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  <row Id="1" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1" RevisionGUID="f34a8460-7e47-4eaa-88ce-a7b9a860c4de" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:32:45.710" UserId="4" Text="I'm looking at the questions proposed during the Area 51 process:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - My supervisor thinks that all `If` statements should include `else` statements. Do you agree?&#xD;&#xA; - What are common mistakes in Software Development?&#xD;&#xA; - Tabs vs. Spaces: What is the one proper indentation character for everything, in every situation, ever?&#xD;&#xA; - What programming language should I teach to my 4 year old son?&#xD;&#xA; - What was the turning point of your programming career?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of these have an answer that should be accepted. The questions are interesting, and the answers would also be informative if the answer was well written and explained why the answerer thinks his method or idea is better. But I can't really see being able to accept an answer to any of these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if I ask a question, how do I decide if or how to accept an answer? There is no right or wrong answer and just because it works for me doesn't mean I should be floating that answer to the top - unless I'm overlooking something, the questions that are on topic here are very subjective. On Stack Overflow, there are often multiple right solutions to a problem. Here, we have a problem with an infinite number of solutions, none of which are arguably better or worse than any others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1" RevisionGUID="f34a8460-7e47-4eaa-88ce-a7b9a860c4de" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:32:45.710" UserId="4" Text="Why would anyone accept an answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1" RevisionGUID="f34a8460-7e47-4eaa-88ce-a7b9a860c4de" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:32:45.710" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|accepted-answer|answering|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="4" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2" RevisionGUID="6f6b34e5-2b5e-4dac-bd2c-2ea3e6bd2173" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:34:51.797" UserId="9" Text="One of the big 7 questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="5" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2" RevisionGUID="6f6b34e5-2b5e-4dac-bd2c-2ea3e6bd2173" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:34:51.797" UserId="9" Text="What should our FAQ contain?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="6" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2" RevisionGUID="6f6b34e5-2b5e-4dac-bd2c-2ea3e6bd2173" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:34:51.797" UserId="9" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="7" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3" RevisionGUID="0c4e2be0-02fb-4a43-a325-717a5169cf54" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:36:08.390" UserId="9" Text="One of the big 7 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - One answer per answer please&#xD;&#xA; - Only .com domain names please&#xD;&#xA; - Only untaken domain names please (use whois)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="8" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3" RevisionGUID="0c4e2be0-02fb-4a43-a325-717a5169cf54" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:36:08.390" UserId="9" Text="What should our domain name be?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="9" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3" RevisionGUID="0c4e2be0-02fb-4a43-a325-717a5169cf54" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:36:08.390" UserId="9" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="10" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4" RevisionGUID="b7bc78b3-0177-4cb7-9194-13c9d0d15782" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:37:08.953" UserId="9" Text="One of the big 7 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - One suggestion per answer please" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="11" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4" RevisionGUID="b7bc78b3-0177-4cb7-9194-13c9d0d15782" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:37:08.953" UserId="9" Text="What should our logo and site design look like?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="12" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4" RevisionGUID="b7bc78b3-0177-4cb7-9194-13c9d0d15782" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:37:08.953" UserId="9" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="13" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5" RevisionGUID="e94e0062-e506-4b48-999d-ff3a3a832c0c" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:38:15.610" UserId="9" Text="One of the big 7 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please nominate a user other than yourself, and state criteria why that user would be a good moderator." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="14" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5" RevisionGUID="e94e0062-e506-4b48-999d-ff3a3a832c0c" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:38:15.610" UserId="9" Text="Who should the moderators be?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="15" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5" RevisionGUID="e94e0062-e506-4b48-999d-ff3a3a832c0c" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:38:15.610" UserId="9" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="16" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6" RevisionGUID="69e2a97a-2d0d-4641-a8dd-280a81266a86" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:38:50.627" UserId="6" Text="A few options would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * **Always pick the highest-voted answer.**  This relies on the asker either keeping this up to date as new answers get voted up, or just picking the highest voted after N days from the asking.&#xD;&#xA; * **Never accept an answer** and just rely on upvotes for rep.&#xD;&#xA; * **Pick whatever answer the asker likes most** based on whatever criteria he/she feels like (humor/accuracy/whatever-they-agree-with)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="17" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7" RevisionGUID="7b616493-8c91-4bc2-a290-e0dbb0d9d6ae" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:39:24.160" UserId="9" Text="One of the big 7 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - One sugestion per answer, please" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="18" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7" RevisionGUID="7b616493-8c91-4bc2-a290-e0dbb0d9d6ae" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:39:24.160" UserId="9" Text="How do we promote our site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="19" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7" RevisionGUID="7b616493-8c91-4bc2-a290-e0dbb0d9d6ae" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:39:24.160" UserId="9" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="20" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8" RevisionGUID="a24f3d37-210c-4965-943e-a45915e560fa" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:42:25.453" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Related to [Why would anyone accept an answer?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer), what's the criteria for what should be a community wiki and what is a regular question? If most, if not all questions are subjective, is there a need to generate one mega-answer through collaboration?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="21" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8" RevisionGUID="a24f3d37-210c-4965-943e-a45915e560fa" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:42:25.453" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Community Wiki on Programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="22" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8" RevisionGUID="a24f3d37-210c-4965-943e-a45915e560fa" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:42:25.453" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|community-wki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="23" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="9" RevisionGUID="9731982d-01e3-4ba4-b214-b0dde6f69c29" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:42:28.073" UserId="4" Text="**Word of mouth.** I'm at school now, but I'm planning on telling everyone I know who might be interested in this to check it out when it enters public beta. I'll probably also shoot an email to some old coworkers of mine, Tweet interesting questions, etc." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="24" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="10" RevisionGUID="10633dcf-1f47-4079-b40c-248f46634c12" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:44:31.533" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="&lt;strong&gt;Comments on off-topic questions on Stack Overflow.&lt;/strong&gt; There are lots of questions that pop up on Stack Overflow that would be better suited here. Using comments as a vehicle to promote this might be a good way to funnel traffic to its appropriate place in lieu of having a *Migrate to Programmers* close option." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="25" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6" RevisionGUID="4330380c-bc55-4593-b51b-93b362d3ca83" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:45:20.797" UserId="6" Comment="added 99 characters in body" Text="A few options would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * **Always pick the highest-voted answer.**  This relies on the asker either keeping this up to date as new answers get voted up, or just picking the highest voted after N days from the asking.&#xD;&#xA; * **Never accept an answer** and just rely on upvotes for rep.&#xD;&#xA; * **Pick whatever answer the asker likes most** based on whatever criteria he/she feels like (humor/accuracy/whatever-they-agree-with).&#xD;&#xA; * **[Edit add:] Always accept Fishtoaster's answers** because they are, by definition, the best." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="26" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="11" RevisionGUID="bcbdd893-8daa-4364-81dc-6aa69dbebae5" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:47:29.187" UserId="7" Text="CodingOasis.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="27" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="12" RevisionGUID="b6bf5040-3ff3-406c-868f-9d2094079449" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:48:55.053" UserId="7" Text="ChatOverJoe.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Playoff of StackOverflow - like a conversation around the coffeepot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="28" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="13" RevisionGUID="cb8d1405-ee63-4d79-a309-5a6e601fe3af" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:50:58.567" UserId="7" Text="NotProgrammingRelated.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Owned by someone hosting a StackExchange 1.0 site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="29" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="14" RevisionGUID="d660fe50-a40f-4485-ab35-a93837f84bfc" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:52:00.977" UserId="37" Text="To delininate what makes this site different from stackoverflow.com:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**All questions here should be inherently subjective and unanswerable, and all the answers to said questions should be 100% based purely on the opinion of the answerer**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of on-topic questions [from the proposal definition](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352?phase=commitment):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My supervisor thinks that all `If` statements should include `else` statements. Do you agree? 27 votes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tabs vs. Spaces: What is the one proper indentation character for everything, in every situation, ever? 24 votes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are common mistakes in Software Development? 24 votes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is your favorite programming joke? 22 votes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What’s your favorite “programmer” cartoon? 21 votes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For questions that are *not* subjective, we might want to have a close reason like &quot;not subjective enough&quot; or &quot;can actually have a definitive answer&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not entirely kidding here -- we want the non-subjective stuff on Stack Overflow so we need a policy here about what the difference is, and where things belong." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="30" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="14" RevisionGUID="d660fe50-a40f-4485-ab35-a93837f84bfc" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:52:00.977" UserId="37" Text="Should we have a &quot;not subjective enough&quot; close reason?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="31" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="14" RevisionGUID="d660fe50-a40f-4485-ab35-a93837f84bfc" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:52:00.977" UserId="37" Text="|discussion|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="32" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="15" RevisionGUID="06b8dfb1-ee7b-49fc-b065-dabc29aee18d" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:55:51.457" UserId="7" Text="IdleCoder.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="33" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="16" RevisionGUID="f6cc0187-6098-4a9b-96c7-30c74c85a142" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:56:38.053" UserId="7" Text="IdleProgrammer.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="34" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="17" RevisionGUID="07e304cb-0528-461a-90a8-c0fb07a5eb6a" CreationDate="2010-09-01T19:58:02.657" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I'm having a hard time coming up with a question that would belong on *Programmers* and have an objective, definitive answer. I'm for the idea of closing non-subjective questions, but perhaps using a different name, like **not a real discussion** (as opposed to **not a real question** on Stack Overflow):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**Not a real discussion**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;This question either has an objective, definitive answer or does not provide enough value as a discussion topic. Definitive questions about programming belong on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would also have the benefit of capturing loaded questions and rants." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="35" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="18" RevisionGUID="eeb7552f-1fa4-4af5-b9e2-f4dfc4fd1df9" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:03:52.767" UserId="47" Text="As I mentioned on another meta when discussing acceptance rate all acceptance really means is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer helped me the most.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore @Fishtoaster's option of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Pick whatever answer the asker likes most** based on whatever criteria he/she feels like (humor/accuracy/whatever-they-agree-with).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is what you should do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the OP feels that none of the answers really &quot;help&quot; then they shouldn't be forced to accept one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="36" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="19" RevisionGUID="06e12878-9c6b-409d-a51d-ce5619f8233c" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:05:08.700" UserId="40" Text="Most of the subjective questions on StackOverflow relied on being popular enough to have a lot of replies. However, at some point there'll probably be a flood of questions and the answers will be split between them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When this site goes into public beta, I suggest requiring a minimum amount of rep (300?) to ask questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="37" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="19" RevisionGUID="06e12878-9c6b-409d-a51d-ce5619f8233c" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:05:08.700" UserId="40" Text="Minimum rep to ask questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="38" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="19" RevisionGUID="06e12878-9c6b-409d-a51d-ce5619f8233c" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:05:08.700" UserId="40" Text="|feature-request|reputation|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="39" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="20" RevisionGUID="91b1d1bf-5c8a-4875-a89c-f3d8a56fc442" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:11:07.810" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="That's pretty contrary to how all the other StackExchange/Trilogy sites are run. The purpose of these sites is to provide a mechanism for anyone to ask a question for which they need an answer to, and if they have to be an active member of the community to even post a question, that purpose is circumvented." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="40" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="21" RevisionGUID="7e4971a4-b134-4018-904f-505b1fbc0974" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:12:34.940" UserId="40" Text="I think the accept rate should at least be hidden, so that people don't need to accept more answers to improve it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="41" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="22" RevisionGUID="4af527b0-db9f-4324-a6df-d1a6241b183c" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:15:21.287" UserId="56" Text="Maybe downvoting and moderating is enough. &#xD;&#xA;If there will be lack of moderators and questions flood, we can just (e.g.) autodelete all questions, that were downvoted enough, or make vote proposals for deletion, merge, or somewhat, so, community will decide, whose question will die or merge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it is too cruel to forbid to ask questions on Q&amp;A site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="42" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="23" RevisionGUID="a40b9e60-3627-4409-8f81-a9aa9c678486" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:15:32.567" UserId="41" Text="When the beta will be over, should the subjective question of StackOverflow be migrated here ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example question : &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/76364/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skill  &#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/84556/whats-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="43" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="23" RevisionGUID="a40b9e60-3627-4409-8f81-a9aa9c678486" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:15:32.567" UserId="41" Text="Should we migrate subjective question from StackOverflow ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="44" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="23" RevisionGUID="a40b9e60-3627-4409-8f81-a9aa9c678486" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:15:32.567" UserId="41" Text="|discussion|migration|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="46" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="25" RevisionGUID="a58aea33-615c-4077-ae4d-01aaa6fd93c2" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:19:20.397" UserId="47" Text="If the site survives beta then there will probably be a migration path set up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime any currently *closed* question should be reposted here. Add a link to the question in comments (if you still can)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="47" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="26" RevisionGUID="46c92453-7afb-447f-bddf-1b61f8acefdf" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:32:40.407" UserId="56" Text="I think, that we should remove approving of answers completely from this site, and it would be  good and reasonable distinction from stackoverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers to subjective questions are not just right or wrong, less or more complete, so votes should be enough and make more sense." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="48" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="27" RevisionGUID="07a9c6bf-4943-4270-997f-6fd4feebb3ff" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:40:45.083" UserId="4" Text="Should questions that depend on a specific location (continent, country, city) or time (anything that changes rapidly over time) be allowed? I'm specifically referring to questions about how much to charge or what a job market looks like." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="49" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="27" RevisionGUID="07a9c6bf-4943-4270-997f-6fd4feebb3ff" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:40:45.083" UserId="4" Text="Are locale or time-dependent questions acceptable?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="50" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="27" RevisionGUID="07a9c6bf-4943-4270-997f-6fd4feebb3ff" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:40:45.083" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="51" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="28" RevisionGUID="89ca2f60-63ac-473a-a461-6cba7b459b31" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:44:24.567" UserId="4" Text="I say no. I don't think any questions that depend on geographic location (country, state, city) or time should be allowed. We should try to capture things that are long-lasting and relevant to programmers everywhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I realize that some things will become irrelevant over the course of time, but specifically, things like the current job market and wages/rates change far too rapidly, IMO, to be of use here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="52" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="29" RevisionGUID="ce0bee80-022b-4141-89cd-b5bece3140b7" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:47:57.323" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I was originally okay with it, but in the first hour of beta, there are three mostly-identical questions that deal with different locales:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Hourly Billing or per project? Rates in the US?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134/hourly-billing-or-per-project-rates-in-the-us)&#xD;&#xA;* [Best country for getting a job](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118/best-country-for-getting-a-job)&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmer's salary in UK](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19/programmers-salary-in-uk)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unchecked, this could consume the site. I think these types of questions should be closed as **too localized**." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="53" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="30" RevisionGUID="dd799239-65fa-4ffc-9047-8be51a379ddb" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:49:35.233" UserId="67" Text="I would argue that the fact that posts have dates on them leave the post up to the discretion of the reader. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that StackExchange sites are designed for quick answers means that questions will be answered in a timely fashion. As such, there will not be open ended $$ questions. Users use SO with judgement. It's either current or not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; The same thing is with tech.  Let's shut down SO because tech changes a few time s a year with Apple and faster/slower depending where you go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would vote to allow such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps we should make a new site called SiliconValue.se specifically for project price haggling?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="54" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="31" RevisionGUID="b9f4551c-b432-4e14-b301-19847d4988a2" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:49:48.150" UserId="56" Text="Why should we do it now?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does it make sense, if moderators will be selected at the end of some period, maybe public beta stage, or smth, among the persons with high reputation values, maybe even from all SO nestlings family." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="55" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="30" RevisionGUID="0855feb7-7206-4c75-a2f2-12221498457f" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:55:04.277" UserId="67" Comment="edited body" Text="I would vote to allow such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would argue that the fact that posts have dates on them leave the post up to the discretion of the reader. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that StackExchange sites are designed for quick answers means that questions will be answered in a timely fashion. As such, there will not be open ended $$ questions. Users use SO with judgement. It's either current or not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; The same thing is with tech.  Let's shut down SO because tech changes a few time s a year with Apple and faster/slower depending where you go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps we should make a new site called SiliconValue.se specifically for project price haggling?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="56" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="32" RevisionGUID="933de09d-6654-4eb9-9fbe-d85588b84cf2" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:56:43.090" UserId="56" Text="suggestions, please!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="57" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="32" RevisionGUID="933de09d-6654-4eb9-9fbe-d85588b84cf2" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:56:43.090" UserId="56" Text=" Should we migrate too stackoverflowish questions to stackoverflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="58" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="32" RevisionGUID="933de09d-6654-4eb9-9fbe-d85588b84cf2" CreationDate="2010-09-01T20:56:43.090" UserId="56" Text="|discussion|migration|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="59" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="33" RevisionGUID="a2b60bda-bf1e-47f9-8c71-be64a08c1e7b" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:00:58.450" UserId="11" Text="The reason to have a community wiki is to avoid to ask a question just for reputation harvesting. The rule I suggest is to make wikis for humor like questions, &quot;what's you favorite ...&quot;, and every other question that could accept an undefined number of replies." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="60" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="34" RevisionGUID="f89fe25d-4c50-4ed4-97a0-1c4da8b8cb6c" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:02:12.093" UserId="61" Text="pointertotheheap.com&#xD;&#xA;available&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you can't store on the stack, put on the heap" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="61" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="35" RevisionGUID="12d617c5-f24c-40c5-a61e-0a5b01001be9" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:07:33.287" UserId="61" Text="programmersbackyard.com or theprogrammersbackyard.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;both available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="62" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="36" RevisionGUID="09dc4697-f59d-40b3-a2fc-bc522cc847b3" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:08:47.137" UserId="61" Text="stronginthesource.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;available" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="63" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="37" RevisionGUID="ebf49528-0a6b-4117-9a2e-146185d07ef6" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:14:18.323" UserId="66" Text="I would really like this, along with all the questions being reopened. This way discussion that was halted because of the close could restart, and new answers could flow in for the single &quot;Don't ask here, ask (obscure site)&quot; type answer to the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see two issues though&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **The amount of questions that could be moved is immense**. I haven't done any statistics, but I put it in the hundreds&#xD;&#xA; - **What about old questions?** Moving a question asked and closed in 08 and reopening here would make little sense. &#xD;&#xA; - **Moving by batch processes would get false positives.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="64" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="28" RevisionGUID="02662c8f-15c6-4c61-a1ee-9ff130858b31" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:14:46.550" UserId="4" Comment="added 235 characters in body" Text="I say no. I don't think any specific questions that depend on geographic location (country, state, city) or time should be allowed. We should try to capture things that are long-lasting and relevant to programmers everywhere. However, if someone is asking for a resource that helps them obtain geographic or time-specific information (such as asking for a website that regularly tracks salaries of programmers in country X), that should be acceptable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I realize that some things will become irrelevant over the course of time, but specifically, things like the current job market and wages/rates change far too rapidly, IMO, to be of use here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="65" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="38" RevisionGUID="771126fd-4e96-49f8-a4f7-d2cb49fbf41b" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:18:34.317" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Code golf questions are a perennial favorite on Stack Overflow, but are under constant threat of being closed for being off topic or not a real question. Now that Programmers is live, do Code Golf and Code Challenge questions have a home here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="66" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="38" RevisionGUID="771126fd-4e96-49f8-a4f7-d2cb49fbf41b" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:18:34.317" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Where do Code Golf/Code Challenge questions belong?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="67" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="38" RevisionGUID="771126fd-4e96-49f8-a4f7-d2cb49fbf41b" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:18:34.317" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|stack-overflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="68" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="39" RevisionGUID="dbf2631b-513e-45fa-acab-8e6d327efc55" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:21:48.507" UserId="4" Text="Honestly, I don't want to see them here or on Stack Overflow. I think that there should be a code golf stack exchange for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They don't belong here because they aren't subjective - someone can either write a shorter program or you have written the shortest program to do that task. They don't belong on Stack Overflow because they aren't an explicit question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="70" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="40" RevisionGUID="932baaf0-f565-4e8d-aeb9-32fab75fb797" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:27:32.900" UserId="40" Text="This is an issue in a lot of subjective questions but is relevant particularly here. Should people post large answers with lots of points or post each one in a separate answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="71" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="40" RevisionGUID="932baaf0-f565-4e8d-aeb9-32fab75fb797" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:27:32.900" UserId="40" Text="Should each point be posted in a separate answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="72" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="40" RevisionGUID="932baaf0-f565-4e8d-aeb9-32fab75fb797" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:27:32.900" UserId="40" Text="|discussion|answers|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="73" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="41" RevisionGUID="798f5dd6-fcf0-4467-99de-8f02070c9574" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:34:43.060" UserId="4" Text="If the points are leading up to a common statement or sentiment, then one answer. If they are disjoint (such as multiple books in a book recommendation question or multiple people to follow on Twitter), one point per post so they can be voted on independently." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="74" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="38" RevisionGUID="e4a45ca4-04bf-4c91-a747-d7898646578f" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:42:04.687" UserId="40" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|stack-overflow|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="75" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3" RevisionGUID="a3d742e5-ba54-435f-98f7-4fbb2a0625da" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:48:54.317" UserId="40" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="76" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2" RevisionGUID="fbfc4f95-5745-4153-8a16-46a5025a9259" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:49:45.830" UserId="40" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="77" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4" RevisionGUID="f6028bd6-9af5-4208-b143-c63dfb3bae02" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:50:45.453" UserId="40" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="81" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="43" RevisionGUID="4acd7654-4a66-459f-a816-374a4b6b15bc" CreationDate="2010-09-01T21:58:27.630" UserId="87" Text="IMHO, if most of the users on programmers are also on SO, AND if Jeff&amp;co. are ok, there would be no problem in migrating questions to stackoverflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="82" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="44" RevisionGUID="876018c4-3a75-4c2b-afe7-61d4c3ec8c01" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:05:57.440" UserId="94" Text="When this site was proposed, there was an unspoken understanding &amp;#8212; heck, sometimes it wasn't even unspoken &amp;#8212; that it was the place for questions like &quot;[What's your favorite programmer cartoon?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/84556/whats-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon)&quot; and &quot;[What book should every programmer read?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read)&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming for a moment that the migration pathway opens up from SO after the beta &amp;#8212; that's being discussed at [a separate question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23/should-we-migrate-subjective-question-from-stackoverflow) &amp;#8212; do we still want to ask those questions during the beta?  It's already happening; [example 1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon), [example 2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-programming-quote).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the one hand, it seems redundant.  But on the other hand, there's always the merge function.  Back to the first hand, merging will probably create some dupe answers.  But on the second hand again, there are already dupe answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="83" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="44" RevisionGUID="876018c4-3a75-4c2b-afe7-61d4c3ec8c01" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:05:57.440" UserId="94" Text="How should we handle questions currently closed on SO?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="84" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="44" RevisionGUID="876018c4-3a75-4c2b-afe7-61d4c3ec8c01" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:05:57.440" UserId="94" Text="|discussion|beta|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="85" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="45" RevisionGUID="55bd20eb-6b98-44b9-a860-591b2cc09213" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:15:25.787" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I think asking them now before a migration path is important as it sets the tone for the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we limit ourselves to questions that haven't already been asked on Stack Overflow when this site is meant as a place for all those questions that don't belong on Stack Overflow, the amount of questions available to seed the site becomes very limited, and the concrete examples to show on Stack Overflow that Programmers.SE is the appropriate place for off-topic questions would be missing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="86" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="46" RevisionGUID="cb03de60-bbde-4050-b616-300303f8021f" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:16:33.867" UserId="94" Text="A handful of you may remember [Stack Overflow Overflow](http://stackoverflowoverflow.stackexchange.com/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##stackoverflowoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is parked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Why aren't other people using CW?  Am I missing something?)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="87" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="46" RevisionGUID="cb03de60-bbde-4050-b616-300303f8021f" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:16:33.867" UserId="94" />
  <row Id="88" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="45" RevisionGUID="186e9165-7c33-4c4d-9b9b-e6c7c3c22324" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:20:32.173" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 212 characters in body; added 483 characters in body; added 6 characters in body" Text="I think asking them now before a migration path is important as it sets the tone for the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is a little different than previous SE sites in that it's meant as *the place you put all the off-topic and subjective but still programming-related questions that get closed on Stack Overflow*. It's important that we can show that demonstrably by seeding the site with quality questions that would normally get closed on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we limit ourselves to questions that haven't already been asked on Stack Overflow when this site is meant as a place for all those questions that don't belong on Stack Overflow, the amount of questions available to seed the site becomes very limited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although, I should say the examples you pointed out are pretty low quality to begin with, and I hope they aren't going to be used as exemplars for what Programmers.SE will become. [On another question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8/community-wiki-on-programmers/33#33), I suggested those types of questions that are of the ilk *What's your favorite cartoon?* or *What's your favorite quotation?* might be better off closed as *off-topic* even on Programmers.SE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="89" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="47" RevisionGUID="4ec9757d-5971-4152-902c-705207bce51f" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:23:02.043" UserId="56" Text="Here is an example (speculative) of the question: &#xD;&#xA;What IDE do you like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, shortly we'd see something like:&#xD;&#xA;'VS6 blah-blah..' x500&#xD;&#xA;'blah-blamm VS2010..' x100&#xD;&#xA;'bzzzz Eclipse..' x1000&#xD;&#xA;'vim is cool!' x20&#xD;&#xA;'we use butterflies!'&#xD;&#xA;and so one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;maybe we can find a method to fold such flames? Vote for answers are not enough. Like polling, for example, of smth else. Of course, we should leave the ability to provide full answer in free form, but maybe polling is what we need for the kind of questions I mentioned here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="90" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="47" RevisionGUID="4ec9757d-5971-4152-902c-705207bce51f" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:23:02.043" UserId="56" Text="Polling as a measure to prevent answer flood." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="91" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="47" RevisionGUID="4ec9757d-5971-4152-902c-705207bce51f" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:23:02.043" UserId="56" Text="|feature-request|answering|voting|polling|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="92" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8" RevisionGUID="ca3eaf71-3e5d-41ad-8474-5a4854898f90" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:29:44.590" UserId="40" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="93" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="48" RevisionGUID="52bf0b03-fe3a-478e-b355-b67ad9c99a71" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:30:08.100" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="There are now a lot of questions that are of the same caliber:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What's your favourite programming quote?][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [What is your favorite “programmer” cartoon?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is your favorite editor/IDE?][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [What's your favorite programming joke?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35/whats-your-favorite-programming-joke)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can you recommend some good programming blogs?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67/can-you-recommend-some-good-programming-blogs)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should these types of questions be allowed on Programmers.SE, or should we be limiting the scope of the site to subjective questions that promote extended discussion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was suggested on the [Community Wiki on Programmers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8/community-wiki-on-programmers) question that we should use the *Community Wiki* flag to allow these types of questions, but prevent rep farming on them. But is that a good solution? What about closing these questions as off-topic even on Programmers.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-programming-quote&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/219/what-is-your-favorite-editor-ide" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="94" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="48" RevisionGUID="52bf0b03-fe3a-478e-b355-b67ad9c99a71" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:30:08.100" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="What types of subjective questions are not acceptable on Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="95" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="48" RevisionGUID="52bf0b03-fe3a-478e-b355-b67ad9c99a71" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:30:08.100" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="96" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="49" RevisionGUID="b633c383-adaf-4c36-a882-eb8ee51d8c00" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:31:47.847" UserId="94" Text="In the same vein as [this answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3/what-should-our-domain-name-be/34#34), how about&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##heapunderflow.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="97" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="49" RevisionGUID="b633c383-adaf-4c36-a882-eb8ee51d8c00" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:31:47.847" UserId="94" />
  <row Id="98" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="48" RevisionGUID="f0691dbf-dcf1-4dbd-8534-660036c972a5" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:39:06.927" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited title" Text="What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="99" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8" RevisionGUID="95ba9162-b8fa-4546-a2fd-70430b72a800" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:39:43.197" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited title" Text="Purpose of Community Wiki" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="100" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="50" RevisionGUID="afe75809-fca3-40ad-852c-df4ecf3eb967" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:46:03.917" UserId="40" Text="I don't think any should be. Looking at the main page, nearly all the questions are subjective in some way and could have an unlimited number of answers (any counter-examples?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If questions were made CW according to how useful they were, it would be difficult to draw the line. Is [this question][1] pointless or asking for a genuine recommendation. It's open ended, but very useful to someone wanting to start an open source project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/i-want-to-start-an-open-source-project-wheres-the-best-place-to-host-it" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="101" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="51" RevisionGUID="b3b1cf81-3c31-4547-9463-1cd2c880ed54" CreationDate="2010-09-01T22:56:23.570" UserId="6" Text="I don't think subjectivity should be among the criteria for being unacceptable.  I mean, one of the stated goals of this site was to catch what SO considers off-topic, and &quot;Favorite Cartoon&quot; was even on the definition stage here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, I think there's only a finite number of those that can be created and still draw interest, whereas there is much more variety in the threads that generate more discussion (&quot;Will Java still be relevant in 5 years?&quot;, &quot;Agile for the Solo Developer&quot;, etc)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="102" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="52" RevisionGUID="feba6160-deef-4e39-9a1d-b393511a6ab1" CreationDate="2010-09-01T23:28:09.480" UserId="86" Text="This isn't just about subjective questions - but about forming a home for questions that don't fit well on StackOverflow. I think that they would be better here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="103" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="53" RevisionGUID="8d891c13-e1be-4da2-9769-a76d0f7cb8e3" CreationDate="2010-09-02T00:30:24.267" UserId="104" Text="Since everything is pretty much subjective here, perhaps this message should be disabled on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="104" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="53" RevisionGUID="8d891c13-e1be-4da2-9769-a76d0f7cb8e3" CreationDate="2010-09-02T00:30:24.267" UserId="104" Text="&quot;The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed.&quot; yeah baby! " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="105" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="53" RevisionGUID="8d891c13-e1be-4da2-9769-a76d0f7cb8e3" CreationDate="2010-09-02T00:30:24.267" UserId="104" Text="|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="107" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="55" RevisionGUID="50ed6b95-e154-4711-a898-aec23bffe7a5" CreationDate="2010-09-02T01:02:23.223" UserId="6" Text="I concur.  I don't know what level of customization we can do, but I understand we have CSS control, so we could at least hide that message, if not replace is as per Dori's suggestion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="108" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="56" RevisionGUID="0c23b0ff-3bcd-4242-9ed5-c994a745c12e" CreationDate="2010-09-02T01:56:25.287" UserId="13" Text="AboutCode.com&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like the domain is taken, but for sale. Not sure what the logistics would be." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="109" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="57" RevisionGUID="4c70a300-00b2-4100-8118-d9791a356710" CreationDate="2010-09-02T01:59:25.173" UserId="13" Text="CoderOverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;available" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="110" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5" RevisionGUID="c88492e6-8a21-4332-9c11-a4c86256660e" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:30:48.670" UserId="3" Comment="added 1764 characters in body; edited tags" Text="In about two weeks, this community will receive some provisional moderators to help get this site started prior to the elections at the end of the beta. Please read this: **[Moderators Pro Tempore](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/moderator-pro-tempore/)**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please suggest some members of this community you feel would make excellent moderators (self nominations are okay).**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some basic guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Each nomination should be a separate answer. Link the name to the user’s profile (parent and meta) so we can see their activity.&#xD;&#xA; - The nominee should indicate their acceptance by editing the answer, adding that they accept the nomination. Optionally they can write something about themselves.&#xD;&#xA; - Self nominations are okay, and even encouraged. Most sites have not had sufficient time for many users to stand out. Self nomination is simply a way to say, “I’m interested. Let my record speak for itself.” Links to other activities may be helpful: Area 51 participation, participation in other sites, blog posts reviewing or announcing the site, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is what we are looking for in a Moderator...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are seeking out members who are deeply engaged in the community’s development; members who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Have a reasonably high reputation score to indicate active, consistent participation.&#xD;&#xA; - Show an interest in their meta’s community-building activities.&#xD;&#xA; - Lead by example, showing patience and respect for their fellow community members in everything they write.&#xD;&#xA; - Exhibit those intangible traits discussed in A Theory of Moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bonus points for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Members with participation in both meta and the parent site (i.e. interest in both community building and expertise in the field).&#xD;&#xA; - Area 51 participation, social network referrals, or blogging about the site.&#xD;&#xA; - Members who have already shown an interest or ability to promote their community." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="111" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5" RevisionGUID="c88492e6-8a21-4332-9c11-a4c86256660e" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:30:48.670" UserId="3" Comment="added 1764 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
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  <row Id="113" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:32:56.437" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="114" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="11" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:40:00.467" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="115" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="12" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:40:00.467" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="116" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="13" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:40:00.467" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="117" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="15" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:40:00.467" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="118" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="16" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:40:00.467" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="119" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="34" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:40:00.467" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="120" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="35" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:40:00.467" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="121" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="36" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:40:00.467" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="122" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="56" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:40:00.467" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="123" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="57" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:40:00.467" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="124" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:40:00.467" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="126" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="2" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:42:26.083" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="127" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="58" RevisionGUID="8e70c82e-2488-4159-8145-2081987d4020" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:42:49.830" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I think we're starting to already get some duplication and unnecessary tagging; we should use this post as a means to figure out what should be combined and what should be blacklisted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Questions to consider&#xD;&#xA;* Are meta-tags allowed? (e.g. *poll*, *discussion*, [*quotes*](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/quotes), [*humor*](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/humor), etc.)&#xD;&#xA;* Given this site is called **Programmers**, should the word *programming* and its synonyms be avoided in tags? (e.g. [*programming languages*](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming-languages), [*programming tool*](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming-tool), [*programmers*](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programmers), etc.)&#xD;&#xA;* What tags should be merged as synonyms?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="128" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="58" RevisionGUID="8e70c82e-2488-4159-8145-2081987d4020" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:42:49.830" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Tag consolidation and blacklist" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="129" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="58" RevisionGUID="8e70c82e-2488-4159-8145-2081987d4020" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:42:49.830" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="130" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="58" RevisionGUID="8e70c82e-2488-4159-8145-2081987d4020" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:42:49.830" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="131" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="59" RevisionGUID="8dc67bfc-ee83-42ab-a95e-b7902b59b352" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:50:14.327" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Meta tags&#xD;&#xA;Given the nature of the content on Programmers.SE, I think *some* meta-tags would be helpful. Many questions are going to have specific topics of interest, but others are so subjective they necessarily encompass vaguely defined topics but are still on-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One example of a tag I think would be beneficial would be *poll*. Assuming it's decided that asking people about their favorite *X* is considered on-topic (related discussion: [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable), it'd be really useful for people to add those types of questions to their ignored or interested tag lists. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A similar use-case could be made for *humor* and other similar tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Programmer tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to see those renamed or removed: they're redundant. It's assumed if you're talking about a *language*, it's C++ or Erlang, not French or Spanish; and every question on this site has something to do with *programmers*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="132" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="59" RevisionGUID="8dc67bfc-ee83-42ab-a95e-b7902b59b352" CreationDate="2010-09-02T03:50:14.327" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="133" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="13" RevisionGUID="d705effa-736c-4652-8d7e-92215af8a093" CreationDate="2010-09-02T07:52:24.523" UserId="11" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="## notprogrammingrelated.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Owned by someone hosting a StackExchange 1.0 site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="134" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="34" RevisionGUID="5bc5bfb6-3358-4702-abfb-5717707d37e8" CreationDate="2010-09-02T07:52:51.040" UserId="11" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="##pointertotheheap.com&#xD;&#xA;available&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you can't store on the stack, put on the heap" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="135" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="60" RevisionGUID="a839fbbb-362c-424b-825d-a4405309d33b" CreationDate="2010-09-02T07:57:39.533" UserId="11" Text="#heappointer.com&#xD;&#xA;available&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe also **heapointer.com** or **heap-pointer.com**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We all know about stack pointers, but what about heap pointers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="136" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="60" RevisionGUID="a839fbbb-362c-424b-825d-a4405309d33b" CreationDate="2010-09-02T07:57:39.533" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="137" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="57" RevisionGUID="7a70c103-92a4-4bfe-bf3d-a3d9985f7a41" CreationDate="2010-09-02T08:01:31.893" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="coderoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;available" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="138" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="56" RevisionGUID="1a2e9415-6dfc-47b7-9034-e66946b86ab9" CreationDate="2010-09-02T08:01:50.130" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="aboutcode.com&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like the domain is taken, but for sale. Not sure what the logistics would be." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="139" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3" RevisionGUID="355169e4-4922-4ca0-9656-47ad85e04203" CreationDate="2010-09-02T08:03:02.127" UserId="11" Comment="added 129 characters in body" Text="One of the big 7 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - One answer per answer please&#xD;&#xA; - Only .com domain names please&#xD;&#xA; - Only untaken domain names please (use whois)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please use lowercase characters only in domain name! DomainName.com is more readable, but we have to register domainname.com!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="140" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="61" RevisionGUID="b537f660-c3c9-4b84-9818-16094459f902" CreationDate="2010-09-02T10:14:45.347" UserId="64" Text="**stackoverflowed.com**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7cO0f.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="141" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="61" RevisionGUID="b537f660-c3c9-4b84-9818-16094459f902" CreationDate="2010-09-02T10:14:45.347" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="142" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="62" RevisionGUID="72220f05-5522-4130-aae9-a22b2949b043" CreationDate="2010-09-02T11:34:50.293" UserId="66" Text="I'm kind of in the middle. On SO there is a huge community, many people following `[code-golf]`, and therefor a large group of people willing to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On here, this is more of the idea's of programming then actual code writing. I want to come here when the only questions in my skillset are about things I havn't use yet. I don't want to come here and see more code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other side, there are tons of close happy, downvote happy people that will close anything that's not a specific question, argue the heck of it, and then have others drag the squabbles to meta. The 3k+ community seems to be split on the issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However if we move them to here, most questions will become unanswered because we don't have as large of a community. We would essentially kill code golf for the entire S[EO] network.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="143" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="63" RevisionGUID="c78d7674-f862-45a2-aa13-e75bdec1a340" CreationDate="2010-09-02T12:35:32.200" UserId="135" Text="Jeff, I agree that any question that is a valid SO question should get the full attention of the SO community. Then how about a [belongs-on-stackoverflow] tag and close reason?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Belongs on Stack Overflow**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question presents a problem that can be clearly and satisfactorily solved by a solution and is directly related to programming. Consider posting this question on Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="144" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="64" RevisionGUID="5ca52271-36e7-4979-b602-f6b9ddbcfd61" CreationDate="2010-09-02T13:36:21.913" UserId="6" Text="Have any code golfers considered starting a new SE?  &quot;Code Games,&quot; maybe?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="145" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="65" RevisionGUID="9b84c3b7-9474-4a29-acd7-6fd2a8b9425e" CreationDate="2010-09-02T13:45:10.433" UserId="44" Text="&gt; All questions here should be inherently subjective and unanswerable[…].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, _unanswerable_ means _for which is not possible to answer_; that is probably different from the meaning that is being suggested here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The example questions reported have been voted as good examples; not all the examples has been voted, and that doesn't mean they are not good examples.  &#xD;&#xA;If we apply the same criterium, then we should wait to close a question as _not too much subjective_, and see if the question gets enough votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="146" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="50" RevisionGUID="13fd4efb-23e7-42a3-90a2-b9742fad8087" CreationDate="2010-09-02T14:56:12.983" UserId="40" Comment="deleted 8 characters in body" Text="I don't think any should be. Looking at the main page, nearly all the questions are subjective in some way and voting is based mainly on opinion (any counter-examples?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If questions were made CW according to how useful they were, it would be difficult to draw the line. Is [this question][1] pointless or asking for a genuine recommendation. It's open ended, but very useful to someone wanting to start an open source project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/i-want-to-start-an-open-source-project-wheres-the-best-place-to-host-it" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="152" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="59" RevisionGUID="c7335b08-949c-44b9-a194-5e30e901536f" CreationDate="2010-09-02T17:52:24.813" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 504 characters in body" Text="### Meta tags&#xD;&#xA;Given the nature of the content on Programmers.SE, I think *some* meta-tags would be helpful. Many questions are going to have specific topics of interest, but others are so subjective they necessarily encompass vaguely defined topics but are still on-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One example of a tag I think would be beneficial would be *poll*. Assuming it's decided that asking people about their favorite *X* is considered on-topic (related discussion: [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable), it'd be really useful for people to add those types of questions to their ignored or interested tag lists. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A similar use-case could be made for *humor* and other similar tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Programmer tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to see those renamed or removed: they're redundant. It's assumed if you're talking about a *language*, it's C++ or Erlang, not French or Spanish; and every question on this site has something to do with *programmers* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:** *Programmers* tag removed, *programming-tool* renamed to *tools*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### *Favorite* tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to see this renamed to *poll*. *Favorite* is subjective and does not convey anything about the question: is it the author's favorite question? The taggers? *Poll* is specific and concrete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Hiring/Job/Career tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These should be consolidated into one tag: *careers* and synonyms created for the other tags. There is no difference in the type of questions among these tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="153" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="38" RevisionGUID="aea8b816-5bf8-4353-a813-58ec2403238f" CreationDate="2010-09-02T18:03:14.380" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="154" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="68" RevisionGUID="019ff48e-afd5-4559-832b-191023cefa2b" CreationDate="2010-09-02T19:00:29.003" UserId="6" Text="This is thinking ahead a bit, but since most of these questions are subjective, there's a couple situations we'll eventually have to deal with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions with changing answers.  For example, if someone asks &quot;What's the hottest new language&quot; today and then someone else asks that in a year or two, is it fair to mark it as a duplicate?  At what point is it ok to repeat time-sensitive questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. *Very* subjective questions (eg, &quot;What's your favorite programming joke?&quot;).  Such questions get filled up pretty quickly and then stagnate.  Do we want to always point anyone wanted to ask that to the super big, super old original question, or do we eventually want to allow it to start over and let new users contribute?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="155" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="68" RevisionGUID="019ff48e-afd5-4559-832b-191023cefa2b" CreationDate="2010-09-02T19:00:29.003" UserId="6" Text="How to handle repeat questions after a certain age?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="156" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="68" RevisionGUID="019ff48e-afd5-4559-832b-191023cefa2b" CreationDate="2010-09-02T19:00:29.003" UserId="6" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="157" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="69" RevisionGUID="e8e5b837-66de-41b9-a58d-458483ef676c" CreationDate="2010-09-02T19:21:35.583" UserId="4" Text="For questions that are somewhat date sensitive, but long-lasting, they should be dated (&quot;What are the hottest languages of 2010?&quot;, followed by &quot;What are the hottest languages of 2011?&quot; sometime late in 2011). But then again, I'm not a fan of a lot of time sensitive questions (although if you are interested in what the emerging trends were for a year, that's of enough interest, I think).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as large questions, I don't have an opinion there. I'm not a fan of the ones that grow to hundreds of postings (favorite joke, favorite cartoon). They do belong here (as opposed to Stack Overflow), but I'm not going to weigh in on something I don't plan on participating in." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="158" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="70" RevisionGUID="05a57d1e-552e-4d9a-895b-eda045a7a768" CreationDate="2010-09-02T21:10:33.450" UserId="6" Text="I'm conflicted.  I see a few points to this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Some interesting and worthy questions may *require* local context (eg, &quot;What's the average salary&quot; is less useful than &quot;What's the average salary in the UK?)&#xD;&#xA; * Some similar questions would be clearly useless for too small of a Geographical area (&quot;what's the average salary in the town of Warwick in Orange County, NY)&#xD;&#xA; * The above two points would put us in the hairy position of deciding what constitutes &quot;too small&quot; (is Sri Lanka too small?  Latvia?  Italy?  France?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that, I think it'd be better to avoid geographically local questions entirely, at the cost of whatever small amount of good discussion might have been had." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="162" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="59" RevisionGUID="59b0f803-917e-4a9d-bc1d-dcea7b4fd8a7" CreationDate="2010-09-02T22:06:42.743" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 62 characters in body" Text="### Meta tags&#xD;&#xA;Given the nature of the content on Programmers.SE, I think *some* meta-tags would be helpful. Many questions are going to have specific topics of interest, but others are so subjective they necessarily encompass vaguely defined topics but are still on-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One example of a tag I think would be beneficial would be *poll*. Assuming it's decided that asking people about their favorite *X* is considered on-topic (related discussion: [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable), it'd be really useful for people to add those types of questions to their ignored or interested tag lists. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A similar use-case could be made for *humor* and other similar tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Programmer tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to see those renamed or removed: they're redundant. It's assumed if you're talking about a *language*, it's C++ or Erlang, not French or Spanish; and every question on this site has something to do with *programmers* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:** *Programmers* tag removed, *programming-tool* renamed to *tools*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### *Favorite* tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to see this renamed to *poll*. *Favorite* is subjective and does not convey anything about the question: is it the author's favorite question? The taggers? *Poll* is specific and concrete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:** *Favorite* tag is deprecated in favor of *Poll*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Hiring/Job/Career tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These should be consolidated into one tag: *careers* and synonyms created for the other tags. There is no difference in the type of questions among these tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="163" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="72" RevisionGUID="9b8b239d-8bab-4894-9485-48863238246d" CreationDate="2010-09-02T22:52:56.967" UserId="38" Text="We don't want barriers to adoption, particularly in the beta stage. We seem to deal with these things pretty well on Stack Overflow, with gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) reminders to n00bs of the etiquette (checking for dupes / accepting answers etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember we want to have users on this site and preferably a lot of them.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that more experienced users giving out those reminders should be sufficient, at least unless this becomes a real problem, rather than a potential problem." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="166" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="73" RevisionGUID="833c27f4-c4c8-44b5-81af-72f3504f46e0" CreationDate="2010-09-02T23:24:00.553" UserId="66" Text="&quot;Like/Share&quot; type links for various social networks? I have a many people on social networks that I would like to spread this to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This probably exists somewhere, but I haven't been able to find it" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="167" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="74" RevisionGUID="7db50739-f972-476e-b8b9-0e8eefc970a9" CreationDate="2010-09-02T23:37:22.360" UserId="66" Text="Something like this&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; `Programmers` is  for the discussion of subjective programming related questions, like &quot;Tabs vs Spaces&quot; or &quot;Whats the best language?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kinds of questions should I **not** ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; *Avoid asking questions that have a definitive answer.* This includes most &quot;Whats wrong with my code&quot; type questions. [StackOverflow][1] would be a better place&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(any particular reason why I don't see a community wiki option?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="168" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="74" RevisionGUID="7db50739-f972-476e-b8b9-0e8eefc970a9" CreationDate="2010-09-02T23:37:22.360" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="169" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="47" RevisionGUID="460be17f-5827-47d7-ba7d-84f721614bf9" CreationDate="2010-09-03T00:41:16.627" UserId="99" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|answers|voting|polling|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="170" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1" RevisionGUID="4fae6afe-1dd7-44a5-a1d1-3a9b3b146f0e" CreationDate="2010-09-03T00:42:07.733" UserId="99" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="171" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="75" RevisionGUID="ed405db5-7521-4745-a70b-9c4407e3037d" CreationDate="2010-09-03T01:00:10.670" UserId="6" Text="I think this is kinda self-correcting.  If there's 10 &quot;VS2010&quot; answers, generally only one (usually one of the first ones) gets voted up significantly.  As such, the relevant and distinct answers tend to rise to the top (assuming you sort by votes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The downside, of course, is that after a while questions will stagnate as new answers (starting with 1 vote) get lost at the bottom of the thread." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="177" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="79" RevisionGUID="7bf5ac57-3a0b-4f24-83ef-59eef037f8d6" CreationDate="2010-09-03T09:57:10.533" UserId="25" Text="I proposed **SlackOverflow** [.com?] on [meta.stackoverflow.com][1] and Jeff suggested to add it here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/62734/renaming-the-not-programming-related-proposal/62849#62849" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="178" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="79" RevisionGUID="7bf5ac57-3a0b-4f24-83ef-59eef037f8d6" CreationDate="2010-09-03T09:57:10.533" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="179" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="79" RevisionGUID="5f2b31ac-706b-42d8-9dc5-6519ab7827a9" CreationDate="2010-09-03T10:15:43.030" UserId="25" Comment="added 6 characters in body" Text="##SlackOverflow [.com?]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I proposed this on [meta.stackoverflow.com][1] and Jeff suggested to add it here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/62734/renaming-the-not-programming-related-proposal/62849#62849" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="180" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="80" RevisionGUID="8bfacb0e-f545-456d-895a-b96c9406c498" CreationDate="2010-09-03T10:28:35.860" UserId="25" Text="Several possibilities along the same lines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##StackOverspill.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stuff that doesn't fit on StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##StackOverdose.com&#xD;&#xA;People who can't get enough of StackOverflow come here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##StackOverride.com&#xD;&#xA;The normal rules of StackOverflow don't apply here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="181" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="80" RevisionGUID="8bfacb0e-f545-456d-895a-b96c9406c498" CreationDate="2010-09-03T10:28:35.860" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="182" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="33" RevisionGUID="a2ee0f07-e3a6-4a3d-95aa-2473c46243ed" CreationDate="2010-09-03T12:24:50.823" UserId="11" Comment="added 107 characters in body" Text="While the true purpose of Community Wiki is to allow collaborative effort (in building list of elements, for example), CW can be used effectively to avoid to ask a question just for reputation harvesting. The rule I suggest is to make wikis for humor like questions, &quot;what's you favorite ...&quot;, and every other question that could accept an undefined number of replies." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="183" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="81" RevisionGUID="35d01285-64b8-4383-bc95-45e43060b88d" CreationDate="2010-09-03T12:26:07.013" UserId="113" Text="You probably could pick an answer to accept for this one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What programming language should I teach to my 4 year old son?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and possibly this one&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* My supervisor thinks that all If statements should include else  statements. Do you agree?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although the second example is a yes/no question, there might be an argument that is more convincing than the others." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="184" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="82" RevisionGUID="28e35016-8707-4d2d-9b50-ea966b2db5bf" CreationDate="2010-09-03T12:55:43.773" UserId="29" Text="It would be nice if some questions such as the famous quote and cartoon questions from StackOverflow could be copied or moved to this site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="185" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="82" RevisionGUID="28e35016-8707-4d2d-9b50-ea966b2db5bf" CreationDate="2010-09-03T12:55:43.773" UserId="29" Text="Is there a way to move questions from stackoverflow to this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="186" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="82" RevisionGUID="28e35016-8707-4d2d-9b50-ea966b2db5bf" CreationDate="2010-09-03T12:55:43.773" UserId="29" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="187" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="83" RevisionGUID="4b1b0085-bfd6-4881-8473-77b08da143ce" CreationDate="2010-09-03T13:19:33.857" UserId="4" Text="Not yet. I'm not sure what the criteria for getting this feature is, but it has been discussed on Stack Overflow Meta (don't have any links at this time, but I can dig them up). I would suspect it wouldn't happen until we are out of beta, though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="188" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="84" RevisionGUID="d170cf99-284d-4f5f-a671-c520bfdac1d5" CreationDate="2010-09-04T00:31:51.043" UserId="40" Text="Is this a good place to ask questions about the [hidden features][1] of programming languages and tools?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/hidden-features" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="189" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="84" RevisionGUID="d170cf99-284d-4f5f-a671-c520bfdac1d5" CreationDate="2010-09-04T00:31:51.043" UserId="40" Text="Are hidden features questions on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="190" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="84" RevisionGUID="d170cf99-284d-4f5f-a671-c520bfdac1d5" CreationDate="2010-09-04T00:31:51.043" UserId="40" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="191" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="79" RevisionGUID="9d19fad3-fd5b-412e-a5b6-6925e6087486" CreationDate="2010-09-04T00:36:28.763" UserId="3" Comment="added 10 characters in body" Text="##SlackOverflow [.com?]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taken.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I proposed this on [meta.stackoverflow.com][1] and Jeff suggested to add it here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/62734/renaming-the-not-programming-related-proposal/62849#62849" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="192" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="85" RevisionGUID="ba3a9b76-4489-4aa9-895c-e25710700501" CreationDate="2010-09-04T02:12:48.130" UserId="66" Text="I think they are perfectly fine over there and don't fit this site well. My definition of this site is about the idea's of programming and other programming related stuff, but not actual code. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And besides, do we really want to move them all over here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="195" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="61" RevisionGUID="e1381b1b-c0e5-4173-a8bc-99eec1aea5c6" CreationDate="2010-09-04T08:10:20.903" UserId="64" Comment="deleted 18 characters in body" Text="**stackoverflowed.com**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Removed controversial image." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="196" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="87" RevisionGUID="24f02924-2076-4cbb-ab40-1f1be6293ec0" CreationDate="2010-09-04T12:18:43.707" UserId="11" Text="If people on StackOverflow will ban hidden features from their allowed questions, we will accept them! Until then, I think that SO is the right place." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="197" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="88" RevisionGUID="cc552a5a-aa74-4588-8818-af358180ba1f" CreationDate="2010-09-04T18:39:37.580" UserId="6" Text="I'd have thought this'd be obvious, but someone went through and tagged a bunch of questions &quot;subjective.&quot;  I've untagged them, and I really don't see any reason to have such a tag, since it's almost all subjective here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="198" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="88" RevisionGUID="cc552a5a-aa74-4588-8818-af358180ba1f" CreationDate="2010-09-04T18:39:37.580" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="199" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="89" RevisionGUID="aee267ff-6977-4796-a58d-19379f62fa8b" CreationDate="2010-09-04T19:51:52.540" UserId="63" Text="The biggest problem with &quot;Hidden Features&quot; questions on SO is that they tend to devolve into &quot;favorite feature&quot; discussions. Since examples of those questions already exist and are doing well here, there's no real reason to bother disguising them..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="200" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="90" RevisionGUID="546019a5-6e93-411d-ad1e-f36b5537f6b3" CreationDate="2010-09-05T00:12:00.170" UserDisplayName="user81" Text="what about using CW for survey type questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="201" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="40" RevisionGUID="66e32ed2-dccc-425c-b46c-e31049e8852e" CreationDate="2010-09-05T13:23:00.023" UserId="40" Comment="edited title" Text="Should each point be posted in a separate answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="202" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="91" RevisionGUID="255682df-1287-4e64-80db-5af7f5e65b14" CreationDate="2010-09-05T15:30:53.807" UserDisplayName="user81" Text="Any time I post a question or answer, I have to enter a captcha. I don't get this on other stack exchange sites. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="203" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="91" RevisionGUID="255682df-1287-4e64-80db-5af7f5e65b14" CreationDate="2010-09-05T15:30:53.807" UserDisplayName="user81" Text="Why do I keep getting a captcha?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="204" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="91" RevisionGUID="255682df-1287-4e64-80db-5af7f5e65b14" CreationDate="2010-09-05T15:30:53.807" UserDisplayName="user81" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="205" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="92" RevisionGUID="ef7ebcfa-66b4-4f1f-bc90-293aa9109c68" CreationDate="2010-09-05T18:39:41.310" UserId="6" Text="I've been getting it periodically.  I thought it was happening when I posted too fast or too much in a given time period." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="206" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="93" RevisionGUID="4274614d-98be-49a2-bd60-4bdf0694cc94" CreationDate="2010-09-05T19:09:35.623" UserId="6" Text="I'm speaking mainly of [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/would-you-be-willing-to-donate-your-software-or-computer-talent-to-charity).  What do you think?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="207" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="93" RevisionGUID="4274614d-98be-49a2-bd60-4bdf0694cc94" CreationDate="2010-09-05T19:09:35.623" UserId="6" Text="Is recruiting appropriate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="208" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="93" RevisionGUID="4274614d-98be-49a2-bd60-4bdf0694cc94" CreationDate="2010-09-05T19:09:35.623" UserId="6" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="209" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="94" RevisionGUID="74f2a2d3-ecb2-46de-805d-513b48e0ce69" CreationDate="2010-09-05T19:34:18.947" UserId="175" Text="I just got prompted by captcha to enter in the pi symbol.  Not really possible on any keyboard I've seen.  Could be an issue with the new site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="210" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="94" RevisionGUID="74f2a2d3-ecb2-46de-805d-513b48e0ce69" CreationDate="2010-09-05T19:34:18.947" UserId="175" Text="&quot;pi&quot; character in Captcha... really?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="211" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="94" RevisionGUID="74f2a2d3-ecb2-46de-805d-513b48e0ce69" CreationDate="2010-09-05T19:34:18.947" UserId="175" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="212" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="95" RevisionGUID="6dc25ada-e097-42e5-af5b-17400e8faec1" CreationDate="2010-09-05T19:37:43.043" UserId="90" Text="I don't like it. Accepting it would be opening the door to terrible things." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="213" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="96" RevisionGUID="14bc0242-2bf2-4377-a2e3-9e2d532bb5ab" CreationDate="2010-09-05T19:43:33.310" UserId="90" Text="This is strongly related to [this question][1] I asked on meta.stacko where it was a huge no-no that there should be no Accept button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/58543/do-all-stack-exchange-sites-need-an-accept-answer-button" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="214" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="97" RevisionGUID="9eee70a3-cc85-40c6-9a3a-4d1117367d5d" CreationDate="2010-09-05T20:14:45.903" UserId="6" Text="My opinion matches Zneaks, in that it opens a bad door.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't mind allowing MakerOfThings7's specific question, but we need to structure a rule on this such that we prevent both commercial recruitment efforts and getting flooded with well-meaning charity recruitment efforts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As such, I'd vote we don't allow that sort of thing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="215" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="98" RevisionGUID="d4e24fc7-3733-4fbc-9814-1b69ec083486" CreationDate="2010-09-05T23:38:53.900" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="It's not a question of &quot;opening the door&quot; or it being a slippery slope: it's completely off topic for a Q&amp;A site, even one more based on discussion like Programmers.SE. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It wouldn't be acceptable if someone was selling something in a question (e.g. &quot;Would you buy X?&quot;), and it's not acceptable merely because it's non-commercial. There are other venues for recruitment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question cited can—and should—be worded to remove the recruitment notice. It's ostensibly an on-topic question without it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="217" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="100" RevisionGUID="779224d0-d25d-4e2f-89ec-a97c2ea06c09" CreationDate="2010-09-06T06:08:21.903" UserId="6" Text="I'd recommend reading up on [reCAPTCHA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;TLDR: reCAPTCHA is a system that uses captcha strings to parse books that its OCR can't read.  You are presented with 2 words- one is a control word that reCAPTCHA knows- the other is a word is hasn't yet determined to sufficient accuracy.  So, if you get one word you can read and one you can't, just take your best stab at typing the unreadable one, since it's probably not the control word." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="218" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="101" RevisionGUID="0083701d-d26a-43bd-b92d-50203404b483" CreationDate="2010-09-06T07:35:29.603" UserId="38" Text="When asking a question that will result in a list (which is a big chunk of this site's content), people often provide an example answer in their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example:[What non programming books should a programmer read?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this is at least twofold. Firstly the question may get upvotes based on the example answer, rather than being a good question. Secondly, the answer provided in the question will not sit in the list in the correct place in the voting, as it's unlikely anyone else will add that answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose that we should encourage people when asking &quot;list&quot; type questions to provide their own answer separately so that the question and answer can be voted on independently, and the answer can be part of the list of answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/966/what-non-programming-books-should-a-programmer-read-that-helps-developing-progra" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="219" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="101" RevisionGUID="0083701d-d26a-43bd-b92d-50203404b483" CreationDate="2010-09-06T07:35:29.603" UserId="38" Text="What's the correct style for asking a list question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="220" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="101" RevisionGUID="0083701d-d26a-43bd-b92d-50203404b483" CreationDate="2010-09-06T07:35:29.603" UserId="38" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="221" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="102" RevisionGUID="123ddc88-7da4-46dd-b94d-98268425e194" CreationDate="2010-09-06T18:12:43.737" UserId="57" Text="**offtopic.stackoverflow.com**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="222" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="102" RevisionGUID="123ddc88-7da4-46dd-b94d-98268425e194" CreationDate="2010-09-06T18:12:43.737" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="223" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="80" RevisionGUID="c0388323-9725-45f7-8760-7d8a741611ee" CreationDate="2010-09-07T11:27:45.333" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="Several possibilities along the same lines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##stackoverspill.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stuff that doesn't fit on StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##stackoverdose.com&#xD;&#xA;People who can't get enough of StackOverflow come here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##stackoverride.com&#xD;&#xA;The normal rules of StackOverflow don't apply here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="224" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="103" RevisionGUID="1a63e356-afa9-4a1f-8b41-83a8ff079ad8" CreationDate="2010-09-07T11:35:22.773" UserId="11" Text="##programmers.stackoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It makes sense to keep it tighten with stackoverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="225" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="103" RevisionGUID="1a63e356-afa9-4a1f-8b41-83a8ff079ad8" CreationDate="2010-09-07T11:35:22.773" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="226" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="104" RevisionGUID="76de49a5-b4f9-47ec-93a6-14113faaeb6c" CreationDate="2010-09-07T17:25:36.553" UserId="13" Text="NotCodeRelated.com&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this more than *NotProgrammingRelated.com* because it is a more accurate representation of the direction this community is heading. We **do** talk about programming here, so first and foremost this community is most definitely *programming related*. That being said, the discussions stay away from physical code for the most part, and thus I believe that *NotCodeRelated.com* still conveys allows the name to convey a programming mindset, but it excludes the focus of Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just my two cents." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="227" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="104" RevisionGUID="76de49a5-b4f9-47ec-93a6-14113faaeb6c" CreationDate="2010-09-07T17:25:36.553" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="228" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="49" RevisionGUID="5554b286-ec24-4e4a-ac22-de6e40ba0a62" CreationDate="2010-09-07T18:42:41.990" UserId="11" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="In the same vein as [this answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3/what-should-our-domain-name-be/34#34), how about &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##heapunderflow.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="229" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="79" RevisionGUID="6a93938d-4473-461f-b036-3ed25bd96bd9" CreationDate="2010-09-07T18:46:48.517" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="##slackoverflow [.com?]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taken.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I proposed this on [meta.stackoverflow.com][1] and Jeff suggested to add it here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/62734/renaming-the-not-programming-related-proposal/62849#62849" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="230" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="105" RevisionGUID="e2800f90-401b-4843-b227-e7819931e31d" CreationDate="2010-09-08T02:08:21.283" UserId="86" Text="I've asked a lot of questions, but very few of them have any answer that nicely covers the whole issue or which is so much higher quality than the other answers that it deserves to be highlighted? My current accept rate is only 34%. Should I increase it by going back and selecting the answer with the highest number of votes or doesn't accept rate matter on this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Related:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why would anyone accept an answer?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="231" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="105" RevisionGUID="e2800f90-401b-4843-b227-e7819931e31d" CreationDate="2010-09-08T02:08:21.283" UserId="86" Text="Should we worry about accept rate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="232" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="105" RevisionGUID="e2800f90-401b-4843-b227-e7819931e31d" CreationDate="2010-09-08T02:08:21.283" UserId="86" Text="|discussion|accepted-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="233" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="106" RevisionGUID="ef07abb5-6bc2-4f7b-9d39-ddf0f3436b7d" CreationDate="2010-09-08T02:23:34.230" UserId="6" Text="I think that a low accept rate should/will become the norm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some cases where there's a clear correct answer and some where there's at least one answer that stands out somewhat in quality, and I can see accepting in those cases.  So far, though, they seem to be largely the exception." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="234" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="107" RevisionGUID="e7252744-e8c0-4d4f-bb39-3284d92dda53" CreationDate="2010-09-08T02:31:39.733" UserId="6" Text="###FishToaster&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to throw my hat in, since the guidelines say self-nomination is encouraged.  No one's been here long enough to really establish their credentials, but we need people with mod tools, so here I am.  I've been reasonably active in both NPR and meta.NPR, and intend to be for a while (at the very least for the duration of the temporary modship)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="235" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="107" RevisionGUID="e7252744-e8c0-4d4f-bb39-3284d92dda53" CreationDate="2010-09-08T02:31:39.733" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="236" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="108" RevisionGUID="430a9ce2-db63-4e9f-89d6-9823156c2b9d" CreationDate="2010-09-08T03:17:56.807" UserId="175" Text="Relating to &quot;[why should anyone accept an answer][1]&quot;, why not alter the point allocation system in a way that encourages discussion, thought provoking questions, or something along those lines?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="237" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="108" RevisionGUID="430a9ce2-db63-4e9f-89d6-9823156c2b9d" CreationDate="2010-09-08T03:17:56.807" UserId="175" Text="Should the point distribution system be changed to encourage discussion, not answering?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="238" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="108" RevisionGUID="430a9ce2-db63-4e9f-89d6-9823156c2b9d" CreationDate="2010-09-08T03:17:56.807" UserId="175" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="239" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="108" RevisionGUID="8ebc62c1-19ad-4155-a076-ad30e3a45ee2" CreationDate="2010-09-08T03:24:02.667" UserId="175" Comment="added 81 characters in body; added 10 characters in body" Text="Relating to &quot;[why should anyone accept an answer][1]&quot;, why not alter the point allocation system in a way that encourages discussion, thought provoking questions, or something along those lines?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It will eliminate {some of} the people who whine about not getting their answer accepted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="242" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="108" RevisionGUID="c5a57563-9920-48a8-9240-0010dbf38195" CreationDate="2010-09-08T03:48:50.460" UserId="175" Comment="added 825 characters in body; edited body; added 10 characters in body; deleted 2 characters in body" Text="Relating to &quot;[why should anyone accept an answer][1]&quot;, why not alter the point allocation system in a way that encourages discussion, thought provoking questions, or something along those lines?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It could eliminate {some of} the whining about not getting their answer accepted, since this is a different kind of community.  To support that train of though here is an alternative point distribution we could use: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answer is voted up.....	 +15     (+2 to voter)  	&#xD;&#xA;    question is voted up...	 +5	 &#xD;&#xA;    answer is accepted.....	 +10	 &#xD;&#xA;    post is voted down.....	 -2	 (-1 to voter)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It encourages people to *actually read* existing questions and comment on them, while highlighting the best answer).  For times that a Q &amp; A is needed, it is welcome but de-emphasized when compared to StackOverflow and the other sites that value closed-ended discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For comparison purposes, here is the current (as of 9/7/10) point distribution:&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answer is voted up....	 +10	&#xD;&#xA;    question is voted up..	 +5	&#xD;&#xA;    answer is accepted....	 +15	 (+2 to acceptor)&#xD;&#xA;    post is voted down...	 -2	 (-1 to voter)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="243" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="108" RevisionGUID="34a6fff3-e5cf-4867-830b-ee9979917ad0" CreationDate="2010-09-08T04:00:40.127" UserId="175" Comment="added 1 characters in body; added 13 characters in body" Text="Relating to &quot;[why should anyone accept an answer][1]&quot;, why not alter the point allocation system in a way that encourages discussion, thought provoking questions, or something along those lines?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It could eliminate {some of} the whining about not getting their answer accepted, since this is a different kind of community.  To support that train of thought here is an alternative point distribution we could use: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answer is voted up.....	 +15     (+2 to voter)  	&#xD;&#xA;    question is voted up...	 +5	 &#xD;&#xA;    answer is accepted.....	 +10	 &#xD;&#xA;    post is voted down.....	 -2	 (-1 to voter)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It encourages people to *actually read* existing answers and rate the best answer.  On the flip side, it encourages good answers.  For times that a Q &amp; A is needed, it is welcome but de-emphasized when compared to StackOverflow and the other sites that value closed-ended discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For comparison purposes, here is the current (as of 9/7/10) point distribution:&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answer is voted up....	 +10	&#xD;&#xA;    question is voted up..	 +5	&#xD;&#xA;    answer is accepted....	 +15	 (+2 to acceptor)&#xD;&#xA;    post is voted down...	 -2	 (-1 to voter)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="244" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="110" RevisionGUID="eedb9e53-c632-4825-9ae0-080ee43d0d22" CreationDate="2010-09-08T07:02:11.550" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The calculus you propose would lead to serious rep inflation and, in general, a devaluing of the reputation system as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By giving rep for up-voting, people would merely use their vote allotment of 30 times a day to upvote 30 answers, whether or not there are 30 up-votable answers or whether there are questions that need voting or questions/answers that need down-voting, just to get a guaranteed 60 rep points a day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, by inflating the rep value of an up-vote, it would only take three upvotes to outvalue an accepted answer. Imagine a answer with 15 upvotes: that'd be the equivalent of the answer being accepted 5 times in addition to the rep received from the up-votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather than changing the reputation calculus (especially in such a lopsided manner), we should be looking for ways to incentivize accepting answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="245" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="36" RevisionGUID="c511f797-e3d1-454d-ba60-65e928bb4436" CreationDate="2010-09-08T11:33:34.827" UserId="66" Comment="Bolded" Text="stronginthesource.com&#xD;&#xA;---------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;available" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="246" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="12" RevisionGUID="da397f44-818e-4fcc-bd1e-8f2a64ca561e" CreationDate="2010-09-08T11:34:20.723" UserId="66" Comment="bolded" Text="ChatOverJoe.com&#xD;&#xA;---------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Playoff of StackOverflow - like a conversation around the coffeepot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="247" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="108" RevisionGUID="0dd60db9-18a7-4e2a-9c9d-44739f8791d3" CreationDate="2010-09-08T13:31:29.303" UserId="175" Comment="added 29 characters in body" Text="Relating to &quot;[why should anyone accept an answer][1]&quot;, why not alter the point allocation system in a way that encourages discussion, thought provoking questions, or something along those lines?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It could eliminate {some of} the whining about not getting their answer accepted, since this is a different kind of community.  To support that train of thought here is an alternative point distribution we could use: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answer is voted up.....	 +15      	&#xD;&#xA;    question is voted up...	 +5	 &#xD;&#xA;    answer is accepted.....	 +10	 (+2 to acceptor) &#xD;&#xA;    post is voted down.....	 -2	 (-1 to voter)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It encourages people to *actually read* existing answers and rate the best answer.  On the flip side, it encourages good answers.  For times that a Q &amp; A is needed, it is welcome but de-emphasized when compared to StackOverflow and the other sites that value closed-ended discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For comparison purposes, here is the current (as of 9/7/10) point distribution:&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answer is voted up....	 +10	&#xD;&#xA;    question is voted up..	 +5	&#xD;&#xA;    answer is accepted....	 +15	 (+2 to acceptor)&#xD;&#xA;    post is voted down...	 -2	 (-1 to voter)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Updated calculus&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="248" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="111" RevisionGUID="bfcbfa13-da0d-4df7-8364-8c31aeb68d73" CreationDate="2010-09-08T15:08:42.507" UserId="6" Text="I think we should leave the system as-is.  A lot of thought and data has gone into balancing out the current numbers, and we've only been at this for about 6 days.  I think we should wait until we've been around a bit longer and see if there's actually any problems (eg, people not getting enough rep due to answers not being accepted)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="249" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5" RevisionGUID="bfac5cb9-f6a7-442a-9b1c-f487dae73c4c" CreationDate="2010-09-08T17:54:23.973" UserId="3" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="In about two weeks, this community will receive some provisional moderators to help get this site started prior to the elections at the end of the beta. Please read this: **[Moderators Pro Tempore](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/moderator-pro-tempore/)**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please suggest some members of this community you feel would make excellent moderators *(self nominations are okay).***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some basic guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Each nomination should be a separate answer. Link the name to the user’s profile (parent and meta) so we can see their activity.&#xD;&#xA; - The nominee should indicate their acceptance by editing the answer, adding that they accept the nomination. Optionally they can write something about themselves.&#xD;&#xA; - Self nominations are okay, and even encouraged. Most sites have not had sufficient time for many users to stand out. Self nomination is simply a way to say, “I’m interested. Let my record speak for itself.” Links to other activities may be helpful: Area 51 participation, participation in other sites, blog posts reviewing or announcing the site, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is what we are looking for in a Moderator...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are seeking out members who are deeply engaged in the community’s development; members who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Have a reasonably high reputation score to indicate active, consistent participation.&#xD;&#xA; - Show an interest in their meta’s community-building activities.&#xD;&#xA; - Lead by example, showing patience and respect for their fellow community members in everything they write.&#xD;&#xA; - Exhibit those intangible traits discussed in A Theory of Moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bonus points for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Members with participation in both meta and the parent site (i.e. interest in both community building and expertise in the field).&#xD;&#xA; - Area 51 participation, social network referrals, or blogging about the site.&#xD;&#xA; - Members who have already shown an interest or ability to promote their community." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="250" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="112" RevisionGUID="dbf58b85-39d3-496e-bde1-9d3641a4081f" CreationDate="2010-09-08T18:04:32.980" UserId="47" Text="**ChrisF**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to put myself forward as an extra or backup moderator. **I don't want to take the place of anyone else who's willing and able to do the job**, but I thought it might be useful if there was somebody who &quot;knew the ropes&quot; so to speak.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm already a moderator on the [Web Applications site](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/users/21/chrisf) and I'm a 10K user on [Stack Overflow][1], [Super User][2] and [Meta Stack Overflow][3] so I know how the system works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/59303/chrisf&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://superuser.com/users/289/chrisf&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/59303/chrisf" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="251" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="112" RevisionGUID="dbf58b85-39d3-496e-bde1-9d3641a4081f" CreationDate="2010-09-08T18:04:32.980" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="252" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="113" RevisionGUID="a3787e20-8c0e-48d7-8cf7-57b09aa8fb8d" CreationDate="2010-09-08T19:46:08.050" UserId="89" Text="As in title - the site is now public beta, but the FAQ has not been updated to reflect this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, the rep requirements mostly all say `1`, but I can't (for example) vote to close." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="253" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="113" RevisionGUID="a3787e20-8c0e-48d7-8cf7-57b09aa8fb8d" CreationDate="2010-09-08T19:46:08.050" UserId="89" Text="FAQ is out of date (rep requirements still refer to private beta levels)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="254" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="113" RevisionGUID="a3787e20-8c0e-48d7-8cf7-57b09aa8fb8d" CreationDate="2010-09-08T19:46:08.050" UserId="89" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="258" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="115" RevisionGUID="3ab8e571-cc97-4dc5-bded-fe2d6ddd5047" CreationDate="2010-09-08T20:34:25.550" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Just to consolidate the thoughts in the comments on [one of the other answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki/33#33):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [Lord Torgamus](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/94/lord-torgamus) said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CW questions are about collaboration; if you are sure of one part of an answer, but think the community can fill in some information, you can transfer ownership of the answer to the community. The effect on rep is a side effect, not the true purpose. Examples: FAQs, the MSO list of sites that steal SE content, Gaming SE questions about locations of special items. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And as I mentioned:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If there are questions that should not receive reputation (because they are of low quality/value) they should be closed as off-topic. Every thing on Programmers is going to be subjective, so every answer is going to be some formulation of &quot;This is my favorite X&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="259" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="110" RevisionGUID="164de4e6-478f-4da7-8784-68ce35b7baf5" CreationDate="2010-09-08T20:46:21.017" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Changes based on OP edits and comments." Text="The calculus you propose would lead to serious rep inflation and, in general, a devaluing of the reputation system as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;strike&gt;By giving rep for up-voting, people would merely use their vote allotment of 30 times a day to upvote 30 answers, whether or not there are 30 up-votable answers or whether there are questions that need voting or questions/answers that need down-voting, just to get a guaranteed 60 rep points a day.&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, by inflating the rep value of an up-vote, it would only take &lt;strike&gt;three&lt;/strike&gt; two upvotes to outvalue an accepted answer. Imagine a answer with &lt;strike&gt;15&lt;/strike&gt; 10 upvotes: that'd be the equivalent of the answer being accepted 5 times in addition to the rep received from the up-votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Changing the rep values of actions is not the solution. Rather than changing the reputation calculus (especially in such a lopsided manner), we should be looking for ways to incentivize accepting answers if low accept rates become an issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:** parts of my response have been rendered moot by the latest change to the original post." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="260" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="116" RevisionGUID="aec8f7ed-6521-41fb-a10e-8e9b6d46c88e" CreationDate="2010-09-08T20:59:28.637" UserId="220" Text="OutOfScope.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taken, but I'm the owner and I'm willing to sell for a fair price." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="261" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="116" RevisionGUID="aec8f7ed-6521-41fb-a10e-8e9b6d46c88e" CreationDate="2010-09-08T20:59:28.637" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="262" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="117" RevisionGUID="81a31bdc-fe98-42e7-9ddd-f867d9b04d59" CreationDate="2010-09-08T21:04:36.530" UserId="66" Text="So [this][1] question was closed at off topic, but the close reason took me back&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Programmers are expected&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to **generally relate to indirectly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; relate to programming**, within the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; scope defined in the faq.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1301/how-can-i-make-money-other-than-salary-through-internet-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="263" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="117" RevisionGUID="81a31bdc-fe98-42e7-9ddd-f867d9b04d59" CreationDate="2010-09-08T21:04:36.530" UserId="66" Text="Grammer of Off topic close reason" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="264" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="117" RevisionGUID="81a31bdc-fe98-42e7-9ddd-f867d9b04d59" CreationDate="2010-09-08T21:04:36.530" UserId="66" Text="|bug|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="268" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="119" RevisionGUID="ab25e398-4e0b-425e-9dd3-3573c3e7d2b6" CreationDate="2010-09-08T21:50:08.383" UserId="236" Text="The following text is shown to non logged in users. Italic is mine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Welcome New User&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;Programmers is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for people who love _indirectly relate to programming_. It's 100% free, no registration required.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess the usual text concatenation approach is useless here. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="269" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="119" RevisionGUID="ab25e398-4e0b-425e-9dd3-3573c3e7d2b6" CreationDate="2010-09-08T21:50:08.383" UserId="236" Text="Problem with the site introductory text " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="270" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="119" RevisionGUID="ab25e398-4e0b-425e-9dd3-3573c3e7d2b6" CreationDate="2010-09-08T21:50:08.383" UserId="236" Text="|bug|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="271" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="120" RevisionGUID="0f94d0d8-e7fd-4ce8-bfb0-1cbf3dfc1f3f" CreationDate="2010-09-08T21:59:50.393" UserId="246" Text="I suggest:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; # Welcome New User Programmers is a collaboratively edited question and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer site for people who love&#xD;&#xA;&gt; anything which indirectly relates to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programming. It's 100% free, no&#xD;&#xA;&gt; registration required&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Simple, but effective... `:-)`" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="272" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="120" RevisionGUID="24ba31d8-a997-45de-9f1d-74083ea06616" CreationDate="2010-09-08T22:05:17.030" UserId="246" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="I suggest:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; # Welcome New User&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers is a collaboratively edited question and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer site for people who love&#xD;&#xA;&gt; anything which indirectly relates to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programming. It's 100% free, no&#xD;&#xA;&gt; registration required&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Simple, but effective... `:-)`" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="273" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="107" RevisionGUID="c38c8fe5-2d6c-4c67-91f8-84e73789687b" CreationDate="2010-09-08T22:30:21.117" UserId="317" Comment="added 144 characters in body" Text="###[FishToaster][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to throw my hat in, since the guidelines say self-nomination is encouraged.  No one's been here long enough to really establish their credentials, but we need people with mod tools, so here I am.  I've been reasonably active in both NPR and meta.NPR, and intend to be for a while (at the very least for the duration of the temporary modship).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6/fishtoaster" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="274" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="112" RevisionGUID="826e42bf-46aa-4f59-aff7-598ab798ef43" CreationDate="2010-09-08T22:31:17.230" UserId="317" Comment="added 137 characters in body" Text="**[ChrisF][1]** ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to put myself forward as an extra or backup moderator. **I don't want to take the place of anyone else who's willing and able to do the job**, but I thought it might be useful if there was somebody who &quot;knew the ropes&quot; so to speak.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm already a moderator on the [Web Applications site](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/users/21/chrisf) and I'm a 10K user on [Stack Overflow][3], [Super User][4] and [Meta Stack Overflow][5] so I know how the system works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/47&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/47/chrisf&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/59303/chrisf&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://superuser.com/users/289/chrisf&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/59303/chrisf" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="276" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="122" RevisionGUID="68007dd0-2ac8-47c9-ba9f-eedd44d800cb" CreationDate="2010-09-08T22:43:22.733" UserId="37" Text="Yes they should be allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They'll automatically get converted to wiki questions after 30 answers, and they will get there IMMEDIATELY so no need to worry about serious rep farming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Longer term the mods may want to close and lock them, as a &quot;favorite programming joke&quot; question with 1,000 answers isn't really helping anyone, is it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="277" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="119" RevisionGUID="555e6745-3e3f-46ff-b3fd-d474606e9cb4" CreationDate="2010-09-08T22:43:42.517" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="278" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="117" RevisionGUID="e09fed69-0ab6-4fab-bc05-cfbf9665e409" CreationDate="2010-09-08T22:45:45.220" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="279" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="123" RevisionGUID="4e5d854d-7559-4f8d-9015-ce0b68edd2a3" CreationDate="2010-09-08T22:46:00.243" UserId="37" Text="Changing to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Programmers are expected to be about subjective issues in software development, within the scope defined in the &lt;a href=&quot;/faq&quot;&gt;faq&lt;/a&gt;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="280" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="94" RevisionGUID="6c8b506c-5303-4f4d-a070-a8b30afeaa92" CreationDate="2010-09-08T22:46:22.523" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="281" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="124" RevisionGUID="a1190170-08d1-4eb4-aa0d-6e97df8f4c13" CreationDate="2010-09-08T22:47:02.427" UserId="37" Text="We had a bug with iPad / iPhone (anywhere we disable the WMD editor) that would cause this. Now fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If that's not your issue, then I suspect you have javascript disabled and possibly other issues with your browser." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="282" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="125" RevisionGUID="0cc4f2b8-dc5d-46fa-86d2-c7ff6ce6acbc" CreationDate="2010-09-08T22:47:47.403" UserId="194" Text="Something else that may be a little confusing (from the FAQ):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then in the following paragraph: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Avoid asking questions that are subjective, argumentative, or require extended discussion&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="283" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="126" RevisionGUID="06f690f9-8bb3-4a43-9c50-4d33624aedbf" CreationDate="2010-09-08T22:48:43.463" UserId="37" Text="/faq looks correct to me. No repro." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="284" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="113" RevisionGUID="88889e22-2e1f-485a-9a7a-2f4c0cacb0dd" CreationDate="2010-09-08T22:48:52.123" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-norepro|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="286" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="128" RevisionGUID="bd8d4e70-b061-4921-95b5-349b19cbd350" CreationDate="2010-09-08T23:48:07.543" UserId="66" Text="I would suggest that we remove it from the OP user box since its irrelevant to the effort that the user puts into Programmers. This way SO people who join won't have a mindset that &lt;50% = Not worth answering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="292" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="131" RevisionGUID="a73b4bb2-3c79-4e34-bb0c-89b3fed9503c" CreationDate="2010-09-09T05:12:22.477" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Shouldn't all &quot;list&quot; questions be Community Wiki to prevent rep farming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No: the *community wiki* flag should be used for questions which would benefit from a collaborative answer; it is not for allowing questions that might be too low value to garner reputation. If a question is too poor or might attract low quality answers, it should be flagged for moderator attention and/or voted to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, some list questions might only have a finite number of correct answers and could benefit from more than one person editing an answer to provide the most comprehensive point of view. In this case, *community wiki* is appropriate. Answerers can flag a question as *community wiki* on their own questions, and all questions will convert to *community wiki* automatically after receiving 30 answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Purpose of Community Wiki](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable/122#122)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="293" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="131" RevisionGUID="a73b4bb2-3c79-4e34-bb0c-89b3fed9503c" CreationDate="2010-09-09T05:12:22.477" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="294" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="132" RevisionGUID="cb12afc9-1523-4790-bbb2-4f3bc71bd614" CreationDate="2010-09-09T05:34:56.153" UserDisplayName="user81" Text="I'm interested, and would like to nominate myself. I am very interested in helping this site grow, and seeing it become a great place to be on the internet. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am pretty active in the parent site, and somewhat on meta. Although my rep isn't very high, as of the time of this writing I am on the first page of the users list.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="295" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="132" RevisionGUID="cb12afc9-1523-4790-bbb2-4f3bc71bd614" CreationDate="2010-09-09T05:34:56.153" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="296" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="132" RevisionGUID="16844bed-cd95-4dad-811c-6bb96f5e1523" CreationDate="2010-09-09T05:44:42.773" UserDisplayName="user81" Comment="added 147 characters in body" Text="[Joe][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;I'm interested, and would like to nominate myself. I am very interested in helping this site grow, and seeing it become a great place to be on the internet. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am pretty active in the parent site, and somewhat on meta. Although my rep isn't very high, as of the time of this writing I am on the first page of the users list.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/81/joe&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/81/joe" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="297" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="133" RevisionGUID="87af949b-6896-4f0c-bb5d-22005ecf4023" CreationDate="2010-09-09T10:02:27.753" UserId="4" Text="**[Thomas Owens][1]** ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be interested in helping this community out. Of all the current Stack Exchanges, this is one of my favorites (the other being Stack Overflow, where [I'm a 20k+ user][3] and have been involved since the early beta). In terms of Area 51 participation (see [my profile][4]), I currently have one proposal for a Software Engineering Stack Exchange (currently in the committal phase). In the current public betas, I usually lurk around SEs such as (links go to my profile page) [Theoretical Computer Science][5], [Mathematics][6], [Statistical Analysis][7], and [User Interface][8], since these are areas that I'm somewhat interested in (although don't usually have enough of a background to contribute that much).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/572/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/users/2531/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/users/403/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://math.stackexchange.com/users/91/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/110/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://ui.stackexchange.com/users/343/thomas-owens" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="298" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="133" RevisionGUID="87af949b-6896-4f0c-bb5d-22005ecf4023" CreationDate="2010-09-09T10:02:27.753" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="299" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="134" RevisionGUID="7be80652-abdd-427b-a7bd-388c7c516598" CreationDate="2010-09-09T13:39:46.373" UserId="212" Text="[Shady M. Najib][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;###Self-nominated&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been benefiting out of StackOverflow for quite sometime, lately I decided to join to pay back. Though I'm kinda new to Stack Exchange as a whole, You might want to check my profile here &amp; also on [StackOVerFlow][3], [Area51][4], I claim I'm very passionate about community&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/212/shady-m-najib&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/212/shady-m-najib&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/406464/shady-m-najib&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/users/14222/shady-m-najib" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="300" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="134" RevisionGUID="7be80652-abdd-427b-a7bd-388c7c516598" CreationDate="2010-09-09T13:39:46.373" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="301" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="104" RevisionGUID="457364d7-873b-402b-b9f4-a0e038847ef1" CreationDate="2010-09-09T14:46:02.673" UserId="57" Comment="edited body" Text="notcoderelated.com&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this more than *NotProgrammingRelated.com* because it is a more accurate representation of the direction this community is heading. We **do** talk about programming here, so first and foremost this community is most definitely *programming related*. That being said, the discussions stay away from physical code for the most part, and thus I believe that *NotCodeRelated.com* still conveys allows the name to convey a programming mindset, but it excludes the focus of Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just my two cents." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="302" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="116" RevisionGUID="41392aed-1177-4c6d-9329-437e0e65ce51" CreationDate="2010-09-09T14:46:44.590" UserId="57" Comment="edited body" Text="outofscope.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taken, but I'm the owner and I'm willing to sell for a fair price." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="303" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="133" RevisionGUID="54668714-ecd7-44f1-9789-4e3b3ae3aad8" CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:06:10.943" UserId="6" Comment="formatting" Text="###[Thomas Owens][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be interested in helping this community out. Of all the current Stack Exchanges, this is one of my favorites (the other being Stack Overflow, where [I'm a 20k+ user][3] and have been involved since the early beta). In terms of Area 51 participation (see [my profile][4]), I currently have one proposal for a Software Engineering Stack Exchange (currently in the committal phase). In the current public betas, I usually lurk around SEs such as (links go to my profile page) [Theoretical Computer Science][5], [Mathematics][6], [Statistical Analysis][7], and [User Interface][8], since these are areas that I'm somewhat interested in (although don't usually have enough of a background to contribute that much).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/572/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/users/2531/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/users/403/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://math.stackexchange.com/users/91/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/110/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://ui.stackexchange.com/users/343/thomas-owens" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="304" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="132" RevisionGUID="fc95288d-706e-46a4-993c-5811cefe61a6" CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:06:40.210" UserId="6" Comment="formatting" Text="###[Joe][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;I'm interested, and would like to nominate myself. I am very interested in helping this site grow, and seeing it become a great place to be on the internet. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am pretty active in the parent site, and somewhat on meta. Although my rep isn't very high, as of the time of this writing I am on the first page of the users list.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/81/joe&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/81/joe" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="307" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="134" RevisionGUID="8e9c0831-f7af-48f0-9cbc-d566d4c543fa" CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:24:38.560" UserId="212" Comment="deleted 12 characters in body" Text="###[Shady M. Najib][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;###Self-nominated&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been benefiting out of StackOverflow for quite sometime, lately I decided to join to pay back. Though I'm kinda new to Stack Exchange as a whole, You might want to check my profile here &amp; also on [StackOVerFlow][3], [Area51][4], I claim I'm very passionate about community&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/212/shady-m-najib&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/212/shady-m-najib&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/406464/shady-m-najib&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/users/14222/shady-m-najib" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="311" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="137" RevisionGUID="4c3291a1-713c-477a-ad73-373baef0b432" CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:34:05.433" UserId="666" Text="ProgPub.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short version based on a suggestion in [Renaming the Not Programming Related Proposal][1]...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/62734/renaming-the-not-programming-related-proposal/62849#62849" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="312" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="137" RevisionGUID="4c3291a1-713c-477a-ad73-373baef0b432" CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:34:05.433" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="313" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="102" RevisionGUID="729710f8-b200-4684-9abd-a6465ac6b037" CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:34:44.520" UserId="666" Comment="Improved formatting..." Text="OffTopic.StackOverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;==&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="314" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="79" RevisionGUID="6a2310cc-0500-4be3-9315-703e71651cc8" CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:35:19.590" UserId="666" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="SlackOverflow[.com?]&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taken.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I proposed this on [meta.stackoverflow.com][1] and Jeff suggested to add it here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/62734/renaming-the-not-programming-related-proposal/62849#62849" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="315" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="15" RevisionGUID="7c9f2581-5840-4ceb-8dfc-ef82953df4e1" CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:36:10.413" UserId="666" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="IdleCoder.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="316" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="49" RevisionGUID="5e32235b-cf47-4973-a8ab-9218d961a341" CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:38:05.000" UserId="666" Comment="Improved formatting..." Text="HeapUnderflow.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the same vein as [this answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3/what-should-our-domain-name-be/34#34).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="317" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="16" RevisionGUID="44fd5853-ae4d-43f8-b696-1941cde30830" CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:38:49.477" UserId="666" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="IdleProgrammer.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="318" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="116" RevisionGUID="64c860c6-c71d-43f4-a201-4eed7fa87bb9" CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:39:17.823" UserId="666" Comment="Improved formatting..." Text="OutOfScope.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taken.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm the owner and I'm willing to sell for a fair price." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="319" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="13" RevisionGUID="532c0238-a8da-4454-af66-29ad3f39fa26" CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:39:46.977" UserId="666" Comment="Improved formatting..." Text="NotProgrammingRelated.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;Taken.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Owned by someone hosting a StackExchange 1.0 site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="320" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="46" RevisionGUID="34726516-d183-4d16-b824-c8cfead8dcc2" CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:41:46.407" UserId="666" Comment="Improved formatting..." Text="StackOverflowOverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;Taken.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's parked...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A handful of you may remember [Stack Overflow Overflow](http://stackoverflowoverflow.stackexchange.com/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why aren't other people using CW? Am I missing something?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="321" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="104" RevisionGUID="aa7a4da7-c7fa-4552-989f-b61ee5c8a1c2" CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:43:18.523" UserId="666" Comment="Improved formatting..." Text="NotCodeRelated.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this more than *NotProgrammingRelated.com* because it is a more accurate representation of the direction this community is heading. We **do** talk about programming here, so first and foremost this community is most definitely *programming related*. That being said, the discussions stay away from physical code for the most part, and thus I believe that *NotCodeRelated.com* still conveys allows the name to convey a programming mindset, but it excludes the focus of Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just my two cents." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="322" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="60" RevisionGUID="4402a27c-d66d-4719-a626-2a84c9a330ca" CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:43:59.940" UserId="666" Comment="Improved formatting..." Text="HeapPointer.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe also **heapointer.com** or **heap-pointer.com**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We all know about stack pointers, but what about heap pointers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="323" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="61" RevisionGUID="a90719df-a397-43ce-bdae-2401b1e4679a" CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:44:46.653" UserId="666" Comment="Improved formatting..." Text="StackOverflowed.com&#xD;&#xA;==&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="324" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="103" RevisionGUID="62358761-3f24-4fa7-9360-d4be39d8ed32" CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:45:26.180" UserId="666" Comment="Improved formatting..." Text="Programmers.StackOverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;==&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It makes sense to keep it tighten with StackOverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="325" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="34" RevisionGUID="fb95b7db-6bda-428b-80c1-5ed489532b20" CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:46:05.610" UserId="666" Comment="Improved formatting..." Text="PointerToTheHeap.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you can't store on the stack, put on the heap." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="326" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="138" RevisionGUID="56d96dc5-3a06-43a6-a787-5dd7497efdac" CreationDate="2010-09-09T16:18:41.087" UserId="666" Text="[How to deals with users that think their computer could think?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1814/how-to-deals-with-users-that-think-their-computer-could-think) does not answer to  &#xD;&#xA;&quot;expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet people are answering...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this question off-topic (it should probably then be asked on SU) or not?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="327" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="138" RevisionGUID="56d96dc5-3a06-43a6-a787-5dd7497efdac" CreationDate="2010-09-09T16:18:41.087" UserId="666" Text="Is this question about users and their computer on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="328" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="138" RevisionGUID="56d96dc5-3a06-43a6-a787-5dd7497efdac" CreationDate="2010-09-09T16:18:41.087" UserId="666" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="329" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="138" RevisionGUID="c723e4e5-f190-4837-bd0f-5356e688d1ed" CreationDate="2010-09-09T16:35:26.110" UserId="666" Comment="added 55 characters in body" Text="[How to deals with users that think their computer could think?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1814/how-to-deals-with-users-that-think-their-computer-could-think) does not answer to  &#xD;&#xA;&quot;expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet people are answering...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this question off-topic (it should probably then be asked on SU) or not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it is, but why are other people missing it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="330" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="139" RevisionGUID="0983921a-78f2-4642-b336-f1f782c26fbc" CreationDate="2010-09-09T17:32:57.490" UserId="63" Text="1. **Is it relevant to programmers and software development?** *I think so*: if you've ever had to deal with an end-user who has been having a *really hard time* with your software&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;, then you'll be immediately familiar with this attitude, as well as the importance of handling the situation without coming off as patronizing or unsympathetic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Is it an objectively-answerable programming question?** (i.e., does it belong on Stack Overflow) *No*. It's not a programming question, and the validity of any answer is a highly subjective matter. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, it is on-topic for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;sub&gt;In many places, programmers are effectively the final support team, and end up dealing with users who are both important enough in some way to *get* that much support *and* are faced with some very challenging problems.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="339" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="142" RevisionGUID="8bb1b2c7-6fcb-44fb-a1f7-2ee0549c76f0" CreationDate="2010-09-09T19:41:06.553" UserId="666" Text="Once the domain name is decided, should we create a Facebook page to help the site grow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="340" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="142" RevisionGUID="8bb1b2c7-6fcb-44fb-a1f7-2ee0549c76f0" CreationDate="2010-09-09T19:41:06.553" UserId="666" Text="Should we (or Jeff) create a Facebook page?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="341" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="142" RevisionGUID="8bb1b2c7-6fcb-44fb-a1f7-2ee0549c76f0" CreationDate="2010-09-09T19:41:06.553" UserId="666" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="344" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="143" RevisionGUID="c098df37-7825-4850-a9ee-142aa4782abd" CreationDate="2010-09-09T22:26:36.273" UserId="47" Text="Can Facebook pages be renamed? Perhaps I should ask on http://webapps.stackexchange.com/ ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If so then it should be done sooner rather than later to build up momentum during the beta phase - unless people think there'll be enough traffic from the SO crowd.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've just noticed that it does say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please note that only the official representative of an organization, business, celebrity, or band is permitted to create a Page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;on [this help page](http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=904). So perhaps it does need Jeff or at the very least a diamond mod who could claim to be an &quot;official representative&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="345" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="143" RevisionGUID="ba6a1e3b-cf19-4fe7-bde6-4660dde5ae6e" CreationDate="2010-09-09T22:31:48.570" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="Can Facebook pages be renamed? Perhaps I should ask on http://webapps.stackexchange.com/ ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If so then it should be done sooner rather than later to build up momentum during the beta phase - unless people think there'll be enough traffic from the SO crowd.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've just noticed that it does say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please note that only the official representative of an organization, business, celebrity, or band is permitted to create a Page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;on [this help page](http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=904). So perhaps it does need Jeff or at the very least a diamond mod who could claim to be an &quot;official representative&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ah - you can't rename pages:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Once you have claimed a username by clicking the &quot;Confirm&quot; button, it is not possible to edit it, or to transfer your username to a different account on Facebook.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Source](http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=900)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So either we wait for the domain name or create a &quot;beta&quot; page now and then transfer to the &quot;real&quot; one later." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="346" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="144" RevisionGUID="52c706eb-b86f-4d43-bbf7-d4eecc9e11dd" CreationDate="2010-09-09T22:38:27.347" UserId="41" Text="##SubjectiveOverflow.com##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="347" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="144" RevisionGUID="52c706eb-b86f-4d43-bbf7-d4eecc9e11dd" CreationDate="2010-09-09T22:38:27.347" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="348" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="145" RevisionGUID="2354f238-770f-4b2f-b51f-06ca1a26e088" CreationDate="2010-09-09T22:39:20.903" UserId="40" Text="Since most questions here can have an unlimited number of answers, I think the automatic conversion to CW when a question receives 30 answers should be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also: [Purpose of Community Wiki](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="349" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="145" RevisionGUID="2354f238-770f-4b2f-b51f-06ca1a26e088" CreationDate="2010-09-09T22:39:20.903" UserId="40" Text="Remove CW conversion at 30 answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="350" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="145" RevisionGUID="2354f238-770f-4b2f-b51f-06ca1a26e088" CreationDate="2010-09-09T22:39:20.903" UserId="40" Text="|feature-request|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="351" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="146" RevisionGUID="3f8ad756-7b80-4cef-a810-65d028f02713" CreationDate="2010-09-09T22:44:25.603" UserId="666" Text="I agree with this, maybe there should instead be a flag reason for a question to be made a community wiki..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="352" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="147" RevisionGUID="beb9a38d-726d-4053-b7d6-976680c1726f" CreationDate="2010-09-09T22:51:14.577" UserId="666" Text="CodeBabble.com&#xD;&#xA;==&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="353" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="147" RevisionGUID="beb9a38d-726d-4053-b7d6-976680c1726f" CreationDate="2010-09-09T22:51:14.577" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="354" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="148" RevisionGUID="a8c0eb9f-ab3b-498f-a69e-f6269c4c59d9" CreationDate="2010-09-09T22:51:31.907" UserId="666" Text="DevBabble.com&#xD;&#xA;==&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="355" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="148" RevisionGUID="a8c0eb9f-ab3b-498f-a69e-f6269c4c59d9" CreationDate="2010-09-09T22:51:31.907" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="356" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="144" RevisionGUID="342a7afb-a430-44b3-966c-9e0149dbc417" CreationDate="2010-09-09T22:51:46.523" UserId="666" Comment="Improved formatting..." Text="SubjectiveOverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;==&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="357" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="149" RevisionGUID="d290f430-60ef-4b18-b3a1-8d64bec5b416" CreationDate="2010-09-09T23:11:28.933" UserId="666" Text="Would a separate SE site with only Code Games have succes? Maybe, maybe not...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there enough interest in such separate SE site? Maybe, maybe not...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see this site as a pause for developers that want to improve themselves, know about other developers or just have plain fun; for this last reason I see that Code Golfs fit if there aren't too much of them. Maybe people should first mail some Diamond moderator(s) **with a proposal to let it be checked** so it is sufficiently good and if it's the right time to be posted before it may be released to the Code Golfers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But our current FAQ states discussions in &quot;subjective **discussions** on software development&quot;, Code Golf doesn't fall under discussion but some questions I've seen at the site currently don't fall under that term either (list posts for example) so I don't see this to be an issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of users will see this site as the **subjective counter-part of Stack Overflow**,  &#xD;&#xA;why have yet another big site for such a small activity? This leaves me wondering...  &#xD;&#xA;Can such site really become the next Google Code Jam or Project Euler? Maybe, maybe not...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding Thomas Owen's answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; They don't belong here because they aren't subjective - someone can either write a shorter program or you have written the shortest program to do that task.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe the Code Golfs should be made sufficiently complex to allow for enough room to improve...  &#xD;&#xA;Apart from that there isn't a single answer though. It's like a list of tools: An answer for each language!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="358" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="150" RevisionGUID="fc408b9c-b5fd-4f4a-9289-916ae4953b11" CreationDate="2010-09-09T23:12:47.340" UserId="100" Text="I still fail to see any reason why any post should be CW here. We definitely need to do away with the automatic conversion, and I'm not even sure we need a flag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="363" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="153" RevisionGUID="a85216ac-feb7-4f41-a8ff-332a536e5870" CreationDate="2010-09-10T00:50:12.293" UserId="666" Text="[[language]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/language)  &#xD;&#xA;[[languages]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/languages)  &#xD;&#xA;[[programming-languages]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming-languages)  &#xD;&#xA;[[spoken-languages]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/spoken-languages)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="364" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="153" RevisionGUID="a85216ac-feb7-4f41-a8ff-332a536e5870" CreationDate="2010-09-10T00:50:12.293" UserId="666" Text="[language(s)] --&gt; [programming-languages] or [spoken-languages]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="365" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="153" RevisionGUID="a85216ac-feb7-4f41-a8ff-332a536e5870" CreationDate="2010-09-10T00:50:12.293" UserId="666" Text="|discussion|retag-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="367" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="154" RevisionGUID="88f9ce48-0720-4f78-9b85-9ff1193b299b" CreationDate="2010-09-10T02:26:52.100" UserId="666" Text="eg. [design-pattern] or [design-patterns]?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="368" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="154" RevisionGUID="88f9ce48-0720-4f78-9b85-9ff1193b299b" CreationDate="2010-09-10T02:26:52.100" UserId="666" Text="Should a tag be singular or plural?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="369" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="154" RevisionGUID="88f9ce48-0720-4f78-9b85-9ff1193b299b" CreationDate="2010-09-10T02:26:52.100" UserId="666" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="370" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="155" RevisionGUID="45df1226-ee78-4d72-9b18-e9ba1e004902" CreationDate="2010-09-10T02:30:45.890" UserId="666" Text="There are a lot of tags where a tag wiki wouldn't fit or is just plain stupid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example... For the tag [programming-languages][1] a wiki could be made but would it be useful?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming-languages" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="371" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="155" RevisionGUID="45df1226-ee78-4d72-9b18-e9ba1e004902" CreationDate="2010-09-10T02:30:45.890" UserId="666" Text="Will tag wikis have any use? Which tags should we create a wiki for?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="372" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="155" RevisionGUID="45df1226-ee78-4d72-9b18-e9ba1e004902" CreationDate="2010-09-10T02:30:45.890" UserId="666" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="373" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="156" RevisionGUID="a3ff8ff0-6d51-405e-8735-9decda957115" CreationDate="2010-09-10T02:32:42.270" UserId="666" Text="Are all the current badges sufficient for the community or are there badges that don't fit the community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="374" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="156" RevisionGUID="a3ff8ff0-6d51-405e-8735-9decda957115" CreationDate="2010-09-10T02:32:42.270" UserId="666" Text="Are all the current badges sufficient for our community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="375" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="156" RevisionGUID="a3ff8ff0-6d51-405e-8735-9decda957115" CreationDate="2010-09-10T02:32:42.270" UserId="666" Text="|discussion|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="379" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="116" RevisionGUID="e651ee59-8e67-4b73-aefb-a77b897287aa" CreationDate="2010-09-10T02:41:31.347" UserId="220" Comment="deleted 17 characters in body" Text="OutOfScope.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taken.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm the owner and I'm willing to sell." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="380" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="158" RevisionGUID="7ff21dc9-52a4-4e7f-b27e-c8b440dd9741" CreationDate="2010-09-10T02:47:45.977" UserId="666" Text="CompilationPhase.com&#xD;&#xA;==&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Sorry, couldn't resist...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CWldD.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="381" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="158" RevisionGUID="7ff21dc9-52a4-4e7f-b27e-c8b440dd9741" CreationDate="2010-09-10T02:47:45.977" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="382" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="159" RevisionGUID="f90a3b36-2bfe-4b0c-90dd-362499822408" CreationDate="2010-09-10T06:14:22.320" UserId="212" Text="Personally I find unexplained down-votes very frustrating, also IMHO, this isn't constructive criticism. On the contrary it promotes bad behavior..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suggest enforcing adding a comment when casting a down vote, rather than just giving a hint. It can be anonymous, at least for the person being voted on" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="383" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="159" RevisionGUID="f90a3b36-2bfe-4b0c-90dd-362499822408" CreationDate="2010-09-10T06:14:22.320" UserId="212" Text="Should we force adding a coment with every down-vote?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="384" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="159" RevisionGUID="f90a3b36-2bfe-4b0c-90dd-362499822408" CreationDate="2010-09-10T06:14:22.320" UserId="212" Text="|feature-request|down-votes|votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="385" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="160" RevisionGUID="4a55aef1-a345-4a23-9ed5-26f827f4bd13" CreationDate="2010-09-10T06:25:45.103" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This topic has been hashed over and over on Meta.StackOverflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Encouraging people to explain down-votes](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/135)&#xD;&#xA;* [So annoyed with no-comment, vindictive downvoting](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/22934/so-annoyed-with-no-comment-vindictive-downvoting)&#xD;&#xA;* [Who has downvoted me and why [closed]](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/63895/who-has-downvoted-me-and-why)&#xD;&#xA;* [If you don't like my question you have to explain why. [closed]](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/50738/if-you-dont-like-my-question-you-have-to-explain-why)&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoters and comments [closed]](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/55324/downvoters-and-comments)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a *Bad Idea*. Downvoting is a personal thing for the voter, is necessary for a functioning voting system (that is, down-voters should not be subject to reprisal), and should not be taken so personally that you feel you are owed an explanation. Shrug downvotes, concentrate on providing the best answers you can, and move on." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="386" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="159" RevisionGUID="024e829f-3de1-4220-8a28-169dfdc4f7c2" CreationDate="2010-09-10T06:40:31.713" UserId="212" Comment="added 112 characters in body" Text="Personally I find unexplained down-votes very frustrating, also IMHO, this isn't constructive criticism. On the contrary it promotes bad behavior..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suggest enforcing adding a comment when casting a down vote, rather than just giving a hint. It can be anonymous, at least for the person being voted on&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;UPDATE: If it would make any difference, please, note that this is for both the answer &amp; question down-votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="387" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="161" RevisionGUID="16685510-5f17-4d40-9164-fa61ce9538a4" CreationDate="2010-09-10T07:06:57.953" UserId="212" Text="Jon Skeet says it all here:&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votes/2268#2268" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="388" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="162" RevisionGUID="48a1c566-b834-4555-b3bd-312e414ce6a5" CreationDate="2010-09-10T07:16:49.090" UserId="74" Text="I'm seeing a lot of great famous Stack Overflow questions asked again here on Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;Why allowing to duplicate those questions?  &#xD;&#xA;Will you close them, import them or merge them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="389" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="162" RevisionGUID="48a1c566-b834-4555-b3bd-312e414ce6a5" CreationDate="2010-09-10T07:16:49.090" UserId="74" Text="How do we deal with famous questions of StackOverflow that are being asked again on Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="390" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="162" RevisionGUID="48a1c566-b834-4555-b3bd-312e414ce6a5" CreationDate="2010-09-10T07:16:49.090" UserId="74" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="391" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="162" RevisionGUID="f3e9d95f-2e18-438a-b34d-43d57b9f4847" CreationDate="2010-09-10T07:24:15.090" UserId="74" Comment="edited title" Text="How do you deal with famous questions of Stack Overflow that are being asked again on Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="392" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="161" RevisionGUID="2b19d9ad-de09-4487-8709-b6946a965c29" CreationDate="2010-09-10T07:30:25.397" UserId="212" Comment="added 321 characters in body" Text="Jon Skeet says it all here:&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votes/2268#2268&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reading this: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2009/05/20/reasons-for-voting-on-questions-and-answers.aspx&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder why not use the same system in comments for voting?&#xD;&#xA;That's if you like a question/answer up-vote it, if not, you either comment about what you see wrong or flag it if it's such an offshoot" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="393" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="163" RevisionGUID="a3c9f4fa-a201-4b64-9155-9425c394029f" CreationDate="2010-09-10T07:32:41.370" UserId="108" Text="[`career`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career): 29 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`work`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/work): 5 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`job`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/job): 15 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`career-development`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career-development): 8 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`employment`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/employment): 3 questions  &#xD;&#xA;`hiring` and `work-environment` are somewhat related, but I think may have a better case for independent existence. I propose the other tags be merged into `career`, the most populated one, with individual questions retagged as appropriate (for example, several of the `work` questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58/tag-consolidation-and-blacklist/59#59. I created this question so that this issue could be discussed/voted on separately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="394" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="163" RevisionGUID="a3c9f4fa-a201-4b64-9155-9425c394029f" CreationDate="2010-09-10T07:32:41.370" UserId="108" Text="[work], [job], [career-development], [employment] =&gt; [career]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="395" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="163" RevisionGUID="a3c9f4fa-a201-4b64-9155-9425c394029f" CreationDate="2010-09-10T07:32:41.370" UserId="108" Text="|discussion|support|tags|retag-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="396" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="162" RevisionGUID="b5d20ee1-940c-4204-99b4-165466fbe967" CreationDate="2010-09-10T07:35:13.140" UserId="74" Comment="added 149 characters in body" Text="I'm seeing a lot of great famous Stack Overflow questions asked again here on Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;Why allowing to duplicate those questions? &#xD;&#xA;Will you close them, import them or merge them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My 0.02c approach:  &#xD;&#xA;1. Close them as duplicate on Programmers  &#xD;&#xA;2. When Programmers will be out of the Beta, import\merge them.  &#xD;&#xA;3. Reopen them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="397" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="164" RevisionGUID="152cb3b1-6556-46fd-a999-fad644195af2" CreationDate="2010-09-10T08:06:08.540" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The site was proposed and set up specifically to *hold* all the popular but nevertheless off-topic questions on Stack Overflow: they are important seeding questions and they should not be closed. If the site makes it out of beta, there [will be a migration path](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23/should-we-migrate-subjective-question-from-stackoverflow) to move and merge questions from Stack Overflow to here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also my answer on [How should we handle questions currently closed on SO?&#xD;&#xA;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44/how-should-we-handle-questions-currently-closed-on-so/45#45)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="398" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="162" RevisionGUID="90e7575c-da16-490b-b4b6-bd88518649b0" CreationDate="2010-09-10T08:12:49.267" UserId="74" Comment="added 358 characters in body; added 3 characters in body" Text="I'm seeing a lot of great famous Stack Overflow questions asked again here on Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;Why allowing to duplicate those questions?   &#xD;&#xA;Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/192793/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-t-shirt  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2212/whats-the-best-programming-t-shirt&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/58640/great-programming-quotes-closed  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-programming-quote&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will you close them, import them or merge them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My 0.02c approach:  &#xD;&#xA;1. Close them as duplicate on Programmers  &#xD;&#xA;2. When Programmers will be out of the Beta, import\merge them.  &#xD;&#xA;3. Reopen them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="399" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="164" RevisionGUID="0e023873-617e-422e-a4f9-3afb3d5101ee" CreationDate="2010-09-10T08:29:23.237" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 186 characters in body" Text="Programmers is a separate site from Stack Overflow: the questions are on topic and not duplicates of questions on Programmers, so they should not be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site was proposed and set up specifically to *hold* all the popular but nevertheless off-topic questions on Stack Overflow: there will be overlap on some popular questions because they are important seeding questions. If the site makes it out of beta, there [will be a migration path](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23/should-we-migrate-subjective-question-from-stackoverflow) to move and merge questions from Stack Overflow to here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also my answer on [How should we handle questions currently closed on SO?&#xD;&#xA;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44/how-should-we-handle-questions-currently-closed-on-so/45#45)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="400" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="165" RevisionGUID="985438c2-e902-4c41-804e-f06d252cfb2e" CreationDate="2010-09-10T08:50:04.833" UserId="47" Text="Questions that are already closed on Stack Overflow should remain closed and probably deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are open on Stack Overflow but re-asked here should just be closed as &quot;off-topic&quot; and eventually deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once this site becomes a fully fledged site with a migration path there will, no doubt, be some questions still open on SO that will get migrated here and become duplicates. In that case they should be closed as duplicates and merged with this site's question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over time this will become less of an issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime if you find any &quot;duplicates&quot; add a comment to the SO question pointing here and vote to close it as &quot;off topic&quot; (if you have enough rep) or flag it for moderator attention (if you don't)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="401" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="166" RevisionGUID="2c70620f-0c0d-4abd-b978-b90376f6b24f" CreationDate="2010-09-10T09:02:23.203" UserId="34" Text="&gt;1. Close them as duplicate on Programmers&#xD;&#xA;2. When Programmers will be out of the Beta, import\merge them.&#xD;&#xA;3. Reopen them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;WHY?  What *problem* does this plan solve?  What actually *is* the problem you're addressing? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That users on this site &quot;steal&quot; reputations from &quot;original authors&quot;?  Many of those who was active on StackOverflow, and answered those questions, doesn't care of this site, and about whether thy have any &quot;rep&quot; here.  If a user borrows the answer directly, he jsut links to the original one.  Even if StackOverflow *was the place where the answerer first learned about this*,  it's not a problem: there always is such a place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That people here duplicate a work that's already done?  Well, I don't think that dozens of those who answer the questions you linked are not enthusiastic about it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, your plan suggests that we should ban specific topics here (though temporarily).  But *we opened this site to ask and answer such questions*, and banning them contradicts the purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My suggestion is just leave them as is, alive and not closed.  When the time to merge comes, moderators will carefully merge the missing answers in." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="402" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="162" RevisionGUID="bfa3c230-d961-458e-b78b-79055d8ba8c2" CreationDate="2010-09-10T09:06:25.283" UserId="74" Comment="added 12 characters in body" Text="I'm seeing a lot of great famous Stack Overflow questions asked again here on Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;Why allowing to duplicate those questions?   &#xD;&#xA;Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/192793/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-t-shirt  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2212/whats-the-best-programming-t-shirt&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/58640/great-programming-quotes-closed  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-programming-quote&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will you close them, import them or merge them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My 0.02c approach:  &#xD;&#xA;1. Temporarily close them as duplicate on Programmers  &#xD;&#xA;2. When Programmers will be out of the Beta, import\merge them.  &#xD;&#xA;3. Reopen them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="403" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="162" RevisionGUID="0360fcbd-35c6-4828-b5fa-cd59c4315112" CreationDate="2010-09-10T09:15:13.433" UserId="74" Comment="deleted 8 characters in body; added 165 characters in body" Text="I'm seeing a lot of great famous Stack Overflow questions asked again here on Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;Why allowing to duplicate those questions?   &#xD;&#xA;Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/192793/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-t-shirt  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2212/whats-the-best-programming-t-shirt&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/58640/great-programming-quotes-closed  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-programming-quote&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will you delete or close or merge them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My 0.02c approach:  &#xD;&#xA;1. Temporarily close them as Duplicate on Programmers  &#xD;&#xA;2. When Programmers will be out of the Beta, import\merge them.  &#xD;&#xA;3. Reopen them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Probably I feel it as a problem because I read and loved hundreds of top voted questions of Stack Overflow and now, seeing them popping up again, it's like a Dejavù.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="406" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="166" RevisionGUID="4d2e893d-4376-448b-a138-13eb626914b7" CreationDate="2010-09-10T10:16:10.867" UserId="34" Comment="typos" Text="&gt;1. Close them as duplicate on Programmers&#xD;&#xA;2. When Programmers will be out of the Beta, import\merge them.&#xD;&#xA;3. Reopen them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;WHY?  What *problem* does this plan solve?  What actually *is* the problem you're addressing? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That users on this site &quot;steal&quot; reputations from &quot;original authors&quot;?  Many of those who were active on StackOverflow, and answered those questions, don't care about this site, and about whether thy have any &quot;rep&quot; here.  If a user borrows the answer directly, he just may link to the original one.  Even if StackOverflow *was the place where the answerer first learned about this*,  it's not a problem: there always is such a place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That people here duplicate a work that's already done?  Well, I don't think that dozens of those who answer the questions you linked are not enthusiastic about it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, your plan suggests that we should ban specific topics here (though temporarily).  But *we opened this site to ask and answer such questions*, and banning them contradicts the purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My suggestion is just leave them as is, alive and not closed.  When the time to merge comes, moderators will carefully merge the missing answers in." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="407" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="168" RevisionGUID="385179d9-491f-478f-8551-6c86465a212f" CreationDate="2010-09-10T11:35:06.573" UserId="34" Text="Here's what I think about the tags you listed.  IMHO they fall into several topics, not just one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The topic you probably meant is **career development**.  It addresses such topics as:&#xD;&#xA;  * How do I develop my career to make a better specialist?&#xD;&#xA;  * What languages should I learn for that?&#xD;&#xA;  * Should I turn that job and get master's education, or...?&#xD;&#xA;  * Will certification make me a better developer? &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  [career] seems a perfect tag for this kind of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Another topic, which *mirrors* the previous one, is **being a good employer**.  It addresses:&#xD;&#xA;  * How do I become an attractive employer?&#xD;&#xA;  * Can Java developers make it in a C# project?&#xD;&#xA;  * Are people with MS degree better programmers?&#xD;&#xA;  * Will certificates help us if our company focuses on Microsoft tech stack?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  As these questions are essentially the same ones as those in pt.1 (essentially, they're dupes), so they fall into the same [career] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. However, if the questions in the previous point are asked with accent on **how to hire good developers**, it deserves more of a [hiring] tag.  At least I think that the tag should be different to [career].  Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * How would you describe your company in a job ad?&#xD;&#xA;  * What traits of Java developers should be scrutinized if I'm interviewing them for a C# project?&#xD;&#xA;  * Should I prefer developers with MS degree to those with BS only?&#xD;&#xA;  * Should I consider only Certified Developers if our company uses only Microsoft technologies?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Different, aren't they?  Perhaps, the last two aren't defferent from their counterparts at pt. 2, but they all are very different from those in pt.1.  So we definitely need another tag here ([hiring]). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. Some questions concern **the way you work** as programmer.  They're sometimes tagged as [work].  Actually, among [five questions tagged [work]][1], and *[only one][2] is about [career] actually*.  Most likely that one question is just a misunderstanding (for example, in Russian, only one word is used for both &quot;work&quot; and &quot;job&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summary:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. tags like [career], [job], [career-development], [employment] are generally the same and should be merged into [career].&#xD;&#xA;2. The [hiring] tag deserves a separate treatment, as it's about &quot;how to hire/interview&quot; developers.&#xD;&#xA;3. The [work] tag presents a different concept, and, perhaps, is to be renamed, but not merged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/work&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2130/what-are-the-biggest-differences-between-working-for-a-small-company-and-working" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="408" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="169" RevisionGUID="eea3668c-6c6c-4d6d-a400-a7bbd14a04d9" CreationDate="2010-09-10T15:57:56.530" UserId="190" Text="re-post the highest voted answers, increase reputation :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="409" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="170" RevisionGUID="f28b6d25-4e8b-44ed-9501-51f78393f780" CreationDate="2010-09-10T17:09:39.757" UserId="63" Text="###[Pavel Shved][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;About time someone nominated a person *other than themselves*. So here's why I think Pavel would make a great moderator for Programmers.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Adept at mocking other users&#xD;&#xA;- Terrible manners&#xD;&#xA;- Unpronounceable name&#xD;&#xA;- Honest about why he shouldn't be a moderator&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/34/pavel-shved&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/34/pavel-shved" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="410" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="170" RevisionGUID="f28b6d25-4e8b-44ed-9501-51f78393f780" CreationDate="2010-09-10T17:09:39.757" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="412" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="171" RevisionGUID="dd42ce13-a599-47ea-b647-ddca454228b3" CreationDate="2010-09-10T16:37:08.957" UserId="1112" Text="Hi,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's the difference between Programmers and SO" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="413" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="171" RevisionGUID="dd42ce13-a599-47ea-b647-ddca454228b3" CreationDate="2010-09-10T16:37:08.957" UserId="1112" Text="What's the difference between Programmers and SO" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="414" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="171" RevisionGUID="dd42ce13-a599-47ea-b647-ddca454228b3" CreationDate="2010-09-10T16:37:08.957" UserId="1112" Text="|retag-me|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="415" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="171" RevisionGUID="a734d356-52a2-4282-9150-9428a352fe49" CreationDate="2010-09-10T17:15:53.227" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2595/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so" Text="" />
  <row Id="416" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="173" RevisionGUID="bfa0c7d0-6c8d-4b9e-b0b7-78c687a65803" CreationDate="2010-09-10T17:39:53.323" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Programmers.SE is for subjective or extended discussions that have no definitive answer, whereas Stack Overflow is for objective, pointed questions that have a definitive answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More info:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [*Not Programming Related* proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352?phase=definition)  on Area 51&#xD;&#xA;* [*Programmers on stack exchange*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange) on Meta.StackOverflow " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="418" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="174" RevisionGUID="4b7309f2-4d3b-45c6-a3ab-6a627a11751d" CreationDate="2010-09-10T19:44:32.357" UserId="13" Text="Programmersexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Please forgive me... I had no choice...*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="419" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="174" RevisionGUID="4b7309f2-4d3b-45c6-a3ab-6a627a11751d" CreationDate="2010-09-10T19:44:32.357" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="420" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="154" RevisionGUID="81b029e6-fd1e-4c9c-8d90-7ccbf4f09435" CreationDate="2010-09-10T20:12:46.820" UserId="666" Comment="added 51 characters in body" Text="Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [design-pattern] or [design-patterns]&#xD;&#xA; - [best-practice] or [best-practices]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="421" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="171" RevisionGUID="02a9bcb4-2e4b-46ee-84b0-a8933aea93c0" CreationDate="2010-09-10T20:16:26.687" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|retag-me|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="422" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="154" RevisionGUID="23267699-ab95-4e03-8c58-04fc5ca608f6" CreationDate="2010-09-10T22:40:25.213" UserId="666" Comment="added 26 characters in body" Text="Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [career] or [careers]&#xD;&#xA; - [design-pattern] or [design-patterns]&#xD;&#xA; - [best-practice] or [best-practices]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="423" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="175" RevisionGUID="d339ff82-8801-42a9-bd86-a59477bf14a9" CreationDate="2010-09-10T22:45:28.350" UserId="666" Text="Having thought on this I think it's better to have **plural** tags...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example with [design-pattern] and [design-patterns].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There might be a question regarding a single design pattern,  &#xD;&#xA;but there might also be one regarding multiple design patterns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both tags fit well for the first question about a single pattern,  &#xD;&#xA;however [design-pattern] doesn't math for the second question about multiple design patterns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another reason for plural tags is that a tag lists questions about design patterns, not design pattern. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there are exceptions to this proposed rule:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Words that shouldn't be plural,  &#xD;&#xA;  it's unlikely that a question will be about [careers] so it should be [career].&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="424" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="176" RevisionGUID="368757f1-5547-4445-8bd1-60458b8097ae" CreationDate="2010-09-11T15:31:30.400" UserId="1299" Text="It seems like half of this site should be community wiki. Also, what kind of questions are supposed to go here that don't already fit into StackOverflow or Webmasters? Webmasters is loosely defined as it is. This site only means to complicate it even more." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="425" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="176" RevisionGUID="368757f1-5547-4445-8bd1-60458b8097ae" CreationDate="2010-09-11T15:31:30.400" UserId="1299" Text="Lots of subjective questions here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="426" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="176" RevisionGUID="368757f1-5547-4445-8bd1-60458b8097ae" CreationDate="2010-09-11T15:31:30.400" UserId="1299" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="427" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="177" RevisionGUID="0410ec65-5044-433f-9b06-8986162e5221" CreationDate="2010-09-11T15:35:49.237" UserId="47" Text="You know all those questions on Stack Overflow that get (or should get) closed as &quot;subjective and argumentative&quot;, you know one's like: &quot;what's your favourite programmer cartoon&quot;, &quot;what language/framework should I learn next&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well this is the place to ask them without fear of them being closed (except perhaps as a duplicate)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="428" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="178" RevisionGUID="b8f810be-3ce9-4305-a355-07e84f835f5e" CreationDate="2010-09-11T17:30:57.437" UserId="666" Text="For this site, I tend to think that Community Wiki should only be encouraged for collaborative editing...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If all questions that should be CW on a normal site be CW here then reputation would be nearly useless,  &#xD;&#xA;and I still tend to think that reputation should still be there to show the activity  and experience an user has." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="429" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="179" RevisionGUID="422f9efe-3bdf-40e7-88c9-dde3e7a015c9" CreationDate="2010-09-11T20:03:10.567" UserId="1328" Text="I know subjective questions are unacceptable on stackoverflow.com, but what if the question is directly about stackoverflow, for example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Have you noticed more [insert lanuage&#xD;&#xA;   of you choice] questions on&#xD;&#xA;   stackoverflow now that college&#xD;&#xA;   started?&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA; - Do you believe their are better&#xD;&#xA;   technical questions asked on&#xD;&#xA;   stackoverflow during the summer?&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA; - Do you think those that program in a&#xD;&#xA;   particular language ask better&#xD;&#xA;   technical questions on stackoverflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would subjective questions about stackoverflow be acceptable here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="430" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="179" RevisionGUID="422f9efe-3bdf-40e7-88c9-dde3e7a015c9" CreationDate="2010-09-11T20:03:10.567" UserId="1328" Text="Can I ask a Subject Question about Stackoverflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="431" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="179" RevisionGUID="422f9efe-3bdf-40e7-88c9-dde3e7a015c9" CreationDate="2010-09-11T20:03:10.567" UserId="1328" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="432" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="180" RevisionGUID="e640d52d-8507-4e37-aa06-779ac14d6b99" CreationDate="2010-09-11T20:13:07.010" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="No, this site is for extended and subjective questions about *programming*, not Stack Overflow. If you want to talk about Stack Overflow, use [Meta.StackOverflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="433" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="181" RevisionGUID="5d945d60-59b9-4740-babd-3ea0371f4587" CreationDate="2010-09-11T21:27:42.677" UserId="61" Text="#[Chinmay Kanchi][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to nominate myself as well. For the most part, I think I fit in well at this community and I participate actively. I'm not super-active at meta, but that's because Fishtoaster seems to beat me to most answers ;). I do read it regularly though, and will throw in an opinion if I think it'll help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/61/chinmay-kanchi&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/61/chinmay-kanchi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="434" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="181" RevisionGUID="5d945d60-59b9-4740-babd-3ea0371f4587" CreationDate="2010-09-11T21:27:42.677" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="437" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="181" RevisionGUID="192ec7eb-20c2-4f06-9c37-5d666185ea3c" CreationDate="2010-09-11T21:36:25.087" UserId="61" Comment="added 198 characters in body; added 2 characters in body" Text="###[Chinmay Kanchi][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to nominate myself as well. For the most part, I think I fit in well at this community and I participate actively. I'm not super-active at meta, but that's because Fishtoaster seems to beat me to most answers ;). I do read it regularly though, and will throw in an opinion if I think it'll help. I program for a living (well, I'm a PhD student who programs extensively for his project) and I've been programming long enough that I have some understanding of the kinds of things discussed here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/61/chinmay-kanchi&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/61/chinmay-kanchi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="439" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="116" RevisionGUID="cd7e9294-8251-40bd-9360-70aba43b9cf5" CreationDate="2010-09-12T00:31:55.103" UserId="220" Comment="added 106 characters in body" Text="OutOfScope.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taken / Available for purchase&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[GoodEnough][1] is the owner and willing to sell.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/220/goodenough" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="440" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="79" RevisionGUID="798a9d51-edc1-4442-9fe3-b620c51eae59" CreationDate="2010-09-12T00:32:24.493" UserId="220" Comment="added 21 characters in body" Text="SlackOverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taken / Available for purchase&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I proposed this on [meta.stackoverflow.com][1] and Jeff suggested to add it here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/62734/renaming-the-not-programming-related-proposal/62849#62849" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="441" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="102" RevisionGUID="a4af9f14-3d85-4d20-8b77-d6cce75bb1f3" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:21:10.397" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="offtopic.stackoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;==&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="442" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="79" RevisionGUID="4ddd7f9d-2fb8-4f14-8f93-3d74f7c42054" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:21:49.210" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="slackoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taken / Available for purchase&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I proposed this on [meta.stackoverflow.com][1] and Jeff suggested to add it here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/62734/renaming-the-not-programming-related-proposal/62849#62849" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="443" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="15" RevisionGUID="26bba378-7d43-4eba-ae30-55f7328fdb4f" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:22:00.287" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="idlecoder.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="444" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="104" RevisionGUID="6025cb29-9ad2-4ff4-bc4a-fd9efddb0a56" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:22:26.150" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="notcoderelated.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this more than *NotProgrammingRelated.com* because it is a more accurate representation of the direction this community is heading. We **do** talk about programming here, so first and foremost this community is most definitely *programming related*. That being said, the discussions stay away from physical code for the most part, and thus I believe that *NotCodeRelated.com* still conveys allows the name to convey a programming mindset, but it excludes the focus of Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just my two cents." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="445" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3" RevisionGUID="3a09a341-6197-4b27-b64d-34fcc728ad4c" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:22:46.587" UserId="11" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="One of the big 7 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - One answer per answer please&#xD;&#xA; - Only .com domain names please&#xD;&#xA; - Only untaken domain names please (use whois)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please use **lowercase characters only** in domain name! DomainName.com is more readable, but we have to register domainname.com!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="446" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="116" RevisionGUID="db4ad548-f150-48d9-9e02-b0fa7ec27208" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:23:27.367" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="outofscope.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taken / Available for purchase&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[GoodEnough][1] is the owner and willing to sell.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/220/goodenough" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="447" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="49" RevisionGUID="24ca9e3f-a9aa-4b49-843c-9a833b5a3472" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:23:41.623" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="heapunderflow.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the same vein as [this answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3/what-should-our-domain-name-be/34#34).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="448" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="16" RevisionGUID="5711da50-7995-4a9d-b77c-e0f2ec8e869c" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:24:06.567" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="idleprogrammer.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="449" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="158" RevisionGUID="94febb28-2d10-4d86-aa3a-fe671a2a8d12" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:24:24.930" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="compilationphase.com&#xD;&#xA;==&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Sorry, couldn't resist...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CWldD.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="450" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="13" RevisionGUID="39f52818-c7d8-47df-b0bb-923838dd0628" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:24:50.390" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="notprogrammingrelated.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;Taken.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Owned by someone hosting a StackExchange 1.0 site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="451" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="60" RevisionGUID="7f628211-d20d-4007-891b-d6193029d1e9" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:25:05.897" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="heappointer.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe also **heapointer.com** or **heap-pointer.com**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We all know about stack pointers, but what about heap pointers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="452" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="61" RevisionGUID="8f07ce9b-2b90-468d-9635-7b7173b4224d" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:27:18.837" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="stackoverflowed.com&#xD;&#xA;==&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="453" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="147" RevisionGUID="79197645-b10d-439c-a6e7-31885574713a" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:27:40.973" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="codebabble.com&#xD;&#xA;==&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="454" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="34" RevisionGUID="d5ca98dd-3095-45f2-8f70-c83823da376a" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:27:58.290" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="pointertotheheap.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you can't store on the stack, put on the heap." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="455" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="137" RevisionGUID="b2fb5a77-53d2-4db0-ac2f-479f411fc359" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:28:20.520" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="progpub.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short version based on a suggestion in [Renaming the Not Programming Related Proposal][1]...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/62734/renaming-the-not-programming-related-proposal/62849#62849" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="456" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="148" RevisionGUID="0cd4ec25-325b-4579-8853-14d37da8eeb9" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:28:34.840" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="devbabble.com&#xD;&#xA;==&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="457" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="144" RevisionGUID="7602e054-f550-46ef-ad8f-72cf3dc77efc" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:30:35.243" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="subjectiveoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;==&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="458" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="46" RevisionGUID="ceb10e28-cb2b-4e8b-8e13-f084597b1320" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:31:06.207" UserId="11" Comment="edited body" Text="stackoverflowoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;Taken.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's parked...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A handful of you may remember [Stack Overflow Overflow](http://stackoverflowoverflow.stackexchange.com/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why aren't other people using CW? Am I missing something?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="459" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="183" RevisionGUID="cc35e186-f26a-40e5-b450-103511d8567d" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:33:19.247" UserId="11" Text="###[Lorenzo][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm subjective and argumentative, but (hope) on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/11/lorenzo&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/11/lorenzo" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="460" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="183" RevisionGUID="cc35e186-f26a-40e5-b450-103511d8567d" CreationDate="2010-09-12T01:33:19.247" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="461" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="184" RevisionGUID="57f1e409-79b1-4d85-9ced-87d2e8e2ad9c" CreationDate="2010-09-12T04:58:37.847" UserId="497" Text="Hmmm... People are much less likely to answer a question with an accepted answer. For many questions this would be counter productive....but TheLQ makes a good point about the &lt;50% mindset. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would a check box, like the community wiki box, or similar device.... that effectively tagged the question as answered....or un-answerable...with the goal of maintaining the OP's acceptance rate ? ...moderator driven ?...something ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Might end up being the root of all evil...Just thinking out-loud.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="466" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="174" RevisionGUID="f97fb928-85c0-45ad-8753-e0612f072e91" CreationDate="2010-09-12T10:50:11.687" UserId="666" Comment="edited body" Text="programmersexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Please forgive me... I had no choice...*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="467" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="103" RevisionGUID="0095bf2c-497c-403b-a783-99f4b1cd4427" CreationDate="2010-09-12T10:50:35.913" UserId="666" Comment="edited body" Text="programmers.stackoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;==&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It makes sense to keep it tighten with StackOverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="468" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="11" RevisionGUID="8d337e3b-920e-47f3-9fec-75b3ed269023" CreationDate="2010-09-12T10:50:49.390" UserId="666" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="codingoasis.com&#xD;&#xA;==&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="469" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="12" RevisionGUID="ea34ad99-4430-4751-913f-02905d4de1a4" CreationDate="2010-09-12T10:51:09.703" UserId="666" Comment="edited body" Text="chatoverjoe.com&#xD;&#xA;---------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Playoff of StackOverflow - like a conversation around the coffeepot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="471" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3" RevisionGUID="e8f29db2-07f7-4a1b-b058-31acbe22cbc8" CreationDate="2010-09-12T10:52:04.147" UserId="666" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="One of the big 7 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - One answer per answer please&#xD;&#xA; - Only .com domain names please&#xD;&#xA; - Only untaken domain names please (use whois)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please use **lowercase characters only** in domain name!  &#xD;&#xA;DomainName.com is more readable, but we have to register domainname.com!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="473" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="168" RevisionGUID="8c7928f5-e39e-4112-861a-fccc6168b69b" CreationDate="2010-09-12T12:33:07.153" UserId="34" Comment="removed &quot;[job]&quot; to evade confusion" Text="Here's what I think about the tags you listed.  IMHO they fall into several topics, not just one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The topic you probably meant is **career development**.  It addresses such topics as:&#xD;&#xA;  * How do I develop my career to make a better specialist?&#xD;&#xA;  * What languages should I learn for that?&#xD;&#xA;  * Should I turn that job and get master's education, or...?&#xD;&#xA;  * Will certification make me a better developer? &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  [career] seems a perfect tag for this kind of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Another topic, which *mirrors* the previous one, is **being a good employer**.  It addresses:&#xD;&#xA;  * How do I become an attractive employer?&#xD;&#xA;  * Can Java developers make it in a C# project?&#xD;&#xA;  * Are people with MS degree better programmers?&#xD;&#xA;  * Will certificates help us if our company focuses on Microsoft tech stack?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  As these questions are essentially the same ones as those in pt.1 (essentially, they're dupes), so they fall into the same [career] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. However, if the questions in the previous point are asked with accent on **how to hire good developers**, it deserves more of a [hiring] tag.  At least I think that the tag should be different to [career].  Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * How would you describe your company in a job ad?&#xD;&#xA;  * What traits of Java developers should be scrutinized if I'm interviewing them for a C# project?&#xD;&#xA;  * Should I prefer developers with MS degree to those with BS only?&#xD;&#xA;  * Should I consider only Certified Developers if our company uses only Microsoft technologies?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Different, aren't they?  Perhaps, the last two aren't defferent from their counterparts at pt. 2, but they all are very different from those in pt.1.  So we definitely need another tag here ([hiring]). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. Some questions concern **the way you work** as programmer.  They're sometimes tagged as [work].  Actually, among [five questions tagged [work]][1], and *[only one][2] is about [career] actually*.  Most likely that one question is just a misunderstanding (for example, in Russian, only one word is used for both &quot;work&quot; and &quot;job&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summary:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. tags like [career], [career-development], [employment] are generally the same and should be merged into [career].&#xD;&#xA;2. The [hiring] tag deserves a separate treatment, as it's about &quot;how to hire/interview&quot; developers.&#xD;&#xA;3. The [work] tag presents a different concept, and, perhaps, is to be renamed, but not merged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/work&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2130/what-are-the-biggest-differences-between-working-for-a-small-company-and-working" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="474" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="186" RevisionGUID="7140983e-e479-41cc-b97d-2b21428a377b" CreationDate="2010-09-12T13:51:25.343" UserId="666" Text="There are some questions on our site regarding Software Engineering. ([Example 1][1], [Example 2][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should we do with those questions when [Area 51 - Software Engineering][3] will be pubilc beta?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - keep them open as they are valid for the FAQ? (If not, we should list SE as an exception)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - close them as off-topic and ask them to post their request at the other site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - or do something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1224/whats-the-most-effective-way-to-perform-code-reviews&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/954/whats-your-programming-philosophy&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6922/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="475" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="186" RevisionGUID="7140983e-e479-41cc-b97d-2b21428a377b" CreationDate="2010-09-12T13:51:25.343" UserId="666" Text="Software Engineering soon to be beta, what should we do with SE questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="476" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="186" RevisionGUID="7140983e-e479-41cc-b97d-2b21428a377b" CreationDate="2010-09-12T13:51:25.343" UserId="666" Text="|discussion|software-engineering|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="477" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="187" RevisionGUID="305227da-d23a-4714-a6b1-957e1c02fcf9" CreationDate="2010-09-12T14:25:32.507" UserId="34" Text="I think, we should keep them here.  Unlike code problems (which go to StackOverflow), software engineering problems are inherently more subjective, and are more likely to fit here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, **we should win over that site!**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="479" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="188" RevisionGUID="21f2a73e-062b-413d-ab38-be5569c2365a" CreationDate="2010-09-12T15:05:33.487" UserId="4" Text="Let me preface this with the fact that I'm the creator of the SE proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's no reason why SO, this site, and SE can't all coexist. So far, the majority of the questions on Stack Overflow and here are related to the construction phase of the software development life cycle. And you can tell that there's isolation in the people based on the percentage committed to the other proposal. Less than 10% of the people involved in the Programmers private beta committed to the Software Engineering Stack Exchange and around 8% of the SE committers committed here. That's honestly a pretty small number.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The SE stack exchange is designed for requirements engineering, design and architecture, testing (excluding the implementation of test cases - that's Stack Overflow's territory), and maintenance practices. SE also covers topics such as configuration management processes (not tools, as that falls into Stack Overflow's domain), business and engineering management, development processes, tools (although construction tools such as text editors and IDEs are covered on Stack Overflow), software quality, and professional ethics. High level questions on computer engineering, theoretical computer science, mathematics, usability, and systems engineering would also be on topic on SE, while more specific questions would be directed to the appropriate Stack Exchange (if one exists).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly, it's likely that this site, SO, and SE will have overlap in topics, but I think the target audience is going to be different. SE is specifically focused on people pursuing a software engineering degree, have a title similar to &quot;software engineer&quot; at work, or perform academic research into the field of software engineering. On the other hand, this site and SO cater to people who work as developers and programmers (which software engineers do...about 20% of the time).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that how this should go down is that SE enters private beta, we get a bunch of good questions going in the first week. Then, once SE enters private beta, there's a discussion started on the three relevant metas - SO, here, and SE - to further define how each site can &quot;play nice&quot; with the other two.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now (as awesome as this site is), its future is still undecided for another 2.5 months and the SE exchange hasn't even opened. So let's take this one day at a time, work together to build strong communities, and see what happens." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="480" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="189" RevisionGUID="2d4cd70b-3f54-4391-acb0-aa731b1e866a" CreationDate="2010-09-12T18:25:27.510" UserId="350" Text="I have &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1338/#1993&quot;&gt;an answer with 10 up-votes&lt;/a&gt; on programmers.stackexchange.com, but my reputation is still stuck at 101 (for linking my accounts across other Stack* sites).  Shouldn't my reputation be increasing for each up-vote I get?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="481" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="189" RevisionGUID="2d4cd70b-3f54-4391-acb0-aa731b1e866a" CreationDate="2010-09-12T18:25:27.510" UserId="350" Text="Why isn't my reputation increasing?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="482" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="189" RevisionGUID="2d4cd70b-3f54-4391-acb0-aa731b1e866a" CreationDate="2010-09-12T18:25:27.510" UserId="350" Text="|support|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="483" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="190" RevisionGUID="d2509d19-46d8-4d36-99ad-66439df25dfe" CreationDate="2010-09-12T18:32:19.750" UserId="63" Text="It's a [&quot;Community Wiki&quot;][1] answer (one which doesn't have a permanent &quot;owner&quot;, can be edited by more users, and doesn't grant reputation to anyone) - this status is forced for answers to questions with more than 30 answers. On the other sites, this is done to try and reduce the motivation for posting duplicate answers on open-ended questions... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this site, [there's some discussion as to whether it's a useful behavior][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145/remove-cw-conversion-at-30-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="486" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="191" RevisionGUID="eb32a144-34cd-418a-b299-0656b06f69ea" CreationDate="2010-09-12T21:54:17.903" UserId="25" Text="I've frequently criticised the points adjustments associated with down votes on SO, but I see no reason to complicate things by making this site different from all the others." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="487" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="192" RevisionGUID="e702f4ea-b55d-4630-8d47-5203bf321175" CreationDate="2010-09-12T22:18:29.143" UserId="666" Text="Increasing the up-vote reputation isn't going to encourage much better answers, to the voter it will still be a +1 or -1. He's not going to think in terms of &quot;it has 30, I give him 15 or take 2 away&quot;... Instead it will be encouraging people to place more answers, they could maybe have a worse quality. If there comes reasonable whining, I guess it's the accept system that must improve, not the reputation economy. Maybe we could let the owner agree (not accept, still needs a better word) with multiple answers based on the amount of answers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example given: For less than 10 answer, he can agree with 1 answer to be really helpful/good. For more than 10 answers, he can agree with 2 answers to be really good. For more than 30 answers, he can agree with 3, etc... It would need some fine-tuning because the amount of answers are probably to high in this example, but maybe it could tend to be a good idea to type out a better subjective answer. This system does not break the more objective questions (which has less answers, thus 1 agreement) and also works for posts with lots of questions... It needs a better word than &quot;agree&quot; though. :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In case you do change the original reputation slightly, the down-vote should also change in proportion to counter the described inflation effect my Mark. And even this only will not help towards the reputations being abnormally high... (An user that would have 6k+ could have 10k+)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="488" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="193" RevisionGUID="9db1123d-aba9-4564-a41b-cb1ccb78237c" CreationDate="2010-09-13T14:20:48.953" UserId="1328" Text="Downvoters are penalized for their down vote already. Adding a comment is optional and should be a courtesy to the OP. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvotes do not hurt the OP significantly and they discourage unwanted or undesirable questions. The caster of the downvote receives negative rep as well, to discourage frivolous downvoting. I feel that the voting system on stackexchange is designed to encourage positive answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the case of this particular question, I feel that it was a fair question and worth discussion. I believe the reason you received -6 was not because it appears on other meta stackexchange sites or that it is a bad suggestion, but rather a demonstration that users can and will downvote without posting comments.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="489" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="194" RevisionGUID="1ba4135c-0bb9-4b31-96a5-ad7e44a22fd6" CreationDate="2010-09-13T15:20:08.577" UserId="160" Text="On Stack Overlflow, accept rate makes sense as there *is* a right answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where there is no single 'right' answer, then the question belongs here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, the implication is that there might not be a single correct answer, so why should we have to bother marking as 'solved'?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would prefer the community to use votes to show which is the 'best' answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="490" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="195" RevisionGUID="ac37a1b1-eb0e-4a1b-8575-99586ee41918" CreationDate="2010-09-13T19:03:14.360" UserId="667" Text="Post a synthesis and accept it. Seriously.  &#xD;&#xA;On SO, I was in the situation, that I had asked for a problem, some people gave me helpful pointers, which I did upvote, and in the end I provided the answer myself. Even got an upvote :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="493" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="171" RevisionGUID="0755f3d1-bcce-4a25-9f67-9789f515ac49" CreationDate="2010-09-13T22:47:55.277" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="495" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="162" RevisionGUID="11018475-3424-4681-a428-980a2f14d7ad" CreationDate="2010-09-14T08:29:38.930" UserId="74" Comment="added 14 characters in body" Text="I'm seeing a lot of great famous Stack Overflow questions asked again here on Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;Why allowing to duplicate those greatest hits questions?   &#xD;&#xA;Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/192793/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-t-shirt  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2212/whats-the-best-programming-t-shirt&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/58640/great-programming-quotes-closed  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-programming-quote&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will you delete or close or merge them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My 0.02c approach:  &#xD;&#xA;1. Temporarily close them as Duplicate on Programmers  &#xD;&#xA;2. When Programmers will be out of the Beta, import\merge them.  &#xD;&#xA;3. Reopen them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Probably I feel it as a problem because I read and loved hundreds of top voted questions of Stack Overflow and now, seeing them popping up again, it's like a Dejavù.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="510" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="202" RevisionGUID="5978b7fd-9eb9-4cdd-871f-c6bf339230a5" CreationDate="2010-09-14T10:58:19.953" UserId="100" Text="Fishtoaster has posted comments to a number of questions this week that have beeen mislabelled as CW.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The option for CW should be removed, too many SO (and other Stack Exchange sites) users are naturally carrying their habits over to this site. It's too confusing in it's current guise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we are to keep CW for objective questions which benefit from collaborative answers, then we should change it's name and mechanics in order to better fit with this site where a high proportion of questions are subjective, and frequently mislabelled as CW." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="514" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="108" RevisionGUID="6c396a11-6260-4419-8a62-8e7fbfbc5003" CreationDate="2010-09-14T13:03:19.467" UserId="666" Comment="Retagged." Text="|discussion|answers|voting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="518" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="204" RevisionGUID="774b92b6-58b0-4be7-84c2-23c7afcec713" CreationDate="2010-09-14T21:10:01.770" UserId="1806" Text="Maybe instead of just hiding accept rate as @TheLQ suggests, acceptance itself should be hidden/removed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="524" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="170" RevisionGUID="d880c7b5-f20e-4e57-9a57-fa1b4ab3c2f4" CreationDate="2010-09-14T21:47:11.640" UserId="37" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:37,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Jeff Atwood&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="534" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="210" RevisionGUID="2c8921a0-e4cd-465e-8325-d9fa42c1e03d" CreationDate="2010-09-15T04:25:02.463" UserId="1865" Text="I couldn't repro this so don't have more info, but I received &quot;An Error has Occured&quot; while trying to upvote an answer. What I *think* happened was I tried to open the comments section for the answer while it was still handling the upvote. &#xD;&#xA;There is no error sitting in my FF error console for it. &#xD;&#xA;Going back to the main list, then to the question again, I could upvote it successfully." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="535" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="210" RevisionGUID="2c8921a0-e4cd-465e-8325-d9fa42c1e03d" CreationDate="2010-09-15T04:25:02.463" UserId="1865" Text="Got &quot;An Error has occured&quot; while upvoting answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="536" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="210" RevisionGUID="2c8921a0-e4cd-465e-8325-d9fa42c1e03d" CreationDate="2010-09-15T04:25:02.463" UserId="1865" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="537" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="173" RevisionGUID="422c0e1c-d79f-4243-8b49-1f050a329451" CreationDate="2010-09-15T07:08:47.300" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Clarifying answer based on others' input; deleted 15 characters in body" Text="Programmers.SE is for subjective or extended discussions about programming-related issues that have no definitive answer, whereas Stack Overflow is for objective, technical, and pointed questions about programming that have a definitive answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More info:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [*Not Programming Related* proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352?phase=definition)  on Area 51&#xD;&#xA;* [*Programmers on stack exchange*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange) on Meta.StackOverflow " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="538" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="173" RevisionGUID="422c0e1c-d79f-4243-8b49-1f050a329451" CreationDate="2010-09-15T07:08:47.300" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Clarifying answer based on others' input; deleted 15 characters in body" />
  <row Id="539" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="173" RevisionGUID="daabf928-a3f5-4dd8-9c0c-1d02826885c3" CreationDate="2010-09-15T07:18:19.647" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 308 characters in body" Text="Programmers.SE is for subjective or extended discussions about programming-related issues that have no definitive answer, whereas Stack Overflow is for objective, technical, and pointed questions about programming that have a definitive answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More info:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers.SE FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) (note that the answer to the  question *What kind of questions should I not ask here?* [still needs to be rewritten](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76/really-need-to-change-faq) as it currently bars subjective questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [*Not Programming Related* proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352?phase=definition)  on Area 51&#xD;&#xA;* [*Programmers on stack exchange*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange) on Meta.StackOverflow " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="540" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="74" RevisionGUID="1be065ee-abd3-4694-bce6-a1e436e05f13" CreationDate="2010-09-15T07:28:13.463" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Expanded the on/off topic questions with latest discussions" Text="### What kinds of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE** is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development and programming related issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What kinds of questions should I *not* ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Avoid asking questions that are objective or technical in nature and can have a definitive answer. Ask technical questions about programming on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should also avoid asking questions that are not at least tangentially related to programming or programmers in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the site itself, please don't do it here. [Visit our meta-discussion site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com) where you can talk about things like what questions are appropriate, what tags we should use, suggest a feature, or generally discuss how Programmers.SE works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the family of Stack Exchange sites, including problems using the site or your account, [visit the meta-discussion site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="541" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="173" RevisionGUID="074499a3-56df-4f2e-aff1-e327956c885d" CreationDate="2010-09-15T07:30:13.957" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 120 characters in body" Text="Programmers.SE is for subjective or extended discussions about programming-related issues that have no definitive answer, whereas Stack Overflow is for objective, technical, and pointed questions about programming that have a definitive answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More info:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers.SE FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) (note that the answer to the  question *What kind of questions should I not ask here?* [still needs to be rewritten](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76/really-need-to-change-faq) as it currently bars subjective questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [What should our FAQ contain?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain/74)&#xD;&#xA;* [*Not Programming Related* proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352?phase=definition)  on Area 51&#xD;&#xA;* [*Programmers on stack exchange*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange) on Meta.StackOverflow " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="542" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="211" RevisionGUID="a8185c0f-5d61-4709-a649-51c30fafb80a" CreationDate="2010-09-15T07:52:46.977" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### How is Programmers.SE different from [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow) and other related Stack Exchange sites?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On **Stack Overflow**, subjective questions, questions requiring extended discussion, and list-type questions are considered off-topic and will be closed. On **Programmers.SE**, these questions are considered on-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, questions that are only tangentially related to programming, but aren't *actually* programming questions, are accepted on **Programmers.SE**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example questions that are off-topic on **Stack Overflow** but on-topic on **Programmers.SE**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is your favorite “programmer” cartoon?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon)&#xD;&#xA;* [I've stopped coding for fun, is this a bad sign?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3558/ive-stopped-coding-for-fun-is-this-a-bad-sign)&#xD;&#xA;* [Job hopping, is it a problem?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3272/job-hopping-is-it-a-problem)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the (craziest, stupidest, silliest) thing a client/boss asked you to do?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2051/what-is-the-craziest-stupidest-silliest-thing-a-client-boss-asked-you-to-do)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why do programmers write apps and then make them free?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3233/why-do-programmers-write-apps-and-then-make-them-free)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example questions that are off-topic on **Programmers.SE** but on-topic on **Stack Overflow**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Peak detection in a 2D array](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3684484/peak-detection-in-a-2d-array)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why doesn't jQuery bomb if your selector object is invalid?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3709604/why-doesnt-jquery-bomb-if-your-selector-object-is-invalid)&#xD;&#xA;* [Other ways to deal with “loop initialization” in C#](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3596348/other-ways-to-deal-with-loop-initialization-in-c)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="543" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="211" RevisionGUID="a8185c0f-5d61-4709-a649-51c30fafb80a" CreationDate="2010-09-15T07:52:46.977" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="544" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="211" RevisionGUID="4fd317d6-230a-4e22-b8e9-519f3019866b" CreationDate="2010-09-15T08:04:44.300" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 97 characters in body" Text="### How is Programmers.SE different from [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow) and other related Stack Exchange sites?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On **Stack Overflow**, subjective questions, questions requiring extended discussion, and list-type questions are considered off-topic and will be closed. On **Programmers.SE**, these questions are considered on-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, questions that are only tangentially related to programming, but aren't *actually* programming questions, are accepted on **Programmers.SE**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example questions that are off-topic on **Stack Overflow** but on-topic on **Programmers.SE**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is your favorite “programmer” cartoon?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon)&#xD;&#xA;* [I've stopped coding for fun, is this a bad sign?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3558/ive-stopped-coding-for-fun-is-this-a-bad-sign)&#xD;&#xA;* [Job hopping, is it a problem?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3272/job-hopping-is-it-a-problem)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the (craziest, stupidest, silliest) thing a client/boss asked you to do?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2051/what-is-the-craziest-stupidest-silliest-thing-a-client-boss-asked-you-to-do)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why do programmers write apps and then make them free?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3233/why-do-programmers-write-apps-and-then-make-them-free)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example questions that are off-topic on **Programmers.SE** but on-topic on **Stack Overflow**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Peak detection in a 2D array](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3684484/peak-detection-in-a-2d-array)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why doesn't jQuery bomb if your selector object is invalid?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3709604/why-doesnt-jquery-bomb-if-your-selector-object-is-invalid)&#xD;&#xA;* [Other ways to deal with “loop initialization” in C#](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3596348/other-ways-to-deal-with-loop-initialization-in-c)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Happy Primes!](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3543811/code-golf-happy-primes)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="545" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="165" RevisionGUID="6a3804bd-d81a-428a-84c3-493c2f2b80d0" CreationDate="2010-09-15T08:44:56.693" UserId="47" Comment="clarification" Text="Questions that are already closed on Stack Overflow should remain closed **on Stack Overflow** and probably deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are open on Stack Overflow but re-asked here should just be closed as &quot;off-topic&quot; **on Stack Overflow** and eventually deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once this site becomes a fully fledged site with a migration path there will, no doubt, be some questions still open **on Stack Overflow** that will get migrated here and become duplicates. In that case they should be closed as duplicates **here** and merged with this site's original question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over time this will become less of an issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime if you find any &quot;duplicates&quot; add a comment to the SO question pointing here and vote to close it as &quot;off topic&quot; (if you have enough rep) or flag it for moderator attention (if you don't)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="549" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="213" RevisionGUID="0a6c2fc3-3a33-4057-8b03-eebf1d23bf37" CreationDate="2010-09-15T09:44:52.287" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="One of the topics that's come up several times on Meta.StackOverflow is that Programmers.SE is a joke proposal, existing solely to help keep Stack Overflow free of all the &quot;crappy&quot; questions that it gets plagued with every day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few of examples of this sentiment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You absolutely nailed my resentment of Programmers.SE; it was created as a tongue-in-cheek, NOT-Stack-Overflow site: the stuff we keep in the basement because it's not fit for keeping upstairs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The problem is that Programmers.SE was created as an amorphous blob where nothing is off topic (read: everything not Stack Overflow is on topic). The travesty is that Programmers.SE is, at least in perception, [your quote] &quot;an ocean of jokes and polls.&quot; That's where the problem lies. I would have created the site very differently: Subjective/soft programming topics okay; Industry/engineering issues okay; The business of software okay; Banal polls/jokes off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Programmers on stackexchange](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what you are saying is that Programmers.SE is the skin of evil left behind to free the race of titans from the bonds of destructiveness: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ims5W5bJl9s&amp;feature=related#t=11s&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64043#64043)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you browse questions on Meta for a bit, you'll quickly realize that there are a fair number of people who want to use SO for things that SO wasn't designed to be used for: discussions, polls, flame-wars, endless lists... And over time, this has created some amount of irritation on the site: some folks really, *really* want to, um, *participate* in questions like, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What's the single best way to type code?&#xD;&#xA;- Do you hurt sometimes (as a programmer)?&#xD;&#xA;- How can I get a job drawing cartoons featuring the funniest programmer joke about my favorite hidden feature in the worst language ever (on a boat)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So rather than just stamping them out, like so many ducks putting out flaming elephants, some rose-tint-spectacled user got the idea of proposing a site *for all the questions that shouldn't be asked on SO*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE is that site. Soon, it'll have its own set of rules and standards, and the cycle will begin anew. But until then, it remains an anarchic paradise of freedom and love.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Shog9*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to challenge the premise behind the sentiment: that was the purpose of the proposal, and Programmers.SE is flourishing despite of this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm wondering if there's a way we can spin the content of this site more positively rather than being merely a wretched hive of scum and villainy." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="550" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="213" RevisionGUID="0a6c2fc3-3a33-4057-8b03-eebf1d23bf37" CreationDate="2010-09-15T09:44:52.287" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="551" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="213" RevisionGUID="0a6c2fc3-3a33-4057-8b03-eebf1d23bf37" CreationDate="2010-09-15T09:44:52.287" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="552" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="214" RevisionGUID="4fce08db-8968-4336-9ae8-0557b0dc8f00" CreationDate="2010-09-15T09:54:55.827" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="One idea I had was to position ourselves as a sort of mechanical turk: yes, there is a proliferation of polls and greatly subjective questions, but that has value to a passerby *because* it's a great forum to get a variety of possible opinions about something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take [Job hopping, is it a problem?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3272/job-hopping-is-it-a-problem), for example. There are a ton of different opinions, some similar to others, some completely divergent. There's very little evidence to support any one answer's version as being the canonical answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the value in the question is being able to accumulate all possible perspectives on the issue in on shot so you can synthesize your own answer to a related question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could even be applied to the categorically silly questions like [What is your favorite “programmer” cartoon?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon): if I was looking for programming cartoons for whatever reason, I could spend a lot of time performing Google searches, or I could just ask &quot;What's your favorite programming cartoon?&quot; on Programmers.SE and relatively quickly have a fairly-curated list of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example that would be beneficial to Stack Overflow (while still being off-topic there) are questions like [What is your opinion of the new Java 7 features?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3700/what-is-your-opinion-of-the-new-java-7-features). You can ask here to get a list of various opinions about a specific programming topic to get up to speed and so you can create an informed question or answer on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, I think we can keep being the garbage dump for Stack Overflow and still have some selling point when it comes time for Programmers.SE to be reviewed as being viable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="553" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="215" RevisionGUID="d953238c-9274-4a4f-bd63-cf59bcd23922" CreationDate="2010-09-15T09:55:06.793" UserId="100" Text="I think it will happen organically. We're still in public beta, and it's obvious that there's a difference of opinion (confusion even) about the purpose of Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once, as Shog9 says, we have our own set of rules and standards, (perhaps including a rule that forbids not-programming-related questions) then the wheat may be easier to sort from the chaff, and our reputation may improve." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="554" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="213" RevisionGUID="19d6a31f-69b7-4a68-b807-99ddd5755711" CreationDate="2010-09-15T09:57:56.917" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body" Text="One of the topics that's come up several times on Meta.StackOverflow is that Programmers.SE is a joke proposal, existing solely to help keep Stack Overflow free of all the &quot;crappy&quot; questions that it gets plagued with every day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few of examples of this sentiment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You absolutely nailed my resentment of Programmers.SE; it was created as a tongue-in-cheek, NOT-Stack-Overflow site: the stuff we keep in the basement because it's not fit for keeping upstairs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The problem is that Programmers.SE was created as an amorphous blob where nothing is off topic (read: everything not Stack Overflow is on topic). The travesty is that Programmers.SE is, at least in perception, [your quote] &quot;an ocean of jokes and polls.&quot; That's where the problem lies. I would have created the site very differently: Subjective/soft programming topics okay; Industry/engineering issues okay; The business of software okay; Banal polls/jokes off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Programmers on stackexchange](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what you are saying is that Programmers.SE is the skin of evil left behind to free the race of titans from the bonds of destructiveness: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ims5W5bJl9s&amp;feature=related#t=11s&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64043#64043)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you browse questions on Meta for a bit, you'll quickly realize that there are a fair number of people who want to use SO for things that SO wasn't designed to be used for: discussions, polls, flame-wars, endless lists... And over time, this has created some amount of irritation on the site: some folks really, *really* want to, um, *participate* in questions like, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What's the single best way to type code?&#xD;&#xA;- Do you hurt sometimes (as a programmer)?&#xD;&#xA;- How can I get a job drawing cartoons featuring the funniest programmer joke about my favorite hidden feature in the worst language ever (on a boat)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So rather than just stamping them out, like so many ducks putting out flaming elephants, some rose-tint-spectacled user got the idea of proposing a site *for all the questions that shouldn't be asked on SO*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE is that site. Soon, it'll have its own set of rules and standards, and the cycle will begin anew. But until then, it remains an anarchic paradise of freedom and love.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Shog9*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to challenge the premise behind the sentiment: that was the purpose of the proposal, and Programmers.SE is flourishing despite it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm wondering if there's a way we can spin the content of this site more positively rather than being merely a wretched hive of scum and villainy." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="555" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="216" RevisionGUID="47f386a9-40ab-4b8f-bd59-4ee1b8bc6285" CreationDate="2010-09-15T11:28:16.920" UserId="66" Text="These are usually one time occurrences that could be anything from a random dropped connection, error in downloading, an upgrade was going on, your router hating you, anything. A refresh should fix it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="556" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="214" RevisionGUID="a5be5ca8-2e71-4eb6-b888-35ea987df8e5" CreationDate="2010-09-15T11:28:22.840" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 6 characters in body" Text="One idea I had was to position ourselves as a sort of mechanical turk: yes, there is a proliferation of polls and greatly subjective questions, but that has value to a passerby *because* it's a great forum to get a variety of possible opinions about something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take [Job hopping, is it a problem?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3272/job-hopping-is-it-a-problem), for example. There are a ton of different opinions, some similar to others, some completely divergent. There's very little evidence to support any one answer's perspective as being the canonical answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the value in the question is being able to accumulate all possible perspectives on the issue in one shot so one can synthesize their own answer to a related question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could even be applied to the categorically silly questions like [What is your favorite “programmer” cartoon?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon): if I was looking for programming cartoons for whatever reason, I could spend a lot of time performing Google searches, or I could just ask &quot;What's your favorite programming cartoon?&quot; on Programmers.SE and relatively quickly have a fairly-curated list of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example that would be beneficial to Stack Overflow (while still being off-topic there) are questions like [What is your opinion of the new Java 7 features?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3700/what-is-your-opinion-of-the-new-java-7-features). You can ask here to get a list of various opinions about a specific programming topic to get up to speed and so you can create an informed question or answer on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, I think we can keep being the garbage dump for Stack Overflow and still have some selling point when it comes time for Programmers.SE to be reviewed as being viable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="559" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="218" RevisionGUID="69a4ac63-0dea-4287-b0ff-ab8df308896e" CreationDate="2010-09-15T13:16:30.657" UserId="63" Text="I'm here because I want this site to succeed. Not as &quot;Questions we *wish* were allowed on SO&quot;, but as &quot;Questions that *can't* be allowed on SO&quot;. A place for all the things that SO/SE was never designed for, or explicitly designed to prevent, but which massive numbers of users want anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really, *really* **want** this to be the SE &quot;black sheep&quot;. Because like it or not, there's *always* a black sheep. It's a necessity. Look at all the forum systems that have a &quot;lounge&quot; or &quot;soapbox&quot; or &quot;battlefront&quot; set up for this very purpose: to relieve the pressure placed on the system by all the (overly-) enthusiastic users who would otherwise treat it like their personal playground. These are often the most popular forums on the site...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may not *like* it that SO needs such a thing. I don't. I'd much rather see one or two &quot;fun&quot; questions slip past the voters each month, giving folks a chance to get it all out of their system, and then get quietly deleted or archived once the next month rolled around...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But wishful thinking doesn't change anything. Here already, there are a handful of users who not only want the &quot;fun&quot; questions to thrive, *they want them moved back to SO*! At some point, you have to compromise. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my advice is, accept it, *work with it*. A cesspool may not be something you want to show off to guests, but you definitely don't want to do without one. So build the best you can..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="560" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="219" RevisionGUID="83f95788-c21b-439c-a0a2-b21ee432a48b" CreationDate="2010-09-15T14:27:30.123" UserId="57" Text="stackbar.com&#xD;&#xA;--&#xD;&#xA;Available" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="561" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="219" RevisionGUID="83f95788-c21b-439c-a0a2-b21ee432a48b" CreationDate="2010-09-15T14:27:30.123" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="562" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="220" RevisionGUID="1334fdcc-de13-45a5-ba64-dca7efa7b638" CreationDate="2010-09-15T14:41:31.850" UserId="40" Text="Surely all questions here are polls, in the sense that people vote for answers they agree with?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="563" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="220" RevisionGUID="1334fdcc-de13-45a5-ba64-dca7efa7b638" CreationDate="2010-09-15T14:41:31.850" UserId="40" Text="Is the &quot;poll&quot; tag redundent?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="564" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="220" RevisionGUID="1334fdcc-de13-45a5-ba64-dca7efa7b638" CreationDate="2010-09-15T14:41:31.850" UserId="40" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="565" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="159" RevisionGUID="89cd3682-e9ad-42c7-84c4-247c00ae8c2b" CreationDate="2010-09-15T15:03:30.320" UserId="212" Comment="edited title" Text="Should we force adding a comment with every down-vote?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="566" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="221" RevisionGUID="7e802a3a-2148-4849-a272-8f0ba0c70ebc" CreationDate="2010-09-15T17:43:14.890" UserId="61" Text="What is the limit to the number of votes one can cast per day? I've never hit this limit on SO, but I appear to have hit it here today (well, it says I have 1 vote left). I've probably cast ~20 votes in the last 24 hours. If the vote limit is ~20, should it be raised? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If it isn't then I have an inkling of why I might have hit the limit, I cast a ton of downvotes on a thread where the poster had posted a bunch of times to rep-whore)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="567" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="221" RevisionGUID="7e802a3a-2148-4849-a272-8f0ba0c70ebc" CreationDate="2010-09-15T17:43:14.890" UserId="61" Text="What is the vote limit?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="568" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="221" RevisionGUID="7e802a3a-2148-4849-a272-8f0ba0c70ebc" CreationDate="2010-09-15T17:43:14.890" UserId="61" Text="|discussion|support|votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="570" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="222" RevisionGUID="ea21305f-611e-4d06-9a06-7bf6e64f6fa1" CreationDate="2010-09-15T18:22:11.053" UserId="13" Text="The first thing that comes to mind for me is a logo involving a cup of coffee and maybe some code in the faded background. Kind of like this, but less crappy:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know, it is perhaps a little too reminiscent of the Java logo.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/o9xEY.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="571" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="223" RevisionGUID="d3d71e80-8b7d-4122-b03c-675720018b2d" CreationDate="2010-09-15T18:40:38.483" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="It's [30 votes a day](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/5212/are-there-any-voting-limits-in-stackoverflow), and it really shouldn't be raised. Limits are in place to prevent abuse: SOIC has ostensibly thought a lot about what the limits should be and why they're necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further discussion: [Why are there voting limits?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/28314/why-are-there-voting-limits)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="572" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="211" RevisionGUID="de60b960-2c84-4f11-a99c-d5d8ab5589f6" CreationDate="2010-09-15T18:44:37.490" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add new questions and sources; added 177 characters in body" Text="### How is Programmers.SE different from [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow) and other related Stack Exchange sites?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On **Stack Overflow**, subjective questions, questions requiring extended discussion, and list-type questions are considered off-topic and will be closed. On **Programmers.SE**, these questions are considered on-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, questions that are only tangentially related to programming, but aren't *actually* programming questions, are accepted on **Programmers.SE**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example questions that are off-topic on **Stack Overflow** but on-topic on **Programmers.SE**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is your favorite “programmer” cartoon?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon)&#xD;&#xA;* [I've stopped coding for fun, is this a bad sign?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3558/ive-stopped-coding-for-fun-is-this-a-bad-sign)&#xD;&#xA;* [Job hopping, is it a problem?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3272/job-hopping-is-it-a-problem)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the (craziest, stupidest, silliest) thing a client/boss asked you to do?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2051/what-is-the-craziest-stupidest-silliest-thing-a-client-boss-asked-you-to-do)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why do programmers write apps and then make them free?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3233/why-do-programmers-write-apps-and-then-make-them-free)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example questions that are off-topic on **Programmers.SE** but on-topic on **Stack Overflow**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How do emulators work and how are they written?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/448673/how-do-emulators-work-and-how-are-they-written)&#xD;&#xA;* [round() for float in C++](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/485525/round-for-float-in-c)&#xD;&#xA;* [In-Place Radix Sort](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/463105/in-place-radix-sort)&#xD;&#xA;* [How to Round in MS Access, VBA](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/137114/how-to-round-in-ms-access-vba)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Happy Primes!](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3543811/code-golf-happy-primes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Sources:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How do you deal with famous questions of Stack Overflow that are being asked again on Programmers?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162/how-do-you-deal-with-famous-questions-of-stack-overflow-that-are-being-asked-agai)&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the difference between Programmers and SO](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)&#xD;&#xA;* [Where do Code Golf/Code Challenge questions belong?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38/where-do-code-golf-code-challenge-questions-belong)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable)&#xD;&#xA;* [Should we migrate subjective question from StackOverflow ?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23/should-we-migrate-subjective-question-from-stackoverflow)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="573" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="74" RevisionGUID="dd0d4829-4faf-4eb3-b619-7af4936a2c64" CreationDate="2010-09-15T18:46:20.403" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 484 characters in body" Text="### What kinds of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE** is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development and programming related issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What kinds of questions should I *not* ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Avoid asking questions that are objective or technical in nature and can have a definitive answer. Ask technical questions about programming on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should also avoid asking questions that are not at least tangentially related to programming or programmers in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the site itself, please don't do it here. [Visit our meta-discussion site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com) where you can talk about things like what questions are appropriate, what tags we should use, suggest a feature, or generally discuss how Programmers.SE works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the family of Stack Exchange sites, including problems using the site or your account, [visit the meta-discussion site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Sources:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Lots of subjective questions here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176/lots-of-subjective-questions-here)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can I ask a Subject Question about Stackoverflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/179/can-i-ask-a-subject-question-about-stackoverflow)&#xD;&#xA;* [Is this question about users and their computer on-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138/is-this-question-about-users-and-their-computer-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="574" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="222" RevisionGUID="60ff913d-bfb5-4709-850c-e572f4029e8d" CreationDate="2010-09-15T18:51:05.587" UserId="13" />
  <row Id="575" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="224" RevisionGUID="0cae0bee-ca86-4986-a50a-dc36013ded0e" CreationDate="2010-09-15T18:58:09.827" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Can I use Programmers.SE to advertise, promote, or recruit for my project/site/product?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No. Programmers.SE is a question-and-answer site meant to catalog the community's answers to questions asked here: a question should be in the form of question whose answers would be useful to the greater community of programmers, not just yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of questions that are off-topic on Programmers.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Can you fill out my questionnaire on how many programmers use Vim over Emacs?&#xD;&#xA;* Would you donate to my charity to help the lost children of C#?&#xD;&#xA;* Would you be interested in a timeshare condo marketed specifically to programmers?&#xD;&#xA;* Can I hire one of you to do my homework?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Sources:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is recruiting appropriate?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/93/is-recruiting-appropriate)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="576" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="224" RevisionGUID="0cae0bee-ca86-4986-a50a-dc36013ded0e" CreationDate="2010-09-15T18:58:09.827" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="577" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="213" RevisionGUID="cccdb415-2509-4824-941a-b5386508f210" CreationDate="2010-09-15T19:09:51.673" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 437 characters in body; added 64 characters in body" Text="One of the topics that's come up several times on Meta.StackOverflow is that Programmers.SE is a joke proposal, existing solely to help keep Stack Overflow free of all the &quot;crappy&quot; questions that it gets plagued with every day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few of examples of this sentiment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You absolutely nailed my resentment of Programmers.SE; it was created as a tongue-in-cheek, NOT-Stack-Overflow site: the stuff we keep in the basement because it's not fit for keeping upstairs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The problem is that Programmers.SE was created as an amorphous blob where nothing is off topic (read: everything not Stack Overflow is on topic). The travesty is that Programmers.SE is, at least in perception, [your quote] &quot;an ocean of jokes and polls.&quot; That's where the problem lies. I would have created the site very differently: Subjective/soft programming topics okay; Industry/engineering issues okay; The business of software okay; Banal polls/jokes off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Programmers on stackexchange](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what you are saying is that Programmers.SE is the skin of evil left behind to free the race of titans from the bonds of destructiveness: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ims5W5bJl9s&amp;feature=related#t=11s&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64043#64043)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you browse questions on Meta for a bit, you'll quickly realize that there are a fair number of people who want to use SO for things that SO wasn't designed to be used for: discussions, polls, flame-wars, endless lists... And over time, this has created some amount of irritation on the site: some folks really, *really* want to, um, *participate* in questions like, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What's the single best way to type code?&#xD;&#xA;- Do you hurt sometimes (as a programmer)?&#xD;&#xA;- How can I get a job drawing cartoons featuring the funniest programmer joke about my favorite hidden feature in the worst language ever (on a boat)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So rather than just stamping them out, like so many ducks putting out flaming elephants, some rose-tint-spectacled user got the idea of proposing a site *for all the questions that shouldn't be asked on SO*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE is that site. Soon, it'll have its own set of rules and standards, and the cycle will begin anew. But until then, it remains an anarchic paradise of freedom and love.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Shog9*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to challenge the premise behind the sentiment: that was the purpose of the proposal, and Programmers.SE is flourishing despite it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm wondering if there's a way we can spin the content of this site more positively rather than being merely a wretched hive of scum and villainy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the things that's popping up here is we should leave Programmers.SE alone because it's popular and as Nathan Taylor puts it, &quot;Haters gonna hate.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think the content or community Programmers.SE needs changing *per se*. Rather, I think we just need to provide a clear way to show value to SOIC and others, because the current sentiment is that we don't, and this site is more or less a joke that's gotten out of hand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how can we do that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="578" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="131" RevisionGUID="d8d86610-76b3-4a47-84c2-2e586b118fb2" CreationDate="2010-09-15T19:11:37.330" UserId="666" Comment="Small corrections." Text="### Shouldn't all &quot;list&quot; questions be Community Wiki to prevent rep farming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No. The *community wiki*  flag should be used for questions which would benefit from a collaborative answer; it is not for allowing questions that might be of too low value to gather reputation. If a question is too poor or might attract low quality answers, it should be flagged for moderator attention and/or voted to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, some list questions might only have a finite amount of correct answers and could benefit from more than one person editing an answer to provide the most comprehensive point of view. In this case, *community wiki*  is appropriate. Answerers can flag a question as *community wiki*  on their own questions, and all questions will convert to *community wiki*  automatically after receiving 30 answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Purpose of Community Wiki](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable/122#122)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="579" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="74" RevisionGUID="2fd6fca1-dbe3-4571-8eb0-7e7fe2a43f86" CreationDate="2010-09-15T19:13:39.463" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 159 characters in body" Text="### What kinds of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE** is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development and programming related issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What kinds of questions should I *not* ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Avoid asking questions that are objective or technical in nature and can have a definitive answer. Ask technical questions about programming on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should also avoid asking questions that are not at least tangentially related to programming or programmers in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the site itself, please don't do it here. [Visit our meta-discussion site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com) where you can talk about things like what questions are appropriate, what tags we should use, suggest a feature, or generally discuss how Programmers.SE works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the family of Stack Exchange sites, including problems using the site or your account, [visit the meta-discussion site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Sources:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Lots of subjective questions here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176/lots-of-subjective-questions-here)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can I ask a Subject Question about Stackoverflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/179/can-i-ask-a-subject-question-about-stackoverflow)&#xD;&#xA;* [Is this question about users and their computer on-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138/is-this-question-about-users-and-their-computer-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the difference between Programmers and SO](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="580" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="131" RevisionGUID="422b1436-fc56-4fce-95b8-077e4b3dbe98" CreationDate="2010-09-15T19:20:43.377" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="### Shouldn't all &quot;list&quot; questions be Community Wiki to prevent rep farming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No. The *community wiki*  flag should be used for questions which would benefit from a collaborative answer; it is not for allowing questions that might be of too low value to gather reputation. If a question is too poor or might attract low quality answers, it should be flagged for moderator attention and/or voted to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, some list questions might only have a finite amount of correct answers and could benefit from more than one person editing an answer to provide the most comprehensive point of view. In this case, *community wiki*  is appropriate. Answerers can flag a question as *community wiki*  on their own answers, and all questions will convert to *community wiki*  automatically after receiving 30 answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Purpose of Community Wiki](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable/122#122)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="581" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="117" RevisionGUID="ba10b6b5-691d-4ca6-9b4e-2d4689bc7a49" CreationDate="2010-09-15T19:25:11.837" UserId="25" Comment="Spelling" Text="Grammar of Off topic close reason" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="582" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="225" RevisionGUID="4463ae75-8680-4b55-931a-c308c8c44792" CreationDate="2010-09-15T20:34:43.130" UserId="389" Text="It's too sooner to try Google. I want know if P.SE have some public information about referrer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question had a huge traffic today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Question][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1785/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-programming" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="583" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="225" RevisionGUID="4463ae75-8680-4b55-931a-c308c8c44792" CreationDate="2010-09-15T20:34:43.130" UserId="389" Text="Is it possible figure out which URLs links to a question on P.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="584" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="225" RevisionGUID="4463ae75-8680-4b55-931a-c308c8c44792" CreationDate="2010-09-15T20:34:43.130" UserId="389" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="585" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="220" RevisionGUID="ea09326c-1487-4442-b759-372b29ea1347" CreationDate="2010-09-15T20:42:21.277" UserId="25" Comment="Spelling" Text="Is the &quot;poll&quot; tag redundant?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="586" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="225" RevisionGUID="167b6c79-5d4a-4533-b413-9d3a16b25f52" CreationDate="2010-09-15T21:44:09.503" UserId="389" Comment="added 19 characters in body" Text="It's too sooner to try Google. I want know if P.SE have some public information about the referrer of landed page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question had a huge traffic today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Question][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1785/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-programming" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="587" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="222" RevisionGUID="bf22df8f-2057-4fca-880a-43bc460f4e12" CreationDate="2010-09-15T21:57:03.227" UserId="13" Comment="edited body" Text="The first thing that comes to mind for me is a logo involving a cup of coffee and maybe some faded code in the background. Kind of like this, but less crappy:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know, it is perhaps a little too reminiscent of the Java logo.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/o9xEY.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="588" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="226" RevisionGUID="3455dfe1-f08a-4105-9438-5a58c3ba92d4" CreationDate="2010-09-16T04:38:01.800" UserId="99" Text="[Joel](http://www.joelonsoftware.com) added it at [Hacker News](http://news.ycombinator.com) — see [What should every programmer know about programming?](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1695156)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="589" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="227" RevisionGUID="aad0076d-afcf-4288-9632-8b09bb86f6b8" CreationDate="2010-09-16T11:27:44.883" UserId="100" Text="I certainly don't think that the 'poll' tag is very useful, I don;t think anyone is really going to search for questions through that tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="592" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="229" RevisionGUID="0c258280-c5f2-4246-833e-c0f4ec9b9a47" CreationDate="2010-09-16T15:38:15.360" UserId="64" Text="As long as it's not a copy-write issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/51r38.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="594" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="230" RevisionGUID="2c145533-2f9b-4e6e-bb37-48f8f6f5c16e" CreationDate="2010-09-16T17:29:56.797" UserId="148" Text="I don't know that this needs to be the sludge-pool of SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a pile of questions that are programmer-related that are Frequently Asked on SO, but aren't about *programming*. That's - IMO - what this site is about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I have always disagreed with the anti-discussion stance of the Official People on SO. Discussion is very valuable, and there needs to be a place for it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="595" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="170" RevisionGUID="0b5e6379-8f9c-4fcb-9307-710b4a727a72" CreationDate="2010-09-16T20:01:26.513" UserId="63" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:63,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mr. C&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="596" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="229" RevisionGUID="d2e59396-aea3-4e4f-bed1-afef3608c9d6" CreationDate="2010-09-16T20:08:09.653" UserId="64" />
  <row Id="597" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="213" RevisionGUID="217a6030-3d18-47c8-a385-f6b86369daef" CreationDate="2010-09-16T22:19:39.047" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="I don't know where the C came from." Text="One of the topics that's come up several times on Meta.StackOverflow is that Programmers.SE is a joke proposal, existing solely to help keep Stack Overflow free of all the &quot;crappy&quot; questions that it gets plagued with every day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few of examples of this sentiment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You absolutely nailed my resentment of Programmers.SE; it was created as a tongue-in-cheek, NOT-Stack-Overflow site: the stuff we keep in the basement because it's not fit for keeping upstairs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The problem is that Programmers.SE was created as an amorphous blob where nothing is off topic (read: everything not Stack Overflow is on topic). The travesty is that Programmers.SE is, at least in perception, [your quote] &quot;an ocean of jokes and polls.&quot; That's where the problem lies. I would have created the site very differently: Subjective/soft programming topics okay; Industry/engineering issues okay; The business of software okay; Banal polls/jokes off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Programmers on stackexchange](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what you are saying is that Programmers.SE is the skin of evil left behind to free the race of titans from the bonds of destructiveness: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ims5W5bJl9s&amp;feature=related#t=11s&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64043#64043)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you browse questions on Meta for a bit, you'll quickly realize that there are a fair number of people who want to use SO for things that SO wasn't designed to be used for: discussions, polls, flame-wars, endless lists... And over time, this has created some amount of irritation on the site: some folks really, *really* want to, um, *participate* in questions like, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What's the single best way to type code?&#xD;&#xA;- Do you hurt sometimes (as a programmer)?&#xD;&#xA;- How can I get a job drawing cartoons featuring the funniest programmer joke about my favorite hidden feature in the worst language ever (on a boat)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So rather than just stamping them out, like so many ducks putting out flaming elephants, some rose-tint-spectacled user got the idea of proposing a site *for all the questions that shouldn't be asked on SO*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE is that site. Soon, it'll have its own set of rules and standards, and the cycle will begin anew. But until then, it remains an anarchic paradise of freedom and love.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Shog9*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to challenge the premise behind the sentiment: that was the purpose of the proposal, and Programmers.SE is flourishing despite it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm wondering if there's a way we can spin the content of this site more positively rather than being merely a wretched hive of scum and villainy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the things that's popping up here is we should leave Programmers.SE alone because it's popular and as Nathan Taylor puts it, &quot;Haters gonna hate.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think the content or community Programmers.SE needs changing *per se*. Rather, I think we just need to provide a clear way to show value to SOIS and others, because the current sentiment is that we don't, and this site is more or less a joke that's gotten out of hand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how can we do that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="598" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4" RevisionGUID="69b1133b-abde-47a8-a31e-f028b848dece" CreationDate="2010-09-16T22:46:13.283" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add guidance" Text="One of the big 7 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - One suggestion per answer please&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Logo guidance, from Jin](http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/982/design-ideas-for-gaming-site-updated-with-screenshot) (resident UI designer for at least some of the Stack Exchange sites):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please note: I prefer gray-scaled logo submissions, that way we can judge the IDEA of the logo more objectively. We can always add colors to the logo later. Also, the logo itself(sans the site title text) should be able to fit in a square dimension nicely. This way we can use it for favicons, mobile touch icons etc." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="599" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="231" RevisionGUID="314b787a-23a9-4166-9137-bba1b5d812a3" CreationDate="2010-09-17T05:29:38.987" UserId="1709" Text="So what if it's an &quot;ocean of jokes and polls&quot;! I'm lovin' it!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="600" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="74" RevisionGUID="b128d63a-aaba-48fd-9839-a2a22caa2f8e" CreationDate="2010-09-17T07:42:10.500" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Programming-related to Programmer-related" Text="### What kinds of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE** is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development and programmer-related issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What kinds of questions should I *not* ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Avoid asking questions that are objective or technical in nature and can have a definitive answer. Ask technical questions about programming on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should also avoid asking questions that are not at least tangentially related to programming or programmers in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the site itself, please don't do it here. [Visit our meta-discussion site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com) where you can talk about things like what questions are appropriate, what tags we should use, suggest a feature, or generally discuss how Programmers.SE works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the family of Stack Exchange sites, including problems using the site or your account, [visit the meta-discussion site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Sources:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Lots of subjective questions here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176/lots-of-subjective-questions-here)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can I ask a Subject Question about Stackoverflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/179/can-i-ask-a-subject-question-about-stackoverflow)&#xD;&#xA;* [Is this question about users and their computer on-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138/is-this-question-about-users-and-their-computer-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the difference between Programmers and SO](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="601" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="155" RevisionGUID="5bdf5a0c-bdba-42d5-88fd-85cdfca97276" CreationDate="2010-09-17T10:22:19.440" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|tag-wikis|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="602" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="232" RevisionGUID="8fd52925-515c-4725-ba78-06e5ca68ede2" CreationDate="2010-09-17T11:15:41.640" UserId="47" Text="Why not let it just evolve?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think a tag needs a wiki entry create it and just ignore the ones you think are OK with out one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Others will create other tag wiki's as they see fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Eventually we'll have wiki's for a set of tags that *at least one person* has thought would be useful. The ones that don't have wiki's will be the ones that *everybody* has thought wouldn't be useful." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="603" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="229" RevisionGUID="81ff9dfb-888a-45e7-b844-3308d3106d81" CreationDate="2010-09-17T13:16:20.427" UserId="64" Comment="Added concept of the logo. ; deleted 6 characters in body; added 16 characters in body" Text="As long as it's not a copy-write issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Concept of the logo is a combination of the stackoverflow logo and the meta.stackoverflow logo, hense the grey and colored rainbow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel that the programmers site is a kinda of joining between both old sites so they meet together.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/51r38.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="604" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="229" RevisionGUID="869bd10f-5b69-45a3-9d30-78f0db551669" CreationDate="2010-09-17T16:01:39.837" UserId="64" Comment="added 185 characters in body" Text="As long as it's not a copy-write issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Concept of the logo is a combination of the stackoverflow logo and the meta.stackoverflow logo, hense the grey and colored rainbow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel that the programmers site is a kinda of joining between both old sites so they meet together.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was the orignal image from a meta image competion a while back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All the talk of rainbows are making the logo a bit silly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/51r38.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/S0hHq.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="607" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="234" RevisionGUID="f51e7a42-cdcb-4ae6-aab5-3d2c2fbb325e" CreationDate="2010-09-17T19:42:00.180" UserId="2449" Text="Possibly http://careers.stackoverflow.com/ would be a better place for such a thing. After all, donating work is the same as work.. you just don't get money for it. Perhaps some solicitation is just plain solicitation, but there are legitimate charities, and like every other industry around the world, they may need a place to seek this out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I'd vote to not have it on programmers.SE, especially like the original edit. I would say the revised version is OK, since it is subjective - but now that's been asked anything further is a dupe." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="608" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="235" RevisionGUID="d62f00a7-b3e3-473b-90de-2352e0fdd873" CreationDate="2010-09-17T20:04:55.203" UserId="2449" Text="I'm not sure everyone is seeing the big picture... programmers.SE in a way is the white sheep, and SO is the black. But seriously, thats the pot calling the kettle black(hat)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Everyone* knows the most votes, the most views, the greatest gain in rank is and always has been the subjective-language-agnostic-poll-discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For one, its why I'm here. Sure, SO has become a valuable resource to gain insights to things I do not know... **quickly** But I would have normally been able to figure it out eventually by sifting through pages and pages of poor search engine results. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But seriously, after so long as a programmer you get to know your stuff and you don't need to really research much... and after a **very** long time technologies change, you miss the news and before you know it something else has come along that's better, but you didn't know. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of the reason for having an almost never-ending-community-wiki-discussion-that-can-never-close is so that I **CAN** reference that tidbit of obscure programming history. I **CAN** find that joke that was hilarious I want to share with someone. I **CAN** find an outlet to vent about things with people that *actually get it* and are not all confused.. well because I'm talking in jargon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think everyone is here because we are all passionate about this. And the negatives I have heard I just do not see happening. Like seriously? People are really going to start trolling and flaming the ***programmers***?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; [&lt;h2&gt;Do you know who we are?&lt;/h2&gt;][1] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="610" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="74" RevisionGUID="41e8a30f-8499-410b-98ce-6becf7333651" CreationDate="2010-09-18T00:14:28.200" UserId="6" Comment="Added &quot;Television shows for programmers.&quot;" Text="### What kinds of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE** is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development and programmer-related issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What kinds of questions should I *not* ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Avoid asking questions that are objective or technical in nature and can have a definitive answer. Ask technical questions about programming on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should also avoid asking questions that are not at least tangentially related to programming or programmers in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try not to ask questions that are not programming related, but merely have &quot;programming&quot; tacked on, eg: &quot;What are some good television shows for programmers.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the site itself, please don't do it here. [Visit our meta-discussion site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com) where you can talk about things like what questions are appropriate, what tags we should use, suggest a feature, or generally discuss how Programmers.SE works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the family of Stack Exchange sites, including problems using the site or your account, [visit the meta-discussion site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Sources:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Lots of subjective questions here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176/lots-of-subjective-questions-here)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can I ask a Subject Question about Stackoverflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/179/can-i-ask-a-subject-question-about-stackoverflow)&#xD;&#xA;* [Is this question about users and their computer on-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138/is-this-question-about-users-and-their-computer-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the difference between Programmers and SO](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="611" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="74" RevisionGUID="e93e01ac-84d5-484d-bfcb-4970d61c7720" CreationDate="2010-09-18T01:09:02.797" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Television for programmers *is* on-topic here: see http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046" Text="### What kinds of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE** is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development and programmer-related issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What kinds of questions should I *not* ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Avoid asking questions that are objective or technical in nature and can have a definitive answer. Ask technical questions about programming on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should also avoid asking questions that are not at least tangentially related to programming or programmers in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the site itself, please don't do it here. [Visit our meta-discussion site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com) where you can talk about things like what questions are appropriate, what tags we should use, suggest a feature, or generally discuss how Programmers.SE works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the family of Stack Exchange sites, including problems using the site or your account, [visit the meta-discussion site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Sources:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Lots of subjective questions here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176/lots-of-subjective-questions-here)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can I ask a Subject Question about Stackoverflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/179/can-i-ask-a-subject-question-about-stackoverflow)&#xD;&#xA;* [Is this question about users and their computer on-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138/is-this-question-about-users-and-their-computer-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the difference between Programmers and SO](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="612" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="237" RevisionGUID="15cfd1b0-335b-4241-8940-856eb5c614f3" CreationDate="2010-09-18T01:44:49.310" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Joel Spolsky created a post on the [Stack Overflow blog](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/) this afternoon on [merging Area51 proposals](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/). In it, he talks about how some proposals are just too specific or are subsets of larger sites and will be merged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of Programmers.SE, he had this to say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There’s an even longer list of things that really belong on the new Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense, and could benefit from an infusion of more meaty subjects, like these proposals[.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He then goes on to list all the proposals he thinks could or should be merged into Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier, there was an edit to the [Proposed FAQ](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain) to ban questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are some good television shows for programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few days ago, I created the question, [&quot;How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep). There, the consensus was to not change anything. Unfortunately, SOIS has spoken, and it looks like that sentiment will not be able to sustain the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, let's use this question as a way to identify possible on-topic and off-topic questions and vote on them. This way we can demonstrate what the community will and won't find acceptable on the site to better help SOIS and others make an informed decision when the time comes to merge." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="613" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="237" RevisionGUID="15cfd1b0-335b-4241-8940-856eb5c614f3" CreationDate="2010-09-18T01:44:49.310" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="614" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="237" RevisionGUID="15cfd1b0-335b-4241-8940-856eb5c614f3" CreationDate="2010-09-18T01:44:49.310" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="615" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="238" RevisionGUID="dbd14346-c536-445f-9fff-427887bb7015" CreationDate="2010-09-18T01:46:27.980" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Normally off-topic questions made on-topic by restricting the domain to &quot;programmers.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What are some good television shows for programmers?&#xD;&#xA;* What is your favorite &quot;programmer&quot; cartoon?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="616" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="239" RevisionGUID="1df23a57-4161-4ee8-9092-67f15ea3f71c" CreationDate="2010-09-18T01:49:18.997" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Software Engineering Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers. Software engineering deals with requirements engineering, software design and architecture, implementation, testing, maintenance, configuration management, process, tools, methodologies, quality, and ethics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Engineering soon to be beta, what should we do with SE questions?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/186/software-engineering-soon-to-be-beta-what-should-we-do-with-se-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6922/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="617" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="237" RevisionGUID="0b15290c-7763-401a-97dd-8832613a87a7" CreationDate="2010-09-18T01:50:22.180" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 106 characters in body" Text="Joel Spolsky created a post on the [Stack Overflow blog](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/) this afternoon on [merging Area51 proposals](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/). In it, he talks about how some proposals are just too specific or are subsets of larger sites and will be merged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of Programmers.SE, he had this to say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There’s an even longer list of things that really belong on the new Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense, and could benefit from an infusion of more meaty subjects, like these proposals[.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He then goes on to list all the proposals he thinks could or should be merged into Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier, there was an edit to the [Proposed FAQ](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain) to ban questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are some good television shows for programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few days ago, I created the question, [&quot;How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep). There, the consensus was to not change anything. Unfortunately, SOIS has spoken, and it looks like that sentiment will not be able to sustain the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, let's use this question as a way to identify possible on-topic and off-topic questions and vote on them. One topic per answer, and use the comments to discuss why or why not it's on topic for Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This way we can demonstrate what the community will and won't find acceptable on the site to better help SOIS and others make an informed decision when the time comes to merge." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="618" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="240" RevisionGUID="c47ff99d-067b-4b3c-a960-9b02b5f692c9" CreationDate="2010-09-18T01:52:00.213" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Developer Testing : Unit Testing and more… Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for for developers, xDD enthusiasts and all those who believe in the philosophy that no single piece of code should be shipped without writing a test for it. It is for all those who believe that tests are the first users of your code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/8494/developer-testing-unit-testing-and-more" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="619" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="241" RevisionGUID="e72a084f-b777-40ce-b08f-9a8fb0776edd" CreationDate="2010-09-18T01:53:27.937" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Scrum Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for professionals that need to understand and apply the agile management framework Scrum.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7794/scrum" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="620" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="242" RevisionGUID="3b609bf9-2c5f-452b-ac0b-bbc45c6f1989" CreationDate="2010-09-18T01:55:09.687" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Hidden features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden Features of PHP?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/61401/hidden-features-of-php-closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Are hidden features questions on-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84/are-hidden-features-questions-on-topic)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="621" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="243" RevisionGUID="8259f6c1-6d1e-41c7-b173-e564888f7243" CreationDate="2010-09-18T01:59:27.303" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Code Golf&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Seven Segments](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1407422/code-golf-seven-segments)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Code 39 Bar Code](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2800073/code-golf-code-39-bar-code)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Morse code](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1352587/code-golf-morse-code)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf New Year Edition - Integer to Roman Numeral](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/394574/code-golf-new-year-edition-integer-to-roman-numeral)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Factorials](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/237496/code-golf-factorials)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related Discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Where do Code Golf/Code Challenge questions belong?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38/where-do-code-golf-code-challenge-questions-belong)&#xD;&#xA;* [We have puzzle, code-golf, and now code-chess tags. Can we migrate them all somewhere else?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64511/we-have-puzzle-code-golf-and-now-code-chess-tags-can-we-migrate-them-all-somew)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="624" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="246" RevisionGUID="fb5d0fd2-d3a5-431b-b4a2-0f67643c0d6d" CreationDate="2010-09-18T02:04:52.797" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Healthcare IT Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for healthcare IT professionals and solution providers. Questions may be related to standards in healthcare IT, commercial and open source products, and development of healthcare IT applications.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6433/healthcare-it" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="626" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="248" RevisionGUID="e0de43fd-9d0b-44d4-a108-afe9fd4c0fbd" CreationDate="2010-09-18T02:07:32.233" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Software Law Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for lawyers and specialists in software-related law of both international and specific country laws.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3527/software-law" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="627" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="249" RevisionGUID="979b10a8-9e16-4e3f-a6ba-c1a1e81107b9" CreationDate="2010-09-18T02:08:48.773" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Software Quality Assurance Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for software quality assurance specialists, QA engineers, QA analysts, and automation engineers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2241/software-quality-assurance" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="629" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="243" RevisionGUID="2b11733e-acb3-49b4-9fb4-d68058c62208" CreationDate="2010-09-18T02:11:16.743" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 305 characters in body" Text="### Code Golf &amp; Programming Puzzles Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for code golfers and for those who interested in code golfing (from beginners to experts), and programming puzzles.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Seven Segments](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1407422/code-golf-seven-segments)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Code 39 Bar Code](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2800073/code-golf-code-39-bar-code)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Morse code](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1352587/code-golf-morse-code)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf New Year Edition - Integer to Roman Numeral](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/394574/code-golf-new-year-edition-integer-to-roman-numeral)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Factorials](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/237496/code-golf-factorials)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related Discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Where do Code Golf/Code Challenge questions belong?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38/where-do-code-golf-code-challenge-questions-belong)&#xD;&#xA;* [We have puzzle, code-golf, and now code-chess tags. Can we migrate them all somewhere else?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64511/we-have-puzzle-code-golf-and-now-code-chess-tags-can-we-migrate-them-all-somew)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4570/code-golf-programming-puzzles" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="630" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="251" RevisionGUID="7109c0f4-7965-4efe-a767-e52cd56e6058" CreationDate="2010-09-18T02:12:26.027" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Software Design Patterns Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for experts, architects, developers and anyone who interested in all kinds of design patterns like OO, Functional, SOA and much more...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/10560/software-design-patterns" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="631" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="252" RevisionGUID="44836ab3-e142-4bce-a38c-13e4944cb2bd" CreationDate="2010-09-18T02:13:42.517" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Software Architecture Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for software / Application Architects, Enterprise Architects, Software Developers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/10506/software-architecture" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="635" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="256" RevisionGUID="8d21fd60-84c9-4e57-b667-1e39184a097b" CreationDate="2010-09-18T02:17:45.827" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Freelance Developers Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for freelance Developers who are working daily on several projects, with several technologies and/or many clients. Here you can ask all kind of questions: from tech advice to job hunting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Are there complete open-source packages for time tracking, invoice generation and bug tracking/project management?&#xD;&#xA;* Can you suggest some resources to find more [ further description ... ] freelance gigs?&#xD;&#xA;* How do I keep my projects from dragging on with endless tweaks and changes?&#xD;&#xA;* What is the best method to calculate how much your software will cost?&#xD;&#xA;* What signs can I watch out for early-on that can indicate a project will turn &quot;bad/sour&quot;? And how can I avoid/correct them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/11624/freelance-developers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="636" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="237" RevisionGUID="6779d8be-16f2-424c-ab97-fa9efe700797" CreationDate="2010-09-18T02:17:57.153" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="637" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="256" RevisionGUID="8d21fd60-84c9-4e57-b667-1e39184a097b" CreationDate="2010-09-18T02:17:45.827" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="638" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="239" RevisionGUID="6724da0a-e861-428b-bf5d-be672776148d" CreationDate="2010-09-18T02:21:14.983" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add example questions" Text="### Software Engineering Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers. Software engineering deals with requirements engineering, software design and architecture, implementation, testing, maintenance, configuration management, process, tools, methodologies, quality, and ethics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How can I justify the use of throwaway prototyping to my manager?&#xD;&#xA;* What’s the best method for estimation? &#xD;&#xA;* I got a job in a company that practices Scrum. How can I prepare myself before the first workday? &#xD;&#xA;* What single book provides the best overview of key software engineering topics? &#xD;&#xA;* What is the single most important Software Engineering concept to learn for practical use?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Engineering soon to be beta, what should we do with SE questions?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/186/software-engineering-soon-to-be-beta-what-should-we-do-with-se-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6922/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="639" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="239" RevisionGUID="6724da0a-e861-428b-bf5d-be672776148d" CreationDate="2010-09-18T02:21:14.983" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="640" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="251" RevisionGUID="49c027a3-58cb-4f0b-a887-8d652e9eabcd" CreationDate="2010-09-18T02:23:07.260" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="641" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="251" RevisionGUID="49c027a3-58cb-4f0b-a887-8d652e9eabcd" CreationDate="2010-09-18T02:23:07.260" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add example questions" Text="### Software Design Patterns Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for experts, architects, developers and anyone who interested in all kinds of design patterns like OO, Functional, SOA and much more...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What's the exact difference between the proactor and reactor pattern?&#xD;&#xA;* How does the [Flyweight pattern] work, I don't understand [xyz] about it?&#xD;&#xA;* Why is Singleton considered bad?&#xD;&#xA;* I want to create an application which will create forms on the fly and store user input for future analysis, which design pattern is suitable?&#xD;&#xA;* What are the most popular books to start learning OO Design Patterns?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/10560/software-design-patterns" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="642" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="213" RevisionGUID="51fd141b-adfd-457a-a7bf-c01c81148345" CreationDate="2010-09-18T02:28:48.367" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 748 characters in body" Text="One of the topics that's come up several times on Meta.StackOverflow is that Programmers.SE is a joke proposal, existing solely to help keep Stack Overflow free of all the &quot;crappy&quot; questions that it gets plagued with every day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few of examples of this sentiment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You absolutely nailed my resentment of Programmers.SE; it was created as a tongue-in-cheek, NOT-Stack-Overflow site: the stuff we keep in the basement because it's not fit for keeping upstairs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The problem is that Programmers.SE was created as an amorphous blob where nothing is off topic (read: everything not Stack Overflow is on topic). The travesty is that Programmers.SE is, at least in perception, [your quote] &quot;an ocean of jokes and polls.&quot; That's where the problem lies. I would have created the site very differently: Subjective/soft programming topics okay; Industry/engineering issues okay; The business of software okay; Banal polls/jokes off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Programmers on stackexchange](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what you are saying is that Programmers.SE is the skin of evil left behind to free the race of titans from the bonds of destructiveness: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ims5W5bJl9s&amp;feature=related#t=11s&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64043#64043)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you browse questions on Meta for a bit, you'll quickly realize that there are a fair number of people who want to use SO for things that SO wasn't designed to be used for: discussions, polls, flame-wars, endless lists... And over time, this has created some amount of irritation on the site: some folks really, *really* want to, um, *participate* in questions like, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What's the single best way to type code?&#xD;&#xA;- Do you hurt sometimes (as a programmer)?&#xD;&#xA;- How can I get a job drawing cartoons featuring the funniest programmer joke about my favorite hidden feature in the worst language ever (on a boat)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So rather than just stamping them out, like so many ducks putting out flaming elephants, some rose-tint-spectacled user got the idea of proposing a site *for all the questions that shouldn't be asked on SO*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE is that site. Soon, it'll have its own set of rules and standards, and the cycle will begin anew. But until then, it remains an anarchic paradise of freedom and love.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Shog9*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to challenge the premise behind the sentiment: that was the purpose of the proposal, and Programmers.SE is flourishing despite it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm wondering if there's a way we can spin the content of this site more positively rather than being merely a wretched hive of scum and villainy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the things that's popping up here is we should leave Programmers.SE alone because it's popular and as Nathan Taylor puts it, &quot;Haters gonna hate.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think the content or community Programmers.SE needs changing *per se*. Rather, I think we just need to provide a clear way to show value to SOIS and others, because the current sentiment is that we don't, and this site is more or less a joke that's gotten out of hand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how can we do that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like SOIS has decided to [publicly address][1] the banality of Programmers.SE on its blog:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There’s an even longer list of things that really belong on the new Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense, and could benefit from an infusion of more meaty subjects, like these proposals:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've created a new question, [What questions are on topic, and what are off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic), to see if we can hash out the proposed merges and other off-topic questions that have come up so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="643" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="241" RevisionGUID="bc882214-6692-4de1-99cc-4391ad3a0d81" CreationDate="2010-09-18T02:30:51.440" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="644" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="241" RevisionGUID="bc882214-6692-4de1-99cc-4391ad3a0d81" CreationDate="2010-09-18T02:30:51.440" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add example questions" Text="### Scrum Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for professionals that need to understand and apply the agile management framework Scrum.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Our product owner wants us to stop doing unit testing. She claims that she has the right to decide where we invest our time. Can she do this?&#xD;&#xA;* Scrum require very little planning beforehand. How can we then ensure a coherent and sound architecture? What role do architects play in Scrum?&#xD;&#xA;* We’ve been doing retrospectives for some time, but they’re starting to feel dull. What can we do to raise the energy in them again? &#xD;&#xA;* The Product Owner has told us that he no longer requires the stories we are working on. What do we do now? &#xD;&#xA;* We need to have multiple team working with the same product. How should we organize the teams to be most effective? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7794/scrum" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="645" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="252" RevisionGUID="60f55993-7623-4b91-ab31-893e465068f1" CreationDate="2010-09-18T02:32:38.427" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="646" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="252" RevisionGUID="60f55993-7623-4b91-ab31-893e465068f1" CreationDate="2010-09-18T02:32:38.427" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add example questions" Text="### Software Architecture Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for software / Application Architects, Enterprise Architects, Software Developers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is Model Driven Architecture?&#xD;&#xA;* What artifacts do you often produce when designing an application architecture?&#xD;&#xA;* Which Design Pattern, Algorithm or Data Structure is appropriate for [this problem]?&#xD;&#xA;* Is Service Oriented Architecture appropriate outside of the large enterprise?&#xD;&#xA;* Is Microsoft Entity Framework mature enough for a large scale application?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/10506/software-architecture" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="657" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="249" RevisionGUID="8dd55bb7-3eff-4e13-a82b-7077b0f1434a" CreationDate="2010-09-18T03:14:51.217" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add example questions" Text="### Software Quality Assurance Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for software quality assurance specialists, QA engineers, QA analysts, and automation engineers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is the difference between integration and regression testing?&#xD;&#xA;* Our management thinks if developers are doing unit tests, it’s good enough. How can we convince them other testing is needed?&#xD;&#xA;* What makes a good software tester? &#xD;&#xA;* At what stage of the software development lifecycle do you automate your tests? &#xD;&#xA;* What can’t be tested by automation? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2241/software-quality-assurance" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="658" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="238" RevisionGUID="2a92c009-f57e-4970-bd0a-20652c5ec280" CreationDate="2010-09-18T03:19:34.283" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add more example questions" Text="### Normally off-topic questions made on-topic by restricting the domain to &quot;programmers.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What are some good television shows for programmers?&#xD;&#xA;* [What is your favorite &quot;programmer&quot; cartoon?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon/156#156)&#xD;&#xA;* [What are good keyboards for programming?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2254/what-are-good-keyboards-for-programming)&#xD;&#xA;* [How much coffee do you drink in a normal work day of programming?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4446/how-much-coffee-do-you-drink-in-a-normal-work-day-of-programming)&#xD;&#xA;* [What's your favourite programming quote?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-programming-quote)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="659" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="248" RevisionGUID="0794236b-654a-4b3f-86c7-f29028c1dc8d" CreationDate="2010-09-18T03:21:36.760" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="660" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="248" RevisionGUID="0794236b-654a-4b3f-86c7-f29028c1dc8d" CreationDate="2010-09-18T03:21:36.760" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add example questions" Text="### Software Law Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for lawyers and specialists in software-related law of both international and specific country laws.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If I release my own code under the GPL, can I still use it in a commercial project?&#xD;&#xA;* How do I know that I haven’t violated someone’s frivolous patent, when I write my own software?&#xD;&#xA;* Can someone explain this license in plain English to me?&#xD;&#xA;* How do I protect myself from copyright violations that other people have made in their own code?&#xD;&#xA;* Can I be sued if someone uses my software for illegal purposes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3527/software-law" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="666" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="246" RevisionGUID="afbac38d-1c4e-4fde-a602-b59356e64099" CreationDate="2010-09-18T03:26:31.480" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="667" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="246" RevisionGUID="afbac38d-1c4e-4fde-a602-b59356e64099" CreationDate="2010-09-18T03:26:31.480" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add example questions" Text="### Healthcare IT Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for healthcare IT professionals and solution providers. Questions may be related to standards in healthcare IT, commercial and open source products, and development of healthcare IT applications.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How are [patient records] shared with other [hospitals]? &#xD;&#xA;* What are the regulatory considerations for using open source software in healthcare?&#xD;&#xA;* What should a [software developer|healthcare IT company] know about HIPAA? &#xD;&#xA;* Where can I learn HL7? &#xD;&#xA;* What open source software applications are available for viewing medical images?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6433/healthcare-it" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="668" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="238" RevisionGUID="64c54251-0959-4aae-8294-5341d2327c08" CreationDate="2010-09-18T03:27:00.717" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="669" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="243" RevisionGUID="e4f8f6fc-36a3-470c-be13-078a377a94e7" CreationDate="2010-09-18T03:27:15.863" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="672" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="240" RevisionGUID="ceabe266-c3af-417f-848c-964ebe64dfe6" CreationDate="2010-09-18T03:31:02.210" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="673" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="240" RevisionGUID="ceabe266-c3af-417f-848c-964ebe64dfe6" CreationDate="2010-09-18T03:31:02.210" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add example questions" Text="### Developer Testing : Unit Testing and more… Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for for developers, xDD enthusiasts and all those who believe in the philosophy that no single piece of code should be shipped without writing a test for it. It is for all those who believe that tests are the first users of your code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How do I unit test threaded code? &#xD;&#xA;* How do I mock a database?&#xD;&#xA;* How do I test private methods? &#xD;&#xA;* is it OK to have multiple asserts in a single unit test? &#xD;&#xA;* How to start unit testing for a large scale application with no unit testing support at all?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/8494/developer-testing-unit-testing-and-more" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="674" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="249" RevisionGUID="88fdc55b-5129-4ec9-806c-7ce78affda91" CreationDate="2010-09-18T03:31:34.033" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="675" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="242" RevisionGUID="f52f3630-c763-4b6f-8ddd-4039d823f750" CreationDate="2010-09-18T03:33:49.893" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="676" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="242" RevisionGUID="f52f3630-c763-4b6f-8ddd-4039d823f750" CreationDate="2010-09-18T03:33:49.893" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add more example questions" Text="### Hidden features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden Features of PHP?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/61401/hidden-features-of-php-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden Features of C#?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9033/hidden-features-of-c)&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden features of Python](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/101268/hidden-features-of-python)&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden Features of JavaScript?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/61088/hidden-features-of-javascript)&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden Features of Java](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15496/hidden-features-of-java)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Are hidden features questions on-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84/are-hidden-features-questions-on-topic)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="677" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="213" RevisionGUID="3989c3f6-ceb5-4b04-b745-8dde371b0237" CreationDate="2010-09-18T06:06:02.920" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Change sentiment to perception, per Robert Cartaino's clarifying comments." Text="One of the topics that's come up several times on Meta.StackOverflow is the perception that Programmers.SE is a joke proposal, existing solely to help keep Stack Overflow free of all the &quot;crappy&quot; questions that it gets plagued with every day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few of examples of this perception:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You absolutely nailed my resentment of Programmers.SE; it was created as a tongue-in-cheek, NOT-Stack-Overflow site: the stuff we keep in the basement because it's not fit for keeping upstairs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The problem is that Programmers.SE was created as an amorphous blob where nothing is off topic (read: everything not Stack Overflow is on topic). The travesty is that Programmers.SE is, at least in perception, [your quote] &quot;an ocean of jokes and polls.&quot; That's where the problem lies. I would have created the site very differently: Subjective/soft programming topics okay; Industry/engineering issues okay; The business of software okay; Banal polls/jokes off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Programmers on stackexchange](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what you are saying is that Programmers.SE is the skin of evil left behind to free the race of titans from the bonds of destructiveness: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ims5W5bJl9s&amp;feature=related#t=11s&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64043#64043)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you browse questions on Meta for a bit, you'll quickly realize that there are a fair number of people who want to use SO for things that SO wasn't designed to be used for: discussions, polls, flame-wars, endless lists... And over time, this has created some amount of irritation on the site: some folks really, *really* want to, um, *participate* in questions like, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What's the single best way to type code?&#xD;&#xA;- Do you hurt sometimes (as a programmer)?&#xD;&#xA;- How can I get a job drawing cartoons featuring the funniest programmer joke about my favorite hidden feature in the worst language ever (on a boat)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So rather than just stamping them out, like so many ducks putting out flaming elephants, some rose-tint-spectacled user got the idea of proposing a site *for all the questions that shouldn't be asked on SO*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE is that site. Soon, it'll have its own set of rules and standards, and the cycle will begin anew. But until then, it remains an anarchic paradise of freedom and love.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Shog9*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to challenge the premise behind the sentiment: in many ways, that *was* the purpose of the proposal, and Programmers.SE is flourishing despite it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm wondering if there's a way we can spin the content of this site more positively rather than being merely a wretched hive of scum and villainy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the things that's popping up here is we should leave Programmers.SE alone because it's popular and as Nathan Taylor puts it, &quot;Haters gonna hate.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think the content or community Programmers.SE needs changing *per se*. Rather, I think we just need to provide a clear way to show value to SOIS and others, because the current perception is that we don't, and this site is more or less a joke that's gotten out of hand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how can we do that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like SOIS has decided to [publicly address][1] the banality of Programmers.SE on its blog:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There’s an even longer list of things that really belong on the new Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense, and could benefit from an infusion of more meaty subjects, like these proposals:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've created a new question, [What questions are on topic, and what are off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic), to see if we can hash out the proposed merges and other off-topic questions that have come up so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="678" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="213" RevisionGUID="ab9168d8-3f78-478b-acf9-b5a6283a53d9" CreationDate="2010-09-18T07:30:59.300" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Added Robert Cartaino's comments" Text="One of the topics that's come up several times on Meta.StackOverflow is the perception that Programmers.SE is a joke proposal, existing solely to help keep Stack Overflow free of all the &quot;crappy&quot; questions that it gets plagued with every day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few of examples of this perception (**note: see Edits 2 and 3 below for clarification**):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You absolutely nailed my resentment of Programmers.SE; it was created as a tongue-in-cheek, NOT-Stack-Overflow site: the stuff we keep in the basement because it's not fit for keeping upstairs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The problem is that Programmers.SE was created as an amorphous blob where nothing is off topic (read: everything not Stack Overflow is on topic). The travesty is that Programmers.SE is, at least in perception, [your quote] &quot;an ocean of jokes and polls.&quot; That's where the problem lies. I would have created the site very differently: Subjective/soft programming topics okay; Industry/engineering issues okay; The business of software okay; Banal polls/jokes off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Programmers on stackexchange](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what you are saying is that Programmers.SE is the skin of evil left behind to free the race of titans from the bonds of destructiveness: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ims5W5bJl9s&amp;feature=related#t=11s&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64043#64043)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you browse questions on Meta for a bit, you'll quickly realize that there are a fair number of people who want to use SO for things that SO wasn't designed to be used for: discussions, polls, flame-wars, endless lists... And over time, this has created some amount of irritation on the site: some folks really, *really* want to, um, *participate* in questions like, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What's the single best way to type code?&#xD;&#xA;- Do you hurt sometimes (as a programmer)?&#xD;&#xA;- How can I get a job drawing cartoons featuring the funniest programmer joke about my favorite hidden feature in the worst language ever (on a boat)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So rather than just stamping them out, like so many ducks putting out flaming elephants, some rose-tint-spectacled user got the idea of proposing a site *for all the questions that shouldn't be asked on SO*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE is that site. Soon, it'll have its own set of rules and standards, and the cycle will begin anew. But until then, it remains an anarchic paradise of freedom and love.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Shog9*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to challenge the premise behind the sentiment: in many ways, that *was* the purpose of the proposal, and Programmers.SE is flourishing despite it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm wondering if there's a way we can spin the content of this site more positively rather than being merely a wretched hive of scum and villainy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the things that's popping up here is we should leave Programmers.SE alone because it's popular and as Nathan Taylor puts it, &quot;Haters gonna hate.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think the content or community Programmers.SE needs changing *per se*. Rather, I think we just need to provide a clear way to show value to SOIS and others, because the current perception is that we don't, and this site is more or less a joke that's gotten out of hand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how can we do that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like SOIS has decided to [publicly address][1] the banality of Programmers.SE on its blog:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There’s an even longer list of things that really belong on the new Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense, and could benefit from an infusion of more meaty subjects, like these proposals:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've created a new question, [What questions are on topic, and what are off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic), to see if we can hash out the proposed merges and other off-topic questions that have come up so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------ &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 3&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Cartaino clarified his position and the quotes above in the comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't actively despise the **concept** of Programmers.SE at all. Read my quotes (above) *very* carefully. What I lament is the perception created; the &quot;anything goes&quot; ethos that simply aims to flout what makes Stack Overflow great. I wanted a site about the &quot;Programmers' Life: a site for discussion of the business, careers, issues, and memes concerning professional developers.&quot; Subjective talk and soft topics okay if it follows a &quot;back it up&quot; philosophy or hard-earned experience. What I got instead was *&quot;what is the coolest/stupidest/weirdest/funniest thing you saw/did/tasted today?&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Q&amp;A will live on SO, Programmers, and a few academic sites. That's it. Not dozens of ridiculously niche and redundant proposals. But the mere mention of merging proposals with Programmers horrifies most. &quot;I don't want my subject on that site.&quot; That's a **huge problem.** Programmers.SE is the &quot;Park Place&quot; to Stack Overflow's &quot;Boardwalk&quot;; a tremendously valuable resource in a bad neighborhood. I'd prefer to paint over the graffiti and fix broken windows; to reestablish community pride so the police come out on occasion. But that's a far cry from &quot;hater&quot; or &quot;actively despise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="679" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="258" RevisionGUID="5778fd31-a89c-4f01-819a-47d5258ab3aa" CreationDate="2010-09-18T11:30:52.047" UserId="11" Text="What Joel has forgot to say in his awkward blog post, is that this &quot;fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense&quot; site has been created because all the dishoused questions, banned as &quot;subjective and argumentative&quot; or &quot;off topic&quot; on Stack Overflow, needed a new house." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="680" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="259" RevisionGUID="5333998c-909d-4eec-9296-0a5f330cf059" CreationDate="2010-09-18T12:26:02.887" UserId="235" Text="##basement.stackoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Idea taken from: [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;You absolutely nailed my resentment of Programmers.SE; it was created as a tongue-in-cheek, NOT-Stack-Overflow site: &lt;b&gt;the stuff we keep in the basement&lt;/b&gt; because it's not fit for keeping upstairs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="681" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="259" RevisionGUID="5333998c-909d-4eec-9296-0a5f330cf059" CreationDate="2010-09-18T12:26:02.887" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="682" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="260" RevisionGUID="c6ebdbe1-83da-48fc-822c-250bb78ad081" CreationDate="2010-09-18T15:24:02.453" UserId="25" Text="I think Joel has a point.  Since the site has moved from private beta to public beta it seems the questions are drifting further away from being programmer-related.  Many are completely irrelevant questions with &quot;for programmers&quot; tacked on the end as token gesture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to see the site be for questions that are of interest to programmers in their capacity as programmers, rather than the &quot;What are some good socks for programmers?&quot; type of questions.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="683" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5" RevisionGUID="fb83e3be-dae5-40a5-895b-0f4d7b84b0a3" CreationDate="2010-09-18T15:36:56.747" UserId="25" Comment="added 231 characters in body" Text="In about two weeks, this community will receive some provisional moderators to help get this site started prior to the elections at the end of the beta. Please read this: **[Moderators Pro Tempore](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/moderator-pro-tempore/)**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please suggest some members of this community you feel would make excellent moderators *(self nominations are okay).***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some basic guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Each nomination should be a separate answer. Link the name to the user’s profile (parent and meta) so we can see their activity.&#xD;&#xA; - The nominee should indicate their acceptance by editing the answer, adding that they accept the nomination. Optionally they can write something about themselves.&#xD;&#xA; - Self nominations are okay, and even encouraged. Most sites have not had sufficient time for many users to stand out. Self nomination is simply a way to say, “I’m interested. Let my record speak for itself.” Links to other activities may be helpful: Area 51 participation, participation in other sites, blog posts reviewing or announcing the site, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is what we are looking for in a Moderator...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are seeking out members who are deeply engaged in the community’s development; members who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Have a reasonably high reputation score to indicate active, consistent participation.&#xD;&#xA; - Show an interest in their meta’s community-building activities.&#xD;&#xA; - Lead by example, showing patience and respect for their fellow community members in everything they write.&#xD;&#xA; - Exhibit those intangible traits discussed in A Theory of Moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bonus points for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Members with participation in both meta and the parent site (i.e. interest in both community building and expertise in the field).&#xD;&#xA; - Area 51 participation, social network referrals, or blogging about the site.&#xD;&#xA; - Members who have already shown an interest or ability to promote their community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:** Users might like to vote for moderators who share their vision for the site.  Perhaps nominees could include their views on *how* the site should be moderated, and in what direction they would like to see it progress." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="684" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="261" RevisionGUID="3a120147-fe91-4f68-a1bf-bb59c4819564" CreationDate="2010-09-18T15:48:47.737" UserId="1204" Text="[When did this policy go into effect?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just don't think that this works.  If you really believe that duplication of material on other websites is a problem, we will need a way to link to the duplicate on the other website.  The SE software doesn't work this way right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4901/what-is-the-worst-designed-website-you-have-ever-seen" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="685" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="261" RevisionGUID="3a120147-fe91-4f68-a1bf-bb59c4819564" CreationDate="2010-09-18T15:48:47.737" UserId="1204" Text="Are we now voting to close based on content in other websites?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="686" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="261" RevisionGUID="3a120147-fe91-4f68-a1bf-bb59c4819564" CreationDate="2010-09-18T15:48:47.737" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="687" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="262" RevisionGUID="b6eed8d4-39c1-44fb-8bd2-ba422ffbc299" CreationDate="2010-09-18T16:06:57.097" UserId="6" Text="I think the issue with that question is more that it was off topic for here than anything else.  Graphic design really isn't a P.SE thing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="688" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="5" RevisionGUID="73fcfc37-5a14-4732-9bbc-926441b63037" CreationDate="2010-09-18T16:10:07.013" UserId="6" Comment="Rollback to [bfac5cb9-f6a7-442a-9b1c-f487dae73c4c]" Text="In about two weeks, this community will receive some provisional moderators to help get this site started prior to the elections at the end of the beta. Please read this: **[Moderators Pro Tempore](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/moderator-pro-tempore/)**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please suggest some members of this community you feel would make excellent moderators *(self nominations are okay).***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some basic guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Each nomination should be a separate answer. Link the name to the user’s profile (parent and meta) so we can see their activity.&#xD;&#xA; - The nominee should indicate their acceptance by editing the answer, adding that they accept the nomination. Optionally they can write something about themselves.&#xD;&#xA; - Self nominations are okay, and even encouraged. Most sites have not had sufficient time for many users to stand out. Self nomination is simply a way to say, “I’m interested. Let my record speak for itself.” Links to other activities may be helpful: Area 51 participation, participation in other sites, blog posts reviewing or announcing the site, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is what we are looking for in a Moderator...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are seeking out members who are deeply engaged in the community’s development; members who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Have a reasonably high reputation score to indicate active, consistent participation.&#xD;&#xA; - Show an interest in their meta’s community-building activities.&#xD;&#xA; - Lead by example, showing patience and respect for their fellow community members in everything they write.&#xD;&#xA; - Exhibit those intangible traits discussed in A Theory of Moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bonus points for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Members with participation in both meta and the parent site (i.e. interest in both community building and expertise in the field).&#xD;&#xA; - Area 51 participation, social network referrals, or blogging about the site.&#xD;&#xA; - Members who have already shown an interest or ability to promote their community." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="689" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="263" RevisionGUID="66aa9900-f6d6-4375-95f5-3f667076d1bd" CreationDate="2010-09-18T17:36:51.523" UserId="666" Text="**Should we be close duplicates of questions that came from other SE sites?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, we shouldn't.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me quote [Thomas Owens][1] from [Math.SE - Vote to Close as Exact Duplicate][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; From my perspective, the existence of MathOverflow has nothing to do with anything here.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; In fact, life should go on as if it doesn't exist because this is a totally separate site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While MathOverflow is a non-SE site, we should have the same behavior with other SE sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We must see if the question could fit on our site, not if it could fit on other sites...&#xD;&#xA;Which brings us to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should the question be closed?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, it needs improvement...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me quote the [about page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We are a site for expert programmers interested in subjective discussions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sure bad website designs can be learned from and might fit in our domain,  &#xD;&#xA;but the question is stated similar to requesting people for their desktop wallpapers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I see it right to close this question for off-topic reasons, but it's not a duplicate in my eyes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/users/91/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/310/vote-to-close-as-exact-duplicate-should-accept-mathoverflow-question-urls" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="690" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="264" RevisionGUID="db190471-fc47-4754-be05-da2779356cd2" CreationDate="2010-09-18T17:39:37.290" UserId="63" Text="Hmmm... I kinda liked that question. Seemed to fit the &quot;best/worst UI&quot; category. Didn't really understand the edit though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is actually *better suited* for another site, then it should probably be closed here. But there's [an argument to be made][1] in favor of asking *similar* questions to different audiences. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/4708/what-to-do-with-cross-site-duplicates" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="691" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="238" RevisionGUID="71c381a5-16f4-4c1c-8b86-a31914508a77" CreationDate="2010-09-18T18:08:18.253" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Question should link to question, not answer within question" Text="### Normally off-topic questions made on-topic by restricting the domain to &quot;programmers.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What are some good television shows for programmers?&#xD;&#xA;* [What is your favorite &quot;programmer&quot; cartoon?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon)&#xD;&#xA;* [What are good keyboards for programming?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2254/what-are-good-keyboards-for-programming)&#xD;&#xA;* [How much coffee do you drink in a normal work day of programming?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4446/how-much-coffee-do-you-drink-in-a-normal-work-day-of-programming)&#xD;&#xA;* [What's your favourite programming quote?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-programming-quote)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="694" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="266" RevisionGUID="458886c3-29a5-4e75-950a-f28987e0fad1" CreationDate="2010-09-19T19:08:13.847" UserId="40" Text="Programmers.SE is often seen as a dumping ground for anything not suitable for StackOverflow. How would you more clearly define the type of questions that this site is intended for?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA; - [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable)&#xD;&#xA; - [Lots of subjective questions here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176/lots-of-subjective-questions-here)&#xD;&#xA; - [What's the difference between Programmers and SO](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="695" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="266" RevisionGUID="458886c3-29a5-4e75-950a-f28987e0fad1" CreationDate="2010-09-19T19:08:13.847" UserId="40" Text="How to succintly define the purpose of Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="696" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="266" RevisionGUID="458886c3-29a5-4e75-950a-f28987e0fad1" CreationDate="2010-09-19T19:08:13.847" UserId="40" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="697" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="266" RevisionGUID="11743cca-0bf7-497d-a35d-973b0ddb0aae" CreationDate="2010-09-19T20:50:48.307" UserId="666" Comment="edited title" Text="How to succinctly define the purpose of Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="698" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="267" RevisionGUID="63eed32c-9d90-4d8a-99c1-b73365e8040f" CreationDate="2010-09-19T22:26:47.357" UserId="389" Text="On or off? For me is off-topic. maybe it's localized, because this is a personal taste completely unrelated with programming. This is just chit chat. If I could I would down vote my answer to indicate my opinion against this noise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How long have you been in your current job closed][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What time of day do you prefer to shower?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How much coffee do you drink in a normal work day of programming?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What's your favorite programming snack?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3389/how-long-have-you-been-in-your-current-job-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/571/what-time-of-day-do-you-prefer-to-shower-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4446/how-much-coffee-do-you-drink-in-a-normal-work-day-of-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3878/whats-your-favorite-programming-snack" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="699" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="267" RevisionGUID="63eed32c-9d90-4d8a-99c1-b73365e8040f" CreationDate="2010-09-19T22:26:47.357" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="700" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="268" RevisionGUID="2de3f7f7-f9f5-414f-93c2-ca505d29c98b" CreationDate="2010-09-20T00:29:25.710" UserId="2449" Text="I kind of think being in beta and the fact there is much discussion about on-topic/off-topic sites, some mods are hasty to close questions without first determining the best place for it first. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;see: [voting to close based on possible dupe][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/261/are-we-now-voting-to-close-based-on-content-in-other-websites" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="701" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="268" RevisionGUID="2de3f7f7-f9f5-414f-93c2-ca505d29c98b" CreationDate="2010-09-20T00:29:25.710" UserId="2449" Text="Can there be a rule to only vote to close if it belongs on a better *.SE site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="702" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="268" RevisionGUID="2de3f7f7-f9f5-414f-93c2-ca505d29c98b" CreationDate="2010-09-20T00:29:25.710" UserId="2449" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="703" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="269" RevisionGUID="97276f54-7631-4384-8dd8-8bf16d4a17d9" CreationDate="2010-09-20T00:54:50.370" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Closing questions because they belong on another site is only one reason to close: one can vote to close because the question doesn't make any sense, only applies to the individual asking the question, or is off-topic even though there is no Stack Exchange for which the question is on-topic: &quot;Is Justin Bieber Dreamy?&quot; *is* an off-topic question and *should* be closed even though there is no Justin Bieber Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the whole point of the &quot;5 votes to close&quot; functionality is so one person can't dictate whether a question should be closed: it requires four other people to agree with them. Five people independently arriving at the conclusion that a question should be closed is about the same amount of consensus one would arrive if we discussed each and every close candidate on meta, first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Just like a down-vote](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159/should-we-force-adding-a-comment-with-every-down-vote), regular users should be free to vote for close based on their interpretation of the rules of the site. The only people who should otherwise be restricted, at least by principle, are diamond moderators because they can override any voting on a question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="705" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="269" RevisionGUID="f497ed50-b846-41d0-8000-9641d149e3c4" CreationDate="2010-09-20T01:02:40.367" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 341 characters in body" Text="Closing questions because they belong on another site is only one reason to close: one can vote to close because the question doesn't make any sense, only applies to the individual asking the question, or is off-topic even though there is no Stack Exchange for which the question is on-topic: &quot;Is Justin Bieber Dreamy?&quot; *is* an off-topic question and *should* be closed even though there is no Justin Bieber Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the whole point of the &quot;5 votes to close&quot; functionality is so one person can't dictate whether a question should be closed: it requires four other people to agree with them. Five people independently arriving at the conclusion that a question should be closed is about the same amount of consensus one would arrive if we discussed each and every close candidate on meta, first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Just like a down-vote](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159/should-we-force-adding-a-comment-with-every-down-vote), regular users should be free to vote for close based on their interpretation of the rules of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only people who should otherwise be restricted, at least by principle, are diamond moderators because they can override any voting on a question. To diamond moderators, clear community consensus *will* be essential in guiding their actions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, there *is* a lot of consensus on what does and does not belong on the site, and we're currently hashing through the parts that don't. But we don't actually have any diamond moderators at this point, so it's not really an issue." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="707" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="271" RevisionGUID="99d76399-e37d-485f-97cf-5b94cca08ac5" CreationDate="2010-09-20T01:58:12.620" UserId="66" Text="Were trying to define it here: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain/74#74" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="708" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="269" RevisionGUID="f96d78d6-4972-48bb-b150-c5c47b4a6b35" CreationDate="2010-09-20T02:03:59.723" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited body" Text="Closing questions because they belong on another site is only one reason to close: one can vote to close because the question doesn't make any sense, only applies to the individual asking the question, or is off-topic even though there is no Stack Exchange for which the question is on-topic: &quot;Is Justin Bieber Dreamy?&quot; *is* an off-topic question and *should* be closed even though there is no Justin Bieber Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the whole point of the &quot;5 votes to close&quot; functionality is so one person can't dictate whether a question should be closed: it requires four other people to agree with them. Five people independently arriving at the conclusion that a question should be closed is about the same amount of consensus that would achieved if we discussed each and every close candidate on meta first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Just like a down-vote](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159/should-we-force-adding-a-comment-with-every-down-vote), regular users should be free to vote for close based on their interpretation of the rules of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only people who should otherwise be restricted—at least in principle—are diamond moderators because they can override any voting on a question. To diamond moderators, clear community consensus *will* be essential in guiding their actions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, there *is* a lot of consensus on what does and does not belong on the site, and we're currently hashing through the parts that don't. But we don't actually have any diamond moderators at this point, so it's not really an issue." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="709" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="272" RevisionGUID="3e605edd-4560-40f1-8c39-67c27ab1051f" CreationDate="2010-09-20T06:35:26.353" UserId="236" Text="#tabsvsspaces.com&#xD;&#xA;available" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="710" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="272" RevisionGUID="3e605edd-4560-40f1-8c39-67c27ab1051f" CreationDate="2010-09-20T06:35:26.353" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="711" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="273" RevisionGUID="adcb2ee7-a3fc-43f8-a54c-3b51a8f0f15a" CreationDate="2010-09-20T07:51:40.413" UserId="1626" Text="Personally, I just don't want to see deletionists get to programmers.SE like they did stackoverflow.  Yeah, there are a bunch of crappy questions, but they can be ignored.  Keep SO the well-controlled area for questions within a defined set of rules.  Let programmers.SE cut loose a little bit!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="712" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="215" RevisionGUID="a15cdb7c-1acf-403a-8082-500410a591a2" CreationDate="2010-09-20T09:11:10.830" UserId="100" Comment="added 618 characters in body" Text="I think it will happen organically. We're still in public beta, and it's obvious that there's a difference of opinion (confusion even) about the purpose of Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once, as Shog9 says, we have our own set of rules and standards, (perhaps including a rule that forbids not-programming-related questions) then the wheat may be easier to sort from the chaff, and our reputation may improve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Joel's post has encouraged me to come back and revisit my original answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I didn't want Programmers to be ALL (or even mostly) polls/best-foo-for-programmers questions. But I do think the popularity of some of these type of (more relevant) polls that have existed on SO for some time (comic/t-shirt/music to code to) fit well here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do believe we need some way of restricting the number of these types of questions. &#xD;&#xA;I don't really want to see a proposal for a 3rd no-holds-barred, truly-anything-goes SE site for people who code, but I could imagine it being one possible way to resolve this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="713" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="74" RevisionGUID="b967a525-c2cd-4a9f-9841-41d87cd2abde" CreationDate="2010-09-20T09:15:33.650" UserId="100" Comment="P.SE is for all programmers, not expert programmers" Text="### What kinds of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE** is for programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development and programmer-related issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What kinds of questions should I *not* ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Avoid asking questions that are objective or technical in nature and can have a definitive answer. Ask technical questions about programming on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should also avoid asking questions that are not at least tangentially related to programming or programmers in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the site itself, please don't do it here. [Visit our meta-discussion site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com) where you can talk about things like what questions are appropriate, what tags we should use, suggest a feature, or generally discuss how Programmers.SE works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the family of Stack Exchange sites, including problems using the site or your account, [visit the meta-discussion site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Sources:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Lots of subjective questions here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176/lots-of-subjective-questions-here)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can I ask a Subject Question about Stackoverflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/179/can-i-ask-a-subject-question-about-stackoverflow)&#xD;&#xA;* [Is this question about users and their computer on-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138/is-this-question-about-users-and-their-computer-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the difference between Programmers and SO](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="714" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="74" RevisionGUID="88187587-f8ef-4af9-aacb-7a4ce9378743" CreationDate="2010-09-20T11:02:03.810" UserId="666" Comment="added 28 characters in body" Text="### What kinds of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE** is for professional and enthusiast programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development and programmer-related issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What kinds of questions should I *not* ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Avoid asking questions that are objective or technical in nature and can have a definitive answer. Ask technical questions about programming on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should also avoid asking questions that are not at least tangentially related to programming or programmers in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the site itself, please don't do it here. [Visit our meta-discussion site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com) where you can talk about things like what questions are appropriate, what tags we should use, suggest a feature, or generally discuss how Programmers.SE works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the family of Stack Exchange sites, including problems using the site or your account, [visit the meta-discussion site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Sources:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Lots of subjective questions here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176/lots-of-subjective-questions-here)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can I ask a Subject Question about Stackoverflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/179/can-i-ask-a-subject-question-about-stackoverflow)&#xD;&#xA;* [Is this question about users and their computer on-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138/is-this-question-about-users-and-their-computer-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the difference between Programmers and SO](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="715" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="165" RevisionGUID="2fcf0e9d-860a-4b6a-81cb-5b186ad15da8" CreationDate="2010-09-20T12:27:01.613" UserId="47" Comment="clarification" Text="Questions that are already closed on Stack Overflow should remain closed **on Stack Overflow** and probably deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally, questions that are open on Stack Overflow but re-asked here should just be closed as &quot;off-topic&quot; **on Stack Overflow** and eventually deleted. The only drawback with this is that some of the answers that exist on Stack Overflow won't exist here, so perhaps the closing of these should be delayed until after this site leaves beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once this site becomes a fully fledged site with a migration path there will, no doubt, be questions still open **on Stack Overflow** that will get migrated here and become duplicates. In that case they should be closed as duplicates **here** and merged with this site's original question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over time this will become less of an issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime if you find any &quot;duplicates&quot; add a comment to the SO question pointing here and vote to close it as &quot;off topic&quot; (if you have enough rep) or flag it for moderator attention (if you don't)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="716" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="274" RevisionGUID="f8a9cf96-1063-4278-b3b9-1a3da7d15b29" CreationDate="2010-09-20T16:43:57.507" UserId="666" Text="Supposing the current best suggested domain might have a good chance to become our domain:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And an example of a tiny version which still needs some improvement through some pixel pushing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/BOtXW.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CdLZI.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CYdAJ.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="717" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="274" RevisionGUID="efcf4088-3c4d-448c-942c-35a4016f389e" CreationDate="2010-09-20T16:52:53.823" UserId="666" Comment="added 343 characters in body; added 2 characters in body; deleted 2 characters in body; added 71 characters in body" Text="Supposing the current [best suggested name][1] might have a good chance to become our domain:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And an example of a tiny version which still needs some improvement through some pixel pushing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**About the colors:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We need to find a color that has a good characteristic for our site, maybe one that expresses subjectivity...&#xD;&#xA;I think we should change the color of Scope. We can also place a vertical line with the color in the tiny version which denotes the typing cursor, as if one is willing to type something between the brackets.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3/what-should-our-domain-name-be/116#116&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CdLZI.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CYdAJ.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="720" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="74" RevisionGUID="a311c356-f2e7-4850-8a1f-41ad5d02e6ad" CreationDate="2010-09-20T21:17:31.000" UserId="66" Comment="made sentance more clear" Text="### What kinds of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE** is for professional and enthusiast programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development and programmer-related issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What kinds of questions should I *not* ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Avoid asking questions that are objective or technical in nature and can have a definitive answer. Ask technical questions about programming on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should also avoid asking questions that are not tangentially related to programming or programmers in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the site itself, please don't do it here. [Visit our meta-discussion site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com) where you can talk about things like what questions are appropriate, what tags we should use, suggest a feature, or generally discuss how Programmers.SE works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the family of Stack Exchange sites, including problems using the site or your account, [visit the meta-discussion site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Sources:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Lots of subjective questions here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176/lots-of-subjective-questions-here)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can I ask a Subject Question about Stackoverflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/179/can-i-ask-a-subject-question-about-stackoverflow)&#xD;&#xA;* [Is this question about users and their computer on-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138/is-this-question-about-users-and-their-computer-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the difference between Programmers and SO](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="721" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="239" RevisionGUID="9920a5be-521a-4b4c-818d-423531cf8f1a" CreationDate="2010-09-20T21:41:13.350" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Software Engineering no longer applicable" Text="### &lt;strike&gt;Software Engineering Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers. Software engineering deals with requirements engineering, software design and architecture, implementation, testing, maintenance, configuration management, process, tools, methodologies, quality, and ethics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How can I justify the use of throwaway prototyping to my manager?&#xD;&#xA;* What’s the best method for estimation? &#xD;&#xA;* I got a job in a company that practices Scrum. How can I prepare myself before the first workday? &#xD;&#xA;* What single book provides the best overview of key software engineering topics? &#xD;&#xA;* What is the single most important Software Engineering concept to learn for practical use?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Engineering soon to be beta, what should we do with SE questions?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/186/software-engineering-soon-to-be-beta-what-should-we-do-with-se-questions)&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Software Engineering has been re-proposed purposefully to avoid being merged, so it's no longer applicable.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6922/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="722" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="276" RevisionGUID="f904f11f-2685-4f2a-a41f-9d97e088c2b7" CreationDate="2010-09-21T01:19:07.567" UserId="58922" Text="there is something wrong with closed questions, here is a popular question [why are so many programmers arrogant][1] it has a lot answers and a lot views and it seems a valid question and was closed just for a few peoples.&#xD;&#xA;shouldn't the system of close votes be reformulated?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;here is a question that got a close vote Mark Trapp user&#xD;&#xA;[what-s-the-minimal-requeriment-for-a-code-be-considerated-an-ai-implementation][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;he says: by possible duplicate of  (Covers same ground) [Will we ever develop artificial intelligence?][3]– Mark Trapp 2 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;insane.. there is nothing duplicated.&#xD;&#xA;So, it would be nice to lock valid questions for don't get close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;shouldn't you agree that valid questions would be locked for don't get close votes?&#xD;&#xA;I know it depends of the moderation and has no efficient way to moderators analyze question by question &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;but anyway what do you think should be done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5034/what-s-the-minimal-requeriment-for-a-code-be-considerated-an-ai-implementation&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/959/will-we-ever-develop-artificial-intelligence" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="723" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="276" RevisionGUID="f904f11f-2685-4f2a-a41f-9d97e088c2b7" CreationDate="2010-09-21T01:19:07.567" UserId="58922" Text="valid questions being closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="724" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="276" RevisionGUID="f904f11f-2685-4f2a-a41f-9d97e088c2b7" CreationDate="2010-09-21T01:19:07.567" UserId="58922" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="725" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="276" RevisionGUID="f761fb23-00a4-4ef9-88a5-cd83c2636b71" CreationDate="2010-09-21T01:24:48.303" UserId="58922" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body" Text="there is something wrong with closed questions, here is a popular one [why are so many programmers arrogant][1] it has a lot answers and a lot views and it seems a valid question and was closed just for a few peoples.&#xD;&#xA;shouldn't the system of close votes be reformulated?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;here is a question that got a close vote Mark Trapp user&#xD;&#xA;[what-s-the-minimal-requeriment-for-a-code-be-considerated-an-ai-implementation][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;he says: by possible duplicate of  (Covers same ground) [Will we ever develop artificial intelligence?][3]– Mark Trapp 2 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;insane.. there is nothing duplicated.&#xD;&#xA;So, it would be nice to lock valid questions for don't get close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;shouldn't you agree that valid questions would be locked for don't get close votes?&#xD;&#xA;I know it depends of the moderation and has no efficient way to moderators analyze question by question &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;but anyway what do you think should be done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5034/what-s-the-minimal-requeriment-for-a-code-be-considerated-an-ai-implementation&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/959/will-we-ever-develop-artificial-intelligence" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="726" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="277" RevisionGUID="d7587323-9f10-4af3-89b0-f33707e97131" CreationDate="2010-09-21T01:30:47.353" UserId="63" Text="&gt; but anyway what do you think should be done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing. Anything that has been closed can be re-opened... Unless it's locked or deleted. So steer clear of locking and deletion, and closing is *at most* a temporary inconvenience. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The important thing is that you voice your opinions. If you see a question being closed that you think is on-topic, *then argue for it* - provide justification, skewer arguments against it, and so on. This is how the site grows and becomes a community that recognizes its own. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Trying to &quot;protect&quot; questions from closing just sweeps the problem under the rug. The community must *know* what questions are on-topic, that *they* may keep them open. And the community most know what questions are *off*-topic, in order to remove them. Without discussion, voting, controversy... This awareness will never form." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="727" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="278" RevisionGUID="5f408fe0-7871-43c5-ac2c-289393ab09a1" CreationDate="2010-09-21T01:31:32.347" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I voted to close the question because I believe the question covers the same ground. My vote is one of five needed to close: people can disagree with me, and that's fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously, you disagree that your question isn't a duplicate of an earlier question; that's fine too. It would be helpful and constructive to myself and others if you explained *why* it wasn't a duplicate, but that's your prerogative to do so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question then becomes when two people disagree, who gets to decide which questions are locked and prevented from being closed by 5 independent people? Obviously, you have a conflict of interest in preserving your own questions, so it shouldn't be you. As I voted to close the question, you probably wouldn't be satisfied with me being that arbiter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's say there is someone independent arbitrating the question. If someone else decided that your question *shouldn't* be locked, what then? Would you create a new topic declaring that there should be a new level to prevent people from not locking your question from close votes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The system works: people are going to disagree, that's why we vote." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="728" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="279" RevisionGUID="73a37a1f-7996-40fc-9431-ac477cf89a05" CreationDate="2010-09-21T01:35:26.660" UserId="666" Text="**Why [why are so many programmers arrogant][1] was closed by accident:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People saw this as a fun question and didn't really like it, the large thread of comments to the question lead into confusion (I was between the people who voted) and were enough to hide the first serious answer, and it seems that after some initial down-votes people decide more quickly based on negative comments...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, 5 people were wrong... But it is reasonable with the amount of people that can vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seems it triggered some kind of near-the-edge case because of the &quot;this is a fun question&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Ignore [what 's the minimal requeriment for a code be considerated an AI implementation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5034/what-s-the-minimal-requeriment-for-a-code-be-considerated-an-ai-implementation)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a single vote and nobody else has agreed with it, if a question is really related but not duplicate, such an accidental close vote can happen and you shouldn't worry about it... Just ignore it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our site is community driven, it is thus impossible for one to lock a question against downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What should be done?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing, in most cases problems resolve itself... In this case it has.  &#xD;&#xA;Your question is back open again, the other question is open, the edit war has stopped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it wasn't the case, attention from a diamond user or valued associated might have been appropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="729" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="278" RevisionGUID="2adc995b-be4c-4d9b-a3d3-31ba4b178aae" CreationDate="2010-09-21T01:40:43.933" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="I voted to close the question because I believe the question covers the same ground. My vote is one of five needed to close: people can disagree with me, and that's fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously, you disagree that your question is a duplicate of an earlier question; that's fine too. It would be helpful and constructive to myself and others if you explained *why* it wasn't a duplicate, but that's your prerogative to do so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question then becomes when two people disagree, who gets to decide which questions are locked and prevented from being closed by 5 independent people? Obviously, you have a conflict of interest in preserving your own questions, so it shouldn't be you. As I voted to close the question, you probably wouldn't be satisfied with me being that arbiter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's say there is someone independent arbitrating the question. If someone else decided that your question *shouldn't* be locked, what then? Would you create a new topic declaring that there should be a new level to prevent people from not locking your question from close votes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The system works: people are going to disagree, that's why we vote." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="730" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="279" RevisionGUID="e225d70a-9aa4-4945-b3d4-82f4579b5f4b" CreationDate="2010-09-21T02:41:53.647" UserId="666" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:666,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;TomWij&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="731" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="279" RevisionGUID="ec47acea-3ec3-4660-b95b-4618d9308efa" CreationDate="2010-09-21T02:46:57.103" UserId="666" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:666,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;TomWij&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="732" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="280" RevisionGUID="4c335d4c-925d-4473-9d60-09722bb498c3" CreationDate="2010-09-21T03:46:37.110" UserId="1865" Text="An alternative approach is that the accepted answer should be an answer created by the OP to summarize their thoughts on the other answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This approach is probably most suited to survey type questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="733" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="281" RevisionGUID="e47be9ff-0aa1-464c-b3eb-27fc25b78771" CreationDate="2010-09-21T03:48:43.213" UserId="1865" Text="In general, I think we should encourage upvoting if you're just likely to say the same thing, to the point that at least here on p.se, we should be looking for down votes on too similar answers if posted more than a couple of minutes apart." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="734" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="282" RevisionGUID="0e565f28-5b14-4ba1-bf65-b3e6b871b44b" CreationDate="2010-09-21T11:32:34.000" UserId="2449" Text="I keep clicking on related questions and they are closed. Its annoying. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be more helpful if it was only related open questions. Or even if they are older related questions with good answers, but most are close for duplicate and have few answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I guess, if they are closed for duplicate, can we not have them in related, since they will be deleted anyway?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="735" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="282" RevisionGUID="0e565f28-5b14-4ba1-bf65-b3e6b871b44b" CreationDate="2010-09-21T11:32:34.000" UserId="2449" Text="Can the closed questions please be removed from &quot;related&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="736" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="282" RevisionGUID="0e565f28-5b14-4ba1-bf65-b3e6b871b44b" CreationDate="2010-09-21T11:32:34.000" UserId="2449" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="737" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="283" RevisionGUID="059acd46-830e-4de0-8949-5c86a6d8eacd" CreationDate="2010-09-21T14:58:50.410" UserId="2091" Text="I would love to be able to upvote this question, but the automatic CW conversion has actually kept me below the 15 reputation needed to vote. In a technical forum with specific answers, it helps to keep the answer count down, but in a more discussion oriented forum, where the answers are often opinions, it actually ends up penalizing people for participating." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="738" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="284" RevisionGUID="4613dd1f-9737-432b-8e18-413050802945" CreationDate="2010-09-21T15:25:13.887" UserId="17" Text="It doesn't seem like people are discussing the underlying problem -- the &lt;b&gt;incentive&lt;/b&gt; for posting silly shit.  Namely, rep and badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Decry &quot;rep whoring&quot; and &quot;badge whoring&quot; all you like; people are still going to do it, because &lt;b&gt;it feels good.&lt;/b&gt;  It's a pat on the back from your peers!  It's a freakin' score that you can make bigger, and get a series of escalating perks for making bigger!  They're validation!  They're sparkly baubles handed out for something you did!  They're &lt;b&gt;rewards.&lt;/b&gt;  And if rewards are being given out for behavior that's detrimental to the community, you're doing it wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we're going to trim down the silly shit, we need to 1) clearly define what constitutes &quot;silly shit&quot; and 2) ruthlessly slap &quot;Community Wiki&quot; on anything that meets that definition.  I believe this is already the de-facto use of CW; it ought to be explicit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I'm guessing that the important step 3) of &quot;Deny badges for any questions or answers designated 'Community Wiki'&quot; isn't on the table, but it really needs to be.  Badges are a lesser reward than rep because they don't get you perks, but they're a reward, too.  As long as you reward a behavior, you encourage a behavior.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I'd also like a step 4) of &quot;Rescind rep/badges earned between somebody asking the question and it getting designated 'Community Wiki'&quot; for the same reason, but again, I'm guessing that's not an option -- and it raises all sorts of unpleasant &quot;You just cost me 150 rep, you humorless bastard!&quot; flamewar vendetta possibilities, so perhaps it's for the best.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fun questions are, well, fun, so people are always going to ask and answer them.  Hell, I &lt;b&gt;like&lt;/b&gt; taking a break to read what my peers think are good coder jokes.  But they're also the fast-path to cheap rep and shiny badges.  Make the fun factor the &lt;b&gt;only&lt;/b&gt; reward, and you'll see less of them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="739" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="285" RevisionGUID="319a19fb-aa9a-466f-af1a-23ec9969f79e" CreationDate="2010-09-21T15:55:34.827" UserId="61" Text="In connection to [this][1], and the closing of [Why are so many programmers arrogant?][2]. The question was closed (unjustifiably, IMHO), then reopened by those of us who disagreed. The question has now been locked, preventing others from participating. I have a feeling this is going to happen to the [Do programmers have higher tendency to be atheists than non programmers?][3] as well, which has been closed and reopened as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, even though both questions _could_ potentially lead to flamewars, I think it is a credit to this community that there was not a single answer (apart from one joke answer that was subsequently deleted) that was potentially inflammatory. I fail to see why such questions should be locked, as long as the community wants it open. If the question turns into a close-reopen war, and is closed and reopened more than _x_ times (say thrice), then perhaps it might be worth locking. Even then, it should be done on a case-by-case basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as far as the &quot;Why are so many programmers&quot; arrogant question goes, it has only been closed and reopened once, and at least one of the high-rep users has said that he voted to close by accident. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone please tell me why this decision was taken? Both questions are perfectly valid  for programmers.se, and while such questions _should_ be closed, locked (and probably deleted) on SO, doing so here merely amounts to censorship.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;[3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/do-programmers-have-higher-tendency-to-be-atheists-than-non-programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="740" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="285" RevisionGUID="319a19fb-aa9a-466f-af1a-23ec9969f79e" CreationDate="2010-09-21T15:55:34.827" UserId="61" Text="Please let's not lock questions unless as an absolute last resort" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="741" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="285" RevisionGUID="319a19fb-aa9a-466f-af1a-23ec9969f79e" CreationDate="2010-09-21T15:55:34.827" UserId="61" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="742" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="284" RevisionGUID="168228c3-8df3-42be-8e6c-f14aa6a31fa9" CreationDate="2010-09-21T15:58:39.447" UserId="17" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="It doesn't seem like people are discussing the underlying problem -- the &lt;b&gt;incentive&lt;/b&gt; for posting silly shit.  Namely, rep and badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Decry &quot;rep whoring&quot; and &quot;badge whoring&quot; all you like; people are still going to do it, because &lt;b&gt;it feels good.&lt;/b&gt;  It's a pat on the back from your peers!  It's a freakin' score that you can make bigger, and get a series of escalating perks for making bigger!  They're validation!  They're sparkly baubles handed out for something you did!  They're &lt;b&gt;rewards.&lt;/b&gt;  And if you're giving out rewards for behavior that's detrimental to the community, you're doing it wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we're going to trim down the silly shit, we need to 1) clearly define what constitutes &quot;silly shit&quot; and 2) ruthlessly slap &quot;Community Wiki&quot; on anything that meets that definition.  I believe this is already the de-facto use of CW; it ought to be explicit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I'm guessing that the important step 3) of &quot;Deny badges for any questions or answers designated 'Community Wiki'&quot; isn't on the table, but it really needs to be.  Badges are a lesser reward than rep because they don't get you perks, but they're a reward, too.  As long as you reward a behavior, you encourage a behavior.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I'd also like a step 4) of &quot;Rescind rep/badges earned between somebody asking the question and it getting designated 'Community Wiki'&quot; for the same reason, but again, I'm guessing that's not an option -- and it raises all sorts of unpleasant &quot;You just cost me 150 rep, you humorless bastard!&quot; flamewar vendetta possibilities, so perhaps it's for the best.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fun questions are, well, fun, so people are always going to ask and answer them.  Hell, I &lt;b&gt;like&lt;/b&gt; taking a break to read what my peers think are good coder jokes.  But they're also the fast-path to cheap rep and shiny badges.  Make the fun factor the &lt;b&gt;only&lt;/b&gt; reward, and you'll see less of them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="743" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="286" RevisionGUID="d9f6dc8f-442a-44ec-a4d7-dc9eefed8a79" CreationDate="2010-09-21T16:00:17.847" UserId="11" Text="The locker should **at least** write a comment or edit the question to justify the lock." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="744" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="287" RevisionGUID="b9c02fbf-0ebc-4bb7-842a-2a595e06a8cf" CreationDate="2010-09-21T16:36:19.313" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Locking does not prevent people voting or commenting on answers: it just prevents the question from being edited or being answered. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the particular case of [Why are so many programmers arrogant?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant), an edit-war erupted when the original poster insisted on using the question as a platform to air his grievances with the people who closed it. I think after 41 answers, an accepted answer, and 36 thousand views, adding more answers isn't really an issue anymore." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="745" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="287" RevisionGUID="4ed1f506-04e0-490b-a82c-3deed52322d5" CreationDate="2010-09-21T16:36:54.600" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="746" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="287" RevisionGUID="8175d656-bfba-427d-a537-74473eb4d161" CreationDate="2010-09-21T16:38:34.490" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="747" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="288" RevisionGUID="9a61a0fc-b6dc-479b-aa1a-f3ed3c6a358f" CreationDate="2010-09-21T18:33:12.363" UserId="6" Text="Questions like &quot;Can you recommend some good pottery for programmers?&quot; are an issue we need to figure out- to what extent are they allowed?  I see a few variants on this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that are clearly unrelated to programming in anyway, but have programming tacked on (eg, &quot;Can you recommend some good pottery for programmers?&quot; or &quot;What, as a programmer, is your favorite legume?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;2. Questions that are a middle ground: &quot;What are some good movies for programmer?&quot; is a good example- on one hand it'd be off-topic without &quot;for programmer,&quot; but on the other hand, programming-related movies affect programmer culture, and are something that is, to my mind, &#xD;&#xA;worth discussing here.&#xD;&#xA;3. Questions that are somewhat clearly directly related to programming: &quot;What are some good keyboards for programmers&quot;- since keyboards are the tool of our trade, this is definitely worth discussing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been a few discussions of this issue so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- An answer in &quot;[What questions are on-topic and what questions are off-topic](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic/238#238)&quot; starts to discuss this&#xD;&#xA;- In revision 7 on [What should be in our FAQ](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/74/revisions), Mark Trapp rolls back a change I made to suggest that blatant &quot;types of pickles&quot; questions should be off-topic.  He asserts that they are on-topic, citing a meta.SO post.  This exchange is why I'm making this question- we should have an internal question deciding it one way or another to point people to in the future.&#xD;&#xA;- An early discussion took place in the comments for the [programming fiction](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2982/recommended-fiction-for-programmers) question.&#xD;&#xA;- Mark points out [this](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046) answer on meta.SO&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been out for a few days, and I have't payed that much attention to external discussion of P.SE on meta.SO, so I may have missed us coming to a consensus on this issue, but it seems we haven't, and we need to.  What do you think- are 1, 2, and/or 3 on-topic or off-topic for this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="748" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="288" RevisionGUID="9a61a0fc-b6dc-479b-aa1a-f3ed3c6a358f" CreationDate="2010-09-21T18:33:12.363" UserId="6" Text="Dealing with &quot;What are some good types of pickles... for programmers.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="749" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="288" RevisionGUID="9a61a0fc-b6dc-479b-aa1a-f3ed3c6a358f" CreationDate="2010-09-21T18:33:12.363" UserId="6" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="751" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="290" RevisionGUID="8d285a9d-b935-428e-8969-1002a8eededa" CreationDate="2010-09-21T19:19:12.197" UserId="389" Text="I can't agree more with every single word. My opinion about what is on-topic can be solved asking &quot;Is it interesting to programmers in general?&quot;. Not people in general, but programmers. Not as chit chat, but as a good recommendation **to programmers**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. These questions just have the word &quot;programm*&quot;. Nothing related with programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The example is identical to 1. But some questions affect or get interest on programming world. The problem isn't the question, but the answers. Some can be related to programming but others can be just a recommendation to people in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. On-topic. Ok, it's related to computer users in general, but it has great value to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are hard to decide." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="752" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="290" RevisionGUID="85c65b7f-4932-4abc-9c15-8aea2c9ab9c3" CreationDate="2010-09-21T19:27:40.767" UserId="389" Comment="added 75 characters in body" Text="I can't agree more with every single word. My opinion about what is on-topic can be solved asking &quot;Is it interesting to programmers in general?&quot;. Not people in general, but programmers. Not as chit chat, but as a good recommendation **to programmers**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. These questions just have the word &quot;programm*&quot;. Nothing related with programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The example is identical to 1. But some questions affect or get interest on programming world. The problem isn't the question, but the answers. Some can be related to programming but others can be just a recommendation to people in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. On-topic. Ok, it's related to computer users in general, but it has great value to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are hard to decide. Unfortunately I get more lost today than yesterday. But we have time yest." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="754" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="290" RevisionGUID="36c438f3-77a1-4029-8e15-8e6414bd474c" CreationDate="2010-09-21T20:06:34.357" UserId="6" Comment="typo fix: yest -&gt; yet" Text="I can't agree more with every single word. My opinion about what is on-topic can be solved asking &quot;Is it interesting to programmers in general?&quot;. Not people in general, but programmers. Not as chit chat, but as a good recommendation **to programmers**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. These questions just have the word &quot;programm*&quot;. Nothing related with programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The example is identical to 1. But some questions affect or get interest on programming world. The problem isn't the question, but the answers. Some can be related to programming but others can be just a recommendation to people in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. On-topic. Ok, it's related to computer users in general, but it has great value to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are hard to decide. Unfortunately I get more lost today than yesterday. But we have time yet." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="755" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="291" RevisionGUID="57a9813c-b09d-40a7-8262-f2c0f337170c" CreationDate="2010-09-21T20:32:34.657" UserId="148" Text="I am going on a flagging rampage. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some things are *relevant*. Things like keyboards. Hand care. Chairs. Stuff that is seriously relevant to our daily work life. Even if yes, they are more office-worker relevance, they still relate to our working life and practice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things like plants for programmers? Don't be stupid. Take it to IRC." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="756" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="288" RevisionGUID="6b188400-1e5b-4768-b7ac-3e02170744d3" CreationDate="2010-09-21T20:46:54.947" UserId="6" Comment="added 95 characters in body" Text="Questions like &quot;Can you recommend some good pottery for programmers?&quot; are an issue we need to figure out- to what extent are they allowed?  I see a few variants on this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that are clearly unrelated to programming in anyway, but have programming tacked on (eg, &quot;Can you recommend some good pottery for programmers?&quot; or &quot;What, as a programmer, is your favorite legume?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;2. Questions that are a middle ground: &quot;What are some good movies for programmer?&quot; is a good example- on one hand it'd be off-topic without &quot;for programmer,&quot; but on the other hand, programming-related movies affect programmer culture, and are something that is, to my mind, &#xD;&#xA;worth discussing here.&#xD;&#xA;3. Questions that are somewhat clearly directly related to programming: &quot;What are some good keyboards for programmers&quot;- since keyboards are the tool of our trade, this is definitely worth discussing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been a few discussions of this issue so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- An answer in &quot;[What questions are on-topic and what questions are off-topic](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic/238#238)&quot; starts to discuss this&#xD;&#xA;- In revision 7 on [What should be in our FAQ](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/74/revisions), Mark Trapp rolls back a change I made to suggest that blatant &quot;types of pickles&quot; questions should be off-topic.  He asserts that they are on-topic, citing a meta.SO post.  This exchange is why I'm making this question- we should have an internal question deciding it one way or another to point people to in the future.&#xD;&#xA;- An early discussion took place in the comments for the [programming fiction](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2982/recommended-fiction-for-programmers) question.&#xD;&#xA;- Mark points out [this](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046) answer on meta.SO&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been out for a few days, and I have't payed that much attention to external discussion of P.SE on meta.SO, so I may have missed us coming to a consensus on this issue, but it seems we haven't, and we need to.  What do you think- are 1, 2, and/or 3 on-topic or off-topic for this site, and how do we handle determining which side of the 'on-topic' line a question like this falls?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="757" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="288" RevisionGUID="ceae7c83-ffb8-41e9-a5cd-ac45ac8a23f4" CreationDate="2010-09-21T21:18:03.833" UserId="66" Comment="Made title make sense" Text="Dealing with &quot;What are some good types of pickles for programmers?&quot; type questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="758" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="292" RevisionGUID="65ee1fa0-5d10-4acb-ab13-ae2aff054007" CreationDate="2010-09-21T21:23:04.670" UserId="6" Text="I propose the following criteria by which to judge such questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;1. Is it interesting to programmers in general? *&#xD;&#xA;2. Would answers be significantly different without &quot;for programmers&quot; added?&#xD;&#xA;3. Does the addition of &quot;for programmers&quot; seem like an afterthought?&#xD;&#xA;4. Will the question produce useful and/or interesting discussion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see two major alternatives to dealing with pickle questions: a hard and fast rule (&quot;ban 'em all&quot;, &quot;accept 'em all&quot;), or a guideline/moderation approach, where we have a general idea to guide what questions are truly programming related and which are pickles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm proposing that second approach, using the above criteria, along with the common sense and good judgement of the people moderating and/or voting.  The advantage of this approach is increased granularity (the ability to save good questions while still tossing the bad).  The disadvantage is the increased subjectivity- a universal rule on these questions would be easier to enforce.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I think we should put some faith in the community- a lot of the questions we're seeing now are the result of unclear directions.  If we have a set of criteria (such as those I propose) posted in the FAQ, I expect we'll see a lot fewer people asking about the best type of wood for a programmer to build their porch out of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Borrowed from Bigown's answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="759" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="293" RevisionGUID="38d98cd0-59a1-4a2c-8267-c2dadffba4c6" CreationDate="2010-09-21T21:57:58.140" UserId="40" Text="How about banning questions titles containin the words **for programmers** (possibly with a something similar to the subjective warning) and instead asking people to explain **why** the questions are relevant to programmers? Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What is your favourite &quot;programmer&quot; cartoon?**&lt;br &gt;&#xD;&#xA;-&gt; What is your favourite cartoon about programming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What are some good keyboards for programmers?**&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;-&gt; What are some good keyboards for writing code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What are some good movies for programmers?**&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;-&gt; What are some good movies about programmer culture?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="760" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="293" RevisionGUID="3595691f-6983-4f9a-b649-75bf3f0e5006" CreationDate="2010-09-21T22:06:25.540" UserId="40" Comment="added 76 characters in body" Text="How about banning questions titles containin the words **for programmers** (possibly with a something similar to the subjective warning) and instead asking people to explain **why** the questions are relevant to programmers? Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What is your favourite &quot;programmer&quot; cartoon?**&lt;br &gt;&#xD;&#xA;-&gt; What is your favourite cartoon about programming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What are some good keyboards for programmers?**&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;-&gt; What are some good keyboards for writing code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What are some good movies for programmers?**&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;-&gt; What are some good movies about programmer culture?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would (hopefully) be hard to write such a title for a WGTPP question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="761" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="294" RevisionGUID="8d6dbaf8-b541-4677-b0f5-44345e5cb1d3" CreationDate="2010-09-21T22:18:04.547" UserId="61" Text="I don't mind questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **What are good movies/fiction/TV shows for programmers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Movies and fiction relating to hacker culture, programming, etc. are likely to be of interest to many (most?) programmers, so these types of questions have answers that are specific to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **What is a good chair/keyboard/mouse/desk for programmers?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These types of questions are OK too, since they directly relate to the day-to-day life of programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **What is a good plant/building material/pet for programmers?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;are off-topic, since preferences for these are likely to vary widely between programmers, with little or nothing in common between the various answerers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the criterion for deciding should be whether there is likely to be a lot of common ground between programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="762" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="293" RevisionGUID="e3855055-cb37-48e3-aaa3-4207e2465cb4" CreationDate="2010-09-21T22:21:22.840" UserId="40" Comment="edited body; deleted 2 characters in body" Text="How about banning questions titles containin the words **for programmers** (possibly with something similar to the subjective warning) and instead asking people to explain **why** the questions are relevant to programmers? Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What is your favourite &quot;programmer&quot; cartoon?**&lt;br &gt;&#xD;&#xA;-&gt; What is your favourite cartoon about programming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What are some good keyboards for programmers?**&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;-&gt; What are some good keyboards for writing code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What are some good movies for programmers?**&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;-&gt; What are some good movies about programmer culture?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would (hopefully) be hard to write such a title for a WGTPP question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="763" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="295" RevisionGUID="d1447d91-c75d-4e43-a6bd-e9ef4c4681fb" CreationDate="2010-09-21T22:42:39.677" UserId="389" Text="One problem arise on my mind. We start to get useful and good discussions here in Meta, but &quot;half dozen&quot; users are deciding important issues. Do you agree?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How to bring more users to real participation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="764" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="295" RevisionGUID="d1447d91-c75d-4e43-a6bd-e9ef4c4681fb" CreationDate="2010-09-21T22:42:39.677" UserId="389" Text="Is it important more people participate on Meta.P.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="765" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="295" RevisionGUID="d1447d91-c75d-4e43-a6bd-e9ef4c4681fb" CreationDate="2010-09-21T22:42:39.677" UserId="389" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="766" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="296" RevisionGUID="dcd9e3e9-8bc2-44aa-81e8-7a603d4b3e3c" CreationDate="2010-09-21T23:11:11.980" UserId="47" Text="The simple answer is &quot;yes&quot; it is important that people participate on a site's meta - but they don't have to do it all the time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The more complex answer is that with the proliferation of sites, I (and I expect others who are active on several sites) just don't have the time to participate as much as I'd like to and indeed should. I try to get on each site's meta once a day to check to see which questions are currently active, but there's often nothing more I can add.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to how to bring more users - I don't know. If there was more controversy then people would come here to ask why their post was closed/edited/whatever, but I'm not convinced that's what we really want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The top meta questions are already featured on the right side bar when viewing questions on the main site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="767" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="297" RevisionGUID="077f1247-550c-420f-a0e9-d43bee01c20e" CreationDate="2010-09-22T08:06:22.310" UserId="100" Text="Fishtoaster's type 1 questions are off-topic, and I'd be very happy to see them banned outright.&#xD;&#xA;Fishtoaster's type 3 questions are on-topic, and the site would be less valuable without them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fishtoaster's type 2 questions are one of the key types of questions this site was originally proposed for. I'd like to see them kept, and I believe them to be on-topic. But knowing where to draw the line is difficult. (which is a type 2 and which is a type 1 question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="768" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="298" RevisionGUID="c9a6c3b8-349f-4842-928a-8bfb6c88a96a" CreationDate="2010-09-22T08:08:56.350" UserId="100" Text="There are some crucial questions begin asked which will afect who participates on P.SE in the future and to what extent. The key one seems to be http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288/dealing-with-what-are-some-good-types-of-pickles-for-programmers-type-question . I can well imaging people not visiting if those questions continue to be allowed, and vice versa. We could do with more people who use the site expressing their views." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="769" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="296" RevisionGUID="21c0c584-2fe0-41b6-93d9-6969bdbb68f0" CreationDate="2010-09-22T09:23:48.283" UserId="47" Comment="clarification" Text="The simple answer is &quot;yes&quot; it is important that people participate on a site's meta - but they don't have to do it all the time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The more complex answer is that with the proliferation of sites, I (and I expect others who are active on several sites) just don't have the time to participate on any site's meta as much as I'd like to and indeed should. I try to get on each site's meta once a day to check to see which questions are currently active, but there's often nothing more I can add.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to how to bring more users - I don't know. If there was more controversy then people would come here to ask why their post was closed/edited/whatever, but I'm not convinced that's what we really want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The top meta questions are already featured on the right side bar when viewing questions on the main site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="770" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="286" RevisionGUID="da28c8c2-15f7-43f0-9959-ca1ca3c2009d" CreationDate="2010-09-22T12:40:38.840" UserId="11" Comment="added 328 characters in body" Text="The locker should **at least** write a comment or edit the question to justify the lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And since there's nothing like private mail, you can't send complaint to moderators or to [Jeff](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/37/jeff-atwood) for closing very interesting questions like [Do programmers have higher tendency to be atheists than non programmers? ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5555/11)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="771" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="299" RevisionGUID="1367fa5f-f472-4f59-80aa-b123a6078cb2" CreationDate="2010-09-22T16:28:01.493" UserId="40" Text="I often close questions here as S&amp;A just for the &quot;argumentative&quot; part, as all questions here are subjective. To replace S&amp;A, I think there should be a close reason for anything that has a high chance of starting a flame war." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="772" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="299" RevisionGUID="1367fa5f-f472-4f59-80aa-b123a6078cb2" CreationDate="2010-09-22T16:28:01.493" UserId="40" Text="Add a &quot;flamebait&quot; close reason" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="773" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="299" RevisionGUID="1367fa5f-f472-4f59-80aa-b123a6078cb2" CreationDate="2010-09-22T16:28:01.493" UserId="40" Text="|feature-request|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="774" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="285" RevisionGUID="3efe0836-17f6-4b08-a579-c4e5ed199594" CreationDate="2010-09-22T17:04:49.840" UserId="61" Comment="added 546 characters in body; added 1 characters in body" Text="In connection to [this][1], and the closing of [Why are so many programmers arrogant?][2]. The question was closed (unjustifiably, IMHO), then reopened by those of us who disagreed. The question has now been locked, preventing others from participating. I have a feeling this is going to happen to the [Do programmers have higher tendency to be atheists than non programmers?][3] as well, which has been closed and reopened as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, even though both questions _could_ potentially lead to flamewars, I think it is a credit to this community that there was not a single answer (apart from one joke answer that was subsequently deleted) that was potentially inflammatory. I fail to see why such questions should be locked, as long as the community wants it open. If the question turns into a close-reopen war, and is closed and reopened more than _x_ times (say thrice), then perhaps it might be worth locking. Even then, it should be done on a case-by-case basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as far as the &quot;Why are so many programmers&quot; arrogant question goes, it has only been closed and reopened once, and at least one of the high-rep users has said that he voted to close by accident. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone please tell me why this decision was taken? Both questions are perfectly valid  for programmers.se, and while such questions _should_ be closed, locked (and probably deleted) on SO, doing so here merely amounts to censorship.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;[3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/do-programmers-have-higher-tendency-to-be-atheists-than-non-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** OK, the unilateral closing of the atheist question has really pissed me off. If this happens a few more times, I see myself leaving the community for good. People were being respectful and the community at large had no problem with the question. It was closed once, and reopened once and had no close votes the last time I looked. That means that only 5 people felt strongly enough about it to vote to close it, and the rest were happy to let it be. This makes the &quot;community-run&quot; aspect of the website look like simply lip-service. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="775" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="300" RevisionGUID="7e66460c-be8e-40e4-933f-6679587a9d5e" CreationDate="2010-09-22T21:41:08.970" UserId="66" Text="A mod is really more appropriate in this kind of situation. People just need to realize that this is a semi-professional site and they need to act as such. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And as @Chinmay said, I've yet to see a flame war, even in the [Vi vs Emacs question][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1271/which-is-better-vim-vs-emacs" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="776" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="301" RevisionGUID="dd5d8788-9432-428e-8dc0-f91ccfce7334" CreationDate="2010-09-23T01:20:48.413" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="There shouldn't be a separate reason, and as TheLQ mentioned, such questions should be flagged for moderator review. In extreme cases, especially since we don't have diamond moderators of our own yet, you should send an e-mail to team@stackoverflow.com.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But really, that people who have access to moderator tools can't recognize topics that turn into dozens of comments and answers about how people are irrational and stupid for believing in god, or begin with inflammatory propositions like whether programmers are homophobic, or have a high likelihood of adding liability to the site (like people casually recommending things to a person who is clearly suffering from depression) is starting to get absurd.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The larger issue is that as a community, we need to be **less stupid** when it comes to identifying issues that are inflammatory or *completely inappropriate* for any public site, especially one that is supposed to be for professionals. Maybe it should be spelled out in the FAQ: &quot;If asking or answering this question in the real world would have a high likelihood of someone yelling or getting punched, it is not appropriate for this site.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This isn't 'nam, there are rules.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiQmQhA-OrM) If you want to ask shock questions and discuss any issue under the sun without any rules, use [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) instead of trying shoehorn &quot;programmers&quot; into a hot-button topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="779" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="287" RevisionGUID="038b15e5-9532-4445-a7fe-dc29ff254289" CreationDate="2010-09-23T01:30:15.197" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add other answer as an edit; added 8 characters in body" Text="Locking does not prevent people voting or commenting on answers: it just prevents the question from being edited or being answered. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the particular case of [Why are so many programmers arrogant?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant), an edit-war erupted when the original poster insisted on using the question as a platform to air his grievances with the people who closed it. I think after 41 answers, an accepted answer, and 36 thousand views, adding more answers isn't really an issue anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I said elsewhere, if you guys can't understand *why* the atheist question was closed and locked, or why people are quickly closing questions like the homophobic or arrogant question, I don't know what to tell you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This isn't 'nam, there are rules.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiQmQhA-OrM#t=0m57s) If you want to ask shock questions and discuss any issue under the sun without any rules, use [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) instead of trying shoehorn &quot;programmers&quot; into a hot-button topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a community, we need to be **less stupid** when it comes to identifying issues that are inflammatory or *completely inappropriate* for any public site, especially one that is supposed to be for professionals. Maybe it should be spelled out in the FAQ: &quot;If asking or answering this question in the real world would have a high likelihood of someone yelling or getting punched, it is not appropriate for this site.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="780" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="301" RevisionGUID="6ad0180b-3f7b-4d7e-a342-9d6fb510e7e4" CreationDate="2010-09-23T01:32:14.537" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="There shouldn't be a separate reason, and as TheLQ mentioned, such questions should be flagged for moderator review. In extreme cases, especially since we don't have diamond moderators of our own yet, you should send an e-mail to team@stackoverflow.com.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But really, that people who have access to moderator tools can't recognize topics that turn into dozens of comments and answers about how people are irrational and stupid for believing in god, or begin with inflammatory propositions like whether programmers are homophobic, or have a high likelihood of adding liability to the site (like people casually recommending things to a person who is clearly suffering from depression) is starting to get absurd.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The larger issue is that as a community, we need to be **less stupid** when it comes to identifying issues that are inflammatory or *completely inappropriate* for any public site, especially one that is supposed to be for professionals. Maybe it should be spelled out in the FAQ: &quot;If asking or answering this question in the real world would have a high likelihood of someone yelling or getting punched, it is not appropriate for this site.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This isn't 'nam, there are rules.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiQmQhA-OrM#t=0m57s) If you want to ask shock questions and discuss any issue under the sun without any rules, use [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) instead of trying shoehorn &quot;programmers&quot; into a hot-button topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="781" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="303" RevisionGUID="7c3fad20-eca5-42a8-8541-4b271169ee55" CreationDate="2010-09-23T06:31:31.037" UserId="55" Text="See: [Why don't people use white space inside parentheses][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, questions related to coding style / standards are clearly within the remit of Programmers.SE, however the tone of the question I linked is argumentative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what should happen?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6512/why-dont-people-use-white-space-inside-parentheses &quot;Why don't people use white space inside parentheses&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="782" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="303" RevisionGUID="7c3fad20-eca5-42a8-8541-4b271169ee55" CreationDate="2010-09-23T06:31:31.037" UserId="55" Text="Are argumentative questions allowed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="783" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="303" RevisionGUID="7c3fad20-eca5-42a8-8541-4b271169ee55" CreationDate="2010-09-23T06:31:31.037" UserId="55" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="784" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="303" RevisionGUID="c6ae6bf4-0400-4b6a-ad93-4b27a948cb30" CreationDate="2010-09-23T06:44:52.337" UserId="55" Comment="More examples, clearer explanation of point" Text="See: [Why don't people use white space inside parentheses][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, questions related to coding style / standards are clearly within the remit of Programmers.SE, however the tone of the question I linked is argumentative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: [What is better: Java or C#][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The content of the question itself seems ok, the title is very argumentative though.  An alternative that was suggested was: &quot;What are the relative merits of Java and C#&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that a lot of subjective questions are also argumentative, where does the line get drawn?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6512/why-dont-people-use-white-space-inside-parentheses &quot;Why don't people use white space inside parentheses&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6284/what-is-better-java-or-c" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="785" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="304" RevisionGUID="e21c793b-8e4b-4c31-a190-1dcc3bbf0876" CreationDate="2010-09-23T07:30:13.810" UserId="100" Text="The nature of SE sites is such that the very format discourages thread-long flame wars with multiple responses bvy the same handful of people. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This helps keep questions which are phrased argumentatively from descending into tit-for-tat flaming. Neither of the threads linked above have been *answered* argumentatively.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be naive to suggest that flamewars won't happen here, but I have faith in the community and believe that argumentative, programming-culture-related threads should be allowed, as people come to subjective sites looking for multiple viewpoints. As long as the comminity can continue to provide those multiple viewpoints in a rationale manner, we'll be just fine." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="786" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="305" RevisionGUID="d5bbb563-0bb7-4164-8efa-114998ed3d21" CreationDate="2010-09-23T08:28:37.907" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Argumentative questions, in the sense that they are liable to piss a lot of people off, aren't appropriate; but neither of the questions you linked are particularly argumentative. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of inappropriate *argumentative* questions would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Do programmers have higher tendency to be atheists than non programmers? ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/do-programmers-have-higher-tendency-to-be-atheists-than-non-programmers) &#xD;&#xA;* [Is the computing community homophobic?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6295/is-computing-community-homophobic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also include the following as examples of questions that are ostensibly on-topic, but worded in such a way that make them unnecessarily argumentative:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The lifecycle of &quot;cool&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311/the-lifecycle-of-cool)&#xD;&#xA;* [MVC just the SEO of PHP programming?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2806/is-mvc-just-the-seo-of-php-programming)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it'd be nice if people removed their answer to the question they are asking from the question itself, merely doing so isn't really grounds for a close. Down-voting questions with bad premises is more appropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="787" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="304" RevisionGUID="fbe37800-d02f-4d49-b651-d0de9631c326" CreationDate="2010-09-23T08:42:32.513" UserId="100" Comment="typos :)" Text="The nature of SE sites is such that the very format discourages thread-long flame wars with multiple responses by the same handful of people. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This helps keep questions which are phrased argumentatively from descending into tit-for-tat flaming. Neither of the threads linked above have been *answered* argumentatively.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be naïve to suggest that flamewars won't happen here, but I have faith in the community and believe that argumentative, programming-culture-related threads should be allowed, as people come to subjective sites looking for multiple viewpoints. As long as the community can continue to provide those multiple viewpoints in a rationale manner, we'll be just fine." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="788" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="306" RevisionGUID="2224ee56-16d6-49d0-82de-e2e0ad76e001" CreationDate="2010-09-23T11:59:50.730" UserId="93" Text="communitywikis.com&#xD;&#xA;-----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know, I know, not all q's are community wiki's, but almost all are :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="789" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="306" RevisionGUID="2224ee56-16d6-49d0-82de-e2e0ad76e001" CreationDate="2010-09-23T11:59:50.730" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="790" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="307" RevisionGUID="6144606b-682d-433c-b71a-9b6f7dfbe49f" CreationDate="2010-09-23T15:22:10.347" UserId="94" Text="The banner message for new/not-logged-in users reads&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to Q&amp;A site for expert programmers interested...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There should be an article in there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to a Q&amp;A site for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or, if we want to be fancier:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to the super-mega-ultimate best-on-the-Interblags programmer Q&amp;A site!!!!eleven!!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reference image (ignore the freehand text, I'm reusing an earlier screenshot (hey, I'm being &quot;green&quot;)) available [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65401/limit-the-size-of-banner-messages)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="791" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="307" RevisionGUID="6144606b-682d-433c-b71a-9b6f7dfbe49f" CreationDate="2010-09-23T15:22:10.347" UserId="94" Text="Grammar error in new user banner message" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="792" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="307" RevisionGUID="6144606b-682d-433c-b71a-9b6f7dfbe49f" CreationDate="2010-09-23T15:22:10.347" UserId="94" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="793" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="285" RevisionGUID="ae7e4cae-4d72-45df-8f56-c701b5dfc8f8" CreationDate="2010-09-23T15:22:35.883" UserId="61" Comment="added 215 characters in body" Text="In connection to [this][1], and the closing of [Why are so many programmers arrogant?][2]. The question was closed (unjustifiably, IMHO), then reopened by those of us who disagreed. The question has now been locked, preventing others from participating. I have a feeling this is going to happen to the [Do programmers have higher tendency to be atheists than non programmers?][3] as well, which has been closed and reopened as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, even though both questions _could_ potentially lead to flamewars, I think it is a credit to this community that there was not a single answer (apart from one joke answer that was subsequently deleted) that was potentially inflammatory. I fail to see why such questions should be locked, as long as the community wants it open. If the question turns into a close-reopen war, and is closed and reopened more than _x_ times (say thrice), then perhaps it might be worth locking. Even then, it should be done on a case-by-case basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as far as the &quot;Why are so many programmers&quot; arrogant question goes, it has only been closed and reopened once, and at least one of the high-rep users has said that he voted to close by accident. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone please tell me why this decision was taken? Both questions are perfectly valid  for programmers.se, and while such questions _should_ be closed, locked (and probably deleted) on SO, doing so here merely amounts to censorship.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;[3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/do-programmers-have-higher-tendency-to-be-atheists-than-non-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** OK, the unilateral closing of the atheist question has really pissed me off. If this happens a few more times, I see myself leaving the community for good. People were being respectful and the community at large had no problem with the question. It was closed once, and reopened once and had no close votes the last time I looked. That means that only 5 people felt strongly enough about it to vote to close it, and the rest were happy to let it be. This makes the &quot;community-run&quot; aspect of the website look like simply lip-service. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 2:** I should clarify that I have absolutely nothing against vote-based closing. I may or may not agree with the closers, but at least everyone (at least those who have enough rep) is on an equal footing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="794" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="308" RevisionGUID="bd47451e-6eb1-4a3c-b2f3-5367f359b493" CreationDate="2010-09-23T15:55:05.143" UserId="389" Text="We have a lot of code here. I think everyone agree that we need syntax highlighting." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="795" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="308" RevisionGUID="bd47451e-6eb1-4a3c-b2f3-5367f359b493" CreationDate="2010-09-23T15:55:05.143" UserId="389" Text="Bring Syntax Highlighting to code blocks here on P.SE" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="796" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="308" RevisionGUID="bd47451e-6eb1-4a3c-b2f3-5367f359b493" CreationDate="2010-09-23T15:55:05.143" UserId="389" Text="|feature-request|code|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="797" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="309" RevisionGUID="f0ae2ff0-33c8-4f78-961c-7d27778c1d89" CreationDate="2010-09-23T17:35:48.133" UserId="666" Text="Yeah, I agree... I'll use this as a test post for when they implement it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**PHP**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;?php&#xD;&#xA;    // Display a string.&#xD;&#xA;    die(&quot;Syntax Highlighting Test&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;    ?&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**C#**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    class TestSyntaxHighlighting&#xD;&#xA;    {&#xD;&#xA;        static void Main(string[] args)&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;            // Display a string.&#xD;&#xA;            System.Console.WriteLine(&quot;Syntax Highlighting Test&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;    }" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="798" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="309" RevisionGUID="f0ae2ff0-33c8-4f78-961c-7d27778c1d89" CreationDate="2010-09-23T17:35:48.133" UserId="666" />
  <row Id="799" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="309" RevisionGUID="3d2bd306-78b9-4ec4-a1d3-6d755e9534e8" CreationDate="2010-09-23T17:41:57.497" UserId="666" Comment="added 336 characters in body; added 260 characters in body; added 94 characters in body" Text="Yeah, I agree... I'll use this as a CW test post for when they implement it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feel free to improve examples with more syntax, add other languages or correct mistakes...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**C++**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    #include &lt;iostream&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    #include &quot;SyntaxHighlightingTest.h&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    int main(int argc, const char * argv[])&#xD;&#xA;    {&#xD;&#xA;        SyntaxHighlightingTest * sht = new SyntaxHighlightingTest();&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        cout &lt;&lt; sht-&gt;useString(&quot;Syntax Highlighting Test&quot;) &lt;&lt; endl;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        delete sht;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        return 0;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**C#**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    class TestSyntaxHighlighting&#xD;&#xA;    {&#xD;&#xA;        static void Main(string[] args)&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;            // Display a string.&#xD;&#xA;            System.Console.WriteLine(&quot;Syntax Highlighting Test&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**F#**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    let getTriple m n =&#xD;&#xA;        let a = 2 * m * n&#xD;&#xA;        let b = m * m - n * n&#xD;&#xA;        let c = m * m + n * n&#xD;&#xA;        a, b, c&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**LISP**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    (defun factorial (n)&#xD;&#xA;        (if (= n 1)&#xD;&#xA;            1&#xD;&#xA;            (* n (factorial (- n 1)))))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**PHP**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;?php&#xD;&#xA;        // Display a string.&#xD;&#xA;        die(&quot;Syntax Highlighting Test&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;    ?&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="800" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="310" RevisionGUID="798f2658-2e60-4c8e-942d-b553950e18b5" CreationDate="2010-09-23T22:02:19.070" UserId="66" Text="No, simply because we aren't here for fixing code. There aren't that many examples of code being used, with most questions being text. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And besides, we have to think about who's going to implement this. And if its not on SO already, it's never going to make it here. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="801" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="213" RevisionGUID="449c59a4-0355-41e3-9e47-6dedf759c653" CreationDate="2010-09-23T22:29:56.270" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 554 characters in body" Text="One of the topics that's come up several times on Meta.StackOverflow is the perception that Programmers.SE is a joke proposal, existing solely to help keep Stack Overflow free of all the &quot;crappy&quot; questions that it gets plagued with every day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few of examples of this perception (**note: see Edits 2 and 3 below for clarification**):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You absolutely nailed my resentment of Programmers.SE; it was created as a tongue-in-cheek, NOT-Stack-Overflow site: the stuff we keep in the basement because it's not fit for keeping upstairs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The problem is that Programmers.SE was created as an amorphous blob where nothing is off topic (read: everything not Stack Overflow is on topic). The travesty is that Programmers.SE is, at least in perception, [your quote] &quot;an ocean of jokes and polls.&quot; That's where the problem lies. I would have created the site very differently: Subjective/soft programming topics okay; Industry/engineering issues okay; The business of software okay; Banal polls/jokes off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Programmers on stackexchange](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what you are saying is that Programmers.SE is the skin of evil left behind to free the race of titans from the bonds of destructiveness: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ims5W5bJl9s&amp;feature=related#t=11s&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64043#64043)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you browse questions on Meta for a bit, you'll quickly realize that there are a fair number of people who want to use SO for things that SO wasn't designed to be used for: discussions, polls, flame-wars, endless lists... And over time, this has created some amount of irritation on the site: some folks really, *really* want to, um, *participate* in questions like, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What's the single best way to type code?&#xD;&#xA;- Do you hurt sometimes (as a programmer)?&#xD;&#xA;- How can I get a job drawing cartoons featuring the funniest programmer joke about my favorite hidden feature in the worst language ever (on a boat)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So rather than just stamping them out, like so many ducks putting out flaming elephants, some rose-tint-spectacled user got the idea of proposing a site *for all the questions that shouldn't be asked on SO*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE is that site. Soon, it'll have its own set of rules and standards, and the cycle will begin anew. But until then, it remains an anarchic paradise of freedom and love.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Shog9*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to challenge the premise behind the sentiment: in many ways, that *was* the purpose of the proposal, and Programmers.SE is flourishing despite it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm wondering if there's a way we can spin the content of this site more positively rather than being merely a wretched hive of scum and villainy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the things that's popping up here is we should leave Programmers.SE alone because it's popular and as Nathan Taylor puts it, &quot;Haters gonna hate.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think the content or community Programmers.SE needs changing *per se*. Rather, I think we just need to provide a clear way to show value to SOIS and others, because the current perception is that we don't, and this site is more or less a joke that's gotten out of hand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how can we do that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like SOIS has decided to [publicly address][1] the banality of Programmers.SE on its blog:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There’s an even longer list of things that really belong on the new Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense, and could benefit from an infusion of more meaty subjects, like these proposals:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've created a new question, [What questions are on topic, and what are off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic), to see if we can hash out the proposed merges and other off-topic questions that have come up so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------ &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 3&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Cartaino clarified his position and the quotes above in the comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't actively despise the **concept** of Programmers.SE at all. Read my quotes (above) *very* carefully. What I lament is the perception created; the &quot;anything goes&quot; ethos that simply aims to flout what makes Stack Overflow great. I wanted a site about the &quot;Programmers' Life: a site for discussion of the business, careers, issues, and memes concerning professional developers.&quot; Subjective talk and soft topics okay if it follows a &quot;back it up&quot; philosophy or hard-earned experience. What I got instead was *&quot;what is the coolest/stupidest/weirdest/funniest thing you saw/did/tasted today?&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Q&amp;A will live on SO, Programmers, and a few academic sites. That's it. Not dozens of ridiculously niche and redundant proposals. But the mere mention of merging proposals with Programmers horrifies most. &quot;I don't want my subject on that site.&quot; That's a **huge problem.** Programmers.SE is the &quot;Park Place&quot; to Stack Overflow's &quot;Boardwalk&quot;; a tremendously valuable resource in a bad neighborhood. I'd prefer to paint over the graffiti and fix broken windows; to reestablish community pride so the police come out on occasion. But that's a far cry from &quot;hater&quot; or &quot;actively despise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jeff Atwood has created two topics with the basic premise that Programmers.SE as it is now is too undisciplined, and SOIS will be taking steps to correct that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Adding discipline to programmers.stackexchange.com](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;* [Should “Developer Testing” be folded into a more general “Programmers” site?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="802" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="311" RevisionGUID="d6e44523-d47e-47a8-939c-9f0acbbc6055" CreationDate="2010-09-23T23:19:21.450" UserId="3" Text="Throughout the beta, we need members from the site whose focus is to engage the community, both in community-building issues and site management. That's why we select a few members from each community to act as temporary, provisional Moderators. You can read about the program here: [**Moderators Pro Tempore**](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/moderator-pro-tempore/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am pleased to announce that these members have stepped up and generously volunteered their time to help us assure that each community’s issues are properly addressed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1] ![alt text][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are other candidates on their way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We want to make this site a huge success, and these members are great examples of exactly the type of people we need to make this site succeed. Please welcome them for the hard work and time they contribute.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Did I overlook anyone? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Almost certainly. There are members who are actively involved and very deserving of recognition. My failure to account for everyone this early on is in *no way* a slight against them. Ideally, Moderators are elected by the community and that's why **you'll have your elections in several weeks.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of all, be respectful and understanding of the Moderators Pro Tem. Members of your community are volunteering their time and learning on the job. It’s a learning experience for everyone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/C9NA1.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RT7nj.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="803" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="311" RevisionGUID="d6e44523-d47e-47a8-939c-9f0acbbc6055" CreationDate="2010-09-23T23:19:21.450" UserId="3" Text="Moderator Pro Tem Announcement" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="804" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="311" RevisionGUID="d6e44523-d47e-47a8-939c-9f0acbbc6055" CreationDate="2010-09-23T23:19:21.450" UserId="3" Text="|discussion|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="815" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="315" RevisionGUID="3f7402dd-2c94-43e9-800e-ce557242a822" CreationDate="2010-09-24T12:37:19.107" UserId="666" Text="**Is everyone OK with the tag being removed?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting TheLQ's comment on an answer at [Adding discipline to programmers.SE][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... If you look at it, all subjective questions are polls, ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As most questions could be tagged with [poll] and nobody speaks up it really seems like a redundant tag. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com/65440#65440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="816" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="285" RevisionGUID="214cd203-5cfd-433d-95aa-c9fb88e397ae" CreationDate="2010-09-24T12:45:40.840" UserId="61" Comment="added 46 characters in body; added 169 characters in body" Text="In connection to [this][1], and the closing of [Why are so many programmers arrogant?][2]. The question was closed (unjustifiably, IMHO), then reopened by those of us who disagreed. The question has now been locked, preventing others from participating. I have a feeling this is going to happen to the [Do programmers have higher tendency to be atheists than non programmers?][3] as well (_**EDIT:** this has happened, as predicted_), which has been closed and reopened as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, even though both questions _could_ potentially lead to flamewars, I think it is a credit to this community that there was not a single answer (apart from one joke answer that was subsequently deleted) that was potentially inflammatory. I fail to see why such questions should be locked, as long as the community wants it open. If the question turns into a close-reopen war, and is closed and reopened more than _x_ times (say thrice), then perhaps it might be worth locking. Even then, it should be done on a case-by-case basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as far as the &quot;Why are so many programmers&quot; arrogant question goes, it has only been closed and reopened once, and at least one of the high-rep users has said that he voted to close by accident. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone please tell me why this decision was taken? Both questions are perfectly valid  for programmers.se, and while such questions _should_ be closed, locked (and probably deleted) on SO, doing so here merely amounts to censorship.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;[3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/do-programmers-have-higher-tendency-to-be-atheists-than-non-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** OK, the unilateral closing of the atheist question has really pissed me off. If this happens a few more times, I see myself leaving the community for good. People were being respectful and the community at large had no problem with the question. It was closed once, and reopened once and had no close votes the last time I looked. That means that only 5 people felt strongly enough about it to vote to close it, and the rest were happy to let it be. This makes the &quot;community-run&quot; aspect of the website look like simply lip-service. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 2:** I should clarify that I have absolutely nothing against vote-based closing. I may or may not agree with the closers, but at least everyone (at least those who have enough rep) is on an equal footing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 3:** Jeff has been talking about removing the &quot;worst&quot; 15-20% of questions. If this happens, I'm going to ask for my account on p.se to be deleted in protest. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="817" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="285" RevisionGUID="16d1c125-ee38-4217-a9a4-b05c0767d2eb" CreationDate="2010-09-24T12:51:43.480" UserId="61" Comment="added 316 characters in body; added 101 characters in body" Text="In connection to [this][1], and the closing of [Why are so many programmers arrogant?][2]. The question was closed (unjustifiably, IMHO), then reopened by those of us who disagreed. The question has now been locked, preventing others from participating. I have a feeling this is going to happen to the [Do programmers have higher tendency to be atheists than non programmers?][3] as well (_**EDIT:** this has happened, as predicted_), which has been closed and reopened as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, even though both questions _could_ potentially lead to flamewars, I think it is a credit to this community that there was not a single answer (apart from one joke answer that was subsequently deleted) that was potentially inflammatory. I fail to see why such questions should be locked, as long as the community wants it open. If the question turns into a close-reopen war, and is closed and reopened more than _x_ times (say thrice), then perhaps it might be worth locking. Even then, it should be done on a case-by-case basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as far as the &quot;Why are so many programmers&quot; arrogant question goes, it has only been closed and reopened once, and at least one of the high-rep users has said that he voted to close by accident. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone please tell me why this decision was taken? Both questions are perfectly valid  for programmers.se, and while such questions _should_ be closed, locked (and probably deleted) on SO, doing so here merely amounts to censorship.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;[3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/do-programmers-have-higher-tendency-to-be-atheists-than-non-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** OK, the unilateral closing of the atheist question has really pissed me off. If this happens a few more times, I see myself leaving the community for good. People were being respectful and the community at large had no problem with the question. It was closed once, and reopened once and had no close votes the last time I looked. That means that only 5 people felt strongly enough about it to vote to close it, and the rest were happy to let it be. This makes the &quot;community-run&quot; aspect of the website look like simply lip-service. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 2:** I should clarify that I have absolutely nothing against vote-based closing. I may or may not agree with the closers, but at least everyone (at least those who have enough rep) is on an equal footing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 3:** Jeff has been talking about removing the &quot;worst&quot; 15-20% of questions. If this happens, I'm going to ask for my account on p.se to be deleted in protest. That's what voting and flagging are for. Remember, a closed question can be deleted if enough high-rep users cast delete votes. If I'd known that this site wasn't going to be strictly community-run, I would have approached participation _very_ differently. Why should I be active on meta, cast close/delete votes or view flagged posts if every so often, the community's verdict is going to be overridden unilaterally?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="818" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="311" RevisionGUID="38e65ff4-096c-470d-b15a-2ea1b8ce2900" CreationDate="2010-09-24T13:10:57.047" UserId="3" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="Throughout the beta, we need members from the site whose focus is to engage the community, both in community-building issues and site management. That's why we select a few members from each community to act as temporary, provisional Moderators. You can read about the program here: [**Moderators Pro Tempore**](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/moderator-pro-tempore/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am pleased to announce that these members have stepped up and generously volunteered their time to help us assure that each community’s issues are properly addressed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1] ![alt text][2] ![alt text][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We want to make this site a huge success, and these members are great examples of exactly the type of people we need to make this site succeed. Please welcome them for the hard work and time they contribute.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Did I overlook anyone? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Almost certainly. There are members who are actively involved and very deserving of recognition. My failure to account for everyone this early on is in *no way* a slight against them. Ideally, Moderators are elected by the community and that's why **you'll have your elections in several weeks.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of all, be respectful and understanding of the Moderators Pro Tem. Members of your community are volunteering their time and learning on the job. It’s a learning experience for everyone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/C9NA1.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RT7nj.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/eEaGu.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="819" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="285" RevisionGUID="cea67b80-4f48-4bff-a317-07c4e4ac821b" CreationDate="2010-09-24T13:12:45.543" UserId="666" Comment="Added a link to the question to prevent the next visitors from having to search the question.; edited tags" Text="In connection to [this][1], and the closing of [Why are so many programmers arrogant?][2]. The question was closed (unjustifiably, IMHO), then reopened by those of us who disagreed. The question has now been locked, preventing others from participating. I have a feeling this is going to happen to the [Do programmers have higher tendency to be atheists than non programmers?][3] as well (_**EDIT:** this has happened, as predicted_), which has been closed and reopened as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, even though both questions _could_ potentially lead to flamewars, I think it is a credit to this community that there was not a single answer (apart from one joke answer that was subsequently deleted) that was potentially inflammatory. I fail to see why such questions should be locked, as long as the community wants it open. If the question turns into a close-reopen war, and is closed and reopened more than _x_ times (say thrice), then perhaps it might be worth locking. Even then, it should be done on a case-by-case basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as far as the &quot;Why are so many programmers&quot; arrogant question goes, it has only been closed and reopened once, and at least one of the high-rep users has said that he voted to close by accident. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone please tell me why this decision was taken? Both questions are perfectly valid  for programmers.se, and while such questions _should_ be closed, locked (and probably deleted) on SO, doing so here merely amounts to censorship.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;[3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/do-programmers-have-higher-tendency-to-be-atheists-than-non-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** OK, the unilateral closing of the atheist question has really pissed me off. If this happens a few more times, I see myself leaving the community for good. People were being respectful and the community at large had no problem with the question. It was closed once, and reopened once and had no close votes the last time I looked. That means that only 5 people felt strongly enough about it to vote to close it, and the rest were happy to let it be. This makes the &quot;community-run&quot; aspect of the website look like simply lip-service. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 2:** I should clarify that I have absolutely nothing against vote-based closing. I may or may not agree with the closers, but at least everyone (at least those who have enough rep) is on an equal footing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 3:** Jeff has been talking about [removing the &quot;worst&quot; 15-20% of questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com). If this happens, I'm going to ask for my account on p.se to be deleted in protest. That's what voting and flagging are for. Remember, a closed question can be deleted if enough high-rep users cast delete votes. If I'd known that this site wasn't going to be strictly community-run, I would have approached participation _very_ differently. Why should I be active on meta, cast close/delete votes or view flagged posts if every so often, the community's verdict is going to be overridden unilaterally?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="820" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="285" RevisionGUID="cea67b80-4f48-4bff-a317-07c4e4ac821b" CreationDate="2010-09-24T13:12:45.543" UserId="666" Comment="Added a link to the question to prevent the next visitors from having to search the question.; edited tags" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="821" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2" RevisionGUID="1f4d0b23-dce4-4154-ae0a-e3b833d01e7c" CreationDate="2010-09-24T13:55:41.637" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-attributes|top-7|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="822" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3" RevisionGUID="b63af74e-f3ca-4a1c-8e46-2e0ed83fe5ea" CreationDate="2010-09-24T13:56:12.650" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-attributes|top-7|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="823" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4" RevisionGUID="b09d597f-3caa-4000-9ade-a1eb7d80219d" CreationDate="2010-09-24T13:56:33.587" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-attributes|top-7|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="824" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7" RevisionGUID="555cfb5c-6333-4f06-85de-7f8e58e5a0ef" CreationDate="2010-09-24T13:57:19.670" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags; edited tags" Text="|discussion|top-7|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="825" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5" RevisionGUID="ab470c76-48b8-46b5-a95e-6bd94b7f91a4" CreationDate="2010-09-24T13:58:07.407" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|top-7|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="826" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="237" RevisionGUID="b6288d54-f615-4726-ae0d-a3fcf543d714" CreationDate="2010-09-24T13:58:53.583" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|top-7|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="827" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="58" RevisionGUID="50fa1d8e-d487-444f-bf98-b4fa07084e84" CreationDate="2010-09-24T14:01:38.703" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|top-7|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="828" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="316" RevisionGUID="68a88a59-074f-4b6c-b6df-2287d7b5c40f" CreationDate="2010-09-24T19:00:22.933" UserId="235" Text="**Why bigown?** Nothing against him, but he wasn't even in the [poll](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5)... so I don't understand the logic or the procedure behind that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="829" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="317" RevisionGUID="b5836589-507f-4f82-ae33-decd786aaa71" CreationDate="2010-09-24T21:35:50.737" UserId="666" Text="[What is the best editor?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7167/what-is-the-best-editor) versus&#xD;&#xA;[What is your favorite editor/IDE?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/219/what-is-your-favorite-editor-ide)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm wondering if such questions result in the same answer, often the best is your favorite and vice-versa.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My guess s that we should see such questions as duplicates, but what do you think?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="830" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="317" RevisionGUID="b5836589-507f-4f82-ae33-decd786aaa71" CreationDate="2010-09-24T21:35:50.737" UserId="666" Text="What is the best? VS What is your favorite?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="831" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="317" RevisionGUID="b5836589-507f-4f82-ae33-decd786aaa71" CreationDate="2010-09-24T21:35:50.737" UserId="666" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="832" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="317" RevisionGUID="1fb41949-40f2-4695-8138-a1d7a33122cd" CreationDate="2010-09-24T22:12:53.280" UserId="666" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="[What is the best editor?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7167/what-is-the-best-editor) versus&#xD;&#xA;[What is your favorite editor/IDE?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/219/what-is-your-favorite-editor-ide)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm wondering if such questions result in the same answer, often the best is your favorite and vice-versa.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My guess is that we should see such questions as duplicates, but what do you think?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="833" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="318" RevisionGUID="0492055f-f30f-4c9a-a07e-28f3c9fdd7c6" CreationDate="2010-09-24T22:15:17.097" UserId="389" Text="Probably yes. I'm waiting to community decides on vote as I was oriented to don't interfere on what can be left to community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best you can do is vote to close if this is your interpretation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="834" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="315" RevisionGUID="98bf5a67-aa66-4949-af5c-4adbc85a07d3" CreationDate="2010-09-24T22:21:45.467" UserId="666" Comment="added 275 characters in body; added 3 characters in body" Text="**Is everyone OK with the tag being removed?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting TheLQ's comment on an answer at [Adding discipline to programmers.SE][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... If you look at it, all subjective questions are polls, ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As most questions could be tagged with [poll] and nobody speaks up it really seems like a redundant tag. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com/65440#65440&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Removing those now with the following reason**, I have a strong believe people would agree:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The poll tag is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * a meta tag as it doesn't tell something about the content,&#xD;&#xA; * redundant as it's an useless tag for the reasons described in this question and its comment." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="835" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="315" RevisionGUID="fa016ec8-8a66-4bc9-b46d-b68742836851" CreationDate="2010-09-24T22:38:29.870" UserId="666" Comment="added 11 characters in body" Text="**Is everyone OK with the tag being removed?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting TheLQ's comment on an answer at [Adding discipline to programmers.SE][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... If you look at it, all subjective questions are polls, ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As most questions could be tagged with [poll] and nobody speaks up it really seems like a redundant tag. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com/65440#65440&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Waiting for a decision or till too much time has passed**, I have a strong believe people would agree:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The poll tag is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * a meta tag as it doesn't tell something about the content,&#xD;&#xA; * redundant as it's an useless tag for the reasons described in this question and its comment." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="839" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="320" RevisionGUID="7a92a319-bd09-47dc-ac20-65aefd3d7ba6" CreationDate="2010-09-25T03:56:52.467" UserDisplayName="Roger Pate" Text="If the [poll] tag was useful, wouldn't this question be tagged with it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also disagree with its use on SO, along with other meta tags: they describe the *poster's intent or motivation* rather than the *question's content.*  You could say the poster's intent is the question type (of which &quot;poll&quot;, &quot;homework&quot;, etc. fit), but those still aren't about the *content* of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was a long time coming around to this opinion, though, and it's broken on this very site: [discussion], [feature-request], [bug], etc.  These categories are needed on a support site (with [discussion] merely because we mix it with support), while they don't seem to be on a Q&amp;A site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="840" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="310" RevisionGUID="331e0a9f-3b91-4670-80cc-e7c8dc059148" CreationDate="2010-09-25T04:20:21.907" UserId="66" Comment="deleted 135 characters in body" Text="No, simply because we aren't here for fixing code. There aren't that many examples of code being used, with most questions being text. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="841" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="321" RevisionGUID="ff442b99-b2c5-41d2-9ea0-6e552b5fc250" CreationDate="2010-09-25T13:18:45.483" UserId="3278" Text="I'm just looking for some guidelines and examples, with an explanation of why it would not be acceptable to leave it up to the community to vote close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I couldn't find any answers to this in the FAQ or here on Meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="842" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="321" RevisionGUID="ff442b99-b2c5-41d2-9ea0-6e552b5fc250" CreationDate="2010-09-25T13:18:45.483" UserId="3278" Text="When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="843" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="321" RevisionGUID="ff442b99-b2c5-41d2-9ea0-6e552b5fc250" CreationDate="2010-09-25T13:18:45.483" UserId="3278" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="844" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="322" RevisionGUID="fa26d99c-f65e-4a26-afea-192ab087263b" CreationDate="2010-09-25T15:17:29.687" UserId="47" Text="There are two scenarios:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. When there aren't that many users of a site who have &quot;vote to close&quot; rights (normally 3K+ rep, but only 500 rep on beta sites). When there are a largish number of users who can vote to close it becomes less necessary for the moderators to step in and close a question &quot;unilaterally&quot;. Personally, I might add my &quot;final&quot; vote when a post is on 3 close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. When a question is flagged by someone who doesn't have close rights. This is an indication that someone thinks that the post is bad enough to be removed as soon as possible. The more flags there are the more &quot;urgent&quot; it is that the post is closed sooner rather than later.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there are &quot;enough&quot; users with access to the &quot;tools&quot; menu (normally 10K+, 2k+ for beta sites) then these users will be able to see lists of questions with close votes and add their own. This reduces still further for the moderators to step in." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="845" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="323" RevisionGUID="c5be89d7-cab8-49cf-9aec-17cb95ae9f9c" CreationDate="2010-09-25T16:16:22.067" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="programmerslife.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="846" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="323" RevisionGUID="c5be89d7-cab8-49cf-9aec-17cb95ae9f9c" CreationDate="2010-09-25T16:16:22.067" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="847" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="322" RevisionGUID="8d322d25-ee5c-4f0b-a1c6-a93e39c17dc3" CreationDate="2010-09-25T17:09:23.333" UserId="47" Comment="clarification" Text="The way I see it is that there are two basic scenarios:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. When there aren't that many users of a site who have &quot;vote to close&quot; rights (normally 3K+ rep, but only 500 rep on beta sites). When there are a largish number of users who can vote to close it becomes less necessary for the moderators to step in and close a question &quot;unilaterally&quot;. Personally, I might add my &quot;final&quot; vote when a post is on 3 close votes, just to &quot;speed things along&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. When a question is flagged by someone who doesn't have close rights. This is an indication that someone thinks that the post is bad enough to be removed as soon as possible. The more flags there are the more &quot;urgent&quot; it is that the post is closed sooner rather than later.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there are &quot;enough&quot; users with access to the &quot;tools&quot; menu (normally 10K+, 2k+ for beta sites) then these users will be able to see lists of questions with close votes and add their own vote. This reduces still further for the moderators to step in." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="848" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="309" RevisionGUID="de82e071-fd58-4046-ae06-aa1482e46b5a" CreationDate="2010-09-25T19:58:12.060" UserId="666" Comment="added 98 characters in body; edited body" Text="Yes, there should be syntax highlighting for any code-related posts...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll use the rest of this answer as a CW sandbox... (Haven't fount the meta.SO counterpart yet)  &#xD;&#xA;Feel free to improve examples with more syntax, add other languages or correct mistakes, etc.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**C++**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    #include &lt;iostream&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    #include &quot;SyntaxHighlightingTest.h&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    int main(int argc, const char * argv[])&#xD;&#xA;    {&#xD;&#xA;        SyntaxHighlightingTest * sht = new SyntaxHighlightingTest();&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        cout &lt;&lt; sht-&gt;useString(&quot;Syntax Highlighting Test&quot;) &lt;&lt; endl;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        delete sht;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        return 0;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**C#**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    class TestSyntaxHighlighting&#xD;&#xA;    {&#xD;&#xA;        static void Main(string[] args)&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;            // Display a string.&#xD;&#xA;            System.Console.WriteLine(&quot;Syntax Highlighting Test&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**F#**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    let getTriple m n =&#xD;&#xA;        let a = 2 * m * n&#xD;&#xA;        let b = m * m - n * n&#xD;&#xA;        let c = m * m + n * n&#xD;&#xA;        a, b, c&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**LISP**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    (defun factorial (n)&#xD;&#xA;        (if (= n 1)&#xD;&#xA;            1&#xD;&#xA;            (* n (factorial (- n 1)))))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**PHP**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;?php&#xD;&#xA;        // Display a string.&#xD;&#xA;        die(&quot;Syntax Highlighting Test&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;    ?&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="849" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="324" RevisionGUID="ed9ada49-ace4-4c1a-a1f4-14ba20ab4f5d" CreationDate="2010-09-25T20:31:19.107" UserId="1865" Text="It seems to me the trend in the on/off topic question really comes down to &quot;What's subjective but not subjective to the point of pointless and/or uninteresting.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So far it seems that we're making our way trying to find good vs. bad questions and I think that's a pretty good approach. The downside is that without a definition, I think we leave ourselves open to &quot;if asking about lighting for programmers was good, then why was asking about shoes for programmers bad?&quot; type questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, should/how do we capture this in the FAQ or elsewhere? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="850" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="324" RevisionGUID="ed9ada49-ace4-4c1a-a1f4-14ba20ab4f5d" CreationDate="2010-09-25T20:31:19.107" UserId="1865" Text="Do we need a definition of subjective?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="851" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="324" RevisionGUID="ed9ada49-ace4-4c1a-a1f4-14ba20ab4f5d" CreationDate="2010-09-25T20:31:19.107" UserId="1865" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="854" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="325" RevisionGUID="23305364-1320-481c-bf8a-af7333dd56fb" CreationDate="2010-09-25T22:00:49.123" UserId="389" Text="Certain we need. This is a work in progress and will be a hard work. It seems pretty subjective say what is subjective :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In Beta phase some undefined is normal. We're discussing here and on meta.stackoverflow.com. Your contributions are welcome." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="855" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="326" RevisionGUID="f68f776c-e26b-46e2-aba8-316e6e7430a6" CreationDate="2010-09-25T22:24:25.697" UserId="47" Text="Well, to take your example of lighting vs shoes, here's my take:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lighting is OK because it affects the environment we program in, and while there will be some discussion over the details in general there is a broadly &quot;right&quot; set of answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shoes is not OK because while bad shoes can cause problems, they don't cause problems that are unique to &lt;strike&gt;programmers&lt;/strike&gt; developers. Also the answer is &quot;buy a new pair of shoes&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So does the question raise an issue that's unique to, or at least has a direct impact on, software development? If so then it's OK to be asked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="856" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="326" RevisionGUID="f62d3435-21e9-4bbd-8985-f684b1b7b165" CreationDate="2010-09-25T22:50:24.987" UserId="47" Comment="clarification" Text="Well, to take your example of lighting vs shoes, here's my take:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lighting is OK because it affects the environment we program in, and while there will be some discussion over the details in general there is a broadly &quot;right&quot; set of answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shoes is not OK because while bad shoes can cause problems, they don't cause problems that are unique to &lt;strike&gt;programmers&lt;/strike&gt; developers. Also the answer is &quot;buy a new pair of shoes&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So does the question raise an issue that's unique to, or affects in a unique way, software development? If so then it's OK to be asked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="857" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="325" RevisionGUID="2fe0f60d-b485-4d34-9c26-037ca25dd12a" CreationDate="2010-09-25T23:04:21.577" UserId="389" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="Certainly we need. This is a work in progress and will be a hard work. It seems pretty subjective say what is subjective :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In Beta phase some undefined is normal. We're discussing here and on meta.stackoverflow.com. Your contributions are welcome." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="859" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="327" RevisionGUID="3d532911-c04c-488a-8575-b0a02cc174a6" CreationDate="2010-09-26T01:27:29.793" UserId="666" Text="As such questions get closed, we see discussions like these arise on the meta, reopen votes.  &#xD;&#xA;And exceptionally this could start over again if the question does get opened again...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So yes, we certainly need a simple definition to understand which at the same time limits clarity discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As bigown stated in his own answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It seems pretty subjective say what is subjective :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it will take some time for a perfect simple understandable definition to form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of this subjectivity can be seen in my comment on ChrisF his answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, but lightning isn't unique to them either...  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; A lawyer typing a text document at day or at night will have the exact same light issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess a large share of people not agreeing over things is what slows this discussion down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not into statistics, but it might even be that there are enough people that do want these questions  &#xD;&#xA;thus try their best to beautify them with subjective comments. This made me think...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If no good definition can be derived in a reasonable time. why not allow/ban them all at once?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="860" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="328" RevisionGUID="bdcde1e9-9583-412f-820d-b80ee7ca2a10" CreationDate="2010-09-26T01:54:10.200" UserId="63" Text="No, you can't have a definition for subjective. Because it's subjective. That's what troubled SO for so long, and eventually lead to the banishment of the &lt;kbd&gt;subjective&lt;/kbd&gt; tag - **no one could agree on what it *meant*.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Time** isn't going to fix this. ***Discussion*** isn't going to fix this. Not in any reasonable time-frame at least - or it would already have been settled on SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If &quot;subjectiveness&quot; is the criteria by which questions are judged, then everyone's just going to argue that *their* favorites are on the low end of the scale...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...But the current arguments aren't really about &quot;question subjectiveness&quot; anyway. Some of the commonly-cited &quot;good&quot; questions are *extremely* subjective. The problem is that the obvious rules for separating on- and off-topic questions (strictly *programming* related, no GTKY/write whatever you want) exclude some rather popular questions - so instead, you get these arguments in favor of more (*ahem*) **subjective criteria**: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;answerability&quot;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;utility&quot;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;seriousness/professionalism&quot;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;potential for long-term benefit to humanity&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and those are at least as difficult to nail down as &quot;subjective&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So to answer your second question: forget it. You're not gonna capture this in the FAQ in any useful fashion. I say we just admit this right at the start, and codify it thusly:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about things programmers care about. **Good** ones.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do you know if your question is good enough for Programmers.SE? You don't. Question &quot;goodness&quot; is hard to define, and so we're not gonna try. But **we know it when we see it**, and if we *don't* see it, *you're outa here!*   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have fun...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="861" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="326" RevisionGUID="6887126c-a900-4c25-ba01-35519ae57958" CreationDate="2010-09-26T17:18:32.717" UserId="47" Comment="clarification" Text="Well, to take your example of lighting vs shoes, here's my take:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lighting is OK because it affects the environment we program in, and while there will be some discussion over the details in general there is a broadly &quot;right&quot; set of answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shoes is not OK because while bad shoes can cause problems, they don't cause problems that are specific to &lt;strike&gt;programmers&lt;/strike&gt; developers. Also the answer is &quot;buy a new pair of shoes&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So does the question raise an issue that's specific to, or affects in a specific way, software development? If so then it's OK to be asked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="862" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="292" RevisionGUID="236cf4e8-db54-4988-a09e-c6ce7889b13f" CreationDate="2010-09-26T17:42:33.187" UserId="6" Comment="Added #5" Text="I propose the following criteria by which to judge such questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;1. Is it interesting to programmers in general? *&#xD;&#xA;2. Would answers be significantly different without &quot;for programmers&quot; added?&#xD;&#xA;3. Does the addition of &quot;for programmers&quot; seem like an afterthought?&#xD;&#xA;4. Will the question produce useful and/or interesting discussion?&#xD;&#xA;5. **Edit, from comments: Does this question make the internet better?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see two major alternatives to dealing with pickle questions: a hard and fast rule (&quot;ban 'em all&quot;, &quot;accept 'em all&quot;), or a guideline/moderation approach, where we have a general idea to guide what questions are truly programming related and which are pickles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm proposing that second approach, using the above criteria, along with the common sense and good judgement of the people moderating and/or voting.  The advantage of this approach is increased granularity (the ability to save good questions while still tossing the bad).  The disadvantage is the increased subjectivity- a universal rule on these questions would be easier to enforce.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I think we should put some faith in the community- a lot of the questions we're seeing now are the result of unclear directions.  If we have a set of criteria (such as those I propose) posted in the FAQ, I expect we'll see a lot fewer people asking about the best type of wood for a programmer to build their porch out of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Borrowed from Bigown's answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="863" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="329" RevisionGUID="ad84ebbd-ba59-4002-8816-f8a79883317c" CreationDate="2010-09-27T10:01:01.930" UserId="18" Text="I wounder if the Tumbleweed badge is working here on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had a question with low views, no comments and no answer in 12 days, and I didn't get a Tubmleweed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it working or is the requirements very hard? Maybe it's inactivated?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="864" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="329" RevisionGUID="ad84ebbd-ba59-4002-8816-f8a79883317c" CreationDate="2010-09-27T10:01:01.930" UserId="18" Text="Is the Tumbleweed badge working?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="865" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="329" RevisionGUID="ad84ebbd-ba59-4002-8816-f8a79883317c" CreationDate="2010-09-27T10:01:01.930" UserId="18" Text="|support|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="866" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="156" RevisionGUID="5498d5d2-917e-45dc-994c-a036922fc5ec" CreationDate="2010-09-27T10:41:37.223" UserId="666" Comment="added 154 characters in body" Text="Are all the current badges sufficient for the community or are there badges that don't fit the community?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Is the Tumbleweed badge working?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/329/is-the-tumbleweed-badge-working" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="868" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="331" RevisionGUID="1fdf17d1-d67b-45fa-beea-5b29c13d6a72" CreationDate="2010-09-27T11:40:49.677" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="There are two issues at play:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [The text for the Tumbleweed badge on Programmers.SE is out of date](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65803/tumbleweed-text-on-programmers-se-is-out-of-date). It should read:&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Asked a question with no votes, no answers, no comments, and low views for a week&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. None of your questions meet the requirements for the badge, given the correct definition. If you're interested about the viewcount requirement, it's [10-15](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/32376/tumbleweed-how-many-views-is-low)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="870" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="331" RevisionGUID="4c8ecea1-58d5-4107-a249-eb9f8a629bad" CreationDate="2010-09-27T14:22:49.033" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="There are two issues at play:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [The text for the Tumbleweed badge on Programmers.SE is out of date](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65803/tumbleweed-text-on-programmers-se-is-out-of-date). It should read:&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Asked a question with no votes, no answers, no comments, and low views for a week&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. None of your questions meet the requirements for the badge, given the correct definition. If you're curious about the viewcount requirement, it's [10-15](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/32376/tumbleweed-how-many-views-is-low)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="871" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="332" RevisionGUID="36929c7d-9f05-4be3-b9de-9d77e62972dc" CreationDate="2010-09-27T14:35:35.200" UserId="2344" Text="Since they're going to accumulate much the same answers, they're effectively dupes.  Close them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I much prefer &quot;Favorite&quot; questions to &quot;Best&quot; questions, myself, since they're less likely to lead to arguments.  If somebody claims I should obviously use emacs as my primary editor, that's an indictment of my competence, and hence inflammatory.  If somebody claims they really like emacs, that's a difference in taste.  Therefore, I'd be tempted to flag the &quot;Best&quot; question as the dupe if there's a real choice." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="872" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="333" RevisionGUID="71c41715-c0b0-4e03-8efe-09d59af3ee5b" CreationDate="2010-09-27T16:33:54.933" UserId="6" Text="The [consensus](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki) seems to be that community wiki is useless here, and we've been pointing this out in various question comment threads.  The problem is that new user keep coming in with the old expectations of how CW should work, and marking their questions CW just because they're subjective.  I see a few options for dealing with this that I'll post in separate answers- of course, post your own if you can think of a better solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we get a clear consensus, the mods, in their capacity of liaisons, can take it to SOIS." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="873" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="333" RevisionGUID="71c41715-c0b0-4e03-8efe-09d59af3ee5b" CreationDate="2010-09-27T16:33:54.933" UserId="6" Text="What to do with Community Wiki?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="874" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="333" RevisionGUID="71c41715-c0b0-4e03-8efe-09d59af3ee5b" CreationDate="2010-09-27T16:33:54.933" UserId="6" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="875" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="334" RevisionGUID="e16c1c38-7bf2-4313-aa4f-84a1a818e711" CreationDate="2010-09-27T16:36:29.470" UserId="6" Text="## Remove the Community Wiki feature entirely&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would eliminate the issue.  Based on the [purpose-of-community-wiki](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki) thread, it looks like there's no need for it anyway.  The only problem would be that we'd be out of luck if there's some unforeseen category of question that is appropriate for here and needs to be CW in the future." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="876" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="335" RevisionGUID="5b50dddb-cb68-47e1-aec2-5243c95e2b28" CreationDate="2010-09-27T16:42:42.047" UserId="6" Text="## Allow Mods and/or 10k (2k for beta) users to De-CW a question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would solve our problem without losing the CW feature.  However, it's require a more active effort on the part of the mods and the top users.  Further, it's been discussed [on meta.SO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/6821/ability-to-undo-the-community-wiki) to, as far as I can tell, no effect." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="877" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="336" RevisionGUID="84887f59-f718-4500-8e2e-5f961e67786d" CreationDate="2010-09-27T16:44:52.777" UserId="6" Text="##Add a warning when marking anything CW&#xD;&#xA;Saying something like &quot;This is P.SE, read the FAQ, you probably don't want to do that.&quot;  This would at least help a bit with new users being misinformed, and it probably the easiest technical fix.  Then again, only a certain number will actually read it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="878" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="337" RevisionGUID="f512d071-f0f8-4f55-8198-983ddffe4afd" CreationDate="2010-09-27T17:10:01.560" UserId="63" Text="##Do *nothing*&#xD;&#xA;As the community matures, expectations of how CW should work on sites like SO will become less relevant, and the problem will become less common." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="879" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="338" RevisionGUID="ab41b416-4167-4ba5-a06f-debd56e93d27" CreationDate="2010-09-27T17:15:11.343" UserId="666" Text="## Remove CW conversions at 30 answers&#xD;&#xA;See [the original question][1] which has sufficient votes but should be in this concensus. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the original author:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Since most questions here can have an unlimited number of answers,  &#xD;&#xA;I think the automatic conversion to CW when a question receives 30 answers should be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145/remove-cw-conversion-at-30-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="880" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="15" RevisionGUID="d47b1d1b-e5a6-47f0-9c22-1d8acb9c80fc" CreationDate="2010-09-27T18:40:09.783" UserId="11" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="idlecoder.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="888" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="341" RevisionGUID="d5e6fe0f-d313-4361-a73b-f5e1a7ef6713" CreationDate="2010-09-28T08:52:51.523" UserId="100" Text="&lt;h2&gt;Rename Community Wiki to Collaborative Question (or similar)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By renaming the feature we clarify it's exact purpose, and can also add a warnings and remove auto CW conversion. Most questions here will not need to be collaborative. But a few might benefit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="889" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="342" RevisionGUID="e71a4add-0fe0-47fb-93c9-f08faf8153c1" CreationDate="2010-09-28T09:59:40.077" UserId="47" Text="Just to put a spanner in the works:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Best&quot; questions can often be rewritten to ask &quot;which X meets these criteria&quot; and then list the criteria as the author often includes a couple of features they want/need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Favourite&quot; questions are purely subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="890" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="343" RevisionGUID="066e7cd3-70c8-45e5-b3ba-ee53831909e7" CreationDate="2010-09-28T10:36:08.320" UserId="11" Text="I could consider something the best in the category, but something else could still be my favorite for a number of reasons. So no, they are not the same. But the overlap is usually too huge to allow both the questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="891" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="344" RevisionGUID="925718a2-e75e-47dc-9104-caafb84cc291" CreationDate="2010-09-28T15:40:34.077" UserId="866" Text="&quot;Best&quot; questions are inherently bad - there is seldom a single best as most choices are a compromise of some sort so inevitably you're going to get answers that tend towards favourites (or just stuff you use). Its hard to generalise objective criteria for best (although possibly if you list a lot of constraints it will refine the question to the point where you could get a concensus). Worse things change - best today may not be best tomorrow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Favourite&quot; is much more honest question in that - as suggested - its obviously at least somewhat subjective so you know where you are to start - when can have a favourite that is not necessarily the best in some respect you can explain that and its not necessarily flamebait in the way that an assertion that something is best is (c.f. is an iPhone better than Android better than WP7 better than my MiL's ancient Nokia? When the answer is &quot;it depends&quot; - given that all she ever wants to do is make phone calls reliably...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All that aside, they're substantially looking for the same thing - which is suggestions and recommendations so yes they are, in effect, duplicated (or would be if the question were asked right...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="892" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="345" RevisionGUID="42478e47-4986-479d-aee4-032848c805f3" CreationDate="2010-09-28T16:11:37.270" UserId="2344" Text="The big problem with &quot;subjective and argumentative&quot; is that questions should be subjective.  It says so in the FAQ.  If they were objective, we'd want them on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think &quot;flamebait&quot; is a good close reason, since it'll generate flame wars in the comments field and in meta.  &quot;Argumentative&quot; sounds a lot better to me." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="893" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="346" RevisionGUID="096bfb2a-2cf4-47c4-b89c-ad6ac53cbbd3" CreationDate="2010-09-28T16:19:42.937" UserId="712" Text="I recently posted [this question][1] to get the opinions of other programmers. To me there really isn't a definite answer so wouldn't that make it an appropriate question for this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7887/what-are-your-thoughts-on-this-constructor-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="894" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="346" RevisionGUID="096bfb2a-2cf4-47c4-b89c-ad6ac53cbbd3" CreationDate="2010-09-28T16:19:42.937" UserId="712" Text="Am I completely wrong in thinking this question was subjective?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="895" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="346" RevisionGUID="096bfb2a-2cf4-47c4-b89c-ad6ac53cbbd3" CreationDate="2010-09-28T16:19:42.937" UserId="712" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="898" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="347" RevisionGUID="9cedb7b2-e52d-49d4-afcd-66175562dd8e" CreationDate="2010-09-28T17:05:49.813" UserId="63" Text="You're kinda straddling the line between SO-appropriate and P.SE appropriate...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##How to ask for a code review&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[There's nothing wrong with asking SO for feedback on some code][1], *provided you've put some effort into it*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###*Bad*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Is there anything wrong with this code?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ???&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &lt;massive code dump&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###*Good*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Are there problems with passing a callback to a constructor to allow for lazy initialization?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Description of technique used in code&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     Brief code snippet(s) illustrating only relevant techniques&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've managed to get about half-way on this: you're asking for feedback on the practicality of a specific technique, but rather than describing the technique and your motivations for using it, you've just dumped the code with a few hints as to what it does. Your question starts out sounding like it might be P.SE-appropriate (&quot;what would you think upon seeing this signature?&quot;) but then delves into meatier implementation details (more of a SO thing). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, your title is unacceptably vague.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Decide what you want the answers to look like. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're questioning the readability/maintainability of the code (whether the implementation, or the client code) then ask about *that* - P.SE is a reasonable location. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're concerned that the implementation itself fails in some way (error handling, efficiency, unforeseen pitfalls involving the callback referencing disposed data) then be clear about why and how you're using it, and ask on SO. Note that you'll probably get comments on readability/maintainability as well, 'cause SO users are helpful like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/1957/should-so-allow-give-me-some-feedback-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="899" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="323" RevisionGUID="2757caa1-943a-4a56-84b3-9b7ed62ed5ce" CreationDate="2010-09-28T20:22:14.267" UserId="3917" Comment="heading-ify" Text="programmerslife.com&#xD;&#xA;-------------------" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="900" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="348" RevisionGUID="b4f8727c-02b5-4f99-b8e4-0689f635331c" CreationDate="2010-09-29T05:01:20.910" UserId="825" Text="I've wondered about all these new sites for a while; Is it just someone who paid to use Stack Exchange, or is it just a new addition to a wholly owned collection?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="901" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="348" RevisionGUID="b4f8727c-02b5-4f99-b8e4-0689f635331c" CreationDate="2010-09-29T05:01:20.910" UserId="825" Text="Is this site owned by the same people who own Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="902" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="348" RevisionGUID="b4f8727c-02b5-4f99-b8e4-0689f635331c" CreationDate="2010-09-29T05:01:20.910" UserId="825" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="903" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="349" RevisionGUID="10592f11-1c14-4da1-8881-c16c318166f0" CreationDate="2010-09-29T08:21:40.647" UserId="47" Text="It is brought to you by the same team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See http://stackexchange.com and http://area51.stackexchange.com for more information." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="904" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="350" RevisionGUID="3417470d-d192-4ee0-8219-51e191060b71" CreationDate="2010-09-29T11:02:07.543" UserId="37" Text="Just a quick note here on meta to let everyone know we will be enforcing [these six subjective question guidelines][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Great subjective questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers. &#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references. &#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just the title of each guideline; there's [more detail about each guideline, with examples][1] on the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fair warning, any questions on programmers.se that do not meet a reasonable number of these guidelines (let's say roughly 4 out of 6) *will be closed... aggressively*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="905" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="350" RevisionGUID="3417470d-d192-4ee0-8219-51e191060b71" CreationDate="2010-09-29T11:02:07.543" UserId="37" Text="The Six Subjective Question Guidelines -- Enforcement Notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="906" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="350" RevisionGUID="3417470d-d192-4ee0-8219-51e191060b71" CreationDate="2010-09-29T11:02:07.543" UserId="37" Text="|discussion|subjective|six-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="907" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="350" RevisionGUID="fc206447-3117-42d8-a943-acea5ac14909" CreationDate="2010-09-29T11:02:17.543" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|subjective|six-questions|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="908" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="122" RevisionGUID="2e5c213e-e109-45f9-a362-30c44a139f21" CreationDate="2010-09-29T11:05:17.053" UserId="37" Comment="added 202 characters in body" Text="Yes they should be allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They'll automatically get converted to wiki questions after 30 answers, and they will get there IMMEDIATELY so no need to worry about serious rep farming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Longer term the mods may want to close and lock them, as a &quot;favorite programming joke&quot; question with 1,000 answers isn't really helping anyone, is it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;edit:  &#xD;&#xA;[The Six Subjective Question guidelines -- enforcement notice][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="909" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="351" RevisionGUID="9b50c5dc-c0a7-4c97-b115-31ba1857eb85" CreationDate="2010-09-29T14:07:01.790" UserId="6" Text="Will these rules be applied to existing questions, or just to new ones?  Specifically with regards to old, popular questions ([Favorite Joke](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35/whats-your-favorite-programming-joke),[What music do you code to](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/344/what-music-do-you-code-to), or [Favorite Cartoon](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon))?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Ok, a few of these were addressed [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable), but what about existing question in general that don't meet the new guidelines?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="910" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="352" RevisionGUID="5cb9ceb2-d879-4e3c-a539-e7fd28457282" CreationDate="2010-09-29T14:18:12.903" UserId="1525" Text="ChrisF answered this, but I simply wish to expand on it a bit more than would be suitable as a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was started as a project by [Jeff Atwood][1] , which he tried to move into different marketable directions. The Stack Exchange group of sites uses the same engine developed on SO, and has been growing into the network of sites you now see. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is likely in it's late infancy, as we're seeing sites exit their beta phases into full fledged websites. The creation of area 51 is a place where new sites can be 'born' into the network. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The SE software is open-source, so you will find many sites outside of this network using the exact same engine, even some nock-off's that forked the open source project and are trying to make money by selling it as their own...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you didn't get to it from the stack exchange site, it's not part of the network. If you link together your account with another SE site, it should notify you they are connected under &quot;accounts&quot; on your profile, because it centralizes the oAuth part, which is really neat because we can do cross-site notification stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/02/about-me.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="911" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="352" RevisionGUID="d2852877-7e14-40b7-a3da-a68d601a1833" CreationDate="2010-09-29T16:55:21.480" UserId="1525" Comment="deleted 232 characters in body" Text="ChrisF answered this, but I simply wish to expand on it a bit more than would be suitable as a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was started as a project by [Jeff Atwood][1] , which he tried to move into different marketable directions. The Stack Exchange group of sites uses the same engine developed on SO, and has been growing into the network of sites you now see. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is likely in it's late infancy, as we're seeing sites exit their beta phases into full fledged websites. The creation of area 51 is a place where new sites can be 'born' into the network. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you didn't get to it from the stack exchange site, it's not part of the network. If you link together your account with another SE site, it should notify you they are connected under &quot;accounts&quot; on your profile, because it centralizes the oAuth part, which is really neat because we can do cross-site notification stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/02/about-me.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="912" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="353" RevisionGUID="ba3ca0e8-9061-4a4b-abc4-5b73d49de98d" CreationDate="2010-09-29T17:51:44.437" UserId="2344" Text="It's part of the third phase of the process that produced Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky had an idea for a site called Stack Overflow, and implemented it.  They then added a few other sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, they introduced Stack Exchange (now often called SE 1.0), where people could pay for Stack Overflow-type sites.  Apparently, quite a few people did, and some sites (like Math Overflow) were highly successful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Third, they dropped the SE 1.0 model and went to a new idea for Stack Exchange.  In this, people would make proposals in a new site called Area 51, and if they seemed to have enough support they'd make a real site of it.  This is one of those.  No money changes hands, but since the SO team makes money off SO and the other sites (presumably through advertising), they hope to do the same here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(In addition, some other people liked the SO idea, and independently created sites much like SO, but that's not quite relevant here.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, this is indeed owned and run by Jeff and Joel et al.  Currently, it's in public beta, which means they're seeing how it works out before committing to it for real.  They, not us, make the decision as to when it goes truly live or is just dumped as a failed site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be specific, Programmers is a site that's being closely watched.  People on Meta Stack Overflow are concerned that it isn't turning out well, and you can go there if you want to read about it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="913" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="354" RevisionGUID="6a354f29-9e46-4353-8358-db585003b2af" CreationDate="2010-09-29T19:10:54.460" UserId="1973" Text="This was what I thought was my first [legit][1] question (being the man whose cactus is still dying for lack of an awesomer programmering plant being found) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm kind of under the impression that I have absolutely no business on this website at all.  Unlike SO where I can ask good questions and routinely give crap answers.  Here I can't figure out what to ask at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that the proper pronunciation of Delphi is about the perfect programmers.stackexchange.com question - for Delphi programmers, which I know there to be quite a few good ones (Mason Wheeler, Gamecat, not me) because they answer my questions on SO a lot.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It sucks to live in the ignominy of having questions closed.  Why would a guy ask questions just to have them closed, just to be funny - sometimes (but that should be ok within limits)... But if he's not why treat him like a child? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's kind of hard not to take it as an insult and a cue that 'you don't belong in programmer land'.  This ain't freaking usenet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8241/how-to-pronounce-delphi-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="914" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="355" RevisionGUID="aacd38f4-c5aa-419d-8701-f608d9ecc7ab" CreationDate="2010-09-29T19:27:59.950" UserId="1973" Text="The way I see it, there's no real reason to close anything that's not offensive on this website.  People should utilize the [stuff-i-like] and [stuff-i-dont-like] tags to filter for stuff they consider &quot;Lounge&quot; material. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why can't this be a, &quot;as a programmer, how do you feel about this&quot; kind of a site?** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm really sick of seeing the same questions re-appear here that were already done to death on the original trilogy.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd get the most use out of people discussing subtleties, there are a lot of people on this site who have very good ideas who would I'd never find otherwise.  At work, I can't go into a chat room and ask these kinds of questions and I'll get 99% worse answers in a chat room.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a very special kind of website and I feel people are jumping to conclusions before considering the merits of questions!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've participated on most of the SO websites since their inception, being much more of a learner than a teacher.  If my teachers continually told me not to ask any questions... well I'd be more of a bum than I am now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="915" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="355" RevisionGUID="aacd38f4-c5aa-419d-8701-f608d9ecc7ab" CreationDate="2010-09-29T19:27:59.950" UserId="1973" Text="Remove the options to close questions on this site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="916" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="355" RevisionGUID="aacd38f4-c5aa-419d-8701-f608d9ecc7ab" CreationDate="2010-09-29T19:27:59.950" UserId="1973" Text="|feature-request|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="917" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="356" RevisionGUID="717bc83e-2aee-4280-924f-28d0e305d656" CreationDate="2010-09-29T19:37:25.063" UserId="666" Text="It will not work out right...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are going to allow such questions, they will **result in useless bloat** on the site.  &#xD;&#xA;Not everyone wants to block a big set of tags to get the behavior of the site back to the way it is now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you **define a border** instead and close based on that border, the site will have useful questions.  &#xD;&#xA;This allows people to spent their tags on things they are interested in... " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="922" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="350" RevisionGUID="7ee3bc62-a44c-4a2c-a8c8-6f00710f8ea7" CreationDate="2010-09-29T21:11:33.860" UserId="37" Comment="added 336 characters in body; edited tags" Text="Just a quick note here on meta to let everyone know we will be enforcing [these six subjective question guidelines][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Great subjective questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers. &#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references. &#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just the title of each guideline; there's [more detail about each guideline, with examples][1] on the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fair warning, any questions on programmers.se that do not meet a reasonable number of these guidelines (let's say roughly 4 out of 6) *will be closed... aggressively*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;edit: the subjective/argumentative close reason has been changed to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Not constructive&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not meet enough of our &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;six guidelines for constructive subjective questions&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... now let the closings begin, *for great justice*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="923" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="350" RevisionGUID="7ee3bc62-a44c-4a2c-a8c8-6f00710f8ea7" CreationDate="2010-09-29T21:11:33.860" UserId="37" Comment="added 336 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|featured|subjective|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="927" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="315" RevisionGUID="7a65137d-876b-40a6-a92e-70e003e55929" CreationDate="2010-09-29T23:23:00.017" UserId="666" Comment="added 156 characters in body" Text="**Is everyone OK with the tag being removed?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting TheLQ's comment on an answer at [Adding discipline to programmers.SE][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... If you look at it, all subjective questions are polls, ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As most questions could be tagged with [poll] and nobody speaks up it really seems like a redundant tag. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com/65440#65440&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a strong believe people would agree:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The poll tag is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * a meta tag as it doesn't tell something about the content,&#xD;&#xA; * redundant as it's an useless tag for the reasons described in this question and its comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**As of now, it's gone...**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those that disagree should start a serious meta question with a reason for such tags to exist.  &#xD;&#xA;After waiting long enough, a lot of people have agreed and nobody has disagreed..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="928" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="315" RevisionGUID="0a152ff6-97a3-436e-a720-da0dc4737719" CreationDate="2010-09-29T23:40:10.777" UserId="666" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="**Is everyone OK with the tag being removed?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting TheLQ's comment on an answer at [Adding discipline to programmers.SE][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... If you look at it, all subjective questions are polls, ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As most questions could be tagged with [poll] and nobody speaks up it really seems like a redundant tag. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com/65440#65440&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a strong believe people would agree:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The poll tag is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * a meta tag as it doesn't tell something about the content,&#xD;&#xA; * redundant as it's an useless tag for the reasons described in this question and its comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**As of now, it's gone...**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those that disagree should start a serious meta question with a reason for such tags to exist.  &#xD;&#xA;After waiting some days, a lot of people have agreed and nobody has disagreed..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="929" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="350" RevisionGUID="85317b5f-2be0-49e9-b91a-f4c2657bedcb" CreationDate="2010-09-29T23:45:26.647" UserId="37" Comment="added 107 characters in body" Text="Just a quick note here on meta to let everyone know we will be enforcing [these six subjective question guidelines][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Great subjective questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers. &#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references. &#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just the title of each guideline; there's [more detail about each guideline, with examples][1] on the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fair warning, any questions on programmers.se that do not meet a reasonable number of these guidelines (let's say roughly 4 out of 6) *will be closed... aggressively*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;edit: the subjective/argumentative close reason has been changed to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Not constructive&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not meet enough of our &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;six guidelines for constructive subjective questions&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and [the official faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) has been updated to reflect the above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... now let the closings begin, *for great justice*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="930" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="359" RevisionGUID="9fbe3dd5-2db6-4b79-a3d0-4c17e9de9f73" CreationDate="2010-09-30T02:20:11.653" UserId="1865" Text="Looks like the almighty ubermods have answered this...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="931" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="360" RevisionGUID="21a28fb5-e47c-4df1-ad6e-c44ac8bcd519" CreationDate="2010-09-30T02:21:15.210" UserId="1973" Text="I've asked 3 questions so far&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [The programming plant one][1] &#xD;&#xA; 2. [The pronunciation of Delphi one][2]&#xD;&#xA; 3. [The Unnecessary Code One][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and they've all been scoffed at or given joke answers.  I think I've been improving with each iteration.  I've read the FAQ.  I've been on SO and every other site for longer than you, I'd think I'd understand the game by now.  I was under the impression that the stupid stuff I posted on SO that got closed within one hour would at least last a day on this site.  But it doesn't and ya'll are playing popularity control because this site seems to be growing wildly out of proportion to it's actual usefulness.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm in it for myself - not to improve the internet.  My cactus dies, I ask a programmer what kind of a plant they think is a cool plant a programmer might have, the kind of plant they might sell to a programmer on ThinkGeek if ThinkGeek sold plants.  Everyone in the office says Del Fee, everyone in America Says Del Fi, everyone in the rest of the world says Del Fee.  I think this is interesting, so I ask about it on this website.  I write some dumb code, I think it is funny so I want to see what other dumb code people write - at least as good a question as [least useful comment][4]. And asked in the right place, made it community wiki - and people have the discourtesy to try to close it.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. I don't give a hoot about &quot;[Jeff's guidelines][5]&quot;. I'm not sure what he's thinking if he wants to micromanage the kinds of questions we can ask on a community driven site.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6055/awesomest-programming-plant-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8384/whats-your-best-unnecessary-code&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8384/whats-your-best-unnecessary-code&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/143429/whats-the-least-useful-comment-youve-ever-seen&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="932" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="360" RevisionGUID="21a28fb5-e47c-4df1-ad6e-c44ac8bcd519" CreationDate="2010-09-30T02:21:15.210" UserId="1973" Text="Do I totally not understand the point of Programmers.Stackoverflow.Com?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="933" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="360" RevisionGUID="21a28fb5-e47c-4df1-ad6e-c44ac8bcd519" CreationDate="2010-09-30T02:21:15.210" UserId="1973" Text="|discussion|rant|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="934" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="361" RevisionGUID="5e2f3a3d-c3ec-437e-8083-bbec56b59f1a" CreationDate="2010-09-30T03:29:21.153" UserId="63" Text="&gt; I've been on SO and every other site for longer than you, I'd think I'd understand the game by now. I was under the impression that the stupid stuff I posted on SO that got closed within one hour would at least last a day on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well... You *did* understand the point. For about a week. Then it all started to fall apart. Call it conflicting visions, or tragedy of the commons, or whatever else you want... 'Fact is, a number of folks don't want this site to be a free-for-all or the &quot;anti-SO&quot; or anything of the sort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't quite know what it *will* be yet. Current plan seems to be to position it as a sort of grab-bag for everything that's sorta development-related but doesn't quite fit or garner enough attention on SO... With those &quot;guidelines&quot; in place to stave off the sort of idle discussion that's never been welcome on SO and which first prompted the establishment of P.SE. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime... You posts your questions and you takes your chances. Maybe they'll fly, maybe they won't. Best of luck!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="935" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="350" RevisionGUID="fae67876-ccfe-49d5-8d68-84ed3f12c301" CreationDate="2010-09-30T13:10:02.550" UserId="11" Comment="deleted 21 characters in body" Text="Just a quick note here on meta to let everyone know we will be enforcing [these six subjective question guidelines][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Great subjective questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers. &#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references. &#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just the title of each guideline; there's [more detail about each guideline, with examples][1] on the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fair warning, any questions on programmers.se that do not meet a reasonable number of these guidelines (let's say roughly 4 out of 6) *will be closed... aggressively*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;edit: the subjective/argumentative close reason has been changed to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Not constructive&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not meet enough of our &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;six guidelines for constructive subjective questions&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and [the official faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) has been updated to reflect the above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... now let the closings begin.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="936" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="362" RevisionGUID="848fad9f-6ad7-4546-adbf-f917eadd2d4f" CreationDate="2010-09-30T13:13:18.797" UserId="11" Text="OK, now it's clear that &quot;trust the community&quot; and &quot;we don't rule SE, the community does&quot; was just mouth rhetoric.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's still some democracy on SE, we will be able to [build our new place](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/21841/bad-subjective-programmers?referrer=x1q3QTNL346OcSFp2uqP3w2)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="937" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="363" RevisionGUID="837af1b7-2cd5-460d-9143-03d02664c014" CreationDate="2010-09-30T13:29:23.327" UserId="1973" Text="If I wanted to ask something regarding the history of the name SQL as it relates to computer programmers is that applicable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first answer would undoubtedly be a link to wikipedia so I'm not sure it would even be worth it to ask.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="938" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="363" RevisionGUID="837af1b7-2cd5-460d-9143-03d02664c014" CreationDate="2010-09-30T13:29:23.327" UserId="1973" Text="Are historical questions on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="939" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="363" RevisionGUID="837af1b7-2cd5-460d-9143-03d02664c014" CreationDate="2010-09-30T13:29:23.327" UserId="1973" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="940" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="364" RevisionGUID="e9e26b10-499c-467d-b6da-85f62b898e2b" CreationDate="2010-09-30T13:43:24.613" UserId="134" Text="In general I don't see any reason why questions on programming history should not be acceptable here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(That said, if the answer is simple enough to be found on a wikipedia page, I would possibly question it's merit from that perspective, but that would have to be judged on a case by case basis)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="942" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="363" RevisionGUID="a794fb74-8e90-4a70-9efc-cf69e7b00d87" CreationDate="2010-09-30T14:33:07.627" UserId="1973" Comment="added 247 characters in body; edited title" Text="If I wanted to ask something regarding the history of the name SQL as it relates to computer programmers is that applicable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first answer would undoubtedly be a link to wikipedia so I'm not sure it would even be worth it to ask.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;History is by it's very nature subjective.  Clouded by ideology and culture.  It is my belief that no historical question can be objectively answered.  (i.e. who discovered the calculus? what is the first computer?, who invented the internet?)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="943" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="363" RevisionGUID="a794fb74-8e90-4a70-9efc-cf69e7b00d87" CreationDate="2010-09-30T14:33:07.627" UserId="1973" Comment="added 247 characters in body; edited title" Text="How can historical questions be on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="944" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="366" RevisionGUID="80ddaefd-2912-4de2-85e0-04ab7b915836" CreationDate="2010-09-30T15:01:10.140" UserId="6" Text="**No.**  Historical questions should not be allowed here because they're too objective, or they're subjective but not useful, or they're subjective and just not in the scope of P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Answer included for completeness- vote up or down based on your opinion on this issue)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="945" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="364" RevisionGUID="ff8afcbf-b133-4ec8-b80b-8d8998d777f9" CreationDate="2010-09-30T15:03:52.300" UserId="6" Comment="added 8 characters in body; added 1 characters in body" Text="**Yes.** In general I don't see any reason why questions on programming history should not be acceptable here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(That said, if the answer is simple enough to be found on a wikipedia page, I would possibly question it's merit from that perspective, but that would have to be judged on a case by case basis)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="946" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="350" RevisionGUID="24b71b39-b39e-46a7-99ea-f4c6709a69cc" CreationDate="2010-09-30T15:29:05.547" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Rollback to [85317b5f-2be0-49e9-b91a-f4c2657bedcb]" Text="Just a quick note here on meta to let everyone know we will be enforcing [these six subjective question guidelines][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Great subjective questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers. &#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references. &#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just the title of each guideline; there's [more detail about each guideline, with examples][1] on the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fair warning, any questions on programmers.se that do not meet a reasonable number of these guidelines (let's say roughly 4 out of 6) *will be closed... aggressively*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;edit: the subjective/argumentative close reason has been changed to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Not constructive&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not meet enough of our &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;six guidelines for constructive subjective questions&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and [the official faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) has been updated to reflect the above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... now let the closings begin, *for great justice*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="948" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="360" RevisionGUID="cbb3498f-7227-42e2-8bd6-fdbfff6f5133" CreationDate="2010-09-30T16:12:19.657" UserId="63" Comment="fixed link" Text="I've asked 3 questions so far&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [The programming plant one][1] &#xD;&#xA; 2. [The pronunciation of Delphi one][2]&#xD;&#xA; 3. [The Unnecessary Code One][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and they've all been scoffed at or given joke answers.  I think I've been improving with each iteration.  I've read the FAQ.  I've been on SO and every other site for longer than you, I'd think I'd understand the game by now.  I was under the impression that the stupid stuff I posted on SO that got closed within one hour would at least last a day on this site.  But it doesn't and ya'll are playing popularity control because this site seems to be growing wildly out of proportion to it's actual usefulness.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm in it for myself - not to improve the internet.  My cactus dies, I ask a programmer what kind of a plant they think is a cool plant a programmer might have, the kind of plant they might sell to a programmer on ThinkGeek if ThinkGeek sold plants.  Everyone in the office says Del Fee, everyone in America Says Del Fi, everyone in the rest of the world says Del Fee.  I think this is interesting, so I ask about it on this website.  I write some dumb code, I think it is funny so I want to see what other dumb code people write - at least as good a question as [least useful comment][4]. And asked in the right place, made it community wiki - and people have the discourtesy to try to close it.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. I don't give a hoot about &quot;[Jeff's guidelines][5]&quot;. I'm not sure what he's thinking if he wants to micromanage the kinds of questions we can ask on a community driven site.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6055/awesomest-programming-plant-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8241/how-to-pronounce-delphi&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8384/whats-your-best-unnecessary-code&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/143429/whats-the-least-useful-comment-youve-ever-seen&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="949" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="368" RevisionGUID="b784049a-a8d4-4453-b16a-46108d427f12" CreationDate="2010-09-30T16:12:38.377" UserId="63" Text="I actually think these should be on-topic for SO, provided the subject is directly programming-related (*not* something that just happens to be used among programmers, i.e. &quot;What is the history of QWERTY?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which means there's no good reason to ask them *here*. Now, if you want to ask a historical question about *programmers* (or programmer-behavior I suppose, although the appropriateness of that subject is becoming more and more unclear), that does seem like more of a P.SE thing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, for instance, &quot;How did Knuth get started in CS?&quot; - that's a good historical P.SE question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;FWIW, I would also consider your Delphi pronunciation question a good P.SE question, but not a *historical* question even if the answers themselves may include historical information. Obviously, this is a bit controversial though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="951" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="362" RevisionGUID="4aaa5c90-6bee-4e97-847e-924d096cf790" CreationDate="2010-09-30T21:05:53.770" UserId="11" Comment="added 231 characters in body" Text="OK, now it's clear that &quot;trust the community&quot; and &quot;we don't rule SE, the community does&quot; was just mouth rhetoric.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's still some democracy on SE, we will be able to [build our new place](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/21841/bad-subjective-programmers?referrer=x1q3QTNL346OcSFp2uqP3w2).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/21841/bad-subjective-programmers?referrer=x1q3QTNL346OcSFp2uqP3w2) has been **CLOSED**! People who think that we need some democracy, please vote to reopen." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="952" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="369" RevisionGUID="9cce0431-ed11-4619-9af3-14bf4789091b" CreationDate="2010-09-30T21:34:41.440" UserId="145" Text="So there are 2 ways to interpret this post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1.  All _Subjective_ questions must&#xD;&#xA;   adhere to these guidelines   &#xD;&#xA; 2.  _All_ questions must adhere to these guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reading the blog post, I understand the rationale behind enforcing #1.  Subjective opinions are valuable to the community if they are based on experience, well-thought out reasoning, etc.  Subjective rants or one-liners are not valuable.   So a policy to avoid bad subjective questions makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But enforcing #2 implies that all questions must be subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that really the intent?  Are there really no objective questions about the practice of programming that would add value to the site?  I found these to be interesting questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8228/what-is-the-first-published-reference-to-test-first-programming/ &#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1151/where-does-the-word-programming-come-from?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first was closed as &quot;not subjective enough&quot;.  This makes no sense to me.  How is this type of question detracting from the value of the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="957" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="351" RevisionGUID="ed9044ee-06eb-48e0-b464-d5458ec9392b" CreationDate="2010-09-30T22:15:32.823" UserId="11" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="Will these rules be applied to existing questions, or just to new ones? Specifically with regards to old, popular questions ([Favorite Joke](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35/whats-your-favorite-programming-joke),[What music do you code to](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/344/what-music-do-you-code-to), or [Favorite Cartoon](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon))?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Ok, a few of these were addressed [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable), but what about existing question in general that don't meet the new guidelines?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="958" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="237" RevisionGUID="aeb637b8-0075-43ac-9ead-919a12b47f99" CreationDate="2010-09-30T22:50:46.147" UserId="666" Comment="edited title; edited title" Text="What question topics should we allow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="960" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="58" RevisionGUID="4694d14e-95ca-49b9-a4b7-f94071e2b453" CreationDate="2010-09-30T23:01:48.667" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="961" PostHistoryTypeId="7" PostId="237" RevisionGUID="7a0cd3d1-6b49-4770-a0ce-90b971c70228" CreationDate="2010-09-30T23:08:26.407" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Rollback to [0b15290c-7763-401a-97dd-8832613a87a7]" Text="What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="962" PostHistoryTypeId="9" PostId="237" RevisionGUID="7a0cd3d1-6b49-4770-a0ce-90b971c70228" CreationDate="2010-09-30T23:08:26.407" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Rollback to [0b15290c-7763-401a-97dd-8832613a87a7]" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" />
  <row Id="963" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="237" RevisionGUID="d47408be-a7da-495e-bf95-ccb749629a3e" CreationDate="2010-09-30T23:18:27.620" UserId="666" Comment="Okay, in the current form... It's a top-7 question again. Although the answers don't match with this version..." Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|top-7|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="964" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="360" RevisionGUID="47dee8dd-4c5c-42ca-b7e3-19e7f514dbd6" CreationDate="2010-10-01T00:22:06.680" UserId="666" Comment="Let's stay clear from the subdomain idea, it's Programmers.SE at the moment. :-)" Text="Do I totally not understand the point of Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="965" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="350" RevisionGUID="f3bc56c7-3da7-4be8-992d-d976cbe831c1" CreationDate="2010-10-01T08:00:54.713" UserId="11" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|featured|subjective|edict|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="966" PostHistoryTypeId="9" PostId="350" RevisionGUID="fd438af9-f056-47e3-96dc-601e5ae13590" CreationDate="2010-10-01T08:51:19.253" UserId="37" Comment="Rollback to [24b71b39-b39e-46a7-99ea-f4c6709a69cc]" Text="|discussion|faq|featured|subjective|moderation|" />
  <row Id="968" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="370" RevisionGUID="f1693505-67b4-4087-b210-3c6b0fbab58a" CreationDate="2010-10-01T23:26:03.647" UserId="666" Text="See the close votes and comments on the question [When will IE6 be irrelevant?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/815/when-will-ie6-be-irrelevant):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Off topic (2)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Not constructive (1)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Not a real question (1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can you edit this question to meet &quot;Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Which guidelines of the big 6 do you think this question apply? Gradually we will close questions that doesn't fit on the 6 Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions. If you think your question doesn't meet enough points it would be a good thing the author of the question initiate the close process. Otherwise community or moderators can take the initiative if they they consider this question inappropriate to this site. Thank you. See more: blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective Maybe an edit turns it more suitable to guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are people now checking the 6-Q guidelines **before checking whether the question is off-topic**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those people can't change their vote to off-topic, so this question stays open while it shouldn't...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can we prevent this behavior? Should we make the vote reasons more clear?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="969" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="370" RevisionGUID="f1693505-67b4-4087-b210-3c6b0fbab58a" CreationDate="2010-10-01T23:26:03.647" UserId="666" Text="Incorrect order of checking the close vote reasons?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="970" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="370" RevisionGUID="f1693505-67b4-4087-b210-3c6b0fbab58a" CreationDate="2010-10-01T23:26:03.647" UserId="666" Text="|discussion|subjective|vote-to-close|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="971" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="370" RevisionGUID="1e03903b-f02f-4a25-97fa-0c564acb3a60" CreationDate="2010-10-01T23:38:19.410" UserId="666" Comment="added 304 characters in body" Text="See the close votes and comments on the question [When will IE6 be irrelevant?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/815/when-will-ie6-be-irrelevant):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Off topic (2)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Not constructive (1)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Not a real question (1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can you edit this question to meet &quot;Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Which guidelines of the big 6 do you think this question apply? Gradually we will close questions that doesn't fit on the 6 Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions. If you think your question doesn't meet enough points it would be a good thing the author of the question initiate the close process. Otherwise community or moderators can take the initiative if they they consider this question inappropriate to this site. Thank you. See more: blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective Maybe an edit turns it more suitable to guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are people now checking the 6-Q guidelines **before checking whether the question is off-topic**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those people can't change their vote to off-topic, so this question stays open while it shouldn't...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can we prevent this behavior? Should we make the vote reasons more clear?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS: It would be so useful to be able to [contact](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/431/any-way-to-send-a-personal-message-to-another-user) [another user](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/57537/how-do-i-contact-other-users) somehow, then this didn't have to be so public." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="972" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="370" RevisionGUID="455d0b93-1181-41e6-b453-b358ce3726bd" CreationDate="2010-10-01T23:46:23.963" UserId="666" Comment="added 57 characters in body" Text="See the close votes and comments on the question [When will IE6 be irrelevant?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/815/when-will-ie6-be-irrelevant):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Off topic (2)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Not constructive (1)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Not a real question (1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can you edit this question to meet &quot;Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Which guidelines of the big 6 do you think this question apply? Gradually we will close questions that doesn't fit on the 6 Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions. If you think your question doesn't meet enough points it would be a good thing the author of the question initiate the close process. Otherwise community or moderators can take the initiative if they they consider this question inappropriate to this site. Thank you. See more: blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective Maybe an edit turns it more suitable to guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are people now checking the 6-Q guidelines **before checking whether the question is off-topic**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those people can't change their vote to off-topic, so this question stays open while it shouldn't...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can we prevent this behavior? Should we make the vote reasons more clear?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS: It would be so useful to be able to [contact](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/431/any-way-to-send-a-personal-message-to-another-user) [another](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/57537/how-do-i-contact-other-users) [user](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/389/bigown) somehow, then this didn't have to be so public." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="980" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="372" RevisionGUID="7b43dbb4-4daf-406a-903f-c8140247efd7" CreationDate="2010-10-02T08:40:00.747" UserId="221" Text="SE seems to be going more and more the way of forum-type questions.  Just scanning across the questions a moment ago about 1 in 3 don't really belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are typically of the type&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Which are the best pickles for programmers?&#xD;&#xA; - What should the next step in my career be?&#xD;&#xA; - Why is language x better than language y?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We will obviously have more subjective questions here than on SO, but it just seems to me that most of the questions break down to arguments rather than questions.  For example, have a quick look to compare the number of comments (and their content) to SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's nothing wrong with programming forums, but SE isn't design to be that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="986" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="374" RevisionGUID="6552ca89-8c81-4455-b3fd-d0d3954e0c55" CreationDate="2010-10-02T11:23:28.093" UserId="666" Text="With the recent changes, perhaps we should discuss and vote about this question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feel free to improve vote answers (those that start with a bold sentence) or add new ones." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="987" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="374" RevisionGUID="6552ca89-8c81-4455-b3fd-d0d3954e0c55" CreationDate="2010-10-02T11:23:28.093" UserId="666" Text="Should we get rid of the [experience] tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="988" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="374" RevisionGUID="6552ca89-8c81-4455-b3fd-d0d3954e0c55" CreationDate="2010-10-02T11:23:28.093" UserId="666" Text="|discussion|retag-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="989" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="375" RevisionGUID="8a807617-30f9-47aa-9398-c4ad2245bb72" CreationDate="2010-10-02T11:24:17.733" UserId="666" Text="**Yes, most questions will be about experience thanks to [the 6-Q enforcement notice][1].**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="990" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="376" RevisionGUID="d38bdf1d-1332-410d-8b3b-a5363864a34f" CreationDate="2010-10-02T11:25:10.133" UserId="666" Text="**No, it's useful to have this as a meta tag, because:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - *Feel free to add reasons here, discuss these in the comments.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="991" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="376" RevisionGUID="d38bdf1d-1332-410d-8b3b-a5363864a34f" CreationDate="2010-10-02T11:25:10.133" UserId="666" />
  <row Id="992" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="375" RevisionGUID="8a807617-30f9-47aa-9398-c4ad2245bb72" CreationDate="2010-10-02T11:24:17.733" UserId="666" />
  <row Id="993" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="377" RevisionGUID="bf511c2b-5c3f-4178-a89b-b28867a87e55" CreationDate="2010-10-02T14:26:46.930" UserId="1973" Text="In my opinion, [this question][1] was doomed, not because of what it was asking, but because it too obviously didn't match the phraseology of a question you're supposed to be able to ask on SE websites.  I see the purpose of this requirement on SO, when subjective questions were able to be asked with a 50/50 chance of getting closed - it reduced the chances of bad factionalism resulting from a Brazilian SO and a Pakistani SO all mixed together and very confusing.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It asks an interesting question about programming culture and the history of development houses, the question mentions an outline of a historical event that a good answerer might use in his answer had he not mentioned it in his question. But this should not disqualify the question.  I think questions that expose prejudices and give people knowledge about how it is to program in a certain geographic area is a good thing for programmers to know!  Before I move my family to either coast, I'd like to know what the expectations are: I'm not exactly aware of the differences between programming on either coast.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, I don't think it's wise to close a question just because there is no one qualified to answer the question who is a member of the site yet.  I'm prepared to wait a month for a proper answer.  No decent programmer is going to write an essay on this site while at work, it's just a waste of time.  We almost need to accept short answers at first - and then wait for the answer to develop.   That's at a microlevel, but at a macrolevel we need to do that for the whole site.    &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope that the people who turn out to be the stellar rep-getters on this site aren't the folks with the most opinions (or even the wittiest), but the people who have learned the most from the most diverse experiences!  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is a way to change the question to make it acceptable, why can't we just change the question instead of closing it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8694/east-vs-west-coast-usa-programming/8796#8796" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="994" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="377" RevisionGUID="bf511c2b-5c3f-4178-a89b-b28867a87e55" CreationDate="2010-10-02T14:26:46.930" UserId="1973" Text="Is there a way to phrase a localized question that works for the site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="995" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="377" RevisionGUID="bf511c2b-5c3f-4178-a89b-b28867a87e55" CreationDate="2010-10-02T14:26:46.930" UserId="1973" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="996" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="378" RevisionGUID="25f2d494-eabd-4f75-930c-da7e9a1c9364" CreationDate="2010-10-02T14:44:49.770" UserId="1973" Text="&lt;h1&gt;professionalhacker.com&lt;/h1&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd imagine you'd have to spend more than 8.99 to get the domain, but it's not being used. I don't think we should stress idea that lame questions should be asked here if we're not going to accept them.  We'd probably be much improved if there was more than just the SO crowd coming to this site anyway.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You might object to the term &quot;hacker&quot;. I'd take hacker in the &quot;Pirates of Silicon Valley&quot; sense that it's what you should answer when Bill Gates asks you what you do for a living. It might be an objectionable name, I do like &quot;out of scope&quot; but I don't know how useful it would be in the long term to only feed off the scraps of SO - as that name implies. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="997" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="378" RevisionGUID="25f2d494-eabd-4f75-930c-da7e9a1c9364" CreationDate="2010-10-02T14:44:49.770" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="998" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="379" RevisionGUID="42233de2-9d5d-412b-ad45-feb31989eeb9" CreationDate="2010-10-02T14:49:05.707" UserId="1973" Text="&lt;b&gt;SEO&lt;/b&gt; - ask good questions and give better than wikipedia answers that are relevant and likely to get linked up to lot's of blogs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you really want to advertise the site, you've got to make the internet better.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course this is just a ruse to put Mr. Rock Hard Awesome through Stanford.  But I don't care, it's fun." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="999" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="380" RevisionGUID="421d88af-9177-453d-8b8f-3b0df6815d7e" CreationDate="2010-10-02T14:55:02.923" UserId="389" Text="In last Friday moderators had a chat cast to clarify some points of the http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/ Robert will post new blog posts with details, so we can't be overzealous with every question on Pr.SE. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;List/Poll questions should have home on Pr.SE. This type of question doesn't meet 6 guidelines but it fits on usefulness. Not every list/poll question should be kept open, just the useful ones. We'll wait Robert give us more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, probably poll tag will survive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Usefulness for whole community** probably will be more important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One misconception about new guidelines is that they change everything. Actually nothing changed, they are just more clear now. I have seen question with 4 votes to close which probably will survive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To some questions, it's not clear yet, at least to me. An example: [What symbols out there best represent programming?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We count with collaboration of whole community to close bad subjective questions, but these guidelines should be applied when the usefulness is doubtful. This is not a official position of SOIS team, I am just trying to clarify before the closes go out of control. Again we'll get more details soon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feel free to post your doubts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8772/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1000" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="381" RevisionGUID="bdd5219e-30bb-4075-8583-4daa2207749c" CreationDate="2010-10-02T15:25:12.840" UserId="666" Text="**No, it isn't useful to have this meta tag, because:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - *Feel free to add reasons here, discuss these in the comments.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1001" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="376" RevisionGUID="f96f4a0f-baac-4f1a-9e16-56d561448e9c" CreationDate="2010-10-02T15:25:55.337" UserId="666" Comment="added 7 characters in body; added 128 characters in body; added 106 characters in body" Text="**No, it's useful to have this as a normal/meta tag, because of one of the following reasons:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The [6-Q guidelines](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) aren't there to enforce questions to be about [experience].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - *Feel free to add reasons here, discuss these in the comments.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1002" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="382" RevisionGUID="b05e51e0-0871-450b-95c8-1c48cac5b3db" CreationDate="2010-10-02T15:43:54.377" UserId="18" Text="[Peter Turner][1] is retagging a hole lot of questions and adding the tag [`[bestestes]`][2]. I can't understand the meaning of the tag or how it is useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's the point of the tag `[bestestes]`? and is it useful?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1973/peter-turner&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/bestestes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1003" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="382" RevisionGUID="b05e51e0-0871-450b-95c8-1c48cac5b3db" CreationDate="2010-10-02T15:43:54.377" UserId="18" Text="What is the point with the tag [bestestes]?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1004" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="382" RevisionGUID="b05e51e0-0871-450b-95c8-1c48cac5b3db" CreationDate="2010-10-02T15:43:54.377" UserId="18" Text="|discussion|support|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1005" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="380" RevisionGUID="293de3d5-bd50-4d23-bab8-7b6fe997f197" CreationDate="2010-10-02T15:45:36.703" UserId="389" Comment="added 16 characters in body" Text="In last Friday moderators had a chat cast to clarify some points of the http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/ Robert will post new blog posts with details, so we can't be overzealous with every question on Pr.SE. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;List/Poll questions should have home on Pr.SE. This type of question doesn't meet 6 guidelines but it fits on usefulness. Not every list/poll question should be kept open, just the useful ones. We'll wait Robert give us more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, probably poll tag will survive. We should wait.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Usefulness for whole community** probably will be more important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One misconception about new guidelines is that they change everything. Actually nothing changed, they are just more clear now. I have seen question with 4 votes to close which probably will survive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To some questions, it's not clear yet, at least to me. An example: [What symbols out there best represent programming?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We count with collaboration of whole community to close bad subjective questions, but these guidelines should be applied when the usefulness is doubtful. This is not a official position of SOIS team, I am just trying to clarify before the closes go out of control. Again we'll get more details soon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feel free to post your doubts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8772/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1006" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="383" RevisionGUID="c72625e4-a0de-4c87-b881-0c3d67402012" CreationDate="2010-10-02T15:57:49.293" UserId="1973" Text="Yeah, I'm not trying to get them closed or anything.  I'm just making up something that maybe we can merge into recommendations or favorites or just leave alone so that some semblance of what I believe to be the original purpose of this website can be preserved.  People who like the &quot;bestestes&quot; (or &quot;worstestes&quot;) tag can have it in their list, people who would just close'em on principle can just ignore them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm all done now, I just searched for &quot;best&quot; got to page 12 and they kind of fizzled out.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we can merge tags into some sort of better synonym.  There obviously is a better (real) word than bestestes.  I just wanted something that'd stick out. And as I'm a bum not a moderator or a high-rep-y-ite and don't believe in closation without representation I'm doing what I can within my limited powers, feel free to join in! " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1007" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="384" RevisionGUID="34ff4218-94bb-4fdf-93a2-54d959a3f0b7" CreationDate="2010-10-02T16:18:04.800" UserId="3966" Text="This tag is not useful.  &quot;Recommendations&quot; and &quot;Favorites&quot; is covered by voting on questions/answers and the star.  &quot;Best&quot; is relative and there are tools in place to better facilitate what I think Peter is trying to accomplish.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather than retagging, a better way to point out best of bread questions is to create a blog post or something outside the site which points to your &quot;top X questions and answers on [some subject]&quot; or something like that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1008" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="385" RevisionGUID="c6ab6336-c382-4fa9-ae41-8d3ae6d46256" CreationDate="2010-10-02T17:30:25.077" UserId="1973" Text="So, I went about it exactly the wrong way in the first place.  Does anybody have any objection to tagging questions hearkening to the &quot;best&quot; of things and the &quot;worst&quot; of things with two tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever the tag is, it shouldn't imply &quot;this is the best question on programmers.se&quot; nor should it imply that it is unto itself a worthless question.  Nor should it encourage people to ask questions like that to gain rep, by definition the first comment should be to such a question &quot;Make it CW, please&quot; (not &quot;HEY, don't you know anything? This should be CW&quot;).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also, runs counter to the way people have thought about programmers.SE though, when I asked the Programming Plant question - I made it CW and people said that wasn't the right reason to make it CW.  But I think a good reason to make a question CW is to show in good faith that you're not rep farming, even though you have an overly broad question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Best Delphi XE Reference&quot; is in a different category than &quot;Best Programming Condiment&quot;, but that's why there are 5 tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe it's just as worthless as the subjective tag on SO was.  But as so much vitriol has been spilled about this subject it seems like it better be discussed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please note, this is not meant as a repeat discussion of [Programming Pickles][1].  For better or worse, that's been pretty much settled.  I'd like to see what the community thinks about tagging the questions that do remain, so that the ones that come up in the future will have a better chance of being seen by the users who have the right to see them and not have them immediately quashed by the powers that be. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288/dealing-with-what-are-some-good-types-of-pickles-for-programmers-type-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1009" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="385" RevisionGUID="c6ab6336-c382-4fa9-ae41-8d3ae6d46256" CreationDate="2010-10-02T17:30:25.077" UserId="1973" Text="Tag request for best and worst type questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1010" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="385" RevisionGUID="c6ab6336-c382-4fa9-ae41-8d3ae6d46256" CreationDate="2010-10-02T17:30:25.077" UserId="1973" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1012" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="387" RevisionGUID="dc2d1b0c-ce6a-40be-bec5-b8e6b00f8edb" CreationDate="2010-10-02T20:35:24.277" UserId="47" Text="`[best]` and `[worst]` are meta tags and as such have no place on Stack Exchange sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jeff wrote a blog post on [The Death of Meta Tags](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/). The key bit in this case is clause 1:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. **If the tag can’t work as the only tag on a question, it’s probably a meta-tag.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So just having the tag `[best]` on a post really tells you nothing about the post. Best what?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore don't create these tags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1041" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="388" RevisionGUID="78434ad1-4ae4-4a4e-9758-299222483eaf" CreationDate="2010-10-03T07:51:21.343" UserId="2340" Text="The requirements to close a question should be much more strict. This is because it does not really do much harm to leave a bad question open, but it does do harm to close a question that should not be closed. If votes to close a question can build up before it is closed, then votes to keep a question open should also build up before it is close. That is not meant to be taken literally but is meant to point out an impbalance in the system. Obvously voting to keep a question open would not make much sense if it is currently open. But things like favoriting a question or people posing answers to it should count toward keeping a question open and count agains the votes to close it even if it is currently open. This is because if people still are adding answers wrather than voting to close it, other people must also find the question useful or interesting and obiously don't want it closed since closing it means no one else can post answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1042" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="388" RevisionGUID="646dfee9-53b7-40a1-af39-c73dbf11f4f3" CreationDate="2010-10-03T08:04:33.090" UserId="2340" Comment="added 551 characters in body" Text="The requirements to close a question should be much more strict. This is because it does not really do much harm to leave a bad question open, but it does do harm to close a question that should not be closed. If votes to close a question can build up before it is closed, then votes to keep a question open should also build up before it is closed. That is not meant to be taken literally but is meant to point out an impbalance in the system. Obvously voting to keep a question open would not make much sense if it is currently open. But things like favoriting a question or people posting answers to it should count against the votes to close it even if it is currently open. The act of posting an answer to a question is expressing the oposite of voting to close a question since after a question is closed you cannot post answers to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea that it is no big deal to close questions because they can be opened again is kind of a non-argument. That fact that you can reopen a question that was wrongfully closed does not mean that there is no reason to try to improve the question closing process. A simple way to recognize that that argument does not make sense is to realize that you could still use it even if the question closing process was horrible which I am not claiming is the case. Since you can probably never perfect the question closing process there should always be a way to reopen questions, but this should not stop you from trying to improve the question closing process." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1057" PostHistoryTypeId="14" PostId="5" RevisionGUID="448ca95c-66de-4938-9246-e9a4a7290487" CreationDate="2010-10-03T19:14:56.463" UserId="47" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="1058" PostHistoryTypeId="15" PostId="5" RevisionGUID="61dd6c6f-bda9-44e6-90f0-721c2d9a1eee" CreationDate="2010-10-03T19:15:28.707" UserId="47" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="1059" PostHistoryTypeId="14" PostId="5" RevisionGUID="8a472463-6f52-4aca-b4d1-206b1acf16e1" CreationDate="2010-10-03T19:15:41.890" UserId="47" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="1064" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="390" RevisionGUID="6e0317cd-d1b2-4b90-af42-35c8b78d30b1" CreationDate="2010-10-03T23:54:14.133" UserId="175" Text="I don't think a -4 for this question is warranted... considering even SO revised the point calculation a few months ago: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/03/important-reputation-rule-changes/ &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At some point in the future I think this should be re-addressed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1065" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="391" RevisionGUID="b274e459-1b27-49ac-abdb-c788b4d7f0eb" CreationDate="2010-10-04T03:44:07.900" UserId="1973" Text="Now, I think ChrisF is generally right and so do a few other people including the framers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But consider the paradigm - this is the land of subjectivity.  It's not anti-SO because the powers that be won't let it, maybe it's Bizzarro-SO, maybe this is the only place where what we considered a meta-tag is the butter between the [best] bread.    &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I wouldn't use [best] either, and I wouldn't suggest inventing a word either - that doesn't get much traction.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually, doing a query for 'best' reveals a lot about the way Search works on SO.  It brings up a whole horde of synonyms 'good', 'better', 'best' - But, it's not complete and there is no tag that binds all those concepts. It also doesn't work for the filter tags, since it's not a tag! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; The tag behind the concept is not [best] because the concept is not an adjective [best].  It's a noun [bests] or [worsts] (or a better term) - which tells you as much about the question as [Delphi] but obviously more than [Mr-Snodgrass], because in order to properly search for [Delphi], you need to search for &quot;[Delphi] my list view got broke&quot; - but you could also search for &quot;[bests] pointing device&quot; and maybe, just maybe the search would show you the best mouse, the best trackball, the best tablet, the best trackpad, the best laptop with the best trackpad, the best little red thing in a Thinkpad, the best finger to point with, the best thing to point with instead of a finger (for programmers). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point is, there's no reason not to put a tag behind something we find to be so taggable.  We're programmers, so we should be able to define what Meta-data is.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Timestamps&#xD;&#xA; 2. Size of the thing&#xD;&#xA; 3. Creator/Owner/Group&#xD;&#xA; 4. Context* (Archived, Read only, locked, etc...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*It's the context in which the question is asked.  The mood, if you will, that is the thing in question.  I whole heartedly agree that the context is Subjective - but the context is not &quot;Give me your best&quot;, that is the question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To further exacerbate the already (probably) moot point: If Programmers.SE were on my hard drive, I might create a folder called &quot;Keyboard Related&quot; and a folder called &quot;Mouse Related&quot;.  I could also make a folder called &quot;Best Hardware&quot;, then put symlinks to the appropriate files in the &quot;Keyboards Related&quot; and &quot;Mouse Related&quot; folders, this would be grand. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it - I don't feel too strongly and won't cry too much if for some reason you don't like this idea either. But I'm a DB guy at heart so I hate seeing multi-variable attributes used at all.  I prefer the IS-A relationship and that's what I think when I think about seeing [bests], this is a [bests] list, better think of something with universal appeal quick so I can get my golden [bests] badge. When I saw subjective on SO, I thought, oh no this'll be dumb. Here, I can't say that I like the idea of [bests], but after tagging 57 questions [bestsestes], being horsewhipped for it after apologizing profusely, I can't say that I don't still feel that we should at least try inventing such a tag, even if it flies in the face of settled law.  I'm certainly not going to do it on my own again, I'm not exactly sure why the system would even let me do something like that if it were so frowned upon." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1070" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="317" RevisionGUID="853791f1-4c8b-4ab6-9276-b93ff123506a" CreationDate="2010-10-04T15:22:16.280" UserId="666" Comment="added 122 characters in body; edited title" Text="[What is the best X?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7167/what-is-the-best-editor) versus&#xD;&#xA;[What is your favorite X?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/219/what-is-your-favorite-editor-ide) versus [What X to use?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5/what-program-to-use-to-edit-and-or-view-text-files-on-windows)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm wondering if such questions result in the same answer, often the best is your favorite and vice-versa.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My guess is that we should see such questions as duplicates, but what do you think?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1071" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="317" RevisionGUID="853791f1-4c8b-4ab6-9276-b93ff123506a" CreationDate="2010-10-04T15:22:16.280" UserId="666" Comment="added 122 characters in body; edited title" Text="What is the best? VS What is your favorite? VS What X to use?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1072" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="393" RevisionGUID="6ab18367-fd28-4e94-8a34-b4e56c11e5bd" CreationDate="2010-10-04T17:07:15.060" UserId="389" Text="Jeff Atwood post new article about [Asking Better Questions][1]. Please read and help us enforce the quality of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- if you see a great, thoughtfully asked, well researched question, vote it up — please! Great questions are an art!&#xD;&#xA;- if you see an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended question that you feel was asked in bad faith … vote it down.&#xD;&#xA;- anything in between that’s salvageable, edit it — if you have the requisite 2,000 reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please **use your votes**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/asking-better-questions/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1073" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="393" RevisionGUID="6ab18367-fd28-4e94-8a34-b4e56c11e5bd" CreationDate="2010-10-04T17:07:15.060" UserId="389" Text="Asking Better Questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1074" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="393" RevisionGUID="6ab18367-fd28-4e94-8a34-b4e56c11e5bd" CreationDate="2010-10-04T17:07:15.060" UserId="389" Text="|questions|notifications|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1075" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="394" RevisionGUID="59b94d5a-2337-4d7c-af0c-277ddb6580e0" CreationDate="2010-10-04T17:13:21.703" UserId="4275" Text="I know there is &lt;b&gt;a lot&lt;/b&gt; of discussion about subjective questions, not just here, but all over the Stack Exchange network of sites. And I'm posting this because my question [&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8890/boss-asking-to-work-overtime-but-under-the-radar-closed&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8890/boss-asking-to-work-overtime-but-under-the-radar-closed&lt;/a&gt;] was closed, but I'm not arguing that it shouldn't have been. I'm wondering where I should have posted the question, if it is not appropriate for Programmers SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my view, if I can't post something like that here, then which SE site is appropriate for it? Any? Or was it just a matter of how the question was asked? It is a bit frustrating, because the question generated a lot of good answers and those answers helped me a great deal, but now if these types of questions aren't welcomed here, then where can someone turn to?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1076" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="394" RevisionGUID="59b94d5a-2337-4d7c-af0c-277ddb6580e0" CreationDate="2010-10-04T17:13:21.703" UserId="4275" Text="Subjective Question Question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1077" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="394" RevisionGUID="59b94d5a-2337-4d7c-af0c-277ddb6580e0" CreationDate="2010-10-04T17:13:21.703" UserId="4275" Text="|discussion|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1078" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="393" RevisionGUID="0abaf0f3-8b87-4c65-9d82-f677cfa4c415" CreationDate="2010-10-04T17:34:55.673" UserId="389" Comment="edited body" Text="Jeff Atwood post new article about [Asking Better Questions][1]. Please read and help us enforce the quality of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- if you see a great, thoughtfully asked, well researched question, vote it up — please! Great questions are an art!&#xD;&#xA;- if you see an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended question that you feel was asked in bad faith … vote it down.&#xD;&#xA;- anything in between that’s salvageable, edit it — if you have the requisite 1,000 reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please **use your votes**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/asking-better-questions/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1079" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="395" RevisionGUID="2a7d2722-44bc-46e9-94d9-098fec100db7" CreationDate="2010-10-04T17:56:04.770" UserId="666" Text="Please note that I use &quot;you&quot; in my answer, but this refers to anyone who can benefit from your answer.  &#xD;&#xA;See the &quot;make it relevant to others&quot; section of [ask advice][1], which is an adaption from [Google's Tips][2]...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The story might make the question too localized/specific, but that's not the reason I've closed it for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I were one of the people who decided to vote for a close these were my thoughts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;1 -&gt; inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;4 -&gt; invite sharing experiences over opinions.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;5 -&gt; insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question asks for opinions and does get different opinions as an answer.  &#xD;&#xA;They all say you should do something, this doesn't result in an useful decision...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As nothing is backed up by experiences/facts/references, there is nothing to base your decision on. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;3 -&gt; have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As there are a lot of different opinions, the answers aren't constructive towards a decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is what the close reason is about.  &#xD;&#xA;There can be questions that have constructive opinions that can help you create a subjective answer...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;2 -&gt; tend to have long, not short, answers.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;6 -&gt; are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These two are just fine, but not enough to have an overall effect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it seemed a bad idea to leave some questions open, it now seems a bad idea to close some questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**To answer your questions:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In my view, if I can't post something like that here, then which SE site is appropriate for it? Any?  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Or was it just a matter of how the question was asked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is on-topic, but as it isn't subjective in a good way it might not be useful in its current form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest to reform it to match the enforcement notice more, so it invites experiences and then the rest would come automatically. Please note that the notice isn't there to enforce questions that are solely based on experience, but experience tends to work out better for a question to be useful...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It is a bit frustrating, because the question generated a lot of good answers and those answers helped me a great deal, but now if these types of questions aren't welcomed here, then where can someone turn to?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sorry, perhaps I looked wrong at the answers that where there when I voted? I'm in for re-opening.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reforming the question might help, but feel free to disagree with me...&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask-advice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/09/tips-for-getting-help-with-your-site.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1080" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="393" RevisionGUID="c39fd3c6-dc43-482d-8b31-2721ef94b8ab" CreationDate="2010-10-04T18:06:17.263" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|notifications|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1081" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="395" RevisionGUID="ca68ebab-8fa6-4a1b-bddc-2a32d98b43f2" CreationDate="2010-10-04T18:08:27.860" UserId="666" Comment="deleted 12 characters in body" Text="Please note that I use &quot;you&quot; in my answer, but this could refer to anyone who can benefit.  &#xD;&#xA;See the &quot;make it relevant to others&quot; section of [ask advice][1], which is an adaption from [Google's Tips][2]...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The story might make the question too localized/specific, but that's not the reason I've closed it for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I were one of the people who decided to vote for a close these were my thoughts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;1 -&gt; inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;4 -&gt; invite sharing experiences over opinions.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;5 -&gt; insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question asks for opinions and does get different opinions as an answer.  &#xD;&#xA;They all say you should do something, this doesn't result in an useful decision...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As nothing is backed up by experiences/facts/references, there is nothing to base your decision on. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;3 -&gt; have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As there are a lot of different opinions, the answers aren't constructive towards a decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is what the close reason is about.  &#xD;&#xA;There can be questions that have constructive opinions that can help you create a subjective answer...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;2 -&gt; tend to have long, not short, answers.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;6 -&gt; are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These two are just fine, but not enough to have an overall effect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it seemed a bad idea to leave some questions open, it now seems a bad idea to close some questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**To answer your questions:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In my view, if I can't post something like that here, then which SE site is appropriate for it? Any?  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Or was it just a matter of how the question was asked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is on-topic, but as it isn't subjective in a good way it might not be useful in its current form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest to reform it to match the enforcement notice more, so it invites experiences and then the rest would come automatically. Please note that the notice isn't there to enforce questions that are solely based on experience, but experience tends to work out better for a question to be useful...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It is a bit frustrating, because the question generated a lot of good answers and those answers helped me a great deal, but now if these types of questions aren't welcomed here, then where can someone turn to?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sorry, perhaps I looked wrong at the answers that where there when I voted? I'm in for re-opening.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reforming the question might help, but feel free to disagree with me...&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask-advice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/09/tips-for-getting-help-with-your-site.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1082" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="396" RevisionGUID="430489c8-658c-497a-a4b6-e3370741c862" CreationDate="2010-10-05T08:59:04.080" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Hey Jeff, why not letting the community decide about [this question][1]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question has a purpose. I want to understand how people projects themselve in the future. I know that it's impossible to answer, and that's why the question is very valuable to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where can we discuss psychology of programmers if not at P.SE ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-will-programmer-profession-look-like-in-30-years-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1083" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="396" RevisionGUID="430489c8-658c-497a-a4b6-e3370741c862" CreationDate="2010-10-05T08:59:04.080" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Question being closed without community requests" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1084" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="396" RevisionGUID="430489c8-658c-497a-a4b6-e3370741c862" CreationDate="2010-10-05T08:59:04.080" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1093" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="401" RevisionGUID="18ddd561-e477-4924-9c89-472032d88891" CreationDate="2010-10-05T14:36:46.417" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The first thing you should always do if you are confused about what's happening on a Stack Exchange site is to check the FAQ. From [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;.** Please keep it professional at all times. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot;** Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, you should check the tags colored red on the meta-discussion site. If you did, you would've found this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions are being closed in accordance with the guidelines for this site. If Programmers.SE no longer appeals to you because of that, you might want to try to find a different site, like [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) or [Quora](http://quora.com)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1097" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="401" RevisionGUID="6efc2ff8-e2ff-40cc-91e4-3076ed9c64b2" CreationDate="2010-10-05T14:46:06.923" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add rationale for redefinition based on OP's comments on another question" Text="The first thing you should always do if you are confused about what's happening on a Stack Exchange site is to check the FAQ. From [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;.** Please keep it professional at all times. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot;** Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, you should check the tags colored red on the meta-discussion site. If you did, you would've found this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions are being closed in accordance with the guidelines for this site. If Programmers.SE no longer appeals to you because of that, you might want to try to find a different site, like [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) or [Quora](http://quora.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're confused because this is vastly different from the Area 51 proposal which has a lot of fluff questions, this redefinition was discussed on Meta.StackOverflow.com:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Should “Developer Testing” be folded into a more general “Programmers” site?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Adding discipline to programmers.stackexchange.com](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And discussed on this meta-discussion site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* [valid questions being closed.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do I totally not understand the point of Programmers.SE?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/360/do-i-totally-not-understand-the-point-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do we need a definition of subjective?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/324/do-we-need-a-definition-of-subjective)&#xD;&#xA;* [Remove the options to close questions on this site.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/355/remove-the-options-to-close-questions-on-this-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why should we have to battle to keep questions open? [closed]](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/339/why-should-we-have-to-battle-to-keep-questions-open-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [Please let's not lock questions unless as an absolute last resort](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/285/please-lets-not-lock-questions-unless-as-an-absolute-last-resort)&#xD;&#xA;* *and so on...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry you missed all of the discussion we had about the definition of the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1099" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="401" RevisionGUID="6899ba4c-1d4f-4d95-94b1-c69807f9a6c4" CreationDate="2010-10-05T14:59:14.947" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 109 characters in body" Text="The first thing you should always do if you are confused about what's happening on a Stack Exchange site is to check the FAQ. From [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;.** Please keep it professional at all times. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot;** Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, you should check the tags colored red on the meta-discussion site. If you did, you would've found this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions are being closed in accordance with the guidelines for this site. If you're confused because this is vastly different from the Area 51 proposal which has a lot of fluff questions, this redefinition was discussed on Meta.StackOverflow.com:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Should “Developer Testing” be folded into a more general “Programmers” site?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Adding discipline to programmers.stackexchange.com](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And discussed on this meta-discussion site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* [valid questions being closed.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do I totally not understand the point of Programmers.SE?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/360/do-i-totally-not-understand-the-point-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do we need a definition of subjective?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/324/do-we-need-a-definition-of-subjective)&#xD;&#xA;* [Remove the options to close questions on this site.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/355/remove-the-options-to-close-questions-on-this-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why should we have to battle to keep questions open? [closed]](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/339/why-should-we-have-to-battle-to-keep-questions-open-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [Please let's not lock questions unless as an absolute last resort](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/285/please-lets-not-lock-questions-unless-as-an-absolute-last-resort)&#xD;&#xA;* *and so on...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry you missed all of the discussion we had about the definition of the site, but the decision has already been made to redefine the site as it currently is in the FAQ, and the time for discussion is over. If Programmers.SE no longer appeals to you, you might want to try to find a different site, like [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) or [Quora](http://quora.com)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1101" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="401" RevisionGUID="c314e711-203f-4c5e-b0df-363a2a76e903" CreationDate="2010-10-05T15:13:57.023" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 69 characters in body" Text="The first thing you should always do if you are confused about what's happening on a Stack Exchange site is to check the FAQ. From [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;.** Please keep it professional at all times. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot;** Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, you should check the tags colored red on the meta-discussion site. If you did, you would've found this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions are being closed in accordance with the guidelines for this site. If you're confused because this is vastly different from the Area 51 proposal which has a lot of fluff questions, this redefinition was discussed on Meta.StackOverflow.com:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Should “Developer Testing” be folded into a more general “Programmers” site?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Adding discipline to programmers.stackexchange.com](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And discussed on this meta-discussion site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* [valid questions being closed.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do I totally not understand the point of Programmers.SE?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/360/do-i-totally-not-understand-the-point-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do we need a definition of subjective?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/324/do-we-need-a-definition-of-subjective)&#xD;&#xA;* [Remove the options to close questions on this site.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/355/remove-the-options-to-close-questions-on-this-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why should we have to battle to keep questions open? [closed]](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/339/why-should-we-have-to-battle-to-keep-questions-open-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [Please let's not lock questions unless as an absolute last resort](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/285/please-lets-not-lock-questions-unless-as-an-absolute-last-resort)&#xD;&#xA;* *and so on...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry you missed all of the discussion we had about the definition of the site, but the decision has already been made to redefine the site as it currently is in the FAQ, and the time for discussion is over. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If Programmers.SE no longer appeals to you or your question does not fit within the guidelines of this site, you might want to try to find a different site, like [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) or [Quora](http://quora.com)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1102" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="393" RevisionGUID="c5533615-88f6-439b-800a-c6ac96246182" CreationDate="2010-10-05T16:01:29.093" UserId="389" Comment="added 386 characters in body" Text="Jeff Atwood post new article about [Asking Better Questions][1]. Please read and help us enforce the quality of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- if you see a great, thoughtfully asked, well researched question, vote it up — please! Great questions are an art!&#xD;&#xA;- if you see an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended question that you feel was asked in bad faith … vote it down.&#xD;&#xA;- anything in between that’s salvageable, edit it — if you have the requisite 1,000 reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please **use your votes**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting RobertCartaino from chat:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Vote, vote, vote. Encourage others to vote, vote, vote. On good content, leave signposts (&quot;If you like this, please vote it up. It's important for the community!&quot;)-- in both meta and the main site. Maybe a few meta posts informing the users of the important of that type of participation. You are empowered a lot more than you know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/asking-better-questions/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1103" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="396" RevisionGUID="6cead158-fc27-4055-9f7d-b4b9a06c88b7" CreationDate="2010-10-05T16:03:04.397" UserId="-1" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[321],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:389,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;bigown&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="1104" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="396" RevisionGUID="bb52b012-dc38-449b-a748-343394abe0b3" CreationDate="2010-10-05T16:03:05.487" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Hey Jeff, why not letting the community decide about [this question][1]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question has a purpose. I want to understand how people projects themselve in the future. I know that it's impossible to answer, and that's why the question is very valuable to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where can we discuss psychology of programmers if not at P.SE ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-will-programmer-profession-look-like-in-30-years-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1109" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="393" RevisionGUID="2fff1a13-1bf3-46cf-a97a-1345beadace7" CreationDate="2010-10-05T19:42:49.003" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|questions|notifications|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1110" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="84" RevisionGUID="6c813138-8358-4610-9349-3b15a29bee5d" CreationDate="2010-10-05T20:45:30.010" UserId="389" Comment="added 139 characters in body" Text="Is this a good place to ask questions about the [hidden features][1] of programming languages and tools?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our example: [hidden features][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/hidden-features&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8961/what-are-hidden-features-of-visual-studio" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1111" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="404" RevisionGUID="f90f85d8-f279-45cd-a012-2c28679e07aa" CreationDate="2010-10-05T21:55:32.317" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="*Hidden features* questions generally provide one type of answer: a description of a quirky feature. This alone does not provide enough to satisfy [the guidelines for subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Answers rarely, if ever, provide a why or how behind the feature.&#xD;&#xA;* Answers rarely, if ever, have anything to do with a person's experience. They're just lists of what people opine to be &quot;hidden&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;* Hidden features are little more than mindless, social fun: they amount to &quot;hey, look at this neat thing I found.&quot; The quirkiest feature gets the most votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They don't belong here. Programmers.SE is no longer the dumping ground for every off-topic question on Stack Overflow merely because those questions are tangentially related to programming." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1117" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="406" RevisionGUID="3188354c-eeb7-4a91-b9b3-887219267021" CreationDate="2010-10-06T18:33:01.537" UserId="38" Text="This discussion is going on at stackoverflow meta:&#xD;&#xA;[adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I was to ask a specific topic about one single other SE site here, it would be closed as off-topic (and rightly so). Why is this discussion that is specifically about this site happening on another meta?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you agree with having that discussion there instead of here? Can explain why you think this discussion should (or should not) be happening on this meta instead?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1118" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="406" RevisionGUID="3188354c-eeb7-4a91-b9b3-887219267021" CreationDate="2010-10-06T18:33:01.537" UserId="38" Text="Why is the discussion about good and bad questions happening on meta.stackexchange rather than here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1119" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="406" RevisionGUID="3188354c-eeb7-4a91-b9b3-887219267021" CreationDate="2010-10-06T18:33:01.537" UserId="38" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1120" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="401" RevisionGUID="29ae4c70-6dd3-41f7-8acd-d0a02f9a6ea6" CreationDate="2010-10-06T18:43:14.243" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 359 characters in body" Text="The first thing you should always do if you are confused about what's happening on a Stack Exchange site is to check the FAQ. From [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;.** Please keep it professional at all times. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot;** Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, you should check the tags colored red on the meta-discussion site. If you did, you would've found this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions are being closed in accordance with the guidelines for this site. If you're confused because this is vastly different from the Area 51 proposal which has a lot of fluff questions, this redefinition was discussed on Meta.StackOverflow.com:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Should “Developer Testing” be folded into a more general “Programmers” site?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Adding discipline to programmers.stackexchange.com](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And discussed on this meta-discussion site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* [valid questions being closed.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do I totally not understand the point of Programmers.SE?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/360/do-i-totally-not-understand-the-point-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do we need a definition of subjective?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/324/do-we-need-a-definition-of-subjective)&#xD;&#xA;* [Remove the options to close questions on this site.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/355/remove-the-options-to-close-questions-on-this-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why should we have to battle to keep questions open? [closed]](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/339/why-should-we-have-to-battle-to-keep-questions-open-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [Please let's not lock questions unless as an absolute last resort](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/285/please-lets-not-lock-questions-unless-as-an-absolute-last-resort)&#xD;&#xA;* [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* *and so on...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry you missed all of the discussion we had about the definition of the site, but the decision has already been made to redefine the site as it currently is in the FAQ, and the time for discussion is over. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If Programmers.SE no longer appeals to you or your question does not fit within the guidelines of this site, you might want to try to find a different site, like [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) or [Quora](http://quora.com)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1121" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="401" RevisionGUID="1c3b5aac-9c2e-4e91-8bac-b0616be2a382" CreationDate="2010-10-06T18:43:35.880" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Rollback to [c314e711-203f-4c5e-b0df-363a2a76e903]" Text="The first thing you should always do if you are confused about what's happening on a Stack Exchange site is to check the FAQ. From [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;.** Please keep it professional at all times. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot;** Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, you should check the tags colored red on the meta-discussion site. If you did, you would've found this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions are being closed in accordance with the guidelines for this site. If you're confused because this is vastly different from the Area 51 proposal which has a lot of fluff questions, this redefinition was discussed on Meta.StackOverflow.com:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Should “Developer Testing” be folded into a more general “Programmers” site?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Adding discipline to programmers.stackexchange.com](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And discussed on this meta-discussion site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* [valid questions being closed.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do I totally not understand the point of Programmers.SE?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/360/do-i-totally-not-understand-the-point-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do we need a definition of subjective?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/324/do-we-need-a-definition-of-subjective)&#xD;&#xA;* [Remove the options to close questions on this site.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/355/remove-the-options-to-close-questions-on-this-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why should we have to battle to keep questions open? [closed]](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/339/why-should-we-have-to-battle-to-keep-questions-open-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [Please let's not lock questions unless as an absolute last resort](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/285/please-lets-not-lock-questions-unless-as-an-absolute-last-resort)&#xD;&#xA;* *and so on...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry you missed all of the discussion we had about the definition of the site, but the decision has already been made to redefine the site as it currently is in the FAQ, and the time for discussion is over. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If Programmers.SE no longer appeals to you or your question does not fit within the guidelines of this site, you might want to try to find a different site, like [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) or [Quora](http://quora.com)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1122" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="407" RevisionGUID="c17664d6-9bf7-4c55-8301-5ea56c472a51" CreationDate="2010-10-06T19:18:00.883" UserId="63" Text="Because the problem was never that the P.SE *community* was unhappy with P.SE. That would have given rise to discussion here, and a whole lot more participation in the various &quot;What's on-topic?&quot; threads. But by and large, P.SE users *wanted* the sort of content that was showing up on the site, and with a handful of exceptions were content to just participate on the site itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, the problem was that P.SE - the content, the users, *the very idea behind its inception* were seen as distasteful and embarrassing by The Stack Exchange. The perception of the StackExchange brand has become a concern for them, and a site seen as frivolous didn't fit with the image they hoped to project. It's anyone's guess why they let the Area51 proposal make it all the way through commitment; perhaps they thought it would fizzle in private beta and could then be swept under the rug? But once the site went live and immediately garnered popular support it became hard for them to ignore it - and so they had a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hence the discussion on Meta. Asking P.SE users to solve their own problems wouldn't have been a useful thing to do, as the problems were not those *of* the P.SE users. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1123" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="333" RevisionGUID="bc1cca59-5cf2-41d4-a9f5-2611a275a0ee" CreationDate="2010-10-07T10:20:09.850" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|feature-request|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1124" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="408" RevisionGUID="7ee77474-62b6-4870-b8af-52b933c2aa86" CreationDate="2010-10-08T04:45:58.610" UserId="3966" Text="I've followed the evolution of this site for a little while now and I must say I am a little confused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm looking for a single place where I can join a community of, what might commonly be called, software engineers.  Some subjects commonly included in this field include project management, agile, testing and quality assurance, team work and leadership, methodologies, architecture and design, and estimation among others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding is that the main focus of StackOverflow is, literally, programming questions.  Unlike this site which I think is trying to be ironic?  (I understand that this site started off as a gag, but is that still the case?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding of a programming question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - language, syntax, and implementation&#xD;&#xA; - compiles or can be interpreted&#xD;&#xA; - definite &quot;right&quot; answer - it can be tested directly or builds&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But where do these other subjects I mentioned above belong?  Some here, some there, [the only guideline being on the basis of subjectivity][1]? This is kind of...abstract and a little hard to understand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I think subjectivity vs. objectivity is too blurry and confusing a delineator for partitioning content across sites. Really what we're talking about is macro-software development vs. micro-software development**, very similar to macroeconomics vs microeconomics.  Both macro and micro perspectives are critical to understanding how to build great software, both are huge fields with specialists and experts.  Both can coexist, and while there is some overlap, the perspectives are completely different enough that it makes sense to think of them as different things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I bring this up because if this site is about macro-software development, we can rephrase the summary language a little and reasonably justify official mergers with [other SE sites interested in macro-development topics][2].  I feel that this would benefit the community as a whole much more than the confused, divided state it's in now.  As it is phrased now, it's confusing who this site is for and what is actually covered here. It's for programmers, but it's not *really* about &quot;programming&quot;...?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1125" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="408" RevisionGUID="7ee77474-62b6-4870-b8af-52b933c2aa86" CreationDate="2010-10-08T04:45:58.610" UserId="3966" Text="Does &quot;objective&quot; vs. &quot;subjective&quot; confuse the purpose of this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1126" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="408" RevisionGUID="7ee77474-62b6-4870-b8af-52b933c2aa86" CreationDate="2010-10-08T04:45:58.610" UserId="3966" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|stackoverflow|site-definition|software-engineering|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1127" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="409" RevisionGUID="ca523793-583f-4629-9c59-d84abf90891f" CreationDate="2010-10-08T13:44:46.570" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="My understanding is that this website is about `programmers` **the people**, not `programming` **the task**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; That's why I'm here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1128" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="410" RevisionGUID="bc1582b9-1676-4bf2-a246-eee169aa9e5b" CreationDate="2010-10-08T17:14:43.417" UserId="92" Text="&quot;Programmers is a site to share wisdom about the programming profession and subculture&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a site for advice for programmers, by programmers, about the problems that arise from being a programmer. For the most part this would mean questions about the practice (coding standards, business of software, which library to use, workplace issues and setup, etc.), but sometimes, being the special breed that they are, programmers also come across life problems that are unique to them, like constantly being asked to fix people's computers, or the difficulty of explaining to people what you do, or how to write a CV, and is going to grad school worth it... and these are OK too. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you identify a question as something that is not Stack Overflow material, but you definitely need a programmer in order to get an answer, then it belongs to Programmers. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1129" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="410" RevisionGUID="1980a52f-4128-4fb8-938f-31a1db99c003" CreationDate="2010-10-08T17:27:03.313" UserId="92" Comment="added 81 characters in body" Text="&quot;Programmers is a site to share wisdom about the programming profession and subculture&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a site for advice for programmers, by programmers, about the problems that arise from being a programmer. For the most part this would mean questions about the practice (coding standards, business of software, which library to use, workplace issues and setup, etc.), but sometimes, being the special breed that they are, programmers also come across life problems that are unique to them, like constantly being asked to fix people's computers, or the difficulty of explaining to people what you do, or how to write a CV (within the context of the industry), and is going to grad school worth it (again, within the context of the industry)... and these are OK too. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you identify a question as something that is not Stack Overflow material, but you definitely need a programmer in order to get an answer, then it belongs to Programmers. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1130" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="411" RevisionGUID="34d83520-e67c-4de1-844a-7b3c374ce98b" CreationDate="2010-10-08T20:44:33.077" UserId="38" Text="There's always going to be a grey area between SO and SE and I don't see that as a problem, as we are a different audience from SO. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like it or not, whether or not something is subjective, is itself subjective. And unfortunately, the six subjective guidelines are merely guidelines and are themselves subjective so should not be used as a consensus for the group to make further bad decisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is everyone scared of? Let the questions stay for now. Vote a question up if you think it's useful and clear. Vote it down if you think it isn't useful. If these types of questions continually get voted down, then the community has decided that they are no good and then we'll start closing them. If they get voted up then the community likes them and they stay. Isn't that the *whole point* of having a voting system in the first place?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1131" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="412" RevisionGUID="7895db7e-94b6-48c4-8210-ba63a2d1b33c" CreationDate="2010-10-08T21:02:29.667" UserId="3" Text="*We closed the [domain naming thread (click for details)](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3/what-should-our-domain-name-be).*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, we want you to **come up with a killer &quot;elevator pitch!&quot;** Joel will be blogging about the elevator pitch approach to naming, but to get you started: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Elevator Pitch &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't as easy as it sounds. Imagine users will never read your FAQ and you have two seconds to catch their attention. The elevator pitch should be catchy but descriptive. It should be thoroughly clear but painfully concise. **Make every... word... count.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The elevator pitch is something you may want to display on the home page: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Gawker](http://gawker.com/): Daily Manhattan media news and gossip. Reporting live from the center of the universe. &#xD;&#xA;- [Gizmodo](http://gizmodo.com/): The gadget guide. So much in love with shiny new toys, it’s unnatural. &#xD;&#xA;- [Autoblog](http://www.autoblog.com/): We obsessively cover the auto industry. &#xD;&#xA;- [DumbLittleMan](http://www.dumblittleman.com/): So what do we do here? Well, it’s simple. 15 to 20 times per week we provide tips that will save you money, increase your productivity, or simply keep you sane. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think about how your elevator pitch works with the rest of the site. Can it be used as a tagline? Or will you need a shorter version for a t-shirt, bumper sticker, and other marketing material? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Do you need a shortened tagline? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Find a tagline&amp;thinsp;&amp;mdash;&amp;thinsp;a motto&amp;thinsp;&amp;mdash;&amp;thinsp;that works well with your elevator pitch. If it's short enough, the tagline and elevator pitch can be the same thing. Great Examples: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Slashdot](http://slashdot.org/): News for nerds. Stuff that matters. &#xD;&#xA;- [Lifehacker](http://www.lifehacker.com/): Don’t live to geek, geek to live! &#xD;&#xA;- [The Simple Dollar](http://www.thesimpledollar.com/): Financial talk for the rest of us. &#xD;&#xA;- [Needcoffee.com](http://www.needcoffee.com/): We are the Internet equivalent of a triple espresso with whipped cream. Mmmm…whipped cream. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Logo Blurb &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A logo begs for it own little, short tag line. Maybe the tag line inspires the logo; Maybe it's the other way around. Either way, you'll recognize a good logo tagline when you see it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Just do it. &#xD;&#xA;- Think Different. &#xD;&#xA;- The Uncola. &#xD;&#xA;- Intel inside. &#xD;&#xA;- Like a rock. &#xD;&#xA;- The king of beers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;hellip;and perhaps this all leads to a proper name and domain for your site&amp;hellip; *eventually*. So let's start from the basics. **Come up with a killer &quot;elevator pitch&quot;, tagline, and/or logo blurb!** " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1132" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="412" RevisionGUID="7895db7e-94b6-48c4-8210-ba63a2d1b33c" CreationDate="2010-10-08T21:02:29.667" UserId="3" Text="Write an Elevator Pitch / Tagline" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1133" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="412" RevisionGUID="7895db7e-94b6-48c4-8210-ba63a2d1b33c" CreationDate="2010-10-08T21:02:29.667" UserId="3" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1134" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3" RevisionGUID="8da74daf-b297-43a3-bd1b-bacc316844e3" CreationDate="2010-10-08T21:02:50.313" UserId="3" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[412],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:3,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Robert Cartaino&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="1135" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3" RevisionGUID="be491ea7-f348-49dc-b8bb-aab21469ee92" CreationDate="2010-10-08T21:02:50.390" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Write an Elevator Pitch / Tagline](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;One of the big 7 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - One answer per answer please&#xD;&#xA; - Only .com domain names please&#xD;&#xA; - Only untaken domain names please (use whois)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please use **lowercase characters only** in domain name!  &#xD;&#xA;DomainName.com is more readable, but we have to register domainname.com!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1136" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3" RevisionGUID="5ec9d66d-cfec-469b-ac11-457796fb4e1e" CreationDate="2010-10-08T21:03:18.377" UserId="3" Comment="added 1199 characters in body; edited tags" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Write an Elevator Pitch / Tagline](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Note: &#xD;&#xA;We are closing this domain naming thread. It is asking the *entirely* wrong question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read the blog post for details: [**Domain Names: Wrong Question**](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/domain-names-the-wrong-question/) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're going to keep the name programmers.stackexchange.com. But we WILL be setting up redirects from the more &quot;popular&quot; domains names. E.g. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Seasonedadvice.com will redirect to cooking.stackexchange.com. &#xD;&#xA;- Basicallymoney.com will redirect to money.stackexchange.com. &#xD;&#xA;- (More as we go through the list) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, we want you to **come up with a killer &quot;elevator pitch!&quot;** Joel will be blogging about the elevator pitch approach to naming, but to get you started: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Elevator Pitch &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't as easy as it sounds. Imagine users will never read your FAQ and you have two seconds to catch their attention. The elevator pitch should be catchy but descriptive. It should be thoroughly clear but painfully concise. **Make every... word... count.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[**Contribute your ideas and vote here.**](http://meta.webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/709/find-and-elevator-pitch-tagline) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[original message text below] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the big 7 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - One answer per answer please&#xD;&#xA; - Only .com domain names please&#xD;&#xA; - Only untaken domain names please (use whois)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please use **lowercase characters only** in domain name!  &#xD;&#xA;DomainName.com is more readable, but we have to register domainname.com!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1137" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3" RevisionGUID="5ec9d66d-cfec-469b-ac11-457796fb4e1e" CreationDate="2010-10-08T21:03:18.377" UserId="3" Comment="added 1199 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|top-7|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1138" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3" RevisionGUID="c0eb903a-ecc9-42eb-9a3c-7b0a746d8aa9" CreationDate="2010-10-08T21:34:19.347" UserId="63" Comment="replace webapps link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Write an Elevator Pitch / Tagline](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Note: &#xD;&#xA;We are closing this domain naming thread. It is asking the *entirely* wrong question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read the blog post for details: [**Domain Names: Wrong Question**](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/domain-names-the-wrong-question/) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're going to keep the name programmers.stackexchange.com. But we WILL be setting up redirects from the more &quot;popular&quot; domains names. E.g. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Seasonedadvice.com will redirect to cooking.stackexchange.com. &#xD;&#xA;- Basicallymoney.com will redirect to money.stackexchange.com. &#xD;&#xA;- (More as we go through the list) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, we want you to **come up with a killer &quot;elevator pitch!&quot;** Joel will be blogging about the elevator pitch approach to naming, but to get you started: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Elevator Pitch &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't as easy as it sounds. Imagine users will never read your FAQ and you have two seconds to catch their attention. The elevator pitch should be catchy but descriptive. It should be thoroughly clear but painfully concise. **Make every... word... count.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[**Contribute your ideas and vote here.**](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[original message text below] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the big 7 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - One answer per answer please&#xD;&#xA; - Only .com domain names please&#xD;&#xA; - Only untaken domain names please (use whois)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please use **lowercase characters only** in domain name!  &#xD;&#xA;DomainName.com is more readable, but we have to register domainname.com!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1139" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="413" RevisionGUID="82346faf-02ff-4311-95b3-0b4dcf759754" CreationDate="2010-10-08T21:51:29.037" UserId="63" Text="###Elevator Pitch *and* Tagline&#xD;&#xA;*Experiences and advice from programming professionals*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The target subject matter for this site *still* seems rather... unclear. But this seems like a good fit. Where SO is targeted at pulling in technical answers from wherever, P.SE seems to value the voice of experience (or a reasonable imitation...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Logo blurb&#xD;&#xA;*Programmer-related*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it was Joel Coehoorn who coined this, originally to describe questions that *seemed* like they would belong on SO but didn't. Pithy..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1140" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="414" RevisionGUID="2ad67a0c-1796-450a-b036-1cdb4f76338d" CreationDate="2010-10-08T22:13:38.653" UserId="38" Text="## Elevator Pitch ##&#xD;&#xA;*A site for programming professionals to ask and answer questions about non-coding problems.*&#xD;&#xA;## Tagline ##&#xD;&#xA;*Where programmers go when they need answers to non-coding problems.*&#xD;&#xA;## Logo Blurb ##&#xD;&#xA;*It's not about the code.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1141" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="411" RevisionGUID="53a94205-fbcd-49c6-a408-017173481682" CreationDate="2010-10-08T23:43:34.370" UserId="38" Comment="removed the word &quot;bad&quot; as it is subjective!" Text="There's always going to be a grey area between SO and SE and I don't see that as a problem, as we are a different audience from SO. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like it or not, whether or not something is subjective, is itself subjective. And unfortunately, the six subjective guidelines are merely guidelines and are themselves subjective so should not be used as a consensus for the group to make all further decisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is everyone scared of? Let the questions stay for now. Vote a question up if you think it's useful and clear. Vote it down if you think it isn't useful. If these types of questions continually get voted down, then the community has decided that they are no good and then we'll start closing them. If they get voted up then the community likes them and they stay. Isn't that the *whole point* of having a voting system in the first place?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1142" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="412" RevisionGUID="0e24d47d-2149-4bfb-a7c5-b2d359d94592" CreationDate="2010-10-09T00:15:04.187" UserId="3" Comment="deleted 120 characters in body" Text="*We closed the [domain naming thread (click for details)](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3/what-should-our-domain-name-be).* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, **let's start with a killer &quot;elevator pitch!&quot;** Joel will be blogging about the elevator pitch approach to naming, but to get you started: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Elevator Pitch &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't as easy as it sounds. Imagine the user who will never read your FAQ and you have two seconds to grab their attention. It should be catchy but descriptive. It should be thoroughly clear but painfully concise. **Make every... word... count.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some creative examples: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Gawker](http://gawker.com/): Daily Manhattan media news and gossip. Reporting live from the center of the universe. &#xD;&#xA;- [Gizmodo](http://gizmodo.com/): The gadget guide. So much in love with shiny new toys, it’s unnatural. &#xD;&#xA;- [Autoblog](http://www.autoblog.com/): We obsessively cover the auto industry. &#xD;&#xA;- [DumbLittleMan](http://www.dumblittleman.com/): So what do we do here? Well, it’s simple. 15 to 20 times per week we provide tips that will save you money, increase your productivity, or simply keep you sane. &#xD;&#xA;- [Needcoffee.com](http://www.needcoffee.com/): We are the Internet equivalent of a triple espresso with whipped cream. Mmmm…whipped cream. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Use it as a Tagline &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A shorter elevator pitch *can* be used as a tagline&amp;thinsp;&amp;mdash;&amp;thinsp;something you can display in the header at the top of the page. If it doesn't fit, consider shortening it or creating a separate tagline. Here are some great examples: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Slashdot](http://slashdot.org/): News for nerds. Stuff that matters. &#xD;&#xA;- [Lifehacker](http://www.lifehacker.com/): Don’t live to geek, geek to live! &#xD;&#xA;- [The Simple Dollar](http://www.thesimpledollar.com/): Financial talk for the rest of us. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Moto (don't forget your logo) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A logo begs for it own little, short tagline&amp;thinsp;&amp;mdash;&amp;thinsp;like a motto. Maybe the tagline inspires the logo; Maybe it's the other way around. Mottos make good t-shirt, bumper stickers, and other marketing material. Either way, you'll recognize a good motto when you see it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Just do it. &#xD;&#xA;- Think Different. &#xD;&#xA;- The Uncola. &#xD;&#xA;- Intel inside. &#xD;&#xA;- Like a rock. &#xD;&#xA;- The king of beers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;hellip;and perhaps all this leads to a proper name and domain for your site&amp;hellip; *eventually*. So let's start from the basics. **Come up with a killer elevator pitch, tagline, and/or motto!** " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1143" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3" RevisionGUID="b3fc975e-066b-44de-b84c-14b42180522c" CreationDate="2010-10-09T00:16:01.513" UserId="3" Comment="deleted 446 characters in body" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Write an Elevator Pitch / Tagline](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Note: &#xD;&#xA;We are closing this domain naming thread. It is asking the *entirely* wrong question. See this blog post for details: [Domain Names: Wrong Question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/domain-names-the-wrong-question/) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're going to keep the name programmers.stackexchange.com. But we WILL be setting up redirects from the more &quot;popular&quot; domains names. (e.g. seasonedadvice.com to cooking.stackexchange.com, basicallymoney.com to money.stackexchange.com, and others as we go through the list).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;New question: &quot;**Write and Elevator Pitch / Tagline!**&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[**Click here to contribute ideas and vote.**](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*[original message text below]*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the big 7 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - One answer per answer please&#xD;&#xA; - Only .com domain names please&#xD;&#xA; - Only untaken domain names please (use whois)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please use **lowercase characters only** in domain name!  &#xD;&#xA;DomainName.com is more readable, but we have to register domainname.com!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1144" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="415" RevisionGUID="b84fa1b0-c473-4cf2-818f-29a587295564" CreationDate="2010-10-09T00:45:06.080" UserId="38" Text="I've been grumbling about this for a while, so I've decided to try and post something constructive about this post and ask for clarifications that are not in the post or linked blog. You might argue that this isn't really an answer, but the post isn't really a question. I couldn't fit all this into a comment anyway!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Great subjective questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This list defines *great* subjective questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should we do about questions that are not &quot;great&quot;? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's fair to say that if a question met 2 or 3 of these criteria, it could still be *good*. I believe that being good should be enough to keep a question open. Being great should get it upvotes, unless it is now SE policy to only allow *great* questions. There should be a middle ground for a subjective question that merely gets it downvotes instead of close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You mention that if a question meets four of the guidelines it's enough to keep a question open, but the criteria are flawed as four of the six guidelines them refer to the qualities of the answers, rather than the question and two of them have co-dependencies, so can't really be counted separately. Let me go through the criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that we do not yet know what the as-yet unposted answers are going to be like, shouldn't we give each and every question a fair kick of the can to actually see some of the answers before we close it? How long should that be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Agreed. But isn't this expected as a given for any SE question or answer, not just subjective ones?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These two points really need to be combined as one, particularly if people are using a count of these guidelines as a reason for closing or downvoting a question. If you word a question to strictly follow the &quot;experience&quot; guideline, by definition you should not even need the &quot;opinion&quot; guideline, so it is impossible currently for a question to meet all six guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should read&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   invite sharing experience over opinions; if opinions are shared without experience, insist they are backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, we come to:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the few joke and quote questions are gotten out of the way (and I think they have already), I'm not sure if there are many new questions that would really fall foul of this that wouldn't just be closed as off-topic, but I certainly could be wrong about that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By the way, are we planning on closing the *always-friday-in-iceland* tagged questions on meta.SO, or are they okay, because that's where the grown-ups play?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1145" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="416" RevisionGUID="1f1268ea-3cef-42a8-ad5f-45cc0375a39e" CreationDate="2010-10-09T02:37:49.050" UserId="92" Text="I asked [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238/what-are-your-favorite-programming-related-movies-documentaries) question back at the private beta phase after watching Pirates of Silicon Valley and Revolution OS, which I found to be both enjoyable and *informative*, and I wanted to find more movies like that. Back then the idea of what was on topic and what wasn't was more loose, and so many people answered with movies that were more on the entertainment side, and got even upvoted quite a lot. I myself was hoping to see more answers in the documentary genre, but I felt like I should let the events play out because: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. I realized in advance that there might be some movies that are more on the entertainment side of things but still very iconic and influential to programmers' culture, and I felt like they should still be mentioned due to cultural relevance, so I left a slight gray are in that respect. Therefore, these answers were still kinda on topic. &#xD;&#xA; 2. I wasn't familiar with a lot of the answers, so it was difficult for me to judge if they were good ones or not and I gave them the benefit of doubt. &#xD;&#xA; 3. The definition of this site was more loose and the whole &quot;discussion&quot; was on topic in the grand scope of the site itself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that I got to watch some of the top answers, and in light of the overlords cracking down on fun centric questions, I began to wonder if maybe the selection of answers in that question should be fixed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm saying this because I still feel like my question has value for the same reason that movies about making movies have malue for cinema students, and for the same reason that &quot;what are your favorite programming blogs&quot; has value, but because it was asked at the time when people were looking for a more forum-like community, and the boundries were loosly defined, the informative aspect of the question wasn't addressed, and now those top answers are setting the tone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I modified the wording of my question, but now the effect is that there's a question with lots of high-rated answers that clearly don't answer it, and yet they are there because they were originally on topic. What do you think we should do about it? Create a new question? Ask the authors of each answer to re-evaluate it? Leave it as it is? &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1146" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="416" RevisionGUID="1f1268ea-3cef-42a8-ad5f-45cc0375a39e" CreationDate="2010-10-09T02:37:49.050" UserId="92" Text="Do you think the &quot;programming related movies/documentaries&quot; question should be sanitized?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1147" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="416" RevisionGUID="1f1268ea-3cef-42a8-ad5f-45cc0375a39e" CreationDate="2010-10-09T02:37:49.050" UserId="92" Text="|discussion|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1148" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="417" RevisionGUID="8849b01b-2be1-44c8-b570-130610febf04" CreationDate="2010-10-09T02:47:57.057" UserId="4856" Text="I was also under the impression that this a discussion board, which means topic that can be discussed, not objectively answered (anti-SO), for anything vaguely related to programming. E.g. Best work hours?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If some people want this site to be more objective and on-topic, it will just become an SO duplicate, which is far from what I want, and what anybody needs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though I must agree, there is a limit to how off-topic you can get, and there are a lot of questions here that have nearly no connection, if any, to programming." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1149" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="418" RevisionGUID="03bf2f72-938b-4d15-93c2-7b5023b06faf" CreationDate="2010-10-09T02:55:31.490" UserId="4856" Text="Stack Overflow is for programming questions, that have straight-forward answers and directly discuss the art of programming, free of factors surrounding the programmer. Questions like: why won't this work, how to make this more efficient, how do I do ... in this programming language, ect...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is for matters surrounding the programmer, which tend to be rather off-topic. This site is also for discussions, not a straight-forward for Q and A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions on this site may refer to programming habits, team work, communication, computers in general, or anything really as long as they tie in with programming one way or another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a lot of people who don't want this to happen, and will prefer it that question still stick to programming, making the only distinction from SO is the fact that discussion is allowed, while SO is far more strict.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like the fact that this site is more subjective (discussions), and allows for more off-topic questions, because otherwise it would just be a SO duplicate, and noone wants that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1150" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="412" RevisionGUID="3b21a3bd-f53a-459a-9e14-f60620f8fbe0" CreationDate="2010-10-09T03:03:58.937" UserId="3" Comment="edited tags; added 1 characters in body" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1151" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="412" RevisionGUID="3b21a3bd-f53a-459a-9e14-f60620f8fbe0" CreationDate="2010-10-09T03:03:58.937" UserId="3" Comment="edited tags; added 1 characters in body" Text="*We closed the [domain naming thread (click for details)](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3/what-should-our-domain-name-be).* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, **let's start with a killer &quot;elevator pitch!&quot;** Joel will be blogging about the elevator pitch approach to naming, but to get you started: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Elevator Pitch &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't as easy as it sounds. Imagine the user who will never read your FAQ and you have two seconds to grab their attention. It should be catchy but descriptive. It should be thoroughly clear but painfully concise. **Make every... word... count.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some creative examples: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Gawker](http://gawker.com/): Daily Manhattan media news and gossip. Reporting live from the center of the universe. &#xD;&#xA;- [Gizmodo](http://gizmodo.com/): The gadget guide. So much in love with shiny new toys, it’s unnatural. &#xD;&#xA;- [Autoblog](http://www.autoblog.com/): We obsessively cover the auto industry. &#xD;&#xA;- [DumbLittleMan](http://www.dumblittleman.com/): So what do we do here? Well, it’s simple. 15 to 20 times per week we provide tips that will save you money, increase your productivity, or simply keep you sane. &#xD;&#xA;- [Needcoffee.com](http://www.needcoffee.com/): We are the Internet equivalent of a triple espresso with whipped cream. Mmmm…whipped cream. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Use it as a Tagline &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A shorter elevator pitch *can* be used as a tagline&amp;thinsp;&amp;mdash;&amp;thinsp;something you can display in the header at the top of the page. If it doesn't fit, consider shortening it or creating a separate tagline. Here are some great examples: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Slashdot](http://slashdot.org/): News for nerds. Stuff that matters. &#xD;&#xA;- [Lifehacker](http://www.lifehacker.com/): Don’t live to geek, geek to live! &#xD;&#xA;- [The Simple Dollar](http://www.thesimpledollar.com/): Financial talk for the rest of us. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Motto (don't forget your logo) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A logo begs for it own little, short tagline&amp;thinsp;&amp;mdash;&amp;thinsp;like a motto. Maybe the tagline inspires the logo; Maybe it's the other way around. Mottos make good t-shirt, bumper stickers, and other marketing material. Either way, you'll recognize a good motto when you see it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Just do it. &#xD;&#xA;- Think Different. &#xD;&#xA;- The Uncola. &#xD;&#xA;- Intel inside. &#xD;&#xA;- Like a rock. &#xD;&#xA;- The king of beers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;hellip;and perhaps all this leads to a proper name and domain for your site&amp;hellip; *eventually*. So let's start from the basics. **Come up with a killer elevator pitch, tagline, and/or motto!** " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1152" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="415" RevisionGUID="29e1a058-c762-4309-8903-ab94fa6d48c5" CreationDate="2010-10-09T04:00:48.467" UserId="38" Comment="Removed final sentence after suggestion from a comment" Text="I've been grumbling about this for a while, so I've decided to try and post something constructive about this post and ask for clarifications that are not in the post or linked blog. You might argue that this isn't really an answer, but the post isn't really a question. I couldn't fit all this into a comment anyway!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Great subjective questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This list defines *great* subjective questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should we do about questions that are not &quot;great&quot;? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's fair to say that if a question met 2 or 3 of these criteria, it could still be *good*. I believe that being good should be enough to keep a question open. Being great should get it upvotes, unless it is now SE policy to only allow *great* questions. There should be a middle ground for a subjective question that merely gets it downvotes instead of close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You mention that if a question meets four of the guidelines it's enough to keep a question open, but the criteria are flawed as four of the six guidelines them refer to the qualities of the answers, rather than the question and two of them have co-dependencies, so can't really be counted separately. Let me go through the criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that we do not yet know what the as-yet unposted answers are going to be like, shouldn't we give each and every question a fair kick of the can to actually see some of the answers before we close it? How long should that be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Agreed. But isn't this expected as a given for any SE question or answer, not just subjective ones?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These two points really need to be combined as one, particularly if people are using a count of these guidelines as a reason for closing or downvoting a question. If you word a question to strictly follow the &quot;experience&quot; guideline, by definition you should not even need the &quot;opinion&quot; guideline, so it is impossible currently for a question to meet all six guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should read&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   invite sharing experience over opinions; if opinions are shared without experience, insist they are backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, we come to:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the few joke and quote questions are gotten out of the way (and I think they have already), I'm not sure if there are many new questions that would really fall foul of this that wouldn't just be closed as off-topic, but I certainly could be wrong about that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1153" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="415" RevisionGUID="95c31374-0e20-4503-9942-a5de2ba72019" CreationDate="2010-10-09T04:06:56.360" UserId="38" Comment="Typo fix" Text="I've been grumbling about this for a while, so I've decided to try and post something constructive about this post and ask for clarifications that are not in the post or linked blog. You might argue that this isn't really an answer, but the post isn't really a question. I couldn't fit all this into a comment anyway!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Great subjective questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This list defines *great* subjective questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should we do about questions that are not &quot;great&quot;? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's fair to say that if a question met 2 or 3 of these criteria, it could still be *good*. I believe that being good should be enough to keep a question open. Being great should get it upvotes, unless it is now SE policy to only allow *great* questions. There should be a middle ground for a subjective question that merely gets it downvotes instead of close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You mention that if a question meets four of the guidelines it's enough to keep a question open, but the criteria are flawed as four of the six guidelines refer to the qualities of the answers, rather than the question and two of them have co-dependencies, so can't really be counted separately. Let me go through the criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that we do not yet know what the as-yet unposted answers are going to be like, shouldn't we give each and every question a fair kick of the can to actually see some of the answers before we close it? How long should that be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Agreed. But isn't this expected as a given for any SE question or answer, not just subjective ones?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These two points really need to be combined as one, particularly if people are using a count of these guidelines as a reason for closing or downvoting a question. If you word a question to strictly follow the &quot;experience&quot; guideline, by definition you should not even need the &quot;opinion&quot; guideline, so it is impossible currently for a question to meet all six guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should read&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   invite sharing experience over opinions; if opinions are shared without experience, insist they are backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, we come to:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the few joke and quote questions are gotten out of the way (and I think they have already), I'm not sure if there are many new questions that would really fall foul of this that wouldn't just be closed as off-topic, but I certainly could be wrong about that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1154" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="416" RevisionGUID="36062b1a-1b65-41f0-a31f-22a82e603230" CreationDate="2010-10-09T05:42:46.690" UserId="92" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="I asked [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238/what-are-your-favorite-programming-related-movies-documentaries) question back at the private beta phase after watching Pirates of Silicon Valley and Revolution OS, which I found to be both enjoyable and *informative*, and I wanted to find more movies like that. Back then the idea of what was on topic and what wasn't was more loose, and so many people answered with movies that were more on the entertainment side, and got even upvoted quite a lot. I myself was hoping to see more answers in the documentary genre, but I felt like I should let the events play out because: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. I realized in advance that there might be some movies that are more on the entertainment side of things but still very iconic and influential to programmers' culture, and I felt like they should still be mentioned due to cultural relevance, so I left a slight gray area in that respect. Therefore, these answers were still kinda on topic. &#xD;&#xA; 2. I wasn't familiar with a lot of the answers, so it was difficult for me to judge if they were good ones or not and I gave them the benefit of doubt. &#xD;&#xA; 3. The definition of this site was more loose and the whole &quot;discussion&quot; was on topic in the grand scope of the site itself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that I got to watch some of the top answers, and in light of the overlords cracking down on fun centric questions, I began to wonder if maybe the selection of answers in that question should be fixed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm saying this because I still feel like my question has value for the same reason that movies about making movies have value for cinema students, and for the same reason that &quot;what are your favorite programming blogs&quot; has value, but because it was asked at the time when people were looking for a more forum-like community, and the boundries were loosly defined, the informative aspect of the question wasn't addressed, and now those top answers are setting the tone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I modified the wording of my question, but now the effect is that there's a question with lots of high-rated answers that clearly don't answer it, and yet they are there because they were originally on topic. What do you think we should do about it? Create a new question? Ask the authors of each answer to re-evaluate it? Leave it as it is? &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1155" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="419" RevisionGUID="3c8911ad-7ce6-42e0-b2ab-3c971cc29cf8" CreationDate="2010-10-09T21:43:29.570" UserId="38" Text="In this case, with so many answers, it doesn't make sense to reword the question in a way that invalidates a lot of answers; anyone coming to the question in the future will be confused by the answers. Retroactively deleting answers doesn't seem the right thing to do either. Why not ask a new question, specifically about documentaries? In your question, link to your previous question and this discussion so that no-one hastily closes it as a dupe. Then, if the fun police think your first question is not constructive, it can be closed separately." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1156" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="420" RevisionGUID="a86241c4-695b-4d77-8d61-611a7f571f7e" CreationDate="2010-10-10T05:06:13.513" UserId="66" Text="With a few questions around here about version control, I think we need to pick a tag and stick with it. In the title are 3 that I could find. Which one should be the master tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(On a related note, do we have some kind of tag synonym system on here?)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1157" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="420" RevisionGUID="a86241c4-695b-4d77-8d61-611a7f571f7e" CreationDate="2010-10-10T05:06:13.513" UserId="66" Text="Merge [source-control], [source-repository], and [version-control]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1158" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="420" RevisionGUID="a86241c4-695b-4d77-8d61-611a7f571f7e" CreationDate="2010-10-10T05:06:13.513" UserId="66" Text="|discussion|retag-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1159" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="421" RevisionGUID="4432db24-673e-4545-b8a7-29c8da75e204" CreationDate="2010-10-10T05:14:17.920" UserId="66" Text="Seen this on a [few questions][1], but is it really necessary? Isn't half this site recommendations? We recommend principles, languages, contests, and best ways to handle something. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thought I would ask before removing them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/recommendations" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1160" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="421" RevisionGUID="4432db24-673e-4545-b8a7-29c8da75e204" CreationDate="2010-10-10T05:14:17.920" UserId="66" Text="Is a [recommendations] tag really nessesary?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1161" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="421" RevisionGUID="4432db24-673e-4545-b8a7-29c8da75e204" CreationDate="2010-10-10T05:14:17.920" UserId="66" Text="|discussion|tagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1162" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="422" RevisionGUID="c0dd2e14-9fde-471f-9c7a-2d284ca141f3" CreationDate="2010-10-10T13:45:43.190" UserId="38" Text="Completely agree that they should be merged. I'd go with [version-control], because it can be used for more than just source code." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1163" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="416" RevisionGUID="cb9b0502-f43e-49a1-b6fe-b30fb3302ac4" CreationDate="2010-10-10T13:51:58.077" UserId="92" Comment="added 81 characters in body" Text="I asked [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238/what-are-your-favorite-programming-related-movies-documentaries) question back at the private beta phase after watching Pirates of Silicon Valley and Revolution OS, which I found to be both enjoyable and *informative*, and I wanted to find more movies like that. Back then the idea of what was on topic and what wasn't was more loose, and so many people answered with movies that were more on the entertainment side, and got even upvoted quite a lot. I myself was hoping to see more answers in the documentary genre, but I felt like I should let the events play out because: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. I realized in advance that there might be some movies that are more on the entertainment side of things but still very iconic and influential to programmers' culture, and I felt like they should still be mentioned due to cultural relevance, so I left a slight gray area in that respect. Therefore, these answers were still kinda on topic. &#xD;&#xA; 2. I wasn't familiar with a lot of the answers, so it was difficult for me to judge if they were good ones or not and I gave them the benefit of doubt. &#xD;&#xA; 3. The definition of this site was more loose and the whole &quot;discussion&quot; was on topic in the grand scope of the site itself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that I got to watch some of the top answers, and in light of the overlords cracking down on fun centric questions, I began to wonder if maybe the selection of answers in that question should be fixed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm saying this because I still feel like my question has value for the same reason that movies about making movies have value for cinema students, and for the same reason that &quot;what are your favorite programming blogs&quot; has value, but because it was asked at the time when people were looking for a more forum-like community, and the boundries were loosly defined, the informative aspect of the question wasn't addressed, and now those top answers are setting the tone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;strike&gt;I modified the wording of my question, but now the effect is that there's a question with lots of high-rated answers that clearly don't answer it, and yet they are there because they were originally on topic. &lt;/strike&gt;  **(EDIT: reverted to the original, asked a new question)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think we should do about it? Create a new question? Ask the authors of each answer to re-evaluate it? Leave it as it is? &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1164" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="420" RevisionGUID="ba0ec04a-1ad4-486f-a502-682be1b6eb89" CreationDate="2010-10-10T15:47:00.787" UserId="66" Comment="Added helpful links" Text="With [a][1] [few][2] [questions][3] around here about version control, I think we need to pick a tag and stick with it. In the title are 3 that I could find. Which one should be the master tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(On a related note, do we have some kind of tag synonym system on here?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/source-control&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/source-repository&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/source-repository" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1165" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="424" RevisionGUID="c1d99578-7f08-47e7-b7f8-0bcc31924dac" CreationDate="2010-10-10T19:31:23.513" UserDisplayName="Dan Cirnat" Text="You haven't read the FAQ/About page probably.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; expert programmers who are interested&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in subjective discussions on software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This can include topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Developer tools and techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Practical algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **Development methodologies**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **Software law**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Code golf &amp; programming puzzles&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **Freelancing and business concerns**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that most of this topics are not allowed on SO because they tend to reflect the personal opinions of the answer authors. SO is more for practical examples and objective facts. (Correct me if I'm wrong)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1166" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="424" RevisionGUID="c1d99578-7f08-47e7-b7f8-0bcc31924dac" CreationDate="2010-10-10T19:31:23.513" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="1167" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="425" RevisionGUID="f79cb08a-a9a2-41b9-8a8e-4f0cc35a95e5" CreationDate="2010-10-10T19:43:00.913" UserDisplayName="John" Text="I was recently referred here because I asked a subjective question on SO.  Apparently that is a big no-no.  That's what this site is for. (within reason)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1168" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="423" RevisionGUID="300d8853-7040-4086-8d9c-73de2a7a8513" CreationDate="2010-10-10T19:22:39.877" UserDisplayName="ybakos" Text="This StackExchange Programmers Beta site seems very redundant to me. How is it intended to differ from StackOverflow?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1169" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="423" RevisionGUID="300d8853-7040-4086-8d9c-73de2a7a8513" CreationDate="2010-10-10T19:22:39.877" UserDisplayName="ybakos" Text="How is this site different than Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1170" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="423" RevisionGUID="300d8853-7040-4086-8d9c-73de2a7a8513" CreationDate="2010-10-10T19:22:39.877" UserDisplayName="ybakos" Text="|retag-me|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1171" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="423" RevisionGUID="6b178388-3776-4c58-a204-3c39bfbc2e22" CreationDate="2010-10-10T19:43:14.207" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10891/how-is-this-site-different-than-stack-overflow" Text="" />
  <row Id="1172" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="426" RevisionGUID="0174aa74-2191-4d43-b8ed-9be1611e31d9" CreationDate="2010-10-10T19:50:05.937" UserId="1013" Text="Programmers.SE is for **subjective discussions**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is for **NON-subjective discussions**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;funny thing is that there are a lot of question that end up on here that should go on SO.  Personally I think the title should be changed to make that more obvious.. but worlds not perfect." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1173" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="423" RevisionGUID="70962a1c-c17b-4f71-be52-4c828b305155" CreationDate="2010-10-10T19:58:36.857" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1174" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="423" RevisionGUID="b86f2998-0f2b-4851-86c8-2e1df04c48fa" CreationDate="2010-10-11T11:21:34.883" UserId="-1" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[171],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:66,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;TheLQ&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:666,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;TomWij&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:40,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Simon Brown&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="1175" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="423" RevisionGUID="438326b2-c63c-4bb1-8897-fc626da103ca" CreationDate="2010-10-11T11:21:35.023" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and SO](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;This StackExchange Programmers Beta site seems very redundant to me. How is it intended to differ from StackOverflow?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1178" PostHistoryTypeId="38" PostId="410" RevisionGUID="844c70b0-122b-4e93-ae45-836ee77a0ada" CreationDate="2010-10-11T21:29:54.883" UserId="47" Comment="from http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/403/what-is-our-site-and-community-about" Text="[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]" />
  <row Id="1179" PostHistoryTypeId="38" PostId="412" RevisionGUID="844c70b0-122b-4e93-ae45-836ee77a0ada" CreationDate="2010-10-11T21:29:54.883" UserId="47" Comment="from http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/403/what-is-our-site-and-community-about" Text="[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]" />
  <row Id="1181" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="420" RevisionGUID="1b58968b-de33-42f4-bb7a-e2aacfb93d4e" CreationDate="2010-10-12T01:48:26.203" UserId="66" Comment="added 160 characters in body" Text="With [a][1] [few][2] [questions][3] around here about version control, I think we need to pick a tag and stick with it. In the title are 3 that I could find. Which one should be the master tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(On a related note, do we have some kind of tag synonym system on here?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## UPDATE ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Synonyms added, please upvote them so their permanent!][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/source-control&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/source-repository&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/version-control&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/version-control/synonyms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1182" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="410" RevisionGUID="f4bd33ae-5922-4257-aa96-d0580e3f0369" CreationDate="2010-10-12T08:32:34.690" UserId="92" Comment="added 223 characters in body" Text="##Elevator Pitch: &#xD;&#xA;&quot;Programmers is a site to share wisdom about the programming profession and subculture&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Tag line:&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Advice for programmers, by programmers&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Motto: &#xD;&#xA;I really don't think we need a marketing motto. It sounds more commercial than informative. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Short description (for the FAQ): &#xD;&#xA;It's a site for advice for programmers, by programmers, about the problems that arise from being a programmer. For the most part this would mean questions about the practice (coding standards, business of software, which library to use, workplace issues and setup, etc.), but sometimes, being the special breed that they are, programmers also come across life problems that are unique to them, like constantly being asked to fix people's computers, or the difficulty of explaining to people what you do, or how to write a CV (within the context of the industry), and is going to grad school worth it (again, within the context of the industry)... and these are OK too. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you identify a question as something that is not Stack Overflow material, but you definitely need a programmer in order to get an answer, then it belongs to Programmers. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1183" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="410" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-10-12T14:49:34.730" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="1184" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="413" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-10-12T14:49:34.730" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="1185" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="414" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-10-12T14:49:34.730" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="1186" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="412" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-10-12T14:49:34.730" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="1188" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="429" RevisionGUID="391c6f3e-0d4f-42ca-9639-655dc5901369" CreationDate="2010-10-12T20:06:05.293" UserId="1973" Text="That's quite an outrage, why go so far against the grain to inflict your will upon the masses and not even acknowledge why you are doing so?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11033/which-programming-jargon-words-are-your-least-favorite-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Give me a break, why wasn't &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2119/which-programming-jargon-words-are-your-favorite&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;closed as well?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1189" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="429" RevisionGUID="391c6f3e-0d4f-42ca-9639-655dc5901369" CreationDate="2010-10-12T20:06:05.293" UserId="1973" Text="Mods should be stopped from closing reopened stuff automatically" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1190" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="429" RevisionGUID="391c6f3e-0d4f-42ca-9639-655dc5901369" CreationDate="2010-10-12T20:06:05.293" UserId="1973" Text="|discussion|feature-request|close-reasons|rant|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1191" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="430" RevisionGUID="a2295e99-5226-4f39-95fc-88daa22c50e4" CreationDate="2010-10-12T20:19:24.933" UserId="47" Text="The question (11033) was closed by five non-moderators, reopened by five other non-moderators and then finally closed by two non-moderators and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So far 8 non-moderators have voted to close the question. The moderator has only intervened at a late stage. Personally I would have waited until there were 3 or even 4 non-moderator close votes, but I don't disagree with the result." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1192" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="430" RevisionGUID="711073ee-641c-4d43-bf4e-dcd04cd7ad37" CreationDate="2010-10-12T21:22:26.613" UserId="47" Comment="clarification" Text="The question (11033) was closed by five non-moderators, reopened by five other non-moderators and then finally closed by two non-moderators and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So far 8 non-moderators have voted to close the question. The moderator has only intervened at a late stage. Personally I would have waited until there were 3 or even 4 non-moderator close votes, and I would potentially vote to close even if I personally disagreed with decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case I'm not sure that either question passes the new constructive subjective test." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1193" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="177" RevisionGUID="9e286027-f78d-41a2-a4e7-8cb6b7db7acd" CreationDate="2010-10-13T07:54:04.380" UserId="47" Comment="caveat" Text="You know all those questions on Stack Overflow that get (or should get) closed as &quot;subjective and argumentative&quot;, you know one's like: &quot;what's your favourite programmer cartoon&quot;, &quot;what language/framework should I learn next&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well this is the place to ask them without fear of them being closed (except perhaps as a duplicate).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Important note&#xD;&#xA;This question was posted and my answer written before the &quot;constructive subjective&quot; policy was introduced - [Six Subjective Guidelines](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice). So the example questions I quote should be regarded as theoretical questions only." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1194" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="431" RevisionGUID="c849fc31-fb90-423a-ab6a-3c9a68e474b6" CreationDate="2010-10-13T12:56:21.880" UserId="1130" Text="I recently posted [this question][5] on programmers.SE and it was suggested that I move part of the question to meta. I was asking if there was a good forum/discussion board I could find online to talk to other programmers about culture, opinions, stories, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I love Programmers.SE but lately it seems that they are enforcing the &quot;good subjective question&quot; policy too harshly. If they want this to be a place for Answers and not discussion, that's fine, but then I would like to find a site where I can discuss things. If this is the site to discuss things, then please think before you vote to close something and don't just vote to close something because it doesn't meet some set of rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few examples are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **[What do you call this { character][1]**  I think this is a perfectly valid question. We're all new once and the best way to find out the answer to something like this is to ask the industry&#xD;&#xA; - **[What programming jargon words are your least favorite][2]** I enjoyed this one and learned some new terms&#xD;&#xA; - **[Do speakers get paid for their tech talks?][3]** Another one I was interested in but got closed&#xD;&#xA; - **[I've got &quot;benefits&quot;][4]** I actually found this one funny and would sympathize with him. Its the sort of thing you kind of have to be a geek to appreciate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were a few others I was looking at a short time ago that had some close votes, but hadn't closed yet. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11077/what-do-you-call-this-character&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11033/which-programming-jargon-words-are-your-least-favorite&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10916/do-speakers-get-paid-for-their-tech-talks-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10970/ive-got-benefits-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11397/is-there-a-good-site-for-programmers-to-discuss-culture-stories-opinions-or-wh" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1195" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="431" RevisionGUID="c849fc31-fb90-423a-ab6a-3c9a68e474b6" CreationDate="2010-10-13T12:56:21.880" UserId="1130" Text="Is Programmers.SE a discussion board or a Q&amp;A board?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1196" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="431" RevisionGUID="c849fc31-fb90-423a-ab6a-3c9a68e474b6" CreationDate="2010-10-13T12:56:21.880" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1197" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="431" RevisionGUID="1600beda-52dd-411e-8a38-01840d542677" CreationDate="2010-10-13T13:03:17.420" UserId="1130" Comment="deleted 82 characters in body" Text="I recently posted [this question][1] on programmers.SE and it was suggested that I move part of the question to meta. I was asking if there was a good forum/discussion board I could find online to talk to other programmers about culture, opinions, stories, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I love Programmers.SE but lately it seems that they are enforcing the &quot;good subjective question&quot; policy too harshly. If they want this to be a place for Answers and not discussion, that's fine, but then I would like to find a site where I can discuss things. If this is the site to discuss things, then please think before you vote to close something and don't just vote to close something because it doesn't meet some set of rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few examples are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **[What do you call this { character][2]**  I think this is a perfectly valid question. We're all new once and the best way to find out the answer to something like this is to ask the industry&#xD;&#xA; - **[What programming jargon words are your least favorite][3]** I enjoyed this one and learned some new terms&#xD;&#xA; - **[Do speakers get paid for their tech talks?][4]** Another one I was interested in but got closed&#xD;&#xA; - **[I've got &quot;benefits&quot;][5]** I actually found this one funny and would sympathize with him. Its the sort of thing you kind of have to be a geek to appreciate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were a few others I was looking at a short time ago that had some close votes, but hadn't closed yet. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/11397/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11077/what-do-you-call-this-character&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11033/which-programming-jargon-words-are-your-least-favorite&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10916/do-speakers-get-paid-for-their-tech-talks-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10970/ive-got-benefits-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1199" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="432" RevisionGUID="441c3613-acc5-4043-ac9d-5f7cc35a32c8" CreationDate="2010-10-13T14:14:03.403" UserId="500" Text="**Programmers.SE is still somewhere in the middle**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one of the most controversial websites in the StackExchange network because of the large amount of subjectivity present here. Subjectivity and discussion are a bad combination for a supposedly Q&amp;A site because there are no definite answers for questions that are asked here, so that leads to forum-like debates, arguments and flame wars.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;About the policies being enforced here, you should remember that rules are made by humans only and they change over time as we learn more about the problem-domain. Seeing as we are still starting out as a community and that the site is still in beta phase, I can say that there's still a lot of room left for improvement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pretty sure Programmers.SE won't be your usual StackExchange site in the future. People having low acceptance rates here are signs of that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1200" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="433" RevisionGUID="1488ee8f-3f62-4c5f-a723-c9049a1113e4" CreationDate="2010-10-13T14:22:07.890" UserId="3" Text="This is *not* a discussion board. If you want a discussion forum, go get a copy of vBulletin or phpBB and start one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community *will* close posts because they do not follow a list of rules. Those rules form [the basis of a philosophy](http://scobleizer.com/2009/11/02/the-chat-roomforum-problem-an-apology-to-technosailor/) that is designed to avoid the problems that destroy traditional threaded forums. Those rules and behaviors are at the very core of building great Q&amp;A and why this software and network exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers DOES NOT work outside that philosophy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE's purpose is to handle questions of interest to programmers which are not directly related to coding (Stack Overflow is about *coding*, explicitly). We recognize that those questions will *tend* towards more subjective subjects, so we set up a framework asking subjective questions that fall within the scope of Q&amp;A: [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is still a contingent of users who believe that Programmers.SE is here solely as their playground; that the rules and philosophy somehow don't apply; that nothing is too subjective or off-topic and that craziness and anarchy should rule. That is *not* the case.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1203" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="433" RevisionGUID="1937738d-3248-4735-a5ee-ecd6a7fbe977" CreationDate="2010-10-13T16:52:18.240" UserId="3" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body; deleted 83 characters in body" Text="This is *not* a discussion board. The community *will* close posts because they do not follow a list of rules. Those rules form [the basis of a philosophy](http://scobleizer.com/2009/11/02/the-chat-roomforum-problem-an-apology-to-technosailor/) that is designed to avoid the problems that destroy traditional threaded forums. Those rules and behaviors are at the very core of building great Q&amp;A and why this software and network exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers DOES NOT work outside that philosophy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE's purpose is to handle questions of interest to programmers which are not directly related to coding (Stack Overflow is about *coding*, explicitly). We recognize that those questions will *tend* towards more subjective subjects, so we set up a framework asking subjective questions that fall within the scope of Q&amp;A: [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is still a contingent of users who believe that Programmers.SE is here solely as their playground; that the rules and philosophy somehow don't apply; that nothing is too subjective or off-topic and that craziness and anarchy should rule. That is *not* the case.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1204" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="435" RevisionGUID="b23f585e-cee2-421c-b0e5-fd4fce6ff662" CreationDate="2010-10-13T17:49:20.390" UserId="1973" Text="###Programmers.SE skirts around the issue&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interesting questions on the top then come interesting answers to the questions. Discussions happen in the comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's more like the Summa Theologia of programmer philosophy with footnotes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're lucky enough to make it through the first and second scrutiny, you may be able to post something on this site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. Where's my platinum anarchyrulez badge?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1205" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="436" RevisionGUID="39a89e6c-aecb-42d9-9480-2c957c5336a5" CreationDate="2010-10-13T18:25:09.283" UserDisplayName="user1842" Text="Chat.Programmers.SE when it is implemented.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's and example of a [SE chat room][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/89/the-tavern-general" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1206" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="436" RevisionGUID="8ee42971-ddf6-49f7-a230-900bf44bf160" CreationDate="2010-10-13T18:45:53.820" UserDisplayName="user1842" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="Chat.Programmers.SE when it is implemented.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's an example of a [SE chat room][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/89/the-tavern-general" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1207" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="435" RevisionGUID="c8ddddc4-b4dc-4364-9404-e9616e7044fa" CreationDate="2010-10-13T19:32:51.807" UserId="1973" Comment="added 158 characters in body" Text="###Programmers.SE skirts around the issue&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interesting questions on the top then come interesting answers to the questions. Discussions happen in the comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's more like the Summa Theologia of programmer philosophy with footnotes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're lucky enough to make it through the first and second scrutiny, you may be able to post something on this site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. Where's my platinum anarchyrulez badge? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.P.S Just kidding, I'm not an anarchist (nor do I appreciate being called one) and contrary to some people's opinion I'm not trying to subvert the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1208" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="437" RevisionGUID="24a9db40-e45f-435f-a63b-725efd8811bb" CreationDate="2010-10-14T01:19:50.483" UserId="5341" Text="Rant incoming...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this fracturing of SO into a 'subjective' and 'non-subjective' version is the worst idea since New Coke.  Its idealogical nonsense in the face of what made SO great, i.e. a sense of community and the improving thereof. What was unworkable about stucking 'subjective' tags on subjective questions and letting people who wanted to participate in an active discussion of subjective topics do so, leaving people who didn't with the ability to stick 'subjective' in their list of ignore tags?  One minute spent by a user trying to decide if a question should be on Programmers or SO is about 59 seconds too many.  I've watched questions come in on SO in realtime and participated in closing down the egregiously stupid or redundant ones, of which there are quite a few.  I don't see how it could have been such an insurmountable burden to stick subjective tags in the actual subjective questions at the same time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rant complete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;FYI, this is NOT a duplicate of 'what the difference between this and SO?'.  This is 'what was actually broken in SO?'" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1209" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="437" RevisionGUID="24a9db40-e45f-435f-a63b-725efd8811bb" CreationDate="2010-10-14T01:19:50.483" UserId="5341" Text="What was wrong with the Subjective tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1210" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="437" RevisionGUID="24a9db40-e45f-435f-a63b-725efd8811bb" CreationDate="2010-10-14T01:19:50.483" UserId="5341" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|rant|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1211" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="437" RevisionGUID="10251ca6-340f-4f45-9e03-4b20e13a9e28" CreationDate="2010-10-14T02:28:11.663" UserId="5341" Comment="added 666 characters in body" Text="Rant incoming...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this fracturing of SO into a 'subjective' and 'non-subjective' version is the worst idea since New Coke.  Its idealogical nonsense in the face of what made SO great, i.e. a sense of community and the improving thereof. What was unworkable about stucking 'subjective' tags on subjective questions and letting people who wanted to participate in an active discussion of subjective topics do so, leaving people who didn't with the ability to stick 'subjective' in their list of ignore tags?  One minute spent by a user trying to decide if a question should be on Programmers or SO is about 59 seconds too many.  I've watched questions come in on SO in realtime and participated in closing down the egregiously stupid or redundant ones, of which there are quite a few.  I don't see how it could have been such an insurmountable burden to stick subjective tags in the actual subjective questions at the same time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rant complete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;FYI, this is NOT a duplicate of 'what the difference between this and SO?'.  This is 'what was actually broken in SO?'&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update:&#xD;&#xA;So my question is an exact duplicate of a question that has been closed as an exact duplicate of a question which I explicitly said is not what I'm asking?  The blog post referenced in the top response to that question seems to me to  boil down to 'I don't like meta-tags'.  So I reiterate... aside from being annoying to some subset of users, what was wrong with meta tags as a division of questions?  There are always going to be N dimensions along which we could divide questions.  Just because some of those dimensions feel unnatural to some people isn't a good enough reason to split the site (even if that someone is one of the site founders).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1213" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="436" RevisionGUID="cc375bac-1aaa-4f10-8110-5cb26cdc9782" CreationDate="2010-10-14T05:37:01.560" UserDisplayName="user1842" Comment="added 158 characters in body" Text="&gt; I was asking if there was a good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; forum/discussion board I could find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; online to talk to other programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about culture, opinions, stories, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Chat.Programmers.SE when it is implemented.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's an example of a [SE chat room][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/89/the-tavern-general" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1214" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="439" RevisionGUID="7e92fe85-664d-44e5-9733-e923549de3da" CreationDate="2010-10-14T05:53:21.830" UserDisplayName="user1842" Text="I didn't think there was anything wrong with the subjective tag, but there is a problem with subjective questions.  **Stack Overflow was made great because you could come here and get a good quick answer.**  I love being able to get my questions answered quick.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also like to answer questions, but with all the subjective crap it really bloats the front page.  We need to keep SO focused so it will maintain its usability as a Q&amp;A site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1215" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="440" RevisionGUID="d6d1a0b9-a67e-405f-9d12-dc2ad017ffd1" CreationDate="2010-10-14T07:43:06.300" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="SOIS has decided to [disable the community feature entirely for end-users](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/67039/what-can-we-do-to-make-community-wiki-better/67192#67192). Now, if you want a question to be community wiki, you need to flag it for moderator attention. So, that's that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1216" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8" RevisionGUID="e56a8360-641c-43d9-b4c2-d1d8bb1b44f1" CreationDate="2010-10-14T07:51:33.673" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 315 characters in body" Text="&gt; ###Update&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Community Wiki is [no longer an option](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/392/should-the-community-wiki-police-be-shut-down/7183#7183), across the network, for regular users when creating or editing a question. If a question should be flagged community wiki, flag a moderator for attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related to [Why would anyone accept an answer?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer), what's the criteria for what should be a community wiki and what is a regular question? If most, if not all questions are subjective, is there a need to generate one mega-answer through collaboration?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1217" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="333" RevisionGUID="0806ee89-a453-4cc3-8a58-032fa570cb71" CreationDate="2010-10-14T14:15:05.973" UserId="6" Comment="added 68 characters in body; added 129 characters in body" Text="###Edit: Problem solved.  As Mark Trapp points out, [normal users can no longer mark CW](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/67039/what-can-we-do-to-make-community-wiki-better/67192#67192).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [consensus](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki) seems to be that community wiki is useless here, and we've been pointing this out in various question comment threads.  The problem is that new user keep coming in with the old expectations of how CW should work, and marking their questions CW just because they're subjective.  I see a few options for dealing with this that I'll post in separate answers- of course, post your own if you can think of a better solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we get a clear consensus, the mods, in their capacity of liaisons, can take it to SOIS." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1218" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="441" RevisionGUID="72366f1d-d41a-4b45-8729-1ecb8a4f56dc" CreationDate="2010-10-14T15:03:14.607" UserId="226" Text="Once in a while someone pops up with an objective &quot;help me with my code&quot; question like [this one][1]. I think it'd be nice to have a mechanism to migrate these to StackOverflow. Thoughts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12010/pyton-gtk-menu-show-the-menu-at-a-certain-position" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1219" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="441" RevisionGUID="72366f1d-d41a-4b45-8729-1ecb8a4f56dc" CreationDate="2010-10-14T15:03:14.607" UserId="226" Text="Can we get a &quot;Belongs on StackOverflow&quot; as a closing reason?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1220" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="441" RevisionGUID="72366f1d-d41a-4b45-8729-1ecb8a4f56dc" CreationDate="2010-10-14T15:03:14.607" UserId="226" Text="|feature-request|close-reasons|migration|disc|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1221" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="441" RevisionGUID="bc754ddd-04dc-48e8-9adb-80653fa15f31" CreationDate="2010-10-14T15:03:23.763" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|feature-request|close-reasons|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1222" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="442" RevisionGUID="62d0e3ec-54ed-4fd1-ad0b-c3e5bec00c47" CreationDate="2010-10-14T15:29:10.300" UserId="47" Text="Not until the site leaves beta, and then we'll have to provide evidence of open questions that should be migrated and closed questions that should have been migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end - if anyone comes across a question that fits the bill, edit it into this answer so we don't have to do it all at once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12010/pyton-gtk-menu-show-the-menu-at-a-certain-position-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Server Fault&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11723/in-namebench-results-what-is-to-and-other-questions-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1223" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="442" RevisionGUID="62d0e3ec-54ed-4fd1-ad0b-c3e5bec00c47" CreationDate="2010-10-14T15:29:10.300" UserId="47" />
  <row Id="1224" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="442" RevisionGUID="4adb8eb2-ff6e-4fd9-9034-8ade34348715" CreationDate="2010-10-14T15:58:25.040" UserId="18" Comment="added 653 characters in body" Text="Not until the site leaves beta, and then we'll have to provide evidence of open questions that should be migrated and closed questions that should have been migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end - if anyone comes across a question that fits the bill, edit it into this answer so we don't have to do it all at once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Pyton + GTK.Menu - show the menu at a certain position [closed]&#xD;&#xA;][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [jQuery $.Post quirk [closed]][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Do we “Inherit an Interface” or “Implement an Interface”?&#xD;&#xA;][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Server Fault&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [In NameBench results, what is TO and other questions? [closed]&#xD;&#xA;][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Super User&#xD;&#xA;* [How is Linux not prone to viruses or that kind? [closed]&#xD;&#xA;][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12010/pyton-gtk-menu-show-the-menu-at-a-certain-position-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11451/jquery-post-quirk&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11920/do-we-inherit-an-interface-or-implement-an-interface&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11723/in-namebench-results-what-is-to-and-other-questions-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9141/how-is-linux-not-prone-to-viruses-or-that-kind" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1225" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="443" RevisionGUID="c3eb7caa-4bf1-4052-89e3-5ec859efdb7f" CreationDate="2010-10-14T17:45:27.567" UserId="63" Text="We tried to agree on a set of guidelines for asking and marking overly-subjective questions on SO... And failed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We tried to agree on a set of guidelines for creating &quot;list&quot; and &quot;gtky&quot; questions... And failed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We tried to agree on a set of guidelines for using Community Wiki on SO... And failed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So now subjective, list, and GTKY questions are off-topic for SO, and CW is no longer an option for question authors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is why we can't have nice things..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1226" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="444" RevisionGUID="9fdfc818-9be9-47d5-b65c-81d0d4cbf7b8" CreationDate="2010-10-14T19:37:34.053" UserId="145" Text="I'm hoping it becomes the one stop shop for &quot;What developers think about developing&quot; site.  A place to figure out what the collective wisdom of developers finds valuable, and (perhaps even more importantly) what appears valuable but turns out to be ineffective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A critical component is Q&amp;A about the Patterns and Anti-Patterns of performing software development.   Questions like &quot;Why do people do &lt; this &gt;?&quot; or &quot;Why should I avoid &lt; that &gt;?&quot; are great.  The subjective guidelines make sense here, they are designed to encourage answers backed up by experience and reasoning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   * A good recent example is [why-are-cyclic-imports-considered-so-evil][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But certain discussion forum type questions are valuable too.  Having a place where people vote on answers to Questions like &quot;what is your opinion on &lt; controversy &gt;?&quot; may actually help to clearly outline the pluses and minuses of either side, and help a visitor decide his/her own position.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  *  With some editing, [Is the agile approach too much of a convenient excuse for cowboys][2] could actually be a good discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another potentially valuable question type is &quot;What is the Best &lt; thing &gt; for &lt; situation &gt;&quot;, or &quot;What is your &lt; particular situation &gt;.  Good answers to the first one show where the community wisdom lies, answers to the second one paint a picture of the field. However, these are prone to multiple versions of the same short answers, making it hard to see if the community has a clear answer.  I'd really like to see the ability to tag a question as 'Survey', where the writer creates the initial set of answers, anyone could suggest more alternates, but only users with sufficient rep could add them.  People would vote for their best answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The question that made me think of this is [how-many-hours-do-you-work][3]?  I'd really like to see the answers to this question in the form of a survey.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my answer to this question is &quot;Both&quot;.  It should be a Q&amp;A board that encourages discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12005/why-are-cyclic-imports-considered-so-evil&#xD;&#xA;   [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/11188/145&#xD;&#xA;   [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11589/how-many-hours-do-you-work-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1227" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="442" RevisionGUID="868c1e9e-a5e5-4c8b-998a-fc88e5382a57" CreationDate="2010-10-14T21:51:43.443" UserId="1973" Comment="Removed a question I didn't think belonged" Text="Not until the site leaves beta, and then we'll have to provide evidence of open questions that should be migrated and closed questions that should have been migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end - if anyone comes across a question that fits the bill, edit it into this answer so we don't have to do it all at once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Pyton + GTK.Menu - show the menu at a certain position [closed]&#xD;&#xA;][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [jQuery $.Post quirk [closed]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Server Fault&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [In NameBench results, what is TO and other questions? [closed]&#xD;&#xA;][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Super User&#xD;&#xA;* [How is Linux not prone to viruses or that kind? [closed]&#xD;&#xA;][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12010/pyton-gtk-menu-show-the-menu-at-a-certain-position-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11451/jquery-post-quirk&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11723/in-namebench-results-what-is-to-and-other-questions-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9141/how-is-linux-not-prone-to-viruses-or-that-kind" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1228" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="445" RevisionGUID="06b1e5ba-4b3d-48f5-9f9d-8f99add4e5fe" CreationDate="2010-10-14T21:56:58.673" UserId="145" Text="**Pitch ** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers on Programming. The collective wisdom and best practices of the software development community.  _The_ place to go for answers on the art of programming.   100% code free. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;** Tagline **&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Art of Programming. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;MOTTO&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No {} allowed " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1229" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="446" RevisionGUID="017a41a1-f58b-4434-bcb9-6eebd44475f8" CreationDate="2010-10-15T16:41:44.563" UserId="94" Text="I don't support this, but in the interest of completeness, note that [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) says code golf does belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This __can include topics such as__:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * ... (snip for brevity) ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * Software law&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * __Code golf &amp; programming puzzles__&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(emphasis mine)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1230" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="445" RevisionGUID="332c2053-1f78-4375-a9ed-1887823682d1" CreationDate="2010-10-15T16:53:36.990" UserId="145" Comment="formatting" Text="**Pitch** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers on Programming. The collective wisdom and best practices of the software development community.  _The_ place to go for answers on the art of programming.   100% code free. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Tagline**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Art of Programming. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Motto**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No {} allowed " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1231" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="447" RevisionGUID="20cf06b9-159e-409b-bc83-00e5a9a248a3" CreationDate="2010-10-15T20:58:37.947" UserId="1973" Text="I've been monitoring [the heathcare IT][1] SO and I'd really like it to take off so I can rant and rave about the government somewhere.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today (actually yesterday) [CMS][2] (part of the American Health and Human Services) was supposed to release a file that we were supposed to have in our update.  However, that file never got released.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to ask about how I could get a [redress of grievances][3] but was unceremoniously slammed by people who probably had no idea what I was talking about. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, did we reject [this edict][4] or just ignore it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6433/healthcare-it&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://www.cms.gov/NursingHomeQualityInits/30_NHQIMDS30TechnicalInformation.asp&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12298/when-the-government-is-the-problem-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1232" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="447" RevisionGUID="20cf06b9-159e-409b-bc83-00e5a9a248a3" CreationDate="2010-10-15T20:58:37.947" UserId="1973" Text="Is Heathcare IT taboo?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1233" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="447" RevisionGUID="20cf06b9-159e-409b-bc83-00e5a9a248a3" CreationDate="2010-10-15T20:58:37.947" UserId="1973" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1234" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="448" RevisionGUID="f3eef6f7-2a8e-4d34-9f4f-69b9dfaf157b" CreationDate="2010-10-15T21:30:46.717" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The issue isn't the topic of Healthcare IT.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is a site for questions and answers about programming related issues. Your question isn't programming related: you're ranting about your experience with the government, and tangentially asking for a file you couldn't get from them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rants, in any form, are not allowed across the Stack Exchange network. If you're looking for an outlet to air your frustration, I'd suggest a blog." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1235" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="210" RevisionGUID="39789c9c-6e0a-4482-9397-809df454c001" CreationDate="2010-10-16T08:31:04.280" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-norepro|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1239" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="449" RevisionGUID="37fae6c4-99a6-42bd-9558-04dce1cf5e35" CreationDate="2010-10-16T08:35:51.650" UserId="37" Text="Changed to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for professional topics related to programming. It's 100% free, no registration required.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;for more, see the [faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1240" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="450" RevisionGUID="f9b65b8b-77cb-43db-90b9-637a25b02a83" CreationDate="2010-10-16T08:40:29.017" UserId="37" Text="It now says&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to Q&amp;A for expert programmers interested in professional discussions on software development -- check out the FAQ!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1241" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="307" RevisionGUID="aafa69b6-895a-4903-8d0f-47b49c3793c3" CreationDate="2010-10-16T08:40:37.427" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1245" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2" RevisionGUID="568d2b0b-a994-4caa-8df8-cdb3f68aa229" CreationDate="2010-10-16T08:42:24.580" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|top-7|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1248" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="452" RevisionGUID="d92a41ed-8a28-490d-8eac-ff1164d0aa8c" CreationDate="2010-10-16T11:05:09.120" UserId="2210" Text="Currently the reputation requirement for using moderator tools set at 2,000 points. Seeing as many members are reaching that limit, should it be increased?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1249" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="452" RevisionGUID="d92a41ed-8a28-490d-8eac-ff1164d0aa8c" CreationDate="2010-10-16T11:05:09.120" UserId="2210" Text="Should reputation requirement for moderator be increased?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1250" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="452" RevisionGUID="d92a41ed-8a28-490d-8eac-ff1164d0aa8c" CreationDate="2010-10-16T11:05:09.120" UserId="2210" Text="|discussion|reputation|moderation|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1251" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="453" RevisionGUID="bf304cd9-18ea-4d20-8f80-d19001e54922" CreationDate="2010-10-16T16:04:21.987" UserId="4971" Text="If the members have proven themselves worthy of the reputation, I see no reason to ensure it remains only a privileged few that can use moderator tools." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1252" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="454" RevisionGUID="a754ad86-9bb3-4fc3-9d9b-9d48bb4469ce" CreationDate="2010-10-16T16:17:02.363" UserId="47" Text="When the site graduates the reputation requirement for access to the tools menu will increase to 10K - in line with Stack Overflow et al.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reduced reputation requirements is a feature of beta. During the private beta the requirements were different again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lower requirements are needed to allow the site to evolve into it's final form and during the initial phases more people who can cast close votes and edit other people's post are needed. As the site matures and what's on topic and off topic settles to it's final version the same tasks can be accomplished with fewer voters plus the diamond moderators." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1253" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="412" RevisionGUID="289ae688-cbd2-42ad-b0eb-82540a245b3c" CreationDate="2010-10-16T18:38:25.330" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1255" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="53" RevisionGUID="ec929e50-47c3-4670-ad02-0686bf66914c" CreationDate="2010-10-16T18:55:06.113" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1257" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="429" RevisionGUID="0ebb9f64-1691-4082-8a21-7047776736c2" CreationDate="2010-10-18T13:00:24.447" UserId="1973" Comment="added some seething vitriol" Text="###Funny that Moderator BigOwn feels the need to close a question that the community reopened twice.  He must feel as though he Bigowns the place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's quite an outrage, why go so far against the grain to inflict your will upon the masses and not even acknowledge why you are doing so?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11033/which-programming-jargon-words-are-your-least-favorite-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Give me a break, why wasn't &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2119/which-programming-jargon-words-are-your-favorite&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;closed as well?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1258" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="429" RevisionGUID="0ebb9f64-1691-4082-8a21-7047776736c2" CreationDate="2010-10-18T13:00:24.447" UserId="1973" Comment="added some seething vitriol" Text="Mods should be stopped from closing reopened stuff automatically the second time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1259" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="429" RevisionGUID="98e992c0-7bf3-42bd-b28f-6c22d04eb774" CreationDate="2010-10-18T16:15:10.347" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Remove personal attack" Text="That's quite an outrage, why go so far against the grain to inflict your will upon the masses and not even acknowledge why you are doing so?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11033/which-programming-jargon-words-are-your-least-favorite-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Give me a break, why wasn't &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2119/which-programming-jargon-words-are-your-favorite&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;closed as well?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1261" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="455" RevisionGUID="8bea3da6-a58d-40f3-a395-9d52e660a2fd" CreationDate="2010-10-18T23:35:41.483" UserId="66" Text="According to the [new blog entry][1], we can now move questions in between sites. Would it be possible for us, even though were in beta, to have several migration paths setup?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sites that I think deserve a migration path:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;  - Objective questions are already being asked here and will just grow. &#xD;&#xA;  - Examples&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12566/how-to-name-a-single-purpose-class-and-method-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12426/what-methods-can-be-employed-for-using-composition-over-inheritance-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12271/how-i-do-versioning-for-an-web-application-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12010/pyton-gtk-menu-show-the-menu-at-a-certain-position-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11451/jquery-post-quirk-closed&#xD;&#xA; - SuperUser&#xD;&#xA;  - Originally there were few good questions about computer setups which resulted in many objective questions about setups. We really don't need this stuff here&#xD;&#xA;  - Examples&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12839/what-monitors-have-larger-than-hd-resolution-size-is-less-important-closed&#xD;&#xA;        - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12584/how-would-you-make-a-qwerty-keyboard-more-programming-friendly-closed&#xD;&#xA;        - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12565/best-out-of-box-linux-distro-for-general-programming-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12375/what-mouse-model-or-brand-do-you-like-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11895/recommendation-electronic-reader-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11577/running-javascript-on-the-command-line-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think this can be setup? It would make much of this site a bit more friendly instead of a straight close. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/new-question-migration-paths/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1262" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="455" RevisionGUID="8bea3da6-a58d-40f3-a395-9d52e660a2fd" CreationDate="2010-10-18T23:35:41.483" UserId="66" Text="Can we get new migration paths setup?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1263" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="455" RevisionGUID="8bea3da6-a58d-40f3-a395-9d52e660a2fd" CreationDate="2010-10-18T23:35:41.483" UserId="66" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1264" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="456" RevisionGUID="76c6830e-846e-4680-b887-b6e83c221d2d" CreationDate="2010-10-18T23:53:58.293" UserDisplayName="user1842" Text="The current philosophy from the Team is that they [won't provide migration until the Beta is over][1], but it seems like that part of the site should be vetted in Beta also.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/68000/allow-beta-sites-to-migrate-questions-to-relevant-sites/68003#68003" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1265" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="442" RevisionGUID="b7f2e505-1125-4740-84bb-eb8087d0a0c3" CreationDate="2010-10-19T10:29:12.093" UserId="18" Comment="added 146 characters in body" Text="Not until the site leaves beta, and then we'll have to provide evidence of open questions that should be migrated and closed questions that should have been migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end - if anyone comes across a question that fits the bill, edit it into this answer so we don't have to do it all at once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Pyton + GTK.Menu - show the menu at a certain position [closed]&#xD;&#xA;][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [jQuery $.Post quirk [closed]][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [mod_security + apache + geoip block != 404][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Server Fault&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [In NameBench results, what is TO and other questions? [closed]&#xD;&#xA;][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Super User&#xD;&#xA;* [How is Linux not prone to viruses or that kind? [closed]&#xD;&#xA;][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12010/pyton-gtk-menu-show-the-menu-at-a-certain-position-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11451/jquery-post-quirk&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12942/mod-security-apache-geoip-block-404&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11723/in-namebench-results-what-is-to-and-other-questions-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9141/how-is-linux-not-prone-to-viruses-or-that-kind" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1266" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="457" RevisionGUID="981c47e2-19fa-4965-b18a-a26692f50212" CreationDate="2010-10-19T10:55:45.550" UserId="4027" Text="**Elevator Pitch**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A site exploring the big picture of programming and the practicalities of professional software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Tagline**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Professional programming principles and practice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Logo Blurb**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think outside the brackets&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1267" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="455" RevisionGUID="32c03dea-01e9-474c-abd8-31fe7dc91f39" CreationDate="2010-10-19T12:35:42.637" UserId="47" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[441],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="1268" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="455" RevisionGUID="add1ae2d-1d76-4714-af06-75125b83c714" CreationDate="2010-10-19T12:35:42.777" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Can we get a &amp;ldquo;Belongs on StackOverflow&amp;rdquo; as a closing reason?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/441/can-we-get-a-belongs-on-stackoverflow-as-a-closing-reason)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;According to the [new blog entry][1], we can now move questions in between sites. Would it be possible for us, even though were in beta, to have several migration paths setup?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sites that I think deserve a migration path:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;  - Objective questions are already being asked here and will just grow. &#xD;&#xA;  - Examples&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12566/how-to-name-a-single-purpose-class-and-method-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12426/what-methods-can-be-employed-for-using-composition-over-inheritance-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12271/how-i-do-versioning-for-an-web-application-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12010/pyton-gtk-menu-show-the-menu-at-a-certain-position-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11451/jquery-post-quirk-closed&#xD;&#xA; - SuperUser&#xD;&#xA;  - Originally there were few good questions about computer setups which resulted in many objective questions about setups. We really don't need this stuff here&#xD;&#xA;  - Examples&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12839/what-monitors-have-larger-than-hd-resolution-size-is-less-important-closed&#xD;&#xA;        - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12584/how-would-you-make-a-qwerty-keyboard-more-programming-friendly-closed&#xD;&#xA;        - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12565/best-out-of-box-linux-distro-for-general-programming-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12375/what-mouse-model-or-brand-do-you-like-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11895/recommendation-electronic-reader-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11577/running-javascript-on-the-command-line-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think this can be setup? It would make much of this site a bit more friendly instead of a straight close. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/new-question-migration-paths/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1269" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="458" RevisionGUID="cb5fdfea-7035-4f69-92db-69ec2fca03b5" CreationDate="2010-10-19T12:56:29.243" UserId="5717" Text="Not very original, but I think that fits the site's *leit motiv*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Tagline**  &#xD;&#xA;Beacuse programming is not just coding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1270" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="459" RevisionGUID="44b946c3-2f53-4cc3-8c3a-a295efa27c79" CreationDate="2010-10-19T13:43:59.003" UserId="285" Text="I just noticed that at the bottom of closed questions here on meta.programmers.stackexchange.com, it tells me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You must have at least 5 reputation on Programmers to answer a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have over 1000 rep, so that's not an accurate message. (And I am offered the Your Answe box on open questions.) It doesn't do that when I look at closed questions on programmers.stackexchange.com." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1271" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="459" RevisionGUID="44b946c3-2f53-4cc3-8c3a-a295efa27c79" CreationDate="2010-10-19T13:43:59.003" UserId="285" Text="Closed meta questions tell me I don't have enough rep" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1272" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="459" RevisionGUID="44b946c3-2f53-4cc3-8c3a-a295efa27c79" CreationDate="2010-10-19T13:43:59.003" UserId="285" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1273" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="459" RevisionGUID="cb97d7a1-dd81-418f-8014-c785a517daf1" CreationDate="2010-10-19T15:47:10.017" UserId="285" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="I just noticed that at the bottom of closed questions here on meta.programmers.stackexchange.com, it tells me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You must have at least 5 reputation on Programmers to answer a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have over 1000 rep, so that's not an accurate message. (And I am offered the Your Answer box on open questions.) It doesn't do that when I look at closed questions on programmers.stackexchange.com." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1274" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="393" RevisionGUID="b0f8e5f2-6dd2-454e-9c2d-c03ce2a0362a" CreationDate="2010-10-19T16:13:33.083" UserId="389" Comment="new blog link" Text="Jeff Atwood post new article about [Asking Better Questions][1]. Please read and help us enforce the quality of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- if you see a great, thoughtfully asked, well researched question, vote it up — please! Great questions are an art!&#xD;&#xA;- if you see an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended question that you feel was asked in bad faith … vote it down.&#xD;&#xA;- anything in between that’s salvageable, edit it — if you have the requisite 1,000 reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please **use your votes**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting RobertCartaino from chat:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Vote, vote, vote. Encourage others to vote, vote, vote. On good content, leave signposts (&quot;If you like this, please vote it up. It's important for the community!&quot;)-- in both meta and the main site. Maybe a few meta posts informing the users of the important of that type of participation. You are empowered a lot more than you know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT2:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Read: [Vote Early, Vote Often][2] too.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/asking-better-questions/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/vote-early-vote-often/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1275" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="460" RevisionGUID="b25d0c1d-9597-4a98-a4d6-60eca61715ea" CreationDate="2010-10-19T16:20:18.373" UserId="47" Text="This has been reported over on Meta Stack Overflow - but I don't have the link right now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1276" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="461" RevisionGUID="7f7a3a32-8d1a-4e24-84b7-c9957a57b816" CreationDate="2010-10-20T14:09:38.367" UserId="1525" Text="**Pitch**&#xD;&#xA;Yeah, you can code, but what about the rest? Welcome to your new home.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Tagline**&#xD;&#xA;Living outside of scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Motto**&#xD;&#xA;/dev/discussion" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1277" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="462" RevisionGUID="6b19b7af-e05c-4ffe-8a58-0a028c262d62" CreationDate="2010-10-20T23:12:29.933" UserId="66" Text="Me and 2 others have reported this a while ago on Meta.SO. Its been reproduced on at least SuperUser and Gaming. Currently its `[status-planned]`, but who knows when it will actually get fixed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Root question: [Misleading error message on SE metas](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65390/you-must-have-at-least-5-reputation-on-parent-site-to-answer-a-question-for-c)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other reports&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Per-site metas say I need more than 5 reputation to answer a closed question…](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/66528/per-site-metas-say-i-need-more-than-5-reputation-to-answer-a-closed-question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [“You must have at least 5 reputation on [parent site] to answer a question” for closed questions (despite having the rep)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64767/misleading-error-message-on-se-metas)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1278" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="442" RevisionGUID="ab0146e6-8368-4aaf-aea6-7bef9937ac29" CreationDate="2010-10-20T23:16:40.583" UserId="66" Comment="Merged http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/455/can-we-get-new-migration-paths-setup-closed" Text="Not until the site leaves beta, and then we'll have to provide evidence of open questions that should be migrated and closed questions that should have been migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end - if anyone comes across a question that fits the bill, edit it into this answer so we don't have to do it all at once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Pyton + GTK.Menu - show the menu at a certain position [closed]&#xD;&#xA;][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [jQuery $.Post quirk [closed]][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [mod_security + apache + geoip block != 404][3]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12566/how-to-name-a-single-purpose-class-and-method-closed&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12426/what-methods-can-be-employed-for-using-composition-over-inheritance-closed&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12271/how-i-do-versioning-for-an-web-application-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Server Fault&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [In NameBench results, what is TO and other questions? [closed]&#xD;&#xA;][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Super User&#xD;&#xA;* [How is Linux not prone to viruses or that kind? [closed]&#xD;&#xA;][5]&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12839/what-monitors-have-larger-than-hd-resolution-size-is-less-important-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12584/how-would-you-make-a-qwerty-keyboard-more-programming-friendly-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12565/best-out-of-box-linux-distro-for-general-programming-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12375/what-mouse-model-or-brand-do-you-like-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11895/recommendation-electronic-reader-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11577/running-javascript-on-the-command-line-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12010/pyton-gtk-menu-show-the-menu-at-a-certain-position-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11451/jquery-post-quirk&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12942/mod-security-apache-geoip-block-404&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11723/in-namebench-results-what-is-to-and-other-questions-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9141/how-is-linux-not-prone-to-viruses-or-that-kind" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1279" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="463" RevisionGUID="56d6804a-25ed-4d57-8e6a-14a4e9484f3f" CreationDate="2010-10-21T08:17:57.473" UserId="5068" Text="### Tagline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers: About.  By.  For.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1280" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="458" RevisionGUID="23927c19-b9c3-49e0-8482-ef13da6f0fb3" CreationDate="2010-10-21T08:21:39.563" UserId="666" Comment="edited body" Text="Not very original, but I think that fits the site's *leit motiv*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Tagline**  &#xD;&#xA;Because programming is not just coding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1281" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="464" RevisionGUID="df21ab9d-278f-46d0-8b0d-19d59679dd71" CreationDate="2010-10-21T16:21:41.300" UserId="4027" Text="I agree about explaining why it has been closed. Especially when it's a mod closure, where it doesn't have the same accountability as a regular user closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is always going to be on a bit of a knife edge with regard to what is good subjective and bad subjective, so offering guidance as to what criteria people feels it breached when the question is closed is going to be really help guide questions in the right direction." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1282" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="465" RevisionGUID="65b32ca3-cee1-4e55-8b8e-f75477fece7c" CreationDate="2010-10-21T16:24:22.357" UserId="4" Text="Right now, it's &quot;Programmers&quot;, which was a good name at the beginning. However, the FAQ contains so much more now (and I love the new topics for discussion here, except for code golf): software engineering, testing, tools/techniques, algorithms and data structures, design patterns, architecture, methodologies, QA, law, business concerns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although many people who are interested in these are programmers, I think a name that invokes engineering, craftsmanship, or development would be better. Lots of people interested in these topics are or were programmers, but these topics go far beyond programming and include people who aren't programmers (architects typically aren't programmers, but were at one time, as an example).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1283" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="465" RevisionGUID="65b32ca3-cee1-4e55-8b8e-f75477fece7c" CreationDate="2010-10-21T16:24:22.357" UserId="4" Text="Can we change the name of the site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1284" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="465" RevisionGUID="65b32ca3-cee1-4e55-8b8e-f75477fece7c" CreationDate="2010-10-21T16:24:22.357" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1285" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="466" RevisionGUID="ddf071a8-00f9-462a-85b5-2b0f1232cc0c" CreationDate="2010-10-21T18:28:20.710" UserId="2344" Text="Face it, CW never did work as intended.  People are still reluctant to edit other people's answers.  This applies especially here:  it's reasonable for somebody else to edit my post if I put something factually incorrect in it (although that's usually done with comments), but it's hardly reasonable to edit my post when it's my opinion and the reasons I have for holding it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it's great for polls, as it allows answers to be proposed and voted on without having the first guy with a popular answer hitting the rep cap for the day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we're going to have polls around here, it would be useful to keep CW around, but rename it to something like &quot;Poll format&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1286" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="467" RevisionGUID="508d8e36-2bff-4694-a3f6-2a553241c0bf" CreationDate="2010-10-21T20:43:55.403" UserId="17" Text="##Elevator Pitch##&#xD;&#xA;Where programmers discuss career management, industry trends, good ideas, bad ideas, co-workers, and other problems they can't solve with clever code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Tagline##&#xD;&#xA;Wisdom from fellow code monkeys who've Been There.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Blurb##&#xD;&#xA;Code is the easy part." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1287" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="468" RevisionGUID="2e20d88c-f261-46b4-9c51-2261413e6bf4" CreationDate="2010-10-21T22:59:28.493" UserId="4027" Text="I agree that it is about big picture software development. No question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that doesn't mean that we have got rid of the objective-subjective thing. There aren't objective answers to a macro level question. There are best practices and there are things that have worked for other people in a similar situation, which is what this site can bring together. But there isn't *an* answer that will compile, like you might find in an SO question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site, as I see it, is absolutely about programming - more so than SO really as it's about programming as a profession or craft, rather than the details of how to perform a particular task - but I don't see that we can expect a single definitive answer in every case or indeed in most cases. The responses have to be subjective because it is people talking about things they have learned or benefited from. So yes, I guess objective/subjective is confusing. If there is an objective answer, it's probably a question for SO." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1288" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="469" RevisionGUID="b0163fdd-d298-4786-a6b6-a669bf669d10" CreationDate="2010-10-21T23:08:30.883" UserId="2274" Text="What's the point of a subjective site when &quot;too localized&quot; questions or unpopular questions are asked.  You would expect to see LESS closed questions here than elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Becoming very annoying and un-enjoyable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1289" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="469" RevisionGUID="b0163fdd-d298-4786-a6b6-a669bf669d10" CreationDate="2010-10-21T23:08:30.883" UserId="2274" Text="Why SO many closed questions?  Extremely annoying." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1290" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="469" RevisionGUID="b0163fdd-d298-4786-a6b6-a669bf669d10" CreationDate="2010-10-21T23:08:30.883" UserId="2274" Text="|discussion|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1291" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="469" RevisionGUID="655f971d-a8f1-4f65-b9e4-c72b7dc2f1b7" CreationDate="2010-10-21T23:13:54.470" UserId="2274" Comment="added 115 characters in body; edited title" Text="What's the point of a subjective site when &quot;too localized&quot; questions or unpopular questions are asked.  You would expect to see LESS closed questions here than elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Becoming very annoying and un-enjoyable.  Is it really THAT bad to have this board be of programming discussion with the original catalyst as the question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1292" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="469" RevisionGUID="655f971d-a8f1-4f65-b9e4-c72b7dc2f1b7" CreationDate="2010-10-21T23:13:54.470" UserId="2274" Comment="added 115 characters in body; edited title" Text="Why high number of  closed questions?  Extremely annoying." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1293" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="470" RevisionGUID="f5d6e2af-3e71-49e4-9f8d-a2f0ee35ab8a" CreationDate="2010-10-22T08:06:51.400" UserId="47" Text="Assuming the site goes live and gets &quot;Server Fault levels of traffic&quot; (source to follow) then we'll get a &quot;proper&quot; domain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we've chosen a good tagline, see [Write an Elevator Pitch/Tagline](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline) then the name should come." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1294" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="471" RevisionGUID="e975b908-13d7-43e6-a18e-86d5dd7b3403" CreationDate="2010-10-22T17:56:14.623" UserId="3" Text="Because this is not a &quot;Subjective Site.&quot; Programmers.SE's purpose is to handle questions of interest to programmers which are not directly related to coding (Stack Overflow is about *coding*, explicitly). Those questions will *tend* to be more subjective than the topics on Stack Overflow, so we set up some guidelines for asking subjective questions which fall within the scope of Q&amp;A: [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If questions cannot fit within the &quot;Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions,&quot; they need to be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's the point of a subjective site...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah, that's the crux of the issue. **There is no point** to a subjective site. &quot;Subjective&quot; is not a topic. You don't major in *subjective*. You cannot become an expert at *subjective*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This [has been covered](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/431/is-programmers-se-a-discussion-board-or-a-qa-board/433#433) extensively. If folks really want to hang out at a site which hosts [fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/), Stack Exchange simply is not the best venue. You'd be much better off setting up a phpBB forum somewhere.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1295" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="471" RevisionGUID="588b45c4-07c5-4e7c-af38-c94ab7ac8b26" CreationDate="2010-10-22T19:21:21.710" UserId="3" Comment="edited body; added 5 characters in body" Text="Because this is not a &quot;subjective site.&quot; Programmers.SE's purpose is to handle questions of interest to programmers which are not directly related to coding (Stack Overflow is about *coding*, explicitly). Those questions will *tend* to be more subjective than the topics on Stack Overflow, so we set up some guidelines for asking subjective questions which fall within the scope of good Q&amp;A: [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If questions cannot fit within the &quot;Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions,&quot; they need to be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's the point of a subjective site...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah, that's the crux of the issue. **There is no point** to a subjective site. &quot;Subjective&quot; is not a topic. You don't major in *subjective*. You cannot become an expert at *subjective*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This [has been covered](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/431/is-programmers-se-a-discussion-board-or-a-qa-board/433#433) extensively. If folks really want to hang out at a site which hosts [fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/), Stack Exchange simply is not the best venue. You'd be much better off setting up a phpBB forum somewhere.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1296" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="472" RevisionGUID="9ca8043a-7f79-416a-91c0-51d521fc1fc7" CreationDate="2010-10-23T16:39:33.963" UserId="89" Text="_(I like different parts from different responses, so I'm submitting this combined version.)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Elevator Pitch: **Where programmers discuss problems they can't solve with clever code.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tagline: ***&quot;Advice for programmers, by programmers&quot;***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Motto: **Think outside the brackets.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;_(I haven't included the Short Description because I think the existing FAQ description is mostly ok - personally I'd drop the &quot;subjective&quot; in the first line, and not mention code golf - but otherwise don't think it needs replacing.)_" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1297" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="472" RevisionGUID="974c000f-7712-4a26-80c0-f69fb4196071" CreationDate="2010-10-23T16:47:45.990" UserId="89" Comment="added 4 characters in body; added 8 characters in body" Text="_(I like different parts from different responses, so I'm submitting this combined version.)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Elevator Pitch: **A place for programmers to discuss problems that require wisdom, not clever code.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tagline: ***&quot;Advice for programmers, by programmers&quot;***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Motto: **Think outside the brackets.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;_(I haven't included the Short Description because I think the existing FAQ description is mostly ok - personally I'd drop the &quot;subjective&quot; in the first line, and not mention code golf - but otherwise don't think it needs replacing.)_" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1298" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="473" RevisionGUID="4606ea1b-7781-43d7-9d73-c77f3128508e" CreationDate="2010-10-23T17:13:45.967" UserId="89" Text="Here's a quick logo concept:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Think outside the brackets][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can work on an improved version (trying different fonts, positioning, etc), and do variants with motto/etc if people like the idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/f41t4.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1299" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="472" RevisionGUID="3519ccee-938d-42f3-98fd-89fa24ba958c" CreationDate="2010-10-23T17:17:41.737" UserId="89" Comment="added 226 characters in body" Text="_(I like different parts from different responses, so I'm submitting this combined version.)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Elevator Pitch: **A place for programmers to discuss problems that require wisdom, not clever code.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tagline: ***&quot;Advice for programmers, by programmers&quot;***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Motto: **Think outside the brackets.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Logo: ([see this answer][1])  &#xD;&#xA;![Think outside the brackets][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;_(I haven't included the Short Description because I think the existing FAQ description is mostly ok - personally I'd drop the &quot;subjective&quot; in the first line, and not mention code golf - but otherwise don't think it needs replacing.)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like/473#473&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/f41t4.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1300" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="472" RevisionGUID="7671ab1e-50ac-4d5d-8e47-e228ff49050d" CreationDate="2010-10-23T17:28:37.480" UserId="89" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="_(I like different parts from different responses, so I'm submitting this combined version.)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Elevator Pitch: **A place for programmers to discuss problems that require wisdom, not clever code.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tagline: ***&quot;Advice for programmers, by programmers&quot;***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Motto: **Think outside the brackets.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Logo Idea: ([see this answer][2])  &#xD;&#xA;![Think outside the brackets][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;_(I haven't included the Short Description because I think the existing FAQ description is mostly ok - personally I'd drop the &quot;subjective&quot; in the first line, and not mention code golf - but otherwise don't think it needs replacing.)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/QqIdm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like/473#473" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1301" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="474" RevisionGUID="ec7b69ed-2274-4196-88f8-92caf7f8adf7" CreationDate="2010-10-23T20:35:47.460" UserId="5934" Text="There is something to do with the site's name: **Programmers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People think it's about coding, and when they get there, they see soft ethereal questions, about ethics, and many onstartups-like questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Developers and marketing responsible could either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. change site's name &#xD;&#xA; 2. create a site for ethereal, fun and soft questions about programming&#xD;&#xA; 3. remove all subjective tags and show a warning to user: dear user, this is not the question we want &gt;:)&#xD;&#xA; 4. remove the site :/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1302" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="474" RevisionGUID="58af186b-917b-44e9-b477-5cb9f45d3e73" CreationDate="2010-10-24T00:24:02.880" UserId="5934" Comment="please some hard to please guys" Text="There is something to do with the site's name: **Programmers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People think it's about coding, and when they get there, they see soft ethereal questions, about ethics, and many onstartups-like questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Developers and marketing responsible could either do something clever to solve it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1303" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="475" RevisionGUID="5bcee13e-abcc-48bf-bc25-690fea0aa25b" CreationDate="2010-10-24T04:05:43.237" UserId="1961" Text="A couple of answers and comments that I wrote a few hours ago have mysteriously disappeared from the site. Does this have anything to do with the server migration that's in progress? Will my answers be restored from a backup?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1304" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="475" RevisionGUID="5bcee13e-abcc-48bf-bc25-690fea0aa25b" CreationDate="2010-10-24T04:05:43.237" UserId="1961" Text="Lost answers (during server migration?)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1305" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="475" RevisionGUID="5bcee13e-abcc-48bf-bc25-690fea0aa25b" CreationDate="2010-10-24T04:05:43.237" UserId="1961" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1306" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="476" RevisionGUID="e80c16fe-e07e-4619-b89e-00b4efbbc4f1" CreationDate="2010-10-24T19:56:51.913" UserId="4971" Text="I asked a question(on meta) last night about my reputation, &quot;Why Isn't My Reputation Updating?&quot;, but today I can't find it.  It's not listed with my questions(on meta).  A search doesn't find it.  Was it deleted?  Migrated?  If so, shouldn't I have been notified?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interestingly enough, I had theorized that the server move might have affected my reputation too.  My reputation doesn't show any of the upvotes I've received in the past few days.  And what about votes on meta?  Since the meta rep is from the parent site, do votes on meta have any effect?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*This is sort of two questions.  I'll split it into two if anyone thinks it necessary.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1307" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="476" RevisionGUID="e80c16fe-e07e-4619-b89e-00b4efbbc4f1" CreationDate="2010-10-24T19:56:51.913" UserId="4971" Text="Question I asked dissappeared" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1308" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="476" RevisionGUID="e80c16fe-e07e-4619-b89e-00b4efbbc4f1" CreationDate="2010-10-24T19:56:51.913" UserId="4971" Text="|discussion|support|bug|questions|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1309" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="477" RevisionGUID="9f0673a9-7b93-4d30-8ab9-1fbaad12126b" CreationDate="2010-10-25T09:36:04.920" UserId="47" Text="There's a chance that the post was lost during the data-centre migration, but I'm not on the development team so I don't know what processes were in place (if any) to prevent this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/datacenter-migration-oct-23/) about migration.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1310" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="478" RevisionGUID="f8c055d8-b9df-4754-a898-de1e8a5c40ed" CreationDate="2010-10-25T12:59:22.477" UserId="5149" Text="The site is subjective regardless of what some of the posters might think. When we start having a site that caters to programmers' interests, that becomes subjective and subject to up/down voting as expressed by whoever constitute the mass of posters with the power to vote up/down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are valid but closed because of being too localized, but then you have these inane questions that continue to exist despite logic dictating to close the damned thing. People vote up and down on a whim as if they were in Myspace (with many of the posters being just out of HS and still pretending to be the second reincarnation of Dijkstra.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what you have is a combination of the worst posting elements of Yahoo!Answers, MySpace and slashdot, all mixed in a cabalistic abomination, semi-moderated by whim rather than procedure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You cannot help yourself from being annoyed, but don't let it get under your skin either. For every gold nugget of info you get here, you'll get a bucket of crap with crawling roaches on it. You have to determine if the signal-to-noise ratio makes it worthwhile the reading." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1311" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="479" RevisionGUID="c347a420-c1ea-4281-b7df-49d6c1cef0de" CreationDate="2010-10-25T23:23:07.407" UserId="2592" Text="Ok, yes, it's good to enforce the usefulness of the forum by cutting out dead weight, but when you see things like [this][1] getting closed, while the [equivalent Stack Overflow question][2] is still open...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Might that not be a sign that you're being just a tad overzealous on the Programmers board? Especially since the question in question is arguably a better fit for Programmers than SO (subjective, non-coding, programming related).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/344/what-music-do-you-code-to-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14987/audio-while-programming" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1312" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="480" RevisionGUID="dc5df306-c5f3-4d90-be77-a30a3d820a3d" CreationDate="2010-10-26T03:07:42.150" UserId="4971" Text="I received several upvotes between 10/21 and 10/24 but my reputation screen doesn't show them and they weren't and aren't counted toward my rep.  By my calculations, I'm about 20 rep behind where I should be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know of [at least 2 upvotes][1] that did not cause a change in my rep.  As you can see, both between 10/21 and 10/24.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know 20 rep is no big deal, but if this is a problem it should be pointed out.  As you can see, my [stats][2] tab shows 3 answers with upvotes but my [rep][3] tab only shows two.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Excerpt from my rep screen:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    -- 2010-10-19 rep +58   = 87        &#xD;&#xA;     1     12870 (15)&#xD;&#xA;     1     11836 (2)&#xD;&#xA;    -- 2010-10-21 rep +17   = 104       &#xD;&#xA;    -- 2010-10-24 rep 0     = 104       &#xD;&#xA;     2     12870 (10)&#xD;&#xA;    -- 2010-10-25 rep +10   = 114 `&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I already made a question about this but [it disappeared][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6847/whats-your-favorite-programming-language/12424#12424&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4971?tab=stats&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4971?tab=reputationhistory&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/476/question-i-asked-dissappeared" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1313" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="480" RevisionGUID="dc5df306-c5f3-4d90-be77-a30a3d820a3d" CreationDate="2010-10-26T03:07:42.150" UserId="4971" Text="Why Isn't My Reputation Updating?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1314" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="480" RevisionGUID="dc5df306-c5f3-4d90-be77-a30a3d820a3d" CreationDate="2010-10-26T03:07:42.150" UserId="4971" Text="|discussion|support|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1315" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="476" RevisionGUID="4d328af5-4e75-4f67-93b7-4dbdcb5c4ace" CreationDate="2010-10-26T03:12:35.173" UserId="4971" Comment="added 157 characters in body" Text="I asked a question(on meta) last night about my reputation, &quot;Why Isn't My Reputation Updating?&quot;, but today I can't find it.  It's not listed with my questions(on meta).  A search doesn't find it.  Was it deleted?  Migrated?  If so, shouldn't I have been notified?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interestingly enough, I had theorized that the server move might have affected my reputation too.  My reputation doesn't show any of the upvotes I've received in the past few days.  And what about votes on meta?  Since the meta rep is from the parent site, do votes on meta have any effect?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*This is sort of two questions.  I'll split it into two if anyone thinks it necessary.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE:** [I decided to ask the question again.][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/480/why-isnt-my-reputation-updating" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1316" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="480" RevisionGUID="7372849a-6327-45ec-8f5e-d58749dc0aed" CreationDate="2010-10-26T03:13:31.960" UserId="4971" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|bug|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1317" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="480" RevisionGUID="eb496759-8b48-4a4f-9883-d8b800216e61" CreationDate="2010-10-26T07:59:30.413" UserId="47" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[189],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="1318" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="480" RevisionGUID="49fdd934-f99f-4a97-a75a-1d93f9218603" CreationDate="2010-10-26T07:59:30.553" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Why isn&amp;#39;t my reputation increasing?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189/why-isnt-my-reputation-increasing)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I received several upvotes between 10/21 and 10/24 but my reputation screen doesn't show them and they weren't and aren't counted toward my rep.  By my calculations, I'm about 20 rep behind where I should be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know of [at least 2 upvotes][1] that did not cause a change in my rep.  As you can see, both between 10/21 and 10/24.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know 20 rep is no big deal, but if this is a problem it should be pointed out.  As you can see, my [stats][2] tab shows 3 answers with upvotes but my [rep][3] tab only shows two.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Excerpt from my rep screen:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    -- 2010-10-19 rep +58   = 87        &#xD;&#xA;     1     12870 (15)&#xD;&#xA;     1     11836 (2)&#xD;&#xA;    -- 2010-10-21 rep +17   = 104       &#xD;&#xA;    -- 2010-10-24 rep 0     = 104       &#xD;&#xA;     2     12870 (10)&#xD;&#xA;    -- 2010-10-25 rep +10   = 114 `&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I already made a question about this but [it disappeared][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6847/whats-your-favorite-programming-language/12424#12424&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4971?tab=stats&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4971?tab=reputationhistory&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/476/question-i-asked-dissappeared" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1323" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="483" RevisionGUID="e7521016-a347-4711-9cdb-3faa699cbb80" CreationDate="2010-10-28T00:20:44.207" UserDisplayName="mumtaz" Text="I hope this question is answered before its closed. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1324" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="483" RevisionGUID="e7521016-a347-4711-9cdb-3faa699cbb80" CreationDate="2010-10-28T00:20:44.207" UserDisplayName="mumtaz" Text="How do you delete an account from programmers ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1325" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="483" RevisionGUID="e7521016-a347-4711-9cdb-3faa699cbb80" CreationDate="2010-10-28T00:20:44.207" UserDisplayName="mumtaz" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1326" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="484" RevisionGUID="0dad1660-6ba0-4968-85ed-2162032426e2" CreationDate="2010-10-28T02:12:59.697" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="From [Meta.StackOverflow.com](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/5999/can-i-delete-my-account):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to delete your account:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. **Edit your profile to say &quot;please delete me&quot;** so we can confirm your ownership of the account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. **Obtain your user page URL or numeric user ID**. This is linked from the top of every page of the site, when you are logged in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3. **Email the support address linked at the bottom of every web page** on the site. Where it says &quot;contact us&quot;, click that. In your email, you **MUST** include your user page URL or user ID so we can find your account." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1327" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="476" RevisionGUID="64ee4d7f-31c5-487a-9ae2-17a855bfda9f" CreationDate="2010-10-28T05:45:32.003" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|reputation|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1328" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="459" RevisionGUID="c9493661-9109-4cb5-b3b9-067f7035ebc3" CreationDate="2010-10-28T06:14:48.013" UserId="2" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1329" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="485" RevisionGUID="2d46cca2-3f36-4232-87d2-75fb29bc5932" CreationDate="2010-10-28T13:12:15.050" UserId="1061" Text="I trully understand when a question is unpropper for a site, but this is rediculous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was ['Do you have a phone on your desk?'][1]. Obviously my intend was to share experiences from fellow programmers. It is not about some error in my code, it is about a programmer daily work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe my question follows some of [Jeff Atwood' Six Subjective Question Guidelines][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I that wrong? am I missing something? My question got 17 answers and ome up votes in those answers, one of them from a deaf guy, which I believe is pretty interesting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anybody please axplain why people closed that question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14226/do-you-have-a-phone-on-your-desk-closed&#xD;&#xA;[2]:http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1330" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="485" RevisionGUID="2d46cca2-3f36-4232-87d2-75fb29bc5932" CreationDate="2010-10-28T13:12:15.050" UserId="1061" Text="I don't think people (or me) understand programmers.se" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1331" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="485" RevisionGUID="2d46cca2-3f36-4232-87d2-75fb29bc5932" CreationDate="2010-10-28T13:12:15.050" UserId="1061" Text="|discussion|questions|moderators|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1332" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="486" RevisionGUID="d652ad38-2439-48fb-a0f0-19a96815f155" CreationDate="2010-10-28T15:03:52.000" UserId="3" Text="How about providing some context to make it a decent question? I'll admit, at first glance, this *sounds* like a really silly, nonsensical question. It might as well read *&quot;how many people have all their teeth?&quot;* Who the h&amp;mdash; cares?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that you expound on the question here, I started thinking about it: &quot;Wow, that really *is* an interesting question. Is it a distraction? Does it enhance productivity? Advantages, disadvantages? Can we do without it altogether?&quot; If you spent an extra minute formulating the question, adding a bit of context or clarifying what you were asking, maybe it wouldn't have come off as so flip and pointless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's chalk it up to &quot;decent question, poorly asked.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1333" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="486" RevisionGUID="34ff162e-30c4-4b41-ab4d-9cd4130fe8e2" CreationDate="2010-10-28T15:17:43.770" UserId="3" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="You could have provided some context to make it a decent question. I'll admit, at first glance, this *sounds* like a really silly, nonsensical question. It might as well read *&quot;how many people have all their teeth?&quot;* Who the h&amp;mdash; cares?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that you expound on the question here, I started thinking about it: &quot;Wow, that really *is* an interesting question. Is it a distraction? Does it enhance productivity? Advantages, disadvantages? Can we do without it altogether?&quot; If you spent an extra minute formulating the question, adding a bit of context or clarifying what you were asking, maybe it wouldn't have come off as so flip and pointless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's chalk it up to &quot;decent question, poorly asked.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1334" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="487" RevisionGUID="0682057a-609b-4ec8-a108-efc2dfcff79b" CreationDate="2010-10-28T16:27:05.397" UserId="2340" Text="I don't see any way to add a comment. Am I just not seeing it or is there some other reason for this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1335" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="487" RevisionGUID="0682057a-609b-4ec8-a108-efc2dfcff79b" CreationDate="2010-10-28T16:27:05.397" UserId="2340" Text="Why Can't I Add Comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1336" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="487" RevisionGUID="0682057a-609b-4ec8-a108-efc2dfcff79b" CreationDate="2010-10-28T16:27:05.397" UserId="2340" Text="|bug|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1337" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="488" RevisionGUID="1e4ab0c8-ea6c-492d-8d43-7062224a10e6" CreationDate="2010-10-28T17:11:02.277" UserId="389" Text="You can read the [FAQ][1] to figure out. It's a protection measure to avoid spamming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1338" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="489" RevisionGUID="0d9c42d4-0e21-4399-ada3-19ed01fb7fa3" CreationDate="2010-10-28T20:04:19.400" UserId="1061" Text="What's the point of closing a question if people can still answer, vote it up/down, favorite it and add comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I dont get it :(" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1339" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="489" RevisionGUID="0d9c42d4-0e21-4399-ada3-19ed01fb7fa3" CreationDate="2010-10-28T20:04:19.400" UserId="1061" Text="What's the point of closing a question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1340" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="489" RevisionGUID="0d9c42d4-0e21-4399-ada3-19ed01fb7fa3" CreationDate="2010-10-28T20:04:19.400" UserId="1061" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1341" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="490" RevisionGUID="a0704204-1b9b-445e-aed2-3895f195c1fd" CreationDate="2010-10-28T20:06:10.320" UserId="1061" Text="I believe you must have 50 reputation points in order to add comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1342" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="487" RevisionGUID="abe0d8fa-5df4-4461-926a-aac929fc6e8f" CreationDate="2010-10-28T20:33:27.267" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1343" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="491" RevisionGUID="ecbd97b5-7f3f-4084-b825-705d66080dd3" CreationDate="2010-10-28T21:30:15.547" UserId="3" Text="A closed question *cannot* receive new answers. That is the point. The other activities occur because a *closed* question does not mean it is *deleted*. It can be improved, discussed, and voted to re-open. If the question is a real mess and salvageable, it will eventually be deleted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1344" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="485" RevisionGUID="5314c6ec-e89c-4c83-8da9-cc5232a63581" CreationDate="2010-10-29T08:46:22.977" UserDisplayName="user1842" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="I trully understand when a question is unproper for a site, but this is ridiculous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was ['Do you have a phone on your desk?'][1]. Obviously my intent was to share experiences from fellow programmers. It is not about some error in my code, it is about a programmer's daily work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe my question follows some of [Jeff Atwood' Six Subjective Question Guidelines][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I that wrong? Am I missing something? My question got 17 answers and some up votes in those answers, one of them from a deaf guy, which I believe is pretty interesting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anybody please explain why people closed that question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14226/do-you-have-a-phone-on-your-desk-closed&#xD;&#xA;[2]:http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1345" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="e237ce77-b589-497d-99e8-379cd20f19cb" CreationDate="2010-10-29T20:56:06.227" UserId="666" Text="[`Close`-minded people not even looking into the answers, sigh...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/curly-braces-on-their-own-line-or-not)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why are all other questions still there?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/holy-war)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Perhaps some users should stop editing my things in the bad way?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8?tab=activity) Weren't the first times enough?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1346" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="e237ce77-b589-497d-99e8-379cd20f19cb" CreationDate="2010-10-29T20:56:06.227" UserId="666" Text="Why is my question being closed? Anyone willing to reopen it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1347" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="e237ce77-b589-497d-99e8-379cd20f19cb" CreationDate="2010-10-29T20:56:06.227" UserId="666" Text="|support|reputation|site-definition|closure|reopen-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1348" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="8c1733f2-f2f0-4e36-8dd3-919755863eff" CreationDate="2010-10-29T21:01:14.223" UserId="666" Comment="added 44 characters in body; added 46 characters in body; added 5 characters in body" Text="[`Close`-minded people not even looking into the answers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/curly-braces-on-their-own-line-or-not)  Sigh, now I see why some users are frustrated...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why are all other questions still there open then?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/holy-war) Apart from duplicates or other reasons...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Perhaps this user should stop editing my things in the bad way?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8?tab=activity) Weren't the first times enough..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1349" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="07579df7-eb2b-4482-9385-c437bc2198b1" CreationDate="2010-10-29T21:06:38.667" UserId="666" Comment="added 778 characters in body; added 698 characters in body; edited title; added 61 characters in body; added 12 characters in body" Text="Now I'm one of them in my own question, it all seems clear to me now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[`Close`-minded people not even looking into the answers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/curly-braces-on-their-own-line-or-not)  Sigh, now I see why some users are frustrated...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why are all other questions still there open then?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/holy-war) Apart from duplicates or other reasons...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Perhaps this user should stop editing my things in the bad way?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8?tab=activity) Weren't the first times enough...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other frustrations all on the front page, we need to take action:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/485/i-dont-think-people-or-me-understand-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/483/how-do-you-delete-an-account-from-programmers&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/469/why-high-number-of-closed-questions-extremely-annoying&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/396/question-being-closed-without-community-requests-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What could the problem be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too low reputation requirement for asking a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Yes, we are one of the Area 51 sites that got a lot more visitors. And our site allows one to gain reputation more quickly than on other sites, let my account be an example for that...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too strong rules on asking questions, or are these rules applied to strong?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions should be constructive, but for some people all rules seem needed.  &#xD;&#xA;   While they stated originally that it's fine that only 3 of the rules apply to your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Users aren't clearly informed about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   If we get these questions on meta, it seems to me that they might have no idea about it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1350" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="07579df7-eb2b-4482-9385-c437bc2198b1" CreationDate="2010-10-29T21:06:38.667" UserId="666" Comment="added 778 characters in body; added 698 characters in body; edited title; added 61 characters in body; added 12 characters in body" Text="On &quot;Why is my question being closed?&quot; and User Frustrations." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1351" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="9b13458b-acd5-48a7-92fe-e8adb73fa134" CreationDate="2010-10-29T21:12:33.700" UserId="666" Comment="added 114 characters in body; added 94 characters in body; added 185 characters in body; deleted 6 characters in body" Text="**Before starting to search for a duplicate:** Read the question, thank you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I'm one of them in my own question, it all seems clear to me now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[`Close`-minded people not even looking into the answers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/curly-braces-on-their-own-line-or-not)  Sigh, now I see why some users are frustrated...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Looking into his question, how can I take him serious?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8554/boat-programming-closed) Seems clear to me he doesn't understand P.SE...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why are all other questions still open then?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/holy-war) Apart from duplicates or other reasons...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Perhaps this user should stop editing my things in the bad way?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8?tab=activity) Weren't the first times enough...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other frustrations all on the front page, we need to take action:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/485/i-dont-think-people-or-me-understand-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/483/how-do-you-delete-an-account-from-programmers&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/469/why-high-number-of-closed-questions-extremely-annoying&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/396/question-being-closed-without-community-requests-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What could the problem be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too low reputation requirement for asking a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Yes, we are one of the Area 51 sites that got a lot more visitors. And our site allows one to gain reputation more quickly than on other sites, let my account be an example for that...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too strong rules on asking questions, or are these rules applied to strong?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions should be constructive, but for some people all rules seem needed.  &#xD;&#xA;   While they stated originally that it's fine that only 3 of the rules apply to your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Users aren't clearly informed about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   If we get these questions on meta, it seems to me that they might have no idea about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please, don't dumb questions and people down.** That's not a *community* we're aiming for..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1352" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="5967f0ba-ba60-416b-9dda-160721704b0b" CreationDate="2010-10-29T21:17:53.087" UserId="666" Comment="added 59 characters in body" Text="**Before starting to search for a duplicate:** Read the question, thank you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I'm one of them in my own question, it all seems clear to me now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[`Close`-minded people not even looking into the answers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/curly-braces-on-their-own-line-or-not)  Sigh, now I see why some users are frustrated...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Looking into his question, how can I take him serious?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8554/boat-programming-closed) Seems clear to me he doesn't understand P.SE...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why are all other questions still open then?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/holy-war) Apart from duplicates or other reasons...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Perhaps this user should stop editing my things in the bad way?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8?tab=activity) Weren't the first times enough...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other frustrations all on the front page, we need to take action:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/485/i-dont-think-people-or-me-understand-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/483/how-do-you-delete-an-account-from-programmers&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/469/why-high-number-of-closed-questions-extremely-annoying&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/396/question-being-closed-without-community-requests-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What could the problem be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too low reputation requirement for asking a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Yes, we are one of the Area 51 sites that got a lot more visitors. And our site allows one to gain reputation more quickly than on other sites, let my account be an example for that...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too strong rules on asking questions, or are these rules applied to strong?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions should be constructive, but for some people all rules seem needed.  &#xD;&#xA;   While they stated originally that it's fine that only 3 of the rules apply to your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Users aren't clearly informed about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   If we get these questions on meta, it seems to me that they might have no idea about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please, don't dumb questions and people down.** That's not a *community* we're aiming for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8QvwO.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1353" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="491" RevisionGUID="bac1e0c5-e0a7-48d0-8b06-1843cb935ffb" CreationDate="2010-10-29T22:06:57.640" UserId="3" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="A closed question *cannot* receive new answers. That is the point. The other activities occur because a *closed* question does not mean it is *deleted*. It can be improved, discussed, and voted to re-open. If the question is a real mess and not salvageable, it will eventually be deleted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1354" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="493" RevisionGUID="93b8d555-77e6-440c-9bea-e46c651eec55" CreationDate="2010-10-29T22:37:16.293" UserId="4971" Text="I know a little box appears saying &quot;Share this link! [link]&quot;, but share it where?  How?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1355" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="493" RevisionGUID="93b8d555-77e6-440c-9bea-e46c651eec55" CreationDate="2010-10-29T22:37:16.293" UserId="4971" Text="How Does The &quot;Publicist&quot; Badge Work?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1356" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="493" RevisionGUID="93b8d555-77e6-440c-9bea-e46c651eec55" CreationDate="2010-10-29T22:37:16.293" UserId="4971" Text="|discussion|support|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1357" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="025de2b4-9c19-496d-971b-4d70488efe77" CreationDate="2010-10-30T00:57:24.957" UserId="666" Comment="Major fault, replaced asking by closing... It would be wrong the other way. xD; added 152 characters in body" Text="**Before starting to search for a duplicate:** Read the question, thank you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I'm one of them in my own question, it all seems clear to me now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[`Close`-minded people not even looking into the answers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/curly-braces-on-their-own-line-or-not)  Sigh, now I see why some users are frustrated...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Looking into his question, how can I take him serious?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8554/boat-programming-closed) Seems clear to me he doesn't understand P.SE...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why are all other questions still open then?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/holy-war) Apart from duplicates or other reasons...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Perhaps this user should stop editing my things in the bad way?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8?tab=activity) Weren't the first times enough...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other frustrations all on the front page, we need to take action:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/485/i-dont-think-people-or-me-understand-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/483/how-do-you-delete-an-account-from-programmers&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/469/why-high-number-of-closed-questions-extremely-annoying&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/396/question-being-closed-without-community-requests-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What could the problem be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too low reputation requirement for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Yes, we are one of the Area 51 sites that got a lot more visitors. And our site allows one to gain reputation more quickly than on other sites, let my account be an example for when you ask a lot of questions and I'm pretty sure that there are top users that just have famous answers in frequently visited questions that are non wiki...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too strong rules on asking questions, or are these rules applied to strong?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions should be constructive, but for some people all rules seem needed.  &#xD;&#xA;   While they stated originally that it's fine that only 3 of the rules apply to your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Users aren't clearly informed about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   If we get these questions on meta, it seems to me that they might have no idea about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please, don't dumb questions and people down.** That's not a *community* we're aiming for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8QvwO.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1358" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="494" RevisionGUID="c6bc76ef-b597-44c4-9bd9-04cc95cb6d14" CreationDate="2010-10-30T01:01:20.600" UserId="666" Text="Share it in a social manner, eg. Facebook, Twitter, Friends, Blog, Digg, IM, ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By doing that you are publishing the question to a public outside the StackExchange community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for how, just copy the link and paste it. Perhaps give it some explanation so it's more than a link..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1359" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="0c956ae7-10c0-4fb7-955b-429c596d55f0" CreationDate="2010-10-30T01:07:53.653" UserId="666" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body; edited tags" Text="**Before starting to search for a duplicate:** Read the question, thank you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I'm one of them in my own question, it all seems clear to me now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[`Close`-minded people not even looking into the answers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/curly-braces-on-their-own-line-or-not)  Sigh, now I see why some users are frustrated...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Looking into his question, how can I take him serious?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8554/boat-programming-closed) Seems clear to me he doesn't understand P.SE...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why are all other questions still open then?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/holy-war) Apart from duplicates or other reasons...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Perhaps this user should stop editing my things in the bad way?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8?tab=activity) Weren't the first times enough...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other frustrations all on the front page, we need to take action:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/485/i-dont-think-people-or-me-understand-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/483/how-do-you-delete-an-account-from-programmers&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/469/why-high-number-of-closed-questions-extremely-annoying&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/396/question-being-closed-without-community-requests-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What could the problem be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too low reputation requirement for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Yes, we are one of the Area 51 sites that got a lot more visitors. And our site allows one to gain reputation more quickly than on other sites, let my account be an example for when you ask a lot of questions and I'm pretty sure that there are top users that just have famous answers in frequently visited questions that are non wiki...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too strong rules on asking questions, or are these rules applied to strong?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions should be constructive, but for some people all rules seem needed.  &#xD;&#xA;   While they stated originally that it's fine that only 3 of the rules apply to your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Users aren't clearly informed about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   If we get these questions on meta, it seems to me that they might have no idea about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please, don't dumb questions and people down.** That's not a *community* we're aiming for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8QvwO.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1360" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="0c956ae7-10c0-4fb7-955b-429c596d55f0" CreationDate="2010-10-30T01:07:53.653" UserId="666" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|support|closed-questions|site-attributes|frustration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1361" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="494" RevisionGUID="13151f24-4665-4a87-90cb-7adeab4bcc97" CreationDate="2010-10-30T01:13:35.257" UserId="666" Comment="added 321 characters in body; added 72 characters in body" Text="Share it in a social manner, eg. Facebook, Twitter, Friends, Blog, Digg, IM, ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By doing that you are publishing the question to a public outside the StackExchange community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for how, just copy the link and paste it. Perhaps give it some explanation so it's more than a link...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Announcer:** Shared a link to a question that was visited by 25 unique IP addresses in 3 days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Booster:** Shared a link to a question that was visited by 300 unique IP addresses in 4 days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Publicist:** Shared a link to a question that was visited by 1000 unique IP addresses in 5 days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More info on badges [here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1362" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="55eec54e-9cd8-4070-81fd-1f8987d54252" CreationDate="2010-10-30T01:44:17.397" UserId="666" Comment="*snip* Removed personal reference to something unrelated." Text="**Before starting to search for a duplicate:** Read the question, thank you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I'm one of them in my own question, it all seems clear to me now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[`Close`-minded people not even looking into the answers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/curly-braces-on-their-own-line-or-not)  Sigh, now I see why some users are frustrated...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Looking into his question, how can I take him serious?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8554/boat-programming-closed) Seems clear to me he doesn't understand P.SE...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why are all other questions still open then?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/holy-war) Apart from duplicates or other reasons...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other frustrations all on the front page, we need to take action:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/485/i-dont-think-people-or-me-understand-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/483/how-do-you-delete-an-account-from-programmers&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/469/why-high-number-of-closed-questions-extremely-annoying&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/396/question-being-closed-without-community-requests-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The above questions are a clear sign. What could the problem be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too low reputation requirement for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Yes, we are one of the Area 51 sites that got a lot more visitors. And our site allows one to gain reputation more quickly than on other sites, let my account be an example for when you ask a lot of questions and I'm pretty sure that there are top users that just have famous answers in frequently visited questions that are non wiki...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too strong rules on asking questions, or are these rules applied to strong?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions should be constructive, but for some people all rules seem needed.  &#xD;&#xA;   While they stated originally that it's fine that only 3 of the rules apply to your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Users aren't clearly informed about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   If we get these questions on meta, it seems to me that they might have no idea about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **We want to be professional?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   We can be professonal, but if we close content is such way that a lot of people are complaining I think it's a step too far. And it's not just the above, but also comments to meta and closed parent questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please, don't dumb questions and people down.** That's not a *community* we're aiming for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now... What do you think? How can we improve? Or is this behavior of the community right? why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8QvwO.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1363" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="4e285b3e-d6f4-4d4c-af44-6369432a46a8" CreationDate="2010-10-30T01:56:51.567" UserId="666" Comment="added 482 characters in body; added 48 characters in body; added 107 characters in body" Text="**Before starting to search for a duplicate:** Read the question, thank you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I'm one of them in my own question, it all seems clear to me now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[`Close`-minded people not even looking into the answers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/curly-braces-on-their-own-line-or-not)  Sigh, now I see why some users are frustrated...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Looking into his question, how can I take him serious?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8554/boat-programming-closed) Seems clear to me he doesn't understand P.SE...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why are all other questions still open then?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/holy-war) Apart from duplicates or other reasons...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other frustrations all on the front page, we need to take action:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/485/i-dont-think-people-or-me-understand-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/483/how-do-you-delete-an-account-from-programmers&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/469/why-high-number-of-closed-questions-extremely-annoying&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/396/question-being-closed-without-community-requests-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The above questions are a clear sign. What could the problem be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too low reputation requirement for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Yes, we are one of the Area 51 sites that got a lot more visitors. And our site allows one to gain reputation more quickly than on other sites, let my account be an example for when you ask a lot of questions and I'm pretty sure that there are top users that just have famous answers in frequently visited questions that are non wiki...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too strong rules on asking questions, or are these rules applied to strong?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions should be constructive, but for some people all rules seem needed.  &#xD;&#xA;   While they stated originally that it's fine that only 3 of the rules apply to your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Users aren't clearly informed about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   If we get these questions on meta, it seems to me that they might have no idea about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **We want to be professional?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   We can be professonal, but if we close content is such way that a lot of people are complaining I think it's a step too far. And it's not just the above, but also comments to meta and closed parent questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; But don't you think that closing on this site has become discouragement, not incentive?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Peter Turner](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question#491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   And another one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Now there is that new generic excuse to close topics: &quot;not constructive&quot;. If you don't like something, you can ban it as &quot;not constructive&quot;. What an improvement! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Lorenzo](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   I have disagreed with these users in the past, but I now understand their concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please, don't dumb questions and people down.** That's not a *community* we're aiming for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now... What do you think? How can we improve? Or is this behavior of the community right? why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8QvwO.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1364" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="01c436d8-4a2f-41a6-a8d7-a46599880f7e" CreationDate="2010-10-30T02:01:56.430" UserId="666" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="**Before starting to search for a duplicate:** Read the question, thank you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I'm one of them in my own question, it all seems clear to me now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[`Close`-minded people not even looking into the answers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/curly-braces-on-their-own-line-or-not)  Sigh, now I see why some users are frustrated...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Looking into his question, how can I take him serious?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8554/boat-programming-closed) Seems clear to me he doesn't understand P.SE...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why are all other questions still open then?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/holy-war) Apart from duplicates or other reasons...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other frustrations all on the front page, we need to take action:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/485/i-dont-think-people-or-me-understand-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/483/how-do-you-delete-an-account-from-programmers&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/469/why-high-number-of-closed-questions-extremely-annoying&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/396/question-being-closed-without-community-requests-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The above questions are a clear sign. What could the problem be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too low reputation requirement for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Yes, we are one of the Area 51 sites that got a lot more visitors. And our site allows one to gain reputation more quickly than on other sites, let my account be an example for when you ask a lot of questions and I'm pretty sure that there are top users that just have famous answers in frequently visited questions that are non wiki...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too strong rules on asking questions, or are these rules applied to strong?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions should be constructive, but for some people all rules seem needed.  &#xD;&#xA;   While they stated originally that it's fine that only 3 of the rules apply to your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Users aren't clearly informed about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   If we get these questions on meta, it seems to me that they might have no idea about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **We want to be professional?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   We can be professonal, but if we close content is such way that a lot of people are complaining I think it's a step too far. And it's not just the above, but also comments to meta and closed parent questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; But don't you think that closing on this site has become discouragement, not incentive?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Peter Turner](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question#491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   And another one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Now there is that new generic excuse to close topics: &quot;not constructive&quot;. If you don't like something, you can ban it as &quot;not constructive&quot;. What an improvement! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Lorenzo](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   I have once disagreed with these users in the past, but I now understand their concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please, don't dumb questions and people down.** That's not a *community* we're aiming for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now... What do you think? How can we improve? Or is this behavior of the community right? why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8QvwO.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1365" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="ce3c7f2a-7a04-40f9-8d24-08f0112b30d6" CreationDate="2010-10-30T02:10:00.260" UserId="666" Comment="added 106 characters in body; deleted 7 characters in body; edited body; added 8 characters in body" Text="**Before starting to search for a duplicate:** Read the question, thank you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I'm one of them in my own question, it all seems clear to me now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[`Close`-minded people not even looking into the answers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/curly-braces-on-their-own-line-or-not)  Sigh, now I see why some users are frustrated...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Looking into his question, how can I take him serious?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8554/boat-programming-closed) Seems clear to me he doesn't understand P.SE...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why are all other questions still open then?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/holy-war) Apart from duplicates or other reasons...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other frustrations all on the front page, we need to *take action*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/485/i-dont-think-people-or-me-understand-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/483/how-do-you-delete-an-account-from-programmers&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/469/why-high-number-of-closed-questions-extremely-annoying&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/396/question-being-closed-without-community-requests-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The above questions are a *clear sign*. What could the problem be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too low reputation requirement for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Yes, we are one of the Area 51 sites that got a lot more visitors. And our site allows one to gain reputation more quickly than on other sites, let my account be an example for when you ask a lot of questions and I'm pretty sure that there are top users that just have famous answers in frequently visited questions that are non wiki...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too strong rules on asking questions, or are these rules applied to strong?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions should be constructive, but for some people all rules seem needed.  &#xD;&#xA;   While they stated originally that it's fine that only 3 of the rules apply to your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Users aren't clearly informed about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   If we get these questions on meta, it seems to me that they might have no idea about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **We want to be professional?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   We can be professonal, but if we close content is such way that a lot of people are complaining I think it's a step too far. And it's not just the above, but also comments to meta and closed parent questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; But don't you think that closing on this site has become discouragement, not incentive?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Peter Turner](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question#491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   And another one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Now there is that new generic excuse to close topics: &quot;not constructive&quot;. If you don't like something, you can ban it as &quot;not constructive&quot;. What an improvement! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Lorenzo](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   I have once disagreed with these users in the past, but I now understand their concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please, don't dumb questions and people down.** That's not a *community* we're aiming for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Did you know that **25% of the questions are closed** here? Compare that to SO (1%), SU (8%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Now...** What do you think? How can we improve? Or is this behavior of the community right? Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8QvwO.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1366" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="ce3c7f2a-7a04-40f9-8d24-08f0112b30d6" CreationDate="2010-10-30T02:10:00.260" UserId="666" Comment="added 106 characters in body; deleted 7 characters in body; edited body; added 8 characters in body" />
  <row Id="1367" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="e3b9e95b-244a-4cdb-b855-7962700da6cf" CreationDate="2010-10-30T02:16:08.417" UserId="666" Comment="added 61 characters in body" Text="**Before starting to search for a duplicate:** Read the question, thank you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I'm one of them in my own question, it all seems clear to me now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[`Close`-minded people not even looking into the answers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/curly-braces-on-their-own-line-or-not)  Sigh, now I see why some users are frustrated...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Looking into his question, how can I take him serious?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8554/boat-programming-closed) Seems clear to me he doesn't understand P.SE...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why are all other questions still open then?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/holy-war) Apart from duplicates or other reasons...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other frustrations all on the front page, we need to *take action*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/485/i-dont-think-people-or-me-understand-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/483/how-do-you-delete-an-account-from-programmers&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/469/why-high-number-of-closed-questions-extremely-annoying&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/396/question-being-closed-without-community-requests-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The above questions are a *clear sign*. What could the problem be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too low reputation requirement for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Yes, we are one of the Area 51 sites that got a lot more visitors. And our site allows one to gain reputation more quickly than on other sites, let my account be an example for when you ask a lot of questions and I'm pretty sure that there are top users that just have famous answers in frequently visited questions that are non wiki...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too strong rules on asking questions, or are these rules applied to strong?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions should be constructive, but for some people all rules seem needed.  &#xD;&#xA;   While they stated originally that it's fine that only 3 of the rules apply to your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Users aren't clearly informed about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   If we get these questions on meta, it seems to me that they might have no idea about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **We want to be professional?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   We can be professonal, but if we close content is such way that a lot of people are complaining I think it's a step too far. And it's not just the above, but also comments to meta and closed parent questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; But don't you think that closing on this site has become discouragement, not incentive?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Peter Turner](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question#491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   And another one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Now there is that new generic excuse to close topics: &quot;not constructive&quot;. If you don't like something, you can ban it as &quot;not constructive&quot;. What an improvement! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Lorenzo](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   I have once disagreed with these users in the past, but I now understand their concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please, don't dumb questions and people down.** That's not a *community* we're aiming for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Frustrated user sitting on his closed question, wondering about it...][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Did you know that **25% of the questions are closed** here? Compare that to SO (1%), SU (8%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Now...** What do you think? How can we improve? Or is this behavior of the community right? Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8QvwO.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1368" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="cee50723-0802-4acc-823d-4cd687f8ac1f" CreationDate="2010-10-30T02:22:21.250" UserId="666" Comment="added 60 characters in body; added 34 characters in body" Text="This question is about the earlier questions that were wondering about closed questions, *it's not a duplicate!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I'm one of them in my own question, thinking about it again it all seems clear to me now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[`Close`-minded people not even looking into the answers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/curly-braces-on-their-own-line-or-not)  Sigh, now I see why some users are frustrated...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Looking into his question, how can I take him serious?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8554/boat-programming-closed) Seems clear to me he doesn't understand P.SE...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why are all other questions still open then?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/holy-war) Apart from duplicates or other reasons...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other frustrations all on the front page (and there were more in the past), we need to *take action*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/485/i-dont-think-people-or-me-understand-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/483/how-do-you-delete-an-account-from-programmers&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/469/why-high-number-of-closed-questions-extremely-annoying&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/396/question-being-closed-without-community-requests-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The above questions are a *clear sign*. What could the problem be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too low reputation requirement for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Yes, we are one of the Area 51 sites that got a lot more visitors. And our site allows one to gain reputation more quickly than on other sites, let my account be an example for when you ask a lot of questions and I'm pretty sure that there are top users that just have famous answers in frequently visited questions that are non wiki...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too strong rules on asking questions, or are these rules applied to strong?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions should be constructive, but for some people all rules seem needed.  &#xD;&#xA;   While they stated originally that it's fine that only 3 of the rules apply to your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Users aren't clearly informed about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   If we get these questions on meta, it seems to me that they might have no idea about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **We want to be professional?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   We can be professonal, but if we close content is such way that a lot of people are complaining I think it's a step too far. And it's not just the above, but also comments to meta and closed parent questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; But don't you think that closing on this site has become discouragement, not incentive?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Peter Turner](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question#491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   And another one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Now there is that new generic excuse to close topics: &quot;not constructive&quot;. If you don't like something, you can ban it as &quot;not constructive&quot;. What an improvement! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Lorenzo](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   I have once disagreed with these users in the past, but I now understand their concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please, don't dumb questions and people down.** That's not a *community* we're aiming for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Frustrated user sitting on his closed question, wondering about it...][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Did you know that **25% of the questions are closed** here? Compare that to SO (1%), SU (8%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Now...** What do you think? How can we improve? Or is this behavior of the community right? Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8QvwO.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1369" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="68551f79-8bfe-43ca-aa22-d7c123cb035b" CreationDate="2010-10-30T13:36:15.883" UserId="666" Comment="edited title; edited title" Text="How to prevent &quot;Why is my question being closed?&quot; and User Frustration?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1370" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="1076709b-3441-44f6-bded-19965e76f20e" CreationDate="2010-10-30T13:43:37.550" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|site-attributes|frustration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1371" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="495" RevisionGUID="8b827c43-1b2b-4e72-8f84-7f164762b3f8" CreationDate="2010-10-30T13:52:09.337" UserId="666" Text="The &quot;accept rate&quot; feature seems useless to me and only leads into frustration for those asking questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[See this question.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105/should-we-worry-about-accept-rate) (And no, it's not a duplicate as that question isn't a feature request...)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1372" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="495" RevisionGUID="8b827c43-1b2b-4e72-8f84-7f164762b3f8" CreationDate="2010-10-30T13:52:09.337" UserId="666" Text="Can the accept rate be removed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1373" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="495" RevisionGUID="8b827c43-1b2b-4e72-8f84-7f164762b3f8" CreationDate="2010-10-30T13:52:09.337" UserId="666" Text="|feature-request|accept-rate|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1374" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="495" RevisionGUID="f20fac9a-2097-4e42-b910-39d01424a886" CreationDate="2010-10-30T18:10:04.730" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|accept-rate|removal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1375" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="101" RevisionGUID="44de0a46-4a3a-452d-8d77-677445467373" CreationDate="2010-10-30T18:41:24.610" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|list-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1376" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="421" RevisionGUID="c42b2966-d153-4338-bcba-d9be41a949fd" CreationDate="2010-10-30T18:42:10.130" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|retag-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1377" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="421" RevisionGUID="b99ad929-0de8-451a-956b-299550bc3ac2" CreationDate="2010-10-30T18:42:19.007" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|retag-request|recommendations|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1378" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="317" RevisionGUID="4f13dfdf-3317-4651-a1ab-175bfe55d052" CreationDate="2010-10-30T18:43:06.370" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|recommendations|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1379" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="282" RevisionGUID="0b97e87c-a6a3-4241-a453-505854db909e" CreationDate="2010-10-30T18:43:39.007" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|closed-questions|removal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1380" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="22eccf34-ef9b-4c17-8ca3-f20e0f5bf8da" CreationDate="2010-10-30T18:46:43.950" UserId="666" Comment="added 544 characters in body; added 175 characters in body" Text="This question is about the earlier questions that were wondering about closed questions, *it's not a duplicate!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I'm one of them in my own question, thinking about it again it all seems clear to me now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[`Close`-minded people not even looking into the answers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/curly-braces-on-their-own-line-or-not)  Sigh, now I see why some users are frustrated...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Looking into his question, how can I take him serious?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8554/boat-programming-closed) Seems clear to me he doesn't understand P.SE...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why are all other questions still open then?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/holy-war) Apart from duplicates or other reasons...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other frustrations all on the front page (and there were more in the past), we need to *take action*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [I don't think peaple understand Programmers SE.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/485/i-dont-think-people-or-me-understand-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA; - [What's the point of closing a question?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question)&#xD;&#xA; - [How do you delete an account from programmers?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/483/how-do-you-delete-an-account-from-programmers)&#xD;&#xA; - [Why? The high numbers of closed questions are extremely annoying.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/469/why-high-number-of-closed-questions-extremely-annoying)&#xD;&#xA; - [Mods should be stopped from closing reopened stuff automatically the second time.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time)&#xD;&#xA; - [Questions are being closed without community requests.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/396/question-being-closed-without-community-requests-closed)&#xD;&#xA; - [Why should we have to battle to keep questions open?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/339/why-should-we-have-to-battle-to-keep-questions-open-closed)&#xD;&#xA; - [Can the closed questions please be removed from the related section?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/282/can-the-closed-questions-please-be-removed-from-related)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The above questions are a *clear sign*. What could the problem be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too low reputation requirement for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Yes, we are one of the Area 51 sites that got a lot more visitors. And our site allows one to gain reputation more quickly than on other sites, let my account be an example for when you ask a lot of questions and I'm pretty sure that there are top users that just have famous answers in frequently visited questions that are non wiki...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too strong rules on asking questions, or are these rules applied to strong?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions should be constructive, but for some people all rules seem needed.  &#xD;&#xA;   While they stated originally that it's fine that only 3 of the rules apply to your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Users aren't clearly informed about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   If we get these questions on meta, it seems to me that they might have no idea about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **We want to be professional?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   We can be professonal, but if we close content is such way that a lot of people are complaining I think it's a step too far. And it's not just the above, but also comments to meta and closed parent questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; But don't you think that closing on this site has become discouragement, not incentive?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Peter Turner](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question#491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   And another one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Now there is that new generic excuse to close topics: &quot;not constructive&quot;. If you don't like something, you can ban it as &quot;not constructive&quot;. What an improvement! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Lorenzo](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   I have once disagreed with these users in the past, but I now understand their concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please, don't dumb questions and people down.** That's not a *community* we're aiming for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Frustrated user sitting on his closed question, wondering about it...][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Did you know that **25% of the questions are closed** here? Compare that to SO (1%), SU (8%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Now...** What do you think? How can we improve? Or is this behavior of the community right? Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8QvwO.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1382" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="496" RevisionGUID="847809f3-20a1-4c15-8951-c07f94fab2c6" CreationDate="2010-10-30T19:28:31.917" UserId="4971" Text="I agree.  People judge otherwise useful answers according to someones &quot;Accept Rate&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1384" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="495" RevisionGUID="1398dcca-aa49-4255-89d7-b26f67179a87" CreationDate="2010-10-31T20:08:57.503" UserId="666" Comment="added 277 characters in body; edited tags; added 1 characters in body" Text="The &quot;accept rate&quot; feature seems useless to me and only leads into frustration for those asking questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[See this question.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105/should-we-worry-about-accept-rate) (And no, it's not a duplicate as that question isn't a feature request...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Related**: [Alternative solution that can replace accept rate][1] if we still want to allow &quot;agreement&quot; of answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108/should-the-point-distribution-system-be-changed-to-encourage-discussion-not-answ/192#192" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1385" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="495" RevisionGUID="1398dcca-aa49-4255-89d7-b26f67179a87" CreationDate="2010-10-31T20:08:57.503" UserId="666" Comment="added 277 characters in body; edited tags; added 1 characters in body" Text="|feature-request|removal|accept-rate|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1386" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="498" RevisionGUID="d231ba8c-476b-46ce-9fbe-5c10c431af59" CreationDate="2010-10-31T20:29:21.137" UserId="285" Text="There is quite a high close rate here on Programmers.SE. I think it's fair to say that not everyone agrees with some of the decisions to close. As a result there's also a fairly high re-open rate. That's got me wondering why I have to wait until something is closed to say &quot;hey guys, I don't want this closed.&quot; Or alternatively why I have to wait until something is re-opened to say &quot;no way, it was closed for good reason.&quot; As it stands, when you see people are voting to close something you think should stay open, you have no options other than silence, and the same when people are voting to re-open something you think should stay closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could it hurt, once one close vote has been cast, to have a &quot;don't close&quot; vote option, and in order to close it you need 5 more close than don't close? Ditto for the re-open process? I think there would be less ping-pong this way." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1387" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="498" RevisionGUID="d231ba8c-476b-46ce-9fbe-5c10c431af59" CreationDate="2010-10-31T20:29:21.137" UserId="285" Text="Can we anti-vote for closing/re-opening in parallel, instead of in series?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1388" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="498" RevisionGUID="d231ba8c-476b-46ce-9fbe-5c10c431af59" CreationDate="2010-10-31T20:29:21.137" UserId="285" Text="|feature-request|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1389" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="499" RevisionGUID="f45c10da-b22f-4ac7-ba0d-8996f207a85e" CreationDate="2010-11-01T01:32:50.890" UserId="666" Text="That would break the system...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's say we've got 10 votes to close and 5 votes to open it would be closed.  &#xD;&#xA;But then it would require the people that want it open 10 votes to get it back open, unfair...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Why would someone vote to keep it open if it is already open?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- More votes are required to close and open a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I agree, the ping-pong is another [user frustration due to closed questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/492/how-to-prevent-why-is-my-question-being-closed-and-user-frustration) and needs improvement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps it could work with some fine tuning, but still it is something which has to be thought about..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1390" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="498" RevisionGUID="2d0d389b-e740-44ea-87dd-4ab3a3302f6e" CreationDate="2010-11-01T11:37:45.710" UserId="285" Comment="added 702 characters in body" Text="There is quite a high close rate here on Programmers.SE. I think it's fair to say that not everyone agrees with some of the decisions to close. As a result there's also a fairly high re-open rate. That's got me wondering why I have to wait until something is closed to say &quot;hey guys, I don't want this closed.&quot; Or alternatively why I have to wait until something is re-opened to say &quot;no way, it was closed for good reason.&quot; As it stands, when you see people are voting to close something you think should stay open, you have no options other than silence, and the same when people are voting to re-open something you think should stay closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could it hurt, once one close vote has been cast, to have a &quot;don't close&quot; vote option, and in order to close it you need 5 more close than don't close? Ditto for the re-open process? I think there would be less ping-pong this way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: I don't expect this to change the overall close rate at all. Imagine a question where 100 people with close power have an opinion. 60 want it closed and 40 want it open. Today, we could have 9 cycles of open/close (5 vote to close, 5 vote to re-open, 5 vote to close...) before it's finally closed. Under this setup, everyone would vote the first time and it would close 45-40. Only when there was a timing issue, with the voting happening while mostly closers were online, would stuff re-open. And it would take an even weirder timing issue to create close-reopen-close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But yes, if 5 people want it closed and 95 want it open, it would never close. And I consider that a good thing, too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1392" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="171" RevisionGUID="2f3d1758-c836-4750-955b-5131a3cdc750" CreationDate="2010-11-01T15:01:11.323" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1394" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="502" RevisionGUID="b35e801a-442e-4658-9ada-583cfdd1610c" CreationDate="2010-11-01T21:28:36.720" UserDisplayName="user1842" Text="It's one of [the highest requested ideas][1] on Meta Stack Overflow, but has been declined by management.  It would be great if they implemented this since it really sucks to try and keep track of posts so that when they get re-opened, I can go back and cast my one close vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/125/how-about-a-vote-not-to-close-option-to-counter-the-vote-to-close" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1395" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="503" RevisionGUID="e22e4469-7ddc-4256-9a77-426651022cdd" CreationDate="2010-11-01T21:29:50.213" UserDisplayName="user1842" Text="Accept Rate is a great concept for the completely non-subjective sites like Stack Overflow, but probably doesn't work as well for a more subjective site like Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1396" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="499" RevisionGUID="23b147da-482c-4bea-9aa5-e8c4602e0df9" CreationDate="2010-11-01T23:54:30.663" UserId="666" Comment="added 46 characters in body" Text="This might break the system... We should think about it before applying it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's say we've got 10 votes to close and 5 votes to open it would be closed.  &#xD;&#xA;But then it would require the people that want it open 10 votes to get it back open, unfair...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Why would someone vote to keep it open if it is already open?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- More votes are required to close and open a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I agree, the ping-pong is another [user frustration due to closed questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/492/how-to-prevent-why-is-my-question-being-closed-and-user-frustration) and needs improvement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps it could work with some fine tuning, but still it is something which has to be thought about..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1397" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="489" RevisionGUID="8961cf6a-2322-4e51-bfb7-af9faa94c306" CreationDate="2010-11-02T00:04:35.333" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1398" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="483" RevisionGUID="b6fd2f92-6f9e-4e73-a948-1b23ccb1e54e" CreationDate="2010-11-02T00:04:58.423" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1399" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="475" RevisionGUID="a6570ae8-261e-460c-8d75-a0aee920e509" CreationDate="2010-11-02T00:05:30.277" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1400" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="504" RevisionGUID="5d40d2b5-a731-41ec-af35-2afbcae621b0" CreationDate="2010-11-03T19:02:57.133" UserId="6415" Text="No. However, if applicable, someone should be allowed to ask for justification of an answer, which could indeed be historical." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1404" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="506" RevisionGUID="afe7e7b1-b7cf-47ff-a945-498fcf7446d0" CreationDate="2010-11-03T19:35:36.610" UserId="6415" Text="It could be an artifact of the fact that this site is about subjectivity. Therefore, most of the people that will be attracted to this site will have strong opinions (Like me). It takes a lot of experience to temper that opinionation (is that a word?) into good judgement. So, people with strong, well thought out opinions on one subject will often assume that their opinions on another, such as closing posts, are also correct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me inevitable that we'll have a higher close rate, and for that matter, downvotes. I can live with that. The moderators, though, should be on the lookout for those abusing the priviledge. Those people who close posts just because the question isn't &quot;clear&quot; should try to help the poster by suggesting how the question could be phrased better, or asking questions via comments to find out what the question truly is. In other words **the community should help the community** to create better examples of good questions for others to follow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please be responsible, as I will do my best to be. If I'm not, I expect others will correct me constructively, just as I will do if I can." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1406" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="8a575842-9f54-4033-9bc5-a07e65996417" CreationDate="2010-11-03T21:58:32.980" UserId="666" Comment="edited body; added 60 characters in body" Text="This question is about the earlier questions that were wondering about closed questions, *it's not a duplicate!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I'm one of them in my own question, thinking about it again it all seems clear to me now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[`Close`-minded people not even looking into the answers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/curly-braces-on-their-own-line-or-not)  Sigh, now I see why some users are frustrated...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Looking into his question, how can I take him serious?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8554/boat-programming-closed) Seems clear to me he doesn't understand P.SE...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why are all other questions still open then?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/holy-war) Apart from duplicates or other reasons...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other frustrations all on the front page (and there were more in the past), we need to *take action*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [I don't think peaple understand Programmers SE.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/485/i-dont-think-people-or-me-understand-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA; - [What's the point of closing a question?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question)&#xD;&#xA; - [How do you delete an account from programmers?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/483/how-do-you-delete-an-account-from-programmers)&#xD;&#xA; - [Why? The high numbers of closed questions are extremely annoying.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/469/why-high-number-of-closed-questions-extremely-annoying)&#xD;&#xA; - [Mods should be stopped from closing reopened stuff automatically the second time.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time)&#xD;&#xA; - [Questions are being closed without community requests.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/396/question-being-closed-without-community-requests-closed)&#xD;&#xA; - [Why should we have to battle to keep questions open?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/339/why-should-we-have-to-battle-to-keep-questions-open-closed)&#xD;&#xA; - [Can the closed questions please be removed from the related section?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/282/can-the-closed-questions-please-be-removed-from-related)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The above questions are a *clear sign*. What could the problem be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too low reputation requirement for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Yes, we are one of the Area 51 sites that got a lot more visitors. And our site allows one to gain reputation more quickly than on other sites, let my account be an example for when you ask a lot of questions and I'm pretty sure that there are top users that just have famous answers in frequently visited questions that are non wiki...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too strong rules on asking questions, or are these rules applied to strong?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions should be constructive, but for some people all rules seem needed.  &#xD;&#xA;   While they stated originally that it's fine that only 3 of the rules apply to your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Users aren't clearly informed about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   If we get these questions on meta, it seems to me that they might have no idea about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **We want to be professional?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   We can be professonal, but if we close content is such way that a lot of people are complaining I think it's a step too far. And it's not just the above, but also comments to meta and closed parent questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; But don't you think that closing on this site has become discouragement, not incentive?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Peter Turner](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question#491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   And another one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Now there is that new generic excuse to close topics: &quot;not constructive&quot;. If you don't like something, you can ban it as &quot;not constructive&quot;. What an improvement! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Lorenzo](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   I have once disagreed with these users in the past, but I now understand their concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please, don't dumb questions and people down.** That's not a *community* we're aiming for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Frustrated user sitting on his closed question, wondering about it...][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Did you know that **25% of the questions are closed** here? Compare that to SO (1%), SU (8%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Now...** What do you think: &#xD;&#xA;How we can improve the community to prevent this?  &#xD;&#xA;Or am I writing non-sense and is the current behavior of the community right?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8QvwO.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1407" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="507" RevisionGUID="9124f2a7-a670-455f-9b5a-dfed2e37cbfe" CreationDate="2010-11-03T23:23:17.363" UserDisplayName="DaNieL" Text="Sorry for the silly question, but looking at the question/answers in this beta i dont understand why this... exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, like the title, what is the exact difference between the topics treated here and those in stackoverflow.com?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1408" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="507" RevisionGUID="9124f2a7-a670-455f-9b5a-dfed2e37cbfe" CreationDate="2010-11-03T23:23:17.363" UserDisplayName="DaNieL" Text="What is exactly the difference between this site's topic and stackoverflow.com?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1409" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="507" RevisionGUID="9124f2a7-a670-455f-9b5a-dfed2e37cbfe" CreationDate="2010-11-03T23:23:17.363" UserDisplayName="DaNieL" Text="|discussion|websites|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1410" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="507" RevisionGUID="2c92d447-63e5-4256-8745-253ffcd71eef" CreationDate="2010-11-03T23:38:00.867" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16644/what-is-exactly-the-difference-between-this-sites-topic-and-stackoverflow-com" Text="" />
  <row Id="1411" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="507" RevisionGUID="6c06b4c1-5ef4-47c1-85bd-f6c3b89c1844" CreationDate="2010-11-03T23:57:46.873" UserId="6" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[171],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:6,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Fishtoaster&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="1412" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="507" RevisionGUID="ba1e2e90-3295-4e0e-97d9-0ef3f3496d85" CreationDate="2010-11-03T23:57:47.030" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and SO](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Sorry for the silly question, but looking at the question/answers in this beta i dont understand why this... exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, like the title, what is the exact difference between the topics treated here and those in stackoverflow.com?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1413" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="f4cb014f-9d06-4929-90dc-a6ab96529b38" CreationDate="2010-11-04T15:22:26.783" UserId="666" Comment="deleted 6 characters in body; deleted 14 characters in body" Text="This question is about the earlier questions that were wondering about closed questions, *it's not a duplicate!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I'm one of them in my own question, thinking about it again it all seems clear to me now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[`Close`-minded people not even looking into the answers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/curly-braces-on-their-own-line-or-not)  Sigh, now I see why some users are frustrated...&#xD;&#xA;[Looking into his question, how can I take him serious?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8554/boat-programming-closed) Seems clear to me he doesn't understand P.SE...&#xD;&#xA;[Why are all other questions still open then?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/holy-war) Apart from duplicates or other reasons...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other frustrations all on the front page (and there were more in the past), we need to *take action*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [I don't think peaple understand Programmers SE.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/485/i-dont-think-people-or-me-understand-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA; - [What's the point of closing a question?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question)&#xD;&#xA; - [How do you delete an account from programmers?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/483/how-do-you-delete-an-account-from-programmers)&#xD;&#xA; - [Why? The high numbers of closed questions are extremely annoying.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/469/why-high-number-of-closed-questions-extremely-annoying)&#xD;&#xA; - [Mods should be stopped from closing reopened stuff automatically the second time.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time)&#xD;&#xA; - [Questions are being closed without community requests.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/396/question-being-closed-without-community-requests-closed)&#xD;&#xA; - [Why should we have to battle to keep questions open?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/339/why-should-we-have-to-battle-to-keep-questions-open-closed)&#xD;&#xA; - [Can the closed questions please be removed from the related section?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/282/can-the-closed-questions-please-be-removed-from-related)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The above questions are a *clear sign*. What could the problem be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too low reputation requirement for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Yes, we are one of the Area 51 sites that got a lot more visitors. And our site allows one to gain reputation more quickly than on other sites, let my account be an example for when you ask a lot of questions and I'm pretty sure that there are top users that just have famous answers in frequently visited questions that are non wiki...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too strong rules on asking questions, or are these rules applied to strong?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions should be constructive, but for some people all rules seem needed.  &#xD;&#xA;   While they stated originally that it's fine that only 3 of the rules apply to your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Users aren't clearly informed about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   If we get these questions on meta, it seems to me that they might have no idea about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **We want to be professional?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   We can be professonal, but if we close content is such way that a lot of people are complaining I think it's a step too far. And it's not just the above, but also comments to meta and closed parent questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; But don't you think that closing on this site has become discouragement, not incentive?  &#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Peter Turner](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question#491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   And another one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Now there is that new generic excuse to close topics: &quot;not constructive&quot;. If you don't like something, you can ban it as &quot;not constructive&quot;. What an improvement!   &#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Lorenzo](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   I have once disagreed with these users in the past, but I now understand their concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please, don't dumb questions and people down.** That's not a *community* we're aiming for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Did you know that **25% of the questions are closed** here? Compare that to SO (1%), SU (8%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Now... What do you think**: &#xD;&#xA;How we can improve the community to prevent this?  &#xD;&#xA;Or am I writing non-sense and is the current behavior of the community right?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Frustrated user sitting on his closed question, wondering about it...][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8QvwO.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1415" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="509" RevisionGUID="c33fe9f9-6b36-409a-8be1-00857161151e" CreationDate="2010-11-04T18:21:51.460" UserId="5516" Text="It's there, it's sort of interesting, it may or may not be probative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're *coders* for goodness sake, can't we all accept that and refrain from overanalyzing?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1416" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="510" RevisionGUID="5497689c-8731-484b-a540-8cf21b56bea8" CreationDate="2010-11-05T02:32:14.380" UserId="1997" Text="This question was closed for not meeting the criteria for a good subjective question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15856/when-do-you-get-your-best-ideas-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The criteria are posted here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've attempted a rebuttal in the question, but it's drifted off the front page now and I'm afraid I won't get any feedback whatsoever. I'd like to know, is there a flaw in my reasoning? Is this really a bad question, or was it closed prematurely?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1417" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="510" RevisionGUID="5497689c-8731-484b-a540-8cf21b56bea8" CreationDate="2010-11-05T02:32:14.380" UserId="1997" Text="Is my question that bad, or am I totally out of it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1418" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="510" RevisionGUID="5497689c-8731-484b-a540-8cf21b56bea8" CreationDate="2010-11-05T02:32:14.380" UserId="1997" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1419" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="511" RevisionGUID="63ed6a0f-2533-40ec-a37f-339a47f4f260" CreationDate="2010-11-05T06:29:52.690" UserId="389" Text="Please don't spam on your question. What you had posted on question is advertising to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No one wanted reopen it for 5 days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is not constructive AND off-topic. I follow Peter vote but I could close by off-topic. This is not to do with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can commit to [Personal productivity][1] proposal and **maybe** they could accept your question soon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4296/personal-productivity-and-organization-gtd-covey-etc" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1420" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="512" RevisionGUID="3aaa07a3-97bf-40fd-b6aa-b4f1db429036" CreationDate="2010-11-05T13:59:53.800" UserId="89" Text="**No, it's not a bad thing to discuss - it's just not suitable for Programmers.SE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;When considering whether to vote to close a question, I have a simple metric I use:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Will this question make [me] a better programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;i.e. I attempt to objectively determine if there is value in the question (and any answers) at the time of voting.&#xD;&#xA;Obviously applying empathy if I'm not directly involved/educated in the topic, and if it's borderline I might wait a bit and see how it evolves before voting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this specific question, I don't see any point in it. It's more of a discussion - find a forum to have it in, or pop into SO chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Responses such as ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've always said I do my best programming in the shower.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Driving, definitely the best ideas are coming while driving.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Often when I can't sleep at night. Usually because I have a problem on my mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sometimes a few weeks after release: I look at my code and wonder &quot;what was I thinking?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I came up with the solution to a totally intractable database problem in a dream the other night.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;..are all utterly useless, and will not make anyone a better programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Plus, several people are confusing &quot;providing inspiration&quot; with &quot;solving problems&quot; which are two different things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with Bigown that it's (bordering on) off-topic - with another question that might be redeemed by people sticking to on-topic answers, but in this case it still lacks value for a Programmers Q&amp;A site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1421" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="513" RevisionGUID="e7330435-564b-4d5d-a6df-31927c88a643" CreationDate="2010-11-06T10:01:17.797" UserId="963" Text="We all know about the &quot;Six Subjective Question Guidelines&quot; which we were [__ENFORCED__][1] to follow while asking questions in Programmers.SE. For convenience I am quoting them here-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    1. Inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;    2. Tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;    3. Have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;    4. Invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;    5. Insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;    6. Are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And many questions are being closed now because of not following the guideline. I just seen [one][2](and already voted for reopen). But I feel, it was helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please have a look at the [most voted][3] questions of this site. I don't feel all of them meet all of  these criteria mentioned in the guideline. But I think these are the  questions which represents the 'type of questions' should be asked in Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel only two things (other than being `subjective`) should be considered for deciding whether the question is a good one or not-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Is it helpful?&#xD;&#xA;- Is it fun (harmless definitely)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider the description of Programmers.SE in [area51][4]-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Beta Q&amp;A site for expert programmers interested in discussions that are only indirectly related to programming.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And again there can be a guideline for asking good subjective questions. But people will __NOT__ be enforced to follow it. That means, no questions will be closed because of not following the guideline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-noticeBlockquote&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15856/when-do-you-get-your-best-programming-ideas&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1422" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="513" RevisionGUID="e7330435-564b-4d5d-a6df-31927c88a643" CreationDate="2010-11-06T10:01:17.797" UserId="963" Text="Should the &quot;Six Subjective Question Guidelines&quot; be revised?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1423" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="513" RevisionGUID="e7330435-564b-4d5d-a6df-31927c88a643" CreationDate="2010-11-06T10:01:17.797" UserId="963" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1424" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="511" RevisionGUID="76218a98-edf7-42f7-aceb-cbe7fe43f5eb" CreationDate="2010-11-06T17:42:59.253" UserId="666" Comment="Fixed grammar, sorry, I blame my OCD. :-(" Text="Please don't spam on your question. What you had posted on question is an advertisement to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody wanted to reopen it for 5 days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is non-constructive AND off-topic. I followed Peter's vote but I could have closed it for being off-topic. This has nothing to do with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can commit to the [Personal productivity][1] proposal and **maybe** they could accept your question soon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4296/personal-productivity-and-organization-gtd-covey-etc" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1425" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="513" RevisionGUID="29c931ea-ab0b-43a5-af6a-655bcb602a51" CreationDate="2010-11-06T18:04:20.620" UserId="963" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="We all know about the &quot;Six Subjective Question Guidelines&quot; which we were [__ENFORCED__][1] to follow while asking questions in Programmers.SE. For convenience I am quoting them here-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    1. Inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;    2. Tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;    3. Have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;    4. Invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;    5. Insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;    6. Are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And many questions are being closed now because of not following the guideline. I just seen [one][2](and already voted for reopen). But I feel, it was helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please have a look at the [most voted][3] questions of this site. I don't feel all of them meet all of  these criteria mentioned in the guideline. But I think these are the  questions which represents the 'type of questions' should be asked in Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel only two things (other than being `subjective`) should be considered for deciding whether the question is a good one or not-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Is it helpful?   &#xD;&#xA;OR&#xD;&#xA;- Is it fun (harmless definitely)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider the description of Programmers.SE in [area51][4]-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Beta Q&amp;A site for expert programmers interested in discussions that are only indirectly related to programming.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And again there can be a guideline for asking good subjective questions. But then, people will __NOT__ be enforced to follow it. That means, no questions will be closed because of not following the guideline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15856/when-do-you-get-your-best-programming-ideas&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1426" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="513" RevisionGUID="4b2106df-343f-4755-a126-8a6b18987d59" CreationDate="2010-11-06T18:47:41.573" UserId="963" Comment="added 19 characters in body" Text="We all know about the &quot;Six Subjective Question Guidelines&quot; which we were [__ENFORCED__][1] to follow while asking questions in Programmers.SE. For convenience I am quoting them here-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    1. Inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;    2. Tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;    3. Have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;    4. Invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;    5. Insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;    6. Are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And many questions are being closed now because of not following the guideline. I just seen [one][2](and already voted for reopen). But I feel, it was helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please have a look at the [most voted][3] questions of this site. I don't feel all of them meet all of  these criteria mentioned in the guideline. But I think these are the  questions which represents the 'type of questions' should be asked in Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel only two things (other than being `subjective`) should be considered for deciding whether the question is a good one or not-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Is it helpful?   &#xD;&#xA;OR&#xD;&#xA;- Is it fun (harmless definitely)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider the description of Programmers.SE in [area51][4]-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Beta Q&amp;A site for expert programmers interested in discussions that are only indirectly related to programming.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And again there can be a guideline for asking good subjective questions. But then, people will __NOT__ be enforced to follow it. That means, no questions will be closed because of not following the guideline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15856/when-do-you-get-your-best-programming-ideas&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?page=1&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=50&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1427" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="512" RevisionGUID="4bb09feb-bb1b-4ec6-88b5-3db620f82b11" CreationDate="2010-11-06T19:36:29.773" UserId="89" Comment="added 1570 characters in body" Text="**No, it's not a bad thing to discuss - it's just not suitable for Programmers.SE _(in its current form)_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# In General:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When considering whether to vote to close a question, I have a simple metric I use:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Will this question make [me] a better programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;i.e. I attempt to objectively determine if there is value in the question (and any answers) at the time of voting.&#xD;&#xA;Obviously applying empathy if I'm not directly involved/educated in the topic, and if it's borderline I might wait a bit and see how it evolves before voting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;six subjective guidelines&quot; I don't agree with, because it's not a matter of subjectivity, and &quot;sharing experiences&quot; is *not* a valid measure of whether something is useful (sometimes experiences are helpful, sometimes they're not).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Voting to close is not a one-way decision; it doesn't mean the question is bad or irredeemable. If a question is improved and made into something useful, I will happily vote in favour of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**This is all about me wanting to help create a Q&amp;A website which is useful and respected** - *not* one that is considered a dumping ground for everything closed on StackOverflow, nor a place where the signal:noise ratio (i.e. useful:mindless-fun) is too low. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to [share programming wisdom][1], (not discuss showers, dreaming, and tacky TV shows).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Specifically:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this specific question, when I voted, there wasn't any point in it. It was more of a discussion - so find a discussion forum to have it in, or pop into the SO chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When combined with responses such as these:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've always said I do my best programming in the shower.  &#xD;&#xA;_and_  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Driving, definitely the best ideas are coming while driving.  &#xD;&#xA;_and_  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Often when I can't sleep at night. Usually because I have a problem on my mind.  &#xD;&#xA;_and_  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sometimes a few weeks after release: I look at my code and wonder &quot;what was I thinking?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;_and_  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I came up with the solution to a totally intractable database problem in a dream the other night.  &#xD;&#xA;_and_  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;Usually on my way home, about 5 minutes after leaving the office.  &#xD;&#xA;_and_  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;This totally reminds me of that Big Bang Theory episode...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of those are helpful and will not make anyone a better programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## To make it a good question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It needs to focus on making people better programmers, and tuning the question towards what we can do to improve our inspirational abilities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And **to keep it on-topic**, it needs to be specifically targeted at programmers - what sort of ideas do programmers have/need compares to other people? Well, ideas on API design. To inspire yourself for that, you might get a list of method names from ten popular APIs, print them out, jumble them up, and see if that helps inspire you as to good names for your own API.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question body should remind people it's asking for programming advice on coming up with ideas, to make sure the answers are focused in the right direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1428" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="472" RevisionGUID="a09d773d-e2c2-4666-aeb4-cb9e46a977c0" CreationDate="2010-11-06T19:57:05.130" UserId="89" Comment="added 147 characters in body" Text="_(I like different parts from different responses, so I'm submitting this combined version.)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Elevator Pitch: **A place for programmers to discuss problems that require wisdom, not clever code.**  &#xD;&#xA;OR  &#xD;&#xA;**Programmers is a site to share wisdom about the programming profession and subculture**  &#xD;&#xA;OR  &#xD;&#xA;[third option] _(see comments)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Tagline: ***&quot;Advice for programmers, by programmers&quot;***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Motto: **Think outside the brackets.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Logo Idea: ([see this answer][2])  &#xD;&#xA;![Think outside the brackets][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;_(I haven't included the Short Description because I think the existing FAQ description is mostly ok - personally I'd drop the &quot;subjective&quot; in the first line, and not mention code golf - but otherwise don't think it needs replacing.)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/QqIdm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like/473#473" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1429" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="514" RevisionGUID="b53aa768-500b-4355-a5dc-a36013dc080a" CreationDate="2010-11-06T20:19:57.160" UserId="89" Text="No - they shouldn't be revised, they should be scrapped and a new set done properly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The subjective/objective or good/bad subjective is the wrong approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And half of these &quot;guidelines&quot; are rubbish...  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, that's fair enough, but a bit too vague on its own.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. Tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Irrelevant.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3. Have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This applies to all questions; failure here should be a down-vote not a close-vote.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4. Invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We should not be inviting sharing of experiences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not to say some experiences are not valuable, but those ones will come anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having this as a guideline invites meaningless experiences.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 5. Insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not always necessary; up-votes alone can provide the proof of an opinion.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 6. Are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Agree. &lt;sub&gt;(It's not bad, just do it elsewhere.)&lt;/sub&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So yeah, out of that you could salvage this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. Encourage opinion to be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3. Are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I don't think that properly captures the essence of what (I hope) we're trying to nurture here.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*This is only half an answer, so far, giving my opinion on what's wrong with the &quot;six subjective question guidelines&quot; - I'll update the answer later to suggest an alternative approach for deciding if a question fits with Programmers.SE*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1431" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="515" RevisionGUID="65d0f089-f3c4-4930-b4e4-725e2c1c054f" CreationDate="2010-11-06T22:42:05.727" UserId="6" Text="Regardless of what you think of the rules, they've been handed down from on high a StackExchange-wide policy:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As such, they're probably not going anywhere soon." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1432" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="515" RevisionGUID="0d484704-a812-4fef-96b6-b6d72a6bad53" CreationDate="2010-11-07T06:06:59.157" UserId="6" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="Regardless of what you think of the rules, they've been handed down from on high as a StackExchange-wide policy:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As such, they're probably not going anywhere soon." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1433" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="516" RevisionGUID="e88172b7-02e8-4d82-b652-bc6d7265a18d" CreationDate="2010-11-07T09:14:30.297" UserId="389" Text="## Basics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Read our FAQ.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;- You can log in with your Google, Yahoo, etc. user by clicking the on icon of the service you have an account on the Login page.&#xD;&#xA;- Unlike forums and mailing lists, this concentrates on highlighting the good answers, and downvoting the incorrect or bad answers.  **It's not a replacement for discussion**, just a more efficient way to get answers. The [about page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about) has a picture which illustrates this best.&#xD;&#xA;- *After you get some reputation make sure you are voting good questions and answers up, and bad answers down!*&#xD;&#xA;- A ton of value comes from finding a question and answer via a search engine. We want a good answer to be the top hit for &quot;How do I use the me menu?&quot;  Don't worry if the questions are scrolling by too quickly on the front page, this isn't about tracking discussions.&#xD;&#xA;- What is Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow?  Joel's [announcement for stackoverflow.com](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/15.html) mentions the motivation behind this method of Q&amp;A.  More information on Stack Exchange in general can be found in the [Stack Overflow community FAQ](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/7931/) (much of it is general, some is specific to SO).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Asking good questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- People will upvote your question based on it's quality, so [put some effort](http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx) into it.&#xD;&#xA;- Use tags for classify your question. This makes the questions easier to read on the front page.&#xD;&#xA;- There's no bumping &amp;mdash; if your question is unanswered the community user will bump it on occasion.&#xD;&#xA;- Feel free to continue to work on your question; edit, edit, edit.  This will give it a natural bump, and people will be able to watch your progress in adding more detail. People tend to help/upvote people who are actively trying to investigate their problem.&#xD;&#xA;- As you add to your question, if you end up finding the answer, then answer your own question so that future generations can benefit from it!&#xD;&#xA;- If someone answers your question, accept it as the answer. This is an important [part of the process](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/5234) and rewards the people trying to help you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Giving good answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Don't only link to random sources on the Internet. Any person can type their answer into Google and do that. If the information is good and under an open license, just put it in the answer (don't forget to link to and attribute the author).&#xD;&#xA;- Edit, edit, edit should be your mantra. &amp;mdash; If you've got a good answer and someone adds more detail, integrate it, and remember to always respect an individual's work.&#xD;&#xA;- Comments are like &quot;meta&quot; for the answer. *Don't ping pong back and forth in comments with new data, when someone leaves a comment with more info or something, just add the information to your question directly.* If people post updates to a comment ask them to add it to their question; that's where the power of SE comes in: updates on people answering their question happens in the answers and the questions, so that when you are finished people don't have to track the conversation, just the final answer and solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Spread the word&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- We need help getting the word out, [we have some ideas](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7/how-do-we-promote-our-site) on how you can help, especially in places where users are already asking you for help.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1434" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="516" RevisionGUID="e88172b7-02e8-4d82-b652-bc6d7265a18d" CreationDate="2010-11-07T09:14:30.297" UserId="389" Text="How does Programmers site work?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1435" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="516" RevisionGUID="e88172b7-02e8-4d82-b652-bc6d7265a18d" CreationDate="2010-11-07T09:14:30.297" UserId="389" Text="|discussion|recommendations|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1436" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="516" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-11-07T09:14:41.997" UserId="389" />
  <row Id="1437" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="516" RevisionGUID="0b48c6cb-ee41-4c92-8ad8-3caa172692a5" CreationDate="2010-11-07T09:17:34.863" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|recommendations|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1438" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="516" RevisionGUID="7b8894e3-8b89-4500-9d28-1d4902293559" CreationDate="2010-11-08T07:21:29.923" UserDisplayName="Roger Pate" Comment="move answer to an answer" Text="How does this site work?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1439" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="517" RevisionGUID="93529500-a2e1-4b1b-8728-8353078e6f67" CreationDate="2010-11-08T07:21:54.417" UserDisplayName="Roger Pate" Text="## Basics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Read our FAQ.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;- You can log in with your Google, Yahoo, etc. user by clicking the on icon of the service you have an account on the Login page.&#xD;&#xA;- Unlike forums and mailing lists, this concentrates on highlighting the good answers, and downvoting the incorrect or bad answers.  **It's not a replacement for discussion**, just a more efficient way to get answers. The [about page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about) has a picture which illustrates this best.&#xD;&#xA;- *After you get some reputation make sure you are voting good questions and answers up, and bad answers down!*&#xD;&#xA;- A ton of value comes from finding a question and answer via a search engine. We want a good answer to be the top hit for &quot;How do I use the me menu?&quot;  Don't worry if the questions are scrolling by too quickly on the front page, this isn't about tracking discussions.&#xD;&#xA;- What is Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow?  Joel's [announcement for stackoverflow.com](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/15.html) mentions the motivation behind this method of Q&amp;A.  More information on Stack Exchange in general can be found in the [Stack Overflow community FAQ](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/7931/) (much of it is general, some is specific to SO).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Asking good questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- People will upvote your question based on it's quality, so [put some effort](http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx) into it.&#xD;&#xA;- Use tags for classify your question. This makes the questions easier to read on the front page.&#xD;&#xA;- There's no bumping &amp;mdash; if your question is unanswered the community user will bump it on occasion.&#xD;&#xA;- Feel free to continue to work on your question; edit, edit, edit.  This will give it a natural bump, and people will be able to watch your progress in adding more detail. People tend to help/upvote people who are actively trying to investigate their problem.&#xD;&#xA;- As you add to your question, if you end up finding the answer, then answer your own question so that future generations can benefit from it!&#xD;&#xA;- If someone answers your question, accept it as the answer. This is an important [part of the process](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/5234) and rewards the people trying to help you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Giving good answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Don't only link to random sources on the Internet. Any person can type their answer into Google and do that. If the information is good and under an open license, just put it in the answer (don't forget to link to and attribute the author).&#xD;&#xA;- Edit, edit, edit should be your mantra. &amp;mdash; If you've got a good answer and someone adds more detail, integrate it, and remember to always respect an individual's work.&#xD;&#xA;- Comments are like &quot;meta&quot; for the answer. *Don't ping pong back and forth in comments with new data, when someone leaves a comment with more info or something, just add the information to your question directly.* If people post updates to a comment ask them to add it to their question; that's where the power of SE comes in: updates on people answering their question happens in the answers and the questions, so that when you are finished people don't have to track the conversation, just the final answer and solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Spread the word&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- We need help getting the word out, [we have some ideas](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7/how-do-we-promote-our-site) on how you can help, especially in places where users are already asking you for help.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1440" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="518" RevisionGUID="faec0347-56ca-402b-9abb-72b53f417d79" CreationDate="2010-11-08T18:34:01.787" UserId="38" Text="I think they should be revisited, as there are some flaws in the current wording. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I actually posted a fuller answer to this as an answer to Jeff's original post. It's probably redundant for me to re-post my answer, so I'll simply [link to it][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice/415#415" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1441" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="519" RevisionGUID="1f8fc8f6-73f7-4c88-9b2d-e75aac427da7" CreationDate="2010-11-08T20:18:11.430" UserId="5624" Text="Say I've got a piece of code. Nothing wrong with it; I'm just curious if it's the best way to go about doing what I'm trying to accomplish.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would those kinds of questions go here, SO or do they not belong on either site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1442" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="519" RevisionGUID="1f8fc8f6-73f7-4c88-9b2d-e75aac427da7" CreationDate="2010-11-08T20:18:11.430" UserId="5624" Text="Is this where I would post code review type questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1443" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="519" RevisionGUID="1f8fc8f6-73f7-4c88-9b2d-e75aac427da7" CreationDate="2010-11-08T20:18:11.430" UserId="5624" Text="|discussion|code|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1444" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="520" RevisionGUID="74b8c50d-a307-4a74-b791-77ac0ab19c38" CreationDate="2010-11-08T20:45:26.857" UserId="3" Text="No. Stack Exchange sites are for specific questions that can be answered. Not code reviews. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Look over my code&quot; questions do not belong on either Stack Overflow nor Programmers.stackexchange." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1445" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="521" RevisionGUID="b54761c7-387b-4577-a049-2f9253c78dcd" CreationDate="2010-11-09T07:59:10.757" UserId="156" Text="I found a question which was asked in two sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/4823/are-you-a-geek-or-nerd&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17779/are-you-a-geek-or-nerd&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Need your thoughts on this. Is this allowed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1446" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="521" RevisionGUID="b54761c7-387b-4577-a049-2f9253c78dcd" CreationDate="2010-11-09T07:59:10.757" UserId="156" Text="Is this kind of activity allowed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1447" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="521" RevisionGUID="b54761c7-387b-4577-a049-2f9253c78dcd" CreationDate="2010-11-09T07:59:10.757" UserId="156" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1449" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="521" RevisionGUID="37366395-3fec-4fe1-b12f-ccfea7916eb7" CreationDate="2010-11-09T16:30:20.220" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Edit links so they are both clickable" Text="I found a question which was asked in two sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/4823/are-you-a-geek-or-nerd&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17779/are-you-a-geek-or-nerd&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Need your thoughts on this. Is this allowed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1451" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="523" RevisionGUID="b9c70815-7823-4a5c-8cb9-457231a0759f" CreationDate="2010-11-09T18:17:11.990" UserId="6" Text="Probably a good thing to decide.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I'd vote **yes**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- It would be very difficult to enforce it if we decided to say that that was unacceptable.&#xD;&#xA;- You're likely to get different answers from different communities (as in that example)&#xD;&#xA;- If it's appropriate for both communities, I can't think of a compelling reason why not." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1452" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="520" RevisionGUID="798c7648-ef0e-4c96-b2a8-e3b6f7337c8f" CreationDate="2010-11-09T18:18:08.517" UserId="6" Comment="grammar fix" Text="No. Stack Exchange sites are for specific questions that can be answered. Not code reviews. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Look over my code&quot; questions do not belong on either Stack Overflow or Programmers.stackexchange." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1453" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="524" RevisionGUID="d0904208-2aa6-4b42-ab68-65e2d67d41f8" CreationDate="2010-11-09T19:18:14.400" UserId="389" Text="See [How do you rate Hosting?][1]. It seems a genuine question for a programmer but I don't know if this kind of quesion should be on-topic. What do you think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17947" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1454" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="524" RevisionGUID="d0904208-2aa6-4b42-ab68-65e2d67d41f8" CreationDate="2010-11-09T19:18:14.400" UserId="389" Text="Question about hosting is on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1455" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="524" RevisionGUID="d0904208-2aa6-4b42-ab68-65e2d67d41f8" CreationDate="2010-11-09T19:18:14.400" UserId="389" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1456" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="525" RevisionGUID="4f19ef5e-ec68-4db1-baa8-30bf534bcdbd" CreationDate="2010-11-09T20:22:00.297" UserDisplayName="Idsa" Text="I'm  implementing Q&amp;A service for my project and I can't really choose: to use linear or hierachical answer comments structure. Hierachical looks more appropriate for me, but linear is much more compact." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1457" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="525" RevisionGUID="4f19ef5e-ec68-4db1-baa8-30bf534bcdbd" CreationDate="2010-11-09T20:22:00.297" UserDisplayName="Idsa" Text="Why does StackExchange use linear (not hierachical) answer comments structure" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1458" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="525" RevisionGUID="4f19ef5e-ec68-4db1-baa8-30bf534bcdbd" CreationDate="2010-11-09T20:22:00.297" UserDisplayName="Idsa" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1459" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="525" RevisionGUID="36e2c528-45e6-4ae8-bfc7-95a5b741dc4c" CreationDate="2010-11-09T20:25:54.033" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17982/why-does-stackexchange-use-linear-not-hierachical-answer-comments-structure" Text="" />
  <row Id="1460" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="526" RevisionGUID="73a46eea-383d-4448-8c0e-eee46aedc938" CreationDate="2010-11-09T20:47:50.413" UserDisplayName="user1842" Text="See this [Meta SO post][1] for a Greasemonkey script to do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/43055/greasemonkey-script-for-displaying-threaded-comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1461" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="527" RevisionGUID="709a7ba5-e430-4bd9-8cd5-2064e9afe51e" CreationDate="2010-11-10T00:35:43.303" UserId="7123" Text="So, the description for the Beta badge says that one must &quot;Actively participated in the private beta&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is Programmers not a &quot;private&quot; beta or something? Because I'm wondering what all would actually be needed to achieve this badge otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1462" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="527" RevisionGUID="709a7ba5-e430-4bd9-8cd5-2064e9afe51e" CreationDate="2010-11-10T00:35:43.303" UserId="7123" Text="Where is my Beta badge?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1463" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="527" RevisionGUID="709a7ba5-e430-4bd9-8cd5-2064e9afe51e" CreationDate="2010-11-10T00:35:43.303" UserId="7123" Text="|support|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1464" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="528" RevisionGUID="b184b808-ba8a-4262-8e2e-9b16ff51e96b" CreationDate="2010-11-10T02:18:05.610" UserId="7360" Text="From http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/ :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;our fellow programmers created [a sister site specifically for their pent up subjective questions][1]. Take one heaping pile of subjective questions, bottle it up for over two years and… kablooey!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted that question here because it was my impression that this forum is the only one that accepts subjective questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1465" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="529" RevisionGUID="2060d377-228c-4f82-8849-9b993f4e8510" CreationDate="2010-11-10T03:43:01.267" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The private beta for Programmers lasted for 7 days immediately following the conclusion of the commitment period. It is unattainable now. We're currently in the public beta period." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1466" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="530" RevisionGUID="43fce364-329c-4b8b-8ca3-0388bd42bd43" CreationDate="2010-11-10T06:05:01.057" UserId="4260" Text="My first reaction when I saw that question was that it should be on webmasters.  I did a little looking, and there are questions about measuring and comparing hosting providers in the [web-hosting][1] and [hosting][2] tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's also been [some discussion][3] on webmasters meta about hosting questions, and the consensus seems to be that they are being handled well (i.e., answered or closed) so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My vote is for directing these questions to webmasters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/web-hosting&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/hosting&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.webmasters.stackexchange.com/search?q=hosting" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1467" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="531" RevisionGUID="ca2e2895-82e7-4e88-8161-4f5a4b8756b9" CreationDate="2010-11-10T07:04:08.367" UserId="7360" Text="Here is another suggestion, by the way.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;When I made that thread, there were no &quot;hosting&quot; or &quot;web hosting&quot; tags... only &quot;project-hosting&quot;.  When I tried to use &quot;hosting&quot; and &quot;web hosting&quot;, it gave me an error about not being able to create new tags with below-150 rep.  Of course, to a veteran, that would probably be an indication that they were asking the question on the wrong forum, but I didn't really think much of it.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;I think another great way to help new users would be for the forum to read the tag and based on the tags, suggest a different forum if it seemed as though the user was in the wrong spot (with a Continue/Cancel dialogue box)... and to do that before the 150-rep check too... otherwise new users will just erase the tag creating the error. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1468" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="531" RevisionGUID="af9b40f0-515f-4acf-a226-355a54a599db" CreationDate="2010-11-10T07:10:02.410" UserId="7360" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="Here is another suggestion, by the way.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;When I made that thread, there were no &quot;hosting&quot; or &quot;web hosting&quot; tags... only &quot;project-hosting&quot;.  When I tried to use &quot;hosting&quot; and &quot;web hosting&quot;, it gave me an error about not being able to create new tags with below-150 rep.  Of course, to a veteran, that would probably be an indication that they were asking the question on the wrong forum, but I didn't really think much of it.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;I think another great way to help new users would be for the forum to read the tags and, based on the tags, suggest a different forum if it seemed as though the user was in the wrong spot (with a Continue/Cancel dialogue box)... and to do that before the 150-rep check too... otherwise new users will just erase the tag creating the error. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1469" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="532" RevisionGUID="e882274f-f571-4d55-9321-6118b7df9180" CreationDate="2010-11-10T10:07:49.773" UserId="1352" Text="Because linear comments suck.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, seriously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a Question&amp;Answer site, not a discussion site. Threaded posts are *vital* for a healthy discussion, linear comments make it impossible to properly follow the flow of a (distributed) discussion. And that's exactly the point: discourage discussion by making it hard to *have* a discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another point is about the comments themselves: they are second-class citizens. They only support a subset of the formatting options that other posts do. They have a pretty harsh length restriction. They are rendered in a smaller font.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This creates a divide between the poster and the commenter, which, again, hinders discussion. A healthy discussion requires that all participants be equal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, in short: comments are *deliberately* made this way to *discourage* discussion, because this is not a discussion site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1470" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="533" RevisionGUID="9b73e267-704c-4676-b7d5-6588cd42b539" CreationDate="2010-11-10T15:08:53.180" UserId="6967" Text="Elevator Pitch: Google.  For everything else there's Programmers@stackexchange.com.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tagline:  Programmers@stackexchange.com - Where programmers give their 10 cents.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Motto:  Where people know what 0xCAFEBABE is.  &#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/2nDLg.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1471" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="534" RevisionGUID="2e4cb53d-058e-4ed1-960a-96888f40a0a1" CreationDate="2010-11-11T18:59:54.977" UserId="89" Text="It seems that questions on Prog.SE are language-agnostic by default, and the tag is just unnecessary noise&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's [currently 29 questions with the tag](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/language-agnostic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone agree/disagree we should kill the tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1472" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="534" RevisionGUID="2e4cb53d-058e-4ed1-960a-96888f40a0a1" CreationDate="2010-11-11T18:59:54.977" UserId="89" Text="Do we need language-agnostic tag here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1473" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="534" RevisionGUID="2e4cb53d-058e-4ed1-960a-96888f40a0a1" CreationDate="2010-11-11T18:59:54.977" UserId="89" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1474" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="535" RevisionGUID="10a5f40b-e8c1-457c-a09a-559a9248fbf3" CreationDate="2010-11-11T21:53:07.150" UserId="145" Text="The answer to a similar question on [Stack Overflow][1] was:  http://refactormycode.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1509288/is-there-a-site-where-i-can-post-snippets-of-code-for-review" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1475" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="536" RevisionGUID="547b4bb3-cced-4c06-8dca-a4b31b74a301" CreationDate="2010-11-11T22:39:55.050" UserId="1973" Text="I don't disagree that we should kill the tag, but I do disagree if that means that we shouldn't ask language specific questions here.  They may not get answered right away, but there are enough opinionated Delphi, Python and C# programmers on the site that language minutiae is not beyond the scope or interests of the community.   " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1476" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="537" RevisionGUID="a8df3aaf-d178-44de-b863-8fcb9980fdfd" CreationDate="2010-11-12T16:00:31.633" UserId="1204" Text="`[Recommendations]` is a meta-tag...It doesn't categorize the question's content, and it cannot stand on its own without other tags.  It should therefore be removed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1477" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="421" RevisionGUID="e179edd4-4876-4b90-aaa2-08696d845403" CreationDate="2010-11-12T18:06:34.910" UserId="1204" Comment="edited title" Text="Is a [recommendations] tag really necessary?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1478" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="538" RevisionGUID="c55708a3-a5f1-4221-8c0f-d139490e401b" CreationDate="2010-11-12T22:38:35.313" UserId="6420" Text="I agree it is superfluous. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1479" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="517" RevisionGUID="2d62d0fb-eb36-41ae-999f-57d1270457e2" CreationDate="2010-11-13T13:03:43.323" UserId="591" Comment="added 104 characters in body" Text="## Basics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Read our FAQ.][1]&#xD;&#xA;- You can log in with your Google, Yahoo, etc. user by clicking the on icon of the service you have an account on the Login page.&#xD;&#xA;- Unlike forums and mailing lists, this concentrates on highlighting the good answers, and downvoting the incorrect or bad answers.  **It's not a replacement for discussion**, just a more efficient way to get answers. The [about page][2] has a picture which illustrates this best.&#xD;&#xA;- *After you get some reputation make sure you are voting good questions and answers up, and bad answers down!*&#xD;&#xA;- A ton of value comes from finding a question and answer via a search engine. We want a good answer to be the top hit for &quot;How do I use the me menu?&quot;  Don't worry if the questions are scrolling by too quickly on the front page, this isn't about tracking discussions.&#xD;&#xA;- What is Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow?  Joel's [announcement for stackoverflow.com][3] mentions the motivation behind this method of Q&amp;A.  More information on Stack Exchange in general can be found in the [Stack Overflow community FAQ][4] (much of it is general, some is specific to Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Asking good questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- People will upvote your question based on its quality, so [put some effort][5] into it.&#xD;&#xA;- Use tags for classify your question. This makes the questions easier to read on the front page.&#xD;&#xA;- There's no bumping &amp;mdash; if your question is unanswered the community user will bump it on occasion.&#xD;&#xA;- Feel free to continue to work on your question; edit, edit, edit.  This will give it a natural bump, and people will be able to watch your progress in adding more detail. People tend to help/upvote people who are actively trying to investigate their problem.&#xD;&#xA;- As you add to your question, if you end up finding the answer, then answer your own question so that future generations can benefit from it!&#xD;&#xA;- If someone answers your question, accept it as the answer. This is an important [part of the process][6] and rewards the people trying to help you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Giving good answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Don't only link to random sources on the Internet. Any person can type their answer into Google and do that. If the information is good and under an open license, just put it in the answer (don't forget to link to and attribute the author).&#xD;&#xA;- Edit, edit, edit should be your mantra. &amp;mdash; If you've got a good answer and someone adds more detail, integrate it, and remember to always respect an individual's work.&#xD;&#xA;- Comments are like &quot;meta&quot; for the answer. *Don't ping pong back and forth in comments with new data, when someone leaves a comment with more information or something, just add the information to your question directly.* If people post updates to a comment ask them to add it to their question; that's where the power of Stack Exchange comes in: updates on people answering their question happens in the answers and the questions, so that when you are finished people don't have to track the conversation, just the final answer and solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Spread the word&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- We need help getting the word out, [we have some ideas][7] on how you can help, especially in places where users are already asking you for help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/15.html&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/7931/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/5234&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7/how-do-we-promote-our-site&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1480" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="539" RevisionGUID="567897df-c1dd-4332-8cc7-7859a37b9f12" CreationDate="2010-11-13T14:12:03.297" UserDisplayName="user7071" Text="Usability. Every additional click, when required to use the application decimates audience of users by factor of 2. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Population of planet is a limited number. After 33 clicks application becomes theoretically unreachable dark matter. We can not prove or disprove that such applications exist, because  no evidence was ever obtained." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1481" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="540" RevisionGUID="21844aba-31bf-4f5a-9b61-bb6cb46fe7f2" CreationDate="2010-11-13T19:43:07.767" UserId="7629" Text="I recently linked my SO account here to PE, and asked a [question][1]. A got some decent answers, but I realized that the question is specific enough to ask on SO and possibly get more interest/views/response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should I do in this case? Is it considered bad form to duplicate a question across sites? I'm not trying to game the rep system, I just want my question to get good exposure. Is there a way of migrating the question that doesn't require moderator assistance? Should I just leave the question here on PE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18838/haskell-and-lisp-vs-haskell-or-lisp" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1482" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="540" RevisionGUID="21844aba-31bf-4f5a-9b61-bb6cb46fe7f2" CreationDate="2010-11-13T19:43:07.767" UserId="7629" Text="How are questions moved or duplicated between PE and SO?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1483" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="540" RevisionGUID="21844aba-31bf-4f5a-9b61-bb6cb46fe7f2" CreationDate="2010-11-13T19:43:07.767" UserId="7629" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1484" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="541" RevisionGUID="aea398e5-d662-4ed4-a62d-be1727569c30" CreationDate="2010-11-14T05:38:40.077" UserId="1973" Text="Regarding &quot;Bad form&quot; check http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/521/is-this-kind-of-activity-allowed apparently it has the go ahead from one mod and a word of warning from another (which should not be taken lightly, if you have any doubts as to whether something you post is off topic, he will see to it that it is closed). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find myself asking questions on programmers.SE that could probably get much better answers from the larger user base on stackoverflow.  The one good thing about this site is that almost nothing slips through the cracks (for better or worse).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I kinda don't think there can be crossposted stuff between SO and here though, there is too much of a disconnect now between &quot;Opinion Answering&quot; on this site and &quot;Just the facts, dude&quot; on SO. You may be able to crosspost a pronunciation question between the English usage site and this one or a snack suggestion between &quot;Seasoned Advice&quot; and this site.  But in each of those cases, the post on this site is probably going to be closed (at least once).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh, and I don't think the &quot;migration paths&quot; open up till the site is out of beta (looks like that'll be soon)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1485" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="542" RevisionGUID="c7ce01ef-1050-405e-bae8-45a49dc7f744" CreationDate="2010-11-16T15:24:55.693" UserId="89" Text="No - it should not be _completely_ killed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, so as in the comment above I removed the tag from most questions, but as I was going through I noticed three exceptions, where it seems relevant to keep the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Language agnostic programming books](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/language-agnostic-programming-books)&#xD;&#xA;* [What should I do to be language-agnostic?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1189/what-should-i-do-to-be-language-agnostic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Language-agnostic libs every programmer should consider learning?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/language-agnostic-libs-every-programmer-should-consider-learning)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the topic of those tags is *specifically* about being language agnostic, (rather than it being a non-descriptive tag as in the other cases), I figured it makes sense to keep it there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully others agree?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1486" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="543" RevisionGUID="2ac82f66-3f6a-40dd-bae2-fbedeff130e4" CreationDate="2010-11-19T18:24:05.563" UserId="2329" Text="Does this site need a programming tag?  It certainly doesn't give me much clue about what to expect the question to contain." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1487" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="543" RevisionGUID="2ac82f66-3f6a-40dd-bae2-fbedeff130e4" CreationDate="2010-11-19T18:24:05.563" UserId="2329" Text="Do we need a programming tag here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1488" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="543" RevisionGUID="2ac82f66-3f6a-40dd-bae2-fbedeff130e4" CreationDate="2010-11-19T18:24:05.563" UserId="2329" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1489" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="544" RevisionGUID="1b7eeb81-d075-49b3-b3f4-2b3d8ed38d3e" CreationDate="2010-11-19T23:05:11.633" UserId="389" Text="See that question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/13623/does-giving-a-developer-a-slower-development-machine-result-in-faster-more-effici&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From OP's comment &quot;many many responses... but not many answers.&quot;. This question is very silly, so it's very unlikely an answer could been given. I'm concerned about Pr.SE direction. Silly questions should be ignored or downvoted. One or two posts should be enough. That question was turned on a forum thread. Just discussion and repeated posts writing the same thing in another words.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we accept this kind of question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12807/make-a-big-deal-out-of-true&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They attract attention but few or no good answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you think?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1490" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="544" RevisionGUID="1b7eeb81-d075-49b3-b3f4-2b3d8ed38d3e" CreationDate="2010-11-19T23:05:11.633" UserId="389" Text="Questions like a forum thread" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1491" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="544" RevisionGUID="1b7eeb81-d075-49b3-b3f4-2b3d8ed38d3e" CreationDate="2010-11-19T23:05:11.633" UserId="389" Text="|discussion|questions|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1492" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="545" RevisionGUID="24979477-26fe-4ed1-8b6c-c2d8baf79763" CreationDate="2010-11-20T02:49:52.483" UserId="89" Text="Random idea that just popped into my head - I'm not sure if I agree myself even, but I'm throwing the thought out there to see what happens:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question reaches a certain size, should it cost reputation to add a new answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is based on an assumption that after so mnay answers, anything new is either going to be repeated, or such a good point that it'll get upvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, when a question gets to 20 answers, a new answer requires/costs 10 rep.&#xD;&#xA;At 30 answers, it'd be 50 rep, and for 40 answers, it the cost would be 100 rep.&#xD;&#xA;If the answer gets X upvotes, the rep cost is refunded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actual numbers could be tweaked, but basically it's saying &quot;only add an answer if you've got something worth saying&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would that be a successful deterrent, or would it perhaps cause other problems?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1493" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="546" RevisionGUID="198b5e08-5703-47a8-bb62-814c1ba4fdc6" CreationDate="2010-11-20T02:55:39.183" UserId="89" Text="Another thought - maybe an additional close reason &quot;Succesful question&quot; - the question has served its purpose and gained lots of answers, but no more are needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a closed question, answers can still be voted on, and comments still added, so the question is still &quot;alive&quot;, just not answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone have thoughts on whether that makes sense, and if it would work?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1494" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="545" RevisionGUID="14e7f06f-7b12-4def-b414-d0b76d0c1af9" CreationDate="2010-11-20T02:55:53.287" UserId="89" Comment="edited body" Text="Random idea that just popped into my head - I'm not sure if I agree myself even, but I'm throwing the thought out there to see what happens:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question reaches a certain size, should it cost reputation to add a new answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is based on an assumption that after so many answers, anything new is either going to be repeated, or such a good point that it'll get upvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, when a question gets to 20 answers, a new answer requires/costs 10 rep.&#xD;&#xA;At 30 answers, it'd be 50 rep, and for 40 answers, it the cost would be 100 rep.&#xD;&#xA;If the answer gets X upvotes, the rep cost is refunded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actual numbers could be tweaked, but basically it's saying &quot;only add an answer if you've got something worth saying&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would that be a successful deterrent, or would it perhaps cause other problems?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1495" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="547" RevisionGUID="ad160362-c406-467a-85b4-0df3211b993d" CreationDate="2010-11-20T14:27:58.493" UserId="101" Text="I think the OP's intentions were good and not at all silly and perhaps we can do a better job of editing the question or guiding OP to alter the question to get better answers and not just a lot of responses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first example that you cited is a good one.  The original question came off as 'should we give programmers slow machines...', which of course started the flood of responses.  In reality the OP's real concern is 'what's the best way to test code on average hardware a typical user might be running'.  My guess is that if that were the question posted then there would have been 7 answers, not 47.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm always a little wary of editing questions too much as I may have missed the intent and in those cases I would normally opt for leaving the OP a suggestion as a comment.  But that may be just me, I'm not one who likes to edit too much..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1496" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="547" RevisionGUID="bb558e97-0c6a-4fcc-b5a4-9ba297827cdb" CreationDate="2010-11-21T13:17:17.793" UserId="101" Comment="fixed grammar" Text="I think the OP's intentions were good and not at all silly.  Perhaps we can do a better job of editing the question or guiding OP to alter the question to get better answers and not just a lot of responses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first example that you cited is a good one.  The original question came off as 'should we give programmers slow machines...', which of course started the flood of responses.  In reality the OP's real concern is 'what's the best way to test code on average hardware a typical user might be running'.  My guess is that if that were the question posted then there would have been 7 answers, not 47.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm always a little wary of editing questions too much as I may have missed the intent and in those cases I would normally opt for leaving the OP a suggestion as a comment.  But that may be just me, I'm not one who likes to edit too much..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1497" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="548" RevisionGUID="95955546-0639-4a2c-9eed-0c3d96bba6fe" CreationDate="2010-11-21T14:19:20.603" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="I just posted [this][1] question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I saw no options to make it community wiki. I remember that option. Why I don't see it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20363/what-is-the-most-inspiring-speech-from-a-developer-you-ever-watched" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1498" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="548" RevisionGUID="95955546-0639-4a2c-9eed-0c3d96bba6fe" CreationDate="2010-11-21T14:19:20.603" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="How to make my question community wiki?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1499" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="548" RevisionGUID="95955546-0639-4a2c-9eed-0c3d96bba6fe" CreationDate="2010-11-21T14:19:20.603" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="|support|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1500" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="549" RevisionGUID="09c09f61-e035-49f9-b9a2-2891b25140e1" CreationDate="2010-11-21T14:34:46.700" UserId="389" Text="See [What can we do to make Community Wiki better?][1] on Meta.SO. So you can request it for moderators, but I just convert to CW if the question requires CW status. If you want it, please explain why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/67039/what-can-we-do-to-make-community-wiki-better/67192#67192" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1501" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="550" RevisionGUID="83012a65-1345-4fbc-9690-5ff538e3f9bb" CreationDate="2010-11-22T16:06:18.587" UserId="191" Text="I use the same google Id, but I've (attempted) to remove the identifying info from my profile on Programmers.  Can it still be correlated with my SO identity? (by random people, obviously SO staff could) Or another way to ask the question is, who am I?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since SO is theoretically an extension to my future resume, I'd rather not have my identity there associated with my identity on programmers.stackexchange.com, which in my opinion, is where the argumentative, combative and other bad-behavior-encouraging questions end up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose if one doesn't want to get into a bar fight, don't go to bars, but on the other hand, sitting out the discussion isn't an attractive option either." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1502" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="550" RevisionGUID="83012a65-1345-4fbc-9690-5ff538e3f9bb" CreationDate="2010-11-22T16:06:18.587" UserId="191" Text="Can my user Id on programmers be correlated with my user Id on stack overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1503" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="550" RevisionGUID="83012a65-1345-4fbc-9690-5ff538e3f9bb" CreationDate="2010-11-22T16:06:18.587" UserId="191" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1504" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="551" RevisionGUID="bbc875bf-bb9e-4053-81b3-2b0ecdf6c99f" CreationDate="2010-11-22T17:44:37.483" UserId="6415" Text="The [Reputation Priveledges][1] state that editing should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - to fix grammatical or spelling mistakes&#xD;&#xA; - to clarify the meaning of a post without changing it&#xD;&#xA; - correct minor mistakes or add addendums / updates as the post ages&#xD;&#xA; - add related resources or hyperlinks&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also says, &quot;Try to make the post substantively better when you edit, not just change a single character. Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, can anyone tell me how I could edit someone else's question and make it better? Should I presume that I understand the question being asked better than the asker? Or would it be better to simply make a comment on the question that clarifies or asks that the question be clarified?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1505" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="551" RevisionGUID="bbc875bf-bb9e-4053-81b3-2b0ecdf6c99f" CreationDate="2010-11-22T17:44:37.483" UserId="6415" Text="What sort of edits are appropriate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1506" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="551" RevisionGUID="bbc875bf-bb9e-4053-81b3-2b0ecdf6c99f" CreationDate="2010-11-22T17:44:37.483" UserId="6415" Text="|discussion|questions|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1507" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="551" RevisionGUID="5c5280ab-3559-44d5-aa5e-c3b716480ad9" CreationDate="2010-11-22T17:50:21.390" UserId="6415" Comment="added question about trivialness" Text="The [Reputation Priveledges][1] state that editing should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - to fix grammatical or spelling mistakes&#xD;&#xA; - to clarify the meaning of a post without changing it&#xD;&#xA; - correct minor mistakes or add addendums / updates as the post ages&#xD;&#xA; - add related resources or hyperlinks&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also says, &quot;Try to make the post substantively better when you edit, not just change a single character. Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, can anyone tell me how I could edit someone else's question and make it better? Should I presume that I understand the question being asked better than the asker? Or would it be better to simply make a comment on the question that clarifies or asks that the question be clarified?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, with regard to the &quot;Tiny, trivial&quot; part, does that mean I should not correct spelling/grammer errors should I see them? One of the sample reasons for editing is &quot;correctedspelling, fixed grammer&quot;, after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1508" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="552" RevisionGUID="01653f05-28ea-4673-84d3-fe38b66c245a" CreationDate="2010-11-23T01:01:03.237" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Apparantly it's very easy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand your point but maybe the solution to your problem is to avoid posting answers you wouldn't assume in the future?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1509" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="553" RevisionGUID="0d18d624-4bb0-4285-9a81-9838e8b3f6f0" CreationDate="2010-11-23T02:15:42.940" UserId="99" Text="If what you want is to use a single OpenID and have all your SE accounts associated *except* for your Programmer's account, then sorry, [you can't do that](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/52272/stop-repeatedly-auto-associating-accounts-on-login).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're okay with disassociating all of your accounts, then go to [your Programmer's account page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/191?tab=accounts), where you should see a link/button/box at the very bottom that says [`Clear all associations`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/191?tab=accounts#clear-associations). Clicking that *should* do the trick.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another approach is to create a new OpenID and use it just for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to answer the general question: anyone can go to [one of your account pages](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/191?tab=accounts) and see all your associated accounts at once." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1510" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="544" RevisionGUID="6018820a-09b3-4b37-be79-d9116f30a07b" CreationDate="2010-11-23T03:39:45.490" UserId="389" Comment="added 121 characters in body" Text="See that question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/13623/does-giving-a-developer-a-slower-development-machine-result-in-faster-more-effici&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From OP's comment &quot;many many responses... but not many answers.&quot;. This question is very silly, so it's very unlikely an answer could been given. I'm concerned about Pr.SE direction. Silly questions should be ignored or downvoted. One or two posts should be enough. That question was turned on a forum thread. Just discussion and repeated posts writing the same thing in another words.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we accept this kind of question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12807/make-a-big-deal-out-of-true&#xD;&#xA;And: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20407/will-high-reputation-in-stack-overflow-help-to-get-a-good-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They attract attention but few or no good answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you think?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1511" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="551" RevisionGUID="6825c654-7568-49ce-9b78-e38142e0dd6a" CreationDate="2010-11-23T13:05:45.197" UserId="6415" Comment="added 1 characters in body; edited body" Text="The [Reputation Priviledges][1] state that editing should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - to fix grammatical or spelling mistakes&#xD;&#xA; - to clarify the meaning of a post without changing it&#xD;&#xA; - correct minor mistakes or add addendums / updates as the post ages&#xD;&#xA; - add related resources or hyperlinks&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also says, &quot;Try to make the post substantively better when you edit, not just change a single character. Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, can anyone tell me how I could edit someone else's question and make it better? Should I presume that I understand the question being asked better than the asker? Or would it be better to simply make a comment on the question that clarifies or asks that the question be clarified?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, with regard to the &quot;Tiny, trivial&quot; part, does that mean I should not correct spelling/grammer errors should I see them? One of the sample reasons for editing is &quot;corrected spelling, fixed grammer&quot;, after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1512" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="554" RevisionGUID="29e92ba2-6ce7-46e4-8bd1-36a68947830b" CreationDate="2010-11-23T17:57:25.987" UserId="145" Text="[Does giving a developer a slower development machine result in faster/more efficient code?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like most respondents, I am horrified that anyone would think this is a good strategy.  But that doesn't make the question unconstructive or off-topic.  It stimulated a good discussion of development strategies for slow target platforms, and of the difference between development and test.  Pros and Cons for the strategy were suggested (and the cons clearly won out).   It was the 2nd highest voted question on the site, and near the top of the view count too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What makes that an unconstructive question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Disclaimer - I neither wrote nor answered this question - I am just suprised to see it closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/13623/145" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1513" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="554" RevisionGUID="29e92ba2-6ce7-46e4-8bd1-36a68947830b" CreationDate="2010-11-23T17:57:25.987" UserId="145" Text="Why is this question closed?  It's a good question about a bad idea." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1514" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="554" RevisionGUID="29e92ba2-6ce7-46e4-8bd1-36a68947830b" CreationDate="2010-11-23T17:57:25.987" UserId="145" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1515" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="555" RevisionGUID="8860bf11-9ad4-48e8-98a1-a115537a1c90" CreationDate="2010-11-23T20:25:34.867" UserId="1608" Text="Well I do now. I've some activity here obviously but not before this question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1516" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="555" RevisionGUID="8860bf11-9ad4-48e8-98a1-a115537a1c90" CreationDate="2010-11-23T20:25:34.867" UserId="1608" Text="why have I a reputation going up on meta programmers when I've no activity on meta programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1517" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="555" RevisionGUID="8860bf11-9ad4-48e8-98a1-a115537a1c90" CreationDate="2010-11-23T20:25:34.867" UserId="1608" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1518" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="556" RevisionGUID="c575936f-146f-4c92-8694-311000ca985d" CreationDate="2010-11-23T20:42:18.347" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="All meta sites share reputation with their parent sites: the only exception is [Meta.StackOverflow.com](http://meta.stackoverflow.com). Any reputation you get on [Programmers.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com) transfers here, and you receive no reputation for activity here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1519" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="517" RevisionGUID="11ba34ff-c3e7-4684-836d-31d1a68b61c1" CreationDate="2010-11-24T02:41:09.690" UserId="7441" Comment="Made some simple grammatical/readability corrections" Text="## Basics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Read our FAQ.][1]&#xD;&#xA;- You can log in with your Google, Yahoo, etc. user by clicking the on icon of the service you have an account on the Login page.&#xD;&#xA;- Unlike forums and mailing lists, this concentrates on highlighting the good answers, and downvoting the incorrect or bad answers.  **It's not a replacement for discussion**, just a more efficient way to get answers. The [about page][2] has a picture which illustrates this best.&#xD;&#xA;- *After you get some reputation make sure you are voting good questions and answers up, and bad answers down!*&#xD;&#xA;- A ton of value comes from finding a question and answer via a search engine. We want a good answer to be the top hit for &quot;How do I use the me menu?&quot;  Don't worry if the questions are scrolling by too quickly on the front page, this isn't about tracking discussions.&#xD;&#xA;- What is Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow?  Joel's [announcement for stackoverflow.com][3] mentions the motivation behind this method of Q&amp;A.  More information on Stack Exchange in general can be found in the [Stack Overflow community FAQ][4] (much of it is general, some is specific to Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Asking good questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- People will upvote your question based on its quality, so [put some effort][5] into it.&#xD;&#xA;- Use tags to classify your question. This makes questions easier to read on the front page.&#xD;&#xA;- There's no bumping &amp;mdash; if your question is unanswered the community user will bump it on occasion.&#xD;&#xA;- Feel free to continue to work on your question; edit, edit, edit.  This will give it a natural bump, and people will be able to watch your progress in adding more detail. People tend to help/upvote people who are actively trying to investigate their problem.&#xD;&#xA;- As you add to your question, if you end up finding the answer, then answer your own question so that future generations can benefit from it!&#xD;&#xA;- If someone answers your question, accept it as the answer. This is an important [part of the process][6] and rewards the people trying to help you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Giving good answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Don't only link to random sources on the Internet. Any person can type their answer into Google and do that. If the information is good and under an open license, just put it in the answer (don't forget to link to and attribute the author).&#xD;&#xA;- Edit, edit, edit should be your mantra. &amp;mdash; If you've got a good answer and someone adds more detail, integrate it, and remember to always respect an individual's work.&#xD;&#xA;- Comments are like &quot;meta&quot; for the answer. *Don't ping pong back and forth in comments with new data, when someone leaves a comment with more information or something, just add the information to your question directly.* If people post updates to a comment ask them to add it to their question; that's where the power of Stack Exchange comes in: updates on people answering their question happens in the answers and the questions, so that when you are finished people don't have to track the conversation, just the final answer and solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Spread the word&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- We need help getting the word out, [we have some ideas][7] on how you can help, especially in places where users are already asking you for help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/15.html&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/7931/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/5234&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7/how-do-we-promote-our-site&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1524" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="d2bc45fe-8294-4a0e-a2a8-730367ce338f" CreationDate="2010-11-24T14:53:08.150" UserId="666" Comment="added 196 characters in body" Text="This question is about the earlier questions that were wondering about closed questions, *it's not a duplicate!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I'm one of them in my own question, thinking about it again it all seems clear to me now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[`Close`-minded people not even looking into the answers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/curly-braces-on-their-own-line-or-not)  Sigh, now I see why some users are frustrated...&#xD;&#xA;[Looking into his question, how can I take him serious?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8554/boat-programming-closed) Seems clear to me he doesn't understand P.SE...&#xD;&#xA;[Why are all other questions still open then?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/holy-war) Apart from duplicates or other reasons...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other frustrations all on the front page (and there were more in the past), we need to *take action*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Why is this question closed? It's a good question about a bad idea.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/554/why-is-this-question-closed-its-a-good-question-about-a-bad-idea)&#xD;&#xA; - [I don't think peaple understand Programmers SE.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/485/i-dont-think-people-or-me-understand-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA; - [What's the point of closing a question?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question)&#xD;&#xA; - [How do you delete an account from programmers?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/483/how-do-you-delete-an-account-from-programmers)&#xD;&#xA; - [Why? The high numbers of closed questions are extremely annoying.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/469/why-high-number-of-closed-questions-extremely-annoying)&#xD;&#xA; - [Mods should be stopped from closing reopened stuff automatically the second time.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time)&#xD;&#xA; - [Questions are being closed without community requests.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/396/question-being-closed-without-community-requests-closed)&#xD;&#xA; - [Why should we have to battle to keep questions open?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/339/why-should-we-have-to-battle-to-keep-questions-open-closed)&#xD;&#xA; - [Can the closed questions please be removed from the related section?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/282/can-the-closed-questions-please-be-removed-from-related)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The above questions are a *clear sign*. What could the problem be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too low reputation requirement for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Yes, we are one of the Area 51 sites that got a lot more visitors. And our site allows one to gain reputation more quickly than on other sites, let my account be an example for when you ask a lot of questions and I'm pretty sure that there are top users that just have famous answers in frequently visited questions that are non wiki...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too strong rules on asking questions, or are these rules applied to strong?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions should be constructive, but for some people all rules seem needed.  &#xD;&#xA;   While they stated originally that it's fine that only 3 of the rules apply to your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Users aren't clearly informed about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   If we get these questions on meta, it seems to me that they might have no idea about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **We want to be professional?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   We can be professonal, but if we close content is such way that a lot of people are complaining I think it's a step too far. And it's not just the above, but also comments to meta and closed parent questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; But don't you think that closing on this site has become discouragement, not incentive?  &#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Peter Turner](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question#491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   And another one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Now there is that new generic excuse to close topics: &quot;not constructive&quot;. If you don't like something, you can ban it as &quot;not constructive&quot;. What an improvement!   &#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Lorenzo](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   I have once disagreed with these users in the past, but I now understand their concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please, don't dumb questions and people down.** That's not a *community* we're aiming for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Did you know that **25% of the questions are closed** here? Compare that to SO (1%), SU (8%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Now... What do you think**: &#xD;&#xA;How we can improve the community to prevent this?  &#xD;&#xA;Or am I writing non-sense and is the current behavior of the community right?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Frustrated user sitting on his closed question, wondering about it...][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8QvwO.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1525" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="558" RevisionGUID="06bcb271-4388-4656-baaf-82a5ddde7bb3" CreationDate="2010-11-24T18:52:21.593" UserId="2344" Text="Specific questions with short code snippets are, AFAICT, acceptable on SO.  Those questions tend not to be suitable for Programmers.se, since they're not usually subjective.  Neither site is for code reviews." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1526" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="559" RevisionGUID="e5b1126a-4174-4411-a811-b4653fa18b95" CreationDate="2010-11-24T20:05:28.647" UserId="3250" Text="stackoverflow.com is about programming  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;programmers.stackexchange.com is discussion about programming so it is meta programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;this is meta.programmers.stackexchange.com, so it is a discussion about meta programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we go deeper?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1527" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="559" RevisionGUID="e5b1126a-4174-4411-a811-b4653fa18b95" CreationDate="2010-11-24T20:05:28.647" UserId="3250" Text="Is this the absolute meta of programming?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1528" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="559" RevisionGUID="e5b1126a-4174-4411-a811-b4653fa18b95" CreationDate="2010-11-24T20:05:28.647" UserId="3250" Text="|discussion|meta|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1529" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="559" RevisionGUID="7acc39b1-6c2e-4d25-81a0-10d10562c82e" CreationDate="2010-11-24T20:13:42.307" UserId="3250" Comment="added 28 characters in body" Text="stackoverflow.com is about programming  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;programmers.stackexchange.com is discussion about programming so it is meta-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;this is meta.programmers.stackexchange.com, so it is a discussion about meta programming hence meta-meta-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we go deeper?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1530" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="560" RevisionGUID="e17348ba-c35f-43ab-bd7a-891261616b2a" CreationDate="2010-11-25T00:52:26.420" UserId="145" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7656/do-you-ever-write-code-with-pen-and-paper-and-should-we-do-it-more-often/21307#21307&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I view my answer, it contains the following text&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... I'll jot it down,&lt;br&gt; down,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I tried to edit it, I realized there is only one 'down'.    It seems that the word wrap algorithm at the new line is duplicating the word 'down'.  This happens in IE7 on Windows XP, regardless of how wide I have my window set.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1531" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="560" RevisionGUID="e17348ba-c35f-43ab-bd7a-891261616b2a" CreationDate="2010-11-25T00:52:26.420" UserId="145" Text="Is this a bug in the site, or in Internet Explorer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1532" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="560" RevisionGUID="e17348ba-c35f-43ab-bd7a-891261616b2a" CreationDate="2010-11-25T00:52:26.420" UserId="145" Text="|bug|html|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1533" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="561" RevisionGUID="46861a17-fa00-477f-a455-d3b9a92a8345" CreationDate="2010-11-25T03:29:07.827" UserId="37" Text="I recall seeing this before on IE7. Pretty sure it's a browser bug, and thus not something we can really fix.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Plus IE7 is entering our &quot;new IE6&quot; designation, as we no longer support IE6.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1534" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="560" RevisionGUID="957c1442-8df5-494c-b9c2-69f7f8559e0f" CreationDate="2010-11-25T03:29:46.190" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-declined|html|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1536" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="562" RevisionGUID="0cd04dba-f49a-4060-ba00-2bd0d3d63fd8" CreationDate="2010-11-25T15:25:09.153" UserId="101" Text="Your assumptions are incorrect.  Progammers.SE is not about programming, per se, but more about programmers.  Programmers.SE is NOT meta-programming." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1537" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="551" RevisionGUID="29aa8145-1a59-4a5f-bcf9-71a5710455e9" CreationDate="2010-11-25T15:28:39.790" UserId="101" Comment="fixed spelling" Text="The [Reputation Priviledges][1] state that editing should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - to fix grammatical or spelling mistakes&#xD;&#xA; - to clarify the meaning of a post without changing it&#xD;&#xA; - correct minor mistakes or add addendums / updates as the post ages&#xD;&#xA; - add related resources or hyperlinks&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also says, &quot;Try to make the post substantively better when you edit, not just change a single character. Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, can anyone tell me how I could edit someone else's question and make it better? Should I presume that I understand the question being asked better than the asker? Or would it be better to simply make a comment on the question that clarifies or asks that the question be clarified?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, with regard to the &quot;Tiny, trivial&quot; part, does that mean I should not correct spelling/grammer errors should I see them? One of the sample reasons for editing is &quot;corrected spelling, fixed grammar&quot;, after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1538" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="563" RevisionGUID="729f50d3-45f2-40e7-8995-562e8c5a30e8" CreationDate="2010-11-25T15:37:21.620" UserId="101" Text="Recently I discovered the &quot;Data&quot; link at the bottom of the SE sites.  It's a very cool tool.  I also noticed that Programmers.SE is not in the list of sites that can be queried. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it safe to assume that the &quot;Data&quot; link is for all NON-beta sites?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1539" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="563" RevisionGUID="729f50d3-45f2-40e7-8995-562e8c5a30e8" CreationDate="2010-11-25T15:37:21.620" UserId="101" Text="Data query for beta sites?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1540" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="563" RevisionGUID="729f50d3-45f2-40e7-8995-562e8c5a30e8" CreationDate="2010-11-25T15:37:21.620" UserId="101" Text="|discussion|beta|data-explorer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1541" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="564" RevisionGUID="2b8d8ef2-dfaa-46c9-a1d9-9292e47a4672" CreationDate="2010-11-25T16:16:18.950" UserId="6770" Text="What does &quot;1 consecutive&quot; mean? Seriously, you can have 2 consecutive days, but how can a singleton of anything &quot;[follow one after the other in order][1]&quot;, when there is no &quot;other&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![1 consecutive][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consecutive&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LtUOC.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1542" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="564" RevisionGUID="2b8d8ef2-dfaa-46c9-a1d9-9292e47a4672" CreationDate="2010-11-25T16:16:18.950" UserId="6770" Text="Nitpick - 1 consecutive day" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1543" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="564" RevisionGUID="2b8d8ef2-dfaa-46c9-a1d9-9292e47a4672" CreationDate="2010-11-25T16:16:18.950" UserId="6770" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1544" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="565" RevisionGUID="5777072c-c472-4042-b050-b315a33917d7" CreationDate="2010-11-25T17:04:55.413" UserId="8360" Text="Hi,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I found out that my eyes get tired when I spend more then 10 minutes on [the site][1] and this is because of the small difference between the colors used for visited/unvisited posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![unvisited][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![visited][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this going to be changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks in advance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. Sorry, if this is not the right place for this question, or if inappropriately tagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/bIbSf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LvQa7.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1545" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="565" RevisionGUID="5777072c-c472-4042-b050-b315a33917d7" CreationDate="2010-11-25T17:04:55.413" UserId="8360" Text="The skin of programmers.stackexchange.com. Visited/unvisited links. Is it going to be changed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1546" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="565" RevisionGUID="5777072c-c472-4042-b050-b315a33917d7" CreationDate="2010-11-25T17:04:55.413" UserId="8360" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1547" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="564" RevisionGUID="fbfd1b7a-e28f-49cd-8f6a-147749ed020a" CreationDate="2010-11-25T17:07:38.333" UserId="6770" Comment="Now with less of my face" Text="What does &quot;1 consecutive&quot; mean? Seriously, you can have 2 consecutive days, but how can a singleton of anything &quot;[follow one after the other in order][1]&quot;, when there is no &quot;other&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;![1 consecutive][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consecutive&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/lyFk3.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1548" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="566" RevisionGUID="322b244b-aa19-48a6-a041-939dfc5c58cd" CreationDate="2010-11-25T17:23:35.393" UserId="389" Text="This is the quantity of days you login on site in a row. When you complete 30 you earn a Enthusiast badge. For now you have no days in a row.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The word is just the same problem with &quot;you have 1 messages&quot;. It's ugly but not important." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1549" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="564" RevisionGUID="247138cc-7ff7-4b81-9f33-2f04f42ff7ea" CreationDate="2010-11-25T17:24:12.117" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1550" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="567" RevisionGUID="de309cb5-a8ab-4fd8-9bbc-e55de906210b" CreationDate="2010-11-25T17:26:28.793" UserId="389" Text="I agree. Pr.SE is near to earn your own theme." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1551" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="568" RevisionGUID="64672a6b-ef8d-4360-98c7-879a5c179d60" CreationDate="2010-11-25T17:39:41.577" UserId="66" Text="No beta sites are accessible with Data Explorer, only finished sites and their beta's. I'm working on a scraper to reconstruct as much of the DB as I can, but it will take some time before I get a release." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1552" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="551" RevisionGUID="ac270211-e05c-40e9-831c-f5aba8fabbfc" CreationDate="2010-11-26T03:05:17.927" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="The [Reputation Privileges][1] state that editing should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - to fix grammatical or spelling mistakes&#xD;&#xA; - to clarify the meaning of a post without changing it&#xD;&#xA; - correct minor mistakes or add addendums / updates as the post ages&#xD;&#xA; - add related resources or hyperlinks&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also says, &quot;Try to make the post substantively better when you edit, not just change a single character. Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, can anyone tell me how I could edit someone else's question and make it better? Should I presume that I understand the question being asked better than the asker? Or would it be better to simply make a comment on the question that clarifies or asks that the question be clarified?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, with regard to the &quot;Tiny, trivial&quot; part, does that mean I should not correct spelling/grammer errors should I see them? One of the sample reasons for editing is &quot;corrected spelling, fixed grammar&quot;, after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1553" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="569" RevisionGUID="5c0eeaf8-52f9-416f-a239-ee95549ac74e" CreationDate="2010-11-26T05:11:31.733" UserId="5445" Text="&gt; Answers should age like wine&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should become better, more relevant. Any edits that supports it should be encouraged. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Micro edits are still fine :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On stackoverflow, I have made number of micro edits, even if it is discouraged. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is an incentive to garner votes / acceptance of your solution. The heat of answering a question early means, your answer may be technically correct but unappealing as an answer. I have always felt like going back and doing the micro edits to improve the answer. This means that those who will search for these questions will get better edited answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me, the following has been some of the common use case for edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Re-structuring an answer to improve the quality of statement&#xD;&#xA;2. Include additional relevant discussion, specially on Stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;3. Initial code has pithy variable names, change them to some thing more descriptive. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1554" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="569" RevisionGUID="5ff23852-8fd0-4e4b-856a-766f59fd60ae" CreationDate="2010-11-26T05:16:47.923" UserId="5445" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="&gt; Answers should age like wine&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should become better and more relevant. Any edits that supports it, should be encouraged. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Micro edits are still fine :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On stackoverflow, I have made number of micro edits, even if it is discouraged. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is an incentive to garner votes / acceptance of your solution. The heat of answering a question early means, your answer may be technically correct but unappealing as an answer. I have always felt like going back and doing the micro edits to improve the answer. This means that those who will search for these questions will get better edited answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me, the following has been some of the common use case for edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Re-structuring an answer to improve the quality of statement&#xD;&#xA;2. Include additional relevant discussion, specially on Stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;3. Initial code has pithy variable names, change them to some thing more descriptive. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1555" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="570" RevisionGUID="4b976893-a0c1-4c49-b6f7-47266edfc9e5" CreationDate="2010-11-26T08:28:51.627" UserId="4832" Text="At the top of the screen there is a &quot;stack exchange&quot; dropdown menu. It contains &quot;hot questions&quot;, &quot;all sites&quot; and &quot;inbox&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm using the &quot;all sites&quot; to switch between the different stack exchange sites im intrested in, but finding the right one is more difficult than it needs to be. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why is this list not sorted alphabetically?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1556" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="570" RevisionGUID="4b976893-a0c1-4c49-b6f7-47266edfc9e5" CreationDate="2010-11-26T08:28:51.627" UserId="4832" Text="stack exchange dropdown, &quot;all sites&quot; should be in alphabetical order" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1557" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="570" RevisionGUID="4b976893-a0c1-4c49-b6f7-47266edfc9e5" CreationDate="2010-11-26T08:28:51.627" UserId="4832" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1558" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="571" RevisionGUID="a9326050-9565-4ac4-afe2-e58f7a190c92" CreationDate="2010-11-26T13:57:42.903" UserId="101" Text="I have noticed recently a number of new users who have a significant amount of closed questions.  One [user][1] in particular has around 50% of 28 questions asked that have been closed.  A lot of the questions asked are inane and completely useless and it seems fairly obvious that this user has not read the FAQ.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do we handle new users like this?  What's the best way to teach them what makes a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8226" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1559" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="571" RevisionGUID="a9326050-9565-4ac4-afe2-e58f7a190c92" CreationDate="2010-11-26T13:57:42.903" UserId="101" Text="How to handle new user with significant amount of closed questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1560" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="571" RevisionGUID="a9326050-9565-4ac4-afe2-e58f7a190c92" CreationDate="2010-11-26T13:57:42.903" UserId="101" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|new-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1561" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="572" RevisionGUID="982201bd-b116-49c8-a757-3a884376e013" CreationDate="2010-11-26T17:53:02.153" UserId="1973" Text="Be polite and ask him why he cares so much in the comments.  I have no idea why anyone would waste their time doing what he's doing if he wasn't the least bit interested in the answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't see what kind of personal gain he's getting out of doing what he's doing (doesn't appear to be selling anything more than M$ vehemence) other than maybe getting to see what the advanced tools look like by getting +5 rep here and there, which he'll loose as soon as he's gained when we go out of beta. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1562" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="573" RevisionGUID="68e2b43a-f9c4-4113-9b05-6e0c9784bc23" CreationDate="2010-11-27T00:19:20.303" UserId="1973" Text="Nope, this is the absolute armpit of programming where nobody laughs at your jokes and everyone is hypercritical of you so much so that they routinely question your very humanity. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Follow the advice of those who came before me and don't ask questions like that.  Furthermore  don't make assumptions based on evidence." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1563" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="574" RevisionGUID="25bd5504-1f6b-48d4-9d07-51d9177ddb19" CreationDate="2010-11-28T01:48:20.677" UserId="2314" Text="When a person such as me is bored on a Friday or Saturday night and decides to spend it surfing Pr.SE, is a question they post going to be at a disadvantage for attention due to the smaller audience visiting the site on the weekend? I've noticed that weekends don't have a lot of activity but have a steady enough flow of questions to push questions from a Friday or Saturday off the page by Monday, when the visitors start to ramp up again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would hope the Community user would be smart enough to help this, but I don't know if that's the case." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1564" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="574" RevisionGUID="25bd5504-1f6b-48d4-9d07-51d9177ddb19" CreationDate="2010-11-28T01:48:20.677" UserId="2314" Text="Are questions posted on weekends at a disadvantage?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1565" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="574" RevisionGUID="25bd5504-1f6b-48d4-9d07-51d9177ddb19" CreationDate="2010-11-28T01:48:20.677" UserId="2314" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1566" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="575" RevisionGUID="3b59e889-aa59-4aa8-81bc-56b493feee81" CreationDate="2010-11-28T02:11:03.883" UserId="2314" Text="Recently http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21280/what-are-the-essential-things-i-should-know-about-the-mac-closed was close as off-topic: **Questions on Programmers are expected to be about subjective issues in software development, within the scope defined in the faq.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question could be summed up as &quot;I'm a programmer who is new to the Mac: What does a programmer need to know about programming when using Mac OS?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't a purely subjective question, but it's as subjective as many others are, and there isn't just one right answer, so it seems appropriate for Pr.SE (roughly &amp;mdash; `inappropriate for SO and about programmers == appropriate for Pr.SE`?).  It is also very much in scope according to the FAQ: **Developer tools and techniques**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that it was closed by long-standing members of this community, but I thought I'd ask since it seems like a pretty good question to me (and where else would it be more appropriate?)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1567" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="575" RevisionGUID="3b59e889-aa59-4aa8-81bc-56b493feee81" CreationDate="2010-11-28T02:11:03.883" UserId="2314" Text="Offtopic close reconsideration - Questions about programming tools should be on topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1568" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="575" RevisionGUID="3b59e889-aa59-4aa8-81bc-56b493feee81" CreationDate="2010-11-28T02:11:03.883" UserId="2314" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1569" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="576" RevisionGUID="2db5fac2-2b95-4809-ae77-30c1f9dacbf0" CreationDate="2010-11-28T05:02:41.583" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="If that's what the question and its answers essentially were, you'd be correct in saying it's on topic because it deals with a developer's tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that's not what the question is, and the answers only mention in passing Mac OS X's development capability. Explaining what the command key does and where the Applications folder is doesn't make a professional programmer better at his job, but they do help someone new to a Mac in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And general questions about how to use a Mac (just like general questions about how to use a PC or any other system) are off topic here. They are better suited for user Stack Exchanges like [Super User](http://superuser.com) or [Apple.SE](http://apple.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using the &quot;as a programmer&quot; qualifier to make any question on topic (among other cheese methods) has been discussed several times [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22as+a+programmer%22), on the [Stack Overflow blog](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/), and on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suffice it to say, Programmers.SE does not suffer from a lack of good questions such that we need to be a general-purpose question and answer site like [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) or [Quora](http://quora.com); where the only thing that you need to do is add keyword &quot;programmer&quot; or the phrase &quot;as a programmer&quot; to be on topic. There are literally dozens of specialized Stack Exchange sites that cover the topics more appropriately." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1570" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="576" RevisionGUID="48e7dcb8-f764-4d47-8a12-b407fb6a20cc" CreationDate="2010-11-28T05:23:58.570" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 363 characters in body; added 2 characters in body; added 7 characters in body" Text="If that's what the question and its answers essentially were, you'd be correct in saying it's on topic because it deals with a developer's tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that's not what the question is, and the answers only mention in passing Mac OS X's development capability. Explaining what the command key does and where the Applications folder is doesn't make a professional programmer better at his job, but they do help someone new to a Mac in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In reality, a question like &quot;What are the essential things I should know about Mac?&quot; is essentially asking, &quot;Can someone read my mind and link every question I might find useful on [Apple.SE](http://apple.stackexchange.com)?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange system only works when people ask pointed questions that are directly related to the Stack Exchange they are on because they attract the knowledge and experience of experts on the topic. A person interested in learning more about specific things on a Mac should avail themselves of [Apple.SE](http://apple.stackexchange.com) and ask questions there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using the &quot;as a programmer&quot; qualifier to make any question on topic (among other cheese methods) has been discussed several times [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22as+a+programmer%22), on the [Stack Overflow blog](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/), and on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suffice it to say, Programmers.SE does not suffer from a lack of good questions such that we need to be a general-purpose question and answer site like [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) or [Quora](http://quora.com); where the only thing that you need to do is add the keyword &quot;programmer&quot; or the phrase &quot;as a programmer&quot; and ask an broad, easy-to-answer question to be on topic. There are literally dozens of specialized Stack Exchange sites that cover the topics more appropriately." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1571" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="577" RevisionGUID="694946d5-a31f-4d1e-bf4b-dafd065065e5" CreationDate="2010-11-28T15:00:21.387" UserId="101" Text="If your goal is to have the most amount of eyes on your question, then yes, it is at a disadvantage to post over the weekend.  BUT that doesn't mean that your question won't get answered.  This current weekend, a bunch of questions were asked and EVERY single question that was answerable, had several very good answers to them within a couple of hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Did the posters get as much Rep as they would have on a Monday at 14:00 or 16:00 GMT (both Europe and US are typically online during those times)?  Probably not.  Is the goal to get an answer to a question or to build Rep?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1572" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="578" RevisionGUID="816a4065-5442-4450-9787-1dd900031d70" CreationDate="2010-11-28T21:28:28.487" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Interesting questions have a life longer that a few days, so it doesn't matter when you ask it.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1578" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="582" RevisionGUID="60c5f19d-c05a-41a9-8a64-b3452b38f412" CreationDate="2010-11-30T07:17:57.563" UserId="6699" Text="Sorry, I don't speak English, only Pascal, C++, VB and C# :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1579" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="581" RevisionGUID="9b03d9db-7d43-45b4-9c4e-57f84d2849df" CreationDate="2010-11-30T06:37:28.297" UserId="8825" Text="Why is it so that when I scroll down the &quot;Programmers&quot; face web-page I can see (down below) links to almost all the web-pages that belong to &quot;Stack Exchange&quot; except the link to &quot;English&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I know I am supposed to ask this question on &quot;meta&quot; instead of here, but in order to do that I have to have 5 points of reputation on &quot;Programmers&quot;, which I am most likely a far cry from achieving as I have no expertise to answer any of the serious questions here)   " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1580" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="581" RevisionGUID="9b03d9db-7d43-45b4-9c4e-57f84d2849df" CreationDate="2010-11-30T06:37:28.297" UserId="8825" Text="Why no link  to &quot;English&quot; on &quot;Programmers&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1581" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="581" RevisionGUID="9b03d9db-7d43-45b4-9c4e-57f84d2849df" CreationDate="2010-11-30T06:37:28.297" UserId="8825" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1582" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="581" RevisionGUID="8e2f2f5c-734a-4dbd-a3e3-2cba54919849" CreationDate="2010-11-30T08:31:37.087" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22461/why-no-link-to-english-on-programmers" Text="" />
  <row Id="1583" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="583" RevisionGUID="e731ace9-d4b4-428f-8887-881251a39eba" CreationDate="2010-11-30T09:55:23.990" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="I've deleted my [answer][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I didn't want to hurt anyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I checked the FAQ again and there is nothing about that point except the fact that my answer is clearly not [constructive][2].&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Should we delete or avoid posting question that can potentially hurt people feelings?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where is the limit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8511/how-should-older-programmers-respond-when-interviewed/8609#8609&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1584" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="583" RevisionGUID="e731ace9-d4b4-428f-8887-881251a39eba" CreationDate="2010-11-30T09:55:23.990" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Should I delete my answer when it apparantly hurt someone?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1585" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="583" RevisionGUID="e731ace9-d4b4-428f-8887-881251a39eba" CreationDate="2010-11-30T09:55:23.990" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1586" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="584" RevisionGUID="5f94a2eb-c104-43ca-a486-b82da4485d07" CreationDate="2010-11-30T09:58:11.273" UserId="6617" Text="I have a simple rule for moderation: If you are unsure, just **don't** do it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1587" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="585" RevisionGUID="39988371-5b45-424f-b92d-d7bd4e70ff23" CreationDate="2010-11-30T10:24:36.503" UserId="101" Text="I often find myself re-reading my answers just before I post them and asking myself (1) if this answers the actual question or (2) is in anyway constructive.  A bunch of times after asking these questions I've abandoned my response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone is continually asking dumb questions that are closed within a few minutes of posting, my inclination would be to write something a little more critical to the poster but I try to balance my critical tone with something constructive that could help the poster build a better question the next time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As in your case I am always tempted to write something funny as my response but that usually gets edited out by my 2 questions above." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1588" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="586" RevisionGUID="a6ca7185-9131-4705-b681-6feb60bdd52c" CreationDate="2010-11-30T12:43:17.650" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Stack Exchange sites that are in beta are segregated from the Stack Exchange community at large: when you're on Programmers.SE–a beta Stack Exchange site—you'll only see sites that are also in beta in the footer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[English.SE](http://english.stackexchange.com) is out of beta, so it no longer appears in the beta Stack Exchange footer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You know a site is out of beta when it has its own theme instead of the &quot;Sketchy&quot; theme." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1589" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="587" RevisionGUID="e1a208c9-b780-47e8-b92e-e2e910c258c1" CreationDate="2010-11-30T15:33:23.610" UserId="7446" Text="I think the simple answer is that if you think it is hurtful to someone, it is probably not a useful answer to the question to begin with. I would say avoid posting anything that could be hurtful. This includes &quot;funny&quot; answers/comments. A lot of the time, what seems funny at one moment can be misconstrued and seem hurtful the next." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1590" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="588" RevisionGUID="f4d2932b-5abf-4705-9517-9b7d1ae6c55d" CreationDate="2010-11-30T19:54:37.340" UserId="145" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career-advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career-guidance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There seem to be a fair number of &quot;should I leave this job&quot; questions.  Are they actually useful to anyone except the OP?  Do they add to the value of the site?  A lot of them strike me as just a platform for the poster to venting about how frustrating his workplace is.  Is that a valid use for P.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1591" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="588" RevisionGUID="f4d2932b-5abf-4705-9517-9b7d1ae6c55d" CreationDate="2010-11-30T19:54:37.340" UserId="145" Text="Are Career Advice questions useful to anyone except the poster?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1592" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="588" RevisionGUID="f4d2932b-5abf-4705-9517-9b7d1ae6c55d" CreationDate="2010-11-30T19:54:37.340" UserId="145" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1593" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="589" RevisionGUID="0e57ab1b-0da2-4a16-9584-4b12b9bbfaa4" CreationDate="2010-11-30T23:52:40.837" UserId="8887" Text="Going deeper is inadvisable, because nobody is sure what happens when you get stuck in [limbo.][l]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   [l]:  http://inception.wikia.com/wiki/Limbo" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1594" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="590" RevisionGUID="ee442921-d31f-4cd3-9d80-822e3afff0a0" CreationDate="2010-12-01T03:49:24.110" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The general rule of thumb should be whether the question can help others in a similar situation. If the circumstances surrounding the question are too specific to the question asker, they should be closed as *too localized*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Applying that rule should put a theoretical limit on the amount of ways the question &quot;My job is X, what should I do?&quot; can be asked. Questions that have similar set of circumstances to already-asked questions should be closed as *exact duplicates*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, if there isn't something pointed being asked in the question, and the asker is merely using Programmers.SE as a means to vent about whatever annoyed them at their job that day, it should be closed as *not constructive*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, and only if, a career-advice question passes those three tests, should it stay open." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1595" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="590" RevisionGUID="5264e309-170e-474a-8199-a045e851282e" CreationDate="2010-12-01T03:57:07.583" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 946 characters in body; deleted 1 characters in body; added 64 characters in body" Text="The general rule of thumb should be whether the question can help others in a similar situation. If the circumstances surrounding the question are too specific to the question asker such that there is no way to generalize and answer the question, they should be closed as *too localized*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Applying that rule should put a theoretical limit on the amount of ways the question &quot;My job is X, what should I do?&quot; can be asked. Questions that have similar set of circumstances to already-asked questions should be closed as *exact duplicates*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, if there isn't something pointed being asked in the question, and the asker is merely using Programmers.SE as a means to vent about whatever annoyed them at their job that day, it should be closed as *not constructive*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, and only if, a career-advice question passes those three tests, should it stay open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of on-topic career guidance questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Job hopping, is it a problem?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3272/job-hopping-is-it-a-problem)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can someone find a job as a programmer without an education?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8886/can-someone-find-a-job-as-a-programmer-without-an-education)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of career guidance questions that should be closed: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Mid level IT lead](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20289/mid-level-it-lead)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the best qualification route for me to get back into programming? (UK)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22350/what-is-the-best-qualification-route-for-me-to-get-back-into-programming-uk)&#xD;&#xA;* [On programmers, INTJ personality, human interactions, and large companies.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18227/on-programmers-intj-personality-human-interactions-and-large-companies-close) (deleted)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1596" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="590" RevisionGUID="dae0b12e-7774-4f82-b5eb-df46491da4a7" CreationDate="2010-12-01T04:02:38.107" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 234 characters in body; added 197 characters in body" Text="The general rule of thumb should be whether the question can help others in a similar situation. If the circumstances surrounding the question are too specific to the question asker such that there is no way to generalize and answer the question, they should be closed as *too localized*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Applying that rule should put a theoretical limit on the amount of ways the question &quot;My job is X, what should I do?&quot; can be asked. Questions that have similar set of circumstances to already-asked questions should be closed as *exact duplicates*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, if there isn't something pointed being asked in the question, and the asker is merely using Programmers.SE as a means to vent about whatever annoyed them at their job that day, it should be closed as *not constructive*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, and only if, a career-advice question passes those three tests, should it stay open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of on-topic career guidance questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Job hopping, is it a problem?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3272/job-hopping-is-it-a-problem)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can someone find a job as a programmer without an education?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8886/can-someone-find-a-job-as-a-programmer-without-an-education)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of career guidance questions that should be closed: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Mid level IT lead](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20289/mid-level-it-lead)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the best qualification route for me to get back into programming? (UK)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22350/what-is-the-best-qualification-route-for-me-to-get-back-into-programming-uk)&#xD;&#xA;* [On programmers, INTJ personality, human interactions, and large companies.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18227/on-programmers-intj-personality-human-interactions-and-large-companies-close) (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should also be noted that most, if not all, of the other Stack Exchanges have elected to consider their versions of &quot;help my exact situation&quot;-type questions (gaming recommendations, code reviews, proofreading, etc.) to be off-topic on the basis that a Q&amp;A system does not lend well to the necessary discussion to tease out all the details to fully answer the question. I don't see why Programmers.SE should be any different." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1597" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="591" RevisionGUID="a7e54c60-e726-4d2a-89a4-80849e4678eb" CreationDate="2010-12-01T06:44:00.550" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22504/what-would-you-add-in-this-software-development-project-checklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to start a bounty there. It's not always possible. What are the rules?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1598" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="591" RevisionGUID="a7e54c60-e726-4d2a-89a4-80849e4678eb" CreationDate="2010-12-01T06:44:00.550" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="When will I be able to start a bounty on my questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1599" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="591" RevisionGUID="a7e54c60-e726-4d2a-89a4-80849e4678eb" CreationDate="2010-12-01T06:44:00.550" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1600" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="592" RevisionGUID="cce3d98b-86df-466c-b94d-66eac4e8e03b" CreationDate="2010-12-01T06:48:24.603" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="- Questions must be at least 2 days old to be eligible for a bounty.&#xD;&#xA;- Users must have at least 75 reputation to offer a bounty.&#xD;&#xA;- There can only be 1 active bounty per question and per user at any given time.&#xD;&#xA;- Once initiated, the bounty period lasts 7 days.&#xD;&#xA;- After starting a bounty, you must wait 1 day before awarding it.&#xD;&#xA;- If you do not award your bounty within 7 days, the highest voted answer created after the bounty started with at least 2 upvotes will be awarded half the bounty amount." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1605" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="583" RevisionGUID="978de84a-baac-467c-a0c1-38381ea66ea4" CreationDate="2010-12-01T17:01:33.087" UserId="1204" Comment="edited title" Text="Should I delete my answer when it apparently hurt someone?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1606" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="588" RevisionGUID="d2d2e5cd-4f44-44f8-9b55-1c1b2bfb0e6b" CreationDate="2010-12-01T18:17:01.370" UserId="145" Comment="grammar police" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career-advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career-guidance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There seem to be a fair number of &quot;should I leave this job&quot; questions.  Are they actually useful to anyone except the OP?  Do they add to the value of the site?  A lot of them strike me as just a platform for the poster to vent about how frustrating his workplace is.  Is that a valid use for P.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1607" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="594" RevisionGUID="88c1208f-8e50-499b-a66c-e0107825bd3e" CreationDate="2010-12-02T02:54:58.777" UserId="3249" Text="Please refer to the following question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[I hate the users. Am I a sinner ?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, 4 people have already voted to reopen it, without leaving any comments as to why.  It would appear to me that the question fails on [**all** counts][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It does not appear to ask any serious &quot;how&quot; or &quot;why&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;2. It doesn't call for detailed answers (there are some, but there are just as many one-liners).&#xD;&#xA;3. It most certainly does not have an impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. It does not at any point ask for experiences, only opinions (and it barely even asks for those).&#xD;&#xA;5. It *absolutely* does not call for facts or evidence as backup.&#xD;&#xA;6. It may not exactly be mindless *fun*, but it's definitely mindless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Aren't constructive questions supposed to meet at least 4 or 5 out of the 6?  Why would a question that is *so far off the mark* (with respect to the 6 guidelines) be reopened, not to mention voted up 20 times?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this really even a question at all, and not just a rant?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it the kind of question that we want representing the community here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22897/i-hate-the-users-am-i-a-sinner-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1608" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="594" RevisionGUID="88c1208f-8e50-499b-a66c-e0107825bd3e" CreationDate="2010-12-02T02:54:58.777" UserId="3249" Text="Is this &quot;I hate the users&quot; question constructive?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1609" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="594" RevisionGUID="88c1208f-8e50-499b-a66c-e0107825bd3e" CreationDate="2010-12-02T02:54:58.777" UserId="3249" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1610" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="595" RevisionGUID="8b5334c7-4ae7-44a8-af97-3a29cde284a0" CreationDate="2010-12-02T11:33:02.807" UserId="7446" Text="While I don't think the question was worded quite right, I understand the sentiment. To me, the question seems more to be how to deal with &quot;difficult&quot; customers. And based on this, some of the answers to the question do see to be helpful." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1611" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="596" RevisionGUID="f776cd47-bcbb-47aa-9601-0bcf90f8fc87" CreationDate="2010-12-02T16:54:33.647" UserId="963" Text="Let's make a list of subjective questions of Stackoverflow that should be migrated here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1612" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="596" RevisionGUID="f776cd47-bcbb-47aa-9601-0bcf90f8fc87" CreationDate="2010-12-02T16:54:33.647" UserId="963" Text="List of Stackoverflow questions should be migrated here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1613" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="596" RevisionGUID="f776cd47-bcbb-47aa-9601-0bcf90f8fc87" CreationDate="2010-12-02T16:54:33.647" UserId="963" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1614" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="597" RevisionGUID="e2f287c8-cc5c-49c5-ad22-db2fcdd95389" CreationDate="2010-12-02T20:41:19.140" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="It shouldn't have been reopened, but there are more than enough people with 500+ rep that don't understand the guidelines of the site, or understand them and choose to ignore them for some concept of an &quot;anything-goes&quot; Stack Exchange where they can ask questions about why the world's against them (as a programmer), what everyone's hated language is (spoiler alert: it's PHP), and why do non-programmers believe in God when He's clearly a NP-solvable problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every close question generally gets *n* reopen votes, where *n* is greater than or equal to one and directly related to how controversial the question is (controversial in the sense that the question is substantively similar to trolling). Questions that pick a fight are more likely to remain open because everyone likes a good argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This issue comes up frequently on Meta.Programmers.SE, and nothing gets done about it. The only thing one can do is to continue to vote to close and hope the anarcho-exchangers overlook the question when it gets closed. Ideally, our diamond moderators would step in and lock questions that clearly don't belong here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1623" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="600" RevisionGUID="623cd5eb-5263-4919-b77a-eed8f039af77" CreationDate="2010-12-05T10:37:03.970" UserId="5199" Text="The first of the FAQ is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; expert programmers who are interested&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in subjective discussions on software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to the FAQ it is about the actual development of software not programmers, there a lot of questions about programmers (eg http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1166/how-important-is-dress-code-to-you)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is in complete contrast to the Area 51 proposal Not Programming Related (which is the proposal for this site) the tagline on Area 51 is &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Beta Q&amp;A site for expert programmers interested in discussions that are only indirectly related to programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is wider than the FAQ, also take this On topic question (13 votes):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should I work for a company that makes you wear a suit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be closed on this site under the current FAQ. I think people want a somewhat more open ended site, I've pretty new here to the site and programming but its the feeling I get from the people who actually use the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1624" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="600" RevisionGUID="623cd5eb-5263-4919-b77a-eed8f039af77" CreationDate="2010-12-05T10:37:03.970" UserId="5199" Text="Misleading site title" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1625" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="600" RevisionGUID="623cd5eb-5263-4919-b77a-eed8f039af77" CreationDate="2010-12-05T10:37:03.970" UserId="5199" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1626" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="601" RevisionGUID="ea7e795e-735d-43fe-9e71-ef55e924bf03" CreationDate="2010-12-05T15:28:39.507" UserId="7426" Text="Maybe I am going senile, but I had answers sorted by &quot;oldest&quot; and now it says &quot;newest&quot;. Was this ever an option, or did I just dream it one night?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1627" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="601" RevisionGUID="ea7e795e-735d-43fe-9e71-ef55e924bf03" CreationDate="2010-12-05T15:28:39.507" UserId="7426" Text="Sort answers by oldest" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1628" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="601" RevisionGUID="ea7e795e-735d-43fe-9e71-ef55e924bf03" CreationDate="2010-12-05T15:28:39.507" UserId="7426" Text="|feature-request|bug|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1629" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="600" RevisionGUID="c4f64e06-d63b-42e0-99a1-bc9c274edef6" CreationDate="2010-12-05T19:23:34.740" UserId="5199" Comment="added 411 characters in body; deleted 2 characters in body" Text="The first of the FAQ is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; expert programmers who are interested&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in subjective discussions on software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to the FAQ it is about the actual development of software not programmers, there a lot of questions about programmers (eg http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1166/how-important-is-dress-code-to-you)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is in complete contrast to the Area 51 proposal Not Programming Related (which is the proposal for this site) the tagline on Area 51 is &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Beta Q&amp;A site for expert programmers interested in discussions that are only indirectly related to programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is wider than the FAQ, also take this On topic question (13 votes):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should I work for a company that makes you wear a suit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be closed on this site under the current FAQ. I think people want a somewhat more open ended site, I've pretty new here to the site and programming but its the feeling I get from the people who actually use the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm asking for the site to be widened to allow more subjective questions that currently available. I think it as long as it related to programmers (and programming) it should be ok, no matter what the question is (pretty much like that anyway).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alternatively rename the site to Programm*ing* as the FAQ says this site is about Programming only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So either change the title or the FAQ (preferably the FAQ)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1630" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="602" RevisionGUID="d4fe387d-963a-42df-99c7-7994894895d3" CreationDate="2010-12-06T19:02:23.660" UserId="3" Text="The schism between the site name, the *subjective clause* of the FAQ, and the site's content only adds to the confusion. But don't change the name; it comes the closest to getting it right. To that end, I suggested a byline to clarify the issue:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Programming issues beyond coding*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**This site is about the skills, issues, careers, and interests of programmers&amp;hellip; beyond coding.** That's what the FAQ should say.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site's **identity crisis** is rooted in people's fixation on *subjectivity*. *&quot;Subjective&quot;* is not a topic. *&quot;Not Programming&quot;* is NOT a topic. If you can step outside the anti-establishment bent of this site for a moment, the *purpose* of this site becomes exceedingly simple.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow became so huge, lumping all those &quot;soft topics&quot; into the coding conglomerate of Stack Overflow was unpalatable. But fix the FAQ (it's editable) and [keep the *quality* of the content high](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/). Don't change the site name." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1631" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="596" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-12-06T19:05:49.740" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="1632" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="603" RevisionGUID="f9913816-8fec-42e4-ba6f-72b789193deb" CreationDate="2010-12-06T21:38:15.603" UserId="162" Text="So I know from Mark Trapp's [answer][1] to [this question][2] that &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The private beta for Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lasted for 7 days immediately&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following the conclusion of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; commitment period. It is unattainable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; now. We're currently in the public&#xD;&#xA;&gt; beta period.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So from I gather the Private Beta started on 9/1/2010. [My oldest answer][3] is from 9/3/2010. So I had some activity in the first week. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously I wasn't active enough. Any ideas what more I needed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/527/where-is-my-beta-badge/529#529&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/527/where-is-my-beta-badge&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/775/what-is-the-ideal-mix-of-senior-to-junior-developers-on-a-team/788#788" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1633" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="603" RevisionGUID="f9913816-8fec-42e4-ba6f-72b789193deb" CreationDate="2010-12-06T21:38:15.603" UserId="162" Text="Where is my Beta badge?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1634" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="603" RevisionGUID="f9913816-8fec-42e4-ba6f-72b789193deb" CreationDate="2010-12-06T21:38:15.603" UserId="162" Text="|support|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1635" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="604" RevisionGUID="24db8962-1def-4121-8aa8-03515928de02" CreationDate="2010-12-06T21:50:51.610" UserId="101" Text="Just from my intial read, the Beta Badge description says &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Actively participated in the private beta&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pretty sure that one answer is not actively participating.  But to your point, I don't know what number of questions/answers is." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1636" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="602" RevisionGUID="72ba399d-0cb8-4c87-8861-e7a9a8dd4a9e" CreationDate="2010-12-06T22:02:20.037" UserId="3" Comment="added 27 characters in body" Text="The schism between the site name, the *subjective clause* of the FAQ, and the site's content only adds to the confusion. But don't change the name; it comes the closest to getting it right. To that end, I suggested a byline to clarify the issue:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Programming issues beyond coding*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**This site is about the skills, issues, careers, and interests of programmers&amp;hellip; beyond coding.** That's what the FAQ should say, or some variation thereof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site's **identity crisis** is rooted in people's fixation on *subjectivity*. *&quot;Subjective&quot;* is not a topic. *&quot;Not Programming&quot;* is NOT a topic. If you can step outside the anti-establishment bent of this site for a moment, the *purpose* of this site becomes exceedingly simple.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow became so huge, lumping all those &quot;soft topics&quot; into the coding conglomerate of Stack Overflow was unpalatable. But fix the FAQ (it's editable) and [keep the *quality* of the content high](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/). Don't change the site name." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1637" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="603" RevisionGUID="01cafea9-9c01-4052-9929-5e89bc7db3bc" CreationDate="2010-12-07T10:24:29.847" UserId="-1" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[527],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="1638" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="603" RevisionGUID="7738baf9-e6be-484f-8119-b948bbe6f7b9" CreationDate="2010-12-07T10:24:30.063" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Where is my Beta badge?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/527/where-is-my-beta-badge)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;So I know from Mark Trapp's [answer][1] to [this question][2] that &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The private beta for Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lasted for 7 days immediately&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following the conclusion of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; commitment period. It is unattainable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; now. We're currently in the public&#xD;&#xA;&gt; beta period.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So from I gather the Private Beta started on 9/1/2010. [My oldest answer][3] is from 9/3/2010. So I had some activity in the first week. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously I wasn't active enough. Any ideas what more I needed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/527/where-is-my-beta-badge/529#529&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/527/where-is-my-beta-badge&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/775/what-is-the-ideal-mix-of-senior-to-junior-developers-on-a-team/788#788" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1643" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="412" RevisionGUID="b5066187-9c1a-4656-9a2d-d8c423a6b41a" CreationDate="2010-12-08T00:42:42.260" UserId="666" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|top-7|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1644" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="606" RevisionGUID="ae5a0c93-c6ae-449b-87e6-0c65945b6b80" CreationDate="2010-12-08T15:26:20.650" UserId="6415" Text="Two days ago I found that I could not upvote any comments. I believe I have the priviledge; at least, I can comment everywhere and vote up/down. I see other comments getting voted up, so it looks like it's just me. Is there a problem with my account, or my computer, or what?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1645" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="606" RevisionGUID="ae5a0c93-c6ae-449b-87e6-0c65945b6b80" CreationDate="2010-12-08T15:26:20.650" UserId="6415" Text="Why can't I upvote comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1646" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="606" RevisionGUID="ae5a0c93-c6ae-449b-87e6-0c65945b6b80" CreationDate="2010-12-08T15:26:20.650" UserId="6415" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1647" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="607" RevisionGUID="0efca440-0623-440d-a183-a2fc0d881a2c" CreationDate="2010-12-08T19:01:12.343" UserId="572" Text="We have a link at the top of each page titled 'Unanswered'. Clicking it yields a list of questions and how many answers they have. Last time I clicked it, all questions listed had at least 2 answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it's behaving like &quot;All questions without an accepted answer&quot; - but there's an [amount][2] of [discussion][1] around the subjective nature of Programmers' questions meaning that the accepted answer isn't a useful concept - there are plenty of equally-valid answers to many of the questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even for Stack Overflow, isn't it just highlighting that the questioner hasn't accepted an answer yet, even though there's no (technical) forcing function to comply them to do so? On Programmers, this is largely irrelevant.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So.. what's the point of the 'Unanswered' link..? Is it still useful?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105/should-we-worry-about-accept-rate&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1648" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="607" RevisionGUID="0efca440-0623-440d-a183-a2fc0d881a2c" CreationDate="2010-12-08T19:01:12.343" UserId="572" Text="What's the point of 'Unanswered' link?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1649" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="607" RevisionGUID="0efca440-0623-440d-a183-a2fc0d881a2c" CreationDate="2010-12-08T19:01:12.343" UserId="572" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1652" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="609" RevisionGUID="0193d4f3-019f-438a-a120-5052f6ff3638" CreationDate="2010-12-08T21:34:10.063" UserId="1685" Text="Hi all. I'm [Jin][1], and I'll be working on the designs for the Stack Exchange sites as they graduate from the beta phase. Each site will have its own unique theme that will reflect its topic. However, all sites will share quite a bit of common elements so they feel like they're part of the Stack Exchange family.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since most user of the base on this site is familiar with Stackoverflow.com, I decided to go with a clean and simple design similar to SO, but with slightly more visual elements. The focus is still on readability and keeping the familiarity you have with SO.com. Layout structure-wise, I'm not changing much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also read the suggestions from the [logo thread][2]. I like the idea of using symbols as part of the logo. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(click image to view full resolution version)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/m0xSo.png&quot;&gt;![alt text][3]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please let me know what you think. Early congrats on launching soon!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/our-designer-in-residence-jin-yang/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/m0xSo.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1653" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="609" RevisionGUID="0193d4f3-019f-438a-a120-5052f6ff3638" CreationDate="2010-12-08T21:34:10.063" UserId="1685" Text="Design Ideas for Programmers Site" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1654" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="609" RevisionGUID="0193d4f3-019f-438a-a120-5052f6ff3638" CreationDate="2010-12-08T21:34:10.063" UserId="1685" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1655" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="610" RevisionGUID="e8530e7e-ffcb-4c45-96a7-6bba8fc81a8f" CreationDate="2010-12-08T22:01:34.547" UserId="855" Text="I like everything but the greens." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1656" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="611" RevisionGUID="065143ea-a958-4fd2-9abc-bdc0d325a089" CreationDate="2010-12-08T22:09:57.017" UserId="855" Text="I agree that somewhere there is something wrong because too many questions get closed. Early on it is important to keep the site going for it's intended purpose, but most visitors seem to think that should include a broader range of acceptable topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think too many people are searching for answers to the types of questions here. It just seems like you get more out of it by participating in the dialog." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1657" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="609" RevisionGUID="19c12e94-acff-45be-8add-613f582abdb7" CreationDate="2010-12-08T22:29:55.067" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1658" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="609" RevisionGUID="61840979-b6fc-428e-8721-ff48bfa89d39" CreationDate="2010-12-08T22:53:10.570" UserId="236" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1659" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="612" RevisionGUID="2d00f62c-a046-4969-bb86-4daa6e6ee239" CreationDate="2010-12-08T23:04:33.133" UserId="8409" Text="I am not a fan of the retro look. Programmers are not dinosaurs living in the past. The current programmers design is much more appealing, but it could use less chalkboard and more whiteboard." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1660" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="613" RevisionGUID="edf91370-a03b-4f7c-959a-601c2e18d94f" CreationDate="2010-12-08T23:06:07.360" UserId="236" Text="Since you're going markup, the subtitle should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- programming issues beyond coding --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;...or the jQuery unicorns amongst us: (released under the [WTFPD][1] license)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    $(&quot;.issues&quot;).find(&quot;.programming&quot;).not(&quot;.coding&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/13072/alternatives-to-if-else-statement/13077#13077" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1661" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="614" RevisionGUID="ed334a8a-7127-4da2-80ce-dd1ed3ce1b75" CreationDate="2010-12-08T23:08:40.540" UserId="2107" Text="I don't want to sound too harsh, but I'm not entirely certain that the green and black monitor scheme is a good direction. Those old monitors are notoriously hard on the eyes, and the current design looks like an attempt to force a reference to something that should perhaps be referenced more subtly, if at all. There seem to be a number of different conflicting styles at work here, as well, from the gradients to the inset navigation links to the mix of oranges and greens.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If others like the idea but not this design, then to improve it I would steer clear of gradients altogether, probably keep the inset navigation, consistently use a fixed-width typeface for small linked items (site navigation, usernames, tags, and badges), be rid of the orange, and reduce the saturation of the green in the body, which right now reads &quot;Christmas tree&quot;. The subtle texture in the background works well, as I think do the keyboardesque buttons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm definitely with Dan Grossman that a whiteboard look would be more suitable. Perhaps a more informal version of the [Mathematics](http://math.stackexchange.com/) design would be more appropriate?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The `&lt;Programmers&gt;` logo conveys markup more than code, but I'm guessing it's just a placeholder for whatever the name and logotype turn out to be, likely `} Out of Scope {`.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1662" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="615" RevisionGUID="46081151-650b-4ca5-b84d-9246eec7ff11" CreationDate="2010-12-08T23:13:13.080" UserId="5497" Text="The green question links and green answer boxes look fine.  They look stellar actually.  The green-on-grey header and menu links?  Not so much.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1664" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="617" RevisionGUID="b4e8a9b6-17fd-4420-b5b4-5d10baded2b6" CreationDate="2010-12-08T23:57:22.607" UserId="5624" Text="I hate the logo. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1665" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="618" RevisionGUID="d79471a6-fab4-469b-a929-7a1422f9fd67" CreationDate="2010-12-09T00:24:02.890" UserId="2314" Text="Like others, I don't want to reject the effort that has gone into this, but with a  subtitle like &quot;Programming issues **beyond coding**&quot; (which makes sense), do we really want the site to **look like code**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I love this site because I learn about a lot more than code here. The site design should not just reflect that, but emote it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a side note, if we do have any fixed width font, I'd love it if we could use a similar font-family priority order to the `code` style on StackOverflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    code {&#xD;&#xA;        font-family:Consolas,Menlo,Monaco,Lucida Console,Liberation Mono,&#xD;&#xA;          DejaVu Sans Mono,Bitstream Vera Sans Mono,Courier New,monospace,serif;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Courier is just so difficult to scan." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1666" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="619" RevisionGUID="8b4492cb-e431-47d1-9e21-a7fd71769693" CreationDate="2010-12-09T00:40:05.250" UserId="7789" Text="Overall, I like it, except for two things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) I agree with others that I don't particularly like the logo. I agree with @Jon Purdy that, since the site is about programmers, it should have a code-esque look to it. I also agree with @Renesis though, that since it's supposed to be &quot;beyond coding&quot;, maybe it shouldn't look like code. Maybe some combination of &quot;Programmers&quot; in a code-esque look, and then the subtitle something like the first example from @badp: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;!-- programming issues beyond coding --&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) The font for the questions seems a little thick, maybe something less bold. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1667" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="620" RevisionGUID="bab1612e-10e1-40bd-8f6e-7bcdf601ad5c" CreationDate="2010-12-09T00:47:56.757" UserId="6329" Text="Perhaps the subtitle should be a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    /* programming issues beyond coding  */&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the main design, the chevrons need to be smaller. They are already longer than the monotyped spacing of the other letters. (Although, I think the monospaced font should be kerned. Should create a nice effect.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1668" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="609" RevisionGUID="35b28c46-7b27-44ea-a1ef-aaf2242c5f5f" CreationDate="2010-12-09T03:02:26.357" UserId="1685" Comment="added 640 characters in body; edited title" Text="Hi all. I'm [Jin][1], and I'll be working on the designs for the Stack Exchange sites as they graduate from the beta phase. Each site will have its own unique theme that will reflect its topic. However, all sites will share quite a bit of common elements so they feel like they're part of the Stack Exchange family.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since most user of the base on this site is familiar with Stackoverflow.com, I decided to go with a clean and simple design similar to SO, but with slightly more visual elements. The focus is still on readability and keeping the familiarity you have with SO.com. Layout structure-wise, I'm not changing much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also read the suggestions from the [logo thread][2]. I like the idea of using symbols as part of the logo. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(click image to view full resolution version)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/m0xSo.png&quot;&gt;![alt text][3]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;update&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you for your feedback. I have revise the initial mockup per your suggestions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RoM17.png&quot;&gt;![alt text][4]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;some changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Green in the header is changed to cyan, I think it contrasts well against the darker background. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Updated the logo treatment to &quot;} Programmers {&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Added &amp;lt;!- --&amp;gt; around the tag line.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Removed monospace font in top nav&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Question link color is now in blue instead of green.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Redid the tag treatment, so they're less boxy. I feel simpler () treament makes the home/question pages airier. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please let me know what you think. Early congrats on launching soon!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/our-designer-in-residence-jin-yang/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/m0xSo.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RoM17.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1669" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="609" RevisionGUID="35b28c46-7b27-44ea-a1ef-aaf2242c5f5f" CreationDate="2010-12-09T03:02:26.357" UserId="1685" Comment="added 640 characters in body; edited title" Text="Design Ideas for Programmers Site (Updated)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1670" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="609" RevisionGUID="1861cc9c-2433-4710-ae66-efce29a5a991" CreationDate="2010-12-09T03:09:48.313" UserId="1685" Comment="added 127 characters in body" Text="Hi all. I'm [Jin][1], and I'll be working on the designs for the Stack Exchange sites as they graduate from the beta phase. Each site will have its own unique theme that will reflect its topic. However, all sites will share quite a bit of common elements so they feel like they're part of the Stack Exchange family.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since most user of the base on this site is familiar with Stackoverflow.com, I decided to go with a clean and simple design similar to SO, but with slightly more visual elements. The focus is still on readability and keeping the familiarity you have with SO.com. Layout structure-wise, I'm not changing much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also read the suggestions from the [logo thread][2]. I like the idea of using symbols as part of the logo. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(click image to view full resolution version)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/m0xSo.png&quot;&gt;![alt text][3]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;update&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you for your feedback. I have revise the initial mockup per your suggestions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RoM17.png&quot;&gt;![alt text][4]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;some changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Green in the header is changed to cyan, I think it contrasts well against the darker background. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Updated the logo treatment to &quot;} Programmers {&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Added &amp;lt;!- --&amp;gt; around the tag line.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Removed monospace font in top nav&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Question link color is now in blue instead of green.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Redid the tag treatment, so they're less boxy. I feel simpler () treament makes the home/question pages airier. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll be hanging out in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&quot;&gt;chatroom&lt;/a&gt;, feel free to drop by.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please let me know what you think. Early congrats on launching soon!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/our-designer-in-residence-jin-yang/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/m0xSo.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RoM17.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1671" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="621" RevisionGUID="f6f0c166-6c49-4f32-a008-d1f59168a7cd" CreationDate="2010-12-09T04:02:48.900" UserDisplayName="user4626" Text="The second (revised) version of your design looks better. However I suggest that the curly braces be like: `{ Programmers }` instead of `} Programmers {`. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1672" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="622" RevisionGUID="2be53457-0614-4d97-b70e-f4355339a4c6" CreationDate="2010-12-09T04:26:31.467" UserId="9202" Text="Should the title bar background(Programmers) is a little brighter? It may reduces the contrast between the text-color and background-color, which may not very good for eyes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1673" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="623" RevisionGUID="03523b0b-6dd5-4ad6-b69d-b761e34f5e7b" CreationDate="2010-12-09T04:31:59.310" UserId="9202" Text="I'm new here, but I think that kind of question will be very useful for many people, because it often attracts lots of ideas, opinions &amp; experience. But the bad thing is that it's hard to go through every answer, to extract the best idea for a specific programmer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1674" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="624" RevisionGUID="8e25c142-0f4c-4306-8d3d-5623a7d62d26" CreationDate="2010-12-09T05:36:38.653" UserId="389" Text="What happen with the most voted logo? Community approved it. Is there any problem?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like/473#473" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1675" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="625" RevisionGUID="68a37e28-93e6-4671-af99-e325c50cb17a" CreationDate="2010-12-09T05:38:36.533" UserId="389" Text="Answered question can have corners rounded? It can look like a monitor." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1678" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="628" RevisionGUID="74559ad6-efcb-4386-990f-dfc7602a11a2" CreationDate="2010-12-09T09:26:14.473" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="I don't like the two proposal. If possible, I would prefer a more `positive` design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this can be solved by changing the colors. Especially the top gray bar that shouldn't be gray.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The layout itself is fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I preferred the BETA layout colors." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1679" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="629" RevisionGUID="d7604ede-fad1-47f9-8e30-e2f022551b05" CreationDate="2010-12-09T12:06:57.143" UserId="8760" Text="Cool Design and Nice colors." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1680" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="624" RevisionGUID="abe557e4-8b0f-4491-b648-2c4cc3209eb8" CreationDate="2010-12-09T13:10:52.383" UserId="389" Comment="added 99 characters in body; added 8 characters in body" Text="What happen with the most voted logo? Community approved it. Is there any problem?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like/473#473&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Added:&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline/472#472" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1681" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="630" RevisionGUID="f37d6217-f29e-49a8-98f6-7640adf9a60c" CreationDate="2010-12-09T13:38:56.910" UserId="2329" Text="Rather than the brackets, I would like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    // Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    /*  Programmers  */&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Indicating comments, rather than out-of-scope.  I think that this would be a less obscure reference.  But either is good." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1682" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="631" RevisionGUID="3365ba58-43e3-4727-8ba1-ff87ce354944" CreationDate="2010-12-09T14:02:30.580" UserId="6509" Text="Overall, I like the second mockup a lot.  The overall look is very clean and looks good.  Minor tweak is that the light diamond hash background makes it harder for me to read than the graph paper look we have now.  It particularly becomes a problem on machines where the OS doesn't do the antialiasing nicely.  I would prefer to see a solid color, or perhaps a variation of the familiar graph paper.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Logos look fine to me, prefering the second logo to the first.  I'd also put in a vote for the `;}{;  Programmers` style logo on the logo thread.  Another tweak I'd make is to adjust the look for the &quot;Add&quot; buttons.  They don't seem to quite fit the rest of the site.  Perhaps all that's needed is for the button to appear as if we are viewing it directly from overhead.  As it is now, the perspective is different than the other controls.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The color scheme in the second example is soothing, modern, and crisp.  I like it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1683" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="632" RevisionGUID="aa0987e4-5db7-46a5-a829-0a4b23bda159" CreationDate="2010-12-09T14:53:18.967" UserId="5692" Text="Many questions on Programmers.SE are complex, behavior related and subjective (&quot;My team lead is a psycho&quot;, &quot;How to best teach coding&quot;, &quot;Meetings in agile&quot; etc). The nuances and depth of the questions and answers is what should define this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of these complex questions receives a bunch of easily digested, clever answers which gets upvoted quickly and then marked as accepted just as fast. That is fine on Stackoverflow, but programmers.SE are a *completely different beast* which *deserves* long and complex answers. I think there should be some way of actively encourage that. It's about increasing the quality of answers really.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A suggestion I thought about: *Don't allow questions to be marked answered until after a certain &quot;grace time&quot; (3-4 days) has passed.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions left without an accepted answer for a number of days seems to shift. The easy/quick/clever answers loses ground to more thoughtful answers which bubbles to the top. That is a good thing. I assume it's because it takes time to digest the complexity and the hidden brilliance in some of the answers. Adding a grace time can perhaps help encourage that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other ideas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1684" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="632" RevisionGUID="aa0987e4-5db7-46a5-a829-0a4b23bda159" CreationDate="2010-12-09T14:53:18.967" UserId="5692" Text="How to encourage thoughtful answers to complex questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1685" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="632" RevisionGUID="aa0987e4-5db7-46a5-a829-0a4b23bda159" CreationDate="2010-12-09T14:53:18.967" UserId="5692" Text="|feature-request|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1686" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="633" RevisionGUID="4d58fdcc-a5dc-48bd-b0a6-90eec13d9858" CreationDate="2010-12-09T14:53:19.407" UserId="4027" Text="I liked the green on grey ( I find the cyan on the title a little bit blaring ) but then I always colour my remote terminal windows to those colours anyways..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1687" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="634" RevisionGUID="40abe785-b80e-44d2-bfe0-942d34878bdb" CreationDate="2010-12-09T17:16:58.653" UserId="3249" Text="Extending the time limit for accepting answers addresses the wrong facet of the problem.  The central issue is not a lack of *thoughtful* answers, but an overabundance of *thoughtless* answers, and a 3-day waiting period will do precisely nothing to hold back the tide of one-liners and hyper-generous Civic Duty-seeking voters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suggest swift and merciless downvoting of *thoughtless* answers, and moderator-flagging of truly useless (joke or retort) answers.  That's how this site, and every SE site, is designed to be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also wouldn't hurt to point these members to the [FAQ][1], politely explaining that the question guidelines also apply broadly to answers.  In other words, explain your answer, back it up, and mind your tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may be hard for some people to believe, but on other SE sites, we've actually had fairly mindless poll questions saved by early, thoughtful, detailed answers.  It's a matter of instilling those values in the community, and the way to do that is not with arbitrary and frustrating technical limitations, but with behaviour - positive and negative reinforcement - and ongoing discussion and education.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know about you guys, but my reputation on Programmers.SE means about as much to me as my Meta.SO rep, which is to say, not much.  Just downvote, guys; stop worrying about the -1 rep hit you'll take.  It doesn't matter if 10 people upvote a stupid answer when there are 30 more waiting to downvote it, and eventually after seeing the negative scores, people will start to take the hint that unconstructive answers are frowned upon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(And yes, I am aware of the unwritten law that any meta answer encouraging downvoting must be downvoted several times, so go ahead and downvote it - just don't forget to downvote on the parent site, too.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*P.S. Increasing the weight of downvotes probably wouldn't hurt either.  It's not appropriate for Stack Overflow, but it makes a certain amount of sense for subjectivity-oriented sites because people are more likely to post controversial or rep-whoring answers.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1688" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="609" RevisionGUID="2c2d5bb2-59c6-44d3-a0e2-ea0f41f8d126" CreationDate="2010-12-09T17:48:51.567" UserId="1685" Comment="added 234 characters in body; edited title" Text="Hi all. I'm [Jin][1], and I'll be working on the designs for the Stack Exchange sites as they graduate from the beta phase. Each site will have its own unique theme that will reflect its topic. However, all sites will share quite a bit of common elements so they feel like they're part of the Stack Exchange family.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since most user of the base on this site is familiar with Stackoverflow.com, I decided to go with a clean and simple design similar to SO, but with slightly more visual elements. The focus is still on readability and keeping the familiarity you have with SO.com. Layout structure-wise, I'm not changing much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also read the suggestions from the [logo thread][2]. I like the idea of using symbols as part of the logo. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(click image to view full resolution version)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/m0xSo.png&quot;&gt;![alt text][3]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;update&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you for your feedback. I have revise the initial mockup per your suggestions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RoM17.png&quot;&gt;![alt text][4]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;some changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Green in the header is changed to cyan, I think it contrasts well against the darker background. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Updated the logo treatment to &quot;} Programmers {&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Added &amp;lt;!- --&amp;gt; around the tag line.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Removed monospace font in top nav&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Question link color is now in blue instead of green.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Redid the tag treatment, so they're less boxy. I feel simpler () treament makes the home/question pages airier. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll be hanging out in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&quot;&gt;chatroom&lt;/a&gt;, feel free to drop by.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;UPDATE 2&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you for the feedback! I've decided to go with a different approach with the design which I think will work better for the Programmers site. I'm locking this thread so no additional feedback will be posted about the old mockup. I'll start a new post for the next design. Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/our-designer-in-residence-jin-yang/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/m0xSo.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RoM17.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1689" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="609" RevisionGUID="2c2d5bb2-59c6-44d3-a0e2-ea0f41f8d126" CreationDate="2010-12-09T17:48:51.567" UserId="1685" Comment="added 234 characters in body; edited title" Text="Design Ideas for Programmers Site [Closed]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1690" PostHistoryTypeId="14" PostId="609" RevisionGUID="10062497-1eab-4139-a491-674e824b6405" CreationDate="2010-12-09T17:49:20.973" UserId="1685" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:1685,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Jin&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="1691" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="635" RevisionGUID="b149dad2-9cb2-4084-bf9b-b8c8040e7c95" CreationDate="2010-12-09T18:53:16.577" UserId="841" Text="I probably missed it, but I had assumed that once you could propose synonyms you would be able to vote on them.  After I figured out how to propose one it seemed it was the only one in the system until I noticed there were more on the all tab and I eventually found this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64247/show-synonym-suggestions-awaiting-my-vote&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can somewhat see the point of that decision, but it took a while to figure out what was going on and I still don't think I understand what the &quot;merge&quot; tag is for.  I am certain I can find that answer as well, but I would suggest either adding some of this to the FAQ or providing some more obvious instruction or description.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Certainly not a huge deal, but for someone that has only lurked before on stackexchange sites it is a bit confusing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1692" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="635" RevisionGUID="b149dad2-9cb2-4084-bf9b-b8c8040e7c95" CreationDate="2010-12-09T18:53:16.577" UserId="841" Text="Should there be some FAQ for Tag Synonyms Voting" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1693" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="635" RevisionGUID="b149dad2-9cb2-4084-bf9b-b8c8040e7c95" CreationDate="2010-12-09T18:53:16.577" UserId="841" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1694" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="609" RevisionGUID="794d4177-2d5c-485f-a1fa-e5b6eb7a12db" CreationDate="2010-12-09T20:17:18.203" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1695" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="632" RevisionGUID="3ae9f6c9-a187-45e5-b94f-a502540ffdff" CreationDate="2010-12-09T20:54:43.937" UserId="5692" Comment="Highlight reason for suggestion" Text="Many questions on Programmers.SE are complex, behavior related and subjective (&quot;My team lead is a psycho&quot;, &quot;How to best teach coding&quot;, &quot;Meetings in agile&quot; etc). The nuances and depth of the questions and answers is what should define this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of these complex questions receives a bunch of easily digested, clever answers which gets upvoted quickly and then marked as accepted just as fast. That is fine on Stackoverflow, but programmers.SE are a *completely different beast* which *deserves* long and complex answers. I think there should be some way of actively encourage that. It's about increasing the quality of answers really.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A suggestion I thought about: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Don't allow questions to be marked answered until after a certain &quot;grace time&quot; (3-4 days) has passed.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Rationale:** Questions left without an accepted answer for a number of days seems to shift. The easy/quick/clever answers loses ground to more thoughtful answers which bubbles to the top. That is a good thing. I assume it's because it takes time to digest the complexity and the hidden brilliance in some of the answers. Adding a grace time can perhaps help encourage that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other ideas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1696" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="606" RevisionGUID="e0210807-2ee9-4493-a959-2e64e4374262" CreationDate="2010-12-10T01:15:26.663" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-norepro|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1697" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="636" RevisionGUID="51365d53-384e-4850-b210-2706603a2148" CreationDate="2010-12-10T01:15:41.813" UserId="37" Text="We can't reproduce this; try clearing your browser's cache." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1703" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="638" RevisionGUID="a64ede77-9196-457c-bb12-f81095999fc4" CreationDate="2010-12-10T07:01:03.300" UserId="37" Text="But you can still fulfill your Area 51 commitment to the site -- assuming you [committed to the site proposal][1] -- for a [badge][2] on http://area51.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352?phase=commitment&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/badges/210/upholder" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1705" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="639" RevisionGUID="2e3e4268-c232-4c38-86d5-9a7ced17bded" CreationDate="2010-12-10T09:36:37.167" UserId="468" Text="I thought programmers SE should be out of beta long time ago, how come it's still not yet?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1706" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="639" RevisionGUID="2e3e4268-c232-4c38-86d5-9a7ced17bded" CreationDate="2010-12-10T09:36:37.167" UserId="468" Text="Why is it that Programmers are Not Out of Beta yet?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1707" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="639" RevisionGUID="2e3e4268-c232-4c38-86d5-9a7ced17bded" CreationDate="2010-12-10T09:36:37.167" UserId="468" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1708" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="640" RevisionGUID="f316f87d-7006-412c-9224-710c0af3db66" CreationDate="2010-12-10T11:01:21.477" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Programmers.SE has been in beta for [99 days](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related): all Stack Exchange sites, barring some exceptional circumstances like a business-development deal (e.g. [Ask Ubuntu](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/ubuntu-stack-exchange-is-askubuntu-com/)), stay in beta for at least 90 days. Many sites stay in beta for [significantly longer than that](http://area51.stackexchange.com/?tab=progress).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're currently next or second in line to leave beta: right now, Jin is [working on the final design](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed). Once that's done, we'll leave beta shortly thereafter." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1709" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="641" RevisionGUID="312924cd-59b3-4a05-91cb-726987d7b82d" CreationDate="2010-12-10T15:12:49.597" UserId="47" Text="We are next in line.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jin is working on the design, but has decided on to do a redesign based on the feedback from [the first &amp; second attempts](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed). Once that's been agreed we'll probably go live.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's also a question on Meta Stack Overflow about [identifying questions to migrate from SO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate) that indicates the go live date is imminent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com is *probably* going live this week," ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1710" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="642" RevisionGUID="907561c1-5664-49dc-a02c-0360ffae1a26" CreationDate="2010-12-10T23:25:46.663" UserId="389" Text="Next week we will receive an avalanche of questions migrated from SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a lot of questions not related to programming job if we drop the &quot;programming&quot; word. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing new so far. But we need managing them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are closed already and many of them need to be closed. But many questions is falling on a black hole of SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where to ask a question about workplace, co-working, ergonomics, business policies, management practices, ethics on work, career guidance, personal development, etc. when the question can be applied to every office work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMO we should directing users to follow/commit some proposals to get approved and later we can migrate those questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could avoid to close every off-topic question because &quot;programming&quot; is just incidentally present on it. We can close when it's totally off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact every question closed as off-topic should be followed with a comment where the OP or other users can get answers about that. It can be one of the trilogy sites or a graduated site or a beta site or a proposal on commit of definition phase.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What proposals can we use to directing some off-topic questions (closed or not) of Pr.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What proposals should be created to settle those questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What questions should we directing to sites/proposals? Or better yet, can you help with the effort to selecting and advice users to try a new proposal/site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I started with these proposals: [Organizations aspects][2] which I created to achieve this purpose and [Office work and desk jobs][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can be used too: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/12887/it-careers-training, http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/24003/career-advice, http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/21141/career-development (which should be merged with the preview one), http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/10947/project-management (and similar http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/20300/developer-team-leads and http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7502/it-management), http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/13418/interviewing, http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4296/personal-productivity-and-organization-gtd-covey-etc, http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/11624/freelance-workers, http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/5133/social-engineering (maybe), http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/17134/brain-power (some questions fits in), http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/14151/sleeping (oh yeah).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course when the question is about these topics but has a **strong** relationship with programming job, it's on-topic on Pr.SE. I'm not proposing a new definition for off-topic, I just propose better handling with the same criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/22377/office-work-and-desk-jobs?referrer=Nx4kn5M-Wvu5FEmYvDudhQ2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/25661/organizations-aspects?referrer=VWCGRjdShg3eJFzjytmq4Q2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1711" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="642" RevisionGUID="907561c1-5664-49dc-a02c-0360ffae1a26" CreationDate="2010-12-10T23:25:46.663" UserId="389" Text="Questions barely or not related directly to programming. We need handling them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1712" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="642" RevisionGUID="907561c1-5664-49dc-a02c-0360ffae1a26" CreationDate="2010-12-10T23:25:46.663" UserId="389" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|migration|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1713" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="642" RevisionGUID="a653e7f8-b646-4d24-846b-9fff28c50d4c" CreationDate="2010-12-10T23:33:38.060" UserId="101" Comment="fixed grammar" Text="Next week we will receive an avalanche of questions migrated from SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a lot of questions not related to programming jobs if we drop the &quot;programming&quot; word. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing new so far. But we need a way to manage them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are closed already and many of them need to be closed. But many questions are falling into a black hole of SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where to ask a question about workplace, co-working, ergonomics, business policies, management practices, ethics on work, career guidance, personal development, etc. when the question can be applied to every office work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMO we should direct users to follow/commit some proposals to get approved and later we can migrate those questions to another SE site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could avoid closing every off-topic question because &quot;programming&quot; is just incidentally present on it. We can close when it's totally off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact every question closed as off-topic should be followed with a comment where the OP or other users can get answers about that. It can be one of the trilogy sites or a graduated site or a beta site or a proposal on commit of definition phase.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What proposals can we use to direct some off-topic questions (closed or not) of Pr.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What proposals should be created to settle those questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What questions should we direct to sites/proposals? Or better yet, can you help with the effort to selecting and advising users to try a new proposal/site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I started with these proposals: [Organizations aspects][2] which I created to achieve this purpose and [Office work and desk jobs][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These can be used too: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/12887/it-careers-training, http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/24003/career-advice, http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/21141/career-development (which should be merged with the preview one), http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/10947/project-management (and similar http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/20300/developer-team-leads and http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7502/it-management), http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/13418/interviewing, http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4296/personal-productivity-and-organization-gtd-covey-etc, http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/11624/freelance-workers, http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/5133/social-engineering (maybe), http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/17134/brain-power (some questions fits in), http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/14151/sleeping (oh yeah).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course when the question is about these topics but has a **strong** relationship with programming job, it's on-topic on Pr.SE. I'm not proposing a new definition for off-topic, I just propose better handling with the same criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/22377/office-work-and-desk-jobs?referrer=Nx4kn5M-Wvu5FEmYvDudhQ2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/25661/organizations-aspects?referrer=VWCGRjdShg3eJFzjytmq4Q2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1714" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="642" RevisionGUID="3729131a-b6a4-4dd4-806c-105cbf391ad1" CreationDate="2010-12-11T01:20:09.107" UserId="389" Comment="added new proposal link." Text="Next week we will receive an avalanche of questions migrated from SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a lot of questions not related to programming jobs if we drop the &quot;programming&quot; word. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing new so far. But we need a way to manage them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are closed already and many of them need to be closed. But many questions are falling into a black hole of SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where to ask a question about workplace, co-working, ergonomics, business policies, management practices, ethics on work, career guidance, personal development, etc. when the question can be applied to every office work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMO we should direct users to follow/commit some proposals to get approved and later we can migrate those questions to another SE site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could avoid closing every off-topic question because &quot;programming&quot; is just incidentally present on it. We can close when it's totally off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact every question closed as off-topic should be followed with a comment where the OP or other users can get answers about that. It can be one of the trilogy sites or a graduated site or a beta site or a proposal on commit of definition phase.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What proposals can we use to direct some off-topic questions (closed or not) of Pr.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What proposals should be created to settle those questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What questions should we direct to sites/proposals? Or better yet, can you help with the effort to selecting and advising users to try a new proposal/site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I started with these proposals: [Organizations aspects][2] which I created to achieve this purpose and [Office work and desk jobs][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These can be used too: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/12887/it-careers-training, http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/24003/career-advice, http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/21141/career-development (which should be merged with the preview one), http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/10947/project-management (and similar http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/20300/developer-team-leads and http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7502/it-management), http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/13418/interviewing, http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4296/personal-productivity-and-organization-gtd-covey-etc, http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/11624/freelance-workers, http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/5133/social-engineering (maybe), http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/17134/brain-power (some questions fits in), http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/14151/sleeping (oh yeah), http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/17225/personal-development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course when the question is about these topics but has a **strong** relationship with programming job, it's on-topic on Pr.SE. I'm not proposing a new definition for off-topic, I just propose better handling with the same criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/22377/office-work-and-desk-jobs?referrer=Nx4kn5M-Wvu5FEmYvDudhQ2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/25661/organizations-aspects?referrer=VWCGRjdShg3eJFzjytmq4Q2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1715" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="643" RevisionGUID="ee0d96b2-001a-4221-8b94-af0bb1924a2f" CreationDate="2010-12-11T07:49:46.940" UserId="485" Text="[Dori is right](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/607/whats-the-point-of-unanswered-link/626#626). It's actually explained on the Unanswered page, but for some reason people tend to miss it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot of the Unanswered tab](http://so.mrozekma.com/unanswered-questions.png)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1716" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="644" RevisionGUID="b3dfa403-b73f-4771-ad51-951de93ce11d" CreationDate="2010-12-11T08:54:15.500" UserId="1626" Text="&gt; Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.  &#xD;&#xA;-*Albert Einstein*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I dispute the notion that easily digestible, clever one-liners aren't thoughtful answers.  Oftentimes they take more thought than longer answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1717" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="645" RevisionGUID="901e0e2f-f779-4e08-8beb-b2fac9b81f02" CreationDate="2010-12-11T09:22:06.137" UserId="9411" Text="Often, I face myself asking a tricky question where someone interested in giving me a constructive answer would have to sit down and **think**. They would also need to **care** about my question and my problem and be **open-minded** (which is the whole idea behind [Programmers.SE][1]). Instead, they often end up just trying to make a point - the point they may have had all their lives and they wouldn't reconsider - or make me bad or show off their (sometimes questionable) knowledge. In short: useless and not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usually, this doesn't happen when the question itself is technical and can be answered very objectively (as on [Stackoverflow][2]). But as soon as I'd like a subjective, critical but constructive answer, I get a bashing. And even more so, the bashers get voted up by other bashers such that the really constructive, interesting answers will move down in ranking among all the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a way to circumvent that? E.g. in phrasing my question very carefully (how?) Any ideas welcome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;NOTE: I've already asked the question here: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/71977/how-to-phrase-my-subjective-question-to-avoid-unconstructive-answers, but **meta.programmers** is the better place for it than **meta.stackoverflow**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1718" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="645" RevisionGUID="901e0e2f-f779-4e08-8beb-b2fac9b81f02" CreationDate="2010-12-11T09:22:06.137" UserId="9411" Text="How to phrase my subjective question to avoid unconstructive answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1719" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="645" RevisionGUID="901e0e2f-f779-4e08-8beb-b2fac9b81f02" CreationDate="2010-12-11T09:22:06.137" UserId="9411" Text="|discussion|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1722" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="647" RevisionGUID="eaac2f6d-1e00-4ef4-8350-a80fff129ebf" CreationDate="2010-12-11T16:59:35.657" UserId="3249" Text="The most important factor in getting constructive answers, by a wide margin, is to ask the question constructively in the first place.  For example, I'm looking at one of your questions, which goes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Would anyone care about a database-mapping tool, that's not really an ORM?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I still find it hard to believe that most Java persistence tools and standards try to somehow implement an object-relational model...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; In short, they're still in Vietnam as qstarin put it in his answer.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so on and so forth.  The problem is that **this question is written as a rant**, quoting an editorial that's four-and-a-half years old, to boot; you appear to be upset that more people aren't using your software.  That's fine, but you have to approach it from a neutral perspective if you don't want combative answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I don't even think you should have asked the question, because the motivation is a little suspect.  But assuming people can get past that, I might have worded it like so:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is jOOQ a viable model for querying databases?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As the creator and maintainer of the jOOQ tool, I've often felt that an object-oriented query model has several advantages over a more traditional ORM, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [blah blah blah]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, I'm not sure how many others share my enthusiasm.  So I was wondering if anyone can point me to some *disadvantages* of using this approach?  Are there issues that I am overlooking, either conceptual or practical?  Is there anything that I could add or change to make this more attractive to developers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This *still* sounds a little like self-promotion but at least you're not subtly insinuating that everybody else is doing it wrong.  *That's* why you got the answers you did.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, that said, if you are *absolutely certain* that the question itself is constructive, then the best way to get constructive answers is to ask specifically for them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Question text]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; #Please answer constructively.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I realize that many people have strong feelings on the subject of ORMs and similar subjects, and that is fine, but please **explain** your answers, giving specific examples from your own experience if possible.  Constructive criticism is welcome, but please be specific!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1723" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="648" RevisionGUID="9da4c731-8665-4a6c-9228-8115b7b8341a" CreationDate="2010-12-11T18:23:25.323" UserId="4971" Text="Try a different browser, make sure you're updated, clear cookies, destroy global credentials." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1724" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="649" RevisionGUID="ac8ecdb8-ba3e-491b-87a3-84f8ab2ef787" CreationDate="2010-12-11T18:25:16.430" UserId="4971" Text="Yes, the &quot;oldest&quot; option was changed to &quot;newest&quot;.  There has been some complaint about this.  Try MSO if you want to complain too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1725" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="650" RevisionGUID="af6873d8-59ac-4c2c-8aaa-95399341e3d8" CreationDate="2010-12-11T18:38:34.193" UserId="389" Text="We're discussing this on [MSO][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate/71734#71734" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1726" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="642" RevisionGUID="bb569d65-9924-4086-a710-b3b2a6c25f4c" CreationDate="2010-12-11T19:14:20.933" UserId="3249" Comment="added 436 characters in body" Text="Next week we will receive an avalanche of questions migrated from SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a lot of questions not related to programming jobs if we drop the &quot;programming&quot; word. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing new so far. But we need a way to manage them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are closed already and many of them need to be closed. But many questions are falling into a black hole of SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where to ask a question about workplace, co-workers, ergonomics, business policies, management practices, ethics on work, career guidance, personal development, etc. when the question can be applied to every office work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMO we should direct users to follow/commit some proposals to get approved and later we can migrate those questions to another SE site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could avoid closing every off-topic question because &quot;programming&quot; is just incidentally present on it. We can close when it's totally off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact every question closed as off-topic should be followed with a comment where the OP or other users can get answers about that. It can be one of the trilogy sites or a graduated site or a beta site or a proposal on commit of definition phase.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What proposals can we use to direct some off-topic questions (closed or not) of Pr.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What proposals should be created to settle those questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What questions should we direct to sites/proposals? Or better yet, can you help with the effort to selecting and advising users to try a new proposal/site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I started with these proposals: [Organizations aspects][2] which I created to achieve this purpose and [Office work and desk jobs][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These can be used too:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [IT Careers &amp; Training][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [Career Advice][4]&#xD;&#xA;* [Career Development][5] (which should be merged with the preview one)&#xD;&#xA;* [Project Management][6] (Similar: [Developer Team Leads][7] and [IT Management][8])&#xD;&#xA;* [Interviewing][9]&#xD;&#xA;* [Personal Productivity][10]&#xD;&#xA;* [Freelance Workers][11]&#xD;&#xA;* [Social Engineering][12] (maybe)&#xD;&#xA;* [Brain Power][13] (some questions fits in)&#xD;&#xA;* [Sleeping][14] (oh yeah)&#xD;&#xA;* [Personal Development][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course when the question is about these topics but has a **strong** relationship with programming jobs, it's on-topic on Pr.SE. I'm not proposing a new definition for off-topic, I'm just proposing better handling with the same criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/22377/office-work-and-desk-jobs?referrer=Nx4kn5M-Wvu5FEmYvDudhQ2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/25661/organizations-aspects?referrer=VWCGRjdShg3eJFzjytmq4Q2&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/12887/it-careers-training&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/24003/career-advice&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/21141/career-development&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/10947/project-management&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/20300/developer-team-leads&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7502/it-management&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/13418/interviewing&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4296/personal-productivity-and-organization-gtd-covey-etc&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/11624/freelance-workers&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/5133/social-engineering&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/17134/brain-power&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/14151/sleeping&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/17225/personal-development" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1727" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="651" RevisionGUID="69f4d8ef-cc13-42ce-b9e5-f8740bb6ddba" CreationDate="2010-12-11T21:13:29.403" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="It really depends on the context of the question. I thought a few times about starting a very definitive proposal for office politics, but I lost enthusiasm once I realized that such a site would be quite depressing, perhaps toxic to the depressed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a programmer finds his way to our site asking for help, I'd hope that the first question we ask is 'can I help' versus looking for reasons not to help. Granted, some questions that have been asked are just in outer space, but according to our community (if votes mean anything), most questions are on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone finds a new incarnation for a question, **I'm fine with that**, it just increases the chances of others finding the site. If someone attempts [a breaching experiment][1] that I feel is harmful to our community or goes against our purpose, I'll vote to close it. Example [here][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think you might be underestimating the power of those of us that the system has learned to trust. If the question _is_ off topic, it will be closed. It may take a few days, but it will be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps you were expecting faster results? If so, why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaching_experiment&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/24930/131" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1728" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="651" RevisionGUID="990f1939-05f1-414b-9e76-31015509490b" CreationDate="2010-12-11T21:27:56.273" UserDisplayName="user131" Comment="added 206 characters in body" Text="It really depends on the context of the question. I thought a few times about starting a very definitive proposal for office politics, but I lost enthusiasm once I realized that such a site would be quite depressing, perhaps toxic to the depressed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a programmer finds his way to our site asking for help, I'd hope that the first question we ask is 'can I help' versus looking for reasons not to help. Granted, some questions that have been asked are just in outer space, but according to our community (if votes mean anything), most questions are on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone finds a new incarnation for a question, **I'm fine with that**, it just increases the chances of others finding the site. If someone attempts [a breaching experiment][1] that I feel is harmful to our community or goes against our purpose, I'll vote to close it. Example [here][2]. I've done such experiments myself, simply by [picking up litter in Singapore][3]. There are constructive ways to do most anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think you might be underestimating the power of those of us that the system has learned to trust. If the question _is_ off topic, it will be closed. It may take a few days, but it will be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps you were expecting faster results? If so, why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaching_experiment&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/24930/131&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.google.com/search?q=laws+against+littering+in+singapore" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1731" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="652" RevisionGUID="4f6df7c0-b130-4fd9-85b8-7fdeeac7df24" CreationDate="2010-12-12T00:42:01.313" UserId="3249" Text="It's hard to even *begin* to answer a question like this because so much of the history of this community is steeped in the &quot;anything goes&quot; philosophy that it originated with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of you may view me as being pro-moderation, but I want to remind those people that I argued against the merging of proposals like testing and architecture and software law into Programmers.SE because it was diametrically opposed to the community's collective mindset, not to mention the proposal's original stated purpose.  I was in favour of it remaining as a free-for-all.  Nevertheless, that merge happened, primarily because the team was not satisfied with this being a water cooler, and so here we are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't want to try to define in this answer what the site's scope *should be*.  My aim here is merely to highlight the identity crisis that this community still hasn't quite put behind itself, which *must* be resolved before it can successfully put anything into policy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start with what's in the FAQ today:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Developer tools and techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Practical algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Software law&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Code golf &amp; programming puzzles&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This reads like the description of a site for professionals.  Indeed, I'm sure that many of us (although certainly not all of us) want it to have a professional, if quirky, tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now let's look at the top 15 questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job?][1]&#xD;&#xA;2. [Does giving a developer a slower development machine result in faster/more efficient code?][2]&#xD;&#xA;3. [What is the good/bad decision you made in your mid 20's about your career][3]&#xD;&#xA;4. [Make a big deal out of == true?][4]&#xD;&#xA;5. [Stuff every programmer needs while working][5]&#xD;&#xA;6. [What's your favourite quote about programming?][6]&#xD;&#xA;7. [What's the most absurd myth about programming issues?][7]&#xD;&#xA;8. [What's your experience with female programmers?][8]&#xD;&#xA;9. [Will programmers be around in a few years?][9]&#xD;&#xA;10. [Why are so many programmers arrogant?][10]&#xD;&#xA;11. [What are the worst false economies in software development?][11]&#xD;&#xA;12. [Do people in non-English-speaking countries code in English?][12]&#xD;&#xA;13. [What is the (craziest, stupidest, silliest) thing a client/boss asked you to do?][13]&#xD;&#xA;14. [I've stopped coding for fun, is this a bad sign?][14]&#xD;&#xA;15. [How can a new programmer impress the software engineer (boss)?][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two of these are closed; if you go further down the list (I won't, in order to keep this long-winded post as short as possible) you'll see that fewer than 1/10 questions are actually closed; #9 and #10 are outliers in that respect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So let's now ask the question: Which of the top 15 (or indeed, top 25 or even top 100) questions actually fit into *any* of the sub-topics outlined in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Could maybe be lumped in under &quot;Freelancing and business concerns&quot;&#xD;&#xA;2. Nope.&#xD;&#xA;3. Definitely not.&#xD;&#xA;4. Nope.&#xD;&#xA;5. Double nope.&#xD;&#xA;6. Nope.&#xD;&#xA;7. No...&#xD;&#xA;8. Eh...&#xD;&#xA;9. Er...&#xD;&#xA;10. Dear lord no.&#xD;&#xA;11. Also maybe &quot;business concerns&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;12. Nope.&#xD;&#xA;13. Triple nope.&#xD;&#xA;14. Nah.&#xD;&#xA;15. No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, **I am not saying that these questions are all off-topic or don't belong here** - only that they don't match any of the topics *listed*, and that is bound to lead to confusion over what's *actually* on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps what's actually needed are a few more topics in the list, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Coding style (#4)&#xD;&#xA;* Software Career Development (#1, #3, possibly #8 and #14, #15)&#xD;&#xA;* Software Project Management (#2, #5 with major edits, possibly #8)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other questions in the list do seem to be &quot;programmer&quot; specific (to varying degrees) but can only really be classified as &quot;general interest&quot;, &quot;poll&quot;, or even &quot;rant&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So there's a definite impedance mismatch here.  Officially, you guys are saying that this site is for the professional working programmer, the senior developers and maybe a few of the juniors, people who are looking to *broaden their software skill set beyond just coding*.  Ostensibly, it's a Q&amp;A site for developers truly committed to creating better software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the questions and votes tell another story.  Even if we rule out the rants and jokes in the questions *and* answers - the ultimate removal of which is an unenviable task that is nowhere near complete - the site appears to cater to the *casual* programmer or even the *aspiring* programmer.  People who are just getting into software and are frustrated or confused.  People who want to reach out and exchange stories and water-cooler chat with other programmers and *maybe* learn a little bit in the process.  It's like the &quot;Programmers' Pub&quot;.  I'll take the [Language Holy War][16] with a side of [Pointless Bitching][17], please.  And do you have [Cartoons][18] on tap?  No matter, a bottle is fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I don't want to be prescriptive here.  If that is to be the scope of the site, *that's okay*.  It's also okay for people to occasionally argue about whether or not a specific question reasonably fits in scope.  However, it's very unhealthy for the community to be split down the middle on *what the site is supposed to be about*.  Programmers.SE is a confused adolescent, just about to graduate with no idea what to do next.  Will it be an exciting but hollow affair with Mrs. Robinson, or an uncertain, awkward bus ride into the horizon with Elaine?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry to be so dramatic, but Programmers.SE seems to have effectively become center stage for the epic and probably never-ending battle between inclusionists and deletionists.  Stack Overflow isn't *about* to dump its problems on you, it already *has* dumped its problems on you.  And because you no longer have the trusty metaphorical lanterns of code and objectivity to help you navigate through the proverbial fog, I don't think you can continue to play both sides the way that Stack Overflow did.  A few migrated questions are not going to make a lick of a difference when most of the frivolous questions are already *originating* here; you guys have to decide what you're going to be when you grow up, and you have to decide fast.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would love to write out a long list of examples of questions that should be closed or redirected to an Area 51 proposal.  But right now, I have no idea which of the Area 51 proposals you've listed are actually supposed to be off topic here.  There are already *so many* questions here about career advice, project management, interviewing, freelancing, brain power, etc., almost *none* of which are closed, that you can't start applying a bunch of arbitrary scope rules to *new* questions and expect them not to end in kicking and screaming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want a broader scope than what's spelled out in the FAQ, then you need to broaden the scope.  You need to come up with a definition that actually encompasses all of the subjects that are being talked about here *today* and currently considered on topic.  You need to revise the FAQ.  Normally this all would have been settled in Area 51, but Programmers.SE did a 180 halfway through, which makes matters more difficult.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if you actually want the scope to be what you currently have prescribed, then you need to start enforcing it on existing questions before you can even talk about what you're going to do with new questions.  Start by closing the most massively-upvoted off-topic questions.  *Then* observe patterns and see if it makes sense to point people to new or existing Area 51 proposals.  Then consider deleting the off-topic questions so that they're not sitting in the top 50, confusing the hell out of everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Either way is fine.  I have no personal axe to grind here, no serious investment in this site one way or the other.  Serious questions, fun questions, professional questions, newbie questions, I don't care.  But I don't think you can do this piecemeal; you need to take a holistic look at what this site is / should be, because otherwise you will have people bickering over every single closure and migration (sort of like... right now).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I admire your efforts to develop a policy here but just don't think that the community is ready for it.  Maybe Tim is right and you should just wait and see how things play out, although, speaking as a relative outsider, it doesn't look like that's been a very effective strategy so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Evidently, based on some of the comments in here, part of the community does not even agree that *there should be rules*.  If you want to talk about restricting the scope, then you've got your work cut out for you; before anything else, you're going to need to address this sub-community directly and come up with some sort of compromise (or just lay down the law, whatever works).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My personal suggestion is to start with the hopelessly vague [elevator pitch][19].  &quot;Sharing wisdom&quot; communicates precisely nothing about who you are.  If somebody's able to come up with a meaningful pitch that gets decent support, then maybe you'll have your answer as to what the scope should be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's my absurdly long-winded two cents.  Take or leave it.  Thanks for reading, if you got this far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/20407/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/13623/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/18120/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/12807/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/11312/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/39/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1745/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3974/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/11153/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/4693/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/19573/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1483/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2051/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3558/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/25432/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2846/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/14706/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/154/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/412/3249" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1733" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="653" RevisionGUID="5ef1fac8-cddf-487c-b39a-048540318e64" CreationDate="2010-12-12T01:38:10.620" UserId="1626" Text="So let me get this straight.  Stack overflow dumps all of their unwanted questions onto us, which causes problems.  And how is our moderator proposing we act?  We dump the problems onto *still other* sites, most of which aren't finalized yet. Sorry, but the solution here doesn't lie in perpetuating the original problem.  Nor do I like the idea of having 20 different sites where a programming question *could* belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we please stop trying to turn programmers.se into stack overflow with subjective questions?  I come here because moderation tends to be less anal, but lately even that doesn't seem to be the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose that we adopt a &quot;the buck stops here&quot; approach.  If a question clearly belongs elsewhere, move it there.  If a question clearly doesn't belong anywhere, then close it.  That's far more humane than creating an increasing number of sites to send unwanted questions rather than dealing with them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1734" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="601" RevisionGUID="b73a3354-28db-4bf4-a7d5-92f6b2efe69a" CreationDate="2010-12-12T07:23:32.623" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|bug|status-bydesign|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1735" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="649" RevisionGUID="d2188185-bac8-4bc8-bfab-a5f6e291c925" CreationDate="2010-12-12T12:31:19.833" UserId="47" Comment="corrected post" Text="Yes, the &quot;oldest&quot; option was changed to &quot;active&quot;.  There has been some complaint about this.  Try MSO if you want to complain too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1736" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="634" RevisionGUID="21baf0c8-beb7-4bdd-b766-75917af8c27c" CreationDate="2010-12-13T18:17:59.580" UserId="2654" Comment="added 7 characters in body" Text="Extending the time limit for accepting answers addresses the wrong facet of the problem.  The central issue is not a lack of *thoughtful* answers, but an overabundance of *thoughtless* answers, and a 3-day waiting period will do precisely nothing to hold back the tide of one-liners and hyper-generous Civic Duty-seeking voters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suggest swift and merciless downvoting of *thoughtless* answers, and moderator-flagging of truly useless (joke or retort) answers.  That's how this site, and every SE site, is designed to be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also wouldn't hurt to point these members to the [FAQ][1], politely explaining that the question guidelines also apply broadly to answers.  In other words, explain your answer, back it up, and mind your tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may be hard for some people to believe, but on other SE sites, we've actually had fairly mindless poll questions saved by early, thoughtful, detailed answers.  It's a matter of instilling those values in the community, and the way to do that is not with arbitrary and frustrating technical limitations, but with behaviour - positive and negative reinforcement - and ongoing discussion and education.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know about you guys, but my reputation on Programmers.SE means about as much to me as my Meta.SO rep, which is to say, not much.  Just downvote, guys; stop worrying about the -1 rep hit you'll take.  It doesn't matter if 10 people upvote a stupid answer when there are 30 more waiting to downvote it, and eventually after seeing the negative scores, people will start to take the hint that unconstructive answers are frowned upon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(And yes, I am aware of the unwritten law that any meta answer encouraging downvoting must be downvoted several times, so go ahead and downvote it - just don't forget to downvote on the parent site, too.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*P.S. Increasing the weight of downvotes probably wouldn't hurt either.  It's not appropriate for Stack Overflow, but it makes a certain amount of sense for subjectivity-oriented sites because people are more likely to post controversial or rep-whoring answers.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1737" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="654" RevisionGUID="f46faef3-3c50-45c6-bdd2-9003dc778685" CreationDate="2010-12-13T21:49:11.133" UserId="4971" Text="**NOTE: This is NOT a complaint question.  I would like to know how I can improve my asking/answering ability.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [this question][1], what was wrong with my answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Again: This is **NOT** a complaint question, I'm not asked for upvotes, I'm not asking for the downvote removed, I just want to learn how I can be a better contributing member of the SE community.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/606/why-cant-i-upvote-comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1738" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="654" RevisionGUID="f46faef3-3c50-45c6-bdd2-9003dc778685" CreationDate="2010-12-13T21:49:11.133" UserId="4971" Text="Why was I downvoted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1739" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="654" RevisionGUID="f46faef3-3c50-45c6-bdd2-9003dc778685" CreationDate="2010-12-13T21:49:11.133" UserId="4971" Text="|discussion|support|votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1740" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="655" RevisionGUID="8078cef3-f9ba-491b-a4c2-89e1149ac7b9" CreationDate="2010-12-13T22:40:23.903" UserId="1685" Text="First, I want to thank you for your valuable feedback for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed&quot;&gt;first design concept&lt;/a&gt;. Programmers.SE is a site about people and conceptual design more than coding. The old design simply did not reflect that; so it failed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I talked to Jeff about this, and he agrees that Programmers.se is much different from Stackoverflow. I quote him:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is when you sit down in front of the compiler,&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is when you sit down in front of the whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Dan Grossman and Jon Purdy also thought a whiteboard theme was more appropriate from their comments regarding the first design review, and I agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since late last week I've been working on a whiteboard theme, and I'm pleased with the outcome. I feel it gives the site a more positive and personal touch, and has some similarities from the Beta theme. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The handwritten font in the title, top nav and section header is &lt;a href=&quot;http://callsignkatejones.deviantart.com/art/House-Whiteboard-font-64929545&quot;&gt;House Whiteboard&lt;/a&gt;. Yes, it is actually Hugh Laurie's handwriting. (&quot;It's Not Lupus!&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the question title typeface, I tried a few &quot;handwritten&quot; ones; they looked great visually, but they scored rather poorly on readability. I eventually went with &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/webfonts/family?family=Yanone+Kaffeesatz&amp;subset=latin&quot;&gt;Yanone Kaffeesatz&lt;/a&gt;. I feel it has that soft look, and works well with the whiteboard theme.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please let me know what you think. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**bonus:** (the making of)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/hmenW.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MQPlw.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1741" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="655" RevisionGUID="8078cef3-f9ba-491b-a4c2-89e1149ac7b9" CreationDate="2010-12-13T22:40:23.903" UserId="1685" Text="Site Design, round 2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1742" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="655" RevisionGUID="8078cef3-f9ba-491b-a4c2-89e1149ac7b9" CreationDate="2010-12-13T22:40:23.903" UserId="1685" Text="|discussion|featured|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1743" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="656" RevisionGUID="ae8775be-eaf8-4de4-b1ae-5c7c98355fdb" CreationDate="2010-12-13T23:23:08.450" UserId="8187" Text="That is a much more modern design. The previous iteration was a tad predictable for a site about programming, but this one is much better. I especially like the whiteboards in there, as those, or other planning mechanisms, are a big part of programming. The colour scheme (going from the screenshot) looks very readable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like that last picture - how very meta!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1744" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="657" RevisionGUID="c5d12a14-de37-4624-a7ed-a76ccc956df9" CreationDate="2010-12-13T23:33:01.403" UserId="101" Text="This design is AWESOME.  I think it captures the spirit of Programmers and sets us apart from SO (IMO that's a good thing).  I'm not even going to offer any suggestions - Spot ON.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1745" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="658" RevisionGUID="ba148a0f-79d8-4ba6-8cad-d9f67559e3b5" CreationDate="2010-12-14T00:50:11.063" UserId="2314" Text="###Like###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The overall feel&#xD;&#xA;* The graphic logo on the top and the flow-charts on the side and bottom&#xD;&#xA;* The color palette (like good, solid whiteboard markers - awesome)&#xD;&#xA;* The sticky note&#xD;&#xA;* The navigation&#xD;&#xA;* The font on the number on the vote boxes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Could be improved###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The mixing of different handwriting-style fonts&#xD;&#xA;* The badge style&#xD;&#xA;* The vote boxes&#xD;&#xA;* The tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Suggestions###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* For question titles (and any body text), I think a simple, standard web font (like SO and Pr.SE already have) would be both more readable and not conflict with the styled fonts of the navigation&#xD;&#xA;     [**Edit**]: Now that I see you said it was Yanone Kaffeesatz, which I like, I wonder if I just need to see a higher res image to like it more.&#xD;&#xA;* I think the badge style would look good with light-on-dark like SO.  It compliments the light layout nicely.&#xD;&#xA;* For the badge icons (gold, silver, bronze), I think a black outline might look nice (like you would draw on a whiteboard to help make the light colors more solid)&#xD;&#xA;* I like the font on the vote boxes, but (minor nitpick) I think the box background should surround the word as well as the number. The pale-green is also a little strange (white-board colors are bold)&#xD;&#xA;* I can't really see the tags but I think I like them.  I really like the tags on the SE beta theme - I wonder if we could keep the same look somehow (with the little tag hole punch)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Great work and great idea!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1746" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="659" RevisionGUID="aa590b28-9b13-42ae-a214-66ec897bc874" CreationDate="2010-12-14T01:41:53.193" UserId="3" Text="I don't see anything inherently wrong with your answer. Nor do I see a pattern of poor answers or down-voting on your content. Sometimes down-votes are just somewhat&amp;hellip; random. An isolate vote in either direction is not typically something to worry about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that the occasional random (even undeserved) down-vote can sting a bit. But, as you use the system and gain a bit of reputation, accounting for each and every point becomes less of a concern and you can better enjoy the use of the site. Consider for a moment that, for every deserved down-vote, you've probably also received the occasional up-vote you didn't deserve either. Remember:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Up-vote = +10 points&#xD;&#xA; - Down-vote = -2 points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And in meta, down-votes don't cost *any* reputation. If the vote was not random, someone was simply saying they do not agree with your suggestion. Nothing to worry about." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1747" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="655" RevisionGUID="7a736d21-1eab-4b50-ba37-5698af3ebf7c" CreationDate="2010-12-14T02:18:04.597" UserId="1685" Comment="added 43 characters in body; added 36 characters in body" Text="First, I want to thank you for your valuable feedback for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed&quot;&gt;first design concept&lt;/a&gt;. Programmers.SE is a site about people and conceptual design more than coding. The old design simply did not reflect that; so it failed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I talked to Jeff about this, and he agrees that Programmers.se is much different from Stackoverflow. I quote him:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is when you sit down in front of the compiler,&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is when you sit down in front of the whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Dan Grossman and Jon Purdy also thought a whiteboard theme was more appropriate from their comments regarding the first design review, and I agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since late last week I've been working on a whiteboard theme, and I'm pleased with the outcome. I feel it gives the site a more positive and personal touch, and has some similarities from the Beta theme. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(click to see full res version.)*&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MQPlw.png&quot;&gt;![alt text][2]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The handwritten font in the title, top nav and section header is &lt;a href=&quot;http://callsignkatejones.deviantart.com/art/House-Whiteboard-font-64929545&quot;&gt;House Whiteboard&lt;/a&gt;. Yes, it is actually Hugh Laurie's handwriting. (&quot;It's Not Lupus!&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the question title typeface, I tried a few &quot;handwritten&quot; ones; they looked great visually, but they scored rather poorly on readability. I eventually went with &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/webfonts/family?family=Yanone+Kaffeesatz&amp;subset=latin&quot;&gt;Yanone Kaffeesatz&lt;/a&gt;. I feel it has that soft look, and works well with the whiteboard theme.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please let me know what you think. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**bonus:** (the making of)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/hmenW.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MQPlw.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1748" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="660" RevisionGUID="f9f69ef3-f569-451a-acf0-6c3d55c0b953" CreationDate="2010-12-14T05:51:53.283" UserId="9927" Text="My question was closed as too localized:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25975/best-programming-books-in-2010&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure that &quot;too localized&quot; is a bad thing in this case.  This question, in my mind, would have been useful for people who already own, have read, or have considered buying many of the &quot;classics&quot; (GoF, SICP, Dragon, Pragmatic Programmer, etc, etc, etc).  I'm at fault for not stating my rational in my question, but I asked the question precisely because this would be useful for me.  It's hard to sift through all the past very good books to find the good **new** books.  Given the number of upvotes and stars I think it was useful to others too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, it can be useful for people who want to keep on top of new developments in the field.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cheers,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;JD" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1749" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="660" RevisionGUID="f9f69ef3-f569-451a-acf0-6c3d55c0b953" CreationDate="2010-12-14T05:51:53.283" UserId="9927" Text="Why close time limited &quot;best book&quot; questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1750" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="660" RevisionGUID="f9f69ef3-f569-451a-acf0-6c3d55c0b953" CreationDate="2010-12-14T05:51:53.283" UserId="9927" Text="|support|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1751" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="661" RevisionGUID="17195ca2-12f5-4c13-9d19-5a9a37b4e1bd" CreationDate="2010-12-14T06:09:46.147" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I really like it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not too crazy about ultra-narrow fonts, but as long as it's not used for the really important text (question, answer, and comment bodies), I think it works well with the &quot;whiteboard&quot; theme.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only other concern I have is with the logotype: I get why people latched onto the current design, that `} Programmers {` is a play on the fact that this site is &quot;out of scope&quot; of Stack Overflow, but I'd really like to see that changed for two reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It doesn't fit in with the idea that this is a conceptual site, rather than a coding site.&#xD;&#xA;2. Most of the problems with this site's scope has arisen from people confusing Programmers.SE  as the &quot;dumping ground&quot; for Stack Overflow, where the real questions are asked. Reinforcing that conception with a logo that says &quot;Programmers is the place for out of scope questions&quot; doesn't seem constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In keeping with the idea of using *some* code for the logotype, what about `/* Programmers */` or similar?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1752" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="662" RevisionGUID="c64e8bbd-cbe3-4e79-88f3-ffcb5b7669ae" CreationDate="2010-12-14T06:18:51.957" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Remember that the purpose of the Stack Exchange family of websites isn't to be a closed eco-system for the sole benefit of regular visitors or the question-asker, but to be a resource for people searching for answers. That is, to out-Experts-Exchange Experts Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I'm searching for best programming books in, say, 2012, finding questions that only applied to 2010 isn't helpful and reinforces the problem people have with searching for answers: tons of out-of-date and irrelevant answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of this, questions need to be as timeless and universal as possible. When asking a question, you should be thinking &quot;Can this question help others in a year from now?&quot; Books like *Code Complete* are good recommendations because they have been proven to be relevant for years. It's not clear at all what books of 2010 are going to be all that useful even six months from now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1753" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="663" RevisionGUID="289553b9-677e-4cdf-b2cd-75563bcd3c5d" CreationDate="2010-12-14T06:30:42.527" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Beyond Robert Cartaino's suggestions, it's also possible that the downvote signifies the answer did not work or help solve the problem, which implies the answer was not useful. That is, either the OP or someone having a similar problem did everything you suggested in your answer, but they still could not upvote comments." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1754" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="664" RevisionGUID="b3684b41-bcb7-4deb-8d13-03132fbbde65" CreationDate="2010-12-14T08:59:54.050" UserId="5940" Text="Why are some questions &quot;too localized&quot; while some aren't?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First question,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Programmer's salary in UK][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second question,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Computer jobs in Singapore?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One gets closed and the other doesn't. Both are country specific questions. Do people from different countries deserve different treatment?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/19/5940&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/22818/5940" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1755" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="664" RevisionGUID="b3684b41-bcb7-4deb-8d13-03132fbbde65" CreationDate="2010-12-14T08:59:54.050" UserId="5940" Text="Unfair treatment by the community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1756" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="664" RevisionGUID="b3684b41-bcb7-4deb-8d13-03132fbbde65" CreationDate="2010-12-14T08:59:54.050" UserId="5940" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1757" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="665" RevisionGUID="200e1d6d-c592-4a05-b4ea-7854a3d20e80" CreationDate="2010-12-14T14:26:58.680" UserId="3631" Text="Nice and clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm a bit undecided between that one and the previous one with the cyan theme though...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But both are pretty cool." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1758" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="658" RevisionGUID="35188c8b-9b17-490a-96c2-a429e9c6b844" CreationDate="2010-12-14T14:38:26.260" UserId="2314" Comment="Der, typo" Text="###Like###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The overall feel&#xD;&#xA;* The graphic logo on the top and the flow-charts on the side and bottom&#xD;&#xA;* The color palette (like good, solid whiteboard markers - awesome)&#xD;&#xA;* The sticky note&#xD;&#xA;* The navigation&#xD;&#xA;* The font on the number on the vote boxes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Could be improved###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The mixing of different handwriting-style fonts&#xD;&#xA;* The badge style&#xD;&#xA;* The vote boxes&#xD;&#xA;* The tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Suggestions###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* For question titles (and any body text), I think a simple, standard web font (like SO and Pr.SE already have) would be both more readable and not conflict with the styled fonts of the navigation&#xD;&#xA;     [**Edit**]: Now that I see you said it was Yanone Kaffeesatz, which I like, I wonder if I just need to see a higher res image to like it more.&#xD;&#xA;* I think the badge style would look good with light-on-dark like SO.  It complements the light layout nicely.&#xD;&#xA;* For the badge icons (gold, silver, bronze), I think a black outline might look nice (like you would draw on a whiteboard to help make the light colors more solid)&#xD;&#xA;* I like the font on the vote boxes, but (minor nitpick) I think the box background should surround the word as well as the number. The pale-green is also a little strange (white-board colors are bold)&#xD;&#xA;* I can't really see the tags but I think I like them.  I really like the tags on the SE beta theme - I wonder if we could keep the same look somehow (with the little tag hole punch)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Great work and great idea!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1759" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="666" RevisionGUID="f0e9c44d-aed6-4695-a76e-621e4b446f36" CreationDate="2010-12-14T14:51:17.163" UserId="4711" Text="We have four tags containing the word &quot;career&quot;: career, career-development, career-advice, and career-guidance. I propose a tag merge to &quot;career&quot;. Upvote to agree, answer with your point of contention if you disagree." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1760" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="666" RevisionGUID="f0e9c44d-aed6-4695-a76e-621e4b446f36" CreationDate="2010-12-14T14:51:17.163" UserId="4711" Text="Cloud of career-related tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1761" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="666" RevisionGUID="f0e9c44d-aed6-4695-a76e-621e4b446f36" CreationDate="2010-12-14T14:51:17.163" UserId="4711" Text="|discussion|retag-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1762" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="667" RevisionGUID="f34a52b7-478a-448a-bdf9-49f608323d62" CreationDate="2010-12-14T14:56:18.543" UserId="6509" Text="Here's what I really like about this design:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The whiteboard theme really reinforces that this site is less about code and more about other things surrounding it.  Feels very much like a brainstorming session.&#xD;&#xA;* The typography is clear, yet not cookie cutter.  The handwritten elements are on the less critical repetitive portions of the site while the clear type is on the all important questions.&#xD;&#xA;* Badges don't have too much contrast to pull your attention to them disproportionately.&#xD;&#xA;* I really like this site design.  It's shows a lot of creativity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Minor criticism I'll repeat from the last iteration:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;Add&quot; buttons are done with a different perspective than the remainder of the visual elements.  The badges that curl up are from directly overhead, as is the post-it note.  The light is coming from the top-left and casts the shadow toward the bottom-right as demonstrated by the aforementioned badges, post-it note, as well as the text boxes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;Add&quot; buttons have the perspective from slightly below the button as opposed to overhead, although the shadow is correct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps if you made the top of the buttons slightly smaller than the bottom, like a keyboard, you can maintain the consistent perspective and still make it look like the type of button you want.  If you are modeling the button after a physical button on something you've seen (looks somewhat like a calculator button), hold the physical object in front of you in the same perspective as the post-it note to figure out how to really make it look like it belongs on the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1763" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="659" RevisionGUID="1153e377-5d26-4ea3-ba41-0143f25e94f1" CreationDate="2010-12-14T15:12:21.433" UserId="3" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="I don't see anything inherently wrong with your answer. Nor do I see a pattern of poor answers or down-voting on your content. Sometimes down-votes are just somewhat&amp;hellip; random. An isolate vote in either direction is not typically something to worry about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that the occasional random (even undeserved) down-vote can sting a bit. But, as you use the system and gain a bit of reputation, accounting for each and every point becomes less of a concern and you can better enjoy the use of the site. Consider for a moment that, for every undeserved down-vote, you've probably also received the occasional up-vote you didn't deserve either. Remember:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Up-vote = +10 points&#xD;&#xA; - Down-vote = -2 points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And in meta, down-votes don't cost *any* reputation. If the vote was not random, someone was simply saying they do not agree with your suggestion. Nothing to worry about." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1764" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="668" RevisionGUID="b04fd4d1-0130-4a5e-be5c-2f05480b9d3f" CreationDate="2010-12-14T17:20:02.930" UserId="1685" Text="Hi all,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I have started the CSS conversion of the [new design][1], since it's gotten a lot of positive feedback this time. I'm aiming to launch the site very soon!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Meanwhile, I need some ideas for the new site's 404/Captcha/Error page images. Examples from other SE sites:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cooking site's 404:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Gaming site's CAPTCHA&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Photography site's 404 (Normally for Captcha, we do a &quot;robot&quot; theme.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea is to have these images somewhat light hearted, and reflect the theme of the site. &#xD;&#xA;For the new Programmers site, I will make the images hand-drawn marker style. I need your help with coming up with ideas. You can either describe a concept, or link to an existing image that has the concept you have in mind. I'll recreate it hand drawn style.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/655/site-design-round-2&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PFoPH.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EE8PW.jpg&#xD;&#xA;[4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/bSQ7c.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1765" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="668" RevisionGUID="b04fd4d1-0130-4a5e-be5c-2f05480b9d3f" CreationDate="2010-12-14T17:20:02.930" UserId="1685" Text="404/Error/Captcha Images" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1766" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="668" RevisionGUID="b04fd4d1-0130-4a5e-be5c-2f05480b9d3f" CreationDate="2010-12-14T17:20:02.930" UserId="1685" Text="|discussion|featured|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1767" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="668" RevisionGUID="00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" CreationDate="2010-12-14T17:20:18.733" UserId="1685" />
  <row Id="1768" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="669" RevisionGUID="230be583-e1fd-449e-8705-fda0d989bbcf" CreationDate="2010-12-14T17:36:33.447" UserId="906" Text="beautiful!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;but... }PROGRAMMERS{ won't compile, the braces are backwards&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(yes i know they look like faces, but not that much; to me it looks like a syntax error)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1769" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="670" RevisionGUID="4bde9e7b-8754-4239-a887-e57d397e4198" CreationDate="2010-12-14T18:06:15.630" UserId="7441" Text="I love this new design.&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Just an idea, I would like to see the metaphor of &quot;Sticky Notes on a whiteboard&quot; extended to the **Votes**, **Answers**, **Views** panels to the left of each question. If each of these were a specific colored sticky, I think that would work well, and look really great." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1770" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="671" RevisionGUID="ab3ab72b-bf7a-4171-8e2d-89f4c053a479" CreationDate="2010-12-14T18:10:55.587" UserId="47" Text="How about something resembling Stack Overflow's Search Results page when nothing's been found:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=somethingnotfound&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(assuming no one's posted a question with that word in it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Replace &quot;somethingnotfound&quot; with a phrase suitable for a Programmer's search." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1771" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="672" RevisionGUID="6aeb9740-6f32-42bd-a3f8-efd572dd6e35" CreationDate="2010-12-14T18:41:05.880" UserId="8903" Text="It's a cool design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The whiteboards we use bring a sense of urgency in our minds when it comes to taking action on to-do's, and I believe the whiteboard scheme for the site will help replicate the same feeling when it comes to solving problems, or asking questions that will help the SE community." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1772" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="666" RevisionGUID="af74e224-fcd2-45a4-9929-113df66bad9f" CreationDate="2010-12-14T19:54:42.380" UserId="-1" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[163],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:6415,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Michael&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:101,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Walter&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:389,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;bigown&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="1773" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="666" RevisionGUID="caf4010c-ad32-4453-a67c-eb5f06d84a17" CreationDate="2010-12-14T19:54:42.520" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [[work], [job], [career-development], [employment] =&amp;gt; [career]](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/work-job-career-development-employment-career)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;We have four tags containing the word &quot;career&quot;: career, career-development, career-advice, and career-guidance. I propose a tag merge to &quot;career&quot;. Upvote to agree, answer with your point of contention if you disagree." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1774" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="673" RevisionGUID="9f6c963a-e6d1-4173-88e7-87d9c19f02a0" CreationDate="2010-12-14T20:10:55.790" UserId="389" Text="Maybe a coffee cup tumbled.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe a flow chart what the user should do to get an actual page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe both!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1775" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="673" RevisionGUID="02c8e834-05f0-45ca-b2a8-4d41a1b6cef4" CreationDate="2010-12-14T22:01:59.620" UserId="389" Comment="added 23 characters in body" Text="Maybe a coffee cup tumbled. Maybe over a keyboard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe a flow chart what the user should do to get an actual page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe both!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1776" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="668" RevisionGUID="58bc89bc-e089-4ec2-bb74-eeaadb235d49" CreationDate="2010-12-14T22:16:02.293" UserId="1685" Comment="edited body" Text="Hi all,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I have started the CSS conversion of the [new design][1], since it's gotten a lot of positive feedback this time. I'm aiming to launch the site very soon!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Meanwhile, I need some ideas for the new site's 404/Captcha/Error page images. Examples from other SE sites:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cooking site's 404:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Gaming site's CAPTCHA&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][2]&#xD;&#xA;(Normally for Captcha, we do a &quot;robot&quot; theme.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Photography site's 404 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea is to have these images somewhat light hearted, and reflect the theme of the site. &#xD;&#xA;For the new Programmers site, I will make the images hand-drawn marker style. I need your help with coming up with ideas. You can either describe a concept, or link to an existing image that has the concept you have in mind. I'll recreate it hand drawn style.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/655/site-design-round-2&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PFoPH.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EE8PW.jpg&#xD;&#xA;[4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/bSQ7c.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1777" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="674" RevisionGUID="cb94e778-50eb-42f1-a0c7-cf657770e287" CreationDate="2010-12-15T05:27:31.410" UserId="82" Text="I don't quite like the font, I would like something more like, you know, programming font ( something like Courier )  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Plus I don't use which board too much. I'm not identified (oops, I'll start feeling bad if I'm the only programmer who doesn't use a white board ) anyway it may be just me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I actually like the design, but I'm not 100% identified ( probably this would be more like a designer/architect role? ) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1778" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="675" RevisionGUID="1868b217-c248-4353-b9bc-2e8dddedb836" CreationDate="2010-12-15T07:33:45.110" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="An empty box of waffles might be a cool 404, but I don't know if everyone would get it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1779" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="676" RevisionGUID="64bd0829-2ca4-4771-8074-49ca4f35d3f8" CreationDate="2010-12-15T13:07:44.050" UserId="2329" Text="How about a silver bullet?  (Something that might be sought here and not found.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1784" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="678" RevisionGUID="c69ea626-096e-406b-a7c7-620c981e41a5" CreationDate="2010-12-15T16:05:22.163" UserId="2314" Text="I like the flow chart idea in another answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since a whiteboard fits pretty well with the idea that &quot;something used to be here, but isn't anymore&quot;, you could go with the flow chart drawn on top of something half-erased - some sample code or bullet point list or maybe even multiple layers, like you see on most whiteboards around the office." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1785" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="679" RevisionGUID="97d7f7bc-e357-4fca-ae55-8d6866d9bc56" CreationDate="2010-12-15T17:07:30.563" UserId="6329" Text="A picture of a programmer sitting at their desk, typing away blithely, not realizing a cat unplugged the computer and the monitor is blank." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1786" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="680" RevisionGUID="48207a79-62db-433e-90db-65100a0a8f38" CreationDate="2010-12-15T17:08:41.067" UserDisplayName="user7146" Text="One of my questions was closed and I would like to know how I go about reopening it. There is no 'vote to reopen'." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1787" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="680" RevisionGUID="48207a79-62db-433e-90db-65100a0a8f38" CreationDate="2010-12-15T17:08:41.067" UserDisplayName="user7146" Text="Why is there no 'vote to reopen'?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1788" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="680" RevisionGUID="48207a79-62db-433e-90db-65100a0a8f38" CreationDate="2010-12-15T17:08:41.067" UserDisplayName="user7146" Text="|feature-request|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1790" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="681" RevisionGUID="c1f15e47-d68e-450d-870f-af17a75ea407" CreationDate="2010-12-15T17:49:59.820" UserDisplayName="user1842" Text="There is a vote to reopen, but I believe you have to have the required rep to cast it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently (in beta), it takes 500 rep for anyone to cast that vote, and 250 rep to vote to reopen your own post.  See the [FAQ][1] for the rep enabling numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1792" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="682" RevisionGUID="5cf73a9f-57f5-4150-8dc2-73fc11484c7f" CreationDate="2010-12-15T22:08:42.747" UserId="906" Text="how about a screen showing cryptic compiler error output (e.g. error #404 designated resource identifier not found in web cache), with a motion-blurred hammer descending upon it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1793" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="683" RevisionGUID="857b868f-49c2-4b3c-bb92-a33e11770238" CreationDate="2010-12-15T22:48:19.603" UserId="66" Text="I'm going to make a different argument why I highly dislike the fonts than [OscarRyz][1] did: Its too hard to read. I know giving each site a personal touch is nice, but readability stands above all. I'm in the group that hates the [webapps][2] font: Just too blocky and weird. Every single title for the rest of this sites life will take a second glance just to see if they translated it correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm all for changing the design. Just not the fonts. The original 3 sites have been widely successful on just the same general font style. Why change it now?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/655/site-design-round-2/674#674&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1794" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="684" RevisionGUID="5636d815-7d85-464e-839e-84937baf473c" CreationDate="2010-12-16T07:08:06.507" UserId="9202" Text="This design is good, I like it for the clearance &amp; simplicity over the previous one. Please keep up the good job. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1795" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="685" RevisionGUID="8275cc8e-9c04-4bb6-8a32-fbcf8805ff0f" CreationDate="2010-12-16T11:44:42.603" UserId="666" Text="Very nice design, nice to see that you went for the } Programmers { way...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only two small remarks:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I think that the question section would fit better on a white background,&#xD;&#xA;perhaps you could create the background white between the line under &quot;top questions&quot; and the line above &quot;looking for more?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Similar, some elements don't contrast well, for example: Badges could benefit from a yellow note-like background as you are more likely to put that on a whiteboard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really like the coffee cup logo, the new user note and the add buttons. Well done!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1796" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="675" RevisionGUID="00f1e371-951a-4e45-a8d2-db61097cc114" CreationDate="2010-12-16T16:58:21.970" UserDisplayName="user131" Comment="added 206 characters in body" Text="An empty box of waffles might be a cool 404, but I don't know if everyone would get it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, I think [most gems here][1] should be well out of copyright.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.redditmirror.cc/cache/websites/www.rgbpicture.com_b3z9v/www.rgbpicture.com/wtf-photos-from-the-past.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1797" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="686" RevisionGUID="1d52026f-88f9-4944-9e0e-7e3d8af2f3bb" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:03:09.427" UserDisplayName="user1842" Text="I've voted to close [this question][1], but it shows no close vote, but when I vote to close again it says I've already voted.  See pics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![No close number][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Already closed][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26793/which-nosql-databases-every-programmer-should-know-about&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/YZp6f.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PTYzj.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1798" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="686" RevisionGUID="1d52026f-88f9-4944-9e0e-7e3d8af2f3bb" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:03:09.427" UserDisplayName="user1842" Text="Close number not showing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1799" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="686" RevisionGUID="1d52026f-88f9-4944-9e0e-7e3d8af2f3bb" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:03:09.427" UserDisplayName="user1842" Text="|support|bug|close-reasons|vote-to-close|information-display|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1800" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="655" RevisionGUID="f3182e5f-7870-44d8-a695-401a7d680108" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:16:52.093" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1801" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="687" RevisionGUID="2f04bfe9-740d-41ae-9cbc-fe93e523d88a" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:27:43.623" UserId="1685" Text="Hi all, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The [new design][1] has been deployed just now and I want to congratulate you guys for the official launch!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A few tweaks on the final design from the mockup I posted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - I decided not to use the Yanone font since it is a bit narrow for question titles, especially on the homepage where the titles are repeated. I'm using Tahoma instead, same as the Beta theme.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - I used /* */ for the logo since a lot of people liked it. But I did leave a faint cameo for  } { as well. If the community feels strongly about using } { maybe the mods can open up a poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - CSS3. The final implementation uses some CSS3 elements, such as the button treatment, new user greeting box(same tips box on Ask/Edit pages), multiple background for the body doodles. Our web stats show close to 90% of users use CSS3 capable browsers, so I felt it was OK to do so. IE and older browsers should degrade gracefully.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - The right side doodle didn't make it in, because it'd clash with the content at lower res. However, I may work it in later, using media query.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Error/404/Captcha images. For now I put in some place holders. Feel free to provide more feedback on the [official suggestion thread][2]. Or, if you like what I put in, I can leave them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The new favicons are up, but the old ones may be cached by your browsers. You can always load the following URLs and hard refresh.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  http://sstatic.net/programmers/img/favicon.ico&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  http://sstatic.net/programmersmeta/img/favicon.ico&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see any CSS/Styling issues, please start a new question for the bug report, and tag it with &quot;Design&quot; and &quot;Bug.&quot; It will be a lot easier for me to track new questions than reading the comments replied to this thread.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I typically fix CSS/usability issues asap. As for more subjective styling requests, I tend to let the new design simmer a bit. After having used the Beta Sketchy theme for a few months, it will take a bit of time to get used to the new design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks, and congrats again!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/655/site-design-round-2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/668/404-error-captcha-images" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1802" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="687" RevisionGUID="2f04bfe9-740d-41ae-9cbc-fe93e523d88a" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:27:43.623" UserId="1685" Text="New Design Launched" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1803" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="687" RevisionGUID="2f04bfe9-740d-41ae-9cbc-fe93e523d88a" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:27:43.623" UserId="1685" Text="|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1804" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="688" RevisionGUID="794c79ce-2ce4-4fab-9817-eade18d8216f" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:30:32.577" UserId="1204" Text="Kudos on the new theme; I like it.  I just thought I would bring some styling problems in Internet Explorer 8 to your attention.  I don't have time to post screenshots now, but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  House font does not work on menus in header (questions/tags/users, etc.).  It looks like it is falling back to arial.  `Ask Question` is wrapping around to the next line. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;Actually, House font does not appear to be working at all in IE8.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Whiteboard ghost image does not appear in IE8." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1805" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="688" RevisionGUID="794c79ce-2ce4-4fab-9817-eade18d8216f" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:30:32.577" UserId="1204" Text="Styling problems with new theme and IE8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1806" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="688" RevisionGUID="794c79ce-2ce4-4fab-9817-eade18d8216f" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:30:32.577" UserId="1204" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1807" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="689" RevisionGUID="daf67321-8326-4492-9225-3e6f66ae3868" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:34:03.593" UserId="2654" Text="# Love it!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Except the logo. In my opinion the logo [should be what was voted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like) rather then a few comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also when loading a new page there is a *very* noticeable lag when swapping the fonts out. The nav bar overflows and then re-corrects when the new font drops in. Can this be fixed? (FF 4.b7)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1808" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="690" RevisionGUID="467d31d1-769d-4610-a01b-0444d45ce147" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:35:16.550" UserId="4428" Text="Blood cell badges?  I liked the little &quot;sunken&quot; versions in the mockup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/zOQup.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1810" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="688" RevisionGUID="91338cb7-4d41-435d-8040-bb7caac51c83" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:35:46.660" UserId="1204" Comment="added 39 characters in body" Text="Kudos on the new theme; I like it.  I just thought I would bring some styling problems in Internet Explorer 8 to your attention.  I don't have time to post screenshots now, but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  House font does not work on menus in header (questions/tags/users, etc.).  It looks like it is falling back to arial.  `Ask Question` is wrapping around to the next line. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;Actually, House font does not appear to be working at all in IE8.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Whiteboard ghost image does not appear in IE8.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Site seems to work fine in Firefox." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1811" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="692" RevisionGUID="ec9d0719-3852-4431-a28a-a0d0e479e215" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:39:15.150" UserId="1351" Text="I'm IE8 on WinXP and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - ... House is working fine for me.  Perhaps you need to install it?  Although I don't think I installed it&#xD;&#xA; - ghost image is likewise working for me." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1813" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="693" RevisionGUID="71655f14-0d10-4d73-89c1-120c5e64b190" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:41:19.207" UserId="1351" Text="I was only vaguely aware a site appearance redesign was in the offing, and so when I clicked on a question I had displaying to see if anyone had added anything, suddenly everything changed! I was like &quot;Whoa!&quot; After a moment it all came clear, and I was ENLIGHTENED! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;NICE! MUCH BETTER! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I didn't have a problem with the old design appearance, but this is a huge improvement. Thanks!&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1814" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="694" RevisionGUID="54b93a1f-cb10-4632-b309-895a5e80899e" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:41:30.470" UserId="7426" Text="The community seems to have been doing a good job in keeping the questions on-topic around here. I have helped, and have enjoyed being part of it. However, now that Programmers is out of beta, I no longer have the privileges I had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not trying to whine, I am just wondering if it makes sense to revert all previously gained privileges? In the meantime, the burden has increased for those who retained their privileges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1815" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="694" RevisionGUID="54b93a1f-cb10-4632-b309-895a5e80899e" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:41:30.470" UserId="7426" Text="Is it really a good idea to revert privileges from people who already gained them?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1816" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="694" RevisionGUID="54b93a1f-cb10-4632-b309-895a5e80899e" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:41:30.470" UserId="7426" Text="|discussion|reputation|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1817" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="688" RevisionGUID="81455efc-78d9-4f5d-86af-d6f921d7e16f" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:44:36.183" UserId="1204" Comment="added 52 characters in body; added 84 characters in body; deleted 71 characters in body" Text="Kudos on the new theme; I like it.  I just thought I would bring some styling problems in Internet Explorer 8 to your attention. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  House font does not work on menus in header (questions/tags/users, etc.).  It looks like it is falling back to arial.  `Ask Question` is wrapping around to the next line. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;Actually, House font does not appear to be working at all in IE8.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Whiteboard ghost image does not appear in IE8.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Site seems to work fine in Firefox. OS is Windows 7 Enterprise.  IE8 is 8.0.7600.16385.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/wxqSg.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1818" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="695" RevisionGUID="07c5f691-2214-4917-a5cf-64e31d690f75" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:46:16.080" UserId="37" Text="We can't reproduce this; in IE8 the font loads correctly for multiple members of our development team including me." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1819" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="696" RevisionGUID="d95c6793-9dfe-4b0e-8b40-6c8d43f9ec7f" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:54:04.627" UserId="66" Text="A long time ago we discussed the importance of the accept rate. Here are some examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Should we worry about accept rate?][1] - 16 votes on question, 25 votes + accepted answer on request to remove + 24 combined votes on other answers&#xD;&#xA; - [Can the accept rate be removed?][2] - 16 votes on question + 10 combined votes on answers&#xD;&#xA; - [Why would anyone accept an answer?][3] - Some backbround on why this is an issue&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was a bit disappointed when the new site design didn't hide the accept rates. The general consensus when those questions were asked was that we can't change anything now since were in beta but once we get out of beta, this will change. Which hasn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this something that can be done? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105/should-we-worry-about-accept-rate&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/495/can-the-accept-rate-be-removed&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1820" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="696" RevisionGUID="d95c6793-9dfe-4b0e-8b40-6c8d43f9ec7f" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:54:04.627" UserId="66" Text="Accept rate not hidden? I thought we already discussed this" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1821" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="696" RevisionGUID="d95c6793-9dfe-4b0e-8b40-6c8d43f9ec7f" CreationDate="2010-12-16T18:54:04.627" UserId="66" Text="|bug|design|accept-rate|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1822" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="696" RevisionGUID="67a1f6b5-f99c-43b1-8725-517470aca2c0" CreationDate="2010-12-16T19:00:22.210" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|design|accept-rate|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1823" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="697" RevisionGUID="567c11ec-ff5d-4667-8036-f2f0259bf51d" CreationDate="2010-12-16T19:08:02.623" UserDisplayName="user1842" Text="I'm going to assume this had to do with the ongoing transition out of Beta, since I've now lost my privileges to close." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1824" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="686" RevisionGUID="5d68fc0f-7b7a-4d9d-8638-59c91709cdf6" CreationDate="2010-12-16T19:13:47.733" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|close-reasons|vote-to-close|information-display|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1826" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="699" RevisionGUID="b5010d3d-15fc-4632-83e7-07732770d25b" CreationDate="2010-12-16T19:19:01.897" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The consensus, if you could call it that, on removing the accept rate was mostly achieved before [Great Redisiplining](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice). People can and should be accepting answers: the acceptance criteria on all Stack Exchange sites is &quot;this answer helped me, personally, the most.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1827" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="681" RevisionGUID="d4005c6d-caeb-44ed-8937-e0b895a7f7d0" CreationDate="2010-12-16T19:22:00.123" UserDisplayName="user1842" Comment="deleted 30 characters in body" Text="There is a vote to reopen, but you have to have the required rep to cast it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It takes 3000 rep for anyone to cast that vote, and 250 rep to vote to reopen your own post.  See the [FAQ][1] for the rep enabling numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1828" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="700" RevisionGUID="cd32c46c-f563-4c23-807c-c12ee28c8d94" CreationDate="2010-12-16T19:22:01.183" UserId="2654" Text="# Yes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In beta you want to demonstrate a very active self-moderating community. Out of beta you don't need that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1829" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="701" RevisionGUID="27b39315-359e-4c28-8baf-42e668787ebd" CreationDate="2010-12-16T19:23:50.480" UserId="37" Text="see&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/67054/can-we-grandfather-in-rep-abilities-as-sites-leave-beta&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;TL;DR version -- reputation levels need to be the same across the network.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1830" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="702" RevisionGUID="4baefbb0-d172-4c7e-a6b7-f2f17af045fc" CreationDate="2010-12-16T19:30:09.827" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Now that the site is out of beta, presumably we're going to get migration paths set up to the other sites. It would stand to reason adding [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com) would be a no-brainer, but are there any other migration paths that should be set up?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1831" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="702" RevisionGUID="4baefbb0-d172-4c7e-a6b7-f2f17af045fc" CreationDate="2010-12-16T19:30:09.827" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Off-topic Migration Paths" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1832" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="702" RevisionGUID="4baefbb0-d172-4c7e-a6b7-f2f17af045fc" CreationDate="2010-12-16T19:30:09.827" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1833" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="703" RevisionGUID="1a63a586-eff6-4f47-932d-ff814b3a7436" CreationDate="2010-12-16T19:45:18.770" UserId="2471" Text="Off hand, I would think that [Super User][1] might also be a good one to be able to send questions to. Beyond that, questions relevant to [Webmasters][2] or [Webapps][3] might show up from time to time, but I suspect they would be quite rare.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://superuser.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1834" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="704" RevisionGUID="3c294fd6-ef27-43c5-8bdd-27d792dd7ea0" CreationDate="2010-12-16T20:06:22.253" UserId="2471" Text="I'm not very good with Photoshop, but maybe someone can do something with these?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;This one should be a fairly obvious Office Space reference&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][2]&#xD;&#xA;Somewhat related to Office Space (i.e. the printer) but the 00 error could be expanded for a 404 perhaps?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/2CFjn.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/D6HIi.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1835" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="705" RevisionGUID="4796fd65-6f0b-4011-a484-b91f8247a4d4" CreationDate="2010-12-16T20:08:54.007" UserId="79" Text="404: An empty coffee pot. Example found on Google Images:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![the horror!][1] ([source][2]) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFhMf.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.underconsideration.com/wordit/archives/empty/&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1836" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="704" RevisionGUID="ed2e153a-5ebb-4b5c-8a36-f8de0f72e335" CreationDate="2010-12-16T20:18:04.563" UserId="2471" Comment="deleted 78 characters in body" Text="&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one should be a fairly obvious Office Space reference&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Somewhat related to Office Space (i.e. the printer) but the 00 error could be expanded for a 404 perhaps?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/2CFjn.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/D6HIi.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1838" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="707" RevisionGUID="11f86097-9d92-4173-a118-60455dfea6f6" CreationDate="2010-12-16T20:29:08.103" UserId="389" Text="It's rare but sometimes questions belonging to SF show up here. I think the most migration paths needed, besides SO, are in beta/commit or even in definition phase." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1839" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="708" RevisionGUID="f072a088-9c7a-4284-8991-f886f4f2b40e" CreationDate="2010-12-16T20:33:06.027" UserId="162" Text="I really like the semi-erased white board background" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1841" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="709" RevisionGUID="f853a40a-5cac-4f02-9440-bdfa1149aeca" CreationDate="2010-12-16T21:12:50.237" UserId="5185" Text="It's quite harder to read,&#xD;&#xA;-------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; at least for me." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1842" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="710" RevisionGUID="c41bc510-3554-4cba-82ba-1f8d0b778cb2" CreationDate="2010-12-16T21:27:18.590" UserId="2592" Text="Programmers doesn't seem to have a big problem; there are enough users here above 3k that we can effectively police ourselves." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1843" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="699" RevisionGUID="6b357ab0-396a-411a-bd85-a8aafc976c9c" CreationDate="2010-12-16T22:27:46.380" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 447 characters in body; added 5 characters in body" Text="The consensus, if you could call it that, on removing the accept rate was mostly achieved before [Great Redisiplining](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice). People can and should be accepting answers: the acceptance criteria on all Stack Exchange sites is &quot;this answer helped me, personally, the most.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To clarify, the re-disiplining of Programmers.SE set guidelines that discourage people from asking questions they don't actually need the answers to (i.e. so-called &quot;pointless water cooler nonsense&quot;). With that, the [standard criteria for accepting answers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work) applies to all questions on Programmers.SE like it does on the rest of the Stack Exchange network." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1844" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="711" RevisionGUID="60b05165-61de-408e-91b5-7c0c0de3cac1" CreationDate="2010-12-16T23:57:48.130" UserId="5402" Text="Loving the new design, and just wanted to say that the &quot;post comment&quot; button works much better than before!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1845" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="712" RevisionGUID="84a56dba-f9d4-4e04-9495-084b6ff746a6" CreationDate="2010-12-17T01:06:46.103" UserId="6969" Text="The current dog picture seems good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/cdLG1.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1846" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="713" RevisionGUID="80f80106-30ab-4bf7-a4f5-a5d1331707cb" CreationDate="2010-12-17T01:12:44.817" UserId="6969" Text="How about showing a computer in an office cubicle with the wording &quot;there is no programmer&quot; or &quot;waiting for programmer to come back [from coffee session etc.]...&quot; on the screen? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The computer/monitor can be an old school bulky one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1847" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="714" RevisionGUID="24f94991-e188-4b23-a354-14d90b74d005" CreationDate="2010-12-17T06:06:52.487" UserId="8820" Text="I feel bad as I lose the editing privilege. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1848" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="715" RevisionGUID="c384e413-1809-4cb4-a5d5-eabdae9147d5" CreationDate="2010-12-17T09:01:41.753" UserId="4285" Text="Check out the screen shot:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Apparently Firefox isn't liking House Whiteboard...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/HAnvv.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1849" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="715" RevisionGUID="c384e413-1809-4cb4-a5d5-eabdae9147d5" CreationDate="2010-12-17T09:01:41.753" UserId="4285" Text="The Ask Question link is wrapped" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1850" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="715" RevisionGUID="c384e413-1809-4cb4-a5d5-eabdae9147d5" CreationDate="2010-12-17T09:01:41.753" UserId="4285" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1851" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="716" RevisionGUID="aab82430-5578-4bc4-9226-4cfd8a5e4f36" CreationDate="2010-12-17T10:30:27.997" UserId="1254" Text="I like the design, overall. I'm not quite so keen on the badge icons though. When I look at the users page, their &quot;3dness&quot; makes it harder for me to read/find users' names.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(This is a _minor_ nit.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1852" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="717" RevisionGUID="5947a967-b415-47d7-90f3-39174b75b033" CreationDate="2010-12-17T11:23:25.937" UserId="5095" Text="Anyone else missing the tools link in the header bar since the UI change?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1853" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="717" RevisionGUID="5947a967-b415-47d7-90f3-39174b75b033" CreationDate="2010-12-17T11:23:25.937" UserId="5095" Text="Tools Link Missing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1854" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="717" RevisionGUID="5947a967-b415-47d7-90f3-39174b75b033" CreationDate="2010-12-17T11:23:25.937" UserId="5095" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1855" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="718" RevisionGUID="188605b6-4328-4faf-b428-7efb2d98532d" CreationDate="2010-12-17T12:11:35.487" UserId="101" Text="You need to have 10k points to see the tools again.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1856" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="719" RevisionGUID="77b30e50-de1c-4431-a026-0b7e6c4de2a3" CreationDate="2010-12-17T12:17:02.300" UserId="47" Text="With the site going fully live the reputation privileges have changed. From the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) they are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 15	 Vote up  &#xD;&#xA;15	 Flag offensive  &#xD;&#xA;50	 Leave comments†  &#xD;&#xA;100	 Edit community wiki posts  &#xD;&#xA;125	 Vote down  &#xD;&#xA;150	 Create new tags  &#xD;&#xA;200	 Reduced advertising  &#xD;&#xA;200	 Retag questions  &#xD;&#xA;250	 Vote to close, reopen, or migrate your questions  &#xD;&#xA;1000	 Show total up and down vote counts  &#xD;&#xA;2000	 Edit other people's posts  &#xD;&#xA;3000	 Vote to close, reopen, or migrate any questions  &#xD;&#xA;**10000	 Delete closed questions, access to moderation tools**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(with added emphasis)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check your (new) progress to each level at the [privileges page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1857" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="720" RevisionGUID="eb281d6a-520a-4d51-b292-4edb2a6d447a" CreationDate="2010-12-17T12:23:56.820" UserId="47" Text="A minor point, but the new favicon (coffee cup) has a white rather than transparent background - unlike the other sites:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we have a nice transparent background please?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OpSGg.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1858" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="720" RevisionGUID="eb281d6a-520a-4d51-b292-4edb2a6d447a" CreationDate="2010-12-17T12:23:56.820" UserId="47" Text="Favicon has white rather than transparent background" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1859" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="720" RevisionGUID="eb281d6a-520a-4d51-b292-4edb2a6d447a" CreationDate="2010-12-17T12:23:56.820" UserId="47" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1860" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="721" RevisionGUID="d49568b1-8ecf-4d00-8315-5b3f648eab0a" CreationDate="2010-12-17T13:15:13.177" UserId="101" Text="Now that we're out of Beta, when will Programmers show up in the Data Explorer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1861" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="721" RevisionGUID="d49568b1-8ecf-4d00-8315-5b3f648eab0a" CreationDate="2010-12-17T13:15:13.177" UserId="101" Text="Programmers.SE and Data Explorer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1862" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="721" RevisionGUID="d49568b1-8ecf-4d00-8315-5b3f648eab0a" CreationDate="2010-12-17T13:15:13.177" UserId="101" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1863" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="715" RevisionGUID="4605b3c0-a656-4f0e-b5d3-e29180025952" CreationDate="2010-12-17T13:28:32.457" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-norepro|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1864" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="722" RevisionGUID="4f4de521-e0e4-4017-b063-364646db59d1" CreationDate="2010-12-17T13:30:04.483" UserId="37" Text="what Browser / OS? Can't repro in Firefox current version (3.6.13) / Windows 7 64-bit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/bkhl7.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1865" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="717" RevisionGUID="7f0d4d05-6715-4e3f-af6c-f556a751e56d" CreationDate="2010-12-17T13:30:37.930" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1866" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="688" RevisionGUID="73f24024-3a42-4dc4-8cd1-a18386d14b84" CreationDate="2010-12-17T13:31:02.017" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-norepro|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1867" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="723" RevisionGUID="60114ef7-f6cc-45e9-b1c7-efd0747bac52" CreationDate="2010-12-17T13:42:20.793" UserId="47" Text="In the next monthly data dump *.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The data explorer runs on a copy of the Stack Exchange data which is refreshed around the end of each month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;\* Assuming that it's not affected by Christmas/New Year." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1868" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="694" RevisionGUID="5a23eb12-41c5-4f43-aa76-81fd1ca65341" CreationDate="2010-12-17T13:47:14.240" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-bydesign|reputation|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1871" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="725" RevisionGUID="bdd5cb77-1714-4e84-a433-ff964cbe13ba" CreationDate="2010-12-17T14:21:28.820" UserId="2471" Text="I've seen this on my netbook as well which is running Firefox 3.6.8 with a screen resolution of 1024x600. However, preforming a hard refresh seems to do the trick when it happens so it might be an issue with the style sheets not getting downloaded correctly (i.e. my problem, not yours).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1872" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="720" RevisionGUID="2f7d4236-c306-4106-9fbc-5fa7b26c5517" CreationDate="2010-12-17T14:38:08.457" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1873" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="720" RevisionGUID="01be5453-fd3c-46c0-9f73-29b59647c16a" CreationDate="2010-12-17T14:38:28.063" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1874" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="687" RevisionGUID="b048b7d0-d567-48fc-9492-a7cca8afac5f" CreationDate="2010-12-17T14:38:42.603" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1875" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="726" RevisionGUID="d8144b45-680b-4df4-b4d9-4465fdddaa58" CreationDate="2010-12-17T14:48:56.070" UserId="1130" Text="I was wondering if the SE team had considered adding a Poll option to their framework. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of the questions here are similiar to a poll and it would be nice to total results and view summaries. Personally, I love viewing statistics and seeing how my opinion compares to what other popular opinions are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A site I visit a lot, [www.gamefaqs.com][1], always has a poll of the day up and whenever I go to their site I always take a minute to check it out. It's on the main page in the right sidebar. Polls are based on user submissions and you can view a history of past polls and their results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.gamefaqs.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1876" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="726" RevisionGUID="d8144b45-680b-4df4-b4d9-4465fdddaa58" CreationDate="2010-12-17T14:48:56.070" UserId="1130" Text="Ever thought of adding a Poll-of-the-Day option to SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1877" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="726" RevisionGUID="d8144b45-680b-4df4-b4d9-4465fdddaa58" CreationDate="2010-12-17T14:48:56.070" UserId="1130" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1878" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="727" RevisionGUID="64a95b65-70ad-44b3-ada4-44ec14192c1a" CreationDate="2010-12-17T15:13:48.473" UserId="5095" Text="So, my understanding is that, unlike SO, the accepted answer is usually the one the user finds most useful, rather than correct (questions obviously being subjective).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given this it seems odd that people accept answers so quickly - often within minutes of the first answer being posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should there be some threshold which has to be passed before an answer can be accepted?  After all, while the questioner's opinion of the right answer is important, accepting an answer discourages further answering and limits the sharing of experience on the subject." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1879" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="727" RevisionGUID="64a95b65-70ad-44b3-ada4-44ec14192c1a" CreationDate="2010-12-17T15:13:48.473" UserId="5095" Text="Minimum time / response before answers can be accepted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1880" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="727" RevisionGUID="64a95b65-70ad-44b3-ada4-44ec14192c1a" CreationDate="2010-12-17T15:13:48.473" UserId="5095" Text="|discussion|accepted-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1881" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="728" RevisionGUID="8986e1f9-338e-4b14-989a-d3841dc6b848" CreationDate="2010-12-17T15:26:46.453" UserId="5095" Text="Poll of the day type polls are almost entirely meaningless as statistics, unless you're interested in comparing your opinions to those of a non-representative, self selected group which can't be generalised in any way to meaningfully represent a wider audience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Surely if a question is interesting enough it should just be a straight question, if it's not then no need to ask it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1882" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="729" RevisionGUID="4986fd2c-e686-46d3-ae14-913dd43e2968" CreationDate="2010-12-17T15:29:56.683" UserId="37" Text="There is already such a limit, it is 15 minutes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1883" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="162" RevisionGUID="195521f2-b3e8-4781-a064-75fa94a1ba52" CreationDate="2010-12-17T15:31:30.133" UserId="74" Comment="added 15 characters in body" Text="I'm seeing a lot of great famous Stack Overflow questions asked again here on Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;Why allowing to duplicate those greatest hits questions?   &#xD;&#xA;Here are some examples :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/192793/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-t-shirt  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2212/whats-the-best-programming-t-shirt&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/58640/great-programming-quotes-closed  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-programming-quote&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will you delete or close or merge them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My 0.02c approach:  &#xD;&#xA;1. Temporarily close them as Duplicate on Programmers  &#xD;&#xA;2. When Programmers will be out of the Beta, import\merge them.  &#xD;&#xA;3. Reopen them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Probably I feel it as a problem because I read and loved hundreds of top voted questions of Stack Overflow and now, seeing them popping up again, it's like a Dejavù.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1884" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="728" RevisionGUID="c80362bf-13c1-4b37-8411-912b03e1af7c" CreationDate="2010-12-17T15:32:20.440" UserId="5095" Comment="added 9 characters in body" Text="Poll of the day type polls are almost entirely meaningless as statistics, unless you're interested in comparing your opinions to those of a non-representative, self selected group which can't be generalised in any way to meaningfully represent a wider audience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides, surely if a question is interesting enough it should just be a straight question, if it's not then no need to ask it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1885" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="727" RevisionGUID="9e850661-480a-4d4c-949e-cd4e228aa3e1" CreationDate="2010-12-17T15:34:29.953" UserId="5095" Comment="added 255 characters in body" Text="So, my understanding is that, unlike SO, the accepted answer is usually the one the user finds most useful, rather than correct (questions obviously being subjective).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given this it seems odd that people accept answers so quickly - often within minutes of the first answer being posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should there be some threshold which has to be passed before an answer can be accepted?  After all, while the questioner's opinion of the right answer is important, accepting an answer discourages further answering and limits the sharing of experience on the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**:  In light of Jeff's response that there is already a 15 minute limit.  Shouldn't the limit be slightly higher - a few hours, maybe a single day (to allow all timezones to comment?) - given the more subject / sharing nature of questions here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1886" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="730" RevisionGUID="b769bcd0-f20b-43b0-8b6c-37ea5e07093e" CreationDate="2010-12-17T15:35:06.410" UserId="2471" Text="Currently using Firefox 3.6.3 and I haven't tried this on other browsers, but it might be a bit hard to catch. However, as per the screen shot, the navigation links are overlapping the notification that appears when there are new answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/SDQVK.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1887" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="730" RevisionGUID="b769bcd0-f20b-43b0-8b6c-37ea5e07093e" CreationDate="2010-12-17T15:35:06.410" UserId="2471" Text="Rendering glitch, navigation links overlap new answers notification" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1888" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="730" RevisionGUID="b769bcd0-f20b-43b0-8b6c-37ea5e07093e" CreationDate="2010-12-17T15:35:06.410" UserId="2471" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1889" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="731" RevisionGUID="e4b56820-9159-43b6-9c88-2e9ef2de83af" CreationDate="2010-12-17T17:02:43.150" UserId="1685" Text="I have put in a fix, it will be in the next deployment." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1890" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="732" RevisionGUID="0535d3e2-21ee-4001-bc9f-c16b6a0c2162" CreationDate="2010-12-17T17:05:40.040" UserId="1685" Text="I have updated the css, so in case you can't load the custom font, the fall back font won't be wrapped to 2 lines. The fix will be in the next deployment." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1891" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="733" RevisionGUID="03dfb912-6274-481a-af65-a6c86d14e9bc" CreationDate="2010-12-17T17:07:44.033" UserId="1685" Text="Robert, while I can't reproduce the font glitch, I have updated the CSS for those who can't load the font: the navigation text will still be on one line, instead of wrapped to two." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1892" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="734" RevisionGUID="de9af207-807e-4c71-b7ef-49b6416d149c" CreationDate="2010-12-17T19:07:20.920" UserId="1685" Text="The transparent versions of the favicons(parent site and Meta) will be in the next deployment." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1893" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="735" RevisionGUID="2d7116d6-4899-4c4f-aa09-87befeb2efa9" CreationDate="2010-12-17T19:31:33.667" UserId="13" Text="After reviewing the '[Great Redisiplining][1]' and learning that we now *do* accept answers here, I'm not sure how I should handle accepting some of my previous questions. I have only asked a few, but some of them do not have have specific 'right' answer. For example, '[Do you work contract projects in addition to your full-time job?][2]' and '[What features are missing from the languages you use?][3]' are open-ended forum-type questions that have produced valuable discussion, but there is no correct response which should be accepted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the questions above and perhaps similar ones like it by other members, what is the correct course of action and are they still permissible here under the new guidelines?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10495/do-you-work-contract-projects-in-addition-to-your-full-time-job&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/634/what-features-are-missing-from-the-languages-you-use" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1894" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="735" RevisionGUID="2d7116d6-4899-4c4f-aa09-87befeb2efa9" CreationDate="2010-12-17T19:31:33.667" UserId="13" Text="What if I can't reasonably accept a single answer to a question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1895" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="735" RevisionGUID="2d7116d6-4899-4c4f-aa09-87befeb2efa9" CreationDate="2010-12-17T19:31:33.667" UserId="13" Text="|discussion|accepted-answer|guidelines|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1896" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="736" RevisionGUID="f7414462-7769-406c-95df-a5019cf7e4fc" CreationDate="2010-12-17T19:38:14.210" UserId="47" Text="You don't have to accept an answer, particularly on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there are various options open to you (assuming that you have two answers of equal merit).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Upvote A (10 rep) but accept B (15 rep)&#xD;&#xA;2. Upvote A (10 rep), upvote B (10 rep) but don't accept any answer.&#xD;&#xA;3. Upvote and accept A (25 rep) and award a bounty to B (min 50 rep).&#xD;&#xA;4. and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are only limited by your imagination." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1897" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="735" RevisionGUID="e36d8295-2395-4b5a-8440-3312c3debc2e" CreationDate="2010-12-17T19:40:04.733" UserId="13" Comment="added 299 characters in body; added 225 characters in body" Text="After reviewing the '[Great Redisiplining][1]' and learning that we now *do* accept answers here, I'm not sure how I should handle accepting some of my previous questions. I have only asked a few, but some of them do not have have specific 'right' answer. For example, '[Do you work contract projects in addition to your full-time job?][2]' and '[What features are missing from the languages you use?][3]' are open-ended forum-type questions that have produced valuable discussion, but there is no correct response which should be accepted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a related note, one of my first questions-&#xD;&#xA;[Good furniture for programmers][4], although rather popular, almost certainly does not fit here under the new guidelines; should it be closed? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the questions above and perhaps similar ones like it by other members, what is the correct course of action and are they still permissible here under the new guidelines?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit&#xD;&#xA;--&#xD;&#xA;The chief concern here is that we have chosen not to hide the accept rate from profiles, so I don't really wish to be toting around a badge that says '0% Accept Rate' if it is going to have an adverse affect on my standing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10495/do-you-work-contract-projects-in-addition-to-your-full-time-job&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/634/what-features-are-missing-from-the-languages-you-use&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/742/good-furniture-for-programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1898" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="737" RevisionGUID="d268d114-5669-45a8-ab6f-ea132eb91f21" CreationDate="2010-12-17T20:11:41.653" UserId="10080" Text="The new design has a bug in my Firefox 3.6.13 - the &quot;Ask Question&quot; link is under &quot;Questions&quot; not on the right where it should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PSgsN.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Screen resolution is 1440x900." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1899" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="737" RevisionGUID="d268d114-5669-45a8-ab6f-ea132eb91f21" CreationDate="2010-12-17T20:11:41.653" UserId="10080" Text="new design header bug" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1900" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="737" RevisionGUID="d268d114-5669-45a8-ab6f-ea132eb91f21" CreationDate="2010-12-17T20:11:41.653" UserId="10080" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1901" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="737" RevisionGUID="440962dd-b793-4abc-a57e-9a07da6a0854" CreationDate="2010-12-17T20:18:38.523" UserId="-1" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[715],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:37,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Jeff Atwood&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="1902" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="737" RevisionGUID="78101e73-a345-4d27-991b-5e9001181990" CreationDate="2010-12-17T20:18:38.677" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [The Ask Question link is wrapped](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/715/the-ask-question-link-is-wrapped)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;The new design has a bug in my Firefox 3.6.13 - the &quot;Ask Question&quot; link is under &quot;Questions&quot; not on the right where it should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PSgsN.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Screen resolution is 1440x900." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1903" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="738" RevisionGUID="86f0bf6d-d9e5-410e-bcc8-fff35ad0678c" CreationDate="2010-12-17T20:22:39.897" UserId="10080" Text="I can reproduce this on Firefox on Mac, see: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/737/new-design-header-bug" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1904" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="739" RevisionGUID="1cf98932-341e-4948-b19c-97d2f049d244" CreationDate="2010-12-17T20:24:42.453" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="From the [Meta Stack Overflow FAQ on accepting answers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Which answer should I choose?&#xD;&#xA;- Don't hesitate to accept an answer that is well-written, suggests a good practice and works for you.&#xD;&#xA;- It is generally accepted that you should wait 24 to 48 hours to let a bunch of people have a chance to answer your question. A question with an accepted answer may deter people from looking at a question.&#xD;&#xA;- Make sure that besides working for you, the answer is really good practice. Sometimes after the answer gets accepted, another comes in, uncovering the fact that previous one was in fact a bad hack.&#xD;&#xA;- __The bottom line is to accept the answer that you found to be the most helpful to you, personally.__&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1905" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="740" RevisionGUID="470b6967-d3ae-4f16-9987-6536a8cd6956" CreationDate="2010-12-17T20:39:47.700" UserId="1973" Text="I can reproduce the background glitch in IE8 on Windows XP - SP3 (tried with themes on and off). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using Firebug in Firefox 3 for Linux I see under the container class:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`url(&quot;img/bg-doodle-bottom.png&quot;) no-repeat scroll left bottom, url(&quot;img/bg-doodle-top.png&quot;) no-repeat scroll center 38px transparent`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using the developer tools with IE8 I don't see anything, img/bg-doodle-top.png is not rendered. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*note* I'm don't actually use IE8 in windows XP, but I did want to see whether or not the fonts would display OK in IE8 and only happened to notice that the background was missing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, everything else appears normal. ![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/3V8s9.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1906" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="741" RevisionGUID="3a8c7081-bdc8-4913-9335-b36ab7b159f8" CreationDate="2010-12-17T22:17:02.540" UserId="63" Text="I actually think this is a great idea, for the following reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. They're useless, apart from idle entertainment. Limiting them to 1/day limits the amount of useless fluff posted on the site.&#xD;&#xA;2. People post them anyway. They were discouraged on SO, and they're now &quot;discouraged&quot; here... But, people post them anyway. A quick search hints at the presence of &gt;400 such questions... and the site's only been up for a bit over 3 months! See also #1...&#xD;&#xA;3. They *are* fun. Nothing like seeing a totally-bogus indicator that you're in the moral majority to boost your ego... Except maybe seeing a totally-bogus indicator that the majority of other users really *are* the idiots you think they are." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1907" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="736" RevisionGUID="94d1e544-5d7c-4af5-9173-a0eb50900386" CreationDate="2010-12-17T23:05:53.563" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="You don't have to accept an answer, particularly on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there are various options open to you (assuming that you have two answers of equal merit).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Upvote A (10 rep) but accept B (15 rep)&#xD;&#xA;2. Upvote A (10 rep), upvote B (10 rep) but don't accept any answer.&#xD;&#xA;3. Upvote and accept A (25 rep) and award a bounty to B (min 50 rep).&#xD;&#xA;4. and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are only limited by your imagination.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In response to your update - I don't really consider people's accept rate even on Stack Overflow so it will be even less of an issue here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If people do start commenting on accept rate, then it becomes an issue we need to discuss." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1908" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="742" RevisionGUID="c6eec851-68ee-43d7-8d0f-7f96670e9134" CreationDate="2010-12-17T23:27:24.987" UserId="9635" Text="Can you merge this account &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/9635/sevki to this http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1567/sevki account dear moderator" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1909" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="742" RevisionGUID="c6eec851-68ee-43d7-8d0f-7f96670e9134" CreationDate="2010-12-17T23:27:24.987" UserId="9635" Text="Merge my accounts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1910" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="742" RevisionGUID="c6eec851-68ee-43d7-8d0f-7f96670e9134" CreationDate="2010-12-17T23:27:24.987" UserId="9635" Text="|support|user-accounts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1911" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="743" RevisionGUID="1e3589bf-c199-43ad-916c-0a8f8c9594a1" CreationDate="2010-12-17T23:37:03.693" UserId="47" Text="As neither profile has any associated questions or answers it will be simpler to just delete the one you don't want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you edit the profile of the one you want to delete so I get the right one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once that's done you can add the second OpenId as the alternate id to the remaining profile." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1912" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="744" RevisionGUID="961cfbce-482b-4d7c-ab87-b0960b51a6e9" CreationDate="2010-12-18T00:11:21.193" UserId="4032" Text="I see someone felt like [my delicious Question][1] didn't meet 6 points of decent subjective Questions, and after having a look at [that blog post][2], am curious which of those points did it fall short on?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/25100/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1913" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="744" RevisionGUID="961cfbce-482b-4d7c-ab87-b0960b51a6e9" CreationDate="2010-12-18T00:11:21.193" UserId="4032" Text="How can my Queston be improved?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1914" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="744" RevisionGUID="961cfbce-482b-4d7c-ab87-b0960b51a6e9" CreationDate="2010-12-18T00:11:21.193" UserId="4032" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1915" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="745" RevisionGUID="01ac19fc-81fd-4db3-8733-b5e7bf50566a" CreationDate="2010-12-18T00:47:34.107" UserId="389" Text="Done! You can put a new OpenID in your remain account." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1916" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="746" RevisionGUID="8c0c4803-af64-4be6-8d78-9a1055bdcf20" CreationDate="2010-12-18T00:51:32.813" UserId="10080" Text="I recently asked a question about how PHP can be improved: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27564/what-features-you-like-to-have-in-php-language&#xD;&#xA;which was promptly closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; - even though I specifically asked constructive questions and provided guideline to bring constructive answers - and got some too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, we have such questions as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Is there anyone who has used Python/Ruby and PHP for a long time and still prefer PHP?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why is php considerd the darkside of programing?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why do you hate/love PHP][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've re-read the guidelines and I am still wondering - can somebody explain what definition of &quot;constructive&quot; and &quot;subjective&quot; being used here so that question asking for specific opinions of people to improve X is closed as &quot;subjective&quot; but question soliciting subjective rants on hating X is perfectly fine? Could you provide me an example of how could I have written my question so it would be in accordance with the guidelines? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tried to (1) inspire answers that explain “why” and “how” (2) to have long, not short, answers (3) have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone (4) invite sharing experiences over opinions (5) insist that opinion be backed up with fact and (6) have more than just mindless social fun. Obviously, I failed. Moreover, I still fail - I fail to see where exactly my failure was. Could you please point it out to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22742/is-there-anyone-who-has-used-python-ruby-and-php-for-a-long-time-and-still-prefer&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2323/why-is-php-considerd-the-darkside-of-programing&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/696/why-do-you-hate-love-php" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1917" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="746" RevisionGUID="8c0c4803-af64-4be6-8d78-9a1055bdcf20" CreationDate="2010-12-18T00:51:32.813" UserId="10080" Text="Confused about questions allowed here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1918" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="746" RevisionGUID="8c0c4803-af64-4be6-8d78-9a1055bdcf20" CreationDate="2010-12-18T00:51:32.813" UserId="10080" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|subjective|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1919" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="747" RevisionGUID="7e5103a4-57a3-432b-a85f-b78f6a671d23" CreationDate="2010-12-18T02:07:35.067" UserId="10381" Text="It seems from your own guidelines that you restricted answers *too* much.  You at different points ask for something that *does not* change it into a different language, however you asked that it make changes to the language.  You then go on to ask for broad changes rather than nitpicking bugs.  This would, by necessity, fundamentally change the language.  A better question might be one asking for changes to the model provided by PHP, rather than asking for changes for the language.  Next time, try to give some sort of context as well: Are you attempting to create a better version of PHP, or are you just looking for its limitations?  Anyway, that's why I think your post was closed.  It may have just been a misunderstanding." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1920" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="748" RevisionGUID="ab45ddaf-f956-4f8c-abb8-2cd7108f3538" CreationDate="2010-12-18T02:10:52.213" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="They aren't perfectly fine, and trying to base the argument for why your question should be open when similar questions remain open is an exercise in personal frustration. The site is moderated by other users who do not catch every bad question that slips through the cracks, but calling attention to those questions does let people handle them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [six guidelines for good subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) are what defines a good, constructive, subjective question. Your question *and* the questions you link fail to meet those criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One additional point to mention is that questions on Stack Exchange generally require a need to be satisfied: on Programmers.SE, that need is for the question to help the asker and other visitors do their jobs better. When someone asks a question, it's presumed the answer to the question will directly improve and/or solve the problem that person is having.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is nothing about listing all the reasons why you and others hate (or love) PHP, or any other language, that helps anyone do their jobs better or solves a problem: it's pointless commiseration about something you don't like. If you're looking for a place to vent about whatever annoys you at the moment, this is not the site for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end, all of the questions fail point three, they start off with requesting a non-constructive and partisan tone (what do you hate about a language isn't constructive), they fail point six; they're nothing more than mindless social fun. From the answers on your question in particular, it failed the rest of the points as well. Nobody is explaining why, they're all short answers, and they're wrote opinions not backed up with facts or experiences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think you can improve your question so that you can elicit answers that are useful to other people and help people do their jobs better, by all means edit your question so that people can vote to reopen it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1921" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="749" RevisionGUID="ec563edb-d0f7-42e8-b6a4-48b828b646ca" CreationDate="2010-12-18T02:13:04.347" UserId="10381" Text="I'm afraid this sort of question is prone to creating a flame war.  Without adequate guidelines, questions like this tend to spiral into arguments.  You may also want to check rule #6 of the subjective questions guidelines.  I see no practical purpose for this question other than as &quot;mindless social fun.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1922" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="748" RevisionGUID="99075796-0e51-4849-9631-953196a03391" CreationDate="2010-12-18T02:15:53.490" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 165 characters in body" Text="They aren't perfectly fine, and trying to base the argument for why your question should be open when similar questions remain open is an exercise in personal frustration. The site is moderated by other users who do not catch every bad question that slips through the cracks, but calling attention to those questions does let people handle them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [six guidelines for good subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) are what defines a good, constructive, subjective question. Your question *and* the questions you link fail to meet those criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One additional point to mention is that questions on Stack Exchange generally require a need to be satisfied: on Programmers.SE, that need is for the question to help the asker and other visitors do their jobs better. When someone asks a question, it's presumed the answer to the question will directly improve and/or solve the problem that person is having.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless you happen to be one of the developers of the Zend Engine or a core PHP developer (which honestly, I highly doubt you are), there is nothing about listing all the reasons why you and others hate (or love) PHP—or what you think the language can do to be improved—that helps anyone do their jobs better or solves a real problem: it's pointless commiseration about something you don't like. If you're looking for a place to vent about whatever annoys you at the moment, this is not the site for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end, all of the questions fail point three, they start off with requesting a non-constructive and partisan tone (what do you hate about a language isn't constructive), they fail point six; they're nothing more than mindless social fun. From the answers on your question in particular, it failed the rest of the points as well. Nobody is explaining why, they're all short answers, and they're wrote opinions not backed up with facts or experiences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think you can improve your question so that you can elicit answers that are useful to other people and help people do their jobs better, by all means edit your question so that people can vote to reopen it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1923" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="748" RevisionGUID="805a41e5-bd4c-4dee-bae9-52a84aed1d8d" CreationDate="2010-12-18T02:30:36.597" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 356 characters in body" Text="### Edit&#xD;&#xA;The following is general advice given no context about the question other than the question body itself. It turns out you, of all people, would *actually* be helped by the question, so assuming you edit the question to reflect why it'd help you (i.e., you explain who you are), it should (and most likely will) be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They aren't perfectly fine, and trying to base the argument for why your question should be open when similar questions remain open is an exercise in personal frustration. The site is moderated by other users who do not catch every bad question that slips through the cracks, but calling attention to those questions does let people handle them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [six guidelines for good subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) are what defines a good, constructive, subjective question. Your question *and* the questions you link fail to meet those criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One additional point to mention is that questions on Stack Exchange generally require a need to be satisfied: on Programmers.SE, that need is for the question to help the asker and other visitors do their jobs better. When someone asks a question, it's presumed the answer to the question will directly improve and/or solve the problem that person is having.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless you happen to be one of the developers of the Zend Engine or a core PHP developer (which honestly, I highly doubt you are), there is nothing about listing all the reasons why you and others hate (or love) PHP—or what you think the language can do to be improved—that helps anyone do their jobs better or solves a real problem: it's pointless commiseration about something you don't like. If you're looking for a place to vent about whatever annoys you at the moment, this is not the site for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end, all of the questions fail point three, they start off with requesting a non-constructive and partisan tone (what do you hate about a language isn't constructive), they fail point six; they're nothing more than mindless social fun. From the answers on your question in particular, it failed the rest of the points as well. Nobody is explaining why, they're all short answers, and they're wrote opinions not backed up with facts or experiences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think you can improve your question so that you can elicit answers that are useful to other people and help people do their jobs better, by all means edit your question so that people can vote to reopen it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1924" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="750" RevisionGUID="82e3bf44-d38d-4d0d-ac1f-d3f948dd9b27" CreationDate="2010-12-18T05:10:04.500" UserId="6329" Text="I think your post was closed too soon and there are many other related posts with good answers. I was surprised to see it closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a theory that maybe your question could have been more polished and on point, and that it was only surface-level reasons why it was closed. The list of examples might have put the emphasis of your question off track, because they were all examples of what you *wouldn't* like to see, which might have left in the reader's mind &quot;oh boy, these are the kinds of answers this will get, let me close it fast.&quot; The word like &quot;wish&quot; might have also made it seem less engaging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think you should try again. But next time, **be sure the title is grammatically correct**: &quot;What features [would] you like to have in [the] PHP language?&quot; Or, better: &quot;What features are missing from PHP?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1925" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="751" RevisionGUID="1f4f4748-ae79-4a49-9a84-13cbc6bc4a93" CreationDate="2010-12-18T05:30:33.010" UserId="6329" Text="The description says &quot;Voted on 600 questions and 25% or more of total votes are on questions.&quot; So, to recap: Voted on questions, and 25% were... *questions?* (As opposed to the questions that aren't questions?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does that mean you voted 600 times (questions and answers), and 25% were on questions only? If so, I should have gotten this badge 200 votes ago. And I assume this applies to only the vote count that shows up on my profile (i.e. it doesn't include voting-up comments)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, one of three things is wrong: (1) the description of the Electorate badge (it's at least confusing); (2) the computation to award the Electorate badge; or (3) my count of my question votes. Given that so few seem to have it, I'm thinking it might be #2, and at least #1 should be clarified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a way to tell what my real percentage is? Lately I've been going through the top votes, the bottom votes, and everything in between to try to help those really interesting questions get closer to the top. Perhaps I was voting on questions too frequently, so the votes got discounted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, the badge is a strange incentive: because I was close, I wouldn't vote up answers as often as I should. Perhaps the Electorate badge limit should be absolute (150 questions) and not a percentage?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1926" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="751" RevisionGUID="1f4f4748-ae79-4a49-9a84-13cbc6bc4a93" CreationDate="2010-12-18T05:30:33.010" UserId="6329" Text="What's the criteria for the Electorate badge?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1927" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="751" RevisionGUID="1f4f4748-ae79-4a49-9a84-13cbc6bc4a93" CreationDate="2010-12-18T05:30:33.010" UserId="6329" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1928" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="751" RevisionGUID="5ca09e0e-c9b2-4b23-a474-5349f7b24500" CreationDate="2010-12-18T05:43:52.650" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1929" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="752" RevisionGUID="56c408ff-73cc-4152-9f4d-1d9b19f61a4f" CreationDate="2010-12-18T05:46:11.257" UserId="37" Text="It means you must have voted on 600 questions and 25% of your total votes must be on questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6329&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now you've cast 801 votes, so unless at *least* 600 of those votes were on questions, you won't get the badge." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1930" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="753" RevisionGUID="22c0fc86-3b9a-4723-8503-1abb4ddd2ff1" CreationDate="2010-12-18T05:48:45.547" UserId="500" Text="I was messing around with my CV in StackOverflow Careers and I noticed that I can associate my SO, Meta SO, SU, and SF accounts to my CV. I didn't see an option for Programmers so I figured it isn't allowed yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will this feature be allowed in the future?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some thoughts**: Honestly, I'm a bit skeptical about it because of the issues we're having with off-topic questions right now. It's hard to measure the accuracy of the reputation here because of that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1931" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="753" RevisionGUID="22c0fc86-3b9a-4723-8503-1abb4ddd2ff1" CreationDate="2010-12-18T05:48:45.547" UserId="500" Text="Can we associate our Programmers account to our StackOverflow Careers CV?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1932" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="753" RevisionGUID="22c0fc86-3b9a-4723-8503-1abb4ddd2ff1" CreationDate="2010-12-18T05:48:45.547" UserId="500" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1933" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="720" RevisionGUID="38272bd3-ee66-49a4-9a5a-efb6c51cec41" CreationDate="2010-12-18T06:44:25.960" UserId="1685" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1934" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="730" RevisionGUID="916abf74-2ce6-4300-99d2-a1942d412b1b" CreationDate="2010-12-18T06:44:50.030" UserId="1685" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1935" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="742" RevisionGUID="18c8d90c-d0f9-4f84-a944-345dedc30f5f" CreationDate="2010-12-18T17:52:06.583" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|user-accounts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1942" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="744" RevisionGUID="8178073c-e75f-42a1-bf28-82224c488232" CreationDate="2010-12-19T09:29:38.167" UserId="4032" Comment="expansion" Text="I see someone felt like [my delicious Question][1] didn't meet 6 points of decent subjective Questions, and after having a look at [that blog post][2], am curious which of those points did it fall short on?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[**update**] In response to a Comment, here's an expansion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. pass&#xD;&#xA;2. not too relevant here; observation is more important than personal experience here (not sure if observation==opinion)&#xD;&#xA;3. pass&#xD;&#xA;4. see (2)&#xD;&#xA;5. see (2)&#xD;&#xA;6. not sure of this one&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyways, it was interesting to learn about people you might not even, but are having an influence in your life as a programmer. Maybe that's not enough, but then the decision would mean some other Questions got to be closed. I'm here referring to Questions like favorite programming language, or even the [Question][3] I linked to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/25100/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1202/who-is-the-greatest-and-most-influential-programmer-of-all-time" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1943" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="756" RevisionGUID="5203ec64-3542-44ba-9e83-98dc7948bedc" CreationDate="2010-12-19T10:49:53.250" UserId="2439" Text="I'm more active at *programmers* than here at *meta*, so I'm sure this is just something I missed. However, nothing seems to be poppin' up while searching, so I'll just ask bluntly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Upon visiting programmers...com/reputation today there was a new button *Trigger reputation recalc*. Upon clicking on it, I gather it got recalculated and on site I lost about 200 reputation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know what that is about. Can someone point me to the link to the discussion regarding that? Or just give a quick overview?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1944" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="756" RevisionGUID="5203ec64-3542-44ba-9e83-98dc7948bedc" CreationDate="2010-12-19T10:49:53.250" UserId="2439" Text="A quick question about reputation recalc" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1945" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="756" RevisionGUID="5203ec64-3542-44ba-9e83-98dc7948bedc" CreationDate="2010-12-19T10:49:53.250" UserId="2439" Text="|discussion|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1946" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="757" RevisionGUID="290558cd-c89e-4955-afd1-43eb52acc8f1" CreationDate="2010-12-19T12:31:15.350" UserId="3446" Text="The recalc removes any up- or downvotes you got for answers or questions that have been deleted. It also gives you back the one rep you lost for downvoting an answer or question that has then been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically it undoes any changes that a deleted post had on your reputation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1947" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="757" RevisionGUID="9e0f6c45-0bd5-4b57-bc3f-ba9198b4af93" CreationDate="2010-12-19T12:48:41.613" UserId="3446" Comment="added 197 characters in body" Text="The recalc removes any up- or downvotes you got for answers or questions that have been deleted. It also gives you back the one rep you lost for downvoting an answer or question that has then been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically it undoes any changes that a deleted post had on your reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the feature request in response to which this feature has been introduced: [Self-instigated rep recalc](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/14200/self-instigated-rep-recalc)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1948" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="758" RevisionGUID="518c88b6-f2f9-40fb-a605-1d99ce19897c" CreationDate="2010-12-19T14:52:20.493" UserId="47" Text="The fact that you've said that points 2, 4 and 5 are &quot;not too relevant here&quot;, marked 1 and 3 as &quot;pass&quot; and admitted that you're &quot;not sure&quot; of point 6 would indicate to me that the question certainly doesn't meet enough (or indeed any) of the 6 points to be *relevant* **and** *useful* here on programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually I'm not sure of the question you lined to either - but as my close vote would be final I'm not going to do anything with it at the moment." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1949" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="759" RevisionGUID="4ed06718-e9af-419a-a7fd-37d9257e1b5c" CreationDate="2010-12-19T16:54:21.917" UserId="8073" Text="Earlier in beta there used to be option to share the question on social/networking site, but now it has been removed. Is it intentional or are there any plans to reintroduce it later on." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1950" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="759" RevisionGUID="4ed06718-e9af-419a-a7fd-37d9257e1b5c" CreationDate="2010-12-19T16:54:21.917" UserId="8073" Text="Option for sharing questions on social " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1951" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="759" RevisionGUID="4ed06718-e9af-419a-a7fd-37d9257e1b5c" CreationDate="2010-12-19T16:54:21.917" UserId="8073" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1952" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="760" RevisionGUID="066b6e03-b328-4e8c-ae0b-956ca2a63495" CreationDate="2010-12-19T17:23:59.347" UserId="47" Text="The options are still there if the question has no answer, but disappears once there's at least one answer. This is true for **all** sites including Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been asked before on http://meta.stackoverflow.com (I can't find the link right now), and Jeff said that it wasn't going to happen for the existing sites.&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CzSO1.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1953" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="744" RevisionGUID="1085a90c-2952-431a-a1d3-90d19b97fb02" CreationDate="2010-12-19T17:50:08.067" UserId="389" Comment="edited title" Text="How can my Question be improved?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1954" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="761" RevisionGUID="80fe8606-de11-41e2-ab07-d5056f7cd0c6" CreationDate="2010-12-19T18:31:10.683" UserId="2616" Text="They do on all other sites AFAIK and I'd like to be able to do some of the things that I'm currently unable to do - my reputation is an unfortunate 7 at the moment." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1955" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="761" RevisionGUID="80fe8606-de11-41e2-ab07-d5056f7cd0c6" CreationDate="2010-12-19T18:31:10.683" UserId="2616" Text="Don't associated acounts get 100 rep for that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1956" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="761" RevisionGUID="80fe8606-de11-41e2-ab07-d5056f7cd0c6" CreationDate="2010-12-19T18:31:10.683" UserId="2616" Text="|support|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1957" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="762" RevisionGUID="47de326d-f907-4ff7-b698-a0e7b98b21d1" CreationDate="2010-12-19T18:48:13.800" UserId="47" Text="As long as one of the accounts has more than 200 rep you'll get the bonus. You can only get the bonus once per site, so if you're on 3 sites (A, B and C) and A has &gt; 200 rep. When you associate A -&gt; B you'll get 100 points on both A and B. Then when you associate A -&gt; C you'll just get the 100 point bonus on C. Associating B -&gt; C is effectively done by this point, but wouldn't get you any more bonus points anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've now got over 200 rep on Programmers so if you break the association and remake it you'll get the 100 point bonus." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1958" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3" RevisionGUID="a6810e73-429d-4462-8387-8078f8a35764" CreationDate="2010-12-20T02:46:31.950" UserId="2314" Comment="typo" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Write an Elevator Pitch / Tagline](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Note: &#xD;&#xA;We are closing this domain naming thread. It is asking the *entirely* wrong question. See this blog post for details: [Domain Names: Wrong Question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/domain-names-the-wrong-question/) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're going to keep the name programmers.stackexchange.com. But we WILL be setting up redirects from the more &quot;popular&quot; domains names. (e.g. seasonedadvice.com to cooking.stackexchange.com, basicallymoney.com to money.stackexchange.com, and others as we go through the list).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;New question: &quot;**Write an Elevator Pitch / Tagline!**&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[**Click here to contribute ideas and vote.**](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*[original message text below]*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the big 7 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - One answer per answer please&#xD;&#xA; - Only .com domain names please&#xD;&#xA; - Only untaken domain names please (use whois)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please use **lowercase characters only** in domain name!  &#xD;&#xA;DomainName.com is more readable, but we have to register domainname.com!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1959" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="763" RevisionGUID="ae0df631-0d93-41a5-8bbb-c7a3ce4d4027" CreationDate="2010-12-20T14:37:30.210" UserId="6415" Text="I'm curious about the &quot;Visit Meta&quot; section on the main page. What are the criteria for a question landing there? Many of the questions (at least as far as I can tell) are older." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1960" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="763" RevisionGUID="ae0df631-0d93-41a5-8bbb-c7a3ce4d4027" CreationDate="2010-12-20T14:37:30.210" UserId="6415" Text="&quot;Visit Meta&quot; section" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1961" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="763" RevisionGUID="ae0df631-0d93-41a5-8bbb-c7a3ce4d4027" CreationDate="2010-12-20T14:37:30.210" UserId="6415" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1962" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="764" RevisionGUID="4d512c50-792c-4f45-adae-a34c77b1e6fa" CreationDate="2010-12-20T14:46:24.337" UserId="47" Text="One of the criteria is that if the question is tagged `[featured]` then it will appear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are others, but I can't find the original MSO post that explains them right now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1963" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="516" RevisionGUID="644e97a3-6860-457c-b4ba-2137abbd42b6" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:00:37.113" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|faq|recommendations|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1964" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="759" RevisionGUID="081b4f4d-53bb-4f37-876d-5d191e100609" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:05:17.063" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|feature-request|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1965" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="726" RevisionGUID="911b4abf-6125-4017-9ceb-e5efe7011b27" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:07:04.460" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1966" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="764" RevisionGUID="66977029-3c10-4b59-a350-97a600ab9c19" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:07:55.147" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="One of the criteria is that if the question is tagged `[featured]` then it will appear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are others, but I can't find the original MSO post that explains them right now, but they are related to the activity on the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1967" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="680" RevisionGUID="a07819ce-f3e2-454f-850a-7b4c02f76ae3" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:08:09.843" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-bydesign|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1968" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="632" RevisionGUID="f7923642-9b52-4cc6-a0af-610523895584" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:09:31.780" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1969" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="607" RevisionGUID="cbc09e3b-7bb4-4060-9657-a1b55bb3ed81" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:10:08.393" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1970" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="607" RevisionGUID="0d33ecf5-6bea-46c7-b5ae-0d634667f3bc" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:10:26.413" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1971" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="565" RevisionGUID="06e408e8-3d20-48fe-a98c-260d71520e9c" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:13:24.523" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1972" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="495" RevisionGUID="09556fb2-ee75-419c-9484-e4e8f90763e7" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:15:04.277" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|accept-rate|removal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1974" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="498" RevisionGUID="4f66a859-6bc1-478f-877e-e838d0e45734" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:15:39.143" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1975" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="282" RevisionGUID="d0597192-3a57-439c-a99f-deb93e43325d" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:19:15.273" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|closed-questions|removal|list-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1976" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="441" RevisionGUID="89ff7478-fd18-425d-a0e2-dc5f93c99614" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:19:54.943" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|feature-request|status-deferred|close-reasons|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1977" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="429" RevisionGUID="623b6c0e-4c21-495c-beb8-ad9e972f1cca" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:20:36.193" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|rant|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1978" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="299" RevisionGUID="7f1b36cd-f16d-4957-beeb-3fb136d8f6f2" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:20:55.553" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1979" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="308" RevisionGUID="7c8025c3-cf66-4574-a715-1c847ac53d87" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:27:46.797" UserId="389" Comment="post link to MSO" Text="We have a lot of code here. I think everyone agree that we need syntax highlighting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;[Support this feature request on MSO][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/72797/enable-syntax-highlighting-to-code-blocks-on-programmers-se" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1980" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="308" RevisionGUID="7c8025c3-cf66-4574-a715-1c847ac53d87" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:27:46.797" UserId="389" Comment="post link to MSO" Text="|feature-request|code|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1981" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="145" RevisionGUID="1d5927af-d40e-4bce-ab8b-711a7bbfebf8" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:28:10.480" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1982" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="47" RevisionGUID="71e2dabb-d305-48be-b28b-e0a28322eeae" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:28:30.387" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|answers|voting|polling|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1983" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="159" RevisionGUID="16f7635f-45ae-484b-9139-1c103dc5e878" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:28:48.280" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|down-votes|votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1986" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="82" RevisionGUID="fe1854ae-c6cc-46e9-9802-e40007138396" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:41:51.300" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-deferred|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1987" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="19" RevisionGUID="2e8f2fe8-66c9-4423-b2b9-c94b7481a3c6" CreationDate="2010-12-20T15:42:10.863" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|questions|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1988" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="765" RevisionGUID="0668b3e6-ed88-4bc2-a168-e62bc4553d4e" CreationDate="2010-12-20T16:47:51.023" UserId="7771" Text="How i can follow a question without bookmarking the question web page ? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is there any specific way to follow an interest question and be mailed when some one write down another answer or some change are made ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1989" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="765" RevisionGUID="0668b3e6-ed88-4bc2-a168-e62bc4553d4e" CreationDate="2010-12-20T16:47:51.023" UserId="7771" Text="follow a question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1990" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="765" RevisionGUID="0668b3e6-ed88-4bc2-a168-e62bc4553d4e" CreationDate="2010-12-20T16:47:51.023" UserId="7771" Text="|feature-request|questions|list-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1991" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="766" RevisionGUID="b27f81dd-89e7-4918-a5c8-8248591a9165" CreationDate="2010-12-20T16:57:44.490" UserId="6415" Text="As I've participated in this site I've seen quite a few questions whose answer will always be, &quot;It depends.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that all answers should give a justification for their opinion. Answers like [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28314/is-the-ternary-operator-evil/28316#28316) seem not helpful at all, since they don't give an opinion, much less a justification for that opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone have suggestions for giving constructive answers on this kind of question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1992" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="766" RevisionGUID="b27f81dd-89e7-4918-a5c8-8248591a9165" CreationDate="2010-12-20T16:57:44.490" UserId="6415" Text="How to answer &quot;it depends&quot; questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1993" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="766" RevisionGUID="b27f81dd-89e7-4918-a5c8-8248591a9165" CreationDate="2010-12-20T16:57:44.490" UserId="6415" Text="|discussion|questions|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1994" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="767" RevisionGUID="84a6a7f3-9c3d-4008-ab52-cedb10583395" CreationDate="2010-12-20T16:59:40.057" UserId="6415" Text="You can mark it as a favorite (the star underneath the vote area next to the question). Then whenever the question is ansered or commented on, the envelope next to your username at the top of the window will turn red. You can click on that, and it will take you to your inbox where you can see what changes occurred." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1995" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="768" RevisionGUID="933ac3cf-6fc9-4fac-8d39-741c708dac86" CreationDate="2010-12-20T17:04:32.007" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="You can't go wrong with what you know from your experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can think of things that'll cause the answer to change, preface your answer with that you're assuming. An even better answer would provide multiple versions of the answer with different assumptions (i.e., &quot;If X is Y and Z is A, this is right, otherwise that is right&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of times questions that elicit &quot;it depends&quot; answers aren't very good questions to begin with: narrowing down the focus of a question so it actually demands a non-wishy-washy response is a hard thing to do for a lot of people. If you think you can improve the question, you should either by commenting or editing. Otherwise, the question really should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In terms of *other* people answering with non-answers, downvote them without pity, or remorse, or fear and if you are so inclined, leave a comment as to why. &quot;It depends&quot; doesn't help anyone. We all know it depends, that's why the question was asked in the first place." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1996" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="769" RevisionGUID="07e6bbc4-9c66-4e61-9f19-8fb78c3ade99" CreationDate="2010-12-20T17:28:01.100" UserId="2314" Text="Remember SE sites are an economy - this is exactly what down votes are for. If you believe an answer is unhelpful, show it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[**Edit**] Ironically, I probably should have posted this as a comment instead, since that wasn't exactly what your question was about." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1997" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="770" RevisionGUID="f824c8c9-bedb-43f4-ad86-054b87eaef25" CreationDate="2010-12-20T21:01:48.230" UserId="47" Text="There's also the RSS feed - found at the bottom right _\| of every question page." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1998" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="765" RevisionGUID="a421dc1e-d25c-43f7-b9e6-08267acca690" CreationDate="2010-12-20T21:18:45.617" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|questions|list-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1999" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="771" RevisionGUID="4544914e-38ae-47db-a1eb-ce35b5bca264" CreationDate="2010-12-20T23:36:56.957" UserId="37" Text="It's built based on &quot;hot&quot; meta question lists, plus the [featured] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Click here to see what it uses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/?tab=week  &#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/?tab=hot  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... in that order&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [meta-tag:featured] tag is problematic because users tend to leave the featured tag on.. *forever*. Which I disagree with, so we'll be pushing some changes on that soon.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2000" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="772" RevisionGUID="ab87bf98-77f0-40ff-a067-717821f08071" CreationDate="2010-12-20T23:41:43.113" UserId="37" Text="Indeed, this is covered in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective which is linked in the faq and every question closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;, as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Great subjective questions invite sharing experiences over opinions.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Certainly experiences inform opinions, but the best subjective questions unabashedly and unashamedly prioritize sharing actual experiences over random opinions. It’s more useful to share with us what you’ve done than what you think. Everyone has an opinon. It takes zero effort or imagination to have an opinion about anything and everything. But people who have done things, real things in the world, and have the scars and arrows in their back to show for it — now that’s worth sharing. You should be uniquely qualified to have your opinion based on the specific experiences you had. And you should share those experiences, and more specifically what you learned from your experiences, with us!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Opinion isn’t all bad, so long as it’s backed up with something other than “because I’m an expert”, or “because I said so”, or “just because”. Use your specific experiences to back up your opinions, as above, or point to some research you’ve done on the web or elsewhere that provides evidence to support your claims. We like you. We want to believe you. But like wikipedia itself, {{citation needed}}. And good subjective questions make this clear from the outset: back it up!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2001" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="412" RevisionGUID="b7303955-96e2-4023-8fa5-1c885f8ab31e" CreationDate="2010-12-21T00:25:06.800" UserId="389" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|top-7|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2002" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="773" RevisionGUID="6da1f546-69fb-479f-b4be-f115167a9b46" CreationDate="2010-12-21T09:22:56.277" UserId="159" Text="This is a summary of the question :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Gives a file size and encryption method. Seeks information on how easy/difficult it is to crack, what kind of infrastructure is required and what are the best programming languages to write a program to crack this file.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the link  : http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27227/breaking-wikileaks-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially this question was down-voted 6 times and later closed as in-appropriate. I am trying to understand this radical policing of questions. To me, this reeks of a problem deeper than this question itself and something that is fundamentally against the spirit of  StackExchange websites i.e. mutual co-operation &amp; learning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why should a question that seems perfectly legitimate be dealt with in this fashion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2003" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="773" RevisionGUID="6da1f546-69fb-479f-b4be-f115167a9b46" CreationDate="2010-12-21T09:22:56.277" UserId="159" Text="Legitimate question closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2004" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="773" RevisionGUID="6da1f546-69fb-479f-b4be-f115167a9b46" CreationDate="2010-12-21T09:22:56.277" UserId="159" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2005" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="727" RevisionGUID="33a470be-895d-460b-a4d6-02b24e1d6bf5" CreationDate="2010-12-21T14:01:05.673" UserId="5095" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2006" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="774" RevisionGUID="0af9ff0d-e8be-4d9c-9cb1-a1d86f1e902f" CreationDate="2010-12-21T17:27:46.570" UserId="8140" Text="The new design is great, but it has an inconsistent view. The &quot;Front Page&quot; view has 4 columns: Votes, Answers, Views, Question Title. The &quot;Questions&quot; view has 2 columns: Votes, Answers and Views on the same column, and the Question Title on the secondth one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/DhO8U.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/roJPU.png&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2007" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="774" RevisionGUID="0af9ff0d-e8be-4d9c-9cb1-a1d86f1e902f" CreationDate="2010-12-21T17:27:46.570" UserId="8140" Text="Inconsistent views on new design" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2008" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="774" RevisionGUID="0af9ff0d-e8be-4d9c-9cb1-a1d86f1e902f" CreationDate="2010-12-21T17:27:46.570" UserId="8140" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2009" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="774" RevisionGUID="249884e4-89dd-43cc-bf8f-8ce17fbf8683" CreationDate="2010-12-21T17:35:38.323" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2010" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="775" RevisionGUID="b2aadcc4-f6d1-4b76-8390-15e6d991a09e" CreationDate="2010-12-21T17:36:07.120" UserId="37" Text="That has nothing to do with the design, that's just the way the sites are all set up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should open that on http://meta.stackoverflow.com if you have a more substantive critique." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2011" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="776" RevisionGUID="1ac18b0c-760c-477d-8deb-1f2254f7707e" CreationDate="2010-12-21T19:36:44.013" UserId="6415" Text="That question would be more appropriate on [stackoverflow](http://stackoverflow.com). Programmers is more for discussion on style, features, the programmers themselves, etc, than &quot;how can I do this&quot; questions. Also, it is not a political forum (not a forum at all!). Questions on conspiracys are definately off topic. I suspect the question may have been kept open had it not asked about other governments. The other questions may or may not have been appropriate; I wouldn't have closed it for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, the members that closed the question have been a part of this community nearly from its inception. I would consider any accusation against their motives for closing questions as &quot;off topic&quot; very suspect, since they had quite a hand in developing this site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2012" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="776" RevisionGUID="91387437-30f8-4239-b48d-f792b69903ff" CreationDate="2010-12-21T22:01:03.343" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="That question would be more appropriate on [stackoverflow](http://stackoverflow.com). Programmers is more for discussion on style, features, the programmers themselves, etc, than &quot;how can I do this&quot; questions. Also, it is not a political forum (not a forum at all!). Questions on conspiracies are definately off topic. I suspect the question may have been kept open had it not asked about other governments. The other questions may or may not have been appropriate; I wouldn't have closed it for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, the members that closed the question have been a part of this community nearly from its inception. I would consider any accusation against their motives for closing questions as &quot;off topic&quot; very suspect, since they had quite a hand in developing this site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2013" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="777" RevisionGUID="3062568a-3eba-4131-8918-db1a0676c7ae" CreationDate="2010-12-22T01:02:46.793" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This tag needs to be killed and blacklisted with extreme prejudice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are 122 questions tagged with [tag:programming]: *every* question is about programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's even worse is that there are questions that are *only* tagged [tag:programming]. There really shouldn't be a tag that's solely there so you can avoid putting useful tags for your question. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2017" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="779" RevisionGUID="6a162e31-b52b-4a09-97ff-59506090b6ad" CreationDate="2010-12-22T03:49:05.157" UserDisplayName="user2528" Text="I dont know if this is a question but to me it seems wrong that these answers exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take this question [Is anything in programming truly evil?&#xD;&#xA;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28667). Currently there is **35** answers and i counted about 7 real answers (of what is evil) out of the 35. Thats a lot of answers (28/35) that arent really answers (nor are comments). Something about it feels wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But then again i hate another thread and all of them are serious real answers. I only consider [one to be actually correct](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28238/is-using-else-bad-programming/28248#28248) and cant believe all the upvote in the thread especially the top answer (currently +63) which doesnt even address avoiding the ELSE keyword which can EASILY be done!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Total nonsense -_-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2018" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="779" RevisionGUID="6a162e31-b52b-4a09-97ff-59506090b6ad" CreationDate="2010-12-22T03:49:05.157" UserDisplayName="user2528" Text="Answers that irritate me." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2019" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="779" RevisionGUID="6a162e31-b52b-4a09-97ff-59506090b6ad" CreationDate="2010-12-22T03:49:05.157" UserDisplayName="user2528" Text="|discussion|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2020" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="780" RevisionGUID="0727d25e-4c73-48cd-87a7-25b478671197" CreationDate="2010-12-22T04:15:57.140" UserId="30" Text="Vote 'em down, baby! Use the power!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2021" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="781" RevisionGUID="9e66f0b5-770d-43d0-9788-3cbb26fc4420" CreationDate="2010-12-22T07:35:52.050" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Tell what you think in a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2022" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="292" RevisionGUID="b1e63b9f-f70f-4b94-9f54-835975820faf" CreationDate="2010-12-22T07:43:30.717" UserId="2314" Comment="Reversing question 3 so &quot;yes&quot; is the good answer on all 5 points." Text="I propose the following criteria by which to judge such questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;1. Is it interesting to programmers in general? *&#xD;&#xA;2. Would answers be significantly different without &quot;for programmers&quot; added?&#xD;&#xA;3. Does the addition of &quot;for programmers&quot; seem like more than just an afterthought?&#xD;&#xA;4. Will the question produce useful and/or interesting discussion?&#xD;&#xA;5. **Edit, from comments: Does this question make the internet better?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see two major alternatives to dealing with pickle questions: a hard and fast rule (&quot;ban 'em all&quot;, &quot;accept 'em all&quot;), or a guideline/moderation approach, where we have a general idea to guide what questions are truly programming related and which are pickles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm proposing that second approach, using the above criteria, along with the common sense and good judgement of the people moderating and/or voting.  The advantage of this approach is increased granularity (the ability to save good questions while still tossing the bad).  The disadvantage is the increased subjectivity- a universal rule on these questions would be easier to enforce.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I think we should put some faith in the community- a lot of the questions we're seeing now are the result of unclear directions.  If we have a set of criteria (such as those I propose) posted in the FAQ, I expect we'll see a lot fewer people asking about the best type of wood for a programmer to build their porch out of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Borrowed from Bigown's answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2023" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="782" RevisionGUID="fb53a98e-e998-481f-ad12-fc59be005bed" CreationDate="2010-12-22T14:09:05.867" UserId="6329" Text="The [FAQ][1] has conflicting values for being able to vote to close/reopen. It lists both 250 and 3000. There might be other parts that need to be updated too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2024" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="782" RevisionGUID="fb53a98e-e998-481f-ad12-fc59be005bed" CreationDate="2010-12-22T14:09:05.867" UserId="6329" Text="FAQ has wrong value for reopen" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2025" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="782" RevisionGUID="fb53a98e-e998-481f-ad12-fc59be005bed" CreationDate="2010-12-22T14:09:05.867" UserId="6329" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2026" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="783" RevisionGUID="3b3c860e-829e-4fe1-8136-73a14d10a4a9" CreationDate="2010-12-22T14:34:28.753" UserId="389" Text="250	 Vote to close, reopen, or migrate **your** questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3000	 Vote to close, reopen, or migrate **any** questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They're different things." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2027" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="784" RevisionGUID="3000c505-6ecd-4151-bf7a-c1b3a68bbffe" CreationDate="2010-12-22T15:03:09.323" UserId="6329" Text="Something has changed ever since Programmers got out of beta. Too many good questions, which are fully in the spirit of the site, are getting closed prematurely. Mostly these questions seem to be closed due to minor issues like grammar. Others have been improved by more senior members, but get closed anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are a few examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [What criteria should be used in evaluating if a company is worth working for?][1]&#xD;&#xA; - [What features would you like to have in PHP?][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [What is 1 WORD that best highlights a productive programming mindset?][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [What prompted Alex Stepanov to consider object-orientation a hoax?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The closing of the PHP question was particularly shocking, not because it was asked by a PHP developer, but because &quot;what feature would you like to see in *X*?&quot;-style questions have been around here for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand the impulse to close when there is more than one red flag: (1) poor grammar; (2) the question has meta commentary, asking if this is the right place; (3) extra detail is added, which pulls away emphasis on the question itself. Now that all of the red flag issues have been addressed on these questions, I hope we can reconsider the decision to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Simply, if you close questions and provide specific reasons for doing so, and then when those reasons are addressed you leave the question closed, you will discourage good users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27786/what-criteria-should-be-used-in-evaluating-if-a-company-is-worth-working-for&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27564/what-features-would-you-like-to-have-in-php&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28919/what-is-1-word-that-best-highlights-a-productive-programming-mindset/28923#28923&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27388/what-prompted-alex-stepanov-to-consider-object-orientation-a-hoax" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2028" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="784" RevisionGUID="3000c505-6ecd-4151-bf7a-c1b3a68bbffe" CreationDate="2010-12-22T15:03:09.323" UserId="6329" Text="Are we closing too many good questions now?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2029" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="784" RevisionGUID="3000c505-6ecd-4151-bf7a-c1b3a68bbffe" CreationDate="2010-12-22T15:03:09.323" UserId="6329" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2030" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="785" RevisionGUID="19912793-f1e0-4ceb-ae03-d646b42ffe99" CreationDate="2010-12-22T15:17:43.957" UserId="6329" Text="I agree that questions that lead to poor answers and non-answers (which usually take the form of rants) are problematic. Sometimes it's not the fault of the question either, but a couple few initial answers setting the tone for what's to follow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2031" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="782" RevisionGUID="de29acc2-c586-4dc9-828c-d2ebd483f433" CreationDate="2010-12-22T16:01:04.917" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2032" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="786" RevisionGUID="d11effe8-309d-41e9-893b-70a33b5a42d3" CreationDate="2010-12-22T16:09:24.573" UserId="389" Text="1. What this question have to do with programming?&#xD;&#xA;2. It's open. The OP didn't reveal his position and intention.&#xD;&#xA;3. It's absolutely useless. Just curiosity, fun.&#xD;&#xA;4. Maybe it can be reopened now, but the answers is very poor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Poor grammar is not a good reason to close a question. Question should be closed by your own content." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2033" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="784" RevisionGUID="8ac95b24-9e70-4052-9958-57ede5d1b6b7" CreationDate="2010-12-22T16:27:25.680" UserId="6329" Comment="added 550 characters in body" Text="Something has changed ever since Programmers got out of beta. Too many good questions, which are fully in the spirit of the site, are getting closed prematurely. Mostly these questions seem to be closed due to minor issues like grammar. Others have been improved by more senior members, but get closed anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are a few examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [What criteria should be used in evaluating if a company is worth working for?][1]&#xD;&#xA; - [What features would you like to have in PHP?][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [What is 1 WORD that best highlights a productive programming mindset?][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [What prompted Alex Stepanov to consider object-orientation a hoax?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The closing of the PHP question was particularly shocking, not because it was asked by a PHP developer, but because &quot;what feature would you like to see in *X*?&quot;-style questions have been around here for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand the impulse to close when there is more than one red flag: (1) poor grammar; (2) the question has meta commentary, asking if this is the right place; (3) extra detail is added, which pulls away emphasis on the question itself. Now that all of the red flag issues have been addressed on these questions, I hope we can reconsider the decision to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Simply, if you close questions and provide specific reasons for doing so, and then when those reasons are addressed you leave the question closed, you will discourage good users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:** Here's yet another example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Cant answer very many questions on StackOverflow. How can I improve?][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like [Anna Lear][6]'s comment: *&quot;The close makes no sense. This question isn't about SO as a site and doesn't belong on meta. The question is about ways to improve as a developer to be able to better answer questions.&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27786/what-criteria-should-be-used-in-evaluating-if-a-company-is-worth-working-for&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27564/what-features-would-you-like-to-have-in-php&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28919/what-is-1-word-that-best-highlights-a-productive-programming-mindset/28923#28923&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27388/what-prompted-alex-stepanov-to-consider-object-orientation-a-hoax&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29118/cant-answer-very-many-questions-on-stackoverflow-how-can-i-improve-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/226/anna-lear" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2034" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="787" RevisionGUID="100bbae3-cf51-483b-b7c4-fc19f9ee4d6f" CreationDate="2010-12-22T16:35:08.073" UserId="11340" Text="**Don't forget your Area51.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;During [your Area51 phase][1], the feeling-out of what kind of questions that should, and shouldn't make up P.SE was determined; I'd like to encourage you to use them, as that is what Area51 is all about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regardless of what others may think, expect, or migrate to P.SE, I think it would be wise to stick with what the community decided P.SE actually should be, in it's Area51 proposal, as that proposal is the one that the community passed, and is this site right now. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2035" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="787" RevisionGUID="24d0909f-4f29-4781-b7f6-d6e8f8b9cea2" CreationDate="2010-12-22T16:46:32.680" UserId="11340" Comment="added 531 characters in body" Text="**Don't forget your Area51.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;During [your Area51 phase][1], the feeling-out of what kind of questions that should, and shouldn't make up P.SE was determined; I'd like to encourage you to use them, as that is what Area51 is all about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regardless of what others may think, expect, or migrate to P.SE, I think it would be wise to use your Area51 as a guide to what P.SE actually should be, in it's Area51 proposal, as that proposal is the one that the community passed, and is this site right now. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That being said, I'd like to pull a few examples from your proposal. The only opinion here I'd like to present is to use your Area51 as a guide.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;8th place off-topic: **&quot;Is Ruby better than Python?&quot; 0/9/0** (on-topic/off-topic/NAGE)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9th place on-topic: **&quot;Should I work for a company that makes you wear a suit?&quot; 13/0/0**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;16th place on-topic: **&quot;What's good music for programmers to listen to?&quot; 6/0/0**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Please go here to see more...][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352?phase=definition" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2036" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="788" RevisionGUID="7ea5f53e-31ed-4a21-9343-b88bc923310f" CreationDate="2010-12-22T16:50:52.997" UserId="4027" Text="I'm trying to accept an answer to a question I asked ([specifically this one][1]) and as far as I can tell it just isn't working- I get the &quot;hand&quot; pointer when I mouseover the tick but clicking on it has no clear effect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm using IE8 at the moment. I'll try it in a proper browser later, but it seems to me one should be able to use the site even in Exploder.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27632/what-are-common-pitfalls-of-cloud-development-that-you-have-run-into" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2037" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="788" RevisionGUID="7ea5f53e-31ed-4a21-9343-b88bc923310f" CreationDate="2010-12-22T16:50:52.997" UserId="4027" Text="Why can I not accept an answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2038" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="788" RevisionGUID="7ea5f53e-31ed-4a21-9343-b88bc923310f" CreationDate="2010-12-22T16:50:52.997" UserId="4027" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2039" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="789" RevisionGUID="10f3be09-66b7-4ee7-885a-daf97b10233a" CreationDate="2010-12-22T16:58:48.963" UserId="37" Text="Hmm, I can't repro this -- I am able to accept an answer in IE8 just fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe clear the browser cache?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2040" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="790" RevisionGUID="4c07ef8d-9cc1-47bd-a3c4-89126c0d079a" CreationDate="2010-12-22T17:57:30.107" UserId="37" Text="These fare poorly on the [subjective scale][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. If you read the question, it is literally asking &quot;what single quality you would want to see in a prospective employer?&quot; &#xD;&#xA;2. The OP should have revealed a bit more about who he was and what his goals were; I support leaving this one open.&#xD;&#xA;3. Might as well be &quot;what's your favorite word&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;4. Completely speculative and not in a good way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read over these questions with the [6 guidelines in mind][2] ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tend to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over opinions.&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... and I think you'll agree *with the exception of #2*, they are all correctly closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2041" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="786" RevisionGUID="bbe4529f-63fb-4ce3-8ad1-28e7c50383b4" CreationDate="2010-12-22T18:04:28.293" UserId="389" Comment="added 208 characters in body" Text="1. What this question have to do with programming?&#xD;&#xA;2. It's open. The OP didn't reveal his position and intention.&#xD;&#xA;3. It's absolutely useless. Just curiosity, fun.&#xD;&#xA;4. Maybe it can be reopened now, but the answers is very poor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Poor grammar is not a good reason to close a question. Question should be closed by your own content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit for the new question added on above post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What this question have to do with programming? I don't know where it's appropraited, SO, MSO, Writes.SE or whatever, but I'm pretty sure it isn't on PSE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2042" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="786" RevisionGUID="446a8446-2981-4f49-8a2d-fa9056d4462a" CreationDate="2010-12-22T18:12:10.073" UserId="63" Comment="grammar, spelling" Text="1. What does this question have to do with programming?&#xD;&#xA;2. It's open. The OP didn't reveal his position and intention.&#xD;&#xA;3. It's absolutely useless. Just curiosity, fun.&#xD;&#xA;4. Maybe it can be reopened now, but the existing answers are very poor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Poor grammar is not a good reason to close a question. Questions should be closed based on their content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit for the new question added on above post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does this question have to do with programming? I don't know where it's appropriate, SO, MSO, Writes.SE or whatever, but I'm pretty sure it isn't on PSE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2043" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="791" RevisionGUID="2338f5e2-ce32-444d-a1b2-c59236e01439" CreationDate="2010-12-22T20:06:01.397" UserId="11376" Text="Can we tag answers with tags, not just the questions?  Especially on this site where multiple answers may be good, and none are necessarily best, just most popular, it might be worthwhile to tag the answers themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, we often make distinctions between &quot;functional programming weenies&quot; and &quot;dynamic programming zealots&quot; in causal conversation, when it's clear that an answer has a particular bias, it might make sense to tag it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There could be good usability in searching for questions for these tags to answer meta-questions like &quot;what types of questions have good functional programming solutions&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2044" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="791" RevisionGUID="2338f5e2-ce32-444d-a1b2-c59236e01439" CreationDate="2010-12-22T20:06:01.397" UserId="11376" Text="Can we tag answers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2045" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="791" RevisionGUID="2338f5e2-ce32-444d-a1b2-c59236e01439" CreationDate="2010-12-22T20:06:01.397" UserId="11376" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2046" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="792" RevisionGUID="ee07af42-37da-455d-a805-2a09e71ff79d" CreationDate="2010-12-22T20:27:27.697" UserId="389" Text="This was discussed before for other sites and declined. I don't see any reason to implement this feature here. If we need tags on answers it means that something is wrong with the question and if this is an issue with many questions it's a problem of the whole community." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2048" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="794" RevisionGUID="53b9c720-f132-4dae-b980-d0188db540aa" CreationDate="2010-12-22T22:02:54.980" UserId="63" Text="The nature of subjective topics is to encourage controversy and populism; that's why some of us felt strongly about removing these sorts of questions from Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Express your feelings by down-voting; combat opinions you feel are wrong with well-reasoned rebuttals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can't handle doing that, you may wish to stick to the more technical questions on Stack Overflow. If it bothers you seeing that so many people hold different beliefs, you may wish to join a monastery. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2054" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="543" RevisionGUID="620de41e-ed06-4e97-8338-4e9fe7c102e5" CreationDate="2010-12-23T14:00:45.390" UserId="2329" Comment="added 107 characters in body" Text="Does this site need a programming tag?  It certainly doesn't give me much clue about what to expect the question to contain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;UPDATE:  I'm retagging these questions, but need help, they are coming in faster than I can retag them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2055" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="796" RevisionGUID="47028f85-8472-466f-9828-4330198cd640" CreationDate="2010-12-23T14:19:47.777" UserId="1973" Text="Yeah this was exceptionally annoying, I asked a simple question about who the Patron Saint of programmers should be, not surprisingly the 'community' found some pretext to close it.  But the answers weren't what I was looking for so it doesn't bother me that it was closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I doubt it would have been closed had I not gotten a bunch of joke answers because the question is relevant to me and other like minded programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know what you can do to discourage people who don't take the time to write a decent answer except disagree with them in the comments.  Which may encourage other people to downvote them - especially if they completely missed the point of the question where it would be an objectively good idea to downvote their answer. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2060" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="798" RevisionGUID="13670b20-0604-482d-99f2-5f6115496102" CreationDate="2010-12-23T17:11:16.830" UserDisplayName="user1842" Text="Answers inherit the tags from the questions. If an answer doesn't match at least one of the tags in the question, it may be an indication that it doesn't belong there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2062" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="799" RevisionGUID="895c1d7f-d22c-467c-99f0-a4eba57a790d" CreationDate="2010-12-23T19:58:34.233" UserId="11146" Text="Hi.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought I definitely agreed with the Subjective Questions Guidelines, and it made sense to me to close those which did not reach a score of at least 4/6. It seems, though, that my interpretation of the guidelines was somewhat flawed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm asking now after a specific case, and the question - er - in question was mine, but please grant me enough trust not to assume I'm not impartial in judgement. I really love this place, although I'm kind of a newbie, and I want to play it by the rules - and to do so, I need to know them first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, [this][1] is the question. I added a self-evaluation post-scriptum about the guidelines, too, before posting. Nevertheless, I got some downvotes for not abiding to them, and one person - with a way higher reputation and experience here than mine - also made me notice which points my question supposedly didn't respect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Problem is: I disagree, and I think the reasons are clear, so there could be something I'm missing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, could you please tell me what I fail to understand in the guidelines implications, if I fail to understand something? I know it's an effort, but it would be really helpful for me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29485/does-music-increase-your-productivity/29609" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2063" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="799" RevisionGUID="895c1d7f-d22c-467c-99f0-a4eba57a790d" CreationDate="2010-12-23T19:58:34.233" UserId="11146" Text="Subjective question guidelines' interpretation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2064" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="799" RevisionGUID="895c1d7f-d22c-467c-99f0-a4eba57a790d" CreationDate="2010-12-23T19:58:34.233" UserId="11146" Text="|discussion|support|subjective|guidelines|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2065" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="800" RevisionGUID="e81b2ea2-d8eb-42ae-bc70-23f8b068ddf0" CreationDate="2010-12-23T22:12:22.773" UserId="5095" Text="It was closed as off-topic because (at least my vote was because) this doesn't apply specifically to programmers - the same question, with the same answer, could reasonably be asked of anyone doing vaguely similar desk based work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to be one of the things people misunderstand.  Questions should be about things which are pretty much unique to programming and programmers, rather than being things that apply generically to office workers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2069" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="788" RevisionGUID="3feb93c5-2361-4f7f-a8a6-37cdf76233e3" CreationDate="2010-12-24T05:20:43.667" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-norepro|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2070" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="802" RevisionGUID="98a84f18-053f-4d0c-afa0-ec0839a34335" CreationDate="2010-12-24T09:19:24.087" UserId="9411" Text="I don't understand your anger about the `ELSE` question. The top answer is a perfectly good one. By inverting the default (fallback message) and the actual action (logging in), the &quot;security problem&quot; you address would be resolved. Also the second rated answer is a good answer, as it shows that **your** suggestion might lead to new security problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides, that's their opinion and maybe you are just not right about your hypothesis, that `ELSE` is something bad per se. But maybe that's not what you wanted to hear..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2071" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="802" RevisionGUID="dfd8395f-8f66-4b3a-bf5b-66924861d830" CreationDate="2010-12-24T09:27:27.137" UserId="9411" Comment="added 83 characters in body" Text="I don't understand your anger about the `ELSE` question. The top answer is a perfectly good one. By inverting the default (fallback message) and the actual action (logging in), the &quot;security problem&quot; you address would be resolved (which of course is rather a [SO][1] question). Also the second rated answer is a good answer, as it shows that **your** suggestion might lead to new security problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides, that's their opinion and maybe you are just not right about your hypothesis, that `ELSE` is something bad per se. But maybe that's not what you wanted to hear...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2072" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="803" RevisionGUID="662dcb8f-eced-49e7-86fc-3e9aee2fce61" CreationDate="2010-12-24T14:08:23.660" UserId="101" Text="Has anyone else seen this happening?  As of yesterday, when you voted up or down the site would highlight your vote.  As of this morning, the vote count changes as expected but no hightlighting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm running IE8, Win7Pro." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2073" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="803" RevisionGUID="662dcb8f-eced-49e7-86fc-3e9aee2fce61" CreationDate="2010-12-24T14:08:23.660" UserId="101" Text="UI - Vote up/down not highlighting" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2074" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="803" RevisionGUID="662dcb8f-eced-49e7-86fc-3e9aee2fce61" CreationDate="2010-12-24T14:08:23.660" UserId="101" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2075" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="804" RevisionGUID="87a66a97-2efe-4e3b-9fb3-3383a3badae7" CreationDate="2010-12-24T15:57:51.947" UserId="48" Text="There was a whiteboard ink shortage, so we couldn't fill the arrows for a few hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Santa brought some new markers, so everything's well again." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2076" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="803" RevisionGUID="1248c31e-4f39-41cc-8336-47b08ef55f11" CreationDate="2010-12-24T15:58:01.650" UserId="48" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2077" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="805" RevisionGUID="f58ac75b-d219-479a-9e75-f2b615307f24" CreationDate="2010-12-24T17:36:31.417" UserDisplayName="user11586" Text="Is it OK to ask a question like &quot;Could you write a program that [does &#xD;&#xA;stuff]?&quot; &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Excluding code golf, most people seem to draw the line at actually &#xD;&#xA;writing a program, but is it OK to at least ask? &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2078" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="805" RevisionGUID="f58ac75b-d219-479a-9e75-f2b615307f24" CreationDate="2010-12-24T17:36:31.417" UserDisplayName="user11586" Text="OK to ask people to write programs (not just code golf)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2079" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="805" RevisionGUID="f58ac75b-d219-479a-9e75-f2b615307f24" CreationDate="2010-12-24T17:36:31.417" UserDisplayName="user11586" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2080" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="806" RevisionGUID="685ade35-5f86-4da7-bdf7-310eb5c89f54" CreationDate="2010-12-24T18:10:44.997" UserId="63" Text="No. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It's rude.&#xD;&#xA;2. The system isn't designed for that sort of large-scale code sharing.&#xD;&#xA;3. It's off-topic for Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't &quot;Rent-A-Coder&quot;. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2081" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="807" RevisionGUID="0ce0ccc4-2c03-4a0f-bb2d-9decfc001d30" CreationDate="2010-12-24T19:28:45.460" UserId="226" Text="What would be the point of such a question? The answers would boil down to &quot;yep, I could&quot; or &quot;nope, I couldn't&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2082" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="773" RevisionGUID="e4abb38b-c91f-4c50-9215-b46013674867" CreationDate="2010-12-25T08:51:57.453" UserId="159" Comment="Added : reasons for closing a question" Text="This is a summary of the question :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Gives a file size and encryption method. Seeks information on how easy/difficult it is to crack, what kind of infrastructure is required and what are the best programming languages to write a program to crack this file.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the link  : http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27227/breaking-wikileaks-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially this question was down-voted 6 times and later closed as in-appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why should a question that seems perfectly legitimate be dealt with in this fashion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Edit :&lt;/b&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;I have edited the question, I think most people had a problem with the wordings on the third point on the question to what I meant :&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I read the guidelines of what is a good enough question. I am trying to figure out where the problem was with this question.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;For Ref :&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;tend to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over opinions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand if this question is not meant to be on programmers and should be on SO instead. But otherwise I fail to see where this question is not right. I just feel this question has been closed when it should have been left open." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2083" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="808" RevisionGUID="4af24a69-3d4b-4cb3-804d-b6fc1f1a95a2" CreationDate="2010-12-25T14:41:43.817" UserId="8031" Text="I am doing a lot of work in Managed Extensibility Framework and have some general questions to ask On Programmers. Can someone add an [mef] tag, or [managed-ext-framework], please?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now I am using [framework][net] as my tags and, while this may be *okay*, I don't feel these tags accurately target my intended audience." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2084" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="808" RevisionGUID="4af24a69-3d4b-4cb3-804d-b6fc1f1a95a2" CreationDate="2010-12-25T14:41:43.817" UserId="8031" Text="Can someone add a tag for [mef]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2085" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="808" RevisionGUID="4af24a69-3d4b-4cb3-804d-b6fc1f1a95a2" CreationDate="2010-12-25T14:41:43.817" UserId="8031" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2086" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="809" RevisionGUID="79a895a2-6996-4e02-b837-1a652def710f" CreationDate="2010-12-25T16:08:52.060" UserId="6591" Text="Done. I made one called &quot;MEF&quot;. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2087" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="810" RevisionGUID="4c392b12-660a-4699-8792-235f1fc358be" CreationDate="2010-12-25T18:32:27.600" UserId="2654" Text="![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is some odd font sizing on the tools page (10k+ and mods).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Wccrm.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2088" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="810" RevisionGUID="4c392b12-660a-4699-8792-235f1fc358be" CreationDate="2010-12-25T18:32:27.600" UserId="2654" Text="Font changes in tools" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2089" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="810" RevisionGUID="4c392b12-660a-4699-8792-235f1fc358be" CreationDate="2010-12-25T18:32:27.600" UserId="2654" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2090" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="810" RevisionGUID="2840503f-cbe8-417e-9fdc-0ddc8046c06a" CreationDate="2010-12-25T19:39:14.237" UserId="48" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-reproduced|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2091" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="811" RevisionGUID="e31f4c91-3652-4a81-90d5-4fa5a290cb67" CreationDate="2010-12-25T22:07:44.023" UserId="6329" Text="I think CW makes sense for some questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, the &quot;[What features would you like to have in PHP?][1]&quot; question is well-suited for this: People can feel free to both submit their ideas *and* to down vote ideas they disfavor. Because votes don't affect reps you can see where the consensus is: what is popular, what is controversial (*provided you have the ability view vote counts*) and what is plain unpopular.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without CW, there would be less freedom for suggesting ideas. Meta works similarly in this regard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27564/what-features-would-you-like-to-have-in-php" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2092" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="812" RevisionGUID="0431fa20-ccb9-4ba2-9000-1c4988a25572" CreationDate="2010-12-26T16:38:08.830" UserId="6329" Text="I don't want to single anyone out, but I've seen this a couple of times: A moderator or someone with vote-to-close capabilities edits a question for clarity, spelling, or grammar, and also votes to close it. Does that even make sense?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The one exception I would see is if someone posted a &quot;rant question&quot; and you tried to edit out the rant to get the good question to the surface, and then the OP keeps reverting it back. In such &quot;lost causes&quot; it would make sense to have both edited and voted to close." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2093" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="812" RevisionGUID="0431fa20-ccb9-4ba2-9000-1c4988a25572" CreationDate="2010-12-26T16:38:08.830" UserId="6329" Text="Does it make sense for a mod to edit a question and also vote to close?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2094" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="812" RevisionGUID="0431fa20-ccb9-4ba2-9000-1c4988a25572" CreationDate="2010-12-26T16:38:08.830" UserId="6329" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2095" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="813" RevisionGUID="59c01b05-fde0-44a5-942f-40e2a110ca18" CreationDate="2010-12-26T16:49:05.463" UserId="37" Text="It can make sense; there's no reason for incorrect spelling or grammar to hang around as a broken window, even on a question you think should be closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2096" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="650" RevisionGUID="e956ce28-db9f-4db5-a605-0c65b7b1b5e2" CreationDate="2010-12-26T18:24:00.447" UserId="389" Comment="added 86 characters in body" Text="We're discussing this on [MSO][1]. It's important our users to get in discussion there to avoid they dumping trash here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate/71734#71734" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2097" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="650" RevisionGUID="e40e1998-facf-44c6-8f09-9021476d57d6" CreationDate="2010-12-26T22:09:56.567" UserId="101" Comment="fixed grammar" Text="We're discussing this on [MSO][1]. It's important for our users to get in discussion there to avoid dumping their trash here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate/71734#71734" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2098" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="814" RevisionGUID="717bc842-b0d3-4080-b314-8e45bdf12bd3" CreationDate="2010-12-26T22:34:32.073" UserId="285" Text="I don't mean &quot;Hi Everybody&quot; or &quot;I hope someone can help me&quot; or even &quot;I've tried a search but can't find anything.&quot; I mean&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 0 down vote favorite&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;example here http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/30153/285 and it's not the first time I've seen it. Is it a marker of some kind of copying and pasting?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2099" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="814" RevisionGUID="717bc842-b0d3-4080-b314-8e45bdf12bd3" CreationDate="2010-12-26T22:34:32.073" UserId="285" Text="Why do some questions start with a magic invocation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2100" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="814" RevisionGUID="717bc842-b0d3-4080-b314-8e45bdf12bd3" CreationDate="2010-12-26T22:34:32.073" UserId="285" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2101" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="815" RevisionGUID="ae9dfdb4-0d40-45ee-a006-d4245dcc114a" CreationDate="2010-12-27T01:48:26.277" UserId="63" Text="If you drag-select the text of a question, starting at the end and ending at the beginning... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And you overshoot a bit...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...you end up selecting the vote count (0), the down-vote arrow (down vote) and the star (favorite). The text on the latter two is normally hidden by the stylesheet in favor of an image, but the vote number allows it to be selected and copied.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Now, I have no idea what these users are doing copying and then pasting a question *into* another question... Cross-posting? Ahhh... [Manual migration!][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4535311/programmer-coach-wanted-to-learn-vb-net" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2102" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="702" RevisionGUID="ee00938d-fb1b-4041-8d2a-272889477f1a" CreationDate="2010-12-27T21:18:36.893" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2103" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="816" RevisionGUID="0d1a79fa-355f-43ac-b36b-57cf5ba05875" CreationDate="2010-12-27T21:24:59.637" UserId="47" Text="Some questions that should have been migrated to Stack Overflow (had the option existed):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2979/how-do-you-set-sourcegear-vault-as-the-scc-for-vs2010-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3597/questions-related-to-search-engine-friendly-urls-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4509/bitwise-operator-predence-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1840/creating-a-vb-log-in-page-using-an-already-existing-program-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5365/open-a-new-window-and-call-javascript-function-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6933/java-exception-handling-i-want-to-repair-errors-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are others, these are from the first few pages of closed questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2104" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="817" RevisionGUID="bf6b1e68-1f64-4a89-a23a-beabe703faa0" CreationDate="2010-12-27T21:53:29.347" UserId="47" Text="Now that there's a migration path from Stack Overflow to here, should we be more strict about what's off topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know there's [this old question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain) about what the FAQ should contain, but the current [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) doesn't have the what's not allowed list that the [Super User one](http://superuser.com/faq) or [Web Applications one](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/faq) does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, should we have an &quot;off topic&quot; list and what should it contain?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of things spring to mind straight away:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Office environment questions - such as questions about office chairs and desks. These apply to any office worker and aren't unique to developers.&#xD;&#xA;2. Office politics questions - these are clearly going to be *very* subjective and will usually fall foul of the 6 guidelines for quality subjective questions anyway." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2105" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="817" RevisionGUID="bf6b1e68-1f64-4a89-a23a-beabe703faa0" CreationDate="2010-12-27T21:53:29.347" UserId="47" Text="Should our FAQ contain a list of what's off topic and if so what should that list contain?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2106" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="817" RevisionGUID="bf6b1e68-1f64-4a89-a23a-beabe703faa0" CreationDate="2010-12-27T21:53:29.347" UserId="47" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2107" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="818" RevisionGUID="2dc21ba2-3484-4f76-9f1a-ab350bc62c94" CreationDate="2010-12-28T00:36:19.347" UserId="4" Text="Although I don't know if they should be made now, since I haven't looked through the closed questions, but some possible Stack Exchanges that should be linked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Unix and Linux (when it comes out of Beta, of course)&#xD;&#xA;* User Interface&#xD;&#xA;* Game Development&#xD;&#xA;* Web Applications&#xD;&#xA;* On Startups&#xD;&#xA;* Super User&#xD;&#xA;* Server Fault&#xD;&#xA;* Stack Overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2108" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="819" RevisionGUID="90df4af8-31d7-4d5a-a0bb-7ce13fc8fd0e" CreationDate="2010-12-28T01:18:27.473" UserId="389" Text="We need to define guidelines to merge questions. Who did merging on other sites before?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which best practices we can apply here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is our first challenge: [Nuggets of wisdom][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30769/nuggets-of-wisdom" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2109" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="819" RevisionGUID="90df4af8-31d7-4d5a-a0bb-7ce13fc8fd0e" CreationDate="2010-12-28T01:18:27.473" UserId="389" Text="Guidelines to merge questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2110" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="819" RevisionGUID="90df4af8-31d7-4d5a-a0bb-7ce13fc8fd0e" CreationDate="2010-12-28T01:18:27.473" UserId="389" Text="|discussion|merging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2111" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="820" RevisionGUID="ff385bfa-9584-413d-8b3c-c756bda7e2c3" CreationDate="2010-12-28T07:02:23.377" UserId="1204" Text="Example here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30513/as-a-programmer-what-single-discovery-has-given-you-the-greatest-boost-in-product&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***Really?***" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2112" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="820" RevisionGUID="ff385bfa-9584-413d-8b3c-c756bda7e2c3" CreationDate="2010-12-28T07:02:23.377" UserId="1204" Text="Is Programmers.SE suddenly going to be flooded with old, unwanted, two year old questions from StackOverflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2113" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="820" RevisionGUID="ff385bfa-9584-413d-8b3c-c756bda7e2c3" CreationDate="2010-12-28T07:02:23.377" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2114" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="821" RevisionGUID="5aea0bf1-58d0-4360-827a-2c33e8701828" CreationDate="2010-12-28T12:42:49.973" UserId="389" Text="It's important that we disallow SO to push trash to us. Engage on these questions on MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Programmers is about to go live, which questions should we migrate?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Multiple duplicated question on SO are being migrated to PSE partially][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Have Code Golf questions been implicitly disallowed on StackOverflow, now that migration to PSE is possible?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Migration questions from SO to PSE just to stay temporarily][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73375/multiple-duplicated-question-on-so-are-being-migrated-to-pse-partially&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73332/have-code-golf-questions-been-implicitly-disallowed-on-stackoverflow-now-that-mi&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73373/migration-questions-from-so-to-pse-just-to-stay-temporarily" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2115" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="821" RevisionGUID="5aea0bf1-58d0-4360-827a-2c33e8701828" CreationDate="2010-12-28T12:42:49.973" UserId="389" Text="Please, engage on MSO discussions about migration process" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2116" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="821" RevisionGUID="5aea0bf1-58d0-4360-827a-2c33e8701828" CreationDate="2010-12-28T12:42:49.973" UserId="389" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2117" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="821" RevisionGUID="8660b237-864d-4f56-87ed-991923a351e8" CreationDate="2010-12-28T12:42:58.817" UserId="389" />
  <row Id="2118" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="822" RevisionGUID="39229f85-2516-42a8-8f55-06e34cb32a97" CreationDate="2010-12-28T13:08:03.487" UserId="389" Text="Specially comments about the migration to PSE. It'a a little weird to see &quot;migrate this question to PSE&quot; here on PSE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or it's better to keep the history untouched?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2119" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="822" RevisionGUID="39229f85-2516-42a8-8f55-06e34cb32a97" CreationDate="2010-12-28T13:08:03.487" UserId="389" Text="Should we delete dated comments on SO questions migrated to PSE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2120" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="822" RevisionGUID="39229f85-2516-42a8-8f55-06e34cb32a97" CreationDate="2010-12-28T13:08:03.487" UserId="389" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2121" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="823" RevisionGUID="f04a18ac-d85e-49ac-86d3-65259c931287" CreationDate="2010-12-28T13:50:14.523" UserId="47" Text="Comments like that are noise, so just delete them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2122" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="824" RevisionGUID="dc0cb75d-2b79-4352-a292-9c5b2c468d73" CreationDate="2010-12-28T13:51:20.247" UserId="47" Text="&quot;What language should I learn next?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As the answer is always &quot;it depends on what you want to do&quot; these are either too localised or not constructive." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2123" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="817" RevisionGUID="c2037179-3376-4b14-b61c-7dedb6f5e838" CreationDate="2010-12-28T13:57:13.113" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2124" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="825" RevisionGUID="64ee32d6-6c1e-4302-9b13-1f6cc143caa9" CreationDate="2010-12-28T14:01:46.727" UserId="101" Text="My concern is that it has no value (doesn't meet the 6 guidelines) and thus I've voted to close it.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The thing that concerns me more is that the 15-20 questions that I've come across that have been migrated from SO also have little value to PSE.  They've either been dups or just a waste of breath." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2125" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="826" RevisionGUID="ba9cb100-9cf6-441a-bedc-96414f7ebb50" CreationDate="2010-12-28T14:07:52.220" UserId="389" Text="We need something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Networking, servers, or maintaining other people's PCs and contains no source code, ask on Server Fault.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; General computer software or hardware troubleshooting, ask on Super User.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Specific programming problem, software algorithms, coding, ask on Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2126" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="827" RevisionGUID="e08a60f0-aed6-464a-b983-98e2602735aa" CreationDate="2010-12-28T14:08:31.647" UserId="101" Text="&quot;What salary/wage should I ask for?&quot; Always too localized." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2127" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="828" RevisionGUID="463a32bf-5e5b-4ce1-a1b6-1dfc7bc5851a" CreationDate="2010-12-28T14:26:35.853" UserId="101" Text="&quot;Looking for job in X city/country&quot; is also another one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2128" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="829" RevisionGUID="ba1136e4-a2e7-42c5-b629-eb9992e25af0" CreationDate="2010-12-28T14:28:37.687" UserId="10106" Text="My general practice for answering here at programmers.se is to browse the Questions list, scrolling down until I see ones that I've read before.  Lately I've noticed that a bit farther down, there will be one or two that I haven't seen before.  Then I see this:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; migrated from stackoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it make more sense to have the migrated questions timestamped at the time they were migrated, rather than the time they were originally asked on the other site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By the way, I'm very pleased that there's now an automated migration path from SO." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2129" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="829" RevisionGUID="ba1136e4-a2e7-42c5-b629-eb9992e25af0" CreationDate="2010-12-28T14:28:37.687" UserId="10106" Text="List migrated questions at the top?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2130" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="829" RevisionGUID="ba1136e4-a2e7-42c5-b629-eb9992e25af0" CreationDate="2010-12-28T14:28:37.687" UserId="10106" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2131" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="830" RevisionGUID="479df6e5-9428-4822-a4cc-c6eb7c855e9c" CreationDate="2010-12-28T14:46:56.903" UserId="6415" Text="I'm glad you brought this up. I have no problem with questions being migrated. There are some question that have come already that do belong here, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How to persuade programmers to follow the basic rules](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/30985/6415)&#xD;&#xA; - [Should I Learn C/C++ Even If I Just Want To Do Web Programming?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/30974/6415)(This one is a duplicate, but I think is on topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then a question that is off topic (too localized) for *any* SE site: [Programmer's Wages [closed]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/30918/6415).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that perhaps as the &quot;newness&quot; of the migration path wears off we will see less junk questions being dumped here. That being said, I'd wait a week or so before doing anything off-site. If this continues, we need to open a new discussion on meta.SO about the issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as what to do with junky questions, **CLOSE THEM!** They aren't doing us any good open. If they belong on another SE site such as webmasters, etc., then certainly migrate them, but kill it otherwise. If they are of no use, delete them. No reason to clutter our site up with other site's horrible questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please visit the links @bigown has posted. Even if you don't have anything to add, vote up the answers present the best solutions with P.SE's best interests. (and vote down the bad ones!) &quot;If you don't vote, don't complain&quot; - be heard!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2132" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="821" RevisionGUID="cb5f7a1d-5efc-4711-a806-7f20db6e86fe" CreationDate="2010-12-28T14:52:03.790" UserId="389" Comment="added 168 characters in body" Text="It's important that we disallow SO to push trash to us. Engage on these questions on MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Programmers is about to go live, which questions should we migrate?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Multiple duplicated question on SO are being migrated to PSE partially][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Have Code Golf questions been implicitly disallowed on StackOverflow, now that migration to PSE is possible?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Migration questions from SO to PSE just to stay temporarily][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73375/multiple-duplicated-question-on-so-are-being-migrated-to-pse-partially&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73332/have-code-golf-questions-been-implicitly-disallowed-on-stackoverflow-now-that-mi&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73373/migration-questions-from-so-to-pse-just-to-stay-temporarily&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2133" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="826" RevisionGUID="9268e013-cc1a-4d37-902a-66af7c9d1614" CreationDate="2010-12-28T14:55:15.053" UserId="389" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="We need **something like**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Networking, servers, or maintaining other people's PCs and contains no source code, ask on Server Fault.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; General computer software or hardware troubleshooting, ask on Super User.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Specific programming problem, software algorithms, coding, ask on Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2134" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="819" RevisionGUID="71edc898-0c6a-41d4-bc40-217ed68640ab" CreationDate="2010-12-28T15:12:55.933" UserId="389" Comment="deleted 147 characters in body" Text="We need to define guidelines to merge questions. Who did merging on other sites before?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which best practices we can apply here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2135" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="831" RevisionGUID="59dc825f-7a4a-4159-9aaf-ce9eec79cc29" CreationDate="2010-12-28T15:31:16.580" UserId="389" Text="See more about on Mark Trapp's [comment][1] and [question][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I'm directly asking for permission to drop it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73332/have-code-golf-questions-been-implicitly-disallowed-on-stackoverflow-now-that-mi/73372#73372&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/67780/why-is-code-golf-now-the-domain-of-programmers-se" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2136" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="831" RevisionGUID="59dc825f-7a4a-4159-9aaf-ce9eec79cc29" CreationDate="2010-12-28T15:31:16.580" UserId="389" Text="Should we remove Code Golf questions from on-topic on FAQ" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2137" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="831" RevisionGUID="59dc825f-7a4a-4159-9aaf-ce9eec79cc29" CreationDate="2010-12-28T15:31:16.580" UserId="389" Text="|discussion|faq|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2138" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="832" RevisionGUID="c64665ab-0748-41e5-9f3a-0cea4ff99b5d" CreationDate="2010-12-28T15:41:31.463" UserId="101" Text="Yes, please do.  Code golf is too code specific for PSE and belongs on SO, IMO." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2139" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="833" RevisionGUID="f4576446-add4-477c-81f1-b73d88dd94e1" CreationDate="2010-12-28T16:06:53.553" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Most of my response is in [the question I posed on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/67780/why-is-code-golf-now-the-domain-of-programmers-se), but it's so completely out of place here. Our de-facto elevator pitch involves saying Programmers.SE is for all those things *about* programming that aren't *actually* programming, and Code Golf *is* programming (albeit *fun* programming)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2140" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="831" RevisionGUID="da971c22-6634-4552-83b5-6e2b1b689d51" CreationDate="2010-12-28T16:28:03.073" UserId="389" Comment="added 16 characters in body" Text="See more about this discussion on Mark Trapp's [comment][1] and [question][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I'm directly asking for permission to drop it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73332/have-code-golf-questions-been-implicitly-disallowed-on-stackoverflow-now-that-mi/73372#73372&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/67780/why-is-code-golf-now-the-domain-of-programmers-se" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2141" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="834" RevisionGUID="fd3a855d-3164-4529-943b-ad498dd95602" CreationDate="2010-12-28T16:55:08.937" UserId="63" Text="- If a question is an *exact* duplicate (re-posted, cross-posted then migrated, etc.), merge without hesitation, moving answers to the older post.&#xD;&#xA;- If a user flags a question as an effective duplicate and requests a merge, consider whether both questions are fundamentally identical and answers to one will work just as well for either, and merge into the better-written question.&#xD;&#xA;- If two answers are *exact* duplicates, delete the newer answer after merging.&#xD;&#xA;- Delete all comments on the question itself that call it out as a duplicate of one of the now-merged questions.&#xD;&#xA;- If one of the questions was marked CW, force the question and all answers into CW-mode.&#xD;&#xA;- If answers quote portions of a merged question that are no longer relevant, leave comments for their authors suggesting a revision.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2142" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="834" RevisionGUID="22e60899-e80d-4320-b895-dc9f28849500" CreationDate="2010-12-28T17:22:44.177" UserId="63" Comment="elaborate a bit" Text="- If a question is an *exact* duplicate (re-posted, cross-posted then migrated, etc.), merge without hesitation, moving answers to the older post.&#xD;&#xA;- If a user flags a question as an effective duplicate and requests a merge, consider whether both questions are fundamentally identical and answers to one will work just as well for either, and merge into the better-written question.&#xD;&#xA;- If two answers are *exact* duplicates, delete the newer answer after merging.&#xD;&#xA;- Delete all comments on the question itself that call it out as a duplicate of one of the now-merged questions.&#xD;&#xA;- If one of the questions was marked CW, force the question and all answers into CW-mode.&#xD;&#xA;- If answers quote portions of a merged question that are no longer relevant, leave comments for their authors suggesting a revision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators should be *reluctant* to merge without a request; however, if the questions are clearly identical (same wording / same user) or the moderator happens to be an expert on the subject matter and can confidently argue that the questions are the same, then they should be expected to act unilaterally.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Removing duplicate answers is important in terms of reducing noise, but for questions that are not yet marked CW it is doubly important as large numbers of redundant answers will risk forcing auto-CW on questions that otherwise do not need it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Be a surgeon, not a butcher - it may be tempting to just wipe all comments on older Q&amp;A, but resist the urge to do so unless they're clearly irrelevant (&quot;possible duplicate&quot;, etc.); there's no revision history for comments, and zealous cleansing can lead to confusion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2143" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="805" RevisionGUID="5b0cea22-2ca8-4c8f-b991-a2e041a465d4" CreationDate="2010-12-28T18:22:21.367" UserDisplayName="user11586" Comment="pair programming?" Text="Is it OK to ask a question like &quot;Could you write a program that [does &#xD;&#xA;stuff]?&quot; &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Excluding code golf, most people seem to draw the line at actually &#xD;&#xA;writing a program, but is it OK to at least ask? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: Is it OK to look for a pair programming partner here?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2144" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="835" RevisionGUID="4f14ddab-659a-476c-b24e-ef7f3e56fdaf" CreationDate="2010-12-28T18:22:46.413" UserId="1973" Text="I was thinking that it might be bad to have them deleted because it wouldn't leave a history and people might be tempted to re-migrate the question, but they'll see the &quot;Migrated from StackOverflow&quot; so that's not a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What needs to be preserved is the time of the comments for complete transparency - we should strive for honesty and not social engineering.  And in order to preserve that, we'd better just leave the comments alone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a subtle difference between saying &quot;We should move this to Programmers.SE&quot; and &quot;You should have asked this on Programmers.SE&quot; which could influence the tendency for closers to close a given question based on it's own merits.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2145" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="836" RevisionGUID="e60f0357-ae89-49db-980d-abfcd427ce28" CreationDate="2010-12-28T19:04:15.457" UserId="1973" Text="So I [asked a question][1] which doesn't jibe with the normal flow of questions on this site, but I don't think it is off-topic and I edited the question to specifically relate it to software development and appease even the minute details of the commentators to no avail&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be tempted to ask &quot;Why is there no patron saint of computer programmers?&quot; I'm pretty sure it would get closed for the same reason, which is unbeknownst to me. I can't really help it if people I don't know don't believe there needs to be a patron of programmers, but I don't see how a disconnect between the beliefs of certain programmers makes the question inappropriate - or necessarily misses the boat on any of the subjective criteria. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to argue &quot;Where else could I ask this question and get a decent answer&quot; the reason for asking the question was mainly so people who type &quot;Patron Saint of Computer Programmers&quot; into their [search engine of choice][2] could hit a living community where-in the patron could actually be determined, which is how we've always done things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I asked &quot;Why is there no patron saint&quot; the answer would actually be A: because programmers have higher tendency to be skeptics and B: because programmers who aren't skeptics don't have much of a cohesive presence (i.e. a guild). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original intent (and still the intent) of Stack Overflow was for C++ programmers to answer C++ question and Java programmers to answer Java questions, but they're certainly free to cross from one realm to another.  It's no different with our website, a person should be free to ask and answer questions from their own points of view.  If a Java question is answered with a C++ code example and the answerer says, sorry that's the only syntax I can muster up, then he'll be voted on based on how well he answers the question - it may very well be the best answer.  The same goes for our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29326/who-would-be-the-most-efficacious-patron-saint-of-programmers-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://dogpile.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2146" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="836" RevisionGUID="e60f0357-ae89-49db-980d-abfcd427ce28" CreationDate="2010-12-28T19:04:15.457" UserId="1973" Text="What's the off-topic part of this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2147" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="836" RevisionGUID="e60f0357-ae89-49db-980d-abfcd427ce28" CreationDate="2010-12-28T19:04:15.457" UserId="1973" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2148" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="837" RevisionGUID="667cddd3-42b3-452f-840e-f021ed9bf651" CreationDate="2010-12-28T19:43:12.197" UserId="47" Text="There actually is a patron saint of programmers - http://www.scborromeo.org/saints/isidores.htm, though I see you already mention him.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would have been more inclined to close as &quot;not constructive&quot; as any answer cannot be backed up by evidence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lance Robert's comment is the pertinent one though - your question doesn't really have any relevance to software development." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2149" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="838" RevisionGUID="d51e7e8f-44af-4648-8258-10047833ad26" CreationDate="2010-12-28T20:33:57.540" UserId="101" Text="I can tell you why I voted to close it.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question has more to do with religion than it does about programming.  Secondly, there is nothing in your question that would prevent someone from substituting Accountants with Programmers.  That's why I voted to close it as Off-Topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also agree with ChrisF and would have also voted to close it as &quot;not constructive&quot;.  In addition, I could have been persuaded to vote to close it as &quot;too localized&quot; because it only dealt with a single religion, but that would be stretching the use of &quot;too localized&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bottom line for me is whether or not this question makes me a better programmer.  And for me that answer is no.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2150" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="839" RevisionGUID="bc73a64f-61ff-4621-a1aa-03dc203ae1a6" CreationDate="2010-12-28T22:11:32.083" UserId="6329" Text="I think it's better to keep the history untouched, so long as there's that big notice that the question has been migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think what really needs to happen is that **we should scale the votes on the questions based on active users**. Right now the top four questions here are all migrated from SO. Many of them weren't even that popular on SO, but they are here due to the user base skew." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2151" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="840" RevisionGUID="7ed8a031-f110-4d2d-b329-a1170772da60" CreationDate="2010-12-28T22:17:25.493" UserId="6329" Text="Yes, there is a flood. The worst part is that they have the vote counts from SO intact, making them look more important and popular than they really are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The ratings of the questions should either be scaled or, when migrated, should get a completely fresh count." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2152" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="841" RevisionGUID="34545891-0575-49f7-a4d2-afe72be961b4" CreationDate="2010-12-29T00:11:54.650" UserId="10246" Text="I peek into Programmers Stack Exchange every once in a while and I keep noticing a pattern: there are a whole lot of [CLOSED]-marked questions.  What is behind this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Are people unclear on what is or is not on-topic for this Stack Exchange sub-board?&#xD;&#xA; * Are the permissible questions simply too narrow in scope?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In either case, what can be done to make the front page look a little less uninviting?  The way it looks now, a first-time or infrequent visitor will just see Programmers Stack Exchange as an unwelcoming place to ask questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2153" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="841" RevisionGUID="34545891-0575-49f7-a4d2-afe72be961b4" CreationDate="2010-12-29T00:11:54.650" UserId="10246" Text="Why are almost half the questions on the front page marked &quot;closed&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2154" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="841" RevisionGUID="34545891-0575-49f7-a4d2-afe72be961b4" CreationDate="2010-12-29T00:11:54.650" UserId="10246" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2155" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="842" RevisionGUID="ea215821-2573-427a-a4d8-ece9869de4dd" CreationDate="2010-12-29T00:22:33.713" UserId="63" Text="1. Are people unclear on what is or is not on-topic for this Stack Exchange sub-board?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Oh yeah. The scope effectively made a 90&amp;deg; turn a few weeks into the beta, and it was a friggin' *freight train* already in terms of popularity and support even then.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Are the permissible questions simply too narrow in scope?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not really. But we're kinda trying to turn a biker bar into a tea room without kicking out the bikers first; doesn't really matter what we *say* the scope is.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2157" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="844" RevisionGUID="0c34b919-2b70-465e-9164-e1c16fefbaaf" CreationDate="2010-12-29T00:31:01.570" UserId="11259" Text="I can understand the desire to close duplicate questions. However, as the site grows I suspect that there will be a lot of new users that can offer valuable responses to old questions. I worry that this new knowledge base will tend not to respond to question that are &quot;old&quot;. Is there a better way of reviving a thread to take advantage of the knowledge in the &quot;new&quot; user base. Perhaps a way to reassign the question to the user that posted the duplicate question. Or if the old thread is sufficiently old (maybe three months) then close the old thread and move all the responses to the new thread. Ultimately, I am suggesting some method that will entice people answer an old question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...just a suggestion. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2158" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="844" RevisionGUID="0c34b919-2b70-465e-9164-e1c16fefbaaf" CreationDate="2010-12-29T00:31:01.570" UserId="11259" Text="Duplicate Questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2159" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="844" RevisionGUID="0c34b919-2b70-465e-9164-e1c16fefbaaf" CreationDate="2010-12-29T00:31:01.570" UserId="11259" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2160" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="845" RevisionGUID="4bb4f317-6795-43ac-9868-0200680dfac8" CreationDate="2010-12-29T00:32:22.627" UserId="11827" Text="*Secondly, there is nothing in your question that would prevent someone from substituting Accountants with Programmers*  &#xD;&#xA;Accountants should have a different saint i think. And that's an important question. Who would you pray to when your project goes wrong? I don't really care too much, but that's an interesting question :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*In addition, I could have been persuaded to vote to close it as &quot;too localized&quot; because it only dealt with a single religion*  &#xD;&#xA;Yeah, let's be tolerant. Close all topics that deal with only one programming language or operating system. Because we make so many windows users sad when we discuss linux :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Walter why such religious hatered? Wanting to close something just because it's about religion that you don't like. That's sad." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2164" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="847" RevisionGUID="127505bd-4c96-453e-9a1d-a7fdcf789174" CreationDate="2010-12-29T02:46:32.477" UserId="37" Text="I don't think it's &quot;half&quot;. I've told you a *million* times to stop exaggerating.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And there is some value in seeing closed questions, because..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. People understand *there are rules and norms*, this is not some kind of &quot;I can do whatever I want&quot; place. So if what you want is anything goes, you might keep on moseying along to the next town.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. People get a sense of why questions are closed, because every closed question links to the reason behind the closing, e.g.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; ### closed as not constructive by Macneil, Mark Trapp, bigown♦ 3 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; This question does not meet enough of our [six guidelines for constructive subjective questions][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2170" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="470" RevisionGUID="3148b545-4fe5-4323-945c-45ee9276ec88" CreationDate="2010-12-29T08:45:11.497" UserId="47" Comment="update" Text="Assuming the site goes live and gets &quot;Server Fault levels of traffic&quot; (source to follow) then we'll get a &quot;proper&quot; domain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we've chosen a good tagline, see [Write an Elevator Pitch/Tagline](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline) then the name should come.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things have changed since I wrote this answer. Except in rare circumstances sites don't get their own top level domain any more." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2172" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="470" RevisionGUID="fa03eee6-3538-4acf-9deb-e9cd627abc5a" CreationDate="2010-12-29T08:56:29.947" UserId="47" Comment="better update" Text="Assuming the site goes live **and** gets &quot;Server Fault levels of traffic&quot; (source to follow) then we'll get a &quot;proper&quot; domain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we've chosen a good tagline, see [Write an Elevator Pitch/Tagline](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline) then the name should come.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things have changed since I wrote this answer. The site has gone live, but the criteria for getting a top level domain have changed. As well as getting Server Fault levels of traffic (which we are probably approaching) we still need to have a good name, and except in rare circumstances sites don't get their own name any more." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2173" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="849" RevisionGUID="add02f11-2454-4dfc-a0ff-201d2800e00e" CreationDate="2010-12-29T09:50:07.547" UserId="11785" Text="Is the subject of IT service management (for example discussion about implementing specific ITIL processes) within the scope of this site? I know, that it is really on the very edge of what Programmers aims to be, but would like to know your opinion nonetheless." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2174" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="849" RevisionGUID="add02f11-2454-4dfc-a0ff-201d2800e00e" CreationDate="2010-12-29T09:50:07.547" UserId="11785" Text="Is service management within the scope of the site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2175" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="849" RevisionGUID="add02f11-2454-4dfc-a0ff-201d2800e00e" CreationDate="2010-12-29T09:50:07.547" UserId="11785" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2176" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="850" RevisionGUID="31b555bc-75e4-49dd-ac99-35967969c70a" CreationDate="2010-12-29T10:01:58.593" UserId="5095" Text="Pesonally I think that support should be covered, at least as far as it relates to programmers and programming, my question / concern would be that something like ITIL is far wider ranging than that (or can be) so it will ultimately depend on how you target your question - the more you can keep it specific to programmers the more likely it is to (a) survive and (b) actually get good answers - after all, that's what people here know about." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2177" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="851" RevisionGUID="b3decd55-ae20-4e26-bf00-e98173410058" CreationDate="2010-12-29T10:10:14.233" UserId="5095" Text="A lot of closed questions keep popping up on the front page because someone has added a comment to an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While technically this is activity, could the definition be tightened up for closed question to allow them to die a graceful death?  Maybe have it so no activity on them other than re-open or question edits count?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am suspicious that there are people keeping their questions alive in the hope that they'll be re-opened..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2178" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="851" RevisionGUID="b3decd55-ae20-4e26-bf00-e98173410058" CreationDate="2010-12-29T10:10:14.233" UserId="5095" Text="Defining Activity for Close Questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2179" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="851" RevisionGUID="b3decd55-ae20-4e26-bf00-e98173410058" CreationDate="2010-12-29T10:10:14.233" UserId="5095" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2180" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="852" RevisionGUID="55990ee4-2e4b-4461-84fc-b12626adeb88" CreationDate="2010-12-29T10:13:11.607" UserId="5095" Text="A question can be revived by editing it which will put it back on the front page, alternatively, you could post a bounty if you think that there's more that can be added.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there's a case for this where the old question is old enough that things may have changed since then (I'd say 2 years plus) but not for a few months.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2181" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="853" RevisionGUID="d9f8b704-edfa-4d37-a887-1a2fc4994e68" CreationDate="2010-12-29T12:40:45.323" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="I agree with you. But maybe we should change the behavior of the default view mode instead (when you click on the logo)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't like the default view (activity). I prefer the &quot;question&quot; view with questions sorted by date for that reason.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2182" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="854" RevisionGUID="7ef5d006-4778-4a39-affa-8e1f40158e6a" CreationDate="2010-12-29T14:41:40.913" UserId="4265" Text="We've got some questions that seem to cover very similar ground, specifically:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/282/what-are-the-best-podcasts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26730/optimizing-your-daily-commute&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26002/road-trip-listening-material&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And they have been effectively marked as duplicates of each other.  All well and good.  The thing is that I think that while the answers to all the questions have largely worked out to cover the same meta-question, the questions themselves are not really the same and don't really cover the same thing that their answers do.  I think that that is what may be preventing the merging of the answers to these 3 questions into a single question that can continue to be updated with new answers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I would suggest is that someone create a new question, which more broadly covers the ground in the three questions above (something like &quot;How to pass time in the car&quot;) and then we merge all the answers from the 3 questions above into that single question, which can then be left open for future additions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does that make sense to anyone else?  &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2183" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="854" RevisionGUID="7ef5d006-4778-4a39-affa-8e1f40158e6a" CreationDate="2010-12-29T14:41:40.913" UserId="4265" Text="Consolidating Several Questions Marked as Duplicates" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2184" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="854" RevisionGUID="7ef5d006-4778-4a39-affa-8e1f40158e6a" CreationDate="2010-12-29T14:41:40.913" UserId="4265" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|merging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2185" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="821" RevisionGUID="3386db4d-388d-49d9-81c8-df59bae27dbc" CreationDate="2010-12-29T17:00:33.773" UserId="389" Comment="added 134 characters in body" Text="It's important that we disallow SO to push trash to us. Engage on these questions on MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Programmers is about to go live, which questions should we migrate?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Multiple duplicated question on SO are being migrated to PSE partially][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Have Code Golf questions been implicitly disallowed on StackOverflow, now that migration to PSE is possible?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Migration questions from SO to PSE just to stay temporarily][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl][5] specially this answer: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl/73431#73431&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73375/multiple-duplicated-question-on-so-are-being-migrated-to-pse-partially&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73332/have-code-golf-questions-been-implicitly-disallowed-on-stackoverflow-now-that-mi&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73373/migration-questions-from-so-to-pse-just-to-stay-temporarily&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2186" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="855" RevisionGUID="4866306b-a9f4-436a-bcc9-ac1053d86227" CreationDate="2010-12-29T17:33:46.100" UserId="226" Text="I'm not a fan of seeing questions closed without the usual 5 closing votes, but I understand that sometimes that's necessary. Still, what are the rules around moderators closing questions outright?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, this one: [Why does Microsoft have such a bad reputation with the people involved in open source? [closed]][1]. Seems like a decent question, the answers are well thought out, and then it's mod-hammered down as &quot;not constructive&quot; with two votes and no explanation. Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: I did see [this question][2], but I wanted to raise the issue again with some context. The situations described in the answer there don't seem to apply in this case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/31603/why-does-microsoft-have-such-a-bad-reputation-with-the-people-involved-in-open-so&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2187" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="855" RevisionGUID="4866306b-a9f4-436a-bcc9-ac1053d86227" CreationDate="2010-12-29T17:33:46.100" UserId="226" Text="What are the rules around moderators closing questions outright?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2188" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="855" RevisionGUID="4866306b-a9f4-436a-bcc9-ac1053d86227" CreationDate="2010-12-29T17:33:46.100" UserId="226" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2189" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="856" RevisionGUID="567c2055-e967-4a43-9fa2-4ee3a3443902" CreationDate="2010-12-29T18:53:45.910" UserId="30" Text="The principle is that moderators are encouraged to make decisions; that's why they're moderators. As such, a moderator's close decision goes into effect immediately... that's the way the Stack Exchange software was designed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to why that particular question was closed: it was closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; which makes a lot of sense to me. Is the Internet really improved by yet another lengthy conversation about Microsoft and open source? The question is nothing but an invitation to reignite the pointless flame wars which have plenty of other homes. Stack Exchange is for exchanging knowledge." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2190" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="857" RevisionGUID="a085564b-42fe-40f9-8b4a-d0036c6f6065" CreationDate="2010-12-29T19:00:12.270" UserId="30" Text="That strikes me as three very different ways of answering three very different questions that *happen* to share the same answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sharing an answer doesn't mean they're the same question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the primary interfaces to this site is through Google, where people often search by typing questions. If you merge these three different questions, you're reducing the chances that someone who has one of the three questions can actually find their answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2191" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="858" RevisionGUID="61379eee-ebcb-4cae-9b94-c34261fa6e5e" CreationDate="2010-12-29T19:04:46.510" UserId="30" Text="One thing that can help is editing the original question to make it more generalized. If a question appears to be evergreen, general, and canonical, it will get evergreen traffic. If a question appears to be something that some guy wanted to know six months ago, and he apparently already got his answer, far fewer people will care to answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2192" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="821" RevisionGUID="726ffdb0-968c-4d3b-9311-521d870723a6" CreationDate="2010-12-29T20:17:13.740" UserId="389" Comment="added 159 characters in body" Text="It's important that we disallow SO to push trash to us. Engage on these questions on MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Programmers is about to go live, which questions should we migrate?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Multiple duplicated question on SO are being migrated to PSE partially][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Have Code Golf questions been implicitly disallowed on StackOverflow, now that migration to PSE is possible?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Migration questions from SO to PSE just to stay temporarily][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl][5] specially this answer: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl/73431#73431&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Who should be granted to Migration Path feature?][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73375/multiple-duplicated-question-on-so-are-being-migrated-to-pse-partially&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73332/have-code-golf-questions-been-implicitly-disallowed-on-stackoverflow-now-that-mi&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73373/migration-questions-from-so-to-pse-just-to-stay-temporarily&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73493/who-should-be-granted-to-migration-path-feature" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2193" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="836" RevisionGUID="a432ba8c-4550-4a7c-88de-3f8031dca72e" CreationDate="2010-12-29T20:18:11.510" UserId="389" Comment="3" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:389,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;bigown&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="2194" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="859" RevisionGUID="92de392e-6a4a-406c-80d8-f15288a683bb" CreationDate="2010-12-29T20:24:57.517" UserId="1685" Text="I have put in a fix, it will be in the next deployment. Thanks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2195" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="860" RevisionGUID="462a32d4-2323-4542-8203-bd0a541c9695" CreationDate="2010-12-29T20:26:45.883" UserId="4265" Text="It seems to me that if you're going to close a question as being a duplicate, you should be willing to (in principle at least) merge its answers with the question it is a duplicate of.  If it is sufficiently different that the answers are too different, then maybe its not a duplicate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2196" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="861" RevisionGUID="30cb1d27-4768-4cc4-8e4f-e3f49713d60a" CreationDate="2010-12-29T21:10:44.143" UserId="3114" Text="My personal opinion is that one (or more) moderators on PSE who've decided that they are the arbiters instead of the community and are spooked by questions being migrated here from SO.  Instead of simply letting the community coalesce around a way of handling these questions, they're being reactionary and defensive.  They also seem to take it too personally, rallying the troops to protect *their* domain. The best moderators have a light touch and a thick skin.  At this point, it seems that any question migrated from SO is in danger of being trashed by these mods despite what the community thinks or whether it could be worked into a shape that would be appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just another reason for me not to participate here, despite the fact that these are the topics that are of particular interest to me." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2197" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="862" RevisionGUID="ff37a20c-e91c-4c66-a2f7-6da0e6f7406e" CreationDate="2010-12-29T21:33:07.843" UserId="37" Text="If you disagree with a closure you can vote to open it, provided you have 3k rep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That one is borderline so IMHO it could go either way (and already has). I agree with the principle that the determining factor is the type of answers a question is getting, *particularly* in these borderline cases." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2198" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="863" RevisionGUID="2e37f837-38e1-461c-9171-de6fbc5b274a" CreationDate="2010-12-29T21:48:25.260" UserId="1973" Text="So, weren't we supposed to choose our mods near the end of the beta?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's the status of this first class Stack Exchange feature?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2199" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="863" RevisionGUID="2e37f837-38e1-461c-9171-de6fbc5b274a" CreationDate="2010-12-29T21:48:25.260" UserId="1973" Text="When can we have mod elections - or - a vote of no confidence" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2200" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="863" RevisionGUID="2e37f837-38e1-461c-9171-de6fbc5b274a" CreationDate="2010-12-29T21:48:25.260" UserId="1973" Text="|discussion|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2204" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="865" RevisionGUID="104b4137-ca15-430a-85ae-00c0d9483581" CreationDate="2010-12-29T22:12:58.543" UserId="37" Text="Mod elections will be held in the new year, though it make take a month or two -- we have a lot of sites that we need to run elections on and the election code is just out of beta&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/stack-exchange-moderator-elections-begin/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2208" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="831" RevisionGUID="fca74552-6c8a-4c62-b3b9-06f5c425e996" CreationDate="2010-12-30T04:36:35.633" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2209" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="869" RevisionGUID="7b570b70-e5a6-4524-b8d5-7b9cb7f4e4e5" CreationDate="2010-12-30T05:01:09.363" UserId="37" Text="In general, I have been deleting the questions that I think have no lasting value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only ones I want migrated are the ones that are *useful*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See:  &#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73226/set-up-an-archive-for-legendary-deleted-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2210" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="870" RevisionGUID="70957ac7-b870-4355-8932-3c7448eccdd9" CreationDate="2010-12-30T05:01:20.703" UserId="37" Text="In general, I have been deleting the questions that I think have no lasting value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only ones I want migrated are the ones that are *useful*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See:  &#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73226/set-up-an-archive-for-legendary-deleted-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2211" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="871" RevisionGUID="069720a8-cb46-4178-87f7-3af8298292eb" CreationDate="2010-12-30T05:03:41.870" UserId="37" Text="see&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/handling-duplicate-questions/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/improved-question-merging/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I’m not necessarily advocating deletion, either; we want some of these merge stub questions hanging around so people can find two “identical” questions that were asked in two totally different ways. The exact, perfect duplicate question, in my experience, is much more rare than people think." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2213" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="872" RevisionGUID="f4cb60e7-783d-49d1-9560-8123ea6a4dba" CreationDate="2010-12-30T11:55:56.983" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Following up to [Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the main opposition position, which based on votes is pretty popular, is essentially &quot;you're not getting rid of the crap, so we're going to keep flushing,&quot; it doesn't look like we're going to stop getting terribad Stack Overflow questions for some time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was a feature suggestion that moderators should be able to &quot;accept&quot; incoming migrations to police what's sent to their Stack Exchange site: failing that feature being implemented, do moderators want all potentially terrible migrated questions to be flagged so they can make a call about closing them without waiting for 5 close votes that may or may not come? I've been flagging the obvious career advice and duplicate questions, but there are some potentially bad questions beyond that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2214" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="872" RevisionGUID="f4cb60e7-783d-49d1-9560-8123ea6a4dba" CreationDate="2010-12-30T11:55:56.983" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Do moderators want to be notified when Stack Overflow questions get migrated?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2215" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="872" RevisionGUID="f4cb60e7-783d-49d1-9560-8123ea6a4dba" CreationDate="2010-12-30T11:55:56.983" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|migration|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2216" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="873" RevisionGUID="92530417-2be9-4981-81fd-d302a7e84d00" CreationDate="2010-12-30T13:00:03.093" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="The original charter for PSE was much broader. Originally &quot;Not Programming Related&quot;, we were seeking a place to ask and entertain questions that would have been closed as &quot;not programming related&quot; on SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mostly, NPR was used when a question was more about _programmers_ than _programming_. Now we've introduced six guidelines for better subjective questions, which are in their own right open to subjective interpretation. I might feel that a question satisfies &quot;_Great subjective questions are more than just mindless social fun_&quot;, where someone else might not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the first page of users, I think we're only a few weeks away from having a sufficient number of 10k users that have access to tools that show them where problematic questions might be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it _really_ enough of an issue to be concerned with at this point?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2217" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="874" RevisionGUID="428ccd22-2c1d-4d87-89c0-510805ad1969" CreationDate="2010-12-30T13:32:33.893" UserId="2329" Text="Which technology is better? questions are usually bad.  (Java/C#, Eclipse/Netbeans, iPhone/Android)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2218" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="875" RevisionGUID="d0aebea4-f69b-4b3f-9722-41c5fabf4160" CreationDate="2010-12-30T14:06:40.457" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="I click on this question (see the link is correct):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I got redirected here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also recorded a video if it can helps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/R8w9j.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/uqPSj.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2219" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="875" RevisionGUID="d0aebea4-f69b-4b3f-9722-41c5fabf4160" CreationDate="2010-12-30T14:06:40.457" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="I get redirected to stackoverflow.com when I click on a migrated question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2220" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="875" RevisionGUID="d0aebea4-f69b-4b3f-9722-41c5fabf4160" CreationDate="2010-12-30T14:06:40.457" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2221" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="876" RevisionGUID="b26cde41-ea4a-4cf9-b53e-619d6c9c71a9" CreationDate="2010-12-30T14:17:09.343" UserId="226" Text="I think it's supposed to work like that, although it certainly threw me for a loop when I clicked it. I didn't realize I was on SO right away." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2222" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="876" RevisionGUID="47fdf3fe-4922-4db1-ae47-ecf211893f87" CreationDate="2010-12-30T17:27:58.273" UserId="63" Comment="Added links to relevant documentation, link to original question" Text="I think it's [supposed to work like that](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/17552/why-do-migrated-questions-lack-redirection-via-http-response-status-code-301-mov), although it certainly threw me for a loop when I clicked it. I didn't realize I was on SO right away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Appending `?noredirect=1` to the P.SE URL lets you view [the original question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32590/unicode-to-ascii-conversion-closed?noredirect=1)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2223" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="877" RevisionGUID="598c60d9-d4f9-4cd9-881f-0250b6952489" CreationDate="2010-12-30T19:57:57.867" UserId="6419" Text="It seems to me there is a difference of opinion about how to handle questions that would be considered overly broad, and that is leading to inconsistent handling of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For your consideration, here are two questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first that came along is [&quot;What are good resources for design patterns?&quot;][1], which is a two-liner, general, question asking for resources about design patterns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second, and most recent, is [&quot;design pattern for unit testing&quot;][2], which was, originally, a two-liner, general, question asking for resources about design patterns as they relate to unit testing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was brought up in the comments that the second question was too broad, and there was a close vote to that. But arguably the second question had more context because it was asking about design patterns as they pertain to unit testing and not just design patterns in general. I have no idea if there were any close votes on the first question as I don't have those privileges (yet). [This question on Meta was raised][3] which touches upon the topic of overly broad questions, but doesn't really discuss them in real detail and seems more focused on duplicate questions (which is quickly turning into an uncontrollable problem in the sites I frequent). Strictly speaking, neither of these question violate the guidelines of subjective questions which appears to be the gold standard for assessing the quality of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I won't debate the point that either question is broad, but both questions have brought some useful answers (particularly the first). The broad questions of these types seem to be logical ones to ask, I'm sure everyone here has asked them at one point or another, but there are few places to ask them outside of the SE family of websites. Alternatives have yet to be presented by the objector(s) of the second question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the P.SE community does decide to close questions that are broad, that it should at least wait to see the quality of the answers before submitting the close vote. Or, better still, simply mark it as `community wiki` and let it fly. These are really not that much different than the &quot;favorite tool/application/technique&quot; questions that exist now and will always be asked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The subjective guidelines are great—and people need to remember they are just guidelines and not strict rules—and judging something as being &quot;overly broad&quot; is just as subjective a topic. I think the community would benefit from a clear definition of &quot;overly broad&quot; and a consistent implementation that would result.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2240/what-are-good-resources-for-design-patterns&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32571/design-pattern-for-unit-testing&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2224" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="877" RevisionGUID="598c60d9-d4f9-4cd9-881f-0250b6952489" CreationDate="2010-12-30T19:57:57.867" UserId="6419" Text="Do we need a definition and policy on what would be considered &quot;overly broad&quot; questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2225" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="877" RevisionGUID="598c60d9-d4f9-4cd9-881f-0250b6952489" CreationDate="2010-12-30T19:57:57.867" UserId="6419" Text="|discussion|questions|subjective|close-reasons|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2226" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="878" RevisionGUID="a1b6ea78-2768-46fe-a7cf-37a8e0e0e318" CreationDate="2010-12-30T20:12:35.530" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="There are *already* policies in place for questions that are too broad: edit them to limit their scope or close them. That's what the *not a real question* close reason is for. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Wiki is a tool for allowing the community to take ownership of a question or answer, it's to say &quot;Hey, I got the ball rolling, can you help me fill out the rest?&quot;, it's not a tool to be used to allow borderline-to-bad questions to exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to the question you're using as an example of something that you feel is just as broad as the one that got a *single close vote*, it was asked before the [Great Redisiplining](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) and hasn't had much activity since. Two wrongs don't make a right: it's good too point out questions that slip through the cracks to others can take the appropriate action, like closing, on them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I emphasize *single close vote* because you're taking *one single, solitary* close vote far too personally. It takes 5 regular users with 3,000+ rep or a moderator to close a question. The moderation of this site is done by real people who make real choices and real interpretations of what the policies are. Many times people agree, perhaps just as often they don't. That's why it takes 5 people to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the question, as it stands now, looks to be fine, although borderline with the quality of the answers it's getting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And honestly, Programmers.SE is in no dire straits when it comes to people asking questions. There are tons of questions being asked, beyond the two you're focusing on, that aren't too broad; we don't need to make a special exception for overly broad questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2227" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="878" RevisionGUID="0bfee877-aba4-4a05-a226-0dd8bde4990e" CreationDate="2010-12-30T20:24:21.477" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="There are *already* policies in place for questions that are too broad: edit them to limit their scope or close them. That's what the *not a real question* close reason is for. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Wiki is a tool for allowing the community to take ownership of a question or answer, it's to say &quot;Hey, I got the ball rolling, can you help me fill out the rest?&quot;, it's not a tool to be used to allow borderline-to-bad questions to exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to the question you're using as an example of something that you feel is just as broad as the one that got a *single close vote*, it was asked before the [Great Redisiplining](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) and hasn't had much activity since. Two wrongs don't make a right: it's good to point out questions that slip through the cracks so others can take the appropriate action, like closing, on them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I emphasize *single close vote* because you're taking *one single, solitary* close vote far too personally. It takes 5 regular users with 3,000+ rep or a moderator to close a question. The moderation of this site is done by real people who make real choices and real interpretations of what the policies are. Many times people agree, perhaps just as often they don't. That's why it takes 5 people to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the question, as it stands now, looks to be fine, although borderline with the quality of the answers it's getting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And honestly, Programmers.SE is in no dire straits when it comes to people asking questions. There are tons of questions being asked, beyond the two you're focusing on, that aren't too broad; we don't need to make a special exception for overly broad questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2228" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="878" RevisionGUID="ab5cf40e-e76e-4019-bb77-401ded16ffdb" CreationDate="2010-12-30T20:46:26.903" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 103 characters in body" Text="There are *already* policies in place for questions that are too broad: edit them to limit their scope or close them. That's what the *not a real question* close reason is for. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Wiki is a tool for allowing the community to take ownership of a question or answer, it's to say &quot;Hey, I got the ball rolling, can you help me fill out the rest?&quot;, it's not a tool to be used to allow borderline-to-bad questions to exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to the question you're using as an example of something that you feel is just as broad as the one that got a *single close vote*, it was asked before the [Great Redisiplining](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) and hasn't had much activity since. Two wrongs don't make a right: just because a similar question stayed open doesn't mean a bad question gets a free pass. However, it's good to point out questions that slip through the cracks so others can take the appropriate action, like closing, on them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I emphasize *single close vote* because you're taking *one single, solitary* close vote far too personally. It takes 5 regular users with 3,000+ rep or a moderator to close a question. The moderation of this site is done by real people who make real choices and real interpretations of what the policies are. Many times people agree, perhaps just as often they don't. That's why it takes 5 people to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the question, as it stands now, looks to be fine, although borderline with the quality of the answers it's getting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And honestly, Programmers.SE is in no dire straits when it comes to people asking questions. There are tons of questions being asked, beyond the two you're focusing on, that aren't too broad; we don't need to make a special exception for overly broad questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2229" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="877" RevisionGUID="f003edbd-5f43-4ca0-ba28-ed6302e973d2" CreationDate="2010-12-30T21:15:47.403" UserId="6419" Comment="added 865 characters in body" Text="It seems to me there is a difference of opinion about how to handle questions that would be considered overly broad, and that is leading to inconsistent handling of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For your consideration, here are two questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first that came along is [&quot;What are good resources for design patterns?&quot;][1], which is a two-liner, general, question asking for resources about design patterns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second, and most recent, is [&quot;design pattern for unit testing&quot;][2], which was, originally, a two-liner, general, question asking for resources about design patterns as they relate to unit testing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was brought up in the comments that the second question was too broad, and there was a close vote to that. But arguably the second question had more context because it was asking about design patterns as they pertain to unit testing and not just design patterns in general. I have no idea if there were any close votes on the first question as I don't have those privileges (yet). [This question on Meta was raised][3] which touches upon the topic of overly broad questions, but doesn't really discuss them in real detail and seems more focused on duplicate questions (which is quickly turning into an uncontrollable problem in the sites I frequent). Strictly speaking, neither of these question violate the guidelines of subjective questions which appears to be the gold standard for assessing the quality of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I won't debate the point that either question is broad, but both questions have brought some useful answers (particularly the first). The broad questions of these types seem to be logical ones to ask, I'm sure everyone here has asked them at one point or another, but there are few places to ask them outside of the SE family of websites. Alternatives have yet to be presented by the objector(s) of the second question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the P.SE community does decide to close questions that are broad, that it should at least wait to see the quality of the answers before submitting the close vote. Or, better still, simply mark it as `community wiki` and let it fly. These are really not that much different than the &quot;favorite tool/application/technique&quot; questions that exist now and will always be asked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The subjective guidelines are great—and people need to remember they are just guidelines and not strict rules—and judging something as being &quot;overly broad&quot; is just as subjective a topic. I think the community would benefit from a clear definition of &quot;overly broad&quot; and a consistent implementation that would result.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE:** What I am proposing is that the definition of &quot;broad&quot;, its existence as a reason to close, and the policy of closing for broad context should be revisited. While this isn't nearly as important as past issues, it is one that I think hasn't been hashed out enough and some questions (and possibly potential contributors) are suffering as a result. What one may consider a simple, basic question, another may consider a bad one. Is voting to close it really the best way to handle it, particularly if the topic would yield solid, basic answers? It's not as though the SE sites, SO and P.SE in particular, make any clearly stated assumptions and qualifications of the skill level of people who post questions. Until that happens, these types of questions are going to come up again and again, and I think there ought to be a better way of managing them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2240/what-are-good-resources-for-design-patterns&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32571/design-pattern-for-unit-testing&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2230" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="879" RevisionGUID="58638f31-5938-4999-b815-bee54c70e63c" CreationDate="2010-12-30T21:16:20.333" UserId="47" Text="There's a link on the 10K tools pages - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/recently-imported - (it's on [this tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=links&amp;daterange=last2days)) that shows all the questions recently imported (the name's a give-away really ;) ). Something to look forward to when you get to 10K.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We (moderators and 10K users) just have to remember to click it from time to time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please feel free to flag anything you come across that you think doesn't belong - though don't forget to vote as well. It looks better if there are more names on a closed question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2231" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="880" RevisionGUID="bc8cfdd8-ed91-4e1f-b18f-1bed0559fc4c" CreationDate="2010-12-30T22:24:59.310" UserId="2344" Text="Any question that would apply equally to accountants, or CAD designers, or legal assistants, or...." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2232" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="881" RevisionGUID="a9704e86-e4f8-4c57-ad61-a7b2dbf84724" CreationDate="2010-12-30T23:08:13.050" UserId="37" Text="Question migrations, both in and out, should be a dedicated tab on the 10k tools page -- Marc will implement this as soon as is reasonably possible." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2233" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="882" RevisionGUID="3c230bb1-bfe0-4457-8b5d-160632375c4c" CreationDate="2010-12-31T00:13:16.623" UserId="389" Text="How can we define what is good or what is wrong about software law here? This issue came from [this question][1] closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best way to explain the problem with that question would be: &quot;*What's that question could add to us, programmers on our job?*&quot;. We can ask questions about software law that affects our job. That question is just about an past issue of our industry. This issue probably didn't affect the programmers of IE 10 years ago. How it could affect us? How it could be more than a trivia like?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some good questions about software law that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Are there laws to protect us from hackers who disclose vulnerabilities prior to alerting the vendor?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is the “default” software license?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Should software patents be legal?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Ethics, Clients, and legal repercussions.][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What legal considerations do I need to have when programming?][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How would you want to see software intellectual property protected?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of them has other problems, specially &quot;Should software patents be legal?&quot;, but they are on-topic to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is my personal opinion. What you think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32460/why-was-microsoft-sued-for-for-a-product-ie-that-was-going-to-give-them-an-edg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11546/are-there-laws-to-protect-us-from-hackers-who-disclose-vulnerabilities-prior-to&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26548/what-is-the-default-software-license&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/790/should-software-patents-be-legal&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10296/ethics-clients-and-legal-repercussions&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/13034/what-legal-considerations-do-i-need-to-have-when-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32577/how-would-you-want-to-see-software-intellectual-property-protected" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2234" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="882" RevisionGUID="3c230bb1-bfe0-4457-8b5d-160632375c4c" CreationDate="2010-12-31T00:13:16.623" UserId="389" Text="Software Law definition" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2235" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="882" RevisionGUID="3c230bb1-bfe0-4457-8b5d-160632375c4c" CreationDate="2010-12-31T00:13:16.623" UserId="389" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2236" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="883" RevisionGUID="c130f9ef-ca84-4d5e-83b8-55445a98f1c8" CreationDate="2010-12-31T00:48:41.667" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="When I look at a question like that,the one question that goes through my mind is: &quot;what knowledge, gained from experience, does an answer to this question provide?&quot; That is, the value of Programmers.SE, mostly codified in the Six Subjective Guidelines and the FAQ, is that there are certain things you only find out from being a programmer for a long enough period of time, and this is the place to ask the questions to get at that knowledge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question like that is off-topic because it's not asking something that only a veteran programmer can answer based on his years of experience, but a trivia question. There's no experiential knowledge being transferred, except from maybe reading about it when it happened. The other questions at least invite others to back their answers with knowledge they've gained over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be honest, the question smells like a perfect [Quora](http://www.quora.com) question, where they eat up those types of trivia questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2237" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="882" RevisionGUID="6baf9161-4a70-40d5-a490-d518a6b341dc" CreationDate="2010-12-31T01:07:22.557" UserId="389" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body; added 1 characters in body" Text="How can we define what is good or what is wrong about software law here? This issue came from [this question][1] closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best way to explain the problem with that question would be: &quot;*What's that question could add to us, programmers on our job?*&quot;. We can ask questions about software law that affects our job. That question is just about an past issue of our industry. This issue probably didn't affect the programmers of IE 10 years ago. How it could affect us? How it could be more than a trivia like?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some good questions about software law:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Are there laws to protect us from hackers who disclose vulnerabilities prior to alerting the vendor?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is the “default” software license?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Should software patents be legal?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Ethics, Clients, and legal repercussions.][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What legal considerations do I need to have when programming?][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How would you want to see software intellectual property protected?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of them have other problems, specially &quot;Should software patents be legal?&quot;, but they are on-topic to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is my personal opinion. What you think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32460/why-was-microsoft-sued-for-for-a-product-ie-that-was-going-to-give-them-an-edg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11546/are-there-laws-to-protect-us-from-hackers-who-disclose-vulnerabilities-prior-to&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26548/what-is-the-default-software-license&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/790/should-software-patents-be-legal&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10296/ethics-clients-and-legal-repercussions&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/13034/what-legal-considerations-do-i-need-to-have-when-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32577/how-would-you-want-to-see-software-intellectual-property-protected" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2238" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="884" RevisionGUID="d376ef6f-477e-45e6-acf5-10bb5e0918ee" CreationDate="2010-12-31T01:45:45.990" UserId="37" Text="This is by design -- we feel a migrated question should take you directly to the destination, since otherwise it's just another click to get to the actual question and any answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2239" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="875" RevisionGUID="ee6e9bee-0526-4267-aff5-4a468167bbc5" CreationDate="2010-12-31T01:45:52.543" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2240" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="885" RevisionGUID="87474884-c6ba-4880-8a68-3a6be741f660" CreationDate="2010-12-31T04:28:38.967" UserDisplayName="user4626" Text="When I click the flair link, there it shows a reputation of 180 for programmers.stackexchange. But at the top of the page it shows 320. So what makes this difference ?   &#xD;&#xA;I have done the reprecalc , and it gives me 328. Totally confused." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2241" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="885" RevisionGUID="87474884-c6ba-4880-8a68-3a6be741f660" CreationDate="2010-12-31T04:28:38.967" UserDisplayName="user4626" Text="Why is reputation and flair points differ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2242" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="885" RevisionGUID="87474884-c6ba-4880-8a68-3a6be741f660" CreationDate="2010-12-31T04:28:38.967" UserDisplayName="user4626" Text="|discussion|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2243" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="886" RevisionGUID="2a251e03-3c55-4199-9f81-c3b5db34bdb3" CreationDate="2010-12-31T04:59:09.283" UserId="1554" Text="Considering that there are questions that some think should not have been closed at all, that activity will hopefully give those questions views -&gt; and hopefully votes to re-open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe after a certain period of time, once the community has had the opportunity to see those questions and agree that they should stay closed, it would make sense. Recently closed questions should stay as they are IMO." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2244" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="887" RevisionGUID="18f1cbc6-604f-4e00-9efd-f3190afd124f" CreationDate="2010-12-31T18:39:48.400" UserId="47" Text="The reputation in your flair is cached whereas the headline figure is more or less real-time.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2245" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="888" RevisionGUID="42a208bb-fced-4530-892a-d97acef64f56" CreationDate="2011-01-01T02:51:20.500" UserId="5624" Text="![Giant pencil icon!!!][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The pencil icon for edited comments are far too large on P.SE + Meta. It seems like every other site uses the standard tiny pencil, which works well and is unobtrusive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7O6fG.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2246" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="888" RevisionGUID="42a208bb-fced-4530-892a-d97acef64f56" CreationDate="2011-01-01T02:51:20.500" UserId="5624" Text="The &quot;comment edited&quot; picture icon to be more subtle" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2247" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="888" RevisionGUID="42a208bb-fced-4530-892a-d97acef64f56" CreationDate="2011-01-01T02:51:20.500" UserId="5624" Text="|feature-request|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2248" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="889" RevisionGUID="c428d98a-9b19-4904-8ab4-8ec9d73166ee" CreationDate="2011-01-01T20:39:30.843" UserId="1554" Text="Just wondering but I've seen it happen a number of times, but when answers get blatantly obvious duplicate/repeat answers from multiple people. Now, I normally just upvote the first person if the answer is good, but take [this][1] question for instance. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's the etiquette for dealing with repeat answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32956/what-are-the-common-revenue-models-for-free-software-companies" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2249" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="889" RevisionGUID="c428d98a-9b19-4904-8ab4-8ec9d73166ee" CreationDate="2011-01-01T20:39:30.843" UserId="1554" Text="What's the etiquette for repeat answers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2250" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="889" RevisionGUID="c428d98a-9b19-4904-8ab4-8ec9d73166ee" CreationDate="2011-01-01T20:39:30.843" UserId="1554" Text="|discussion|answers|etiquette|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2251" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="890" RevisionGUID="d2e436e8-a9fa-422b-adca-f3e202551afc" CreationDate="2011-01-01T21:35:12.853" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="On this site, people are incredibly liberal with voting: almost all answers that are remotely related to the question are upvoted, and *any* downvoting is called into question as being rude, mean, or uncouth. If you want to follow etiquette, you should upvote all the answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, your own personal preference in how you vote isn't going to make or break a person's reputation total, so feel free to ignore the etiquette and follow the overarching principle of **upvote answers you think are useful, downvote answers you think are not useful.** Of course, only you can tell what's useful to you. If people duplicating already perfectly suitable answers is useless to you, downvote without pity, or remorse, or fear and upvote only those answers you *personally* found of use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To give you my own criteria in the situation you're describing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that a lot of times, even so-called &quot;subjective&quot; answers only really have one *real* answer that people understand in slightly different ways. It's possible that people act in bad faith when answering (hoping you won't see they just duplicated an earlier answer for quick rep points), but I think most people are thinking that their answer is truly novel because it's not an exact copy-and-paste.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of that, I tend to upvote the answers that explain their position well. This dovetails nicely into the [Six Subjective Guidelines](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/), which encourage questions to invite long answers that share reasons, experiences, and facts. It's not simply enough that one answers a question: we get enough answers already. For an answer to be useful here, it needs to provide more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if a person says something first but provides no detail, and a second person provides the same answer cogently (that is, they provided useful reasons why one ought to believe the answer is true), I'll always upvote the second person and I'll tend to downvote the first person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, however, the first person gave a really useful answer and the second person didn't provide any new insights to the answer, I upvote the first and downvote the second as the second isn't useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both people have the same answer, but provide really great and different reasons for arriving at that answer, I'll upvote them both. Finally, if both answers lack any explanation, I'll downvote them both.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2252" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="891" RevisionGUID="a66f08c4-9cd2-4a16-8a21-65865d14dfc8" CreationDate="2011-01-01T22:59:34.013" UserId="37" Text="I agree, the pencil is massively overstyled (and far too literal) for a whiteboard design, and doesn't look correct. Perhaps an editing mark would be more appropriate -- like a small squiggle indicating &quot;this was edited&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://wadsworth.com/english_d/templates/student_resources/1413001890_burnett/UsageHandbook/edit_marks.htm&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://www.westga.edu/~megp/editing%20marks.gif&quot;&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2253" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="892" RevisionGUID="e57f1a26-e86f-440d-b58e-868d6a5d932b" CreationDate="2011-01-01T23:23:07.450" UserId="6329" Text="You should probably notify the person that their answer duplicates a previous one, and provide a link. They may then decide to delete their answer. If not, then at least you've made a pointer, so that people who would have otherwise upvoted that would upvote the &quot;right&quot; one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The purpose of voting is to strengthen the signal and reduce the noise. But such activities should also take the whole ecosystem into account: Posting a notice that something seems like a duplicate answer will help those in the community improve. Downvoting a sincere answer can poison the well and we could lose participation from people who would have really helped. (I have seen a similar poisoning of the well on Wikipedia, which has probably peaked in terms of high-quality edits on non-pop-culture articles.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2254" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="893" RevisionGUID="46aa7656-852a-4980-88bc-b996236aeb9e" CreationDate="2011-01-01T23:29:32.730" UserId="6329" Text="Suppose that you once wrote a very comprehensive answer to a question, and the contents can actually answer several other questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be appropriate to copy and paste your answer, revising as needed? Do you need to &quot;cite&quot; yourself if you do? Would it be appropriate to post a link to your answer, with some brief quotes?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2255" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="893" RevisionGUID="46aa7656-852a-4980-88bc-b996236aeb9e" CreationDate="2011-01-01T23:29:32.730" UserId="6329" Text="What's the etiquette for reusing your answers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2256" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="893" RevisionGUID="46aa7656-852a-4980-88bc-b996236aeb9e" CreationDate="2011-01-01T23:29:32.730" UserId="6329" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2257" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="894" RevisionGUID="177c07de-42c4-4edd-9362-fdc190da81d7" CreationDate="2011-01-01T23:32:21.960" UserId="6329" Text="On my last question on Meta on etiquette, I got this warning: &quot;The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First: Subjective? On programmers? Second: On meta? If the warning shouldn't appear anywhere, you'd think Programmers/Meta would be it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2258" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="894" RevisionGUID="177c07de-42c4-4edd-9362-fdc190da81d7" CreationDate="2011-01-01T23:32:21.960" UserId="6329" Text="Subjective question warning on Meta?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2259" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="894" RevisionGUID="177c07de-42c4-4edd-9362-fdc190da81d7" CreationDate="2011-01-01T23:32:21.960" UserId="6329" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2260" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="895" RevisionGUID="0e706f43-7277-4e1b-bc67-eb23333ca73a" CreationDate="2011-01-01T23:46:11.147" UserId="37" Text="No -- copying and pasting the exact same answer is frowned upon and should be avoided, in every context.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's OK to link them with hyperlinks, but it really implies the questions should all be closed as duplicates of each other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also OK to edit the answer and customize it to different answers, so long as it is materially different in a meaningful way." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2261" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="896" RevisionGUID="4cc1d7b8-96d3-429d-b7a3-bc782b3de63d" CreationDate="2011-01-01T23:51:27.820" UserId="37" Text="This also implies the question is bad, that it's a flawed &quot;let's make a list of X&quot; type question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And let's face it, when a question has 3 pages of answers, who actually *reads* all three pages before answering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is also why I favor length as a predictor of answer quality -- if people are sharing specific experiences (eg &quot;the last time I tried peanut butter, {this happened}&quot; rather than  &quot;try peanut butter!&quot; then there can't be duplicates in that sense." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2262" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="890" RevisionGUID="f0912fdb-8e6a-4e1a-ad76-fd17cfdb0eb2" CreationDate="2011-01-02T02:50:41.927" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Copyediting" Text="On this site, people are incredibly liberal with voting: almost all answers that are remotely related to the question are upvoted, and *any* downvoting is called into question as being rude, mean, or uncouth. If you want to follow etiquette, you should upvote all the answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, your own personal preference in how you vote isn't going to make or break a person's reputation total. So feel free to ignore the etiquette and follow the overarching principle of **upvote answers you think are useful, downvote answers you think are not useful.** Of course, only you can tell what's useful to you. If answers duplicating already perfectly suitable answers are useless to you, downvote without pity, or remorse, or fear and upvote only those answers you *personally* found of use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To give you my own criteria in the situation you're describing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that a lot of times, even so-called &quot;subjective&quot; questions really only have one *real* answer that people understand in slightly different ways. It's possible that people act in bad faith when answering (hoping you won't see they just duplicated an earlier answer for quick rep points), but I think most people are thinking that their answer is truly novel because it's not an exact copy-and-paste of an earlier answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of that, I tend to upvote the answers in which people explain their positions well. This dovetails nicely into the [Six Subjective Guidelines](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) which encourage questions to invite long answers that share reasons, experiences, and facts. It's not simply enough that one answers a question: we get enough answers already. For an answer to be useful here, it needs to provide more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if a person says something first but provides no detail, and a second person provides the same answer cogently (that is, they provided useful reasons why one ought to believe the answer is true), I'll always upvote the second person and I'll tend to downvote the first person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, however, the first person gave a really useful answer and the second person didn't provide any new insights to the answer, I'll upvote the first and downvote the second as the second isn't useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both people have the same answer, but provide really great and different reasons for arriving at that answer, I'll upvote them both. Finally, if both answers lack any explanation, I'll downvote them both.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2263" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="897" RevisionGUID="4d936df1-b927-499a-a814-4eafdd68f23e" CreationDate="2011-01-03T13:41:44.980" UserId="226" Text="Is there anything that can be done about a user who switches his answer to Community Wiki after receiving a downvote?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like doing that clears out the rep loss from negative votes, but is that actually what happens? Did I just observe a strange case of timing between my downvote and a the user editing the answer to make it CW at the same time and just beating me to it by a second?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2264" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="897" RevisionGUID="4d936df1-b927-499a-a814-4eafdd68f23e" CreationDate="2011-01-03T13:41:44.980" UserId="226" Text="Is there any recourse against using CW to avoid rep loss?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2265" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="897" RevisionGUID="4d936df1-b927-499a-a814-4eafdd68f23e" CreationDate="2011-01-03T13:41:44.980" UserId="226" Text="|discussion|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2266" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="898" RevisionGUID="6cd7cf1c-e99c-4814-9248-144afa8717b1" CreationDate="2011-01-03T14:17:13.250" UserId="1973" Text="In [my experience][1] on this site, changing a question to CW would have been a bad idea, even after 17 down votes - so they may just be hurting themselves through the conversion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16618/what-will-be-considered-harmful-next/16621#16621" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2267" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="898" RevisionGUID="91d7e031-9338-472e-b751-7b9b17b466c6" CreationDate="2011-01-03T15:15:37.240" UserId="1973" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="In [my experience][1] on this site, changing an answer to CW would have been a bad idea, even after 17 down votes - so they may just be hurting themselves through the conversion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16618/what-will-be-considered-harmful-next/16621#16621" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2268" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="899" RevisionGUID="640810b8-e834-4d18-b3b0-b5c6f0f00dc8" CreationDate="2011-01-03T16:19:57.530" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I don't doubt that some people mark their answer as *community wiki* to avoid rep loss, but we should try to assume good faith. One could read the same action as the answerer saying, &quot;okay, you guys are right, this answer sucks: please help me make this answer better.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In terms of clearing out any downvotes they had, that shouldn't occcur unless the user manually triggers a reputation recalc by going to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/reputation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2269" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="899" RevisionGUID="15c9a7a2-375d-4699-9a3e-3028f0e1ac40" CreationDate="2011-01-03T16:26:00.753" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 144 characters in body; added 7 characters in body" Text="I don't doubt that some people mark their answer as *community wiki* to try to avoid rep loss from previous downvotes, but we should try to assume good faith. One could read the same action as the answerer saying, &quot;okay, you guys are right, this answer sucks: please help me make this answer better.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In terms of clearing out any downvotes they had, that shouldn't occcur unless the user manually triggers a reputation recalc by going to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/reputation. Unless the answerer did that, it's probably the case that your downvote and the *community wiki* flag was coincidental." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2271" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="311" RevisionGUID="52bb3d50-81a0-46cb-b77e-9082bc7b5aa7" CreationDate="2011-01-04T02:09:09.627" UserId="3" Comment="added 52 characters in body" Text="Throughout the beta, we need members from the site whose focus is to engage the community, both in community-building issues and site management. That's why we select a few members from each community to act as temporary, provisional Moderators. You can read about the program here: [**Moderators Pro Tempore**](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/moderator-pro-tempore/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am pleased to announce that these members have stepped up and generously volunteered their time to help us assure that each community’s issues are properly addressed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1] ![alt text][2] ![alt text][3] ![alt text][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We want to make this site a huge success, and these members are great examples of exactly the type of people we need to make this site succeed. Please welcome them for the hard work and time they contribute.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Did I overlook anyone? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Almost certainly. There are members who are actively involved and very deserving of recognition. My failure to account for everyone this early on is in *no way* a slight against them. Ideally, Moderators are elected by the community and that's why **you'll have your elections in several weeks.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of all, be respectful and understanding of the Moderators Pro Tem. Members of your community are volunteering their time and learning on the job. It’s a learning experience for everyone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/C9NA1.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RT7nj.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/eEaGu.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/4LB7o.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2272" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="901" RevisionGUID="37b112a6-a0df-431a-aeaa-4c7e4150a45e" CreationDate="2011-01-04T16:13:26.527" UserId="12337" Text="This site is apparently 1/2 full of closed questions because we can't discuss anything that shouldn't already be on SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If many interesting, useful questions with dozens of posts and votes are getting closed non-stop, maybe there should be a place for those questions.  There is obviously a demand for questions such as this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33058/most-innovative-or-helpful-tool-library-technology-practice-you-use-that-you-feel&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a different SE site I should be using or is are questions without one concrete answer beyond the scope of SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2273" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="311" RevisionGUID="e82cb74e-f2a1-4c47-a573-ac442abb8aaf" CreationDate="2011-01-04T18:52:57.970" UserId="63" Comment="&quot;alt text&quot; just doesn't do these guys justice" Text="Throughout the beta, we need members from the site whose focus is to engage the community, both in community-building issues and site management. That's why we select a few members from each community to act as temporary, provisional Moderators. You can read about the program here: [**Moderators Pro Tempore**](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/moderator-pro-tempore/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am pleased to announce that these members have stepped up and generously volunteered their time to help us assure that each community’s issues are properly addressed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![ChrisF][1] ![Fishtoaster][2] ![bigown][3] ![Walter][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We want to make this site a huge success, and these members are great examples of exactly the type of people we need to make this site succeed. Please welcome them for the hard work and time they contribute.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Did I overlook anyone? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Almost certainly. There are members who are actively involved and very deserving of recognition. My failure to account for everyone this early on is in *no way* a slight against them. Ideally, Moderators are elected by the community and that's why **you'll have your elections in several weeks.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of all, be respectful and understanding of the Moderators Pro Tem. Members of your community are volunteering their time and learning on the job. It’s a learning experience for everyone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/C9NA1.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RT7nj.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/eEaGu.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/4LB7o.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2274" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="902" RevisionGUID="87d91742-0a59-4617-8c4d-6e6523ed0ee5" CreationDate="2011-01-04T20:27:05.180" UserId="37" Text="Just to clarify, you can't *undo* existing downvotes by switching an answer to community wiki. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The existing downvotes remain, but all *future* downvotes, after the switch, will not affect that user's rep." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2275" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="899" RevisionGUID="721e472c-0c9b-4b24-9a1b-f3db26e68832" CreationDate="2011-01-04T20:40:26.203" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Remove speculation about recalc affecting CW per Jeff Atwood and Mr. CRT's clarifications" Text="I don't doubt that some people mark their answer as *community wiki* to try to avoid rep loss from previous downvotes, but we should try to assume good faith. One could read the same action as the answerer saying, &quot;okay, you guys are right, this answer sucks: please help me make this answer better.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In terms of clearing out any downvotes they had, that shouldn't occur. It's probably the case that your downvote and the *community wiki* flag was coincidental." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2277" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="903" RevisionGUID="c4b80339-b032-48a0-ba34-6fd5a1ab5879" CreationDate="2011-01-04T21:53:39.610" UserId="1245" Text="I'll make my answers community-wiki sometimes when I'm arguing against a common meme on SO. In some cases you cannot avoid downvotes if you voice an unpopular tidbit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also on occasion, I'm posting an answer in lieu of a comment - when multiple issues should be mentioned, usually for poor questions. In essence the answer then amounts to an elaborate LMGTFY and a couple of onsite links. The last one I even declared an &quot;faux answer&quot; outright. (Incidentially that one even got an upvote, even if it didn't address the core question.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Last note: &quot;community wiki&quot; isn't really what the name suggests. It's what people make of it. Unless there is outrageous abuse (and undoing downvotes seemingly doesn't work anyway), it seems unproblematic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2278" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="904" RevisionGUID="d5443252-8808-4d9f-ac3f-c868ed294a0d" CreationDate="2011-01-04T22:09:20.340" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The [tag:requirments-gathering] and [tag:requirements-engineering] tags were just added via the question [What is the difference between requirements Elicitation and Requirements Analysis in the real world?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33722/what-is-the-difference-between-requirements-elicitation-and-requirements-analysis): the former is misspelled and the latter is a rephrase of the tags already on the question. Can these be killed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2279" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="904" RevisionGUID="d5443252-8808-4d9f-ac3f-c868ed294a0d" CreationDate="2011-01-04T22:09:20.340" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Kill requirments-gathering and requirments-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2280" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="904" RevisionGUID="d5443252-8808-4d9f-ac3f-c868ed294a0d" CreationDate="2011-01-04T22:09:20.340" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2281" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="904" RevisionGUID="33d5d156-b54d-41c7-bc55-179530b66968" CreationDate="2011-01-05T00:28:34.463" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited title" Text="Kill requirments-gathering and requirements-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2282" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="905" RevisionGUID="28083d97-f129-4116-a586-d82f8788447a" CreationDate="2011-01-05T02:29:24.073" UserId="37" Text="Correct. As long as the tags have been removed, and are not used in any &quot;live&quot; questions, they will be culled daily." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2283" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="906" RevisionGUID="9a1939f8-0f19-477b-af04-2991018809bf" CreationDate="2011-01-05T07:34:22.023" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="To me, CW has only one advantage, it permits a broader group of users the necessary privileges to edit something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I use it when answering a question that might not suggest the same answer a year from now, or even a few months from now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I know (ICBW), the only way to remove down votes is to _delete_ the answer and recalculate reputation, just like up votes go away when an answer is deleted and reputation is recalculated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see anything terribly _wrong_ with people wanting to stop the onslaught of down votes while they fix their answer, but the best way to do this is just delete it, edit it, then undelete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, converting an answer with lots of down votes to CW is like saying &quot;Ok, you don't like this answer? _you_ fix it!&quot;. So, perhaps the best thing to do is just fix it if you can. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2284" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="907" RevisionGUID="9d470eb3-e460-4e66-a489-a2bdea0b13aa" CreationDate="2011-01-05T10:36:59.197" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="I find it slightly annoying too. I think I was the second person to answer that question, and I remember the first answer posting when I was still finishing my answer. So, I stopped a second and read it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I revised my answer a bit to be less redundant and opted to expand a bit more on the part of my answer that wasn't redundant.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I typically don't bother with questions that have three pages of answers, _unless_ all of those answers are outdated and I can't simply edit one of the top answers for some reason. One of the reasons why I love SE sites is that the best information typically rises to the top. I _hate_ forums, so I think I naturally avoid going to the third page of _anything_, much less contributing to the mess myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you can do is answer the question yourself with something that compiles the best answers (with citations) together, then mark your own answer as correct so it floats to the top.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2285" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="908" RevisionGUID="60a65848-4307-457d-8b41-68c0425ce69c" CreationDate="2011-01-05T10:46:08.770" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="The `C` tag on SO becomes an interesting place at the start of every semester. We get hordes of beginner questions that are asked _just_ differently enough to not be duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find myself digging through my old answers to find the example code snippets I used before, then re-cycle them into something that fits the exact problem being described. Then I link to my original answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Still, I've effectively done what Jeff [likes us to avoid][1], duplicating content. My snippet is basically the same, it's showing someone how to operate on a pointer, illustrating precedence or something else very simple. Yet, the question remains open, was re-opened .. and technically 'deserves' an answer, even if it's basically the same darn answer I've given three times. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It makes me think that, if you _could_ recycle an answer with little effort, the question at hand should probably be closed or merged. But then we're also told that a little duplication is a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, ideals are confusingly conflicting :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/893/whats-the-etiquette-for-reusing-your-answers/895#895" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2286" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="909" RevisionGUID="2e396588-12b9-4ec2-a7a2-7e95eb31ae7b" CreationDate="2011-01-05T11:01:16.913" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="I think a question like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Has your work been negatively impacted&#xD;&#xA;&gt; by a software patent? If so, please&#xD;&#xA;&gt; explain how.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would be a little 'hot', but probably on topic, 'kosherly' subjective enough to fly and actually add value to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I deal with copyright, patents and trademark on a very frequent basis, it's part of my job. I'm also extremely familiar with most OSI approved software licenses and have first hand experience with the caveats of each. I like sharing that experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree, it is a big part of our industry and litigation is in no danger of slowing down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think, if more experienced users see these types of questions and edit them to work (while preserving the OP's intent), they won't detract from the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What worries me the most is people who should _probably_ be talking to a lawyer, not a Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2287" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="910" RevisionGUID="d943cd75-e4e8-4c72-a5a1-7e425da707ee" CreationDate="2011-01-05T11:47:25.987" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="I couldn't resist:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/brI20.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2288" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="910" RevisionGUID="114499df-a0e2-4343-91ae-882c50853e92" CreationDate="2011-01-05T13:02:24.657" UserDisplayName="user131" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body; added 2 characters in body" Text="I couldn't resist:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RuyvV.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2289" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="911" RevisionGUID="d17e65bf-32ce-4430-acf2-0d5f87b12a36" CreationDate="2011-01-05T18:53:24.683" UserId="1554" Text="There are problems here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1) The guidelines aren't guidelines**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Wikipedia][1]: &quot;By definition, following a guideline is never mandatory...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, as evidence has shown: they're treated as rule or law. Don't fit the guidelines, get closed regardless of how many votes it has received or how many quality answers it has received (in some cases, both are true, an answer has been accepted and it's _STILL_ been closed).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2) The guidelines aren't defined for what they guide**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As it stands, 2 (arguably 3) of the guidelines actually pertain to the question - that is 3, 6 (5). The rest are focused on answers (1, 2, 4).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging questions based on answers is preposterous. Given a place where (I hope) difficult questions to answer are asked, there _should be and will invariably be very poor answers_. In high quantities even, from those who want to participate but lack the ability to do so adequately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless P.SE's goal is to grow into a fluff site, where only easily answered questions are asked, we should _never_ judge the quality of a question by the answers it gets. That's what voting covers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not arguing that this is the case currently (I wish it were), but I'm arguing that using these criteria to judge questions is flawed because the premises that they are based on is wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**3) The guidelines don't promote the vision for P.SE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I voted on Area 51 for P.SE, and participated in the beta extensively. Let us recall:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... Q&amp;A site for expert programmers interested in discussions that are only indirectly related to programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[reference][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't want the site to exist, then get rid of it, that's perfectly reasonable but allowing it to go beta _and_ public while attempting to hijack and derail its intent the whole way is just rude to those who contributed extensively to support it and help create it (via content).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**edit for a final note**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can't tell, I _do_ want good, difficult to answer, entertaining, thought provoking, constructive questions. I _do_ think that we need criteria that questions must _usually_ meet. But these aren't those criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guideline&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2290" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="912" RevisionGUID="eb9a8feb-2509-4aec-afdb-f2777f25da75" CreationDate="2011-01-05T19:24:06.467" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Today I saw my reputation go down and up with a strange behavior. Then I got the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I shouldn't have **217** but **215**. 200 for &quot;normal&quot; reputation (capped) + 15 for the accepted answer. Maybe this is something you wanted to be aware of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it has something to do with down votes I got after cap was reached, then got new reputation point, and now new cap is calculated incorrectly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/jvbaD.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2291" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="912" RevisionGUID="eb9a8feb-2509-4aec-afdb-f2777f25da75" CreationDate="2011-01-05T19:24:06.467" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Is this reputation cap calculated correctly?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2292" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="912" RevisionGUID="eb9a8feb-2509-4aec-afdb-f2777f25da75" CreationDate="2011-01-05T19:24:06.467" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2293" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="913" RevisionGUID="ff712329-ec3a-45c9-a0ff-e5ce762c0b6b" CreationDate="2011-01-05T19:57:56.110" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="Have you compared that against [this link][1]? There are sometimes lags ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2294" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="914" RevisionGUID="02ed360d-21ff-41ec-ba7b-fcd1c0e6d009" CreationDate="2011-01-05T20:28:56.180" UserId="2654" Text="Can we get the [migrated answer account](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34023/how-to-end-a-relationship-with-a-client-without-pissing-them-off) merged with the [new posters account](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/12490/thesam18888)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2295" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="914" RevisionGUID="02ed360d-21ff-41ec-ba7b-fcd1c0e6d009" CreationDate="2011-01-05T20:28:56.180" UserId="2654" Text="Merge User Accounts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2296" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="914" RevisionGUID="02ed360d-21ff-41ec-ba7b-fcd1c0e6d009" CreationDate="2011-01-05T20:28:56.180" UserId="2654" Text="|support|merge-accounts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2297" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="912" RevisionGUID="d64b6e87-f530-4d46-a234-592f574638d1" CreationDate="2011-01-05T21:28:24.377" UserDisplayName="user2567" Comment="added 382 characters in body" Text="Today I saw my reputation go down and up with a strange behavior. Then I got the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I shouldn't have **217** but **215**. 200 for &quot;normal&quot; reputation (capped) + 15 for the accepted answer. Maybe this is something you wanted to be aware of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it has something to do with down votes I got after cap was reached, then got new reputation point, and now new cap is calculated incorrectly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**: I did something unusual. I deleted one of my [answer][2] (link) that got 4 upvotes and one downvote (the answer did not answer the question at all). Maybe this *case* is so specific (cap + deleted question with up/down votes + accepted answer) ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/jvbaD.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33986/software-consultancy-or-in-house-developement/33990#33990" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2298" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="912" RevisionGUID="c39ac80c-fb55-464a-b462-ecccf3b252ed" CreationDate="2011-01-05T21:56:13.100" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2304" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="916" RevisionGUID="93b2bad3-6a72-4d3a-a79e-184b25516cc6" CreationDate="2011-01-06T04:54:39.510" UserId="12518" Text="Hi all&#xD;&#xA;  I'm a moderator over at cstheory.stackexchange.com, and noticed [this question on regex matching][1], which had been migrated over from programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The mandate for our site is 'research level' questions in theoretical computer science, and so while this question is in scope in general for theoretical computer science, it's not at the right level for our site (as the community has deemed it). It seems like, given the question, the right migration venue is math.stackechange.com (but I wouldn't want to speak for them). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have a question about this per se, but I thought I'd mention this here, in the event that other questions come up for migration. Should I be posting this on meta.SO instead ? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/4143/thoughts-on-a-theorem-regarding-regex-and-matching-multiples-of-a-number" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2305" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="916" RevisionGUID="93b2bad3-6a72-4d3a-a79e-184b25516cc6" CreationDate="2011-01-06T04:54:39.510" UserId="12518" Text="Migrating a question to cstheory" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2306" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="916" RevisionGUID="93b2bad3-6a72-4d3a-a79e-184b25516cc6" CreationDate="2011-01-06T04:54:39.510" UserId="12518" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2307" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="917" RevisionGUID="9d1530c4-e89a-4a69-843c-c366f666f8c5" CreationDate="2011-01-06T05:40:09.750" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This is the right place to post this, as it deals with a migration from Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that it shouldn't have been migrated to CSTheory.SE, and the commenter that suggested that was obviously mistaken. But I don't think it should be migrated to Math.SE: it's a question that's better suited for Stack Overflow, which handles issues related to programming, including regular expressions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But at this point, that question has no chance to survive: if it keeps getting migrated, [it's a sign of a deeper problem](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/63564/weird-behavior-when-migrating-a-migrated-question/63576#63576), which is shown by the significant confusion as to where it belongs." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2308" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="918" RevisionGUID="076d4a9f-bc91-4e6b-9d7a-7614abde8747" CreationDate="2011-01-06T05:49:04.197" UserId="37" Text="This was an arbitrary site-to-site migration, *which can only be performed by a diamond moderator*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The unlocked migration paths, available to 3k users, are documented on the `/about` page of each site. This is limited to a maximum of 4 sites on the network (and the per-site meta) for a total of 5 sites -- and only *public* sites are eligible. No beta sites can be migrated to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any migrations *outside* that unlock list can only be done by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just FYI -- so this post was manually migrated by a diamond mod on programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### migrated to cstheory.stackexchange.com by bigown♦ 2 hours ago" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2309" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="918" RevisionGUID="25221a8d-31cb-4362-8dbf-a66aa45cc35b" CreationDate="2011-01-06T06:00:09.127" UserId="37" Comment="added 56 characters in body" Text="This was an arbitrary site-to-site migration, *which can only be performed by a diamond moderator*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The unlocked migration paths, available to 3k users, are documented on the `/faq` page of each site (err... not currently showing up but I'll get that fixed). This is limited to a maximum of 4 sites on the network (and the per-site meta) for a total of 5 sites -- and only *public* sites are eligible. No beta sites can be migrated to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any migrations *outside* that unlock list can only be done by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just FYI -- so this post was manually migrated by a diamond mod on programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### migrated to cstheory.stackexchange.com by bigown♦ 2 hours ago" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2310" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="918" RevisionGUID="20f1afe6-9433-4937-b5b1-8bec39a84827" CreationDate="2011-01-06T06:06:01.990" UserId="37" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body; added 37 characters in body" Text="This was an arbitrary site-to-site migration, *which can only be performed by a diamond moderator*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The unlocked migration paths, available to 3k users, are documented on the `/faq` page of each site. This is limited to a maximum of 4 sites on the network (and the per-site meta) for a total of 5 sites -- and only *public* sites are eligible. No beta sites can be migrated to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(err... and programmers currently *has* no valid migration paths, other than to its meta)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any migrations *outside* that unlock list can only be done by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just FYI -- so this post was manually migrated by a diamond mod on programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### migrated to cstheory.stackexchange.com by bigown♦ 2 hours ago" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2311" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="919" RevisionGUID="1931cd7b-153e-40d4-adff-0220819a1a76" CreationDate="2011-01-06T11:19:34.573" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="Someone new to our site, or perhaps Stack Exchange might get the idea that our site is for any kind of programming related question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since migration with Stack Overflow is not bi-directional, I suggest that we decide on [an elevator pitch or tagline][1] that lets people know that questions about the programming _industry_ are welcome here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2312" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="919" RevisionGUID="1931cd7b-153e-40d4-adff-0220819a1a76" CreationDate="2011-01-06T11:19:34.573" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="Can we put a tagline under our logo?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2313" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="919" RevisionGUID="1931cd7b-153e-40d4-adff-0220819a1a76" CreationDate="2011-01-06T11:19:34.573" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2314" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="920" RevisionGUID="982e013b-a480-4b8c-acee-ca0bfd7af11c" CreationDate="2011-01-06T11:46:20.727" UserId="389" Text="My mistake, sorry, I will more careful next time. Thanks for post here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2315" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="921" RevisionGUID="be48fc67-0aae-424c-ad52-17f4cd08063c" CreationDate="2011-01-06T19:12:55.300" UserId="11259" Text="How do we handle the case where an accepted answer clearly contains wrong information?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2316" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="921" RevisionGUID="be48fc67-0aae-424c-ad52-17f4cd08063c" CreationDate="2011-01-06T19:12:55.300" UserId="11259" Text="Answer's that accept but contain wrong information" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2317" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="921" RevisionGUID="be48fc67-0aae-424c-ad52-17f4cd08063c" CreationDate="2011-01-06T19:12:55.300" UserId="11259" Text="|discussion|accepted-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2318" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="921" RevisionGUID="56c918a7-187d-4c65-9d86-6a71d7b0ac55" CreationDate="2011-01-06T19:18:59.010" UserId="11259" Comment="edited title" Text="Answer's that are accept but contain wrong information" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2319" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="921" RevisionGUID="8dfee028-dae9-4075-8cbe-d79d643f5dd8" CreationDate="2011-01-06T19:34:15.237" UserId="11259" Comment="edited title" Text="Answer's that are accepted but contain wrong information" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2320" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="922" RevisionGUID="f5da0b95-367a-4439-8c03-093e6dc4a631" CreationDate="2011-01-06T19:44:25.803" UserId="226" Text="I think the best you can do is leave a comment on the answer and/or the post itself. You can also downvote the answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2321" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="921" RevisionGUID="ff6247da-7ac0-4167-b7bd-9f37356ab492" CreationDate="2011-01-06T19:46:44.143" UserId="63" Comment="remove superfluous apostrophe" Text="Answers that are accepted but contain wrong information" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2322" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="920" RevisionGUID="4f898ab1-56e2-4a91-9670-12078c482731" CreationDate="2011-01-06T20:10:54.920" UserId="389" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="My mistake, sorry, I will be more careful next time. Thanks for post here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2323" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="923" RevisionGUID="0b52e180-2c96-4985-940f-3fdf4a1e89df" CreationDate="2011-01-06T23:26:26.553" UserId="5497" Text="I'm referring to this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/23535/5497&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No offense to moderator **bigown**, but I don't see how this is fair or constructive behavior.  The question has plenty of upvotes.  The answers have plenty of upvotes.  It has been viewed 1,305 times at the time of this writing, and there are 23 answers and plenty of comments and discussion!  The community obviously approves of this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, bigown thinks the question doesn't meet the six guidelines.  He's entitled to an opinion.  According to the privileges page, [4 other people typically need to share his opinion to close the question][1].  I realize moderators can just close a question on their own, but this seems like overzealous behavior.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/close-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2324" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="923" RevisionGUID="0b52e180-2c96-4985-940f-3fdf4a1e89df" CreationDate="2011-01-06T23:26:26.553" UserId="5497" Text="This question should not have been closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2325" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="923" RevisionGUID="0b52e180-2c96-4985-940f-3fdf4a1e89df" CreationDate="2011-01-06T23:26:26.553" UserId="5497" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2326" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="924" RevisionGUID="2500cc3e-48cf-4f70-bf56-6489e0a6e96b" CreationDate="2011-01-07T00:05:33.840" UserId="389" Text="Popularity is not an argument to keep a question open. Doesn't meet the 6 guidelines is an argument to close it. That were my opinion. If 5 users or other moderators disagree, it can be reopened. Other 5 users or other moderator could close it again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could defend your question here but you choose defend its popularity. I learnt nothing with that question. I just see what other **people** do when they *surf*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact I could close it again as Not A Real Question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2327" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="924" RevisionGUID="a3f3592c-ecd4-411a-aeaf-72738859ea93" CreationDate="2011-01-07T00:15:41.653" UserId="389" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="Popularity is not an argument to keep a question open. Doesn't meet the 6 guidelines is an argument to close it. That were my opinion. If 5 users or other moderators disagree, it can be reopened. Other 5 users or other moderator could close it again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could defend your question here but you choose defend its popularity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I learnt nothing with that question. I just see what other **people** do when they *surf*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact I could close it again as Not A Real Question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2328" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="925" RevisionGUID="c74551c0-9cc5-49ab-aede-cd654e0f2e53" CreationDate="2011-01-07T00:18:02.370" UserDisplayName="user1842" Text="It doesn't have anything to do with Programming.  Please reread the name of the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2329" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="926" RevisionGUID="aa1c74f1-91ff-4ef8-a7b3-804ef4ad036a" CreationDate="2011-01-07T01:26:13.613" UserId="37" Text="How exactly does this relate to programming? Anybody can surf with javascript disabled: doctors, lawyers, dentists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only constructive form of this I can think of is &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Should we program our site to require JavaScript?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;where the implied subtext is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Show me data that indicates how many people don't have JavaScript enabled, so we can program our site with the correct strategy&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2330" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="927" RevisionGUID="bbbb912a-1971-4f57-8e79-c114ee055f67" CreationDate="2011-01-07T16:34:39.817" UserId="17" Text="I've noticed that every time somebody poses a question along the lines of &quot;What are some programs other coders find useful that I might not know about?&quot;, it is, no matter how many upvotes or answers it gets, doomed to closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?  We're programmers; the computer is one of our most crucial tools.  I would think that a question about making more efficient use of your computer would be extremely relevant on a site dedicated to programming.  And based on the kind of response and participation the best of those questions tend to get, I'm not the only one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Disclosure:  Yes, this was prompted by a question I asked on this subject getting deleted.  And yes, that rankles.  But it was a useful question -- and I've noticed that the topic seems to provoke a whack-a-mole reflex from the moderators in general.  I honestly want to know &lt;b&gt;why.&lt;/b&gt;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2331" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="927" RevisionGUID="bbbb912a-1971-4f57-8e79-c114ee055f67" CreationDate="2011-01-07T16:34:39.817" UserId="17" Text="Why are questions about programs verboten?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2332" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="927" RevisionGUID="bbbb912a-1971-4f57-8e79-c114ee055f67" CreationDate="2011-01-07T16:34:39.817" UserId="17" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2333" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="928" RevisionGUID="8eb3f5e9-21b3-4b87-870d-3b1f480dadd7" CreationDate="2011-01-07T16:45:02.960" UserId="226" Text="I don't know for sure, but my theory is that part of the reason is that those questions tend to just result in people throwing up lists of whatever they use with little context. A bullet point list of 6 apps that I use daily helps noone. The answers are also hard to upvote and there is a lot of duplication between the answers, since people are more apt to share what they use instead of upvoting someone else who may be using 90% the same apps they do, but then added something else that they don't." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2334" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="929" RevisionGUID="f06c1db5-da65-494b-877f-a4df66762d2f" CreationDate="2011-01-07T17:08:05.747" UserId="1865" Text="They usually get whacked because they are too open ended. That makes for a site with very few questions, but lots of answers. How are you going to ever find those answers if you can't find the questions? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're asking &quot;tell me what I'm missing&quot;. There's no practical, specific answer to that question. &quot;Tell me the advantages of distributed VCS over classic VCS&quot; will generate specific answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Joel's latest post on the SO blog also indirectly answers this -&gt;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2335" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="930" RevisionGUID="0ade9263-0dc2-4f08-a202-cc504b755a85" CreationDate="2011-01-07T17:08:48.393" UserId="389" Text="See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19408/what-are-must-have-tools-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6157/what-tools-should-every-programmer-know&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1913/what-are-the-must-have-development-tools-for-windows&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/826/must-have-development-tools-for-a-mac&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19725/languages-and-tools-that-are-portable-work-well-from-a-usb-storage-drive&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18751/tools-to-produce-manage-specifications-requirements-not-ticket-trackers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11002/best-free-uml-authoring-tool&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17434/the-useful-tools-for-windows-device-driver-developers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33102/what-are-the-preferred-documentation-tools-for-the-major-programming-languages&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8808/what-is-the-best-agile-project-management-tool-have-you-used&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of these questions probably should be close either but do you can see the difference of these questions to your second example? Probably your question could be closed as off-topic because it has nothing to do with programming. Your question would be great on Super User (actually the same question did a huge success there).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first example provided just be closed as duplicated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anna's answer complements what I think." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2336" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="931" RevisionGUID="4a0ef8c2-effe-46f3-867a-f35b722178db" CreationDate="2011-01-07T17:20:27.827" UserId="11259" Text="I am little confused on the requirements for the citizen badge. I interpreted the requirement as the first post that I flagged. However, I have flagged at least one post and I still have not received the badge. Have I interpreted the requirement wrong? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2337" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="931" RevisionGUID="4a0ef8c2-effe-46f3-867a-f35b722178db" CreationDate="2011-01-07T17:20:27.827" UserId="11259" Text="Citizen Badge Requirements " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2338" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="931" RevisionGUID="4a0ef8c2-effe-46f3-867a-f35b722178db" CreationDate="2011-01-07T17:20:27.827" UserId="11259" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2339" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="931" RevisionGUID="a2051bac-e8e8-4a95-9a9c-037c36b0e00c" CreationDate="2011-01-07T17:54:40.997" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 7 characters in body; edited title" Text="I am little confused on the requirements for the Citizen Patrol badge. I interpreted the requirement as the first post that I flagged. However, I have flagged at least one post and I still have not received the badge. Have I interpreted the requirement wrong? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2340" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="931" RevisionGUID="a2051bac-e8e8-4a95-9a9c-037c36b0e00c" CreationDate="2011-01-07T17:54:40.997" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 7 characters in body; edited title" Text="Citizen Patrol Badge Requirements " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2341" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="932" RevisionGUID="df52a66a-3e6e-460a-aff3-ed9794f55930" CreationDate="2011-01-07T17:55:23.413" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The requirement is that you flag a post as [spam or offensive](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/6120/citizen-patrol-badge-not-awarded): flagging something for moderator attention doesn't count. It also takes a little bit of time for the system to recognize it: from my experience, it takes an hour or two." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2342" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="933" RevisionGUID="2510dcb0-f9c9-4c8e-b6d2-06e81ed8eca3" CreationDate="2011-01-08T14:11:37.313" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="I noticed one nice feature today (move your mouse over tags in question list) and apparently it's new.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any &quot;what's new&quot; file maintained somewhere where we could follow features added in new releases?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think SE websites are a good example of great design and some word about new releases could be interesting for programmers like us." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2343" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="933" RevisionGUID="2510dcb0-f9c9-4c8e-b6d2-06e81ed8eca3" CreationDate="2011-01-08T14:11:37.313" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="What's new in the latest release?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2344" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="933" RevisionGUID="2510dcb0-f9c9-4c8e-b6d2-06e81ed8eca3" CreationDate="2011-01-08T14:11:37.313" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="|feature-request|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2345" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="934" RevisionGUID="54637a02-1431-4657-81ba-5672d9dbe5ad" CreationDate="2011-01-08T14:22:41.277" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The [Recent feature changes to Stack Exchange](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/59445/recent-feature-changes-to-stack-exchange) question on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) catalogs all announced and undocumented changes to the system." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2346" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="935" RevisionGUID="28cc44e0-c6a7-4e4c-b487-cdd55a3ce507" CreationDate="2011-01-10T14:31:05.830" UserId="1961" Text="On StackOverflow, lmgtfy.com is banned by a word filter, because it's insulting and because it's not in keeping with the goals of the site which is to be a encyclopedia of sorts of answers to common and uncommon questions. [Someone](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35098/something-like-php-net-for-ruby-on-rails) decided to post an lmgtfy.com link as an answer to a question here on programmers.stackexchange.com. Should the same word filter be installed here too?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2347" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="935" RevisionGUID="28cc44e0-c6a7-4e4c-b487-cdd55a3ce507" CreationDate="2011-01-10T14:31:05.830" UserId="1961" Text="Should LMGTFY be banned?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2348" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="935" RevisionGUID="28cc44e0-c6a7-4e4c-b487-cdd55a3ce507" CreationDate="2011-01-10T14:31:05.830" UserId="1961" Text="|feature-request|answers|lmgtfy|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2349" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="936" RevisionGUID="ee964593-1166-46d6-b49c-26b9981ab5e6" CreationDate="2011-01-10T16:48:39.620" UserId="101" Text="My feeling is that if they did away with it on SO, then that should be the rule for us and all of the other SE sites.  There's no value added to an answer from there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2350" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="937" RevisionGUID="89a78c0a-9186-4f91-a8c3-70e30d94f852" CreationDate="2011-01-10T18:27:47.713" UserId="79" Text="Steps to reproduce:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Visit [Programmers - Stack Exchange][1] or [Programmers chat][2] in browser.&#xD;&#xA;2. Keep page open for a while.&#xD;&#xA;3. Notice blemish on monitor at edge of vision, reach with hand or cloth to clean it off.&#xD;&#xA;4. Realize that blemish is actually the theme's background image and you just wiped it for nothing/touched monitor with finger and *actually made it worse*. Possible infinite loop condition.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(P.S. I would've tagged this [fun] if I had the rep. =))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2351" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="937" RevisionGUID="89a78c0a-9186-4f91-a8c3-70e30d94f852" CreationDate="2011-01-10T18:27:47.713" UserId="79" Text="Bug: Background image looks like gunk on monitor." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2352" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="937" RevisionGUID="89a78c0a-9186-4f91-a8c3-70e30d94f852" CreationDate="2011-01-10T18:27:47.713" UserId="79" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2353" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="938" RevisionGUID="8650671b-19ff-4782-b8de-21de824f0c63" CreationDate="2011-01-10T19:34:08.307" UserId="1973" Text="Edit your question with Jeff's suggestions and I'll bet it'll get reopened.  The question is good, but too subtle.  It probably shouldn't be directed at &quot;you&quot; but at &quot;your clients&quot;.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the real criteria to getting your question through the content filter: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is it about something that has to do with your job as a programmer besides code itself?&#xD;&#xA; 2. Are you not just ranting about something?&#xD;&#xA; 3. Does anyone need to know the answer to this question?&#xD;&#xA; 4. Did remember to fail to mention what country you're using as a frame of reference to asking this question?&#xD;&#xA; 5. Did you use the queen's english?&#xD;&#xA; 6. Is your question politically correct?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2354" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="939" RevisionGUID="fa497ecd-cbb1-4619-86cf-c34511c061bc" CreationDate="2011-01-10T21:13:14.593" UserId="3" Text="Testing...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe you can find your answer [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:    &#xD;&#xA;Hmm... Doesn't seem to be banned. Strange. I'm looking into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Ban+LMGTFY" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2355" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="939" RevisionGUID="95aa87b5-c600-46a1-bd34-696329d1acb7" CreationDate="2011-01-10T21:41:20.170" UserId="3" Comment="added 312 characters in body; added 18 characters in body" Text="Testing...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe you can find your answer [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:    &#xD;&#xA;Hmm... Doesn't seem to be banned. Strange. I'm looking into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update:    &#xD;&#xA;No, LMGTFY links are *not* banned on Programmers-SE. Each site has a unique black list and it has not been added to Programmers-SE. The [feature-request] should be sufficient to raise the issue. Vote it up if you want it implemented or raise on meta.Stackoverflow, if you feel it should be a network-wide feature.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Ban+LMGTFY" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2356" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="940" RevisionGUID="e5a5d24d-2ea1-4a9f-800e-0553af5c79cd" CreationDate="2011-01-11T00:54:33.907" UserId="1865" Text="I think that's the point. It's supposed to look like the whiteboard drawings that got left on there too long and no longer quite erases. That's my guess anyway." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2357" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="937" RevisionGUID="9220ed80-677e-4dbf-a0c4-f74dd4317803" CreationDate="2011-01-11T01:17:39.767" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2358" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="941" RevisionGUID="04d25ea7-0c6c-49d3-800c-acf23cda5a31" CreationDate="2011-01-11T14:09:47.350" UserId="47" Text="I've just noticed that [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/35471/47) converted to Community Wiki after 16 answers had been posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought that the threshold was after the 30th answer had been posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;NOTE: This is a question to which I already know the answer - I'm asking it to aide others." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2359" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="941" RevisionGUID="04d25ea7-0c6c-49d3-800c-acf23cda5a31" CreationDate="2011-01-11T14:09:47.350" UserId="47" Text="Why has this question converted to Community Wiki?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2360" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="941" RevisionGUID="04d25ea7-0c6c-49d3-800c-acf23cda5a31" CreationDate="2011-01-11T14:09:47.350" UserId="47" Text="|support|community-wiki|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2361" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="942" RevisionGUID="6f363e96-a575-422c-a435-4ece82ddad4c" CreationDate="2011-01-11T14:11:03.607" UserId="47" Text="As detailed in the answer to [this question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/74582/59303) on Meta Stack Overflow, the threshold can be set on a site by site basis and is now 15 for Programmers (along with Super User).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't affect existing questions, but if a new answer is posted to those they will convert." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2362" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="943" RevisionGUID="4890d6a9-030f-464d-90a9-00a0bf0abd31" CreationDate="2011-01-11T18:44:20.950" UserDisplayName="user8685" Text="No, it shouldn't be banned. In fact it's a good hint that the question be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question provokes a [working] LMGTFY answer then it is a poor question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You say it's insulting to get that kind of response. But don't you think it might also be insulting to folks here to see you didn't bother to google first, then you didn't bother to put some effort into your question and then you will likely not bother to accept an answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;BTW, did you bother to check if there are discussions already of this matter?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ban+lmgtfy+on+stackoverflow&amp;l=1][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ban+lmgtfy+on+stackoverflow&amp;l=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2363" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="944" RevisionGUID="64041ea2-bd75-4447-b554-b2fe0bc80426" CreationDate="2011-01-11T22:49:03.720" UserId="11259" Text="I have noticed that sometimes new questions don't show up until they are 5-10mins old. Some of them even have answers that are not much younger. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been running a few experiments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With a partner we use two different computers  on the same LAN.  &#xD;&#xA;We used separate accounts.  &#xD;&#xA;We refreshed the page using the &quot;new&quot; navigation button until a new question showed up in the feed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On more than one occasion, one of us was able to see a new question for approximatively (5-10) mins. before the other.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone please explain the delay?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2364" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="944" RevisionGUID="64041ea2-bd75-4447-b554-b2fe0bc80426" CreationDate="2011-01-11T22:49:03.720" UserId="11259" Text="Why do some new questions show up as 10-15 old?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2365" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="944" RevisionGUID="64041ea2-bd75-4447-b554-b2fe0bc80426" CreationDate="2011-01-11T22:49:03.720" UserId="11259" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2366" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="817" RevisionGUID="b7d655a2-b8cc-42cd-a6ff-8f4bcc847d92" CreationDate="2011-01-11T23:13:03.170" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="Now that there's a migration path from Stack Overflow to here, should we be more strict about what's off topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know there's [this old question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain) about what the FAQ should contain, but the current [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) doesn't have the what's not allowed list that the [Super User one](http://superuser.com/faq) or [Web Applications one](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/faq) does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, should we have an &quot;off topic&quot; list and what should it contain?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of things spring to mind straight away:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Office environment questions - such as questions about office chairs and desks. These apply to any office worker and aren't unique to developers.&#xD;&#xA;2. Office politics questions - these are clearly going to be *very* subjective and will usually fall foul of the 6 guidelines for quality subjective questions anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I need to chase up the ability edit the &quot;what's not allowed&quot; section. If it's not going to be forthcoming any time soon I'll go ahead and edit it into the section I *can* edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As all the answers seem to have pretty much universal approval from all those who voted, they're all in." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2367" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="944" RevisionGUID="18890183-c006-4f9c-b793-0b3ba31df267" CreationDate="2011-01-11T23:40:11.933" UserId="11259" Comment="added 566 characters in body; edited title" Text="I have noticed that sometimes new questions don't show up until they are 5-10mins old. Some of them even have answers that are not much younger. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been running a few experiments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With a partner we use two different computers  on the same LAN.  &#xD;&#xA;We used separate accounts.  &#xD;&#xA;We refreshed the page using the &quot;new&quot; navigation button until a new question showed up in the feed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On more than one occasion, one of us was able to see a new question for approximatively (5-10) mins. before the other.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone please explain the delay?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Pre CRT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Link&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35798/fixing-a-bug-that-has-never-caused-a-problem-until-now&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On that specific question the first answer was not post yet when I clicked on the question. After I answered, I noticed that the question was answered and the time on the answer read 10 mins ago. Then I noticed that the question was 14mins old. I am positive that it did not take me 10-14 mins to write two sentences. That is what spawned the investigation. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2368" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="944" RevisionGUID="18890183-c006-4f9c-b793-0b3ba31df267" CreationDate="2011-01-11T23:40:11.933" UserId="11259" Comment="added 566 characters in body; edited title" Text="Why do some new questions show up as 10-15mins old?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2369" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="944" RevisionGUID="eeb42d2a-ea48-4433-8c32-6463f054c928" CreationDate="2011-01-11T23:51:43.103" UserId="11259" Comment="edited body" Text="I have noticed that sometimes new questions don't show up until they are 5-10mins old. Some of them even have answers that are not much younger. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been running a few experiments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With a partner we use two different computers  on the same LAN.  &#xD;&#xA;We used separate accounts.  &#xD;&#xA;We refreshed the page using the &quot;new&quot; navigation button until a new question showed up in the feed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On more than one occasion, one of us was able to see a new question for approximatively (5-10) mins. before the other.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone please explain the delay?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per CRT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Link&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35798/fixing-a-bug-that-has-never-caused-a-problem-until-now&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On that specific question the first answer was not post yet when I clicked on the question. After I answered, I noticed that the question was answered and the time on the answer read 10 mins ago. Then I noticed that the question was 14mins old. I am positive that it did not take me 10-14 mins to write two sentences. That is what spawned the investigation. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2370" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="945" RevisionGUID="e7876ea5-e1d8-42f6-ae73-836ccb60e0d0" CreationDate="2011-01-12T03:24:11.037" UserId="6591" Text="I created one entry for the [career-advice wiki tag][1], and decided to see if I qualified to create any others. According to the &quot;top users&quot; link for a couple other tags, I appear in the top 20 answerers for a couple others, for example &quot;[best practices][2]&quot; (oh no, I'm at the bottom of the list!). There is no edit functionality for me when I try to edit the wiki tag for best practices. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career-advice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/best-practices/topusers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2371" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="945" RevisionGUID="e7876ea5-e1d8-42f6-ae73-836ccb60e0d0" CreationDate="2011-01-12T03:24:11.037" UserId="6591" Text="Is there a time limit on wiki tag entries?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2372" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="945" RevisionGUID="e7876ea5-e1d8-42f6-ae73-836ccb60e0d0" CreationDate="2011-01-12T03:24:11.037" UserId="6591" Text="|bug|tag-wikis|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2379" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="949" RevisionGUID="256f4803-cf28-4960-a391-6c953e1b9df8" CreationDate="2011-01-12T06:20:23.943" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35887/why-programmers-when-stackoverflow-already-exists/35888#35888" Text="" />
  <row Id="2380" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="950" RevisionGUID="b9f3dc45-2164-4813-93a2-79427e410efe" CreationDate="2011-01-12T06:20:23.943" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35887/why-programmers-when-stackoverflow-already-exists/35889#35889" Text="" />
  <row Id="2381" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="949" RevisionGUID="5f359f92-f098-431f-a3b6-a5aa144dfbf8" CreationDate="2011-01-12T05:59:48.533" UserDisplayName="Anto" Text="This site is for more subjective questions than SO is for. SO is mostly about getting help, or a direct answer, for programming questions while this place has more argumentive answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2382" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="950" RevisionGUID="e778ac20-7bf2-44b0-8360-270ffd7b56ad" CreationDate="2011-01-12T06:03:07.217" UserId="9829" Text="So we can ask questions like http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35887/why-programmers-when-stackoverflow-already-exists" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2383" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="948" RevisionGUID="07c4148c-c3f1-4557-b434-8eb2f6c799fd" CreationDate="2011-01-12T05:57:06.067" UserId="12977" UserDisplayName="Bobby Alexander" Text="Why does this site exist when there is Stack overflow already?!!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2384" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="948" RevisionGUID="07c4148c-c3f1-4557-b434-8eb2f6c799fd" CreationDate="2011-01-12T05:57:06.067" UserId="12977" UserDisplayName="Bobby Alexander" Text="Why Programmers when StackOverflow already exists?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2385" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="948" RevisionGUID="07c4148c-c3f1-4557-b434-8eb2f6c799fd" CreationDate="2011-01-12T05:57:06.067" UserId="12977" UserDisplayName="Bobby Alexander" Text="|programmers|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2386" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="948" RevisionGUID="928a4e62-1609-4aae-ada6-c1d281290002" CreationDate="2011-01-12T06:20:23.943" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35887/why-programmers-when-stackoverflow-already-exists" Text="" />
  <row Id="2387" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="948" RevisionGUID="a2a017a2-ca3f-427a-a05b-6c68e33db88c" CreationDate="2011-01-12T06:21:50.103" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[171],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="2388" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="948" RevisionGUID="e784d93b-8617-4ed5-86c9-3cbdbd0e4615" CreationDate="2011-01-12T06:21:50.243" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and SO](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Why does this site exist when there is Stack overflow already?!!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2389" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="951" RevisionGUID="4e27ba19-3c0f-4247-99b7-9a378ec87e2c" CreationDate="2011-01-12T07:00:11.947" UserId="2673" Text="I believe there are other rules aside from just being in the Top 20.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the Tag wiki concept was launched, you also require a certain about of up votes for that tag as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tag wikis help introduce newcomers to the tag. They contain frequently asked questions about the tag and guidelines on its usage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tag wikis can be edited by users with more than 2000 reputation, provided:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * They are in the top 20 answerers for this tag or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * They have more than 100 answer upvotes in this tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[From Jeff][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the exact rules have changed since then, but I can't find the current rules to be more exact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/tag-folksonomy-and-tag-synonyms/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2390" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="952" RevisionGUID="a006e7eb-7d94-40f0-ab6c-90b64e7fa05f" CreationDate="2011-01-12T10:57:16.537" UserId="47" Text="The top users page *always* shows the current user, **even if they're not in the top 20**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take another look at that page and count the number of users displayed. I suspect that there are 21, with you at the bottom. It can be difficult to tell and I believe has been raised on Meta Stack Overflow before. If I find the link I'll update this answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/JJZ8Y.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2392" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="480" RevisionGUID="b3158827-8bdf-4ff5-8829-63fc4e87c932" CreationDate="2011-01-12T11:04:51.320" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|bug|status-bydesign|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2393" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="952" RevisionGUID="3120f08c-a431-440c-a499-b2cf7c8e6338" CreationDate="2011-01-12T11:28:34.197" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="The top users page *always* shows the current user, **even if they're not in the top 20**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take another look at that page and count the number of users displayed. I suspect that there are 21, with you at the bottom. It can be difficult to tell - especially if you are outside the top answerers in the last 30 days as well - and I believe has been raised on Meta Stack Overflow before. If I find the link I'll update this answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/JJZ8Y.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2394" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="945" RevisionGUID="43dd1558-59a4-464f-81f8-6502ddce3eb7" CreationDate="2011-01-12T13:45:31.197" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|tag-wikis|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2395" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="311" RevisionGUID="cbc430a4-b85b-4349-9267-825f154e82e4" CreationDate="2011-01-12T15:17:25.323" UserId="3" Comment="Added Mark Trapp as moderator" Text="Throughout the beta, we need members from the site whose focus is to engage the community, both in community-building issues and site management. That's why we select a few members from each community to act as temporary, provisional Moderators. You can read about the program here: [**Moderators Pro Tempore**](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/moderator-pro-tempore/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am pleased to announce that these members have stepped up and generously volunteered their time to help us assure that each community’s issues are properly addressed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![ChrisF][1] ![Fishtoaster][2] ![bigown][3] ![Walter][4] ![Mark Trapp][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We want to make this site a huge success, and these members are great examples of exactly the type of people we need to make this site succeed. Please welcome them for the hard work and time they contribute.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Did I overlook anyone? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Almost certainly. There are members who are actively involved and very deserving of recognition. My failure to account for everyone this early on is in *no way* a slight against them. Ideally, Moderators are elected by the community and that's why **you'll have your elections in several weeks.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of all, be respectful and understanding of the Moderators Pro Tem. Members of your community are volunteering their time and learning on the job. It’s a learning experience for everyone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/C9NA1.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RT7nj.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/eEaGu.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/4LB7o.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Jp1dO.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2396" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="953" RevisionGUID="ead64e1c-3916-4479-8538-225c14e513a2" CreationDate="2011-01-12T15:37:30.787" UserId="1961" Text="How do I do [X] with [language Y]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where can I find documentation for [library Z]?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2397" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="954" RevisionGUID="952d47ca-f88e-422d-afd3-58bc8b938a7f" CreationDate="2011-01-12T16:02:50.840" UserId="1973" Text="Remember folks, the best qualification for being appointed moderator is your ability to close questions with extreme prejudice. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2398" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="955" RevisionGUID="a67fe7f8-5301-4200-b3d0-7cbe34b7d47e" CreationDate="2011-01-12T18:12:18.310" UserId="12436" Text="I can edit another user's question/answer, but I only have 251 reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a defect or are privledge reputation boundaries different for SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2399" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="955" RevisionGUID="a67fe7f8-5301-4200-b3d0-7cbe34b7d47e" CreationDate="2011-01-12T18:12:18.310" UserId="12436" Text="I can edit other users' contribution with 251 reputation. Is this a defect?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2400" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="955" RevisionGUID="a67fe7f8-5301-4200-b3d0-7cbe34b7d47e" CreationDate="2011-01-12T18:12:18.310" UserId="12436" Text="|bug|reputation|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2401" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="956" RevisionGUID="dd1f85b9-c2d6-4e85-a4ef-249ad9fade3e" CreationDate="2011-01-12T18:15:54.663" UserId="37" Text="Are the posts community wiki? If so they are editable at a lower rep threshold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2402" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="954" RevisionGUID="e1f34727-77ce-4ca7-b48f-4430730ede63" CreationDate="2011-01-12T21:54:02.857" UserId="101" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:101,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Walter&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="2403" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="954" RevisionGUID="db2f02f6-75e1-452f-b9ee-a2f1995f6de7" CreationDate="2011-01-12T22:27:41.797" UserId="1973" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:1973,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Peter Turner&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="2404" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="945" RevisionGUID="be48ed5d-2c06-4faa-b498-d5fa55823e34" CreationDate="2011-01-12T22:39:48.467" UserId="104" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-bydesign|tag-wikis|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2405" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="957" RevisionGUID="9b68f68b-9493-45af-8097-84df885411bb" CreationDate="2011-01-12T23:25:42.813" UserDisplayName="user8685" Text="It's almost certainly a ubiquitous caching strategy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Listings are retrieved from the database say once a minute and cached for that duration. All the requests in-between are served that cache version. This way it lowers the strain on the servers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However 15 minutes for that active site is way too much. Most likely explanation would be they were tweaking something which affected this cache update. You just hit this time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2406" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="958" RevisionGUID="b0030c12-2766-490b-9d07-fd4507bb6e44" CreationDate="2011-01-13T08:33:25.023" UserId="55" Text="I wanted to search for questions relating to F# on the site, so I went to the search box and just typed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;f#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This returned no results.  Searching for F# however (note the uppercase F), does return results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would appear that StackOverflow does not suffer from this bug...&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2407" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="958" RevisionGUID="b0030c12-2766-490b-9d07-fd4507bb6e44" CreationDate="2011-01-13T08:33:25.023" UserId="55" Text="Search cases-sensitivity bug" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2408" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="958" RevisionGUID="b0030c12-2766-490b-9d07-fd4507bb6e44" CreationDate="2011-01-13T08:33:25.023" UserId="55" Text="|bug|search|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2409" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="959" RevisionGUID="a6c29e22-5b95-4e29-9699-1e3466fc9c0e" CreationDate="2011-01-13T23:46:59.233" UserId="11259" Text="Why are there a bunch of users with a 100ish reputation that have no answers and one or two questions that don't have enough up votes on them to equal their reputation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2410" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="959" RevisionGUID="a6c29e22-5b95-4e29-9699-1e3466fc9c0e" CreationDate="2011-01-13T23:46:59.233" UserId="11259" Text="100ish reputation with no votes?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2411" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="959" RevisionGUID="a6c29e22-5b95-4e29-9699-1e3466fc9c0e" CreationDate="2011-01-13T23:46:59.233" UserId="11259" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2412" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="959" RevisionGUID="d30f0b0e-8002-4601-9780-77ef1c456000" CreationDate="2011-01-13T23:54:45.527" UserId="11259" Comment="added 129 characters in body" Text="Why are there a bunch of users with a 100ish reputation that have no answers and one or two questions that don't have enough up votes on them to equal their reputation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just click on the profile of someone with 100ish rep. I haven't found one yet that had enough votes to match the reputation. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2413" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="960" RevisionGUID="eb5ee637-5346-4e8a-acc9-46ccd03b47a3" CreationDate="2011-01-14T00:10:27.207" UserId="6591" Text="You get 100 points for linking your programmers profile with any other stack exchange profile. This makes your points 101 even before you answer any questions. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2414" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="961" RevisionGUID="9e374e64-d405-4230-99c1-c206216ab56a" CreationDate="2011-01-14T00:10:57.960" UserId="47" Text="You get 100 reputation bonus when you link your account to another one in the Stack Exchange network with more than 200 points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By getting 200 points on site A (Stack Overflow) you've demonstrated that you know how to use the system. Giving you a 100 point bonus on site B (this one) is a way of helping you over that initial hump so you can do the basic things like vote up and comment. Voting down needs a reputation of 125 so you have to participate in this site to be able to do that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2415" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="962" RevisionGUID="eba07ff6-06fe-4713-ad67-134ea93bd3da" CreationDate="2011-01-14T04:26:25.530" UserId="4971" Text="[I asked this question also.][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There's a chance that the post was&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lost during the data-centre migration,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but I'm not on the development team so&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't know what processes were in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; place (if any) to prevent this.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Blog post][2] about migration.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;*ChrisF*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And in the comments to it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;@john this is probably it – Jeff Atwood♦&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I can speak from experience that your answers probably aren't coming back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/476/question-i-asked-dissappeared&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/datacenter-migration-oct-23/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2417" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="964" RevisionGUID="23ea6a80-3841-4899-8f5f-5debda9f6928" CreationDate="2011-01-14T09:02:18.743" UserId="7167" Text="I This has been annoying me for a while and I thought it might just go away, but it hasn't so here I am bringing it to the community's attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I try to click the favourite star graphic when browsing Programmers on my Android phone (currently v2.2) all I can reach is the downvote (Argh! Not what I intended at all!) or Facebook button. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, this could be a fault of the Android browser since I certainly don't have a problem on any PC device, but there may be a CSS issue that is causing this. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hope this is an appropriate question for meta, if not - well the Hammer of Close will just have to fall upon me." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2418" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="964" RevisionGUID="23ea6a80-3841-4899-8f5f-5debda9f6928" CreationDate="2011-01-14T09:02:18.743" UserId="7167" Text="Why can't I favourite a question in Android?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2419" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="964" RevisionGUID="23ea6a80-3841-4899-8f5f-5debda9f6928" CreationDate="2011-01-14T09:02:18.743" UserId="7167" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2420" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="964" RevisionGUID="de4aa2c7-7b6e-4bac-a6bc-2d9d2e3af829" CreationDate="2011-01-14T09:27:02.950" UserId="7167" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="This has been annoying me for a while and I thought it might just go away, but it hasn't so here I am bringing it to the community's attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I try to click the favourite star graphic when browsing Programmers on my Android phone (currently v2.2) all I can reach is the downvote (Argh! Not what I intended at all!) or Facebook button. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, this could be a fault of the Android browser since I certainly don't have a problem on any PC device, but there may be a CSS issue that is causing this. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hope this is an appropriate question for meta, if not - well the Hammer of Close will just have to fall upon me." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2421" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="965" RevisionGUID="1cf6b70c-1c52-421b-bc60-a84151731ecc" CreationDate="2011-01-14T10:53:18.737" UserId="37" Text="I believe this issue is specific to some browsers on Android 2.2, but not 2.3.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not reproducible for us on the devices we have." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2422" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="965" RevisionGUID="71b23c3e-ca5c-4b31-97c0-681643aebcb2" CreationDate="2011-01-14T10:59:25.110" UserId="48" Comment="added 116 characters in body" Text="I believe this issue is specific to some browsers on Android 2.2, but not 2.3.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've reproduced this on Android 2.2, we'll see if there's some way to work around it. The Android browser is know for some strange behavior regarding &quot;clickable&quot; areas." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2424" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="966" RevisionGUID="ad771482-c7e0-46ff-85b3-9944b6660811" CreationDate="2011-01-14T16:53:22.993" UserId="8720" Text="The logic seems hollow -- it might make sense to prevent answer duplication but why should the person who asked the question not have the reputations added? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or am I missing something here? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2425" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="966" RevisionGUID="ad771482-c7e0-46ff-85b3-9944b6660811" CreationDate="2011-01-14T16:53:22.993" UserId="8720" Text="When a question is made community wiki why does the person who asked the question stop accruing reputation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2426" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="966" RevisionGUID="ad771482-c7e0-46ff-85b3-9944b6660811" CreationDate="2011-01-14T16:53:22.993" UserId="8720" Text="|discussion|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2427" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="967" RevisionGUID="1a31848e-1019-4a6d-a333-53db4b467669" CreationDate="2011-01-14T16:56:18.763" UserId="8720" Text="Is there any obvious way to create a poll in stackexchange? Seems like a cool feature to have particularly in programmers.stackexchange. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2428" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="967" RevisionGUID="1a31848e-1019-4a6d-a333-53db4b467669" CreationDate="2011-01-14T16:56:18.763" UserId="8720" Text="How can I create a poll as part of a question in stackexchange? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2429" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="967" RevisionGUID="1a31848e-1019-4a6d-a333-53db4b467669" CreationDate="2011-01-14T16:56:18.763" UserId="8720" Text="|feature-request|polling|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2430" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="968" RevisionGUID="3eaee03c-83ef-4056-aae9-83cdf9548726" CreationDate="2011-01-14T17:14:14.707" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="You can't create polls: that isn't what this site and the other sites in the Stack Exchange system are about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is for questions that can be answered. Specifically on Programmers.SE, questions must have the following qualities:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the system allows for some measure of voting on answers and questions: you can guage popularity and usefulness of an answer by its current score." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2431" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="969" RevisionGUID="3b644bc0-6995-4684-a61c-54501f4c913b" CreationDate="2011-01-14T17:29:14.817" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The mechanics of the community wiki flag are as blind as Lady Justice: if a post is marked community wiki, reputation stops accruing regardless of what the circumstances behind that which is marked as such. Simply:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    function addRep(value) {&#xD;&#xA;      if (!this-&gt;communityWiki) {&#xD;&#xA;        this-&gt;user-&gt;addRep(value);&#xD;&#xA;      }&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for why there's no distinction, we need to go back to [what the community wiki flag is for](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community wiki flag is used when it's determined (either by the original author of the post or automatically) that the post could benefit from the community taking ownership of it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [this case](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36612/what-kind-of-innovative-non-cash-financial-benefits-do-i-offer-to-my-developers-t), it looks like you ran into an automatic triggering of the flag that occurred when the answer got 15 answers. You can think of the reason why posts automatically convert to community wiki as a reaction to problem with scope: the vast majority of constructive, pointed questions only have a few answers. When a question starts to get a ton of answers, two things have likely occurred:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. People are providing new answers, intentionally or unintentionally, to slightly tweak existing answers&#xD;&#xA;2. The original question is very broad and its scope not very well defined, allowing for a plethora of ways to answer it that are likely irrelevant to the original intent&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In both cases, community ownership winds up being a good thing as it allows others to address the quality of both the question and answers: community wiki relaxes the rep requirement to edit, so answers can be made more useful and distinct and the question can be made more specific by people who would otherwise just post a new answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2432" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="969" RevisionGUID="e099b65e-0f73-4e90-ac6b-4b302afab8cd" CreationDate="2011-01-14T17:35:26.013" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 129 characters in body; added 187 characters in body" Text="The mechanics of the community wiki flag are as blind as Lady Justice: if a post is marked community wiki, reputation stops accruing regardless of what the circumstances behind that which is marked as such. Simply:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    function addRep(value) {&#xD;&#xA;      if (!this-&gt;communityWiki) {&#xD;&#xA;        this-&gt;user-&gt;addRep(value);&#xD;&#xA;      }&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for why there's no distinction, we need to go back to [what the community wiki flag is for](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community wiki flag is used when it's determined (either by the original author of the post or automatically) that the post could benefit from the community taking ownership of it. Since the community as a whole takes ownership of the post, there's no single person to award the reputation to and it is not awarded at all. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it another way, once the community wiki flag is set, you are no longer considered to be the owner of the post, so that's why you stopped getting reputation for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [this case](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36612/what-kind-of-innovative-non-cash-financial-benefits-do-i-offer-to-my-developers-t), it looks like you ran into an automatic triggering of the flag that occurred when the answer got 15 answers. You can think of the reason why posts automatically convert to community wiki as a reaction to problem with scope: the vast majority of constructive, pointed questions only have a few answers. When a question starts to get a ton of answers, two things have likely occurred:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. People are providing new answers, intentionally or unintentionally, to slightly tweak existing answers&#xD;&#xA;2. The original question is very broad and its scope not very well defined, allowing for a plethora of ways to answer it that are likely irrelevant to the original intent&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In both cases, community ownership winds up being a good thing as it allows others to address the quality of both the question and answers: community wiki relaxes the rep requirement to edit, so answers can be made more useful and distinct and the question can be made more specific by people who would otherwise just post a new answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2433" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="968" RevisionGUID="9bc274f6-6951-4633-8009-551ac0fab7e3" CreationDate="2011-01-14T17:43:49.377" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited body" Text="You can't create polls: that isn't what this site and the other sites in the Stack Exchange system are about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is for questions that can be answered. Specifically on Programmers.SE, questions must have the following qualities:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the system allows for some measure of voting on answers and questions: you can gauge popularity and usefulness of an answer by its current score." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2434" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="970" RevisionGUID="2ee6d1ba-52b6-4394-a3c1-df4fc1f9673a" CreationDate="2011-01-14T18:04:21.990" UserId="1961" Text="When I ask a question (and every answer has a check mark next to it for me to select one as my accepted answer), it's very hard for me to tell the difference between the check mark that I've checked, and one that I haven't checked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could you either use a brighter green for the one that I've checked, or make the unchecked ones appear as an outline like on StackOverflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2435" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="970" RevisionGUID="2ee6d1ba-52b6-4394-a3c1-df4fc1f9673a" CreationDate="2011-01-14T18:04:21.990" UserId="1961" Text="Accepted answer checkmark color" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2436" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="970" RevisionGUID="2ee6d1ba-52b6-4394-a3c1-df4fc1f9673a" CreationDate="2011-01-14T18:04:21.990" UserId="1961" Text="|feature-request|design|accepted-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2437" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="971" RevisionGUID="119e11e2-43d3-49d6-b49d-deee9e69dfde" CreationDate="2011-01-14T18:31:15.170" UserId="9411" Text="Heck, this place used to be **fun**. Before the [&quot;Six Subjective Question Guidelines&quot;][1] (kinda sounds like &quot;The Ten Commandments&quot;... **Thou shalt inspire answers...**) there were a lot of controversial, useless, funny rants around here. Hilariously angry people telling Dilbert-like stories. I understand that not everyone has the same sense of humour and it's sure nice to keep things in order, like having a platform for every type of topic. The biggest advantage of keeping topics separated is the quality of feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But every 3rd question has `Mark Trapp`'s comment in them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Which of the six subjective guidelines&#xD;&#xA;&gt; do you think your question meets? –&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mark Trapp♦ 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No offense Mark, you do your job as a `Moderator` and that's fine. But the fact that you need to remind everyone of these guidelines makes me think that maybe the time has come for a page like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://rants-and-fun.stackexchange.com &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you guys think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2438" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="971" RevisionGUID="119e11e2-43d3-49d6-b49d-deee9e69dfde" CreationDate="2011-01-14T18:31:15.170" UserId="9411" Text="A place for the subjective, fun questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2439" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="971" RevisionGUID="119e11e2-43d3-49d6-b49d-deee9e69dfde" CreationDate="2011-01-14T18:31:15.170" UserId="9411" Text="|discussion|feature-request|rant|fun|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2440" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="972" RevisionGUID="7e6c51c7-3e1f-4eb1-a061-7eecadc17a1a" CreationDate="2011-01-14T18:36:23.293" UserId="226" Text="There is definitely some merit in the funny questions, but the goal of the site is to promote serious discussions about software development without turning into yet another forum flooded with poorly thought out posts. So I think the overall quality of questions on P.SE has improved over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you aren't happy with it, you can always start a proposal on [Area 51][1] and see if it gets enough traction. Alternatively, there are other places (such as [The Daily WTF Forums][2]) that may be more like what you're looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://forums.thedailywtf.com/Forums/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2441" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="973" RevisionGUID="ce81eb28-f039-4e39-bf08-5ae32a03d42d" CreationDate="2011-01-14T19:41:31.663" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="It's easy to be hyperbolic when it comes to the problems Programmers.SE faces: I've been guilty of doing so on a number of occasions. But the reality is that most people and most questions are on topic, and the so-called &quot;problem&quot; questions and users, to what everyone seems to reference when talking about the character of Programmers.SE, are a minority, albeit a particularly vocal one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It may seem like I'm laying down the law in every third question, but that's not the case. What you're likely seeing is the product of a selection bias: you might be drawn to the &quot;problem&quot; questions, so you think they constitute the majority of the site. I make it a point to look at every single question that comes into Programmers.SE, and 90% of them are on-topic and don't require any attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The six subjective guidelines are a global policy, borne out of the problems Programmers.SE faced when it was created. The original formulation of Programmers.SE was a more-or-less anything goes type site that you are proposing, and it failed. There was very little redeeming about the site, and very little to distinguish it from other [low-quality question-and-answer sites](http://answers.yahoo.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The six subjective guidelines were [devised to allow for subjective Stack Exchange sites to exist](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) without devolving into a useless website. It's unlikely to impossible for an Area 51 proposal to make it into and through beta without adhering to its principles. If you're looking for a place free of those guidelines, Stack Exchange is not the place for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the questions I have posted the quoted comment, it's not necessarily an indication that I think the question is off topic or should be closed: as a moderator, I can close questions that I think are a problem immediately. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The purpose of me asking that question is that it's not clear to me how the question addresses the guidelines for this site, and if it's not clear to me, it's likely the case that others see it the same way. In many cases, a question needs minor editing or a brief discussion in the comments to resolve any ambiguity." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2442" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="973" RevisionGUID="3c20d916-8cf8-447d-96f3-04c9e4441bde" CreationDate="2011-01-14T19:48:25.883" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 12 characters in body; added 4 characters in body" Text="It's easy to be hyperbolic when it comes to the problems Programmers.SE faces: I've been guilty of it on a number of occasions. But the reality is that most people and most questions are on topic, and the so-called &quot;problem&quot; questions and users, to what everyone seems to reference when talking about the character of Programmers.SE, are a minority ( albeit a particularly vocal one).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It may seem like I'm laying down the law in every third question, but that's not the case. What you're likely seeing is the product of a selection bias: you might be drawn to the &quot;problem&quot; questions, so you think they constitute the majority of the site. I make it a point to look at every single question that comes into Programmers.SE; 90% of them are on-topic and don't require any attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The six subjective guidelines are a global policy, borne out of the problems Programmers.SE faced when it was created. The original formulation of Programmers.SE was the more-or-less &quot;anything goes&quot;-type site that you are proposing and it failed. There was very little redeeming about the site, and very little to distinguish it from other [low-quality question-and-answer sites](http://answers.yahoo.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The six subjective guidelines were [devised to allow for subjective Stack Exchange sites to exist](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) without devolving into a useless website. It's unlikely to impossible for an Area 51 proposal to make it into and through beta without adhering to its principles. If you're looking for a place free of those guidelines, Stack Exchange is not the place for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the questions I have posted the quoted comment, it's not necessarily an indication that I think the question is off topic or should be closed: as a moderator, I can close questions that I think are a problem immediately. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The purpose of me asking that question is that it's not clear to me how the question addresses the guidelines for this site, and if it's not clear to me, it's likely that it's not clear to others as well. In many cases, a question needs minor editing or a brief discussion in the comments to resolve any ambiguity." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2443" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="974" RevisionGUID="f9a145ba-ade1-4680-801d-b09eccb4f850" CreationDate="2011-01-14T20:06:54.817" UserId="10106" Text="When you hovered over a tag, there used to be an option that said &quot;Add to interesting tags&quot; (or something similar to that).  Now there only seem to be options to subscribe to that tag for email notifications, or for RSS.  Am I missing something?  Is this option available elsewhere?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2444" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="974" RevisionGUID="f9a145ba-ade1-4680-801d-b09eccb4f850" CreationDate="2011-01-14T20:06:54.817" UserId="10106" Text="What happened to &quot;add to interesting tags&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2445" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="974" RevisionGUID="f9a145ba-ade1-4680-801d-b09eccb4f850" CreationDate="2011-01-14T20:06:54.817" UserId="10106" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2446" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="975" RevisionGUID="b16a6e0f-7476-4c64-84a7-93350aa1329b" CreationDate="2011-01-14T20:11:23.957" UserId="7426" Text="You can add interesting (favorite) tags on the right side of the &quot;home&quot; page." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2447" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="971" RevisionGUID="4f70b3ef-fbf1-42b3-a185-d2b87020d85d" CreationDate="2011-01-14T20:29:05.007" UserId="9411" Comment="added 106 characters in body" Text="Heck, this place used to be **fun**. Before the [&quot;Six Subjective Question Guidelines&quot;][1] (kinda sounds like &quot;The Ten Commandments&quot;... **Thou shalt inspire answers...**) there were a lot of controversial, useless, funny rants around here. Hilariously angry people telling Dilbert-like stories. I understand that not everyone has the same sense of humour and it's sure nice to keep things in order, like having a platform for every type of topic. The biggest advantage of keeping topics separated is the quality of feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But every 3rd question (that I have seen today) has `Mark Trapp`'s comment in them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Which of the six subjective guidelines&#xD;&#xA;&gt; do you think your question meets? –&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mark Trapp♦ 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do not take this as an offense Mark, you do your job as a `Moderator` and that's fine. And you're right about the guidelines for Programmers.SE. But the fact that you need to remind many people of these guidelines makes me think that maybe the time has come for a page like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://rants-and-fun.stackexchange.com &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you guys think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2448" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="976" RevisionGUID="5539cdbc-f118-4246-b645-51937d39d645" CreationDate="2011-01-14T21:52:53.647" UserId="3" Text="Apart from saying **&quot;no, Stack Exchange does not provide a polling option.&quot;** there are long-standing ideals behind &quot;why?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it *is* possible to come up with an occasional poll-style questions that avoids social pitfalls of “Getting To Know You” (GTKY) questions and mindless entertainment, it is pretty rare. It is better just to ask your question with the tools we have now, rather than explicitly encouraging (an even *soliciting*) &quot;polling&quot;-type questions as a [feature] of this system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Simply stated, **we don't want to *encourage* polls** on this site. Stack Exchange is supposed to be about building a canonical archive; a source for authoritative answers to decisive questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Polls are typically very basic *&quot;what do you think about&amp;hellip;&quot;* questions that have been asked hundreds of times on every other forum on the internet.  Asking interesting and challenging questions is hard. But when you compare that to asking questions  out of  mere curiosity (one that gives *everyone* the opportunity to sound off with random opinion), it becomes the low-hanging fruit of the system. More often than not, polls are a quick and dirty way to seed discussion without regard to the quality of the question or the answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is not what we do here. It is the high quality questions and answers (and the high expectations) that separates these systems from the random phpBB noise and junk food found in most discussion forums. So let's not encourage polls&amp;hellip; save the few that can get by the strict vetting of the community. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2449" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="977" RevisionGUID="30cdaa0c-3b43-4f82-80b1-2684ec6ea23a" CreationDate="2011-01-14T22:16:28.327" UserId="3" Text="##A Serious Proposal&#xD;&#xA;If you want a rants-and-fun Stackexchange, why not drop by your nearest phpBB host **and create one?** I'm not being snarky here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Our* goal is to build sites where people are asking very interesting and challenging questions, not the basic questions found on every other forum. It sounds like we're being a whole bunch of no-fun &quot;building an expert archive to canonical questions.&quot; Boooorrring, but that's what we do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can fully understand that you've fallen in love with the technology and the software; that you want to play and have fun when you're done with all our learning, and knowledge archiving, and getting stuff done bullshit. But we simply do not want to spend *one* hour building and supporting a system who's sole purpose is to become the low-hanging fruit of the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not saying that there is no place anywhere on the internet where this should exist. I love noise and junk food once in awhile, too. All I am saying is, **simply stated, that is *not* what we do here.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2450" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="971" RevisionGUID="c34b9c87-4f07-4bc4-af7a-29be9c7b38f0" CreationDate="2011-01-15T01:40:10.633" UserId="9411" Comment="deleted 80 characters in body" Text="Heck, this place used to be **fun**. Before the [&quot;Six Subjective Question Guidelines&quot;][1] there were a lot of controversial, useless, funny rants around here. Hilariously angry people telling Dilbert-like stories. I understand that not everyone has the same sense of humour and it's sure nice to keep things in order, like having a platform for every type of topic. The biggest advantage of keeping topics separated is the quality of feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But every 3rd question (that I have seen today) has `Mark Trapp`'s comment in them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Which of the six subjective guidelines&#xD;&#xA;&gt; do you think your question meets? –&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mark Trapp♦ 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do not take this as an offense Mark, you do your job as a `Moderator` and that's fine. And you're right about the guidelines for Programmers.SE. But the fact that you need to remind many people of these guidelines makes me think that maybe the time has come for a page like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://rants-and-fun.stackexchange.com &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you guys think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2451" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="971" RevisionGUID="55010117-7c58-4312-b0c8-6fa243ee2e48" CreationDate="2011-01-15T01:45:22.830" UserId="9411" Comment="added 794 characters in body" Text="Before the [&quot;Six Subjective Question Guidelines&quot;][1] there were a lot of controversial, useless, funny rants around here. Hilariously angry people telling Dilbert-like stories. I understand that not everyone has the same sense of humour and it's sure nice to keep things in order, like having a platform for every type of topic. The biggest advantage of keeping topics separated is the quality of feedback you get, when people know exactly what they may ask/answer and what they may not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But every 3rd question (that I have seen today) has `Mark Trapp`'s comment in them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Which of the six subjective guidelines&#xD;&#xA;&gt; do you think your question meets? –&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mark Trapp♦ 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do not take this as an offense Mark, you do a great job as a `Moderator` and that's fine. And you're right about the guidelines for Programmers.SE. But the fact that you need to remind many people of these guidelines makes me think that maybe the time has come for a page like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://rants-and-fun.stackexchange.com &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you guys think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT**: Please, before you get angry about this, understand this: I'm fairly new to SE (some 3 months?) and I love every aspect of it. Technology, seriousness, quality, potential of fun. I know I'm questioning some **fundamental** principles of SE, but be aware of these two facts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I think I'm not alone, and SE lives off its community. So let's hear opinions, e.g. on [Area 51][2]&#xD;&#xA;2. Be fair about it. You expect fairness from your users, so be fair to your users as well. Your guidelines have been negotiated over time, they're not written in marble. And they will change again eventually, no matter for what reason. This is exactly, what makes SE so powerful!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/27342/rants-and-fun" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2452" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="978" RevisionGUID="5340b8d7-2fb2-4a0a-be5c-a8a7d211c9ea" CreationDate="2011-01-15T03:34:46.920" UserId="4285" Text="[This][1] question started out so-so, but by the time you get to the comments on the last (most downvoted) question, it's descended into a mire of tit-for-tat insults between two people who have ended up using Programmers to settle an internal dispute.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever the merits of their respective cases, or the value of the original question, and even taking into account the time invested by answerers and commenters, I can't help thinking that this question ought to be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34877/hired-developer-insists-on-doing-things-the-wrong-way" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2453" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="978" RevisionGUID="5340b8d7-2fb2-4a0a-be5c-a8a7d211c9ea" CreationDate="2011-01-15T03:34:46.920" UserId="4285" Text="Should this bickering question be deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2454" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="978" RevisionGUID="5340b8d7-2fb2-4a0a-be5c-a8a7d211c9ea" CreationDate="2011-01-15T03:34:46.920" UserId="4285" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2455" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="979" RevisionGUID="66a6889f-b164-4591-a41d-eac1d76ec0ef" CreationDate="2011-01-15T03:49:52.013" UserId="37" Text="I think that *answer* should be deleted, and I have done so. The question seems OK so far." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2456" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="980" RevisionGUID="99999085-a59f-4df9-9df1-0f7e64c6a7b6" CreationDate="2011-01-15T05:04:59.513" UserId="10935" Text="Can't the members communicate through Private Messages(PM) each others? Why SE doesn't allow it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2457" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="980" RevisionGUID="99999085-a59f-4df9-9df1-0f7e64c6a7b6" CreationDate="2011-01-15T05:04:59.513" UserId="10935" Text="Why isn't private message facility available in SE sites?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2458" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="980" RevisionGUID="99999085-a59f-4df9-9df1-0f7e64c6a7b6" CreationDate="2011-01-15T05:04:59.513" UserId="10935" Text="|feature-request|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2460" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="982" RevisionGUID="1a22bbab-462b-4228-8a52-aafa1b5af1e6" CreationDate="2011-01-15T08:50:43.620" UserId="1685" Text="Ken, thank you for bringing this to my attention. We take accessibility pretty seriously. I have adjusted the contrast between accepted and non-accepted arrows. should be in the next deployment. Be sure to refresh your browser since the images are sprited on the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2461" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="983" RevisionGUID="6c9e868d-57c3-4957-a195-ccdba842fd7f" CreationDate="2011-01-15T10:18:29.750" UserId="37" Text="Click the star on the tag tooltip to add the tag as a favorite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/TPtIf.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2462" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="974" RevisionGUID="f058a01a-f6c6-426d-88f6-447836d99f17" CreationDate="2011-01-15T10:19:18.983" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|tag-watching|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2463" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="955" RevisionGUID="d9dba3a9-da2a-4135-92a7-88b89ad81510" CreationDate="2011-01-15T19:02:41.993" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|reputation|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2464" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="937" RevisionGUID="d689ac8e-81d6-4597-900b-b2df5d31d6ab" CreationDate="2011-01-15T19:15:48.030" UserId="1685" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-bydesign|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2465" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="984" RevisionGUID="78442ef2-cc4b-485f-99f1-60f66874a16d" CreationDate="2011-01-15T19:17:48.527" UserId="1685" Text="I have updated the Edit icon. It is a subtle squiggle line now. I think it fits the whiteboard theme." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2466" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="888" RevisionGUID="c8b4f804-f69a-43d9-a2c2-9b60e56b2ca1" CreationDate="2011-01-15T19:18:00.523" UserId="1685" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2467" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="985" RevisionGUID="8ee2e4d9-4e43-49d7-98c3-1e04e5125074" CreationDate="2011-01-16T11:20:34.897" UserId="48" Text="This will be fixed in the next build. It's quite interesting: The click action on that star is bound via [jQuery.live()](http://api.jquery.com/live/) (which isn't a &quot;real&quot; event handler) and is very close to other &quot;clickable&quot; areas (namely downvote and Facebook, as you noticed yourself).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of this, the Android browser assumes you meant to tap one of the buttons in the star's proximity, causing the event to never bubble up to the document object (which is neccessary for a `.live()` event to work).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We gave the star (which is an `&lt;a&gt;` element) a *pro forma* `href` attribute, after which the Android browser is willing to consider it a clickable area." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2468" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="964" RevisionGUID="5f32d628-644e-4f36-81ee-9f4dc9ff9655" CreationDate="2011-01-16T11:20:44.930" UserId="48" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2469" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="955" RevisionGUID="0023b150-5868-428c-8be8-cda9222b7ac0" CreationDate="2011-01-17T10:01:39.847" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-bydesign|reputation|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2470" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="974" RevisionGUID="354231f6-f37d-44e7-915e-17d8e85df90b" CreationDate="2011-01-17T10:01:55.853" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-bydesign|tag-watching|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2471" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="970" RevisionGUID="71e59528-0894-4560-92af-7f1a37c05609" CreationDate="2011-01-17T10:02:22.777" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|design|accepted-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2472" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="986" RevisionGUID="6eb3a555-cb34-4a0f-a0dc-8a32007be19e" CreationDate="2011-01-17T14:52:09.317" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="This is not the goal of SE communities. It may change in the future, but I doubt. IMHO, PM is not going to happen anytime soon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel the need to contact a user, check his profile. Users that accept to be contacted usually leave their email address, blog of whatever. If the user don't put that information, it's a good indication that he doesn't want to be contacted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2473" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="987" RevisionGUID="f30851b9-2203-437e-8891-135f297658b7" CreationDate="2011-01-17T16:46:09.930" UserId="5095" Text="Some questions seem destined for closure but have, at their core, something decent trying to get out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously it's fine to edit someone else's question to correct grammar, spelling or whatever, but how valid is it to rework a question because you think there's something worth saving and it's obvious it's not going to survive in it's current form?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance here: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37532/best-industry-to-work-for-as-a-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Different industries do conform to type with regards to working practices, and do so in ways which are specific to developers.  For me there is a core of a good question here but the edit it needs goes beyond what I feel is polite to do to someone else's question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or am I just wrong and it's a bad question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2474" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="987" RevisionGUID="f30851b9-2203-437e-8891-135f297658b7" CreationDate="2011-01-17T16:46:09.930" UserId="5095" Text="Rewording other people's questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2475" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="987" RevisionGUID="f30851b9-2203-437e-8891-135f297658b7" CreationDate="2011-01-17T16:46:09.930" UserId="5095" Text="|discussion|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2476" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="988" RevisionGUID="60522869-bdf4-4398-abac-58a5a5eae8a4" CreationDate="2011-01-17T17:06:41.577" UserId="1973" Text="I've been told by a mod that this is a bad idea and doing so is a not so good, although for the life of me I can't see why. I've had good success in coaxing the asker to improve his or her question in the past. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since this is a migrated question I think you should be able to do whatever you want to it.  I answered the question because I think it does have an answer.  The problem with that particular question is that it is too long.  It would be improved by redaction and I think that's probably always admissible." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2477" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="989" RevisionGUID="49d26aac-fe52-405e-9e5b-f3c3576305f7" CreationDate="2011-01-17T17:13:53.370" UserId="101" Text="If a question is destined to be closed, but has some kernel of a good question inside then I think that there are a couple of options available.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first and least intrusive is to post a comment and ask the OP to edit the question with your suggestions.  The second is editing the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case the user may/may not have an account on PSE so there's little benefit to commenting.  I would go ahead and edit the question.  I would much rather have a good question survive in place of a poor closed question.  I don't think that all questions are savable but in this case I think there's a pretty good chance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other thing I might suggest is posting a comment with your reasoning for editing the question.  That would give a Mod (and other users) the opportunity to back up your choices (assuming you did a good job) as well as let the OP know how to construct a better question next time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2478" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="987" RevisionGUID="54ee0221-e136-481b-8346-536987a2c14f" CreationDate="2011-01-17T17:32:09.037" UserId="5095" Comment="added 131 characters in body" Text="Some questions seem destined for closure but have, at their core, something decent trying to get out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously it's fine to edit someone else's question to correct grammar, spelling or whatever, but how valid is it to rework a question because you think there's something worth saving and it's obvious it's not going to survive in it's current form?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance here: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37532/best-industry-to-work-for-as-a-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Different industries do conform to type with regards to working practices, and do so in ways which are specific to developers.  For me there is a core of a good question here but the edit it needs goes beyond what I feel is polite to do to someone else's question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or am I just wrong and it's a bad question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT**: I have now edited this at Walter's prompting so you'll need to look at the edit history to see the original question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2479" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="990" RevisionGUID="097c503e-ebfa-432d-928e-72e2c53d74b2" CreationDate="2011-01-17T18:26:30.250" UserId="63" Text="With **one click**, the original author can revert any changes you make. But it takes considerably more effort to re-open a closed question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, if you think a question risks being closed (and your example clearly did) and you think you can edit it into shape, you shouldn't hold back - if the author accepts your changes then everyone wins, and if he rejects them it can still be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't anyone's personal blog. Yes, the name of the original author appears below the post... But so does the name of the last editor. As an editor, strive to make the author look good, or at least competent - failing to do that purely out of fear is little better than *actively vandalizing* a post." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2480" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="991" RevisionGUID="c5b8278f-28fe-47be-b097-26b84e0445bc" CreationDate="2011-01-17T20:05:16.170" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="There's a new post on the Stack Overflow blog entitled [Real Questions Have Real Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), which serves to expand upon the [six subjective guidelines](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) we all know and love. I encourage you to read it and [the original answer from Aarobot](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179) that sparked the post itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main point that's now been added to [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) is the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite X?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, in a variant of “I’ll go first”. If you can authoritatively answer, it’s not a real question.&#xD;&#xA;* there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if X happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* it is a rant disguised as a question: “What is the deal with X?” or “X sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about X”, then you should not be asking here. If your motivation is “I would like others to explain X to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are your thoughts on the new guidelines? Is there a problem with these types of questions that needs addressing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to encourage questions that don't fall into the trap of being poll questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2481" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="991" RevisionGUID="c5b8278f-28fe-47be-b097-26b84e0445bc" CreationDate="2011-01-17T20:05:16.170" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Real Questions Have Real Answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2482" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="991" RevisionGUID="c5b8278f-28fe-47be-b097-26b84e0445bc" CreationDate="2011-01-17T20:05:16.170" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|featured|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2483" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="992" RevisionGUID="60535bba-db75-4870-bac3-7b8a28a88441" CreationDate="2011-01-17T20:41:48.060" UserId="7426" Text="Are there any differentiating factors between &quot;What is the deal with X?&quot; and &quot;I would like others to explain X to me.&quot;? These two questions are quite similar, yet the former is bad and the latter is good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be the author's wording and tone?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2484" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="993" RevisionGUID="0f5d2724-593f-4bb5-abe8-42eadb29d405" CreationDate="2011-01-17T21:57:19.463" UserId="11259" Text="I think that the major issue with these types of questions is that they enable reputation inflation. I realize that there is cap, but if you ask one &quot;popular&quot; question of this nature it is an automatic 200+ reputation boost. Same goes for the answer. I have seen numerous &quot;constructive question&quot; with relatively low voting and at the same time questions like &quot;What equipment does every developer need?&quot; get blasted through the roof with votes. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2485" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="993" RevisionGUID="df02586c-8380-4d03-8381-0197142308cd" CreationDate="2011-01-17T22:02:36.507" UserId="11259" Comment="added 137 characters in body; added 82 characters in body" Text="I think that the major issue with these types of questions is that they enable reputation inflation. I realize that there is cap, but if you ask one &quot;popular&quot; question of this nature it is an automatic 200+ reputation boost. Same goes for the answer. I have seen numerous &quot;constructive question&quot; with relatively low voting and at the same time questions like &quot;What equipment does every developer need?&quot; get blasted through the roof with votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a side effect, I fear that users will be hunting for questions or answers that they know will get them votes just boot their rep opposed asking more constructive questions or answering more legitimate questions. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2486" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="994" RevisionGUID="41b9b7fd-c591-4bc6-aa12-af98737e4f66" CreationDate="2011-01-17T23:54:18.750" UserId="63" Text="&gt; What are your thoughts on the new guidelines? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am exceedingly happy about them! One of the most persistent abuses of SO, right from the very start, has been Getting To Know You questions (often incorrectly referred to as polls&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;) - a bored user asking others to share their favorite X, tell a story about X, commiserate in X, etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's forum-fodder, a staple of newsgroups and message boards, and perfectly appropriate for those venues, but utterly useless on SO/SE (where questions are expected to live on for years). They're fun, and often they'll collect a small number of very interesting answers... This in turn makes them very hard to kill: &quot;How dare you delete Eric's brilliant story about how he once built a web browser out of corn?!! You heartless bastard!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the broader category of [&quot;list questions&quot;][1] (poll, GTKY, product recommendation, brainstorming, tips, etc.), there are perhaps a handful that are generally useful... And invariably, they're asked by users who actually *care deeply* about getting some useful answers. The rest, asked by the bored/lazy/rep-hungry, quickly devolve into fluff, as the asker has no vested interest in refining his question to limit such responses. And so every compromise we've tried - meta-tagging, mandatory-CW, [fluff-ghetto][2] - has been resisted and ultimately has failed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, the only way to combat this rot is by judging the intent of the asker. And you gauge their intent by the words they use: while &quot;What's your favorite editor?&quot; and &quot;What's a good editor for Windows that supports &gt;5GB files and has built-in macros?&quot; are superficially close, the projected intent is utterly different. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's good to know that we can now refer to the FAQ when editing or closing these beasts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;sub&gt;A poll is useless unless someone is compiling the responses into a finite set of categories. This almost never happens. The only *painless* way to run an effective poll on SE is to post a finite set of answers, CW everything, and then close the question and let people vote and comment - this hasn't been possible without moderator intervention for over two years.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/11760/whats-the-opinion-on-list-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2487" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="995" RevisionGUID="dade7839-e7c2-4285-86f5-e829cdaef3a2" CreationDate="2011-01-18T01:02:01.783" UserId="2314" Text="The new guidelines, at the moment, seem well-formed and a positive move.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as encouraging better questions, I think we need to look at the motivation for the questions that violate these rules.  Some of them are lost causes, but some may have a valid topic that, worded differently, could actually produce a **real answer**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of **&quot;What is your favorite...&quot;** questions, what about **&quot;What is the best...&quot;** questions?  It gives the poster the burden of backing up their answer, as well as an actual (albeit subjective) criteria for accepting an answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2488" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="995" RevisionGUID="9f068b71-c9ef-405d-9b3f-5d00dc5f2457" CreationDate="2011-01-18T01:07:18.577" UserId="2314" Comment="added 77 characters in body" Text="The new guidelines, at the moment, seem well-formed and a positive move.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as encouraging better questions, I think we need to look at the motivation for the questions that violate these rules.  Some of them are lost causes, but some may have a valid topic that, worded differently, could actually produce a **real answer**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of **&quot;What is your favorite...&quot;** questions, what about **&quot;What is the best...&quot;** questions?  It gives the poster the burden of backing up their answer, as well as an actual (albeit subjective) criteria for accepting an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(Obviously, not **all** favorite questions could be reworded like this)*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2489" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="996" RevisionGUID="54ffcc7c-5ac5-4d7f-85a3-49f8eb3fc74b" CreationDate="2011-01-18T05:06:59.347" UserId="7494" Text="Hi All,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have come across quite a few questions now that have been closed a single Moderator (and a couple with 1 Moderator, and 1 Community Member).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't this not happen? Half the point of the &quot;SE-way&quot; is that the community decides (with vote-to-close), and the moderators are brought in only if required.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not have a ton of examples, but a good one is here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14856/best-practices-that-you-disagree-with&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community has **obviously** shown that the question belongs, but the moderator closes it in any case." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2490" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="996" RevisionGUID="54ffcc7c-5ac5-4d7f-85a3-49f8eb3fc74b" CreationDate="2011-01-18T05:06:59.347" UserId="7494" Text="Moderator's Taking Community Function" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2491" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="996" RevisionGUID="54ffcc7c-5ac5-4d7f-85a3-49f8eb3fc74b" CreationDate="2011-01-18T05:06:59.347" UserId="7494" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2492" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="996" RevisionGUID="9adc0f01-79c6-442b-8bc4-86d079835787" CreationDate="2011-01-18T05:18:31.390" UserId="7494" Comment="added 110 characters in body" Text="Hi All,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have come across quite a few questions now that have been closed a single Moderator (and a couple with 1 Moderator, and 1 Community Member).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't this not happen? Half the point of the &quot;SE-way&quot; is that the community decides (with vote-to-close), and the moderators are brought in only if required. I am all for having active moderation, but this is still a community website, driven by the community itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not have a ton of examples, but a good one is here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14856/best-practices-that-you-disagree-with&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community has **obviously** shown that the question belongs, but the moderator closes it in any case." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2493" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="997" RevisionGUID="c334fad5-1766-4c91-b88b-bf57e3f042a6" CreationDate="2011-01-18T07:27:10.977" UserId="37" Text="Well, in this specific case, **Programmers is a bit unusual** because it's a proving grounds for a lot of network learning about &quot;how do we allow *constructive* subjective questions?&quot; -- something we did not really do en masse before this site was launched. And that is challenging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(also, bear in mind that question predates a lot of these decisions being made)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read up:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;- http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and of course:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, *in the general case*, I do like to see at least one other 3k user voting to close in addition to the moderator. But I support the moderators, and I think you need to make a case here for that specific question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my personal opinion, that question meets most of the 6 guidelines, doesn't run afoul of the explicit subjective pitfalls, and is probably OK. I have certainly seen much much MUCH worse." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2494" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="991" RevisionGUID="b8fe9ae7-88a8-4991-972c-97843bd65a5e" CreationDate="2011-01-18T08:44:57.883" UserId="37" Comment="copy changed on the examples a bit; added 30 characters in body" Text="There's a new post on the Stack Overflow blog entitled [Real Questions Have Real Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), which serves to expand upon the [six subjective guidelines](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) we all know and love. I encourage you to read it and [the original answer from Aarobot](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179) that sparked the post itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main point that's now been added to [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) is the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: &amp;ldquo;What&amp;rsquo;s your favorite \_\_\_\_\_?&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: &amp;ldquo;I use \_\_\_\_\_ for \_\_\_\_\_, what do you use?&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: &amp;ldquo;I&amp;rsquo;m curious if other people feel like I do.&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: &amp;ldquo;What if \_\_\_\_\_ happened?&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - it is a rant disguised as a question: &amp;ldquo;\_\_\_\_\_ sucks, am I right?&amp;rdquo;&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about \_\_\_\_\_”, then you should not be asking here. If your motivation is “I would like others to explain \_\_\_\_\_ to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are your thoughts on the new guidelines? Is there a problem with these types of questions that needs addressing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to encourage questions that don't fall into the trap of being poll questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2495" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="998" RevisionGUID="931ee13b-ff80-4881-b0c5-297920f4477b" CreationDate="2011-01-18T10:20:03.217" UserId="5095" Text="Popularity amongst the community isn't an automatic sign that it belongs here.  There are all sorts of questions that don't belong here which would be well received by a programmer audience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think what would help would be that in cases where a question is either long standing or has a significant number of up votes (+10 or more), the mod could add an explanation of why it was closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2496" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="998" RevisionGUID="54da29f3-7b7a-4ebe-8aaf-f8cb9cbf52e0" CreationDate="2011-01-18T11:15:50.373" UserId="5095" Comment="added 350 characters in body" Text="Popularity amongst the community isn't an automatic sign that it belongs here.  There are all sorts of questions that don't belong here which would be well received by a programmer audience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While the community can (and do) take an active role in enforcing the more definitive rules (such as these), the moderators exist for the cases where things are in clear violation to (a) keep the place in a decent order and (b) allow the community to focus on adding real value rather than having to spend their time taking out the obvious trash.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think what would help would be that in cases where a question is either long standing or has a significant number of up votes (+10 or more), the mod could add an explanation of why it was closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2497" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="980" RevisionGUID="53967140-3a6b-4b74-a691-b80636c2f740" CreationDate="2011-01-18T12:50:14.067" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|support|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2498" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="996" RevisionGUID="e5ffd46f-ba8a-43a4-b5dd-e3b9d2d3d1e5" CreationDate="2011-01-18T13:20:31.860" UserId="7494" Comment="added 152 characters in body" Text="Hi All,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have come across quite a few questions now that have been closed a single Moderator (and a couple with 1 Moderator, and 1 Community Member).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't this not happen? Half the point of the &quot;SE-way&quot; is that the community decides (with vote-to-close), and the moderators are brought in only if required. I am all for having active moderation, but this is still a community website, driven by the community itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not have a ton of examples, but a good one is here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14856/best-practices-that-you-disagree-with&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community has **obviously** shown that the question belongs, but the moderator closes it in any case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an update, that question has had a couple more queries on why it was closed (and another asking why it was closed as a singular decision)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2505" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="996" RevisionGUID="dcbbb1ed-51fc-498d-93cc-a4cf40f75e78" CreationDate="2011-01-18T14:14:01.847" UserId="226" Comment="Slayed an errant apostrophe" Text="Moderators Taking Community Function" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2506" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1000" RevisionGUID="562802ac-1ef1-44ae-93c8-2f8852d41098" CreationDate="2011-01-18T14:45:38.377" UserId="8575" Text="Multiple times a day on Programmers, I'm lulled into a false sense of popularity when I'm presented with a red envelop in the middle of the top bar. But when I click through, I see that I don't have any messages. Multiple times a day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't experience this on Stack Overflow. Does anyone else get this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2507" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1000" RevisionGUID="562802ac-1ef1-44ae-93c8-2f8852d41098" CreationDate="2011-01-18T14:45:38.377" UserId="8575" Text="Why do I have a red envelop every time I come to Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2508" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1000" RevisionGUID="562802ac-1ef1-44ae-93c8-2f8852d41098" CreationDate="2011-01-18T14:45:38.377" UserId="8575" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2509" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1001" RevisionGUID="3f35ce5c-ba66-4983-a68f-dab788766c92" CreationDate="2011-01-18T14:48:09.530" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Whenever one of the questions you've starred has new activity, the envelope lights up. By the looks of it, [you have a few very popular questions starred](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8575/chrisaycock?tab=favorites), which is why you see it light up every time you visit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2510" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1000" RevisionGUID="fb9813c0-0505-41d7-8f9c-306ac9eb2146" CreationDate="2011-01-18T14:56:42.137" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|notifications|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2511" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1002" RevisionGUID="5bd6934a-cc40-4204-90fc-5340c3f07776" CreationDate="2011-01-18T15:20:18.477" UserId="12354" Text="What is the consensus around formatting? If things like bold and h1 tags are their in the formatting bar I assume it's ok to use them. I can empathize that one shouldn't abuse formatting since it would make the site look &quot;messy&quot; to say the least. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However I have some answers where I've put a heading  (h1) and bolded a key phrase and some moderator has taken upon himself to remove it from each and every answer. If that kind of formatting isn't allowed why have it there at all?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;if the normal formatting for h1,h2 etc is &quot;obnoxious&quot; I'd suggest decreasing their size and impact on the page" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2512" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1002" RevisionGUID="5bd6934a-cc40-4204-90fc-5340c3f07776" CreationDate="2011-01-18T15:20:18.477" UserId="12354" Text="Formatting rules?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2513" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1002" RevisionGUID="5bd6934a-cc40-4204-90fc-5340c3f07776" CreationDate="2011-01-18T15:20:18.477" UserId="12354" Text="|discussion|formatting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2514" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1002" RevisionGUID="3b43eddf-d647-4390-aa87-ab877ac4e07a" CreationDate="2011-01-18T15:28:06.920" UserId="12354" Comment="added 161 characters in body" Text="What is the consensus around formatting? If things like bold and h1 tags are their in the formatting bar I assume it's ok to use them. I can empathize that one shouldn't abuse formatting since it would make the site look &quot;messy&quot; to say the least. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It does however makes sense to add _some_ formatting to your answers since it will draw more attention to it and I guess if done tastefully that should be ok&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However I have some answers where I've put a heading  (h1) and bolded a key phrase and some moderator has taken upon himself to remove it from each and every answer. If that kind of formatting isn't allowed why have it there at all?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;if the normal formatting for h1,h2 etc is &quot;obnoxious&quot; I'd suggest decreasing their size and impact on the page" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2515" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1002" RevisionGUID="cead7846-1b49-42e3-a46e-409672be61e2" CreationDate="2011-01-18T15:28:14.487" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add examples" Text="What is the consensus around formatting? If things like bold and h1 tags are their in the formatting bar I assume it's ok to use them. I can empathize that one shouldn't abuse formatting since it would make the site look &quot;messy&quot; to say the least. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However I have some answers where I've put a heading  (h1) and bolded a key phrase and some moderator has taken upon himself to remove it from each and every answer. If that kind of formatting isn't allowed why have it there at all?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;if the normal formatting for h1,h2 etc is &quot;obnoxious&quot; I'd suggest decreasing their size and impact on the page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What do you say to people when they say that programming is not demanding?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/37373/revisions)&#xD;&#xA;* [Coupling. Best practices.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/37736/revisions)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2516" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1002" RevisionGUID="17d5efc2-a07a-4620-8ea0-28c40c3b7cb4" CreationDate="2011-01-18T15:31:42.640" UserId="12354" Comment="added 58 characters in body" Text="What is the consensus around formatting? If things like bold and h1 tags are their in the formatting bar I assume it's ok to use them. I can empathize that one shouldn't abuse formatting since it would make the site look &quot;messy&quot; to say the least. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However I have some answers where I've put a heading  (h1) and bolded a key phrase and some moderator has taken upon himself to remove it from each and every answer. If that kind of formatting isn't allowed why have it there at all?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;if the normal formatting for h1,h2 etc is &quot;obnoxious&quot; I'd suggest decreasing their size and impact on the page. If h1, h2 etc shouldn't be used them why not remove them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What do you say to people when they say that programming is not demanding?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/37373/revisions)&#xD;&#xA;* [Coupling. Best practices.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/37736/revisions)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2517" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1003" RevisionGUID="fb6ba786-d1ca-4eab-8854-c47ffe984656" CreationDate="2011-01-18T15:33:34.463" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The old adage goes, &quot;just because you can, doesn't mean you should.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can generally get a good understanding of what the best practices are when answering questions by taking a look at what other people are doing: you'll notice the vast majority of answers do not use formatting the way you've been using it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Indeed, the `&lt;h1&gt;` element isn't for emphasis, which is what you've been using it for: it's to denote the [top-most section element](http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html#h-7.5.5). When you use it for emphasis, or when you use bold formatting excessively, the elements lose their meaning and it makes it harder to read your answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, it detracts from the purpose of the answering system on Stack Exchange: that the answers with the most votes are the most important. When you overuse attention-grabbing formatting elements, it detracts from other answers that are competing solely on merit, not formatting showmanship." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2518" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1004" RevisionGUID="a37cb772-a35f-43e7-8ac6-c2856bb011f0" CreationDate="2011-01-18T19:22:25.630" UserId="1973" Text="Sometimes I've noticed the asker will suggest a formatting technique, in those cases I'd say it is certainly more polite to follow it (plus it proves you actually read the question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes an editor will suggest a formatting technique.  In that case, I'd say it's the responsibility of the question editor to modify all the questions involved - this should only be done for a very good reason.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2520" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1005" RevisionGUID="27726a31-0dde-41e9-8963-0c2bdfb15f63" CreationDate="2011-01-19T02:32:15.860" UserId="3249" Text="I feel like I'm partly responsible for this, having brought special attention to the question and all, so I'd like to throw in my two cents.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The question itself][1] is a useful resource, but that's *only* because the answers are of a reasonably high quality.  Luck factored into this one; questions phrased the way this one [was originally phrased][3] have *so much* potential to end up like a reddit comment thread, and usually, they do.  What's wrong with it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * It explicitly asks for **opinions** (&quot;disagree with&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;  * It doesn't ask for **evidence**, or imply that answers should be backed up;&#xD;&#xA;  * It doesn't even ask for any **elaboration**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, it fails the poll test.  Fortunately, it happens to be a subject that many programmers are passionate about, and so many of them took the question seriously and answered it with the requisite amount of detail and care.  I still think that luck and timing played a major part as well; when I open a question with a title like that, I expect to see dozens of one-liners, and it's kind of miraculous that there weren't any here (or maybe there were, and they got edited/deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The quality of answers clearly indicates that it **should not be deleted** - but that doesn't necessarily mean it should be *open*.  Closing a question *sometimes* means &quot;this question is going straight to /dev/null&quot;, but sometimes it also means &quot;this question needs an overhaul so it doesn't start attracting crappy answers&quot;.  In this case, I felt the latter would have been an appropriate rationale, albeit a sudden and unexpected one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've put in a major edit to the question representing what I think *would* have been a more constructive version; I have a feeling it's going to get rolled back within minutes, but at least I tried, and anyone can view the edit history to see what I'm getting at here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, off the subject of the specific question and onto the larger moderation issue, there are a few points to note here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * The more open-ended a question is, the more people become compelled to upvote it because they *enjoyed* the question, and not necessarily because it was *useful and clear* as upvotes are intended to be used.  Popularity has to be taken with a grain of salt for certain types of questions, and moderators have to walk this tightrope frequently, sometimes overruling the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * There are *dozens* if not *hundreds* of questions on Programmers.SE that were asked during or shortly after its &quot;free for all&quot; phase (before the &quot;constructive&quot; criteria were introduced), and it's unreasonable and unfair to expect all of the high-ranking community members to slog through the entire history and use up their close vote quotas.  I actually spent one day here going through what I felt were the worst questions and flagging them; I got exhausted after about 10 of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * The [improved flagging system][2] allows lower-reputation users to flag for moderator attention based on a specific close reason.  This *strongly* indicates that, yes, it is OK and expected for moderators to occasionally intervene if the community is not pulling its weight.  If the community was perfect, if it always did the right thing, then *we wouldn't need moderators*, right?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Although Programmers.SE probably has the highest number of 3k+ (close-rep) members of any of the Stack Exchange communities, there are still only about 70 of them.  That number is *good*, but it's not *huge*.  The trilogy sites have *hundreds* or even *thousands* of these privileged members, so it's natural to expect a high level of autonomy there; the same is not true of Stack Exchange sites where the number of these members is relatively low **and** many of them are still learning what Stack Exchange is all about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * As Jeff says, Programmers.SE is a bit *experimental*, and has a lot of checkered history to cope with.  Since many of the rules are new and have not been followed or enforced consistently in the past, members here don't have a great example to follow, and they're left scratching their heads and saying *&quot;well, this question is pretty open-ended, but it's not as bad as **this** one over here...&quot;* and of course, there be dragons.  Moderators are **uniquely** qualified to do the cleanup work necessary in order to make the site more consistent and set a strong example for the community itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly, if I could sum all of this up in one sentence it would be that **Stack Exchange sites tend to need *leadership*, not just moderation**, and the diamond moderators are in the unenviable position of wearing many hats.  Once the sites *mature*, then the role of diamonds will become less and less important over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know how many people will agree, but I hope I've done a good job of representing the position and responsibilities of P.SE moderators and really *all* SE moderators here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14856/best-practices-that-you-disagree-with&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/improved-flagging/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/446b12a3-9761-41c5-9f91-c9d60f28c507/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2521" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1006" RevisionGUID="123a7aeb-f05b-45e4-8c31-0a240e23d5f7" CreationDate="2011-01-19T06:06:41.103" UserId="226" Text="I find myself in situations when a question isn't appropriate but I know there's nowhere else for it to go, so I'm compelled to close it and yet at the same time I want to help the poster out. Other times I find I post an answer and later realize that the question wasn't really up to par.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it expected that people who close a question don't answer it? Should I delete my existing answer if I decide to vote to close after all?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2522" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1006" RevisionGUID="123a7aeb-f05b-45e4-8c31-0a240e23d5f7" CreationDate="2011-01-19T06:06:41.103" UserId="226" Text="Is it appropriate to answer a question and vote to close it at the same time?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2523" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1006" RevisionGUID="123a7aeb-f05b-45e4-8c31-0a240e23d5f7" CreationDate="2011-01-19T06:06:41.103" UserId="226" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2524" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1007" RevisionGUID="beaef9d5-37c4-4ca6-9fc6-9a532672dcc4" CreationDate="2011-01-19T06:22:23.127" UserId="5570" Text="I'm sure you're familiar with the process: When you vote on a question or answer, you're given a brief period in which to cancel your vote (as if you never voted) or reverse your vote, but then your vote will be locked in permanently until the question/answer is edited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However I've discovered that _if you cancel your vote, this too is locked in_. Your nulled vote is permanently a nulled vote until the question/answer is edited. This strikes me as counter-intuitive (my vote was cancelled - how can you lock that in?) and unhelpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe there is great utility in not having a cancelled vote locked in. Earlier today I downvoted an answer, then questioned whether it truly deserved it and decided I'd rather suspend my judgement and cancelled my vote. I revisited the answer a few minutes ago and was convinced it deserved the downvote. Clicking the downvote arrow, I was met with this...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![1][]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My request: Cancelled votes should not be counted as votes and should not be locked in. They should be treated as if no vote was ever placed in the first place, allowing me to place the vote much later.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/1371/29588db0b3ae4d67ab4a9a1.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2525" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1007" RevisionGUID="beaef9d5-37c4-4ca6-9fc6-9a532672dcc4" CreationDate="2011-01-19T06:22:23.127" UserId="5570" Text="Cancelled votes count as votes: Why?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2526" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1007" RevisionGUID="beaef9d5-37c4-4ca6-9fc6-9a532672dcc4" CreationDate="2011-01-19T06:22:23.127" UserId="5570" Text="|feature-request|voting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2527" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1008" RevisionGUID="b72e43cb-03d3-430d-a2f8-a2bffa02eba9" CreationDate="2011-01-19T06:25:24.363" UserId="37" Text="The community does not generally react well to this practice in my experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For better or worse, it is viewed as a form of &quot;nobody can answer and get reputation for this, *oh except me*.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You might try closing it and leaving a comment with some pointers instead." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2528" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1007" RevisionGUID="7fd08b9d-c28f-4e97-aafa-9734a2489a88" CreationDate="2011-01-19T07:28:37.120" UserId="5570" Comment="More suitable title" Text="Cancelled votes should not count as votes for lock-in." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2529" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1007" RevisionGUID="d69b58ae-b7aa-46f0-a2f5-312e364b2288" CreationDate="2011-01-19T08:11:56.643" UserId="5570" Comment="Clarification" Text="I'm sure you're familiar with the process: When you vote on a question or answer, you're given a brief period in which to cancel your vote (as if you never voted) or reverse your vote, but then your vote will be locked in permanently until the question/answer is edited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However I've discovered that _if you cancel your vote, this too is locked in_. Your nulled vote is permanently a nulled vote until the question/answer is edited. This strikes me as counter-intuitive (my vote was cancelled - what is there to lock in?) and unhelpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe there is great utility in not having a cancelled vote locked in. Earlier today I downvoted an answer, then questioned whether it truly deserved it and decided I'd rather suspend my judgement and cancelled my vote. I revisited the answer a few minutes ago and was convinced it deserved the downvote. Clicking the downvote arrow, I was met with this...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![1][]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My request: Cancelled votes should not be counted as votes and should not be locked in. They should be treated as if no vote was ever placed in the first place, allowing me to place the vote much later.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/1371/29588db0b3ae4d67ab4a9a1.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2530" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1009" RevisionGUID="63b2807f-e1c4-48ee-8a32-b99993f33b45" CreationDate="2011-01-19T08:34:07.093" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="I think its always good to answer questions regardless their ontopic or offtopic quality. After all, most of us are here to help people aren't they? Some persons are really in distress and IMHO not helping them is the real bad attitude.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I prefer closed questions with answers than without. I've seen many yesterday.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However we should also ensure that we questions meet the community rules. I try to vote to close only on obvious problems, and I usually ignore borderline situations." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2531" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1010" RevisionGUID="02aa62dd-d705-4682-9950-e31a9a705764" CreationDate="2011-01-19T11:21:40.463" UserId="5095" Text="It depends on why you're voting to close and whether you think the community as a whole will agree or disagree but there are absolutely situations where I wouldn't see this as a bad thing to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're absolutely certain that a question is off topic and that it's going to end up getting closed then yes, answering is bad form but I'm not sure these are the situations we're really talking about.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After all in these instances even the rep argument is pretty weak.  Bad questions don't stay open long enough to get the traffic for any serious voting and if you can vote to close your rep is already high enough that why would you waste your time putting together an answer for the sake of another 20 or 30 points?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But more to the point, there are also questions I've voted to close where I've done so unsure as to whether the community as a whole will agree.  That's not to say I'm wrong in my vote or lack conviction, just that I don't think the way I see it is the same way that everyone else does.  As often as not in these cases the question gets a couple of close votes and stays open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At that point not engaging with the question seems an odd thing to do, basically saying *even though you think you have something useful to add* you're not going to because you think that everyone else has made the wrong call.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now if that's how you feel then fine, that's your right, but I'm guessing most people would accept the majority view and engage on that basis.  After all, if whichever party we vote for loses an election, so-one suggests disengaging with the political process as a constructive or useful thing to do - you get in there and make the best of the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other thing that I'd see supporting this course of action is that whether mediocre questions go on to be useful or not often depends on the first few answers which set the tone for what follows.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can help steer the mood of what you see as a borderline question in the right direction with a great answer, isn't that a good thing? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2532" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1010" RevisionGUID="93ca3e83-c02f-4d77-b8d0-65ad71bfc6bd" CreationDate="2011-01-19T11:28:01.737" UserId="5095" Comment="added 241 characters in body" Text="It depends on why you're voting to close and whether you think the community as a whole will agree or disagree but there are plenty of situations where I don't see a problem with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're absolutely certain that a question is off topic and that it's going to end up getting closed then yes, answering is bad form but I'm not sure these are the situations we're really talking about.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After all in these instances even the rep argument is pretty weak.  Bad questions don't stay open long enough to get the traffic for any serious voting and if you can vote to close your rep is already high enough that why would you waste your time putting together an answer for the sake of another 20 or 30 points?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But more to the point, there are also questions I've voted to close where I've done so unsure as to whether the community as a whole will agree.  That's not to say I'm wrong in my vote or lack conviction, just that I don't think the way I see it is the same way that everyone else does.  As often as not in these cases the question gets a couple of close votes and stays open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At that point not engaging with the question seems an odd thing to do, basically saying *even though you think you have something useful to add* you're not going to because you think that everyone else has made the wrong call.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now if that's how you feel then fine, that's your right, but I'm guessing most people would accept the majority view and engage on that basis.  After all, if whichever party we vote for loses an election, so-one suggests disengaging with the political process as a constructive or useful thing to do - you get in there and make the best of the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other thing that I'd see supporting this course of action is that whether mediocre questions go on to be useful or not often depends on the first few answers which set the tone for what follows.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can help steer the mood of what you see as a borderline question in the right direction with a great answer, isn't that a good thing? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do get what Jeff says about how this can be seen, but I tend to view it that if I'm honest, helpful and consistent in the way I behave then I'm happy for the community to judge me how they will and believe that on balance they'll be fine with it. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2533" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1011" RevisionGUID="33f47bf3-a14e-4f4e-b83a-720cb2fa5592" CreationDate="2011-01-19T11:40:15.547" UserId="5095" Text="I agree - I would also see it that cancelling your vote should effectively take you back to the position of having never voted rather than what it seems to do now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though as an aside, I think you're way over-thinking your votes...&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2534" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1007" RevisionGUID="0f8a1248-01e8-4b67-838a-1d512b920653" CreationDate="2011-01-19T18:16:43.160" UserId="2654" Comment="added 31 characters in body" Text="I'm sure you're familiar with the process: When you vote on a question or answer, you're given a brief period in which to cancel your vote (as if you never voted) or reverse your vote, but then your vote will be locked in permanently until the question/answer is edited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However I've discovered that _if you cancel your vote, this too is locked in_. Your nulled vote is permanently a nulled vote until the question/answer is edited. This strikes me as counter-intuitive (my vote was cancelled - what is there to lock in?) and unhelpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe there is great utility in not having a cancelled vote locked in. Earlier today I downvoted an answer, then questioned whether it truly deserved it and decided I'd rather suspend my judgement and cancelled my vote. I revisited the answer a few minutes ago and was convinced it deserved the downvote. Clicking the downvote arrow, I was met with this...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![error message? This image hasn't loaded yet](http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/1371/29588db0b3ae4d67ab4a9a1.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My request: Cancelled votes should not be counted as votes and should not be locked in. They should be treated as if no vote was ever placed in the first place, allowing me to place the vote much later." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2535" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1012" RevisionGUID="8adf6fea-e415-4e79-a63c-adcc6923c649" CreationDate="2011-01-19T18:33:37.017" UserId="1973" Text="What I'd say is not appropriate is to add an answer that is apt to contribute to the closability of the question while voting to close. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If questions that are likely to be closed attract short pointless answers, then answering with a short pointless answer and voting to close is almost like voting to close twice - especially given the fact that you cannot see who voted to close until it is closed; closing and answering is more like subterfuge in that regard. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answering the question in a way that might help draw out the question you wished had been asked might be an appropriate way to go about things.  Especially since you know what kind of stuff is acceptable here and the asker is probably ignorant of the complicated and tenuous nature of this website (and why on earth wouldn't they be?)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2539" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1007" RevisionGUID="2f949260-ffc9-438b-96f9-0cf321ead57f" CreationDate="2011-01-19T20:54:49.240" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|voting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2540" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="978" RevisionGUID="48c4787d-02c4-43e1-bc12-93715a8945ea" CreationDate="2011-01-19T20:56:12.653" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2542" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1007" RevisionGUID="b436e9f5-0aba-431c-b340-c54293dabd0c" CreationDate="2011-01-20T00:07:32.173" UserId="5570" Comment="Alt-text." Text="I'm sure you're familiar with the process: When you vote on a question or answer, you're given a brief period in which to cancel your vote (as if you never voted) or reverse your vote, but then your vote will be locked in permanently until the question/answer is edited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However I've discovered that _if you cancel your vote, this too is locked in_. Your nulled vote is permanently a nulled vote until the question/answer is edited. This strikes me as counter-intuitive (my vote was cancelled - what is there to lock in?) and unhelpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe there is great utility in not having a cancelled vote locked in. Earlier today I downvoted an answer, then questioned whether it truly deserved it and decided I'd rather suspend my judgement and cancelled my vote. I revisited the answer a few minutes ago and was convinced it deserved the downvote. Clicking the downvote arrow, I was met with this...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![&quot;You last voted on this answer 46 mins ago. Your vote is now locked in unless this answer is edited.&quot;](http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/1371/29588db0b3ae4d67ab4a9a1.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My request: Cancelled votes should not be counted as votes and should not be locked in. They should be treated as if no vote was ever placed in the first place, allowing me to place the vote much later." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2543" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="991" RevisionGUID="4eaa2026-a7c5-4d26-80a4-9ad127444c42" CreationDate="2011-01-20T19:24:00.897" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Remove second real, which I think I imagined" Text="There's a new post on the Stack Overflow blog entitled [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), which serves to expand upon the [six subjective guidelines](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) we all know and love. I encourage you to read it and [the original answer from Aarobot](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179) that sparked the post itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main point that's now been added to [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) is the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: &amp;ldquo;What&amp;rsquo;s your favorite \_\_\_\_\_?&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: &amp;ldquo;I use \_\_\_\_\_ for \_\_\_\_\_, what do you use?&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: &amp;ldquo;I&amp;rsquo;m curious if other people feel like I do.&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: &amp;ldquo;What if \_\_\_\_\_ happened?&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - it is a rant disguised as a question: &amp;ldquo;\_\_\_\_\_ sucks, am I right?&amp;rdquo;&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about \_\_\_\_\_”, then you should not be asking here. If your motivation is “I would like others to explain \_\_\_\_\_ to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are your thoughts on the new guidelines? Is there a problem with these types of questions that needs addressing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to encourage questions that don't fall into the trap of being poll questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2544" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="991" RevisionGUID="4eaa2026-a7c5-4d26-80a4-9ad127444c42" CreationDate="2011-01-20T19:24:00.897" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Remove second real, which I think I imagined" Text="Real Questions Have Answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2545" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1015" RevisionGUID="e414ddc3-ec13-4978-a9ad-253698158e9d" CreationDate="2011-01-21T15:31:42.367" UserId="12041" Text="I see a lot of people ^ rep just because someone drops a link that they like.  I've seen people get ridiculous rep for doing as much as being the first one to mention something everyone likes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there should be separate votes for quality/reputation and votes for what should be displayed first.  I.e, 'I like vim' comment doesn't make a person a great contributor, just a popular one. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2546" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1015" RevisionGUID="e414ddc3-ec13-4978-a9ad-253698158e9d" CreationDate="2011-01-21T15:31:42.367" UserId="12041" Text="One line link-drops or buzz words lead to higher reputation then meaningful though out answers.  What to do about it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2547" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1015" RevisionGUID="e414ddc3-ec13-4978-a9ad-253698158e9d" CreationDate="2011-01-21T15:31:42.367" UserId="12041" Text="|discussion|feature-request|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2548" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1016" RevisionGUID="098f07a8-2346-4b55-8749-402b6c57a25a" CreationDate="2011-01-21T18:11:24.217" UserId="101" Text="I see that you've found one of the main sources of major arguments on the whole SE network.  People upvote funny/witty/silly/trivial/popular things even though they don't add any value to the site or question.  (ie. &quot;oh, hey, someone mentioned a tool I like/use&quot; = upvote).  Then when the question gets closed because it's just noise, everyone yells &quot;but look how much the community wanted it... look at all those answers, look at all those votes&quot;.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It becomes a major source of friction between moderators and those who don't fully understand what SO Inc. envisions.  Popular questions/answers do not necessarily equal good questions/answers.  The bottom line is all those votes for popular questions/answers will eventually get smaller and smaller as the site matures into the vision that the powers above are pushing towards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime, yes, there are a bunch of us (me included) who earned a ton of rep on things that were/are popular.  Welcome to the growing pains of Programmers.SE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2549" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1016" RevisionGUID="6c02ec1d-6ea2-42d5-a24a-2699324a73f2" CreationDate="2011-01-21T19:14:15.020" UserId="101" Comment="deleted 28 characters in body" Text="I see that you've found one of the main sources of major arguments on the whole SE network.  People upvote funny/witty/silly/trivial/popular things even though they don't add any value to the site or question.  (ie. &quot;oh, hey, someone mentioned a tool I like/use&quot; = upvote).  Then when the question gets closed because it's just noise, everyone yells &quot;but look how much the community wanted it... look at all those answers, look at all those votes&quot;.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It becomes a major source of friction between moderators and some parts of the community.  Popular questions/answers do not necessarily equal good questions/answers.  The bottom line is all those votes for popular questions/answers will eventually get smaller and smaller as the site matures into the vision that the powers above are pushing towards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime, yes, there are a bunch of us (me included) who earned a ton of rep on things that were/are popular.  Welcome to the growing pains of Programmers.SE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2551" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1018" RevisionGUID="e5df97e6-a455-4260-905b-8b36879fdef5" CreationDate="2011-01-21T20:29:34.530" UserId="10106" Text="Yes, there are up votes for short/pithy answers, and one-liners / one-link answers.  And yes, this does improve that person's reputation.  However, most of the people with really high reputations (1000s and up) have provided numerous, well-thought-out answers.  In the long haul, I don't think the one-line posters are going to get into the very high reputation ranks.  So I don't think this is really a problem.  Quality wins out in the long run.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as the display order of the answers, this too usually sorts itself out in time (pun intended).  While the witty/popular answer may get a lot of upvotes when the question is first posted, over time, when people see a &quot;good&quot;, lengthy answer lower-down, they upvote it.  It gradually floats toward the top.  That's the beauty of this entire community model -- it actually gets better with age.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having two voting controls, one for &quot;popularity&quot; and the other for &quot;sorting&quot; would be very confusing.  Do I upvote this answer on the left because I &quot;like&quot; it, but downvote it on the right because I don't think it should be displayed first?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2552" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1019" RevisionGUID="d424ac99-bbd1-4833-baf0-4defb0fdeeb4" CreationDate="2011-01-21T20:30:55.207" UserId="-1" Text="The 2011 Community Moderator Election is now underway!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community moderator elections have three phases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Nomination phase&#xD;&#xA;2. Primary phase&#xD;&#xA;3. Election phase&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends how many candidates there are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please visit the official election page at&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;for more detail, and to participate!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged [tag-meta:election]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2553" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1019" RevisionGUID="d424ac99-bbd1-4833-baf0-4defb0fdeeb4" CreationDate="2011-01-21T20:30:55.207" UserId="-1" Text="2011 Community Moderator Election" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2554" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1019" RevisionGUID="d424ac99-bbd1-4833-baf0-4defb0fdeeb4" CreationDate="2011-01-21T20:30:55.207" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|moderators|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2555" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="817" RevisionGUID="e16ef89c-a7d1-4e98-af26-d9e172df0d84" CreationDate="2011-01-21T21:34:39.007" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2560" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1021" RevisionGUID="75465ff9-8387-4d23-ae78-9baf4addf7ac" CreationDate="2011-01-21T21:47:52.980" UserId="12041" Text=" - Vim vs Emacs vs IDE (too much has been said already)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2561" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1022" RevisionGUID="eeee2309-06fc-41a6-abc9-ae00cbff3569" CreationDate="2011-01-21T23:37:13.343" UserId="12041" Text="I think it would be much more convenient to allow users to vote to merge a post with another post along with all the answers retaining the titles of both.  Essentially symbolically linking the names to the same data(merged)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That way the benefit of having multiple search entries would be retained and the added convenience of now having to look through similar posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another benefit would be that these duplicate posts might breathe new life into old questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2562" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1022" RevisionGUID="eeee2309-06fc-41a6-abc9-ae00cbff3569" CreationDate="2011-01-21T23:37:13.343" UserId="12041" Text="Why are similar questions closed instead of mergred?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2563" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1022" RevisionGUID="eeee2309-06fc-41a6-abc9-ae00cbff3569" CreationDate="2011-01-21T23:37:13.343" UserId="12041" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2564" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1023" RevisionGUID="88f5f98b-cb55-4a6c-940c-06b3f18672c4" CreationDate="2011-01-21T23:46:28.777" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="We close questions as duplicates instead of merging all questions for a few reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A question might cover the same ground, but it's not a word-for-word duplicate. The answers on the master question may answer the closed question, but the answers on the closed question might not answer the master question.&#xD;&#xA;* The same questions can be asked in different ways, and it's important that people searching for answers through, say, Google find what they're looking for no matter how they phrase their question.&#xD;&#xA;* Merging is destructive, closing isn't. A person can reformulate their closed question to be less of a duplicate if they feel the original question isn't what they're looking for. But once a merge happens, that's it: there's no way to save the newer question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More information: [The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/) " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2565" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1024" RevisionGUID="8c1db80d-6d2b-46c1-9425-5c2ec638c80f" CreationDate="2011-01-21T23:47:18.417" UserId="47" Text="Merging is a special case for when two questions are deemed to be identical rather than just very similar.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think you'd have to ask this question on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) to get a definitive answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you think there are questions that should be merged flag them for moderator attention and we'll look into it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2566" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1025" RevisionGUID="de8b0dbc-4913-4a66-a8c6-d552dd00acee" CreationDate="2011-01-22T01:40:42.147" UserId="37" Text="Information about enhanced question merging:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/improved-question-merging/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rationale for when to merge and when not to merge:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/handling-duplicate-questions/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I’m not necessarily advocating deletion, either; we want some of these merge stub questions hanging around so people can find two “identical” questions that were asked in two totally different ways. **The exact, perfect duplicate question, in my experience, is much more rare than people think.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2567" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1019" RevisionGUID="1d1c33e3-c5b9-4140-bfa8-4a471fe2b19d" CreationDate="2011-01-22T01:49:50.733" UserId="37" Comment="edited body" Text="The 2011 Community Moderator Election is now underway!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community moderator elections have three phases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Nomination phase&#xD;&#xA;2. Primary phase&#xD;&#xA;3. Election phase&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends how many candidates there are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please visit the official election page at&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;for more detail, and to participate!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged [meta-tag:election]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2568" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1026" RevisionGUID="e3c3f4d8-cc7c-4214-8cdd-b58bf2097dd8" CreationDate="2011-01-22T01:56:28.480" UserId="37" Text="The stupid / silly / meaningless / no-content one line answer is symptomatic of problem questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're seeing just one of them, it could be an isolated incident with a new user or a clueless user, but  if you see many of these on a question, *__it means the question is bad and should be closed!__*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See:  &#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers.** The best subjective questions inspire your peers to share their actual experiences, not just post a mindless one-liner or cartoon in hopes of being rewarded with upvotes for being merely “first.” Sharing an experience takes at least one paragraph; ideally several paragraphs. If I’m asking about how to bake cookies, don’t give me a list of grocery items: milk. butter. vanilla. eggs. There is virtually nothing I can learn from a short, static list of grocery items that make up a recipe. Instead, tell me what happened the last time you made cookies from that recipe! Share your detailed experiences, so that we all might learn from them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2569" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1027" RevisionGUID="dbcaeb2c-5421-4681-8219-fa48651bade3" CreationDate="2011-01-22T14:57:54.710" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="I have some general questions to ask. I hope each nominee will answer. Should I ask each questions individually or in a single question to avoid too much items in case other users want to do the same (which I hope will happens) ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2570" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1027" RevisionGUID="dbcaeb2c-5421-4681-8219-fa48651bade3" CreationDate="2011-01-22T14:57:54.710" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="I want to ask few questions to nominees, should I ask them in a single question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2571" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1027" RevisionGUID="dbcaeb2c-5421-4681-8219-fa48651bade3" CreationDate="2011-01-22T14:57:54.710" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="|support|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2572" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1028" RevisionGUID="553330eb-a263-4107-b6ec-bd93354baefb" CreationDate="2011-01-22T15:41:04.100" UserId="226" Text="I think individual questions would be the way to go. If you have a lot of them, perhaps they can be grouped by some common trait and consolidated into several posts with multiple related questions in each.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Separate questions would help reduce duplication, since they'll be easier to find in case other people have similar questions they want to ask." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2573" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1027" RevisionGUID="3729cd6e-403d-4733-a5ea-efa573cc9f53" CreationDate="2011-01-22T15:44:25.400" UserDisplayName="user2567" Comment="added 254 characters in body" Text="I have some general questions to ask. I hope each nominee will answer. Should I ask each questions individually or in a single question to avoid too much items in case other users want to do the same (which I hope will happens) ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm referring to http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1019/2011-community-moderator-election in which Jeff suggest to ask questions to nominees on meta with the Election tag. The answer to those questions won't fit in a comment anyway." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2574" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1029" RevisionGUID="d31155e3-73ec-4a25-b353-4814f5b82e23" CreationDate="2011-01-22T17:26:48.250" UserId="8630" Text="Pain is a necessary part of the learning experience." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2575" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1030" RevisionGUID="4e3e00aa-500b-4233-a159-71ca6170e724" CreationDate="2011-01-22T19:10:43.863" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="It’s very important to pick the right moderators for the future of this community. Here is a first (grouped) question I would like to ask. I strongly encourage other members to do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. In introductions I've seen many different way of describing moderation. I’ve seen words like serving, leading, navigating, guiding, facilitating, etc. Could you explain in more details your way of moderation and why it will be efficient here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Regarding general criteria the owner specified in http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election, could you please provide some concrete example on how you proven to be:&#xD;&#xA;- patient and fair&#xD;&#xA;- led by example&#xD;&#xA;- shown respect to fellow community members in their actions&#xD;&#xA;- *and* words and open to some light but firm moderation to keep the community on track and resolve (hopefully) uncommon disputes and exceptions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize, please describe how your moderation style will help this community to prosper.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2576" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1030" RevisionGUID="4e3e00aa-500b-4233-a159-71ca6170e724" CreationDate="2011-01-22T19:10:43.863" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Nominees 2011: Could you please tell more about your future moderation style?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2577" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1030" RevisionGUID="4e3e00aa-500b-4233-a159-71ca6170e724" CreationDate="2011-01-22T19:10:43.863" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="|discussion|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2578" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1030" RevisionGUID="e9108fb9-d8c3-4d3b-a5bc-b8cc7d94aeee" CreationDate="2011-01-22T20:06:38.460" UserDisplayName="user2567" Comment="added 44 characters in body" Text="It’s very important to pick the right moderators for the future of this community. Here is a first (grouped) question I would like to ask. I strongly encourage other members to do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. In introductions I've seen many different way of describing moderation. I’ve seen words like serving, leading, navigating, guiding, facilitating, etc. Those are very different way of moderating. Could you explain in more details your way of moderation and why it will be efficient here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Regarding general criteria the owner specified in http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election, could you please provide some concrete example on how you proven to be:&#xD;&#xA;- patient and fair&#xD;&#xA;- led by example&#xD;&#xA;- shown respect to fellow community members in their actions&#xD;&#xA;- *and* words and open to some light but firm moderation to keep the community on track and resolve (hopefully) uncommon disputes and exceptions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize, please describe how your moderation style will help this community to prosper.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2579" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1031" RevisionGUID="0f9c2f1b-ba36-49ae-b91c-9a5ee1aa6883" CreationDate="2011-01-22T20:52:01.493" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Jeff [suggests][1] that we ask questions to nominees on meta with the **Election** tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So far I've seen four ways to ask questions to nominees:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Right in the comments of nominee's introduction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. One question in a meta, every nominee can answer (Jeff's [suggestion][1]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Many questions in a meta post ([used][2] on [Super User][2] by Ivo Flipse).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. One post on meta for many questions. Questions are asked in answers. Nominees edit the answer with their own. ([used][3] on [Math.SE][3]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've [used method 2][4] by grouping two questions with a very similar subjects as per [Anna's suggestion][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What's is your preferred way?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1019/2011-community-moderator-election&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.superuser.com/questions/1950/qa-with-the-candidates-in-2011-moderator-election&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/1254/list-of-questions-for-candidates-in-2010-moderator-election&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1030/nominees-2011-could-you-please-tell-more-about-your-future-moderation-style&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1027/i-want-to-ask-few-questions-to-nominees-should-i-ask-them-in-a-single-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2580" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1031" RevisionGUID="0f9c2f1b-ba36-49ae-b91c-9a5ee1aa6883" CreationDate="2011-01-22T20:52:01.493" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="What is the best way to ask questions to nominees?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2581" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1031" RevisionGUID="0f9c2f1b-ba36-49ae-b91c-9a5ee1aa6883" CreationDate="2011-01-22T20:52:01.493" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="|discussion|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2582" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1032" RevisionGUID="5544f68b-cfbf-4af9-b39b-f526c4932e41" CreationDate="2011-01-22T21:07:57.547" UserId="47" Text="1. The way I see it is that a moderator has two conflicting requirements. The first is to be there in the background, giving advice and taking their lead from the community. The second is to be up front leading the way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; How does this affect my moderating style?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; In the first case it means I try not to jump straight in closing, migrating or even deleting posts. If I see something I think doesn't fit I'll wait to see if the other members of the community agree - either by casting their own close votes or flagging the post. If I see these indicators then I'll step in and speed the process along.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; In the second case it means that I'm not afraid to take these actions sooner rather than later if the circumstances warrant it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Regarding your bullet points:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Fairness is difficult to achieve, but I do try to be consistent and my actions are guided by my interpretation of the guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;* Leading by example -  I've been active on this site since the private beta and I participated in the early discussions on meta about the shape and direction of the site.&#xD;&#xA;* Showing respect - perhaps the one thing I could do better in this area is provide more commentary that explains my actions. However, I am always willing to explain my actions if questioned. I realise that questions are asked with the best of intentions.&#xD;&#xA;* If this site is to succeed it needs to keep it's focus. There's nothing to say that that focus can't shift and evolve over time, but until we have those discussions we must keep to the rules and guidelines as they are currently set out." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2583" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1033" RevisionGUID="54e298fd-b551-4ebb-9e3e-f8c74f441af3" CreationDate="2011-01-22T21:21:42.157" UserId="37" Text="\#2 and #3 are both good choices, #4 seems like a bastardization to me, and #1 is too noisy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, we are also going to do &quot;town hall&quot; chat sessions for moderator candidates on Super User and Server Fault -- that's another option.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2584" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1034" RevisionGUID="843c535e-0d52-4d7d-9228-efe0374e418b" CreationDate="2011-01-22T22:04:58.590" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="After a lot of discussion and changes throughout the past few months, Programmers.SE is currently on the right track and there's no reason to change how we approach the challenges the site will face in the future. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, I don't think moderators need to pledge anything to help Programmers.SE to prosper in the future: through the hard work of the community, Programmers.SE *is* prospering *now*. We as a community should continue to keep doing what we're doing to keep it that way, and it's the job of the moderator to help keep the community on the same path.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like ChrisF, I have the advantage of having some history to elaborate on my nomination, and I think [my record through moderation](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8/mark-trapp?tab=activity) and [participation on the meta discussion site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8/mark-trapp) speaks louder than describing moderation styles in the abstract.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If elected, I will continue to act as I have been as a moderator *pro tempore* and as an active member of the site since the first day of private beta. If my style of moderation and participation, as demonstrated through my actions, works for you, I encourage you to vote for me. If it doesn't, I encourage you to vote for someone else who's demonstrated the type of moderation style you'd like to see." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2585" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1035" RevisionGUID="013135a5-8b18-42cf-b3a0-7b55c4f34299" CreationDate="2011-01-22T22:47:09.007" UserId="226" Text="&gt; In introductions I've seen many different way of describing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; moderation. I’ve seen words like&#xD;&#xA;&gt; serving, leading, navigating, guiding,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; facilitating, etc. Those are very&#xD;&#xA;&gt; different way of moderating. Could you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; explain in more details your way of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; moderation and why it will be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; efficient here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I view moderating as serving the community. What that means to me is being present to uphold existing standards of quality and environment. What it doesn't mean is always going with the popular opinion. I like where P.SE is now. We get many great questions and answers daily and I want to see it remain that way. It can be sometimes difficult to judge if a question fits well on P.SE due to the site's inherently subjective nature, but I do my best to keep the six guidelines and the FAQ in mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I used to run RPG games back in the day (anyone else here from the MUSH crowd?) and there it was all about coaching new players to greatness and making sure the experienced players had fun and stayed within the bounds of the rules. I see P.SE in a similar light. New users sometimes need a little help to get acquainted with how SE sites work, and old users want to have a place they enjoy coming back to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unlike other candidates, I don't have pre-existing SE moderation experience, but my plan is to continue what I've been doing up until now even without mod powers: leave comments on posts that can be improved, vote to close as needed, and upvote good questions and answers. I check the site several times daily and have a pretty good handle on which questions are new, which have been around a while, or which ones are likely duplicates of something we've seen before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Regarding general criteria the owner specified in http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election, could you please provide some concrete example on how you proven to be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For concrete examples, I invite everybody to examine my answer and comment history. I believe it will paint a better picture of my communication style than I can describe here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - patient and fair&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - led by example&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As ChrisF said, fairness can be difficult to achieve, but I too try to remain consistent. I'm always happy to explain the reasoning behind a decision or to accept that I've made the wrong call or had a wrong opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been an active participant on the site over the last few months. I don't ask a lot of questions, but that's usually because most questions I come up with are something that's already been asked. I make use of answers and comments as appropriate. What my activity history won't show is the times when I've typed up an answer or a comment and then decided against posting it because I felt it might be too abrasive or pointless. I do a fair amount of thinking before posting, which I think is a good example to set.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - shown respect to fellow community members in their actions and words&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've done my best to remain civil and diplomatic even with people I perceive to be intentionally pushing against the limits of the rules and constructive communication. I avoid sarcasm and strive to maintain a neutral and non-aggressive tone. Even when I disagree with someone (and most notably I have disagreed with a number of close reasons), I communicate that in a reasonable manner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - and open to some light but firm moderation to keep the community on track and resolve (hopefully) uncommon disputes and exceptions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one's hard for me to provide an example for, since I haven't yet been a moderator. I think the site is doing well enough right now that it doesn't need heavy moderating, but at the same time its subjective nature requires consistent moderating from people who can justify their decisions. I believe I can do that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2586" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1036" RevisionGUID="50c0325e-6753-435e-b5f0-de3ff1ae0b35" CreationDate="2011-01-23T13:34:40.607" UserId="7771" Text="I have [asked a question about what to do when coding feel boring and the same all over again][1]. All the answer can be for a community point of view right, so there is no one answer right, but the right question is a little sum of all the answer, what can i do in this case ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[the related question is this one][1] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38225/what-to-do-when-coding-begins-to-feel-boring-like-it-is-all-just-more-of-the-sam" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2587" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1036" RevisionGUID="50c0325e-6753-435e-b5f0-de3ff1ae0b35" CreationDate="2011-01-23T13:34:40.607" UserId="7771" Text="What do when after a question the right answer is no one of the answer but a sum of all of this ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2588" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1036" RevisionGUID="50c0325e-6753-435e-b5f0-de3ff1ae0b35" CreationDate="2011-01-23T13:34:40.607" UserId="7771" Text="|discussion|accepted-answer|information-display|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2589" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1037" RevisionGUID="78eb223b-8972-438d-87a0-afa045e704ef" CreationDate="2011-01-23T13:56:11.790" UserId="220" Text="I believe a good solution is to create a community wiki answer that sums up all the answers and accept that one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2590" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1038" RevisionGUID="6db1edf7-fee2-4b10-b9fe-5cceb5356c8d" CreationDate="2011-01-23T14:32:25.197" UserId="226" Text="Some questions on Programmers.SE do not have a single valid answer and that is okay. I would just leave it as is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alternatively, if one answer stands out above all others (with more information, detail, better reasoning, etc), I would accept that one. You can also use upvotes as a guide and accept the answer with the highest number of votes, although the most popular answer may not be the most useful, so use your best judgement there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2591" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1038" RevisionGUID="51cf7cc9-23da-4b20-bfe5-6316fd686d72" CreationDate="2011-01-23T15:57:52.263" UserId="226" Comment="edited for clarity" Text="Some questions on Programmers.SE do not have just one correct answer and that is okay. I would just leave it as is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alternatively, if one answer stands out above all others (with more information, detail, better reasoning, etc), I would accept that one. You can also use upvotes as a guide and accept the answer with the highest number of votes, although the most popular answer may not be the most useful, so use your best judgement there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2592" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1039" RevisionGUID="c3751b65-7bbf-487b-80db-d64bc6797af7" CreationDate="2011-01-23T16:40:52.750" UserId="10785" Text="Well i never seen a need to close a questi on, maybe you can edit your question by adding a note where you describe the situation. But as far i know, there could be always question with no right answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2593" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1040" RevisionGUID="1e9fc511-5b22-4759-96b9-6858d0c73cf1" CreationDate="2011-01-23T18:29:06.697" UserId="1306" Text="Why is it that this [Question][1] gets challenged by a mod as &quot;not a real question&quot; but yet this [Question][2] is just fine and is determined a &quot;real question&quot;.  I'm really getting confused as the point of this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38810/can-there-be-too-much-uniformity-in-coding-standards&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39200/what-arguments-are-there-against-easter-eggs-are-there-any-arguments-to-even-sup" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2594" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1040" RevisionGUID="1e9fc511-5b22-4759-96b9-6858d0c73cf1" CreationDate="2011-01-23T18:29:06.697" UserId="1306" Text="Moderators why is this question acceptable but this one gets the &quot;not a real question&quot; moniker?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2595" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1040" RevisionGUID="1e9fc511-5b22-4759-96b9-6858d0c73cf1" CreationDate="2011-01-23T18:29:06.697" UserId="1306" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2596" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1041" RevisionGUID="3dc7dfbd-2708-44d4-b5ad-fb1947f04180" CreationDate="2011-01-23T18:36:53.393" UserId="47" Text="Part of the reason will be that the different moderators will have different interpretations of the guidelines. We're not identical so this is inevitable. Personally I think your question is OK - but perhaps you should have brought out the style over substance aspect a little more clearly - and with the accepted answer it has I think it is a useful question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try not to take the criticism personally (I know it's hard). As to what you can do, well you've brought this to our attention so we can have a discussion and hopefully reach a better consensus of what's OK and what's not OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other thing you can do is to look at your question as though it were written by someone else. Does it give enough information? Is the intention clear? The question isn't just for you - if it's a good question it needs to be beneficial to the wider community." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2597" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1039" RevisionGUID="3c7c1302-434b-478a-a963-1aef032e2306" CreationDate="2011-01-23T18:37:56.167" UserId="47" Comment="corrected spelling" Text="Well I've never seen a need to close a question, maybe you can edit your question by adding a note where you describe the situation. But as far as I know, there could be always question with no right answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2598" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1040" RevisionGUID="8c0d1672-0c54-4d14-ba29-ea7aa729bafb" CreationDate="2011-01-23T21:06:21.247" UserId="2654" Comment="added 57 characters in body" Text="Why is it that [Can there be too much uniformity in coding standards?][1] gets challenged by a mod as &quot;not a real question&quot; but yet this [Easter eggs, good or bad?][2] is just fine and is determined a &quot;real question&quot;.  I'm really getting confused as the point of this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38810/can-there-be-too-much-uniformity-in-coding-standards&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39200/what-arguments-are-there-against-easter-eggs-are-there-any-arguments-to-even-sup" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2599" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1042" RevisionGUID="7e9d86ce-a66a-478c-8fec-9e8bff59c61f" CreationDate="2011-01-23T21:30:14.013" UserId="37" Text="That's fine -- this is the very *purpose* of meta, so we can have these discussions in a constructive way and learn how to make these decisions better in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In these specific cases, I support both questions with the edits they had to make them more constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the guidance is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- yes, ask on meta! That's great! I mentally add 5 airquote upvotes to any person smart enough to come to meta and make a reasonable, non-argumentative statement in support of their questions!&#xD;&#xA;- always be open to editing questions to make them *more clear* and *more constructive*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2600" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1043" RevisionGUID="cf0589d1-253f-4fc3-837e-b149fab8783c" CreationDate="2011-01-23T22:40:59.063" UserId="47" Text="[Yi Jiang](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/150097/yi-jiang) has put together a nice site that use the Stack Overflow API to display information on the moderator candidates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The information presented is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What the candidate wrote when nominating themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Answers/Questions on the main site and it's meta&#xD;&#xA;* Up-vote/down-vote ratio&#xD;&#xA;* Average reputation earned per post&#xD;&#xA;* Average reputation earned per day.&#xD;&#xA;* Participation in other Stack Exchange sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It displays what Yi Jiang considers to be noteworthy badges and whether the nominee has the badge and a summary of their recent activity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The information is presented as is with no commentary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It came about from this question on MSO [Moderator nomination possibly useful statistics](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/75454/59303)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2601" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1043" RevisionGUID="cf0589d1-253f-4fc3-837e-b149fab8783c" CreationDate="2011-01-23T22:40:59.063" UserId="47" Text="Information on the moderator candidates" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2602" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1043" RevisionGUID="cf0589d1-253f-4fc3-837e-b149fab8783c" CreationDate="2011-01-23T22:40:59.063" UserId="47" Text="|discussion|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2603" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1043" RevisionGUID="3dd62d3f-756f-4227-b7cf-5af48b7f6f5b" CreationDate="2011-01-23T22:48:33.763" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="[Yi Jiang](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/150097/yi-jiang) has put together a nice site that use the Stack Overflow API to display information on the moderator candidates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Click here to see all the information](http://se.awio.com/election.html).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The information presented is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What the candidate wrote when nominating themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Answers/Questions on the main site and it's meta&#xD;&#xA;* Up-vote/down-vote ratio&#xD;&#xA;* Average reputation earned per post&#xD;&#xA;* Average reputation earned per day.&#xD;&#xA;* Participation in other Stack Exchange sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It displays what Yi Jiang considers to be noteworthy badges and whether the nominee has the badge and a summary of their recent activity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The information is presented as is with no commentary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It came about from this question on MSO [Moderator nomination possibly useful statistics](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/75454/59303)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2604" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1044" RevisionGUID="e263faa4-6654-4404-88d1-c5b5920aeaf6" CreationDate="2011-01-23T22:52:03.740" UserId="2654" Text="&gt; In introductions I've seen many different way of describing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; moderation. I’ve seen words like&#xD;&#xA;&gt; serving, leading, navigating, guiding,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; facilitating, etc. Those are very&#xD;&#xA;&gt; different way of moderating. Could you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; explain in more details your way of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; moderation and why it will be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; efficient here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderating isn't about playing the middle, it's about bringing things to the middle as best as possible through community encouragement, judicious editing, and a flexible view of what the intention of the user is. There have been quite a few questions that with the collaborative editing power of the community have been excellent topics for discussion. Then I say discussion I mean answering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you look at the other extreme end of the spectrum you find questions that simple need to be handled swiftly and efficiently, whether it's off topic (technical SO questions chief among them), or not real questions (spam, advertising, etc). Closing for reasons of not constructive and too localized I view as too subjective to be handled by one person alone unless there is a strong precedent to lead with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll be the first to admit I'm not always the most patient, but I do try to be as fair as possible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have tried to provide complete answers whenever possible. I do appreciate a certain terseness. I have left comments for the majority (if not all) of my downvotes in an attempt to promote better answers / questions. I have had a few [controversial answers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24412/do-you-have-your-own-misc-utils-library-what-part-are-you-most-proud-of/24432#24432), but those a rare now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2605" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1045" RevisionGUID="a9585786-744a-4e7f-93ba-34519e5bff40" CreationDate="2011-01-24T04:32:08.277" UserId="257" Text="I'm trying hard to avoid using Programmers as the new and improved dumping ground for unwanted SO questions, but the flags keep coming.  Right now the question [How to handle people who lie on their resume][1] is close to being resurrected, and there's a request in the queue to migrate it to Programmers.  This is clearly off-topic for SO, but I'm not sure if it will just get closed here as well.  Do you guys want questions like this, or should I kill it with fire?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/566662/how-to-handle-people-who-lie-on-their-resume" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2606" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1045" RevisionGUID="a9585786-744a-4e7f-93ba-34519e5bff40" CreationDate="2011-01-24T04:32:08.277" UserId="257" Text="Are there closed/deleted questions on SO that you guys actually want over here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2607" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1045" RevisionGUID="a9585786-744a-4e7f-93ba-34519e5bff40" CreationDate="2011-01-24T04:32:08.277" UserId="257" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2608" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1046" RevisionGUID="b7df1386-9551-46eb-b321-dfd5bf4caba2" CreationDate="2011-01-24T04:43:22.477" UserId="37" Text="It seems awfully generic to me -- how is &quot;guy who lies on his resume&quot; specific to programming versus any other profession?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers (the top two voted ones anyway) don't strike me as particularly programmer-specific, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2609" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1047" RevisionGUID="c9b5b661-3f39-444b-bec3-6ff2cbad044b" CreationDate="2011-01-24T04:50:35.690" UserId="2654" Text="If you can make it significantly programmer specific I don't see why not. I believe it would be a good question along the vein of they put a buzzword on paper but can't clearly define it or really understand what it is. [Similar to the agile buzzword question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36925/weeding-out-real-agile-from-buzzword-agile-in-an-interview). " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2610" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1046" RevisionGUID="87100930-8ab6-4774-a595-6655bab3fabd" CreationDate="2011-01-24T05:46:05.247" UserId="37" Comment="added 149 characters in body" Text="It seems awfully generic to me -- how is &quot;guy who lies on his resume&quot; specific to programming versus any other profession?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers (the top two voted ones anyway) don't strike me as particularly programmer-specific, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that in the general case my criteria for preservation is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; if a question has no *lasting and permanent value*, it should be **deleted**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2611" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1048" RevisionGUID="f16b510e-ac23-441b-b27d-7fae11cbcf1a" CreationDate="2011-01-24T11:43:22.467" UserId="13250" Text="Another Thing I've Noticed&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is that fancy-formatting your answer.&#xD;&#xA; - Whether or not it's a quality answer. &#xD;&#xA; - Seems to get higher votes than plain text. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2612" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1049" RevisionGUID="a55ed936-b2fe-427b-9b6b-137a6b1c7094" CreationDate="2011-01-24T12:07:58.557" UserId="47" Text="I would be very reluctant to migrate old questions. This one is nearly **two year's old**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be far better to keep it closed (and even locked) on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case I've added a note to the question over here, but might have to lock it if it gets too much bad attention." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2613" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1043" RevisionGUID="68ec8644-09bb-4546-b807-6a301cf8a1e0" CreationDate="2011-01-24T14:16:30.687" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2614" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1050" RevisionGUID="b10c9734-c3af-4883-9c46-12b18698f5cc" CreationDate="2011-01-24T15:07:23.067" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="One trend I've seen since the [improved flagging feature was rolled out](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/improved-flagging/) has been users—who are otherwise able to vote to close—instead opting to flag a question for moderator attention with the standard close reasons like &quot;low quality&quot;, &quot;not constructive&quot;, &quot;not a real question&quot;, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We moderators do take a look at every flag that comes in, but we try, as much as possible, to defer to the community's actions when it comes to closing a question. While we will close the clearly off-topic or not constructive questions, we're more likely to leave a borderline question open if it hasn't received any close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, before you flag a question for moderator attention, please consider doing one or both of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you have the reputation, vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;* If you don't have the reputation, or even if you do have the reputation, leave a comment explaining why you don't think the question is a good fit for Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These two actions send a signal to us and other members of the community of what you guys think of the question, and increases the likelihood of what you're trying to accomplish: that is, to keep Programmers.SE a useful resource for constructive questions about software development." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2615" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1050" RevisionGUID="b10c9734-c3af-4883-9c46-12b18698f5cc" CreationDate="2011-01-24T15:07:23.067" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Voting to Close vs. Flagging" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2616" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1050" RevisionGUID="b10c9734-c3af-4883-9c46-12b18698f5cc" CreationDate="2011-01-24T15:07:23.067" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|vote-to-close|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2617" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1050" RevisionGUID="fe523310-3674-4fca-9dcb-a578e2af924e" CreationDate="2011-01-24T15:12:43.107" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body" Text="One trend I've seen since the [improved flagging feature was rolled out](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/improved-flagging/) has been users—who are otherwise able to vote to close—instead opting to flag a question for moderator attention with the standard close reasons like &quot;low quality&quot;, &quot;not constructive&quot;, &quot;not a real question&quot;, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We moderators do take a look at every flag that comes in, but we try, as much as possible, to defer to the community's actions when it comes to closing a question. While we will close the clearly off-topic or not constructive questions, we're more likely to leave a borderline question open if it hasn't received any close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, before you flag a question for moderator attention, please consider doing one or both of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you have the reputation, vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;* If you don't have the reputation, or even if you do have the reputation, leave a comment explaining why you don't think the question is a good fit for Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These two actions send a signal to us and other members of the community of what you think about the question and increase the likelihood of what you're trying to accomplish: that is, keeping Programmers.SE a useful resource for constructive questions about software development." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2618" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1051" RevisionGUID="105c8951-492c-4f04-ae3d-a03441fe3c88" CreationDate="2011-01-24T15:14:19.427" UserId="2654" Text="I prefer that approach. Moderators are for edge cases, not power closing every question they come across. [Some questions still hang around for days](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38299/do-computer-glasses-work) but that's fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With almost 100 users with closing reputation there should be far less moderator involvement then there has been recently. Abilities should be exercised, otherwise lost. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2619" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1052" RevisionGUID="a897322c-d52d-42f0-9cba-582c31e41f1c" CreationDate="2011-01-24T20:19:11.613" UserId="897" Text="Perhaps the ability to 'flag' should be removed for those with enough reputation to close a topic.  Voting to close itself could be a flag to a moderator.  Honestly, I thought 'flagging' was specifically for things like excessive profanity and such on answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2620" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1053" RevisionGUID="ff7d68d5-d73c-4864-9261-32827472f764" CreationDate="2011-01-24T22:29:10.727" UserId="2314" Text="Questions like [Is there an alternative to HTML Web Sockets, now that Firefox 4 has disabled them?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33713/is-there-an-alternative-to-html-web-sockets-now-that-firefox-4-has-disabled-them) always give me pause.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was asked January 4.  To me, it is clearly suited better for StackOverflow than Programmers, since it is an answerable programming question, not a question about programmers or about the development process.  But, I say &quot;gray area&quot; since clearly the poster thought it was appropriate and most of the community haven't felt concerned with it remaining open on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is, **what do we do about questions which *do* fall into some sort of a gray area between StackOverflow and Programmers?** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I see a question like this, I have three options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Vote to close as off-topic, or at the very least to post a comment saying it's better suited there.&#xD;&#xA;2. Answer (mark as community-wiki if I'm also voting to close)&#xD;&#xA;3. Leave it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I'm unable to answer, my inclination would be to choose #1, to help the user find a better forum for obtaining an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However well-intentioned that would be, when the question is in a gray area, it's likely to cause some to think I'm just being unhelpful and better off just leaving the question alone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, once it's been around for 2 weeks, it seems more people are inclined to let it stay simply because it has longevity and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any advice for this situation?  Am I being too sensitive?  Could we benefit from a clear description of the difference between SO/Programmers in the &quot;How to Ask&quot; note on the Ask Question page? Are there any other ways in which we could reduce this gray area?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2621" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1053" RevisionGUID="ff7d68d5-d73c-4864-9261-32827472f764" CreationDate="2011-01-24T22:29:10.727" UserId="2314" Text="SO/Programmers gray area" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2622" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1053" RevisionGUID="ff7d68d5-d73c-4864-9261-32827472f764" CreationDate="2011-01-24T22:29:10.727" UserId="2314" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|vote-to-close|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2623" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1054" RevisionGUID="96fc852c-b56c-4cb4-b3e3-ea9356636080" CreationDate="2011-01-25T00:02:44.150" UserId="47" Text="If you think a question would have a better home elsewhere and the migration route isn't available (none are at the moment) then flag it for moderator attention. Explain where you think it needs to go and if the moderators agree they can move it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is a migration route (there might be at some point), then just vote to close as &quot;off topic&quot; selecting that site as the target. Other users with close rights will see that flag and either back you up or vote to close another way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't worry about marking your answer CW. After all if it does get moved your answer might get up-votes on the target site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2624" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1055" RevisionGUID="7d36ff5a-415d-429b-94ac-413eb3427091" CreationDate="2011-01-25T00:08:15.063" UserId="37" Text="For users who repeatedly do this, just mark their flags as invalid -- this will reduce their flag weight for future flags of this type." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2625" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1056" RevisionGUID="8d1f14a0-d1f2-4d5e-82ba-34e502b94cc3" CreationDate="2011-01-25T00:39:54.067" UserId="6591" Text="For questions in &quot;the grey area&quot; my feelings are to try the following in this order:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Answer it.  &#xD;&#xA;2. Leave it alone (if I can't answer it).  &#xD;&#xA;3. Migrate it to where it has a better chance of getting answered. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I still haven't figured out that community wiki thing, including how to find it. All I know is that I lose the ability to get badges for each answer of mine that gets &quot;lost&quot; in wikiland. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2626" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1057" RevisionGUID="29e3fa8b-adc5-4cd8-8769-86999a67a0ff" CreationDate="2011-01-25T04:44:21.917" UserId="9094" Text="An extreme example to illustrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's say we have **a valid question about Antartica versus the same question about New York**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Antartica: bigger than a country, so it doesn't fall under loo lozalized, but I doubt there are many programmers there besides a few researchers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - New York: has a very high population density and *a lot* of programmers, but falls under the &quot;too localized&quot; rule because it's smaller than a country.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hence I suggest that &quot;too localized&quot; would be more accurate if it used the size of the target population instead of arbitrary geographical areas." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2627" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1057" RevisionGUID="29e3fa8b-adc5-4cd8-8769-86999a67a0ff" CreationDate="2011-01-25T04:44:21.917" UserId="9094" Text="Too localized: by population size instead of geographical area" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2628" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1057" RevisionGUID="29e3fa8b-adc5-4cd8-8769-86999a67a0ff" CreationDate="2011-01-25T04:44:21.917" UserId="9094" Text="|feature-request|guidelines|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2629" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1058" RevisionGUID="0e8ed8f5-2394-48ed-9677-82a34eda1686" CreationDate="2011-01-25T09:15:28.203" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="I think too localized meaning here is not bound only to rules you mention (size of a country).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess too localized means the question will not be applicable to the majority of developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So geography is not always the main reason." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2630" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1059" RevisionGUID="8b4da069-f27a-4eb9-bbbe-63612b878008" CreationDate="2011-01-25T11:40:31.230" UserId="5095" Text="I think the first thing is to accept that there are some questions which do fit into neither camp and will end up getting closed.  There seem to be plenty of questions which are migrated because they're subjective but are actually to general (that is not programmer specific enough) for here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the instance you state though I think it's almost the opposite, I think it could sit happily on either site.  It's subjective enough that it works here (there is no out and out right answer but plenty of options) but it's technical enough that a lot of that subjectivity can be debated in a very black and white way so I suspect SO would be fine with it too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on that and the fact it's getting answers I'd leave it, though I might add a comment suggesting that the user could also ask it on SO and might get some additional useful responses. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More generally though I'd not move/close something unless either (a) it was an out and out bad fit here or (b) it was getting no answers and you felt that the questioner would benefit from it being moved." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2631" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1060" RevisionGUID="22ff83a8-67b9-4e93-98cf-230a3a4f37c6" CreationDate="2011-01-25T18:34:27.910" UserId="2314" Text="One thing that is important to remember is that it's been well agreed upon by moderators and the site owners that **upvotes are not an indicator that a question should remain open**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't think this is very well communicated to users who haven't being reading meta or the comments of many closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To those users, it's natural to think that upvotes indicate a **good** question.  What it indicates is that it's a **popular** question.  If you read http://meta.stackoverflow.com and http://blog.stackoverflow.com, you'll realize this has been addressed many times - even popular questions can have a long term negative effect on keeping the site in line with it's purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a number of topics that would likely receive a high net score, but yet be closed as not aligned with the site's purpose.  Just search through the [questions sorted by votes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes) and you'll find several, including two of the first four.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That being said, I didn't see anything wrong with your question, and I felt like the upvotes were also well deserved.  As others have pointed out, sometimes the wording of a question can simply feel like a &quot;discussion topic&quot; to a moderator rather than an answerable question, but I didn't see yours that way (which is why I answered it!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2632" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1061" RevisionGUID="382c85fe-99db-4b10-930f-17f2ef8743ba" CreationDate="2011-01-26T02:20:56.513" UserId="6415" Text="I noticed recently that voting seemed to be sparse, particularly on questions.So I ran a [quick query](http://data.stackexchange.com/superuser/s/855/average-votes-for-mid-level-users) on programmers and found these results:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    NumUsers AvrUpVotes AvrDownVotes AvrDaysMember&#xD;&#xA;    -------- ---------- ------------ -------------&#xD;&#xA;       432      280        19            123&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the **average up and down votes for all users with a reputation range of 1000 to 10,000.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We users in this rep range are supposed to be the [healthy voting middle class](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/vote-early-vote-often/)! So why do so is the average votes for us so low? At 30 votes a day, and an average membership of 123 days, there should be an average of 3690 votes per person! (Well, statistically closer to 1500. Most of us don't use up all our votes every day.) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I realize that most of us are only moderately active. But surely we all can find more than two tings a day to vote on. So I encourage you: **Exercise your right to vote!**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2633" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1061" RevisionGUID="382c85fe-99db-4b10-930f-17f2ef8743ba" CreationDate="2011-01-26T02:20:56.513" UserId="6415" Text="A call for the exercising of rights!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2634" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1061" RevisionGUID="382c85fe-99db-4b10-930f-17f2ef8743ba" CreationDate="2011-01-26T02:20:56.513" UserId="6415" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2635" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1061" RevisionGUID="f199e591-6377-4e24-8e48-c6af234e642b" CreationDate="2011-01-26T03:53:34.683" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|voting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2636" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1062" RevisionGUID="0c64faeb-4b2d-4e80-be9f-550e4c26e202" CreationDate="2011-01-26T05:27:33.147" UserId="897" Text="Well the answer is, much like in the real world of politics, there's simply not that much worth voting for.  Particularly down votes, which cost rep - a mechanic introduced *specifically to deter votes*.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind, just because there are 30 available votes per day, and 123 days, does not mean that a) the user has been here every single day, or b) the user actually reads every topic.  Many simply may be of no interest to them.  So most users probably only ever see a small subset of the questions and answers, which simply may not be enough to generate 30 votes for them on the days they visit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2637" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1063" RevisionGUID="a1f283f2-08e4-4162-be1c-6c8ba92cd7c4" CreationDate="2011-01-26T11:07:36.007" UserId="7768" Text="See this answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12216/which-features-from-other-ides-editors-you-wish-you-have-in-visual-studio/22729#22729&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has got a +25 bounty from the community, which looks like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![This answer has been awarded bounty worth 25 reputation by Community][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It says in the tooltip on the red box with +25:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;This answer has been awarded bounty worth 25 reputation by Community&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is this? How is it awarded?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/BGQSc.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2638" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1063" RevisionGUID="a1f283f2-08e4-4162-be1c-6c8ba92cd7c4" CreationDate="2011-01-26T11:07:36.007" UserId="7768" Text="What is community awarded bounty?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2639" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1063" RevisionGUID="a1f283f2-08e4-4162-be1c-6c8ba92cd7c4" CreationDate="2011-01-26T11:07:36.007" UserId="7768" Text="|discussion|community|bounty-awards|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2640" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1064" RevisionGUID="07170d02-4095-4de8-8394-043b6be12ef4" CreationDate="2011-01-26T11:22:34.200" UserId="37" Text="see &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#bounty&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;specifically&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you do not award your bounty within 7 days, the highest voted answer created after the bounty started with at least 2 upvotes will be awarded half the bounty amount." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2641" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1063" RevisionGUID="1c09498f-3ea6-4bd2-b42e-3664d6bb1bdd" CreationDate="2011-01-26T11:22:51.113" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|bounty-awards|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2642" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1061" RevisionGUID="fd9e9843-dd87-4900-9056-9371c3f4c6b4" CreationDate="2011-01-26T13:36:55.163" UserId="6415" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="I noticed recently that voting seemed to be sparse, particularly on questions.So I ran a [quick query](http://data.stackexchange.com/superuser/s/855/average-votes-for-mid-level-users) on programmers and found these results:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    NumUsers AvrUpVotes AvrDownVotes AvrDaysMember&#xD;&#xA;    -------- ---------- ------------ -------------&#xD;&#xA;       432      280        19            123&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the **average up and down votes for all users with a reputation range of 1000 to 10,000.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We users in this rep range are supposed to be the [healthy voting middle class](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/vote-early-vote-often/)! So why do so is the average votes for us so low? At 30 votes a day, and an average membership of 123 days, there should be an average of 3690 votes per person! (Well, statistically closer to 1500. Most of us don't use up all our votes every day.) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I realize that most of us are only moderately active. But surely we all can find more than two things a day to vote on. So I encourage you: **Exercise your right to vote!**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2643" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1061" RevisionGUID="b70c2313-74d9-4f0e-8118-ad7fe148d7df" CreationDate="2011-01-26T13:45:07.340" UserId="6415" Comment="added 346 characters in body" Text="I noticed recently that voting seemed to be sparse, particularly on questions.So I ran a [quick query](http://data.stackexchange.com/superuser/s/855/average-votes-for-mid-level-users) on programmers and found these results:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    NumUsers AvrUpVotes AvrDownVotes AvrDaysMember&#xD;&#xA;    -------- ---------- ------------ -------------&#xD;&#xA;       432      280        19            123&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the **average up and down votes for all users with a reputation range of 1000 to 10,000.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We users in this rep range are supposed to be the [healthy voting middle class](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/vote-early-vote-often/)! So why are the average votes for us so low? At 30 votes a day, and an average membership of 123 days, there could theoretically be an average of 3690 votes per person! In practice, there must be less, because you may not find anything useful to you on a given day. However, I suspect that we all see more than 2.28 things a day that we find interesting. An answer doesn't need to be funny or catchy to be good, and if you think a question is worth answering, you should vote it up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I realize that most of us are only moderately active. But surely we all can find more than two things a day to vote on. If you see a question that interests you, *vote it up*. If any answer is helpful to you in understanding an issue, *vote it up*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Exercise your right to vote!**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2644" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1065" RevisionGUID="2710f78a-b9bb-4299-89ca-3bddf38b3fb6" CreationDate="2011-01-26T14:22:30.037" UserId="13585" Text="As someone with a serious case of textual diarrhea (go on check my posts :) I appreciate you raising the issue.  Maybe answers &amp; questions that are still being upvoted after 6, 12, 18 months... would get a greater weight of reps.  The mods probably have access to do a little stat analysis to see what that might really mean with voting history on a question/answer, or indeed all of them (if not, code it in now!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or maybe people could occasionally bonus vote something... though that could be easily abused unless a good mechanism to guard against that could be worked out.  Or, and this is controversial and would probably cause more grief than benefit, older reputation decays over time - you are only as good as your last round in the ring after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not going to defend any of those ideas to the death, just brainstorming and indulging in that thing I mentioned earlier.  Ultimately I don't think it's a big deal... it's a number on a computer screen after all.  Though after being a long time browser, and only joining recently (on P.SE first!, because I couldn't be arsed when it was just SO) I must admit to being a little obsessed atm.  But I'll grow out of that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2645" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1065" RevisionGUID="81b852fa-47be-4958-8d3a-354fa37c22b6" CreationDate="2011-01-26T14:34:21.900" UserId="13585" Comment="my brain never switches off, I hate it" Text="As someone with a serious case of textual diarrhea (go on check my posts :) I appreciate you raising the issue.  Maybe answers &amp; questions that are still being upvoted after 6, 12, 18 months... would get a greater weight of reps.  The mods probably have access to do a little stat analysis to see what that might really mean with voting history on a question/answer, or indeed all of them (if not, code it in now!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or maybe people could occasionally bonus vote something... though that could be easily abused unless a good mechanism to guard against that could be worked out.  Or, and this is controversial and would probably cause more grief than benefit, older reputation decays over time - you are only as good as your last round in the ring after all. [edit: here's another thought - questions that still get posts *after* already having an accepted answer, deserve a little something extra.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not going to defend any of those ideas to the death, just brainstorming and indulging in that thing I mentioned earlier.  Ultimately I don't think it's a big deal... it's a number on a computer screen after all.  Though after being a long time browser, and only joining recently (on P.SE first!, because I couldn't be arsed when it was just SO) I must admit to being a little obsessed atm.  But I'll grow out of that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2646" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1066" RevisionGUID="e2aab57d-28e4-4273-92a9-104885f3a6c2" CreationDate="2011-01-26T18:04:41.343" UserId="1973" Text="I had like two days of access to mod tools and didn't do a whole lot with them, but here are some examples of helping a user on Meta to edit a question to get it reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/923/this-question-should-not-have-been-closed/938#938&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16618/what-will-be-considered-harmful-next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(or not)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/510/is-my-question-that-bad-or-am-i-totally-out-of-it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, in the interest of full disclosure, here's something that got me banned from programmers.SE for a day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/66438/p-se-user-is-creating-bad-tags-for-personal-harassment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, now, I ask questions on Meta before I go it alone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, always apologize for my mistakes. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2647" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1066" RevisionGUID="6f79e9e2-7ed2-4a89-9a9c-37720cf8cf1f" CreationDate="2011-01-26T19:40:57.897" UserId="1973" Comment="added 477 characters in body" Text="My moderation style would be to give users time to edit their question before closing, never close based on the quality of the answers and consider the popularity of the question when deciding whether or not it truly requires moderator attention. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some examples of helping a user on Meta to edit a question to get it reopened.  This is how I would guide users to making changes to their questions rather than welcoming them with a closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/923/this-question-should-not-have-been-closed/938#938&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16618/what-will-be-considered-harmful-next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(or not)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/510/is-my-question-that-bad-or-am-i-totally-out-of-it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, in the interest of full disclosure, here's something that got me banned from programmers.SE for a day.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/66438/p-se-user-is-creating-bad-tags-for-personal-harassment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I add this to explain that I believe in retagging, the use meta-tags within the paradigm, and until the feature is deprecated using tags to filter out junk you don't want to see.  Also, I am committed to I asking questions on meta before I go it alone and when I make a mistake, apologize. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2648" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1067" RevisionGUID="5865e483-cda6-47ba-9082-ebdd8ac5b10b" CreationDate="2011-01-26T22:43:43.653" UserId="2673" Text="I've noticed this morning that once I hit 190, I stopped receiving rep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was on 9 votes (+9/-0) in this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40315/whats-the-name-for-a-bug-that-suddenly-breaks-things-but-has-always-been-present/40323#40323&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since then the answer has went to (+12/-1) yet my rep has not changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't care about the rep, just wanted to report the bug and see if it is already known." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2649" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1067" RevisionGUID="5865e483-cda6-47ba-9082-ebdd8ac5b10b" CreationDate="2011-01-26T22:43:43.653" UserId="2673" Text="Daily Limit Bug" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2650" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1067" RevisionGUID="5865e483-cda6-47ba-9082-ebdd8ac5b10b" CreationDate="2011-01-26T22:43:43.653" UserId="2673" Text="|bug|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2651" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1068" RevisionGUID="3919fedf-c075-4467-bced-1282ad8a3835" CreationDate="2011-01-26T22:49:35.357" UserId="47" Text="Have you checked your reputation report http://programmers.stackexchange.com/reputation? That will give you an output which will show you exactly how much reputation you've received for the day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Checking the rep graph on your profile page (which is all I can see) doesn't really help. It looks like you've actually earned 220 points - which can't be right. Post today's section of the report.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And don't forget the Stack Exchange day is UTC." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2652" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1067" RevisionGUID="b45a84ff-1041-40ed-a832-105f119db6fc" CreationDate="2011-01-26T22:51:23.117" UserId="2673" Comment="added 60 characters in body" Text="I've noticed this morning that once I hit 190, I stopped receiving rep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was on 9 votes (+9/-0) in this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40315/whats-the-name-for-a-bug-that-suddenly-breaks-things-but-has-always-been-present/40323#40323&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since then the answer has went to (+12/-1) yet my rep has not changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't care about the rep, just wanted to report the bug and see if it is already known.&#xD;&#xA;![Screen shot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ogALl.gif" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2653" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1067" RevisionGUID="5bf602b8-c280-4054-b925-dfcabf8d1284" CreationDate="2011-01-26T23:02:07.040" UserId="2673" Comment="added 674 characters in body" Text="I've noticed this morning that once I hit 190, I stopped receiving rep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was on 9 votes (+9/-0) in this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40315/whats-the-name-for-a-bug-that-suddenly-breaks-things-but-has-always-been-present/40323#40323&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since then the answer has went to (+12/-1) yet my rep has not changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't care about the rep, just wanted to report the bug and see if it is already known.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screen shot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today's section of the rep log:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     2     40103 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40103 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40109 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40103 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40103 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40109 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40109 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40103 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40103 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40103 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40103 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 [0]&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 [0]&#xD;&#xA;     3     40323 [-2]&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 [2]&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 [0]&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 [0]&#xD;&#xA;    -- 2011-01-26 rep +200  = 3597  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ogALl.gif&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2654" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1068" RevisionGUID="5382787c-65e3-462d-ac18-994f4e1541cd" CreationDate="2011-01-26T23:04:39.030" UserId="47" Comment="correction" Text="Have you checked your reputation report http://programmers.stackexchange.com/reputation? That will give you an output which will show you exactly how much reputation you've received for the day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Checking the rep graph on your profile page (which is all I can see) doesn't really help. It looks like you've actually earned 220 points - which can't be right. Post today's section of the report.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And don't forget the Stack Exchange day is UTC.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reputation report - which is &quot;the truth&quot; - shows 200 points for the day, so you're not missing out on any rep. I'm asking around to see if anyone else has seen this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2655" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1068" RevisionGUID="3732dc0d-696b-4ee8-b826-96a90a6fff47" CreationDate="2011-01-26T23:13:28.780" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="Have you checked your reputation report http://programmers.stackexchange.com/reputation? That will give you an output which will show you exactly how much reputation you've received for the day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Checking the rep graph on your profile page (which is all I can see) doesn't really help. It looks like you've actually earned 220 points - which can't be right. Post today's section of the report.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And don't forget the Stack Exchange day is UTC.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reputation report - which is &quot;the truth&quot; - shows 200 points for the day, so you're not missing out on any rep. I'm asking around to see if anyone else has seen this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here's what's going on**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The discrepancy is due to a deleted answer [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40290/what-is-the-best-way-to-count-time-spans/40293#40293) - (you should be able to see it, but if not it gained you an upvote).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The deletion causes a loss of the original 10 rep from the upvote because the upvote ceases, but the &quot;real-time&quot; counter thinks you've hit the rep cap and so doesn't add any more points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you hit the &quot;recalc now&quot; button at the bottom of the report you'll &quot;get back&quot; the missing 10 points because your history will be re-run and the deleted post won't count at all - it's as though it never happened. You will probably find that your rep goes down due to other deleted posts though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2656" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1069" RevisionGUID="b570a896-81ea-46e6-a4b3-27109a3e6660" CreationDate="2011-01-26T23:21:03.403" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="ChrisF's answer is correct, but if you're interested in a blow-by-blow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You wrote an answer to the question [What is the best way to count time spans?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40290/what-is-the-best-way-to-count-time-spans). That answer got 1 upvote, which gave you **10** reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You also got **80** rep from [How many lines of code can a C# developer produce per month?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40100/how-many-lines-of-code-can-a-c-developer-produce-per-month/40103#40103), **30** rep from [vim tutorial for beginners](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40099/vim-tutorial-for-beginners/40109#40109), and **80** rep from [What's the name for a bug that suddenly breaks things but has always been present?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40315/whats-the-name-for-a-bug-that-suddenly-breaks-things-but-has-always-been-present/40323#40323).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point, you hit 200 reputation and the daily cap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, [What is the best way to count time spans?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40290/what-is-the-best-way-to-count-time-spans) was migrated to Stack Overflow, so your answer was deleted. The reputation report immediately recalculated your score, removing the **10** rep you got from the now migrated answer and giving you **90** rep for [What's the name for a bug that suddenly breaks things but has always been present?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40315/whats-the-name-for-a-bug-that-suddenly-breaks-things-but-has-always-been-present/40323#40323), bringing you back to the daily cap again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The front end immediately gets rid of the deleted answer, but doesn't immediately show your recalculated reputation, making it seem like you only got 190 rep before hitting the cap, even though you didn't." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2657" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1067" RevisionGUID="46738bc7-c980-46ee-913b-8eec9db4780a" CreationDate="2011-01-27T00:50:34.133" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2658" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1070" RevisionGUID="85469a80-50ba-4e72-a5f6-1f3b98d324ec" CreationDate="2011-01-27T11:33:32.650" UserDisplayName="WinstonChurchill" Text="I just got a UK specific question closed as too localised, which annoyed me a lot. Bigger than New York in both numbers of programmers and size.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's put a number/size on it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10000 people (programmers and the like) in the locality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2659" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="941" RevisionGUID="2cdb4185-0c41-48f0-9248-37ba3033bea5" CreationDate="2011-01-27T15:38:28.137" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-bydesign|community-wiki|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2660" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1071" RevisionGUID="b5a3f1a3-bdd3-43f9-9785-3f7a7e66d1d1" CreationDate="2011-01-27T16:23:36.720" UserId="1973" Text="Well, I just recalced and lost a few hundred points, it might not be a bad idea for everyone else to do the same in the interest of full disclosure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Purely voluntary of course." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2661" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1071" RevisionGUID="b5a3f1a3-bdd3-43f9-9785-3f7a7e66d1d1" CreationDate="2011-01-27T16:23:36.720" UserId="1973" Text="Rep Recalc for All Moderator Nominees" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2662" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1071" RevisionGUID="b5a3f1a3-bdd3-43f9-9785-3f7a7e66d1d1" CreationDate="2011-01-27T16:23:36.720" UserId="1973" Text="|support|reputation|moderators|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2663" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="942" RevisionGUID="999dc195-80bb-45c7-b13a-e20af14d2ddf" CreationDate="2011-01-27T17:50:48.163" UserId="63" Comment="Added link to additional background information, discussion, etc." Text="As detailed in the answer to [this question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/74582/59303) on Meta Stack Overflow, the threshold can be set on a site by site basis and is now 15 for Programmers (along with Super User, where the threshold was [originally reduced in an effort to stem the tide of pile-on answers][1]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't affect existing questions, but if a new answer is posted to those they will convert.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.superuser.com/questions/274/reduce-community-wiki-force-threshold-to-15-answers-on-superuser" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2664" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1072" RevisionGUID="00083e16-e13f-44bb-9183-477118fa5f7e" CreationDate="2011-01-28T01:22:28.793" UserId="10410" Text="This is similar to http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/888, but it has to do with the &quot;Flag&quot; icon that shows up when hovering over comments.  On my machine it looks like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The blackness of the flag lines seem quite harsh when compared to the grays of the comment score and upvote triangle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could it be toned down to match the grays of the other things near it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/HSygm.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2665" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1072" RevisionGUID="00083e16-e13f-44bb-9183-477118fa5f7e" CreationDate="2011-01-28T01:22:28.793" UserId="10410" Text="The &quot;Flag comment&quot; icon is too harsh" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2666" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1072" RevisionGUID="00083e16-e13f-44bb-9183-477118fa5f7e" CreationDate="2011-01-28T01:22:28.793" UserId="10410" Text="|feature-request|design|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2667" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1073" RevisionGUID="343dfa87-1dcf-48ad-ad3c-f49175459377" CreationDate="2011-01-28T14:49:01.427" UserId="4032" Text="There's two questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [favorite programming language][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [worst software bug in history][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How come one is still open, and the other one closed? I ask because both seem to me to be *mere curiosity* questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6847/whats-your-favorite-programming-language-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2668" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1073" RevisionGUID="343dfa87-1dcf-48ad-ad3c-f49175459377" CreationDate="2011-01-28T14:49:01.427" UserId="4032" Text="Some incosistency in closing questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2669" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1073" RevisionGUID="343dfa87-1dcf-48ad-ad3c-f49175459377" CreationDate="2011-01-28T14:49:01.427" UserId="4032" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2670" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1074" RevisionGUID="644900b8-0966-4d17-a506-80c7b1a3fe6f" CreationDate="2011-01-28T14:54:51.533" UserId="37" Text="**Because worst software bug can, in fact, be _measured_** -- how much damage did the bug cause in billions of dollars? How many children were killed by this bug? Did the company go out of business because of it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whereas favorite programming language -- how exactly do you measure a favorite? This is just &quot;what's your favorite color?&quot; in pure form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can't see the difference, you're not looking hard enough. Try harder." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2671" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1073" RevisionGUID="8fc6d932-9917-44cc-a9b1-3909c647e787" CreationDate="2011-01-28T16:10:52.170" UserId="1973" Comment="edited title" Text="Some inconistency in closing questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2672" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1075" RevisionGUID="cceab6fc-af0b-4508-a616-aa07eaf2574d" CreationDate="2011-01-28T16:13:59.013" UserId="1973" Text="Check out this ['discussion'][1] or lack there-of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's pretty clear that 'favorite' is one of those keywords that doesn't hit the filter (least favorite or most favorite doesn't matter)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My suggestion would be to either take your chances and use the queen's english &quot;favourite&quot; (which according to my Fedora Spin, is in fact the correct spelling) or just replace the word with &quot;Won the most awards&quot; or &quot;Killed the most people&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2673" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1076" RevisionGUID="296e6649-5441-48d5-9ab8-a2ff0792a746" CreationDate="2011-01-28T17:07:32.353" UserId="13181" Text="I think a good compromise should be a popcorn timer. As answers come in extend the cooldown so that there's enough time for the long-winded among us to give their answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2674" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1077" RevisionGUID="681a11ea-33cc-49f1-a60f-1f10f22105b3" CreationDate="2011-01-28T17:34:38.983" UserId="2314" Text="Further to my [post on the nomination page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election#post-39586), I'd just add that my &quot;moderation style&quot; will be that of a teacher rather than a disciplinarian.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I realize, as I said, that moderators have a difficult task given them.  That task is to keep a site that is open to community-created content clean and in-line with the site's purpose, while at the same time being civil, courteous and helpful to both new and existing members of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even users who have posted several questions and have significant reputation may end up posting questions that don't seem in line with established rules or guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* This doesn't mean that those users wish to fill up the site with junk&#xD;&#xA;* It doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't aware of the guidelines&#xD;&#xA;* It doesn't even necessarily mean that they don't understand the guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They may just have a different view of them (I've [been there](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28172/what-does-a-productive-programmer-day-consist-of-closed) myself). When this happens, I believe it can be a learning experience for all involved.  It may very well be that the question is in fact [in a gray area](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1053/so-programmers-gray-area).  It may also be that this situation doesn't fall neatly into any category of guidance.  **Very likely, there is a good question in there that just isn't worded in the most productive way**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tools that moderators and even members have should be used very carefully.  An experience I had just a few days ago illustrated this to me.  I was closely watching a question that was interesting to me.  A new answer was posted that I very much disagreed with.  It was well thought out and a valid opinion, but to me, personally, it was philosophically wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I downvoted the question because I disagreed with it.  This didn't mean that I thought it should never have been posted - in fact, I appreciated that perspective being added to the answers, because I felt like it brought up an angle that had not been addressed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few minutes later, I realized it had been deleted.  The user had obviously though that by getting a downvote so quickly, it was better off to just get rid of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I immediately regretted having downvoted so quickly and wished I had let more members of the community read that opinion and see what they thought.  I believe I was too fast to act and didn't consider the consequences of my action (not that I don't believe it's ok to downvote -- the consequence was that the user would see downvotes coming in so quickly).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I take this same view with the close-vote and the tools a moderator has. They are not just a mop and a broom (what Wikipedia administrators refer to their tools as).  Here, I believe, we have a great responsibility to teach &amp;mdash; ask questions first and early, give suggestions, help, etc., and clean up (vote to close/delete) if needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To address Pierre's point about being &quot;firm&quot; - I absolutely understand that no matter how nice or helpful a moderator has been, it doesn't mean that conflict will never arise.  When it does, I don't believe a moderator is out of line to act authoritatively &amp;mdash; I would simply be careful to make sure that I have exhausted my ability to be helpful prior to taking any action that could be viewed as unilateral.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the end, I would simply be asking of my actions &quot;is what I'm doing helping the community reach the potential it has?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2675" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1077" RevisionGUID="de2c14be-e05e-42ba-9895-52d7c8561964" CreationDate="2011-01-28T17:41:40.613" UserId="2314" Comment="deleted 130 characters in body; deleted 194 characters in body" Text="Further to my [post on the nomination page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election#post-39586), I'd just add that my &quot;moderation style&quot; will be that of a teacher rather than a disciplinarian.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators do have a difficult task given them &amp;mdash; keep a site that is open to community-created content clean and in-line with the site's purpose; at the same time being civil, courteous and helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even users who have posted several questions and have significant reputation may end up posting questions that don't seem in line with established rules or guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* This doesn't mean that those users wish to fill up the site with junk&#xD;&#xA;* It doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't aware of the guidelines&#xD;&#xA;* It doesn't even necessarily mean that they don't understand the guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They may just have a different view of them (I've [been there](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28172/what-does-a-productive-programmer-day-consist-of-closed) myself). I believe this can be a learning experience for all involved. The question may be in fact [in a gray area](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1053/so-programmers-gray-area).  Maybe situation doesn't fall neatly into any category of guidance.  **Very likely, there is a good question in there that just isn't worded in the most productive way**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tools that moderators and even members have should be used very carefully.  An experience I had just a few days ago illustrated this to me.  I was closely watching a question that was interesting. A new answer was posted that I very much disagreed with.  It was well written and a valid opinion, but to me, personally, it was philosophically wrong. So, I downvoted the question. However, I appreciated the perspective it added to the answers, because I felt like it brought up an angle that had not been addressed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few minutes later, I realized it had been deleted.  The user had obviously thought that by getting a downvote so quickly, it was better off to just get rid of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I regretted having downvoted so quickly and wished I had let more members of the community read that opinion and see what they thought. I didn't consider the impact my downvote would have to the poster, and I think that I should have commented prior to downvoting so early.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I take this same view with the close-vote and the tools a moderator has. They are not just a mop and a broom (what Wikipedia administrators refer to their tools as).  Here, I believe, we have a great responsibility to teach &amp;mdash; ask questions first and early, give suggestions, help, etc., and clean up (vote to close/delete) if needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To address Pierre's point about being &quot;firm&quot; - I absolutely understand that no matter how nice or helpful a moderator has been, it doesn't mean that conflict will never arise.  When it does, I don't believe a moderator is out of line to act authoritatively &amp;mdash; I would simply be careful to make sure that I have exhausted my ability to be helpful prior to taking any action that could be viewed as unilateral.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the end, I would simply be asking of my actions &quot;is what I'm doing helping the community reach the potential it has?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2676" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1073" RevisionGUID="4ddffa03-73fa-4ec4-840c-2eb4a345478c" CreationDate="2011-01-28T19:53:58.767" UserId="1973" Comment="I'll get that word right eventually" Text="Some inconsistency in closing questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2677" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1078" RevisionGUID="9041f1f2-9ae5-4d4b-89a9-376dcddf0ee3" CreationDate="2011-01-28T20:16:39.367" UserId="399" Text="In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session with the candidates.  This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.  I am working with the candidates to find a time that allows the most participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(**Candidates**: candidates on other sites have reported that my email has been placed in their spam folder. Please be on the lookout for an email from me!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the details so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I would like to schedule this towards the beginning of the election phase, so I am looking at the 1st-3rd.  As soon as I coordinate with the existing moderators and candidates, I will edit this post with details on the &quot;when&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;* The Town Hall Chat will be a one-hour event using our [chat platform](http://chat.stackexchange.com/?tab=site&amp;sort=active&amp;host=programmers.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;* The format will be an open discussion.  Users are encouraged to pose questions to the candidate regarding their thoughts on moderation.&#xD;&#xA;* After the chat session, the transcript of the event will be permanently linked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2678" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1078" RevisionGUID="9041f1f2-9ae5-4d4b-89a9-376dcddf0ee3" CreationDate="2011-01-28T20:16:39.367" UserId="399" Text="2011 Moderator Elections - Town Hall Chat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2679" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1078" RevisionGUID="9041f1f2-9ae5-4d4b-89a9-376dcddf0ee3" CreationDate="2011-01-28T20:16:39.367" UserId="399" Text="|discussion|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2680" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1079" RevisionGUID="15305f4d-ca27-42a6-8ec7-ad033daa8b6d" CreationDate="2011-01-29T17:44:34.780" UserId="389" Text="I started a [discussion on Area51 about the UI merging][1]. Please participate with the open mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/128/user-interface-merge" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2681" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1079" RevisionGUID="15305f4d-ca27-42a6-8ec7-ad033daa8b6d" CreationDate="2011-01-29T17:44:34.780" UserId="389" Text="Merging with UI. What do you think?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2682" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1079" RevisionGUID="15305f4d-ca27-42a6-8ec7-ad033daa8b6d" CreationDate="2011-01-29T17:44:34.780" UserId="389" Text="|discussion|merging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2683" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1080" RevisionGUID="228082d1-4ff5-4cbd-8dce-f1d2e8df6eb1" CreationDate="2011-01-29T22:10:04.040" UserId="47" Text="I don't think it would work for the reasons I outline in [my answer](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/128/user-interface-merge/145#145)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2684" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1081" RevisionGUID="9fe01f2e-2781-4e14-b09a-d7b61698aef0" CreationDate="2011-01-30T18:44:35.243" UserId="8120" Text="OK, so I edited a question in Programmers.  The poster had misspelled a word, and I corrected it.  I do this all the time in Stack Exchange. And... My correction was fewer than six character (because the error was fewer than six characters), and my Edit Summary (&quot;typo&quot;) was fewer than ten.  To me, that's a good and appropriate edit.  But I was encouraged to lengthen the edit, and required to lengthen the summary - that's dumb.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, because I don't yet have edit privileges (or because I wasn't logged in), I got this message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thanks for your edit! This edit will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; only be visible to you until it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; peer reviewed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually (assuming it passes muster), my edit will be visible to me forevermore.  It will be visible ONLY TO ME until it is peer reviewed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2685" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1081" RevisionGUID="9fe01f2e-2781-4e14-b09a-d7b61698aef0" CreationDate="2011-01-30T18:44:35.243" UserId="8120" Text="Please change the edit rules and correct the message for those lacking edit privileges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2686" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1081" RevisionGUID="9fe01f2e-2781-4e14-b09a-d7b61698aef0" CreationDate="2011-01-30T18:44:35.243" UserId="8120" Text="|bug|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2687" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1082" RevisionGUID="2d2ccb5c-a0dd-4678-bcee-49ac317cb948" CreationDate="2011-01-30T22:29:14.783" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="From the [*Edit questions and answers* privilage page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try to make the post substantively better when you edit, not just change a single character. Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All edits bump the question back to the front page, so editing for the sake of correcting a minor typo or spelling mistake is potentially annoying to other users. If your edit isn't substantial enough to avoid the filter, it's probably not worth doing at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In terms of the copyediting you're requesting, it's not necessary at all. It is perfectly valid to say &quot;only be visible to you&quot;: given the context, &quot;only be&quot; modifies &quot;visible to you&quot;. The other way to read it, that your edit will stop being visible to you once approved, doesn't make any sense in this context." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2688" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1082" RevisionGUID="13f1a4af-57eb-458c-b275-276827ebc13d" CreationDate="2011-01-30T22:34:46.193" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited body" Text="From the [*Edit questions and answers* privilege page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try to make the post substantively better when you edit, not just change a single character. Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All edits bump the question back to the front page, so editing for the sake of correcting a minor typo or spelling mistake is potentially annoying to other users. If your edit isn't substantial enough to avoid the filter, it's probably not worth doing at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In terms of the copyediting you're requesting, it's not necessary at all. It is perfectly valid to say &quot;only be visible to you&quot;: given the context, &quot;only be&quot; modifies &quot;visible to you&quot;. The other way to read it, that your edit will stop being visible to you once approved, doesn't make any sense in this context." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2689" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1083" RevisionGUID="fee2dee2-eb3c-4dfb-a8b7-ad9c7fcb0ec2" CreationDate="2011-01-31T06:13:10.263" UserId="4091" Text="Odds are good some questions will come up which no one currently on the site has a (good) answers for. What is the protocol for handling such questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2690" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1083" RevisionGUID="fee2dee2-eb3c-4dfb-a8b7-ad9c7fcb0ec2" CreationDate="2011-01-31T06:13:10.263" UserId="4091" Text="What is the correct course of action when faced with a question that is answerable, but hasn't been answered?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2691" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1083" RevisionGUID="fee2dee2-eb3c-4dfb-a8b7-ad9c7fcb0ec2" CreationDate="2011-01-31T06:13:10.263" UserId="4091" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2692" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1084" RevisionGUID="6a4fe6d4-a064-4c81-8959-27966b3cf630" CreationDate="2011-01-31T06:29:54.280" UserId="37" Text="I am not sure I understand your question -- if you see a question that isn't answered, and you have the expertise or knowledge to answer it ... why wouldn't you?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only time I would refrain from answering a question is when I know it is clearly off-topic, e.g.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2693" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1083" RevisionGUID="783e9790-0d8f-4f61-9dae-f234aac31ba9" CreationDate="2011-01-31T07:17:21.033" UserId="4091" Comment="edited title" Text="How can we help good unanswered questions, which I myself do not know the answer to, get answered?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2694" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1085" RevisionGUID="d4bd14e9-991b-4bff-a397-3063ea33e6cf" CreationDate="2011-01-31T13:02:17.857" UserId="47" Text="You could post a link to the question on your blog, Facebook page or Twitter (for example).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you use the URL from the &quot;link&quot; link then this includes your user id and visits using that URL are tracked. If you get enough visits within a given time period you might get the [&quot;Announcer&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/54/announcer), [&quot;Booster&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/55/booster) or even [&quot;Publicist&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/56/publicist) badge." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2695" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1086" RevisionGUID="705809fb-9f1b-45fc-accb-233271ba6f78" CreationDate="2011-01-31T14:12:00.417" UserId="226" Text="Take, for example, [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41760/which-version-of-net-should-i-learn-to-find-a-job). The last paragraph is an explanation of how the question isn't a duplicate and references meta for justification. This explanation is longer than the question itself. Is it reasonable to edit it out of the question? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm personally not a fan of reading instructions to not close a question, but I can see how sometimes it may be useful to explain the reasoning behind asking a question that at first glance may look like a great candidate for closing. I edited the question this time, since it looks like the &quot;it's not a duplicate&quot; plea was only relevant on SO, but what's the common approach to that sort of thing?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2696" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1086" RevisionGUID="705809fb-9f1b-45fc-accb-233271ba6f78" CreationDate="2011-01-31T14:12:00.417" UserId="226" Text="Editing a question to remove the &quot;do not close this&quot; plea" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2697" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1086" RevisionGUID="705809fb-9f1b-45fc-accb-233271ba6f78" CreationDate="2011-01-31T14:12:00.417" UserId="226" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2698" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1087" RevisionGUID="ab92b35d-77d6-415c-b582-728d65c8fbed" CreationDate="2011-01-31T14:18:40.140" UserId="2654" Text="If a question is obviously asking something different in the original then it should be easily inferred from the question, not by any pleas to not close. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the questions are close, I think it would be fine to have one or two lines detailing why it is different. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2699" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1088" RevisionGUID="f13b9f5a-a874-4e31-9d0a-35d537034943" CreationDate="2011-01-31T14:37:20.330" UserId="1973" Text="At face value it sounds like a bad idea, but since most of UI is as subjective as is allowed on $this. It might add a little color to the site and I wouldn't have to go somewhere else to ask why my program looks like the Bruce Wayne's car stereo." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2700" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1089" RevisionGUID="92936d47-874b-473f-bbf5-4a75d34755ee" CreationDate="2011-01-31T16:25:08.620" UserId="2314" Text="It seems like the reason that these messages get created is that the user who posted the question &quot;knows&quot; it's not a duplicate but is having a hard time to explain why to everyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, the question *itself* should be edited so that it is apparent to other users that the question is not a duplicate.  If it really is a unique question, the body should be able to be worded in a way that makes that pretty obvious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If that can't be done, it is a duplicate, and we should just vote to close, perhaps adding a comment.  Whether the plea is removed or not is kind of irrelevant at that point, but I'd favor removing it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2701" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1089" RevisionGUID="213bd554-e829-4d67-afb0-ee50bd36eab2" CreationDate="2011-01-31T16:46:11.090" UserId="2314" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="It seems like the reason that these messages get created is that the user who posted the question &quot;knows&quot; it's not a duplicate but is finding it hard to explain *why* to everyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, the question *itself* should be edited so that it is apparent to other users that the question is not a duplicate.  If it really is a unique question, the body should be able to be worded in a way that makes that pretty obvious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If that can't be done, it is a duplicate, and we should just vote to close, perhaps adding a comment.  Whether the plea is removed or not is kind of irrelevant at that point, but I'd favor removing it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2702" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1078" RevisionGUID="e58b767c-915d-42b9-ad95-f843c023c0db" CreationDate="2011-02-01T04:20:17.977" UserId="399" Comment="scheduled!; added 134 characters in body" Text="In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session with the candidates.  This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.  I am working with the candidates to find a time that allows the most participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Town Hall Chat will take place Wednesday the 2nd at 11pm UTC, or 6pm EST.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[(view in other timezones)](http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=2&amp;day=2&amp;year=2011&amp;hour=23&amp;min=0&amp;sec=0&amp;p1=0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the details so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I have coordinated with the candidates and done the best I could with a best fit match.  &lt;s&gt;I would like to schedule this towards the beginning of the election phase, so I am looking at the 1st-3rd.  As soon as I coordinate with the existing moderators and candidates, I will edit this post with details on the &quot;when&quot;.&lt;/s&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* The Town Hall Chat will be a one-hour event using our [chat platform](http://chat.stackexchange.com/?tab=site&amp;sort=active&amp;host=programmers.stackexchange.com).  You can register for the event [here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/251/programmers-town-hall-chat?tab=schedule).&#xD;&#xA;* The format will be an open discussion.  Users are encouraged to pose questions to the candidate regarding their thoughts on moderation.&#xD;&#xA;* After the chat session, the transcript of the event will be permanently linked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2703" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1078" RevisionGUID="e58b767c-915d-42b9-ad95-f843c023c0db" CreationDate="2011-02-01T04:20:17.977" UserId="399" Comment="scheduled!; added 134 characters in body" Text="2011 Moderator Elections - Town Hall Chat:  11pm UTC on the 2nd" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2704" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1090" RevisionGUID="a00b1d08-cf8f-4057-a1a9-599cc16afc23" CreationDate="2011-02-01T09:20:34.453" UserId="47" Text="I will make every effort to attend - but as the time is towards the end of my availability &quot;window&quot; I may have to leave early.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you address any questions you have to me directly (using @ChrisF) I will check the transcript and respond either in this answer or in chat if you are still around." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2705" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1091" RevisionGUID="bdc21b4c-a533-4862-b944-d29e3cd5da56" CreationDate="2011-02-01T13:56:49.073" UserId="2654" Text="Unfortunately I'm with Chris, this is right on the edge of my availability due to a [rescheduled meetup](http://www.meetup.com/codeigniter/events/15830595/) that I'm running. In fact this is right in the middle of my transit, so I most likely will be late and have to leave early." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2706" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1092" RevisionGUID="8bd41bbb-b1f7-4863-a0b0-e81ba21b7431" CreationDate="2011-02-01T14:35:24.127" UserId="1973" Text="I'm not going to able to attend, I'll be driving home at the time to avoid driving through a blizzard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not saying it matters because I'm probably not going to win anyway, but a positive number of votes still makes me happy. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2707" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1093" RevisionGUID="dbee6341-9d74-4a9d-9509-3bf7da4f4c19" CreationDate="2011-02-01T16:24:35.243" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The technical aspect of the ban (blacklisting lmgtfy.com links in posts) might not be active, but it's my understanding the practice effectively is banned for all the reasons pointed out in the original [Ban lmgtfy (let me google that for you) links](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/15650/ban-lmgtfy-let-me-google-that-for-you-links) question on Meta Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There isn't a context in which they are helpful or constructive on a site where one of the main sections in the FAQ is [Be Nice](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#benice). If you see it being used, I suggest flagging it for moderator review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2708" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="1092" RevisionGUID="9eaa2043-3750-4c34-bb6f-021a856e747e" CreationDate="2011-02-01T16:31:50.427" UserId="1973" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:1973,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Peter Turner&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="2709" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1094" RevisionGUID="6bede864-a607-4f1c-8de7-606dce287631" CreationDate="2011-02-01T21:01:47.020" UserId="37" Text="OK, I added this to the blacklist for programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2710" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="935" RevisionGUID="1e1a498b-239b-40db-a7aa-83bf65db460d" CreationDate="2011-02-01T21:01:54.367" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|answers|lmgtfy|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2711" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1095" RevisionGUID="a725571b-88c2-4cdf-95fd-5a5f07c39f1b" CreationDate="2011-02-02T13:39:07.407" UserId="101" Text="With the recent addition of queueing edits from users without sufficient rep to edit questions, there is a new notification icon on the tool bar.  The background color of the notification area and the font color of the number of questions in the queue are nearly identical making it impossible to see.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vUGon.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2712" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1095" RevisionGUID="a725571b-88c2-4cdf-95fd-5a5f07c39f1b" CreationDate="2011-02-02T13:39:07.407" UserId="101" Text="Pending edit notification icon change" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2713" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1095" RevisionGUID="a725571b-88c2-4cdf-95fd-5a5f07c39f1b" CreationDate="2011-02-02T13:39:07.407" UserId="101" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2714" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1078" RevisionGUID="1497ec88-3a61-403a-b583-e8c036acfc10" CreationDate="2011-02-02T22:47:40.140" UserId="399" Comment="now!" Text="In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session with the candidates.  This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.  I am working with the candidates to find a time that allows the most participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Town Hall Chat will take place Wednesday the 2nd at 11pm UTC, or 6pm EST.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[**click here to join**](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/251/programmers-town-hall-chat)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[(view in other timezones)](http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=2&amp;day=2&amp;year=2011&amp;hour=23&amp;min=0&amp;sec=0&amp;p1=0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the details so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I have coordinated with the candidates and done the best I could with a best fit match.  &lt;s&gt;I would like to schedule this towards the beginning of the election phase, so I am looking at the 1st-3rd.  As soon as I coordinate with the existing moderators and candidates, I will edit this post with details on the &quot;when&quot;.&lt;/s&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* The Town Hall Chat will be a one-hour event using our [chat platform](http://chat.stackexchange.com/?tab=site&amp;sort=active&amp;host=programmers.stackexchange.com).  You can register for the event [here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/251/programmers-town-hall-chat?tab=schedule).&#xD;&#xA;* The format will be an open discussion.  Users are encouraged to pose questions to the candidate regarding their thoughts on moderation.&#xD;&#xA;* After the chat session, the transcript of the event will be permanently linked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2715" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1078" RevisionGUID="1497ec88-3a61-403a-b583-e8c036acfc10" CreationDate="2011-02-02T22:47:40.140" UserId="399" Comment="now!" Text="2011 Moderator Elections - Town Hall Chat:  11pm UTC on the 2nd (happening now!)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2716" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1096" RevisionGUID="afc19dcc-b7c9-40f4-b1b8-ca29f8fb71bf" CreationDate="2011-02-03T01:02:15.583" UserId="2314" Text="Thanks Rebecca for putting the chat together, it was fun and informative both as a candidate and member of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are my answers to questions I missed either prior to arrival or as the chat went along.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **How will you handle having a vote that is binding?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is, to me, an interesting part of the SO system.  I'm not 100% sure why it is chosen to work this way, but I believe it is because a moderator should be both more careful/accurate and more trusted with their decisions.  So, I will take it that way.  I will make sure I understand the comments or discussion and have explained my actions and responded to any valid concerns.  In addition, I will make sure that I have provided links for more help if the user is new or uniformed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **I have a question. What are your thoughts on the new &quot;Everyone can edit&quot; feature which was recently introduced and is still under development?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    I really believe the statement that one of the key differentiators of SE to other Q&amp;A sites is the edit.  I don't think that having 2000 rep is necessary for any other reason than to prevent abuse of the system.  Many well-meaning users become informed of how the site works very quickly, and so I think this is a good step in the right direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **We all know Programmers had a bit of a rough start. In your opinion, are things good now? Better? Still a lot of things to figure out?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Absolutely better now, though there are a lot of things to still figure out.  The [real questions have answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) blog post was a great step.  That doesn't mean there aren't still things to figure out.  For one, the interpretation of the &quot;6 guidelines for subjective questions&quot; is itself subjective.  It's good guidance, but it makes [enforcement](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) difficult when one user's interpretation is different from another's.  The best we have to deal with that situation now is the voting system, which is the core reason that the binding moderator vote has caused problems in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **If anyone minds, I was stagnant on Programmers for a while. What was the challenge initially?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    If I am remembering correctly the original SE proposal for Programmers was &quot;NPR - Not programming related&quot;.  The emphasis there is on program&lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;ing&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.  However, there was some connotation, partly due to SO history, that it would be `!StackOverflow`, or the site for things programmers wanted to talk about that didn't fit on SO; in other words, a dumping ground.  Since the site was born, it's become apparent that it has a much better purpose than that, which I think is summed up nicely by the [SE tagline](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq): **&quot;Programmers is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective questions on software development.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    As a hypothetical, it's hard to answer this really well without full information on a real scenario. However, I'd hope that well-thought-out and voted-up responses in comments could effectively deal with this situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Question, what do you think is more important: A moderator that interacts well with the community, or one that is willing to put in lots of hard work cleaning flags?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    If you are saying the moderator who puts in a lot of hard work cleaning flags is not interacting well with the community, then what is the point?  The same could be said vice-versa.  So, I think the best that can be said is, a moderator should learn how to interact well and then get to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **When should questions be closed and just left alone vs. when should they be closed and deleted? That is, when do you believe in deleting content?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Delete should be used for content that has no value.  The only difference between a closed question and an open one is that of adding answers.  To me that indicates that the tool is used to indicate that the question is not appropriate for receiving new answers, but existing answers and discussion may still have value of some kind.  The closed question may also serve as a type of marker for previous off-topic precedent, for commonly-revisited questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   I hope this means I will act with increased prudence and care, something I would look forward to!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2717" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1092" RevisionGUID="2c13cca6-c3f9-4b80-87d6-2557fb63e01b" CreationDate="2011-02-03T02:50:48.287" UserId="1973" Comment="added 2766 characters in body" Text="&lt;h3&gt;Answers to Questions I missed&lt;/h3&gt;	&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@moshe RE: Good and Bad Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bad Question:&#xD;&#xA; What is your experience programming Algol in Tuscany in the dark?&#xD;&#xA; This is an amalgamation of every bad and pointless question.  It asks for opinion without context, places it in a particular locale, about an awfully old language, and adding an extra variable (in the dark) that few would find applicable to their daily lives.  A question is going to have to be about that bad for me to consider closing it.   &#xD;&#xA;@moshe&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good Question:&#xD;&#xA; Who should be the patron saint of programmers?  I asked this question because there are other questions about unions, and one said something about guilds and that a guild would be a better way to organize programmers.  And since programmers are often organized under a patron, I thought it was an applicable question.  It got closed as off topic and in my opinion, it would be the most topical sort of thing possible&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@Michael  RE: things you wouldn't want a diamond next to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I regret a few of the things I've said and done on the website.  They'd certainly paint the site in an unfavorable light, assuming someone was going to pay for ads on the site.  But I'm not sure anyone is too concerned about that.  I'd certainly be more apt to bite my tongue, but this still oughta be a fun place and I wouldn't change who I am!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@Justin RE: Speed and thought in moderation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would be slow and methodical in my actions, it is my experience that messing with a question in the first 10 minutes of it's existence can seriously jeopardize or enhance it's ability to get good answers.  I'd never blame the asker for getting awful answers.  The problem with this site is that we're really more peers than experts and good answers on this site are a lot more like good answers in an interview than good answers in an encyclopedia. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@instanceoftom RE: what's your favorite... questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't really see the harm in what is your favorite being asked.   Just substitute 'favorite' for 'best' or 'most award winning' in your mind and get over it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@rebecca Re: mods closing questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other mods would know that I'm in favor of nearly all cheese and mirth questions, so if they unilaterally close questions as off topic / not constructive then they can pretty much expect me to have a problem with that.  Any other close reasons, spam, rants, etc... if they get there first, that's OK.  I wouldn't do anything to jeopardize the harmony of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@Justin  RE: Low turnout.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I'm not surprised, most people don't want to get into the politics.   I've posted a lot of stuff on meta that individually a lot of people on the parent site would have agreed with had they actually read it - but on the meta site, I'm like the biggest bonehead possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@Justin  RE: Bringing users to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I'm not really a popular social networker, so I wouldn't do too much of that.  The one thing I would try to do is not drive new users off the site. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2718" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="1092" RevisionGUID="eb33253e-83ec-4434-90ba-e6405a770059" CreationDate="2011-02-03T02:50:53.137" UserId="1973" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:1973,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Peter Turner&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="2719" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1078" RevisionGUID="b467ab6a-b31d-40eb-96be-440a5e1a597e" CreationDate="2011-02-03T02:51:53.887" UserId="1973" Comment="added link to digest" Text="In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session with the candidates.  This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.  I am working with the candidates to find a time that allows the most participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Town Hall Chat will take place Wednesday the 2nd at 11pm UTC, or 6pm EST.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[**click here to join**](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/251/programmers-town-hall-chat)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[(view in other timezones)](http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=2&amp;day=2&amp;year=2011&amp;hour=23&amp;min=0&amp;sec=0&amp;p1=0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the details so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I have coordinated with the candidates and done the best I could with a best fit match.  &lt;s&gt;I would like to schedule this towards the beginning of the election phase, so I am looking at the 1st-3rd.  As soon as I coordinate with the existing moderators and candidates, I will edit this post with details on the &quot;when&quot;.&lt;/s&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* The Town Hall Chat will be a one-hour event using our [chat platform](http://chat.stackexchange.com/?tab=site&amp;sort=active&amp;host=programmers.stackexchange.com).  You can register for the event [here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/251/programmers-town-hall-chat?tab=schedule).&#xD;&#xA;* The format will be an open discussion.  Users are encouraged to pose questions to the candidate regarding their thoughts on moderation.&#xD;&#xA;* After the chat session, the transcript of the event will be [permanently linked here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/259/programmers-town-hall-digest" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2720" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1097" RevisionGUID="6d42ee14-1c44-4e83-840a-b8788bda88e3" CreationDate="2011-02-03T08:11:32.677" UserId="12611" Text="From what I read in the FAQ, if a question is edited, that can bump it back up to the top of the list.  So if some time has gone by and you have edit privileges, you could clean up the question a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This actually has the added benefit of not just bumping it to the top, but also it helps make sure the question is clear, readable, and easy to understand.  All of these things will help increase the likelihood that more people will be interested in spending time trying to answer it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2721" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1098" RevisionGUID="3a1d4414-468f-4ee7-859f-bd79f0bbc1ab" CreationDate="2011-02-03T08:19:24.940" UserId="12611" Text="The reason I like this site is because of all of the thought provoking questions related to the field of programming.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many questions have involved design, but only when specifically related to programming issues.  Answers to those questions on this site have involved things like &quot;programming != graphics design&quot;.  Additionally, many people have gone to great lengths to point out that the skills involved in design are a completely different set of skills used in programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Merging programming with UI would be like merging with Computer Hardware design, which also involves a completely different set of skills.  Let's draw the line in the sand right here and keep this site limited to just programming." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2722" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1091" RevisionGUID="0c4d9a28-1d9a-4ecc-8e5c-ffbf85d6dc67" CreationDate="2011-02-03T14:41:34.020" UserId="2654" Comment="Added answers to missed questions." Text="Unfortunately I'm with Chris, this is right on the edge of my availability due to a [rescheduled meetup](http://www.meetup.com/codeigniter/events/15830595/) that I'm running. In fact this is right in the middle of my transit, so I most likely will be late and have to leave early.&#xD;&#xA;***&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### How will you work to bring new users to the site? Or is this not the job of a moderator?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course it's part of the job. While I don't employ the normal methods of social networking I do often link to P.SE questions when relevant. Migrating questions more appropriate here from other sites also leads users to Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### How will you handle having a vote that is binding?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Carefully. A binding vote should only be case when you have a clear decision. &quot;Grey&quot; questions should be left up to the rest of the voting community.&#xD;&#xA;***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### I have a question. What are your thoughts on the new &quot;Everyone can edit&quot; feature which was recently introduced and is still under development?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a great feature and will promote more user involvement in the site. It does rather limit the number of rep levels available, but overall I believe it's a positive change. Does this mean there will be more useless edits? Sure, but they can be reviewed and discarded.&#xD;&#xA;***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### We all know Programmers had a bit of a rough start. In your opinion, are things good now? Better? Still a lot of things to figure out?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rough starts (like bad dress rehearsals) give you some good karma. I think it has gotten a lot better. I would like to see more genuinely useful questions on Programming instead of general business / office questions. I think steering Programmers in that direction will be the most beneficial.&#xD;&#xA;***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### If anyone minds, I was stagnant on Programmers for a while. What was the challenge initially?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The challenge was removing the &quot;dumping ground&quot; mentality. Everything that's Off Topic on SO is not on topic on Programmers. The &quot;good subjective&quot; question template wasn't clearly defined. &#xD;&#xA;***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments are comments, they can be abrasive, rude, and even ignorant. If it get's six flags it's removed. If someone flags a comment I find offensive I'll add a flag to it. A steady stream of those comments, along with a steady stream of valuable answers, would *maybe* call for an email to the user. It would be completely dependent on the context of the answers and comments.&#xD;&#xA;***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### When should questions be closed and just left alone vs. when should they be closed and deleted? That is, when do you believe in deleting content?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Delete content that is not, and will not, be useful. &#xD;&#xA;***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel fine. I try to act as I would in person at all times, whether or not I have a diamond next to my name wouldn't change that.&#xD;&#xA;***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Do you prefer a moderator that is quick to make decisions and may make a few mistakes, or a moderator that is slow to act, but doesn't make mistakes? (These mistakes may be reversed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quicker and reversible mistakes. You can be too quick to close or delete, especially with a binding vote. &#xD;&#xA;***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that's all the questions I missed, if I didn't just edit them in here and I'll try my best to provide answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2723" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1099" RevisionGUID="15851a4f-fbcd-4064-a0ed-4ffa2cdb7c63" CreationDate="2011-02-03T14:44:03.627" UserId="2654" Text="See the two attached screenshots.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/oqX3c.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Jc6mI.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LODex.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2724" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1099" RevisionGUID="15851a4f-fbcd-4064-a0ed-4ffa2cdb7c63" CreationDate="2011-02-03T14:44:03.627" UserId="2654" Text="Edit (and other bars) have a bad background" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2725" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1099" RevisionGUID="15851a4f-fbcd-4064-a0ed-4ffa2cdb7c63" CreationDate="2011-02-03T14:44:03.627" UserId="2654" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2726" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1095" RevisionGUID="4ae1f94b-e91e-42b7-ad69-e4f69a6f7e8a" CreationDate="2011-02-03T17:24:14.187" UserId="101" Comment="added 29 characters in body" Text="With the recent addition of queueing edits from users without sufficient rep to edit questions, there is a new notification icon on the tool bar.  The background color of the notification area and the font color of the number of questions in the queue are nearly identical making it impossible to see.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Forgot to add:  Win7/IE8.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vUGon.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2727" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1100" RevisionGUID="54a727c4-d248-4eb1-9365-5e18ad865e74" CreationDate="2011-02-03T18:57:58.503" UserId="1685" Text="the fix will be in the next deployment." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2728" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1101" RevisionGUID="5dd265d2-3b1b-455d-a503-bc7481108156" CreationDate="2011-02-03T18:59:01.797" UserId="1685" Text="The fix will be in the next deployment." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2729" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1099" RevisionGUID="db51f33c-987c-4125-9323-62b4b647b3f8" CreationDate="2011-02-03T20:49:34.837" UserId="1685" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2730" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1095" RevisionGUID="cab986c0-8285-4ef5-85ca-ebcbbba16951" CreationDate="2011-02-03T20:58:11.503" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2731" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1102" RevisionGUID="f07373cd-ba70-4620-8a7f-46f4a4af8730" CreationDate="2011-02-03T21:40:38.550" UserId="13181" Text="I just got a notification that I earned the Tag Editor privilege. Problem is I don't know which tag it was for. Is there a way to determine at a glance what tags you have Editor privileges for?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2732" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1102" RevisionGUID="f07373cd-ba70-4620-8a7f-46f4a4af8730" CreationDate="2011-02-03T21:40:38.550" UserId="13181" Text="Which tag did I just earn Tag Editor privilege for?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2733" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1102" RevisionGUID="f07373cd-ba70-4620-8a7f-46f4a4af8730" CreationDate="2011-02-03T21:40:38.550" UserId="13181" Text="|feature-request|support|tag-wikis|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2734" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1103" RevisionGUID="300823af-a4c0-41fc-b005-1bd88594f020" CreationDate="2011-02-03T23:53:38.813" UserId="47" Text="You misunderstand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [tag-wiki edit **privilege**](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit-tag-wiki) is earned at 1,500 rep - which you've just past. This gives you the ability to create and edit tag wikis - short pieces of information that explain what the tag is about. It's not a badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be able to edit tag wikis:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; .. editors must also either&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * be in the top 20 answerers for the tag, or&#xD;&#xA;* have a total score of 100 or more for the tag on non CW questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will get the badge on your first edit to a tag-wiki body and it will be linked to from your profile page. See [which one I got it for on Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/badges/254/tag-editor?userid=59303)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2735" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1103" RevisionGUID="9218788c-5a4f-46de-bbca-cb8a572608a9" CreationDate="2011-02-04T00:09:31.317" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="You misunderstand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [tag-wiki edit **privilege**](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit-tag-wiki) is earned at 1,500 rep - which you've just past. This gives you the ability to create and edit tag wikis - short pieces of information that explain what the tag is about. It's not a badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be able to edit tag wikis:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; .. editors must also either&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * be in the top 20 answerers for the tag, or&#xD;&#xA;* have a total score of 100 or more for the tag on non CW questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually this isn't strictly true any more. If you are in the top 20 or have a score of 100 you will be able to edit as normal, but any user can propose an edit to tag wikis in the same way that they can propose edits to questions and answers. The edit must be approved by a user that meets the above criteria though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look in your profile to see which tags you have a score of 100 or more, and check the top users page ([C# Top Users](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/c%23/topusers)) where you'll see if you are in the top 20. You are currently 8th - so you can edit that tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will get the badge on your first edit to a tag-wiki body and it will be linked to from your profile page. See [which one I got it for on Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/badges/254/tag-editor?userid=59303)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2736" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1104" RevisionGUID="a47d7aab-ace2-4656-89a6-b1150df187fe" CreationDate="2011-02-04T03:39:59.677" UserId="11259" Text="I just lost about 226 reputation within past 2 hours or so...what is going here?  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2737" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1104" RevisionGUID="a47d7aab-ace2-4656-89a6-b1150df187fe" CreationDate="2011-02-04T03:39:59.677" UserId="11259" Text="Was there a rep recalculation? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2738" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1104" RevisionGUID="a47d7aab-ace2-4656-89a6-b1150df187fe" CreationDate="2011-02-04T03:39:59.677" UserId="11259" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2739" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1105" RevisionGUID="d5a239c8-e907-4ef1-b2c3-9ec3a75981d0" CreationDate="2011-02-04T10:01:10.393" UserId="47" Text="Someone probably thought that they were doing you a favour by up-voting a lot of your answers in quick succession. This would have triggered the vote fraud mechanism which would have removed the votes and in turn triggered a reputation recalculation. This will result in a loss of points - probably greater than the up-votes you received due to deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other, less charitable, alternative is that you had a sock-puppet account which was up-voting your main account. This was detected, the sock-puppet account deleted and with it its votes - which again would trigger a reputation recalculation. **However, I haven't seen any evidence of this so I've only included it here for completeness sake.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2740" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1106" RevisionGUID="070779a4-7a9d-4338-81c2-247075ef086e" CreationDate="2011-02-04T18:29:22.423" UserId="226" Text="I see a &quot;dismiss&quot; link beside a flag, but I don't have the privileges to dismiss flags. When I click on it, I get the yellow pop-up shown in the screenshot below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![screenshot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xHE2Z.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2741" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1106" RevisionGUID="070779a4-7a9d-4338-81c2-247075ef086e" CreationDate="2011-02-04T18:29:22.423" UserId="226" Text="I see a link to dismiss a flag when I don't have the privileges to do so" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2742" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1106" RevisionGUID="070779a4-7a9d-4338-81c2-247075ef086e" CreationDate="2011-02-04T18:29:22.423" UserId="226" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2743" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1107" RevisionGUID="870b552f-1a2b-4c52-98d3-b8cc0fdb0364" CreationDate="2011-02-04T19:28:04.247" UserId="3045" Text="On Stack Overflow, at some point my rep reached a level where I could see deleted questions and answers. They're just grayed out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On this site, I have very low rep; so I'm sure I can't see deleted questions in general. But what about my *own* question? Can I still see it, if/once I delete it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2744" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1107" RevisionGUID="870b552f-1a2b-4c52-98d3-b8cc0fdb0364" CreationDate="2011-02-04T19:28:04.247" UserId="3045" Text="If I delete my own question, can I still see it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2745" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1107" RevisionGUID="870b552f-1a2b-4c52-98d3-b8cc0fdb0364" CreationDate="2011-02-04T19:28:04.247" UserId="3045" Text="|discussion|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2746" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1108" RevisionGUID="635a051c-833c-473b-ad2e-58b0a71f81f4" CreationDate="2011-02-04T19:36:38.923" UserId="2654" Text="# Yes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should be able to view your own deleted questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2747" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1104" RevisionGUID="5f908a77-ec1f-4ef7-8e0f-bfd773aaf843" CreationDate="2011-02-04T23:23:19.820" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2748" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1109" RevisionGUID="0ca4e89d-b127-407e-a9d4-d201f9f695f3" CreationDate="2011-02-05T04:04:41.837" UserId="6385" Text="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3st-Hai1y54&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of good and fairly specific questions on P.SE end up getting answers that are witty, abstract, agreeable and popular -- but have no substance, and don't really answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't like to be a buzzkill, but I really don't think we at P.SE need to be reminded that [whitespace is good][1] or that [we don't like closed-minded employers][2] or that [stopping learning isn't conducive to learning][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, there can be wisdom in tautologies, but they don't answer the question, and when said plainly, their messages are quite mundane.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that simply down-voting them isn't enough, because popular answers have a lot of votes, even if they're not necessarily good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there ways when you ask a question to discourage these kinds of answers? Or is there anything policy-wise that could be done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17305/how-do-you-use-blank-lines-in-your-code/17306#17306&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43771/what-tool-would-make-you-turn-down-a-job-because-you-couldnt-use-it/43960#43960&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42260/learning-to-be-a-good-developer-what-parts-can-you-skip-over/42271#42271" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2749" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1109" RevisionGUID="0ca4e89d-b127-407e-a9d4-d201f9f695f3" CreationDate="2011-02-05T04:04:41.837" UserId="6385" Text="How to discourage crowd-pleasing non-answers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2750" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1109" RevisionGUID="0ca4e89d-b127-407e-a9d4-d201f9f695f3" CreationDate="2011-02-05T04:04:41.837" UserId="6385" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2751" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1109" RevisionGUID="e3bafca8-569a-44ce-b993-ee269ab435cd" CreationDate="2011-02-05T04:19:29.250" UserId="6385" Comment="edited body; edited tags; deleted 2 characters in body" Text="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3st-Hai1y54&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of good and fairly specific questions on P.SE end up getting answers that are witty, abstract, agreeable and popular -- but have no substance, and don't really answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't like to be a buzzkill, but I really don't think we at P.SE need to be reminded that [whitespace is good][1] or that [we don't like closed-minded employers][2] or that [stopping learning isn't conducive to learning][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, there can be wisdom in tautologies, but they seldom answer questions, and when said plainly, their messages are quite mundane.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that simply down-voting them isn't enough, because popular answers have a lot of votes, even if they're not necessarily good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there ways when you ask a question to discourage these kinds of answers? Or is there anything policy-wise that could be done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17305/how-do-you-use-blank-lines-in-your-code/17306#17306&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43771/what-tool-would-make-you-turn-down-a-job-because-you-couldnt-use-it/43775#43775&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42260/learning-to-be-a-good-developer-what-parts-can-you-skip-over/42271#42271" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2752" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1109" RevisionGUID="e3bafca8-569a-44ce-b993-ee269ab435cd" CreationDate="2011-02-05T04:19:29.250" UserId="6385" Comment="edited body; edited tags; deleted 2 characters in body" Text="|discussion|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2753" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1110" RevisionGUID="b29effcf-5a2e-4336-82ff-b2128a266740" CreationDate="2011-02-05T04:29:24.550" UserId="37" Text="Demand people *back up their claims with data*, then:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.** Opinion isn’t all bad, so long as it’s backed up with something other than “because I’m an expert”, or “because I said so”, or “just because”. Use your specific experiences to back up your opinions, as above, or point to some research you’ve done on the web or elsewhere that provides evidence to support your claims. We like you. We want to believe you. But like wikipedia itself, {{citation needed}}. And good subjective questions make this clear from the outset: back it up!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/HGFeQ.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2757" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1112" RevisionGUID="12f898ea-a824-4907-96bc-faec7386da60" CreationDate="2011-02-05T08:45:26.050" UserId="12611" Text="From that [same blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/), reads the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;`2. Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers. The best subjective questions inspire your peers to share their actual experiences, not just post a mindless one-liner or cartoon in hopes of being rewarded with upvotes for being merely “first.” Sharing an experience takes at least one paragraph; ideally several paragraphs. If I’m asking about how to bake cookies, don’t give me a list of grocery items: milk. butter. vanilla. eggs. There is virtually nothing I can learn from a short, static list of grocery items that make up a recipe. Instead, tell me what happened the last time you made cookies from that recipe! Share your detailed experiences, so that we all might learn from them.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the short one-liners we're seeing just don't meet this guideline.  My suggestion is that no one upvote the one-liners, unless it's the only answer you agree with.  My suggestion is to support those who put thought into their answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as &quot;backing it up with references&quot;, that's a bit of a contradiction in some cases.  Some questions fit guideline #2 in that it's about `your experiences` and not what is on Wikipedia.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I made chocolate chip cookies and I used dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate and they tasted better, that's my experience, and [I'm not famous enough to have a Wikipedia article about me](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest) citing my taste in chocolate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In summary, I think it's okay to insist on references if the question calls for it, but that rule will clearly not apply in every situation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2761" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1113" RevisionGUID="1af48b64-617e-4a05-8e9e-faab14190ddb" CreationDate="2011-02-05T12:24:10.557" UserDisplayName="alex" Text="I answered a question, got 4 upvotes, yet my rep is only 103. Here's a screenshot of what I see on my profile page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![WTF][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It says it's 103 on the bar above, yet 149 just below my profile image. What's going on here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/HTNGz.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2762" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1113" RevisionGUID="1af48b64-617e-4a05-8e9e-faab14190ddb" CreationDate="2011-02-05T12:24:10.557" UserDisplayName="alex" Text="What's my real rep?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2763" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1113" RevisionGUID="1af48b64-617e-4a05-8e9e-faab14190ddb" CreationDate="2011-02-05T12:24:10.557" UserDisplayName="alex" Text="|bug|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2764" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1114" RevisionGUID="2e9847a8-c933-4a8d-bc3e-8bc4b0c5bb4f" CreationDate="2011-02-05T09:18:20.603" UserId="12697" Text="Do *stackoverflow* and *stackexchange* provide their **wallpaper**? I enjoy the style of stackoverflow site, but couldn't find the wallpaper." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2765" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1114" RevisionGUID="2e9847a8-c933-4a8d-bc3e-8bc4b0c5bb4f" CreationDate="2011-02-05T09:18:20.603" UserId="12697" Text="Where can I get wallpaper of Stackoverflow and Stackexchange?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2766" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1114" RevisionGUID="2e9847a8-c933-4a8d-bc3e-8bc4b0c5bb4f" CreationDate="2011-02-05T09:18:20.603" UserId="12697" Text="|support|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2767" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1114" RevisionGUID="2ab6c644-89b7-43c2-ac67-66ccbc57351d" CreationDate="2011-02-05T12:24:20.727" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44019/where-can-i-get-wallpaper-of-stackoverflow-and-stackexchange" Text="" />
  <row Id="2768" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1115" RevisionGUID="6fb380cf-b8c7-457b-abf0-445f4679345c" CreationDate="2011-02-05T16:07:48.633" UserId="15283" Text="It appears you have two different accounts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/15794/alex  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/10538/alex&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In your picture, it doesn't show the 'private' fields 'Real Name' or 'email'.  That indicates you are looking at a profile that is not the same as the one you are logged in as.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A friendly neighborhood moderator should be able to merge these for you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2769" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1043" RevisionGUID="2620599e-0aee-488d-a8b0-a5f7d361ed5f" CreationDate="2011-02-05T21:39:04.683" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2770" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1116" RevisionGUID="5b8c8710-91b1-4b12-9856-8dbea55674a4" CreationDate="2011-02-05T21:43:03.600" UserId="47" Text="I'll merge account [15794](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/15794/alex) into [10538](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/10538/alex) as the latter has your answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Account 15794 uses a Yahoo OpenID, 10583 a Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure you log into the Google account and edit both profiles to indicate this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Post a comment on this answer so I know you've done it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2771" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1043" RevisionGUID="591aea82-c3f3-4730-b39c-c4d2621526d7" CreationDate="2011-02-05T21:48:11.970" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2772" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1106" RevisionGUID="b8d280d3-1011-43bc-885c-3629d0542b85" CreationDate="2011-02-06T10:34:57.833" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2773" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1117" RevisionGUID="6360df3c-c4d5-46a7-88f8-df75124a724a" CreationDate="2011-02-06T10:35:17.833" UserId="37" Text="This should now be fixed. (And no, I don't mean because you were elected a moderator..)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2774" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1113" RevisionGUID="42c7d20f-9612-42f4-881f-2503bd9858e5" CreationDate="2011-02-06T17:14:23.750" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2775" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1118" RevisionGUID="735ce2f5-e52c-49fe-976d-456b389fe67f" CreationDate="2011-02-06T20:22:19.217" UserDisplayName="user8685" Text="Seems you didn't like my rather open-minded answer... :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's talk serious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) I'd be very much interested in writing good elaborate answers. I actually have done so on numerous occasions. You know what? **People don't read them.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can't tell you how many times I wrote single-line answers to get numerous votes and immediately after adding &quot;substance&quot; as you call it the voting ended up abruptly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I actually learned this tactic from seasoned high-rep users (40K+) on SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People just don't want to read the stuff. I can't do anything to change them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I see folks don't read my answers, I have no motivation of writing them really.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the very least I can amuse myself by seeing numbers tick (rep growing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) The other reason is that by the time you finished writing an elaborate answer there will be 10+ single-lined answers voted up to the heaven. **Nobody will notice yours.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who's to blame if the site is all about being the [Fastest Gun in the West][1]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose the blame is partially on the site creator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been COUNTLESS proposals on how to change the operational model to realign to the quality rather than to quantity and mass. They were all turned down. The creator is very stubborn and doesn't want to listen to input.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even I proposed an improvement - lock out answers display for the first N minutes to give everyone sufficient time to contribute *quality* answers - I got laughed at.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Just tried to locate that old question of mine - seems it was deleted. So much for user voice.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That other trick with limiting reputation growth to 200 per day only results in newcomers desperately trying to reach the elder by contributing an insane amount of answers, quality evidently suffers here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also see with all that stackexchange expansion that the creators do not concern themselves with the conceptual problems - it's now all about growth, expansion, consumption of markets, going public and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At that time I'm starting to hope somebody will start a different Q&amp;A site - with the right priorities and with the right attitude.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2776" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1119" RevisionGUID="16c33c48-ef06-4ed8-949f-54c77cdbc483" CreationDate="2011-02-07T01:09:30.583" UserId="2314" Text="Every once in a while there seems to be a question which starts bringing in tons of traffic from an external link.  For example, I've noticed that the question [Why do programmers write applications and then make them free?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3233/why-do-programmers-write-applications-and-then-make-them-free) has brought in around **33k views today alone**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've seen a lot of cool new tools added such as the (automatic?) link-posting to Twitter (that shows up in the history, which is really cool), as well as the Publicist badges and popups, and the Facebook/Twitter buttons (some of these may even be responsible for the traffic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it would be pretty cool to get the reverse of these new tools and show those of us who are regulars of the site where all the new traffic is coming from.  It could work by checking if the majority of the views are coming in from an external referrer.  If it was, it could post the top referrer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have no idea if this is possible or if SE would want to publicize this information.  Any thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2777" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1119" RevisionGUID="16c33c48-ef06-4ed8-949f-54c77cdbc483" CreationDate="2011-02-07T01:09:30.583" UserId="2314" Text="Suggestion: Top referrers for popular questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2778" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1119" RevisionGUID="16c33c48-ef06-4ed8-949f-54c77cdbc483" CreationDate="2011-02-07T01:09:30.583" UserId="2314" Text="|feature-request|popular-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2779" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1120" RevisionGUID="32d8f93c-0241-4ad4-9594-8df48df4a4e7" CreationDate="2011-02-07T06:16:53.077" UserId="12611" Text="I think it would encourage others to publish links on Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms.  Not everyone will do this if they don't see the benefit, and seeing the benefit might encourage me to do so.  I wouldn't want to come off like a spammer, so I'd have to know that there is a target market for what I'm publishing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2780" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1121" RevisionGUID="bda4e60c-ff66-4e41-90a6-18a81ac6916c" CreationDate="2011-02-07T23:56:50.253" UserId="16275" Text="In the FAQ, in clearly states&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions can I ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in ***subjective questions*** on software development. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet, later, it states&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions should I not ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, ***avoid asking subjective questions*** where...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does that sound a little... off to anyone else?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2781" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1121" RevisionGUID="bda4e60c-ff66-4e41-90a6-18a81ac6916c" CreationDate="2011-02-07T23:56:50.253" UserId="16275" Text="Faq clarification" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2782" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1121" RevisionGUID="bda4e60c-ff66-4e41-90a6-18a81ac6916c" CreationDate="2011-02-07T23:56:50.253" UserId="16275" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2783" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1122" RevisionGUID="6abf5ba7-b5f3-4b7a-b1cb-500d329ca0be" CreationDate="2011-02-08T00:44:57.070" UserId="2654" Text="We are voiding a certain class of subjective questions. Namely the kinds listed there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA; * your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA; * there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA; * we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA; * it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2784" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1119" RevisionGUID="5a517f1d-61fc-468d-9315-e26ca7a4299d" CreationDate="2011-02-08T02:30:04.980" UserId="2314" Comment="Add reddit link" Text="Every once in a while there seems to be a question which starts bringing in tons of traffic from an external link.  For example, I've noticed that the question [Why do programmers write applications and then make them free?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3233/why-do-programmers-write-applications-and-then-make-them-free) has brought in around **33k views today alone**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've seen a lot of cool new tools added such as the (automatic?) link-posting to Twitter (that shows up in the history, which is really cool), as well as the Publicist badges and popups, and the Facebook/Twitter buttons (some of these may even be responsible for the traffic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it would be pretty cool to get the reverse of these new tools and show those of us who are regulars of the site where all the new traffic is coming from.  It could work by checking if the majority of the views are coming in from an external referrer.  If it was, it could post the top referrer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have no idea if this is possible or if SE would want to publicize this information.  Any thoughts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Edit] And apparently it was *&quot;reddited&quot;*: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/fg8gt/why_do_programmers_write_apps_and_then_make_them/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2785" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1123" RevisionGUID="2773e06c-bf3d-4496-b076-60827167c749" CreationDate="2011-02-08T04:52:13.693" UserId="37" Text="Well, there's [good subjective, and there's bad subjective][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, this is a subjective question that works:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm building a database [for some specific reason, include concrete details here] and I'm not sure whether I should fully normalize it. Does it make sense in my specific situation, and why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some subjective forms of this question that do *not* work:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What's your preferred database storage form, normalized, denormalized, or something else?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I denormalize all my databases for speed, how about you?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I feel like denormalization is too risky, do you agree?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What if databases always forced you to fully normalize?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Normalization is a huge waste of time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you see the difference?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2786" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1124" RevisionGUID="5d27aaa1-ab23-4c98-b5ae-9098b858edaf" CreationDate="2011-02-08T16:42:15.880" UserId="15464" Text="Being quite new to Stack Exchange, I don't know what the general opinion is about asking a question, based on a blog post of yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For Stack Overflow, where only non-subjective questions are allowed, the 'need' for this is low. On Programmers.SE however, it's tempting to attract a wider audience on a certain opinion you wrote about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course I feel that the [six guidelines for good subjective questions][1] should still apply, as the point would be to get more constructive feedback which is hard to get just by google traffic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't there be any formulated guidelines? Is it allowed to just pose the question with a brief summary of the blog post, and link to it for further detail?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2787" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1124" RevisionGUID="5d27aaa1-ab23-4c98-b5ae-9098b858edaf" CreationDate="2011-02-08T16:42:15.880" UserId="15464" Text="Is linking to a blog post of yourself to get more constructive opinions a bad practice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2788" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1124" RevisionGUID="5d27aaa1-ab23-4c98-b5ae-9098b858edaf" CreationDate="2011-02-08T16:42:15.880" UserId="15464" Text="|discussion|questions|hyperlinks|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2789" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1125" RevisionGUID="0ebaae16-1d41-4952-93e6-e93304681366" CreationDate="2011-02-08T16:57:41.300" UserId="2654" Text="# Yes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would most likely be considered spam and self promotion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is answered in the blog post, what is the point of the question? If not, then there is little reason to link to the post itself when asking the question. The best way to get constructive feedback on a blog post would be to write good content and attract more readers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2790" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1126" RevisionGUID="a923df85-7986-4992-8184-cc2190bfca6b" CreationDate="2011-02-08T17:25:50.293" UserId="37" Text="I think this is fine so long as&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It actually answers the question (obviously.. right?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. You quote your blog and elaborate a tiny bit, don't make it one giant quote with a link, give us some additional explanation to go with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Your posts aren't *all* of this form, that is, if you are only here to post links to your blog.. that's weird. And would be discouraged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, go for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;edit: oops you meant for *questions*. Well that's even better actually, and les risky, since you're using the blog post as a platform to start with a well formulated question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just make **sure** you check http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask first to be sure you aren't running into the common pitfalls of discouraged subjectivity." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2791" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1127" RevisionGUID="2a2472fb-5b92-4595-8228-395c5861b860" CreationDate="2011-02-08T17:37:34.173" UserId="6415" Text="I'm not sure if it's just me, but I've been seeing a lot of answers that are being posted in comments. Nothing wrong with that, per se, but I would like to be able to upvote that as an answer that gives the commenter more rep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Example](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/45510/6415)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2792" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1127" RevisionGUID="2a2472fb-5b92-4595-8228-395c5861b860" CreationDate="2011-02-08T17:37:34.173" UserId="6415" Text="Are answers being posted as comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2793" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1127" RevisionGUID="2a2472fb-5b92-4595-8228-395c5861b860" CreationDate="2011-02-08T17:37:34.173" UserId="6415" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2794" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1128" RevisionGUID="22ce403e-59b8-4e2f-910e-68c9523390f3" CreationDate="2011-02-08T17:39:25.397" UserId="2654" Text="Encouraging them to post it as an answer is an excellent way to remedy this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2795" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1129" RevisionGUID="d7e10f69-8740-46f4-b4c3-d03440af4942" CreationDate="2011-02-08T18:07:22.027" UserId="11259" Text="I frequently use comments as answers if I think that the question doesn't meet our guild-lines, but I feel like responding anyway. However, I usually mention that I don't think it meets the guild-lines in my comment.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2796" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1130" RevisionGUID="e991a440-e084-490c-9587-2373cb4f66c4" CreationDate="2011-02-08T18:46:58.477" UserId="2344" Text="It might be better if the &quot;subjective&quot; in the second example was removed, leaving &quot;avoid asking questions where...&quot;.  I'd suggest removing that word." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2797" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1131" RevisionGUID="f0e2bfa8-daca-4e3e-9db4-0dd1fc8f6af2" CreationDate="2011-02-08T21:23:27.727" UserId="2314" Text="This is definitely an  &quot;**it depends**.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For answers, Jeff's answer is great.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For questions, though, the danger is treading to close to [this guideline](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Avoid** asking subjective questions where …  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have posted a blog on the subject, there's a good chance the blog post already drew some conclusions.  And, there's also a good chance you feel passionately about it, since no one blogs about things they don't care about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you've already drawn conclusions, possibly passionately, it's **really** hard to turn that into a real question that isn't just a rant you want people to respond to.  But, if you can, then by all means, post it up and get opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My sense is that most posters and voters can tell the difference between someone who is really asking and those who are just looking for validation or a pat-on-the-back.  The value (and amount) of the responses you get will probably go down if users feel that you already know the answer.  (Unless it's a hot-button issue, in which case you may get a ton of votes and answers anyway.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. do you have a blog article for this question? :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2798" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1129" RevisionGUID="cf865932-12df-4e23-b606-6cd31ce5c434" CreationDate="2011-02-08T22:24:35.787" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="I frequently use comments as answers if I think that the question doesn't meet our guidelines, but I feel like responding anyway. However, I usually mention that I don't think it meets the guidelines in my comment.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2799" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1132" RevisionGUID="06950957-c8a4-43df-9a01-221be2a15bc3" CreationDate="2011-02-08T23:14:46.817" UserId="8888" Text="**Short version:**  Is this the same as a question &quot;without a definitive answer&quot;?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Long version:**  Personally, I understood &quot;subjective&quot; to mean, &quot;without a definitive answer&quot;, yet I keep seeing questions on this subjective question site closed because they lack definitive answers.  I understand the requirement that not all answers be equally valid to mean that there should be some reasonably obvious criteria for determining if a certain answer is &quot;more valid&quot; than another answer.  This could be &quot;correctness&quot;, but since subjective questions often defy correct / incorrect assessments, I would think it could also be some other reasonable criteria, such as &quot;thought-provoking&quot;, which maybe should be specified in the question.  I think a good litmus test for this is, &quot;Could you downvote something for being less valid, and support your claim based on the question?&quot;  E.g., &quot;Down-voted because this is common sense and not thought-provoking.&quot;  Does this seem like a correct understanding?  Can you provide me with a better interpretation, so I don't run afoul of this rule again?  Should this be clarified in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Commentary:**  I suspect a non-official reason people understand this requirement as &quot;needs a definitive answer&quot; is that it stops threads where everyone has something to contribute that can easily grow very large.  People enjoy these questions, perhaps partly because everyone can contribute meaningfully, so more people read and respond and they get a lot of votes.  While I understand frustration when this is blatant &quot;rep-farming&quot;, I think there is at least one class of questions which are best answered by accumulating a lot of answers and letting the cream rise to the top.  This becomes a sort of process of &quot;community inference&quot;, and lets the community explore topics that maybe aren't yet understood well enough to have a &quot;right answer&quot; yet, or maybe are too complex to ever be fully answered. While I agree that the reputation system has an undesirable result for these questions, I feel like the problem is with the SE system and not with the questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am especially frustrated because I find that many software test questions fall into this category, and right now programmers.se seems to be the best site available for these questions (I've voted for the [QA Area 51 proposal][1], but it's stuck in the &quot;commit&quot; phase).  Lots of the work that testers do requires inferential analysis, and being able to draw from wider ranges of experiences with questions like these is a *big* help!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Disclaimer:**  I did post [a question][2] that falls into this category.  My goal wasn't to farm rep, and I considered if it was appropriate to mark 'community wiki', but decided against it based on [this meta thread on the purpose of 'community wiki'][3].  I was frustrated when it was closed but glad to see discussion over the closure (followed by it being re-opened), and thought the discussion was *really* good and the general topic deserved a full thread on meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2241/software-quality-assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45594/what-have-you-learned-from-the-bugs-you-helped-discover-and-fix&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2800" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1132" RevisionGUID="06950957-c8a4-43df-9a01-221be2a15bc3" CreationDate="2011-02-08T23:14:46.817" UserId="8888" Text="What are questions where &quot;every answer is equally valid&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2801" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1132" RevisionGUID="06950957-c8a4-43df-9a01-221be2a15bc3" CreationDate="2011-02-08T23:14:46.817" UserId="8888" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2802" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1133" RevisionGUID="837d468e-0338-4e7e-8720-17dce6c72173" CreationDate="2011-02-09T00:45:07.643" UserId="11259" Text="Not having a definitive answer and not having an answer at all are two different things. One type of question that is discouraged at this site are &quot;poll&quot; questions. If I remember correctly the first rendition of your question was something along the lines of &quot;what is the most outrageous bug you have ever encountered?&quot; There is no answer to this question subjective or objective it is just a survey so to speak.   " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2803" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1134" RevisionGUID="cfd25f5a-5a6e-41dd-945d-68c5a9100a6d" CreationDate="2011-02-09T00:55:21.547" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="It's a common misconception that *subjective* means &quot;without a definitive answer&quot;: in reality, subjective means &quot;valid based on one perspective&quot;. This is in contrast to *objective*, which is &quot;valid for all perspectives&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So a subjective question that's interesting and useful for others is one that gets answers that are based on people's experiences: it's useful to hear how other programmers have handled certain problems because their experience is useful knowledge. That is, for any one problem a programmer might face, other programmers have likely had to deal with the same problem and can share their perspective on how they handled it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, this is in contrast to a site like Stack Overflow, where there's very likely one *real* way to solve a problem, and it's likely any competent programmer will give you the same answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key factor in both a site like Programmers.SE and Stack Overflow is that questions solve real problems: whether the answer to the problem is an objective answer or a subjective answer based on one person's experience. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this end, the Stack Exchange network is not a discussion board: it's not your role, as question-asker, to ask thought-provoking questions. Your role, as question-asker, is to ask a question you personally need the answer to. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's nice that you want to contribute to the community, but questions that just create lists of things because that's a question you think would be a nice, chatty question to ask is filler: it takes up the space of some other question that a person asked because they actually need some help with a problem they're having. Creating those types of questions actually hinders the community and makes the site a less useful place for people needing help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to have a place where you can just shoot the sh— with other programmers and do community-building activities like asking thought-provoking questions, I humbly suggest setting up a PHPBB instance or seeking out the numerous existing programming communities on the web and in your area." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2804" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1134" RevisionGUID="e1f4777a-1126-404e-a14f-d37481b4b9dd" CreationDate="2011-02-09T01:00:31.507" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 210 characters in body" Text="It's a common misconception that *subjective* means &quot;without a definitive answer&quot;: in reality, subjective means &quot;valid based on one perspective&quot;. This is in contrast to *objective*, which is &quot;valid for all perspectives&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So a subjective question that's interesting and useful for others is [one that gets answers that are based on people's experiences](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/): it's useful to hear how other programmers have handled certain problems because their experience is useful knowledge. That is, for any one problem a programmer might face, other programmers have likely had to deal with the same problem and can share their perspective on how they handled it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, this is in contrast to a site like Stack Overflow, where there's very likely one *real* way to solve a problem, and it's likely any competent programmer will give you the same answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key factor in both a site like Programmers.SE and Stack Overflow is [that questions solve real problems](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/): whether the answer to the problem is an objective answer or a subjective answer based on one person's experience. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this end, the Stack Exchange network is not a discussion board: it's not your role, as question-asker, to ask thought-provoking questions. Your role, as question-asker, is to ask a question you personally need the answer to. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's nice that you want to contribute to the community, but questions that just create lists of things because that's a question you think would be a nice, chatty question to ask is filler: it takes up the space of some other question that a person asked because they actually need some help with a problem they're having. Creating those types of questions actually [hinders the community](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows) and makes the site a less useful place for people needing help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to have a place where you can just shoot the sh— with other programmers and do community-building activities like asking thought-provoking questions, I humbly suggest setting up a [PHPBB](http://phpbb.com) instance or seeking out the numerous existing programming communities on the web and in your area." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2805" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1133" RevisionGUID="47e8327e-cd05-4eb7-9d01-18cc1ad1df88" CreationDate="2011-02-09T01:03:20.890" UserId="11259" Comment="added 493 characters in body; edited body" Text="Not having a definitive answer and not having an answer at all are two different things. One type of question that is discouraged at this site are &quot;poll&quot; questions. If I remember correctly the first rendition of your question was something along the lines of &quot;what is the most outrageous bug you have ever encountered?&quot; There is no answer to this question subjective or objective it is just a survey so to speak. One criteria that might help you to evaluate the legitimacy of question is does the question ask how to solve a problem or is the question asking for advice that applies to a wide audience. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would personally argue that your question even it is finally rendition could use some editing. I know what you are trying to ask, but I still think that it is incomplete. I think the more appropriate question would be &quot;How has/does discovering and fixing bugs increased your skills as a developer?&quot; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2806" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1135" RevisionGUID="e648593e-0d8e-479a-9438-931a910c9001" CreationDate="2011-02-09T02:39:10.667" UserId="3" Text="Comments as answers are becoming more common on some sites. This is a problem because once a comment-based answer is posted, most users will not feel compelled to provide a proper answer. The question then remains squarely in the 'unanswered' column. Besides, comments-as-answers cannot be be vetted, and voted on properly so the best answers *don't* always appear on the top.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comment authors should be asked to post their comment as an answer. Failing that, comment-based answers are fair game. Post the answer yourself and flag the errant for removal. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2807" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1136" RevisionGUID="f117421d-6701-4995-a2e5-08425ffc98f4" CreationDate="2011-02-09T03:36:23.757" UserId="226" Text="In addition to what Mark and Pemdas have said, I'd like to add that another important distinction (far as belonging on P.SE or not goes) is whether or not reading a question's answers would help one become a better programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In that sense, I liked the twist you put on your question: how did you learn from your bug and how did it help you later vs the other incarnations of the same question that simply asked for a list of &quot;fun&quot; bugs. The former might help someone by exposing a vulnerability they never thought of. The latter is just fun to read, but has little substance behind it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The difference there is subtle and others might disagree, but in my mind placing extra criteria in the question (such as requests to elaborate on the answer or restricting answers to bugs that people were personally involved in fixing) helps guide upvotes/downvotes on good/bad answers. A question like that has a better chance of being useful. That alone isn't always enough to &quot;save&quot; a question from being closed, but it certainly helps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think I summed up the issue with questions that just ask for a &quot;list of X&quot; [here][1]. Directions to restrict answers to one item per answer (to simulate a survey) are almost never followed and the whole thread degenerates pretty quickly more often than not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/927/why-are-questions-about-programs-verboten/928#928" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2808" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1128" RevisionGUID="5f96a202-fbff-469c-9aa5-324b9c848258" CreationDate="2011-02-09T06:15:18.077" UserId="2654" Comment="added 120 characters in body" Text="Encouraging them to post it as an answer is an excellent way to remedy this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then there is Jeff's definitive answer:&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PNLUJ.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2809" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1137" RevisionGUID="eeadf120-ed92-4e9a-872a-c847fe1c2353" CreationDate="2011-02-09T12:09:26.080" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="1. I usually put an answer as a comment when the question is likely to be closed (or when I vote to close) but want to help the OP anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. I also put an answer as a comment when I feel my answer does not deserve the exposure of an answer but may help the OP anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Finally, I use comment to put some humor sometimes that definitely doesn't deserve to be made as an answer.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2810" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1133" RevisionGUID="40f6b8a6-9414-4f8a-9503-3acfc201a706" CreationDate="2011-02-09T13:50:34.247" UserId="6415" Comment="added punctuation" Text="Not having a definitive answer and not having an answer at all are two different things. One type of question that is discouraged at this site are &quot;poll&quot; questions. If I remember correctly the first rendition of your question was something along the lines of, &quot;What is the most outrageous bug you have ever encountered?&quot; There is no answer to this question, subjective or objective; it is just a survey so to speak. One criteria that might help you to evaluate the legitimacy of question is: Does the question ask how to solve a problem? Or, is the question asking for advice that applies to a wide audience? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would personally argue that your question even in it's final rendition could use some editing. I know what you are trying to ask, but I still think that it is incomplete. I think the more appropriate question would be, &quot;How has/does discovering and fixing bugs increased your skills as a developer?&quot; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2811" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1138" RevisionGUID="18685be3-7caf-45e3-9d9f-8483eaf325f8" CreationDate="2011-02-09T15:56:06.883" UserId="16321" Text="Crowd pleasing answers *must* serve some social dynamic purpose for a community. An outlet for this behavior should be allowed (repression isn't healthy). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The stack design uses &quot;community reputation&quot; and &quot;bounties&quot; to support and promote positive and constructive behaviors. The same concepts should be applied to this issue of &quot;crowd pleasing answers&quot; as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I leave this to those with more experience and wisdom than myself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2812" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1139" RevisionGUID="5069d312-b465-4323-a6b3-5a86b80c1f75" CreationDate="2011-02-09T17:29:01.503" UserId="13137" Text="The second question from above. There should be something wrong?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or why is this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/O5TVR.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2813" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1139" RevisionGUID="5069d312-b465-4323-a6b3-5a86b80c1f75" CreationDate="2011-02-09T17:29:01.503" UserId="13137" Text="Bug in viewcounter?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2814" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1139" RevisionGUID="5069d312-b465-4323-a6b3-5a86b80c1f75" CreationDate="2011-02-09T17:29:01.503" UserId="13137" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2815" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1140" RevisionGUID="cd3609cb-8d70-47c5-ab41-e9d9845b3ba8" CreationDate="2011-02-09T17:40:47.150" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="My guess is that nobody viewed it yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was posted 1m ago, so this perfectly possible.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2816" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1128" RevisionGUID="ed3d670c-bdd3-4ce7-b554-fbdf0c2bfb02" CreationDate="2011-02-09T17:45:25.677" UserId="2654" Comment="added 39 characters in body" Text="Encouraging them to post it as an answer is an excellent way to remedy this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then there is Jeff's definitive answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/V6ALs.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PNLUJ.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2817" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1139" RevisionGUID="4775ccf2-3ac4-4056-b52b-d6e2ce09532f" CreationDate="2011-02-09T17:51:37.797" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2818" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1128" RevisionGUID="1cc1a9b4-1ce2-4da4-94fa-80f842f28e15" CreationDate="2011-02-09T18:35:48.243" UserId="2314" Comment="Here you go - for some reason it was still the same image before" Text="Encouraging them to post it as an answer is an excellent way to remedy this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then there is Jeff's definitive answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Jeff's Comment][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/uwsGh.png&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2819" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1141" RevisionGUID="cc06cb79-cf8d-4e2f-b53b-5f1bf0155c84" CreationDate="2011-02-09T19:12:08.120" UserId="5902" Text="I just flipped over to meta for the first time and started browsing &amp; voting, and my rep (but not my badges) carried over from programmers. Is this the way it's supposed to work? I would expect that my &quot;score&quot; would either carry over in entirety or not at all, and I'd start on meta with 0 rep and 0 badges..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2820" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1141" RevisionGUID="cc06cb79-cf8d-4e2f-b53b-5f1bf0155c84" CreationDate="2011-02-09T19:12:08.120" UserId="5902" Text="Should rep and badges carry over from programmers to meta.programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2821" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1141" RevisionGUID="cc06cb79-cf8d-4e2f-b53b-5f1bf0155c84" CreationDate="2011-02-09T19:12:08.120" UserId="5902" Text="|support|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2822" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1142" RevisionGUID="4016867b-58ea-474b-a3df-ea457fc6649d" CreationDate="2011-02-09T19:26:56.760" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Reputation does, badges don't: it's [meta-tag:status-bydesign]. However, there's a lag time between the time you gain rep on the main site and when it reflects as your rep total on meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2823" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1143" RevisionGUID="4744afd0-aaa5-4a50-9cca-c6d965a1eb07" CreationDate="2011-02-09T22:12:26.947" UserId="2314" Text="It's a trade-off between starting with nothing and having nothing to gain by participating.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason repuation **does transfer** is so that you have the same privileges here, as well as others being able to see your main-site participation.  By consequence you gain no reputation from Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Badges **don't transfer** so that you can still earn something here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2824" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1135" RevisionGUID="47c726fc-c2ec-4594-80a8-d2e13dd8d935" CreationDate="2011-02-10T02:48:52.250" UserId="3" Comment="added 7 characters in body" Text="Comments as answers are becoming more common on some sites. This is a problem because once a comment-based answer is posted, most users will not feel compelled to provide a proper answer. The question then remains squarely in the 'unanswered' column. Besides, comments-as-answers cannot be be vetted, and voted on properly so the best answers *don't* always appear on the top.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comment authors should be asked to post their comment as an answer. Failing that, comment-based answers are fair game. Post the answer yourself and flag the errant comment for removal." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2825" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1135" RevisionGUID="f555f65a-030b-40fd-afa9-cadcdf827255" CreationDate="2011-02-10T12:54:09.383" UserId="101" Comment="fixed grammar" Text="Comments as answers are becoming more common on some sites. This is a problem because once a comment-based answer is posted, most users will not feel compelled to provide a proper answer. The question then remains squarely in the 'unanswered' column. Besides, comments-as-answers cannot be vetted, and voted on properly so the best answers *don't* always appear on the top.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comment authors should be asked to post their comment as an answer. Failing that, comment-based answers are fair game. Post the answer yourself and flag the errant comment for removal." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2826" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1144" RevisionGUID="cab95465-ef20-4e23-8ced-b8ec26e040ea" CreationDate="2011-02-10T13:29:40.310" UserId="226" Text="&quot;Help me with my resume&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think we're here to critique resumes and most of those end up being not very programming-centric. There are also better sites out there for that sort of thing. They can already be closed, but it'd be nice to have a spelled-out guideline to point people to." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2827" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1144" RevisionGUID="9e707217-6ead-41c6-b48a-e584b713dc12" CreationDate="2011-02-10T13:48:44.243" UserId="226" Comment="added 289 characters in body" Text="&quot;Help me with my resume&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think we're here to critique resumes and most of those end up being not very programming-centric. There are also better sites out there for that sort of thing. They can already be closed, but it'd be nice to have a spelled-out guideline to point people to.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;I've added the following to our FAQ under the off-topic questions section:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please critique my resumé. *(Unless you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have a **specific** question about a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development part of your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; resume. Questions about resumé&#xD;&#xA;&gt; formatting and style are always&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off-topic.)*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2828" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1145" RevisionGUID="97f614aa-cffe-4af6-9797-3dccf58881a1" CreationDate="2011-02-10T14:14:02.903" UserId="1725" Text="I noticed that there's a twitter account for most SE websites, but not programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any idea why's that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2829" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1145" RevisionGUID="97f614aa-cffe-4af6-9797-3dccf58881a1" CreationDate="2011-02-10T14:14:02.903" UserId="1725" Text="Programmers.SE twitter account?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2830" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1145" RevisionGUID="97f614aa-cffe-4af6-9797-3dccf58881a1" CreationDate="2011-02-10T14:14:02.903" UserId="1725" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2831" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1146" RevisionGUID="82dcd5d8-865a-459f-8a43-58578a018efd" CreationDate="2011-02-10T15:36:45.280" UserId="1043" Text="I never flagged a post or comment as offensive/spam, and yet I now have the &quot;Citizen Patrol&quot; badge? Is it an errant click or a bug?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2832" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1146" RevisionGUID="82dcd5d8-865a-459f-8a43-58578a018efd" CreationDate="2011-02-10T15:36:45.280" UserId="1043" Text="Citizen Patrol bug?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2833" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1146" RevisionGUID="82dcd5d8-865a-459f-8a43-58578a018efd" CreationDate="2011-02-10T15:36:45.280" UserId="1043" Text="|bug|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2834" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1147" RevisionGUID="1387ba6a-234d-4422-a852-15e1cccf9c4d" CreationDate="2011-02-10T17:28:40.780" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Sure there is: [@StackProgrammer](http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2835" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1145" RevisionGUID="62128936-97a4-4b27-bfed-b0e35bf1098e" CreationDate="2011-02-10T17:29:08.970" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|twitter|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2836" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1148" RevisionGUID="ee08aefd-c3d9-4161-9370-b33c6ed9dd3f" CreationDate="2011-02-10T21:32:48.453" UserId="37" Text="Citizen Patrol has been extended to all mod flags, so if you have ever mod flagged, you will now get it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2837" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1146" RevisionGUID="d2d44e51-a383-42ac-b866-317bbe2b5325" CreationDate="2011-02-10T21:33:00.763" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2838" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1149" RevisionGUID="11d3e788-9835-470b-96ff-455c2dc0b9b7" CreationDate="2011-02-11T02:42:03.987" UserDisplayName="Zeno" Text="My question was closed today: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46386/what-is-programming-like-in-the-japanese-language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was never closed: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1483/do-people-in-non-english-speaking-countries-code-in-english" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2839" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1149" RevisionGUID="11d3e788-9835-470b-96ff-455c2dc0b9b7" CreationDate="2011-02-11T02:42:03.987" UserDisplayName="Zeno" Text="Why was my programmers question closed but not one similar?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2840" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1149" RevisionGUID="11d3e788-9835-470b-96ff-455c2dc0b9b7" CreationDate="2011-02-11T02:42:03.987" UserDisplayName="Zeno" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|programmers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2841" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1149" RevisionGUID="91663b24-34f7-4332-bda8-1a0ba510e477" CreationDate="2011-02-11T03:11:17.210" UserId="-1" Comment="from https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78912/why-was-my-programmers-question-closed-but-not-one-similar" Text="" />
  <row Id="2842" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1150" RevisionGUID="21906ce8-9273-4961-a4c4-ca66ae0d9f17" CreationDate="2011-02-11T03:14:02.573" UserId="5624" Text="This is not a duplicate of http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1072/the-flag-comment-icon-is-too-harsh because I actually like the image of the flag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather, the problem is when you hover over it. On Meta, if you hover over the flag so it turns from white to black, the heights of the two images are not the same. It results in the control (and anything below it) being shifted up one pixel if the comment's length is short and does not increase the height. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For an example, see http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-list and hover over the flag of a short comment and the flag of a long comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's different on Programmers. On Programmers, the height *and width* are off. See http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23120/does-tweeting-9-to-5-hurt-job-applicants for an example. (Specifically, GrandMasterB's comment on the original question post)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Due to the way browsers render font sizes and line lengths, this may vary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there is an extremely simple way to know something is wrong: the bottom of the hovered &quot;flag&quot; image is cut off." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2843" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1150" RevisionGUID="21906ce8-9273-4961-a4c4-ca66ae0d9f17" CreationDate="2011-02-11T03:14:02.573" UserId="5624" Text="&quot;Flag&quot; image inconsistancies" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2844" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1150" RevisionGUID="21906ce8-9273-4961-a4c4-ca66ae0d9f17" CreationDate="2011-02-11T03:14:02.573" UserId="5624" Text="|support|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2845" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1151" RevisionGUID="ffa309d7-cb40-4e52-aa7b-76c4f7096ed7" CreationDate="2011-02-11T04:02:49.327" UserId="11259" Text="Well for one...your question is borderline a duplicate of that question, which by itself is justification for closure. However, the major difference is that your question is far to localized to be beneficial to the community. It is similar to asking &quot;What can I expect as salary compensation in Japan?&quot; The question that was not closed was far more more general and was of value to a wide audience. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2846" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1152" RevisionGUID="967dcd8b-4d7e-4c69-bf50-4f431007a68d" CreationDate="2011-02-11T04:50:40.627" UserId="37" Text="As Pemdas indicated, the other question is the *generalized* and more correct form of your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2847" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1151" RevisionGUID="04651173-71c4-45b2-b75f-a38d2b932042" CreationDate="2011-02-11T05:01:10.473" UserId="11259" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body" Text="Well for one...your question is borderline a duplicate of that question, which by itself is justification for closure. However, the major difference is that your question is far to localized to be beneficial to the community. It is similar to asking &quot;What can I expect as salary compensation in Japan?&quot; The question that was not closed was far more general and was of value to a wide audience. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2848" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1146" RevisionGUID="2e7c9927-fd56-47f9-b685-57670583041a" CreationDate="2011-02-11T11:56:39.690" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-bydesign|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2849" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1145" RevisionGUID="bbf91f31-52fd-424f-b02b-c7fb6a53a98a" CreationDate="2011-02-11T11:57:11.763" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|twitter|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2850" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="817" RevisionGUID="2bdcd945-60d7-4db5-a2cc-c6d5d130ca71" CreationDate="2011-02-11T11:57:34.137" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2851" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1153" RevisionGUID="f128c334-5200-41e7-8c7b-24a10c37d869" CreationDate="2011-02-11T14:43:33.963" UserId="13328" Text="Hi,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Appreciate I'm in an extreme minority using ie6 (at work, where I have no choice to upgrade or use alternatives) but with the other stackexchange sites I use (stackoverflow and webmasters) I can reply to questions, add comments and vote. In programmers I don't seem to be able to do any of these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to lose sleep if this doesn't get fixed, I understamnd the pain ie6 causes - just seems odd that some stack exchange sites are ie6 functional, whilst this one isn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2852" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1153" RevisionGUID="f128c334-5200-41e7-8c7b-24a10c37d869" CreationDate="2011-02-11T14:43:33.963" UserId="13328" Text="no functionality in ie6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2853" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1153" RevisionGUID="f128c334-5200-41e7-8c7b-24a10c37d869" CreationDate="2011-02-11T14:43:33.963" UserId="13328" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2854" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1154" RevisionGUID="5ab0150e-bde7-4522-99fc-4e2009670dd1" CreationDate="2011-02-11T16:28:29.293" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This is [meta-tag:status-bydesign]: IE6 is not supported at all, and even IE7 is minimally supported. Check Meta Stack Overflow for [a list of browsers that are currently supported](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/56161/which-browsers-are-officially-supported/71208#71208). Things might work in IE6 on some sites, but working functionality is purely coincidental." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2855" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1155" RevisionGUID="349f8cc4-65ea-47b4-b53d-9638452a4c74" CreationDate="2011-02-11T19:32:04.903" UserId="37" Text="I agree, it is odd since they are all using the same engine -- therefore it has to be the css of this particular site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you try disabling stylesheets?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't want to spend any additional engineering resources on ie6 at this point." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2856" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1156" RevisionGUID="064661a1-7fda-4b46-9a0e-f07e99bade30" CreationDate="2011-02-13T00:04:39.773" UserId="4534" Text="For example: Advantages and disadvantages of REE 1.8.7 versus Ruby MRI&#xD;&#xA;1.9.2 with the local directory search path differences.  Specifically since the most common solution is to pass underscores File underscores to patch around the problem for most projects or gems?  REE does offer faster multithreading and there are other API differences, but I am looking for more significant differences." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2857" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1156" RevisionGUID="064661a1-7fda-4b46-9a0e-f07e99bade30" CreationDate="2011-02-13T00:04:39.773" UserId="4534" Text="Is it considered acceptable to as a question that is labeled as &quot;please modify to community wiki&quot; if it is productive" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2858" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1156" RevisionGUID="064661a1-7fda-4b46-9a0e-f07e99bade30" CreationDate="2011-02-13T00:04:39.773" UserId="4534" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2866" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1160" RevisionGUID="38876dff-5db7-40b6-b677-2c5183f757a0" CreationDate="2011-02-13T03:31:01.553" UserId="16349" Text="**Terminology: Subjective**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I read the faq, and the page 'good subjective, bad subjective' http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/ and one of my conclusions is, that the terminology 'subjective' is meaningless, as used there. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is this term, and then there are 10 bullet points, and none of them is about subjective things. Maybe the last one 'Freelancing and business concerns' a little. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest to avoid this misleading term, or change the bulletpoints accordingly. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2868" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="600" RevisionGUID="d78a5740-2abd-461d-bda5-2b1f5de45433" CreationDate="2011-02-13T14:23:15.670" UserId="47" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="2869" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="475" RevisionGUID="7bc4ade0-b913-4016-8110-12560afbc451" CreationDate="2011-02-14T09:32:45.953" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Question I asked dissappeared](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/476/question-i-asked-dissappeared)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;A couple of answers and comments that I wrote a few hours ago have mysteriously disappeared from the site. Does this have anything to do with the server migration that's in progress? Will my answers be restored from a backup?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2870" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="475" RevisionGUID="0ff85622-7d62-418b-b027-35ef273f0e48" CreationDate="2011-02-14T09:32:45.813" UserId="47" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[476],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="2871" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1161" RevisionGUID="e0139d7b-2bc8-410c-811c-510a9b96ba90" CreationDate="2011-02-14T09:44:53.450" UserId="5095" Text="Community Wiki shouldn't be seen as a way of ignoring the rules on what can and can not be posted, instead it's an indication that the question or an answer is better owned by the community rather than by individuals.  They should still basically sit within the guidelines on the FAQ regarding topic, answerability and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In terms of making something community wiki, questions automatically become community wiki when they pass a certain activity threshold and generally can't be easily changed and can't be specified as such in advance.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect it may be possible for moderators but it's a privilege that hi rep users ever get so setting up questions and asking people to change them isn't something that would be encouraged as there is such a limited pool of people who can do it.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2880" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1162" RevisionGUID="afa36b78-5807-445a-aa7b-da353b30ea16" CreationDate="2011-02-14T15:10:40.217" UserId="698" Text="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4984832/what-is-the-output-of-grails-stats-for-your-largest-grails-project#question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Never seen this kind of question before.  If I had to bet, it'd get closed asap.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What says the community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2881" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1162" RevisionGUID="afa36b78-5807-445a-aa7b-da353b30ea16" CreationDate="2011-02-14T15:10:40.217" UserId="698" Text="Would this question be on-topic on PSE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2882" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1162" RevisionGUID="afa36b78-5807-445a-aa7b-da353b30ea16" CreationDate="2011-02-14T15:10:40.217" UserId="698" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2883" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1163" RevisionGUID="7c2c127a-d87d-4420-b4f5-d813f3bcb9c3" CreationDate="2011-02-14T16:09:26.150" UserId="11259" Text="It would probably get closed because it is basically a survey and not constructive. You could argue that the result might be used in some constructive fashion, but answers themselves are too localized and not very useful.   " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2884" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1164" RevisionGUID="be1b6bff-8eae-492e-a910-afad1df760ca" CreationDate="2011-02-14T16:18:37.903" UserId="226" Text="Pemdas got it. I'm not seeing a constructive point to that question. It seems like it falls firmly in the &quot;getting to know you&quot; category, which is off-topic on P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm usually in the mod chat room even if I don't have it explicitly opened in a browser, so feel free to @-address me in there if there are questions like this that you want answered quickly. I may not _always_ respond right away, but the notification popping up in my SE inbox is better than relying on me checking P.SE meta at the right time. (The same probably goes for the other mods, too, but I can't speak for them.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2888" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1166" RevisionGUID="519ae4bc-9b55-4bd8-8968-02fe17f7b969" CreationDate="2011-02-15T17:17:00.730" UserId="2314" Text="For some reason (perhaps a good one that I am not aware of) the line-height of normal paragraph text (in posts), and the line-height of the text body of bullet points is different.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Examples&#xD;&#xA;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean vestibulum erat vitae velit tempus ut congue ante lacinia. Cras a ligula mi. Duis porttitor dui sed nisl condimentum et tristique lorem venenatis. In pharetra dignissim nisl, at hendrerit massa dignissim id. Vivamus commodo purus eget odio elementum et porttitor ante imperdiet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean vestibulum erat vitae velit tempus ut congue ante lacinia. Cras a ligula mi. Duis porttitor dui sed nisl condimentum et tristique lorem venenatis. In pharetra dignissim nisl, at hendrerit massa dignissim id. Vivamus commodo purus eget odio elementum et porttitor ante imperdiet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###CSS&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    .post-text {&#xD;&#xA;        font-size: 14px;&#xD;&#xA;        line-height: 130%; /* equivalent to 18.2px */&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ol li, ul li {&#xD;&#xA;        line-height: 16px;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The `130%/18px` from the paragraph CSS looks much better, in my humble opinion, and I think the bullet point should be set to match it.  I don't know why it's 16px right now but it looks more squashed together, and at the very least it looks weird when reading posts that use both bullet point paragraphs and normal paragraphs together (I admit this is somewhat in self-interest, it is a style I often use!)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2889" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1166" RevisionGUID="519ae4bc-9b55-4bd8-8968-02fe17f7b969" CreationDate="2011-02-15T17:17:00.730" UserId="2314" Text="CSS Nitpick: Line height of bullet points is smaller" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2890" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1166" RevisionGUID="519ae4bc-9b55-4bd8-8968-02fe17f7b969" CreationDate="2011-02-15T17:17:00.730" UserId="2314" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2891" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1167" RevisionGUID="220ca618-8b6f-42f9-83fd-6b4f519aab73" CreationDate="2011-02-15T17:41:46.183" UserId="1685" Text="The fix will be in the next deployment." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2892" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1168" RevisionGUID="26293017-4ea9-4216-ab32-3b1d303b25ac" CreationDate="2011-02-15T20:29:45.380" UserId="147" Text="User “romkyns” asked an interesting question about the future of professional programming. It has little if anything to do with *users* and most certainly cannot be answered by anyone who is not in the field of programming. The question I’m referring to is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Can the “Documents” standard folder be rescued and how?](http://superuser.com/questions/246232)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is clearly intended to incite a philosophical debate on the use of the documents folder *by programmers* and possible steps that future software system designers may take to improve the dire situation he describes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is not going to garner any useful, insightful, constructive or interesting discussion on SuperUser.&#xD;&#xA;Can this question please be moved back?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2893" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1168" RevisionGUID="26293017-4ea9-4216-ab32-3b1d303b25ac" CreationDate="2011-02-15T20:29:45.380" UserId="147" Text="On-topic question inappropriately moved to SuperUser" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2894" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1168" RevisionGUID="26293017-4ea9-4216-ab32-3b1d303b25ac" CreationDate="2011-02-15T20:29:45.380" UserId="147" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2895" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1169" RevisionGUID="8d0714df-4785-4100-85e2-b5fafaf92336" CreationDate="2011-02-15T20:36:36.607" UserId="2654" Text="&gt; philosophical debate on the use of the documents folder by programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not quite sure I understand. The use of a *Documents* folder is not limited in scope to Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not see how this question relates to *&quot;the future of professional programming&quot;*. I encourage you to elaborate your question to include more information." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2898" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1171" RevisionGUID="8831d95c-f91a-49cf-bef8-5d316f87d6a4" CreationDate="2011-02-15T21:35:24.703" UserId="934" Text="&#xD;&#xA;Insert self-aggrandizing question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Insert about 10 &quot;Congratulations, looks like you are just as cool as me&quot; answer here. Then insert a link to one of the top 10 frequently referenced books here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do exchanges like these add any value to this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A specific example of the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48240/developing-instincts-and-subconscious-debugging&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2899" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1171" RevisionGUID="8831d95c-f91a-49cf-bef8-5d316f87d6a4" CreationDate="2011-02-15T21:35:24.703" UserId="934" Text="Insert &quot;does it ever happen to you&quot; question title in disguise here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2900" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1171" RevisionGUID="8831d95c-f91a-49cf-bef8-5d316f87d6a4" CreationDate="2011-02-15T21:35:24.703" UserId="934" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2901" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1172" RevisionGUID="214f1107-6c6a-4464-9de5-706370855e52" CreationDate="2011-02-15T21:40:49.457" UserId="226" Text="Questions like that are already discouraged in the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions should I not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answerable questions based on actual&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problems that you face. Chatty,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; open-ended questions diminish the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; usefulness of our site and push other&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions off the front page. To&#xD;&#xA;&gt; prevent your question from being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; flagged and possibly removed, avoid&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;[...]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you see questions like that, please flag them as &quot;not constructive&quot; or vote to close for the same reason if you have the rep to do so." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2902" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1174" RevisionGUID="19872c40-8e10-4899-aeb5-fb1502fecf4e" CreationDate="2011-02-16T01:08:29.197" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48338/where-can-i-ask-career-development-questions-on-the-stack-exchange-about-programm/48340#48340" Text="" />
  <row Id="2903" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1175" RevisionGUID="079badf1-843c-42f2-a57b-45c15b714a40" CreationDate="2011-02-16T01:08:29.197" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48338/where-can-i-ask-career-development-questions-on-the-stack-exchange-about-programm/48341#48341" Text="" />
  <row Id="2904" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1176" RevisionGUID="5ce6f340-5bcb-4a8b-816a-15f884611a45" CreationDate="2011-02-16T01:08:29.197" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48338/where-can-i-ask-career-development-questions-on-the-stack-exchange-about-programm/48342#48342" Text="" />
  <row Id="2905" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1174" RevisionGUID="a9031457-2a49-42ae-8d7f-d2317309df5a" CreationDate="2011-02-16T00:04:30.627" UserId="4327" Text="[CareerOverflow.com][1] would be my suggestion though I'm not sure how active is that site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://careeroverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2906" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1175" RevisionGUID="4ed8fe1f-900e-465d-8da7-f5dfe6b9cae5" CreationDate="2011-02-16T00:06:58.777" UserId="7857" Text="For one thing: You should have posted this question here: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For another, &quot;career-development&quot; is very ambiguous. You asking the questions wrong. Decide what you want to do first, then come back and ask us how to get there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2907" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1176" RevisionGUID="8740c9fe-3042-4afd-a8b2-fee752d55b88" CreationDate="2011-02-16T00:07:36.503" UserId="9029" Text="What do you mean by &quot;the question about programming&quot;? If you look at the not-closed questions on Programmers.SE, then you'll see a wide variety of different questions related to programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that the example from the FAQ you cite is *specifically listed as **off-topic*** for this site - so you shouldn't be surprised if questions of that nature get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want examples of career-development questions that *are* on topic, take a look at the other questions that get tagged as such for examples of questions that *do* belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, questions about Programmers.SE itself belong on the Meta site, not directly here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2908" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1173" RevisionGUID="3311806d-f392-43b7-83d5-a81340179799" CreationDate="2011-02-16T00:01:08.603" UserId="14211" Text="Every Career-Development question gets closed, This is pathetic! Where else am I meant to ask the question about programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is pretty silly considering it is a quideline:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What language should I learn next?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (Unless you have a specific&#xD;&#xA;&gt; requirement and don't know which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; language meets that requirement.) [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although these tags are available and used on this programmers site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;career-development career-advice career career-guidance career" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2909" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1173" RevisionGUID="3311806d-f392-43b7-83d5-a81340179799" CreationDate="2011-02-16T00:01:08.603" UserId="14211" Text="Where can I ask Career-Development questions on the Stack Exchange about Programming? (without getting closed!)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2910" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1173" RevisionGUID="3311806d-f392-43b7-83d5-a81340179799" CreationDate="2011-02-16T00:01:08.603" UserId="14211" Text="|untagged|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2911" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1173" RevisionGUID="80b34083-a898-43f0-832e-67b6e3a0526a" CreationDate="2011-02-16T01:08:29.197" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48338/where-can-i-ask-career-development-questions-on-the-stack-exchange-about-programm" Text="" />
  <row Id="2912" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1177" RevisionGUID="fd41a8d9-4505-45f0-b3ed-4ed8d8709e82" CreationDate="2011-02-16T01:19:35.443" UserId="226" Text="The answer to &quot;what language should I learn next&quot; is almost always either &quot;it depends&quot; or &quot;it doesn't matter. just pick one.&quot; The &quot;specific requirement&quot; part of the guideline is meant to address situations like not knowing what language to choose for a particular kind of problem. For example, I want to get into robotics -- what language(s) should I focus on first?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Saying that your current career situation is a specific requirement may fit the letter of the guideline but may also be going against its spirit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career development questions that are general enough to apply to a wider audience are still welcome on Programmers.SE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2913" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1178" RevisionGUID="8079842b-8e4f-483d-9a9d-fceb00f45068" CreationDate="2011-02-16T03:17:32.857" UserId="12611" Text="The question &quot;What language to Learn Next?&quot; and all the various derivatives of that same question has been answered countless times, both by the volunteers on this site, as well as the authors of numerous blogs, articles, career journals, and forums.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, here is the same question [What Should I Learn Next?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33964/what-should-i-learn-next).  There are 8 answers there about what language to learn next.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This Programmers SE Search for &quot;What Language Should I Learn&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=what+language+should+i+learn) turns up 67 pages of results, with the first 2 pages dedicated to various different incantations of the question `What Language Should I Learn Next?`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, if you want to know the answer to that question.  Start there and work your way through the bounty of answers available.  In addition to answers, you'll find links to other resources, which will link to other forums, documents, opinions, articles, and journals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is to not answer the same questions that have already been answered; instead, the volunteers here look forward to challenging new questions that have yet to be answered." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2914" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1179" RevisionGUID="32f0b292-c8ba-4c07-a01c-9aead09e0fc3" CreationDate="2011-02-16T09:32:16.323" UserId="8331" Text="I was under the impression that coding-style questions are allowed here, even if they deal with a language-specific feature; but [another user claims this is not the case][1]. I couldn't find any explicit policy regarding this, so I'm turning to meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My opinion is that these sort of questions are not coding problems (which belong on SO) but squarely rest in the coding-style field, which seems to be allowed here. Not to mention that with the variety between different programming languages, every coding style question could be said to be specific to a certain (and possibly small) group of languages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, are coding style questions in general on-topic, and does the size of the group of programming languages they refer to matter?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48413/in-java-should-i-use-final-for-parameters-and-locals-even-when-i-dont-have-to" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2915" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1179" RevisionGUID="32f0b292-c8ba-4c07-a01c-9aead09e0fc3" CreationDate="2011-02-16T09:32:16.323" UserId="8331" Text="Are coding style questions that deal with language-specific features allowed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2916" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1179" RevisionGUID="32f0b292-c8ba-4c07-a01c-9aead09e0fc3" CreationDate="2011-02-16T09:32:16.323" UserId="8331" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2917" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1180" RevisionGUID="33743387-d3f1-413b-8c1f-4632be439ba9" CreationDate="2011-02-16T09:49:03.377" UserId="7083" Text="This can include topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;- Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;- **Algorithm and data structure concepts**&#xD;&#xA;- **Design patterns**&#xD;&#xA;- Architecture&#xD;&#xA;- Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;- Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;- Software law&#xD;&#xA;- Programming puzzles&#xD;&#xA;- Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I see it the nearest programming related question you can ask is the ones that I have marked.&#xD;&#xA;This question doesn’t fall under any of them.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2918" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1181" RevisionGUID="3d2e0861-c025-4669-9da2-c75afe81c2e3" CreationDate="2011-02-16T10:07:15.077" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="It's perfectly within the domain of Programmers.SE: answers are entirely based on convention derived from experience. Additionally, it would be entirely *off-topic* on Stack Overflow, which would be interested in a specific problem you were having, not a programming philosophy/best practices question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2919" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1180" RevisionGUID="b3ea2138-78ca-4d4e-997a-df739f821370" CreationDate="2011-02-16T12:19:11.597" UserId="7083" Comment="added 47 characters in body" Text="This can include topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;- Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;- **Algorithm and data structure concepts**&#xD;&#xA;- **Design patterns**&#xD;&#xA;- Architecture&#xD;&#xA;- Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;- Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;- Software law&#xD;&#xA;- Programming puzzles&#xD;&#xA;- Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I see it the nearest programming related question you can ask is the ones that I have marked.&#xD;&#xA;This question doesn’t fall under any of them.&#xD;&#xA;**This is a programming specific feature.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2920" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1179" RevisionGUID="8820361f-cb48-45c9-a9d7-428c00112a7d" CreationDate="2011-02-16T13:11:25.113" UserId="8331" Comment="Change wording since the question was closed." Text="I was under the impression that coding-style questions are allowed here, even if they deal with a language-specific feature; but [other users assert this is not the case][1], and that these questions should be closed. I couldn't find any explicit policy regarding this, so I'm turning to meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My opinion is that these sort of questions are not coding problems (which belong on SO) but squarely rest in the coding-style field, which seems to be allowed here. Not to mention that with the variety between different programming languages, every coding style question could be said to be specific to a certain (and possibly small) group of languages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, are coding style questions in general on-topic, and does the size of the group of programming languages they refer to matter?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48413/in-java-should-i-use-final-for-parameters-and-locals-even-when-i-dont-have-to" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2921" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1182" RevisionGUID="1917185d-8966-437a-800e-8acfd8b11e1d" CreationDate="2011-02-16T14:57:11.773" UserId="226" Text="As Mark said, those questions could be fine here. Additionally, if you have existing code that you'd like critiqued, you can also check out the new [Code Review.SE](http://codereview.stackexchange.com)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2922" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1183" RevisionGUID="e8e0137f-e551-454a-8dec-d78cb4262c9a" CreationDate="2011-02-16T15:36:43.450" UserId="196" Text="I would like to get tips on how I could evaluate my manager or my boss without being unjust.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is this question on topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2923" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1183" RevisionGUID="e8e0137f-e551-454a-8dec-d78cb4262c9a" CreationDate="2011-02-16T15:36:43.450" UserId="196" Text="Is the question “How to evaluate your manager/boss?” on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2924" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1183" RevisionGUID="e8e0137f-e551-454a-8dec-d78cb4262c9a" CreationDate="2011-02-16T15:36:43.450" UserId="196" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2925" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1184" RevisionGUID="2348e88e-0b1b-481d-bed8-798444665cad" CreationDate="2011-02-16T16:23:57.050" UserId="226" Text="I would say it's not, unless there's some specific aspect to it that's related to software development. Otherwise it's just a question about interpersonal relationships in an office settings.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[CareerOverflow.com][1] may be a better place for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://careeroverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2928" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1185" RevisionGUID="6b629f3c-7272-4a47-b9a8-54498e203d22" CreationDate="2011-02-16T17:51:33.623" UserId="2314" Text="As Anna says, by itself &quot;**How to evaluate your manager**&quot; is not a problem with any specific relation to programming (yes, programmers do it, but so does everyone).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's &quot;on-topicness&quot; depends on how you qualify it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You say your problem is how to evaluate your manager &quot;without being unjust&quot; &amp;mdash; this doesn't sound like a problem that is unique to developers.  However, I can imagine a few variations that *would* be on topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I'm being asked to evaluate my manager technically, but I am not quite sure what my manager's &quot;technical&quot; responsibilities are.  How should I address this?&#xD;&#xA;* I'm being asked to evaluate my manager, but my manager is non-technical. His lack of understanding of our technical issues *is* a frequent source of conflict, but is it fair for me to expect anything more?&#xD;&#xA;* I'm submitting a review of my manager. My manager has moved on from coding to &quot;managerial&quot; issues, should my review be based only on our coding interactions, which are few these days, or should I also her performance on larger business goals?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think about what ways your question can be answered uniquely by programmers, and make sure to ask the question in a way that solicits those answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2929" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1185" RevisionGUID="e1b36331-210a-49ed-b678-db173e9d7705" CreationDate="2011-02-16T18:10:41.377" UserId="2314" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="As Anna says, by itself &quot;**How to evaluate your manager**&quot; is not a problem with any specific relation to programming (yes, programmers do it, but so does everyone).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's &quot;on-topicness&quot; depends on how you qualify it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You say your problem is how to evaluate your manager &quot;without being unjust&quot; &amp;mdash; this doesn't sound like a problem that is unique to developers.  However, I can imagine a few variations that *would* be on topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I'm being asked to evaluate my manager technically, but I am not quite sure what my manager's &quot;technical&quot; responsibilities are.  How should I address this?&#xD;&#xA;* I'm being asked to evaluate my manager, but my manager is non-technical. His lack of understanding of our technical issues *is* a frequent source of conflict, but is it fair for me to expect anything more?&#xD;&#xA;* I'm submitting a review of my manager. My manager has moved on from coding to &quot;managerial&quot; issues, should my review be based only on our coding interactions, which are few these days, or should I also address her performance on larger business goals?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think about what ways your question can be answered uniquely by programmers, and make sure to ask the question in a way that solicits those answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2930" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1166" RevisionGUID="3097a950-bfde-40ed-aa3d-607644350836" CreationDate="2011-02-16T20:49:16.300" UserId="1685" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2931" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1186" RevisionGUID="a02b9458-c540-4915-999c-3b2aa15a26d4" CreationDate="2011-02-16T21:20:11.443" UserId="47" Text="Here are some questions that have recently been migrated to SO by the mods:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4998425/use-mingw-in-eclipse-on-linux&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4994258/turn-off-visual-studio-vb-net-lines-around-each-method&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4993600/speech-to-text-converter&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4991764/find-d-square-no&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4979076/jquery-wcf-http-404-error&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4957995/customizing-the-nunit-gui-for-data-driven-testing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4949633/copy-parts-of-a-buffer-in-c&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4946068/using-windows-intergrated-autenifcation-with-sqlroleprovider-in-silverlight-appli" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2932" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1187" RevisionGUID="956f3a69-7e09-4a1b-a879-d70e5ec05007" CreationDate="2011-02-16T22:05:51.940" UserDisplayName="user9009" Text="Hello &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone help in merging my accounts on programmers stack exchange ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;please merge &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/9779/user9009&quot;&gt;this account&lt;/a&gt; into the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/17335/user9009&quot;&gt;new one&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not able to access my old account because of lost openid credentials&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2933" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1187" RevisionGUID="956f3a69-7e09-4a1b-a879-d70e5ec05007" CreationDate="2011-02-16T22:05:51.940" UserDisplayName="user9009" Text="Help : Someone please help me merge my accounts " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2934" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1187" RevisionGUID="956f3a69-7e09-4a1b-a879-d70e5ec05007" CreationDate="2011-02-16T22:05:51.940" UserDisplayName="user9009" Text="|untagged|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2935" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1187" RevisionGUID="a7555f7d-71b0-4fa5-9a69-ae6a03815bde" CreationDate="2011-02-16T22:08:02.500" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48679/help-someone-please-help-me-merge-my-accounts" Text="" />
  <row Id="2936" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1178" RevisionGUID="11b7267a-7b52-4414-8c48-977079daf382" CreationDate="2011-02-17T05:33:53.787" UserId="12611" Comment="edited body" Text="The question &quot;What language to Learn Next?&quot; and all the various derivatives of that same question has been answered countless times, both by the volunteers on this site, as well as the authors of numerous blogs, articles, career journals, and forums.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, here is the same question [What Should I Learn Next?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33964/what-should-i-learn-next).  There are 8 answers there about what language to learn next.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This Programmers SE Search for &quot;What Language Should I Learn&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=what+language+should+i+learn) turns up 67 pages of results, with the first 2 pages dedicated to various different incarnations of the question `What Language Should I Learn Next?`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, if you want to know the answer to that question.  Start there and work your way through the bounty of answers available.  In addition to answers, you'll find links to other resources, which will link to other forums, documents, opinions, articles, and journals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is to not answer the same questions that have already been answered; instead, the volunteers here look forward to challenging new questions that have yet to be answered." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2937" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1187" RevisionGUID="2858eb60-ac28-47db-96d2-4d4069258110" CreationDate="2011-02-17T12:10:46.337" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|merge-accounts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2938" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1188" RevisionGUID="87dd7d67-0e0f-405d-810c-be3f48f5b457" CreationDate="2011-02-17T20:42:15.893" UserId="47" Text="Jin,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I managed to confuse myself today as I couldn't tell which tab was active on the &quot;tagged&quot; page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming-languages&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can the current tab be shown in red or something?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/T0Zn7.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2939" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1188" RevisionGUID="87dd7d67-0e0f-405d-810c-be3f48f5b457" CreationDate="2011-02-17T20:42:15.893" UserId="47" Text="Can we have more difference between the current tab and others on the &quot;tagged&quot; pages?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2940" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1188" RevisionGUID="87dd7d67-0e0f-405d-810c-be3f48f5b457" CreationDate="2011-02-17T20:42:15.893" UserId="47" Text="|feature-request|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2941" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1189" RevisionGUID="9f3ee24c-697b-49e0-b9dd-79aa1504d467" CreationDate="2011-02-18T00:02:27.860" UserId="2314" Text="This is what the search page looks like for me right now (**I'm on Mac, with Firefox 3.6.13** )...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comparing that to http://stackoverflow.com/search, it seems that the search box has pushed the main instructions down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, the search boxes ought to be shrunk to allow the longer search button names. (They are much shorter in Chrome and therefore fit fine, which seems to be because they are using the `input` `size` attribute. Should they be using a pixel width instead?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The float problem is the same in Chrome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/um3E7.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2942" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1189" RevisionGUID="9f3ee24c-697b-49e0-b9dd-79aa1504d467" CreationDate="2011-02-18T00:02:27.860" UserId="2314" Text="There seems to be a float problem on the search page" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2943" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1189" RevisionGUID="9f3ee24c-697b-49e0-b9dd-79aa1504d467" CreationDate="2011-02-18T00:02:27.860" UserId="2314" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2944" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1190" RevisionGUID="3e93e589-eb66-4399-9e97-aa6b7a4eb605" CreationDate="2011-02-18T00:09:22.377" UserId="13825" Text="Why is the phrase &quot;exact duplicate&quot; used instead of just &quot;duplicate&quot;? Can there an inexact duplicate? I've actually never seen an exact duplicate of another question (i.e. word for word the same) and sometimes ones marked exact duplicate don't even cover the 'exact' same ground as another but are close enough to be marked duplicate.  &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Sorry if this nitpicking but it's been niggling at me every time I see it. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2945" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1190" RevisionGUID="3e93e589-eb66-4399-9e97-aa6b7a4eb605" CreationDate="2011-02-18T00:09:22.377" UserId="13825" Text="Why does we use the phrase exact duplicate instead of just duplicate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2946" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1190" RevisionGUID="3e93e589-eb66-4399-9e97-aa6b7a4eb605" CreationDate="2011-02-18T00:09:22.377" UserId="13825" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2947" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1190" RevisionGUID="f4c4c355-1e85-4e2e-832c-92714b79ced4" CreationDate="2011-02-18T00:16:05.227" UserId="13825" Comment="edited title" Text="Why do we use the phrase exact duplicate instead of just duplicate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2948" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1190" RevisionGUID="9e0dfda2-1aec-46de-bc8a-fdf3421e52b7" CreationDate="2011-02-18T00:33:58.213" UserId="13825" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="Why is the phrase &quot;exact duplicate&quot; used instead of just &quot;duplicate&quot;? Can there be an inexact duplicate? I've actually never seen an exact duplicate of another question (i.e. word for word the same) and sometimes ones marked exact duplicate don't even cover the 'exact' same ground as another but are close enough to be marked duplicate.  &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Sorry if this nitpicking but it's been niggling at me every time I see it. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2949" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1191" RevisionGUID="92e3d4db-0350-4be0-b6a8-35cd2c632a99" CreationDate="2011-02-18T00:54:47.803" UserId="37" Text="It's because programmers, unless you tell them to be strict, think every question is a duplicate of some other question if they squint their eyes hard enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2950" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1192" RevisionGUID="497cc35b-ee59-40e1-97cb-ac5bb31d008b" CreationDate="2011-02-18T01:26:36.780" UserId="949" Text="There was a styling issue with margin here which has now been fixed - the search page is pretty again :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To try it out: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2951" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1189" RevisionGUID="c73cfcb6-af4c-4018-a83f-b5edd63213b1" CreationDate="2011-02-18T01:26:46.717" UserId="949" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2955" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1194" RevisionGUID="3085f825-84c7-4e18-b441-b639ce15f33a" CreationDate="2011-02-18T10:31:32.873" UserId="5095" Text="The guidelines on general edits says:  &quot;Try to make the post substantively better when you edit, not just change a single character. Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This morning in this spirit I rejected a proposed edit where something like three words had been changed which ultimately added nothing other than the editor clearly preferred his wording.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was nothing *wrong* with the edited version but I rejected it on the grounds that (a) there was nothing wrong with the original and I felt if in doubt the original questioners voice should prevail and (b) we should discourage small edits even where there is nothing wrong as they don't add anything but do take people's time (even if it's only a few seconds to approve them).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this approach correct?  Obviously I don't want to needlessly discourage people making edits as it's a useful contribution." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2956" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1194" RevisionGUID="3085f825-84c7-4e18-b441-b639ce15f33a" CreationDate="2011-02-18T10:31:32.873" UserId="5095" Text="Reason to Reject Flagged Edits?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2957" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1194" RevisionGUID="3085f825-84c7-4e18-b441-b639ce15f33a" CreationDate="2011-02-18T10:31:32.873" UserId="5095" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2958" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1195" RevisionGUID="1c8789de-e664-4679-ab56-cb45e0b666ef" CreationDate="2011-02-18T10:50:02.770" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="I'm also approving and rejecting edits daily and would like to be able to explain why I rejected one particular edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, I decide to not reject it because I feel that rejecting something without an explanation is a bit rude.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2959" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1196" RevisionGUID="89b79599-26d0-4d2e-9e05-94eab9fbe25a" CreationDate="2011-02-18T11:16:28.270" UserDisplayName="Drake Guan" Text="Not sure what kind of questions should post in [programmers][1] and others in [stackoverflow][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2960" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1196" RevisionGUID="89b79599-26d0-4d2e-9e05-94eab9fbe25a" CreationDate="2011-02-18T11:16:28.270" UserDisplayName="Drake Guan" Text="Difference between programmers and stackoverflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2961" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1196" RevisionGUID="89b79599-26d0-4d2e-9e05-94eab9fbe25a" CreationDate="2011-02-18T11:16:28.270" UserDisplayName="Drake Guan" Text="|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2962" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1196" RevisionGUID="978d3e88-38a7-4c2d-b9d5-e1d135c42f6a" CreationDate="2011-02-18T11:17:01.460" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49240/difference-between-programmers-and-stackoverflow" Text="" />
  <row Id="2963" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1196" RevisionGUID="ae27d07b-9ee7-4041-9fbb-1d6c26561b28" CreationDate="2011-02-18T11:18:13.380" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and SO](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Not sure what kind of questions should post in [programmers][1] and others in [stackoverflow][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2964" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="1196" RevisionGUID="0df2e4a1-3c8d-4254-9aa9-26fb4f1653dc" CreationDate="2011-02-18T11:18:13.253" UserId="47" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[171],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="2965" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1197" RevisionGUID="c19ba19c-a279-4a94-bd4c-78c5f55b2878" CreationDate="2011-02-18T11:57:35.097" UserId="16637" Text="I'm also interested in seeing the answers posted here as I've suggested edits containing only a few changes. The FAQ suggests that edits are welcomed and that they're a good thing for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From edits, I've strived for having concise, descriptive question titles. Reasons for this are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The are examples of what questions should be. This will, hopefully, show newer participants how to phrase their question and use the site.&#xD;&#xA; - The title is the main factor that determines whether people read the question (for people that do not read every question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's probably also a negative that 2 reputations are 'awarded' for each edit - surely these would rack up a lot of nonsensical edits and would impose additional stress on those deciding whether or not to approve an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apologies for treating this as a discussion, rather than a question-and-answer thing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2974" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1199" RevisionGUID="4628cbf5-f6f1-4201-b19e-c52a12838be2" CreationDate="2011-02-18T22:26:36.330" UserId="16637" Text="Click the mail icon next to your account name on the top of screen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The default display is a summary of your recent activity. However, the time span's end date is later than the start date. (This might be timezone related.) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;E.g. it's currently stating &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    2011-02-18 22:14:08Z to 2011-02-18 23:59:59Z&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;as the time span. (I'm GMT +11.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Also note that 'today' (the default display) is not in bold.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, selecting the other menus (reputation, responses, favorites, revisions, and badges) all return nothing because of the incorrect timespan.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In practice, this can be rectified by clicking 'today'.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2975" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1199" RevisionGUID="4628cbf5-f6f1-4201-b19e-c52a12838be2" CreationDate="2011-02-18T22:26:36.330" UserId="16637" Text="User summary - default date span" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2976" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1199" RevisionGUID="4628cbf5-f6f1-4201-b19e-c52a12838be2" CreationDate="2011-02-18T22:26:36.330" UserId="16637" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2977" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1200" RevisionGUID="df6bc7f7-813d-4e56-b3ed-21b8dbe6ff8f" CreationDate="2011-02-18T22:43:08.470" UserId="47" Text="This is correct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The default is to show the activity since (approximately) the last time you checked. It has the end date of 11:59:59 **UTC** as that way the activity is always encompassed by the date range." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2978" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1199" RevisionGUID="e7f130c2-ca6c-46bf-ad14-7be766bcea66" CreationDate="2011-02-18T22:43:52.243" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2979" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1196" RevisionGUID="d1bd1cca-5354-47a6-9078-e79f2013f6b5" CreationDate="2011-02-18T22:44:20.903" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2980" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1201" RevisionGUID="c9340771-4f8b-48ad-a07a-5fbb778cfc27" CreationDate="2011-02-19T01:29:26.140" UserId="37" Text="I often reject edits I feel are not substantive enough. I then go in and re-edit to make the post *substantively* better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, there is far too much turd-polishing in suggested edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Congratulations, you fixed *one* spelling error, in a post with missing markdown, terrible grammar, and run-on sentences. Would you like a congressional medal of honor?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2988" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1027" RevisionGUID="f2af5376-99ca-410a-9355-e9a175a8e010" CreationDate="2011-02-22T14:02:50.170" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2989" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1206" RevisionGUID="ef26dd04-a2ee-4a96-aa58-e30f238fb724" CreationDate="2011-02-23T15:46:09.640" UserId="6498" Text="I keep finding interesting sounding questions that are closed only to find out they were closed the same day they were migrated because they shouldn't be here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sounds like we need more coordination between the people migrating questions and the people closing them!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's a sample question that was closed within minutes of being migrated:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37804/which-big-web-applications-use-linq-to-sql&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks to whoever can shed some light on this for me.  Also, if I missed a Meta question that already addresses this, please point me in the right direction.  I couldn't find one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2990" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1206" RevisionGUID="ef26dd04-a2ee-4a96-aa58-e30f238fb724" CreationDate="2011-02-23T15:46:09.640" UserId="6498" Text="What's up with all of the migrated questions being closed the same day they are migrated?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2991" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1206" RevisionGUID="ef26dd04-a2ee-4a96-aa58-e30f238fb724" CreationDate="2011-02-23T15:46:09.640" UserId="6498" Text="|discussion|migration|frustration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2992" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1207" RevisionGUID="fa995804-273f-4421-8067-a82115f0ef9e" CreationDate="2011-02-23T16:11:47.990" UserId="6498" Text="I've been trying to lurk on the Programmer's site and a couple of other new Stack Exchange sites before posting a question to get a higher reputation.  My ID was automatically associated with my other Stack Exchange sites, but I still have under a 15 reputation on some of these sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I can't vote up questions or answers to show my interest in them, and don't feel comfortable adding answers to a question if I don't feel it will add value to the conversation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be nice if a minimum level (15) reputation was automatically added when an ID is automatically linked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks,&#xD;&#xA;Jeff&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS.  Arrgggg... can't post a second question right away, my retation is too low, so I have to wait for 20 minutes to ask this question.  This seems like a bad thing for the meta site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2993" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1207" RevisionGUID="fa995804-273f-4421-8067-a82115f0ef9e" CreationDate="2011-02-23T16:11:47.990" UserId="6498" Text="When associating multiple sites to a new site, what about adding a minimum level reputation automatically for the new site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2994" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1207" RevisionGUID="fa995804-273f-4421-8067-a82115f0ef9e" CreationDate="2011-02-23T16:11:47.990" UserId="6498" Text="|discussion|reputation|new-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2995" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1208" RevisionGUID="ac6f2fc6-9ba8-4d9e-bcb3-d792b553c55f" CreationDate="2011-02-23T16:29:36.027" UserId="226" Text="This is already in place, but with different rep thresholds than you have in mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have to have 200 rep on one of the sites you're associating your new account with in order to get the 100 rep association bonus on the new account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a workaround, you can get your rep up to 200 on one of your other sites and then disassociate/reassociate this account to receive the bonus." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2996" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1209" RevisionGUID="1dcb5971-8713-4002-82d5-b9a1c4db809b" CreationDate="2011-02-23T16:36:00.323" UserId="226" Text="A lot of questions get migrated to Programmers by people who are not very well familiar with the site's [FAQ and guidelines][1]. Such questions often get closed because they would get closed if they were asked here directly instead of having been migrated in from another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The specific question you used as an example is not a constructive subjective question. It's just asking for a list of sites. The answers are objective (either a site uses LINQ to SQL or not), short (what else is there to say besides leaving the URL?), and ultimately don't fit well within a Q&amp;A voting model on StackExchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2997" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1210" RevisionGUID="c3c3c4cc-b180-49a7-ba2d-d9bdb6cdb163" CreationDate="2011-02-23T16:39:45.577" UserId="101" Text="Since you linked to one of the questions I closed, I'll add my 2 cents.  Yes there needs to be more communication between people on SO closing/migrating questions and mods/users on Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand how it happens.  A question is posted on SO that clearly doesn't belong there, someone votes to migrate it to Programmers thinking it's not about code so it should live here, not really know if it meets Programmers guidelines.  It actually happens a lot.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do know that in recent weeks that some of the mods on SO have started [asking][1] here on Meta whether a question should be migrated to Programmers or just closed on SO.  This goes a long way to help the situation.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What it doesn't fix is the situation where 5 SO users vote to migrate a question here.  They may or may not know whether it's a good question to migrate and they may or may not care (as long as it's gone from SO).  I don't know how that gets fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's some other discussions about the same topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/872&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1162" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2998" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1211" RevisionGUID="090f9bea-42d9-452f-84ee-66ec8f9e6ea8" CreationDate="2011-02-23T22:54:32.980" UserId="5095" Text="A significant proportion of questions being transferred here from SO are being closed pretty rapidly upon arrival.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be possible to have them transfer to a holding area where they can be reviewed (by mods or suitably rep-ed up users - appearing in the tools area) prior to appearing on the site?  I'd suggest a threshold of two (or more) users have to accept the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's accepted then it appears as normal, if not then it gets returned to SO closed with a comment explaining what's happened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="2999" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1211" RevisionGUID="090f9bea-42d9-452f-84ee-66ec8f9e6ea8" CreationDate="2011-02-23T22:54:32.980" UserId="5095" Text="Ability to review questions being transferred from SO before they appear" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3000" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1211" RevisionGUID="090f9bea-42d9-452f-84ee-66ec8f9e6ea8" CreationDate="2011-02-23T22:54:32.980" UserId="5095" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3001" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1212" RevisionGUID="a471c749-54ae-4343-978f-d50ff12abc5d" CreationDate="2011-02-24T07:09:54.830" UserId="5941" Text="When flagging a question as being off-topic, only meta.programmers or Stack Overflow can be chosen. What if the question doesn't fit either of those options, or maybe not any site on the Stack Exchange network?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3002" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1212" RevisionGUID="a471c749-54ae-4343-978f-d50ff12abc5d" CreationDate="2011-02-24T07:09:54.830" UserId="5941" Text="Why isn't there an &quot;off-topic&quot; off-topic option?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3003" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1212" RevisionGUID="a471c749-54ae-4343-978f-d50ff12abc5d" CreationDate="2011-02-24T07:09:54.830" UserId="5941" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3009" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1213" RevisionGUID="89da53c2-572a-4819-a42a-fb3346e88f81" CreationDate="2011-02-24T11:24:30.393" UserId="5095" Text="Migration paths between sites depend on there being a natural affinity between the sites as exists between a site and it's meta or between Programmers and SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it's possible that a question posted on Programmers might really belong on Cooking it's pretty unlikely and the negative impact on the user interface of having 40 or so options in that box would outweigh the likely benefits of the one question every year or two that would use that functionality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also argue that users have to take some responsibility for asking their question in at least roughly the right place. If they don't make that basic effort and get it wildly wrong it's hard to justify why others should spend their time finding it's real home or answering it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In terms of questions which don't fit anywhere on the SE network - realistically those are questions which are just going to get closed (which is what happens if you select close as off-topic but don't pick a site to migrate it to).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE works by having well defined communities of knowledgeable users in clearly defined fields but that does mean that some things just aren't going to fit.  While that's not great for someone asking a question on a topic which doesn't currently have a home, it is the very thing which makes SE sites great places to get great answers for questions which are on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's worth remembering that SE isn't claiming to be able to answer every question, and that leaving off topic questions on sites where they didn't belong would dilute the focus of those sites and ultimately lead to a Yahoo answers style free for all." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3013" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1215" RevisionGUID="07e063fb-e39b-4e01-92a6-ed73af7ead3b" CreationDate="2011-02-24T16:57:11.707" UserId="5095" Text="OK, so the question is, as far as it goes, fine, not great but not an immediate close (though maybe off-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50989/arguing-developers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the answers have largely descended into a passive agressive self-help group with threats of violence and so on. There are enough up votes that simply down voting isn't going to do it - reason enough to close?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or am I being OTT?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3014" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1215" RevisionGUID="07e063fb-e39b-4e01-92a6-ed73af7ead3b" CreationDate="2011-02-24T16:57:11.707" UserId="5095" Text="Arguing Developers Question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3015" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1215" RevisionGUID="07e063fb-e39b-4e01-92a6-ed73af7ead3b" CreationDate="2011-02-24T16:57:11.707" UserId="5095" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3016" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1216" RevisionGUID="0e80f557-85b4-44c4-95ea-0e23f7a6128e" CreationDate="2011-02-24T17:17:50.467" UserId="17887" Text="Will a post with 10000+ views get a Famous Question (golden)badge automatically ? Or is there any other criteria present with it ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3017" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1216" RevisionGUID="0e80f557-85b4-44c4-95ea-0e23f7a6128e" CreationDate="2011-02-24T17:17:50.467" UserId="17887" Text="Question regarding badges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3018" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1216" RevisionGUID="0e80f557-85b4-44c4-95ea-0e23f7a6128e" CreationDate="2011-02-24T17:17:50.467" UserId="17887" Text="|support|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3019" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="1216" RevisionGUID="7a43adee-26c0-44e0-8a00-3cd5ec8c86f8" CreationDate="2011-02-24T17:30:42.207" UserId="17887" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:17887,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;vinoth&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="3020" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="1216" RevisionGUID="d7d8446e-6ddf-494f-85c8-8e51edf2eff9" CreationDate="2011-02-24T17:31:03.253" UserId="17887" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:17887,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;vinoth&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="3021" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1217" RevisionGUID="75601cf7-face-40f1-a2b2-3c83e6e3a6f3" CreationDate="2011-02-24T17:50:18.240" UserId="226" Text="Yes, it should happen automatically. There may be a delay due to caching and whatnot, but generally you shouldn't have to do anything else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think you should've received a badge and you didn't, let us know what question should've yielded a badge and we can look into it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3022" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1218" RevisionGUID="4e2232df-b8ae-46e4-a847-aa4a98aaaec4" CreationDate="2011-02-24T18:42:56.677" UserId="226" Text="You can (and are encouraged to) vote to close if you feel that it's warranted. Adding a comment may also encourage others to consider voting similarly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as the question goes, I agree that it's borderline, but I'd call it not constructive before calling it off-topic. Some of the answers are just attempts at humour, however potentially misguided. With a reasonable answer accepted, I think we can leave this as is for now (especially since it's now CW). If more unconstructive answers keep showing up, it may be worth protecting or locking the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3026" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1219" RevisionGUID="4a31f71c-f0ce-4453-8ecf-005c274ee487" CreationDate="2011-02-24T20:55:33.623" UserId="37" Text="Er.. what? Just take the default. The default is what you want, it's just plain off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  is off topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Programmers are expected to be about subjective issues in software development, within the scope defined in the faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/09TTD.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3027" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1220" RevisionGUID="59bfd650-9990-4a8d-a9ae-822667b61d9d" CreationDate="2011-02-24T21:03:51.263" UserId="37" Text="This question does not seem very specific to the profession of software development to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Really? Only programmers enter long, drawn out discussions yelling at each other?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess all those thousands of years of human history have steered me wrong, somehow! " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3028" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1221" RevisionGUID="6d383f24-29e4-416a-9e25-578f8063fe7d" CreationDate="2011-02-25T05:26:33.473" UserId="16198" Text="There's an Area 51 proposal for office-related issues that may be more appropriate for this sort of question (http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/22377/office-work-and-desk-jobs).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, since that site is not yet launched, I think it is acceptable to leave the question on programmers.stackexchange." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3029" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1212" RevisionGUID="5a1c2442-5e8f-4902-99d0-628d5fa9dd32" CreationDate="2011-02-25T10:41:25.847" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-bydesign|close-reasons|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3030" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1216" RevisionGUID="33cc487d-abb8-42ba-bd78-2395f3f1fe7b" CreationDate="2011-02-25T10:41:44.737" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3031" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1207" RevisionGUID="3a530492-9e2e-4828-a4e1-7751f4bd5bf5" CreationDate="2011-02-25T12:36:46.197" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|reputation|new-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3032" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1222" RevisionGUID="5d34ea93-14c3-4448-9802-7d617a07eefb" CreationDate="2011-02-27T15:51:24.647" UserId="8720" Text="Earlier in the day 27/02/2011, my reputation was 3445 and as of evening 27/02/2011 the same has reduced to 3408.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I checked out my reputation graph and there shows no down votes either. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone's got an idea how to track what is going on?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3033" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1222" RevisionGUID="5d34ea93-14c3-4448-9802-7d617a07eefb" CreationDate="2011-02-27T15:51:24.647" UserId="8720" Text="Erratic reputation score movement?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3034" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1222" RevisionGUID="5d34ea93-14c3-4448-9802-7d617a07eefb" CreationDate="2011-02-27T15:51:24.647" UserId="8720" Text="|bug|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3035" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1223" RevisionGUID="d1411e40-2708-414e-8701-79bea25a12e5" CreationDate="2011-02-27T18:08:58.390" UserId="226" Text="There was a rep recalculation performed on your account. It would've removed rep from questions and answers that were deleted or migrated to another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was a StackExchange-wide recalc done as part of the preparations for the new Users page. More details [here][1] on Meta.SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/80862/sudden-sharp-drop-in-reputation-find-out-reason-recalc" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3036" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1222" RevisionGUID="cadd7921-ce7b-4054-a9fc-1dd346cd0f7f" CreationDate="2011-02-27T18:09:27.623" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3037" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1224" RevisionGUID="f0785c30-2fd5-4819-b22c-52604a2fdae1" CreationDate="2011-02-27T18:10:29.620" UserId="15283" Text="See http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/80862/sudden-sharp-drop-in-reputation-find-out-reason-recalc for the details.  This was StackExchange wide in preparation for some upcoming changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3038" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1225" RevisionGUID="25882d5b-9489-4e45-9d0d-c742b387d167" CreationDate="2011-02-28T08:49:36.073" UserId="14221" Text="I earned 60 rep on PSE yesterday, as shown on [my rep page][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in the [wekly user league][3] only 30 points appear:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect this is a side effect of yesterday's rep recalc, where I lost exactly 30 points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/recent/14221?StartDate=2011-02-27&amp;EndDate=2011-02-27&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/3D5xx.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackexchange.com/leagues/52/week/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/1oIMK.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3039" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1225" RevisionGUID="25882d5b-9489-4e45-9d0d-c742b387d167" CreationDate="2011-02-28T08:49:36.073" UserId="14221" Text="Discrepancy in daily rep score between PSE and SE weekly league" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3040" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1225" RevisionGUID="25882d5b-9489-4e45-9d0d-c742b387d167" CreationDate="2011-02-28T08:49:36.073" UserId="14221" Text="|bug|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3041" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1226" RevisionGUID="841aaedb-e2be-46b6-ab56-6284a3193cae" CreationDate="2011-02-28T09:58:23.447" UserId="47" Text="I suspect that the reputation league figure is fairly heavily cached and only updated once or twice a day, whereas your profile page figure is &quot;real time&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3042" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1225" RevisionGUID="579c3194-4fcb-4b67-8166-d263c9d4ed53" CreationDate="2011-02-28T09:58:49.543" UserId="47" Comment="corrected spelling" Text="I earned 60 rep on PSE yesterday, as shown on [my rep page][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in the [weekly user league][3] only 30 points appear:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect this is a side effect of yesterday's rep recalc, where I lost exactly 30 points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/recent/14221?StartDate=2011-02-27&amp;EndDate=2011-02-27&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/3D5xx.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackexchange.com/leagues/52/week/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/1oIMK.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3043" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1227" RevisionGUID="309a16b4-c4af-45b3-9032-1d9429d6018c" CreationDate="2011-03-01T08:04:17.957" UserId="12611" Text="I can't see close votes, but I have the reputation to see them.  Does the close link only show if at least one person has already voted to close?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm getting confused and thinking that when I don't see any close votes that no one has yet voted to close a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should the screen look like when at least one person has voted to close **and** I have permissions to view close votes but not to actually vote to close myself?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3044" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1227" RevisionGUID="309a16b4-c4af-45b3-9032-1d9429d6018c" CreationDate="2011-03-01T08:04:17.957" UserId="12611" Text="Why can't I see close votes even though I have permissions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3045" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1227" RevisionGUID="309a16b4-c4af-45b3-9032-1d9429d6018c" CreationDate="2011-03-01T08:04:17.957" UserId="12611" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3047" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1229" RevisionGUID="e2e5e1b1-dfd6-447f-81c3-bc0b1a9ef512" CreationDate="2011-03-01T08:41:49.150" UserId="37" Text="You have the ability to cast close and reopen votes on *your own questions* at 250 rep per the faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, you will see `close (2)` if there are 2 pending close votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3048" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1230" RevisionGUID="5f730fda-7eae-44ad-811f-b3862052d8c5" CreationDate="2011-03-01T09:48:22.600" UserId="14221" Text="These two questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Question you really want to ask AS a potential EMPLOYER but cannot?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53167/question-you-really-want-to-ask-as-a-potential-employer-but-cannot)&#xD;&#xA;- [Question you really want to ask AS a potential EMPLOYEE but cannot?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53158/question-you-really-want-to-ask-as-a-potential-employee-but-cannot)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;are obviously related, but not duplicates. Rather, they are opposing pairs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO it was a mistake to merge them as duplicates and close the latter one. Now, most of the answers associated with the former one aren't actually valid answers to that question. (I even downvoted these mistakenly, before noticing that they have been merged from the other thread.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, it is another issue whether this pair of posts is suitable at PSE. To me it is borderline, I wouldn't object them getting closed as off topic. But merging them only created confusion.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3049" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1230" RevisionGUID="5f730fda-7eae-44ad-811f-b3862052d8c5" CreationDate="2011-03-01T09:48:22.600" UserId="14221" Text="These two questions are not duplicates" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3050" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1230" RevisionGUID="5f730fda-7eae-44ad-811f-b3862052d8c5" CreationDate="2011-03-01T09:48:22.600" UserId="14221" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3051" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1231" RevisionGUID="0adad0ad-3673-4ce5-a5bd-dc1cb7885445" CreationDate="2011-03-01T11:58:02.637" UserId="13625" Text="As the author of the accepted answer, I have to admit that I was very surprised, puzzled and at the same time slightly embarrassed at the number of votes it got. (Particularly when I compare it to the number of votes you get for a reasonably well-researched or insightful answer.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I don't think humour and irony should be banished from this site, life would be quite awful without them and we're all human (although some I suspect to be robots), it made me question the value of &quot;how much the community trusts you&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3052" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1227" RevisionGUID="aa518125-3e87-4486-9403-0911847f86e3" CreationDate="2011-03-01T13:57:41.767" UserId="12611" Comment="added 228 characters in body" Text="I can't see close votes, but I have the reputation to see them.  Does the close link only show if at least one person has already voted to close?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm getting confused and thinking that when I don't see any close votes that no one has yet voted to close a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What should the screen look like when at least one person has voted to close,** ***and***  **I have permissions to view close votes but not to actually vote to close myself?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, 3000 rep is required to close.  Obviously.  But 250 reputation is required to **view close votes.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, where does one view the close votes when they don't have the ability to close themselves." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3053" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1232" RevisionGUID="ce56ae5c-3cbd-4819-816c-717feb040a6b" CreationDate="2011-03-01T14:27:15.760" UserId="226" Text="I agree that they're not duplicates. I imagine the similarity in titles (there's only a 1 letter difference) made it seem like they're pretty much the same. Unfortunately question merges aren't reversibl, but I edited the remaining question to add &quot;employee&quot; into its scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I don't think either of them is a good question for this site. Neither is programmer-specific or constructive as defined by the guidelines in our FAQ." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3054" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1233" RevisionGUID="a7d39d16-4f1b-4ed2-90f6-1d6b6ff7504c" CreationDate="2011-03-01T17:47:49.830" UserId="399" Text="This was a temporary issue resulting from the global rep recalc.  It has since been resolved. (:" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3056" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1225" RevisionGUID="a729e9cd-f289-46d4-a718-06189e2d0ef7" CreationDate="2011-03-01T19:35:34.037" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3057" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1234" RevisionGUID="d1a47735-e752-4e2d-9bc7-0deea6732152" CreationDate="2011-03-02T11:46:18.333" UserId="18263" Text="I would like to ask a question about setting up a library of book resources for a team.  I have looked at the questions on prog.se and on so and they are all about individual books recommendations, not about what would be useful as a combined resource.  I would really appreciate an answer on what books should be in a dev team library (I would want it to be platform / language agnostic) but I am not sure if it would be able to be phrased in such a way that would fit with the faq guidelines and be beneficial to the community.  Any input on: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) How that question should be phrased to get sensible, valuable responses&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Whether that question is valid for prog.se&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would be appreciated." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3058" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1234" RevisionGUID="d1a47735-e752-4e2d-9bc7-0deea6732152" CreationDate="2011-03-02T11:46:18.333" UserId="18263" Text="How to ask a question about software library resources" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3059" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1234" RevisionGUID="d1a47735-e752-4e2d-9bc7-0deea6732152" CreationDate="2011-03-02T11:46:18.333" UserId="18263" Text="|discussion|off-topic|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3060" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1234" RevisionGUID="d2db0dc1-f2bf-4742-8c7f-e96fbf0c44a2" CreationDate="2011-03-02T13:44:10.263" UserId="18263" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3061" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1235" RevisionGUID="8b7cbba9-103b-4136-8e4e-5f7ffdfb0b01" CreationDate="2011-03-02T19:21:48.843" UserDisplayName="Sergio" Text="I opened a bounty on my question a while back and gave a maximum of 450 bounty points. I **really** wanted some great answers and I got them. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40394/how-do-you-organize-your-projects&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two things went wrong:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A) Amy P never got the bounty awarded to her. She is still at around 200 reputation points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;B) I never got the Benefactor badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks for your help. :)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3062" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1235" RevisionGUID="8b7cbba9-103b-4136-8e4e-5f7ffdfb0b01" CreationDate="2011-03-02T19:21:48.843" UserDisplayName="Sergio" Text="Bounty wasn't awarded, and badge wasn't given." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3063" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1235" RevisionGUID="8b7cbba9-103b-4136-8e4e-5f7ffdfb0b01" CreationDate="2011-03-02T19:21:48.843" UserDisplayName="Sergio" Text="|bug|bounty-awards|badge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3068" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1237" RevisionGUID="8e66199f-2ba0-44c6-903c-320da2d2367a" CreationDate="2011-03-02T23:11:07.490" UserId="162" Text="If you look at [this answer][1] from the [bounty faq][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What happens if there's no answer after the bounty period?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What happens if I feel my question is still unanswered?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What is automatic awarding?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; At the end of the bounty period, if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the bounty starter has not manually&#xD;&#xA;&gt; awarded the bounty, eligible answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can be automatically awarded half the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; bounty amount. The criteria for an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer to be eligible for automatic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; awarding are as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The answer must be given after the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; bounty was started The answer must&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have a score of at least +2 If two or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more eligible answers have the same&#xD;&#xA;&gt; score, the oldest answer is awarded&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no answers meet these criteria, the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; bounty ends without it being awarded&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to any answer, and is not refunded to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the bounty starter.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; An accepted answer that does not meet&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the above criteria is still ignored by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the automatic-awarding system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like the bounty was automatically given to [this answer][3] by Alex. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This explains why it went to alex. It also explains why no badge for you. Automatic awards don't count because the benefactor badge goes for the &quot;First bounty you **manually** awarded on&#xD;&#xA; your own question&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/16065/how-does-the-bounty-system-work/16067#16067&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/16065/148672&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40394/how-do-you-organize-your-projects/41938#41938" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3069" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1235" RevisionGUID="afe6f4ce-43e8-425e-9830-15df52fb4bda" CreationDate="2011-03-02T23:38:06.330" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|bounty-awards|badge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3070" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1227" RevisionGUID="5f4ff4a6-f76a-40bd-aedd-54c25f2b40e3" CreationDate="2011-03-02T23:39:19.590" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3071" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1235" RevisionGUID="58be41b6-b277-4f1b-9020-6804dc3a92c3" CreationDate="2011-03-03T00:15:10.140" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|bounty-awards|badge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3072" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1238" RevisionGUID="28c131fc-ba0f-4178-b27e-e66b026c4607" CreationDate="2011-03-03T14:20:51.310" UserDisplayName="Sergio" Text="I opened up my profile this morning and saw my flag weight was 160.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is flag weight, and how does that effect me?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3073" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1238" RevisionGUID="28c131fc-ba0f-4178-b27e-e66b026c4607" CreationDate="2011-03-03T14:20:51.310" UserDisplayName="Sergio" Text="What is flag weight?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3074" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1238" RevisionGUID="28c131fc-ba0f-4178-b27e-e66b026c4607" CreationDate="2011-03-03T14:20:51.310" UserDisplayName="Sergio" Text="|support|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3075" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1239" RevisionGUID="2190732b-f2cb-4e9b-9130-0addb74961e1" CreationDate="2011-03-03T14:55:29.370" UserId="226" Text="Flag weight is a measure of how reliable your content flags are. When you flag a post or an answer for moderator attention, we get the option to dismiss the flag as valid or invalid. &quot;Valid&quot; increases your flag weight, &quot;invalid&quot; lowers it. Your flags will be given a lower priority (i.e. appear further down the list of mod flags) if you have a low flag weight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More details and the official FAQ entry [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3080" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1241" RevisionGUID="b39ce595-ab2f-44ee-bc91-c901caa081c0" CreationDate="2011-03-03T16:57:53.053" UserId="7167" Text="I'm finding that the new style Users page does not seem to be showing gravatars properly. Mine shows fine in questions and in my profile, but is some weird brown geometry on the users pages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently, I'm not alone in this since quite a few other users are also getting default gravatar rendering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any particular reason for this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, I like the concept of the new Users page, it seems to reduce the rep competition by relegating all time top scores to a much less prominent location with emphasis on recent gainers. This encourages continuous engagement." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3081" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1241" RevisionGUID="b39ce595-ab2f-44ee-bc91-c901caa081c0" CreationDate="2011-03-03T16:57:53.053" UserId="7167" Text="Why does the new style user page not show gravatars properly?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3082" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1241" RevisionGUID="b39ce595-ab2f-44ee-bc91-c901caa081c0" CreationDate="2011-03-03T16:57:53.053" UserId="7167" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3083" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1242" RevisionGUID="c554cd08-f701-4fb2-800e-b6d23135a383" CreationDate="2011-03-03T21:53:27.987" UserId="14157" Text="Is there a SO related site dedicated to issues faced by programmers for life outside work?e.g:&#xD;&#xA;Health/Relationships? if not, maybe create one..&#xD;&#xA;Most of the popular forums dealing with these kind of issues are open to all..and it can be difficult to relate sometimes.&#xD;&#xA;The relationship problems faced by a person working in adult industry is different than that of a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;The health problems of an athlete is different from that of a programmer. etc. etc etc." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3084" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1242" RevisionGUID="c554cd08-f701-4fb2-800e-b6d23135a383" CreationDate="2011-03-03T21:53:27.987" UserId="14157" Text="A site for life-outside-work issues dedicated to programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3085" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1242" RevisionGUID="c554cd08-f701-4fb2-800e-b6d23135a383" CreationDate="2011-03-03T21:53:27.987" UserId="14157" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3086" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1243" RevisionGUID="25db92f6-5e26-403b-8777-981a42c20340" CreationDate="2011-03-03T23:00:35.600" UserId="2314" Text="Victor, have you checked out [area51.stackexchange.com](http://area51.stackexchange.com/)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a proposal system for creating new StackExchange sites. It's how Programmers was created.  If you're interested in creating new SE sites that don't match any current sites, in helping to define new sites, or discuss the problems with existing sites ([discuss.area51.stackexchange.com](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/)), that's the place to be." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3087" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1244" RevisionGUID="0e681fda-c5d3-49a4-972c-b81664c7ac29" CreationDate="2011-03-03T23:32:44.320" UserDisplayName="Sergio" Text="I'd like to see who else from Bolivia is here. Maybe I find a work colleague. :D" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3088" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1244" RevisionGUID="0e681fda-c5d3-49a4-972c-b81664c7ac29" CreationDate="2011-03-03T23:32:44.320" UserDisplayName="Sergio" Text="Is there a way to see users from a specific country?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3089" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1244" RevisionGUID="0e681fda-c5d3-49a4-972c-b81664c7ac29" CreationDate="2011-03-03T23:32:44.320" UserDisplayName="Sergio" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3090" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1245" RevisionGUID="098f830b-c4f8-4356-8b53-8e2b70faf92f" CreationDate="2011-03-04T00:48:00.000" UserId="2314" Text="I think the best way is the **[StackExchange data explorer](http://data.stackexchange.com)**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just made a quick user search query for you: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1051/users-from&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Type in &quot;Bolivia&quot; and there you go! There were **4** at the last import on February 10. Imports are done once a month." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3091" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1241" RevisionGUID="3370392e-535d-4618-b6e8-7ab83afe08b8" CreationDate="2011-03-04T09:38:54.063" UserId="7167" Comment="Added screenshot" Text="I'm finding that the new style Users page does not seem to be showing gravatars properly. Mine shows fine in questions and in my profile, but is some weird brown geometry on the users pages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently, I'm not alone in this since quite a few other users are also getting default gravatar rendering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any particular reason for this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, I like the concept of the new Users page, it seems to reduce the rep competition by relegating all time top scores to a much less prominent location with emphasis on recent gainers. This encourages continuous engagement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This doesn't seem to happen on my home machine (Macbook Pro with Chrome), but is happening at work (XP with FF3). Here's a screenshot (from Users | All) to illustrate:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screen shot from Users | All][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kStdJ.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3092" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1246" RevisionGUID="fcbe29d4-f6a4-4c11-9c7c-75a64142c63d" CreationDate="2011-03-05T00:21:57.437" UserId="63" Text="There are athletic programmers who work in &quot;adult&quot; industries... The truth is, &quot;life&quot; questions from programmers aren't usually all that different from those of other professions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, the challenges you face in your daily non-work life are considerably different from those of your friend the investment-banking cyclist. Then again, they're probably also considerably different from *mine*. Many different factors influence our lives, and grouping questions by profession isn't necessarily any more effective than grouping them by age, race, location, or favorite food. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not that there's anything inherently wrong in carving out a niche... But if you're going to do so [on Stack Exchange][1], there better be enough people firmly dedicated to that niche to sustain it. Trying to get around that by grouping a bunch of mostly-unrelated niche topics together (programmer-HEALTH, programmer-RELATIONSHIPS, programmer-COMPETITIVE ROSE GROWING) just ends up creating a site about anything and nothing at all... and that won't fly. [We sorta tried that already...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352?phase=definition)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange isn't a social network or a support group. It's about questions, and their answers. If you can ask a health question in a way that makes it sufficiently unique to the software development profession, [it *might* find a home on this site][2]... Otherwise, you'd be better off asking it on a dedicated health site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1242/a-site-for-life-outside-work-issues-dedicated-to-programmers/1243#1243&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38299/do-computer-glasses-work" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3097" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="1043" RevisionGUID="f7436f3a-73f2-4884-8e69-d376398702b9" CreationDate="2011-03-05T14:09:38.587" UserId="47" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="3098" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1248" RevisionGUID="0afb95df-0f98-4d42-b86c-200bb6f0662c" CreationDate="2011-03-05T22:23:56.130" UserId="16637" Text="Just wondering if I've misunderstood the requirements for the [Deputy badge][1]. *(I haven't received it.)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Achieved maximum flag weight by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reviewing and flagging appropriately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![flag weight][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Have I misinterpreted the requirements?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/75/deputy&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ULEE8.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3099" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1248" RevisionGUID="0afb95df-0f98-4d42-b86c-200bb6f0662c" CreationDate="2011-03-05T22:23:56.130" UserId="16637" Text="Requirements for the Deputy badge" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3100" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1248" RevisionGUID="0afb95df-0f98-4d42-b86c-200bb6f0662c" CreationDate="2011-03-05T22:23:56.130" UserId="16637" Text="|support|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3101" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1249" RevisionGUID="23abd100-9861-44cc-afb1-472dfd8cb5cf" CreationDate="2011-03-06T07:53:16.747" UserId="12611" Text="I don't believe it's awarded right away.  Most of the badges are awarded when a cron job on the system runs.  For some things, like privileges, it happens sooner, but for badges like  the Deputy Badge, it may take longer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you can see, you would be the first to receive it!  Therefore, it's computationally intensive for this job to run continuously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is of course just my interpretation based on similar questions on Meta SO.  If you don't get it in the next 24 hours, I'd suggest hunting down a moderator." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3102" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1248" RevisionGUID="8b0ec094-4ea5-477c-98b5-29f13c511766" CreationDate="2011-03-06T20:39:52.320" UserId="16637" Comment="Added 'bug' tag." Text="|support|bug|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3103" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1241" RevisionGUID="2ec0d528-daac-4daa-841f-07db8a432f19" CreationDate="2011-03-07T14:27:04.327" UserId="7167" Comment="Fixing link" Text="I'm finding that the new style Users page does not seem to be showing gravatars properly. Mine shows fine in questions and in my profile, but is some weird brown geometry on the users pages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently, I'm not alone in this since quite a few other users are also getting default gravatar rendering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any particular reason for this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, I like the concept of the new Users page, it seems to reduce the rep competition by relegating all time top scores to a much less prominent location with emphasis on recent gainers. This encourages continuous engagement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This doesn't seem to happen on my home machine (Macbook Pro with Chrome), but is happening at work (XP with FF3). Here's a screenshot (from Users | All) to illustrate:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screen shot from Users | All][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update 2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The gravatar URI for Jeff O (one of the few currently still showing as a default) is &quot;http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/970d11475b62705c41719801b176bf2a?s=48&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mine seems to have returned to normal.&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kStdJ.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3104" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1250" RevisionGUID="7fdaae28-d839-41d0-bb9e-86b9cffcd50d" CreationDate="2011-03-07T20:20:14.367" UserId="226" Text="[This was reported on Meta.SO][1] and fixed today. The fix should be released in the next day or so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/81985/flag-weight-deputy-badge-bug" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3105" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1248" RevisionGUID="5f960d9f-5178-4d2f-b392-ad9af1d3c06a" CreationDate="2011-03-07T20:20:40.387" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|bug|status-completed|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3106" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1251" RevisionGUID="ca840473-06f5-4ca1-abb9-be3c0d9cd650" CreationDate="2011-03-08T10:10:33.020" UserDisplayName="AdityaGameProgrammer" Text="Hi, I have noticed this concept prevalent in other forums where people create multiple id / account and upvote  their own answers/questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes we see a lot of answers with lot up votes even when the question in concern doesn't get any vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or similar situations where you are lead to believe the person answering might be gaming the system by using 4-5 alternate id's.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is there any existing system i am unaware of that checks for things like this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3107" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1251" RevisionGUID="ca840473-06f5-4ca1-abb9-be3c0d9cd650" CreationDate="2011-03-08T10:10:33.020" UserDisplayName="AdityaGameProgrammer" Text="stackoverflow rep gamed? any audit system to check authenticity?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3108" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1251" RevisionGUID="ca840473-06f5-4ca1-abb9-be3c0d9cd650" CreationDate="2011-03-08T10:10:33.020" UserDisplayName="AdityaGameProgrammer" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3109" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1251" RevisionGUID="17a2768a-58f7-4813-a6c0-5ad46dcbae81" CreationDate="2011-03-08T10:14:44.513" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55909/stackoverflow-rep-gamed-any-audit-system-to-check-authenticity" Text="" />
  <row Id="3110" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1252" RevisionGUID="efd53629-5579-4078-ac84-853e61e5c1e1" CreationDate="2011-03-08T10:18:06.557" UserId="47" Text="Yes there are systems in place that will detect vote fraud.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They look out for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Lots of votes from one user to another in a short period of time&#xD;&#xA;* Votes from accounts sharing the same IP address (which could be innocent - people from universities or companies, but they need to be manually verified).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know the exact details of these (nor should I), but they seem to work as fraud is detected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also rely on other users flagging up potential abuse." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3111" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1253" RevisionGUID="77034dff-2df5-4134-a6c3-9795f158d185" CreationDate="2011-03-08T19:18:31.403" UserId="7751" Text="In a [recent question][1], a commenter suggested the existence of a &quot;rant&quot; tag so that she may keep track of programmer rants, as she sometimes enjoys reading them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should a &quot;rant&quot; tag exist?  If so, should any rules regarding its use be instituted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55823/how-much-effort-should-you-put-into-a-junior-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3112" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1253" RevisionGUID="77034dff-2df5-4134-a6c3-9795f158d185" CreationDate="2011-03-08T19:18:31.403" UserId="7751" Text="&quot;Rant&quot; tag - Should it exist?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3113" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1253" RevisionGUID="77034dff-2df5-4134-a6c3-9795f158d185" CreationDate="2011-03-08T19:18:31.403" UserId="7751" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3114" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1254" RevisionGUID="76aa5dd0-097f-425d-ac87-459f5de8e1ce" CreationDate="2011-03-08T19:40:28.463" UserId="2314" Text="No, I don't think so. Rants are explicitly discouraged in the [Don't ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section of the FAQ. They can be interesting to read, but if they are appropriate anywhere it would be in answers, which don't have tags &amp;mdash; not questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3115" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1255" RevisionGUID="4d2a793a-614e-4cf3-a723-8e7b4f904490" CreationDate="2011-03-08T20:21:11.767" UserId="226" Text="Rants do not belong on a Q&amp;A site and we generally at least try to edit them out of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[DailyWTF forums][1] are a good place to find entertaining programming-related rants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://forums.thedailywtf.com/Forums/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3116" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1256" RevisionGUID="5409ab21-3b70-4bb1-8a83-5166d0ae649f" CreationDate="2011-03-09T16:47:28.780" UserId="6329" Text="In a way, a tag is an endorsement that the tagged item is acceptable behavior. A rants tag would be just as bad as a &quot;homework&quot; tag. It makes no sense to have a tag for something that we don't want in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only should there be no rants, there should be no implicit rants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a form of a kind of question here that basically says: *&quot;Please suggest a type of X for me, but definitely not Y!&quot;* For example, &quot;What's functional programming languages are used, and you can't say F#!&quot; and &quot;What's a good editor for Lisp, but don't say Emacs!&quot; [paraphrasing].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should be bold in editing these arbitrarily scoped questions that intentionally avoid types of answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3117" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1257" RevisionGUID="f3249d24-37b1-4a2f-bf81-241b1ca09931" CreationDate="2011-03-09T21:59:18.410" UserId="17662" Text="This is my first day actively participating on StackExchange but I've experienced at least two outages today.  Is it always like this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3118" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1257" RevisionGUID="f3249d24-37b1-4a2f-bf81-241b1ca09931" CreationDate="2011-03-09T21:59:18.410" UserId="17662" Text="Is it just me or does this site have a lot of downtime?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3119" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1257" RevisionGUID="f3249d24-37b1-4a2f-bf81-241b1ca09931" CreationDate="2011-03-09T21:59:18.410" UserId="17662" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3120" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1258" RevisionGUID="3d1c302f-ebf1-4f33-81e1-3f199f968bc8" CreationDate="2011-03-10T00:29:56.810" UserId="175" Text="I'm not a Moderator, but I think Mods see deleted / closed posts.  I would think that rant and homework would be helpful as a secret 6th tag, but I agree it is off scope, and more suited towards other forums.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective programmers exchange has parameters and isn't a catch all for everything that doesn't fit with SO.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3121" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1257" RevisionGUID="960b1d0c-15d6-4f66-b158-4cea15003fe0" CreationDate="2011-03-10T00:59:22.493" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3122" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1259" RevisionGUID="e21063dc-15df-4ecb-9b90-216efea215df" CreationDate="2011-03-10T03:31:20.217" UserId="8187" Text="The sites are occasionally taken offline for maintenance purposes. Sometimes it's just one site, sometimes more than one. The outage typically does not last long, though. Revisit in a while and chances are the site will be back up." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3123" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1260" RevisionGUID="c01ed006-4fec-4bfc-8a14-6135a581820f" CreationDate="2011-03-10T16:52:42.277" UserId="6393" Text="Outages happen, but in the year-plus that I have been using StackOverflow and the related sites extensively, I have only seen them go down for more than a minute or two on one occasion that I can remember.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the incredible amount of traffic that these sites handles, I'd say that their responsiveness and uptime are remarkable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3124" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1261" RevisionGUID="800f2394-7a11-4677-8d37-c440f8bdb4b5" CreationDate="2011-03-10T17:27:47.543" UserId="1130" Text="The Chat is telling me I need to login to chat, and when I go to login from there it tells me the meta data is old and to login to any stack exchange site to update it. But I can't login because I'm already logged in and cannot find the logout button...." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3125" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1261" RevisionGUID="800f2394-7a11-4677-8d37-c440f8bdb4b5" CreationDate="2011-03-10T17:27:47.543" UserId="1130" Text="Stupid question... where is the logout button???" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3126" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1261" RevisionGUID="800f2394-7a11-4677-8d37-c440f8bdb4b5" CreationDate="2011-03-10T17:27:47.543" UserId="1130" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3127" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1262" RevisionGUID="7c815b11-7e10-43e8-92e0-8c35ca935679" CreationDate="2011-03-10T18:15:02.120" UserId="6415" Text="They removed it recently from the main banner. It's now on your profile page. There's 3 links: edit | add openid | log out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;meta.SO question - [Logout link now missing](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/80610/154388)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3128" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1262" RevisionGUID="172fde58-2266-42a7-a9cf-c92ec3fc7e8a" CreationDate="2011-03-10T18:28:26.400" UserId="6415" Comment="added 10 characters in body" Text="They removed it recently from the main banner. It's now on your main site profile page. There's 3 links: edit | add openid | log out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;meta.SO question - [Logout link now missing](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/80610/154388)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3129" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1257" RevisionGUID="01355f90-e863-40fc-860a-24885ca6f6ac" CreationDate="2011-03-10T18:38:21.447" UserId="17662" Comment="added 276 characters in body" Text="This is my first day actively participating on StackExchange but I've experienced at least two outages today.  Is it always like this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Edit: This just made me curious about whether it was a known issue that stack exchange is bumping up against [scalability concerns](http://highscalability.com/blog/2009/10/13/why-are-facebook-digg-and-twitter-so-hard-to-scale.html) similar to Twitter, Facebook, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3130" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1263" RevisionGUID="ff684b53-f71e-4bf5-a504-846b0a85e90e" CreationDate="2011-03-11T00:31:09.183" UserId="15177" Text="Hi,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to hide questions asked in the user profile?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have some questions that I posted recently that I wouldn't like potential employer's to find as they could impact one's ability to be hired." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3131" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1263" RevisionGUID="ff684b53-f71e-4bf5-a504-846b0a85e90e" CreationDate="2011-03-11T00:31:09.183" UserId="15177" Text="Hide Questions Asked?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3132" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1263" RevisionGUID="ff684b53-f71e-4bf5-a504-846b0a85e90e" CreationDate="2011-03-11T00:31:09.183" UserId="15177" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3133" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1264" RevisionGUID="d83d743c-8a90-461c-8d84-aab5eb11ecce" CreationDate="2011-03-11T03:14:32.563" UserId="226" Text="No, there is no way to do that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best I can advise is to either phrase your questions in such a way that they obscure your specific situation and make it harder to trace it to you, or avoid posting things you would regret saying on the internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also create a new account on the site that's not using your real name or picture, or post from an unregistered account." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3134" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1265" RevisionGUID="bb057e0b-4d44-45dd-b888-f32609ceda5c" CreationDate="2011-03-11T09:29:46.923" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="The only way to prevent anyone to use what you wrote against you, is to anonymize your profile (a simple request to team@stackexchange.com) is enough OR create an anonymous profile to ask questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I personaly think that asking question (even stupid question) is just a proof you are able to consume your employer's money wisely instead of staying in the exact same level of knowledge for years or worse, trying to solve a bug for weeks that someone on the internet can solve in 5 minutes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3135" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1266" RevisionGUID="8b1259e4-2e55-4b95-89fc-89c1f78ad5c7" CreationDate="2011-03-11T10:16:48.153" UserId="2673" Text="You must visit when I visit. I've probably experience close to 10 outages this year already. Most are more than a few minutes as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess for some of us, we fall into the 'slow-zone' where they deem it is the best window.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although, with websites such as this being globally orientated, maybe more work needs to go into being able to do migrations, maintenance and hardware upgrades while keeping the site functioning." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3136" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1267" RevisionGUID="0f58e29c-afc9-4067-84ae-fab58d517499" CreationDate="2011-03-11T12:31:12.263" UserId="13576" Text="I'm not sure if this where it's brought up, but i can't see any other avenue to discuss (or  query) why this question was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should this be the wrong avenue, please email on my username with a dot between the first and second names at gmail.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**CRUX:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are plenty of questions in the career, work-environment and lifestyle tags where you could replace 'programmer' (or your favorite synonym) slice of text with near all professions or lifestyle choices.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Considering [this question][1] was both asked by a programmer (with application to activity whilst programming), and received responses from (i assume) other programmers (due to the perceived audience), why was it closed?  Was it not relevant to programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56897/what-can-i-keep-my-hand-occupied-with" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3137" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1267" RevisionGUID="0f58e29c-afc9-4067-84ae-fab58d517499" CreationDate="2011-03-11T12:31:12.263" UserId="13576" Text="Need a link to the rules" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3138" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1267" RevisionGUID="0f58e29c-afc9-4067-84ae-fab58d517499" CreationDate="2011-03-11T12:31:12.263" UserId="13576" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|moderation|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3139" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1268" RevisionGUID="a64a6e5f-408c-4dfd-8c10-1388c976d5e5" CreationDate="2011-03-11T12:43:36.223" UserId="37" Text="Did you, perchance, take a look at the FAQ? It's linked all over the place, including&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the top of the page&#xD;&#xA;- the bottom of the page&#xD;&#xA;- on the mandatory greeting for new users (two places)&#xD;&#xA;- on the /questions/ask page seen when asking a new question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short of driving to your home and delivering you a hand-embossed, countersigned, wax sealed copy ... I'm not sure what else to do other than provide the very same link:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read closely, particularly the top 4 or 5 paragraphs and related bulleted lists." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3140" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1269" RevisionGUID="56c324cc-66ea-4ad4-95bb-399b94a2466e" CreationDate="2011-03-11T20:21:54.367" UserId="7048" Text="I wasn't sure where else to put it, so I decided upon Meta.Programmers.StackExchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you evaluate the html generated for [this post][1], you will notice that it generates mismatched tags when making bold-italic text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Platform&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deadline&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;/&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Budget&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;...&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Content&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not particularly a W3C validation nut, but surely we can all agree this is wrong?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-a-developer-know-before-building-a-public-web-site/46763#46763" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3141" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1269" RevisionGUID="56c324cc-66ea-4ad4-95bb-399b94a2466e" CreationDate="2011-03-11T20:21:54.367" UserId="7048" Text="Broken Markdown Formatting" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3142" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1269" RevisionGUID="56c324cc-66ea-4ad4-95bb-399b94a2466e" CreationDate="2011-03-11T20:21:54.367" UserId="7048" Text="|bug|html|markdown|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3143" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1270" RevisionGUID="6ec1660b-d78f-4cae-ba7d-496cef1406d4" CreationDate="2011-03-11T22:32:04.737" UserId="15466" Text="I'm fairly new to SE and wonder what exactly Meta is supposed to be used for?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3144" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1270" RevisionGUID="6ec1660b-d78f-4cae-ba7d-496cef1406d4" CreationDate="2011-03-11T22:32:04.737" UserId="15466" Text="What exactly is the purpose of Meta?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3145" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1270" RevisionGUID="6ec1660b-d78f-4cae-ba7d-496cef1406d4" CreationDate="2011-03-11T22:32:04.737" UserId="15466" Text="|discussion|meta|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3146" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1271" RevisionGUID="3dcddd9a-09d7-4a59-a14e-c09e1fc7073c" CreationDate="2011-03-11T22:56:41.147" UserId="16637" Text="In the case of Programmers.SE, the [main][1] site is to discuss anything related to programming (further defined in the [FAQ][2]). Whereas the [meta site][3] exists to *discuss* the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a look at the [recent popular questions in Meta][4], you'll find:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - bug reports&#xD;&#xA; - generic questions regarding to Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA; - suggestions to FAQ modifications&#xD;&#xA; - discussions on which questions are on and off topic (for the main site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of which do not contain anything directly related to programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/?tab=month" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3147" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1272" RevisionGUID="62b54c55-1af3-4999-b97d-eb8946fbff1d" CreationDate="2011-03-12T17:08:00.743" UserId="37" Text="Let's see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***Bold and Italic***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`***Bold and Italic***`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This produces&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bold and Italic&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I simply entered a space in the post, pressed the save button, and this re-rendered the post with correct output. The original post was from December 2008 so it reflects an earlier output parser." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3148" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1269" RevisionGUID="b97635c8-8142-4a5c-ab50-aa085884cb7e" CreationDate="2011-03-12T17:09:40.773" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|html|markdown|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3149" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1273" RevisionGUID="9c7bec3e-dffc-4b24-8a97-5fd786dcdffb" CreationDate="2011-03-12T17:49:54.310" UserId="37" Text="I recommend reading the /faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    This site is for meta discussion about &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;programmers.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt;. That is, things like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Are questions about _____ on or off topic?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;What should our FAQ contain?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;How should we tag questions about _____?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;What should our &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/stack-exchange-naming-for-dummies/&quot;&gt;elevator pitch be&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;What should our site design look like?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Who should &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/moderator-pro-tempore/&quot;&gt;the moderators be&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;How do we &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/a-recipe-to-promote-your-site/&quot;&gt;promote our site&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/the-7-essential-meta-questions-of-every-beta/&quot;&gt;The 7 Essential Meta Questions&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3150" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1274" RevisionGUID="d1adba2c-8811-4e78-b448-fe91a36f6254" CreationDate="2011-03-12T19:58:41.323" UserId="5148" Text="How is it decided which questions get tweeted by the stack exchange programmer twitter account?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3151" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1274" RevisionGUID="d1adba2c-8811-4e78-b448-fe91a36f6254" CreationDate="2011-03-12T19:58:41.323" UserId="5148" Text="Questions being tweeted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3152" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1274" RevisionGUID="d1adba2c-8811-4e78-b448-fe91a36f6254" CreationDate="2011-03-12T19:58:41.323" UserId="5148" Text="|discussion|twitter|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3153" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1274" RevisionGUID="2ebfc0a8-2fb7-4043-9080-f7eb0a2988b0" CreationDate="2011-03-12T20:08:54.577" UserId="5148" Comment="added 65 characters in body" Text="How is it decided which questions get tweeted by the stack exchange programmer twitter account?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it a choice by a mod or just automatic every nth question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3154" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1275" RevisionGUID="e014bf55-2e5b-4772-b5b6-14d9d662aab1" CreationDate="2011-03-12T20:44:33.770" UserId="37" Text="It's algorithmically determined based on hotness, without repetition (no duplicates).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/?tab=hot" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3155" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1274" RevisionGUID="a70bf0a3-f543-495f-881e-2431ff9bcf56" CreationDate="2011-03-12T20:44:57.607" UserId="37" Comment="added 41 characters in body" Text="How is it decided which questions get tweeted by the stack exchange programmer twitter account?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://twitter.com/#!/stackprogrammer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it a choice by a mod or just automatic every nth question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3156" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1276" RevisionGUID="f555b53e-dbbf-466a-92e2-a7d7b0a3a0ce" CreationDate="2011-03-12T21:55:46.547" UserId="12611" Text="I noticed that for the last 2 days the Consecutive streak calendar in my Meta PM SE profile won't load.  I can view this on PM SE.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a bug?  I also noticed that the consecutive days dropped back to 1.  I'm not sure if I missed a day, which is very possible, or if there is a problem with the data which coincides with the inability to fetch the calendar.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll tag this as a possible bug.  If not, we can edit the tag and remove it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3157" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1276" RevisionGUID="f555b53e-dbbf-466a-92e2-a7d7b0a3a0ce" CreationDate="2011-03-12T21:55:46.547" UserId="12611" Text="Consecutive Visits Calendar Possibly Broken In Meta PM SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3158" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1276" RevisionGUID="f555b53e-dbbf-466a-92e2-a7d7b0a3a0ce" CreationDate="2011-03-12T21:55:46.547" UserId="12611" Text="|support|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3159" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1275" RevisionGUID="ccd39f78-5db6-4891-9137-ee885601a30b" CreationDate="2011-03-13T05:28:03.330" UserId="37" Comment="added 147 characters in body" Text="It's algorithmically determined based on hotness, without repetition (no duplicates).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/?tab=hot&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The (mostly) complete list of twitter accounts is here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/twitter-question-feeds-for-stack-exchange/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3160" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1277" RevisionGUID="b95a4f57-0486-4724-975a-765e6363001d" CreationDate="2011-03-13T21:49:28.643" UserId="102" Text="This was indeed a bug on the child meta sites - a fix is checked in and will be deployed tonight." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3161" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1276" RevisionGUID="3ce3da78-802d-410d-8cfa-4dac7c15fab3" CreationDate="2011-03-13T21:50:27.333" UserId="102" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3162" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1278" RevisionGUID="1de15454-c8e7-40b1-9bdd-870e43fa1d00" CreationDate="2011-03-14T18:31:35.587" UserId="9062" Text="It now appears at the top of every page - move your mouse over the little down arrow to the left of your user name, and you'll see logout in there along with some other useful links." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3165" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1265" RevisionGUID="dc84a4ab-2b0b-4d02-893a-a5acb5aed2b9" CreationDate="2011-03-14T21:21:51.633" UserDisplayName="user2567" Comment="edited body" Text="The only way to prevent anyone to use what you wrote against you, is to anonymize your profile (a simple request to team@stackexchange.com is enough) OR create an anonymous profile to ask questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I personaly think that asking question (even stupid question) is just a proof you are able to consume your employer's money wisely instead of staying in the exact same level of knowledge for years or worse, trying to solve a bug for weeks that someone on the internet can solve in 5 minutes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3166" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1271" RevisionGUID="72019356-eb37-442d-8671-a90f8e2216b5" CreationDate="2011-03-15T05:37:15.213" UserId="92" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="In the case of Programmers.SE, the [main][1] site is to discuss *anything related to programming* (further defined in the [FAQ][2]). Whereas the [meta site][3] exists to discuss *the main site*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a look at the [recent popular questions in Meta][4], you'll find:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - bug reports&#xD;&#xA; - generic questions regarding to Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA; - suggestions to FAQ modifications&#xD;&#xA; - discussions on which questions are on and off topic (for the main site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of which do not contain anything directly related to programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/?tab=month" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3167" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1281" RevisionGUID="26fe7f82-e7d2-4568-9348-ab84b3d1acb3" CreationDate="2011-03-15T09:34:51.600" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58100/what-is-the-source-of-income-for-a-website-like-so/58105#58105" Text="" />
  <row Id="3168" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1282" RevisionGUID="a14f5248-bf4e-4d3d-943d-ff442db08402" CreationDate="2011-03-15T09:34:51.600" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58100/what-is-the-source-of-income-for-a-website-like-so/58106#58106" Text="" />
  <row Id="3169" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1283" RevisionGUID="7a8dbe84-f38c-489c-b783-3744e1360f14" CreationDate="2011-03-15T09:34:51.600" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58100/what-is-the-source-of-income-for-a-website-like-so/58107#58107" Text="" />
  <row Id="3170" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1284" RevisionGUID="fbfe8da2-b370-4bd8-97fc-a73f52d6dfd7" CreationDate="2011-03-15T09:34:51.600" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58100/what-is-the-source-of-income-for-a-website-like-so/58108#58108" Text="" />
  <row Id="3171" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1285" RevisionGUID="8b98f67b-b417-4d5c-9e40-e82e23d798dc" CreationDate="2011-03-15T09:34:51.600" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58100/what-is-the-source-of-income-for-a-website-like-so/58109#58109" Text="" />
  <row Id="3172" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1281" RevisionGUID="69986223-49f5-4faf-9ee4-05eaf645c9af" CreationDate="2011-03-15T06:06:52.757" UserId="87" Text="SO actually has ads. You get to see less of them when you get more reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, since many readers come form Google or don't have many reputation, the income is guaranteed to come nevertheless.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3173" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1282" RevisionGUID="3273e734-285c-489a-888a-82fa0dc835c2" CreationDate="2011-03-15T06:08:52.643" UserId="2021" Text="SO probably doesn't make money - yet - it certainly doesn't cover the staff costs or Joel wouldn't need to sell bits of it to investors. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It does run some ads on SO and the career site did bring in some money - but a company is valued on it's future earnings. Imagine a day in the future where you go to SE to find the answer to any question in the same way you go to google to search for a web page - how much would that visitor traffic be worth!&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3174" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1283" RevisionGUID="ca5faace-8e12-4df6-86be-4eb25a02770a" CreationDate="2011-03-15T06:09:06.123" UserId="172" Text="I can think of a number of models:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Income from general advertisements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Earn income as a broker for other service providers; e.g. a paid job ads or work wanted service.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Income from third parties as a &quot;platform provider&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Income from software licensing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Income from user subscriptions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Income from user pay-per-view.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Income from user donations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Site is cross-subsidised from some other activity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Site is run solely on donated resources and effort; e.g. Groklaw is a good (and worthy) example. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And there are doubtless other variations, depending on exactly what the website does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the case of SO, I expect they are also (to some degree) living off money provided by investors ... though this will only be in the short term.  The long term plan will be to turn a profit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3175" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1284" RevisionGUID="70da49ac-73a2-497d-9301-f5da26d27622" CreationDate="2011-03-15T06:09:47.510" UserId="17183" UserDisplayName="shovonr" Text="Jeff Atwood's &quot;*[The Vast and Endless Sea][1]*&quot; gives you a small glimpse at how the StackExchange makes money.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Pay us $129 a month (and up), and you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; too can create a hosted Q&amp;A community&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on our engine -- for whatever topic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you like!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/06/the-vast-and-endless-sea.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3176" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1285" RevisionGUID="ce1a36bb-5c29-4425-a7ca-53af3ee9c600" CreationDate="2011-03-15T06:15:35.243" UserDisplayName="Sameer Parwani" Text="Their prime goal is to build a community of experts and enthusiasts around certain subjects. Third parties will then pay for access to the community of experts and enthusiasts. For example, the main Stack Overflow site now has a careers/jobs section that Stack Overflow profits from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The founder of Stack Overflow talks about the revenue model around the 18 minute mark of the second video on this page: http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/13/founder-stories-spolsky-startup/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3177" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1280" RevisionGUID="d08d9af8-5f50-4453-84bd-cdbf18104f9f" CreationDate="2011-03-15T05:52:42.117" UserId="6373" Text="What is the source of income for a website like SO?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I read this [blog entry][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I have this question. How do websites earn money without ads. I see SO doesnot run more ads. But how do they earn that much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is ads the only source of income for a website or is there any other source of income?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/03/a-new-name-for-stack-overflow-with-surprise-ending/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3178" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1280" RevisionGUID="d08d9af8-5f50-4453-84bd-cdbf18104f9f" CreationDate="2011-03-15T05:52:42.117" UserId="6373" Text="What is the source of income for a website like SO?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3179" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1280" RevisionGUID="d08d9af8-5f50-4453-84bd-cdbf18104f9f" CreationDate="2011-03-15T05:52:42.117" UserId="6373" Text="|discussion|websites|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3180" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1280" RevisionGUID="59a6127d-c731-4e45-9c3b-a041c2ba6aa1" CreationDate="2011-03-15T09:34:51.600" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58100/what-is-the-source-of-income-for-a-website-like-so" Text="" />
  <row Id="3181" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1286" RevisionGUID="26ca00d8-715c-4ee7-bef9-252c0b12964f" CreationDate="2011-03-15T10:15:55.043" UserId="37" Text="See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/79435/what-is-stack-overflows-business-model/79448#79448" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3186" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1288" RevisionGUID="2a48f1af-8374-4c81-a779-9f3827b4e0ce" CreationDate="2011-03-15T18:32:04.290" UserId="175" Text="I have a question [here][1] that I've used lobby for fixes in VS2010 SP1.  I haven't yet gone through the release notes to determine what has been fixed in SP1 or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the best action that should be taken on a question that refers to a product that is one version behind current?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9378/what-usability-issues-have-you-had-with-vs2010/58285#58285" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3187" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1288" RevisionGUID="2a48f1af-8374-4c81-a779-9f3827b4e0ce" CreationDate="2011-03-15T18:32:04.290" UserId="175" Text="Best way to handle this VS2010 question now that SP1 was released" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3188" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1288" RevisionGUID="2a48f1af-8374-4c81-a779-9f3827b4e0ce" CreationDate="2011-03-15T18:32:04.290" UserId="175" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3189" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1289" RevisionGUID="68c6116b-a1c5-4cbc-b72b-e4acf28459cb" CreationDate="2011-03-15T20:30:45.920" UserId="226" Text="I would edit the body of the question to note which issues have been fixed in SP1 and edit the title to reflect the fact that it applies to the stock version of VS2010. At that point, the question could be locked to prevent further edits/new answers. You'll have to flag it for a moderator to have that done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think since SP1 doesn't come bundled with VS2010, it may still be beneficial to keep the question around in case anyone needs help justifying an upgrade to their boss or something along those lines." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3190" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1290" RevisionGUID="b9ef1010-d2a5-47bd-98ee-e26a91be57ac" CreationDate="2011-03-17T20:52:04.310" UserId="19839" Text="Many times when looking at a topic I will think its closed because it has [closed] in the title, only to realize its been moved from another stackexchange board. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3191" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1290" RevisionGUID="b9ef1010-d2a5-47bd-98ee-e26a91be57ac" CreationDate="2011-03-17T20:52:04.310" UserId="19839" Text="Why does it still say [-closed-] after being brought from another stackexchange?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3192" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1290" RevisionGUID="b9ef1010-d2a5-47bd-98ee-e26a91be57ac" CreationDate="2011-03-17T20:52:04.310" UserId="19839" Text="|bug|stackexchange|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3196" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1292" RevisionGUID="38857b1e-8862-41a0-9af0-fa944bf52148" CreationDate="2011-03-18T08:27:18.573" UserId="37" Text="This isn't correct; I suspect you are seeing a post that was migrated and *closed here on this very site*." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3197" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1290" RevisionGUID="97026f6c-d317-405d-b11a-9d93939cd0c8" CreationDate="2011-03-18T08:27:33.767" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3199" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1282" RevisionGUID="c23136ed-fc47-4771-9b52-60b33f50d3d0" CreationDate="2011-03-18T15:48:57.890" UserId="2021" Comment="added 627 characters in body" Text="SO probably doesn't make money - yet - it certainly doesn't cover the staff costs or Joel wouldn't need to sell bits of it to investors. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It does run some ads on SO and the career site did bring in some money - but a company is valued on it's future earnings. Imagine a day in the future where you go to SE to find the answer to any question in the same way you go to google to search for a web page - how much would that visitor traffic be worth!&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;SO has a number of advantages over most 'if you build it they will come' websites. It has minimal server costs compared to wiki/youtube and low staff costs since content is user generated. Plus a high level and very well defined customer set - if you want to advertise cookware then cooking.so or bikes on bicycles.so is a lot better targeted (read more appealing to advertisers equals higher rates) than a general pop-up ad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And although visitor numbers to Facebook look impressive - the average stackoverflow users are likely to have bigger credit cards than the 12year old girls on social network site of the day (tm)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3200" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1293" RevisionGUID="6a12efb1-1d1d-483d-9f7f-8c93085ab1c2" CreationDate="2011-03-19T11:12:59.273" UserId="2366" Text="The deletion mafia has struck again. We had this discussion before on Meta.SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Case in point: the question [What do you say to people when they say that programming is not demanding?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37316) was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we just please, *please* agree that this is not constructive behaviour and that questions – even ones that get closed for valid reasons – should **not** be deleted except when they are really disruptive?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question above ([cached copy here][1]) wasn’t a great question but it got *great* answes and I had linked to it elsewhere. It is just *really* annoying that such questions get deleted, and it completely runs counter the spirit of the Internet: *do not let links go stale*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I’m serious about this. **Pervasive deleting destroys these sites. It’s a bad attitude and it needs to stop.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XVdaauL6aP0J:programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37316/what-do-you-say-to-people-when-they-say-that-programming-is-not-demanding/37318+http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37316&amp;cd=1&amp;hl=en&amp;ct=clnk&amp;source=www.google.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3201" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1293" RevisionGUID="6a12efb1-1d1d-483d-9f7f-8c93085ab1c2" CreationDate="2011-03-19T11:12:59.273" UserId="2366" Text="Great question got deleted" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3202" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1293" RevisionGUID="6a12efb1-1d1d-483d-9f7f-8c93085ab1c2" CreationDate="2011-03-19T11:12:59.273" UserId="2366" Text="|discussion|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3203" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1294" RevisionGUID="9a649f6a-8448-4ea8-be0c-e5213d981ede" CreationDate="2011-03-19T14:34:47.443" UserId="37" Text="I don't really see what's so great about this question. Perhaps you could explain it to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What do you say to people when they say that programming is not demanding? [closed]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Like the title says, how have you approached this? It may not be physically demanding but it sure is mentally demanding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was originally closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;, which I agree with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't find any of the so-called answers particularly illuminating." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3204" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1295" RevisionGUID="5c346542-0517-4be2-b0f0-ed529bd06a95" CreationDate="2011-03-19T18:20:01.213" UserId="12611" Text="I'm going to include my [answer from Meta SO on this topic](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/83825/great-question-got-deleted/83864#83864).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is not a real question.  It's not an on-topic question for at least three of the reasons listed in the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq).  It's opinionated, which means the original poster already has an answer.  He posted that answer in his question box:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It may not be physically demanding but it sure is mentally demanding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to keep this site productive, the line in the sand has to be drawn somewhere.  Otherwise, we'll get more gray area questions like `What do programmers eat?  I know they eat food at some point in their day`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, I agree with Jeff, the answers are essentially all the same AOL &quot;me too&quot; type answers that don't really tell me anything I didn't already know or couldn't figure out by Googling some forum somewhere, a forum, that I might add, is probably now a ghost town on the Internet because the professionals keeping the site alive all moved elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The blog articles that Robert, Jeff, and other StackExchange employees have written makes a great case for sites thriving because they're properly policed for content that doesn't meet the goals of the site.  Unfortunately, we're not all going to agree with every decision, but please keep in mind that those decisions are made with the community's best interests in mind.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a clearer, well written explanation of the dangers of allowing poor questions, please read [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3205" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1296" RevisionGUID="ac4a9c6f-ccce-4984-9a67-68095a3c96a9" CreationDate="2011-03-19T20:23:13.923" UserId="92" Text="I noticed that my answer here http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3233/why-do-programmers-write-applications-and-then-make-them-free/3267#3267 did not give me a Good Answer badge. I noticed this after I suddenly received a Nice Answer badge for it, a few weeks after it passed 70 upvotes. This sounds like a bug to me, unless there are rules that are specific to community wiki answers that I'm unaware of? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3206" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1296" RevisionGUID="ac4a9c6f-ccce-4984-9a67-68095a3c96a9" CreationDate="2011-03-19T20:23:13.923" UserId="92" Text="Missing Good Answer badge." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3207" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1296" RevisionGUID="ac4a9c6f-ccce-4984-9a67-68095a3c96a9" CreationDate="2011-03-19T20:23:13.923" UserId="92" Text="|support|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3208" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1297" RevisionGUID="0260f80e-19d2-424c-af5d-a642337b6052" CreationDate="2011-03-20T00:09:47.793" UserId="15466" Text="I don't know if this is your answer or not but I have noticed that some things like badges and reputation and acceptance percentages, etc don't always update or appear right away.  Maybe its still on its way?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3209" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1298" RevisionGUID="8c33aff2-6b54-498f-8653-67b7ee61f7eb" CreationDate="2011-03-20T00:12:07.540" UserId="15466" Text="When is it appropriate to use the flag option to flag a post?  It says in the sub title to use it for serious problems or to flag post for moderator attention.  Would this include if we think its in the wrong SE group and needs to be moved? Or is it intended only for offensive posts and such?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3210" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1298" RevisionGUID="8c33aff2-6b54-498f-8653-67b7ee61f7eb" CreationDate="2011-03-20T00:12:07.540" UserId="15466" Text="What is the flag option for?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3211" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1298" RevisionGUID="8c33aff2-6b54-498f-8653-67b7ee61f7eb" CreationDate="2011-03-20T00:12:07.540" UserId="15466" Text="|support|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3212" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1299" RevisionGUID="3e98cdec-521f-4665-b158-fbae404b7114" CreationDate="2011-03-20T00:57:13.647" UserId="16637" Text="For members with less than 3000 reputation&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The usual cases for flagging are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **A question (or answer) is off-topic**. Use the [FAQ][1] to discern what is accepted or unaccepted. Also monitor what gets closed by a moderator or closed by getting five votes by other users.&#xD;&#xA; - **A question or answer is spam.** If it is *obviously* unwelcome here, flagging is the single most effective way for getting a moderator's attention to deal with the suspect post.&#xD;&#xA; - **A question that belongs on SO.** These are usually riddled with specific technical details. It should be obvious to anyone here what does and does not belong on SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each person will have to learn which posts constitutes flagging, as it's not very obvious from the beginning. When I've been unsure, I've filled out the textbox with a reason for flagging. Then I've watched the question to see what action was taken.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Members with 3000 reputation (or higher)&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**A question or answer that requires immediate attention.** Most users (with 3000 reputation or higher) will vote to close appropriately, but since a moderator has the power to close or remove questions and answers, they should be informed in the case of a post requiring immediate attention. If a question is horribly off-topic or blatant spam, then I believe it should be flagged so that it gets closed ASAP, saving other members from wasting their time reading gibberish. Every other case should be voting to close (assuming all 12 votes have not been used) to conform with the community's beliefs and conventions on what is accepted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each day, there's a period of time when the three (active) moderators aren't lingering on this site. The overall activity is lower during that time of the day. The site can get a bit messy from time to time, but once the *next* moderator is due to wake up, it gets cleaned up promptly. During this time, continue to flag and wait.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Reason for not dismissing my answer: I have a flag weight of 551.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3213" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1300" RevisionGUID="b43913e0-0deb-470f-8a48-7f3083109549" CreationDate="2011-03-20T01:30:11.733" UserId="37" Text="Bear in mind that badges are never removed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you previously got a badge for a deleted or migrated question, you won't get the &quot;next&quot; one of that type.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The total count of badges of that type is how this is determined. Go ahead and count up the totals of answers with &gt;= (n) votes on your user page. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3214" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1296" RevisionGUID="c30bd2e5-1794-4bd3-83ce-1124063aed06" CreationDate="2011-03-20T01:30:21.593" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3215" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1301" RevisionGUID="042fb7f9-eeeb-49de-96d2-3ff0c23b90c9" CreationDate="2011-03-20T12:27:04.773" UserId="20600" Text="Completely aside from the ads or any form of income, consider this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things have value because people consider them valuable. Not because of income or assets, but because people's consideration&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You invest $1,000,000 today in a website which is receiving 25 million visitors and valued $XX million based on some computation that this is what it is worth to be able to reach this many people. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One year from now, the website gets 50 million visitors. Valuation increases by 100%. Your shares are now worth $2,000,000, even if the site hasn't made a single cents of income. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an institutional investor, if you are confident that valuation will increase as popularity increase (which is almost a given because money reflects the amount of attention something attracts), and that popularity is increasing on such a great trend, making a small investment worth a few million dollars is reasonably safe.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another thing you might want to look into is the earning potential of recruitment ads. I remember Joël mentioning on his blog, back when he was blogging, that his job board (on the blog Joëlonsoftware, not the much larger one on SO) was bringing in over a million USD in less than a year and that the jobmarket website business was worth $2bn overall. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Building expert communities on every valuable subject under the sun, they are creating a potential worth which is literally mind-boggling. Fast forward a few years. Insane numbers of users debating in just about any subject under the sun. Start linking all this together. Users start connecting up on a number of different subjects, and progressively, you enter within the realm of social networking on a scale large enough to eat up Facebook.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The potential is huge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3216" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1302" RevisionGUID="ad825e80-e561-4a7e-af4c-d0cee8c44b99" CreationDate="2011-03-20T23:15:50.890" UserId="104" Text="Cross post from meta.so: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For context, this is the particular bit of content it seems people are upset about losing: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;##What do you say to people when they say that programming is not demanding?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ask them if writing a small 100 page novel in English **without a single spelling or grammatical error** is mentally demanding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further explain to them that this novel is actually **someone else's story** that you have to write as they explain it to you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That person **only speaks Chinese** (luckily you are bilingual), so **you have to translate it** from &#xD;&#xA;Chinese to English as you go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then to top it off, the **person isn't exactly sure what the story they want is**, so they can only help you get it right by informing you when you have done it wrong from their vague descriptions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have to **complete this in 3 days**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(In rare DailyWTF stories: *Your boss insists on helping, despite being semi-illiterate*)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Now is it demanding?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Written by: Dan McGrath &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this interesting content? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Yes**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does this content make the Internet a better place? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Possibly** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does this content belong on programmers.se? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**That totally depends on the community running the site**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we make engine level changes that make it impossible to remove content from a site? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**No, I don't think so**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community and moderators should have the right to decide what content they think belongs on the site, for example: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What if the most **awesome** answer **ever** is posted on SO, it gets 100s of votes, but turns out to be off-topic. An example could be a question regarding employment law, with an answer by a prominent lawyer in the field. Great content, however, off topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leaving content like that on SO, sets a bad example and sends a totally wrong message to people visiting the site. We have no place in the network for such content at the moment so we are stuck with the unfortunate task of deleting it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the best way to solve this **orphan great content** issue, is to simply provide it in the data dump, perhaps include all deleted posts with more than X votes with in a &quot;we have no home for this content&quot; dump. Then others that feel like the content needs a new home can host a web site where it can thrive. As it stands 10k users on the respective sites can grab the content and host it elsewhere if they feel so strongly about it, provided the licensing terms are filled.   &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3217" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1303" RevisionGUID="bcf74b12-4906-4496-9f55-2b322f40bb93" CreationDate="2011-03-21T00:02:28.750" UserId="6432" Text="I made a feature request question so that we could get some indication on the badges as to when &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/72903/is-the-timing-of-badge-awards-documented&quot;&gt;each badge will be awarded&lt;/a&gt; on meta so.  Still hopeful.  It might be useful to also know if you knew if any of your badges have lapsed due to migration or deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some badges are awarded instantly, some at the end of the day (I guess after a batch run or sql job) and some (like tenacious) 7-10 days after you qualify for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that Good Answer falls into the 'will be awarded at the end of the day' bracket - so after this much time I guess its not going to come." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3222" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1305" RevisionGUID="9bd4a35f-d637-4956-9a45-ca17533b0b3c" CreationDate="2011-03-21T17:50:11.377" UserId="7167" Text="Gravatar issue seems to be the cause of the problem" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3229" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1307" RevisionGUID="8cde3c60-5b7d-4fde-b35c-c4ec1ac3e6d9" CreationDate="2011-03-22T06:53:53.337" UserId="16637" Text="I've been on this site for over a month now and have noticed several fundamental issues regarding the FAQ. The purpose of this post is **to elucidate these issues or wait for other users to tell me to hush.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rules or FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;--&#xD;&#xA;The general usage of the FAQ (exclusive of the StackExchange network) is a *reference*. It is used as a guide when things are not clear and obvious. While I have never used a question-and-answer site before, I read everything I could before posting my first answer and question. Fortunately, likewise with most people, I realised that the so-called **rules actually reside within the FAQ.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While containing guidelines inside the FAQ is fine for the majority of people who are considerate and strive to behave 'correctly' on this site, there is still a large number of people who the FAQ as a secondary reference (or not at all) and then find their question closed within minutes for asking something off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that 'rules' itself is a strong term - independently, the FAQ contains guidelines on what is permissible, but yet questions get closed promptly because people don't adhere to the rules in the FAQ; in this case, they *are* hard-and-fast rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggestion: make the rules more distinct or force each newcomer to read the rules section of the FAQ before posting a question. It is true they will learn inevitably, but let's go one step further and properly define what is and isn't accepted here from the beginning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Accepting an Answer&#xD;&#xA;--&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [FAQ][1] states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When you have decided which answer is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the most helpful to you, mark it as&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the accepted answer by clicking on the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; check box outline to the left of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer. This lets other people know&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that you have received a good answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to your question. Doing this is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; helpful because it shows other people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that you’re getting value from the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; community. (If you don’t do this,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; people will often politely ask you to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; go back and accept answers for more of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your questions!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this site, it is simply wrong. There are countless instances where a member will ask the original poster to accept more answers. This is **always** countered by another (more experienced) user or moderator stating that the acceptance rate is irrelevant to programmers.stackexchange.com. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example: 2-3 weeks ago, [Péter Török][4], possibly the fastest person to gain reputation on this site was in the position of asking the original poster to accept more questions. [Anna Lear][5] was the one who retorted, saying that accepting answers doesn't matter because this site is based on subjective discussions. This shouldn't have happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the stackexchange model ([here][2] and [here][3]), this site is a self-regulating site (where the community sets the conventions). This results in advice (from experienced users) and direction (from the moderating team) which directly conflicts with what is stated in the FAQ. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggestion: change the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/moderator-pro-tempore/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/14221/peter-torok&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/226/anna-lear" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3230" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1307" RevisionGUID="8cde3c60-5b7d-4fde-b35c-c4ec1ac3e6d9" CreationDate="2011-03-22T06:53:53.337" UserId="16637" Text="Qualms regarding the FAQ (and the behaviour on this site)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3231" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1307" RevisionGUID="8cde3c60-5b7d-4fde-b35c-c4ec1ac3e6d9" CreationDate="2011-03-22T06:53:53.337" UserId="16637" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3232" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1308" RevisionGUID="3be03677-cd5c-45c0-ab87-99cf3efaee08" CreationDate="2011-03-22T08:59:10.607" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Regarding the first part of your question: this already exists. All new users have to pass through a page that explains the guidelines of the site. If a user hasn't figured it out after that, well... that's what community moderation is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding the second part of your question, there are two aspects to this: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Whether it's acceptable or encouraged to nag people about their accept rates&#xD;&#xA;2. Whether people should be worrying about accepting answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the first part, people nagging others about their accept rate is just crass: there are so many more important things to worry about than pestering people about one metric. It's noise, and there are a lot of people who flag those comments as noise/spam. The FAQ actually covers this: **[be nice](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#benice)**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the second part, whether people should be worrying about accepting answers: as user #8, I'm confident in saying accept rate is not irrelevant, even on Programmers.SE. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The misguided idea that there are no accepted answers, or that people shouldn't accept answers, or that it's acceptable to never accept answers, comes from a short period of Programmers.SE's history when it was unclear what types of questions were acceptable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, that was **quickly** nipped in the bud and Programmers.SE does not have any special dispensation that makes it qualitatively different than the literally dozens of other Stack Exchange sites that follow the same conventions and norms when it comes to question and answer model. The guidelines in the FAQ are the result of months of discussion both here and elsewhere in the Stack Exchange system: they comprise best practices that have been tested time and time again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In reality, while Programmers.SE is home to questions of a more subjective nature, [every question has an answer](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/). That is, a good question that deserves a home on the Stack Exchange network needs to be the result of an actual problem a person faces. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That problem is going to have a solution: therefore, unless the question got terrible answers, there's going to be an answer the question asker can accept. So the advice in the FAQ is correct: [people should be accepting answers that helped them, personally, the most](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work/5235#5235). It serves as an acknowledgement that the problem was solved and that another user was instrumental in solving that problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And that really is the value proposition to answering questions: people want to know that they actually helped someone. Otherwise, what's the point? Answering for the sake of filling out textareas?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3233" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1308" RevisionGUID="c921e3af-5679-4b39-ae67-9c7c845cfb1e" CreationDate="2011-03-22T14:01:21.970" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 333 characters in body" Text="&lt;strike&gt;Regarding the first part of your question: this already exists. All new users have to pass through a page that explains the guidelines of the site. If a user hasn't figured it out after that, well... that's what community moderation is for.&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Overflow and sites during private beta, users get hit with a page that explains the guidelines for asking good questions. I thought it was there for all sites, but apparently it's not: I agree that something similar should be there that gets people to at least ostensibly agree to the site's guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding the second part of your question, there are two aspects to this: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Whether it's acceptable or encouraged to nag people about their accept rates&#xD;&#xA;2. Whether people should be worrying about accepting answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the first part, people nagging others about their accept rate is just crass: there are so many more important things to worry about than pestering people about one metric. It's noise, and there are a lot of people who flag those comments as noise/spam. The FAQ actually covers this: **[be nice](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#benice)**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the second part, whether people should be worrying about accepting answers: as user #8, I'm confident in saying accept rate is not irrelevant, even on Programmers.SE. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The misguided idea that there are no accepted answers, or that people shouldn't accept answers, or that it's acceptable to never accept answers, comes from a short period of Programmers.SE's history when it was unclear what types of questions were acceptable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, that was **quickly** nipped in the bud and Programmers.SE does not have any special dispensation that makes it qualitatively different than the literally dozens of other Stack Exchange sites that follow the same conventions and norms when it comes to question and answer model. The guidelines in the FAQ are the result of months of discussion both here and elsewhere in the Stack Exchange system: they comprise best practices that have been tested time and time again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In reality, while Programmers.SE is home to questions of a more subjective nature, [every question has an answer](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/). That is, a good question that deserves a home on the Stack Exchange network needs to be the result of an actual problem a person faces. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That problem is going to have a solution: therefore, unless the question got terrible answers, there's going to be an answer the question asker can accept. So the advice in the FAQ is correct: [people should be accepting answers that helped them, personally, the most](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work/5235#5235). It serves as an acknowledgement that the problem was solved and that another user was instrumental in solving that problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And that really is the value proposition to answering questions: people want to know that they actually helped someone. Otherwise, what's the point? Answering for the sake of filling out textareas?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3234" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1309" RevisionGUID="ad17752d-43d7-498b-a8ae-1ec70a846b1d" CreationDate="2011-03-22T14:37:00.820" UserId="6697" Text="To expand on @jeffs answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, say, a question is migrated from Stackoverflow to Programmers. The Question is Closed on Stackoverflow and then the link redirects to Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not entirely sure how the system works (Its possibly documented somewhere on meta.se).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I myself have a question I asked on SO. I asked a mod later to move it off to programmers. So it shows as a normal question here, but the question shows on my list of questions on my profile with _[closed]_ in the title.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3242" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1311" RevisionGUID="201429b7-6b74-4e92-9914-dd7e760ff1e5" CreationDate="2011-03-23T16:09:11.867" UserId="19584" Text="If I filter the questions, maybe based on tag, then go into a question, maybe post an answer, I have to use back button to get back to the list of questions based on my filter? I don't see another way. I remember on ebay, you can click around w/in items, and there's always the breadcrumb trail to get back to your original list of items so you can keep browsing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3243" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1311" RevisionGUID="201429b7-6b74-4e92-9914-dd7e760ff1e5" CreationDate="2011-03-23T16:09:11.867" UserId="19584" Text="No breadcrumbs or trail in order to return to questions page" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3244" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1311" RevisionGUID="201429b7-6b74-4e92-9914-dd7e760ff1e5" CreationDate="2011-03-23T16:09:11.867" UserId="19584" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3245" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1312" RevisionGUID="63b1bd1c-e059-494e-be1a-e0e22935426f" CreationDate="2011-03-24T00:14:35.083" UserId="15466" Text="I constantly see people reference OP or &quot;the OP&quot;... what is OP?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3246" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1312" RevisionGUID="63b1bd1c-e059-494e-be1a-e0e22935426f" CreationDate="2011-03-24T00:14:35.083" UserId="15466" Text="What is meant when someone says OP?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3247" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1312" RevisionGUID="63b1bd1c-e059-494e-be1a-e0e22935426f" CreationDate="2011-03-24T00:14:35.083" UserId="15466" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3248" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1313" RevisionGUID="a61abe0d-0b2a-4152-8d12-8bd04e5dbe33" CreationDate="2011-03-24T00:25:32.737" UserId="1725" Text="I have a suggestion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It'd be really nice if we had a way to see if the tag exists on other sites or not from the wiki page of the tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, if I'm currently viewing the &quot;Ruby&quot; tag, I would like to know if this tag exists on SO or gamedev or any other site, with links to the other wiki pages, of course." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3249" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1313" RevisionGUID="a61abe0d-0b2a-4152-8d12-8bd04e5dbe33" CreationDate="2011-03-24T00:25:32.737" UserId="1725" Text="Cross website tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3250" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1313" RevisionGUID="a61abe0d-0b2a-4152-8d12-8bd04e5dbe33" CreationDate="2011-03-24T00:25:32.737" UserId="1725" Text="|feature-request|tag-wikis|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3251" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1314" RevisionGUID="f18a9734-e712-4e91-b23b-4ee773e725ae" CreationDate="2011-03-24T00:46:05.497" UserId="16637" Text="OP is an acronym for [Original Poster.][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.google.com.au/search?sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=op+original+poster" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3252" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1315" RevisionGUID="8131adba-5ba5-477c-bc56-7b4ed9d79084" CreationDate="2011-03-24T01:16:38.733" UserId="6591" Text="In threaded conversations it can also mean &quot;original post.&quot; But since that sort of &quot;conversation&quot; doesn't happen here, the other meaning of &quot;original poster&quot; is what we're referring to. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3255" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1316" RevisionGUID="8cec25ce-a818-48c2-8c4d-335a66515e7c" CreationDate="2011-03-24T06:13:10.240" UserId="19554" Text="Really!&#xD;&#xA;          We find highest voted answers to the questions often not conveying the point or answering the direct question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find *Vote count is more of a popularity contest ,rather than what seemingly answers the direct question better*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hence we find questions with no votes but answers to those questions with insanely high up votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**Question:** What kind of moderation-regulation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; check is there regarding this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not trying to be a spoil sport or any thing but it would be nice to have direct answers to questions when you are really looking for simple and straightforward answers to issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**This may be the reason we see duplicate threads of similar topic. as the topic poster does not find satisfactory answers in similar/duplicate threads.**&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3256" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1316" RevisionGUID="8cec25ce-a818-48c2-8c4d-335a66515e7c" CreationDate="2011-03-24T06:13:10.240" UserId="19554" Text="Since when did Vote Count indicate the correct answer to the question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3257" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1316" RevisionGUID="8cec25ce-a818-48c2-8c4d-335a66515e7c" CreationDate="2011-03-24T06:13:10.240" UserId="19554" Text="|feature-request|bug|questions|moderation|up-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3258" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1317" RevisionGUID="38a21b3a-a383-4d66-b479-628a9e404e31" CreationDate="2011-03-24T11:06:55.160" UserId="5385" Text="Since never. *Voting up* just says that you agree to the answer itself, and a high voted answer doesn't mean that it is the right one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Duplicate threads are a part of what we do. A great part of the issue is that people are too lazy to search and rely on the goodness of our hearts to get an immediate answer. And that simply works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another problem is that sometimes even if you do try to search an answer for your problem before posting it, you might just miss one keyword that will prevent you from finding the similar question. This happened to me many times before." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3259" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1318" RevisionGUID="cad43351-84cb-4fa0-9ee7-344b1d7fafeb" CreationDate="2011-03-24T13:34:28.140" UserId="285" Text="See http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/51156/revisions for example. I don't think the automated Community user that bumps old posts edited in some more speculation about the date of the PDC." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3260" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1318" RevisionGUID="cad43351-84cb-4fa0-9ee7-344b1d7fafeb" CreationDate="2011-03-24T13:34:28.140" UserId="285" Text="Are edits being misattributed to Community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3261" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1318" RevisionGUID="cad43351-84cb-4fa0-9ee7-344b1d7fafeb" CreationDate="2011-03-24T13:34:28.140" UserId="285" Text="|bug|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3262" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1319" RevisionGUID="1f9d9d93-3cfd-4906-8f20-08196e78da16" CreationDate="2011-03-24T14:16:29.323" UserId="63" Text="Click the &quot;suggested&quot; link above the user name, and you'll find [*the rest of the story*](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/534): the edit was proposed by an anonymous user. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3263" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1316" RevisionGUID="f5862c03-0ca3-4115-a198-0792280b8c11" CreationDate="2011-03-24T14:17:44.713" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|moderation|up-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3264" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1318" RevisionGUID="815f453d-dc97-4d89-9935-cb91cc06d7d0" CreationDate="2011-03-25T05:26:31.250" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3265" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1320" RevisionGUID="f83fc6ed-8f97-468c-ac34-f3d327da50ab" CreationDate="2011-03-25T18:05:53.880" UserId="2314" Text="While running some [Data Explorer](http://data.stackexchange.com) queries, I noticed a user who has no answers with less than 2 votes (more than 100 total).  As I don't yet have **[10k](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools)** I can't view the deleted posts, but I am assuming that there is no possible way this would occur over so many answers without having deleted low-scoring answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure I've ever deleted answers*.  I can understand the feeling of being sensitive to piling up low- or zero-voted posts &amp;mdash; I am too, but this is why I usually just don't post late answers to questions unless I feel I have a substantial improved answer to what's already there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is this common, or did I happen upon an extremely rare case?&#xD;&#xA;2. Is it ok?  Should the community feel robbed of possibly good, but unnoticed (maybe late) answers?  Is it gaming of some kind?&#xD;&#xA;3. Why or why not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;* I may have that I can't remember, so if you have 10k, don't jump on me.  I even left a **-1** post because I reviewed the answer after downvotes and felt like I still believed in my answer.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3266" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1320" RevisionGUID="f83fc6ed-8f97-468c-ac34-f3d327da50ab" CreationDate="2011-03-25T18:05:53.880" UserId="2314" Text="Do some users delete their low-voted answers? Is this ok?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3267" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1320" RevisionGUID="f83fc6ed-8f97-468c-ac34-f3d327da50ab" CreationDate="2011-03-25T18:05:53.880" UserId="2314" Text="|discussion|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3268" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1321" RevisionGUID="f4cc1044-7e42-4366-9535-888c4f019d93" CreationDate="2011-03-25T18:13:15.693" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="You can actually do an audit of people deleting their own low-voted answers because there's [a badge for that](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/20/peer-pressure).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But generally, people are extremely liberal with their voting on Programmers.SE: the only answers and questions that tend to get more downvotes than upvotes are ones that are egregiously offensive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So there winds up being a very high correlation between posts that are flagged (and thus deleted) and posts that have negative vote totals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm of the mind that the community *should* feel robbed: votes are more or less meaningless on Programmers.SE because nearly everything—no matter how inane, banal, or off-topic—gets upvotes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3269" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1322" RevisionGUID="4e6a0574-d44f-4ec2-9d0a-d83bf33a46e4" CreationDate="2011-03-25T18:39:24.593" UserId="226" Text="Some people delete their answers once they realize that someone else made their point better. I don't think I've observed lots of deleted answers. We don't see that very often.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In terms of your actual concern, I wouldn't worry about it much. If a user went on a deletion spree, it'd trip the &quot;vandalizing content&quot; heuristic and we (the diamond mods) would get notified. Depending on the circumstances, we would then likely restore some or all of the removed answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mark mentioned, Programmers is quite liberal with votes, so the odds of someone not having any 0-voted answers can be pretty good. Without knowing which user you're talking about, it's hard to draw any other conclusions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3270" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1323" RevisionGUID="85b463a0-1339-4353-8de5-3033cc45958d" CreationDate="2011-03-25T20:48:34.903" UserId="5385" Text="[There's this thing][1] made for Stackoverflow which let's you track your reputation on Firefox (check [microsummaries][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some guy made an [enhanced version][3], it's worth checking it out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be great to have one for Programmers too. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If only I had *teh skillz*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/12362/firefox-users-your-stack-overflow-reputation-microsummary&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Microsummaries#Introduction&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/12362/firefox-users-your-stack-overflow-reputation-microsummary/12372#12372" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3271" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1323" RevisionGUID="85b463a0-1339-4353-8de5-3033cc45958d" CreationDate="2011-03-25T20:48:34.903" UserId="5385" Text="Wouldn't be nice to have a reputation microsummary?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3272" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1323" RevisionGUID="85b463a0-1339-4353-8de5-3033cc45958d" CreationDate="2011-03-25T20:48:34.903" UserId="5385" Text="|discussion|reputation|programmers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3273" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1323" RevisionGUID="8be6860e-0dc6-4749-ba16-e99166db291c" CreationDate="2011-03-25T20:57:33.087" UserId="5385" Comment="Uploaded image." Text="[There's this thing][1] made for Stackoverflow which let's you track your reputation on Firefox (check [microsummaries][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some guy made an [enhanced version][3], it's worth checking it out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be great to have one for Programmers too. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If only I had *teh skillz*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/12362/firefox-users-your-stack-overflow-reputation-microsummary&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Microsummaries#Introduction&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/12362/firefox-users-your-stack-overflow-reputation-microsummary/12372#12372&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/FhFFD.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3274" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1324" RevisionGUID="7071aba2-3505-4943-9014-4b6697f902e2" CreationDate="2011-03-25T22:05:08.447" UserId="20853" Text="I prefer programming language." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3275" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1325" RevisionGUID="8837524b-5ac1-4c6e-9ca5-4120c8fa298a" CreationDate="2011-03-25T23:10:46.747" UserId="37" Text="Did you check on&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackapps.com ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particularly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackapps.com/?tab=scripts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many of these and they should work on [any Stack Exchange site](http://stackexchange.com/sites)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3276" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1326" RevisionGUID="7a996d69-dd88-4e8a-ab74-1f66c727ad83" CreationDate="2011-03-26T01:55:23.157" UserId="21213" Text="Hi Meta-forum,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wondered over to programmers.se today from SO for the first time, and posted a response to a users question.  I was a little surprised at being allowed to do this by just providing my name and email address, but once I saw my SE profile pic come up, I figured it must just be a common sign-on  (I'm using OpenID creds, via the verisign PIP site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was the question - and my response below &lt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61936/do-software-engineers-really-need-to-know-low-level-stuff-anymore&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, tonight I'm logging in from my home system.  As before, I first log into SO with my OpenID, and then navigate to here via the StackExchange navigator, and I find I'm not logged in.  I hit &quot;Login&quot; entered my OpenID, and it found and linked my accounts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that my new account here doesn't have the question listed as posted by me - so it appears that is some other or &quot;anonymous&quot; account that just happens to have the same name and profile picture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So - I'm mentioning this as it was a bit odd of an on-boarding experience that might be useful to consider for new user workflows.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also be keen on getting that answer added to my real account, if there's an admin-type that I can appeal too!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks - I'm very impressed with stackexchange site functionality and am glad to see it branching out." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3277" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1326" RevisionGUID="7a996d69-dd88-4e8a-ab74-1f66c727ad83" CreationDate="2011-03-26T01:55:23.157" UserId="21213" Text="Fell into a seam (of seamless integration)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3278" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1326" RevisionGUID="7a996d69-dd88-4e8a-ab74-1f66c727ad83" CreationDate="2011-03-26T01:55:23.157" UserId="21213" Text="|bug|answers|new-users|login|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3279" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1326" RevisionGUID="ac66cb3e-f5a1-4b63-8920-79b233360735" CreationDate="2011-03-26T03:32:50.933" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|new-users|login|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3280" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1327" RevisionGUID="098e2a77-649c-4caa-a2b8-b7e969d1170d" CreationDate="2011-03-26T03:33:54.337" UserId="37" Text="You still have to explicitly log in to create an account on any site in our network. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**We don't automatically create accounts just for visiting, so just be sure to click that &quot;log in&quot; link first next time.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On *subsequent* visits, once you *have created an account*, we can automatically log you in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(anyway, I merged your accounts.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3281" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1328" RevisionGUID="de8b1aea-ef49-46ae-a0e4-fe9729fe47c0" CreationDate="2011-03-26T18:15:17.320" UserId="5148" Text="Personally, I delete some of my answers. My reasons for doing so are usually one of the following.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. I've misunderstood the question and given an answer that is useless.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Whilst I've been writing my answer someone else has posted and it is a correct answer, or at least I agree with it.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Someone else has answered and it is a better answer, more clear, or accurate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My doing this, I feel I'm improving the site as a whole by cutting down on the chaff answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3282" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1329" RevisionGUID="80e16f46-dd64-4f2f-8b6f-3be2d5edbaaa" CreationDate="2011-03-26T23:44:31.467" UserId="16349" Text="I guess it's perfectly fine to delete low or negative answers, if you think they are of no value, compared with the other answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In some cases I have low or negative voted answers, but still think, that I am right, and wouldn't delete it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shall I suffer for the all times from bad answers? Shall visitors read my mediocre posts? Why? They just lose time. SE isn't meant as a documentation or archive of errors. Remove the bad - maybe it will work in small, but regular doses, without triggering Atwoods guards. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3283" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1330" RevisionGUID="ed190388-57da-47d4-8925-9620302a4853" CreationDate="2011-03-27T03:22:33.717" UserId="6591" Text="I used to delete my low (zero or below) scoring answers once someone else got the green check. My premise was that my answer was thought so poorly by the rest of the readership that not one other person felt it worthy of a single upvote. But I don't do that anymore. There is the &quot;[sportsmanship][1]&quot; badge that one can get by leaving one's low scores up and voting for competing answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another reason I've stopped doing it is that on beta sites, your commitment cannot be fulfilled if you have less than 10 answers + questions, so deleting low scoring answers is counterproductive. And a silly bug I've noticed on beta sites is that if you award bounties that take you below 100 karma, no matter how many badges you've acquired by the end of the private beta week, you forfeit your beta badge (which supposedly only requires 3 badges). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/67397/list-of-all-badges-with-full-descriptions/68258#68258" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3284" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1328" RevisionGUID="50d61464-b2d3-48c2-ac6b-4269c5f5d457" CreationDate="2011-03-27T11:27:30.300" UserId="5148" Comment="corrected word" Text="Personally, I delete some of my answers. My reasons for doing so are usually one of the following.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. I've misunderstood the question and given an answer that is useless.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Whilst I've been writing my answer someone else has posted and it is a correct answer, or at least I agree with it.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Someone else has answered and it is a better answer, more clear, or accurate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By doing this, I feel I'm improving the site as a whole by cutting down on the chaff answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3285" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1331" RevisionGUID="1372b63c-cd8f-4412-b3f6-ecc99b6a7d90" CreationDate="2011-03-27T15:50:17.617" UserId="699" Text="My questions are about some concepts of programming language. I was wondering if such questions are unacceptable here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - One is &quot;[Understand foreign function&#xD;&#xA;   interface (FFI) and language&#xD;&#xA;   binding][1]&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - Another is &quot;[Is there some nice&#xD;&#xA;   description about language&#xD;&#xA;   features][2]&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One has been flagged as off-topic on Stack-overflow. This and the rate of reply both make me come here to ask if there may be a chance for match. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If they are completely unacceptable here as well, do you happen to know some places where I can ask these questions, and/or some suggestion on improving my questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks and regards!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5440968/understand-foreign-function-interface-ffi-and-language-binding&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5439060/is-there-some-nice-description-about-language-features" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3286" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1331" RevisionGUID="1372b63c-cd8f-4412-b3f6-ecc99b6a7d90" CreationDate="2011-03-27T15:50:17.617" UserId="699" Text="Are programming language questions acceptable here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3287" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1331" RevisionGUID="1372b63c-cd8f-4412-b3f6-ecc99b6a7d90" CreationDate="2011-03-27T15:50:17.617" UserId="699" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3288" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1332" RevisionGUID="f0da8799-d9b4-4ca3-b9b5-e83600de2350" CreationDate="2011-03-27T16:57:17.980" UserId="101" Text="I would think that both questions would be fine on this site.  I would not re-post them, however.  I would flag them on SO and as the moderators to migrate them if they think it is appropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3289" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1332" RevisionGUID="49711d26-b159-4891-bfe1-fd6ff8b2474c" CreationDate="2011-03-28T12:23:16.077" UserId="101" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="I would think that both questions would be fine on this site.  I would not re-post them, however.  I would flag them on SO and ask the moderators to migrate them if they think it is appropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3290" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1333" RevisionGUID="3c567e25-3e7c-4106-8f84-fc61de73197c" CreationDate="2011-03-28T14:47:30.430" UserId="19431" Text="I have a question that is along the same lines as other questions that I have seen closed for being &quot;discussion questions,&quot; where do I ask those type of questions so my question doesn't get closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I actually have a question that is burning inside me but it can probably be considered open-ended and opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where should I ask this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3291" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1333" RevisionGUID="3c567e25-3e7c-4106-8f84-fc61de73197c" CreationDate="2011-03-28T14:47:30.430" UserId="19431" Text="Where do I ask a discussion only question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3292" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1333" RevisionGUID="3c567e25-3e7c-4106-8f84-fc61de73197c" CreationDate="2011-03-28T14:47:30.430" UserId="19431" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3293" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1333" RevisionGUID="7c531f9d-9589-4050-b66e-a0ed79c2d2cf" CreationDate="2011-03-28T14:55:50.140" UserId="19431" Comment="added 146 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="I actually have a question that is burning inside me but it can probably be considered open-ended and opinion based. I have seen other questions closed for being &quot;discussion questions,&quot; or &quot;subjective&quot; where should I ask those type of questions so my question doesn't get closed?  Or, if there is not an appropriate stackexchange site, where is a good forum that I can ask that sort of question that has the maturity and popularity of the stackexchange sites so that I can get a quality response?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3294" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1333" RevisionGUID="7c531f9d-9589-4050-b66e-a0ed79c2d2cf" CreationDate="2011-03-28T14:55:50.140" UserId="19431" Comment="added 146 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Where do I ask a subjective question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3295" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1333" RevisionGUID="7c531f9d-9589-4050-b66e-a0ed79c2d2cf" CreationDate="2011-03-28T14:55:50.140" UserId="19431" Comment="added 146 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3296" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1334" RevisionGUID="8a746a7f-114b-4fa3-8a0b-51c22ceecb25" CreationDate="2011-03-28T17:12:27.837" UserId="2314" Text="As Anna says, being **subjective** alone is not the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Starting with just the title, it was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Why is there so much hate for .NET in the world?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The two primary problems with this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It makes the presumption that there *is* &quot;so much hate&quot;.  That won't sit well with some people since I'm not sure everyone agrees with that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Hate is a personal thing. It makes the question not seem answerable beyond each person's opinion.  Subjective is one thing, personal preference is another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would post the question as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What reasons do some programmers have for disliking .NET?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have X experience in .NET and I find it good for [example A] and [example B].  However I have encountered [people such as managers or developers] that have a strong dislike for .NET, shunning its use or even speaking derogatorily of [competitors, vendors, etc.] using .NET.  Much of this negativity goes unexplained.  **Is this perception that many dislike .NET correct, and if so, why does the hatred exist?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3297" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1335" RevisionGUID="d319f6ef-468e-41f5-a41d-a33b3c1e4b82" CreationDate="2011-03-28T21:38:22.340" UserId="14554" Text="Is it proper to ask geographically based career questions? For example, &quot;What US city has the greatest opportunity for software engineers?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3298" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1335" RevisionGUID="d319f6ef-468e-41f5-a41d-a33b3c1e4b82" CreationDate="2011-03-28T21:38:22.340" UserId="14554" Text="Is it proper to ask geographically based questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3299" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1335" RevisionGUID="d319f6ef-468e-41f5-a41d-a33b3c1e4b82" CreationDate="2011-03-28T21:38:22.340" UserId="14554" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3300" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1336" RevisionGUID="7a0a1e64-cd2e-42c5-b61e-261384cc9a32" CreationDate="2011-03-28T23:25:57.140" UserId="37" Text="Typically no, as these would be too localized:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **too localized**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question would only be relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There can be exceptions, for example, on a poker site questions about Las Vegas would *certainly* be relevant, yes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rule of thumb is to generalize the question so it is relevant and helpful to as many people in *your* community as possible -- don't give someone a fish, teach them how to fish, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3301" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1337" RevisionGUID="0c8a3ae5-b112-4ec1-9f61-f320bcca3d91" CreationDate="2011-03-29T03:50:02.583" UserId="2021" Text="If it's likely to still be valuable in a year, eg. what user groups are there in the Houston area then yes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's geographically and time limited, eg. is  Initrode in Houston hiring, then no " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3302" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1338" RevisionGUID="4e1fabba-b9d2-42ed-b730-7cd0472fcafb" CreationDate="2011-03-29T04:01:36.040" UserId="12611" Text="The best approach to asking subjective questions is to **ask the question objectively.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you've ever noticed how &quot;interrogator&quot; type personalities try to manipulate a person, you may have observed that they ask questions, but the question contains a hint of what they actually believe the answer to their question to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- You're not wearing *that*, are you?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a question, but it's very obvious what the question asker thinks.  This question would be closed as `subjective and argumentative`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Are you going to wear your yellow tie or are you going to wear something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To make your subjective questions more constructive, make sure that, when you read your question, it's not obvious what ***you*** think about the subject.  The goal is to encourage others to tell you what ***they*** think without the answer feeling defensive or argumentative." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3303" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1339" RevisionGUID="9a5f2408-4c6d-42bc-b25a-f7d36d349993" CreationDate="2011-03-29T09:15:47.303" UserId="19554" Text="&quot;Oh! this answer has highest votes it must be good *bling*  upvote!!&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sheep as in follows the heard ( no lost sheep...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The kind of votes that keep getting added to the most catchy answer because it has high votes already. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A kind of peer pressure that puts you on the spot to vote for a popular answer so you'd fit in the popular/hip thinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its a mystery to see if most voters make it down to the bottom of the page to see new answers .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Question :** Is this phenomenon a norm these days?.&#xD;&#xA; -  **Question :**  I am i correct in observing this phenomenon to be true? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am trying to understand better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How to discourage crowd-pleasing&#xD;&#xA;   non-answers?][1]&#xD;&#xA; - [Since when did Vote Count indicate the correct answer to the question?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1316/since-when-did-vote-count-indicate-the-correct-answer-to-the-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3304" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1339" RevisionGUID="9a5f2408-4c6d-42bc-b25a-f7d36d349993" CreationDate="2011-03-29T09:15:47.303" UserId="19554" Text="Is Sheep Voting the Norm these days?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3305" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1339" RevisionGUID="9a5f2408-4c6d-42bc-b25a-f7d36d349993" CreationDate="2011-03-29T09:15:47.303" UserId="19554" Text="|discussion|answers|up-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3306" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1340" RevisionGUID="324c14ce-caeb-42b3-92fa-45a26beb8095" CreationDate="2011-03-29T12:12:58.493" UserId="19584" Text="I'd be surprised if it was, its anonymous voting right? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have the problem of forgetting to vote for good questions, only good answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3307" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1339" RevisionGUID="fc37ac92-fe24-4415-96b5-bd3235b15c99" CreationDate="2011-03-29T13:22:42.587" UserId="226" Comment="edited body" Text="&quot;Oh! this answer has highest votes it must be good *bling*  upvote!!&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sheep as in follows the herd ( no lost sheep...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The kind of votes that keep getting added to the most catchy answer because it has high votes already. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A kind of peer pressure that puts you on the spot to vote for a popular answer so you'd fit in the popular/hip thinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a mystery to see if most voters make it down to the bottom of the page to see new answers .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Question :** Is this phenomenon a norm these days?.&#xD;&#xA; -  **Question :**  I am i correct in observing this phenomenon to be true? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am trying to understand better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How to discourage crowd-pleasing&#xD;&#xA;   non-answers?][1]&#xD;&#xA; - [Since when did Vote Count indicate the correct answer to the question?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1316/since-when-did-vote-count-indicate-the-correct-answer-to-the-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3308" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1341" RevisionGUID="287b82dc-e16d-437b-bf25-1bbf812d2e79" CreationDate="2011-03-29T13:27:30.633" UserId="226" Text="I think you're worrying about a problem that doesn't exist. There's no peer pressure to vote for the highest voted answer. There's nobody holding a gun to a voter's head saying &quot;vote highest or *else*&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will see the highest voted answer get more votes because often it *is* the best answer. Either it goes into more details or provides a more sensible view than the others. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Crowd-pleasing non-answers are a different issue. Those posts aren't answers and they get votes on popularity. Those should be downvoted and/or flagged for removal, depending on the question. Some of the worse questions we get attract &quot;cheap&quot; answers -- a link to a popular comic or a joke. Those will always gather a lot of votes, but don't mistake them for being useful." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3309" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1342" RevisionGUID="7c611ca9-0091-4462-83d0-74b55d393d63" CreationDate="2011-03-29T13:54:58.487" UserId="12804" Text="I think yes.&#xD;&#xA; Sometimes 'correct answer' can only come from good discussion. Sometimes discussion is 'the answer'. Also in many questions OP asks for things like &quot;How much of you guys..&quot; In such questions there is simply no correct answer. Or often you can see very subjective questions which have no definite answer but can be very informative if you read through all the posts, and see different opinions. I even believe this site should be more 'forum like'" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3310" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1343" RevisionGUID="1b67346e-25bd-4a78-81bb-613e07b914df" CreationDate="2011-03-29T14:00:26.247" UserId="19431" Text="I had a &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62916/why-is-there-so-much-hate-for-net-in-the-world&quot;&gt;subjective question&lt;/a&gt; that I was pretty sure would get closed, and it did.  Before I wrote this question I debated with myself for quite a while before asking it for a few reasons.  I highly respect the Stack Exchange network and I didn't want to get my question closed for violating the standards and guidelines of questions.  I also wrote and re-wrote my question several times trying to get the wording right to follow the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;six guidelines of subjective questions&lt;/a&gt;, which I failed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Still things didn't seem right, so I decided to ask the meta site &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1333/where-do-i-ask-a-subjective-question&quot;&gt;where I should ask a subjective question&lt;/a&gt;.  Thank you to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1333/where-do-i-ask-a-subjective-question/1334#1334&quot;&gt;very helpful answer&lt;/a&gt; I was able to understand the reasons why my wording was poor and why my question was closed.  However, in my meta question I also asked &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&quot;if there is not an appropriate stackexchange site, where is a good forum that I can ask that sort of question that has the maturity and popularity of the stackexchange sites so that I can get a quality response?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you to Jeff Atwood's comment, which I agree and kind of thought might be the case before I submitted the question in the first place, that the best place would have been to ask this outside of the stackexchange network.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, my question is, where is a good place to go outside of the stackexchange network where I can ask this very subjective question (probably with better wording as suggested by the answers to my meta question) but still be reaching the maturity and quality of the stackexchange community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3311" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1343" RevisionGUID="1b67346e-25bd-4a78-81bb-613e07b914df" CreationDate="2011-03-29T14:00:26.247" UserId="19431" Text="Where is a good place outside of the stackexchange network to ask a subjective question but still get the quality and maturity of the SE community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3312" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1343" RevisionGUID="1b67346e-25bd-4a78-81bb-613e07b914df" CreationDate="2011-03-29T14:00:26.247" UserId="19431" Text="|discussion|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3313" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1339" RevisionGUID="b6b4c406-c36a-4831-864b-5559562d7ad7" CreationDate="2011-03-29T14:53:00.810" UserId="19554" Comment="deleted 85 characters in body; edited title" Text="&quot;Oh! this answer has highest votes it must be good *bling*  upvote!!&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The kind of votes that keep getting added to the most catchy answer because it has high votes already. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A kind of peer pressure that puts you on the spot to vote for a popular answer so you'd fit in the popular/hip thinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a mystery to see if most voters make it down to the bottom of the page to see new answers .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Question :** Is this phenomenon a norm these days?.&#xD;&#xA; -  **Question :**  I am i correct in observing this phenomenon to be true? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How to discourage crowd-pleasing&#xD;&#xA;   non-answers?][1]&#xD;&#xA; - [Since when did Vote Count indicate the correct answer to the question?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1316/since-when-did-vote-count-indicate-the-correct-answer-to-the-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3314" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1339" RevisionGUID="b6b4c406-c36a-4831-864b-5559562d7ad7" CreationDate="2011-03-29T14:53:00.810" UserId="19554" Comment="deleted 85 characters in body; edited title" Text="Peer Pressure in Voting?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3315" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1344" RevisionGUID="5df99d88-64b1-43b4-96d8-bee2a4632fcb" CreationDate="2011-03-29T15:00:11.070" UserId="19554" Text=" - Is There a way to see the increase in vote count per post in a topic which was setup for a bounty?&#xD;&#xA; - Is there a way to sort the answers to newest posted and voted " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3316" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1344" RevisionGUID="5df99d88-64b1-43b4-96d8-bee2a4632fcb" CreationDate="2011-03-29T15:00:11.070" UserId="19554" Text="A way to see increase in vote count after bounty? Also to sort newly answered and voted answers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3317" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1344" RevisionGUID="5df99d88-64b1-43b4-96d8-bee2a4632fcb" CreationDate="2011-03-29T15:00:11.070" UserId="19554" Text="|feature-request|site-attributes|up-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3318" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1344" RevisionGUID="5cb49167-23a1-4edb-8b9b-705ceabd4b1f" CreationDate="2011-03-29T17:27:13.487" UserId="19554" Comment="deleted 14 characters in body; edited title" Text=" - Is There a way to see the increase in vote count per post in a topic which was setup for a bounty?&#xD;&#xA; - Is there a way to sort the answers newly posted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3319" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1344" RevisionGUID="5cb49167-23a1-4edb-8b9b-705ceabd4b1f" CreationDate="2011-03-29T17:27:13.487" UserId="19554" Comment="deleted 14 characters in body; edited title" Text="A way to see increase in vote count after bounty? Also to sort newly posted answers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3320" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1345" RevisionGUID="f558b007-de1f-4703-85e6-f6023ac87662" CreationDate="2011-03-29T18:02:14.530" UserId="63" Text="You're gonna have some trouble, since a key part of maintaining &quot;the quality and maturity&quot; of the SE network is built around *not* allowing questions like that...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, you gotta start somewhere.  [Where can I find interesting programming discussions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/13198/where-can-i-find-interesting-programming-discussions) has a few suggestions you might consider..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3321" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1346" RevisionGUID="94202e1d-a69e-4db7-8590-b10b09167294" CreationDate="2011-03-29T23:15:17.307" UserId="2314" Text="A user's reputation tab now shows the actual time votes to posts were given, so you could infer it from that.  For example, for the question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38597/where-and-how-to-mention-stackoverflow-participation-in-the-resume&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can look at the [asker's reputation tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4443/sandeepan-nath?tab=reputation):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; +5 	23:01 	upvote 	 &#xD;&#xA;&gt; +5 	10:33 	upvote 	 &#xD;&#xA;&gt; +5 	06:49 	upvote 	 &#xD;&#xA;&gt; +5 	06:20 	upvote 	 &#xD;&#xA;&gt; +5 	06:13 	upvote 	 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [revisions tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/38597/revisions) shows when the bounty was added (17 hours ago)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just click [active](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38597/where-and-how-to-mention-stackoverflow-participation-in-the-resume?tab=active#tab-top) to see the answers by recent activity (sort of what you are asking) or [oldest](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38597/where-and-how-to-mention-stackoverflow-participation-in-the-resume?tab=oldest#tab-top) (the order they were posted, but in reverse, so you'd have to look to the end for the newest answers).  Again, you'd have to infer which is which by the time the bounty was posted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3322" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1347" RevisionGUID="b6a8d5a3-c5b3-4f6d-80f0-480dd8b2f436" CreationDate="2011-03-30T05:01:16.973" UserId="12611" Text="It's not that StackExchange discourages subjective questions.  In fact, the Stack Exchange network has welcomed subjective questions as long as they meet those six guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with your question is it's biased.  I can tell what your opinion is based on the wording of the questions.  Good subjective questions give absolutely no hint of your opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way to make your subjective question less biased is to ask the question so that you target both the people who dislike the subject as well as those who like it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`What are some of the reasons people dislike .NET and what are some of the reasons people like .NET?`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is less likely to be closed as `subjective and argumentative`.  Do I like .NET or dislike it?  Can you tell?  I hope you see my point, and I hope this helps you rework your question to where you can ask it here.  Good luck!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3323" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1348" RevisionGUID="c984bd5b-278a-478c-b244-28f1d5f1f9f2" CreationDate="2011-03-30T05:25:55.513" UserId="16637" Text="After reading a post on meta.so, I noticed the http://programmers.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/XXX page. I'm guessing that it's part of the so-called moderator tools a user receives as moderator or reaching 10k reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It didn't take long to find the [latest suggestion][1] and reject it. *Note: I didn't maliciously reject it - it was an irrelevant suggestion.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since this web page is publicly accessible, can **anyone** reject/approve edits? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/668" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3324" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1348" RevisionGUID="c984bd5b-278a-478c-b244-28f1d5f1f9f2" CreationDate="2011-03-30T05:25:55.513" UserId="16637" Text="Can anyone reject suggested edits?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3325" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1348" RevisionGUID="c984bd5b-278a-478c-b244-28f1d5f1f9f2" CreationDate="2011-03-30T05:25:55.513" UserId="16637" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3326" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1349" RevisionGUID="857c4813-cd79-43a3-8d9c-2e240e71d119" CreationDate="2011-03-30T07:08:44.427" UserId="63" Text="Please see: [How does peer review for edits work?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/76251/how-does-peer-review-for-edits-work/76284#76284)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - All users with the [edit privilege][1] may vote on suggested edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(voting includes rejecting as well as accepting)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[There is some discussion underway][2] about making that page a bit more visible...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/84693/eeeek-i-sense-an-eeeek-question-about-missing-a-unanswered-tab" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3327" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1350" RevisionGUID="c886ecd0-690f-42ab-974b-596bd880dacf" CreationDate="2011-03-30T11:57:57.403" UserId="6509" Text="A very good example would be this question that came in today: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63584/parsing-rss-feeds.  I purposely avoided the LMGTFY, although a question like that begs for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I asked something recently that borders on that as well: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63381/functional-languages-that-compile-to-androids-dalvik-vm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think both of these questions, and I will take care of mine, could use a bit of an edit to request personal experience with the tool, if it exists.  Recommendations on how to make these types of questions better for the community at large?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3328" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1350" RevisionGUID="c886ecd0-690f-42ab-974b-596bd880dacf" CreationDate="2011-03-30T11:57:57.403" UserId="6509" Text="Suggestions for questions begging for a &quot;Let Me Google That For You&quot; link" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3329" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1350" RevisionGUID="c886ecd0-690f-42ab-974b-596bd880dacf" CreationDate="2011-03-30T11:57:57.403" UserId="6509" Text="|discussion|questions|lmgtfy|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3330" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1351" RevisionGUID="20d499f0-ff7d-4978-86f6-2a37af9b5801" CreationDate="2011-03-30T13:35:15.340" UserId="226" Text="One of today's questions looks like it's been asked by a suspended user -- the user has 1 rep point and the account profile says the account is temporarily suspended. How is that possible?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3331" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1351" RevisionGUID="20d499f0-ff7d-4978-86f6-2a37af9b5801" CreationDate="2011-03-30T13:35:15.340" UserId="226" Text="How can a suspended user ask a question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3332" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1351" RevisionGUID="20d499f0-ff7d-4978-86f6-2a37af9b5801" CreationDate="2011-03-30T13:35:15.340" UserId="226" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3333" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1352" RevisionGUID="4b42b179-b9fe-430f-a245-d65168d1e118" CreationDate="2011-03-30T13:36:26.197" UserId="226" Text="A suspended account cannot post new questions. What happened was that the user created another account to evade suspension. When such cases are discovered, the offending accounts are often merged into the master account that's still under suspension. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The post ownership is transfered to the master account during the merge and thus the post looks as if it were made by a suspended account." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3334" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1353" RevisionGUID="25675315-6a2b-44a8-a7e5-09df106d100b" CreationDate="2011-03-30T15:03:54.657" UserId="19799" Text="I'll admit that I was a little influenced by the amount of votes with accepting an answer for my first question but I moved on from being impressed by votes and badges etc...there's some great people on here but it's also relative to how much time you want to spend here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3335" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1354" RevisionGUID="835df79f-f5f7-4f25-a06e-62d92905e4db" CreationDate="2011-03-30T15:41:23.070" UserId="2314" Text="Your suggestion to request personal experience or more details is a good one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the questions and answers are thoughtful, I actually don't think its a problem even if it's a pretty easy Google search.  The reason for that is that the Question-Answer format is better for readability and permanency than Google anyway, and we need to remember that asking and answering questions on StackExchange is *more* than just for the asker &amp;mdash; it's a service to all those who will be searching the site, or even Google, in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, in summary, what should we do with easy questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Make sure the question explains the problem using **more than just search keywords.**&#xD;&#xA;2. Make sure to answer it with **more than just links.** (Even if you don't have personal experience, summarize what you gleaned from the link, since links do often go stale.  E.G. for questions about tools, summarize the platforms the tool runs with/on, and the main features or purpose of the tool.)&#xD;&#xA;3. Sit back and watch the rep roll in for an easy question! :)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3336" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1355" RevisionGUID="612e0746-942a-4a8c-8ce3-5a8214e3f003" CreationDate="2011-03-30T17:53:35.053" UserId="19554" Text=" 1. I would think the personal experience is implied by the asker if he can Google it himself.&#xD;&#xA; 2. The thing with &quot;Let Me Google That For You&quot; Type questions is.People would differ in search results based on keywords.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Experience, Understanding, Exposure of each person varies hence his search on an issue would vary by the keywords they use based on the deeper understanding of the problem or maybe a different aspect.&#xD;&#xA; 4. Even with searching the answers using Google we might often miss a point due to mere over sight or not getting the context or not exploring a link further as we may not see the immediate relevancy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So: IMHO We should do what we can to provide interesting answers :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3337" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1356" RevisionGUID="ab552490-472e-46d1-a78a-a8e8871d9ee2" CreationDate="2011-03-30T18:15:54.113" UserId="37" Text="There is a relevant blog post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/are-some-questions-too-simple/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And even a handy flow chart:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/wp-content/uploads/interesting-question-decision-tree-flowchart.png)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3338" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1357" RevisionGUID="5020b048-9017-4901-a725-ad10ed6c29c0" CreationDate="2011-03-31T02:27:21.630" UserId="21007" Text="Yes. I think this phenomenon is true, here and on other forums. It is probably the norm as well. This is the unintended consequence of SO/SE trying to be helpful to random people on the net. In promoting the highest rated answers to the top of the heap, they also implicitly encourage voting for the earliest answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A corollary to that is that if you want to rep-whore (not saying it's right), you'd best stick to unanswered questions and get a quick answer in before anyone else. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3339" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1358" RevisionGUID="1f2dc23e-bec5-4280-844d-fc8d2a6c2f0f" CreationDate="2011-03-31T03:05:17.200" UserId="17275" Text="Is there a reason to upvote community wiki posts?  Does an upvote on the community wiki matter if there is no rep associated (why waste a vote on it if I can't give credit to someone for a good question or answer)?  Is it a waste of a vote?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;TIA." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3340" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1358" RevisionGUID="1f2dc23e-bec5-4280-844d-fc8d2a6c2f0f" CreationDate="2011-03-31T03:05:17.200" UserId="17275" Text="Upvote In Community Wiki" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3341" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1358" RevisionGUID="1f2dc23e-bec5-4280-844d-fc8d2a6c2f0f" CreationDate="2011-03-31T03:05:17.200" UserId="17275" Text="|discussion|community-wiki|voting|up-votes|votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3342" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1359" RevisionGUID="035287ff-b013-46e6-bddb-8fb59dd9a83e" CreationDate="2011-03-31T03:15:10.287" UserId="226" Text="Voting on community wiki posts is most certainly *not* a waste of a vote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two ways to look at votes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. They are a vehicle for reputation.&#xD;&#xA;2. They are a mark of &quot;useful content&quot; vs &quot;useless content&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I prefer to look at them in the second way as I find it more useful overall. Reputation awards/losses are just a side benefit. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3343" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1359" RevisionGUID="bc4ad36b-28e6-4cd3-a4eb-c758f3bc01aa" CreationDate="2011-03-31T03:41:37.953" UserId="226" Comment="added 177 characters in body" Text="Voting on community wiki posts is most certainly *not* a waste of a vote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two ways to look at votes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. They are a vehicle for reputation.&#xD;&#xA;2. They are a mark of &quot;useful content&quot; vs &quot;useless content&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you only view votes solely as the means of punishment (downvotes) and reward (upvotes), then CW votes would be pointless, since as you say there's no rep given or taken away. I prefer to look at them in the second way as I find it more useful overall. Reputation awards/losses are just a side benefit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3344" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1359" RevisionGUID="a5c451ea-2f41-45f2-9933-88e2c9cea058" CreationDate="2011-03-31T03:52:38.693" UserId="226" Comment="added 168 characters in body" Text="Voting on community wiki posts is most certainly *not* a waste of a vote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two ways to look at votes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. They are a vehicle for reputation.&#xD;&#xA;2. They are a mark of &quot;useful content&quot; vs &quot;useless content&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you only view votes solely as the means of punishment (downvotes) and reward (upvotes), then CW votes would be pointless, since as you say there's no rep given or taken away. I prefer to look at them in the second way as I find it more useful overall. Reputation awards/losses on &quot;normal&quot; posts are just a side benefit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of community wiki posts is to allow editing by the community in order to improve their quality. Lack of reputation changes is incidental." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3345" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1360" RevisionGUID="a7c58e88-f3c7-4b90-9bb3-e58b22dc8263" CreationDate="2011-03-31T07:59:16.373" UserId="37" Text="1. It affects sort order and influences what responses are considered &quot;best&quot; by the community, moving them up and down on the page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Users can still earn badges for community wiki posts, if not reputation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3346" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1361" RevisionGUID="afc84097-9f1d-4bd0-9135-0762d06ff944" CreationDate="2011-03-31T17:28:03.800" UserId="285" Text="Because of the sort order, you can have a situation like this: read question. Formulate sorta-kinda answer, or immediately spot problem. Read first answer. Yes, that's right, upvote. Read second answer. Also right, upvote. Read third answer. Oh. Well I am kind of bored of this now so I think I will wander away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is why votes with the same score are shown in random order. It should even out over time, even it it's not even on one question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3347" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1362" RevisionGUID="4df8b991-cef7-4992-a829-eae0f12fcad6" CreationDate="2011-03-31T18:09:33.413" UserId="7865" Text="I've noticed on Programmmers.SE that when you hover over the `flag this comment` button it bumps the surrounding container by 1px. After inspecting the css, I noticed these rules in all.css:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    .flag-off {&#xD;&#xA;        background-position: -2px -741px;&#xD;&#xA;        height: 19px;&#xD;&#xA;        width: 19px;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;    .flag-on {&#xD;&#xA;        background-position: -2px -712px;&#xD;&#xA;        height: 18px;&#xD;&#xA;        width: 18px;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the second one should read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    .flag-on {&#xD;&#xA;        background-position: -2px -712px;&#xD;&#xA;        height: 19px;&#xD;&#xA;        width: 19px;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To prevent the layout from jumping." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3348" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1362" RevisionGUID="4df8b991-cef7-4992-a829-eae0f12fcad6" CreationDate="2011-03-31T18:09:33.413" UserId="7865" Text="CSS Rule for Flagging comments bumps layout by 1px" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3349" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1362" RevisionGUID="4df8b991-cef7-4992-a829-eae0f12fcad6" CreationDate="2011-03-31T18:09:33.413" UserId="7865" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3350" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1362" RevisionGUID="ed181965-0d0a-4cf1-806f-07be3a746608" CreationDate="2011-03-31T21:46:56.577" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3351" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1363" RevisionGUID="c00ec0ea-0c59-40e5-a656-75416bebce94" CreationDate="2011-04-01T00:36:05.453" UserId="21459" Text="Have you ever done a google search and found the first few results were all discussion boards where someone said, &quot;This is a dumb question, why don't you google it?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't want to answer the question, don't answer it.  But a link to LMGTFY will only make it harder for people who _are_ trying to find the information on their own." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3352" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1364" RevisionGUID="023e2706-5f22-460a-bb3f-bf4579a89aeb" CreationDate="2011-04-01T06:27:02.840" UserId="1685" Text="The fix will be in the next deployment." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3353" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1365" RevisionGUID="f357a92f-4f6f-4c68-b64e-bb5ef0b4247d" CreationDate="2011-04-01T12:53:02.460" UserId="11457" Text="I was directed here to present alternative point of view, so sorry to bump up again an issue you all consider closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think there is anything wrong with answers that contain just only one sentence. Quite contrary, I think in some situations they are wayyy better than useless essays about whole array of possible (not necessarily relevant) options. To be more precise, there are answers out there that are long and detailed, but if you try to draw clear conclusions from them, you simply can't do it. I think Jeff Atwood is right in his blog entry: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/02/how-to-write-without-writing.html&quot;&gt;How to Write Without Writing&lt;/a&gt;. It is very important for technical people to communicate their ideas. A person not saying much, where something needs to be clarified isn't going to be understood. Frankly the same applies to person that talks a lot, but somehow &quot;drifts away&quot; and ends up taking about minor &quot;side&quot; issues. What is worse, most of the time such person won't finish his talk with a simple sentence that somehow &quot;sums up&quot; all the issues he was talking about. He just stops talking, causing even more confusion. I personally draw &quot;equal&quot; sign between two examples above. For me all those people have problems communicating their ideas, even when at a first glance second case is quite different.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that P.SE has quite a lot of those &quot;long &amp; pointless&quot; answers. At first sight it looks promising. You keep on reading and waste some time only to find out, you don't know exactly what the guy is suggesting as an answer. I can't provide you with such answer right now as an example to illustrate this, but I'll try to fish one out and add it here. Anyway that leaves the reader with feeling of wasted time and a confusion. Just like your brain was somehow poisoned by the lack of logic in what you have just read. Sometimes you are lucky and you get a long, detailed and very consistent answer. Yes, those are also out there, but from my personal experience long pointless answers are much more common.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, in my personal opinion the quality of answer has nothing to do with it's lenght. It has more to do with how people understand an answer. Communicating is not about producing a stream of words. Its about combining them in such way, that your reader clearly understands your intentions. To me the only way to measure answer quality is the vote system with the following rules:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I understand the answer, I strongly agree with it = upvote&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I understand the answer, I strongly disagree with it = downvote&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't understand the answer or not really sure how I feel = no action&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think that is how it works right now, you're wrong. Using the Jeff quote as a basis a lot of people downvote certain answer just because it is too short and not because it is wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So... I don't think P.SE schould encourage/discourage certain type of answer. If somebody wants to write short answer -- let it be. Other people with the help of voting system will decide if this is enough information or not." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3354" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1362" RevisionGUID="7e97aee8-debf-486c-812c-9423269ce1a7" CreationDate="2011-04-01T20:14:10.567" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3355" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1366" RevisionGUID="18789568-8551-420a-bf79-a2552590533d" CreationDate="2011-04-01T22:09:25.800" UserId="6385" Text="I think more serious is the issue of peer pressure affecting what people feel they should write.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I often find myself defending Microsoft because the criticisms that people have against it are often so downright superstitious and insulting to the overall intelligence of the software community (can you believe [people thought SQL Server was responsible for 300,000 cases of SQL injection attacks][1]?), but it's hard to write an answer that might paint me an apologist -- especially with my real name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And here's the really stupid case-in-point disclaimer that I feel pressured to write: I'm nonetheless just as frustrated at Microsoft overall as anyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9929861-7.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3356" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1367" RevisionGUID="839f0186-5ce7-4e36-a31b-30816577170a" CreationDate="2011-04-02T00:18:16.473" UserId="2314" Text="Answer to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64449/can-a-function-be-too-short/64514#64514 by user &quot;Uncle Bob&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If so, welcome Uncle Bob! I'm thrilled to see you answering questions on Programmers! " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3357" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1367" RevisionGUID="839f0186-5ce7-4e36-a31b-30816577170a" CreationDate="2011-04-02T00:18:16.473" UserId="2314" Text="Is this really Uncle Bob??" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3358" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1367" RevisionGUID="839f0186-5ce7-4e36-a31b-30816577170a" CreationDate="2011-04-02T00:18:16.473" UserId="2314" Text="|discussion|new-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3359" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1339" RevisionGUID="2878014e-a520-40f6-9977-8de7444fdf70" CreationDate="2011-04-02T05:07:47.730" UserId="19554" Comment="added 1175 characters in body" Text="&quot;Oh! this answer has highest votes it must be good *bling*  upvote!!&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The kind of votes that keep getting added to the most catchy answer because it has high votes already. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A kind of peer pressure that puts you on the spot to vote for a popular answer so you'd fit in the popular/hip thinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a mystery to see if most voters make it down to the bottom of the page to see new answers .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Question :** Is this phenomenon a norm these days?.&#xD;&#xA; -  **Question :**  I am i correct in observing this phenomenon to be true? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How to discourage crowd-pleasing&#xD;&#xA;   non-answers?][1]&#xD;&#xA; - [Since when did Vote Count indicate the correct answer to the question?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;Conversely,for example when a person with very high rep or seniority ( mention of their years of experience and such) posts an answer to the question.In some cases even though it may not be right or relevant their answers still get up votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - For reasons of respect to seniority.Simply for the trouble they have taken to post an answer&#xD;&#xA; - Like you don't say no to your boss or your superior. say yes on the terms, OK it may not apply to this but it maybe useful in some other cases( not exactly in that level  but, you get the idea)&#xD;&#xA; - Up votes for reasons of not appearing to be bad or stupid to ignore or be contrary the words of a senior person( rep count/experience/age) lest their post gets flamed or discourage others in not answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is why you would notice rep builds up easier after a certain level due to the above factors Besides The **obvious** volume, good quality answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S :  I am not trying to flame or offend any one with high rep ( as natural consequence of providing great answers over a period of time) or seniority.Neither do i dismiss the factors of tenure,diplomacy,strategic up/down voting, Rep W***ing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1316/since-when-did-vote-count-indicate-the-correct-answer-to-the-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3360" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1368" RevisionGUID="efbf77cb-c994-43c9-8aa1-6037c079715b" CreationDate="2011-04-02T08:32:32.723" UserId="37" Text="Indeed it is! Welcome Uncle Bob.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://twitter.com/#!/unclebobmartin/status/54097164942573568" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3361" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1369" RevisionGUID="20f76950-620a-49d8-983a-2cc799513ca4" CreationDate="2011-04-02T11:04:57.400" UserId="1069" Text="I don't think this phenomenon exists. This is simply because I can't think of a reason why someone would vote for an answer that isn't right, or why someone would vote for an answer that they haven't read, when voting is anonymous. You can't feel in with the in crowd, because no one else knows you've voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, and this is something I have been guilty of, people probably do up vote answers from members who are somewhat famous (Jon Skeet, Piere303, Anna Leer, etc.), regardless of if the answer is the best. This is because the vote is like showing support for them, rather than their answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The voter might not even read the answer if the person is famous enough (although this seems somewhat unlikely)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3362" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1369" RevisionGUID="d24a6cda-1c79-466f-87db-276334ca4935" CreationDate="2011-04-02T13:53:12.947" UserId="226" Comment="Corrected spelling of names. Sorry. :)" Text="I don't think this phenomenon exists. This is simply because I can't think of a reason why someone would vote for an answer that isn't right, or why someone would vote for an answer that they haven't read, when voting is anonymous. You can't feel in with the in crowd, because no one else knows you've voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, and this is something I have been guilty of, people probably do up vote answers from members who are somewhat famous (Jon Skeet, Pierre303, Anna Lear, etc.), regardless of if the answer is the best. This is because the vote is like showing support for them, rather than their answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The voter might not even read the answer if the person is famous enough (although this seems somewhat unlikely)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3363" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1370" RevisionGUID="db0755c4-789a-4b20-a53b-0315320a93d4" CreationDate="2011-04-03T03:30:22.803" UserId="12611" Text="I really believe we're looking at the problem the wrong way.  Answers that are upvoted because they're short, popular answers are generally the result of poorly-written questions that *don't meet the guidelines for good, subjective questions.*  See [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of these not-so-good questions are either closed, deleted, or converted to community wiki, so the upvotes don't matter for reputation.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of trying to change the system, we need all of the 3000+ users to contribute to voting on questions that should be closed.  If the questions can be improved, leave a comment encouraging the OP to improve the question, or try editing it yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're a user that doesn't have the ability to close vote, you can still help by suggesting an edit, submitting a helpful comment, or flagging the post for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The more people we have in the community contributing to the moderation of this site, the less we'll see issues with the system itself and the more positive our experience here will be.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3364" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1339" RevisionGUID="387a4e51-b5fe-4f99-8240-4002a49af78a" CreationDate="2011-04-03T04:48:14.157" UserId="19554" Comment="added 167 characters in body" Text="&quot;Oh! this answer has highest votes it must be good *bling*  upvote!!&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The kind of votes that keep getting added to the most catchy answer because it has high votes already. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A kind of peer pressure that puts you on the spot to vote for a popular answer so you'd fit in the popular/hip thinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a mystery to see if most voters make it down to the bottom of the page to see new answers .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Question :** Is this phenomenon a norm these days?.&#xD;&#xA; -  **Question :**  I am i correct in observing this phenomenon to be true? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How to discourage crowd-pleasing&#xD;&#xA;   non-answers?][1]&#xD;&#xA; - [Since when did Vote Count indicate the correct answer to the question?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;Conversely,for example when a person with very high rep or seniority ( mention of their years of experience and such) posts an answer to the question.In some cases even though it may not be right or relevant their answers still get up votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - For reasons of respect to seniority.Simply for the trouble they have taken to post an answer&#xD;&#xA; - Like you don't say no to your boss or your superior. say yes on the terms, OK it may not apply to this but it maybe useful in some other cases.&#xD;&#xA; - Up votes for reasons of not appearing to be bad or stupid to ignore or be contrary the words of a senior person( rep count/experience/age) lest their post gets flamed or discourage others in not answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is why you would notice rep builds up easier after a certain level at a slight extent maybe due to the above factors ,Besides The **obvious** volume and/or good quality answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S : I am not trying to flame or offend any one with high rep&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;( as natural consequence of providing great answers over a period of time) or seniority.Neither do i dismiss the factors of tenure,diplomacy,strategic up/down voting, Rep W***ing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit2: I am not claiming that this happens every time or for every up voted question or answer.&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1316/since-when-did-vote-count-indicate-the-correct-answer-to-the-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3365" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1371" RevisionGUID="482cda62-14a6-469f-b130-87fbe4a01721" CreationDate="2011-04-03T06:43:29.727" UserId="19554" Text="Great question. ( Not localizing on the OP's example)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a community with so many people reading the question its likely That people may misinterpret or not go to the trouble of understanding the intentions behind the OP's seemingly duplicate question.&#xD;&#xA;Due to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. OP' lack of proper expression/wording &#xD;&#xA; 2. Which in turn maybe due to the OP's grasp of the language,due to missing factors in the questions definition which may be uncovered with a discussion and such.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Remember Not everyone is a Native speaker of English,not everyone one is an excellent or an effective communicator.&#xD;&#xA; 4. The point is to give the OP some benefit of doubt and concern to his requirement.I am not implying we go overboard on this,But we are an open community aren't we?&#xD;&#xA; 5. If the volume of people who might not understand this at the time of posting the question it would be closed very soon much to the frustration of the OP.&#xD;&#xA; 6. It may also be due to the Inability of the readers to see beyond the seeming duplicate nature to understand the real meaning of the question.Some people just don't take the trouble of understanding the question properly.&#xD;&#xA; 7. Agreed that some users might find it tiring/worn out /annoying to what they think is a duplicate post.IT wouldn't kill them to just ignore or not post in the topic for a while at least until it gets some constructive answers.Luckily we see this happening often :) thats why seemingly duplicate posts get some answers before they are closed .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In my opinion, the question itself&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be edited so that it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; apparent to other users that the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is not a duplicate. If it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; really is a unique question, the body&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be able to be worded in a way&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that makes that pretty obvious.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -[Renesis][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Plea should stay as is. If its too long it should be shorted.If it is removed *It Defeats The Basic Purpose of Putting it There*** to prevent the people who jump to quick conclusions and who dont take the trouble of understanding the OP's requirement in the question. *The fact that the OP has indicated that his question may be a duplicate indicates that he has been through the other posts and understands ,needs something more or better*.Which is totally ignored by the people who just want to close the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2314/renesis" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3366" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1372" RevisionGUID="314b9329-e46e-4488-a8dd-ae128aa72b97" CreationDate="2011-04-04T08:35:15.040" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="That's [The Herd Instinct][1]. I talk about this phenomenom in another (controversed) [meta post][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Voting for already highly voted answers feel &quot;safe&quot;. Therefore, consciously or unconsciously you do it. On rare occasion, you do the inverse, by rebellion ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kate mention the impact of ordering which is real and IMHO is an unfair advantage for those who answer the question first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've observed that phenomenum many time. It is unlikely that better answers that come later get more vote than the inferior (and first) one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why timezone also affect how much reputation you can get from your answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fICjq822SwQ&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/77416/proposal-for-amendments-to-the-election-primary" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3367" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1373" RevisionGUID="c8904af8-28fc-46c2-961e-256df0ac057c" CreationDate="2011-04-04T21:56:34.317" UserId="2314" Text="The *Questions/Tags/Users/Badges/Unanswered* navigation buttons appear over the close box.  I am using Firefox 3.6, Mac OS.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because the close box is vertically centered, you need to make your viewport vertically almost as short as the close box itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/W6jEM.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3368" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1373" RevisionGUID="c8904af8-28fc-46c2-961e-256df0ac057c" CreationDate="2011-04-04T21:56:34.317" UserId="2314" Text="Navigation buttons appear over the close box" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3369" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1373" RevisionGUID="c8904af8-28fc-46c2-961e-256df0ac057c" CreationDate="2011-04-04T21:56:34.317" UserId="2314" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3370" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1374" RevisionGUID="ca7ee058-9a8a-444d-87b1-87100b01bd7d" CreationDate="2011-04-04T23:31:47.577" UserId="44" Text="There are questions tagged [tag:career], and questions tagged [tag:career-development]. The two tags should probably be merged, as questions about career development are still questions about career." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3371" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1374" RevisionGUID="ca7ee058-9a8a-444d-87b1-87100b01bd7d" CreationDate="2011-04-04T23:31:47.577" UserId="44" Text="Merge the &quot;career&quot; and &quot;career-development&quot; tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3372" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1374" RevisionGUID="ca7ee058-9a8a-444d-87b1-87100b01bd7d" CreationDate="2011-04-04T23:31:47.577" UserId="44" Text="|feature-request|retag-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3373" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1375" RevisionGUID="6003aa53-fb58-41fd-aafd-a3dca9dfb2eb" CreationDate="2011-04-05T05:35:30.490" UserId="1685" Text="The fix will be in the next deployment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3374" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1376" RevisionGUID="86e78612-8f68-4aa2-862f-25fd0af1fec5" CreationDate="2011-04-05T06:56:14.387" UserId="19554" Text="This question&#xD;&#xA;[Where and how to mention Stackoverflow participation in the résumé?][1]&#xD;&#xA;I had started a bounty to get better direct answer to the question. The whole topic has much discussion on yes and no to putting the participation on resume with no real answers on where and how to mention. except a very few.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the bounty had started 06:10 I had posted an answer to make it relevant on what kind of answer was expected for the bounty  .The newly [posted answer][2] was at 6:13. &#xD;&#xA;Over the week's duration this had got the highest votes.&#xD;&#xA;Which should be given  Community awarded bounty i.e 50 rep. This has not happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had checked the rules and similar post on meta regarding this and confirmed that the bounty should be awarded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38597/where-and-how-to-mention-stackoverflow-participation-in-the-resume/63130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38597/where-and-how-to-mention-stackoverflow-participation-in-the-resume/63130#63130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3375" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1376" RevisionGUID="86e78612-8f68-4aa2-862f-25fd0af1fec5" CreationDate="2011-04-05T06:56:14.387" UserId="19554" Text="Community Awarded bounty Rep Not Given when own answer after bounty has higest votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3376" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1376" RevisionGUID="86e78612-8f68-4aa2-862f-25fd0af1fec5" CreationDate="2011-04-05T06:56:14.387" UserId="19554" Text="|feature-request|bug|bounty-awards|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3377" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1377" RevisionGUID="93d11d36-03fa-45b8-8236-7b3f4634d19a" CreationDate="2011-04-05T07:46:07.250" UserId="37" Text="Simple: you can't be awarded your own bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3378" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1376" RevisionGUID="a3ecffb0-a9fd-4922-b01b-71c5737c8ae1" CreationDate="2011-04-05T07:46:21.897" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|bounty-awards|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3379" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1378" RevisionGUID="095bb47f-d81d-4cfc-bf07-59875077370e" CreationDate="2011-04-05T09:29:43.557" UserDisplayName="There is nothing we can do" Text="From here:&#xD;&#xA;http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2011/03/29/10146895.aspx?PageIndex=1#comments  &#xD;&#xA;It proves that what I've said here:  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64245/vs2010-aka-very-slow-2010  &#xD;&#xA;is valid/constructive and over all true.  Funny but in the first link there are comments which are almost identical to what I've said in my second link provided.  &#xD;&#xA;I sometimes wonder about people who even though Microsoft itself admitts that Very Slow 2010 is slower than 2008 ([here][1]) yet, they still saying that on their machines Very Slow 2010 is working faster than VS2008?&#xD;&#xA;So the question is: After reading what I've provided in links are you still saying that Very Slow 2010 performs better than VS2008&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2011/03/03/10136696.aspx?PageIndex=3#comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3380" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1378" RevisionGUID="095bb47f-d81d-4cfc-bf07-59875077370e" CreationDate="2011-04-05T09:29:43.557" UserDisplayName="There is nothing we can do" Text="Why my thread has been closed and locked?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3381" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1378" RevisionGUID="095bb47f-d81d-4cfc-bf07-59875077370e" CreationDate="2011-04-05T09:29:43.557" UserDisplayName="There is nothing we can do" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3382" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1378" RevisionGUID="6a81d6fb-1843-44d2-97ac-3a69a2d2ad79" CreationDate="2011-04-05T09:30:39.243" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65268/why-my-thread-has-been-closed-and-locked" Text="" />
  <row Id="3383" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1379" RevisionGUID="d3845e4c-727c-4c4d-856f-00c8369afa80" CreationDate="2011-04-05T09:33:34.093" UserId="47" Text="The post was locked as the comments were getting out of hand. I've unlocked it now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't help that you call Visual Studio 2010 &quot;Very Slow 2010&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want it to be reopened, edit it to remove the highly subjective and potentially inflammatory language and then if the community votes it will be reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3384" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1378" RevisionGUID="ef96be1e-1d0b-4d5a-b772-39c3978e16c2" CreationDate="2011-04-05T09:34:05.090" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3385" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1380" RevisionGUID="7b335d23-89eb-4642-83ff-527372972c94" CreationDate="2011-04-05T09:39:12.013" UserId="19554" Text="Can we have a Progress percentage or indicator that shows how much of a remaining ______ till the badge. Like we have the percentage reputation displayed  till privilege  in the privileges tab.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems odd that progress indicator for one aspect and not for the other" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3386" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1380" RevisionGUID="7b335d23-89eb-4642-83ff-527372972c94" CreationDate="2011-04-05T09:39:12.013" UserId="19554" Text="Badge progress display like the Percentage Till privilages display" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3387" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1380" RevisionGUID="7b335d23-89eb-4642-83ff-527372972c94" CreationDate="2011-04-05T09:39:12.013" UserId="19554" Text="|feature-request|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3388" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1379" RevisionGUID="fbd307f6-e9ce-4592-b9c0-9f37dbe724ba" CreationDate="2011-04-05T10:05:15.043" UserId="47" Comment="correction" Text="The post was locked as the comments were getting out of hand. I've unlocked it now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't help that you call Visual Studio 2010 &quot;Very Slow 2010&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want it to be reopened, edit it to remove the highly subjective and &lt;strike&gt;potentially inflammatory&lt;/strike&gt; pejorative language and then if the community votes it will be reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3389" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1381" RevisionGUID="8a6265df-ec90-4439-856b-e1f2888d4e1f" CreationDate="2011-04-05T14:11:04.223" UserId="226" Text="This has been brought up [many times][1] on Meta.StackOverflow and rejected. The posts are now closed as duplicates tracing back to [this question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/3230/so-badge-progress-report).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=progress%20badges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3390" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1380" RevisionGUID="e8cbba6d-10e3-4e97-a960-d96b392e514f" CreationDate="2011-04-05T14:11:26.330" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3391" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1382" RevisionGUID="5383af33-878d-49f3-874b-de04099a8f99" CreationDate="2011-04-05T14:12:06.760" UserId="22193" Text="You should try to be as helpful as possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its easy to research a subject when you know it but many a time Google has failed me as I am asking the wrong question through ignorance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I joined this site as recently many Google searches have lead me here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also it is highly irritating to research something on you own and when you try to ask a question you get told to Google it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That being said some questions need to be ignored." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3392" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1373" RevisionGUID="0b6bc9dc-b1c3-45f7-b9c7-b5711a0f4b05" CreationDate="2011-04-05T14:24:51.590" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3393" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1383" RevisionGUID="08abb7f5-6fa0-45ae-aed3-f76ed809079c" CreationDate="2011-04-05T14:35:52.423" UserId="19799" Text="I would have thought that it should be the same as it is for answers. A good question is just as important as a good answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3394" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1383" RevisionGUID="08abb7f5-6fa0-45ae-aed3-f76ed809079c" CreationDate="2011-04-05T14:35:52.423" UserId="19799" Text="Why is it only 5 reputation points for an up vote on a question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3395" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1383" RevisionGUID="08abb7f5-6fa0-45ae-aed3-f76ed809079c" CreationDate="2011-04-05T14:35:52.423" UserId="19799" Text="|discussion|reputation|questions|answers|votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3396" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1383" RevisionGUID="2ac40556-2595-4790-8d49-36392afa875d" CreationDate="2011-04-05T14:57:43.060" UserId="19799" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|reputation|questions|answers|votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3397" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1384" RevisionGUID="7312466b-a55b-4ac4-9560-4acd95c8a243" CreationDate="2011-04-05T15:05:16.267" UserId="226" Text="Question upvotes used to award 10 points. That was changed last year. From [this blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/03/important-reputation-rule-changes/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question upvotes will now grant only +5 rep instead of +10.* There is no change to answer upvotes. This will apply retroactively to all &gt;users.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - While we value good questions (and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking a great question is absolutely&#xD;&#xA;&gt; an art), we want to explicitly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; encourage people to provide the best&#xD;&#xA;&gt; possible answers. Without people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interested in providing good answers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the questions are moot. We know that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers have more intrinsic value than&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions, and the reputation balance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should reflect that. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asker already enjoys a substantial&#xD;&#xA;&gt; benefit beyond reputation gain from&#xD;&#xA;&gt; upvotes on their question — namely,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they get great answers to their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question! Thus, the asker shouldn’t&#xD;&#xA;&gt; need as much reputation gain. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - There&#xD;&#xA;&gt; are a few users who ask hundreds,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; sometimes even thousands of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Over time, these users generate a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; fairly sizable reputation entirely&#xD;&#xA;&gt; through the tiny trickle of upvotes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gained by these questions. In a sense,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to discourage question asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a little bit, and make sure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; people who ask questions are doing it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for the right reasons and not to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generate reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also this [discussion post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/42769/should-the-weight-of-question-upvotes-be-reduced) on Meta.SO." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3398" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1385" RevisionGUID="8a4e362a-428c-444c-bb42-e5d1a07673d6" CreationDate="2011-04-05T16:53:23.190" UserId="2314" Text="Sorry about the all the acronyms in the title.  There are many questions here on Meta Programmers that are neither:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* about Programmers.SE at all&#xD;&#xA;* about a general SE problem, but related to a question on Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should these questions be flagged for migration to [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) (where they can often be closed as duplicates)? Examples include the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1383/why-is-it-only-5-reputation-points-for-an-up-vote-on-a-question&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1380/badge-progress-display-like-the-percentage-till-privilages-display&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1358/upvote-in-community-wiki" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3399" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1385" RevisionGUID="8a4e362a-428c-444c-bb42-e5d1a07673d6" CreationDate="2011-04-05T16:53:23.190" UserId="2314" Text="Should questions about SE and not about PSE be moved to MSO?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3400" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1385" RevisionGUID="8a4e362a-428c-444c-bb42-e5d1a07673d6" CreationDate="2011-04-05T16:53:23.190" UserId="2314" Text="|discussion|questions|meta|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3401" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1386" RevisionGUID="f9782fd6-266a-4c0c-830b-873b6fd9092d" CreationDate="2011-04-05T17:20:35.667" UserId="226" Text="Sometimes yes, sometimes no. My personal approach is to not migrate questions that have been frequently asked/answered on MSO, since they'll just add to the noise and get closed anyway. I find it more valuable to provide a good answer here in those situations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Far as bug reports go, site-specific metas do get attention from the SE dev team, so posting them here is fine. Although, they will get attention sooner on the main site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3402" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1374" RevisionGUID="64b1594e-1669-4f2d-b6f1-a5339fbff4b0" CreationDate="2011-04-06T04:10:39.107" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|retag-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3403" PostHistoryTypeId="14" PostId="1378" RevisionGUID="477bf666-5004-4bc5-9c23-bf5263bacb3c" CreationDate="2011-04-06T12:28:12.417" UserId="226" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:226,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Anna Lear&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="3404" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1387" RevisionGUID="e2b18ab8-c809-4026-977b-b5b693ad1df9" CreationDate="2011-04-06T14:00:13.477" UserId="12853" Text="I incorrectly flagged [this answer][1] as being not-an-answer. Any way to take it back?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65541/why-does-hacking-in-movies-always-have-to-involve-extremely-fancy-graphical-inter/65613#65613" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3405" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1387" RevisionGUID="e2b18ab8-c809-4026-977b-b5b693ad1df9" CreationDate="2011-04-06T14:00:13.477" UserId="12853" Text="Is it possible to unflag an answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3406" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1387" RevisionGUID="e2b18ab8-c809-4026-977b-b5b693ad1df9" CreationDate="2011-04-06T14:00:13.477" UserId="12853" Text="|support|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3407" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1388" RevisionGUID="2f440697-ac91-4f8c-b4e1-294a6188a7f0" CreationDate="2011-04-06T14:37:32.713" UserId="226" Text="There's no way you can do it yourself, but I dismissed the flag for you. The best you can do is flag the answer again for moderator attention and explain that the flag is invalid. Usually, though, we'll look at the answer and dismiss the flag anyway if it doesn't apply.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, don't worry about it. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3408" PostHistoryTypeId="15" PostId="1378" RevisionGUID="a9ec966d-e7d2-4d76-84e2-e87f7506811d" CreationDate="2011-04-06T18:22:04.983" UserId="226" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:226,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Anna Lear&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="3409" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1389" RevisionGUID="28909ef5-bdc4-4bff-94f9-fa890540a307" CreationDate="2011-04-06T18:47:13.357" UserId="18476" Text="I recently had the pleasure of reading the top 1500 questions/answers on programmers.SE, and noticed an alarming trend. About 100 of these questions, all with a community vote ranging from about +10 to +300, were closed by a select few moderators for being not 'constructive'. Around 15 questions among these top 1500 were closed collectively by non-moderators for this reason - a large difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point of this post is not to debate the 'constructiveness' of the questions within the set I speak of, or to debate about the '6 guidelines for constructive questions'. There is no doubt in my mind that some of these questions are constructive. It is also clear that these questions, as a whole, are viewed as constructive by the community. As a whole, these questions and answers have probably garnered significantly more than 10,000 community upvotes. They are obviously useful to many. If they really were not at all constructive, I imagine they would be removed from the site, instead of still sitting in their same place with a little [closed] sign stifling further growth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is also not the point to bemoan the power of the moderator to close questions with a click. I believe that this is an important tool for some to possess, and takes much of the burden off of the user base when it comes to regulating spam, duplicates, and non-questions. I am grateful to the moderators that use their bestowed power for these reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I do see a problem here, and the plot thickens. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overwhelming majority of these closed questions were flagged as 'not constructive' by a single user. Yes, a single user. I won't call you out, because I don't need to. It is an easy fact to find, for anyone looking. This flag draws moderator attention, which dispatches those with the mod-hammer. It appears that a few moderators really enjoy swinging it, so the questions get closed. I feel that this is an abuse of both the flagging system and of moderator power.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not really sure how we arrived at a point on programmers where this can happen. I do acknowledge and understand why the subjective question criteria exist, and although I don't feel like they are perfect, nothing really is, and i'm willing to accept them, as open to interpretation as they are. My problem rests in the fact that a moderator can easily spoil a good question, well accepted by the community, with a click of a button and no explanation, because they feel that it doesn't meet enough of the criteria, or doesn't meet the criteria well enough. In all the questions mentioned, the community disagreed with the moderator decision to an overwhelming degree. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Case in 2 points, briefly - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question has been mod-hammered. It has a total of +63 ups, and has been favorited by 36 users. It has been twittered about by Joel, and about this question Jeff says, &quot;the measurement of the worst software bug, and the idea that programmers need to consider the consequences of their professional actions, puts it on the other side of the line to 'acceptable'&quot;. For this question, both founders feel it fits, and so does the community. One moderator disagrees, however, so it is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(quoted from http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1073/some-inconsistency-in-closing-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, this is my question, and yes, it helped sparked this question. It was mod-hammered for not being constructive. I asked this question because I am working in NLP/AI, not because it just popped into my head and thought it would be useless but fun question to post here. The answers people gave helped me further understand the aspects from which a computer is generally considered to be different from a machine, information I can extrapolate from the questions listed. I can ask my robot all the answers (questions) provided by the community. To me, this is very 'constructive'. The included comment regarding the close - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;I was prepared to leave this open, but I think it's run its course.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't get this. At all. I don't feel like this is the moderator's place to judge the 'course' of a question. What is the harm in leaving it open? I hate to see the most awesome community QA site be subverted by a small handful of individuals on some sort of bent that I don't understand. If this question were closed by the community, because the community as a whole did not accept the question, I still wouldn't understand, but I would accept. In these cases, however, I do not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more complete list - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32786/programmer-aptitude-test&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-programming-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30513/as-a-programmer-what-single-discovery-has-given-you-the-greatest-boost-in-product&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47197/are-there-any-famous-one-man-army-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-quote-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63657/i-made-a-mistake-accepting-this-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46791/do-programmers-need-a-union&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64617/who-has-the-best-documentation-you-have-ever-seen-language-framework-cms-wh&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6847/whats-your-favorite-programming-language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6157/what-tools-should-every-programmer-know&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45939/whats-the-best-indie-game-development-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34537/ashamed-to-admit-using-jquery&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53184/do-you-actively-look-for-a-better-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6067/what-programming-language-are-you-curious-to-learn-next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/539/what-colour-scheme-do-you-use-in-your-ide&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7636/what-is-your-typical-source-control-commit-comment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42867/what-was-the-worst-3rd-party-api-you-had-to-work-with&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296/what-will-be-the-next-big-language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42986/if-we-can-do-functional-programming-with-python-do-we-need-a-specific-functional&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3363/whats-the-best-bad-comment-you-ever-encountered&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59446/how-do-you-answer-rate-yourself-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23965/what-programming-language-still-in-use-today-will-die-in-the-near-future&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23537/whats-your-favorite-productivity-tip-hack&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/most-used-programming-language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1015/how-do-you-keep-track-of-all-your-passwords&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41848/did-your-outlook-on-your-career-change-after-marriage&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21028/which-language-did-you-love-from-heart&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57461/as-a-programmer-whats-the-most-valuable-non-english-human-language-to-learn&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/880/whats-a-good-computer-to-use-for-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1913/what-are-the-must-have-development-tools-for-windows&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22073/is-functional-programming-actually-used-to-create-applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48996/does-anyone-here-work-from-a-really-remote-location&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17779/is-a-programmer-a-geek-or-nerd&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45300/how-to-hide-thinking-at-work-so-that-the-non-programmers-dont-suspect-slacking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skill&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7806/what-would-be-a-few-ideas-concepts-from-programming-that-i-can-have-on-paper-and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3732/whats-your-least-favorite-thing-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62570/another-term-for-common-code-smell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34644/what-are-the-best-rss-feeds-for-programmers-developers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23331/what-do-we-developers-have-in-common&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28642/absolute-statements-in-it-that-are-wrong&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5372/how-do-programmers-stay-healthy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41140/what-is-the-best-moment-of-your-developer-life&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34917/top-reasons-why-programmers-are-fired&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1202/who-is-the-greatest-or-most-influential-programmer-of-all-time&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33625/anti-depressant-and-programming-does-it-reduce-your-thinking-and-focusing-abilit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42317/code-that-smells-good&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8617/worst-working-conditions-environmental-or-otherwise&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6368/what-will-operating-systems-look-like-in-20-years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/419/how-do-you-celebrate-programmer-day&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36260/things-which-makes-you-frustrated-as-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42066/programmers-are-said-to-be-not-so-social-and-philanthrophic-is-it-true&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25432/how-can-a-new-programmer-impress-the-software-engineer-boss&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14706/overtime-is-part-of-the-job-true-but-a-bad-attitude&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19782/is-this-a-good-idea-to-use-humour-during-a-job-interview&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32674/why-do-good-programmers-have-ugly-websites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28667/is-anything-in-programming-truly-evil&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21782/stagnating-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35/whats-your-favorite-programming-joke&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11440/being-a-good-mentor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25902/if-you-take-a-crap-role-how-do-recover&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/558/how-can-you-learn-to-design-nice-looking-websites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4671/whats-the-weirdest-or-funniest-programming-mistake-youve-made&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17443/what-does-it-mean-to-write-good-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16222/how-to-remain-calm-in-all-situations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14601/what-to-do-with-old-computing-books&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4941/how-do-you-politely-keep-colleagues-from-leaving-fingerprints-on-your-monitor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4433/who-is-the-most-interesting-programmer-in-the-world&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6543/what-are-the-benefits-of-using-database-abstraction-by-orm&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8973/programming-language-you-wish-you-learned-first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19104/how-to-interview-someone-you-know-well&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15856/when-do-you-get-your-best-ideas&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22244/my-company-has-me-doing-a-christmas-card&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28406/do-i-expect-too-much-work-from-an-employer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/13228/what-are-awesome-job-titles-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5233/is-it-worth-getting-a-computer-science-degree-if-youre-already-in-the-door&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11565/what-programming-skill-do-you-use-most-often-that-you-are-terrible-at&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25100/which-individuals-are-having-the-greatest-impact-on-software-developers-today&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24663/how-to-reconcile-inner-creativity-with-the-corporate-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/837/did-i-miss-an-exit-in-my-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6639/what-headphones-work-best-to-block-out-the-cubical-office-noise&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2846/which-programming-language-do-you-really-hate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21635/how-has-programming-benefited-and-enriched-your-life&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/do-programmers-have-higher-tendency-to-be-atheists-than-non-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40952/what-is-the-hardest-part-of-your-programming-related-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8283/best-worst-logically-impossible-task-assigned-to-you&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I'm not trying to say that all of these mod-closed questions belong here. Some of them don't, in my eyes, and I would cast a vote to close. But even if I were a moderator, I don't think I would exercise my authority on any of these, especially given the overwhelmingly positive community response to them. I do feel that it is better to have borderline questions open than closed, but not even all of these questions are borderline, in my eyes. Some of them are just plain awesome! What is the harm, and has the mod-hammer been taken overboard? Is there any way we can escape the tyranny? To the offenders - Why? Why would you ever do this? I love the SE community, but it is things like this that makes me want to bring my contribution (and questions) elsewhere. This is a community site. I don't enjoy seeing it stifled by a handful of trolling mods. I'm now seeing questions arise on the regular with a 'do not close' plea. Is there anything that can be done? Do you feel that anything needs to be done, or do you disagree in entirety? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3410" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1389" RevisionGUID="28909ef5-bdc4-4bff-94f9-fa890540a307" CreationDate="2011-04-06T18:47:13.357" UserId="18476" Text="leave constructiveness judgement to community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3411" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1389" RevisionGUID="28909ef5-bdc4-4bff-94f9-fa890540a307" CreationDate="2011-04-06T18:47:13.357" UserId="18476" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3412" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1389" RevisionGUID="7fc7f4c3-af4e-480d-810b-802f6021a5bd" CreationDate="2011-04-06T19:14:06.350" UserId="18476" Comment="added 5 characters in body; added 33 characters in body" Text="I recently had the pleasure of reading the top 1500 questions/answers on programmers.SE, and noticed an alarming trend. About 100 of these questions, all with a community vote ranging from about +10 to +300, were closed by a select few moderators for being not 'constructive'. Only around 15 questions among these top 1500 were closed collectively by non-moderators for this reason - a large difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point of this post is not to debate the 'constructiveness' of the questions within the set I speak of, or to debate about the '6 guidelines for constructive questions'. There is no doubt in my mind that some of these questions are constructive. It is also clear that these questions, as a whole, are viewed as constructive by the community. As a whole, these questions and answers have probably garnered significantly more than 10,000 community upvotes. They are obviously useful to many. If they really were not at all constructive, I imagine they would be removed from the site, instead of still sitting in their same place with a little [closed] sign stifling further growth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is also not the point to bemoan the power of the moderator to close questions with a click. I believe that this is an important tool for some to possess, and takes much of the burden off of the user base when it comes to regulating spam, duplicates, and non-questions. I am grateful to the moderators that use their bestowed power for these reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I do see a problem here, and the plot thickens. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overwhelming majority of these closed questions were flagged as 'not constructive' by a single user. Yes, a single user. I won't call you out, because I don't need to. It is an easy fact to find, for anyone looking. This flag draws moderator attention, which dispatches those with the mod-hammer. It appears that a few moderators really enjoy swinging it, so the questions get closed. I feel that this is an abuse of both the flagging system and of moderator power.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not really sure how we arrived at a point on programmers where this can happen. I do acknowledge and understand why the subjective question criteria exist, and although I don't feel like they are perfect, nothing really is, and i'm willing to accept them, as open to interpretation as they are. My problem rests in the fact that a moderator can easily spoil a good question, well accepted by the community, with a click of a button and no explanation, because they feel that it doesn't meet enough of the criteria, or doesn't meet the criteria well enough. In all the questions mentioned, the community disagreed with the moderator decision to an overwhelming degree. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Case in 2 points, briefly - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question has been mod-hammered. It has a total of +63 ups, and has been favorited by 36 users. It has been twittered about by Joel, and about this question Jeff says, &quot;the measurement of the worst software bug, and the idea that programmers need to consider the consequences of their professional actions, puts it on the other side of the line to 'acceptable'&quot;. For this question, both founders feel it fits, and so does the community. One moderator disagrees, however, so it is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(quoted from http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1073/some-inconsistency-in-closing-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, this is my question, and yes, it helped sparked this question. It was mod-hammered for not being constructive. I asked this question because I am working in NLP/AI, not because it just popped into my head and thought it would be useless but fun question to post here. The answers people gave helped me further understand the aspects from which a computer is generally considered to be different from a machine, information I can extrapolate from the questions listed. I can ask my robot all the answers (questions) provided by the community. To me, this is very 'constructive'. The included comment regarding the close - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;I was prepared to leave this open, but I think it's run its course.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't get this. At all. I don't feel like this is the moderator's place to judge the 'course' of a question. What is the harm in leaving it open? I hate to see the most awesome community QA site be subverted by a small handful of individuals on some sort of bent that I don't understand. If this question were closed by the community, because the community as a whole did not accept the question, I still wouldn't understand, but I would accept. In these cases, however, I do not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more complete list - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32786/programmer-aptitude-test&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-programming-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30513/as-a-programmer-what-single-discovery-has-given-you-the-greatest-boost-in-product&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47197/are-there-any-famous-one-man-army-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-quote-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63657/i-made-a-mistake-accepting-this-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46791/do-programmers-need-a-union&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64617/who-has-the-best-documentation-you-have-ever-seen-language-framework-cms-wh&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6847/whats-your-favorite-programming-language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6157/what-tools-should-every-programmer-know&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45939/whats-the-best-indie-game-development-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34537/ashamed-to-admit-using-jquery&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53184/do-you-actively-look-for-a-better-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6067/what-programming-language-are-you-curious-to-learn-next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/539/what-colour-scheme-do-you-use-in-your-ide&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7636/what-is-your-typical-source-control-commit-comment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42867/what-was-the-worst-3rd-party-api-you-had-to-work-with&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296/what-will-be-the-next-big-language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42986/if-we-can-do-functional-programming-with-python-do-we-need-a-specific-functional&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3363/whats-the-best-bad-comment-you-ever-encountered&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59446/how-do-you-answer-rate-yourself-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23965/what-programming-language-still-in-use-today-will-die-in-the-near-future&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23537/whats-your-favorite-productivity-tip-hack&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/most-used-programming-language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1015/how-do-you-keep-track-of-all-your-passwords&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41848/did-your-outlook-on-your-career-change-after-marriage&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21028/which-language-did-you-love-from-heart&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57461/as-a-programmer-whats-the-most-valuable-non-english-human-language-to-learn&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/880/whats-a-good-computer-to-use-for-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1913/what-are-the-must-have-development-tools-for-windows&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22073/is-functional-programming-actually-used-to-create-applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48996/does-anyone-here-work-from-a-really-remote-location&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17779/is-a-programmer-a-geek-or-nerd&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45300/how-to-hide-thinking-at-work-so-that-the-non-programmers-dont-suspect-slacking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skill&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7806/what-would-be-a-few-ideas-concepts-from-programming-that-i-can-have-on-paper-and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3732/whats-your-least-favorite-thing-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62570/another-term-for-common-code-smell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34644/what-are-the-best-rss-feeds-for-programmers-developers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23331/what-do-we-developers-have-in-common&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28642/absolute-statements-in-it-that-are-wrong&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5372/how-do-programmers-stay-healthy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41140/what-is-the-best-moment-of-your-developer-life&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34917/top-reasons-why-programmers-are-fired&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1202/who-is-the-greatest-or-most-influential-programmer-of-all-time&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33625/anti-depressant-and-programming-does-it-reduce-your-thinking-and-focusing-abilit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42317/code-that-smells-good&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8617/worst-working-conditions-environmental-or-otherwise&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6368/what-will-operating-systems-look-like-in-20-years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/419/how-do-you-celebrate-programmer-day&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36260/things-which-makes-you-frustrated-as-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42066/programmers-are-said-to-be-not-so-social-and-philanthrophic-is-it-true&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25432/how-can-a-new-programmer-impress-the-software-engineer-boss&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14706/overtime-is-part-of-the-job-true-but-a-bad-attitude&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19782/is-this-a-good-idea-to-use-humour-during-a-job-interview&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32674/why-do-good-programmers-have-ugly-websites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28667/is-anything-in-programming-truly-evil&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21782/stagnating-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35/whats-your-favorite-programming-joke&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11440/being-a-good-mentor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25902/if-you-take-a-crap-role-how-do-recover&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/558/how-can-you-learn-to-design-nice-looking-websites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4671/whats-the-weirdest-or-funniest-programming-mistake-youve-made&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17443/what-does-it-mean-to-write-good-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16222/how-to-remain-calm-in-all-situations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14601/what-to-do-with-old-computing-books&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4941/how-do-you-politely-keep-colleagues-from-leaving-fingerprints-on-your-monitor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4433/who-is-the-most-interesting-programmer-in-the-world&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6543/what-are-the-benefits-of-using-database-abstraction-by-orm&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8973/programming-language-you-wish-you-learned-first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19104/how-to-interview-someone-you-know-well&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15856/when-do-you-get-your-best-ideas&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22244/my-company-has-me-doing-a-christmas-card&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28406/do-i-expect-too-much-work-from-an-employer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/13228/what-are-awesome-job-titles-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5233/is-it-worth-getting-a-computer-science-degree-if-youre-already-in-the-door&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11565/what-programming-skill-do-you-use-most-often-that-you-are-terrible-at&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25100/which-individuals-are-having-the-greatest-impact-on-software-developers-today&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24663/how-to-reconcile-inner-creativity-with-the-corporate-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/837/did-i-miss-an-exit-in-my-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6639/what-headphones-work-best-to-block-out-the-cubical-office-noise&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2846/which-programming-language-do-you-really-hate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21635/how-has-programming-benefited-and-enriched-your-life&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/do-programmers-have-higher-tendency-to-be-atheists-than-non-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40952/what-is-the-hardest-part-of-your-programming-related-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8283/best-worst-logically-impossible-task-assigned-to-you&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I'm not trying to say that all of these mod-closed questions belong here. Some of them don't, in my eyes, and I would cast a vote to close. But even if I were a moderator, I don't think I would exercise my authority on any of these, especially given the overwhelmingly positive community response to them. I do feel that it is better to have borderline questions open than closed, but not even all of these questions are borderline, in my eyes. Some of them are just plain awesome! What is the harm, and has the mod-hammer been taken overboard? Is there any way we can escape the tyranny? To the offenders (no need to call you out either) - Why? Why would you ever do this? I love the SE community, but it is things like this that makes me want to bring my contribution (and questions) elsewhere. This is a community site. I don't enjoy seeing it stifled by a handful of trolling mods. I'm now seeing questions arise on the regular with a 'do not close' plea. Is there anything that can be done? Do you feel that anything needs to be done, or do you disagree in entirety? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3413" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1390" RevisionGUID="fc00500a-8bfc-473b-92a1-c7c03c2f4995" CreationDate="2011-04-06T20:29:46.113" UserId="101" Text="This topic has been discussed on this site at length.  Just a few minutes looking at old posts will get you this list (which is a very small sampling):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/429/&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/431/&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/396/&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/393/&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/360/&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I cared to spend more time I'm sure the list would grow quite a lot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site went through a major transition from it's original purpose at the end of last year.  There was a very noticable crack down on different types of questions and it caused a lot of growing pains.  For the most part this site has emerged from the transition in the form you see today.  Like it or not, the tightening of the rules around questions being asked probably saved this site from turning into answers.yahoo.com.  Moderators on this site play a difficult role of walking the line between bringing the hammer and letting it ride.  During the transition period that line was distinctly on the bringing the hammer side as it was a huge shift for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question that you asked yesterday that was closed really doesn't meet most of the guidelines in the FAQ.  I would have voted to close it on those grounds as well.  The fact that the question was closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot; doesn't mean that the topic isn't worthy.  If you were to edit that question and expand upon it (keeping in mind that your goal is to satisfy around 4 or more of the 6 guidelines), I doubt you would get much argument from those who closed it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, it's probably not a good idea to use votes (or popularity) as an indicator of what does or does not belong on this site.  &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3414" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1391" RevisionGUID="a2554c73-bd8d-4a2a-bedb-dc4abb68d652" CreationDate="2011-04-06T21:14:19.017" UserId="2314" Text="Just for the record, I flagged your question with something like the following comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question clearly fails 2, 4 and 5 of the six guidelines and is gathering some really terrible answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. **tend to have long, not short, answers.**&#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. **invite sharing experiences over opinions.**&#xD;&#xA;5. **insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.**&#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you argue with any of those?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so many of the answers ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be/65082#65082), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be/64475#64475), [3](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be/64531#64531),&#xD;&#xA;[4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be/65107#65107),&#xD;&#xA;[5](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be/65030#65030),&#xD;&#xA;[6](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be/64265#64265) to name the clearest examples) really were not useful in any way.  They get votes because they are funny.  Humor has a place on this site, but mostly that's in comments.  Humor is also fine if it's *also* in a useful answer, or *maybe* as an answer to a question you know is doomed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was prepared to vote for this question, because I don't think the moderators are perfect, but your rant turned me off.  Yes, there are dozens of examples of questions that are on the fence enough that they could warrant a reconsideration.  [I've asked some, too](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28172/what-does-a-productive-programmer-day-consist-of-closed).  But the moderators are doing a decent job and are generally fair and open when you flag it for reconsideration, address them in comments, or bring it here to Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Popularity != Appropriateness**.  A simple correlation between popular and *constructive* questions doesn't make it a rule." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3415" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1392" RevisionGUID="2b04521d-453c-45c1-8453-8f24116f62e8" CreationDate="2011-04-06T21:36:27.390" UserId="226" Text="There is no need to insult other members of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators often act on message flags that are submitted by the members of the community. Acting on those flags sometimes comes across as acting unilaterally. My personal policy (that evolved somewhat since I first started moderating) is to wait for signals from the community. They can come through flags, comments, or close votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, constructiveness of the question is judged in part by the answers the question receives. It is perhaps somewhat unfair, but the guidelines for good subjective questions focus a lot on the various aspects of the answers, so that's what we go by. Typically when there's a disagreement over constructiveness of a question, we go through the 6 guidelines and check the question fits them. Sometimes questions are reopened as a result, sometimes they stay closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can see from your comments that you are not interested in debating whether or not the questions that were closed were actually constructive. I don't think that's a constructive approach (no pun intended). After all, if an unconstructive question is closed as not constructive, is it really part of the problem?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm asking you to read through the links Walter posted in his answer. You're relatively new to the site and having some history might help you see where the answers you're getting here are coming from. Once you've done that, if you still disagree with the closing of your question (which would be fair), we can discuss that. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3416" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1393" RevisionGUID="e9b560ec-8e79-4f33-9b54-e803e45c2f4a" CreationDate="2011-04-07T11:23:31.513" UserId="47" Text="As the moderator being talked about here I thought I ought to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Despite the evidence you've presented I am reluctant to &quot;unilaterally&quot; close posts. I have a policy of **usually** waiting until there are 3 (or perhaps 2) close votes before adding mine as the &quot;final&quot; vote that will close a post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there are exceptions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. When the post is clearly not constructive. This is often the case for posts migrated (in ignorance it has to be said) from Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;2. When there are **at least 2** moderator flags on the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a lot of cases if there is a single flag I will add a comment to the effect that I don't think the post is constructive. If later when I re-review that post my comment has been upvoted I'll take that into account as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I would be much happier if the people who flag the question would either vote to close (if they have enough rep) or add a comment. This gives the moderators a *much* better idea of how accurately their views reflect that of the community as a whole. Adding comments have the added benefit that the OP gets to see them and has a chance to improve their post either by adding more information or rewording it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been cases where users have challenged my decisions and after a short conversation in the comments or via a question here on meta plus some edits to the post I have reversed my decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Very few actions on Stack Exchange are irreversible (question and user merging being the exception). If you disagree with a closure flag the question for moderator attention and I and the other moderators will take a look. I can assure you we do look at all flags. If the flagging doesn't appear to be working raise a question here on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am happy to reopen questions if I've made a mistake or the question has been improved, but unless you tell us we don't have the time to review old decisions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3417" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1389" RevisionGUID="d97bc641-a0ab-4955-97ed-c519c4502f87" CreationDate="2011-04-07T21:50:53.427" UserId="18476" Comment="added 34 characters in body" Text="I recently had the pleasure of reading the top 1500 questions/answers on programmers.SE, and noticed an alarming trend. About 100 of these questions, all with a community vote ranging from about +10 to +300, were closed by a select few moderators for being not 'constructive'. Only around 15 questions among these top 1500 were closed collectively by non-moderators for this reason - a large difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point of this post is not to debate the 'constructiveness' of the questions within the set I speak of, or to debate about the '6 guidelines for constructive questions'. There is no doubt in my mind that some of these questions are constructive. It is also clear that these questions, as a whole, are viewed as constructive by the community. As a whole, these questions and answers have probably garnered significantly more than 10,000 community upvotes. They are obviously useful to many. If they really were not at all constructive, I imagine they would be removed from the site, instead of still sitting in their same place with a little [closed] sign stifling further growth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is also not the point to bemoan the power of the moderator to close questions with a click. I believe that this is an important tool for some to possess, and takes much of the burden off of the user base when it comes to regulating spam, duplicates, and non-questions. I am grateful to the moderators that use their bestowed power for these reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I do see a problem here, and the plot thickens. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overwhelming majority of these closed questions were flagged as 'not constructive' by a single user. Yes, a single user. I won't call you out, because I don't need to. It is an easy fact to find, for anyone looking. This flag draws moderator attention, which dispatches those with the mod-hammer. It appears that a few moderators really enjoy swinging it, so the questions get closed. I feel that this is an abuse of both the flagging system and of moderator power.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not really sure how we arrived at a point on programmers where this can happen. I do acknowledge and understand why the subjective question criteria exist, and although I don't feel like they are perfect, nothing really is, and i'm willing to accept them, as open to interpretation as they are. My problem rests in the fact that a moderator can easily spoil a good question, well accepted by the community, with a click of a button and no explanation, because they feel that it doesn't meet enough of the criteria, or doesn't meet the criteria well enough. In all the questions mentioned, the community disagreed with the moderator decision to an overwhelming degree. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Case in 2 points, briefly - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question has been mod-hammered. It has a total of +63 ups, and has been favorited by 36 users. It has been twittered about by Joel, and about this question Jeff says, &quot;the measurement of the worst software bug, and the idea that programmers need to consider the consequences of their professional actions, puts it on the other side of the line to 'acceptable'&quot;. For this question, both founders feel it fits, and so does the community. One moderator disagrees, however, so it is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(quoted from http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1073/some-inconsistency-in-closing-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, this is my question, and yes, it helped sparked this question. It was mod-hammered for not being constructive. I asked this question because I am working in NLP/AI, not because it just popped into my head and thought it would be useless but fun question to post here. The answers people gave helped me further understand the aspects from which a computer is generally considered to be different from a machine, information I can extrapolate from the questions listed. I can ask my robot all the answers (questions) provided by the community. To me, this is very 'constructive'. The included comment regarding the close - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;I was prepared to leave this open, but I think it's run its course.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't get this. At all. I don't feel like this is the moderator's place to judge the 'course' of a question. What is the harm in leaving it open? I hate to see the most awesome community QA site be subverted by a small handful of individuals on some sort of bent that I don't understand. If this question were closed by the community, because the community as a whole did not accept the question, I still wouldn't understand, but I would accept. In these cases, however, I do not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more complete list - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32786/programmer-aptitude-test&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-programming-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30513/as-a-programmer-what-single-discovery-has-given-you-the-greatest-boost-in-product&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47197/are-there-any-famous-one-man-army-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-quote-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63657/i-made-a-mistake-accepting-this-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46791/do-programmers-need-a-union&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64617/who-has-the-best-documentation-you-have-ever-seen-language-framework-cms-wh&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6847/whats-your-favorite-programming-language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6157/what-tools-should-every-programmer-know&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45939/whats-the-best-indie-game-development-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34537/ashamed-to-admit-using-jquery&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53184/do-you-actively-look-for-a-better-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6067/what-programming-language-are-you-curious-to-learn-next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/539/what-colour-scheme-do-you-use-in-your-ide&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7636/what-is-your-typical-source-control-commit-comment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42867/what-was-the-worst-3rd-party-api-you-had-to-work-with&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296/what-will-be-the-next-big-language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42986/if-we-can-do-functional-programming-with-python-do-we-need-a-specific-functional&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3363/whats-the-best-bad-comment-you-ever-encountered&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59446/how-do-you-answer-rate-yourself-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23965/what-programming-language-still-in-use-today-will-die-in-the-near-future&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23537/whats-your-favorite-productivity-tip-hack&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/most-used-programming-language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1015/how-do-you-keep-track-of-all-your-passwords&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41848/did-your-outlook-on-your-career-change-after-marriage&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21028/which-language-did-you-love-from-heart&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57461/as-a-programmer-whats-the-most-valuable-non-english-human-language-to-learn&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/880/whats-a-good-computer-to-use-for-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1913/what-are-the-must-have-development-tools-for-windows&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22073/is-functional-programming-actually-used-to-create-applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48996/does-anyone-here-work-from-a-really-remote-location&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17779/is-a-programmer-a-geek-or-nerd&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45300/how-to-hide-thinking-at-work-so-that-the-non-programmers-dont-suspect-slacking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skill&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7806/what-would-be-a-few-ideas-concepts-from-programming-that-i-can-have-on-paper-and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3732/whats-your-least-favorite-thing-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62570/another-term-for-common-code-smell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34644/what-are-the-best-rss-feeds-for-programmers-developers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23331/what-do-we-developers-have-in-common&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28642/absolute-statements-in-it-that-are-wrong&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5372/how-do-programmers-stay-healthy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41140/what-is-the-best-moment-of-your-developer-life&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34917/top-reasons-why-programmers-are-fired&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1202/who-is-the-greatest-or-most-influential-programmer-of-all-time&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33625/anti-depressant-and-programming-does-it-reduce-your-thinking-and-focusing-abilit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42317/code-that-smells-good&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8617/worst-working-conditions-environmental-or-otherwise&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6368/what-will-operating-systems-look-like-in-20-years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/419/how-do-you-celebrate-programmer-day&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36260/things-which-makes-you-frustrated-as-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42066/programmers-are-said-to-be-not-so-social-and-philanthrophic-is-it-true&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25432/how-can-a-new-programmer-impress-the-software-engineer-boss&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14706/overtime-is-part-of-the-job-true-but-a-bad-attitude&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19782/is-this-a-good-idea-to-use-humour-during-a-job-interview&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32674/why-do-good-programmers-have-ugly-websites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28667/is-anything-in-programming-truly-evil&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21782/stagnating-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35/whats-your-favorite-programming-joke&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11440/being-a-good-mentor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25902/if-you-take-a-crap-role-how-do-recover&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/558/how-can-you-learn-to-design-nice-looking-websites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4671/whats-the-weirdest-or-funniest-programming-mistake-youve-made&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17443/what-does-it-mean-to-write-good-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16222/how-to-remain-calm-in-all-situations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14601/what-to-do-with-old-computing-books&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4941/how-do-you-politely-keep-colleagues-from-leaving-fingerprints-on-your-monitor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4433/who-is-the-most-interesting-programmer-in-the-world&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6543/what-are-the-benefits-of-using-database-abstraction-by-orm&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8973/programming-language-you-wish-you-learned-first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19104/how-to-interview-someone-you-know-well&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15856/when-do-you-get-your-best-ideas&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22244/my-company-has-me-doing-a-christmas-card&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28406/do-i-expect-too-much-work-from-an-employer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/13228/what-are-awesome-job-titles-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5233/is-it-worth-getting-a-computer-science-degree-if-youre-already-in-the-door&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11565/what-programming-skill-do-you-use-most-often-that-you-are-terrible-at&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25100/which-individuals-are-having-the-greatest-impact-on-software-developers-today&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24663/how-to-reconcile-inner-creativity-with-the-corporate-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/837/did-i-miss-an-exit-in-my-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6639/what-headphones-work-best-to-block-out-the-cubical-office-noise&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2846/which-programming-language-do-you-really-hate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21635/how-has-programming-benefited-and-enriched-your-life&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/do-programmers-have-higher-tendency-to-be-atheists-than-non-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40952/what-is-the-hardest-part-of-your-programming-related-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8283/best-worst-logically-impossible-task-assigned-to-you&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I'm not trying to say that all of these mod-closed questions belong here. Some of them don't, in my eyes, and I would cast a vote to close. But even if I were a moderator, I don't think I would exercise my authority on any of these, especially given the overwhelmingly positive community response to them. I do feel that it is better to have borderline questions open than closed, but not even all of these questions are borderline, in my eyes. Some of them are just plain awesome! What is the harm, and has the mod-hammer been taken overboard? Is there any way we can escape the tyranny? To the offenders (no need to call you out either) - Why? Why would you ever do this? I love the SE community, but it is things like this that makes me want to bring my contribution (and questions) elsewhere. This is a community site. I don't enjoy seeing it stifled by a handful of trolling mods. I'm now seeing questions arise on the regular with a 'do not close' plea. Is there anything that can be done? Do you feel that anything needs to be done, or do you disagree in entirety? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: 43% closed unilaterally." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3418" PostHistoryTypeId="14" PostId="1389" RevisionGUID="edcb6ca9-1fdf-4e11-8447-c7d67b98687b" CreationDate="2011-04-07T22:36:44.897" UserId="226" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:226,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Anna Lear&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="3419" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1389" RevisionGUID="af2f4901-8f9b-4a68-9cda-3e4958b21fe2" CreationDate="2011-04-07T22:37:16.503" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I recently had the pleasure of reading the top 1500 questions/answers on programmers.SE, and noticed an alarming trend. About 100 of these questions, all with a community vote ranging from about +10 to +300, were closed by a select few moderators for being not 'constructive'. Only around 15 questions among these top 1500 were closed collectively by non-moderators for this reason - a large difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point of this post is not to debate the 'constructiveness' of the questions within the set I speak of, or to debate about the '6 guidelines for constructive questions'. There is no doubt in my mind that some of these questions are constructive. It is also clear that these questions, as a whole, are viewed as constructive by the community. As a whole, these questions and answers have probably garnered significantly more than 10,000 community upvotes. They are obviously useful to many. If they really were not at all constructive, I imagine they would be removed from the site, instead of still sitting in their same place with a little [closed] sign stifling further growth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is also not the point to bemoan the power of the moderator to close questions with a click. I believe that this is an important tool for some to possess, and takes much of the burden off of the user base when it comes to regulating spam, duplicates, and non-questions. I am grateful to the moderators that use their bestowed power for these reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I do see a problem here, and the plot thickens. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overwhelming majority of these closed questions were flagged as 'not constructive' by a single user. Yes, a single user. I won't call you out, because I don't need to. It is an easy fact to find, for anyone looking. This flag draws moderator attention, which dispatches those with the mod-hammer. It appears that a few moderators really enjoy swinging it, so the questions get closed. I feel that this is an abuse of both the flagging system and of moderator power.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not really sure how we arrived at a point on programmers where this can happen. I do acknowledge and understand why the subjective question criteria exist, and although I don't feel like they are perfect, nothing really is, and i'm willing to accept them, as open to interpretation as they are. My problem rests in the fact that a moderator can easily spoil a good question, well accepted by the community, with a click of a button and no explanation, because they feel that it doesn't meet enough of the criteria, or doesn't meet the criteria well enough. In all the questions mentioned, the community disagreed with the moderator decision to an overwhelming degree. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Case in 2 points, briefly - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question has been mod-hammered. It has a total of +63 ups, and has been favorited by 36 users. It has been twittered about by Joel, and about this question Jeff says, &quot;the measurement of the worst software bug, and the idea that programmers need to consider the consequences of their professional actions, puts it on the other side of the line to 'acceptable'&quot;. For this question, both founders feel it fits, and so does the community. One moderator disagrees, however, so it is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(quoted from http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1073/some-inconsistency-in-closing-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, this is my question, and yes, it helped sparked this question. It was mod-hammered for not being constructive. I asked this question because I am working in NLP/AI, not because it just popped into my head and thought it would be useless but fun question to post here. The answers people gave helped me further understand the aspects from which a computer is generally considered to be different from a machine, information I can extrapolate from the questions listed. I can ask my robot all the answers (questions) provided by the community. To me, this is very 'constructive'. The included comment regarding the close - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;I was prepared to leave this open, but I think it's run its course.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't get this. At all. I don't feel like this is the moderator's place to judge the 'course' of a question. What is the harm in leaving it open? I hate to see the most awesome community QA site be subverted by a small handful of individuals on some sort of bent that I don't understand. If this question were closed by the community, because the community as a whole did not accept the question, I still wouldn't understand, but I would accept. In these cases, however, I do not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more complete list - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32786/programmer-aptitude-test&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-programming-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30513/as-a-programmer-what-single-discovery-has-given-you-the-greatest-boost-in-product&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47197/are-there-any-famous-one-man-army-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-quote-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63657/i-made-a-mistake-accepting-this-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46791/do-programmers-need-a-union&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64617/who-has-the-best-documentation-you-have-ever-seen-language-framework-cms-wh&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6847/whats-your-favorite-programming-language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6157/what-tools-should-every-programmer-know&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45939/whats-the-best-indie-game-development-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34537/ashamed-to-admit-using-jquery&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53184/do-you-actively-look-for-a-better-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6067/what-programming-language-are-you-curious-to-learn-next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/539/what-colour-scheme-do-you-use-in-your-ide&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7636/what-is-your-typical-source-control-commit-comment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42867/what-was-the-worst-3rd-party-api-you-had-to-work-with&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296/what-will-be-the-next-big-language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42986/if-we-can-do-functional-programming-with-python-do-we-need-a-specific-functional&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3363/whats-the-best-bad-comment-you-ever-encountered&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59446/how-do-you-answer-rate-yourself-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23965/what-programming-language-still-in-use-today-will-die-in-the-near-future&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23537/whats-your-favorite-productivity-tip-hack&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/most-used-programming-language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1015/how-do-you-keep-track-of-all-your-passwords&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41848/did-your-outlook-on-your-career-change-after-marriage&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21028/which-language-did-you-love-from-heart&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57461/as-a-programmer-whats-the-most-valuable-non-english-human-language-to-learn&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/880/whats-a-good-computer-to-use-for-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1913/what-are-the-must-have-development-tools-for-windows&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22073/is-functional-programming-actually-used-to-create-applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48996/does-anyone-here-work-from-a-really-remote-location&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17779/is-a-programmer-a-geek-or-nerd&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45300/how-to-hide-thinking-at-work-so-that-the-non-programmers-dont-suspect-slacking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skill&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7806/what-would-be-a-few-ideas-concepts-from-programming-that-i-can-have-on-paper-and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3732/whats-your-least-favorite-thing-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62570/another-term-for-common-code-smell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34644/what-are-the-best-rss-feeds-for-programmers-developers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23331/what-do-we-developers-have-in-common&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28642/absolute-statements-in-it-that-are-wrong&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5372/how-do-programmers-stay-healthy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41140/what-is-the-best-moment-of-your-developer-life&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34917/top-reasons-why-programmers-are-fired&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1202/who-is-the-greatest-or-most-influential-programmer-of-all-time&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33625/anti-depressant-and-programming-does-it-reduce-your-thinking-and-focusing-abilit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42317/code-that-smells-good&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8617/worst-working-conditions-environmental-or-otherwise&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6368/what-will-operating-systems-look-like-in-20-years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/419/how-do-you-celebrate-programmer-day&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36260/things-which-makes-you-frustrated-as-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42066/programmers-are-said-to-be-not-so-social-and-philanthrophic-is-it-true&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25432/how-can-a-new-programmer-impress-the-software-engineer-boss&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14706/overtime-is-part-of-the-job-true-but-a-bad-attitude&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19782/is-this-a-good-idea-to-use-humour-during-a-job-interview&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32674/why-do-good-programmers-have-ugly-websites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28667/is-anything-in-programming-truly-evil&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21782/stagnating-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35/whats-your-favorite-programming-joke&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11440/being-a-good-mentor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25902/if-you-take-a-crap-role-how-do-recover&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/558/how-can-you-learn-to-design-nice-looking-websites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4671/whats-the-weirdest-or-funniest-programming-mistake-youve-made&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17443/what-does-it-mean-to-write-good-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16222/how-to-remain-calm-in-all-situations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14601/what-to-do-with-old-computing-books&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4941/how-do-you-politely-keep-colleagues-from-leaving-fingerprints-on-your-monitor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4433/who-is-the-most-interesting-programmer-in-the-world&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6543/what-are-the-benefits-of-using-database-abstraction-by-orm&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8973/programming-language-you-wish-you-learned-first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19104/how-to-interview-someone-you-know-well&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15856/when-do-you-get-your-best-ideas&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22244/my-company-has-me-doing-a-christmas-card&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28406/do-i-expect-too-much-work-from-an-employer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/13228/what-are-awesome-job-titles-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5233/is-it-worth-getting-a-computer-science-degree-if-youre-already-in-the-door&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11565/what-programming-skill-do-you-use-most-often-that-you-are-terrible-at&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25100/which-individuals-are-having-the-greatest-impact-on-software-developers-today&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24663/how-to-reconcile-inner-creativity-with-the-corporate-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/837/did-i-miss-an-exit-in-my-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6639/what-headphones-work-best-to-block-out-the-cubical-office-noise&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2846/which-programming-language-do-you-really-hate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21635/how-has-programming-benefited-and-enriched-your-life&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/do-programmers-have-higher-tendency-to-be-atheists-than-non-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40952/what-is-the-hardest-part-of-your-programming-related-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8283/best-worst-logically-impossible-task-assigned-to-you&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I'm not trying to say that all of these mod-closed questions belong here. Some of them don't, in my eyes, and I would cast a vote to close. But even if I were a moderator, I don't think I would exercise my authority on any of these, especially given the overwhelmingly positive community response to them. I do feel that it is better to have borderline questions open than closed, but not even all of these questions are borderline, in my eyes. Some of them are just plain awesome! What is the harm, and has the mod-hammer been taken overboard? Is there any way we can escape the tyranny? To the offenders (no need to call you out either) - Why? Why would you ever do this? I love the SE community, but it is things like this that makes me want to bring my contribution (and questions) elsewhere. This is a community site. I don't enjoy seeing it stifled by a handful of trolling mods. I'm now seeing questions arise on the regular with a 'do not close' plea. Is there anything that can be done? Do you feel that anything needs to be done, or do you disagree in entirety? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: 43% closed unilaterally." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="3420" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="1389" RevisionGUID="b27dc167-940d-4899-9962-40d5c3941029" CreationDate="2011-04-07T22:37:16.237" UserId="-1" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[321],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:101,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Walter&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:2314,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Renesis&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:226,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Anna Lear&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="3421" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1389" RevisionGUID="d4a3fd8f-881f-4001-acbe-a0ed5548a6a9" CreationDate="2011-04-09T03:23:55.657" UserId="37" Comment="deleted 9403 characters in body" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recently had the pleasure of reading the top 1500 questions/answers on programmers.SE, and noticed an alarming trend. About 100 of these questions, all with a community vote ranging from about +10 to +300, were closed by a select few moderators for being not 'constructive'. Only around 15 questions among these top 1500 were closed collectively by non-moderators for this reason - a large difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point of this post is not to debate the 'constructiveness' of the questions within the set I speak of, or to debate about the '6 guidelines for constructive questions'. There is no doubt in my mind that some of these questions are constructive. It is also clear that these questions, as a whole, are viewed as constructive by the community. As a whole, these questions and answers have probably garnered significantly more than 10,000 community upvotes. They are obviously useful to many. If they really were not at all constructive, I imagine they would be removed from the site, instead of still sitting in their same place with a little [closed] sign stifling further growth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is also not the point to bemoan the power of the moderator to close questions with a click. I believe that this is an important tool for some to possess, and takes much of the burden off of the user base when it comes to regulating spam, duplicates, and non-questions. I am grateful to the moderators that use their bestowed power for these reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I do see a problem here, and the plot thickens. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overwhelming majority of these closed questions were flagged as 'not constructive' by a single user. Yes, a single user. I won't call you out, because I don't need to. It is an easy fact to find, for anyone looking. This flag draws moderator attention, which dispatches those with the mod-hammer. It appears that a few moderators really enjoy swinging it, so the questions get closed. I feel that this is an abuse of both the flagging system and of moderator power.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not really sure how we arrived at a point on programmers where this can happen. I do acknowledge and understand why the subjective question criteria exist, and although I don't feel like they are perfect, nothing really is, and i'm willing to accept them, as open to interpretation as they are. My problem rests in the fact that a moderator can easily spoil a good question, well accepted by the community, with a click of a button and no explanation, because they feel that it doesn't meet enough of the criteria, or doesn't meet the criteria well enough. In all the questions mentioned, the community disagreed with the moderator decision to an overwhelming degree. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Case in 2 points, briefly - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question has been mod-hammered. It has a total of +63 ups, and has been favorited by 36 users. It has been twittered about by Joel, and about this question Jeff says, &quot;the measurement of the worst software bug, and the idea that programmers need to consider the consequences of their professional actions, puts it on the other side of the line to 'acceptable'&quot;. For this question, both founders feel it fits, and so does the community. One moderator disagrees, however, so it is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(quoted from http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1073/some-inconsistency-in-closing-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, this is my question, and yes, it helped sparked this question. It was mod-hammered for not being constructive. I asked this question because I am working in NLP/AI, not because it just popped into my head and thought it would be useless but fun question to post here. The answers people gave helped me further understand the aspects from which a computer is generally considered to be different from a machine, information I can extrapolate from the questions listed. I can ask my robot all the answers (questions) provided by the community. To me, this is very 'constructive'. The included comment regarding the close - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;I was prepared to leave this open, but I think it's run its course.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't get this. At all. I don't feel like this is the moderator's place to judge the 'course' of a question. What is the harm in leaving it open? I hate to see the most awesome community QA site be subverted by a small handful of individuals on some sort of bent that I don't understand. If this question were closed by the community, because the community as a whole did not accept the question, I still wouldn't understand, but I would accept. In these cases, however, I do not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more complete list - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[.. excessively long list of URLs elided, try searching using the `isclosed:` and `votes:` modifiers ..]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I'm not trying to say that all of these mod-closed questions belong here. Some of them don't, in my eyes, and I would cast a vote to close. But even if I were a moderator, I don't think I would exercise my authority on any of these, especially given the overwhelmingly positive community response to them. I do feel that it is better to have borderline questions open than closed, but not even all of these questions are borderline, in my eyes. Some of them are just plain awesome! What is the harm, and has the mod-hammer been taken overboard? Is there any way we can escape the tyranny? To the offenders (no need to call you out either) - Why? Why would you ever do this? I love the SE community, but it is things like this that makes me want to bring my contribution (and questions) elsewhere. This is a community site. I don't enjoy seeing it stifled by a handful of trolling mods. I'm now seeing questions arise on the regular with a 'do not close' plea. Is there anything that can be done? Do you feel that anything needs to be done, or do you disagree in entirety? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: 43% closed unilaterally." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3438" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1374" RevisionGUID="171a3a56-6e1e-412d-be6b-708a55882f29" CreationDate="2011-04-10T01:36:11.583" UserId="44" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|retag-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3442" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1397" RevisionGUID="09150c1a-e53a-41ed-a170-3e872724f599" CreationDate="2011-04-11T03:06:37.387" UserId="9183" Text="I think the answer would be an &quot;export&quot; button.  Rather than close a topic, so that everyone has to see so many interesting topics and find them closed; rather than close the topic, which can be hurtful especially if the asker feels it's not subjective; and rather than degrade the &quot;purity&quot; of the particular SE site by keeping it around and searchable, the question would be exported to a different system, where more of a gray area is allowed.  Perhaps the other system would represent a dumping ground of very low quality.  But if it were not a regular SE site, hopefully it would not require the maintenance and upkeep of the more formal areas.  And if it these questions truly had no use, then the site could age out the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I have more time I'll try to put something more concrete together, though I'm not sure where the proposal would belong.  Feeling hurt at the mo on others' behalf with so many closed topics.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3443" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1398" RevisionGUID="d208a18b-397a-4e9a-9f5d-5419a4ae5354" CreationDate="2011-04-11T03:37:50.810" UserId="9183" Text="Probably someone has said this already, but I don't think being at the top is the reason people vote for it as a good answer.  I think being a good answer is the reason it's near the top.  Voting is anonymous, and people often do not vote for a top answer if they disagree.  Which does not, of course, mean that they vote for lower answers and pull them up." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3444" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="321" RevisionGUID="38286c9c-4b94-46b6-82e1-79b65e643e05" CreationDate="2011-04-11T04:01:53.683" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3445" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1399" RevisionGUID="50b656bd-25c4-43ab-abef-f8cdbc84dc05" CreationDate="2011-04-11T11:40:35.843" UserId="1715" Text="There's a lot of space dedicated to explaining the [difference between SO and PSE][1], but precious little cogent justification.  Frankly, there's no good reason to have 2 separate sites, other than satisfying a psychological need to be officious.  You're decentralizing information and forcing people to search in two places to find answers to questions that might or might not be considered subjective.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only that, but there are WAY more people out there answering questions on SO than on PSE - so migrating a question to PSE is really a kiss of death.  Case in point - I asked [this question][2] on SO, and very quickly got 8 very useful answers.  Then someone did me a &quot;favor&quot; and migrated my question to PSE.  Question is now effectively dead, with almost no views.  5 of the people who answered my question don't even have PSE accounts, so I can't ask them questions in the comments.  If I had asked the question on PSE in the first place, I would still be waiting for answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?  Why not just have a &quot;subjective&quot; tag, and let people who don't want to read subjective questions ignore them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the votes and comments to my [answer][3] to that question (+24 at this writing), it appears that the community is generally unhappy with the SO/PSE split.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, whoever the powers-that-be are who run this site - I really think you have done the programming community a big disservice by splitting PSE from SO.  Please will you seriously consider eliminating PSE and merging all the questions back to StackOverflow, where they belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/171/1715&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66380/advice-please-old-server-side-guy-learning-new-client-side-tricks&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so/199#199" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3446" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1399" RevisionGUID="50b656bd-25c4-43ab-abef-f8cdbc84dc05" CreationDate="2011-04-11T11:40:35.843" UserId="1715" Text="Please, please can we merge this site back into SO?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3447" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1399" RevisionGUID="50b656bd-25c4-43ab-abef-f8cdbc84dc05" CreationDate="2011-04-11T11:40:35.843" UserId="1715" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3448" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1399" RevisionGUID="10ee770e-a79b-4838-9649-2383888c7879" CreationDate="2011-04-11T11:56:40.703" UserId="1715" Comment="deleted 69 characters in body" Text="There's a lot of space dedicated to explaining the [difference between SO and PSE][1], but precious little cogent justification.  I can't see any reason to have 2 separate sites.  You're decentralizing information and forcing people to search in two places to find answers to questions that might or might not be considered subjective.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only that, but there are WAY more people out there answering questions on SO than on PSE - so migrating a question to PSE is really a kiss of death.  Case in point - I asked [this question][2] on SO, and very quickly got 8 very useful answers.  Then someone did me a &quot;favor&quot; and migrated my question to PSE.  Question is now effectively dead, with almost no views.  5 of the people who answered my question don't even have PSE accounts, so I can't ask them questions in the comments.  If I had asked the question on PSE in the first place, I would still be waiting for answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?  Why not just have a &quot;subjective&quot; tag, and let people who don't want to read subjective questions ignore them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the votes and comments to my [answer][3] to that question (+24 at this writing), it appears that the community is generally unhappy with the SO/PSE split.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, whoever the powers-that-be are who run this site - I really think you have done the programming community a big disservice by splitting PSE from SO.  Please will you seriously consider eliminating PSE and merging all the questions back to StackOverflow, where they belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/171/1715&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66380/advice-please-old-server-side-guy-learning-new-client-side-tricks&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so/199#199" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3450" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1400" RevisionGUID="e143c11e-6ab9-402e-9e57-075f343ce7ad" CreationDate="2011-04-11T16:58:59.237" UserId="3249" Text="I'm sorry to flog a dead horse, but I'm honestly disgusted by the conduct in the [Programming Tourism][1] question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to be clear about this.  I would never do the kind of thing he's proposing.  I'd go out and enjoy the sights and sounds and smells and tastes and &lt;del&gt;harlots&lt;/del&gt; company.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the OP asks two very simple questions, point blank:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Is it legal?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. Is it possible?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the top-voted, *ridiculously* voted [answer][2], now at 62 upvotes, scornfully rejects the premise of the question without offering any real insight or rationale:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, but I think you're crazy. Paris is one of the most interesting and lively cities in the world. You have a 10 day vacation with your girlfriend and you want to spend that time coding?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why not take a break from computers for the 10 days and come back refreshed and energised to complete your Ph.D?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it.  That's the *whole* post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not an answer to the question.  It doesn't answer either #1 or #2.  It does not provide an &quot;alternative&quot; because the OP was not asking for options.  It is no more than a snarky retort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me reiterate: *I agree* with the general feelings expressed *within* that answer.  But there is a difference between feeling the same way as someone and upvoting their answer.  The answer is not helpful or useful to the person who asked the question, or any future readers, in any way.  It is no different from all the joke answers on Stack Overflow we saw in the early days that went, *dude, you should totally drop that and try jQuery* - now relegated to a silly meta meme.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What really bothers me is not that the answer was posted; quite honestly, I can forgive Steve for having the knee-jerk reaction he did, even if I personally would have had more tact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the mass upvoting and people *militantly* defending the answer afterward is *not* what these Q&amp;A sites are supposed to be about.  This is not supposed to be a place where people come genuinely looking for help, and not only get shot down, but get a *pile-on* of comments and votes telling him that, basically, he's a loser.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meanwhile, [serious questions about software development][3] collect dust, and even [easier serious ones][4] don't get nearly as much attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I *know* that we're seeing the bike shed effect, but this seems *way* out of proportion to any of the bikeshedding I've seen on any other Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there something I'm missing?  Why has this answer been upvoted so many times?  Why hasn't it been locked or deleted?  Are there seriously people who don't think this is utterly childish and a very poor reflection on the community in general?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there anything more we can be doing to improve the level of discipline here?  (Don't say flag/downvote - I already did.)  Or is this type of behaviour already firmly entrenched in the site's culture, something that we're all expected to just ignore or chuckle at when it comes up?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site's come a long way in terms of *question* quality - but are answers and votes still basically a free for all, or is there actually some standard people are expected to follow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/66881/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66881/programming-tourism/66893#66893&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/66502/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/66708/3249" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3451" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1400" RevisionGUID="e143c11e-6ab9-402e-9e57-075f343ce7ad" CreationDate="2011-04-11T16:58:59.237" UserId="3249" Text="Why are people still mass upvoting non-answers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3452" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1400" RevisionGUID="e143c11e-6ab9-402e-9e57-075f343ce7ad" CreationDate="2011-04-11T16:58:59.237" UserId="3249" Text="|discussion|answers|up-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3453" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1401" RevisionGUID="58b77b42-a6df-40cf-81d3-53fab6abe35d" CreationDate="2011-04-11T17:33:44.867" UserId="2314" Text="&gt; There's a lot of space dedicated to explaining the [difference between SO and PSE][1], but precious little cogent justification. I can't see any reason to have 2 separate sites.  You're decentralizing information and forcing people to search in two places to find answers to questions that might or might not be considered subjective.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sure you've read Joel's blog post [Merging Season](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/) which addresses this point, although it's pretty open ended.  But the important take-aways are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The delicacy of the balance is known to the community managers.&#xD;&#xA;* The list of proposals that, according to Joel, fit well within Programmers contains many that would not fit inside StackOverflow, and few that do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, check out the top [tags](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags) on Programmers. **career**, **programming-languages**, **learning**, **software-engineering**, **productivity**.  Compare this to the top [StackOverflow tags](http://stackoverflow.com/tags) - nearly all related to platforms and languages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the popular langauges are top tags on Programmers as well, but look at the difference between the stream of [Programmers Java questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/java?sort=newest&amp;pagesize=50) vs. [StackOverflow Java questions](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/java?sort=newest&amp;pagesize=50).  I'd say seeing an obvious difference in the question streams alone is a good indication that the division between the sites is working.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Not only that, but there are WAY more people out there answering questions on SO than on PSE - so migrating a question to PSE is really a kiss of death.  Case in point - I asked [this question][2] on SO, and very quickly got 8 very useful answers.  Then someone did me a &quot;favor&quot; and migrated my question to PSE.  Question is now effectively dead, with almost no views.  5 of the people who answered my question don't even have PSE accounts, so I can't ask them questions in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually, only 2/8 answers have a higher score than **1**, and [one of them](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66380/advice-please-old-server-side-guy-learning-new-client-side-tricks/66390#66390) was posted after the migration. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the question being dead, you can't blame that on Programmers.  Questions die on both sites.  If anything, *any* question has a higher likelihood of surviving the first few minutes, let alone hours, on Programmers than on StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I had asked the question on PSE in the first place, I would still be waiting for answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find this argument completely silly; there are [22 questions with no upvoted answers on Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/unanswered) out of 8606, (**0.25%**), and out of 1503865 on SO, 2730108 (**18.1%**) with no upvoted answers and 101104 (**6.7%**) with *no answers at all*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why?  Why not just have a &quot;subjective&quot; tag, and let people who don't want to read subjective questions ignore them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not a solution - who is going to do the work of making sure that every question that *would have fit on Programmers* is tagged subjective.  What is *subjective* is also subjective itself - it's not always obvious what is a subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Based on the votes and comments to my [answer][3] to that question (+24 at this writing), it appears that the community is generally unhappy with the SO/PSE split.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers has **160+** users with **&gt;2000** rep and growing.  Score on a meta post means little at this point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please, whoever the powers-that-be are who run this site - I really think you have done the programming community a big disservice by splitting PSE from SO.  Please will you seriously consider eliminating PSE and merging all the questions back to StackOverflow, where they belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best distinction between the two can be summed up in this [beautifully concise answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55373/half-of-everything-you-know-will-be-obsolete-in-18-24-months-true-or-false/55379#55379) by Robert Harvey.  In it, he compares fundamental knowledge to &quot;ephemeral&quot; knowledge:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Fundamental programming principles and techniques are eternal.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow is literally **filled to the brim** with &quot;ephemeral&quot; problems and solutions.  These **fundamental principles**, that will last with us long beyond Java generics syntax, CSS-3 box shadows, PHP frameworks, **deserve their own site**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/171/1715&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66380/advice-please-old-server-side-guy-learning-new-client-side-tricks&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so/199#199" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3454" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1402" RevisionGUID="6113cd9e-fd0f-4e8d-a2ba-04219d898361" CreationDate="2011-04-11T18:04:38.893" UserId="1554" Text="Have you tried flagging the answer as not an answer? At that point, I believe it is in the mod's hands to decide what to do with it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3457" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1405" RevisionGUID="280538b1-d736-4e58-861e-a4062cc26a9b" CreationDate="2011-04-11T21:20:04.853" UserId="12750" Text="We have 3 closely identical tags: `open-source`, `free-software` and `foss` on PSE. These are almost identical other than for the philosophical &quot;Open Source vs. Free Software&quot; debate. Should these be merged or are these philosophical reasons enough to have them seperated?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3458" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1405" RevisionGUID="280538b1-d736-4e58-861e-a4062cc26a9b" CreationDate="2011-04-11T21:20:04.853" UserId="12750" Text="We have an open-source, a free-software and a foss tag; are philosophical reasons enough for having 3 of them?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3459" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1405" RevisionGUID="280538b1-d736-4e58-861e-a4062cc26a9b" CreationDate="2011-04-11T21:20:04.853" UserId="12750" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3460" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1406" RevisionGUID="2f3455cd-fbe6-4a4c-afde-f88745d8e4ba" CreationDate="2011-04-11T21:52:47.853" UserId="1554" Text="1. open source = give away the source&#xD;&#xA;2. free-software = don't have to pay to use it (but don't necessarily get the source)&#xD;&#xA;3. foss = free software with source (ie. 1 + 2)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3462" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1407" RevisionGUID="c87c0c5f-f38e-4670-a46e-396242d92575" CreationDate="2011-04-11T22:10:37.550" UserId="226" Text="The answer you used as your example did get locked (and subsequently deleted). The main reason it didn't get locked sooner is because there wasn't a mod around to do so right away. I waited perhaps too long, but as I described elsewhere, my interpretation of the answer was different than yours. I do not think that suggesting someone take a vacation is equivalent to calling one a loser.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, while I don't think that this particular example was a non-answer (though I do think that it was a poor answer), I agree that answer quality in general is a problem. I think it stems at least in part from the fact that a lot of questions asked here are similar. The answer is always &quot;it depends&quot; and there are only so many times one can re-type that in different and constructive ways.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been thinking about this a fair bit lately. In some ways, Programmers is more like a discussion site with votes than it is a definitive Q&amp;A resource and that introduces challenges that other SE sites might not run into to the same extent. As moderators, where do we draw the line between hammering low quality posts and respecting community wishes? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers certainly doesn't have a very active community that is willing to self-moderate in ways that are perceived to be in line with the guidelines from on high. &quot;Not constructive&quot; posts are always a battleground and if the community will not self-moderate with the tools that it is given and moderators are looked down on for closing things without community votes, where does that leave us? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm open to suggestions on promoting answer quality beyond leaving comments on poor answers and trying to edit them into shape where possible." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3463" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="393" RevisionGUID="9cead469-805c-4db3-acf4-f19def7b789d" CreationDate="2011-04-11T22:28:20.723" UserId="226" Comment="added 94 characters in body" Text="Jeff Atwood post new article about [Asking Better Questions][1]. Please read and help us enforce the quality of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- if you see a great, thoughtfully asked, well researched question, vote it up — please! Great questions are an art!&#xD;&#xA;- if you see an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended question that you feel was asked in bad faith ... vote it down.&#xD;&#xA;- anything in between that’s salvageable, edit it. You can edit posts if you have 2000 rep or you can suggest an edit and gain 2 rep points if it's approved by someone with over 2000 rep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please **use your votes**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting RobertCartaino from chat:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Vote, vote, vote. Encourage others to vote, vote, vote. On good content, leave signposts (&quot;If you like this, please vote it up. It's important for the community!&quot;)-- in both meta and the main site. Maybe a few meta posts informing the users of the important of that type of participation. You are empowered a lot more than you know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT2:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Read: [Vote Early, Vote Often][2] too.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/asking-better-questions/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/vote-early-vote-often/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3464" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1408" RevisionGUID="5f233f73-69ae-4a6a-aeba-f5f512cdd17f" CreationDate="2011-04-11T23:14:11.700" UserId="2314" Text="If you catch it early *enough*, I think the answer is easy, I've had success with it myself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Downvote** and **comment**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    I came upon an interesting question ([I made a mistake accepting this job](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63657/i-made-a-mistake-accepting-this-job)) which had about 5 answers already, and the top one, if I remember correctly, in 4 minutes had already gone up to **+5/-0** (sadly the [timeline](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/63657/timeline) doesn't break it down into small enough chunks to actually tell).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    I didn't want to be so harsh, but I felt like the community was going to run away with it if I didn't say something.  Soon the comment had several upvotes and the momentum on the answer had been killed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59606/is-type-safety-worth-the-trade-offs/59608#59608 this is another example where a comment stopped the streak of upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;* If you have time, **answer**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Since I had downvoted, the OP asked me what my problem with it was and what my thoughts were.  I hadn't planned on answering, but I figured if I was going to be a naysayer then I had a responsibility to back up what I'd said if asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some users actually like these short answers; One poster commented this, and said that others (I can only assume mine) were too long-winded.  In response to me, he subsequently posted an [answer here on meta](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers/1365#1365) stating his reasoning.  I disagree with this view, but if it is a conscious opinion, than it is that user's prerogative and I am OK with that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I *don't* think this is a problem of members of the community *wanting* short answers, or valuing them over good ones in a completely fair comparison.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is another manifestation of [Fastest Gun in the West Problem](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem), and it *may be worse here on Programmers*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A short answer by nature has less to disagree with.&#xD;&#xA;* The short answer is more likely to be read by people just scanning the answers.&#xD;&#xA;* The short answer is digested quickly by all readers.&#xD;&#xA;* If the short answer already has votes, it's easy to *assume* that someone else has read the long answers for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the answers to the FGITW problem, [Adam Davis starts out with](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem/9758#9758):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've asked questions that have received an immediate answer with enough information to get me past my block, but not served on a platter as you propose, with all the information I might need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This quick-answer nature is ***very*** specific to StackOverflow.  A *high* percentage of questions on SO are likely to have been a &quot;blocker&quot; for someone, while almost all on Programmers are the thoughtful, non-urgent kind of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [(non-)solution](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73/is-the-fastest-gun-in-the-west-solved#93) to the FGITW problem is to encourage people to vote better.  This solution is much better suited to SO than to Programmers, and I believe needs revisiting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**In conclusion** I disagree with the idea that something is wrong the the &quot;people&quot; here.  It is completely natural to see a highly-upvoted short answer, read it, agree; then scan the rest and see a long-winded answer and assume everyone else must not have agreed and skip it.  Then you add your vote to the stack on the short answer, and voila, the cycle continues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If we want to fix this, the software is going to have to change.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3466" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1409" RevisionGUID="2bf9394c-8945-411b-8d41-80872cf503d6" CreationDate="2011-04-12T03:38:26.777" UserId="12611" Text="There are roughly 111 total users with 3000+ reputation and 21 users over 10k.  With these numbers, we should be able to effectively maintain the standards on this Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem that I see is not every high rep user fully understands that this *is* a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion site.  I feel like there are some things we can try:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Evangelize and educate more of the 3000+ and 10k users to take part in actively moderating the site through encouragement and education of the dangers of the site becoming a doomed discussion forum.  Where at all possible, we should reference the knowledge of Jeff, Joel, Robert, Rebecca, and Dori, who have seen countless StackExchange sites succeed and fail.  They *do* know what they're talking about, and the blog is a wealth of knowledge that we should reference when dealing with stubborn users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Appoint/Elect more moderators.  If there are more people responsible for the site, this will help take pressure off the current 3 moderators. (It's 3, right?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Take the approach that [Ivo Flipse has taken on SuperUser and start a blog](http://meta.superuser.com/questions/2153/the-super-user-blog-now-officially-blessed).  For Programmers, we could reward higher rep users with the ability to blog about certain questions that may be off-topic here on the Q&amp;A site, but that may thrive on the blog, since blogs are more appropriate for discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3467" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1410" RevisionGUID="ec6ff37d-8399-4eac-b975-0274c59f3f65" CreationDate="2011-04-12T04:57:55.827" UserId="37" Text="There were two full years of sociological experimentation that led us to the current arrangement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your proposal is, to put it mildly, naive -- and ignores thousands of man-hours of prior dicussion on this topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Stack Overflow is for concrete, answerable questions with source code. Imagine you're in front of a compiler or interpreter and have a question. That's Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Programmers is for nebulous, discussiony **BUT ALWAYS PROFESSIONAL AND CONSTRUCTIVE** questions on programming. Imagine you're in a meeting with your fellow programmers, in front of a whiteboard, discussing what you plan to do. That's Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's really not that hard to figure out, particularly since the /faq on both sites is pretty clear about this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3468" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1411" RevisionGUID="f3881240-b934-4c3e-a328-d282d0b47ec4" CreationDate="2011-04-12T05:11:46.180" UserId="37" Text="I think you're on to something, but are overreacting a little in this specific case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe it's difficult for people to separate the act of voting for &quot;hey, this makes no sense&quot; -- which you said you *agreed with*, as do I -- and &quot;hey, this isn't really an answer to your question&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This particular answer should just have been deleted earlier so that it wasn't on the menu of options, so to speak.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(This is also an implicit call for more moderators, as jmort noted.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3469" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1405" RevisionGUID="abdb44e8-4d22-4cb9-ab81-a19fdd88101d" CreationDate="2011-04-12T05:14:35.850" UserId="37" Comment="added 12 characters in body" Text="We have 3 closely identical tags: [tag:open-source], [tag:free-software] and [tag:foss] on PSE. These are almost identical other than for the philosophical &quot;Open Source vs. Free Software&quot; debate. Should these be merged or are these philosophical reasons enough to have them seperated?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3470" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1412" RevisionGUID="a1c14c5e-a77b-4e90-ad52-c13a1f139e37" CreationDate="2011-04-12T12:31:13.433" UserId="101" Text="I came about a blog post written by Jon Skeet towards the end of last year entitled [Writing the perfect question][1] (He also has a post entitled [Answering technical questions helpfully][2]).  In it he offers some very good advice for writing good questions on SO.  Some of the advice might not translate to PSE very well but I believe that most of it will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seeing that there has been a lot of discussion here in the past few days about some of the deep rooted issues with the site (closing questions, viral up voting, good answers...), I wonder if this is a good time to discuss updating our FAQ?  We could incorporate some of Jon's advice or add a section for answers (as most of the FAQ is about quesitons).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it time to update our FAQ?  What should be changed/added/removed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2009/02/17/answering-technical-questions-helpfully.aspx" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3471" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1412" RevisionGUID="a1c14c5e-a77b-4e90-ad52-c13a1f139e37" CreationDate="2011-04-12T12:31:13.433" UserId="101" Text="Writing the perfect question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3472" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1412" RevisionGUID="a1c14c5e-a77b-4e90-ad52-c13a1f139e37" CreationDate="2011-04-12T12:31:13.433" UserId="101" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3473" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1413" RevisionGUID="d2417b92-b949-4a58-b6b5-1405d76d7b73" CreationDate="2011-04-12T12:59:42.243" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="While I don't see any problem is *helping* newcomers (or even older members) write better questions in order to get better answers, I think all the stuff regarding the *quality* is too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been involved in communities for years, and I've observed many efforts from the manager to make it &quot;better&quot; without much success. Because &quot;better&quot; is subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the user's point of view, all I want when I ask a question is to get answers. I don't expect them to visit the FAQ quite often.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, we should focus our efforts in improving the [Ask Question][1] page. It's where **all** askers go. Today, we have info about potential duplicates and formatting tips.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The link &quot;[asking help »][2]&quot; bring the user to a very useful page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I suggest that the content of the [asking help page][2] be displayed (even in a smaller form) within the [Ask Question][1] page.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3474" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1413" RevisionGUID="a30b737d-61bf-4ae8-86b7-d1e19665343d" CreationDate="2011-04-12T13:08:15.587" UserDisplayName="user2567" Comment="added 200 characters in body" Text="While I don't see any problem is *helping* newcomers (or even older members) write better questions in order to get better answers, I think all the stuff regarding the *quality* is too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been involved in communities for years, and I've observed many efforts from the manager to make it &quot;better&quot; without much success. Because &quot;better&quot; is subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the user's point of view, all I want when I ask a question is to get answers. I don't expect them to visit the FAQ quite often.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, we should focus our efforts in improving the [Ask Question][1] page. It's where **all** askers go. Today, we have info about potential duplicates and formatting tips.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The link &quot;[asking help »][2]&quot; bring the user to a very useful page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I suggest that the content of the [asking help page][3] be displayed (even in a smaller form) within the [Ask Question][4] page.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/DtM82.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3476" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1415" RevisionGUID="64074c0d-831b-416a-8646-fdeeeb5337c8" CreationDate="2011-04-12T14:21:44.363" UserId="2344" Text="When the philosophical differences come up in any sort of web forum, the result is usually flame wars with misinformation flying around, at least in my experience.  We don't want that here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are definitions for &quot;Free Software&quot; and &quot;Open Source&quot; that are different from what the FSF and OSI define them as, but using them is just going to cause confusion, and confusion is likely to cause flame wars over definitions, according to what I've seen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, there is no functional difference between &quot;open source&quot; and &quot;free software&quot;, and we may as well merge the tags.  Since the communities typically don't like to be confused, I'd keep &quot;foss&quot; and merge &quot;open source&quot; and &quot;free software&quot; into it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3479" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1417" RevisionGUID="1f93635f-1c51-448b-9a70-3a9ee5bef7cb" CreationDate="2011-04-13T00:10:48.710" UserId="13421" Text="Surely, if a question is important to programmers and careers in programming, even if it applies to other jobs/careers outside of that scope, it is a valid question for the community of programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know what the FAQ says about this - but it doesn't really explain why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example - this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67438/research-and-articles-on-bonus-schemes-and-how-they-relate-to-overtime-and-team-h&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would say that this is important to a lot of programmers and managers of programmers. But a comment from one user shows that it may very well be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't there be room for questions like this, while stopping the ones that read like &quot;So, what colour socks do you wear while programming?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3480" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1417" RevisionGUID="1f93635f-1c51-448b-9a70-3a9ee5bef7cb" CreationDate="2011-04-13T00:10:48.710" UserId="13421" Text="Why does a job-related question have to be specific to programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3481" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1417" RevisionGUID="1f93635f-1c51-448b-9a70-3a9ee5bef7cb" CreationDate="2011-04-13T00:10:48.710" UserId="13421" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3482" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1418" RevisionGUID="2a187a38-c10e-4079-a973-06bcacb72077" CreationDate="2011-04-13T00:36:56.397" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Every Stack Exchange site has a specific domain: Programmers.SE's domain is aptly...programmers. All questions have to be specific to programmers, just like all questions on Gaming.SE have to be specific to gaming, all questions on Cooking.SE have to be specific to cooking, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The cutoff is whether a question requires the site's domain-specific knowledge. If I don't have to be an expert in the site's domain to provide a useful answer to the question, it doesn't really belong on the site. This allows each site to be concentrated on one specific focus and to ostensibly attract experts within that domain so that questions get high-quality responses. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's something of a social contract:  the value in asking a programmers-related question to Programmers.SE is that one knows they're going to get expert programmers answering the question, and the value to the expert audience knows that the questions they're going to get actually demand their expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been a few attempts at getting an office-space Stack Exchange proposal: check out [Area 51](http://area51.stackexchange.com) if you're interested in getting a place where general office-related questions can get answered." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3483" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1417" RevisionGUID="2fb14de2-7d8e-45c1-ad46-3722b3a4394f" CreationDate="2011-04-13T00:39:32.717" UserId="13421" Comment="added 114 characters in body" Text="Surely, if a question is important to programmers and careers in programming, even if it applies to other jobs/careers outside of that scope, it is a valid question for the community of programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know what the FAQ says about this - but it doesn't really explain why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example - this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67438/research-and-articles-on-bonus-schemes-and-how-they-relate-to-overtime-and-team-h&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would say that this is important to a lot of programmers and managers of programmers. But a comment from one user shows that it may very well be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't there be room for questions like this, while stopping the ones that read like &quot;So, what colour socks do you wear while programming?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short form question: Why does a question have to be &quot;specific&quot; and not simply &quot;important/relevant&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3484" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1419" RevisionGUID="6b91df52-756f-4aa0-b153-6ca0e98cc409" CreationDate="2011-04-13T03:32:30.087" UserId="37" Text="&gt; I would say that this is important to a lot of programmers and managers of programmers. But a comment from one user shows that it may very well be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, questions like ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is sexual harassment appropriate in the workplace?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What do I do when my manager is cruel to myself and coworkers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should I work unpaid overtime if my boss asks me to?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... are perfectly valid questions, **just not on this site.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3485" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1417" RevisionGUID="a7dba0a5-18fc-484e-bdf5-f46c6320a256" CreationDate="2011-04-13T06:35:36.900" UserId="13421" Comment="added in about domain specific answers to generic questions" Text="Surely, if a question is important to programmers and careers in programming, even if it applies to other jobs/careers outside of that scope, it is a valid question for the community of programmers. I'm especially thinking about questions where the answers themselves are specific to the community, even if the question could be asked in other domains.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know what the FAQ says about non-domain-specific questions - but it doesn't really cover this aspect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example - this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67438/research-and-articles-on-bonus-schemes-and-how-they-relate-to-overtime-and-team-h&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would say that this is important to a lot of programmers and managers of programmers. But a comment from one user shows that it may very well be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't there be room for questions like this, while stopping the ones that read like &quot;So, what colour socks do you wear while programming?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short form question: Why does a question have to be &quot;specific&quot; and not simply &quot;important/relevant&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3486" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1420" RevisionGUID="4ae2958f-89b4-4a4d-9fa7-13e678d3be83" CreationDate="2011-04-13T06:49:08.763" UserId="897" Text="I think the answer that was provided to the 'programming tourism' question was perfectly reasonable.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, peers looking out for each other and providing some common sense feedback is perfectly acceptable in my book.  One might say that it should have been a comment, but otherwise it is addressing the question, whether the questioner (or readers) likes what they hear or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, there have been many questions on here and other stackexchange sites that have been 'accepted' by the question writer despite not answering the exact question asked.  And thats perfectly reasonable in some cases.  Consider if someone asks 'For our next enterprise product, should I use Paradox or FoxPro for our Web App's database?'.  The answer of 'Dont use either' is *completely valid*, despite not actually picking one of the two choices.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3487" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1421" RevisionGUID="43290591-2f64-46de-840a-699899de500e" CreationDate="2011-04-13T07:01:59.960" UserId="12611" Text="In [this question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1400/why-are-people-still-mass-upvoting-non-answers), we've established that this Q&amp;A site has grown to the point where adding more moderator coverage will help maintain the standards of a Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would the results of the last election still represent the current, active body of users?  Should we pull moderator #4, 5, and 6 based on the last election when the perceived quality of questions and answers was better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would the results be different if an election was done today for #4, 5, and 6?Would the users of today elect moderators who may not have the best interests of the site in mind?  For instance, some of the 3000+ users with close and reopen privileges may close/reopen questions that shouldn't be opened/closed, and if there are enough of these types of users voting in the election, could their votes affect the quality of the moderators who are selected?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible that elections in some cases may not actually result in what's best for the community, or would modifying the elections destroy the very foundation and design of the StackExchange network?  Which option is least-destructive to the community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3488" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1421" RevisionGUID="43290591-2f64-46de-840a-699899de500e" CreationDate="2011-04-13T07:01:59.960" UserId="12611" Text="How Should We Select More Moderators for Programmers SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3489" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1421" RevisionGUID="43290591-2f64-46de-840a-699899de500e" CreationDate="2011-04-13T07:01:59.960" UserId="12611" Text="|discussion|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3490" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1422" RevisionGUID="004fffa5-7ea9-41e4-a019-1ece9dcc55fe" CreationDate="2011-04-13T07:45:40.110" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="To provide a little bit of context behind the last election, there were several candidates who ran on a platform of &quot;less moderation&quot; due to a vocal portion of the community who believed the moderators pro tempore were too hands on. If you look at [the platforms people ran on](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election/1), you can see that definitely influenced the  other candidates (myself included) to address that issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the election was incredibly close: it took 17 rounds of runoffs before a third person crossed the threshold needed to be elected. The next three people were:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Me (Mark Trapp)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8/mark-trapp)&#xD;&#xA;* [Ryan Hayes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1521/ryan-hayes)&#xD;&#xA;* [ammoQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6617/ammoq)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was most certainly considered a &quot;stern&quot; candidate, Ryan Hayes seemed to run on a mostly middle-to-lax moderation platform, and ammoQ ran on a &quot;as little moderation as possible&quot; platform.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the top 6, it's hard to make any generalizations about whether the election process failed the community, or whether the choices would be significantly different. Obviously I disagree with some of the candidates, as I'm sure they disagree with me. I think if anything, it shows the community is deeply divided about what constitutes a &quot;good&quot; site. But you don't need the election to see that: it's evident in the questions on meta and comments on controversial questions.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3491" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1423" RevisionGUID="68cd545c-f1f1-462f-81d9-cabc5c35257f" CreationDate="2011-04-13T08:22:01.947" UserId="37" Text="In general we favor bringing the 4th place moderator online in these cases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Same thing is happening on Super User, and we did it on Math as well when one of the moderators was a no-show (literally)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3492" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1424" RevisionGUID="4fc3871e-28e3-4694-a5d7-4c8f3f819e55" CreationDate="2011-04-13T09:06:41.363" UserId="37" Text="To be clear, the specific help you want is **when the title field is focused**, under the assumption that the user enters the title first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/bA22Y.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3493" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1425" RevisionGUID="b44177a9-a6d2-4f79-9e22-2cfb2d0d1b44" CreationDate="2011-04-13T13:54:59.533" UserId="16637" Text="I'm still relatively new to this site, so I don't know the people as well as the older folk. But it seems that the current moderating team are active; between them, it's evident there's a great deal of expertise and role-model traits. There are a number of people who would be great as a moderator, so I'm not worried about selecting someone unfit for the job because that simply won't happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I urge anyone involved in the selection process to keep in mind that consistent moderation is ideal. While the 3k users can vote to close at any time, I've always been baffled each day because at around +1 UTC when ChrisF becomes active, a notable number of questions get closed within the period of minutes - every day. I suspect that this is due to Anna and Josh going to sleep around the same time, leaving a lengthy period of this site only being moderated by the 3k users. While some might say it's not an issue, from a user's point of view, it seems disjoint as I watch the incoming questions, vote to close some of them and then wait for ChrisF to jump online and place his vote alongside (some of) mine." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3497" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1427" RevisionGUID="b6406258-98be-4630-b33c-f7163468be23" CreationDate="2011-04-14T16:57:03.133" UserId="16747" Text="As one of the militant defenders of that answer in question, I'd like to put forth a thought regarding one of your questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Are there seriously people who don't&#xD;&#xA;&gt; think this is utterly childish and a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; very poor reflection on the community&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in general?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion the answer was perfectly valid in a contradictory manner. I didn't see the answer as falling within the realm of &quot;Dude, you should totally drop that and try jQuery.&quot; To me the answer was more along the lines of a correctional tone more applicable to an answer regarding plain text passwords such as &quot;You should never pass a password in plain text in the query string.&quot; I've seen many &quot;answers&quot; like that which didn't actually answer the questions posed but rather pointed a potential flaw or &quot;gotcha&quot; in the reasoning that led to the question. My opinion here is stated specifically within the context of that question, and I don't think it's an accurate representation of the point you raise about non-answers (which I think is a very valid point).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the crux of my opinion on this question revolves around the 2 specific questions you've asked here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there anything more we can be doing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to improve the level of discipline&#xD;&#xA;&gt; here? (Don't say flag/downvote - I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; already did.) Or is this type of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; behaviour already firmly entrenched in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the site's culture, something that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we're all expected to just ignore or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; chuckle at when it comes up?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the behavior is not only already firmly entrenched in the site's culture, but I would say that it should be the expectation of the site itself. Most of the questions that appear on this site hold the tag of &quot;Migrated from {somewhere else}&quot;. In essence, this site has become a place for the cast-off questions that have been either misplaced on Stackoverflow or possibly should never have been asked in the first place. I think in a subconscious manner, this cast-off attitude has led many to answer questions in a fashion that is more like a playground atmosphere than a serious Q&amp;A. Indeed, many questions are treated as a discussion forum (just look at some of the comment sequences on this question alone) far more than you'll find on the other SE sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think we should chuckle and ignore it, but I don't think we can blame anyone but ourselves for allowing it. It's not necessarily the responsibility of the moderators to police this sort of thing. It's up to the community to determine this sort of thing, and I think the community has done so inadvertently. I think in time as the community begins to solidify and grow (as happened on SO over the last few years) it will mature and grow into something that has a more meaningful dialog and a little less cynicism and mockery." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3498" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1428" RevisionGUID="eaf73149-1aed-4783-bd9d-52ce439d6b70" CreationDate="2011-04-15T03:29:04.317" UserId="37" Text="We're evaluating the feasibility of **sponsoring a member of the programmers community to speak at a conference in 2011**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Speaking is a relatively big &quot;ask&quot;, so this needs to be planned many months in advance. Let's get started! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We'd like the community to establish **where** ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What relevant programming conferences are coming up in 2011 that have open speaker slots or calls for papers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... and then **who**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Which members of the community are strongly interested in being sponsored by Stack Exchange, Inc to speak at one of the above conferences in 2011?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3499" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1428" RevisionGUID="eaf73149-1aed-4783-bd9d-52ce439d6b70" CreationDate="2011-04-15T03:29:04.317" UserId="37" Text="Possible Conference Speaking Sponsorships -- 2011" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3500" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1428" RevisionGUID="eaf73149-1aed-4783-bd9d-52ce439d6b70" CreationDate="2011-04-15T03:29:04.317" UserId="37" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3501" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1429" RevisionGUID="0c8c8dca-c11a-4797-b767-80b831b42978" CreationDate="2011-04-15T07:01:45.663" UserId="22098" Text="i am new to stackexchange and asking the question correctly is of paramount importance. But IMHO you all &quot;pros&quot; are missing the point here. (now have patience) Stachexchange is a place where you would like to come everyday rather than a &quot;tool&quot; which you use once in a blue moon. i think we should accentuate this specific behaviour. So then the best way to learn to ask a question is not by looking at &quot;a few pointers&quot; but rather by looking at negative comments by &quot;pros&quot; and moderators when you ask a wrong one. So what you guys need to do is edit questions more often and mentor newcomers. thats all. it HAS to be a slow (but sure) process. now time for a bad example :: you might wanna learn to drive a rental car quickly ... but if you buy your own ferrari .. you shud rather take time .. but learn to drive it really well. looking at FAQ's is not the way to got there. you better get Shumacher give you a few tips.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3502" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1430" RevisionGUID="80e38a88-5116-469a-8b42-d1e08a133dff" CreationDate="2011-04-15T13:19:51.820" UserId="19799" Text="Should 'Programming psychology and philosophy' be added to the list of topics for questions in the faq?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of questions fall under that description" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3503" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1430" RevisionGUID="80e38a88-5116-469a-8b42-d1e08a133dff" CreationDate="2011-04-15T13:19:51.820" UserId="19799" Text="Inclusion to the topics section of the faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3504" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1430" RevisionGUID="80e38a88-5116-469a-8b42-d1e08a133dff" CreationDate="2011-04-15T13:19:51.820" UserId="19799" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3505" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1430" RevisionGUID="79458f7f-b4ca-4415-917f-e0873cdd2eff" CreationDate="2011-04-15T13:31:31.440" UserId="19799" Comment="edited title" Text="Inclusion to the question topics section of the faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3506" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1430" RevisionGUID="e950e0e9-b2de-46f6-854d-37374f4420dc" CreationDate="2011-04-15T13:47:41.917" UserId="19799" Comment="added 355 characters in body; added 1 characters in body" Text="Should 'Programming psychology and philosophy' be added to the list of topics for questions in the faq?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of questions fall under that description&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: This [answer][1] to [Questions barely or not related directly to programming. We need handling them][2], got me thinking about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/642/questions-barely-or-not-related-directly-to-programming-we-need-handling-them/652#652&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/642/19799" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3507" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1431" RevisionGUID="097e924d-b55b-41c1-ac2d-2dbdbab1053a" CreationDate="2011-04-15T15:00:43.987" UserId="6415" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/68258/6415&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, the tone is somewhat argumentative. But it's a legitamate question - he wants some ideas on how to help his junior programmers be aware of SQL injection attacks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Post by OP after close:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So maybe it was a stupid question that wasn't really a question, but thanks for nothing, guys. You think you are being helpful but you aren't...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I must say I agree. I feel the question is on-topic. It also has several good answers - joke posts aren't an issue here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3508" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1431" RevisionGUID="097e924d-b55b-41c1-ac2d-2dbdbab1053a" CreationDate="2011-04-15T15:00:43.987" UserId="6415" Text="Why was the SQL injection question closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3509" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1431" RevisionGUID="097e924d-b55b-41c1-ac2d-2dbdbab1053a" CreationDate="2011-04-15T15:00:43.987" UserId="6415" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3510" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1432" RevisionGUID="c8ad8ed0-2646-4306-97d6-fa0f0d9840cc" CreationDate="2011-04-15T16:05:25.110" UserId="2314" Text="The only offense here, if any, is that the close reason is wrong.  The close reason should be **Not a real question** &amp;mdash; after all the OP said so himself in the comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I didn't really have a question, I just wanted to share some bad code with the world. It is driving me crazy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question title sounds like a good question.  But then he just pasted some bad code, and quizzed the world on why it's bad (*&quot;who can tell me what possible problem there might be with this sample?&quot;*).  Who cares?  Q&amp;A isn't a quiz.  It's to get answers to questions the *asker didn't know*." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3511" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1433" RevisionGUID="1348b040-e8b2-412d-b499-8a1786f512de" CreationDate="2011-04-15T17:37:12.240" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="For the **who**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## [Anna Lear][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My second choice is [Chris F][2], if someone put an answer with him, I'll upvote it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have no idea where.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/226/anna-lear&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/47/chrisf" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3512" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1434" RevisionGUID="2a015582-d842-42ab-be78-ee45b817d118" CreationDate="2011-04-15T17:51:05.127" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The goal of any Stack Exchange site is ask and provide **expert** answers that deal with the site's domain: answers that are based in reality and supported by cogent arguments and verifiable data.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is **not**, however, to provide a place to discuss whatever topic tangentially related to the site's domain. That is, Stack Exchange sites are not for the merely curious; for the armchair philosophers and armchair psychologists. The questions that appeal to them don't attract experts willing to offer their knowledge and experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if the purpose of this is to give free license to the questions linked in the answer you linked to, then no.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Indeed, the questions mentioned in the answer you linked support this: not a single question there has answers from expert psychologists or philosophers. And most (if not all) of the highest-voted answers are complete non-answers showing no expertise at all, but instead merely play to the crowd.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now, the site's problem is a [lack of **good answers**](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1400/why-are-people-still-mass-upvoting-non-answers), not a lack of good questions. It doesn't help the problem by introducing a whole new class of questions that invite bad answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3513" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1435" RevisionGUID="102c5154-ea1f-4865-ab45-f45c5935616a" CreationDate="2011-04-15T17:52:24.657" UserId="226" Text="One conference that comes to mind is [Software Craftsmanship North America](http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.org/). I'm not sure if it's still accepting speakers for 2011, although the [Speakers page](http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.org/speakers/) seems to suggest so at the time of this writing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I second @Michael's question. What sort of talks are you envisioning here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3515" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1437" RevisionGUID="219d59ff-8b5e-4537-bb69-bcd4abd5bfaf" CreationDate="2011-04-15T19:35:59.667" UserId="20093" Text="IMO, mass up-voting is due to sorting by votes. When some people read the first answer and **like** what they read and see it has some votes, they vote up before continue reading the rest of the answers. They think to themselves &quot;Ok, someone's got that I will move to another question.&quot;. And even if a better answer exists below and the reader up-voted it, it's still more probable that the first answer will be the one with most votes in the end because they are not going to un-vote the first. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3516" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1438" RevisionGUID="7a409c70-143d-476b-aa02-b49068cff44e" CreationDate="2011-04-15T19:49:04.337" UserId="5621" Text="Programmers.SE has the potential to become the first place to look for best practices and theory about the programming profession. This will happen as long as we continue to get good questions and good answers to those questions. Eliminating the noise will help but isn't essential. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3517" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1439" RevisionGUID="8eeda148-2f6b-44e1-9045-142504a52f3d" CreationDate="2011-04-15T21:27:19.713" UserId="6695" Text="This question on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;[What is the datastore used by Google for Google Instant?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is pretty much an exact duplicate of this on on SO: [How does Google Instant work?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quite rightly, the answer to the Programmers question references the SO answer (and althought the answerer on Programmers suggest upvoting on the SO answer a couple of votes were cast on this answer - no problem so long as the original answer also got upvotes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly these would be merged as duplicates if they were both on one site, but as Anna clarifed to me the other day we do not close questions as duplicates if the dupe is on another SE site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, does this imply that one of these questions should actually be migrated, in which case one of them can be closed, or do we expect some questions to meet the FAQs for both sites, and so they would both remain as they are?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What would be the correct flagging here? Should I flag such as a question as attention migration, or should I leave alone if it appears to meet the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68601/what-is-the-datastore-used-by-google-for-google-instant&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3670831/how-does-google-instant-work" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3518" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1439" RevisionGUID="8eeda148-2f6b-44e1-9045-142504a52f3d" CreationDate="2011-04-15T21:27:19.713" UserId="6695" Text="How to handle (flag) duplicates across stackexchange sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3519" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1439" RevisionGUID="8eeda148-2f6b-44e1-9045-142504a52f3d" CreationDate="2011-04-15T21:27:19.713" UserId="6695" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3520" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1440" RevisionGUID="743dd1f7-cf80-40b2-a6eb-279346fd9f35" CreationDate="2011-04-15T22:11:00.967" UserId="226" Text="If it belongs on this site, you can just leave it alone. Maybe add a comment saying that other answers are available on SO as you did. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the SO version ever gets migrated, it'll be merged or closed as a duplicate of the question asked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3521" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1441" RevisionGUID="a9a158cd-3ed6-44b4-b470-149126e3fef6" CreationDate="2011-04-15T22:18:36.477" UserId="7083" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68724/where-to-find-good-clients&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I specificity bold this line:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I’m simply search for a site that ranks clients based on employer/freelancers opinions.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't see how this question is a duplicates? The answers doesn't help either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46981/where-to-find-clients" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3522" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1441" RevisionGUID="a9a158cd-3ed6-44b4-b470-149126e3fef6" CreationDate="2011-04-15T22:18:36.477" UserId="7083" Text="Why &quot;Where to find “good” clients?&quot; closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3523" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1441" RevisionGUID="a9a158cd-3ed6-44b4-b470-149126e3fef6" CreationDate="2011-04-15T22:18:36.477" UserId="7083" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3524" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1442" RevisionGUID="01d81271-2691-409c-a5c7-00bb548f517e" CreationDate="2011-04-16T13:07:36.193" UserId="11107" Text="My reputation dropped -15.  I can't see any downvotes in my history.  Any ideas why?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3525" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1442" RevisionGUID="01d81271-2691-409c-a5c7-00bb548f517e" CreationDate="2011-04-16T13:07:36.193" UserId="11107" Text="Lost reputation - not sure why" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3526" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1442" RevisionGUID="01d81271-2691-409c-a5c7-00bb548f517e" CreationDate="2011-04-16T13:07:36.193" UserId="11107" Text="|support|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3527" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1443" RevisionGUID="6a2e7f51-51f4-444e-98fe-c9f48f9c95dd" CreationDate="2011-04-16T15:43:28.583" UserId="226" Text="Probably someone unaccepted one of your answers. That'd account for lost 15 rep, but wouldn't show up on the history." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3528" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1444" RevisionGUID="b115417f-4c54-4249-91f7-f05386c4bd44" CreationDate="2011-04-16T23:28:22.637" UserId="22493" Text="Yes, it is somewhat frustrating to be someone who has actually done some programming tourism and spent the time to respond reasonably comprehensively, yet still ended up (at the time of writing) with fewer up votes than some of the remaining non-answers. Now my answer is lost in amongst a bunch of similar nay-saying answers that add very little to the body of knowledge, and there's nothing I can do about it, except try to make it better (like I did earlier today by adding some notes on the possible legal ramifications of programming tourism) and hope someone notices." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3529" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1445" RevisionGUID="73f09f6c-ba09-40f8-b73d-f0bbe20ed0df" CreationDate="2011-04-17T00:04:59.370" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="In [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) under the heading [**What kind of questions should I *not* ask here?**](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask), the following advice is given:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question would be of interest to …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Professional and enthusiast programmers**, ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, there are some questions that should be asked on Stack Overflow because they are of interest to professional and enthusiast programmers, but that's not the main reason a question should be asked on Stack Overflow instead of Programmers.SE. Indeed, the entire premise for Programmers.SE is... *to ask questions that would be of interest to professional and enthusiast programmers*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This part of the FAQ is misleading at best, incorrect at worst, and really ought to be removed. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3530" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1445" RevisionGUID="73f09f6c-ba09-40f8-b73d-f0bbe20ed0df" CreationDate="2011-04-17T00:04:59.370" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Sketchy Advice in the FAQ" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3531" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1445" RevisionGUID="73f09f6c-ba09-40f8-b73d-f0bbe20ed0df" CreationDate="2011-04-17T00:04:59.370" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|bug|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3532" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1446" RevisionGUID="39a3798d-99c5-4cd6-b7e5-f55f8bb414f2" CreationDate="2011-04-17T00:37:58.337" UserId="226" Text="Moderators don't have access to editing that part of the FAQ, but the part that we do have access to has the following clarification:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Specific programming problem, software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; algorithms, coding**, ask on Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Overflow.   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **System administration**, ask&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on Server Fault.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  **General computer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software or hardware troubleshooting**,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ask on Super User.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3533" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1428" RevisionGUID="81dc90d9-4eeb-478f-a4bc-e88d5382f960" CreationDate="2011-04-17T03:24:41.800" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="We're evaluating the feasibility of **sponsoring a member of the programmers community to speak at a conference in 2011**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Speaking is a relatively big &quot;ask&quot;, so this needs to be planned many months in advance. Let's get started! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We'd like the community to establish **where** ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What relevant programming conferences are coming up in 2011 that have open speaker slots or calls for papers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... and then **who**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Which members of the community are strongly interested in being sponsored by Stack Exchange, Inc to speak at one of the above conferences in 2011?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, the speaker is free talk about anything he or she wants so long as it would be roughly on topic for this site -- with a quick acknowledgement of support from Stack Exchange and a mention of the community here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3534" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1428" RevisionGUID="81dc90d9-4eeb-478f-a4bc-e88d5382f960" CreationDate="2011-04-17T03:24:41.800" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|conferences|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3535" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1447" RevisionGUID="27de4d1f-fcd1-4a29-8437-1a9a1dc17bf2" CreationDate="2011-04-17T06:43:41.080" UserId="37" Text="That is built algorithmically based on the unlocked migration paths.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The string you're referring to is the &quot;audience&quot; string for Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3536" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1448" RevisionGUID="21538826-a8b8-42e6-99f6-5399dd3cb70f" CreationDate="2011-04-17T07:41:51.347" UserId="23174" Text="The distinction between Open Source and Free Software is an important one. You start to split hairs pretty soon after that though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps we need 'Libre' and 'FLOSS' as categories as well.  :-)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3537" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1449" RevisionGUID="33f0838e-8c7f-4f25-a63d-c1e5cc096710" CreationDate="2011-04-17T11:49:18.563" UserId="47" Text="I would absolutely **hate** standing up in front of an audience speaking about anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I'm happy to spout forth on the internet and in the office, doing it in lecture hall fills me with dread.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sorry to disappoint Anna and Pierre." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3539" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1450" RevisionGUID="fb87230b-080f-4c12-a1f9-a0beb90f5849" CreationDate="2011-04-17T20:38:58.853" UserId="12557" Text="This site is about &quot;being a programmer&quot;. So how about &quot;To-1-Or-0-A-Programmer&quot; or &quot;ToBe or not(ToBe) a programmer&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like the first option better, also 1 OR 0 is 1 and that is the only option once you are one. :-)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3540" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1451" RevisionGUID="608c29a9-28d2-4e6e-ac5d-1a70f777f7c1" CreationDate="2011-04-17T20:46:06.317" UserId="12557" Text="Quoting an old joke from memory (can't find the source)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a debugger is something used to find and remove bugs, then what do you call the ones that write the bugs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hence, in the spirt of site names such as StackOverflow and ServerFault, I suggest:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;If a debugger is something used to find and remove bugs, then what do you call the ones that write the bugs? Buggers - The ones behind the bugs.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3541" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1452" RevisionGUID="3fc35b4e-0a3f-4a2b-83b1-cf24b58903e7" CreationDate="2011-04-18T02:35:54.510" UserId="7892" Text="What about Pierre 303? He's a stalwart representative and is certainly prolific on the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3542" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1453" RevisionGUID="c2ad45cf-6c37-4442-975a-ae3f0ba318b7" CreationDate="2011-04-18T07:40:31.307" UserId="37" Text="I think it's decent since it is about education and lists a specific problem. (Anna's edit helps a lot too)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I didn't at all like the comments on the question, which were all jokes and noise, so those were removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I reopened it and rolled back the weird last edit. Let's try again and see what happens." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3543" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1431" RevisionGUID="7215bdb9-6b6a-4227-a53b-7a4c86eb5137" CreationDate="2011-04-18T07:40:44.490" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3544" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1430" RevisionGUID="c8bb7de9-1814-423a-86bd-798f09913817" CreationDate="2011-04-18T09:33:45.540" UserId="19799" Comment="added 584 characters in body; added 4 characters in body; added 2 characters in body" Text="My original suggestion was: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should 'Programming psychology and philosophy' be added to the list of topics for questions in the faq? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've subsequently refined it to two separate topics: &#xD;&#xA;'Programmer relations' and 'Programmer development' &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that fall under 'Programmer relations' are those that concern teamwork, programmer to manager to stakeholder (or anyone in the development process?) etc...&#xD;&#xA;Some examples from today are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How can I get programmers to stop writing code vulnerable to SQL injection?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is the best advice to give someone in this industry who resists change?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that fall under 'Programmer development' are those that concern self improvement as a programmer, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[&#xD;&#xA;“The pragmatic Programmer” or “Clean Code”. which one would you get, and why?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Suggestions to set goals][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/68258/19799&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/69111/19799&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/69059/19799&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/69176/19799" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3545" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1454" RevisionGUID="978f51ce-bc58-425d-a52b-fe92858b0b3b" CreationDate="2011-04-18T17:06:21.653" UserId="2654" Text="Using 10.0.648.205&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![comment overflow][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/fDYYz.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3546" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1454" RevisionGUID="978f51ce-bc58-425d-a52b-fe92858b0b3b" CreationDate="2011-04-18T17:06:21.653" UserId="2654" Text="Flag comment box overflowing on Chrome" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3547" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1454" RevisionGUID="978f51ce-bc58-425d-a52b-fe92858b0b3b" CreationDate="2011-04-18T17:06:21.653" UserId="2654" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3548" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="1430" RevisionGUID="67a99dab-32fa-4c46-ba7b-83781db668ad" CreationDate="2011-04-18T18:30:44.843" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Rollback to [e950e0e9-b2de-46f6-854d-37374f4420dc]" Text="Should 'Programming psychology and philosophy' be added to the list of topics for questions in the faq?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of questions fall under that description&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: This [answer][1] to [Questions barely or not related directly to programming. We need handling them][2], got me thinking about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/642/questions-barely-or-not-related-directly-to-programming-we-need-handling-them/652#652&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/642/19799" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3549" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1455" RevisionGUID="41b38672-29f5-4c3e-a06b-3a234be10128" CreationDate="2011-04-18T18:34:37.413" UserId="19799" Text="Born from the earlier question [Inclusion to the question topics section of the faq](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1430/inclusion-to-the-question-topics-section-of-the-faq) which asked whether 'programming psychology and philosophy' be added to the list of topics for questions in the FAQ, should we add *programmer relations* and *programmer development* to the FAQ instead?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(Quoted from [an earlier revision](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/c8bb7de9-1814-423a-86bd-798f09913817/view-source) of the previous question:)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that fall under 'Programmer relations' are those that concern teamwork, programmer to manager to stakeholder (or anyone in the development process?) etc...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Some examples from today are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [How can I get programmers to stop writing code vulnerable to SQL injection?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What is the best advice to give someone in this industry who resists change?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that fall under 'Programmer development' are those that concern self improvement as a programmer, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;[“The pragmatic Programmer” or “Clean Code”. which one would you get, and why?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Suggestions to set goals][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/68258/19799&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/69111/19799&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/69059/19799&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/69176/19799" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3550" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1455" RevisionGUID="41b38672-29f5-4c3e-a06b-3a234be10128" CreationDate="2011-04-18T18:34:37.413" UserId="19799" Text="Are questions about programmer relations and programmer development on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3551" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1455" RevisionGUID="41b38672-29f5-4c3e-a06b-3a234be10128" CreationDate="2011-04-18T18:34:37.413" UserId="19799" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3552" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1456" RevisionGUID="957bbaa6-730f-4f45-b158-bc774d38f958" CreationDate="2011-04-18T22:49:36.410" UserId="1685" Text="The fix will be in the next deployment." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3553" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="1455" RevisionGUID="4505d1b0-217f-4b6d-b783-6cc42d1cb29e" CreationDate="2011-04-19T01:35:15.123" UserId="37" />
  <row Id="3555" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1454" RevisionGUID="19ebfb36-2a06-49e2-b93e-6796b7c167df" CreationDate="2011-04-19T05:28:45.767" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3556" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1457" RevisionGUID="26116c5f-38a3-44d6-9ea7-d99d9e11b237" CreationDate="2011-04-19T17:02:34.597" UserId="2314" Text="Subsequent to a question about technical solutions to cleaning up noise, Jeff Atwood posted [this answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/83480/add-possibility-to-remove-comment-noise-fancy-edition/88010#88010):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;I appreciate the *intent*, but this is hellishly complex. I think my solution is even simpler than Shog9's&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Simply flag the first comment in the series for mod attention** with the text&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; irrelevant comment conversation; delete this conversation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A moderator could then blam, blam, blam, blam on each [x] to remove it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with this.  I've often wanted to even clean up my own conversations after resolving something that was productive, but not worth preserving.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, as we all know, with the introduction of [flag weight](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight) our flagging ability and priority gets diminished if no action is taken on our flags.  So, I think it's up to our community and moderators to decide (and therefore send the message to our moderators and 10k users) whether we believe this is an appropriate action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, **I'm all for it** - I'd love to see transient and incidental conversations completely disappear (not just be hidden) so that new visitors have a higher comment signal-to-noise ratio." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3557" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1457" RevisionGUID="26116c5f-38a3-44d6-9ea7-d99d9e11b237" CreationDate="2011-04-19T17:02:34.597" UserId="2314" Text="How do our moderators, and community members, feel about cleaning up comment noise?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3558" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1457" RevisionGUID="26116c5f-38a3-44d6-9ea7-d99d9e11b237" CreationDate="2011-04-19T17:02:34.597" UserId="2314" Text="|discussion|flagging|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3561" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1458" RevisionGUID="97503530-6d50-44e9-af46-82ad3ac8d1a9" CreationDate="2011-04-19T19:30:43.777" UserId="3" Text="Flag weights diminish if you constantly use the flag system *inappropriately*. If you are acting in good faith, I would not obsess too much over &quot;maintaining the integrity&quot; of your flag weight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I raised this issue in meta: [**Should moderators delete ... comments**](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/77373/should-moderators-delete-make-correction-done-comments)? The consensus seems to be (and the action taken) that comments which no longer serve a purpose (or never *had* a purpose to begin with) should be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's all about creating the highest quality content possible; the end result. If a comment-conversation was the *means* of getting that content &amp;mdash; and that means was served &amp;mdash; those now-superfluous discussions should be removed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a matter of community self-moderation. Moderators should remove irrelevant comments in the routine course of using the site. Users can help by flagging comments that that serve no further purpose." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3562" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1459" RevisionGUID="97d7bdc6-05f7-4a3d-8526-56db3797b274" CreationDate="2011-04-20T04:52:56.133" UserId="12611" Text="I personally find comments helpful.  If an answer to a question still leaves me on the fence about an issue, sometimes a comment from an articulate user can help convince me or clarify doubts that I had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, this isn't a discussion site, so I guess I can see *why* some users and moderators would want to delete comments." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3563" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1460" RevisionGUID="95f852f1-65ef-4608-b1a5-66addc3773b7" CreationDate="2011-04-20T13:59:54.040" UserId="2654" Text="Just to chime in as the major closing party.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question started off bad enough: *&quot;How do I get Programmers to stop writing this?&quot;*. How do you get programmers to stop writing *anything*? This isn't a constructive question. There is some code in there, not exactly indicating what they shouldn't be writing. Poor code? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anna's edits helped, but I didn't think the question was improved enough. Looks like I was wrong. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3564" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1461" RevisionGUID="154715af-89e1-4773-bfb7-94eba67331d7" CreationDate="2011-04-20T21:58:46.437" UserId="23486" Text="The [2011 RallyOn Agile Conference][1] is coming up May 10th and 11th in Boulder, CO.  We're partnering with Rally on this great (and invite only) event and as part of that, want to sponsor one member from the Programmers.SE community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're looking for a community member who can go to the conference (the whole time) to represent Programmers.SE.  You'll need to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Promote the community&#xD;&#xA; - Answer questions from other attendees&#xD;&#xA; - Help the audience make use of Stack Exchange throughout the conference&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We'll also be putting you in touch with the conference organizers so you can coordinate your efforts with them (since they are asking us to send folks to help with these things).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're interested, let know (just submit your name and why you should go as an answer to this question).  If you can't go (or think that someone else would make a great ambassador) go ahead and vote them up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The ideal ambassador should have a strong history on Programmers.SE and be a prominent member of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.rallydev.com/events/rallyon2011" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3565" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1461" RevisionGUID="154715af-89e1-4773-bfb7-94eba67331d7" CreationDate="2011-04-20T21:58:46.437" UserId="23486" Text="Sponsoring a community member to attend the 2011 RallyOn Conference" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3566" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1461" RevisionGUID="154715af-89e1-4773-bfb7-94eba67331d7" CreationDate="2011-04-20T21:58:46.437" UserId="23486" Text="|discussion|conferences|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3567" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1462" RevisionGUID="855a5ab3-e110-48d5-9a4b-29f7cbc9d7d5" CreationDate="2011-04-20T23:15:51.643" UserId="16637" Text="Why I should be considered:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **I'm sociable and energetic** - Conferences are all about networking and meeting people. I'm sure only &lt; 5% is retained from everyone's presentations - I understand and am enticed by the countless opportunities to meet people at a gathering of similar interests like a fat kid at a buffet.&#xD;&#xA; - **I give presentations at work** - I'm sure most people do as well. My line of work is scientific computing in astrophysics (funded by the Australian government). Over the last four years, I've given presentations which have had a wide variety of conference participants. I *know* how to tailor my behaviour and presentation(s) to connect with everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why I should *not* be considered:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **I have an Australian accent** - While travelling along the west coast, I've had a mound of trouble obtaining *a fork* in the smaller towns.&#xD;&#xA; - **I'm young** - I only have four years professional experience under my belt. My technical skills are notable, but they have a *long* way to go.&#xD;&#xA; - **I'm far away** - This wouldn't be a 2-hour flight into a different state for me, thus making it harder to organise and more expensive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These people should be considered:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. **[Developer Art][1]** - I'm continuously amazed by his input - some of the contributions made are astounding.&#xD;&#xA; 3. **[Pierre 303][2]** - This guy *understands* people and shows it by knowing how to write. His questions are back with a lot of common sense but also include another point which people would never think of.&#xD;&#xA; 4. **[S.Lott][3]** - A very knowledgeable member of the community. Even though he's the bluntest member of P.SE and would probably tell everyone at the conference to shut up, it's obvious that he's patient and would be able to connect with a lot of people.&#xD;&#xA; 5. **[Berin Loritsch][4]** - The same reasons as S.Lott (above), except he wouldn't tell everyone to shut up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8685/developer-art&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2567/pierre-303&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/5834/s-lott&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6509/berin-loritsch" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3568" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1463" RevisionGUID="713d9039-dbc1-40a3-8617-894f553cd48b" CreationDate="2011-04-21T14:30:29.960" UserId="19584" Text="Why I should be considered:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. My team uses Rally, and my manager is one of those invited. We've also been used in an article written by someone at Rally.&#xD;&#xA; 2. I'm sociable, have a passion for software engineering, and have no problem communicating ideas to others&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Reasons I should not be considered:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I've only been on P.SE for about a month, so while the 1st and 3rd actions I'm comfortable with, the 2nd, answering questions, I probably can't answer some as well as someone who's been here for longer. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3569" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1464" RevisionGUID="0b7206b1-b807-4aab-ab80-11152389d7ad" CreationDate="2011-04-21T15:12:23.327" UserId="226" Text="I'll throw my name into the hat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Pros:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I've been around on Programmers since the public beta and am still active. I'm a moderator, so I'm well-versed in Programmers.SE and Stack Exchange mechanics in general.&#xD;&#xA; - I can put coherent sentences together on demand.&#xD;&#xA; - I use Rally at work and am familiar with its feature set and general philosophy.&#xD;&#xA; - I drink the agile kool-aid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Like Jonathan, I'm fairly young, with only four years of professional experience.&#xD;&#xA; - I live in Canada, so travel logistics are a bit more complicated than they would be for an American." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3570" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1465" RevisionGUID="9a840968-39ae-42af-9cc3-8a80bbc78c2c" CreationDate="2011-04-21T15:23:59.353" UserId="226" Text="I agree with deleting transient comments. That issue seems fairly straightforward to me -- if the comment has served its purpose, it can be safely removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other comments, such as heated discussions on particularly contentious subjects, are harder to judge. My personal policy is to clean up threads that may contain valuable information but degenerate into name-calling. Threads that devolve into rounds and rounds of  &quot;Your comment is stupid and shows a total lack of understanding of [some useful information].&quot; / &quot;No, *your* comment is stupid, you didn't even read mine, and anyway... [useful information].&quot; are the kind of thing I'm talking about. In some cases I feel that the way the information is presented trumps the usefulness of that information. (Especially if the conversation starts to veer off on a tangent.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3571" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1466" RevisionGUID="fd288414-cc90-4abb-80af-6a1dbf2e310c" CreationDate="2011-04-21T15:30:48.480" UserId="2654" Text="### **[Developer Art][1]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm continuously amazed by his input - some of the contributions made are astounding.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Jonathan Khoo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Proposed by [Jonathan Khoo](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1461/sponsoring-a-community-member-to-attend-the-2011-rallyon-conference/1462#1462)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8685/developer-art&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3572" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="1466" RevisionGUID="827a6964-19eb-4b08-a909-baed49196d3e" CreationDate="2011-04-21T15:30:53.987" UserId="2654" />
  <row Id="3573" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1467" RevisionGUID="3bd009c0-a189-4241-b62e-340f055074de" CreationDate="2011-04-21T15:32:01.380" UserId="2654" Text="### [Berin Loritsch][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The same reasons as S.Lott, except he wouldn't tell everyone to shut up.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Jonathan Khoo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Proposed by [Jonathan Khoo](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1461/sponsoring-a-community-member-to-attend-the-2011-rallyon-conference/1462#1462)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6509/berin-loritsch" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3574" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1468" RevisionGUID="f4e2e1ee-a900-49b0-b282-ad10378f95d3" CreationDate="2011-04-21T15:32:48.207" UserId="226" Text="The topics of programmer interactions and professional development are generally on topic, but that doesn't mean that every question in those categories will remain open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The topic is only a part of what contributes to the question staying open or closed. Some will be open because they are asked in a [constructive way](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) and apply to a general internet audience. Some will be closed because they are too broad to be definitively answered or too localized to the asker. Some will be closed because they're not programmer-specific (i.e. questions about general coworker issues that are not limited to software development).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is nothing in the [FAQ][1] right now that prohibits these kinds of questions. So long as they fall within the guidelines described in the &quot;What questions can I ask here?&quot; sections and avoid the pitfalls of the &quot;What questions should I not ask here?&quot; sections, they should be fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3575" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1469" RevisionGUID="208be7ce-5965-4c90-b374-372768fbac71" CreationDate="2011-04-21T15:33:01.473" UserId="2654" Text="### [Pierre 303][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This guy *understands* people and shows it by knowing how to write. His questions are back with a lot of common sense but also include another point which people would never think of.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Jonathan Khoo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Proposed by [Jonathan Khoo](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1461/sponsoring-a-community-member-to-attend-the-2011-rallyon-conference/1462#1462)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2567/pierre-303&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3576" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="1469" RevisionGUID="984342fa-12c4-4c70-88a4-0003a5f2a3b1" CreationDate="2011-04-21T15:33:06.463" UserId="2654" />
  <row Id="3577" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1462" RevisionGUID="b68074b0-d77c-46fc-a5a4-de0c5d2bd355" CreationDate="2011-04-21T15:33:25.887" UserId="2654" Comment="Sliced out other nominations into own questions" Text="Why I should be considered:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **I'm sociable and energetic** - Conferences are all about networking and meeting people. I'm sure only &lt; 5% is retained from everyone's presentations - I understand and am enticed by the countless opportunities to meet people at a gathering of similar interests like a fat kid at a buffet.&#xD;&#xA; - **I give presentations at work** - I'm sure most people do as well. My line of work is scientific computing in astrophysics (funded by the Australian government). Over the last four years, I've given presentations which have had a wide variety of conference participants. I *know* how to tailor my behaviour and presentation(s) to connect with everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why I should *not* be considered:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **I have an Australian accent** - While travelling along the west coast, I've had a mound of trouble obtaining *a fork* in the smaller towns.&#xD;&#xA; - **I'm young** - I only have four years professional experience under my belt. My technical skills are notable, but they have a *long* way to go.&#xD;&#xA; - **I'm far away** - This wouldn't be a 2-hour flight into a different state for me, thus making it harder to organise and more expensive. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3578" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1470" RevisionGUID="ca22f9b5-f355-4de5-99aa-e8d97b82bf28" CreationDate="2011-04-21T15:34:06.823" UserId="2654" Text="### [S.Lott][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;A very knowledgeable member of the community. Even though he's the bluntest member of P.SE and would probably tell everyone at the conference to shut up, it's obvious that he's patient and would be able to connect with a lot of people.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Jonathan Khoo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Proposed by [Jonathan Khoo](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1461/sponsoring-a-community-member-to-attend-the-2011-rallyon-conference/1462#1462)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/5834/s-lott&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3579" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1471" RevisionGUID="b354b15c-b909-4d70-a033-ebfc57cb3df0" CreationDate="2011-04-21T19:44:00.153" UserId="23130" Text="When viewing Programmers site in Opera 11.10, I get an error message box from Opera with the following text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No registered application for this type of extension.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tried to track down what causes it but I haven't found any clue. I run it on Windows 7 x64, I have the following plugins:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Shockwave Flash - 10,2,153,1&#xD;&#xA; - QuickTime Plug-in 7.6.9 - 7.6.9 (1680.9)&#xD;&#xA; - Adobe Acrobat - 9.4.3.231&#xD;&#xA; - 2007 Microsoft Office system - 12.0.4518.1014&#xD;&#xA; - Silverlight Plug-In - 4.0.60129.0&#xD;&#xA; - Windows Live Photo Gallery - 15.4.3508.1109&#xD;&#xA; - Media Go Detector - 1.7.0.1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3580" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1471" RevisionGUID="b354b15c-b909-4d70-a033-ebfc57cb3df0" CreationDate="2011-04-21T19:44:00.153" UserId="23130" Text="“No registered application for this type of extension.” displays on each page in Opera 11.10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3581" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1471" RevisionGUID="b354b15c-b909-4d70-a033-ebfc57cb3df0" CreationDate="2011-04-21T19:44:00.153" UserId="23130" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3582" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1472" RevisionGUID="9e9d7c80-43ad-4b07-884f-c96f9d80e550" CreationDate="2011-04-22T05:57:23.817" UserId="399" Text="As Jeff mentioned [in his answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1421/how-should-we-select-more-moderators-for-programmers-se/1423#1423), if another moderator is needed for whatever reason, we generally promote the 4th place election finisher to full moderator status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a result, [Mark Trapp](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8) has been promoted to moderator status." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3583" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1473" RevisionGUID="17b280fa-e73b-4502-b015-827b3ee930ac" CreationDate="2011-04-22T13:33:25.957" UserId="47" Text="I've seen a number of questions tagged [tag:beginners] recently. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a [meta tag](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/) which doesn't add anything to the question or site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What benefit, if any, does anyone think that this tag brings?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is no benefit I propose to remove the tag from all existing posts and re-tag any posts left [tag:untagged] in the process." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3584" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1473" RevisionGUID="17b280fa-e73b-4502-b015-827b3ee930ac" CreationDate="2011-04-22T13:33:25.957" UserId="47" Text="Do we need to ban the `beginners` tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3585" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1473" RevisionGUID="17b280fa-e73b-4502-b015-827b3ee930ac" CreationDate="2011-04-22T13:33:25.957" UserId="47" Text="|discussion|tags|meta-tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3586" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1474" RevisionGUID="c05918fd-48fa-4e7d-8a16-d4a926992e0b" CreationDate="2011-04-22T14:17:19.427" UserId="101" Text="I'm trying to think of a reason I would want to see all questions tagged as 'beginners' and I can't think of one.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps it's the several decades that have passed since I was one but I can't for the life of me see why that would be useful." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3587" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1475" RevisionGUID="60106eac-9c96-43ee-ab3b-e9b260b3c7f0" CreationDate="2011-04-22T17:46:56.690" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Programmers.SE has a somewhat unique mission in that we're about *being programmers* instead of *doing programming*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, the one use I can see for it is for questions that are about *starting out* as a professional programmer. If I'm a tenderfoot programmer, it stands to reason I'd be interested in questions about starting out as a programmer in and of themselves, which would make [tag:beginners] not necessarily a meta-tag. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of the questions are used in that sense, but some aren't: a tag wiki might help clarify the intended use. Otherwise, it might be worth exploring another tag under which to categorize those questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3588" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1471" RevisionGUID="0916fc2d-b52d-424e-8fc3-2ed5b5dc00fc" CreationDate="2011-04-22T20:54:55.393" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-norepro|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3589" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1476" RevisionGUID="8f39a584-8304-4bef-b0bd-43d3063336b1" CreationDate="2011-04-22T20:55:20.430" UserId="37" Text="I can't reproduce this -- the site loads fine for me in Opera 11.01 with no errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I have no special extensions installed, it is a default Opera install." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3590" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="1475" RevisionGUID="460714de-caf8-4f7c-9ccb-eb06ebda9721" CreationDate="2011-04-22T22:18:33.650" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="3591" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1475" RevisionGUID="460714de-caf8-4f7c-9ccb-eb06ebda9721" CreationDate="2011-04-22T22:18:33.650" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 205 characters in body" Text="Programmers.SE has a somewhat unique mission in that we're about *being programmers* instead of *doing programming*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, the one use I can see for it is for questions that are about *starting out* as a professional programmer. If I'm a tenderfoot programmer, it stands to reason I'd be interested in questions about starting out as a programmer in and of themselves, which would make [tag:beginners] not necessarily a meta-tag. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of the questions are used in that sense, but some aren't: a tag wiki might help clarify the intended use. Otherwise, it might be worth exploring another tag under which to categorize those questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Potential Tag Wiki Excerpt&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; These questions are about being an entry-level or beginner programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Potential Tag Wiki Body&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Todo, should include examples of tag misuse*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3592" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1471" RevisionGUID="1b600308-b5c6-4200-8886-8a91f0f96d74" CreationDate="2011-04-23T08:14:23.443" UserId="23130" Comment="Added info on what causes the problem." Text="When viewing Programmers site in Opera 11.10, I get an error message box from Opera with the following text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No registered application for this type of extension.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tried to track down what causes it but I haven't found any clue. I run it on Windows 7 x64, I have the following plugins:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Shockwave Flash - 10,2,153,1&#xD;&#xA; - QuickTime Plug-in 7.6.9 - 7.6.9 (1680.9)&#xD;&#xA; - Adobe Acrobat - 9.4.3.231&#xD;&#xA; - 2007 Microsoft Office system - 12.0.4518.1014&#xD;&#xA; - Silverlight Plug-In - 4.0.60129.0&#xD;&#xA; - Windows Live Photo Gallery - 15.4.3508.1109&#xD;&#xA; - Media Go Detector - 1.7.0.1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:** I finally found out what causes it. Pages at Programmers try to load `house-webfont.ttf`, the URL is `http://sstatic.net/programmersmeta/img/house-webfont.ttf`. Server response has&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Content-Type: application/octet-stream&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like Opera does not know how to handle it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On another computer with Windows 7 and Opera 11.10 where this message does not appear, I see it requests `house-webfont.woff` which has `Content-Type` set to `application/x-woff`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Disabling all the plugins did not make a difference." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3593" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1477" RevisionGUID="ee3fd9d5-399c-4a58-a73d-0b82d20ed8d7" CreationDate="2011-04-23T13:40:56.003" UserId="855" Text="Many users on this site don't even think choosing a correct answer is important on this site. Having a low acceptance percentage is acceptable, so why would upvoting be looked at any differently?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3597" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1479" RevisionGUID="ad4be793-9191-4871-9853-4b64a56a4be8" CreationDate="2011-04-23T19:55:40.587" UserId="19554" Text="for example this user http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/44/necromancer?userid=16337 had got the necromancer badge today as a question was merged with the one which was older than 60 days. i.e http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17826/how-do-people-read-big-technical-books/56934#56934&#xD;&#xA;Does this mean every one who gets up voted above 5 votes automatically earns this badge? .&#xD;&#xA;IMHO the actual badge description makes this a rare and a relatively hard badge to earn.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Answered a question more than 60 days later with score of 5 or more&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it is to be earned by the user when he resurrects an old question by answering it or by editing an existing old answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Merged Questions Do not consider the Effort Portion of the user in answering a 60 days old question as this is already done implicitly by merging. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3598" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1479" RevisionGUID="ad4be793-9191-4871-9853-4b64a56a4be8" CreationDate="2011-04-23T19:55:40.587" UserId="19554" Text="Necromancer badges awarded due to merged questions, are they valid?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3599" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1479" RevisionGUID="ad4be793-9191-4871-9853-4b64a56a4be8" CreationDate="2011-04-23T19:55:40.587" UserId="19554" Text="|bug|badge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3600" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1480" RevisionGUID="0cc385d0-e438-46b3-a0e9-8070ada3f4e3" CreationDate="2011-04-23T20:03:32.263" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This has come up on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/53302/necromancer-badge-anomaly), so it's a known issue. Personally, I think they technically *did* meet the requirements of the badge, even if they didn't realize it: by virtue of the merge, they answered a question more than 60 days old and received a score of 5 or higher.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some badges are easy to game, this isn't the only way one can game the Necromancer badge, and merging certainly isn't the easiest way  to acquire it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. answer a question that's an exact duplicate of an earlier question, &#xD;&#xA;2. get people to only add answers that would be equally applicable to the earlier question, then &#xD;&#xA;3. convince a moderator to merge the new question with the old one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my advice would be to not worry about it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3601" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1479" RevisionGUID="9de8f9fd-584d-4b01-b20e-dbd1d52d2437" CreationDate="2011-04-23T20:39:15.213" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3602" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1235" RevisionGUID="008e8ec2-57ba-4670-8a58-552c26dc7f77" CreationDate="2011-04-23T20:39:25.417" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|badges|bounty-awards|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3604" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1481" RevisionGUID="4fe60a2f-78fb-4842-a820-14c4a34ed40e" CreationDate="2011-04-25T12:02:16.200" UserId="6287" Text="There appears to be no case to have a post that only has the *personal-preference* tag, since it's completely unclear what that would be about (apart from a personal preference regarding something). It's like the weak version of *subjective*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, given that Programmers.SE is about subjective stuff anyway, it's also a little redundant. For example, you may as well ask: &quot;What's the best setup for a three monitor workstation to do software development?&quot; It's not like you'd expect anyone to give an objectively verifiable definitive answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My proposal then is to remove the personal-preference tag from all posts that have it and ban it if possible." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3605" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1481" RevisionGUID="4fe60a2f-78fb-4842-a820-14c4a34ed40e" CreationDate="2011-04-25T12:02:16.200" UserId="6287" Text="Isn't personal-preference a meta-tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3606" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1481" RevisionGUID="4fe60a2f-78fb-4842-a820-14c4a34ed40e" CreationDate="2011-04-25T12:02:16.200" UserId="6287" Text="|discussion|tags|meta-tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3607" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1481" RevisionGUID="df2f1c7f-e669-4ee4-9d8a-89a6eb367542" CreationDate="2011-04-25T18:58:22.137" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Tagify" Text="There appears to be no case to have a post that only has the [tag:personal-preference] tag, since it's completely unclear what that would be about (apart from a personal preference regarding something). It's like the weak version of *subjective*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, given that Programmers.SE is about subjective stuff anyway, it's also a little redundant. For example, you may as well ask: &quot;What's the best setup for a three monitor workstation to do software development?&quot; It's not like you'd expect anyone to give an objectively verifiable definitive answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My proposal then is to remove the [tag:personal-preference] tag from all posts that have it and ban it if possible." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3608" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1482" RevisionGUID="16d0c596-f7c3-4444-9762-50a3e3fcd3a9" CreationDate="2011-04-25T23:08:42.450" UserId="14245" Text="My thought is that we have a silly situation right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question might be a really GREAT high quality question, but not on topic for SO, because it's subjective.  Such GREAT high quality questions as the list of free programming books, which is the TOP most upvoted question of all time on Stackoverflow, is now closed, and locked and homeless. Too  old to be moved/merged up to Programmers.SE, and yet, so worth asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just because the &quot;karma whoring&quot; answerers reposted it, doesn't mean having that content here is wrong. In fact, they were simply abhoring the vaccuum that the process that created Programmers.SE created.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My view is that we should make all the really classic subjective questions that are on SO already, and are closed and locked, visible here on Programmers, so that when you search for duplicates, because someone is asking a new question that's an exact duplicate  of an SO question that got closed and locked, after 500k views, and a thousand upvotes, they can be seen here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we  don't do that, we'll get the situation we have now, which is a completely predictable MESS." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3609" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1483" RevisionGUID="44ad87d3-4fd1-4cf8-85fa-d109664b41f4" CreationDate="2011-04-25T23:14:00.560" UserId="14245" Text="I think the top 100 best subjective+closed+locked questions should be merged/migrated to here without making them invisible on Stack Overflow, so that Programmers.stackexchange.com can become more of a source of valuable content, and less of sad wasteland, an outpost where bad questions go to languish and die.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I the only one who loves the great subjective questions? Obviously not. The greatest (in terms of popularity) questions ever asked on SO were all subjective.   So, programmers should be their home, and not a kind of dingy trashy home. A nicely appointed, welcoming home.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3610" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="45" RevisionGUID="27385015-75f5-4678-afc1-8f791e9382ab" CreationDate="2011-04-25T23:37:26.697" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="I don't know why people take day 1 posts as word, but here's a disclaimer" Text="&gt; ### Note&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer was posted before the Great Disciplining of Programmers.SE and is rendered obsolete by the following resources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Programmers.SE FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think asking them now before a migration path is important as it sets the tone for the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;strike&gt;This site is a little different than previous SE sites in that it's meant as *the place you put all the off-topic and subjective but still programming-related questions that get closed on Stack Overflow*. It's important that we can show that demonstrably by seeding the site with quality questions that would normally get closed on Stack Overflow.&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we limit ourselves to questions that haven't already been asked on Stack Overflow when this site is meant as a place for all those questions that don't belong on Stack Overflow, the amount of questions available to seed the site becomes very limited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although, I should say the examples you pointed out are pretty low quality to begin with, and I hope they aren't going to be used as exemplars for what Programmers.SE will become. [On another question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8/community-wiki-on-programmers/33#33), I suggested those types of questions that are of the ilk *What's your favorite cartoon?* or *What's your favorite quotation?* might be better off closed as *off-topic* even on Programmers.SE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3611" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="164" RevisionGUID="4f90b77e-7768-47a4-907c-551c1bb5422f" CreationDate="2011-04-25T23:45:48.843" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add disclaimer since we're bumping months-old posts; edited body" Text="&gt; ### Note&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer was posted before the Great Disciplining of Programmers.SE and is rendered obsolete by the following resources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Programmers.SE FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is a separate site from Stack Overflow: the questions are on topic and not duplicates of questions on Programmers, so they should not be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;strike&gt;The site was proposed and set up specifically to *hold* all the popular but nevertheless off-topic questions on Stack Overflow: there will be overlap on some popular questions because they are important seeding questions. If the site makes it out of beta, there [will be a migration path](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23/should-we-migrate-subjective-question-from-stackoverflow) to move and merge questions from Stack Overflow to here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also my answer on [How should we handle questions currently closed on SO?&#xD;&#xA;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44/how-should-we-handle-questions-currently-closed-on-so/45#45)&lt;/strike&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3612" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1484" RevisionGUID="5cab16db-e5a1-4032-80f6-c97ac1e8f9ab" CreationDate="2011-04-26T10:00:33.507" UserId="20093" Text="I have written one tag wiki [visual-studio] but I got 4 (2*2) rep points in return.&#xD;&#xA;Is this a bug or what ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3613" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1484" RevisionGUID="5cab16db-e5a1-4032-80f6-c97ac1e8f9ab" CreationDate="2011-04-26T10:00:33.507" UserId="20093" Text="Bug : tag wiki gave me 4 points" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3614" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1484" RevisionGUID="5cab16db-e5a1-4032-80f6-c97ac1e8f9ab" CreationDate="2011-04-26T10:00:33.507" UserId="20093" Text="|bug|tag-wikis|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3615" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1485" RevisionGUID="6dea4823-80f3-4ff1-a9a5-3a846a8ac7fc" CreationDate="2011-04-26T10:10:08.527" UserId="37" Text="You will get +2 for the excerpt and +2 for the full wiki, if you submit both." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3616" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1484" RevisionGUID="2d037e48-7e34-4c77-bd8a-6e5153e98ff3" CreationDate="2011-04-26T10:10:22.550" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|tag-wikis|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3617" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1484" RevisionGUID="219d18bf-297c-4434-a2fc-e7c252336610" CreationDate="2011-04-26T11:14:47.610" UserId="20093" Comment="edited title" Text="Tag wiki gave me 4 points" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3618" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1486" RevisionGUID="b628b97c-0c6c-4792-9778-8559cda3221e" CreationDate="2011-04-26T14:26:03.947" UserId="63" Text="Does this even mean anything when used *correctly*? [Mark notes][1] that since programmers themselves are on-topic for the site it could be used to refer to questions *about* beginners... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...But who is a beginner? The kid typing his [first &quot;Hello world&quot; program][2]? The freshman [about to attend class][3]? The new graduate starting his [first real-world project][4]? The [polyglot programmer][5] trying to make sense of Ruby? Beginner as a description for a person means very different things in different contexts, much more so than a *role* like [tag:team-leader]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A similar tag is [tag:great-programmer], where a disturbing number of the questions tagged are concerned with *[de][6][fi][7][ni][8][ng][9] [wh][10][at][11] [it][12] [me][13][an][14][s][15]*...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Mark argues][1] that beginner could be useful for a person starting their professional life to find questions about other people in the same situation. But Renesis suggests the [tag:junior-programmer] tag for this, which is probably a better choice seeing as I can only find a couple of questions tagged &quot;beginners&quot; that actually fit this criteria. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regardless of how it *could* be used, [tag:beginners] **is** primarily used as a meta-tag. They're not questions *about* beginners, they're questions *from* beginners! For the vast majority of the questions currently tagged `beginners`, [tag:learning], [tag:teaching] and [tag:education] are all better choices.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's get rid of it.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1473/do-we-need-to-ban-the-beginners-tag/1475#1475&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60406/which-programming-language-first-introduced-hello-world&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51669/getting-started-and-learning-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70661/how-big-is-the-gap-between-what-you-learn-in-cs-curriculums-and-what-you-need-in&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46045/why-is-it-always-what-language-should-i-learn-next-instead-of-what-project-sho&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9055/what-are-the-big-contemporary-names-in-the-programming-field&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7749/how-do-you-go-from-a-so-so-programmer-to-a-great-one&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4680/is-it-possible-to-become-a-good-programmer-if-you-dont-like-math&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1106/when-can-you-call-yourself-good-at-language-x&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4711/what-are-the-most-common-schools-of-knowledge-prevalent-in-great-programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3849/when-would-someone-be-considered-a-great-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28/what-personal-qualities-make-for-a-successful-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7439/which-web-site-gives-the-most-accurate-indication-of-a-programmers-capabilities&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14052/is-there-such-a-thing-as-a-super-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50818/is-it-possible-to-measure-if-someone-is-a-good-programmer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3619" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1473" RevisionGUID="73dd68c9-ad72-4e52-a31e-7f091e359946" CreationDate="2011-04-26T15:07:37.813" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="I've seen a number of questions tagged [tag:beginners] recently. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a [meta tag](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/) which doesn't add anything to the question or site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What benefit, if any, does anyone think that this tag brings?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is no benefit I propose to remove the tag from all existing posts and re-tag any posts left [tag:untagged] in the process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tag has been manually removed from all posts, [tag:learning] seemed an appropriate replacement in a number of circumstances." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3620" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1473" RevisionGUID="73dd68c9-ad72-4e52-a31e-7f091e359946" CreationDate="2011-04-26T15:07:37.813" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|meta-tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3621" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="44" RevisionGUID="bb39faa3-15eb-4186-a6e2-c0873a4d788b" CreationDate="2011-04-26T15:39:58.550" UserId="94" Comment="update to reflect the passage of time" Text="&gt; ### Note (copied from Mark Trapp's answer)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question was posted before the Great Disciplining of Programmers.SE and is rendered obsolete by the following resources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Programmers.SE FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When this site was proposed, there was an unspoken understanding &amp;#8212; heck, sometimes it wasn't even unspoken &amp;#8212; that it was the place for questions like &quot;[What's your favorite programmer cartoon?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/84556/whats-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon)&quot; and &quot;[What book should every programmer read?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read)&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming for a moment that the migration pathway opens up from SO after the beta &amp;#8212; that's being discussed at [a separate question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23/should-we-migrate-subjective-question-from-stackoverflow) &amp;#8212; do we still want to ask those questions during the beta?  It's already happening; [example 1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon), [example 2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-programming-quote).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the one hand, it seems redundant.  But on the other hand, there's always the merge function.  Back to the first hand, merging will probably create some dupe answers.  But on the second hand again, there are already dupe answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3622" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1487" RevisionGUID="ebfd95c7-295c-44ae-9bf2-bbfb30227b6e" CreationDate="2011-04-27T01:26:31.150" UserId="6605" Text="While on SO, the hyperlinks are light blue and easy to distinguish from simple text, the hyperlinks on Programmers.SE appears visually as much darker, especially for visited links (due to their color).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only do I have some pain to make the difference between visited links and text on my home PC, but with some screens in some working conditions, **it is completely impossible to find a visited link in a text**, and very hard to find non visited links.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to make those colors, especially the one used for visited links, lighter?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3623" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1487" RevisionGUID="ebfd95c7-295c-44ae-9bf2-bbfb30227b6e" CreationDate="2011-04-27T01:26:31.150" UserId="6605" Text="It is possible to change the colors of hypertext links?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3624" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1487" RevisionGUID="ebfd95c7-295c-44ae-9bf2-bbfb30227b6e" CreationDate="2011-04-27T01:26:31.150" UserId="6605" Text="|discussion|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3625" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1487" RevisionGUID="d4c367c6-1f9b-4db6-a966-9c9de30dea9d" CreationDate="2011-04-27T04:26:31.260" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3626" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1488" RevisionGUID="e366d890-99a3-48e8-a126-344f339d9a31" CreationDate="2011-04-27T04:46:30.433" UserId="21703" Text="Silly question?  I don't think so...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Referring to the question [What is the flag option for][1], and the accepted answer provided, I should be contributing by flagging obvious spam as such, which I believe I'm adhering to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three times I've done so, in each case the post was closed and deleted, yet *I now end up with flag weight 90*.  That's counter intuitive to say the least.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Needless to say I'm reluctant to continue as I'm apparently doing something that doesn't meet the approval of the mods - so what's the current correct answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1298/what-is-the-flag-option-for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3627" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1488" RevisionGUID="e366d890-99a3-48e8-a126-344f339d9a31" CreationDate="2011-04-27T04:46:30.433" UserId="21703" Text="Is flagging spam still recommended? Inconsistent policy?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3628" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1488" RevisionGUID="e366d890-99a3-48e8-a126-344f339d9a31" CreationDate="2011-04-27T04:46:30.433" UserId="21703" Text="|discussion|moderation|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3629" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1489" RevisionGUID="82454785-924b-40db-b28a-b7fe53a8ad4a" CreationDate="2011-04-27T05:51:31.897" UserId="99" Text="Change the appearance of Programmers.SE for everyone based on your particular setup? Unlikely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it's easy enough to change it just for you. What's your browser, version, and platform? There's a million different ways to do this, and they all depend on exactly which browser you're running.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3630" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1490" RevisionGUID="cc4b4a7d-5581-4c13-94a4-b672c87d2718" CreationDate="2011-04-27T09:56:24.860" UserId="47" Text="Please don't obsess over flag weight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please do keep flagging. Spam flags *tend* to be handled automatically by the system - if there's enough the post is auto deleted - so there is no moderator involvement here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There will be some inconsistency to the way flags are handled - we're human beings after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My policy is to dismiss a flag as valid if the post had to be &quot;dealt with&quot; in some way even if the flag didn't match the eventual disposition. So you see you don't have to be 100% accurate all the time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've just checked the posts you flagged and I'd consider them all valid. I don't know why two of them were dismissed as invalid - a slip of the mouse perhaps?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3631" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1491" RevisionGUID="376ead9f-f94e-40f2-bc1d-05e244faf795" CreationDate="2011-04-27T16:21:33.173" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Two of your posts were for the same unregistered user, who was going around spamming a giant wall of text. I deleted the user, which deleted the posts and cleared the flags on those posts automatically. I assumed the flags were automatically dismissed as *valid*, but this appears not to be the case. I'm looking into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as Chris said, please don't put too much weight into flag...weight, especially on Programmers.SE. We don't get so many flags per day that having a low flag weight actually matters: we act on everything, even if that action is to take no action right away." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3632" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1488" RevisionGUID="d25133f8-ea9c-4e6a-bca5-2f10dda10aa2" CreationDate="2011-04-27T16:23:24.297" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Clearer title, this is likely a bug" Text="Why are spam flags for posts that were deleted being dismissed as invalid?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3633" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1488" RevisionGUID="d25133f8-ea9c-4e6a-bca5-2f10dda10aa2" CreationDate="2011-04-27T16:23:24.297" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Clearer title, this is likely a bug" Text="|bug|moderation|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3634" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1491" RevisionGUID="1f227852-48e7-4f88-a71a-e353a416ac53" CreationDate="2011-04-27T16:55:56.453" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add info about comment flags; deleted 6 characters in body" Text="Two of your posts were for the same unregistered user, who was going around spamming a giant wall of text. I deleted the user, which deleted the posts and cleared the flags on those posts automatically. I assumed the flags were automatically dismissed as *valid*, but this appears this might not have been the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, one possible way to lose flag weight without realizing it (or having moderators know what happened) is to lose it on comment flags. When you flag a comment, moderators have four options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Delete the comment outright&#xD;&#xA;* Edit the comment to remove the offending bits&#xD;&#xA;* Dismiss the comment&#xD;&#xA;* Take no action and/or leave another comment addressing the first commenter (e.g. &quot;Be nice&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only the first option awards an increase of 5 flag weight outright. The second two will decrease your flag weight automatically, and the last will decrease your flag weight if four other people don't also flag the comment (a common occurrence, especially if a moderator steps in via comments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, unlike flagged posts, these *won't* show up on your flag weight audit. You'll just see the change in flag weight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussion on Meta Stack Overflow: [Can a flag that attracts moderator action be treated as invalid?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/87931/149432)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as Chris said, please don't put too much weight into flag...weight, especially on Programmers.SE. We don't get so many flags per day that having a low flag weight actually matters: we act on everything, even if that action is to take no action right away." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3635" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1488" RevisionGUID="20f56823-eae8-4a57-88b6-251a070f8e22" CreationDate="2011-04-27T17:11:17.907" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="This likely isn't a bug, but a quirk with the flag weight system" Text="|support|moderation|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3636" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1492" RevisionGUID="932892a2-bc1a-4682-a7e8-391ad70615bf" CreationDate="2011-04-27T18:21:06.160" UserId="6300" Text="These tags were actively being deleted as they add no value. I would of though this one wants deleting too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/60318/cant-keep-a-good-tag-down&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3637" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1493" RevisionGUID="3c878de7-e095-4069-8640-808e1074bd5d" CreationDate="2011-04-27T18:33:06.740" UserId="666" Text="Why did http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1920/what-are-the-must-have-development-tools-for-linux get closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, it looks like someone just read&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Fails 1, 2, 4, and 5? Maybe 6?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;mdash; Roger Pate, Oct 20 '10 at 21:57&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and didn't check out the rules or help to improve the post instead of using the 'mighty close hammer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, my question finely holds with all of the rules and none of them seem to really fail:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does not fail 1, it inspires &quot;why they are good&quot; and &quot;how they are more productive&quot;. Does not fail 2, when you answer these questions you will have long enough answers, take an example of what Anto has answered. Does not fail 4, as using software gives you experience and I'm asking why people have a good experience with them. Rule 5 should be part of the FAQ, it's a bit silly to ask for this in every single question and conflicts with Rule 4 as I'm mostly asking for experience. I don't see how this is mindless social fun, programmers use tools and should thus be able to discuss tools...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;mdash; TomWij, Apr 27 '11 at 18:28&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, why did my question get closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1913/what-are-the-must-have-development-tools-for-windows" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3638" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1493" RevisionGUID="3c878de7-e095-4069-8640-808e1074bd5d" CreationDate="2011-04-27T18:33:06.740" UserId="666" Text="Why did 'must have developers tools' get closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3639" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1493" RevisionGUID="3c878de7-e095-4069-8640-808e1074bd5d" CreationDate="2011-04-27T18:33:06.740" UserId="666" Text="|support|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3640" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1494" RevisionGUID="9e0e5243-9f39-4bec-a796-ae32170cd3b5" CreationDate="2011-04-27T18:40:55.630" UserId="666" Text="Any update on this? (I'm not putting this as a comment as that simply will not bump this)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[My question seems still closed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8961/what-are-hidden-features-of-visual-studio)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3641" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1495" RevisionGUID="f1e0dd34-a11a-41b3-b0a5-3824e176f377" CreationDate="2011-04-27T18:56:43.820" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="None of the answers, including the one added today, meet [the criteria for identifying a constructive question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/): the answers are one-liners (or lists of one-liners) of the answerers favorite tools: they don't explain how or why, and they don't provide facts or references. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not surprising, since the question doesn't invite any of those things or ask to solve a problem that someone's actually facing: there's no context, no qualifiers (must have developers' tools for *whom*? Do I care about gcc if I'm a web developer?), nor a description of the problem you're actually facing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that point, the question was an artifact of the pre-disciplining period, so it was left untouched. However, the bump today, after 6 months of inactivity, warranted review. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question hasn't received a single answer that is in line with current Programmers.SE standards, and it's been open for 7 months. If you have a specific problem you need help with, feel free to ask a new pointed question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3642" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1495" RevisionGUID="390b55b9-8a38-4d66-b859-a5e386282fdf" CreationDate="2011-04-27T19:06:44.063" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add RQHA link, fix double colon" Text="None of the answers, including the one added today, meet [the criteria for identifying a constructive question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/). The answers are one-liners (or lists of one-liners) of the answerers favorite tools: they don't explain how or why, and they don't provide facts or references. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not surprising, since the question doesn't invite any of those things or ask for help [solving a problem that someone's actually facing](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/): there's no context, no qualifiers (must have developers' tools for *whom*? Do I care about gcc if I'm a web developer?), nor a description of the problem you're actually facing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that point, the question was an artifact of the pre-disciplining period, so it was left untouched. However, the bump today, after 6 months of inactivity, warranted review. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question hasn't received a single answer that is in line with current Programmers.SE standards, and it's been open for 7 months. If you have a specific problem you need help with, feel free to ask a new pointed question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3643" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1496" RevisionGUID="49c1f574-cd8b-4c6d-ae3f-b86093d757b5" CreationDate="2011-04-28T05:14:19.340" UserId="37" Text="Agree; this tag has been burninated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![this tag has been BURNINATED](https://i.stack.imgur.com/M2qer.png)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3644" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1481" RevisionGUID="7cf679de-3dc5-4756-8bef-906ece401d54" CreationDate="2011-04-28T05:14:37.843" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|meta-tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3645" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1491" RevisionGUID="55d2421c-409c-4ca3-b191-61bafdb85a70" CreationDate="2011-04-28T10:22:51.050" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 5 characters in body; deleted 5 characters in body" Text="Two of your posts were for the same unregistered user, who was going around spamming a giant wall of text. I deleted the user, which deleted the posts and cleared the flags on those posts automatically. I assumed the flags were automatically dismissed as *valid*, but this appears this might not have been the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, one possible way to lose flag weight without realizing it (or having moderators know what happened) is to lose it on comment flags. When you flag a comment, moderators have four options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Delete the comment outright&#xD;&#xA;* Edit the comment to remove the offending bits&#xD;&#xA;* Dismiss the comment&#xD;&#xA;* Take no action and/or leave another comment addressing the first commenter (e.g. &quot;Be nice&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only the first two options awards an increase of 5 flag weight outright. The third will decrease your flag weight automatically, and the last will decrease your flag weight if four other people don't also flag the comment (a common occurrence, especially if a moderator steps in via comments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, unlike flagged posts, these *won't* show up on your flag weight audit. You'll just see the change in flag weight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussion on Meta Stack Overflow: [Can a flag that attracts moderator action be treated as invalid?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/87931/149432)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as Chris said, please don't put too much weight into flag...weight, especially on Programmers.SE. We don't get so many flags per day that having a low flag weight actually matters: we act on everything, even if that action is to take no action right away." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3646" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1497" RevisionGUID="db28a3b6-2b7c-47db-9d9c-605114e89804" CreationDate="2011-04-28T10:37:08.717" UserId="1508" Text="The most likely thing if probably on of the votes (only) was marked &quot;invalid&quot;, perhaps in error. Mark reports deleting the users, and I have now beefed up this process to ensure that spam/offensive flags are correctly attributed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your flags were good; keep at it ;p In this case, it just appears to have been a combination of circumstances that made it report badly. Sorry about that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3647" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1498" RevisionGUID="fb496565-1065-4db1-8ccb-811988108461" CreationDate="2011-04-28T16:16:09.407" UserId="1539" Text="I had set my initial location as India (got shortened to IN) in my profile. A few days ago it turned into Indiana! Funny! I've changed it back now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why did this happen?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3648" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1498" RevisionGUID="fb496565-1065-4db1-8ccb-811988108461" CreationDate="2011-04-28T16:16:09.407" UserId="1539" Text="Why is my location interpreted as Indiana?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3649" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1498" RevisionGUID="fb496565-1065-4db1-8ccb-811988108461" CreationDate="2011-04-28T16:16:09.407" UserId="1539" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3650" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1499" RevisionGUID="a822e8ae-401e-443c-b653-9ff51274dc95" CreationDate="2011-04-28T16:36:14.373" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This is a known issue, and has been [discussed on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/88217/149432). From Nick Craver's answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We're doing a best-guess match on locations across the network in an effort to get more consistent location formats for all the users, for example mine would be &quot;Winston-Salem, NC&quot;, &quot;City, ST&quot;, or &quot;Something, Ontario&quot; for Canada, &quot;London, United Kingdom&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To do this we needed to perform a backfill of locations across the network, but we can't do this instantaneously since we're hitting against Yahoo's API to do this (which would more than likely ban us for a massive hit like that).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's unfortunate but we will get a few false positives in here...we've reduced that as much as possible and checked many of the matches to ensure the correct location's being returned...but some will slip through, and we apologize for that. In the future this is done from your profile, rather than on the server-side, so whatever location you leave in that field after this we'll respect (but still recommend the match we found on the right optionally)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3651" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1498" RevisionGUID="2d1219e2-462b-4f80-8d33-c9d66b49abfd" CreationDate="2011-04-28T16:38:25.760" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|user-profile|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3652" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1499" RevisionGUID="ff534122-49d4-4f42-a68d-427318820ae9" CreationDate="2011-04-28T17:15:45.290" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 110 characters in body" Text="This is a known issue, and has been [discussed on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/88217/149432). From Nick Craver's answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We're doing a best-guess match on locations across the network in an effort to get more consistent location formats for all the users, for example mine would be &quot;Winston-Salem, NC&quot;, &quot;City, ST&quot;, or &quot;Something, Ontario&quot; for Canada, &quot;London, United Kingdom&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To do this we needed to perform a backfill of locations across the network, but we can't do this instantaneously since we're hitting against Yahoo's API to do this (which would more than likely ban us for a massive hit like that).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's unfortunate but we will get a few false positives in here...we've reduced that as much as possible and checked many of the matches to ensure the correct location's being returned...but some will slip through, and we apologize for that. In the future this is done from your profile, rather than on the server-side, so whatever location you leave in that field after this we'll respect (but still recommend the match we found on the right optionally).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to why IN got translated to Indiana, IN is the US Postal Service abbreviation for the state of Indiana." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3653" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1500" RevisionGUID="6a63fca3-40ce-4b22-98d3-af921eb496cc" CreationDate="2011-04-28T17:35:27.820" UserId="226" Text="Cross-posting on behalf of [Eric Willeke](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/21994/eric-willeke) from Rally Software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Original post is [here on Meta.PM.SE](http://meta.pm.stackexchange.com/questions/205/sponsoring-a-community-member-to-attend-the-2011-rallyon-conference/209#209).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;A request from Rally, and some background on how we see our event interacting with PMSE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our Requests&#xD;&#xA;First, I'd like the community's perspective on us adding a tag &quot;RallyOn11&quot; to PMSE that our attendees can use to easily identify and browse topics arising from the conference. After some period (90 days? 180 days?) we'd be happy to delete the tag as it would no longer contribute to the meaningful taxonomy of the content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, I suspect (hope!) we'll be driving an influx of new members during that period, who will all be practicing members of project leadership. I know you'll continue as a group to be your awesome, supportive selves, and I wanted you to know we at Rally strongly appreciate the PMSE community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've attached a draft of what we've shared internally about PMSE for you to see in addition to what @Alex shared above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here’s our thinking...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The customers attending RallyOn are among our most energetic agile champions, and the questions they are willing to voice will be ones held in silence by many others. Equally valuable, posting the questions in an open, online forum allows our many users that are not attending RallyOn to share in and contribute to the experience by providing their perspectives and knowledge. We desire that the important and interesting questions raised by our attendees live on as questions in Stack Exchange, and for our entire team to provide answers, seeding the community in both directions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The leadership of Stack Exchange is providing support by sending two community champions to join RallyOn and guide us as we try and share the knowledge we are creating during the conference. As such, please welcome Anna Lear (@aalear) and TBD (@TBD) to RallyOn!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We will rely on our participants in the roles of scribes, room facilitators, speakers, and members of the audience to keep an ear open for interesting and appropriate questions during the sessions. We need to help these questions find their way on to the appropriate Stack Exchange, likely either http://pm.stackexchange.com/ or http://programmers.stackexchange.com/. It’s our responsibility to ensure that attendees have as little friction as possible in the process. However, it is very important that we strive to help our customers join the site rather than posting the questions ourselves." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3654" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1501" RevisionGUID="46a1eb90-24ae-41b8-8a20-5bc8d93d118c" CreationDate="2011-04-28T18:06:17.340" UserId="22098" Text="in other words how can i &quot;archive&quot; my favourite QA's" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3655" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1501" RevisionGUID="46a1eb90-24ae-41b8-8a20-5bc8d93d118c" CreationDate="2011-04-28T18:06:17.340" UserId="22098" Text="is there a way i can see all my favourited questions in one place" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3656" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1501" RevisionGUID="46a1eb90-24ae-41b8-8a20-5bc8d93d118c" CreationDate="2011-04-28T18:06:17.340" UserId="22098" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3657" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1502" RevisionGUID="1d7fd68a-6003-42be-a2a0-7396894fab31" CreationDate="2011-04-28T18:15:57.857" UserId="16637" Text="Your [profile][1] contains all your starred questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/22098/ryuzaki" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3658" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1503" RevisionGUID="b30ee87b-6480-44d8-9252-986bdcc3aa8c" CreationDate="2011-04-28T22:05:01.237" UserId="12557" Text="I DO think this site is great for questions such as software-development-methologies, programming-eductaion, software-laws, business and many other non-programming related questions.&#xD;&#xA;However I believe that for a few of the topics related in the FAQ, this is not the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have read http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/948/why-programmers-when-stackoverflow-already-exists, http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so and http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/324/do-we-need-a-definition-of-subjective and even a few more related questions here and non of them seems to deal with theses specific overlaps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Quoting StackOverflow's FAQ:&lt;/b&gt; (please notice the * &lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;italic bold&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; list items)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question generally covers …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    a specific programming problem&#xD;&#xA;    * &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;a software algorithm&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    software tools commonly used by programmers&#xD;&#xA;    * &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;matters that are unique to the programming profession&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Quoting Programmer's FAQ:&lt;/b&gt; (please notice the * &lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;italic bold&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; list items)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can include topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;    Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;    * &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;Algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    * &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;Design patterns&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    * &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;Architecture&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;    Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;    Software law&#xD;&#xA;    * &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;Programming puzzles&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Architecture and design patterns&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me it seems like many architecture questions are as objective as many programming questions are. If fact, many programming questions are really to do with architecture and the accepted answer suggests an architectural change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also many programming questions can be solved in many ways (just like architectural problems). Each way has its pros and cons, but the decision of which way to take is subjective since the decider (or asker/voter), being human, thinks in a subjective way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Algorithms and datastructures&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not see how these can be considered subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Programming Puzzles&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asked over and over in StackOverflow, sometimes referred to as &quot;interview questions&quot; or &quot;homework&quot;. Basically no different than any StackOverflow question, except maybe never being technology-specific.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;A bit of statistics:&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow has over 5400 questions tagged [design-patterns].&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow has over 3400 questions tagged [architecture] and more with similar tags.&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow has over 1500 questions tagged [interview-questions] and more with tags such as [code-golf] and [puzzle].&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3659" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1503" RevisionGUID="b30ee87b-6480-44d8-9252-986bdcc3aa8c" CreationDate="2011-04-28T22:05:01.237" UserId="12557" Text="Architecture (and a few other topics) questions, StackOverflow or Programmers? - How do you decide what is subjective?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3660" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1503" RevisionGUID="b30ee87b-6480-44d8-9252-986bdcc3aa8c" CreationDate="2011-04-28T22:05:01.237" UserId="12557" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|subjective|stackoverflow|programmers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3661" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1504" RevisionGUID="09d21a84-aaf2-4882-a182-a987c896ba55" CreationDate="2011-04-28T22:49:01.527" UserId="226" Text="Generally we take subjective to mean &quot;not having a single definitive answer&quot;. Subjective questions allow answers to come from different perspectives and be motivated by people's individual experiences instead of an well-define and clear &quot;right&quot; way to do something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So let's take questions about algorithms and data structures, for example. A question about an existing algorithm (how to use it or implement it) would be objective. A question about algorithm choice or algorithm design would be subjective, as the answer could vary based on different perspectives and approaches.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A similar approach holds true for the architecture and design pattern questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will see high numbers of questions that would belong on P.SE over on StackOverflow instead. This is largely due to the fact that SO is a mature site and a lot of those questions were (sort of) on-topic there before Programmers came into being. Sometimes they get migrated over, sometimes they don't. Dumping thousands of old questions on Programmers would effectively cripple the site, so it is a case-by-case decision. New questions asked over on SO that belong here usually get migrated here or closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also: [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3662" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1505" RevisionGUID="1014e4a4-d636-4c6c-bcf8-0cd262fb940f" CreationDate="2011-04-28T23:21:12.493" UserId="12557" Text="such as [training-courses] --&gt; [courses]&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;and [career-advice] and [career-guidance] --&gt; [career]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or perhaps let more users suggest synonyms (e.g. by factoring in SO/total(SE) reputation)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3663" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1505" RevisionGUID="1014e4a4-d636-4c6c-bcf8-0cd262fb940f" CreationDate="2011-04-28T23:21:12.493" UserId="12557" Text="Can someone with enough reputation (or a moderator) add a few tag aliasses..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3664" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1505" RevisionGUID="1014e4a4-d636-4c6c-bcf8-0cd262fb940f" CreationDate="2011-04-28T23:21:12.493" UserId="12557" Text="|discussion|feature-request|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3665" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1505" RevisionGUID="aaae2f5e-e743-4ab5-997f-e9e859c1ef7e" CreationDate="2011-04-29T00:49:05.233" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Formatting" Text="Such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training-courses] &amp;rarr; [tag:courses]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-advice] and [tag:career-guidance] &amp;rarr; [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or perhaps let more users suggest synonyms (e.g. by factoring in SO/total(SE) reputation)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3666" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1505" RevisionGUID="aaae2f5e-e743-4ab5-997f-e9e859c1ef7e" CreationDate="2011-04-29T00:49:05.233" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Formatting" Text="Tag aliases for training courses and career advice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3667" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1506" RevisionGUID="a28ef7bd-a5ac-4dd6-8e30-aed5ae743cd4" CreationDate="2011-04-29T00:54:08.630" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I would rather we merge [tag:courses] into [tag:training-courses] to prevent ambiguity. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We need to do something about [tag:career-advice] and [tag:career-guidance] beyond/instead of merging it into [tag:career]: career advice is [off-topic here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) except in very specific circumstances. I'm even going to go out on a limb and say they're pointless meta-tags: all on-topic questions here are necessarily about programming as a career." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3668" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="173" RevisionGUID="0d4e9529-11c1-4304-be45-ea6a9fdcb820" CreationDate="2011-04-29T00:57:30.093" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add disclaimer because this week is dredge up posts from 7 months ago week" Text="&gt; ### Note&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer was posted before the Great Disciplining of Programmers.SE and is rendered obsolete by the following resources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Programmers.SE FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is for subjective or extended discussions about programming-related issues that have no definitive answer, whereas Stack Overflow is for objective, technical, and pointed questions about programming that have a definitive answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More info:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers.SE FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) (note that the answer to the  question *What kind of questions should I not ask here?* [still needs to be rewritten](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76/really-need-to-change-faq) as it currently bars subjective questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [What should our FAQ contain?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain/74)&#xD;&#xA;* [*Not Programming Related* proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352?phase=definition)  on Area 51&#xD;&#xA;* [*Programmers on stack exchange*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange) on Meta.StackOverflow " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3669" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1506" RevisionGUID="f63c8035-ea73-40b8-899e-9235025d84ea" CreationDate="2011-04-29T01:50:07.583" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Clarify the meta-tag issue" Text="I would rather we merge [tag:courses] into [tag:training-courses] to prevent ambiguity. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We need to do something about [tag:career-advice] and [tag:career-guidance] beyond/instead of merging it into [tag:career]: career advice is [off-topic here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) except in very specific circumstances. I'm even going to go out on a limb and say they're pointless meta-tags: all on-topic questions here are necessarily about programming as a career, and having separate tags for advice and guidance only serves to reinforce the idea that asking for *advice* and *guidance*, as opposed to *answers*, is okay." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3670" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1507" RevisionGUID="c30bdc18-3293-41a2-9fe3-cc457031bee1" CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:23:38.947" UserId="15464" Text="Before posting this, I first searched meta, and found that previously people already found the [accept answer checkmark unclear][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The accepted answer indicates that a change was made, but I still find the checkmark the worst from all the SE sites I am on. I actively notice me wondering whether or not I accepted a certain answer. I find an outline to be far more clearer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usually I'm only certain after comparing the color with another answer (if there is one!). An outline vs. filled in shape would solve this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally (this isn't done on any SE site I'm aware of) I feel it would also be an improvement to switch the image to the 'checked' state when hovering over it when it isn't checked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/970/15464" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3671" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1507" RevisionGUID="c30bdc18-3293-41a2-9fe3-cc457031bee1" CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:23:38.947" UserId="15464" Text="Accept answer checkmark could still be clearer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3672" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1507" RevisionGUID="c30bdc18-3293-41a2-9fe3-cc457031bee1" CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:23:38.947" UserId="15464" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3673" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1507" RevisionGUID="58b73821-f092-4ee8-a068-a064e6b3929f" CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:27:36.377" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3674" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1507" RevisionGUID="51653e85-9e7f-4bde-98e3-42ab8e52f05d" CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:27:52.533" UserId="15464" Comment="Added GUI argumentation.; added 1 characters in body" Text="Before posting this, I first searched meta, and found that previously people already found the [accept answer checkmark unclear][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The accepted answer indicates that a change was made, but I still find the checkmark the worst from all the SE sites I am on. I actively notice me wondering whether or not I accepted a certain answer. I find an outline to be far more clearer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usually I'm only certain after comparing the color with another answer (if there is one!). An outline vs. filled in shape would solve this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally (this isn't done on any SE site I'm aware of) I feel it would also be an improvement to switch the image to the 'checked' state when hovering over it when it isn't checked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Futhermore, a GUI should be consistent so a user can expect a certain behavior. Therefore I would argue to definitly change the accept answer icons to something similar as the upvote/downvote/favorite icons. They look wonderful, and also use the outline when not selected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Following the same argument, I would either implement the hover for all icons, or for none ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/970/15464" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3675" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1507" RevisionGUID="51653e85-9e7f-4bde-98e3-42ab8e52f05d" CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:27:52.533" UserId="15464" Comment="Added GUI argumentation.; added 1 characters in body" Text="|feature-request|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3676" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1507" RevisionGUID="74c5df54-da2e-4c39-8855-49db393f5534" CreationDate="2011-04-29T14:12:04.413" UserId="15464" Comment="Added link to User Experience.SE." Text="Before posting this, I first searched meta, and found that previously people already found the [accept answer checkmark unclear][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The accepted answer indicates that a change was made, but I still find the checkmark the worst from all the SE sites I am on. I actively notice me wondering whether or not I accepted a certain answer. I find an outline to be far more clearer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usually I'm only certain after comparing the color with another answer (if there is one!). An outline vs. filled in shape would solve this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally (this isn't done on any SE site I'm aware of) I feel it would also be an improvement to switch the image to the 'checked' state when hovering over it when it isn't checked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Futhermore, a GUI should be consistent so a user can expect a certain behavior. Therefore I would argue to definitly change the accept answer icons to something similar as the upvote/downvote/favorite icons. They look wonderful, and also use the outline when not selected. I [asked about this on UX.SE][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Following the same argument, I would either implement the hover for all icons, or for none ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/970/15464&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/q/6576/3612" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3677" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1508" RevisionGUID="5ef57935-f35f-448b-95a2-452ea2e23449" CreationDate="2011-04-29T18:44:00.063" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="We moderators will now be actively cleaning up questions and answers that have extended discussion in comments: any additional information teased out in the comments should be re-incorporated back into the question or answer, not left as a comment. Any extended discussion should go to our awesome [chat system](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers), built from the ground up explicitly for this purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see the original asker or answerer leave a comment instead of editing their post, you should edit it back in yourself: anyone can edit a post or suggest an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because comment deletions aren't very transparent, we will be leaving the following comment when comments are cleaned up:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Commenters:** comments are meant for seeking clarification, not for extended discussion. If you have a solution, leave an answer. If your solution is already posted, please upvote it. If you'd like to discuss this question with others, please use [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers). See [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) for more information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and the following has been added to [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#comments):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are useful for getting clarifications, but extended discussions detract from the question and its answers. If you'd like to discuss anything related to programming with other expert programmers, please use our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3678" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1457" RevisionGUID="c6b874b8-036c-4e4c-88a1-c14ca25c5240" CreationDate="2011-04-29T18:44:17.677" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|flagging|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3685" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="171" RevisionGUID="f60b4666-a14d-48dc-89e2-edb97937c12d" CreationDate="2011-05-01T01:36:50.647" UserId="226" Comment="Retagged, added a mod note" Text="&gt; ##Moderator Message&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **This question was originally asked during beta when the purpose and focus of Programmers was being determined. While there are differences of opinion in the answers, Mark Trapp's post contains the official answer.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3686" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="171" RevisionGUID="f60b4666-a14d-48dc-89e2-edb97937c12d" CreationDate="2011-05-01T01:36:50.647" UserId="226" Comment="Retagged, added a mod note" Text="What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3687" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="171" RevisionGUID="f60b4666-a14d-48dc-89e2-edb97937c12d" CreationDate="2011-05-01T01:36:50.647" UserId="226" Comment="Retagged, added a mod note" Text="|discussion|faq|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3689" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1511" RevisionGUID="91c28618-8c03-488f-8e97-0862191e93a6" CreationDate="2011-05-02T17:27:54.497" UserId="6605" Text="It seems that there is an issue with votes/reputation on Programmers.SE (don't know if there is the same issue on other SE websites).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've recently answered two questions and my answer had one up-vote each, but the up-vote is not reflected in my profile. The reputation remains the same as before, and &quot;votes&quot; display is weird.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's a screenshot:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can see that for non-wiki questions and my non-wiki answers, for both answers the reputation has +0 instead of +10.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The links to the answers are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Are Subject specific programing books a good idea][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What best practices should be employed in a PHP login script?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's happening?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Je00w.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73009/are-subject-specific-programing-books-a-good-idea/73030#73030&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73024/what-best-practices-should-be-employed-in-a-php-login-script/73042#73042" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3690" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1511" RevisionGUID="91c28618-8c03-488f-8e97-0862191e93a6" CreationDate="2011-05-02T17:27:54.497" UserId="6605" Text="Why the upvoted non-wiki answers have +0 reputation instead of +10?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3691" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1511" RevisionGUID="91c28618-8c03-488f-8e97-0862191e93a6" CreationDate="2011-05-02T17:27:54.497" UserId="6605" Text="|bug|reputation|votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3692" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1511" RevisionGUID="f724b675-72f6-4ed7-bfbb-65a31974d311" CreationDate="2011-05-02T17:43:45.710" UserId="6605" Comment="added 720 characters in body" Text="It seems that there is an issue with votes/reputation on Programmers.SE (don't know if there is the same issue on other SE websites).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've recently answered two questions and my answer had one up-vote each, but the up-vote is not reflected in my profile. The reputation remains the same as before, and &quot;votes&quot; display is weird.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's a screenshot:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can see that for non-wiki questions and my non-wiki answers, for both answers the reputation has +0 instead of +10.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The links to the answers are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Are Subject specific programing books a good idea][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What best practices should be employed in a PHP login script?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's happening?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:** it seems that the same problem affects [another answer][4]. With 34 upvotes, there are 215 reputation points (15 as accepted answer) instead of 355.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It makes me think about another point. At the beginning, I published this last answer as a community wiki (see edits history). But it didn't work, i.e. the answer was displayed as a non-wiki. Then, I edited the answer, without checking the wiki checkbox again. May it be that it affected every other answer, so now, every answer I write is treated as wiki, while being displayed as non-wiki?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Je00w.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73009/are-subject-specific-programing-books-a-good-idea/73030#73030&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73024/what-best-practices-should-be-employed-in-a-php-login-script/73042#73042&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72967/i-want-to-create-a-software-company-what-are-the-basic-things-that-i-should-know/72969#72969" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3693" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1512" RevisionGUID="5d5a079d-0a16-4f7e-8d74-7579b2ee0949" CreationDate="2011-05-02T17:58:42.313" UserId="226" Text="It sounds like you hit the daily reputation limit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3694" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1513" RevisionGUID="aaeff126-9441-4a8c-ac6c-bf9e59aed712" CreationDate="2011-05-02T19:47:52.987" UserId="6695" Text="I'm curious... Mr Skeet is heading up the May [league tables][1]. No problem with that, but a rep increase of +790 in under 2 days seems to be a mathematical impossibility, given he has no accpeted answers on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a glitch or is there some way of getting around the +200 daily cap (other than bounty points)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackexchange.com/leagues/52/month/programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3695" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1513" RevisionGUID="aaeff126-9441-4a8c-ac6c-bf9e59aed712" CreationDate="2011-05-02T19:47:52.987" UserId="6695" Text="Is it possible to get +790 in under 48 hours, or is this a glitch?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3696" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1513" RevisionGUID="aaeff126-9441-4a8c-ac6c-bf9e59aed712" CreationDate="2011-05-02T19:47:52.987" UserId="6695" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3697" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1511" RevisionGUID="1bef4ee4-618a-40d2-b6ed-ef9c8a9ce919" CreationDate="2011-05-02T19:54:36.537" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|reputation|votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3698" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1514" RevisionGUID="8cea8ae1-138b-458f-8407-dcf6c39bad84" CreationDate="2011-05-02T20:09:22.080" UserId="47" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72806/how-do-you-make-people-accept-code-review) was migrated from Stack Overflow yesterday (1st May 2011). It has an answer from Jon that is quite highly upvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you check [Jon's reputation graph](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8958/jon-skeet?tab=reputation#reppage_1-repview_graph) you can see a spike on Friday August 29th 2009 *when the question was originally answered* that must have included a bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This must be the source of the increase." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3699" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1514" RevisionGUID="95fad436-815f-4928-b57c-81d250ebf6a8" CreationDate="2011-05-02T20:20:56.267" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72806/how-do-you-make-people-accept-code-review) was migrated from Stack Overflow yesterday (1st May 2011). It has an answer from Jon that is quite highly upvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you check [Jon's reputation graph](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8958/jon-skeet?tab=reputation#reppage_1-repview_graph) you can see a spike on Friday August 29th 2009 *when the question was originally answered* that must have included a bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This must be the source of the increase.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jon's reputation *on this site* has increased dramatically over the last 24 hours as a result even though the reputation was first awarded nearly 2 years ago. I'd suggest it's an edge case that we'll have to live with." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3700" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1515" RevisionGUID="735edb6f-5625-4e88-baff-39048c298664" CreationDate="2011-05-03T01:53:47.553" UserId="102" Text="Both the rep leagues on Stack Exchange and on individual sites see rep changes as occurring *right now*, instead of *when they actually did happen*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Normally, this is fine: you get upvoted, your rep increases, the leagues take note.  With migration, we move all the post's votes over with their original creation dates, and when we increment the owner's rep with that lump sum, the leagues **incorrectly see this increase as happening for today**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've got a fix planned for this, but it will be a few weeks until we can get it implemented." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3701" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1513" RevisionGUID="74b1705b-f987-4a4e-816f-4de852925159" CreationDate="2011-05-03T01:56:56.803" UserId="102" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-planned|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3702" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1513" RevisionGUID="7c45b247-330e-4270-b132-cbb33a61009e" CreationDate="2011-05-03T17:06:12.133" UserId="6415" Comment="edited body" Text="I'm curious... Mr Skeet is heading up the May [league tables][1]. No problem with that, but a rep increase of +790 in under 2 days seems to be a mathematical impossibility, given he has no accepted answers on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a glitch or is there some way of getting around the +200 daily cap (other than bounty points)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackexchange.com/leagues/52/month/programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3703" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1516" RevisionGUID="e2d8ef49-d081-4cdb-9bdc-06df3257247f" CreationDate="2011-05-04T12:28:27.750" UserId="3124" Text="[This][1] is a question that I thought was perfectly reasonable for P.SE.  It was closed as &quot;too localized&quot; due to the fact that the answer may change over time.  I find this to be a strange reason to close the question, as many of the answers to P.SE questions would change over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've seen questions on this site pertaining to architecture, software lifecycles, design patterns, methodologies, etc.  Answers to almost all of these types of questions might change over time, as the technologies, and thinking around those technologies, change.  This is a site focused on a technology profession which is in a state of constant evolution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we really be closing questions because appropriate answers may change over time?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/377/is-there-a-way-to-phrase-a-localized-question-that-works-for-the-site" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3704" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1516" RevisionGUID="e2d8ef49-d081-4cdb-9bdc-06df3257247f" CreationDate="2011-05-04T12:28:27.750" UserId="3124" Text="Is it appropriate to close questions as &quot;too localized&quot; because the answer might change over time?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3705" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1516" RevisionGUID="e2d8ef49-d081-4cdb-9bdc-06df3257247f" CreationDate="2011-05-04T12:28:27.750" UserId="3124" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3706" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1516" RevisionGUID="127c5387-b4b6-47f1-b383-39d66860a4ef" CreationDate="2011-05-04T13:50:44.623" UserId="3124" Comment="deleted 35 characters in body" Text="[This][1] is a question that I thought was perfectly reasonable for P.SE.  It was closed as &quot;too localized&quot; due to the fact that the answer may change over time.  I find this to be a strange reason to close the question, as many of the answers to P.SE questions would change over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've seen questions on this site pertaining to architecture, software lifecycles, design patterns, methodologies, etc.  Answers to almost all of these types of questions might change over time, as the technologies, and thinking around those technologies, change.  This is a site focused on a technology profession which is in a state of constant evolution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we really be closing questions because appropriate answers may change over time?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73206/career-in-vb-net-or-c-net/73285#73285" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3707" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1517" RevisionGUID="22b02013-4fc5-48e7-9c8d-4d0c408df4bd" CreationDate="2011-05-04T14:26:11.423" UserId="226" Text="It's a poorly defined question all around. It borders on off-topic by asking which is better, C# or VB.NET, and in a way, by asking what language the OP should choose without a specific requirement. It's also not very constructive - it doesn't call for explaining &quot;why&quot; or &quot;how&quot; and it mostly invited opinionated short answers with a lot of duplication between them. Yours was one of the few answers that offered concrete advice on how the poster can explore the job market.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the end, though, I felt the localized aspects of the question were the strongest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reasoning was that nobody can say what language is better (C# or VB.NET) for the poster's career *and* have the answer be applicable to the internet at large. Even if we do serious research into the market trends in the poster's geographical area, that will make the question too localized geographically without a guarantee of accuracy or lasting appeal. And if we ignore that, we are left with answers that can go out of date quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When someone talks about a software practice, it can certainly change over time, but older information might still be useful. Knowing that C# has more jobs than VB.NET in a specific area right now is not at all useful (and potentially harmful) to someone a year from now or in a completely different location.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With all those things taken into consideration, I opted to close the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3708" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1518" RevisionGUID="495b2ca9-dbb0-448e-aa82-cbce0714ca71" CreationDate="2011-05-04T18:42:38.173" UserId="19554" Text="There is this question [Can a flag that attracts moderator action be treated as invalid?][1]   &#xD;&#xA;which deals with the general idea behind the validity of any flag. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What i am asking is the specific flag option when we hit the flag button. The area in which we  address the moderator regarding the type of attention that is required. Can this flag be dismissed as invalid? Meaning who ever raised it Did not need to and it did not warrant a mods attention?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance this topic http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73667/mobile-games-paid-vs-ad-supported  I was unable to define the exact nature of the problem, as i was unable to find its duplicate here. IMHO it needed a mods attention. Hence i flagged it using the inform moderator flag stating that it could be migrated to gamedev.stackexchange.com - the idea in itself is valid. and it is valid topic.&#xD;&#xA; Mod attention was required and the topic was closed as duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leaving me miffed as to why this type flag was dismissed as invalid. specifically when this was not defined In absolutes as off topic or duplicate or does not belong here.&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/87931/can-a-flag-that-attracts-moderator-action-be-treated-as-invalid" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3709" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1518" RevisionGUID="495b2ca9-dbb0-448e-aa82-cbce0714ca71" CreationDate="2011-05-04T18:42:38.173" UserId="19554" Text="Can the Flag of Type &quot;Inform Moderator&quot; Be dismissed as Invalid?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3710" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1518" RevisionGUID="495b2ca9-dbb0-448e-aa82-cbce0714ca71" CreationDate="2011-05-04T18:42:38.173" UserId="19554" Text="|support|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3711" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1519" RevisionGUID="0d3563bf-cad6-4c1a-9065-0a3566294217" CreationDate="2011-05-04T19:16:26.940" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Any individual flag can be dismissed as valid or invalid. In this specific instance, your flag was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Kindly Migrate to expert site gamedev.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question, as explained in my comment on the question, did not warrant migration to GameDev.SE and as such, was dismissed as invalid. It was later found to be a duplicate of an earlier-asked question on Programmers.SE and was closed based on that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To quote myself on an [earlier question about flagging](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1488/8):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [P]lease don't put too much weight into flag...weight, especially on Programmers.SE. We don't get so many flags per day that having a low flag weight actually matters: we act on everything, even if that action is to take no action right away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flag weight determines the sorting of flags on the moderator tools screen. We don't get so many flags as to not be able to act on every single one in due time, and your flag weight is so high (currently 602.4794) that you are almost certainly at the top of the flag list regardless of a few false positives. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep flagging when you think you see something wrong: we appreciate it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3712" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1520" RevisionGUID="4f89113d-4c25-4217-8546-b2549289f942" CreationDate="2011-05-04T19:20:30.447" UserId="226" Text="For the most part, any moderator flag can be dismissed as valid or invalid. Comment flags can only be dismissed. There is no explicit valid/invalid distinction, but comment flags that aren't acted upon can decrease the flag weight as Mark described [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1488/why-are-spam-flags-for-posts-that-were-deleted-being-dismissed-as-invalid/1491#1491).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;It doesn't belong here&quot; flags from users with enough rep to vote to close will get converted to close votes, so there's nothing to dismiss there. For users with less than 3,000 rep, they will appear as normal flags for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't recall off-hand how spam flags I handled, but I believe those can be dismissed as valid or invalid as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mark said, we look at all flags, so flag weight on Programmers doesn't carry as much value as it would on busier sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3713" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1521" RevisionGUID="1bf10c09-3529-4a07-9820-5253a3d5806e" CreationDate="2011-05-05T02:21:23.503" UserId="3214" Text="Programmers was one of the first StackExchange sites and seem to be one of the most popular.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was wondering, now that it's been &quot;launched&quot; why are we still programmers.stackexchange.com and not it's own unique domain name?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3714" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1521" RevisionGUID="1bf10c09-3529-4a07-9820-5253a3d5806e" CreationDate="2011-05-05T02:21:23.503" UserId="3214" Text="Why doesn't this site have it's own domain?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3715" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1521" RevisionGUID="1bf10c09-3529-4a07-9820-5253a3d5806e" CreationDate="2011-05-05T02:21:23.503" UserId="3214" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3716" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1522" RevisionGUID="820461f9-5764-4c97-9a43-5870b7cda27d" CreationDate="2011-05-05T02:52:19.063" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="To answer this, I need to provide a little background:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the first Stack Exchange sites went into beta, it was expected all sites would get their own site and domain name. All sites in beta had boilerplate questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What should our domain name be?&#xD;&#xA;* What should our logo be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Web Applications.SE](http://webapps.stackexchange.com), the first non-trilogy Stack Exchange to launch, even launched under the moniker &quot;Nothing to Install&quot; with the domain name *nothingtoinstall.com*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, *Nothing to Install* is a terrible name. But nobody had a better name for it, and so you had this site, an important milestone in the Stack Exchange network, launching with a forgettable name. To make matters worse, there were several Stack Exchange sites ready to launch, most with equally terrible names. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So that got the gears turning at the mothership that perhaps rapidly launching sites with mediocre names wasn't the best idea. At that point it was decided that unless a site has an absolutely fantastic name and had traffic levels comparable to Server Fault (i.e. several times more traffic than even the most popular non-triology site), the Stack Exchange brand is worth more than whatever forgettable name might come up in beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All this (and more) is covered in the Stack Overflow Blog post, [Domain Names: The Wrong Question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/domain-names-the-wrong-question/)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3717" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1522" RevisionGUID="80d1066c-88a2-4273-8735-5cd070fdfb65" CreationDate="2011-05-05T03:00:12.957" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 52 characters in body; added 211 characters in body" Text="To answer this, I need to provide a little background:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the first Stack Exchange sites went into beta, it was expected all sites would get their own site and domain name. All sites in beta had boilerplate questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What should our domain name be?&#xD;&#xA;* What should our logo be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Web Applications.SE](http://webapps.stackexchange.com), the first non-trilogy Stack Exchange to launch, even launched under the moniker &quot;Nothing to Install&quot; with the domain name *nothingtoinstall.com*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, branding and naming is hard. *Nothing to Install* is an okay name, but certainly not a home run. And nobody had a better name for it, and so you had this site, an important milestone in the Stack Exchange network, launching with a forgettable name. To make matters worse, there were several Stack Exchange sites ready to launch, most with equally *eh* names. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So that got the gears turning at the mothership that perhaps rapidly launching sites with mediocre names wasn't the best idea. At that point it was decided that unless a site has an absolutely fantastic name and had traffic levels comparable to Server Fault (i.e. several times more traffic than even the most popular non-triology site), the Stack Exchange brand is worth more than whatever forgettable name might come up in beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All this (and more) is covered in the Stack Overflow Blog post, [Domain Names: The Wrong Question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/domain-names-the-wrong-question/). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also the discussion on Meta.Webapps.SE: [Webapps.stackexchange.com versus Nothingtoinstall.com](http://meta.webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/624/webapps-stackexchange-com-versus-nothingtoinstall-com)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3718" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1523" RevisionGUID="5217f467-03db-45cc-b936-89776993afd4" CreationDate="2011-05-05T06:45:16.407" UserId="19554" Text="As the topic Says. I am posting this as apparently i do not have votes on either of the tags to suggest synonyms. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3719" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1523" RevisionGUID="5217f467-03db-45cc-b936-89776993afd4" CreationDate="2011-05-05T06:45:16.407" UserId="19554" Text="Tag publicity,promotion,promotions can be merged into just publicity" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3720" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1523" RevisionGUID="5217f467-03db-45cc-b936-89776993afd4" CreationDate="2011-05-05T06:45:16.407" UserId="19554" Text="|discussion|recommendations|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3721" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1524" RevisionGUID="2f69094e-6d5b-424a-9ba9-d006c56f2efe" CreationDate="2011-05-05T07:47:50.570" UserId="2654" Text="While this is a good idea, there are only six questions matching all tags. Perhaps it would be better to merge them? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3722" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1524" RevisionGUID="80394451-1862-4b9b-9652-b5d3fbf9810d" CreationDate="2011-05-05T09:51:14.790" UserId="37" Comment="added 7 characters in body" Text="While this is a good idea, there are only six questions matching all tags. Perhaps it would be better to simply retag them? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3723" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1525" RevisionGUID="ff25541e-2a09-44e4-8a66-2782538cc302" CreationDate="2011-05-05T18:24:04.227" UserId="3941" Text="A user deleted content in [my question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73995/key-programming-for-hire-contract-points) that took me almost 30 minutes to type up... so if I sound mad it is because I am (it feels like my time was unfairly stolen from me).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could I get some help with what I'm being told about this edit in the comments to [my question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73995/key-programming-for-hire-contract-points) please?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this editor is being unreasonable and is overly-narrowly applying some ideal about &quot;never having lists in questions because that always makes them too subjective and instantly in the format 'I like X, what do you like'?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm asking because I don't want to just have an edit war, which I could very easily and fanatically do, (though he might then flag my question as inappropriate to assert his personal control to get the outcome he wants), but rather I'm looking for input from many instead of letting just the one person unilaterally dictate to me how he's going to run my question for me on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if the consensus is that the list I included should be deleted, I think the edit was NOT in the spirit of what the edit privilege should be used for. I edit posts on stackoverflow ALL the time... to improve the grammar or format the code or add a link or state an important caveat. But I would never just delete whole sections I don't like. That in my opinion should be handled through communication with the poster, because even though we are able to edit other people's posts, *the original poster still owns the question* unless it's been made community wiki. Some respect of the poster's intent and time seems in order to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just in case the comments get deleted, here they are for the record:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi Erik, list questions, especially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; list questions that provide answers in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the body, aren't constructive here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There is, however, a good question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; without the list, so I've edited your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question to remove your rules for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; crowd-sourcing a list. You can always&#xD;&#xA;&gt; provide your examples as an answer to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your question, but keep in mind what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; types of answers work well here. –&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mark Trapp&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Mark The&#xD;&#xA;&gt; faq doesn't say anything about &quot;list&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions&quot;. And I don't think I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; provided the answer in the body. The&#xD;&#xA;&gt; point of the list was to save any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answerers the work of thinking about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; every possible important item, so they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; could focus on the ones that the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; contract missed. To me it seems a very&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answerable question. If I rephrased my&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question &quot;what are the other points we&#xD;&#xA;&gt; missed in this contract&quot; will that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; avoid all appearance of answering the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question in the question? It was kind&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of brutal to slash what took me 25&#xD;&#xA;&gt; minutes to distill and type up. – Erik&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Erik&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from the part of the FAQ I linked to,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;To prevent your question from being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; flagged and possibly removed, avoid&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking subjective questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; where...your answer is provided along&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with the question, and you expect more&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers: “I use ______ for ______,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what do you use?”&quot; See also the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; explanation of the second guideline&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for constructive questions in the Good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective, Bad Subjective article I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; linked, which explains the problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with list questions. – Mark Trapp&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Erik&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your question is fine as it is now:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the only thing I removed was the list&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and the request for a list. As I said&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in my earlier comment, you're welcome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to offer your own research as an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer instead: doing so would have&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the added benefit of getting separate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; feedback on what you've found so far.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; – Mark Trapp&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Mark If I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; provided program code I had already&#xD;&#xA;&gt; written and asked what was wrong with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it, you would hardly say &quot;don't&#xD;&#xA;&gt; provide the answer with the question&quot;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; even though the answer would repeat&#xD;&#xA;&gt; most of my code! You would understand&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was showing respect to the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participants by not making them&#xD;&#xA;&gt; produce the entire piece of code from&#xD;&#xA;&gt; scratch. If I show the contract we&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have now and ask for critique of it,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this is not even close to &quot;I use X,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what do you use?&quot; It is much closer to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;here's my code, what's wrong with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it?&quot; – Erik" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3724" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1525" RevisionGUID="ff25541e-2a09-44e4-8a66-2782538cc302" CreationDate="2011-05-05T18:24:04.227" UserId="3941" Text="Lists in questions, subjectiveness, and (in)appropriate editing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3725" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1525" RevisionGUID="ff25541e-2a09-44e4-8a66-2782538cc302" CreationDate="2011-05-05T18:24:04.227" UserId="3941" Text="|discussion|subjective|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3726" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1525" RevisionGUID="242c7eda-ff9a-46ed-b536-ce6da48e55ef" CreationDate="2011-05-05T18:34:08.460" UserId="3941" Comment="deleted 35 characters in body" Text="A user deleted [content in my question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/73995/revisions) that took me almost 30 minutes to type up... so if I sound mad it is because I am (it feels like my time was unfairly stolen from me).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could I get some help with what I'm being told about this edit in the comments to [my question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73995/key-programming-for-hire-contract-points) please?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this editor is being unreasonable and is overly-narrowly applying some ideal about &quot;never having lists in questions because that always makes them too subjective and instantly in the format 'I like X, what do you like'?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm asking because I don't want to just have an edit war, which I could very easily and fanatically do, (though he might then flag my question as inappropriate to assert his personal control to get the outcome he wants), but rather I'm looking for input from many instead of letting just the one person unilaterally dictate to me how he's going to run my question for me on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if the consensus is that the list I included should be deleted, I think the edit was NOT in the spirit of what the edit privilege should be used for. I edit posts on stackoverflow ALL the time... to improve the grammar or format the code or add a link or state an important caveat. But I would never just delete whole sections I don't like. That in my opinion should be handled through communication with the poster, because even though we are able to edit other people's posts, *the original poster still owns the question* unless it's been made community wiki. Some respect of the poster's intent and time seems in order to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just in case the comments get deleted, here they are for the record:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi Erik, list questions, especially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; list questions that provide answers in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the body, aren't constructive here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There is, however, a good question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; without the list, so I've edited your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question to remove your rules for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; crowd-sourcing a list. You can always&#xD;&#xA;&gt; provide your examples as an answer to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your question, but keep in mind what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; types of answers work well here. –&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mark Trapp&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Mark The&#xD;&#xA;&gt; faq doesn't say anything about &quot;list&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions&quot;. And I don't think I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; provided the answer in the body. The&#xD;&#xA;&gt; point of the list was to save any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answerers the work of thinking about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; every possible important item, so they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; could focus on the ones that the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; contract missed. To me it seems a very&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answerable question. If I rephrased my&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question &quot;what are the other points we&#xD;&#xA;&gt; missed in this contract&quot; will that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; avoid all appearance of answering the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question in the question? It was kind&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of brutal to slash what took me 25&#xD;&#xA;&gt; minutes to distill and type up. – Erik&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Erik&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from the part of the FAQ I linked to,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;To prevent your question from being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; flagged and possibly removed, avoid&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking subjective questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; where...your answer is provided along&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with the question, and you expect more&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers: “I use ______ for ______,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what do you use?”&quot; See also the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; explanation of the second guideline&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for constructive questions in the Good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective, Bad Subjective article I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; linked, which explains the problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with list questions. – Mark Trapp&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Erik&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your question is fine as it is now:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the only thing I removed was the list&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and the request for a list. As I said&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in my earlier comment, you're welcome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to offer your own research as an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer instead: doing so would have&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the added benefit of getting separate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; feedback on what you've found so far.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; – Mark Trapp&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Mark If I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; provided program code I had already&#xD;&#xA;&gt; written and asked what was wrong with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it, you would hardly say &quot;don't&#xD;&#xA;&gt; provide the answer with the question&quot;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; even though the answer would repeat&#xD;&#xA;&gt; most of my code! You would understand&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was showing respect to the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participants by not making them&#xD;&#xA;&gt; produce the entire piece of code from&#xD;&#xA;&gt; scratch. If I show the contract we&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have now and ask for critique of it,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this is not even close to &quot;I use X,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what do you use?&quot; It is much closer to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;here's my code, what's wrong with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it?&quot; – Erik" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3727" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1526" RevisionGUID="52d297e7-32d8-4f4e-bc0a-734a611cee60" CreationDate="2011-05-05T18:35:30.643" UserId="226" Text="I think I agree with Mark here. As a moderator, he is well-versed in the aspects of the FAQ and types of questions that work well on Programmers. I'm sorry that removing the list comes across as a waste of the time it took you to type up the points, but I believe it is done to make the question more answerable and easier to read. Including a long list as part of the question makes it more difficult to provide good answers and harder to process the question as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mark mentioned, the points you made would be valid answers themselves and you're welcome to post them as such. That would maintain the acceptable an Q&amp;A format and your time spent distilling the contract down to those points would not be lost.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3728" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1527" RevisionGUID="a1f3ee68-e8a0-4748-8f00-7f767a4e44a1" CreationDate="2011-05-05T18:49:58.987" UserId="63" Text="&gt; A user deleted content in my question that took me almost 30 minutes to type up... so if I sound mad it is because I am (it feels like my time was unfairly stolen from me).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not lost. What you typed is still there in the revision history - if you take Mark's advice and convert it to an answer, or merely wish to reference it later on, you won't have to type it again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But I would never just delete whole sections I don't like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And you shouldn't. Your personal preference, void of any justification, is not a reason to edit. *However,* if the choice is between closing a question as not-constructive, or editing out the section that *makes it* not constructive, then by failing to edit you're doing the author a disservice. Don't be *timid* in your edits - as I noted, the system tracks revisions, so what you delete won't be permanently lost. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Some respect of the poster's intent and time seems in order to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming the poster's intent was to get an answer to his question, edits that further this goal are in line with it. Authors who are so attached to their words that they recoil at the thought of anyone else touching them have been discouraged from using these sites [in the FAQ][1] for a long, long, *loooong* time - pussy-footing around users who can't accept that is a disservice to both them and the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#editing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3729" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="1071" RevisionGUID="47ce3d3d-e156-4631-bfa1-ccf08809887b" CreationDate="2011-05-05T19:05:48.713" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="3730" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="1019" RevisionGUID="7485ab06-11d7-4575-bebd-5a2fdcabc18b" CreationDate="2011-05-05T19:06:02.553" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="3731" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1528" RevisionGUID="b52229a8-bd7e-4746-8bba-10c7a928a972" CreationDate="2011-05-05T19:16:00.767" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="If your intent is for a site recommendation, that's [off-topic here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask &quot;Where can I get X?&quot;—recommendation questions—don't really demonstrate learning. I can ask &quot;Where do I find good clients?&quot; and likely get an answer, but then a few days later, I can ask &quot;Where do I find good clients who have X?&quot;, then a few days later, &quot;Where do I find good clients who have Y?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of these questions help me learn *how* to select good clients, and answers just become a glorified search engine. That's not what Stack Exchange is about. Instead, we want to help you answer *how* to select good clients so the next time the issue comes up (but with a slightly different set of circumstances), you can answer it yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, it helps others who aren't in your same exact situation apply the question to their own situation, preventing multiple similar questions because the first question didn't exactly apply.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more information, check out [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/), which describes this problem in detail:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I had to summarize our network in a single word, that word is **“learning”**. People come to our sites to learn about topics they are passionate about. As the old Chinese proverb goes, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Every question and answer ultimately should be about teaching and learning — yes, even the shopping ones.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3734" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="554" RevisionGUID="d6cf2161-6d87-41e4-ba57-4889ad428c5e" CreationDate="2011-05-05T19:19:53.947" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="3736" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="829" RevisionGUID="bf759389-ef4c-4ebd-ac57-9aaa42004b8c" CreationDate="2011-05-05T19:22:53.977" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3737" PostHistoryTypeId="9" PostId="829" RevisionGUID="ed207167-5c7c-44be-943e-cbb824c8163d" CreationDate="2011-05-05T19:23:18.767" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Rollback to [ba1136e4-a2e7-42c5-b629-eb9992e25af0]" Text="|feature-request|" />
  <row Id="3738" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1529" RevisionGUID="d25feaca-67a7-46bf-8165-da5dfd926ea4" CreationDate="2011-05-05T19:26:55.050" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="There is no official repository of Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange Approved™ wallpapers, but this question has been asked on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/39049/where-can-i-get-stack-overflow-wallpapers), where you might find some questionable candidates." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3740" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="664" RevisionGUID="44931c21-b4b1-4c8d-a2ff-0296b7bce728" CreationDate="2011-05-05T19:28:39.557" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="3741" PostHistoryTypeId="11" PostId="664" RevisionGUID="0477a7b5-3dd0-44bf-ac30-73b66e2c1e9d" CreationDate="2011-05-05T19:28:52.443" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="3742" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1530" RevisionGUID="3934ea0a-670c-445d-86c7-fe8f3a6514bc" CreationDate="2011-05-05T19:35:41.330" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="When questions are moderated, generally people use their best judgement to determine the merits of the question *by itself*. Does it meet our site's standards? Does the question make sense? Is it answerable? I don't want to say it's completely non-existant, but it's exceedingly rare that community moderation takes into account the country of origin for a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, community moderation is governed by humans who occasionally make mistakes or overlook certain things. One question might get the benefit of community moderation, while another slips through the cracks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the cases where a question slips through the cracks and you notice it, it's important to do something about it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Edit the question to bring it in line with our site's [standards](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;* Comment on the question to provide feedback as to why the question doesn't fit&#xD;&#xA;* Use voting to down-vote bad things, up-vote good things, and close off-topic things.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's something that really needs attention right away, flag it for moderator review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3743" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="958" RevisionGUID="fd5b0666-4e17-4c63-ac60-d3aa54104a77" CreationDate="2011-05-05T19:39:15.460" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|search|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3744" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1531" RevisionGUID="931daa3e-1829-44cc-8118-6cbaa6e95c87" CreationDate="2011-05-05T19:40:14.023" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="There was an [issue or two](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/84799/149432) with case sensitivity in searches that was fixed. Searching for `f#` (lowercase) [now works](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=f%23)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3745" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1532" RevisionGUID="23881623-3908-4e43-b36d-d3a789313911" CreationDate="2011-05-05T19:47:27.373" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Your best bet when asking a question about resources like books or libraries is to ask how to solve the problem yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How can I select the best books for X?&#xD;&#xA;* What should I keep in mind when building a library for Y?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for a list of books isn't learning. The next time someone has that question, but with a slightly different set of circumstances, they're going to ask the same question but with a new qualifier. That's not really constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if you ask *how* to find the types of books you're looking for, others can apply the advice given to you to their own situation and get what they need even though they don't have the exact same situation as you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more information, check out [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/), which describes this problem in detail:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I had to summarize our network in a single word, that word is **“learning”**. People come to our sites to learn about topics they are passionate about. As the old Chinese proverb goes, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Every question and answer ultimately should be about teaching and learning — yes, even the shopping ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this end, we've been taking care of the book recommendation questions, as they aren't in keeping with the spirit of this site.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3746" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="914" RevisionGUID="924c8f62-9353-4fbb-b751-bc2c83ae9e79" CreationDate="2011-05-05T19:49:00.180" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="3747" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="914" RevisionGUID="443393f1-0555-491f-bbec-b68e2d8a6654" CreationDate="2011-05-05T19:49:09.680" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|merge-accounts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3748" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1522" RevisionGUID="e7509555-3b64-45f8-b5d0-085ab4e2c9c6" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:04:00.493" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Fix typos" Text="To answer this, I need to provide a little background:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the first Stack Exchange sites went into beta, it was expected all sites would get their own site and domain name. All sites in beta had boilerplate questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What should our domain name be?&#xD;&#xA;* What should our logo be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Web Applications.SE](http://webapps.stackexchange.com), the first non-trilogy Stack Exchange to launch, even launched under the moniker &quot;Nothing to Install&quot; with the domain name *nothingtoinstall.com*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, branding and naming is hard. *Nothing to Install* is an okay name, but certainly not a home run. And nobody had a better name for it; so you had this site, an important milestone in the Stack Exchange network, launching with a forgettable name. To make matters worse, there were several Stack Exchange sites ready to launch, most with equally *eh* names. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So that got the gears turning at the mothership that perhaps rapidly launching sites with mediocre names wasn't the best idea. At that point it was decided that unless a site has an absolutely fantastic name and had traffic levels comparable to Server Fault (i.e. several times more traffic than even the most popular non-trilogy site), the Stack Exchange brand is worth more than any forgettable name that might come up in beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All this (and more) is covered in the Stack Overflow Blog post, [Domain Names: The Wrong Question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/domain-names-the-wrong-question/). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also the discussion on Meta.Webapps.SE: [Webapps.stackexchange.com versus Nothingtoinstall.com](http://meta.webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/624/webapps-stackexchange-com-versus-nothingtoinstall-com)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3749" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1533" RevisionGUID="e84f1517-ad4a-47ce-8dae-f4d0a663449d" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:28:08.070" UserId="1785" Text="Any reason why the [career badge][1] is pink?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I noticed it on someones [profile][2] and it sparked my curiosity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/60/career&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/897/grandmasterb" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3750" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1533" RevisionGUID="e84f1517-ad4a-47ce-8dae-f4d0a663449d" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:28:08.070" UserId="1785" Text="Why is the career badge pink?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3751" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1533" RevisionGUID="e84f1517-ad4a-47ce-8dae-f4d0a663449d" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:28:08.070" UserId="1785" Text="|discussion|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3752" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1534" RevisionGUID="6683a897-9a46-47cb-b66f-6e4ba7ad9517" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:32:25.947" UserId="1554" Text="I believe that's because it's a badge for a tag (ie. they received 100 upvotes in that tag). It's not the same as a &quot;Nice Answer&quot; badge." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3753" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1535" RevisionGUID="0a42c3bd-bf04-4133-80bc-591eefbbe838" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:32:29.703" UserId="226" Text="Badges awarded for upvotes received in a particular tag (such as [tag:career]) have a different style to differentiate them from the other kind of badges. For example, I have a badge for the [meta-tag:discussion] tag here on meta and it's shown in pink as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for why it's pink instead of any other colour... not a clue. That's probably a question only [Jin ♦][1] can answer. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1685/jin" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3754" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1536" RevisionGUID="826ef05c-e860-4068-bcc8-ca0a6710bb00" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:32:39.987" UserId="47" Text="It's a tag badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two kinds of badges:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [general badges](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges) awarded for specific things&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag badges](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=tags) awarded &quot;These badges are awarded for participating in **non community-wiki questions** with particular tags.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag badges can be revoked if you fall below the criteria." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3755" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1537" RevisionGUID="e5616a22-fa72-4e0d-894d-1592f81c8ffc" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:36:16.003" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="ChrisF and Anna Lear answered why it's different, so I'm not going to repeat them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And [Jin](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1685/jin), Stack Exchange's designer-in-residence, would be able to answer definitively as to why it's *specifically* pink. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I always understood the badges to be abstractions of the Post-It Note:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Regular Badge&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Yellow Post-It Notes][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Tag Badge&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Pink Post-It Notes][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/fhKxX.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6GH6R.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3756" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="753" RevisionGUID="a31613af-72bf-488c-9c1c-b1e36f4d6fd6" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:42:52.973" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="3757" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="753" RevisionGUID="734ae688-b383-4723-8211-04568686815e" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:43:23.113" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3758" PostHistoryTypeId="11" PostId="753" RevisionGUID="f6653141-44a3-435e-9b9e-97f46acfae60" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:43:28.120" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="3759" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1538" RevisionGUID="8639a391-8d33-428a-9ec6-29d4308d9b99" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:46:51.610" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="[Stack Overflow Careers 2.0](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/) allows you to associate any open Stack Exchange site with your profile.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* More info: [Careers 2.0 Launches](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/careers-2-0-launches/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3760" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="101" RevisionGUID="282e1939-e32f-4752-ae89-573e0463014b" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:48:19.223" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [How to ask a question about software library resources](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1234/how-to-ask-a-question-about-software-library-resources)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;When asking a question that will result in a list (which is a big chunk of this site's content), people often provide an example answer in their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example:[What non programming books should a programmer read?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this is at least twofold. Firstly the question may get upvotes based on the example answer, rather than being a good question. Secondly, the answer provided in the question will not sit in the list in the correct place in the voting, as it's unlikely anyone else will add that answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose that we should encourage people when asking &quot;list&quot; type questions to provide their own answer separately so that the question and answer can be voted on independently, and the answer can be part of the list of answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/966/what-non-programming-books-should-a-programmer-read-that-helps-developing-progra" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3761" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="101" RevisionGUID="3d356318-64bc-42db-819c-0c366ef0d309" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:48:18.740" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[1234],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="3762" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="1187" RevisionGUID="302d5e43-14d9-47dc-904d-d7941eecb746" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:48:51.813" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="3763" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="664" RevisionGUID="b6d88237-82da-435d-90e8-4783d46c0b41" CreationDate="2011-05-05T21:38:16.263" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3764" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1539" RevisionGUID="bb2eab8e-ed61-40bf-931f-f596ffc96865" CreationDate="2011-05-06T07:14:29.417" UserId="2314" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74116/how-often-is-too-often-to-change-workplaces&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really something that uniquely applies to software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask this question because that question has received several upvotes, answers, and no close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this question actually specific to Programmers in some way?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-or-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this requirement still working for us?  Does the community even notice questions that violate that requirement? Or is this just one (of the many) that slip through?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3765" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1539" RevisionGUID="bb2eab8e-ed61-40bf-931f-f596ffc96865" CreationDate="2011-05-06T07:14:29.417" UserId="2314" Text="Is this question specific to programmers, or has everyone forgotten/relaxed about that requirement?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3766" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1539" RevisionGUID="bb2eab8e-ed61-40bf-931f-f596ffc96865" CreationDate="2011-05-06T07:14:29.417" UserId="2314" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3767" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1540" RevisionGUID="e3bd7ff0-f78a-4ba9-a22c-6ceb41af0530" CreationDate="2011-05-06T07:52:10.427" UserId="47" Text="I think that this is always going to be a problematical requirement. There will always be questions that slip through.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most people will think that *their* problem is unique to programmers even if it's not. Equally there will be people who see that question and also think that's it's unique to programmers and hence won't vote to close or flag the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The test is (as always) - replace the work &quot;programmer&quot; with &quot;lawyer&quot;, &quot;architect&quot;, &quot;fireman&quot; etc. and if the question still applies then it's off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All you can do, if you think it falls foul, is vote to close yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think it's not being seen by others then raise a flag or post a question like this on meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3768" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1541" RevisionGUID="b7ccd125-94a5-4e94-b604-bc54faf36aee" CreationDate="2011-05-06T11:46:23.940" UserId="24671" Text="I just entered this site from stackoverflow. First thing I notice is bad choice of colors, and that fonts are hard to read. Is there a way to customize these? or perhaps you changing it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3769" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1541" RevisionGUID="b7ccd125-94a5-4e94-b604-bc54faf36aee" CreationDate="2011-05-06T11:46:23.940" UserId="24671" Text="Hard to read fonts and bad choice of colors" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3770" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1541" RevisionGUID="b7ccd125-94a5-4e94-b604-bc54faf36aee" CreationDate="2011-05-06T11:46:23.940" UserId="24671" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3771" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1542" RevisionGUID="e8f40c4d-c72c-4365-a2c1-b213e3a18c25" CreationDate="2011-05-06T11:48:42.543" UserId="47" Text="The only way to customise the look of the site is via user scripts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you check [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/) there are some posted there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have positive suggestions then please edit them into your question. The designer, Jin, checks the sites from time to time and will see this question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3772" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1541" RevisionGUID="e117bd54-97a9-45f1-b86d-b5b786e5df4d" CreationDate="2011-05-06T11:48:52.420" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3773" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1541" RevisionGUID="c453da56-0e81-4823-8aaf-507f51849fba" CreationDate="2011-05-06T11:54:17.583" UserId="24671" Comment="added 208 characters in body; added 2 characters in body" Text="I just entered this site from stackoverflow. First thing I notice is bad choice of colors, and that fonts are hard to read. Is there a way to customize these? or perhaps you changing it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit --  &#xD;&#xA;White background and black fonts, it hurts my eyes.&#xD;&#xA;Fonts that look like handwriting are are to read.&#xD;&#xA;Overall look of website isn't attractive, maybe use warm colors? right now site looks dead." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3774" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1541" RevisionGUID="13964dfb-4827-4a10-ba55-a02bba3daf55" CreationDate="2011-05-06T12:11:13.387" UserId="24671" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="I just entered this site from stackoverflow. First thing I notice is bad choice of colors, and that fonts are hard to read. Is there a way to customize these? or perhaps you changing it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit --  &#xD;&#xA;White background and black fonts, it hurts my eyes.  &#xD;&#xA;Fonts that look like handwriting are are to read.  &#xD;&#xA;Overall look of website isn't attractive, maybe use warm colors? right now site looks dead." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3775" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1523" RevisionGUID="1ec90359-5c26-41ad-ba65-80e10b0ddb21" CreationDate="2011-05-06T15:45:38.937" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|recommendations|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3776" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1523" RevisionGUID="9fceb9f5-b2c2-49fd-979c-ea2bbd588e1c" CreationDate="2011-05-06T16:02:59.437" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|recommendations|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3777" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="1374" RevisionGUID="fa025745-950a-4c00-be95-0168f4b556c6" CreationDate="2011-05-07T20:59:05.980" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="3789" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1545" RevisionGUID="cd50593d-6d24-4013-b3e2-1e13faaf0520" CreationDate="2011-05-08T14:12:46.193" UserId="620" Text="It is very disconcerting to see that very simple tag synonyms were not being recognized for a long time. Is it possible to lower the tag synonym submission barrier so that more people can help identify them for voting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that the minimum reputation for synonym suggestion is there because there is a potential issue of disputes about whether two tags are true synonyms, which at times can become subjective and contentious. However there is a much larger class of tag synonyms which are rarely contentious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of setting a high barrier on submission, I'd suggest the following: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Lower submission barrier&#xD;&#xA;  * Allow multiple conflicting submissions and automatically list them together so that voters can choose the best interpretation&#xD;&#xA;  * A vote requirement that requires all of:&#xD;&#xA;    * A certain number (20?) of upvotes from everyone&#xD;&#xA;    * A certain number (5?) of upvotes from users active in either tag&#xD;&#xA;    * A certain number (1?) of upvotes from users active in both tags&#xD;&#xA;    * Or, a certain number of moderator votes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An alternative suggestion is to allow people of similar reputation to flag a suggestion as &quot;likely to be contentious&quot;. When flagged, the upvote requirements will be raised so as to avoid premature decision. When not flagged, that means most people do not consider it as contentious, such that the lower upvote requirements can be used.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3790" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1545" RevisionGUID="cd50593d-6d24-4013-b3e2-1e13faaf0520" CreationDate="2011-05-08T14:12:46.193" UserId="620" Text="Synonym tag request [tdd] [test-driven-development]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3791" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1545" RevisionGUID="cd50593d-6d24-4013-b3e2-1e13faaf0520" CreationDate="2011-05-08T14:12:46.193" UserId="620" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3792" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1546" RevisionGUID="0bfce4e7-68d1-4ddf-9252-d8b1ad2cc06a" CreationDate="2011-05-08T21:16:20.990" UserId="37" Text="These weren't actually synonyms because of the &quot;synonym can't have more questions than the tag it is a synonym of&quot; rule. Which doesn't really make sense when the counts are 36 and 30 respectively..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, I managed to get this one set up and merged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feel free to open meta requests as necessary to make sure tag synonyms get attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(and I'll look at making approve threshold met tag synonyms appear in moderator message queues..)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3793" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1545" RevisionGUID="394cf867-c015-4280-86ad-bcd939826010" CreationDate="2011-05-08T21:44:10.360" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|feature-request|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3794" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1547" RevisionGUID="203cbb9b-36e4-4f72-a297-176663b818af" CreationDate="2011-05-09T06:20:05.743" UserId="1685" Text="&gt; White background and black fonts, it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hurts my eyes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see how you'd have a problem with this site but not Stack Overflow especially since Programmers.se' text vs background has less harsh contrast than SO's.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Fonts that look like handwriting are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; are to read.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The hand-written font is only used on meta text, such as the navigation text and sidebar head text. You don't &quot;read&quot; these text, you simply &quot;scan&quot; them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Overall look of website isn't&#xD;&#xA;&gt; attractive, maybe use warm colors?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; right now site looks dead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like the other two points you've made, this is purely subjective. I typically ignore subjective design requests based purely on personal preferences. If I try to please everyone, I end up pleasing no one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3795" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1541" RevisionGUID="4978ab6c-bdad-4bc2-a84c-2a943ac6250e" CreationDate="2011-05-09T06:20:17.837" UserId="1685" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3796" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1548" RevisionGUID="737336c7-316c-49a5-9aa5-09205ab71e91" CreationDate="2011-05-09T10:56:10.710" UserId="620" Text="Perhaps a better phrase than &quot;too localized&quot; would be &quot;Question asker is **not assertive enough** to generate answers useful for anyone; original asker included.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3797" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1549" RevisionGUID="f28eb79a-3607-4d3f-bcc2-c090f23cc91a" CreationDate="2011-05-09T14:55:18.320" UserId="2329" Text="It is somewhat specific to programmers, as the nature of our work is particularly related to how frequently it is acceptable to change jobs.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3798" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1550" RevisionGUID="80c8c13f-af4b-489f-a6e7-801986a6ae4a" CreationDate="2011-05-09T16:24:47.910" UserId="6920" Text="I believe the question might not be specific, but a correct answer probably is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question makes sense with &quot;As a programmer...&quot; appended, then I think it fits the guideline.  Design and engineering jobs may overlap in questions, but the answers may be unique to programming." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3804" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1550" RevisionGUID="49974ddd-cc5d-4695-9020-d584618a22f8" CreationDate="2011-05-09T19:00:12.153" UserId="6920" Comment="added 102 characters in body" Text="I believe the question might not be specific, but a correct answer probably is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question makes sense with &quot;As a programmer...&quot; appended, then I think it fits the guideline.  Design and engineering jobs may overlap in questions, but the answers may be unique to programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read 'makes sense' as would in 'be applied with common sense', not merely 'grammatically correct'." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3810" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1552" RevisionGUID="c1bad2a6-23d4-4ef2-b8fb-0f050885f54b" CreationDate="2011-05-10T14:33:58.767" UserId="14401" Text="I feel strongly that my [question][1] was improperly closed. There is clearly a sharp difference of opinion on this question, but that is far different than the question being &quot;ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical&quot;. Even a moderator who closed the question took a definite position and answered the question in his/her comments. One answer that has received 14 upvotes already, so clearly people think that the question is answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a way to lobby to have the question reopened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75064/true-or-false-the-natural-limit-on-the-length-of-a-programming-career-is-about-2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3811" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1552" RevisionGUID="c1bad2a6-23d4-4ef2-b8fb-0f050885f54b" CreationDate="2011-05-10T14:33:58.767" UserId="14401" Text="How do I get my age bias question reopened" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3812" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1552" RevisionGUID="c1bad2a6-23d4-4ef2-b8fb-0f050885f54b" CreationDate="2011-05-10T14:33:58.767" UserId="14401" Text="|discussion|support|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3813" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1553" RevisionGUID="44fc9442-2e07-4c66-b154-c7b73a232e3f" CreationDate="2011-05-10T14:37:42.710" UserId="47" Text="This *is* the way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to get 5 people (or one moderator) to agree and vote to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By posting this question you've raised the profile of the question so it might be seen by enough people." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3814" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1553" RevisionGUID="f338f330-6128-40e9-829c-4a35a632326d" CreationDate="2011-05-10T15:06:17.353" UserId="47" Comment="clarification" Text="This *is* the way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to get 5 people with more than 3,000 reputation (or one moderator) to agree and vote to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By posting this question you've raised the profile of the question so it might be seen by enough people." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3815" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1554" RevisionGUID="70309c4d-8ea6-45aa-9c4d-489973d2caa1" CreationDate="2011-05-11T03:01:09.443" UserId="2314" Text="After reviewing (and leaving undecided, for now) a [suggested edit](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/993) that revealed that the [tag:websites] tag can have both concrete meaning (about developing websites or [having a website](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12279/is-having-your-own-website-important)) and meta-meaning ([websites about X](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/756/programming-puzzles)), I am not sure what to do with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* This [seems like a meta tag](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/) but, is it?  After all, if it is, then isn't [tag:books] also?&#xD;&#xA;* If it is a meta tag in one form, then how do we stop its growth, even if we untag all the meta-usages?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3816" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1554" RevisionGUID="70309c4d-8ea6-45aa-9c4d-489973d2caa1" CreationDate="2011-05-11T03:01:09.443" UserId="2314" Text="Is [websites] a meta tag, or just a tag with two legitimate meanings?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3817" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1554" RevisionGUID="70309c4d-8ea6-45aa-9c4d-489973d2caa1" CreationDate="2011-05-11T03:01:09.443" UserId="2314" Text="|discussion|tags|meta-tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3821" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1556" RevisionGUID="2db451fb-ee22-4301-9966-3e33d5a6b66f" CreationDate="2011-05-11T12:50:00.280" UserId="6287" Text="From the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Can I ask career advice questions?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Yes, within reason. Most career advice questions are specific to the poster's situation and run the risk of being closed. Try to generalize your situation into a good subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please note that the following subjects are considered off-topic here:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * What salary/wage should I ask for/expect? (Too localized to your place and time)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've noticed that a lot of questions are being asked along the lines of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I can choose between being an X developer or a Y engineer, which has better perspectives/salary?&#xD;&#xA;* Shall I get a Master's degree in part-time or should I go to a great school and do the Master's in full-time first?&#xD;&#xA;* I've worked at my company for six months, can I ask for a raise?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's easy to qualify these types of questions as being too localized (as noted in the FAQ): what type of work you should do depends on what you personally enjoy, whether you should get a degree or certifications depends on your personal ambitions, whether you deserve a raise depends on your contributions, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the same time, a lot of these questions are not closed because they lead to answers that can be useful in general: musings about the future of different technologies, the general usefulness of degrees and certifications and universal approaches to getting a raise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My feeling however is that while these answers may be useful, they are typically not what the asker wants. He/she just wants a detailed answer that will generally lead him to make a simple decision to make more money ASAP. So because of this, I wonder whether it would make sense to word the restrictions on career questions a bit stronger in the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Can I ask career advice questions?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Yes, but only general questions are allowed that can expect to get answers that will be of value to a large amount of professional software engineers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a recent enthusiast and daily visitor/answerer on this site, I just feel those &quot;Should I go for the degree?&quot; and &quot;How to get the most money?&quot; questions drag the site down a bit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3822" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1556" RevisionGUID="2db451fb-ee22-4301-9966-3e33d5a6b66f" CreationDate="2011-05-11T12:50:00.280" UserId="6287" Text="When are career questions too localized? Should this be more strict?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3823" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1556" RevisionGUID="2db451fb-ee22-4301-9966-3e33d5a6b66f" CreationDate="2011-05-11T12:50:00.280" UserId="6287" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|career|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3824" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1557" RevisionGUID="7fbc2b32-3cba-45b6-90bc-938ef124b27d" CreationDate="2011-05-11T12:56:43.090" UserId="47" Text="I think that your proposal makes a lot of sense. If we get a consensus as to whether it is a good idea and then the wording (though I should state that what you propose is acceptable to me) then I'll happily update the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On your point about the &quot;Should I go for the degree?&quot; and &quot;How to get the most money?&quot; type questions, please flag them for moderator attention. They might already have close votes but it won't hurt to bring them to our attention so they get dealt with sooner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think that the question is salvageable with a little editing suggest an edit. We don't get that many at the moment so it will be reviewed fairly quickly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3827" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1559" RevisionGUID="d44d7fab-6aa0-4373-9f82-53d475733f6d" CreationDate="2011-05-12T13:46:28.963" UserId="2344" Text="I like this, but I'll propose a slight wording change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Yes, but only questions that will be relevant to a large number of professional software developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that's more succinct and slightly better worded.  Discussions about that here or on writers.stackexchange.com." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3828" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1560" RevisionGUID="d5c587eb-5fac-405f-b631-95dd0d692a96" CreationDate="2011-05-12T15:48:37.840" UserId="3249" Text="I am referring to this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [What stressors do programmers encounter on the job?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can see that one of the moderators stepped in and added some guidance for answers, but it sure doesn't look like anybody took it seriously, and the question itself seems like a pure &quot;pet peeve&quot; poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there something I'm missing?  What redeeming value is there in a question like this?  How is it any different from simply asking *&quot;What do you hate about being a programmer?&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about dealing with *specific* impediments are great - I even answered one about [getting better requirements][2], that being the #1 item on the list in Joel's (accepted) answer.  Of course, the 3 line blurb there is (no offense to Joel) really not going to help any programmer be better at his/her job, whereas the former targeted question at least has a chance.  The &quot;stressors&quot; question is really just yet another bitch-fest, pardon my French.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ordinarily I'd just flag these questions, but since it's already picked up a ridiculous number of votes *and* been touched by at least one moderator, I figured it made more sense to ask for clarification.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74913/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/67923/3249" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3829" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1560" RevisionGUID="d5c587eb-5fac-405f-b631-95dd0d692a96" CreationDate="2011-05-12T15:48:37.840" UserId="3249" Text="Should the &quot;stressors&quot; question have been left open?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3830" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1560" RevisionGUID="d5c587eb-5fac-405f-b631-95dd0d692a96" CreationDate="2011-05-12T15:48:37.840" UserId="3249" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3833" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1561" RevisionGUID="630cdac8-3647-4588-8251-3362481ec8cf" CreationDate="2011-05-12T17:27:10.127" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I first looked at the question after it had been flagged: when I saw it, it had a couple of relatively decent answers and a couple of bad one-liner answers. I edited the question to try to get it away from being a list and to add the guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes that works, sometimes that doesn't. In this case, it didn't look like it did. I've gone through the question and deleted all the answers that were clearly one-liners ignoring the guidance set out. If there are any other answers that clearly miss the point of the question, flag them as not an answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I personally think there is a potential for some good advice there: the question isn't just &quot;What do you hate about programming?&quot;, it's &quot;what are the things that cause stress for programmers, and how can one manage them?&quot; But I'll leave it to the community to decide if the question needs to be ultimately closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3834" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1562" RevisionGUID="aace9ae0-2689-401a-9e03-3bcc391322d6" CreationDate="2011-05-12T19:03:17.370" UserId="3249" Text="I wasn't originally intending to answer my own question, but after some offline discussion it's become apparent that I should clarify what I think is wrong with the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. The wording is vague. The definition of &quot;stress&quot; and &quot;manage&quot; is unclear, and indeed, if you look at the answers you'll see that different people had different interpretations.  Some thought of it in terms of productivity, others thought of it in terms of anxiety/job satisfaction, and not surprisingly of course, many considered it to be any kind of frustration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  2. It doesn't provide any criteria for evaluating the rightness or wrongness of an answer, which is one of the main litmus tests for constructiveness. Although the moderator note says to &quot;back it up&quot;, neither the question nor the note really explain *how* one is supposed to back up such an answer, since stress is a very personal issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  3. Although it is technically aimed at solving problems, it's not trying to solve a *single* problem, it's trying to solve an *arbitrarily large set* of problems.  That's extremely broad, and reminiscent of discussion forum mega-threads.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    There's an entire *category* of specific questions here that could be asked - how do I manage unrealistic expectations, how do I gather better requirements, how do I solicit user feedback, how can I limit my other duties, etc.  All great questions by themselves, but this überquestion lazily asks for a hasty summary of *every* possible productivity factor, which (a) may discourage more specific questions from being asked, and (b) really doesn't give answerers a good opportunity to provide much substance or context.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So take your pick.  It's either too vague (NARQ), too broad (NARQ), too open-ended (NC), or a mass duplicate of all of the other [tag:career], [tag:environment], and [tag:job] questions combined.  That's a lot of reasons to close." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3835" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1562" RevisionGUID="afcd6398-fed2-4226-a02d-8b78c8727a18" CreationDate="2011-05-12T19:29:57.930" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="I wasn't originally intending to answer my own question, but after some offline discussion it's become apparent that I should clarify what I think is wrong with the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. The wording is vague. The definition of &quot;stress&quot; and &quot;manage&quot; is unclear, and indeed, if you look at the answers you'll see that different people had different interpretations.  Some thought of it in terms of productivity, others thought of it in terms of anxiety/job satisfaction, and not surprisingly of course, many considered it to be any kind of frustration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  2. It doesn't provide any criteria for evaluating the rightness or wrongness of an answer, which is one of the main litmus tests for constructiveness. Although the moderator note says to &quot;back it up&quot;, neither the question nor the note really explain *how* one is supposed to back up such an answer, since stress is a very personal issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  3. Although it is technically aimed at solving problems, it's not trying to solve a *single* problem, it's trying to solve an *arbitrarily large set* of problems.  That's extremely broad, and reminiscent of discussion forum mega-threads.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  4. There's an entire *category* of specific questions here that could be asked - how do I manage unrealistic expectations, how do I gather better requirements, how do I solicit user feedback, how can I limit my other duties, etc.  All great questions by themselves, but this überquestion lazily asks for a hasty summary of *every* possible productivity factor, which (a) may discourage more specific questions from being asked, and (b) really doesn't give answerers a good opportunity to provide much substance or context.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So take your pick.  It's either too vague (NARQ), too broad (NARQ), too open-ended (NC), or a mass duplicate of all of the other [tag:career], [tag:environment], and [tag:job] questions combined.  That's a lot of reasons to close." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3836" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1563" RevisionGUID="98ed9ddd-8aed-4b45-a36a-c2f53588b2a0" CreationDate="2011-05-12T21:48:41.477" UserId="22235" Text="Difficult for me to say. It was certainly a low signal/noise question but there *was* some signal in there. Joel's answer I think is useful enough to redeem a lot of the original question's faults." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3837" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1564" RevisionGUID="858069fe-1d89-48a6-b2ee-f9a2d6af384a" CreationDate="2011-05-13T05:26:21.370" UserId="906" Text="I see nothing in that question or the answers that only pertains to programmers. Voted to close." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3838" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1565" RevisionGUID="521ba5cb-6bc8-4308-929e-0b290b56a163" CreationDate="2011-05-13T08:31:22.483" UserId="5148" Text="Programmers kicked me to the app offline screen today and I couldn't help but notice it still had the beta tag on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://sstatic.net/skins/sketchy/app_offline.htm&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The url and content looks generic enough but it is also using the old programmers skin." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3839" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1565" RevisionGUID="521ba5cb-6bc8-4308-929e-0b290b56a163" CreationDate="2011-05-13T08:31:22.483" UserId="5148" Text="The word &quot;beta&quot; still appears in the app offline html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3840" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1565" RevisionGUID="521ba5cb-6bc8-4308-929e-0b290b56a163" CreationDate="2011-05-13T08:31:22.483" UserId="5148" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3841" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1565" RevisionGUID="dfd1cf36-3cb3-43c6-b999-578a7e98d705" CreationDate="2011-05-13T11:59:22.423" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3846" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1567" RevisionGUID="544f8455-e0a5-46de-8ace-6028eb265baf" CreationDate="2011-05-13T14:49:40.750" UserId="6287" Text="Since the maximum amount of votes went from 30 to 40, there's a small bug in the code showing the yellow &quot;votes left&quot; notification box. When I vote 40 times on a day, I get the following notifications, after:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* 25: 5 votes left&#xD;&#xA;* 35: 5 votes left&#xD;&#xA;* 36: 4 votes left&#xD;&#xA;* etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the notifications have been updated to work with the new limit of 40, except for the &quot;5 votes left&quot; which fires after 25 (incorrect) and 35 (correct) votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've seen this multiple times, so I'm pretty sure it's not a browser glitch or something that would cause it to happen only sometimes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3847" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1567" RevisionGUID="544f8455-e0a5-46de-8ace-6028eb265baf" CreationDate="2011-05-13T14:49:40.750" UserId="6287" Text="Bug in votes left notification" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3848" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1567" RevisionGUID="544f8455-e0a5-46de-8ace-6028eb265baf" CreationDate="2011-05-13T14:49:40.750" UserId="6287" Text="|bug|voting|notifications|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3849" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1567" RevisionGUID="2f49ba4e-9115-4c82-a482-11c9b35b8135" CreationDate="2011-05-13T15:33:08.193" UserId="2654" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-reproduced|voting|notifications|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3850" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1568" RevisionGUID="4943648e-c221-46a3-86cc-576a4c2e9e7a" CreationDate="2011-05-13T17:46:50.583" UserId="22235" Text="I have perceived some inconsistency regarding the treatment of borderline OT questions. For instance, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76144/in-what-context-php-is-easier-than-asp-net-c has had comment discussion leaning towards reopening even though it seems (to me) to violate the &quot;Which technology is better?&quot; clause in the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it enough to replace &quot;better&quot; with a near synonym such as &quot;easier&quot; to avoid closing, or is there some deeper reason that this question is on-topic? I think &quot;easier&quot; could also be replaced with a lot of other near-synonyms to give this question a broader application.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, did this question slip through on a technicality or is it in fact a type of question that we want to encourage ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3851" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1568" RevisionGUID="4943648e-c221-46a3-86cc-576a4c2e9e7a" CreationDate="2011-05-13T17:46:50.583" UserId="22235" Text="Are &quot;Which technology is easier&quot; questions on-topic even though &quot;Which technology is better&quot; questions are off-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3852" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1568" RevisionGUID="4943648e-c221-46a3-86cc-576a4c2e9e7a" CreationDate="2011-05-13T17:46:50.583" UserId="22235" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3853" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1569" RevisionGUID="ee2af2c6-5d9e-4532-a709-28d883e221a9" CreationDate="2011-05-14T05:05:28.487" UserId="4092" Text="There used to be a very popular question on Stack Overflow called [Surprise for a programmer on Birthday][1], but it got deleted. It had a bunch of suggestions for humorous code snippets and other jokes to put on a programmer's birthday cake, and I was planning to post pictures of the cake I just made with inspiration from some of those suggestions. It seems obvious to me that posting something on Stack Overflow is just going to get deleted, but would it be welcome on this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm hoping that it is close enough to a programming puzzle and far enough from mindless social fun that it would be tolerated here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just to be clear, I want to create a page with a question like, &quot;What are some fun ideas for decorating a programmer's birthday cake?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to see the content of the old page, it's available on [Stack Printer][2]. I also asked a slightly more general version of this question on [the main meta site][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2420689/surprise-for-a-programmer-on-birthday/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.stackprinter.com/export?question=2420689&amp;format=HTML&amp;service=stackoverflow&amp;printer=false&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/91219/131335" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3854" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1569" RevisionGUID="ee2af2c6-5d9e-4532-a709-28d883e221a9" CreationDate="2011-05-14T05:05:28.487" UserId="4092" Text="Is a question about birthday cakes for programmers welcome here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3855" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1569" RevisionGUID="ee2af2c6-5d9e-4532-a709-28d883e221a9" CreationDate="2011-05-14T05:05:28.487" UserId="4092" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|fun|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3856" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1570" RevisionGUID="3a157845-cb06-4347-8495-1fb608287fbe" CreationDate="2011-05-14T05:18:10.847" UserId="226" Text="Hi Don. No, a question like that would not be a good fit for Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More specifically, while it would be technically on topic, it wouldn't be constructive. We try to avoid &quot;list of X&quot; questions that ask for and attract lots of short, equally valid answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's take a closer look at the guidelines for good subjective questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1) inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Probably not, but I could see some answers explaining what they're about. I'd expect those to be exceptions, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2) tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Highly unlikely. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3) have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, in the sense that it's hard to argue about cake.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4) invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could invite others to only suggest cakes they've seen or eaten themselves, but that's neither enforceable nor practical, all things considered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 5) insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are no facts or references that could back up an opinion along the lines of &quot;I think this would make a great cake for a programmer&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 6) are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It may not be mindless, but the proposed question is the very definition of social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So out of 6 guidelines, this question would only fit #3 for sure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Relevant FAQ sections:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answerable questions based on actual&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problems that you face. Chatty,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; open-ended questions diminish the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; usefulness of our site and push other&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions off the front page. To&#xD;&#xA;&gt; prevent your question from being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; flagged and possibly removed, avoid&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; every answer is equally valid: “What’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is “I would like to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participate in a discussion about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ______”, then you should not be asking here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3857" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1571" RevisionGUID="64bf9e7b-b5e4-4df5-ad7d-1703545eb623" CreationDate="2011-05-14T05:28:30.387" UserId="226" Text="I'm of two minds about this question. On one hand, it did focus on the &quot;why&quot; rather than the asking if PHP was easier. On the other, language/framework comparison *is* almost always a touchy subject and we're kind of hitting the saturation point on PHP vs ASP.NET questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately I'm happy to see that the question got a few good answers, and I think I'm with Mr CRT here: comparisons are okay so long as they're constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I don't feel strongly enough for the question (especially in light of it having received answers to choose from) to reopen it against 5 close votes from community members." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3859" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1572" RevisionGUID="b13be983-23b4-42c3-8db0-f60bb050c0b4" CreationDate="2011-05-14T05:44:31.993" UserId="226" Text="Looking through a few questions, I think it'd be reasonable to keep [tag:websites] as a tag denoting web-based resources. Training materials are potentially within the scope of our site, so that seems reasonable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many questions asking for resources fall into the &quot;not constructive&quot; bucket, but periodically there are ones worth preserving, so I hesitate to argue for the tag's (and the questions' that go with it) complete removal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the concrete meaning, we have the [tag:web-development] tag, which I think should be used instead of [tag:websites] when the question deals with developing websites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3860" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1573" RevisionGUID="856f94aa-1bad-456b-b9f9-f6bbde181ed9" CreationDate="2011-05-14T06:24:57.210" UserId="5777" Text="Don't get me wrong: I understand the argument that the answer in almost all cases is &quot;it depends&quot;. Nevertheless, many people **do** want some advice on the applicability of various languages in the real world and it seems to me that programmers is the place to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there is a meta-question that most people who ask this question have: &quot;How much value is there to my career if I learn another language?&quot; or, maybe, &quot;does it really matter that much which languages I know?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again: I understand that this is localised and may be specific to a person's individual circumstances, but it also seems that it would be really helpful to a bunch of people to have an answer that says &quot;knowing languages is good&quot; rather than &quot;don't ask that; it's off-topic&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess I'm asking how we can help those people who are trying to make an important decision about their career development but don't have the industry experience to know that it's not quite the right question to be asking. They are asking for mentorship and I don't think immediately closing the question is helpful or encouraging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a better place we can refer these questions to? I don't see any stack sites that would be more appropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3861" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1573" RevisionGUID="856f94aa-1bad-456b-b9f9-f6bbde181ed9" CreationDate="2011-05-14T06:24:57.210" UserId="5777" Text="Why is &quot;what language should I learn&quot; considered off-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3862" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1573" RevisionGUID="856f94aa-1bad-456b-b9f9-f6bbde181ed9" CreationDate="2011-05-14T06:24:57.210" UserId="5777" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3863" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1574" RevisionGUID="d68c68a5-cf0b-4b04-965f-49b660f332ba" CreationDate="2011-05-14T07:03:01.653" UserId="12611" Text="The reason it's off topic is because the question has been asked already so many times that it's no longer a valuable question for the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just take a look at this search for [Search: What language next](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=what+language+next) and look at all of the countless questions about what language to learn next.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is also not valuable because it's just too argumentative and not constructive. It's the type of question that just spurs a lot of debate between the different groups of developers who defend their platform *because* it's their platform. You can do a quick Google search and find many dead forums on this topic that have died simply because the noise was too overwhelming. The Q&amp;A site goals are different:  To create great content to serve as a reference of questions and answers that will still be valuable in years to come.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, the answer to the question really doesn't matter. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3864" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1575" RevisionGUID="af7b02ad-f806-4b58-8e27-6254b11aea18" CreationDate="2011-05-14T08:11:51.977" UserId="20255" Text="THe question may seem generic at face value but one thing should be keptin mind: The same question can generate radically different answers for different professions. For example this question is almost useless for a governement servant(atleast here in India) becuase beauraucrats just dont hop jobs at the same rate as developers do. So I think it is a valid question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3865" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1576" RevisionGUID="8379b70b-d905-4e04-a139-09d77cda7132" CreationDate="2011-05-14T10:10:31.703" UserId="47" Text="The simple answer is that the question as stated &quot;which language should I learn next?&quot; is **unanswerable**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only answer anyone should give is **always** &quot;it depends&quot; - which isn't an answer at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does it depend on? Well this is an incomplete list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What languages you already know&#xD;&#xA;* What problem you want to solve&#xD;&#xA;* What environment you have to solve the problem in&#xD;&#xA;* What language the company you're about to join uses&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the only answers you get (as jmort253 points out) are ones promoting people's favourite language. The votes then become meaningless with people voting up their favourite and voting down the one(s) they hate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately it's not a real problem. The next language you should learn is largely determined by the project you are working on and unless you are in the rare situation of having complete freedom over what you do this will have been chosen by someone else." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3866" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1572" RevisionGUID="0882888b-5d01-4b09-bb45-a40b8ece8f72" CreationDate="2011-05-14T15:25:37.500" UserId="226" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="Looking through a few questions, I think it'd be reasonable to keep [tag:websites] as a tag denoting web-based resources. Training materials are potentially within the scope of our site, so that seems reasonable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many questions asking for resources fall into the &quot;not constructive&quot; bucket, but periodically there are ones worth preserving, so I hesitate to argue for the complete removal of the tag and the questions that go with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the concrete meaning, we have the [tag:web-development] tag, which I think should be used instead of [tag:websites] when the question deals with developing websites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3867" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1577" RevisionGUID="08ab5ba9-c7ec-4bc8-b00e-7efcda605114" CreationDate="2011-05-15T07:57:08.960" UserId="1608" Text="I've had a question migrated here but I don't think its a good fit for programmers. If I understand the nature of the questions you get.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76396/how-can-you-make-a-cluster-run-a-task-only-once&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should this have been migrated here? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3868" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1577" RevisionGUID="08ab5ba9-c7ec-4bc8-b00e-7efcda605114" CreationDate="2011-05-15T07:57:08.960" UserId="1608" Text="Is this question a good match for this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3869" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1577" RevisionGUID="08ab5ba9-c7ec-4bc8-b00e-7efcda605114" CreationDate="2011-05-15T07:57:08.960" UserId="1608" Text="|discussion|support|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3870" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1578" RevisionGUID="36c2d745-ad85-4113-b9e4-6ea6e6e73570" CreationDate="2011-05-15T12:22:40.943" UserId="16637" Text="Just because a question is not valid on Stack Overflow doesn't automatically mean it is suited to Programmers (i.e. a question can be off-topic for *both* Stack Overflow and Programmers - or every Stack Exchange site). You'd get the response you're looking for by asking this question on http://meta.stackoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, I don't this the question is constructive (regarding the Programmers FAQ)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3871" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1579" RevisionGUID="fb68977a-b001-4721-a4c3-d278ffb1848d" CreationDate="2011-05-15T17:19:04.923" UserId="25310" Text="Recently I posted a question that asked a slightly similar (but not anywhere near exactly the same as) question which had already been posted by another user. Shortly thereafter, it was closed as a &quot;Duplicate&quot; by a moderator, and I was not given a chance to edit/change it or what-not before the question simply disappeared from my profile.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any way to dispute these flags when they come up? Should I contact the site admins or the flagging mod directly?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks in advance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Also, please forgive my ignorance if this has already been addressed. I signed up today and I've been going through the FAQs and what-not but I haven't come across anything that talks about this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3872" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1579" RevisionGUID="fb68977a-b001-4721-a4c3-d278ffb1848d" CreationDate="2011-05-15T17:19:04.923" UserId="25310" Text="Is there any way to dispute moderator flags such as &quot;duplicate&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3873" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1579" RevisionGUID="fb68977a-b001-4721-a4c3-d278ffb1848d" CreationDate="2011-05-15T17:19:04.923" UserId="25310" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3874" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1580" RevisionGUID="7f176558-78d5-4c8a-a83a-d7b7c691bd75" CreationDate="2011-05-15T18:11:20.537" UserId="5777" Text="After reading the FAQ and the answers in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic, I feel that there is still a hole in the discussion, namely how can we help all those people that are genuinely asking for advice on how to progress their careers in terms of language knowledge?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems that there are a lot of college-level people asking this question and getting immediately closed as off-topic. I don't see that response as being particularly helpful, so I'd like to see some discussion around how we could update the FAQ or provide some useful feedback to the person asking the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More senior stackoverflow/programmers users know that in the real world knowing any particular language is not as important as knowing a range of languages, environments and toolkits. Juniors, however, do not know this. This is not limited to the software world, either. People will also agonize over whether to learn French or Spanish, or to study inorganic chemistry vs biochemistry etc. In each case *it doesn't really matter* except in specific circumstances (e.g. if you **really** want to work at the French embassy, or you only ever want to work with Android) as long as you learn *something*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is perfectly reasonable for a college kid to ask &quot;what should I learn&quot; or &quot;where should I focus my effort&quot; and so on, and for them many of the reasons why these are considered off-topic questions are irrelevant. To quote one of the answers from the http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    What does it depend on? Well this is an incomplete list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    What languages you already know&#xD;&#xA;    What problem you want to solve&#xD;&#xA;    What environment you have to solve the problem in&#xD;&#xA;    What language the company you're about to join uses&#xD;&#xA;    and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For college kids only the first point is relevent (and even then only vaguely - college kids are unlikely to be an expert in *any* language yet). They're not looking to solve a particular problem or join a particular company, and without some industry experience they will have no idea what &quot;and so on&quot; encompasses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think they're attempting to ask a deeper question &quot;How does one become a strong, employable developer&quot; but they don't know how to ask it. They mistakenly think that choice of language is the most important thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can we help the junior users to understand this without discouraging them with an immediate &quot;this is off-topic, go away&quot;? It could be as simple as a canned response that points them to a website hosting a good discussion of what makes a good developer (I know, I know, that's subjective and argumentative in itself)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3875" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1580" RevisionGUID="7f176558-78d5-4c8a-a83a-d7b7c691bd75" CreationDate="2011-05-15T18:11:20.537" UserId="5777" Text="How can we help people who ask &quot;What language should I learn next&quot; ask a better question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3876" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1580" RevisionGUID="7f176558-78d5-4c8a-a83a-d7b7c691bd75" CreationDate="2011-05-15T18:11:20.537" UserId="5777" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3877" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1581" RevisionGUID="7779fe33-f212-49ce-9ac0-3a9182ba6ccb" CreationDate="2011-05-15T18:38:44.100" UserId="25310" Text="I'm someone who really wants to learn about programming, and I ask the &quot;What language should I learn?&quot; question a lot around the office and what-not, because, to me, it seems like a plausible starting point. In most professions, you begin by asking &quot;What skills do I need?&quot; and most employers will say &quot;X, Y, and Z&quot; skills. This is where I think this line of thinking comes from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think you're right in saying that the question should really be reformulated as &quot;How do I become a strong, employable developer?&quot; But what does that mean? What market am I supposed to shoot for? How do I define my interests if I don't know what languages are out there that will do what I want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand why so many people here would get frustrated by the &quot;What language should I learn?&quot; discussion, because it IS so open ended, but at the same time I think some clarificatory questions are helpful for the newbies because often times they (myself included) have no idea what their interests are and are just looking for the fastest way to get their hands dirty in the programming field.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just my two cents as a fledgling developer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3878" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1582" RevisionGUID="1ffc9720-582a-4af2-a88e-cc4ec3104c8c" CreationDate="2011-05-15T18:41:42.743" UserId="226" Text="Welcome to Programmers!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Making a meta post is exactly the right way to dispute something like that. Please include the link to the question that you think was wrongly closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3879" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1579" RevisionGUID="345fac62-3519-4c1f-badb-0a09a4bd7d98" CreationDate="2011-05-15T18:45:18.183" UserId="25310" Comment="added 223 characters in body" Text="Recently I posted a question that asked a slightly similar (but not anywhere near exactly the same as) question which had already been posted by another user. Shortly thereafter, it was closed as a &quot;Duplicate&quot; by a moderator, and I was not given a chance to edit/change it or what-not before the question simply disappeared from my profile.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any way to dispute these flags when they come up? Should I contact the site admins or the flagging mod directly?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks in advance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Also, please forgive my ignorance if this has already been addressed. I signed up today and I've been going through the FAQs and what-not but I haven't come across anything that talks about this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit II: Per Anna's request, here is the link to the question to which I'm referring: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76484/i-feel-like-i-am-capable-of-learning-how-to-code-but-i-lose-motivation-because-i" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3880" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1583" RevisionGUID="d6c419c4-2906-4637-81ad-bb92c1ad1ee8" CreationDate="2011-05-15T19:06:34.033" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="When a new user first asks a question, they're asked to read (and explicitly agree to) [How to Ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask) that describes how to ask a constructive question, including some very basic advice along with links:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On-site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Our search](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search) so they can get help immediately instead of asking a duplicated question&#xD;&#xA;* [Our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) so they can understand what questions work best here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Off-site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Google's [tips for getting help](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/09/tips-for-getting-help-with-your-site.html)&#xD;&#xA;* Jon Skeet's [Writing the perfect question](http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx)&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask question's the smart way](http://catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help vampires: a spotter's guide](http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/)&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask a question](http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When they start typing in a question title, the system presents them with a ton of related questions that might be really close to what they intended to ask about, thereby preventing another question that covers the same ground from being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, most questions get a ton of feedback in comments (and in answers) addressing the *problems* with the question: a question asker can use that feedback to edit and better hone their question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, when a question is closed, there's a very brief message that explains what was wrong with the question, and in most cases, moderators will leave a comment explaining what was wrong and what the next steps are for the user (how to rephrase, what to read, or how to get the question reopened).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By all means, we'd love for every possible developer to be able to ask questions that are going to get answers that are helpful to them, but after all of the above, they *still* ask an off-topic question, or a question that's not constructive, or a question that doesn't clearly say what problem the asker is trying to solve, **I'm not sure there's any more we can do.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is one of the more popular Stack Exchange sites: we get a lot of users, a lot of questions, and a lot of answers. We can't spend a great deal of time mentoring every single user who happens upon the site: at some point, users either need to help themselves and figure out if they're in the right place to ask their question (and, if they are, how to ask it in a way that makes it interesting to other people), or if they can't, find a place that's better suited for them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3881" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1583" RevisionGUID="b5b8b86a-8722-4e99-9bb6-7ff5ca6a832d" CreationDate="2011-05-15T19:11:55.213" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="When a new user first asks a question, they're asked to read (and explicitly agree to) [How to Ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask) that describes how to ask a constructive question, including some very basic advice along with links:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On-site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Our search](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search) so they can get help immediately instead of asking a duplicated question&#xD;&#xA;* [Our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) so they can understand what questions work best here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Off-site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Google's [tips for getting help](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/09/tips-for-getting-help-with-your-site.html)&#xD;&#xA;* Jon Skeet's [Writing the perfect question](http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx)&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask question's the smart way](http://catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help vampires: a spotter's guide](http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/)&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask a question](http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When they start typing in a question title, the system presents them with a ton of related questions that might be really close to what they intended to ask about, thereby preventing another question that covers the same ground from being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, most questions get a ton of feedback in comments (and in answers) addressing the *problems* with the question: a question asker can use that feedback to edit and better hone their question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, when a question is closed, there's a very brief message that explains what was wrong with the question; and, in most cases, moderators will leave a comment explaining what was wrong and what the next steps are for the user (how to rephrase, what to read, or how to get the question reopened).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By all means, we'd love for every possible developer to be able to ask questions that are going to get answers that are helpful to them, but after all of the above, they *still* ask an off-topic question, or a question that's not constructive, or a question that doesn't clearly say what problem the asker is trying to solve, **I'm not sure there's any more we can do.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is one of the more popular Stack Exchange sites: we get a lot of users, a lot of questions, and a lot of answers. We can't spend a great deal of time mentoring every single user who happens upon the site: at some point, users either need to help themselves and figure out if they're in the right place to ask their question (and, if they are, how to ask it in a way that makes it interesting to other people), or if they can't, find a place that's better suited for them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3882" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1573" RevisionGUID="de576c21-d2a5-4b28-96f0-7b1d977a587a" CreationDate="2011-05-15T20:12:03.627" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3883" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1584" RevisionGUID="1930a173-205a-437a-b212-f8369e024cfe" CreationDate="2011-05-15T23:35:57.473" UserId="25276" Text="First of all, like noted by an above answer, it depends on countless factors about yourself that we don't know about and don't have the time to learn about. Only you know all of these. But as this as already been discussed, I won't get to into this reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps the biggest reason this question should not be asked is because it has already been asked countless times across the Internet. It is also an extremely subjunctive question because of the large amount of pure opinion that can be put into it. Even Programmers, which is the subjective site, discourages questions with this much subjectiveness. It turns into useless babble and debates where the experts and professionals that can attempt to answer your question effectively get drowned out. Both are reasons on their own that they should not be asked on a Stack Exchange website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you ask a question on the Stack Exchange Network, you are somewhat expected to do your own research on the question to see if you can answer it yourself before you ask it. I'm sure that if anyone asking this question took the time to go to Google and type the question in there, they would find many resources that would help them answer their question, many of them ironically being Stack Exchange questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3888" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1585" RevisionGUID="4ca315aa-fb16-46a6-9292-8ef028614013" CreationDate="2011-05-16T12:49:27.733" UserId="17561" Text="I'd find it useful if there was an option to only display open questions. I find some of the closed questions useful but a click to open questions only (not unlike being able to click to bounty questions) would be useful. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there some way to do this that I've missed or is this a case of &quot;that's just the way it is&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not asking on aesthetic grounds - it's purely a practical question - it's less efficient for me to scan a list of questions I can't answer than a list of questions I can answer. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3889" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1585" RevisionGUID="4ca315aa-fb16-46a6-9292-8ef028614013" CreationDate="2011-05-16T12:49:27.733" UserId="17561" Text="Is it possible to provide an active questions list that doesn't include closed questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3890" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1585" RevisionGUID="4ca315aa-fb16-46a6-9292-8ef028614013" CreationDate="2011-05-16T12:49:27.733" UserId="17561" Text="|feature-request|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3891" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1586" RevisionGUID="ca4f45d0-ff2f-4164-a592-4c3cd42369fa" CreationDate="2011-05-16T12:54:56.530" UserId="47" Text="You can use&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed:0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;in the search which gives the url:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search for more search options." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3892" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1587" RevisionGUID="fd48bad7-84a3-472d-ac4f-31ae206ed299" CreationDate="2011-05-16T14:14:10.093" UserId="1931" Text="I'll just bring up one point that hasn't been mentioned to this point... in our FAQ, the VERY first sentence is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps I'm adding my own emphasis when reading this but to me one of the key words is expert.  We seem to have drifted away from this over time and I would bet that now more than half of the questions asked are asked by absolute beginners or students looking for advice of some sort. Most students are not expert programmers and by definition most of their questions would be off-topic if the FAQ was strictly enforced.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Aside: We should either enforce this point more or change the FAQ to represent reality.  Since I don't think the original intent was to be exclusionary, I would vote for changing the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3893" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1588" RevisionGUID="f53b5cc1-9471-44c2-acef-b03343a513f4" CreationDate="2011-05-16T14:43:42.770" UserId="226" Text="I'm noodling on the idea of making a &quot;definitive&quot; post along the lines of &quot;how should I choose my next language?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the idea that the answers would be along the lines of &quot;look at your project requirements, explore market trends, etc&quot;. That way we could provide a helpful response (via closing the &quot;what should I learn next&quot; question as a duplicate) while making sure that the questions aren't allowed to stick around for too long.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A &quot;FAQ&quot; thread on meta with links to that question and possibly others like it (I can think of a few questions we get often even though they're either not answerable or otherwise not appropriate for SE) and/or an FAQ tag on the main site could also help." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3894" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1577" RevisionGUID="91aab0bb-38c7-46b4-8188-c4c4c9c0d31d" CreationDate="2011-05-16T17:10:32.927" UserId="1608" Comment="added 204 characters in body" Text="I've had a question migrated here but I don't think its a good fit for programmers. If I understand the nature of the questions you get.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76396/how-can-you-make-a-cluster-run-a-task-only-once&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should this have been migrated here? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit 1**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tried asking this on meta.stackoverflow.com but to no real avail. &#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/91349/is-this-question-a-good-match-for-programmers-stackexchange-com-site&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3895" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1589" RevisionGUID="5174500c-d52c-4359-965d-d36e8b115276" CreationDate="2011-05-16T21:11:06.317" UserId="22235" Text="For instance, [user252244](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/25244/user25244) has asked twelve questions in the three days they have been a member and ten of them have been closed. That's an 83% close rate. These generic &quot;userXXXXX&quot; accounts seem mostly inactive but when they are active they seem to ask a lot of poor questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These account names also indicate a minimum of investment in becoming a productive member of our communities (that they didn't take the time to choose a unique, meaningful or memorable username might imply that they won't take the time to formulate useful questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Need anything be done about these accounts in general or do we continue to handle them on a case-by-case basis? Can anything be done that is more useful than a &quot;please choose a meaningful/memorable username&quot; suggestion and a reiteration to read the FAQ before asking questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3896" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1589" RevisionGUID="5174500c-d52c-4359-965d-d36e8b115276" CreationDate="2011-05-16T21:11:06.317" UserId="22235" Text="What to do about the proliferation of bad questions from generic accounts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3897" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1589" RevisionGUID="5174500c-d52c-4359-965d-d36e8b115276" CreationDate="2011-05-16T21:11:06.317" UserId="22235" Text="|discussion|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3898" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1590" RevisionGUID="1c33fa6f-655b-4089-944d-46502b35c91f" CreationDate="2011-05-16T21:16:33.760" UserId="47" Text="At the moment we have to handle them on a case by case basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We moderators have contacted the team about getting the same poor question detecting algorithms that are implemented on Stack Overflow enabled here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime you can do your bit by down-voting those questions that are &quot;unclear and not useful&quot; and don't &quot;show any research effort&quot; (taken from the new voting tooltips), voting to close and flagging particularly bad questions. If, however, you can see that there is a germ of a half-decent question present **edit** the post to try to reveal it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't forget - down-votes on **questions** are now free - there's no -1 reputation penalty any more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't just down-vote or vote to close all questions by these users simply because of who posted it. Take each question on it's merits." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3899" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1591" RevisionGUID="317cf40c-83df-48d3-adf3-a86f9bd26cc6" CreationDate="2011-05-16T21:50:28.060" UserId="37" Text="The issue in this case is that someone (I'm looking at you, programming.se community) voted up quite a few of this user's questions. Looking at the profile I see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; +7 +3 +3 +1 +1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is basically what is enabling this user to continue asking at this point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would also recommend deleting some of the worst questions on the account, as this will hasten matters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Essentially, what you should be asking yourself is &quot;How many closed, deleted, flagged, and downvoted questions does this user have?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3900" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1590" RevisionGUID="118be80c-cbef-4285-90eb-a36fdc18b0a9" CreationDate="2011-05-16T22:03:44.560" UserId="47" Comment="Correction and more info" Text="At the moment we have to handle them on a case by case basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We moderators have contacted the team about getting the same poor question detecting algorithms that are implemented on Stack Overflow enabled here - apparently it already is (see Jeff's comment).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To make this algorithm effective you can do your bit by down-voting those questions that are &quot;unclear and not useful&quot; and don't &quot;show any research effort&quot; (taken from the new voting tooltips), voting to close and flagging particularly bad questions. If, however, you can see that there is a germ of a half-decent question present **edit** the post to try to reveal it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't forget - down-votes on **questions** are now free - there's no -1 reputation penalty any more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't just down-vote or vote to close all questions by these users simply because of who posted it. Take each question on it's merits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, once an question has been closed you can vote to delete after 2 days (immediately if you have 20K+ reputation) so please feel free to do some house keeping on these bad questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3901" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1592" RevisionGUID="ca1c5380-88a2-4f5f-a97d-a6c1e38464ee" CreationDate="2011-05-16T23:42:54.937" UserId="25276" Text="Questions on StackOverflow should contain, as quoted by their faq:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;a specific programming problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a software algorithm&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;software tools commonly used by programmers&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;matters that are &lt;i&gt;unique&lt;/i&gt; to the programming profession&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pretty sure that your question involved a programming problem that you were having, and it involved a good amount of source code and was specific, and it's my personal belief that it leaned more on the objective side (Stack Overflow) than the subjective side (Programmers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, your question did contain terms that made it somewhat subjective, such as&#xD;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &quot;If you had...&quot; that you started the question out with. This makes it seem hypothetical and open to many different opinionated answers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;...the best way of achieving this?&quot; makes it subjective and opinionated. If you ask this on Stack Overflow, it makes it more likely to get migrated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;I'm still not entirely sure why it was migrated, but to me it seems like you put it on the correct site. I may regret saying this later, but if I were you, I would remove the original question and repost a new, revised question that leaves out the subjective parts such as those that I have listed and making it appear as subjective as possible. This will make it more likely to be accepted on Stack Overflow. Good luck and sorry about the inconvenience!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3902" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1593" RevisionGUID="61b883a3-0d49-41cc-a164-af481e07e214" CreationDate="2011-05-17T02:37:24.193" UserId="7048" Text="I just down voted a couple rather poor and thankfully closed questions on P.SE when I noticed that my reputation did not decrease from these votes. Should reputation not still be removed for a down vote, considering these votes still affect the question's Op?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that in such a case, the question has already been deemed unacceptable, but I'm not sure it's fair that users would be able to affect another users reputation without this negatively reflecting on their own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps this has already been discussed somewhere. It did not show up under &quot;Related Questions&quot; as I was opening this question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3903" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1593" RevisionGUID="61b883a3-0d49-41cc-a164-af481e07e214" CreationDate="2011-05-17T02:37:24.193" UserId="7048" Text="Should down voting on closed questions still result in reputation loss?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3904" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1593" RevisionGUID="61b883a3-0d49-41cc-a164-af481e07e214" CreationDate="2011-05-17T02:37:24.193" UserId="7048" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3905" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1593" RevisionGUID="0e84effe-b7d9-4974-9e32-2acd1345648a" CreationDate="2011-05-17T02:45:24.920" UserId="7048" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3906" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1594" RevisionGUID="4419610c-e599-4d66-8850-1f212d62d35d" CreationDate="2011-05-17T02:52:40.343" UserId="226" Text="It's a recent change done mostly on a trial basis to see how it performs. The idea is that we want to encourage voting on questions in general and using downvotes as a means of quality control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/90324/should-downvotes-on-questions-be-free/90336#90336) on Meta.SO." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3907" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1593" RevisionGUID="416416ea-1ffa-4ab2-930f-0a7147ba070c" CreationDate="2011-05-17T02:52:55.240" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3908" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1594" RevisionGUID="ad87f167-6fe8-4c72-b21b-27cf8f16ba2e" CreationDate="2011-05-17T03:18:52.830" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 12 characters in body" Text="It's a recent change done mostly on a trial basis to see how it performs. The idea is that we want to encourage voting on questions in general and using downvotes as a means of quality control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/90324/should-downvotes-on-questions-be-free) on Meta.SO." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3909" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1595" RevisionGUID="8fabfdf7-fd3a-492f-9c70-300559b6e5b5" CreationDate="2011-05-17T04:25:31.667" UserId="2314" Text="Right now we have just 8 [meta-tag:faq] posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not *terrible*, but they are in various states, various formats, and one of them is even closed. &#xD;&#xA;I think it would be great to clean up these posts, decide on a format and figure out a process for bringing in new FAQ questions (and apply the tag now to the best ones we have here on Meta).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Motivations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Provide a great place for new users to start learning about the best ways to use this site.&#xD;&#xA;2. Provide links for experienced users to use in comments on questions or answers that need attention.&#xD;&#xA;3. Take a big step in [fixing this site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1400/2314)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have **three main proposals** and a couple questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 1. Make the FAQ tagged questions more FAQ-y&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my understanding, the [meta-tag:faq] tag should be used for **the most frequently asked and answered questions on Meta.** (That's what the tag wiki says, at least.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I propose we review which questions are tagged **faq**, and fix any that are out of place (such as those about the **site-faq** which I propose as the replacement tag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. I believe that these questions should be in **Question and Answer** form, so that users can see quickly that it's a question they actually have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now, these are the questions we have in the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is “what language should I learn” considered off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic) - Good question.  Should be community wiki, and I'm not sure the answers are quite there yet.&#xD;&#xA;* [Proposed FAQ change regarding career advice questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1165/2314) - Since it's about the *actual FAQ page* I'm not sure if the tag was correctly applied, but it's a good question (deserves it anyway).  It just needs to be edited to question-answer form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [I've updated our FAQ.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/ive-updated-our-faq) - Honestly I'm not sure I understand the inclusion of this one (why is it closed as too localize?)&#xD;&#xA;* [How does Programmers site work?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/516/how-does-programmers-site-work) - Perfect.  Shining example of what a **faq** question can be.  Oh - except for maybe fixing the grammar in the title :)&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) - Great topic, but needs Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu) - Good&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow) - Great question. Need to turn Mark's whole answer into an updated answer, and I wish we could accept it somehow.&#xD;&#xA;* [What should our FAQ contain?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain) - Kind of meta. I think it's more **site-faq** than **faq**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 2. A FAQ index&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The FAQ for Stack Exchange Sites at Meta.SO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/7931/faq-for-stack-exchange-sites) is great.  Would be cool to see one like that here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 3. Figure out a process for bringing in new FAQ posts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, where do we propose a good posts, discuss its merits, or decide on the &quot;right&quot; answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My first nomination is &quot;Real Questions have Answers&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;[This is the post](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/991/real-questions-have-answers) announcing the addition of the section to the FAQ page, but I think it would be great to have a **&quot;Are polls ok?&quot;** question with a bit longer answer (community wiki) comprising the [best](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) [writing](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179) on this topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally this answer would also talk about how we should avoid &quot;you/your&quot; in questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this process, maybe we could use the [meta-tag:meta-faq] tag I created for this question (no others fit).&#xD;&#xA;### Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is the **Q&amp;A format** (a la Meta.SO) correct for this site?  I believe it is, but I'm open to opposing viewpoints.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. If we *do* go with Q&amp;A format for FAQ questions, how do we arrive at the *right* answer but still allow voting, discussion (comments), and editing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    The [Skeptics site is working on solution for this](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/413/on-adding-the-faq-tag-to-questions) that involves turning the original into a discussion/staging area and posting a new question with the best/correct answer.  However, I'm not a big fan of this.  I [posted an answer](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/519/discussion-about-requiring-references-for-all-claims/343#343) that became [the &quot;official&quot; one](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5/must-all-claims-be-referenced/522#522) but all that served to do was branch the conversation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. How do we push the right answer to the top on FAQ questions? Votes? Accept it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3910" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1595" RevisionGUID="8fabfdf7-fd3a-492f-9c70-300559b6e5b5" CreationDate="2011-05-17T04:25:31.667" UserId="2314" Text="Can we make the FAQ (tag) more FAQ-y?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3911" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1595" RevisionGUID="8fabfdf7-fd3a-492f-9c70-300559b6e5b5" CreationDate="2011-05-17T04:25:31.667" UserId="2314" Text="|discussion|meta-faq|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3912" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1596" RevisionGUID="964daebc-e8b1-4da1-8b29-5bf07f07e006" CreationDate="2011-05-17T04:49:05.343" UserId="2314" Text="I'm just going to say it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community-wiki auto conversion sucks.  And it's not (really) the rep, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been racking my brain trying to figure out why I don't have a [career tag badge](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/60/career).  After all, I have [many answers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=user:2314+[career]), and even in the first 6 non-wiki or so, I've got more than 100 upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can accept that CW *upvotes* don't really count toward tag badges (even though it's a little weird), though I definitely think that **votes before the CW conversion *should* count**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, [here's the problem requirement](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/63835/what-are-tag-badges-how-do-they-work/63836#63836): Must have **20 non-wiki answers**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it looks like I'm not too far away, but I'm still quite irked by this whole auto-conversion thing.  Why?  Because I don't tend to answer questions that are pile-on polls like http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38505/most-overhyped-software-engineering-technologies-and-concepts-of-the-last-20-year.  But every once in a while, I do get a [decent answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38746/software-design-build-it-fast-or-build-it-well/38752#38752) in on a question which becomes highly viewed, and how am I rewarded? **Community wiki!** (that one stopped at 16 answers... ugh.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not an &quot;we should change the whole system to benefit me&quot; post.  I understand that rep should not be dished out like mad to posts with a hockey-puck view trajectory.  But I really wish the auto-conversion would not slap the answerers on those posts which *barely ever* reach the 15 answer limit.  **After all, that's *most really good questions* given enough time.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3913" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1596" RevisionGUID="964daebc-e8b1-4da1-8b29-5bf07f07e006" CreationDate="2011-05-17T04:49:05.343" UserId="2314" Text="The 15-answer CW conversion really sucks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3914" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1596" RevisionGUID="964daebc-e8b1-4da1-8b29-5bf07f07e006" CreationDate="2011-05-17T04:49:05.343" UserId="2314" Text="|discussion|badges|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3915" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1595" RevisionGUID="e8d2a4f9-3c79-4858-b6a6-076e0768f1dd" CreationDate="2011-05-17T04:52:49.490" UserId="2314" Comment="added 248 characters in body" Text="Right now we have just 8 [meta-tag:faq] posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not *terrible*, but they are in various states, various formats, and one of them is even closed. &#xD;&#xA;I think it would be great to clean up these posts, decide on a format and figure out a process for bringing in new FAQ questions (and apply the tag now to the best ones we have here on Meta).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Motivations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Provide a great place for new users to start learning about the best ways to use this site.&#xD;&#xA;2. Provide links for experienced users to use in comments on questions or answers that need attention.&#xD;&#xA;3. Take a big step in [fixing this site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1400/2314)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have **three main proposals** and a couple questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 1. Make the FAQ tagged questions more FAQ-y&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my understanding, the [meta-tag:faq] tag should be used for **the most frequently asked and answered questions on Meta.** (That's what the tag wiki says, at least.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I propose we review which questions are tagged **faq**, and fix any that are out of place (such as those about the **site-faq** which I propose as the replacement tag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. I believe that these questions should be in **Question and Answer** form, so that users can see quickly that it's a question they actually have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now, these are the questions we have in the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is “what language should I learn” considered off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic) - Good question.  Should be community wiki, and I'm not sure the answers are quite there yet.&#xD;&#xA;* [Proposed FAQ change regarding career advice questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1165/2314) - Since it's about the *actual FAQ page* I'm not sure if the tag was correctly applied, but it's a good question (deserves it anyway).  It just needs to be edited to question-answer form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [I've updated our FAQ.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/ive-updated-our-faq) - Honestly I'm not sure I understand the inclusion of this one (why is it closed as too localize?)&#xD;&#xA;* [How does Programmers site work?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/516/how-does-programmers-site-work) - Perfect.  Shining example of what a **faq** question can be.  Oh - except for maybe fixing the grammar in the title :)&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) - Great topic, but needs Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu) - Good&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow) - Great question. Need to turn Mark's whole answer into an updated answer, and I wish we could accept it somehow.&#xD;&#xA;* [What should our FAQ contain?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain) - Kind of meta. I think it's more **site-faq** than **faq**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 2. A FAQ index&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The FAQ for Stack Exchange Sites at Meta.SO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/7931/faq-for-stack-exchange-sites) is great.  Would be cool to see one like that here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 3. Figure out a process for bringing in new FAQ posts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, where do we propose a good posts, discuss its merits, or decide on the &quot;right&quot; answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My first nomination is &quot;Real Questions have Answers&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;[This is the post](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/991/real-questions-have-answers) announcing the addition of the section to the FAQ page, but I think it would be great to have a **&quot;Are polls ok?&quot;** question with a bit longer answer (community wiki) comprising the [best](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) [writing](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179) on this topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally this answer would also talk about how we should avoid &quot;you/your&quot; in questions, so we can use it in comments on [questions like this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76710/would-you-rather-work-in-a-small-company-or-a-large-one) &amp;mdash; the question that got me thinking about all of this in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this process, maybe we could use the [meta-tag:meta-faq] tag I created for this question (no others fit).&#xD;&#xA;### Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is the **Q&amp;A format** (a la Meta.SO) correct for this site?  I believe it is, but I'm open to opposing viewpoints.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. If we *do* go with Q&amp;A format for FAQ questions, how do we arrive at the *right* answer but still allow voting, discussion (comments), and editing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    The [Skeptics site is working on solution for this](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/413/on-adding-the-faq-tag-to-questions) that involves turning the original into a discussion/staging area and posting a new question with the best/correct answer.  However, I'm not a big fan of this.  I [posted an answer](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/519/discussion-about-requiring-references-for-all-claims/343#343) that became [the &quot;official&quot; one](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5/must-all-claims-be-referenced/522#522) but all that served to do was branch the conversation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. How do we push the right answer to the top on FAQ questions? Votes? Accept it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3916" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1597" RevisionGUID="fafa7a14-e34a-4279-99f1-3b0c899af45e" CreationDate="2011-05-17T04:59:41.977" UserId="2654" Text="# Write Better Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and down vote bad answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions with more then 15 answers are at risk of being not constructive questions. There are several previous meta post in regards to these voting patterns and encouraging people to vote *against* meaningless or inconsequential answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3917" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1598" RevisionGUID="8875c3fc-8172-4e0f-baa8-9f00fa3eb844" CreationDate="2011-05-17T05:03:15.673" UserId="2654" Text="We appreciate the time you took in writing that up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best way to get things more appropriately tagged is liberal use of the moderator flag. Just a quick *&quot;I think this has FAQ potential&quot;* would be fine. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will try to go through currently FAQ tagged questions with fellow moderators tomorrow. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3918" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1599" RevisionGUID="07b4b7e8-8824-403e-891a-9a1fae97ab01" CreationDate="2011-05-17T05:04:45.160" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I don't think there's a tremendous amount of value in spending a whole lot of time on this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Stack Overflow, they get a ton of questions about all the sites about every possible mechanic. They get dozens upon dozens of questions about the same things, and as such, require canonical posts to point to for the purposes of duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, the amount of questions they get about various aspects of the site require extensive detail that can't be fit into a single page FAQ. For example, there's a FAQ post that goes into the excruciating minutiae of [how comment replies work](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/43019/how-do-comment-replies-work).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, Meta Stack Overflow has what Jeff Atwood terms &quot;big city problems&quot;. The FAQ is the only reasonable way to handle the onslaught of support questions they get about the engine and global policies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't really have that problem. We get ~2-3 questions every couple of days, and for the most part, cover new issues that do need a discussion or a real answer (i.e. they can't be closed as a duplicate). Even the ones that cover the same ground as earlier questions, we (usually) can answer the question in a way that makes it specific to the person asking it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we've been using [meta-tag:faq] to tag questions to the few questions frequently arise organically: how is Programmers.SE different from Stack Overflow, changes to the main FAQ sparked by frequent on-topic discussions, and the consequences of the Great Redisciplining. The main intent of these questions is to explain the background behind the policies Programmers.SE has, not to explain in detail the different mechanics behind those policies (like Meta Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for the stuff everyone needs to know—the stuff we want to refer to when closing questions or discussing policy—we use [our actual FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if you see something that really explains the problems with an issue that frequently comes up, by all means flag it. Beyond that, the normal Stack Exchange guidelines apply:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you have a better answer to a question, answer it.&#xD;&#xA;* If you like an answer, up-vote it.&#xD;&#xA;* If you don't like an answer, down-vote it and leave a comment explaining why." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3919" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1597" RevisionGUID="b2bbbb1b-aec6-4637-bde3-6c2d263a039f" CreationDate="2011-05-17T05:05:00.350" UserId="2654" Comment="added 329 characters in body" Text="# Write Better Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and down vote bad answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions with more then 15 answers are at risk of being not constructive questions. There are several previous meta post in regards to these voting patterns and encouraging people to vote *against* meaningless or inconsequential answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, like I said in the post, I think it's often the best questions that attract many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That can definitely be the case with some edge case questions, but do you expect fifteen unique, diverse, well thought out view points on a single question? That many tells me there is something wrong with the question.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3920" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1596" RevisionGUID="7ce5032d-4b26-4939-badc-510e36ad4457" CreationDate="2011-05-17T05:09:13.860" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-bydesign|badges|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3921" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1600" RevisionGUID="19974ae2-7c0e-43e6-92b5-20ff8812f8ae" CreationDate="2011-05-17T05:30:29.160" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="From the looks of your question, you're trying to determine how best to tackle a problem given a site of requirements. That is, it's a conceptual, writeboarding-type question rather than a problem with code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Conceptual questions are on-topic here and off-topic on Stack Overflow. Stack Overflow is when you have already started implementation, and you've run into a problem in your source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it was rightly migrated here, at least in terms of scope of Programmers.SE and Stack Overflow. The question is, however, awfully specific and reads like a request for a proposal rather than a question asking for help: I doubt you'll get good answers anywhere as the question, with all of its requirements and restrictions, likely isn't all that relevant to anyone but yourself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've opted not to close it as *too localized* as it looks like someone was able to figure out a general solution, but you might want to figure out what you can do to generalize the question to make it more interesting for other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3922" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1599" RevisionGUID="c1e88e51-3930-40e4-9a0f-9ed7964794ad" CreationDate="2011-05-17T05:43:05.233" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 93 characters in body" Text="I don't think there's a tremendous amount of value in spending a whole lot of time on this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Stack Overflow, they get a ton of questions about all the sites about every possible mechanic. They get dozens upon dozens of questions about the same things, and as such, require canonical posts to point to for the purposes of duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, the amount of questions they get about various aspects of the site require extensive detail that can't be fit into a single page FAQ. For example, there's a FAQ post that goes into the excruciating minutiae of [how comment replies work](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/43019/how-do-comment-replies-work).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, Meta Stack Overflow has what Jeff Atwood terms &quot;big city problems&quot;. The [meta-tag:faq] tag is the only reasonable way to handle the onslaught of support questions they get about the engine and global policies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't really have that problem. We get ~2-3 questions every couple of days, and for the most part, cover new issues that do need a discussion or a real answer (i.e. they can't be closed as a duplicate). Even the ones that cover the same ground as earlier questions, we (usually) can answer the question in a way that makes it specific to the person asking it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we've been using [meta-tag:faq] to tag questions to the few questions frequently arise organically: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* how is Programmers.SE different from Stack Overflow, &#xD;&#xA;* changes to the main FAQ sparked by frequent on-topic discussions, &#xD;&#xA;* the consequences of the Great Redisciplining,&#xD;&#xA;* and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main intent of these questions is to explain the background behind the policies Programmers.SE has, not to explain in detail the different mechanics behind those policies (like Meta Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for the stuff everyone needs to know—the stuff we want to refer to when closing questions or discussing policy—we use [our single-page FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq). If anything should get some love, it's that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, if you see something that really explains the problems with an issue that frequently comes up, by all means flag it. Beyond that, the normal Stack Exchange guidelines apply:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you have a better answer to a question, answer it.&#xD;&#xA;* If you like an answer, up-vote it.&#xD;&#xA;* If you don't like an answer, down-vote it and leave a comment explaining why." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3923" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1601" RevisionGUID="1d6a6129-146e-4fd1-933a-d05e509d4a1a" CreationDate="2011-05-17T11:08:37.853" UserId="37" Text="Regardless, **you keep all reputation from before the community wiki transition** -- you know that, right? All upvotes prior to the `CommunityOwnedDate` are still valid and generate reputation for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, I don't see what's so harmful about this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you get an answer in early, you still get reputation benefits, but there is a disincentive to pile on and add that 13th - 16th answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Isn't this as it should be?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3926" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1567" RevisionGUID="80cde5ce-01b1-4504-b03e-77d4b31d153f" CreationDate="2011-05-18T07:44:53.820" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|voting|notifications|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3927" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1604" RevisionGUID="0d5dcbb2-1b9c-4465-8936-52c9a9b5a424" CreationDate="2011-05-18T07:46:23.490" UserId="37" Text="Right now all the launched SE sites use the &quot;Sketchy&quot; beta offline page. But we're working on having an &quot;official&quot; offline page for every graduated site, matching their main site theme." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3928" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1591" RevisionGUID="86764b70-98fd-47ed-a224-cfbef84ef5bd" CreationDate="2011-05-18T08:42:55.003" UserId="37" Comment="edited body" Text="The issue in this case is that someone (I'm looking at you, programmers.se community) voted up quite a few of this user's questions. Looking at the profile I see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; +7 +3 +3 +1 +1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is basically what is enabling this user to continue asking at this point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would also recommend deleting some of the worst questions on the account, as this will hasten matters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Essentially, what you should be asking yourself is &quot;How many closed, deleted, flagged, and downvoted questions does this user have?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3929" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1583" RevisionGUID="d2a7a6e6-e10f-4c86-b77b-a1a3ca8c04de" CreationDate="2011-05-18T15:56:05.330" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="New users don't have to accept the How to Ask page per Jeff" Text="When a user asks a question, the sidebar links to [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and  [How to Ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask), which describes how to ask a constructive question, including some very basic advice along with links:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On-site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Our search](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search) so they can get help immediately instead of asking a duplicated question&#xD;&#xA;* Our FAQ (again) so they can understand what questions work best here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Off-site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Google's [tips for getting help](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/09/tips-for-getting-help-with-your-site.html)&#xD;&#xA;* Jon Skeet's [Writing the perfect question](http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx)&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask question's the smart way](http://catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help vampires: a spotter's guide](http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/)&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask a question](http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When they start typing in a question title, the system presents them with a ton of related questions that might be really close to what they intended to ask about, thereby preventing another question that covers the same ground from being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, most questions get a ton of feedback in comments (and in answers) addressing the *problems* with the question: a question asker can use that feedback to edit and better hone their question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, when a question is closed, there's a very brief message that explains what was wrong with the question; and, in most cases, moderators will leave a comment explaining what was wrong and what the next steps are for the user (how to rephrase, what to read, or how to get the question reopened).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By all means, we'd love for every possible developer to be able to ask questions that are going to get answers that are helpful to them, but after all of the above, they *still* ask an off-topic question, or a question that's not constructive, or a question that doesn't clearly say what problem the asker is trying to solve, **I'm not sure there's any more we can do.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is one of the more popular Stack Exchange sites: we get a lot of users, a lot of questions, and a lot of answers. We can't spend a great deal of time mentoring every single user who happens upon the site: at some point, users either need to help themselves and figure out if they're in the right place to ask their question (and, if they are, how to ask it in a way that makes it interesting to other people), or if they can't, find a place that's better suited for them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3930" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1471" RevisionGUID="39f73cd6-aefa-4860-bf2c-8c935ca8cbd7" CreationDate="2011-05-18T18:30:53.883" UserId="23130" Comment="Updated the questions with resolution of the issue." Text="When viewing Programmers site in Opera 11.10, I get an error message box from Opera with the following text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No registered application for this type of extension.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tried to track down what causes it but I haven't found any clue. I run it on Windows 7 x64, I have the following plugins:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Shockwave Flash - 10,2,153,1&#xD;&#xA; - QuickTime Plug-in 7.6.9 - 7.6.9 (1680.9)&#xD;&#xA; - Adobe Acrobat - 9.4.3.231&#xD;&#xA; - 2007 Microsoft Office system - 12.0.4518.1014&#xD;&#xA; - Silverlight Plug-In - 4.0.60129.0&#xD;&#xA; - Windows Live Photo Gallery - 15.4.3508.1109&#xD;&#xA; - Media Go Detector - 1.7.0.1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:** I finally found out what causes it. Pages at Programmers try to load `house-webfont.ttf`, the URL is `http://sstatic.net/programmersmeta/img/house-webfont.ttf`. Server response has&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Content-Type: application/octet-stream&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like Opera does not know how to handle it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On another computer with Windows 7 and Opera 11.10 where this message does not appear, I see it requests `house-webfont.woff` which has `Content-Type` set to `application/x-woff`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Disabling all the plugins did not make a difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update 2:** I have resolved this problem. It was connected with left-over setting of previous installs where I had ReGet installed and ReGet configured Opera to intercept downloads. The behavior of Opera changed over time… which now caused this error to be displayed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I changed Download setting in Opera so that it displays Download dialog for `application/octet-stream` type. And custom fonts returned to Programmers pages." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3942" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1567" RevisionGUID="d029d26a-0022-4ddd-a119-15417ebb56d6" CreationDate="2011-05-19T01:05:47.573" UserId="104" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|voting|notifications|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3943" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1608" RevisionGUID="be103272-dab5-4051-a6eb-e712ac37a706" CreationDate="2011-05-19T01:10:41.280" UserId="104" Text="OOPS .... had a little logic hole there, fixed now. Only happened if you *only* voted on questions. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3945" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1609" RevisionGUID="244c19d9-0633-4218-afa9-b40e1c50ca12" CreationDate="2011-05-19T19:13:57.870" UserId="983" Text="English has [verb agreement][1], where verbs have to agree in grammatical number with their subject. That rule is not being followed on the &quot;Your flagging history&quot; page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![a sad face](https://img.skitch.com/20110519-g1wihmt6thdkg5biie1qa4sd15.jpg)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_%28linguistics%29#English" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3946" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1609" RevisionGUID="244c19d9-0633-4218-afa9-b40e1c50ca12" CreationDate="2011-05-19T19:13:57.870" UserId="983" Text="Single flags verb agreement" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3947" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1609" RevisionGUID="244c19d9-0633-4218-afa9-b40e1c50ca12" CreationDate="2011-05-19T19:13:57.870" UserId="983" Text="|bug|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3948" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1609" RevisionGUID="15c039f9-717e-4ab7-aef8-d8e7f2fb4b0a" CreationDate="2011-05-19T19:27:41.680" UserId="2654" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-reproduced|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3949" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1610" RevisionGUID="11d09fb3-72e3-42aa-85ad-fb6444c7c3a0" CreationDate="2011-05-19T20:06:01.607" UserId="620" Text="For example, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77637/yyyy-mm-dd-hhmm-vs-major-minor-revision&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, I'm referring to a &quot;burst&quot; of answers submitted within a few minutes or so, when the question has just been asked within the hour and appeared on everyone's screen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Normally, this is less likely to happen on questions which require thoughtful answers, because the time taken to prepare an answer will make it less likely for a &quot;burst&quot; to happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we shorten the time interval for checking &quot;Another answer has been submitted, click to refresh&quot; especially when answers are short?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3950" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1610" RevisionGUID="11d09fb3-72e3-42aa-85ad-fb6444c7c3a0" CreationDate="2011-05-19T20:06:01.607" UserId="620" Text="Should we encourage consolidation of similar answers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3951" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1610" RevisionGUID="11d09fb3-72e3-42aa-85ad-fb6444c7c3a0" CreationDate="2011-05-19T20:06:01.607" UserId="620" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3952" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1594" RevisionGUID="5d0746c4-007d-4a3f-a4ff-13a4d86a89f0" CreationDate="2011-05-19T20:52:18.540" UserId="63" Comment="added 62 characters in body" Text="It's a recent change done mostly on a trial basis to see how it performs. And it's all questions, not just those that have been closed. The idea is that we want to encourage voting on questions in general and using downvotes as a means of quality control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/90324/should-downvotes-on-questions-be-free) on Meta.SO." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3953" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1611" RevisionGUID="92e35bfe-fe89-4589-bfe3-44962865947b" CreationDate="2011-05-20T02:24:17.950" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="When something like this happens, it's an indication that there's generally something wrong with the question. Good questions, at least on Programmers.SE, shouldn't be so easy to answer that they'll suffer the &quot;[fastest gun in the west](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/9731/149432)&quot; problem as we have [general guidelines in place](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) that insist questions invite long, detailed, and thoughtful answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this specific case, it so happens that the question in practice covers identical ground as an earlier question, so I've closed it as a duplicate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3954" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1612" RevisionGUID="0a77db09-afdc-4e62-94fe-366b66cd81aa" CreationDate="2011-05-20T02:38:25.287" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="When a question is closed as being *off-topic* or *not a real question*, the question is automatically down-voted. This was instituted network-wide after some discussion [a couple of months ago](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/84978/149432).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems like this behavior should extend to *not constructive*, which is arguably worse than an off-topic question, at least on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there any reasons why it wouldn't or shouldn't?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3955" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1612" RevisionGUID="0a77db09-afdc-4e62-94fe-366b66cd81aa" CreationDate="2011-05-20T02:38:25.287" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Should the &quot;not constructive&quot; close reason add a down-vote?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3956" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1612" RevisionGUID="0a77db09-afdc-4e62-94fe-366b66cd81aa" CreationDate="2011-05-20T02:38:25.287" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|feature-request|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3958" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1613" RevisionGUID="fa4cea19-44f2-4f84-8a18-789afb78ecec" CreationDate="2011-05-20T06:26:37.087" UserId="13211" Text="Has any sort of resume feedback exchange site been considered, possibly as a sub-exchange under 'Programmers'? I've looked around for good feedback locations but the results weren't great (off-shoots of forums that aren't even tech related). As a recent college graduate, I know that my university offers resume feedback (I used it), but they only offer it in the general sense of: spelling, punctuation, spacing, general layout and design, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was looking more for specified tech feedback from people working/managing in the industry." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3959" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1613" RevisionGUID="fa4cea19-44f2-4f84-8a18-789afb78ecec" CreationDate="2011-05-20T06:26:37.087" UserId="13211" Text="Resume Feedback" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3960" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1613" RevisionGUID="fa4cea19-44f2-4f84-8a18-789afb78ecec" CreationDate="2011-05-20T06:26:37.087" UserId="13211" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3961" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1614" RevisionGUID="e2fb9617-2f55-4c0b-9c85-9c77b9ecb9c7" CreationDate="2011-05-20T11:41:43.773" UserId="16637" Text="I've never understood the difference between 'off-topic' and 'not constructive' - they're synonymous to me (i.e. a question that is deemed on-topic *is* constructive by nature of the requirements stated by the FAQ). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, no, I don't think there's any reason to follow suit and have 'not constructive' votes incur down-votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3962" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1615" RevisionGUID="dad6358f-47fa-42e1-9063-e3c5757e6772" CreationDate="2011-05-20T13:39:42.847" UserId="226" Text="Resume formatting and style questions are specifically off-topic here, but questions about software development parts of your resume may be okay.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What sort of questions do you have? We can try putting together a question that'd be within the Programmers guidelines." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3963" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1616" RevisionGUID="0c3ed94d-ad16-485e-9bff-f60771ff9307" CreationDate="2011-05-20T22:40:45.693" UserId="2314" Text="As [Anna says](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1613/resume-feedback/1615#1615), it's possible to post good on-topic questions about resumes here, but you have to make sure it's **not too specific to your situation,** nor too broad to specifically apply to programmers, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many people who do post those kinds of personal questions don't actually realize that their question *can* be extended to apply to many software engineers, **if they just isolated what their *real question* was and left out the superfluous details.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You just want to fit into the blue range:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3964" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1614" RevisionGUID="a19f7501-1555-4a09-bcd8-078b2b95e022" CreationDate="2011-05-21T01:54:27.300" UserId="16637" Comment="Fixed answer." Text="I've never understood the difference between 'off-topic' and 'not constructive' - they're synonymous to me (i.e. a question that is deemed on-topic *is* constructive by nature of the requirements stated by the FAQ). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, no, I don't think there's any reason not to follow suit - 'not constructive' votes *should* incur down-votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3965" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1617" RevisionGUID="2d686d8e-a875-49d9-815c-21e012adff4f" CreationDate="2011-05-21T06:04:19.523" UserId="37" Text="There is a difference of intent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is *off-topic*, that is akin to asking about tea on `coffee.stackexchange.com`. It's a blatant, obvious violation of the parameters of the site. Now, you could argue that users simply don't read, and I will agree with you, but ignorance of the law is not an excuse. But in this case, *it is egregiously off topic*. That is, even the most casual browsing of the front page would immediately let you know what is and is not on topic without thinking too hard about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is *not constructive* the distinction is much subtler. It can take a bit of trial and error to &quot;get it&quot;. I also believe that many unconstructive questions do NOT indicate the same level of obliviousness bordering on irresponsible failure to just *look at* the questions on the homepage and ask something similar. I believe it is possible for some people to honestly try to read the faq and still get it slightly wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore I don't support this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(However I do think that egregious examples of unconstructive questions should regularly be downvoted and remember, downvotes on questions are now free... http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/90324/should-downvotes-on-questions-be-free )" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3966" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1618" RevisionGUID="4a429718-839e-4034-9610-1740c9300269" CreationDate="2011-05-21T22:11:33.790" UserId="4091" Text="Here's a recent example: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78172/nook-color-development-market-stats-and-ease-of-promoting-an-equivalent-android&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is this kind of question appropriate for programmers? If not, is there a sister site where it should be migrated?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3967" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1618" RevisionGUID="4a429718-839e-4034-9610-1740c9300269" CreationDate="2011-05-21T22:11:33.790" UserId="4091" Text="Are business development and market research questions appropriate on programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3968" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1618" RevisionGUID="4a429718-839e-4034-9610-1740c9300269" CreationDate="2011-05-21T22:11:33.790" UserId="4091" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3969" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1619" RevisionGUID="49119c35-72ae-471b-8b4d-bd150d825054" CreationDate="2011-05-21T23:01:06.183" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The question needed a good clean up, but I think it's on-topic here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq), business concerns that affect developers on-topic here. In this case, the basic question was whether it's worth it to develop for a currently-niche tablet market if you want to get into mobile development, which is a question I think most mobile developers will have to grapple with." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3970" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1620" RevisionGUID="53192a6a-33fe-410b-9349-2cefa332e682" CreationDate="2011-05-22T00:55:24.680" UserId="226" Text="Another possible option is [Answers.Onstartups.com](http://answers.onstartups.com/), but I'm not familiar with it enough to say to be able to say with 100% certainty that the question should be migrated there. I'm pretty sure it'd be okay, though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3971" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="588" RevisionGUID="14690f3f-1c07-4ee3-be5a-c0af33b9defe" CreationDate="2011-05-22T20:55:13.007" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3972" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1621" RevisionGUID="94815cd4-c76a-4735-8ab3-4a86762e3122" CreationDate="2011-05-22T22:13:11.713" UserId="3249" Text="I happened upon this question today:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [What is the one change you made which shot up your productivity?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was originally closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;. It was recently edited and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, not to pick on Anna, but I really don't think that the substance of the question has changed in any significant way.  It's just written in a different style, with this big disclaimer of sorts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please be sure to include in your answers *how* the things you do affect your productivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I can't call up all of the specific instances to memory, this seems to be becoming a trend.  Questions which are fundamentally not constructive are having phrases such as *&quot;Please explain your answers&quot;* or *&quot;Please back up your answers with facts or experiences&quot;* tacked onto the end, and this, apparently, is enough to make them constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, this isn't any different from adding *&quot;...for programmers&quot;* to the end of a title and claiming that it validates the question as being on topic.  It sounds like a cop-out; standard boilerplate copied-and-pasted to the end of a question in place of any real effort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My take is that &quot;good subjective&quot; questions inherently do not need this kind of disclaimer. Take, for example, the question titled [How do you write tests for code that depends on concrete external implementations that can't be mocked?][2]  You really cannot answer that with pure fluff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, maybe that's a bit of a technical example; here's one that's a little more open-ended: [Under what conditions does it make sense to break code into many files, or merge them?][3] That's a fairly soft question, but it's written in such a way that the &quot;explanation&quot; **is** the answer; you can't have an answer without an explanation, it would make no sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps I am in the minority here. Perhaps I am even wrong.  But I am worried about the aforementioned trend; I think that people are starting to exploit a loophole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE has a policy about questions that contain the phrase *for programmers* or variants:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * If you can remove the phrase &quot;for programmers&quot; and the question and answers would still make sense, then the question is off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question here is, **should we be applying a similar test to open-ended questions with the potential to be closed as &quot;Not Constructive?&quot;**  Specifically:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * If removal of the phrase &quot;explain your answers&quot; would make thoughtless one-liners acceptable answers, then the question should be closed as Not Constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Would this be a useful rule of thumb?**  If not, then why not - where have I gone wrong?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/77090/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/77926/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/77812/3249" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3973" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1621" RevisionGUID="94815cd4-c76a-4735-8ab3-4a86762e3122" CreationDate="2011-05-22T22:13:11.713" UserId="3249" Text="Should open-ended/poll questions be allowed just because they say to &quot;explain your answers&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3974" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1621" RevisionGUID="94815cd4-c76a-4735-8ab3-4a86762e3122" CreationDate="2011-05-22T22:13:11.713" UserId="3249" Text="|discussion|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3975" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1622" RevisionGUID="868de747-577a-44bd-a3ae-2eb2c44df063" CreationDate="2011-05-23T01:08:05.910" UserId="226" Text="I don't feel picked on. Thanks for bringing this up. Your post speaks to something I've been trying to put into coherent words for the last few days. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Far as that question goes, my intent with saying &quot;Please be sure to include in your answers *how* the things you do affect your productivity.&quot; was simply to remind people that one-liners aren't okay and that if they have something to suggest, they should substantiate it with something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main reason I added that in was that I felt (and still do, to a point) that there was merit to the question, but it fell into the trap of crappy phrasing and answers. I was hoping to tease out something better out of it without putting an explicit &quot;moderator note&quot; in it. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. This time it doesn't look like it did much either way, although the question that was chosen as the duplicate is, in my mind, actually worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that aside, let's talk about your idea. I like the spirit of it, but I wonder if most of the questions here are such that if you remove the explanation from answers you end up with thoughtless one-liners.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughtless one-liners are not acceptable and we have other parts of the FAQ that cover that -- usually questions that go for a list of one-liners are described somewhere in the [&quot;What kind of questions should I not ask here?&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section. But out of all the guidelines for constructive subjective questions, short answers appear only once. I think it's possible for a question to contain short but meaningful answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of trying to measure that level of meaning in an additional guideline, I think it may be better to agree on how we should enforce existing guidelines that cover the same ground. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we delete short/thoughtless answers? Do we allow their posters a chance to edit more information in? Does the community accept direct moderator intervention in those cases or are we just going to end up with an endless fight? Sure, moderators are given their power for a reason and all that, but if we don't have the community backing us up and performing some part of the moderation as well, this is gonna be a full-time job, nevermind the resentment that's going to build up until everyone takes their toys and goes home.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in the end, I think your suggestion is a useful rule of thumb, but I'd prefer a clear/unified way to enforce existing guidelines instead of writing it into the FAQ as it might open a very subjective can of worms." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3976" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1623" RevisionGUID="41a53d80-725e-40f5-b134-1ab740d4c13c" CreationDate="2011-05-23T01:24:21.600" UserId="63" Text="&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;OT: I love the stuff you write, and your general attitude... But dude, I have the attention span of a gnat; it would be *sooo* much more soothing to my psyche if you could ever limit yourself to 2-3 paragraphs...&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A GTKY question is a GTKY question, no matter how much you dress it up. That's why I was *so* happy when [Real Questions Have Answers][1] was posted and [added to the FAQ](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/991/real-questions-have-answers). Because if *any answer is valid*, then no matter how good one answer might be, you're gonna have to live with the slow poison that is *every other person who reads it* potentially posting an EQUALLY VALID alternative to it. This isn't fair to the readers who actually want a solution to their problem. It's not fair to the authors of *good* answers who'll now eventually be deprived of reputation on the site when the number of answers rolls past 15. And it may not even be that useful to the original author, who quite possibly *wanted* to know &quot;What can I do that will work?&quot; even as he asked &quot;What did you do and what was the outcome?&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ guidelines on subjective Q&amp;A are meant [to *discourage* questions that attract lazy, unhelpful answers][2]. They are *not* a free pass for every question that happens to comply with them: a &quot;good subjective&quot; question can still be off-topic, too localize, or... simply not a real question. That last one is my preferred reason for polls, GTKY and the like, although for this specific example it's arguable (especially given the answers) that there's simply nothing *programmer-specific* about it and therefore it's off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They can also be duplicates. I just closed that example as a duplicate of [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57507/how-to-become-more-productive-in-design-and-programming), since that's pretty much how I'd re-write it if I were trying to make it less of a GTKY question *and* more programmer-focused. There are other probable duplicates in existence; you linked to one in the comments, and I merged another... Frankly, this whole topic strikes me as the sort that really doesn't need more than one thread on the site, even though (or perhaps because) the specific *answer that works* will be different for every person. It's the classic &quot;how do I diagnose my computer?&quot; question - myriad root problems, countless eventual solutions, best answered with a trouble-shooting guide *if possible*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1621/should-open-ended-poll-questions-be-allowed-just-because-they-say-to-explain-you/1622#1622" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3977" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1623" RevisionGUID="1736f381-0bc8-44f4-9a76-37d45da5dec7" CreationDate="2011-05-23T01:29:29.403" UserId="63" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;OT: I love the stuff you write, and your general attitude... But dude, I have the attention span of a gnat; it would be *sooo* much more soothing to my psyche if you could ever limit yourself to 2-3 paragraphs...&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A GTKY question is a GTKY question, no matter how much you dress it up. That's why I was *so* happy when [Real Questions Have Answers][1] was posted and [added to the FAQ](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/991/real-questions-have-answers). Because if *any answer is valid*, then no matter how good one answer might be, you're gonna have to live with the slow poison that is *every other person who reads it* potentially posting an EQUALLY VALID alternative to it. This isn't fair to the readers who actually want a solution to their problem. It's not fair to the authors of *good* answers who'll now eventually be deprived of reputation on the site when the number of answers rolls past 15. And it may not even be that useful to the original author, who quite possibly *wanted* to know &quot;What can I do that will work?&quot; even as he asked &quot;What did you do and what was the outcome?&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ guidelines on subjective Q&amp;A are meant [to *discourage* questions that attract lazy, unhelpful answers][2]. They are *not* a free pass for every question that happens to comply with them: a &quot;good subjective&quot; question can still be Off-Topic, Too Localized, or... simply Not a Real Question. That last one is my preferred reason for polls, GTKY and the like, although for this specific example it's arguable (especially given the answers) that there's simply nothing *programmer-specific* about it and therefore it's off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They can also be duplicates. I just closed that example as a duplicate of [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57507/how-to-become-more-productive-in-design-and-programming), since that's pretty much how I'd re-write it if I were trying to make it less of a GTKY question *and* more programmer-focused. There are other probable duplicates in existence; you linked to one in the comments, and I merged another... Frankly, this whole topic strikes me as the sort that really doesn't need more than one thread on the site, even though (or perhaps because) the specific *answer that works* will be different for every person. It's the classic &quot;how do I diagnose my computer?&quot; question - myriad root problems, countless eventual solutions, best answered with a trouble-shooting guide *if possible*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1621/should-open-ended-poll-questions-be-allowed-just-because-they-say-to-explain-you/1622#1622" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3978" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1624" RevisionGUID="aa26182a-8ca3-44d1-aab9-e7515f636406" CreationDate="2011-05-23T02:10:40.107" UserId="226" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78253/is-there-something-else-like-squarespace-out-there-closed) reminded me that there is nothing explicit in our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) about shopping recommendation questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should there be? Should we take an approach similar to Super User and Gaming where recommendations are off-topic? And if so, do we exclude only questions like &quot;I'm looking for a service that does what I need&quot; or also things like &quot;is there a library in language X that has feature Y&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3979" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1624" RevisionGUID="aa26182a-8ca3-44d1-aab9-e7515f636406" CreationDate="2011-05-23T02:10:40.107" UserId="226" Text="Are &quot;I'm looking for X&quot; questions on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3980" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1624" RevisionGUID="aa26182a-8ca3-44d1-aab9-e7515f636406" CreationDate="2011-05-23T02:10:40.107" UserId="226" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3981" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1623" RevisionGUID="d7226e81-7bf0-4230-9538-96a1b53dcede" CreationDate="2011-05-23T02:22:32.153" UserId="63" Comment="As I feared, reading all the way to the end of the question produced a question.; added 29 characters in body; added 79 characters in body" Text="**tl;dr:** GTKY is Not a Real Question, no matter how much you qualify it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;OT: I love the stuff you write, and your general attitude... But dude, I have the attention span of a gnat; it would be *sooo* much more soothing to my psyche if you could ever limit yourself to 2-3 paragraphs...&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A GTKY question is a GTKY question, no matter how much you dress it up. That's why I was *so* happy when [Real Questions Have Answers][1] was posted and [added to the FAQ](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/991/real-questions-have-answers). Because if *any answer is valid*, then no matter how good one answer might be, you're gonna have to live with the slow poison that is *every other person who reads it* potentially posting an EQUALLY VALID alternative to it. This isn't fair to the readers who actually want a solution to their problem. It's not fair to the authors of *good* answers who'll now eventually be deprived of reputation on the site when the number of answers rolls past 15. And it may not even be that useful to the original author, who quite possibly *wanted* to know &quot;What can I do that will work?&quot; even as he asked &quot;What did you do and what was the outcome?&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ guidelines on subjective Q&amp;A are meant [to *discourage* questions that attract lazy, unhelpful answers][2]. They are *not* a free pass for every question that happens to comply with them: a &quot;good subjective&quot; question can still be Off-Topic, Too Localized, or... simply Not a Real Question. That last one is my preferred reason for polls, GTKY and the like, although for this specific example it's arguable (especially given the answers) that there's simply nothing *programmer-specific* about it and therefore it's off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They can also be duplicates. I just closed that example as a duplicate of [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57507/how-to-become-more-productive-in-design-and-programming), since that's pretty much how I'd re-write it if I were trying to make it less of a GTKY question *and* more programmer-focused. There are other probable duplicates in existence; you linked to one in the comments, and I merged another... Frankly, this whole topic strikes me as the sort that really doesn't need more than one thread on the site, even though (or perhaps because) the specific *answer that works* will be different for every person. It's the classic &quot;how do I diagnose my computer?&quot; question - myriad root problems, countless eventual solutions, best answered with a trouble-shooting guide *if possible*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Would this be a useful rule of thumb?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not really. If the question is getting good answers with it, fine. If it's getting good answers *without it*, that's fine too. And if the question allows me to ramble on about that time I tried to be more productive by gorging on ephedrine and red bull provided I go into detail about how it didn't really work but did produce 30 new ways to re-arrange my desk, including &quot;disassembled&quot; and &quot;upside down&quot;, then burn it with fire.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1621/should-open-ended-poll-questions-be-allowed-just-because-they-say-to-explain-you/1622#1622" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3982" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1623" RevisionGUID="f6f57e90-acd8-4700-923a-8379b50b965a" CreationDate="2011-05-23T02:27:52.653" UserId="63" Comment="added 125 characters in body" Text="**tl;dr:** GTKY is Not a Real Question, no matter how much you qualify or restrict it. We want your experiences related to a solution to our problems, not just thrown out there for idle entertainment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;OT: I love the stuff you write, and your general attitude... But dude, I have the attention span of a gnat; it would be *sooo* much more soothing to my psyche if you could ever limit yourself to 2-3 paragraphs...&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A GTKY question is a GTKY question, no matter how much you dress it up. That's why I was *so* happy when [Real Questions Have Answers][1] was posted and [added to the FAQ](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/991/real-questions-have-answers). Because if *any answer is valid*, then no matter how good one answer might be, you're gonna have to live with the slow poison that is *every other person who reads it* potentially posting an EQUALLY VALID alternative to it. This isn't fair to the readers who actually want a solution to their problem. It's not fair to the authors of *good* answers who'll now eventually be deprived of reputation on the site when the number of answers rolls past 15. And it may not even be that useful to the original author, who quite possibly *wanted* to know &quot;What can I do that will work?&quot; even as he asked &quot;What did you do and what was the outcome?&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ guidelines on subjective Q&amp;A are meant [to *discourage* questions that attract lazy, unhelpful answers][2]. They are *not* a free pass for every question that happens to comply with them: a &quot;good subjective&quot; question can still be Off-Topic, Too Localized, or... simply Not a Real Question. That last one is my preferred reason for polls, GTKY and the like, although for this specific example it's arguable (especially given the answers) that there's simply nothing *programmer-specific* about it and therefore it's off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They can also be duplicates. I just closed that example as a duplicate of [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57507/how-to-become-more-productive-in-design-and-programming), since that's pretty much how I'd re-write it if I were trying to make it less of a GTKY question *and* more programmer-focused. There are other probable duplicates in existence; you linked to one in the comments, and I merged another... Frankly, this whole topic strikes me as the sort that really doesn't need more than one thread on the site, even though (or perhaps because) the specific *answer that works* will be different for every person. It's the classic &quot;how do I diagnose my computer?&quot; question - myriad root problems, countless eventual solutions, best answered with a trouble-shooting guide *if possible*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Would this be a useful rule of thumb?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not really. If the question is getting good answers with it, fine. If it's getting good answers *without it*, that's fine too. And if the question allows me to ramble on about that time I tried to be more productive by gorging on ephedrine and red bull provided I go into detail about how it didn't really work but did produce 30 new ways to re-arrange my desk, including &quot;disassembled&quot; and &quot;upside down&quot;, then burn it with fire.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1621/should-open-ended-poll-questions-be-allowed-just-because-they-say-to-explain-you/1622#1622" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3983" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1621" RevisionGUID="f7bc59b9-6ad5-4845-8a0d-9c522e46094e" CreationDate="2011-05-23T02:28:22.390" UserId="3249" Comment="added 370 characters in body" Text="**tl;dr version: A lot of questions which would normally be closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot; or NARQ have recently been getting a free pass because they say things at the end such as &quot;please explain your answers&quot; or &quot;please answer with facts or experiences&quot;.  I think that this has become a loophole for poor-quality questions and needs to be addressed somehow.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I happened upon this question today:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [What is the one change you made which shot up your productivity?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was originally closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;. It was recently edited and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, not to pick on Anna, but I really don't think that the substance of the question has changed in any significant way.  It's just written in a different style, with this big disclaimer of sorts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please be sure to include in your answers *how* the things you do affect your productivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I can't call up all of the specific instances to memory, this seems to be becoming a trend.  Questions which are fundamentally not constructive are having phrases such as *&quot;Please explain your answers&quot;* or *&quot;Please back up your answers with facts or experiences&quot;* tacked onto the end, and this, apparently, is enough to make them constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, this isn't any different from adding *&quot;...for programmers&quot;* to the end of a title and claiming that it validates the question as being on topic.  It sounds like a cop-out; standard boilerplate copied-and-pasted to the end of a question in place of any real effort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My take is that &quot;good subjective&quot; questions inherently do not need this kind of disclaimer. Take, for example, the question titled [How do you write tests for code that depends on concrete external implementations that can't be mocked?][2]  You really cannot answer that with pure fluff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, maybe that's a bit of a technical example; here's one that's a little more open-ended: [Under what conditions does it make sense to break code into many files, or merge them?][3] That's a fairly soft question, but it's written in such a way that the &quot;explanation&quot; **is** the answer; you can't have an answer without an explanation, it would make no sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps I am in the minority here. Perhaps I am even wrong.  But I am worried about the aforementioned trend; I think that people are starting to exploit a loophole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE has a policy about questions that contain the phrase *for programmers* or variants:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * If you can remove the phrase &quot;for programmers&quot; and the question and answers would still make sense, then the question is off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question here is, **should we be applying a similar test to open-ended questions with the potential to be closed as &quot;Not Constructive?&quot;**  Specifically:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * If removal of the phrase &quot;explain your answers&quot; would make thoughtless one-liners acceptable answers, then the question should be closed as Not Constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Would this be a useful rule of thumb?**  If not, then why not - where have I gone wrong?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/77090/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/77926/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/77812/3249" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3984" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1624" RevisionGUID="aff9dd7b-2938-4b53-beb8-ab8da6a7605d" CreationDate="2011-05-23T02:43:24.743" UserId="226" Comment="added 149 characters in body" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78253/is-there-something-else-like-squarespace-out-there-closed) reminded me that there is nothing explicit in our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) about shopping recommendation questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should there be? Should we take an approach similar to Super User and Gaming where recommendations are off-topic? And if so, do we exclude only questions like &quot;I'm looking for a service that does what I need&quot; or also things like &quot;is there a library in language X that has feature Y&quot;? (Here's an [example](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78379/need-advice-on-php-search-functionality) of the latter kind of questions.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3985" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1625" RevisionGUID="37aef33c-7314-4f6a-860d-43f644d1a9d6" CreationDate="2011-05-23T02:53:06.893" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I think it's pretty well covered by the [`#dontask` section of the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, **open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site** and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”**&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also covered by [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/), which is linked and summarized in the FAQ as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **2. Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers.** The best subjective questions inspire your peers to share their actual experiences, not just post a mindless one-liner or cartoon in hopes of being rewarded with upvotes for being merely “first.” Sharing an experience takes at least one paragraph; ideally several paragraphs. If I’m asking about how to bake cookies, don’t give me a list of grocery items: milk. butter. vanilla. eggs. There is virtually nothing I can learn from a short, static list of grocery items that make up a recipe. Instead, tell me what happened the last time you made cookies from that recipe! Share your detailed experiences, so that we all might learn from them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **4. Great subjective questions invite sharing experiences over opinions.** Certainly experiences inform opinions, but the best subjective questions unabashedly and unashamedly prioritize sharing actual experiences over random opinions. It’s more useful to share with us what you’ve done than what you think. Everyone has an opinon. It takes zero effort or imagination to have an opinion about anything and everything. But people who have done things, real things in the world, and have the scars and arrows in their back to show for it — now that’s worth sharing. You should be uniquely qualified to have your opinion based on the specific experiences you had. And you should share those experiences, and more specifically what you learned from your experiences, with us!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason they're covered by these guidelines is that, time and time again, any time anyone asks a recommendation question it is almost certain to devolve into a list of favorites, with next to no justification for why anyone should care about that recommendation. Answers usually hinge on weasely opinion language like &quot;it's easy&quot;, &quot;it's cheap&quot;, &quot;it's awesome&quot;, &quot;I love it&quot;, and so forth. In this respect, they mirror [the thinly-veiled GTKY questions that Aaronaught brought up](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1621/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there might be some value to referencing the specific terms &quot;shopping recommendation&quot;, &quot;list of recommendations&quot;, and so forth to eliminate any ambiguity. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I do feel that it's hard to use the FAQ as a be-all and end-all to what's on and off-topic, as the basis for the site is founded upon several nuanced concepts, and at a certain point, people need to think for themselves and apply those concepts when deciding if a question is on-topic or off. Just because X isn't explicitly stated to be off-topic in the FAQ doesn't mean all the other stuff in the FAQ doesn't apply." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3986" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1625" RevisionGUID="df01d893-b424-4aff-abc5-d2944c3e525e" CreationDate="2011-05-23T03:00:38.073" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 880 characters in body; added 213 characters in body" Text="In general, I think it's pretty well covered by the [`#dontask` section of the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, **open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site** and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”**&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also covered by [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/), which is linked and summarized in the FAQ as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **2. Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers.** The best subjective questions inspire your peers to share their actual experiences, not just post a mindless one-liner or cartoon in hopes of being rewarded with upvotes for being merely “first.” Sharing an experience takes at least one paragraph; ideally several paragraphs. If I’m asking about how to bake cookies, don’t give me a list of grocery items: milk. butter. vanilla. eggs. There is virtually nothing I can learn from a short, static list of grocery items that make up a recipe. Instead, tell me what happened the last time you made cookies from that recipe! Share your detailed experiences, so that we all might learn from them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **4. Great subjective questions invite sharing experiences over opinions.** Certainly experiences inform opinions, but the best subjective questions unabashedly and unashamedly prioritize sharing actual experiences over random opinions. It’s more useful to share with us what you’ve done than what you think. Everyone has an opinon. It takes zero effort or imagination to have an opinion about anything and everything. But people who have done things, real things in the world, and have the scars and arrows in their back to show for it — now that’s worth sharing. You should be uniquely qualified to have your opinion based on the specific experiences you had. And you should share those experiences, and more specifically what you learned from your experiences, with us!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason they're covered by these guidelines is that, time and time again, any time anyone asks a recommendation question it is almost certain to devolve into a list of favorites, with next to no justification for why anyone should care about that recommendation. Answers usually hinge on weasely opinion language like &quot;it's easy&quot;, &quot;it's cheap&quot;, &quot;it's awesome&quot;, &quot;I love it&quot;, and so forth. In this respect, they mirror [the thinly-veiled GTKY questions that Aaronaught brought up](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1621/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that point, questions that ask *how* to do something (where the &quot;recommendation&quot; *per se* is not the point of the question) are on-topic, questions that ask *what* will do something (where the &quot;recommendation&quot; *is* the point of the question) is off-topic. So,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is there something else like SquareSpace out there?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/78253/8)  — off-topic: asks for a list of stuff that meets X&#xD;&#xA;* [Need Advice on PHP Search Functionality](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/78379/8) — off-topic: asks for a list of stuff that meets X&#xD;&#xA;* [Learning C# quickly (given I already know…)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/78068/8) — on-topic: asks for info on *how* to do X&#xD;&#xA;* [What guidelines do you suggest for using Objective-C Properties?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/36262/8) — on-topic: asks for info on how to do X&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there might be some value to referencing the specific terms &quot;shopping recommendation&quot;, &quot;list of recommendations&quot;, and so forth to eliminate any ambiguity. The number of recommendation questions we've been getting have been growing an an increasing rate, and without a clear push to clean them up, Programmers.SE is nothing more than a glorified recommendation service.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I do feel that it's hard to use the FAQ as a be-all and end-all to what's on and off-topic, as the basis for the site is founded upon several nuanced concepts, and at a certain point, people need to think for themselves and apply those concepts when deciding if a question is on-topic or off. Just because X isn't explicitly stated to be off-topic in the FAQ doesn't mean all the other stuff in the FAQ doesn't apply." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3987" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1625" RevisionGUID="695c26cd-c1de-49d8-af85-4dd6d93a2397" CreationDate="2011-05-23T03:06:07.987" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 41 characters in body" Text="In general, I think it's pretty well covered by the [`#dontask` section of the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, **open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site** and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”**&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also covered by [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/), which is linked and summarized in the FAQ as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **2. Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers.** The best subjective questions inspire your peers to share their actual experiences, not just post a mindless one-liner or cartoon in hopes of being rewarded with upvotes for being merely “first.” Sharing an experience takes at least one paragraph; ideally several paragraphs. If I’m asking about how to bake cookies, don’t give me a list of grocery items: milk. butter. vanilla. eggs. There is virtually nothing I can learn from a short, static list of grocery items that make up a recipe. Instead, tell me what happened the last time you made cookies from that recipe! Share your detailed experiences, so that we all might learn from them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **4. Great subjective questions invite sharing experiences over opinions.** Certainly experiences inform opinions, but the best subjective questions unabashedly and unashamedly prioritize sharing actual experiences over random opinions. It’s more useful to share with us what you’ve done than what you think. Everyone has an opinon. It takes zero effort or imagination to have an opinion about anything and everything. But people who have done things, real things in the world, and have the scars and arrows in their back to show for it — now that’s worth sharing. You should be uniquely qualified to have your opinion based on the specific experiences you had. And you should share those experiences, and more specifically what you learned from your experiences, with us!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason they're covered by these guidelines is that, time and time again, any time anyone asks a recommendation question it is almost certain to devolve into a list of favorites, with next to no justification for why anyone should care about that recommendation. Answers usually hinge on weasely opinion language like &quot;it's easy&quot;, &quot;it's cheap&quot;, &quot;it's awesome&quot;, &quot;I love it&quot;, and so forth. In this respect, they mirror [the thinly-veiled GTKY questions that Aaronaught brought up](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1621/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that point, questions that ask *how* to do something (where the &quot;recommendation&quot; *per se* is not the point of the question) are on-topic, questions that ask *what* will do something (where the &quot;recommendation&quot; *is* the point of the question) is off-topic. So,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is there something else like SquareSpace out there?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/78253/8)  — off-topic: asks for a list of stuff that meets X&#xD;&#xA;* [Need Advice on PHP Search Functionality](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/78379/8) — off-topic: asks for a list of stuff that meets X&#xD;&#xA;* [Learning C# quickly (given I already know…)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/78068/8) — on-topic: asks for info on *how* to do X&#xD;&#xA;* [What guidelines do you suggest for using Objective-C Properties?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/36262/8) — on-topic: asks for info on how to do X&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there might be some value to referencing the specific terms &quot;shopping recommendation&quot;, &quot;list of recommendations&quot;, and so forth to eliminate any ambiguity. The number of recommendation questions we've been getting have been growing an an increasing rate (I count 14 on the front page right now), and without a clear push to clean them up, Programmers.SE is nothing more than a glorified recommendation service.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I do feel that it's hard to use the FAQ as a be-all and end-all to what's on and off-topic, as the basis for the site is founded upon several nuanced concepts, and at a certain point, people need to think for themselves and apply those concepts when deciding if a question is on-topic or off. Just because X isn't explicitly stated to be off-topic in the FAQ doesn't mean all the other stuff in the FAQ doesn't apply." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3988" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1625" RevisionGUID="d1e3a1a2-43b7-471f-8a24-7e39e278bd4a" CreationDate="2011-05-23T03:19:00.123" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 658 characters in body; added 70 characters in body" Text="In general, I think it's pretty well covered by the [`#dontask` section of the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, **open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site** and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”**&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also covered by [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/), which is linked and summarized in the FAQ as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **2. Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers.** The best subjective questions inspire your peers to share their actual experiences, not just post a mindless one-liner or cartoon in hopes of being rewarded with upvotes for being merely “first.” Sharing an experience takes at least one paragraph; ideally several paragraphs. If I’m asking about how to bake cookies, don’t give me a list of grocery items: milk. butter. vanilla. eggs. There is virtually nothing I can learn from a short, static list of grocery items that make up a recipe. Instead, tell me what happened the last time you made cookies from that recipe! Share your detailed experiences, so that we all might learn from them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **4. Great subjective questions invite sharing experiences over opinions.** Certainly experiences inform opinions, but the best subjective questions unabashedly and unashamedly prioritize sharing actual experiences over random opinions. It’s more useful to share with us what you’ve done than what you think. Everyone has an opinon. It takes zero effort or imagination to have an opinion about anything and everything. But people who have done things, real things in the world, and have the scars and arrows in their back to show for it — now that’s worth sharing. You should be uniquely qualified to have your opinion based on the specific experiences you had. And you should share those experiences, and more specifically what you learned from your experiences, with us!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason they're covered by these guidelines is that, time and time again, any time anyone asks a recommendation question it is almost certain to devolve into a list of favorites, with next to no justification for why anyone should care about that recommendation. Answers usually hinge on weasely opinion language like &quot;it's easy&quot;, &quot;it's cheap&quot;, &quot;it's awesome&quot;, &quot;I love it&quot;, and so forth. In this respect, they mirror [the thinly-veiled GTKY questions that Aaronaught brought up](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1621/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that point, questions that ask *how* to do something (where the &quot;recommendation&quot; *per se* is not the point of the question) are on-topic, questions that ask *what* will do something (where the &quot;recommendation&quot; *is* the point of the question) is off-topic. So,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is there something else like SquareSpace out there?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/78253/8)  — off-topic: asks for a list of stuff that meets X&#xD;&#xA;* [Need Advice on PHP Search Functionality](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/78379/8) — off-topic: asks for a list of stuff that meets X&#xD;&#xA;* [Learning C# quickly (given I already know…)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/78068/8) — on-topic: asks for info on *how* to do X&#xD;&#xA;* [What guidelines do you suggest for using Objective-C Properties?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/36262/8) — on-topic: asks for info on how to do X&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there might be some value to referencing the specific terms &quot;shopping recommendation&quot;, &quot;list of recommendations&quot;, and so forth to eliminate any ambiguity. The number of recommendation questions we've been getting have been growing an an increasing rate (I count 14 on the front page right now), and without a clear push to clean them up, Programmers.SE is nothing more than a glorified recommendation service.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And of course, that's [*not* the point of Stack Exchange](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/). We're here to help *solve* problems, not come up with a dubious list of resources to help solve a problem. People should feel comfortable asking about the problem they're having directly. It'd be like if people asked &quot;Can you point me to a website that tells me how to fix this error I'm getting?&quot; on Stack Overflow: there's no added value to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know where Programmers.SE went off the track on this: it might be an issue of broken windows, or something else, but a FAQ mention specifically about this problem could at least act as a basis for bringing the site back from this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that said, I do feel that it's hard to use the FAQ as a be-all and end-all to what's on and off-topic, as the basis for the site is founded upon several nuanced concepts, and at a certain point, people need to think for themselves and apply those concepts when deciding if a question is on-topic or off. Just because X isn't explicitly stated to be off-topic in the FAQ doesn't mean all the other stuff in the FAQ doesn't apply." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3989" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1626" RevisionGUID="1293d117-bb42-4f37-9315-50d984987e3c" CreationDate="2011-05-23T04:44:42.480" UserId="37" Text="Putting aside shopping, which is covered here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How is that question even remotely on topic for the audience of programmers?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've been looking at SquareSpace to host my business and customer-support website, but I really require a forum, and SquareSpace's equivalent, a Discussion widget, frankly sucks for the purpose. Are there any other SquareSpace-like outfits that do have a good UI-designer as well as a good Forum?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean, what about this is *specific* to a professional programmer? It seems to me that lawyers, paramedics, burlesque dancers, and rodeo clowns could all ask that exact same question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3990" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1627" RevisionGUID="1b0c595f-0f52-4f24-a4bc-7aeba92e6912" CreationDate="2011-05-23T06:03:23.360" UserDisplayName="user1249" Text="Frequently questions ask for the &quot;Best X for Y&quot; but the OP is unaware that &quot;best&quot; is very individual and the criteria for goodness needs to be provided for people to give better answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should &quot;best&quot; be given special treatment when analyzing the question?  Perhaps even be considered a stop-word which cannot be used?  (at least in the title?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3991" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1627" RevisionGUID="1b0c595f-0f52-4f24-a4bc-7aeba92e6912" CreationDate="2011-05-23T06:03:23.360" UserDisplayName="user1249" Text="Should &quot;best&quot; be a stop-word for questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3992" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1627" RevisionGUID="1b0c595f-0f52-4f24-a4bc-7aeba92e6912" CreationDate="2011-05-23T06:03:23.360" UserDisplayName="user1249" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3993" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1628" RevisionGUID="90f3b7a1-33f5-4a8f-a52c-7acadff55a61" CreationDate="2011-05-23T07:14:26.217" UserId="63" Text="Try asking, say, &quot;What is best in life?&quot; on Stack Overflow. As soon as you finish entering that title and tab off the entry field, you'll get a little warning: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Pretty much what you're asking for, right? Ah, but that won't appear on Programmers, because [Programmers loves subjectivity](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53/the-question-youre-asking-appears-subjective-and-is-likely-to-be-closed-yeah)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see a question that doesn't provide enough information to be answered (not just general, but outright *vague*) then close it. Otherwise, edit the title to reflect the actual question, assuming it doesn't already. If you can find a way to eliminate &quot;best&quot; while doing so... Well, shucks, that *would* be best." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4000" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1630" RevisionGUID="acd0edf4-f5e7-4e7f-bb9f-4f64ca019e16" CreationDate="2011-05-23T20:26:48.253" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Mr. CRT covered the specific issue with adding *best* as a stop-word, but in general, this is a problem that can't be solved entirely by heuristics. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we ban &quot;best&quot;, &quot;greatest&quot; will take its place. Once &quot;greatest&quot; is banned, &quot;most awesome&quot;, and so on will come. Heck, we've even had problems with [people inventing words](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/382/8) to evade moderation focused on weasel words.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mr. CRT alluded to, when you see a question hinged upon a word like that, it's the symptom of a larger problem with the question in general, one that isnt going to be fixed by removing a single word." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4005" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1632" RevisionGUID="2e388d6c-da11-44a7-a8d7-6ce721c7d24d" CreationDate="2011-05-24T16:14:49.997" UserId="14699" Text="How do you navigate to the apparently super secret exchange sites?  &#xD;&#xA;For instance UX, CodeReview, etc..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4006" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1632" RevisionGUID="2e388d6c-da11-44a7-a8d7-6ce721c7d24d" CreationDate="2011-05-24T16:14:49.997" UserId="14699" Text="How do you navigate to the apparently super secret exchange sites?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4007" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1632" RevisionGUID="2e388d6c-da11-44a7-a8d7-6ce721c7d24d" CreationDate="2011-05-24T16:14:49.997" UserId="14699" Text="|discussion|websites|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4008" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1633" RevisionGUID="cc3f9265-e5f3-407e-ab2c-bb1b282b0867" CreationDate="2011-05-24T16:23:50.720" UserId="47" Text="Those sites are still in beta so don't appear in the footer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;User Experience is on http://ux.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Code Review is on http://codereview.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once you've got there you can see all the other beta sites in their footer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can see all the current beta sites at [Area 51](http://area51.stackexchange.com/?tab=beta)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4009" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1634" RevisionGUID="d81c7657-a81f-424c-acfb-99952f4eb9ab" CreationDate="2011-05-24T16:26:37.953" UserId="226" Text="There is a full list of Stack Exchange sites at http://stackexchange.com/sites. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4011" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1635" RevisionGUID="054a4e1c-9a1b-499b-9244-369c4da1ef2c" CreationDate="2011-05-24T20:30:57.233" UserId="9521" Text="Is there anywhere on Stack Exchange for this question I asked? http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78651/suggestions-on-what-database-to-use&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Also, should this be tagged as &quot;support&quot; and not as &quot;discussion&quot;?)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4012" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1635" RevisionGUID="054a4e1c-9a1b-499b-9244-369c4da1ef2c" CreationDate="2011-05-24T20:30:57.233" UserId="9521" Text="Anywhere on Stack Exchange for this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4013" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1635" RevisionGUID="054a4e1c-9a1b-499b-9244-369c4da1ef2c" CreationDate="2011-05-24T20:30:57.233" UserId="9521" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4014" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1636" RevisionGUID="2774c1d9-d17d-4025-aeb0-214c6dfb8f24" CreationDate="2011-05-24T20:38:41.423" UserId="2356" Text="Yes. Ask it on dba with a slant towards actually defining what your database requirements are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS: I'm one of the mods on dba.SE, so I can promise you that a well-crafted question will be quite welcome there. But if you just say &quot;databases are hard, let's go shopping&quot; I'll close it in a heartbeat. ;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4015" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1637" RevisionGUID="2a08eb8a-32ef-4912-bbdf-200fd3c2ef00" CreationDate="2011-05-24T20:38:53.930" UserId="1204" Text="Shopping recommendation questions are [generally off-topic on all StackExchange sites.][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[DBA.Stackexchange.com][2] might be a good venue, if you can ask a question that *has a specific answer,* and is not merely a poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4016" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1638" RevisionGUID="57bdf78f-afac-4815-a1db-08c6cb91752a" CreationDate="2011-05-25T02:02:21.237" UserId="37" Text="In addition to what others added, there is a site directory on the drop-down StackExchange inbox as pictured:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This list is also ordered by reputation, once you have more than 200 rep on a given site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/cdv3d.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4017" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1639" RevisionGUID="21e8488f-0d66-499c-993a-a5949987b822" CreationDate="2011-05-25T12:06:03.620" UserId="5148" Text="This question sprang to mind due to [this question][1] on the main site. My original comment about the question not fitting is no longer applicable since the OP rephrased the question. In fact *all* the comments basically are no longer useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In instances like this,&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Should we as community members&#xD;&#xA;    delete our comments?&#xD;&#xA; 2. Should the moderator re-opening delete/tidy the comments?&#xD;&#xA; 3. Leave them as they are as they pertain to previous form of the question?&#xD;&#xA; 4. Should they be marked in some way to show they are about an older version of the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79011/industry-switch-to-space-technologies" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4018" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1639" RevisionGUID="21e8488f-0d66-499c-993a-a5949987b822" CreationDate="2011-05-25T12:06:03.620" UserId="5148" Text="Should we tidy the comments on re-opened questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4019" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1639" RevisionGUID="21e8488f-0d66-499c-993a-a5949987b822" CreationDate="2011-05-25T12:06:03.620" UserId="5148" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4020" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1640" RevisionGUID="537df007-be6f-499b-9589-2a69e07dc913" CreationDate="2011-05-25T12:20:36.603" UserId="47" Text="I think this needs to be done on a case by case basis, but in general flagging the post for moderator attention is probably the best way to go. There's nothing stopping you deleting your own comments, but it might make other people's meaningless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the question you link to I did do an initial clean up of the comments, but thought that some of them were still relevant - if only to show why the question had been closed and then reopened. However, I'm always willing to listen to the community on this sort of thing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4021" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1639" RevisionGUID="d28bd4a7-c8ad-4548-9183-a459159882af" CreationDate="2011-05-25T13:00:43.340" UserId="5148" Comment="It is a question, it should have a question mark." Text="Should we tidy the comments on re-opened questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4022" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1639" RevisionGUID="594759e4-bae3-4acf-9540-cfa18ec5c98b" CreationDate="2011-05-25T16:21:40.040" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4023" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1641" RevisionGUID="5a262409-3322-4a47-a77e-843d429542eb" CreationDate="2011-05-27T11:37:55.327" UserId="4041" Text="I think some of these questions are closed too quickly; especially when closed as *too localized*. In many cases a reformulated question would be helpful to future visitors. For example: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20289/mid-level-it-lead could be reformulated as 'What do you do when you get limited learning opportunities in your job'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing a question is negative feedback to a user, and I think it should be avoided when possible. If it's not a real question, but just to vent, sure close it as *non constructive*. When it's a duplicate, close it; at least you're giving the user a place to find his/her answer. &#xD;&#xA;But with *too localized* you're closing the door to someone seeking help. If you can instead nudge the user into reformulating the question to make it more useful to other users everybody wins." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4024" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1624" RevisionGUID="440654a0-3ca9-4ad7-80b4-b54e2487a730" CreationDate="2011-05-28T00:11:05.167" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4025" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1642" RevisionGUID="22c7a5dd-9d5a-4c30-8b75-0614d09f4cf5" CreationDate="2011-05-28T05:55:28.290" UserId="37" Text="I much prefer a clean, tidy set of comments that are as on-topic and relevant as possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there are any opportunities to clean up and remove meta-comments or obsolete comments, I never hesitate to do so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(This is doubly true on closed and re-opened questions.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4026" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1643" RevisionGUID="e5ca8990-92f9-49bf-9928-75e67d1df1f4" CreationDate="2011-05-28T18:33:43.573" UserId="9095" Text="The size of user profile image in this forum is smaller than in other forums, why?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4027" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1643" RevisionGUID="e5ca8990-92f9-49bf-9928-75e67d1df1f4" CreationDate="2011-05-28T18:33:43.573" UserId="9095" Text="The size of user profile image in this forum is smaller than in other forums, why?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4028" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1643" RevisionGUID="e5ca8990-92f9-49bf-9928-75e67d1df1f4" CreationDate="2011-05-28T18:33:43.573" UserId="9095" Text="|bug|user-profile|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4029" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1644" RevisionGUID="0a9a92a5-d04d-4b08-9a75-1c02a2f93893" CreationDate="2011-05-28T19:05:16.327" UserId="47" Text="It's part of the design (assuming you mean the picture on [this page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/47/chrisf) - as an example)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4030" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1645" RevisionGUID="d4db7796-9134-4ece-952e-0e17c3e14654" CreationDate="2011-05-28T21:01:11.153" UserId="11905" Text="I think it is strange that a question about job hopping is on-topic, but [a question about the relation between maternity and software development career][1] is closed. I hope it wasn't closed because it concerns women only (and as we all know, women can't program, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79543/changing-jobs-and-pregnancy" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4031" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="590" RevisionGUID="eef52210-73ef-4d22-b51e-680703a08f10" CreationDate="2011-05-28T23:17:39.527" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add off-topic guidance, as apparently it's not obvious that not all career advice questions are on-topic" Text="First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate directly to software development: general career advice questions with no relation to software development or where software development is a minor facet of the question are off-topic. A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as *off-topic*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(This aspect is discussed in [Dealing with “What are some good types of pickles for programmers?” type questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/288/8).)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, the general rule of thumb should be whether the question can help others in a similar situation. If the circumstances surrounding the question are too specific to the question asker such that there is no way to generalize and answer the question, they should be closed as *too localized*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Applying that rule should put a theoretical limit on the amount of ways the question &quot;My job is X, what should I do?&quot; can be asked. Questions that have similar set of circumstances to already-asked questions should be closed as *exact duplicates*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, if there isn't something pointed being asked in the question, and the asker is merely using Programmers.SE as a means to vent about whatever annoyed them at their job that day, it should be closed as *not constructive*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, and only if, a career-advice question passes those three tests, should it stay open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of on-topic career guidance questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Job hopping, is it a problem?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3272/job-hopping-is-it-a-problem)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can someone find a job as a programmer without an education?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8886/can-someone-find-a-job-as-a-programmer-without-an-education)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of career guidance questions that should be closed: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Mid level IT lead](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20289/mid-level-it-lead)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the best qualification route for me to get back into programming? (UK)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22350/what-is-the-best-qualification-route-for-me-to-get-back-into-programming-uk)&#xD;&#xA;* [On programmers, INTJ personality, human interactions, and large companies.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18227/on-programmers-intj-personality-human-interactions-and-large-companies-close) (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should also be noted that most, if not all, of the other Stack Exchanges have elected to consider their versions of &quot;help my exact situation&quot;-type questions (gaming recommendations, code reviews, proofreading, etc.) to be off-topic on the basis that a Q&amp;A system does not lend well to the necessary discussion to tease out all the details to fully answer the question. I don't see why Programmers.SE should be any different." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4032" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="288" RevisionGUID="50e2be40-5e8a-4dce-bdb6-96cb0c56d22c" CreationDate="2011-05-28T23:20:13.050" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="FAQify, generalize title" Text="Are questions not directly related to programming (but might concern programmers) on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4033" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="288" RevisionGUID="50e2be40-5e8a-4dce-bdb6-96cb0c56d22c" CreationDate="2011-05-28T23:20:13.050" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="FAQify, generalize title" Text="|discussion|faq|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4044" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1599" RevisionGUID="23ce2215-2450-49cc-947c-9c84475e4635" CreationDate="2011-05-28T23:51:16.240" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 413 characters in body" Text="**Edit:** Over the past couple of weeks, we've been accumulating several FAQ-worthy questions that provide a good amount of detail beyond what the one-page FAQ, so I've taken the extra couple of steps to consolidate and adjust the questions to be more FAQ-like. We now have a [FAQ Index](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1646/8) which links to several questions on meta and elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think there's a tremendous amount of value in spending a whole lot of time on this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Stack Overflow, they get a ton of questions about all the sites about every possible mechanic. They get dozens upon dozens of questions about the same things, and as such, require canonical posts to point to for the purposes of duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, the amount of questions they get about various aspects of the site require extensive detail that can't be fit into a single page FAQ. For example, there's a FAQ post that goes into the excruciating minutiae of [how comment replies work](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/43019/how-do-comment-replies-work).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, Meta Stack Overflow has what Jeff Atwood terms &quot;big city problems&quot;. The [meta-tag:faq] tag is the only reasonable way to handle the onslaught of support questions they get about the engine and global policies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't really have that problem. We get ~2-3 questions every couple of days, and for the most part, cover new issues that do need a discussion or a real answer (i.e. they can't be closed as a duplicate). Even the ones that cover the same ground as earlier questions, we (usually) can answer the question in a way that makes it specific to the person asking it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we've been using [meta-tag:faq] to tag questions to the few questions frequently arise organically: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* how is Programmers.SE different from Stack Overflow, &#xD;&#xA;* changes to the main FAQ sparked by frequent on-topic discussions, &#xD;&#xA;* the consequences of the Great Redisciplining,&#xD;&#xA;* and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main intent of these questions is to explain the background behind the policies Programmers.SE has, not to explain in detail the different mechanics behind those policies (like Meta Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for the stuff everyone needs to know—the stuff we want to refer to when closing questions or discussing policy—we use [our single-page FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq). If anything should get some love, it's that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, if you see something that really explains the problems with an issue that frequently comes up, by all means flag it. Beyond that, the normal Stack Exchange guidelines apply:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you have a better answer to a question, answer it.&#xD;&#xA;* If you like an answer, up-vote it.&#xD;&#xA;* If you don't like an answer, down-vote it and leave a comment explaining why." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4045" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1595" RevisionGUID="a06db6d0-6614-41b4-8a00-62811cfc8366" CreationDate="2011-05-28T23:51:57.347" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|meta-faq|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4047" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="590" RevisionGUID="d2eefe6e-184c-4894-a6e6-0434d3bf89a1" CreationDate="2011-05-29T03:29:36.013" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Remove Job Hopping as it doesn't meet on-topic criteria" Text="First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate directly to software development: general career advice questions with no relation to software development or where software development is a minor facet of the question are off-topic. A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as *off-topic*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(This aspect is discussed in [Dealing with “What are some good types of pickles for programmers?” type questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/288/8).)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, the general rule of thumb should be whether the question can help others in a similar situation. If the circumstances surrounding the question are too specific to the question asker such that there is no way to generalize and answer the question, they should be closed as *too localized*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Applying that rule should put a theoretical limit on the amount of ways the question &quot;My job is X, what should I do?&quot; can be asked. Questions that have similar set of circumstances to already-asked questions should be closed as *exact duplicates*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, if there isn't something pointed being asked in the question, and the asker is merely using Programmers.SE as a means to vent about whatever annoyed them at their job that day, it should be closed as *not constructive*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, and only if, a career-advice question passes those three tests, should it stay open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example of on-topic career guidance questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Can someone find a job as a programmer without an education?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8886/can-someone-find-a-job-as-a-programmer-without-an-education)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of career guidance questions that should be closed: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Mid level IT lead](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20289/mid-level-it-lead)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the best qualification route for me to get back into programming? (UK)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22350/what-is-the-best-qualification-route-for-me-to-get-back-into-programming-uk)&#xD;&#xA;* [On programmers, INTJ personality, human interactions, and large companies.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18227/on-programmers-intj-personality-human-interactions-and-large-companies-close) (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should also be noted that most, if not all, of the other Stack Exchanges have elected to consider their versions of &quot;help my exact situation&quot;-type questions (gaming recommendations, code reviews, proofreading, etc.) to be off-topic on the basis that a Q&amp;A system does not lend well to the necessary discussion to tease out all the details to fully answer the question. I don't see why Programmers.SE should be any different." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4048" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1648" RevisionGUID="0452a0d1-3f0f-4015-93a5-ecf7df13be2b" CreationDate="2011-05-29T04:17:05.160" UserId="37" Text="We use http://gravatar.com for avatars.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The native size of the avatar is 128x128 as you can see on individual user pages -- this is also the maximum that Gravatar supports. I think this is quite large and I'm not sure why you would feel otherwise." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4049" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1643" RevisionGUID="05fec7ec-0079-4c76-b700-18c58e4ada8c" CreationDate="2011-05-29T04:31:39.260" UserId="9095" Comment="added 85 characters in body; added 75 characters in body" Text="The size of user profile image in this forum (programmers.stackexchange.com) is smaller than in other forums (*.stackexchange.com or stackoverflow.com), why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/XKjqf.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4050" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1643" RevisionGUID="ddb5b35b-3cf3-4b28-99c1-2cdd0c0e60ac" CreationDate="2011-05-29T04:38:34.323" UserId="9095" Comment="added 154 characters in body" Text="The size of user profile image in this forum (programmers.stackexchange.com) is smaller than in other forums (*.stackexchange.com or stackoverflow.com), why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In programmers.stackexchange.com, the size of image, frame, and padding is not aesthetically beautiful. It is just my opinion that maybe incorrect. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/XKjqf.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4051" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1648" RevisionGUID="ed96e4ea-740a-4b0b-b580-8f320ad9561c" CreationDate="2011-05-29T05:02:16.600" UserId="37" Comment="added 164 characters in body" Text="We use http://gravatar.com for avatars.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The native size of the avatar is 128x128 as you can see on individual user pages -- this is also the maximum that Gravatar supports. I think this is quite large and I'm not sure why you would feel otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;edit: as the OP said, for some reason Jin (our designer) decided to resize the avatar on the user page for this particular site. I will let him comment on that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4052" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1649" RevisionGUID="2fabf99e-cac3-48a0-8ea3-2c51fbe7e816" CreationDate="2011-05-30T14:12:36.383" UserId="19799" Text="I've noticed this question; [If you had the power to remove one thing in your daily job, what would it be?][1] floating around on the 'active' page and I can't help but wonder how this is still open when questions such as [What stressors do programmers encounter on the job, and how do you deal with them? ][2] have been closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Did this one slip through the net or am I missing something?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/10087/19799&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74913/19799" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4053" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1649" RevisionGUID="2fabf99e-cac3-48a0-8ea3-2c51fbe7e816" CreationDate="2011-05-30T14:12:36.383" UserId="19799" Text="Poll type question - Should it be closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4054" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1649" RevisionGUID="2fabf99e-cac3-48a0-8ea3-2c51fbe7e816" CreationDate="2011-05-30T14:12:36.383" UserId="19799" Text="|discussion|questions|polling|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4055" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1650" RevisionGUID="e1f7b8f0-fc75-4b86-8709-e1d6d79f08fd" CreationDate="2011-05-30T14:20:04.283" UserId="226" Text="Looks like that was an old question that did, indeed, slip through the cracks. I have closed it as &quot;not constructive&quot;, as is our usual policy with questions like that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4056" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1651" RevisionGUID="22c47807-036e-4a2a-972c-343c9e2bcbd0" CreationDate="2011-05-31T13:51:43.277" UserId="7048" Text="Anna Lear and I have a disagreement on the validity of a question on P.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How to promote Facebook app?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me it seems, that the promotion of an application is subject to localization and the subject matter of the application. The best promotion for two applications will not be the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;eg.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I were to promote a music application, I would likely want to promote and partner with music websites and sources. If I was developing a game however, this would not be the ideal source for promotion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you believe this topic (and topics like it) is off-topic, or is there a better location for such a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78280/how-to-promote-facebook-app" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4057" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1651" RevisionGUID="22c47807-036e-4a2a-972c-343c9e2bcbd0" CreationDate="2011-05-31T13:51:43.277" UserId="7048" Text="Are generic application promotion question on topic for P.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4058" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1651" RevisionGUID="22c47807-036e-4a2a-972c-343c9e2bcbd0" CreationDate="2011-05-31T13:51:43.277" UserId="7048" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4059" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1652" RevisionGUID="9d40ac71-25b4-4d55-8ea7-531b4c7bee18" CreationDate="2011-05-31T14:12:36.777" UserId="226" Text="As I mentioned in the comments on that question (which will likely be cleaned up eventually), I think this question is on-topic. There certainly will be differences in how different applications are promoted, but there is some general advice that could apply, i.e. &quot;partner with sites that share some themes with your application&quot;. Obviously one wouldn't promote a game on a music site, but promoting it on a gaming site would make total sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, I don't think having only 2 answers (one of them good, one potentially editable into a better shape with more detail) is a bad thing. Not every post needs many answers. If a single answer is sufficient, that's okay. If someone comes along a few months later and has more experience to share, that's okay too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Far as other locations go, [answers.onstartups.com](http://answers.onstartups.com) may be a good place, but I'm not familiar enough with them to say that for certain." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4060" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1651" RevisionGUID="593c9dcb-49f4-42e8-b2e9-9653fbc27920" CreationDate="2011-05-31T14:49:01.053" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4061" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1653" RevisionGUID="8c4be1c5-df8a-43b8-a3d6-73d1e730f720" CreationDate="2011-06-01T13:43:26.703" UserId="1069" Text="This question: [AddIn, AddOn and Plugin](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80716/addin-addon-and-plugin-closed) has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I first read it I thought it might be better suited to [EL&amp;U](http://english.stackexchange.com/), but since the question is something specific to computer programmes, this seems like it is a good place to ask. It is a useful thing for developers to be able understand the terminology for their own profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is not vague, incomplete, ambiguous, or overly broad and has been answered in its current form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why was this question closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4062" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1653" RevisionGUID="8c4be1c5-df8a-43b8-a3d6-73d1e730f720" CreationDate="2011-06-01T13:43:26.703" UserId="1069" Text="This question about word meanings was closed as off topic, but does not seem to be off topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4063" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1653" RevisionGUID="8c4be1c5-df8a-43b8-a3d6-73d1e730f720" CreationDate="2011-06-01T13:43:26.703" UserId="1069" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4064" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1654" RevisionGUID="1711db60-83df-4cbc-a757-a831881beb8f" CreationDate="2011-06-01T13:47:16.090" UserId="226" Text="I think I'm with you. I don't know why it was closed and I disagree with its closing. It looks like there's a decent answer up already, though, so I don't think I'm going to override community votes to reopen it unless there's enough support expressed here from users who aren't able to vote to reopen." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4065" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1655" RevisionGUID="d64faad7-a73a-44e5-987c-9af3f754f9d3" CreationDate="2011-06-01T15:27:50.750" UserId="6420" Text="I know legal issues are in the faq as on-topic but I could not find an existing discussion of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do legal questions such as the [iPhone issue][1] or [non-paying customer question][2] really have a place here? I think that providing amateur legal advice (even if it is good) is a disservice to the community and it would be better if we were to close these as off-topic.  It seems these topics always end up with a lot of meta-discussion in the comments directly related to the dubious nature of internet legal advice, caveats etc. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80785/should-i-remove-my-ios-app-from-sale-fearing-lodsys&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23404/how-to-get-money-from-reluctant-client" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4066" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1655" RevisionGUID="d64faad7-a73a-44e5-987c-9af3f754f9d3" CreationDate="2011-06-01T15:27:50.750" UserId="6420" Text="Irresponsible legal advice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4067" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1655" RevisionGUID="d64faad7-a73a-44e5-987c-9af3f754f9d3" CreationDate="2011-06-01T15:27:50.750" UserId="6420" Text="|discussion|legal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4068" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1656" RevisionGUID="81d33c39-88b1-40c6-be32-158ebe69a5b3" CreationDate="2011-06-01T15:48:29.057" UserId="17000" Text="I'm not saying my question was the best in the world, or even the worded in the best way, but I don't think it deserved to be closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80396/programming-languages-with-these-features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Mark Trapp](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8/mark-trapp), you can see, tells me in a comment that the [six guidelines for subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) applies to objective questions, as well. In fact, he interprets the rule to mean that we're not allowed to ask _any_ questions unless we have a real-life situation to solve. He implies that seeking knowledge out of pure curiosity is forbidden.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer to my question would have no opinion involved, only the satisfaction of the four criteria I laid out, so it's not subjective. It definitely has an answer in the form of a list. Do the guidelines for subjective questions really apply to objective questions, too?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Jeff Atwood](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/37/jeff-atwood) seems to make the distinction in a comment on [this Meta post](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice/369#369), but maybe not all moderators are in agreement?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm really trying to figure out why my question was closed, here. Not necessarily just because of that one question (although I am genuinely interested in it), but for future questions, as well. I'd appreciate any help." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4069" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1656" RevisionGUID="81d33c39-88b1-40c6-be32-158ebe69a5b3" CreationDate="2011-06-01T15:48:29.057" UserId="17000" Text="Objective question closed as subjective?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4070" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1656" RevisionGUID="81d33c39-88b1-40c6-be32-158ebe69a5b3" CreationDate="2011-06-01T15:48:29.057" UserId="17000" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4071" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1657" RevisionGUID="6a5befc7-8ead-4ad7-9553-44b27b616ec5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T16:01:36.030" UserId="6420" Text="The question was closed because it is not a subjective question. Programmers is for subjective questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4072" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1658" RevisionGUID="fba2f294-29a3-4a2d-b7e3-cc0ed8874949" CreationDate="2011-06-01T16:20:16.950" UserId="25936" Text="Mark, in his comment, provides a **straight quote** from the [FAQ][1], actually the first paragraph of the section **What kind of questions should I not ask here?**, in which the highlighted &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practical, answerable questions based&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on actual problems that you face&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; part is exactly why *knowledge out of pure curiosity is forbidden*. To say that he voted to close based on some personal interpretation is unfair.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The core problem of your question is that answers are only useful to you, it is highly unlikely that anyone else but you will benefit from it. Instead of asking for a list without defining a reason for it, you could edit your question and tell us why these exact features are important to you, what is the underlying challenge you are facing, so that when we face a similar challenge we too can benefit from your question and its answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please read the FAQ carefully, if you have any objections by all means do use meta to raise them and let the community decide. But until the community decides differently, the FAQ stands as is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4073" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1659" RevisionGUID="aa8f126b-4c86-453b-95b1-bac6ca6ce1f3" CreationDate="2011-06-01T16:31:07.563" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I think the issue with the question, like many rote knowledge questions, is that the purpose of the question is not clear. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, one of the foundations of Programmers.SE, and what differentiates it from Stack Overflow and the other objective Stack Exchange sites, is that we encourage answers to be built upon people's subjective experiences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question that just asks for fact recitation doesn't touch upon that at all, so it appears that question is missing a crucial element that would invite such answers, and as such it's incomplete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not to say you *can't* ask objective questions, it's just that we need to know *why* you're asking it so it can inform people how to answer it. Otherwise, questions like these generally invite answers that have a different set of expectations than the asker (for example, a person opining rather than providing a set of facts)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4074" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1660" RevisionGUID="a8714744-6c12-4d5d-921a-4923211b7e21" CreationDate="2011-06-01T17:00:41.567" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="To tackle the relatively easy part of your question first, if you see a comment chain devolving into an extended discussion that does nothing to improve the post to which it is attached, flag the post for moderator review. Extended discussion, on any question, is discouraged and [we will actively clean those up](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1457/how-do-our-moderators-and-community-members-feel-about-cleaning-up-comment-nois/1508#1508).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding legal questions, it's really a two parter:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Are *all* legal questions ill-served by being asked here?&#xD;&#xA;* If not, is there a certain *kind* of legal question that's ill-served here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the first question, I don't think so. The Stack Exchange system can provide great answers, and there is a certain amount of community vetting in the form of voting, comments, and counter-answers, but it *requires* common sense. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, for example, I told you that the best practice for implementing scrum in your job was to submit TPS reports daily that contain nothing but 14 pages of the letter 'K', I would hope you wouldn't do that even if my answer was the top-voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the context of legal questions, common sense is *always, always* consult a lawyer. Asking a site devoted to non-lawyers who do not have an attorney-client relationship for definitive legal advice is obviously dangerous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that's not to say you *can't* ask about legal issues: it's akin to asking a colleague or a friend about their experiences in a similar situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take the non-paying customer question, for instance: you might ask that question of a colleague, who might say something like &quot;Obviously get a lawyer, but when that happened to me, this is what worked.&quot; That's the type of answer we want on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the second question, the highly-specific legal question that can *only* be answered by a lawyer, like a question about being sued and asking for a legal interpretation for a defense, would be off-topic. We're not lawyers: we can't answer those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One footnote regarding common sense: there are askers who appear to have the wrong set of expectations when asking legal questions, and both of the questions you listed appear to have this problem. A person who appears to think Programmers.SE substitutes a lawyer **needs** to be educated that he *cannot* use the answers given as a way to circumvent legal council.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this end, it's similar to questions on Stack Overflow where someone asks how to do something insane, and the only correct answer is &quot;**Don't do that.**  Do X instead.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the purpose of the Stack Exchange network is to build up questions and answers that can help others, not just the asker. So a misguided asker isn't reason enough to close a question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4075" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1661" RevisionGUID="6c374ab7-9901-4dc6-ad36-fc010bcf9789" CreationDate="2011-06-01T18:19:16.307" UserId="17000" Text="To put my own opinion on this into answer form (so that you can vote on my answer separately from my question):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pretty sure the [six guidelines for subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) applies to only _subjective_ questions rather than objective ones. This is the reason that was given for why my question was closed, and yet my question was an objective one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So now the question is whether or not objective questions in general are forbidden. Even if objective questions are forbidden, I believe my question should have been migrated to the appropriate site rather than closed. However, I read a comment from [Jeff Atwood](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/37/jeff-atwood) on [this Meta post](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice/369#369):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [W]e're not forcing subjective here, the difference is that subjective questions are welcomed and allowed. However, we do think that objective questions can do better on Stack Overflow in many cases...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4076" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1661" RevisionGUID="d153e416-2e71-4dbc-8d7b-947fe968a654" CreationDate="2011-06-01T18:24:59.653" UserId="17000" Comment="Add further reason why I posted my question on Programmers." Text="To put my own opinion on this into answer form (so that you can vote on my answer separately from my question):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pretty sure the [six guidelines for subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) applies to only _subjective_ questions rather than objective ones. This is the reason that was given for why my question was closed, and yet my question was an objective one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So now the question is whether or not objective questions in general are forbidden. Even if objective questions are forbidden, I believe my question should have been migrated to the appropriate site rather than closed. However, I read a comment from [Jeff Atwood](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/37/jeff-atwood) on [this Meta post](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice/369#369):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [W]e're not forcing subjective here, the difference is that subjective questions are welcomed and allowed. However, we do think that objective questions can do better on Stack Overflow in many cases...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought at the time that the subject matter of my question was a better fit for Programmers than Stack Overflow, so that's why I posted here rather than there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4077" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1662" RevisionGUID="eaf68d17-ecd5-4f6c-8d6a-cbb12d53d697" CreationDate="2011-06-01T18:54:18.197" UserId="226" Text="I don't think your question is objective. Or, for that matter, a question that fits within the Q&amp;A framework on Stack Exchange at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An objective question generally has a &quot;correct&quot; answer. A subjective question invites answers that can be valid from different perspectives, shaped by the posters' individual experiences. Your question invites a list of answers where each one is equally valid (except perhaps those that don't fit your criteria at all) under any circumstances and from any perspective. Questions like that are also discouraged in the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's take a look at the &quot;What kind of questions should I not ask here&quot; section:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answerable questions based on actual&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problems that you face. Chatty,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; open-ended questions diminish the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; usefulness of our site and push other&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions off the front page. To&#xD;&#xA;&gt; prevent your question from being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; flagged and possibly removed, avoid&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; every answer is equally valid: “What’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your favorite `______`?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question fits very well into this situation, even though it's not a &quot;what's your favourite X&quot; kind of question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use `______` for `______`, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The body of your question contained many languages that you already found that fit your criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mark mentioned, we try to focus on helping people solve practical problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if `______` happened?”  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; it is a rant disguised as a question: “ `______` sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These two don't apply to your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here. (You are more than welcome to have such discussions in our real time web chat.) However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your post certainly seems to be in the discussion category. It attracts answers that are items on a list, not answers that individually solve the question. Those kinds of posts aren't well-suited to the Q&amp;A format of Stack Exchange and may be better asked elsewhere (for example, on Quora)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4078" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1660" RevisionGUID="79904b45-e3c8-4389-90f3-b7fdc7d62e06" CreationDate="2011-06-01T20:19:17.297" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 323 characters in body" Text="To tackle the relatively easy part of your question first, if you see a comment chain devolving into an extended discussion that does nothing to improve the post to which it is attached, flag the post for moderator review. Extended discussion, on any question, is discouraged and [we will actively clean those up](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1457/how-do-our-moderators-and-community-members-feel-about-cleaning-up-comment-nois/1508#1508).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding legal questions, it's really a two parter:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Are *all* legal questions ill-served by being asked here?&#xD;&#xA;* If not, is there a certain *kind* of legal question that's ill-served here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the first question, I don't think so. The Stack Exchange system can provide great answers, and there is a certain amount of community vetting in the form of voting, comments, and counter-answers, but it *requires* common sense. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, for example, I told you that the best practice for implementing scrum in your job was to submit TPS reports daily that contain nothing but 14 pages of the letter 'K', I would hope you wouldn't do that even if my answer was the top-voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the context of legal questions, common sense is *always, always* consult a lawyer. Asking a site devoted to non-lawyers who do not have an attorney-client relationship for definitive legal advice is obviously dangerous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that's not to say you *can't* ask about legal issues: it's akin to asking a colleague or a friend about their experiences in a similar situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take the non-paying customer question, for instance: you might ask that question of a colleague, who might say something like &quot;Obviously get a lawyer, but when that happened to me, this is what worked.&quot; That's the type of answer we want on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the second question, the highly-specific legal question that can *only* be answered by a lawyer, like a question about being sued and asking for a legal interpretation for a defense, would be off-topic. We're not lawyers: we can't answer those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there is always going to be a fine line between what constitutes regular, professional advice (on-topic) and what constitutes personal legal advice (off-topic). The standard should be, &quot;would a reasonable person consider the question to be asking for personal legal advice?&quot; If so, it's a candidate for closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One footnote regarding common sense: there are askers who appear to have the wrong set of expectations when asking legal questions, and both of the questions you listed appear to have this problem. A person who appears to think Programmers.SE substitutes a lawyer **needs** to be educated that he *cannot* use the answers given as a way to circumvent legal council.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this end, it's similar to questions on Stack Overflow where someone asks how to do something insane, and the only correct answer is &quot;**Don't do that.**  Do X instead.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the purpose of the Stack Exchange network is to build up questions and answers that can help others, not just the asker. So a misguided asker isn't reason enough to close a question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4079" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1663" RevisionGUID="3ffdc5eb-ea2b-4e8d-97dc-5fab650ebe6d" CreationDate="2011-06-01T22:53:31.440" UserId="906" Text="I nominate...me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I'm not shy, and like to talk.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes it's even interesting." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4080" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1664" RevisionGUID="f715594b-57a0-4036-86f9-7cbd66effcea" CreationDate="2011-06-01T23:32:53.170" UserId="906" Text="off-topic: the promotion of an application is a marketing question, and the answer is not specific to programming:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* search-engine optimization&#xD;&#xA;* word of mouth referrals&#xD;&#xA;* advertising&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4081" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1665" RevisionGUID="f693b3be-7f64-4f67-a970-05e3ceebb3e7" CreationDate="2011-06-02T02:18:14.333" UserId="226" Text="Earlier today we saw http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80898/how-do-you-ask-or-get-asked-to-speak-at-a-software-conference asked and subsequently closed as &quot;not a real question&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's gathered 2 reopen votes already and I personally believe it deserves to be reopened. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the highest voted answer in [this question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers/292#292) here on Meta, I think the question fits most of the criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it interesting to programmers in general?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think so, provided they're the type of programmers who want to speak at a conference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Would answers be significantly different without &quot;for programmers&quot; added?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some answers would be more general, but I think there are enough development-specific things that could be pulled in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it is true that other professions have conferences, I doubt, for example, that a speaker at an economics conference has to attend a local user group or create an open source project to become more known in their field.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does the addition of &quot;for programmers&quot; seem like more than just an afterthought?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Software&quot; was edited into the question by request, but I don't think it's unreasonable to say that a question about conferences on a programming-themed site is about software conferences and not, say, knitting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Will the question produce useful and/or interesting discussion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think so. I think many developers are focused on their own jobs and daily tasks and might think that speaking at a conference is for other people. They might not consider the fact that they, too, have a lot to offer to the community and that presenting doesn't have to be intimidating or only done by the big names in the industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does this question make the internet better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See above, I think so. As a developer, reading the answers given to that question, I could also extrapolate beyond conferences and see how I could improve the soft side of my career in addition to eventually improving technical skills.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the question could be expanded a bit to include something like asking what sort of preparation (at the technical level) is required for presenting at a software conference, but even as it is now, I think it should be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4082" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1665" RevisionGUID="f693b3be-7f64-4f67-a970-05e3ceebb3e7" CreationDate="2011-06-02T02:18:14.333" UserId="226" Text="Should &quot;How do you ask or get asked to speak at a software conference?&quot; have been closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4083" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1665" RevisionGUID="f693b3be-7f64-4f67-a970-05e3ceebb3e7" CreationDate="2011-06-02T02:18:14.333" UserId="226" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4084" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1666" RevisionGUID="97a1a183-c7eb-4f73-8584-e8b20fb7cdd3" CreationDate="2011-06-02T02:23:42.197" UserId="906" Text="not specific to programmers; the answer is the same as for any conference: &lt;strike&gt;bribe someone&lt;/strike&gt; submit a proposal and apply, be known by the conference audience, do something to get the attention of the audience and organizers, &lt;strike&gt;bribe someone&lt;/strike&gt; talk to people about it, &lt;strike&gt;pimp yourself&lt;/strike&gt; sell them on the benefits of having you speak, write a best-selling book in the appropriate niche..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4085" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1667" RevisionGUID="44e41d59-4f28-4059-be61-85ec760807d2" CreationDate="2011-06-02T04:02:15.653" UserId="464" Text="Every profession has its professional conferences.  I believe, however, that statements like &quot;the answer is the same as for any conference&quot; may hide the possibilities that there are aspects of conferences that are unique to programming or apply to a small number of professions, including programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussing such aspects in the answers can definitely help the original poster and is programming specific.  Therefore, I believe this is an on-topic question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of such aspects could be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Open space**.  This is yet another low-barrier-of-entry venue where the conference agenda is set dynamically, just-in-time, and anyone can propose a session and lead it.  I have been to open-space conferences and have not heard of this concept's being used outside the software development community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Fast pace of learning.**  Conference speakers - in all professions - tend to be people who were the first to discover and master something and now they are on stage enlightening the rest of us.  They are at the cutting edge.  The important question is, how fast does the cutting edge move?  In many professions, not very fast, so your potential as a conference speaker depends more on your established status.  But, in programming, you can fall really behind in less than a year, so your potential depends mostly on your continued drink-from-a-firehose professional learning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Unique events** such as code- and demo-camps that you can use to promote yourself.  (Unique to programming, that is; I have not heard of, say, schoolteachers' demo camps.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The above highlights are debatable, of course.  Responders can also find more examples than I presented here.  Such debate and more examples can be just part of normal, keep-in-mind-we're-talking-about-programming-here discussion that is within the site guidelines and can help the original poster.  We need to reopen the question to let such discussion continue. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4086" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1668" RevisionGUID="c74ddb81-9760-4346-9687-ff1ff2cf50c4" CreationDate="2011-06-02T04:53:44.627" UserId="37" Text="I personally think this could work, but it doesn't help that the question is so short.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For one thing, there's no rationale; invite answerers to explain *why* the OP thinks it could be beneficial to a programmer to speak at a software conference -- not just how:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not seeing this question do much of the above, primarily because it is so short that it provides zero guidance to potential answerers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4087" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1669" RevisionGUID="cec0faa7-56a3-4840-9255-c4feec82b9fc" CreationDate="2011-06-02T10:57:40.427" UserId="37" Text="As a thank you for *being awesome*, if you are on page 1 or page 2 of &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=reputation&amp;filter=all&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;hellip; we'll be sending you a little care package shortly:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Programmers Stack Exchange t-shirt in your size&#xD;&#xA;- Programmers Stack Exchange die-cut, vinyl stickers&#xD;&#xA;- [Stack Exchange sharpie][1] &#xD;&#xA;- [Stack Exchange pen][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [Stack Exchange stickers][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can expect to get an email soon with details on how to confirm and provide your mailing address and size preferences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The t-shirt&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![programmers.stackexchange.com t-shirt][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The sticker&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![programmers.stackexchange.com sticker][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rest of the items you can view in the [Stack Exchange store][7] &amp;mdash; direct links to [sharpie][8], [pens][9], [stickers][10].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Congratulations! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(for anyone else who wants this swag, but isn't on page 1 or page 2 of the all time top users -- the limited edition t-shirts and stickers will be available for purchase from the store soon as well)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://shop.stackexchange.com/collections/frontpage/products/stack-exchange-sharpies&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://shop.stackexchange.com/products/stack-exchange-pens&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://shop.stackexchange.com/products/stack-exchange-network-stickers&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EXsDI.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/1rsFF.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://shop.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://shop.stackexchange.com/collections/frontpage/products/stack-exchange-sharpies&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://shop.stackexchange.com/products/stack-exchange-pens&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://shop.stackexchange.com/products/stack-exchange-network-stickers&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4088" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1669" RevisionGUID="cec0faa7-56a3-4840-9255-c4feec82b9fc" CreationDate="2011-06-02T10:57:40.427" UserId="37" Text="Programmers Stack Exchange swag for top users" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4089" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1669" RevisionGUID="cec0faa7-56a3-4840-9255-c4feec82b9fc" CreationDate="2011-06-02T10:57:40.427" UserId="37" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4090" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1663" RevisionGUID="a4154582-7f90-4372-8004-cbf311bc9486" CreationDate="2011-06-02T16:39:55.833" UserId="906" Comment="added 76 characters in body" Text="I nominate...me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I'm not shy, and like to talk.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes it's even interesting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I'd be happy to wear my stackoverflow t-shirt; I look good in black!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4091" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1663" RevisionGUID="3a82b658-d136-471d-925d-8e63fe30cd69" CreationDate="2011-06-02T17:46:50.977" UserId="906" Comment="added 135 characters in body" Text="I nominate...me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I'm not shy, and like to talk.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes it's even interesting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I'd be happy to wear my stackoverflow t-shirt; I look good in black!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it helps, I signed the [software craftsmanship manifesto][1] years ago ;-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://manifesto.softwarecraftsmanship.org/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4092" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1670" RevisionGUID="cede4c94-96b0-4d4a-abd2-1ac8c70b3aeb" CreationDate="2011-06-02T20:50:27.493" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="I don't think the wholesale discouraging of such questions would be productive. There are a number of topics, for instance free software licenses, where people here do have considerable knowledge to share.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like it or not - licenses, patents, copyright and trademarks are in fact a part of many of our professional lives. Many of us have, if nothing worse, made mistakes that could help someone else. Such questions are surely on topic. A lot of people learned about organizations like the Software Freedom Law Center / Software Freedom Conservancy from reading questions here. Those are valuable resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would hope that people are wise enough to consult with an attorney for legal advice. Asking if the new BSD license is compatible with version 3 of the GPL is not asking for legal advice, that's asking for information that anyone working in open source should know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not everything is so cut and dry, but I'd hate to alienate a possible answer like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was in this situation and I live close to you. I ended up contacting an attorney and this is what we did, it cost me a fortune and I never did get the resolution I was after. I recommend talking to your lawyer, but my experience was dreadful, I wish now I had just let it go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not sharing legal advice, that's sharing your first hand experience from being in a very similar situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't guarantee common sense in all users, but I think we should be able to assume that some exists for the sake of keeping the site rolling productively. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4094" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1671" RevisionGUID="906c5058-378a-446a-a020-5a1ee28c0baf" CreationDate="2011-06-03T14:31:27.550" UserId="1554" Text="My opinion: **No.** They don'y have a place here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If any answer is, or should be, followed up with &quot;... but you need to speak to a lawyer&quot; then the answer is immediately irrelevant. A lawyer, who knows the situation/location (which potentially already makes them too localized as questions) could easily contradict everything in the answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All someone is saying is &quot;I think [this], but I'm not a lawyer, so I don't actually know.&quot; which is not an _answer_. **At best** it's a hypothesis based on experience. At worst, it's bad advice that &quot;sounds right&quot;. If there's anything that I've learned about the law, it's that things that sound right, or should be right, or seem to be common sense... are rarely any of those things in a room full of lawyers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, does that mean that things like software licensing are off topic in my view? No. Those are not. The line is obviously blurry, but _even then_ most responsible companies _still_ end up needing to consult a lawyer when it comes to licensing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMO: relate them to questions about hardware on this site. Sure we're programmers, so lots of us know, and are expected to know, about hardware issues. Harware cabn also be very related to programming... but it's off topic. The only downside is that we don't have a legal.stackexchange.com where we do have a serverfault and superuser." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4095" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1672" RevisionGUID="c89a2269-f520-4fc0-8fe7-af7b6012011a" CreationDate="2011-06-03T20:49:09.393" UserId="226" Text="I reached 10 upvotes on [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4000/how-involved-should-our-employers-be-in-our-education/4053#4053) today, but for some reason the `Nice Answer` badge I got as a result was for [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65477/why-is-it-important-that-a-unit-test-not-test-dependencies/65482#65482) instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I also have 12 upvotes for the latter answer, so the badge itself makes sense, but why now and not whenever it was that I got 10 votes on it? That question doesn't appear on my reputation page today at all:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    +60	 23 mins ago	6 votes	 How involved should our employers be in our education?&#xD;&#xA;    +10	 4 hours ago	upvote	How do you ask or get asked to speak at a software conference?&#xD;&#xA;    +10	 6 hours ago	upvote	Should you version web applications?&#xD;&#xA;    +10	 7 hours ago	upvote	Hard-copy approaches to time tracking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should I still expect a badge for the first answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4096" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1672" RevisionGUID="c89a2269-f520-4fc0-8fe7-af7b6012011a" CreationDate="2011-06-03T20:49:09.393" UserId="226" Text="&quot;Nice answer&quot; badge awarded for the wrong answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4097" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1672" RevisionGUID="c89a2269-f520-4fc0-8fe7-af7b6012011a" CreationDate="2011-06-03T20:49:09.393" UserId="226" Text="|support|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4098" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1673" RevisionGUID="fad23bff-6c37-4d3b-a293-d7effc6c5c2a" CreationDate="2011-06-03T20:52:49.863" UserId="2654" Text="Badges are delayed and not granted instantly. I'm guessing you'll get another one later for the second question. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4099" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1674" RevisionGUID="5d160b20-c310-4ea5-849e-922b25c7bc8a" CreationDate="2011-06-03T20:56:58.417" UserId="47" Text="How many non deleted answers have 10 or more votes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer - 53 (you have 2 answers at 10+ that have been deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have 54 Nice Answer badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So you actually have too many Nice Answer badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You won't get another real Nice Answer badge until this extra one has been &quot;used up&quot;. It used to be that you didn't get any notification when this happened. I'm not sure why you were notified now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4100" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1675" RevisionGUID="bd0e0af6-9c6f-4f3e-8eee-6e444d014118" CreationDate="2011-06-05T12:23:48.667" UserId="11727" Text="Often on this site popular questions (either in terms of debate generated or upvotes) are closed for being against the mythical 6 guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically, the 6 guidelines do not currently seem to match what the community want to talk about. At the moment, mods seem hell bend on making the community respect the 6 guidelines when surely it should actually be the 6 guidelines that are changed to respect the communities wishes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I appreciate that people are trying to ensure good content, but this is also a community site and do we not think that if the community indicate interest in something this should be respected?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this in a simple Q so this isn't closed; can we have a 7th guideline saying &quot;Questions with high interest (indicated by debate or upvotes) will not be closed even if they breach other guidelines?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4101" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1675" RevisionGUID="bd0e0af6-9c6f-4f3e-8eee-6e444d014118" CreationDate="2011-06-05T12:23:48.667" UserId="11727" Text="Frequenty closing popular questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4102" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1675" RevisionGUID="bd0e0af6-9c6f-4f3e-8eee-6e444d014118" CreationDate="2011-06-05T12:23:48.667" UserId="11727" Text="|discussion|popular-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4103" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1676" RevisionGUID="bf4207e1-d53d-424c-b457-427ebb6d02dd" CreationDate="2011-06-05T12:41:56.927" UserId="47" Text="Just because something is popular doesn't necessary make it right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also questions often gain a lot of votes simply by virtue of being old. A lot of the highly voted question were migrated from Stack Overflow and were asked in the early days of that site so have been in existence for 2 years or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having your 7th guideline will make it harder to close other off topic questions as people will point to these &quot;grandfathered&quot; questions and (quite rightly) ask&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If this is allowed why isn't my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we have rules we have to be consistent in their application.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often the things the community want to talk about are really discussions. These don't work on the Stack Exchange system as it's geared to questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you really want a discussion - go to [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4104" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1675" RevisionGUID="adabdb02-592f-42d3-8c7b-2537b98914b5" CreationDate="2011-06-05T12:42:30.220" UserId="47" Comment="corrected spelling" Text="Frequently closing popular questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4107" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1678" RevisionGUID="9979a1b9-1dee-4f01-ac39-6bfcbb6e938a" CreationDate="2011-06-05T13:02:14.033" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="The guidelines were written as a result of years of trial and error. O.k., mostly error, but darn it there was plenty of trial in there too!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest problem I see with this is the following train of thought:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I know this is going to cause a disruption, but I want to ask it anyway. If I can word this just right, I'll get a get-out-of-closing-free card and that would be a serious accomplishment!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not the kind of thing we want, the resulting content is most decidedly not the kind of _site_ we want (minus the few exceptions) and the example they present would be really, really bad. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The 7'th guideline would tell me that I could migrate every famous but subjective question from Stack Overflow over to Programmers. I wouldn't do that even if the guideline was added, I'm just wondering if you are _sure_ you realize the kind of stuff that would be 'protected'?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4109" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1679" RevisionGUID="244437c3-8da8-42c5-b172-15a5ab6f9efb" CreationDate="2011-06-05T14:26:05.387" UserId="226" Text="In my case, when it comes to popular questions, I typically act on flags from people with less than 3000 rep, so if I end up closing them, it's usually not a unilateral decision. Flags are unfortunately not transparent to the community at all. I've opened a [feature request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/92623/155160) on Meta.SO for better visibility of &quot;duplicate of&quot; flags, but perhaps I'll write up another one for any &quot;it doesn't belong here&quot; flag since they're essentially close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime, voting to reopen, flagging for another moderator to review the closure, or posting to meta are the best ways to voice your disagreement with the closure of a particular question. As Pierre pointed out, sometimes that does result in the reopening of a question. (The reverse is also true - if you see a question that should clearly have been closed or you can make a case of it, post to meta and see if there's agreement.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With all that said, the 6 guidelines apply to Stack Exchange as a whole, not just to Programmers and I don't think we're in a position to change them at the site level. I don't know if you've read the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) blog post, but if you haven't it might shed more light on the &quot;why and how&quot; behind those guidelines and take some mystery out of them. We also use [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) to supplement the six guidelines for constructive questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4110" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1680" RevisionGUID="b9f85805-432f-4b79-afc4-d8cab5198c9f" CreationDate="2011-06-05T17:14:12.387" UserId="17626" Text="There are hundreds of forums with broader charters. SE is experimenting with a more restricted format to see how it flies; popularity of some out-of-bounds questions shouldn't be interpreted as a mandate to become yet another unrestricted web forum." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4111" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1681" RevisionGUID="2a14f01f-02e0-4dff-9135-f85b1ece3301" CreationDate="2011-06-05T17:19:21.280" UserId="17626" Text="I'm sure this is answered somewhere on meta, but I couldn't find it (nor is it in the faq).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My [question][1] is better suited to pm.SE, as pointed out by another user.  How do I migrate my question?  Or how do I flag it so that a mod will perhaps do it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to simply delete and re-ask, but my question has answers now, so this is not allowed.  And I assume cross-posting is frowned upon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81622/points-to-nail-down-when-agreeing-to-develop-software-on-spec" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4112" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1681" RevisionGUID="2a14f01f-02e0-4dff-9135-f85b1ece3301" CreationDate="2011-06-05T17:19:21.280" UserId="17626" Text="How do I properly migrate my question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4113" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1681" RevisionGUID="2a14f01f-02e0-4dff-9135-f85b1ece3301" CreationDate="2011-06-05T17:19:21.280" UserId="17626" Text="|support|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4114" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1682" RevisionGUID="d63abae2-15ba-4d6b-a241-e7184ab3f10d" CreationDate="2011-06-05T18:05:57.523" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Moderators have the ability to migrate questions to any other site on the network, so when you feel that a question is a better fit for another site, flag it for moderator review and explain why you think it should be migrated and where it should go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've gone ahead and migrated your question to [Project Management.SE](http://pm.stackexchange.com/q/2549)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4116" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1683" RevisionGUID="3c73fcc9-f690-4a3a-88a1-5b666c894b78" CreationDate="2011-06-06T06:58:36.870" UserId="6617" Text="For what it's worth, I side with James and Pierre, though I don't think it will change anything. I don't know exactly what *kind* of site you have in your mind, but it seems clear to me that it's not a social thing. Serious, humorless, with strictly enforced rules. In other words, boring. Not the kind of site that is driven by an excited community. IMO, that's a sad thing, because I liked the old programmers.stackexchange.com site before the big rule enforcement started. I liked the idea of community moderation, but now that part seems obsolete, like a parliament in a totalitarian state." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4117" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1124" RevisionGUID="b56ac989-ac24-4816-8268-6248e12d1b95" CreationDate="2011-06-06T11:31:09.283" UserId="15464" Comment="Added concrete example." Text="Being quite new to Stack Exchange, I don't know what the general opinion is about asking a question, based on a blog post of yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For Stack Overflow, where only non-subjective questions are allowed, the 'need' for this is low. On Programmers.SE however, it's tempting to attract a wider audience on a certain opinion you wrote about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course I feel that the [six guidelines for good subjective questions][1] should still apply, as the point would be to get more constructive feedback which is hard to get just by google traffic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't there be any formulated guidelines? Is it allowed to just pose the question with a brief summary of the blog post, and link to it for further detail?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally I have [a concrete example][2]. ;p The link to the blog post was removed by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/81714/15464" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4118" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1684" RevisionGUID="9d66b321-c369-457f-be74-3acaae0c0807" CreationDate="2011-06-06T14:10:46.943" UserId="220" Text="I've often wanted to ask some questions or post comments and answers here but refrained because I didn't want my current employer to find them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that we don't want to have too many anonymous questions so maybe you could only use the option if you have a certain number of reputation and/or sacrifice some reputation to use the feature.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4119" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1684" RevisionGUID="9d66b321-c369-457f-be74-3acaae0c0807" CreationDate="2011-06-06T14:10:46.943" UserId="220" Text="Could there be an option to ask questions anonymously?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4120" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1684" RevisionGUID="9d66b321-c369-457f-be74-3acaae0c0807" CreationDate="2011-06-06T14:10:46.943" UserId="220" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4121" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1685" RevisionGUID="8f63ce49-3223-42ea-9fbf-9e0facbc2599" CreationDate="2011-06-06T14:20:36.863" UserId="2654" Text="It is possible to post questions without creating an account. Simply log out, and when posting your question create a random display name and use an old email address.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that posting a question in this fashion has some restrictions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Post is quality checked by the system&#xD;&#xA; * No new tags can be created&#xD;&#xA; * You must supply both an email address and display name&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously you will also fail to gain any reputation or badges related to that question should it gain them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I took the liberty of creating an example question, see [Example Anon Question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81913/example-anon-question). I'll delete this after you take a look. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4122" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1686" RevisionGUID="fd330e13-96b1-4fc6-9736-51f4d66d45ff" CreationDate="2011-06-06T14:24:35.443" UserId="226" Text="You don't need an account to ask a question, so one way to do it would be to open up an &quot;incognito&quot; window if you use Chrome and post your question. You could also use a different browser or sign out of your account. Make sure you log out of your OpenID provider as well, to avoid being automatically signed back in to SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could also register a second account. That is allowed so long as there is no interaction between your accounts - that is, if someone attempts to game the system by creating accounts to upvote their main account's posts, we will find out and merge the accounts together. If the accounts never interact, there's nothing to worry about." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4123" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1687" RevisionGUID="5e367e2a-3fde-4023-82e2-7bdaa6e957e6" CreationDate="2011-06-06T16:31:53.633" UserId="1685" Text="We have rolled out customized offline pages for all the graduated SE sites, themed after their parent sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4124" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1565" RevisionGUID="a89bf2f2-a40b-4454-bbf8-319ee40afcec" CreationDate="2011-06-06T16:32:11.030" UserId="1685" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4125" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1688" RevisionGUID="871d41d1-03f1-467a-9c06-1de8090b04ae" CreationDate="2011-06-06T22:31:18.123" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="While we can discuss the potential merits of such a change in guidelines (or &quot;rules&quot;, if you want to phrase it that way), it appears this may be a solution in search of a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take the [month](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/?tab=month) tab on the main site: it lists the top 50 questions for the past month based, for the most part, on popularity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now out of those 50 questions, **five** have been closed. Two of them were closed entirely by members of the community (i.e. without moderator intervention), two of them were closed by a moderator after other members of the community voted to closed, and one was closed by me as an exact duplicate of an even more popular question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now if the contention is that even those five shouldn't have been closed, what it amounts to is taking community moderation, *even by regular users*, off the table. If that's the case, I'm afraid Stack Exchange might not be the best fit for you: the value proposition of Stack Exchange is centered around the practice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4126" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1688" RevisionGUID="08f5d52c-a160-4d20-8846-6c686b1dcf96" CreationDate="2011-06-06T22:39:50.170" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 325 characters in body" Text="While we can discuss the potential merits of such a change in guidelines (or &quot;rules&quot;, if you want to phrase it that way), it appears this may be a solution in search of a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take the [month](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/?tab=month) tab on the main site: it lists the top 50 questions for the past month based, for the most part, on popularity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now out of those 50 questions, **five** have been closed. Two of them were closed entirely by members of the community (i.e. without moderator intervention), two of them were closed by a moderator after other members of the community voted to closed, and one was closed by me as an exact duplicate of an even more popular question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if you take a look at even the [week](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/?tab=week) tab, you'll see the same ratio: five questions out of 50 were closed. Three were closed with public input from the community in the form of votes, and two were closed as a result of community members flagging the posts for moderator review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now if the contention is that even these questions shouldn't have been closed, community moderation, *even by regular users*, is being taken off the table. If that's the case, I'm afraid Stack Exchange might not be the best fit for you: the value proposition of Stack Exchange is centered around the practice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4127" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1688" RevisionGUID="10966fcb-6e48-4eec-9cc5-94ca5437e071" CreationDate="2011-06-06T22:55:31.540" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="While we can discuss the potential merits of such a change in guidelines (or &quot;rules&quot;, if you want to phrase it that way), it appears this may be a solution in search of a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take the [month](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/?tab=month) tab on the main site: it lists the top 50 questions for the past month based, for the most part, on popularity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now out of those 50 questions, **five** have been closed. Two of them were closed entirely by members of the community (i.e. without moderator intervention), two of them were closed by a moderator after other members of the community voted to close, and one was closed by me as an exact duplicate of an even more popular question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But even if you take a look at the [week](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/?tab=week) tab, you'll see the same ratio: five questions out of 50 were closed. Three were closed with public input from the community in the form of votes, and two were closed as a result of community members flagging the posts for moderator review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now if the contention is that even these questions shouldn't have been closed, community moderation—*even by regular users*—is being taken off the table. If that's the case, I'm afraid Stack Exchange might not be the best fit for you: the value proposition of Stack Exchange is centered around the practice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4128" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1689" RevisionGUID="600220e1-bc6b-47a7-8154-27d7fc5abccb" CreationDate="2011-06-07T14:36:24.767" UserId="226" Text="I got the badge for the software conferences question today. Not sure how the badge mechanism works in this case, but it looks like it was a combination of a delay and the fact that I had a deleted answer that qualified for the badge as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4129" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1690" RevisionGUID="40ff0add-07ae-4b48-a187-fe8f2c45c561" CreationDate="2011-06-07T18:20:12.350" UserDisplayName="user8685" Text="You're right on this one, but you're not the first one to address this problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been dozens of people who tried to open a dialogue in relation to not just Pr.SE but to SO as well. They were all turned down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it's not just about the popular questions being closed. They've also deleted mega-popular and wonderful questions from Stack Overflow with the age of 2-3 years. Magnificent questions with a lot of wisdom and insight. They are all gone now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've read all the arguments in favor of deletion and I still find them wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a need for a focus in the community. Absolutely. But it must not cross the border to become the dictatorship.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's true that the site is effectively owned by one individual and it's his call how it should work. However the value of the project like it is with most of the social spaces is exclusively defined by the community which has its habitat here. And it's not quite up to the management to decide what community should look like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For now it has a huge momentum but you should not deceive yourself. Community places have vaporized in the history of the web. In the beginning you have ridiculed the &quot;experts-exchange&quot; and how they pissed off their users. I say the history is repeating itself. You're going basically the same way. Not to quite that extent - yet - but in the same direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the online communities have been destroyed by the management either leaving all of the spammers be or tightening the screw on their members. Recall what happened to Digg when they alienated their users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this place. I really do. It's been a wonderful time first on SO then here on Pr.SE. I would hate to see it go down. And I mean it. But let us be honest to ourselves - it's not that challenging technically to recreate the site functionality, almost anybody can do it. And there have been many similar projects already. For a trigger to fire it only takes to continue acting against the community for somebody to come up at the right moment with the right attitude to take away the angry users. A little advertising in the right places and a new community is born and the old is gone. Recall MySpace. At the time people thought it was going to be eternal - but in a few years Facebook swallowed it by offering a better service. These things happen. Be careful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yes, I vote with both hands for the 7th guideline." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4130" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1690" RevisionGUID="9d749ee5-9af0-43d2-b6be-994dec721f0b" CreationDate="2011-06-07T18:47:16.800" UserDisplayName="user8685" Comment="added 806 characters in body" Text="You're right on this one, but you're not the first one to address this problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been dozens of people who tried to open a dialogue in relation to not just Pr.SE but to SO as well. They were all turned down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it's not just about the popular questions being closed. They've also deleted mega-popular and wonderful questions from Stack Overflow with the age of 2-3 years. Magnificent questions with a lot of wisdom and insight. They are all gone now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've read all the arguments in favor of deletion and I still find them wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a need for a focus in the community. Absolutely. But it must not cross the border to become the dictatorship.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's true that the site is effectively owned by one individual and it's his call how it should work. However the value of the project like it is with most of the social spaces is exclusively defined by the community which has its habitat here. And it's not quite up to the management to decide what community should look like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For now it has a huge momentum but you should not deceive yourself. Community places have vaporized in the history of the web. In the beginning you have ridiculed the &quot;experts-exchange&quot; and how they pissed off their users. I say the history is repeating itself. You're going basically the same way. Not to quite that extent - yet - but in the same direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the online communities have been destroyed by the management either leaving all of the spammers be or tightening the screw on their members. Recall what happened to Digg when they alienated their users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this place. I really do. It's been a wonderful time first on SO then here on Pr.SE. I would hate to see it go down. And I mean it. But let us be honest to ourselves - it's not that challenging technically to recreate the site functionality, almost anybody can do it. And there have been many similar projects already. For a trigger to fire it only takes to continue acting against the community for somebody to come up at the right moment with the right attitude to take away the angry users. A little advertising in the right places and a new community is born and the old is gone. Recall MySpace. At the time people thought it was going to be eternal - but in a few years Facebook swallowed it by offering a better service. These things happen. Be careful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yes, I vote with both hands for the 7th guideline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. And the very fact that we're even having this sort of a discussion (and not for the first time, but again and again with ever increasing frequency) shows that we have in fact a real problem on our hands. And notice that it is not some disgruntled newbie user going on a rant after his malformed question was closed with the attitude &quot;your site sucks&quot; or something. These are old members, with lots of reputation, who have proven themselves to the community as being skilled both technically and socially and being able to stay focused who keep telling you you're going too far with the closing policy. You may not take me seriously if you want but it's not just me - as I have said there have been other people way smarter than me who keep reacting in the same way. Please listen to them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4131" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1691" RevisionGUID="6970ac24-a630-4d38-8b98-bb7b89a6bee8" CreationDate="2011-06-08T03:47:04.750" UserId="1554" Text="This is more of a curiosity. I'm not actually _concerned_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yesterday I was a bit confused. I logged in to notice that I had hit my cap for the day. I hadn't posted anything that I would have seen as tremendously insightful, so I checked the rep history and it almost seemed as though someone went through my history and voted up a bunch of my answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked around, and as it turns out, a colleague of mine who is a relatively frequent SO user, but is new to P.SE decided to check out the site and reviewed my answer history - specifically my highly voted answers. He was &quot;impressed&quot; (which I am actually quite pleased about, because I have a great deal of respect for him and his abilities) and voted for a number of my answers quickly causing me to hit cap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;About an hour or so ago, it appears that all those reputation gains were removed. Is this expected behaviour? Is there an automated system in place that identifies these types of conditions and reverts them or is something else at play?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the answers that were voted up, I think honestly deserved the recognition for (via reputation), but I'm not going to put up a stink about it if some rule has been broken. Again, this is more of a curiosity and if this situation is an acceptable aberration then I wouldn't mind if it was restored." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4132" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1691" RevisionGUID="6970ac24-a630-4d38-8b98-bb7b89a6bee8" CreationDate="2011-06-08T03:47:04.750" UserId="1554" Text="Is there a reason why my rep gains for a certain day would have been removed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4133" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1691" RevisionGUID="6970ac24-a630-4d38-8b98-bb7b89a6bee8" CreationDate="2011-06-08T03:47:04.750" UserId="1554" Text="|bug|reputation|votes|inquiry|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4134" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1692" RevisionGUID="da710a24-f36b-4e88-b6f5-f22935c62a50" CreationDate="2011-06-08T03:50:34.750" UserId="2654" Text="There are checks to &quot;recall&quot; mass voting by a singular user in either direction. It's quite possible that your friend got caught in one of them. I'll do some digging, but I'm fairly certain there isn't a way for me to override the system and apply those votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A quick scan shows one user (14 days old) that had a number of upvotes on your questions. I can't say for certain if they were revoked by the system or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best advice to an upvote happy friend it to have them spread the votes around a greater number of users over a period of time. Upvotes aren't bad, but when concentrated in a short period on few users it runs afoul of various system traps." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4135" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1691" RevisionGUID="25ab4555-5a69-4490-bc14-04e39a60af71" CreationDate="2011-06-08T03:54:21.657" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|reputation|votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4136" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1693" RevisionGUID="ddaee6c7-3995-43d5-ae6d-b16f06e2e4d5" CreationDate="2011-06-08T04:02:39.587" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Your friend triggered the anti-vote fraud mechanism due to irregular voting patterns, and the reputation was removed. That is, there's a system in place based on the knowledge that, except in edge cases, the way your friend voted isn't in line with how people normally vote on Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While you may feel you earned those votes, it's impossible for the system to know whether rapid voting by a single user is someone who is really impressed with your answers, or a person who's participating in vote collusion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not saying that this is the case, and I don't mean this as an offense, but I'm sure you can appreciate the inability for the system (or us) to know whether you're telling the truth or whether you prompted someone to vote up a bunch of your posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since we don't know either way, and reputation is such a central aspect of the Stack Exchange experience, the anomalous votes are rolled back and no further action is taken. Essentially: no harm, no foul.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I may, you might want to suggest to your friend that while you appreciate his support, he should consider up-voting on the merits of posts he finds in the normal course of using the site, rather than going down the line on a single user. Stack Exchange is centered around questions and answers, not users, after all." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4137" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1694" RevisionGUID="d90b1d31-a5cc-4f54-a25f-7de7697a72ca" CreationDate="2011-06-08T19:50:08.663" UserId="11833" Text="This is in regards to this question:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82519/why-command-line-is-faster-than-gui-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't usually complain about other users here, and especially the moderators (most of which are pretty darn awesome, even when I disagree with them!), but I feel like this one is necessary, and I'd like to figure out exactly why all this happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@Josh: I'd **really** appreciate it if you also allow other mods to take a look at this and give their opinions, instead of jumping in and ranting about my &quot;rant&quot;. Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm really disappointed at Josh's behavior on my post, and I still don't understand quite why it happened. (As he's deleted some of the comments, I have no choice but to paraphrase.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm getting the feeling that some users (esp. Josh) felt that &quot;Why is the terminal faster than a GUI shell?&quot; was a &quot;taboo&quot; topic (&quot;Of *course* it is, you have no idea what you're talking about if you think otherwise&quot;), and got really angry at the question, hence his behavior: he consistently made claims in comments that my question doesn't make any sense, should be revised, that I'm just ranting and argumentative, that I'm making claims without providing examples, and he'd made snarky comments like:&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Mehrdad: [history](http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?history)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;trying to make me look like a stupid user who doesn't have any idea what he's talking about, when in fact I have no idea what the heck he's replying to because he's deleted the previous comments and refuses to make sense of what he says.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Josh: `It is because of your comments on answers.` **Which comments** on **which answers** is he referring to? His entire conversation with me was vague. Where was I looking like I was ranting? It was pretty obvious that I had found some of the answers convincing, wasn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Josh: `If you feel like you can create a quality question from this then please do so.` What exactly was Josh looking for (rather than, what was he *not* looking for)? He was very vague about this, and he didn't tell me if anything improved or not after my revisions to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Thanks to Josh's super-god powers, most of the comments which I could refer to (esp. his snarky remarks) are gone, and he instantaneously locked and closed my question, all based on his own decision. (Okay, granted, there was a *single* close vote. Nowhere near consensus as I saw, though.) But did that really require *locking* the question, all on his own accord?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Yeah, I realize this is a complaint, and yes, I realize my tone isn't great here -- neither is my mood. In my current mood, I just can't make it better, sorry -- if someone feels like they can make the tone of this post a bit better (OTHER than Josh), please feel free to do so, I'd appreciate it. :) Thanks. )" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4138" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1694" RevisionGUID="d90b1d31-a5cc-4f54-a25f-7de7697a72ca" CreationDate="2011-06-08T19:50:08.663" UserId="11833" Text="Why this Question was Closed/Locked, and a Question on a Mod's Behavior" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4139" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1694" RevisionGUID="d90b1d31-a5cc-4f54-a25f-7de7697a72ca" CreationDate="2011-06-08T19:50:08.663" UserId="11833" Text="|discussion|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4140" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1694" RevisionGUID="2bae910a-2d09-442b-ae20-fbaa90499e8f" CreationDate="2011-06-08T20:01:50.970" UserId="11833" Comment="added 126 characters in body" Text="This is in regards to this question:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82519/why-command-line-is-faster-than-gui-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't usually complain about other users here, and especially the moderators (most of which are pretty darn awesome, even when I disagree with them!), but I feel like this one is necessary, and I'd like to figure out exactly why all this happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@Josh: I'd **really** appreciate it if you also allow other mods to take a look at this and give their opinions, instead of jumping in and ranting about my &quot;rant&quot;. Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@Everyone: **Please read the PREVIOUS VERSION of my question** also, as the second revision will make more sense that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm really disappointed at Josh's behavior on my post, and I still don't understand quite why it happened. (As he's deleted some of the comments, I have no choice but to paraphrase.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm getting the feeling that some users (esp. Josh) felt that &quot;Why is the terminal faster than a GUI shell?&quot; was a &quot;taboo&quot; topic (&quot;Of *course* it is, you have no idea what you're talking about if you think otherwise&quot;), and got really angry at the question, hence his behavior: he consistently made claims in comments that my question doesn't make any sense, should be revised, that I'm just ranting and argumentative, that I'm making claims without providing examples, and he'd made snarky comments like:&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Mehrdad: [history](http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?history)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;trying to make me look like a stupid user who doesn't have any idea what he's talking about, when in fact I have no idea what the heck he's replying to because he's deleted the previous comments and refuses to make sense of what he says.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Josh: `It is because of your comments on answers.` **Which comments** on **which answers** is he referring to? His entire conversation with me was vague. Where was I looking like I was ranting? It was pretty obvious that I had found some of the answers convincing, wasn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Josh: `If you feel like you can create a quality question from this then please do so.` What exactly was Josh looking for (rather than, what was he *not* looking for)? He was very vague about this, and he didn't tell me if anything improved or not after my revisions to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Thanks to Josh's super-god powers, most of the comments which I could refer to (esp. his snarky remarks) are gone, and he instantaneously locked and closed my question, all based on his own decision. (Okay, granted, there was a *single* close vote. Nowhere near consensus as I saw, though.) But did that really require *locking* the question, all on his own accord?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Yeah, I realize this is a complaint, and yes, I realize my tone isn't great here -- neither is my mood. In my current mood, I just can't make it better, sorry -- if someone feels like they can make the tone of this post a bit better (OTHER than Josh), please feel free to do so, I'd appreciate it. :) Thanks. )" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4141" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1695" RevisionGUID="457e0378-5066-4e2f-87c4-2dba10c5647e" CreationDate="2011-06-08T20:17:19.163" UserId="2654" Text="I would like to take the time to fully detail my actions involved with your question. However, given I just got in the middle of something I can't take the time to do so *at the moment*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a (very brief) nutshell:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * You asked &quot;Why is Command Line faster then GUI&quot;&#xD;&#xA; * You received several excellent answers and even more helpful comments&#xD;&#xA; * This topic is not *&quot;taboo&quot;* in any fashion. &#xD;&#xA; * Comment discussions turned into extended fights between you and other members about what your wording of the question meant.&#xD;&#xA; * You repeatedly edited the question to add *&quot;except in cases Foo, Bar, Baz&quot;* style exclusions to the original question, diluting it's worth and adding more confusion to what you were really asking.&#xD;&#xA; * I asked you to clean up your question.&#xD;&#xA; * You said you would get to it later today.&#xD;&#xA; * I locked your question.&#xD;&#xA; * You flagged the question so you could edit it.&#xD;&#xA; * I unlocked your question.&#xD;&#xA; * Your edits did little to clean it up. &#xD;&#xA; * You continued disagreeing with interpretation of other people as to the point of your question.&#xD;&#xA; * I offered you `history` as an example of real-world bash usage&#xD;&#xA; * You decided to not understand what that meant.&#xD;&#xA; * I replied with a link to the man page. &#xD;&#xA; * You decided I was being snarky.&#xD;&#xA; * I closed your question and invited you to try again.&#xD;&#xA; * You continued to comment reply *en masse* to both me and other posters.&#xD;&#xA; * You accepted an answer.&#xD;&#xA; * I locked your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In attempting to justify keeping your question open I did delete quite a few discussion threads in the comment. Had I foreseen the eventual end of the question as it did I would have left those and simply closed it. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4142" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1655" RevisionGUID="18bed8be-24b4-46e0-a937-2b5168a2e3c8" CreationDate="2011-06-09T02:45:36.967" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="FAQify" Text="What types of legal questions are on-topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4143" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1655" RevisionGUID="18bed8be-24b4-46e0-a937-2b5168a2e3c8" CreationDate="2011-06-09T02:45:36.967" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="FAQify" Text="|discussion|faq|legal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4145" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="1655" RevisionGUID="18bed8be-24b4-46e0-a937-2b5168a2e3c8" CreationDate="2011-06-09T02:45:36.967" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="4146" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1694" RevisionGUID="d37c4506-5a6c-4e38-8890-238bbbd603f0" CreationDate="2011-06-09T04:52:56.030" UserId="11833" Comment="deleted 2553 characters in body; added 154 characters in body" Text="This is in regards to this question:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82519/why-command-line-is-faster-than-gui-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please read the **previous version** of my question also, as the second revision will make more sense that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A moderator mentioned the locking `is because of [my] comments on answers.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###My question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Which** comments on **which** answers is the mod referring to?  &#xD;&#xA;Everything has been vague so far (even the current answer below), and I still have no idea which user I was misbehaving toward, as was mentioned to me." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4147" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1694" RevisionGUID="0ffe9519-a145-4c1d-91ba-dd24f5f2d590" CreationDate="2011-06-09T05:38:51.430" UserId="11833" Comment="edited title; added 4 characters in body" Text="Why this Question was Closed/Locked, and a Question on a Mod's Comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4148" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1694" RevisionGUID="0ffe9519-a145-4c1d-91ba-dd24f5f2d590" CreationDate="2011-06-09T05:38:51.430" UserId="11833" Comment="edited title; added 4 characters in body" Text="This is in regards to this question:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82519/why-command-line-is-faster-than-gui-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please read the **previous version** of my question also, as the second revision will make more sense that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A moderator mentioned the locking &quot;is because of [my] comments on answers.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###My question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Which** comments on **which** answers is the mod referring to?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything has been vague so far (even the current answer below), and I still have no idea which user I was misbehaving toward, as was mentioned to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4149" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1696" RevisionGUID="d29c1328-b68b-4034-bea8-2ef780b27fde" CreationDate="2011-06-09T06:18:05.173" UserId="37" Text="This question is yet another variation of &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why should I use vim for daily tasks, as opposed to emacs? Someone told me it's faster, but I don't understand why/when/how. Please provide examples of the daily tasks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or if you prefer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why should I use choose vanilla ice cream for my daily ice cream break, as opposed to chocolate? Someone told me it's more delicious, but I don't understand why/when/how. Please provide examples of your ice cream breaks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question simply isn't appropriate for the site, per &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And specifically&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use \_\_\_\_\_\_ for \_\_\_\_\_\_, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if the question went off the rails, that's not surprising, since it wasn't a good fit from the beginning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I don't think we can interpret your question as &quot;I would like others to explain the benefits of the command line to me&quot;; even if we could, I wouldn't support such a question under the emerging too trivial / general reference close reason. That's like a truck driver asking about the benefits of steering wheels and gas pedals.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4150" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1697" RevisionGUID="ea32d98f-e7ac-4aa0-8157-b8b6917f3538" CreationDate="2011-06-09T13:26:09.257" UserId="6617" Text="Example: [How can you filter out irritable programmers in interviews?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously, other professions probably have similar problems. You wouldn't want an irritable policeman, teacher or salesmen in your team either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, one might argue that the solution depends on the job. At least it's easier to implement a solution crafted for the typical interviewing process of a programmer than a generic answer that might fit for every possible job description.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82663/how-can-you-filter-out-irritable-programmers-in-interviews-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4151" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1697" RevisionGUID="ea32d98f-e7ac-4aa0-8157-b8b6917f3538" CreationDate="2011-06-09T13:26:09.257" UserId="6617" Text="Is a question always off topic when it applies to other professions too?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4152" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1697" RevisionGUID="ea32d98f-e7ac-4aa0-8157-b8b6917f3538" CreationDate="2011-06-09T13:26:09.257" UserId="6617" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4153" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1698" RevisionGUID="1c9949a7-8db7-4162-b671-a0b29a89e702" CreationDate="2011-06-09T13:32:28.037" UserId="47" Text="From the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please note that the following subjects are considered off-topic here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If your question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really something that uniquely applies to software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So basically yes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I can see that, as you point out, there might be cases where the solution is unique to software development - but it might not be immediately obvious and these situations might be few and far between.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The danger is, that if we (as a community) leave these questions open we risk diluting the site content until it becomes a general employment discussion site - something we don't really want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know what the answer is. Unfortunately I think we have to err on the side of caution at the moment. If you think something's been unfairly closed then please do flag it or raise it here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4158" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1676" RevisionGUID="acbfffc1-e71b-4528-a175-80c4558fc937" CreationDate="2011-06-09T19:18:57.797" UserId="47" Comment="clarification" Text="Just because something is popular doesn't necessary make it right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also questions often gain a lot of votes simply by virtue of being old. A lot of the highly voted question were migrated from Stack Overflow and were asked in the early days of that site so have been in existence for 2 years or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having your 7th guideline will make it harder to close other off topic questions as people will point to these &quot;grandfathered&quot; questions and (quite rightly) ask&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If this is allowed why isn't my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we have rules we have to be consistent in their application.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often the things the community want to talk about are really general discussions. These don't work well on the Stack Exchange system as it's geared to questions and answers, though they have to be tightly focused and kept to the point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you really want a general discussion - go to [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4165" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1702" RevisionGUID="bc4f1eac-0f4f-458c-bd56-0970f35a79e0" CreationDate="2011-06-09T22:03:40.820" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="We have an artifact from the Antedisciplining period that should be removed: [tag:holy-war], which is obviously not the type of question we're looking for here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can it be purged with the fire from a thousand suns?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4166" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1702" RevisionGUID="bc4f1eac-0f4f-458c-bd56-0970f35a79e0" CreationDate="2011-06-09T22:03:40.820" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Blacklist [holy-war]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4167" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1702" RevisionGUID="bc4f1eac-0f4f-458c-bd56-0970f35a79e0" CreationDate="2011-06-09T22:03:40.820" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|feature-request|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4170" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1704" RevisionGUID="f3daeda4-ab73-463b-9d16-9059a662db99" CreationDate="2011-06-10T08:25:18.713" UserId="6617" Text="In the beginning, Stackoverflow contained all kinds the questions, including the famous &quot;comics for programmer&quot; type of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then programmers.stackexchange.com was created, and all that stuff was migrated here, so only &quot;professional&quot; questions remained at stackoverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then came the disciplining, and now programmers.stackexchange.com has become another place that only allows professional questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a distinction between &quot;objective&quot; (so) and &quot;subjective&quot; (p.se) questions, but I think that this is a bit arbitrary. In fact, questions migrated from so are often closed in p.se as well; and there are non-closed questions on both sites that could be asked on the other site as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples (all from the first page as of this writing):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82952/how-do-i-implement-the-mpl-whats-this-exhibit-a-thingy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82940/types-of-encoding-in-xml&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82904/are-msdn-licenses-transferrable-how-about-if-they-have-expired&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6303407/when-to-choose-webservices&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6302780/what-is-the-best-replacement-for-amazon-s3&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A possible solution to that dilemma would be to restrict SO to pure technical/coding questions. Currently, most of the questions on SO fall into that category anyway. That would require a change in SO's FAQ, though, since it reads...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... if your question generally covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     * a specific programming problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     * a software algorithm&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     * software tools commonly used by programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     * matters that are unique to the programming profession&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last item on the list includes a lot of things that are allowed on P.SE too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4171" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1704" RevisionGUID="f3daeda4-ab73-463b-9d16-9059a662db99" CreationDate="2011-06-10T08:25:18.713" UserId="6617" Text="Once all the disciplining is done and P.SE is purely professional, will it be merged with stackoverflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4172" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1704" RevisionGUID="f3daeda4-ab73-463b-9d16-9059a662db99" CreationDate="2011-06-10T08:25:18.713" UserId="6617" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4174" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1706" RevisionGUID="fc43da3b-d4f3-42d7-971a-f601df5f4400" CreationDate="2011-06-10T10:32:56.047" UserId="37" Text="No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even in the last bullet point you cite, the way to read it is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; matters that are unique to the programming profession [which have concrete, definitive solutions that can be verified as correct, more or less].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See:   &#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4175" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1707" RevisionGUID="307da3b8-9218-4675-9f26-4ed44463eeb8" CreationDate="2011-06-10T11:05:51.323" UserId="12578" Text="I would like to see a SE that allows this, the issue of course is it would need to be moderated extremely well but it would be nice to have a place were you could get some form of per review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the questions that involve &quot;code it better&quot; type scenarios are actually based on the fact that a person is stuck trying to figure out good implementation. There are many resources to tell people how to use x, y , z language but there are few and far between that discuss implementation of features.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having said that if you know the implementations you want to use but are unsure what the pros and cons are of each I find SO is fine as long as you are honest in the fact that you are unsure of why to use one over the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4176" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1708" RevisionGUID="f96678ff-b49d-48c2-8956-e9297b4ebcfb" CreationDate="2011-06-10T11:40:22.373" UserId="47" Text="Since this question was originally asked there is now somewhere to ask this sort of question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; #[Code Review](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4178" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="519" RevisionGUID="4d5efc11-27fb-44d9-a5d7-cabba218edd5" CreationDate="2011-06-10T15:32:14.193" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|code|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4179" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1709" RevisionGUID="68b36fbd-819a-478b-aeb7-609136d32895" CreationDate="2011-06-10T16:53:47.243" UserId="4" Text="I just saw [this site][1] after a tweet by Bill the Lizard from Stack Overflow. Some Stack Exchange sites (the only non-trilogy site with a blog right now is Gaming) have blogs. There's a page about [guidelines for starting a site's blog][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are four key things to discuss:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Raise the idea on the child meta. A community blog needs the involvement of community members.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what this post is doing. Getting the idea out there, and getting some high level ideas flowing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Define the scope and purpose of the blog. Is the blog about the site? Is it about the site’s topic? Is it about the industry around the topic? Keep in mind the audience of your community and their interests. Another generic blog about &lt;x&gt; may not be all that interesting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see why we can't start this discussion now, either, before moving on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Recruit contributors. Who will write entries for the blog? Starting a blog is a bit like going through the buffet line. Be realistic – don’t let your eyes be bigger than your stomach. Think seriously about if and how often you will be able to contribute a blog post, including research/prep time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a lot of heavily involved people at Programmers who are pretty good writers (at least when it comes to answers). Looking at the top users, a few names stand out in particular. I would be interested to see who would step forward, however.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Plan a schedule. Given the results of steps #2 and #3, think about a rough idea of a schedule for the blog. Will there be one post a week, posted Mondays? Will there be &lt;x&gt; posts on Tuesdays and &lt;y&gt; posts on Fridays? You don’t need to be pushing out postsdaily, but I would say at least one post a week.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would be much further down the road, once we have topic(s) and contributors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose to kick off discussion, there are two questions to answer at this point:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Should Programmers have a blog? Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. What topics should be covered by this blog?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blogoverflow.com/getting-started/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4180" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1709" RevisionGUID="68b36fbd-819a-478b-aeb7-609136d32895" CreationDate="2011-06-10T16:53:47.243" UserId="4" Text="Any chance of a Programmers Community Blog?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4181" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1709" RevisionGUID="68b36fbd-819a-478b-aeb7-609136d32895" CreationDate="2011-06-10T16:53:47.243" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4182" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1710" RevisionGUID="01fed1ef-3433-4bff-8791-0f9d0d545bb2" CreationDate="2011-06-10T16:57:02.840" UserId="4" Text="I think part of the problem is the name. This isn't so much about programmers is it is about the group of people who refer to themselves as software engineers, software developers, software architects, requirements engineers, software designers, software craftsmen (and probably a dozen other names and job titles that I'm missing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is for the &quot;how do I code X&quot;. Well, writing code is a huge deal. It's how we in the software profession actually get to deliver something. But a lot more goes on in the lifecycle - requirements, architecture, design, maintenance, testing, process, project management, quality engineering. These are things that are mostly of concern to professionals working on medium-to-large scale projects, and that's who (IMO) this site targets." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4183" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1711" RevisionGUID="80478de8-8ecf-4e74-a864-c555710de9ae" CreationDate="2011-06-10T17:45:13.263" UserId="4" Text="I would be willing to write for this blog, if I have anything to say about any of the topics. I would also be interested in cross-posting anything that I write to my personal blog if the rules allow for that (would need to look into it). The frequency at which I would be willing to write would depend on topics and my ability to cross-post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, that said, I am in the process of transitioning to a new full-time job, so my availability will be constrained by me moving and getting set up in a new place. My computers are usually the last thing packed and first thing unpacked, though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4184" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1711" RevisionGUID="a098e0f3-3469-4f06-8d01-166be0c87fee" CreationDate="2011-06-10T17:53:27.763" UserId="4" Comment="added 1132 characters in body" Text="I would be willing to write for this blog, if I have anything to say about any of the topics. I would also be interested in cross-posting anything that I write to my personal blog if the rules allow for that (would need to look into it). The frequency at which I would be willing to write would depend on topics and my ability to cross-post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For things that I would be interested in writing about, you can just take a look at my profile and see the kinds of questions I've asked/answered both here and on Stack Overflow. To summarize, I'm mostly interested in software engineering practices (&quot;best practices&quot;, as some might say), process models/methodologies, software design and architecture, software quality, tools, project management, team leadership, and communication. I'm also pretty passionate about software engineering education and assessment of software developers (interviews, certifications, and so on).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In terms of content, I think we can just look at some of top tags here on the site. Posts about careers and jobs as software developers (ranging from finding and getting a job to the work environment and work conditions), learning and education, project management, productivity, processes and process models and methodologies, architecture, books, tools (version control, editors, programming languages), communication (written, verbal, presentations), and teamwork. There are probably more, but those stand out as the top topics posted about here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, that said, I am in the process of transitioning to a new full-time job, so my availability will be constrained by me moving and getting set up in a new place. My computers are usually the last thing packed and first thing unpacked, though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4185" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1712" RevisionGUID="bec36c70-fc16-4507-a53f-c947587e41f0" CreationDate="2011-06-10T17:54:40.227" UserId="257" Text="In addition to a group of regular contributors, you should probably also accept irregular submissions from the community.  Maybe the core group of regular contributors could also act as an editorial review board?  I'm in middle of getting a Master's degree at the moment, so I wouldn't be able to commit to a regular schedule (see my own blog for evidence), but I might be able to contribute occasionally if a topic on Programmers inspires me to write a post." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4186" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1713" RevisionGUID="1caae074-bcc5-4826-8f3c-4faeb82c5ae1" CreationDate="2011-06-10T19:26:36.183" UserId="47" Text="A good starting point for the blog would be to take a few of the best questions on the site and explore them in more depth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of way this could be done spring to mind:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The asker expanding on the thinking behind the question and what they learnt from the answers.&#xD;&#xA;* The writer of the accepted answer expanding on their answer taking in any discussion points that came up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course someone else could pick up the question and answers and use that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4197" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1716" RevisionGUID="8a13e44c-ae25-49d1-8784-367ed2445ce1" CreationDate="2011-06-11T09:33:33.027" UserId="37" Text="You have to make a *very strong* case that the question is truly specific or at least unusually applicable to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, programmers tend to be introverted and sometimes suffer from Aspergers-like symptoms, so questions about those factors in a job or career would tend to be on-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4198" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1717" RevisionGUID="2bd564e0-b2e6-4cee-b5a7-2e875e0a4d87" CreationDate="2011-06-12T16:11:55.637" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83362/how-does-stack-overflow-protect-our-email-addresses" Text="" />
  <row Id="4199" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1717" RevisionGUID="91a85c80-d8af-42bc-b929-efc7f6c51348" CreationDate="2011-06-12T16:03:11.037" UserId="24257" Text="So when I went to my [profile page][1], I had a great shock because there vulnerably is my email address freely obtainable by any spammer, email  trafficker, and the like..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/632951/pacerier" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4200" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1717" RevisionGUID="91a85c80-d8af-42bc-b929-efc7f6c51348" CreationDate="2011-06-12T16:03:11.037" UserId="24257" Text="How does stack overflow protect our email addresses?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4201" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1717" RevisionGUID="91a85c80-d8af-42bc-b929-efc7f6c51348" CreationDate="2011-06-12T16:03:11.037" UserId="24257" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4202" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1718" RevisionGUID="194a1925-136c-40ed-a436-7f1d7abca9eb" CreationDate="2011-06-12T17:49:51.157" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="E-mail addresses on your profile are only visible to you, the Programmers.SE moderators, and the Stack Exchange team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other data that's shown on your profile but not visible to the public:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Visited statistics&#xD;&#xA;* OpenID&#xD;&#xA;* Real Name&#xD;&#xA;* Responses tab" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4203" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1719" RevisionGUID="44628f99-21b7-42b8-9f7d-26f1498933f9" CreationDate="2011-06-13T12:29:46.567" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="There are many discussions ([1][1] [2][2] [3][3] [4][4] [5][5] [6][6]) about what is currently or what should be off-topic or on-topic. That question is asked again and again but the way this community is managed is not going to happen anytime soon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meanwhile, moderators &amp; community are doing their job by closing many questions from (sometimes desperate) programmer seeking for help from other programmers (this is us).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Instead of closing the questions by only stating that it's off topic, should we seek for viable alternatives to propose them?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would help to make the internet better isn't? A place where people could find help from their peers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or should we consider that it's not our problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1162/would-this-question-be-on-topic-on-pse&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/what-types-of-programming-related-questions-are-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1568/are-which-technology-is-easier-questions-on-topic-even-though-which-technology&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1212/why-isnt-there-an-off-topic-off-topic-option&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1697/is-a-question-always-off-topic-when-it-applies-to-other-professions-too&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83510/benefit-of-arguing-with-your-manager-about-minor-development-things" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4204" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1719" RevisionGUID="44628f99-21b7-42b8-9f7d-26f1498933f9" CreationDate="2011-06-13T12:29:46.567" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Should we seek for alternatives to propose to OP when closing their off-topic question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4205" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1719" RevisionGUID="44628f99-21b7-42b8-9f7d-26f1498933f9" CreationDate="2011-06-13T12:29:46.567" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4206" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1719" RevisionGUID="c00cb0b5-5f95-4d9e-961e-a3dcf6c2e6d4" CreationDate="2011-06-13T12:45:28.427" UserId="101" Comment="fixed grammar" Text="There are many discussions ([1][1] [2][2] [3][3] [4][4] [5][5] [6][6]) about what is currently on/off topic or what should be on/off-topic. That question is asked again and again but the way this community is managed it is not going to answered anytime soon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meanwhile, moderators &amp; community are doing their job by closing many questions from sometimes desperate programmers seeking help from other programmers (this is us).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Instead of closing the questions by only stating that it's off topic, should we seek for viable alternatives to propose them?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would help to make the internet better, correct? A place where people could find help from their peers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or should we consider that it's not our problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1162/would-this-question-be-on-topic-on-pse&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/what-types-of-programming-related-questions-are-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1568/are-which-technology-is-easier-questions-on-topic-even-though-which-technology&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1212/why-isnt-there-an-off-topic-off-topic-option&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1697/is-a-question-always-off-topic-when-it-applies-to-other-professions-too&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83510/benefit-of-arguing-with-your-manager-about-minor-development-things" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4207" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1720" RevisionGUID="4e94a1e2-53eb-48d6-a681-cb40b5f9a8f9" CreationDate="2011-06-13T13:01:04.337" UserId="12354" Text="Here's a solution:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a period of n-days (or hours), don't show any votes on answers and don't show the authors of the answers either, and randomize the order that the answers are displayed (except perhaps negative answers).  That should give &quot;late&quot; good answers a better chance to rise to the top and avoid favoritism.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not saying this is necessarily better but I'd be an interesting experiment. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4210" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1722" RevisionGUID="783b8ca2-d4fd-4957-be08-186c9c268d6c" CreationDate="2011-06-13T13:10:58.010" UserId="226" Text="Depending on the question, I try to add a pointer in the right direction in comments either another site or a starting point for solving the OP's problem. I think that's a reasonable approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think answering off-topic questions is a good way to go. As ChrisF mentioned in his comment, that would eventually lead to off-topic swarming the on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, in general, I'd say if you have something to offer to the OP on an off-topic question, feel free to make a comment and point them in the right direction." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4211" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1723" RevisionGUID="a443a9a0-e500-4451-9218-e3f5754ab45a" CreationDate="2011-06-13T19:26:36.183" UserId="27038" Text="i &quot;think&quot; that there should be a website where people can ask some general social questions, i have seen many sites here which attempts to do the same but they cover a single general topic, thats why i am asking, why isnt there a Peope.Se which could cover much more juice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4212" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1723" RevisionGUID="a443a9a0-e500-4451-9218-e3f5754ab45a" CreationDate="2011-06-13T19:26:36.183" UserId="27038" Text="why isn't there a People.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4213" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1723" RevisionGUID="a443a9a0-e500-4451-9218-e3f5754ab45a" CreationDate="2011-06-13T19:26:36.183" UserId="27038" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4214" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1724" RevisionGUID="576f8da7-8e88-4a82-bbd5-4cfeed7a11d8" CreationDate="2011-06-13T19:44:18.377" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Over the course of launching 40+ Stack Exchange sites, it was found that the concept and engine works best when it has a clear and relatively narrow focus, and is populated by experts for that narrow focus. So things like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A site for [Programmers](http://stackoverflow.com)&#xD;&#xA;* A site for [Gamers](http://gaming.stackexchange.com)&#xD;&#xA;* A site for [Physicists](http://physics.stackexchange.com)&#xD;&#xA;* A site for [Mathematicians](http://math.stackexchange.com)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;all seem to work because the goal is clearly defined and the potential experts are clearly defined. When you work with a concept that's broad or ill-defined (People would be that), there's no focus for the user base: it's hard to impossible to know what is a good question for the site, what is a bad question the site, who are the experts in the field, and if there are any experts, why they would choose to participate in the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So rather than a People.SE site, think:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* An SE for [psychologists](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3431/psychology)&#xD;&#xA;* An SE for anthropologists&#xD;&#xA;* An SE for sociologists&#xD;&#xA;* An SE for [human resources](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2900/human-resources)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're interested in learning more about the background, the Stack Exchange team has written a few different blog posts about it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [No Artificial Intelligence in Area 51](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/no-artificial-intelligence-in-area-51/): talks about how a failed SE site, [Artificial Intelligence.SE](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6607/artificial-intelligence), due to a lack of clearly-defined experts &#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow Around the World](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/stack-overflow-around-the-world/): talks about the success of Stack Exchange in narrowly defined topics, and how that relates to localized communities&#xD;&#xA;* [Pruning Season](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/pruning-season/): talks about another failed site, Gadgets.SE, which didn't have a clearly defined and narrow scope as well as a host of other Area 51 proposals which would suffer the same fate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a postscript, it's also interesting to look at [Atheism.SE](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2732/atheism), which failed mostly because it was an SE site for people who *are* something rather than a site for people who *do* something. That is, if you happened to be an atheist, you were automatically an expert: obviously, that's not true, and it's hard to define what an &quot;expert&quot; atheist would be. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same would be true of a People.SE: who is an &quot;expert&quot; person?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4215" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1719" RevisionGUID="e866f454-e588-4824-836c-98cdda783be7" CreationDate="2011-06-13T19:49:43.040" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4216" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1724" RevisionGUID="83d62aa5-47f3-49ee-9a24-af893e813cd0" CreationDate="2011-06-13T19:50:42.977" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 79 characters in body; added 49 characters in body" Text="Over the course of launching 40+ Stack Exchange sites, it was found that the concept and engine works best when it has a clear and relatively narrow focus, and is populated by experts for that narrow focus. So things like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A site for [Programmers](http://stackoverflow.com)&#xD;&#xA;* A site for [Gamers](http://gaming.stackexchange.com)&#xD;&#xA;* A site for [Physicists](http://physics.stackexchange.com)&#xD;&#xA;* A site for [Mathematicians](http://math.stackexchange.com)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;all seem to work because the goal is clearly defined and the potential experts are clearly defined. When you work with a concept that's broad or ill-defined (People would be that), there's no focus for the user base: it's hard to impossible to know what is a good question for the site, what is a bad question the site, who are the experts in the field, and if there are any experts, why they would choose to participate in the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So rather than a People.SE site, think:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* An SE for [psychologists](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3431/psychology)&#xD;&#xA;* An SE for anthropologists&#xD;&#xA;* An SE for sociologists&#xD;&#xA;* An SE for [human resources](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2900/human-resources)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're interested in learning more about the background, the Stack Exchange team has written a few different blog posts about it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [No Artificial Intelligence in Area 51](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/no-artificial-intelligence-in-area-51/) talks about how a failed SE site, [Artificial Intelligence.SE](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6607/artificial-intelligence), due to a lack of clearly-defined experts &#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow Around the World](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/stack-overflow-around-the-world/) talks about the success of Stack Exchange in narrowly defined topics, and how that relates to localized communities&#xD;&#xA;* [Pruning Season](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/pruning-season/) talks about another failed site, [Electronic Gadgets.SE](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/614/electronic-gadgets), which didn't have a clearly defined and narrow scope&#xD;&#xA;* [Merging Season](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/) talks about what the sweet spot is for a site's scope &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a postscript, it's also interesting to look at [Atheism.SE](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2732/atheism), which failed mostly because it was an SE site for people who *are* something rather than a site for people who *do* something. That is, if you happened to be an atheist, you were automatically an expert: obviously, that's not true, and it's hard to define what an &quot;expert&quot; atheist would be. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same would be true of a People.SE: who is an &quot;expert&quot; person?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4217" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1725" RevisionGUID="c09d1d37-e8db-4b43-93b5-113df22ed510" CreationDate="2011-06-13T20:05:15.480" UserId="47" Text="The &quot;procedure&quot; (in my view) for off-topic questions should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is it on-topic on one of the defined migration choices? As of this writing it's only our meta or Stack Overflow, though this will could increase to include [Project Management](http://pm.stackexchange.com/) and [QA and Testing](http://sqa.stackexchange.com/). If so then vote to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Is it on-topic for one of the other sites in the network? Code Golf or UX spring to mind. If so then flag for moderator attention stating where you think it should go and we'll deal with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Is it on-topic for a site currently in definition or commitment stage at [Area 51](http://area51.stackexchange.com/)? If so then vote to close as off topic, but leave a comment directing the OP at the proposal. Their involvement may be just what the site needs to get off the ground.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. If there's no where else then just vote to close as off topic direct them to [Area 51](http://area51.stackexchange.com/) itself where they can start their own proposal if their so inclined." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4224" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1728" RevisionGUID="834c024b-9a6e-4fce-af33-d7bbd3044623" CreationDate="2011-06-15T06:20:13.137" UserId="-1" Comment="from https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/95174/question-removed" Text="" />
  <row Id="4225" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1728" RevisionGUID="207a9acf-d332-4206-bcda-b37868e15386" CreationDate="2011-06-15T06:11:32.657" UserDisplayName="amitairos" Text="Yesterday I asked a question about web development, here's [the link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84062/starting-web-development-and-interactive-experiences)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the question was removed, and I wanted to look back at it. Why is this?  &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4226" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1728" RevisionGUID="207a9acf-d332-4206-bcda-b37868e15386" CreationDate="2011-06-15T06:11:32.657" UserDisplayName="amitairos" Text="Question removed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4227" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1728" RevisionGUID="207a9acf-d332-4206-bcda-b37868e15386" CreationDate="2011-06-15T06:11:32.657" UserDisplayName="amitairos" Text="|support|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4228" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1729" RevisionGUID="57c65307-5160-4430-b4d9-754e757a1457" CreationDate="2011-06-15T06:45:52.250" UserId="1685" Text="We recently printed some business cards for our Stack Exchange employees and they turned out great.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It got us thinking: our sites' moderators have been working hard to keep our sites high quality for the past few years. They may not be employees, per se, but great community moderators are why our communities are safe, sane, and worth visiting in the first place..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're a programmers.stackexchange moderator, would you be interested in having your own Programmers Stack Exchange contact card? Would you find it useful?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can see them being handy to pass out during your local meetups or tech conferences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below is a mockup:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(click on image to see full res version)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6h9FG.png&quot;&gt;![programmers.stackexchange.com moderator card][1]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course Twitter ID/phone# are optional. It can be Skype, AIM, URL etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note: the text rendering in the mockup is slightly blurry. But when printed it will be crisp.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6h9FG.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4229" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1729" RevisionGUID="57c65307-5160-4430-b4d9-754e757a1457" CreationDate="2011-06-15T06:45:52.250" UserId="1685" Text="Programmers Moderator Cards" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4230" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1729" RevisionGUID="57c65307-5160-4430-b4d9-754e757a1457" CreationDate="2011-06-15T06:45:52.250" UserId="1685" Text="|discussion|design|community|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4232" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1730" RevisionGUID="aac9ce07-93a5-4f77-b77a-3efa400a56bc" CreationDate="2011-06-15T11:20:43.430" UserId="44" Text="The used phrases have been changed, and now that block appears as in the following screenshot, taken from _English Language &amp; Usage_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![screenshot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tEfXL.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4234" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1732" RevisionGUID="0b9d8415-e2d8-4bf3-960a-0a5f4354a6f2" CreationDate="2011-06-15T13:16:34.823" UserId="226" Text="I'm gonna have to ask around why it was removed. As I mentioned in my comment to Josh, there was a [problem with migrations](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/95153/same-questions-migrated-multiple-times) last night, but the other two questions that were affected seem to still be around. I'm not sure why this one was removed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4235" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1733" RevisionGUID="68be47bb-a796-4407-8ae8-9e866a131693" CreationDate="2011-06-15T13:18:05.227" UserId="226" Text="I'm certainly interested. Where do I sign up? :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4236" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1734" RevisionGUID="e52c4652-155c-4632-9a24-21477c9ed996" CreationDate="2011-06-15T13:22:01.717" UserId="620" Text="### The context ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments may be removed by moderators with or without prejudice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If it was not apparent, a quick criterion of judging whether something should have been removed *with prejudice* is that, you think the commenter *probably* deserve a down-voting (reputation deducted) for posting that comment.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of reasons for removing comments *with prejudice* are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  *  (Just to list a few): useless, not contributing anything, not desirable, offensive, etc. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of reasons for removing comments *without prejudice*: (namely, to tidy up)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1457/620&#xD;&#xA;  * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1127/620&#xD;&#xA;  * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1639/620&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### My feature request ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the latter case, we may want to **keep some linked questions** that were once posted as comments even after those comments have been deleted, because a few of them may be relevant to the main question or OP. This will have to be decided on a case-by-case basis because not all linked questions are actually relevant; editorial insight will be needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, moderators should be able to directly edit the list of linked questions to add relevant ones and remove irrelevant (or borderline) ones. To be able to do this, the *linked/related questions* may need to be decoupled from the commentary system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This feature is more important to SO than to Programmers.SE because there is a higher tendency that *technical/mechanical/reference* questions are inter-related [1] and that if we require the related-question-provider to summarize the link, it would just be a verbatim quote of said technical matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Opposing opinion (1) ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, it might be argued that requiring a verbal summary/quote for every related link (by an answerer, not a commenter) may be a good thing because it improves signal-to-noise ratio. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If this is correct then there is no harm in deleting related links posted as comments.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Opposing opinion (2) ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP may want to have a say in what links are relevant and what aren't. If the OP decides that a link is relevant, the OP should edit the question to included the link, so that the SE engine can pick up and show it as a linked-question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#### Side note ####&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: just take a look at any reference documentation such as MSDN to see how the pages are linked like a web.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4237" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1734" RevisionGUID="e52c4652-155c-4632-9a24-21477c9ed996" CreationDate="2011-06-15T13:22:01.717" UserId="620" Text="During comment cleanup by moderators, retain linked/related questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4238" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1734" RevisionGUID="e52c4652-155c-4632-9a24-21477c9ed996" CreationDate="2011-06-15T13:22:01.717" UserId="620" Text="|feature-request|comments|hyperlinks|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4239" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1734" RevisionGUID="1d5d541d-d387-4c28-803b-d93fb8c862d3" CreationDate="2011-06-15T13:30:24.697" UserId="620" Comment="MSDN or NUnit (to avoid msft bias)" Text="### The context ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments may be removed by moderators with or without prejudice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If it was not apparent, a quick criterion of judging whether something should have been removed *with prejudice* is that, you think the commenter *probably* deserve a down-voting (reputation deducted) for posting that comment.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of reasons for removing comments *with prejudice* are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  *  (Just to list a few): useless, not contributing anything, not desirable, offensive, etc. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of reasons for removing comments *without prejudice*: (namely, to tidy up)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1457/620&#xD;&#xA;  * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1127/620&#xD;&#xA;  * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1639/620&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### My feature request ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the latter case, we may want to **keep some linked questions** that were once posted as comments even after those comments have been deleted, because a few of them may be relevant to the main question or OP. This will have to be decided on a case-by-case basis because not all linked questions are actually relevant; editorial insight will be needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, moderators should be able to directly edit the list of linked questions to add relevant ones and remove irrelevant (or borderline) ones. To be able to do this, the *linked/related questions* may need to be decoupled from the commentary system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This feature is more important to SO than to Programmers.SE because there is a higher tendency that *technical/mechanical/reference* questions are inter-related [1] and that if we require the related-question-provider to summarize the link, it would just be a verbatim quote of said technical matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Opposing opinion (1) ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, it might be argued that requiring a verbal summary/quote for every related link (by an answerer, not a commenter) may be a good thing because it improves signal-to-noise ratio. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If this is correct then there is no harm in deleting related links posted as comments.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Opposing opinion (2) ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP may want to have a say in what links are relevant and what aren't. If the OP decides that a link is relevant, the OP should edit the question to included the link, so that the SE engine can pick up and show it as a linked-question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Collaterals ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This feature would probably require declining http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/282/620&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#### My reflection ####&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a tendency to keep a lot of reference links &quot;just in case&quot;, and I was trained to look for &quot;signals&quot; in a sea of noise (i.e. to locate useful information in a mix of data of low signal-to-noise ratio)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#### Side note ####&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: just take a look at any reference documentation such as MSDN or NUnit to see how the pages are linked like a web.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4240" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1732" RevisionGUID="bc56f53b-5ce4-4bc4-bc3f-0c02321928c9" CreationDate="2011-06-15T13:43:34.790" UserId="226" Comment="added 140 characters in body" Text="I'm gonna have to ask around why it was removed. As I mentioned in my comment to Josh, there was a [problem with migrations](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/95153/same-questions-migrated-multiple-times) last night, but the other two questions that were affected seem to still be around. I'm not sure why this one was removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Looks like it was just deleted by accident during the clean-up after fixing the problem I linked to above. It's been restored now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4241" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1735" RevisionGUID="6fbc960c-69ff-4166-9cde-9b026cd19f9a" CreationDate="2011-06-15T13:45:34.337" UserId="949" Text="There was an issue last night with migrations due to an unrelated push, causing this to migrate multiple times.  In correcting it we deleted all the duplicates, but unfortunately we deleted the one that the [original][1] question [points][2] to as well...oops.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I undeleted [that question][2] (the same you linked in *this* question) to correct this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6349835/starting-web-development-and-interactive-experiences?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84062/starting-web-development-and-interactive-experiences" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4242" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1736" RevisionGUID="6cf7d785-252e-44ce-a71c-2e2a0380777e" CreationDate="2011-06-15T13:57:57.000" UserId="226" Text="Generally moderators don't clean up relevant comments. This includes comments with relevant links. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is closed as a duplicate of one of those links, every comment that includes it will be [automatically deleted](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/2246/automatic-removal-of-comments-when-a-question-gets-closed-as-exact-duplicate). This does turn out to be problematic on occasion, like when the comment contains more than just the link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do tend to clean up lengthy discussions (especially when they veer off topic) as described [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1457/how-do-our-moderators-and-community-members-feel-about-cleaning-up-comment-nois), but we do our best to avoid removing useful/relevant information while doing so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With all that said... I'm not really sure what you're asking for. Do you want moderators to validate links in comments and add them to the &quot;Linked questions&quot; sidebar?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4243" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1737" RevisionGUID="16333d9a-73cc-415d-a1ad-c43cdf701c95" CreationDate="2011-06-15T14:01:59.700" UserId="47" Text="I haven't read the question in great depth, but I would like to point out the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments are really only intended to ask for clarification, more information or point out errors in posts. The are not meant for extended discussions or holding valuable information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If something is posted in a comment (e.g. a link) that's *valuable to the post* then that information should be edited into the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I post an answer that makes an assertion about something but I don't back it up with a link. Someone comes along and posts a comment &quot;can you back that up?&quot;. A third person comes along before I have a chance to respond and replies in the comments with a link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now in this case there are several things that should really happen:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The third party edits my answer to include the link.&#xD;&#xA;2. I edit my answer to include the link.&#xD;&#xA;3. Someone else edits my answer to include the link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This way if the comments are cleaned up we haven't lost any information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same applies to questions. Either the information is supporting the question and therefore should be edited into the question or is offering a (perhaps partial) answer in which case it should be posted as an answer.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4250" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1739" RevisionGUID="c43bc3d7-043a-44d3-8399-e6db8bc432b7" CreationDate="2011-06-15T14:57:31.800" UserId="620" Text="When editing my own question, sometimes I want to discard the change. This can be done by navigating away, but ideally there should be a place within the browseable area (e.g. a button or link near the &quot;Save Edits&quot; button) that allows me to go back to the original question thus discarding my changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In Wikipedia for example, at the bottom of the editing page there is a small &quot;Cancel&quot; link next to the big &quot;Save Page&quot; button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tagged this a &quot;bug&quot; because it seems to be a missing feature rather than a feature request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4251" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1739" RevisionGUID="c43bc3d7-043a-44d3-8399-e6db8bc432b7" CreationDate="2011-06-15T14:57:31.800" UserId="620" Text="Add a button/link for canceling a question edit (discarding change)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4252" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1739" RevisionGUID="c43bc3d7-043a-44d3-8399-e6db8bc432b7" CreationDate="2011-06-15T14:57:31.800" UserId="620" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4253" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1728" RevisionGUID="d58c1eb3-c5d8-4a2c-b19e-c9bc1b5e446d" CreationDate="2011-06-15T15:01:26.980" UserId="949" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4254" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1740" RevisionGUID="40d841a6-3989-452e-85ad-6b631e612ac9" CreationDate="2011-06-15T15:49:19.893" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I like it! It'd be nice to have a card at user group meetings.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One minor nag: can the word &quot;discussions&quot; be removed from the front and be replaced with &quot;questions&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4255" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1733" RevisionGUID="0ca6aa60-384d-473b-8ba9-ed8e65befe7d" CreationDate="2011-06-15T15:52:30.103" UserId="226" Comment="added 117 characters in body" Text="I'm certainly interested. Where do I sign up? :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In retrospect, it would've come in handy at RallyON, and I certainly see a use for it at user groups and whatnot." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4256" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1741" RevisionGUID="b09add79-ef9c-4ff6-ae72-93a87eeef103" CreationDate="2011-06-15T19:08:25.813" UserId="2654" Text="I think it's a great idea. Will go great with the (hopefully forthcoming) shirts. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4258" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1739" RevisionGUID="ebb723bd-68f5-44c9-b2e1-e2269185b820" CreationDate="2011-06-15T21:22:34.907" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|user-interface|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4259" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1742" RevisionGUID="4e54b088-25e7-46d1-bc90-f560e7cd2445" CreationDate="2011-06-15T21:24:49.323" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This [has been declined](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/32277/add-a-cancel-button-when-editing-an-answer/32283#32283) in the past on our sister meta-site, [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Adding a &quot;cancel&quot; button means there's some percent chance people will accidentally click on it and lose their changes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's another item on the page that [Makes You Think](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000377.html).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Compare with the back button, and I can't see any reason to make this change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would agree with that: the back button accomplishes the same thing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4260" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="1742" RevisionGUID="27b39d95-f540-4bfa-b70d-6314a8498c11" CreationDate="2011-06-15T21:26:32.723" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="4261" PostHistoryTypeId="9" PostId="1739" RevisionGUID="cfadb320-be15-4f88-a9c6-ddbbb9a13d59" CreationDate="2011-06-15T21:26:56.187" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Rollback to [c43bc3d7-043a-44d3-8399-e6db8bc432b7]" Text="|bug|" />
  <row Id="4262" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="1742" RevisionGUID="458dbee1-89bc-48c8-991e-dc86e7d69fb7" CreationDate="2011-06-15T21:27:38.387" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="4263" PostHistoryTypeId="9" PostId="1739" RevisionGUID="0b1d8d79-6d41-4b01-ba5c-8ea9f0a8cbc8" CreationDate="2011-06-15T21:28:45.453" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Rollback to [ebb723bd-68f5-44c9-b2e1-e2269185b820]" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|user-interface|" />
  <row Id="4264" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1739" RevisionGUID="d8aff437-cbf5-48d2-aeb3-9731390d34d7" CreationDate="2011-06-15T21:29:19.837" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|user-interface|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4265" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1743" RevisionGUID="82f2d5da-c8e0-43c7-ba47-8c47e3ba913c" CreationDate="2011-06-15T22:36:18.457" UserId="18234" Text="I´ve just signed up to Programmers and i noticed in my profile that &quot;member for&quot; indicates that i´m a member since 3 months.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I´ve expected an other value like &quot;less than 1 month&quot; or &quot;1 day&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a bug or the default value for new users." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4266" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1743" RevisionGUID="82f2d5da-c8e0-43c7-ba47-8c47e3ba913c" CreationDate="2011-06-15T22:36:18.457" UserId="18234" Text="Member for in profile displays unexpected value" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4267" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1743" RevisionGUID="82f2d5da-c8e0-43c7-ba47-8c47e3ba913c" CreationDate="2011-06-15T22:36:18.457" UserId="18234" Text="|bug|user-profile|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4268" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1744" RevisionGUID="146435b6-cd7c-4611-a7de-09a307dbcae3" CreationDate="2011-06-15T22:40:47.723" UserId="2654" Text="Interesting, are you sure you didn't link your SO account to Programmers at any point?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4269" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="350" RevisionGUID="e94c6d29-9902-4762-ac9b-e69600872da9" CreationDate="2011-06-16T02:10:31.417" UserId="37" Comment="added 508 characters in body" Text="Just a quick note here on meta to let everyone know we will be enforcing [these six subjective question guidelines][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Great subjective questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers. &#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references. &#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just the title of each guideline; there's [more detail about each guideline, with examples][1] on the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fair warning, any questions on programmers.se that do not meet a reasonable number of these guidelines (let's say roughly 4 out of 6) *will be closed... aggressively*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;edit: the subjective/argumentative close reason has been changed to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Not constructive&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not meet enough of our &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;six guidelines for constructive subjective questions&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;edit: Description now enhanced to provide a TL;DR summary for the link:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Not constructive&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not meet enough of our &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;six guidelines for constructive subjective questions&lt;/a&gt;. All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and [the official faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) has been updated to reflect the above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... now let the closings begin, *for great justice*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4270" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1743" RevisionGUID="54373059-067e-4680-a61c-ab17c18ac1bf" CreationDate="2011-06-16T06:45:00.580" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|user-profile|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4271" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1745" RevisionGUID="57db7f02-fe59-452c-82d0-cfa846ea1165" CreationDate="2011-06-16T06:45:47.693" UserId="37" Text="Well, someone from an IP address in &quot;Siegen 07 Germany&quot; created your account back in February. (I can provide email addresses and specific IPs if necessary, but I am not sure that would be advisable in a public area.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are you sure you didn't just have a duplicate account you created earlier and forgot about?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4272" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1746" RevisionGUID="3c76b8ec-da1a-45a0-919c-b2d6b7e565ee" CreationDate="2011-06-16T07:06:34.033" UserId="14401" Text="These are not guidelines, they pre-justifications for any moderator to arbitrarily close any question that bothers them or that they simple do not &quot;like.&quot; They are completely subjective, open to wide interpretation, and just not suitable basis for rules and procedures of any community. They are so vague that they are practically [meaningless][1]. I think it's fair to say that anyone who believes that these &quot;guidelines&quot; are basis to fairly &quot;enforce&quot; anything is &#xD;&#xA;deluding themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_%28philosophy_of_language%29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4273" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1716" RevisionGUID="9dbf30a1-a83e-46f0-af53-b0fc33b040e8" CreationDate="2011-06-16T08:39:45.033" UserId="37" Comment="added 45 characters in body" Text="You have to make a *very strong* case that the question is truly specific or at least unusually applicable to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BngZk.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, programmers tend to be introverted and sometimes suffer from Aspergers-like symptoms, so questions about those factors in a job or career would tend to be on-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4274" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1747" RevisionGUID="f90ac8c5-eac3-4260-b7ad-cd6d0979830a" CreationDate="2011-06-16T17:36:57.747" UserId="26681" Text="Like the title says; What is the difference between Stackoverflow and this Q&amp;A site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4275" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1747" RevisionGUID="f90ac8c5-eac3-4260-b7ad-cd6d0979830a" CreationDate="2011-06-16T17:36:57.747" UserId="26681" Text="What is the difference between Programmers and Stack overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4276" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1747" RevisionGUID="f90ac8c5-eac3-4260-b7ad-cd6d0979830a" CreationDate="2011-06-16T17:36:57.747" UserId="26681" Text="|discussion|programmers|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4277" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1747" RevisionGUID="78f35729-9b05-411b-a29e-743f9d05ed4a" CreationDate="2011-06-16T17:51:36.707" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84557/what-is-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow" Text="" />
  <row Id="4278" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1748" RevisionGUID="c3461714-806f-4317-98fe-1a96f32b9b40" CreationDate="2011-06-16T17:51:36.707" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84557/what-is-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow/84558#84558" Text="" />
  <row Id="4279" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1748" RevisionGUID="42f987bb-f0db-4ddc-b330-c0fa707d309b" CreationDate="2011-06-16T17:39:47.090" UserId="17315" Text="I think of SO as being about &quot;programming problems&quot; and PSE as being about &quot;problems *with* programming&quot; -- i.e. a meta discussion about the process of programming." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4280" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1747" RevisionGUID="ac7b8ae2-6087-4609-a078-210c2ea056d3" CreationDate="2011-06-16T17:52:30.450" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Like the title says; What is the difference between Stackoverflow and this Q&amp;A site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4281" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="1747" RevisionGUID="150f0fdd-fefe-4d73-8c7a-0fe19c1ca936" CreationDate="2011-06-16T17:52:29.263" UserId="48" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[171],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:48,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;balpha&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="4283" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1749" RevisionGUID="09f5f000-12c2-4e7c-8a52-b6c0f4a5eeb5" CreationDate="2011-06-17T08:14:05.957" UserId="6617" Text="Example (the title promises more than the body of the question delivers):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84739/what-is-the-preferable-mobile-android-iphone-game-development-tool-for-a-c-ne&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The asker has only a relatively vague idea what he is going to do, and often, when someone points him to an obvious place to look for an answer, the reply is an &quot;but where do I start&quot; comment from the asker. Doesn't seem to be very constructive to me. Plus there are only so many questions of that kind possible before &quot;exact duplicates&quot; are inevitable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4284" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1749" RevisionGUID="09f5f000-12c2-4e7c-8a52-b6c0f4a5eeb5" CreationDate="2011-06-17T08:14:05.957" UserId="6617" Text="Are &quot;Getting started with...&quot; questions constructive?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4285" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1749" RevisionGUID="09f5f000-12c2-4e7c-8a52-b6c0f4a5eeb5" CreationDate="2011-06-17T08:14:05.957" UserId="6617" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4286" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1750" RevisionGUID="7604d15d-1c28-45a4-b69e-c18d0d9e8665" CreationDate="2011-06-17T08:17:39.480" UserId="47" Text="I'm not sure at the moment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I wasn't a moderator I think I'd be voting to close - after all it could be seen as a variation on the &quot;what do I learn next?&quot; type question. It's a little more specific than that, but unless framed correctly it will just result in people listing their favourite development tools." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4287" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1751" RevisionGUID="6b1f01f0-016b-4187-a18c-95b61b2f402c" CreationDate="2011-06-17T13:02:55.900" UserId="12135" Text="My answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84278/how-do-i-create-my-own-programming-&#xD;&#xA;language-and-a-compiler-for-it/84282#84282&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;seems to have a fair amount of upvotes, call it N(&gt;25).  I didn't think it controversial, but the first comment in response is pretty negative about the quality of the answer, and has a huge upvote count (&gt;N-4).  I assume that means there are a bunch of folks to agree with the negative assessment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ignoring the answer itself, why would it be the case that the answer has a huge upvote count, and the negative remark has a huge upvote count?  The answer is getting almost exactly one vote in favor, for each upvote on the negative comment, if I interpret this data, which seems statistically strange to me.  Weirder, the differences in votes for and the negative comment count seem to have held steady at a small constant (&quot;4?&quot;).  If I didn't think SO+friends was well built, I'd say the first-comment count was automatically tracking the positive-vote count without any human beings participating.&#xD;&#xA;(That's the question: is it broken? Nah, can't be ...?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd generally expect downvoters to vote against the answer, rather than upvoting the comment (but maybe they're all in violent agreement which is pretty strange at SO in my experience).&#xD;&#xA;If I could see the actual for/against votes as on StackOverflow, would I see a positive vote count of 2N+4, and a negative vote count of N?   Why doesn't Programmers have the same vote display mechanism, which would let me lay my fears to rest?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4288" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1751" RevisionGUID="6b1f01f0-016b-4187-a18c-95b61b2f402c" CreationDate="2011-06-17T13:02:55.900" UserId="12135" Text="Strange behavior of counts on first remark to answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4289" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1751" RevisionGUID="6b1f01f0-016b-4187-a18c-95b61b2f402c" CreationDate="2011-06-17T13:02:55.900" UserId="12135" Text="|feature-request|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4290" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1751" RevisionGUID="13a0108e-6155-4259-8d87-d76373376649" CreationDate="2011-06-17T13:16:00.690" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 6 characters in body" Text="[My answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84278/how-do-i-create-my-own-programming-language-and-a-compiler-for-it/84282#84282) seems to have a fair amount of upvotes, call it N(&gt;25).  I didn't think it controversial, but the first comment in response is pretty negative about the quality of the answer, and has a huge upvote count (&gt;N-4).  I assume that means there are a bunch of folks to agree with the negative assessment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ignoring the answer itself, why would it be the case that the answer has a huge upvote count, and the negative remark has a huge upvote count?  The answer is getting almost exactly one vote in favor, for each upvote on the negative comment, if I interpret this data, which seems statistically strange to me.  Weirder, the differences in votes for and the negative comment count seem to have held steady at a small constant (&quot;4?&quot;).  If I didn't think SO+friends was well built, I'd say the first-comment count was automatically tracking the positive-vote count without any human beings participating.&#xD;&#xA;(That's the question: is it broken? Nah, can't be ...?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd generally expect downvoters to vote against the answer, rather than upvoting the comment (but maybe they're all in violent agreement which is pretty strange at SO in my experience).&#xD;&#xA;If I could see the actual for/against votes as on StackOverflow, would I see a positive vote count of 2N+4, and a negative vote count of N?   Why doesn't Programmers have the same vote display mechanism, which would let me lay my fears to rest?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4291" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1751" RevisionGUID="c2e091f5-7b0e-4304-9642-35d9ea11fc96" CreationDate="2011-06-17T13:20:19.637" UserId="12135" Comment="edited title" Text="Strange behavior of counts on first comment to answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4292" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1752" RevisionGUID="564a7ae2-15fd-4fa3-951b-a5b4cf855771" CreationDate="2011-06-17T13:25:03.813" UserId="226" Text="Programmers has the same &quot;view vote counts&quot; privilege as every other Stack Exchange site. It becomes available at [1000 reputation](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/view-vote-counts). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Matt Allen said, the current vote split on your answer is +34 / -5. I don't think it really means anything other than &quot;34 people agreed enough to upvote my question and 5 thought it was worth downvoting&quot;. I wouldn't read too much into the comment upvotes, since there is no corresponding downvote to balance them out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the explanation for what you're seeing is simple: it costs rep to downvote an answer and it doesn't cost anything to upvote a comment. Not now that the answer is community wiki which might even it out a bit, but even then there will be people who disagree but not strongly enough to downvote." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4293" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1753" RevisionGUID="4e865176-9301-4d58-a047-78597e90c4c6" CreationDate="2011-06-17T16:25:39.440" UserId="6795" Text="Yesterday this question ([Considering career change to patent agent/patent engineer [closed][1]) was closed. The question was now edited by the original author and I would like to flag it for reopening. Is this possible? If it isn't, I'd like to suggest this as a feature request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4294" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1753" RevisionGUID="4e865176-9301-4d58-a047-78597e90c4c6" CreationDate="2011-06-17T16:25:39.440" UserId="6795" Text="How to flag a question for reopening" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4295" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1753" RevisionGUID="4e865176-9301-4d58-a047-78597e90c4c6" CreationDate="2011-06-17T16:25:39.440" UserId="6795" Text="|support|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4296" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1754" RevisionGUID="0423499c-ba05-4af0-9c3f-b1b6ca548814" CreationDate="2011-06-17T16:28:27.270" UserId="2654" Text="Yes, just issue a flag for a moderators attention. As ChrisF was the original moderator vote I let him issue the reopen - though you're three votes there already. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4297" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1753" RevisionGUID="ce1cd152-6a2b-4592-9509-08d8b5a10585" CreationDate="2011-06-17T16:41:15.033" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4298" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1755" RevisionGUID="fae280df-a331-4308-a10e-8e5daff72e5c" CreationDate="2011-06-18T10:45:20.077" UserId="-1" Comment="from https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/95605/negative-moderator-message" Text="" />
  <row Id="4299" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1755" RevisionGUID="d65a3edb-26e8-4849-80ff-d563e6e8f098" CreationDate="2011-06-18T10:36:45.527" UserDisplayName="CodingTales" Text="Moderator message for Questions with many answer is very negative (See an example [here][1]):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; With 75 answers it is highly unlikely that your answer will add anything new. Please feel free to comment or even edit existing answers if you wish to add extra information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A better message could be a positive one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; With 75 answers, it is highly *likely that an answer similar to yours was already posted*. Please feel free to comment or even edit existing answers if you wish to add extra information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-a-developer-know-before-building-a-public-web-site" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4300" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1755" RevisionGUID="d65a3edb-26e8-4849-80ff-d563e6e8f098" CreationDate="2011-06-18T10:36:45.527" UserDisplayName="CodingTales" Text="Negative Moderator Message" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4301" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1755" RevisionGUID="d65a3edb-26e8-4849-80ff-d563e6e8f098" CreationDate="2011-06-18T10:36:45.527" UserDisplayName="CodingTales" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4302" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1755" RevisionGUID="802aa844-f951-41ec-83d7-d016d42fe8e7" CreationDate="2011-06-18T10:55:03.970" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4314" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1761" RevisionGUID="cebe4e85-eb18-4174-b00e-aff8b06421fa" CreationDate="2011-06-20T03:24:38.223" UserId="906" Text="The FAQ says to use the Edit Room menu, but I didn't see any such menu.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other chat systems, INVITE USER was a big, obvious, and frequently-used button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I blind?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4315" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1761" RevisionGUID="cebe4e85-eb18-4174-b00e-aff8b06421fa" CreationDate="2011-06-20T03:24:38.223" UserId="906" Text="How to Invite someone to Chat that's not already in a chat room?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4316" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1761" RevisionGUID="cebe4e85-eb18-4174-b00e-aff8b06421fa" CreationDate="2011-06-20T03:24:38.223" UserId="906" Text="|support|chat|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4318" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1763" RevisionGUID="49a34a4b-4e5b-4b6e-b357-2478d2b2054d" CreationDate="2011-06-20T05:44:26.700" UserId="48" Text="Yeah, the FAQ is lying. I don't know how that sentence slipped in there, but that's not true nor ever was. I'll update it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have two ways to invite a user. Either through the little user popup in the life chat:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![inviting through the user popup][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or on the user's profile page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![inviting through the profile page][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both lists will show you all rooms you can invite the user to, which are rooms that satisfy the following conditions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* You are already in it.&#xD;&#xA;* The invitee isn't in there yet (and hasn't been invited there either).&#xD;&#xA;* The invitee has the right to talk in the room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Fc2AW.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ej2zb.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4320" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1764" RevisionGUID="f70135ec-239f-433c-ad23-5139a62d06eb" CreationDate="2011-06-20T14:41:37.480" UserId="906" Text="The answer to [this chat-related question][1] leads to a feature request:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A simple way to notify and invite someone to chat regardless of whether they've ever chatted before or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Story:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    As a [stackexchange user] &#xD;&#xA;    I want to [invite another user to chat] &#xD;&#xA;    So that [we can continue our discussion easily]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1761/how-to-invite-someone-to-chat-thats-not-already-in-a-chat-room" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4321" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1764" RevisionGUID="f70135ec-239f-433c-ad23-5139a62d06eb" CreationDate="2011-06-20T14:41:37.480" UserId="906" Text="Can we get a simple way to initiate a chat?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4322" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1764" RevisionGUID="f70135ec-239f-433c-ad23-5139a62d06eb" CreationDate="2011-06-20T14:41:37.480" UserId="906" Text="|feature-request|chat|stackexchange|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4323" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1761" RevisionGUID="2a2e9f89-0203-487c-a171-6f7fcd0d37d3" CreationDate="2011-06-20T14:42:02.160" UserId="906" Comment="added 153 characters in body" Text="The FAQ says to use the Edit Room menu, but I didn't see any such menu.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other chat systems, INVITE USER was a big, obvious, and frequently-used button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I blind?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: new feature requested [here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1764/can-we-get-a-simple-way-to-initiate-a-chat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4324" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1765" RevisionGUID="6745e88f-e293-4d93-8d4d-47b76566dbe2" CreationDate="2011-06-20T14:44:54.577" UserId="226" Text="I think it'd be nice to have an &quot;invite to chat&quot; link in a user profile similar to the ones already in the chat profiles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, this has been brought up on [Meta.SO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/70385/add-invite-user-to-chat-function-on-main-site) before and while it wasn't outright [meta-tag:status-declined], it received a lukewarm response at best." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4325" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1764" RevisionGUID="676a9320-2ca9-4128-b321-98a539c239e7" CreationDate="2011-06-20T14:51:04.793" UserId="906" Comment="added 315 characters in body" Text="The answer to [this chat-related question][1] leads to a feature request:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A simple way to notify and invite someone to chat regardless of whether they've ever chatted before or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Story:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    As a [stackexchange user] &#xD;&#xA;    I want to [invite another user to chat] &#xD;&#xA;    So that [we can continue our discussion easily]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ADENDUM: for archival purposes it might make sense to auto-create a room for discussions started in the comments of a particular question/answer. Yes, this effectively turns SO into a forum - but it keeps the discussiony stuff out of the main Q&amp;A stuff, which I think was the point of having a separate chat system.&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1761/how-to-invite-someone-to-chat-thats-not-already-in-a-chat-room" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4326" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1766" RevisionGUID="d2ecca6d-0afc-4a77-8cab-72db8d774ec8" CreationDate="2011-06-20T15:11:49.573" UserId="48" Text="This feature actually already exists. We're still experimenting with it, but it has been activated this morning on all sites except for Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(note the &quot;automatically move this discussion to chat&quot; link). This link is visible to you and me, because we're having a back-and-forth discussion in the comments. At the moment this is still voluntary; at some point, we may start blocking further comments, thus *forcing* (not just *suggesting*) to take it to chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clicking the link will create a new room in chat, copy our comment discussion into that room, and leave an automatic &quot;let's take this to chat&quot; comment on behalf of the user who clicked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/U6gxN.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4327" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1764" RevisionGUID="43796095-96f9-4a21-a77e-14632f242395" CreationDate="2011-06-20T15:12:15.813" UserId="48" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|chat|stackexchange|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4328" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1767" RevisionGUID="e5ee380e-9100-47d2-b4ab-6b1ee6982263" CreationDate="2011-06-20T19:30:25.113" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This was fixed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(Posting an answer so someone can up-vote it causing it to drop off the unanswered list :P)*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4329" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1768" RevisionGUID="6db21b4b-b623-4c02-8278-52b544daa728" CreationDate="2011-06-21T08:10:18.677" UserId="26094" Text="great idea but instead of &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am community moderator on programmer stackexchange&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should be like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am community member on programmer stackexchange&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;its should be for all contributors" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4330" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="1768" RevisionGUID="1ec5be31-e2e3-4f55-ad7a-4345efe84732" CreationDate="2011-06-21T08:10:51.547" UserId="26094" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:26094,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;abdul wakeel&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="4331" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="1768" RevisionGUID="c6b2feca-a261-4ee1-a214-0409ce5af520" CreationDate="2011-06-21T08:11:23.947" UserId="26094" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:26094,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;abdul wakeel&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="4332" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1769" RevisionGUID="1e83bdb4-0d4c-488a-b8c5-f8804dd6d2b6" CreationDate="2011-06-21T13:17:46.773" UserDisplayName="user28480" Text="The original question was:&#xD;&#xA;-------------------------------- &#xD;&#xA;I'm currently trying to decide what server-side language to learn and use for web development, and while it's relatively easy to get information on why x, y, or z is a good thing, it's harder to figure out the downsides to each of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, I'm curious about what drawbacks there are to learning and/or using Ruby on Rails as opposed to any other given language/framework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And my answer(there were about 10 solid answers already posted to the question):&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;This is coming from a spanky new RoR coder, so... I'm POSITIVE my point of view is the one you are looking for. (since we're in the same boat)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd have to say the biggest problem you'll encounter is ... well... the high number of &quot;a-holeiness&quot; coders involved. Take this highly scientific ascii graph for example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;       40                                                        *&#xD;&#xA;    a  |                                                *        *&#xD;&#xA;       |                                                *        *  &#xD;&#xA;    h  30                                               *        *&#xD;&#xA;    o  |                 *                    *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;    l  |                 *                    *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;    i  20                *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;    n  |                 *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;    e  |                 *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;    s  10        *       *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;    s  |         *       *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;       |         *       *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;      0+------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;language      PHP   ASP/.NET    JQuery    Java       Perl     RoR&#xD;&#xA;You know when you've out-done PERL coders in this graph, that there's something serious going on (Not going to say any more about PERL coders lest I incur their wrath). Of course there are the caveats that the a-holiness of the ASP and .NET developers is kind of the inverse of of the other languages, as their levels stem strictly from having to work in a windows environment, so is based from anger, rather than a strict religious adherence. Similarly, the lowest scoring language is PHP, as their coders are blissfully ignorant as to actually HOW to code. JQuery is kinda middle of the road since it attracts the best (and worst) from every language... and yea... it's a front end language, so the worst (see: me) happily cavort about butchering it, and the other half (see: you other half) publicly stab us (me) with a-holy pitchforks (I just included this for referential purposes). Java has a very interesting caveat as well, since their a-holiness stems from their smug &quot;why bother worrying about a job when I can plop 'java' on my resume and land a kush gig with out even trying&quot; attitude.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whelp... hope that helped!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(pssssst! Just between you and me I'm casting my vote for js on the server (see Node.js)... I think in the near future, REST-ish interactions will go the way of the TCP/IP layer, and you'll just write js like you would a native app! But... I really do like RoR a whole lot too!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comments:&#xD;&#xA;----------------------	&#xD;&#xA;Welcome to Programmers. Stack Exchange isn't a place for unsubstantiated opinions. We require answers to be backed up by references. Please read through the FAQ and improve your answer, or be prepared to see it downvoted and possibly removed. Thanks. – Anna Lear♦ 9 hours ago&#xD;&#xA; 	&#xD;&#xA; 	&#xD;&#xA;One's perception of the attitude of programmers of language X may be rather biased if one hasn't sought out every forum, mailing list, chat room, etc. where people talk about language X. For example, in an IRC channel with hundreds of users, the tone seems to be set by the small handful of users who are the most active. When you gauge the attitude of a group of people, go back to your logs and make sure you're not actually gauging the attitude of one or two people. – Joey Adams 6 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;3	&#xD;&#xA; 	&#xD;&#xA;No offense, but this site (along with others in the StackExchange network) has a more professional tone than you might be used to (though we do like to have fun from time to time). It's hard to start &quot;flame wars&quot; on this site, as such posts will likely get deleted quickly. – Joey Adams 6 hours ago&#xD;&#xA; 	&#xD;&#xA; 	&#xD;&#xA;I originally upvoted for the main point which is the rails community can be a bit elitist, but I have to downvote because your entire attitude does not belong on stackexchange. Trash talk and flame baiting should be taken somewhere else where we don't attempt to be constructive. – Raynos 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I added 2 comments (1 was fairly snarky I'll admit) that I deleted when I woke up this morning that aren't included (sorry for the incompleteness... I was going to be frank and set things straight before I realized it had been deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mostly I'm confused.  Was it not apparent that I was totally joking?  From the replies that I got, it seems like folks took me seriously.  Also, the reason stated by the moderator for deletion was weak at best (imho), as EVERY answer was an opinion, the question was opinionated etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the reason was more like: &quot;ha... funny... but we try to keep the clutter down and only include 'good' answers so I'm gonna delete&quot;... THAT makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4333" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1769" RevisionGUID="1e83bdb4-0d4c-488a-b8c5-f8804dd6d2b6" CreationDate="2011-06-21T13:17:46.773" UserDisplayName="user28480" Text="Should a joking answer be deleted (or was it not aparent this was a joke)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4334" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1769" RevisionGUID="1e83bdb4-0d4c-488a-b8c5-f8804dd6d2b6" CreationDate="2011-06-21T13:17:46.773" UserDisplayName="user28480" Text="|discussion|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4335" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1769" RevisionGUID="3ef8d6ed-fc84-4fa6-b895-abac8209650c" CreationDate="2011-06-21T13:23:11.637" UserId="226" Comment="added 365 characters in body" Text="The [original question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/85559/226) was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm currently trying to decide what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; server-side language to learn and use&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for web development, and while it's&#xD;&#xA;&gt; relatively easy to get information on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; why x, y, or z is a good thing, it's&#xD;&#xA;&gt; harder to figure out the downsides to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; each of them.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; In particular, I'm curious about what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; drawbacks there are to learning and/or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; using Ruby on Rails as opposed to any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other given language/framework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And [my answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85559/what-are-the-downsides-of-ror/85709#85709) (there were about 10 solid answers already posted to the question):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is coming from a spanky new RoR&#xD;&#xA;&gt; coder, so... I'm POSITIVE my point of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; view is the one you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (since we're in the same boat)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd have to say the biggest problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you'll encounter is ... well... the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; high number of &quot;a-holeiness&quot; coders&#xD;&#xA;&gt; involved. Take this highly scientific&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ascii graph for example:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;        40                                                        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     a  |                                                *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;        |                                                *        *  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     h  30                                               *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     o  |                 *                    *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     l  |                 *                    *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     i  20                *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     n  |                 *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     e  |                 *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     s  10        *       *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     s  |         *       *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;        |         *       *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;       0+------------------------------------------------------------ language      PHP   ASP/.NET    JQuery&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Java       Perl     RoR You know when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you've out-done PERL coders in this&#xD;&#xA;&gt; graph, that there's something serious&#xD;&#xA;&gt; going on (Not going to say any more&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about PERL coders lest I incur their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; wrath). Of course there are the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; caveats that the a-holiness of the ASP&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and .NET developers is kind of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; inverse of of the other languages, as&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their levels stem strictly from having&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to work in a windows environment, so&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is based from anger, rather than a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; strict religious adherence. Similarly,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the lowest scoring language is PHP, as&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their coders are blissfully ignorant&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as to actually HOW to code. JQuery is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; kinda middle of the road since it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; attracts the best (and worst) from&#xD;&#xA;&gt; every language... and yea... it's a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; front end language, so the worst (see:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; me) happily cavort about butchering&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it, and the other half (see: you other&#xD;&#xA;&gt; half) publicly stab us (me) with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a-holy pitchforks (I just included&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this for referential purposes). Java&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has a very interesting caveat as well,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; since their a-holiness stems from&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their smug &quot;why bother worrying about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a job when I can plop 'java' on my&#xD;&#xA;&gt; resume and land a kush gig with out&#xD;&#xA;&gt; even trying&quot; attitude.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Whelp... hope that helped!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; (pssssst! Just between you and me I'm&#xD;&#xA;&gt; casting my vote for js on the server&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (see Node.js)... I think in the near&#xD;&#xA;&gt; future, REST-ish interactions will go&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the way of the TCP/IP layer, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you'll just write js like you would a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; native app! But... I really do like&#xD;&#xA;&gt; RoR a whole lot too!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to Programmers. Stack Exchange&#xD;&#xA;&gt; isn't a place for unsubstantiated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinions. We require answers to be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; backed up by references. Please read&#xD;&#xA;&gt; through the FAQ and improve your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer, or be prepared to see it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; downvoted and possibly removed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thanks. – Anna Lear♦ 9 hours ago  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One's perception of the attitude of programmers of language X may be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rather biased if one hasn't sought out&#xD;&#xA;&gt; every forum, mailing list, chat room,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; etc. where people talk about language&#xD;&#xA;&gt; X. For example, in an IRC channel with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hundreds of users, the tone seems to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be set by the small handful of users&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are the most active. When you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gauge the attitude of a group of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; people, go back to your logs and make&#xD;&#xA;&gt; sure you're not actually gauging the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; attitude of one or two people. – Joey&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Adams 6 hours ago  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3 No offense,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but this site (along with others in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the StackExchange network) has a more&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional tone than you might be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; used to (though we do like to have fun&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from time to time). It's hard to start&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;flame wars&quot; on this site, as such&#xD;&#xA;&gt; posts will likely get deleted quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; – Joey Adams 6 hours ago  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I originally upvoted for the main point which is the rails&#xD;&#xA;&gt; community can be a bit elitist, but I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have to downvote because your entire&#xD;&#xA;&gt; attitude does not belong on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; stackexchange. Trash talk and flame&#xD;&#xA;&gt; baiting should be taken somewhere else&#xD;&#xA;&gt; where we don't attempt to be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; constructive. – Raynos 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I added 2 comments (1 was fairly snarky I'll admit) that I deleted when I woke up this morning that aren't included (sorry for the incompleteness... I was going to be frank and set things straight before I realized it had been deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mostly I'm confused.  Was it not apparent that I was totally joking?  From the replies that I got, it seems like folks took me seriously.  Also, the reason stated by the moderator for deletion was weak at best (imho), as EVERY answer was an opinion, the question was opinionated etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the reason was more like: &quot;ha... funny... but we try to keep the clutter down and only include 'good' answers so I'm gonna delete&quot;... THAT makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4336" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1770" RevisionGUID="da5639dd-3090-40f8-a46d-62f687516d01" CreationDate="2011-06-21T13:28:54.447" UserId="47" Text="Apparently it wasn't apparent that you were &quot;totally&quot; joking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you've been posting anything anywhere on the web, or indeed just surfing the web, for any length of time you should be aware that some people take what you post very seriously indeed regardless of your motives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While there is humour, posting something you think is humorous on an otherwise serious site is going to have it taken seriously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Put this down to experience, and remember - think before you hit that &quot;Post&quot; button." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4337" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1771" RevisionGUID="226195d7-0cc3-4716-918b-6839cbf0a3a5" CreationDate="2011-06-21T13:30:41.090" UserId="226" Text="&gt; If the reason was more like: &quot;ha...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; funny... but we try to keep the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; clutter down and only include 'good'&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers so I'm gonna delete&quot;... THAT&#xD;&#xA;&gt; makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I didn't find it particularly funny, I did see you were going for a joke. That's why I originally simply left a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overnight your answer received a few flags and a bunch of downvotes. You also added comments that gave the impression that you were flamebaiting instead of attempting to answer a question in a humorous way. I made the decision to remove your answer at that point, especially in light of your comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging by Joey's and Raynos' comments, I wasn't the only one left with that impression." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4338" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1769" RevisionGUID="0b65e8c4-d81a-41e3-9b63-66dbc37ad9ab" CreationDate="2011-06-21T13:35:11.243" UserDisplayName="user28480" Comment="added 9 characters in body" Text="The [original question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/85559/226) was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm currently trying to decide what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; server-side language to learn and use&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for web development, and while it's&#xD;&#xA;&gt; relatively easy to get information on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; why x, y, or z is a good thing, it's&#xD;&#xA;&gt; harder to figure out the downsides to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; each of them.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; In particular, I'm curious about what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; drawbacks there are to learning and/or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; using Ruby on Rails as opposed to any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other given language/framework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And [my answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85559/what-are-the-downsides-of-ror/85709#85709) (there were about 10 solid answers already posted to the question):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is coming from a spanky new RoR&#xD;&#xA;&gt; coder, so... I'm POSITIVE my point of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; view is the one you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (since we're in the same boat)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd have to say the biggest problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you'll encounter is ... well... the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; high number of &quot;a-holeiness&quot; coders&#xD;&#xA;&gt; involved. Take this highly scientific&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ascii graph for example:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;        40                                                        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     a  |                                                *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;        |                                                *        *  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     h  30                                               *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     o  |                 *                    *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     l  |                 *                    *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     i  20                *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     n  |                 *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     e  |                 *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     s  10        *       *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     s  |         *       *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;        |         *       *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;       0+------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     language      PHP   ASP/.NET    JQuery    Java     Perl     RoR &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You know when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you've out-done PERL coders in this&#xD;&#xA;&gt; graph, that there's something serious&#xD;&#xA;&gt; going on (Not going to say any more&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about PERL coders lest I incur their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; wrath). Of course there are the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; caveats that the a-holiness of the ASP&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and .NET developers is kind of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; inverse of of the other languages, as&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their levels stem strictly from having&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to work in a windows environment, so&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is based from anger, rather than a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; strict religious adherence. Similarly,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the lowest scoring language is PHP, as&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their coders are blissfully ignorant&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as to actually HOW to code. JQuery is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; kinda middle of the road since it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; attracts the best (and worst) from&#xD;&#xA;&gt; every language... and yea... it's a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; front end language, so the worst (see:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; me) happily cavort about butchering&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it, and the other half (see: you other&#xD;&#xA;&gt; half) publicly stab us (me) with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a-holy pitchforks (I just included&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this for referential purposes). Java&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has a very interesting caveat as well,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; since their a-holiness stems from&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their smug &quot;why bother worrying about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a job when I can plop 'java' on my&#xD;&#xA;&gt; resume and land a kush gig with out&#xD;&#xA;&gt; even trying&quot; attitude.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Whelp... hope that helped!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; (pssssst! Just between you and me I'm&#xD;&#xA;&gt; casting my vote for js on the server&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (see Node.js)... I think in the near&#xD;&#xA;&gt; future, REST-ish interactions will go&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the way of the TCP/IP layer, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you'll just write js like you would a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; native app! But... I really do like&#xD;&#xA;&gt; RoR a whole lot too!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to Programmers. Stack Exchange&#xD;&#xA;&gt; isn't a place for unsubstantiated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinions. We require answers to be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; backed up by references. Please read&#xD;&#xA;&gt; through the FAQ and improve your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer, or be prepared to see it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; downvoted and possibly removed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thanks. – Anna Lear♦ 9 hours ago  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One's perception of the attitude of programmers of language X may be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rather biased if one hasn't sought out&#xD;&#xA;&gt; every forum, mailing list, chat room,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; etc. where people talk about language&#xD;&#xA;&gt; X. For example, in an IRC channel with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hundreds of users, the tone seems to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be set by the small handful of users&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are the most active. When you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gauge the attitude of a group of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; people, go back to your logs and make&#xD;&#xA;&gt; sure you're not actually gauging the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; attitude of one or two people. – Joey&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Adams 6 hours ago  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3 No offense,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but this site (along with others in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the StackExchange network) has a more&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional tone than you might be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; used to (though we do like to have fun&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from time to time). It's hard to start&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;flame wars&quot; on this site, as such&#xD;&#xA;&gt; posts will likely get deleted quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; – Joey Adams 6 hours ago  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I originally upvoted for the main point which is the rails&#xD;&#xA;&gt; community can be a bit elitist, but I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have to downvote because your entire&#xD;&#xA;&gt; attitude does not belong on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; stackexchange. Trash talk and flame&#xD;&#xA;&gt; baiting should be taken somewhere else&#xD;&#xA;&gt; where we don't attempt to be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; constructive. – Raynos 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I added 2 comments (1 was fairly snarky I'll admit) that I deleted when I woke up this morning that aren't included (sorry for the incompleteness... I was going to be frank and set things straight before I realized it had been deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mostly I'm confused.  Was it not apparent that I was totally joking?  From the replies that I got, it seems like folks took me seriously.  Also, the reason stated by the moderator for deletion was weak at best (imho), as EVERY answer was an opinion, the question was opinionated etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the reason was more like: &quot;ha... funny... but we try to keep the clutter down and only include 'good' answers so I'm gonna delete&quot;... THAT makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4339" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1772" RevisionGUID="c63d7ed3-1e2a-4b75-8541-786f3fc3ad69" CreationDate="2011-06-21T13:40:59.163" UserId="1973" Text="Funny that the [first question][1] I asked in 4 months was closed, even though it garnered good responses, a few positive votes and is objectively a good question pertaining only to programmers and the business of programming.  I'd think it was the direct influence of a man with no capacity for abstract thinking or imagination for that matter. A true prerequisite for a real programmer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd go so far as to say that the man who closed my question is not even a programmer, and as thus, has no business here among us kings of men! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85605/do-programmers-possess-the-means-of-production-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4340" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1772" RevisionGUID="c63d7ed3-1e2a-4b75-8541-786f3fc3ad69" CreationDate="2011-06-21T13:40:59.163" UserId="1973" Text="Should moderators be programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4341" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1772" RevisionGUID="c63d7ed3-1e2a-4b75-8541-786f3fc3ad69" CreationDate="2011-06-21T13:40:59.163" UserId="1973" Text="|discussion|support|close-reasons|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4342" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1773" RevisionGUID="884a6d6e-50f2-4bd6-97f5-dae14eef4822" CreationDate="2011-06-21T14:11:04.567" UserId="2654" Text="My first thought was that the question was muddy babble. &quot;Means of production&quot;, alluding to serfs in the middle ages, etc. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I went and re-read the question I found this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So, as programmers, with the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hither-to-unknown supply of free tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and resources, have we reclaimed as a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; class of workers, unlike any others,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the means of production. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I think that more then a few programmers would have closed that question, I wouldn't have. I think that the discussion stemming from that question would be most interesting and beneficial. Let me ping this for Mark." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4344" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1772" RevisionGUID="9530cab6-fd86-4016-93f0-f488c84c9150" CreationDate="2011-06-21T14:36:14.753" UserId="1973" Comment="added 255 characters in body; edited tags" Text="Funny that the [first question][1] I asked in 4 months was closed, even though it garnered good responses, a few positive votes and is objectively a good question pertaining only to programmers and the business of programming.  I'd think it was the direct influence of a man with no capacity for abstract thinking or imagination for that matter. A true prerequisite for a real programmer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd go so far as to say that the man who closed my question is not even a programmer, and as thus, has no business here among us kings of men! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not asking for close reasons, as the reasons are pretty obvious to me.  I don't even want to define a gray area.  I just want to discuss the difference between the ethics of a moderator who is a programmer and the ethics of a moderator who is not.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85605/do-programmers-possess-the-means-of-production-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4345" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1772" RevisionGUID="9530cab6-fd86-4016-93f0-f488c84c9150" CreationDate="2011-06-21T14:36:14.753" UserId="1973" Comment="added 255 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4346" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1775" RevisionGUID="891efc04-f9f1-464a-9d4c-d8bf1d48b9dd" CreationDate="2011-06-21T16:50:37.357" UserId="1973" Text="Quite a few of us had a big problem with the way the site was headed back when it started, I haven't been around much lately, but I had a question pop into my head yesterday, which I asked, got some good responses and had closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I believe that the site really should be an interface to a discussion, if we can't understand that then we're not programmers.  Q and A is a structured discussion consisting of Q's and A's. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So this is how I see things&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    IQandA = interface;&#xD;&#xA;        function Ask(const Question : String) : TList&lt;TAnswers&gt; ;         &#xD;&#xA;    end;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    TDiscuss = class(IQandA);&#xD;&#xA;        function Ask(const Question : String) : TList&lt;TAnswers&gt; ;         &#xD;&#xA;        procedure Discuss(var PSE : TProgrammersSE);&#xD;&#xA;    end;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;    TProgrammersSE = class(IQandA);&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;StackExchange Inc has implemented TProgrammersSE, but there is nothing preventing us from passing it into the TDiscuss Object, and doing so would not even be a syntax error.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4347" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1776" RevisionGUID="1d1e2d63-1d6e-4368-9326-58f4652b9970" CreationDate="2011-06-21T19:29:48.797" UserId="22532" Text="My question here was directly prompted by this QA:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85921/how-do-i-explain-to-hr-that-my-work-experience-is-relevant-even-if-it-doesnt-mat&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure if I think this should be closed. On the one hand, I'm fine with the original question. I don't *like* it but I'm fine with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, the ensuing discussion in the comments is shaping up to be a flamewar because of the argumentativeness of the person who asked the original question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it appropriate to close (or in my case flag, since I can't close) a question because of it's ensuing discussion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4348" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1776" RevisionGUID="1d1e2d63-1d6e-4368-9326-58f4652b9970" CreationDate="2011-06-21T19:29:48.797" UserId="22532" Text="Close due to ensuing discussion and not original question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4349" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1776" RevisionGUID="1d1e2d63-1d6e-4368-9326-58f4652b9970" CreationDate="2011-06-21T19:29:48.797" UserId="22532" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4350" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1777" RevisionGUID="851446ab-1471-450d-8af8-587c343d1fc1" CreationDate="2011-06-21T19:32:12.037" UserId="226" Text="It's definitely appropriate to flag it. Since the question is on-topic and generally salvageable, we can step in to either simply ask the warring parties to knock it off, edit the question, or lock it to prevent further derailing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally we wouldn't close a question in that situation unless it was off-topic or otherwise unsuitable in the first place, since it doing so wouldn't stop the flame war anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this particular question, I've reworded the title, cleaned up the comments that are no longer relevant and am keeping an eye on it to see if it continues going south." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4351" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1777" RevisionGUID="03fb6343-d970-4d15-94cc-041f497862b2" CreationDate="2011-06-21T19:46:41.600" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="It's definitely appropriate to flag it. Since the question is on-topic and generally salvageable, we can step in to either simply ask the warring parties to knock it off, edit the question, or lock it to prevent further derailing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally we wouldn't close a question in that situation unless it was off-topic or otherwise unsuitable in the first place, since doing so wouldn't stop the flame war anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this particular question, I've reworded the title, cleaned up the comments that are no longer relevant and am keeping an eye on it to see if it continues going south." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4352" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1778" RevisionGUID="5b1e1760-9ee7-49e6-bb0a-283f445434e0" CreationDate="2011-06-21T19:51:54.510" UserId="47" Text="I'd be interested too (to make the full house).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having the cards would spur me on to find occasions where I can use them.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4353" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1779" RevisionGUID="7325aeaf-1968-480c-98d7-1a7be796926b" CreationDate="2011-06-21T19:52:26.453" UserId="6617" Text="Hmm. I understand why some people closed the question. I also understand why it has been reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current direction of this site is aimed towards useful questions and answers. The wording of the quesion makes it look more like a philosophical discussion issue. Something to discuss over a beer or two or more in a left-wing intellectual discussion group.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On second sight, there is a huge practical implication if the answer is yes. If we, the programmers, own the means of production, it's feasible to become self-employed when we are not happy with the life of an employee.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Concerning your meta-question, it seems unreasonable to assume that any of the moderators is not a programmer. They all have a high reputation, meaning that they were able to answer well quite a lot of programming questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4355" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1781" RevisionGUID="d9233333-eeba-4e56-a193-08cb0a174b3f" CreationDate="2011-06-21T21:51:02.580" UserId="2107" Text="Say I've asked a question that may be rather controversial. Oh, wait, [I have](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85754/are-there-any-non-self-taught-famous-programmers). It was closed, and for good reason: it's probably not the best fit for Stack Exchange, no matter how interesting the resulting answers and discussion might have been.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Also, bug-wise, there actually *was* an answer on that question, for which I have a notification in my inbox, but which doesn't appear on the question page. I'd like to know what it says beyond &quot;Sure. For example, there is no indication (and&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange sites are known for having very fast turnaround: I can ask a question and have votes, comments, and answers within minutes. On Stack Overflow, sometimes within seconds. That's great for getting answers to legitimate questions, but unfortunately, it's also great for getting close-votes on questions whose legitimacy is in doubt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose that on a subjective-question site such as Programmers, when a question could go either way, closing be postponed until *answers* demonstrate whether or not the question has merit. A so-so question can still garner great answers, because the people who provide great answers are likely going to view the question impartially; and after all, answers are the blood of Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a good solution to this?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4356" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1781" RevisionGUID="d9233333-eeba-4e56-a193-08cb0a174b3f" CreationDate="2011-06-21T21:51:02.580" UserId="2107" Text="Putting contentious questions on probation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4357" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1781" RevisionGUID="d9233333-eeba-4e56-a193-08cb0a174b3f" CreationDate="2011-06-21T21:51:02.580" UserId="2107" Text="|discussion|bug|closed-questions|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4358" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1781" RevisionGUID="dbb74b20-b1e6-4bc7-a117-56f332e6196e" CreationDate="2011-06-21T21:56:43.217" UserId="2107" Comment="deleted 248 characters in body; edited tags" Text="Say I've asked a question that may be rather controversial. Oh, wait, [I have](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85754/are-there-any-non-self-taught-famous-programmers). It was closed, and for good reason: it's probably not the best fit for Stack Exchange, no matter how interesting the resulting answers and discussion might have been.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange sites are known for having very fast turnaround: I can ask a question and have votes, comments, and answers within minutes. On Stack Overflow, sometimes within seconds. That's great for getting answers to legitimate questions, but unfortunately, it's also great for getting close-votes on questions whose legitimacy is in doubt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose that on a subjective-question site such as Programmers, when a question could go either way, closing be postponed until *answers* demonstrate whether or not the question has merit. A so-so question can still garner great answers, because the people who provide great answers are likely going to view the question impartially; and after all, answers are the blood of Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a good solution to this?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4359" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1781" RevisionGUID="dbb74b20-b1e6-4bc7-a117-56f332e6196e" CreationDate="2011-06-21T21:56:43.217" UserId="2107" Comment="deleted 248 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4360" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1782" RevisionGUID="a3124436-9f2d-44ab-b9a6-1746f5dd2c58" CreationDate="2011-06-21T22:04:43.653" UserId="63" Text="Um... Wow. We've really done a lousy job of communicating this, haven't we...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Closing *is* &quot;probation&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the whole point, y'see? Put the question in limbo for a bit, while folks discuss it, edit it, beat it into shape and make it presentable. Then re-open, so it can be answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we didn't want to give borderline questions a chance, we'd just *delete them*. Often enough, we have to do that anyway... but they do usually get a *chance*, whether minutes or days, to reform and be good citizens.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, a *great* answer can salvage a borderline question. Heck, a truly **great** answer can salvage a *horrible* question. But the point isn't to have horrible questions with great answers - it's to have *great* questions with great answers!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4361" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1783" RevisionGUID="30428ecb-7e93-4985-9e9c-589467e2af0c" CreationDate="2011-06-22T06:29:33.250" UserId="27910" Text="I would say no, as long it has some value in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It saysthe community may seem elitist and be demotivating. How is that less valuable than the absolutely worthless and flame-ish &quot;it made me hate ASP.NET&quot; answer (score 59 right now)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4362" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1783" RevisionGUID="4342401b-aef6-4d53-afb3-48568cf434d4" CreationDate="2011-06-22T07:22:36.323" UserId="27910" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="I would say no, as long it has some value in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It says the community may seem elitist and be demotivating. How is that less valuable than the absolutely worthless and flame-ish &quot;it made me hate ASP.NET&quot; answer (score 59 right now)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4363" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1784" RevisionGUID="8c0ede12-6807-4d7c-9aa6-0dcd7ab2f874" CreationDate="2011-06-22T10:34:47.663" UserId="28628" Text="How does stackoverflow prevent the tyranny of selfish moderators who close questions at will (for instance because they are bureaucratic or have an ego problem)? Closing questions can be very frustrating for powerless newcomers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4364" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1784" RevisionGUID="8c0ede12-6807-4d7c-9aa6-0dcd7ab2f874" CreationDate="2011-06-22T10:34:47.663" UserId="28628" Text="How does stackoverflow prevent the tyranny of selfish moderators?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4365" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1784" RevisionGUID="8c0ede12-6807-4d7c-9aa6-0dcd7ab2f874" CreationDate="2011-06-22T10:34:47.663" UserId="28628" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|frustration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4366" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1785" RevisionGUID="02256535-e6d2-4abc-af4e-dd6a21b15d56" CreationDate="2011-06-22T10:46:38.623" UserId="47" Text="There are several checks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firstly, any user with more than 3,000 reputation can cast a reopen vote. When 5 people have voted the question is reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, moderators review each other and they can reverse the decision with a single vote. If there is a particular question you have in mind flag it for moderator attention to speed this along.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thirdly, you can post a question here on meta raising the issue. This will help with the first two points as well as more people will see the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, you can send an e-mail to the team - use the &quot;contact us&quot; link at the foot of every page. Though this should be reserved for the most serious problems." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4367" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1753" RevisionGUID="b6e7a4d3-aa6d-4c37-828e-cdb2fde975c3" CreationDate="2011-06-22T13:09:17.053" UserId="1069" Comment="changed link" Text="Yesterday this question ([Considering career change to patent agent/patent engineer [closed]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer)) was closed. The question was now edited by the original author and I would like to flag it for reopening. Is this possible? If it isn't, I'd like to suggest this as a feature request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4369" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1787" RevisionGUID="412d33cc-d959-46c2-b20a-208a2c64367f" CreationDate="2011-06-22T18:15:48.353" UserId="1973" Text="I'm wondering for the sake of meta knowledge, how programmers.SE has helped you as a programmer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think this site should be shut down and tossed out on the dung heap with the Atheism site.  But, as I view the questions that make it through the difficult vetting process.  I think the only advice most people can give on this site is A.) Don't do that and B.) Use such and such a framework.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This mainly stems from the fact that only generic, yet somehow not abstract, programmerish questions are allowed to be asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I don't learn anything from this site, maybe if I worked for myself or for a big company I would.  But I'm just a programmer for a small business with &lt;strike&gt;no methodology&lt;/strike&gt; a modified waterfall methodology.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am however, quite romantic about the calling of the programmer and I think we can learn a lot from each other (and build each other up as a cohort).  But so far, I haven't learned a lot more than google or wikipedia has to offer.  If we truly had experts on this site they would be much more apt to quote expert references. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am a moderately experienced programmer (4 years on the job, 9 years of programming classes in schools), but I find that I've got a lot more practical advice to give on gardening.SE than I do here and that's just a hobby. In the two weeks that site has been up, I've learned a lot more about composting and soil composition than I have in as long as I've been trolling around this site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question is, how can we focus programmers.SE towards learning to be better programmers (and people) and away from &quot;Architecture review and commentary&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4370" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1787" RevisionGUID="412d33cc-d959-46c2-b20a-208a2c64367f" CreationDate="2011-06-22T18:15:48.353" UserId="1973" Text="How have you been helped by programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4371" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1787" RevisionGUID="412d33cc-d959-46c2-b20a-208a2c64367f" CreationDate="2011-06-22T18:15:48.353" UserId="1973" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4372" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1787" RevisionGUID="f2469215-72bf-40c4-8b42-df458cd4889c" CreationDate="2011-06-22T18:29:36.177" UserId="1973" Comment="added 14 characters in body" Text="I'm wondering for the sake of meta knowledge, how programmers.SE has helped you as a programmer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think this site should be shut down and tossed out on the dung heap with the Atheism site.  But, I view the questions that make it through the difficult vetting process are pretty vapid.  I think the only advice most people can give on this site is A.) Don't do that and B.) Use such and such a framework.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This mainly stems from the fact that only generic, yet somehow not abstract, programmerish questions are allowed to be asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I don't learn anything from this site, maybe if I worked for myself or for a big company I would.  But I'm just a programmer for a small business with &lt;strike&gt;no methodology&lt;/strike&gt; a modified waterfall methodology.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am however, quite romantic about the calling of the programmer and I think we can learn a lot from each other (and build each other up as a cohort).  But so far, I haven't learned a lot more than google or wikipedia has to offer.  If we truly had experts on this site they would be much more apt to quote expert references. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am a moderately experienced programmer (4 years on the job, 9 years of programming classes in schools), but I find that I've got a lot more practical advice to give on gardening.SE than I do here and that's just a hobby. In the two weeks that site has been up, I've learned a lot more about composting and soil composition than I have in as long as I've been trolling around this site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question is, how can we focus programmers.SE towards learning to be better programmers (and people) and away from &quot;Architecture review and commentary&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4374" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1784" RevisionGUID="43400806-6597-4c36-9677-aed7776ab539" CreationDate="2011-06-22T18:55:14.783" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What are the rules around moderators closing questions outright?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;How does stackoverflow prevent the tyranny of selfish moderators who close questions at will (for instance because they are bureaucratic or have an ego problem)? Closing questions can be very frustrating for powerless newcomers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4375" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="1784" RevisionGUID="e0e0807d-80fc-411c-b96f-b00252751e70" CreationDate="2011-06-22T18:55:14.593" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[855],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="4376" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1784" RevisionGUID="8b216bc6-4681-4acf-a9cc-1825cbb49358" CreationDate="2011-06-22T18:56:51.690" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 244 characters in body" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicates:** &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [What are the rules around moderators closing questions outright?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright) &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does stackoverflow prevent the tyranny of selfish moderators who close questions at will (for instance because they are bureaucratic or have an ego problem)? Closing questions can be very frustrating for powerless newcomers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4377" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1787" RevisionGUID="ee087387-99e2-497a-b9e1-c3c30eae9d06" CreationDate="2011-06-22T19:04:13.523" UserDisplayName="user131" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="I'm wondering for the sake of meta knowledge, how programmers.SE has helped you as a programmer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think this site should be shut down and tossed out on the dung heap with the Atheism site.  But, I view the questions that make it through the difficult vetting process as pretty vapid. I think the only advice most people can give on this site is A.) Don't do that and B.) Use such and such a framework.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This mainly stems from the fact that only generic, yet somehow not abstract, programmerish questions are allowed to be asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I don't learn anything from this site, maybe if I worked for myself or for a big company I would.  But I'm just a programmer for a small business with &lt;strike&gt;no methodology&lt;/strike&gt; a modified waterfall methodology.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am however, quite romantic about the calling of the programmer and I think we can learn a lot from each other (and build each other up as a cohort).  But so far, I haven't learned much more than google or wikipedia has to offer.  If we truly had experts on this site, they would be much more apt to quote expert references. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am a moderately experienced programmer (4 years on the job, 9 years of programming classes in schools), but I find that I've got a lot more practical advice to give on gardening.SE than I do here and that's just a hobby. In the two weeks that site has been up, I've learned a lot more about composting and soil composition than I have in as long as I've been trolling around this site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question is, how can we focus programmers.SE towards learning to be better programmers (and people) and away from &quot;Architecture review and commentary&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4378" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1787" RevisionGUID="4f269e99-b815-40f4-8473-0fc673a24a5b" CreationDate="2011-06-22T19:08:57.127" UserId="1973" Comment="removed my rant, read it if you want!" Text="I'm wondering for the sake of meta knowledge, how programmers.SE has helped you as a programmer?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4379" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1789" RevisionGUID="df06e679-280a-4fb3-8aca-154c213267c6" CreationDate="2011-06-22T19:25:34.200" UserId="1973" Text="Yeah, I learned about [lambda expressions][1] and how to do them in Delphi. I thought that was a pretty cool thing and I seriously didn't know it before.  I'm glad I asked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33663/delphi-doesnt-have-lambda-expressions-and-im-a-delphi-programmer-what-am-i-mis" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4380" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1790" RevisionGUID="bee71c25-da8d-4721-b13e-10deb11b7642" CreationDate="2011-06-22T20:13:20.917" UserId="1069" Text="I was able to answer a question of someone dealing with a personal problem by relating my own and this helped me understand my problem better." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4381" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1790" RevisionGUID="81ac4055-bbec-4824-9134-73a67ea0a970" CreationDate="2011-06-22T20:30:06.330" UserId="63" Comment="Moved link in from comment" Text="I was able to answer the question of someone [dealing with a personal problem][1] by relating it to my own, and this helped me understand my problem better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43260/how-to-stay-creative-when-going-through-tough-emotional-times-divorce-family-de" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4386" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1793" RevisionGUID="a4e1f545-2c87-4a85-85bf-a47834cbb731" CreationDate="2011-06-23T09:35:38.833" UserId="1681" Text="My rep on the P.Se site was 641 this morning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The `/reputation` page showed a total of 645 or so, and I pressed the button to `Trigger Recalc`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It now [jumps to 905][1] and the `/reputation` page shows a total of 905 as well. I'm not sure where the 260 came from - this discrepancy is only on p.se and not on SO, meta.so etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Has anyone else faced this today?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've checked that none of the CW answers have suddenly turned to scoring ones, they're still CW.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*I'm not complaining* - just wondering if I got someone else's stats by mistake?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1681/jose" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4387" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1793" RevisionGUID="a4e1f545-2c87-4a85-85bf-a47834cbb731" CreationDate="2011-06-23T09:35:38.833" UserId="1681" Text="Trigger Rep recalc gives huge jump - incorrectly?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4388" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1793" RevisionGUID="a4e1f545-2c87-4a85-85bf-a47834cbb731" CreationDate="2011-06-23T09:35:38.833" UserId="1681" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4389" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1794" RevisionGUID="f063f959-3707-4bac-a185-e03ecdc43c63" CreationDate="2011-06-23T09:38:16.350" UserId="47" Text="You rep on Meta lags behind that on the main site - it's copied every hour or so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main ways you could have gained this rep is through posts you were down-voted on (or down-voted) have been deleted. This will return the reputation you lost - though this seems a lot of down-votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't worry about it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4390" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1793" RevisionGUID="27bf193e-2495-41fb-b8ce-95de5a3c97be" CreationDate="2011-06-23T09:49:31.067" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4391" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1793" RevisionGUID="01e164d3-75fe-4f60-b629-4bde3e5e70e6" CreationDate="2011-06-23T10:01:41.960" UserId="1681" Comment="added 477 characters in body; added 8 characters in body; added 164 characters in body" Text="My rep on the P.Se site was 641 this morning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The `/reputation` page showed a total of 645 or so, and I pressed the button to `Trigger Recalc`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It now [jumps to 905][1] and the `/reputation` page shows a total of 905 as well. I'm not sure where the 260 came from - this discrepancy is only on p.se and not on SO, meta.so etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Has anyone else faced this today?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've checked that none of the CW answers have suddenly turned to scoring ones, they're still CW.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*I'm not complaining* - just wondering if I got someone else's stats by mistake?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit after Jeff's comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've checked and think it's related [to this answer][2] from May 2010 which was migrated over from SO on Feb 15 2011 **as CW**. But now I can see it has accumulated 290 rep on p.se on dates prior to the migration. This is original rep from SO which I think was not credited earlier on P.SE - but which I remember I did lose on SO when the migration happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So probably the rep did not get calculated all this while - but I'm sure I saw the breakdown only showing 645 this morning. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1681/jose&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48117/how-do-software-projects-go-over-budget-and-under-deliver/48123#48123" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4392" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1795" RevisionGUID="bf416eba-fb4c-4e7e-b1cb-a6a4f25acc8d" CreationDate="2011-06-23T13:21:34.227" UserId="27476" Text="As a &quot;programmer&quot; it hasn't been much help. As a &quot;development team lead&quot; I find it gets me thinking about questions my developers haven't voiced yet. It helps me stay ahead of the game and solve problems as soon as they crop up. It feels a bit like cheating to be honest." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4393" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1796" RevisionGUID="03e75c4f-b311-476a-b2ba-b87e1694e901" CreationDate="2011-06-23T14:25:59.427" UserId="949" Text="A reputation recalc does a few &quot;fixups&quot; as well, including some migration cleanup to ensure you get reputation for your content even with old migrations (we have increased the robustness of the migration process over time, but don't want to forget any old data).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're seeing the result of this in action, enjoy your long lost rep!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4394" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1793" RevisionGUID="2bb837b7-466d-4711-9d35-31e182aabef5" CreationDate="2011-06-23T14:26:08.023" UserId="949" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-bydesign|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4395" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1797" RevisionGUID="2411db09-67f3-4271-a253-f6fb190fe686" CreationDate="2011-06-23T14:36:02.587" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Since a few hours I'm downvoted on all my questions and only questions. Is it because downvoting question is now free?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2567/pierre-303?tab=reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4396" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1797" RevisionGUID="2411db09-67f3-4271-a253-f6fb190fe686" CreationDate="2011-06-23T14:36:02.587" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Does the algorythm will detect this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4397" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1797" RevisionGUID="2411db09-67f3-4271-a253-f6fb190fe686" CreationDate="2011-06-23T14:36:02.587" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="|support|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4398" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1798" RevisionGUID="b0603213-0290-41a6-a182-1b4eb3745f64" CreationDate="2011-06-23T14:40:06.340" UserId="47" Text="Down-votes on questions have been free for a number of weeks now, so it *could* be that someone's just discovered this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The vote fraud scripts will detect if one person has voted (either way) on more than N posts in less than T time. I don't know the exact numbers here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if that's the case you'll get the points back tomorrow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't - well just move on. Down-votes happen. If the questions are otherwise OK they'll gain more up-votes in the future." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4399" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1797" RevisionGUID="1101ba3e-116d-44dc-94c9-542c62c4837c" CreationDate="2011-06-23T15:09:02.960" UserDisplayName="user2567" Comment="added 4 characters in body; edited title" Text="Since a few hours I'm downvoted on all my questions and only questions. Is it because downvoting question is now free?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2567/pierre-303?tab=reputation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4400" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1797" RevisionGUID="1101ba3e-116d-44dc-94c9-542c62c4837c" CreationDate="2011-06-23T15:09:02.960" UserDisplayName="user2567" Comment="added 4 characters in body; edited title" Text="Will the algorythm detect this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4401" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1797" RevisionGUID="8c738553-9278-4622-b1a1-af9350b25a4d" CreationDate="2011-06-23T15:20:33.160" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body; edited title" Text="A few hours ago I got downvoted on all my questions and only questions. Is it because downvoting question is now free?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2567/pierre-303?tab=reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4402" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1797" RevisionGUID="8c738553-9278-4622-b1a1-af9350b25a4d" CreationDate="2011-06-23T15:20:33.160" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body; edited title" Text="Will the voting fraud detection algorithm detect this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4403" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1799" RevisionGUID="7ce859b8-90d0-48c1-8863-3a1471054b9f" CreationDate="2011-06-23T18:59:41.813" UserId="21598" Text="A question of mine has been closed and I really can't understand why, It followed all the guidelines and was very much a real question with a real concern of mine.  &#xD;&#xA;[How to keep your eyes on the prize?][1]  &#xD;&#xA;It fits all the guidelines: It's definitely a how question, the answer can be as long or short as the answerer wants it to be, I believe my tone was fine (except for the secrecy, I explained that I can't say much about the course itself), it definitely invites sharing experiences - and that is what I was hoping for in an answer, it does not really require references as it's more of a &quot;personal advice&quot; question and I can assure you it is not just mindless social fun.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was hoping someone can explain to me why it was closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I found that most comments did not focus on the question itself but more on the stuff around it, like I initially wrote (by accident) that it takes place in every day of the week, could someone explain to me how to rewrite the question to get more answers of the type I'm asking for?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86305/how-to-keep-your-eyes-on-the-prize" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4404" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1799" RevisionGUID="7ce859b8-90d0-48c1-8863-3a1471054b9f" CreationDate="2011-06-23T18:59:41.813" UserId="21598" Text="I don't understand why a question of mine has been closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4405" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1799" RevisionGUID="7ce859b8-90d0-48c1-8863-3a1471054b9f" CreationDate="2011-06-23T18:59:41.813" UserId="21598" Text="|support|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4406" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1800" RevisionGUID="456c0b78-754b-4ea5-b95f-e89af49cef8a" CreationDate="2011-06-23T19:07:54.253" UserId="2654" Text="It's not unique to programmers - as such it's off topic here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;General questions such as this fall outside of the scope here. See [the FAQ on Questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions). " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4407" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1801" RevisionGUID="4e5d75d0-9f04-4485-b600-9998047f467b" CreationDate="2011-06-23T19:08:10.023" UserId="47" Text="At first glance it looks like the question could equally apply to any profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take a look at this image (borrowed from [this answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1613/resume-feedback/1616#1616)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![What's on topic](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question fits in the &quot;All Careers&quot; section and is therefore off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We should be asking questions that fit into the blue &quot;All Programmers&quot; section." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4408" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1709" RevisionGUID="43c55bb0-7771-4969-8e7b-d7e29f67a91d" CreationDate="2011-06-23T20:01:25.537" UserId="4" Comment="added 150 characters in body" Text="I just saw [this site][1] after a tweet by Bill the Lizard from Stack Overflow. Some Stack Exchange sites (the only non-trilogy site with a blog right now is Gaming) have blogs. There's a page about [guidelines for starting a site's blog][2]. More recently, there was a [Stack Overflow blog post about getting a blog started][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are four key things to discuss:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Raise the idea on the child meta. A community blog needs the involvement of community members.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what this post is doing. Getting the idea out there, and getting some high level ideas flowing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Define the scope and purpose of the blog. Is the blog about the site? Is it about the site’s topic? Is it about the industry around the topic? Keep in mind the audience of your community and their interests. Another generic blog about &lt;x&gt; may not be all that interesting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see why we can't start this discussion now, either, before moving on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Recruit contributors. Who will write entries for the blog? Starting a blog is a bit like going through the buffet line. Be realistic – don’t let your eyes be bigger than your stomach. Think seriously about if and how often you will be able to contribute a blog post, including research/prep time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a lot of heavily involved people at Programmers who are pretty good writers (at least when it comes to answers). Looking at the top users, a few names stand out in particular. I would be interested to see who would step forward, however.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Plan a schedule. Given the results of steps #2 and #3, think about a rough idea of a schedule for the blog. Will there be one post a week, posted Mondays? Will there be &lt;x&gt; posts on Tuesdays and &lt;y&gt; posts on Fridays? You don’t need to be pushing out postsdaily, but I would say at least one post a week.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would be much further down the road, once we have topic(s) and contributors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose to kick off discussion, there are two questions to answer at this point:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Should Programmers have a blog? Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. What topics should be covered by this blog?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blogoverflow.com/getting-started/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/blog-overflow/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4410" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1802" RevisionGUID="92db22d9-6037-494b-85d1-fcdc316d57bc" CreationDate="2011-06-24T06:48:35.450" UserId="5516" Text="I'd actually avoided putting my Super-Community-Manager-Diamond-Hat-of-Doom (+355 in case anyone from [rpg](http://rpg.stackexchange.com/) was wondering) on in here until I saw this post.  But, you convinced me to do it, so here I am.  I have also appointed myself the *Queen of Bluntness* until some other Community Team member sees fit to depose me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Joke answers have *extreme* negative value here.  They destroy our signal/noise ratio, which is one of the most important advantages of the SE format.  Anna was being very nice by letting it ride to see if it was turned into anything useful.  When it wasn't, she tried to close it in a polite way, rather than going &quot;**Jokes are for forums, KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!**&quot; on you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Pointing out that your answer was argumentative (which it was) is nicer than saying &quot;joke answers are a drain on the community, please learn to do something constructive while you are here&quot;.  (My thoughts there -- I'm not speaking for Anna.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We try really hard to be nice here, even when users (especially new users like you) do something that isn't good for the site.  One never knows where really great contributions will come from, and often they come from someone who behaved one way before they really grokked the ways in which SE is different from, well, everything they are used to, and an infinitely better way after they got it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**TL;DR:** A ridiculous amount of the internet (almost everything that's not porn, and some things that are) is devoted to humor.  Stack Exchange is about something else -- being a place to find answers when you need them, and pay it forward to other users -- so stick around and get a feel for how things work here.  I bet you'll find it valuable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4411" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1803" RevisionGUID="198ce7aa-90ba-4a7b-9b06-68b9f2aa5cee" CreationDate="2011-06-24T16:05:49.747" UserId="5095" Text="A good way of understanding this is to substitute every instance of &quot;programmer&quot; and &quot;programming&quot; for &quot;lawyer&quot; or &quot;the practice of law&quot;, or &quot;accountant&quot; and &quot;accounting&quot; or &quot;doctor&quot; and medicine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not about whether it applies to programmers, it's about whether it equally applies to a range of other professions. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4412" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1804" RevisionGUID="e8246618-69bb-4f33-a437-91ce4232315d" CreationDate="2011-06-24T20:36:58.157" UserId="934" Text="&#xD;&#xA;I feel about it the same way as if someone deleted my code comments without first asking me. The comments do have my name on them and I did mean to write what I wrote. I am an adult. Someone else feels like they should delete my comments. This is totally subjective. Can I think for myself for once? If I do not like my old comment, then I will remove it. Others can too. I moved from SO ti PSE because I could talk to humans, not machines. many questions, answers and comments do fit the guidelines technically, but are pretty stupid nonetheless (in my opinion). It is one thing to have a democratic process where the community decides to shut down an answer or a comment with enough votes. It is different when the chosen few decided to delete a bunch of good, highly-upvoted comments, and then leave their own comments in place, basically saying &quot;Commenters - screw yourself. This is my territory. I get to delete all other comments and leave only mine here. This is exactly what you need and why you elected me, I swear.&quot;. Do as I say, and not as I do. This is just like in politics. You vote for the whole package. They look great when running for elections, and then they start power-tripping. They also use coercion in the name of greater good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, Stack Exchange is a for-profit organization that owns the content. I thought they were hip and not MSFT-like, anti-dictatorship and all. They feel like they can make more money by strict policing, although they sell this under the guise of helping the programmers. Well, I happen to hate a lot of &quot;nerdy talk&quot; that is so common here and is supposed to be cool. I do not go about deleting those answers or comments. I rarely even down-vote them. I just accept this for what it is - most programmers are dorky geeks whether I like it or not. In terms of filtering out the answers and comments - the most useful already float to the top. if you do not like my comments, then do not read them. If they suck, then they will not be up-voted much and will be harder to find. But no, we have got to censor everything in order to protect the innocent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever happened to freedom? Ah, right, I am on a private property of the Stack Exchange which owns my posts and thoughts, so my freedom is limited by their EULA. Fair enough, I shall vote with my feet then.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PSE is a very subjective forum.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;if you feel like responding to my post, do not even try to leave a comment. Instead, visit the http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21 as I have been told, and hope that I will show up there as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, this is how I feel about the forced, unbeknown deletion of comments." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4413" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1805" RevisionGUID="102b3ff6-f001-4dee-8f7c-6fd0b1ad08c0" CreationDate="2011-06-25T16:50:56.893" UserId="3249" Text="One very important question that I think needs answering before we even *think* about having a blog is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Who is our target audience?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or even more generally, what would be the purpose of the blog?  To keep the existing community engaged, or to try to reach out to a larger audience and show how awesome we are?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not to put too fine a point on it, but currently there's still an inordinate focus in this community on *vapor* topics (careers, productivity, coding style, language A vs. language B, etc.) as opposed to just *soft* topics (design patterns, enterprise architectures, software project management, and so on).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the same tug-of-war that the community here has *always* been embroiled in, but a blog is going to be somewhat polarizing.  Is it going to have the tone of...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Paul Graham, Steve Yegge, Scoble, and their ilk - full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? There's already copious amounts of this on P.SE and the internet in general. I'm sure it would be popular, but would it mesh with SE's pitch of making the internet a better place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Eric Lippert, Raymond Chen, Jon Skeet, etc.?  The material from them almost seems too technical to put on a P.SE blog.  It really belongs on a Stack Overflow blog - of course, *that* blog already has a [different meaning][1], so maybe this is precisely where it should be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Maybe the kind of topics we see from Fowler, Ayende, Udi Dahan (minus the advertising), and so on?  There *are* bloggers out there who frequently or at least occasionally write serious posts about non-code aspects of the software development *process*, although they're kind of hard to find.  This would certainly be an interesting niche; the question is, would people read it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Or maybe we want to take advantage of the breadth of the community and aggregate all of the off-the-beaten-path stuff like [space][2], [high-frequency trading][3], [energy][4], [device drivers][5], and all of the other professions that collectively employ millions of developers worldwide but we almost never hear about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a critically-important question to me.  I'm not saying for sure that I'd personally be qualified or willing to write *anyway*, but I definitely *wouldn't* want to be associated with the usual [participatory narcissism][6], complete with fluff on software &quot;craftsmanship&quot; and what it &quot;means&quot; to be a developer and how every corporate programming job (which is [over 85% of all programming jobs][7]) is a nightmarish dead end and the only way to ever be truly *happy* as a programmer is to work for a caffeinated, VC-infused, pampering software publisher like Google, or maybe start your own business.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You get the idea, I hope.  Software is an *immense* field; it's almost depressing how 90% of the popular writing seems to come from this weird alien echo chamber comprising maybe 10% of the profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point is, if P.SE really wants to have a blog that *stands out*, it's going to have to do something different from the mountains of crap that are already out there.  Take advantage of the diversity in this community to produce articles that will make people *think*, and dispense with the usual narcissism found on the less-technical programming blogs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/82648/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/13547/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/78928/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/52729/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151131.htm" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4414" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1806" RevisionGUID="0121d770-b705-413f-9f8c-1a9191624680" CreationDate="2011-06-25T21:06:30.990" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="So it's summer-time, and while you may be thinking that means warm temperatures and blue skies (sorry, Southern Hemisphere!), the Stack Exchange network has caught the clean-up bug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our sister sites like [OnStartups](http://meta.answers.onstartups.com/questions/526/onstartups-clean-up-getting-started) and [Ask Ubuntu](http://meta.askubuntu.com/questions/1220/clean-up-week-event-planning) have proposed cleaning up old questions to spruce up the place, and we thought it'd be a good idea to explore here on Programmers.SE, as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea would be to sweep up the hundreds of questions collecting dust because they weren't great fits for our site and were closed or abandoned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It'd also be a way to get everyone involved in moderating the site, and we moderators would rely heavily on you guys to go through and take a look at what needs to go or what needs to be reviewed. Plus, it's a chance for more flag weight increases than you can possibly imagine!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Criteria for deletion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our thinking right now is to follow the leads of our sister sites and delete questions that have one or more of the following criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Have a vote total of -2 or less&#xD;&#xA;* Have a very low view count&#xD;&#xA;* Have no answers, or no upvoted answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the additional criterion that the question must've been closed, ideally for a decent amount of time to allow the original poster to revise the question and try to get it reopened (let's say, a month).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Getting involved&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is where you guys come in. If you see a question that's worth saving but exhibits the qualities above, **fight for it.** If a question is sitting around that really doesn't belong here, **tell us.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does that mean? Taken from AskUbuntu:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* **Identifying *good* answers** - Plenty of old questions do have some answers but those answers haven't been voted for nor have they been accepted. In these threads we need people to vote for the good answers, just like normal. Getting a good answer up to +2 will classify the question as resolved and get it off our list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *  **Answer it** - You probably haven't seen every question on the site so some of these  questions will get organic answers. You'll get rewarded by the community in the regular way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Removing or improving the unanswerable** - Programmers.SE is only as good as its questions. We will need people to chase up old threads to make sure they have enough information to be answered. If their users don't respond and edit their posts, we need to cull the deadwood.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Merging duplicates** - So many duplicates slip through the gaps and we end up with multiple answered questions covering identical ground. While this isn't the prime aim of the week, any duplicates (even from established, answered questions) are candidates for treatment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Identifying *good*, hard questions** - Some questions are unanswered because they're really very tough to solve. There's no value in closing them so if you can't answer them, we need users to try and involve relevant external groups and get askers to keep the information flowing in. If we can match people with the knowledge with the questions, we fulfil several of our goals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Questions and comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you guys think? Are there any other parts of the site we should be looking at for some clean-up? Do you have any suggestions or ideas about how to handle this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4415" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1806" RevisionGUID="0121d770-b705-413f-9f8c-1a9191624680" CreationDate="2011-06-25T21:06:30.990" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Programmers.SE Summer Cleaning" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4416" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1806" RevisionGUID="0121d770-b705-413f-9f8c-1a9191624680" CreationDate="2011-06-25T21:06:30.990" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|featured|closed-questions|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4417" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1806" RevisionGUID="df1253f5-3494-4753-9ef9-a5014d33aae6" CreationDate="2011-06-25T21:17:56.383" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 384 characters in body" Text="So it's summer-time, and while you may be thinking that means warm temperatures and blue skies (sorry, Southern Hemisphere!), the Stack Exchange network has caught the clean-up bug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our sister sites like [OnStartups](http://meta.answers.onstartups.com/questions/526/onstartups-clean-up-getting-started) and [Ask Ubuntu](http://meta.askubuntu.com/questions/1220/clean-up-week-event-planning) have proposed cleaning up old questions to spruce up the place, and we thought it'd be a good idea to explore here on Programmers.SE, as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea would be to sweep up the hundreds of questions collecting dust because they weren't great fits for our site and were closed or abandoned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It'd also be a way to get everyone involved in moderating the site, and we moderators would rely heavily on you guys to go through and take a look at what needs to go or what needs to be reviewed. Plus, it's a chance for more flag weight increases than you can possibly imagine!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Criteria for deletion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our thinking right now is to follow the leads of our sister sites and delete questions that have one or more of the following criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Have a vote total of -2 or less&#xD;&#xA;* Have a very low view count&#xD;&#xA;* Have no answers, or no upvoted answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the additional criterion that the question must've been closed, ideally for a decent amount of time to allow the original poster to revise the question and try to get it reopened (let's say, a month).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Getting involved&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is where you guys come in. If you see a question that's worth saving but exhibits the qualities above, **fight for it.** If a question is sitting around that really doesn't belong here, **tell us.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does that mean? Taken from AskUbuntu:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* **Identifying *good* answers** - Plenty of old questions do have some answers but those answers haven't been voted for nor have they been accepted. In these threads we need people to vote for the good answers, just like normal. Getting a good answer up to +2 will classify the question as resolved and get it off our list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *  **Answer it** - You probably haven't seen every question on the site so some of these  questions will get organic answers. You'll get rewarded by the community in the regular way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Removing or improving the unanswerable** - Programmers.SE is only as good as its questions. We will need people to chase up old threads to make sure they have enough information to be answered. If their users don't respond and edit their posts, we need to cull the deadwood.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Merging duplicates** - So many duplicates slip through the gaps and we end up with multiple answered questions covering identical ground. While this isn't the prime aim of the week, any duplicates (even from established, answered questions) are candidates for treatment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Identifying *good*, hard questions** - Some questions are unanswered because they're really very tough to solve. There's no value in closing them so if you can't answer them, we need users to try and involve relevant external groups and get askers to keep the information flowing in. If we can match people with the knowledge with the questions, we fulfil several of our goals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Finding candidate questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE search has a few operators to help locate candidate questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [All questions that are closed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1) (We have over 2,600!)&#xD;&#xA;* [Closed questions with the lowest number of votes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?page=54&amp;tab=votes&amp;q=closed%3a1)&#xD;&#xA;* Others? Post 'em!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Questions and comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you guys think? Are there any other parts of the site we should be looking at for some clean-up? Do you have any suggestions or ideas about how to handle this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4418" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1807" RevisionGUID="eda625ac-5c18-4f0c-b315-a172179fb2b8" CreationDate="2011-06-26T10:09:55.267" UserId="37" Text="For reference, the automatic rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/78048/auto-deleting-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year/92006#92006&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Just to formally document the exact policies we have in place to remove old abandoned / dead questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If the question is more than `30` days old, and ...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - has -1 or lower score&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - has no answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - is not locked&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If the question is more than `365` days old, and ...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - has a score of 0 *or* a score of 1 with a deleted owner&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - has no answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - is not locked&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - has a viewcount &lt;= the age of the question in days times 1.5&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - has 1 or 0 comments&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This check is run every week across all sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4421" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1150" RevisionGUID="90f335ee-0a05-4aa6-9e23-7640aafa9589" CreationDate="2011-06-26T11:16:42.090" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4422" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1808" RevisionGUID="362e4a78-8c62-4880-8f0c-0ec921aa8982" CreationDate="2011-06-26T11:16:51.807" UserId="37" Text="This was completed and deployed a while ago." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4423" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1806" RevisionGUID="2e9e960b-a567-4ce0-9846-b1c1d0d56607" CreationDate="2011-06-26T21:54:44.980" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Advice from AskUbuntu was more about saving questions that weren't closed; mention auto-deletion" Text="So it's summer-time, and while you may be thinking that means warm temperatures and blue skies (sorry, Southern Hemisphere!), the Stack Exchange network has caught the clean-up bug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our sister sites like [OnStartups](http://meta.answers.onstartups.com/questions/526/onstartups-clean-up-getting-started) and [Ask Ubuntu](http://meta.askubuntu.com/questions/1220/clean-up-week-event-planning) have proposed cleaning up old questions to spruce up the place, and we thought it'd be a good idea to explore here on Programmers.SE, as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange has an automatic deletion system in place (see [Jeff's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning/1807#1807) for the details), but we've still amassed 2,690 (and counting) closed questions so far. The idea would be to sweep up the hundreds of questions collecting dust because they weren't great fits for our site and were closed or abandoned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It'd also be a way to get everyone involved in moderating the site, and we moderators would rely heavily on you guys to go through and take a look at what needs to go or what needs to be reviewed. Plus, it's a chance for more flag weight increases than you can possibly imagine!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Criteria for deletion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our thinking right now is to follow the leads of our sister sites and delete questions that have one or more of the following criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Have a vote total of -2 or less&#xD;&#xA;* Have a very low view count&#xD;&#xA;* Have no answers, or no upvoted answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the additional criterion that the question must've been closed, ideally for a decent amount of time to allow the original poster to revise the question and try to get it reopened (let's say, a month).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Getting involved&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is where you guys come in. If you see a question that's worth saving but exhibits the qualities above, **fight for it.** If a question is sitting around that really doesn't belong here, **tell us.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does that mean? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Identifying questions that could be improved.** Some questions were closed because they were bad fits for the *as written*, but nevertheless had some really great answers. If you think you can get the question into a state that'd make it a fit for our site without invalidating the answers, edit the question or suggest an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Voting on questions.** If you have the ability to vote for deletion or re-open, use your powers for good. If you see a question that's wrongfully closed, vote to re-open it. If you see a question that should be deleted, vote to delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Flagging questions that need moderator's attention.** If you find a closed question that needs one of us to take a look at it, flag it and let us know what your concern is. If you don't have the ability to vote to re-open or delete but feel strongly about it, let us know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Finding candidate questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE search has a few operators to help locate candidate questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [All questions that are closed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1) (We have over 2,600!)&#xD;&#xA;* [Closed questions with the lowest number of votes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?page=54&amp;tab=votes&amp;q=closed%3a1)&#xD;&#xA;* Others? Post 'em!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Questions and comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you guys think? Are there any other parts of the site we should be looking at for some clean-up? Do you have any suggestions or ideas about how to handle this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4427" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1811" RevisionGUID="ed6d7f89-cd30-4c4c-925c-632a7344f96a" CreationDate="2011-06-27T13:04:44.493" UserId="5095" Text="I've got into a few comment conversations in response to answers I've made.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While SE isn't designed for this sort of thing, sometimes that's what needs to happen to get clarity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me the appropriate response is to take the outcome, edit it into the answer and then remove the comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on that I'd very much like to be able to remove comments once I've taken them onboard and answered them in the main answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4428" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1812" RevisionGUID="ab62fd53-a63f-434c-a14e-e1cb609b1498" CreationDate="2011-06-27T14:49:53.373" UserId="4" Text="There is [this question from December 2010][1], with 10 upvotes for removing code golf from being on-topic here. There are also a total of 17 upvotes on posts advocating a separate puzzles/golf sits in [this question, also from 2010][2]. The &quot;code golf&quot; Stack Exchange is officially called [&quot;Programming Puzzles and Code Golf&quot;][3], making it on topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't seen very many puzzle/golf questions here, but I was reading the FAQ and noticed that this still exists. It's probably a hold over from before the other site was opened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/831/should-we-remove-code-golf-questions-from-on-topic-on-faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38/where-do-code-golf-code-challenge-questions-belong&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4429" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1812" RevisionGUID="ab62fd53-a63f-434c-a14e-e1cb609b1498" CreationDate="2011-06-27T14:49:53.373" UserId="4" Text="Can we remove &quot;programming puzzles&quot; from appropriate questions to ask on Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4430" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1812" RevisionGUID="ab62fd53-a63f-434c-a14e-e1cb609b1498" CreationDate="2011-06-27T14:49:53.373" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4431" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1813" RevisionGUID="9795ba0a-711c-48dd-b149-57850c5be4f5" CreationDate="2011-06-27T14:54:38.253" UserId="47" Text="I've removed the line about programming puzzles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately I can't edit section that mentions where questions might be on topic to add Code Golf in there. Though as it's still in beta it might not be allowed anyway." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4432" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1812" RevisionGUID="7e71f344-7f65-422d-b1a5-b7cd3c17eeea" CreationDate="2011-06-27T14:57:59.143" UserId="4" Comment="added 483 characters in body" Text="There is [this question from December 2010][1], with 10 upvotes for removing code golf from being on-topic here. There are also a total of 17 upvotes on posts advocating a separate puzzles/golf sits in [this question, also from 2010][2]. The &quot;code golf&quot; Stack Exchange is officially called [&quot;Programming Puzzles and Code Golf&quot;][3], making it on topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't seen very many puzzle/golf questions here, but I was reading the FAQ and noticed that this still exists. It's probably a hold over from before the other site was opened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This can include topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Software law&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**Programming puzzles**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/831/should-we-remove-code-golf-questions-from-on-topic-on-faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38/where-do-code-golf-code-challenge-questions-belong&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4433" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1812" RevisionGUID="a76ecd6c-b03b-429f-a98d-d8617c3cf86e" CreationDate="2011-06-27T17:37:02.060" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4434" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1814" RevisionGUID="edb0a702-9b63-4b56-a5eb-8c766d2f9535" CreationDate="2011-06-27T18:34:47.633" UserId="29020" Text="My question &quot;Evolution of mainstream programming languages: simplicity versus complexity.&quot; on http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not sure I fully understand why. The explanation I got from the moderator(s) is that &quot;we're looking for practical, solvable problems people are actually facing and need to get help with&quot;. The problem that I was stating was quite clear to me: C++ and Java are becoming very complex and difficult to use (is this not a real problem?), shall I switch to another language? This is a very practical problem for me since I am a developer and C++ and Java are my main languages of expertise. I am considering whether I should invest time learning the new versions of these languages, or move to some other language like Scala.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was hoping to read answers like: stay with Java because my experience is ... or: move to Scala, because my experience is...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have seen questions that are much more vaguely formulated and still have not been closed, such as: &quot;Why do we study Java at university?&quot; Very interesting question and I do not have anything against it. But in what way does this very general and very open question meet the site requirements more than mine? This is not very clear to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, I am not a bit unsure whether I should ask any more questions on this site apart from very concrete, technical ones. So I would be grateful if someone could explain to me what exactly caused my question to be closed and whether I could have formulated it in a different way (consider also what I have explained above) so that it would have been valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks a lot for any useful feedback.&#xD;&#xA;Giorgio" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4435" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1814" RevisionGUID="edb0a702-9b63-4b56-a5eb-8c766d2f9535" CreationDate="2011-06-27T18:34:47.633" UserId="29020" Text="My question has been closed. I would like to understand why so that I can write more appropriate questions in the futute." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4436" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1814" RevisionGUID="edb0a702-9b63-4b56-a5eb-8c766d2f9535" CreationDate="2011-06-27T18:34:47.633" UserId="29020" Text="|support|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4437" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1814" RevisionGUID="c99e463a-dc9a-44ce-ae9f-ff7efcdff3b7" CreationDate="2011-06-27T18:35:41.097" UserId="226" Comment="added 40 characters in body; edited title" Text="My question [&quot;Evolution of mainstream programming languages: simplicity versus complexity.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87155/evolution-of-mainstream-programming-languages-simplicity-versus-complexity) has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not sure I fully understand why. The explanation I got from the moderator(s) is that &quot;we're looking for practical, solvable problems people are actually facing and need to get help with&quot;. The problem that I was stating was quite clear to me: C++ and Java are becoming very complex and difficult to use (is this not a real problem?), shall I switch to another language? This is a very practical problem for me since I am a developer and C++ and Java are my main languages of expertise. I am considering whether I should invest time learning the new versions of these languages, or move to some other language like Scala.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was hoping to read answers like: stay with Java because my experience is ... or: move to Scala, because my experience is...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have seen questions that are much more vaguely formulated and still have not been closed, such as: &quot;Why do we study Java at university?&quot; Very interesting question and I do not have anything against it. But in what way does this very general and very open question meet the site requirements more than mine? This is not very clear to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, I am not a bit unsure whether I should ask any more questions on this site apart from very concrete, technical ones. So I would be grateful if someone could explain to me what exactly caused my question to be closed and whether I could have formulated it in a different way (consider also what I have explained above) so that it would have been valid." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4438" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1814" RevisionGUID="c99e463a-dc9a-44ce-ae9f-ff7efcdff3b7" CreationDate="2011-06-27T18:35:41.097" UserId="226" Comment="added 40 characters in body; edited title" Text="My question has been closed. I would like to understand why and to have it deleted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4439" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1814" RevisionGUID="994ff395-9bca-4839-b79a-052cdb3e774c" CreationDate="2011-06-27T18:37:14.293" UserId="29020" Comment="Corrected wrong sentence." Text="My question [&quot;Evolution of mainstream programming languages: simplicity versus complexity.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87155/evolution-of-mainstream-programming-languages-simplicity-versus-complexity) has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not sure I fully understand why. The explanation I got from the moderator(s) is that &quot;we're looking for practical, solvable problems people are actually facing and need to get help with&quot;. The problem that I was stating was quite clear to me: C++ and Java are becoming very complex and difficult to use (is this not a real problem?), shall I switch to another language? This is a very practical problem for me since I am a developer and C++ and Java are my main languages of expertise. I am considering whether I should invest time learning the new versions of these languages, or move to some other language like Scala.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was hoping to read answers like: stay with Java because my experience is ... or: move to Scala, because my experience is...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have seen questions that are much more vaguely formulated and still have not been closed, such as: &quot;Why do we study Java at university?&quot; Very interesting question and I do not have anything against it. But in what way does this very general and very open question meet the site requirements more than mine? This is not very clear to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, I am a bit unsure whether I should ask any more questions on this site apart from very concrete, technical ones. So I would be grateful if someone could explain to me what exactly caused my question to be closed and whether I could have formulated it in a different way (consider also what I have explained above) so that it would have been valid." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4440" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1814" RevisionGUID="36d909bf-ec68-4424-9906-bb02217ad314" CreationDate="2011-06-27T18:43:25.387" UserId="29020" Comment="Fixed title." Text="My question has been closed. I would like to understand why." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4441" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1814" RevisionGUID="e44be527-6ae1-4208-87a5-20d25dea6d5f" CreationDate="2011-06-27T18:51:05.730" UserId="29020" Comment="Corrected spelling mistake." Text="My question [&quot;Evolution of mainstream programming languages: simplicity versus complexity.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87155/evolution-of-mainstream-programming-languages-simplicity-versus-complexity) has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not sure I fully understand why. The explanation I got from the moderator(s) is that &quot;we're looking for practical, solvable problems people are actually facing and need to get help with&quot;. The problem that I was stating was quite clear to me: C++ and Java are becoming very complex and difficult to use (is this not a real problem?), shall I switch to another language? This is a very practical problem for me since I am a developer and C++ and Java are my main languages of expertise. I am considering whether I should invest time learning the new versions of these languages, or move to some other language like Scala.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was hoping to read answers like: stay with Java because my experience is ... or: move to Scala, because my experience is...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have seen questions that are much more vaguely formulated and still have not been closed, such as: &quot;Why do we study Java at university?&quot; Very interesting question and I do not have anything against it. But in what way does this very general and very open question meet the site requirements more than mine? This is not very clear to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also understand that a question on this site should not end up in a discussion. It should be rather one question with possibly a few answers.&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand I am afraid that a general question will generate some discussion (some back and forth). Should this be avoided altogether? Or is it allowed to a very limited extent?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am a bit unsure whether I try and submit further questions on this site apart from very concrete, technical ones. So I would be grateful if someone could explain to me better what exactly caused my question to be closed and whether I could have formulated it in a different way (consider also what I have explained above) so that it would have been valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you in advance for any useful feedback&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best regards&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Giorgio" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4442" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1814" RevisionGUID="a9ede9b8-0bc7-47e2-a48f-1fe3cd003749" CreationDate="2011-06-27T18:57:51.633" UserId="226" Comment="Removed signature" Text="My question [&quot;Evolution of mainstream programming languages: simplicity versus complexity.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87155/evolution-of-mainstream-programming-languages-simplicity-versus-complexity) has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not sure I fully understand why. The explanation I got from the moderator(s) is that &quot;we're looking for practical, solvable problems people are actually facing and need to get help with&quot;. The problem that I was stating was quite clear to me: C++ and Java are becoming very complex and difficult to use (is this not a real problem?), shall I switch to another language? This is a very practical problem for me since I am a developer and C++ and Java are my main languages of expertise. I am considering whether I should invest time learning the new versions of these languages, or move to some other language like Scala.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was hoping to read answers like: stay with Java because my experience is ... or: move to Scala, because my experience is...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have seen questions that are much more vaguely formulated and still have not been closed, such as: &quot;Why do we study Java at university?&quot; Very interesting question and I do not have anything against it. But in what way does this very general and very open question meet the site requirements more than mine? This is not very clear to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also understand that a question on this site should not end up in a discussion. It should be rather one question with possibly a few answers.&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand I am afraid that a general question will generate some discussion (some back and forth). Should this be avoided altogether? Or is it allowed to a very limited extent?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am a bit unsure whether I try and submit further questions on this site apart from very concrete, technical ones. So I would be grateful if someone could explain to me better what exactly caused my question to be closed and whether I could have formulated it in a different way (consider also what I have explained above) so that it would have been valid." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4444" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1815" RevisionGUID="c2a34cd1-6b06-4d78-8725-5859e2d6d106" CreationDate="2011-06-27T19:07:39.877" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The questions that work on Stack Exchange are ones that have a specific, practical, solvable problem: that is, you ask a question, you get answers that may or may not help you solve the problem. If they don't, you comment and get the answerers to clarify.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, that's not what happened: you've presented a position, asked several questions, and attempted to carry on a conversation with all the answerers in a now deleted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not really what Stack Exchange is about: we're not a discussion board where free-form conversations can take place about a general topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I encourage you to read [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), which talks about this type of problem and is codified in our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.** To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* **there is no actual problem to be solved:** “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.** If your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you distilled all the discussion you were trying to have in all the comments, and all the opinions you might have about a topic, what is the *exact nature* of the problem you're trying to solve? Asking about that likely is going to be a good fit for us. Try to ask yourself, &quot;what does a *correct* answer to this question look like?&quot; If it's hard to imagine it, is the question really a problem that has a solution, or is it just a discussion topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to other questions, feel free to flag questions you don't believe fit these criteria for moderator review. With over 12,000 questions asked, some slip through the cracks of community moderation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4447" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="3ccf1a32-9838-4067-b0a0-3f66977cf685" CreationDate="2011-06-27T19:12:07.237" UserId="666" Comment="deleted 919 characters in body" Text="There are a lot of frustrations all on the front page (Nov 2010, still occuring Jun 2011):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Why is this question closed? It's a good question about a bad idea.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/554/why-is-this-question-closed-its-a-good-question-about-a-bad-idea)&#xD;&#xA; - [I don't think peaple understand Programmers SE.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/485/i-dont-think-people-or-me-understand-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA; - [What's the point of closing a question?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question)&#xD;&#xA; - [How do you delete an account from programmers?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/483/how-do-you-delete-an-account-from-programmers)&#xD;&#xA; - [Why? The high numbers of closed questions are extremely annoying.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/469/why-high-number-of-closed-questions-extremely-annoying)&#xD;&#xA; - [Mods should be stopped from closing reopened stuff automatically the second time.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time)&#xD;&#xA; - [Questions are being closed without community requests.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/396/question-being-closed-without-community-requests-closed)&#xD;&#xA; - [Why should we have to battle to keep questions open?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/339/why-should-we-have-to-battle-to-keep-questions-open-closed)&#xD;&#xA; - [Can the closed questions please be removed from the related section?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/282/can-the-closed-questions-please-be-removed-from-related)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The above questions are a *clear sign*. What could the problem be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too low reputation requirement for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Yes, we are one of the Area 51 sites that got a lot more visitors. And our site allows one to gain reputation more quickly than on other sites, let my account be an example for when you ask a lot of questions and I'm pretty sure that there are top users that just have famous answers in frequently visited questions that are non wiki...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too strong rules on asking questions, or are these rules applied to strong?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions should be constructive, but for some people all rules seem needed.  &#xD;&#xA;   While they stated originally that it's fine that only 3 of the rules apply to your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Users aren't clearly informed about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   If we get these questions on meta, it seems to me that they might have no idea about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **We want to be professional?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   We can be professonal, but if we close content is such way that a lot of people are complaining I think it's a step too far. And it's not just the above, but also comments to meta and closed parent questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; But don't you think that closing on this site has become discouragement, not incentive?  &#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Peter Turner](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question#491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   And another one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Now there is that new generic excuse to close topics: &quot;not constructive&quot;. If you don't like something, you can ban it as &quot;not constructive&quot;. What an improvement!   &#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Lorenzo](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   I have once disagreed with these users in the past, but I now understand their concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Did you know that **25% of the questions are closed** here? Compare that to SO (1%), SU (8%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Now... What do you think**: &#xD;&#xA;How we can improve the community to prevent this?  &#xD;&#xA;Or am I writing non-sense and is the current behavior of the community right?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4450" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1815" RevisionGUID="1e777bf4-0a70-49f5-94f3-58c8e7a2a196" CreationDate="2011-06-27T19:25:34.213" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 924 characters in body" Text="As you mention, the questions that work on Stack Exchange are ones that have a specific, solvable problem: that is, you ask a question, you get answers that may or may not help you solve the problem. If they don't, you comment and get the answerers to clarify.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, that's not what happened: you've presented a position, asked several questions, and attempted to carry on a conversation with all the answerers in a now deleted answer. That's not really what Stack Exchange is about: we're not a discussion board where free-form conversations can take place about a general topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The blog post [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) talks about this type of problem and provides specific guidance that is codified in our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.** To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* **there is no actual problem to be solved:** “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.** If your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you distilled all the discussion you were trying to have in all the comments, and all the opinions you might have about a topic, what is the *exact nature* of the problem you're trying to solve? Asking about that likely is going to be a good fit for us. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to ask yourself, &quot;what does a *correct* answer to this question look like?&quot; If it's hard to imagine it, the question is likely a discussion topic, and should be revised. That is, if you're not getting the answers you want, your first inclination should be to tighten up the question, not to initiate a discussion about your opinions or thoughts about the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To speak to the specific nature of *this* question, you wanting to know what language you should learn, that's *specifically* off-topic here, regardless of how open-ended the question is. For more information about why &quot;What language should I learn?&quot; is off-topic, check out the question, [Why is “what language should I learn” considered off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The simple answer is that the question as stated &quot;which language should I learn next?&quot; is **unanswerable**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only answer anyone should give is **always** &quot;it depends&quot; - which isn't an answer at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ultimately it's not a real problem. The next language you should learn is largely determined by the project you are working on and unless you are in the rare situation of having complete freedom over what you do this will have been chosen by someone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to other questions, feel free to flag questions you don't believe fit these criteria for moderator review. With over 12,000 questions asked, some slip through the cracks of community moderation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4451" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1815" RevisionGUID="ea6ae07e-44a4-4339-b0eb-595641237f29" CreationDate="2011-06-27T19:31:19.470" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 924 characters in body" Text="As you mention, the questions that work on Stack Exchange are ones that have a specific, singular, and solvable problem: that is, you ask a question, you get targeted answers that may or may not help you solve the problem. If they don't, you edit your question to clarify. If the answers are unclear, you ask the answerers to expand on their answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, that's not what happened: you've presented a position, asked several questions, and attempted to carry on a conversation with all the answerers in a now deleted answer complete with your own thoughts and ideas about the subject. That's not really what Stack Exchange is about: we're not a discussion board where free-form conversations can take place about a general topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The blog post [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) talks about this type of problem and provides specific guidance that is codified in our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.** To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* **there is no actual problem to be solved:** “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.** If your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you distilled all the discussion you were trying to have in all the comments, and all the opinions you might have about a topic, what is the *exact nature* of the problem you're trying to solve? Asking about that likely is going to be a good fit for us. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to ask yourself, &quot;what does a *correct* answer to this question look like?&quot; If it's hard to imagine it, the question is likely a discussion topic, and should be revised. That is, if you're not getting the answers you want, your first inclination should be to tighten up the question, not to initiate a discussion about your opinions or thoughts about the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To speak to the specific nature of *this* question, you wanting to know what language you should learn, that's *specifically* off-topic here, regardless of how open-ended the question is. For more information about why &quot;What language should I learn?&quot; is off-topic, check out the question, [Why is “what language should I learn” considered off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The simple answer is that the question as stated &quot;which language should I learn next?&quot; is **unanswerable**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only answer anyone should give is **always** &quot;it depends&quot; - which isn't an answer at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ultimately it's not a real problem. The next language you should learn is largely determined by the project you are working on and unless you are in the rare situation of having complete freedom over what you do this will have been chosen by someone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to other questions, feel free to flag questions you don't believe fit these criteria for moderator review. With over 12,000 questions asked, some slip through the cracks of community moderation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4452" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1815" RevisionGUID="3b0d4b2e-7462-4a7c-b6e3-594606f703e8" CreationDate="2011-06-27T19:38:03.633" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 924 characters in body" Text="As you mention, the questions that work on Stack Exchange are ones that have a specific, singular, and solvable problem: that is, you ask a question, you get targeted answers that may or may not help you solve the problem. If they don't, you edit your question to clarify. If the answers are unclear, you ask the answerers to expand on their answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, that's not what happened: you've presented a position, asked several questions, and attempted to carry on a conversation with all the answerers in a now deleted answer complete with your own thoughts and ideas about the subject. That's not really what Stack Exchange is about: we're not a discussion board where free-form conversations can take place about a general topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The blog post [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) talks about this type of problem and provides specific guidance that is codified in our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.** To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* **there is no actual problem to be solved:** “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.** If your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you distilled all the discussion you were trying to have in all the comments, and all the opinions you might have about a topic, what is the *exact nature* of the problem you're trying to solve? Asking about that likely is going to be a good fit for us. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to ask yourself, &quot;what does a *correct* answer to this question look like?&quot; If it's hard to imagine it, the question is likely a discussion topic, and should be revised. That is, if you're not getting the answers you want, your first inclination should be to tighten up the question, not to initiate a discussion about your opinions or thoughts about the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To speak to the specific nature of *this* question, you wanting to know what language you should switch to, that's off-topic here unless it's particularly specific. That is, you have a specific use-case and you need to know if a specific language would be more appropriate: perhaps something like, &quot;Can I interact with an RDBMS using something other than SQL?&quot; or &quot;How can I develop iOS applications without knowing Objective-C?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more information about why the more general &quot;What language should I use?&quot; is off-topic, check out the question, [Why is “what language should I learn” considered off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The simple answer is that the question as stated &quot;which language should I learn next?&quot; is **unanswerable**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only answer anyone should give is **always** &quot;it depends&quot; - which isn't an answer at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ultimately it's not a real problem. The next language you should learn is largely determined by the project you are working on and unless you are in the rare situation of having complete freedom over what you do this will have been chosen by someone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to other questions, feel free to flag questions you don't believe fit these criteria for moderator review. With over 12,000 questions asked, some slip through the cracks of community moderation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4453" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1816" RevisionGUID="94ed6e00-1655-438a-b0f8-555e5bc8201b" CreationDate="2011-06-27T23:16:11.350" UserId="47" Text="I don't believe that [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87366/are-there-any-valid-reasons-for-disallowing-characters-and-limiting-the-length-of/87367#87367) is of any use on the site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; #No&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are no _good_ reasons,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it. No further explanation or justification of this view. It doesn't add anything to the debate. Yet as of this writing it has a score of 17 consisting of 26 up-votes and 9 down-votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we want this site to be taken seriously we have to act responsibly and show that we know what we're talking about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;NOTE: I'm not singling out any particular user here, nor am I questioning the validity of the actual answer - just that there's no *evidence* to back up the bald assertion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4454" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1816" RevisionGUID="94ed6e00-1655-438a-b0f8-555e5bc8201b" CreationDate="2011-06-27T23:16:11.350" UserId="47" Text="Is this really the sort of answer we want on our site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4455" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1816" RevisionGUID="94ed6e00-1655-438a-b0f8-555e5bc8201b" CreationDate="2011-06-27T23:16:11.350" UserId="47" Text="|discussion|answer-quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4458" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1817" RevisionGUID="40651d3b-950b-42b6-9b76-5e82334d5171" CreationDate="2011-06-27T23:24:16.887" UserId="3249" Text="There's a subtle but pernicious problem with the quoted answer and many like it: *it's impossible to prove a negative.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This kind of answer would never fly on any of the science SE sites because it is incorrect *by definition*.  The best *objective* answer one can give (assuming one agrees with the &quot;no&quot; premise) is to list the reasons that *might* be considered valid and explain why they should be considered invalid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know if we should be trying to &quot;moderate away&quot; these answers, but [as I've pleaded for in the past][1], we desperately need people to start downvoting these fact-free &quot;pithy phrase&quot; answers instead of upvoting them.  I think that having answers on top of the heap that look like they took 5 seconds to poop out (maybe less) really hurt our credibility as a community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange wants to [optimize for pearls, not sand][2].  *Part* of this is emphasizing the value of great answers.  The other part is *de-emphasizing the poor ones*.  This is exactly why we have downvotes.  Has anyone *ever* seen a 1-line answer singled out in a positive light on the SE blog, or on any major blog, or really anywhere other than maybe reddit?  *Some* short answers may genuinely be correct and complete, but *most* of them are... sand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop pressing the other arrow when you see this type of pandering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1400/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4459" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1817" RevisionGUID="2b047e2a-c85d-4a69-97bb-46d9c4cbd941" CreationDate="2011-06-27T23:30:58.323" UserId="3249" Comment="added 165 characters in body" Text="There's a subtle but pernicious problem with the quoted answer and many like it: *it's impossible to prove a negative.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This kind of answer would never fly on any of the science SE sites because it is incorrect *by definition*.  The best *objective* answer one can give (assuming one agrees with the &quot;no&quot; premise) is to list the reasons that *might* be considered valid and explain why they should be considered invalid.  If no such reasons are known, then the correct answer to the question isn't *&quot;no&quot;*, it's actually *&quot;I don't know&quot;*, which clearly isn't worth posting as an answer.  Maybe a comment, if the question goes [tumbleweed][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know if we should be trying to &quot;moderate away&quot; these answers, but [as I've pleaded for in the past][1], we desperately need people to start downvoting these fact-free &quot;pithy phrase&quot; answers instead of upvoting them.  I think that having answers on top of the heap that look like they took 5 seconds to poop out (maybe less) really hurt our credibility as a community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange wants to [optimize for pearls, not sand][2].  *Part* of this is emphasizing the value of great answers.  The other part is *de-emphasizing the poor ones*.  This is exactly why we have downvotes.  Has anyone *ever* seen a 1-line answer singled out in a positive light on the SE blog, or on any major blog, or really anywhere other than maybe reddit?  *Some* short answers may genuinely be correct and complete, but *most* of them are... sand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop pressing the other arrow when you see this type of pandering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1400/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/21/tumbleweed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4461" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1819" RevisionGUID="c5762768-a8a2-4841-8427-c82e471d97e8" CreationDate="2011-06-28T00:32:13.747" UserId="6591" Text="I've been noticing a trend towards more and more answers that folks *want* to be true, even when real-life experience states the opposite. [Example][1], where &quot;run away&quot; is the most common of answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86502/move-on-and-look-elsewhere-or-confront-the-boss" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4462" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1820" RevisionGUID="614cec77-5980-49cd-9abd-fe4006175b75" CreationDate="2011-06-28T00:41:32.293" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I think there's definitely some interest in starting a blog, but what we really need is someone to start shaping the specifics of what the blog will look like. We can say we want a blog and launch one, but we're currently really thin on the details of what a Programmers.SE blog would be about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I'd like to see is some demonstrable value to this endeavor: what would a really great post on this blog look like? How do we prevent being just another blog about programming (or programmers)? How do we determine who's going to write for this? That is, we should be asking ourselves (and providing a cogent answer to):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How does a Programmers.SE blog make the Internet a better place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think perhaps the next step is to come up with a couple of topics for the blog and flesh out actual sample posts about those topics." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4463" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1820" RevisionGUID="ec66a78c-36dc-40f9-8b15-446da2e69022" CreationDate="2011-06-28T00:47:05.490" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 12 characters in body" Text="I think there's definitely some interest in starting a blog, but what we really need is someone to start shaping the specifics of what the blog will look like. We can say we want a blog and launch one, but we're currently really thin on the details of what a Programmers.SE blog would be about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I'd like to see is some demonstrable value to this endeavor: what would a really great post on this blog look like? How do we prevent it from being just another blog about programming (or programmers)? How do we determine who's going to write for this? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, we should be asking ourselves (and providing a cogent answer to):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How does a Programmers.SE blog make the Internet a better place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think perhaps the next step is to come up with a couple of topics for the blog and flesh out actual sample posts about those topics." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4464" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1821" RevisionGUID="2721f72d-692b-4a7c-9102-bc536dee76d2" CreationDate="2011-06-28T02:09:11.003" UserId="906" Text="#No&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is _not_ the sort of answer that we want on the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4465" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1821" RevisionGUID="6216594f-5619-439c-b1f5-8b1c193b6b13" CreationDate="2011-06-28T02:51:41.157" UserId="906" Comment="edited body" Text="#No&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is _not_ the sort of answer that we want on our site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4469" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1816" RevisionGUID="94855ca8-d96b-482b-9567-db293b12562e" CreationDate="2011-06-28T09:12:06.210" UserId="47" Comment="clarification" Text="I don't believe that [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87366/are-there-any-valid-reasons-for-disallowing-characters-and-limiting-the-length-of/87367#87367) is of any use on the site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; #No&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are no _good_ reasons,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it. No further explanation or justification of this view. It doesn't add anything to the debate. Yet as of this writing it has a score of 17 consisting of 26 up-votes and 9 down-votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we as a community want this site to be taken seriously we all have to act responsibly and show that we (that's everyone who contributes to the site) know what we're talking about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;NOTE: I'm not singling out any particular user here, nor am I questioning the validity of the actual answer - just that there's no *evidence* to back up the bald assertion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4470" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1816" RevisionGUID="94855ca8-d96b-482b-9567-db293b12562e" CreationDate="2011-06-28T09:12:06.210" UserId="47" Comment="clarification" Text="Is this really the sort of answer we as a community want on our site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4471" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1822" RevisionGUID="eb9b6b9c-73e5-4efa-b678-a4cb49e31f62" CreationDate="2011-06-28T09:37:49.447" UserId="6617" Text="IMO it really depends on the question. A question that provokes such an answer is probably not a good one. For example, if someone asked &quot;Are there good reasons to assume that Microsoft will abandon Windows in favor of Linux?&quot;, it would be pretty hard to give a much better answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4472" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1823" RevisionGUID="5077a00c-019d-41ce-9fb5-338c02b0256e" CreationDate="2011-06-28T09:42:31.210" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="The community is clear. That answer got more upvotes than downvotes, therefore you have your answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However here is my opinion: I don't think it's good to have short answers unless the short answer covers it all. Which is pretty rare, but unavoidable with the reputation point system in use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since answers here much be backed with references and/or personal experiences, it won't hurt if we **increase the number of minimum characters required**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If we want this site to be taken seriously we have to act responsibly and show that we know what we're talking about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's an interesting point. IMHO, this community should be taken for what it is, no more, no less." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4473" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1823" RevisionGUID="81310c77-ed73-43bf-aec8-44e017747c07" CreationDate="2011-06-28T09:50:41.897" UserDisplayName="user2567" Comment="added 44 characters in body" Text="The community is clear. That answer got more upvotes than downvotes, therefore you have your answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However here is my opinion: I don't think it's good to have short answers unless the short answer covers it all. Which is pretty rare, but unavoidable with the reputation point system in use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since answers must be backed with references and/or personal experiences, it won't hurt if we **increase the number of minimum characters required**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If we want this site to be taken seriously we have to act responsibly and show that we know what we're talking about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's an interesting point. IMHO, this community should be taken for what it is, no more, no less. Which doesn't mean it shouldn't work to improve." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4474" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1824" RevisionGUID="feae1d1d-a433-417c-a3e8-b16565cb0a58" CreationDate="2011-06-28T15:31:40.930" UserId="5095" Text="How about people pitch ideas for posts on Meta and things that get up voted get &quot;commissioned&quot;. You don't have to write the piece to pitch, just a brief synopsis of what you're thinking in bullet point form, people can comment (which may help inform the piece) and say whether they're interested.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that there should be a particular &quot;line&quot; on anything or a set group of contributors, if anything the opposite, it should be a chance to see the breadth of opinion on here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They should just be a chance to people who are accepted as as honest, thoughtful contributors to the site to make a point that others might find interesting on a topic which fits with the board.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think of them as answers to questions that haven't been asked yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if anyone were interested I'd probably be interesting in writing something, or at least trying and seeing how it came out, though I'm not 100% sure where I'll find the time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4475" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1824" RevisionGUID="799c80f0-c062-4965-8056-8c8b7ec8e4f5" CreationDate="2011-06-28T16:27:48.927" UserId="5095" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="How about people pitch ideas for posts on Meta and things that get up voted get &quot;commissioned&quot;. You don't have to write the piece to pitch, just a brief synopsis of what you're thinking in bullet point form, people can comment (which may help inform the piece) and say whether they're interested.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that there should be a particular &quot;line&quot; on anything or a set group of contributors, if anything the opposite, it should be a chance to see the breadth of opinion on here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They should just be a chance to people who are accepted as as honest, thoughtful contributors to the site to make a point that others might find interesting on a topic which fits with the board.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think of them as answers to questions that haven't been asked yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if anyone were interested I'd probably be interested in writing something, or at least trying and seeing how it came out, though I'm not 100% sure where I'll find the time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4481" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1827" RevisionGUID="dd6fc89f-6627-4288-b2b2-de35a020f7b3" CreationDate="2011-06-28T23:01:46.433" UserId="16637" Text="**No, but there's (probably) nothing we can do about it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The (voting) community has grown as a function of time and, unfortunately, the people participating in programmers.SE are more prone to being careless and apathetic. Over time I have been here, the quality of questions and answers has diminished noticeably (and I'm fairly certain it doesn't have anything to me getting bored of this site). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to have your answer up-voted a lot, you write an answer that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - People *want* to hear.&#xD;&#xA; - Use very casual and simple English.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This works because all the people that don't see quality as important will *like* the answer for one stupid reason or another. The quality is continue to drop here and it is a shame. A lot of the smart and experienced users will move on and a lot of them already have." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4483" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1828" RevisionGUID="0a1bf6b3-0ab5-44cb-abd0-a72eea9580be" CreationDate="2011-06-28T23:04:54.250" UserId="37" Text="Shirts are progressing!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/HVmYN.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4484" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1829" RevisionGUID="534f4987-634e-4fbb-90ee-2b640800a76e" CreationDate="2011-06-28T23:25:53.813" UserId="3" Text="One thing I would caution against is getting too mired down in consensus building and (what we call) the Mother Teressa Complex (i.e. everything can be saved). Getting a community to crowd-source this sort of thing has turned out to be exceedingly difficult.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a whole slew of posts that should unquestionably be deleted. Just delete them; outline the criteria and just delete them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're only talking about post that are taking up space and cluttering up this site: closed-as-off-topic posts, chronically down-voted and unanswered posts&amp;hellip; that sort of thing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea of these &quot;Cleanup Days&quot; is to set aside a few days to rid yourself of the worst of the useless clutter. Setting this time aside gives everyone fair notice that this is *not* a normal part of the site operation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@[Joel talked about these posts](http://meta.answers.onstartups.com/questions/526/onstartups-clean-up-getting-started/537#537) on Answer.OnStartups&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&amp;hellip;this site has an unusual number of really old questions that never got an answer. If a question has been languishing for 6 months without a single answer, I'd say just delete it mercilessly. If it's important, someone will ask again....&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Someone can ask it again&quot; is an important consideration. These posts currently have *no useful* content. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Start with Joel's suggested &quot;forgotten posts&quot; that have been either abandoned, no longer relevant, or &quot;nobody cares.&quot; That will get you 90% of the way there &amp;mdash; *Then* you can circle around and rally everyone around more general question-improvement activities.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4485" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1829" RevisionGUID="7f4e375d-1318-407d-b8c9-9c23ac1b2f06" CreationDate="2011-06-28T23:43:04.187" UserId="3" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="One thing I would caution against is getting too mired down in consensus building and (what we call) the Mother Teressa Complex (i.e. everything can be saved). Getting a community to crowd-source this sort of thing has turned out to be exceedingly difficult.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a whole slew of posts that should unquestionably be deleted. Just delete them; outline the criteria and just delete them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're only talking about posts which are taking up space and cluttering up this site: closed-as-off-topic posts, chronically down-voted and unanswered posts&amp;hellip; that sort of thing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea of these &quot;Cleanup Days&quot; is to set aside a few days to rid yourself of the worst of the useless clutter. Setting this time aside gives everyone fair notice that this is *not* a normal part of the site operation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@[Joel talked about these posts](http://meta.answers.onstartups.com/questions/526/onstartups-clean-up-getting-started/537#537) on Answer.OnStartups&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&amp;hellip;this site has an unusual number of really old questions that never got an answer. If a question has been languishing for 6 months without a single answer, I'd say just delete it mercilessly. If it's important, someone will ask again....&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Someone can ask it again&quot; is an important consideration. These posts currently have *no useful* content. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Start with Joel's suggested &quot;forgotten posts&quot; that have been either abandoned, no longer relevant, or &quot;nobody cares.&quot; That will get you 90% of the way there &amp;mdash; *Then* you can circle around and rally everyone around more general question-improvement activities.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4486" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1806" RevisionGUID="f3555bcf-7b18-442a-967c-5d1321038117" CreationDate="2011-06-29T01:23:32.630" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 167 characters in body" Text="So it's summer-time, and while you may be thinking that means warm temperatures and blue skies (sorry, Southern Hemisphere!), the Stack Exchange network has caught the clean-up bug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our sister sites like [OnStartups](http://meta.answers.onstartups.com/questions/526/onstartups-clean-up-getting-started) and [Ask Ubuntu](http://meta.askubuntu.com/questions/1220/clean-up-week-event-planning) have proposed cleaning up old questions to spruce up the place, and we thought it'd be a good idea to explore here on Programmers.SE, as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange has an automatic deletion system in place (see [Jeff's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning/1807#1807) for the details), but we've still amassed 2,690 (and counting) closed questions so far. The idea would be to sweep up the hundreds of questions collecting dust because they weren't great fits for our site and were closed or abandoned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It'd also be a way to get everyone involved in moderating the site, and we moderators would rely heavily on you guys to go through and take a look at what needs to go or what needs to be reviewed. Plus, it's a chance for more flag weight increases than you can possibly imagine!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Criteria for deletion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our thinking right now is to follow the leads of our sister sites and delete questions that have one or more of the following criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Have a vote total of -2 or less *(Edit: mostly complete)*&#xD;&#xA;* Have a very low view count&#xD;&#xA;* Have no answers, or no upvoted answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the additional criterion that the question must've been closed, ideally for a decent amount of time to allow the original poster to revise the question and try to get it reopened (let's say, a month).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Getting involved&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is where you guys come in. If you see a question that's worth saving but exhibits the qualities above, **fight for it.** If a question is sitting around that really doesn't belong here, **tell us.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does that mean? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Identifying questions that could be improved.** Some questions were closed because they were bad fits for the *as written*, but nevertheless had some really great answers. If you think you can get the question into a state that'd make it a fit for our site without invalidating the answers, edit the question or suggest an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Voting on questions.** If you have the ability to vote for deletion or re-open, use your powers for good. If you see a question that's wrongfully closed, vote to re-open it. If you see a question that should be deleted, vote to delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Flagging questions that need moderator's attention.** If you find a closed question that needs one of us to take a look at it, flag it and let us know what your concern is. If you don't have the ability to vote to re-open or delete but feel strongly about it, let us know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Finding candidate questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE search has a few operators to help locate candidate questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [All questions that are closed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1)&#xD;&#xA;* [Closed questions with -2 score or less](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1530/closed-questions-with-2-score-or-less)&#xD;&#xA;* [Closed questions with less than 100 views and more than -2 score](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1531/closed-questions-with-less-than-100-views-and-greater-than-2-score)&#xD;&#xA;* Others? Post 'em!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Questions and comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you guys think? Are there any other parts of the site we should be looking at for some clean-up? Do you have any suggestions or ideas about how to handle this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4487" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1806" RevisionGUID="3d57ed84-1fa3-4bf1-9554-55abe26fd70b" CreationDate="2011-06-29T01:30:39.430" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 362 characters in body" Text="So it's summer-time, and while you may be thinking that means warm temperatures and blue skies (sorry, Southern Hemisphere!), the Stack Exchange network has caught the clean-up bug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our sister sites like [OnStartups](http://meta.answers.onstartups.com/questions/526/onstartups-clean-up-getting-started) and [Ask Ubuntu](http://meta.askubuntu.com/questions/1220/clean-up-week-event-planning) have proposed cleaning up old questions to spruce up the place, and we thought it'd be a good idea to explore here on Programmers.SE, as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange has an automatic deletion system in place (see [Jeff's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning/1807#1807) for the details), but we've still amassed 2,690 (and counting) closed questions so far. The idea would be to sweep up the hundreds of questions collecting dust because they weren't great fits for our site and were closed or abandoned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It'd also be a way to get everyone involved in moderating the site, and we moderators would rely heavily on you guys to go through and take a look at what needs to go or what needs to be reviewed. Plus, it's a chance for more flag weight increases than you can possibly imagine!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Criteria for deletion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our thinking right now is to follow the leads of our sister sites and delete questions that have one or more of the following criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Have a vote total of -2 or less *(Edit: mostly complete)*&#xD;&#xA;* Have a very low view count&#xD;&#xA;* Have no answers, or no upvoted answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the additional criterion that the question must've been closed, ideally for a decent amount of time to allow the original poster to revise the question and try to get it reopened (let's say, a month).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, based on Joel Spolsky and Robert Cartaino's suggestions, any questions with have not been answered and haven't had any activity in several months (i.e. the &quot;forgotten&quot; questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Getting involved&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is where you guys come in. If you see a question that's worth saving but exhibits the qualities above, **fight for it.** If a question is sitting around that really doesn't belong here, **tell us.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does that mean? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Identifying questions that could be improved.** Some questions were closed because they were bad fits for the *as written*, but nevertheless had some really great answers. If you think you can get the question into a state that'd make it a fit for our site without invalidating the answers, edit the question or suggest an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Voting on questions.** If you have the ability to vote for deletion or re-open, use your powers for good. If you see a question that's wrongfully closed, vote to re-open it. If you see a question that should be deleted, vote to delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Flagging questions that need moderator's attention.** If you find a closed question that needs one of us to take a look at it, flag it and let us know what your concern is. If you don't have the ability to vote to re-open or delete but feel strongly about it, let us know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Finding candidate questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE search has a few operators to help locate candidate questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [All questions that are closed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1)&#xD;&#xA;* [Closed questions with -2 score or less](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1530/closed-questions-with-2-score-or-less)&#xD;&#xA;* [Closed questions with less than 100 views and more than -2 score](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1531/closed-questions-with-less-than-100-views-and-greater-than-2-score)&#xD;&#xA;* [Questions with no activity and no answers for 6 months](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1532/questions-with-no-answers-and-no-activity-for-6-months)&#xD;&#xA;* Others? Post 'em!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Questions and comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you guys think? Are there any other parts of the site we should be looking at for some clean-up? Do you have any suggestions or ideas about how to handle this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4489" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1831" RevisionGUID="0bf06764-8dee-4353-a844-8d09d54f45b9" CreationDate="2011-06-29T06:08:53.373" UserId="28374" Text="&gt; But there is a difference between feeling the same way as someone and upvoting their answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there? There is exactly one mechanism for giving approval to an answer: voting it up. When all you have is a single number, then the *meaning* behind that number will be different for different people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some people want upvoting to mean, &quot;I think you really answered the question well.&quot; Others want upvoting to mean, &quot;I liked that answer.&quot; Others upvote to mean, &quot;I agree.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if you state what the standards ought to be, each person will decide for themselves how and whether to follow those standards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that this is a problem. But I don't agree it's a solvable one. Not without adding a more robust communication mechanism." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4491" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1832" RevisionGUID="1ba2e464-0ab8-4221-b794-2077246c6ce2" CreationDate="2011-06-29T06:26:05.200" UserId="28374" Text="&gt; I don't believe that this answer is of any use on the site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree. What you're talking about are pat answers. They're short, direct, to-the-point, usually quite correct. But *incomplete*. They impart knowledge (do X, don't do Y, etc), but they don't provide *wisdom* (why should I do X, why shouldn't I do Y).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some people need pat answers. Some people aren't ready to know the truth. Some people aren't ready to know everything about everything. A simple shove down the proper path, feeding on the accumulated knowledge of others, is sufficient to their needs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take this as an example. I know nothing about password security; I do entirely different kinds of programming. Seeing this question answered with a header-sized NO, coupled with lots of upvoting, is enough to tell me that it's probably not a good idea. I don't need a 30 paragraph dissertation that ritualistically vivisects every argument for restricting passwords. I just need to know if I should.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, that doesn't mean I think the dissertation shouldn't exist. But the fact is that some people don't need or want it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That being said, the answer itself isn't the problem, is it? If it were a bad answer, it would be downvoted and that would be that. The problem is that the voting system is *promoting* the pat answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that this comes from one simple fact: what does it mean to upvote something?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of forums, YouTube, etc, have voting systems for comments. Thumbs up for &quot;liked it!&quot;, thumbs down for &quot;hated it!&quot;. Democracy only works when everyone is saying the same thing with a vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guarantee you that most of those who voted for it were thinking, &quot;Yes, he's right.&quot; They weren't taking a considered and reasoned stand on how useful his answer was in a broad sense. They saw the answer, agreed with it, maybe chucked at the bluntness of it, and voted it up. Because they liked it and it was correct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's how voting works. Not everyone thinks that their vote means &quot;this was a reply that will be a font of thoughtful and insightful knowledge for any passersby.&quot; They simply thought, &quot;he's right, and that's funny.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So until you can find a way to make everyone use their vote to mean &quot;thoughtful and considered&quot; rather than &quot;correct and liked it,&quot; then this will continue to happen." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4493" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1833" RevisionGUID="f974fccd-64fe-4c65-acca-774777cbd8c6" CreationDate="2011-06-29T10:38:43.627" UserId="12354" Text="Personally I think the general attitude in the community is a bit too strict. Focus should be on providing good answers and fostering the community, not having inane discussions on whether borderline questions should be closed or not. The &quot;policy-nazis&quot; are just off-putting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd rather have some slightly off-topic but interesting questions than a bunch of &quot;mad-with-power-and-itching-to-use-it-grumpy-geeks&quot; closing questions to the left and right. Questions that are obviously &quot;bad&quot; should of course be closed but questionable ones should be left IMO, use that energy to answer the question instead :)  Perhaps closing questions should require a bit more rep so it's (hopefully) used a bit more sparringly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4494" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="1833" RevisionGUID="bb183b2e-df6f-47a2-a4a4-bcee8f15108d" CreationDate="2011-06-29T10:38:43.627" UserId="12354" />
  <row Id="4495" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1834" RevisionGUID="f8d2f260-0658-44d8-98d0-162cb3f1eaa5" CreationDate="2011-06-29T18:51:57.420" UserId="1444" Text="I want to post the following question but I'm worried it will be closed as off topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Title: Great software development pictures&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This][1] design company I know absolutely nothing about has on their website a beautiful picture of people actively engaged in the design process. I'm interested in collecting similar pictures which relate to the software development process. What great pictures of the software development process have you seen?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, FogCreek has this nice picture on their site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.designandco.net/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/QJrJ9.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4496" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1834" RevisionGUID="f8d2f260-0658-44d8-98d0-162cb3f1eaa5" CreationDate="2011-06-29T18:51:57.420" UserId="1444" Text="Would it be off topic to make a question thread about pictures of the software development process?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4497" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1834" RevisionGUID="f8d2f260-0658-44d8-98d0-162cb3f1eaa5" CreationDate="2011-06-29T18:51:57.420" UserId="1444" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4498" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1834" RevisionGUID="dccbe83a-7d0b-4ae9-9de3-961714cf739b" CreationDate="2011-06-29T18:57:02.020" UserId="1444" Comment="added 23 characters in body" Text="I want to post the following question but I'm worried it will be closed as off topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Title: Great software development pictures&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This][1] design company I know absolutely nothing about has on their website a beautiful picture of people actively engaged in the design process. I'm interested in collecting similar pictures which relate to the software development process and software development places. What great pictures related to software development have you seen?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, FogCreek has this picture on their site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What if I changed the question to relate only to software development places - pictures of where software development happens?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.designandco.net/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/QJrJ9.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4499" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1835" RevisionGUID="7658c5a0-3ea8-4db9-90ae-dd117683f45f" CreationDate="2011-06-29T19:35:27.943" UserId="226" Text="No, that would not be on-topic. Or, more precisely, it would not be constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For one, it's a question where every answer is equally valid. For another, it's kind of a &quot;getting to know you&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both of those are explicitly discouraged in the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4505" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1006" RevisionGUID="b632f977-3024-410b-8321-115355c55f9a" CreationDate="2011-06-29T21:35:06.240" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|vote-to-close|etiquette|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4506" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1838" RevisionGUID="626d56e3-9cb4-47ca-8f57-6a6fd5d7c765" CreationDate="2011-06-30T11:25:49.083" UserId="29074" Text="As many, I had a question migrated from SO to PE. I actually liked the fact it was migrated, as I initially also had the gut feeling it was more appropriate on PE than SO, but I couldn't find anything backing up this feeling in either PE or SO FAQ backing up my feeling. On the contrary, I could find indication that the question was a better fit for SO on their FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  if your question generally covers matters that are unique to the programming profession then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I [asked][1] clarifications on why the question was migrated a user came up with a dead easy explanation that I am proposing to include in both SO and PE FAQ's:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If it's a question about *programming* belongs on StackOverflow&#xD;&#xA; - If it's a question about *programmers* belongs on Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/96845/why-was-my-question-migrated" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4507" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1838" RevisionGUID="626d56e3-9cb4-47ca-8f57-6a6fd5d7c765" CreationDate="2011-06-30T11:25:49.083" UserId="29074" Text="Proposal for inserting a &quot;SO xor PE&quot; sentence in the FAQ." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4508" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1838" RevisionGUID="626d56e3-9cb4-47ca-8f57-6a6fd5d7c765" CreationDate="2011-06-30T11:25:49.083" UserId="29074" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4509" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1838" RevisionGUID="e17bf4dc-e450-4eea-beb9-c965a2c307e0" CreationDate="2011-06-30T11:35:05.927" UserId="29074" Comment="repeated sentence" Text="As many, I had a question migrated from SO to PE. I actually liked the fact it was migrated, as I initially also had the gut feeling it was more appropriate on PE than SO, but I couldn't find anything backing up this feeling in either PE or SO FAQ. On the contrary, I could find indication that the question was a better fit for SO on their FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  if your question generally covers matters that are unique to the programming profession then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I [asked][1] clarifications on why the question was migrated a user came up with a dead easy explanation that I am proposing to include in both SO and PE FAQ's:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If it's a question about *programming* belongs on StackOverflow&#xD;&#xA; - If it's a question about *programmers* belongs on Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/96845/why-was-my-question-migrated" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4510" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1839" RevisionGUID="ad98d358-058b-45e1-ba5b-265de2e83dec" CreationDate="2011-06-30T12:47:39.403" UserId="5095" Text="I don't think that definition is right though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are plenty of questions about the act of programming which are subjective and which are therefore in the remit of PSE rather than SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with the idea of having a clear distinction in the FAQ, just tricky to come up with one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4511" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1840" RevisionGUID="ce50261f-75b9-4cf2-9905-562f555fbbfc" CreationDate="2011-06-30T13:23:59.870" UserId="226" Text="Like Jon, I don't think that's a correct definition. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do not *only* allow questions about *programmers*. Algorithm design and application licensing, for example, are both on topic without being about people and at least algorithm design is definitely about *programming*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I agree that there we need to better communicate the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow. I'm personally partial to Jeff's own statement from [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In a nutshell, Stack Overflow is for when you're front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you're in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe our tag line could use an update to something along those lines as well. Currently it is &quot;Q&amp;A for programmers interested in professional discussions on software development&quot;, which is bad both for being extremely vague and including the word &quot;discussions&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should put more emphasis on conceptual *programming* questions or else we will be forever seeing millions of variations on &quot;what's the best language for me&quot; and &quot;should I take this job&quot;. Not saying that those aren't real problems for people, but they're not questions that either fit very well in the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A model or require the software development expertise and talent that we're trying to draw in and build in the community here on Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4514" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1842" RevisionGUID="8f82ed5b-d66e-40a0-b5b0-e9f078498911" CreationDate="2011-06-30T19:52:38.600" UserId="28029" Text="It seems to me that P.SE is full of people that cares more for looking smart than for helping others out, at the same time with good questions / answers / votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, quality goes hand in hand with restrictions. I say unfortunately because restrictions are unpopular, but very needed some times.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As it is now, except for some guidelines that moderators use at their discretion (rightfully), there is nothing stopping low quality questions / answers / votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose the voting system was put in place to help improve quality. What is really difficult for me to understand is &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How are we supposed to get value from free currency?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We all know that inflation is bad, but the current voting system is based on hyperinflation, because when A upvotes B, A loses nothing and B earns 10 !! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That means that the voting system is more like a LIKE than a BUY system. I like whatever, but I only buy something, for a reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Maybe voting up / down should cost to A the same amount of reputation B gets / loses. &#xD;&#xA; - Maybe questions / answers should initially cost authors some reputation. (while allowing them to earn some with votes along time)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a BUY system like this, votes up/down would be like gifts, and questions/answers like bets.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4515" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1842" RevisionGUID="8f82ed5b-d66e-40a0-b5b0-e9f078498911" CreationDate="2011-06-30T19:52:38.600" UserId="28029" Text="Should the voting system be changed from LIKE to BUY?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4516" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1842" RevisionGUID="8f82ed5b-d66e-40a0-b5b0-e9f078498911" CreationDate="2011-06-30T19:52:38.600" UserId="28029" Text="|discussion|voting|quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4517" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1843" RevisionGUID="0473c764-03a3-4dc9-b53d-7e2be1d5f6f5" CreationDate="2011-06-30T20:00:20.153" UserId="1069" Text="I do not think that this will produce the outcome of better questions and answers, only fewer votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is because you only buy things you like or need. The people you perceive as up-voting incorrectly will up-vote less but that won't make them up-vote differently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a result Programmers will become a ghost town due to a perceived lack of appreciation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4518" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1843" RevisionGUID="9108256d-374c-4ba9-879c-d21f6df53f3e" CreationDate="2011-06-30T20:16:56.090" UserId="1069" Comment="Extra info on voting practice" Text="I do not think that this will produce the outcome of better questions and answers, only fewer votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is because you only buy things you like or need. The people you perceive as up-voting incorrectly will up-vote less but that won't make them up-vote differently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a result Programmers will become a ghost town due to a perceived lack of appreciation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To further demonstrate my point: look at how people vote now in the up/down metric. Most people cast far far more up votes than down votes, because down voting costs, not because all the content is good quality.&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4519" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1843" RevisionGUID="170d162b-bcae-4604-ab10-f7ac180dde80" CreationDate="2011-06-30T20:43:58.683" UserId="1069" Comment="Added point about witcoin" Text="I do not think that this will produce the outcome of better questions and answers, only fewer votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is because you only buy things you like or need. The people you perceive as up-voting incorrectly will up-vote less but that won't make them up-vote differently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a result Programmers will become a ghost town due to a perceived lack of appreciation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To further demonstrate my point: look at how people vote now in the up/down metric. Most people cast far far more up votes than down votes, because down voting costs, not because all the content is good quality.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;One further thing I'd like to add: your idea is not without precedence. The website [witcoin](http://witcoin.com/) implements this idea with real currency. However this is a forum, rather than a Q&amp;A site, so the dynamic is different. I cannot comment on how successful it is, as I haven't used the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4526" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1846" RevisionGUID="c99a4722-9984-4323-908f-da17d1552ec2" CreationDate="2011-07-01T06:12:00.770" UserId="21687" Text="I was going to ask the following question: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Are there any benefits of gaming laptops to the non gamer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After seeing the list of &quot;questions with similar titles&quot;, I saw that a question asking: &quot;best laptop for programming&quot; was closed as off topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although a shopping recommendation question in reality, I am not looking for discussions/opinions but some specific thing that might be too extraneous for non gamers, or if it might be better, as experienced programmers might be able to tell.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am wondering if this question can be phrased in a way that is acceptable. (I am trying to make a choice between Macbook Pro and Alienware M14x. I need a unix based system for my work,  so if I go for Alienware, I might have to install ubuntu.) I was reading the FAQ, and although I may make my question specific enough, the headline defeats me &quot;... is for expert programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development.&quot; And this question will probably be offtopic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is no place for such questions on any SE site, then pointers to other places where **reliable** answers to these questions can be received will also be appreciated. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4527" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1846" RevisionGUID="c99a4722-9984-4323-908f-da17d1552ec2" CreationDate="2011-07-01T06:12:00.770" UserId="21687" Text="Can I ask for hardware recommendations" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4528" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1846" RevisionGUID="c99a4722-9984-4323-908f-da17d1552ec2" CreationDate="2011-07-01T06:12:00.770" UserId="21687" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4529" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1847" RevisionGUID="746589f9-bffa-4ea7-9d3f-e6b8dd8f9d11" CreationDate="2011-07-01T06:53:04.300" UserId="16637" Text="I think this question has the potential to be phrased well and perfectly suited for Programmers, but this is what I'd like to see before it is posted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. **State the computer specifications** - While it's a fair assumption that people know what a MacBook it is, we're not going to read the Apple website just because you didn't want to. Stating the specifications in question will make this applicable in the future.&#xD;&#xA; 2. **What *kind* of programming are you doing?** - As an extension from stating the specifications you're after, we need to know how you will be using your computer. Are you running lots of simulations performing a multiple of memory accesses? We would be looking at the cache sizes here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you address these two points, I believe this would be a [good subjective question][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4530" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1848" RevisionGUID="ff31b75e-b93f-4457-b344-da2ba4223506" CreationDate="2011-07-01T07:18:30.637" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="As you noted, shopping recommendations are off-topic here: they just don't impart any real knowledge, and usually only help the original poster. The blog post, [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) goes into this in pretty good detail:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But consider the voluminous amount of information you need to even begin properly answering a shopping question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * What is your budget?&#xD;&#xA;* Where do you live?&#xD;&#xA;* What are your preferences?&#xD;&#xA;* Which alternatives will you consider?&#xD;&#xA;* When do you want to buy?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Let’s say the question asker provided all that information. Fat chance, I know, but let’s pretend for a moment they did — and we were able to provide the perfect, ideal shopping recommendation to them. Even if that was the case, technology moves so rapidly that the best shopping recommendations will be utterly obsolete within a year! What’s the point of a bunch of labor intensive questions that provide only temporary benefit to a limited (some might say Too Localized) audience? There isn’t any.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of trying to ask for a hardware recommendation, think about the core problem you're trying to solve. To quote the famous axiom:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Create a question that teaches someone how to fish; that is: **ask how to determine what computer to buy.** *That* is a question that would fit SE's general guidelines for questions, and would impart real knowledge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*However*, there's another catch to ask a question on Programmers.SE: it needs to be specially served by programmers answering it. That is, *only* a programmer could provide the best answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So general questions about how to select hardware aren't on topic here: for that, you may want to try our sister-site [Super User](http://superuser.com) instead. If you do believe your question can only be answered correctly by other programmers, make sure your question explains why." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4531" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1848" RevisionGUID="ce7e578e-e0ff-4a4d-8109-97211f3e1c6d" CreationDate="2011-07-01T07:25:09.863" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 103 characters in body" Text="As you noted, shopping recommendations are off-topic here (and across the Stack Exchange network): they just don't impart any real knowledge, and usually only help the original poster. The blog post, [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) goes into this in pretty good detail:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But consider the voluminous amount of information you need to even begin properly answering a shopping question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * What is your budget?&#xD;&#xA;* Where do you live?&#xD;&#xA;* What are your preferences?&#xD;&#xA;* Which alternatives will you consider?&#xD;&#xA;* When do you want to buy?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Let’s say the question asker provided all that information. Fat chance, I know, but let’s pretend for a moment they did — and we were able to provide the perfect, ideal shopping recommendation to them. Even if that was the case, technology moves so rapidly that the best shopping recommendations will be utterly obsolete within a year! What’s the point of a bunch of labor intensive questions that provide only temporary benefit to a limited (some might say Too Localized) audience? There isn’t any.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of trying to ask for a hardware recommendation, think about the core problem you're trying to solve. To quote the famous axiom:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Create a question that teaches someone how to fish; that is: **ask how to determine what computer to buy.** What things should one look for in a computer for programming? *That* is a question that would fit SE's general guidelines for questions, and would impart real knowledge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*However*, there's another catch to ask a question on Programmers.SE: it needs to be specially served by programmers answering it. That is, *only* a programmer could provide the best answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So general questions about how to select hardware aren't on topic here: for that, you may want to try our sister-site [Super User](http://superuser.com) instead. If you do believe your question can only be answered correctly by other programmers, make sure your question explains why." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4532" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1846" RevisionGUID="b5ebb2db-d69e-49ad-b745-7aeeeddc888c" CreationDate="2011-07-01T07:25:37.273" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|recommendations|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4533" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1849" RevisionGUID="2206e5f1-0079-4dda-beae-21e840fc2eeb" CreationDate="2011-07-01T07:49:49.487" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="As a corollary to this, many might not be aware down-voting on questions is now free. There's never been a better time to liberally use your votes to [optimize the site for pearls, not sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4537" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1851" RevisionGUID="a6a147c3-2083-4379-876f-36dda5812d83" CreationDate="2011-07-01T10:21:27.583" UserId="13584" Text="I answered a question within the last week. It got a couple of upvotes, however, I can no longer find the question that was asked. I did a search through my reputation and I don't see the question there. I also did a search through my recent activity and I don't see the question there either. Is there a way to see if the question was migrated to another site or if it was deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4538" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1851" RevisionGUID="a6a147c3-2083-4379-876f-36dda5812d83" CreationDate="2011-07-01T10:21:27.583" UserId="13584" Text="Question I answered &quot;disappeared&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4539" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1851" RevisionGUID="a6a147c3-2083-4379-876f-36dda5812d83" CreationDate="2011-07-01T10:21:27.583" UserId="13584" Text="|bug|migration|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4540" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1852" RevisionGUID="2faf9557-3ecb-4d62-abdf-fb727169a97f" CreationDate="2011-07-01T10:26:48.667" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The question you answered was migrated to [IT Security.SE](http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/4844/how-can-you-become-a-competent-web-application-security-expert-without-breaking-t). There, you'll find your answer: if you log in on IT Security.SE, you should automatically reclaim ownership of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question gets migrated, all answers are deleted and reposted on the destination site. As a normal user, deleted questions and answers don't appear in searches or on your profile." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4541" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1851" RevisionGUID="1d0b9a8f-9608-4e1b-b8ba-d320ca9c0b4b" CreationDate="2011-07-01T10:27:07.577" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|migration|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4542" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1853" RevisionGUID="f5ecb78a-c071-4849-a203-1f6d9ecf11f8" CreationDate="2011-07-01T10:38:04.970" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This was marked [meta-tag:status-bydesign] on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/14614/149432). Anton Geraschenko probably phrased why this is best:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The point of keeping closed questions around (rather than deleting them) is that they might still be relevant. For example, if a question is closed as a duplicate, it might still have phrased the question in a completely different way, and that different phrasing might be very useful to someone. In particular, looking at a related closed question might be just the thing you need to realize that the question you're looking at solves your problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To his point, we regularly use the related column to find duplicates that may be of use to a question asker, even if they happen to be closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4543" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="282" RevisionGUID="6120bb54-df45-4736-b186-34b8ab542b46" CreationDate="2011-07-01T10:38:27.903" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|closed-questions|list-questions|removal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4544" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1854" RevisionGUID="d853e5fc-725e-4263-aa0e-3f8b5db1eadb" CreationDate="2011-07-01T10:41:21.880" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="There is a community auto-flag that trips when a user has consecutive closed questions, alerting moderators to the problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's an issue that you feel hasn't been addressed or needs immediate attention, feel free to flag one of the user's questions with your concerns and it'll be looked into." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4546" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1311" RevisionGUID="4b5a7936-6cbf-4213-9f22-d0bc3d03de1e" CreationDate="2011-07-01T10:42:08.557" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4547" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1211" RevisionGUID="b6d778f5-3b3c-4163-b67a-715cc333c83d" CreationDate="2011-07-01T10:42:47.323" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4548" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1855" RevisionGUID="64c9dfa7-dc43-4057-b7ed-98db1bd3d027" CreationDate="2011-07-01T14:58:41.623" UserId="3249" Text="I'd suggest starting your search in [tag:programming-languages].  I *accidentally* happened upon that tag page while searching for a duplicate, and... wow.  Most of the questions there seem to have no redeeming value, and several are still open!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Almost every question in the list is some variant of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * What's the best language?&#xD;&#xA;  * What's the worst language?&#xD;&#xA;  * What's the best language feature?&#xD;&#xA;  * What's the worst language feature?&#xD;&#xA;  * What *will* be the best/worst language/feature?&#xD;&#xA;  * I love/hate X, do you love/hate X?&#xD;&#xA;  * Let's make a list of languages fitting $hopelessly_generic_criteria!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd almost go so far as to say that [tag:programming-languages] is effectively a placeholder tag for questions that need community and/or moderator attention.  The ratio of on-topic/constructive to absolute crap is shockingly low.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm going to start voting to close the blatant polls that are still open; I'd suggest quick and ruthless deletion of the ones that already *are* closed, and I hope that a few 3k+ community members will chip in and cast their own close votes where appropriate so the moderators don't have to do all the dirty work." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4549" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1211" RevisionGUID="43c9813c-c6f2-4f16-94c5-67f1f4b6d66d" CreationDate="2011-07-01T15:26:51.490" UserId="5095" Comment="added 324 characters in body" Text="A significant proportion of questions being transferred here from SO are being closed pretty rapidly upon arrival.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be possible to have them transfer to a holding area where they can be reviewed (by mods or suitably rep-ed up users - appearing in the tools area) prior to appearing on the site?  I'd suggest a threshold of two (or more) users have to accept the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's accepted then it appears as normal, if not then it gets returned to SO closed with a comment explaining what's happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: Can I just highlight in light of: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88846/what-are-you-doing-with-cables-under-workrtable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a question which should obviously be shut rather than migrated anywhere. If SO can't give it more thought then this then the migration functionality should be disabled." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4550" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1856" RevisionGUID="2f99fae3-60e0-454b-888a-ef43594a7fdd" CreationDate="2011-07-01T16:55:52.013" UserDisplayName="user8660" Text="Not sure if this is the best place to post this, but I've always wondered why the programmers.SO, or SO for that matter, does not have the option to save a question as a draft for later posting; similar to how most email clients work (Gmail, Yahoo etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a good idea?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4551" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1856" RevisionGUID="2f99fae3-60e0-454b-888a-ef43594a7fdd" CreationDate="2011-07-01T16:55:52.013" UserDisplayName="user8660" Text="Possibility of saving questions for later posting" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4552" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1856" RevisionGUID="2f99fae3-60e0-454b-888a-ef43594a7fdd" CreationDate="2011-07-01T16:55:52.013" UserDisplayName="user8660" Text="|feature-request|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4553" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1857" RevisionGUID="b07bfd16-cde5-469e-b811-766f41ba6765" CreationDate="2011-07-01T17:01:55.630" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="It's already there and it's 100% automatic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See the following screen:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your draft is automatically saved after 45 seconds.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/gceJ9.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4554" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1858" RevisionGUID="67d2bb12-386d-4bcb-8816-5df50eb2163e" CreationDate="2011-07-01T18:01:08.127" UserId="6420" Text="By making it a zero-sum game, your system provides no way to pump rep into the system. If no one has any rep to spend, then no one has a way to earn rep. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if you provided a rep pump,  your system removes the ability to grant privileges to the highly-active contributors. The best contributors would never accumulate very much rep, because they would be spending most of their rep voting up good answers and some creating questions and answers. The ideal contributor would be running a very low balance. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather than tie it directly to rep, perhaps you could propose a system in which there is still some finite budget for voting. Keeping it distinct from rep allows rep to continue functioning the way it does now, and the &quot;vote budget&quot; could be pumped in daily at a rate that is based on reputation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Still, even if you proposed something like that, I would think its a very bad idea. Anything that discourages voting will discourage answering, and discouraging answering discourages questioning and after awhile the site is dead." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4555" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1856" RevisionGUID="113f41f7-7dbc-40be-a1ff-8d65918c9f5e" CreationDate="2011-07-01T19:30:07.093" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4556" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1842" RevisionGUID="356abacf-5e99-496c-b028-44e0afea0094" CreationDate="2011-07-01T20:23:03.193" UserId="28029" Comment="clarity" Text="It seems to me that P.SE is full of people that cares more for looking smart than for helping others out, at the same time with good questions / answers / votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, quality goes hand in hand with restrictions. I say unfortunately because restrictions are unpopular, but very needed some times.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As it is now, except for some guidelines that moderators use at their discretion (rightfully), there is nothing stopping low quality questions / answers / votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose the voting system was put in place to help improve quality. What is really difficult for me to understand is &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How are we supposed to get value from free currency?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We all know that inflation is bad, but the current voting system is based on hyperinflation, because when A upvotes B, A loses nothing and B earns 10 !! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That means that the voting system is more like a LIKE than a BUY system. I like whatever, but I only buy something, for a reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Maybe voting up / down should cost to A the same amount of reputation B gets / loses. &#xD;&#xA; - Maybe questions / answers should initially cost authors some reputation. (while allowing them to earn some with votes along time)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a BUY system like this, votes up/down would be like gifts, and questions/answers like bets.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###EDIT###&#xD;&#xA;The whole point is that the voting system should work towards improving the quality of the content rather than rewarding popularity. I want a knowledge base where useful content (questions / answers / votes) is not a needle in a haystack. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd want P.SE to be better than other sites of this kind.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4557" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1859" RevisionGUID="18bb8c0b-fc23-4ca8-8ebb-e4faa8a32e40" CreationDate="2011-07-01T21:25:39.083" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="So we have a question that's pretty popular today: [Are programmers getting lazier and less competent](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/88745/8)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, to me personally, reads very much like a rant and the answers its received have mainly been to challenge the assertions in the question itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Normally, it's a question that would be closed as not constructive, but it's got a lot of activity and no close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So is this question constructive? If so, why? If it isn't, what can we do to get the community more animated in helping moderate popular questions that are ultimately poor fits for our site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4558" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1859" RevisionGUID="18bb8c0b-fc23-4ca8-8ebb-e4faa8a32e40" CreationDate="2011-07-01T21:25:39.083" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="What's constructive about being lazy and incompetent?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4559" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1859" RevisionGUID="18bb8c0b-fc23-4ca8-8ebb-e4faa8a32e40" CreationDate="2011-07-01T21:25:39.083" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4560" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1860" RevisionGUID="c33896c1-71bf-4702-9215-8183b2ee4177" CreationDate="2011-07-01T21:51:15.873" UserId="37" Text="I edited the title to assist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps there is a kernel of a decent -- not great, but decent -- question in there somewhere. There certainly have been close votes cast before, so maybe something about this seems constructive...ish." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4561" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1861" RevisionGUID="2aedfcc9-10ed-47b2-9399-e9ccceebe76d" CreationDate="2011-07-01T21:51:48.277" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Read this: [How to be Lazy, Dumb, and Successful][1]. This is the only example I remember, I've seen similar articles in the past numerous times. So this is a very interesting post, and I'm not surprised it's so popular.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should try to understand something that seems ridiculous to us can be brilliant to another. This is enforced by the fact our community is global and the cultural factor is strong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your job as a moderator is becoming very difficult in a community where subjectivity is authorized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/08/how-to-be-lazy-dumb-and-successful.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4562" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1862" RevisionGUID="39537f04-3159-4ed0-9e74-1c615498a6f4" CreationDate="2011-07-01T21:56:16.587" UserId="63" Text="&gt; Are programmers getting lazier and less competent&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've seen this question asked for as long as I've been a programmer. Usually in forums or chat, and often by programmers who really haven't been doing it long enough to have any perspective, or whose experience is so narrow that they're threatened by change. I suspect I asked it myself at some point...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's *always* popular. And the answer is always &quot;yes&quot;. [Kids these days are *always* lazy and unruly](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4923/was-this-quote-about-unruly-kids-written-by-an-assyrian).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if this is nothing more than a rehashing of a classic rant, it's not constructive. If, by some miracle, it happens to collect a few lengthy answers full of [experiences, facts, and references][1], then it could be considered constructive, something for us to keep in our back pockets for the next time this argument comes up elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4563" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1863" RevisionGUID="e5aae4a4-197e-4aef-b274-4d3feaad5475" CreationDate="2011-07-01T22:22:34.157" UserId="27130" Text="[A question I asked recently](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88953/what-kind-of-programmer-can-i-expect-for-10-to-12-50-an-hour) was closed on the basis of it being to localized and / or not helping any future visitors.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted a chance to explain myself as this is a very important question to me and I would like as much input as possible. Someone's future is at stake!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I brought up my geographic data because it was relevant to show the difference between what my boss wants to pay a highly technical position and what a McDonald’s worker makes. I was not asking a question about a specific region. I was basically trying to ask “If minimum wage is x and my boss wants to pay x + 2, who will I be able to hire?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How will the question not help future users? I posted that question and in the first 5 minutes it picked up 50 views, 5 answers, some up votes, and no trolls. The question was directly answerable and not open ended or conversational. I looked for similar questions on other forums and found nothing useful. As is usually the case, the SE community came through. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4564" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1863" RevisionGUID="e5aae4a4-197e-4aef-b274-4d3feaad5475" CreationDate="2011-07-01T22:22:34.157" UserId="27130" Text="Response to question being closed: What kind of programmer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4565" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1863" RevisionGUID="e5aae4a4-197e-4aef-b274-4d3feaad5475" CreationDate="2011-07-01T22:22:34.157" UserId="27130" Text="|discussion|support|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4568" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1865" RevisionGUID="a65f143c-702a-4c51-84b2-3dad11afacdb" CreationDate="2011-07-02T00:45:07.787" UserId="12828" Text="As one who answered the question, and has been inclined to vote to close non-constructive questions in the past - I thought it was very valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I started coding before the internet was prevalent, when there was very little thought of collaboration and people would code everything from scratch every time (unless the company had a library for that particular task). RAD languages such as VB were just beginning to gain traction and, when I learned of them, I remember going through a phase of thinking &quot;well that's just lazy, it's not real programming.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wish I'd had someone to explain to me why that's a logical fallacy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the basis that we should really be focusing on the question: Does this question and its answers make the internet a better place? I decided it was worth a good answer rather than a vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a side note, I also think that the more positive subject and the user's own edit have done more harm than good. Now the top-voted answers don't really make any sense." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4569" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1866" RevisionGUID="cffcfdf6-1f1e-44a4-ba1b-01962e5f38a5" CreationDate="2011-07-02T00:46:26.663" UserId="6591" Text="People have been complaining about the *decline in youth today* since Plato penned Phaedrus some 2500 years ago. I'm certain that he heard the same lament from old farts when he was a youngster as well.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the case of Phaedrus, his main complaint was that with youngsters using that new fangled invention (called writing), they aren't using their brains to memorize stuff like we did back in the olden days, when it was 15 miles to school, and it was uphill both ways. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I was a young sprout learning programming, I overheard a similar lament uttered by some greybeards, who claimed that the new fangled computer terminals were going to make every new programmer lazier because they can just hit the backspace if they make a mistake. Having to throw out a punch card and type it all over again was somehow something that was going to build moral character. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4570" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1867" RevisionGUID="e8508b78-1e24-484f-a076-4c66dc4e3173" CreationDate="2011-07-02T00:54:05.357" UserId="226" Text="I apologize for my answer reading a bit disjointed. I'm limited to my phoe at the moment and it's making composing an answer a bit challenging. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question was &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; will anyone actually want to work for us who doesn't need to be walked through everything and can do some things on their own?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that is a good question for Stack Exchange. We cannot predict if you will be able to find a developer who fits your criteria in your area. Even if a reliable answer can be found, it's unlikely to remain accurate for other areas. It might also not stand the test of time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only way for you to get your answer is to start hiring and see what you get. Nothing will convince your boss of the error of his ways than some real information about real applicants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Popularity of a question is not always related to its suitability. To me this felt like a &quot;what salary should I expect&quot; question in reverse -- ultimately too localized and hypothetical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4571" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1867" RevisionGUID="13e11973-87c6-4e93-9296-eecf843ce3a9" CreationDate="2011-07-02T02:04:31.057" UserId="63" Comment="fix typos" Text="I apologize for my answer reading a bit disjointed. I'm limited to my phone at the moment, and it's making composing an answer a bit challenging. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; will anyone actually want to work for us who doesn't need to be walked through everything and can do some things on their own?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that is a good question for Stack Exchange. We cannot predict if you will be able to find a developer who fits your criteria in your area. Even if a reliable answer can be found, it's unlikely to remain accurate for other areas. It might also not stand the test of time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only way for you to get your answer is to start hiring and see what you get. Nothing will convince your boss of the error of his ways other than some real information about real applicants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Popularity of a question is not always related to its suitability. To me, this felt like a &quot;what salary should I expect&quot; question in reverse &amp;mdash; ultimately, too localized and hypothetical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4572" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1868" RevisionGUID="6e3e2a8e-d294-4b72-8784-0ad4b9070740" CreationDate="2011-07-02T02:28:44.523" UserId="63" Text="&gt; Someone's future is at stake!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is usually the case. And it's usually that of the person asking the question. Which is as it should be... However, on SE we want to see questions where the answers will be useful to the asker *and other people*. *This* is the meaning of &quot;too localized&quot;: if a question &quot;is unlikely to ever help any future visitors&quot; we'd rather folks weren't spending time answering it *here*; the goal of SE sites is to compile a database of answers to life's persistent questions, not every problem someone somewhere had once. Joel's example is someone asking why a car is parked outside their house... It's an absurd example, but gets the point across: if the person asking the question *has to be you* for it to be the same question, it's not a good fit here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't *know* who's gonna reply to your ad, or what their abilities will be. If you're asking us to guess, well... you already know the answer, or you wouldn't have bothered to ask in the first place. No one's asking, &quot;What kind of programmer can I expect for $90K/year in Oklahoma City?&quot; - you're asking because you already realize the wages you're offering are too low to attract anyone with *any* real options.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That *doesn't* mean you can't get an answer here though. It just means you have to put some thought into how you can ask your question in a way that might potentially produce generally-useful answers. Don't ask what the car's doing there; ask how you can find out. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've given your question a quick edit to reflect what I think you're actually looking for... We'll see what happens." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4573" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1869" RevisionGUID="28061c2a-3e27-40a5-9462-0ef7b7fc3731" CreationDate="2011-07-02T03:24:55.917" UserId="63" Text="So I caught wind of this [&quot;Summer Cleaning&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning/) project y'all are running. Sounds like a real good time, especially if there are s'mores and plenty of references to unicorns in the Augean Stables...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But good ol' [Aaron, he's latched onto the idea][1] of targeting [tag:programming-languages] for some *hard-core exorcism*. Armed with bell, book, candle, and close votes, he's ventured alone into this wasteland...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I got to thinking... What this guy needs is a *Posse* - fearless men of good character, armed to the teeth and ready to ride, side by side, dispatching vigilante justice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After all, it's not like he's the only one on this site who can vote to close. Granted, questions closed (or re-opened...) without moderator assistance are rare as hen's teeth in these parts, but in theory it *could* happen...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if there be among you users who feel, like Aaronaught, that questions in this tag could use some fixin', I challenge you to step up and nominate yourselves for this thankless task. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Have close votes. Will use them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're *ready and willing*, post below. Once there are enough of you to form a posse, *you ride*...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning/1855#1855" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4574" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1869" RevisionGUID="28061c2a-3e27-40a5-9462-0ef7b7fc3731" CreationDate="2011-07-02T03:24:55.917" UserId="63" Text="Posse nominations for Aaronut" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4575" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1869" RevisionGUID="28061c2a-3e27-40a5-9462-0ef7b7fc3731" CreationDate="2011-07-02T03:24:55.917" UserId="63" Text="|discussion|posse|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4576" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1870" RevisionGUID="f68b0616-304d-4bc5-b69b-0d282be7e7f7" CreationDate="2011-07-02T05:00:51.413" UserId="16637" Text="I'll help. It would be good to have some sort of mechanism so that we don't overlap too much. For example, each question in the targeted tag will only have the outcome of close or leave. It would be time-wasting and inefficient for us not to know questions already deemed as satisfactory." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4577" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1842" RevisionGUID="115e717a-425b-4e82-9db8-1d6964cff271" CreationDate="2011-07-02T09:42:36.053" UserId="28029" Comment="clarity" Text="It seems to me that P.SE is full of people that cares more for looking smart than for helping others out, at the same time with good questions / answers / votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, quality goes hand in hand with restrictions. I say unfortunately because restrictions are unpopular, but very needed some times.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As it is now, except for some guidelines that moderators use at their discretion (rightfully), there is nothing stopping low quality questions / answers / votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose the voting system was put in place to help improve quality. What is really difficult for me to understand is &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How are we supposed to get value from free currency?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We all know that inflation is bad, but the current voting system is based on **hyperinflation**, because when A upvotes B, A spends nothing and B earns 10 !! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That means that the voting system is more like a LIKE than a BUY system. I like whatever, but I only buy something, for a reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Maybe voting up / down should cost to A the same amount of reputation B gets / loses. &#xD;&#xA; - Maybe questions / answers should initially cost authors some reputation. (while allowing them to earn some with votes along time)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a BUY system like this, votes up/down would be like gifts, and questions/answers like bets.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###EDIT###&#xD;&#xA;The whole point is that the voting system should work towards improving the quality of the content rather than rewarding popularity. I want a knowledge base where useful content (questions / answers / votes) is not a needle in a haystack. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd want P.SE to be better than other sites of this kind.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4578" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1871" RevisionGUID="587975bb-2879-4ae4-b7b5-f526436ff6e4" CreationDate="2011-07-02T21:01:42.423" UserId="8553" Text="I've got a question about a language feature for some hypothetical language I've been thinking about implementing. It's sweet, but rather complex, especially on the implementation side, and I'd like to know if it's genuinely workable, both in terms of whether anyone could wrap their minds around it and if it's feasible to implement. Now, I can rapidly see how this would be a totally subjective question, but I'm not sure how many of the subjective question criteria are met.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4579" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1871" RevisionGUID="587975bb-2879-4ae4-b7b5-f526436ff6e4" CreationDate="2011-07-02T21:01:42.423" UserId="8553" Text="Language discussions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4580" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1871" RevisionGUID="587975bb-2879-4ae4-b7b5-f526436ff6e4" CreationDate="2011-07-02T21:01:42.423" UserId="8553" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4581" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1871" RevisionGUID="e433e64b-7393-47fc-b9b5-34ec3657eba6" CreationDate="2011-07-02T21:09:51.183" UserId="8553" Comment="added 41 characters in body" Text="I've got a question about a language feature for some hypothetical language I've been thinking about implementing. It's sweet, but rather complex, especially on the implementation side, and I'd like to know if it's genuinely workable, both in terms of whether anyone could wrap their minds around it and if it's feasible to implement. Now, I can rapidly see how this would be a totally subjective question, but I'm not sure how many of the subjective question criteria are met.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this actually a valid question to ask?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4582" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1872" RevisionGUID="2e4c2a7e-a5dd-4c8d-bb2b-8f8df5de6336" CreationDate="2011-07-02T22:31:31.487" UserId="226" Text="There have been questions in the past along the lines of &quot;what features should I add to my language&quot; and &quot;what do you think is missing from language X&quot;. Those generally end up not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For your case, I'd probably stick to periodic questions about designing particular parts of your language instead of trying to ask one big catch-all type question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further, I'd structure the questions to avoid providing your own answer to it at the same time. So, instead of asking &quot;I want to do X to implement Y in my language, what do you think?&quot;, ask instead &quot;How should I implement Y when designing a language?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, design reviews are on-topic, so if you want to put up a question about an area that's giving you the most trouble, I think that'd be fine. The main thing to keep in mind is that we're not here to *discuss* your ideas, but to come up with ways to *solve the problems* you encounter while coming up with your design." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4583" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1873" RevisionGUID="2a7d23dc-60dd-4265-9f91-7ee3c8833b27" CreationDate="2011-07-02T23:24:07.573" UserId="3249" Text="Simply apply the same guidelines as you would to any other question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. In order to be **Constructive** it has to focus on a *genuine* problem.  Make sure you stick to questions that can be *answered* rather than *discussed*.  Facets I can think of are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Is it similar or identical to a feature that exists already?&#xD;&#xA;  * Has it been tried unsuccessfully before, and if so, why did it fail?&#xD;&#xA;  * How effective is it at solving the problem(s) it is meant to solve?&#xD;&#xA;  * What are the biggest technical challenges in implementation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  And so on and so forth.  **Stay away** from open-ended questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Would you *use* this feature? (no wrong answer)&#xD;&#xA;  * Is it a *good* design? (&quot;good&quot; can mean anything)&#xD;&#xA;  * Why isn't this feature more *popular*? (speculation)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. In order to be a **Real Question** it has to focus on a *specific* problem.  That means:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Don't try to ask all of the above questions at the *same time.*&#xD;&#xA;  * Don't just ask for &quot;feedback&quot; or something equally vague.&#xD;&#xA;  * Don't describe a painfully complex subject in two sentences and ask &quot;How would you implement this?&quot; or &quot;How can I improve this?&quot; or some other non-question that could have a hundred different possible answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Finally, in order to avoid becoming **Too Localized**  then you have to make it *relevant to other programmers*.  That means:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Make the question useful to anybody else who might want to implement something similar;&#xD;&#xA;  * No walls of text/code describing your proposed implementation in excruciating detail;&#xD;&#xA;  * No arbitrary rules or constraints which apply only to your current situation;&#xD;&#xA;  * The feature itself which you describe should be intended to solve some reasonably broad class of problems; if it's intended to solve some highly-specific problem that only you and maybe two other people have, then it's not helping anybody else here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is pretty much the same advice I would give for any &quot;pre-implementation&quot; question.  Just make sure you're asking it for the right reasons - i.e. because there's some aspect of the problem you want help with, and not because you're really excited about some idea you have and just feel like sharing.  Not to insinuate that this describes you, it just describes a lot of similar questions the site has seen in the past." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4584" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1874" RevisionGUID="49beecf5-d8b0-4147-984a-2d9d8903a83f" CreationDate="2011-07-04T00:40:19.810" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89410/is-stakcoverflow-com-built-in-wordpress-and-wordpress-qa-plugin" Text="" />
  <row Id="4585" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1875" RevisionGUID="836cc63e-a86f-43cc-95dc-9fec348b7d33" CreationDate="2011-07-04T00:40:19.810" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89410/is-stakcoverflow-com-built-in-wordpress-and-wordpress-qa-plugin/89411#89411" Text="" />
  <row Id="4586" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1875" RevisionGUID="96301ebe-4dda-4e02-9493-ffb133dce127" CreationDate="2011-07-04T00:34:14.007" UserId="12824" Text="No it's not. All Stackexchange web sites are build on top of ASP.NET MVC I believe." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4587" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1874" RevisionGUID="408e8ed3-5308-4fd1-8cff-628fd76cd188" CreationDate="2011-07-04T00:27:06.763" UserId="30160" Text="Wordpress template and the their new QA plugin is remakebly similar to stackoverflow site. Although it does not have all the features of stackoverflow, it does have all the important ones. I am wondering if stakcoverflow is just using the wordpress plugin?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any idea?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4588" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1874" RevisionGUID="408e8ed3-5308-4fd1-8cff-628fd76cd188" CreationDate="2011-07-04T00:27:06.763" UserId="30160" Text="Is stakcoverflow.com built in Wordpress and Wordpress QA plugin?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4589" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1874" RevisionGUID="408e8ed3-5308-4fd1-8cff-628fd76cd188" CreationDate="2011-07-04T00:27:06.763" UserId="30160" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4591" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1874" RevisionGUID="2e7f68a4-b2df-4fd4-96c1-e8530a5ecb04" CreationDate="2011-07-04T01:47:27.760" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 9 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="The WordPress template and the new QA plugin is remarkably similar to the Stack Exchange family of sites. Although it does not have all the features of Stack Exchange, it does have all of the important ones. Is Stack Exchange just using the WordPress plugin?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4592" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1874" RevisionGUID="2e7f68a4-b2df-4fd4-96c1-e8530a5ecb04" CreationDate="2011-07-04T01:47:27.760" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 9 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Is Stack Exchange built with WordPress and the WordPress QA plugin?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4593" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1874" RevisionGUID="2e7f68a4-b2df-4fd4-96c1-e8530a5ecb04" CreationDate="2011-07-04T01:47:27.760" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 9 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|stackexchange|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4595" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="1877" RevisionGUID="779058ca-63ad-4ee4-a017-ed000713bcfe" CreationDate="2011-07-04T21:43:25.690" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89592/moderators-are-batshit-crazy-closing-7-10-programmers-related-questions" Text="" />
  <row Id="4596" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1877" RevisionGUID="ece93fc4-0df1-42fc-b75f-962941f34d9b" CreationDate="2011-07-04T21:41:59.310" UserId="30257" Text="Why are you closing so many questions?  Clearly they're drawn to questions FOR or ABOUT programmers, and are general enough to be related to 'programmers'.  Why is time management not allowed to be posted, for example?  There's tag for &quot;time-management&quot;, clearly, this is within scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question had +2 and been fav'd.  Clearly people want to know best time manager for programmers in OSX.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're operating outside of the FAQ.  Mark Trapp, and other mods, chill out." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4597" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1877" RevisionGUID="ece93fc4-0df1-42fc-b75f-962941f34d9b" CreationDate="2011-07-04T21:41:59.310" UserId="30257" Text="Moderators are batshit crazy. Closing 7/10 programmers-related questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4598" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1877" RevisionGUID="ece93fc4-0df1-42fc-b75f-962941f34d9b" CreationDate="2011-07-04T21:41:59.310" UserId="30257" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4599" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1878" RevisionGUID="306d3360-d127-4cfc-a357-36f560c0588e" CreationDate="2011-07-04T21:49:33.630" UserId="47" Text="Just because there's a tag doesn't make the question on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could create the tag &quot;caving&quot; on Stack Overflow as I have more than 1,500 reputation on the site ([source](http://stackoverflow.com/privileges/create-tags)) and ask about caving and potholing. It doesn't make the question on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know it's an extreme example, but the applying the same logic if any user with more than 1,500 reputation asks a question that requires a new tag, any tag, does that make it on topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also the tag could well date from the beta period when the reputation required to create tags was much less - 150 reputation in fact ([source](http://ux.stackexchange.com/privileges/create-tags)) and what we considered to be on and off topic different to what it is today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To answer your specific issue with [tag:time-management] questions - these do not uniquely affect software developers. Anybody who works where they have multiple, equally important tasks to do requires good time management skills." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4600" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1877" RevisionGUID="8f27d35e-df9f-4c59-988e-8293f3029f50" CreationDate="2011-07-04T21:59:20.507" UserId="30257" Comment="edited title" Text="Moderator powers are unchecked. Closing 7/10 programmers-related questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4601" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1879" RevisionGUID="95f37466-e306-47e7-ace7-e1102e9622c6" CreationDate="2011-07-04T22:06:50.543" UserId="15466" Text="Typically its not just the moderator's input that goes into closing a post.  Users have the ability to input on these kinds of issues.  If I've understood correctly in the last several months that I've been on here, moderators go a lot based on the input of other users on matters of this nature.  There are strict guidelines (though programmers.SE is much more lenient on the guidelines than other SE sites) for the purpose of keeping the site more useful in the long run than forum sites can be." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4602" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1880" RevisionGUID="ffcfdf79-317e-468a-8e7f-813ba31bdd1f" CreationDate="2011-07-04T22:14:26.493" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="&#xD;&#xA;As ChrisF mentioned, questions need to invite some unique insight from programmers beyond just a simple &quot;I'm asking programmers&quot; clause. In terms of possible scope, we want to hit the blue area of this diagram:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Programmers.SE scope](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, real questions invite *answers*, not *ideas*, *opinions*, or *lists*. From [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. (You are more than welcome to have such discussions in our real time web chat.) However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I closed it as off-topic per these guidelines: Stack Exchange is not well suited for generating lists of recommendations. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, after looking around, I found we had an earlier round that I thought might be helpful (even if it happened to have been closed), so I changed the close reason to exact duplicate to provide a link back to the earlier question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As others have noted, it's probably a better fit for [Productivity.SE](http://productivity.stackexchange.com) or even [Project Management.SE](http://pm.stackexchange.com), but the guidelines about open-ended questions are a network-wide thing, and lists of recommendations are off-topic everywhere, not just on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Are questions not directly related to programming (but might concern programmers) on-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also check out [Frequently closing popular questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1675/frequently-closing-popular-questions), where the idea that the guidelines in place shouldn't apply to popular questions was discussed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4603" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1880" RevisionGUID="1b2155e1-09e1-49d6-bcab-11511f265596" CreationDate="2011-07-04T22:25:43.097" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Fix links and formatting in quoted FAQ" Text="As ChrisF mentioned, questions need to invite some unique insight from programmers beyond just a simple &quot;I'm asking programmers&quot; clause. In terms of possible scope, we want to hit the blue area of this diagram:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Programmers.SE scope](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, real questions invite *answers*, not *ideas*, *opinions*, or *lists*. From [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `_____`”, then you should not be asking here. (You are more than welcome to have such discussions in our [real time web chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/).) However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged [and possibly removed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion), **avoid** asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite `______`?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I closed it as off-topic per these guidelines: Stack Exchange is not well suited for generating lists of recommendations. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, after looking around, I found we had an earlier round that I thought might be helpful (even if it happened to have been closed), so I changed the close reason to exact duplicate to provide a link back to the earlier question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As others have noted, it's probably a better fit for [Productivity.SE](http://productivity.stackexchange.com) or even [Project Management.SE](http://pm.stackexchange.com), but the guidelines about open-ended questions are a network-wide thing, and lists of recommendations are off-topic everywhere, not just on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Are questions not directly related to programming (but might concern programmers) on-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are “I'm looking for X” questions on topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also check out [Frequently closing popular questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1675/frequently-closing-popular-questions), where the idea that the guidelines in place shouldn't apply to popular questions was discussed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4604" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1881" RevisionGUID="961bcfdd-3d97-4fb4-bb0c-f82319e58524" CreationDate="2011-07-04T23:45:38.657" UserId="9293" Text="As per: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1877/moderator-powers-are-unchecked-closing-7-10-programmers-related-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree whole heartedly.  There are a couple moderators of programmers.SE who have gone power mad, deleting important content and leaving off-topic remarks in its place.  They close questions that the community is obviously interested in with no regard for that community at all.  These individuals are a detriment to the site and need to have their moderator priveleges revoked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE is a community run and driven architecture.  We are able to vote IN moderators but I've yet to see anything on how to vote OUT a moderator.  Surely if there is such a method it should be clarified, and if not it should be created.  During the voting procedure there's little to tell people how well a person will moderate and when it becomes clear that they are abusing their powers there should be a method in place for the same community that voted them into office to get rid of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does one begin the process of impeaching a moderator?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be noted that there's actually only a couple such moderators.  There's always a bad apple in every bunch.  I'm not saying the site doesn't need ANY application of moderation, only that certain individuals need to stop, have been asked to stop, and now need to be taken out of office." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4605" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1881" RevisionGUID="961bcfdd-3d97-4fb4-bb0c-f82319e58524" CreationDate="2011-07-04T23:45:38.657" UserId="9293" Text="How to impeach a moderator?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4606" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1881" RevisionGUID="961bcfdd-3d97-4fb4-bb0c-f82319e58524" CreationDate="2011-07-04T23:45:38.657" UserId="9293" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4607" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1882" RevisionGUID="a99e2d66-05de-4729-961f-65a1675f3c82" CreationDate="2011-07-05T00:25:57.613" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Programmers.SE has four community-elected moderators: each of whom is peer-reviewed by the other three. Additionally, the Stack Exchange team has oversight over moderator actions and provides consultation, insight, and guidance for the elected moderators. Finally, all current moderators on Programmers.SE routinely and voluntarily submit their actions for peer review by the moderators of all the sites on the network, and act based on their guidance as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, there is no mechanism for voting a moderator out: moderators are elected by the community, serve at the pleasure of Stack Exchange, Inc, and generally serve for terms of at least one year. If you feel a moderator (or any community member) is abusing the community, you can email [team@stackexchange.com](mailto:team@stackexchange.com) and the team will look into it and determine the best course of action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, raising issues on the meta-discussion site (hopefully in a constructive manner) is how community guidelines get formed: it exposes an issue to the greater community and allows everyone to provide their insights and opinions about how a specific event or a class of events should be moderated. Virtually all of the guidelines by which moderators act have been created this way." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4608" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1882" RevisionGUID="be8cfbcc-e6db-46f1-b87b-74822236bd84" CreationDate="2011-07-05T00:33:11.723" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 230 characters in body" Text="Programmers.SE has four community-elected moderators: each of whom is peer-reviewed by the other three. Additionally, the Stack Exchange team has oversight over moderator actions and provides consultation, insight, and guidance for the elected moderators. Finally, all current moderators on Programmers.SE routinely and voluntarily submit their actions for peer review by the moderators of all the sites on the network, and act based on their guidance as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, there is no mechanism for voting a moderator out: moderators are elected by the community, serve at the pleasure of Stack Exchange, Inc, and generally serve for terms of at least one year. If you feel a moderator (or any community member) is abusing the community, you can email [team@stackexchange.com](mailto:team@stackexchange.com) and the team will look into it and determine the best course of action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, raising issues on the meta-discussion site (hopefully in a constructive manner) is how community guidelines get formed: it exposes an issue to the greater community and allows everyone to provide their insights and opinions about how a specific event or a class of events should be moderated. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Virtually all of the guidelines by which moderators act have been created this way. If you feel that something should be moderated in a certain way, I would encourage you to check out the other questions here and/or create a question yourself to open a dialogue with the rest of the community about the issue." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4609" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1881" RevisionGUID="021ef5f5-c18d-4797-99b1-ea0503a547bd" CreationDate="2011-07-05T02:00:30.437" UserId="99" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4610" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1877" RevisionGUID="0c53aec3-f3cd-4f6c-a672-04104c062fba" CreationDate="2011-07-05T02:01:01.073" UserId="99" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4612" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1884" RevisionGUID="869289a1-f5e5-47df-a672-2da05a67157a" CreationDate="2011-07-05T09:39:00.287" UserId="37" Text="This is the [complete text of your question][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Best simplest project / todo manager for programmers in OSX&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm trying to figure out the best project / todo manager.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am a single programmer, working on a single project in spare time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've tried using TextEdit (notepad), I've tried big project managers, they're too cumbersome with due dates, start dates, etc.  I spend more time organizing what's next and how it's linked with everything else than actually programming / testing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I need some suggestions.  Right now I'm using TaskPaper, which gets the job done very well, but am open for others' suggestions.  It has to be for OSX.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is explicitly covered in http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite \_\_\_\_\_\_?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use \_\_\_\_\_\_ for \_\_\_\_\_\_, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question has the &quot;every answer is equally valid&quot; and the &quot;What do you use? I'll go first&quot; problems, which are listed above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89585/best-simplest-project-todo-manager-for-programmers-in-osx" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4613" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1885" RevisionGUID="f9ca5b8e-ddd4-4cfa-9d65-3b48f0bb866c" CreationDate="2011-07-05T13:36:48.960" UserId="596" Text="A [question][1] of mine was recently closed as 'off topic'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was no message left explaining the reason, and it is not as obvious to me as it apparently was to those closing it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I initially posted this question on SO, then realized it was the wrong place to ask and deleted my question to re-post it on Programmers, as I was sure this place was fitting. Even more surprising came the quick close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be obvious to anyone thinking about the question for a second that this is related to programming. The all people - all careers - all programmers - only me point also &#xD;&#xA;does not apply here. The question is not too localized, too. I was left in confusion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why I would love to see a comment explaining the reason to close. I do consider it pretty rude to simply close the question without any remark and leave me standing as an idiot. This has actually been discussed a LOT on meta.so and the consensus was to have the mods close as they believe is fit (which is very good and I'm perfectly fine with that) and add a quick message explaining the reason (which was not the case here).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case (and more than enough other cases I experienced) a politely helpful (and as per the meta discussion, &quot;suggested to exist&quot;) comment regarding close reason was not given. Please make adding a comment on closing questions a requirement. It is not as blatantly obvious to others as to you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This carries additional weight on this site because apparently a lot of questions get closed, and I'm sure everyone gets bored of the often ensuing discussions on meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89515/svr-or-srv-correct-abbreviation-for-server&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I'm going to tag this 'discussion' because I also asked about a specific question, though feature-request might be more fitting? I'm not sure, please feel free to re-tag.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4614" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1885" RevisionGUID="f9ca5b8e-ddd4-4cfa-9d65-3b48f0bb866c" CreationDate="2011-07-05T13:36:48.960" UserId="596" Text="Could mods please leave a message explaining the close?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4615" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1885" RevisionGUID="f9ca5b8e-ddd4-4cfa-9d65-3b48f0bb866c" CreationDate="2011-07-05T13:36:48.960" UserId="596" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4616" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1886" RevisionGUID="bad7bac2-c995-4a94-875f-09f1d0e7d5f4" CreationDate="2011-07-05T13:44:35.893" UserId="47" Text="The close reason is given in the text below the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed as off topic by Steven A. Lowe, Chris, ChrisF♦ 22 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Programmers - Stack Exchange are expected to generally relate to software development, within the scope defined in the [faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So follow the link to the FAQ." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4617" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1887" RevisionGUID="f5e3b49b-4696-4fe9-a88d-d47cad803a81" CreationDate="2011-07-05T14:02:59.733" UserId="47" Text="In this particular case it could be that the close reason was wrong. Rather than being &quot;off topic&quot; it's probably &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As moderators cast a binding vote and whatever they choose is displayed as the close reason I tend to follow what's already been suggested as the close reason (unless it's clearly wrong). This case was borderline so I stuck with the existing votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to why I know think it's not constructive - ultimately it doesn't really matter as long as you pick one abbreviation and stick to it, plus unless you are really lucky all you are going to get is people posting what they use and people voting for their favourite. Neither of which really answer the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4618" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1886" RevisionGUID="90de196b-1612-49dd-8214-05c1149fced3" CreationDate="2011-07-05T14:10:45.933" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="The close reason is given in the text below the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed as off topic by Steven A. Lowe, Chris, ChrisF♦ 22 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Programmers - Stack Exchange are expected to generally relate to software development, within the scope defined in the [faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So follow the link to the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not always feasible to leave a comment explaining *exactly* why the question falls foul of the FAQ, but I will often leave comments prior to closing if I feel the question can be edited into shape." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4619" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1887" RevisionGUID="0ae6dece-4eb2-43ee-b1b8-ec3fecbb67c2" CreationDate="2011-07-05T14:25:14.487" UserId="47" Comment="correction and clarification" Text="In this particular case it could be that the close reason was wrong. Rather than being &quot;off topic&quot; it's probably &quot;not constructive&quot;. Given that, adding *more information* to the close will create *more discussion* over why a question was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As moderators cast a binding vote and whatever they choose is displayed as the close reason I tend to follow what's already been suggested as the close reason (unless it's clearly wrong). This case was borderline so I stuck with the existing votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to why I now think it's not constructive - ultimately it doesn't really matter as long as you pick one abbreviation and stick to it, plus unless you are really lucky all you are going to get is people posting what they use and people voting for their favourite. Neither of which really answer the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4624" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1889" RevisionGUID="00921e1e-4cdd-431b-99a2-17416ac2ae6e" CreationDate="2011-07-05T17:10:10.660" UserId="5095" Text="Surely the reason to close this is that there really is no &quot;right&quot; answer, just a bunch of different conventions followed by a bunch of different people all of which are equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd say it could fit anything from not a real question (because all answers are equally useless) to not constructive (because it doesnt really matter)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4626" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1890" RevisionGUID="c349aea5-a338-4d38-9b22-ca6c28f65cfc" CreationDate="2011-07-05T21:26:05.553" UserId="1458" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89839/how-do-i-determine-the-runtime-of-a-double-recursive-function) is considered on-topic on Programmers.SE, and I don't understand why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is a question about computer science, not a question about programming or programmers. It's something a good programmer should know, but it's not programming (in the same way, using a computer is definitely required of a programmer, yet computer usage isn't programming). It's a subject where an expert would be a computer scientist, not a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, it's an objective question. The run time of a function is a perfectly well-defined notion (at least in a given context, and the choice of context isn't relevant here). There may be more than one way to compute it, it would still be the same thing being computed — this isn't about making a design choice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, going by the [site FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) as well as the overall tone and audience of the site, this question doesn't belong here. I [don't think there's currently a site in the Stack Exchange network that's really appropriate for it](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/80023/where-on-se-to-discuss-computer-science)¹, but the closest, and [officially-sanctioned](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/80023/where-on-se-to-discuss-computer-science/80058#80058), is [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why, then, is this question not migrated to Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;¹ &lt;sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Reminder: [CSTheory](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/) is about *research-level* computer science only.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4627" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1890" RevisionGUID="c349aea5-a338-4d38-9b22-ca6c28f65cfc" CreationDate="2011-07-05T21:26:05.553" UserId="1458" Text="Why are computer science questions sometimes considered on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4628" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1890" RevisionGUID="c349aea5-a338-4d38-9b22-ca6c28f65cfc" CreationDate="2011-07-05T21:26:05.553" UserId="1458" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4633" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1892" RevisionGUID="929388fe-3762-467f-8036-0070f6cb08d6" CreationDate="2011-07-05T21:42:39.377" UserId="226" Text="I think Mark summed it up in the comments: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE is for conceptual, whiteboard-y questions; Stack Overflow is for implementation, issue-while-I'm-coding questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all programmers are computer scientists, but I'd say a good number are and it is certainly a matter unique to programming whereas general computer usage is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We *want* questions that address concepts programming concepts. And honestly, not to put anybody on the spot, but a computer science question about function run times is infinitely more on topic on Programmers than something along the lines of &quot;how do I stop being shy&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, this question is a bit in a grey area. If it were asked on SO, it could'be happily stayed there. But it was asked here and it's on topic enough to not migrate it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4637" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="173" RevisionGUID="a9f2bf5a-f5b2-465b-853f-6d2d70c5781d" CreationDate="2011-07-05T21:45:04.897" UserId="226" Comment="added 135 characters in body" Text="&gt; ### Note&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer was posted before the Great Disciplining of Programmers.SE and is rendered obsolete by the following resources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Introducing Programmers.StackExchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/)**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Programmers.SE FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is for subjective or extended discussions about programming-related issues that have no definitive answer, whereas Stack Overflow is for objective, technical, and pointed questions about programming that have a definitive answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More info:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers.SE FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) (note that the answer to the  question *What kind of questions should I not ask here?* [still needs to be rewritten](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76/really-need-to-change-faq) as it currently bars subjective questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [What should our FAQ contain?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain/74)&#xD;&#xA;* [*Not Programming Related* proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352?phase=definition)  on Area 51&#xD;&#xA;* [*Programmers on stack exchange*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange) on Meta.StackOverflow " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4642" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="171" RevisionGUID="ed967e64-9679-45eb-ad63-5df28766e4f3" CreationDate="2011-07-05T21:46:21.760" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 248 characters in body" Text="What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4643" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="173" RevisionGUID="619485e8-0393-4c1b-9f39-e0cae93e14cd" CreationDate="2011-07-05T21:51:15.593" UserId="226" Comment="added 135 characters in body" Text="From [Introducing Programmers.StackExchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In a nutshell, **Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor** working through code issues. **Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard** working through higher level conceptual programming issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have **actual source code in the questions or answers**. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additional Resources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers.SE FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4646" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1893" RevisionGUID="9375e8a7-1435-463c-8a57-6efffb06dd98" CreationDate="2011-07-05T22:26:59.307" UserId="30257" Text="How about if there's some kind of check-balance system. If a question has enough upvotes / favs, then mods can't just close it at will. Even with the upvotes and being favd, it was immediately closed as off-topic (and then changed to dupe). Keep in mind, dupes don't apply when time has passed and previous suggestions might now be obsolete. So maybe only being able to mark as dupe for time difference of 6 months (stacked). Meaning, can't dupe something that wasn't asked in last 6 months, unless there's a connecting duplicate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4647" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="441" RevisionGUID="48e54cf4-3811-47ba-9bca-8ecf9fe264c1" CreationDate="2011-07-06T02:27:18.600" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|feature-request|status-completed|close-reasons|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4648" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1894" RevisionGUID="3d87e35e-e20a-4d1a-a33c-e70bcaa4fde7" CreationDate="2011-07-06T02:27:58.417" UserId="226" Text="Now that the site is no longer in beta, there is a direct migration path to Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4649" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1895" RevisionGUID="ef39cc82-7e8a-47f9-9fe9-328bb13d4bb3" CreationDate="2011-07-06T08:12:48.547" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Most meta posts are related to closed questions and misunderstanding about what questions is wanted here. It's not going to stop anytime soon. We need some sort of migration path.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I created a [proposal on area51][1] to offer an alternative to those programmers seeking for help &amp; advice by other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33531/programmers-life" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4650" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1895" RevisionGUID="ef39cc82-7e8a-47f9-9fe9-328bb13d4bb3" CreationDate="2011-07-06T08:12:48.547" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Are you fed up with all the frustration that come here on meta?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4651" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1895" RevisionGUID="ef39cc82-7e8a-47f9-9fe9-328bb13d4bb3" CreationDate="2011-07-06T08:12:48.547" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4652" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1895" RevisionGUID="de64ad19-9d40-4a9d-a51f-a5b12570f0a2" CreationDate="2011-07-06T08:26:29.703" UserDisplayName="user2567" Comment="added 372 characters in body" Text="Most meta posts are related to closed questions and misunderstanding about what sort of questions is allowed here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that we don't offer any alternative to the user that the become very frustrated. It's clear that many existing community members have expressed numerous times their own frustration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not going to stop anytime soon. We need to provide them with a solution, and SE network can do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I created a [proposal on area51][1] to offer an alternative to those programmers seeking for help &amp; advice by other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I count on your support and if the proposal is a success, I suggest to setup a migration path from P.SE to the new proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33531/programmers-life" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4653" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1896" RevisionGUID="8089c333-70be-4482-b259-881c8fe13c74" CreationDate="2011-07-06T08:47:52.293" UserId="37" Text="The reason we have these rules is not because we are jerks who hate fun discussions. It's because these sorts of questions do poorly on our engine due to its philosophy and design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, for the sake of argument, let's consider the opposite of [the don't ask list][1] as a guideline for **what would be explicitly allowed and encouraged in [Bizarro][3]-Programmers.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![superman and bizarro][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like others to explain \_\_\_\_\_\_ to me”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like to participate in a discussion about \_\_\_\_\_\_”, then you are probably OK. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please **do** ask subjective questions where ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since we emphasize learning and problem solving, on Bizarro-programmers there would be no emphasis on learning at all, only its opposite: **entertainment by any and all means possible**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is simply *not what we do on Stack Exchange.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, to have a good home for these questions, almost _by definition_ you would have to create it **not on our engine**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MWZ32.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizarro" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4654" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1829" RevisionGUID="b99c394c-998b-4b9c-ba57-6bcad1255590" CreationDate="2011-07-06T12:24:12.343" UserId="37" Comment="added 55 characters in body" Text="One thing I would caution against is getting too mired down in consensus building and (what we call) the [Mother Teresa][1] Complex (i.e. everything can be saved). Getting a community to crowd-source this sort of thing has turned out to be exceedingly difficult.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a whole slew of posts that should unquestionably be deleted. Just delete them; outline the criteria and just delete them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're only talking about posts which are taking up space and cluttering up this site: closed-as-off-topic posts, chronically down-voted and unanswered posts&amp;hellip; that sort of thing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea of these &quot;Cleanup Days&quot; is to set aside a few days to rid yourself of the worst of the useless clutter. Setting this time aside gives everyone fair notice that this is *not* a normal part of the site operation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@[Joel talked about these posts](http://meta.answers.onstartups.com/questions/526/onstartups-clean-up-getting-started/537#537) on Answer.OnStartups&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&amp;hellip;this site has an unusual number of really old questions that never got an answer. If a question has been languishing for 6 months without a single answer, I'd say just delete it mercilessly. If it's important, someone will ask again....&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Someone can ask it again&quot; is an important consideration. These posts currently have *no useful* content. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Start with Joel's suggested &quot;forgotten posts&quot; that have been either abandoned, no longer relevant, or &quot;nobody cares.&quot; That will get you 90% of the way there &amp;mdash; *Then* you can circle around and rally everyone around more general question-improvement activities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4655" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1897" RevisionGUID="9455edb2-59fa-44ae-b5b9-e5de680d3b4a" CreationDate="2011-07-06T14:50:59.157" UserId="6415" Text="I don't agree with that definition. It doesn't completely conflict with our current FAQ, but it's not complete either since some questions about programming (design patterns, refactoring, best practices and the like) *are* on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The difference as I see it is that SO is for solving coding problems, and P.SE is for solving programming problems. To elaborate:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SO is for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Debugging&#xD;&#xA; - How do I code this? I tried this but...&#xD;&#xA; - Understanding algorithms (although this can be on topic here too)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Architecture&#xD;&#xA; - Understanding best practices and when to use them&#xD;&#xA; - Programming methodologies and their implementation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Not a complete list)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not just for subjective questions; it is for *higher level* questions. It deals with issues that come up when you step back from the machine that is your program. This could be working with other programmers, design, how to go about refactoring, or methodologies. Note though, that this includes questions about programmers and questions about programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps our tag line should be, &quot;Q&amp;A for professional programmers interested in all higher level aspects of programming.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4656" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1895" RevisionGUID="4f876018-1267-4ce5-9c6c-2da560c1bc98" CreationDate="2011-07-06T16:41:41.620" UserDisplayName="user2567" Comment="added 96 characters in body" Text="Most meta posts are related to closed questions and misunderstanding about what sort of questions is allowed here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that we don't offer any alternative to the user that the become very frustrated. It's clear that many existing community members have expressed numerous times their own frustration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not going to stop anytime soon. We need to provide them with a solution, and SE network can do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I created a [proposal on area51][1] to offer an alternative to those programmers seeking for help &amp; advice by other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I count on your support and if the proposal is a success, I suggest to setup a migration path from P.SE to the new proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**: it has been closed as duplicate, but what it duplicate has not be mentionned :) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33531/programmers-life" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4657" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1898" RevisionGUID="e45b1617-f06a-48a5-bc94-3bb87e66dd01" CreationDate="2011-07-06T23:59:09.900" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="We now have a question that's really, really popular, [Why do programmers write applications and then make them free?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3233/8), which is fine (better than fine, great!), but the color used for the &quot;on fire&quot; state overpowers the rest of the color palette, drawing attention to the question over everything else:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Holy crap that's popular][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could the red be subdued a little so it's not as striking?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(This is also a problem on comments with a ton of up-votes, but not as big of an issue as comments don't appear on a page everyone visits. Presumably they share the same styling rules, though)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MHdiN.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4658" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1898" RevisionGUID="e45b1617-f06a-48a5-bc94-3bb87e66dd01" CreationDate="2011-07-06T23:59:09.900" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Could the 100k+ views color be toned down a little bit?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4659" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1898" RevisionGUID="e45b1617-f06a-48a5-bc94-3bb87e66dd01" CreationDate="2011-07-06T23:59:09.900" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|feature-request|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4660" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1899" RevisionGUID="ef8e73de-f7e2-451b-a7a3-90fbc202f4b3" CreationDate="2011-07-07T00:42:32.173" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="So over the past few days I noticed a bit of an up-tick in the number of questions being migrated from Stack Overflow that aren't good fits for Programmers.SE or Stack Exchange in general: either they're off-topic, not-constructive, or just not answerable questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I decided to do a bit of an analysis on questions migrated here, and here's what I found:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Last day: 6/16 migrated questions closed (37.5% fail rate)&#xD;&#xA;* Last week: 21/66 (31.8% fail rate)&#xD;&#xA;* Last 30 days: 79/316 (25% fail rate)&#xD;&#xA;* Previous 30 days: 70/306 (22% fail rate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So there is a bit of an up-tick, but I'm not sure what to make of it or if there are any conclusions to be drawn from it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is, is a 20% fail rate normal or expected? What about 40%? Is this just a quirk of two popular sites sharing a migration path, or is there something that can be done?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4661" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1899" RevisionGUID="ef8e73de-f7e2-451b-a7a3-90fbc202f4b3" CreationDate="2011-07-07T00:42:32.173" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The business of being a migration path for Stack Overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4662" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1899" RevisionGUID="ef8e73de-f7e2-451b-a7a3-90fbc202f4b3" CreationDate="2011-07-07T00:42:32.173" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|migration|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4663" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1900" RevisionGUID="beef41be-0328-474c-9d98-669078afae20" CreationDate="2011-07-07T00:48:51.247" UserId="1204" Text="To the Stack Overflowians: Please don't migrate questions to Programmers unless you are familiar with the FAQ, know that the question is on-topic for Programmers, and the question is stellar.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By stellar I mean Academy award quality.  Ooohh, that better be a good question.  If you think the question is uninteresting, it's probably not a good fit for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, just tell the OP to &quot;Try your luck at Programmers, but *read the FAQ first.*&quot;  In short, if you are in doubt, *do not migrate.*  Just close the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4664" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1900" RevisionGUID="0784262d-dc52-4c46-bb8e-7ec1e8cffd9e" CreationDate="2011-07-07T00:54:08.623" UserId="1204" Comment="added 24 characters in body" Text="To the Stack Overflowians: Please don't migrate questions to Programmers unless you are familiar with the FAQ, know that the question is on-topic for Programmers, and the question is stellar.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By stellar I mean [Academy award](http://oscar.go.com/) quality.  Ooohh, that better be a good question.  If you think the question is uninteresting, it's probably not a good fit for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, just tell the OP to &quot;Try your luck at Programmers, but *read the FAQ first.*&quot;  In short, if you are in doubt, *do not migrate.*  Just close the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/TaQyM.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4665" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1901" RevisionGUID="46cae89d-bd49-422d-b19c-596a4d8142d8" CreationDate="2011-07-07T00:58:10.740" UserId="37" Text="See my answer on Pro Webmasters:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/523/how-do-we-prevent-obviously-low-quality-questions-from-being-migrated-here/524#524&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The first rule of migration is **don't migrate crap**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In general the migration process is working okay but it is possible to see bad outcomes if, say, 3 of the 5 voters incorrectly decide to migrate a question to a site. That's a majority, and enough to make it happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We have some plans to revamp migration a bit to handle this, but it's a few months out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In the meantime, I'll see what we can do to improve the messaging around &quot;don't migrate stuff that is of obviously low quality *anywhere*.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4666" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1901" RevisionGUID="9041d017-448b-4621-ab05-82a2786e62f3" CreationDate="2011-07-07T03:58:37.247" UserId="37" Comment="added 178 characters in body" Text="See my answer on Pro Webmasters:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/523/how-do-we-prevent-obviously-low-quality-questions-from-being-migrated-here/524#524&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The first rule of migration is **don't migrate crap**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In general the migration process is working okay but it is possible to see bad outcomes if, say, 3 of the 5 voters incorrectly decide to migrate a question to a site. That's a majority, and enough to make it happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We have some plans to revamp migration a bit to handle this, but it's a few months out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In the meantime, I'll see what we can do to improve the messaging around &quot;don't migrate stuff that is of obviously low quality *anywhere*.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;edit: one change I can make, and I just did, is that we now require 4/5 of the close votes to be matching migration votes before we migrate anyhere. Prior to this it was 3/5." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4667" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1895" RevisionGUID="b0b788b4-9af0-4b6c-be2b-683fdb8546be" CreationDate="2011-07-07T07:53:29.900" UserDisplayName="user2567" Comment="deleted 38 characters in body" Text="Most meta posts are related to closed questions and misunderstanding about what sort of questions is allowed here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that we don't offer any alternative to the user that the become very frustrated. It's clear that many existing community members have expressed numerous times their own frustration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not going to stop anytime soon. We need to provide them with a solution, and SE network can do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I created a [proposal on area51][1] to offer an alternative to those programmers seeking for help &amp; advice by other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I count on your support and if the proposal is a success, I suggest to setup a migration path from P.SE to the new proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**: it has been closed as *P.SE* duplicate :) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33531/programmers-life" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4668" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1902" RevisionGUID="5043ac7e-37ae-426a-95f8-2b82889e4ff1" CreationDate="2011-07-07T11:02:36.390" UserId="12354" Text="I've noticed that both stack overflow and now programmers are following a similar path. First the sites get going, there's lots of interesting questions and discussions. As the sites become more and more popular there seems to be some issues that make them less enjoyable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. **Moderation abuse** - More people get more points and&#xD;&#xA;    more moderation power, resulting in&#xD;&#xA;    more discussions regarding which&#xD;&#xA;    questions should be closed. While I&#xD;&#xA;    understand the need for this it&#xD;&#xA;    seems that a lot of what in the&#xD;&#xA;    beginning where interesting and&#xD;&#xA;    popular topics become less and less&#xD;&#xA;    common. &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA; 2. **Irrelevant questions**, more&#xD;&#xA;    closed questions and general lower&#xD;&#xA;    quality overall. Popularity has it's&#xD;&#xA;    price and as something gets more&#xD;&#xA;    popular you'll always lose the&#xD;&#xA;    &quot;community feeling&quot; and have quality&#xD;&#xA;    issues. Another problem is that&#xD;&#xA;    people stop visiting the sites if&#xD;&#xA;    all they se is negative, closed and&#xD;&#xA;    stupid questions.&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA; 3. **Duplicates**, after a while&#xD;&#xA;    the sheer volume of content makes it&#xD;&#xA;    hard to ask any questions because&#xD;&#xA;    it's already been covered.  The is&#xD;&#xA;    partly a problem of spamming the new&#xD;&#xA;    questions with &quot;noise&quot; and also that&#xD;&#xA;    you don't feel like contributing to&#xD;&#xA;    something where &quot;everything&quot;'s&#xD;&#xA;    already been covered. This problem&#xD;&#xA;    is aggreviated by stringent&#xD;&#xA;    moderation that too aggressively&#xD;&#xA;    shuts down questions that are&#xD;&#xA;    &quot;kinda&quot; similar&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are hard problems to solve for sure, or you might argue that there is no problem and everything works fine.  I do however have a couple of suggestions for possible improvements, feel free to shoot them down :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - When sites such as programmers&#xD;&#xA;   become big enough, switch to&#xD;&#xA;   &quot;moderation mode&quot; where questions&#xD;&#xA;   have to be &quot;accepted&quot; by a moderator&#xD;&#xA;   to show up. This will hopefully&#xD;&#xA;   reduce noise a lot since moderators&#xD;&#xA;   will pre-emptively be able to keep&#xD;&#xA;   off duplicates, irrelevant questions&#xD;&#xA;   etc etc. I will also reduce or remove&#xD;&#xA;   the distracting comments about&#xD;&#xA;   questions validity.&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA; - Make moderation powers available&#xD;&#xA;   only to a select few. You need enough&#xD;&#xA;   moderators that content goes through&#xD;&#xA;   quickly but not so many that the&#xD;&#xA;   quality of the moderation goes down.&#xD;&#xA;   Moderation powers should probably be&#xD;&#xA;   based on being amongst the top x% of&#xD;&#xA;   users for a period of time (like a&#xD;&#xA;   quarter). If moderation powers are&#xD;&#xA;   based only on points than anyone can&#xD;&#xA;   start moderating by scraping together&#xD;&#xA;   points over time which might result&#xD;&#xA;   in some dubious decisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyways, just a couple of things to think about. I really appreciate this resource so I'd hate if the level of discussion was lowered due to it's popularity and overall noise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps the bias should be a bit more lenient against more discussions type questions  if they add real value." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4669" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1902" RevisionGUID="5043ac7e-37ae-426a-95f8-2b82889e4ff1" CreationDate="2011-07-07T11:02:36.390" UserId="12354" Text="Some thoughts about noise and moderation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4670" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1902" RevisionGUID="5043ac7e-37ae-426a-95f8-2b82889e4ff1" CreationDate="2011-07-07T11:02:36.390" UserId="12354" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4671" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1903" RevisionGUID="436dcb4f-d070-4e7b-bb4e-93e6fc64f517" CreationDate="2011-07-07T11:26:16.247" UserId="37" Text="&gt; When sites such as programmers become big enough, switch to &quot;moderation mode&quot; where questions have to be &quot;accepted&quot; by a moderator to show up. This will hopefully reduce noise a lot since moderators will pre-emptively be able to keep off duplicates, irrelevant questions etc etc. I will also reduce or remove the distracting comments about questions validity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This doesn't seem plausible, since Stack Overflow is one THOUSAND times larger than this site, and it has no such question vetting mechanism (other than getting much stricter about the quality filters new users must pass). Granted Stack Overflow is the &quot;concrete, sitting in front of a compiler&quot; yin to Programmers &quot;abstract, standing in front of a whiteboard&quot; yang, but .. based on the data, no evidence this is really required. Super User is also very very large these days and doesn't do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Make moderation powers available only to a select few. You need enough moderators that content goes through quickly but not so many that the quality of the moderation goes down. Moderation powers should probably be based on being amongst the top x% of users for a period of time (like a quarter). If moderation powers are based only on points than anyone can start moderating by scraping together points over time which might result in some dubious decisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This runs counter to everything we have learned about community; the larger the community, the *more* highly engaged mini-moderators you need to help run the site. I have only seen damage (and lots of it) from sites that were UNDER moderated, never ever ever from sites that had this mythical &quot;too much&quot; moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Perhaps the bias should be a bit more lenient against more discussions type questions if they add real value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you provide examples of this? Remember the gold standard here, in a nutshell, is &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1) Can your peers learn anything from this that will advance their professional career?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2) Does this solve a real problem your peers are facing?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... and absolutely *not* &quot;is this fun?&quot; or &quot;is this entertaining?&quot; ; we spend a lot of time suppressing entertainment in favor of education. It's certainly human nature to favor mindless fun over learning, so it's something we have to actively guard against. Constantly ask yourself: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Am I learning anything here?*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4672" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1903" RevisionGUID="3215d043-2bee-4950-9f30-702ce88be2ad" CreationDate="2011-07-07T11:32:18.847" UserId="37" Comment="added 17 characters in body" Text="&gt; When sites such as programmers become big enough, switch to &quot;moderation mode&quot; where questions have to be &quot;accepted&quot; by a moderator to show up. This will hopefully reduce noise a lot since moderators will pre-emptively be able to keep off duplicates, irrelevant questions etc etc. I will also reduce or remove the distracting comments about questions validity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This doesn't seem plausible, since Stack Overflow is one THOUSAND times larger than this site, and it has no such question vetting mechanism (other than getting much stricter about the quality filters new users must pass). Granted Stack Overflow is the &quot;concrete, sitting in front of a compiler&quot; yin to Programmers &quot;abstract, standing in front of a whiteboard&quot; yang, but .. based on the data, no evidence this is really required. Super User is also very very large these days and doesn't do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Make moderation powers available only to a select few. You need enough moderators that content goes through quickly but not so many that the quality of the moderation goes down. Moderation powers should probably be based on being amongst the top x% of users for a period of time (like a quarter). If moderation powers are based only on points than anyone can start moderating by scraping together points over time which might result in some dubious decisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This runs counter to everything we have learned about community; the larger the community, the *more* highly engaged mini-moderators you need to help run the site. I have only seen damage (and lots of it) from sites that were UNDER moderated, never ever ever from sites that had this mythical &quot;too much&quot; moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Perhaps the bias should be a bit more lenient against more discussions type questions if they add real value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you provide examples of this? Remember the gold standard here, in a nutshell, is &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1) Can your peers learn anything from this that will advance their professional career?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2) Does this solve a real problem your peers are facing?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... and absolutely *not* &quot;is this fun?&quot; or &quot;is this entertaining?&quot; ; we spend a lot of time suppressing entertainment in favor of education. It's certainly human nature to favor mindless whee discussiony fun over learning, so it's something we have to actively guard against. Constantly ask yourself: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Am I learning anything here?*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4673" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1904" RevisionGUID="3faa5995-4604-46b0-b2c7-69e18042dc97" CreationDate="2011-07-07T12:52:34.880" UserId="226" Text="It's only abuse if questions are getting closed incorrectly. :) Do you have evidence of moderation abuse by moderators and 3k+ users? See also the relatively recent [Frequently closing popular questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1675/frequently-closing-popular-questions) post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now on to the suggestions. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;When sites such as programmers become big enough, switch to &quot;moderation mode&quot; where questions have to be &quot;accepted&quot; by a moderator to show up. This will hopefully reduce noise a lot since moderators will pre-emptively be able to keep off duplicates, irrelevant questions etc etc. I will also reduce or remove the distracting comments about questions validity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming for a moment that we want to place questions in a limbo they may never come out of, let's define some terms here. Do you mean &quot;moderator&quot; as in &quot;diamond community moderator&quot; or as in &quot;a user with access to a subset moderator tools&quot;? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's the former, I don't think your idea would be workable. There are only 4 of us, we have day jobs, and we rely a lot on the community to do the bulk of its own moderation or to at least signal to us via flags what needs attention. Remembering/finding all the duplicates would be a challenge, if nothing else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's the latter... I think there would still be problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Make moderation powers available only to a select few. You need enough moderators that content goes through quickly but not so many that the quality of the moderation goes down. Moderation powers should probably be based on being amongst the top x% of users for a period of time (like a quarter). If moderation powers are based only on points than anyone can start moderating by scraping together points over time which might result in some dubious decisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You run the risk of not having enough people around to moderate or placing the power, such as it is, in the same hands all the time if the same people end up active on the site. However, if someone is active on the site doesn't mean they're interested in picking up the janitorial moderation duties. With your proposed system, you could end up with the same users consistently in the top X% and not interested in moderating at all. That would be bad, especially if combined with your first suggestion of getting every question approved." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4674" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1905" RevisionGUID="0585a84a-9104-4c68-950a-2a291c4df56d" CreationDate="2011-07-07T19:10:32.573" UserId="22390" Text="It should be a little of both, IMO.  Adhering to some rigid &quot;Q&amp;A Site&quot; is just going to encourage cut-and-dried &quot;towing the party line&quot; answers (and I personally have experienced downvotes for saying the correct thing which differed from the norm).  However, it shouldn't be entirely freeform like a forum.  It needs to mix the two; a forum where posts are &quot;rated&quot;, or a lenient Q&amp;A site that encourages topical discussion.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4675" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="436" RevisionGUID="a9787b83-4cde-448f-8203-5b1efe00f4ac" CreationDate="2011-07-07T21:45:40.457" UserId="47" Comment="now have chat" Text="&gt; I was asking if there was a good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; forum/discussion board I could find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; online to talk to other programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about culture, opinions, stories, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Chat.Programmers.SE](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21) now that it is implemented.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's an example of a [SE chat room][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/89/the-tavern-general" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4676" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1906" RevisionGUID="aa972617-af85-4a2d-8706-911889241d58" CreationDate="2011-07-07T21:48:17.757" UserId="1973" Text="Yeah, frankly I'm afraid to ask anything on this site because the chances are good I'll be drawn into some long obnoxious close, open, complain, be criticized for being too passionate, criticize others for not having enough passion, get banned, return and repeat loop. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No reason to leave this site, because I've got a SO account and a gardening account and I'm working on a proposal at Area51. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, I certainly don't plan on contributing anything meaningful if I have no idea whether I'm going to have to waste hours of my life just trying to justify myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe there should be a 100 question quiz a person could take, if they pass the quiz, then they at least get the benefit of the doubt because they know what the site is about and they asked the question anyway. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4677" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1906" RevisionGUID="fb1f4ccb-2749-4953-aec4-9a06d0703e6d" CreationDate="2011-07-07T21:53:43.383" UserId="1973" Comment="shameless self promotion" Text="Yeah, frankly I'm afraid to ask anything on this site because the chances are good I'll be drawn into some long obnoxious close, open, complain, be criticized for being too passionate, criticize others for not having enough passion, get banned, return and repeat loop. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No reason to leave this site, because I've got a SO account and a gardening account and I'm working on a [proposal at Area51.][1] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, I certainly don't plan on contributing anything meaningful if I have no idea whether I'm going to have to waste hours of my life just trying to justify myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe there should be a 100 question quiz a person could take, if they pass the quiz, then they at least get the benefit of the doubt because they know what the site is about and they asked the question anyway. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33435/chesterton-belloc-distributism" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4678" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1907" RevisionGUID="63dc8460-9f38-4581-ab6e-1367d78803b9" CreationDate="2011-07-08T10:38:23.573" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="As per Jeff's [request][1] (see comments), I will try to illustrate how I see things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The high number of closed questions and frustrated users complaints is a pretty good indication that our rules and/or guidelines are too complicated to understand by the average developer (and I'm one of them).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the goal is to create an elitistic community of programmers (and attact elites), we should keep them and continue to apply them blindly. It will probably work long term.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However if we really want to make the internet better for programmers, regardless their level, culture, beliefs, *[put any difference here]*, we should either ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- simplify the rules&#xD;&#xA;- be more flexible about them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that that kind of questions should be avoided in the future:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10087/if-you-had-the-power-to-remove-one-thing-in-your-daily-job-what-would-it-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I see a lot of closed questions that should be kept open because of the value they (and will) provide to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90848/is-outsourcing-offshoring-disloyal&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1156/how-do-you-deal-with-bad-coworkers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10916/do-speakers-get-paid-for-their-tech-talks&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72090/want-to-quit-they-want-me-to-stay&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90383/punishment-for-breaking-the-build&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78956/i-no-longer-want-to-be-a-developer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3272/job-hopping-is-it-a-problem&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21782/stagnating-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11440/being-a-good-mentor&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5372/how-do-programmers-stay-healthy&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87155/evolution-of-mainstream-programming-languages-simplicity-versus-complexity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But on the other hand, I see many questions that should be closed according the same rules, but are left open. I selected questions where at least one moderator answered: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89666/promotion-or-de-motivation/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84265/giving-employer-power-of-attorney-to-obtain-your-inventions/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83225/should-a-developer-be-forced-to-memorize-details/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76858/how-important-is-it-to-finish-projects/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72001/so-theyre-trying-to-pull-me-into-management/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4000/how-involved-should-our-employers-be-in-our-education/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80898/how-do-you-ask-or-get-asked-to-speak-at-a-software-conference/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77102/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences/ - How does one network at software conferences?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, **all the questions** above deserve to stay opened. With their answers, they are all **very valuable** for the vast majority of programmers and **contribute to a better internet**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should measure how valuable a question would be before closing it, instead of applying rules blindly. That's the role of the moderators. To be effective, this task **must** be collective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that questions which main aim is having fun and/or social interactions should be closed, however, some highly interesting questions should be able to remain on the site. Because they are interesting and useful, and only for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When in doubt, moderator should request opinions like Mark Trapp [did][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That flexibility, that is called [practical wisdom][3], and I strongly believe it's the way to go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta/1896#1896&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1859/whats-constructive-about-being-lazy-and-incompetent&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1675/frequently-closing-popular-questions/1677#1677" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4679" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1907" RevisionGUID="63dc8460-9f38-4581-ab6e-1367d78803b9" CreationDate="2011-07-08T10:38:23.573" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Is providing more *flexibility* what P.SE needs?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4680" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1907" RevisionGUID="63dc8460-9f38-4581-ab6e-1367d78803b9" CreationDate="2011-07-08T10:38:23.573" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4681" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1895" RevisionGUID="c7ccbeb7-5382-4626-9bae-02b1d0715c63" CreationDate="2011-07-08T10:38:51.340" UserDisplayName="user2567" Comment="added 162 characters in body" Text="Most meta posts are related to closed questions and misunderstanding about what sort of questions is allowed here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that we don't offer any alternative to the user that the become very frustrated. It's clear that many existing community members have expressed numerous times their own frustration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not going to stop anytime soon. We need to provide them with a solution, and SE network can do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I created a [proposal on area51][1] to offer an alternative to those programmers seeking for help &amp; advice by other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I count on your support and if the proposal is a success, I suggest to setup a migration path from P.SE to the new proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**: it has been closed as *P.SE* duplicate :) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE2**: I address a last idea [here][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33531/programmers-life&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1907/is-providing-more-flexibility-what-p-se-needs" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4682" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1908" RevisionGUID="9ffbac73-ac88-4242-a40c-3601cb1bf2b7" CreationDate="2011-07-08T11:15:27.877" UserId="37" Text="&gt; IMHO, all the questions above deserve to stay opened. With their answers, they are all very valuable for the vast majority of programmers and contribute to a better internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Define &quot;valuable&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I said in an earlier response, here is how we define the value of a question and answer at Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Am I learning anything here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More specifically,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Can your peers learn anything from this question that will advance their professional career?&#xD;&#xA;2. Does this question address a real, actual problem your peers are facing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we suppress discussion and chatty stuff is quite simple: [it negates learning][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; At first [more conversations] looks like a positive thing, right? Over on FriendFeed people are telling me “we have more conversations.” That’s true, but **the more conversations I got involved in the less I found I was learning.**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I find I’m craving experts lately. People who build things. People who do things. People who make things happen. Tony Robbins, when he spoke at the Twitter Conference last month said that Twitter is his knowledge machine. He uses it to import great minds.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The thing is in the early days of a community having serendipity, which is what Facebook and FriendFeed’s forum features bring, make things a lot of fun. After all, it makes finding people who are like minded with you easier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But eventually the experts (ie, people who are teaching you stuff) get drowned out and you are left with an experience that looks more like the magazine rack at a grocery store than a book shelf at Harvard. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, it's [not that we hate fun, because we don't][2]. Some fun is fine, so long as the focus is squarely on the learning. Fun is a great condiment like ketchup -- but there's a difference between french fries with ketchup, which are delicious, and chugging ketchup straight from the bottle, which is disgusting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Fun must _always_ be subservient to learning.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are more interested in conversation than learning, it's very simple: *you are in the wrong place.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://scobleizer.com/2009/11/02/the-chat-roomforum-problem-an-apology-to-technosailor/&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4683" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1907" RevisionGUID="e32eea46-d7e0-4c2d-8fdb-b0843510d9a4" CreationDate="2011-07-08T11:55:26.170" UserId="37" Comment="re-edit so we get full matching links (limit increased to 40 on metas)" Text="As per Jeff's [request][1] (see comments), I will try to illustrate how I see things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The high number of closed questions and frustrated users complaints is a pretty good indication that our rules and/or guidelines are too complicated to understand by the average developer (and I'm one of them). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the goal is to create an elitistic community of programmers (and attact elites), we should keep them and continue to apply them blindly. It will probably work long term.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However if we really want to make the internet better for programmers, regardless their level, culture, beliefs, *[put any difference here]*, we should either ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- simplify the rules&#xD;&#xA;- be more flexible about them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that that kind of questions should be avoided in the future:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10087/if-you-had-the-power-to-remove-one-thing-in-your-daily-job-what-would-it-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I see a lot of closed questions that should be kept open because of the value they (and will) provide to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90848/is-outsourcing-offshoring-disloyal&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1156/how-do-you-deal-with-bad-coworkers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10916/do-speakers-get-paid-for-their-tech-talks&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72090/want-to-quit-they-want-me-to-stay&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90383/punishment-for-breaking-the-build&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78956/i-no-longer-want-to-be-a-developer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3272/job-hopping-is-it-a-problem&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21782/stagnating-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11440/being-a-good-mentor&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5372/how-do-programmers-stay-healthy&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87155/evolution-of-mainstream-programming-languages-simplicity-versus-complexity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But on the other hand, I see many questions that should be closed according the same rules, but are left open. I selected questions where at least one moderator answered: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89666/promotion-or-de-motivation/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84265/giving-employer-power-of-attorney-to-obtain-your-inventions/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83225/should-a-developer-be-forced-to-memorize-details/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76858/how-important-is-it-to-finish-projects/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72001/so-theyre-trying-to-pull-me-into-management/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4000/how-involved-should-our-employers-be-in-our-education/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80898/how-do-you-ask-or-get-asked-to-speak-at-a-software-conference/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77102/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences/ - How does one network at software conferences?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, **all the questions** above deserve to stay opened. With their answers, they are all **very valuable** for the vast majority of programmers and **contribute to a better internet**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should measure how valuable a question would be before closing it, instead of applying rules blindly. That's the role of the moderators. To be effective, this task **must** be collective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that questions which main aim is having fun and/or social interactions should be closed, however, some highly interesting questions should be able to remain on the site. Because they are interesting and useful, and only for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When in doubt, moderator should request opinions like Mark Trapp [did][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That flexibility, that is called [practical wisdom][3], and I strongly believe it's the way to go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta/1896#1896&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1859/whats-constructive-about-being-lazy-and-incompetent&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1675/frequently-closing-popular-questions/1677#1677" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4684" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1909" RevisionGUID="f29aad28-5075-4d7b-b07c-194da1826941" CreationDate="2011-07-08T14:22:08.027" UserId="226" Text="Jeff responded to the bulk of this, so I'm just going to touch on a couple points that stood out to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;I think we should measure how valuable a question would be before closing it, instead of applying rules blindly. That's the role of the moderators. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe it's better to close a good question too soon (and subsequently reopen it after review, of course) than to let a bad question stay open too long. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't apply rules blindly. We go by prior history of similar questions, existing flags and close votes, the site-specific rules established here (e.g. &quot;'what language should I learn next' questions are off-topic&quot;), and the network-wide guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;When in doubt, moderator should request opinions like Mark Trapp did.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do request opinions. Making a meta post for every case is not feasible, but we look for flags, close/reopen votes, and comments on the post. For most cases, there is no dissenting community opinion -- we see flags telling us a post doesn't belong, we review it, and then leave it open if the flags are wrong, let the community handle it from there, or close it. It is now possible for 10k+ users to disagree with a flag by marking it &quot;invalid&quot;. We definitely take that kind of feedback into account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're always thinking about questions and evaluating their potential. We *want* to keep good content on this site and draw in more content like it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that you see some questions stay open even if blind adherence to the rules would see them closed proves that. There is an obvious correlation open questions and moderator answers on them -- we don't answer questions we know will get closed because [it's poor etiquette](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1006/is-it-appropriate-to-answer-a-question-and-vote-to-close-it-at-the-same-time).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We try to let through a reasonable mix of good quality topics that are useful and can teach a developer something. Jeff covered the emphasis on learning in his answer, so I'm not going to repeat that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In closing, please flag, please vote, please comment. Please make meta posts if you feel a question stayed open or got closed by mistake, regardless of whether there were moderator actions on it. Guidance from the community is invaluable and we all really appreciate having it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4685" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1909" RevisionGUID="0f39a819-22de-4302-b1e9-84c6cf4668d5" CreationDate="2011-07-08T17:42:43.143" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body" Text="Jeff responded to the bulk of this, so I'm just going to touch on a couple points that stood out to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;I think we should measure how valuable a question would be before closing it, instead of applying rules blindly. That's the role of the moderators. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe it's better to close a good question too soon (and subsequently reopen it after review, of course) than to let a bad question stay open too long. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't apply rules blindly. We go by prior history of similar questions, existing flags and close votes, the site-specific rules established here (e.g. &quot;'what language should I learn next' questions are off-topic&quot;), and the network-wide guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;When in doubt, moderator should request opinions like Mark Trapp did.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do request opinions. Making a meta post for every case is not feasible, but we look for flags, close/reopen votes, and comments on the post. For most cases, there is no dissenting community opinion -- we see flags telling us a post doesn't belong, we review it, and then leave it open if the flags are wrong, let the community handle it from there, or close it. It is now possible for 10k+ users to disagree with a flag by marking it &quot;invalid&quot;. We definitely take that kind of feedback into account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're always thinking about questions and evaluating their potential. We *want* to keep good content on this site and draw in more content like it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that you see some questions stay open even if blind adherence to the rules would see them closed proves that. There is an obvious correlation open questions and moderator answers on them -- we don't answer questions we know will get closed because [it's poor etiquette](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1006/is-it-appropriate-to-answer-a-question-and-vote-to-close-it-at-the-same-time).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We try to let through a reasonable mix of good quality topics that are useful and can teach a developer something. Jeff covered the emphasis on learning in his answer, so I'm not going to repeat that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In closing, please flag, please vote, please comment. Please make meta posts if you feel a question stayed open or got closed by mistake, regardless of whether a moderator acted on it or not. Guidance from the community is invaluable and we all really appreciate having it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4686" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1910" RevisionGUID="bcba4e55-7669-4186-a371-7641b19dea8c" CreationDate="2011-07-08T22:57:26.860" UserId="4" Text=" - Algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - Design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Algorithms, data structures, and design patterns, in my opinion, belong on Stack Overflow. This is especially true considering that &quot;specific programming problems&quot; (design patterns are potential solutions to these) and &quot;software algorithms&quot; are on-topic on SO. I would also suspect that &quot;higher-level&quot; (meaning above and beyond implementation specifics) would probably be more suitable to Theoretical Computer Science or Mathematics, depending on the specific question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [SQA Stack Exchange][1] is now in public beta. Feeding QA questions to them would probably be beneficial to their community. In fact, according to [their Area 51 stats][2], they could use some more questions and visits per day. We should show them some love.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that the FAQ should also be more specific about tools (IDEs, editors, libraries) belong on StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2241/software-quality-assurance-testing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4687" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1910" RevisionGUID="bcba4e55-7669-4186-a371-7641b19dea8c" CreationDate="2011-07-08T22:57:26.860" UserId="4" Text="Can we rethink a few &quot;on-topic&quot; points?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4688" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1910" RevisionGUID="bcba4e55-7669-4186-a371-7641b19dea8c" CreationDate="2011-07-08T22:57:26.860" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4689" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1911" RevisionGUID="0216ab02-8ecc-4bde-ad93-fd5fffcacd0e" CreationDate="2011-07-08T23:03:30.537" UserId="226" Text="I agree about making it more clear that tool questions belong on Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not sure about SQA, though. I think we can direct people there, but until they're out of beta, I wouldn't remove the topic from our FAQ. I realize this is kind of a chicken and egg thing, but I'm not sure what the right move is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Last but not least, I disagree that algorithm and design pattern questions belong on Stack Overflow. So long as we aren't talking about problems with a specific implementation of an algorithm or a pattern, they are certainly welcome here. Programmers is for whiteboard-y type questions and both algorithm and software design concepts are great for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If nothing else, I personally think those subjects are the more interesting ones that we welcome. Taking them off of our on-topic list would be a loss, especially considering that Stack Overflow tends to not respond very well to questions that don't involve code." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4690" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1912" RevisionGUID="a03a6ac3-e524-4668-b6be-4142f12c753b" CreationDate="2011-07-08T23:12:58.253" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The problems Software Quality Assurance has shouldn't have any effect on our site: [Joel Spolsky warned](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/) about the issues of trying to segment the programmer population into progressively smaller camps, and the fact that they can't field enough questions, to me, indicates Spolsky wasn't far off the mark in his original assessment. Many, although perhaps not all, questions related to the topic *are* on-topic here and shouldn't be migrated to a struggling beta site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to the other questions: as Anna points to, [they're not on-topic on Stack Overflow, and are on-topic here](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/). Stack Overflow is for very specific, here-is-my-code-and-I'm-not-sure-where-I-went-wrong-with-it questions; Programmers.SE is for conceptual I'm-planning-on-doing-this-but-need-help-with-the-big-picture questions. The topics you list as being better off on Stack Overflow are are our *best*, most useful questions: the questions that most resemble what Programmers.SE is about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, if *these* questions aren't on-topic here, what *is*? The [junky questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl) that [aren't good enough](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow) for Stack Overflow? We figured out early on in beta that wasn't going to work, and that's why Programmers.SE was launched as the conceptual yang to Stack Overflow's concrete yin." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4691" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1908" RevisionGUID="7f975044-68a0-4d10-bec0-c73e074f72c4" CreationDate="2011-07-09T03:24:55.940" UserId="37" Comment="deleted 8 characters in body; deleted 5 characters in body" Text="&gt; IMHO, all the questions above deserve to stay opened. With their answers, they are all very valuable for the vast majority of programmers and contribute to a better internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Define &quot;valuable&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I said in an earlier response, here is how we define the value of a question and answer at Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Am I learning anything here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More specifically,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Can your peers learn anything from this question that will advance their professional career?&#xD;&#xA;2. Does this question address a real, actual problem your peers are facing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we suppress discussion and chatty stuff is quite simple: [it negates learning][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; At first [more conversations] looks like a positive thing, right? Over on FriendFeed people are telling me “we have more conversations.” That’s true, but **the more conversations I got involved in the less I found I was learning.**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I find I’m craving experts lately. People who build things. People who do things. People who make things happen. Tony Robbins, when he spoke at the Twitter Conference last month said that Twitter is his knowledge machine. He uses it to import great minds.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The thing is in the early days of a community having serendipity, which is what Facebook and FriendFeed’s forum features bring, make things a lot of fun. After all, it makes finding people who are like minded with you easier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But eventually the experts (ie, people who are teaching you stuff) get drowned out and you are left with an experience that looks more like the magazine rack at a grocery store than a book shelf at Harvard. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, it's [not that we hate fun, because we don't][2]. Some fun is fine, so long as the focus is squarely on the learning. Fun is a great condiment like ketchup -- but there's a difference between french fries with ketchup, which are delicious, and chugging ketchup straight from the bottle, which is disgusting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Fun must _always_ be subservient to learning.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are more interested in conversation than learning, *you might be in the wrong place.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://scobleizer.com/2009/11/02/the-chat-roomforum-problem-an-apology-to-technosailor/&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4692" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1907" RevisionGUID="37cf2234-8d01-42b4-9c1a-66d9f811ed85" CreationDate="2011-07-09T03:25:57.143" UserId="37" Comment="deleted 47 characters in body" Text="As per Jeff's [request][1] (see comments), I will try to illustrate how I see things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The high number of closed questions and frustrated users complaints is a pretty good indication that our rules and/or guidelines are too complicated to understand by the average developer (and I'm one of them). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the goal is to create an elitistic community of programmers (and attact elites), we should keep them and continue to apply them blindly. It will probably work long term.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However if we really want to make the internet better for programmers, regardless their level, culture, beliefs, *[put any difference here]*, we should either ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- simplify the rules&#xD;&#xA;- be more flexible about them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that that kind of questions should be avoided in the future:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10087/if-you-had-the-power-to-remove-one-thing-in-your-daily-job-what-would-it-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I see a lot of closed questions that should be kept open because of the value they (and will) provide to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90848/is-outsourcing-offshoring-disloyal&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1156/how-do-you-deal-with-bad-coworkers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10916/do-speakers-get-paid-for-their-tech-talks&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72090/want-to-quit-they-want-me-to-stay&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90383/punishment-for-breaking-the-build&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78956/i-no-longer-want-to-be-a-developer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3272/job-hopping-is-it-a-problem&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21782/stagnating-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11440/being-a-good-mentor&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5372/how-do-programmers-stay-healthy&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87155/evolution-of-mainstream-programming-languages-simplicity-versus-complexity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But on the other hand, I see many questions that should be closed according the same rules, but are left open. I selected questions where at least one moderator answered: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89666/promotion-or-de-motivation/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84265/giving-employer-power-of-attorney-to-obtain-your-inventions/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83225/should-a-developer-be-forced-to-memorize-details/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76858/how-important-is-it-to-finish-projects/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72001/so-theyre-trying-to-pull-me-into-management/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4000/how-involved-should-our-employers-be-in-our-education/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80898/how-do-you-ask-or-get-asked-to-speak-at-a-software-conference/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77102/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences/ &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, **all the questions** above deserve to stay opened. With their answers, they are all **very valuable** for the vast majority of programmers and **contribute to a better internet**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should measure how valuable a question would be before closing it, instead of applying rules blindly. That's the role of the moderators. To be effective, this task **must** be collective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that questions which main aim is having fun and/or social interactions should be closed, however, some highly interesting questions should be able to remain on the site. Because they are interesting and useful, and only for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When in doubt, moderator should request opinions like Mark Trapp [did][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That flexibility, that is called [practical wisdom][3], and I strongly believe it's the way to go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta/1896#1896&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1859/whats-constructive-about-being-lazy-and-incompetent&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1675/frequently-closing-popular-questions/1677#1677" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4693" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1899" RevisionGUID="2bcd16ea-a8b1-4c97-82ad-3c22afe4378c" CreationDate="2011-07-09T05:55:52.817" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 243 characters in body; added 6 characters in body" Text="So over the past few days I noticed a bit of an up-tick in the number of questions being migrated from Stack Overflow that aren't good fits for Programmers.SE or Stack Exchange in general: either they're off-topic, not-constructive, or just not answerable questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I decided to do a bit of an analysis on questions migrated here, and here's what I found:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Last day: 6/16 migrated questions closed (37.5% fail rate)&#xD;&#xA;* Last week: 21/66 (31.8% fail rate)&#xD;&#xA;* Last 30 days: 79/316 (25% fail rate)&#xD;&#xA;* Previous 30 days: 70/306 (22% fail rate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So there is a bit of an up-tick, but I'm not sure what to make of it or if there are any conclusions to be drawn from it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is, is a 20% fail rate normal or expected? What about 40%? Is this just a quirk of two popular sites sharing a migration path, or is there something that can be done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;There's a [new migration stats page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats) in the 10k+ tools that now show these numbers for the past 90 days: it's a 26% failure rate for Stack Overflow over that time period." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4694" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1913" RevisionGUID="7b14cb13-98b5-4203-996d-d087853935cb" CreationDate="2011-07-09T21:28:01.680" UserId="5095" Text="Would it be possible to tie the ability to migrate a question to PSE to PSE Rep in some way? As a sign that at least one person voting to migrate the question actually had a sufficient understanding of PSE to make that call?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Say at least one of those voting to migrate has to have sufficient rep to close / reopen questions on here? Just a background check hidden from the user at the time it's closed - it's it's passed it migrates exactly as at present, if not then it just closes as off-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4695" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1914" RevisionGUID="d47a045e-d5a2-4395-ab4a-f8e40129d49f" CreationDate="2011-07-09T21:33:33.713" UserId="5095" Text="The issue with saying, we don't do that, it goes to SQA is that it's for &quot;software quality control experts, automation engineers, and software testers&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I have some stuff in common with that group, manage people in that group and sometimes want input into issues from people in that group but sometimes I want to ask QA related questions to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I as a unit test question, that's a QA question but it's also a programmer (rather than test analyst) question. Similarly, code review is QA but it's programmer QA not test analyst.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like SQA and will go sign up and suggest to my test team they do the same, but it doesn't mean that QA isn't a programmers topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same is true of design patterns. The question &quot;how do I drive effective adoption of design patterns in my team?&quot; (or some better variant there of) is a valid programmers question, and an invalid SO one. Are we saying we wouldn't allow it though?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These boundaries can't be hard, it has to be on a question by question basis." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4696" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1915" RevisionGUID="df76cfb2-d06a-4e76-879c-b5628ec5fee7" CreationDate="2011-07-10T01:19:56.437" UserId="4828" Text="I was thinking about posting a separate question titled &quot;P.SE Considered Harmful?&quot;, but I think this question raises the issues I wanted to talk about in a non-snarky way. I come to very different conclusions then @Konrad though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hit P.SE when I have a few minutes to kill during compiles and test runs. I'm looking for a few minutes of titillation and amusement and usually find it. I sometimes contribute an answer, but usually only when I have some personal experience, and a narcissistic compulsion to share my anecdote with the world. Can anyone get value (other than entertainment and confirmation bias) from random anecdotes responding to one or two paragraph subjective questions? If my behavior is typical of many users, then I fear that the wisest, most intelligent moderation in the world won't be able to keep P.SE from devolving into noise. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This contrasts with SO, which is a better reference tool than ever, but now much less entertaining. I participate on P.SE because it's easy, but value SO far more highly because it's useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I have nothing but appreciation for the job the moderators and the SE staff have taken on, and there may be many users like @Konrad who are approaching P.SE in a mature way. I'm just concerned that having opened up a site to tackle subjective question they will inevitably be overrun by barbarians like me, no matter how the moderation is done." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4697" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1915" RevisionGUID="f3ba8fc7-b3f3-489b-9150-0f923cce9a41" CreationDate="2011-07-10T01:37:39.807" UserId="4828" Comment="added missing comma" Text="I was thinking about posting a separate question titled &quot;P.SE Considered Harmful?&quot;, but I think this question raises the issues I wanted to talk about in a non-snarky way. I come to very different conclusions then @Konrad though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hit P.SE when I have a few minutes to kill during compiles and test runs. I'm looking for a few minutes of titillation and amusement and usually find it. I sometimes contribute an answer, but usually only when I have some personal experience, and a narcissistic compulsion to share my anecdote with the world. Can anyone get value (other than entertainment and confirmation bias) from random anecdotes responding to one or two paragraph subjective questions? If my behavior is typical of many users, then I fear that the wisest, most intelligent moderation in the world won't be able to keep P.SE from devolving into noise. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This contrasts with SO, which is a better reference tool than ever, but now much less entertaining. I participate on P.SE because it's easy, but value SO far more highly because it's useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I have nothing but appreciation for the job the moderators and the SE staff have taken on, and there may be many users like @Konrad who are approaching P.SE in a mature way. I'm just concerned that having opened up a site to tackle subjective questions, they will inevitably be overrun by barbarians like me, no matter how the moderation is done." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4698" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1916" RevisionGUID="1560cea2-e3b0-43e1-b359-0022a49e941d" CreationDate="2011-07-10T03:03:39.217" UserId="30" Text="Stop abusing &quot;Too Localized.&quot; That is meant to close questions that are so specific to a particular place and time that they can only possible benefit the poster, or questions which would be obsolete in a matter of seconds. Just because there is a location in a question doesn't mean it's too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every question doesn't have to be relevant to every participant on this site. There are plenty of questions on stackoverflow.com about obscure tools that only a few programmers use, and they are fine. That's why questions about a particular geography with only a few programmers in it do not have to be closed as long as they are going to be beneficial to someone else who finds this question later.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Classic example of too localized: &quot;Why is there a Green Honda Civic parked on my block right now?&quot; Or, &quot;Has the latest version of OS-X shipped yet?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4699" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1917" RevisionGUID="74ea68b6-892a-4345-b9cc-0506328c1cfd" CreationDate="2011-07-11T02:28:03.287" UserId="3249" Text="I think what you really mean when you say that those questions are valuable is that the **answers** are valuable, or have the potential to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bad questions can receive great answers; hell, there's even a [badge for it][1].  The yardstick of a great question is the *ratio* of great answers.  Note that I say yardstick and not criteria; it's an heuristic, something that *often* provides great insight but isn't infallible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A truly amazing question helps the craft *not only* by mentioning a popular or thought-provoking topic that other developers can relate to, but also by challenging and persuading readers to *make their answers count*, to *think* before posting and really make sure that the message matters and will have a real impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some people are gifted teachers, or just very meticulous in their reading and writing; they have an uncanny ability to distill the pure essence out of impure questions and reflect it back in a genuinely enlightening and often entertaining answer.  However, as Shog points out in a comment, that talent is at least partially wasted because the original question remains in its raw, unedited, unclear, unfocused form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've noticed that many people have a lot of sincere difficulty maintaining separate mental scorecards for questions vs. answers.  This even permeated the Stack Exchange dev team and we ended up with [answers protecting questions from community deletion][2].  What's interesting is that most people have no trouble identifying the reverse situation - it's somewhat common to see highly-upvoted questions with only low-voted answers - but most of the time, question scores seem to get lifted up by answer scores, and even if they don't, the questions still get labeled as &quot;valuable&quot; in meta discussions such as this one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has the potential to over-credit the question authors.  Certainly, if a question has but one answer and that answer blows your mind, then probably the question itself was at least a little bit special.  But if a question has 1 or 2 great answers amidst a sea of 50-100 crappy ones, then that doesn't really tell you anything at all about the quality of the question, other than the fact that it happened to be posted in the right place at the right time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The former indicates a question that is difficult to answer, or has an authoritative answer (or maybe a couple of them).  The latter indicates a question that *anybody* can answer which happened to catch the fleeting attention of a few of the more prolific contributors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These answers are worth keeping, in both cases - but not at the expense of polluting the site tenfold with frivolity.  The lower-quality questions have to be edited and, in many cases, have their answers cleaned up by moderators, before they become valuable *questions* worthy of continued attention.  Otherwise, those great answers might as well just be archived as blog posts somewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that the rules need to be simplified, and I think that they already are quite flexible.  All of the history and context and discussion around question-asking here - the Six Guidelines, Real Questions Have Answers, the concentric circles now in the FAQ - they all boil down to the same essential concept, which is: **Is this *important* to our community?** That means more than just tickling our collective fancy - it implies that there is some *gravity* to the situation, a real problem that needs solving.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, to me, the First Principle of asking questions, here or anywhere else.  All of the current guidelines around it are just the mathematical formulas, intended to save the less-thoughtful or time-starved students from having to work it all out themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the core, it really is simple; simple things get complicated because everybody tries to interpret them in the way that best serves their own interests. That's why our real-life codes of laws and regulations are so mind-numbingly detailed and specific; we're trying to minimize, if not eliminate, any room for (mis)interpretation.  At least the FAQ isn't a bunch of dense legalese; it's just [six guidelines][3] and [five counterexamples][4].  If that's really too hard to understand, then all hope is lost.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/50/reversal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/50523/should-delete-votes-be-limited-like-close-votes/51071#51071&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4700" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1908" RevisionGUID="e2e8b225-600f-406e-b585-9a0f567ddfc3" CreationDate="2011-07-11T03:54:08.023" UserId="37" Comment="added 83 characters in body" Text="&gt; IMHO, all the questions above deserve to stay opened. With their answers, they are all very valuable for the vast majority of programmers and contribute to a better internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Define &quot;valuable&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I said in an earlier response, here is how we define the value of a question and answer at Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Am I learning anything here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More specifically,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Can your peers learn anything from this question that will advance their professional career?&#xD;&#xA;2. Does this question address a real, actual problem your peers are facing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we suppress discussion and chatty stuff is quite simple: [it negates learning][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; At first [more conversations] looks like a positive thing, right? Over on FriendFeed people are telling me “we have more conversations.” That’s true, but **the more conversations I got involved in the less I found I was learning.**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I find I’m craving experts lately. People who build things. People who do things. People who make things happen. Tony Robbins, when he spoke at the Twitter Conference last month said that Twitter is his knowledge machine. He uses it to import great minds.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The thing is in the early days of a community having serendipity, which is what Facebook and FriendFeed’s forum features bring, make things a lot of fun. After all, it makes finding people who are like minded with you easier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But eventually the experts (ie, people who are teaching you stuff) get drowned out and you are left with an experience that looks more like the magazine rack at a grocery store than a book shelf at Harvard. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, it's [not that we hate fun, because we don't][2]. Some fun is fine, so long as the focus is squarely on the learning. Fun is a great condiment like ketchup -- but there's a difference between french fries with ketchup, which are delicious, and chugging ketchup straight from the bottle, which is disgusting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![fries and ketchup quantity][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Fun must _always_ be subservient to learning.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are more interested in conversation than learning, *you might be in the wrong place.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://scobleizer.com/2009/11/02/the-chat-roomforum-problem-an-apology-to-technosailor/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/P0qe9.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4701" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1918" RevisionGUID="2c18a6d8-827d-4654-8c1e-56d020ad7ed4" CreationDate="2011-07-11T19:40:56.433" UserId="30838" Text="Today I have written two tag descriptions. The way I have done this was by clicking the 'help us create it' link in the tag overview.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few minutes ago I wanted to describe the 'maven' tag, but now the named link references to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/edit-tag-wiki/@tag.Id. As you see there seems to be a problem with the tag.Id parameter. I have tried this with several other tags which doesn't have a tag summary, all of them references to this URL.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can still create a tag summary by clicking the 'about the ... tag' in the tag overview and then click the 'Propose Tag Wiki'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also I can replace the @tag.Id with the name of the tag within this URL. It redirects to an URL where the tag name is replaced with its id." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4702" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1918" RevisionGUID="2c18a6d8-827d-4654-8c1e-56d020ad7ed4" CreationDate="2011-07-11T19:40:56.433" UserId="30838" Text="'Help us create it' link in empty tag overview suddenly broken" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4703" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1918" RevisionGUID="2c18a6d8-827d-4654-8c1e-56d020ad7ed4" CreationDate="2011-07-11T19:40:56.433" UserId="30838" Text="|bug|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4704" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1919" RevisionGUID="191b5df2-6705-4891-b044-fac487270b52" CreationDate="2011-07-12T00:04:50.130" UserId="30838" Text="Whenever I hover over a tag item I get a tooltip with information to this tag, except for my favourite tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I hover over one of my favourite tags I only get a tooltip 'show question tagged ...'. It would be nice if the tooltips are consistent. Especially to provide a 'single click' way to subscribe to a tag in my favourite list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I declare it as bug but you also could call it a feature request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4705" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1919" RevisionGUID="191b5df2-6705-4891-b044-fac487270b52" CreationDate="2011-07-12T00:04:50.130" UserId="30838" Text="Tooltips of tags not consistent" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4706" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1919" RevisionGUID="191b5df2-6705-4891-b044-fac487270b52" CreationDate="2011-07-12T00:04:50.130" UserId="30838" Text="|bug|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4707" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1881" RevisionGUID="8abcaa06-ae48-4415-bb34-6411277071b8" CreationDate="2011-07-12T02:37:25.517" UserId="9293" Comment="added 241 characters in body" Text="As per: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1877/moderator-powers-are-unchecked-closing-7-10-programmers-related-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree whole heartedly.  There are a couple moderators of programmers.SE who have gone power mad, deleting important content and leaving off-topic remarks in its place.  They close questions that the community is obviously interested in with no regard for that community at all.  These individuals are a detriment to the site and need to have their moderator priveleges revoked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE is a community run and driven architecture.  We are able to vote IN moderators but I've yet to see anything on how to vote OUT a moderator.  Surely if there is such a method it should be clarified, and if not it should be created.  During the voting procedure there's little to tell people how well a person will moderate and when it becomes clear that they are abusing their powers there should be a method in place for the same community that voted them into office to get rid of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does one begin the process of impeaching a moderator?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be noted that there's actually only a couple such moderators.  There's always a bad apple in every bunch.  I'm not saying the site doesn't need ANY application of moderation, only that certain individuals need to stop, have been asked to stop, and now need to be taken out of office.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since Mr. CRT wishes names to be named: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88953/what-kind-of-programmer-can-i-expect-for-near-minimum-wages/89262 &lt;- review the edits made to that post.  Perfect example of moderator trolling." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4708" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1920" RevisionGUID="f4cc8e9d-9f1a-4f5f-89a8-26c8fd6babf3" CreationDate="2011-07-12T03:37:06.963" UserId="37" Text="This is by design at the moment; the favorite tag area is so dense that a large onhover popup would make it fairly hard to navigate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4709" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1919" RevisionGUID="c302745e-eb19-42ae-8554-77ff2f80b272" CreationDate="2011-07-12T03:37:15.527" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4710" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1921" RevisionGUID="5d7c66a4-943d-4154-b4cf-4637ea1b1f62" CreationDate="2011-07-12T05:18:03.783" UserId="104" Text="Yes ... I messed this one up, a fix will be deployed later today ... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4711" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1918" RevisionGUID="7d385c44-ae7c-4b4e-9532-b7969954fb5c" CreationDate="2011-07-12T05:18:12.130" UserId="104" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4712" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1922" RevisionGUID="717cd713-6bb1-4e19-aeb3-8569c816fd22" CreationDate="2011-07-12T09:56:28.677" UserId="27103" Text="A week ago, I asked [this question][1] about code editor UX design. The first response to this was an extremely polite moderators comment (since deleted) asking if I wanted it to be migrated to UX.StackExchange - this moderators comment was upvoted about 8 times. In my reply to this comment (also deleted) I recognized the overlap but pleaded for it to remain on the grounds that I wanted the advice of programmers first, before going to the UX designers. Thankfully, it was allowed to remain and I got invaluable help from both answers and comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, in the normal course of events, a UX designer would probably be given the UX problem (addressed by the question) first. They would then come up with some options and then test these out with developers, who might contribute their own ideas which the designer would consider, the process would then repeat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that we can't really bounce questions and answers back and forth across forums, is it ok **in principle**, to submit UX-related questions to Programmers when they're related to the design of programmers tools?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My own view is that questions on programmers tools are high-risk on the subjectivity-scale. But, provided that they can be framed so as not to elicit too many &quot;my tool is better because it does this&quot; responses; they can produce informative, interesting, useful and even innovative answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a tools developer these questions are based on real issues, either for now or the near future. I've listed some extremely raw questions below, to provide just a flavor:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. Which code editor or IDE feature has had the greatest influence on programming language design?&#xD;&#xA;  2. Which parts of IDE functionality most readily lend themselves to touch/gesture based interfaces and why?&#xD;&#xA;  3. What is the best way to measure/assess whether indentation of code within editors is more space-efficient than the alternative methods for conveying code nesting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/87077/27103" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4713" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1922" RevisionGUID="717cd713-6bb1-4e19-aeb3-8569c816fd22" CreationDate="2011-07-12T09:56:28.677" UserId="27103" Text="Are questions on UX related issues specific to programmers' tools ok?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4714" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1922" RevisionGUID="717cd713-6bb1-4e19-aeb3-8569c816fd22" CreationDate="2011-07-12T09:56:28.677" UserId="27103" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4715" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1922" RevisionGUID="8d41f96a-68d3-4cf6-b962-b0e47d35a020" CreationDate="2011-07-12T10:29:08.663" UserId="27103" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4716" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1923" RevisionGUID="68c907d6-91c4-429e-9a1b-a1b3b7db9679" CreationDate="2011-07-12T11:22:50.987" UserId="47" Text="To comment on your specific questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1) Which code editor or IDE feature has had the greatest influence on programming language design?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't this is constructive, at least as phrased. It's too open to every answer being equally valid and is likely just to result in a list of people's favourite IDE/language.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2) Which parts of IDE functionality most readily lend themselves to touch/gesture based interfaces and why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure on this one. While it is programmer focused in talking about IDEs I think it would be more suited to UX as the problem is not limited to the tools that software developers use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3) What is the best way to measure/assess whether indentation of code within editors is more space-efficient than the alternative methods for conveying code nesting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While this one is probably on topic, I'm not sure that it's a particularly useful question in these days of multi-gigabyte hard drives." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4717" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1924" RevisionGUID="f20559bd-f12a-4cc1-be10-dfc844212a32" CreationDate="2011-07-12T13:30:54.013" UserId="12063" Text="I just got my shiny new Deputy badge so I feel compelled to join the posse - I'm going thru some of the open ones and flagging for moderator attention." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4718" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1925" RevisionGUID="60ddd811-7230-452b-a986-9211311019e1" CreationDate="2011-07-12T19:18:19.787" UserId="27757" Text="I was wondering if it was possible to create a &quot;pinned&quot; topic that has links to the best all-time questions on P.SE. My query is similar to this thread: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1714/the-best-of-programmers-se-1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the difference is that instead of a weekly thread, I imagine a permanent thread that is rarely updated but has essential links. Sort of a &quot;best of P.SE&quot; thread that users new and old can visit to reference old topics or get answers to the most frequent questions. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4719" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1925" RevisionGUID="60ddd811-7230-452b-a986-9211311019e1" CreationDate="2011-07-12T19:18:19.787" UserId="27757" Text="Essentials for P.SE" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4720" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1925" RevisionGUID="60ddd811-7230-452b-a986-9211311019e1" CreationDate="2011-07-12T19:18:19.787" UserId="27757" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4721" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="384" RevisionGUID="f8a7e1c2-46e6-4842-a69d-35a9eac00731" CreationDate="2011-07-12T20:36:00.403" UserId="226" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="This tag is not useful.  &quot;Recommendations&quot; and &quot;Favorites&quot; is covered by voting on questions/answers and the star.  &quot;Best&quot; is relative and there are tools in place to better facilitate what I think Peter is trying to accomplish.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather than retagging, a better way to point out &quot;best of breed&quot; questions is to create a blog post or something outside the site which points to your &quot;top X questions and answers on [some subject]&quot; or something like that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4722" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1922" RevisionGUID="a2007cf0-e249-461c-b213-dc8232a0e5b3" CreationDate="2011-07-12T21:18:51.760" UserId="27103" Comment="added 1781 characters in body" Text="A week ago, I asked [this question][1] about code editor UX design. The first response to this was an extremely polite moderators comment (since deleted) asking if I wanted it to be migrated to UX.StackExchange - this moderators comment was upvoted about 8 times. In my reply to this comment (also deleted) I recognized the overlap but pleaded for it to remain on the grounds that I wanted the advice of programmers first, before going to the UX designers. Thankfully, it was allowed to remain and I got invaluable help from both answers and comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, in the normal course of events, a UX designer would probably be given the UX problem (addressed by the question) first. They would then come up with some options and then test these out with developers, who might contribute their own ideas which the designer would consider, the process would then repeat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that we can't really bounce questions and answers back and forth across forums, is it ok **in principle**, to submit UX-related questions to Programmers when they're related to the design of programmers tools?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My own view is that questions on programmers tools are high-risk on the subjectivity-scale. But, provided that they can be framed so as not to elicit too many &quot;my tool is better because it does this&quot; responses; they can produce informative, interesting, useful and even innovative answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a tools developer these questions are based on real issues, either for now or the near future. I've listed some extremely raw questions below, to provide just a flavor:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. Which code editor or IDE feature has had the greatest influence on programming language design?&#xD;&#xA;  2. Which parts of IDE functionality most readily lend themselves to touch/gesture based interfaces and why?&#xD;&#xA;  3. What is the best way to measure/assess whether indentation of code within editors is more space-efficient than the alternative methods for conveying code nesting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[Edit - Following 1st Answer]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't get too distracted by the above 'sketch' questions - the real question is in the title. The idea is to establish a general principle, discussing the merits of the sample questions was not the intention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having said that, the above questions have be re-drafted with totally fictional answers **for illustrative purposes only**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Q1.** Which IDE feature or Code Editor feature has had the greatest influence on programming language design?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**A1.** Auto-completion. e.g. LINQ and other modern function languages require the subject of an expression to comes first so that auto-completion can be provided within that expression (different from SQL).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Q2.** Which parts of IDE functionality most readily lend themselves to touch/gesture based interfaces and why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**A2**. Operations within the IDE related to project files. Because gestures are efficient when managing large sets of objects in groups and also there's useful overlap with other touch-based applications that handle files.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;**Q3**. What is the best way to measure/assess whether indentation of code within editors is more efficient in terms of screen real-estate usage than the alternative methods for conveying code nesting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**A3**. Use the sample code from this [made up] website that implements the same algorithm using 3 popular programming langauges with each one following 3 different established conventions for code structure and formatting. Plot a graph showing the cumulative character space usage for these for each line of code. Then overlay this data with the equivalent space usage taken by the methods put forward as an alternative to indentation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/87077/27103&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/WDciM.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4723" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1922" RevisionGUID="eb1ec512-3bb7-42a8-a6f4-9e7ca42b51da" CreationDate="2011-07-12T21:32:48.720" UserId="27103" Comment="added 6 characters in body" Text="A week ago, I asked [this question][1] about code editor UX design. The first response to this was an extremely polite moderators comment (since deleted) asking if I wanted it to be migrated to UX.StackExchange - this moderators comment was upvoted about 8 times. In my reply to this comment (also deleted) I recognized the overlap but pleaded for it to remain on the grounds that I wanted the advice of programmers first, before going to the UX designers. Thankfully, it was allowed to remain and I got invaluable help from both answers and comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, in the normal course of events, a UX designer would probably be given the UX problem (addressed by the question) first. They would then come up with some options and then test these out with developers, who might contribute their own ideas which the designer would consider, the process would then repeat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that we can't really bounce questions and answers back and forth across forums, is it ok **in principle**, to submit UX-related questions to Programmers when they're related to the design of programmers tools?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My own view is that questions on programmers tools are high-risk on the subjectivity-scale. But, provided that they can be framed so as not to elicit too many &quot;my tool is better because it does this&quot; responses; they can produce informative, interesting, useful and even innovative answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a tools developer these questions are based on real issues, either for now or the near future. I've listed some extremely raw questions below, to provide just a flavor:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. Which code editor or IDE feature has had the greatest influence on programming language design?&#xD;&#xA;  2. Which parts of IDE functionality most readily lend themselves to touch/gesture based interfaces and why?&#xD;&#xA;  3. What is the best way to measure/assess whether indentation of code within editors is more space-efficient than the alternative methods for conveying code nesting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[Edit - Following 1st Answer]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't get too distracted by the above 'sketch' questions - the real question is in the title. The idea is to establish a general principle, discussing the merits of the sample questions was not the intention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having said the above, the sample questions have be re-drafted with totally fictional answers **for illustrative purposes only**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Q1.** Which IDE feature or Code Editor feature has had the greatest influence on programming language design?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**A1.** Auto-completion. e.g. LINQ and other modern function languages require the subject of an expression to comes first so that auto-completion can be provided within that expression (different from SQL).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Q2.** Which parts of IDE functionality most readily lend themselves to touch/gesture based interfaces and why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**A2**. Operations within the IDE related to project files. Because gestures are efficient when managing large sets of objects in groups and also there's useful overlap with other touch-based applications that handle files.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;**Q3**. What is the best way to measure/assess whether indentation of code within editors is more efficient in terms of screen real-estate usage than the alternative methods for conveying code nesting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**A3**. Use the sample code from this [made up] website that implements the same algorithm using 3 popular programming langauges with each one following 3 different established conventions for code structure and formatting. Plot a graph showing the cumulative character space usage for these for each line of code. Then overlay this data with the equivalent space usage taken by the methods put forward as an alternative to indentation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/87077/27103&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/WDciM.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4724" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1926" RevisionGUID="89222ff0-9882-44ed-8dc1-cd06b6d0a4bc" CreationDate="2011-07-12T21:35:21.863" UserId="6420" Text="You mean something like this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4725" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1927" RevisionGUID="0019eb2e-95ac-4381-89e4-b8ae67c8d386" CreationDate="2011-07-13T03:22:17.917" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The value of the Stack Exchange network is in getting *expert* answers to specific questions: if there's a site that has an *expert* audience for the subject of a question, they are the ones you should be asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking UX questions of non-UX professionals is bad: at best, you'll get a mixture of uninformed answers and opinions. It's also counter-productive: we [*have* a site full of UX professionals](http://ux.stackexchange.com) who *want* your UX questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It gets a little murky when there's a topic that concerns another profession (i.e. your original question about code indentation): any UX professional worth their salt is going to ask/survey/test programmers in the course of their discovery. But a good UX professional also knows how to discern what's useful feedback and what isn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The code indention question is borderline (which is why a moderator suggested UX.SE instead of migrating it outright): programming is the *one* profession where code indentation matters, but it's still primarily a UX question, to which programmers don't have prima facie expertise in. It's got some good answers, so it's okay being here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it highlights the main point I'm trying to make: it's a judgement call, and borderline questions are decided not based on some rule of thumb or rubric, but based on the quality of answers they receive. If a borderline question is getting junky and uninformed answers, it'll be closed. If it's getting really great answers, it'll stay open and it'll inform future actions on questions of the same type.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So to summarize, while I can't give you a definitive answer on whether all UX questions relating to programmer tools are on-topic, I *can* tell you a few things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The questions that work the best are the ones that invite the unique expertise of the site's audience.&#xD;&#xA;* Questions about UX problems are *best* served by asking on [UX.SE](http://ux.stackexchange.com) first.&#xD;&#xA;* Questions about the design of programmer tools are not categorically off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a postscript, while you don't want people focusing on the example questions you provided, the first two are not constructive and will almost certainly invite uninformed opinion and the third is definitely a question you'd want to ask a UX professional, not the people who will be the subjects of the test (programmers).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4726" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1928" RevisionGUID="87a71520-3dff-49f7-87b4-fe7a0f54559a" CreationDate="2011-07-13T17:28:22.687" UserId="25437" Text="I've decided to start writing a blog about programming and I'd like to ask for reviews of my style of writing. If it's too slow, too fast, if it's confusing, anything. Is it appropriate to make this question at PSE or is there a board that is more appropriate? Thanks in advance!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cheers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4727" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1928" RevisionGUID="87a71520-3dff-49f7-87b4-fe7a0f54559a" CreationDate="2011-07-13T17:28:22.687" UserId="25437" Text="Can I ask for a blog review at PSE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4728" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1928" RevisionGUID="87a71520-3dff-49f7-87b4-fe7a0f54559a" CreationDate="2011-07-13T17:28:22.687" UserId="25437" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4729" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1929" RevisionGUID="13a510aa-2754-4021-a89d-e7f9ea0853b7" CreationDate="2011-07-13T17:35:59.287" UserId="226" Text="That would not be an appropriate post for PSE. If nothing else, it'd be entirely localized to your situation and we're programming experts, not writing experts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can try [Writing Stack Exchange](http://writers.stackexchange.com). From their [FAQ](http://writers.stackexchange.com/faq), it looks like they accept some kinds of review questions. I suggest asking on their meta to double-check and be sure." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4730" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1930" RevisionGUID="2ebecde7-d4de-4f2d-88b9-4fcf638806ce" CreationDate="2011-07-13T17:36:19.680" UserId="12063" Text="Not a good question for P.SE.  You could always try to find some volunteers in chat, just try not to be to spammy about it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4731" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1931" RevisionGUID="932f692e-af68-497b-ab00-209bc705a452" CreationDate="2011-07-13T17:40:46.713" UserId="12063" Text="It's been several days now - should I have earned a Guru badge for: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90561/co-worker-renamed-all-of-my-queries/90566#90566&#xD;&#xA;?&#xD;&#xA;It's not the answer with the highest vote count, but I didn't see that as a requirement." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4732" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1931" RevisionGUID="932f692e-af68-497b-ab00-209bc705a452" CreationDate="2011-07-13T17:40:46.713" UserId="12063" Text="Should I have a Guru Badge?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4733" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1931" RevisionGUID="932f692e-af68-497b-ab00-209bc705a452" CreationDate="2011-07-13T17:40:46.713" UserId="12063" Text="|bug|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4734" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1932" RevisionGUID="6c869f4f-8028-4d42-8843-20ad6dbd7775" CreationDate="2011-07-13T19:27:24.967" UserId="12436" Text="Would it be desirable for a message similar to the `The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed.` notification to be displayed for this SE, based on certain geographical terms?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4735" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1932" RevisionGUID="6c869f4f-8028-4d42-8843-20ad6dbd7775" CreationDate="2011-07-13T19:27:24.967" UserId="12436" Text="The question you're asking appears localised and is likely to be closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4736" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1932" RevisionGUID="6c869f4f-8028-4d42-8843-20ad6dbd7775" CreationDate="2011-07-13T19:27:24.967" UserId="12436" Text="|feature-request|questions|notifications|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4737" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1932" RevisionGUID="eb38cab4-6fed-4d0c-8ebd-19334b9698ae" CreationDate="2011-07-13T19:38:53.803" UserId="12436" Comment="edited title" Text="Automatically marking questions as potentially localised?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4738" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1932" RevisionGUID="eb38cab4-6fed-4d0c-8ebd-19334b9698ae" CreationDate="2011-07-13T19:38:53.803" UserId="12436" Comment="edited title" Text="Would it be desirable for a message similar to the&#xD;&#xA;&gt;The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;notification to be displayed for this SE, while questions are being asked, based on certain geographical terms in the title or other metrics?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4739" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1933" RevisionGUID="5da04e68-1379-435d-966b-59fc5724e927" CreationDate="2011-07-13T19:59:13.857" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The *too localized* question suffers from a bit of misuse due to a somewhat unclear description. &quot;In New York&quot; or &quot;In the UK&quot; wouldn't count as *too localized*, nor would most easily recognizable geographical names.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [Joel Spolsky likes to phrase it](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1057/too-localized-by-population-size-instead-of-geographical-area/1916#1916):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Classic example of too localized: &quot;Why is there a Green Honda Civic parked on my block right now?&quot; Or, &quot;Has the latest version of OS-X shipped yet?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, the *too localized* parts of these questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;on my block right now&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;latest version ... shipped yet&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Trying to detect a *too localized* question the same way *too subjective* questions are detected (keyword matching) would be difficult, if not impossible.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4740" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1934" RevisionGUID="5b7e2c90-0071-42e9-b3c1-9bcada805ca0" CreationDate="2011-07-13T20:46:00.307" UserId="226" Text="I just merged [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92682/cover-flow-license-issues#question) (10k+ link) into [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92614/cover-flow-license-issues), but it looks like only my comment made it over into the master question and Vitor's comment was left behind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that the expected behaviour?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4741" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1934" RevisionGUID="5b7e2c90-0071-42e9-b3c1-9bcada805ca0" CreationDate="2011-07-13T20:46:00.307" UserId="226" Text="Are comments supposed to be merged with the question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4742" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1934" RevisionGUID="5b7e2c90-0071-42e9-b3c1-9bcada805ca0" CreationDate="2011-07-13T20:46:00.307" UserId="226" Text="|support|bug|moderator-tools|merge-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4743" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1934" RevisionGUID="34351f19-f378-4ac1-b213-f98aeaaeed77" CreationDate="2011-07-13T21:32:19.023" UserId="226" Comment="edited title" Text="During a question merge not all comments got merged into the master question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4744" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1935" RevisionGUID="8c985607-8bba-4ec8-a941-b602df4e7937" CreationDate="2011-07-14T03:57:27.717" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="So we have a question that's pretty popular today: [Software engineering has become all about the red-tape and not about the programming.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/92508/8)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, to me personally, reads very much like a rant and the answers its received have mainly been to chime in with personal opinions about how things suck. It even received a comment with 36 upvotes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this a question or a blog post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Normally, it's a question that would be closed as not constructive, but it's got a lot of activity and no close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So is this question constructive? If so, why? If it isn't, what can we do to get the community more animated in helping moderate popular questions that are ultimately poor fits for our site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4745" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1935" RevisionGUID="8c985607-8bba-4ec8-a941-b602df4e7937" CreationDate="2011-07-14T03:57:27.717" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="What's constructive about being CVS-crazy and Bugzilla-nuts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4746" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1935" RevisionGUID="8c985607-8bba-4ec8-a941-b602df4e7937" CreationDate="2011-07-14T03:57:27.717" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4749" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1937" RevisionGUID="c7b60036-ed21-4ebe-a31e-eb001164e284" CreationDate="2011-07-14T05:32:07.127" UserId="102" Text="During merge, some comments won't be moved to the master when&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - they contain the word &quot;duplicate&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - they contain a link to the master question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4750" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1934" RevisionGUID="73820839-9b3e-428d-a95a-fc71f5dcc673" CreationDate="2011-07-14T05:33:02.213" UserId="102" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|bug|status-bydesign|moderator-tools|merge-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4751" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1938" RevisionGUID="a15ae090-82a5-4e59-9479-8bb4a9b969fd" CreationDate="2011-07-14T05:52:16.970" UserId="12063" Text="There's a constructive question in there, it's just buried underneath a well-worded rant.  I see it's already been paired down once.  It could do with a better title and another de-ranting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Something along the lines of.. Can the processes/procedures/best practices surrounding programming become counter-productive?  What can be done to counteract this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's a good fit and a common frustration.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for getting the community more involved with moderation, well I might have edited it myself if I had seen it before it got active.  Once something is doing well people aren't going to want to break it, esp. people like me who have just gotten edit abilities." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4752" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1939" RevisionGUID="9a01b18e-4683-440a-aa41-160e514705f5" CreationDate="2011-07-14T06:05:08.227" UserId="99" Text="I was looking through some of the tags on this site, and, well, yecccch. And then I thought, hey, could this be part of the [Programmers.SE Summer Cleaning](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning) project?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance, the question [Do we need a programming tag here?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/543/do-we-need-a-programming-tag-here) was asked last December. [The accepted answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/543/do-we-need-a-programming-tag-here/777#777) said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This tag needs to be killed and blacklisted with extreme prejudice.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;There are 122 questions tagged with [tag:programming]: *every* question is about programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Today, there are **421 questions** tagged [tag:programming]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 76 tagged [tag:programmers]&#xD;&#xA;- 1 tagged [tag:programmer]&#xD;&#xA;- 5 tagged [tag:bad-programmer] *[(no biscuit?)](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22bad+*+no+biscuit%22)*&#xD;&#xA;- 5 tagged [tag:copy-paste-programming]&#xD;&#xA;- 48 tagged [tag:great-programmer]&#xD;&#xA;- 1 tagged [tag:rockstar-programmers]&#xD;&#xA;- 28 tagged [tag:junior-programmer]&#xD;&#xA;- 30 tagged [tag:non-programmers]&#xD;&#xA;- 21 tagged [tag:application], 37 tagged [tag:applications], 18 tagged [tag:desktop-application], and 25 tagged [tag:web-applications]&#xD;&#xA;- 2 tagged [tag:backup], and 2 tagged [tag:backups]&#xD;&#xA;- 8 tagged [tag:blog], 55 tagged [tag:blogs], and 5 tagged [tag:blogging]&#xD;&#xA;- 8 tagged [tag:bug], 60 tagged [tag:bugs], 38 tagged [tag:bug-tracking], and 53 tagged [tag:debugging]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so on, and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;You know what to do…&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4753" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1939" RevisionGUID="9a01b18e-4683-440a-aa41-160e514705f5" CreationDate="2011-07-14T06:05:08.227" UserId="99" Text="Yet another cleanup idea" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4754" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1939" RevisionGUID="9a01b18e-4683-440a-aa41-160e514705f5" CreationDate="2011-07-14T06:05:08.227" UserId="99" Text="|discussion|retag-request|community|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4755" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1940" RevisionGUID="9122089a-248e-4c35-a581-f1809ef17a49" CreationDate="2011-07-14T06:21:11.223" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Okay, I've merged the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:backup] &amp;rarr; [tag:backups]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:application] &amp;rarr; [tag:applications]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:blog] &amp;rarr; [tag:blogs]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:bugs] &amp;rarr; [tag:bug] (so `bug-*` tags work)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like someone already took care of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programmer] &amp;rarr; [tag:programmers]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We still need [tag:programmers] blacklisted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These could use a bit of discussion: [tag:debugging], [tag:bug-tracking], [tag:blogging]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of these tags are serious smells that the question is likely bad. The only one out of the list that had [some discussion before](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1473/do-we-need-to-ban-the-beginners-tag) was [tag:junior-programmer], but I haven't been convinced it's been all that constructively used in practice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also like to nominate the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:jobs] merged into [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:learning] and [tag:self-improvement] be blacklisted, or at least merged into each other" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4756" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="1940" RevisionGUID="093d7f30-5c6b-40ae-aad0-1d03c4f20f3d" CreationDate="2011-07-14T06:22:40.923" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="4757" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1940" RevisionGUID="b2c2cfc4-f605-45a5-8060-5ea9c05f2cf6" CreationDate="2011-07-14T06:26:17.720" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 24 characters in body" Text="Okay, I've merged the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:backup] &amp;rarr; [tag:backups]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:application] &amp;rarr; [tag:applications]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:blog] &amp;rarr; [tag:blogs]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:bugs] &amp;rarr; [tag:bug] (so `bug-*` tags work)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like someone already took care of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programmer] &amp;rarr; [tag:programmers]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We still need [tag:programmers] (and [tag:programming]) blacklisted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These could use a bit of discussion: [tag:debugging], [tag:bug-tracking], [tag:blogging]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of these tags are serious smells that the question is likely bad. The only one out of the list that had [some discussion before](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1473/do-we-need-to-ban-the-beginners-tag) was [tag:junior-programmer], but I haven't been convinced it's been all that constructively used in practice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also like to nominate the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:jobs] merged into [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:learning] and [tag:self-improvement] be blacklisted, or at least merged into each other" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4758" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1941" RevisionGUID="0d256905-8af1-4ec1-b349-4401f49dee90" CreationDate="2011-07-14T06:35:57.270" UserId="37" Text="Yet again, I think this post needed editing! We need to get better about editing these questions into shape.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start with the title. I changed it from&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software engineering has become all about the red-tape and not about the programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Too much version control and bug tracking overhead per change?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which I feel is a much better, less rant-y way to express the *actual content* of the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4759" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1940" RevisionGUID="cb1aba42-152e-4dc2-a287-b19dddef0dbb" CreationDate="2011-07-14T06:40:14.007" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 329 characters in body" Text="Okay, the following have been merged:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:application] &amp;rarr; [tag:applications]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:backup] &amp;rarr; [tag:backups]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:blog] &amp;rarr; [tag:blogs]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:xp] &amp;rarr; [tag:extreme-programming]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:bugs] &amp;rarr; [tag:bug] (so `bug-*` tags work)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:telephone-interview], [tag:interviews], [tag:interviewing], [tag:interview-preparation] &amp;rarr; [tag:interview]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programmer] &amp;rarr; [tag:programmers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:cv] &amp;rarr; [tag:resume]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:zend] &amp;rarr; [tag:zend-framework]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Blacklist requests (all questions on the site fall into these tags):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:programmers], [tag:programming], [tag:self-improvement], [tag:learning]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Merge discussion needed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview-questions] has a lot of questions and a tag wiki ([tag:interview] doesn't have one), so I'm a bit hesitant to merge that into [tag:interview].&#xD;&#xA;* These could use a bit of discussion: [tag:debugging], [tag:bug-tracking], [tag:blogging]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:jobs] &amp;rarr; [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the tags listed in your question are serious smells that the question is likely bad. The only one out of the list that had [some discussion before](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1473/do-we-need-to-ban-the-beginners-tag) was [tag:junior-programmer], but I haven't been convinced it's been all that constructively used in practice." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4760" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1940" RevisionGUID="395fcf02-51b9-4817-b779-9b6c8447af13" CreationDate="2011-07-14T06:52:45.880" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 329 characters in body" Text="### Merged&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:application] &amp;rarr; [tag:applications]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:backup] &amp;rarr; [tag:backups]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:blog] &amp;rarr; [tag:blogs]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:xp] &amp;rarr; [tag:extreme-programming]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:bugs] &amp;rarr; [tag:bug] (so `bug-*` tags work)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:telephone-interview], [tag:interviews], [tag:interviewing], [tag:interview-preparation] &amp;rarr; [tag:interview]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programmer] &amp;rarr; [tag:programmers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:rockstar-programmers], [tag:rockstar] &amp;rarr; [tag:great-programmer]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:cv] &amp;rarr; [tag:resume]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:zend] &amp;rarr; [tag:zend-framework]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Blacklist requests&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All questions on the site fall into these tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:programmers], [tag:programming], [tag:self-improvement], [tag:learning], [tag:advice]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Merge discussion needed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-practices] &amp;rarr; [tag:best-practices]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:blogging] &amp;rarr; [tag:blogs]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:jobs] &amp;rarr; [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:bugs], [tag:bug-tracking] &amp;rarr; [tag:debugging]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview-questions] &amp;rarr; [tag:interview] (the former has a lot of questions and a tag wiki, the latter doesn't have a tag wiki)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Aaronaught's Posse fodder&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These tags are smells of likely bad questions and could use some [community weeding](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1869/posse-nominations-for-aaronut).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:recommendations], [tag:programmers], [tag:programming], [tag:bad-programmer], [tag:great-programmer], [tag:non-programmers], [tag:blogs], [tag:junior-programmer], [tag:copy-paste-programming]&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4761" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1940" RevisionGUID="0a0d0590-2f2f-4c48-8691-8692c8375ebe" CreationDate="2011-07-14T07:12:17.883" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 203 characters in body" Text="### Merged&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:abstractions] &amp;rarr; [tag:abstraction]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:agile-project-management], [tag:agile-processes] &amp;rarr; [tag:agile]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:application] &amp;rarr; [tag:applications]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:ai] &amp;rarr; [tag:artificial-intelligence]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:backup] &amp;rarr; [tag:backups]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:blog] &amp;rarr; [tag:blogs]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:xp] &amp;rarr; [tag:extreme-programming]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:bugs] &amp;rarr; [tag:bug] (so `bug-*` tags work)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:telephone-interview], [tag:interviews], [tag:interviewing], [tag:interview-preparation] &amp;rarr; [tag:interview]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programmer] &amp;rarr; [tag:programmers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:rockstar-programmers], [tag:rockstar] &amp;rarr; [tag:great-programmer]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:cv] &amp;rarr; [tag:resume]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:personal-development] &amp;rarr; [tag:self-improvement]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:work-from-home] &amp;rarr; [tag:telecommute]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:verbiage] &amp;rarr; [tag:wording]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:zend] &amp;rarr; [tag:zend-framework]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Blacklist requests&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All questions on the site fall into these tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:programmers], [tag:programming], [tag:self-improvement], [tag:learning], [tag:advice]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Merge discussion needed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-practices] &amp;rarr; [tag:best-practices]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:blogging] &amp;rarr; [tag:blogs]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:jobs] &amp;rarr; [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:bugs], [tag:bug-tracking] &amp;rarr; [tag:debugging]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:hiring], [tag:interview-questions] &amp;rarr; [tag:interview]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Aaronaught's Posse fodder&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These tags are smells of likely bad questions and could use some [community weeding](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1869/posse-nominations-for-aaronut).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:bad-programmer], [tag:blogs],  [tag:copy-paste-programming], [tag:great-programmer], [tag:junior-programmer], [tag:non-programmers],[tag:programmers], [tag:programming], [tag:recommendations], [tag:technology]&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4762" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1940" RevisionGUID="e45bd5fa-aadb-4873-92d2-9e59fc191af7" CreationDate="2011-07-14T07:29:43.037" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add intro that was lost in my updates" Text="I think this is a great idea, and long overdue, but its one heck of a task. Here's what I got so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Merged&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:abstractions] &amp;rarr; [tag:abstraction]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:agile-project-management], [tag:agile-processes] &amp;rarr; [tag:agile]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:application] &amp;rarr; [tag:applications]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:ai] &amp;rarr; [tag:artificial-intelligence]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:guidelines] &amp;rarr; [tag:best-practices]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:backup] &amp;rarr; [tag:backups]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:blog] &amp;rarr; [tag:blogs]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:xp] &amp;rarr; [tag:extreme-programming]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:bugs] &amp;rarr; [tag:bug] (so `bug-*` tags work)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:telephone-interview], [tag:interviews], [tag:interviewing], [tag:interview-preparation] &amp;rarr; [tag:interview]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programmer] &amp;rarr; [tag:programmers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:rockstar-programmers], [tag:rockstar] &amp;rarr; [tag:great-programmer]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:cv] &amp;rarr; [tag:resume]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:personal-development] &amp;rarr; [tag:self-improvement]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:work-from-home] &amp;rarr; [tag:telecommute]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:verbiage] &amp;rarr; [tag:wording]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:zend] &amp;rarr; [tag:zend-framework]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Blacklist requests&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All questions on the site fall into these tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:programmers], [tag:programming], [tag:self-improvement], [tag:learning], [tag:advice]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Merge discussion needed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-practices] &amp;rarr; [tag:best-practices]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:blogging] &amp;rarr; [tag:blogs]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:jobs] &amp;rarr; [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:bugs], [tag:bug-tracking] &amp;rarr; [tag:debugging]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:hiring], [tag:interview-questions] &amp;rarr; [tag:interview]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Aaronaught's Posse fodder&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These tags are smells of likely bad questions and could use some [community weeding](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1869/posse-nominations-for-aaronut).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:bad-programmer], [tag:blogs],  [tag:copy-paste-programming], [tag:great-programmer], [tag:junior-programmer], [tag:non-programmers],[tag:programmers], [tag:programming], [tag:recommendations], [tag:technology]&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4763" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1942" RevisionGUID="82ced216-2ea5-42ee-bf29-ac273de09ef0" CreationDate="2011-07-14T10:38:38.103" UserId="47" Text="Other sites ([Super User](http://superuser.com) springs to mind) have the idea of `community-faq` questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are questions tagged in some way that indicates that these are the canonical question on this topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any duplicate would be closed using this as the original.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure how we'd decide what was a good canonical question though. Sorting by votes isn't going to produce the right answer as @Jeremy's link shows." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4764" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1943" RevisionGUID="d3de52ec-e0a1-4e1a-8166-2ad818c39c60" CreationDate="2011-07-14T16:01:15.033" UserId="9302" Text="[looking for regex engines comparison and benchmark][1] was closed as &quot;not a real question&quot;. The user was told stackexchange does not have a place for technology comparisons. This seems odd for a few reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The question is answerable. The user did not ask for opinions. They asked for feature comparisons and benchmarks. Without doing a lot of research, I've confirmed such things exist. Wikipedia offers a [grid of feature comparisons][2] and Heng Li offers [benchmarks on sourceforge][3]. I'm not claiming they're perfect resources, but they certainly suggest the question can be answered.&#xD;&#xA;2. The benchmark portion of the question was [already asked on stackoverflow][4]. Granted, it isn't rich with responses, but the fact it exists seems likely to confuse the user. This was the user's first question. As well as closing, someone took the time to downvote them. Classy.&#xD;&#xA;3. The user was directed to the FAQ for clarification. As far as I can tell, the FAQ doesn't mention anything about technology comparisons being out-of-bounds. The FAQ's core concepts seem to be that your post must be a question and it must be answerable. If I were the user, I would feel I met the FAQ's criteria.&#xD;&#xA;4. Stackexchange is full of technology comparisons. From P.SE: [Python and ruby frameworks equivalent to codeignter][5] (misspelling left intact) , [What one should look for when choosing a cross-platform C++ GUI library?][6], [Current C++ IDE options:][7], [Selecting the (right?) technology and environment][8], etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not suggesting this is an amazing question or that it belongs on P.SE. I'll leave that for others to decide. I just assume that our main goal is to be helpful. If I were the user asking the question, I wouldn't feel helped. I would feel like I'd been slapped on the wrist and excluded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92792/looking-for-regex-engines-comparison-and-benchmark&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_regular_expression_engines&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://lh3lh3.users.sourceforge.net/reb.shtml&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3544225/regular-expression-library-benchmarks&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92807/python-and-ruby-frameworks-equivalent-to-codeignter&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88888/what-one-should-look-for-when-choosing-a-cross-platform-c-gui-library&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92552/current-c-ide-options&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27379/selecting-the-right-technology-and-environment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4765" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1943" RevisionGUID="d3de52ec-e0a1-4e1a-8166-2ad818c39c60" CreationDate="2011-07-14T16:01:15.033" UserId="9302" Text="Is a question asking for regex engine comparisons and benchmarks really off-topic for all of stackexchange?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4766" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1943" RevisionGUID="d3de52ec-e0a1-4e1a-8166-2ad818c39c60" CreationDate="2011-07-14T16:01:15.033" UserId="9302" Text="|discussion|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4767" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1944" RevisionGUID="56768c14-2c76-4288-8e82-7d9e782c14ec" CreationDate="2011-07-14T16:09:57.477" UserId="47" Text="The problem with questions phrased like this is they tend to just get everyone posting their favourite X (what ever the subject in question is) and the votes tend to be for your favourite too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would probably be more constructive to ask for something that *meets your specific criteria*. This should get you constructive answers as they (to be upvoted) should solve the problem you have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the thing to remember with Stack Exchange. It works best when you have a *specific problem to solve*, whether that's why some code doesn't work, or how to drill a hole in a concrete beam, or which plant grows best in sandy soil, or which regex library meets a specific set of requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only issue could be that your requirements are too general so virtually any regex library would do." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4768" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1945" RevisionGUID="732df321-b623-4799-b207-739cb1044a43" CreationDate="2011-07-14T17:58:45.320" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="If you look at the comments on the question, there were several exchanges with the user on how he could improve his question to be on-topic, including a few prompts for more information and links to helpful resources. He opted not to reply or improve his question after asking twice if there was a place he could ask for comparisons of RegEx engines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think you might be reading too much into the question: algorithm implementation time and space requirements *are* on-topic as long as there's a specific problem or context provided. This wasn't the case here: the user expressed interest in finding out which one was fastest for &quot;gigabytes of data&quot;. I tried to get him to provide more detail in hopes we could tease out a good question, but again, he never replied." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4769" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1946" RevisionGUID="7a3cddd2-68bd-436d-be40-fa352ed6dea0" CreationDate="2011-07-14T19:31:07.547" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="In the first part of what will assuredly be a several part series on [tag cleanups](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea), I'd like to discuss merging [tag:blogs] into [tag:blogging].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both tags generally house questions that aren't all that great: a bunch of closed questions asking for lists of blogs. However, [tag:blogs] seems to be *just* about generating lists of blogs about a subject, whereas [tag:blogging] *might* be used for good to talk about blogging as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a reason we need to keep these tags separate? Is there ever a good reason to tag a question [tag:blogs]? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4770" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1946" RevisionGUID="7a3cddd2-68bd-436d-be40-fa352ed6dea0" CreationDate="2011-07-14T19:31:07.547" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Tag merge discussion: blogs → blogging" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4771" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1946" RevisionGUID="7a3cddd2-68bd-436d-be40-fa352ed6dea0" CreationDate="2011-07-14T19:31:07.547" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4772" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="1946" RevisionGUID="08173461-619f-47cb-8ecc-bd2fbf2189ac" CreationDate="2011-07-14T19:33:24.193" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="4773" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1940" RevisionGUID="16efcb9c-1e8d-4f87-b01e-76469ff10842" CreationDate="2011-07-14T19:35:01.260" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 83 characters in body" Text="I think this is a great idea, and long overdue, but its one heck of a task. Here's what I got so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Merged&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:abstractions] &amp;rarr; [tag:abstraction]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:agile-project-management], [tag:agile-processes] &amp;rarr; [tag:agile]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:application] &amp;rarr; [tag:applications]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:ai] &amp;rarr; [tag:artificial-intelligence]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:guidelines] &amp;rarr; [tag:best-practices]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:backup] &amp;rarr; [tag:backups]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:blog] &amp;rarr; [tag:blogs]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:xp] &amp;rarr; [tag:extreme-programming]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:bugs] &amp;rarr; [tag:bug] (so `bug-*` tags work)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:telephone-interview], [tag:interviews], [tag:interviewing], [tag:interview-preparation] &amp;rarr; [tag:interview]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programmer] &amp;rarr; [tag:programmers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:rockstar-programmers], [tag:rockstar] &amp;rarr; [tag:great-programmer]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:cv] &amp;rarr; [tag:resume]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:personal-development] &amp;rarr; [tag:self-improvement]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:work-from-home] &amp;rarr; [tag:telecommute]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:verbiage] &amp;rarr; [tag:wording]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:zend] &amp;rarr; [tag:zend-framework]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Blacklist requests&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All questions on the site fall into these tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:programmers], [tag:programming], [tag:self-improvement], [tag:learning], [tag:advice]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Merge discussion needed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-practices] &amp;rarr; [tag:best-practices]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:jobs] &amp;rarr; [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:bugs], [tag:bug-tracking] &amp;rarr; [tag:debugging]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:hiring], [tag:interview-questions] &amp;rarr; [tag:interview]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Aaronaught's Posse fodder&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These tags are smells of likely bad questions and could use some [community weeding](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1869/posse-nominations-for-aaronut).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:bad-programmer], [tag:blogs],  [tag:copy-paste-programming], [tag:great-programmer], [tag:junior-programmer], [tag:non-programmers],[tag:programmers], [tag:programming], [tag:recommendations], [tag:technology]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### &quot;Fixed the glitch&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone retagged all the posts in these tags, so it's no longer a problem:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:blogging]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4774" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1946" RevisionGUID="15bd3df5-28d6-4429-bede-556e22d7f77e" CreationDate="2011-07-14T19:36:51.557" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Blogs -&gt; blogging is already fixed, changed to the next on the list" Text="In the first part of what will assuredly be a several part series on [tag cleanups](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea), I'd like to discuss merging [tag:jobs] into [tag:career].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both tags generally are about jobs: working at a job, career development, getting a job, etc. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a reason we need to keep these tags separate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4775" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1946" RevisionGUID="15bd3df5-28d6-4429-bede-556e22d7f77e" CreationDate="2011-07-14T19:36:51.557" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Blogs -&gt; blogging is already fixed, changed to the next on the list" Text="Tag merge discussion: jobs → career" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4776" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="1946" RevisionGUID="1d7a7114-f89d-492b-9105-3d1a0840f4b8" CreationDate="2011-07-14T19:36:54.567" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="4777" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1947" RevisionGUID="031e1b24-2a8e-46c6-aaa0-3c3c94041c15" CreationDate="2011-07-14T19:43:43.540" UserId="47" Text="I haven't had much time to check this recently - what with my PC failing - but this is something I can agree with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, we need some way of ensuring that we&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Get general agreement - even in the cases where we think it's clear cut.&#xD;&#xA;2. Manage the process so two people don't do the same tags.&#xD;&#xA;3. Indicate which have been done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Web Apps each synonym/merger was posted as a separate question. While we might want to group some this would be good as &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. We can see whether people agree with the proposal - from the votes and comments.&#xD;&#xA;2. Indicate which ones each of us is working on - either by posting an answer or editing the question.&#xD;&#xA;3. Indicate which have been done by adding the tag [meta-tag:status-completed]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ah - I see Mark's already started - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4778" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1948" RevisionGUID="e1639ef5-8729-4619-a4bc-e44c65c27c8a" CreationDate="2011-07-14T19:45:35.353" UserId="2654" Text="No reason I know of. Lots of closed questions in both. I would support merging them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4779" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1949" RevisionGUID="b487d23d-11f5-4155-87c6-e321e942533d" CreationDate="2011-07-15T01:50:25.853" UserId="37" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What *problem* was this person trying to solve? Hard to tell, when the question was all of about two sentences." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4780" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1950" RevisionGUID="cf0a83e8-4e28-4b16-8433-16ceb9ac3bf4" CreationDate="2011-07-15T02:08:08.830" UserId="949" Text="Yep you *should* have the badge, but due to a bug in that particular case, it wasn't being granted.  You cannot get guru for your *own* answer (since that easily bypasses the accepted part of the requirement).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the SQl there was a check for this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     And accepted.OwnerUserId &lt;&gt; p.OwnerUserId&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and in SQL Server, when `p.OwnerUserId` is `null` (the owner of the question was deleted), well...that check of course doesn't work so well.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's been properly `IsNull()`'d in the next build, once that goes out we'll properly grant the Guru badges in the deleted-owner case." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4781" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1931" RevisionGUID="d67228ed-886d-44cc-b767-37e4c9ef7b64" CreationDate="2011-07-15T02:08:29.737" UserId="949" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4782" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1950" RevisionGUID="b6416425-59bd-407a-8911-fc17f453b07d" CreationDate="2011-07-15T10:05:56.440" UserId="949" Comment="edited body" Text="Yep you *should* have the badge, but due to a bug in that particular case, it wasn't being granted.  You cannot get guru for your *own* answer (since that easily bypasses the accepted part of the requirement).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the SQL there was a check for this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     And accepted.OwnerUserId &lt;&gt; p.OwnerUserId&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and in SQL Server, when `p.OwnerUserId` is `null` (the owner of the question was deleted), well...that check of course doesn't work so well.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's been properly `IsNull()`'d in the next build, once that goes out we'll properly grant the Guru badges in the deleted-owner case." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4783" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1951" RevisionGUID="d13e907c-ce44-456f-aba2-047640c96a75" CreationDate="2011-07-15T11:30:00.217" UserId="7167" Text="Not sure if this is the right place to put this, but I've yet to receive my swag. I filled in the form (although I wasn't sure about my account number) and waited. Any news?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4784" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1952" RevisionGUID="a72daef8-5372-4fb9-8b6e-8c61372c4194" CreationDate="2011-07-15T12:39:03.313" UserId="3249" Text="This [seems to have been proposed a long time ago][1] but never followed through on.  This is what happens when you let them fester...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, to me there are actually several different subcategories of career questions, almost none of which are properly represented by the current tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * **Career development** means advancing one's career, irrespective of their current job.  In other words, topics such as becoming a more attractive/in-demand employee or candidate, advancing up the ranks, or developing interviewing or negotiating skills.  Some well-defined CD questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/54506/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48100/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/35208/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/13892/3249&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * **Career advice** is essentially an umbrella term for aimless &quot;help me, I fail at life&quot; questions which should be terminated with extreme prejudice.  Right now, these tend to share the [tag:career] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/43528/3249 (thanks Stack Overflow!)&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/18502/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/29213/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/21782/3249&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Then there are **job rants**, which I personally don't even think deserve the dignity of being closed (as opposed to flat-out deleted).  The hallmark of these topics is that the essential question - if there actually is one - is almost always some variant of *&quot;should I quit?&quot;*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74913/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/20866/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/22609/3249&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Several questions exist about **finding and acquiring jobs**.  These are similar, on the surface, to career development questions, but tend to be at the tactical rather than strategic level:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/13811/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/14551/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/37915/3249&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * There are also some (admittedly few) from the **employer** or **management** side, many of which are legitimately tagged [tag:project-management] and don't deserve to be saddled with [tag:career]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/348/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/50616/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/46920/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/43409/3249&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Finally there are several - far too many, actually, including a *ridiculous* number of &quot;talking to management&quot; questions - that I would classify as **managing one's own job**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/70765/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/59740/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3383/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/34570/3249&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, this is not just a simple matter of merging a tag.  The [tag:jobs] tag itself is very unfocused and contains a lot of questions about job searching, job management, and I think a few about hiring.  Merging it with the [tag:career] tag will only create more chaos in *that* tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to suggest dispensing entirely with both the [tag:career] and [tag:jobs] tags and propose the following new categories (of course, this is just a suggestion):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [tag:career-development] for questions that are about... uh, career development. This is currently a synonym of [tag:career] - it probably shouldn't be.&#xD;&#xA;  * [tag:job-searching] or [tag:job-market] for questions about getting a [new] job.  I'd suggest [tag:employment] instead, but I think that is prone to misinterpretation.&#xD;&#xA;  * [tag:job-satisfaction] for questions about work/life balance, creating better workspaces, etc.&#xD;&#xA;  * [tag:job-advancement] and also [tag:teamwork] for questions about excelling in one's current position. [tag:job-performance] might be another possibility.&#xD;&#xA;  * [tag:project-management] and/or [tag:employee-relations] and/or [tag:business] for employer-focused questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the type of thing that's only going to be solved by a long, arduous process of community-supported hand-sorting.  Fortunately, I think this site has enough daily activity to support some bulk manual retagging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alternatively, go ahead and merge it all into [tag:career] but then put the [tag:career] tag on notice saying that it needs to be phased out and sorted into subcategories.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/163/3249" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4785" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1953" RevisionGUID="52e4a7f5-0f65-47e0-9fb2-c585360f710c" CreationDate="2011-07-15T14:31:24.343" UserId="8031" Text="[This question][1] was made CW (I'm not sure why - the whole CW criteria is pretty difficult to understand now) yet I am still getting rep accumulated when up-voted. My understanding is that rep is not affected by CW questions/answers. Has this changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92984/how-do-i-ease-into-programming-coming-from-a-designer-background" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4786" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1953" RevisionGUID="52e4a7f5-0f65-47e0-9fb2-c585360f710c" CreationDate="2011-07-15T14:31:24.343" UserId="8031" Text="Question made CW and still adding rep" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4787" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1953" RevisionGUID="52e4a7f5-0f65-47e0-9fb2-c585360f710c" CreationDate="2011-07-15T14:31:24.343" UserId="8031" Text="|discussion|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4788" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1954" RevisionGUID="62336e20-e753-4338-83fb-e1095f086943" CreationDate="2011-07-15T14:35:32.293" UserId="47" Text="You got the last vote 8 hours ago at 6:05 UTC.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question and all existing answers were made community Wiki 7 hours ago at 06:37 UTC when Mikey added an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore the answer wasn't CW when you earned the rep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I voted now you wouldn't get any rep." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4789" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1954" RevisionGUID="4039e60c-3630-413a-a7fe-efed9d4c1505" CreationDate="2011-07-15T14:41:43.987" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="You got the last vote 8 hours ago at 6:05 UTC.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question and all existing answers were made community Wiki 7 hours ago at 06:37 UTC when Mikey added an answer that took the total number answers over 15. Once a question has more than 15 answers it's converted to CW (the same as Super User, but 1/2 the value on Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore the answer wasn't CW when you earned the rep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I voted now you wouldn't get any rep." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4790" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1955" RevisionGUID="5718a042-fc89-4127-8331-aadce9031f65" CreationDate="2011-07-15T17:14:50.123" UserId="18547" Text="Recently I mistakenly closed one of my Favorite tags.  When I added it back it appeared at the bottom of the list, but due to the ad for Career I now have to scroll down to click it.  Is there a way to arrange the order of your Favorite tags?  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4791" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1955" RevisionGUID="5718a042-fc89-4127-8331-aadce9031f65" CreationDate="2011-07-15T17:14:50.123" UserId="18547" Text="Arrange Favorite Tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4792" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1955" RevisionGUID="5718a042-fc89-4127-8331-aadce9031f65" CreationDate="2011-07-15T17:14:50.123" UserId="18547" Text="|feature-request|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4793" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1956" RevisionGUID="ccccc81a-7b2c-4238-905a-41ccf451547a" CreationDate="2011-07-15T17:36:34.523" UserId="1458" Text="The original version was a rant.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After Robert and Jeff's edits, it's still a rant. (It's looking for validation, not for answers.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a rhetorical (“non-constructive”) question in the rant: “Is there a point at which the process gets in the way and becomes an end unto itself?”. Well, yes, of course.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a real question in the middle of the rant: has the point been reached in Ponk's situation? (Or, more usefully, what can be done, if anything, to focus more on the goal and less on the process.) But that requires detailed study of the situation, it's not something strangers on the Internet can answer. (Too localized.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, no, I don't consider this question salvageable in any way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, I don't really participate on Programmers.SE, so my opinion doesn't count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Yes, the abundance and worth given to this kind of questions is one of the things that put me off Programmers.SE.)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4795" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1953" RevisionGUID="81507b27-0aeb-4475-8fc3-04c44efae9c2" CreationDate="2011-07-16T02:17:37.150" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4796" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1955" RevisionGUID="34ae6c70-1373-41ca-97cb-cdbc733ab6d7" CreationDate="2011-07-16T17:41:19.390" UserId="18547" Comment="added 158 characters in body" Text="Recently I mistakenly closed one of my Favorite tags.  When I added it back it appeared at the bottom of the list, but due to the ad for Career I now have to scroll down to click it.  Is there a way to arrange the order of your Favorite tags?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;edit based on responses:  Please consider making it easier to re-arrange favorite tags.  Delete them all, add them back in order does not seem user friendly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4797" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1955" RevisionGUID="34ae6c70-1373-41ca-97cb-cdbc733ab6d7" CreationDate="2011-07-16T17:41:19.390" UserId="18547" Comment="added 158 characters in body" Text="|discussion|feature-request|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4799" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1958" RevisionGUID="d6f9f398-d731-4ada-b6f8-df2bac3b74b8" CreationDate="2011-07-16T18:16:14.507" UserId="63" Text="Pens... Pens are great.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![shog swag shot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/IJlZT.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4800" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1959" RevisionGUID="fb3077bd-20d8-4d2d-90e0-04d13b5e9893" CreationDate="2011-07-16T23:20:41.443" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Programmers.SE swag just arrived yesterday (Gaming.SE's swag too, but they aren't as cool):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Swag][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/fdgj9.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4801" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1960" RevisionGUID="6f3085cd-4cb1-4b7d-96f8-0f6eb433f662" CreationDate="2011-07-17T11:29:54.213" UserId="1539" Text="Often people downvote what seems like perfectly legitimate questions or answers. Comments asking for the reason for downvote are often ignored.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should it be mandatory for a downvoter to supply a reason? It would at least let the others aware of the downvoter's viewpoint, and open up new lines of discussion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4802" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1960" RevisionGUID="6f3085cd-4cb1-4b7d-96f8-0f6eb433f662" CreationDate="2011-07-17T11:29:54.213" UserId="1539" Text="Should downvoters be forced to give a reason?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4803" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1960" RevisionGUID="6f3085cd-4cb1-4b7d-96f8-0f6eb433f662" CreationDate="2011-07-17T11:29:54.213" UserId="1539" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4804" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1961" RevisionGUID="313e7010-d990-4adf-a7dc-904f2c318ebf" CreationDate="2011-07-17T11:35:53.417" UserId="47" Text="This has been done to death on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The consensus is that while it would nice if people did, there's not a lot we can do to enforce this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4805" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1960" RevisionGUID="ecbd627f-9b8e-4028-84fb-e2d8754f09bd" CreationDate="2011-07-17T11:38:35.447" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4806" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1938" RevisionGUID="c39277ed-1189-4859-89e4-fdb6ab440bea" CreationDate="2011-07-18T12:31:58.863" UserId="12063" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="There's a constructive question in there, it's just buried underneath a well-worded rant.  I see it's already been pared down once.  It could do with a better title and another de-ranting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Something along the lines of.. Can the processes/procedures/best practices surrounding programming become counter-productive?  What can be done to counteract this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's a good fit and a common frustration.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for getting the community more involved with moderation, well I might have edited it myself if I had seen it before it got active.  Once something is doing well people aren't going to want to break it, esp. people like me who have just gotten edit abilities." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4807" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1962" RevisionGUID="4728f57f-2a5b-41e5-a17e-282328ae7bcf" CreationDate="2011-07-18T15:25:30.970" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Got it too! Now I have to figure out where I will use the stickers ;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4808" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1963" RevisionGUID="c8bc7bec-21f5-4b68-b4ec-f72e3c00465d" CreationDate="2011-07-18T20:30:49.307" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="We [discussed](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career) merging [tag:career] and [tag:jobs], but now it's time to put a plan into action. [Aaronut's plan](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952) is great, but we need some help from the *posse*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 1: Clean up the tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are currently several job-related tags that need people to go through and flag or vote to close questions that are no longer (or were never) on-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Jobs: [tag:jobs], [tag:job-market], [tag:new-job], [tag:job-definition], [tag:job-title], [tag:job-hunting], [tag:job-satisfaction], [tag:job-distance], [tag:job-retention], [tag:hpc-jobs], [tag:scientific-computing-jobs]&#xD;&#xA;* Career: [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;* Employment: [tag:employment], [tag:employer], [tag:self-employment]&#xD;&#xA;* Business: [tag:business], [tag:business-process], [tag:business-logic], [tag:business-rules], [tag:business-analysis], [tag:business-it]&#xD;&#xA;* Other: [tag:interview], [tag:hiring], [tag:project-management], [tag:teamwork]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* When you're done cleaning up a tag, post an answer here that you've finished so others know to prioritize other tags. &#xD;&#xA;* When in doubt about a question, create a new question here on meta instead of flagging so the community can decide if a question is a keeper.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 2: Reorganize the survivors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We need to have a set of workable tags and tag synonyms: [Aaronut's guidelines](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952) are pretty good, so let's go with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Use Aaronut's guidelines, but favor tag suffixes: the system allows us to use wildcards in tag preferences, so [tag:jobs-foo] is preferable to [tag:foo-jobs].&#xD;&#xA;* Create a question here on meta asking to create a tag synonym. This is especially important when a tag is organized out of existence (i.e. all the questions that had a tag have had that tag removed in favor of something else).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 3: Burnination&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once all the good questions have been properly organized, we can go through the [normal clean-up process](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning) of deleting old, off-topic stuff." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4809" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1963" RevisionGUID="c8bc7bec-21f5-4b68-b4ec-f72e3c00465d" CreationDate="2011-07-18T20:30:49.307" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Posse request: jobs/career/etc. tag cleanup" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4810" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1963" RevisionGUID="c8bc7bec-21f5-4b68-b4ec-f72e3c00465d" CreationDate="2011-07-18T20:30:49.307" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|moderation|tags|posse|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4811" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1963" RevisionGUID="62a89d82-34e1-4157-b94e-08975e5db1fb" CreationDate="2011-07-18T20:36:48.353" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 17 characters in body" Text="We [discussed](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career) merging [tag:career] and [tag:jobs], but now it's time to put a plan into action. [Aaronut's plan](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952) is great, but we need some help from the *posse*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 1: Clean up the tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are currently several job-related tags that need people to go through and flag or vote to close questions that are no longer (or were never) on-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Jobs: [tag:jobs], [tag:job-market], [tag:new-job], [tag:job-definition], [tag:job-title], [tag:job-hunting], [tag:job-satisfaction], [tag:job-distance], [tag:job-retention], [tag:hpc-jobs], [tag:scientific-computing-jobs]&#xD;&#xA;* Career: [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;* Employment: [tag:employment], [tag:employer], [tag:employers], [tag:self-employment]&#xD;&#xA;* Business: [tag:business], [tag:business-process], [tag:business-logic], [tag:business-rules], [tag:business-analysis], [tag:business-it]&#xD;&#xA;* Other: [tag:interview], [tag:hiring], [tag:project-management], [tag:teamwork]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* When you're done cleaning up a tag, post an answer here that you've finished so others know to prioritize other tags. &#xD;&#xA;* When in doubt about a question, create a new question here on meta instead of flagging so the community can decide if a question is a keeper.&#xD;&#xA;* Start with the oldest questions first: our really old questions have a high likelihood of no longer meeting the site's guidelines, and are what are in most need of cleanup. We have plenty of time to deal with the newer stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 2: Reorganize the survivors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We need to have a set of workable tags and tag synonyms: [Aaronut's guidelines](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952) are pretty good, so let's go with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Use Aaronut's guidelines, but **favor tag suffixes**: the system allows us to use wildcards in tag preferences, so [tag:jobs-foo] is preferable to [tag:foo-jobs].&#xD;&#xA;* **Spread out the organization.** Every time you edit a long-dead question to retag it, it bumps it back to the front page. Retagging 20+ questions at the same time kills the front-page usability for the rest of the visitors.&#xD;&#xA;* **Start with the oldest questions first.** Our really old questions have a high likelihood of no longer meeting the site's guidelines, and are what are in most need of cleanup. We have plenty of time to deal with the newer stuff.&#xD;&#xA;* **Request tag synonyms** by creating a question here on meta. This is especially important when a tag is organized out of existence (i.e. all the questions that had a tag have had that tag removed in favor of something else).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 3: Burnination&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once all the good questions have been properly organized, we can go through the [normal clean-up process](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning) of deleting old, off-topic stuff." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4812" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1964" RevisionGUID="7cf45423-fc23-4a34-94b1-e7ff924f8ba1" CreationDate="2011-07-18T20:41:43.160" UserId="47" Text="This is a good plan.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately I'm having problems getting a stable connection to Stack Exchange at the moment so I won't be as active in this process as I perhaps should be." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4813" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1965" RevisionGUID="eaca8ac1-3f39-40d1-a7dc-b2a1862d3611" CreationDate="2011-07-18T21:01:46.617" UserId="12063" Text="Flagged the one [tag:scientific-computing-jobs] to be closed it's also the only [tag:hpc-jobs] tagged question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4814" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1965" RevisionGUID="b3669b78-20ca-45e3-82ad-b5551930fc71" CreationDate="2011-07-18T21:08:51.967" UserId="12063" Comment="additional info" Text="Flagged the one [tag:scientific-computing-jobs] to be closed it's also the only [tag:hpc-jobs] tagged question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-retention] was really about [tag:employee-retention] I've retagged but that's just a shuffle" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4815" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1965" RevisionGUID="6de2bb5d-1bed-40cb-b2e2-d0a70c527168" CreationDate="2011-07-18T21:16:03.350" UserId="12063" Comment="additional info" Text="  - Flagged the one [tag:scientific-computing-jobs] to be closed it's also the only [tag:hpc-jobs] tagged question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - [tag:job-retention] was really about [tag:employee-retention] I've retagged but that's just a shuffle&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - [tag:job-distance] was on one open, and one closed question.  Deleted the tag from the open one because it already had [tag:telecommute] on it, because it seemed to be repeating itself and redundant too :-p" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4816" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1966" RevisionGUID="ab3b05a1-b0e5-4e5e-83ca-1c2cd45ac5a0" CreationDate="2011-07-19T02:05:01.710" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text=" - [tag:business-it] - 1 question flagged&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:job-title] - Several &quot;What should I call my self&quot;. Top/Accepted&#xD;&#xA;   answers didn't seem to offer much.&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:business-process] Question too specific to the person asking" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4817" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1967" RevisionGUID="870180f1-03d3-4fd9-a470-c756ab164746" CreationDate="2011-07-19T04:48:08.657" UserId="37" Text="There is **an AJAX `&lt;div&gt;` reminder for users under 2000 rep on each downvote**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please consider adding a comment if you think this post can be improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the first downvote, we can't say we didn't remind them, and honestly that's as good as it gets. Forcing a comment will end in even worse results." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4818" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1968" RevisionGUID="a67d86df-c5dd-4dea-ab9d-04f3b3e8105b" CreationDate="2011-07-19T11:48:51.877" UserId="3249" Text="I refer to [this answer][2] from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/92508/3249 for which the question itself was actually the subject of [a previous meta question][1].  Quoted here in the unlikely event of changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Heavy processes are common, unfortunately. Some people - especially management - religiously imagine that processes produce products. So they overdo the processes and forget that it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products. For upper management, it's frightening to even think that their business is in the hands of few geeks, and so the close their eyes from the reality and think of their dear &quot;process&quot; instead, which gives them the illusion of control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; That's why agile startups with a handful of good engineers can beat big, established corporations, whose workers spend 95 % of their energy on process and reporting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer is making grand assertions left and right without a single shred of evidence to back any of them up.  Paraphrased from my comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Which people are &quot;some people&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;  * What evidence is there for managers believing it more often than anyone else?  Why would this be the case?&#xD;&#xA;  * Why liken it to a &quot;religious belief&quot;?  Is there no factual/logical evidence in favour of the belief?  How can we be sure?  Have those people been questioned about their belief?&#xD;&#xA;  * Who claimed/claims that &quot;processes produce products&quot; and what was the context of that claim?  If the answer, as I suspect, is &quot;nobody&quot;, then why mention this at all?&#xD;&#xA;  * What does &quot;overdo the process&quot; mean?  At what point does a process become &quot;overdone&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;  * Is it really true that the &quot;business is in the hands of a few geeks?&quot; Is this true in the 85% of programming jobs that are *not* in the software publishing industry, which is presumably where most of these heavy processes are being instituted?&#xD;&#xA;  * What does the phrase &quot;close their eyes from the reality&quot; mean? Do these people presumably have no accountability to their own managers, shareholders, board of directors, etc.?  How would they justify this?&#xD;&#xA;  * What does &quot;illusion of control&quot; mean? How is it different from actual control? What provides the illusion and how is it supposed to keep people fooled?&#xD;&#xA;  * Although the answer technically only says that &quot;agile startups&quot; *can* beat &quot;big established corporations&quot;, it's misleadingly worded as to imply that this is *routine*. To what degree does this actually happen and is there evidence that it's any more than chance, as opposed to better management?&#xD;&#xA;  * Where was the 95% figure derived from?  Was this measured somewhere?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As much as I hate to pick on one person/post, this isn't information, it's entertainment. It's mindless, populist drivel clearly written with one purpose: to provoke an emotional response and farm upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And in this community, it works.  Every single time.  With 84 upvotes and just 1 downvote (mine, obviously), this is clearly not only the *best* answer, but many times *better* than *any of the other answers*, which the author stubbornly uses as a justification for why it doesn't need to be improved (can't blame him, I guess, I wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth either).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the most irritating part is the most recent comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This forum is not a scientific paper. Nobody, not you nor me, is going to provide an explanation for every single sentence he writes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Call me old fashioned, but I thought that the whole point of the [Subjective Question Guidelines][3] was to elicit answers that would **Back It Up:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Back It Up! means that your answers must be based on either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Something that happened to you personally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Something you can back up with a reference&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I realize that we're not Wikipedia. We're not even [Skeptics.SE][4]. We can afford to be a little more lax.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But who is correct, him or me?  Do we/should we have no standards whatsoever for evidence, or are answers here supposed to be more than just statements of opinion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1935/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92508/too-much-version-control-and-bug-tracking-overhead-per-change/92514#92514&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4819" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1968" RevisionGUID="a67d86df-c5dd-4dea-ab9d-04f3b3e8105b" CreationDate="2011-07-19T11:48:51.877" UserId="3249" Text="Do significant claims require evidence?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4820" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1968" RevisionGUID="a67d86df-c5dd-4dea-ab9d-04f3b3e8105b" CreationDate="2011-07-19T11:48:51.877" UserId="3249" Text="|discussion|answer-quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4822" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1970" RevisionGUID="14063fee-e85a-429f-8ff8-7d61fe8de874" CreationDate="2011-07-19T12:40:29.400" UserId="47" Text="The short answer is &quot;yes&quot;, but that's only (as you say) for **significant** claims.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anybody can make a claim in an question or answer, but without *any* evidence to back it up, but a **good** question or answer will have that claim backed up with links, personal details etc. That's not to say that a question or answer without back up is a bad question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're right to say we don't need (nor should we insist on) the same level of detail as other sites, but if you are quoting figures then this *must* be backed up." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4823" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1971" RevisionGUID="1b8f87f6-6c83-4219-b90d-f656fccb6156" CreationDate="2011-07-19T13:02:17.463" UserId="2550" Text="Thanks for bringing this discussion here. I honestly think it's important (and picking one person/post is good; it provides something tangible to discuss). Let me present my opinions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As much as I hate to pick on one person/post, this isn't information, it's entertainment. It's mindless, populist drivel clearly written with one purpose: to provoke an emotional response and farm upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But these sites aren't strictly about information. If you want strict information, you can go to Wikipedia, IEEE magazines, scientific papers. The world is full of official and dull information. This site is, like the [guideline](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) tells, largely about  *the stuff between objective and subjective*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My answer, surely, leans towards the subjective side. As for being &quot;mindless, populist drivel&quot;, that's your personal opinion, not information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But who is correct, him or me? Do we/should we have no standards whatsoever for evidence, or are answers here supposed to be more than just statements of opinion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this largely depends on the question. Take these questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. [Is there a point at which the process gets in the way and becomes an end unto itself? Is that even engineering?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92508/too-much-version-control-and-bug-tracking-overhead-per-change/)&#xD;&#xA;  2. [How to create an edit profile page like Google+?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/94192/how-to-create-an-edit-profile-page-like-google)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second one is about technology how-to. The first one is about opinion. Opinions grow from experiences. Answers to such questions are unavoidably more or less subjective. How much evidence did you seen in the other answers to the same question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My answer obviously does provoke emotional responses, and even if it were completely incorrect, wrong, false, at least it reveals something about the question itself: **the right answer, whatever it is, is not clear.** Ergo, there is no objective answer. Ergo, the answer must be subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4824" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1971" RevisionGUID="88d78b3c-2ac7-45c5-9e8b-9710a6179a43" CreationDate="2011-07-19T13:08:04.187" UserId="2550" Comment="added 115 characters in body" Text="Thanks for bringing this discussion here. I honestly think it's important (and picking one person/post is only good; it provides something tangible to discuss). Let me present my opinions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As much as I hate to pick on one person/post, this isn't information, it's entertainment. It's mindless, populist drivel clearly written with one purpose: to provoke an emotional response and farm upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But these sites aren't strictly about information. If you want strict information, you can go to Wikipedia, IEEE magazines, scientific papers. The world is full of official and dull information. This site is, like the [guideline](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) tells, largely about  *the stuff between objective and subjective*. About stuff that one *thinks* is correct, but can't prove. Such stuff would go to `/dev/null` without sites like this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My answer, surely, leans towards the subjective side. As for being &quot;mindless, populist drivel&quot;, that's your personal opinion, not information. I certainly did not craft it to farm upvotes. I wrote my opinion, that's all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But who is correct, him or me? Do we/should we have no standards whatsoever for evidence, or are answers here supposed to be more than just statements of opinion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this largely depends on the question. Take these questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. [Is there a point at which the process gets in the way and becomes an end unto itself? Is that even engineering?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92508/too-much-version-control-and-bug-tracking-overhead-per-change/)&#xD;&#xA;  2. [How to create an edit profile page like Google+?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/94192/how-to-create-an-edit-profile-page-like-google)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second one is about technology how-to. The first one is about opinion. Opinions grow from experiences and they vary with time. Answers to such questions are unavoidably quite subjective. How much evidence did you seen in the other answers to the same question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My answer obviously does provoke emotional responses, and even if it were completely incorrect, wrong, false, at least it reveals something about the question itself: **the right answer, whatever it is, is not clear.** Therefore, there is no objective answer. Therefore, the answer must be subjective. And subjective answers are based on personal experiences - something that **nobody can call incorrect.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4825" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1972" RevisionGUID="df3273a2-e195-4b13-9872-8d56810afb66" CreationDate="2011-07-19T14:06:03.563" UserId="5095" Text="In all areas of life *extraordinary* claims should require not just evidence but *extraordinary* evidence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this doesn't happen, this shouldn't actually be a problem that needs a specific solution. You'd **hope** that an answer that makes such claims without backing them up is a poor answer and should be treated as such by those voting and commenting, at least that's the theory.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the nature of PSE and the audience it has means it doesn't always work that way. There are some answers which get away with some fairly outrageous claims because the answer presents a broadly popular perspective. Suggest that someone quit a shitty job and you can get away with almost anything else in the same post. Similarly blame management for getting in your way and the detail will likely be ignored.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While that's annoying it's not actually that much of a problem. For the most part I'd look to read not just the top answer, but the top three or so answers. Generally where you get one answer playing to the crowd, somewhere close to it you get a contrary view point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it's important not to discard the populist viewpoint. It may not be what you want to do but you should use it to inform your understanding of the world and the culture you work in. One place I work lived by the phrase &quot;the perception is reality&quot; - essentially saying that even if something wasn't true, if enough people believed it, it was something you had to deal with and I think that's the case with these answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read all the answers, use your own judgement to work out where you think the truth lies but try and learn from all the views that have been put forward as they will all tell you something, even if it's not exactly what the poster was trying to say.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;(I speak as someone who is most proud of some of my answers that have got next to no up votes...)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4826" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1973" RevisionGUID="927f28ad-397a-4492-8171-e91d6da64a90" CreationDate="2011-07-19T15:35:53.290" UserId="27671" Text="I noticed yesterday that the -1 for down voting an answer is still in effect on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is, should the -1 down voting reputation loss be removed here as it was on SO?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought the topic was well discussed [here][1] and the points about better quality monitoring through more active participation made sense (thought it's probably too early to see if it has in fact led to increased participation).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps answers/comments can lean towards why it would be or would not be appropriate *here*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/90324" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4827" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1973" RevisionGUID="927f28ad-397a-4492-8171-e91d6da64a90" CreationDate="2011-07-19T15:35:53.290" UserId="27671" Text="Should the -1 reputation for downvoting be removed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4828" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1973" RevisionGUID="927f28ad-397a-4492-8171-e91d6da64a90" CreationDate="2011-07-19T15:35:53.290" UserId="27671" Text="|discussion|reputation|voting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4829" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1974" RevisionGUID="4667f196-0ac5-4d83-901c-c5b24e90f458" CreationDate="2011-07-19T15:40:26.130" UserId="47" Text="The -1 reputation cost for down voting answers is still in place on all Stack Exchange sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's only the -1 for down voting questions that's been removed and that has been removed network wide." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4830" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1973" RevisionGUID="93870d3b-b321-4305-adfa-9b5d04f25cdc" CreationDate="2011-07-19T15:56:03.880" UserId="27671" Comment="reformulated post to focus on ANSWER voting, as opposed to QUESTION voting" Text="I noticed yesterday that the -1 for down voting an answer is still in effect, as [ChrisF pointed out][1] it was the -1 for down voting questions that was removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is, should the -1 down voting reputation loss be removed on answers as well?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that the points made in regards to improving participation and quality that applied to questions also apply to answers.  Additionally since there is an observed trend that answers generate more votes than questions, is it reasonable to infer that we might see higher quality answers rising?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I bring this up with no axe to grind, I have observed some answers that were upvoted perhaps due to humour or entertainment value above more &quot;correct&quot; answers.  This would, perhaps, encourage more users to exercise their vote for quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would be genuinely interested in hearing opinions on this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1973/should-the-1-reputation-for-downvoting-be-removed/1974#1974&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4831" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1973" RevisionGUID="93870d3b-b321-4305-adfa-9b5d04f25cdc" CreationDate="2011-07-19T15:56:03.880" UserId="27671" Comment="reformulated post to focus on ANSWER voting, as opposed to QUESTION voting" Text="Should the -1 reputation for downvoting answers be removed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4832" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1975" RevisionGUID="b00609a5-4d3f-4604-a65b-6829b884a696" CreationDate="2011-07-19T20:55:19.580" UserId="897" Text="Questions should support their premises where necessary.  We've seen a lot of posts along the lines of &quot;Why do experts say not to use OOP&quot; (a made-up example for illustration purposes).  Questions like that really should back up their assertions that 'experts' really do say such a thing.  A false premise makes the question meaningless. I routinely vote down questions like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers, on the other hand, really dont have that responsibility.  If someone makes a strong case, vote'm up.  If they dont, vote'm down.  Not every answer needs to be a treatise on a particular subject.  Often experience or opinion is *exactly* whats called for in an answer.  If you dont like that 'the unwashed public' votes up answers you personally find insufficient, well, too bad.  Thats freedom for ya.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4833" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1976" RevisionGUID="ac3da72a-a1d7-4d05-95c3-f03d35371ced" CreationDate="2011-07-19T21:15:55.767" UserId="1458" Text="Depends on what you thing Programmers.SE is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's a site for [expert programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions), then answers had better be backed by references, at least on demand. Even for the kind of subjective questions that make up the meat of the site, some kind of justification should be provided — real experts don't just say “yes” or “no”, they can explain why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If Programmers.SE is [Stack Overflow's toilet bowl](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl), then answers aren't for reading, you don't know where they've been (or rather you do!), so who cares.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4834" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1977" RevisionGUID="3093bc26-f8ca-49a7-a036-83574b8d3f75" CreationDate="2011-07-20T08:06:42.270" UserId="2550" Text="The only here problem is: what is a **significant** claim? What's significant to *you* may not be significant to *someone else*, and vice versa. Is it reasonably possible to back up everything that someone out there may consider significant? If not, then who decides what's significant and what's not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are the following claims significant or not? Or is some of them significant, but so obvious that it doesn't need to be backed up because of that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Developers are notoriously anti-management.&#xD;&#xA;  * Managers love processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Projects tend to go overtime.&#xD;&#xA;  * Startups can beat big, established corporations.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big, established corporations can beat startups.&#xD;&#xA;  * Stackexchange sites are popular.&#xD;&#xA;  * Beginners tend to make mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big corporations tend to have heavy processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Formal processes become a requirement when company grows to &gt; 10 people.&#xD;&#xA;  * Climate change is a major issue.&#xD;&#xA;  * Java is one of the most used languages out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do all of these need to be backed up? If not, which ones, and why?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4835" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1977" RevisionGUID="26f2e728-97c8-4d36-b697-82aa628c4a0c" CreationDate="2011-07-20T08:11:51.283" UserId="2550" Comment="added 97 characters in body" Text="The only here problem is: what is a **significant** claim? What's significant to *you* may not be significant to *someone else*, and vice versa. Is it reasonably possible to back up everything that someone out there may consider significant? If not, then who decides what's significant and what's not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are the following claims significant or not? Or is some of them significant, but so obvious that it doesn't need to be backed up because of that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Developers are notoriously anti-management.&#xD;&#xA;  * Managers love processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Projects tend to go overtime.&#xD;&#xA;  * Startups can beat big, established corporations.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big, established corporations can beat startups.&#xD;&#xA;  * Stackexchange sites are popular.&#xD;&#xA;  * Beginners tend to make mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big corporations tend to have heavy processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Lighter processes have become more and more popular during the last 10 years.&#xD;&#xA;  * Formal processes become a requirement when company grows to &gt; 10 people.&#xD;&#xA;  * Climate change is a major issue.&#xD;&#xA;  * Java is one of the most used languages out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do all of these need to be backed up? If not, which ones, and why? If yes, how would you back up e.g. the first one (&quot;Developers are notoriously anti-management.&quot;)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4836" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1977" RevisionGUID="c62ac669-62f9-4ba2-bc54-55d514b956a0" CreationDate="2011-07-20T08:30:41.993" UserId="2550" Comment="added 431 characters in body" Text="The problem here is: what is a **significant** claim? What's significant to *you* may not be significant to *someone else*, and vice versa. Is it reasonably possible to back up everything that someone out there may consider significant? If not, then who decides what's significant and what's not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are the following claims significant or not? Or is some of them significant, but so obvious that it doesn't need to be backed up because of that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Developers are notoriously anti-management.&#xD;&#xA;  * Managers love processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Projects tend to go overtime.&#xD;&#xA;  * Startups can beat big, established corporations.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big, established corporations can beat startups.&#xD;&#xA;  * Stackexchange sites are popular.&#xD;&#xA;  * Beginners tend to make mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big corporations tend to have heavy processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Lighter processes have become more and more popular during the last 10 years.&#xD;&#xA;  * Formal processes become a requirement when company grows to &gt; 10 people.&#xD;&#xA;  * Climate change is a major issue.&#xD;&#xA;  * Java is one of the most used languages out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do all of these need to be backed up? If not, which ones, and why? If yes, how would you back up e.g. the first one (&quot;Developers are notoriously anti-management.&quot;)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think that since the definition of significance and obviousness depends totally on who you ask, these sites *should* be kept quite lax. Attempting to suppress noise may improve signal-noise ratio, but it will also more or less distort the signal itself. The fallacy is that one starts to consider his own (or his community's) judgement as the only measure of significance or obviousness, and dismisses anything that deviates from it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4837" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1977" RevisionGUID="81acaca9-4091-4861-b32e-5a8d47731f7d" CreationDate="2011-07-20T08:37:24.547" UserId="2550" Comment="added 85 characters in body" Text="The problem here is: what is a **significant** claim? What's significant to *you* may not be significant to *someone else*, and vice versa. Is it reasonably possible to back up everything that someone out there may consider significant? If not, then who decides what's significant and what's not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are the following claims significant or not? Or is some of them significant, but so obvious that it doesn't need to be backed up because of that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Developers are notoriously anti-management.&#xD;&#xA;  * Managers love processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Projects tend to go overtime.&#xD;&#xA;  * Startups can beat big, established corporations.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big, established corporations can beat startups.&#xD;&#xA;  * Stackexchange sites are popular.&#xD;&#xA;  * Beginners tend to make mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big corporations tend to have heavy processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Lighter processes have become more and more popular during the last 10 years.&#xD;&#xA;  * Formal processes become a requirement when company grows to &gt; 10 people.&#xD;&#xA;  * Climate change is a major issue.&#xD;&#xA;  * Java is one of the most used languages out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do all of these need to be backed up? If not, which ones, and why? If yes, how would you back up e.g. the first one (&quot;Developers are notoriously anti-management.&quot;)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think that since the definition of significance and obviousness depends totally on who you ask, these sites should be kept quite lax - much more lax than some extremists suggest. Backing one's claims should of course be *encouraged*, but it shouldn't be *required*. Attempting to suppress noise may improve signal-noise ratio, but it will also more or less distort the signal itself. The fallacy is that one starts to consider his own (or his community's) judgement as the only measure of significance or obviousness, and dismisses anything that deviates from it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4838" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1977" RevisionGUID="2b97b9b1-527a-49cf-8344-182260c0b23d" CreationDate="2011-07-20T08:48:00.440" UserId="2550" Comment="added 101 characters in body" Text="The problem here is: what is a **significant** claim? What's significant to *you* may not be significant to *someone else*, and vice versa. Is it reasonably possible to back up everything that someone out there may consider significant? If not, then who decides what's significant and what's not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are the following claims significant or not? Or is some of them significant, but so obvious that it doesn't need to be backed up because of that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Developers are notoriously anti-management.&#xD;&#xA;  * Managers love processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Projects tend to go overtime.&#xD;&#xA;  * Startups can beat big, established corporations.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big, established corporations can beat startups.&#xD;&#xA;  * Stackexchange sites are popular.&#xD;&#xA;  * Beginners tend to make mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big corporations tend to have heavy processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Lighter processes have become more and more popular during the last 10 years.&#xD;&#xA;  * Formal processes become a requirement when company grows to &gt; 10 people.&#xD;&#xA;  * Climate change is a major issue.&#xD;&#xA;  * Java is one of the most used languages out there.&#xD;&#xA;  * Smoking kills.&#xD;&#xA;  * I feel that a couple of cups coffee does good to my programming efficiency.&#xD;&#xA;  * Too much coffee is bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do all of these need to be backed up? If not, which ones, and why? If yes, how would you back up e.g. the first one (&quot;Developers are notoriously anti-management.&quot;)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think that since the definition of significance and obviousness depends totally on who you ask, these sites should be kept quite lax - much more lax than some extremists suggest. Backing one's claims should of course be *encouraged*, but it shouldn't be *required*. Attempting to suppress noise may improve signal-noise ratio, but it will also more or less distort the signal itself. The fallacy is that one starts to consider his own (or his community's) judgement as the only valid measure of significance or obviousness, and dismisses anything that deviates from it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4839" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1977" RevisionGUID="440c86d6-6801-44d8-a2bb-5d74c4346d92" CreationDate="2011-07-20T08:53:19.237" UserId="2550" Comment="added 101 characters in body" Text="The problem here is: **what is a significant claim?** What's significant to *you* may not be significant to *someone else*, and vice versa. Is it reasonably possible to back up everything that someone out there may consider significant? If not, then who decides what's significant and what's not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are the following claims significant or not? Or is some of them significant, but so obvious that it doesn't need to be backed up because of that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Developers are notoriously anti-management.&#xD;&#xA;  * Managers love processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Projects tend to go overtime.&#xD;&#xA;  * Startups can beat big, established corporations.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big, established corporations can beat startups.&#xD;&#xA;  * Stackexchange sites are popular.&#xD;&#xA;  * Beginners tend to make mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big corporations tend to have heavy processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Lighter processes have become more and more popular during the last 10 years.&#xD;&#xA;  * Formal processes become a requirement when company grows to &gt; 10 people.&#xD;&#xA;  * Climate change is a major issue.&#xD;&#xA;  * Java is one of the most used languages out there.&#xD;&#xA;  * Smoking kills.&#xD;&#xA;  * I feel that a couple of cups coffee does good to my programming efficiency.&#xD;&#xA;  * Too much coffee is bad.&#xD;&#xA;  * Lines Of Code Per Day (LOCPD) is a lousy measure of developer productivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do all of these need to be backed up? If not, which ones, and why? If yes, how would you back up e.g. the first one (&quot;Developers are notoriously anti-management.&quot;)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think that since the definition of significance and obviousness depends totally on who you ask, these sites should be kept quite lax - much more lax than some extremists suggest. Backing one's claims should of course be *encouraged*, but it shouldn't be *required*. Attempting to suppress noise may improve signal-noise ratio, but it will also more or less distort the signal itself. The fallacy is that one starts to consider his own (or his community's) judgement as the only valid measure of significance or obviousness, and dismisses anything that deviates from it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4840" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1977" RevisionGUID="0d453b6f-bbeb-4b67-9f47-1d951305b917" CreationDate="2011-07-20T09:02:02.820" UserId="2550" Comment="added 51 characters in body" Text="The problem here is: **what is a significant claim?** What's significant to *you* may not be significant to *someone else*, and vice versa. Is it reasonably possible to back up everything that someone out there may consider significant? If not, then who decides what's significant and what's not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are the following claims significant or not? Or is some of them significant, but so obvious that it doesn't need to be backed up because of that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Developers are notoriously anti-management.&#xD;&#xA;  * Managers love processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Projects tend to go overtime.&#xD;&#xA;  * Startups can beat big, established corporations.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big, established corporations can beat startups.&#xD;&#xA;  * Stackexchange sites are popular.&#xD;&#xA;  * Beginners tend to make mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big corporations tend to have heavy processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Lighter processes have become more and more popular during the last 10 years.&#xD;&#xA;  * Formal processes become a requirement when company grows to &gt; 10 people.&#xD;&#xA;  * Climate change is a major issue.&#xD;&#xA;  * Java is one of the most used languages out there.&#xD;&#xA;  * Smoking kills.&#xD;&#xA;  * I feel that a couple of cups coffee does good to my programming efficiency.&#xD;&#xA;  * Too much coffee is bad.&#xD;&#xA;  * Lines Of Code Per Day (LOCPD) is a lousy measure of developer productivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do all of these need to be backed up? If not, which ones, and why? If yes, how would you back up e.g. the first one (&quot;Developers are notoriously anti-management.&quot;)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think that since the definition of significance and obviousness depends totally on who you ask, these sites should be kept quite lax - much more lax than some extremists suggest. Backing one's claims should of course be *encouraged*, but it shouldn't be *required*. Attempting to suppress noise may improve signal-noise ratio, but it will also more or less distort the signal itself. The fallacy is that one starts to consider his own (or his community's) judgement as the only valid measure of significance or obviousness, and dismisses anything that deviates from it. How is that better than opinions without evidence?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4841" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1972" RevisionGUID="182e46f3-304d-43ac-b5c9-f0f81bca4002" CreationDate="2011-07-20T09:03:04.740" UserId="5095" Comment="added 2943 characters in body" Text="In all areas of life *extraordinary* claims should require not just evidence but *extraordinary* evidence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this doesn't happen, this shouldn't actually be a problem that needs a specific solution. You'd **hope** that an answer that makes such claims without backing them up is a poor answer and should be treated as such by those voting and commenting, at least that's the theory.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the nature of PSE and the audience it has means it doesn't always work that way. There are some answers which get away with some fairly outrageous claims because the answer presents a broadly popular perspective. Suggest that someone quit a shitty job and you can get away with almost anything else in the same post. Similarly blame management for getting in your way and the detail will likely be ignored.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While that's annoying it's not actually that much of a problem. For the most part I'd look to read not just the top answer, but the top three or so answers. Generally where you get one answer playing to the crowd, somewhere close to it you get a contrary view point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it's important not to discard the populist viewpoint. It may not be what you want to do but you should use it to inform your understanding of the world and the culture you work in. One place I work lived by the phrase &quot;the perception is reality&quot; - essentially saying that even if something wasn't true, if enough people believed it, it was something you had to deal with and I think that's the case with these answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read all the answers, use your own judgement to work out where you think the truth lies but try and learn from all the views that have been put forward as they will all tell you something, even if it's not exactly what the poster was trying to say.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;(I speak as someone who is most proud of some of my answers that have got next to no up votes...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT** (from a comments discussion with Aaronaught):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So just to be clear from the outset - I wish all posts drew on research and personal experience and provided links to reputable sources where the claims warranted them. To me that's a good post and what we should aspire to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what we have is a situation where some popular answers don't meet that standard, and a question about what that means and whether it's a big deal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me the nature of subjective questions means that **the most useful &quot;answer&quot; isn't a single answer (whether the top voted or not) but is the amalgamation of all the great information contained in all the answers that have been provided**. Subjective questions by their nature don't have a single answer so for me what the upvotes are saying is the community indicating &quot;here is something you should have a think about while you're working out how to handle the specific situation you find yourself in&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In that context a glib unsupported popular answer with a mass of up votes is useful information. Sure it would be more useful if it was better supported but ***if you get 40+ people saying &quot;I agree with this&quot; it is absolutely something you should consider even if it's categorically wrong***.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason for that is that right and wrong are not the only thing that matters. If you're in a shitty job and you post about it you *will* get an answer with a bunch of votes saying &quot;Quit now!&quot; sure as the sun will rise tomorrow morning. While on one level that's a bad answer it gives you useful information - that you work in an industry where a significant number of people believe that that is an acceptable approach to the problem. While I and many others would argue it's not the most constructive approach that doesn't change the reality that many people believe this and act on this and it is something that you will see and have to deal with in the industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think what I'm saying (because I'm kind of thinking aloud here) is **a significant number of up votes are evidence in themselves**. Not perhaps of factual correctness, but of a perception that is frequently so strong and so prevalent that it has to be understood and considered. As programmers we sometimes forget that factual correctness isn't everything and that situations are more complex than that, that the softer and more emotive side of things is equally important and that any answer which ignores that may be factually correct but isn't usefully correct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously this requires the reader to apply some thought to the answers being provided and understand a wider context but I hope and believe that the people we're talking to are capable of doing that. If they're not then I suspect there's not much we can do for them anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'm not saying we should encourage bad answers, just that very popular bad answers provide useful information we can learn from and that we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4842" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1972" RevisionGUID="c571da70-d7a1-4db4-ac64-13d13be6b4ff" CreationDate="2011-07-20T09:30:19.723" UserId="5095" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="In all areas of life *extraordinary* claims should require not just evidence but *extraordinary* evidence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this doesn't happen, this shouldn't actually be a problem that needs a specific solution. You'd **hope** that an answer that makes such claims without backing them up is a poor answer and should be treated as such by those voting and commenting, at least that's the theory.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the nature of PSE and the audience it has means it doesn't always work that way. There are some answers which get away with some fairly outrageous claims because the answer presents a broadly popular perspective. Suggest that someone quit a shitty job and you can get away with almost anything else in the same post. Similarly blame management for getting in your way and the detail will likely be ignored.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While that's annoying it's not actually that much of a problem. For the most part I'd look to read not just the top answer, but the top three or so answers. Generally where you get one answer playing to the crowd, somewhere close to it you get a contrary view point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it's important not to discard the populist viewpoint. It may not be what you want to do but you should use it to inform your understanding of the world and the culture you work in. One place I work lived by the phrase &quot;the perception is reality&quot; - essentially saying that even if something wasn't true, if enough people believed it, it was something you had to deal with and I think that's the case with these answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read all the answers, use your own judgement to work out where you think the truth lies but try and learn from all the views that have been put forward as they will all tell you something, even if it's not exactly what the poster was trying to say.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;(I speak as someone who is most proud of some of my answers that have got next to no up votes...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT** (from a comments discussion with Aaronaught):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So just to be clear from the outset - I wish all posts drew on research and personal experience and provided links to reputable sources where the claims warranted them. To me that's a good post and what we should aspire to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what we have is a situation where some popular answers don't meet that standard, and a question about what that means and whether it's a big deal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me the nature of subjective questions means that **the most useful &quot;answer&quot; isn't a single answer (whether the top voted or not) but is the amalgamation of all the great information contained in all the answers that have been provided**. Subjective questions by their nature don't have a single answer so for me what the upvotes are saying is the community indicating &quot;here is something you should have a think about while you're working out how to handle the specific situation you find yourself in&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In that context a glib unsupported popular answer with a mass of up votes is useful information. Sure it would be more useful if it was better supported but ***if you get 40+ people saying &quot;I agree with this&quot; it is absolutely something you should consider even if it's categorically wrong***.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason for that is that right and wrong are not the only thing that matters. If you're in a shitty job and you post about it you *will* get an answer with a bunch of votes saying &quot;Quit now!&quot; sure as the sun will rise tomorrow morning. While on one level that's a bad answer it gives you useful information - that you work in an industry where a significant number of people believe that that is an acceptable approach to the problem. While I and many others would argue it's not the most constructive approach that doesn't change the reality that many people believe this and act on this and it is something that you will see and have to deal with in the industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think what I'm saying (because I'm kind of thinking aloud here) is **a significant number of up votes are evidence in themselves**. Not perhaps of factual correctness, but of a perception that is frequently so strong and so prevalent that it has to be understood and considered. As programmers we sometimes forget that factual correctness isn't everything and that situations are more complex than that, that the softer and more emotive side of things is equally important and that any answer which ignores that may be factually correct but isn't the whole story.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously this requires the reader to apply some thought to the answers being provided and understand a wider context but I hope and believe that the people we're talking to are capable of doing that. If they're not then I suspect there's not much we can do for them anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'm not saying we should encourage bad answers, just that very popular bad answers provide useful information we can learn from and that we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4843" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1977" RevisionGUID="87e37568-4dec-4a6c-8c28-ec433b0b4329" CreationDate="2011-07-20T10:02:56.630" UserId="2550" Comment="added 171 characters in body" Text="It's easy to say and agree with &quot;yes, significant claims should be backed up&quot;, but it's a vain statement as long as there's no common agreement of what &quot;significant&quot; means.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is: **what is a significant claim?** What's significant to *you* may not be significant to *someone else*, and vice versa. Is it reasonably possible to back up everything that someone out there may consider significant? If not, then who decides what's significant and what's not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are the following claims significant or not? Or is some of them significant, but so obvious that it doesn't need to be backed up because of that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Developers are notoriously anti-management.&#xD;&#xA;  * Managers love processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Projects tend to go overtime.&#xD;&#xA;  * Startups can beat big, established corporations.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big, established corporations can beat startups.&#xD;&#xA;  * Stackexchange sites are popular.&#xD;&#xA;  * Beginners tend to make mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big corporations tend to have heavy processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Lighter processes have become more and more popular during the last 10 years.&#xD;&#xA;  * Formal processes become a requirement when company grows to &gt; 10 people.&#xD;&#xA;  * Climate change is a major issue.&#xD;&#xA;  * Java is one of the most used languages out there.&#xD;&#xA;  * Smoking kills.&#xD;&#xA;  * I feel that a couple of cups coffee does good to my programming efficiency.&#xD;&#xA;  * Too much coffee is bad.&#xD;&#xA;  * Lines Of Code Per Day (LOCPD) is a lousy measure of developer productivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do all of these need to be backed up? If not, which ones, and why? If yes, how would you back up e.g. the first one (&quot;Developers are notoriously anti-management.&quot;)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think that since the definition of significance and obviousness depends totally on who you ask, these sites should be kept quite lax - much more lax than some extremists suggest. Backing one's claims should of course be *encouraged*, but it shouldn't be *required*. Attempting to suppress noise may improve signal-noise ratio, but it will also more or less distort the signal itself. The fallacy is that one starts to consider his own (or his community's) judgement as the only valid measure of significance or obviousness, and dismisses anything that deviates from it. How is that better than opinions without evidence?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4844" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1977" RevisionGUID="8f330979-4e33-496c-91b1-a28f9de33079" CreationDate="2011-07-20T10:16:59.540" UserId="2550" Comment="deleted 16 characters in body" Text="It's easy to agree with &quot;yes, significant claims should be backed up&quot;, but it's a vain statement as long as there's no common agreement of what &quot;significant&quot; means.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is: **what is a significant claim?** What's significant to *you* may not be significant to *someone else*, and vice versa. Is it reasonably possible to back up everything that someone out there may consider significant? If not, then who decides what's significant and what's not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are the following claims significant or not? Or is some of them significant, but so obvious that it doesn't need to be backed up because of that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Developers are notoriously anti-management.&#xD;&#xA;  * Managers love processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Projects tend to go overtime.&#xD;&#xA;  * Startups can beat big, established corporations.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big, established corporations can beat startups.&#xD;&#xA;  * Stackexchange sites are popular.&#xD;&#xA;  * Beginners tend to make mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big corporations tend to have heavy processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Lighter processes have become more and more popular during the last 10 years.&#xD;&#xA;  * Formal processes become a requirement when company grows to &gt; 10 people.&#xD;&#xA;  * Climate change is a major issue.&#xD;&#xA;  * Java is one of the most used languages out there.&#xD;&#xA;  * Smoking kills.&#xD;&#xA;  * I feel that a couple of cups coffee does good to my programming efficiency.&#xD;&#xA;  * Too much coffee is bad.&#xD;&#xA;  * Lines Of Code Per Day (LOCPD) is a lousy measure of developer productivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do all of these need to be backed up? If not, which ones, and why? If yes, how would you back up e.g. the first one (&quot;Developers are notoriously anti-management.&quot;)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think that since the definition of significance and obviousness depends totally on who you ask, these sites should be kept quite lax - much more lax than some extremists suggest. Backing one's claims should of course be *encouraged*, but it shouldn't be *required*. Attempting to suppress noise may improve signal-noise ratio, but it will also more or less distort the signal itself. The fallacy is that one starts to consider his own (or his community's) judgement as the only valid measure of significance or obviousness, and dismisses anything that deviates from it. How is that better than opinions without evidence?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4845" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1977" RevisionGUID="8b37087e-0a00-427e-bd2a-5826afcc6bd5" CreationDate="2011-07-20T11:49:28.370" UserId="2550" Comment="added 308 characters in body" Text="It's easy to agree with &quot;yes, significant claims should be backed up&quot;, but it's a vain statement as long as there's no common agreement of what &quot;significant&quot; means.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is: **what is a significant claim?** What's significant to *you* may not be significant to *someone else*, and vice versa. Is it reasonably possible to back up everything that someone out there may consider significant? If not, then who decides what's significant and what's not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are the following claims significant or not? Or is some of them significant, but so obvious that it doesn't need to be backed up because of that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Developers are notoriously anti-management.&#xD;&#xA;  * Managers love processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Projects tend to go overtime.&#xD;&#xA;  * Startups can beat big, established corporations.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big, established corporations can beat startups.&#xD;&#xA;  * Stackexchange sites are popular.&#xD;&#xA;  * Beginners tend to make mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Big corporations tend to have heavy processes.&#xD;&#xA;  * Lighter processes have become more and more popular during the last 10 years.&#xD;&#xA;  * Formal processes become a requirement when company grows to &gt; 10 people.&#xD;&#xA;  * Climate change is a major issue.&#xD;&#xA;  * Java is one of the most used languages out there.&#xD;&#xA;  * Smoking kills.&#xD;&#xA;  * I feel that a couple of cups coffee does good to my programming efficiency.&#xD;&#xA;  * Too much coffee is bad.&#xD;&#xA;  * Lines Of Code Per Day (LOCPD) is a lousy measure of developer productivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do all of these need to be backed up? If not, which ones, and why? If yes, how would you back up e.g. the first one (&quot;Developers are notoriously anti-management.&quot;)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think that since the definition of significance and obviousness depends totally on who you ask, these sites should be kept quite lax - much more lax than some extremists suggest. Backing one's claims should of course be *encouraged*, but it shouldn't be *required*. Attempting to suppress noise may improve signal-noise ratio, but it will also more or less distort the signal itself. The fallacy is that one starts to consider his own (or his community's) judgement as the only valid measure of significance or obviousness, and dismisses anything that deviates from it. How is that better than opinions without evidence? Questions with tens of upvotes getting closed is a sad example of this. Lots of people would be interested in the question (that's why they upvoted it), lots of interesting answers have already been written, and then... some police closes the question as &quot;Not a real question&quot; or something. It's really sad." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4846" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1978" RevisionGUID="8cb724fd-f643-4316-bb3c-f49edb6fe32a" CreationDate="2011-07-20T16:03:02.987" UserId="37" Text="We believe questions are a different matter, for all the reasons listed in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is also helpful to read the 2 related posts linked there as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/asking-better-questions/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/05/vote-for-this-question-or-the-kitten-gets-it/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4847" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1979" RevisionGUID="66f5e171-5227-4f72-a4c0-d712ee9d3b17" CreationDate="2011-07-21T06:16:30.583" UserId="2550" Text="Let's go back to the original question and my answer that started this discussion. The question was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a point at which the process gets in the way and becomes an end unto itself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To which I [answered](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92508/too-much-version-control-and-bug-tracking-overhead-per-change/92514#92514) (emphasis on what **I** meant to say):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Heavy processes are common**, unfortunately. Some people - especially **management** - religiously **imagine that processes produce products.** So they overdo the processes and forget that **it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products.** For upper management, it's frightening to even think that their business is in the hands of few geeks, and so the close their eyes from the reality and **think of their dear &quot;process&quot; instead, which gives them the illusion of control.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words: some (not-so-good) managers tend to think that it's the *process* that's the most essential thing, while I (and quite a few others) emphasize the *people* who create the product. That's the reason for overly heavy processes. The reason that managers prefer to overemphasize process is that it's *controllable*. Real people are way more difficult to control than some abstract process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All the above is said in my original answer, even if somewhat colorfully worded. Some folks seem to read it like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Heavy processes are common, unfortunately. **Some people - especially management - religiously imagine** that processes produce products. **So they overdo** the processes and forget that it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products. **For upper management, it's frightening to even think that their business is in the hands of few geeks,** and so the **close their eyes from the reality** and think of their dear &quot;process&quot; instead, which gives them the **illusion of control.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take only the &quot;anti-managerial tone&quot; from the post, then of course it looks stupid." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4848" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1979" RevisionGUID="fdf5fbc4-93bd-4d3a-bc5d-a46c064fc53c" CreationDate="2011-07-21T06:21:32.720" UserId="2550" Comment="added 34 characters in body" Text="Let's go back to the original question and my answer that started this discussion. The question was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a point at which the process gets in the way and becomes an end unto itself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To which I [answered](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92508/too-much-version-control-and-bug-tracking-overhead-per-change/92514#92514) (emphasis on what **I** meant to say):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Heavy processes are common**, unfortunately. Some people - especially **management** - religiously **imagine that processes produce products.** So they overdo the processes and forget that **it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products.** For upper management, it's frightening to even think that their business is in the hands of few geeks, and so the close their eyes from the reality and **think of their dear &quot;process&quot; instead, which gives them the illusion of control.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words: Since it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products, obviously the process can get in way if it's too heavy. While I (and quite a few colleagues) like to emphasize the *people*, some (not-so-good) managers tend to think in terms of *the process*. That's the reason for overly heavy processes. The reason that (some not-so-good) managers prefer to overemphasize process is that it (at least seems to be) *controllable*. Real people are more difficult to control than an abstract process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All the above is said in my original answer, even if somewhat colorfully worded. Some folks seem to read it like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Heavy processes are common, unfortunately. **Some people - especially management - religiously imagine** that processes produce products. **So they overdo** the processes and forget that it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products. **For upper management, it's frightening to even think that their business is in the hands of few geeks,** and so the **close their eyes from the reality** and think of their dear &quot;process&quot; instead, which gives them the **illusion of control.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take only the &quot;anti-managerial tone&quot; from the post, then of course it looks like a stupid rant." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4849" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1979" RevisionGUID="175fe73c-e2f7-49e3-b7cb-fc7a9ca8b46e" CreationDate="2011-07-21T06:26:42.140" UserId="2550" Comment="added 34 characters in body" Text="Let's go back to the original question and my answer that started this discussion. The question was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a point at which the process gets in the way and becomes an end unto itself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To which I [answered](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92508/too-much-version-control-and-bug-tracking-overhead-per-change/92514#92514) (emphasis on what **I** meant to say):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Heavy processes are common**, unfortunately. Some people - especially **management** - religiously **imagine that processes produce products.** So they overdo the processes and forget that **it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products.** For upper management, it's frightening to even think that their business is in the hands of few geeks, and so the close their eyes from the reality and **think of their dear &quot;process&quot; instead, which gives them the illusion of control.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words: Since it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products, obviously the process can get in way if it's too heavy. While I (and quite a few colleagues) like to emphasize the *people*, some (not-so-good) managers tend to think too much in terms of *the process*. That's the reason for overly heavy processes. The reason that (some not-so-good) managers prefer to overemphasize the process is that it is (or at least seems to be) *controllable*. Real people are way more difficult to control than some abstract process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All the above is said in my original answer, even if somewhat colorfully worded. Some folks seem to read it like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Heavy processes are common, **unfortunately. Some people - especially management - religiously imagine** that processes produce products. **So they overdo** the processes and forget that it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products. **For upper management, it's frightening to even think that their business is in the hands of few geeks,** and so the **close their eyes from the reality** and think of their dear &quot;process&quot; instead, which gives them the **illusion of control.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take only the &quot;anti-managerial tone&quot; from the post, then of course it looks like a stupid rant." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4850" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1979" RevisionGUID="566398c5-cd4b-46d1-a9a0-36f00c2290f0" CreationDate="2011-07-21T06:41:18.123" UserId="2550" Comment="added 125 characters in body" Text="Let's go back to the original question and my answer that started this discussion. The question was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a point at which the process gets in the way and becomes an end unto itself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To which I [answered](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92508/too-much-version-control-and-bug-tracking-overhead-per-change/92514#92514) (emphasis on what **I** meant to say):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Heavy processes are common**, unfortunately. Some people - especially **management** - religiously **imagine that processes produce products.** So they overdo the processes and forget that **it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products.** For upper management, it's frightening to even think that their business is in the hands of few geeks, and so the close their eyes from the reality and **think of their dear &quot;process&quot; instead, which gives them the illusion of control.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**In other words:** Since it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products, obviously the process can get in way if it's too heavy. While I (and quite a few colleagues) like to emphasize the *people*, some (not-so-good) managers tend to think too much in terms of *the process*. That's the reason for overly heavy processes. The reason that (some not-so-good) managers prefer to overemphasize the process is that it is (or at least seems to be) *controllable*. Real people are way more difficult to control than some abstract process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All the above is said in my original answer, even if somewhat colorfully worded. I don't think there's any particularly significant or outrageous statement. It's mostly common sense written out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some folks seem to read it like this:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Heavy processes are common, **unfortunately. Some people - especially management - religiously imagine** that processes produce products. **So they overdo** the processes and forget that it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products. **For upper management, it's frightening to even think that their business is in the hands of few geeks,** and so the **close their eyes from the reality** and think of their dear &quot;process&quot; instead, which gives them the **illusion of control.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take only the &quot;anti-managerial tone&quot; from the post, then of course it looks like a stupid rant. Maybe, just maybe, a more neutral tone should be preferred. But on the other hand, I prefer *reading* strongly written statements instead of gray and boring ones." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4851" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1979" RevisionGUID="6bf78d1f-9273-4125-94ea-fc7043fa9da4" CreationDate="2011-07-21T06:46:35.437" UserId="2550" Comment="added 125 characters in body" Text="Let's go back to the original question and my answer that started this discussion. The question was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a point at which the process gets in the way and becomes an end unto itself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To which I [answered](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92508/too-much-version-control-and-bug-tracking-overhead-per-change/92514#92514) (emphasis on what **I** meant to say):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Heavy processes are common**, unfortunately. Some people - especially **management** - religiously **imagine that processes produce products.** So they overdo the processes and forget that **it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products.** For upper management, it's frightening to even think that their business is in the hands of few geeks, and so the close their eyes from the reality and **think of their dear &quot;process&quot; instead, which gives them the illusion of control.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**In other words:** Since it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products, obviously the process can get in way if it's too heavy. While I (and quite a few colleagues) like to emphasize the *people*, some (not-so-good) managers tend to think too much in terms of *the process*. That's the reason for overly heavy processes. The reason that (some not-so-good) managers prefer to overemphasize the process is that it is (or at least seems to be) *controllable*. Real people are way more difficult to control than some abstract process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All the above is said in my original answer, even if somewhat colorfully worded. I don't think there's any particularly significant or outrageous statement. It's mostly common sense written out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some folks seem to read it like this:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Heavy processes are common, **unfortunately. Some people - especially management - religiously imagine** that processes produce products. **So they overdo** the processes and forget that it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products. **For upper management, it's frightening to even think that their business is in the hands of few geeks,** and so the **close their eyes from the reality** and think of their dear &quot;process&quot; instead, which gives them the **illusion of control.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take only the &quot;anti-managerial tone&quot; from the post, then of course it looks like a stupid rant. Maybe, just maybe, a more neutral tone should be preferred. But on the other hand, I prefer *reading* strongly written, concentrated statements instead of long and boring ones, full of half-assed &quot;evidence&quot; instead of strong opinions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4852" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1979" RevisionGUID="93cac68d-fb86-458e-979a-79c661f9ff2f" CreationDate="2011-07-21T06:53:00.193" UserId="2550" Comment="deleted 27 characters in body" Text="Let's go back to the original question and my answer that started this discussion. The question was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a point at which the process gets in the way and becomes an end unto itself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To which I [answered](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92508/too-much-version-control-and-bug-tracking-overhead-per-change/92514#92514) (emphasis on what **I** meant to say):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Heavy processes are common**, unfortunately. Some people - especially **management** - religiously **imagine that processes produce products.** So they overdo the processes and forget that **it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products.** For upper management, it's frightening to even think that their business is in the hands of few geeks, and so the close their eyes from the reality and **think of their dear &quot;process&quot; instead, which gives them the illusion of control.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**In other words:** Since it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products, obviously the process can get in way if it's too heavy. While I (and quite a few colleagues) like to emphasize the *people*, some (not-so-good) managers tend to think too much in terms of *the process*. That's the reason for overly heavy processes. The reason that (some not-so-good) managers prefer to overemphasize the process is that it is (or at least seems to be) *controllable*. Real people are way more difficult to control than some abstract process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All the above is said in my original answer, even if somewhat colorfully worded. I don't think there's any particularly significant or outrageous statement. It's mostly common sense written out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some folks seem to read it like this:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Heavy processes are common, **unfortunately. Some people - especially management - religiously imagine** that processes produce products. **So they overdo** the processes and forget that it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products. **For upper management, it's frightening to even think that their business is in the hands of few geeks,** and so the **close their eyes from the reality** and think of their dear &quot;process&quot; instead, which gives them the **illusion of control.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take only the &quot;anti-managerial tone&quot; from the post, then of course it looks like a stupid rant. Maybe, just maybe, a more neutral tone should be preferred. But on the other hand, I prefer *reading* strongly written, concentrated statements instead of shy ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My answer is not very good; it's certainly below my average answer quality (but some answers have to be below the average!). Still, calling it &quot;mindless, populist drivel&quot; is clearly a result of reading only the colorful part of it and missing the main point." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4853" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1979" RevisionGUID="70cc8418-4f86-4db8-bc3b-3deb088b9cd4" CreationDate="2011-07-21T08:05:57.630" UserId="2550" Comment="added 73 characters in body" Text="Let's go back to the original question and my answer that started this discussion. The question was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a point at which the process gets in the way and becomes an end unto itself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To which I [answered](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92508/too-much-version-control-and-bug-tracking-overhead-per-change/92514#92514) (emphasis on what **I** meant to say):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Heavy processes are common**, unfortunately. Some people - especially **management** - religiously **imagine that processes produce products.** So they overdo the processes and forget that **it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products.** For upper management, it's frightening to even think that their business is in the hands of few geeks, and so the close their eyes from the reality and **think of their dear &quot;process&quot; instead, which gives them the illusion of control.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**In other words:** Since it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products, obviously the process can get in way if it's too heavy. While I (and quite a few colleagues) like to emphasize *the people*, some (not-so-good) managers tend to think too much in terms of *the process*. That's the reason for overly heavy processes. The reason that (some not-so-good) managers prefer to overemphasize the process is that it is (or at least seems to be) *controllable*. Real people are way more difficult to control than some abstract process. Regardless, it's the real people that produce products, not the process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All the above is said in my original answer, even if somewhat colorfully worded. I don't think there's any particularly significant or outrageous statement. It's mostly common sense written out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some folks seem to read it like this:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Heavy processes are common, **unfortunately. Some people - especially management - religiously imagine** that processes produce products. **So they overdo** the processes and forget that it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products. **For upper management, it's frightening to even think that their business is in the hands of few geeks,** and so the **close their eyes from the reality** and think of their dear &quot;process&quot; instead, which gives them the **illusion of control.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take only the &quot;anti-managerial tone&quot; from the post, then of course it looks like a stupid rant. Maybe, just maybe, a more neutral tone should be preferred. But on the other hand, I prefer *reading* strongly written, concentrated statements instead of shy ones. People shouldn't be ashamed of their own biases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My answer is not very good; it's certainly below my average answer quality (but some answers have to be below the average!), and its lack of quality is emphasized by the number of upvotes it got, which may be seem to be undeserved (but it's not certainly my fault). Still, calling it &quot;mindless, populist drivel&quot; is clearly a result of reading only the colorful part of it and missing the main point." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4854" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1980" RevisionGUID="cf1ed0a9-c860-43eb-93cb-b5c9af50ef79" CreationDate="2011-07-21T11:15:58.117" UserId="2550" Text="I recently wrote an [answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92508/too-much-version-control-and-bug-tracking-overhead-per-change/92514#92514) to Programmers.SE which has caused some [controversy](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1968/do-significant-claims-require-evidence/). I'm starting to realize that the biggest issue is probably not the content (or lack of content) of the answer, but its wording; it's written in strong, colorful language, and obviously some readers see only that surface. I've tried to clarify the answer [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1968/do-significant-claims-require-evidence/1979#1979).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was thinking about re-wording the answer so that it wouldn't invoke unintentional reactions. But then, I've got 90 upvotes from people who apparently liked the answer as it is. Is it fair to completely rewrite such an answer? What about those people who gave their vote - if they wouldn't like the answer after the rewrite, then the voting results are obviously screwed, because the answer isn't any more the one that was voted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4855" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1980" RevisionGUID="cf1ed0a9-c860-43eb-93cb-b5c9af50ef79" CreationDate="2011-07-21T11:15:58.117" UserId="2550" Text="Is it acceptable to totally rewrite an up-voted answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4856" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1980" RevisionGUID="cf1ed0a9-c860-43eb-93cb-b5c9af50ef79" CreationDate="2011-07-21T11:15:58.117" UserId="2550" Text="|discussion|answers|up-votes|answer-quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4857" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1981" RevisionGUID="f66ecba0-f524-46db-8091-77f3704931ab" CreationDate="2011-07-21T11:39:56.700" UserId="5095" Text="I think so long as the answer remains true to the original spirit then rewriting it in a way that you think makes it better should be positively encouraged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of things to remember:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* if you make an edit people can recast their vote - anyone who objects to the edit can remove their up vote. &#xD;&#xA;* if your edits are particularly unreasonable a suitably rep-ed up member of the community can revert them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Essentially there are checks and balances against abuse of edits, though I think in this case (with the insight I've got from the other discussions we're having) I don't think it's an abuse at all, anything but.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the interests of transparency I'd probably include a brief note explaining what you've done and why but broadly speaking I think if you want to make changes you think are significant improvements that can only be a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4858" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1982" RevisionGUID="ce17ac40-d6ea-4aa1-9cae-fdd76cdc7b26" CreationDate="2011-07-21T11:45:51.700" UserId="47" Text="You do need to be careful when editing posts to make sure that you don't change the meaning as you could end up removing the part people agree with as well as the bits that people disagree with. In fact these might well be the same parts!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have something new to add or have found a link to back up your claims etc. then, of course you should edit the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are revisiting the post after receiving a comment and you agree that some of the language is more &quot;colourful&quot; than it needs to be then, yes edit the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The whole point of Stack Exchange is that you can come back to your posts and edit them to improve them - indeed *anyone* can come along and (hopefully) improve it either directly or by suggesting an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's only when you change and answer completed from &quot;Do it this way&quot; to &quot;Do it that way&quot; that you are subverting the system as then you have gained people's votes by subterfuge." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4859" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1983" RevisionGUID="fc3ab040-44e2-408f-8b04-bdb1ee85a4c3" CreationDate="2011-07-21T12:01:52.287" UserId="47" Text="This has come up a few times on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/1975/ability-to-sort-reorder-interesting-ignored-tags-in-sidebar  &#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/23488/sort-interested-ignored-tags-alphabetically&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and this request to &quot;lock&quot; the tags so you can't accidentally delete one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/29350/option-to-lock-interesting-tags-section-so-x-isnt-hit-accidentally-on-a-tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of them are marked [status-declined] so the team will be open to implementing them if they think there's enough demand. Head over to MSO and up-vote these questions and make it clear you support them in other ways. I understand feature requests are looked at in order of votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4860" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1984" RevisionGUID="e4b5a8ad-9841-403d-9521-18ff36275880" CreationDate="2011-07-21T14:40:05.180" UserId="31937" Text="I have been a member of a number of SE sites for some time, but have only today joined the Programmers site. I have asked one question, and have been keeping an eye on responses. My info page appears to be giving incorrect information, attributing my question to users that have not answered or commented on my question. An example is shown below - keppla has not (as far as I can tell) been involved in this question at all. Viewing my info page at other times has shown the same problem, but involving different users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OfO1V.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4861" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1984" RevisionGUID="e4b5a8ad-9841-403d-9521-18ff36275880" CreationDate="2011-07-21T14:40:05.180" UserId="31937" Text="Does the info page work differently on Programmers and other SE sites?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4862" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1984" RevisionGUID="e4b5a8ad-9841-403d-9521-18ff36275880" CreationDate="2011-07-21T14:40:05.180" UserId="31937" Text="|support|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4863" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1985" RevisionGUID="226f7aa5-d0eb-4dda-bae8-b6bd1fcb6d72" CreationDate="2011-07-21T14:45:50.413" UserId="47" Text="keppla was the most recent user to add an answer, but then they deleted it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means that the answer won't be visible (unless you have &gt;10K reputation) but the user is marked as the most recent contributor to the thread.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the same behaviour on all sites in the network." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4864" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1986" RevisionGUID="c91513f2-4b48-4736-8ff0-46c72016c90c" CreationDate="2011-07-21T15:00:43.850" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I've read through all of this discussion, and the one thing that keeps popping out at me is the disconnect between both sides on who has the burden of proof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Self-evidence&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The crux of the argument in support of these types of answers, as I understand it, is that they aren't providing anything that necessitates detailed evidence, and such a requirement would be onerous on otherwise self-evident (or commonly-held) ideas.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Something that's self-evident is, by definition, something any reasonable person would know. By providing answers that are self-evident, you don't provide any expert value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take the classic example of someone coming to the IT guy for help with a computer issue they're having, and the IT guy responding, &quot;Did you plug it in?&quot; It's self-evident that a computer must be plugged in for it to work, but the exchanges speaks to anyone who's had to deal with really trivial computer questions; it's functionally equivalent to saying &quot;You're wasting my time by asking me this question.&quot; It's been lampooned in [many](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IT_Crowd) a comedy [sketch](http://www.hulu.com/watch/19050/saturday-night-live-nick-burns) because it's exactly the type of response **nobody** wants to receive when they're coming to someone for help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Massively up-voted answers like the ones discussed here are our moral equivalent of &quot;did you plug it in?&quot; Someone asks a seemingly trivial question, someone else leaves the obvious response, and it gets massively up-voted not because the answer actually provided value or great insights, but because it said what we're all thinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is decidedly *not* what Stack Exchange is about. If you don't think a question is worth answering with a thoughtful, well-reasoned response, there are several options available:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Leave a comment explaining why the question is trivial and basic things the person can do&#xD;&#xA;* Down-vote the question as showing no research or effort&#xD;&#xA;* Vote to close the question as not constructive, too localized, or not a real question depending on the circumstances&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But beyond that, the main premise behind Stack Exchange is that there are experts who are *willing* to help others who might not know as much as they do. It's important, crucial even, that self-evidence is just taken off the table entirely. The answer is **not** self-evident: if it was, it wouldn't have been asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Preferences vs. belief&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond the question of self-evidence is the issue of what constitutes subjectivity, and answers can be roughly categorized into two types:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Personal preferences&#xD;&#xA;* Warranted beliefs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A *personal preference* is something you personally like or favor for whatever reason: I *like* mint chocolate chip ice cream. I *enjoy* sleeping in late. I *want* a slice of pizza for lunch today. These are unassailable: provided I'm not lying to you, you can't prove I don't like mint chocolate chip ice cream, no matter how hard you try. I said it, it's true.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A personal preference is the appropriate answer to a question asking for a poll: &quot;What is your favorite ice cream flavor?&quot;, &quot;What's your favorite book?&quot;, &quot;Which programming language do you like the most?&quot; Those questions, however, are [straight up prohibited](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) here and across the network. Personal preferences have no place in an answer, and are the smell of a bad question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A *warranted belief*, on the other hand, is something you *personally believe* based on something you *personally know to be true*. That is, &quot;I know X, and I know it because of Y.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This, and only this, is what subjectivity is all about on the Stack Exchange network, and it's the heart of the &quot;back it up&quot; mantra. We want—no, *crave*—answers that provide a belief of yours that you hold because of some special, personal insight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's not enough to just provide the belief: how do *I* know what you're saying is true or credible (remember, self-evidence is off the table)? Tell me more about *why* you believe that and I'll decide for myself whether what you believe is truly warranted from what you know, or if there's some other insight to be gleaned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, the person who has the burden of proof is always, *always* the answerer. If you can't support or are unwilling to support your claim with information about *why you believe the claim to be true*, it's not worth leaving the answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It wastes everyone's time: the question asker who doesn't get a useful answer, visitors who have to read through the answers, and yours when you have to justify it to people who question the claims made in your answer. To respect people's time, and make the internet a better place for everyone, tell us something we don't know and explain what it's all about. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers are like show-and-tell: we're all dying to hear the story behind why you believe PHP is the devil's work, or how you came up with the idea to use recursion to save little Timmy from the well. Don't hold out on us." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4865" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1986" RevisionGUID="81ca4425-69af-46ca-9fe3-345dd0f67126" CreationDate="2011-07-21T15:10:15.430" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 11 characters in body" Text="I've read through all of this discussion, and the one thing that keeps popping out at me is the disconnect between both sides on who has the burden of proof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Self-evidence&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The crux of the argument in support of these types of answers, as I understand it, is that they aren't providing anything that necessitates detailed evidence, and such a requirement would be onerous on otherwise self-evident (or commonly-held) ideas.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Something that's self-evident is, by definition, something any reasonable person would know. By providing answers that are self-evident, you don't provide any expert value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take the classic example of someone coming to the IT guy for help with a computer issue they're having, and the IT guy responding, &quot;Did you plug it in?&quot; It's self-evident that a computer must be plugged in for it to work, but the exchange speaks to anyone who's had to deal with really trivial computer questions; it's functionally equivalent to saying &quot;You're wasting my time by asking me this question.&quot; It's been lampooned in [many](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IT_Crowd) a comedy [sketch](http://www.hulu.com/watch/19050/saturday-night-live-nick-burns) because it's exactly the type of response **nobody** wants to receive when they're coming to someone for help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Massively up-voted answers like the ones discussed here are our moral equivalent of &quot;did you plug it in?&quot; Someone asks a seemingly trivial question, someone else leaves the obvious response, and it gets massively up-voted not because the answer actually provided value or great insights, but because it said what we're all thinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is decidedly *not* what Stack Exchange is about. If you don't think a question is worth answering with a thoughtful, well-reasoned response, there are several options available:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Leave a comment explaining why the question is trivial and basic things the person can do&#xD;&#xA;* Down-vote the question as showing no research or effort&#xD;&#xA;* Vote to close the question as not constructive, too localized, or not a real question depending on the circumstances&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But beyond that, the main premise behind Stack Exchange is that there are experts who are *willing* to help others who might not know as much as they do. It's important, crucial even, that self-evidence is just taken off the table entirely. The answer is **not** self-evident: if it was, it wouldn't have been asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Preferences vs. belief&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond the question of self-evidence is the issue of what constitutes subjectivity, and subjective answers can be roughly categorized into two types:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Personal preferences&#xD;&#xA;* Warranted beliefs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A *personal preference* is something you personally like or favor for whatever reason: I *like* mint chocolate chip ice cream. I *enjoy* sleeping in late. I *want* a slice of pizza for lunch today. These are unassailable: provided I'm not lying to you, you can't prove I don't like mint chocolate chip ice cream, no matter how hard you try. I said it, it's true.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A personal preference is the appropriate answer to a question asking for a poll: &quot;What is your favorite ice cream flavor?&quot;, &quot;What's your favorite book?&quot;, &quot;Which programming language do you like the most?&quot; Those questions, however, are [straight up prohibited](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) here and across the network. Personal preferences have no place in an answer, and are the smell of a bad question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A *warranted belief*, on the other hand, is something you *personally believe* based on something you *personally know to be true*. That is, &quot;I know X, and I know it because of Y.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This, and only this, is what subjectivity is all about on the Stack Exchange network, and it's the heart of the &quot;back it up&quot; mantra. We want—no, *crave*—answers that provide a belief of yours that you hold because of some special, personal insight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's not enough to just provide the belief: how do *I* know what you're saying is true or credible (remember, self-evidence is off the table)? Tell me more about *why* you believe that and I'll decide for myself whether what you believe is truly warranted from what you know, or if there's some other insight to be gleaned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, the person who has the burden of proof is always, *always* the answerer. If you can't support or are unwilling to support your claim with information about *why you believe the claim to be true*, it's not worth leaving the answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It wastes everyone's time: the question asker who doesn't get a useful answer, visitors who have to read through the answers, and yours when you have to justify it to people who question the claims made in your answer. To respect people's time, and make the internet a better place for everyone, tell us something we don't know and explain what it's all about. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers are like show-and-tell: we're all dying to hear the story behind why you believe PHP is the devil's work, or how you came up with the idea to use recursion to save little Timmy from the well. Don't hold out on us." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4866" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="171" RevisionGUID="d3e91c59-ae7e-4fd3-8c5f-034a0fb708e9" CreationDate="2011-07-22T23:23:00.060" UserId="63" />
  <row Id="4877" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1987" RevisionGUID="c103a922-17bb-4fb3-92e7-90f390fbf573" CreationDate="2011-07-24T16:46:07.087" UserId="3249" Text="I think that there is only one semi-strict rule about editing across Stack Exchange, and that is *&quot;don't start an [edit war][1] with the original author.&quot;*  Since you're the OA, that obviously doesn't apply here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's some other guidance in the above link, but [it's kind of dated][2], and not even the site owners really agree on a single universally-applicable methodology.  There are basically three schools of thought which I suspect will always exist in isolation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. The everyman school: Don't edit anything unless it's totally safe, like a barely readable post that's been downvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  2. The Jeff school: Only edit to fix minor errors like spelling, grammar, and formatting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  3. The Joel school: Edit whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want, as long as it substantially improves the question/answer (and therefore makes the internet a better place).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I'm a stalwart supporter of the Joel school.  Excepting extreme cases like the bait-and-switch, which loosely fall into the general *&quot;don't be a jerk&quot;* guidance, you shouldn't be afraid to perform major reconstructive surgery on any post, even if it's somebody else's.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you own it, it's practically your *responsibility* to improve it, *especially* if it's highly-voted/accepted and even if it means a total rewrite.  This isn't just armchair speculation from me, trying to convince you to rewrite your answer; I practice what I preach.  I don't have that many answers on P.SE to demonstrate, but I've done this [frequently on my home turf][3] after realizing that one of my earlier answers was... well, crap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It makes no sense to tell people not to change the content of their answers if the original content is wrong, misleading, incomplete, or simply not the best that it *could* be.  The whole aim of this crowdsourcing exercise is deliver the *best possible* answers we can.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Editing unfreezes voting, so if the people who voted for the previous answer no longer like the &quot;new&quot; answer, they are free to rescind their votes.  Which means that you might lose reputation, but (a) I doubt that'll happen if the edit is truly an improvement, and (b) if you're really worried about that then you might be posting for the wrong reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/03/the-great-edit-wars/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/posts/1126/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4878" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1988" RevisionGUID="54a0b9e0-cf94-4185-81a7-5b9fcc42e31a" CreationDate="2011-07-24T20:39:23.403" UserId="32264" Text="I have never seen anyone swear in a question or an answer, but I haven't seen any rules regarding profanity either. I'm just wondering: is there some sort of regulation against profanity, or is it generally just frowned upon? I am pretty new to the community so please forgive me if there is some obvious rule I have overlooked." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4879" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1988" RevisionGUID="54a0b9e0-cf94-4185-81a7-5b9fcc42e31a" CreationDate="2011-07-24T20:39:23.403" UserId="32264" Text="Is profanity allowed in answers or questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4880" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1988" RevisionGUID="54a0b9e0-cf94-4185-81a7-5b9fcc42e31a" CreationDate="2011-07-24T20:39:23.403" UserId="32264" Text="|discussion|questions|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4881" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1989" RevisionGUID="dd68ea2b-b54d-4a6f-a02e-54a8919216cc" CreationDate="2011-07-24T22:08:07.207" UserId="4" Text="It's generally frowned upon, I think. There aren't any formal rules, but this is a professional site. I would suspect that if your post had profanity in it, someone would edit it away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My personal rule of thumb is that if I wouldn't say it at work, then it doesn't go into a post here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4883" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1991" RevisionGUID="12499406-8861-469b-885f-9c36da66c0bf" CreationDate="2011-07-24T23:39:04.060" UserId="37" Text="No, profanity is not allowed in questions or answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/22232/are-expletives-allowed-on-se-sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to the professionalism issue, there's also the matter of being blocked by corporate proxies based on inappropriate language." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4884" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1976" RevisionGUID="7d43e4a0-2c50-439e-864b-e3e39d50dc40" CreationDate="2011-07-25T21:05:30.363" UserId="2654" Comment="deleted 14 characters in body" Text="It depends on what you think Programmers.SE is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's a site for [expert programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions), then answers had better be backed up by references. Even for the kind of subjective questions that make up the meat of the site, some kind of justification should be provided — real experts don't just say “yes” or “no”, they can explain why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If Programmers.SE is [Stack Overflow's toilet bowl](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl), then answers aren't for reading, you don't know where they've been (or rather you do!), so who cares.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4885" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1992" RevisionGUID="06baad99-05c5-44bb-bdee-a51ae6589a3c" CreationDate="2011-07-26T08:26:52.950" UserId="92" Text="I recently got a Notable Question badge for [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238/what-are-your-favorite-programming-related-movies-documentaries) question. My profile says it has more than 3k views, but on the question page it shows less than that. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4886" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1992" RevisionGUID="06baad99-05c5-44bb-bdee-a51ae6589a3c" CreationDate="2011-07-26T08:26:52.950" UserId="92" Text="Wrong view count bug" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4887" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1992" RevisionGUID="06baad99-05c5-44bb-bdee-a51ae6589a3c" CreationDate="2011-07-26T08:26:52.950" UserId="92" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4888" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1993" RevisionGUID="a1ba5944-64fe-4261-af54-cefa19968a97" CreationDate="2011-07-26T08:33:00.477" UserId="47" Text="The value reported on the question page (2,765 times) is accurate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The value on your profile page is an approximation, rounded to the nearest unit of 10, 100 or in this case 1,000. If you hover over the value a tooltip should pop up with the correct value - 2766 views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The values won't be 100% accurate due to caching, but should be within few views depending on how often the question is getting viewed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4889" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1992" RevisionGUID="9fa9dbd0-3e87-46f3-9860-5da49210f574" CreationDate="2011-07-26T08:33:12.597" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4890" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1993" RevisionGUID="e39f6fb3-5eb0-4d6a-868b-c09817e39aab" CreationDate="2011-07-26T12:28:11.440" UserId="47" Comment="clarification" Text="The value reported on the question page (2,765 times) is accurate (subject to caching).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The value on your profile page is an approximation, rounded to the nearest unit of 10, 100 or in this case 1,000. If you hover over the value a tooltip should pop up with the correct value - 2766 views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The values won't be 100% accurate due to caching, but should be within few views depending on how often the question is getting viewed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4891" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1994" RevisionGUID="b2b119ee-64b6-4bc3-bdf2-26e6a702dd3e" CreationDate="2011-07-26T15:19:57.683" UserId="47" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95920/what-is-each-time-through-a-loop-called) on terminology was asked earlier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should the &quot;General Reference&quot; close reason as outlined [in this blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/are-some-questions-too-simple/) and [this Meta Stack Overflow answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86043/introduce-a-general-reference-close-reason/88521#88521) be enabled here on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there any other questions that would fit this bill, or was this just a one-off that we can live with?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4892" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1994" RevisionGUID="b2b119ee-64b6-4bc3-bdf2-26e6a702dd3e" CreationDate="2011-07-26T15:19:57.683" UserId="47" Text="Would the &quot;General Reference&quot; close reason be useful here on Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4893" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1994" RevisionGUID="b2b119ee-64b6-4bc3-bdf2-26e6a702dd3e" CreationDate="2011-07-26T15:19:57.683" UserId="47" Text="|feature-request|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4894" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1994" RevisionGUID="56344388-7a6f-4408-aed1-2530462379ea" CreationDate="2011-07-26T15:25:23.647" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95920/what-is-each-time-through-a-loop-called) on terminology was asked earlier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should the &quot;General Reference&quot; close reason as outlined [in this blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/are-some-questions-too-simple/) and [this Meta Stack Overflow answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86043/introduce-a-general-reference-close-reason/88521#88521) be enabled here on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there any other questions that would fit this bill, or was this just a one-off that we can live with?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does the existing &quot;Not constructive&quot; close reason cover this case?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4895" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1994" RevisionGUID="56344388-7a6f-4408-aed1-2530462379ea" CreationDate="2011-07-26T15:25:23.647" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4896" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1995" RevisionGUID="4fe0a2dc-d51a-4900-9d23-0c990a35e1ed" CreationDate="2011-07-26T15:27:58.810" UserId="63" Text="What's the reference? &quot;Learn 2 Proggy in 21 Days&quot;? &quot;The Art of Computer Programming&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On EL&amp;U, you could reasonably be expected to look in *a dictionary*, or perhaps even such an exotic source as a thesaurus. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd argue it'd be far more useful on Stack Overflow, where a frightening number of questions can be answered simply by digging up the official documentation for the language / API in question and quoting liberally from it... But then again, interpreting official documentation does have some value. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The example you gave seems to be a very simple, basic question... And yet, there are three different answers to it, all with up-votes. Either there's more to the question than meets the eye, or there are a lot of confused programmers out there (my money's on the latter...); either way, there's probably some value in having an answer, here, where it can be vetted and perhaps even improved by the community." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4897" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1996" RevisionGUID="27bb5500-af21-4992-a9c4-3ba71f2c3892" CreationDate="2011-07-26T15:36:17.407" UserId="7748" Text="When I disagree with an Answer I can down vote it stating my objection. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I Disagree with a comment the only way expresses that, is to Reply-comment. This has on 2 occasions nearly started a flame war resulting in all the comments being deleted. (I am most like the guilty party.. but I digress )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why not simply allow for the down voting of comments?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4898" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="1996" RevisionGUID="27bb5500-af21-4992-a9c4-3ba71f2c3892" CreationDate="2011-07-26T15:36:17.407" UserId="7748" Text="What is the rationale behind not allowing down votes to Comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4899" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="1996" RevisionGUID="27bb5500-af21-4992-a9c4-3ba71f2c3892" CreationDate="2011-07-26T15:36:17.407" UserId="7748" Text="|feature-request|voting|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4900" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1997" RevisionGUID="68f28102-c62b-4364-b45e-247908df8bde" CreationDate="2011-07-26T15:38:52.507" UserId="47" Text="This has been requested many times on Meta Stack Overflow and always declined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is [the canonical question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/3615/should-downvoting-be-allowed-on-comments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your problem - perhaps you need to consider what you type in your comment reply to try to avoid starting a flame war.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4901" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1996" RevisionGUID="b0696c1f-c14c-4493-9869-40cf9c4207d7" CreationDate="2011-07-26T15:48:27.187" UserId="6415" Comment="added 13 characters in body" Text="When I disagree with an answer I can down vote it stating my objection. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I disagree with a comment the only way to express that is to reply to the comment. This has on two occasions nearly started a flame war resulting in all the comments being deleted. (I am most likely the guilty party ... but I digress )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why not simply allow for the down voting of comments?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4902" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1998" RevisionGUID="563afb26-7cf7-4d20-9240-5d8609f235f4" CreationDate="2011-07-26T16:24:46.837" UserId="1458" Text="Regarding the general reference close reason: it has been on trial on [Science Fiction &amp; Fantasy Stack Exchange](http://scifi.stackexchange.com/) and [English Language &amp; Usage](http://english.stackexchange.com/) for a few months. You can watch part of the debate that led to it [here](http://meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/197/should-trivially-easy-to-find-be-a-benchmark-for-moderating-the-site) and [here](http://meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/328/how-should-we-handle-questions-that-are-easily-answered-by-wikipedia).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On SF&amp;F, we don't use it often (6 times total, out of about 80 closed or retracted questions since the close reason was introduced). It gives a clear way to close questions where an encyclopedia, database or other general reference is the best answer, so there is no need to involve an answerer in the process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In its absence, you could (ab)use the “too localized” close reason: “this question is unlikely to ever help any future visitors”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One thing to decide if “general reference” becomes a close reason is what constitutes a general reference.  [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/) is an obvious one. Standard English dictionaries are another, for EL&amp;U. On SF&amp;F, bibliographical data from [IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/) and [ISFDB](http://www.ifsdb.org/) (and that last one isn't completely decided: ISFDB isn't that well known). For SO and Programmers, the reference manual of the language or framework that the question is about would be a general reference. (But what about non-official or hard-to-get-at or not-so-well-known references? Is K&amp;R a GR for C? What about the c.l.c FAQ?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that there's a difference between “general reference” questions and “easily googlable” questions. Following [Borror0's diagram](http://meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/328/how-should-we-handle-questions-that-are-easily-answered-by-wikipedia/330#330): a question is only a general reference question if the answer is easy to find (not scattered across many pages or worded in a way that only people who are already experts can understand), and it isn't a general reference question if you feel that the reference is incomplete and you (as an expert) have more to say that would be useful to the asker. [I would add one element](http://meta.unix.stackexchange.com/questions/377/is-it-okay-to-ask-questions-here-when-wikipedia-already-has-the-answer/380#380): if the first Google hit is a page that answers the question, but the asker would have no particular reason to trust that site (e.g. it's some random blog post), then the question is legitimate — GR is really more about “look it up first” than “google it first”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another thing to watch for is the possibility for abuse. “What is X?”, when Wikipedia has an article on X, is a GR question. “I've read the Wikipedia article on X, but it's defined in terms of V and W which I don't know, my background is B, could you explain X to me?” is a valid question. So is “I've read the Wikipedia article on X, but it doesn't discuss context C, how does X relate to C?”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding this question in particular: it's obviously about loops, so the first thing do do — the minimum amount of research that's expected of any asker — is to browse the [Wikipedia article on loops](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_(computing)#Loops).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find the [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Control_flow&amp;oldid=439997913#Loops) more interesting than the answers here, in fact. It doesn't define a term for each “time through the loop”. There are, however, parts of the article that use the expression “iteration of the loop” or “loop iteration”, without defining it explicitly. This suggests to me that the term “iteration” is the accepted term in part of the community, while another part doesn't use the word. I didn't get that vibe from the answers here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a “smell” in the question, by the way. If you need to work around the “quality standards”, this suggests that your question isn't very high quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe I'm being too negative against the question, and we just need to wait a little more to have good answers. Someone suggested the term “pass”, and there is some debate about it. So at least it does show that the community is divided.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4903" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1995" RevisionGUID="d618fd2e-1706-4086-b7f7-ca0f7506df3c" CreationDate="2011-07-26T16:46:35.487" UserId="63" Comment="Perfectly good close reason for this..." Text="What's the reference? &quot;Learn 2 Proggy in 21 Days&quot;? &quot;The Art of Computer Programming&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On EL&amp;U, you could reasonably be expected to look in *a dictionary*, or perhaps even such an exotic source as a thesaurus. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd argue it'd be far more useful on Stack Overflow, where a frightening number of questions can be answered simply by digging up the official documentation for the language / API in question and quoting liberally from it... But then again, interpreting official documentation does have some value. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The example you gave seems to be a very simple, basic question... And yet, there are three different answers to it, all with up-votes. Either there's more to the question than meets the eye, or there are a lot of confused programmers out there (my money's on the latter...); either way, there's probably some value in having an answer, here, where it can be vetted and perhaps even improved by the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, Aaronaught makes a good point in the comments... If this is *really* a site &quot;for **expert programmers** who are interested in **conceptual questions** on software development&quot; then &quot;what is basic building block of programming called?&quot; can be considered simply Off-Topic... and closed as such." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4904" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="1999" RevisionGUID="cf66b65d-5051-4069-a9d1-a91adfb98f7c" CreationDate="2011-07-26T17:50:53.693" UserId="2654" Text="You are entitled to disagree, however this is not Reddit. It's not a threaded discussion. Comments are a quick and simple way to exchange improvements over the answer or question. Upvote comments you feel would improve the post the best. Flag ones that are offensive or unhelpful. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4906" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2000" RevisionGUID="cb6f4b2e-2e1c-40c2-adf4-1a48925b18a2" CreationDate="2011-07-26T21:06:25.433" UserId="3249" Text="This question got me thinking about a deeper issue on Stack Exchange - but first, let me answer the specific questions here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should the &quot;General Reference&quot; close reason as outlined [in this blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/are-some-questions-too-simple/) and [this Meta Stack Overflow answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86043/introduce-a-general-reference-close-reason/88521#88521) be enabled here on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**No**, because those should already be covered by the [Official FAQ][1] and the site's &quot;elevator pitch&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for **expert programmers** who are interested in conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Emphasis mine.  General reference questions are, by definition, not *expert* questions.  SciFi.SE and English.SE don't have that criteria, so it's more of an issue for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does the existing &quot;Not constructive&quot; close reason cover this case?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**No**, I don't think so - it doesn't fit any of the qualifying definitions of Not Constructive. It's sort of practical, it's answerable, it might educate some beginners in the community. It's not really open-ended, and definitely doesn't have an infinite list of answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So what should we do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless we get a &quot;too easy&quot; close reason, I think we should close these as **off topic**.  The word &quot;expert&quot; is right there in the site's tagline; **if it's not relevant to an *experienced, practicing* programmer, then it's not in our scope.**  I'm sorry if it sounds callous, but we're here to help each other, not educate every single newbie on how to program.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Check this out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Quality Venn][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pretty sure that the purple area between &quot;Advanced&quot; and &quot;Disciplined&quot; is where we are *supposed* to be.  We focus entirely on the subjective (objective questions go on Stack Overflow), so we have to be on the right side; and since we're nowhere near as disciplined as Skeptics, we have to make up for it by discussing subjects that are more advanced.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we start allowing questions that are subjective *and* beginner-level, then we end up with [bike shed][3] questions, which almost invariably produce crap answers *and* drag down the rest of the site with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From now on, I'm going to start closing these &quot;Learn PHP in 21 days&quot; questions as *off topic*. These guys can go read a tutorial or take a class or something; the whole point of this site is to discuss the topics we *don't* learn in school and often don't learn on the job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/yzan7.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_Law_of_Triviality" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4907" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2001" RevisionGUID="50772211-361d-43f7-bc7e-dc411ed9688e" CreationDate="2011-07-27T16:49:23.697" UserId="620" Text="**Tag merge request: book → books**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This request is simple enough. I don't know what text to put here to make the post long enough. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Thanks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4908" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2001" RevisionGUID="50772211-361d-43f7-bc7e-dc411ed9688e" CreationDate="2011-07-27T16:49:23.697" UserId="620" Text="Tag merge request: book → books" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4909" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2001" RevisionGUID="50772211-361d-43f7-bc7e-dc411ed9688e" CreationDate="2011-07-27T16:49:23.697" UserId="620" Text="|feature-request|tags|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4910" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2001" RevisionGUID="a3b82464-3327-47b8-8cf7-79b4afe27ec5" CreationDate="2011-07-27T17:17:22.440" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 488 characters in body" Text="I think the tag [tag:book] should be merged into [tag:books], since they clearly mean the same thing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4911" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2001" RevisionGUID="a3b82464-3327-47b8-8cf7-79b4afe27ec5" CreationDate="2011-07-27T17:17:22.440" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 488 characters in body" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|tags|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4912" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2002" RevisionGUID="f4c99226-ba1e-49c6-9819-2c691144581a" CreationDate="2011-07-27T18:02:12.197" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This has been completed, and this placeholder answer is here to be up-voted or accepted so it'll be taken off the [unanswered](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/unanswered) question list. :P" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4913" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2003" RevisionGUID="e6e7c3a2-64f0-468c-b99a-8f5b587d741e" CreationDate="2011-07-27T18:25:25.173" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="We get [a *lot* of book recommendation questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=book%20recommendation), so much so that it's hard to keep up with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've been closing them as off-topic, not a real question, and not constructive based on a few different points of guidance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The [What questions should I not ask here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) part of our FAQ&#xD;&#xA;* [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are “I'm looking for X” questions on topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* Other consensus built elsewhere on the network like Gaming.SE: [What should be done with questions asking for game recommendations?](http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/1491/what-should-be-done-with-questions-asking-for-game-recommendations)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, due to the sheer number of these questions we get, I wonder if we should revisit this and see where we as a community stands on book recommendations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are book recommendations on-topic? If so, why? What preconditions need to be met for a good book recommendation question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not, do we need to add a new line under *What about other programming-related questions?* to make it explicitly clear they're not allowed? Something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Book recommendations (e.g. What's the best book to learn Python?)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4914" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2003" RevisionGUID="e6e7c3a2-64f0-468c-b99a-8f5b587d741e" CreationDate="2011-07-27T18:25:25.173" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Are book recommendations on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4915" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2003" RevisionGUID="e6e7c3a2-64f0-468c-b99a-8f5b587d741e" CreationDate="2011-07-27T18:25:25.173" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4916" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2004" RevisionGUID="bc5e8c42-a3fa-46bc-bb55-66377fa5c44e" CreationDate="2011-07-27T20:00:25.623" UserId="47" Text="I would say that like &quot;what language should I learn&quot; questions, questions that effectively ask for a list of books on X should be closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, like programming language questions, if you have *specific* requirement (you want to go into LINQ, or networking, or.. in great depth) then *perhaps* those should be allowed. They should inspire answers that explain why a book is good for this topic and shouldn't just produce a list of everyone's favourite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So - in short - if your question will produce a list of everyone's favourite book - don't post, but if it will elicit the title of *the* book on a topic then go for it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4917" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2004" RevisionGUID="16347f98-0abb-4fff-a8ba-972c729a1879" CreationDate="2011-07-28T07:40:29.430" UserId="47" Comment="better wording" Text="I would say that like &quot;what language should I learn&quot; questions, questions that effectively ask for a list of books on X should be closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, like programming language questions, if you have *specialised* requirements (you want to go into LINQ, or networking, or.. in great depth) then *perhaps* those should be allowed. They should inspire answers that explain why a book is good for this topic and shouldn't just produce a list of everyone's favourite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So - in short - if your question will produce a list of everyone's favourite book - don't post, but if it will elicit the title of *the* book on a topic then go for it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4918" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2005" RevisionGUID="5be3e68b-155b-44cb-ad8d-c3eed69bd6c2" CreationDate="2011-07-28T08:52:14.517" UserId="17561" Text="I can't see why it might be even remotely necessary to be honest. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4919" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2006" RevisionGUID="fd42d5c1-92fa-4b35-a8fd-44ff76aebc94" CreationDate="2011-07-28T09:18:29.767" UserId="47" Text="A couple of questions have been flagged today as more appropriate on [IT Security](http://security.stackexchange.com/). I thought I'd do a check on what had been migrated there by moderators and came up with the following list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96553/is-steganography-a-safe-method-migrated?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96547/building-a-security-framework-migrated?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95544/what-are-the-chances-of-a-database-being-hacked-migrated?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/94306/storing-sensitive-information-securely-migrated?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56870/compute-the-aes-encryption-key-given-the-plaintext-and-its-ciphertext-migrated?noredirect=1 (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87337/how-can-you-become-a-competent-web-application-security-expert-without-breaking-t?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84989/how-secure-are-the-default-asp-net-membership-and-role-providers-for-sql-server?noredirect=1 (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32980/pci-encryption-key-management-migrated?noredirect=1 (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this enough evidence to enable the migration route on the close dialog?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there any other questions that would be a better fit for IT Security?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4920" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2006" RevisionGUID="fd42d5c1-92fa-4b35-a8fd-44ff76aebc94" CreationDate="2011-07-28T09:18:29.767" UserId="47" Text="Should we have a migration route to IT Security?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4921" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2006" RevisionGUID="fd42d5c1-92fa-4b35-a8fd-44ff76aebc94" CreationDate="2011-07-28T09:18:29.767" UserId="47" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4922" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2007" RevisionGUID="16df8195-3070-46a1-8129-8de51beaa06e" CreationDate="2011-07-28T14:06:14.177" UserId="7748" Text="I think the new system of randomizing the answers regardless of Votes is Flawed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears that users are (most likely unintentionally) abusing this. Simply re-word the current best answer and you have 50% being up voted (or even accepted) over the original because you are listed first. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it would be better to order them based on Time answered. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS: I do understand the intent was to correct the bias towards the answer with the most votes. But I think this unintended side effect is worse.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4923" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2007" RevisionGUID="16df8195-3070-46a1-8129-8de51beaa06e" CreationDate="2011-07-28T14:06:14.177" UserId="7748" Text="I think the new system of randomizing the answers regardless of Votes is Flawed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4924" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2007" RevisionGUID="16df8195-3070-46a1-8129-8de51beaa06e" CreationDate="2011-07-28T14:06:14.177" UserId="7748" Text="|discussion|voting|answer-order|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4925" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2008" RevisionGUID="c44c09c2-fd2c-488f-a179-702b163b2ae5" CreationDate="2011-07-28T14:17:08.300" UserId="47" Text="What new system?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is randomisation of answers (which isn't new) but it only occurs between answers that have the same vote score and when you have the &quot;votes&quot; tab active. The other two tabs - &quot;oldest&quot; and &quot;active&quot; are consistent in their answer ordering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;oldest&quot; lists the answers in order of age of initial posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;active&quot; lists the answers in reverse order of edits - the most recently edited posts appearing first." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4926" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2009" RevisionGUID="facf6b09-0c15-4a59-b3d9-40a7636e5166" CreationDate="2011-07-28T15:44:03.577" UserId="47" Text="Another question migrated:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96445/arent-permanantly-logged-in-accounts-inherently-insecure?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like the frequency is increasing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4927" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2010" RevisionGUID="ef4aa7a1-ad9e-4d9f-9317-2402adebae9d" CreationDate="2011-07-28T16:53:57.567" UserId="6415" Text="I've been helping out and thought I'd post so people know. When I'm on the site I always watch the new questions, and as I become aware of tags that need cleaning I'll be going through them as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4928" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2007" RevisionGUID="242fc5d9-3731-418d-9d69-40c4994bf2e0" CreationDate="2011-07-28T17:28:15.820" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4929" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2007" RevisionGUID="242fc5d9-3731-418d-9d69-40c4994bf2e0" CreationDate="2011-07-28T17:28:15.820" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="Why is the answer order randomized?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4930" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2011" RevisionGUID="607efbb9-9eef-4ae6-ac2f-0f99cf55c7ce" CreationDate="2011-07-28T21:24:33.573" UserId="31418" Text="I asked [a question][1] about VB.NET and C#. But then one of the moderators of the site closed it in a minute and didn't even let the community decide about worthiness of it. I want to know, how can OP sue such an action. This is immoral and far from fare play. He at least could wait for other moderators to **vote** for close up. Closing a question on a single thought is true **dictatorship** and **egoistic**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96845/why-are-vb-net-developers-are-migrating-to-c" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4931" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2011" RevisionGUID="607efbb9-9eef-4ae6-ac2f-0f99cf55c7ce" CreationDate="2011-07-28T21:24:33.573" UserId="31418" Text="Why this question is closed without letting even community deciding upon it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4932" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2011" RevisionGUID="607efbb9-9eef-4ae6-ac2f-0f99cf55c7ce" CreationDate="2011-07-28T21:24:33.573" UserId="31418" Text="|support|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4933" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2011" RevisionGUID="deab28dc-d4cd-4e0c-b7a6-6ff88d58364c" CreationDate="2011-07-28T21:29:50.137" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Copyediting" Text="I asked a [question about VB.NET and C#][1], but a moderator closed it within a few minutes of it being asked without allowing the community to decide whether it should be worthy of the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to know, how can I appeal this action? Why don't moderators wait until other members of the community weigh in before closing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96845/why-are-vb-net-developers-are-migrating-to-c" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4934" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2011" RevisionGUID="deab28dc-d4cd-4e0c-b7a6-6ff88d58364c" CreationDate="2011-07-28T21:29:50.137" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Copyediting" Text="Why was my question about migrating VB.NET developers closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4935" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2012" RevisionGUID="fa41028e-c677-49da-9e2c-802e748bb194" CreationDate="2011-07-28T21:32:17.670" UserId="485" Text="&gt; how can OP sue such an action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect you already know this, but you can't sue because the moderator of a website did something you don't like. About the most you can do is bring it up on meta like you already have&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; He at least could wait for other moderators to vote for close up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators can't vote, they just act. If you mean he could've waited for other *users* to vote, I suppose so, but moderators are elected because they understand how their respective sites work -- their judgement is generally pretty good&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing a question on a single thought is true dictatorship and egoistic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a dictatorship; again, they were [elected](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election/1). And I know ChrisF well enough to be confident he doesn't get an ego boost closing questions, he's just trying to keep the quality of the site high. The [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) explains what questions are off-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4936" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2013" RevisionGUID="79f4be5f-815f-4fc3-8482-2b85653b5bc1" CreationDate="2011-07-28T21:59:24.947" UserId="433" Text="I was [told to come ask this here][1], so hopefully it doesn't get closed or down voted here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've always been curious why people seem to move from VB to C# when VB.NET seems to have some technical advantages over C#, while both use the same framework and compile down to almost the same code. VB.NET is supported most everywhere C# is in the Microsoft stack.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a way to ask a question about this without it being closed as an ***EXACT DUPLICATE*** of [C# vs VB.NET Debate][2] or some other closed question. Is the [Programmers][3] site not the place to ask questions comparing and contrasting the technical merits of programming languages? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to compare things without it being assumed I am asking &quot;Which tech is better?&quot; Better is subjective but technical advantages or merits is objective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96854/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1180/vb-net-vs-c-debate&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4937" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2013" RevisionGUID="79f4be5f-815f-4fc3-8482-2b85653b5bc1" CreationDate="2011-07-28T21:59:24.947" UserId="433" Text="Is there a way to ask a question contrasting the advantages or differences of C# and VB.NET without it being closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4938" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2013" RevisionGUID="79f4be5f-815f-4fc3-8482-2b85653b5bc1" CreationDate="2011-07-28T21:59:24.947" UserId="433" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4939" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2014" RevisionGUID="946c132c-7425-4993-a770-1a139d092566" CreationDate="2011-07-28T22:18:12.717" UserId="226" Text="Mousing over the &quot;What does voting mean here?&quot; section of the [Meta Programmers FAQ](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) displays the correct link: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#vote-differences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, clicking on it places `faq#dontask` into the address bar instead of `faq#vote-differences`. It does not refresh the page and put the quoted section at the top, but I'm not entirely sure if it's supposed to do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I copy the link and paste it into the browser, it looks like both &quot;dontask&quot; and &quot;vote-differences&quot; sections are quoted at the top of the page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![screenshot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/zdqI3.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4940" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2014" RevisionGUID="946c132c-7425-4993-a770-1a139d092566" CreationDate="2011-07-28T22:18:12.717" UserId="226" Text="#vote-differences link anchor seems broken in the Meta FAQ" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4941" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2014" RevisionGUID="946c132c-7425-4993-a770-1a139d092566" CreationDate="2011-07-28T22:18:12.717" UserId="226" Text="|bug|meta|hyperlinks|meta-faq|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4942" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="855" RevisionGUID="4faab73a-93a3-4ec2-ab6f-93828c628338" CreationDate="2011-07-28T22:23:27.813" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|closed-questions|close-reasons|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4943" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="321" RevisionGUID="f46247c7-807a-4e92-a3c6-94fdf5ef4086" CreationDate="2011-07-28T22:26:28.590" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="de-FAQify with the more updated version of this question." Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4944" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="321" RevisionGUID="a2c4d47b-0a56-40c0-9575-dd28cbd048fc" CreationDate="2011-07-28T22:26:55.267" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What are the rules around moderators closing questions outright?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I'm just looking for some guidelines and examples, with an explanation of why it would not be acceptable to leave it up to the community to vote close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I couldn't find any answers to this in the FAQ or here on Meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4945" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="321" RevisionGUID="2c7c25cc-44e5-4a28-8309-fc6d08158beb" CreationDate="2011-07-28T22:26:55.033" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[855],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="4947" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2015" RevisionGUID="f2c5c038-35de-410c-a4f5-2cc9c58668e7" CreationDate="2011-07-28T23:38:22.907" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I recently had my question closed, but I don't understand why, and it doesn't seem fair. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why wasn't my question left open so others can decide if the question is good themselves, and how can I get it re-opened?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4948" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2015" RevisionGUID="f2c5c038-35de-410c-a4f5-2cc9c58668e7" CreationDate="2011-07-28T23:38:22.907" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Why was my question closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4949" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2015" RevisionGUID="f2c5c038-35de-410c-a4f5-2cc9c58668e7" CreationDate="2011-07-28T23:38:22.907" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|moderation|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4950" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2016" RevisionGUID="81dcff76-fb05-4a5f-92fb-f264dd45fb4f" CreationDate="2011-07-28T23:40:11.407" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="*(Taken shamelessly [from English Language &amp; Usage](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/q/1665/2512).)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Typically, people react poorly to having one of their questions closed. This is understandable but it suggests a misunderstanding of why we close questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Closing your question is _good_ for you##&#xD;&#xA;Something about your question is giving us pause and we feel that it would be best to wait on answering until we get the issue resolved. This does a handful of things that _help_ you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * ... get better answers. A little clarification goes a long way toward getting an answer that helps you. Instead of a handful of, &quot;Well, I think this is blah...&quot; you get &quot;This is the answer look at these awesome references.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * ... potentially mitigate downvotes. If your question is attracting downvotes, a close will typically stop them and give people a chance to resolve their concerns in a more constructive manner. A few edits later, your question will get reopened and those downvoting you will have a chance to change their votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * ... point toward an already existing answer. Closing as a duplicate will give you a link to an answer that the voters feel will answer your question. It may not be a perfect match but it gets you far enough that we feel you can make the rest of the connections on your own (or with a little bit of research.) There are lots of other reasons to close-as-duplicate but if it happens to you, be thankful that you just got a single link containing one or more viable answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * ... learn how to ask better questions. After a close-reopen process you have an opportunity to learn more about what the EL&amp;U crowd likes in a question. This is valuable information! The more you learn about asking questions the better answers to those questions will be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Your question is not yours alone###&#xD;&#xA;You are the primary focus when answering a question you have asked but the StackExchange network also considers future visitors when closing. Sometimes we can make a few changes to your question that will still get you your help but also increases the chance of helping people wandering in from a web search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we close a question, sometimes we are explicitly taking these future visitors into account. Something about your question may be accidentally excluding these visitors from getting _their_ questions answered. A few edits and a reopen will help both you _and_ them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it is easy to see this as people walking all over your question, that isn't what they are trying to do. While your name is attached to the question, the question really belongs to everyone who uses Programmers.SE. This includes those future visitors and part of our job is to make sure that we are accurately predicting (and answering) those questions. We can do that by closing your question, making a few edits or changes, and reopening. And we _should_ do that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4951" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="2015" RevisionGUID="f2c5c038-35de-410c-a4f5-2cc9c58668e7" CreationDate="2011-07-28T23:38:22.907" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="4952" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="2016" RevisionGUID="81dcff76-fb05-4a5f-92fb-f264dd45fb4f" CreationDate="2011-07-28T23:40:11.407" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="4953" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2016" RevisionGUID="a6bc66b0-fc7d-407f-b0d7-6f34f2699308" CreationDate="2011-07-28T23:52:01.800" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 151 characters in body" Text="*(Taken shamelessly [from English Language &amp; Usage](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/q/1665/2512).)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Typically, people react poorly to having one of their questions closed. This is understandable but it suggests a misunderstanding of why we close questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Closing your question is _good_ for you##&#xD;&#xA;Something about your question is giving us pause and we feel that it would be best to wait on answering until we get the issue resolved. This does a handful of things that _help_ you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * ... get better answers. A little clarification goes a long way toward getting an answer that helps you. Instead of a handful of, &quot;Well, I think this is blah...&quot; you get &quot;This is the answer look at these awesome references.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * ... potentially mitigate downvotes. If your question is attracting downvotes, a close will typically stop them and give people a chance to resolve their concerns in a more constructive manner. A few edits later, your question will get reopened and those downvoting you will have a chance to change their votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * ... point toward an already existing answer. Closing as a duplicate will give you a link to an answer that the voters feel will answer your question. It may not be a perfect match but it gets you far enough that we feel you can make the rest of the connections on your own (or with a little bit of research).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * ... learn how to ask better questions. After a close-reopen process you have an opportunity to learn more about what the Programmers.SE crowd likes in a question. This is valuable information! The more you learn about asking questions, the better answers to those questions will be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Your question is not yours alone###&#xD;&#xA;You are the primary focus when answering a question you have asked but the Stack Exchange network also considers future visitors when closing. Sometimes we can make a few changes to your question that will still get you your help but also increases the chance of helping people wandering in from a web search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we close a question, sometimes we are explicitly taking these future visitors into account. Something about your question may be accidentally excluding these visitors from getting _their_ questions answered. A few edits and a reopen will help both you _and_ them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it is easy to see this as people walking all over your question, that isn't what they are trying to do. While your name is attached to the question, the question really belongs to everyone who uses Programmers.SE. This includes those future visitors and part of our job is to make sure that we are accurately predicting (and answering) those questions. We can do that by closing your question, making a few edits or changes, and reopening. And we _should_ do that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4954" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2017" RevisionGUID="93d7093d-9da0-4aef-9956-9d4789855ced" CreationDate="2011-07-29T01:15:55.637" UserId="37" Text="&gt; I've always been curious why people seem to move from VB to C# when VB.NET seems to have some technical advantages over C#, while both use the same framework and compile down to almost the same code. VB.NET is supported most everywhere C# is in the Microsoft stack.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a way to ask a question about this without it being closed as an EXACT DUPLICATE of C# vs VB.NET Debate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think so; I took a look at that question, and it seems to me *all* the answers there are applicable to your proposed question, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your proposed question is by no means bad ... but I do think it's adequately been covered already with answers that have data and graphs and everything." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4955" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2018" RevisionGUID="c3f6061d-0466-46b9-8906-302d21d9e867" CreationDate="2011-07-29T02:55:56.370" UserId="949" Text="Some markup was missing here, it will be fixed in the next push." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4956" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2014" RevisionGUID="d322579b-316d-40fd-95cd-6c65308afac8" CreationDate="2011-07-29T02:56:06.137" UserId="949" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|meta|hyperlinks|meta-faq|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4957" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2019" RevisionGUID="8a673322-00ed-47c5-902a-6072f99e1849" CreationDate="2011-07-29T07:25:32.163" UserId="23130" Text="I have resolved this problem. It was connected with left-over setting of previous installs where I had ReGet installed and ReGet configured Opera to intercept downloads. The behavior of Opera changed over time… which now caused this error to be displayed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I changed Download setting in Opera so that it displays Download dialog for `application/octet-stream` type. And custom fonts returned to Programmers pages." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4958" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2020" RevisionGUID="3ddcc019-5257-4b38-9c61-144d1adaae39" CreationDate="2011-07-29T12:34:08.713" UserId="47" Text="As I stated in a comment on [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96845/why-vb-net-developers-are-migrating-to-c)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There will be an answer for every developer who switches and each answer will be equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means it falls foul of this clause in the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) under the &quot;What kind of questions should I *not* ask here? section:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. [...] **avoid** asking subjective questions where ... every answer is equally valid [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4959" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2021" RevisionGUID="c1a8fc9a-5e1f-47ba-bdbc-06b994ba83ca" CreationDate="2011-07-29T16:38:29.050" UserId="620" Text="I think I have found an appropriate tag for this type of questions: [tag:trivia]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Inventor and History of programming technology&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/97065/620&#xD;&#xA;  * [version:1 Favorite Pascal language features and when were they introduced?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/96770/revisions) (Before the question was reworded and reopened in its current form)&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/221/620 [closed]&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/96784/620 [closed]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My view of the tag relationship is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [tag:history] for significant historical questions&#xD;&#xA;  * Questions about historical, but are not significant enough to worth remembering, can be called [tag:trivia]. They may be tagged both.&#xD;&#xA;  * Other questions which are also not significant enough to remember, can be just tagged [tag:trivia].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is: is trivia questions acceptable on P.SE? &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4960" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2021" RevisionGUID="c1a8fc9a-5e1f-47ba-bdbc-06b994ba83ca" CreationDate="2011-07-29T16:38:29.050" UserId="620" Text="Are programming-related trivia questions acceptable on P.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4961" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2021" RevisionGUID="c1a8fc9a-5e1f-47ba-bdbc-06b994ba83ca" CreationDate="2011-07-29T16:38:29.050" UserId="620" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4962" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2022" RevisionGUID="de01eef8-ce04-4652-ab3d-5ff19db430d8" CreationDate="2011-07-29T17:26:53.090" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Any question that's trivia, by definition, would be any that ask about unimportant (i.e. *trivial*) facts and matters. Those [would be prohibited](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) and should be closed as *not constructive*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.** Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, a question stops being trivia the moment an actual, solvable problem is defined: that is, if one tells us *why* you want to know X or how knowing X solves Y problem, the question is a whole lot more constructive." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4963" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2023" RevisionGUID="20e82043-7b81-4b74-a751-103e32ff49a4" CreationDate="2011-07-29T17:31:09.480" UserId="28651" Text="I noticed that [a recent high-profile post](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96933/why-did-git-get-so-much-hype-while-others-dont) had all answers put in community wiki fairly fast, by the same mysterious person which has not participated at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a case of &quot;Community Wiki Troll&quot;, or is there a perfectly acceptable reason?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe Community Wikis are set for all answers once set for the question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4964" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2023" RevisionGUID="20e82043-7b81-4b74-a751-103e32ff49a4" CreationDate="2011-07-29T17:31:09.480" UserId="28651" Text="Some put everything in Community Wiki for no reason" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4965" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2023" RevisionGUID="20e82043-7b81-4b74-a751-103e32ff49a4" CreationDate="2011-07-29T17:31:09.480" UserId="28651" Text="|discussion|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4966" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2024" RevisionGUID="2ed2fa52-818e-45da-85e3-f7345a4fcd47" CreationDate="2011-07-29T17:34:33.393" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The community wiki flag is set automatically once a question reaches 15 answers: this is to encourage collaboration on existing answers, as after 15 or so of them, it's highly likely answers are going to overlap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, this automatic action is marked with a confusing message: the person who had the privilege of posting the answer that triggered the automatic conversion to community wiki is the one who gets the attribution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our sister meta site, [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com), has more background on the mechanics [community wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts), but you can rest assured that nobody has the ability to &quot;troll&quot; people with community wiki flags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions can only be converted to community wiki by diamond moderators or through automatic conversion&#xD;&#xA;* Answers can only be converted to community wiki by the post owner, diamond moderators, or through automatic conversion" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4967" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2023" RevisionGUID="5e2e96ec-231e-4973-ad39-8737a47f7c7b" CreationDate="2011-07-29T17:37:49.710" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="Why was this post converted to community wiki?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4968" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2023" RevisionGUID="5e2e96ec-231e-4973-ad39-8737a47f7c7b" CreationDate="2011-07-29T17:37:49.710" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|support|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4969" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2024" RevisionGUID="af0f4119-dfb0-4103-9628-dc5df9261e3c" CreationDate="2011-07-29T18:03:04.347" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Missing an &quot;of&quot;" Text="The community wiki flag is set automatically once a question reaches 15 answers: this is to encourage collaboration on existing answers, as after 15 or so of them, it's highly likely answers are going to overlap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, this automatic action is marked with a confusing message: the person who had the privilege of posting the answer that triggered the automatic conversion to community wiki is the one who gets the attribution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our sister meta site, [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com), has more background on the [mechanics of community wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts), but you can rest assured that nobody has the ability to &quot;troll&quot; people with community wiki flags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions can only be converted to community wiki by diamond moderators or through automatic conversion&#xD;&#xA;* Answers can only be converted to community wiki by the post owner, diamond moderators, or through automatic conversion" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4970" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2025" RevisionGUID="b39fbef8-3ca4-4c5a-af49-9c22442faaa9" CreationDate="2011-07-29T18:17:33.607" UserId="32621" Text="I would support eliminating both tags since very few seem to not get closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4971" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2026" RevisionGUID="14448829-a9f4-4995-a234-9594c63a3dc4" CreationDate="2011-07-29T18:49:55.890" UserId="13866" Text="Ok, not exactly circles like G+, but I would like to be able to create a list of users who I think give especially good answers or ask interesting questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the idea is that I can go to this user's profile and have a button to add him to my list of users to follow. (And later remove if I want)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my own profile I have a new tab where I can see all questions and answers by  users who are in my list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would not only be a interesting new feature, but would as a nice side effect enhance the community feeling." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4972" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2026" RevisionGUID="14448829-a9f4-4995-a234-9594c63a3dc4" CreationDate="2011-07-29T18:49:55.890" UserId="13866" Text="Can we have Circles?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4973" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2026" RevisionGUID="14448829-a9f4-4995-a234-9594c63a3dc4" CreationDate="2011-07-29T18:49:55.890" UserId="13866" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4974" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2027" RevisionGUID="512b3672-73e2-4c7a-9ea0-10e78ccd1ec7" CreationDate="2011-07-29T19:10:35.200" UserId="226" Text="[Probably not](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/886/a-friends-list-on-stack-overflow-would-be-nice).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This idea has been brought in up various ways on Meta Stack Overflow and it has always been rejected. The users aren't the focus of Stack Exchange. Content and knowledge sharing are. Being able to &quot;favourite&quot; users goes against that philosophy of deemphasizing the person in favour of the content they produce.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This goes both ways -- someone's reputation or fame doesn't exempt them from having to adhere to the quality and behaviour standards set on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, &quot;who&quot; doesn't matter. &quot;What&quot; does." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4975" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2026" RevisionGUID="10ef434a-0364-4c70-b2a8-b869eae5f639" CreationDate="2011-07-29T19:48:05.980" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4976" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2021" RevisionGUID="2d1115b0-4d4c-4786-bb0c-4daf48b8c780" CreationDate="2011-07-29T20:03:00.217" UserId="620" Comment="added 67 characters in body" Text="I think I have found an appropriate tag for this type of questions: [tag:trivia]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Inventor and History of programming technology&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/97065/620&#xD;&#xA;  * [version:1 Favorite Pascal language features and when were they introduced?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/96770/revisions) (Before the question was reworded and reopened in its current form)&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/221/620 [duplicate of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/69788/620, still open]&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/96784/620 [closed]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My view of the tag relationship is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [tag:history] for significant historical questions&#xD;&#xA;  * Questions about historical, but are not significant enough to worth remembering, can be called [tag:trivia]. They may be tagged both.&#xD;&#xA;  * Other questions which are also not significant enough to remember, can be just tagged [tag:trivia].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is: is trivia questions acceptable on P.SE? &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4977" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2028" RevisionGUID="0bdd0ee9-3f26-4281-9919-ddbbe07a7b79" CreationDate="2011-07-29T20:09:55.190" UserId="620" Text="Since in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2003/620 there is a sentiment that at least some book recommendation questions are off-topic, would it be helpful if book lists can be added to the tag wiki?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(maybe sponsored adds too!)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4978" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2028" RevisionGUID="0bdd0ee9-3f26-4281-9919-ddbbe07a7b79" CreationDate="2011-07-29T20:09:55.190" UserId="620" Text="Will it be useful to put book list into tag wiki?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4979" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2028" RevisionGUID="0bdd0ee9-3f26-4281-9919-ddbbe07a7b79" CreationDate="2011-07-29T20:09:55.190" UserId="620" Text="|discussion|tag-wikis|recommendations|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4980" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2029" RevisionGUID="7b065adb-03c8-4225-be24-16d33f4c1238" CreationDate="2011-07-29T23:08:41.710" UserId="47" Text="It depends and it *might* be one of those cases where the quality of the *answers* determines whether the question remains open or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A trivia question that just elicits short or one line answers is almost certainly &quot;not constructive&quot;. From the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;* tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if the question gives rise to longer answers that go beyond that which is necessary then it *might* be left open, but there's no guarantee.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, as Mark states in his answer, it helps if you've got a real problem you need solving." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4981" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2021" RevisionGUID="18d35f83-620a-4264-928e-c92a72dab927" CreationDate="2011-07-29T23:43:25.917" UserId="620" Comment="added tags on-topic-definition, quality" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|tags|quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4982" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2021" RevisionGUID="18d35f83-620a-4264-928e-c92a72dab927" CreationDate="2011-07-29T23:43:25.917" UserId="620" Comment="added tags on-topic-definition, quality" Text="Are programming-related history/trivia questions acceptable on P.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4983" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2028" RevisionGUID="0bf10f3d-026f-43fe-95e6-a01f43ae0e70" CreationDate="2011-07-30T02:07:47.313" UserId="620" Comment="book voting system" Text="Since in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2003/620 there is a sentiment that at least some book recommendation questions are off-topic, would it be helpful if book lists can be added to the tag wiki?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(maybe sponsored adds too!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(There are even ideas to put a book voting system too! See http://stackoverflow.com/q/5098367/377657)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4984" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1313" RevisionGUID="404ade6f-01d5-4771-9a67-d249d58c1b8c" CreationDate="2011-07-30T02:37:10.593" UserId="1725" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|feature-request|tags|tag-wikis|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4985" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2030" RevisionGUID="a8adc5e8-c410-463f-86df-cc5083698ba1" CreationDate="2011-07-30T03:40:24.470" UserId="226" Text="What are you trying to get out of being able to see if the tag exists on other sites?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you just want to see more questions in some set of tags, you can set up [filters](http://stackexchange.com/filters/) that will show questions with the tags specified in the filter across all (or some) Stack Exchange sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4986" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2006" RevisionGUID="acc857a9-ded1-4afb-a3bb-4600ebb9ff7d" CreationDate="2011-07-30T11:09:10.047" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|feature-request|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4987" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2031" RevisionGUID="025eec93-6985-4e1b-ba35-4aa1cfb8c2fa" CreationDate="2011-07-30T11:11:15.863" UserId="47" Text="Mine finally arrived this morning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interestingly the date on the letter was the 5th July the same as the Gaming swag which arrived last week.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I blame the UK Post Office." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4988" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2032" RevisionGUID="cbba5a6a-d346-4f16-b848-2ce3ac6f74cc" CreationDate="2011-07-30T11:17:20.333" UserId="47" Text="If you got to the &quot;tagged questions&quot; tab of Stack Exchange and then click on &quot;New filter&quot; you get a page where you can create a cross site tag set.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Click the &quot;Just questions tagged with the .... tag&quot; option and enter &quot;ruby&quot; into the box.&#xD;&#xA;2. Click the &quot;All Sites&quot; option.&#xD;&#xA;3. Create a name.&#xD;&#xA;4. Save changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then you'll have a tag that shows all questions tagged &quot;ruby&quot;. Of course in this example it will predominantly show questions from Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4989" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2033" RevisionGUID="e5a63cde-b95d-4947-bb20-8681c86b0c76" CreationDate="2011-07-30T11:20:46.257" UserId="47" Text="I'm not sure I follow what you mean by adding &quot;book lists&quot; to the &quot;tag wiki&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you mean adding links to the &quot;books&quot; tag information page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/books/info&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;then you can always suggest the edit yourself." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4990" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2028" RevisionGUID="5e48a080-3d28-4cf4-8f17-a2d08086d7cc" CreationDate="2011-07-30T17:05:49.400" UserId="620" Comment="@ChrisF's double tag search suggestion" Text="Since in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2003/620 there is a sentiment that at least some book recommendation questions are off-topic, would it be helpful if book lists can be added to the tag wiki?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(maybe sponsored adds too!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(There are even ideas to put a book voting system too! See http://stackoverflow.com/q/5098367/377657)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(**Edited** July 30th)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@ChrisF's answer inspires me an alternative implementation: Searching for [tag:scrum] + [tag:books] should give me a list of posts of book recommendations for scrum, right? We just need to add a convenience link on the tag wiki to do this search." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4991" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2028" RevisionGUID="42093176-0592-49f8-9606-705787632deb" CreationDate="2011-07-30T17:17:53.330" UserId="620" Comment="@ChrisF's double tag search suggestion, also FAQ advice " Text="Since in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2003/620 there is a sentiment that at least some book recommendation questions are off-topic, would it be helpful if book lists can be added to the tag wiki?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(maybe sponsored adds too!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(There are even ideas to put a book voting system too! See http://stackoverflow.com/q/5098367/377657)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(**Edited** July 30th)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@ChrisF's answer inspires me an alternative implementation: Searching for [tag:scrum] + [tag:books] should give me a list of posts of book recommendations for scrum, right? We just need to add a convenience link on the tag wiki to do this search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(**Edited** July 30th) Related FAQ issue. Quoted from http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2003/620 :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If not, do we need to add a new line under What about other&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programming-related questions? to make it explicitly clear they're not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; allowed? Something like:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Book recommendations (e.g. What's the best book to learn Python?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can simply say &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are looking for book recommendations, try search your favorite&#xD;&#xA;&gt; topic together with the [tag:books] tag. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/agile+books&quot;&gt;Search: [agile] [books]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Keep in mind that there are too many books in the world**, and some companies (including our [affiliate sponsors](http://www.amazon.com/?tag=stackoverfl08-20)) already did a very good job listing them. Their recommendation system and reader reviews works really well. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4992" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2028" RevisionGUID="d1bd4979-ed9c-4d2a-8970-2db6925ae6c3" CreationDate="2011-07-30T18:26:31.607" UserId="620" Comment="edited title to reflect the new direction of discussion." Text="Should we include an introductory book list in each topical tag wiki?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4993" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2034" RevisionGUID="76eef0d7-9512-4f6d-80b8-0f697b59b0b8" CreationDate="2011-07-30T18:42:05.753" UserId="31418" Text="In [this question][1], I got 2 upvotes, and system has recognized it, as it comes in my reputation history. But my reputation score at the top of the screen doesn't change. Why? Is it a bug?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97295/a-practical-use-of-yield-keyword-in-c" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4994" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2034" RevisionGUID="76eef0d7-9512-4f6d-80b8-0f697b59b0b8" CreationDate="2011-07-30T18:42:05.753" UserId="31418" Text="Why I'm not getting reputation in spite of upvote?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4995" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2034" RevisionGUID="76eef0d7-9512-4f6d-80b8-0f697b59b0b8" CreationDate="2011-07-30T18:42:05.753" UserId="31418" Text="|bug|reputation|up-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4996" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2035" RevisionGUID="404d4796-c935-4233-8671-d1162c826209" CreationDate="2011-07-30T18:52:02.840" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="There are two different suggestions here, and they should probably be discussed separately, but I'll try to address both:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Adding book recommendations to the tag wiki for certain tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this idea. If you look at the tag wiki for [tag:php], for example, it'd be really helpful to get a list of the books everyone recommends for learning it. This is similar to how [Stack Overflow does it](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/php/info), and it'd be great if we did the same. I think being able to link to the tag wiki when closing book recommendation questions would go a long way to cleaning up the [tag:books] tag and cutting down on the amount of duplication we have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Adding a note in the FAQ for how to find book recommendation questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This I cannot support. Currently, book recommendations are generally on the &quot;off&quot; side of topicality based the guidance listed in [my question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic). ChrisF's answer to that question is a potentially good way to qualify that guidance, but it does not mean we should be getting so many book recommendation questions where we actively want people to keep asking them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, if a question is capable of producing *the canonical* book for a topic, there is no need for another question asking for book recommendations about the subject: Even if there was, those questions should be closed as duplicates of the earlier. So in the case of [tag:agile], there should only *be* one question asking for book recommendations about the subject. In which case, such a question can and should be linked in [tag:agile]'s tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, the FAQ is a general overview of the guidelines for the site: what's on topic, site etiquette, why certain things work the way they do. It's not a roadmap for finding certain types of content, and search tips don't belong there. It *might* be worth proposing a meta FAQ question about it, but search tips are already pretty well explained on [Search Options](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search) page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4997" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2036" RevisionGUID="30b59175-7dae-4190-afd6-2db25489997a" CreationDate="2011-07-30T18:54:41.687" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="You've hit [the reputation cap](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation) for today, and you won't receive any more reputation from up-votes until tomorrow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can see your current reputation for today on [your reputation page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31418/saeed?tab=reputation): you've received 202 reputation so far: 200 from up-votes and 2 from accepting an answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4998" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2034" RevisionGUID="199ec087-9ed7-4a84-8a7e-d01b4e1bc45b" CreationDate="2011-07-30T18:54:55.117" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4999" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2035" RevisionGUID="52248b92-ab35-4857-8fc0-63f1c095ae8e" CreationDate="2011-07-30T18:58:01.323" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="There are two different suggestions here, and they should probably be discussed separately, but I'll try to address both:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Adding book recommendations to the tag wiki for certain tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this idea. If you look at the tag wiki for [tag:php], for example, it'd be really helpful to get a list of the books everyone recommends for learning it. This is similar to how [Stack Overflow does it](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/php/info), and it'd be great if we did the same. I think being able to link to the tag wiki when closing book recommendation questions would go a long way to cleaning up the [tag:books] tag and cutting down on the amount of duplication we have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Adding a note in the FAQ on how to find book recommendation questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This I cannot support. Currently, book recommendations are generally on the &quot;off&quot; side of topicality based the guidance listed in [my question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic). ChrisF's answer to that question is a potentially good way to qualify that guidance, but it does not mean we should be getting so many book recommendation questions where we actively want people to keep asking them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, if a question is capable of producing *the canonical* book for a topic, there is no need for another question asking for book recommendations about the subject. Even if there was, those questions should be closed as duplicates of the earlier. So in the case of [tag:agile], there should only *be* one question asking for book recommendations about the subject. In which case, such a question can and should be linked in [tag:agile]'s tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, the FAQ is a general overview of the guidelines for the site: what's on topic, site etiquette, why certain things work the way they do, and where to find more help. It's not a roadmap for finding specific types of content, and search tips don't belong there. It *might* be worth proposing a meta FAQ question about it, but search tips are already pretty well explained on [Search Options](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search) page (which is also [linked to from the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#search-options)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5000" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2035" RevisionGUID="e3174bf8-ee3f-4a79-b432-6a7e6aa4b16b" CreationDate="2011-07-30T19:03:11.667" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="There are two different suggestions here, and they should probably be discussed separately, but I'll try to address both:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Adding book recommendations to the tag wiki for certain tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this idea. If you look at the tag wiki for [tag:php], for example, it'd be really helpful to get a list of the books everyone recommends for learning it. This is similar to how [Stack Overflow does it](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/php/info), and it'd be great if we did the same. I think being able to link to the tag wiki when closing book recommendation questions would go a long way to cleaning up the [tag:books] tag and cutting down on the amount of duplication we have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Adding a note in the FAQ on how to find book recommendation questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This I cannot support. Currently, book recommendations are generally on the &quot;off&quot; side of topicality based the guidance listed in [my question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic). ChrisF's answer to that question is a potentially good way to qualify that guidance, but it does not mean we should be getting so many book recommendation questions where we actively want people to keep asking them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, if a question is capable of producing *the canonical* book for a topic, there is no need for another question asking for book recommendations about the subject, and any subsequent question asking for the same information should be closed as a duplicate of the earlier one. So in the case of [tag:agile], there should only *be* one book recommendation question. That question can and should be linked in [tag:agile]'s tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, the FAQ is a general overview of the guidelines for the site: what's on topic, site etiquette, why certain things work the way they do, and where to find more help. It's not a roadmap for finding specific types of content, and search tips don't belong there. It *might* be worth proposing a meta FAQ question about it, but search tips are already pretty well explained on [Search Options](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search) page (which is also [linked to from the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#search-options)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5001" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2036" RevisionGUID="7f95411d-cbc1-4f7a-a00c-cb943002872a" CreationDate="2011-07-30T19:06:48.030" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Fix punctuation" Text="You've hit [the reputation cap](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation) for today, and you won't receive any more reputation from up-votes until tomorrow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can see your current reputation for today on [your reputation page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31418/saeed?tab=reputation). You've received 202 reputation so far: 200 from up-votes and 2 from accepting an answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5002" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2037" RevisionGUID="90fba5de-1bce-4bc5-98c3-f0bf9293b0f7" CreationDate="2011-07-30T19:47:34.933" UserId="47" Text="If this is the first time you hit the cap you'll get the [Mortarboard](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/25/mortarboard) badge. In fact if you look at that page now (30th July 2011) you'll see your name at the top of the list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep doing it and you'll eventually get the [Epic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/26/epic) and [Legendary](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/27/legendary) badges." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5003" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2038" RevisionGUID="b94a73fe-d60b-41bb-a068-3849d31dd052" CreationDate="2011-07-31T17:31:35.177" UserId="66" Text="Checking the stats&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:db] - 3 questions&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:database] - 192 questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can these be merged? It doesn't make sense to have both" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5004" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2038" RevisionGUID="b94a73fe-d60b-41bb-a068-3849d31dd052" CreationDate="2011-07-31T17:31:35.177" UserId="66" Text="Merge [database] and [db] tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5005" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2038" RevisionGUID="b94a73fe-d60b-41bb-a068-3849d31dd052" CreationDate="2011-07-31T17:31:35.177" UserId="66" Text="|discussion|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5006" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2039" RevisionGUID="80a613c9-8309-4e22-9264-dcc91815d9ca" CreationDate="2011-07-31T18:54:03.530" UserId="8187" Text="I've retagged the `db` questions with the `database` tag. Easy enough, since there were only three of them. It probably wouldn't hurt to have a tag synonym in place, just to eliminate the redundancy." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5007" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2040" RevisionGUID="5555fc46-6ee0-45a4-a785-194911d563d3" CreationDate="2011-07-31T18:59:42.933" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This is now complete: [tag:db] is now a synonym of [tag:database]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5008" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2038" RevisionGUID="8b25b47f-2e69-4b80-8251-b01e75325b1a" CreationDate="2011-07-31T18:59:55.493" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5009" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2041" RevisionGUID="257f266c-0119-4a5f-8afd-a19cbb3d0c70" CreationDate="2011-07-31T21:22:07.013" UserId="27757" Text="Could we possibly add a button to share on HN/Slashdot? I find that I rarely share articles on Facebook/Twitter because not all my friends are programmers and instead go straight and share the URL on Hacker News. Do you think we could add a button to directly share articles? The audience is much more focused on those sites and it would be easier for everyone. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5010" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2041" RevisionGUID="257f266c-0119-4a5f-8afd-a19cbb3d0c70" CreationDate="2011-07-31T21:22:07.013" UserId="27757" Text="Share on Hacker News/ Slashdot" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5011" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2041" RevisionGUID="257f266c-0119-4a5f-8afd-a19cbb3d0c70" CreationDate="2011-07-31T21:22:07.013" UserId="27757" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5012" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2042" RevisionGUID="4c34ac9d-4353-4f28-9a4a-b3b128b3d130" CreationDate="2011-07-31T23:22:19.557" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Sharing on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn is an intentional action to ostensibly share with people you personally know: that is, you're sharing with your social graph because you think the people who follow you would be interested in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sharing on Hacker News, Slashdot, Reddit, Digg, and others is not the same thing: it's submitting a story to essentially a news service. The act of personally sharing to those services doesn't really have any value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, let's say I share a question on Facebook. At most only a couple hundred people are going to get the link from me, and I'm reasonably confident that if those people are interested in me, they'd be interested in taking a look at a question about whatever I thought was interesting enough to share. The same with Twitter or LinkedIn: you don't get the question unless you're actually following me. If *you* then share the question to *your* social graph, it's quite likely there's not going to be a huge overlap: I don't know the same people you know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But let's say you post the question on site like Hacker News. There is only one, shared user base of hundreds of thousands of people you don't know. You have no idea whether those people care, you don't know if those people are qualified to answer the question, and more than likely, nobody is going to have any idea it was you who shared it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And that's the real problem with providing easy sharing for news services: nearly every question that doesn't get closed on Programmers.SE gets up-votes. Every question here is interesting to *somebody*, and with the massive amount of traffic services like Hacker News, Slashdot, and Reddit get, it's quite likely every question could get shared, multiple times, by different Programmers.SE users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That sucks for everyone. It sucks for us because questions get exposure by a disinterested audience who cares more about attention-getting headlines than providing expert answers, and it sucks for news services because we're actively encouraging people to resubmit stories to the same, shared user base." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5013" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2043" RevisionGUID="1c25a1d0-3f6f-4c9d-b261-21cd64d5f573" CreationDate="2011-08-01T11:18:19.823" UserId="47" Text="[Personal Productivity](http://productivity.stackexchange.com/) is now in public beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, if you see a question that might be on topic over there but definitely off topic here flag it for moderator attention and we'll take a look.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;NOTE: Personally I'm not in favour of migrating old questions to a new site. However, new questions are always fair game." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5014" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2043" RevisionGUID="1c25a1d0-3f6f-4c9d-b261-21cd64d5f573" CreationDate="2011-08-01T11:18:19.823" UserId="47" Text="Personal Productivity is now in public beta - look out for new questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5015" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2043" RevisionGUID="1c25a1d0-3f6f-4c9d-b261-21cd64d5f573" CreationDate="2011-08-01T11:18:19.823" UserId="47" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5016" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="186" RevisionGUID="ba2ff898-51df-478f-997a-5e9ea40cff13" CreationDate="2011-08-01T11:24:41.190" UserId="47" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5017" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="639" RevisionGUID="e82ce9da-10f9-4025-8742-15bd0715efd9" CreationDate="2011-08-01T11:24:58.037" UserId="47" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5018" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2043" RevisionGUID="9207e78c-5ca7-43b4-a8fd-a1c8553326ef" CreationDate="2011-08-01T11:51:25.957" UserId="47" Comment="clarification" Text="[Personal Productivity](http://productivity.stackexchange.com/) is now in public beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, if you see a question that might be on topic over there but definitely off topic here flag it for moderator attention and we'll take a look.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This doesn't apply to questions that could be on topic on either site (admittedly a small number) as there's always a chance that the site won't leave beta. However, if the question is *definitely* off topic and would otherwise be closed (and eventually deleted) then migrating it an option.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;NOTE: Personally I'm not in favour of migrating old questions to a new site. However, new questions are always fair game." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5019" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2044" RevisionGUID="4ae1b138-3d38-429f-868f-fa2fcf8bf865" CreationDate="2011-08-01T20:25:38.683" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Based on [network-wide guidance](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/77373/149432) and [a discussion here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1457/8), we've been actively deleting comment chains that have become obsolete, chatty, or pointless. This has been met with some resistance, in part because of the differing expectations of what comments are for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have the following entry in our FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are useful for getting clarifications, but extended discussions detract from the question and its answers. If you'd like to discuss anything related to programming with other expert programmers, please use our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But perhaps we can make it better. In [a discussion on this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97207/what-does-c-do-better-than-d/97211#97211), it was suggested we highlight the alternatives for disagreeing with an answer where the answerer does chooses not to improve his/her answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to address this? Are there other things we should address in our FAQ's guidance about comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5020" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2044" RevisionGUID="4ae1b138-3d38-429f-868f-fa2fcf8bf865" CreationDate="2011-08-01T20:25:38.683" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="How can we improve our guidance about the purpose of comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5021" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2044" RevisionGUID="4ae1b138-3d38-429f-868f-fa2fcf8bf865" CreationDate="2011-08-01T20:25:38.683" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5022" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2045" RevisionGUID="29b92a6c-07e6-4405-bd9a-92e59075abec" CreationDate="2011-08-01T20:32:31.430" UserId="47" Text="The most obvious way to disagree is to cast a down-vote. However, that's not always the most constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the user doesn't improve the post after a comment and a down-vote (or two) then there's not a lot we (as a community) can do. We certainly can't go round to the posters house (or office) and *force* them to edit their post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In these cases post your own answer that addresses the question and the deficiencies in the existing answer(s). If you're right then then this should gain the up-votes necessary to float it to the top of the pile.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the issue is with **extended** discussions. If there's already a comment stating that the the answer is deficient in some way then there's no real need to add another one. Just up-vote the original comment. If the answerer replies that they're happy with the answer and can't see what you're getting at then *at most* post another comment, but don't get involved in a protracted back and forth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5023" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2046" RevisionGUID="58db7aa9-ea0b-4a4d-864d-112cb69b315f" CreationDate="2011-08-01T20:32:41.670" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I think addressing the recourse people have when an answer doesn't get improved the way they like is a good idea. To that end, perhaps we can revise it to say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are useful for getting clarifications, but extended discussions detract from the question and its answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you'd like to discuss anything related to programming with other expert programmers, please use our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * This site is &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#editing&quot;&gt;collaborative&lt;/a&gt;: if a question or answer can be improved without changing the author's intent, please edit it or suggest an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you like a post, show your appreciation by voting it up.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you disagree with an answer or a question remains unclear, feel free to down-vote it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you have a better answer to a question, please leave your own answer instead of writing a comment." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5024" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2047" RevisionGUID="c2d8b776-9f5b-41cb-b743-db0410f387f9" CreationDate="2011-08-01T20:39:55.357" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I think this is a good idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like they're still [defining what their FAQ is going to look like](http://meta.productivity.stackexchange.com/questions/38/help-design-our-first-draft-faq). It might be something we want to hold off on until they have a working FAQ so we mitigate any potential problems with their definition process." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5025" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2044" RevisionGUID="17ec2805-6f8a-4761-b018-68f91ba7cc6b" CreationDate="2011-08-01T20:41:20.100" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 17 characters in body" Text="Based on [network-wide guidance](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/77373/149432) and [a discussion here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1457/8), we've been actively deleting comment chains that have become obsolete, chatty, or pointless. This has been met with some resistance, in part because of the differing expectations of what comments are for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have the following entry in our FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are useful for getting clarifications, but extended discussions detract from the question and its answers. If you'd like to discuss anything related to programming with other expert programmers, please use our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But perhaps we can make it better. In [a discussion on this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97207/what-does-c-do-better-than-d/97211#97211), it was suggested we highlight the alternatives for disagreeing with an answer where the answerer chooses not to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to address this? Are there other things we should address in our FAQ's guidance about comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5026" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2048" RevisionGUID="05039de7-25c2-47b8-8503-6ea3f18b385c" CreationDate="2011-08-02T15:43:23.390" UserId="6415" Text="We've had [some discussion recently](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow) about bad Programmers questions being migrated from Stackoverflow. The number of close votes required to migrate on SO was changed from 3/5 to 4/5 in response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I'm not sure if that has made a difference. It seems to me that a lot of the migrated question get closed quickly. Unfortunately I don't have 10k yet so I can't see the actual stats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have another look at the closing statistics on migrated questions from SO? If there's not been a significant reduction it that rate, I suggest that the path be removed. If there are questions that belong here (and I know there are quite a few) they can be flagged and migrated by a moderator." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5027" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2048" RevisionGUID="05039de7-25c2-47b8-8503-6ea3f18b385c" CreationDate="2011-08-02T15:43:23.390" UserId="6415" Text="Can the migration path from SO be reconsidered?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5028" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2048" RevisionGUID="05039de7-25c2-47b8-8503-6ea3f18b385c" CreationDate="2011-08-02T15:43:23.390" UserId="6415" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5029" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2049" RevisionGUID="f6400fbd-e359-4c4e-8fe1-deae3b6fdc5d" CreationDate="2011-08-02T15:49:00.167" UserId="226" Text="The migration stats tell us that over the last 90 days, 790 questions were migrated from Stack Overflow to Programmers and 26% of those (~205 questions) were &quot;rejected&quot;. If memory serves, a migration is &quot;rejected&quot; when the migrated question is closed or deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we have a quarter (give or take) of the questions migrated to us that get closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My perception is that that number is lower than it should be. With 790 questions migrated in, I think more than a few just never got noticed and didn't get closed. I didn't go hunting through questions, though, to see if that's really the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's fairly rare for us to see a good, on-topic questions migrated from Stack Overflow, so I definitely support reviewing whether its worth keeping the migration path or not." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5030" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2048" RevisionGUID="27edd4b6-6b6b-4846-9ce8-bee3c305f749" CreationDate="2011-08-02T16:50:58.273" UserId="6415" Comment="edited body" Text="We've had [some discussion recently](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow) about bad Programmers questions being migrated from Stackoverflow. The number of close votes required to migrate on SO was changed from 3/5 to 4/5 in response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I'm not sure if that has made a difference. It seems to me that a lot of the migrated question get closed quickly. Unfortunately I don't have 10k yet so I can't see the actual stats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have another look at the closing statistics on migrated questions from SO? If there's not been a significant reduction in that rate, I suggest that the path be removed. If there are questions that belong here (and I know there are quite a few) they can be flagged and migrated by a moderator." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5031" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2050" RevisionGUID="ae8543e1-b8d2-454a-a2fa-8f990ea9a43c" CreationDate="2011-08-03T07:07:52.047" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="To keep the ball rolling on the cleanup, I've deleted all questions prior to July 1st that met the guidelines in the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Closed questions that had -2 score or lower&#xD;&#xA;* Closed questions with less than 100 views&#xD;&#xA;* Closed questions with no answers that weren't duplicates of non-closed questions (duplicates left for SEO)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And all questions, open and closed, with no answers and less than 100 views prior to February 1st.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's hard to say how many that was (I did it in bursts), but I'd estimate it was about 700 questions total, which is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* 20% of all closed questions&#xD;&#xA;* 4.4% of all questions asked&#xD;&#xA;* 30% of all questions deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This leaves us with 2,832 questions still left closed out of 13,295: 21%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to figure out a way to fairly clean up a larger portion of the closed questions, but I could use help with coming up with rules to apply." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5032" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2051" RevisionGUID="6758b52c-9636-45df-bd16-fdefc34612da" CreationDate="2011-08-03T07:35:40.807" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="So in [Part I of the summer cleaning project](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning), we focused on deleting the bottom portion of our closed question backlog: things that never got any love and just were dying a slow, cold death.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In part II, I'd like to address the elephants in the room: our once popular, yet nevertheless off-topic questions that are no longer a fit for the current Programmers.SE direction. Many of them are from the Ante-disciplining period, some are bad migrations from Stack Overflow, and we've accumulated others throughout the year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nevertheless, they're broken windows: they continue to attract pageviews and still show up in Google searches, compounding any quality problems we have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taking the [closed questions with 30 or more up-votes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1+votes%3A30), we have a total of 61 questions. Because of the number of up-votes, they will never attract enough delete votes from the community, and would have to be deleted by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before that happens, I'd like to see what everyone thinks: what should be done with them? Is deleting them now the best way to go? Are there certain questions worth saving, and if so, how can we improve them to fit the guidelines of the site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5033" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2051" RevisionGUID="6758b52c-9636-45df-bd16-fdefc34612da" CreationDate="2011-08-03T07:35:40.807" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Programmers.SE Summer Cleaning, Part II: Electric Boogaloo" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5034" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2051" RevisionGUID="6758b52c-9636-45df-bd16-fdefc34612da" CreationDate="2011-08-03T07:35:40.807" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5035" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2051" RevisionGUID="d356b2b9-c453-49d6-9520-bc25ccce645a" CreationDate="2011-08-03T07:45:53.167" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Address a larger portion of the popular closed questions" Text="So in [Part I of the summer cleaning project](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning), we focused on deleting the bottom portion of our closed question backlog: things that never got any love and just were dying a slow, cold death.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In part II, I'd like to address the elephants in the room: our once popular, yet nevertheless off-topic questions that are no longer a fit for the current Programmers.SE direction. Many of them are from the Ante-disciplining period, some are bad migrations from Stack Overflow, and we've accumulated others throughout the year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nevertheless, they're broken windows: they continue to attract pageviews and still show up in Google searches, compounding any quality problems we have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taking the [closed questions with 20 or more up-votes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1+votes%3A20), we have a total of 116 questions. Because of the number of up-votes, they will likely never attract enough delete votes from the community, and would have to be deleted by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before that happens, I'd like to see what everyone thinks: what should be done with them? Is deleting them now the best way to go? Are there certain questions worth saving, and if so, how can we improve them to fit the guidelines of the site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5036" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2052" RevisionGUID="541b5f4a-2bac-4603-976a-f088b0b035ab" CreationDate="2011-08-03T10:48:26.473" UserId="4" Text="Every question on this site should be related to [tag:programming], [tag:software-engineering] (or something tangentially related to software engineering), and/or [tag:software-development]. These are just the ones on the front page of the &quot;popular&quot; tags, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I get some free time this week or weekend, I would honestly like to go through all (currently 52) pages of tags and come up with a list of tags that add little or no value, and let the community decide. Perhaps as a part of the Summer Cleaning. I would like to see a major effort to clean up tags and write some good tag wiki pages, but I'm not going to ask other people to jump in on this until I get a feel for how much value this would add or what the community thinks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5037" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2052" RevisionGUID="541b5f4a-2bac-4603-976a-f088b0b035ab" CreationDate="2011-08-03T10:48:26.473" UserId="4" Text="Should the &quot;programming&quot;, &quot;software-engineering&quot;, and &quot;software-development&quot; tags exist?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5038" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2052" RevisionGUID="541b5f4a-2bac-4603-976a-f088b0b035ab" CreationDate="2011-08-03T10:48:26.473" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5039" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2053" RevisionGUID="ecaeda2f-33dc-4609-b43a-212480de0964" CreationDate="2011-08-03T10:54:08.590" UserId="4" Text="The only problem that I see with cleaning up these questions is that it would make some of the answers nonsensical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, the question on [&quot;Why are there so few female programmers?&quot;][1] could probably be revised into something more like &quot;What efforts are underway to encourage more women to enter computing and technology-related fields?&quot; Acceptable answers would discuss organizations such as the [Association for Women in Computing][2] and the [ACM-W][3], as well as studies that reflect the growth or decline of women in computing-related fields. However, this change would make most, if not all, of the answers to this question not make sense anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be possible to save some of these questions in terms of who asked them, but &quot;reset&quot; them? Remove the reputation from the question and answers, remove the answers, and perhaps float it to the top (although if they are going to get floated, you can only edit a couple of questions at a time, but we could identify &quot;salvageable&quot; questions in advance and choose two or three a day for fixing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5780/why-are-there-so-few-female-programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.awc-hq.org/home.html&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://women.acm.org/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5040" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2054" RevisionGUID="0155c547-f46c-41e7-b6f7-ed617dabb20b" CreationDate="2011-08-03T11:29:22.303" UserId="1069" Text="I disagree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since we have [tag:career] questions (as an example), many of which it would not make sense to tag as programming, software engineering or software development, there is ample scope for question not relating to any of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, it would not make sense to tag [&quot;How to get into accessibility consulting?&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98165/how-to-get-into-accessibility-consulting) with [tag:programming], [tag:software-engineering] or [tag:software-development] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am all for removing pointless tag, but I don't not think these three qualify. (Although programming and software engineering might be merged as synonyms, I'm not sure.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5041" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2055" RevisionGUID="0d9311a2-3d83-4e1b-85c3-24661af82633" CreationDate="2011-08-03T11:51:19.663" UserId="854" Text="&gt; We have a lot of questions not related to programming jobs if we drop the &quot;programming&quot; word.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So don't drop the &quot;programming&quot; word.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, it would be great to have an active SE site to discuss the non-technical aspects of being a programmer, perhaps in common with non-programmers. A sort of general office life site - OfficeSpace.SE or FugitivesFromTheCubiclePolice.SE, anyone? - would be great, and could be a migration destination for questions from here, or directly from SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, we don't have such a place. We do have a balkanised, low-traffic set of sites floating about in Area 51; but (a) they're still in Area 51, and (b) even if they graduated, i wouldn't consider them much use, because they're so specialised.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if we did have such a place, many (not all) of the questions ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about workplace, co-workers, ergonomics, business policies, management practices, ethics on work, career guidance, personal development, etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... are actually more programming-related than you might think. Say Alice has a problem with her boss telling her to cut corners in her code to get work done faster. Sounds like a generic problem, right? Wrong! Because a central thing to discuss here is the [tradable quality hypothesis][1], which is a software-specific idea (i'm not saying it can't apply elsewhere, but Martin Fowler was talking specifically about software when he framed it). Or Bob is griping about how his coworkers keep fiddling with work he's done. A generic problem? No! Because we can talk about [collective code ownership][2], and whether Bob's team does and should have it. I could go on like that all day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would you kick those questions to a generic site? Because that would be a mistake.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TradableQualityHypothesis.html&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CollectiveCodeOwnership" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5042" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2052" RevisionGUID="a00ef2b9-4628-44c1-aedf-97c7e00a9e5e" CreationDate="2011-08-03T12:07:58.823" UserId="4" Comment="added 1198 characters in body; edited title" Text="Every question on this site should be related to [tag:software-engineering] (or something tangentially related to software engineering), and/or [tag:software-development]. These are just the ones on the front page of the &quot;popular&quot; tags, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I get some free time this week or weekend, I would honestly like to go through all (currently 52) pages of tags and come up with a list of tags that add little or no value, and let the community decide. Perhaps as a part of the Summer Cleaning. I would like to see a major effort to clean up tags and write some good tag wiki pages, but I'm not going to ask other people to jump in on this until I get a feel for how much value this would add or what the community thinks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In response to Matt Ellen's answer, the [tag:programming] tag makes sense if it is referring to issues that arise during the construction of software. I would still want to go through the questions tagged with it and make sure that its used appropriately, but I can now see it being a valid tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other two, [tag:software-engineering] and [tag:software-development] I still feel are two general. More specific tags, such as [tag:requirements], [tag:architecture], [tag:programming], [tag:testing], [tag:maintenance], [tag:process], [tag:quality], [tag:tools], and [tag:education], along with a number of others should probably be used instead to get at the root of the topic of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And this brings up another issue: the [tag:design] tag being used to refer to architectural design, component/module design, and UI design. This is kind of blowing up the scope a little bit (well, a ton, but we'll overlook that for a second), but I think it does underscore a need to take a good hard look at tags and how they are used to make it easier to search and sort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the reasons why I don't have favorite tags here is because it's too hard to use them. Cleaning up would make this easier." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5043" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2052" RevisionGUID="a00ef2b9-4628-44c1-aedf-97c7e00a9e5e" CreationDate="2011-08-03T12:07:58.823" UserId="4" Comment="added 1198 characters in body; edited title" Text="Should the &quot;software-engineering&quot;, and &quot;software-development&quot; tags exist?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5044" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2054" RevisionGUID="88aa9670-e414-462c-857b-591e8fc7a5ff" CreationDate="2011-08-03T12:22:58.793" UserId="1069" Comment="added 263 characters in body" Text="I disagree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since we have [tag:career] questions (as an example), many of which it would not make sense to tag as programming, software engineering or software development, there is ample scope for question not relating to any of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, it would not make sense to tag [&quot;How to get into accessibility consulting?&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98165/how-to-get-into-accessibility-consulting) with [tag:programming], [tag:software-engineering] or [tag:software-development] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am all for removing pointless tag, but I don't not think these three qualify. (Although programming and software engineering might be merged as synonyms, I'm not sure.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having looked through some of the [tag:software-engineering] questions, the tag does seem to be a meta tag that adds little to a question. I am for removing the tag, since [meta is murder](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/meta-is-murder.html)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5045" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="2056" RevisionGUID="f0db7cfa-0592-49d6-994f-7467d70d0997" CreationDate="2011-08-03T12:48:27.117" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98189/how-do-i-copy-my-stackoverflow-profile-to-all-the-sites-of-stackexchange-network" Text="" />
  <row Id="5046" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2056" RevisionGUID="299859cd-141d-45ea-a042-40192b9e9acb" CreationDate="2011-08-03T12:44:21.707" UserId="23750" Text="How I can my Stack Overflow profile to all the sites of this network ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5047" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2056" RevisionGUID="299859cd-141d-45ea-a042-40192b9e9acb" CreationDate="2011-08-03T12:44:21.707" UserId="23750" Text="How do I copy my stackoverflow profile to all the sites of stackExchange Network?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5048" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2056" RevisionGUID="299859cd-141d-45ea-a042-40192b9e9acb" CreationDate="2011-08-03T12:44:21.707" UserId="23750" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5049" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2057" RevisionGUID="b7b96eb5-4844-4f74-8dfe-14f30cd00fca" CreationDate="2011-08-03T12:52:15.507" UserId="47" Text="If you go to the accounts tab on your profile page - http://stackoverflow.com/users/720176/amit-dwivedi?tab=accounts you should see three links/buttons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Copy Stack Overflow profile to all Stack Exchange accounts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Clear all Stack Exchange account associations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Copy Stack Overflow login credentials to all Stack Exchange sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Click on the first link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want your Programmers information copying do the same but from your Programmers account - http://stackoverflow.com/users/720176/amit-dwivedi?tab=accounts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5050" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2056" RevisionGUID="8e1b9c29-0d49-4a27-907a-21f67f7508b1" CreationDate="2011-08-03T12:53:03.540" UserId="47" Comment="corrected spelling" Text="How I can copy my Stack Overflow profile to all the sites of this network?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5051" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2056" RevisionGUID="8e1b9c29-0d49-4a27-907a-21f67f7508b1" CreationDate="2011-08-03T12:53:03.540" UserId="47" Comment="corrected spelling" Text="How do I copy my Stack Overflow profile to all the sites of Stack Exchange Network?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5052" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2058" RevisionGUID="c274d102-00b6-4127-81e3-4053812f5756" CreationDate="2011-08-03T14:56:09.683" UserId="2654" Text="I'm fine with cleaning up low ranked answers and questions to eliminate cruft. Look at [StackOverflow's top ranked questions](http://stackoverflow.com/questions?sort=votes). Not all of those are really &quot;good&quot; questions, and more then a few would be off topic at todays standard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions&amp;mdash;however off topic&amp;mdash;have earned their place through votes&amp;mdash;however misguided&amp;mdash;and should remain. They should already be closed, protected, or locked. They aren't hurting anything, and they provided an excellent reference for new people who may be looking to ask questions along a similar vein. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5053" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2059" RevisionGUID="4d3e9840-f709-46f8-8ee6-50fe2226bc38" CreationDate="2011-08-03T17:29:12.740" UserId="21184" Text="I am strongly in favour of this cleanup. I disagree with @Josh K's statement that &quot;since they have already been closed, they aren't hurting anybody&quot;. People interested in questions of this type will find programmers.SE via search engines and therefore get the impression that it's &quot;common practice&quot; to ask such questions, even though they are not suited for this platform. After all they earned such high vote counts, so it must be accepted practice!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's just one thing I could change on programmers.SE, it would be deleting these harmful, but popular questions everybody can relate to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That being said, I would like to stress that the community has already elected you as moderators. **They have precicely elected you to act in moments where the community itself can't reach a consensus, but action is needed in order to protect it.** Even if some rebels may get loud, most people will silently acknowledge whatever action you have in mind!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5054" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2058" RevisionGUID="05716660-d922-49d6-8a24-565f524b39a9" CreationDate="2011-08-03T17:47:14.733" UserId="2654" Comment="Added points from comment discussion. " Text="I'm fine with cleaning up low ranked answers and questions to eliminate cruft. Look at [StackOverflow's top ranked questions](http://stackoverflow.com/questions?sort=votes). Not all of those are really &quot;good&quot; questions, and more then a few would be off topic at todays standard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions&amp;mdash;however off topic&amp;mdash;have earned their place through votes&amp;mdash;however misguided&amp;mdash;and should remain. They should already be closed, protected, or locked. They aren't hurting anything, and they provided an excellent reference for new people who may be looking to ask questions along a similar vein. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I disagree. Questions are are not allowed here should be either cleaned up or removed. In fact, with the exception of duplicates, since they are valid questions that might bring in additional hits when searching from outside, **closed questions should be routinely purged.** If the author (or someone else) isn't willing to spend the time to clean it up and make it an acceptable question, get rid of it. Otherwise, it becomes noise when searching the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree! Questions that have been closed for a reasonable amount of time with no activity should be deleted. This applies especially to *low-voted* or *unanswered* questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the community thought they were valuable, **why weren't they voted to be reopened?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They weren't reopened because the stabilizing rules would not permit them to. I agree with the rule shift, but don't agree that these questions&amp;mdash;highly voted or active&amp;mdash;should be deleted. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And I do say they are hurting things. There are almost 3000 closed questions, each of which produces noise to not only searches here, but searches coming from the Internet at large. No grandfathering questions in, fix them or delete them all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Noise&quot; in what? When I'm searching for something I have no issue wading through pages of bad questions. &quot;Fixing&quot; these questions is incredibly difficult. The answers are matched to the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  There have been times when I've upvoted a question because it's good, but it just doesn't belong here, so I've also voted to close. The idea behind that is when it's moved, the asker will get appropriate reputation on the site that it is moved to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That practice is a hypocrisy. Questions that you expect to be migrated should just be closed. Upvote when (if!) it gets migrated, not before while it's still on the site. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5055" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2051" RevisionGUID="ac808ef1-e12b-4717-9e50-e5d93b24f5ef" CreationDate="2011-08-03T18:19:04.663" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add disclaimer" Text="So in [Part I of the summer cleaning project](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning), we focused on deleting the bottom portion of our closed question backlog: things that never got any love and just were dying a slow, cold death.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In part II, I'd like to address the elephants in the room: our once popular, yet nevertheless off-topic questions that are no longer a fit for the current Programmers.SE direction. Many of them are from the Ante-disciplining period, some are bad migrations from Stack Overflow, and we've accumulated others throughout the year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nevertheless, they're broken windows: they continue to attract pageviews and still show up in Google searches, compounding any quality problems we have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taking the [closed questions with 20 or more up-votes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1+votes%3A20), we have a total of 116 questions. Because of the number of up-votes, they will likely never attract enough delete votes from the community, and would have to be deleted by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before that happens, I'd like to see what everyone thinks: what should be done with them? Is deleting them now the best way to go? Are there certain questions worth saving, and if so, how can we improve them to fit the guidelines of the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Note&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't official dictum: I'm asking personally about this specific issue. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question, like the previous questions on the summer cleanup, are here to involve you guys in the process of what gets cleaned up. It's asked in the spirit of the community consensus that we should clean up the place, but that—as a community—we still need to work through the details of that cleanup. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5056" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2058" RevisionGUID="efc13139-4ad7-46a1-9ccf-c67601ada44e" CreationDate="2011-08-03T18:22:24.093" UserId="2654" Comment="Added comment owner " Text="I'm fine with cleaning up low ranked answers and questions to eliminate cruft. Look at [StackOverflow's top ranked questions](http://stackoverflow.com/questions?sort=votes). Not all of those are really &quot;good&quot; questions, and more then a few would be off topic at todays standard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions&amp;mdash;however off topic&amp;mdash;have earned their place through votes&amp;mdash;however misguided&amp;mdash;and should remain. They should already be closed, protected, or locked. They aren't hurting anything, and they provided an excellent reference for new people who may be looking to ask questions along a similar vein. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I disagree. Questions are are not allowed here should be either cleaned up or removed. In fact, with the exception of duplicates, since they are valid questions that might bring in additional hits when searching from outside, **closed questions should be routinely purged.** If the author (or someone else) isn't willing to spend the time to clean it up and make it an acceptable question, get rid of it. Otherwise, it becomes noise when searching the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Comment by [Thomas Owens](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree! Questions that have been closed for a reasonable amount of time with no activity should be deleted. This applies especially to *low-voted* or *unanswered* questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the community thought they were valuable, **why weren't they voted to be reopened?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Comment by [Thomas Owens](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They weren't reopened because the stabilizing rules would not permit them to. I agree with the rule shift, but don't agree that these questions&amp;mdash;highly voted or active&amp;mdash;should be deleted. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And I do say they are hurting things. There are almost 3000 closed questions, each of which produces noise to not only searches here, but searches coming from the Internet at large. No grandfathering questions in, fix them or delete them all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Comment by [Thomas Owens](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Noise&quot; in what? When I'm searching for something I have no issue wading through pages of bad questions. &quot;Fixing&quot; these questions is incredibly difficult. The answers are matched to the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  There have been times when I've upvoted a question because it's good, but it just doesn't belong here, so I've also voted to close. The idea behind that is when it's moved, the asker will get appropriate reputation on the site that it is moved to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Comment by [Thomas Owens](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That practice is a hypocrisy. Questions that you expect to be migrated should just be closed. Upvote when (if!) it gets migrated, not before while it's still on the site. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5057" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2056" RevisionGUID="8ac8f45e-c217-4962-a88c-90162abed3d3" CreationDate="2011-08-03T20:20:10.963" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|user-profile|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5058" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2046" RevisionGUID="8cf1dff6-7678-493f-90f7-5b2b8e1e9061" CreationDate="2011-08-04T02:39:55.520" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 337 characters in body" Text="I think addressing the recourse people have when an answer doesn't get improved the way they like is a good idea. To that end, perhaps we can revise it to say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are useful for getting clarifications, but extended discussions detract from the question and its answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you'd like to discuss anything related to programming with other expert programmers, please use our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * This site is &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#editing&quot;&gt;collaborative&lt;/a&gt;: if a question or answer can be improved without changing the author's intent, please edit it or suggest an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you like a post, show your appreciation by voting it up.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you disagree with an answer or a question remains unclear, feel free to down-vote it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you have a better answer to a question, please leave your own answer instead of writing a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yoda over on Gardening.SE [provided a great guide](http://meta.gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/201/when-should-i-post-an-answer-and-when-should-i-post-a-comment/202#202) on when to use comments, and created this awesome chart:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![How to use comments: a flow chart][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/JS6Z8.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5059" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1729" RevisionGUID="0f1588cd-d8d3-43a1-91c6-9d629170943a" CreationDate="2011-08-04T04:23:05.160" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|design|community|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5060" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2060" RevisionGUID="e5e003b0-306b-4efe-be46-f0f76b479cb2" CreationDate="2011-08-04T12:20:51.620" UserId="6559" Text="Requesting to merge tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*  [multi-threading] × 19&#xD;&#xA;*  [multithreading]  × 5&#xD;&#xA;*  [multi-threaded]  × 4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd propose using [multithreading] as the master tag, as this is [what Wikipedia uses][1], but I guess that's not really important -- important is to not have 3 different tags that say the same thing :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;cheers!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multithreading_%28computer_architecture%29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5061" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2060" RevisionGUID="e5e003b0-306b-4efe-be46-f0f76b479cb2" CreationDate="2011-08-04T12:20:51.620" UserId="6559" Text="Synonym request: multithreading / multi-threading / multi-threaded" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5062" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2060" RevisionGUID="e5e003b0-306b-4efe-be46-f0f76b479cb2" CreationDate="2011-08-04T12:20:51.620" UserId="6559" Text="|feature-request|tags|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5063" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2060" RevisionGUID="94ea1097-897c-48bf-93cb-eeaee0437c82" CreationDate="2011-08-04T12:26:53.767" UserId="47" Comment="make tags tag links" Text="Requesting to merge tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*  [tag:multi-threading] × 19&#xD;&#xA;*  [tag:multithreading]  × 5&#xD;&#xA;*  [tag:multi-threaded]  × 4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd propose using [multithreading] as the master tag, as this is [what Wikipedia uses][1], but I guess that's not really important -- important is to not have 3 different tags that say the same thing :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;cheers!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multithreading_%28computer_architecture%29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5064" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2061" RevisionGUID="7d87f0de-270a-498b-89ff-2d8097b13700" CreationDate="2011-08-04T13:58:24.767" UserId="2654" Text="I like the [tag:multithreading] choice. Merge away!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5065" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2062" RevisionGUID="16dcbf0b-95b0-4d5e-bfe5-70ca2789e1d6" CreationDate="2011-08-04T14:56:35.577" UserId="1204" Text="There have been a [number][1] of [discussions][2] raised about this.  How about some examples, with reasons why they shouldn't have been migrated?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason questions you don't like get migrated to Programmers is because people don't always understand what Programmers is about.  This shouldn't be surprising, given the history of Programmers.SE.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am a moderator on Stack Overflow.  That means that I have to not only know SO's charter, your charter, and the charter of a handful of other sites like Drupal, Tex and Linux; but also the current gestalt of those websites (i.e. what have people been discussing on meta about on-topic-ness).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Needless to say, there are a lot of moving parts to migrations.  So when I get a flag requesting that a question be migrated to programmers (especially on questions that have no close votes or only off-topic close votes), I'm inclined to honor it, if it doesn't seem like an unreasonable request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be honest, I would expect about 25% of such migrations to fail.  It's not a perfect world.  But providing some examples of questions that shouldn't have been migrated, and the reasons why they shouldn't have been migrated, might go a long way towards improving the migration success ratio.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**One example per answer, please.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2048/can-the-migration-path-from-so-be-reconsidered&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5066" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2062" RevisionGUID="16dcbf0b-95b0-4d5e-bfe5-70ca2789e1d6" CreationDate="2011-08-04T14:56:35.577" UserId="1204" Text="Which questions shouldn't have been migrated to Programmers, and why?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5067" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2062" RevisionGUID="16dcbf0b-95b0-4d5e-bfe5-70ca2789e1d6" CreationDate="2011-08-04T14:56:35.577" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5068" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2063" RevisionGUID="429c9edd-d344-47a7-be50-a2b0bc696b43" CreationDate="2011-08-04T15:04:33.213" UserId="47" Text="OK - totally ignoring your one example per answer comment I'm just going to post links from the list of recently migrated in questions. People feel free to take each of these and turn them into an answer for Robert. Presented here so a) those with access to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/here don't have to repeat what I've just done and b) those without access but close votes can find them easily.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98588/how-do-you-think-about-and-architect-programs-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98047/moving-between-developer-jobs-what-should-i-do-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97958/are-there-any-big-name-programmers-that-started-late-in-life-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97812/where-to-buy-a-digital-signature-at-the-lowest-price-possible-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97405/tests-for-c-core-skills-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97223/how-to-convince-my-colleagues-to-learn-new-technologies-and-programming-languages&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97080/career-advice-late-20s-career-change-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97052/from-non-cs-background-algorithm-programmer-to-lone-software-developer-what-shou&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96478/dealing-with-coworkers-when-developing-need-advice-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96437/a-question-to-interviewers-should-i-stick-to-c-or-learn-something-new-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95678/what-is-the-best-version-control-system-for-individual-work-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95650/perl-python-functional-programming-language-and-c-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's 12 out of 49 in the last 10 days, and that's just the first page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't delved into the questions but from the titles there seem to be a lot of duplicates." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5069" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2064" RevisionGUID="c99892fe-efde-432f-b21a-73be917efb80" CreationDate="2011-08-04T17:23:55.060" UserId="13866" Text="A very typical kind of question that get closed most of the time here are the &quot;career advice&quot; type. They are mostly very localized or only of interest to a single person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Moving between developer jobs - what should I do?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98047/moving-between-developer-jobs-what-should-i-do)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[from non-CS background algorithm programmer to lone software developer: what should I learn](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97052/from-non-cs-background-algorithm-programmer-to-lone-software-developer-what-shou)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5070" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2064" RevisionGUID="915cac75-b2c2-4f72-8faa-2b6957cf1807" CreationDate="2011-08-04T17:31:18.767" UserId="13866" Comment="added 440 characters in body" Text="A very typical kind of question that get closed most of the time here are the &quot;career advice&quot; type. They are mostly very localized or only of interest to a single person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Moving between developer jobs - what should I do?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98047/moving-between-developer-jobs-what-should-i-do)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[from non-CS background algorithm programmer to lone software developer: what should I learn](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97052/from-non-cs-background-algorithm-programmer-to-lone-software-developer-what-shou)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;@Robert: exactly. You asked for examples what should not be migrated. That's a typical one that always gets closed anyway. So there is not much sense in migrating.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though I don't think that you should worry that much about migrating a few questions that get deleted here. I don't know the actual rate, but a lot of questions get closed here every day. One or two more that come from Stack Overflow shouldn't make a difference." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5071" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2064" RevisionGUID="eda56a38-2a02-4eb1-ab44-6b3e8a1339e9" CreationDate="2011-08-04T17:44:29.973" UserId="13866" Comment="added 582 characters in body" Text="A very typical kind of question that get closed most of the time here are the &quot;career advice&quot; type. They are mostly very localized or only of interest to a single person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Moving between developer jobs - what should I do?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98047/moving-between-developer-jobs-what-should-i-do)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[from non-CS background algorithm programmer to lone software developer: what should I learn](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97052/from-non-cs-background-algorithm-programmer-to-lone-software-developer-what-shou)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;@Robert: exactly. You asked for examples what should not be migrated. That's a typical one that always gets closed anyway. So there is not much sense in migrating.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though I don't think that you should worry that much about migrating a few questions that get deleted here. I don't know the actual rate, but a lot of questions get closed here every day. One or two more that come from Stack Overflow shouldn't make a difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's actually not the place for career questions at all. (At least as far as I could make out by now). but it's quite difficult. As long as you don't follow the discussions here, you won't have much of a chance to know for sure what's on topic. One of the problems is, that questions in general are slightly more &quot;open&quot; than those on Stack Overflow, where you should ask clear &quot;How can I do X in language Y&quot; questions. I follow both sites regularly and think there is far more confusion about it on Stack Exchange. Though the moderators have clearer views on this.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5079" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2064" RevisionGUID="db89ddba-b518-41ec-acc9-7472888bebb3" CreationDate="2011-08-04T18:16:39.790" UserId="13866" Comment="added 280 characters in body" Text="A very typical kind of question that get closed most of the time here are the &quot;career advice&quot; type. They are mostly very localized or only of interest to a single person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Moving between developer jobs - what should I do?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98047/moving-between-developer-jobs-what-should-i-do)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[from non-CS background algorithm programmer to lone software developer: what should I learn](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97052/from-non-cs-background-algorithm-programmer-to-lone-software-developer-what-shou)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;@Robert: exactly. You asked for examples what should not be migrated. That's a typical one that always gets closed anyway. So there is not much sense in migrating.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though I don't think that you should worry that much about migrating a few questions that get deleted here. I don't know the actual rate, but a lot of questions get closed here every day. One or two more that come from Stack Overflow shouldn't make a difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's actually not the place for career questions at all. (At least as far as I could make out by now). but it's quite difficult. As long as you don't follow the discussions here, you won't have much of a chance to know for sure what's on topic. One of the problems is, that questions in general are slightly more &quot;open&quot; than those on Stack Overflow, where you should ask clear &quot;How can I do X in language Y&quot; questions. I follow both sites regularly and think there is far more confusion about it on Stack Exchange. Though the moderators have clearer views on this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just had a look at the list of questions tagged with [tag:career]. Many of them get closed, though definitely not all of them. Closed questions are mostly the &quot;What can I do to get into a certain position&quot; kind where people ask only about their specific situation. More general question like &quot;Wat can I do to stay up to date with new technologies?&quot; seem to be ok." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5080" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2066" RevisionGUID="4dabfa80-c241-412f-af4f-c9696c7852dd" CreationDate="2011-08-04T20:15:56.067" UserId="148" Text="&gt; our once popular, yet nevertheless off-topic questions that are no&#xD;&#xA;&gt; longer a fit for the current Programmers.SE direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are mods killing off popular questions? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Better to keep popular questions around, since there once (and probably still will be) demand for them.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5081" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2067" RevisionGUID="a8faaac0-4ccb-4485-8af7-880eee119536" CreationDate="2011-08-04T20:18:36.813" UserId="148" Text="I see no reason to kill off comment chains until they turn nasty, personal or offtopic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5082" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2068" RevisionGUID="4df612f1-7d35-4bf5-a332-35736d66b11c" CreationDate="2011-08-04T22:49:19.530" UserId="17426" Text="Would a moderator on programmers.stackexchange (specifically, Anna Lear) kindly explain why this response was deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98692/where-are-octals-useful/98697#98697&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I fail to see why it would be deleted after reviewing the FAQ, especially when there are other, almost identical responses that were not deleted, and my response also had three upvotes.  I admit that it doesn't directly answer the question asked (I was going back to add more info...), but the deletion seems arbitrary to me." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5083" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2068" RevisionGUID="4df612f1-7d35-4bf5-a332-35736d66b11c" CreationDate="2011-08-04T22:49:19.530" UserId="17426" Text="Why was this response deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5084" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2068" RevisionGUID="4df612f1-7d35-4bf5-a332-35736d66b11c" CreationDate="2011-08-04T22:49:19.530" UserId="17426" Text="|discussion|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5085" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2069" RevisionGUID="7fa93e79-421b-41c2-b9ce-81fa5d5d0ab5" CreationDate="2011-08-04T22:51:28.100" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The question was, &quot;Where are octals useful?&quot; and your answer was &quot;It's easy to convert between octals and binary.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, your answer was deleted because it didn't answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see any other answers there that are identical to yours, deleted or otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have some thoughts about a related issue with a question, but don't have a direct answer to it, it's best to just leave a comment on the answer, as we want to keep the answers section reserved for direct answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically, hold off on leaving an answer until you can directly answer the question: if you have a full answer now, it'd definitely be welcomed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5086" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2069" RevisionGUID="53c89110-af6e-46b4-9016-2fe11c1269a4" CreationDate="2011-08-04T23:05:02.173" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 144 characters in body" Text="The question was, &quot;Where are octals useful?&quot; and your answer was &quot;It's easy to convert between octals and binary.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, your answer was deleted because it didn't answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see any other answers there that are identical to yours, deleted or otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have some thoughts about a related issue with a question, but don't have a direct answer to it, it's best to just leave a comment on the answer, as we want to keep the answers section reserved for direct answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically, hold off on leaving an answer until you can directly answer the question: if you have a full answer now, it'd definitely be welcomed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:** As you've noted here that you want to improve your answer, I've gone ahead and undeleted it in anticipation of those improvements." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5087" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2070" RevisionGUID="881ac567-59ad-47b6-8e19-16178b5d7dad" CreationDate="2011-08-05T00:57:34.673" UserId="226" Text="[Mark Trapp's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2068/why-was-this-response-deleted/2069#2069) covered it my reasoning. For the record, your answer was not deleted outright but converted to a comment on the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I apologize for misreading your post and not realizing that you meant that conversion from binary to decimal was a use for octals. I'd undelete the answer now, but it looks like Mark beat me to it. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5088" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2070" RevisionGUID="e10807ef-74bb-4c8e-8109-b3c00695ec1b" CreationDate="2011-08-05T04:32:49.527" UserId="226" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="[Mark Trapp's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2068/why-was-this-response-deleted/2069#2069) covered it my reasoning. For what it's worth, your answer was not deleted outright but converted to a comment on the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I apologize for misreading your post and not realizing that you meant that conversion from binary to decimal was a use for octals. I'd undelete the answer now, but it looks like Mark beat me to it. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5089" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2064" RevisionGUID="cf9eca4b-21c2-4012-87ff-5dba400fc355" CreationDate="2011-08-05T04:40:47.420" UserId="13866" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="A very typical kind of question that get closed most of the time here are the &quot;career advice&quot; type. They are mostly very localized or only of interest to a single person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Moving between developer jobs - what should I do?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98047/moving-between-developer-jobs-what-should-i-do)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[from non-CS background algorithm programmer to lone software developer: what should I learn](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97052/from-non-cs-background-algorithm-programmer-to-lone-software-developer-what-shou)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;@Robert: exactly. You asked for examples what should not be migrated. That's a typical one that always gets closed anyway. So there is not much sense in migrating.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though I don't think that you should worry that much about migrating a few questions that get deleted here. I don't know the actual rate, but a lot of questions get closed here every day. One or two more that come from Stack Overflow shouldn't make a difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's actually not the place for career questions at all. (At least as far as I could make out by now). but it's quite difficult. As long as you don't follow the discussions here, you won't have much of a chance to know for sure what's on topic. One of the problems is, that questions in general are slightly more &quot;open&quot; than those on Stack Overflow, where you should ask clear &quot;How can I do X in language Y&quot; questions. I follow both sites regularly and think there is far more confusion about it on Stack Exchange. Though the moderators have clearer views on this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just had a look at the list of questions tagged with [tag:career]. Many of them get closed, though definitely not all of them. Closed questions are mostly the &quot;What can I do to get into a certain position&quot; kind where people ask only about their specific situation. More general question like &quot;What can I do to stay up to date with new technologies?&quot; seem to be ok." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5090" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2071" RevisionGUID="6ecabd54-9cbf-47d9-bc91-2f9c4eacea39" CreationDate="2011-08-05T11:19:30.763" UserId="6385" Text="I noticed that as of quite recently, you can't address more than @one @person in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it to discourage people from being obnoxious? To avoid spam?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I often want to talk with more than one person in conversations which I think are legitimate and contributive, so I find myself wishing that the problem this new rule addresses could have been dealt with in some other way." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5091" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2071" RevisionGUID="6ecabd54-9cbf-47d9-bc91-2f9c4eacea39" CreationDate="2011-08-05T11:19:30.763" UserId="6385" Text="Rationale behind limiting @user notifications to one person?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5092" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2071" RevisionGUID="6ecabd54-9cbf-47d9-bc91-2f9c4eacea39" CreationDate="2011-08-05T11:19:30.763" UserId="6385" Text="|discussion|notifications|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5093" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2072" RevisionGUID="0357a1a2-0eb2-49a1-8954-6c9b03f4eca0" CreationDate="2011-08-05T11:23:47.067" UserId="47" Text="There are a couple of issues:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Only *the first named* `@user` was ever notified so any others wouldn't know that the comment had been posted.&#xD;&#xA;2. The owner of the post where the comment is posted is *always* notified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if I added the following comment on a post of yours:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Rei, @Jim how about doing this way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only you would be notified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's an effort in social engineering to get people to use the system correctly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5094" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2073" RevisionGUID="89821644-2426-448a-9f3b-34f39792f9a3" CreationDate="2011-08-05T16:57:30.470" UserId="15510" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98899/haskell-code-accompanying-the-paul-hudak-1994-us-navy-experiment-paper&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The paper cited is a much-referenced (in the PL world) classic. I can imagine finding the accompanying code would be an occasional if not frequent need to anyone who found the paper useful or interesting or even controversial.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can think of no sane reason to close a useful question with a correct and useful answer. The only thing I can imagine is that since the mod didn't find the question interesting, they couldn't imagine that others might." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5095" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2073" RevisionGUID="89821644-2426-448a-9f3b-34f39792f9a3" CreationDate="2011-08-05T16:57:30.470" UserId="15510" Text="I think this reference request should not have been closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5096" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2073" RevisionGUID="89821644-2426-448a-9f3b-34f39792f9a3" CreationDate="2011-08-05T16:57:30.470" UserId="15510" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5097" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2074" RevisionGUID="3acfccb0-62e6-4ef6-b021-39fac621da9d" CreationDate="2011-08-05T17:01:34.040" UserId="226" Text="In the time it took you to post this, I saw your flag on the question and reopened it. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, closing a question isn't always a bad thing. I am honestly on the fence on this one, cause on one hand it has been answered well, but on the other -- it is a very specific request. The odds of someone else having the same problem are relatively low, which makes the question a good candidate for &quot;too localized&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Still, ultimately I think it can't hurt to leave it open in case someone else *does* read the same paper (I've no idea how popular it is) and goes looking for the sample code." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5098" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2075" RevisionGUID="246679b1-d4c7-43a8-b7b8-af3451dc9574" CreationDate="2011-08-05T17:05:27.290" UserId="63" Text="&gt; Is it to discourage people from being obnoxious?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Pretty much. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been discussed several times over on MetaSO - [this is a good example](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/45273/allow-more-than-one-name-notification-per-comment). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's worth contrasting the design of comment @-notifications with those of [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/), where you *can* notify multiple users in a single message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Comments always notify the post-author, regardless of @... Chat messages appear to anyone in the room.&#xD;&#xA;- Comments can @-notify anyone who has ever commented / edited the post... Chat messages can notify anyone who has been in the room *recently*.&#xD;&#xA;- Comment notifications persist in your global SE inbox... Chat notifications produce a small indicator *within chat*, with an entry in the SE inbox only if you don't respond.&#xD;&#xA;- You can only leave one comment every 15 seconds... You can post multiple chat messages within that timespan.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, chat messages will only notify people who are probably expecting them, having recently joined a chat room for the purpose of chatting. Comments might notify people who've long ago forgotten about the topic. Making it easier to mass-notify multiple users via comments has a much larger &quot;harassment&quot; potential.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5099" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2076" RevisionGUID="915db201-aa3e-4af6-a28d-7c8efed96908" CreationDate="2011-08-07T01:58:10.707" UserId="2406" Text="Why not do [what they do on SO][1]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; More info: http://stackoverflow.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/192793/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-t-shirt" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5100" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2077" RevisionGUID="68ba18ac-349c-4782-aade-3c57dee5e61d" CreationDate="2011-08-07T11:35:41.870" UserId="13866" Text="Is it possible to see the percentage of answers in a user-profile that where 'accepted answers' and search or sort his list of answers for accepted answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not this would be a nice to have feature. The accepted answers of a user are often the most interesting for others to read.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could even get some badges for 100 accepted answers or 100 answers and an accepted rate of n% or more. I'm not sure, what percentage value would make sense here, would depend on the average accept rate per user." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5101" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2077" RevisionGUID="68ba18ac-349c-4782-aade-3c57dee5e61d" CreationDate="2011-08-07T11:35:41.870" UserId="13866" Text="profile: accepted answer statistics and search" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5102" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2077" RevisionGUID="68ba18ac-349c-4782-aade-3c57dee5e61d" CreationDate="2011-08-07T11:35:41.870" UserId="13866" Text="|feature-request|accepted-answer|user-profile|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5103" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2077" RevisionGUID="e3a548bd-dfbc-4504-ae1d-74831ac0e8ef" CreationDate="2011-08-07T11:41:57.913" UserId="47" Comment="spelling" Text="Is it possible to see the percentage of answers in a user-profile that were 'accepted answers' and search or sort his list of answers for accepted answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not this would be a nice to have feature. The accepted answers of a user are often the most interesting for others to read.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could even get some badges for 100 accepted answers or 100 answers and an accepted rate of n% or more. I'm not sure, what percentage value would make sense here, would depend on the average accept rate per user." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5104" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2078" RevisionGUID="4cdc3724-81ad-4d7d-bb92-cb54c5545fe8" CreationDate="2011-08-07T11:43:25.837" UserId="47" Text="I asked for this [on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/2238/would-it-be-useful-so-show-peoples-hit-rate-i-e-percentage-of-answers-accep) way back in June 2009.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing to come out of that appeared to be the accept rate of questions - not on answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree it would be nice statistic to have. Not sure about the badges though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5105" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2079" RevisionGUID="f0e01f77-881d-4d77-8931-5910697b7362" CreationDate="2011-08-07T12:04:45.237" UserId="4" Text="Unfortunately, I don't have access to the &quot;quick tag&quot; editor since I don't have enough (10k?) rep yet. Does editing only the tags using either the quick editor from the question or going to the edit page bump a question to the top of the question list?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I ask is because I want to implement [part of this change][1]. I want to go through all questions tagged [tag:software-engineering] and replace them with an appropriate (and hopefully existing tag) that is far more specific as to the areas of software engineering that the question is about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5106" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2079" RevisionGUID="f0e01f77-881d-4d77-8931-5910697b7362" CreationDate="2011-08-07T12:04:45.237" UserId="4" Text="Does editing tags bump a question to the top of the list?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5107" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2079" RevisionGUID="f0e01f77-881d-4d77-8931-5910697b7362" CreationDate="2011-08-07T12:04:45.237" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|support|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5108" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2080" RevisionGUID="f68f8876-6a8c-46de-860c-d9e553df3a9e" CreationDate="2011-08-07T12:09:48.327" UserId="47" Text="Any edit to a post bumps it. It doesn't matter whether this is from the normal &quot;edit&quot; link or the quick tag edit option available to 10K+ users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only exception to this are the [CHAOS team](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/100137/what-is-the-meaning-of-chaos-is-it-related-to-the-psi-character) (those with a Ψ after their name) who have been given special &quot;powers&quot; to edit a title (and only a title) without bumping the post." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5109" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2081" RevisionGUID="5bd50b5a-a4b2-47e4-a793-ac2df659e979" CreationDate="2011-08-07T13:19:22.343" UserId="4" Text="[tag:languages] --&gt; [tag:programming-languages]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually, the order doesn't matter. I would want to go through the questions and make sure no spoken or written language questions (not sure why any would be here, but it's possible) get caught up in the merge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly, even though it's longer, I would favor programming-languages. It's more specific (especially for automatic indexing). It would also be more specific when working with large data sets (for example, the monthly data dumps), especially when working across sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5110" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2081" RevisionGUID="5bd50b5a-a4b2-47e4-a793-ac2df659e979" CreationDate="2011-08-07T13:19:22.343" UserId="4" Text="Tag Merge Discussion: languages, programming-languages" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5111" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2081" RevisionGUID="5bd50b5a-a4b2-47e4-a793-ac2df659e979" CreationDate="2011-08-07T13:19:22.343" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5112" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2082" RevisionGUID="32a01823-69d3-49b1-a78a-7b3b86aee7cf" CreationDate="2011-08-07T13:21:32.577" UserId="4" Text="[This question][1] came up on my tag clean up, so I can't retag it. I can see it being closed for Not a Real Question, since it isn't good in it's present state. However, I did want to (like I said) retag it, improve the title, and improve the grammar and formatting of the question. I believe that even closed questions should be well-written and formatted - it just makes the site look better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60568/acm-ieee-software-engineering-code-of-ethics-and-professional" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5113" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2082" RevisionGUID="32a01823-69d3-49b1-a78a-7b3b86aee7cf" CreationDate="2011-08-07T13:21:32.577" UserId="4" Text="Why was this question locked?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5114" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2082" RevisionGUID="32a01823-69d3-49b1-a78a-7b3b86aee7cf" CreationDate="2011-08-07T13:21:32.577" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|locking|question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5115" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2083" RevisionGUID="92745849-d28a-455b-b788-0ce02c7517cf" CreationDate="2011-08-07T13:22:38.173" UserId="4" Text="[tag:process] -&gt; [tag:development-process]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure how to work this one. I think we need to differentiate between business processes (there's already a [tag:business-process] tag with 8 questions) and process models/methodologies. I don't like the name &quot;development-process&quot;, though, since a typical process model covers everything from requirements through end-of-life of a project. I suppose it depends on how you define &quot;development&quot; - it could be the development of a project or it could mean the actual construction/building/development phase of a project. I want to know what the community thinks on this guy, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some manual work to ensure that questions about things that aren't process methodologies (such as [this question][1]) aren't rolled into the tag about process models and methodologies, whatever tag that may be. I also do think that process models and methodologies should be grouped into a single tag. An option for this would be to settle on a name for process questions and then make process-model and process-methodology synonyms with that tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91621/guidelines-for-html-css-js-optimization-process" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5116" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2083" RevisionGUID="92745849-d28a-455b-b788-0ce02c7517cf" CreationDate="2011-08-07T13:22:38.173" UserId="4" Text="Tag Merge Discussion: process, development-process" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5117" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2083" RevisionGUID="92745849-d28a-455b-b788-0ce02c7517cf" CreationDate="2011-08-07T13:22:38.173" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5118" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2084" RevisionGUID="9406610c-742f-41ca-9e99-4ddaf07661c7" CreationDate="2011-08-07T14:06:25.510" UserId="13866" Text="Agree, most people use them synonymously anyway. And there seems slight confusion. In a context with internationalization the usage as natural language would make sense, like in [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95202/if-someone-was-making-software-able-to-display-content-in-any-written-language) question. But they could (and most likely should) use [tag:internationalization]. In addition there is [tag:natural-language] and [tag:spoken-languages]. Maybe some text in the tag wiki would help users to make the distinction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;btw: We have both: [tag:language] and plural [tag:languages]. Could be merged as well I guess." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5119" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2085" RevisionGUID="50deb570-a2e2-4682-aec9-c739e746c9f8" CreationDate="2011-08-07T14:14:36.887" UserId="13866" Text="Process is a bit ambiguous. This could apply to several different meanings as in concurrency or multitasking. At least a few questions are tagged this way. So we have no 100% clear meaning and usage here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5120" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2086" RevisionGUID="b488e50e-3ceb-4699-8c5b-8b2e286e1cea" CreationDate="2011-08-07T15:19:46.903" UserId="226" Text="If I recall, there was an edit war going on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the question has been closed for almost 5 months, has a distinct &quot;homework&quot; bent, and is not solving a practical problem, I chose to delete it instead of unlocking. Although I'm not married to that decision, so if you had an edit in mind that'd improve it to the point where it could be considered for reopening, let me know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5121" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2087" RevisionGUID="f735ae2e-45c0-4b6e-a76d-edb1de3ef2d2" CreationDate="2011-08-07T19:15:44.477" UserId="13866" Text="So at least once every day we have this kind of question where somebody asks to give advice about some technical topic. (I'm not talking about career advice, though that may be handled too). Those questions mostly get closed immediately. Often as to localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I fully understand the reasons behind closing them, mainly for the knowledge base style of StackExchange, I still feel slightly bad for the users who ask those questions. From their subject those questions often fit very well to the community (best way to learn some subject, good tools to do something) and people justifiably expect that they can get good answers here. Often enough, some of the answers given before closing confirm this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Wouldn't it be possible to add a kind of &quot;delayed closing&quot;, that allows users to answer for maybe three days. After this period the question gets closed automatically. This way StackExchange would stay a knowledge base. Or would this still be too much &quot;chatting&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe somebody has a better idea how this can be handled. I just think it would be nice if we at least have a chance to help some people, as long as there are users ready to answer this kind of question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5122" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2087" RevisionGUID="f735ae2e-45c0-4b6e-a76d-edb1de3ef2d2" CreationDate="2011-08-07T19:15:44.477" UserId="13866" Text="Dicussion: 'delayed' closing of advice type and localized questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5123" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2087" RevisionGUID="f735ae2e-45c0-4b6e-a76d-edb1de3ef2d2" CreationDate="2011-08-07T19:15:44.477" UserId="13866" Text="|discussion|closing-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5124" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2088" RevisionGUID="cfa1c1e0-b295-46b9-909c-df06150bf0f9" CreationDate="2011-08-07T19:22:09.257" UserId="37" Text="I don't think on a site titled &quot;programmers&quot; we necessarily should disambiguate [tag:language].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All tags *start* with the assumption that they are most relevant to the audience *of that site*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think [tag:languages] (the plural form) is generally better but I strongly feel that adding &quot;programming-&quot; to tags is highly redundant on a site by, and for, programmers..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5125" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2082" RevisionGUID="b83efa0b-991d-4351-aadc-b9cce5018c3b" CreationDate="2011-08-07T19:30:51.417" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|locking|question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5126" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2087" RevisionGUID="6a40bf8b-8a2e-405b-81ad-741111f562ac" CreationDate="2011-08-07T20:00:09.603" UserId="13866" Comment="added 2807 characters in body" Text="So at least once every day we have this kind of question where somebody asks to give advice about some technical topic. (I'm not talking about career advice, though that may be handled too). Those questions mostly get closed immediately. Often as to localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I fully understand the reasons behind closing them, mainly for the knowledge base style of StackExchange, I still feel slightly bad for the users who ask those questions. From their subject those questions often fit very well to the community (best way to learn some subject, good tools to do something) and people justifiably expect that they can get good answers here. Often enough, some of the answers given before closing confirm this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Wouldn't it be possible to add a kind of &quot;delayed closing&quot;, that allows users to answer for maybe three days. After this period the question gets closed automatically. This way StackExchange would stay a knowledge base. Or would this still be too much &quot;chatting&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe somebody has a better idea how this can be handled. I just think it would be nice if we at least have a chance to help some people, as long as there are users ready to answer this kind of question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some examples**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure, if every single one would fit for such a solution, so please don't start discussions about the questions as such. Just to give some idea:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[how long to learn c++?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99145/how-long-to-learn-c)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe the worst example, since the questions isn't very good. But this could be enhanced instead of closing it. After all he is mainly asking for some input on C++ and how difficult people with experience think it is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is the single most effective thing you did to improve your programming skills? ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skill)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seems to be a 'historical' question. Obviously with some interesting results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Need a simple example theme for wordpress](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99204/need-a-simple-example-theme-for-wordpress)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously closed for good reasons. Too localized, only interesting to one person. But within a day or two, most likely somebody would have given him a few interesting links and he would be happy. Question than auto closed and never to be seen again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What topics should a university course introducing software engineering cover?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98280/what-topics-should-a-university-course-introducing-software-engineering-cover)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That one I really like as an example. It's too unspecified and can't be answered clearly, but is a interesting question anyway.&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Difficulty here of course, that it's a duplicate of an older question. But maybe that makes it even more interesting by drawing temporary attention to te older one and allowing new users to consider adding new material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How can I follow news from the development community?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98814/how-can-i-follow-news-from-the-development-community)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another one of the 'give him some interesting links and he is happy' type. Everybody interested could follow it for a few days, get some interesting information exchange and then forget it ever was asked (and in six months there would be new information anyway)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Is it easier to start with Ruby on Rails or with ASP.NET MVC?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99132/is-it-easier-to-start-with-ruby-on-rails-or-with-asp-net-mvc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Typical 'technology-advice' question. We have the people here who use those technologies since years and can tell him everything he needs to know. Sure, no clear answer and in a few months the game may have changed toward another technology.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can say that many answers to those questions where interesting to me. I either learned something from experienced people or maybe got a link to some interesting blog. I wouldn't know any other site were I could reliably get serious answers to such questions. So having them around for some days as a kind of 'slowed down chat' wouldn't hurt and increase the flow of information between members." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5127" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2087" RevisionGUID="449edb79-3fc5-4d1b-adb0-c23c6961631a" CreationDate="2011-08-07T20:15:18.430" UserId="13866" Comment="edited title" Text="Discussion: 'delayed' closing of advice type and localized questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5128" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2081" RevisionGUID="9945211b-5b19-40b6-9e23-194b21d279b9" CreationDate="2011-08-07T21:40:40.050" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 252 characters in body" Text="[tag:programming-languages] --&gt; [tag:languages]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After thinking about it, and Jeff's post, there should be few questions about spoken or written languages (most, if not all, would be off-topic for too localized) here. As such, it seems like languages is the best tag for the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5129" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2089" RevisionGUID="1ed3a887-61b1-4a6c-be85-f5352bd1fd5f" CreationDate="2011-08-08T01:18:22.537" UserId="238" Text="I was looking through the Stack Exchange hottests questions and stumbled on one of the Programmers questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[When do you start documenting the code?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I'm reading Code Complete and I hoped to find another insightful post to help me decide when I should be doing this. Only to find an answer like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`If you don't comment the code as you write it chances are minimal that you will come back and do it later (let alone do it properly).`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly? This answer only tells the OP he should do it, because else he has to come back and do it anyway. No explanation about how writing your code as pseudocode, which can be converted to comments might lead to fewer errors. Or how commenting what you write helps you think harder about the code you just wrote. **Nothing**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why does this answer have 14(!) upvotes? That's a lot of rep for something that doesn't answer the question and clearly doesn't teach anything to users who are interested in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now if this were just incidental it wouldn't be a problem, but I stumble over your 'hot' questions a lot and more often than not I've come back disappointed. Don't believe me? Here's another example from the top 50 [Laptop ergonomics][2]: **How do you position yourself when working on a laptop for long hours?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Normally, like I would if I was working on a desktop computer. Regular desk, a sturdy wooden chair (I don't like ergonomic chairs or anything of the kind) and a normal posture. &#xD;&#xA;Worked for me. YMMW though!`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing about using an external keyboard, a mouse rather than a trackpad, using a laptop stand for a better viewing angle or height? There's a whole industry devoted to this and there's actual science behind the ergonomics, yet an answer that says: 'Worked for me' gets 5 upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I don't have a solution to offer, but as a fellow Stack Exchange user I think upvoting such answers is giving a bad example. Worst of all, legitimately interested users like myself are repelled from even looking at Programmer questions any more because of the bad experiences, which I hope isn't something we're striving here for. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So please, stop rewarding poor quality answers!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99255/when-do-you-start-documenting-the-code&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99274/laptop-ergonomics" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5130" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2089" RevisionGUID="1ed3a887-61b1-4a6c-be85-f5352bd1fd5f" CreationDate="2011-08-08T01:18:22.537" UserId="238" Text="Is this honestly what Programmers is about?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5131" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2089" RevisionGUID="1ed3a887-61b1-4a6c-be85-f5352bd1fd5f" CreationDate="2011-08-08T01:18:22.537" UserId="238" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5132" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2089" RevisionGUID="b7ab7b30-51b4-4cc5-ae2e-24857e330e95" CreationDate="2011-08-08T02:05:25.927" UserId="1204" Comment="Made it  a real question." Text="I was looking through the Stack Exchange hottests questions and stumbled on one of the Programmers questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[When do you start documenting the code?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I'm reading Code Complete and I hoped to find another insightful post to help me decide when I should be doing this. Only to find an answer like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`If you don't comment the code as you write it chances are minimal that you will come back and do it later (let alone do it properly).`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly? This answer only tells the OP he should do it, because else he has to come back and do it anyway. No explanation about how writing your code as pseudocode, which can be converted to comments might lead to fewer errors. Or how commenting what you write helps you think harder about the code you just wrote. **Nothing**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why does this answer have 14(!) upvotes? That's a lot of rep for something that doesn't answer the question and clearly doesn't teach anything to users who are interested in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now if this were just incidental it wouldn't be a problem, but I stumble over your 'hot' questions a lot and more often than not I've come back disappointed. Don't believe me? Here's another example from the top 50 [Laptop ergonomics][2]: **How do you position yourself when working on a laptop for long hours?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Normally, like I would if I was working on a desktop computer. Regular desk, a sturdy wooden chair (I don't like ergonomic chairs or anything of the kind) and a normal posture. &#xD;&#xA;Worked for me. YMMW though!`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing about using an external keyboard, a mouse rather than a trackpad, using a laptop stand for a better viewing angle or height? There's a whole industry devoted to this and there's actual science behind the ergonomics, yet an answer that says: 'Worked for me' gets 5 upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I don't have a solution to offer, but as a fellow Stack Exchange user I think upvoting such answers is giving a bad example. Worst of all, legitimately interested users like myself are repelled from even looking at Programmer questions any more because of the bad experiences, which I hope isn't something we're striving here for. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should we be rewarding poor quality answers like this?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99255/when-do-you-start-documenting-the-code&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99274/laptop-ergonomics" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5133" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2089" RevisionGUID="dba623f5-cee7-402b-9f5e-066c657a30a5" CreationDate="2011-08-08T02:14:40.267" UserId="37" Comment="edited title" Text="Too many upvotes for poor quality answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5134" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2090" RevisionGUID="054a09a2-54f7-41bb-957a-958f19eb9306" CreationDate="2011-08-08T02:17:56.787" UserId="1204" Text="The purpose of closing questions is to give the OP time to make his question better before people start posting answers to the original question.  Once the question has been improved, the OP can wait for it to be reopened, or flag a moderator to have it reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange network is not like traditional forums; it's not &quot;anything goes&quot; here. Just because a question is interesting doesn't necessarily make it a good, on-topic question for a particular SE site. Our goal should be to ask questions about a specific subject area that are of interest to experts in the subject matter, so that we can attract experts to answer our questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Chatty, subjective questions that solicit opinions or multiple answers are not really a good fit to the SE platform, because they give the impression that the site is an amateur website.  This *drives away* the experts, who expect a higher signal to noise ratio than that.  Consequently, to achieve the high degree of quality &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5135" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2090" RevisionGUID="f1886ab3-8d55-4c8c-8612-cf7fdbd11224" CreationDate="2011-08-08T02:23:53.767" UserId="1204" Comment="added 91 characters in body" Text="The purpose of closing questions is to give the OP time to make his question better before people start posting answers to the original question.  Once the question has been improved, the OP can wait for it to be reopened, or flag a moderator to have it reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange network is not like traditional forums; it's not &quot;anything goes&quot; here. Just because a question is interesting doesn't necessarily make it a good, on-topic question for a particular SE site. Our goal should be to ask questions about a specific subject area that are of interest to experts in the subject matter, so that we can attract experts to answer our questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Chatty, subjective questions that solicit opinions or multiple answers are not really a good fit to the SE platform, because they give the impression that the site is an amateur website.  This *drives away* the experts, who expect to see a higher signal to noise ratio than that.  Consequently, to achieve the high degree of quality we expect from SE sites, we must sacrifice some of the questions that are of lower quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5136" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2091" RevisionGUID="adb7ccbf-946f-466b-a3ad-3116c885746b" CreationDate="2011-08-08T02:27:23.417" UserId="4" Text="I don't think you should be making massive changes to questions/answers unless you are adding information from comments. You need to be careful about putting words into the author's mouth. I've done some major rewrites, but never destroying the intention of the question. The changes made to answers without consulting the author should be limited to fixing spelling, grammar, and adding information from comments if the author does not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is determining if the quality is poor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that the quality of the code documentation/commenting answer is poor at all. The asker wants to know when he should be documenting code. The other information, although true and possibly helpful, does not necessarily answer the provided question. Should it be included? I would probably include it. Must it be included for an answer to be good? No, as long as the answer addresses the question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the ergonomics answer, that is a little lacking. More details about the environment would be extremely helpful. However, it's not a bad answer at all. The answerer should discuss his entire work environment - desk, chair, keyboard, mouse, monitor size and position, and so on. Another good answer would link to research or studies on ergonomics." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5137" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2091" RevisionGUID="dc81212f-fbf6-4501-af6f-2ccee2026393" CreationDate="2011-08-08T02:32:24.097" UserId="4" Comment="added 174 characters in body" Text="I don't think you should be making massive changes to questions/answers unless you are adding information from comments. You need to be careful about putting words into the author's mouth. I've done some major rewrites, but never destroying the intention of the question. The changes made to answers without consulting the author should be limited to fixing spelling, grammar, and adding information from comments if the author does not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is determining if the quality is poor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that the quality of the code documentation/commenting answer is poor at all. The asker wants to know when he should be documenting code. The other information, although true and possibly helpful, does not necessarily answer the provided question. Should it be included? I would probably include it. Must it be included for an answer to be good? No, as long as the answer addresses the question asked. I would consider upvoting this answer (although I typically read all the answers, and upvote the top couple).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the ergonomics answer, that is a little lacking. More details about the environment would be extremely helpful. However, it's not a bad answer at all. The answerer should discuss his entire work environment - desk, chair, keyboard, mouse, monitor size and position, and so on. Another good answer would link to research or studies on ergonomics. I wouldn't upvote this answer, but I also wouldn't downvote it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5138" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2091" RevisionGUID="4bfd514a-aeb9-4536-a1f5-ba8c594843b1" CreationDate="2011-08-08T02:44:47.560" UserId="4" Comment="added 1949 characters in body" Text="&gt; Should we be rewarding poor quality answers like this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think you should be making massive changes to questions/answers unless you are adding information from comments. You need to be careful about putting words into the author's mouth. I've done some major rewrites, but never destroying the intention of the question. The changes made to answers without consulting the author should be limited to fixing spelling, grammar, and adding information from comments if the author does not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason why you shouldn't be making massive changes to other people's posts is because a lot of the answers on Programmers are driven by personal experiences. These aren't cold facts with a right or a wrong. There might be statistics and numbers or commonly accepted &quot;best practices&quot; to back up your experiences (and if there are, you should provide them). But they are still the experiences of the person asking and answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is determining if the quality is poor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;This answer only tells the OP he should do it, because else he has to come back and do it anyway. No explanation about how writing your code as pseudocode, which can be converted to comments might lead to fewer errors. Or how commenting what you write helps you think harder about the code you just wrote. Nothing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that the quality of the code documentation/commenting answer is poor at all. The asker wants to know when he should be documenting code. The other information, although true and possibly helpful, does not necessarily answer the provided question. Should it be included? I would probably include it. Must it be included for an answer to be good? No, as long as the answer addresses the question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you re-read the question, the person asking doesn't ask anything about how to reduce errors (which is a good thing) or thinking harder about design and implementation (another good thing). He just wants to know when you should document your code. The answer says when you should, and says why you should write it at this point in time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would I include more information, about producing pseudocode as a form of documentation, for example? Yes, probably. But that doesn't explicitly answer the question. I would consider upvoting this answer (although I typically read all the answers, and upvote the top couple).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Nothing about using an external keyboard, a mouse rather than a trackpad, using a laptop stand for a better viewing angle or height? There's a whole industry devoted to this and there's actual science behind the ergonomics, yet an answer that says: 'Worked for me' gets 5 upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the ergonomics answer, that is a little lacking. More details about the environment would be extremely helpful. However, it's not a bad answer at all. The answerer should discuss his entire work environment - desk, chair, keyboard, mouse, monitor size and position, and so on. Another good answer would link to research or studies on ergonomics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;works for me&quot; approach is common here and Programmers, and it should be given the nature of the majority of the questions. However, the answer you mention doesn't really delve into why it works for the person writing the answer, which is key. Without the why, it becomes harder to tell if it will also work for me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't upvote this answer, but I also wouldn't downvote it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5139" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2092" RevisionGUID="5399dab7-3aec-46fb-aa29-3412e01d1f0f" CreationDate="2011-08-08T02:49:21.130" UserId="1204" Text="Respectfully, the problem with your cited example may not be the answer, but the question itself (which the top-voted answer answers cleanly, succinctly and correctly).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ask a marginal question, get a marginal answer.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5141" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="2092" RevisionGUID="83a07d86-74c1-410f-9387-b68df2516601" CreationDate="2011-08-08T02:50:32.253" UserId="1204" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:1204,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Robert Harvey&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5143" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2091" RevisionGUID="2bb3c59e-3692-485a-83ea-35807ce2fe50" CreationDate="2011-08-08T02:52:35.353" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 886 characters in body" Text="&gt; Should we be rewarding poor quality answers like this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is determining if the quality is poor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;This answer only tells the OP he should do it, because else he has to come back and do it anyway. No explanation about how writing your code as pseudocode, which can be converted to comments might lead to fewer errors. Or how commenting what you write helps you think harder about the code you just wrote. Nothing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that the quality of the code documentation/commenting answer is poor at all. The asker wants to know when he should be documenting code. The other information, although true and possibly helpful, does not necessarily answer the provided question. Should it be included? I would probably include it. Must it be included for an answer to be good? No, as long as the answer addresses the question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you re-read the question, the person asking doesn't ask anything about how to reduce errors (which is a good thing) or thinking harder about design and implementation (another good thing). He just wants to know when you should document your code. The answer says when you should, and says why you should write it at this point in time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would I include more information, about producing pseudocode as a form of documentation, for example? Yes, probably. But that doesn't explicitly answer the question. I would consider upvoting this answer (although I typically read all the answers, and upvote the top couple).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Nothing about using an external keyboard, a mouse rather than a trackpad, using a laptop stand for a better viewing angle or height? There's a whole industry devoted to this and there's actual science behind the ergonomics, yet an answer that says: 'Worked for me' gets 5 upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the ergonomics answer, that is a little lacking. More details about the environment would be extremely helpful. However, it's not a bad answer at all. The answerer should discuss his entire work environment - desk, chair, keyboard, mouse, monitor size and position, and so on. Another good answer would link to research or studies on ergonomics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;works for me&quot; approach is common here and Programmers, and it should be given the nature of the majority of the questions. However, the answer you mention doesn't really delve into why it works for the person writing the answer, which is key. Without the why, it becomes harder to tell if it will also work for me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't upvote this answer, but I also wouldn't downvote it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5144" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="2092" RevisionGUID="638b0bd3-3bd8-4101-bcdf-4e06d019f4bd" CreationDate="2011-08-08T02:54:48.470" UserId="1204" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:1204,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Robert Harvey&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5145" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2092" RevisionGUID="d6452407-e5fe-4bb9-99e3-46f69995e8cc" CreationDate="2011-08-08T02:55:50.437" UserId="1204" Comment="added 197 characters in body" Text="Respectfully, the problem with your cited example may not be the answer, but the question itself (which the top-voted answer answers cleanly, succinctly and correctly).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ask a specific question, get a specific answer.  Ask a general question, get a general answer (which, by its nature, will attract lots of upvotes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is why we try to encourage people to write questions that are *specific and answerable.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5146" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2092" RevisionGUID="67709403-3b9a-4af4-a749-ddbd08fd3828" CreationDate="2011-08-08T04:06:53.770" UserId="1204" Comment="added 6 characters in body" Text="Respectfully, the problem with your first cited example may not be the answer, but the question itself (which the top-voted answer answers cleanly, succinctly and correctly).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ask a specific question, get a specific answer.  Ask a general question, get a general answer (which, by its nature, will attract lots of upvotes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is why we try to encourage people to write questions that are *specific and answerable.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5147" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2087" RevisionGUID="c5fe927f-ee28-4361-b28f-3b4b1934ca52" CreationDate="2011-08-08T05:08:46.463" UserId="13866" Comment="added 1116 characters in body" Text="So at least once every day we have this kind of question where somebody asks to give advice about some technical topic. (I'm not talking about career advice, though that may be handled too). Those questions mostly get closed immediately. Often as to localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I fully understand the reasons behind closing them, mainly for the knowledge base style of StackExchange, I still feel slightly bad for the users who ask those questions. From their subject those questions often fit very well to the community (best way to learn some subject, good tools to do something) and people justifiably expect that they can get good answers here. Often enough, some of the answers given before closing confirm this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Wouldn't it be possible to add a kind of &quot;delayed closing&quot;, that allows users to answer for maybe three days. After this period the question gets closed automatically. This way StackExchange would stay a knowledge base. Or would this still be too much &quot;chatting&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe somebody has a better idea how this can be handled. I just think it would be nice if we at least have a chance to help some people, as long as there are users ready to answer this kind of question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some examples**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure, if every single one would fit for such a solution, so please don't start discussions about the questions as such. Just to give some idea:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[how long to learn c++?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99145/how-long-to-learn-c)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe the worst example, since the questions isn't very good. But this could be enhanced instead of closing it. After all he is mainly asking for some input on C++ and how difficult people with experience think it is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is the single most effective thing you did to improve your programming skills? ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skill)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seems to be a 'historical' question. Obviously with some interesting results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Need a simple example theme for wordpress](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99204/need-a-simple-example-theme-for-wordpress)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously closed for good reasons. Too localized, only interesting to one person. But within a day or two, most likely somebody would have given him a few interesting links and he would be happy. Question than auto closed and never to be seen again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What topics should a university course introducing software engineering cover?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98280/what-topics-should-a-university-course-introducing-software-engineering-cover)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That one I really like as an example. It's too unspecified and can't be answered clearly, but is a interesting question anyway.&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Difficulty here of course, that it's a duplicate of an older question. But maybe that makes it even more interesting by drawing temporary attention to te older one and allowing new users to consider adding new material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How can I follow news from the development community?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98814/how-can-i-follow-news-from-the-development-community)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another one of the 'give him some interesting links and he is happy' type. Everybody interested could follow it for a few days, get some interesting information exchange and then forget it ever was asked (and in six months there would be new information anyway)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Is it easier to start with Ruby on Rails or with ASP.NET MVC?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99132/is-it-easier-to-start-with-ruby-on-rails-or-with-asp-net-mvc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Typical 'technology-advice' question. We have the people here who use those technologies since years and can tell him everything he needs to know. Sure, no clear answer and in a few months the game may have changed toward another technology.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can say that many answers to those questions where interesting to me. I either learned something from experienced people or maybe got a link to some interesting blog. I wouldn't know any other site were I could reliably get serious answers to such questions. So having them around for some days as a kind of 'slowed down chat' wouldn't hurt and increase the flow of information between members.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another one that just came in and will most likely be closed soon:&#xD;&#xA;[What's better right now: IronRuby or IronPython?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99305/whats-better-right-now-ironruby-or-ironpython)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too bad, user used a 'bad' word: better. Question is auto doomed...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me give an example from real life:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few years ago I had to make a decision about how to implement full text search on a website I was writing in Ruby. There were several engines available, all of them had some community. Namely there was Ferret, which was used by many people and Sphinx which was relatively new and didn't have many users yet. But everybody who had worked with them would have told you clear enough, that Ferret had several very annoying bugs while Sphinx worked very good. There was not much discussion about this. Though the answer would have been too localized in time, since of course Ferret could have been improved. If I would ask this question here, it would be closed within minutes, just because I ask to compare two technologies based on practical experience in real world projects." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5148" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2087" RevisionGUID="201a8f3b-ce12-4d5c-b1b5-7c112a1dc933" CreationDate="2011-08-08T07:31:51.360" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Remove duplicated tag in title" Text="Delay the closing of advice type and localized questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5150" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2089" RevisionGUID="c976f5be-ef68-495f-82ed-1be2746a7a1d" CreationDate="2011-08-08T11:15:33.947" UserId="238" Comment="edited body" Text="I was looking through the Stack Exchange hottests questions and stumbled on one of the Programmers questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[When do you start documenting the code?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I'm reading Code Complete and I hoped to find another insightful post to help me decide when I should be doing this. Only to find an answer like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`If you don't comment the code as you write it chances are minimal that you will come back and do it later (let alone do it properly).`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly? This answer only tells the OP he should do it, because else he has to come back and do it anyway. No explanation about how writing your code as pseudocode, which can be converted to comments might lead to fewer errors. Or how commenting what you write helps you think harder about the code you just wrote. **Nothing**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why does this answer have 25(!) upvotes? That's a lot of rep for something that doesn't answer the question and clearly doesn't teach anything to users who are interested in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now if this were just incidental it wouldn't be a problem, but I stumble over your 'hot' questions a lot and more often than not I've come back disappointed. Don't believe me? Here's another example from the top 50 [Laptop ergonomics][2]: **How do you position yourself when working on a laptop for long hours?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Normally, like I would if I was working on a desktop computer. Regular desk, a sturdy wooden chair (I don't like ergonomic chairs or anything of the kind) and a normal posture. &#xD;&#xA;Worked for me. YMMW though!`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing about using an external keyboard, a mouse rather than a trackpad, using a laptop stand for a better viewing angle or height? There's a whole industry devoted to this and there's actual science behind the ergonomics, yet an answer that says: 'Worked for me' gets 5 upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I don't have a solution to offer, but as a fellow Stack Exchange user I think upvoting such answers is giving a bad example. Worst of all, legitimately interested users like myself are repelled from even looking at Programmer questions any more because of the bad experiences, which I hope isn't something we're striving here for. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should we be rewarding poor quality answers like this?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99255/when-do-you-start-documenting-the-code&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99274/laptop-ergonomics" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5151" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2095" RevisionGUID="ceb3ce98-1289-4595-89a2-8984ce935534" CreationDate="2011-08-08T14:38:44.790" UserId="21184" Text="I just stumbled over this edit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/98434/revisions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I'm confident the edit was done with good intents, it feels a bit like an abuse of the site's mechanics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is editing questions only to bump them to the top of the 'active questions' list accepted practice?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5152" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2095" RevisionGUID="ceb3ce98-1289-4595-89a2-8984ce935534" CreationDate="2011-08-08T14:38:44.790" UserId="21184" Text="Is it ok to edit questions only to bump them to the top of the list?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5153" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2095" RevisionGUID="ceb3ce98-1289-4595-89a2-8984ce935534" CreationDate="2011-08-08T14:38:44.790" UserId="21184" Text="|discussion|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5154" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2095" RevisionGUID="7ef9ac38-4a7d-40e3-a976-ff1864b62620" CreationDate="2011-08-08T14:45:43.737" UserId="21184" Comment="add link to meta.SO question" Text="I just stumbled over this edit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/98434/revisions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I'm confident the edit was done with good intents, it feels a bit like an abuse of the site's mechanics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is editing questions only to bump them to the top of the 'active questions' list accepted practice?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not sure how meta.programmers.SE relates to meta.stackoverflow, but there's a quite [similiar question regarding SO questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/53012/what-is-the-best-way-to-bump-re-ask-an-old-question)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5155" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2096" RevisionGUID="deb1b294-b5a9-421e-9b8e-17259b1d1fe8" CreationDate="2011-08-08T15:10:16.013" UserId="37" Text="&gt; *edit: gratuitous bump to front page*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is definitely frowned upon. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you must edit, edit in the spirit of the faq: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#bounty &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To get better answers, you may need to put additional effort into your question. **Edit your question to provide status and progress updates.** Document your own continued efforts to answer your question. This will naturally bump your question and get more people interested in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't just add noise, add signal!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5160" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2087" RevisionGUID="c148e4d7-c7bf-4594-a36f-55eb7cbb4eea" CreationDate="2011-08-08T18:01:05.427" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Putting contentious questions on probation](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1781/putting-contentious-questions-on-probation)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;So at least once every day we have this kind of question where somebody asks to give advice about some technical topic. (I'm not talking about career advice, though that may be handled too). Those questions mostly get closed immediately. Often as to localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I fully understand the reasons behind closing them, mainly for the knowledge base style of StackExchange, I still feel slightly bad for the users who ask those questions. From their subject those questions often fit very well to the community (best way to learn some subject, good tools to do something) and people justifiably expect that they can get good answers here. Often enough, some of the answers given before closing confirm this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Wouldn't it be possible to add a kind of &quot;delayed closing&quot;, that allows users to answer for maybe three days. After this period the question gets closed automatically. This way StackExchange would stay a knowledge base. Or would this still be too much &quot;chatting&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe somebody has a better idea how this can be handled. I just think it would be nice if we at least have a chance to help some people, as long as there are users ready to answer this kind of question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some examples**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure, if every single one would fit for such a solution, so please don't start discussions about the questions as such. Just to give some idea:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[how long to learn c++?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99145/how-long-to-learn-c)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe the worst example, since the questions isn't very good. But this could be enhanced instead of closing it. After all he is mainly asking for some input on C++ and how difficult people with experience think it is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is the single most effective thing you did to improve your programming skills? ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skill)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seems to be a 'historical' question. Obviously with some interesting results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Need a simple example theme for wordpress](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99204/need-a-simple-example-theme-for-wordpress)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously closed for good reasons. Too localized, only interesting to one person. But within a day or two, most likely somebody would have given him a few interesting links and he would be happy. Question than auto closed and never to be seen again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What topics should a university course introducing software engineering cover?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98280/what-topics-should-a-university-course-introducing-software-engineering-cover)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That one I really like as an example. It's too unspecified and can't be answered clearly, but is a interesting question anyway.&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Difficulty here of course, that it's a duplicate of an older question. But maybe that makes it even more interesting by drawing temporary attention to te older one and allowing new users to consider adding new material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How can I follow news from the development community?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98814/how-can-i-follow-news-from-the-development-community)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another one of the 'give him some interesting links and he is happy' type. Everybody interested could follow it for a few days, get some interesting information exchange and then forget it ever was asked (and in six months there would be new information anyway)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Is it easier to start with Ruby on Rails or with ASP.NET MVC?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99132/is-it-easier-to-start-with-ruby-on-rails-or-with-asp-net-mvc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Typical 'technology-advice' question. We have the people here who use those technologies since years and can tell him everything he needs to know. Sure, no clear answer and in a few months the game may have changed toward another technology.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can say that many answers to those questions where interesting to me. I either learned something from experienced people or maybe got a link to some interesting blog. I wouldn't know any other site were I could reliably get serious answers to such questions. So having them around for some days as a kind of 'slowed down chat' wouldn't hurt and increase the flow of information between members.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another one that just came in and will most likely be closed soon:&#xD;&#xA;[What's better right now: IronRuby or IronPython?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99305/whats-better-right-now-ironruby-or-ironpython)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too bad, user used a 'bad' word: better. Question is auto doomed...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me give an example from real life:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few years ago I had to make a decision about how to implement full text search on a website I was writing in Ruby. There were several engines available, all of them had some community. Namely there was Ferret, which was used by many people and Sphinx which was relatively new and didn't have many users yet. But everybody who had worked with them would have told you clear enough, that Ferret had several very annoying bugs while Sphinx worked very good. There was not much discussion about this. Though the answer would have been too localized in time, since of course Ferret could have been improved. If I would ask this question here, it would be closed within minutes, just because I ask to compare two technologies based on practical experience in real world projects." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5161" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2087" RevisionGUID="5ccd53d4-81ab-4ea5-9c4b-f5fcfd6d3be8" CreationDate="2011-08-08T18:01:03.913" UserId="63" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[1781],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:1204,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Robert Harvey&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:63,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mr. CRT&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5162" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2098" RevisionGUID="7ffab5e0-f75e-421d-8274-54ad02136a1d" CreationDate="2011-08-08T18:52:21.627" UserId="14641" Text="I certainly appreciate your concern, and yes I can assure you that it was done in all honesty. I will do my best in the future to add &quot;signal, not noise&quot; to the thread.  My problem was, and is that it's kind of a static situation.  I'm not actively pursuing an alternative solution at this time, I'm just seeking input on whether the method we are currently using is right, wrong or indifferent...so I don't really have any status or progress updates. Adding a bounty was new to me, I wasn't aware that was an intended purpose of a bounty (yes, I should read the FAQ better), so that was good info to find out." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5163" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1613" RevisionGUID="8f78ea0a-357f-41e0-8051-968b9bf7963c" CreationDate="2011-08-09T00:26:36.090" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5165" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2099" RevisionGUID="5820c768-3785-40d7-8c06-38043986a160" CreationDate="2011-08-09T10:46:14.313" UserId="4" Text="Most of the answers to legal questions here are prefixed with &quot;I'm not a lawyer, but...&quot; I'm beginning to think that including &quot;software law&quot; as on-topic is way too broad, and opens the door to copyright, patent, and trademark issues that most programmers have never had to deal with. In fact, I would suspect most of us work in companies with legal departments that handle that kind of stuff with and/or for us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some things that we deal with more frequently, though. These are things like ethics and specific aspects of the law such as licensing (frequently seen when you want to release a project under some conditions and need to find a license, or need to know what you can/can't do with software under a particular license).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we perhaps fine-tune &quot;software law&quot; in the FAQ to explicitly include and exclude certain topics? I know there isn't a more suitable Stack Exchange open yet, but it's just that no one here is really qualified to answer a lot of these questions in a helpful manner. And it doesn't help that the answers would also be dependent on locale as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5166" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2099" RevisionGUID="5820c768-3785-40d7-8c06-38043986a160" CreationDate="2011-08-09T10:46:14.313" UserId="4" Text="Can we remove &quot;software law&quot; from the FAQ and replace it with something more like &quot;software licenses&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5167" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2099" RevisionGUID="5820c768-3785-40d7-8c06-38043986a160" CreationDate="2011-08-09T10:46:14.313" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|off-topic|software-law|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5168" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2100" RevisionGUID="cf8ea960-435f-4525-932d-1a7a99d1a9a6" CreationDate="2011-08-09T15:09:25.950" UserId="24775" Text="I've seen something similar to this (on stackoverflow.com) even for very technical, answerable questions. The problem is that the really hard questions either don't get answered, or when they do the general community doesn't care or doesn't recognize that an amazing answer has been posted. Because you aren't going to upvote something you don't understand yourself or aren't involved with. On the other hand, when someone asks something like 'why are singletons bad practice?' or 'why does jquery use the $', everyone wants to either jump in and answer or at least upvote something that sounds about right. The result is that reputation is awarded to popular, general, easy, and well-known questions/answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having a high reputation is probably a function of cherry-picking easy questions and not (necessarily) being a guru.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not sure how to &quot;fix&quot; this sort of thing, but it's definitely been laughable to me when I answer a difficult question and get maybe (maybe!) 1 upvote. And then later I'll answer some trivial c++ question posted by a complete beginner. And, because I happened to be the first person to see it, I end up with like 10 or 12 upvotes. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5169" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2101" RevisionGUID="5639a904-a56f-49d6-810b-75ecbf6d1cbe" CreationDate="2011-08-09T15:23:48.067" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="Yes, because that term is way too broad. When we speak of legal issues surrounding software, we're talking about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Copyright&#xD;&#xA; - Trademark&#xD;&#xA; - Patents&#xD;&#xA; - Licenses&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any other type of legal issue would (probably) be a bit too localized for the site. While we aren't lawyers, some of us do deal with legal issues surrounding software on a very frequent basis, so I think there's some value in the experience that could be shared.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, &quot;_My client stole my code and isn't paying, what do I do?_&quot; would conceivably fall into &quot;Software Law&quot;, so I agree that it should be much more specific.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5170" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="32" RevisionGUID="b2c99583-84b6-4531-a504-af6f68c2cb40" CreationDate="2011-08-09T20:15:00.310" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Can we get a &amp;quot;Belongs on StackOverflow&amp;quot; as a closing reason?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/441/can-we-get-a-belongs-on-stackoverflow-as-a-closing-reason)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;suggestions, please!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5171" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="32" RevisionGUID="0287f708-a378-486a-992b-6a40251fb0fb" CreationDate="2011-08-09T20:14:59.983" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[441],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5172" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2052" RevisionGUID="d839f448-83b4-4918-b0d8-96bdd50ebcb0" CreationDate="2011-08-10T06:40:00.457" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/101180981813325825" />
  <row Id="5173" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2102" RevisionGUID="2e271bb7-c4e2-4c59-98ce-fe9f62f5227f" CreationDate="2011-08-10T18:15:32.313" UserId="9302" Text="I've noticed conflicting and uncomfortable attitudes toward the Programmers users. On one hand, we need users to generate the content that makes the site interesting and enjoyable. On the other, we don't trust those users to make good decisions. When you ask, &quot;Should we be rewarding poor quality answers like this?&quot;, you question the legitimacy of more(assuming downvotes) than 29 users' opinions. You're bypassing the voting process and appealing to Meta's perceived higher sense of quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't blame you. I, too, find many Programmers questions and answers poorly written, irrelevant, obnoxious, or just plain stupid. Despite that, I recognize in a democratic system there are bound to be times I'm in the under-served and dissenting minority. My disagreement doesn't make everyone else wrong. The democratic dynamics are even harder on Programmers (compared to other StackExchange sites) since its questions tend to elicit answers that are more persuasive exercise than objective truth. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can put up with highly-rewarded, weak questions and answers. What I'm more afraid of is a small group of highly-motivated, well-intentioned users controlling the site's policies through Meta advocacy and aggressive editing. I know all users are welcome on Meta, but relatively few participate. These non-participants show approval and disapproval with their votes. It would be a shame to diminish the value of those votes with new rules or policies. Users won't participate if their input is ignored or they sense condescension." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5174" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2103" RevisionGUID="0aacfa67-3f41-400b-bbbe-6910d8881fdf" CreationDate="2011-08-10T18:20:30.980" UserId="9302" Text="How about an &quot;**I Demand a Recount!**&quot; feature? It could work like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- After X users indicate the question/answer landscape has changed enough to warrant a recount, the question goes into recount mode.&#xD;&#xA;- Each user who cast a vote is notified and encouraged to revisit the question.&#xD;&#xA;- For X days, all votes are unlocked and may be modified/reallocated to better reflect the new question/answer landscape." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5175" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2104" RevisionGUID="915290da-c386-44b5-a29f-e5e22df2feba" CreationDate="2011-08-10T19:05:31.127" UserId="7748" Text="I thin we should allow for a Question to be listed on multiple sites. If it meets the charter of both sites. There would be a feature similar to the &quot;Move&quot; feature except it will be a &quot;Share with other site&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there is quite a bit of cross over between This site and PM and Start ups.. and it will be beneficial to both site to cross list. (one set of answers of course.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5176" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2104" RevisionGUID="915290da-c386-44b5-a29f-e5e22df2feba" CreationDate="2011-08-10T19:05:31.127" UserId="7748" Text="Cross Site Questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5177" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2104" RevisionGUID="915290da-c386-44b5-a29f-e5e22df2feba" CreationDate="2011-08-10T19:05:31.127" UserId="7748" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5178" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2104" RevisionGUID="cd7322f9-c477-417a-95b6-976734ae7c96" CreationDate="2011-08-10T19:30:55.777" UserId="47" Comment="spelling" Text="I think we should allow for a Question to be listed on multiple sites. If it meets the charter of both sites. There would be a feature similar to the &quot;Move&quot; feature except it will be a &quot;Share with other site&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there is quite a bit of cross over between This site and PM and Start ups.. and it will be beneficial to both site to cross list. (one set of answers of course.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5179" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2105" RevisionGUID="96f09b25-9b5a-41cb-bef8-1c6ea8a4de10" CreationDate="2011-08-10T19:32:48.373" UserId="47" Text="There's nothing wrong with posting the same question on multiple sites - **as long as it's tailored for each site and not a cut and paste repost**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each site is unique. It has it's own community and own guidelines for what is on and off topic. It would be a very rare question indeed that was on topic on more than one site *if posted without modification for that site*." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5180" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2106" RevisionGUID="06e81374-0257-421e-b42c-e8c7dc01afda" CreationDate="2011-08-11T05:02:00.683" UserId="28374" Text="&gt; Why does this answer have 25(!) upvotes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because it is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Correct. It may not be a 20 page treatise on the subject, but you cannot deny that it is ultimately correct.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Succinct. Some people prefer answers that are brief. Indeed, I sometimes find that overly flowery and highly detailed answers are less useful than a quick sentence that points the person in the right direction. Long answers are not better even if they are more detailed.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Sufficient. Any of the techniques you discuss ultimately involve something that has little to do with comments themselves. Those are general coding techniques; you could just as easily keep the &quot;comments&quot; in a separate text file or even on paper. This answer provides exactly what the user asked for: the time to start commenting. Namely, as you write the code.&#xD;&#xA; 4. Flippant. For many programmers, the answer is so obvious that even asking the question shows that the person didn't spend much time actually thinking about it. And therefore, a flippant response is entirely appropriate. Generally, quite a few people will upvote flippant responses to seemingly dumb questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: I'm not saying I agree with any of these reasonings for upvoting. But all of these are properties of the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there times when a poor answer is upvoted? Absolutely. So what? It happens. You deal with it and move on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You cannot make people agree with what you consider to be a poor quality answer. Everyone has their own idea about what constitutes a good answer. Some people only consider multi-paragraph essays to be good. Others feel that if you can point someone in the right direction, that's a good answer. And so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to accept that other people are not going to agree with what you consider to be poor quality." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5181" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2104" RevisionGUID="a3765c53-5519-4027-8564-d0989947212e" CreationDate="2011-08-11T10:43:51.870" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5182" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2089" RevisionGUID="36560aca-3517-4551-aade-f410399cf575" CreationDate="2011-08-11T21:26:09.097" UserId="2329" Comment="change markdown for quotes from code" Text="I was looking through the Stack Exchange hottests questions and stumbled on one of the Programmers questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[When do you start documenting the code?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I'm reading Code Complete and I hoped to find another insightful post to help me decide when I should be doing this. Only to find an answer like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If you don't comment the code as you write it chances are minimal that you will come back and do it later (let alone do it properly).`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly? This answer only tells the OP he should do it, because else he has to come back and do it anyway. No explanation about how writing your code as pseudocode, which can be converted to comments might lead to fewer errors. Or how commenting what you write helps you think harder about the code you just wrote. **Nothing**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why does this answer have 25(!) upvotes? That's a lot of rep for something that doesn't answer the question and clearly doesn't teach anything to users who are interested in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now if this were just incidental it wouldn't be a problem, but I stumble over your 'hot' questions a lot and more often than not I've come back disappointed. Don't believe me? Here's another example from the top 50 [Laptop ergonomics][2]: **How do you position yourself when working on a laptop for long hours?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Normally, like I would if I was working on a desktop computer. Regular desk, a sturdy wooden chair (I don't like ergonomic chairs or anything of the kind) and a normal posture. &#xD;&#xA;Worked for me. YMMW though!`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing about using an external keyboard, a mouse rather than a trackpad, using a laptop stand for a better viewing angle or height? There's a whole industry devoted to this and there's actual science behind the ergonomics, yet an answer that says: 'Worked for me' gets 5 upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I don't have a solution to offer, but as a fellow Stack Exchange user I think upvoting such answers is giving a bad example. Worst of all, legitimately interested users like myself are repelled from even looking at Programmer questions any more because of the bad experiences, which I hope isn't something we're striving here for. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should we be rewarding poor quality answers like this?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99255/when-do-you-start-documenting-the-code&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99274/laptop-ergonomics" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5183" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2107" RevisionGUID="74da6349-e1f9-4c28-97d3-880c3d3c762b" CreationDate="2011-08-12T01:19:36.687" UserId="37" Text="OK, I made this change -- any of the diamond mods could have done it as well, of course...." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5184" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2099" RevisionGUID="4cdbe56e-ec35-4133-a56c-b6d32c63feeb" CreationDate="2011-08-12T01:20:12.270" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|on-topic-definition|off-topic|software-law|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5185" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2108" RevisionGUID="77ebc50e-e4d7-4439-b50b-781009507348" CreationDate="2011-08-12T03:52:43.350" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Some time ago, there was [some interest](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1709/any-chance-of-a-programmers-community-blog) in getting a blog rolling for Programmers.SE as part of the [Blog Overflow project](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/blog-overflow). In the interest of taking the next step, I'd like to discuss what the blog would be about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what topics should this blog cover? What would a really great post look like? How do we prevent it from being just another blog about programming (or programmers)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most importantly, how does a Programmers.SE blog make the Internet a better place?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5186" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2108" RevisionGUID="77ebc50e-e4d7-4439-b50b-781009507348" CreationDate="2011-08-12T03:52:43.350" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="What would a Programmers.SE be about?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5187" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2108" RevisionGUID="77ebc50e-e4d7-4439-b50b-781009507348" CreationDate="2011-08-12T03:52:43.350" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5188" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2108" RevisionGUID="ca518fcf-76c9-4302-a60e-fbbf865f9c84" CreationDate="2011-08-12T03:53:24.480" UserId="226" Comment="edited title" Text="What would a Programmers.SE blog be about?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5189" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2108" RevisionGUID="d81d8796-108a-4c6f-b5da-6d999609dfd4" CreationDate="2011-08-12T03:56:16.993" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5190" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2108" RevisionGUID="a99098bd-90ce-4c0e-bda1-3296652a10a3" CreationDate="2011-08-12T03:56:18.673" UserId="226" Comment="edited title" Text="|discussion|featured|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5191" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2109" RevisionGUID="4ca750c2-1371-4334-9938-6bea6c3e75f4" CreationDate="2011-08-12T05:15:57.300" UserId="4471" Text="I am leaving the relevant moderator's name out of this question because I wish to focus on the actions and facts and not on the person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, I sincerely thank whomever migrated my question (&lt;a href=&quot;http://sqa.stackexchange.com/questions/1601/need-to-make-watin-work-for-us-or-need-to-find-a-different-tool&quot;&gt;Need to make WatiN work for us, or need to find a different tool&lt;/a&gt;) to the Software Quality Assurance and Testing site.  I had quite frankly forgotten about that site until it was raised in a comment after my question had been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, the commentary on my question initially both before and after it was closed made some valid points on how the question could be improved.  But, I think there were some less-than-valid points as well.  Posters rarely agree that their questions should have been closed, and I realize I am no exception here.  Further, I recognize that our moderators are volunteers, and I thank them for their efforts.  However, I believe that the moderator who closed this question did not handle it correctly after I edited the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the relevant comments are now missing from the migrated question, I am relying on my memory of the comment thread, so I apologize in advance for any errors I may make in discussing the points raised therein.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * If I recall, the close reason was &quot;Too Localized.&quot;  I initially mentioned that the website for WatiN had been down for several days and asked for any information.  The moderator's comment when I asked why he closed my question was essentially that the site was just down temporarily, as another user had commented.  Obviously, I did not know that the situation was being addressed when asking the question, and another user did.  I had no way of knowing for sure that the condition was transient when asking the question.  Nevertheless, among other editing for brevity, I edited that inquiry out of my question.&#xD;&#xA; * After I edited my question and asked the moderator if the issue was remedied, the moderator persisted in explaining that the question was too localized.  This honestly seemed just like a way to justify the close decision after the fact.  Had the close been a &quot;five votes&quot; sort of close, things might be different, but since it was one vote plus a moderator, I believe the moderator should have reopened (or, better yet, migrated) the question right away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The moderator, upon giving reasons that the question should remain closed as &quot;too localized,&quot; directed me to the FAQ.  I had read it before, but I read it again.  I believe my question was in compliance, and if there were not a more specific site to address the question, I believe that my question would have been on-topic for Programmers.  To address the points I remember:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * _Point:_ I was asking about the status of two somewhat-related products, and I should have been asking the owners of those products instead.  _Why I disagree:_ Both WatiN and Watin Test Recorder are open source, without any obvious &quot;central authority&quot; to ask (especially with a site outage, Google Cache notwithstanding).  I checked Google for status information on both projects.  I did not find any compelling answers.  Further, someone have known about a fork of one or both projects that I was not able to locate.  Finally, if every project with a more specific community was off-topic here or on SO, many, many questions would be off-topic that are currently considered relevant.&#xD;&#xA; * _Point:_ I was asking about a situation that was only relevant to me and would have been useless to other programmers.  _Why I disagree:_ I find it hard to believe that I am the working for the only company that decided to develop and/or maintain an internal web application for IE only and wanted to find a way to test it using .NET tools.  Programmers deal with less-than-ideal situations all the time.  I believed that another programmer may well have met a similar situation and had a solution based on his or her experience.&#xD;&#xA; * _Point:_ The question was a &quot;shopping question.&quot;  _Why I disagree:_ It's true that I mentioned that we might be willing to buy a tool if it was in budget and worth the money.  That was hardly the point of the question.  Even in a broader sense of &quot;shopping&quot; meaning &quot;looking for a particular tool, paid or free,&quot; an adequate answer may not have depended on recommending a particular product at all.  The answer could perhaps be an approach to using the tools I already mentioned, for example.  I do not find my question equivalent in spirit to the canonical &quot;Which camera should I buy?&quot; shopping question in any event.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am very willing to accept humble correction from the community should it be appropriate.  But, I hope my view of the Programmers site is not so skewed that I am entirely incorrect here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments?  Suggestions for improvement?  I know the process ended in what I believe is the correct result (i.e., migration), but how we got there seems wrong to me." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5192" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2109" RevisionGUID="4ca750c2-1371-4334-9938-6bea6c3e75f4" CreationDate="2011-08-12T05:15:57.300" UserId="4471" Text="Moderator closing, reasoning behind it, and handling thereof" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5193" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2109" RevisionGUID="4ca750c2-1371-4334-9938-6bea6c3e75f4" CreationDate="2011-08-12T05:15:57.300" UserId="4471" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|close-reasons|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5194" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2110" RevisionGUID="3670728d-baa7-410a-885d-a0d82c8b0c33" CreationDate="2011-08-12T05:44:35.367" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I was one of the moderators you interacted with and the one who migrated the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question was flagged for moderators as being too localized, which is why moderators stepped in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the main goals for Programmers.SE is to ask questions that will serve as useful information for future vistors: if someone is having a similar problem, we want them to be able to find the question and derive value from it. To that end, questions need to be generally applicable to all programmers, not just the question asker, and have some amount of lasting value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Programmer diagram][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your original question and its current, &quot;tl;dr&quot; version state the framework in question is dead, that you're unsure of what the status of the project is, and your question still asks what you can do to make it work again. A comment was left, stating:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Per the Sourceforge mailing list it's a memory issue with watin.org and it's being looked into; WatiN isn't dead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Essentially, rumors of its death are greatly exaggerated, and that in a few days, the question would be obsolete. The project isn't dead: the website's just having some trouble.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, your question asks for a list of recommendations for a testing framework, and you laid out several requirements for that framework, scoping the question specifically for your situation. We're not looking for questions that specific, as they are unlikely to ever help future visitors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, the question's scope goes from all programmers (our target scope), to testers, to people having trouble with the framework in question, to people having trouble with the framework in question and have the same exact set of requirements you have. There aren't a lot of visitors, if any, who would derive value from that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why we generally don't want questions that ask for [lists of recommendations](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic) or [shopping recommendations](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/): everyone's requirements are different, and it has the potential to create an infinite number of iterations of the question, each one only helping the question asker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of questions that give a person a fish, we want questions that teach a person how to fish. &quot;How do I go about selecting a testing framework?&quot; would be a better, more general question and would work well on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to why it took so long to get the question migrated: we don't migrate questions away unless they are especially good fits for the destination site (the so-called [&quot;don't migrate crap&quot; rule](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow/1901#1901)). I put a feeler out to the moderators on SQA.SE to see if it would be something that they would be interested in, and it took a few hours for them to get back to me. Once they determined it would be a good fit for their site, it was migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/lgkjg.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5195" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2109" RevisionGUID="ead08572-bce1-4afb-ad06-171faedc2692" CreationDate="2011-08-12T05:48:05.190" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|moderation|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5196" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2110" RevisionGUID="6f48ccc2-89ad-48fc-9d53-6949e095a717" CreationDate="2011-08-12T06:00:27.290" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 448 characters in body" Text="I was one of the moderators you interacted with and the one who migrated the question. Your question was flagged for moderators as being too localized, which is why moderators stepped in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the main goals for Programmers.SE is to ask questions that will serve as useful information for future vistors: if someone is having a similar problem, we want them to be able to find the question and derive value from it. To that end, questions need to be generally applicable to all programmers, not just the question asker, and have some amount of lasting value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Programmer diagram][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your original question and its current, &quot;tl;dr&quot; version state the framework in question is dead, that you're unsure of what the status of the project is, and your question still asks what you can do to make it work again. A comment was left, stating:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Per the Sourceforge mailing list it's a memory issue with watin.org and it's being looked into; WatiN isn't dead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Essentially, rumors of its death are greatly exaggerated: it isn't dead, its website is just having some trouble. In a few days, the question would be obsolete when the website comes back online.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granting you didn't know about the mailing list beforehand, you do now, and that would be where you'd want to check on the status of the website and follow-up with any concerns about the status of the project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, your question asks for a list of recommendations for a testing framework, and you laid out several requirements for that framework, scoping the question specifically to your situation. We're not looking for questions that specific, as they are unlikely to ever help future visitors, especially on a site that's geared towards programmers in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, the question's scope goes from all programmers (our target scope), to testers, to people who use the framework in question, to people having trouble with the framework in question, to people having trouble with the framework in question and have the same exact set of requirements you have. There aren't a lot of visitors, if any, who would derive value from that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why we generally don't field questions that ask for [lists of recommendations](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic) or [shopping recommendations](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/): everyone's requirements are different, and it has the potential to create an infinite number of iterations of the question, each one only helping the question asker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of questions that give a person a fish, we want questions that teach a person how to fish. &quot;How do I go about selecting a testing framework?&quot; would be a better, more general question and would work well on Programmers. The comments left on your question were intended to guide you towards editing your question to that effect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to why it took so long to get the question migrated: we don't migrate questions away unless they are especially good fits for the destination site (the so-called [&quot;don't migrate crap&quot; rule](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow/1901#1901)). I put a feeler out to the moderators on SQA.SE to see if it would be something that they would be interested in, and it took a few hours for them to get back to me. Once they determined it would be a good fit for their site, it was migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/lgkjg.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5197" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2111" RevisionGUID="2715f730-398f-431a-9f2b-1dcab15d5ffb" CreationDate="2011-08-12T07:45:07.493" UserId="1458" Text="If a question like “What's your favourite programming quote?” is to be allowed on this site, then as per the site definition&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;all answers should reflect programming expertise. An answer that simply contains a quote or URL is unacceptable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can work only if most of the community is disciplined enough not to post one-liner answers and to downvote any one-liner answers, and moderators are expected to and do delete any one-liner answer that goes through the cracks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't see this working for a question like favorite cartoon and favorite joke: does your favorite joke have a virtue that makes it *insightful* and not just funny? Did you explain that insight in your answer? You didn't, did you? These questions violently violate all six subjective question guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question like favorite quote could, in principle, meet the guidelines: maybe a quote did make you see the Light. Maybe your favorite blog is full of interesting information for programmers. So, does your answer to this question why your favorite blog is interesting? No? It's clear that this sort of question does not work on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I say, good riddance to all of them. By deleting these questions, you're fixing a few window panes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![broken windows](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2483/3549316941_c17284d6e3.jpg)](http://www.flickr.com/photos/96537549@N00/3549316941/ &quot;9999 broken windows on the wall. 9999 broken windows. Delete one, pass it around. 9998 broken windows on the wall.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5198" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2111" RevisionGUID="b70f9d6c-8ac1-45f4-a558-8739def64fbd" CreationDate="2011-08-12T08:58:59.290" UserId="1458" Comment="I should proofread my rants more" Text="If a question like “What's your favourite programming quote?” is to be allowed on this site, then as per the site definition&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers (…)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;all answers should reflect programming expertise. An answer that simply contains a quote or URL is unacceptable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can work only if most of the community is disciplined enough not to post one-liner answers and to downvote any one-liner answers, and moderators are expected to and do delete any throwaway answer that goes through the cracks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't see this ever working for a question like favorite cartoon and favorite joke: does your favorite joke have a virtue that makes it *insightful* and not just funny? Did you explain that insight in your answer? You didn't, did you? These questions violently violates all six subjective question guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question like favorite quote could, in principle, meet the guidelines: maybe a quote did make you see the Light. Maybe your favorite blog is full of interesting information for programmers. So, does your answer to this question why your favorite blog is interesting? No? It's clear that this sort of question does not work on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I say, **good riddance to all of them**. By deleting these questions, you're fixing a few window panes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![broken windows](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2483/3549316941_c17284d6e3.jpg)](http://www.flickr.com/photos/96537549@N00/3549316941/ &quot;9999 broken windows on the wall. 9999 broken windows. Delete one, stop passing it around. 9998 broken windows on the wall.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5199" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2112" RevisionGUID="367dbf39-8bc3-480a-a289-30484ebed7ec" CreationDate="2011-08-12T15:01:00.907" UserId="28877" Text="&gt; How do we prevent it from being just another blog about programming (or programmers)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's something I've noticed about programming blogs, in general, over the years. A programming blog (singular) mostly stinks. What I've found is that a programmer usually understands one or two or three topics that they can really **blog well** about. Unfortunately, only a few bloggers have the discipline to do this - they frequently branch out into worlds they understand very little about; the quality suffers and for their readers finding the gems amongst the veritable dross becomes an extended treasure hunt through a **cavern of mediocre content** (I was guilty of this myself, when I blogged).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I remember correctly, it was that exact vision that drove the creation of Stack Overflow: sheer frustration with the dearth of quality information because it was scattered throughout phpBB boards across the internet, mired in the muck of trolls and flame wars and leetspeak. So build a site for the community, driven by the community, and let the community decide as a whole what is &quot;correct&quot;. The community may not *always* be correct, but there is a far higher likelihood than LeetSamurai69 getting it right **five years ago** on a forum about Unreal Tournament mods (that event will always stick out in my mind).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Blogs *were* the same and blogs **are** the same. Everybody and their kid brother has a blog. I have no way of trusting what I read in a blog unless I read **the entire body of work**, sometimes. I could start a free blog in ten minutes and start indiscriminately spewing out information about developing J2EE web applications, something in which I have **no experience**, and somebody searching for information would have **no idea** that I was full of it until they had read enough of my work enough times to realize that I'm a moron. But the worst part? Google doesn't know I'm a moron. They can't *tell* Google I'm a moron, and Google's algorithms, as amazing as they are, are not intelligent enough to tell that I'm an incompetent when it comes to configuring a GlassFish server.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The StackExchange network is about trust. **I trust just about every last thing I see on SO or PSE** with a reasonably high vote count because its the most quality content **on the internet** when it comes to how I do my work. It's why I've **configured my Google quick search to search Stack Overflow** whenever I prefix **any** query with an &quot;so&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've gone afield. To me, a PSE blog isn't about *what*, its about **who**. This is programming - is there a bigger world out there? We have programmers every ilk: web, desktop, mainframe, database, hardware, all across a half trillion dollar industry! Is there a topic that we *can't* cover, so long as we have the right person cover it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we do this, and I sincerely think that we should, it should be the **tops**. The PSE blog should be the **gold-plated *standard*** for programming blogs, as trusted and secure as a U.S. Treasury bond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summation. How do we prevent it from being just another programming blog? We have some of the top minds in the programming industry in this network: Jeff Atwood, Joel Spolsky, Jon Skeet and more, plus reams of other great programmers who *aren't* necessarily famous or well-known but are active contributors, and consistently amass a body of work and reputation through SO and PSE. I don't see how this **could** be &quot;just another blog about programming&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5200" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2108" RevisionGUID="3310963c-be73-4113-be4b-3cf09903f5b5" CreationDate="2011-08-12T16:49:10.577" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited title" Text="What should a Programmers.SE blog be about?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5201" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2108" RevisionGUID="186e1c0a-ca7c-4171-976f-277db81a47f5" CreationDate="2011-08-12T18:03:40.173" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Mention this is about theme rather than coming up with a list of topics" Text="Some time ago, there was [some interest](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1709/any-chance-of-a-programmers-community-blog) in getting a blog rolling for Programmers.SE as part of the [Blog Overflow project](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/blog-overflow). In the interest of taking the next step, I'd like to discuss what the blog would be about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What guidance can we offer to prospective bloggers about the theme of the Programmers.SE blog? What would a really great post look like? How do we prevent it from being just another blog about programming (or programmers)? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More importantly, how does a Programmers.SE blog make the Internet a better place? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5202" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2112" RevisionGUID="dc2a8984-6631-409b-a640-4fe524dff044" CreationDate="2011-08-12T21:39:31.553" UserId="28877" Comment="refactored to align with original question" Text="This is modeled after the P.SE FAQ, modified for blog posts. I think it applies in giving a &quot;guidance of theme&quot;, as Mark Trapp put it in our discussion. I have written this with the &quot;tone&quot; of being an existing standard for blog posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## What kind of blog posts will we make? ##&#xD;&#xA;The Programmers - Stack Exchange blog is for expert programmers to post articles that are not necessarily suited for the standard P.SE &quot;question and answer&quot; format but are in the same spirit and theme of the P.SE site. This includes topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Software engineering&#xD;&#xA; - Developer testing&#xD;&#xA; - Algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - Design patterns&#xD;&#xA; - Architecture&#xD;&#xA; - Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA; - Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA; - Software licensing&#xD;&#xA; - Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Purpose ##&#xD;&#xA;The purpose of the blog is to provide a platform for users who are experts in particular areas of programming to share and expound on a topic without being constrained to the traditional Q&amp;A format. This will provide a body of collective work that is provided by **peer-reviewed members** of the Programmers - Stack Exchange network with cross-over from the Stack Overflow site as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Blog posts should meet the following criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Relevant to present-day programming concepts.&#xD;&#xA; - Highly professional and representative.&#xD;&#xA; - Have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA; - Opinions are the result of real-world experience.&#xD;&#xA; - Anything presented as fact should be backed up with credible references or research presentable within the post.&#xD;&#xA; - Applicable to all programmers, fitting within the the bounds of subjects that are considered &quot;on topic&quot; to the general P.SE site.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5203" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2113" RevisionGUID="c3e901c9-18df-4aa6-ad09-26c5939f28d9" CreationDate="2011-08-13T01:18:58.887" UserId="28029" Text="As a matter of fact, votes express likability, not quality. And I think that any answer is legitimate. So, the real question for me is: how can we fix SE so that high reputation highlights good contributors?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following could be a solution that is easy to implement (both in the front and in the back end) and easy to understand and agree with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. State (by any means) the authority of moderators to tell apart answers from non-answers, (in the guidelines meaning).&#xD;&#xA; 1. Leave non-answers in place, together with their votes, and not locked, but marked as non-answers.&#xD;&#xA; 1. When computing the rep number, consider rep coming from non-answers to be zero.&#xD;&#xA; 1. Along time, review all SE answers, including fossils. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People will still be able to vote non-answers, and highly voted non-answers will still appear at the top. The only difference will be a nice icon with a small notice like &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - On 2011-08-12 at 10:30pm, [John Doe][1] ([site moderator][2]) marked this as a [non-answer][3] according to this site contribution [guidelines][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it should not be possible to have accepted non-answers, so if in the past there would be such a situation, the moderator should help the OP select another answer or do it themselves if the OP is unreachable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://example.com?moderator=JohnDoe&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://example.com?help=moderator&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://example.com?help=non-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://example.com?help=guidelines" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5204" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2114" RevisionGUID="061f6b0f-6d76-4e97-b5b6-b3f05620b962" CreationDate="2011-08-13T16:56:36.860" UserId="27757" Text="I had a question about commenting on posts by new users (and sometimes experienced users). I see a post that just has a link without context, or some vague/poorly formatted answer, and I think about how to fix it. As I'm about to leave a comment, however, I think &quot;hmm, I'm not a mod, maybe the user will react poorly to me&quot; and instead I opt to flag the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I used to be a forum administrator, so I'm not a fan of users who try to do the jobs of moderators i.e. &quot;mini-modding&quot;. Is it appropriate for users to leave comment similar to what a mod would write, or should we just stick to flagging?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On an unrelated note, this &quot;similar questions&quot; side bar scrolls down, which is cool, but if I go all the way down to the bottom of the page, then the side bar covers up the link to the wiki, the &quot;ubuntu&quot; link, the &quot;programmers&quot; link, and one other link. I don't really care about it, but I don't think this is desired functionality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5205" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2114" RevisionGUID="061f6b0f-6d76-4e97-b5b6-b3f05620b962" CreationDate="2011-08-13T16:56:36.860" UserId="27757" Text="Advising new users without mini-modding" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5206" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2114" RevisionGUID="061f6b0f-6d76-4e97-b5b6-b3f05620b962" CreationDate="2011-08-13T16:56:36.860" UserId="27757" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5207" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2115" RevisionGUID="836cfba7-261e-45c5-8daa-0ee6720cad76" CreationDate="2011-08-13T17:04:01.810" UserId="47" Text="Please comment/down-vote/vote to close if you have the reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community can only call itself that if users (of all reputation scores) are engaged in promoting good behaviour. By just flagging a post you are trying to absolve yourself of the responsibility that you should have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also it shows that the rules and guidelines of the community are agreed on and enforce by **all** users not just those with a diamond after their name. This is one of the important differences between Stack Exchange and other forms. The more reputation you have the more trust the system has in you and at high levels of trust you are not *that* different from the moderators and site owners.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This particularly applies to users with more than 3,000 reputation (not you) who choose to flag a question as off topic rather than voting to close. I'm more likely to cast my binding vote to close if a question already has a couple of close votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5208" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2116" RevisionGUID="9daa73ea-7238-44c6-a081-eeba103c3bc6" CreationDate="2011-08-13T17:39:01.593" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="&gt; I used to be a forum administrator, so I'm not a fan of users who try to do the jobs of moderators i.e. &quot;mini-modding&quot;. Is it appropriate for users to leave comment similar to what a mod would write, or should we just stick to flagging?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the biggest mistakes that a user can make is thinking of Stack Exchange as a forum. The Q&amp;A platform has shown, many times that it isn't suitable for handling extended discussions. That's because the system is specifically designed to make the best information rise directly to the top.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Voting is every Stack Exchange citizen's duty. Voting is what makes the system work. Remember, you're casting your vote to indicate if information is of good or poor quality, don't worry about rewarding or penalizing the author when you do this. A few down votes provides more than enough signal to someone that something might be wrong with their question or answer, where several up votes tell the author that they provided a great answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to leave a comment to explain what you think is wrong or should be improved, that's completely up to you. Voting is the most important thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see a post that is _particularly_ stinky, that's when flags should be used. When it comes to answers, sending a flag is basically telling your moderators that something is seriously wrong with the post that should be handled right away. It also implies that it's something that the community can't fix on its own, such as a post of very poor quality that can't be helped by editing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every user that can vote on any given Stack Exchange site _is_ a moderator, to the degree that their reputation permits access to privileges. Diamond moderators are really just exception handlers that step in when they are needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5209" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2117" RevisionGUID="03f292d5-4906-4eda-843e-5271284a847a" CreationDate="2011-08-13T18:02:02.563" UserId="226" Text="It is absolutely appropriate. I personally love seeing comments that I'd leave left by someone else and that's only in part because that saves me typing. :) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As moderators, we are doing our best to let the community handle as much of its own organizing as possible. Seeing mod-like comments from the community members tells us that we're all collectively on the same page. It's a nice sanity check to have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only requirement is that the comments should be polite. I'm not saying that yours wouldn't be, but I want to cover all the bases. It's easy to make a snarky or a snide comment, but it's important that we all keep our cool and remember the &quot;be nice&quot; part of the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#etiquette) especially when it comes to commenting on new users' posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ChrisF and Tim Post both touched on the reputation aspect, so I'll just close with saying that having regular community members contribute to site's moderation with comments and votes is what makes Stack Exchange awesome, unique, and community-driven. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5210" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2114" RevisionGUID="7cb3d2e1-c785-4105-81e7-aae31d1f9ffc" CreationDate="2011-08-13T18:25:30.977" UserId="27757" Comment="removed a second question" Text="I had a question about commenting on posts by new users (and sometimes experienced users). I see a post that just has a link without context, or some vague/poorly formatted answer, and I think about how to fix it. As I'm about to leave a comment, however, I think &quot;hmm, I'm not a mod, maybe the user will react poorly to me&quot; and instead I opt to flag the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I used to be a forum administrator, so I'm not a fan of users who try to do the jobs of moderators i.e. &quot;mini-modding&quot;. Is it appropriate for users to leave comment similar to what a mod would write, or should we just stick to flagging?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5211" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2118" RevisionGUID="d0520816-810f-4bfb-b4b8-ff505c19e16f" CreationDate="2011-08-13T18:26:53.303" UserId="27757" Text="When asking a question, the &quot;similar questions&quot; side bar scrolls down, which is cool, but if I go all the way down to the bottom of the page, then the side bar covers up the link to the wiki, the &quot;ubuntu&quot; link, the &quot;programmers&quot; link, and one other link. If you guys could fix it so that it does not go down beyond the &quot;post your question&quot; button, that would be really useful. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5212" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2118" RevisionGUID="d0520816-810f-4bfb-b4b8-ff505c19e16f" CreationDate="2011-08-13T18:26:53.303" UserId="27757" Text="Fixing &quot;similar question&quot; sidebar" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5213" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2118" RevisionGUID="d0520816-810f-4bfb-b4b8-ff505c19e16f" CreationDate="2011-08-13T18:26:53.303" UserId="27757" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5214" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2118" RevisionGUID="ad9f9aa6-8ce2-42e2-95d8-cc4c782f0447" CreationDate="2011-08-13T18:42:56.460" UserId="666" Comment="added 118 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="When asking a question, the &quot;similar questions&quot; side bar scrolls down, which is cool, but if I go all the way down to the bottom of the page, then the side bar covers up the link to the wiki, the &quot;ubuntu&quot; link, the &quot;programmers&quot; link, and one other link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](http://content.screencast.com/users/TomWij/folders/Jing/media/ced06a17-656a-48e3-b3de-54725dcf8557/2011-08-13_2041.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you guys could fix it so that it does not go down beyond the &quot;post your question&quot; button, that would be really useful. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5215" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2118" RevisionGUID="ad9f9aa6-8ce2-42e2-95d8-cc4c782f0447" CreationDate="2011-08-13T18:42:56.460" UserId="666" Comment="added 118 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="The &quot;similar question&quot; sections underflows under the footer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5216" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2118" RevisionGUID="ad9f9aa6-8ce2-42e2-95d8-cc4c782f0447" CreationDate="2011-08-13T18:42:56.460" UserId="666" Comment="added 118 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|bug|user-interface|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5217" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2119" RevisionGUID="3f3416a5-495b-4a5a-8063-3a3493236b35" CreationDate="2011-08-13T18:46:35.267" UserId="666" Text="I partly agree, it is so long that it falls under the footer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, making them relatively short doesn't give enough to people that actually do check it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5218" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2117" RevisionGUID="b33b0f90-ee61-4d28-88c1-07cb82471124" CreationDate="2011-08-13T18:53:56.993" UserId="226" Comment="added 14 characters in body" Text="It is absolutely appropriate. I personally love seeing comments that I'd leave left by someone else and that's only in part because that saves me typing. :) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As moderators, we are doing our best to let the community handle as much of its own organizing as possible. Seeing mod-like comments from the community members tells us that we're all collectively on the same page. It's a nice sanity check to have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only requirement is that the comments should be polite. I'm not saying that yours wouldn't be, but I want to cover all the bases. It's sometimes tempting to make a snarky or a snide comment, but it's important that we all keep our cool and remember the &quot;be nice&quot; part of the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#etiquette) especially when it comes to commenting on new users' posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ChrisF and Tim Post both touched on the reputation aspect, so I'll just close with saying that having regular community members contribute to site's moderation with comments and votes is what makes Stack Exchange awesome, unique, and community-driven. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5219" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2114" RevisionGUID="d5abaa3c-56aa-4f48-a0a9-ab52471c2024" CreationDate="2011-08-13T18:54:59.170" UserId="666" Comment="You can thank users by upvoting their answers and accepting the right answer." Text="I had a question about commenting on posts by new users (and sometimes experienced users). I see a post that just has a link without context, or some vague/poorly formatted answer, and I think about how to fix it. As I'm about to leave a comment, however, I think &quot;hmm, I'm not a mod, maybe the user will react poorly to me&quot; and instead I opt to flag the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I used to be a forum administrator, so I'm not a fan of users who try to do the jobs of moderators i.e. &quot;mini-modding&quot;. Is it appropriate for users to leave comment similar to what a mod would write, or should we just stick to flagging?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5220" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2114" RevisionGUID="d5abaa3c-56aa-4f48-a0a9-ab52471c2024" CreationDate="2011-08-13T18:54:59.170" UserId="666" Comment="You can thank users by upvoting their answers and accepting the right answer." Text="Are new users allowed to advice without mini-modding?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5221" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1345" RevisionGUID="daf1a395-169e-4980-a762-41ef3967148b" CreationDate="2011-08-13T19:03:36.487" UserId="63" Comment="Ain't &quot;Closed as belongs on TDWTF&quot;, but..." Text="You're gonna have some trouble, since a key part of maintaining &quot;the quality and maturity&quot; of the SE network is built around *not* allowing questions like that...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, you gotta start somewhere.  [Where can I find interesting programming discussions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/13198/where-can-i-find-interesting-programming-discussions) has a few suggestions you might consider...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I was recently informed that Prog.SE user [AmmoQ][1] has carved out a little corner on [The Daily WTF Forums](http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/27.aspx) specifically for questions that cannot and should not be asked here on Programmer's. TDWTF is not affiliated with Stack Exchange, and has its own standards of quality and conduct, so be respectful of these if you decide to make use of this resource. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6617/ammoq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5222" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2114" RevisionGUID="dcdd63b9-bd8d-4ac8-be20-e6f40d0111b7" CreationDate="2011-08-13T20:17:13.850" UserId="226" Comment="edited title" Text="Are new users allowed to advise without mini-modding?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5223" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2118" RevisionGUID="cc6fbd31-2e71-49a6-8e45-2e69748b7c6e" CreationDate="2011-08-13T21:37:21.307" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|design|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5224" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2115" RevisionGUID="950b4dcb-d742-45a2-8cfc-339835e30447" CreationDate="2011-08-13T23:29:04.847" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="Please comment/down-vote/vote to close if you have the reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community can only call itself that if users (of all reputation scores) are engaged in promoting good behaviour. By just flagging a post you are trying to absolve yourself of the responsibility that you should have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also it shows that the rules and guidelines of the community are agreed on and enforce by **all** users not just those with a diamond after their name. This is one of the important differences between Stack Exchange and other forums. The more reputation you have the more trust the system has in you and at high levels of trust you are not *that* different from the moderators and site owners.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This particularly applies to users with more than 3,000 reputation (not you) who choose to flag a question as off topic rather than voting to close. I'm more likely to cast my binding vote to close if a question already has a couple of close votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5225" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="1963" RevisionGUID="d04258d6-09ca-4c22-a126-ce91fe4ffafc" CreationDate="2011-08-14T02:40:13.543" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/102570190402891776" />
  <row Id="5226" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="1988" RevisionGUID="1be2a1cb-c2c9-42de-9516-939600d4e596" CreationDate="2011-08-14T06:40:13.677" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/102630587797479424" />
  <row Id="5227" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2099" RevisionGUID="27e92e0f-1357-4a35-8d48-09ca9eae99aa" CreationDate="2011-08-14T14:40:14.057" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/102751385279401985" />
  <row Id="5228" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2120" RevisionGUID="345551f4-a47d-4abc-afd8-b00b09c9f1c4" CreationDate="2011-08-14T17:57:56.583" UserId="6617" Text="You can try your luck here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/27.aspx&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;but I can't promise the maturity of p.se there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5229" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2121" RevisionGUID="74bd7e9b-b045-423a-b8cb-cae50ecf7bc6" CreationDate="2011-08-14T18:27:25.743" UserDisplayName="user33439" Text="I want to offer a bounty for my [question][1] and the **start a bounty** link is not there. Please help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98651/what-are-the-advantages-of-the-intel-c-compiler" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5230" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2121" RevisionGUID="74bd7e9b-b045-423a-b8cb-cae50ecf7bc6" CreationDate="2011-08-14T18:27:25.743" UserDisplayName="user33439" Text="Start a bounty link is missing for my question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5231" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2121" RevisionGUID="74bd7e9b-b045-423a-b8cb-cae50ecf7bc6" CreationDate="2011-08-14T18:27:25.743" UserDisplayName="user33439" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5232" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2122" RevisionGUID="b0747285-90a5-4d9f-bacd-ab9eff2a68b8" CreationDate="2011-08-14T18:29:35.760" UserId="47" Text="There was a previous bounty that ended less than 24 hours ago (as of this writing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a grace period of 24 hours at the end of the bounty to give the bounty setter time to award the bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As there can only be one bounty on a question at any one time this means that you can't start your own until the full 24 hours have passed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This section of the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#bounty) explains how bounties work, but doesn't include the 24 hour grace period." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5233" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2122" RevisionGUID="bd02d42a-9401-4834-b7b6-8d964aaa57e0" CreationDate="2011-08-14T18:34:43.410" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="There was a previous bounty that ended less than 24 hours ago (as of this writing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a [grace period of 24 hours](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/68050/a-grace-period-of-one-day-to-award-the-bounty-after-expiration-without-remaining/74037#74037) at the end of the bounty to give the bounty setter time to award the bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As there can only be one bounty on a question at any one time this means that you can't start your own until the full 24 hours have passed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This section of the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#bounty) explains how bounties work, but doesn't include the 24 hour grace period." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5234" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2122" RevisionGUID="2d80ebbb-4277-4446-9eb3-92b22990d102" CreationDate="2011-08-14T18:41:43.727" UserId="47" Comment="caveat" Text="There was a previous bounty that ended less than 24 hours ago (as of this writing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a [grace period of 24 hours](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/68050/a-grace-period-of-one-day-to-award-the-bounty-after-expiration-without-remaining/74037#74037) at the end of the bounty to give the bounty setter time to award the bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As there can only be one bounty on a question at any one time I can only assume that this means that you can't start your own until the full 24 hours have passed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This section of the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#bounty) explains how bounties work, but doesn't include the 24 hour grace period." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5235" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2006" RevisionGUID="3cba9157-863b-4a45-aabf-5c98d1b7f8c9" CreationDate="2011-08-14T22:40:15.433" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/102872185693155329" />
  <row Id="5243" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2126" RevisionGUID="1e0c6d6e-52ef-453c-b8ef-20ddf51f8ec7" CreationDate="2011-08-15T14:20:41.630" UserId="226" Text="The &quot;badge details&quot; pages are showing lists of questions that awarded the badge in different font sizes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![screenshot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is affecting only some of the badges. Others use the same size for all questions on their page, but different size from other pages: for example, [Nice Question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/46/nice-question) shows all questions in the same font size (the larger one from the screenshot) while [Altruist](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/32/altruist) shows all questions in the smaller size.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Browser/OS: Chrome 13.0.782.112 on Windows 7 64-bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ID9c5.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5244" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2126" RevisionGUID="1e0c6d6e-52ef-453c-b8ef-20ddf51f8ec7" CreationDate="2011-08-15T14:20:41.630" UserId="226" Text="Different font sizes used in question titles on &quot;badge details&quot; pages" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5245" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2126" RevisionGUID="1e0c6d6e-52ef-453c-b8ef-20ddf51f8ec7" CreationDate="2011-08-15T14:20:41.630" UserId="226" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5246" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2126" RevisionGUID="3f0cbfc5-27de-49d1-ab06-70056ce396a7" CreationDate="2011-08-15T14:26:16.803" UserId="226" Comment="added 185 characters in body" Text="The &quot;badge details&quot; pages are showing lists of questions that awarded the badge in different font sizes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![screenshot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is affecting only some of the badges. Others use the same size for all questions on their page, but different size from other pages: for example, [Nice Question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/46/nice-question) shows all questions in the same font size (the larger one from the screenshot) while [Altruist](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/32/altruist) shows all questions in the smaller size.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At @ChrisF suggestion, I checked if questions and answers appeared in different sizes and that seems to be the case: questions are in the larger font and answers are in the smaller.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Browser/OS: Chrome 13.0.782.112 on Windows 7 64-bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ID9c5.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5247" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2126" RevisionGUID="ed26a636-65ba-4f3c-a2b3-27238ed9ef41" CreationDate="2011-08-15T15:06:25.833" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 16 characters in body" Text="The &quot;badge details&quot; pages are showing lists of posts that awarded the badge in different font sizes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![screenshot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is affecting only some of the badges. Others use the same size for all posts on their page, but different size from other pages: for example, [Nice Question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/46/nice-question) shows all posts in the same font size (the larger one from the screenshot) while [Altruist](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/32/altruist) shows all posts in the smaller size.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At @ChrisF suggestion, I checked if questions and answers appeared in different sizes and that seems to be the case: questions are in the larger font and answers are in the smaller.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Browser/OS: Chrome 13.0.782.112 on Windows 7 64-bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ID9c5.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5248" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2127" RevisionGUID="4d1fbf94-f077-433a-822a-60ff81393468" CreationDate="2011-08-15T16:41:27.510" UserId="30551" Text="    Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;My Programmer account was banned recently to ask questions with only two questions raised, one get downvote to -1, and the other downvote to -4.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it is not so fair to the new user was banned to just ask only 2 questions and being banned. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you think it is better to give a warning message to ban account such that a user can seriously ask their question later on?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now my account was being banned, I don't know what I can do in here anymore. :(" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5249" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2127" RevisionGUID="4d1fbf94-f077-433a-822a-60ff81393468" CreationDate="2011-08-15T16:41:27.510" UserId="30551" Text="Suggest to give warning before banning user to ask question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5250" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2127" RevisionGUID="4d1fbf94-f077-433a-822a-60ff81393468" CreationDate="2011-08-15T16:41:27.510" UserId="30551" Text="|feature-request|user-accounts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5251" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2127" RevisionGUID="e37852e5-a3c3-4e7a-9847-80d6e54b0ff4" CreationDate="2011-08-15T16:55:25.420" UserId="226" Comment="edited body; edited title" Text="&gt; Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;My Programmers account was banned recently from asking questions with only two questions raised, one get downvote to -1, and the other downvote to -4.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it is not so fair to the new user was banned for only asking 2 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you think it is better to give a warning message before banning the account such that a user can seriously ask their questions later on?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that my account has been banned, I don't know what I can do in here anymore. :(" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5252" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2127" RevisionGUID="e37852e5-a3c3-4e7a-9847-80d6e54b0ff4" CreationDate="2011-08-15T16:55:25.420" UserId="226" Comment="edited body; edited title" Text="Users should receive a warning before they're banned from asking questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5253" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2128" RevisionGUID="ad521cab-b6dd-4013-8a9f-3637ac50ab30" CreationDate="2011-08-15T17:02:46.157" UserId="226" Text="There are actually four questions on your account. All of them have been closed and two have been deleted by you. At the time of this writing, one is at 0 score, and the rest are at -1, -4, and -5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The exact details of the banning algorithm are not public, but [this answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this/86998#86998) on Meta Stack Overflow suggests a couple ways to potentially undo the ban. The gist of it is that you can still use the site and provide answers. If you focus on giving good answers that receive upvotes, your account may get unblocked and you will be able to ask questions again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know for sure how the algorithm works, but I think you may have tripped it just slightly, since your deleted questions are self-deleted and out of the two that remained visible one was closed as a duplicate after being migrated to us. You can try emailing team@stackoverflow.com and make your case for why your account should not have been banned. Be prepared to justify your request. No promises that it'll work for sure, but it can't hurt to ask.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5254" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2044" RevisionGUID="3e9b299a-625c-437f-b54c-e839016f1e1e" CreationDate="2011-08-15T18:40:19.653" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/103174195105636353" />
  <row Id="5256" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2089" RevisionGUID="72d66cbc-9799-4cc4-b7ac-6dc258efe1cc" CreationDate="2011-08-16T06:40:23.417" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/103355402703482880" />
  <row Id="5257" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2114" RevisionGUID="b79ae089-4e32-48cc-903b-6507dc1eb22c" CreationDate="2011-08-16T13:19:20.517" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5258" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="1968" RevisionGUID="1ebbb0fe-c571-42aa-ae4c-5607b404cda8" CreationDate="2011-08-16T15:40:23.597" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/103491301135224832" />
  <row Id="5259" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="1980" RevisionGUID="aa98bc9e-e833-48e9-bf6f-d4fd8fc7f84f" CreationDate="2011-08-16T18:40:23.990" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/103536599480012800" />
  <row Id="5261" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2129" RevisionGUID="817acd37-3172-4dc7-9e87-ebc54ceaed73" CreationDate="2011-08-16T19:01:42.330" UserId="3792" Text="Why not? All it does is make the content of the site better and improve the chances of good answers to good questions. Often, it allows problems to be corrected before a moderator needs to get invloved, which is great for everyone." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5262" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2130" RevisionGUID="3d8f40af-1ee5-454a-87db-8082487bdff9" CreationDate="2011-08-16T22:48:49.977" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="As the newest generation of Stack Exchange sites are launched, one thing I'm envious of is the font style used for coding blocks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider the following program here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    #include &lt;stdio.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    main()&#xD;&#xA;    {&#xD;&#xA;      printf(&quot;Hello World&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Compared to the same program on, say, [DBA](http://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/1407/help-with-query-tuning) or [Code Review](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/4147/python-code-check-need-help):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Clean fonts for code][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we don't get a lot of code, the new code style is easier to read and would provide a bit of a contrast to the rest of the text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xSATh.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5263" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2130" RevisionGUID="3d8f40af-1ee5-454a-87db-8082487bdff9" CreationDate="2011-08-16T22:48:49.977" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Could we get the &quot;new&quot; coding font style?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5264" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2130" RevisionGUID="3d8f40af-1ee5-454a-87db-8082487bdff9" CreationDate="2011-08-16T22:48:49.977" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|feature-request|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5265" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2131" RevisionGUID="cd6137d2-0d79-4645-80f8-3792228e9027" CreationDate="2011-08-17T01:11:29.670" UserId="18283" Text="First of all, I realize that this topic has already been discussed ad nauseam, so I apologize in advance if nothing fruitful comes of this.  **I strongly feel that there is a large disconnect between the community's understanding of the site's purposes and the collective understanding of the moderators.**   I'm bringing this up again because I feel that previous answers on this topic have been a bit dismissive, and I was hoping that a more data-driven approach might elicit a more meaningful discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I did a few queries on [data.stackexchange.com][1] to get some statistics about the number of questions being closed on each site.  Unfortunately, saving the queries is not working properly for me, or I'd link directly to them.  Instead, I've tabulated the results in [this spreadsheet][2].  I found the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * 22.91% of all questions on Programmers have been closed, compared to only 1.86% on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA; * Of the closed questions, 38.5% have a score of 0 or lower on Programmers.  On Stack Overflow, 66.35% have a score of 0 or lower.&#xD;&#xA; * 23.3% of closed questions on Programmers have a score of **five or higher**, compared to 5.08% on SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without wishing to sound whiny, from a personal perspective I'm rather apprehensive about asking any questions on Programmers.  Even after reading the FAQ and the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][4] post, I don't feel like I really have a good understanding of what kinds of questions are acceptable.  I think the guidelines do a _decent_ job of explaining what _not_ to ask, but are not nearly specific enough on what _should_ be asked.  (For instance, there are four examples of bad questions, but not a single example of a good question.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, **I am not suggesting that the mods are wrong, or that we should accept questions which do not fall within the guidelines.**  What I am saying is that these data, to me, make it very clear that the community and the mods are not in complete agreement about the purpose of the site or about how to interpret the question guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I am asking for are suggestions as to how we can:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Bring the community's idea of the site in line with official Stack Exchange policies and guidelines.&#xD;&#xA; * Ensure that moderation is used to maintain a high signal to noise ratio, but not to an unnecessary extent.&#xD;&#xA; * Reduce the number and percentage of closed questions (and resultant disgruntled users).&#xD;&#xA; * Maintain a friendly and mutually respectful atmosphere between moderators and users.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmaLbFCSqCWudE9DM1dSU0E1bzlkZmdnenBDSGNSWHc&amp;hl=en_US&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZKMgQ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5266" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2131" RevisionGUID="cd6137d2-0d79-4645-80f8-3792228e9027" CreationDate="2011-08-17T01:11:29.670" UserId="18283" Text="How to reconcile guidelines, community opinion and moderation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5267" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2131" RevisionGUID="cd6137d2-0d79-4645-80f8-3792228e9027" CreationDate="2011-08-17T01:11:29.670" UserId="18283" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|moderation|guidelines|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5268" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2132" RevisionGUID="91f799f0-9813-4912-b2af-67962edebe1b" CreationDate="2011-08-17T01:13:32.567" UserId="18283" Text="I'll start the discussion by stating that I'd like to see examples of good questions in the FAQ, along with explanations of _why_ those questions are good.  I don't mean any disrespect to the hard work that has already gone into the FAQ, but it's clear that a large percentage of community members are finding it an insufficient resource to determine what kinds of questions they should be asking.  Examples of existing questions which are on-topic and strictly adherent to Stack Exchange subjectivity guidelines would be very helpful." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5269" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2131" RevisionGUID="e87525f2-6e3e-4aa5-ad3c-99c1604ea49d" CreationDate="2011-08-17T02:31:29.750" UserId="18283" Comment="Added more data" Text="First of all, I realize that this topic has already been discussed ad nauseam, so I apologize in advance if nothing fruitful comes of this.  **I strongly feel that there is a large disconnect between the community's understanding of the site's purposes and the collective understanding of the moderators.**   I'm bringing this up again because I feel that previous answers on this topic have been a bit dismissive, and I was hoping that a more data-driven approach might elicit a more meaningful discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I did a few queries on [data.stackexchange.com][1] to get some statistics about the number of questions being closed on each site.  Unfortunately, saving the queries is not working properly for me, or I'd link directly to them.  Instead, I've tabulated the results in [this spreadsheet][2].  I found the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Site           | % Closed with Score &lt;= 0 | % Closed with Score &gt;= 5&#xD;&#xA;    ---------------+--------------------------+--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;    Stack Overflow | 66.35%                   | 5.08%&#xD;&#xA;    Programmers    | 38.5%                    | 23.3%&#xD;&#xA;    English        | 47.47%                   | 6.27%&#xD;&#xA;    Gaming         | 47.55%                   | 9.18%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overall, a relatively high percentage of questions are closed on Programmers compared to other Stack Exchange sites, but I'm not going to give specific numbers on that because to do so would probably not be constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without wishing to sound whiny, from a personal perspective I'm rather uncertain about asking any questions on Programmers.  Even after reading the FAQ and the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][4] post, I don't feel like I really have a good understanding of what kinds of questions are acceptable.  I think the guidelines do a _decent_ job of explaining what _not_ to ask, but are not nearly specific enough on what _should_ be asked.  (For instance, there are four examples of bad questions, but not a single example of a good question.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, **I am not suggesting that the mods are wrong, or that we should accept questions which do not fall within the guidelines.**  What I am saying is that these data, to me, make it very clear that the community and the mods are not in complete agreement about the purpose of the site or about how to interpret the question guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I am asking for are suggestions as to how we can:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Bring the community's idea of the site in line with official Stack Exchange policies and guidelines.&#xD;&#xA; * Reduce the number and percentage of closed questions (and resultant disgruntled users).&#xD;&#xA; * Maintain a friendly and mutually respectful atmosphere between moderators and users.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmaLbFCSqCWudE9DM1dSU0E1bzlkZmdnenBDSGNSWHc&amp;hl=en_US&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZKMgQ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5270" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2131" RevisionGUID="e87525f2-6e3e-4aa5-ad3c-99c1604ea49d" CreationDate="2011-08-17T02:31:29.750" UserId="18283" Comment="Added more data" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|moderation|faq-proposed|guidelines|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5271" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2131" RevisionGUID="ee438716-4333-46eb-9e81-9894f8dda2d1" CreationDate="2011-08-17T02:37:56.693" UserId="18283" Comment="Added more data" Text="First of all, I realize that this topic has already been discussed ad nauseam, so I apologize in advance if nothing fruitful comes of this.  **I strongly feel that there is a large disconnect between the community's understanding of the site's purposes and the collective understanding of the moderators.**   I'm bringing this up again because I feel that previous answers on this topic have been a bit dismissive, and I was hoping that a more data-driven approach might elicit a more meaningful discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I did a few queries on [data.stackexchange.com][1] to get some statistics about the number of questions being closed on each site.  Unfortunately, saving the queries is not working properly for me, or I'd link directly to them.  Instead, I've tabulated the results in [this spreadsheet][2].  I found the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Site           | % Closed with Score &lt;= 0 | % Closed with Score &gt;= 5&#xD;&#xA;    ---------------+--------------------------+--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;    Stack Overflow | 66.35%                   | 5.08%&#xD;&#xA;    Programmers    | 38.5%                    | 23.3%&#xD;&#xA;    English        | 47.47%                   | 6.27%&#xD;&#xA;    Gaming         | 47.55%                   | 9.18%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The percent columns represent the percentages _of all closed questions_ with scores less than or equal to zero, and greater than or equal to five, respectively.  Overall, a relatively high percentage of questions are closed on Programmers compared to other Stack Exchange sites, but I'm not going to give specific numbers on that because to do so would probably not be constructive.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please note some caveats about these numbers:** the community on each site is different and there is no accepted or target ratio for any of these values.  The numbers represent all non-deleted questions from the beginning of each site's existence.  It's difficult to make proper comparisons because of differences in the number of users and questions on each site, as well as how mature each site is.  **I am using these numbers merely to illustrate why I think there is room for improvement.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without wishing to sound whiny, from a personal perspective I'm rather uncertain about asking any questions on Programmers.  Even after reading the FAQ and the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][4] post, I don't feel like I really have a good understanding of what kinds of questions are acceptable.  I think the guidelines do a _decent_ job of explaining what _not_ to ask, but are not nearly specific enough on what _should_ be asked.  (For instance, there are four examples of bad questions, but not a single example of a good question.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, **I am not suggesting that the mods are wrong, or that we should accept questions which do not fall within the guidelines.**  What I am saying is that these data, to me, make it very clear that the community and the mods are not in complete agreement about the purpose of the site or about how to interpret the question guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I am asking for are suggestions as to how we can:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Bring the community's idea of the site in line with official Stack Exchange policies and guidelines.&#xD;&#xA; * Reduce the number and percentage of closed questions (and resultant disgruntled users).&#xD;&#xA; * Maintain a friendly and mutually respectful atmosphere between moderators and users.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmaLbFCSqCWudE9DM1dSU0E1bzlkZmdnenBDSGNSWHc&amp;hl=en_US&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZKMgQ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5272" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2133" RevisionGUID="e62dd14f-3076-4f48-baf0-867fa95b0867" CreationDate="2011-08-17T02:45:34.820" UserId="18283" Text="At the request of Mark Trapp, I'm turning one of my answers to another topic into a feature request.  &#xD;&#xA;Currently the FAQ does not provide very much specific information on what exactly defines a good question. It does a decent job of explaining what not to ask, but it isn't specific enough about what _should_ be asked. (For instance, there are four examples of bad questions, but not a single example of a good question.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't mean any disrespect to the hard work that has already gone into the FAQ, but it's clear that a large percentage of community members are finding it an insufficient resource to determine what kinds of questions they should be asking. Examples of existing questions which are on-topic and strictly adherent to Stack Exchange subjectivity guidelines would be very helpful." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5273" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2133" RevisionGUID="e62dd14f-3076-4f48-baf0-867fa95b0867" CreationDate="2011-08-17T02:45:34.820" UserId="18283" Text="FAQ should include examples of good questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5274" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2133" RevisionGUID="e62dd14f-3076-4f48-baf0-867fa95b0867" CreationDate="2011-08-17T02:45:34.820" UserId="18283" Text="|feature-request|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5275" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2134" RevisionGUID="b5562125-c07c-4051-81fd-9eae1e2eac46" CreationDate="2011-08-17T03:45:28.630" UserId="226" Text="Our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) says that &quot;algorithm and data structure concepts&quot; questions are on-topic on Programmers. However, we receive &quot;migrate to Stack Overflow&quot; flags on a lot of algorithm-related question. This tells me there's a misunderstanding somewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we want algorithm questions? What kind of questions are those? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly questions about implementing an algorithm are off-topic, but are questions asking to derive an algorithm okay? Is that &quot;conceptual&quot; enough?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like the idea of coming up with [examples of good questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2133/faq-should-include-examples-of-good-questions). So, what kinds of algorithm-related questions (if any) do you want to see on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's a consensus reached here, we can amend the FAQ to be more clear about the kinds of algorithm-related questions we want or don't want." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5276" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2134" RevisionGUID="b5562125-c07c-4051-81fd-9eae1e2eac46" CreationDate="2011-08-17T03:45:28.630" UserId="226" Text="What are &quot;algorithm concepts&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5277" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2134" RevisionGUID="b5562125-c07c-4051-81fd-9eae1e2eac46" CreationDate="2011-08-17T03:45:28.630" UserId="226" Text="|discussion|featured|on-topic-definition|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5278" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2135" RevisionGUID="2db8b98b-78e4-4f81-a23a-e747ef1bb9b2" CreationDate="2011-08-17T04:29:40.027" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="An good? Example: What algorithm is most useful on large unordered data sets where the sets change rapidly and each set may contain elements of the previous set?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A bad? Example: How do I implement Ranga-Kutta Approximation into a Database in APL?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think algorithm utility questions are valid, I think Big O estimation probably is OT but I'm not gonna go one way or the other on it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5279" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="2135" RevisionGUID="4ae9b66b-80ae-4d3b-b8fb-3ddeab18c387" CreationDate="2011-08-17T04:29:40.027" UserDisplayName="user28988" />
  <row Id="5280" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2028" RevisionGUID="cd0594b8-28d6-4a19-9574-22b9908ec229" CreationDate="2011-08-17T12:40:25.727" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/103808399153704960" />
  <row Id="5281" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2136" RevisionGUID="e516b0b3-4336-4c52-8f0c-a8513b030e3f" CreationDate="2011-08-17T13:24:39.020" UserId="29765" Text="Before starting, take into account that my English is going to be awful XD.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think you are appliying a very restrictive policy when considering if a question is too subjective or not. You must also notice that some stackoverflow moderators redirect some users here when the question is not concrete enough there. So this is the place where questions that are subjective to a certain degree should go, otherwise we would have a clone of stackoverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a lot of people scrambling to be the first to denounce a question as subjective, substracting points, and when that happens it influences other users to do the same. On the contrary, if the first votes are positive, the tendency is to add more positive points or let the score as it was.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've read a lot of questions here that are more subjective than the one I asked (and was closed), and these have, however, a high score since they are considered useful by many people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, don't close a question so quickly if it has been aswered, wait a minimun time (2-3 hours) to see what happens. Because the first 3-5 answers may be really helpful and then you can close the thread if you want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone is interested, my question was this:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101451/best-programming-language-for-native-application-development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe I shouldn't have used the word &quot;best&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5282" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2136" RevisionGUID="e516b0b3-4336-4c52-8f0c-a8513b030e3f" CreationDate="2011-08-17T13:24:39.020" UserId="29765" Text="Fierce and irrational subjective questions hunting?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5283" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2136" RevisionGUID="e516b0b3-4336-4c52-8f0c-a8513b030e3f" CreationDate="2011-08-17T13:24:39.020" UserId="29765" Text="|discussion|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5284" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2137" RevisionGUID="b2c2fb94-4165-44b5-8ae6-c726384b656a" CreationDate="2011-08-17T14:03:51.357" UserId="4" Text="In my opinion, as soon as you go deeper than performance and pseudocode for the algorithm, it belongs to Stack Overflow. Asking about &lt;insert algorithm here&gt; is OK, but asking about &lt;insert algorithm here&gt; in &lt;your programming language&gt; belongs is off-topic. Questions here should generally be about libraries and programming languages at a high level, not implementation details - rarely should code ever be posted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5285" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2137" RevisionGUID="942a5e9e-aacc-4e05-a338-661c6e792401" CreationDate="2011-08-17T14:18:13.323" UserId="4" Comment="edited body" Text="In my opinion, as soon as you go deeper than performance and pseudocode for the algorithm, it belongs to Stack Overflow. Asking about {insert algorithm here} is OK, but asking about {insert algorithm here} in {your programming language} belongs is off-topic. Questions here should generally be about libraries and programming languages at a high level, not implementation details - rarely should code ever be posted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5286" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2138" RevisionGUID="3f43a8dc-a412-46d1-b0d6-b16d9053c046" CreationDate="2011-08-17T14:21:55.600" UserId="47" Text="To answer your question no you shouldn't have used the word &quot;best&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you should have done is explained your problem in neutral terms, outlining what you needed the programming language to do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* produce small binaries&#xD;&#xA;* produce patchable executables&#xD;&#xA;* ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;as examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then this could actually be **answered** either with the programming language that met your criteria or with a &quot;no nothing exists that can do all that, but have you looked at X&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to provide [context to your problem](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5287" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2139" RevisionGUID="8cdcb241-b711-4dbc-8162-e703ffb00e1f" CreationDate="2011-08-17T14:32:57.663" UserId="1254" Text="Is it possible to find out tracking numbers on parcels sent out? Some folks in London (ChrisF) have received their swag, but as yet I haven't. I'm wondering how I can find out where the parcel might be..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5288" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2140" RevisionGUID="eec78ec0-8162-4274-89b1-eb11dc174a9d" CreationDate="2011-08-17T14:34:41.170" UserId="226" Text="A question with a long list of short answers mentioning people's favourite language isn't very useful and is not what Stack Exchange is trying to do. We want to help people solve problems, not create lists of things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't want vague &quot;what language should I use&quot; kind of questions to the point where &quot;what language should I learn next&quot; is explicitly mentioned as off-topic in the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The exception to that rule is finding a language that fits a specific set of criteria. The goal is to encourage answers that explain *why* a language fits a given set of requirements. ChrisF pretty much summed up what I was going to say on that before I got to it. I think the question can be edited with his suggestions and reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5289" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2141" RevisionGUID="31d3f998-10d1-47d1-865c-663796ec9988" CreationDate="2011-08-17T22:22:39.893" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="What is the purpose of the daily reputation limit? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only one reason I could think of would be someone quickly getting an incredulously high reputation and accessing moderation tools to damage the site/content in some way." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5290" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2141" RevisionGUID="31d3f998-10d1-47d1-865c-663796ec9988" CreationDate="2011-08-17T22:22:39.893" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="Why a Reputation Cap?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5291" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2141" RevisionGUID="31d3f998-10d1-47d1-865c-663796ec9988" CreationDate="2011-08-17T22:22:39.893" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="|discussion|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5292" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2142" RevisionGUID="915a79c1-54cb-4454-a1e4-42c96c3dd7eb" CreationDate="2011-08-17T22:25:58.300" UserId="47" Text="This question [What is the reasoning behind the reputation cap?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/22447/59303) on Meta Stack Overflow is probably the definitive one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several reasons including the one you mention. Another is to give you a reason to stop using the site - you've hit the reputation cap, there's no need to keep posting." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5293" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2143" RevisionGUID="585f94ac-ca24-4ffa-880c-345c51c91d73" CreationDate="2011-08-18T07:27:29.730" UserId="29765" Text="I'm going to post my humble opinion, that I know in advance many people are not going to like it. (Yea, come in and vote down).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A site where the main task is judging questions instead of answering them is nonsense. I have seen very few places on the net applying such a censorship. Actually, the only questions that should be closed are the ones containing difamation or insults, things like these. Or extremely off-topic questions, like coming to bicycles.stackexchange.com and asking something related to motorbikes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The closing or not decission can't be in hands of other users, this is the task of moderators. Because we all know, marking a question to be closed is funny (more that answering them). &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5294" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2143" RevisionGUID="7eb50c32-efe4-42ac-9ea0-b1c3e7a92484" CreationDate="2011-08-18T07:40:34.277" UserId="29765" Comment="added 413 characters in body" Text="I'm going to post my humble opinion, that I know in advance many people are not going to like it. (Yea, come in and vote down).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A site where the main task is judging questions instead of answering them is nonsense. I have seen very few places on the net applying such a censorship. Actually, the only questions that should be closed are the ones containing difamation or insults, things like these. Or extremely off-topic questions, like coming to bicycles.stackexchange.com and asking something related to motorbikes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The closing or not decission can't be in hands of other users, this is the task of moderators. And plain users should not be able to influence the moderators. Because we all know, marking a question to be closed is funny (more that answering them). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm going to reason this: the Human Being is blood-thirsty by nature, when in large groups. Take a few people and they will act with responsible attitude. Take a large group and they will loose the individual consciente. See the Colosseum in classical Rome, 50.000 people demanding for brutality. similarly, if a user sees a question that has been voted down many times, he will probably follow the pack and do the same.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5295" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2144" RevisionGUID="e29f2492-b77c-4028-b989-01ca310d82c1" CreationDate="2011-08-18T16:22:33.897" UserId="27122" Text="I'd say that stackexchange is something like drug... Better than drug&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cap &quot;forces&quot; you to take a break, and do something else. When I reach cap (+ 100 more reputation) I have really no reason to continue posting, as ChrisF said" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5297" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2146" RevisionGUID="fc0b2240-56cb-476b-b10e-5ef91153afa6" CreationDate="2011-08-18T20:08:29.733" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This tag is a broken window, and it's causing problems by its continued existence:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* People [see the tag and assume career advice questions are automatically on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102177/ever-wondered-why-i-havent-got-that-job-position-instead-of-him-her)&#xD;&#xA;* It's a Venus Fly Trap for Bad questions&#xD;&#xA;* It's a completely superfluous tag to our *other* bad career tag, [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've [already discussed how bad this tag is](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952), and should it go away, none of the questions still tagged with it would be untagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can [tag:career-advice] please be blacklisted once and for all?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5298" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2146" RevisionGUID="fc0b2240-56cb-476b-b10e-5ef91153afa6" CreationDate="2011-08-18T20:08:29.733" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Blacklist [career-advice]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5299" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2146" RevisionGUID="fc0b2240-56cb-476b-b10e-5ef91153afa6" CreationDate="2011-08-18T20:08:29.733" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|feature-request|tags|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5300" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1702" RevisionGUID="42463add-6fd5-4903-b994-f2c1c87dc407" CreationDate="2011-08-18T20:20:43.330" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|tags|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5301" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2147" RevisionGUID="8bcdd42c-90e4-445b-a64a-fd5236a1326b" CreationDate="2011-08-18T20:29:17.700" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Other sites have been able to get their site name and primary focus blacklisted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [English](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/625/how-about-getting-rid-of-the-english-tag)&#xD;&#xA;* [WordPress](http://meta.wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/338/why-wordpress-tag-on-wordpress-answers)&#xD;&#xA;* [Drupal](http://meta.drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/128/block-the-cms-tag)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a request to get ours blacklisted as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our entire site could be tagged with [tag:programming] and/or [tag:programmers], and people tend to use it as a tag when they don't have anything better to tag their question. And, like other zero-content tags, it tends to attract a large number of questions that were never good fits for our site anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previous discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58/tag-consolidation-and-blacklist&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/543/do-we-need-a-programming-tag-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5302" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2147" RevisionGUID="8bcdd42c-90e4-445b-a64a-fd5236a1326b" CreationDate="2011-08-18T20:29:17.700" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Blacklist [programming] and [programmers]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5303" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2147" RevisionGUID="8bcdd42c-90e4-445b-a64a-fd5236a1326b" CreationDate="2011-08-18T20:29:17.700" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|feature-request|tags|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5304" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2148" RevisionGUID="549a91e9-a8a8-49ba-a850-b17291320417" CreationDate="2011-08-18T20:38:12.907" UserId="3781" Text="The linked post has the tags [tag:career], [tag:jobs], [tag:job-market]. and [tag:career-advice].  Except for [tag:job-market], they could all be synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there are other tags with a similar problem.  Here are the tag wiki excerpt and body for each tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:career]  &#xD;&#xA;   **Excerpt**: Questions about career, rather than a specific programming project.  &#xD;&#xA;   **Wiki**: See the separate tags for hiring and interviewing.&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:jobs]  &#xD;&#xA;   **Excerpt**: The [tag:jobs] tag has no wiki summary, would you like to [help us create it?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/edit-tag-wiki/1279)  &#xD;&#xA;   **Wiki**: No wiki&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:career-advice]&#xD;&#xA;   **Excerpt**: This tag is no longer used. Please see tag wiki for better alternatives.  &#xD;&#xA;   **Wiki**: &#xD;&#xA;   &gt; This tag is no longer used, as general career advice questions are not on-topic here. Please use the following suggestions instead:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; * [tag:career-development] for questions that are about developing your career.   &#xD;&#xA;   &gt; * [tag:job-searching] or [tag:job-market] for questions about getting a *new* job. &#xD;&#xA;   &gt; * [tag:job-satisfaction] for questions about work/life balance, creating better workspaces, etc.&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; * [tag:job-advancement] and also [tag:teamwork] for questions about excelling in one's current position.&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; * [tag:project-management] and/or [tag:employee-relations] and/or [tag:business] for employer-focused questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:job-market]  &#xD;&#xA;   **Excerpt**: Career prospects as programmers in general. Likelihood of getting hired if one is seeking a new position,a.k.a. job. There can be some cases where the question is rather specific in terms of applying to a small geographic area however.  &#xD;&#xA;   **Wiki**: Same as Excerpt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the exception of [tag:job-market], none of these tags mention that they should be exclusive to programming.  For honeypot tags like this, it's important that the excerpt mentions that they must be applied to programming-specific problems.  [tag:career-development] is colloquially synonymous with [tag:career-advice], but *it has no excerpt*.  By blacklisting one pair of words, you're just killing the messenger.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fix the excerpts, so that users see something useful when they type the tags in." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5305" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2149" RevisionGUID="7b2bab8a-e44f-474a-bcc8-ea78b8ba6467" CreationDate="2011-08-18T20:48:19.263" UserId="2654" Text="Go for it. I agree, having the main focus as a tag doesn't make sense. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5306" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2150" RevisionGUID="4d1ccb8c-16c3-4d89-a6cb-5b2a8ab0c74c" CreationDate="2011-08-18T21:28:18.243" UserId="63" Text="You have six questions in that tag, all closed - you could just delete them and the tag would go away... [tag:career] looks like the bigger monster here, but you obviously have your work cut out for you before *that* can be removed easily. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If people are re-creating the tag for bad questions, then you have bad questions to close. If they're re-creating it for *good* questions, then it should be synonymized with something else. Blacklisting it seems like sweeping the problem under the rug - the problem being the questions themselves..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5307" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2146" RevisionGUID="2b69c273-49e4-4956-93ee-a7787a6bd52a" CreationDate="2011-08-18T22:15:40.103" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-deferred|tags|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5308" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2151" RevisionGUID="8c159673-8ffb-418f-99fd-b18f49f075cc" CreationDate="2011-08-19T00:00:12.703" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I've cleaned up [tag:career-advice]: any open questions were retagged and any closed questions were deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also added new tag wikis for [tag:career], [tag:jobs], [tag:job-market], and [tag:career-development].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, I've begun work on the gargantuan task of cleaning up [tag:career]: starting from the newest questions and working backward, I'm cleaning up any non-closed question and adding the appropriate tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd welcome help in this, but we need to take care not to flood the home page with old questions. As a natural throttle, I'm not simply editing the tags, as nearly every question in [tag:career] could use substantial improvements." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5309" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2152" RevisionGUID="2c2b33f1-eb1f-4c33-b22e-fa1807d3e564" CreationDate="2011-08-19T00:09:20.113" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Every question is about advice: it'd be akin to tagging every question with [tag:help] or [tag:this-is-a-question-i-assure-you]. I would speculate the vast majority of questions tagged [tag:advice] are there because of misuse of the tag box (e.g. typing &quot;career advice&quot; instead of &quot;career-advice&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So can we kill [tag:advice] with fire?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5310" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2152" RevisionGUID="2c2b33f1-eb1f-4c33-b22e-fa1807d3e564" CreationDate="2011-08-19T00:09:20.113" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Blacklist [advice]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5311" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2152" RevisionGUID="2c2b33f1-eb1f-4c33-b22e-fa1807d3e564" CreationDate="2011-08-19T00:09:20.113" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|feature-request|tags|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5312" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2060" RevisionGUID="ebe43666-224a-40a5-a2ee-64303a510ff3" CreationDate="2011-08-19T00:40:27.473" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/104351988803833856" />
  <row Id="5313" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="82" RevisionGUID="54aaf63c-5941-432c-924b-5d0dc9bbe9eb" CreationDate="2011-08-19T01:02:50.447" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5314" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2015" RevisionGUID="79489767-42e5-4363-b2a4-e773b2a6e4df" CreationDate="2011-08-19T06:40:28.193" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/104442588127428608" />
  <row Id="5315" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2153" RevisionGUID="2dee9e93-824f-4023-ac95-3068beeb42a1" CreationDate="2011-08-19T07:43:23.740" UserId="47" Text="Sounds like a fine plan to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tag probably started out as &quot;career advice&quot; (i.e. without the hyphen) but it seems to have taken on a life of its own." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5316" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2134" RevisionGUID="6391035f-43b5-489d-9b04-44517834d342" CreationDate="2011-08-19T09:40:29.210" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/104487890708471808" />
  <row Id="5317" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2147" RevisionGUID="c816ee63-82fb-4a78-bfa8-0450644e9307" CreationDate="2011-08-19T12:40:30.583" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/104533195457966081" />
  <row Id="5318" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2048" RevisionGUID="d863a8c8-9871-4d15-8507-6bb899a65666" CreationDate="2011-08-19T15:40:31.613" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/104578498332602370" />
  <row Id="5319" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="23" RevisionGUID="2cc8f75c-7e24-456e-83c5-95a79e211048" CreationDate="2011-08-19T16:06:09.183" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Can we get a &amp;quot;Belongs on StackOverflow&amp;quot; as a closing reason?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/441/can-we-get-a-belongs-on-stackoverflow-as-a-closing-reason)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;When the beta will be over, should the subjective question of StackOverflow be migrated here ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example question : &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/76364/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skill  &#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/84556/whats-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5320" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="23" RevisionGUID="3332128a-5b56-4660-893d-9128e2ea112b" CreationDate="2011-08-19T16:06:07.000" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[441],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5321" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="82" RevisionGUID="8aa32acc-5d02-411d-89d2-04d5b6d6a6aa" CreationDate="2011-08-19T16:06:25.110" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Can we get a &amp;quot;Belongs on StackOverflow&amp;quot; as a closing reason?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/441/can-we-get-a-belongs-on-stackoverflow-as-a-closing-reason)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;It would be nice if some questions such as the famous quote and cartoon questions from StackOverflow could be copied or moved to this site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5322" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="82" RevisionGUID="8b0c06d6-7c40-45f0-b135-f6c6faf01cd6" CreationDate="2011-08-19T16:06:24.487" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[441],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5323" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2114" RevisionGUID="91fbd534-e803-4017-9752-a1ffa7bd7985" CreationDate="2011-08-19T19:22:31.767" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|featured|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5324" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2154" RevisionGUID="0817150b-b4a0-4a89-998f-22d9b5bd660c" CreationDate="2011-08-19T19:37:12.903" UserId="27757" Text="If you look at my programmers profile [BlackJack][1], you can see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`flag weight 518.3176`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to happen..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/27757/blackjack" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5325" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2154" RevisionGUID="0817150b-b4a0-4a89-998f-22d9b5bd660c" CreationDate="2011-08-19T19:37:12.903" UserId="27757" Text="Decimal point flag weight" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5326" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2154" RevisionGUID="0817150b-b4a0-4a89-998f-22d9b5bd660c" CreationDate="2011-08-19T19:37:12.903" UserId="27757" Text="|support|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5327" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2154" RevisionGUID="7935038d-83e4-4ed2-95d6-5f28547bc130" CreationDate="2011-08-19T19:38:31.963" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="It's by design. Relevant MSO entry incoming." Text="|support|status-bydesign|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5328" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2155" RevisionGUID="045908d3-a71a-4b50-9bcb-45cb24a2347c" CreationDate="2011-08-19T19:42:38.133" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="After 500, your flag weight increases asymptotically towards the current cap of 750. Because of this, as you get closer and closer to the cap, it's possible to only receive .001 flag weight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So rather than display a rounded number (and thus, no change as you get closer to the cap when you flag correctly), it's shown as a double once you pass 500.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More information:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is flag weight?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight/80178#80178)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unnecessary precision displayed for flag weight](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/83657/unnecessary-precision-displayed-for-flag-weight)&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the flag weight formula in the 500-750 range?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/83530/whats-the-flag-weight-formula-in-the-500-750-range)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5329" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2156" RevisionGUID="df2e4a82-42da-411b-a995-897ccf065a1d" CreationDate="2011-08-19T20:46:09.087" UserId="22390" Text="I propose that we redefine what constitutes an off-topic question.  Currently, we define a question that does not 100% apply **only** to software developers as a profession as off-topic.  Lately I have seen questions that are of relevance to the community regarding career and job decisions closed as &quot;off-topic&quot; because the nature of the question can also be applied to another profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my belief that, given the nature of our field, certain questions are applicable in a different sense to us than to a general-purpose career.  For example, questions regarding flexible hours, or telecommuting, or overtime have a different context for programmers than for, say, a salesperson.  Advice which could apply to general careers may not always apply to developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this reason, I propose that we redefine the concept of off-topic so that general-purpose career questions are valid for the site **as long as** they are approached from the perspective of a programmer.  What I mean is a general career question would remain off-topic, but a question regarding, let's say, how to negotiate flexible hours or telecommuting or how to deal with a micromanaging supervisor should be allowed because the answers and reasons are *different* for programmers than for other professions and the advice given should directly relate to programmers instead of being generic advice." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5330" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2156" RevisionGUID="df2e4a82-42da-411b-a995-897ccf065a1d" CreationDate="2011-08-19T20:46:09.087" UserId="22390" Text="Redefine what constitutes an off-topic question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5331" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2156" RevisionGUID="df2e4a82-42da-411b-a995-897ccf065a1d" CreationDate="2011-08-19T20:46:09.087" UserId="22390" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5332" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2157" RevisionGUID="453e419b-0afc-426b-9f57-449c0617eb7d" CreationDate="2011-08-19T20:55:25.860" UserId="226" Text="Do you have any examples of general career questions that did not attract generic answers but were closed anyway? We can (and should) review them for reopening. When a question looks general *but generates programmer-specific answers*, it is already on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think [negotiating flexible hours](http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=negotiate+flexible+hours) or [dealing with a micromanager](http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=dealing+with+a+micromanager) are problems that require unique programmer insights to solve. There are hundreds of sites out there that cover possible solutions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't want to repeat generic advice here just because it might apply to a programmer or the person who asked the question happens to be a programmer. We are not Career Advice Stack Exchange and unfortunately there one right now at all. There are a few proposals on Area 51 such as [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters) where more general questions could thrive, so I suggest following that proposal to see that niche covered on Stack Exchange." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5333" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2157" RevisionGUID="9cd86b33-6ec0-4bca-bfb8-868e4ae50d9f" CreationDate="2011-08-19T21:02:00.633" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 6 characters in body" Text="Do you have any examples of general career questions that did not attract generic answers but were closed anyway? We can (and should) review them for reopening. When a question looks general *but generates programmer-specific answers*, it is already on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think [negotiating flexible hours](http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=negotiate+flexible+hours) or [dealing with a micromanager](http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=dealing+with+a+micromanager) are problems that require unique programmer insights to solve. There are hundreds of sites out there that cover possible solutions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't want to repeat generic advice here just because it might apply to a programmer or the person who asked the question happens to be a programmer. We are not Career Advice Stack Exchange and unfortunately there isn't one right now at all. There are a few proposals on Area 51 such as [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters) where more general questions could thrive, so I suggest following that proposal to see that niche covered on Stack Exchange." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5334" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2156" RevisionGUID="904af8d6-df7b-4b12-9f9f-0c02748ad5b5" CreationDate="2011-08-19T21:04:40.213" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5335" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2038" RevisionGUID="ad2e77c3-f151-40e0-afaf-0e9455f0b7de" CreationDate="2011-08-20T00:40:31.947" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/104714396038733824" />
  <row Id="5336" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2158" RevisionGUID="3ee28cac-c276-4d30-be8a-770892e2ed05" CreationDate="2011-08-20T01:30:44.157" UserId="37" Text="Right off the top of my head, go to the top questions by month:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/?tab=month&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rule out any [closed] questions, obviously -- and possibly anything that was contentious enough to get closed and reopened based on the revision history of the question -- and **there's your list of good, on-topic questions.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sure the mods could hand-pick favorite &quot;best of&quot; here, but is that really necessary?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5337" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2152" RevisionGUID="f70d53b9-2491-4559-b371-d7b4aef01c92" CreationDate="2011-08-20T03:40:33.230" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/104759697604751360" />
  <row Id="5338" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2013" RevisionGUID="cb9a3e2b-8014-4691-91ed-92ac55b04a85" CreationDate="2011-08-20T06:40:33.813" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/104804999468564480" />
  <row Id="5339" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2131" RevisionGUID="f6f462cc-3c59-4be9-b8ba-4875a0b03de3" CreationDate="2011-08-20T09:40:35.093" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/104850297867866112" />
  <row Id="5340" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2130" RevisionGUID="b6c0ffec-3924-4789-86c2-50c36b62eac1" CreationDate="2011-08-20T15:40:35.843" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/104940903533252608" />
  <row Id="5341" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2062" RevisionGUID="84590a78-2380-4c70-96c7-6321018f7050" CreationDate="2011-08-20T21:40:36.557" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/105031503544721408" />
  <row Id="5342" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2108" RevisionGUID="30b8055e-af08-419d-b044-003df532e7c7" CreationDate="2011-08-21T03:40:38.290" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/105122108367060992" />
  <row Id="5343" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2159" RevisionGUID="9b9ee5f5-e4be-49b6-bf78-1a429674dbe8" CreationDate="2011-08-22T15:12:33.577" UserId="6222" Text="I see several types of closed questions on the Programmers' stack exchange that concern me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. ***Non-duplicate-duplicates***: [Questions closed as duplicates that are at least some degree different from the question that is cited as a duplicate](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101988/should-developers-accept-overtime-weekend-work-denied-bonus-payments). (The concern here is that a good question, when asked in a different light, can elicit different, possibly better answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. ***Poor questions***: [Questions closed as not fulfilling enough of the 6 guidelines for a good question that are &quot;on the border&quot; of fulfilling enough of the guidelines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102528/what-is-more-standard-shortening-for-regular-expression-regex-or-regexp) that, to the casual observer, appear to be good questions. (The concern here is that closing good questions makes the exchange less valuable as a medium for exchanging information about, in this case, the programming profession).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. ***Mis-labeled closed questions***: Questions closed as not fulfilling guidelines that are actually good questions, but clearly off-topic, [such as this one on what is an iteration](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95920/what-is-each-time-through-a-loop-called), or [this one from a 14-year old beginner](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97785/my-dad-is-impatient-with-the-pace-of-my-learning-to-program-what-do-i-do). (The concern here is that newbies can become confused between what it means to stay on topic and how to ask good questions.  Another concern is that moderation can take the appearance of being incompetent when it lists the wrong reason for closing a question.) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. ***Marginally off-topic questions***: Questions that are closed as being off topic that, while not being exactly on topic, have the casual appearance of being on topic, such as [this one about interruptions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33667/how-to-fend-off-external-interuptions). (The concern here is that closing good questions makes the exchange less valuable as a medium for exchanging information about, in this case, the programming profession. Another concern is that moderation can take the appearance of being in the control of mindless bureaucrats rather than reasoned, pragmatic elders.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way to handle this is to ask the moderators to take some extra time to explain close decisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance, noting that Programmers' stack exchange is for ***expert*** programmers would be sufficient to close [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97785/my-dad-is-impatient-with-the-pace-of-my-learning-to-program-what-do-i-do) and [this one also](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95920/what-is-each-time-through-a-loop-called).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For ***poor questions***such as [this one on GIT](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96933/why-did-git-get-so-much-hype-while-others-dont) or this one on [regex/regexp](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102528/what-is-more-standard-shortening-for-regular-expression-regex-or-regexp), ticking off the guidelines that are not present would really help casual users understand the elements of a good question better. For instance, the [regex/regexp](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102528/what-is-more-standard-shortening-for-regular-expression-regex-or-regexp) question could be closed because it is merely mindless fun, it cannot be answered through facts or references, it does not invite sharing of experiences, it is not asked in an impartial tone, it only elicits short answers, and it will not inspire good answers. (Note -- I am curious about why [the regex/regexp question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102528/what-is-more-standard-shortening-for-regular-expression-regex-or-regexp) is not a good question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The entire community can help out with ***mis-labeled closed*** questions by flagging then for re-labeling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When closing, ***marginally off-topic*** questions -- either close them with the caveat that they be reworded to apply to expert programmers, or explain why the question is considered off-topic. For instance, the [question about interruptions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33667/how-to-fend-off-external-interuptions) is a real problem for programmers as interruptions impact the productivity of programmers differently than they impact most other professions, so either it can be reworded to apply to programmers, or it should be explained that this is off-topic because other professions (such as mathematicians) also have the same problem with interruptions, so this question will always be considered off-topic in this stack exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not know the answer to the ***non-duplicate-duplicate*** issue, this one is heavily discussed in [meta.stackoverflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=non-duplicate+duplicate) as well. It is just one of the minor annoyances of using stack exchanges, I guess.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The moderators for this stack exchange have been very busy lately. I do not know if it is fair to ask them to shoulder the additional thought and care that the above recommendations would entail." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5344" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2160" RevisionGUID="50f81458-736a-43ff-9d7e-83a67151cc90" CreationDate="2011-08-25T02:51:32.567" UserId="30138" Text="I had asked these two questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [Roadmap for switching from a Developer to a Project Manager][1]&#xD;&#xA; 2. [What can developer do when he bored of his job?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;but both of them are closed for the same reason. So if I want to ask this kind of question again, where can I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89320/roadmap-for-switching-from-a-developer-to-a-project-manager&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/103301/what-can-developer-do-when-he-bored-of-his-job" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5345" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2160" RevisionGUID="50f81458-736a-43ff-9d7e-83a67151cc90" CreationDate="2011-08-25T02:51:32.567" UserId="30138" Text="where can I ask this kind of questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5346" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2160" RevisionGUID="50f81458-736a-43ff-9d7e-83a67151cc90" CreationDate="2011-08-25T02:51:32.567" UserId="30138" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5347" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2161" RevisionGUID="674cbd74-4c40-4b73-a123-3cf93eb16db1" CreationDate="2011-08-25T17:00:08.270" UserId="25262" Text="I agree with the OP that career questions should definitely be part of this site.  It seems that career questions may or may not be on topic depending on what moderator sees the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I generally feel that these Stack Exchange sites should err on the side of being inclusive when it comes to edge cases unless there is another Stack Exchange that is definitely a better fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question that pertains to programming as a career, I think we have a great pool of talent here to provide answers and a great audience to appreciate said answers.  I am strongly against closing these questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5348" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2162" RevisionGUID="d3f80533-c41e-432a-89f3-1af09e2648cb" CreationDate="2011-08-25T20:23:56.993" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="It's important to realize that Programmers is not a general career advice site, and a question isn't automatically on-topic merely because a programmer asked it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange works because each site caters to a specific group of experts: on Gaming.SE, it's gamers. On Server Fault, it's sysadmins. On Cooking.SE, it's cooks. The value in asking a question on that site is that you'll be getting the expertise of the target audience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But this is not a one-way proposition, it's a social contract. The reason there are a set of experts there at all is because an SE site *doesn't* allow every question to be on-topic: the only questions that are on-topic are the ones that are actually benefited by getting answers from the expert audience, in fact the questions that could *only* be answered by the expert audience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are tons and tons and tons and tons of questions that a programmer might face in their career that happen in every other career too. They don't require a programmer to answer them, and programmers aren't in a special position to answer them better than anyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In many cases, a programmer is in a *worse* position to answer them than the appropriate expert, and when you ask a question, the answers you receive aren't actually expert answers, they're just opinions or guesses. And that's when SE starts to lose its value: if any answer will do, regardless of whether the person answering is qualified to answer it, there are a host of other sites on the internet for that. I'd suggest [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com), but [Quora](http://quora.com) will do too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if you're looking for expert answers from *programmers*, your question should have the proper scope:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it can be applied to anyone, regardless of profession (what to do when you're bored), it's not on-topic here. If it's not about the business of being a programmer (how do I get into project management), it's not on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where would those questions be on-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* For the question about how to get into project management, you might want to check with our sister-site, [Project Management.SE](http://meta.pm.stackexchange.com). However, being a general question, I wouldn't be surprised if it's already been asked and answered there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* For the question about what to do when you're bored: I'm not sure you're going to find anywhere on the Stack Exchange network, or any proposal for a SE site, where such a question would be welcome. There is no expert answer on what to do when you're bored: perhaps the only advice that's even useful is to find something to do that's interesting.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5349" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2163" RevisionGUID="90f5f509-eb3e-4c8d-8c10-527e04f3576f" CreationDate="2011-08-25T21:30:24.493" UserId="16929" Text="I have watched my reputation changes and understood every one, until today.  I answered a question this morning, recieved 39 votes, but no reputation change at all from that question.  I thought I understood the reputation system pretty well, including the CommunityWiki exception, and the daily cap, but I'm missing something today." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5350" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2163" RevisionGUID="90f5f509-eb3e-4c8d-8c10-527e04f3576f" CreationDate="2011-08-25T21:30:24.493" UserId="16929" Text="39 + votes but no reputation change" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5351" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2163" RevisionGUID="90f5f509-eb3e-4c8d-8c10-527e04f3576f" CreationDate="2011-08-25T21:30:24.493" UserId="16929" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5352" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2164" RevisionGUID="800f6d13-d6e5-4137-840c-d38464cd1126" CreationDate="2011-08-25T21:38:54.140" UserId="226" Text="[Your answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/103501/thoughts-on-development-using-virtual-machines/103504#103504) was marked &quot;community wiki&quot;. Revision history showed it was set by you 18 hours ago (as of this writing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best explanation I can give is that you accidentally checked the &quot;community wiki&quot; checkbox when making the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I removed the CW status and turned it into a normal answer. Visit the [reputation breakdown](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/reputation) and use the button at the bottom of the page to trigger a reputation recalc. You should get your reputation back (up to the daily cap) at that point." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5353" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2156" RevisionGUID="23767944-fc38-4977-98fa-3fcce69f9556" CreationDate="2011-08-26T05:56:27.403" UserId="37" Comment="edited title" Text="Redefine what constitutes an off-topic career or job question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5354" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2165" RevisionGUID="15d5740b-e999-4b7b-b1be-cc240368a47b" CreationDate="2011-08-26T08:28:16.433" UserId="8413" Text="When I hover over the profile link, a box pops out showing links for &quot;activity, privileges and logout&quot;.  &#xD;&#xA;The first time I hover, the box gets formed for the first time, so it's first a small box and then it loads all the content and it becomes a bigger box.  &#xD;&#xA;The trouble is that during the 1 second that it is a small box, a user would've already located the 'logout' link and will be moving the mouse pointer to click on it. By the time the mouse pointer reaches the logout link, the 'privileges' link also loads and the user ends up clicking on the privileges link.  &#xD;&#xA;This happens only the first time you log out once you've opened the browser.  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;Would it be possible for you to either switch positions of the 'logout' link with the 'activity' link so that the link does not jump suddenly and be an annoyance while logging out?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5355" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2165" RevisionGUID="15d5740b-e999-4b7b-b1be-cc240368a47b" CreationDate="2011-08-26T08:28:16.433" UserId="8413" Text="Logging out the first time causes an unintentional click on the privileges link" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5356" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2165" RevisionGUID="15d5740b-e999-4b7b-b1be-cc240368a47b" CreationDate="2011-08-26T08:28:16.433" UserId="8413" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5357" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2166" RevisionGUID="8671a437-2bf3-44a8-be68-af6e1a1ae9e3" CreationDate="2011-08-26T09:44:29.567" UserId="17561" Text="Mitch, that's an interesting set of figures and the differences between behaviour on StackOverflow and Programmers.Stackexchange are particularly disconcerting as an indication of the lack of line up between the community behaviour and moderation on Programmers.SE. It says to me that StackOverflow is getting its buyin right in a way that Programmers.SE is not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm obviously not privy to what the site owner wants for the site, but when you build a community based site, you can only exert a certain amount of control over the behaviour of that community before you change the community utterly. In some cases, by getting rid of some poor user behaviour, you can cause the site to grow; in other cases you just kill the site. Or you may not wind up with the community you want. I'm reminded by one comment here above that this is a site for expert programmers. The questions, however, are not expert level questions, and a lot of the more nuanced questions seem to be getting closed because nuance is being missed. This is a key criticism I have about one of my questions getting closed, incidentally. Duplicates are not always duplicates and the list of duplicates which Mark Trapp provided for this question are absolutely not duplicates. They are related, yes, but not duplicates. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mitch - I am not sure what can be done in response. When there is that level of disconnect between what the site providers what to provide and what the community would like to gain, it's hard to tell any audience &quot;we're not giving you this, so have that instead&quot; because communities just move on. I think there is an issue in that for the most part, elements of the community here see this site as having a hefty element of discussion - but that the questions/answers format is enforced in a rigid manner which tends to kill off discussion for questions to which there are non-binary answers. The response seems to be that those questions which have no straight answers and which thus, generate a large number of answers, are not necessarily good questions per the preferences of the site. While I can see the site's rationale for that, I don't agree that it's realistic. Unfortunately. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jeff - in response to your answer - given that there are some question marks over mod decisions in terms of closing questions, I would not necessarily be in favour of them being responsible for deciding what the best questions are. There's a voting protocol in place for questions and I'd be inclined to wonder why that would need to be over-ridden - again it boils down to the community not being in tune with the site owners, right? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5358" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2163" RevisionGUID="370a70ef-807a-4941-a1e3-5c3dd0204239" CreationDate="2011-08-26T13:25:53.477" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="I have watched my reputation changes and understood every one, until today.  I answered a question this morning, received 39 votes, but no reputation change at all from that answer. I thought I understood the reputation system pretty well, including the Community Wiki exception, and the daily cap, but I'm missing something today." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5359" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2167" RevisionGUID="83a998b6-57cd-427a-bd73-1dc90e509d0a" CreationDate="2011-08-26T13:33:16.617" UserId="32234" Text="[Are MS Server OSs a requirement for DVCS systems (Mercurial or Git) on the windows platform? ][1][closed]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/103199/are-ms-server-oss-a-requirement-for-dvcs-systems-mercurial-or-git-on-the-window&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet, another example of a question being closed as ‘not a real question’.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I grant the question actually requires reading to understand. Yet, people shouldn’t be closing questions if they do not understand the details. If one doesn’t use Kiln (for example) they should be additionally cautious for closing a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The very first line is:&#xD;&#xA;“Kiln (service for Mercurial) requires Windows server 2003/2008.”&#xD;&#xA;This establishes a found system requirement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The two actual questions are not only reasonable and clear, but actually bulleted to stand out as questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;• Are MS Server OSs a requirement for DVCS systems (Mercurial or Git) on the windows platform? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;• Or to put it another way, Is it practical to run DVCS (Mercurial or Git) on Windows 7?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next paragraph points out that open source software tends not to include this type of information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last bullet point is a bit vague, but taken in the context of the question is answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would at this point answer the question myself, but as it is closed cannot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer is along the lines of the following should be acceptable:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, while Kiln (service for Mercurial) requires Window Server 2003/2008 to operate, Mercurial itself does not require Windows Server 2003/2008. Many developers run Mercurial on Windows 7." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5360" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2167" RevisionGUID="83a998b6-57cd-427a-bd73-1dc90e509d0a" CreationDate="2011-08-26T13:33:16.617" UserId="32234" Text="Yet, another example of a question being closed as ‘not a real question’" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5361" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2167" RevisionGUID="83a998b6-57cd-427a-bd73-1dc90e509d0a" CreationDate="2011-08-26T13:33:16.617" UserId="32234" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5362" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2168" RevisionGUID="203c1b9d-53eb-4048-be1e-c06452b71b29" CreationDate="2011-08-26T13:38:57.993" UserId="47" Text="Well it has a) 5 down-votes and b) 3 non moderators voted to close before Mark stepped in and closed it. It could have had a couple of flags as well - I don't know I didn't see them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So all in all I think it is a bad question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think that it is answerable then please edit it to a form where it does make sense. You'll have to make a suggested edit which will need to be reviewed - but this has the added benefit of getting another pair of eyes on the question. Then either post a question here or flag it for moderator attention so we can review the closure." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5363" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2168" RevisionGUID="4a40f9c8-a187-4fd8-8ef5-e24deb87d6ea" CreationDate="2011-08-26T13:44:48.067" UserId="47" Comment="remove incorrect sentence" Text="Well it has a) 5 down-votes and b) 3 non moderators voted to close before Mark stepped in and closed it. It could have had a couple of flags as well - I don't know I didn't see them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So all in all I think it is a bad question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think that it is answerable then please edit it to a form where it does make sense. Then either post a question here or flag it for moderator attention so we can review the closure." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5364" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2165" RevisionGUID="9ec34ffc-1c5c-4ab3-a319-f71a44873266" CreationDate="2011-08-26T17:28:04.503" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5365" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2169" RevisionGUID="25601643-33a9-4d79-a9e4-0c86b45b499a" CreationDate="2011-08-26T18:29:30.960" UserId="37" Text="I agree with Anna -- this is no-repro for me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  I can't reproduce this. I get the &quot;smaller box&quot; first, but all three links (Activity, Privileges, and Logout) are already in it at that time and do not change position when the box resizes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hard to capture in a screenshot but basically the box starts out like this, then grows outward:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/AfygX.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5366" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2165" RevisionGUID="31621511-3733-4d6a-b52a-d6208c4c55ae" CreationDate="2011-08-26T18:31:24.733" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-norepro|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5367" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2170" RevisionGUID="d07c465e-200a-4fdc-83da-44020db48bfb" CreationDate="2011-08-26T19:04:03.127" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="In the previous question about this, [Jeff suggested](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation/2158#2158) that we take our cues from the top-voted questions list, but that list generally isn't indicative of question quality, just popularity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a new question view that might be more helpful in coming up with a &quot;best of Programmers&quot; list: [the Greatest Hits](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/greatest-hits):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that got a large amount of views or a large amount of feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The current algorithm divides the number of page views with the total amount of question and answer feedback received (adding a bonus for high view counts), excluding questions with less views than the median :- 238.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are still some questions in the list that are duds, but overall it does seem to be better than other question views at capturing the site's intent." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5368" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2171" RevisionGUID="f05008c8-617c-4fdf-940a-059294efa43b" CreationDate="2011-08-26T19:54:17.657" UserId="4" Text="I'm just curious as to if there have been changed in topicality recently, after I saw this question had been migrated from here to PM.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Should a group of three students working on a big programming project have a leader?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a few ways to cut this. I organized them in order of my personal preference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(1) It's on-topic both here and at PM.SE. Migration {should | should not} (aside: my preference is should not have been migrated, especially since PM is not out of beta yet) have happened. It's a project management question, but software project management is inherently different than managing projects in other engineering disciplines or even cross-disciplinary projects. Since the main focus was software, it's on-topic here. However, since it has to do with subject matter in the [Project Management Body of Knowledge][5] (mainly Project Human Resources Management), it's also on-topic at PM.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(2) It's on-topic here and should not have been migrated. One of the on-topic categories is &quot;software engineering&quot;. My take on that is that the formal definition of what is included in software engineering should come from the [SWEBOK][2]. Software engineering management is a [knowledge area in the SWEBOK][3], and therefore is on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(3) It's on topic here and should not have been migrated. The project, based on the question, is specifically and exclusively a software project. There was no mention of other engineering or business disciplines. The [P.SE FAQ][4] states that conceptual questions about software development are on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(4) It's off-topic here because it's relevant to more than just software engineers. Although software projects are different than other projects, if and how to choose a leader remains the same. It's a cross-cutting PM concern of interest to all PMs, software or otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(5) It's off-topic here because the question was worded to generally. Although it was a software project, no key concerns about developing software were identified. Unless there is some kind of demonstration of relevance to exclusively software, it should be moved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure who moved it, but these are what I see as the major possibilities for dealing with this question are. The only one I don't like is 5 - if that's the case, could the question have been edited to be made more specific?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose this does prompt another question, though. How do we deal with a site like PM that's in such overlap with a huge chunk of relevant questions? It might be something to look at in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3235/should-a-group-of-three-students-working-on-a-big-programming-project-have-a-lead&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/swebok/home&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/swebok/html/ch8&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_to_the_Project_Management_Body_of_Knowledge" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5369" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2171" RevisionGUID="f05008c8-617c-4fdf-940a-059294efa43b" CreationDate="2011-08-26T19:54:17.657" UserId="4" Text="Why was this question migrated to PM?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5370" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2171" RevisionGUID="f05008c8-617c-4fdf-940a-059294efa43b" CreationDate="2011-08-26T19:54:17.657" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5371" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2172" RevisionGUID="029f8f34-d803-4828-bfb0-3df53e155281" CreationDate="2011-08-26T20:17:11.083" UserId="226" Text="I was the one who migrated it after a quick consultation with the other moderators. As an aside, you can click on the &quot;programmers.stackexchange.com&quot; link in the &quot;Migrated from&quot; banner on PM to get back to the [original question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/103930/should-a-group-of-three-students-working-on-a-big-programming-project-have-a-lead?noredirect=1) here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reasons for the migration were a combination of #1, #4, and #5 on your list. The question (while mentioning a software team) did not focus on software development aspects of the project and the answers did not provide any information that was uniquely related to software development either. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was a general question that could be summarized as &quot;should we have a project manager/leader?&quot;. The type of project appeared to be irrelevant, and I think that made the question a better fit for PM than for us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Far as editing the question to be more specific, I'm not sure how anyone except the OP could do it. We could've asked the OP to edit it, I suppose, but I'm not sure what that'd gain us when the question as it stands is pretty good as is, but simply better for another site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5372" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2173" RevisionGUID="99a387d5-a8f4-4562-b284-3b2aa9ba02ec" CreationDate="2011-08-26T21:03:46.537" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="While I don't think it's particularly constructive to approach the problem this way, I think it's important, if we do, to work with accurate numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are 2,816 closed, but not deleted, questions on Programmers as of right now. There are 13,925 questions total on Programmers. This makes the closed, but not deleted ratio of questions 20.2%. In the 10 days since you measured this, it's gone down 3%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Isolating the metrics you did, % of closed with at least 5 score and % closed with less than or equal to 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 774. % of closed: 27.5%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 265. % of closed: 9.4%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This puts the ratio of 5+ score questions closed higher than what you had, and the ratio of &lt;= 0 score questions much lower than what you had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand why, we need to include data you didn't have access to when you did this survey: the number of deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of deleted questions on Programmers.SE is 2,975: more than the number of closed questions you see. If we also include these numbers into the mix, we get a different story:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 891. % of closed or deleted: 15.3%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 2223. % of closed or deleted: 38.3%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This paints a much different picture than the one presented in your survey. The reason why it's so drastic is because we routinely delete low-scoring questions as they are uncontroversially bad for the site and everyone agrees.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we don't delete nearly as many high-scoring answers is because &quot;closed&quot; doesn't mean &quot;bad.&quot; It means the question doesn't meet the site's guidelines in some way, but there's some value, and it could even be improved and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, *deletion*, not closure is where bad questions go to spend eternity in hell. Closure, on the other hand is the purgatory of questions. They're not on-topic, but they're providing some value, enough to stick around while we figure out what to do with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A Comparison&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that we're working with accurate numbers, how do they compare to other sites, particularly Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From a purely quantitative standpoint, Stack Overflow's numbers are in a different league:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Publicly viewable questions: 1,997,856&#xD;&#xA;* Closed, but not deleted: ~39,048 (2%)&#xD;&#xA;* Deleted: 194,008 (8.9%)&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~1,964 (5%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~4,142 (1.8%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~26,123 (67%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~199,326 (85.5%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like Programmers, Stack Overflow's ratios skew a lot higher when  deleted low-scoring questions are added, and lower when it deleted high-voted questions are added. This isn't coincidence: the same moderation style is used on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Some context&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's important, from a qualitative standpoint, to put these numbers into context. Stack Overflow is not qualitatively similar to Programmers: it has a different set of problems (notably, mammoth scale) than we do. Comparing their closed/deleted percentage to ours is about as meaningless as comparing our percentages to Quora's or Yahoo! Answers. We just simply don't have the same issues or types of questions they have: if we did, there wouldn't be a separate site. We'd just be part of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also important to put Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE into historical context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was the first, for for a long period of time, the only Stack Exchange site. It did not, for much of its history, have the benefit of the year's worth of trial and error gleaned from the Stack Exchange 2.0 project. Notably, it did not have the benefit of 40+ other sites which 40+ other sets of problems to crystalize what should and shouldn't belong there. To this day, we still have issues with this: 27% of all questions migrated here from Stack Overflow are closed and/or deleted. Thousands upon thousands of questions that should be off-topic there and on-topic here do just fine there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of its history as the flagship SE site, it also has enormous scaling issues. They have ~10 volunteer moderators for 2 million questions: one for every 200,000 asked. We have 3 for 16,000: one for every 5,300. 18% of their users are able to cast a close vote, compared to 42% of ours. We are just better equipped at closing bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The history of Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But going into our history a little bit: Stack Overflow had a serious problem with popular questions that didn't really belong anywhere: &quot;What's your favorite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What do you like about programming?&quot;, etc. When Stack Exchange 2.0 and the Area 51 engine launched, one of the first proposals to gain traction was *Not Programming Related*, intended to house all of these types of questions. It launched on September 1st, 2010 and for a period of 3 weeks, surged in popularity as all the questions repressed on Stack Overflow were asked on this new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the quality was all over the place. The site had some of the worst questions and some of the best questions. After a few weeks of this, new guidelines were put into place to try to raise the level of questions. Over the rest of the beta, these guidelines were enforced sporadically as the community tried to come to terms with its original charter and what it would take to make a useful site. On December 16, 2010 Programmers.SE was launched based on its new mission, having been the test-bed for a number of guidelines about questions that later generations of Stack Exchange sites benefitted from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left 3.5 months of questions asked during a particularly formative point in the Stack Exchange network: more than a quarter of our site's lifespan in total. Compare this to Stack Exchange, we has had the benefit of 2.5 years and wasn't originally created to be the toilet bowl of a different site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But we're slowly resolving those initial growing pains, and it's going to take some more time. The ratios will normalize, but they aren't going to normalize in the next month. It going to take several months to years, just like Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The situation isn't as dire as it might seem from one reading of the numbers. It once was dire, but that was last year. We're moving forward. I think there's a lot we can improve, but it's going to be far more constructive and productive to isolate specific failings and correct those, not to make generalizations about the site as a whole. If we do that, we might as well just shut this site down and start over." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5373" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2173" RevisionGUID="626c37cd-d984-4a56-bfa9-0e19c58e999b" CreationDate="2011-08-26T21:09:44.027" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 218 characters in body" Text="While I don't think it's particularly constructive to approach the problem this way, I think it's important, if we do, to work with accurate numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are 2,816 closed, but not deleted, questions on Programmers as of right now. There are 13,925 questions total on Programmers. This makes the closed, but not deleted ratio of questions 20.2%. In the 10 days since you measured this, it's gone down 3%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Isolating the metrics you did, % of closed with at least 5 score and % closed with less than or equal to 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 774. % of closed: 27.5%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 265. % of closed: 9.4%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This puts the ratio of 5+ score questions closed higher than what you had, and the ratio of &lt;= 0 score questions much lower than what you had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand why, we need to include data you didn't have access to when you did this survey: the number of deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of deleted questions on Programmers.SE is 2,975: more than the number of closed questions you see. If we also include these numbers into the mix, we get a different story:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 891. % of closed or deleted: 15.3%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 2223. % of closed or deleted: 38.3%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This paints a much different picture than the one presented in your survey. The reason why it's so drastic is because we routinely delete low-scoring questions as they are uncontroversially bad for the site and everyone agrees.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we don't delete nearly as many high-scoring answers is because &quot;closed&quot; doesn't mean &quot;bad.&quot; It means the question doesn't meet the site's guidelines in some way, but there's some value, and it could even be improved and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, *deletion*, not closure is where bad questions go to spend eternity in hell. Closure, on the other hand is the purgatory of questions. They're not on-topic, but they're providing some value, enough to stick around while we figure out what to do with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A Comparison&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that we're working with accurate numbers, how do they compare to other sites, particularly Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From a purely quantitative standpoint, Stack Overflow's numbers are in a different league:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Publicly viewable questions: 1,997,856&#xD;&#xA;* Closed, but not deleted: ~39,048 (2%)&#xD;&#xA;* Deleted: 194,008 (8.9%)&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~1,964 (5%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~4,142 (1.8%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~26,123 (67%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~199,326 (85.5%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like Programmers, Stack Overflow's ratios skew a lot higher when  deleted low-scoring questions are added, and lower when it deleted high-voted questions are added. This isn't coincidence: the same moderation style is used on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Some context&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's important, from a qualitative standpoint, to put these numbers into context. Stack Overflow is not qualitatively similar to Programmers: it has a different set of problems (notably, mammoth scale) than we do. Comparing their closed/deleted percentage to ours is about as meaningless as comparing our percentages to Quora's or Yahoo! Answers. We just simply don't have the same issues or types of questions they have: if we did, there wouldn't be a separate site. We'd just be part of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also important to put Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE into historical context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was the first, for for a long period of time, the only Stack Exchange site. It did not, for much of its history, have the benefit of the year's worth of trial and error gleaned from the Stack Exchange 2.0 project. Notably, it did not have the benefit of 40+ other sites with 40+ other sets of problems to crystalize what makes and doesn't make a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this day, we still have issues with this: 27% of all questions migrated here from Stack Overflow are closed and/or deleted. Thousands upon thousands of questions that should be off-topic there and on-topic here never get closed or migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of its history as the flagship SE site, it also has enormous scaling issues. They have ~10 volunteer moderators for 2 million questions: one for every 200,000 asked. We have 3 for 16,000: one for every 5,300. 18% of their users are able to cast a close vote, compared to 42% of ours. We are just better equipped at closing bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The history of Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But going into our history a little bit: Stack Overflow had a serious problem with popular questions that didn't really belong anywhere: &quot;What's your favorite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What do you like about programming?&quot;, etc. When Stack Exchange 2.0 and the Area 51 engine launched, one of the first proposals to gain traction was *Not Programming Related*, intended to house all of these types of questions. It launched on September 1st, 2010 and for a period of 3 weeks, surged in popularity as all the questions repressed on Stack Overflow were asked on this new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the quality was all over the place. The site had some of the worst questions and some of the best questions. After a few weeks of this, new guidelines were put into place to try to raise the level of questions. Over the rest of the beta, these guidelines were enforced sporadically as the community tried to come to terms with its original charter and what it would take to make a useful site. On December 16, 2010 Programmers.SE was launched based on its new mission, having been the test-bed for a number of guidelines about questions that later generations of Stack Exchange sites benefitted from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left 3.5 months of questions asked during a particularly formative point in the Stack Exchange network: more than a quarter of our site's lifespan in total. Compare this to Stack Exchange, we has had the benefit of 2.5 years and wasn't originally created to be the toilet bowl of a different site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But we're slowly resolving those initial growing pains, and it's going to take some more time. The ratios will normalize, but they aren't going to normalize in the next month. It going to take several months to years, just like Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The situation isn't as dire as it might seem from one reading of the numbers. It once was dire, but that was last year. We're moving forward: our traffic is increasing and our closed ratio is decreasing. More and more, people are taking ownership of Programmers.SE as something to be proud of, and the quality of questions and answers is noticeably rising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there's a lot we can improve, but it's going to be far more constructive and productive to isolate specific failings and correct those, not to make generalizations about the site as a whole. If we do that, we might as well just shut this site down and start over." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5374" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2173" RevisionGUID="5e2ae546-b15f-46b5-9ec2-607277c8d6ec" CreationDate="2011-08-26T21:14:00.350" UserId="47" Comment="corrected the number of moderators (even though one is less active)" Text="While I don't think it's particularly constructive to approach the problem this way, I think it's important, if we do, to work with accurate numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are 2,816 closed, but not deleted, questions on Programmers as of right now. There are 13,925 questions total on Programmers. This makes the closed, but not deleted ratio of questions 20.2%. In the 10 days since you measured this, it's gone down 3%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Isolating the metrics you did, % of closed with at least 5 score and % closed with less than or equal to 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 774. % of closed: 27.5%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 265. % of closed: 9.4%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This puts the ratio of 5+ score questions closed higher than what you had, and the ratio of &lt;= 0 score questions much lower than what you had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand why, we need to include data you didn't have access to when you did this survey: the number of deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of deleted questions on Programmers.SE is 2,975: more than the number of closed questions you see. If we also include these numbers into the mix, we get a different story:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 891. % of closed or deleted: 15.3%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 2223. % of closed or deleted: 38.3%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This paints a much different picture than the one presented in your survey. The reason why it's so drastic is because we routinely delete low-scoring questions as they are uncontroversially bad for the site and everyone agrees.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we don't delete nearly as many high-scoring answers is because &quot;closed&quot; doesn't mean &quot;bad.&quot; It means the question doesn't meet the site's guidelines in some way, but there's some value, and it could even be improved and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, *deletion*, not closure is where bad questions go to spend eternity in hell. Closure, on the other hand is the purgatory of questions. They're not on-topic, but they're providing some value, enough to stick around while we figure out what to do with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A Comparison&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that we're working with accurate numbers, how do they compare to other sites, particularly Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From a purely quantitative standpoint, Stack Overflow's numbers are in a different league:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Publicly viewable questions: 1,997,856&#xD;&#xA;* Closed, but not deleted: ~39,048 (2%)&#xD;&#xA;* Deleted: 194,008 (8.9%)&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~1,964 (5%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~4,142 (1.8%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~26,123 (67%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~199,326 (85.5%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like Programmers, Stack Overflow's ratios skew a lot higher when  deleted low-scoring questions are added, and lower when it deleted high-voted questions are added. This isn't coincidence: the same moderation style is used on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Some context&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's important, from a qualitative standpoint, to put these numbers into context. Stack Overflow is not qualitatively similar to Programmers: it has a different set of problems (notably, mammoth scale) than we do. Comparing their closed/deleted percentage to ours is about as meaningless as comparing our percentages to Quora's or Yahoo! Answers. We just simply don't have the same issues or types of questions they have: if we did, there wouldn't be a separate site. We'd just be part of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also important to put Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE into historical context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was the first, for for a long period of time, the only Stack Exchange site. It did not, for much of its history, have the benefit of the year's worth of trial and error gleaned from the Stack Exchange 2.0 project. Notably, it did not have the benefit of 40+ other sites with 40+ other sets of problems to crystalize what makes and doesn't make a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this day, we still have issues with this: 27% of all questions migrated here from Stack Overflow are closed and/or deleted. Thousands upon thousands of questions that should be off-topic there and on-topic here never get closed or migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of its history as the flagship SE site, it also has enormous scaling issues. They have ~10 volunteer moderators for 2 million questions: one for every 200,000 asked. We have 4 for 16,000: one for every 4,000. 18% of their users are able to cast a close vote, compared to 42% of ours. We are just better equipped at closing bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The history of Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But going into our history a little bit: Stack Overflow had a serious problem with popular questions that didn't really belong anywhere: &quot;What's your favorite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What do you like about programming?&quot;, etc. When Stack Exchange 2.0 and the Area 51 engine launched, one of the first proposals to gain traction was *Not Programming Related*, intended to house all of these types of questions. It launched on September 1st, 2010 and for a period of 3 weeks, surged in popularity as all the questions repressed on Stack Overflow were asked on this new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the quality was all over the place. The site had some of the worst questions and some of the best questions. After a few weeks of this, new guidelines were put into place to try to raise the level of questions. Over the rest of the beta, these guidelines were enforced sporadically as the community tried to come to terms with its original charter and what it would take to make a useful site. On December 16, 2010 Programmers.SE was launched based on its new mission, having been the test-bed for a number of guidelines about questions that later generations of Stack Exchange sites benefitted from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left 3.5 months of questions asked during a particularly formative point in the Stack Exchange network: more than a quarter of our site's lifespan in total. Compare this to Stack Exchange, we has had the benefit of 2.5 years and wasn't originally created to be the toilet bowl of a different site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But we're slowly resolving those initial growing pains, and it's going to take some more time. The ratios will normalize, but they aren't going to normalize in the next month. It going to take several months to years, just like Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The situation isn't as dire as it might seem from one reading of the numbers. It once was dire, but that was last year. We're moving forward: our traffic is increasing and our closed ratio is decreasing. More and more, people are taking ownership of Programmers.SE as something to be proud of, and the quality of questions and answers is noticeably rising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there's a lot we can improve, but it's going to be far more constructive and productive to isolate specific failings and correct those, not to make generalizations about the site as a whole. If we do that, we might as well just shut this site down and start over." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5375" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2173" RevisionGUID="e5482a5c-35f0-4923-ae62-a9bd21f875d5" CreationDate="2011-08-26T21:18:41.520" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 752 characters in body" Text="While I don't think it's particularly constructive to approach the problem this way, I think it's important, if we do, to work with accurate numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are 2,816 closed, but not deleted, questions on Programmers as of right now. There are 13,925 questions total on Programmers. This makes the closed, but not deleted ratio of questions 20.2%. In the 10 days since you measured this, it's gone down 3%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Isolating the metrics you did, % of closed with at least 5 score and % closed with less than or equal to 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 774. % of closed: 27.5%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 265. % of closed: 9.4%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This puts the ratio of 5+ score questions closed higher than what you had, and the ratio of &lt;= 0 score questions much lower than what you had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand why, we need to include data you didn't have access to when you did this survey: the number of deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of deleted questions on Programmers.SE is 2,975: more than the number of closed questions you see. If we also include these numbers into the mix, we get a different story:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 891. % of closed or deleted: 15.3%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 2223. % of closed or deleted: 38.3%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This paints a much different picture than the one presented in your survey. The reason why it's so drastic is because we routinely delete low-scoring questions as they are uncontroversially bad for the site and everyone agrees.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we don't delete nearly as many high-scoring answers is because [&quot;closed&quot; doesn't mean &quot;bad&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed) It means the question doesn't meet the site's guidelines in some way, but there's some value, and it could even be improved and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, *deletion*—not closure—is where bad questions go to spend eternity in Hell. Closure, on the other hand, is the purgatory of questions. They're not on-topic, but they're providing some value: enough to stick around while we figure out what to do with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A Comparison&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that we're working with accurate numbers, how do they compare to other sites, particularly Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From a purely quantitative standpoint, Stack Overflow's numbers are in a different league:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Publicly viewable questions: 1,997,856&#xD;&#xA;* Closed, but not deleted: ~39,048 (2%)&#xD;&#xA;* Deleted: 194,008 (8.9%)&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~1,964 (5%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~4,142 (1.8%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~26,123 (67%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~199,326 (85.5%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like Programmers, Stack Overflow's ratios skew a lot higher when  deleted low-scoring questions are added, and lower when it deleted high-voted questions are added. This isn't coincidence: the same moderation style is used on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Some context&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's important, from a qualitative standpoint, to put these numbers into context. Stack Overflow is not qualitatively similar to Programmers: it has a different set of problems than we do (notably, mammoth scale). Comparing their closed/deleted percentage to ours is about as meaningless as comparing our percentages to [Quora](http://quora.com) or [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com). We just simply don't have the same issues or types of questions they have: if we did, there wouldn't be a separate site. We'd just be part of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also important to put Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE into historical context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was the first, for for a long period of time, the only Stack Exchange site. It did not, for much of its history, have the benefit of the year's worth of trial and error gleaned from the Stack Exchange 2.0 project. Notably, it did not have the benefit of 40+ other sites with 40+ other sets of problems to crystalize what makes and doesn't make a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this day, [we still have issues with this](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow): 27% of all questions migrated here from Stack Overflow are closed and/or deleted. Thousands upon thousands of questions that should be off-topic there and on-topic here never get closed or migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of its history as the flagship SE site, it also has enormous scaling issues. [They have ~10 volunteer moderators for 2 million questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/101431/should-stack-overflow-moderators-have-a-standard-of-duty): one for every 200,000 asked. We have 4 for 16,000: one for every 4,000. 18% of their users are able to cast a close vote, compared to 42% of ours. We are just better equipped to close bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The history of Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But going into [our history](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) a little bit: Stack Overflow had a serious problem with popular questions that didn't really belong anywhere: &quot;What's your favorite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What do you like about programming?&quot;, etc. When Stack Exchange 2.0 and the Area 51 engine launched, one of the first proposals to gain traction was *Not Programming Related*, intended to house all of these types of questions. It launched on September 1st, 2010 and for a period of 3 weeks, surged in popularity as all the questions repressed on Stack Overflow were asked on this new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the quality was all over the place. The site had some of the worst questions and some of the best questions. After a few weeks of this, [new guidelines were put into place](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) to try to raise the level of questions. Over the course of the rest of its beta period, these guidelines were enforced sporadically as the community tried to come to terms with its original charter and what it would take to make a useful site. On December 16, 2010, [Programmers.SE was launched](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/) based on its new mission, having been the test-bed for a number of guidelines about questions that later generations of Stack Exchange sites benefitted from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left 3.5 months of questions asked during a particularly formative point in the Stack Exchange network: more than a quarter of our site's lifespan in total. Compare this to Stack Overflow, we has had the benefit of 2.5 years and wasn't originally created to be [the toilet bowl of a different site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But we're slowly resolving those initial growing pains, and it's going to take some more time. The ratios will normalize, but they aren't going to normalize in the next month. It going to take several months to years, just like Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The situation isn't as dire as it might seem from one reading of the numbers. It once was dire, but that was last year. We're moving forward: our traffic is increasing and our closed ratio is decreasing. More and more, people are taking ownership of Programmers.SE as something to be proud of, and the quality of questions and answers is noticeably rising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there's a lot we can improve, but it's going to be far more constructive and productive to isolate specific failings and correct those, not to make generalizations about the site as a whole. If we do that, we might as well just shut this site down and start over." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5376" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2174" RevisionGUID="2b7aab11-7d4e-4120-b024-d2e0d0e077d2" CreationDate="2011-08-26T22:09:27.357" UserId="32008" Text="I noticed that I recently obtained the &quot;Autobiographer&quot; badge, and three others, and somehow my badge count is still at 8 on the top of the page whereas it correctly displays 12 on my profile. My question may be naive, but why doesn't it show the correct count ? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it because of some caching and that it takes some time to update ? &#xD;&#xA;Is it because some badges are not &quot;considered&quot; enough to be counted in the total number of badges displayed ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess the world will not change tomorrow if I get the answer, but I'm just curious :-) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you for your answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5377" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2174" RevisionGUID="2b7aab11-7d4e-4120-b024-d2e0d0e077d2" CreationDate="2011-08-26T22:09:27.357" UserId="32008" Text="Why is the badge count on top of the page different than the badge count in the profile?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5378" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2174" RevisionGUID="2b7aab11-7d4e-4120-b024-d2e0d0e077d2" CreationDate="2011-08-26T22:09:27.357" UserId="32008" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5379" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2175" RevisionGUID="db6d0bdd-6705-47fc-ae9f-35fd46a78cfd" CreationDate="2011-08-26T22:12:06.247" UserId="47" Text="It seems to be a [recent bug](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/104094/new-badges-do-not-update-your-badge-count-when-awarded).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The badge counts were updating yesterday (25th August)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5380" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2174" RevisionGUID="678b760d-97ae-462b-aba4-4223c0a1904a" CreationDate="2011-08-26T22:18:47.343" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5381" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2175" RevisionGUID="d0328228-3bdb-4162-8b35-3c45a1fa22cc" CreationDate="2011-08-26T22:22:25.323" UserId="47" Comment="update" Text="It seems to be a [recent bug](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/104094/new-badges-do-not-update-your-badge-count-when-awarded).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The badge counts were updating yesterday (25th August).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bug has been [fixed](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/104094/new-badges-do-not-update-your-badge-count-when-awarded/104104#104104), so you should see your badge count correct itself soon." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5382" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2174" RevisionGUID="abeba633-385c-42a7-883e-a9e0f0beb787" CreationDate="2011-08-26T22:26:52.650" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5383" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2163" RevisionGUID="cd72abe0-f952-4b81-81f8-a4845a395ce2" CreationDate="2011-08-26T22:27:18.890" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5384" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2173" RevisionGUID="3784bf37-688d-4fd3-a9d2-4e10fe9792d0" CreationDate="2011-08-26T22:36:45.880" UserId="63" Comment="typos" Text="While I don't think it's particularly constructive to approach the problem this way, I think it's important, if we do, to work with accurate numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are 2,816 closed, but not deleted, questions on Programmers as of right now. There are 13,925 questions total on Programmers. This makes the closed, but not deleted ratio of questions 20.2%. In the 10 days since you measured this, it's gone down 3%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Isolating the metrics you did, % of closed with at least 5 score and % closed with less than or equal to 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 774. % of closed: 27.5%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 265. % of closed: 9.4%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This puts the ratio of 5+ score questions closed higher than what you had, and the ratio of &lt;= 0 score questions much lower than what you had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand why, we need to include data you didn't have access to when you did this survey: the number of deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of deleted questions on Programmers.SE is 2,975: more than the number of closed questions you see. If we also include these numbers into the mix, we get a different story:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 891. % of closed or deleted: 15.3%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 2223. % of closed or deleted: 38.3%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This paints a much different picture than the one presented in your survey. The reason why it's so drastic is because we routinely delete low-scoring questions as they are uncontroversially bad for the site and everyone agrees.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we don't delete nearly as many high-scoring answers is because [&quot;closed&quot; doesn't mean &quot;bad&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed) It means the question doesn't meet the site's guidelines in some way, but there's some value, and it could even be improved and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, *deletion*—not closure—is where bad questions go to spend eternity in Hell. Closure, on the other hand, is the purgatory of questions. They're not on-topic, but they're providing some value: enough to stick around while we figure out what to do with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A Comparison&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that we're working with accurate numbers, how do they compare to other sites, particularly Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From a purely quantitative standpoint, Stack Overflow's numbers are in a different league:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Publicly viewable questions: 1,997,856&#xD;&#xA;* Closed, but not deleted: ~39,048 (2%)&#xD;&#xA;* Deleted: 194,008 (8.9%)&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~1,964 (5%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~4,142 (1.8%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~26,123 (67%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~199,326 (85.5%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like Programmers, Stack Overflow's ratios skew a lot higher when  deleted low-scoring questions are added, and lower when it deleted high-voted questions are added. This isn't coincidence: the same moderation style is used on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Some context&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's important, from a qualitative standpoint, to put these numbers into context. Stack Overflow is not qualitatively similar to Programmers: it has a different set of problems than we do (notably, mammoth scale). Comparing their closed/deleted percentage to ours is about as meaningless as comparing our percentages to [Quora](http://quora.com) or [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com). We just simply don't have the same issues or types of questions they have: if we did, there wouldn't be a separate site. We'd just be part of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also important to put Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE into historical context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was the first, for a long period of time, the only Stack Exchange site. It did not, for much of its history, have the benefit of the year's worth of trial and error gleaned from the Stack Exchange 2.0 project. Notably, it did not have the benefit of 40+ other sites with 40+ other sets of problems to crystalize what makes and doesn't make a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this day, [we still have issues with this](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow): 27% of all questions migrated here from Stack Overflow are closed and/or deleted. Thousands upon thousands of questions that should be off-topic there and on-topic here never get closed or migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of its history as the flagship SE site, it also has enormous scaling issues. [They have ~10 volunteer moderators for 2 million questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/101431/should-stack-overflow-moderators-have-a-standard-of-duty): one for every 200,000 asked. We have 4 for 16,000: one for every 4,000. 18% of their users are able to cast a close vote, compared to 42% of ours. We are just better equipped to close bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The history of Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But going into [our history](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) a little bit: Stack Overflow had a serious problem with popular questions that didn't really belong anywhere: &quot;What's your favorite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What do you like about programming?&quot;, etc. When Stack Exchange 2.0 and the Area 51 engine launched, one of the first proposals to gain traction was *Not Programming Related*, intended to house all of these types of questions. It launched on September 1st, 2010 and for a period of 3 weeks, surged in popularity as all the questions repressed on Stack Overflow were asked on this new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the quality was all over the place. The site had some of the worst questions and some of the best questions. After a few weeks of this, [new guidelines were put into place](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) to try to raise the level of questions. Over the course of the rest of its beta period, these guidelines were enforced sporadically as the community tried to come to terms with its original charter and what it would take to make a useful site. On December 16, 2010, [Programmers.SE was launched](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/) based on its new mission, having been the test-bed for a number of guidelines about questions that later generations of Stack Exchange sites benefitted from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left 3.5 months of questions asked during a particularly formative point in the Stack Exchange network: more than a quarter of our site's lifespan in total. Compare this to Stack Overflow, which has had the benefit of 2.5 years and wasn't originally created to be [the toilet bowl of a different site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But we're slowly resolving those initial growing pains, and it's going to take some more time. The ratios will normalize, but they aren't going to normalize in the next month. It going to take several months to years, just like Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The situation isn't as dire as it might seem from one reading of the numbers. It once was dire, but that was last year. We're moving forward: our traffic is increasing and our closed ratio is decreasing. More and more, people are taking ownership of Programmers.SE as something to be proud of, and the quality of questions and answers is noticeably rising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there's a lot we can improve, but it's going to be far more constructive and productive to isolate specific failings and correct those, not to make generalizations about the site as a whole. If we do that, we might as well just shut this site down and start over." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5385" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2173" RevisionGUID="afa868a3-3b18-48f3-a260-9eae42e94cc0" CreationDate="2011-08-26T23:15:34.537" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Copyedit lingering issues triggering the twitching in the OCD part of my brain" Text="While I don't think it's particularly constructive to approach a problem this way, I think it's important, if we do, to work with accurate numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of right now, there are 2,816 closed—but not deleted—questions on Programmers. There are 13,925 questions total on Programmers. This makes the closed, but not deleted ratio of questions 20.2%. In the 10 days since you measured this, it's gone down 3%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on the same metrics you did your post, here are number closed with at least 5 score and number closed with less than or equal to 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 774 (27.5%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 265 (9.4%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This puts the ratio of 5+ score questions closed higher than what you had and the ratio of &lt;= 0 score questions much lower than what you had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand why, we need to include data you didn't have access to when you did this survey: the number of deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of deleted questions on Programmers.SE is 2,975: more than the number of closed questions you see. If we also include these numbers into the mix, we get a different story:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 891. % of closed or deleted: 15.3%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 2,223. % of closed or deleted: 38.3%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This paints a bit of a different picture than measuring just the closed questions and the results presented in your survey. Why? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's because we routinely delete low-scoring questions as they are uncontroversially bad for the site, and the scores on those questions agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we don't delete nearly as many high-scoring answers is because [&quot;closed&quot; doesn't mean &quot;bad&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed). It means the question doesn't meet the site's guidelines in some way, but there's some value, and it could even be improved and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, *deletion*—not closure—is where bad questions go to spend eternity in Hell. Closure, on the other hand, is the purgatory of questions. They're not on-topic, but they're providing *some* value: enough to stick around while we figure out what to do with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A Comparison&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that we're working with accurate numbers, how do they compare to other sites, particularly Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From a purely quantitative standpoint, Stack Overflow's numbers are in a different league:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Publicly viewable questions: 1,997,856&#xD;&#xA;* Closed, but not deleted: ~39,048 (2%)&#xD;&#xA;* Deleted: 194,008 (8.9%)&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~1,964 (5%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~4,142 (1.8%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~26,123 (67%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~199,326 (85.5%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like Programmers, Stack Overflow's ratios skew a lot higher when  deleted low-scoring questions are added, and lower when it deleted high-voted questions are added. This isn't coincidence: the same moderation style is used on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Some context&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's important, from a qualitative standpoint, to put these numbers into context. Stack Overflow is not qualitatively similar to Programmers.SE, and comparing their closed/deleted percentage to ours is about as meaningless as comparing our percentages to [Quora](http://quora.com) or [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com). We just simply don't have the same issues or types of questions they have. If we did, there wouldn't be a separate site: we'd just be part of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also important to put Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE into historical context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was the first, and for a long period of time, the only Stack Exchange site. It did not, for much of its history, have the benefit of knowledge gleaned from the year of trial and error with the Stack Exchange 2.0 project. And notably, it did not have the benefit of 40+ other sites with 40+ other sets of problems to crystalize what makes and doesn't make a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This difference in background and two year head start is [a constant cause of problems](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow): 27% of all questions migrated here from Stack Overflow are closed and/or deleted. Thousands upon thousands of questions that should be off-topic there and on-topic here never get closed or migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of its history as the flagship Stack Exchange site, it also has enormous scaling issues. They have [~10 volunteer moderators for 2 million questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/101431/should-stack-overflow-moderators-have-a-standard-of-duty): one for every 200,000 asked. We have 4 for 16,000: one for every 4,000. 18% of their users are able to cast a close vote, compared to 42% of ours. We are just better equipped to close bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The history of Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But going into [our history](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) a little bit: Stack Overflow had a serious problem with popular questions that didn't really belong anywhere: &quot;What's your favorite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What do you like about programming?&quot;, etc. When Stack Exchange 2.0 and the Area 51 engine launched, one of the first proposals to gain traction was [*Not Programming Related*](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related), intended to house all of these types of questions. It launched on September 1st, 2010 and for a period of 3 weeks, surged in popularity as all the questions repressed on Stack Overflow were asked on this new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the quality was all over the place: the site had some of the worst questions and some of the best questions. After a few weeks of this, [new guidelines were put into place](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) to try to raise the level of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the rest of the beta period, these guidelines were enforced sporadically as the community tried to come to terms with its original charter and what it would take to make a useful site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On December 16, 2010, [Programmers.SE was launched](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/) under its new mission, having been the test-bed for a number of guidelines about questions that later generations of Stack Exchange sites benefitted from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left 3.5 months of questions asked during a particularly formative point in the Stack Exchange network: more than a quarter of our site's lifespan. Compare this to Stack Overflow, which has had the benefit of 2.5 years of maturity and wasn't originally created to be [the toilet bowl of a different site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we're slowly resolving those initial growing pains, it's going to take some more time. The ratios will normalize, but they aren't going to normalize in the next month: it going to take several months to a couple of years to stabilize into a site as mature as the currently-three-year-old Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The situation isn't as dire as it might seem from one reading of the numbers. It was dire at one time, but that was last year. Now, we're moving forward: our traffic is increasing and our closed ratio is decreasing. More and more, people are taking ownership of Programmers.SE as something to be proud of, and the quality of questions and answers is noticeably rising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there's a lot we can improve, but it's going to be far more constructive and productive to isolate specific failings and correct those, not to make generalizations about the site as a whole. If we stick to generalizations, we might as well just shut this site down and start over." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5386" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2171" RevisionGUID="2708cfee-0e25-4d1e-ac54-6166f72de513" CreationDate="2011-08-27T06:18:29.953" UserId="37" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body" Text="I'm just curious as to if there have been changed in topicality recently, after I saw this question had been migrated from here to PM.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Should a group of three students working on a big programming project have a leader?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a few ways to cut this. I organized them in order of my personal preference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It's on-topic both here and at PM.SE. Migration {should | should not} (aside: my preference is should not have been migrated, especially since PM is not out of beta yet) have happened. It's a project management question, but software project management is inherently different than managing projects in other engineering disciplines or even cross-disciplinary projects. Since the main focus was software, it's on-topic here. However, since it has to do with subject matter in the [Project Management Body of Knowledge][5] (mainly Project Human Resources Management), it's also on-topic at PM.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. It's on-topic here and should not have been migrated. One of the on-topic categories is &quot;software engineering&quot;. My take on that is that the formal definition of what is included in software engineering should come from the [SWEBOK][2]. Software engineering management is a [knowledge area in the SWEBOK][3], and therefore is on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. It's on topic here and should not have been migrated. The project, based on the question, is specifically and exclusively a software project. There was no mention of other engineering or business disciplines. The [P.SE FAQ][4] states that conceptual questions about software development are on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. It's off-topic here because it's relevant to more than just software engineers. Although software projects are different than other projects, if and how to choose a leader remains the same. It's a cross-cutting PM concern of interest to all PMs, software or otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. It's off-topic here because the question was worded to generally. Although it was a software project, no key concerns about developing software were identified. Unless there is some kind of demonstration of relevance to exclusively software, it should be moved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure who moved it, but these are what I see as the major possibilities for dealing with this question are. The only one I don't like is 5 - if that's the case, could the question have been edited to be made more specific?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose this does prompt another question, though. How do we deal with a site like PM that's in such overlap with a huge chunk of relevant questions? It might be something to look at in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3235/should-a-group-of-three-students-working-on-a-big-programming-project-have-a-lead&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/swebok/home&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/swebok/html/ch8&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_to_the_Project_Management_Body_of_Knowledge" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5387" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2176" RevisionGUID="a0cb8f9e-ae15-4a1d-b1bd-fb2239bc86de" CreationDate="2011-08-27T17:49:12.003" UserId="3249" Text="While searching for a duplicate today, I discovered a new unholy mess of hopeless tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Among these tags are: [tag:money], [tag:pricing], [tag:billing], [tag:fees], [tag:cost], [tag:sales], [tag:paying], [tag:selling-software].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sure there's more, that's just what I've found so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The (major) problem with all of this is that **it makes it extremely hard to actually find questions about this topic because it's impossible to predict what tag it will have**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my case, there was a question that was more or less about minimum billable units (&quot;what should I charge for X minutes of work?&quot;) and I knew I'd seen it before, but couldn't remember many keywords from the original. Eventually I managed to find it in [tag:freelancing] - turned out it didn't have *any* of these tags, and didn't share any tags with the duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of these tags mean the exact same thing. A lot of them *don't*, but are widely being *misused* to mean the same thing (for example, [tag:paying] doesn't usually actually mean *paying*, it means *getting paid*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose the following structure for questions of this nature:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Questions about **running a software business** (i.e. selling shrinkwrap software or running a web business) should be tagged [tag:business]. This is still a very small tag - only 105 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This would also cover [tag:isv] and [tag:micro-isvs], which span all of 8 questions; I don't think we need that level of specialization considering the tiny percentage of our user base who actually ask and answer these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Questions about **selling software development as a service** should be tagged [tag:freelancing] or [tag:consulting]. We don't need both - pick one. Yeah, I know there's a theoretical difference, and it's a difference that 0.1% of people understand, so let it go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Again, these tags are still very small (~150 questions between them), and we *don't* need separate subtags for pricing, billing, etc. - they're basically redundant anyway, since that's 90% of what freelancing comprises.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Questions about **full-time employment compensation** should be tagged [tag:salary]. Again, this is a relatively small tag and is more than enough to set expectations as to what the question is about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * If we absolutely *must* have an additional tag to describe &quot;money matters&quot;, then I propose we settle on [tag:billing]. That word refers to the entire process of setting rates, calculating billable units, invoicing, collections, and so on. We only need the one tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any comments, arguments, suggestions? Did I miss any really obvious problem-tags? Will you help out with this cleanup?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5388" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2176" RevisionGUID="a0cb8f9e-ae15-4a1d-b1bd-fb2239bc86de" CreationDate="2011-08-27T17:49:12.003" UserId="3249" Text="Tag Cleanup: [Money] and Related" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5389" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2176" RevisionGUID="a0cb8f9e-ae15-4a1d-b1bd-fb2239bc86de" CreationDate="2011-08-27T17:49:12.003" UserId="3249" Text="|discussion|tags|retag-request|posse|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5390" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2176" RevisionGUID="38f9f4d5-013b-49ef-bc3e-c42473b32365" CreationDate="2011-08-27T21:41:06.957" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/107568345817165824" />
  <row Id="5391" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2177" RevisionGUID="ead7e1e8-30d8-4665-8def-ad2bfb6b416d" CreationDate="2011-08-27T21:46:10.867" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Yes, please.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just a few thoughts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The tag wikis for the final tags need to be written, especially the excerpts. We should use the tag wiki body to explain alternatives for related questions that don't belong in the tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:business] runs the risk of being a honeypot tag: there's not a lot of questions in there, but the questions that *are* there make it seem like people are tagging their questions with it because it's there (like [tag:programming], [tag:programmers], [tag:career], [tag:jobs], and [tag:programming-languages]). I wonder if we can just kill it and focus on a more specific type of business: [tag:entrepreneurship].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I agree about the [tag:freelancing] vs. [tag:consulting] distinction, and in this case, I think we should definitely create a synonym. One other one you missed is [tag:contracting], which, while there's a theoretical distinction between the three, can be used interchangeably for the purposes of Programmers.SE tagging. [tag:freelancing] seems to be the most popular tag elsewhere on the network (and heck, we even tried to create a Freelancers.SE): let's use that as the master tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Salary questions are almost always the smell of a bad question: most of the time, they're rants or vague questions about whether or not the asker is getting paid enough, and in the times when they are constructive, they almost always depend on a number of factors specific to situation. We've explicitly classified them as off-topic in the FAQ: [tag:salary] should just be cleaned up and left to die.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:billing] is fine for invoicing and such (to that end, [tag:invoicing] should be a synonym). The tag wiki should make it clear exactly what types of billing questions we want here: &quot;I haven't gotten paid, what should I do?&quot;, &quot;What invoicing software do you use?&quot;, and such are not on-topic here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5392" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2133" RevisionGUID="9e838128-4f14-42fe-a6c2-b00a8b5062a0" CreationDate="2011-08-28T06:41:09.113" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/107704250666201088" />
  <row Id="5398" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2179" RevisionGUID="f728d2a1-37d3-4c39-b5c6-eb1fb519ced5" CreationDate="2011-08-29T10:54:06.567" UserId="31260" Text="I noticed there's no 'edit' option for questions and answers posted at Programmers meta - as opposed to eg Programmers, SO and So meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that intentional? a missing feature? something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* example of 'edit' option as it looks at SO meta:  &#xD;&#xA;  ![screen shot](http://i51.tinypic.com/2afmq9c.jpg)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5399" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2179" RevisionGUID="f728d2a1-37d3-4c39-b5c6-eb1fb519ced5" CreationDate="2011-08-29T10:54:06.567" UserId="31260" Text="no 'edit' option for Q&amp;A at Programmers meta" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5400" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2179" RevisionGUID="f728d2a1-37d3-4c39-b5c6-eb1fb519ced5" CreationDate="2011-08-29T10:54:06.567" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5401" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2179" RevisionGUID="1716d8c9-3bbd-421f-a1a2-9151f9dd7870" CreationDate="2011-08-29T11:51:11.203" UserId="31260" Comment="added 299 characters in body" Text="I noticed there's no 'edit' option for questions and answers posted at Programmers meta - as opposed to eg Programmers, SO and So meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that intentional? a missing feature? something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* example of 'edit' option as it looks at SO meta:  &#xD;&#xA;  ![screen shot](http://i51.tinypic.com/2afmq9c.jpg)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* example of how this looks to me at programmers meta:  &#xD;&#xA;  ![screen shot](http://i51.tinypic.com/hwiy6h.jpg)  &#xD;&#xA;  there's _retag_ link placed where I would expect _edit_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note To avoid misunderstanding, I refer to 'edit' option for Q&amp;A posted by other members (for my own posts it appears ok)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5402" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2180" RevisionGUID="63f8dafe-a349-415e-9537-cfe1c608e7ea" CreationDate="2011-08-29T12:43:22.167" UserId="226" Text="This is [meta-tag:status-bydesign]. Suggested edits are disabled on meta sites, so you will need to have 2,000 reputation before you will see the edit link on other people's posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/87890/why-cant-i-suggest-edits-on-se-meta-sites/97371#97371) for Jeff Atwood's explanation of the rationale behind that decision." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5403" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2179" RevisionGUID="28b9d3f8-fe2e-4177-8b0b-04cd06d13b1e" CreationDate="2011-08-29T12:43:46.300" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5404" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2180" RevisionGUID="c7688176-ca6e-4d59-b7ee-a471e52776f6" CreationDate="2011-08-29T13:14:51.300" UserId="226" Comment="added 130 characters in body" Text="This is [meta-tag:status-bydesign]. Suggested edits are disabled on meta sites, so you will need to have 2,000 reputation before you will see the edit link on other people's posts. The only exception is Meta Stack Overflow which functions as a meta for all Stack Exchange sites and has its own reputation pool.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/87890/why-cant-i-suggest-edits-on-se-meta-sites/97371#97371) for Jeff Atwood's explanation of the rationale behind that decision." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5405" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2179" RevisionGUID="52f1bdc7-ce36-4f70-b167-f4976765fa83" CreationDate="2011-08-29T13:59:24.190" UserId="31260" Comment="update SO meta turns out to be a special case, as explained in answer comments" Text="I noticed there's no 'edit' option for questions and answers posted at Programmers meta - as opposed to eg Programmers, SO and So meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that intentional? a missing feature? something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* example of 'edit' option as it looks at SO meta:  &#xD;&#xA;  ![screen shot](http://i51.tinypic.com/2afmq9c.jpg)&#xD;&#xA;  **update** _SO meta_ turns out to be a special case, as explained in [answer comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2179/no-edit-option-for-qa-at-programmers-meta/2180#2180)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* example of how this looks to me at programmers meta:  &#xD;&#xA;  ![screen shot](http://i51.tinypic.com/hwiy6h.jpg)  &#xD;&#xA;  there's _retag_ link placed where I would expect _edit_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note To avoid misunderstanding, I refer to 'edit' option for Q&amp;A posted by other members (for my own posts it appears ok)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5406" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2179" RevisionGUID="9a615cf0-9457-4e9e-be68-bfbcdb79ca8a" CreationDate="2011-08-29T16:51:21.277" UserId="31260" Comment="[answer comments] -&gt; [answer]" Text="I noticed there's no 'edit' option for questions and answers posted at Programmers meta - as opposed to eg Programmers, SO and So meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that intentional? a missing feature? something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* example of 'edit' option as it looks at SO meta:  &#xD;&#xA;  ![screen shot](http://i51.tinypic.com/2afmq9c.jpg)&#xD;&#xA;  **update** _SO meta_ turns out to be a special case, as explained in [answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2179/no-edit-option-for-qa-at-programmers-meta/2180#2180)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* example of how this looks to me at programmers meta:  &#xD;&#xA;  ![screen shot](http://i51.tinypic.com/hwiy6h.jpg)  &#xD;&#xA;  there's _retag_ link placed where I would expect _edit_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note To avoid misunderstanding, I refer to 'edit' option for Q&amp;A posted by other members (for my own posts it appears ok)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5407" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2177" RevisionGUID="518f2931-8c18-4edb-9cf0-77f8ac112785" CreationDate="2011-08-29T18:54:57.037" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 433 characters in body" Text="Yes, please.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just a few thoughts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The tag wikis for the final tags need to be written, especially the excerpts. We should use the tag wiki body to explain alternatives for related questions that don't belong in the tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:business] runs the risk of being a honeypot tag: there's not a lot of questions in there, but the questions that *are* there make it seem like people are tagging their questions with it because it's there (like [tag:programming], [tag:programmers], [tag:career], [tag:jobs], and [tag:programming-languages]). &lt;strike&gt;I wonder if we can just kill it and focus on a more specific type of business: [tag:entrepreneurship].&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  **Update:** Per the comments, [tag:venture] might be a better alternative to [tag:business] or [tag:entrepreneurship].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I agree about the [tag:freelancing] vs. [tag:consulting] distinction, and in this case, I think we should definitely create a synonym. One other one you missed is [tag:contracting], which, while there's a theoretical distinction between the three, can be used interchangeably for the purposes of Programmers.SE tagging. [tag:freelancing] seems to be the most popular tag elsewhere on the network (and heck, we even tried to create a Freelancers.SE): let's use that as the master tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  **Update:** [tag:consulting] has been merged into [tag:freelancing]. Still need to decide whether [tag:contracting] should have the same fate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Salary questions are almost always the smell of a bad question: most of the time, they're rants or vague questions about whether or not the asker is getting paid enough, and in the times when they are constructive, they almost always depend on a number of factors specific to situation. We've explicitly classified them as off-topic in the FAQ: [tag:salary] should just be cleaned up and left to die.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  **Update:** Pour one out for [tag:salary]: it's been destroyed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:billing] is fine for invoicing and such (to that end, [tag:invoicing] should be a synonym). The tag wiki should make it clear exactly what types of billing questions we want here: &quot;I haven't gotten paid, what should I do?&quot;, &quot;What invoicing software do you use?&quot;, and such are not on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   **Update:** [tag:invoicing] is gone, [tag:billing] is the final tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5411" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2182" RevisionGUID="0c0b3828-c2ee-4df3-ba50-250f255a4f64" CreationDate="2011-08-29T19:22:21.867" UserId="3792" Text="I agree. It seems that we should do absolutely everything possible to make it easier for new users to write great questions. Honestly I am not sure if Jeff's suggestion of using the most upvoted questions, or @MarkTrapp's modified version are necessarily the best, since there will be inevitable bad questions. I think that the reason a lot of bad questions get asked is because a new user comes on and sees something like &quot;What's the best programmer cartoon ever?&quot; (probably deleted now, but I remember that one from a while back) with 127 upvotes, leading them to ask something like &quot;What's the best soda for programmers?&quot;  Promoting questions that really meet the quality guidelines, could really do a lot to incentivise asking better questions. To find the best questions, it seems that they really need to be selected by a real person who is fully aware of what makes a great question. Whether the questions get selected by moderators, or through the meta this really does seem worthwhile." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5412" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2183" RevisionGUID="db8d12ba-1fda-4e51-879f-fcf7eb9d2edd" CreationDate="2011-08-30T00:05:16.457" UserId="34985" Text="We should permit and actually encourage certain kinds of legal questions.  If the best you can come up with is &quot;consult a lawyer&quot; then your clients or employers are going to skull fuck you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been a freelancers part time for twenty years and full time for thirteen.I've consulted lawyers lots of times but they have never done me any damn good.  Accountants aren't any better.  I was in a world of hurt until I learned enough about the law and business finance that I did not need to consult attorneys and accountants anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I wouldn't represent myself in a lawsuit, by understanding contract an intellectual property law I don't need to get into situations that can only be resolved by a court.  The best kind of lawsuit is one that doesn't happen at all because it doesn't need to.  Knowing how to read a contract, knowing when not to sign a bad contract and knowing how to get the other party to live up to their contractual o ligations through diplomatic means are all good ways to avoid ever needing an attorney.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; It is somewhat better to say that the answer depends either on your location or your clients, but having said that some effort should be made" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5418" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2186" RevisionGUID="fdd3112c-15bd-412c-aa06-6590e0654c83" CreationDate="2011-08-30T04:59:44.130" UserId="34985" Text="I take the question as asking whether the DVCS repository has to be on Windows if the coders who work with that repository use Windows as their development machines.  That's not the case; Linux or any other OS that the repository server supports will work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can be a technical requirement or a licensing requirement.  The Windows world is full of all-manner of non-sensical End User License Agreements that serve only to protect the interests of the software vendor.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example O'Reilly - the technical book publisher - used a sell a really good Win32 web server that ran just fine on Windows 95.  It did not need a server OS to serve lots of requests.  But Microsoft pointed out that the EULA for Win95 did not permit servers running under that OS to have more than I think five clients, even if the OS itself was completely up to the task and the server vendor was perfectly cool about unlimited clients.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Microsoft gave O'Reilly the only alternative of allowing unrestricted clients on fully licensed NT Server installs.  Unfortunately NT Server came bundled with Internet Information Server, Microsoft's own web server that never ran at all on non-server windows builds.  Because of this horrible licensing scheme and the fact that Microsoft retains more Men In Grey Pinstripe Suits than Tim O'Reilly could ever hope to afford, O'Reilly's web server was a complete failure in the market.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's just wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone who runs only Windows for a living just has to get used to living with this kind of crap.  Thus the OP's question may well not have been in any way technical, just legal." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5419" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2187" RevisionGUID="f2b3dfd1-ce67-42a0-b5ce-99af60015f75" CreationDate="2011-08-30T16:36:18.830" UserId="25701" Text="Not sure if it's due to the background image, but i see the text on few stackexchange sites as a low-quality jpeg, when viewed with citrix terminal client. This is likely due to the usage of bachground image under the text.&#xD;&#xA;Please consider using a solid color, if background image is not absolutely necessary." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5420" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2187" RevisionGUID="f2b3dfd1-ce67-42a0-b5ce-99af60015f75" CreationDate="2011-08-30T16:36:18.830" UserId="25701" Text="Background image makes the text into jpeg artifacts when used with citrix terminal client" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5421" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2187" RevisionGUID="f2b3dfd1-ce67-42a0-b5ce-99af60015f75" CreationDate="2011-08-30T16:36:18.830" UserId="25701" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5422" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2187" RevisionGUID="d6f946a5-4a59-487e-9546-0d0237012d64" CreationDate="2011-08-30T16:44:56.320" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5423" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2188" RevisionGUID="78c5e439-a7e7-48e2-ba21-e1702a4145da" CreationDate="2011-08-30T22:15:34.680" UserId="27253" Text="I've seen a number of questions where there are a few useful clarifying questions in the comments, and then a funny comment, and the funny comment has several upvotes. once the comments fold, this is going to bump a useful comment away. Is there anything sensible to do about this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5424" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2188" RevisionGUID="78c5e439-a7e7-48e2-ba21-e1702a4145da" CreationDate="2011-08-30T22:15:34.680" UserId="27253" Text="What can be done about &quot;funny&quot; comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5425" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2188" RevisionGUID="78c5e439-a7e7-48e2-ba21-e1702a4145da" CreationDate="2011-08-30T22:15:34.680" UserId="27253" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5426" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2189" RevisionGUID="5b4aa181-85e8-40c7-83ad-14dc3fac5bc7" CreationDate="2011-08-30T22:20:14.583" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="We [clean up comments that have outlived their use](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1457/how-do-our-moderators-and-community-members-feel-about-cleaning-up-comment-nois/1508#1508), and joke comments outlive their use as soon as they're posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flag them as *chatty* or *not constructive* and they'll be deleted. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5427" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2190" RevisionGUID="e4149b16-f55c-4941-84fd-f504bb713b45" CreationDate="2011-08-31T07:27:47.147" UserId="6605" Text="A question was recently posted on Programmers.SE about [Why IDEs don't support Unicode characters in code?][1]. The author wrongly asserts that &quot;no IDE supports&quot; unicode, and the question is written in a way that it has chances to be downvoted (and has already one downvote) and closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, the question can be reformulated into a form which will be actually useful to the community; something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are the things to check when my IDE fails to support unicode in code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I use [name of the IDE], but am unable to use unicode characters like `æ`, represented by U+00E6 in unicode table.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this behavior the same in other IDEs? What can I do to make it work in [name of the IDE]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, we don't care about about the wrong assertions of the author, neither by the fact that the IDE she/he uses does not support it, but the situation where the text editor must support unicode, but doesn't can exist and affect other developers (see my answer about fonts or underlying file encoding).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So is it a good idea to just rewrite from scratch the question, or it's somehow abusive to change the question so heavily, and I must let it as is, awaiting for it to be closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/104885/why-ides-dont-support-unicode-characters-in-code/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5428" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2190" RevisionGUID="e4149b16-f55c-4941-84fd-f504bb713b45" CreationDate="2011-08-31T07:27:47.147" UserId="6605" Text="May I completely rewrite the question which has chances to be closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5429" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2190" RevisionGUID="e4149b16-f55c-4941-84fd-f504bb713b45" CreationDate="2011-08-31T07:27:47.147" UserId="6605" Text="|discussion|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5430" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2191" RevisionGUID="f110639a-c53c-4a78-b8ed-1d6b0a840bfc" CreationDate="2011-08-31T07:36:30.360" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="If it's going to invalidate the answers, which it looks like your rewrite will do, you'll want to ask a separate question. We're not short on question IDs: if a question is bad and the answers are useless, we can just close the question out and you can ask a new one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think a question needs to be closed faster than the community can do it for whatever reason, flag it for a moderator and we'll take a look at it. I tend to agree with the non-constructiveness of this question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5431" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2192" RevisionGUID="5f181149-3411-4141-8106-a11a4108efa3" CreationDate="2011-08-31T13:37:14.460" UserId="226" Text="In addition to what Mark said, if you catch a question like that before it gathers answers, definitely feel free to rewrite it into a better form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there are only a couple short answers, it's also possible to get their authors to update (or delete) them by posting a comment along the lines of &quot;The question was edited. Can you update your answer please? Thanks.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5432" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2193" RevisionGUID="28412b2b-93ab-4056-8933-d83472744651" CreationDate="2011-08-31T18:19:09.070" UserId="226" Text="I edited this question to focus on the problem at hand and reopened it. I agree that it is answerable, but I think it was phrased in a way that made people react negatively to it. I hope to have changed that with my edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also checked with a Stack Overflow moderator to see if the question would be a better fit there, since typically tool-related questions are off-topic here and on-topic on SO, but he said this question would likely not get a good reception on SO." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5436" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2195" RevisionGUID="dbb3d56c-2d0f-4b2f-9615-e79fc2c5509b" CreationDate="2011-09-01T00:34:36.060" UserId="37" Text="I recommend using a browser that lets you turn off background images in this particular case." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5437" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2187" RevisionGUID="e663d828-f48a-4c92-9d3c-501557bc53ab" CreationDate="2011-09-01T00:34:42.330" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-declined|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5443" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2193" RevisionGUID="b21ec205-b3cb-45bd-8d09-309e00df7e6d" CreationDate="2011-09-01T18:04:42.527" UserId="226" Comment="added 312 characters in body" Text="I edited this question to focus on the problem at hand and reopened it. I agree that it is answerable, but I think it was phrased in a way that made people react negatively to it. I hope to have changed that with my edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also checked with a Stack Overflow moderator to see if the question would be a better fit there, since typically tool-related questions are off-topic here and on-topic on SO, but he said this question would likely not get a good reception on SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;So, am I getting downvotes because people disagree with the decision? If so, how should I have acted instead? I welcome any and all constructive criticism so I can do better next time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feel free to re-flag the original question or vote to close, etc., if you think it should not have been reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5444" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2197" RevisionGUID="05ef3e09-5951-4139-bc09-4676f5703350" CreationDate="2011-09-01T18:09:11.110" UserId="34477" Text="Can some one review this question and actually tell me if its particularly bad. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105285/best-single-tool-to-generate-documentation-related-to-a-web-application-speed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just wanted to know. A tool is one of the basic requirement for any programmer. It doesn't matter what it is but tools make programmers life easy and it often is very important to know whether there exist a tool to do something that you want to accomplish and the best way to do is ask another programmer what he uses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; How can these sort of questions be off topic in programmers stack exchange. The more questions i post i feel like almost all important stuff are marked off topic here then why do we have to name this programmers. Do any of the programmers here actually work here without tools or have any of you ever not asked another programmer what tool he uses and used the same thing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok so even if its off topic why have a tag for it here. When i type in a question when i enter a tag it shows a lot of questions with the tags, and the mere fact that there is a tag for it shows that it is indeed a related question. Yet my questions, where, i specifically say i require &quot;ONE&quot; tool, and give &quot;all&quot; its functionalities and which has a very specific answer yet it was closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I m taking about 15 minutes of time to come up with this post because i feel that newbies are not allowed to use this site at all. What ever questions we come up with its being closed. Even if it has a definitive answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of closing the questions blatantly and making the asker look like a fool, would'nt it be better if you *big* guys bestowed with all powerful closing permissions answer it with all ur mighty experience and make the eco system much friendlier. I think downvoting and closing is too hostile for any ecosystem for the freshlings to survive. For particularly bad single line &quot;give me the codez&quot; question its ok but even for genuine descriptive questions is an overkill.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Im sure that this is going to get downvoted too. But let it be. This is what i feel and i feel i have to break the ice here. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5445" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2197" RevisionGUID="05ef3e09-5951-4139-bc09-4676f5703350" CreationDate="2011-09-01T18:09:11.110" UserId="34477" Text="if tool related questions are off topic on programmers.SE then why is there a tag called tool" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5446" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2197" RevisionGUID="05ef3e09-5951-4139-bc09-4676f5703350" CreationDate="2011-09-01T18:09:11.110" UserId="34477" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5447" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2198" RevisionGUID="c9416274-e325-49c3-9d78-c41de7119ba3" CreationDate="2011-09-01T19:37:10.410" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The Stack Exchange platform works with very specific types of questions, and we've found through a few years of trial and error recommendation questions don't work well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I closed the question, I provided a link to why recommendation questions don't work, which you can still find here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, questions asking for recommendations almost inevitably turn into a list of one line answers that don't provide any information as to why someone would use it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, when a question is ultra specific in its requirements, it's unlikely to help future visitors: if my requirements are off by a little from yours, your question doesn't answer *my* recommendation question, opening the door for several iterations of essentially the same question. To wit, we have [over 2,000 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=documentation+%2Btool&amp;submit=search) asking about documentation tools: most of them are terrible and help nobody.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that point, it's important to realize two things about closing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Closing is a manual process. Someone has to call a question to the attention of moderators or stumble onto the question and decide to vote to close. With over 14,000 questions on Programmers.SE, some bad questions slip through the cracks. When that happens, we rely on community members like yourself to flag those questions so they can be closed or improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [Closing isn't a death sentence for a question.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed) We close questions and provide guidance when they do, hopefully before they amass too many answers, so that they can be revised by the asker to meet our question guidelines. It was my intention to prompt you to read the linked guidance and improve your question (or ask another one) based on that guidance, and I apologize that my comment didn't make that clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a blog post (also linked from the above meta post) called [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/), that describes a better way to ask a recommendation question without it being a recommendation question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, if you ask *how* you can go about evaluating documentation tools, or *what things you should look for* when you are evaluating documentation tools, that'd be something that'd be on-topic and pretty useful for everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To quote the end of that blog post,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I had to summarize our network in a single word, that word is “learning”. People come to our sites to learn about topics they are passionate about. As the old Chinese proverb goes, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Every question and answer ultimately should be about teaching and learning — yes, even the shopping ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to why there are tags for questions that aren't on-topic here, tagging has never been Programmers.SE's strong suit, and [we're working on it](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/tagging).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5448" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2199" RevisionGUID="a235fa3d-01a8-4ac7-ab31-674a03257390" CreationDate="2011-09-01T19:41:07.567" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="Here's my action shot on vacation at [Boracay][1]. As you can tell, I'm not fond of direct sun:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Directly in front of me is my daughter. Huge waves tend to creep up there, which is the noise you see on the front of the lens.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks for sending this out :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boracay&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/puqVI.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5449" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2199" RevisionGUID="49c04dc8-405c-44e8-8c18-5329860b1a38" CreationDate="2011-09-01T19:51:57.267" UserDisplayName="user131" Comment="added 16 characters in body" Text="Here's my action shot on vacation at [Boracay][1]. As you can tell, I'm not fond of direct sun:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Directly in front of me is my daughter. Huge waves and sandy winds tend to creep up there, which is the noise you see on the front of the lens.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks for sending this out :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boracay&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/puqVI.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5450" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2003" RevisionGUID="0f560959-a9f4-4219-bd33-bd48966ef439" CreationDate="2011-09-01T20:52:08.650" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5451" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2200" RevisionGUID="62390349-bb61-4cfe-9bc5-b97854d010d1" CreationDate="2011-09-01T21:30:52.767" UserId="15455" Text="I posted the question: [Is it a bad idea for a company to take liberties with the truth in job specs for software developers?][1] A few people have taken this as either a rant or a question that is not constructive to any degree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This issue I raised was based on a past observation I found as a graduate and also based on my discussions with team mates. I thought it would be good to post the question to see if developers in other software houses have noticed this and if there was a reason why it was happening. In addition to this, I thought the answers would provide useful input for other graduates/junior developers who come here and may find this of some interest. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question can we salvaged, by rewording it, I'm happy to do so. If that's not possible, I'm happy for it to close. I'm not interested evoking an argument &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105326/is-it-a-bad-idea-for-a-company-to-take-liberties-with-the-truth-in-job-specs-for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5452" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2200" RevisionGUID="62390349-bb61-4cfe-9bc5-b97854d010d1" CreationDate="2011-09-01T21:30:52.767" UserId="15455" Text="Is it a bad idea for a company to take liberties with the truth in job specs for software developers - off topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5453" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2200" RevisionGUID="62390349-bb61-4cfe-9bc5-b97854d010d1" CreationDate="2011-09-01T21:30:52.767" UserId="15455" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5454" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2201" RevisionGUID="604d25d9-c534-411b-b74b-d0c8583992c0" CreationDate="2011-09-01T23:10:32.963" UserId="1655" Text="If a [question is moved to a beta site][1], and the beta site does not get promoted to permanently live, will the question get moved back to the live site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/103930/1655" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5455" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2201" RevisionGUID="604d25d9-c534-411b-b74b-d0c8583992c0" CreationDate="2011-09-01T23:10:32.963" UserId="1655" Text="Question (and answers) moved to a beta site ... will it get moved back if the beta fails?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5456" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2201" RevisionGUID="604d25d9-c534-411b-b74b-d0c8583992c0" CreationDate="2011-09-01T23:10:32.963" UserId="1655" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5457" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2202" RevisionGUID="60bf539f-d359-4c84-9dc8-06af67f342f5" CreationDate="2011-09-02T00:17:29.330" UserId="2654" Text="**I don't think so**, but I'm not positive either. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the beta site doesn't go live, I would restructure the question to make it acceptable on a current site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5458" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2203" RevisionGUID="aa1018d3-edba-4fad-b37b-4ef648b911de" CreationDate="2011-09-02T02:06:58.243" UserId="226" Text="Josh K got it. Although if the beta site is merged with another instead of just closed, then the questions and answers will be moved over to the &quot;master&quot; site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We usually don't migrate questions to beta sites for that very reason, except in some cases where the site is still in beta due to having been migrated from an SE 1.0 site (such as answers.onstartups.com) or the question is clearly a poor fit for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that would fit here *and* on a more specialized beta site do not get migrated." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5459" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2201" RevisionGUID="859f2e65-412f-4b1b-b5e0-9ace3ae1afc9" CreationDate="2011-09-02T06:38:41.107" UserId="1655" Comment="Responded to answers and questions." Text="If a [question is moved to a beta site][1], and the beta site does not get promoted to permanently live, will the question get moved back to the live site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT - response to questions and comments ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;** I don't object to moving per se .. I object to moving to a site that subsequently goes away and not putting the questions back.  The question, **and the answers which people have put effort into** are effectively deleted.  I think that doesn't show proper respect for the contributors and their contributions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;** Would the question have been closed on Programmers absent the existence of PM?  If no, then the logic of &quot;it doesn't belong and was moved as a courtesy&quot; doesn't really apply.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;** I didn't ask the question I linked, but I don't think that it was better suited for PM than for Programmers. In fact I think it was just the opposite. It was a programmer asking if a team of programmers needs a team leader. The programmer is going to want other programmers to answer, not PMs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/103930/1655" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5460" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2200" RevisionGUID="239b2e95-201f-49d5-841f-d6ee84a65f4d" CreationDate="2011-09-02T10:22:09.853" UserId="15455" Comment="added 13 characters in body" Text="I posted the question: [Is it a bad idea for a company to take liberties with the truth in job specs for software developers?][1] A few people have interpreted this as either a rant or a question that is not constructive to any degree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This issue I raised was based on a past observation I found as a graduate and also based on my discussions with team mates. I thought it would be good to post the question to see if developers in other software houses have noticed this and if there was a reason why it was happening. In addition to this, I thought the answers would provide useful input for other graduates/junior developers who come here and may find this of some interest. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question can we salvaged, by rewording it, I'm happy to do so. If that's not possible, I'm happy for it to be closed. I'm not interested in evoking an argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105326/is-it-a-bad-idea-for-a-company-to-take-liberties-with-the-truth-in-job-specs-for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5461" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2204" RevisionGUID="dc529d96-507c-482c-af16-72d91e0ed816" CreationDate="2011-09-02T10:23:27.027" UserId="23819" Text="I noticed that a lot of questions related to books and book recommendations are getting downvoted and closed. [This][1] question suggests that some people have negative attitude towards such type of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the book related questions have common sense in them and I love them. Usually there are tonnes of books and it is hard to understand which one is the most helpful, unless you have been here for ages and know all the stuff. Books questions are mostly general, open-minded and have relationship to software development. People who tend to downvote and close questions don't seem to be interested in books and do not allow other members to answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Q:** Why not to let books-related question be here and stay open-minded?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5462" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2204" RevisionGUID="dc529d96-507c-482c-af16-72d91e0ed816" CreationDate="2011-09-02T10:23:27.027" UserId="23819" Text="Why book questions tend to get downvoted and closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5463" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2204" RevisionGUID="dc529d96-507c-482c-af16-72d91e0ed816" CreationDate="2011-09-02T10:23:27.027" UserId="23819" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5464" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2205" RevisionGUID="96962624-c29d-4827-879e-8616462f445e" CreationDate="2011-09-02T10:42:29.753" UserId="47" Text="The problem with book questions is that it's very hard to write one that isn't basically:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's your favourite book on [Topic]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specifically mentioned in the [What kind of questions should I *not* ask here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section of the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two areas they fail. One is that they promote discussion and secondly *with this wording* every answer is equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a book question to be any good it needs to be asking for a book that covers a *specific* topic. Something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What book will explain networking between distributed offices?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is better, but still not really a **good** question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(However, this might not be a good example as all networking books might cover this. But you get the point).*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Really a question like this is only as good as the answers it receives so unless the answers explain *why* the book meets the criteria set out in the question they are no better than just listing your favourite (or the one you read last). The relevant bit from the FAQ is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers that explain will be longer and more detailed - which is good." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5465" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2206" RevisionGUID="9d78f663-5e97-4d18-940c-971b994ff2db" CreationDate="2011-09-02T13:03:24.640" UserId="26304" Text="&gt; Are we just unlucky rubes, taken in by a handful of scandalous organizations?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please tell me what you hope to get constructively from this question?  There is nothing.  Yes you are a worthless rube who the company hopes will be to lazy to go find another job for a year or so.  There are you happy?  Of course not but that is the truth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Or is this common enough to where &quot;migration&quot; should be taken as a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; euphemism for &quot;dead-end maintenance work&quot; when reading job ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No migrations happen regularly and you probably should know this.  And maintenance work is not dead end.  But you provide the answer you want to hear in your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it a good idea to use this technique when posting job ads for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is bad subjective because it asks for an opinion about good or bad of something that is not about programming its about recruiting.  While it has a tangental lead this technique is used across all industries to make boring jobs sound worth applying for.  But what can you constructively learn about programming from the answer?  ABOSLUTLY NOTHING.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thats why this is a bad question for this SE.  Take it to a forum and let them light it up like you want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What may be on topic would be a question on how to detect if a job posting has the potential to be a legacy job, and how to determine if it is prior to accepting it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5466" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2207" RevisionGUID="f1dc32e8-4955-43fa-b2f4-c2546c0e18d5" CreationDate="2011-09-02T14:36:14.427" UserId="3688" Text="I certainly thought this [question about wrist pain][1] was off-topic, given that the FAQ says *nothing* about health issues, but my flag was declined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I mis-reading the FAQ? Is there any other meta-issue here? While I realize the question may be of *interest* to programmers, it would also apply to *anyone* who uses a computer extensively, not just programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62149/do-you-have-finger-wrist-pain-how-do-you-deal-with-that" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5467" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2207" RevisionGUID="f1dc32e8-4955-43fa-b2f4-c2546c0e18d5" CreationDate="2011-09-02T14:36:14.427" UserId="3688" Text="RSI (repetitive-stress injuries) questions - on-topic or off-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5468" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2207" RevisionGUID="f1dc32e8-4955-43fa-b2f4-c2546c0e18d5" CreationDate="2011-09-02T14:36:14.427" UserId="3688" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5469" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2208" RevisionGUID="ffbb25b8-ddac-4544-822f-ac18ac96f49b" CreationDate="2011-09-02T14:55:08.733" UserId="47" Text="I was the one that dismissed the flag - at first look the question and answers did look like they were offering a &quot;unique to programmers&quot; perspective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, on looking again I can see that this is borderline at best.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5470" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2209" RevisionGUID="b8918b61-3498-49b0-b24d-5ad7676d4079" CreationDate="2011-09-02T15:17:48.387" UserId="18263" Text="I fail to see how either the question or any of the answers have any relevance to computer programmers as opposed to a secretaries, authors, graphic designers or anyone who regularly uses a mouse and keyboard for long periods." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5471" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2206" RevisionGUID="1fb4a8ab-452a-48cc-bf2d-d1035ceeed37" CreationDate="2011-09-02T16:23:42.033" UserId="26304" Comment="deleted 9 characters in body" Text="&gt; Are we just unlucky rubes, taken in by a handful of scandalous organizations?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please tell me what you hope to get constructively from this question?  There is nothing.  Yes you are a rube who the company hopes will be to lazy to go find another job for a year or so.  There are you happy?  Of course not but that is the truth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Or is this common enough to where &quot;migration&quot; should be taken as a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; euphemism for &quot;dead-end maintenance work&quot; when reading job ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No. migrations happen regularly and you probably should know this.  And maintenance work is not dead end.  But you provide the answer you want to hear in your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it a good idea to use this technique when posting job ads for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is bad subjective because it asks for an opinion about good or bad of something that is not about programming its about recruiting.  While it has a tangental lead this technique is used across all industries to make boring jobs sound worth applying for.  But what can you constructively learn about programming from the answer?  ABOSLUTLY NOTHING.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thats why this is a bad question for this SE.  Take it to a forum and let them light it up like you want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What may be on topic would be a question on how to detect if a job posting has the potential to be a legacy job, and how to determine if it is prior to accepting it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5472" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2210" RevisionGUID="101fdda6-ac88-4a0d-bd47-d6839ca70762" CreationDate="2011-09-02T18:20:36.273" UserId="28877" Text="&gt; Please tell me what you hope to get constructively from this question? There is nothing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I need to disagree with this statement by Chad. He asked some very specific questions that are relevant to programmers as a whole and the answers, while not new, certainly, can be eye-opening especially to entry level programmers who *do* look through ads like these frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He asked the following, perfectly reasonable questions in his post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is this common enough to where &quot;migration&quot; should be taken as a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; euphemism for &quot;dead-end maintenance work&quot; when reading job ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it a good idea to use this technique when posting job ads for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He has taken a specific incident in his region of the world and he's looking for the collective knowledge of programmers world-wide to see if this is commonplace. Granted, I think that the question could have been formatted a little better but I truly do not see anything out of place here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5473" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2211" RevisionGUID="1ad2a499-07e2-45de-ab1e-3c4039cff02d" CreationDate="2011-09-02T20:54:40.070" UserId="22390" Text="This is one of the examples of a previous petition I stated about allowing topics that *could* deal with other professions but have a unique approach/viewpoint relative to software developers.  Our profession, more so than most any other, is subject to companies lying or misleading the job description.  It's not something that salespeople, HR, accountants, et all face regularly and certainly not in the contexts as presented by the OP in the original question - those circumstances are all but unique to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, I say the question is on topic (and in fact I was the first to cast a reopen vote)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5474" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2200" RevisionGUID="033e654c-8421-487c-a2b5-17df61e8dba8" CreationDate="2011-09-02T21:19:35.140" UserId="15455" Comment="edited body" Text="I posted the question: [Is it a bad idea for a company to take liberties with the truth in job specs for software developers?][1] A few people have interpreted this as either a rant or a question that is not constructive to any degree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This issue I raised was based on a past observation I found as a graduate and also based on my discussions with team mates. I thought it would be good to post the question to see if developers in other software houses have noticed this and if there was a reason why it was happening. In addition to this, I thought the answers would provide useful input for other graduates/junior developers who come here and may find this of some interest. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question can be salvaged, by rewording it, I'm happy to do so. If that's not possible, I'm happy for it to be closed. I'm not interested in evoking an argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105326/is-it-a-bad-idea-for-a-company-to-take-liberties-with-the-truth-in-job-specs-for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5475" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2212" RevisionGUID="3f88d24c-ec16-4cc4-b27c-9f143fab60da" CreationDate="2011-09-03T13:39:56.753" UserId="4" Text="Per a [previous discussion here on Meta][1], I went through all questions tagged [tag:process]. There were no questions about concurrency or IPC with this tag, so it was irrelevant, but I would recommend something along the lines of [tag:concurrency] or [tag:inter-process-communication] for these questions. I used the tag [tag:development-process] to account for process model and methodology questions and simply removed the tag from &quot;how do I do X&quot; questions that didn't involve a formal process or concurrency issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure how, but this tag is now dead to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2083/tag-merge-discussion-process-development-process" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5476" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2212" RevisionGUID="3f88d24c-ec16-4cc4-b27c-9f143fab60da" CreationDate="2011-09-03T13:39:56.753" UserId="4" Text="Process tag clean-up complete. Please deal with?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5477" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2212" RevisionGUID="3f88d24c-ec16-4cc4-b27c-9f143fab60da" CreationDate="2011-09-03T13:39:56.753" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5478" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2213" RevisionGUID="0a83ad3d-ef5a-4689-bc74-d2095d58b8e2" CreationDate="2011-09-03T13:56:19.003" UserId="44" Text="The problem I see with questions about book, or other resources, is that there isn't a definitive answer, as once a new book is published, or a new resource is available, who answered to those questions could change their mind. A new answer should be then added every time a new book (or resource) that matches the requirements is available.  &#xD;&#xA;It is also probable the question would not help any future users, if it is not updated. If then the question is about the best book, or the preferite book, then the question becomes rather subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think those questions suit more a forum site, than a Q&amp;A site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5480" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2135" RevisionGUID="ebf19ae2-6c12-4d36-a35a-84f57d537420" CreationDate="2011-09-03T14:21:39.993" UserId="44" Comment="added 17 characters in body" Text="A good example could be: What algorithm is most useful on large unordered data sets where the sets change rapidly and each set may contain elements of the previous set?  &#xD;&#xA;A bad example could be: How do I implement Ranga-Kutta Approximation into a Database in APL?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that algorithm utility questions are valid, but Big O estimation probably is OT; I am not going to go one way or the other on it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5481" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2156" RevisionGUID="3ba0ba2d-01db-41f4-8914-285d64d7fc2c" CreationDate="2011-09-03T15:42:48.660" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/110014890806214656" />
  <row Id="5482" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2212" RevisionGUID="4957d741-d98c-4cca-b450-896daa8251cf" CreationDate="2011-09-03T18:15:35.997" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5483" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2214" RevisionGUID="c06ee81e-de15-4743-8f74-c063a11389db" CreationDate="2011-09-03T18:16:12.003" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="There are no questions tagged with [tag:process], so it'll go away in the next day. If someone recreates it, we can deal with more permanent solutions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5485" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2190" RevisionGUID="b3e8a408-3db3-4b56-9331-ae345caa21e7" CreationDate="2011-09-03T18:42:48.690" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/110060189406855169" />
  <row Id="5486" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2200" RevisionGUID="d90435ad-4bec-40a0-9159-31e2663ce5ea" CreationDate="2011-09-04T06:42:52.997" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/110241402096594944" />
  <row Id="5487" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2215" RevisionGUID="efdbba85-3e1f-4534-86fc-4eb156d368dc" CreationDate="2011-09-04T08:26:02.170" UserId="31418" Text="How is this possible to have 35 views with 59 answers. Yeah, maybe each person can answer twice. But hey, 35 views, and 35 vote ups?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one's from larger view:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kHuQZ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/w1Kg3.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5488" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2215" RevisionGUID="efdbba85-3e1f-4534-86fc-4eb156d368dc" CreationDate="2011-09-04T08:26:02.170" UserId="31418" Text="Isn't this a bug?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5489" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2215" RevisionGUID="efdbba85-3e1f-4534-86fc-4eb156d368dc" CreationDate="2011-09-04T08:26:02.170" UserId="31418" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5490" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2216" RevisionGUID="1835b0df-1e2f-47bc-9f82-6efaac48b91a" CreationDate="2011-09-04T09:20:30.673" UserId="37" Text="The question itself explains at the bottom:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### migrated from stackoverflow.com 3 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question came from our site for professional and enthusiast programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5491" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2215" RevisionGUID="13e50e35-95ee-4751-b6e2-98863c630b76" CreationDate="2011-09-04T09:20:44.027" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5492" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2217" RevisionGUID="fb239a3d-bff5-4c59-8863-2a2f316035d9" CreationDate="2011-09-04T20:44:56.863" UserId="4" Text="If we do, someone should add it to the wiki for the [now-deprecated][1] [tag:software-engineering].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Options that I see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:programming] works, but it's too vague. It's also very similar to the name of the site. It also covers a lot of ground and could be put on a lot of questions here.&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:construction] exists, but has been used to refer to constructors. Construction is the phase name as defined in the SWEBOK. However, the SWEBOK definition for &quot;construction&quot; includes coding, verification, unit testing, and integration testing.&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:coding] seems simplistic to me, but it exists with 66 questions tagged. It seems like this is the current standard, although I've seen questions about the act of writing code not tagged with it.&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:implementation] exists in a plural form [tag:implementations]. However, this tag refers to implementations of features, usually at the language level (from what I gathered). Having two very similar tags to refer to two very different things seems silly and confusing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like [tag:coding] is the winner, but I'm not sure if it's the best choice. It works, it's well understood, and it has some meaning. What does the community think, though?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5493" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2217" RevisionGUID="fb239a3d-bff5-4c59-8863-2a2f316035d9" CreationDate="2011-09-04T20:44:56.863" UserId="4" Text="Do we have a tag specifically related to the construction phase (the act of writing code)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5494" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2217" RevisionGUID="fb239a3d-bff5-4c59-8863-2a2f316035d9" CreationDate="2011-09-04T20:44:56.863" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5495" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2218" RevisionGUID="b2ad1738-4de7-41e6-98b0-1146858d9823" CreationDate="2011-09-04T20:55:57.520" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="One thing to keep in mind is that this isn't Software Engineers.SE or SWEBOK.SE: we shouldn't be trying to morph the tag usage on this site such that all questions fit into one of the predefined &quot;buckets&quot; that SWEBOK defines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest issue with having a tag for the construction phase is that it's pretty meaningless in the context of Programmers: every question can be about writing code in some respect. And we already have the results of that ambiguity: [tag:programming], [tag:coding], and [tag:implementation].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it might make sense to have tags for the phases that regular, non-software engineer programmers don't experience on a day-to-day basis, writing code is the main task of programmers. If you're talking about that, you don't need to tag your question about it: use something more descriptive." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5496" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2218" RevisionGUID="ba0ae84d-acf3-46de-ad43-0b7f5915e7fd" CreationDate="2011-09-04T21:08:20.697" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="One thing to keep in mind is that this isn't Software Engineers.SE or SWEBOK.SE: we shouldn't be trying to morph the tag usage on this site such that all questions fit into one of the predefined &quot;buckets&quot; that SWEBOK defines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest issue with having a tag for the construction phase is that it's pretty meaningless in the context of Programmers: every question can be about writing code in some respect. And we already have the results of that ambiguity: [tag:programming], [tag:coding], and [tag:implementation].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it might make sense to have tags for the phases that regular, non-software engineer programmers don't experience on a day-to-day basis, writing code is the main task of programmers. If you're talking about that, you don't need to tag your question with it: use something more descriptive." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5497" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2147" RevisionGUID="edc4fda5-07d5-4b07-b5f6-49751b3a1637" CreationDate="2011-09-05T01:29:02.870" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|tags|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5498" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2219" RevisionGUID="65f3c50b-2674-4972-95a2-6424811acc2e" CreationDate="2011-09-05T01:29:45.910" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Apparently this was silently completed at some point. Hooray!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5499" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2218" RevisionGUID="d13a7bbf-f099-4ca7-b3ce-6add116d7f4a" CreationDate="2011-09-05T01:30:55.050" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Programming has been destroyed already" Text="One thing to keep in mind is that this isn't Software Engineers.SE or SWEBOK.SE: we shouldn't be trying to morph the tag usage on this site such that all questions fit into one of the predefined &quot;buckets&quot; that SWEBOK defines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest issue with having a tag for the construction phase is that it's pretty meaningless in the context of Programmers: every question can be about writing code in some respect. And we already have the results of that ambiguity: [programming](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2147/blacklist-programming-and-programmers), [tag:coding], and [tag:implementations].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it might make sense to have tags for the phases that regular, non-software engineer programmers don't experience on a day-to-day basis, writing code is the main task of programmers. If you're talking about that, you don't need to tag your question with it: use something more descriptive." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5500" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2188" RevisionGUID="61b31e64-67d8-489b-94c9-b6710b1a0ebe" CreationDate="2011-09-05T03:43:18.127" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/110558596198174720" />
  <row Id="5501" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2220" RevisionGUID="395093c5-c9c7-4e6e-b6e0-377b548ad550" CreationDate="2011-09-05T10:11:10.310" UserId="44" Text="I noticed there are [tag:mit] and [tag:mit-license], but (as both the tags don't have a description) I am not sure I understand when to use one, and when to use the other one. As I noticed there are [tag:gpl] and [tag:lgpl], I thought that the tag for the MIT license should be [tag:mit]; when I entered &quot;mit,&quot; the autocomplete proposed me both [tag:mit] and [tag:mit-license].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the difference between those tags, or between [tag:bsd] and [tag:bsd-license]?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5502" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2220" RevisionGUID="395093c5-c9c7-4e6e-b6e0-377b548ad550" CreationDate="2011-09-05T10:11:10.310" UserId="44" Text="What is the difference between the &quot;mit&quot; and &quot;mit-license&quot; tags?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5503" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2220" RevisionGUID="395093c5-c9c7-4e6e-b6e0-377b548ad550" CreationDate="2011-09-05T10:11:10.310" UserId="44" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5504" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2221" RevisionGUID="9a1f382e-9ce2-4c1c-bc71-7b605cc08bcd" CreationDate="2011-09-05T11:51:44.207" UserId="620" Text="Think about the negative space: before, and after.&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. a period of time where construction haven't started, [#1]&#xD;&#xA; 1. a period of time where *most* of the construction has been finished and the focus is on something else. [#2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software construction by itself isn't a phase: it is an activity, regardless of what SWEBOK or SDLC wants you to believe. During that &quot;phase&quot; where the software construction activity is at the highest, it always co-occurs with design and testing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tag [tag:implementation] (of features) would be the closest to what you consider as the collection of &quot;construction phase&quot; activities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[#1] is the period of time where construction haven't started - it is a period of time set aside during which we *refrain from* coding for the real, where *some* important decisions are made in the hope of maximizing productivity in the subsequent timeframe. This is a conscious choice, as we have to convince ourselves not to treat the prototyping code as the work product of the design phase. This phase could be called [tag:planning], [tag:design] or [tag:research].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[#2] is marked by the increasing predictibility in the forecast of the software release timeframe. Unlike the design-phase, coding is permitted: if a feature is found to be missing, inadequate or faulty, code has to be written. Even the software design may have to be fine-tuned to meet the original functional specification. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5505" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2221" RevisionGUID="7dc6d553-a7b5-4870-9629-cb69ee520e35" CreationDate="2011-09-05T12:00:00.580" UserId="620" Comment="added 156 characters in body" Text="Think about the negative space: before, and after.&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. a period of time where construction haven't started, [#1]&#xD;&#xA; 1. a period of time where *most* of the construction has been finished and the focus is on something else. [#2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software construction by itself isn't a phase: it is an activity, regardless of what SWEBOK or SDLC wants you to believe. During that &quot;phase&quot; where the software construction activity is at the highest, it always co-occurs with design and testing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tag [tag:implementation] (of features) would be the closest to what you consider as the collection of &quot;construction phase&quot; activities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The analogy which compares software implementation with the construction phase of a building is not very accurate. *(Too many references to cite here.)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[#1] is the period of time where construction haven't started - it is a period of time set aside during which we *refrain from* coding for the real, where *some* important decisions are made in the hope of maximizing productivity in the subsequent timeframe. This is a conscious choice, as we have to convince ourselves not to treat the prototyping code as the work product of the design phase. This phase could be called [tag:planning], [tag:design] or [tag:research].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[#2] is marked by the increasing predictibility in the forecast of the software release timeframe. Unlike the design-phase, coding is permitted: if a feature is found to be missing, inadequate or faulty, code has to be written. Even the software design may have to be fine-tuned to meet the original functional specification.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The management activity during this phase is usually called [Software release management](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management), which is simply tagged [tag:release]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5506" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2221" RevisionGUID="e0bd8016-e3e9-4d10-a67b-59dee3fc5c52" CreationDate="2011-09-05T12:07:06.020" UserId="620" Comment="added 156 characters in body" Text="Think about the negative space: before, and after.&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. a period of time where construction haven't started, [#1]&#xD;&#xA; 1. a period of time where *most* of the construction has been finished and the focus is on something else. [#2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software construction by itself isn't a phase: it is an activity, regardless of what SWEBOK or SDLC wants you to believe. During that &quot;phase&quot; where the software construction activity is at the highest, it always co-occurs with design and testing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tag [tag:development] (meaning implementation [#3] of features) would be the closest to what you consider as the collection of &quot;construction phase&quot; activities. However, most of the questions on this site belong to this category, such that it is typically assumed unless tagged otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The analogy which compares software implementation with the construction phase of a building is not very accurate. *(Too many references to cite here.)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[#3] On this site, tag [tag:implementations] seems to have taken a meaning of &quot;*details* of an implementation&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[#1] is the period of time where construction haven't started - it is a period of time set aside during which we *refrain from* coding for the real, where *some* important decisions are made in the hope of maximizing productivity in the subsequent timeframe. This is a conscious choice, as we have to convince ourselves not to treat the prototyping code as the work product of the design phase. This phase could be called [tag:planning], [tag:design] or [tag:research].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[#2] is marked by the increasing predictibility in the forecast of the software release timeframe. Unlike the design-phase, coding is permitted: if a feature is found to be missing, inadequate or faulty, code has to be written. Even the software design may have to be fine-tuned to meet the original functional specification.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The management activity during this phase is usually called [Software release management](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management), which is simply tagged [tag:release]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5507" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2222" RevisionGUID="31595826-95e4-4397-ba51-284d00b8b07e" CreationDate="2011-09-05T15:27:42.640" UserId="226" Text="Probably just a case of mistagging. I'm looking at the licensing tags and they're a mess.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll see about coming up with a clean-up suggestion. I think something like &quot;license-X&quot; would work well, cause it'll support wildcards in tag favourites, but for now I'd say it doesn't matter which one you use and we'll settle on an approach in a couple days." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5508" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2221" RevisionGUID="a31f0491-492f-4e8c-9c6c-e173888a0803" CreationDate="2011-09-05T15:34:09.430" UserId="620" Comment="deleted 58 characters in body" Text="**Think about the phase before, and after.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. a period of time where construction haven't started, [#1]&#xD;&#xA; 1. a period of time where *most* of the construction has been finished and the focus is on something else. [#2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software construction by itself isn't a phase: it is an activity, regardless of what SWEBOK or SDLC wants you to believe. During that &quot;phase&quot; where the software construction activity is at the highest, it always co-occurs with design and testing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tag [tag:development] (meaning implementation [#3] of features) would be the closest to what you consider as the collection of &quot;construction phase&quot; activities. However, most of the questions on this site belong to this category, such that it is typically assumed unless tagged otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The analogy which compares software implementation with the construction phase of a building is not very accurate. *(Too many references to cite here.)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[#3] On this site, tag [tag:implementations] seems to have taken a meaning of &quot;*details* of an implementation&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[#1] is the period of time where construction haven't started - it is a period of time set aside during which we *refrain from* coding for the real, where *some* important decisions are made in the hope of maximizing productivity in the subsequent timeframe. This is a conscious choice, as we have to convince ourselves not to treat the prototyping code as the work product of the design phase. This phase could be called [tag:planning], [tag:design] or [tag:research].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[#2] is marked by the increasing predictibility in the forecast of the software release timeframe. Unlike the design-phase, coding is permitted: if a feature is found to be missing, inadequate or faulty, code has to be written. Even the software design may have to be fine-tuned to meet the original functional specification.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The management activity during this phase is usually called [Software release management](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management), which is simply tagged [tag:release]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5509" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2221" RevisionGUID="a55ed96e-51fa-4890-975b-3c1779da2c21" CreationDate="2011-09-05T22:57:23.937" UserId="620" Comment="added 171 characters in body" Text="**Think about the phase before, and after.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. a period of time where construction haven't started, [#1]&#xD;&#xA; 1. a period of time where *most* of the construction has been finished and the focus is on something else. [#2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software construction by itself isn't a phase: it is an activity, regardless of what SWEBOK or SDLC wants you to believe. During that &quot;phase&quot; where the software construction activity is at the highest, it always co-occurs with design and testing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An analogy is that the software construction time graph is a layered cake which consists of design, coding, and testing as its layers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If software construction were to be regarded as a process, it would have covered the entire period of time from the confirmed selection of vendor to the initial delivery of the software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tag [tag:development] (meaning implementation [#3] of features) would be the closest to what you consider as the collection of &quot;construction phase&quot; activities. However, most of the questions on this site belong to this category, such that it is typically assumed unless tagged otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[#3] On this site, tag [tag:implementations] seems to have taken a meaning of &quot;*details* of an implementation&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[#1] is the period of time where construction haven't started - it is a period of time set aside during which we *refrain from* coding for the real, where *some* important decisions are made in the hope of maximizing productivity in the subsequent timeframe. This is a conscious choice, as we have to convince ourselves not to treat the prototyping code as the work product of the design phase. This phase could be called [tag:planning], [tag:design] or [tag:research].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[#2] is marked by the increasing predictibility in the forecast of the software release timeframe. Unlike the design-phase, coding is permitted: if a feature is found to be missing, inadequate or faulty, code has to be written. Even the software design may have to be fine-tuned to meet the original functional specification.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The management activity during this phase is usually called [Software release management](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management), which is simply tagged [tag:release]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5510" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2223" RevisionGUID="445d3fb2-d4c6-4c40-94c7-8aeacdc0ba9a" CreationDate="2011-09-06T14:14:47.317" UserId="12436" Text="A clearly off-topic question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106165/what-is-the-relationship-between-chuck-norris-and-programmers/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wrote an answer making it clear that there is no real significance, as I assumed it could be useful for someone trying to find information in a bizarre circumstance: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106165/what-is-the-relationship-between-chuck-norris-and-programmers/106169#106169 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is ANY response to such a blatantly off topic question detrimental to the community (despite the intention to add a scintilla of usefulness)? Should questions like this be completely ignored until they're closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5511" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2223" RevisionGUID="445d3fb2-d4c6-4c40-94c7-8aeacdc0ba9a" CreationDate="2011-09-06T14:14:47.317" UserId="12436" Text="Are useful(?) answers to off-topic questions useful to the community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5512" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2223" RevisionGUID="445d3fb2-d4c6-4c40-94c7-8aeacdc0ba9a" CreationDate="2011-09-06T14:14:47.317" UserId="12436" Text="|discussion|bad-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5513" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2224" RevisionGUID="ed1b5af0-c1b5-46a4-87a5-7141c2e32ea0" CreationDate="2011-09-06T14:19:46.923" UserId="47" Text="Strictly speaking you shouldn't answer an off topic question, at best you should just post a comment. However, I would admit that there are grey areas - not sure that this is one though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each time an answer is provided it dilutes the site. Someone can point to that question and say &quot;well it was answered&quot; when they post their off topic question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By making sure that we don't answer and quickly close these questions it's much easier to maintain the site's standards." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5514" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2223" RevisionGUID="b75db3d2-2d89-4321-a07b-5747e7b932cd" CreationDate="2011-09-06T14:34:17.643" UserId="12436" Comment="added 71 characters in body" Text="A clearly off-topic question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106165/what-is-the-relationship-between-chuck-norris-and-programmers/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wrote an answer making it clear that there is no real significance, as I assumed it could be useful for someone trying to find information in a bizarre circumstance: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106165/what-is-the-relationship-between-chuck-norris-and-programmers/106169#106169 (**update:** I deleted the answer, it may be visible to high-rep users)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is ANY response to such a blatantly off topic question detrimental to the community (despite the intention to add a scintilla of usefulness)? Should questions like this be completely ignored until they're closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5515" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2225" RevisionGUID="ea56f766-2c4f-4131-bc64-c1569bd25eba" CreationDate="2011-09-07T01:19:31.987" UserId="2439" Text="Since I've recently noticed, for the first time, that some higher ranking users have the habit of **deleting discussion in the form of comments in bulk**, under the justification that it falls under the term &quot;*extended discussion*&quot;, I would like to ask - can someone provide me clarification on the term &quot;*extended*&quot; and what is considered &quot;extended&quot; (as in &quot;prolonged&quot; I guess) and what is considered an &quot;ordinary&quot; discussion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Just so it is not missed, I'm extremelly pissed (I picked this word very carefully) by this practice for I was under the impression that that is something one does not do in a community where expressing one's opinions is encouraged.* " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5516" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2225" RevisionGUID="ea56f766-2c4f-4131-bc64-c1569bd25eba" CreationDate="2011-09-07T01:19:31.987" UserId="2439" Text="What is an &quot;extended&quot; discussion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5517" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2225" RevisionGUID="ea56f766-2c4f-4131-bc64-c1569bd25eba" CreationDate="2011-09-07T01:19:31.987" UserId="2439" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5518" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2225" RevisionGUID="eaf816ab-f88f-4b4f-8ed5-d1b102d1c8fc" CreationDate="2011-09-07T01:36:28.553" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [How can we improve our guidance about the purpose of comments?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/how-can-we-improve-our-guidance-about-the-purpose-of-comments)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Since I've recently noticed, for the first time, that some higher ranking users have the habit of **deleting discussion in the form of comments in bulk**, under the justification that it falls under the term &quot;*extended discussion*&quot;, I would like to ask - can someone provide me clarification on the term &quot;*extended*&quot; and what is considered &quot;extended&quot; (as in &quot;prolonged&quot; I guess) and what is considered an &quot;ordinary&quot; discussion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Just so it is not missed, I'm extremelly pissed (I picked this word very carefully) by this practice for I was under the impression that that is something one does not do in a community where expressing one's opinions is encouraged.* " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5519" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2225" RevisionGUID="5711519f-9723-44e3-ae19-e62aed00d9c8" CreationDate="2011-09-07T01:36:27.240" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[2044],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5520" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2225" RevisionGUID="9b849d19-ab7a-4b66-b740-989e111d7b48" CreationDate="2011-09-07T13:11:26.503" UserId="-1" Comment="remove duplicate link" Text="Since I've recently noticed, for the first time, that some higher ranking users have the habit of **deleting discussion in the form of comments in bulk**, under the justification that it falls under the term &quot;*extended discussion*&quot;, I would like to ask - can someone provide me clarification on the term &quot;*extended*&quot; and what is considered &quot;extended&quot; (as in &quot;prolonged&quot; I guess) and what is considered an &quot;ordinary&quot; discussion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Just so it is not missed, I'm extremelly pissed (I picked this word very carefully) by this practice for I was under the impression that that is something one does not do in a community where expressing one's opinions is encouraged.* " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5521" PostHistoryTypeId="11" PostId="2225" RevisionGUID="f2fbcc84-8bdd-440f-bcd7-d27d55734954" CreationDate="2011-09-07T13:11:26.380" UserId="226" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:226,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Anna Lear&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5522" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2226" RevisionGUID="a8561131-d865-492e-8259-43955a78de83" CreationDate="2011-09-07T13:15:40.863" UserId="226" Text="Stack Exchange now automatically suggests moving the conversation to chat when some threshold for &quot;extended discussion&quot; is reached. I'm not sure what that threshold is, but it seems to be around six comments between two people. We can take that as the definition of an extended discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, discussion (ordinary and otherwise) should happen in chat and answers should contain complete information. Comments can be used to enhance answers, but they're not a substitute for chat or forum threads.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related questions:  &#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/how-can-we-improve-our-guidance-about-the-purpose-of-comments  &#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1764/can-we-get-a-simple-way-to-initiate-a-chat&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5523" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2227" RevisionGUID="4f58fc86-bc8e-48e8-9ddd-facae00c41b6" CreationDate="2011-09-07T18:20:38.807" UserId="3792" Text="An extended discussion, as I see it, is anything that is not a clarification of the question/answer or a request for a clarification." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5524" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2225" RevisionGUID="2f7f8908-29a3-49af-a9bf-9b583c88f1d2" CreationDate="2011-09-07T18:45:12.903" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/111510345159409664" />
  <row Id="5525" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2228" RevisionGUID="14259cc4-c9f2-4894-acce-f996c04c7ea0" CreationDate="2011-09-07T19:56:01.680" UserId="3792" Text="It has been suggested in [this question][1] that comments should be for the purpose of clarification of a question or answer, and that eventually the clarifications should be editted into the question/answer so that people don't have to look down the comment change to see what was &quot;really&quot; meant. **Is there any reason that comments should not just be deleted after a certain period of time?** They can be fun to read, but do comments truly serve any purpose 6 months after they were posted if questions are being properly editted? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2225/what-is-an-extended-discussion/2227#2227" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5526" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2228" RevisionGUID="14259cc4-c9f2-4894-acce-f996c04c7ea0" CreationDate="2011-09-07T19:56:01.680" UserId="3792" Text="Auto-delete comments over time?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5527" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2228" RevisionGUID="14259cc4-c9f2-4894-acce-f996c04c7ea0" CreationDate="2011-09-07T19:56:01.680" UserId="3792" Text="|discussion|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5528" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2229" RevisionGUID="38cdceab-817c-4ca8-adbd-96f0823c87e6" CreationDate="2011-09-07T20:47:27.590" UserId="2439" Text="If the policy is ***that the comments will be deleted after the conclusions made in them have been implemented in the answer, there should be a notice of warning and some leeway time given to the participants*** (and expecially the original author which will in most probability implement those conclusions) ***before comments are mass deleted***.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***12-24 hours, or perhaps two days*** (to account for weekends and for users who only visit these forums from work and not from home) ***seems reasonable.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5529" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2230" RevisionGUID="44450c7b-d3c1-412b-b3a9-a19dc6e8259f" CreationDate="2011-09-07T21:12:53.470" UserId="4" Text="I say comments should stay around forever. In fact, I think that fewer comments need to be deleted overall. Comments serve as kind of a record of how the answer developed. Sure, some of the comments might not be relevant, but the dialog that they capture shows how an answer is understood and (if it's edited) evolves over time. It tells a story that the edit history really doesn't, and that's collaboration between multiple people to build &quot;the perfect answer&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And before someone mentions the chat, right now, I don't feel it's suitable for this purpose. To the best of my knowledge, there's no way to tie chats into questions. The chat also seems so wrong for this purpose. As nice as having chat functionality is, a lot of what happens on a Stack Exchange is asynchronous - questions, answers, and comments are asynchronous while chat just means you have to go to another page/part of the site and it introduces a more synchronous feel to it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5530" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2231" RevisionGUID="e40463ec-3a4b-43e3-b2af-482923334405" CreationDate="2011-09-08T04:23:03.487" UserId="897" Text="I agree with Thomas.  Comments often contain good supporting (or refuting) points related to the answer, or contain other valuable nuggets of information who's worth *may not be immediately evident*.  I've spent many years on the net digging up hints to solving obscure programming problems - and I cant tell you how many times an 'answer' or an important 'clue' was found in some post made in a forum or blog that was only tangental to their topic, but critically important to me.  So you never *really know* what information will be valuable in the future.  I see no reason to ever delete them.  Maybe stack can just allow users to ignore comments if they dont see the value in them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5531" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2232" RevisionGUID="06311eda-5c2d-4db0-b7ff-351c3bcc772c" CreationDate="2011-09-08T16:04:34.053" UserId="25476" Text="Comments add a lot of pertinent information, and history as to how certain information was determined.  I think searching previous question on SE sites for related queries would be useless without them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that being said there are a lot of extended &quot;chat sessions&quot; that spring up and the only thing preventing them are a moderator scolding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps we can have a vote system for comment deletion much like for question closing?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5533" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2234" RevisionGUID="1d085f5d-e741-4dca-bc6d-d21ac9e45d1d" CreationDate="2011-09-08T18:49:46.357" UserId="2439" Text="My viewpoint which coincides greatly with the ones already made by Thomas, GrandmasterB and maple, is that **we should not embrace a policy by which comments serve only for the purposes of clarification an answer**. **Since rules on this site are alredy applied retroactively** (something else which I am also opposed to, since that puts us in the *ex post facto* situation, which is not, let's say *expected*, but let's leave that aside for now) **that would put the majority of all comments in line for deletion.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my view that yes, although comments don't always serve the purpose of clarification; sometimes they only tangentially touch the answer's topic, they are in many cases a source of valuable information! Or funny (yes, I cherish those as well).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***In the ideal world***, an answer would be posted by the author, after which an **&quot;extended&quot; comments discussion** of no more than **3 comments per person(!)** would be led in hope of clarifying the finer points of the answer. If it took longer than that, it would be moved to chat, after which an author would come back and amend the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**However, this is real world**. I don't know them or can't speak about the habits of others, but I'm a fella who has a life. Meaning, first, I don't stare at these forums all day waiting for someone to post a comment so that I could think about it and immediately change my answer. Sometimes I don't change it at all (just don't feel *editorial* at the moment). Sometimes somebody posts a comment, to which I don't reply at all but come back to after two weeks after thinking about it, or after something else reminds me of something I saw in that comment. Sometimes somebody posts a link or a *Did you know* tip which I would never include in my answer, but which adds to the topic at hand very nicely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Chat is not an adequate comments replacement. Not only it** (not sure about this, but someone will set me right if I'm wrong) **disables those who have not commented first to see the current discussion, but it forces them to comment something** (which has possibly already been said) **to even &quot;join the discussion&quot;. Also, if the chat room holds several comments** (which are not necessarily clarifying the answer) **but less than 15** (so I've heard) **it is not kept, therefore effectively losing its contents.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it short, the system of answers and comments as it was put in the beginning and up until relatively recently worked very well. Comments were not deleted (Why should they, after all? Are they taking ***that much space*** on the server's hard drives that they cannot be kept?) and the **interface and joining in to see what is currently discussed was easy and intuitive**. **Also, history was kept.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only comments which I **exclude from that rule, are the ones containing obvious SPAM which was easily delt with with the 5 second** (or something like that) **delay in posting and through the flagging system**. In any case, those were easily recognized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; They can be fun to read, but do comments truly serve any purpose 6&#xD;&#xA;&gt; months after they were posted if questions are being properly editted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why 6 months? Why not two? Or twelve? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And what after that? Will we start deleting answers as well? Questions also, while we're at it? **After all, after a certain time, most things lose their purpose. That doesn't mean we should suddenly kill and get rid of it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**And who is to say whether something is for deletion? Moderators?** (It's a nice model. **On a community shaped site, two or three persons having the power to decide to single handedly delete and shape content to their liking, without any discussion or warning, possibly even to the level of completely changing the original author's meaning.** ... No, sorry, I don't buy it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**History should be kept intact, wherever we like it and agree with it or not.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5535" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2046" RevisionGUID="f77960b9-461f-4801-806a-3562ec0f0be1" CreationDate="2011-09-08T21:04:27.543" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 259 characters in body" Text="I think addressing the recourse people have when an answer doesn't get improved the way they like is a good idea. To that end, perhaps we can revise it to say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are useful for getting clarifications, but extended discussions detract from the question and its answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you'd like to discuss anything related to programming with other expert programmers, please use our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * This site is &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#editing&quot;&gt;collaborative&lt;/a&gt;: if a question or answer can be improved without changing the author's intent, please edit it or suggest an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you like a post, show your appreciation by voting it up.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you disagree with an answer or a question remains unclear, feel free to down-vote it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you have a better answer to a question, please leave your own answer instead of writing a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yoda over on Gardening.SE [provided a great guide](http://meta.gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/201/when-should-i-post-an-answer-and-when-should-i-post-a-comment/202#202) on when to use comments, and created this awesome chart:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![How to use comments: a flow chart][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue of [how to improve the purpose of comments in the FAQ](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/104981/is-the-official-comment-policy-obsolete-and-should-we-change-it) is being discussed on Meta Stack Overflow, as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/JS6Z8.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5536" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2234" RevisionGUID="5e502f49-2c81-47a0-8787-9b83cd84f841" CreationDate="2011-09-08T21:20:20.313" UserId="2439" Comment="added 95 characters in body" Text="My viewpoint which coincides greatly with the ones already made by Thomas, GrandmasterB and maple, is that **we should not embrace a policy by which comments serve only for the purposes of clarification an answer**. **Since rules on this site are alredy applied retroactively** (something else which I am also opposed to, since that puts us in the *ex post facto* situation, which is not, let's say *expected*, but let's leave that aside for now) **that would put the majority of all comments in line for deletion.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my view that yes, although comments don't always serve the purpose of clarification; sometimes they only tangentially touch the answer's topic, they are in many cases a source of valuable information! Or funny (yes, I cherish those as well).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***In the ideal world***, an answer would be posted by the author, after which an **&quot;extended&quot; comments discussion** of no more than **3 comments per person(!)** would be led in hope of clarifying the finer points of the answer. If it took longer than that, it would be moved to chat, after which an author would come back and amend the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**However, this is real world**. I don't know them or can't speak about the habits of others, but I'm a fella who has a life. Meaning, first, I don't stare at these forums all day waiting for someone to post a comment so that I could think about it and immediately change my answer. Sometimes I don't change it at all (just don't feel *editorial* at the moment). Sometimes somebody posts a comment, to which I don't reply at all but come back to after two weeks after thinking about it, or after something else reminds me of something I saw in that comment. Sometimes somebody posts a link or a *Did you know* tip which I would never include in my answer, but which adds to the topic at hand very nicely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Chat is not an adequate comments replacement. Not only it** (not sure about this, but someone will set me right if I'm wrong) **disables those who have not commented first to see the current discussion, but it forces them to comment something** (which has possibly already been said) **to even &quot;join the discussion&quot;. Also, if the chat room holds several comments** (which are not necessarily clarifying the answer) **but less than 15** (so I've heard) **it is not kept, therefore effectively losing its contents.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it short, the system of answers and comments as it was put in the beginning and up until relatively recently worked very well. Comments were not deleted (Why should they, after all? Are they taking ***that much space*** on the server's hard drives that they cannot be kept?) and the **interface and joining in to see what is currently discussed was easy and intuitive**. **Also, history was kept.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only comments which I **exclude from that rule, are the ones containing obvious SPAM which was easily delt with with the 5 second** (or something like that) **delay in posting and through the flagging system. In any case, those were easily recognized. Those containing obviously useless bits like &quot;+1 you rock&quot; would also fall into this category.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; They can be fun to read, but do comments truly serve any purpose 6&#xD;&#xA;&gt; months after they were posted if questions are being properly editted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why 6 months? Why not two? Or twelve? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And what after that? Will we start deleting answers as well? Questions also, while we're at it? **After all, after a certain time, most things lose their purpose. That doesn't mean we should suddenly kill and get rid of it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**And who is to say whether something is for deletion? Moderators?** (It's a nice model. **On a community shaped site, two or three persons having the power to decide to single handedly delete and shape content to their liking, without any discussion or warning, possibly even to the level of completely changing the original author's meaning.** ... No, sorry, I don't buy it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**History should be kept intact, wherever we like it and agree with it or not.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5537" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2235" RevisionGUID="71040bd7-feee-4646-9956-f5fb0cfe5297" CreationDate="2011-09-09T04:51:25.720" UserId="226" Text="*Disclaimer: in this answer, I'm assuming comments' content is not offensive, insulting, or otherwise not in keeping with the spirit of the &quot;Be nice&quot; guideline.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there are two things to tackle here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. automatic deletion of comments;&#xD;&#xA;2. manual deletion of comments and removal of some discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should we automatically delete comments after some time? Absolutely not.** While it is true that extended discussion in comments is discouraged universally across the Stack Exchange network, there is still value in comments that add supporting information. Ideally that information should be edited into the answer, but that doesn't always happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments on questions serve the purpose of someone being able to add a helpful hint that might just be a guess or otherwise not fit to stand on its own as an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is absolutely no way to automatically or manually ensure that all information given in a comment is preserved in a question or an answer. This leaves us with some comments that are more noise than signal. Those we have to remove as we find them. When I say &quot;we&quot; here I mean both the community and the moderators. As moderators, we typically react to flags on comments, but given enough flags on a comment, it will be removed automatically without our intervention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments have always been and probably will continue to be second-class citizens on the network. That is entirely by design and that's shown in the limitations that comments have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* comments have a length limit;&#xD;&#xA;* there is no downvoting on comments, so they are not subject to the usual community vetting of their quality;&#xD;&#xA;* comments do not affect reputation;&#xD;&#xA;* comments are collapsed when their number exceeds 5;&#xD;&#xA;* moderators see an automated &quot;more than 20 comments posted&quot; flag on posts that generate a lot of comments in a short amount of time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The design of each site places primary focus on questions and answers. We want all useful information required to answer a question to ideally be in an answer. How that answer was developed is largely unimportant so long as the final product of that development is valuable. How valuable it is can be determined through up and down votes on the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange set out to make the internet better by creating an environment where the best information rises to the top. Asking the user to dig through a lengthy comment thread on the off chance that the information you're looking for is there goes completely counter to that mission. If we're going to allow that, we might as well just abandon this whole Q&amp;A idea and go back to forums where readers can already sift through pages of unrelated or possibly contradictory information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For an example, compare the comments between Rook and me on [his answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2228/auto-delete-comments-over-time/2234#2234). Is it really beneficial to have our discussion there or is it better for him to express his point in his answer and for me to express mine here? In my opinion, reading one coherent answer is infinitely better than reading a string of broken up comments. Granted, meta posts are a bit of a special case since here we encourage discussion, but I think this still illustrates my point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I do think we can be better about defining extended discussions and clearing up comment threads. We can discuss that [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/how-can-we-improve-our-guidance-about-the-purpose-of-comments).** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know it can be difficult to watch your comments be removed and I apologize for that. I know the chat isn't perfect in many ways, and I apologize for that too. But at the end of the day, comments are designed to be transient. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For what it's worth, as moderators we typically only respond to comment flags from community members and to the automatic &quot;more than 20 comments posted&quot; flag as those are usually a good indication that something might be going off-track. It's not typical for posts to generate large amounts of comments in a short amount of time. We do not (far as I know) go out looking for comments to delete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5538" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2228" RevisionGUID="09d746e6-1633-48bd-8494-24512dcec0e8" CreationDate="2011-09-09T05:12:53.407" UserId="226" Comment="added 340 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="It has been suggested in [this question][1] that comments should be for the purpose of clarification of a question or answer, and that eventually the clarifications should be editted into the question/answer so that people don't have to look down the comment change to see what was &quot;really&quot; meant. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We took up a [policy of removing irrelevant comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1457/how-do-our-moderators-and-community-members-feel-about-cleaning-up-comment-nois), but it seems that the issue is larger now than just dealing with noise in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When, if at all, should we delete comments? For that matter, is there any reason that comments should not just be deleted after a certain period of time? They can be fun to read, but do comments truly serve any purpose 6 months after they were posted if questions are being properly edited? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2225/what-is-an-extended-discussion/2227#2227" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5539" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2228" RevisionGUID="09d746e6-1633-48bd-8494-24512dcec0e8" CreationDate="2011-09-09T05:12:53.407" UserId="226" Comment="added 340 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="When should comments be deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5540" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2228" RevisionGUID="09d746e6-1633-48bd-8494-24512dcec0e8" CreationDate="2011-09-09T05:12:53.407" UserId="226" Comment="added 340 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5541" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2236" RevisionGUID="8e0dd369-38c4-48fe-b0be-1b126ee436fb" CreationDate="2011-09-09T11:52:34.283" UserId="4" Text="To clarify, I'm referring to [statistical surveys][1] and questionnaires that are [well designed][2], ask open-ended questions, are relevant to programmers as per the diagram in the FAQ, aren't rants, and generally add value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, questions more like [this one][3] (although that's a mediocre example, at best) or questions like what a professional or academic study would entail (if anyone has read [The Dark Side of Software Engineering][4], they included a sample of questions they asked to professional software developers and their responses).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that, overall, well-written survey questions could add value to people looking to tap into the total knowledge and experience here on Programmers, as well as add legitimacy to the site by bringing in academics and software engineering researchers to access practitioners and perhaps provide answers to questions based on the latest academic research, where applicable. However, it would have to be monitored and controlled to ensure only high-quality surveys are allowed - ones that don't add value or demonstrate relevance are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is similar to [another discussion here on Meta][5], but provides a much more narrow definition of what is allowed and what isn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_survey&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questionnaire_construction&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106924/on-average-how-many-times-does-eclipse-crash-during-a-day-for-you&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Software-Engineering-Computing/dp/0470597178&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1621/should-open-ended-poll-questions-be-allowed-just-because-they-say-to-explain-you" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5542" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2236" RevisionGUID="8e0dd369-38c4-48fe-b0be-1b126ee436fb" CreationDate="2011-09-09T11:52:34.283" UserId="4" Text="Should surveys be allowed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5543" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2236" RevisionGUID="8e0dd369-38c4-48fe-b0be-1b126ee436fb" CreationDate="2011-09-09T11:52:34.283" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5544" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2236" RevisionGUID="e9f3fb0c-4a51-44da-884b-a539e878c2b8" CreationDate="2011-09-09T12:49:10.787" UserId="4" Comment="added 328 characters in body" Text="To clarify, I'm referring to [statistical surveys][1] and questionnaires that are [well designed][2], ask open-ended questions, are relevant to programmers as per the diagram in the FAQ, aren't rants, and generally add value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, questions more like [this one][3] (although that's a mediocre example, at best) or questions like what a professional or academic study would entail (if anyone has read [The Dark Side of Software Engineering][4], they included a sample of questions they asked to professional software developers and their responses).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that, overall, well-written survey questions could add value to people looking to tap into the total knowledge and experience here on Programmers, as well as add legitimacy to the site by bringing in academics and software engineering researchers to access practitioners and perhaps provide answers to questions based on the latest academic research, where applicable. However, it would have to be monitored and controlled to ensure only high-quality surveys are allowed - ones that don't add value or demonstrate relevance are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions should also be made community-wiki. By nature, they are designed to bring in a large number of answers, typically relating to personal experiences and knowledge gained from them. There's no right or wrong answers, and as such, reputation should not be assigned to the question or any answers provided for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is similar to [another discussion here on Meta][5], but provides a much more narrow definition of what is allowed and what isn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_survey&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questionnaire_construction&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106924/on-average-how-many-times-does-eclipse-crash-during-a-day-for-you&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Software-Engineering-Computing/dp/0470597178&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1621/should-open-ended-poll-questions-be-allowed-just-because-they-say-to-explain-you" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5545" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2237" RevisionGUID="e9da8772-5bae-4524-bd33-90675095aa4a" CreationDate="2011-09-09T12:58:16.390" UserId="36312" Text="What is the difference between &quot;stackoverflow&quot; and &quot;programmers&quot; on stackexchange?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that on Stackoverflow there much much more people able to answer than here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5546" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2237" RevisionGUID="e9da8772-5bae-4524-bd33-90675095aa4a" CreationDate="2011-09-09T12:58:16.390" UserId="36312" Text="What is the difference between StackOverflow and Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5547" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2237" RevisionGUID="e9da8772-5bae-4524-bd33-90675095aa4a" CreationDate="2011-09-09T12:58:16.390" UserId="36312" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5548" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="2237" RevisionGUID="1f568d4e-1143-4394-bf5b-da709bb1a2f3" CreationDate="2011-09-09T13:20:54.603" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106950/what-is-the-difference-between-stackoverflow-and-programmers" Text="" />
  <row Id="5549" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="2238" RevisionGUID="0e8129fe-9476-4659-843f-b971f31d1891" CreationDate="2011-09-09T13:20:54.603" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106950/what-is-the-difference-between-stackoverflow-and-programmers/106952#106952" Text="" />
  <row Id="5550" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="2239" RevisionGUID="a1a02d9a-afca-48b6-befd-826bcfb42b64" CreationDate="2011-09-09T13:20:54.603" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106950/what-is-the-difference-between-stackoverflow-and-programmers/106953#106953" Text="" />
  <row Id="5551" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="2240" RevisionGUID="97c090b0-0ced-4768-a5de-a6103cebcc42" CreationDate="2011-09-09T13:20:54.603" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106950/what-is-the-difference-between-stackoverflow-and-programmers/106960#106960" Text="" />
  <row Id="5552" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2238" RevisionGUID="32740ae2-9025-4fe2-a335-6c5ae925a9e2" CreationDate="2011-09-09T13:01:56.547" UserId="34573" Text="Stack Overflow is for practical questions, this is for the more conceptual and business related concerns of programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, this is in the FAQ on both sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5553" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2239" RevisionGUID="bc803239-aa9a-4829-8936-9c9a946844d0" CreationDate="2011-09-09T13:03:40.233" UserId="32325" Text="First you should read both [Programmers FAQs][1] and [StackOverflow FAQs][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow is for specif programming problems, algorithms, tools, etc... have written some bugged code and can't find the bugs? Want to optimize an algorithm you wrote? SO is the place for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is more incentrate on general programming methodologies and design, development, software engineering, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5554" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2240" RevisionGUID="b1f8a615-7782-4bea-96b8-cc13d14fe279" CreationDate="2011-09-09T13:15:39.000" UserId="36317" Text="&gt;*I posted a comment giving a link, but I'll copy the answer from there anyway  &#xD;&#xA;Thank you to [Alpine][1] from StackOverflow Meta for the answer.*&#xD;&#xA;(see http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/82988/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is related to coding, it should be on [Stack Overflow][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's related to higher level programming concepts or is subjective (but still related to programming), it should be on [Programmers][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;From [Introducing Programmers.StackExchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In a nutshell, **Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor** working through code issues. **Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard** working through higher level conceptual programming issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have **actual source code in the questions or answers**. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [Stack Overflow FAQ][4]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; enthusiast programmers, people who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; write code because they love it. We&#xD;&#xA;&gt; feel the best Stack Overflow questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have a bit of source code in them, but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; if your question generally covers … &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific programming problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a software algorithm&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software tools commonly used by programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - matters that are unique to the programming profession&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [Programmers FAQ][5]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; expert programmers who are interested&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in subjective questions on software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This can include topics such as: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software law &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Programming puzzles &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective does not mean “anything&#xD;&#xA;&gt; goes”. Please keep it professional at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; all times. If this is a question you'd&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be uncomfortable discussing with your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; colleagues in a work environment, it's&#xD;&#xA;&gt; probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**However, pay attention to the next bit of the FAQ, which explicitly lists the types of question that are off-topic. Programmers SE is not a free-for-all.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/157949/alpine&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5555" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2237" RevisionGUID="4f8168e8-527f-460a-9298-2d36f7927dcf" CreationDate="2011-09-09T13:21:29.993" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;What is the difference between &quot;stackoverflow&quot; and &quot;programmers&quot; on stackexchange?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that on Stackoverflow there much much more people able to answer than here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5556" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2237" RevisionGUID="c281489a-fe87-4b21-a20b-e0c48be24c47" CreationDate="2011-09-09T13:21:27.280" UserId="47" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[171],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5557" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2237" RevisionGUID="d3d8dbe5-f182-4070-bed0-91a904f685c3" CreationDate="2011-09-09T13:22:05.203" UserId="47" Comment="spelling" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the difference between &quot;Stack Overflow&quot; and &quot;Programmers&quot; on Stack Exchange?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that on Stack Overflow there much much more people able to answer than here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5558" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2237" RevisionGUID="d3d8dbe5-f182-4070-bed0-91a904f685c3" CreationDate="2011-09-09T13:22:05.203" UserId="47" Comment="spelling" Text="What is the difference between Stack Overflow and Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5559" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2239" RevisionGUID="1488bf12-90f5-433d-8bef-cd6f7205439f" CreationDate="2011-09-09T13:22:19.400" UserId="47" Comment="spelling" Text="First you should read both [Programmers FAQs][1] and [StackOverflow FAQs][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is for specif programming problems, algorithms, tools, etc... have written some bugged code and can't find the bugs? Want to optimize an algorithm you wrote? SO is the place for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is more incentrate on general programming methodologies and design, development, software engineering, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5560" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2235" RevisionGUID="b7db10df-bef8-4ab7-bc47-70c37e36f9e5" CreationDate="2011-09-09T13:52:40.887" UserId="226" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="*Disclaimer: in this answer, I'm assuming comments' content is not offensive, insulting, or otherwise not in keeping with the spirit of the &quot;Be nice&quot; guideline.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there are two things to tackle here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. automatic deletion of comments;&#xD;&#xA;2. manual deletion of comments and removal of some discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should we automatically delete comments after some time? Absolutely not.** While it is true that extended discussion in comments is discouraged universally across the Stack Exchange network, there is still value in comments that add supporting information. Ideally that information should be edited into the answer, but that doesn't always happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments on questions serve the purpose of someone being able to add a helpful hint that might just be a guess or otherwise not fit to stand on its own as an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is absolutely no way to automatically or manually ensure that all information given in a comment is preserved in a question or an answer. This leaves us with some comments that are more noise than signal. Those we have to remove as we find them. When I say &quot;we&quot; here I mean both the community and the moderators. As moderators, we typically react to flags on comments, but given enough flags on a comment, it will be removed automatically without our intervention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments have always been and probably will continue to be second-class citizens on the network. That is entirely by design and that's shown in the limitations that comments have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* comments have a length limit;&#xD;&#xA;* there is no downvoting on comments, so they are not subject to the usual community vetting of their quality;&#xD;&#xA;* comments do not affect reputation;&#xD;&#xA;* comments are collapsed when their number exceeds 5;&#xD;&#xA;* moderators see an automated &quot;more than 20 comments posted&quot; flag on posts that generate a lot of comments in a short amount of time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The design of each site places primary focus on questions and answers. We want all useful information required to answer a question to ideally be in an answer. How that answer was developed is largely unimportant so long as the final product of that development is valuable. How valuable it is can be determined through up and down votes on the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange set out to &quot;make the internet better&quot; by creating an environment where the best information rises to the top. Asking the user to dig through a lengthy comment thread on the off chance that the information they're looking for is there goes completely counter to that mission. If we're going to allow that, we might as well just abandon this whole Q&amp;A idea and go back to forums where readers can already sift through pages of unrelated or possibly contradictory information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For an example, compare the comments between Rook and me on [his answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2228/auto-delete-comments-over-time/2234#2234). Is it really beneficial to have our discussion there or is it better for him to express his point in his answer and for me to express mine here? In my opinion, reading one coherent answer is infinitely better than reading a string of broken up comments. Granted, meta posts are a bit of a special case since here we encourage discussion, but I think this still illustrates my point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I do think we can be better about defining extended discussions and clearing up comment threads. We can discuss that [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/how-can-we-improve-our-guidance-about-the-purpose-of-comments).** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know it can be difficult to watch your comments be removed and I apologize for that. I know the chat isn't perfect in many ways, and I apologize for that too. But at the end of the day, comments are designed to be transient. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For what it's worth, as moderators we typically only respond to comment flags from community members and to the automatic &quot;more than 20 comments posted&quot; flag as those are usually a good indication that something might be going off-track. It's not typical for posts to generate large amounts of comments in a short amount of time. We do not (far as I know) go out looking for comments to delete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5561" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2241" RevisionGUID="4f8e8271-1544-4e9b-a271-93d83ecb0818" CreationDate="2011-09-09T14:26:22.657" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I'd suggest reading [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) and particularly the [answer on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179) created by our very own [Aaronaught](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/3249/aaronaught), which goes into more finer detail about why just such a bad fit for Stack Exchange, but in short, the purpose of Stack Exchange is to get an answer to an actual problem a person is facing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One answer that actually solves the problem is what we're looking for: not a host of suggestions with no proposed criteria for evaluating the answers. A future visitor, who has the same issue, should be able to look at the set of answers and be able to determine two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What the community has decided is the correct answer (highest number of votes)&#xD;&#xA;* What the question asker has decided is the correct answer (accept flag)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you use Stack Exchange for polling, these two concepts break down: every answer is equally valid (it's a survey, after all). Voting doesn't mean anything: what do people vote for? Their favorite answer? There's no value in that in the Stack Exchange network: it adds another dimension to voting that a future visitor, not aware of the exception to the rule being made for the specific question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, I'd consider this to be an abuse of the user base. Stack Exchange users are not &quot;participants&quot;, sitting around waiting to take surveys for whatever purpose someone coming to the site needs. They're experts, who have generously devoted their time and knowledge to help people solve problems. Every time we forget that there are actual people here with specific issues and specific knowledge by reducing them to one point on a graph, we diminish the value of their contributions. Answering a few questions for a survey is *not* the same thing as providing a long, thoughtful answer about a specific problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, Community Wiki is not the answer. Community Wiki—for questions—was made a moderator-only function specifically to combat its abuse to keep questions that were off-topic or bad fits for Stack Exchange (but were ostensibly interesting) open. Recently on the Stack Exchange blog, [Grace Note](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/146126/grace-note) went into a good amount of detail about [the point of Community Wiki](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; With suggested edits now in place, you could argue that the removal of reputation from voting is now the only function of community wiki. Unfortunately, this means it is often seen as a magic switch to allow questionable content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One of the first feature requests I saw on Meta Stack Overflow was Moderator Filtering of Highest Voted Questions, which was deemed necessary because questions like Coolest Server Names show the wrong side of the site. The actual problem-solving nature of sites is too easily buried under the weight of all these “fun” community wiki questions. At one point, “Our top voted post is an actual question!” was a point of pride. That’s … not a positive sign for a Q&amp;A network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, as Grace Note  continues, we should be looking for quality content that stands *without* Community Wiki. We *might* be able to do that by rewriting survey questions into a question about a problem the asker is actually facing: this would bring back the voting and acceptance functions into play, and make a question that meets our general guidelines *without* having to abuse Community Wiki." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5562" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2241" RevisionGUID="667d0983-92ef-40ae-8e54-fbcf64bdd689" CreationDate="2011-09-09T14:32:57.373" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 94 characters in body" Text="I'd suggest reading [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) and particularly the [answer on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179) created by our very own [Aaronaught](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/3249/aaronaught), which goes into more finer detail about why just such a bad fit for Stack Exchange, but in short, the purpose of Stack Exchange is to get an answer to an actual problem a person is facing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One answer that actually solves the problem is what we're looking for: not a host of suggestions. A future visitor, who has the same issue, should be able to look at the set of answers and be able to determine two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What the community has decided is the correct answer (highest number of votes)&#xD;&#xA;* What the question asker has decided is the correct answer (accept flag)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you use Stack Exchange for polling, these two concepts break down. When every answer is equally valid (it's a survey, after all), voting doesn't mean anything: what do people vote for? Their favorite answer? There's no value in that in the Stack Exchange network: it adds another, hidden dimension to voting that a future visitor, not aware of the exception to the rule being made for the specific question, isn't going to pick up on. &quot;Use voting as a means to vet the answers...except on this question! Ignore the voting on this question!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, I'd consider this to be an abuse of the user base. Stack Exchange users are not &quot;participants&quot;, sitting around waiting to take surveys for whatever purpose someone coming to the site needs. They're experts, who have generously devoted their time and knowledge to help people solve problems. Every time we forget that there are actual people here with specific issues and specific knowledge by reducing them to one point on a graph, we diminish the value of their contributions. Answering a few questions for a survey is *not* the same thing as providing a long, thoughtful answer about a specific problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, Community Wiki is not the answer. Community Wiki—for questions—was made a moderator-only function specifically to combat its abuse to keep questions that were off-topic or bad fits for Stack Exchange (but were ostensibly interesting) open. Recently on the Stack Exchange blog, [Grace Note](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/146126/grace-note) went into a good amount of detail about [the point of Community Wiki](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; With suggested edits now in place, you could argue that the removal of reputation from voting is now the only function of community wiki. Unfortunately, this means it is often seen as a magic switch to allow questionable content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One of the first feature requests I saw on Meta Stack Overflow was Moderator Filtering of Highest Voted Questions, which was deemed necessary because questions like Coolest Server Names show the wrong side of the site. The actual problem-solving nature of sites is too easily buried under the weight of all these “fun” community wiki questions. At one point, “Our top voted post is an actual question!” was a point of pride. That’s … not a positive sign for a Q&amp;A network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, as Grace Note  continues, we should be looking for quality content that stands *without* Community Wiki. We *might* be able to do that by rewriting survey questions into a question about a problem the asker is actually facing: this would bring back the voting and acceptance functions into play, and make a question that meets our general guidelines *without* having to abuse Community Wiki." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5563" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2242" RevisionGUID="046be854-31fb-46e3-aba2-6a155e225709" CreationDate="2011-09-09T14:35:13.983" UserId="32325" Text="Right now I can see 41 questions on my home page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the questions appearing on my home page are the only one that are really interesting to me (because looking at the complete list of questions or browsing tags is really slow and not so efficient), how can I see more questions like that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5564" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2242" RevisionGUID="046be854-31fb-46e3-aba2-6a155e225709" CreationDate="2011-09-09T14:35:13.983" UserId="32325" Text="How can I see more questions displayed in my home page?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5565" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2242" RevisionGUID="046be854-31fb-46e3-aba2-6a155e225709" CreationDate="2011-09-09T14:35:13.983" UserId="32325" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5566" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2243" RevisionGUID="1eff8020-098b-42aa-a825-326478ac3f04" CreationDate="2011-09-09T14:44:12.223" UserId="33171" Text="The front page's question count is a fixed limit of 50 (fewer if you have ignored tags hidden, though). It cannot be modified. Unfortunately, you will have to use the questions list as an alternative. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5567" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2242" RevisionGUID="8ec376a9-19b8-40de-a070-dfabc5772060" CreationDate="2011-09-09T15:00:12.273" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5568" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2225" RevisionGUID="b17fb003-1512-4a95-9f2e-5d5a21d0cd06" CreationDate="2011-09-09T15:02:57.433" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderation|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5569" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2242" RevisionGUID="a8e211ec-9f8b-494e-8bf9-cabb10ad2621" CreationDate="2011-09-09T15:04:24.373" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|user-interface|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5570" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2244" RevisionGUID="823fe567-44b6-47f1-a8ae-e6581147f09f" CreationDate="2011-09-09T15:53:10.353" UserId="32325" Text="I love Stack Exchange sites because of the amount of knowledge and people sharing it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the best thing is that here you can find real people, sharing your interests and job experience. It's a human site, not a bunch of computer data like you can find on wikis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is possible imho thanks to comments. Thanks to comments we can express our opinions, enhance our point of views, have fun, share links and useful resources, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, comments are underrated and they can be used more effectively to enhance user experience, without making the site a holy-war place of course.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't say &quot;you can continue discussion in chat&quot;. In chat you can find 3 people sleeping, and chat rooms are not good for specified arguments. We have thousands of questions on specific topics, and only two chat rooms... wonder why? because chat rooms are good oldie useless '90.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think somewhere comments (not merely clarifications) should find their place to allow pacific discussion and view sharing. How about a collapsed box next to the question? If you want to look at it and take place just click it to show other comments, otherwise you won't get distracted by those." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5571" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2244" RevisionGUID="823fe567-44b6-47f1-a8ae-e6581147f09f" CreationDate="2011-09-09T15:53:10.353" UserId="32325" Text="Why the use of comments is limited to clarification?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5572" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2244" RevisionGUID="823fe567-44b6-47f1-a8ae-e6581147f09f" CreationDate="2011-09-09T15:53:10.353" UserId="32325" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5573" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2245" RevisionGUID="27ddb758-18d0-4411-a97d-cbe223239e59" CreationDate="2011-09-09T15:57:29.073" UserId="47" Text="The focus of all Stack Exchange sites is the question and the answer, **not** the interaction between the people. Jeff and co have resisted many attempts to turn the sites into social networks and I agree with this. There are plenty of other places on the internet to chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's one of the reasons why Stack Overflow succeeded and allowed the model to expand to other areas.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments that aren't asking for clarification or adding clarification are just noise. Even comments that are adding clarification are ultimately noise when that clarification is edited into the post." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5574" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2244" RevisionGUID="248df5ac-c92d-48a9-b7cd-9cd5f0c524ab" CreationDate="2011-09-09T15:58:32.243" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5575" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1806" RevisionGUID="20dbea73-5d5b-40ec-b583-3ebe04d81757" CreationDate="2011-09-09T16:09:19.823" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|moderation|posse|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5576" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2246" RevisionGUID="a5205843-e163-46c0-a947-d283d34a3e26" CreationDate="2011-09-10T01:53:47.110" UserId="5184" Text="I think a lot of people come to stackexhange site in the hope of learning a subject or getting a deeper understanding of a subject. Jeff claims that they want people to learn but that isn't in fact what they want people to do. What they really desire is to  have people that already have learned the subject trade the subjects minutia.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The stackexchange model isn't for learning in the broad sense. It is for fact gathering or specific skill building. I am not saying you can't learn from the posts but that is not the intent. The type of learning going on in the stackexchange sites is more like either elementary level learning or expert data exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So experts are generally not going to gain a deeper understanding of the subject because of stackexhange sites and individuals will not goo from, say, novice to intermediate because of stackexhange. (Well, individuals might do these things but it will be in spite of the design and moderation of the subject areas.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of what I have said is inherently bad. What is bad is that the fact/skill gathering have been watered down because the moderators have not been strict enough. There is two much noise to use it as a programmers dictionary/encyclopedia. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe this has happened because the creators and moderators do actually, in their gut, want people to be able to learn but have no good ideas how to do this with what has developed so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason is because nobody has real good ideas on how to use the whole hyper text thing to instigate real learning that is also efficient. Real learning is very messy and needs lots of side questions and discussion and off topic comments and tangents. Real learning isn't along a straight path guided by precise q&amp;a.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually I think they are getting closer to a good model. But the owners may simply be happy with what they have and have no desire to make it an actual learning site. Or maybe they understand and want to try it but understand that it would be to hard to implement or take to much trained manpower.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Plus understand the the moderators are going to be developers. I haven't known to many software developers that understand and have the social skills to teach people how to use complex tools like stackexhange in a pleasant way. Instead they tend to instruct by just telling people what to do using their authority (often like a hammer). Getting people to use the tools correctly and consistently over time would take teachers. Instructors will work but it will almost always come across heavy handed and a bit rude.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think they, or somebody else, could implement the social aspect required for true learning using the (often) high quality Q&amp;A focus of stackoverflow (or other subject sites).  One idea is actually tying chat to questions and removing comments so that you can look at a question and, instead of comments, you could optionally view the chat that comes up. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5577" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2244" RevisionGUID="008bab5a-8297-4d08-a065-dcbb6605c345" CreationDate="2011-09-10T02:50:02.347" UserId="226" Comment="edited title" Text="Why is the use of comments limited to clarification?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5578" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2246" RevisionGUID="22037211-e241-4953-8e6d-56890f2e4162" CreationDate="2011-09-10T03:02:12.120" UserId="5184" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="I think a lot of people come to stackexhange site in the hope of learning a subject or getting a deeper understanding of a subject. Jeff claims that they want people to learn but that isn't in fact what they want people to do. What they really desire is to  have people that already have learned the subject trade the subjects minutia.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The stackexchange model isn't for learning in the broad sense. It is for fact gathering or specific skill building. I am not saying you can't learn from the posts but that is not the intent. The type of learning going on in the stackexchange sites is more like either elementary level learning or expert data exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So experts are generally not going to gain a deeper understanding of the subject because of stackexhange sites and individuals will not go from, say, novice to intermediate because of stackexhange. (Well, individuals might do these things but it will be in spite of the design and moderation of the subject areas.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of what I have said is inherently bad. What is bad is that the fact/skill gathering have been watered down because the moderators have not been strict enough. There is two much noise to use it as a programmers dictionary/encyclopedia. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe this has happened because the creators and moderators do actually, in their gut, want people to be able to learn but have no good ideas how to do this with what has developed so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason is because nobody has real good ideas on how to use the whole hyper text thing to instigate real learning that is also efficient. Real learning is very messy and needs lots of side questions and discussion and off topic comments and tangents. Real learning isn't along a straight path guided by precise q&amp;a.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually I think they are getting closer to a good model. But the owners may simply be happy with what they have and have no desire to make it an actual learning site. Or maybe they understand and want to try it but understand that it would be to hard to implement or take to much trained manpower.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Plus understand the the moderators are going to be developers. I haven't known to many software developers that understand and have the social skills to teach people how to use complex tools like stackexhange in a pleasant way. Instead they tend to instruct by just telling people what to do using their authority (often like a hammer). Getting people to use the tools correctly and consistently over time would take teachers. Instructors will work but it will almost always come across heavy handed and a bit rude.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think they, or somebody else, could implement the social aspect required for true learning using the (often) high quality Q&amp;A focus of stackoverflow (or other subject sites).  One idea is actually tying chat to questions and removing comments so that you can look at a question and, instead of comments, you could optionally view the chat that comes up. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5579" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2247" RevisionGUID="2cca285e-3da6-464c-82c5-83d7d854d0f5" CreationDate="2011-09-10T03:36:28.373" UserId="63" Text="&gt; One of the best thing is that here you can find real people, sharing your interests and job experience. It's a human site, not a bunch of computer data like you can find on wikis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, I have two questions now: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Have you ever participated in an actual *forum*? Because, man, those things can be *great* for sharing interests and job experiences. Someone starts a conversation, others chime in, threads branch off on tangential topics... It's good fun. You might even learn something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. What sad, sad wikis have you been hanging around? A good wiki can have all sorts of interesting stuff on it, stuff from humans, even stuff about humans. Indeed, the whole *point* of a wiki is that humans - multiple persons - can edit them; packing them full of static &quot;computer data&quot; is really missing the point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Aaaand, one little aside:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In chat you can find 3 people sleeping&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah, 'cause the folks who have stuff to chat about are still trying to hammer that square peg into the wrong hole that is the Q&amp;A site, and coming here to gripe about all the splinters. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***Patient:** Doctor, it hurts when I do this!  &#xD;&#xA;**Doctor:** Well, then don't* do *that!*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5580" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2248" RevisionGUID="1f065c26-7fdc-4b75-aac9-fe693ad2d19b" CreationDate="2011-09-10T04:14:15.193" UserId="37" Text="**Comments aren't for discussion**, per se, they are for clarification, examination, and refinement of the parent post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An &quot;extended&quot; discussion for the purposes of migration to chat is at least 3-4 back and forth responses between two and only two users. That is, a total of 6 or 8 messages between two users with no intervening comments from other users." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5581" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2249" RevisionGUID="86997114-ee6b-4ac7-83b6-550af6773be4" CreationDate="2011-09-10T05:23:29.963" UserId="1204" Text="##Forums suck.&#xD;&#xA;Let me tell you about my own personal experience with forums.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has to do with trying to find out why my 2005 Ford Taurus wouldn't start.  I spent about an hour sifting through chaff in various forums that I found in a Google search.  The closest thing I came up with is the starter relay in the fuse box might be bad (it wasn't).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following post is typical of such forums.  Note that this post actually has *better signal to noise ratio* than most of the others I found:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://www.epinions.com/msg/show_~threads/cat_id_~3/id_~8961/forum_id_~124&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A summary of the replies in this post: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It could be an electrical problem.&#xD;&#xA; - I'm having the same problem.&#xD;&#xA; - I'm also having the same problem.  Let me know if you fixed it.&#xD;&#xA; - I'm having the same problem with my Honda Accord (!)&#xD;&#xA; - Maybe you need a tune-up.&#xD;&#xA; - Check for the connections in the engine. Maybe the problem is there.&#xD;&#xA; - I'm having kinda the same problem, but slightly different...&#xD;&#xA; - Colder weather tends to bring out the worst in an improperly maintained vehicle.&#xD;&#xA; - Find a mechanic.&#xD;&#xA; - Pat's advice is good. Remember, your car is old.&#xD;&#xA; - Anyone knows any information about upgrades for our ignition coils?&#xD;&#xA; - A lame reply to the ignition coils query (having nothing to do with the original question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And finally, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - an answer (posted by a moderator) stating that the problem might be a bad relay.  This is the *only answer* that imparts any useful information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Under the Stack Exchange rules, every one of these answers except the useful one would have been flagged and deleted by the system, leaving only the useful answer.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5582" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2249" RevisionGUID="539ee4d0-0efc-4e87-883c-f488f9830d78" CreationDate="2011-09-10T05:30:34.743" UserId="1204" Comment="added 24 characters in body" Text="##Forums suck.&#xD;&#xA;Let me tell you about my own personal experience with forums.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has to do with trying to find out why my 2005 Ford Taurus wouldn't start when the engine was hot.  I spent about an hour sifting through chaff in various forums that I found in a Google search.  The closest thing I came up with is the starter relay in the fuse box might be bad (it wasn't).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following post is typical of such forums.  Note that this post actually has *better signal to noise ratio* than most of the others I found:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://www.epinions.com/msg/show_~threads/cat_id_~3/id_~8961/forum_id_~124&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A summary of the replies in this post: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It could be an electrical problem.&#xD;&#xA; - I'm having the same problem.&#xD;&#xA; - I'm also having the same problem.  Let me know if you fixed it.&#xD;&#xA; - I'm having the same problem. With my Honda Accord (!)&#xD;&#xA; - Maybe you need a tune-up.&#xD;&#xA; - Check for the connections in the engine. Maybe the problem is there.&#xD;&#xA; - I'm having kinda the same problem, but slightly different...&#xD;&#xA; - Colder weather tends to bring out the worst in an improperly maintained vehicle.&#xD;&#xA; - Find a mechanic.&#xD;&#xA; - Pat's advice is good. Remember, your car is old.&#xD;&#xA; - Anyone knows any information about upgrades for our ignition coils?&#xD;&#xA; - A lame reply to the ignition coils query (having nothing to do with the original question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And finally, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - an answer (posted by a moderator) stating that the problem might be a bad starter relay in the fuse box.  This is the *only answer* that imparts any useful information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Under the Stack Exchange rules, every one of these answers except the useful one would have been flagged and deleted by the system, leaving only the useful answer.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5583" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2249" RevisionGUID="c123c298-1405-4aed-b40c-75b33fe8feb3" CreationDate="2011-09-10T05:35:39.990" UserId="1204" Comment="added 24 characters in body" Text="##Forums suck.&#xD;&#xA;By way of answering your question about comments, let me tell you about my own personal experience with forums.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has to do with trying to find out why my 2005 Ford Taurus wouldn't start when the engine was hot.  I spent about an hour sifting through chaff in various forums that I found in a Google search.  The closest thing I came up with is the starter relay in the fuse box might be bad (it wasn't).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following post is typical of such forums.  Note that this post actually has *better signal to noise ratio* than most of the others I found:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://www.epinions.com/msg/show_~threads/cat_id_~3/id_~8961/forum_id_~124&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A summary of the replies in this post: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It could be an electrical problem.&#xD;&#xA; - I'm having the same problem.&#xD;&#xA; - I'm also having the same problem.  Let me know if you fixed it.&#xD;&#xA; - I'm having the same problem. With my Honda Accord (!)&#xD;&#xA; - I am having the exact same problem with my 98 Dodge Avenger.&#xD;&#xA; - Maybe you need a tune-up.&#xD;&#xA; - Check for the connections in the engine. Maybe the problem is there.&#xD;&#xA; - I'm having kinda the same problem, but slightly different...&#xD;&#xA; - Colder weather tends to bring out the worst in an improperly maintained vehicle.&#xD;&#xA; - Find a mechanic.&#xD;&#xA; - Pat's advice is good. Remember, your car is old.&#xD;&#xA; - Anyone knows any information about upgrades for our ignition coils?&#xD;&#xA; - A lame reply to the ignition coils query (having nothing to do with the original question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And finally, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - an answer (posted by a moderator) stating that the problem might be a bad starter relay in the fuse box.  This is the *only answer* that imparts any useful information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Under the Stack Exchange rules, every one of these answers except the useful one would have been flagged and deleted by the system, leaving only the useful answer.**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only posts that would be eligible as comments would be those that provided clarification on the original question and on-topic answers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is how a Q &amp; A site works.  It's deliberately designed to reduce the noise as much as possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5584" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2249" RevisionGUID="2f552139-5ead-4807-9467-130a592b6629" CreationDate="2011-09-10T06:04:56.120" UserId="1204" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="##Because forums suck.&#xD;&#xA;By way of answering your question about comments, let me tell you about my own personal experience with forums.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has to do with trying to find out why my 2005 Ford Taurus wouldn't start when the engine was hot.  I spent about an hour sifting through chaff in various forums that I found in a Google search.  The closest thing I came up with is the starter relay in the fuse box might be bad (it wasn't).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following post is typical of such forums.  Note that this post actually has *better signal to noise ratio* than most of the others I found:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://www.epinions.com/msg/show_~threads/cat_id_~3/id_~8961/forum_id_~124&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A summary of the replies in this post: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It could be an electrical problem.&#xD;&#xA; - I'm having the same problem.&#xD;&#xA; - I'm also having the same problem.  Let me know if you fixed it.&#xD;&#xA; - I'm having the same problem. With my Honda Accord (!)&#xD;&#xA; - I am having the exact same problem with my 98 Dodge Avenger.&#xD;&#xA; - Maybe you need a tune-up.&#xD;&#xA; - Check for the connections in the engine. Maybe the problem is there.&#xD;&#xA; - I'm having kinda the same problem, but slightly different...&#xD;&#xA; - Colder weather tends to bring out the worst in an improperly maintained vehicle.&#xD;&#xA; - Find a mechanic.&#xD;&#xA; - Pat's advice is good. Remember, your car is old.&#xD;&#xA; - Anyone knows any information about upgrades for our ignition coils?&#xD;&#xA; - A lame reply to the ignition coils query (having nothing to do with the original question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And finally, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - an answer (posted by a moderator) stating that the problem might be a bad starter relay in the fuse box.  This is the *only answer* that imparts any useful information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Under the Stack Exchange rules, every one of these answers except the useful one would have been flagged and deleted by the system, leaving only the useful answer.**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only posts that would be eligible as comments would be those that provided clarification on the original question and on-topic answers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is how a Q &amp; A site works.  It's deliberately designed to reduce the noise as much as possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5585" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2244" RevisionGUID="ca153078-f553-4675-b88c-b22ca367fd85" CreationDate="2011-09-10T07:26:25.490" UserId="32325" Comment="added 544 characters in body" Text="I love Stack Exchange sites because of the amount of knowledge and people sharing it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the best thing is that here you can find real people, sharing your interests and job experience. It's a human site, not a bunch of computer data like you can find on wikis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is possible imho thanks to comments. Thanks to comments we can express our opinions, enhance our point of views, have fun, share links and useful resources, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, comments are underrated and they can be used more effectively to enhance user experience, without making the site a holy-war place of course.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't say &quot;you can continue discussion in chat&quot;. In chat you can find 3 people sleeping, and chat rooms are not good for specified arguments. We have thousands of questions on specific topics, and only two chat rooms... wonder why? because chat rooms are good oldie useless '90.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think somewhere comments (not merely clarifications) should find their place to allow pacific discussion and view sharing. How about a collapsed box next to the question? If you want to look at it and take place just click it to show other comments, otherwise you won't get distracted by those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just for clarification, **I never talked about forums!** Those sucks as much as the chat here. I'm talking about doing the same identical thing we all are doing now, commenting on answers with personal opinions and points of view, without the fear that some random moderator may interrupt a pacific and interesting discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not that we have chat, forums and comments and we have to choose between those 3... probably if we think about it we could find a better solution, without going against the site main interests." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5586" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2250" RevisionGUID="48d0cbf4-8dd6-4554-a051-3c22d045264f" CreationDate="2011-09-10T15:15:21.743" UserId="44" Text="There are cases where comments should not used, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- You don't agree with a given answer, and you keep debating with the OP about that.  &#xD;&#xA;  If you don't agree with the answer, you can add a comment explaining why you don't agree with what reported; the OP could report you didn't understand what said in the answer, but an extended discussion about that is done in the wrong place, if it is done in the comments. If you completely disagree with the answer, you can answer the question yourself, reporting exactly why you would not do what reported in an existing answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- You are the user who asked the question, and you report the solution doesn't work for you because something you didn't say in the question; the OP adds more details in the answer, and then you report that even the added solution doesn't work because something else you didn't explain in the question.  &#xD;&#xA;In the latter case, where you report the solution doesn't work and you add more details in the comments, it should have been better to write a more complete question, where all the significant details of the question are explained. The reason is that adding details as comments of one of the answers would force who read the question to read all the answers and all the comments to completely understand the question being asked; this means the question would be less useful for the users that will read the question. It should reminded that a question and its answers are not for being used from the user who asked the question, but from any users who read the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- You are the user who asked the question, and you ask secondary questions about the answer given in comments.  &#xD;&#xA;If the question is verify you understood what reported, that is fine, but if the question is caused by you trying the solution, and having difficulties on applying it, then those comments should probably be a different question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5587" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2246" RevisionGUID="48fc8b84-5ec3-4bc4-9bee-8ae885d56d66" CreationDate="2011-09-10T15:34:03.710" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 18 characters in body" Text="I think a lot of people come to Stack Exchange sites in the hope of learning a subject or getting a deeper understanding of a subject. Jeff claims that they want people to learn, but what they really desire is to  have people that already have learned the subject share their expert knowledge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my view, The Stack Exchange model isn't for learning in the broad sense. It is for fact gathering or specific skill building. I am not saying you can't learn from the posts but that is not the intent. The type of learning going on in the Stack Exchange sites is more like either elementary level learning or expert data exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So experts are generally not going to gain a deeper understanding of the subject because of Stack Exchange sites, and individuals will not go from, say, novice to intermediate because of Stack Exchange. (Well, individuals might do these things but it will be in spite of the design and moderation of the subject areas.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of what I have said is inherently bad. What is bad is that the fact/skill gathering have been watered down because the moderators have not been strict enough. There is too much noise to use it as a programmers dictionary/encyclopedia. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe this has happened because the creators and moderators do actually, in their gut, want people to be able to learn but have no good ideas how to do this with what has developed so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason is because nobody has real good ideas on how to use the whole hyper text thing to instigate real learning that is also efficient. Real learning is very messy and needs lots of side questions and discussion and off topic comments and tangents. Real learning isn't along a straight path guided by precise Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually I think they are getting closer to a good model. But the owners may simply be happy with what they have and have no desire to make it an actual learning site. Or maybe they understand and want to try it but understand that it would be to hard to implement or take too much trained manpower.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Plus understand the the moderators are going to be developers. I haven't known too many software developers that understand and have the social skills to teach people how to use complex tools like Stack Exchange in a pleasant way. Instead they tend to instruct by just telling people what to do using their authority (often like a hammer). Getting people to use the tools correctly and consistently over time would take teachers. Instructors will work but it will almost always come across heavy handed and a bit rude.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think they, or somebody else, could implement the social aspect required for true learning using the (often) high quality Q&amp;A focus of Stack Exchange (or other subject sites).  One idea is actually tying chat to questions and removing comments so that you can look at a question and, instead of comments, you could optionally view the chat that comes up. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5588" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2251" RevisionGUID="89ee7dda-51ca-4a1a-ad53-c64b542fc06f" CreationDate="2011-09-10T15:39:39.423" UserId="6795" Text="[This][1] question has been closed as being not constructive. The main point is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does anyone still use flowcharts and if so, under what circumstances?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is answerable and relevant answers can include pointers to contemporary development methodologies that uses flowcharts. I fail to see how it is  non constructive. Can someone shed a light on this issue?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/107227/does-anyone-still-use-flowcharts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5589" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2251" RevisionGUID="89ee7dda-51ca-4a1a-ad53-c64b542fc06f" CreationDate="2011-09-10T15:39:39.423" UserId="6795" Text="Why &quot;Does anyone still use flowcharts?&quot; has been closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5590" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2251" RevisionGUID="89ee7dda-51ca-4a1a-ad53-c64b542fc06f" CreationDate="2011-09-10T15:39:39.423" UserId="6795" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5591" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2252" RevisionGUID="440dad07-205c-4833-a032-feda7c921067" CreationDate="2011-09-10T15:47:04.113" UserId="47" Text="The problem is that **as phrased** the question is a poll. If you check the [What kind of questions should I *not* ask here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section of the FAQ you'll see the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **avoid** asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question fails (as I see it) because you don't have a problem you're trying to solve, every answer is fundamentally equally valid (&quot;Yes I still use flow charts&quot;, &quot;No I don't use flow charts any more&quot;) and you answered your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also check out the blog post on [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) linked to from the close reason. This goes into more details about the type of open ended question that makes a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more useful question *might* be something along the lines of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Are flowcharts still useful with modern software development techniques and methodologies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though I'm sure someone else could phrase that a lot better." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5592" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2252" RevisionGUID="3c80c714-b572-47d9-b81e-3ae4381d23a4" CreationDate="2011-09-10T16:58:43.000" UserId="47" Comment="clarification - it wasn't the poster of this question's question" Text="The problem is that **as phrased** the question is a poll. If you check the [What kind of questions should I *not* ask here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section of the FAQ you'll see the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **avoid** asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question fails (as I see it) because the poster doesn't have a problem they're trying to solve, every answer is fundamentally equally valid (&quot;Yes I still use flow charts&quot;, &quot;No I don't use flow charts any more&quot;) and it answered the question in the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also check out the blog post on [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) linked to from the close reason. This goes into more details about the type of open ended question that makes a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more useful question *might* be something along the lines of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Are flowcharts still useful with modern software development techniques and methodologies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though I'm sure someone else could phrase that a lot better." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5593" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2250" RevisionGUID="7446d7ca-bdf0-4696-90cb-6ac446ea4cb1" CreationDate="2011-09-10T17:15:59.907" UserId="44" Comment="improved grammar" Text="There are cases where comments should not used, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- You don't agree with a given answer, and you keep debating with the OP about that.  &#xD;&#xA;  If you don't agree with the answer, you can add a comment explaining why you don't agree with what reported; the OP could report you didn't understand what said in the answer, but an extended discussion about that is done in the wrong place, if it is done in the comments. If you completely disagree with the answer, you can answer the question yourself, reporting exactly why you would not do what reported in an existing answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- You are the user who asked the question, and you report the solution doesn't work for you because something you didn't say in the question; the OP adds more details in the answer, and then you report that even the added solution doesn't work because something else you didn't explain in the question.  &#xD;&#xA;It should be better to write a more complete question, where all the significant details of the question are explained. The reason is that adding details as comments of one of the answers would force who read the question to read all the answers and all the comments to completely understand the question being asked; this means the question would be less useful for the users that will read it. It should be reminded that a question and its answers are not for only being used from the user who asked the question, but from any users who read the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- You are the user who asked the question, and you ask secondary questions about the answer given, in comments.  &#xD;&#xA;If the purpose is to verify you understood what reported, that is fine, but if the question is asked because you are having difficulties on applying the suggested solution, then those comments should probably be a different question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5595" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2234" RevisionGUID="7f6d8474-d3e1-49ec-b495-9711bd6b14b3" CreationDate="2011-09-11T17:27:57.887" UserId="2439" Comment="added 2295 characters in body" Text="*Update:* ***My modest opinion on what should and when it should get deleted.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Obvious SPAM --&gt; ***should be deleted***  &#xD;&#xA;2. Comments with obviously no useful content like &quot;+1 you ROCK&quot; (for those there are upvotes) --&gt; ***should be deleted***  &#xD;&#xA;3. Comment which clarifies a question or an answer, or which inquires about a point mentioned in the question or an answer.  &#xD;&#xA;a) ***After a finished discussion with the author, the author decides whether to delete his own comments after implementing them in an answer.*** The other side is strongly suggested to&#xD;&#xA;do so too. If the contents of the comments have already been included in the answer the&#xD;&#xA;moderator will first warn the author that they will be deleted, after which he will do so (within approximately 12-24 hours). That way the author can check whether there is any remaining valuable information in the comments which he considers worth keeping. He can object to the deletion, after which that discussion must be settled before the moderator deletes the aforementioned comments. ***The moderator will not by his own hand delete comments at the refusal of the author, unless they're SPAM, hate speech or those falling into one of the similar categories.***  &#xD;&#xA;b) An unfinished discussion with the author is in progress - ***comments stay***.  &#xD;&#xA;c) A tip which tangentially adds to the answer topic but will not be included in the answer by the author  - ***comments stay***.  &#xD;&#xA;4. &quot;Insult matches&quot; as Anna nicely puts it - ***will be deleted by the moderator after a previous warning some time before to the participants to stop with that kind of talk***. Hate speech, political talk and alike included.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***To put it short, I am against most deletions of comments*** (except the obvious SPAM, hate speech et cetera) ***by the moderators without any consultations with the authors of the mentioned comments.*** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because we already have several categories of users with the capability to change content at will(!) - and if we accept the policy that they can delete content as well, then it is just a step away from having complete and utter control over content ***still signed by you***. ***In analogy it is like you gave away a bianco check to someone who you do not know, lest alone agree with.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My viewpoint which coincides greatly with the ones already made by Thomas, GrandmasterB and maple, is that **we should not embrace a policy by which comments serve only for the purposes of clarification an answer**. **Since rules on this site are alredy applied retroactively** (something else which I am also opposed to, since that puts us in the *ex post facto* situation, which is not, let's say *expected*, but let's leave that aside for now) **that would put the majority of all comments in line for deletion.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my view that yes, although comments don't always serve the purpose of clarification; sometimes they only tangentially touch the answer's topic, they are in many cases a source of valuable information! Or funny (yes, I cherish those as well).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***In the ideal world***, an answer would be posted by the author, after which an **&quot;extended&quot; comments discussion** of no more than **3 comments per person(!)** would be led in hope of clarifying the finer points of the answer. If it took longer than that, it would be moved to chat, after which an author would come back and amend the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**However, this is real world**. I don't know them or can't speak about the habits of others, but I'm a fella who has a life. Meaning, first, I don't stare at these forums all day waiting for someone to post a comment so that I could think about it and immediately change my answer. Sometimes I don't change it at all (just don't feel *editorial* at the moment). Sometimes somebody posts a comment, to which I don't reply at all but come back to after two weeks after thinking about it, or after something else reminds me of something I saw in that comment. Sometimes somebody posts a link or a *Did you know* tip which I would never include in my answer, but which adds to the topic at hand very nicely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Chat is not an adequate comments replacement. Not only it** (not sure about this, but someone will set me right if I'm wrong) **disables those who have not commented first to see the current discussion, but it forces them to comment something** (which has possibly already been said) **to even &quot;join the discussion&quot;. Also, if the chat room holds several comments** (which are not necessarily clarifying the answer) **but less than 15** (so I've heard) **it is not kept, therefore effectively losing its contents.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it short, the system of answers and comments as it was put in the beginning and up until relatively recently worked very well. Comments were not deleted (Why should they, after all? Are they taking ***that much space*** on the server's hard drives that they cannot be kept?) and the **interface and joining in to see what is currently discussed was easy and intuitive**. **Also, history was kept.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only comments which I **exclude from that rule, are the ones containing obvious SPAM which was easily delt with with the 5 second** (or something like that) **delay in posting and through the flagging system. In any case, those were easily recognized. Those containing obviously useless bits like &quot;+1 you rock&quot; would also fall into this category.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; They can be fun to read, but do comments truly serve any purpose 6&#xD;&#xA;&gt; months after they were posted if questions are being properly editted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why 6 months? Why not two? Or twelve? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And what after that? Will we start deleting answers as well? Questions also, while we're at it? **After all, after a certain time, most things lose their purpose. That doesn't mean we should suddenly kill and get rid of it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**And who is to say whether something is for deletion? Moderators?** (It's a nice model. **On a community shaped site, two or three persons having the power to decide to single handedly delete and shape content to their liking, without any discussion or warning, possibly even to the level of completely changing the original author's meaning.** ... No, sorry, I don't buy it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**History should be kept intact, wherever we like it and agree with it or not.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5606" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2234" RevisionGUID="3a81aa9a-18f5-49ca-82d6-cdac81955cdd" CreationDate="2011-09-11T23:59:09.293" UserId="2439" Comment="added 4801 characters in body" Text="***2nd update :: @Anna - reply to your last comment - I couldn't put this in a box down below, therefore ...***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;discussions that veer off-topic and no longer clarify the answer&quot;; well, first, who's to say what's offtopic? I have ***serious doubts*** that moderators who review hundrers of questions every day can just jump in and, in a few seconds, see all the intricate details of the discussion at hand. Something which may seem at first hand &quot;obviously&quot; offtopic can lead to a very ontopic conclusion two comments later which the author will append to his answer and which will indeed augment its value. ***Can the moderators know what either the comenteer or the author are thinking, or where are they getting in their discussion (expecially in the area they are less familiar with)? - I doubt it.***  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, I say let them talk. ***Do not just jump in!*** BUT, as already hinted in my answer, &#xD;&#xA;they can't talk forever (so to say). The discussion in the comments has to finish eventually and its conclusions should be implemented in the answer. So - leave them to it; if neither has posted a comment for, let's say, 2-3 days (to account for the weekends) means they have come to some sort of conclusion, whatever it may be, and the moderator can ***ask (and I can't emphasize the &quot;ask&quot; part enough) the author*** of the question to &quot;close it up&quot; (if he/she has not already done so), implement its results in the answer and &quot;clear up the space below&quot;. The author gives his opinion and does accordingly or argues that the discussion is still going on, only the other side has been detained at the moment (the maximum time the other side can be detained &lt;- decide on something reasonable - a week?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think by now you see where this is going. I'm advertising the principle in which people can talk about whatever, only the talk has got to finish at one point and the authors have got to &quot;clean up afterwards&quot;, ***with the emphasis on the authors cleaning it up***. ***That way the &quot;ones whos name we do not mention&quot; still keep their principle - that the first class citizens are answers - working, and the users do not get the feeling of oppresive &quot;big brother&quot; moderators hanging about their heads*** (the movie &quot;[Brazil][1]&quot; comes to mind here).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Which side are you on really Jack?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your other example, I'll skip it for now, to instead explain my views on why I so persist on this approach. I don't doubt that you realize there are many (infinite?) number of cases not covered here; it would be unwise to even expect that indeed all cases can be covered. So I'm not concerned about that at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I am concerned about is the ***change of original meaning***. I'll elucidate in a bit. Just like usenet and some &quot;forums&quot; (in wide sense of the word) this site's content is also &quot;mirrored&quot; in a few places (&quot;mirrored&quot; may not be the exact term, but its contents are transferred. I've seen my questions posted on this site along with all the answers, on a few others by several occations by now - usually packed in some inferior interface). Meaning that at some point some &quot;thing&quot; comes and picks up the content of some question. It does not update them, nor does it modify them afterwards. The mirror site is not &quot;dynamic&quot; like this one. It just takes a &quot;snapshot&quot; of this one at a certain time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now ***the problem with deletions of comments, expecially if they're done in a middle of a discussion is that it can result in a change of meaning. What the author originally was saying, 2 deleted comments later is not that anymore. I strongly, as I'm sure many others do, object to being signed below something I had no intention of saying.*** To which that situation can easily lead to. That's why I insist on keeping history, and that's why I object to changing someone's words without their consent and without leaving any traces behind (as moderators do).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The content on the internet nowadays is easily searchable, and also very hard-to-remove once it's &quot;in there&quot;. I don't mind that my &quot;content&quot; already &quot;belongs&quot; to the owners of this site, but I'd like to have it retain my meaning. I don't want to one day find my name below something I may or may have not said (I won't be able to remember, naturally),&#xD;&#xA;just because there were intermittent sudden changes by a third party. Do you?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*This is not by far the only reason / the only loophole, but it's the most simple one to explain in a few words.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*This is a sort of a moderate policy, since IMHO, you will still be losing valuable content from the comments that the author didn't implement in his own question, while the commenteer didn't think it being enough to form an independent answer.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Update:* ***My modest opinion on what should and when it should get deleted.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Obvious SPAM --&gt; ***should be deleted***  &#xD;&#xA;2. Comments with obviously no useful content like &quot;+1 you ROCK&quot; (for those there are upvotes) --&gt; ***should be deleted***  &#xD;&#xA;3. Comment which clarifies a question or an answer, or which inquires about a point mentioned in the question or an answer.  &#xD;&#xA;a) ***After a finished discussion with the author, the author decides whether to delete his own comments after implementing them in an answer.*** The other side is strongly suggested to&#xD;&#xA;do so too. If the contents of the comments have already been included in the answer the&#xD;&#xA;moderator will first warn the author that they will be deleted, after which he will do so (within approximately 12-24 hours). That way the author can check whether there is any remaining valuable information in the comments which he considers worth keeping. He can object to the deletion, after which that discussion must be settled before the moderator deletes the aforementioned comments. ***The moderator will not by his own hand delete comments at the refusal of the author, unless they're SPAM, hate speech or those falling into one of the similar categories.***  &#xD;&#xA;b) An unfinished discussion with the author is in progress - ***comments stay***.  &#xD;&#xA;c) A tip which tangentially adds to the answer topic but will not be included in the answer by the author  - ***comments stay***.  &#xD;&#xA;4. &quot;Insult matches&quot; as Anna nicely puts it - ***will be deleted by the moderator after a previous warning some time before to the participants to stop with that kind of talk***. Hate speech, political talk and alike included.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***To put it short, I am against most deletions of comments*** (except the obvious SPAM, hate speech et cetera) ***by the moderators without any consultations with the authors of the mentioned comments.*** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because we already have several categories of users with the capability to change content at will(!) - and if we accept the policy that they can delete content as well, then it is just a step away from having complete and utter control over content ***still signed by you***. ***In analogy it is like you gave away a bianco check to someone who you do not know, lest alone agree with.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My viewpoint which coincides greatly with the ones already made by Thomas, GrandmasterB and maple, is that **we should not embrace a policy by which comments serve only for the purposes of clarification an answer**. **Since rules on this site are alredy applied retroactively** (something else which I am also opposed to, since that puts us in the *ex post facto* situation, which is not, let's say *expected*, but let's leave that aside for now) **that would put the majority of all comments in line for deletion.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my view that yes, although comments don't always serve the purpose of clarification; sometimes they only tangentially touch the answer's topic, they are in many cases a source of valuable information! Or funny (yes, I cherish those as well).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***In the ideal world***, an answer would be posted by the author, after which an **&quot;extended&quot; comments discussion** of no more than **3 comments per person(!)** would be led in hope of clarifying the finer points of the answer. If it took longer than that, it would be moved to chat, after which an author would come back and amend the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**However, this is real world**. I don't know them or can't speak about the habits of others, but I'm a fella who has a life. Meaning, first, I don't stare at these forums all day waiting for someone to post a comment so that I could think about it and immediately change my answer. Sometimes I don't change it at all (just don't feel *editorial* at the moment). Sometimes somebody posts a comment, to which I don't reply at all but come back to after two weeks after thinking about it, or after something else reminds me of something I saw in that comment. Sometimes somebody posts a link or a *Did you know* tip which I would never include in my answer, but which adds to the topic at hand very nicely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Chat is not an adequate comments replacement. Not only it** (not sure about this, but someone will set me right if I'm wrong) **disables those who have not commented first to see the current discussion, but it forces them to comment something** (which has possibly already been said) **to even &quot;join the discussion&quot;. Also, if the chat room holds several comments** (which are not necessarily clarifying the answer) **but less than 15** (so I've heard) **it is not kept, therefore effectively losing its contents.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it short, the system of answers and comments as it was put in the beginning and up until relatively recently worked very well. Comments were not deleted (Why should they, after all? Are they taking ***that much space*** on the server's hard drives that they cannot be kept?) and the **interface and joining in to see what is currently discussed was easy and intuitive**. **Also, history was kept.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only comments which I **exclude from that rule, are the ones containing obvious SPAM which was easily delt with with the 5 second** (or something like that) **delay in posting and through the flagging system. In any case, those were easily recognized. Those containing obviously useless bits like &quot;+1 you rock&quot; would also fall into this category.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; They can be fun to read, but do comments truly serve any purpose 6&#xD;&#xA;&gt; months after they were posted if questions are being properly editted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why 6 months? Why not two? Or twelve? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And what after that? Will we start deleting answers as well? Questions also, while we're at it? **After all, after a certain time, most things lose their purpose. That doesn't mean we should suddenly kill and get rid of it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**And who is to say whether something is for deletion? Moderators?** (It's a nice model. **On a community shaped site, two or three persons having the power to decide to single handedly delete and shape content to their liking, without any discussion or warning, possibly even to the level of completely changing the original author's meaning.** ... No, sorry, I don't buy it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**History should be kept intact, wherever we like it and agree with it or not.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RdT2B.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5607" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2234" RevisionGUID="2e650b50-fd74-440b-a097-cbd1da13f1d2" CreationDate="2011-09-12T00:06:29.173" UserId="2439" Comment="added 4801 characters in body" Text="***2nd update :: @Anna - reply to your last comment - I couldn't put this in a box down below, therefore ...***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;discussions that veer off-topic and no longer clarify the answer&quot;; well, first, who's to say what's offtopic? I have ***serious doubts*** that moderators who review hundrers of questions every day can just jump in and, in a few seconds, see all the intricate details of the discussion at hand. Something which may seem at first hand &quot;obviously&quot; offtopic can lead to a very ontopic conclusion two comments later which the author will append to his answer and which will indeed augment its value. ***Can the moderators know what either the comenteer or the author are thinking, or where are they getting in their discussion (expecially in the area they are less familiar with)? - I doubt it.***  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, I say let them talk. ***Do not just jump in!*** BUT, as already hinted in my answer, &#xD;&#xA;they can't talk forever (so to say). The discussion in the comments has to finish eventually and its conclusions should be implemented in the answer. So - leave them to it; if neither has posted a comment for, let's say, 2-3 days (to account for the weekends) means they have come to some sort of conclusion, whatever it may be, and the moderator can ***ask (and I can't emphasize the &quot;ask&quot; part enough) the author*** of the question to &quot;close it up&quot; (if he/she has not already done so), implement its results in the answer and &quot;clear up the space below&quot;. The author gives his opinion and does accordingly or argues that the discussion is still going on, only the other side has been detained at the moment (the maximum time the other side can be detained &lt;- decide on something reasonable - a week?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think by now you see where this is going. I'm advertising the principle in which people can talk about whatever, only the talk has got to finish at one point and the authors have got to &quot;clean up afterwards&quot;, ***with the emphasis on the authors cleaning it up***. ***That way the &quot;ones whos name we do not mention&quot; still keep their principle - that the first class citizens are answers - working, and the users do not get the feeling of oppresive &quot;big brother&quot; moderators hanging about their heads*** (the movie &quot;[Brazil][1]&quot; comes to mind here).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Whose side are you really on Jack?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your other example, I'll skip it for now, to instead explain my views on why I so persist on this approach. I don't doubt that you realize there are many (infinite?) number of cases not covered here; it would be unwise to even expect that indeed all cases can be covered. So I'm not concerned about that at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I am concerned about is the ***change of original meaning***. I'll elucidate in a bit. Just like usenet and some &quot;forums&quot; (in wide sense of the word) this site's content is also &quot;mirrored&quot; in a few places (&quot;mirrored&quot; may not be the exact term, but its contents are transferred. I've seen my questions posted on this site along with all the answers, on a few others by several occations by now - usually packed in some inferior interface). Meaning that at some point some &quot;thing&quot; comes and picks up the content of some question. It does not update them, nor does it modify them afterwards. The mirror site is not &quot;dynamic&quot; like this one. It just takes a &quot;snapshot&quot; of this one at a certain time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now ***the problem with deletions of comments, expecially if they're done in a middle of a discussion is that it can result in a change of meaning. What the author originally was saying, 2 deleted comments later is not that anymore. I strongly, as I'm sure many others do, object to being signed below something I had no intention of saying.*** To which that situation can easily lead to. That's why I insist on keeping history, and that's why I ***object to changing someone's words without their consent and without leaving any traces behind (as moderators do)***.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The content on the internet nowadays is easily searchable, and also very hard-to-remove once it's &quot;in there&quot;. I don't mind that my &quot;content&quot; already &quot;belongs&quot; to the owners of this site, but I'd like to have it retain my meaning. I don't want to one day find my name below something I may or may have not said (I won't be able to remember, naturally),&#xD;&#xA;just because there were intermittent sudden changes by a third party. Do you?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*This is not by far the only reason / the only loophole, but it's the most simple one to explain in a few words.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*This is a sort of a moderate policy, since IMO, you will still be losing valuable content from the comments that the author didn't implement in his own question, while the commenteer didn't think them being enough to form an independent answer. You will also be losing a humane side to this site, which it had in the beginning. If it is not lost already.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Update:* ***My modest opinion on what should and when it should get deleted.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Obvious SPAM --&gt; ***should be deleted***  &#xD;&#xA;2. Comments with obviously no useful content like &quot;+1 you ROCK&quot; (for those there are upvotes) --&gt; ***should be deleted***  &#xD;&#xA;3. Comment which clarifies a question or an answer, or which inquires about a point mentioned in the question or an answer.  &#xD;&#xA;a) ***After a finished discussion with the author, the author decides whether to delete his own comments after implementing them in an answer.*** The other side is strongly suggested to&#xD;&#xA;do so too. If the contents of the comments have already been included in the answer the&#xD;&#xA;moderator will first warn the author that they will be deleted, after which he will do so (within approximately 12-24 hours). That way the author can check whether there is any remaining valuable information in the comments which he considers worth keeping. He can object to the deletion, after which that discussion must be settled before the moderator deletes the aforementioned comments. ***The moderator will not by his own hand delete comments at the refusal of the author, unless they're SPAM, hate speech or those falling into one of the similar categories.***  &#xD;&#xA;b) An unfinished discussion with the author is in progress - ***comments stay***.  &#xD;&#xA;c) A tip which tangentially adds to the answer topic but will not be included in the answer by the author  - ***comments stay***.  &#xD;&#xA;4. &quot;Insult matches&quot; as Anna nicely puts it - ***will be deleted by the moderator after a previous warning some time before to the participants to stop with that kind of talk***. Hate speech, political talk and alike included.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***To put it short, I am against most deletions of comments*** (except the obvious SPAM, hate speech et cetera) ***by the moderators without any consultations with the authors of the mentioned comments.*** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because we already have several categories of users with the capability to change content at will(!) - and if we accept the policy that they can delete content as well, then it is just a step away from having complete and utter control over content ***still signed by you***. ***In analogy it is like you gave away a bianco check to someone who you do not know, lest alone agree with.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My viewpoint which coincides greatly with the ones already made by Thomas, GrandmasterB and maple, is that **we should not embrace a policy by which comments serve only for the purposes of clarification an answer**. **Since rules on this site are alredy applied retroactively** (something else which I am also opposed to, since that puts us in the *ex post facto* situation, which is not, let's say *expected*, but let's leave that aside for now) **that would put the majority of all comments in line for deletion.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my view that yes, although comments don't always serve the purpose of clarification; sometimes they only tangentially touch the answer's topic, they are in many cases a source of valuable information! Or funny (yes, I cherish those as well).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***In the ideal world***, an answer would be posted by the author, after which an **&quot;extended&quot; comments discussion** of no more than **3 comments per person(!)** would be led in hope of clarifying the finer points of the answer. If it took longer than that, it would be moved to chat, after which an author would come back and amend the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**However, this is real world**. I don't know them or can't speak about the habits of others, but I'm a fella who has a life. Meaning, first, I don't stare at these forums all day waiting for someone to post a comment so that I could think about it and immediately change my answer. Sometimes I don't change it at all (just don't feel *editorial* at the moment). Sometimes somebody posts a comment, to which I don't reply at all but come back to after two weeks after thinking about it, or after something else reminds me of something I saw in that comment. Sometimes somebody posts a link or a *Did you know* tip which I would never include in my answer, but which adds to the topic at hand very nicely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Chat is not an adequate comments replacement. Not only it** (not sure about this, but someone will set me right if I'm wrong) **disables those who have not commented first to see the current discussion, but it forces them to comment something** (which has possibly already been said) **to even &quot;join the discussion&quot;. Also, if the chat room holds several comments** (which are not necessarily clarifying the answer) **but less than 15** (so I've heard) **it is not kept, therefore effectively losing its contents.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it short, the system of answers and comments as it was put in the beginning and up until relatively recently worked very well. Comments were not deleted (Why should they, after all? Are they taking ***that much space*** on the server's hard drives that they cannot be kept?) and the **interface and joining in to see what is currently discussed was easy and intuitive**. **Also, history was kept.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only comments which I **exclude from that rule, are the ones containing obvious SPAM which was easily delt with with the 5 second** (or something like that) **delay in posting and through the flagging system. In any case, those were easily recognized. Those containing obviously useless bits like &quot;+1 you rock&quot; would also fall into this category.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; They can be fun to read, but do comments truly serve any purpose 6&#xD;&#xA;&gt; months after they were posted if questions are being properly editted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why 6 months? Why not two? Or twelve? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And what after that? Will we start deleting answers as well? Questions also, while we're at it? **After all, after a certain time, most things lose their purpose. That doesn't mean we should suddenly kill and get rid of it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**And who is to say whether something is for deletion? Moderators?** (It's a nice model. **On a community shaped site, two or three persons having the power to decide to single handedly delete and shape content to their liking, without any discussion or warning, possibly even to the level of completely changing the original author's meaning.** ... No, sorry, I don't buy it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**History should be kept intact, wherever we like it and agree with it or not.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RdT2B.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5608" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2234" RevisionGUID="47b6367c-4379-4c80-b167-80412a8c70ff" CreationDate="2011-09-12T00:18:50.010" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 7 characters in body" Text="My viewpoint which coincides greatly with the ones already made by Thomas, GrandmasterB and maple, is that **we should not embrace a policy by which comments serve only for the purposes of clarification an answer**. **Since rules on this site are alredy applied retroactively** (something else which I am also opposed to, since that puts us in the *ex post facto* situation, which is not, let's say *expected*, but let's leave that aside for now) **that would put the majority of all comments in line for deletion.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my view that yes, although comments don't always serve the purpose of clarification; sometimes they only tangentially touch the answer's topic, they are in many cases a source of valuable information! Or funny (yes, I cherish those as well).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***In the ideal world***, an answer would be posted by the author, after which an **&quot;extended&quot; comments discussion** of no more than **3 comments per person(!)** would be led in hope of clarifying the finer points of the answer. If it took longer than that, it would be moved to chat, after which an author would come back and amend the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**However, this is real world**. I don't know them or can't speak about the habits of others, but I'm a fella who has a life. Meaning, first, I don't stare at these forums all day waiting for someone to post a comment so that I could think about it and immediately change my answer. Sometimes I don't change it at all (just don't feel *editorial* at the moment). Sometimes somebody posts a comment, to which I don't reply at all but come back to after two weeks after thinking about it, or after something else reminds me of something I saw in that comment. Sometimes somebody posts a link or a *Did you know* tip which I would never include in my answer, but which adds to the topic at hand very nicely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Chat is not an adequate comments replacement. Not only it** (not sure about this, but someone will set me right if I'm wrong) **disables those who have not commented first to see the current discussion, but it forces them to comment something** (which has possibly already been said) **to even &quot;join the discussion&quot;. Also, if the chat room holds several comments** (which are not necessarily clarifying the answer) **but less than 15** (so I've heard) **it is not kept, therefore effectively losing its contents.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it short, the system of answers and comments as it was put in the beginning and up until relatively recently worked very well. Comments were not deleted (Why should they, after all? Are they taking ***that much space*** on the server's hard drives that they cannot be kept?) and the **interface and joining in to see what is currently discussed was easy and intuitive**. **Also, history was kept.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only comments which I **exclude from that rule, are the ones containing obvious SPAM which was easily delt with with the 5 second** (or something like that) **delay in posting and through the flagging system. In any case, those were easily recognized. Those containing obviously useless bits like &quot;+1 you rock&quot; would also fall into this category.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; They can be fun to read, but do comments truly serve any purpose 6&#xD;&#xA;&gt; months after they were posted if questions are being properly editted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why 6 months? Why not two? Or twelve? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And what after that? Will we start deleting answers as well? Questions also, while we're at it? **After all, after a certain time, most things lose their purpose. That doesn't mean we should suddenly kill and get rid of it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**And who is to say whether something is for deletion? Moderators?** (It's a nice model. **On a community shaped site, two or three persons having the power to decide to single handedly delete and shape content to their liking, without any discussion or warning, possibly even to the level of completely changing the original author's meaning.** ... No, sorry, I don't buy it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**History should be kept intact, wherever we like it and agree with it or not.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Update:* ***My modest opinion on what should and when it should get deleted.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Obvious SPAM --&gt; ***should be deleted***  &#xD;&#xA;2. Comments with obviously no useful content like &quot;+1 you ROCK&quot; (for those there are upvotes) --&gt; ***should be deleted***  &#xD;&#xA;3. Comment which clarifies a question or an answer, or which inquires about a point mentioned in the question or an answer.  &#xD;&#xA;a) ***After a finished discussion with the author, the author decides whether to delete his own comments after implementing them in an answer.*** The other side is strongly suggested to&#xD;&#xA;do so too. If the contents of the comments have already been included in the answer the&#xD;&#xA;moderator will first warn the author that they will be deleted, after which he will do so (within approximately 12-24 hours). That way the author can check whether there is any remaining valuable information in the comments which he considers worth keeping. He can object to the deletion, after which that discussion must be settled before the moderator deletes the aforementioned comments. ***The moderator will not by his own hand delete comments at the refusal of the author, unless they're SPAM, hate speech or those falling into one of the similar categories.***  &#xD;&#xA;b) An unfinished discussion with the author is in progress - ***comments stay***.  &#xD;&#xA;c) A tip which tangentially adds to the answer topic but will not be included in the answer by the author  - ***comments stay***.  &#xD;&#xA;4. &quot;Insult matches&quot; as Anna nicely puts it - ***will be deleted by the moderator after a previous warning some time before to the participants to stop with that kind of talk***. Hate speech, political talk and alike included.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***To put it short, I am against most deletions of comments*** (except the obvious SPAM, hate speech et cetera) ***by the moderators without any consultations with the authors of the mentioned comments.*** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because we already have several categories of users with the capability to change content at will(!) - and if we accept the policy that they can delete content as well, then it is just a step away from having complete and utter control over content ***still signed by you***. ***In analogy it is like you gave away a bianco check to someone who you do not know, lest alone agree with.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***2nd update :: @Anna - reply to your last comment - I couldn't put this in a box down below, therefore ...***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;discussions that veer off-topic and no longer clarify the answer&quot;; well, first, who's to say what's offtopic? I have ***serious doubts*** that moderators who review hundrers of questions every day can just jump in and, in a few seconds, see all the intricate details of the discussion at hand. Something which may seem at first hand &quot;obviously&quot; offtopic can lead to a very ontopic conclusion two comments later which the author will append to his answer and which will indeed augment its value. ***Can the moderators know what either the comenteer or the author are thinking, or where are they getting in their discussion (expecially in the area they are less familiar with)? - I doubt it.***  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, I say let them talk. ***Do not just jump in!*** BUT, as already hinted in my answer, &#xD;&#xA;they can't talk forever (so to say). The discussion in the comments has to finish eventually and its conclusions should be implemented in the answer. So - leave them to it; if neither has posted a comment for, let's say, 2-3 days (to account for the weekends) means they have come to some sort of conclusion, whatever it may be, and the moderator can ***ask (and I can't emphasize the &quot;ask&quot; part enough) the author*** of the question to &quot;close it up&quot; (if he/she has not already done so), implement its results in the answer and &quot;clear up the space below&quot;. The author gives his opinion and does accordingly or argues that the discussion is still going on, only the other side has been detained at the moment (the maximum time the other side can be detained &lt;- decide on something reasonable - a week?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think by now you see where this is going. I'm advertising the principle in which people can talk about whatever, only the talk has got to finish at one point and the authors have got to &quot;clean up afterwards&quot;, ***with the emphasis on the authors cleaning it up***. ***That way the &quot;ones whos name we do not mention&quot; still keep their principle - that the first class citizens are answers - working, and the users do not get the feeling of oppresive &quot;big brother&quot; moderators hanging about their heads*** (the movie &quot;[Brazil][1]&quot; comes to mind here).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Whose side are you really on Jack?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your other example, I'll skip it for now, to instead explain my views on why I so persist on this approach. I don't doubt that you realize there are many (infinite?) number of cases not covered here; it would be unwise to even expect that indeed all cases can be covered. So I'm not concerned about that at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I am concerned about is the ***change of original meaning***. I'll elucidate in a bit. Just like usenet and some &quot;forums&quot; (in wide sense of the word) this site's content is also &quot;mirrored&quot; in a few places (&quot;mirrored&quot; may not be the exact term, but its contents are transferred. I've seen my questions posted on this site along with all the answers, on a few others by several occations by now - usually packed in some inferior interface). Meaning that at some point some &quot;thing&quot; comes and picks up the content of some question. It does not update them, nor does it modify them afterwards. The mirror site is not &quot;dynamic&quot; like this one. It just takes a &quot;snapshot&quot; of this one at a certain time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now ***the problem with deletions of comments, expecially if they're done in a middle of a discussion is that it can result in a change of meaning. What the author originally was saying, 2 deleted comments later is not that anymore. I strongly, as I'm sure many others do, object to being signed below something I had no intention of saying.*** To which that situation can easily lead to. That's why I insist on keeping history, and that's why I ***object to changing someone's words without their consent and without leaving any traces behind (as moderators do)***.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The content on the internet nowadays is easily searchable, and also very hard-to-remove once it's &quot;in there&quot;. I don't mind that my &quot;content&quot; already &quot;belongs&quot; to the owners of this site, but I'd like to have it retain my meaning. I don't want to one day find my name below something I may or may have not said (I won't be able to remember, naturally),&#xD;&#xA;just because there were intermittent sudden changes by a third party. Do you?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*This is not by far the only reason / the only loophole, but it's the most simple one to explain in a few words.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*This is a sort of a moderate policy, since IMO, you will still be losing valuable content from the comments that the author didn't implement in his own question, while the commenteer didn't think them being enough to form an independent answer. You will also be losing a humane side to this site, which it had in the beginning. If it is not lost already.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RdT2B.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5618" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2259" RevisionGUID="c3d8ea91-c286-4766-b21e-3fa3fb09a538" CreationDate="2011-09-12T20:46:45.627" UserId="44" Text="The dialog to flag a comment reports the reasons for which a comment should be deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- rude or offensive&#xD;&#xA;- not constructive/off-topic&#xD;&#xA;- obsolete&#xD;&#xA;- too chatty&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, if I add a comment to make clearer what said in an answer, or I report under which conditions the answer is correct, and the answer is corrected basing on my comment, then my comment is obsolete; if the answer is not changed, then my comment should be left. That is true also when I warn the future users about the risks connected with the solution reported in the answer, or when I report exactly in which cases the solution should be adopted.  &#xD;&#xA;I don't think that comments should be automatically removed; they should be removed if they are not useful to the future readers of the answer.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same is true for questions, and for comments that, for example, ask to the OP what exactly he meant with a specific sentence used in the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5619" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2260" RevisionGUID="c2526e68-382b-40f6-b999-86f619767565" CreationDate="2011-09-13T09:23:23.907" UserId="37" Text="I noticed that the [tag:pronunciation] tag is not doing well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is odd, because I migrated&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/107479/pronunciation-for-hexadecimals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;here from SO yesterday and I thought it was a *great* fit -- totally programmer-centric and something that has confounded me from time to time in talking to my programming peers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, my first user group meeting as a very young teenager (this is the Apple // era) I was talking to another user and said&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What Ay Ess Cee Eye Eye character is that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I practically got laughed out of the room because **nobody pronounces ASCII that way!** But how was I to know? I had never *heard* anyone say it, I had only *seen* it in writing...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that not every &quot;how do I pronounce X?&quot; should be allowed, but I'm convinced a bunch (but not all) of these [tag:pronunciation] questions are on-topic and worthy of staying open." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5620" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2260" RevisionGUID="c2526e68-382b-40f6-b999-86f619767565" CreationDate="2011-09-13T09:23:23.907" UserId="37" Text="We can't pronounce anything" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5621" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2260" RevisionGUID="c2526e68-382b-40f6-b999-86f619767565" CreationDate="2011-09-13T09:23:23.907" UserId="37" Text="|discussion|tags|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5622" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2261" RevisionGUID="d48ec085-1dc8-4b8e-950d-c06b28e98fc0" CreationDate="2011-09-13T09:43:09.870" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I strongly disagree. They're chatty and irrelevant:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How you pronounce a word isn't a shibboleth: you're not going to get fired for pronouncing SQL as &quot;sequel&quot; or &quot;ess-cue-ehl&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;* It doesn't help you do your job better.&#xD;&#xA;* The correct pronunciation largely depends on who you're speaking with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They're a textbook case of soft, bike-shedding questions. Unable to answer a question about a real problem? Who cares! Tell us your opinions on how to pronounce this word.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the rare cases where there actually is singular correct pronunciation, they're either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* off-topic because this isn't English.SE&#xD;&#xA;* wholly uninteresting because any dictionary will tell you the correct pronunciation. Want to know how to pronounce ASCII? [Look it up](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ascii).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a look at the answers to other questions in the [tag:pronunciation] tag, you'll note the answer received on the hexidemical question is the exception, not the rule: people wildly upvote crap answers like &quot;I always say {insert pronunciation here}.&quot; that have no justification or explanation. They bring down the rest of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Aaronaught, who is always wont to crystalize the problems with a class of posts, gave [a great answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1994/would-the-general-reference-close-reason-be-useful-here-on-programmers/2000#2000) when we were discussing if we should have a &quot;general reference&quot; close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Unless we get a &quot;too easy&quot; close reason, I think we should close these as **off topic**.  The word &quot;expert&quot; is right there in the site's tagline; **if it's not relevant to an *experienced, practicing* programmer, then it's not in our scope.**  I'm sorry if it sounds callous, but we're here to help each other, not educate every single newbie on how to program.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Check this out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Quality Venn][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm pretty sure that the purple area between &quot;Advanced&quot; and &quot;Disciplined&quot; is where we are *supposed* to be.  We focus entirely on the subjective (objective questions go on Stack Overflow), so we have to be on the right side; and since we're nowhere near as disciplined as Skeptics, we have to make up for it by discussing subjects that are more advanced.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If we start allowing questions that are subjective *and* beginner-level, then we end up with [bike shed][3] questions, which almost invariably produce crap answers *and* drag down the rest of the site with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/yzan7.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_Law_of_Triviality" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5623" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2262" RevisionGUID="54077af5-cfaf-4597-b859-75d99c282fe0" CreationDate="2011-09-13T13:41:35.110" UserId="1554" Text="Agreed. Many should stay open. Sure, ome can be softball questions but...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- They're programming specific.&#xD;&#xA;- The have definitive answers.&#xD;&#xA;- Non-native english speakers might see _great_ value in these types of questions, and by extension, the native english speakers who work with them. &#xD;&#xA;- The proliferation of words and acronyms in the programming domain specific language causes there to be a large amount of these types of miscommunications. If its pronunciation isn't documented well/obviously somewhere then it certainly should be asked.&#xD;&#xA;- These types of questions have the same argument as design patterns: their existence improves communication. &#xD;&#xA;- Unless you're an army of one, improved communication does make you a better at your job.&#xD;&#xA;- When everyone is on the same page with proper pronunciation, the programming profession becomes a better place - and IIRC, that was a goal for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For _years_ I called it ess-cue-ehl server, until I heard a .NET Rocks cast with the PM of the project (whom I'd call an authority on the subject) call it sequel server. If only someone had told me sooner..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5624" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2263" RevisionGUID="ed3bf779-bd5c-45b9-a582-d65c4f649747" CreationDate="2011-09-14T10:56:33.620" UserId="133" Text="I wonder if there are &quot;superuser rights&quot; that allow hi-rep users to change the accepted answer ? Because, for question about &quot;best pratice&quot; for instance, it's obviously not the one asking the question that will be the best person to choose the right answer..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5625" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2263" RevisionGUID="ed3bf779-bd5c-45b9-a582-d65c4f649747" CreationDate="2011-09-14T10:56:33.620" UserId="133" Text="Situation when the people asking a question is not the best person to choose the best answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5626" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2263" RevisionGUID="ed3bf779-bd5c-45b9-a582-d65c4f649747" CreationDate="2011-09-14T10:56:33.620" UserId="133" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5627" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2264" RevisionGUID="9b80b7b2-fba7-43e2-bcd8-176b5fa4eb32" CreationDate="2011-09-14T11:04:55.137" UserId="47" Text="No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only person that can accept an answer (or change the accepted answer) is the question poster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All &quot;accepted answer&quot; means is that **&quot;this answer helped me the most&quot;**, nothing more and nothing else. It doesn't have to be best practise or even good practise, it just has to help the questioner out of his or her hole." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5628" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2263" RevisionGUID="e93f07e4-0153-4403-ac26-de2e29e3e01f" CreationDate="2011-09-14T11:05:03.387" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|accepted-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5629" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2265" RevisionGUID="6fac9384-d6ff-4a71-81fa-e39de0ec7e86" CreationDate="2011-09-14T11:07:00.373" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="No, there isn't: [it's been suggested periodically](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/3669/149432) on the network-wide meta discussion site, but it's always roundly rejected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All questions on Stack Exchange need to be verifiable in principle: the asker should be able to take an answer and see if it works for them. That's the answer that they'll generally accept. It might not be the most optimal solution or the one that the community agrees with, but the asker is always going to be in a better position to know what's going to work for them because they're the ones in a position to try it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the idea is that there are two different metrics people should be looking at:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What the community thinks is the right answer&#xD;&#xA;* What the asker felt helped him or her the most&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first is marked by the answer with the most votes. The second is marked by the acceptance check mark." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5630" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="173" RevisionGUID="2c3c2278-81b3-482a-98b6-bf3cfda1a454" CreationDate="2011-09-14T20:59:39.337" UserId="226" Comment="added 54 characters in body" Text="From [Introducing Programmers.StackExchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In a nutshell, **Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor** working through code issues. **Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard** working through higher level conceptual programming issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have **actual source code in the questions or answers**. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additional Resources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers.SE FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow FAQ](http://stackoverflow.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5631" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2266" RevisionGUID="7e5eb274-b07c-47b9-ad70-e6652681d899" CreationDate="2011-09-14T21:26:35.840" UserId="1554" Text="I know that originally, questions about testing were on-topic here, but now that http://sqa.stackexchange.com exists are questions like [this][1] still considered on-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108351/integration-tests-across-a-3-tier-net-solution" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5632" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2266" RevisionGUID="7e5eb274-b07c-47b9-ad70-e6652681d899" CreationDate="2011-09-14T21:26:35.840" UserId="1554" Text="Are questions about testing supposed to be close?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5633" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2266" RevisionGUID="7e5eb274-b07c-47b9-ad70-e6652681d899" CreationDate="2011-09-14T21:26:35.840" UserId="1554" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5634" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2266" RevisionGUID="40738077-60c0-43a3-85aa-087ca77e45f9" CreationDate="2011-09-15T02:14:54.677" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="Are questions about testing supposed to be closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5635" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2266" RevisionGUID="40738077-60c0-43a3-85aa-087ca77e45f9" CreationDate="2011-09-15T02:14:54.677" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5636" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2267" RevisionGUID="d4bce9c7-9bf2-4f21-8a16-17f9d48972d7" CreationDate="2011-09-15T13:49:44.297" UserId="2983" Text="Seems like there is 100% correlation between people asking, &quot;Isn't XXX...?&quot; and &quot;Closed as Not Constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder if it could make it into a guideline. Or as a question that comes up as a 'similar title', communicating to question authors a more inclusive way of asking the question they have in mind--or not asking.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5637" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2267" RevisionGUID="d4bce9c7-9bf2-4f21-8a16-17f9d48972d7" CreationDate="2011-09-15T13:49:44.297" UserId="2983" Text="Isn't any question starting with &quot;Isn't&quot; argumentative?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5638" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2267" RevisionGUID="d4bce9c7-9bf2-4f21-8a16-17f9d48972d7" CreationDate="2011-09-15T13:49:44.297" UserId="2983" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5639" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2268" RevisionGUID="d132e7d2-168b-4b47-a10e-17d96980604e" CreationDate="2011-09-15T16:14:37.290" UserId="4" Text="Their site name is &quot;software quality assurance&quot; and their FAQ says it's for &quot;software quality control experts&quot; and &quot;software testers&quot;. Until they narrow their definition, I don't think anything should be moved there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quality is a life cycle approach. It encompasses a lot - requirements, reviews, formal inspections, statistical quality control (yes, this applies to software), testing (unit, integration, system, acceptance, smoke, regression), change and configuration management, and formal methods. Six Sigma and TQM are tied directly to quality. Coming from statistical analysis, MTTF, failure rate, and control charts are all metrics and analysis tools that can be applied to SQA.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of these, most of them are on-topic here. Questions about implementing tests and testing tools are on-topic at Stack Overflow. Statistical analysis questions are good on the Statistics.SE site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly, I think the SQA site will be hard pressed to come up with questions that are not appropriate for here or Stack Overflow because they are concerned with software engineering or on Statistics." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5640" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2268" RevisionGUID="bf20bcb2-bf8b-43aa-a494-908bf4d02145" CreationDate="2011-09-15T17:17:05.180" UserId="4" Comment="added 475 characters in body" Text="Their site name is &quot;software quality assurance&quot; and their FAQ says it's for &quot;software quality control experts&quot; and &quot;software testers&quot;. Until they narrow their definition, I don't think anything should be moved there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quality is a life cycle approach. It encompasses a lot - requirements, reviews, formal inspections, statistical quality control (yes, this applies to software), testing (unit, integration, system, acceptance, smoke, regression), change and configuration management, and formal methods. Six Sigma and TQM are tied directly to quality. Coming from statistical analysis, MTTF, failure rate, and control charts are all metrics and analysis tools that can be applied to SQA.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of these, most of them are on-topic here. Questions about implementing tests and testing tools are on-topic at Stack Overflow. Statistical analysis questions are good on the Statistics.SE site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly, I think the SQA site will be hard pressed to come up with questions that are not appropriate for here or Stack Overflow because they are concerned with software engineering or on Statistics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In theory, yes, we should move them a bunch of questions. But until they better define what they want from their community, we shouldn't be moving questions. Software quality is something that I'm very interested in from a process/project standpoint, and if they want those questions, then we should think about a migration path. However, if they are more interested in hands-on details as opposed to also whiteboard SQA questions, then we shouldn't move those questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5641" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2076" RevisionGUID="589d9a47-2f7a-4125-ac79-99c185f34e7c" CreationDate="2011-09-16T02:41:16.663" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add new moderator feature" Text="Why not do [what they do on SO][1]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; More info: http://stackoverflow.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit from Mark Trapp&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators now have the [ability to annotate locked posts](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/106137/better-handling-of-locked-questions-and-answers) with messages that specify why the question was locked, including the historical significance reason seen on Stack Overflow. In lieu of any other consensus, highly upvoted closed questions will be locked with this message.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/192793/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-t-shirt" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5643" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2269" RevisionGUID="783a4bbb-a21a-4ee8-b245-49e7e1313767" CreationDate="2011-09-16T05:28:48.817" UserId="31418" Text="![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Almost any silver or gold badge results in getting a bronze badge before it (in the middle of the way). For example, a question with 20 up-votes get the **nice question** silver badge, which means that when it's got to 10 up-votes, it's given the **good question** bronze badge. Is this an anomaly in the system? What is the explanation behind it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/THchV.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5644" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2269" RevisionGUID="783a4bbb-a21a-4ee8-b245-49e7e1313767" CreationDate="2011-09-16T05:28:48.817" UserId="31418" Text="How these earned badges are possible?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5645" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2269" RevisionGUID="783a4bbb-a21a-4ee8-b245-49e7e1313767" CreationDate="2011-09-16T05:28:48.817" UserId="31418" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5646" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2269" RevisionGUID="a815bc4e-4840-44dd-b0c9-8e9e032e76a6" CreationDate="2011-09-16T05:32:45.380" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5648" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2269" RevisionGUID="ce6b1ac8-8420-40ab-ab6e-7d7f0d10c704" CreationDate="2011-09-16T05:44:01.507" UserId="31418" Comment="added 93 characters in body" Text="![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Almost any silver or gold badge results in getting a bronze badge before it (in the middle of the way). For example, a question with 20 up-votes get the **nice question** silver badge, which means that when it's got to 10 up-votes, it's given the **good question** bronze badge. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why this person (the image) in spite of having 92 silver badge and 13 gold badge, only has 21 bronze badge? Is this a bug? What is the explanation behind it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/THchV.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5649" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2271" RevisionGUID="cd58c080-68ed-4819-a100-dce6cb3ba71b" CreationDate="2011-09-16T05:56:53.793" UserId="399" Text="Are you looking at Pierre 303?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I look at one of Pierre's posts, I see the following which seems to match your partial image:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![badge counts overflow][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like there's too much text on that line that it is getting pushed out of view.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;However, if I look at the [users page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=reputation&amp;filter=all) then the full count is visible, 212 not 21.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![oh hey 212 not 21][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qICRl.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kIUNQ.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5650" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2272" RevisionGUID="c89c02e0-7d86-4e89-811b-92ba1297c90b" CreationDate="2011-09-16T05:58:14.817" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Pierre 303 actually has *212* bronze badges, not 21.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are actually several badges that do not have bronze equivalents:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Archaeologist](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/92/archaeologist): Edited 100 posts that were inactive for 6 months.&#xD;&#xA;* [Beta](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/16/beta): Actively participated in the private beta.&#xD;&#xA;* [Enlightened](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/36/enlightened): First to answer and accepted with at least 10 upvotes. This badge can be awarded multiple times.&#xD;&#xA;* [Enthusiast](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/22/enthusiast): Visited the site each day for 30 consecutive days.&#xD;&#xA;* [Favorite Question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/38/favorite-question): Question favorited by 25 users. This badge can be awarded multiple times.&#xD;&#xA;* [Generalist](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/14/generalist): Provided non-wiki answers of 15 total score in 20 of top 40 tags.&#xD;&#xA;* [Guru](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/43/guru): Accepted answer and score of 40 or more. This badge can be awarded multiple times.&#xD;&#xA;* [Sportsmanship](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/58/sportsmanship): Up voted 100 competing answers.&#xD;&#xA;* [Tenacious](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/34/tenacious): Zero score accepted answers: more than 5 and 20% of total.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it's technically possible to have more silver than copper, and in certain cases—namely when you have a lot of first accepted answers or when your questions are favorited a lot—it's possible for silver to outpace copper, but that's pretty rare (so rare I've never seen it happen)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5651" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="2272" RevisionGUID="8f0a2d41-12f4-44cf-8dac-e303d14a85f6" CreationDate="2011-09-16T05:58:52.787" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5652" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="2272" RevisionGUID="f8facc8e-2ffa-45b6-a222-36c98839b49a" CreationDate="2011-09-16T06:00:34.827" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5657" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2274" RevisionGUID="8b298d2f-1509-4b57-8edb-5afb66d7b66c" CreationDate="2011-09-16T07:34:55.790" UserId="37" Text="We have this&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        /// &lt;summary&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        /// returns true if title contains subjective words like &quot;best&quot;, &quot;favorite&quot;, etc&#xD;&#xA;        /// &lt;/summary&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        public bool ContainsSubjectiveWords(string s)&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;            if (!Current.Site.Settings.Questions.SubjectiveQuestionTitleWarning) return false;&#xD;&#xA;            return Regex.IsMatch(s, @&quot;\bbest\b|\bworst\b|\bhardest\b|\byour?\b|\bfavou?rite\b&quot;, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which results in a warning on the /ask page if triggered in the title, but it is not enabled for Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5659" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2276" RevisionGUID="7141968a-3538-4830-9a77-96d1361b3615" CreationDate="2011-09-16T16:35:05.327" UserId="4" Text="After [this question][1], there's a clear difference between asking about what impact licensure and certification would have on the profession of software engineering and &quot;what if&quot; questions about [the next big language][2] or what [features C# will add in the next version][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we can all agree that unanswerable hypothetical questions that are asking for a prediction of the future are bad and should be closed ASAP, simply because they can't be answered in any form that is known to be correct in the present. However, this is a site for more subjective &quot;whiteboard&quot; questions and it has frequently been described that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a precident for this, as well, from the &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective&quot; blog post][4]. Moms4Mom has (had?) a &quot;back-it-up&quot; policy. Parenting is subjective, and they made it work by requiring that answers provide references or personal experiences. If we're to cater to the more subjective questions from software developers, even hypothetical questions that score high on the 6 criteria for good subjective questions should stay open. The only question is how do you define &quot;high&quot; - I, personally, would say 4/6 and it stays open, 5/6 or greater to get an upvote from me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, if I have a question that I would ask to a room full of software professionals and the answers to that question add some kind of value to the community of software professionals, then it should be allowed in some form. The criteria for a good question here should not include hypotheticalism, but be restricted to being a well-written, specific question that scores high on the criteria for subjective questions and begs for answers that are backed up by personal experiences and authorative sources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108789/what-impact-would-licensing-software-engineers-have-on-the-profession&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296/what-will-be-the-next-big-language&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6275/what-do-you-think-will-be-added-in-c-5&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5660" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2276" RevisionGUID="7141968a-3538-4830-9a77-96d1361b3615" CreationDate="2011-09-16T16:35:05.327" UserId="4" Text="Do we need to refocus the &quot;hypothetical questions&quot; part of the FAQ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5661" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2276" RevisionGUID="7141968a-3538-4830-9a77-96d1361b3615" CreationDate="2011-09-16T16:35:05.327" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5662" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2277" RevisionGUID="9d0e4a04-2ea5-478f-a23c-a34f14f29132" CreationDate="2011-09-16T16:55:56.940" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The issue is that there is no answer: we don't have time machines and we don't have crystal balls. Any &quot;answer&quot; provided is a guess: an educated guess perhaps, but still a guess. There's no criteria by which to gauge the answers in a meaningful manner: who had the best theory? Who wrote the most? Who cares?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not the place to opine about a topic. If you're looking for that type of place, where you can poll fellow programmers to see what they think about some hot or future topic, you will be consistently disappointed. I would suggest looking into Hacker News or /r/Programming or any number of programming forums out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if you have a question that you're actually facing, then that's fine: ask about that. The question you linked is *not* that. It states X is what Y other profession does and asks what would happen if X happened in software engineering. What's the practical problem being faced? What real-world experience related to software development can be provided to answer such a hypothetical?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And consider it from a practical perspective: if you have an actual problem you're facing right now that you need someone to help you with, do you really want to see your question pushed down the front page by people dreaming up hypothetical scenarios to poll the audience about?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5663" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2276" RevisionGUID="0ba32a40-6ed9-4509-bf60-6ad47c3b9dce" CreationDate="2011-09-16T19:12:43.693" UserId="4" Comment="added 6414 characters in body; edited title" Text="#Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mark Trapp closed [this question on the licensure of software engineers][1] for the reason of not being constructive. More recently, [another question about replacing XML with JSON was closed for the same reasons][2]. In the comments of both, he called it a &quot;hypothetical question&quot; and cited the FAQ. I believe that the ultimate problem lies in the definition of hypothetical and practical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The text of the notice for non-constructive questions states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we can agree that open-ended discussion questions, &quot;getting to know you&quot; questions, and questions asking for predicting the future aren't practical, answerable, or of educational value and are more suited to other forums. And there are plenty of questions like this, such as trying to figure out, [the next big language][3], what [features C# will add in the next version][4], or [what terminology you use to refer to the { character][5]. We, as developers, don't know what the next big language is going to be, or what features the next version will have until the creator(s) tell us, and it really doesn't matter that I call { the open-stache and you call it the open brace. Questions like these should be closed, and I think we can all agree on that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I think we need to come to terms, as a community, with what is practical, answerable, and of some educational value. We also need to discuss the balance between the three of them. I think that all questions have to be answerable, but how does an individual (or even a subset) decide what is practical or of educational value to the community at large.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Practicality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For practicality, how do we define what is practical, and who has to consider it practical for it to be practical?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, I just pulled this decent question on [MS SQL XML best practices][6] from the home page. This is practical to people who are working with MSSQL and XML, but it's not practical to me in my job (I'm currently doing Java development with some MySQL database work here and there) nor in my professional interests (I'm interested in the softer topics of software engineering). Should I vote to close it because it's not practical to me? No, because it's practical to a reasonable subset of software developers out there (meaning it's not localized to a particular geographic area, period in time, or individual).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just take a look at my profile to see what I'm referring to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My professional interests include software project management, software engineering process models and methodologies, software measurements and metrics, empirical software engineering, leadership, and professionalism in software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are entire academic disciplines and research areas devoted to these, and the four are specific to software engineering. Questions and answers on these topics are practical, to me. But also, practicality is different depending on context. For example, empirical software engineering isn't necessarily practiced across industry, but it has led to insights into techniques and tools used to develop software better. For something to be practical, does it have to be practical to someone in an office doing work that eventually leads to delivered software, or can it be practical and useful to a researcher or academic who is looking to make the professional lives of those people delivering software easier or better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Answerability&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the minimum level of certainty and/or reliability for a question to be considered answerable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we can all agree that questions must be answerable in some way. There are clearly unanswerable questions (especially those asking to predict the future, or career planning advice that's incredibly localized to a person's current state), but there are also questions that we can draw on experiences and outside knowledge to answer. Going back to this licensure question, I think we can consider Steve McConnell (among others) an expert and cite his work, and we can look at other professions that require licensure and look at what happened there to draw conclusions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;The issue is that there is no answer: we don't have time machines and we don't have crystal balls. Any &quot;answer&quot; provided is a guess: an educated guess perhaps, but still a guess. There's no criteria by which to gauge the answers in a meaningful manner: who had the best theory? Who wrote the most? Who cares? - Mark Trapp&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't entirely agree with that. If I have a question, chances are, I don't know everything that's been written or how answerable the question is. I might have read a book or a blog post or talked to a co-worker about something. I think that the ability to present an expert's theory (which, if you can substantiate it, might be your own theory) in response to a question is perfectly acceptable, as long as you provide a summary or short quotation and a citation so that the original source can be found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you need a time machine or crystal ball to answer the question, that means that the question should be closed. However, if you can provide well-educated guesses based on experiences, knowledge, and reputable sources, that's perfectly acceptable, in my opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][7]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In fact, most academic fields don’t have objective answers. Topics like economics, engineering, the arts, literature, and social sciences don’t exactly have correct and incorrect answers. There is a growing list of proposals about increasingly subjective topics, and we believe many of them are going to make great Stack Exchange sites!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Educational Value&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do we measure how educational a question (and its answers) is?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure about other people, but I had to learn about software engineering professionalism and ethics as part of my undergraduate curriculum. In fact, we had a discussion about licensure and/or certification and their value. I think specific, pointed questions about industry trends are good questions to learn from, especially for people who have 30+ years left to spend in it. The opportunity to stay current on topics I learned about 4-5 years ago is valuable to me, and clearly adds educational value. At least 5 people (4 + the author) appeared to learn something from my answer to the licensure question, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How do we define what is practical, and who has to consider it practical for it to be practical? For something to be practical, does it have to be practical to someone in an office doing work that eventually leads to or otherwise supports delivered software? Or can it be practical and useful to a researcher or academic who is looking to make the professional lives of those people delivering software easier or better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If on-topic (as per the list of topics in the FAQ) questions that are answerable with either facts, reputable sources, or personal experiences, yet are not about a specific problem that someone is having right now aren't allowed here, where should they go? There are many good questions in this realm that are suitable for a Stack Exchange community (suitable meaning they aren't discussions or debates). Should another Stack Exchange be made, further dividing the software development community? Or can we improve guidance as to making it easier to define what is or isn't a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What is the minimum level of certainty and/or reliability for a question to be considered answerable? How do we measure this? How is a diamond moderator or 5 users who aren't knowledgable in a given topic able to assertain the answerability of a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How do we measure how educational a question (and its answers) is?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Can we apply the [Back-It-Up policy as defined in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][8] to allow more good (non-debate, non-discussion) questions that have answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108789/what-impact-would-licensing-software-engineers-have-on-the-profession&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108740/can-we-replace-xml-with-json-entirely&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296/what-will-be-the-next-big-language&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6275/what-do-you-think-will-be-added-in-c-5&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11077/what-do-you-call-this-character&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108834/ms-sql-xml-best-practices&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5664" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2276" RevisionGUID="0ba32a40-6ed9-4509-bf60-6ad47c3b9dce" CreationDate="2011-09-16T19:12:43.693" UserId="4" Comment="added 6414 characters in body; edited title" Text="Why was this question on the licensure of software engineers closed? How do we define constructive questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5665" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2276" RevisionGUID="fc9323ce-9e26-481d-b252-a3ba10e52c31" CreationDate="2011-09-16T19:30:02.943" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5666" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2277" RevisionGUID="fb865374-15a2-4c72-a74c-7869e2f1782b" CreationDate="2011-09-16T19:30:07.967" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add answers to new questions" Text="The issue is that there is no answer: we don't have time machines and we don't have crystal balls. Any &quot;answer&quot; provided is a guess: an educated guess perhaps, but still a guess. There's no criteria by which to gauge the answers in a meaningful manner: who had the best theory? Who wrote the most? Who cares?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not the place to opine about a topic. If you're looking for that type of place, where you can poll fellow programmers to see what they think about some hot or future topic, you will be consistently disappointed. I would suggest looking into Hacker News or /r/Programming or any number of programming forums out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if you have a question that you're actually facing, then that's fine: ask about that. The question you linked is *not* that. It states X is what Y other profession does and asks what would happen if X happened in software engineering. What's the practical problem being faced? What real-world experience related to software development can be provided to answer such a hypothetical?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And consider it from a practical perspective: if you have an actual problem you're facing right now that you need someone to help you with, do you really want to see your question pushed down the front page by people dreaming up hypothetical scenarios to poll the audience about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In response to your new questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do we define what is practical, and who has to consider it practical for it to be practical? For something to be practical, does it have to be practical to someone in an office doing work that eventually leads to or otherwise supports delivered software? Or can it be practical and useful to a researcher or academic who is looking to make the professional lives of those people delivering software easier or better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's pretty straightforward: is the question asking about a problem the asker *is actually facing right now*? If so, it's a practical question that deserves further consideration. If not, it either needs to be revised to ask about a problem the asker is actually facing or it'll be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If on-topic (as per the list of topics in the FAQ) questions that are answerable with either facts, reputable sources, or personal experiences, yet are not about a specific problem that someone is having right now aren't allowed here, where should they go? There are many good questions in this realm that are suitable for a Stack Exchange community (suitable meaning they aren't discussions or debates). Should another Stack Exchange be made, further dividing the software development community? Or can we improve guidance as to making it easier to define what is or isn't a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When we talk about constructiveness, it's not a Programmers.SE-only policy: it's network wide. Programmers was originally created to be the less-strict version of Stack Overflow and it sucked *hard*. That's when we figured out there's a standard level of questions, objective or not, *every* Stack Exchange site needs to have in order to thrive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an alternative to Stack Exchange, I would suggest [Quora](http://quora.com), [Reddit's Programming subreditt](http://reddit.com/r/programming), or [Hacker News](http://news.ycombinator.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the minimum level of certainty and/or reliability for a question to be considered answerable? How do we measure this? How is a diamond moderator or 5 users who aren't knowledgable in a given topic able to assertain the answerability of a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not really about whether the answer knows the answer or knows whether there *is* an answer: as the old saying goes, &quot;ignorance of the law is no excuse.&quot; The &quot;only ask about problems you actually face&quot; guidance covers this pretty well: in cases where the FAQ is unclear and a person asks a borderline question, it's entirely up to the answers and community moderation to save it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to reiterate, *in this specific case*, it's not borderline: it's spelled out pretty clearly in [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask). The question also received 6 downvotes and 2 flags for closure, which to me indicates the community agrees prima facie this question is not a good fit for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can we apply the Back-It-Up policy as defined in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective to allow more good (non-debate, non-discussion) questions that have answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do: I touched on it above, but when a question is borderline, whether it's receiving absolutely stellar answers that are backed up by facts and experiences is what determines if it's able to be saved. But again, in this specific case, this question is not borderline: it's hypothetical speculation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5667" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2277" RevisionGUID="7701cee2-7c1c-4ccf-a0fe-7781356da760" CreationDate="2011-09-16T19:35:11.547" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add answers to new questions" Text="The issue is that there is no answer: we don't have time machines and we don't have crystal balls. Any &quot;answer&quot; provided is a guess: an educated guess perhaps, but still a guess. There's no criteria by which to gauge the answers in a meaningful manner: who had the best theory? Who wrote the most? Who cares?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not the place to opine about a topic. If you're looking for that type of place, where you can poll fellow programmers to see what they think about some hot or future topic, you will be consistently disappointed. I would suggest looking into Hacker News or /r/Programming or any number of programming forums out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if you have a question that you're actually facing, then that's fine: ask about that. The question you linked is *not* that. It states X is what Y other profession does and asks what would happen if X happened in software engineering. What's the practical problem being faced? What real-world experience related to software development can be provided to answer such a hypothetical?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And consider it from a practical perspective: if you have an actual problem you're facing right now that you need someone to help you with, do you really want to see your question pushed down the front page by people dreaming up hypothetical scenarios to poll the audience about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In response to your new questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do we define what is practical, and who has to consider it practical for it to be practical? For something to be practical, does it have to be practical to someone in an office doing work that eventually leads to or otherwise supports delivered software? Or can it be practical and useful to a researcher or academic who is looking to make the professional lives of those people delivering software easier or better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think [it's pretty straightforward](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask): is the question asking about a problem the asker *is actually facing right now*? If so, it's a practical question that deserves further consideration. If not, it either needs to be revised to ask about a problem the asker is actually facing or it'll be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If on-topic (as per the list of topics in the FAQ) questions that are answerable with either facts, reputable sources, or personal experiences, yet are not about a specific problem that someone is having right now aren't allowed here, where should they go? There are many good questions in this realm that are suitable for a Stack Exchange community (suitable meaning they aren't discussions or debates). Should another Stack Exchange be made, further dividing the software development community? Or can we improve guidance as to making it easier to define what is or isn't a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When we talk about constructiveness, it's not a Programmers.SE-only policy: it's network wide. Programmers [was originally created](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) to be the less-strict version of Stack Overflow and it sucked *hard*. That's when we figured out there's a standard level of questions, objective or not, *every* Stack Exchange site needs to have in order to thrive. There really is no room for a less-strict version of another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an alternative to Stack Exchange, I would suggest [Quora](http://quora.com), [Reddit's Programming subreditt](http://reddit.com/r/programming), or [Hacker News](http://news.ycombinator.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the minimum level of certainty and/or reliability for a question to be considered answerable? How do we measure this? How is a diamond moderator or 5 users who aren't knowledgable in a given topic able to assertain the answerability of a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not really about whether the answer knows the answer or knows whether there *is* an answer: as the old saying goes, &quot;ignorance of the law is no excuse.&quot; The &quot;only ask about problems you actually face&quot; guidance covers this pretty well: in cases where the FAQ is unclear and a person asks a borderline question, it's entirely up to the answers and community moderation to save it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to reiterate, *in this specific case*, it's not borderline: it's spelled out pretty clearly in [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask). The question also received 6 downvotes and 2 flags for closure, which to me indicates the community agrees prima facie this question is not a good fit for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can we apply the Back-It-Up policy as defined in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective to allow more good (non-debate, non-discussion) questions that have answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do: I touched on it above, but when a question is borderline, whether it's receiving absolutely stellar answers that are backed up by facts and experiences is [what determines if it's able to be saved](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright/862#862). But again, in this specific case, this question is not borderline: it's hypothetical speculation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5668" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2277" RevisionGUID="7a04cea6-e18e-4572-a2bf-fd5b367f136d" CreationDate="2011-09-16T19:40:54.597" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add answers to new questions" Text="The issue is that there is no answer: we don't have time machines and we don't have crystal balls. Any &quot;answer&quot; provided is a guess: an educated guess perhaps, but still a guess. There's no criteria by which to gauge the answers in a meaningful manner: who had the best theory? Who wrote the most? Who cares?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not the place to opine about a topic. If you're looking for that type of place, where you can poll fellow programmers to see what they think about some hot or future topic, you will be consistently disappointed. I would suggest looking into Hacker News or /r/Programming or any number of programming forums out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if you have a question that you're actually facing, then that's fine: ask about that. The question you linked is *not* that. It states X is what Y other profession does and asks what would happen if X happened in software engineering. What's the practical problem being faced? What real-world experience related to software development can be provided to answer such a hypothetical?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And consider it from a practical perspective: if you have an actual problem you're facing right now that you need someone to help you with, do you really want to see your question pushed down the front page by people dreaming up hypothetical scenarios to poll the audience about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In response to your new questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do we define what is practical, and who has to consider it practical for it to be practical? For something to be practical, does it have to be practical to someone in an office doing work that eventually leads to or otherwise supports delivered software? Or can it be practical and useful to a researcher or academic who is looking to make the professional lives of those people delivering software easier or better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think [it's pretty straightforward](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask): is the question asking about a problem the asker *is actually facing right now*? If so, it's a practical question that deserves further consideration. If not, it either needs to be revised to ask about a problem the asker is actually facing or it'll be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If on-topic (as per the list of topics in the FAQ) questions that are answerable with either facts, reputable sources, or personal experiences, yet are not about a specific problem that someone is having right now aren't allowed here, where should they go? There are many good questions in this realm that are suitable for a Stack Exchange community (suitable meaning they aren't discussions or debates). Should another Stack Exchange be made, further dividing the software development community? Or can we improve guidance as to making it easier to define what is or isn't a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When we talk about constructiveness, it's not a Programmers.SE-only policy: it's network-wide. Programmers [was originally created](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) to be the less-strict version of Stack Overflow and it sucked *hard*. That's when it was figured out there's a standard level of questions, objective or not, *every* Stack Exchange site needs to have in order to thrive. There really is no room for a less-strict version of another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an alternative to Stack Exchange, I would suggest [Quora](http://quora.com), [Reddit's Programming subreditt](http://reddit.com/r/programming), or [Hacker News](http://news.ycombinator.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the minimum level of certainty and/or reliability for a question to be considered answerable? How do we measure this? How is a diamond moderator or 5 users who aren't knowledgable in a given topic able to assertain the answerability of a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not really about whether someone *knows* the answer or knows whether there *is* an answer, and the &quot;only ask about problems you actually face&quot; guidance covers this pretty well: you don't need to know if your question is answerable, but you need to ask about something you're actually facing right now. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In cases where the FAQ is unclear and a person asks a borderline question, it's entirely up to the answers to demonstrate the question's value and community moderation to revise the question into a workable form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to reiterate, *in this specific case*, it's not borderline: it's spelled out pretty clearly in [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask). The question also received 6 downvotes and 2 flags for closure, which to me indicates the community agrees prima facie this question is not a good fit for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But when a question is closed, [there's still opportunity](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed) to get the question into shape. And that includes this question: if it actually asked about a real problem instead of a hypothetical scenario, I'd be the first one to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can we apply the Back-It-Up policy as defined in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective to allow more good (non-debate, non-discussion) questions that have answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do: I touched on it above, but when a question is borderline, whether it's receiving absolutely stellar answers that are backed up by facts and experiences is [what determines if it's able to be saved](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright/862#862). But again, in this specific case, this question is not borderline: it's hypothetical speculation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5669" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2278" RevisionGUID="3a6ddbbc-5cda-4ae6-a897-bf651afe5874" CreationDate="2011-09-16T20:31:14.100" UserId="20011" Text="I agree with Alex Feinman that &quot;isn't&quot; asks for confirmation, but disagree that it excludes disagreement. It's not hard to disagree at all if the question can be answered objectively:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;*Isn't strcpy() the right function to use to copy a string?*&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's true that purpose of strcpy() is to copy strings, but that function has been &#xD;&#xA;&gt;deprecated for quite some time due to the risk of buffer overruns, which in turn&#xD;&#xA;&gt;are a major security risk. You should instead use one of the modern replacements,&#xD;&#xA;&gt;such as strlcpy() or strncpy(). You can read about the differences here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's harder to answer subjective questions that start with &quot;isn't&quot;. The author has already stated an opinion and is usually looking for support more than an answer. Such questions are likely to be closed as &quot;not a real question&quot; or &quot;not constructive.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5670" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2279" RevisionGUID="440bfe70-c067-4995-abe9-bcd2a173d4bc" CreationDate="2011-09-16T20:35:28.477" UserId="20011" Text="I just noticed that my rep on Meta Programmers is the same (currently 3898) as it is on Programmers. This is surely a bug, unless there's been a recent change to combine rep on meta sites with the main sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5671" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2279" RevisionGUID="440bfe70-c067-4995-abe9-bcd2a173d4bc" CreationDate="2011-09-16T20:35:28.477" UserId="20011" Text="Why is my meta.programmers reputation the same as my programmers rep?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5672" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2279" RevisionGUID="440bfe70-c067-4995-abe9-bcd2a173d4bc" CreationDate="2011-09-16T20:35:28.477" UserId="20011" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5673" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2280" RevisionGUID="90ba4c75-93a8-4cad-90ae-6a824336ada0" CreationDate="2011-09-16T20:39:38.073" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I could've sworn we've fielded this question before, but at any rate, this is not a bug: every child meta except for Meta Stack Overflow pegs its users' reputation to the corresponding main site user. It's been like that since Stack Exchange 2.0 launched.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [the Meta FAQ](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reputation here is entirely derived from the main website; your reputation is the same here as it is there, synchronized hourly. Votes here do not affect your reputation in any way. However, you can earn unique badges here on the meta site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5674" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2279" RevisionGUID="10fbb832-af97-49e7-8c37-d2e397501c1b" CreationDate="2011-09-16T20:39:48.710" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5675" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2276" RevisionGUID="a9eaa5ff-76b8-405e-8b44-69edc27d1b03" CreationDate="2011-09-16T21:41:23.790" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Prep for migration" Text="#Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mark Trapp closed [this question on the licensure of software engineers][1] on Programmers for the reason of not being constructive. More recently, [another question about replacing XML with JSON was closed for the same reasons][2]. In the comments of both, he called it a &quot;hypothetical question&quot; and cited the FAQ. I believe that the ultimate problem lies in the definition of hypothetical and practical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The text of the notice for non-constructive questions states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we can agree that open-ended discussion questions, &quot;getting to know you&quot; questions, and questions asking for predicting the future aren't practical, answerable, or of educational value and are more suited to other forums. And there are plenty of questions like this, such as trying to figure out, [the next big language][3], what [features C# will add in the next version][4], or [what terminology you use to refer to the { character][5]. We, as developers, don't know what the next big language is going to be, or what features the next version will have until the creator(s) tell us, and it really doesn't matter that I call { the open-stache and you call it the open brace. Questions like these should be closed, and I think we can all agree on that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I think we need to come to terms, as a community, with what is practical, answerable, and of some educational value. We also need to discuss the balance between the three of them. I think that all questions have to be answerable, but how does an individual (or even a subset) decide what is practical or of educational value to the community at large.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Practicality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For practicality, how do we define what is practical, and who has to consider it practical for it to be practical?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, I just pulled this decent question on [MS SQL XML best practices][6] from the home page. This is practical to people who are working with MSSQL and XML, but it's not practical to me in my job (I'm currently doing Java development with some MySQL database work here and there) nor in my professional interests (I'm interested in the softer topics of software engineering). Should I vote to close it because it's not practical to me? No, because it's practical to a reasonable subset of software developers out there (meaning it's not localized to a particular geographic area, period in time, or individual).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just take a look at my profile to see what I'm referring to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My professional interests include software project management, software engineering process models and methodologies, software measurements and metrics, empirical software engineering, leadership, and professionalism in software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are entire academic disciplines and research areas devoted to these, and the four are specific to software engineering. Questions and answers on these topics are practical, to me. But also, practicality is different depending on context. For example, empirical software engineering isn't necessarily practiced across industry, but it has led to insights into techniques and tools used to develop software better. For something to be practical, does it have to be practical to someone in an office doing work that eventually leads to delivered software, or can it be practical and useful to a researcher or academic who is looking to make the professional lives of those people delivering software easier or better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Answerability&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the minimum level of certainty and/or reliability for a question to be considered answerable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we can all agree that questions must be answerable in some way. There are clearly unanswerable questions (especially those asking to predict the future, or career planning advice that's incredibly localized to a person's current state), but there are also questions that we can draw on experiences and outside knowledge to answer. Going back to this licensure question, I think we can consider Steve McConnell (among others) an expert and cite his work, and we can look at other professions that require licensure and look at what happened there to draw conclusions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;The issue is that there is no answer: we don't have time machines and we don't have crystal balls. Any &quot;answer&quot; provided is a guess: an educated guess perhaps, but still a guess. There's no criteria by which to gauge the answers in a meaningful manner: who had the best theory? Who wrote the most? Who cares? - Mark Trapp&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't entirely agree with that. If I have a question, chances are, I don't know everything that's been written or how answerable the question is. I might have read a book or a blog post or talked to a co-worker about something. I think that the ability to present an expert's theory (which, if you can substantiate it, might be your own theory) in response to a question is perfectly acceptable, as long as you provide a summary or short quotation and a citation so that the original source can be found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you need a time machine or crystal ball to answer the question, that means that the question should be closed. However, if you can provide well-educated guesses based on experiences, knowledge, and reputable sources, that's perfectly acceptable, in my opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][7]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In fact, most academic fields don’t have objective answers. Topics like economics, engineering, the arts, literature, and social sciences don’t exactly have correct and incorrect answers. There is a growing list of proposals about increasingly subjective topics, and we believe many of them are going to make great Stack Exchange sites!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Educational Value&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do we measure how educational a question (and its answers) is?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure about other people, but I had to learn about software engineering professionalism and ethics as part of my undergraduate curriculum. In fact, we had a discussion about licensure and/or certification and their value. I think specific, pointed questions about industry trends are good questions to learn from, especially for people who have 30+ years left to spend in it. The opportunity to stay current on topics I learned about 4-5 years ago is valuable to me, and clearly adds educational value. At least 5 people (4 + the author) appeared to learn something from my answer to the licensure question, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How do we define what is practical, and who has to consider it practical for it to be practical? For something to be practical, does it have to be practical to someone in an office doing work that eventually leads to or otherwise supports delivered software? Or can it be practical and useful to a researcher or academic who is looking to make the professional lives of those people delivering software easier or better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If on-topic (as per the list of topics in the FAQ) questions that are answerable with either facts, reputable sources, or personal experiences, yet are not about a specific problem that someone is having right now aren't allowed here, where should they go? There are many good questions in this realm that are suitable for a Stack Exchange community (suitable meaning they aren't discussions or debates). Should another Stack Exchange be made, further dividing the software development community? Or can we improve guidance as to making it easier to define what is or isn't a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What is the minimum level of certainty and/or reliability for a question to be considered answerable? How do we measure this? How is a diamond moderator or 5 users who aren't knowledgable in a given topic able to assertain the answerability of a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How do we measure how educational a question (and its answers) is?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Can we apply the [Back-It-Up policy as defined in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][8] to allow more good (non-debate, non-discussion) questions that have answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108789/what-impact-would-licensing-software-engineers-have-on-the-profession&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108740/can-we-replace-xml-with-json-entirely&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296/what-will-be-the-next-big-language&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6275/what-do-you-think-will-be-added-in-c-5&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11077/what-do-you-call-this-character&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108834/ms-sql-xml-best-practices&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5676" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2276" RevisionGUID="a9eaa5ff-76b8-405e-8b44-69edc27d1b03" CreationDate="2011-09-16T21:41:23.790" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Prep for migration" Text="How do we define constructive questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5677" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2276" RevisionGUID="a9eaa5ff-76b8-405e-8b44-69edc27d1b03" CreationDate="2011-09-16T21:41:23.790" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Prep for migration" Text="|discussion|moderation|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5678" PostHistoryTypeId="14" PostId="2276" RevisionGUID="a63a3e25-136c-4b32-9957-737a2ee3d5a7" CreationDate="2011-09-16T21:41:48.487" UserId="-1" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5680" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2276" RevisionGUID="08153b27-c781-4f5a-b586-0179e574c8db" CreationDate="2011-09-16T21:41:46.660" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="2" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5682" PostHistoryTypeId="15" PostId="2276" RevisionGUID="c91cde15-b07b-43f6-bf6e-6008d3fbf986" CreationDate="2011-09-16T21:45:41.710" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5683" PostHistoryTypeId="11" PostId="2276" RevisionGUID="cbe914de-9134-4bac-a1bd-8f2cd0ad0175" CreationDate="2011-09-16T21:45:42.177" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5684" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="2277" RevisionGUID="32ce8881-55f8-41eb-b0f4-f60e62759e1f" CreationDate="2011-09-16T21:45:49.820" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5685" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2281" RevisionGUID="4f554456-239a-4d94-83bc-d0da03a271af" CreationDate="2011-09-17T07:44:35.873" UserId="37" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108740/can-we-replace-xml-with-json-entirely-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This *might* be reopenable if it is refocused on XML Namespaces (or something else a bit more specific) and stops being so ridiculously open-ended. **As currently stated, it is correctly closed IMO.** It is very much [Gorilla vs. Shark][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108789/what-impact-would-licensing-software-engineers-have-on-the-profession-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems slightly more defensible; if Marc's concern is that this is too hypothetical (and note it has 6 downvotes) then perhaps it should be rephrased as something like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When I apply for jobs I have to compete with too many other software engineers who have little or no skill and dilute the candidate pool. I feel it devalues our profession and ultimately pushes down the salary levels for all practicing software engineers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I feel my career, and that of other skilled software engineers, would benefit if less unskilled software engineers were prevented from entering the field until they passed a standard set of tests to become &quot;licensed&quot;, like the medicine and law professions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not an exact edit, but you get the idea: the actual problem is that *your* profession is being harmed and *your* salary is being harmed. I do think it's a good topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll go ahead and finish this edit and make it so...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/ " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5686" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2282" RevisionGUID="b2926211-be04-425c-9c0e-5cf85c1d3722" CreationDate="2011-09-17T12:03:50.270" UserId="32803" Text="I need to understand some moderation rules applicable to me. Currently, when for other peoples post, i don't see any close button. All i can do is either downvote or flag the post. If i feel that question doesn't belong to this site, Should i flag it or downvote to recommend closing the question ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5687" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2282" RevisionGUID="b2926211-be04-425c-9c0e-5cf85c1d3722" CreationDate="2011-09-17T12:03:50.270" UserId="32803" Text="No close/close-recommendation button for me" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5688" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2282" RevisionGUID="b2926211-be04-425c-9c0e-5cf85c1d3722" CreationDate="2011-09-17T12:03:50.270" UserId="32803" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5689" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2283" RevisionGUID="408eb82c-97c6-4326-8d8c-ddf9d5ffb8c7" CreationDate="2011-09-17T12:21:47.533" UserId="32803" Text="I asked a question few days back, which was very clear in its statement. The question was regarding compiler and definitely can be answered and was answered pretty well by the fellow programmers. But, still the question was closed as unreal, ambiguous, and vague. I requested for the reopen but it stated that I need 5 votes. Since the question was closed after more than 2 days, everyone had read it; so no one considered to re-visit and upvote it(may be many of them didnt value it that much). And Now, the question is closed and cant be seen so how can i expect 5 votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question i am talking about is this [ONE][1]. Can this be reopened or still lacks substance to be live at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It might not be a great question but still holds a minute value. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/104710/compilers-are-only-for-developers-right" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5690" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2283" RevisionGUID="408eb82c-97c6-4326-8d8c-ddf9d5ffb8c7" CreationDate="2011-09-17T12:21:47.533" UserId="32803" Text="Can a question with 800 views, 7 answers, 20+comments and 9 votes be still counted as vague" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5691" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2283" RevisionGUID="408eb82c-97c6-4326-8d8c-ddf9d5ffb8c7" CreationDate="2011-09-17T12:21:47.533" UserId="32803" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5692" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2284" RevisionGUID="34b3a0bf-f781-4834-a831-f5d29fd36e56" CreationDate="2011-09-17T13:23:38.177" UserId="3688" Text="From the [FAQ][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 250 	Vote to close, reopen, or migrate **your** questions  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 300 	Create new tags  &#xD;&#xA;500 	Retag questions  &#xD;&#xA;1000 	Show total up and down vote counts  &#xD;&#xA;2000 	Edit other people’s posts, vote to approve or reject suggested edits  &#xD;&#xA;3000 	Vote to close, reopen, or migrate **any** questions &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hate to say it, but *seriously* - read the whole FAQ. :) Clicking on each header expands it so you see the whole section (and doing all of them, gets you a *badge*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yes, if you think a Question *should* be closed - flag it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5693" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2285" RevisionGUID="a7236483-aa25-471a-a597-ec2e4d171944" CreationDate="2011-09-17T17:35:02.747" UserId="32803" Text="There are various websites on StackExchange with meta versions available. Still, there isn't any reputation for these meta-sites. &#xD;&#xA;I guess it will be good if StackExchange make this possible. They can have a generalized reputation for all meta sites, rather than showing the same reputation as per the basic site, what do you say ??&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will help user to understand that a well known moderator has answered his query or closed his question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just a thought from my side." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5694" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2285" RevisionGUID="a7236483-aa25-471a-a597-ec2e4d171944" CreationDate="2011-09-17T17:35:02.747" UserId="32803" Text="What there are no Meta site specific reputation points ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5695" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2285" RevisionGUID="a7236483-aa25-471a-a597-ec2e4d171944" CreationDate="2011-09-17T17:35:02.747" UserId="32803" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5696" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2285" RevisionGUID="eb1b932f-e121-43e2-80ca-a0394608e204" CreationDate="2011-09-17T17:41:46.027" UserId="32803" Comment="typo error in title " Text="Why there are no Meta-site specific reputation points?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5697" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2286" RevisionGUID="773b2a47-6495-4225-ba3a-ac0d70b71e1e" CreationDate="2011-09-17T17:53:08.693" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="You'll know a post is from a moderator when that user has a diamond (♦) next their name: for example, me right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in general, the idea is that, by knowing how active a user is on the main site, you should be able to determine how well the user knows the main site when answering questions about it. It's not a 1:1 match, but it works for most meta purposes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was [also discussed on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/66412/why-is-the-meta-reputation-derived-directly-from-the-parent-site), where Robert Cartaino said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It seems like the more participation you have on the PARENT site, the more abilities and bigger the role you should have in the discussions *about* that site. Creating a separate reputation score for META activity means that only frequent META USERS would have the leading roles... not necessarily the same people who actually use the site (i.e. the stakeholders). Having one meta score (for using the ACTUAL SITE) seems like a better system." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5698" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2287" RevisionGUID="1f4c6d62-938b-4721-b7b3-ab72d90df9ff" CreationDate="2011-09-17T17:54:02.870" UserId="47" Text="This has been asked before and there are probably better answers out there, but here's my take:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Down-votes on meta have a different meaning to down-votes on the main site. Here they also mean &quot;I disagree&quot;, &quot;I don't think your suggestion would work&quot;, &quot;It's not a bug&quot;, etc. However, it doesn't mean that you deserve to loose reputation over it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there was &quot;real&quot; reputation involved people would be more reluctant to offer up their suggestions or down-vote the bad answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more appropriate question would be &quot;Why does Meta Stack Overflow have separate reputation?&quot;,  but that has already been asked and answered [over there](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/1451/should-reputation-from-so-carry-over-to-meta).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5699" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2286" RevisionGUID="264d6dd7-b87f-4144-a88d-16d59f8911d7" CreationDate="2011-09-17T17:58:31.613" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 1683 characters in body" Text="You'll know a post is from a moderator when that user has a diamond (♦) next their name: for example, me right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in general, the idea is that, by knowing how active a user is on the main site, you should be able to determine how well the user knows the main site when answering questions about it. It's not a 1:1 match, but it works for most meta purposes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was [also discussed on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/66412/why-is-the-meta-reputation-derived-directly-from-the-parent-site), where Robert Cartaino said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It seems like the more participation you have on the PARENT site, the more abilities and bigger the role you should have in the discussions *about* that site. Creating a separate reputation score for META activity means that only frequent META USERS would have the leading roles... not necessarily the same people who actually use the site (i.e. the stakeholders). Having one meta score (for using the ACTUAL SITE) seems like a better system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's some confusion because Meta Stack Overflow, ostensibly the meta for Stack Overflow, *does* have its own reputation system, and the suggestion from the other angle—eliminating rep there and pegging it to Stack Overflow—comes up often, too. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A [detailed answer on why there is this discrepency](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/1451/should-reputation-from-so-carry-over-to-meta/63235#63235) can be found on the question [Should reputation from SO carry over to Meta?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/1451/should-reputation-from-so-carry-over-to-meta):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Each site's meta (other than this one) is designed for site-specific discussions about things like:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Defining a site's culture&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Determining each site's tolerance for certain types of questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Discussing tagging practices, moderators, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And on those sites, it makes more sense for the meta site rep to mirror the parent site rep, since **the most &quot;trust&quot; to define the site's culture should be assigned to those that have earned the most trust on the site itself; *they are its culture.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site, meta.SO, continues to serve that role of discussing the culture and goals of StackOverflow.com (and that of Area 51,) but it also serves an important larger need:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It is also the meta site for discussion of the *unified engine that will drive both the trilogy sites and the SE 2.0 sites*, addressing things like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Bugs&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Feature Requests&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about the system as a whole (ads, rep-gaming gaps, re-posting policy, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; On a site about *the engine*, it does not make as much sense to make the reputation mirror one or some of the other sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5700" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2286" RevisionGUID="38be05a7-c11b-479c-9df2-4d8d40e8eb97" CreationDate="2011-09-17T18:04:03.510" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 1683 characters in body" Text="You'll know a post is from a moderator when that user has a diamond (♦) next their name: for example, me right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in general, the idea is that, by knowing how active a user is on the main site, you should be able to determine how well the user knows the main site when answering questions about it. It's not a 1:1 match, but it works for most meta purposes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was [also discussed on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/66412/why-is-the-meta-reputation-derived-directly-from-the-parent-site), where Robert Cartaino said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It seems like the more participation you have on the PARENT site, the more abilities and bigger the role you should have in the discussions *about* that site. Creating a separate reputation score for META activity means that only frequent META USERS would have the leading roles... not necessarily the same people who actually use the site (i.e. the stakeholders). Having one meta score (for using the ACTUAL SITE) seems like a better system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One other thing to consider is that it frees up people to participate without affecting a reputation total: people can down-vote bad ideas and participate more without worrying about their reputation being affected. On child metas, where there are already low activity levels, killing as many barriers to entry is important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An [answer by Rebecca Chernoff](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64267/is-there-a-reason-why-we-gain-ghost-reputation-on-the-meta-of-an-se-website/64268#64268) and a [blog post by Jeff Atwood](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/new-per-site-metas/) touches upon this aspect and others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there's some confusion because Meta Stack Overflow, ostensibly the meta for Stack Overflow, *does* have its own reputation system, and the suggestion from the other angle—eliminating rep there and pegging it to Stack Overflow—comes up often, too. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A [detailed answer on why there is this discrepency](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/1451/should-reputation-from-so-carry-over-to-meta/63235#63235) can be found on the question [Should reputation from SO carry over to Meta?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/1451/should-reputation-from-so-carry-over-to-meta):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Each site's meta (other than this one) is designed for site-specific discussions about things like:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Defining a site's culture&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Determining each site's tolerance for certain types of questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Discussing tagging practices, moderators, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And on those sites, it makes more sense for the meta site rep to mirror the parent site rep, since **the most &quot;trust&quot; to define the site's culture should be assigned to those that have earned the most trust on the site itself; *they are its culture.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site, meta.SO, continues to serve that role of discussing the culture and goals of StackOverflow.com (and that of Area 51,) but it also serves an important larger need:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It is also the meta site for discussion of the *unified engine that will drive both the trilogy sites and the SE 2.0 sites*, addressing things like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Bugs&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Feature Requests&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about the system as a whole (ads, rep-gaming gaps, re-posting policy, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; On a site about *the engine*, it does not make as much sense to make the reputation mirror one or some of the other sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5701" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2288" RevisionGUID="ee023a74-e36c-4f12-b064-602203d3edf1" CreationDate="2011-09-17T18:17:53.290" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Before I address your specific question, it's important to note that the level of activity a question gets no bearing on community moderation: there is no &quot;safe&quot; zone for bad questions if they're popular.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange only works insofar as it attracts experts: questions that don't demonstrate a base understanding or preparation for a question give experts—who we need to answer questions—the impression that the site isn't worth their time. So a question like &quot;What's your favorite programming cartoon?&quot;, while wildly popular because it has a low barrier to entry, will be closed every single time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, look to [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) for guidance or like you've done here, ask a question on meta asking why a question was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To get to your specific question, I can see why 5 members of the community closed it: you provided a basic summary of your understanding of what a compiler is, and then asked people to confirm or deny it. That's not *really* what we're shooting for here. You can confirm whether your understanding of a compiler is correct by looking it up on Wikipedia.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There *is* a potentially interesting question there: &quot;can compilers be used by non-developers?&quot; with a subtextual question, &quot;when would compilers be used by non-developers?&quot; I've revised your question to highlight those questions and reopened it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The one thing that's preventing this question from being really great is *why* you're asking. Answers provided are survey-level stuff that could easily be answered by Wikipedia, but where Stack Exchange really shines is when we start solving your specific question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can revise your question to specify what problem you're solving by knowing if non-developers use compilers, it'd go from being a okay, but open-ended question to a great, concrete question that's really the best of what Programmers has to offer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5702" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2281" RevisionGUID="18d50cac-db22-490a-87b0-7ba68d04c292" CreationDate="2011-09-17T18:21:36.717" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment=":)" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108740/can-we-replace-xml-with-json-entirely-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This *might* be reopenable if it is refocused on XML Namespaces (or something else a bit more specific) and stops being so ridiculously open-ended. **As currently stated, it is correctly closed IMO.** It is very much [Gorilla vs. Shark][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108789/what-impact-would-licensing-software-engineers-have-on-the-profession-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems slightly more defensible; if Mark's concern is that this is too hypothetical (and note it has 6 downvotes) then perhaps it should be rephrased as something like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When I apply for jobs I have to compete with too many other software engineers who have little or no skill and dilute the candidate pool. I feel it devalues our profession and ultimately pushes down the salary levels for all practicing software engineers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I feel my career, and that of other skilled software engineers, would benefit if less unskilled software engineers were prevented from entering the field until they passed a standard set of tests to become &quot;licensed&quot;, like the medicine and law professions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not an exact edit, but you get the idea: the actual problem is that *your* profession is being harmed and *your* salary is being harmed. I do think it's a good topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll go ahead and finish this edit and make it so...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/ " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5703" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2288" RevisionGUID="552d0960-de76-4a7d-888a-1265523b5e9d" CreationDate="2011-09-17T18:26:20.547" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 25 characters in body" Text="Before I address your specific question, it's important to note that the level of activity a question gets has no bearing on community moderation: there is no &quot;safe&quot; zone for bad questions just because they're popular.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange only works insofar as it attracts experts: questions that don't demonstrate a base understanding or preparation for a question give experts—who we need to answer questions—the impression that the site isn't worth their time. So a really bad question like &quot;What's your favorite programming cartoon?&quot;, while wildly popular because it has a low barrier to entry, will be closed every single time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, look to [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) for guidance or like you've done here, ask a question on meta asking why a question was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To get to your specific question, I can see why 5 members of the community closed it: you provided a basic summary of your understanding of what a compiler is, and then asked people to confirm or deny it. That's not *really* what we're shooting for here. You can confirm whether your understanding of a compiler is correct by looking it up on Wikipedia.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There *is* a potentially interesting question there: &quot;can compilers be used by non-developers?&quot; with a subtextual question, &quot;when would compilers be used by non-developers?&quot; I've revised your question to highlight those questions and reopened it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The one thing that's preventing this question from being really great is *why* you're asking. Answers provided are survey-level stuff that could easily be answered by Wikipedia, but where Stack Exchange really shines is when we start solving your specific question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can revise your question to specify what problem you're solving by knowing if non-developers use compilers, it'd go from being a okay, but open-ended question to a great, concrete question that's really the best of what Programmers has to offer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5704" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2267" RevisionGUID="cb6675fa-324f-46cb-b8c1-04b765bf423a" CreationDate="2011-09-17T20:01:34.340" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|question-title|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5710" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2290" RevisionGUID="7d93bbbd-f0da-4718-b6cd-c50491123de6" CreationDate="2011-09-18T11:44:05.250" UserId="25708" Text="I'm thinking of asking a question for papers (e.g. from IEEE or ACM) that are of interest to programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's similar question at [Theoretical Computer Science](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/1168/what-papers-should-everyone-read) that has some great answers, but there's a lot of theory there and I'm more interested in less theoretical ones with more interest to programmers and engineers day-to-day at the code-face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would result in a list, and should be one answer per paper, with a summary of why we should read this paper. I hope to find some classic and influential papers of interest to the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Would this be allowed?&#xD;&#xA;* Should it be community wiki?&#xD;&#xA;* What tags to you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;* If not here on Programmers.SE, how about another site?&#xD;&#xA;* What's the general Programmers.SE policy on list-generating questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This similar question was [closed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/870/if-you-could-only-have-one-programming-related-book-on-your-bookshelf-what-would) as not constructive but this similar question is [open](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/966/what-non-programming-books-should-a-programmer-read-to-help-develop-programming-t).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5711" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2290" RevisionGUID="7d93bbbd-f0da-4718-b6cd-c50491123de6" CreationDate="2011-09-18T11:44:05.250" UserId="25708" Text="Can I ask for a list of papers of interest to programmers (and not only CS theorists)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5712" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2290" RevisionGUID="7d93bbbd-f0da-4718-b6cd-c50491123de6" CreationDate="2011-09-18T11:44:05.250" UserId="25708" Text="|discussion|list-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5713" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2291" RevisionGUID="e3ca4c2c-089a-40da-8306-415885d70cf2" CreationDate="2011-09-18T12:54:08.633" UserId="101" Text="If you check the FAQ, you'll see that questions that result in lists for answers are generally considered not constructive, as they usually don't meet the 6 guidelines to asking questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where most list questions fail is in the ability to meet these:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”&#xD;&#xA; - tend to have long, not short, answers&#xD;&#xA; - invite sharing experiences over opinions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can come up with a way to ask your question to satsify these, it would stand a good chance at remaining open.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5714" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2292" RevisionGUID="261db763-d4a4-471e-803a-f96a7d48a3d5" CreationDate="2011-09-18T19:23:15.057" UserId="25708" Text=" * &quot;I need an idea for my [school][1]/[BSc][2]/[Masters][3]/[MS grad][4] [final year][5]/[college][6]/[final year][7]/[course][8]/[computer science][9] [thesis][10]/[project][11]`*`&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; `*` Delete as applicable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108961/getting-ideas-for-project&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/109139/bsc-honours-in-computing-final-project-ideas&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18337/cs-masters-degree-final-project-ideas&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41003/ms-grad-student-project&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102714/any-ideas-for-a-project-in-my-degree-year&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16725/final-year-college-project&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108118/android-application-ideas-for-final-year-student-in-a-final-year-project&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18891/project-suggestion-for-computer-networks-using-c&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85387/computer-science-project-idea-suggestions&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51717/good-idea-in-xmpp-for-master-degree-thesis&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37816/need-an-idea-for-a-non-rails-ruby-project" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5715" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2293" RevisionGUID="66419ade-02f6-4eb3-b0d3-429c055ae352" CreationDate="2011-09-18T22:36:51.360" UserId="33617" Text="Getting &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account. See&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://goo.gl/C1Kwu to learn more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I seriously do not think my question was that bad? Also this link is for meta.stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;I am an active member of many other stackexchange sites and seriously think that it's very harsh. Is there any thing I can do about it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5716" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2293" RevisionGUID="66419ade-02f6-4eb3-b0d3-429c055ae352" CreationDate="2011-09-18T22:36:51.360" UserId="33617" Text="Why am I getting We are no longer accepting questions from this account" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5717" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2293" RevisionGUID="66419ade-02f6-4eb3-b0d3-429c055ae352" CreationDate="2011-09-18T22:36:51.360" UserId="33617" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5718" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2294" RevisionGUID="1e6ae30b-d7be-4e4e-948e-54aa2d788ea0" CreationDate="2011-09-18T22:45:33.157" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="You've asked 6 questions, 5 of which have been deleted or migrated away from the site. From [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## Why am I getting this message?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As stated clearly in the [about](http://stackoverflow.com/about) links on every page, the Stack Exchange web sites are *question and answer sites*, not help forums. This implies that all questions are expected to have some value for later visitors too. To enforce that, and to prevent [help vampires](http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/) making the answerers turn away from the communities, low-quality questions need to be blocked. This includes questions from:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - users who can't be bothered to form sentences&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - users who don't do the most basic kinds of research themselves&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - users who barely even explain what it is they are trying to do&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An [automatic filter](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/56817/can-we-prevent-some-of-the-low-quality-questions-from-entering-our-system/60294#60294) is in place to ban questions from IP addresses or accounts with a history of *extremely* poor questions. To avoid bypassing the filter its internal rules are a secret, but it is partly based on downvotes cast by other members of the communities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Once you have posted too many bad quality questions, you will be banned from asking more, and see the error message. You can then still use the site, except for asking questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## Are deleted questions taken into account too?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Yes. It's not a problem to have deleted questions. But if a large percentage of your questions are deleted by yourself or the community, then apparently they were not suitable for the site. But meanwhile they might have wasted time from users who read them, or even [answered them](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/74466/does-systematic-self-deleting-need-to-be-prevented/74471#74471). Therefore deleted questions [might](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86982/should-i-avoid-deleting-my-questions/87029#87029) have an effect on the filter, among many other secret factors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Beware that an account with a high public reputation might very well have many deleted questions, including [auto-deleted old low-score questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/78048/auto-deleting-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year), all of which are only visible to moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## Is a question ban the same as a suspension?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No, a suspension is a manual, [temporary penalty](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/a-day-in-the-penalty-box/) during which a user cannot ask questions, nor post answers. All other privileges, including commenting and voting, are also revoked by temporarily setting the reputation to 1. Such suspension is publicly visible to other users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A question ban is enforced automatically, and only prevents asking questions. It is invisible to others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## How do I avoid getting a question ban?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Read the FAQ. Investigate and search before you ask. Put some effort in your questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All questions are expected to have some value for later visitors too. So if *many* of your questions do not get any answer, are downvoted, edited by other users, closed, or deleted by yourself or the community, then apparently they did not meet the required quality. Be sure to understand why that happens, and learn from that. Don't simply repost the same question again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you're not sure what qualifies as a &quot;good question&quot;, there are some hints and tips available:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - [How to Ask](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/how-to-ask) from the Stack Overflow FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - [Writing the perfect question](http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx) by Jon Skeet &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - [How to Ask Questions The Smart Way](http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) by Eric S. Raymond&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - [Getting Answers](http://www.mikeash.com/getting_answers.html) by Mike Ash&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - [How to ask questions the smart way](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/1472/how-to-ask-questions-the-smart-way), as discussed here on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To learn about formatting:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [Formatting help](http://stackoverflow.com/editing-help)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [How do I format my code blocks?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/22186/how-do-i-format-my-code-blocks)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Try for yourself in [the formatting sandbox](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/3122/formatting-sandbox)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## How long do I have to wait before I can ask questions again? What can I do to release the ban? How can I reactivate my account?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Question bans never expire or &quot;time out.&quot; This means that you cannot simply wait for a certain amount of time to ask your next question. If you do not take action, you will never be allowed to ask questions again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you tripped the heuristic by just a tiny bit, then writing a few quality answers that get upvoted [might](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/68884/why-i-cant-ask-questions/68885#68885) enable you to ask questions again. But as the internals of the filter are secret, there is no way to know for sure. And even if you're lucky then you're still very close to being banned again, if you get new downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you really, *really* think the question ban is an error, then email the team directly at the address provided at the bottom of every page. But note that Stack Overflow alone gets more than 3,000 questions per day, so a few rejected questions won't be missed. Therefore, reactivation of banned accounts [is not a high priority](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/62373/better-explanation-when-account-is-blocked/62374#62374).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## Can I simply create a new account?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No. The question ban is at [a lower level than account](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/72180/clarify-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this-account-error/76167#comment-174366).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5719" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2294" RevisionGUID="165e7655-52d0-4bca-a5af-53fc70438a4d" CreationDate="2011-09-18T22:51:36.330" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 4055 characters in body" Text="You've asked 6 questions, 5 of which have been deleted or migrated away from the site. Because of this, your account has had an automatic ban from asking questions placed on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [FAQ entry on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this) goes into more detail about why you might've received this ban, so I'll just quote the last part, on getting the ban lifted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### How long do I have to wait before I can ask questions again? What can I do to release the ban? How can I reactivate my account?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Question bans never expire or &quot;time out.&quot; This means that you cannot simply wait for a certain amount of time to ask your next question. If you do not take action, you will never be allowed to ask questions again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you tripped the heuristic by just a tiny bit, then writing a few quality answers that get upvoted [might](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/68884/why-i-cant-ask-questions/68885#68885) enable you to ask questions again. But as the internals of the filter are secret, there is no way to know for sure. And even if you're lucky then you're still very close to being banned again, if you get new downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you really, *really* think the question ban is an error, then email the team directly at the address provided at the bottom of every page. But note that Stack Overflow alone gets more than 3,000 questions per day, so a few rejected questions won't be missed. Therefore, reactivation of banned accounts [is not a high priority](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/62373/better-explanation-when-account-is-blocked/62374#62374).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Can I simply create a new account?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No. The question ban is at [a lower level than account](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/72180/clarify-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this-account-error/76167#comment-174366).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5720" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2295" RevisionGUID="b9888093-9bf0-47f8-9dd0-923193c3aa18" CreationDate="2011-09-19T08:38:16.507" UserId="6385" Text="I disagree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments don't answer the question, but they answer certain important aspects of the question -- and I don't mean just to clarify the question, but to actually *lead* to a good answer by establishing that entire *types of* answers are incorrect or meritless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance, [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/109022/tutoring-students-who-are-struggling-with-the-basics-in-c/109092#109092) would likely not have come up had our comments about having patience with beginners been kept.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As @Captain Shakespeare notes, no one really uses the chat. At this point it's kind of futile to try to make people switch to chat, except for *debates* between exactly two people -- and most of the time we aren't interested in debating. Public discussion, no matter how fitting for chat, will never have the same participants." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5721" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1457" RevisionGUID="6efd019b-8883-49ed-b046-78ab0209e96e" CreationDate="2011-09-19T09:48:59.700" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [How can we improve our guidance about the purpose of comments?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/how-can-we-improve-our-guidance-about-the-purpose-of-comments)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Subsequent to a question about technical solutions to cleaning up noise, Jeff Atwood posted [this answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/83480/add-possibility-to-remove-comment-noise-fancy-edition/88010#88010):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;I appreciate the *intent*, but this is hellishly complex. I think my solution is even simpler than Shog9's&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Simply flag the first comment in the series for mod attention** with the text&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; irrelevant comment conversation; delete this conversation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A moderator could then blam, blam, blam, blam on each [x] to remove it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with this.  I've often wanted to even clean up my own conversations after resolving something that was productive, but not worth preserving.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, as we all know, with the introduction of [flag weight](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight) our flagging ability and priority gets diminished if no action is taken on our flags.  So, I think it's up to our community and moderators to decide (and therefore send the message to our moderators and 10k users) whether we believe this is an appropriate action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, **I'm all for it** - I'd love to see transient and incidental conversations completely disappear (not just be hidden) so that new visitors have a higher comment signal-to-noise ratio." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5722" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="1457" RevisionGUID="70363804-dc41-49e1-86c1-806caa73fa1c" CreationDate="2011-09-19T09:48:59.200" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[2044],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5723" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1457" RevisionGUID="209cb19f-ae05-4e75-97a5-bf2d3275900e" CreationDate="2011-09-19T09:50:02.473" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 139 characters in body" Text="&gt; **This question has been superseded by the following questions:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [How can we improve our guidance about the purpose of comments?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/how-can-we-improve-our-guidance-about-the-purpose-of-comments)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2228/when-should-comments-be-deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subsequent to a question about technical solutions to cleaning up noise, Jeff Atwood posted [this answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/83480/add-possibility-to-remove-comment-noise-fancy-edition/88010#88010):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;I appreciate the *intent*, but this is hellishly complex. I think my solution is even simpler than Shog9's&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Simply flag the first comment in the series for mod attention** with the text&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; irrelevant comment conversation; delete this conversation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A moderator could then blam, blam, blam, blam on each [x] to remove it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with this.  I've often wanted to even clean up my own conversations after resolving something that was productive, but not worth preserving.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, as we all know, with the introduction of [flag weight](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight) our flagging ability and priority gets diminished if no action is taken on our flags.  So, I think it's up to our community and moderators to decide (and therefore send the message to our moderators and 10k users) whether we believe this is an appropriate action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, **I'm all for it** - I'd love to see transient and incidental conversations completely disappear (not just be hidden) so that new visitors have a higher comment signal-to-noise ratio." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5724" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2296" RevisionGUID="f2d6333c-a2ba-4a80-bd18-e8d38ddca3f8" CreationDate="2011-09-20T08:33:36.277" UserId="37" Text="OK, moderators have officially been mailed the form to obtain the cards. Stay tuned!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5730" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2298" RevisionGUID="736ff6fd-89a6-4d40-9765-455bf7256761" CreationDate="2011-09-20T20:34:44.277" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="So pursuant to [the monumental task we have](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup) to clean up the [tag:career] and [tag:jobs] tags, we've taken to putting the following notice in the tag wiki excerpts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do not use this tag. Click &quot;learn more&quot; for better alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This, however, has not stopped people from adding more questions to the tags, which makes an already difficult task more difficult as more questions keep getting added.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was under the assumption that blacklisting not only locked a tag, but blew it away from all existing tags, but after talking to people in Teachers' Lounge, I've found out that blacklisting and burninating are two separate actions: the former locks the tag, the latter kills the tag on all existing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just *locking* the [tag:career] and [tag:jobs] tags would help out a ton: it'd at least let us to freeze their usage while we stort out the 1500 questions already tagged with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So can we get these two tags blacklisted, but not burninated? Before you consider denying the request, consider this puppy:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Please?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now can we get these two tags merely blacklisted (and not burninated)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/17rb9.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5731" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2298" RevisionGUID="736ff6fd-89a6-4d40-9765-455bf7256761" CreationDate="2011-09-20T20:34:44.277" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Blacklist [career] and [jobs]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5732" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2298" RevisionGUID="736ff6fd-89a6-4d40-9765-455bf7256761" CreationDate="2011-09-20T20:34:44.277" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|feature-request|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5733" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2299" RevisionGUID="c6bf3ece-1a8a-44cd-9ed7-2c018ba7d42f" CreationDate="2011-09-20T22:37:15.887" UserId="17309" Text="This may be the wrong area for this, but it seems like something that would be banned by the TOS.  Apparently I upset somebody and a lot of my answers were downvoted all at once.  Kinda sucks losing my internet points like this!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Lost SE rep][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ketxP.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;edit: realized that one of the rep losses was my own." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5734" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2299" RevisionGUID="c6bf3ece-1a8a-44cd-9ed7-2c018ba7d42f" CreationDate="2011-09-20T22:37:15.887" UserId="17309" Text="Is this abuse? Lost 16 rep all at once across 9 unrelated questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5735" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2299" RevisionGUID="c6bf3ece-1a8a-44cd-9ed7-2c018ba7d42f" CreationDate="2011-09-20T22:37:15.887" UserId="17309" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5736" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2300" RevisionGUID="b9ddfaad-b056-4f8a-b9a2-57a3065744c5" CreationDate="2011-09-20T22:53:12.613" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I'm not sure about an explicit ban in the TOS, but the system automatically catches unusual voting patterns and will roll back the changes if it fits its vote fraud heuristic. This rollback generally occurs once a day, so check back in a few hours to see if the votes are still there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's [a FAQ entry on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/19920/how-does-the-so-voter-fraud-detection-mechanism-work) that goes through the vote fraud detector in greater detail, and we'll look into it, but to preserve the integrity of the automatic fraud detection systems and prevent gaming the system, we really can't talk about anything more specific." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5737" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2299" RevisionGUID="f87352e0-438f-4b67-afba-31a53073b574" CreationDate="2011-09-20T22:53:23.177" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|voting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5738" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2173" RevisionGUID="dc3f50e7-ca97-4416-b8cb-020ae0897a80" CreationDate="2011-09-21T00:52:43.653" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 173 characters in body" Text="### Update - September 20th, 2011&#xD;&#xA;Current statistics:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Total Questions: 14,047&#xD;&#xA;* Total Closed but not deleted: 2,380&#xD;&#xA;* Closed Percentage: 16.94%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I don't think it's particularly constructive to approach a problem this way, I think it's important, if we do, to work with accurate numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of right now, there are 2,816 closed—but not deleted—questions on Programmers. There are 13,925 questions total on Programmers. This makes the closed, but not deleted ratio of questions 20.2%. In the 10 days since you measured this, it's gone down 3%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on the same metrics you did your post, here are number closed with at least 5 score and number closed with less than or equal to 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 774 (27.5%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 265 (9.4%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This puts the ratio of 5+ score questions closed higher than what you had and the ratio of &lt;= 0 score questions much lower than what you had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand why, we need to include data you didn't have access to when you did this survey: the number of deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of deleted questions on Programmers.SE is 2,975: more than the number of closed questions you see. If we also include these numbers into the mix, we get a different story:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 891. % of closed or deleted: 15.3%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 2,223. % of closed or deleted: 38.3%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This paints a bit of a different picture than measuring just the closed questions and the results presented in your survey. Why? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's because we routinely delete low-scoring questions as they are uncontroversially bad for the site, and the scores on those questions agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we don't delete nearly as many high-scoring answers is because [&quot;closed&quot; doesn't mean &quot;bad&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed). It means the question doesn't meet the site's guidelines in some way, but there's some value, and it could even be improved and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, *deletion*—not closure—is where bad questions go to spend eternity in Hell. Closure, on the other hand, is the purgatory of questions. They're not on-topic, but they're providing *some* value: enough to stick around while we figure out what to do with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A Comparison&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that we're working with accurate numbers, how do they compare to other sites, particularly Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From a purely quantitative standpoint, Stack Overflow's numbers are in a different league:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Publicly viewable questions: 1,997,856&#xD;&#xA;* Closed, but not deleted: ~39,048 (2%)&#xD;&#xA;* Deleted: 194,008 (8.9%)&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~1,964 (5%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~4,142 (1.8%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~26,123 (67%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~199,326 (85.5%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like Programmers, Stack Overflow's ratios skew a lot higher when  deleted low-scoring questions are added, and lower when it deleted high-voted questions are added. This isn't coincidence: the same moderation style is used on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Some context&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's important, from a qualitative standpoint, to put these numbers into context. Stack Overflow is not qualitatively similar to Programmers.SE, and comparing their closed/deleted percentage to ours is about as meaningless as comparing our percentages to [Quora](http://quora.com) or [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com). We just simply don't have the same issues or types of questions they have. If we did, there wouldn't be a separate site: we'd just be part of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also important to put Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE into historical context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was the first, and for a long period of time, the only Stack Exchange site. It did not, for much of its history, have the benefit of knowledge gleaned from the year of trial and error with the Stack Exchange 2.0 project. And notably, it did not have the benefit of 40+ other sites with 40+ other sets of problems to crystalize what makes and doesn't make a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This difference in background and two year head start is [a constant cause of problems](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow): 27% of all questions migrated here from Stack Overflow are closed and/or deleted. Thousands upon thousands of questions that should be off-topic there and on-topic here never get closed or migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of its history as the flagship Stack Exchange site, it also has enormous scaling issues. They have [~10 volunteer moderators for 2 million questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/101431/should-stack-overflow-moderators-have-a-standard-of-duty): one for every 200,000 asked. We have 4 for 16,000: one for every 4,000. 18% of their users are able to cast a close vote, compared to 42% of ours. We are just better equipped to close bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The history of Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But going into [our history](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) a little bit: Stack Overflow had a serious problem with popular questions that didn't really belong anywhere: &quot;What's your favorite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What do you like about programming?&quot;, etc. When Stack Exchange 2.0 and the Area 51 engine launched, one of the first proposals to gain traction was [*Not Programming Related*](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related), intended to house all of these types of questions. It launched on September 1st, 2010 and for a period of 3 weeks, surged in popularity as all the questions repressed on Stack Overflow were asked on this new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the quality was all over the place: the site had some of the worst questions and some of the best questions. After a few weeks of this, [new guidelines were put into place](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) to try to raise the level of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the rest of the beta period, these guidelines were enforced sporadically as the community tried to come to terms with its original charter and what it would take to make a useful site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On December 16, 2010, [Programmers.SE was launched](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/) under its new mission, having been the test-bed for a number of guidelines about questions that later generations of Stack Exchange sites benefitted from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left 3.5 months of questions asked during a particularly formative point in the Stack Exchange network: more than a quarter of our site's lifespan. Compare this to Stack Overflow, which has had the benefit of 2.5 years of maturity and wasn't originally created to be [the toilet bowl of a different site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we're slowly resolving those initial growing pains, it's going to take some more time. The ratios will normalize, but they aren't going to normalize in the next month: it going to take several months to a couple of years to stabilize into a site as mature as the currently-three-year-old Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The situation isn't as dire as it might seem from one reading of the numbers. It was dire at one time, but that was last year. Now, we're moving forward: our traffic is increasing and our closed ratio is decreasing. More and more, people are taking ownership of Programmers.SE as something to be proud of, and the quality of questions and answers is noticeably rising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there's a lot we can improve, but it's going to be far more constructive and productive to isolate specific failings and correct those, not to make generalizations about the site as a whole. If we stick to generalizations, we might as well just shut this site down and start over." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5739" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2173" RevisionGUID="85068ae2-7844-457c-86f4-5c9ccfaafa6f" CreationDate="2011-09-21T01:23:22.790" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 159 characters in body" Text="### Update - September 20th, 2011&#xD;&#xA;Current statistics:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Total Questions: 14,047&#xD;&#xA;* Total Closed but not deleted: 2,380&#xD;&#xA;* Closed Percentage: 16.94% (▼ 7.88% from September 8th)&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!--break--&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* SE 2.0 Closed Percentage (no Trilogy): 6.09% (▼ 3.64%)&#xD;&#xA;* Network Closed Percentage (w/Trilogy): 2.61% (▼ 1.53%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I don't think it's particularly constructive to approach a problem this way, I think it's important, if we do, to work with accurate numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of right now, there are 2,816 closed—but not deleted—questions on Programmers. There are 13,925 questions total on Programmers. This makes the closed, but not deleted ratio of questions 20.2%. In the 10 days since you measured this, it's gone down 3%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on the same metrics you did your post, here are number closed with at least 5 score and number closed with less than or equal to 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 774 (27.5%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 265 (9.4%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This puts the ratio of 5+ score questions closed higher than what you had and the ratio of &lt;= 0 score questions much lower than what you had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand why, we need to include data you didn't have access to when you did this survey: the number of deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of deleted questions on Programmers.SE is 2,975: more than the number of closed questions you see. If we also include these numbers into the mix, we get a different story:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 891. % of closed or deleted: 15.3%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 2,223. % of closed or deleted: 38.3%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This paints a bit of a different picture than measuring just the closed questions and the results presented in your survey. Why? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's because we routinely delete low-scoring questions as they are uncontroversially bad for the site, and the scores on those questions agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we don't delete nearly as many high-scoring answers is because [&quot;closed&quot; doesn't mean &quot;bad&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed). It means the question doesn't meet the site's guidelines in some way, but there's some value, and it could even be improved and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, *deletion*—not closure—is where bad questions go to spend eternity in Hell. Closure, on the other hand, is the purgatory of questions. They're not on-topic, but they're providing *some* value: enough to stick around while we figure out what to do with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A Comparison&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that we're working with accurate numbers, how do they compare to other sites, particularly Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From a purely quantitative standpoint, Stack Overflow's numbers are in a different league:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Publicly viewable questions: 1,997,856&#xD;&#xA;* Closed, but not deleted: ~39,048 (2%)&#xD;&#xA;* Deleted: 194,008 (8.9%)&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~1,964 (5%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~4,142 (1.8%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~26,123 (67%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~199,326 (85.5%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like Programmers, Stack Overflow's ratios skew a lot higher when  deleted low-scoring questions are added, and lower when it deleted high-voted questions are added. This isn't coincidence: the same moderation style is used on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Some context&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's important, from a qualitative standpoint, to put these numbers into context. Stack Overflow is not qualitatively similar to Programmers.SE, and comparing their closed/deleted percentage to ours is about as meaningless as comparing our percentages to [Quora](http://quora.com) or [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com). We just simply don't have the same issues or types of questions they have. If we did, there wouldn't be a separate site: we'd just be part of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also important to put Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE into historical context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was the first, and for a long period of time, the only Stack Exchange site. It did not, for much of its history, have the benefit of knowledge gleaned from the year of trial and error with the Stack Exchange 2.0 project. And notably, it did not have the benefit of 40+ other sites with 40+ other sets of problems to crystalize what makes and doesn't make a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This difference in background and two year head start is [a constant cause of problems](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow): 27% of all questions migrated here from Stack Overflow are closed and/or deleted. Thousands upon thousands of questions that should be off-topic there and on-topic here never get closed or migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of its history as the flagship Stack Exchange site, it also has enormous scaling issues. They have [~10 volunteer moderators for 2 million questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/101431/should-stack-overflow-moderators-have-a-standard-of-duty): one for every 200,000 asked. We have 4 for 16,000: one for every 4,000. 18% of their users are able to cast a close vote, compared to 42% of ours. We are just better equipped to close bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The history of Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But going into [our history](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) a little bit: Stack Overflow had a serious problem with popular questions that didn't really belong anywhere: &quot;What's your favorite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What do you like about programming?&quot;, etc. When Stack Exchange 2.0 and the Area 51 engine launched, one of the first proposals to gain traction was [*Not Programming Related*](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related), intended to house all of these types of questions. It launched on September 1st, 2010 and for a period of 3 weeks, surged in popularity as all the questions repressed on Stack Overflow were asked on this new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the quality was all over the place: the site had some of the worst questions and some of the best questions. After a few weeks of this, [new guidelines were put into place](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) to try to raise the level of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the rest of the beta period, these guidelines were enforced sporadically as the community tried to come to terms with its original charter and what it would take to make a useful site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On December 16, 2010, [Programmers.SE was launched](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/) under its new mission, having been the test-bed for a number of guidelines about questions that later generations of Stack Exchange sites benefitted from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left 3.5 months of questions asked during a particularly formative point in the Stack Exchange network: more than a quarter of our site's lifespan. Compare this to Stack Overflow, which has had the benefit of 2.5 years of maturity and wasn't originally created to be [the toilet bowl of a different site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we're slowly resolving those initial growing pains, it's going to take some more time. The ratios will normalize, but they aren't going to normalize in the next month: it going to take several months to a couple of years to stabilize into a site as mature as the currently-three-year-old Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The situation isn't as dire as it might seem from one reading of the numbers. It was dire at one time, but that was last year. Now, we're moving forward: our traffic is increasing and our closed ratio is decreasing. More and more, people are taking ownership of Programmers.SE as something to be proud of, and the quality of questions and answers is noticeably rising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there's a lot we can improve, but it's going to be far more constructive and productive to isolate specific failings and correct those, not to make generalizations about the site as a whole. If we stick to generalizations, we might as well just shut this site down and start over." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5740" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2173" RevisionGUID="953349f8-4f24-46af-8aed-90c8f242c126" CreationDate="2011-09-21T02:28:12.140" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Remove woefully inaccurate stat" Text="### Update - September 20th, 2011&#xD;&#xA;Current statistics:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Total Questions: 14,047&#xD;&#xA;* Total Closed but not deleted: 2,380&#xD;&#xA;* Closed Percentage: 16.94% (▼ 7.88% from September 8th)&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!--break--&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* SE 2.0 Closed Percentage (no Trilogy): 6.09% (▼ 3.64%)&#xD;&#xA;* Network Closed Percentage (w/Trilogy): 2.61% (▼ 1.53%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I don't think it's particularly constructive to approach a problem this way, I think it's important, if we do, to work with accurate numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of right now, there are 2,816 closed—but not deleted—questions on Programmers. There are 13,925 questions total on Programmers. This makes the closed, but not deleted ratio of questions 20.2%. In the 10 days since you measured this, it's gone down 3%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on the same metrics you did your post, here are number closed with at least 5 score and number closed with less than or equal to 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 774 (27.5%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 265 (9.4%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This puts the ratio of 5+ score questions closed higher than what you had and the ratio of &lt;= 0 score questions much lower than what you had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand why, we need to include data you didn't have access to when you did this survey: the number of deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of deleted questions on Programmers.SE is 2,975: more than the number of closed questions you see. If we also include these numbers into the mix, we get a different story:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 891. % of closed or deleted: 15.3%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 2,223. % of closed or deleted: 38.3%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This paints a bit of a different picture than measuring just the closed questions and the results presented in your survey. Why? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's because we routinely delete low-scoring questions as they are uncontroversially bad for the site, and the scores on those questions agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we don't delete nearly as many high-scoring answers is because [&quot;closed&quot; doesn't mean &quot;bad&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed). It means the question doesn't meet the site's guidelines in some way, but there's some value, and it could even be improved and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, *deletion*—not closure—is where bad questions go to spend eternity in Hell. Closure, on the other hand, is the purgatory of questions. They're not on-topic, but they're providing *some* value: enough to stick around while we figure out what to do with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A Comparison&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that we're working with accurate numbers, how do they compare to other sites, particularly Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From a purely quantitative standpoint, Stack Overflow's numbers are in a different league:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Publicly viewable questions: 1,997,856&#xD;&#xA;* Closed, but not deleted: ~39,048 (2%)&#xD;&#xA;* Deleted: 194,008 (8.9%)&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~1,964 (5%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~4,142 (1.8%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~26,123 (67%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~199,326 (85.5%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like Programmers, Stack Overflow's ratios skew a lot higher when  deleted low-scoring questions are added, and lower when it deleted high-voted questions are added. This isn't coincidence: the same moderation style is used on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Some context&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's important, from a qualitative standpoint, to put these numbers into context. Stack Overflow is not qualitatively similar to Programmers.SE, and comparing their closed/deleted percentage to ours is about as meaningless as comparing our percentages to [Quora](http://quora.com) or [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com). We just simply don't have the same issues or types of questions they have. If we did, there wouldn't be a separate site: we'd just be part of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also important to put Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE into historical context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was the first, and for a long period of time, the only Stack Exchange site. It did not, for much of its history, have the benefit of knowledge gleaned from the year of trial and error with the Stack Exchange 2.0 project. And notably, it did not have the benefit of 40+ other sites with 40+ other sets of problems to crystalize what makes and doesn't make a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This difference in background and two year head start is [a constant cause of problems](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow): 27% of all questions migrated here from Stack Overflow are closed and/or deleted. Thousands upon thousands of questions that should be off-topic there and on-topic here never get closed or migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of its history as the flagship Stack Exchange site, it also has enormous scaling issues. They have [~10 volunteer moderators for 2 million questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/101431/should-stack-overflow-moderators-have-a-standard-of-duty): one for every 200,000 asked. We have 4 for 16,000: one for every 4,000. We are just better equipped to close bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The history of Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But going into [our history](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) a little bit: Stack Overflow had a serious problem with popular questions that didn't really belong anywhere: &quot;What's your favorite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What do you like about programming?&quot;, etc. When Stack Exchange 2.0 and the Area 51 engine launched, one of the first proposals to gain traction was [*Not Programming Related*](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related), intended to house all of these types of questions. It launched on September 1st, 2010 and for a period of 3 weeks, surged in popularity as all the questions repressed on Stack Overflow were asked on this new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the quality was all over the place: the site had some of the worst questions and some of the best questions. After a few weeks of this, [new guidelines were put into place](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) to try to raise the level of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the rest of the beta period, these guidelines were enforced sporadically as the community tried to come to terms with its original charter and what it would take to make a useful site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On December 16, 2010, [Programmers.SE was launched](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/) under its new mission, having been the test-bed for a number of guidelines about questions that later generations of Stack Exchange sites benefitted from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left 3.5 months of questions asked during a particularly formative point in the Stack Exchange network: more than a quarter of our site's lifespan. Compare this to Stack Overflow, which has had the benefit of 2.5 years of maturity and wasn't originally created to be [the toilet bowl of a different site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we're slowly resolving those initial growing pains, it's going to take some more time. The ratios will normalize, but they aren't going to normalize in the next month: it going to take several months to a couple of years to stabilize into a site as mature as the currently-three-year-old Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The situation isn't as dire as it might seem from one reading of the numbers. It was dire at one time, but that was last year. Now, we're moving forward: our traffic is increasing and our closed ratio is decreasing. More and more, people are taking ownership of Programmers.SE as something to be proud of, and the quality of questions and answers is noticeably rising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there's a lot we can improve, but it's going to be far more constructive and productive to isolate specific failings and correct those, not to make generalizations about the site as a whole. If we stick to generalizations, we might as well just shut this site down and start over." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5741" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2298" RevisionGUID="f069c41c-7b19-4a62-b0ba-417f8b6e69db" CreationDate="2011-09-21T13:01:33.253" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/116497286846099456" />
  <row Id="5742" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2301" RevisionGUID="8ec7a4ea-2383-4fd5-a60e-4cc2286707b2" CreationDate="2011-09-21T17:13:39.063" UserId="29165" Text="I've noticed that a lot of questions on programmers tend to go something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Someone / a senior team member] [refuses to do/always does] [some best practice/something that annoys me]. How do I [make them do something/prevent them from doing this]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many times it seems like people are just interested in ranting or having their preexisting opinion about the situation confirmed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We all know that these situations are fairly common, and annoying, but I'm not sure this type of question and the responses to it add much value to the site. The answers that follow are almost as predictable as the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Change jobs&#xD;&#xA; - Go to a superior and try to get person fired/demoted&#xD;&#xA; - Convince other people to your side&#xD;&#xA; - Institute some kind of process to address the problem &#xD;&#xA; - Talk to the person and try to convince them to stop annoying thing/adhere to best practice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5743" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2301" RevisionGUID="8ec7a4ea-2383-4fd5-a60e-4cc2286707b2" CreationDate="2011-09-21T17:13:39.063" UserId="29165" Text="What can be done to make this site less of a whine/complain fest" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5744" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2301" RevisionGUID="8ec7a4ea-2383-4fd5-a60e-4cc2286707b2" CreationDate="2011-09-21T17:13:39.063" UserId="29165" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5745" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2301" RevisionGUID="99debeeb-29f7-437a-9a50-bc34e45d3bf2" CreationDate="2011-09-21T17:20:50.367" UserId="29165" Comment="clarified my question" Text="I've noticed that a lot of questions on programmers tend to go something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Someone / a senior team member] [refuses to do/always does] [some best practice/something that annoys me]. How do I [make them do something/prevent them from doing this]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many times it seems like people are just interested in ranting or having their preexisting opinion about the situation confirmed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We all know that these situations are fairly common, and annoying, but I'm not sure this type of question and the responses to it add much value to the site. The answers that follow are almost as predictable as the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Change jobs&#xD;&#xA; - Go to a superior and try to get person fired/demoted&#xD;&#xA; - Convince other people to your side&#xD;&#xA; - Institute some kind of process to address the problem &#xD;&#xA; - Talk to the person and try to convince them to stop annoying thing/adhere to best practice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: I might not have been clear about my question here: Do these questions and answers have value and if so how can we direct this type of question in such a way that they provide more value? Can we also support this type of question while at the same time prevent programmers from becoming that place where programmers go to whine about other programmers/management?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5746" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2302" RevisionGUID="5b1847a0-f281-4a08-957e-ca038d258abb" CreationDate="2011-09-21T17:40:09.237" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="Well, we have two options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Shut the site down&#xD;&#xA; 2. Flag / Down vote these things into oblivion and refrain from answering them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I much prefer #2, personally.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These kinds of questions are problematic, I call them 'Mr. Potato Head' questions because their parts can basically be taken off of one and put onto another, without changing much. It's still a potato with crap sticking out of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is, they're _very_ easy to answer, hence the attention they receive." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5747" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2302" RevisionGUID="411edd82-fc21-44cb-bebe-38c9b8305300" CreationDate="2011-09-21T17:46:20.007" UserDisplayName="user131" Comment="added 97 characters in body" Text="Well, we have two options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Shut the site down&#xD;&#xA; 2. Flag / Down vote these things into oblivion and refrain from answering them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I much prefer #2, personally.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These kinds of questions are problematic, I call them 'Mr. Potato Head' questions because their parts can basically be taken off of one and put onto another, without changing much. It's still a potato with crap sticking out of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is, they're _very_ easy to answer, hence the attention they receive. Getting them down voted and off the front page quickly (while voting to close and flagging) is really all we can do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are, in fact, _too localized_. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5748" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2303" RevisionGUID="3b070626-bb76-42ac-b659-3a5f7969e028" CreationDate="2011-09-21T17:49:23.423" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Those questions tend to be popular because anyone with a heartbeat can have an opinion about a work-related problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fortunately, those types of questions are off-topic here. We explicitly prohibit them in the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ________ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* **there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”**&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* **it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We link to [a meta post about it](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster) from the FAQ as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue is, of course, that because they are so wildly popular, they are [broken windows](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory): people don't bother voting to close them, downvote them, or flag them; and new users see the proliferation of them as a reason to ask more. Generally, the users participating in these types of questions either don't know they're not allowed or don't care and [wish we'd stop closing them](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed+questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's exceedingly rare that those questions are caught in time to be crafted into a&#xD;&#xA;constructive question: by the time someone who actually cares about stopping the proliferation of these questions sees them, they already have amassed a ton of activity. And not a day goes by where I don't close one within 5 minutes of asking only to see someone managed to sneak an answer in before the closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in practice, these questions need to just die. If you see one, flag it. Leave a comment explaining why the question isn't constructive or useful for this site. The more people feel empowered to say &quot;enough is enough&quot;, the more useful Programmers.SE can become." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5749" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2303" RevisionGUID="3d2ed596-ec87-464a-a43c-3b33ddcbea0a" CreationDate="2011-09-21T17:55:21.293" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="Those questions tend to be popular because anyone with a heartbeat can have an opinion about a work-related problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fortunately, those types of questions are off-topic here. We explicitly prohibit them in the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ________ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* **there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”**&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* **it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We link to [a meta post about it](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster) from the FAQ as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue is, of course, that because they are so wildly popular, they are [broken windows](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory): people don't bother to vote to close them, downvote them, or flag them; and new users see the proliferation of them as a reason to ask more. Generally, the users participating in these types of questions either don't know they're not allowed or don't care and [wish we'd stop closing them](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed+questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it's exceedingly rare that those questions are caught in time to be crafted into a&#xD;&#xA;constructive question: by the time someone who actually cares about stopping the proliferation of these questions sees them, they already have amassed a ton of activity. And not a day goes by where I don't close one within 5 minutes of asking only to see someone managed to sneak an answer in before the closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in practice, these questions just need to die. If you see one, flag it. Leave a comment explaining why the question isn't constructive or useful for this site. If you see a particularly egregious example, raise a question about it here on meta so it can be crystalized why the question is so bad. You don't have the privilege yet, but those who have it should be voting to close these questions as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The more people feel empowered to say &quot;enough is enough&quot;, the more useful Programmers.SE can become." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5750" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2302" RevisionGUID="8bae29e1-a34d-41ac-a387-ba9d74fb3e01" CreationDate="2011-09-21T18:13:18.777" UserDisplayName="user131" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="Well, we have two options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Shut the site down&#xD;&#xA; 2. Flag / Down / close vote these things into oblivion and refrain from answering them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I much prefer #2, personally.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These kinds of questions are problematic, I call them 'Mr. Potato Head' questions because their parts can basically be taken off of one and put onto another, without changing much. It's still a potato with crap sticking out of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is, they're _very_ easy to answer, hence the attention they receive. Getting them down voted and off the front page quickly (while voting to close and flagging) is really all we can do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are, in fact, _too localized_. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5751" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2304" RevisionGUID="9493ea98-6f45-45ea-b762-c81130a12795" CreationDate="2011-09-21T18:48:35.230" UserId="29270" Text="I have noticed several very active threads that have been closed as off topic or not constructive ([here][1] is just one example). Given the vote count these posts are obviously interesting and popular. I feel it would be more constructive to move them to another site, say offtopic.stackoverflow where they could be discussed without detracting from the quality of the main site. Is this a workable idea? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/93476/how-did-you-get-your-first-programming-job" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5752" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2304" RevisionGUID="9493ea98-6f45-45ea-b762-c81130a12795" CreationDate="2011-09-21T18:48:35.230" UserId="29270" Text="Offtopic posts - Can they be moved rather than closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5753" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2304" RevisionGUID="9493ea98-6f45-45ea-b762-c81130a12795" CreationDate="2011-09-21T18:48:35.230" UserId="29270" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5754" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2304" RevisionGUID="2cfdc06f-0b6f-4d79-a821-112fbe6ecf13" CreationDate="2011-09-21T18:56:16.967" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Are you fed up with all the frustration that come here on meta?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I have noticed several very active threads that have been closed as off topic or not constructive ([here][1] is just one example). Given the vote count these posts are obviously interesting and popular. I feel it would be more constructive to move them to another site, say offtopic.stackoverflow where they could be discussed without detracting from the quality of the main site. Is this a workable idea? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/93476/how-did-you-get-your-first-programming-job" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5755" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2304" RevisionGUID="eca79531-0d52-48cd-91a1-4b4bc69a4162" CreationDate="2011-09-21T18:56:14.877" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[1895],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5758" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2304" RevisionGUID="0f5819a3-b9a8-4c29-b239-8b1700cdbb23" CreationDate="2011-09-21T19:06:37.357" UserId="-1" Comment="remove duplicate link" Text="I have noticed several very active threads that have been closed as off topic or not constructive ([here][1] is just one example). Given the vote count these posts are obviously interesting and popular. I feel it would be more constructive to move them to another site, say offtopic.stackoverflow where they could be discussed without detracting from the quality of the main site. Is this a workable idea? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/93476/how-did-you-get-your-first-programming-job" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5759" PostHistoryTypeId="11" PostId="2304" RevisionGUID="18918743-fff5-4fb5-b08f-9c06deea2070" CreationDate="2011-09-21T19:06:36.453" UserId="47" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5760" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2306" RevisionGUID="d0bace87-ad38-47dc-ae80-3a6231b2cc68" CreationDate="2011-09-21T19:06:55.360" UserId="47" Text="Where do you suggest they be moved to?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many reasons why questions are closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. They are not suitable for the Stack Exchange question and answer format. These would be closed on **any** site.&#xD;&#xA;2. They are questions about problems so specific to the poster that any answers won't be of any help to the general user base.&#xD;&#xA;3. They are questions about problems that don't uniquely affect software development but are more about office relationships, politics etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This last group could be moved, but there's only the [Personal Productivity](http://productivity.stackexchange.com/) site - currently in beta - where some of them could go. All other *potential* sites are still in [Area 51](http://area51.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you think any would fit the Personal Productivity site flag them and we'll check with the guys over there to see if they want them. Bear in mind that migrating highly voted questions distorts the target site - witness what happens here when we get the &lt;strike&gt;dross&lt;/strike&gt; highly voted old questions from Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that put your weight behind one the existing proposals on Area 51 or propose a new site **that clearly shows that it will solve this need**." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5761" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2307" RevisionGUID="ed1550e0-b015-46e5-9a11-da759e8768c1" CreationDate="2011-09-21T19:13:23.323" UserId="226" Text="The idea that we should have `offtopic.stackoverflow.com` is how this site got started and it became quickly apparent that it cannot survive on the SE network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Popularity isn't the definitive measure of quality and usefulness. I highly recommend reading [this summary](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) of the history of Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5762" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2301" RevisionGUID="8ab986f2-7fc3-4ab6-9627-658406221132" CreationDate="2011-09-21T22:01:38.513" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/116633207172104192" />
  <row Id="5763" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2304" RevisionGUID="ebcea830-d8af-4ad8-83d8-6dafb1400d12" CreationDate="2011-09-22T15:25:44.867" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5764" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2302" RevisionGUID="38b5d427-aece-43d1-af26-b41dc72919b9" CreationDate="2011-09-23T06:25:37.053" UserDisplayName="user131" Comment="nits" Text="Well, we have two options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Shut the site down&#xD;&#xA; 2. Flag / Down / close vote these things into oblivion and refrain from answering them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I much prefer #2, personally.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These kinds of questions are problematic. I call them 'Mr. Potato Head' questions because their parts can basically be taken off of one and put onto another, without changing much. It's still a potato with crap sticking out of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is, they're _very_ easy to answer, hence the attention they receive. Getting them down voted and off the front page quickly (while voting to close and flagging) is really all we can do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are, in fact, _too localized_. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5765" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2308" RevisionGUID="fb14b825-89a5-4e00-961a-f1a0cd860df9" CreationDate="2011-09-23T06:28:11.803" UserId="32803" Text="What I understand from the FAQ is that any question concerning Ideas for a project and career enhancement doesn't seem appropriate for the site, no matter in what context or manner they are put up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I kind of flag them as off-topic or not fulfilling any of the six guidelines. Am I going correct or should consider few things before flagging them because now and then I see these floating easily with moderators answering them.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5766" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2308" RevisionGUID="fb14b825-89a5-4e00-961a-f1a0cd860df9" CreationDate="2011-09-23T06:28:11.803" UserId="32803" Text="Ideas about a project and guidance on career enhancement aren't off-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5767" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2308" RevisionGUID="fb14b825-89a5-4e00-961a-f1a0cd860df9" CreationDate="2011-09-23T06:28:11.803" UserId="32803" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5768" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2308" RevisionGUID="3ec82f76-a855-44c7-9630-7f4b81e931e4" CreationDate="2011-09-23T07:57:16.367" UserId="32803" Comment="edited the post with examples" Text="What I understand from the FAQ is that any question concerning Ideas for a project and career enhancement doesn't seem appropriate for the site, no matter in what context or manner they are put up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I kind of flag them as off-topic or not fulfilling any of the six guidelines. Am I going correct or should consider few things before flagging them because now and then I see these floating easily with moderators answering them.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions in this context which are still open : - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [What would be a good first functional programming project?][1]&#xD;&#xA; - [Get a job in C#][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some other questions too like these&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79608/what-would-be-a-good-first-functional-programming-project&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69056/get-a-job-in-c" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5769" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2309" RevisionGUID="fe82c696-1ba6-4791-a14e-795e5fbc1ab7" CreationDate="2011-09-23T08:57:30.137" UserId="37" Text="Based on your examples, those look closeable to me. They probably predate the /faq changes and got missed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Can I ask career advice questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No, unless your question is specifically about software development and requires the unique insights of a programmer. Most career advice questions [run the risk of being closed][1]: try to make yours a good subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure your question has the proper scope. If your question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really something that uniquely applies to software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5770" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2310" RevisionGUID="f235f179-3f2c-48c0-b119-cca403147bc7" CreationDate="2011-09-23T10:37:22.123" UserId="20294" Text="I wonder whether I should also flag questions on which I've already voted for a close. Should they still be flagged so the mods can see it or should the community just manage itself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;98% of the questions I vote to close on lead to a close sooner or later anyway. Many times those questions are clearly off-topic or non-constructive and in my opinion they should not get any answers at all, so it's probably the best thing to flag them, too, in order to have them closed as soon as possible. But I wonder whether such flags are mere noise for the moderators and whether it's acceptable to wait until the community closes the question by itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please note that I do not vote to close on questions which should just be migrated." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5771" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2310" RevisionGUID="f235f179-3f2c-48c0-b119-cca403147bc7" CreationDate="2011-09-23T10:37:22.123" UserId="20294" Text="Should I also flag questions when I already voted to close?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5772" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2310" RevisionGUID="f235f179-3f2c-48c0-b119-cca403147bc7" CreationDate="2011-09-23T10:37:22.123" UserId="20294" Text="|support|flagging|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5773" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2311" RevisionGUID="f7cef8a5-28f0-43ec-8f4a-6cdfd1ea0de7" CreationDate="2011-09-23T10:39:38.957" UserId="47" Text="In general &quot;no&quot; flagging and closing isn't normally necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if it's a question that you think won't get seen by many more users with the right to vote to close then flagging is an option." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5774" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2312" RevisionGUID="4685253f-15a5-4944-93b3-0d15ac44c812" CreationDate="2011-09-23T13:46:48.457" UserId="226" Text="If there is an existing migration path, you should vote to close and pick it. Otherwise, yeah, flagging is more appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to what ChrisF said, I periodically check the list of questions that are gathering close votes. So even if a question doesn't get flagged, odds are I'll see it anyway and might take some action on it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5775" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2313" RevisionGUID="e9050288-8dfc-41eb-b796-36dda1289f58" CreationDate="2011-09-23T15:31:43.777" UserId="226" Text="Only one of those questions shows a flag from you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I closed a bunch of &quot;what project should I choose&quot; questions in the last week or so, and I agree that generally they are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was also brought up by Hugo in an answer [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-list/2292#2292). Since this keeps coming up, I'm going to update the FAQ to explicitly mention &quot;suggest a project for me&quot; kind of questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5776" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2308" RevisionGUID="f90ecefd-7c17-4c28-80de-3b763b2f19b3" CreationDate="2011-09-23T19:46:54.737" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5777" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2299" RevisionGUID="24642f77-daa0-4383-8f47-584f0827eb10" CreationDate="2011-09-23T20:45:10.250" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|voting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5778" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2314" RevisionGUID="58560475-1ad9-445b-bea1-817019d04bcd" CreationDate="2011-09-24T04:37:51.923" UserId="226" Text="The [Software Craftsmanship North America](http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.org/) conference is coming up on November 18-19 in Chicago. I would really like to attend, but unfortunately I am in a bit of a financial bind: I can get myself there but I cannot afford either the hotel or the conference itself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm putting this post together as a proposal for [Stack Exchange sponsorship](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/supporting-community-conferences/) in exchange for me promoting Programmers at the conference and bringing back the knowledge and experience to share with the community here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What is SCNA? Who will be there this year?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SCNA is a conference with a focus on software development as a craft. The talks cover the range from defining the software development profession and discussing the nature of what makes someone a good developer to development practices like TDD.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Last year included talks about functional programming, working with customers, and exploring what draws people to programming and keeps them going.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The full schedule and talk abstracts are unfortunately not up yet, but the [list of speakers](http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.org/speakers/) is up and there are immediately recognizable names on it, such as [Corey Haines](http://www.coreyhaines.com/), [Uncle Bob Martin](http://www.objectmentor.com/omTeam/martin_r.html), and [Michael Feathers](http://www.objectmentor.com/omTeam/feathers_m.html).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What's in it for Programmers.SE?&#xD;&#xA;Programmers covers a wide range of topics with a special focus on development practices rather than implementation details. I think SCNA is a perfect conference for technical topics that are relevant to this site as well as for topics that cover the people aspect of software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there's a great opportunity here to give out some swag and [business cards](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1729/programmers-moderator-cards), introduce Programmers to more developers out there, and to attract more experts to this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers doesn't have a blog of its own, but I will blog about individual sessions and the conference as a whole on my personal site and provide links in a follow-up meta post here. If/when good questions turn up during the conference that would be relevant here, I will post them and invite others at the conference to do the same. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I already got some experience promoting Stack Exchange during my [trip to RallyON](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1461/sponsoring-a-community-member-to-attend-the-2011-rallyon-conference) earlier this year. RallyON ended up being more focused on project management than software development concepts, but I believe SCNA would give us a lot more material that'd be of interest to the Programmers community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;What do you guys think? Any questions or concerns? I think this would be a great opportunity to increase our visibility and attract new users, not to mention a chance to wear my Stack Exchange t-shirts. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5779" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2314" RevisionGUID="58560475-1ad9-445b-bea1-817019d04bcd" CreationDate="2011-09-24T04:37:51.923" UserId="226" Text="Software Craftsmanship North America 2011 - Sponsorship Proposal" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5780" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2314" RevisionGUID="58560475-1ad9-445b-bea1-817019d04bcd" CreationDate="2011-09-24T04:37:51.923" UserId="226" Text="|discussion|conferences|promotion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5781" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2315" RevisionGUID="f8bc6aa7-a519-48c2-8a48-f2ee26648a9d" CreationDate="2011-09-24T10:18:11.387" UserId="31418" Text="You see **Excavator** badge to be given to somebody who has:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Edited first post that was inactive for 6 months&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This 6 month inactivity period has been mentioned in **Archaeologist** badge too.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is, how can I know that a question has been inactive for 6 months? Is there a list accessible of questions with this situation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5782" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2315" RevisionGUID="f8bc6aa7-a519-48c2-8a48-f2ee26648a9d" CreationDate="2011-09-24T10:18:11.387" UserId="31418" Text="How to detect questions inactive for longer than 6 months?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5783" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2315" RevisionGUID="f8bc6aa7-a519-48c2-8a48-f2ee26648a9d" CreationDate="2011-09-24T10:18:11.387" UserId="31418" Text="|support|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5784" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2316" RevisionGUID="59d91150-f54a-4fe6-9e5a-b872e1750d41" CreationDate="2011-09-24T10:23:38.130" UserId="4" Text="My only question is...Can we try to perhaps launch a blog around this time? This seems like the perfect kick-off. I know [I tossed around the idea shortly after I read about BlogOverflow][1] and [Mark asked the question about topics to discuss][2]. It seems like if we can use the next month and a half to actually move forward with a P.SE blog, and have this be a shortly-after-launch thing, it would be a bigger boost for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way I see it is that I'm not sure how many of these experts have time to regularly participate in a Stack Exchange site. I recognize some of these names, and they aren't lightweights in software development. I think if we can also add &quot;and we have a blog that is read by these people, and you can write and submit articles to it&quot; to the description of the site (taking into consideration like the people who read Programmers and how Google just eats up Stack Exchange sites), I think we would be more likely convince some of these people to potentially contribute to a blog when they might not be able to contribute very many answers to questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Getting more programmers (the attendees) of the conference active would be fantastic, and having someone to blog about it would be great for those of us who can't attend, but finding a way to grab in some of the subject matter experts would be awesome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1709/any-chance-of-a-programmers-community-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2108/what-should-a-programmers-se-blog-be-about" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5785" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2317" RevisionGUID="e45ee704-c8a1-4233-8c8d-e9176efaeeaf" CreationDate="2011-09-24T18:10:49.860" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="You can tell whether a question has been inactive for 6 months by looking at the stats in the sidebar:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Question stats][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But these badges suck: you really shouldn't be looking for old questions to raise from the dead. If you happen to run into one, that's fine, but bumping a ton of long-dead questions to the front page just for the sake of the Archaeologist badge breaks the front page for other visitors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to help out with our cleanups and almost certainly get the Archaeologist badge along the way in due time, get involved in [the career and jobs tag cleanup](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6o1Co.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5786" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1963" RevisionGUID="b047a2eb-656f-4b59-abc8-b8c11fe669f7" CreationDate="2011-09-24T18:19:13.697" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 627 characters in body" Text="We [discussed](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career) merging [tag:career] and [tag:jobs], but now it's time to put a plan into action. [Aaronut's plan](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952) is great, but we need some help from the *posse*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 1: Clean up the tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are currently several job-related tags that need people to go through and flag or vote to close questions that are no longer (or were never) on-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Jobs: [tag:jobs], [tag:job-market], [tag:new-job], [tag:job-definition], [tag:job-title], [tag:job-hunting], [tag:job-satisfaction], [tag:job-distance], [tag:job-retention], [tag:hpc-jobs], [tag:scientific-computing-jobs]&#xD;&#xA;* Career: [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;* Employment: [tag:employment], [tag:employer], [tag:employers], [tag:self-employment]&#xD;&#xA;* Business: [tag:business], [tag:business-process], [tag:business-logic], [tag:business-rules], [tag:business-analysis], [tag:business-it]&#xD;&#xA;* Other: [tag:interview], [tag:hiring], [tag:project-management], [tag:teamwork]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* When you're done cleaning up a tag, post an answer here that you've finished so others know to prioritize other tags. &#xD;&#xA;* When in doubt about a question, create a new question here on meta instead of flagging so the community can decide if a question is a keeper.&#xD;&#xA;* Start with the oldest questions first: our really old questions have a high likelihood of no longer meeting the site's guidelines, and are what are in most need of cleanup. We have plenty of time to deal with the newer stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 2: Reorganize the survivors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We need to have a set of workable tags and tag synonyms, and any question that survived the purging needs to be edited to include those tags and improved in any way possible. [Aaronut's guidelines](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952) are pretty good, so let's go with them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-development] for questions that are about developing your career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] for questions about the prospects of getting a *new* job.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-satisfaction] for questions about work/life balance, creating better workspaces, etc.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-advancement] and also [tag:teamwork] for questions about excelling in one's current position.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:project-management] and/or [tag:employee-relations] and/or [tag:business] for employer-focused questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you have to deviate from the list above, **favor tag suffixes**: the system allows us to use wildcards in tag preferences, so [tag:jobs-foo] is preferable to [tag:foo-jobs].&#xD;&#xA;* **Spread out the organization.** Every time you edit a long-dead question to retag it, it bumps it back to the front page. Retagging 20+ questions at the same time kills the front-page usability for the rest of the visitors.&#xD;&#xA;* **Start with the oldest questions first.** Our really old questions have a high likelihood of no longer meeting the site's guidelines, and are what are in most need of cleanup. We have plenty of time to deal with the newer stuff.&#xD;&#xA;* **Request tag synonyms** by creating a question here on meta. This is especially important when a tag is organized out of existence (i.e. all the questions that had a tag have had that tag removed in favor of something else).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 3: Burnination&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once all the good questions have been properly organized, we can go through the [normal clean-up process](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning) of deleting old, off-topic stuff." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5787" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2314" RevisionGUID="6fa46b49-c3fb-4d8b-961a-ad356691f909" CreationDate="2011-09-25T01:01:57.003" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/117765748339912704" />
  <row Id="5788" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="2318" RevisionGUID="211bc8c0-47c7-41bb-98d9-4d81434fcd73" CreationDate="2011-09-25T02:16:45.610" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110485/novice-programmers" Text="" />
  <row Id="5789" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2318" RevisionGUID="20bedd56-32b1-410b-99f4-ef832db0b20e" CreationDate="2011-09-25T02:13:29.790" UserId="22428" Text="Is this really a good place for programmers who are just beginning to learn? I've messed with CMS's like joomla and wordpress, but not a lot of coding is needed for those kinds of things.&#xD;&#xA;I was overwhelmed with StackOverflow when I came across it, and even this section seems like its only for experts. Is there some other Q&amp;A that caters to novice programmers? Or is this one different in some way that I'm not seeing?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5790" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2318" RevisionGUID="20bedd56-32b1-410b-99f4-ef832db0b20e" CreationDate="2011-09-25T02:13:29.790" UserId="22428" Text="Novice Programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5791" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2318" RevisionGUID="20bedd56-32b1-410b-99f4-ef832db0b20e" CreationDate="2011-09-25T02:13:29.790" UserId="22428" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5792" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2319" RevisionGUID="fd4bea5b-c745-4754-8751-180ae5950357" CreationDate="2011-09-25T02:22:14.963" UserId="226" Text="You can certainly ask novice-level questions here, so long as they fit what is described in the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The difference between Stack Overflow and Programmers isn't the complexity level of questions but rather the kind of questions that are asked. Stack Overflow is for specific coding problems (e.g. when you have some code and it's broken) and Programmers is for conceptual questions about software architecture, design, and (to a certain extent) software development as a profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each Stack Exchange site attempts to attract experts so that people like you who have entry-level questions can find out the answers quickly and painlessly. So, feel free to look around the site and see if we cover the kinds of questions that you have on your mind." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5793" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2318" RevisionGUID="8b70dcc9-9c49-48e6-b660-118a54e26aaa" CreationDate="2011-09-25T10:02:01.460" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/117901659509755904" />
  <row Id="5794" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2320" RevisionGUID="28058f97-0844-4fe0-8aae-1561f7654f35" CreationDate="2011-09-26T08:37:49.123" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="You may have noticed a few whale questions—ones with a ton of answers—getting bumped to the front page and subsequently closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot; This is part of a cleanup based on some new guidance we've received about questions that  have accrued way too many answers to be helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you look at the close reason for &quot;not constructive&quot;, it says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### closed as not constructive by Mark Trapp♦ 8 mins ago&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not meet enough of our [six guidelines for constructive subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/). All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question has dozens of answers, they stop being practical: if everyone and anyone can have an opinion about the content of the question, it's hard to learn anything other than what a few dozen people think about the subject. While surveys are fine in some contexts, that's [not what Stack Exchange is about](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the system is designed to facilitate collaborating on a few answers instead of providing dozens of separate ones: once a question gets 16 answers, it will automatically convert to community wiki: this stops reputation accural for answers and lowers the threshold to edit answers without approval substantially.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once a question gets converted to community wiki, it's meant to be a not-so-subtle warning that the question is becoming unwieldy and requires the community to regulate the answers its getting. Questions getting more than a dozen or so answers should be treated like a page on Wikipedia: existing answers should be edited to make them better rather than new ones added.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, per the guidance we've received from Stack Exchange, we'll now be closing [questions that get more than 50 answers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=answers%3A50). Existing questions will remain where they are (although closed), and if we can find a way to prune back the answers to get them below the threshold, we'll do it. There are a few questions with some really stellar, canonical answers that should not go away merely because they got too many mediocre answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can help clean these questions up by going through the answers, consolidating similar answers, and flagging for deletion the answers that add no additional value. If we can get some of these questions back down to a manageable number of answers, they'll be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5795" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2320" RevisionGUID="28058f97-0844-4fe0-8aae-1561f7654f35" CreationDate="2011-09-26T08:37:49.123" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Too many answers is the sign of a bad question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5796" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2320" RevisionGUID="28058f97-0844-4fe0-8aae-1561f7654f35" CreationDate="2011-09-26T08:37:49.123" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|featured|closed-questions|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5797" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2321" RevisionGUID="aea3e25a-a72c-4d40-b1fb-594c5bf26832" CreationDate="2011-09-26T09:18:12.590" UserId="37" Text="As a reminder, we [already suppress the answer box and nag people when there are more than {threshold} answers][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Lknb7.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my very strong belief that any &quot;question&quot; which gets 40+ answers is fundamentally a *discussion* (or worse, a *poll*) and not an answerable question, as noted in the Not Constructive close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Chatty, open-ended discussion questions** diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We of course support the idea that &quot;there's more than one way to do it&quot;, because there always is. But there should not be an *infinite* number of ways to do it, either. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like to use the &quot;Peanut Butter Sandwich&quot; rule here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;how do YOU backup??&quot;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;how do YOU store passwords??&quot;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;how do YOU like your peanut butter sandwiches??&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the thing you are talking about in the question can be replaced by a Peanut Butter Sandwich, the question isn't making meaningful distinctions about what it is soliciting, and therefore either needs to be closed, or **whipped into shape via editing to be far more specific**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/84870/add-a-message-when-posting-to-old-questions-with-more-than-n-answers/86893#86893&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5798" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2320" RevisionGUID="b169072b-b3d1-4cc8-af63-7ab992c1f880" CreationDate="2011-09-26T10:02:07.733" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/118264075498176512" />
  <row Id="5799" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2322" RevisionGUID="52357324-1325-4a15-b92c-f66338b5edd5" CreationDate="2011-09-26T11:14:13.380" UserId="4" Text="One of the measures of a good subjective questions is that it invites &quot;sharing experiences over opinions&quot;. A question that solicits experiences that many people have had can be a good question, and could have an infinite number of good answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a site like Stack Overflow where it's more factual, there should be significantly fewer answers - there might be a lot of ways to solve a problem, but of those, some are Just Plain Bad while a smaller number of others are a Good Answer. I'm of the opinion that if you have a Good Answer on a site like Stack Overflow, you should post it, since the accepted solution might not work for someone else for any number of reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, on a site where experiences matter more and there are far fewer questions with The One Right Answer, there are going to be more answers. Having an excessive number of answers (I'm not sure how to define excessive, but I'd think of as a function of the total number of users on the site, among other things) is a red flag to look at the question and make sure it's valuable and constructive, but it doesn't necessarily mean the question is bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps [a tool][1] could be added to easily view questions that have recently passed different thresholds for large numbers of answers. As an example, view questions that have had their 10th, 15th, and 25th answers posted within the specified time frame. This would give the mods and high-rep users a chance to see the question and decide what to do (flag, close, edit, protect). Honestly, editing is going to be hard since there are already so many answers - my biggest concern (and has been for a number of questions) is &quot;breaking&quot; the existing answers. If you break existing answers and the answerer doesn't realize this and come back fairly quickly to update or delete the answer, then it's more likely to be downvoted since it doesn't apply. Perhaps a tool to &quot;protect&quot; an answer (after a major edit to the question, notify all people who answered the question so they can deal with it, also let diamond mods explicitly &quot;hide&quot; answers and notify a user that their answer is good but not longer appropriate and let the user explicitly choose to unhide with or without edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You explicitly mention that &quot;existing answers should be edited to make them better rather than new ones added&quot;. I'm extremely hesitant to edit any post on Programmers to do things other than fixing spelling and grammar, cleaning up links, and just generally improving readability. My reason is that many answers share experiences, and I'm not comfortable editing other people's experiences or putting words into their mouths. Personally, I'm fine with people editing my posts for the same reasons I edit other posts, and fixing minor factual mistakes, but the moment that I start sharing my experiences on a subject, the only changes made to that section should be spelling and grammar - you weren't there, you don't know what I saw/did/heard, and if you have a question to me, ask it in a comment and I'll personally improve that section.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5800" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2323" RevisionGUID="3323b751-df8f-4337-9cc4-908c8e691a96" CreationDate="2011-09-26T13:43:04.530" UserId="3" Text="Anna, You've done some great work with this site and the Software Craftsmanship conference looks like a good match. This is a no-brainer; You're approved!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will contact you by email to make arrangements for travel, swag, and whatever support we can provide. Continue to work with the community to see how to make the most of this conference and how to bring your experiences back to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Congratulations and enjoy!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5812" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2328" RevisionGUID="ca80ceda-67c7-4441-9e6e-05bc435d2a91" CreationDate="2011-09-26T19:17:04.867" UserId="26365" Text="The Programmers.se FAQ states that &quot;Freelancing and business concerns&quot; are on topic for this exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a developer involved in recruiting, I consider recruiting to be an critical 'business concern' for any programmer, manager, team leader, or individual programmer.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask because I found [this closed question][1] to be very relevant to my own situation (that is, I too have found it almost impossible to find really qualified devs).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to know how other teams, especially those of small outfits handle this problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There certainly ought to be somewhere where recruiting questions can be asked.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[appeal to authority] Joel thought it was important enough to write a book on the subject! [/appeal to authority]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110750/recruiting-asp-net-mvc-web-developers-why-do-i-get-so-few-good-candidates" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5813" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2328" RevisionGUID="ca80ceda-67c7-4441-9e6e-05bc435d2a91" CreationDate="2011-09-26T19:17:04.867" UserId="26365" Text="Should not recruiting related questions be considered on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5814" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2328" RevisionGUID="ca80ceda-67c7-4441-9e6e-05bc435d2a91" CreationDate="2011-09-26T19:17:04.867" UserId="26365" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5815" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2329" RevisionGUID="c6c91009-1903-4c20-a590-6171a5f311f0" CreationDate="2011-09-26T20:10:49.833" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This question was closed for the wrong reason: sorry about that. It was flagged as *too localized* and should've been closed as such. I've corrected that mistake.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason it's closed too localized is that the content of the question and the answers suggest this is a problem *specific* to the question asker: he's doing something wrong that other people in his situation would never do, and that's why it's not working.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end, it's the business concern equivalent of &quot;You forgot a semicolon.&quot; It's a problem, but it's not really going to help anyone in the future. We're trying to hit the blue part of this diagram:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Diagram of Programmers.SE scope][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You say that it's relevant to your situation: can you generalize the question to ask something that's relevant to all programmers and not just the question asker's specific situation? If the question's generalized, it should be fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/IRPRM.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5816" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2320" RevisionGUID="02acee4f-59c3-4b31-821d-af2d92b72377" CreationDate="2011-09-27T01:38:56.260" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Minor copyedits" Text="You may have noticed a few whale questions—ones with a ton of answers—getting bumped to the front page and subsequently closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot; This is part of a cleanup based on some new guidance we've received about questions that  have accrued way too many answers to be helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you look at the close reason for &quot;not constructive&quot;, it says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### closed as not constructive by Mark Trapp♦ 8 mins ago&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not meet enough of our [six guidelines for constructive subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/). All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question has dozens of answers, they stop being practical: if everyone and anyone can have an opinion about the content of the question, it's hard to learn anything other than what a few dozen people think about the subject. While surveys are fine in some contexts, that's [not what Stack Exchange is about](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the system is designed to facilitate collaborating on a few answers instead of providing dozens of separate ones. Once a question gets 16 answers, it will automatically convert to community wiki: this stops reputation accrual for answers and substantially lowers the threshold to edit answers without approval.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once a question gets converted to community wiki, it's meant to be a not-so-subtle warning that the question is becoming unwieldy and requires the community to regulate the answers its getting. Questions getting more than a dozen or so answers should be treated like a page on Wikipedia: existing answers should be edited to make them better rather than new ones added.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, per the guidance we've received from Stack Exchange, we'll now be closing [questions that get more than 50 answers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=answers%3A50). Existing questions (~40 right now) will remain where they are (but closed), and if we can find a way to prune back the answers to get them below the threshold, we'll do it. There are a few questions with some really stellar, canonical answers that should not go away merely because they got too many mediocre answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can help clean these questions up by going through the answers, consolidating similar answers, and flagging for deletion the answers that add no additional value. If we can get some of these questions back down to a manageable number of answers, they'll be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5817" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2276" RevisionGUID="e022c9ab-4ce3-4a4c-80b8-ae2fb63d05ab" CreationDate="2011-09-27T04:02:13.230" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/118535890061631488" />
  <row Id="5818" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2330" RevisionGUID="f8293284-ff43-4306-889b-8158c34e3035" CreationDate="2011-09-27T04:08:30.750" UserId="37" Text="Well, consider the question, which **contains no less than five distinct questions.** I am literally quoting from the text of the question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Is there just a dearth of c# talent in Chicago? &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. Am I uniquely fouling up my recruitment process? &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3. Am I going to have to just hire interns and grow my own devs? &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4. Advice is appreciated. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 5. Commiseration will be accepted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's problematic from the get-go. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question focused on #3, I think it would be a much stronger case and potentially helpful to future readers. But as it is, the answers are all over the place, and can be added infinitely since it's just listing your opinion of this particular highly specific case." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5819" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2331" RevisionGUID="c6d67cdd-788f-4d79-80d3-69b6690260a1" CreationDate="2011-09-27T04:13:24.290" UserId="28950" Text="Too many answers is the sign of a bad question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not 100% true for example:-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question: How to optimize my asp.net application?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer: possible answers maybe endless, but all could be valid answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5820" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="2331" RevisionGUID="170e1b1e-a592-4526-86c5-18a218df79ba" CreationDate="2011-09-27T04:13:24.290" UserId="28950" />
  <row Id="5821" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2328" RevisionGUID="4e14301e-40c6-4720-a70b-9f926a4d8419" CreationDate="2011-09-27T05:07:36.410" UserId="226" Comment="edited title" Text="Should recruiting related questions be considered on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5822" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2332" RevisionGUID="72c429a5-199c-4080-88d9-fc63369dfae1" CreationDate="2011-09-27T18:00:23.370" UserId="26304" Text="The specifics of the question are local to the OP I will grant, but providing specific parameters makes it easier to generate useful answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The location that is specific is really about 1k square miles and over 6 million people. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The specific problem of not getting good candidates for a popular development platform is not unique.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- He has elimiated the 3 concerns for choosing a new job. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While his problem is specific the causes and solutions will be applicable across a wide audience. Here we are asked to help identify either why the OP will be unable to find a reliable supply of new talent or what he can do to access an existing supply.  Those answers will cross a wide audience." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5823" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2333" RevisionGUID="7ec40381-053d-44c1-8717-3774ef2860da" CreationDate="2011-09-27T22:31:49.110" UserId="4" Text="I'm editing a post, I spend a few minutes making changes, and I go to save it. I get an error message that simply says that I've made &quot;too many recent edits&quot;. I don't even know what that means, aside from the obvious of hitting some kind of limiting cap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How many edits is too many? Is it per day or some other unit of time?&#xD;&#xA;- When will I be able to edit again?&#xD;&#xA;- Why can't I even edit my own post to make it better (I can see limiting the editing of others posts)?&#xD;&#xA;- Why did I get to the edit page and be able to spend time making changes if I'll be greeted with a (useless) error message at the end?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The edit restrictions are probably global, as is the ability to reach an edit page and make changes if you can't actually publish them, but could the error message be updated? I'm not sure if that's a global thing or a site-specific thing (if it's global, perhaps kick this over to Meta.SO). The only thing I know is that the message as it's shown here on Programmers is pretty useless (which is surprising considering the clarify of other error messages and notifications)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5824" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2333" RevisionGUID="7ec40381-053d-44c1-8717-3774ef2860da" CreationDate="2011-09-27T22:31:49.110" UserId="4" Text="I'm not sure if this is a global thing or a site-specific thing, but &quot;too many recent edits&quot; is useless" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5825" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2333" RevisionGUID="7ec40381-053d-44c1-8717-3774ef2860da" CreationDate="2011-09-27T22:31:49.110" UserId="4" Text="|support|bug|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5826" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2334" RevisionGUID="f42007aa-c92e-458c-81c3-c095147e67c3" CreationDate="2011-09-27T22:39:25.123" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="To clarify what's going on, from [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/91097/getting-too-many-edits-further-edits-are-not-allowed-until-tomorrow):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; That code was (correctly) not counting recent (today/yesterday) posts in the &quot;how many have you edited&quot; [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This sanity check avoids a few scenarios:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - front-page spamming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hijacked account vandalism&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - rage-quit vandalism&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't have any objection to improving posts, and yes: it is meant to have an amnesty on anything recent (so you can improve your recent answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you're just improving posts in the last day, you should be fine. If you're trying to edit a ton of your old posts in rapid succession, that's by design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As the message says, you should be contacting a moderator if you have a need to revise your posts en masse. Is there a reason you're trying to edit more than 5 of your old posts in rapid succession?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5827" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2334" RevisionGUID="6d0044b3-0966-441e-8d5a-519a064e75e2" CreationDate="2011-09-27T22:53:40.277" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 515 characters in body" Text="To clarify what's going on, from [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/91097/getting-too-many-edits-further-edits-are-not-allowed-until-tomorrow):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; That code was (correctly) not counting recent (today/yesterday) posts in the &quot;how many have you edited&quot; [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This sanity check avoids a few scenarios:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - front-page spamming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hijacked account vandalism&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - rage-quit vandalism&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't have any objection to improving posts, and yes: it is meant to have an amnesty on anything recent (so you can improve your recent answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you're just improving posts in the last day, you should be fine. If you're trying to edit a ton of your old posts in rapid succession, that's by design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As the message says, you should be contacting a moderator if you have a need to revise your posts en masse. Is there a reason you're trying to edit more than 5 of your old posts in rapid succession?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just to encapsulate what I said in comments, an error message that only reads &quot;too many recent edits&quot; does seem to be overly brief. The original message read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Too many edits**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   You have already edited 5 of your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; own posts today (not including very&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recent posts). Further edits are not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; allowed until tomorrow.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   Please contact a moderator if you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; require assistance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which clarified what was going on. To that end, I agree that should be changed or addressed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5828" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2333" RevisionGUID="7821f369-b327-4533-97d9-65624a6878a8" CreationDate="2011-09-27T22:53:51.617" UserId="4" Comment="added 85 characters in body" Text="I'm editing a post, I spend a few minutes making changes, and I go to save it. I get an error message that simply says that I've made &quot;too many recent edits&quot;. I don't even know what that means, aside from the obvious of hitting some kind of limiting cap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How many edits is too many? Is it per day or some other unit of time?&#xD;&#xA;- When will I be able to edit again?&#xD;&#xA;- Why can't I even edit my own post to make it better (I can see limiting the editing of others posts)?&#xD;&#xA;- Why did I get to the edit page and be able to spend time making changes if I'll be greeted with a (useless) error message at the end?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The edit restrictions are probably global, as is the ability to reach an edit page and make changes if you can't actually publish them, but could the error message be updated? I'm not sure if that's a global thing or a site-specific thing (if it's global, perhaps kick this over to Meta.SO). The only thing I know is that the message as it's shown here on Programmers is pretty useless (which is surprising considering the clarify of other error messages and notifications).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/VTHw5.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5829" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2328" RevisionGUID="49bbbfbf-8348-47a6-a8fc-1a063792f469" CreationDate="2011-09-28T01:02:17.823" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/118852995348828160" />
  <row Id="5830" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2333" RevisionGUID="08431ad4-678b-47ca-9a6f-93eaf81b6c32" CreationDate="2011-09-28T11:50:04.503" UserId="1508" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|bug|status-completed|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5831" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2335" RevisionGUID="fb81ac7d-e562-4a3f-acbe-36be9ee97c35" CreationDate="2011-09-28T16:06:30.200" UserId="28877" Text="Some time ago Mark Trapp [asked what a P.SE web site would be about][1] and I posted an answer that received a moderate number of upvotes and a few comments. I've revised it a few times and there hasn't been any commentary in quite awhile so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that its a solid answer for &quot;what our blog is about&quot;. Either way, I haven't seen any other movement on the topic so I'm moving it forward myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based upon an S.E. [blog post][2] about getting a community blog started, our next step is to recruit contributors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Recruit contributors**. Who will write entries for the blog? Starting a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; blog is a bit like going through the buffet line. Be realistic – don’t&#xD;&#xA;&gt; let your eyes be bigger than your stomach. Think seriously about if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and how often you will be able to contribute a blog post, including&#xD;&#xA;&gt; research/prep time.  The more contributors there are, the less&#xD;&#xA;&gt; frequently each contributor needs to post.  One post a month is a much&#xD;&#xA;&gt; easier to stomach than a couple posts every week.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a pretty sound assessment, in my opinion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.SE doesn't appear to get quite the volume of traffic that Stack Overflow or other sites receive but we do have several quality, experienced programmers who are also **excellent writers** that could contribute **quality content**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I'm in favor of a post once a week, appearing every Monday. If we could attract **just six people** willing to write, that would mean just one submission from each individual every six weeks. This may seem like quite awhile between posts but I think that this would fit with the vision of a P.SE blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would favor:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Long, not short posts.&#xD;&#xA; - Well written, thoughtful material.&#xD;&#xA; - A relaxed time frame so nobody gets burned out.&#xD;&#xA; - Time for an editorial process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Allow me to clarify the last point. While most people who write blogs just write write write post! and then call it a day, we should be aspiring for the best. A P.SE blog post should not only represent the intellectual musings of one of the smartest programmers on the planet, it should also represent the highest quality of written English. There are some programmers out there who are truly, truly brilliant but can't write to save their lives. Rather than exclude such people I propose that every submission go through an editorial forge for grammar, punctuation, and formatting consistency.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's what I'd like to see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. At least **six people** respond with something to the effect that you're at least *interested* in helping write - either let your your S.O./P.SE rep speak for itself, or post a few links to previous works (not necessarily written!)&#xD;&#xA; 2. At least **two people** who'd be willing to act as proofreaders.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2108/what-should-a-programmers-se-blog-be-about&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/blog-overflow/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5832" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2335" RevisionGUID="fb81ac7d-e562-4a3f-acbe-36be9ee97c35" CreationDate="2011-09-28T16:06:30.200" UserId="28877" Text="Who Would Contribute to a P.SE Blog?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5833" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2335" RevisionGUID="fb81ac7d-e562-4a3f-acbe-36be9ee97c35" CreationDate="2011-09-28T16:06:30.200" UserId="28877" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5834" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2336" RevisionGUID="0a5c4284-fad1-4bf9-a110-4309fbc194d9" CreationDate="2011-09-28T16:09:50.730" UserId="47" Text="I'll volunteer my time as proofreader and *very* occasional poster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think having an editorial team to do the proofreading and suggest topics is a good idea." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5835" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2337" RevisionGUID="706aba53-199c-4ebd-b36e-9c907dcc4cef" CreationDate="2011-09-28T16:35:53.580" UserId="226" Text="Thank you for bringing this up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the concerns I have with the blog is that it can be used as a soapbox. I want to make sure the posts we put up are solid, well-researched, not just someone spouting off their opinions. The latter is what personal blogs are for. Controversial stances are fine, but in my opinion we cannot allow outright ranting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that in mind, I'm up for writing and editing. My rep can speak for itself, though I'm sure my writing style can use some work. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thomas Owens just [brought up the idea of getting the blog rolling](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2314/software-craftsmanship-north-america-2011-sponsorship-proposal/2316#2316) in light of my upcoming trip to [SCNA](http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.com). I agree that it's a great idea, so I'm keen on getting this going soon. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5836" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2338" RevisionGUID="fe09face-d569-408f-a871-5e9cfa7f04a0" CreationDate="2011-09-28T18:59:00.400" UserId="7748" Text="I would like to contribute as a Writer, and will commit to one article every 6 weeks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though besides having someone proof my work I would like the Subject matter of the articles be a group consensus.  So if we have a rotating 6 writers, we need to work together to decide who is writing what for when. So that is some consistency from week to week.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS: I may be willing to change my handle is that is a requirement. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5837" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2339" RevisionGUID="ce4891d5-0c38-4d37-8512-3da9216a5c38" CreationDate="2011-09-28T21:43:50.320" UserId="37552" Text="This image from the faq is confusing me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/XvYmr.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's excluding people who know programming but don't have a career in it. Is this correct?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5838" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2339" RevisionGUID="ce4891d5-0c38-4d37-8512-3da9216a5c38" CreationDate="2011-09-28T21:43:50.320" UserId="37552" Text="Is this site solely for career programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5839" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2339" RevisionGUID="ce4891d5-0c38-4d37-8512-3da9216a5c38" CreationDate="2011-09-28T21:43:50.320" UserId="37552" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5840" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2340" RevisionGUID="4d2ad182-35e8-4b30-a149-327b1a1814d2" CreationDate="2011-09-28T21:50:46.340" UserId="47" Text="It's not *solely* for career software developers, but *mainly* for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first line of the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) reads (my bold):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for **expert** programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You don't get to be an expert unless you've spent a lot of time doing something and you usually only spend a lot of time doing your job or your passion. We welcome questions from anybody, but we really want the experts to answer them. That way we can &quot;make the internet better&quot; and hopefully software development practices too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, what the graphic represents is where the **question** sits not where the **questioner** sits. On all Stack Exchange sites the primary elements are the question and answer not the people who post those questions and answers. You vote on posts not people (for example). So if your question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's the best chair?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then this is off topic as it applies to anyone who works at a desk all day not just software developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Equally if your question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have a bad back due to an injury I suffered when I was 10, what's the best chair?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then this is too localised as the answer is specific to you and you alone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5841" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2339" RevisionGUID="c7fc4547-2aa6-4e71-b916-75e516bf66b7" CreationDate="2011-09-28T21:51:16.120" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5844" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2340" RevisionGUID="a8aa0207-361e-4e7e-8035-6efe0242c84c" CreationDate="2011-09-28T21:56:12.200" UserId="47" Comment="clarification" Text="It's not *solely* for career software developers, but *mainly* for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first line of the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) reads (my bold):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for **expert** programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You don't get to be an expert unless you've spent a lot of time doing something and you usually only spend a lot of time doing your job or your passion. We welcome questions from anybody, but we really want the experts to answer them. That way we can &quot;make the internet better&quot; and hopefully software development practices too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, what the graphic represents is where the **question** sits not where the **questioner** sits. On all Stack Exchange sites the primary elements are the question and answer not the people who post those questions and answers. You vote on posts not people (for example). So if your question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's the best chair?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then this is off topic as it applies to anyone who works at a desk all day not just software developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Equally if your question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have a bad back due to an injury I suffered when I was 10, what's the best chair?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then this is too localised as the answer is specific to you and you alone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Note: these aren't the best example questions as there's no chair question that would be on topic - but you get the idea)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5845" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2335" RevisionGUID="c2d4ef7b-38cc-43fe-8b7e-8a0951936c0c" CreationDate="2011-09-28T22:02:21.563" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/119170104138268673" />
  <row Id="5846" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2342" RevisionGUID="754d28f3-1928-4162-8941-ab6465a5a1c7" CreationDate="2011-09-28T22:39:04.597" UserId="902" Text="I think it's pretty simple and nearly inevitable. Most of the sites have a single, simple rule : &quot;No subjective questions.&quot; P.SE replaces that with a half dozen guidelines about what constitutes a reasonable subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a few people who use the site extremely regularly, that's not (much of) a problem, but for most others, it's harder to be sure they're following the guidelines -- especially since most of the guidelines are themselves at least somewhat subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong: I think the situation is probably open to at least some improvement (what isn't, after all?) but I think it's normal and probably expected that a higher percentage of questions here will be closed, migrated, need editing, etc., than on most of the sister sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5847" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2343" RevisionGUID="35dcdf79-d245-4161-a9f1-f04d13b323ab" CreationDate="2011-09-29T06:14:03.500" UserId="28950" Text="I open this question on meta because I want to know why Anna Lear closed my [question][1]? Is it my question really sucks or Anna Lear was angry with my comment in other unrelated [question][2]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone told me that I have offended the mod, so she just abuse her power to outright close my question without letting the community to decide. Is that true?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;p/s: I don't what is the correct tag for this question. So forgive me for the mistake.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110205/what-are-the-consequences-of-still-sticking-with-windows-xp-despite-there-are-win&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2297/why-does-this-site-have-more-downvoted-closed-questions-than-other-stackexchange" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5848" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2343" RevisionGUID="35dcdf79-d245-4161-a9f1-f04d13b323ab" CreationDate="2011-09-29T06:14:03.500" UserId="28950" Text="I want to know whether Anna Lear closed my question just because of retaliation to my previous comment or really my question sucks" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5849" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2343" RevisionGUID="35dcdf79-d245-4161-a9f1-f04d13b323ab" CreationDate="2011-09-29T06:14:03.500" UserId="28950" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5850" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2344" RevisionGUID="9ba03ace-eeb4-4df5-930a-cf938cd0f10e" CreationDate="2011-09-29T06:23:51.703" UserId="25635" Text="I attempted to flag a question today. There were two radio buttons present which did **not** behave as radio buttons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clicking the flag question red confirmation button did nothing until a comment was put into the other textbox. However, no feedback was given to let me know that was necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Combined with the inappropriate use of the radio buttons, it took me several attempts to figure out how to flag the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5851" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2344" RevisionGUID="9ba03ace-eeb4-4df5-930a-cf938cd0f10e" CreationDate="2011-09-29T06:23:51.703" UserId="25635" Text="Bug - Cannot flag a question without filling in the other textbox" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5852" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2344" RevisionGUID="9ba03ace-eeb4-4df5-930a-cf938cd0f10e" CreationDate="2011-09-29T06:23:51.703" UserId="25635" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5853" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2343" RevisionGUID="b04f9aa0-f072-424b-9368-08de806a7711" CreationDate="2011-09-29T06:39:08.967" UserId="28950" Comment="added know word" Text="I open this question on meta because I want to know why Anna Lear closed my [question][1]? Is it my question really sucks or Anna Lear was angry with my comment in other unrelated [question][2]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone told me that I have offended the mod, so she just abuse her power to outright close my question without letting the community to decide. Is that true?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;p/s: I don't know what is the correct tag for this question. So forgive me for the mistake.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110205/what-are-the-consequences-of-still-sticking-with-windows-xp-despite-there-are-win&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2297/why-does-this-site-have-more-downvoted-closed-questions-than-other-stackexchange" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5854" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2345" RevisionGUID="73a88215-8f65-4308-931e-65bf5cb85074" CreationDate="2011-09-29T06:58:32.723" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This is the flag dialog box:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Flag dialog box][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you select one of the flag reasons (e.g. &quot;it needs moderator attention&quot;), the dialog then asks you why it needs moderation attention:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* very low quality&#xD;&#xA;* other reason (with a requirement to specify what's wrong)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, there are two levels of radio options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Select the reason you're flagging the question&#xD;&#xA;2. Explain why you're flagging it for that reason&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is marked by the second level of radio options being inset from the first level. Indentation is a common way to denote hierarchy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason for this hierarchy is so we know why you think the post needs moderator attention. Otherwise, we don't know what we're supposed to do with the flag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/9BIXq.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5855" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2344" RevisionGUID="a64e861c-914f-4d59-8f87-a7fafe737fa6" CreationDate="2011-09-29T06:58:58.513" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|flagging|user-interface|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5856" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2343" RevisionGUID="41934f64-316f-407f-a325-abc91da63115" CreationDate="2011-09-29T07:01:27.837" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="Why was my question about the consequences of using Windows XP closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5857" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2343" RevisionGUID="41934f64-316f-407f-a325-abc91da63115" CreationDate="2011-09-29T07:01:27.837" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|support|moderation|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5858" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2346" RevisionGUID="5f2e31dc-fbed-4578-9ce3-b6e5827fd847" CreationDate="2011-09-29T07:09:32.613" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="When a question is closed, it says exactly who closed the question and why it was closed. In this case, it says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### closed as not constructive by Walter, Robert Harvey, TomWij, Anna Lear♦ yesterday&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not meet enough of our [six guidelines for constructive subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/). All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three other people who are not Anna Lear voted to close the question because it's not constructive, and it has nothing to do with your earlier comment (although we are all curious and bemused by what you meant by that).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is too open-ended: you haven't provided any context to frame the question nor any specific problem that someone can help you solve. Answerers are forced to guess at what consequences they can dream up related to using Windows XP that may or may not be relevant to your circumstances.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tell us *why* you're considering sticking with Windows XP. What programming problem do you have that's got you trying to hold onto the ghosts of Windows past? What specifically about Windows XP going the way of the dinosaurs has you concerned? Give us *something* about what you're trying to do to work with and provide an actual, correct answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5859" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2347" RevisionGUID="56f9d5b5-bfde-40a7-8d6c-91e05f9396d8" CreationDate="2011-09-29T08:03:26.393" UserId="28950" Text="Can OP rollback the post if OP strongly feel rightly to do so? Is there a punishment for OP if he/she rollback his/her post?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5860" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2347" RevisionGUID="56f9d5b5-bfde-40a7-8d6c-91e05f9396d8" CreationDate="2011-09-29T08:03:26.393" UserId="28950" Text="Can OP rollback the post if OP strongly feel rightly to do so?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5861" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2347" RevisionGUID="56f9d5b5-bfde-40a7-8d6c-91e05f9396d8" CreationDate="2011-09-29T08:03:26.393" UserId="28950" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5862" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2348" RevisionGUID="72220938-cb11-41f0-b50a-c457771ab821" CreationDate="2011-09-29T08:11:10.063" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="You can rollback a post, but please realize that [Stack Exchange is collaboratively edited](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#editing): people can and will edit your posts to improve them and make them better comply with our rules and guidelines. If you're not comfortable with people editing your stuff in good faith, this might not be the site for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rollbacks should only be used when edits are done in bad faith (e.g. vandalism) or if the edits drastically change the meaning of your post without explanation. Otherwise, please try to resolve any issues in comments before resorting to a rollback: we will lock posts that devolve into edit warring." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5863" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2347" RevisionGUID="fc620f1d-e772-42d5-9a92-8fb19bd9a06a" CreationDate="2011-09-29T08:11:24.713" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5864" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2349" RevisionGUID="0a1ab12b-1e78-4f6e-87c6-0d6c9a7832a2" CreationDate="2011-09-29T08:13:58.987" UserId="47" Text="Usually there's no punishment. However, it all depends on why and how often you roll back edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All posts to Stack Exchange are made under the [cc-by-sa 3.0 license](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) that means that [other people can edit &quot;your&quot; stuff&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#editing) so if someone spots something they consider wrong in your post, they are able and, indeed encouraged, to correct it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, people should exercise caution over edits - especially to questions - that might change the meaning of the post. If you think this has happened then roll back explaining why. You might also want to double check your post for spelling and grammatical errors and check the formatting. These could be why someone started editing your post in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's not welcome is where two (or more) users engage in edit wars, rolling back each others edits. You also shouldn't roll back the automatically inserted text that gets inserted when a post is closed as a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think someone has maliciously edited one of your posts either flag it or raise it here on meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5865" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2344" RevisionGUID="5e85df9d-125a-4167-9ea6-9daa978333c1" CreationDate="2011-09-29T12:21:43.367" UserId="25635" Comment="added a screenshot" Text="I attempted to flag a question today. There were two radio buttons present which did **not** behave as radio buttons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clicking the flag question red confirmation button did nothing until a comment was put into the other textbox. However, no feedback was given to let me know that was necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Combined with the inappropriate use of the radio buttons, it took me several attempts to figure out how to flag the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Heading ##&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/WzSBP.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5866" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2350" RevisionGUID="1e64b0cf-40c6-4f69-bb3b-3d1f1a75ade4" CreationDate="2011-09-29T13:27:27.423" UserId="226" Text="Mark has covered the bases of why your question was considered not constructive by myself and 3 other community members, but I figured I'd come in and give you a definitive answer to the rest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, closing your question had nothing to do with your comment on meta. Two reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. To be honest, I didn't realize it was your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. I was never angry at your meta comment. I'm still very curious to find out what you actually meant by it, but it never made me angry. I don't know who told you that you've offended a mod, but they were wrong. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a hypothetical situation where I am angry or generally in a bad mood, I'm more likely to ask another moderator for a second opinion or take a break for a while until my mood improves." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5867" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2351" RevisionGUID="30d2f15f-17a9-43d0-a50e-04b44f8dc2e5" CreationDate="2011-09-29T14:13:32.947" UserId="4" Text="I'd volunteer as a proofreader and a writer. I'm not sure exactly what I'd write about or the frequency, but my interests are listed in my profile. I'm working on kicking off a personal blog which includes technical posts, so perhaps cross-posting relevant articles might be a possibility, although I'm not sure if that's acceptable. Otherwise, if I have a great idea or someone else wants a post on a subject that I'm strong in, I'd be glad to write about it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5868" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2204" RevisionGUID="c25cff3d-ea40-4b43-8ec2-cf787407932e" CreationDate="2011-09-29T16:02:21.830" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/119441896056700928" />
  <row Id="5869" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2352" RevisionGUID="d9b89e37-bad7-4ec0-b735-6da5f4d61004" CreationDate="2011-09-29T16:24:14.597" UserId="1973" Text="Just something to help you improve your question because I had almost considered sticking with XP because (until yesterday) I ran it from a VM out of linux. Now I've got win7.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One thing to ask is, how does having windows XP limit you as a programmer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me it was obvious - but not until I tried reinstalling Delphi XE2 for 64 bit compilation. But I didn't think of it at first and that's why this question ought to be improved and reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5879" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2099" RevisionGUID="38bae79e-c461-4d3a-8a71-ac6d6108503a" CreationDate="2011-09-29T18:17:27.823" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="Are software law questions off-topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5880" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2099" RevisionGUID="38bae79e-c461-4d3a-8a71-ac6d6108503a" CreationDate="2011-09-29T18:17:27.823" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|faq|legal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5881" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1655" RevisionGUID="299725ef-32f9-437e-9c0d-ee4b501d21e4" CreationDate="2011-09-29T18:17:42.517" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|legal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5882" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="516" RevisionGUID="84261d66-6b1e-4103-b620-140a7ec9ebb5" CreationDate="2011-09-29T18:21:24.430" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 32 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="What do I need to know to get the most out of this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5883" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="516" RevisionGUID="84261d66-6b1e-4103-b620-140a7ec9ebb5" CreationDate="2011-09-29T18:21:24.430" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 32 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="How do I get started with Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5884" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="516" RevisionGUID="84261d66-6b1e-4103-b620-140a7ec9ebb5" CreationDate="2011-09-29T18:21:24.430" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 32 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|faq|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5886" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2355" RevisionGUID="3ad91df1-60e2-45a3-a968-eaa31727765b" CreationDate="2011-09-30T00:53:48.153" UserId="34148" Text="Why not let the site force the user to enter a comment (of min. 20 chars.) when demoting an answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5887" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2355" RevisionGUID="3ad91df1-60e2-45a3-a968-eaa31727765b" CreationDate="2011-09-30T00:53:48.153" UserId="34148" Text="Why not force a comment when demoting an answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5888" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2355" RevisionGUID="3ad91df1-60e2-45a3-a968-eaa31727765b" CreationDate="2011-09-30T00:53:48.153" UserId="34148" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5889" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2355" RevisionGUID="cc841630-a3e6-4299-9f23-1ee3484f6e20" CreationDate="2011-09-30T01:02:52.147" UserId="34148" Comment="added 6 characters in body" Text="Why not let the site force the user to enter a comment (of min. 20 chars. or so) when demoting an answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5890" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2356" RevisionGUID="27011f1b-06aa-457a-bfbf-a05e7334c5b2" CreationDate="2011-09-30T01:13:02.260" UserId="226" Text="Anonymous voting is a key part of how Stack Exchange sites work. If we assume for a moment that you are not suggesting revealing the names along with the comments, forcing people to explain their downvotes still would not get you any usable information. Once you make those comments anonymous, you also take away any sort of accountability for content, so in most cases you'll end up with throwaway or gibberish comments like mine. (Although is intended specifically to illustrate the point.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been brought up many a time on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com). The [request to force anonymous commenting](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/6521/allow-users-to-leave-an-anonymous-comment-when-voting) was declined. [The request to encourage explanations](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votes) was implemented via a pop-up that every user sees when they downvote a question or an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5893" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2298" RevisionGUID="907bcdd7-2b23-4b97-8378-27b101941bb6" CreationDate="2011-09-30T14:58:32.630" UserId="33171" Comment="Can't just leave this open, now, can I?" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5894" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2357" RevisionGUID="86df88e7-a1eb-4056-af91-7831d011ad30" CreationDate="2011-09-30T15:00:46.140" UserId="33171" Text="Unfortunately, we cannot simply &quot;lock&quot; the tags from future use without obliterating them. It causes ruckus and befuddlement as a person will see that not only is a tag quite voluminous, but it is also available on the tag suggestion list, and yet if they try to use it, they are barred.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll be following this up with a new question detailing what we *could* do to tackle this massive tag job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm very much not a dog person, anyway." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5895" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2358" RevisionGUID="c347603e-89f3-4352-9a8a-191e230eb1a5" CreationDate="2011-09-30T15:06:29.143" UserId="33171" Text="We can’t perform the operation [requested here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2298/blacklist-career-and-jobs), that is, blacklist [tag:career] and [tag:jobs] while still leaving the tags present on the site. We have some suggestions on what could be done as an alternative, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Nuke The Tags&#xD;&#xA;Simply put, obliterate the tag. I’m aware that the previous request was to explicitly not destroy the tag, but it remains a simple, direct, and potent form of action. It’s swift and easy to do - simply need to grab a dev and get it done. It is also instantaneous, taking no time. And it gets the most important aspect of the job done: the prevention of future questions with this tag. The cleanup afterwards is just to remove [tag:untagged] from a much smaller portion of questions remaining. Without a doubt, the fastest option available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not without fault, though, the main issue being that it erases all traces of the tag. There may be several questions which had other tags, yet may have benefited from additional retagging. The ease of finding these questions would be lost.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Plot The Disambiguation&#xD;&#xA;Rather than obliterate the tag as a first step, an alternate route is to work through the existing tag, without performing any retags but instead plotting out how the disambiguation would work out. This would entail collecting links of all the questions, and organizing them into discrete groups of similar properties, so that the consequent retagging job is highly organized. An organized set of links to all the posts would allow for the tag to be safely removed from all instances without inhibiting the ability to revisit them; it would also allow for the merits of any particular retag direction to be discussed and fine-tuned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the minus side, it is an extensive amount of work to perform, perhaps the most time-consuming option available. Assuming it is done merely as a side task rather than a focused effort of hours at a time, merely running through a handful of questions, cataloging their links into appropriate groups, it will take a team of users several days to tackle 1100 questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Use A Dummy Tag&#xD;&#xA;This is [what Seasoned Advice did](http://meta.cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/970/discouraging-the-proliferation-of-bad-tags-proposal) when they had to deal with the likewise horrible [cooking-techniques] and [ingredients] tags that were just easily misunderstood, ambiguous, and waaaay too widespread across their site. They created a new tag, [please-remove-this-tag], which all of the bad tags were renamed to. This gave them the ability to take their time with the retag effort while preventing the bad tags from resurfacing during that time period.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is similar to the previous suggestion, but exchanges the high level of organization for a much faster execution. The immediacy of the renaming will prevent future tag instances much sooner, while still preserving the access to all the questions. It is, however, a bit clunky in appearance, and users may be confused by the presence of a tag which requests its own removal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are the current options on the table. There may be better tools available in the future, but dilly-dallying until those tools are available is just going to let those tags continue to grow, festering like a fetid pile of compost salad." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5896" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2358" RevisionGUID="c347603e-89f3-4352-9a8a-191e230eb1a5" CreationDate="2011-09-30T15:06:29.143" UserId="33171" Text="Offering Solutions to the Career and Jobs Tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5897" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2358" RevisionGUID="c347603e-89f3-4352-9a8a-191e230eb1a5" CreationDate="2011-09-30T15:06:29.143" UserId="33171" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5900" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2359" RevisionGUID="8e544bf5-d809-49b6-bfb1-79fb93679b5d" CreationDate="2011-09-30T15:14:41.337" UserId="28950" Text="I understand that questions and answers on programmers.stackexchange.com can be edited. My question are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is that true that user profile information too can be edited without the user knowledge/consent?&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA; 2. Who and under what circumstances that user profile information can be edited?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5901" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2359" RevisionGUID="8e544bf5-d809-49b6-bfb1-79fb93679b5d" CreationDate="2011-09-30T15:14:41.337" UserId="28950" Text="Under what circumstances, a user profile information will be modified by the people other than the user himself?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5902" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2359" RevisionGUID="8e544bf5-d809-49b6-bfb1-79fb93679b5d" CreationDate="2011-09-30T15:14:41.337" UserId="28950" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5903" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2360" RevisionGUID="e7d7d523-12b9-40ab-84db-cb8dde3cea52" CreationDate="2011-09-30T15:17:49.413" UserId="47" Text="Those people with diamonds after their names (moderators and Stack Exchange employees) can modify user profiles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is very rarely done (I've only done it once on a dummy account we use for spammers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for why it might be done there could be any number of reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Profanity&#xD;&#xA;2. Not Safe For Work images&#xD;&#xA;3. Links to malware sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;are the ones that spring to mind immediately. But there could be others - it would have to be looked at on a case by case basis." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5904" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2358" RevisionGUID="a42831c8-d2c0-4ebc-b199-8645628e3df0" CreationDate="2011-09-30T15:27:44.483" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5905" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2361" RevisionGUID="2aec25c7-0fbf-4724-bc30-a45e5df4e40a" CreationDate="2011-09-30T15:32:07.577" UserId="2654" Text="I like the dummy tag idea. Would be very noticeable and easy to lump all general “bad” questions together." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5906" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2359" RevisionGUID="56fb9f49-d250-4b5a-a634-44153541db29" CreationDate="2011-09-30T15:43:23.230" UserId="47" Comment="2" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5907" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="2359" RevisionGUID="af16d7d0-5993-497a-b618-6a2b7f11998a" CreationDate="2011-09-30T15:44:06.863" UserId="47" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5908" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="2359" RevisionGUID="709103f2-3939-43af-b406-39027db50663" CreationDate="2011-09-30T15:44:46.397" UserId="226" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:226,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Anna Lear&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5909" PostHistoryTypeId="11" PostId="2359" RevisionGUID="4717f2e8-c4b5-4878-a8cd-49e9ff12e6f3" CreationDate="2011-09-30T15:45:06.583" UserId="226" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:226,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Anna Lear&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5910" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2357" RevisionGUID="b09664b4-bf92-4d49-9498-51709bd4459c" CreationDate="2011-09-30T15:54:32.050" UserId="63" Comment="added 117 characters in body" Text="Unfortunately, we cannot simply &quot;lock&quot; the tags from future use without obliterating them. It causes ruckus and befuddlement as a person will see that not only is a tag quite voluminous, but it is also available on the tag suggestion list, and yet if they try to use it, they are barred.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've [followed this up with a new question][1] detailing what we *could* do to tackle this massive tag job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm very much not a dog person, anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5911" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2362" RevisionGUID="7479dcc6-afc7-48df-9f9d-042186ce49c5" CreationDate="2011-09-30T16:22:20.357" UserId="4" Text="The only problem with just nuking the tag is that there's no opportunity to apply appropriate tags. Instead, I would recommend changing the tag description to mention it's depricated and put the list of appropriate related tags that should be used in the tag wiki, begin working through all of the questions with that tag to remove it and tag them appropriately, then blacklist the tag when all is said and done." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5912" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2363" RevisionGUID="a5a84bcd-5642-4a87-98fa-bf6e4e9909f9" CreationDate="2011-09-30T16:23:13.143" UserId="28950" Text="What should an OP do if his question on programmers.stackexchange.com being locked by a moderator?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5913" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2363" RevisionGUID="a5a84bcd-5642-4a87-98fa-bf6e4e9909f9" CreationDate="2011-09-30T16:23:13.143" UserId="28950" Text="What should an OP do if his post being locked indefinitely?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5914" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2363" RevisionGUID="a5a84bcd-5642-4a87-98fa-bf6e4e9909f9" CreationDate="2011-09-30T16:23:13.143" UserId="28950" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5915" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2364" RevisionGUID="664d9ece-9c95-4d71-b4dc-d9ad0936eb23" CreationDate="2011-09-30T16:25:19.700" UserId="47" Text="You have several options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;0. Stop doing whatever you were doing that resulted in the question being locked.&#xD;&#xA;1. Flag the post for moderator attention. One of the other moderators can then review the decision.&#xD;&#xA;2. Raise a question here on meta - with a link to the question concerned so we know what you are talking about.&#xD;&#xA;3. E-mail &quot;team+meta.programmers@stackexchange.com&quot; with your issue. This isn't seen by the moderators so you can say what you like about us ;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5916" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2365" RevisionGUID="9d09a9eb-fd3e-4633-b16f-744a6c43c4e9" CreationDate="2011-09-30T16:35:38.753" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="While it sucks we can't get them blacklisted, I'm pretty sure we've already ruled out the &quot;nuke the tags&quot; and &quot;use a dummy tag&quot; options, and we're trying to deal with &quot;disambiguate the tags&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Iteration the first: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/work-job-career-development-employment-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Iteration the second:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Aaronaught's answer on http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While those questions started with thinking we could merge everything into career and sort out the rest, in both iterations, the idea of merging them into one giant supercrap tag was considered to be worse than leaving the tags as they are while we sort through and disamiguate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nuking the tag seems to be the worst of these options: while we'd have lower number of questions with onerous tags on them, we'd have several hundred questions with no career-related tag floating out there, without any way to track them. It &quot;solves&quot; the problem of the tag being available to users &lt; 1,500 rep, but it doesn't actually deal with the questions or tag them correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And like Rebecca mentioned in her comment, [please-remove-this-tag] doesn't seem to be a great user experience either, and I don't see how synonymizing tags to it would be any less disruptive to users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a problem with 1,300 questions whether they're called [tag:career], [tag:jobs], [tag:please-remove-this-tag], [tag:untagged]: it's still going to take many manhours and months to fix. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these are only three options, &quot;disambiguate the tags&quot;, which [we've been doing since July](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup), still seems to be the best way to approach this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5917" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2366" RevisionGUID="d89a164f-dd23-418a-89c9-792a5b5282f0" CreationDate="2011-09-30T16:36:14.587" UserId="4609" Text="Study the FAQ, examine the close reasons, and figure out what you need to do differently in order not to run afoul of the site standards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A complaint without even a link to the problem question isn't helpful. It doesn't give us anything to work with to help you! " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5918" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2365" RevisionGUID="12ac7cad-9509-415d-8d00-2a49b51f60d2" CreationDate="2011-09-30T16:48:27.640" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 112 characters in body" Text="While it sucks we can't get them blacklisted, I'm pretty sure we've already ruled out the &quot;nuke the tags&quot; and &quot;use a dummy tag&quot; options, and we're trying to deal with &quot;disambiguate the tags&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Iteration the first: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/work-job-career-development-employment-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Iteration the second:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Aaronaught's answer on http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While those questions started with thinking we could merge everything into career and sort out the rest, in both iterations, the idea of merging them into one giant supercrap tag was considered to be worse than leaving the tags as they are while we sort through and disamiguate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nuking the tag seems to be the worst of these options: while we'd have lower number of questions with onerous tags on them, we'd have several hundred questions with no career-related tag floating out there, without any way to track them. It &quot;solves&quot; the problem of the tag being available to users &lt; 1,500 rep, but it doesn't actually deal with the questions or tag them correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rebecca mentioned in her comment, having [please-remove-this-tag] doesn't seem to be a great user experience either, and I don't see how synonymizing tags to it would be any less disruptive to users. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if we can just rename [tag:jobs] and [tag:career] (which have been used interchangeably anyway), it'd get people to stop using those tags while still leaving us with the questions to deal with.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;We have a problem with 1,300 questions that's going to take many manhours and months to fix whether they're called [tag:career], [tag:jobs], [tag:please-remove-this-tag], [tag:untagged]. If these are our options, I'd be okay with renaming the tags to [tag:please-remove-this-tag] and working through that tag in the same manner as we've been doing.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5919" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2365" RevisionGUID="7456f974-3eef-41e0-b006-0870e66b6782" CreationDate="2011-09-30T16:54:14.730" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 112 characters in body" Text="While it sucks we can't get them blacklisted, I'm pretty sure we've already ruled out the &quot;nuke the tags&quot; and &quot;use a dummy tag&quot; options, and we're trying to deal with &quot;disambiguate the tags&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Iteration the first: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/work-job-career-development-employment-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Iteration the second:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Aaronaught's answer on http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While those questions started with thinking we could merge everything into career and sort out the rest, in both iterations, the idea of merging them into one giant supercrap tag was considered to be worse than leaving the tags as they are while we sort through and disamiguate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nuking the tag seems to be the worst of these options: while we'd have lower number of questions with onerous tags on them, we'd have several hundred questions with no career-related tag floating out there, without any way to track them. It &quot;solves&quot; the problem of the tag being available to users &lt; 1,500 rep, but it doesn't actually deal with the questions or tag them correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rebecca mentioned in her comment, having [please-remove-this-tag] doesn't seem to be a great user experience either, and I don't see how synonymizing tags to it would be any less disruptive to users. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we can just rename [jobs] and [career] (which have been used interchangeably anyway), it'd get people to stop using those tags while still leaving us with the questions to deal with, but it's still not ideal and has its own set of problems: namely that [please-remove-this-tag] becomes the most-used tag, being on about 1 out of every 10 existing questions.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;We have a problem with 1,300 questions that's going to take many manhours and months to fix whether they're called [career], [jobs], [please-remove-this-tag], [untagged]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these are our only options, disambiguating the tags as we've been doing still seems to be the least onerous of the three. I'd be okay with renaming the tags to [please-remove-this-tag] and working through that tag in the same manner as we've been doing, but I don't see how that's any less disruptive to the user experience than just blacklisting [career] and [jobs].&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5920" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2365" RevisionGUID="5171ec9e-9c93-4082-a03c-2477fd33a4e7" CreationDate="2011-09-30T16:59:44.940" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 112 characters in body" Text="While it sucks we can't get them blacklisted, I'm pretty sure we've already ruled out the &quot;nuke the tags&quot; and &quot;use a dummy tag&quot; options, and we're trying to deal with &quot;disambiguate the tags&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Iteration the first: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/work-job-career-development-employment-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Iteration the second:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Aaronaught's answer on http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While those questions started with thinking we could merge everything into career and sort out the rest, in both iterations, the idea of merging them into one giant supercrap tag was considered to be worse than leaving the tags as they are while we sort through and disamiguate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nuking the tag seems to be the worst of these options: while we'd have lower number of questions with onerous tags on them, we'd have several hundred questions with no career-related tag floating out there, without any way to track them. It &quot;solves&quot; the problem of the tag being available to users &lt; 1,500 rep, but it doesn't actually deal with the questions or tag them correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rebecca mentioned in her comment, having [please-remove-this-tag] doesn't seem to be a great user experience either, and I don't see how synonymizing tags to it would be any less disruptive to users. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we can just rename [jobs] and [career] (which have been used interchangeably anyway), it'd get people to stop using those tags while still leaving us with the questions to deal with, but it's still not ideal and has its own set of problems: namely that [please-remove-this-tag] becomes the most-used tag, being on about 1 out of every 10 existing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a bit bikesheddy, but calling it [please-remove-this-tag] seems to be counterproductive: if people see the tag and have no idea about the disambiguation process, they'll do what the tag says: remove it. It becomes a slower version of the &quot;nuke the tags&quot; option. Not sure what else it could be called to clue people into it being a tag you shouldn't use and you shouldn't just remove without replacing it with one of the approved career-related tags.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;We have a problem with 1,300 questions that's going to take many manhours and months to fix whether they're called [career], [jobs], [please-remove-this-tag], [untagged]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these are our only options, disambiguating the tags as we've been doing still seems to be the least onerous of the three. I'd be okay with renaming the tags to some master crap tag and working through that tag in the same manner as we've been doing, but I don't see how that's any less disruptive to the user experience than just blacklisting [career] and [jobs].&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5921" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2365" RevisionGUID="3788c7af-1ff7-437f-a955-b20dba244341" CreationDate="2011-09-30T17:16:23.697" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 593 characters in body" Text="While it sucks we can't get them blacklisted, I'm pretty sure we've already ruled out the &quot;nuke the tags&quot; and &quot;use a dummy tag&quot; options, and we're trying to deal with &quot;disambiguate the tags&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Iteration the first: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/work-job-career-development-employment-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Iteration the second:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Aaronaught's answer on http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While those questions started with thinking we could merge everything into career and sort out the rest, in both iterations, the idea of merging them into one giant supercrap tag was considered to be worse than leaving the tags as they are while we sort through and disamiguate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nuking the tag seems to be the worst of these options: while we'd have lower number of questions with onerous tags on them, we'd have several hundred questions with no career-related tag floating out there, without any way to track them. It &quot;solves&quot; the problem of the tag being available to users &lt; 1,500 rep, but it doesn't actually deal with the questions or tag them correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rebecca mentioned in her comment, having [please-remove-this-tag] doesn't seem to be a great user experience either, and I don't see how synonymizing tags to it would be any less disruptive to users. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we can just rename [jobs] and [career] (which have been used interchangeably anyway), it'd get people to stop using those tags while still leaving us with the questions to deal with, but it's still not ideal and has its own set of problems: namely that [please-remove-this-tag] becomes the most-used tag, being on about 1 out of every 10 existing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a bit bikesheddy, but calling it [please-remove-this-tag] seems to be counterproductive: if people see the tag and have no idea about the disambiguation process, they'll do what the tag says: remove it. It becomes a slower version of the &quot;nuke the tags&quot; option. Not sure what else it could be called to clue people into it being a tag you shouldn't use and you shouldn't just remove without replacing it with one of the approved career-related tags.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;We have a problem with 1,300 questions that's going to take many manhours and months to fix whether they're called [career], [jobs], [please-remove-this-tag], [untagged]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these are our only options, disambiguating the tags as we've been doing still seems to be the least onerous of the three. I'd be okay with renaming the tags to some master crap tag and working through that tag in the same manner as we've been doing, but I don't see how that's any less disruptive to the user experience than just blacklisting [career] and [jobs].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Addendum&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Talking with Aaronaught about the Seasoned Advice cleanups, they were only working with 150-200 questions, which is a lot of questions, but a fraction of the problem set we have. It is, however, close to the number of [jobs] questions we currently have: 245. There are also 92 [jobs] questions tagged with [career].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we did the rename *just* for [jobs] for now, we'd at least collapse this problem down to one tag. Removing the 92 questions from the [career] pile would bring the total number questions left to be dealt with through only disambiguation  down to 1,000." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5923" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2345" RevisionGUID="25709dd3-3ea8-4990-b9b6-a9f5deb1daf7" CreationDate="2011-09-30T18:49:10.067" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 392 characters in body" Text="This is the flag dialog box:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Flag dialog box][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you select one of the flag reasons (e.g. &quot;it needs moderator attention&quot;), the dialog then asks you why it needs moderation attention:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* very low quality&#xD;&#xA;* other reason (with a requirement to specify what's wrong)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, there are two levels of radio options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Select the reason you're flagging the question&#xD;&#xA;2. Explain why you're flagging it for that reason&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is marked by the second level of radio options being inset from the first level. Indentation is a common way to denote hierarchy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason for this hierarchy is so we know why you think the post needs moderator attention. Otherwise, we don't know what we're supposed to do with the flag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Addendum&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason you don't see &quot;very low quality&quot; and why you see the odd, two-level-one-radio-button-each UI, is because you're flagging a post that was closed. &quot;Very low quality&quot; won't be acted upon with a closed post, so it's disabled.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's unlikely the two-level radio button system would be changed, but it should at least select &quot;Other&quot; when there are no other options.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/9BIXq.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5924" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2344" RevisionGUID="4419aa86-f11a-486e-8ed5-fb4d90ab6495" CreationDate="2011-09-30T18:52:28.687" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="Multi-level radio buttons for only one flag option is confusing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5925" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2344" RevisionGUID="4419aa86-f11a-486e-8ed5-fb4d90ab6495" CreationDate="2011-09-30T18:52:28.687" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|feature-request|flagging|user-interface|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5926" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2363" RevisionGUID="b39f0c39-1b10-4525-befa-110d88048303" CreationDate="2011-09-30T18:54:46.873" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|moderation|locking|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5927" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2355" RevisionGUID="727d5500-a99c-4f41-b7b1-b161ec76faf9" CreationDate="2011-09-30T18:55:53.737" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="Why not force a comment when down-voting an answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5928" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2355" RevisionGUID="727d5500-a99c-4f41-b7b1-b161ec76faf9" CreationDate="2011-09-30T18:55:53.737" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|feature-request|voting|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5929" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2345" RevisionGUID="7c613ccf-3680-4c43-addd-89372df03d2a" CreationDate="2011-09-30T19:01:43.040" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 62 characters in body" Text="This is the flag dialog box:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Flag dialog box][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you select one of the flag reasons (e.g. &quot;it needs moderator attention&quot;), the dialog then asks you why it needs moderation attention:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* very low quality&#xD;&#xA;* other reason (with a requirement to specify what's wrong)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, there are two levels of radio options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Select the reason you're flagging the question&#xD;&#xA;2. Explain why you're flagging it for that reason&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is marked by the second level of radio options being inset from the first level. Indentation is a common way to denote hierarchy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason for this hierarchy is so we know why you think the post needs moderator attention. Otherwise, we don't know what we're supposed to do with the flag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Addendum&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason you don't see &quot;very low quality&quot; and why you see the odd, two-level-one-radio-button-each UI, is because you're flagging your own post. &quot;Very low quality&quot; doesn't make sense in that context, because if you think your question is very low quality, you shouldn't have asked it. :P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's unlikely the two-level radio button system would be changed, but it should at least auto-select &quot;Other&quot; when there are no other options.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/9BIXq.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5930" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2367" RevisionGUID="eb941781-d5b5-4eb6-8d64-f58d52727c67" CreationDate="2011-09-30T19:06:39.810" UserId="226" Text="Building a list of questions for disambiguation without doing the retagging at the same time sounds absolutely horrifying. We have over 1,000 questions that we have to set straight and I can't imagine how collecting and categorizing links to them is going to be anything but a painful and error-prone process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that, I think the &quot;plot the disambiguation&quot; option should go right off the table. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using a dummy tag would only solve a part of the problem. We'd still have to manually retag 1,000+ questions without destroying the front page. At the rate of about 10 questions a day, we can get through that in about 3-4 months. I don't think it makes a huge difference whether we go through a dummy tag or the real ones. New questions that use these tags can be retagged almost immediately, so they shouldn't hugely contribute to drowning the front page -- new questions should already be there anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in my mind, we have two options left:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Do what we've been doing;&#xD;&#xA;2. Delete the tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I kind of favour option 2. It would get the problematic tags off the table quickly. It would break the problem up into smaller, more manageable parts. We'll have some [tag:untagged] questions to deal with and some smaller problematic tags, but overall it should be a far less intimidating and an easier-to-coordinate endeavour. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If nuking the tags also includes blacklisting them to prevent their re-introduction, then I'm definitely in favour of that option." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5931" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1963" RevisionGUID="18594772-cb16-45c1-93a4-0d2bc2483e78" CreationDate="2011-09-30T19:25:45.997" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 322 characters in body" Text="We [discussed](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career) merging [tag:career] and [tag:jobs], but now it's time to put a plan into action. [Aaronut's plan](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952) is great, but we need some help from the *posse*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 1: Clean up the tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are currently several job-related tags that need people to go through and flag or vote to close questions that are no longer (or were never) on-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Jobs: [tag:jobs], [tag:job-market], [tag:new-job], [tag:job-definition], [tag:job-title], [tag:job-hunting], [tag:job-satisfaction], [tag:job-distance], [tag:job-retention], [tag:hpc-jobs], [tag:scientific-computing-jobs]&#xD;&#xA;* Career: [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;* Employment: [tag:employment], [tag:employer], [tag:employers], [tag:self-employment]&#xD;&#xA;* Business: [tag:business], [tag:business-process], [tag:business-logic], [tag:business-rules], [tag:business-analysis], [tag:business-it]&#xD;&#xA;* Other: [tag:interview], [tag:hiring], [tag:project-management], [tag:teamwork]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* When you're done cleaning up a tag, post an answer here that you've finished so others know to prioritize other tags. &#xD;&#xA;* When in doubt about a question, create a new question here on meta instead of flagging so the community can decide if a question is a keeper.&#xD;&#xA;* Start with the oldest questions first: our really old questions have a high likelihood of no longer meeting the site's guidelines, and are what are in most need of cleanup. We have plenty of time to deal with the newer stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 2: Reorganize the survivors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We need to have a set of workable tags and tag synonyms, and any question that survived the purging needs to be edited to include those tags and improved in any way possible. [Aaronut's guidelines](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952) are pretty good, so let's go with them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-development] for questions that are about developing your career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] for questions about the prospects of getting a *new* job.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-satisfaction] for questions about work/life balance, creating better workspaces, etc.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-advancement] and also [tag:teamwork] for questions about excelling in one's current position.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:project-management] and/or [tag:employee-relations] and/or [tag:business] for employer-focused questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you have to deviate from the list above, **favor tag suffixes**: the system allows us to use wildcards in tag preferences, so [tag:jobs-foo] is preferable to [tag:foo-jobs].&#xD;&#xA;* **Spread out the organization.** Every time you edit a long-dead question to retag it, it bumps it back to the front page. Retagging 20+ questions at the same time kills the front-page usability for the rest of the visitors.&#xD;&#xA;* **Start with the oldest questions first.** Our really old questions have a high likelihood of no longer meeting the site's guidelines, and are what are in most need of cleanup. We have plenty of time to deal with the newer stuff.&#xD;&#xA;* **Request tag synonyms** by creating a question here on meta. This is especially important when a tag is organized out of existence (i.e. all the questions that had a tag have had that tag removed in favor of something else).&#xD;&#xA;* **Don't bump questions you don't intend to see reopened.** This is going to be disruptive without bumping a ton of questions that don't belong here anyway. If you can save a question by substantially editing it, by all means do that, but if a question is just bad and already closed, at most just flag it for deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 3: Burnination&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once all the good questions have been properly organized, we can go through the [normal clean-up process](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning) of deleting old, off-topic stuff." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5932" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2368" RevisionGUID="ea2b46f6-6708-43af-acc3-266218c21785" CreationDate="2011-09-30T19:41:51.687" UserId="27253" Text="I asked this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/111530/is-c-harder-to-learn-use-than-other-languages and it was promptly closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, that's fine. But judging from the comments, it was seen as being anti-C++, and basically a rant. That really wasn't what i was aiming for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I want to know is if C++ programmers find C++ harder to program in than, for example, Java. (If so, I can presume that there are benefits that make it worth the difficulty.) Alternatively, do the C++ idioms make C++ just as easy to program in as Java, once you get to know them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically: Harder, or just Different?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can I ask this in a way that makes it a useful question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5933" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2368" RevisionGUID="ea2b46f6-6708-43af-acc3-266218c21785" CreationDate="2011-09-30T19:41:51.687" UserId="27253" Text="How can I repair my question so that it's appropriate" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5934" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2368" RevisionGUID="ea2b46f6-6708-43af-acc3-266218c21785" CreationDate="2011-09-30T19:41:51.687" UserId="27253" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5935" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2369" RevisionGUID="698ab176-48ec-4c77-aaa7-1d8d72759df1" CreationDate="2011-09-30T19:46:42.530" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I'd suggest reading [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/), which goes into the problems of trying to compare two like things without any context or demonstrable problem:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  The asker must contribute a bit more work beyond the title, too. We expect questions to do some basic research before even asking. Did you spend time with both features on both sites? Did you compare and contrast them yourself? What are others saying? Share your research! And most critically, give us context. Explain why you’re looking at this, and what you mean by “better” — clicks to share, discoverability, design, and so forth. Put yourself in the shoes of the people you hope will answer. Have you given them enough guidance and specifics so they know how to reasonably answer your question in, say, 15 minutes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically, make the question less about the answerers opinions and more about the answerers's ability to solve your specific, practical problem. &quot;Is C++ harder than Java?&quot; is an incredibly broad and loaded topic: every answerer is going to interpret that differently unless you make sure you specify how, exactly, you want it answered and what problem is solved by answering it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5936" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2368" RevisionGUID="c3c78d98-3d80-4b98-9f11-c2783723efda" CreationDate="2011-09-30T19:50:54.363" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Specific title, tagging" Text="How can I make my question about whether C++ is harder to learn more appropriate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5937" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2368" RevisionGUID="c3c78d98-3d80-4b98-9f11-c2783723efda" CreationDate="2011-09-30T19:50:54.363" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Specific title, tagging" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5938" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2369" RevisionGUID="057dc91a-1713-4a58-a5dd-ef7b787d6b8e" CreationDate="2011-09-30T19:51:54.863" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="I'd suggest reading [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/), which goes into the problems of trying to compare two like things without any context or demonstrable problem:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  The asker must contribute a bit more work beyond the title, too. We expect questions to do some basic research before even asking. Did you spend time with both features on both sites? Did you compare and contrast them yourself? What are others saying? Share your research! And most critically, give us context. Explain why you’re looking at this, and what you mean by “better” — clicks to share, discoverability, design, and so forth. Put yourself in the shoes of the people you hope will answer. Have you given them enough guidance and specifics so they know how to reasonably answer your question in, say, 15 minutes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Is C++ harder than Java?&quot; is an incredibly broad and loaded topic: every answerer is going to interpret that differently unless you make sure you specify how, exactly, you want it answered and what problem is solved by answering it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically, make the question less about the answerers' opinions and more about getting an answer to the underlying problem that has you comparing C++ to other languages. Why does knowing whether it's harder to learn matter for you? Ask about that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5939" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2365" RevisionGUID="8b719500-e609-4aad-8c9a-7eee9820042c" CreationDate="2011-09-30T20:01:29.697" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Clarify I in no way support relisting each and every one of the 1,300 questions" Text="While it sucks we can't get them blacklisted, I'm pretty sure we've already ruled out the &quot;nuke the tags&quot; and &quot;use a dummy tag&quot; options, and we've already had stabs at disambiguating the tags (without enumerating every single question):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Iteration the first: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/work-job-career-development-employment-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Iteration the second:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Aaronaught's answer on http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While those questions started with thinking we could merge everything into career and sort out the rest, in both iterations, the idea of merging them into one giant supercrap tag was considered to be worse than leaving the tags as they are while we sort through and disamiguate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Nuke the tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nuking the tag seems to be the worst of these options: while we'd have lower number of questions with onerous tags on them, we'd have several hundred questions with no career-related tag floating out there, without any way to track them. It &quot;solves&quot; the problem of the tag being available to users &lt; 1,500 rep, but it doesn't actually deal with the questions or tag them correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Disambiguate the tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We already have lists of tags that need dealing with: the tag pages. We need people to use their best judgement while working through those tags to clean them up. That's what we're currently doing. Manually relisting all the questions in the tags just to avoid a blacklist seems to me to be a non-starter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Rename the tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rebecca mentioned in her comment, having [please-remove-this-tag] doesn't seem to be a great user experience either, and I don't see how synonymizing tags to it would be any less disruptive to users. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we can just rename [jobs] and [career] (which have been used interchangeably anyway), it'd get people to stop using those tags while still leaving us with the questions to deal with, but it's still not ideal and has its own set of problems: namely that [please-remove-this-tag] becomes the most-used tag, being on about 1 out of every 10 existing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a bit bikesheddy, but calling it [please-remove-this-tag] seems to be counterproductive: if people see the tag and have no idea about the disambiguation process, they'll do what the tag says: remove it. It becomes a slower version of the &quot;nuke the tags&quot; option. Not sure what else it could be called to clue people into it being a tag you shouldn't use and you shouldn't just remove without replacing it with one of the approved career-related tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;We have a problem with 1,300 questions that's going to take many manhours and months to fix whether they're called [career], [jobs], [please-remove-this-tag], [untagged]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these are our only options, disambiguating the tags on the flay—as we've been doing—still seems to be the least onerous of the three. I'd be okay with renaming the tags to some master crap tag and working through that tag in the same manner as we've been doing, but I don't see how that's any less disruptive to the user experience than just blacklisting [career] and [jobs].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Addendum&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Talking with Aaronaught about the Seasoned Advice cleanups, they were only working with 150-200 questions, which is a lot of questions, but a fraction of the problem set we have. It is, however, close to the number of [jobs] questions we currently have: 245. There are also 92 [jobs] questions tagged with [career].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we did the rename *just* for [jobs] for now, we'd at least collapse this problem down to one tag. Removing the 92 questions from the [career] pile would bring the total number questions left to be dealt with through only disambiguation  down to 1,000." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5940" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2358" RevisionGUID="f49553ca-bf2d-4fb1-ab34-6e029a53170c" CreationDate="2011-10-01T04:02:26.450" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/119985494951075840" />
  <row Id="5941" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2370" RevisionGUID="02a92071-b118-491e-8c73-6dd689c40afb" CreationDate="2011-10-01T05:05:56.340" UserId="902" Text="I think first and foremost, you need to supply enough context for it to be *a* question. As-is, it's an open-ended family of questions. Basically, you could think of every language to which you might compare C++ as a plane. That plane has tasks defining one dimension, and programmers with differing backgrounds (and, to some extent, comfort with various abstractions and such) in the other dimension.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I mentioned in my comment, it also depends a great deal upon what you mean by &quot;learn&quot; (for one example) -- whether you mean learning enough to use the language reasonably productively, or language lawyer-level expertise (and believe me, in the case of C++ those aren't even remotely similar.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That leaves us with an essentially infinite volume, with each point in the volume defining a single question to which there's a reasonable-sized set of answers that stand a chance of being meaningful (even if they are, to a least some extent, still subjective).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect, however, that you'll run into a bit of a problem: once you've really defined the parameters of the question, you'll run into one of two things: either you've defined a comparison that really does fit the Gorilla vs. Shark description @Mark Trapp gave, or else you'll have defined a comparison for which the answer is almost blindingly obvious. There may be a *few* for which a meaningful, thoughtful comparison is possible, but my initial guess is that they will be few and far between." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5942" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2371" RevisionGUID="b45981c6-1f36-4c00-98fb-7881e93ffc82" CreationDate="2011-10-01T22:01:40.487" UserId="1996" Text="@Mark Trapp marked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [what do i need to learn in order to get an entry level asp.net job?][1]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; as a duplicate of&#xD;&#xA; - [If you develop with ASP.NET, which other technologies do you use?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions aren't even close!&#xD;&#xA;They're asking two completely different things!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/111881/what-do-i-need-to-learn-in-order-to-get-an-entry-level-asp-net-job&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66389/if-you-develop-with-asp-net-which-other-technologies-do-you-use" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5943" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2371" RevisionGUID="b45981c6-1f36-4c00-98fb-7881e93ffc82" CreationDate="2011-10-01T22:01:40.487" UserId="1996" Text="A Duplicate? Seriously?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5944" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2371" RevisionGUID="b45981c6-1f36-4c00-98fb-7881e93ffc82" CreationDate="2011-10-01T22:01:40.487" UserId="1996" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5945" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2372" RevisionGUID="cfde80f1-3889-4658-9e2a-c46380d4a9f1" CreationDate="2011-10-02T02:54:35.763" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="First question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I wanted to know how much C#, SQL, CSS, XHTML, Javascript and/or jQuery I need to learn in order to have a chance of getting an entry level ASP.NET job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm a Microsoft developer, so I'm going to use ASP.NET. I'm familiar with how the web technologies work at a high level, I sort of understand what Javascript can do, I get AJAX (conceptually). CSS and HTML seem ugly but I get what they're for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As an ASP.NET developer do you find yourself working directly with Javascript or HTML? Does AJAX get abstracted away neatly or do you find yourself doing that stuff &quot;by hand&quot;? Are there any other technologies you use?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They're asking exactly the same thing: getting into ASP.NET, need to know what other technologies you need to know to do it properly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If they aren't asking the same, I suggest revising the question—with the original poster's consent—to ask something besides &quot;What other things do I need to know to do ASP.NET?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5946" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2373" RevisionGUID="7dc29a19-5ebc-4208-b794-7520c1a7d302" CreationDate="2011-10-02T04:55:27.673" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="While we [continue our work on cleaning up the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup), I thought I'd bring up the next tag clean-up project: killing the catch-all tags that could be applied to every question on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through the first two pages of tags, these include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-languages] (773 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:learning] (616 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:best-practices] (538 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-development] (308 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:recommendations] (138 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:advice] (135 questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I'm bringing these up now instead of waiting for the first project to complete is that I believe we can exercise the first option—[presented earlier for the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags)—on these tags: nuke them from orbit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, these tags can be applied to every single question on the site. Disambiguating these tags would entail replacing them with *anything else*, not simply a set of pre-defined disambiguation targets. With these tags, we're no better off if they're untagged or left tagged: they tell us nothing about the content of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you think? Is this a good idea, or is there a better way to approach killing these tags? Are there tags that should be on the list but aren't? Is there a serious case to be made for taking tags *off* this list?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5947" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2373" RevisionGUID="7dc29a19-5ebc-4208-b794-7520c1a7d302" CreationDate="2011-10-02T04:55:27.673" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Should we nuke the catch-all tags?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5948" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2373" RevisionGUID="7dc29a19-5ebc-4208-b794-7520c1a7d302" CreationDate="2011-10-02T04:55:27.673" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5949" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2373" RevisionGUID="0dd54988-8e8a-40c0-aa72-bc122ffef79c" CreationDate="2011-10-02T05:01:07.117" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 475 characters in body" Text="While we [continue our work on cleaning up the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup), I thought I'd bring up the next tag clean-up project: killing the catch-all tags that could be applied to every question on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through the first two pages of tags, these include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-languages] (773 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:learning] (616 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:best-practices] (538 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-development] (308 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-engineering] (188 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:recommendations] (138 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:advice] (135 questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I'm bringing these up now instead of waiting for the first project to complete is that I believe we can exercise the first option—[presented earlier for the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags)—on these tags: nuke them from orbit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, these tags can be applied to every single question on the site. Disambiguating these tags would entail replacing them with *anything else*, not simply a set of pre-defined disambiguation targets. With these tags, we're no better off if they're untagged or left tagged: they tell us nothing about the content of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you think? Is this a good idea, or is there a better way to approach killing these tags? Are there tags that should be on the list but aren't? Is there a serious case to be made for taking tags *off* this list?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea/1940#1940&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2152/blacklist-advice&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/421/is-a-recommendations-tag-really-necessary&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5950" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2374" RevisionGUID="fe76c8ac-6ac7-451d-b9f6-aec1cf723f3e" CreationDate="2011-10-02T15:00:53.137" UserId="27122" Text="I see nothing wrong with [this user](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/24257/pacerier#qpage_3-qsort_votes) which was suspended for low-quality contributions. Most of his questions are upvoted and only one answer has five downvotes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do anybody care to explain reason for his suspension?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5951" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2374" RevisionGUID="fe76c8ac-6ac7-451d-b9f6-aec1cf723f3e" CreationDate="2011-10-02T15:00:53.137" UserId="27122" Text="Does this user really have so bad contributions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5952" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2374" RevisionGUID="fe76c8ac-6ac7-451d-b9f6-aec1cf723f3e" CreationDate="2011-10-02T15:00:53.137" UserId="27122" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5953" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2371" RevisionGUID="d6c0d1a3-37fa-422a-8de2-d2a642a864b1" CreationDate="2011-10-02T15:08:09.197" UserId="1996" Comment="added 501 characters in body" Text="@Mark Trapp marked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [what do i need to learn in order to get an entry level asp.net job?][1]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; as a duplicate of&#xD;&#xA; - [If you develop with ASP.NET, which other technologies do you use?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions aren't even close!&#xD;&#xA;They're asking two completely different things!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:**  &#xD;&#xA;Q: What do i need to learn in order to get an entry level asp.net job?  &#xD;&#xA;A: You need to learn how to create CRUD pages and you need to learn SQL.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Q: If you develop with ASP.NET, which other technologies do you use?  &#xD;&#xA;A: I use a hodgepodge of complimentary technologies. I use technology X, technology Y, etc..., NHibernate, and Entity Framework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both answers are perfectly valid answers to their respective questions.  &#xD;&#xA;Neither answer is a good answer to the opposite question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/111881/what-do-i-need-to-learn-in-order-to-get-an-entry-level-asp-net-job&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66389/if-you-develop-with-asp-net-which-other-technologies-do-you-use" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5954" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2374" RevisionGUID="8285a351-e776-4e6c-be51-a4da9984265b" CreationDate="2011-10-02T15:11:01.000" UserId="27122" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="I see nothing wrong with [this user](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/24257/pacerier#qpage_3-qsort_votes) which was suspended for low-quality contributions. Most of his questions are upvoted and only one answer has five downvotes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does anybody care to explain reason for his suspension?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5955" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2375" RevisionGUID="98aad218-5ce9-439d-879a-dac6be812754" CreationDate="2011-10-02T15:33:49.063" UserId="226" Text="Suspensions are a private matter between moderators and a user. We [do not discuss](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/23385/avoid-the-streisand-effect-be-clear-about-the-reason-when-suspending-an-account/23548#23548) suspension reasons unless the issue is brought up by the person who got suspended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting from Jeff Atwood:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I believe it is the reponsibility and right of the user who was placed in timed suspension to have the freedom to discuss (or *not* discuss) what happened to them.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;It is a basic matter of respecting other users' privacy." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5956" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2373" RevisionGUID="7cf98635-4042-4360-8672-5cafd1addbb4" CreationDate="2011-10-02T19:57:09.193" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 33 characters in body" Text="While we [continue our work on cleaning up the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup), I thought I'd bring up the next tag clean-up project: killing the catch-all tags that could be applied to every question on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through the first two pages of tags, these include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-languages] (773 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:learning] (616 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:best-practices] (538 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-development] (308 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-engineering] (188 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:recommendations] (138 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:advice] (135 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:holy-war] (35 questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I'm bringing these up now instead of waiting for the first project to complete is that I believe we can exercise the first option—[presented earlier for the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags)—on these tags: nuke them from orbit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, these tags can be applied to every single question on the site. Disambiguating these tags would entail replacing them with *anything else*, not simply a set of pre-defined disambiguation targets. With these tags, we're no better off if they're untagged or left tagged: they tell us nothing about the content of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you think? Is this a good idea, or is there a better way to approach killing these tags? Are there tags that should be on the list but aren't? Is there a serious case to be made for taking tags *off* this list?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea/1940#1940&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2152/blacklist-advice&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/421/is-a-recommendations-tag-really-necessary&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5957" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2376" RevisionGUID="12ef8fe6-c2f7-4a54-bfb6-32a89dcfc6e6" CreationDate="2011-10-02T20:21:11.943" UserId="4" Text="[tag:programming-languages] should be nuked. If it's about a specific language, it should be tagged with that language. If it's about a specific aspect of programming languages (grammars and syntax, binding time, data representation, control flow, data types, etc.), it should have the appropriate tag(s). If it's about the design of programming languages, we already have the [tag:language-design] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think [tag:learning] is a meta tag. If you're interested in learning about something, visit questions with that tag to see what problems other people have had, what books/tutorials/sites have been recommended, and start there. Anything else can be asked in a new question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm torn on [tag:best-practices]. On one hand, there are questions about things that are commonly considered best practices. On the other hand, best practices change by the environment. I'm leaning toward nuking it and favoring tags to describe the subject of the best practice. The tag is also overused - asking about how people do something isn't a best practice, and I'm not sure if individuals here can generate best practices on their own as they typically come from widely accepted practices across all kinds of projects and problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:software-development] and [tag:software-engineering] should be nuked. All questions here should be about some aspect of software development, and software engineering is way too big to be captured by a single tag, favoring more specific tags instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:recommendations] and [tag:advice] should be killed. Every question here should be some combination of advice and recommendations on what to do (either actions, study material, reading, courses, whatever) to solve whatever problem or concern is being asked about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not one that you mentioned (at least at the time of writing this post), but [tag:holy-war] adds no value. In fact, if a question is legitimately a &quot;holy war&quot;, should it even remain open? It seems like a meta tag indicating a non-constructive question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few other tags that I would suggest looking at, either for deletion or merging, based on the first 10 pages of tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:development-process] and [tag:development-methodologies] for merging&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:jobs] per [the cleanup that you mentioned][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:computer-science] for the same reason as cleaning up the [tag:software-engineering] tag, as it's too broad by itself and more specific topics should be used whenever possible&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:iphone] should be looked at in favor of [tag:ios] (and [tag:ios-sdk]?)&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:design] refers to architectural design, detailed design, and UI design&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:programming-practices] for the same reasons as [tag:best-practices]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software] on questions not looking for software to support the action of doing some task or a question that is specifically looking for some kind of software tool to solve some kind of problem&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:performance] being used to refer to both individual work performance/productivity as well as the performance of software systems&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-developer] seems like a meta tag since everything should relate to software developers in some way&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:bug-tracking] and [bug:issue-tracking] for merging&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:apple] for replacement with [tag:ios], [tag:mac] (which should refer to development on the Mac Operating System, but I'm not sure if it does)&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:efficiency] should be looked at since it looks like some questions refer to productivity while others refer to application program efficience and performance&#xD;&#xA;- Acronym tags like [tag:qa] and [tag:ui] that should be replaced with their full names for clarity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing is that I'm not sure if nuking is the best idea. Otherwise, we end up with posts that should be retagged for proper searching/favoriting/following. But tag posses haven't been wildly successful. So yes, there's a problem. Yes, we can fix it in a number of ways (nuking, manual, merging, blacklisting). But how do we best fix it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question: What happens if you blacklist a tag while there are questions with it? That would be useful. Blacklist the tags that we don't want so no more are created while we manually clean up posts with the existing tags. I'm not sure if that's possible, might need to be a feature request. But it would help manual cleanup efforts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming-languages&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96229/is-structural-typing-in-a-hierarchical-model-necessary&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5958" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2376" RevisionGUID="b401e5cf-d295-4a0b-b774-ffceb05fad76" CreationDate="2011-10-02T21:21:58.753" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 3172 characters in body" Text="Given ChrisF's comment that tags can't be blacklisted when they still exist, I think the only criteria is if they can be replaced by a better tag. There are really two options: either the tag has no suitable replacements and it should just be outright nuked or there are better tags to use in place of the tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that[tag:software-engineering], and perhaps [tag:software-development] and [tag:programming-languages] should not be nuked, but [posse-cleaned up like the jobs/careers tags][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the other tags don't seem like they have suitable &quot;better&quot; tags. Really, every question here is about learning, obtaining recommendations or advice, and best practices for a given situation, making those tags useless. Questions tagged holy war either need to be closed for non-constructive or have the tag removed (so perhaps go through, flag the appropriate questions, then delete).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see two problems with the posse cleanups, though. First, they haven't been wildly successful in terms of getting people involved, but I think that can be changed. Second, I've started to clean up the software engineering tag, but the problem is that editing tags also bumps questions to the top of the page, so I don't retag more than a dozen posts in a day - it just doesn't feel right flooding the homepage with old questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5959" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2373" RevisionGUID="ecdc890c-61e4-4695-83ca-3c3b7a53a640" CreationDate="2011-10-02T22:20:05.263" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 36 characters in body" Text="While we [continue our work on cleaning up the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup), I thought I'd bring up the next tag clean-up project: killing the catch-all tags that could be applied to every question on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through the first two pages of tags, these include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-languages] (773 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:learning] (616 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:best-practices] (538 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-development] (308 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-engineering] (188 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:recommendations] (138 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:advice] (135 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:development] (78 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:holy-war] (35 questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I'm bringing these up now instead of waiting for the first project to complete is that I believe we can exercise the first option—[presented earlier for the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags)—on these tags: nuke them from orbit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, these tags can be applied to every single question on the site. Disambiguating these tags would entail replacing them with *anything else*, not simply a set of pre-defined disambiguation targets. With these tags, we're no better off if they're untagged or left tagged: they tell us nothing about the content of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you think? Is this a good idea, or is there a better way to approach killing these tags? Are there tags that should be on the list but aren't? Is there a serious case to be made for taking tags *off* this list?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea/1940#1940&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2152/blacklist-advice&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/421/is-a-recommendations-tag-really-necessary&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5960" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2377" RevisionGUID="8786a722-a5a4-456a-8311-0838276b3c14" CreationDate="2011-10-03T22:04:08.660" UserId="44" Text="Consider that what you are seeing is probably the situation after some of the posts have been deleted; in such case, you don't see the down-voted posts, and all you see are only up-voted posts that would make you think the user had good contributions. Also, eventual offending comments have been probably deleted, and you would not be able to see them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5961" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2378" RevisionGUID="5e9ac7e2-78bb-4da8-9ada-b9a5c976038b" CreationDate="2011-10-03T23:49:07.350" UserId="148" Text="I am very unhappy with the amount of closing and the types of questions being closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel very strongly that many of the questions being closed are very appropriate for this site, and the # of upvotes and interest these questions often retain would signify that others agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am using this site considerably less these days due to the narrow range of topics permissible. It is adding significantly less value than it used to." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5962" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2379" RevisionGUID="2d84b973-8267-4135-8901-f11df822de08" CreationDate="2011-10-06T01:25:29.047" UserId="148" Text="No, the catch-all tags should not be nuked. Each of them represent a different semantic content the author wished to attach to the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5963" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2380" RevisionGUID="9657fe02-ce93-4f3e-b5d0-1ea39112cb30" CreationDate="2011-10-06T01:36:21.977" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Occasionally, we'll get a question asking for help about naming a concept or symbol, and we've been closing them as &quot;off-topic&quot; and &quot;not constructive&quot; on the basis that naming questions rarely amount to detailed answers beyond &quot;Name it X.&quot; or &quot;What about Y?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previously, there was a discussion in regards to [questions like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95920/what-is-each-time-through-a-loop-called) on whether or not [we needed a &quot;general reference&quot; close reason](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1994/would-the-general-reference-close-reason-be-useful-here-on-programmers). The consensus, as I understood it, was that we don't need a new close reason because such questions are off-topic by the first line in our FAQ (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for **expert programmers** who are interested in conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;What do I call X?&quot; is a question that's generally uninteresting and irrelevant to expert programmers, and thus should not be here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there was some discussion about an [attempted migration from English.SE](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/44295/what-is-the-name-for-the-class-of-computer-programs-that-act-as-a-front-end-for-a#question) on whether this excludes *all* naming questions or if there is a certain subset of naming questions that would be allowed, particularly ones that are not blindingly obvious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Should* all naming questions be considered off-topic and not constructive?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If so, should we add a line to our FAQ about it?&#xD;&#xA;* If not, why not? What types of naming questions could work here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5964" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2380" RevisionGUID="9657fe02-ce93-4f3e-b5d0-1ea39112cb30" CreationDate="2011-10-06T01:36:21.977" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Are &quot;name that thing&quot; questions on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5965" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2380" RevisionGUID="9657fe02-ce93-4f3e-b5d0-1ea39112cb30" CreationDate="2011-10-06T01:36:21.977" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5966" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2381" RevisionGUID="379146da-ecba-44c2-b4fb-87aab690388c" CreationDate="2011-10-06T02:43:33.723" UserId="148" Text="Yes, not everyone knows the standard terms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's ok to be not an expert." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5967" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2298" RevisionGUID="53d517df-6801-4a6e-be77-fa64ca74d91b" CreationDate="2011-10-06T03:04:56.310" UserId="2439" Comment="The picture of a puppy adds no useful content." Text="So pursuant to [the monumental task we have](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup) to clean up the [tag:career] and [tag:jobs] tags, we've taken to putting the following notice in the tag wiki excerpts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do not use this tag. Click &quot;learn more&quot; for better alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This, however, has not stopped people from adding more questions to the tags, which makes an already difficult task more difficult as more questions keep getting added.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was under the assumption that blacklisting not only locked a tag, but blew it away from all existing tags, but after talking to people in Teachers' Lounge, I've found out that blacklisting and burninating are two separate actions: the former locks the tag, the latter kills the tag on all existing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just *locking* the [tag:career] and [tag:jobs] tags would help out a ton: it'd at least let us to freeze their usage while we stort out the 1500 questions already tagged with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So can we get these two tags blacklisted, but not burninated? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/17rb9.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5968" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2382" RevisionGUID="1a5ba1cc-c643-4484-aaad-9d44919137c3" CreationDate="2011-10-06T14:24:29.410" UserId="226" Text="I think there's a difference between questions that ask for a proper term for a concept and questions that ask for naming suggestions for a class or a method.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The former would be fine, in my opinion, but the latter do not belong on Stack Exchange for reasons of being both too localized and entirely discussion-oriented." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5969" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2383" RevisionGUID="8441cacd-c733-4b06-a700-9469b3cb44d8" CreationDate="2011-10-06T15:38:56.603" UserId="34614" Text="I'd like to put myself forward as a proofreader. My standard of written English can be evaluated on my personal blog [http://mattdavey.me/][1]. You'll notice that it's a programming blog which is thus far more about natural languages than programming languages!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://mattdavey.me/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5975" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2385" RevisionGUID="a86b3ad4-64be-4a13-ae18-cb4436597333" CreationDate="2011-10-06T20:58:36.560" UserId="31145" Text="&lt;a href&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112833/31145&quot;&gt;Being asked to do a job without being paid for it&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked this question because I've seen several ethical questions proposed on this site with fairly good responses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question got closed because &quot;General workplace issues aren't on-topic here, but what you're describing is a pretty standard internship.&quot; My question has nothing to do with an internship as I'm not an intern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was about asking for advice on a beginning programmer if he should give up some of his intellectual property as a way of getting his foot in the door or if he should stand his ground and not participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I checked the FAQ's and it says I can ask questions about freelancing jobs and business concerns. Which I consider this to be about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can I get some info about this and maybe why this isn't a good fit for this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5976" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2385" RevisionGUID="a86b3ad4-64be-4a13-ae18-cb4436597333" CreationDate="2011-10-06T20:58:36.560" UserId="31145" Text="Question about a question getting closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5977" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2385" RevisionGUID="a86b3ad4-64be-4a13-ae18-cb4436597333" CreationDate="2011-10-06T20:58:36.560" UserId="31145" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5978" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2385" RevisionGUID="5252fba3-7d7c-4d81-b0fa-c71304fc8266" CreationDate="2011-10-06T21:00:38.783" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Fix link" Text="&gt; [Being asked to do a job without being paid for it](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112833/being-asked-to-do-a-job-without-being-paid-for-it)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked this question because I've seen several ethical questions proposed on this site with fairly good responses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question got closed because &quot;General workplace issues aren't on-topic here, but what you're describing is a pretty standard internship.&quot; My question has nothing to do with an internship as I'm not an intern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was about asking for advice on a beginning programmer if he should give up some of his intellectual property as a way of getting his foot in the door or if he should stand his ground and not participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I checked the FAQ's and it says I can ask questions about freelancing jobs and business concerns. Which I consider this to be about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can I get some info about this and maybe why this isn't a good fit for this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5979" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2386" RevisionGUID="aeb2ee2b-d395-4d2a-85b7-aa03bb12de16" CreationDate="2011-10-06T21:07:21.330" UserId="23230" Text="Programmers.stackexchange.com fractured the programming questions into two places. Users aren't sure where to post certain questions. Users are voting to close a question and the only evident reason for closing seems to be because they want it moved to programmers from SO. Then why isn't there an option to vote to move, or I am seeing it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems StackExchange should be the one named Programmers, it's more logical, and SO is the overflow lot for other programming questions. (YES I KNOW SO came first.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I never visit programmers SE and never thought about searching in it but now I can see there are good questions in it which I always thought SO is the place for them. So now I have to search both sites for certain questions like questions about frameworks, design.. and such. A thumb down for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wish there was a tag called `[programmers]` on SO for questions which are programming related but are not a pure programming/coding question. This way all questions are in one site, abolish the confusion among users and use the tag to filter in or out as you wish." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5980" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2386" RevisionGUID="aeb2ee2b-d395-4d2a-85b7-aa03bb12de16" CreationDate="2011-10-06T21:07:21.330" UserId="23230" Text="I wish programmers.stackexchange.com didn't exist" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5981" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2386" RevisionGUID="aeb2ee2b-d395-4d2a-85b7-aa03bb12de16" CreationDate="2011-10-06T21:07:21.330" UserId="23230" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5982" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2387" RevisionGUID="43b0264b-652d-40bf-8eb8-25284a8a71e4" CreationDate="2011-10-06T21:09:09.627" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="To summarize the background of the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* You work for a guy who's asked you for ideas for a project.&#xD;&#xA;* You provided those ideas, but your boss wants a work-study student (essentially an intern) to implement it&#xD;&#xA;* You've done some preliminary work in the form of mockups and designs that your boss wants you to hand over to the other person who's actually implementing the idea&#xD;&#xA;* Once the other student graduates, you're the one who will have to maintain it&#xD;&#xA;* You're concerned that because you're not doing the initial implementation you're not going to get credit for your ideas&#xD;&#xA;* Your ideas were above and beyond the scope of your actual job and you want to be compensated for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should you hand over the ideas in hopes you could get hired in the future or should you let the other student fail so they come to you?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not a software development question: that's a workplace politics question. Nothing about your situation requires programmers to answer: your beef is with your boss and your current workplace environment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is about software development, feel free to revise your question to ask specifically about that. But if you just want to know how to deal with your boss potentially not giving you credit for your ideas, you'll probably be interested the [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters) Area 51 proposal." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5983" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2388" RevisionGUID="770d07a5-b6ae-4c66-be39-943e20414b60" CreationDate="2011-10-06T21:11:44.257" UserId="2356" Text="Dang, and here I was thinking that when I had a question about: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;* Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;* Algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* Design patterns&#xD;&#xA;* Architecture&#xD;&#xA;* Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;* Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;* Software licensing&#xD;&#xA;* Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and that probably:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;* tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;* have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;* invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;* insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;* are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I always seem to come here. I knew I was doing something wrong ..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5984" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2386" RevisionGUID="ac0f325d-f09e-43f3-9d28-f9fbdd8f138f" CreationDate="2011-10-06T21:11:49.293" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Programmers.stackexchange.com fractured the programming questions into two places. Users aren't sure where to post certain questions. Users are voting to close a question and the only evident reason for closing seems to be because they want it moved to programmers from SO. Then why isn't there an option to vote to move, or I am seeing it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems StackExchange should be the one named Programmers, it's more logical, and SO is the overflow lot for other programming questions. (YES I KNOW SO came first.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I never visit programmers SE and never thought about searching in it but now I can see there are good questions in it which I always thought SO is the place for them. So now I have to search both sites for certain questions like questions about frameworks, design.. and such. A thumb down for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wish there was a tag called `[programmers]` on SO for questions which are programming related but are not a pure programming/coding question. This way all questions are in one site, abolish the confusion among users and use the tag to filter in or out as you wish." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5985" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2386" RevisionGUID="17728e01-0b94-499c-a20c-a4d191977c3d" CreationDate="2011-10-06T21:11:48.467" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[171],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="5986" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2385" RevisionGUID="8d8a174e-4bd0-489a-bbc7-31d53374100a" CreationDate="2011-10-06T21:13:59.010" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Clearer title" Text="Why was my question about being asked to do an unpaid job closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5987" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2385" RevisionGUID="8d8a174e-4bd0-489a-bbc7-31d53374100a" CreationDate="2011-10-06T21:13:59.010" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Clearer title" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5988" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2387" RevisionGUID="377eb9be-e73f-4434-9ad4-14919e4dcad9" CreationDate="2011-10-06T21:15:44.077" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="To summarize the background of the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* You work for a guy who's asked you for ideas for a project.&#xD;&#xA;* You provided those ideas, but your boss wants a work-study student (essentially an intern) to implement it&#xD;&#xA;* You've done some preliminary work in the form of mockups and designs that your boss wants you to hand over to the other person who's actually implementing the idea&#xD;&#xA;* Once the other student graduates, you're the one who will have to maintain it&#xD;&#xA;* You're concerned that because you're not doing the initial implementation you're not going to get credit for your ideas&#xD;&#xA;* Your ideas were above and beyond the scope of your actual job and you want to be compensated for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should you hand over the ideas in hopes you could get hired in the future or should you let the other student fail so they come to you?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not a software development question: that's a workplace politics question. Nothing about your situation requires programmers to answer: your beef is with your boss and your current workplace environment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is about software development, feel free to revise your question to ask specifically about that. But if you just want to know how to deal with your boss potentially not giving you credit for your ideas, you'll probably be more interested in the [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters) Area 51 proposal." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5989" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2389" RevisionGUID="0fc98989-674a-4444-a50e-2c9c61a7b3dd" CreationDate="2011-10-07T02:11:27.997" UserId="30278" Text="For starters this is not a repeat of the &quot;Why are so many quastions closed&quot; and other similar posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer to these earlier questions was that the site was not moderated initially and there was a large one off cleanup effort. That answer no longer applies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion this forum still closes far too many seemingly sensible questions. The moderators seem to be actively looking for excuses to close questions, for, minor breaches which only they seem to detect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I want an answer to a purely technical question I would post it on StackOverflow or ServerFault. This site is meant to be (at least it is advertised as!) more general site about programming as a profession and the practice of programming. And as such questions about career choices, contract vs. permanent, how to interview, choosing one development platform or language over another would seem to be in scope, yet, these questions are regularly closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the set of all allowable questions on *StackExchange* if we take the set of allowable posts on *Programmers* then subtract  the set of allowable posts from *StackOverflow* and *ServerFault*  this seems to leave a vanishingly small set of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fully expecting this question to be closed before anyone can comment!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5990" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2389" RevisionGUID="0fc98989-674a-4444-a50e-2c9c61a7b3dd" CreationDate="2011-10-07T02:11:27.997" UserId="30278" Text="How long will this forum survive if the moderators keep closing questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5991" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2389" RevisionGUID="0fc98989-674a-4444-a50e-2c9c61a7b3dd" CreationDate="2011-10-07T02:11:27.997" UserId="30278" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5992" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2390" RevisionGUID="84cf780b-a915-4740-b3de-5bc7e291583f" CreationDate="2011-10-07T04:11:04.700" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I'm going to mainly address the concrete examples that you left comments on because as you mentioned, there have already been questions here that have addressed the general issue. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as an aside to that, there are about 13% closed questions on the site as of today, which is on the high side but around the amount that are closed on Web Applications (~11%), English Language &amp; Usage (~10%), and Android Enthusiasts (~10%). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mention this because this number, [as predicted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation/2173#2173), has consistently gone down over the past few months. One would expect the number to stabilize or go up if the problems haven't been addressed. Cleanups take time, and they aren't over yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now to the specific questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112694/is-an-associate-engineer-the-same-as-a-junior-engineer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question asks about a specific job title and whether or not it's the same as another one. You left a comment saying, &quot;please leave this open although there is no possible answer to this as job titles vary from organization to organization and even within organizations.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It could've been closed for a different reason, but I'm not sure where the disconnect is or why you think this question should remain open if you yourself believe it doesn't have an answer. We're a question and answer site: we're in the business of providing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112629/learning-path-for-web-developer-net-or-java&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question asks two different things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. How many web servers run Windows&#xD;&#xA;2. Which is more useful for a web developer: .NET or Java&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question is a bit unanswerable: none of the existing answers even touched on it. One even dismissed it as being a nonsense question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second one [isn't really constructive](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/): .NET and Java both enjoy large portions of the web development market. The answers don't really converge on something that indicates this comparison is answerable in a definitive way: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* One guy says &quot;Java rules! But decide for yourself.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* One guy who says &quot;Nobody says no to .NET&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* A third guy who says &quot;.NET rules! Java sucks!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* A fourth guy says &quot;Nobody compares these two anymore. Why not learn both?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is someone supposed to learn from this? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5993" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2390" RevisionGUID="33a083fb-f865-478b-a85c-5c5aa02503f0" CreationDate="2011-10-07T04:30:14.853" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 701 characters in body" Text="I'm going to mainly address the concrete examples that you left comments on because as you mentioned, there have already been questions here that have addressed the general issue. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before that, I'd like to just first add an aside to the issue of the number of questions being closed: there are about 13% closed questions on the site as of today, which is on the high side but around the amount that are closed on Web Applications (~11%), English Language &amp; Usage (~10%), and Android Enthusiasts (~10%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mention this because this number, [as predicted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation/2173#2173), has consistently gone down over the past few months. One would expect the number to stabilize or go up if the problems haven't been addressed. Cleanups take time, and they aren't over yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, an average poster knows whether a question would fit here by [reading the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq). The FAQ is a great resource for making sure you understand what a site's about before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you miss something or make a mistake, it's not that big of a deal because that's what moderation's for. Moderators and other members of the community are generally more than willing to help explain what's on-topic and what isn't. This might happen more often on Programmers due to the relationship with Stack Overflow, but most people seem to get it and most questions do just fine here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now to the specific questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112694/is-an-associate-engineer-the-same-as-a-junior-engineer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question asks about a specific job title and whether or not it's the same as another one. You left a comment saying, &quot;please leave this open although there is no possible answer to this as job titles vary from organization to organization and even within organizations.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It could've been closed for a different reason, but I'm not sure where the disconnect is or why you think this question should remain open if you yourself believe it doesn't have an answer. We're a question and answer site: we're in the business of providing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112629/learning-path-for-web-developer-net-or-java&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question asks two different things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. How many web servers run Windows&#xD;&#xA;2. Which is more useful for a web developer: .NET or Java&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question is a bit unanswerable: none of the existing answers even touched on it. One even dismissed it as being a nonsense question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second one [isn't really constructive](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/): .NET and Java both enjoy large portions of the web development market. The answers don't really converge on something that indicates this comparison is answerable in a definitive way: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* One guy says &quot;Java rules! But decide for yourself.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* One guy who says &quot;Nobody says no to .NET&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* A third guy who says &quot;.NET rules! Java sucks!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* A fourth guy says &quot;Nobody compares these two anymore. Why not learn both?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is someone supposed to learn from this? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5994" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2391" RevisionGUID="da09ee8c-d709-4ccc-9bf4-1e6d8dcb53c3" CreationDate="2011-10-07T18:42:58.297" UserId="31145" Text="There's a user that I feel isn't upholding the Etiquette described in the FAQs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the point that they are editing my questions in an attempt to belittle the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At what point should I start getting moderator attention?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5995" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2391" RevisionGUID="da09ee8c-d709-4ccc-9bf4-1e6d8dcb53c3" CreationDate="2011-10-07T18:42:58.297" UserId="31145" Text="At what point should I bring things to a mods attention?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5996" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2391" RevisionGUID="da09ee8c-d709-4ccc-9bf4-1e6d8dcb53c3" CreationDate="2011-10-07T18:42:58.297" UserId="31145" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5997" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2392" RevisionGUID="a29d7409-b1f8-4579-864c-2bf3e58aa5d8" CreationDate="2011-10-07T19:02:30.183" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="If you see someone doing something that's out of place, flag it for moderator attention and we'll look at it. It's better to err on the side of caution than to wait and let a problem get out of hand." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5998" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2393" RevisionGUID="1f14da12-5f22-4e67-abb7-2599ebf99cc4" CreationDate="2011-10-07T22:15:06.873" UserId="16992" Text="Here is the situation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question seemed interesting at first because I was really wondering what the community would answer. A couple minutes later I realized the question does not really fit the guidelines for questions on Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to undo my upvote by clicking on the down arrow, but a popup told me I could not do it because I just upvoted the question 13 minutes ago and I cannot do anything until the question is edited. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why cannot I undo my vote? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Note: I really wanted to flag the question but I thought it would look odd that I upvoted and then I flagged.* " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5999" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2393" RevisionGUID="1f14da12-5f22-4e67-abb7-2599ebf99cc4" CreationDate="2011-10-07T22:15:06.873" UserId="16992" Text="Undoing an upvote?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6000" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2393" RevisionGUID="1f14da12-5f22-4e67-abb7-2599ebf99cc4" CreationDate="2011-10-07T22:15:06.873" UserId="16992" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6001" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2394" RevisionGUID="d109f80a-5d2e-4706-906a-e66f474a1966" CreationDate="2011-10-07T22:23:25.190" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Votes are locked after 5 minutes to [prevent tactical downvoting](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/6460/if-you-just-witnessed-tactical-downvoting-is-it-a-reportable-offense/18046#18046): voting people down just to make sure your answer appears first to accrue votes, then reversing that when it no longer is needed to get back the lost reputation and hide the evidence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a weird edge case, but it's been around for a long time and unlikely to change. However, if the post gets edited later on, your vote is unlocked and you can change your vote then. Otherwise, don't worry about it too much: mistaken votes happen often, and the community voting as a whole should iron those inconsistencies out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feel free to flag questions even when you up-vote: moderators can't see individual voting patterns so we have no idea whether you up-voted or not. We also don't particularly *care* either: how you vote is your business. If something needs our intervention, definitely flag it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6002" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2395" RevisionGUID="0fb95216-ad00-4597-9a53-6de32fdba650" CreationDate="2011-10-07T23:19:31.417" UserId="32353" Text="One of the justifications for the patterns movement was that having a common vocabulary would help programming overall, and I think that's correct.  I think they are reasonable questions if they are asking for programming specific terms that would be encountered by a reasonably large number of people but that you can't google in 2 minutes.   And I guess excluding those every programmer is expected to know, though most of those probably could be googled in 2 minutes even if you don't know the name to search with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Wouldn't Stack Exchange want the basic terms defined on at least one of their sites though?  I thought part of their goal is to drive site traffic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6003" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2396" RevisionGUID="36c94dba-a34f-4034-b7fb-e8de73308124" CreationDate="2011-10-08T23:43:22.860" UserId="25373" Text="Yes, as per Anna Lear and Paul Nathan's answers.&#xD;&#xA;Asking what the naming of a symbol is is on-topic (as opposed to asking for naming policies for variables/fns/modules).&#xD;&#xA;In particular, note these questions (using punctuation) are usually search-engine-proof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some salient examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Tcl's :: operator (it's called the scoping operator, but very few people know that, including Brent Welch, the author of the Tcl bible, until I emailed him that arratum)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Python's @ notation for decorators: newbies are frequently unable to tie that to 'decorator'. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6004" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2397" RevisionGUID="e587fb1f-a725-49d0-9303-8d2058d7f070" CreationDate="2011-10-09T16:31:18.687" UserId="69" Text="Yesterday I posted a comment on [this question][1] with a link to an answer on StackOverflow that answered this question. Now the OP wants me to post it as an answer so they can accept it. I am not sure what to do because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On one hand, this is the answer that the OP was looking for, so I want to post it as an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, I can't post just the link because I would flag that as &quot;not an answer&quot; and I don't feel like I should just copy someone else's answer into mine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should I do in this situation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/113201/efficiently-implementing-a-prime-sieve" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6005" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2397" RevisionGUID="e587fb1f-a725-49d0-9303-8d2058d7f070" CreationDate="2011-10-09T16:31:18.687" UserId="69" Text="Should I convert this comment into an answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6006" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2397" RevisionGUID="e587fb1f-a725-49d0-9303-8d2058d7f070" CreationDate="2011-10-09T16:31:18.687" UserId="69" Text="|discussion|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6007" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2398" RevisionGUID="15fd5a81-b9a9-4e26-bd15-d81b2312b669" CreationDate="2011-10-09T18:23:12.030" UserId="63" Text="So don't just post a link. [Describe the algorithm][1], note where you found the implementation and why it works so well, maybe go into a bit of detail on the shortcomings of the OP's naive design and how they're avoided...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You know, write a proper answer that can be read and understood without following a link or blindly copy-pasting code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Eratosthenes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6008" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2399" RevisionGUID="57c3b892-310f-4163-b1b3-9224a88cd66d" CreationDate="2011-10-09T20:57:01.673" UserId="3664" Text="Is there a place for just test purposes ? for example i want to post just for testing or for learn something how it works." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6009" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2399" RevisionGUID="57c3b892-310f-4163-b1b3-9224a88cd66d" CreationDate="2011-10-09T20:57:01.673" UserId="3664" Text="Is there a place in here for just testing purposes?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6010" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2399" RevisionGUID="57c3b892-310f-4163-b1b3-9224a88cd66d" CreationDate="2011-10-09T20:57:01.673" UserId="3664" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6011" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2400" RevisionGUID="450156d8-39a2-43a4-a00b-c6f64effd5cc" CreationDate="2011-10-09T20:58:56.863" UserId="47" Text="There's a [formatting sandbox question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/3122/formatting-sandbox) over on Meta Stack Overflow which you can use for testing the formatting, but I suspect you'll find the existing answers cover most (if not all) of the formatting options available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What specifically do you want to test?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6018" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2396" RevisionGUID="48d9cea6-3c1b-48f3-8e5d-b476c9013b97" CreationDate="2011-10-10T05:33:43.497" UserId="25373" Comment="edited body" Text="Yes, as per Anna Lear and Paul Nathan's answers.&#xD;&#xA;Asking what the naming of a symbol is is on-topic (as opposed to asking for naming policies for variables/fns/modules).&#xD;&#xA;In particular, note these questions (using punctuation) are usually search-engine-proof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some salient examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Tcl's :: operator (it's called the scoping operator, but very few people know that, including Brent Welch, the author of the Tcl bible, until I emailed him that erratum)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Python's @ notation for decorators: newbies are frequently unable to tie that to 'decorator'. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6019" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2404" RevisionGUID="b9e37e19-2aa5-47b3-b473-927aeb3fc411" CreationDate="2011-10-11T06:00:21.367" UserId="12402" Text="I have tried to edit this question (closed by one **moderator** vote):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108992/what-does-a-company-expects-from-a-perl-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;to be as clear as possible and most importantly to be objective AND to address specific concerns raised by the moderator in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the question remains unopened despite my flagging it for moderator re-review, with no moderator feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, my meta question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - What specifically is the deficiency in the **updated** wording of the question which makes it not satisfy &quot;six guidelines for constructive subjective questions&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or, alternately:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - What possible areas of fixing are suggested?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks in advance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please note that empirically, it's very hard to claim that the question as worded can not be answered not-too-poorly, since it DOES have an answer (disclaimer: mine) upvoted 4 times despite pretty narrow target audience (it's limited to Perl)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6020" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2404" RevisionGUID="b9e37e19-2aa5-47b3-b473-927aeb3fc411" CreationDate="2011-10-11T06:00:21.367" UserId="12402" Text="Why is this question not re-opened and what work is needed to make it re-openable?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6021" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2404" RevisionGUID="b9e37e19-2aa5-47b3-b473-927aeb3fc411" CreationDate="2011-10-11T06:00:21.367" UserId="12402" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6022" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2405" RevisionGUID="bed69155-cf23-45af-9d83-4de9d992dab2" CreationDate="2011-10-11T08:00:07.677" UserId="47" Text="The main reason I closed the question is the following statement - which is still in the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I know the question may be off topic because each company has its own requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is the nub of the issue. Each company will have it's own requirements so any answer will be either a) guesswork or b) the answerer's own requirements which won't help you in this particular case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each answer will be equally wrong and hence equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other closing choice would have been &quot;too localised&quot; for much the same reasons." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6023" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2404" RevisionGUID="981ca0e1-6a5e-4926-a74a-27bc9cfe1f8e" CreationDate="2011-10-12T00:06:04.117" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|closed-questions|close-reasons|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6028" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2407" RevisionGUID="6b8a74c8-7588-475c-a862-d1a0c03317fb" CreationDate="2011-10-12T01:53:10.257" UserId="6366" Text="I've also noticed an overzealousness on the part of the moderators, some more than others. Yes I agree that the focus does need to be on good quality answerable questions but I've always viewed programmers as a more freeform environment than StackOverflow, it includes deeper questions and sometimes more subjective questions. I see it as much of a community site as a Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I first started reading here BECAUSE of the sort of questions that are regularly getting closed. I like knowing some of the more specific scenarios, I feel that they can provide a worth of their own to see the issues and questions. I feel that for the more individual scenarios it used to provide good, if varied, advice and was a good place for people to improve their abilities and understand of the wider area that affects programmers. I've even enjoyed reading a few of the holy-war tagged threads, the older ones survive but I could never see another one being allowed to start these days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I strongly feel that here Q&amp;A needs to stand for &quot;Queries and Advice&quot; as much as &quot;Question and Answer&quot;, if things don't change I see this turning into StackOverflow 2 rather than something that stands on its own." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6030" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2407" RevisionGUID="d6c95002-fa90-4045-a7a4-7190bfb00d28" CreationDate="2011-10-12T02:03:53.257" UserId="6366" Comment="deleted 23 characters in body" Text="I've also noticed an overzealousness on the part of the moderators. Yes I agree that the focus does need to be on good quality answerable questions but I've always viewed programmers as a more freeform environment than StackOverflow, it includes deeper questions and sometimes more subjective questions. I see it as much of a community site as a Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I first started reading here BECAUSE of the sort of questions that are regularly getting closed. I like knowing some of the more specific scenarios, I feel that they can provide a worth of their own to see the issues and questions. I feel that for the more individual scenarios it used to provide good, if varied, advice and was a good place for people to improve their abilities and understand of the wider area that affects programmers. I've even enjoyed reading a few of the holy-war tagged threads, the older ones survive but I could never see another one being allowed to start these days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I strongly feel that here Q&amp;A needs to stand for &quot;Queries and Advice&quot; as much as &quot;Question and Answer&quot;, if things don't change I see this turning into StackOverflow 2 rather than something that stands on its own." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6031" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2408" RevisionGUID="0db13681-26a0-4d68-a32b-0d104bfa3f39" CreationDate="2011-10-12T08:27:06.183" UserId="31290" Text="I'm with Mark Trapp on this&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for **expert programmers** who are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interested in conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it gets clogged up with 1st year homework &amp; total beginner questions from people too clueless to know what &quot;void&quot; means and too dense to know how to use google or wikipedia its' utility is diluted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6032" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2404" RevisionGUID="3d34724a-b979-4dc4-ac69-59f6b805b721" CreationDate="2011-10-12T09:28:56.583" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6033" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2409" RevisionGUID="e62f1010-bfec-48f1-8227-2fef2853b90a" CreationDate="2011-10-12T14:44:42.350" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="What is expected by most programmers coming here and what is expected by moderators and site owners are not in sync.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparantly the main problem is that there are no easy way to *tell* those programmers that it's not a good place for their questions. This leads to confusion, frustration, and dozens of question like yours. With the same answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I guess until every &quot;non site matching&quot; programmer in the world leaves this site frustrated, we will keep having those question posted, again and again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Until the subset of programmers that match the site's goal remains, alone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To make it short: like it or leave it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6034" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2410" RevisionGUID="5dd7723a-19c9-4980-9f1d-8e5802227448" CreationDate="2011-10-12T15:01:44.683" UserId="1204" Text="How about asking better questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your first mistake: calling this a &quot;forum.&quot;  It's not a forum; it's a question and answer site.  The SE network was designed specifically to avoid the kind of mindless chatter you see on other forums.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take a close look at those forum environments.  On reflection, have you ever found *any* of them really useful to you at all?  Can you count on the fingers of one hand the times when posting to a forum really gave you a timely, meaningful answer to your problem?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently, I googled *&quot;Ford Taurus 2005 won't start when hot.&quot;*  Do you know how many matches there are?  One million, five hundred and sixty thousand.  Do you know how many of those matches actually impart useful information?  Exactly zero.  Well, zero in the first two dozen matches anyway.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why is this?  Because those matches go to forums, where dozens of people have posted the same question over and over again, and hundreds of people have posted countless useless answers to that question, including &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;I have the same problem, any idea?&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;Mine starts but I have this other&#xD;&#xA;   problem.&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;Mine always starts, I don't know&#xD;&#xA;   what your problem is.&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;Mine only starts at Disneyland.&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - [&quot;I like turtles.&quot;][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  And so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange network is a known solution to a known problem.  The question and answer format is carefully crafted to encourage the posting of high-quality material, and specifically designed to discourage useless conversations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMNry4PE93Y" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6035" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2411" RevisionGUID="0354e8d8-26d1-4b12-a4f6-b8506e545048" CreationDate="2011-10-12T20:23:20.687" UserId="1130" Text="&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interested in conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we consider removing the word &quot;expert&quot; from our site description?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've seen a few meta question that quote our FAQ description, and I feel it gives the wrong impression of who this site is for. This is a great site for all programmers, not just expert ones. I am a fairly new programmer myself, and I have benefited greatly from this site. I wish that other programmers, of any skill level, be given the same opportunity, and not get scared away thinking this site is for experts only. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could even replace it with something else if you want: professional, dedicated, passionate, career, serious, etc. There are a great many words I feel would better define this site than &quot;expert&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6036" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2411" RevisionGUID="0354e8d8-26d1-4b12-a4f6-b8506e545048" CreationDate="2011-10-12T20:23:20.687" UserId="1130" Text="Removing &quot;expert&quot; from the site description?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6037" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2411" RevisionGUID="0354e8d8-26d1-4b12-a4f6-b8506e545048" CreationDate="2011-10-12T20:23:20.687" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6038" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2412" RevisionGUID="234bc577-5e93-4bba-836a-19e22bae2e20" CreationDate="2011-10-12T20:35:34.937" UserId="4609" Text="Non-experts are welcome on SE sites in general in-so-far as they are willing to play along and do their best to live up to the standards set by the experts and learn from them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* This means either asking good questions or at least cooperating with having their questions edited into shape as defined by that sites community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* This means providing good answers of the type and quality that experts would want to receive on their own questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE sites are _wide open_ to participation at very low rep levels, but the focus is always on what is best for experts. Everybody else is expected to work up towards those standards of excellence in whatever the field." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6039" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2413" RevisionGUID="ae6c5327-083e-438f-ab34-d6ba0b614ba5" CreationDate="2011-10-12T21:00:53.670" UserId="667" Text="I am aware, that I am not the first one to address this issue. All the more I think it should be resolved. I have made an effort to read all related questions and their answers and I really can't conclude it's resolved just yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So here's the thing (in case this is the first time you hear of someone unhappy with actions taken by the moderators): Some recent moderator activity has left me quite displeased. **Specifically, there has been a number of cases, where questions/answers have been closed/deleted without prior notice, proper explanation and suggestions for improvement.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the last weeks, the problem has become intolerable and I feel that the current moderator team *fails* to pursue [their mission][2] - which AFAIU consists in *guidance* as well as *gentle* and *exceptional* intervention.  &#xD;&#xA;This makes being an active and caring part of this community a frustrating experience. Which leaves me with a simple question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a mere community member, what can I do in this situation?&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The argument has been made, that the current moderators are [elected][3] and therefore what they do is right. Which suggests I'll just have to live with it. However:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Only 3 of the 4 moderators have really been elected.&#xD;&#xA; - Only 11.8% of those entitled to vote have actually done so.&#xD;&#xA; - Just because you're elected, doesn't mean everything you do is right.&#xD;&#xA; - If you really are elected, then you have a responsibility towards those who elected you, which encompasses acting as promised prior to elections. This is precisely not what's happening IMHO.&#xD;&#xA; - Voting doesn't mean to give up power, but only to delegate it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In any case, I don't see trying to ignore this as an option. Since I just don't know how to respond to this, I thought meta might be the right platform for that. I am not looking to blow off steam or to attack anybody. I am looking for solutions to this problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore I would propose the following:&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For all content, that is not *clearly* off-topic or *entirely* substandard or causes immediate damage to the community (i.e. spam, declaration of religious wars):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Content should no longer be blocked without prior warning.&#xD;&#xA; - Content should no longer be blocked without leaving a proper explanation after doing so and pointers as to how to improve the content.  &#xD;&#xA;I've seen quite a number of things blocked, that arguably weren't conforming to the rules in place for programmers.SE, but that definitely contained quite some value. Yet no effort has been made to provide guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any thoughts on that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1881/how-to-impeach-a-moderator/1883#1883&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6040" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2413" RevisionGUID="ae6c5327-083e-438f-ab34-d6ba0b614ba5" CreationDate="2011-10-12T21:00:53.670" UserId="667" Text="How to resolve ongoing trouble with moderators?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6041" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2413" RevisionGUID="ae6c5327-083e-438f-ab34-d6ba0b614ba5" CreationDate="2011-10-12T21:00:53.670" UserId="667" Text="|discussion|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6042" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2414" RevisionGUID="c7ef8a3c-6cef-4a43-b58a-b04893596855" CreationDate="2011-10-12T21:08:41.160" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="To remove the focus on experts in our site FAQ is to lose [what's special about Stack Exchange](http://stackexchange.com/about):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What’s special about Stack Exchange?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You wouldn’t shout out a calculus question in a football stadium, right? You’d go to the math department of a university. That’s why instead of allowing questions on any topic, we have brought together separate communities of experts on very specific topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don’t open a site until we’re sure there’s a critical mass of experts ready to participate. If you can’t find a Stack Exchange site on your subject of expertise, we have a place called Area 51 where you can propose one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All questions on Stack Exchange are expected to be objective and have concrete answers; we’re not a place for conversation, opinions, or socializing. We also expect questions to represent real problems, not just imponderables, hypotheticals, or requests for opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange’s focus on professional communities and this “Just the facts, Ma’am” ethos results in over 90% of questions getting great answers, often stunningly quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason Stack Exchange is such a valuable resoure to people learning a field is because it attracts experts: we want them to pay it forward and help others who don't know what they know. [Everyone can ask a question, not everyone can provide an expert answer.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do that by making sure, as much as we possibly can, that experts are not wasting their time by coming here. That the questions would be interesting and substantial to answer. We don't do that by lowering the bar for questions here or asking questions that are low-hanging fruit for novice programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone can ask a question, but they do so keeping in mind the audience for the site—the people waiting in the wings ready to answer questions—are expert programmers. There are other sites on the web, like Quora or Yahoo! Answers, where people can get help from just anyone." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6043" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2415" RevisionGUID="9610f42b-2dbc-4393-ae4d-08f179dcda47" CreationDate="2011-10-12T21:17:08.010" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="[All four moderators were elected](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1421/how-should-we-select-more-moderators-for-programmers-se), not just three. We are all subject to constant peer-review from each other, the Stack Exchange team, the 100+ moderators across the Stack Exchange network, and users like you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every action is carefully considered, discussed, and explained: you need only look at the activity of each of the moderators on meta and the main site to see the amount of feedback we provide when we intervene. I personally make it a point to explain nearly every closure I do and respond to each and every complaint on meta: the other moderators do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an issue with a moderator or the moderator team and it isn't being resolved to your satisfaction via normal channels, you should contact the Stack Exchange team directly at `team+programmers@stackexchange.com`." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6044" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2416" RevisionGUID="526153d2-6c86-49a1-8745-a9065c2c06a1" CreationDate="2011-10-12T21:46:55.343" UserId="47" Text="Surely you want an answer from an expert - not just any jobbing programmer who happens along - that way you'll know that you are getting the benefit of real experience solving real problems over a long period of time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you had a medical problem would you rather get a diagnosis from someone with a passing interest in medicine or a fully trained and qualified doctor?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's nothing stopping the non-expert **asking** questions (actually there's nothing stopping them answering them either), but they should be the sort of questions that makes an expert go &quot;hmm, that's interesting&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6045" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2413" RevisionGUID="34269b23-3762-4f88-a9e3-685e992a0df4" CreationDate="2011-10-12T21:51:23.027" UserId="667" Comment="added 157 characters in body" Text="**DISCLAIMER: This question is *not* a response to [cleanup activity of *old content*][1].** It is about current content, that is blocked soon after posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am aware, that I am not the first one to address this issue. All the more I think it should be resolved. I have made an effort to read all related questions and their answers and I really can't conclude it's resolved just yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So here's the thing (in case this is the first time you hear of someone unhappy with actions taken by the moderators): Some recent moderator activity has left me quite displeased. **Specifically, there has been a number of cases, where questions/answers have been closed/deleted without prior notice, proper explanation and suggestions for improvement.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the last weeks, the problem has become intolerable and I feel that the current moderator team *fails* to pursue [their mission][2] - which AFAIU consists in *guidance* as well as *gentle* and *exceptional* intervention.  &#xD;&#xA;This makes being an active and caring part of this community a frustrating experience. Which leaves me with a simple question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a mere community member, what can I do in this situation?&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The argument has been made, that the current moderators are [elected][3] and therefore what they do is right. Which suggests I'll just have to live with it. However:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Only 3 of the 4 moderators have really been elected.&#xD;&#xA; - Only 11.8% of those entitled to vote have actually done so.&#xD;&#xA; - Just because you're elected, doesn't mean everything you do is right.&#xD;&#xA; - If you really are elected, then you have a responsibility towards those who elected you, which encompasses acting as promised prior to elections. This is precisely not what's happening IMHO.&#xD;&#xA; - Voting doesn't mean to give up power, but only to delegate it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In any case, I don't see trying to ignore this as an option. Since I just don't know how to respond to this, I thought meta might be the right platform for that. I am not looking to blow off steam or to attack anybody. I am looking for solutions to this problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore I would propose the following:&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For all content, that is not *clearly* off-topic or *entirely* substandard or causes immediate damage to the community (i.e. spam, declaration of religious wars):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Content should no longer be blocked without prior warning.&#xD;&#xA; - Content should no longer be blocked without leaving a proper explanation after doing so and pointers as to how to improve the content.  &#xD;&#xA;I've seen quite a number of things blocked, that arguably weren't conforming to the rules in place for programmers.SE, but that definitely contained quite some value. Yet no effort has been made to provide guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any thoughts on that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6048" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2417" RevisionGUID="798ddee0-5216-4300-b193-c4d3ecfde3b5" CreationDate="2011-10-13T10:22:16.797" UserId="589" Text="Clearly it isn't a question, but it seems somehow appropriate that the original author of the C programming language be commemorated in some fashion on StackExchange, and Programmers is the least off-topic site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6049" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2417" RevisionGUID="798ddee0-5216-4300-b193-c4d3ecfde3b5" CreationDate="2011-10-13T10:22:16.797" UserId="589" Text="Would an RIP Dennis Ritchie question be on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6050" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2417" RevisionGUID="798ddee0-5216-4300-b193-c4d3ecfde3b5" CreationDate="2011-10-13T10:22:16.797" UserId="589" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6051" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2418" RevisionGUID="d7c57742-f59b-446c-8264-d772e6f06fc7" CreationDate="2011-10-13T10:32:38.460" UserId="47" Text="This is already being address on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/109160/no-dennis-ritchie-quote-on-stack-overflow-why)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I didn't think that the Steve Jobs message was appropriate, but I don't own the network." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6052" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2418" RevisionGUID="52af859d-b8e5-4e38-9ca0-f303abd8a7bc" CreationDate="2011-10-13T11:11:20.767" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="This is already being address on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/109160/no-dennis-ritchie-quote-on-stack-overflow-why) with respect to a **message** on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I didn't think that the Steve Jobs message was appropriate, but I don't own the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your question about asking a **question**, then no, that wouldn't be appropriate at all. At best it's too localised." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6053" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2411" RevisionGUID="f2b2ce51-c284-4718-9ae1-2b0c89b6f020" CreationDate="2011-10-13T13:27:24.497" UserId="1130" Comment="added 456 characters in body" Text="&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interested in conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we consider removing the word &quot;expert&quot; from our site description?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've seen a few meta question that quote our FAQ description, and I feel it gives the wrong impression of who this site is for. This is a great site for all programmers, not just expert ones. I am a fairly new programmer myself, and I have benefited greatly from this site. I wish that other programmers, of any skill level, be given the same opportunity, and not get scared away thinking this site is for experts only. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could even replace it with something else if you want: professional, dedicated, passionate, career, serious, etc. There are a great many words I feel would better define this site than &quot;expert&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just to clarify, I was thinking the current line makes it sound like this entire site is only for expert programmers. I was hoping we could re-word it to make it clear that this is a site for any programmer who is looking for some expert answers, not just for expert programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Something along the lines of &quot;P.SE is a site for programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6054" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2419" RevisionGUID="f883ca16-6397-484c-91b6-0c027e9d97e7" CreationDate="2011-10-13T16:56:54.463" UserId="1973" Text="If this site were a code snippet and you used that tag line you'd have &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    SetSite(&quot;Programmers.SE&quot;, &quot;For Expert Programmers&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    procedure SE.SetSite(ASiteName, AWhoIsSiteFor);&#xD;&#xA;    begin&#xD;&#xA;       SE.SiteName := ASiteName;&#xD;&#xA;       SE.WhoIsSiteFor := AWhoIsSiteFor;&#xD;&#xA;    end;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and that's kind of a fallacy, what it should be is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    SetSite(&quot;Programmers.SE&quot;, &quot;For All Programmers&quot;, &quot;Expert Answers&quot;, &quot;Expert Level Questions&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    procedure SE.SetSite(ASiteName, AWhoIsSiteFor, AExpectedAnswerQuality, AExpectedQuestionQuality);&#xD;&#xA;    begin&#xD;&#xA;       SE.SiteName := ASiteName;&#xD;&#xA;       SE.WhoIsSiteFor := AWhoIsSiteFor;&#xD;&#xA;       SE.ExpectedAnswerQuality := AExpectedAnswerQuality;&#xD;&#xA;       SE.ExpectedQuestionQuality := AExpectedQuestionQuality;&#xD;&#xA;    end;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway I think this part of the FAQ generation is a tad neglected, the HealthCareIT site started out by saying &quot;For Expert Linguists&quot; yesterday. However, expert questions are the only ones which need to be asked and expert answers are the only ones who need to be given but any given programmer doesn't need to be both an expert answerer and an expert asker to participate. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6055" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2420" RevisionGUID="cb60cf4d-891d-4eed-93de-f754c129a261" CreationDate="2011-10-13T17:02:36.687" UserId="1973" Text="I was kind of annoyed to find [this question][1] moved to english.SE and the main reason I was annoyed was because Marco Cantu, the noted Delphi guru, deigned to answer it. Then when it was shipped over to English.SE it got 0 extra answers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was pretty much a done deal by the time it was transferred and had a very acceptable answer with a lot of other good nuanced answers which were loppped off, including Marco's, which is not a good way to attract experts to the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/32260/whats-the-history-of-the-pronunciation-of-delphi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6056" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2262" RevisionGUID="6a2e4665-5fa6-4fc7-a68b-d083a95bd219" CreationDate="2011-10-13T18:49:49.283" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="Agreed. Many should stay open. Sure, some can be softball questions but...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- They're programming specific.&#xD;&#xA;- The have definitive answers.&#xD;&#xA;- Non-native english speakers might see _great_ value in these types of questions, and by extension, the native english speakers who work with them. &#xD;&#xA;- The proliferation of words and acronyms in the programming domain specific language causes there to be a large amount of these types of miscommunications. If its pronunciation isn't documented well/obviously somewhere then it certainly should be asked.&#xD;&#xA;- These types of questions have the same argument as design patterns: their existence improves communication. &#xD;&#xA;- Unless you're an army of one, improved communication does make you a better at your job.&#xD;&#xA;- When everyone is on the same page with proper pronunciation, the programming profession becomes a better place - and IIRC, that was a goal for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For _years_ I called it ess-cue-ehl server, until I heard a .NET Rocks cast with the PM of the project (whom I'd call an authority on the subject) call it sequel server. If only someone had told me sooner..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6057" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2421" RevisionGUID="4d13482c-c99b-45f3-96ac-a063225eecf9" CreationDate="2011-10-13T19:33:26.530" UserId="34446" Text="I'm upset that my question caused such negative responses. For my part I am sorry to have contributed to the Bait, Bully and Gang activity that I feel the post was creating. I was on the defensive for a misunderstanding based on, what I can only conclude, was a bad tag--if it had been tagged philosophy of programming then I would likely not have angered the &quot;design pattern&quot; followers who, I now realize, take these questions very seriously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said. My question is not being acurately edited by Mr.Trapp. While it is his determination this is best for the community, it is actually not a good edit. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, if someone wants to ask a different question, they should make their own post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, if you want to improve the quality of the site's answers, do not allow people who Bait, Bully or Gang to make snotty comment in someone's post if there is a misunderstanding of terminology--as was the case here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Third, To change the details of my post and morph into a better question is good for &quot;future users&quot; to read a title that maps closer to the results, but is this why people ask questions? I don't think of myself participating here to create some **generic** Wiki on programming. I think of it as a **very specific** Wiki. If the question didn't come off correctly then I think it should stand as it is--warts and all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't believe it is in the interest of a **participating** community to have their questions *smoothed over* when it suits a moderator's sense of editing duty. The information is out there, its the synergy between the questions and the answers that makes it more meaningful than if I had just posted a question such as &quot;what is a design pattern?&quot; I can find this answer on Wikipedia (and I liked to it in my post). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if you insist on hyjacking my question, then I will want to have my name removed from it--because its no longer my mistaken question but some generic &quot;I should have used google&quot; goof. AND I want my reputation points back, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Programmers is collaboratively edited: your question has been revised to better align with the answers received and so that it can remain open and hopefully be of use to people in the future. We can disassociate your name from the question if you don't want to be associated with it anymore: just let me know.&quot; [1][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/113757/are-version-control-systems-a-form-of-design-pattern&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6058" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2421" RevisionGUID="4d13482c-c99b-45f3-96ac-a063225eecf9" CreationDate="2011-10-13T19:33:26.530" UserId="34446" Text="When is &quot;collaboratively edited&quot;, hijacking someone's question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6059" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2421" RevisionGUID="4d13482c-c99b-45f3-96ac-a063225eecf9" CreationDate="2011-10-13T19:33:26.530" UserId="34446" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6060" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2422" RevisionGUID="0290492d-f6ac-48f1-92bb-fc2e9e1cb16f" CreationDate="2011-10-13T19:50:13.303" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="There have been a few questions lately about improving the guidance and clarity of what this site is about. We rely heavily on [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) for this guidance, but over the past year, our FAQ has become longer and longer as more caveats, exceptions, commentary, and other things that seem important at the time gets added.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to get the FAQ into a state that's clear and easy to read?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: this is solely about **rewriting the FAQ with the current scope.** If you want to suggest changes to the scope of the site, please propose it in [a new question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also note we can't change the entire FAQ: just the first part (up to and including &quot;Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6061" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2422" RevisionGUID="0290492d-f6ac-48f1-92bb-fc2e9e1cb16f" CreationDate="2011-10-13T19:50:13.303" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="How can we improve the FAQ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6062" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2422" RevisionGUID="0290492d-f6ac-48f1-92bb-fc2e9e1cb16f" CreationDate="2011-10-13T19:50:13.303" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|featured|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6063" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2423" RevisionGUID="bfc48337-6214-4363-979e-7b7cc24de3d3" CreationDate="2011-10-13T19:50:52.697" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="**This is the current editable portion of the FAQ (feel free to use as a template for suggested improvements).**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers - Stack Exchange is for &lt;span class=&quot;revision-comment&quot;&gt;expert programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development&lt;/span&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can include topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;- Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;- Algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;- Design patterns&#xD;&#xA;- Architecture&#xD;&#xA;- Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;- Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;- Software licensing&#xD;&#xA;- Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is about *programming tools*, please ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com) instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While subjective questions are allowed, subjective does not mean &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. **Please keep it professional at all times**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All subjective questions are expected to be _constructive_. How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;- tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;- have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;- invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;- insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;- are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot; Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Can I ask career advice questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, unless your question is specifically about software development and requires the unique insights of a programmer. Most career advice questions [run the risk of being closed][1]: try to make yours a [good subjective question][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure your question has the proper scope. If your question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really something that uniquely applies to software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![proper scope for question](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please also be aware that we will not delete your career advice question after you receive answers if you change your mind about having asked it. Think carefully before you post a question full of personal or otherwise sensitive information. If you don't want something to be publicly revealed, consider not posting it on Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## What about other programming related questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please note that the following subjects are considered *off-topic* here:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What language should I learn next? (Unless you have a _specific_ requirement and don't know which language meets that requirement.)&#xD;&#xA;- What salary/wage should I ask for/expect? (Too localized to your place and time)&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;Which technology is better?&lt;/a&gt; (e.g Java/C#, Eclipse/Netbeans, iPhone/Android)&#xD;&#xA;- Please critique my resum&amp;eacute;. (Unless you have a _specific_ question about a software development part of your resum&amp;eacute;. Questions about resum&amp;eacute; formatting and style are always off-topic.)&#xD;&#xA;- What project should I choose for fun/college/course/thesis/practice? (Too localized, inviting a list of equally valid answers, and usually not meeting the guidelines for good subjective questions.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more discussion on these subject see &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-list&quot;&gt;the question where these topics were discussed&lt;/a&gt; on our Meta site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments are useful for getting clarifications, but extended discussions detract from the question and its answers. If you'd like to discuss anything related to programming with other expert programmers, please use our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6064" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2424" RevisionGUID="15ab7f72-a32b-4539-bdb1-ea7546cf052d" CreationDate="2011-10-13T19:55:03.717" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Looking through the other FAQs, many are starting to use what's been called the &quot;Super User style&quot;: explaining right up front what's on-topic and the exceptions to that list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users. If you have a question about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * computer hardware&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *computer software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;and it is not about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * videogames or consoles&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * websites or web services like Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * electronic devices, media players, cell phones or smart phones, except insofar as they interface with your computer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * a shopping or buying recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should follow that. I also think we should drop much of the commentary, as it only clouds the issue related to what's on-topic and what isn't. For example, it's difficult understand all the caveats and exceptions to the career advice policy and whether or not any specific question meets the criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other parts of the FAQ, like the note about comments, is [explained elsewhere](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment). So here is what I'm proposing instead:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* design patterns&#xD;&#xA;* developer testing&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;* freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and it is **not about**…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;* what language you should learn next&#xD;&#xA;* salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;* résumé help&#xD;&#xA;* what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;* programming tools (ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com) instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;…then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![proper scope for question](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please also [look around](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search) to see if your question has been asked before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## What about subjective questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. **Please keep it professional at all times**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All subjective questions are expected to be _constructive_. How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;* tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;* have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;* invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;* insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;* are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot; Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6065" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2423" RevisionGUID="b77543ee-7b78-4a2f-b83b-860fe9546295" CreationDate="2011-10-13T19:56:10.627" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 104 characters in body" Text="**This is the current editable portion of the FAQ (feel free to [use as a template for suggested improvements](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/bfc48337-6214-4363-979e-7b7cc24de3d3/view-source)).**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers - Stack Exchange is for &lt;span class=&quot;revision-comment&quot;&gt;expert programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development&lt;/span&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can include topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;- Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;- Algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;- Design patterns&#xD;&#xA;- Architecture&#xD;&#xA;- Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;- Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;- Software licensing&#xD;&#xA;- Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is about *programming tools*, please ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com) instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While subjective questions are allowed, subjective does not mean &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. **Please keep it professional at all times**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All subjective questions are expected to be _constructive_. How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;- tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;- have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;- invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;- insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;- are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot; Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Can I ask career advice questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, unless your question is specifically about software development and requires the unique insights of a programmer. Most career advice questions [run the risk of being closed][1]: try to make yours a [good subjective question][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure your question has the proper scope. If your question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really something that uniquely applies to software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![proper scope for question](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please also be aware that we will not delete your career advice question after you receive answers if you change your mind about having asked it. Think carefully before you post a question full of personal or otherwise sensitive information. If you don't want something to be publicly revealed, consider not posting it on Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## What about other programming related questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please note that the following subjects are considered *off-topic* here:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What language should I learn next? (Unless you have a _specific_ requirement and don't know which language meets that requirement.)&#xD;&#xA;- What salary/wage should I ask for/expect? (Too localized to your place and time)&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;Which technology is better?&lt;/a&gt; (e.g Java/C#, Eclipse/Netbeans, iPhone/Android)&#xD;&#xA;- Please critique my resum&amp;eacute;. (Unless you have a _specific_ question about a software development part of your resum&amp;eacute;. Questions about resum&amp;eacute; formatting and style are always off-topic.)&#xD;&#xA;- What project should I choose for fun/college/course/thesis/practice? (Too localized, inviting a list of equally valid answers, and usually not meeting the guidelines for good subjective questions.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more discussion on these subject see &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-list&quot;&gt;the question where these topics were discussed&lt;/a&gt; on our Meta site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments are useful for getting clarifications, but extended discussions detract from the question and its answers. If you'd like to discuss anything related to programming with other expert programmers, please use our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6066" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2414" RevisionGUID="8366fe51-a4e7-47ce-9b29-8d3f7aee6026" CreationDate="2011-10-13T20:00:03.710" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 330 characters in body" Text="### Edit&#xD;&#xA;I think the new version, &quot;P.SE is a site for programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development&quot; could work, but as part of a larger improvement to the FAQ. I've created [a new question about that](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2422/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To remove the focus on experts in our site FAQ is to lose [what's special about Stack Exchange](http://stackexchange.com/about):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What’s special about Stack Exchange?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You wouldn’t shout out a calculus question in a football stadium, right? You’d go to the math department of a university. That’s why instead of allowing questions on any topic, we have brought together separate communities of experts on very specific topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don’t open a site until we’re sure there’s a critical mass of experts ready to participate. If you can’t find a Stack Exchange site on your subject of expertise, we have a place called Area 51 where you can propose one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All questions on Stack Exchange are expected to be objective and have concrete answers; we’re not a place for conversation, opinions, or socializing. We also expect questions to represent real problems, not just imponderables, hypotheticals, or requests for opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange’s focus on professional communities and this “Just the facts, Ma’am” ethos results in over 90% of questions getting great answers, often stunningly quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason Stack Exchange is such a valuable resoure to people learning a field is because it attracts experts: we want them to pay it forward and help others who don't know what they know. [Everyone can ask a question, not everyone can provide an expert answer.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do that by making sure, as much as we possibly can, that experts are not wasting their time by coming here. That the questions would be interesting and substantial to answer. We don't do that by lowering the bar for questions here or asking questions that are low-hanging fruit for novice programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone can ask a question, but they do so keeping in mind the audience for the site—the people waiting in the wings ready to answer questions—are expert programmers. There are other sites on the web, like Quora or Yahoo! Answers, where people can get help from just anyone." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6067" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2421" RevisionGUID="42db875e-24da-4955-a94a-6aa8a175bf92" CreationDate="2011-10-13T20:06:28.940" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add link to specific question, add tags" Text="I'm upset that [my question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/113757/are-version-control-systems-a-form-of-design-pattern) caused such negative responses. For my part I am sorry to have contributed to the Bait, Bully and Gang activity that I feel the post was creating. I was on the defensive for a misunderstanding based on, what I can only conclude, was a bad tag--if it had been tagged philosophy of programming then I would likely not have angered the &quot;design pattern&quot; followers who, I now realize, take these questions very seriously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said. My question is not being acurately edited by Mr.Trapp. While it is his determination this is best for the community, it is actually not a good edit. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, if someone wants to ask a different question, they should make their own post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, if you want to improve the quality of the site's answers, do not allow people who Bait, Bully or Gang to make snotty comment in someone's post if there is a misunderstanding of terminology--as was the case here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Third, To change the details of my post and morph into a better question is good for &quot;future users&quot; to read a title that maps closer to the results, but is this why people ask questions? I don't think of myself participating here to create some **generic** Wiki on programming. I think of it as a **very specific** Wiki. If the question didn't come off correctly then I think it should stand as it is--warts and all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't believe it is in the interest of a **participating** community to have their questions *smoothed over* when it suits a moderator's sense of editing duty. The information is out there, its the synergy between the questions and the answers that makes it more meaningful than if I had just posted a question such as &quot;what is a design pattern?&quot; I can find this answer on Wikipedia (and I liked to it in my post). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if you insist on hyjacking my question, then I will want to have my name removed from it--because its no longer my mistaken question but some generic &quot;I should have used google&quot; goof. AND I want my reputation points back, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Programmers is collaboratively edited: your question has been revised to better align with the answers received and so that it can remain open and hopefully be of use to people in the future. We can disassociate your name from the question if you don't want to be associated with it anymore: just let me know.&quot; [1][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/113757/are-version-control-systems-a-form-of-design-pattern&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6068" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2421" RevisionGUID="42db875e-24da-4955-a94a-6aa8a175bf92" CreationDate="2011-10-13T20:06:28.940" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add link to specific question, add tags" Text="|discussion|moderation|specific-question|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6069" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2425" RevisionGUID="4eee90cc-a759-484c-b411-e5103975555b" CreationDate="2011-10-13T20:17:44.307" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="For background before the edits were made, your question was based on a fundamentally flawed understanding of what a &quot;design pattern&quot; is, and when people answered to that question, you added an entirely new question about what type of &quot;parent pattern&quot; Git is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue about adding a second question after you received answers to the first I think we agree on is not the way to go because it invalidates all the answers thus far. If you want to ask a follow-up question, ask a new question that can attract new answers to that specific question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now to the issue of revising your original question. This isn't a discussion board: we're looking for long-lasting question-and-answer pairs that'll help future visitors, not just yourself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's hard enough that your question is based on a flawed premise that I'm not entirely convinced very many people would ever make, but it's all the more difficult when your question is difficult to read. If we can't make your question at least *findable* and *readable* by the few people who might have a similar question in the future, it doesn't belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end, this is the summary of changes that were made to your question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Revision of the title to match the body of the question and SEO&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging with the appropriate, specific tags instead of vague tags like &quot;philosophy&quot;, &quot;theory&quot;, and &quot;patterns&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* Formatting and capitalization, including the use of a blockquote for the multiline quotation and the capitalization of Git&#xD;&#xA;* Change DRCS to DVCS, the more recognizable term for systems like Git&#xD;&#xA;* Incorporation of the problem you're trying to solve:&#xD;&#xA;   * That you are unclear whether certain things are considered design patterns&#xD;&#xA;   * That you want to know what to call them if they're not design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And that's it. Which of these changes, exactly, are you objecting to?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6070" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2424" RevisionGUID="48d4d79f-5fa6-4291-bf15-75ef0399de1a" CreationDate="2011-10-13T20:20:09.497" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 33 characters in body" Text="Looking through the other FAQs, many are starting to use what's been called the &quot;[Super User style](http://superuser.com/faq)&quot;: explaining right up front what's on-topic and the exceptions to that list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users. If you have a question about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * computer hardware&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *computer software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;and it is not about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * videogames or consoles&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * websites or web services like Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * electronic devices, media players, cell phones or smart phones, except insofar as they interface with your computer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * a shopping or buying recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should follow that. I also think we should drop much of the commentary, as it only clouds the issue related to what's on-topic and what isn't. For example, it's difficult understand all the caveats and exceptions to the career advice policy and whether or not any specific question meets the criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other parts of the FAQ, like the note about comments, are [explained elsewhere](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So here is what I'm proposing instead:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* design patterns&#xD;&#xA;* developer testing&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;* freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and it is **not about**…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;* what language you should learn next&#xD;&#xA;* salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;* résumé help&#xD;&#xA;* what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;* programming tools (ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com) instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;…then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![proper scope for question](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please also [look around](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search) to see if your question has been asked before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## What about subjective questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. **Please keep it professional at all times**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All subjective questions are expected to be _constructive_. How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;* tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;* have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;* invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;* insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;* are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot; Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6071" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2424" RevisionGUID="917b16e4-c520-445f-9312-c11ddb10174b" CreationDate="2011-10-13T20:26:00.220" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 33 characters in body" Text="Looking through the other FAQs, many are starting to use what's been called the &quot;[Super User style](http://superuser.com/faq)&quot;: explaining right up front what's on-topic and the exceptions to that list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users. If you have a question about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * computer hardware&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *computer software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;and it is not about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * videogames or consoles&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * websites or web services like Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * electronic devices, media players, cell phones or smart phones, except insofar as they interface with your computer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * a shopping or buying recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should follow that. I also think we should drop much of the commentary, as it only clouds the issue related to what's on-topic and what isn't. For example, it's difficult understand all the caveats and exceptions to the career advice policy and whether or not any specific question meets the criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other parts of the FAQ, like the note about comments, are [explained elsewhere](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So here is what I'm proposing instead:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* design patterns&#xD;&#xA;* developer testing&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;* freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and it is **not about**…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;* what language you should learn next, including [which technology is better](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;* résumé help&#xD;&#xA;* what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;* programming tools (ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com) instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;…then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![proper scope for question](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please also [look around](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search) to see if your question has been asked before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## What about subjective questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. **Please keep it professional at all times**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All subjective questions are expected to be _constructive_. How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;* tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;* have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;* invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;* insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;* are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot; Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6072" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2424" RevisionGUID="8f68ec45-1070-47b2-893a-9b678a312b35" CreationDate="2011-10-13T20:28:53.433" UserId="47" Comment="added link to back up why career advice questions are off topic" Text="Looking through the other FAQs, many are starting to use what's been called the &quot;[Super User style](http://superuser.com/faq)&quot;: explaining right up front what's on-topic and the exceptions to that list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users. If you have a question about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * computer hardware&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *computer software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;and it is not about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * videogames or consoles&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * websites or web services like Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * electronic devices, media players, cell phones or smart phones, except insofar as they interface with your computer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * a shopping or buying recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should follow that. I also think we should drop much of the commentary, as it only clouds the issue related to what's on-topic and what isn't. For example, it's difficult understand all the caveats and exceptions to the career advice policy and whether or not any specific question meets the criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other parts of the FAQ, like the note about comments, are [explained elsewhere](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So here is what I'm proposing instead:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* design patterns&#xD;&#xA;* developer testing&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;* freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and it is **not about**…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [career advice, including general workplace issues](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590)&#xD;&#xA;* what language you should learn next, including [which technology is better](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;* résumé help&#xD;&#xA;* what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;* programming tools (ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com) instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;…then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![proper scope for question](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please also [look around](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search) to see if your question has been asked before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## What about subjective questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. **Please keep it professional at all times**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All subjective questions are expected to be _constructive_. How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;* tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;* have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;* invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;* insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;* are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot; Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6073" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2426" RevisionGUID="85d1ecc2-a353-4bde-8640-091ae80b2620" CreationDate="2011-10-14T01:12:35.507" UserId="32353" Text="I can see where having &quot;I'm having trouble understanding&quot; added to a question might be a bit annoying.  However, you were trying to tie together 3 concepts (patterns, push/pop etc, version control) that, as you saw, almost all programmers consider to be essentially unrelated - to the point where programmers might have an easier time understanding your question with &quot;I'm having trouble understanding&quot; as a lead in.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, such a lead in might tend to prevent down votes, since people who see the concepts as unrelated might think the question showed poor research effort, though I don't think that was the case.  Saying &quot;I'm having trouble understanding&quot; does at least imply you did research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems you may have meant it in a higher level, somewhat metaphorical sense, but even at that level I don't think most programmers think it's a useful way to think about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You were also to some degree collateral damage of some comments by programmers who felt that the idea of design patterns had become overused, and considered your question an example of such overuse.  The comments were more directed at that than at your question, but I can where that plus down-votes plus edits led to a pretty negative experience - sorry about that.  It's possible the tag contributed, but you had &quot;design pattern&quot; in the question (which does have a fairly specific meaning within the programming community, despite it possibly growing more overused).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, I don't think the final form (as of now) of the question is very different from the original, so I don't think &quot;hijacked&quot; is a fair description of what happened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6074" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2427" RevisionGUID="707f2dc2-f7a7-4507-948c-93a3eaf8d635" CreationDate="2011-10-14T01:51:54.673" UserId="30278" Text="How about a &quot;What was your first real C program&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is answerable although the answers might not be considered useful, there, are bound to be some interesting answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6075" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2428" RevisionGUID="be6e6da2-2517-4755-9359-62a6bdce6c6b" CreationDate="2011-10-14T08:46:30.100" UserId="24049" Text="This is highly subjective, but I've noticed that as my reputation has increased I seem to get slightly more upvotes.  There are lots of possible explanations for this, but I wonder if people are more likely to upvote answers from people with higher reputations.  I'm fairly sure that at least sub-consciously I give more weight to such answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is obviously a good thing when you come to look back at an old question, but I wonder if hiding the reputation of an answerer for the first (say) 24 hours might lead to " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6076" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2428" RevisionGUID="be6e6da2-2517-4755-9359-62a6bdce6c6b" CreationDate="2011-10-14T08:46:30.100" UserId="24049" Text="Should users reputation be hidden when they first answer questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6077" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2428" RevisionGUID="be6e6da2-2517-4755-9359-62a6bdce6c6b" CreationDate="2011-10-14T08:46:30.100" UserId="24049" Text="|discussion|subjective|stackexchange|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6078" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2428" RevisionGUID="f1a9e428-9564-4b41-8543-8ca24d2e7cd0" CreationDate="2011-10-14T08:54:24.960" UserId="24049" Comment="edited title" Text="Should users reputation be hidden when they first answer questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6079" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2428" RevisionGUID="f1a9e428-9564-4b41-8543-8ca24d2e7cd0" CreationDate="2011-10-14T08:54:24.960" UserId="24049" Comment="edited title" Text="This is highly subjective, but I've noticed that as my reputation has increased I seem to get slightly more upvotes.  There are lots of possible explanations for this, but I wonder if people are more likely to upvote answers from people with higher reputations.  I'm fairly sure that at least sub-consciously I give more weight to such answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is obviously a good thing when you come to look back at an old question, but I wonder if hiding the reputation of an answerer for the first (say) 24 hours might lead to more representative voting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Has this been tried on any other stack exchange sites?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6080" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2429" RevisionGUID="a60a1457-21f0-4c46-b540-b88f2df5fd18" CreationDate="2011-10-14T09:16:06.783" UserId="47" Text="This has been discussed before on Meta Stack Overflow. I can't find the specific question, but a search for [&quot;hide reputation&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=hide+reputation) gives 24 results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These three questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/198/should-there-be-anonymous-answers-and-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/79621/should-reputation-be-hidden-until-an-answer-is-accepted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/21458/hide-the-rep-and-badge-count-on-a-users-info-box-on-answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are closest to what you're asking&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6081" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2422" RevisionGUID="52ed4448-23bd-4be7-90df-125b20b6f789" CreationDate="2011-10-14T10:04:06.670" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/124787555760734208" />
  <row Id="6082" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2430" RevisionGUID="44a76a81-7280-4b65-a5e8-ff06ca95ee23" CreationDate="2011-10-16T13:31:29.587" UserId="14641" Text="What are the differences between this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Should there be a regulatory body to regulate the number of developers graduating every year? \[closed\]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What were the reasons why Windows never had a decent shell?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first was closed by [Mark Trapp][3] after he commented that Programmers [isn't a discussion board][4]. The second has active speculative answers that seem to me to simply be discussions and opinions about the question. Disregarding the quality of the question (the closed one could have been closed simply on that merit) what makes the Shell question worthy of continued discussion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114580/should-there-be-a-regulatory-body-to-regulate-the-number-of-developers-graduatin&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114530/what-were-the-reasons-why-windows-never-had-a-decent-shell&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8/mark-trapp&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6083" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2430" RevisionGUID="44a76a81-7280-4b65-a5e8-ff06ca95ee23" CreationDate="2011-10-16T13:31:29.587" UserId="14641" Text="Unanswerable &quot;Discussion&quot; Questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6084" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2430" RevisionGUID="44a76a81-7280-4b65-a5e8-ff06ca95ee23" CreationDate="2011-10-16T13:31:29.587" UserId="14641" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6085" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2430" RevisionGUID="5b6d36d4-82e9-4cfc-b320-8dcf1f41a94e" CreationDate="2011-10-16T21:21:05.070" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6086" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2431" RevisionGUID="1e931bc8-96c6-4968-9b8f-972ba0668f51" CreationDate="2011-10-17T11:00:25.427" UserId="22493" Text="Reviewing an [old answer of mine][1], I noticed that one of my links to [another answer of mine][2] had gone stale, losing both the content and the context of that answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I seem to remember that the [second question][3] was considered a duplicate of another [closed question][4], and it was probably right to be closed, but did it really deserve to be deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that a number of answers there were valuable. I certainly put some effort into making a balanced, impartial (as far as one can) response that tried to cover different ground to other questions/answers. In fact, my own answer aside, I remember that it contained more useful answers than the earlier question which *hasn't* been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Incidentally, is there any way for me to get back the content of my answer?&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101649/a-modern-review-of-java/101737#101737&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92157/what-features-are-there-in-c-and-not-in-java/92333#92333&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92157/what-features-are-there-in-c-and-not-in-java/92333&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6284/22493" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6087" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2431" RevisionGUID="1e931bc8-96c6-4968-9b8f-972ba0668f51" CreationDate="2011-10-17T11:00:25.427" UserId="22493" Text="At what point does moderation become censorship?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6088" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2431" RevisionGUID="1e931bc8-96c6-4968-9b8f-972ba0668f51" CreationDate="2011-10-17T11:00:25.427" UserId="22493" Text="|discussion|moderation|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6089" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2432" RevisionGUID="f3a9739a-c74a-43eb-b7cc-9658ab4e7c68" CreationDate="2011-10-17T11:04:41.643" UserId="47" Text="As a duplicate question it becomes a **candidate** for deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all duplicates are deleted the wording of the question may be sufficiently different to make it useful as an alternate route to the initial question on the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case it looks like another moderator decided that the deleted question wasn't sufficiently different. The fact that [your answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101649/a-modern-review-of-java/101737#101737) linked to [another answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92157/what-features-are-there-in-c-and-not-in-java/92333#92333) would tend to support that view. If both questions could have effectively the same answer then they are clearly duplicate questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6090" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2433" RevisionGUID="59891d5e-74e5-4aa0-867e-d9093ed19bab" CreationDate="2011-10-17T11:21:29.343" UserId="6329" Text="Why do decent questions get unilaterally closed by one admin? Here's only the most recent case:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114555/is-there-such-a-thing-as-a-when-statement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand the need for the pure junk/offtopic questions to get a speedy close, and even a speedy delete, but for these gray areas the community itself really needs to step in. When a question is closed with five names, it feels like we're a real community. When a question is closed by one person it starts to feel like we're having to follow the arbitrary [whims of a king][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reasons the admin [who, btw, is a helpful and hardworking contributor] gave was that he didn't think the answers were getting anywhere, when, in fact, they were converging on one of the key ideas of aspect-oriented programming and event-based programming. A close reading of the &quot;when&quot; question reveals they are asking about event-based programming, but just didn't know the term (and hence would ask on a site like this).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could I please get a speedy reopen of this question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/10/serving-at-the-pleasure-of-the-king.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6091" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2433" RevisionGUID="59891d5e-74e5-4aa0-867e-d9093ed19bab" CreationDate="2011-10-17T11:21:29.343" UserId="6329" Text="Why do decent questions get unilaterally closed by one admin?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6092" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2433" RevisionGUID="59891d5e-74e5-4aa0-867e-d9093ed19bab" CreationDate="2011-10-17T11:21:29.343" UserId="6329" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6093" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2434" RevisionGUID="d2efe018-6c0b-4a2a-adc8-d27e5589616d" CreationDate="2011-10-17T11:36:55.943" UserId="47" Text="Well I can't speak for Mark, but he did leave a comment on the question before closing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've closed this because the question is way too broad, and the answers are just guessing at whether or not they match the poorly defined criteria of the question. Having a list of possible candidates for what might fit the condition of a &quot;when&quot; statement is not helpful. If there's a specific problem you're actually facing that has you inquiring about this, feel free to ask a new question about that instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not shown on the default view of the question, you have to click the &quot;add/show more comments&quot; link for it to be visible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also entirely possible that one or more flag was raised on the question by other community users and that Mark was responding to those in the first instance." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6094" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2431" RevisionGUID="6c060a45-caab-47c9-a02e-2ef76d7f3fba" CreationDate="2011-10-17T12:00:16.050" UserId="22493" Comment="edited title" Text="Should we be deleting questions which still have valuable answers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6095" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2433" RevisionGUID="e3abfcee-eb8d-4e25-b26b-4e5470f69cf7" CreationDate="2011-10-17T12:30:32.747" UserId="6329" Comment="added 93 characters in body" Text="Why do decent questions get unilaterally closed by one admin? Here's only the most recent case:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114555/is-there-such-a-thing-as-a-when-statement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand the need for the pure junk/offtopic questions to get a speedy close, and even a speedy delete, but for these gray areas the community itself really needs to step in. When a question is closed with five names, it feels like we're a real community. When a question is closed by one person it starts to feel like we're having to follow the arbitrary [whims of a king][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reasons the admin [who, btw, is a helpful and hardworking contributor] gave was that he didn't think the answers were getting anywhere, when, in fact, they were converging on one of the key ideas of aspect-oriented programming and event-based programming. A close reading of the &quot;when&quot; question reveals they are asking about event-based programming, but just didn't know the term (and hence would ask on a site like this).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could I please get a speedy reopen of this question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update: Looks like it's been reopened! Maybe the community approach does work. :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/10/serving-at-the-pleasure-of-the-king.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6096" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2435" RevisionGUID="02d20822-51a1-40bf-9a9c-8bc74e42e35e" CreationDate="2011-10-17T12:42:14.730" UserId="226" Text="My response is going to come in two (and a half) parts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Part 1**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with your take on the question and have reopened it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Part 2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked a similar question ([&quot;What are the rules around moderators closing questions outright?&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright&quot;)) last year and [one of the responses summed it up](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright/856#856):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;The principle is that moderators are encouraged to make decisions; that's why they're moderators. As such, a moderator's close decision goes into effect immediately... that's the way the Stack Exchange software was designed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not a bad thing. Sometimes we miss the mark and a decent question gets closed, but there are checks in place to make sure we don't run off into the wild. People like you making posts like this is one of those checks. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators get notified of every meta post, so your post showed up in my inbox with what I assume as its original title: &quot;Isn't this supposed to be a community website?&quot; It *is* a community website. This post is proof of that. Making a constructive meta post challenging a closing reason (which this post is) is always encouraged and we will always respond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Part 2.5**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is where I'm going to go off on a slight tangent. Disclaimer: I don't have a problem with your question, Macneil, but it reminded me of an ongoing trend I've noticed and would like to address.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key word above is &quot;constructive&quot;. We welcome constructive criticism and review/reverse decisions where needed. This is why there are four moderators and an entire community of people with reopen votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure what it is about meta that brings out the theatrics along the lines of &quot;moderators are nazi dictators, drunk with power and oppressing us hardworking folk&quot;, but it's getting old. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To everyone who reads this answer: if you disagree with the closure of a question (either by moderator or by community), please post on meta! Say which question was closed, why you think it should stay open, and leave it at that. Let's all collectively drop the drama and focus on what we are really trying to do here: building a great site full of great software development related content." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6097" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2433" RevisionGUID="fe477857-1d41-458f-973a-3dec05b4f80a" CreationDate="2011-10-17T13:14:26.550" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6098" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2436" RevisionGUID="c3f9fa8a-b065-45a9-b483-8dc532d191f5" CreationDate="2011-10-17T18:24:05.000" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="In this specific case, the user who asked the deleted question asked the same duplicate question about 2 dozen times. And the question was exactly the type of question we *don't want here*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;I don't know what language I should learn next, is Java a good choice?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What's the difference between C# and Java: is Java better?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, the question was closed for a month without any activity: nobody tried to save it, make a case for it being the better duplicate, or vote to reopen it. Thus, it was deleted as part of the [ongoing cleaning](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=cleanup) of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closure [sets a question on the path to deletion](http://meta.money.stackexchange.com/questions/415/deleting-closed-question-of-no-value-is-not-happening/418#418). If a question is worth saving because of its answers, let's save it before that happens: make a case for it on meta, edit the question to improve it so it fits on our site, and/or flag it for reopening explaining why the question now (or always) fit the site's guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6099" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2431" RevisionGUID="d027ff2c-bd68-4bde-b2b6-26b3d4371afd" CreationDate="2011-10-17T18:24:29.850" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderation|specific-question|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6100" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2437" RevisionGUID="7766f748-c583-4a67-aed9-bad4003397ab" CreationDate="2011-10-17T18:40:55.713" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="A particular up-voted answer on the question received a few flags as &quot;not an answer&quot;. When handling those flags, I looked at the other answers to determine what was substantively different from the one that kept getting flagged and the others: I found no difference. Instead, what I found was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The (still) top-voted answer is nothing but a link to a Wikipedia article and even mentions the question isn't very clear&#xD;&#xA;2. The (still) second top-voted answer is a single line &quot;Nobody's mentioned Intercal's COMEFROM&quot; with no context or added value&#xD;&#xA;3. The (still) third-top voted answer answers &quot;yes&quot; and gives an example in Perl.&#xD;&#xA;4. 13 out of the 18 answers are guesses (&quot;Is X what you're thinking of?&quot; or &quot;Sounds like X, which has Y&quot;) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is an indiscriminate list. The point of Stack Exchange is to vote questions that a) solve the problem and b) confer actual knowledge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On 13 of the answers, it's clear the answerers are guessing. So what are all the votes for? What people voting like the most? When every answer is equally valid because the question didn't set up any parameters for correctness (like a specific problem to be solved), it renders one of the core aspects of Stack Exchange—community vetting by voting—meaningless. It's a popularity contest: that's what Reddit does, not us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I still think the question should be closed: it's a crappy question with no guidance on how to answer it, so crappy, context-free, one-line answers rise to the top. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But unlike in a tyrannical monarchy, I'm free to voice my dissent with you and the other moderators, just as you're free to make a case for a question to be reopened. If everyone wants to [eat cake](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake), that's cool though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6101" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2437" RevisionGUID="f49a148b-6fa3-4be1-98c7-f1635c2d0998" CreationDate="2011-10-17T18:46:13.287" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 415 characters in body" Text="A particular up-voted answer on the question received a few flags as &quot;not an answer&quot;. When handling those flags, I looked at the other answers to determine what was substantively different from the one that kept getting flagged and the others: I found no difference. Instead, what I found was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The (still) top-voted answer is nothing but a link to a Wikipedia article and even mentions the question isn't very clear&#xD;&#xA;2. The (still) second top-voted answer is a single line &quot;Nobody's mentioned Intercal's COMEFROM&quot; with no context or added value&#xD;&#xA;3. The (still) third-top voted answer answers &quot;yes&quot; and gives an example in Perl.&#xD;&#xA;4. Three of the answers are single-line links to Wikipedia articles.&#xD;&#xA;4. 13 out of the 18 answers are guesses (&quot;Is X what you're thinking of?&quot; or &quot;Sounds like X, which has Y&quot;) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is an indiscriminate list, and that's not what Stack Exchange is here for. The [point of Stack Exchange](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) is to provide definitive answers that a) solve the problem and b) confer actual knowledge and to have those answers rise to the top via voting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On 13 of the answers, it's clear the answerers are guessing. So what are all the votes for? What the people voting like the most? When every answer is equally valid because the question didn't set up any parameters for correctness (like a specific problem to be solved), it renders one of the core aspects of Stack Exchange—community vetting by voting—meaningless. It's a popularity contest: that's what [Reddit](http://reddit.com) does, not us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I still think the question should be closed: it's a crappy question with no guidance on how to answer it, so crappy, context-free, one-line answers have naturally risen to the top. A person coming across the question in the future isn't going to learn anything they couldn't have learned from Googling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But unlike in a tyrannical monarchy, I'm free to voice my dissent with you and the other moderators, just as you're free to make a case for a question to be reopened. If everyone wants to [eat cake](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake), that's cool though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6102" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2437" RevisionGUID="4491fdab-6526-4fae-979f-61d3716904ee" CreationDate="2011-10-17T19:01:47.263" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 415 characters in body" Text="The entirety of the question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a language that has a &quot;when&quot; statement that does something whenever a condition becomes true?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it. No context, no problem to be solved, no specific requirements for correctness. Just give a language that has a &quot;when&quot; statement as provided to the author.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is an indiscriminate list, and that's not what Stack Exchange is here for. The [point of Stack Exchange](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) is to provide definitive answers that a) solve the problem and b) confer actual knowledge and to have those answers rise to the top via voting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question without parameters for correctness is sufficiently vague enough in and of itself to be closed outright. If you're adding anything more than the name of a language (like the long, experience-driven answers we want here), how do you know you're hitting anywhere near the mark?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the question was given the benefit of the doubt to attract high-quality answers, the existence of which is the essentially the only thing that can save a bad question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, a particular up-voted answer on the question received a few flags as &quot;not an answer&quot;. When handling those flags, I looked at the other answers to determine what was substantively different from the one that kept getting flagged and the others: I found no difference. Instead, what I found was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The (still) top-voted answer is nothing but a link to a Wikipedia article and even mentions the question isn't very clear&#xD;&#xA;* The (still) second top-voted answer is a single line &quot;Nobody's mentioned Intercal's COMEFROM&quot; with no context or added value&#xD;&#xA;* The (still) third-top voted answer answers &quot;yes&quot; and gives an example in Perl.&#xD;&#xA;* Three of the answers are single-line links to Wikipedia articles.&#xD;&#xA;* 13 out of the 17 answers are guesses (&quot;Is X what you're thinking of?&quot; or &quot;Sounds like X, which has Y&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* Of the four that actually provided more than a guess or a Wikipedia article, I found each interpreted the question differently or read different things into the single line of the question:&#xD;&#xA;   * One answered a question about the caveats of using a &quot;when&quot;-like statement&#xD;&#xA;   * One gave a basic survey of potential equivalents to a &quot;when&quot;-like statement&#xD;&#xA;   * One when into detail about a particular potential example and then answered a question about the benefits of AOP&#xD;&#xA;   * One answered a question about when you'd want a language to have a &quot;when&quot;-like statement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what are all the votes for? What the people voting like the most? When every answer is equally valid (or worse, everyone answers a different question) because the question didn't set up any parameters for correctness (like a specific problem to be solved), it renders one of the core aspects of Stack Exchange—community vetting by voting—meaningless. It's a popularity contest: that's what [Reddit](http://reddit.com) does, not us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I still think the question should be closed: it's a crappy question with no guidance on how to answer it, so crappy, context-free, one-line answers have naturally risen to the top and the answers that aren't crappy are better served on questions they actually answer. A person coming across the question in the future isn't going to learn anything they couldn't have learned from Googling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But unlike in a tyrannical monarchy, I'm free to voice my dissent with you and the other moderators, just as you're free to make a case for a question to be reopened. If everyone wants to [eat cake](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake), that's cool too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6103" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2433" RevisionGUID="65210305-dd2d-43b8-a8f3-5630b1d13db0" CreationDate="2011-10-17T19:03:06.870" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Less dramatic, more clear title" Text="Why was the question about &quot;when&quot; statements closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6104" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2438" RevisionGUID="936b91b8-b516-4398-99ba-5b9e3f00338b" CreationDate="2011-10-17T19:07:26.643" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Nothing: community moderation is done by humans and some things slip through the cracks. When that happens, we rely on users like yourself to find the things we missed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What were the reasons why Windows never had a decent shell?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114530/what-were-the-reasons-why-windows-never-had-a-decent-shell) is just pure speculation like the other question, so it's been closed now too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6105" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2420" RevisionGUID="53d9cdaf-83d3-4914-8398-a75f0a4e7e52" CreationDate="2011-10-17T20:32:53.100" UserId="1973" Comment="added 190 characters in body" Text="I was kind of annoyed to find [this question][1] moved to english.SE and the main reason I was annoyed was because Marco Cantu, the noted Delphi guru, deigned to answer it. Then when it was shipped over to English.SE it got 0 extra answers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was pretty much a done deal by the time it was transferred and had a very acceptable answer with a lot of other good nuanced answers which were loppped off, including Marco's, which is not a good way to attract experts to the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;AND, I also noticed that Danny Thorpe commented on the question as well. Well at least that survived. I'm not sure if the mods here have an inkling how cool that is, but it's really cool. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/32260/whats-the-history-of-the-pronunciation-of-delphi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6106" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2439" RevisionGUID="de73a0f7-ae80-4e3a-9207-c2ccf5069ab6" CreationDate="2011-10-17T21:03:09.407" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Do you have a question about your career or your workplace that isn't really about software development or being a programmer? Have you tried asking it on Programmers only to have it get closed because it's not on-topic here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good news! A proposal has been created on [Area 51](http://area51.stackexchange.com)—Stack Exchange's site incubator—to serve as a home for general career and workplace questions for all professions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for people in a workplace interested in discussion that relates to general office or business without a specific tie to any professional field.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; This includes questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How should I approach my boss about a raise/promotion?&#xD;&#xA;* How to deal with noisy or irritating co-workers?&#xD;&#xA;* How do you define business casual?&#xD;&#xA;* My coworker comes to work while high on drugs sometimes. What should I do?&#xD;&#xA;* What to do when you are asked “what is your desired salary” before you even get to the interview?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you're interested in asking and answering questions like these and seeing that there's a home for all those general career advice questions we get here on Programmers, consider committing to this proposal. The more people commit, the faster it'll launch.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once launched, you'll have an opportunity to participate in its private beta, where you'll work with other committers to &quot;seed&quot; the site and fill in the site's scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what are you waiting for? Go check it out!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6107" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2439" RevisionGUID="de73a0f7-ae80-4e3a-9207-c2ccf5069ab6" CreationDate="2011-10-17T21:03:09.407" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Professional Matters is now in the commitment phase" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6108" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2439" RevisionGUID="de73a0f7-ae80-4e3a-9207-c2ccf5069ab6" CreationDate="2011-10-17T21:03:09.407" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|featured|career|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6109" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2439" RevisionGUID="b773ae51-db0e-4c11-8cdc-1a42ccaa6499" CreationDate="2011-10-18T10:04:51.530" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/126237296524656641" />
  <row Id="6114" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2441" RevisionGUID="76848b3c-6580-466c-8068-cc12984e0f17" CreationDate="2011-10-18T19:35:36.083" UserDisplayName="user29776" Text="You're correct.  It is clear that &quot;what do i need to learn in order to get an entry level asp.net job?&quot; is broader than &quot;If you develop with ASP.NET, which other technologies do you use?&quot; despite being able to pick out overlap in the body, and could reasonably be expected to get different answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6115" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2442" RevisionGUID="b72de36b-9112-4e43-918a-db6b164e6ed3" CreationDate="2011-10-19T14:17:31.863" UserId="6605" Text="I notice there are five tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:bad-practice] **(10)**, [tag:good-practices] **(18)** and [tag:best-practices] (536),&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:practice] **(9)** and [tag:programming-practices] (195).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [tag:bad-practice] must be removed in all cases and questions merged with one of the other tags,&#xD;&#xA;2. [tag:good-practices] must either be merged with [tag:best-practices], or if there is a subtle difference between those two tags, it must be explained in [tag:good-practices] tag which currently has no description at all.&#xD;&#xA;3. [tag:practice] must be removed and questions merged with [tag:programming-practices]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6116" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2442" RevisionGUID="b72de36b-9112-4e43-918a-db6b164e6ed3" CreationDate="2011-10-19T14:17:31.863" UserId="6605" Text="Bad-practice, good-practices, best-practices, practice and programming-practices tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6117" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2442" RevisionGUID="b72de36b-9112-4e43-918a-db6b164e6ed3" CreationDate="2011-10-19T14:17:31.863" UserId="6605" Text="|discussion|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6118" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2443" RevisionGUID="45cee88f-d6b8-4ac4-a3c6-2920db12ce51" CreationDate="2011-10-19T14:52:31.743" UserId="4" Text="I think that all of them should be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just don't see what value any of them add to a question (can someone explain their value?). Instead, use tags to describe what you are talking about, not some meta-information. My biggest problem is that what is considered &quot;bad&quot; or &quot;best&quot; practices change over time (do we want localized tags?) and vary depending on project and organization. All answers should be providing good (the best) advice and practices given the situation described in the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6135" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2447" RevisionGUID="c753d0e5-b022-4fcd-b0de-db8239560fd9" CreationDate="2011-10-19T22:55:13.957" UserId="2314" Text="The question **[Should developers accept overtime/weekend work/denied bonus payments?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101988/should-developers-accept-overtime-weekend-work-denied-bonus-payments)** was closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; by a single vote.  I'm just curious &amp;mdash; what was wrong with it? No comment was left.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question with so much attention might be more deserving of a bit of cleanup instead of an outright close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also compounded the problem of **[Are 9 to 5 programmers looked down upon?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114819/are-9-to-5-programmers-looked-down-upon)** being closed as a duplicate of it &amp;mdash; even though I don't see any duplication &amp;mdash; now it's the duplicate of a closed question, instead of just being considered on its own merits.  Does that mean that one is *equally* &quot;not constructive&quot;, or not?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6136" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2447" RevisionGUID="c753d0e5-b022-4fcd-b0de-db8239560fd9" CreationDate="2011-10-19T22:55:13.957" UserId="2314" Text="What was wrong with the overtime question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6137" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2447" RevisionGUID="c753d0e5-b022-4fcd-b0de-db8239560fd9" CreationDate="2011-10-19T22:55:13.957" UserId="2314" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6138" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2448" RevisionGUID="367506b5-3d61-4913-8680-9a718a7601ff" CreationDate="2011-10-19T23:20:09.523" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="It was originally closed as a duplicate of [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14706/overtime-is-part-of-the-job-true-but-a-bad-attitude) which was closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; and deleted. You should see this [in the question's revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/101988/revisions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather than cause confusion by having a chain of duplicates that led to a deleted question, I changed the close reason on the canonical question that's still visible to match the deleted question's close reason when it became clear it the 9-to-5 question was on its way to closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question of whether overtime/working on weekends is part of a programmer's job description is a soft, no-content question: everyone has an opinion and it's a controversial topic. We've now have the same question asked, with the same lack of consensus, three times with a ton of answers that don't really teach anyone anything they didn't already know. And answers attracting a ton of answers are [the sign of a question that's not focused enough](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question) for the Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's [a salvageable, constructive, and *solvable*](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) question to be asked about the topic, it's better off reasked under the understanding if it turns into an argue-fest like these three it's going to get closed again." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6139" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2448" RevisionGUID="17955356-dd9b-4fad-9a66-276c0ebf1f07" CreationDate="2011-10-19T23:26:43.957" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 112 characters in body" Text="It was originally closed as a duplicate of [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14706/overtime-is-part-of-the-job-true-but-a-bad-attitude) which was closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; and deleted. You should see this [in the latest question's revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/101988/revisions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather than cause confusion by having a chain of duplicates that led to a deleted question, I changed the close reason on the canonical question that's still visible to match the deleted question's close reason when it became clear it the 9-to-5 question was on its way to closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question of whether overtime/working on weekends is part of a programmer's job description is a soft, no-content question: everyone has an opinion and it's a controversial topic. We've now have the same question asked, with the same lack of consensus, three times with a ton of answers that don't really teach anyone anything they didn't already know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And questions attracting a ton of answers are [the sign of a question that's not focused enough](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question) for the Stack Exchange. A yes or no question that actually has an answer should not be attracting 20 answers each time it's asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's [a salvageable, constructive, and *solvable*](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) question to be asked about the topic, it's better off reasked under the understanding if it turns into an argue-fest like these three it's going to get closed again." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6140" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2449" RevisionGUID="ff2e053b-21ba-46e6-954c-f03bd74b9de4" CreationDate="2011-10-19T23:29:37.223" UserId="2114" Text="In http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/115115/are-there-any-jobs-in-the-programming-field-that-dont-require-you-to-sit-at-a-d/115127#115127,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;one user said in comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (2 upvotes) +1 this is a good suggestion... I forgot to mention that.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Plus, you didn't mention the main perk... young impressionable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (female) undergrads. :P – AJC 9 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and another was&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (7 upvotes) Although in my experience females seem to account for about 10 % of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; class size, add impressionable &amp; attractive and you will soon find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; there isnt much of a pool there ! – NWS 7 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further down in the comments, someone has said&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (1 upvote, by me) @AJC, NWS, you're f-ing scum. So is everyone who voted that up. (And&#xD;&#xA;&gt; f- the moderators who deleted my comment but not the above.) – Joe&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Wreschnig 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Did a moderator delete a comment complaining about sexism without deleting the sexist comments? Or was the comment automatically deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6141" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2449" RevisionGUID="ff2e053b-21ba-46e6-954c-f03bd74b9de4" CreationDate="2011-10-19T23:29:37.223" UserId="2114" Text="Was a comment complaining about sexism deleted by a moderator?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6142" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2449" RevisionGUID="ff2e053b-21ba-46e6-954c-f03bd74b9de4" CreationDate="2011-10-19T23:29:37.223" UserId="2114" Text="|discussion|moderation|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6143" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2450" RevisionGUID="08d0c119-c1fc-4b5a-afa7-8939517ad158" CreationDate="2011-10-19T23:31:40.250" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The entire comment chain was purged and the post locked. I literally completed this 30 seconds ago: looks like you caught it mid-purge." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6144" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2448" RevisionGUID="0530921a-5245-40e0-b7bb-c9418f8d0faf" CreationDate="2011-10-19T23:48:19.140" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 18 characters in body" Text="It was originally closed as a duplicate of [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14706/overtime-is-part-of-the-job-true-but-a-bad-attitude) which was closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; and deleted. You should see this [in its revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/101988/revisions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather than cause confusion by having a chain of duplicates that led to a deleted question, I changed the close reason on the canonical question that's still visible to match the deleted question's close reason when it became clear it the 9-to-5 question was on its way to closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question of whether overtime/working on weekends is part of a programmer's job description is a soft, no-content question: everyone has an opinion and it's a controversial topic. We've now have the same question asked, with the same lack of consensus, three times with a ton of answers that don't really teach anyone anything they didn't already know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And questions attracting a ton of answers are [the sign of a question that's not focused enough](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question) for the Stack Exchange. A yes or no question that actually has an answer should not be attracting 20 answers each time it's asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's [a salvageable, constructive, and *solvable*](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) question to be asked about the topic, it's better off reasked under the understanding if it turns into an argue-fest like these three it's going to get closed again." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6145" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2451" RevisionGUID="b4f49710-ff25-4aea-a615-3d5bf7ab0ede" CreationDate="2011-10-20T05:03:06.290" UserId="3249" Text="Although I tend to think of overtime questions as non-constructive for the same reasons Mark does, my main objection to them is that they're simply *not on topic*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [FAQ][1] now has a pretty little diagram for everyone:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Topic Map][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the thing: Overtime isn't a unique subject for programmers. Lots of programmers tend to *think* it's unique for them, just as lots of programmers tend to think that about almost *everything*, but it isn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You want to see overtime? Check out the finance section of a publicly-traded company at year-end. I'm sure they can tell you a few things about overtime. So can sysadmins, lawyers, researchers, and many others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overtime talk isn't in the &quot;All Programmers&quot; circle, it's in the &quot;All Careers&quot; circle.  It's a popular topic, yes, we all know that - any &quot;pet peeve&quot; thread is going to be wildly popular - but it's not something that uniquely affects programmers and *definitely* not something that programmers are uniquely qualified to *answer*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because there seems to be such a large audience who wants to talk about general employment and workplace environment issues, some folks went and created an Area 51 proposal for it. It's called [Professional Matters][3]. Please support it so that there will finally be a non-controversial home for them on the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;P.S. The other problem with overtime questions is that they are massively duplicated. Every question is practically a carbon copy of the last, with the essential question being some variation of &quot;Should I put up with overtime?&quot; / &quot;How can I say no to overtime?&quot; and the essential answer being some variation of &quot;Familiarize yourself with the local labour laws&quot; and &quot;Your employer doesn't own you, it's OK to work 9 to 5.&quot; It's quite frankly stultifying to read those same threads over and over again. At some point we have to step back and say to ourselves, *you know what, I don't think we really need [another question about overtime][4].*&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=overtime" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6146" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2373" RevisionGUID="a3d76efc-17e7-4a66-924c-f8c192be0ff9" CreationDate="2011-10-20T20:07:44.643" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 47 characters in body" Text="While we [continue our work on cleaning up the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup), I thought I'd bring up the next tag clean-up project: killing the catch-all tags that could be applied to every question on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through the first two pages of tags, these include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-languages] (773 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:learning] (616 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:best-practices] (538 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-development] (308 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-practices] (198 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-engineering] (188 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:recommendations] (138 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:advice] (135 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:development] (78 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:holy-war] (35 questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I'm bringing these up now instead of waiting for the first project to complete is that I believe we can exercise the first option—[presented earlier for the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags)—on these tags: nuke them from orbit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, these tags can be applied to every single question on the site. Disambiguating these tags would entail replacing them with *anything else*, not simply a set of pre-defined disambiguation targets. With these tags, we're no better off if they're untagged or left tagged: they tell us nothing about the content of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you think? Is this a good idea, or is there a better way to approach killing these tags? Are there tags that should be on the list but aren't? Is there a serious case to be made for taking tags *off* this list?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea/1940#1940&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2152/blacklist-advice&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/421/is-a-recommendations-tag-really-necessary&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6147" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2452" RevisionGUID="19e6e491-cc6c-4030-b231-a69c59366051" CreationDate="2011-10-20T20:15:47.057" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="[tag:best-practices] is a tag that's been [nominated for the nuclear option](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/should-we-nuke-the-catch-all-tags). I've also added [tag:programming-practices] to the list: I don't see it adding any semantic value to a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because these are just catch-all tags, I'm a little hesitant to merge anything into them, but on the other hand, we're talking about 37 questions tops.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [tag:bad-practice] isn't adding anything to the questions and can safel be removed. There are only 9 questions, so this can be done manually.&#xD;&#xA;2. I'm comfortable with merging [tag:good-practices] into [tag:best-practices]: from what I can tell, they're used interchangeably (I guess it's a regional thing?) &#xD;&#xA;3. [tag:practice] could, in theory, be used in the training sense, but in practice (no pun intended), it's added no semantic content to the questions it's on. These questions should just have the tag manually removed: I'd rather we don't create a synonym for a tag that can be used in different senses, especially as a synonym for a honeypot tag like [tag:programming-practices]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6148" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2452" RevisionGUID="700016e8-c863-4ce1-ad69-b1f44d13dd5a" CreationDate="2011-10-20T22:16:06.767" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 6 characters in body" Text="[tag:best-practices] is a tag that's been [nominated for the nuclear option](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/should-we-nuke-the-catch-all-tags). I've also added [tag:programming-practices] to the list: I don't see it adding any semantic value to a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because these are just catch-all tags, I'm a little hesitant to merge anything into them, but on the other hand, we're only talking about 37 questions tops.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [tag:bad-practice] isn't adding anything to the questions and can safely be removed. There are only 9 questions, so this can be done manually.&#xD;&#xA;2. I'm comfortable with merging [tag:good-practices] into [tag:best-practices]: from what I can tell, they're used interchangeably (I guess it's a regional thing).&#xD;&#xA;3. [tag:practice] could, in theory, be used in the training sense, but in practice (no pun intended), it's added no semantic content to the questions it's on. These questions should just have the tag manually removed: I'd rather we didn't create a synonym for a tag that can be used in different senses, especially as a synonym for a honeypot tag like [tag:programming-practices]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6149" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2453" RevisionGUID="0ed32883-b540-41cb-9c47-a06d1dc9244e" CreationDate="2011-10-21T00:52:37.923" UserId="25936" Text="I've just added a tag wiki for [myslq][1], essentially copying the text from SO's [mysql tag wiki][2], leaving out the popular questions section as they are SO questions as felt that we should do something similar with PSE questions, *but didn't bother to actually do it*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm wondering if it would be of any value to automate the process (*ask our overlords to do it for us*) and just link tag wikis across SE, or at least between SO and PSE, in which same tags will most probably refer to the same subject. We have a few empty tag wikis for popular (or somewhat popular) tags, i.e. [oracle][3], that have great and peer reviewed info on their SO wikis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if we can't automate it, would it be generally acceptable to just copy paste the info from SO? That would give the copy paster 4 points (2 for excerpt and 2 for body) and that somehow feels wrong. (*although I'm expecting my 4 points for my hard work at the mysql tag wiki soon, people*)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/mysql/info&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/tags/mysql/info&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/oracle/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6150" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2453" RevisionGUID="0ed32883-b540-41cb-9c47-a06d1dc9244e" CreationDate="2011-10-21T00:52:37.923" UserId="25936" Text="Migrating tag wikis from SO" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6151" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2453" RevisionGUID="0ed32883-b540-41cb-9c47-a06d1dc9244e" CreationDate="2011-10-21T00:52:37.923" UserId="25936" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6152" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2453" RevisionGUID="ca8e1672-8f08-463f-82c4-3f2ebee595e8" CreationDate="2011-10-21T00:58:21.243" UserId="25936" Comment="added tag-wikis tag... how the hell did I forget that in a question about tag-wikis?" Text="|discussion|feature-request|tag-wikis|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6153" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2453" RevisionGUID="04c077a7-4394-4062-bd88-6ed679d7075b" CreationDate="2011-10-21T01:08:14.323" UserId="25936" Comment="Oops." Text="I've just added a tag wiki for [myslq][1], essentially copying the text from SO's [mysql tag wiki][2], leaving out the popular questions section as they are SO questions as felt that we should do something similar with PSE questions, *but didn't bother to actually do it*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm wondering if it would be of any value to automate the process (*ask our overlords to do it for us*) and just link tag wikis across SE, or at least between SO and PSE, in which same tags will most probably refer to the same subject. We have a few empty tag wikis for popular (or somewhat popular) tags, i.e. [oracle][3], that have great and peer reviewed info on their SO wikis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if we can't automate it, would it be generally acceptable to just copy paste the info from SO? That would give the copy paster 4 points (2 for excerpt and 2 for body) and that somehow feels wrong. (*although I'm expecting my 4 points for my hard work at the mysql tag wiki soon, people*)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I got my 4 points (and a badge) for the mysql tag. And I'm now fighting the urge to copy paste info on all our empty tag wikis...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/mysql/info&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/tags/mysql/info&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/oracle/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6159" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2456" RevisionGUID="7f20ea0b-b1d5-4a6b-bfc8-6da7d5870880" CreationDate="2011-10-21T03:43:50.567" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Please don't!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag wikis are meant to provide context and guidance for how the tag is supposed to be used on the site: how they relate to other tags, what types of questions work, links to frequently asked questions, etc. Generalized tag wikis don't really help anything or teach people how we want our site to be organized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the reason why there are strict requirements to be able to edit a tag wiki without approval: someone on the site intimately familiar with the tag is going to know what works and what doesn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I approved it because it looked good on its own merits within the context of Programmers. There are going to be *some* tag wikis that could work just as well here as well as Stack Overflow, but there are going to be just as many that won't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because there's not going to be a hard and fast rule on what's going to work and what isn't, I'd hold off on suggesting wikis *en masse*: we've had a long-standing problem with thoughtless tagging and we're just starting to clean that up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, if you can focus on suggesting tag wikis that provide information in the context of Programmers, that'd be preferable. One section of tags we could really use some help with are the career/jobs tags. Kevin Vermeer [pointed out a few tags that could use some love](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2146/blacklist-career-advice/2148#2148). Aaronaught had [some thoughts](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952) about that, too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6164" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2411" RevisionGUID="00ab6250-c3be-40f8-83f9-e7de14ba17d6" CreationDate="2011-10-21T07:49:28.757" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6165" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2422" RevisionGUID="e134c28d-9619-4a0a-a9ea-f1e9142e7972" CreationDate="2011-10-21T07:49:54.653" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6166" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2173" RevisionGUID="9e37e0a8-63de-4942-8643-adc803c54313" CreationDate="2011-10-21T09:36:06.300" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Monthly update" Text="### Update - October 20th, 2011&#xD;&#xA;Current statistics:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Total Questions: 13,440&#xD;&#xA;* Total Closed but not deleted: 1,321&#xD;&#xA;* Closed Percentage: 9.38% (▼ 7.56% from September 20th, ▼ 10.81% since this post was written)&#xD;&#xA;* SE 2.0 Closed Percentage (no Trilogy): 5.36% (▼ 0.72%)&#xD;&#xA;* Network Closed Percentage (w/Trilogy): 2.56% (▼ 0.04%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point, we have a lower close percentage that Web Applications, Android, English, and Webmasters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was some concern that we're bleeding users: not sure how long they've been tracking it, but [the Stack Exchange site tracks](http://stackexchange.com/sites?sort=newengagedusers&amp;expand=true) new 200+ users over a rolling two weeks period: Programmers has consistently had the second highest number of 200+ users (only Stack Overflow itself has beaten us), and the number has gone up since I've been tracking it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've also updated [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) to be much more straightforward, which will hopefully alleviate some confusion about what is and isn't on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I don't think it's particularly constructive to approach a problem this way, I think it's important, if we do, to work with accurate numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of right now, there are 2,816 closed—but not deleted—questions on Programmers. There are 13,925 questions total on Programmers. This makes the closed, but not deleted ratio of questions 20.2%. In the 10 days since you measured this, it's gone down 3%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on the same metrics you did your post, here are number closed with at least 5 score and number closed with less than or equal to 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 774 (27.5%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 265 (9.4%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This puts the ratio of 5+ score questions closed higher than what you had and the ratio of &lt;= 0 score questions much lower than what you had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand why, we need to include data you didn't have access to when you did this survey: the number of deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of deleted questions on Programmers.SE is 2,975: more than the number of closed questions you see. If we also include these numbers into the mix, we get a different story:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 891. % of closed or deleted: 15.3%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 2,223. % of closed or deleted: 38.3%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This paints a bit of a different picture than measuring just the closed questions and the results presented in your survey. Why? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's because we routinely delete low-scoring questions as they are uncontroversially bad for the site, and the scores on those questions agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we don't delete nearly as many high-scoring answers is because [&quot;closed&quot; doesn't mean &quot;bad&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed). It means the question doesn't meet the site's guidelines in some way, but there's some value, and it could even be improved and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, *deletion*—not closure—is where bad questions go to spend eternity in Hell. Closure, on the other hand, is the purgatory of questions. They're not on-topic, but they're providing *some* value: enough to stick around while we figure out what to do with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A Comparison&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that we're working with accurate numbers, how do they compare to other sites, particularly Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From a purely quantitative standpoint, Stack Overflow's numbers are in a different league:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Publicly viewable questions: 1,997,856&#xD;&#xA;* Closed, but not deleted: ~39,048 (2%)&#xD;&#xA;* Deleted: 194,008 (8.9%)&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~1,964 (5%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~4,142 (1.8%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~26,123 (67%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~199,326 (85.5%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like Programmers, Stack Overflow's ratios skew a lot higher when  deleted low-scoring questions are added, and lower when it deleted high-voted questions are added. This isn't coincidence: the same moderation style is used on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Some context&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's important, from a qualitative standpoint, to put these numbers into context. Stack Overflow is not qualitatively similar to Programmers.SE, and comparing their closed/deleted percentage to ours is about as meaningless as comparing our percentages to [Quora](http://quora.com) or [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com). We just simply don't have the same issues or types of questions they have. If we did, there wouldn't be a separate site: we'd just be part of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also important to put Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE into historical context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was the first, and for a long period of time, the only Stack Exchange site. It did not, for much of its history, have the benefit of knowledge gleaned from the year of trial and error with the Stack Exchange 2.0 project. And notably, it did not have the benefit of 40+ other sites with 40+ other sets of problems to crystalize what makes and doesn't make a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This difference in background and two year head start is [a constant cause of problems](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow): 27% of all questions migrated here from Stack Overflow are closed and/or deleted. Thousands upon thousands of questions that should be off-topic there and on-topic here never get closed or migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of its history as the flagship Stack Exchange site, it also has enormous scaling issues. They have [~10 volunteer moderators for 2 million questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/101431/should-stack-overflow-moderators-have-a-standard-of-duty): one for every 200,000 asked. We have 4 for 16,000: one for every 4,000. We are just better equipped to close bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The history of Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But going into [our history](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) a little bit: Stack Overflow had a serious problem with popular questions that didn't really belong anywhere: &quot;What's your favorite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What do you like about programming?&quot;, etc. When Stack Exchange 2.0 and the Area 51 engine launched, one of the first proposals to gain traction was [*Not Programming Related*](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related), intended to house all of these types of questions. It launched on September 1st, 2010 and for a period of 3 weeks, surged in popularity as all the questions repressed on Stack Overflow were asked on this new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the quality was all over the place: the site had some of the worst questions and some of the best questions. After a few weeks of this, [new guidelines were put into place](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) to try to raise the level of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the rest of the beta period, these guidelines were enforced sporadically as the community tried to come to terms with its original charter and what it would take to make a useful site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On December 16, 2010, [Programmers.SE was launched](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/) under its new mission, having been the test-bed for a number of guidelines about questions that later generations of Stack Exchange sites benefitted from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left 3.5 months of questions asked during a particularly formative point in the Stack Exchange network: more than a quarter of our site's lifespan. Compare this to Stack Overflow, which has had the benefit of 2.5 years of maturity and wasn't originally created to be [the toilet bowl of a different site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we're slowly resolving those initial growing pains, it's going to take some more time. The ratios will normalize, but they aren't going to normalize in the next month: it going to take several months to a couple of years to stabilize into a site as mature as the currently-three-year-old Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The situation isn't as dire as it might seem from one reading of the numbers. It was dire at one time, but that was last year. Now, we're moving forward: our traffic is increasing and our closed ratio is decreasing. More and more, people are taking ownership of Programmers.SE as something to be proud of, and the quality of questions and answers is noticeably rising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there's a lot we can improve, but it's going to be far more constructive and productive to isolate specific failings and correct those, not to make generalizations about the site as a whole. If we stick to generalizations, we might as well just shut this site down and start over." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6169" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2411" RevisionGUID="4ac6e2a1-754a-4b76-aa1a-e8ce6287cd11" CreationDate="2011-10-21T19:05:08.930" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/127460428086394880" />
  <row Id="6170" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2458" RevisionGUID="f3708831-f05a-4cf4-ac05-4bcc5d22c0ca" CreationDate="2011-10-21T19:14:42.220" UserId="6300" Text="Sometimes i visit the stack exchange sites not only for a single answer but for a fresh outlook on a problem where many answers out-weight the accepted one! Sometimes i just read these 'whale' threads for fun and/or education.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see nothing wrong with large answer lists, the community preferred answer is always at the top but sometimes education is lurking beneath the surface!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6171" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2459" RevisionGUID="58c983df-5ff8-443b-b481-ccabdd97358f" CreationDate="2011-10-22T02:15:47.617" UserId="7160" Text="*When a question has dozens of answers, they stop being practical:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's a perfectly fine opinion... but I see no actual evidence to back up the assertion.  Of course you'll have to define &quot;practical&quot; first...&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6172" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2460" RevisionGUID="bbcd98d9-c206-4906-8147-8ebf9c733f03" CreationDate="2011-10-22T02:49:02.940" UserId="20884" Text="I just noticed the warning box in the following question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/115654/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-functional-design-specifications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it is very helpful. Is this new? Who can moderate questions like this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6173" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2460" RevisionGUID="bbcd98d9-c206-4906-8147-8ebf9c733f03" CreationDate="2011-10-22T02:49:02.940" UserId="20884" Text="Is This Moderation Style New? If So I Like It" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6174" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2460" RevisionGUID="bbcd98d9-c206-4906-8147-8ebf9c733f03" CreationDate="2011-10-22T02:49:02.940" UserId="20884" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6175" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2461" RevisionGUID="30a375d8-a330-4dcb-9fbb-c99653da3b57" CreationDate="2011-10-22T03:08:56.017" UserId="226" Text="This is a new [&quot;post notices&quot; feature](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/102363/support-for-banners/107142#107142) that was introduced last month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently there are three options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. This post does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.&#xD;&#xA;2. Post is related to a rapidly changing event&#xD;&#xA;3. We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer: please explain why you're recommend it as a solution. Answers that don't explain anything will be deleted. See Good Subjective, Bad Subjective for more information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only moderators can add these notices, so feel free to flag questions you think could use them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6178" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2452" RevisionGUID="ef8ddd4e-2696-4fee-bbf3-3f47d3240f8c" CreationDate="2011-10-22T04:07:41.673" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 130 characters in body" Text="### Update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is all done: [tag:bad-practice], [tag:good-practices], and [tag:practice] have all been cleared.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:best-practices] is a tag that's been [nominated for the nuclear option](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/should-we-nuke-the-catch-all-tags). I've also added [tag:programming-practices] to the list: I don't see it adding any semantic value to a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because these are just catch-all tags, I'm a little hesitant to merge anything into them, but on the other hand, we're only talking about 37 questions tops.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [tag:bad-practice] isn't adding anything to the questions and can safely be removed. There are only 9 questions, so this can be done manually.&#xD;&#xA;2. I'm comfortable with merging [tag:good-practices] into [tag:best-practices]: from what I can tell, they're used interchangeably (I guess it's a regional thing).&#xD;&#xA;3. [tag:practice] could, in theory, be used in the training sense, but in practice (no pun intended), it's added no semantic content to the questions it's on. These questions should just have the tag manually removed: I'd rather we didn't create a synonym for a tag that can be used in different senses, especially as a synonym for a honeypot tag like [tag:programming-practices]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6179" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2442" RevisionGUID="a35d3d61-fd9c-486a-bc3e-35a827d8c731" CreationDate="2011-10-22T04:07:53.043" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6180" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2460" RevisionGUID="6df7e30d-5db0-4bcb-8d07-da0d4f44ba18" CreationDate="2011-10-22T04:11:00.263" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderation|moderator-tools|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6181" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2320" RevisionGUID="02b04eba-1661-4f25-a881-1e3586c46f98" CreationDate="2011-10-22T04:11:27.313" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6182" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2463" RevisionGUID="fe1787db-91be-478b-8472-b4a7a7fb2640" CreationDate="2011-10-23T14:47:25.377" UserId="4" Text="I came across [this question][1] that was closed because it's &quot;not a real question&quot; when cleaning up [tag:software-engineering]. Why was it closed? So far, the answers are pretty poor. This question is easily answerable, but doesn't have any good answers yet. It's a clearly answerable question, as this post answers it. Due to the low quality of answers, it should either be reopened so that a high-quality, correct answer that cites reputable sources can be provided or deleted to prevent the wrong answers from surfacing, especially since this linked question is #2 on my Google search for &quot;are developers stakeholders&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Citing Karl Wieger's Software Requirements:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **stakeholder** A person, group, or organization that is actively involved in a project, is affected by its outcome, or can influence its outcome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Citing Ian Sommverville's Software Engineering 8:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The term *stakeholder* is used to refer to any person or group who will be affected by the system, directly or indirectly. Stakeholders include end-users who interact with the system and everyone else in an organisation that may be affected by its installation. Other system stakeholders may be engineers who are developing or maintaining related systems, business managers, domain experts, and trade union representatives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Roger S. Pressman's Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach (6th Edition) defines five groups or stakeholders: senior managers who define business issues, project/technical managers who organize and control the practitioners, the practitioners who engineer the system, customers who specify the requirements for the software, and end-users who will interact with the delivered system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36415/are-developers-a-stakeholder-in-a-system" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6183" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2463" RevisionGUID="fe1787db-91be-478b-8472-b4a7a7fb2640" CreationDate="2011-10-23T14:47:25.377" UserId="4" Text="Why is &quot;are developers stakeholders&quot; closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6184" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2463" RevisionGUID="fe1787db-91be-478b-8472-b4a7a7fb2640" CreationDate="2011-10-23T14:47:25.377" UserId="4" Text="|support|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6185" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2464" RevisionGUID="fac30406-ccc0-476a-ae55-c805a34a4d1e" CreationDate="2011-10-23T15:18:08.307" UserId="226" Text="If I recall correctly, I closed it because it was pretty vague and received comments on it from other people suggesting it was &quot;not a real question&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm assuming the bulk of your question here is what you'd post as an answer, so it looks like you have a good answer in mind. I'm reopening the question so you can post it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6186" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2463" RevisionGUID="a9ee4e21-36d2-4af0-814a-d50b26b24adc" CreationDate="2011-10-23T15:22:01.747" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6187" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1740" RevisionGUID="c7b053d9-416c-42ca-88ae-07c602d17c81" CreationDate="2011-10-24T21:42:29.187" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 126 characters in body" Text="I like it! It'd be nice to have a card at user group meetings.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One minor nag: can the word &quot;discussions&quot; be removed from the front and be replaced with &quot;questions&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Update&#xD;&#xA;Just came in today:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Business cards][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Very nice. Thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ltgpH.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6188" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1729" RevisionGUID="9511ff3e-9cff-450f-8c4f-f059a31dfd03" CreationDate="2011-10-25T04:52:33.983" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|design|community|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6189" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2465" RevisionGUID="c35f5fd9-31f4-4894-b3b6-28fd1e88a7d8" CreationDate="2011-10-25T13:37:11.567" UserId="29270" Text="Sometimes a see questions that to me seem to fit the faq but have been closed ([this][1] for example). Could there be some way of giving more information or more specific details of why a question is closed in the less obvious cases?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would feel more confident in voting to close questions if I understood fully why previous examples were closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106202/my-boss-wants-a-narrated-line-by-line-english-explanation-of-our-code" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6190" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2465" RevisionGUID="c35f5fd9-31f4-4894-b3b6-28fd1e88a7d8" CreationDate="2011-10-25T13:37:11.567" UserId="29270" Text="More information on why threads were closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6191" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2465" RevisionGUID="c35f5fd9-31f4-4894-b3b6-28fd1e88a7d8" CreationDate="2011-10-25T13:37:11.567" UserId="29270" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6192" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2466" RevisionGUID="19e572ff-bb70-4f9c-aa6c-d8e6185acf47" CreationDate="2011-10-25T13:40:18.400" UserId="47" Text="In the close reason there is a block of text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which has two links in it. I've reproduced the text here with the links:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not meet enough of our [six guidelines for constructive subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/). All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. See the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#close).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This pretty much explains why this post was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What more information would you like to see?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Of2OA.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6193" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2467" RevisionGUID="843820fe-406d-4495-b477-adccec0837cd" CreationDate="2011-10-25T14:07:05.253" UserId="4" Text="Right now, we have [tag:professionalism] and [tag:profession], but I'm not sure that they should be two separate tags. Between them, there are only 32 questions (18 in professionalism and 14 in profession). I, personally, prefer professionalism - it includes a variety of topics ranging from the development software engineering as a [profession][1] to ethics and can be used to denote things that are of interest exclusively to professionals in a work environment. I think that [tag:professionalism], by nature, includes everything in [tag:profession]. But thoughts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6194" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2467" RevisionGUID="843820fe-406d-4495-b477-adccec0837cd" CreationDate="2011-10-25T14:07:05.253" UserId="4" Text="Is there/should there be a difference between the professionalism and profession tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6195" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2467" RevisionGUID="843820fe-406d-4495-b477-adccec0837cd" CreationDate="2011-10-25T14:07:05.253" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6196" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2468" RevisionGUID="41f38b81-a099-4678-b853-cf4446c65de8" CreationDate="2011-10-25T16:44:16.313" UserId="226" Text="&quot;Profession&quot; seems like a meta-tag. After all, all questions here are ostensibly related to the software development profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't looked closely at the professionalism tag yet, but I think that it makes no sense to keep &quot;profession&quot; regardless." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6198" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2470" RevisionGUID="5ca8a8dd-9b2b-4b8a-ae5d-2edbbff7112e" CreationDate="2011-10-25T18:46:09.673" UserId="4" Text="If profession is indeed a Meta tag as Anna suggests, I would recommend merging profession-&gt;professionalism and then manually reviewing the 30 questions, or reviewing the 14 profession questions and then merging. Either way, it's a small enough number for a manual cleanup followed by a merge or a merge followed by a manual cleanup." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6199" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2471" RevisionGUID="5e125f18-f7a7-4573-83f9-c4cd228c8042" CreationDate="2011-10-25T21:15:06.003" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="[tag:profession] is a meta tag and just needs to be blasted from all the questions that have it. It has no semantic value, and it's not the same thing as [tag:professionalism]: it should not be merged into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I looked at the [tag:professionalism] and didn't find a question there that needed the tag and was on-topic here: many of the questions were general workplace professionalism questions, which are off-topic here (probably going to be okay on [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2)). Some had professionalism seemingly as an afterthought. Others mention professionalism, but are really about something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are the questions that look on-topic to me but really should just have their tags replaced with ones that are more meaningful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/111265/is-software-development-an-engineering-discipline&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12279/is-having-your-own-website-important&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26906/what-is-the-proper-relationship-between-the-software-developer-and-the-business&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37975/professionalism-of-online-username-handle (this one I think should be closed, but the comment history has two mods who weren't mods at the time complaining about its unilateral closure so they should probably be the ones to re-evaluate it)&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80077/what-are-the-worst-things-that-inexperienced-developers-forget-to-think-about&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80826/leaving-a-job-professionally-a-check-list-of-the-things-to-take-care-of&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85780/should-i-buy-clean-code-after-reading-the-clean-coder&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101466/as-an-independent-contractor-how-do-i-manage-success&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108789/would-licensing-software-engineers-increase-skill-and-salary-levels&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:professionalism] shouldn't just be removed from these tags; each one of them could have every tag re-evaluated: they all seem to have tags that are equally meaningless in context.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's also [tag:professional]: there was only one question there that was actually on-topic and not a &quot;please tell me what I should do&quot; advice question. This should be blasted from all the questions that have it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the questions in the list above are retagged, we should be able to get SE to just drop the [tag:profession], [tag:professional], and [tag:professionalism] tags so we don't wind up retagging and bumping few dozen off-topic questions for no reason." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6200" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2471" RevisionGUID="37c5108f-3656-4852-9df0-219057e33d6f" CreationDate="2011-10-25T21:31:30.433" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Update tag list" Text="[tag:profession] is a meta tag and just needs to be blasted from all the questions that have it. It has no semantic value, and it's not the same thing as [tag:professionalism]: it should not be merged into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I looked at the [tag:professionalism] and didn't find a question there that needed the tag and was on-topic here: many of the questions were general workplace professionalism questions, which are off-topic here (probably going to be okay on [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2)). Some had professionalism seemingly as an afterthought. Others mention professionalism, but are really about something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are the questions that look on-topic to me but really should just have their tags replaced with ones that are more meaningful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37975/professionalism-of-online-username-handle   &#xD;&#xA;I think this one should be closed, but the comment history has two mods who weren't mods at the time complaining about its unilateral closure so they should probably be the ones to re-evaluate it&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80826/leaving-a-job-professionally-a-check-list-of-the-things-to-take-care-of&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101466/as-an-independent-contractor-how-do-i-manage-success&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108789/would-licensing-software-engineers-increase-skill-and-salary-levels&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:professionalism] shouldn't just be removed from these tags; each one of them could have every tag re-evaluated: they all seem to have tags that are equally meaningless in context.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's also [tag:professional]: there was only one question there that was actually on-topic and not a &quot;please tell me what I should do&quot; advice question. This should be blasted from all the questions that have it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the questions in the list above are retagged, we should be able to get SE to just drop the [tag:profession], [tag:professional], and [tag:professionalism] tags so we don't wind up retagging and bumping few dozen off-topic questions for no reason." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6201" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2471" RevisionGUID="25a35035-9d2e-4dce-8705-abdc83cc3a1d" CreationDate="2011-10-25T21:40:28.700" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Update tag list" Text="[tag:profession] is a meta tag and just needs to be burninated from all the questions that have it. It has no semantic value, and it's not the same thing as [tag:professionalism]: it should not be merged into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I looked at the [tag:professionalism] and didn't find a question there that needed the tag and was on-topic here: many of the questions were general workplace professionalism questions, which are off-topic here (probably going to be okay on [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2)). Some had professionalism seemingly as an afterthought. Others mention professionalism, but are really about something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I went ahead and retagged most the questions that were on-topic, leaving only one that is possibly on-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37975/professionalism-of-online-username-handle   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this one should be closed, but the comment history has two mods—who weren't mods at the time—objecting to its unilateral closure so they should probably be the ones to re-evaluate it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Outside of that question, [tag:professionalism] can be burninated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's also [tag:professional]: there was only one question there that was actually on-topic and not a &quot;please tell me what I should do&quot; advice question. This should be burninated from all the questions that have it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the questions in the list above are retagged, we should be able to get SE to just drop the [tag:profession], [tag:professional], and [tag:professionalism] tags so we don't wind up retagging and bumping few dozen off-topic questions for no reason." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6202" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2472" RevisionGUID="548f88e7-1137-4b6c-b886-f706506c08b3" CreationDate="2011-10-25T21:54:40.700" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="While the six subjective guidelines cover the question...in question, the closure is actually due to the next part of the close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question has 53 had answers, which is a good sign that it's open-ended and unanswerable in its current form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answerable questions—even subjective ones—should be getting 5 or 6 good answers: that signifies the question was a specific enough scope that there were only so many ways it could be answered correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you start getting into 20, or 30, or worse yet 50 answers, it's highly unlikely the question was of a specific enough scope for anyone to learn anything from the answers. Nobody's going to read and test 50+ answers to see which one works for them: it's unreasonable. So instead, what you're left with isn't a Q&amp;A pair that solves a problem, but a discussion or a poll of people's opinions about a topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More info about this, including Jeff's answer from around the same time the question was closed, is found at:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6203" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2471" RevisionGUID="a9ea12c7-d7b7-49a4-888f-66d40ccf630d" CreationDate="2011-10-25T23:53:08.447" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Question in question is resolved" Text="### Profession&#xD;&#xA;[tag:profession] is a meta tag and just needs to be burninated from all the questions that have it. It has no semantic value, and it's not the same thing as [tag:professionalism]: it should not be merged into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Professionalism&#xD;&#xA;I looked at the [tag:professionalism] and didn't find a question there that needed the tag and was on-topic here: many of the questions were general workplace professionalism questions, which are off-topic here (probably going to be okay on [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2)). Some had professionalism seemingly as an afterthought. Others mention professionalism, but are really about something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I went ahead and retagged most the questions that were on-topic, and [tag:professionalism] can now be burninated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Professional&#xD;&#xA;There's also [tag:professional]: there was only one question there that was actually on-topic and not a &quot;please tell me what I should do&quot; advice question. This should be burninated from all the questions that have it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We should be able to get SE to just drop the [tag:profession], [tag:professional], and [tag:professionalism] tags so we don't wind up retagging and bumping few dozen off-topic questions for no reason." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6204" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2473" RevisionGUID="43ee32fe-6382-48e0-ba14-0b81626ab2e2" CreationDate="2011-10-26T13:58:40.197" UserId="226" Text="Last month Stack Exchange has [graciously agreed to sponsor me](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2314/software-craftsmanship-north-america-2011-sponsorship-proposal) to attend the [Software Craftsmanship North America](http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.com) conference in Chicago next month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [conference schedule](http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.org/schedule) is now up on their site, although the [speaker list and talk abstracts](http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.org/speakers/) are still being fleshed out. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the main purpose of this trip is to bring information and knowledge back to the community here, what do *you* want to see? Which sessions do you want to hear about the most?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll try to make up a schedule for myself that hits as much of what you guys pick here as possible. And of course, if anyone else is going to be attending, come find me and say hi. I'll likely have stickers and such and who doesn't love stickers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6205" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2473" RevisionGUID="43ee32fe-6382-48e0-ba14-0b81626ab2e2" CreationDate="2011-10-26T13:58:40.197" UserId="226" Text="What do you want to see from SCNA?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6206" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2473" RevisionGUID="43ee32fe-6382-48e0-ba14-0b81626ab2e2" CreationDate="2011-10-26T13:58:40.197" UserId="226" Text="|discussion|conferences|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6207" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2473" RevisionGUID="d14922af-5d07-4206-b8fb-e608ff869c74" CreationDate="2011-10-26T14:07:20.867" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|conferences|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6208" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2474" RevisionGUID="5516fc39-d0e8-4c72-b143-4244636cebc5" CreationDate="2011-10-26T14:23:25.373" UserId="4" Text="Two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notes and stories. Since the blog effort has been less than spectacular, perhaps asking and self-answering questions based on what the speakers say, or finding questions on here about things that the speakers are talking about and answering with their advice. Somehow getting things out of this conference to all of us who can't go. Personally, I would be interested in what Stephen Anderson, Fred George, Uncle Bob, Todd Sedano, and Zed Shaw (I love his methodology, btw) have to say.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Users. Sell Programmers, get more people to ask and answer awesome questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6209" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2473" RevisionGUID="bb08cdee-deed-46ae-9f49-fd34ea6a6770" CreationDate="2011-10-26T22:18:59.963" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/129273473011949568" />
  <row Id="6210" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2475" RevisionGUID="ec062094-3e4f-425e-b818-aa2ff608c3f2" CreationDate="2011-10-27T10:59:41.707" UserId="47" Text="We've had a number of people posting coding questions here apparently to avoid one of the following rules on Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Question posting rate limit - you can only post [6 questions per day and 50 questions per month](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)&#xD;&#xA;* Low quality question bans - having lots of down-voted, closed and deleted questions means your IP is banned from posting questions.&#xD;&#xA;* Suspensions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not something we should be allowing. If someone can't post on Stack Overflow it must be for a fairly serious reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At first glance it's not always obvious that people are doing this and only becomes clear when you notice that their last four questions were migrated or they actually admit it in a post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we have to assume good faith and that in the first instance people are posting code here by accident, but it would help if people could do a little double checking before voting to migrate to Stack Overflow. This can be (in order of simplicity):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Check their profile to see if a lot of questions have `[migrated]` appended.&#xD;&#xA;* Check their Stack Overflow profile to see if they are suspended.&#xD;&#xA;* Check their Stack Overflow profile to see if they have posted a lot of questions.&#xD;&#xA;* Check the list of questions for many low quality ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that this can take time and the simplest thing to do is vote to migrate, but it would really help the moderators here and on Stack Overflow if we can prevent this abuse of the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have any doubts about the question, just vote to close as off topic and flag the question for us to look at. We can do more checks and contact the Stack Overflow moderators to double check any suspicions we might have.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6211" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2475" RevisionGUID="ec062094-3e4f-425e-b818-aa2ff608c3f2" CreationDate="2011-10-27T10:59:41.707" UserId="47" Text="Using Programmers to side step the rules on Stack Overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6212" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2475" RevisionGUID="ec062094-3e4f-425e-b818-aa2ff608c3f2" CreationDate="2011-10-27T10:59:41.707" UserId="47" Text="|discussion|migration|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6213" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2476" RevisionGUID="ac7fee6e-0925-4ffd-b5da-a5807ffd4f39" CreationDate="2011-10-27T18:29:19.647" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="I consider any post that begins with &quot;Well I asked this over on Stack Overflow...&quot; to be automatic close fodder. I don't care what the post is about, if it was off topic there but okay here, it should have been migrated, not reposted. I rarely see the Spam reason used. Should that be used for cases like this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6214" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2475" RevisionGUID="cc5f15ac-aee4-4a6e-b7de-25427254419b" CreationDate="2011-10-27T20:19:44.817" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/129653527697035264" />
  <row Id="6215" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2477" RevisionGUID="f15b62f1-1ec1-4990-973f-427916ac1826" CreationDate="2011-10-28T12:12:31.673" UserId="4" Text="Just to bring up the extreme here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When using Programmers, I don't want to care about Stack Overflow or how they do things - they are a separate community (that just happens to have a large number of shared users with this site). When wearing my Programmers hat, I just know that a site called Stack Overflow exists, they like questions about implementation details and other hands on development/implementation stuff, and if I see a question like this, I can suggest that it goes there to be answered by the experts in such things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For some sites, there is insufficient information about what they expect or need from a question to understand first if a question is good and second what needs to be clarified in order to make it a good (or better) question. That's why I tend to vote off-topic and would vote to move even questions lacking detail - the experts could say that in order to answer, they need to know X, Y, and Z about the situation. If the asker chooses not to clarify, then they can deal with it, but at least it's in a place where the asker can get help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'm just wondering if this isn't the whole &quot;users vote to move&quot; being a flawed concept, or perhaps even the whole migration system being a bad idea. It was fine when there were three sites and a Meta, and it was very clear exactly what questions go on what site, but that isn't the case anymore. As a user of a particular SE site, I don't want to be bothered with knowing how other SE sites work. If I use a given site, I know what that community expects (or at least, I should, since I'm a part of that community), but I don't know what that other community over there likes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Either way, I think this needs to be kicked back to the SE team, with advice to reconsider an &quot;accept this moved question&quot; queue or the removal of user-driven moves entirely (perhaps letting users suggest sites from all Stack Exchange sites to migrate to and diamond mods actually approving the move)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6216" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2478" RevisionGUID="bf8dd0e4-f0bb-40ce-8516-e752b348a67d" CreationDate="2011-10-28T13:50:38.090" UserId="11107" Text="Is it possible to pretty up links in comments?  Similar to the way we can in answers.  [SO][1] says no. I'm unsuccessful finding an answer for meta-Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/37758/inline-links-in-comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6217" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2478" RevisionGUID="bf8dd0e4-f0bb-40ce-8516-e752b348a67d" CreationDate="2011-10-28T13:50:38.090" UserId="11107" Text="Links in comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6218" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2478" RevisionGUID="bf8dd0e4-f0bb-40ce-8516-e752b348a67d" CreationDate="2011-10-28T13:50:38.090" UserId="11107" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6219" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2479" RevisionGUID="3b105406-58bc-4794-8619-8999da9469f2" CreationDate="2011-10-28T13:58:28.313" UserId="226" Text="You mean automatically convert a link to the question title? No, that's not possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can, however, use the markdown syntax to do it manually:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`[Links in comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2478/links-in-comments)` =&gt; [Links in comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2478/links-in-comments)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6220" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2478" RevisionGUID="b41a1a20-e78f-4204-a508-d5339522c1cf" CreationDate="2011-10-28T14:45:36.493" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6221" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2480" RevisionGUID="0817a04f-456c-4eba-aabb-53ed45fd7790" CreationDate="2011-10-28T16:03:18.763" UserDisplayName="user25791" Text="Just out of curiosity, I clicked to order the questions by vote count, and was surprised that 7 out of the top 15 questions were closed as not-constructive, duplicate, etc. While I wouldn't argue that these questions shouldn't have been closed under the contemporary definition(s) of what is (was) on-topic here, I *would* argue that philosophically all questions are answerable, and the replies to even so-called &quot;unanswerable&quot; questions are often incredibly useful. There isn't one type of answerable question, nor do answers necessarily come in prescribably forms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions at P.SE are inherently unlike questions on StackOverflow because there isn't necessarily a particular coding problem to solve which either works or doesn't. To me, P.SE is the the BA version of SO (vs. the BS). One is more pragmatic (even dogmatic), the other philosophical, well-rounded and open-minded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would argue that consensus is the true &quot;right&quot; answer and 500+ votes for an answer among 300 other answers is more valuable to me than a 5 vote answer out of 7 that is arbitrarily chosen by a stranger who often isn't competent enough to know the difference before asking. To me, the very act of asking a question eliminates the potential for authority sufficient to recommend a proper answer. I care more about the community answer (i.e. the vote count), which from time to time veers obliquely from the chosen answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is answerable in the SO-style pragmatic sense, *that* system works wonderfully. However, I feel that for the 7 top-voted questions mentioned above that have been closed, the answer comes in a different, but no less useful, form.  Perhaps more useful. To my mind, so-called open-ended or chatty questions are **answerable, but not choosable**, and maybe that's a good thing, and should be allowed, especially since almost half of the top 15 questions more or less fit this description.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I'm not absolutely sure what a community wiki status is, how it comes about, etc. and I can't easily find any documentation on it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6222" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2480" RevisionGUID="0817a04f-456c-4eba-aabb-53ed45fd7790" CreationDate="2011-10-28T16:03:18.763" UserDisplayName="user25791" Text="7 out of the top 15 questions have been closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6223" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2480" RevisionGUID="0817a04f-456c-4eba-aabb-53ed45fd7790" CreationDate="2011-10-28T16:03:18.763" UserDisplayName="user25791" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6224" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2480" RevisionGUID="5e9087e5-4270-4764-85c7-e75d4bd62019" CreationDate="2011-10-28T16:10:19.877" UserDisplayName="user25791" Comment="edited body" Text="Just out of curiosity, I clicked to order the questions by vote count, and was surprised that 7 out of the top 15 questions were closed as not-constructive, duplicate, etc. While I wouldn't argue that these questions shouldn't have been closed under the contemporary definition(s) of what is (was) on-topic here, I *would* argue that philosophically all questions are answerable, and the replies to even so-called &quot;unanswerable&quot; questions are often incredibly useful. There isn't one type of answerable question, nor do answers necessarily come in prescribable forms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions at P.SE are inherently unlike questions on StackOverflow because there isn't necessarily a particular coding problem to solve which either works or doesn't. To me, P.SE is the BA version of SO (vs. the BS). One is more pragmatic (even dogmatic), the other philosophical, well-rounded and open-minded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would argue that consensus is the true &quot;right&quot; answer and 500+ votes for an answer among 300 other answers is more valuable to me than a 5 vote answer out of 7 that is arbitrarily chosen by a stranger who often isn't competent enough to know the difference before asking. To me, the very act of asking a question eliminates the potential for authority sufficient to recommend a proper answer. I care more about the community answer (i.e. the vote count), which from time to time veers obliquely from the chosen answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is answerable in the SO-style pragmatic sense, *that* system works wonderfully. However, I feel that for the 7 top-voted questions mentioned above that have been closed, the answer comes in a different, but no less useful, form.  Perhaps more useful. To my mind, so-called open-ended or chatty questions are **answerable, but not choosable**, and maybe that's a good thing, and should be allowed, especially since almost half of the top 15 questions more or less fit this description.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I'm not absolutely sure what a community wiki status is, how it comes about, etc. and I can't easily find any documentation on it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6225" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2480" RevisionGUID="6d79894a-7976-44bc-84d7-b528fee859ac" CreationDate="2011-10-28T16:19:25.077" UserDisplayName="user25791" Comment="added 830 characters in body" Text="Just out of curiosity, I clicked to order the questions by vote count, and was surprised that 7 out of the top 15 questions were closed as not-constructive, duplicate, etc. While I wouldn't argue that these questions shouldn't have been closed under the contemporary definition(s) of what is (was) on-topic here, I *would* argue that philosophically all questions are answerable, and the replies to even so-called &quot;unanswerable&quot; questions are often incredibly useful. There isn't one type of answerable question, nor do answers necessarily come in prescribable forms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions at P.SE are inherently unlike questions on StackOverflow because there isn't necessarily a particular coding problem to solve which either works or doesn't. To me, P.SE is the BA version of SO (vs. the BS). One is more pragmatic (even dogmatic), the other philosophical, well-rounded and open-minded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would argue that consensus is the true &quot;right&quot; answer and 500+ votes for an answer among 300 other answers is more valuable to me than a 5 vote answer out of 7 that is arbitrarily chosen by a stranger who often isn't competent enough to know the difference before asking. To me, the very act of asking a question eliminates the potential for authority sufficient to recommend a proper answer. I care more about the community answer (i.e. the vote count), which from time to time veers obliquely from the chosen answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is answerable in the SO-style pragmatic sense, *that* system works wonderfully. However, I feel that for the 7 top-voted questions mentioned above that have been closed, the answer comes in a different, but no less useful, form.  Perhaps more useful. To my mind, so-called open-ended or chatty questions are **answerable, but not choosable**, and maybe that's a good thing, and should be allowed, especially since almost half of the top 15 questions more or less fit this description.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I'm not absolutely sure what a community wiki status is, how it comes about, etc. and I can't easily find any documentation on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to the 7 closed questions out of the current top 15:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-programming-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/perks-for-new-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91350/what-should-every-programmer-know&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20407/will-high-reputation-in-stack-overflow-help-to-get-a-good-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91629/best-java-book-you-have-read-so-far" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6226" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2480" RevisionGUID="9f2ea26b-5e9f-4317-b94e-d67e774d72b5" CreationDate="2011-10-28T16:22:04.657" UserId="63" Comment="Numbered list, for ease of reference when answering" Text="Just out of curiosity, I clicked to order the questions by vote count, and was surprised that 7 out of the top 15 questions were closed as not-constructive, duplicate, etc. While I wouldn't argue that these questions shouldn't have been closed under the contemporary definition(s) of what is (was) on-topic here, I *would* argue that philosophically all questions are answerable, and the replies to even so-called &quot;unanswerable&quot; questions are often incredibly useful. There isn't one type of answerable question, nor do answers necessarily come in prescribable forms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions at P.SE are inherently unlike questions on StackOverflow because there isn't necessarily a particular coding problem to solve which either works or doesn't. To me, P.SE is the BA version of SO (vs. the BS). One is more pragmatic (even dogmatic), the other philosophical, well-rounded and open-minded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would argue that consensus is the true &quot;right&quot; answer and 500+ votes for an answer among 300 other answers is more valuable to me than a 5 vote answer out of 7 that is arbitrarily chosen by a stranger who often isn't competent enough to know the difference before asking. To me, the very act of asking a question eliminates the potential for authority sufficient to recommend a proper answer. I care more about the community answer (i.e. the vote count), which from time to time veers obliquely from the chosen answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is answerable in the SO-style pragmatic sense, *that* system works wonderfully. However, I feel that for the 7 top-voted questions mentioned above that have been closed, the answer comes in a different, but no less useful, form.  Perhaps more useful. To my mind, so-called open-ended or chatty questions are **answerable, but not choosable**, and maybe that's a good thing, and should be allowed, especially since almost half of the top 15 questions more or less fit this description.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I'm not absolutely sure what a community wiki status is, how it comes about, etc. and I can't easily find any documentation on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The magnificent seven&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Links to the 7 closed questions out of the current top 15* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t  &#xD;&#xA;    *closed as Not Constructive* &#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil  &#xD;&#xA;    *closed as Not Constructive* &#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-programming-career  &#xD;&#xA;    *closed as Too Localized* &#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/perks-for-new-programmers  &#xD;&#xA;    *closed as Not Constructive* &#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91350/what-should-every-programmer-know  &#xD;&#xA;    *closed as Exact Duplicate* &#xD;&#xA;6. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20407/will-high-reputation-in-stack-overflow-help-to-get-a-good-job  &#xD;&#xA;    *closed as Not Constructive* &#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91629/best-java-book-you-have-read-so-far  &#xD;&#xA;    *closed as Not Constructive* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6227" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2481" RevisionGUID="ad68aa5c-cb29-44da-9813-3002cdfcc7d3" CreationDate="2011-10-28T16:24:59.127" UserId="38397" Text="Most of the closed questions have 200+ answers and are questions like &quot;[What should every programmer know?][1]&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of these questions were closed as duplicates but most simply don't fit the format of a Q&amp;A site very well. Q&amp;A sites like programmers.SE are good for questions that have one or two finite answers or at least where one answer is considered &quot;more correct&quot; than any other. These questions, for the most part, were too open-ended and encouraged too much discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like these are great for the rep of those involved, but it is false rep, given for popularity rather than correctness or meaningful participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91350/what-should-every-programmer-know" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6228" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2482" RevisionGUID="1c5c1ac3-0f85-4e9f-a119-0f3b48a06d44" CreationDate="2011-10-28T16:58:11.737" UserId="4" Text="Of that list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I'd consider to vote to reopen if it was worded differently. It's potentially a common issue, especially in a theory-heavy CS curriculum. Tips on things to do to hone practical skills would be valid, but the way it's worded and the generated answers are very list-like. Changing the question would probably invalidate most of the answers at this point.&#xD;&#xA;2. This is asking for a list. There is no single right answer in this instance and everyone would come up with something different. There needs to be enough detail to provide very specific, isolated tips. &quot;How to become a better programmer&quot; is pretty generic. &quot;How do I become a better X programmer&quot; where X is &quot;embedded systems&quot; or &quot;web&quot; or &quot;user interface&quot; programmer might be better. Asking about how to learn specific technique Y is much better.&#xD;&#xA;3. I agree with the too localized - it's very specific to a single individual.&#xD;&#xA;4. Unanswerable. Too many variables. It's also not specific to programmers. Replace programmers with &quot;mechanical engineer&quot; or &quot;secretary&quot; and the answers don't change that much.&#xD;&#xA;5. Another list.&#xD;&#xA;6. I'd vote to reopen&#xD;&#xA;7. Another list." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6229" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="2483" RevisionGUID="c5877f21-9ab8-4aa8-bdb7-eded23e5f093" CreationDate="2011-10-28T22:34:46.277" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/116829/why-are-all-of-the-good-career-related-threads-closed" Text="" />
  <row Id="6230" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2483" RevisionGUID="84a4cc60-6334-4e0d-8481-76f59d762f14" CreationDate="2011-10-28T22:27:09.593" UserDisplayName="user39601" Text="This is a great forum but career questions are often interesting and people like reading/responding to them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why not allow these types of questions as long as they are tagged &quot;career&quot;?  Are there any related forums where these types of questions are allowed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6231" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2483" RevisionGUID="84a4cc60-6334-4e0d-8481-76f59d762f14" CreationDate="2011-10-28T22:27:09.593" UserDisplayName="user39601" Text="Why are all of the good career-related threads closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6232" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2483" RevisionGUID="84a4cc60-6334-4e0d-8481-76f59d762f14" CreationDate="2011-10-28T22:27:09.593" UserDisplayName="user39601" Text="|discussion|career|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6233" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2484" RevisionGUID="9a36435b-21f5-478b-8518-f490fde37b0b" CreationDate="2011-10-28T22:40:28.703" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Programmers is for questions about software development and being a programmer: career advice questions are off-topic here unless they uniquely apply to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, they hit the blue part of this diagram:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Scope](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most don't: there are a great many things about careers that are applicable to *any* job, which dilutes the core focus of this site and diminishes the [value Stack Exchange brings](http://stackexchange.com/about) to the Q&amp;A space: focused sites filled with experts on that one particular subject. Programmers's expertise is software development, not general career advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there *is* a proposal in the works, [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2), that will invite experts on general career and workplace questions. It's currently in the commitment phase: with a few more committed people, it'll launch.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond the scope issue we get into problems that are just unsolvable in the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A format: particularly questions where the asker wants someone to tell them what they should do given a broad situation. Those questions aren'g going to fit here or Professional Matters, regardless of topical scope. We simply don't know the person asking well enough to provide meaningful advice to their specific situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more about this problem, check out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to why an inordinate amount of questions in the [tag:career] tag (also, [tag:jobs], [tag:advice]) are closed: we deprecated them in favor of more specific and meaningful tags a few months ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions that get tagged with it are either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Good, on-topic questions which get retagged; or&#xD;&#xA;2. Off-topic questions that are closed and left to either be substantially improved to become on-topic or deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since we've been fairly vigilant about the former category, the end result is a tag that's more or less a wasteland. We've [tried various tactics to clean the tag up more quickly](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags), but we haven't found a magic bullet." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6234" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2484" RevisionGUID="73456089-91c4-4de8-82a0-437c0bfc0124" CreationDate="2011-10-28T22:45:50.460" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="Programmers is for questions about software development and being a programmer: career advice questions are off-topic here unless they uniquely apply to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, they hit the blue part of this diagram:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Scope](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most don't: there are a great many things about careers that are applicable to *any* job, which dilutes the core focus of this site and diminishes the [value Stack Exchange brings](http://stackexchange.com/about) to the Q&amp;A space: focused sites filled with experts on that one particular subject. Programmers's expertise is software development, not general career advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there *is* a proposal in the works, [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2), that will invite experts on general career and workplace questions. It's currently in the commitment phase: with a few more committed people, it'll launch.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond the scope issue we get into problems that are just unsolvable in the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A format: particularly questions where the asker wants someone to tell them what they should do given a broad situation. Those questions aren't going to fit here or Professional Matters, regardless of topical scope. We simply don't know the person asking well enough to provide meaningful advice to their specific situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more about this problem, check out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to why an inordinate amount of questions in the [tag:career] tag (also, [tag:jobs], [tag:advice]) are closed: we deprecated them in favor of more specific and meaningful tags a few months ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, [tag:career]-tagged questions are either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Good, on-topic questions that get retagged; or&#xD;&#xA;2. Off-topic questions that are closed and left to either be substantially improved to become on-topic or deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since we've been fairly vigilant about the former category, the end result is a tag that's more or less a wasteland. We've [tried various tactics to clean the tag up more quickly](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags), but we haven't found a magic bullet yet." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6235" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2485" RevisionGUID="f49f42fd-30ef-4ec3-80fd-d6bb3919218c" CreationDate="2011-10-28T22:54:20.960" UserId="20011" Text="There are at least three career-related sites proposed in [Area51][1], the furthest along of which is [IT Careers &amp; Training][2]. If you'd like to encourage development of that site, consider supporting the proposal by committing to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/12887/it-careers-training" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6236" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2485" RevisionGUID="f13e3f20-27ef-496b-bb09-1f8a8add6b3b" CreationDate="2011-10-29T00:48:23.667" UserId="20011" Comment="added 103 characters in body" Text="There are at least four career-related sites proposed in [Area51][1], the furthest along of which are [Professional Matters][2] and [IT Careers &amp; Training][3]. If you'd like to encourage development of one of those sites, consider committing to one or the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/12887/it-careers-training" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6237" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2486" RevisionGUID="bf817fd9-be86-454d-a8f4-ae2ff90679bd" CreationDate="2011-10-29T13:49:47.393" UserId="16992" Text="**Scenario**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask a reasonably good question on StackOverflow but it does not get many views (maybe because there are so many questions asked on StackOverflow). I then ask a more generic question on Programmers that is closely related to the StackOverflow question and I link it there. There is a very good chance that if the question on Programmers is a good one, it will get a lot of views. When it does, the linked StackOverflow question will get many views as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does this looked down upon as abuse? Or is this just good marketing :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have just done this recently (and certainly not to abuse the sites). My StackOverflow question had only about 50 views and 5 upvotes before linking it (and it was tapering off at that point). Now the StackOverflow question has more than 250 views and 10 upvotes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are the questions in the example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7922019/openjdks-rehashing-mechanism&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/116678/how-good-does-a-well-rounded-programmer-need-to-be-with-bit-wise-operations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(And yes I understand that I am doing it again :) obviously the intent is not malicious here)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6238" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2486" RevisionGUID="bf817fd9-be86-454d-a8f4-ae2ff90679bd" CreationDate="2011-10-29T13:49:47.393" UserId="16992" Text="Linking less popular questions in popular ones. Does this count as abuse?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6239" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2486" RevisionGUID="bf817fd9-be86-454d-a8f4-ae2ff90679bd" CreationDate="2011-10-29T13:49:47.393" UserId="16992" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6240" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2483" RevisionGUID="beba047b-58a2-402f-ae60-f66a68b3a6e1" CreationDate="2011-10-29T14:19:54.930" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/130287749986136065" />
  <row Id="6242" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2488" RevisionGUID="0412e4aa-aceb-4305-84c0-043259db3069" CreationDate="2011-10-30T01:23:53.127" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The question you asked here on Programmers is not on-topic here. From [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an *entire* book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first part of your question is a rant about how unreasonable it seems to be to know how to understand the code. Taking out that part, we're left with just the general question, &quot;how good does a programmer need to be with bitwise operations?&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is not reasonably scoped nor is it answerable: the only context we have is a question you had on Stack Overflow that you didn't know the answer to. Obviously, knowing bitwise operations would've been helpful to you on Stack Overflow, but not every programmer has the same issue or the same situation as you. The answer is going to be different for every programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, in this diagram: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Scope diagram](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've made your question applicable to the &quot;Just You&quot; section, not &quot;All Programmers.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the problem was scoped differently and described a problem *generally applicable to programmers at large*, it'd be on-topic. And such a question wouldn't include a link to a question on Stack Overflow that you want people to answer, because it'd be irrelevant to such a general question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in general, if you're asking questions framed around getting people to answer question on Stack Overflow, you're Doing It Wrong™. Intentionally and repeatedly doing this would be abuse of the system." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6243" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2488" RevisionGUID="8fba3f20-fab7-4223-a402-628412a59314" CreationDate="2011-10-30T01:31:35.037" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="The question you asked here on Programmers is not on-topic here. From [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an *entire* book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first part of your question is a rant about how unreasonable it seems to be to know how to understand the code. Taking out that part, we're left with just the general question, &quot;how good does a programmer need to be with bitwise operations?&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is not reasonably scoped nor is it answerable: the only context we have is a question you had on Stack Overflow that you didn't know the answer to. Obviously, knowing bitwise operations would've been helpful to you on Stack Overflow, but not every programmer has the same issue or the same situation as you. The answer is going to be different for every programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, in this diagram: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Scope diagram](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've made your question applicable to the &quot;Just You&quot; section, not &quot;All Programmers.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the problem was scoped differently and described a problem *generally applicable to programmers at large*, it'd be on-topic. And such a question wouldn't include a link to a question on Stack Overflow that you want people to answer, because it'd be irrelevant to such a general problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in general, if you're asking questions framed around getting people to answer question on Stack Overflow, you're Doing It Wrong™. Intentionally and repeatedly doing this would be abuse of the system." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6244" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2489" RevisionGUID="28cf596b-2af6-4f0d-a939-b2cf6c7180f4" CreationDate="2011-10-30T13:20:03.883" UserId="20756" Text="The link was present in the initial revision of your question, which had zero popularity by any measure the moment you posted it.  The SO question was already popular enough to have garnered one answer, which means that, if anything, you linked to a _more popular_ question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless you're part of a cabal whose members go around artificially popularizing each others' questions, you had no way of predicting whether or not the Programmers question was going to become popular.  You also had no way of knowing that users following your link to the SO question would upvote it.  Unless Stack Exchange keeps track of how upvoters arrived at questions, any attempt to say those upvotes happened because of referrals via your link would be conjecture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose that to stick to the letter of the FAQ, your question could have been more general, perhaps something along the lines of &quot;should a good programmer be able to easily understand any algorithm implemented using constructs he already understands?&quot;  I could also see the first comment on a question like that being &quot;could you give an example?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6247" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2490" RevisionGUID="1a259860-5dda-49dd-9a29-95d58f980f87" CreationDate="2011-10-30T14:05:55.030" UserId="25936" Text="Flagged about a dozen of questions under [tag:interview] as off topic, all of them are now closed. Started retagging some questions under [tag:hiring] - oldest questions seemed to be on topic but with a variety of unhelpful tags, like [tag:great-programmer]. I've spammed the frontpage with 5 old hiring questions, so it's probably time for a brake." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6249" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2491" RevisionGUID="19817bdd-1a45-4de4-b263-0831d16ad5f4" CreationDate="2011-10-31T11:16:49.823" UserId="4" Text="I'm referring to [this question][1]. It seems like a question with real answers to solve a problem that's only applicable to software developers. The only problems are the &quot;should we?&quot;, the &quot;thanks&quot;, and the poor tags applied, but if it's not going to get reopened, there's no point in fixing it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66544/do-programmers-qualify-as-professionals-to-get-a-pro-domain-name" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6250" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2491" RevisionGUID="19817bdd-1a45-4de4-b263-0831d16ad5f4" CreationDate="2011-10-31T11:16:49.823" UserId="4" Text="Why is the question about programmers qualifying for the .pro domain closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6251" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2491" RevisionGUID="19817bdd-1a45-4de4-b263-0831d16ad5f4" CreationDate="2011-10-31T11:16:49.823" UserId="4" Text="|support|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6252" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2492" RevisionGUID="977d6bf1-b99d-46be-9334-80342f1a7345" CreationDate="2011-10-31T12:41:24.417" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Whether one qualifies for a domain TLD isn't a problem specific to programmers, and doesn't require programmers to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, it's wholly answered by .PRO's [eligibility page](http://www.nic.pro/pro/eligibility.shtml):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; PRO is an exclusive top-level domain reserved for use exclusively by licensed business and service professionals and entities internationally. All applicants meeting the following qualifications may register a .PRO domain name:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Provides professional services&#xD;&#xA;* Admitted to or licensed by a government certification body or jurisdictional licensing entity recognized by a governmental body that regularly verifies the accuracy of its data&#xD;&#xA;* In good standing with the licensing authority&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But beyond whether or not it's connected to the field, what exactly does it have to do with software development? Where's the expertise in going to the .PRO website and clicking on the link that says &quot;Who's Eligible&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6253" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2493" RevisionGUID="6cdb92f9-48de-4060-bfcf-0d2e667c349d" CreationDate="2011-10-31T13:51:09.573" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="When migrating a question to another site, the following notice is added:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### migrated from [programmers.stackexchange.com](http://programmers.stackexchange.com) 2 mins ago&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question came from our site for expert programmers interested in professional discussions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This appears to be an artifact from the early beta: the site isn't for [expert programmers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2411/removing-expert-from-the-site-description) or [discussions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can this be changed to match the [current FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) opening line?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### migrated from [programmers.stackexchange.com](http://programmers.stackexchange.com) 2 mins ago&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question came from our site for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6254" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2493" RevisionGUID="6cdb92f9-48de-4060-bfcf-0d2e667c349d" CreationDate="2011-10-31T13:51:09.573" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Migration notice on destination site is incorrect" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6255" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2493" RevisionGUID="6cdb92f9-48de-4060-bfcf-0d2e667c349d" CreationDate="2011-10-31T13:51:09.573" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|bug|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6256" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2493" RevisionGUID="eea2b2f1-44a5-42a4-bf04-4f57f2746ca8" CreationDate="2011-10-31T13:52:22.550" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6258" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2494" RevisionGUID="f8b9657a-36aa-499c-8728-eac30d685bf8" CreationDate="2011-10-31T19:09:49.253" UserId="34364" Text="I had a question a while back that was closed because it was thought to be an exact duplicate, and it almost was. The reason I asked the question again is because I found no answer that, I believe, would help **me**. So my question is, how do I get a question re-opened after it was closed, and how can I stop my question from getting closed in the first place? Thanks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6259" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2494" RevisionGUID="f8b9657a-36aa-499c-8728-eac30d685bf8" CreationDate="2011-10-31T19:09:49.253" UserId="34364" Text="Getting a Question Reopened" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6260" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2494" RevisionGUID="f8b9657a-36aa-499c-8728-eac30d685bf8" CreationDate="2011-10-31T19:09:49.253" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6261" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2495" RevisionGUID="65534462-6f11-45a3-9f9e-90f59bb1a274" CreationDate="2011-10-31T20:30:45.690" UserId="47" Text="In general you should edit your question so that you are clear about the distinction between it and the possible duplicate. Once you've done that, flag the question for moderator attention and we'll review it. The fact that it's been closed will mean that you've a slightly higher bar to reach, but we try to be fair and often questions do get reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, be careful that you don't end up making the question too localised to your specific situation and this time. This would mean that the question isn't of wider use to the community and could end up staying closed. Take a look at the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) - particularly the diagram. You're aiming for the blue part.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also post a link here where other members of the community will see it and can vote to reopen if they agree. Having other votes to reopen are a good thing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6262" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2496" RevisionGUID="1ef6cb28-6987-4e66-9ae7-2f364a1b2abd" CreationDate="2011-10-31T20:38:15.807" UserId="63" Text="The answer to both of your questions is the same: make your question not a duplicate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you didn't link to your question, and I'm too lazy to search for it, I'll just give you some general advice:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If the answer to the existing question didn't work for you, mention that. And don't just say, &quot;It didn't work&quot; - tell us *how* it didn't work. Example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; ###How might I frobnicate a widget?&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I have three widgets that need frobnicating. I found [this earlier question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2494/getting-a-question-reopened) on the subject, but the answer there doesn't work for me - you see, my widgets all have flywheel grommets, and the Potrzebie method recommended there results in clogged ducts. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If the answer to the existing question works, but you're interested in finding other solutions, describe the attributes of an alternate solution, and why you might want a solution with such attributes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; ###How could I measure the effectiveness of adding more team members to an already-late project?&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I'm about to hire 30 consultants to slam our doomed re-write into overdrive, but my boss wants us to collect metrics to justify it. [The answer here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2494/getting-a-question-reopened) suggests counting lines of code produced per week; while I have to admit that seems like a simple and effective metric, I'd like to have a fall-back in case the consultants catch wind of this - are there any measurements I could take that would not be so easily gamed? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Be aware, if you end up getting good, general-purpose answers, your question may be merged back into the original...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you simply don't understand the existing answers, then do some research first. Ask specific questions as they come up. Once you have a solid understanding, go back and post your own answer, or edit the existing one for clarity. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you're convinced that the world has changed completely in the 8.5 months since that last answer was posted, and by now we must have better ways of accomplishing the same thing, then leave a comment or post a bounty and ask. Who knows? You *might* be right. But don't ask the same question again; even if you're *lucky*, chances are you'll just get the same answers... Or links to the existing answers. If you're unlucky, you'll get worse answers. And then get closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6263" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2497" RevisionGUID="3341728e-fe23-4c64-bfb9-07a618bcec3a" CreationDate="2011-11-01T05:12:50.863" UserId="104" Text="fixed, may take a while to filter through the caches " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6264" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2493" RevisionGUID="e5885e88-63f6-4b69-b340-d910bcd114fb" CreationDate="2011-11-01T05:12:58.083" UserId="104" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6275" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2499" RevisionGUID="35b07b7c-df10-408b-a0fa-22769f9f8274" CreationDate="2011-11-02T02:57:46.457" UserId="25936" Text="I think we should re-open [this question][1] on how to get a PHP stack on iPad as it seems it's [technically possible][2] to get a minimal but working lighttp / PHP stack after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, the iPad is not the best device to code on, but if it's technically possible the question is valid. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97363/php-programming-in-ipad/97368#97368&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.ipadforums.net/ipad-hacking/24007-running-php-server-ipad.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6276" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2499" RevisionGUID="35b07b7c-df10-408b-a0fa-22769f9f8274" CreationDate="2011-11-02T02:57:46.457" UserId="25936" Text="Reopen the PHP on iPad question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6277" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2499" RevisionGUID="35b07b7c-df10-408b-a0fa-22769f9f8274" CreationDate="2011-11-02T02:57:46.457" UserId="25936" Text="|support|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6278" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2500" RevisionGUID="b3d40707-6ab0-43a9-a1c8-d69e0f66733b" CreationDate="2011-11-02T03:01:14.587" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="While that's interesting (albeit wildly not supported), it wasn't closed because there wasn't an answer: it was closed because setting up a LAMP environment isn't on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It'd probably be on-topic on Stack Overflow, but at this point—3 months later—it's probably better off reasked." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6279" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2500" RevisionGUID="0757ef29-bc7b-4cce-b561-741016cf53bf" CreationDate="2011-11-02T03:11:03.763" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 393 characters in body" Text="While that's interesting (albeit wildly not supported), it wasn't closed because there wasn't an answer: it was closed because setting up a LAMP environment isn't on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be honest, it's a pretty exotic and obscure problem: I'm not sure it'd survive on any site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A general question about setting up a LAMP environment would be on-topic for Super User, but they don't deal with iOS devices.&#xD;&#xA;* A question about iOS devices would be on-topic for Apple, but they don't do development questions.&#xD;&#xA;* Stack Overflow would be a fit if it's about general setting up of the development environment, but figuring out how to get Apache running on an obscure device is off-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6280" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2500" RevisionGUID="99a4b356-7008-4974-ae8b-08e0dd9fbf72" CreationDate="2011-11-02T03:21:18.947" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 393 characters in body" Text="While that's interesting (albeit wildly not supported), it wasn't closed because there wasn't an answer: it was closed because setting up a LAMP environment isn't on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be honest, it's a pretty exotic and obscure problem: I'm not sure it'd survive on any site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A general question about setting up a LAMP environment would be on-topic for Super User, but they don't deal with iOS devices.&#xD;&#xA;* A question about iOS devices would be on-topic for Apple, but they don't do development questions.&#xD;&#xA;* Stack Overflow would be a fit if it's about general setting up of the development environment, but questions about getting Apache to run on non-conventional development machines would be off-topic and too localized." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6285" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2502" RevisionGUID="68fd4d0b-8ee4-4bbf-80e4-3ef31161f10e" CreationDate="2011-11-02T19:24:41.483" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="[A question was asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/117538/swag-for-expensive-dev-tools) about the return on investment for swag included with software, and it was not received well: it garnered several downvotes and flags within 15 minutes of asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While marketing in general isn't on-topic, business concerns for software development are. From the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But due to the negative reaction to this question, do we need to narrow &quot;business concerns&quot; to exclude marketing questions like this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6286" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2502" RevisionGUID="68fd4d0b-8ee4-4bbf-80e4-3ef31161f10e" CreationDate="2011-11-02T19:24:41.483" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Are marketing questions on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6287" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2502" RevisionGUID="68fd4d0b-8ee4-4bbf-80e4-3ef31161f10e" CreationDate="2011-11-02T19:24:41.483" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6288" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2503" RevisionGUID="9c08fb9b-0f22-4933-a789-b4ab9e4db7d2" CreationDate="2011-11-02T19:29:00.510" UserId="226" Text="I think the return on investment question would be fine if it didn't come at the end of what reads like an entitlement heavy rant about not getting swag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6290" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2504" RevisionGUID="d56c799d-2180-4684-9fd9-8a620c4a6be1" CreationDate="2011-11-02T19:36:25.340" UserId="1306" Text="How is this specific to programming?  Is this not the same as saying I just spent $10,000.00 on a printer how come they didn't send me any t-shirts.  Or coffee service, or Chairs, or anything." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6291" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2505" RevisionGUID="7f9d0d2b-c53d-4c88-8538-b01699920931" CreationDate="2011-11-03T03:26:39.393" UserId="906" Text="substitute the word 'automobile' for 'software' and the question remains the same; hence off-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6292" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2506" RevisionGUID="71df7843-12d6-47e3-a2ae-a58ca21483f4" CreationDate="2011-11-03T05:18:02.393" UserId="37342" Text="Could someone please reopen then migrate [question 117615][1] to stackoverflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alec Taylor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/117615/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6293" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2506" RevisionGUID="71df7843-12d6-47e3-a2ae-a58ca21483f4" CreationDate="2011-11-03T05:18:02.393" UserId="37342" Text="Migrate question 117615 to stackoverflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6294" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2506" RevisionGUID="71df7843-12d6-47e3-a2ae-a58ca21483f4" CreationDate="2011-11-03T05:18:02.393" UserId="37342" Text="|support|migration|stackoverflow|off-topic|programmers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6295" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2507" RevisionGUID="a2f55b45-4eff-4437-9726-5044a39de12e" CreationDate="2011-11-03T06:47:37.020" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="You were banned from Stack Overflow for asking too many off-topic questions: because of that, [we won't migrate your questions there anymore](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2475/using-programmers-to-side-step-the-rules-on-stack-overflow). For more information about this ban, please check out the Meta Stack Overflow question, [What can I do when getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account”?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears you're very close to getting unbanned: to ensure that happens, you'll need to do two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Stop asking off-topic questions here and on Stack Overflow.** Please [read the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and heed moderators' advice and warnings: you've asked a number of questions here that do not belong on Programmers and and a number on Stack Overflow that don't belong there, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Start answering questions on Stack Overflow.** You only need a few more up-votes to be able to ask questions: you'll get those by paying it forward and helping others out with their problems. Be sure to answer questions that are on-topic there: answering off-topic questions will wind up penalizing you as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6296" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2506" RevisionGUID="6c13b4fe-9f68-4c74-a0e5-07f2884bf199" CreationDate="2011-11-03T06:48:51.807" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 7 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Could someone please reopen then migrate [{RapidXML} Cannot open XML files unless in main][1] to Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/117615/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6297" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2506" RevisionGUID="6c13b4fe-9f68-4c74-a0e5-07f2884bf199" CreationDate="2011-11-03T06:48:51.807" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 7 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Can my question about RapidXML be migrated to Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6298" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2506" RevisionGUID="6c13b4fe-9f68-4c74-a0e5-07f2884bf199" CreationDate="2011-11-03T06:48:51.807" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 7 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|support|status-declined|migration|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6299" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2508" RevisionGUID="dae398ad-d349-4f79-8f20-baf83dfdd5e5" CreationDate="2011-11-03T13:47:58.567" UserId="3530" Text="There is great number of legitimate, but closed questions on programmers.se, mainly because they are open-ended or off-topic (although this latter label is used too liberally in my opinon). There is clearly a demand for such discussions, and chats don't seem to be good enough for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be possible to have another SE site for such content? Maybe without accepted answers. The intention of &quot;what is the best...&quot; questions is not to determine the &quot;best&quot; but to ask the community and see what ranks the highest. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, fun questions are often closed on programmers and SO which perfectly fine, but there is clearly an audience for them since those questions often receive an extremely high number of votes and views. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6300" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2508" RevisionGUID="dae398ad-d349-4f79-8f20-baf83dfdd5e5" CreationDate="2011-11-03T13:47:58.567" UserId="3530" Text="Should there be another stackexchange site for programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6301" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2508" RevisionGUID="dae398ad-d349-4f79-8f20-baf83dfdd5e5" CreationDate="2011-11-03T13:47:58.567" UserId="3530" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6303" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2510" RevisionGUID="9482c105-6b5c-4aa8-b30a-e90483f76134" CreationDate="2011-11-03T13:54:57.223" UserId="226" Text="In short: no.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A longer answer is that [Programmers was born out of the desire for exactly the site you describe](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046). All the questions that were off-topic or otherwise closed on Stack Overflow were intended to find a home here. Shortly after public beta began, it became apparent that that doesn't work. It doesn't make for a good Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong. &quot;What's the best ...&quot; and other fun discussions *are fun*, but they're not what Stack Exchange is built to do. Stack Exchange is built to host professional Q&amp;A and all the systems it has (voting, accepted answers, transient comments, enforcing the fact that responses to questions should be actual answers, etc.) are built with that in mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are tons of forums out there and sites like Reddit and Quora where you can participate in discussions and other open-ended questions. Stack Exchange is simply not the place for that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6310" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2512" RevisionGUID="39522dbf-4c2a-418f-a8fb-7657cebf9e86" CreationDate="2011-11-03T14:35:27.253" UserId="1973" Text="I'm not sure that anyone answered your question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But yeah, marketing questions so long as they're about marketing your software and you are the prime marketer of your software.  My question is probably off topic since it was asked purely as a reaction against Embarcadero not sending us any T-Shirts and questions like that are better off on the edn forums than here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's some guiding principles:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Don't ask a question for your marketing department.&#xD;&#xA; 2. The question should be more about how to make your software more palatable to the markets.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Questions about logos, design, demos etc.. belong on graphic design / UX StackExchanges&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I can't see how a question like &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Who should I give the good swag to at trade shows&quot; wouldn't be on topic, there's probably some facts about it as well as some psychology, the only problem is the &quot;Swap out car with software&quot; issue, which is a fallacy if you take it to an extreme.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and in a tangential way, my question might be on topic, if it had to do with a practical question I faced, like whether or not I should give out swag.  What I really want to know is, should I feel ripped off that I didn't get a t-shirt for my company buying Delphi.  The answer is, no one can tell me whether or not I should feel ripped off. But in reality, I only ought to feel ripped off if it doesn't actually make worthwhile iPhone/Mac/64bit apps - which I have yet to find out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's annoying when people answer a request for facts with, you shouldn't feel that way, I really want to know if something changed in the last 2-3 years with the distribution of swag and if it is something I, as a programmer for a small business who has some (albeit limited) input in the distribution of swag, should know about for the betterment of my company." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6311" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2512" RevisionGUID="6a92b99f-fb46-45b2-9c9a-4022905bef0f" CreationDate="2011-11-03T14:44:25.713" UserId="1973" Comment="added 100 characters in body" Text="I'm not sure that anyone answered your question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But yeah, marketing questions so long as they're about marketing your software and you are the prime marketer of your software are on topic since they're about 'business concerns' and even moreso when they're about freelancing.  My question is probably off topic since it was asked purely as a reaction against Embarcadero not sending us any T-Shirts and questions like that are better off on the edn forums than here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's some guiding principles:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Don't ask a question for your marketing department.&#xD;&#xA; 2. The question should be more about how to make your software more palatable to the markets.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Questions about logos, design, demos etc.. belong on graphic design / UX StackExchanges&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I can't see how a question like &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Who should I give the good swag to at trade shows&quot; wouldn't be on topic, there's probably some facts about it as well as some psychology, the only problem is the &quot;Swap out car with software&quot; issue, which is a fallacy if you take it to an extreme.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and in a tangential way, my question might be on topic, if it had to do with a practical question I faced, like whether or not I should give out swag.  What I really want to know is, should I feel ripped off that I didn't get a t-shirt for my company buying Delphi.  The answer is, no one can tell me whether or not I should feel ripped off. But in reality, I only ought to feel ripped off if it doesn't actually make worthwhile iPhone/Mac/64bit apps - which I have yet to find out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's annoying when people answer a request for facts with, you shouldn't feel that way, I really want to know if something changed in the last 2-3 years with the distribution of swag and if it is something I, as a programmer for a small business who has some (albeit limited) input in the distribution of swag, should know about for the betterment of my company." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6312" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2508" RevisionGUID="006b4c59-b6dc-4fd1-98a4-877e22cc4110" CreationDate="2011-11-04T16:19:10.890" UserId="3530" Comment="added 253 characters in body" Text="There is great number of legitimate, but closed questions on programmers.se, mainly because they are open-ended or off-topic (although this latter label is used too liberally in my opinon). There is clearly a demand for such discussions, and chats don't seem to be good enough for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be possible to have another SE site for such content? Maybe without accepted answers. The intention of &quot;what is the best...&quot; questions is not to determine the &quot;best&quot; but to ask the community and see what ranks the highest. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, fun questions are often closed on programmers and SO which perfectly fine, but there is clearly an audience for them since those questions often receive an extremely high number of votes and views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: It's fine if you disagree with me, but you should not downvote this question unless you think it's poorly worded or off-topic. And even then I would be glad to get constructive criticism because simply bashing the down arrow doesn't help much. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6313" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2513" RevisionGUID="46246db6-6c9e-46c7-9e8f-6e9bb7c8f3f0" CreationDate="2011-11-04T17:47:49.687" UserId="32353" Text="This comes up a lot for questions that are closed as not being related to software development.  (What triggered the question was [some of the answers for the Are Marketing Questions On Topic question on meta][1].   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that there is a logical problem here - many things *might* be specific to programmers, but probably usually aren't very, but you don't know that without knowing the answer to the question.  For example, questions about specific marketing tactics (in this case swag).  But it's also an issue for most work environment questions (which I'm willing to stipulate mostly aren't good questions) and pretty common for career questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But presumably the person asking doesn't know if this is true, or they wouldn't ask.  And people closing the question might not know of any reason programmers are different than the rest of the world for attribute X, but it's hard to prove a negative, since a single valid example invalidates it.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, what if someone happens to answer a post saying that their recently completed research has found that programmers have a uniquely strong response to swag, but only in blue packaging?  Or that they have ranked all professions by correlation between ambient noise and productivity, and programmers have the highest negative correlation of all occupations, including brain surgeons and orchestra conductors?  (Or, to the probable joy of several recent posters, that a gene has been found that greatly increases programming ability but makes the bearer social awkward and physically repulsive?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In practice, most questions closed as not being specific to programmers probably really aren't specific to programmers, or are only slightly so, but then what should the policy be?  Should they just be closed on the theory that anybody with reasonable evidence that it *is* specific to programmers will be able to get it re-opened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2502/are-marketing-questions-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6314" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2513" RevisionGUID="46246db6-6c9e-46c7-9e8f-6e9bb7c8f3f0" CreationDate="2011-11-04T17:47:49.687" UserId="32353" Text="How do you know if a question is specific to programmers before it's been answered?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6315" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2513" RevisionGUID="46246db6-6c9e-46c7-9e8f-6e9bb7c8f3f0" CreationDate="2011-11-04T17:47:49.687" UserId="32353" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6316" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2514" RevisionGUID="bd6c372b-2ddc-4770-b017-a931b08fb293" CreationDate="2011-11-05T07:15:45.417" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="There are really a few different types of questions where the test applies, most of which are straightforward:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Questions that a reasonable person would recognize has nothing to do with software development.** These are questions like, &quot;What color tie should I wear to work?&quot;, &quot;What do I do if my co-worker smells bad?&quot;, &quot;What's your favorite member of *The New Kids on the Block*?&quot;. These are just categorically off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Questions that a reasonable person would consider off-topic, but are scoped to include an &quot;as a programmer&quot; clause.** These are questions like, &quot;What is your favorite pickle (as a programmer)?&quot;, &quot;As a programmer, do you think Justin Timblerlake is dreamy?&quot;, or &quot;What do programmers look for in a spouse?&quot; They almost always try to ask about the mythical programmer &quot;lifestyle&quot;, and are also off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Questions that are unambiguously about software development.** Stuff like, &quot;How should I optimize my Towers of Hanoi solver?&quot;, &quot;Why do I have to use a sigil in PHP?&quot;, or &quot;Is reflection the appropriate way to get access to a private method?&quot; These are categorically on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Most* questions will fall into one of the above categories, and there isn't a lot of thought required about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The one that gets the most pushback is the second group: it's a general question, but they want to know how a programmer would answer it. There's also the gray area you mention, where the asker doesn't know that the problem isn't specific to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is a little bit different from other Q&amp;A sites in that the asker's intent is secondary to the value of the question for the rest of the internet. We want questions that are going to help future visitors and attract experts to the site so they can help with the really tough questions that haven't been answered elsewhere. We *don't* want questions that are only going to help a single person or are going to make experts roll their eyes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it's important—for the sake of building up a corpus of reference questions—that what the asker *intended* or what the asker *believes* is taken out of the picture when evaluating a question's merit. Instead, does the question, *as written*, invite answers from a programmer's perspective? Is the problem *really* unique to software development?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, borderline questions like this are judged by the community's reaction to the question: in comments, flags, close-votes, and answers. Tells include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* None of the answers mention the programmer perspective, or the programmer perspective is exactly the same as every other person in a similar situation&#xD;&#xA;* The question gets a ton of down-votes in a short period of time, or settles on a negative-score&#xD;&#xA;* The comments on the question are argumentative and/or contain an number of clarifying questions for the poster&#xD;&#xA;* The question received a number of close-vote flags (this tell is restricted to moderators and 10k+ users)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the community, through its activity, doesn't consider it to be a problem unique to programmers, it really doesn't belong here. It's kind of annoying not to be able to determine ahead of time on borderline questions whether it's going to work, but it's incredibly hard (if not impossible) to create a set of rules or guidelines that's going to cover every possible question or scenario." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6317" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2514" RevisionGUID="eab7f189-6bae-45bb-a506-d5d82c22c640" CreationDate="2011-11-05T07:21:00.930" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 429 characters in body" Text="There are a few different types of questions where the test applies, most of which are straightforward:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Questions that a reasonable person would recognize has nothing to do with software development.** These are questions like, &quot;What color tie should I wear to work?&quot;, &quot;What do I do if my co-worker smells bad?&quot;, &quot;What's your favorite member of *The New Kids on the Block*?&quot;. These are just categorically off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Questions that a reasonable person would consider off-topic, but are scoped to include an &quot;as a programmer&quot; clause.** These are questions like, &quot;What is your favorite pickle (as a programmer)?&quot;, &quot;As a programmer, do you think Justin Timblerlake is dreamy?&quot;, or &quot;What do programmers look for in a spouse?&quot; They almost always try to ask about the mythical programmer &quot;lifestyle&quot;, and are also off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Questions that are unambiguously about software development.** Stuff like, &quot;How should I optimize my Towers of Hanoi solver?&quot;, &quot;Why do I have to use a sigil in PHP?&quot;, or &quot;Is reflection the appropriate way to get access to a private method?&quot; These are categorically on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Most* questions will fall into one of the above categories, and there isn't a lot of thought required to determine if a question falls into one of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The one that gets the most pushback is the second group: it's a general question, but they want to know how a programmer would answer it. There's also the gray area you mention, where the asker doesn't know that the problem isn't specific to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is a little bit different from other Q&amp;A sites in that the asker's intent is secondary to the value of the question for the rest of the internet. We want questions that are going to help future visitors and attract experts to the site so they can help with the really tough questions that haven't been answered elsewhere. We *don't* want questions that are only going to help a single person or are going to make experts roll their eyes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it's important—for the sake of building up a corpus of reference questions—that what the asker *intended* or what the asker *believes* is taken out of the picture when evaluating a question's merit. Instead, does the question, *as written*, invite answers from a programmer's perspective? Is the problem *really* unique to software development?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, borderline questions like this are judged by the community's reaction to the question: in comments, flags, close-votes, and answers. Tells include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* None of the answers mention the programmer perspective&#xD;&#xA;* The question gets a ton of down-votes in a short period of time, or settles on a negative-score&#xD;&#xA;* The comments on the question are argumentative and/or contain an number of clarifying questions for the poster&#xD;&#xA;* The question received a number of close-vote flags (this tell is restricted to moderators and 10k+ users)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the community, through its activity, doesn't consider it to be a problem unique to programmers, it really doesn't belong here. It's kind of annoying not to be able to determine on borderline questions whether it's going to work ahead of time, but it's incredibly hard (if not impossible) to create a set of rules or guidelines that's going to cover every possible question or scenario.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, as [Anna mentions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2513#comment-6321), if it can later be shown the problem *is* specific to software development, the question can be reopened: [closure isn't an automatic death sentence](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed). Usually this is prompted by a revision the question to demonstrate why it's a programmer problem (*more* than adding a &quot;as a programmer&quot; clause) or from creating consensus here on meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6318" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2514" RevisionGUID="beafa88a-17f7-4d72-b63f-8438c49f12f8" CreationDate="2011-11-05T07:30:11.497" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited body" Text="There are a few different types of questions where the test applies, most of which are straightforward:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Questions that a reasonable person would recognize has nothing to do with software development.** These are questions like, &quot;What color tie should I wear to work?&quot;, &quot;What do I do if my co-worker smells bad?&quot;, &quot;What's your favorite member of *The New Kids on the Block*?&quot;. These are just categorically off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Questions that a reasonable person would consider off-topic, but are scoped to include an &quot;as a programmer&quot; clause.** These are questions like, &quot;What is your favorite pickle (as a programmer)?&quot;, &quot;As a programmer, do you think Justin Timblerlake is dreamy?&quot;, or &quot;What do programmers look for in a spouse?&quot; They almost always try to ask about the mythical programmer &quot;lifestyle&quot;, and are also off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Questions that are unambiguously about software development.** Stuff like, &quot;How should I optimize my Towers of Hanoi solver?&quot;, &quot;Why do I have to use a sigil in PHP?&quot;, or &quot;Is reflection the appropriate way to get access to a private method?&quot; These are categorically on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Most* questions will fall into one of the above categories, and there isn't a lot of thought required to determine if a question falls into one of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The one that gets the most pushback is the second group: it's a general question, but they want to know how a programmer would answer it. There's also the gray area you mention, where the asker doesn't know that the problem isn't specific to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is a little bit different from other Q&amp;A sites in that the asker's intent is secondary to the value of the question for the rest of the internet. We want questions that are going to help future visitors and attract experts to the site so they can help with the really tough questions that haven't been answered elsewhere. We *don't* want questions that are only going to help a single person or are going to make experts roll their eyes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it's important—for the sake of building up a corpus of reference questions—that what the asker *intended* or what the asker *believes* is taken out of the picture when evaluating a question's merit. Instead, does the question, *as written*, invite answers from a programmer's perspective? Is the problem *really* unique to software development?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, borderline questions like this are judged by the community's reaction to the question: in comments, flags, close-votes, and answers. Tells include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* None of the answers mention the programmer perspective&#xD;&#xA;* The question gets a ton of down-votes in a short period of time, or settles on a negative score&#xD;&#xA;* The comments on the question are argumentative and/or contain an number of clarifying questions for the poster&#xD;&#xA;* The question received a number of close-vote flags (this tell is restricted to moderators and 10k+ users)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the community, through its activity, doesn't consider it to be a problem unique to programmers, it really doesn't belong here. It's kind of annoying not to be able to determine on borderline questions whether it's going to work ahead of time, but it's incredibly hard (if not impossible) to create a set of rules or guidelines that's going to cover every possible question or scenario.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, as [Anna mentions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2513#comment-6321), if it can later be shown the problem *is* specific to software development, the question can be reopened: [closure isn't an automatic death sentence](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed). Usually this is prompted by a revision the question to demonstrate why it's a programmer problem (*more* than adding a &quot;as a programmer&quot; clause) or from creating consensus here on meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6326" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2517" RevisionGUID="60cb0955-b24a-419d-9600-f0e59ade6065" CreationDate="2011-11-06T04:08:41.417" UserId="226" Text="We currently have both an [tag:ecommerce] and an [tag:e-commerce] tags. Which should we keep?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I personally prefer [tag:e-commerce] and that's the spelling used in the [Merriam-Webster dictionary](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ecommerce), but it only has 4 questions (3 of which are closed) whereas [tag:ecommerce] has 16 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We typically set up synonyms from smaller tags to larger, but in this case both are pretty small and it wouldn't be a big deal to make either one a synonym of the other." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6327" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2517" RevisionGUID="60cb0955-b24a-419d-9600-f0e59ade6065" CreationDate="2011-11-06T04:08:41.417" UserId="226" Text="Ecommerce or e-commerce?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6328" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2517" RevisionGUID="60cb0955-b24a-419d-9600-f0e59ade6065" CreationDate="2011-11-06T04:08:41.417" UserId="226" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6329" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2518" RevisionGUID="d7554d54-8189-4541-b3fe-540ec9a66e06" CreationDate="2011-11-06T11:45:11.130" UserId="47" Text="Personally I'd go for [tag:e-commerce] as the master with the synonym being [tag:ecommerce].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, by the same logic we should also make sure that [tag:e-mail] is the master and [tag:email] the synonym too if we want to be consistent. However these stand at 0 and 24 questions respectively and on Stack Overflow [email](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/email/synonyms) (no hyphen) is the master. So if we check what Stack Overflow does with e-commerce we see that [ecommerce](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/e-commerce/synonyms) is the master again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, therefore I think we need to override personal preferences and go with the network &quot;standard&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6330" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2519" RevisionGUID="080329a0-53f0-4df7-8718-644a73a272d8" CreationDate="2011-11-06T16:32:17.567" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The [AP Stylebook](http://www.apstylebook.com/?do=ask_faq), the [Chicago Manual of Style](http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/does-ebook-have-a-hyphen.aspx), [Merriam-Webster](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/e-commerce), and [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-commerce) all use &quot;e-commerce.&quot; The places where I've seen &quot;ecommerce&quot; being acceptable also list &quot;e-commerce&quot; as an acceptable construction (for example, [Dictionary.com](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/e-commerce)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like only &quot;email&quot; has been able to shed its hyphen elsewhere (e.g. the AP Stylebook): I'd say we continue to follow the convention and use [tag:e-commerce]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6331" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2518" RevisionGUID="57d7f5c8-2e80-46f0-93bd-733d5e17d35a" CreationDate="2011-11-06T16:38:23.557" UserId="47" Comment="correction" Text="Personally I'd go for [tag:e-commerce] as the master with the synonym being [tag:ecommerce].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, by the same logic we should also make sure that [tag:e-mail] is the master and [tag:email] the synonym too if we want to be consistent. However these stand at 0 and 24 questions respectively and on Stack Overflow [email](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/email/synonyms) (no hyphen) is the master. So if we check what Stack Overflow does with e-commerce we see that [e-commerce](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/e-commerce/synonyms) is the master.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, there doesn't seem to be a network standard at all! However, perhaps we should go with consistency at the individual tag level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6332" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2520" RevisionGUID="14fa9d1d-1b2d-4264-9906-045c2e51288b" CreationDate="2011-11-07T04:52:05.160" UserId="23653" Text="I'm sure this question must have been asked before, but I can't find it using the search function. Why are old questions that haven't had any recent new answers edited, which then causes the question to reappear on the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I misunderstanding what is going on? Otherwise I don't see the point of editing an old question.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6333" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2520" RevisionGUID="14fa9d1d-1b2d-4264-9906-045c2e51288b" CreationDate="2011-11-07T04:52:05.160" UserId="23653" Text="why are old questions edited?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6334" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2520" RevisionGUID="14fa9d1d-1b2d-4264-9906-045c2e51288b" CreationDate="2011-11-07T04:52:05.160" UserId="23653" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6335" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2521" RevisionGUID="ee64a341-f135-48e3-9344-0b377342e0af" CreationDate="2011-11-07T04:58:07.507" UserId="226" Text="We are currently working through hundreds of questions in old badly used tags such as [tag:career] and [tag:jobs]. Some questions that obviously no longer fit the scope of the site are closed, but others have to be retagged. Too many edits at one time can flood the front page with old questions, so we tend to only edit a handful at a time, but having the questions pop up to the front page for a bit is not a bad thing. It allows the community to review them again and see if a better answer can be made or if the question needs further editing (or to be closed).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most edits you'll see on old questions on Programmers are likely due to a retagging. You can click on the edit timestamp on each edited post to see a revision history and check out the changes made by each editor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more information on the question clean-up, see [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning), [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2051/programmers-se-summer-cleaning-part-ii-electric-boogaloo), and [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup). Feel free to get involved by editing and/or flagging old questions for moderator attention as needed. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6336" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2522" RevisionGUID="62edad9f-e6cb-4fc9-aea1-55f14008e6a3" CreationDate="2011-11-07T05:02:12.123" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Wow, a kindred spirit! I personally *loathe* editing long-dead questions, especially when the changes are minor. They push new questions off the front page for no good reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that is not a universal belief: a great many people on Stack Exchange believe that *any* edit, no matter how small, is a good edit. That if you see a post that can be improved, you should do it without any regard for how it affects other posts on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And there's a practical reason to edit: we're in the midst of a cleanup of bad tags that are causing problems for new questions. The only way we can get people to stop using those tags is to [remove them from all previous questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags). And to do that, we need to edit them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally, the front page should be a mixture of brand new questions, active questions that have not been solved yet, and old questions that have been improved. Having too much of any of those makes for a front page that looks more dead or artificial than alive and bustling." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6337" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2520" RevisionGUID="9754922b-a39c-4ded-942a-d3cae64c5cd5" CreationDate="2011-11-07T05:02:34.883" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6338" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2517" RevisionGUID="014de856-d058-4422-a3cd-439d415d8021" CreationDate="2011-11-07T05:06:29.027" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6349" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="2526" RevisionGUID="28105383-4dec-4ef0-9a13-627eb40401d7" CreationDate="2011-11-08T17:44:47.770" UserId="-1" Comment="from https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/111414/is-curiosity-allowed-on-programmers-stackexchange-com" Text="" />
  <row Id="6350" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="2527" RevisionGUID="8eeb64c5-5539-4eee-b0be-3a99a2c84630" CreationDate="2011-11-08T17:44:47.770" UserId="-1" Comment="from https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/111414/is-curiosity-allowed-on-programmers-stackexchange-com/111415#111415" Text="" />
  <row Id="6351" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2527" RevisionGUID="a02ebf10-aca5-436a-99ad-0727e7738f3a" CreationDate="2011-11-08T17:43:25.337" UserId="4767" UserDisplayName="Oded" Text="The first part of the programmers [FAQ][1] is pretty clear on what it is about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6352" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2526" RevisionGUID="eed33db7-3491-4826-ac38-b5ec13d30857" CreationDate="2011-11-08T17:41:34.153" UserDisplayName="Cedric Martin" Text="Is curiosity allowed on the various stackexchange sites or does every single question need to be a question about a precise problem to solve?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, are the two following questions valid questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&quot;When did Huffman discover his minimum-redundancy-code?&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(not that the answer to that one is hard to find, but I'd like to know if that would make for a valid question on a SE site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or the following (asked by me):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118575&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean, to me they're interesting question in themselves but a mod pointed to me that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&quot;(the question) may be interesting but it's not what this site is about&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think a case could be made that knowing the &quot;history&quot; of algorithm, data structure and techniques is interesting in any case: it helps understanding how things evolved and may give insight as to why some other things were made this or that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But even without taking that into account: are interesting question just made out of curiosity not allowed on SE?&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;*(just to be clear: I made the above question because I'm currently working on implementing said tokens and I wanted to read material on the subject and figured out starting from the oldest material available would provide good insight on the topic: that old Usenet post from 2003 I found was certainly a good read, for example)*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6353" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2526" RevisionGUID="eed33db7-3491-4826-ac38-b5ec13d30857" CreationDate="2011-11-08T17:41:34.153" UserDisplayName="Cedric Martin" Text="Is curiosity allowed on programmers.stackexchange.com?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6354" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2526" RevisionGUID="eed33db7-3491-4826-ac38-b5ec13d30857" CreationDate="2011-11-08T17:41:34.153" UserDisplayName="Cedric Martin" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6355" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2528" RevisionGUID="4a60c6b3-652b-46de-961a-e9a9dc6af475" CreationDate="2011-11-08T17:50:22.087" UserId="44" Text="The FAQ reports the following sentence:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I take it means you should not ask a question just for curiosity, but only if it is pertinent with an actual problem you are facing, and trying to resolve." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6356" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2529" RevisionGUID="d63c5aed-0540-4308-8266-c238d76c1e9c" CreationDate="2011-11-08T18:04:03.183" UserId="226" Text="&gt;Are interesting question just made out of curiosity not allowed on SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should distinguish between types of curiosity. Some questions fall in the &quot;trivia&quot; category. Those may be accepted one some sites (for example, I believe Gaming allows trivia questions about various games), but I don't think they'd do well here for the reasons Oded described.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other questions are made out of curiosity but are still entirely on-topic. For example, I could ask my question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66708/how-can-we-reduce-downtime-at-the-end-of-an-iteration even if I myself was working in a waterfall environment. Although at its core, that question still solves that problem - it'd just happen to not be mine in that scenario.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's look specifically at [your question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118575/what-was-the-earliest-use-of-cryptographic-tokens-in-urls): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;what are the oldest know usage of this technique you know of?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is somewhat different from asking &quot;what is the earliest usage of this technique?&quot;. The latter suggests that a good answer would require proof. You version reads more like you want to build a list of occurrences of cryptographic tokens in URLs. That would make for an interesting discussion, but it's not a question that fits well into the Q&amp;A model we have here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll close with a line from the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. I'm checking with moderators on [Cryptography.SE](http://crypto.stackexchange.com) to see if they'd welcome the question since it's more directly in line with their subject matter." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6357" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2530" RevisionGUID="bc8f4b04-c0e4-4ef5-8a5d-d1f62c07b389" CreationDate="2011-11-08T18:37:53.843" UserDisplayName="user10197" Text="Crypto-mod here. *See how amazing moderators are with all this cross site effort we put in to make sure we don't cloe something when it might have a home elsewhere?!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately I've had a chat with both the other cryptography moderators and whilst we do accept questions on &quot;historical&quot; algorithms (which we take to mean algorithms used pre the computing era), the consensus was as it stands it wouldn't be a good fit for us. We tend to focus on the [details and workings of the algorithms][1] and their consequences for implementation. We'd also be concerned that, in our current context, it might get a bit discussion-y.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I'd be happy to have a post raised about history questions on our meta, if only to see what people think.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our [chat][2] is fairly  quiet sometimes, but someone there might know the answer. Similarly, Thomas Pornin made the observation: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There is an underlying crypto question, which is: how would I generate and verify a &quot;token&quot; embedded in the URL, destined to filter out non-genuine URL ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions of that nature, or questions you face when doing this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I made the above question because I'm currently working on implementing said tokens and I wanted to read material on the subject&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would definitely be good, on-topic questions, possibly for [crypto][3] or [security][4]. The difference is summed up (again by Thomas) as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The rule of thumb, here, being that you should post to crypto.SE if you want to understand the internals, and to security.SE if you want to know what you should do now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/784/cryptography&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/784/cryptography&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://security.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6358" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2531" RevisionGUID="d719c3bd-c9e8-4994-bc12-05814d589550" CreationDate="2011-11-08T19:26:36.563" UserId="32353" Text="I did read [a very similar question to this one][1] but found it confusing, and it was more about when this site was in beta.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just flagged a question that was, arguably, an exact duplicate of a stack overflow question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a question that is an exact duplicate, what are non-moderators expected to do?  The site won't allow it to be given a close vote unless it duplicates a programmers question, which perhaps I should take as a hint.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should such questions be flagged as possible merge candidates (though which direction the merge goes would presumably depend on the questions)?  Should we just let a thousand flowers bloom?  If such duplication is considered fine I don't want to waste moderator's time by flagging them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162/how-do-you-deal-with-famous-questions-of-stack-overflow-that-are-being-asked-aga" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6359" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2531" RevisionGUID="d719c3bd-c9e8-4994-bc12-05814d589550" CreationDate="2011-11-08T19:26:36.563" UserId="32353" Text="What is the current policy for questions that are duplicates of stack overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6360" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2531" RevisionGUID="d719c3bd-c9e8-4994-bc12-05814d589550" CreationDate="2011-11-08T19:26:36.563" UserId="32353" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6361" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2530" RevisionGUID="a613ff0f-806f-43d9-aa15-4a5ca7e74a25" CreationDate="2011-11-08T19:38:55.747" UserId="47" Comment="corrected spelling" Text="Crypto-mod here. *See how amazing moderators are with all this cross site effort we put in to make sure we don't close something when it might have a home elsewhere?!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately I've had a chat with both the other cryptography moderators and whilst we do accept questions on &quot;historical&quot; algorithms (which we take to mean algorithms used pre the computing era), the consensus was as it stands it wouldn't be a good fit for us. We tend to focus on the [details and workings of the algorithms][1] and their consequences for implementation. We'd also be concerned that, in our current context, it might get a bit discussion-y.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I'd be happy to have a post raised about history questions on our meta, if only to see what people think.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our [chat][2] is fairly  quiet sometimes, but someone there might know the answer. Similarly, Thomas Pornin made the observation: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There is an underlying crypto question, which is: how would I generate and verify a &quot;token&quot; embedded in the URL, destined to filter out non-genuine URL ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions of that nature, or questions you face when doing this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I made the above question because I'm currently working on implementing said tokens and I wanted to read material on the subject&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would definitely be good, on-topic questions, possibly for [crypto][3] or [security][4]. The difference is summed up (again by Thomas) as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The rule of thumb, here, being that you should post to crypto.SE if you want to understand the internals, and to security.SE if you want to know what you should do now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/784/cryptography&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/784/cryptography&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://security.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6362" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2531" RevisionGUID="37f95453-c68b-4ea4-9d26-2ba93f92b1b5" CreationDate="2011-11-08T19:39:44.063" UserId="32353" Comment="tried to improve clarity" Text="I did read [a very similar question][1] to the question I'm asking now, but found it confusing, and it was more about when this site was in beta.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just flagged a question that was, arguably, an exact duplicate of a stack overflow question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a question that is an exact duplicate, what are non-moderators expected to do?  The site won't allow it to be given a close vote unless it duplicates a programmers question, which perhaps I should take as a hint.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should such questions be flagged as possible merge candidates (though which direction the merge goes would presumably depend on the questions)?  Should we just let a thousand flowers bloom?  If such duplication is considered fine I don't want to waste moderator's time by flagging them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162/how-do-you-deal-with-famous-questions-of-stack-overflow-that-are-being-asked-aga" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6364" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2532" RevisionGUID="540e7543-ed03-47a8-8595-b75794a89d32" CreationDate="2011-11-08T19:52:07.810" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="There is no functional concept of a cross-site duplicate: questions can exist on two separate sites as long as they've been tailored to be on-topic for each site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, that rarely happens, and people cross-post the same question to multiple sites in misguided attempts to get their questions answered faster, or some questions that are off-topic for one site slip through the cracks and stay open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So depending on the scenario, there are a few different things we can do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Cross-posted questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If it's cross-posted and on-topic here, link the Stack Overflow version in the comments and mention to the user they shouldn't cross post because Programmers is the right place for the question. I'd then flag the question on Stack Overflow so the moderators there can remove it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If it's cross-posted and off-topic here, flag it for moderator review and mention it's a cross-post when you do so we can close it as off-topic before the community migrates it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Non-crosspost duplicates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If the question is on-topic here, you can link Stack Overflow question in the comments and mention it's related. If you believe the Stack Overflow question belongs on Programmers and you have the reputation, vote to close it on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If the question is off-topic here, mention the Stack Overflow question in the comments and vote to close the question here as off-topic (*not* &quot;off-topic; belongs on Stack Overflow&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6366" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2533" RevisionGUID="f186eb70-b911-428b-85b0-8cf66751edfd" CreationDate="2011-11-08T20:23:30.470" UserId="1458" Text="In the case of identical questions, there's a network-wide policy: [Is cross-posting a question on multiple Stack Exchange sites permitted if the question is on-topic for each site?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64068/is-cross-posting-a-question-on-multiple-stack-exchange-sites-permitted-if-the-qu) The answer is no: posting the same question twice is not acceptable. This comes up now and then between [Super User](http://superuser.com/), [Server Fault](http://serverfault.com/), [Unix &amp; Linux](http://unix.stackexchange.com/) and [Ask Ubuntu](http://askubuntu.com/), which have overlapping scopes. We arrange to keep only one version open, ideally the single one that has answers already. In this case, please comment (so that potential answerers don't waste time repeating an answer that someone else wrote on another site), vote to close where you can, and flag for a speedy close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the questions are similar and posted by different users, it's a different matter. If the question is off-topic on one site, of course, close it as off-topic. If the issue is on-topic on both sites but the questions are suitably tailored to their respective sites, let both live: there's no notion of cross-site duplicates, and different communities might have different insights.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6368" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2526" RevisionGUID="c6eca327-de05-4e58-8c9a-2651acd836a1" CreationDate="2011-11-09T02:20:56.690" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/134093081455759360" />
  <row Id="6369" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2534" RevisionGUID="621afb45-55c7-4f6a-b7b2-1e445e6e5c61" CreationDate="2011-11-09T04:19:30.633" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="While I realize that it might not be used as often as it is on Math.SE, it would be nice to be able to use inline Latex every now and then to illustrate an algorithm or a math function. Would this be possible?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6370" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2534" RevisionGUID="621afb45-55c7-4f6a-b7b2-1e445e6e5c61" CreationDate="2011-11-09T04:19:30.633" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Can we get Mathjax on Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6371" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2534" RevisionGUID="621afb45-55c7-4f6a-b7b2-1e445e6e5c61" CreationDate="2011-11-09T04:19:30.633" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6372" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2535" RevisionGUID="dcbcae0b-45b9-40bd-a5f5-30a00397aae7" CreationDate="2011-11-09T04:24:27.400" UserId="226" Text="It's possible, but I'm not sure that it's necessary. I can't recall any situations where we could've really used an accurate math representation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, I could be totally wrong. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Typically requests like this need to come with a list of situations where the feature would be genuinely useful. Do you have any particular questions in mind?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6373" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2534" RevisionGUID="fcee7317-a64c-462c-9678-7ece9fa7b9b5" CreationDate="2011-11-09T05:40:56.680" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6379" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2526" RevisionGUID="f0f26d57-a5e3-4a0b-b7d5-5021b57db598" CreationDate="2011-11-09T06:03:36.917" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6380" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2536" RevisionGUID="f3077695-2488-4c31-b923-49804df51b28" CreationDate="2011-11-09T08:39:46.003" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="I noticed they are running for StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also noticed that the previous occured in january this year, does this mean that the next P.SE elections are due in january 2012?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6381" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2536" RevisionGUID="f3077695-2488-4c31-b923-49804df51b28" CreationDate="2011-11-09T08:39:46.003" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="When are the next moderator elections for P.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6382" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2536" RevisionGUID="f3077695-2488-4c31-b923-49804df51b28" CreationDate="2011-11-09T08:39:46.003" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="|discussion|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6383" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2537" RevisionGUID="0fbe0fd8-4c56-4d5a-b7e0-bcc6db00132c" CreationDate="2011-11-09T08:49:09.667" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Moderators are elected for indefinite terms and serve at the pleasure of Stack Exchange. Elections are held when there is a need for more moderators, either due to increased workload or moderators taking extended or permanent leaves of absence. From [Grace Note on Gaming.SE](http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/2618/how-often-are-moderator-elections-held/2619#2619):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Normally, we hold elections once shortly after graduation, then roughly look into it once a year afterwards. However, this is further refined based on the needs of the site. For example, if the current set of moderators (after this election) is more than sufficient, then we could probably skip a year of elections. Times change and the important thing is to have people who have the available time to spend on the site and cover it well. As such, a lot of elections is about when the site needs it, more than it is any periodic effect. Periodic checks are more as a good habit to investigate whether there is an unspoken need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, the elections on Stack Overflow are to elect four more moderators to supplement the 10 man team they have currently. The last supplemental election was held on Gaming.SE, where they elected two moderators to replace Grace Note (who became a Stack Exchange, Inc. employee) and offset the increased traffic on the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6384" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2538" RevisionGUID="fad6278d-3851-47db-9484-57e191199555" CreationDate="2011-11-09T16:04:50.633" UserDisplayName="user39741" Text="I thought I had gone through the entire FAQ and clicked on all the links and read through everything, but no badge shows up under my programmers profile.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the what the badge reads: **Visited every section of the FAQ**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does that mean I have to include all the links to the linked pages? Does it take some time to show up? I'm not sure what I've missed here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6385" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2538" RevisionGUID="fad6278d-3851-47db-9484-57e191199555" CreationDate="2011-11-09T16:04:50.633" UserDisplayName="user39741" Text="Missing something from the requirements for the Analytical Badge?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6386" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2538" RevisionGUID="fad6278d-3851-47db-9484-57e191199555" CreationDate="2011-11-09T16:04:50.633" UserDisplayName="user39741" Text="|discussion|support|feature-request|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6387" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2538" RevisionGUID="712d8c63-215a-4dbb-8c71-6ff564489c52" CreationDate="2011-11-09T16:08:39.957" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6388" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2539" RevisionGUID="27288dba-b01a-4a94-b59d-ed67c1f0eaa2" CreationDate="2011-11-09T16:09:47.833" UserId="47" Text="Double check that you've clicked on all the section links - including the first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The badge *should* turn up a few minutes after you've done this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6389" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2540" RevisionGUID="104862ac-cdad-4496-88ae-cb079916416c" CreationDate="2011-11-10T22:11:20.923" UserId="1996" Text="Building off of @Mark Trapp's answer [here][1], should P.SE moderators have to defend their seat?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, should we keep a limited number of moderators and force them to run for re-election periodically?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think it makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's why:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Imagine that we have eight people who are perfectly capable of performing their duties as P.SE moderator.&#xD;&#xA;- And we agree that we only need four moderators.&#xD;&#xA;- Why should we let four people serve as P.SE moderator indefinitely?&#xD;&#xA;- It seems like we should rotate and infuse some fresh blood into the P.SE group of moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2536/when-are-the-next-moderator-elections-for-p-se/2537#2537" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6390" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2540" RevisionGUID="104862ac-cdad-4496-88ae-cb079916416c" CreationDate="2011-11-10T22:11:20.923" UserId="1996" Text="Should P.SE Moderators have to &quot;defend their seat&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6391" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2540" RevisionGUID="104862ac-cdad-4496-88ae-cb079916416c" CreationDate="2011-11-10T22:11:20.923" UserId="1996" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6392" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2540" RevisionGUID="aab32509-ffc0-4ab4-935d-1d8e4606d223" CreationDate="2011-11-10T22:13:27.147" UserId="226" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="Building off of @Mark Trapp's answer [here][1], should P.SE moderators have to defend their seat?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, should we keep a limited number of moderators and force them to run for re-election periodically?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think it makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's why:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Imagine that we have eight people who are perfectly capable of performing their duties as P.SE moderator.&#xD;&#xA;- And we agree that we only need four moderators.&#xD;&#xA;- Why should we let four people serve as P.SE moderators indefinitely?&#xD;&#xA;- It seems like we should rotate and infuse some fresh blood into the P.SE group of moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2536/when-are-the-next-moderator-elections-for-p-se/2537#2537" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6393" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2541" RevisionGUID="b7c95aff-053a-4583-b3ad-056356090da5" CreationDate="2011-11-10T22:17:02.170" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Rotating is a pretty poor idea; this isn't kindergarten: not everyone gets a turn to play with the good toy. A site deserves the best set of moderators, whether that means it's the same set for multiple terms or it means new people come in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, and I can't speak for the other moderators, I'm [all for periodic elections](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/101431/should-stack-overflow-moderators-have-a-standard-of-duty/101459#101459): not only does it serve the chance for users to re-evaluate who's moderating, it also gives moderators who successfully run a mandate to do what they need to do to get the job done." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6394" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2540" RevisionGUID="41bfed2a-d04c-43af-93a3-867f6657f8bb" CreationDate="2011-11-10T22:24:20.423" UserId="1996" Comment="added 344 characters in body" Text="Building off of @Mark Trapp's answer [here][1], should P.SE moderators have to defend their seat?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, should we keep a limited number of moderators and force them to run for re-election periodically?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think it makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's why:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Imagine that we have eight people who are perfectly capable of performing their duties as P.SE moderator.&#xD;&#xA;- And we agree that we only need four moderators.&#xD;&#xA;- Why should we let four people serve as P.SE moderators indefinitely?&#xD;&#xA;- It seems like we should rotate and infuse some fresh blood into the P.SE group of moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I'm less concerned about rotating.&#xD;&#xA; - Per @Mark Trapp's [answer][2], I'm more concerned about appointing the absolute **best** moderators to the position. [Thanks @Mark Trapp for the suggestion. ;)]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2536/when-are-the-next-moderator-elections-for-p-se/2537#2537&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2540/should-p-se-moderators-have-to-defend-their-seat/2541#2541" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6395" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2542" RevisionGUID="08245882-3e5f-46d0-b34d-2f0650322c25" CreationDate="2011-11-10T23:10:12.540" UserId="63" Text="&gt; Why should we let four people serve as P.SE moderators indefinitely?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why *not*? Are you worried about burnout? Do you feel the current moderators are doing a poor job? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're not particularly interested in holding periodic elections *just for the fun of it*. It's  a big distraction and tends to stir up pointless drama. Not that I don't enjoy a bit of pointless drama, but for the sake of the site I should probably just watch more daytime TV.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Being a moderator is a volunteer position. If a person tires of it, they'll step down. If we ask them to, they'll step down. If *you* (the community) ask them to, they'll step down. And we'll run an election so you can pick someone to replace them. But when things are running smoothly, there is absolutely *no reason* to conduct elections as some sort of pageant that contributes *nothing* by way of actual content to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###And one more thing...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Imagine that we have eight people who are perfectly capable of performing their duties as P.SE moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a long time, I *had* to imagine this. Because it wasn't the case. Not too long ago, the stats on Programmers indicated that, apart from the moderators and maybe *two* other users, almost no one bothered voting to close, voting to re-open, or editing on a regular basis. For a site with this much regular traffic, that was very, very depressing. It's gotten... *better*... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's still not *great*. In the last week, *two* questions have been re-opened. [No one](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/33/copy-editor) has the Copy Editor badge. Out of the top-ten close-voters on the site, four are the active moderators, two are former moderators, and one's a moderator on another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't think of Moderator as some sort of status-symbol. They're - at best - [exception handlers][1]. All too often, they're more like janitors. A healthy site has scores of &quot;junior janitors&quot; doing the bulk of the work - cleaning up poor questions, helping new users understand how things work... When that happens reliably, holding an election is easy - you know there are competent folks willing to take on that responsibility. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry, but that is simply not the case here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe in another year...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6396" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2542" RevisionGUID="b3897e84-0984-4f4e-a29d-0bd034db951e" CreationDate="2011-11-10T23:18:51.373" UserId="63" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="&gt; Why should we let four people serve as P.SE moderators indefinitely?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why *not*? Are you worried about burnout? Do you feel the current moderators are doing a poor job? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're not particularly interested in holding periodic elections *just for the fun of it*. It's  a big distraction and tends to stir up pointless drama. Not that I don't enjoy a bit of pointless drama, but for the sake of the site I should probably just watch more daytime TV.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Being a moderator is a volunteer position. If a person tires of it, they'll step down. If we ask them to, they'll step down. If *you* (the community) ask them to, they'll step down. And we'll run an election so you can pick someone to replace them. But when things are running smoothly, there is absolutely *no reason* to conduct elections as some sort of pageant that contributes *nothing* by way of actual content to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###And one more thing...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Imagine that we have eight people who are perfectly capable of performing their duties as P.SE moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a long time, I *had* to imagine this. Because it wasn't the case. Not too long ago, the stats on Programmers indicated that, apart from the moderators and maybe *two* other users, almost no one bothered voting to close, voting to re-open, or editing on a regular basis. For a site with this much regular traffic, that was very, very depressing. It's gotten... *better*... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's still not *great*. In the last week, *two* questions have been re-opened. [One person](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/33/copy-editor) has the Copy Editor badge. Out of the top-ten close-voters on the site, four are the active moderators, two are former moderators, and one's a moderator on another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't think of Moderator as some sort of status-symbol. They're - at best - [exception handlers][1]. All too often, they're more like janitors. A healthy site has scores of &quot;junior janitors&quot; doing the bulk of the work - cleaning up poor questions, helping new users understand how things work... When that happens reliably, holding an election is easy - you know there are competent folks willing to take on that responsibility. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry, but that is simply not the case here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe in another year...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6397" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2543" RevisionGUID="d4315a3f-5d4b-4417-83d4-d0394c34424a" CreationDate="2011-11-10T23:22:09.963" UserId="47" Text="&gt; And we agree that we only need four moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While this statement is true now, hopefully in the future we'll need more than four moderators. Therefore, it makes sense to hold elections only when we need to augment the existing team (hopefully through expansion, but also through people standing down) rather than potentially replacing them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6398" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2540" RevisionGUID="763bd687-f32a-4365-b15b-868676b764f1" CreationDate="2011-11-10T23:49:36.640" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|moderators|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6399" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2544" RevisionGUID="8a5ddf37-0141-4cd0-91b8-b0b9bd58f8b6" CreationDate="2011-11-11T12:24:38.693" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="I think doing periodic election could have a positive effect on the community and would make it healthy. If we still want to call it community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I posted the [question][1] you mention, I really didn't knew elected moderators would be there for indefinitely. Honesly, I was shocked. But while I was thinking about it the last few days, I concluded that it makes sense in the current configuration of the project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But still, there is no easy way for the community to make a vote of no confidence without posting on meta (and being flamed). Many simply leave without complaining. We have no way to evaluate the positive or negative effect of the moderator's behavior if we don't give the opportunity to everyone to express their opinion *anonymously*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Election was a good way to do it and previous one illustrated it: one moderator that previously operated on P.SE did not get re-elected!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2536/when-are-the-next-moderator-elections-for-p-se/2537" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6400" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2540" RevisionGUID="3a6b6bc3-c2ba-4a0d-ac82-66b3394d3fc0" CreationDate="2011-11-11T23:21:03.813" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/135134977355563009" />
  <row Id="6401" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2545" RevisionGUID="ee0a4e11-1340-4550-89f3-62f479a5f55d" CreationDate="2011-11-12T20:04:28.370" UserDisplayName="user35791" Text="I recently posted a [question regarding the syntax of Python][1]. It wasn't a _how_ question, it was a _why_ question, specifically wanting an explanation of the reason behind what I consider a quirk of Python. I posted it here on P.SE because I have seen similar questions here before. To make sure I wasn't telling myself a lie, I even did a quick search and found questions such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Why do iterators in Python raise an exception?][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why doesn't Python allow multi-line lambdas?][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why aren't there explicit access modifiers in Python:][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of those questions were considered off topic, but mine was. Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;I'm perfectly okay with the question being closed because there is a duplicate on SO; I'm not just trying to vent.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119412/why-does-python-require-a-colon-at-the-end-of-control-flow-statements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112463/why-do-iterators-in-python-raise-an-exception&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99243/why-doesnt-python-allow-multi-line-lambdas&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91799/why-arent-there-explicit-access-modifiers-in-python" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6402" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2545" RevisionGUID="ee0a4e11-1340-4550-89f3-62f479a5f55d" CreationDate="2011-11-12T20:04:28.370" UserDisplayName="user35791" Text="When are questions about the quirks of a language on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6403" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2545" RevisionGUID="ee0a4e11-1340-4550-89f3-62f479a5f55d" CreationDate="2011-11-12T20:04:28.370" UserDisplayName="user35791" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6404" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2546" RevisionGUID="9800770a-959e-49ea-bc82-3a1debe024a5" CreationDate="2011-11-12T20:16:13.647" UserId="226" Text="Yeah, &quot;off-topic&quot; is perhaps not entirely right. Sorry about that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main reason for closing your question honestly *is* that it was covered well on Stack Overflow and isn't off-topic there to warrant a migration to Programmers. Unfortunately there is no way to close questions as cross-site duplicates, so I went with off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also try to not migrate questions just to have them closed, so I opted to not move your question to Stack Overflow either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd forgotten about the other &quot;why does language X do things a certain way&quot; questions we have. The ones you listed as examples seem to be targeting language design rather than just asking about specific syntax choices, but I appreciate that the line is pretty blurry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure if there's a better way to handle this case and I'm open to opinions and ideas from you, other users, and other moderators." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6405" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2547" RevisionGUID="71252755-baeb-444e-bfd1-abc913341c29" CreationDate="2011-11-12T23:34:10.217" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Personally, I'm fine with &quot;why did X do it this way?&quot;-type questions as long as they meet two criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. They're asking about historical language/compiler design decisions and *not* coding conventions. So, asking [why iterators raise an exception in Python](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112463/why-do-iterators-in-python-raise-an-exception) is fine, asking why programmers write jokes in comments is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. They're not rants. This is more of a &quot;it's not what you ask but how you ask it&quot; criterion, but from seeing the questions come in and how they play out over the past year, if a question starts with a rant, people address the rant instead of the content of the question. We don't want back-and-forth discussions about whether or not people are justified in thinking X decision is dumb or silly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So with those two personal criteria in mind, I'd say your question is okay, with the caveat that if the answers go south, it'd be closed again as *not constructive*. However, if consensus is that the question is on-topic, I think it's probably better we just get Stack Overflow to migrate the original one instead of reasking something that's already been answered." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6406" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2538" RevisionGUID="5c2bd58b-e3a1-4823-8d48-9e316a0e0c2b" CreationDate="2011-11-13T03:25:50.120" UserDisplayName="user39741" Comment="Changed some text for meaning." Text="I thought I had gone through the entire FAQ and clicked on all the links as I read through them, but no badge shows up under my programmers profile.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the what the badge reads: **Visited every section of the FAQ**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does that mean I have to include all the links to the linked pages? Does it take some time to show up? I'm not sure what I've missed here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6407" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2548" RevisionGUID="e73619b0-6a8e-4424-beee-b5d1a8bf9e2c" CreationDate="2011-11-13T17:32:57.277" UserId="25936" Text="This is a small list of [Stack Exchange Data Explorer][1] queries I've compiled for my run towards the elusive [Marshal badge][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Duplicates**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Find suggested duplicates that haven't led to question closure][3] &#xD;&#xA;- [Find suggested duplicates that haven't led to question closure in a tag][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Controversial posts**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Most controversial posts][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Self answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Forum style questions - multiple self answers from asker][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Recent self answers][7]&#xD;&#xA;- [You're probably doing it wrong (Questions with Multiple Answers by the OP)][8]&#xD;&#xA;- [Not accepted self answers with negative votes][9]&#xD;&#xA;- [Recent Not accepted self answers with negative votes][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Not an answer**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Posts that could be marked as 'not an answer' to help get the Marshal badge][11]&#xD;&#xA;- [Seek and Destroy: Comments with the phrase &quot;not an answer&quot;][12]&#xD;&#xA;- [Something to Flag &quot;Not an answer&quot; in the body of an answer][13]&#xD;&#xA;- [Answers With Questions][14]&#xD;&#xA;- [Find Something to Flag 1][15] (small answers with links)&#xD;&#xA;- [Find &quot;me too&quot; (so-called) answers][16]&#xD;&#xA;- [Finding bad answers through comments][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Why the downvotes?][18]&#xD;&#xA;- [Downvote Comments][19] (all those -1 comments)&#xD;&#xA;- [Find obsolete &quot;should be wiki&quot; comments][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By *carefully* going through the results, the [review page][21] and browsing through older posts I've managed a flag weight of 686.3842, which is pretty good (if I may say so myself). Since this proved quite effective, I'm sharing the list in response to [this conversation][23] and hoping that it will initiate a flagging frenzy. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Has anyone identified any other related queries or other efficient ways to feed my flagging obsession?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/94/marshal&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/2036/find-suggested-duplicates-that-havent-led-to-question-closure&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/2037/find-suggested-duplicates-that-havent-led-to-question-closure-in-a-tag&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/18/most-controversial-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1950/forum-style-questions-multiple-self-answers-from-asker&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1949/recent-self-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1844/youre-probably-doing-it-wrong-something-to-flag&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1595/not-accepted-self-answers-with-negative-votes&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1662/recent-not-accepted-self-answers-with-negative-votes&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1818/posts-that-could-be-marked-as-not-an-answer-to-help-get-the-marshal-badge&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1636/seek-and-destroy-comments-with-the-phrase-not-an-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1816/something-to-flag-not-an-answer-in-the-body-of-an-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1741/answers-with-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1300/find-something-to-flag-1&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/2008/find-me-too-so-called-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1925/finding-bad-answers-through-comments&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/447/why-the-downvotes&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/2053/downvote-comments&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/2006/find-obsolete-should-be-wiki-comments&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/2420275#2420275" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6408" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2548" RevisionGUID="e73619b0-6a8e-4424-beee-b5d1a8bf9e2c" CreationDate="2011-11-13T17:32:57.277" UserId="25936" Text="Data Explorer queries that help identify flagging candidates" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6409" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2548" RevisionGUID="e73619b0-6a8e-4424-beee-b5d1a8bf9e2c" CreationDate="2011-11-13T17:32:57.277" UserId="25936" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6412" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2550" RevisionGUID="378cd16b-4222-48a6-a3e6-a8f460e9bb35" CreationDate="2011-11-14T11:13:00.053" UserId="4" Text="[tag:legibility] has 3 questions, while [tag:readability] has 24. They appear to be covering the same topics, and &quot;readability&quot; is something that I have heard more often in terms of how easy it is to read and understand code (also evidenced by the usage here, being 8 times more common)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6413" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2550" RevisionGUID="378cd16b-4222-48a6-a3e6-a8f460e9bb35" CreationDate="2011-11-14T11:13:00.053" UserId="4" Text="Tag Merge/Synonym Request: legibility -&gt; readability" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6414" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2550" RevisionGUID="378cd16b-4222-48a6-a3e6-a8f460e9bb35" CreationDate="2011-11-14T11:13:00.053" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6415" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2551" RevisionGUID="3a7812ec-bc84-48b3-b364-61f72d186722" CreationDate="2011-11-14T11:34:32.147" UserId="25936" Text="Legibility != readability &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [wikipedia][1] (empasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Legibility is the degree to which glyphs (**individual characters**) in text are understandable or recognizable based on appearance.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Legibility is different from readability which refers to entire words, sentences, and paragraphs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should just retag the [tag:legibility] questions to [tag:readability], as they are all on readability really, and add a wiki summary for [tag:legibility] to underline the difference. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legibility" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6416" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2551" RevisionGUID="6e33f564-a4c3-443f-890c-45493256cedb" CreationDate="2011-11-14T11:58:40.700" UserId="25936" Comment="added 104 characters in body" Text="Legibility != readability &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [wikipedia][1] (empasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Legibility is the degree to which glyphs (**individual characters**) in text are understandable or recognizable based on appearance.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Legibility is different from readability which refers to entire words, sentences, and paragraphs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should just retag the [tag:legibility] questions to [tag:readability], as they are all on readability really, and add a wiki summary for [tag:legibility] to underline the difference. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;update: but as Mark notes, a tag wiki may not be the best thing for a tag without questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legibility" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6417" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2552" RevisionGUID="e9a3ce3a-2b31-4f16-a65c-dadaa3a9fc46" CreationDate="2011-11-15T02:49:38.377" UserId="40651" Text="I got a question migrated from Stackoverflow [Visual Programming paradigms](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119463/visual-programming-paradigms), and it continues to be responding, so my reputation on Programmers should increase. However I did not get any increase from any actions since the 5 points from the question creation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this behavior right? I mean, we get no points from migrated questions here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS.: If this is not the right place for me to ask this kind of question, please inform me on how to proceed before closing this, ok? Thank you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6418" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2552" RevisionGUID="e9a3ce3a-2b31-4f16-a65c-dadaa3a9fc46" CreationDate="2011-11-15T02:49:38.377" UserId="40651" Text="Migrated question from Stackoverflow with no updating of reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6419" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2552" RevisionGUID="e9a3ce3a-2b31-4f16-a65c-dadaa3a9fc46" CreationDate="2011-11-15T02:49:38.377" UserId="40651" Text="|discussion|reputation|close-reasons|migration|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6420" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2553" RevisionGUID="655b1d15-06f1-418f-8e95-b523353445e4" CreationDate="2011-11-15T02:52:55.627" UserId="226" Text="You are in the right place to ask this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You don't receive reputation when someone responds to your question. Your question received one upvote, which added 5 reputation to your account for a total of 6, so everything seems to be working as expected." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6421" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2552" RevisionGUID="f23e964b-dbb9-4978-9a92-5ffaf9dab07b" CreationDate="2011-11-15T02:58:57.747" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|reputation|close-reasons|migration|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6422" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2554" RevisionGUID="efd42187-efd9-403d-9a4b-10f76416bacf" CreationDate="2011-11-15T10:14:14.793" UserId="25936" Text="The red &quot;Flag question&quot; button in the flagging modal doesn't seem to work today for when &quot;off topic&quot; is chosen. I've tried on two questions, flagged them as not constructive instead (worked fine).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can't seem to see anything wrong in Firebug or Chrome's dev tools. I'm using Chrome 15.0.874.120 m. I'd prefer to test this further before reporting, but since it involves flagging...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone else noticed that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6423" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2554" RevisionGUID="efd42187-efd9-403d-9a4b-10f76416bacf" CreationDate="2011-11-15T10:14:14.793" UserId="25936" Text="Flag question button when &quot;off topic&quot; chosen as reason doesn't work" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6424" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2554" RevisionGUID="efd42187-efd9-403d-9a4b-10f76416bacf" CreationDate="2011-11-15T10:14:14.793" UserId="25936" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6425" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2555" RevisionGUID="82c220dc-8577-4af0-b6bd-b3be62bda948" CreationDate="2011-11-15T10:17:56.603" UserId="47" Text="This is a [known problem](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/112181/cant-vote-to-close-as-off-topic) and should be fixed in the next deploy (when ever that is).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are still having problems try clearing out your cache - there may be some old JavaScript files (or similar) lying around." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6426" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2554" RevisionGUID="7ad45ffb-b3c6-4f58-8424-3a6fbd5b2969" CreationDate="2011-11-15T10:36:40.977" UserId="25936" Comment="added 272 characters in body" Text="The red &quot;Flag question&quot; button in the flagging modal doesn't seem to work today for when &quot;off topic&quot; is chosen. I've tried on two questions, flagged them as not constructive instead (worked fine).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can't seem to see anything wrong in Firebug or Chrome's dev tools. I'm using Chrome 15.0.874.120 m. I'd prefer to test this further before reporting, but since it involves flagging...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone else noticed that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The workaround proposed in the [meta.so discussion][1] worked. The route I tested was &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. it doesn't belong here&#xD;&#xA;2. exact duplicate&#xD;&#xA;3. back&#xD;&#xA;4. off topic&#xD;&#xA;5. flag question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/112181/cant-vote-to-close-as-off-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6427" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2554" RevisionGUID="c567aec3-32ab-49d9-bc31-b1a5e4606b49" CreationDate="2011-11-15T11:38:07.080" UserId="48" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6428" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2556" RevisionGUID="ee62db1e-9450-4328-842a-781fd81c9bc1" CreationDate="2011-11-15T13:52:18.180" UserId="226" Text="I retagged [tag:legibility] -&gt; [tag:readability] and added a first stab at a tag wiki for [tag:readability]. Feel free to edit it from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks for bringing this up!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6429" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2550" RevisionGUID="39328e04-8107-4367-8e19-f66714311163" CreationDate="2011-11-15T13:52:36.463" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6430" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2557" RevisionGUID="10ad8d2d-507f-4de5-9771-eb8359705ef8" CreationDate="2011-11-15T19:14:50.727" UserId="2439" Text="Upon trying to insert an image as part of a post, from a web source, an error occurs saying &quot;format not supported&quot;. The image in question was .jpg&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is .jpg no longer supported as an image format? Really?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6431" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2557" RevisionGUID="10ad8d2d-507f-4de5-9771-eb8359705ef8" CreationDate="2011-11-15T19:14:50.727" UserId="2439" Text="jpeg not supported as an image format?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6432" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2557" RevisionGUID="10ad8d2d-507f-4de5-9771-eb8359705ef8" CreationDate="2011-11-15T19:14:50.727" UserId="2439" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6433" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2558" RevisionGUID="9b01f48e-8b0c-4fac-b092-6884a41a2007" CreationDate="2011-11-15T19:28:01.857" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="While this error was indicative of [a problem on Imgur's end a few weeks ago](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/109857/failed-to-upload-image-format-not-supported-error-when-uploading-supported-form), I can't reproduce this now. This is a JPEG upload:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![This is a JPEG][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's likely occurring is that you're uploading a file that has the JPEG file extension but not the `image/jpeg` mimetype. Have you tried checking to make sure the file is actually a JPEG and not something else? If you're on a *nix-based system, you can check by using [`file`](http://linux.die.net/man/1/file).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/rGb2z.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6434" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2559" RevisionGUID="2b1568eb-a050-49c8-889f-838633a54277" CreationDate="2011-11-15T19:33:44.347" UserId="34183" Text="I began listening to the StackExchange podcast a few months ago, and in one (of several in which they discuss the topic) Jeff and Joel were talking about quality posts, curating content, etc. At one point one of them mentioned that they liked question titles to be actual question, IIRC because it might help the question get more views when people are just typing questions into Google, since the title is in the URL.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I began trying to become active on the site, editing question titles to be a natural language question is one thing that I've started doing a lot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does anyone else have a preference on this topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6435" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2559" RevisionGUID="2b1568eb-a050-49c8-889f-838633a54277" CreationDate="2011-11-15T19:33:44.347" UserId="34183" Text="Should I continue editing question titles to be a natural language question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6436" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2559" RevisionGUID="2b1568eb-a050-49c8-889f-838633a54277" CreationDate="2011-11-15T19:33:44.347" UserId="34183" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6437" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2558" RevisionGUID="5f5b96ad-4f0d-4f7e-8b0a-e72f37ff8e62" CreationDate="2011-11-15T19:34:12.577" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="While this error was indicative of [a problem on Imgur's end a few weeks ago](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/109857/failed-to-upload-image-format-not-supported-error-when-uploading-supported-form), I can't reproduce this now. This is a JPEG upload:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![This is a JPEG][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's could be occurring is that you're uploading a file that has the JPEG file extension but not the `image/jpeg` mimetype. Have you tried checking to make sure the file is actually a JPEG and not something else? If you're on a *nix-based system, you can check by using [`file`](http://linux.die.net/man/1/file).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/rGb2z.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6438" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2560" RevisionGUID="392eea2b-058f-475f-93c8-bd72858447ad" CreationDate="2011-11-15T19:41:48.303" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Writing better titles is high on the list of worthwhile edits to a question, but there are a few caveats you should keep in mind, especially when you're editing below 2,000 reputation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Editing *en masse* [really messes with the front page](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/110768/on-select-sites-show-the-flag-suggested-edit-count-when-it-is-0-instead-of/110816#110816). If you're going to edit, do it in short spurts, not 20 at once.&#xD;&#xA;* Nearly ever question has problems other than the title: we have [a huge tag problem](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags), for example. But beyond that, nearly every question will have spelling,  capitalization, formatting, or other copyediting issues. When editing a question, try to improve as much as possible beyond just the title.&#xD;&#xA;* While many titles are terrible and ought to be reworded as actual questions, there are a lot of questions that have *okay* titles or even good ones that aren't actually questions. If you were going into them to edit more than just the title, editing the title is a nice bonus, but otherwise, it's best to just leave them alone. Ask yourself, &quot;does the title change make the question any clearer?&quot; If it doesn't, don't bother just for the sake of making it into a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, thank you for taking the time to make the site a better place!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6439" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2559" RevisionGUID="8b0d50e9-24ce-4838-830d-bee6a089382f" CreationDate="2011-11-15T19:44:10.530" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6440" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2558" RevisionGUID="a63ca4f2-49d1-4b71-9da7-c573f57cb40a" CreationDate="2011-11-15T19:46:37.357" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 291 characters in body" Text="While this error was indicative of [a problem on Imgur's end a few weeks ago](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/109857/failed-to-upload-image-format-not-supported-error-when-uploading-supported-form), I can't reproduce this now. This is a JPEG upload:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![This is a JPEG][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things to check:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **You might be uploading a file that has the JPEG file extension but not the `image/jpeg` mimetype.** Have you tried checking to make sure the file is actually a JPEG and not something else? If you're on a *nix-based system, you can check by using [`file`](http://linux.die.net/man/1/file).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **You're using the &quot;From the web&quot; option with a URL from a site that doesn't allow Imgur to rip its images.** Try downloading the image yourself and uploading it manually.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **You're experiencing a localized disruption of Imgur.** Try uploading the image again to see if it works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/rGb2z.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6441" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2557" RevisionGUID="b22fda95-f42d-4209-9e30-086e90be888c" CreationDate="2011-11-15T19:46:44.457" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|images|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6442" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2557" RevisionGUID="b22fda95-f42d-4209-9e30-086e90be888c" CreationDate="2011-11-15T19:46:44.457" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="Why can't I upload a JPEG image?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6443" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2557" RevisionGUID="b22fda95-f42d-4209-9e30-086e90be888c" CreationDate="2011-11-15T19:46:44.457" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="Upon trying to insert an image as part of a post, from a web source, an error occurs saying:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; format not supported&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The image in question was a JPEG.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are JPEGs no longer supported as an image format?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6444" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2560" RevisionGUID="fc6322ed-d9c8-4d99-ba34-3ef56347698e" CreationDate="2011-11-15T19:48:31.193" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 123 characters in body" Text="Writing better titles is high on the list of worthwhile edits to a question, but there are a few caveats you should keep in mind, especially when you're editing below 2,000 reputation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Editing *en masse* [really messes with the front page](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/110768/on-select-sites-show-the-flag-suggested-edit-count-when-it-is-0-instead-of/110816#110816). It also clogs up the suggested edit queue, where people are tasked with approving edits from users below 2,000 reputation. If you're going to edit, do it in short spurts, not 20 at once.&#xD;&#xA;* Nearly ever question has problems other than the title: we have [a huge tag problem](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags), for example. But beyond that, nearly every question will have spelling,  capitalization, formatting, or other copyediting issues. When editing a question, try to improve as much as possible beyond just the title.&#xD;&#xA;* While many titles are terrible and ought to be reworded as actual questions, there are a lot of questions that have *okay* titles or even good ones that aren't actually questions. If you were going into them to edit more than just the title, editing the title is a nice bonus, but otherwise, it's best to just leave them alone. Ask yourself, &quot;does the title change make the question any clearer?&quot; If it doesn't, don't bother just for the sake of making it into a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, thank you for taking the time to make the site a better place!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6445" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="2557" RevisionGUID="19e3e26d-faca-49cc-90b0-7e74d9bebf5d" CreationDate="2011-11-15T21:11:15.250" UserId="2439" Comment="Rollback to [10ad8d2d-507f-4de5-9771-eb8359705ef8]" Text="Upon trying to insert an image as part of a post, from a web source, an error occurs saying &quot;format not supported&quot;. The image in question was .jpg&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is .jpg no longer supported as an image format? Really?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6446" PostHistoryTypeId="7" PostId="2557" RevisionGUID="19e3e26d-faca-49cc-90b0-7e74d9bebf5d" CreationDate="2011-11-15T21:11:15.250" UserId="2439" Comment="Rollback to [10ad8d2d-507f-4de5-9771-eb8359705ef8]" Text="jpeg not supported as an image format?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6447" PostHistoryTypeId="9" PostId="2557" RevisionGUID="19e3e26d-faca-49cc-90b0-7e74d9bebf5d" CreationDate="2011-11-15T21:11:15.250" UserId="2439" Comment="Rollback to [10ad8d2d-507f-4de5-9771-eb8359705ef8]" Text="|bug|" />
  <row Id="6448" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2557" RevisionGUID="b6fdc261-6dc2-4bc5-bf11-a2ff445b8bcb" CreationDate="2011-11-15T21:12:57.820" UserId="2439" Comment="added 73 characters in body" Text="Upon trying to insert an image as part of a post, from a web source, an error occurs saying &quot;format not supported&quot;. The image in question was .jpg (not .jpeg; I don't know if that makes a difference, but until then ...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is .jpg no longer supported as an image format? Really?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6449" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2558" RevisionGUID="d42bef8f-d396-4d00-a135-058160d987c0" CreationDate="2011-11-15T21:20:46.050" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 238 characters in body" Text="While this error was indicative of [a problem on Imgur's end a few weeks ago](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/109857/failed-to-upload-image-format-not-supported-error-when-uploading-supported-form), I can't reproduce this now. This is a JPEG upload:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![This is a JPEG][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things to check:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **You might be uploading a file that has the JPEG file extension but not the `image/jpeg` mimetype.** Have you tried checking to make sure the file is actually a JPEG and not something else? If you're on a *nix-based system, you can check by using [`file`](http://linux.die.net/man/1/file).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **You're using the &quot;From the web&quot; option with a URL from a site that doesn't allow Imgur to rip its images.** Try downloading the image yourself and uploading it manually.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **You're experiencing a localized disruption of Imgur.** Try uploading the image again to see if it works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While the &quot;From the web&quot; option didn't work, downloading it first and manually uploading it worked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Image problem][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like it's a problem with the image host.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/rGb2z.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/rKzAw.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6450" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="2557" RevisionGUID="7e3196e1-7486-46a9-8126-25bbfcddedc0" CreationDate="2011-11-15T21:21:56.157" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Rollback to [b22fda95-f42d-4209-9e30-086e90be888c]" Text="Upon trying to insert an image as part of a post, from a web source, an error occurs saying:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; format not supported&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The image in question was a JPEG.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are JPEGs no longer supported as an image format?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6451" PostHistoryTypeId="7" PostId="2557" RevisionGUID="7e3196e1-7486-46a9-8126-25bbfcddedc0" CreationDate="2011-11-15T21:21:56.157" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Rollback to [b22fda95-f42d-4209-9e30-086e90be888c]" Text="Why can't I upload a JPEG image?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6452" PostHistoryTypeId="9" PostId="2557" RevisionGUID="7e3196e1-7486-46a9-8126-25bbfcddedc0" CreationDate="2011-11-15T21:21:56.157" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Rollback to [b22fda95-f42d-4209-9e30-086e90be888c]" Text="|support|images|" />
  <row Id="6453" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2560" RevisionGUID="02610b38-a9d7-4791-a377-fc89aaaf7842" CreationDate="2011-11-15T21:45:36.850" UserId="47" Comment="spelling" Text="Writing better titles is high on the list of worthwhile edits to a question, but there are a few caveats you should keep in mind, especially when you're editing below 2,000 reputation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Editing *en masse* [really messes with the front page](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/110768/on-select-sites-show-the-flag-suggested-edit-count-when-it-is-0-instead-of/110816#110816). It also clogs up the suggested edit queue, where people are tasked with approving edits from users below 2,000 reputation. If you're going to edit, do it in short spurts, not 20 at once.&#xD;&#xA;* Nearly every question has problems other than the title: we have [a huge tag problem](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags), for example. But beyond that, nearly every question will have spelling,  capitalization, formatting, or other copyediting issues. When editing a question, try to improve as much as possible beyond just the title.&#xD;&#xA;* While many titles are terrible and ought to be reworded as actual questions, there are a lot of questions that have *okay* titles or even good ones that aren't actually questions. If you were going into them to edit more than just the title, editing the title is a nice bonus, but otherwise, it's best to just leave them alone. Ask yourself, &quot;does the title change make the question any clearer?&quot; If it doesn't, don't bother just for the sake of making it into a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, thank you for taking the time to make the site a better place!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6466" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2565" RevisionGUID="6f86a348-a19d-4f27-8844-c6f11caea6e6" CreationDate="2011-11-16T20:53:33.283" UserId="15464" Text="The following question got moved to meta: [&quot;Would it be possible to create an open source software library, entirely developed and moderated by an open community?&quot;][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It contains the following two sub-questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. Has anything like this been attempted before?&#xD;&#xA;  2. Are there platforms better suited for this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As neither the main question, nor the sub-question have got anything to do with meta, it evidently got closed here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I personally find I always take care of explicitly stating the questions I want answered. The title of this question is _&quot;Why did this non-meta question get moved to meta?&quot;_, meaning, that _is_ my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They always taught me it is good practice to end an email/letter/question explicitly with the question you want answered. In this case, I'm also interested in the following.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. How could I have better formulated my question(s) so they would have been better understood?&#xD;&#xA; 2. Could this question please be moved back to programmers where it belongs so I can at least vote to re-open it there? Re-opening it here doesn't make any sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Excuse the sarcastic nature of this question, but you might understand I am slightly frustrated with how this question got down voted/closed as I sincerely tried my best to formulate it clearly.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2561/15464" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6467" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2565" RevisionGUID="6f86a348-a19d-4f27-8844-c6f11caea6e6" CreationDate="2011-11-16T20:53:33.283" UserId="15464" Text="Why did this non-meta question get moved to meta?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6468" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2565" RevisionGUID="6f86a348-a19d-4f27-8844-c6f11caea6e6" CreationDate="2011-11-16T20:53:33.283" UserId="15464" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|down-votes|merge-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6469" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2566" RevisionGUID="52f26d02-ec60-43e6-93c0-bc4a4b1173bf" CreationDate="2011-11-16T21:02:20.210" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Just to be clear, five regular community members voted to migrate your question, not moderators. If I was a betting man, it was because of this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You don't know whether an idea is any good until you try it, so I decided to create [an Extension Methods proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/36504/extension-methods?referrer=_i6de9mK9CxzlM3ffhDq4Q2) on Area51. I belief with proper moderation, it could be possible for the site to be more than a Q&amp;A site, and that an actual library (or subsets of it) could be extracted from it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Has anything like this been attempted before?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. Are there platforms better suited for this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It reads like you're asking for feedback for your Area 51 proposal. That's not on-topic on Programmers: at best, it's a meta discussion topic (but to that point, not a meta discussion topic *here*). If you're looking for feedback about an Area 51 proposal, you want to participate directly in the process on [Area 51](http://area51.stackexchange.com), not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question as written has confused enough community members about what you're looking for so much that they migrated it here: it's not clear what you're looking for or how it's [on-topic for Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it might make sense to follow the business correspondance format for petitioning a company or a public servant, when writing questions, you want to get right to the point and do two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Explain what the problem is&#xD;&#xA;* Ask a specific, answerable question that will solve the problem for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Open-ended feedback and recommendation requests might make great discussion topics (which is why a meta discussion site like here or Area 51 is everyone's first thought), but they're not the type of question that works well or has a home on the main Stack Exchange sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more tips, I suggest taking a look at [How to Ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask), which contains a few links to other guides about asking great questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6472" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2566" RevisionGUID="2fa61f72-2e85-43ed-a968-584e443e35d8" CreationDate="2011-11-16T21:24:15.783" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 540 characters in body" Text="Just to be clear, five regular community members voted to migrate your question, not moderators. If I was a betting man, it was because of this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You don't know whether an idea is any good until you try it, so I decided to create [an Extension Methods proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/36504/extension-methods?referrer=_i6de9mK9CxzlM3ffhDq4Q2) on Area51. I belief with proper moderation, it could be possible for the site to be more than a Q&amp;A site, and that an actual library (or subsets of it) could be extracted from it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Has anything like this been attempted before?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. Are there platforms better suited for this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It reads like you're asking for feedback for your Area 51 proposal. That's not on-topic on Programmers: at best, it's a meta discussion topic (but to that point, not a meta discussion topic *here*). If you're looking for feedback about an Area 51 proposal, you want to participate directly in the process on [Area 51](http://area51.stackexchange.com), not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've reversed the migration (you can find it again in [its original location](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120082/would-it-be-possible-to-create-an-open-source-software-library-entirely-develop)), but your question as written has confused enough community members about what you're looking for so much that they migrated it here: it's not clear what you're looking for or how it's [on-topic for Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it might make sense to follow the business correspondance format for petitioning a company or a public servant, when writing questions, you want to get right to the point and do two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Explain what the problem is&#xD;&#xA;* Ask a specific, answerable question that will solve the problem for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more tips, I suggest taking a look at [How to Ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask), which contains a few links to other guides about asking great questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But beyond that, open-ended feedback and recommendation requests might make great discussion topics (which is why a meta discussion site like here or Area 51 is everyone's first thought), but they're not the type of question that works well or has a home on the main Stack Exchange sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, even specific questions about development tools are not on-topic here: for that, you want [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com). But reposting your question there will certainly get it closed again: you need to ask a *specific* solvable problem, not ask for feedback about an idea." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6473" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2567" RevisionGUID="0ad236cd-dff1-4bb1-ac57-ec6053cb1442" CreationDate="2011-11-17T01:59:45.360" UserId="148" Text="Periodic elections allows revalidation that the moderation direction is something that the community at large is happy with. If the community wants a change, they can vote the mods out. If the community likes them, the mods stay.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I am *positive* this has downsides, I think it generates considerably more confidence in the system." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6474" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2540" RevisionGUID="363dbfff-041f-4438-9c3b-bcb1cffd105a" CreationDate="2011-11-17T04:07:49.383" UserId="1996" Comment="added 17 characters in body" Text="Building off of @Mark Trapp's answer [here][1], should P.SE moderators have to defend their seat?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, should we keep a limited number of moderators and force them to run for re-election periodically?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think it makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's why:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Imagine that we have eight people who are perfectly capable of performing their duties as P.SE moderator.&#xD;&#xA;- And we agree that we only need four moderators.&#xD;&#xA;- Why should we let four people serve as P.SE moderators indefinitely?&#xD;&#xA;- It seems like we should &lt;strike&gt;rotate and&lt;/strike&gt; infuse some fresh blood into the P.SE group of moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I'm less concerned about rotating.&#xD;&#xA; - Per @Mark Trapp's [answer][2], I'm more concerned about appointing the absolute **best** moderators to the position. [Thanks @Mark Trapp for the suggestion. ;)]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2536/when-are-the-next-moderator-elections-for-p-se/2537#2537&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2540/should-p-se-moderators-have-to-defend-their-seat/2541#2541" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6475" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2568" RevisionGUID="d003f6e9-cc42-4ea3-86c4-5d6b9028b86d" CreationDate="2011-11-17T15:49:58.003" UserId="25936" Text="There are: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 458 questions tagged [tag:php]&#xD;&#xA;- 9 questions tagged [tag:php5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the 9 [tag:php5] questions two are closed and none ask for anything specific to PHP5 (There's [one comparison with earlier versions question][1], but it fits fine under [tag:php]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The distinction between PHP5 and earlier versions (namely 4) was important in the early days of PHP5 as it employed a completely rewritten engine which introduced quite a lot of compatibility issues. But it's not relevant any more, as PHP4 essentially [reached it's end of life in 2008][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think [tag:php5] doesn't make any sense on its own and probably never will, so we should merge it with [tag:php]. I would have used the &quot;suggest a synonym&quot; thingy, but since [tag:php5] is version specific, it's up to the moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've scanned the popular language tags and I didn't find any other version specific tags lurking around, which is a good thing, we should probably avoid them as most questions that would fit them better than the language tag would probably be off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120023/how-does-php5-fare-with-earlier-versions-of-the-language&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://php.net/ChangeLog-4.php" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6476" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2568" RevisionGUID="d003f6e9-cc42-4ea3-86c4-5d6b9028b86d" CreationDate="2011-11-17T15:49:58.003" UserId="25936" Text="Synonym request: php5 → php" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6477" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2568" RevisionGUID="d003f6e9-cc42-4ea3-86c4-5d6b9028b86d" CreationDate="2011-11-17T15:49:58.003" UserId="25936" Text="|discussion|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6478" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2569" RevisionGUID="c99574a8-c358-4337-85c5-614c289e7cb2" CreationDate="2011-11-17T16:05:47.260" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I merged [tag:php5] into [tag:php], but opted not to create a synonym for the same reasons [they're not synonyms on Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/59285/synonyms-mean-interchangeable-not-similar): a synonym should be interchangeable, not merely a similar term.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also went ahead and merged [tag:php-5.3] into [tag:php], as the questions were being used to say &quot;I'm using this version&quot; instead of &quot;I'm asking about this version,&quot; and PHP 5.3 has been out for several years." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6479" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2568" RevisionGUID="7fc0e425-c7ba-41e3-99c6-6ad0aafcd8a3" CreationDate="2011-11-17T16:05:57.913" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6480" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="2570" RevisionGUID="58262307-abd3-47aa-b626-5a1b9e749af0" CreationDate="2011-11-17T20:58:34.447" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120184/why-are-so-many-questions-closed" Text="" />
  <row Id="6481" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2570" RevisionGUID="794f440f-3e53-4c21-b163-52d503370bac" CreationDate="2011-11-17T07:16:48.673" UserId="3604" Text="Why is there so many questions on this stackexchange site closed? I mean far more than usual. Even very high quality discussions are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Doesn't this high number of closed questions with high number of views and good quality of content seem like that the current policy that governs the criteria for appropriate question might be going against nature?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean it feels as if lot of questions or discussions are everything surrounding programmer, programming, and need not be objective or seeking definitive answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears lot of questions are of inquisitive nature seeking insight into other programmers and finding common subjects of interest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible for mods to relax a bit? I mean lot of great questions with [closed] tag everywhere doesn't do justice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question in itself is a perfect example of what I am talking about and it will be closed. But I think my point is clear." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6482" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2570" RevisionGUID="794f440f-3e53-4c21-b163-52d503370bac" CreationDate="2011-11-17T07:16:48.673" UserId="3604" Text="Why are so many questions closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6483" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2570" RevisionGUID="794f440f-3e53-4c21-b163-52d503370bac" CreationDate="2011-11-17T07:16:48.673" UserId="3604" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6485" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2572" RevisionGUID="7490381b-c1f5-45c4-af64-7db147245a25" CreationDate="2011-11-17T21:39:04.257" UserId="226" Text="Your question isn't a great example since it's not a conceptual software development question but rather a question about the site itself.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, now that it's in the right place (on meta), let's talk about the issue you bring up. It would be helpful if you pointed to some questions you specifically think should not have been closed, but in the absence of examples, we can still talk about the general case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the main features of Stack Exchange is that it's high signal and low noise. Leaving questions that are off-topic or don't fit the Q&amp;A model well (e.g. discussion-oriented threads rather than questions that invite explanations) would contribute to noise and dilute the signal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've had several discussions about what to do with interesting but off-topic questions and the general result is that Programmers.SE doesn't have to cover everything. There are other sites such as Reddit or Quora that have different policies and philosophies and that might be more welcoming of some of the questions we end up rejecting here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some links to the previous discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta ([Jeff's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta/1896#1896) in particular)&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2304/offtopic-posts-can-they-be-moved-rather-than-closed / http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2508/should-there-be-another-stackexchange-site-for-programmers/&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation/ ([Mark's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation/2173#2173) contains some analysis of our closed questions over the last couple of months)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond this, I think we need some specifics from you. Which questions do you think were wrongly closed? What topics do you think should be allowed that currently aren't?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6486" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2573" RevisionGUID="fa33616a-5818-4823-a189-24a2855293ff" CreationDate="2011-11-17T23:16:18.817" UserId="148" Text="I can't answer that question, not being a mod.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can say that, in my opinion, P.SE is for potentially open-ended questions relating to the programmer life, work, and career.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect what OP is referring to are some of the *useful* questions with lots of votes and answers that wound up closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6487" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2574" RevisionGUID="356d182d-d034-4cbd-80a7-48901fe9292e" CreationDate="2011-11-18T00:56:40.903" UserId="6222" Text="[This question about iOS development](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120375/ios-book-app-with-custom-book-repositories-will-apple-block-this) was closed as _off topic_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At its core, this question boiled down the types of applications allowed by a software publisher (in this case the Apple App Store (R)) would accept for publication. The specific rules are most likely detailed in a _Developer Agreement_ that developers would need to agree to abide by.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that the types of questions that could be asked about Developer Agreements are similar in nature to those that have been asked about software licenses. Furthermore, software publishing via channels like the App Store (R) are becoming more common, and developer agreements will be an important topic of interest to many programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think these types of questions should be permitted (and encouraged) rather than be closed as off topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6488" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2574" RevisionGUID="356d182d-d034-4cbd-80a7-48901fe9292e" CreationDate="2011-11-18T00:56:40.903" UserId="6222" Text="Are questions about Developer Agreements on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6489" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2574" RevisionGUID="356d182d-d034-4cbd-80a7-48901fe9292e" CreationDate="2011-11-18T00:56:40.903" UserId="6222" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6490" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2574" RevisionGUID="1c7c38e3-35fb-442a-8a25-d75cb1089377" CreationDate="2011-11-18T03:36:07.897" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 8 characters in body; edited tags" Text="[This question about iOS development](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120375/ios-book-app-with-custom-book-repositories-will-apple-block-this) was closed as _off topic_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At its core, this question boiled down the types of applications allowed by a software publisher (in this case the Apple App Store) would accept for publication. The specific rules are most likely detailed in a _Developer Agreement_ that developers would need to agree to abide by.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that the types of questions that could be asked about developer agreements are similar in nature to those that have been asked about software licenses. Furthermore, software publishing via channels like the App Store are becoming more common, and developer agreements will be an important topic of interest to many programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think these types of questions should be permitted (and encouraged) rather than be closed as off topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6491" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2574" RevisionGUID="1c7c38e3-35fb-442a-8a25-d75cb1089377" CreationDate="2011-11-18T03:36:07.897" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 8 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6492" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2575" RevisionGUID="8ddb346e-ef92-4c0c-b3c3-23226ddac5a8" CreationDate="2011-11-18T03:48:23.327" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="While [I'm sympathetic](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here) to wanting to discuss legal issues here, as legal problems are a large facet of being an independent developer, in *general* questions that are not about licensing (and generally, that means FOSS licenses like the GPL) are [off-topic here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here) for two reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Our expertise is not in IP law, contract law, or any other type of law. We would be giving legal advice as laypeople, which is an opportunity for a bag of hurt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Even putting aside the expertise, questions do not provide enough detail about their specific situations to be able to provide *accurate* legal advice. The ones that do are so specific to the asker's situation, they're *too localized*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, given the diagram:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Scope diagram](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They're hitting the center, &quot;Just You&quot; part, not the blue, &quot;All Programmers&quot; part. There are very few legal questions that are generally applicable to programmers at large: well-known licenses like FOSS licenses are probably the best example of what would be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to speak to this specific question, there is exactly one entity that knows what will be accepted, and that's Apple. From the [App Store Review Guidelines](https://developer.apple.com/appstore/resources/approval/guidelines.html):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, &quot;I'll know it when I see it&quot;. And we think that you will also know it when you cross it.   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * This is a living document, and new apps presenting new questions may result in new rules at any time. Perhaps your app will trigger this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're not going to even begin to provide a definitive answer about this: Apple decides for themselves what's going to work. If there's a concern about what they will and won't allow, *they* need to be asked: not random strangers on the internet who are not in the know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know there's a cost associated with joining the iOS Developer Program: I get it. But just like we're not a substitute for a lawyer when someone can't or won't pay for one, we're not a substitute for Apple when someone can't or won't pay the iOS Developer Program fee." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6494" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2576" RevisionGUID="aac061c0-62de-4489-99f0-07f0b6e2dfa6" CreationDate="2011-11-19T19:53:14.607" UserId="34148" Text="I expect that when someone asks a question, he/she must eventually either pick one of the presented answers or leave the question open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I see happening a lot is that, questions are left open for long time without an answer being chosen. If I contribute an answer to such questions, I never get to know whether my answer was read by the person who asked the question or not or even if they are still interested in more answers to be posted to that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It might require some software change but this is important in my opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6495" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2576" RevisionGUID="aac061c0-62de-4489-99f0-07f0b6e2dfa6" CreationDate="2011-11-19T19:53:14.607" UserId="34148" Text="Unanswered questions left unanswered forever?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6496" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2576" RevisionGUID="aac061c0-62de-4489-99f0-07f0b6e2dfa6" CreationDate="2011-11-19T19:53:14.607" UserId="34148" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6497" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2480" RevisionGUID="e26defb5-d3ef-4454-8f18-b8e622c7733b" CreationDate="2011-11-19T20:21:53.593" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/137988990933536768" />
  <row Id="6498" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2577" RevisionGUID="8e05192d-d77b-400e-afd9-e0012ff8c2bd" CreationDate="2011-11-19T20:35:33.043" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; I never get to know whether my answer was read by the person who asked the question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what? If your answer has at least one upvote, there's someone out there that either agrees with you or found your answer beneficial&lt;sup&gt;\*&lt;/sup&gt;. Why is it important that the person who originally asked the question read your answer? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way I see it the answers are answers to the community not to the person asking, the same way the questions are to the community. Even on questions with selected answers, if you feel your answer can provide a different perspective and be beneficial to the community, go for it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've read a few of your answers, they are good, and the community seems to agree with me (4k rep in three months), hope you don't get discouraged over this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;AFAIK there are a few nagging mechanisms (notifications and such) in place for people with low accept rates or really old questions without accepted answers, but I don't see any point in doing much more. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;* Assuming the system works as intended.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6499" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2577" RevisionGUID="663e2c49-3b58-4a4b-85a6-094797f7bae0" CreationDate="2011-11-19T20:54:43.877" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="&gt; I never get to know whether my answer was read by the person who asked the question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what? If your answer has at least one upvote, there's someone out there that either agrees with you or found your answer beneficial&lt;sup&gt;\*&lt;/sup&gt;. Why is it important that the person who originally asked the question read your answer? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way I see it the answers are answers to the community not to the person asking, the same way the questions are to the community. Even on questions with selected answers, if you feel you can provide a different perspective that would be beneficial to the community, go for it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've read a few of your answers, they are good, and the community seems to agree with me (4k rep in three months), hope you don't get discouraged over this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;AFAIK there are a few nagging mechanisms (notifications and such) in place for people with low accept rates or really old questions without accepted answers, but I don't see any point in doing much more. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;* Assuming the system works as intended.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6500" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2577" RevisionGUID="2964bead-a769-428a-a10a-09e16450dd6b" CreationDate="2011-11-19T21:03:17.320" UserId="25936" Comment="added 7 characters in body" Text="&gt; I never get to know whether my answer was read by the person who asked the question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what? If your answer has at least one upvote, there's someone out there that either agrees with you or found your answer beneficial&lt;sup&gt;\*&lt;/sup&gt;. Why is it important that the person who originally asked the question reads your answer? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way I see it the answers are answers for the community and not for the person asking, the same way the questions are to the community. Even on questions with selected answers, if you feel you can provide a different perspective that would be beneficial to the community, go for it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've read a few of your answers, they are good, and the community seems to agree with me (4k rep in three months), hope you don't get discouraged over this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;AFAIK there are a few nagging mechanisms (notifications and such) in place for people with low accept rates or really old questions without accepted answers, but I don't see any point in doing much more. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;* Assuming the system works as intended.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6522" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2579" RevisionGUID="651fee70-4189-4833-84a7-cfbb86d0ad59" CreationDate="2011-11-22T15:06:08.807" UserId="44" Text="The question cannot be objectively answered because, while Apple reports the guidelines about which applications are accepted, those guidelines are not complete, and could be changed in any moment. Only Apple knows if the application will be rejected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question has been closed as off-topic because, I think, the question is about the decision taken from somebody who probably is not a programmer (or who is not necessarily a programmer).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question was not closed as off-topic, it could have been closed as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Not constructive: The question could have obtained different answers, each of those would be equally valid, but at the same time it could not be the right answer that can be only given from Apple.&#xD;&#xA;- Too localized: The fact my application is rejected, doesn't mean a similar application from another developer would be rejected too; vice versa, the fact my application is approved doesn't mean a similar application would be approved too. In other words, the fact my application is approved/rejected is only of interest of mine, as nobody can use this as prove that their application should be approved too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6523" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2579" RevisionGUID="8b33d2d3-fc27-41eb-adb5-1532e7d89d7e" CreationDate="2011-11-22T16:25:32.623" UserId="44" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body" Text="The question cannot be objectively answered because, while Apple reports the guidelines about which applications are accepted, those guidelines are not complete, and could be changed in any moment. Only Apple knows if the application will be rejected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question has been closed as off-topic because, I think, the question is about the decision taken from somebody who probably is not a programmer (or who is not necessarily a programmer).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question was not closed as off-topic, it could have been closed as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Not constructive: The question could have obtained different answers, each of those would be equally valid, but at the same time it could not be the right answer that can be only given from Apple.&#xD;&#xA;- Too localized: The fact my application is rejected, doesn't mean a similar application from another developer would be rejected too; vice versa, the fact my application is approved doesn't mean a similar application would be approved too. In other words, the fact my application is approved/rejected is only of my interest, as nobody can use this as prove that their application should be approved too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6524" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2580" RevisionGUID="4afbeb2e-bff9-4960-9aca-bb53aa61d41f" CreationDate="2011-11-22T17:41:37.260" UserId="7454" Text="Considering this [Meta-SO question][1] about the same subject, are edits to include Amazon links to books appropriate on programmers ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/111054/are-edits-to-include-amazon-links-to-books-appropriate" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6525" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2580" RevisionGUID="4afbeb2e-bff9-4960-9aca-bb53aa61d41f" CreationDate="2011-11-22T17:41:37.260" UserId="7454" Text="Are edits to include Amazon links to books appropriate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6526" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2580" RevisionGUID="4afbeb2e-bff9-4960-9aca-bb53aa61d41f" CreationDate="2011-11-22T17:41:37.260" UserId="7454" Text="|discussion|suggested-edits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6530" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2582" RevisionGUID="e6fe56e6-8234-4232-b2d8-ecc96ecc9ad2" CreationDate="2011-11-22T17:46:36.413" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The issue isn't adding the links: it's adding the links to [50 posts in the span of an hour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/7454/matthieu?tab=activity).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you suggest 50 edits in a short period, you clog up the suggested edit queue and should those edits be approved, you completely hose the front page, pushing new questions and questions with legitimate activity out of the way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to suggest edits, please do two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Do it in short spurts: 5 at a time, not 50.&#xD;&#xA;2. Make *substantial* improvements to the posts. You were suggesting edits to posts that were terrible: one line answers, answers with spelling and grammar mistakes, answers that provided no context to their recommendations, etc. Adding Amazon links to those posts did not significantly improve them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6533" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2582" RevisionGUID="66451f4d-d1d7-4847-8e0d-114adbaef839" CreationDate="2011-11-22T17:52:08.600" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 1970 characters in body" Text="The issue isn't adding the links: it's adding the links to [50 posts in the span of an hour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/7454/matthieu?tab=activity).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you suggest 50 edits in a short period, you clog up the suggested edit queue and should those edits be approved, you completely hose the front page, pushing new questions and questions with legitimate activity out of the way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I [provided more detail](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/110768/on-select-sites-show-the-flag-suggested-edit-count-when-it-is-0-instead-of/110816#110816) on Meta Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]one issue for sites that are not Stack Overflow is that the front page—the site's advertisement to the world—doesn't change all that often over the course of the day. You'll get a mix of new questions, older questions that haven't been resolved yet, and a sprinkling of questions risen from the dead by people who finally found that awesome answer to that niche question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This type of activity is a great sign: it shows the site has life and many different people are actively engaged. It's like the forest at the beginning of *Bambi*: questions young and old get a safe haven to play and frolic while waiting for an answer from passers by.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Well, when someone gets the idea to edit all the things for some minor issue, they inevitably disrupt the quiet serenity of the front page. They're the hunter from *Bambi* that comes in and starts shooting up the place, and no question is safe. &quot;Ended your post with 'thanks'? Edited. Oh, you did it to all 75 of your questions over the last year? **Edit. all. of. them.**&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; After a short period of time, the front page stops looking like a peaceful forest full of life. It becomes a wasteland of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And that new question I mentioned before learns a hard fact of life: the forest is forever ruined and the chances of getting answered have been significantly reduced all because someone thought &quot;thanks&quot; needed to be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to suggest edits, please do two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Do it in short spurts: 5 at a time, not 50.&#xD;&#xA;2. Make *substantial* improvements to the posts. You were suggesting edits to posts that were terrible: one line answers, answers with spelling and grammar mistakes, answers that provided no context to their recommendations, etc. Adding Amazon links to those posts did not significantly improve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6534" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2582" RevisionGUID="91affeba-688c-44cf-9b07-42f37eab1865" CreationDate="2011-11-22T18:02:22.417" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 269 characters in body" Text="The issue isn't adding the links: it's adding the links to [50 posts in the span of an hour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/7454/matthieu?tab=activity).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you suggest 50 edits in a short period, you clog up the suggested edit queue and should those edits be approved, you completely hose the front page, pushing new questions and questions with legitimate activity out of the way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I [provided more detail](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/110768/on-select-sites-show-the-flag-suggested-edit-count-when-it-is-0-instead-of/110816#110816) on Meta Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]one issue for sites that are not Stack Overflow is that the front page—the site's advertisement to the world—doesn't change all that often over the course of the day. You'll get a mix of new questions, older questions that haven't been resolved yet, and a sprinkling of questions risen from the dead by people who finally found that awesome answer to that niche question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This type of activity is a great sign: it shows the site has life and many different people are actively engaged. It's like the forest at the beginning of *Bambi*: questions young and old get a safe haven to play and frolic while waiting for an answer from passers by.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Well, when someone gets the idea to edit all the things for some minor issue, they inevitably disrupt the quiet serenity of the front page. They're the hunter from *Bambi* that comes in and starts shooting up the place, and no question is safe. &quot;Ended your post with 'thanks'? Edited. Oh, you did it to all 75 of your questions over the last year? **Edit. all. of. them.**&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; After a short period of time, the front page stops looking like a peaceful forest full of life. It becomes a wasteland of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And that new question I mentioned before learns a hard fact of life: the forest is forever ruined and the chances of getting answered have been significantly reduced all because someone thought &quot;thanks&quot; needed to be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to suggest edits, please do two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Do it in short spurts: 5 at a time, not 50.&#xD;&#xA;2. Make *substantial* improvements to the posts. You were suggesting edits to posts that were terrible: one line answers, answers with spelling and grammar mistakes, answers that provided no context to their recommendations, etc. Adding Amazon links to those posts did not significantly improve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is something that needs to be changed on a huge number of posts, please don't do this on your own: bring it up here on meta first. This way we as a community can figure out the best way to go about it and ensure the front page doesn't get hosed in the process." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6535" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2580" RevisionGUID="8ce45f65-7ecb-4b96-80e2-2311914dfb7e" CreationDate="2011-11-22T18:10:41.887" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Fix name" Text="Considering this [Meta Stack Overflow question][1] about the same subject, are edits to include Amazon links to books appropriate on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/111054/are-edits-to-include-amazon-links-to-books-appropriate" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6536" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2583" RevisionGUID="92381f05-85bf-4ab2-b96c-a2bcd7c1ac4b" CreationDate="2011-11-23T00:11:56.503" UserId="63" Text="I'm gonna say pretty much the same thing here as [I said on MSO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/111073/811), but directed at you as the editor instead of someone else as the person approving edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's nothing *inherently wrong* with editing to add links to book posts. Indeed, it can be quite helpful... But before you do, **make sure you're not wasting your time and the time of everyone reviewing the edit.** There are *loads* of lousy questions asking for book recommendations that should probably just be closed and deleted, and many times more lousy *answers* (even on *good* questions) that make no effort to explain why the book being recommended is a good choice. Editing these is maybe *slightly* more useful than copy-editing bathroom-wall graffiti...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And [as Mark notes][1], you're not just wasting *your* time: you're wasting the time of the folks rejecting these edits and you're wasting the time of the folks reading the front page who see these popping up instead of something useful. Don't do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you're going through these posts anyway, why not do something productive: when you come across a poor question or a lazy answer, something no amount of hyperlinking will salvage, don't *edit* it... **flag it**. Ask a moderator to delete it. Instead of seeing these things pop up in the queue knowing they're on their way to making the front page of the site look like Amazon Rejects, they can send them on their way to that Great Booklist in the Sky.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2582/63" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6537" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2584" RevisionGUID="f38d6c03-3b3b-4358-bcbe-ebb24fa4ecc4" CreationDate="2011-11-23T04:53:31.713" UserId="23251" Text="I know that there's always plenty of healthy debate regarding on- and off-topic questions for this site.  We can probably all agree that there are a lot of gray areas and ambiguities.  Then, there are questions like http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/121209/dating-advices-for-programmers, which are fun to answer and entertaining, but IMHO, entirely useless to the knowledge base.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should there be an entry in the faq explicitly saying that questions that loosely combine topic X and programming (GTKY type questions, &quot;What kind of dancin' shoes should programmers wear on a Tuesday?&quot;) may have been entertained at one point, but are no longer pertinent (going beyond what is stated in [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/))?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6538" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2584" RevisionGUID="f38d6c03-3b3b-4358-bcbe-ebb24fa4ecc4" CreationDate="2011-11-23T04:53:31.713" UserId="23251" Text="Should there be a faq entry about &quot;[random activity] and programming&quot; questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6539" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2584" RevisionGUID="f38d6c03-3b3b-4358-bcbe-ebb24fa4ecc4" CreationDate="2011-11-23T04:53:31.713" UserId="23251" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6540" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2585" RevisionGUID="699450da-148c-4921-9b10-bd399a536299" CreationDate="2011-11-23T05:05:23.273" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This *should* be covered by the other aspects of the FAQ, particularly the [six subjective guidelines](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) and [What kinds of questions should I *not* ask here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask). The general class of these questions are &quot;programmer lifestyle&quot; questions: people asking about general issues as if programmers somehow approached basic life skills qualitatively differently from other people. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We tried to lay out the guidelines for these types of questions earlier:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I do agree a FAQ entry is probably warranted, given how prevalent these once were and their inherent &quot;broken window&quot; nature. I propose the following be added to the &quot;but is **not about**&quot; section of the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle (including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6541" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2586" RevisionGUID="8932e6d3-4b15-4fe0-b90c-e3f5c70477df" CreationDate="2011-11-23T10:48:27.070" UserId="29270" Text="I voted to close [this][1] question before it was edited. After the edit it think the question is of much higher quality and I dont want it closed. There dosent seem to be any way of revoking a close vote (unlike normal votes which can be changed if the question is edited). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this an oversight or a delibrate feature? (If the latter then why?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/121097/agile-scrum-and-uml-round-trip-tools" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6542" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2586" RevisionGUID="8932e6d3-4b15-4fe0-b90c-e3f5c70477df" CreationDate="2011-11-23T10:48:27.070" UserId="29270" Text="Remove vote to close after a question has been edited" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6543" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2586" RevisionGUID="8932e6d3-4b15-4fe0-b90c-e3f5c70477df" CreationDate="2011-11-23T10:48:27.070" UserId="29270" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6544" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2587" RevisionGUID="68f10ea9-78e4-48ae-9692-499508ea5d44" CreationDate="2011-11-23T11:06:50.390" UserId="47" Text="It's a deliberate feature.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If no one else votes to close your vote will decay in a few days and the post will remain open. You can add a comment to state that you no longer think the question should be closed - this might stop others casting their vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the post is closed you can then vote to reopen. If 4 others (or a moderator) agree the post will be reopened. If you think that it won't get the required votes then flag it for moderator attention and we'll review it and cast a vote if we agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the immediate term doing nothing is the right option to let the community speak.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In extremis a moderator can close and then reopen the question to clear all the current votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6545" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2584" RevisionGUID="0dd7d1db-f569-4f94-8e31-57f12bfa3281" CreationDate="2011-11-23T22:03:10.370" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6548" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2588" RevisionGUID="f9232bef-c6b5-419f-a3e1-062c9e2c259c" CreationDate="2011-11-24T04:47:04.810" UserId="25936" Text="The issue of editing *en masse* has been discussed a few times on meta, most recently on @MarkTrapp's [answer][1] on the question on [Amazon Links][2] and I think it's clear that no one likes a messy homepage. I've tried to limit myself to 3-4 substantial edits per day on older posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But how about new questions, let's say questions that are on the first page of the newest tab at any given time (and answers to those questions)? Are micro edits like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- removing &quot;thanks&quot;, &#xD;&#xA;- capitalizing Is, &#xD;&#xA;- removing spaces before punctuation marks,&#xD;&#xA;- putting quotes in blockquotes, etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;a bad practice? I've been doing a lot of those recently, strictly on new questions, thinking that they are on the homepage already, and getting bumped at the top of it doesn't really matter. Is there any side effect I should be aware of?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update: An [example][3] of my micro-edits, where I edited 2 minutes after the question was posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2582/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://%20Amazon%20links%20to%20books%20appropriate?&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/121435/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6549" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2588" RevisionGUID="f9232bef-c6b5-419f-a3e1-062c9e2c259c" CreationDate="2011-11-24T04:47:04.810" UserId="25936" Text="Are micro edits on new posts insignificant?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6550" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2588" RevisionGUID="f9232bef-c6b5-419f-a3e1-062c9e2c259c" CreationDate="2011-11-24T04:47:04.810" UserId="25936" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6551" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2589" RevisionGUID="26def520-66cb-48d2-bfbf-6c32fca944b8" CreationDate="2011-11-24T06:02:02.583" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I don't have a problem *per se* in cleaning up those types of things as posts come in: you're not really changing the front page and it can give a little bit of a boost to a question that might be judged on its presentation rather than its content. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I've found it's almost always the case that one can find more to fix in a post than just capitalizing &quot;I&quot; or removing a valediction. In truth, those types of edits don't *really* make a post all that much better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it's untenable to save every single post that comes in, there are a lot of posts that—while not constructive or a real question as originally written—can be saved by someone doing a heroic edit to significantly improve its quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I say always shoot for the heroic edit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What about sentence flow?&#xD;&#xA;* Does the asker use broken English?&#xD;&#xA;* Does the question contain superfluous information, like the asker's life story?&#xD;&#xA;* Is the actual question presented in a clear and concise manner following the problem? &#xD;&#xA;* How about the tone of the post: is it unnecessarily ranty?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6552" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2590" RevisionGUID="166b9a1e-0dc7-44cf-b205-da2d0f688993" CreationDate="2011-11-24T06:17:09.697" UserDisplayName="user39741" Text="Since the FAQ allows the topic of software licensing, I think it would be a good idea to put a legal disclaimer in the FAQ addressing the issue that the opinions expressed on the site do not constitute expert legal advice.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I keep seeing this concern being raised, mainly that the opinions being expressed are just that, opinions and that an attorney needs to be sought for expert advice on software licensing issues.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't imagine someone filing a suit over this, but then again it is possible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe it's a great help to hear from other devs on how they deal with software licensing and I feel it would be prudent to at least address this particular issue specifically in the FAQ.  If for nothing else than to clarify others concerns about consulting an attorney to get expert legal help." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6553" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2590" RevisionGUID="166b9a1e-0dc7-44cf-b205-da2d0f688993" CreationDate="2011-11-24T06:17:09.697" UserDisplayName="user39741" Text="Legal Disclaimer in the FAQ" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6554" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2590" RevisionGUID="166b9a1e-0dc7-44cf-b205-da2d0f688993" CreationDate="2011-11-24T06:17:09.697" UserDisplayName="user39741" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|legal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6555" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2591" RevisionGUID="a30974ed-f419-4eda-946f-e8db5a502035" CreationDate="2011-11-24T06:23:30.240" UserId="25936" Text="From [Stack Exchange Network Terms of Service][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 9 Limitation of liability&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In no event shall Stack Exchange, its directors, officers, shareholders, employees or members be liable with respect to the Network or the Services for (a) any indirect, incidental, punitive, or consequential damages of any kind whatsoever; (b) damages for loss of use, profits, data, images, Subscriber Content or other intangibles; (c) damages for unauthorized use, non-performance of the Network, errors or omissions; or (d) damages related to downloading or posting Content. Stack Exchange's and the Network's collective liability under this agreement shall be limited to three hundred United States Dollars. Some states do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so the above limitations and exclusions may not apply to Subscriber.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that what you had in mind?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackexchange.com/legal" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6556" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2584" RevisionGUID="7dca4ebe-5278-4aae-8b88-45cd5a4e07df" CreationDate="2011-11-24T11:22:20.503" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/139665147550633984" />
  <row Id="6557" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2592" RevisionGUID="294a2f4e-0d31-4da5-8837-8ba72413b096" CreationDate="2011-11-25T00:59:20.010" UserId="25936" Text="I've asked the crowd over at [User Experience Stack Exchange][1] on our link colours, and they seem to agree that our colour scheme is pretty poor. So it's not just you, and I think the issue is worth reopening.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/14194/colour-of-links-on-programmers-stack-exchange" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6558" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2590" RevisionGUID="4fd6b4b4-41fc-4a7c-9712-183807d5d2a6" CreationDate="2011-11-25T06:14:31.977" UserDisplayName="user39741" Comment="Added a clarification." Text="Since the FAQ allows the topic of software licensing, I think it would be a good idea to put a legal disclaimer in the FAQ addressing the issue that the opinions expressed on the site do not constitute expert legal advice.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I keep seeing this concern being raised, mainly that the opinions being expressed are just that, opinions and that an attorney needs to be sought for expert advice on software licensing issues.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't imagine someone filing a suit over this, but then again it is possible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe it's a great help to hear from other devs on how they deal with software licensing and I feel it would be prudent to at least address this particular issue specifically in the FAQ.  If for nothing else than to clarify others concerns about consulting an attorney to get expert legal help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I was thinking was to state the following: the opinions expressed on the site do not constitute expert legal advice and then point to the link for the stack exchange legal disclaimer.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6559" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="2593" RevisionGUID="54de4027-2071-4b8d-8c31-85f08af0d2c7" CreationDate="2011-11-27T02:14:18.830" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/121877/why-keep-these-10-a-penny-how-long-will-it-take-to-program-in-blah-blah-blah-l" Text="" />
  <row Id="6560" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2593" RevisionGUID="89d20887-a955-4690-8006-83170b7f6c34" CreationDate="2011-11-27T02:04:15.650" UserId="41595" Text="Why keep this [question open][1] and others like it open which basically asks how long does it take to learn a programming language?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Yet I ask a valid question which basically asks][2] how esteemed is a mathematics degree from the UK open university and would software employers hire whilst you are the course.. and it gets closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I love the advice I get from this site and I appreciate the fact that Software Technicians of all types use this site, but it's a bit shallow if you can't ask a question with a little bit of the real world involved&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46260/how-long-would-it-take-to-learn-objective-c&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/121875/how-seriously-would-an-employer-take-a-job-application-from-an-applicant-studyin" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6561" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2593" RevisionGUID="89d20887-a955-4690-8006-83170b7f6c34" CreationDate="2011-11-27T02:04:15.650" UserId="41595" Text="Why Keep These 10 A Penny &quot; How Long Will It Take To Program in Blah Blah Blah Language Questions&quot; Open Yet Close This Question..?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6562" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2593" RevisionGUID="89d20887-a955-4690-8006-83170b7f6c34" CreationDate="2011-11-27T02:04:15.650" UserId="41595" Text="|discussion|career|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6563" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2593" RevisionGUID="19a5b8bb-986d-4a25-b012-a7a512b9a476" CreationDate="2011-11-27T02:14:36.597" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6564" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2594" RevisionGUID="d1906e13-e82c-422c-a139-336c53a6dd26" CreationDate="2011-11-27T02:17:31.323" UserId="226" Text="You're right that the http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46260/how-long-would-it-take-to-learn-objective-c question is not suitable for this site. It has now been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question, unfortunately, isn't suitable either. As Mark Trapp said in his comment on your question, Programmers is not a career advice site and we cannot predict whether or not employers will like your education or degree. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please check out our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) to see what kind of conceptual questions about software development Programmers is about." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6565" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2595" RevisionGUID="30e750c0-d9e6-4356-9e38-6c70accdc117" CreationDate="2011-11-27T02:17:33.357" UserId="2021" Text="Because the question is unanswerable,I might think the OU is great - my hiring manager has never heard of it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's too localised - it really only applies to the UK. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should the same question be posted about every course at every institution in the world?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6566" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2596" RevisionGUID="1f8b5f50-dc72-4bc2-b2c1-eb5ab18297f0" CreationDate="2011-11-27T02:57:53.287" UserId="25936" Text="You should spent some time familiarizing yourself with the site, before forming an opinion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've asked a question that's clearly off topic, if you've taken the time to read the [faq][1] as @MarkTrapp and @AnnaLear suggested you would have seen that career advice and resume help are considered off topic. And then you've asked this question on the main site instead of here at the meta, no worries it got migrated, but still you could have avoided it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The guidelines of the site are simple, and if you disagree with them you can always start a meta discussion and change them, if your proposals gain enough support from the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**As for the specifics of your question:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is anyone supposed to know? The only way to get a helpful answer is from someone that were at some point in a very similar situation, but even then how could you tell if her experiences will match yours? The best that could come out of your question would be a subjective discussion, and these don't fit the QA format. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, I can tell you that the Open University is highly regarded in most FSTE companies, but how could I prove that I'm not just re-iterating their marketing department? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And how could anyone compare Open University to &quot;traditional bricks and mortar university&quot;, unless you tell us which one? Cambridge University or University of Luton, if the choice is between Luton and Open employers will greatly prefer an Open University graduate&lt;sup&gt;\*&lt;/sup&gt;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question generates quite a few questions, and that's almost always a sign that [it's not a very good one][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**As for that &quot;not a real question&quot; question you fished out:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately there are quite a lot of those that are still open, some are just because no one else discovered them and some because in the early days of the site some subjective questions that fall under the &quot;[bad subjective][3]&quot; category were allowed and even encouraged. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*After* you familiarized yourself with the site's scope and mechanics you could greatly help the site grow and evolve by searching for them and [flagging them appropriately][4]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;\* Not to badmouth the University of Luton, but a thousand years ago when I was a student in the UK its reputation was, let's say, less than stellar.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/flag-posts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6567" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2596" RevisionGUID="0c5ea040-9070-4a46-b07a-f0727b665582" CreationDate="2011-11-27T03:18:16.043" UserId="25936" Comment="added 267 characters in body" Text="You should spent some time familiarizing yourself with the site, before forming an opinion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've asked a question that's clearly off topic, if you've taken the time to read the [faq][1] as @MarkTrapp and @AnnaLear suggested you would have seen that career advice and resume help are considered off topic. And then you've asked this question on the main site instead of here at the meta, no worries it got migrated, but still you could have avoided it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The guidelines of the site are simple, and if you disagree with them you can always start a meta discussion and change them, if your proposals gain enough support from the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**As for the specifics of your question:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is anyone supposed to know? The only way to get a helpful answer is from someone that were at some point in a very similar situation, but even then how could you tell if her experiences will match yours? The best that could come out of your question would be a subjective discussion, and these don't fit the QA format. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, I can tell you that the Open University is highly regarded in most FSTE companies, but how could I prove that I'm not just re-iterating their marketing department? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And how could anyone compare Open University to &quot;traditional bricks and mortar university&quot;, unless you tell us which one? Cambridge University or University of Luton, if the choice is between Luton and Open employers will greatly prefer an Open University graduate&lt;sup&gt;\*&lt;/sup&gt;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question generates quite a few questions, and that's almost always a sign that [it's not a very good one][2]. But in the off chance you do get a great answer, how would that be helpful to anyone other than you? We like questions that can potentially be helpful to the community, and we don't like questions that can only be helpful to an individual. *We are not that shallow*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**As for that &quot;not a real question&quot; question you fished out:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately there are quite a lot of those that are still open, some are just because no one else discovered them and some because in the early days of the site some subjective questions that fall under the &quot;[bad subjective][3]&quot; category were allowed and even encouraged. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*After* you familiarized yourself with the site's scope and mechanics you could greatly help the site grow and evolve by searching for them and [flagging them appropriately][4]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;\* Not to badmouth the University of Luton, but a thousand years ago when I was a student in the UK its reputation was, let's say, less than stellar.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/flag-posts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6568" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2596" RevisionGUID="821cebd2-1944-49b3-bc69-e090929b4671" CreationDate="2011-11-27T03:34:33.330" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 30 characters in body" Text="You should spent some time familiarizing yourself with the site, before forming an opinion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've asked a question that's clearly off topic, if you've taken the time to read the [faq][1] as @MarkTrapp and @AnnaLear suggested you would have seen that career advice and resume help are considered off topic. And then you asked this question on the main site instead of here at meta, no worries it got migrated, but still you could have avoided it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The guidelines of the site are simple, and if you disagree with them you can always start a meta discussion and change them, if your proposals gain enough support from the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**As for the specifics of your question:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is anyone supposed to know? The only way to get a helpful answer is from someone that were at some point in a very similar situation, but even then how could you tell if her experiences will match yours? The best that could come out of your question would be a subjective discussion, and these don't fit the QA format. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, I can tell you that the Open University is highly regarded in most FSTE companies, but how could I prove that I'm not just re-iterating their marketing department? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And how could anyone compare Open University to &quot;traditional bricks and mortar university&quot;, unless you tell us which one? Cambridge University or University of Luton? If the choice is between Luton and Open employers will greatly prefer Open&lt;sup&gt;\*&lt;/sup&gt;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question generates quite a few questions, and that's almost always a sign that [it's not a very good one][2]. But in the off chance you do get a great answer, how would that be helpful to anyone other than you? We like questions that can potentially be helpful to the community, and we don't like questions that can only be helpful to an individual. *We are not that shallow*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**As for that &quot;not a real question&quot; question you fished out:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately there are quite a lot of those that are still open, some are just because no one else discovered them and some because in the early days of the site some subjective questions that fall under the &quot;[bad subjective][3]&quot; category were allowed and even encouraged. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*After* you familiarized yourself with the site's scope and mechanics you could greatly help the site grow and evolve by searching for them and [flagging them appropriately][4]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;\* Not to badmouth the University of Luton, but a thousand years ago when I was a student in the UK its reputation was, let's say, less than stellar.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/flag-posts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6569" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2597" RevisionGUID="b2494942-5c65-46e7-a71a-32ac965ed485" CreationDate="2011-11-27T04:00:01.073" UserId="3965" Text="Since you only have one [question][1] closed as a duplicate, let me speak specifically to that one.  The duplicate question received an impressive amount of helpful answers on the subject.  Your only distinction seemed to be that those answers were not basic enough for a complete beginner, but it's not a beginner topic.  It requires a foundational understanding of computer science of the sort one usually gets in a university degree.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not an elitist who believes a university degree is the *only* way to learn those concepts, but there *are* a few tasks that require that knowledge one way or the other, if you want a halfway decent chance of succeeding.  Designing a programming language and its tools is one of them.  Even with that background, only maybe 10% of professional developers I know could design a compiler.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest revisiting the duplicate's answers, looking up any concepts you aren't familiar with, and keep digging deeper until you hit concepts you know, and build from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/115920/first-steps-of-making-a-programming-language" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6570" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="1489" RevisionGUID="d4b2ba9b-05b4-40e3-a608-28fac9f63bff" CreationDate="2011-11-27T04:20:17.260" UserId="99" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:99,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Dori&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="6571" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2598" RevisionGUID="ff1b1c05-63a7-4712-a39c-4325f869a703" CreationDate="2011-11-27T04:37:53.113" UserId="226" Text="Last week I attended Software Craftsmanship North America 2011 (thanks again, Stack Exchange!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I spoke to a number of people about Stack Exchange in general and Programmers in particular, and handed out some stickers and a few of my shiny and new moderator business cards. I don't know if this is going to translate into many new users for us, but the word's now out there. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm also starting a [series of blog posts](http://annalear.ca/2011/11/26/scna-2011-part-0-introduction/) over at my personal blog. I will come back and update this post with links to specific new posts as they go up. There's a lot to go through, so it's going to take me a bit to get it all out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had grand plans to keep up with Programmers during the conference, but it really moved way too quickly to do any meaningful knowledge sharing then. Between my blog series and searching for existing related questions to add an answer to, I hope to bring back some value to the community here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, I had a blast at the conference. If the [Stack Exchange sponsorship grant](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/supporting-community-conferences/) still runs next year, I highly recommend applying for it. The sponsorship program is available to regular community users, not just moderators, so for that matter... if you know of a relevant conference you'd like to attend and help promote Programmers at, please make a meta post and tell us all about it! " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6572" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2598" RevisionGUID="ff1b1c05-63a7-4712-a39c-4325f869a703" CreationDate="2011-11-27T04:37:53.113" UserId="226" Text="SCNA 2011 Conference Report" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6573" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2598" RevisionGUID="ff1b1c05-63a7-4712-a39c-4325f869a703" CreationDate="2011-11-27T04:37:53.113" UserId="226" Text="|discussion|conferences|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6574" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2599" RevisionGUID="aaccc157-2d24-48a0-bdc9-8d3985cabd1d" CreationDate="2011-11-28T16:26:06.810" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="A question was recently asked that requested data bout the prevalence of cowboy coding and its affect on the apps markets:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/121953/what-data-is-available-regarding-cowboy-coding&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've had a few other questions around the same request as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Open&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60282/has-there-been-research-into-programming-linguistics&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87851/is-there-any-research-out-there-on-geographic-differences-in-work-environments&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108735/schemes-to-resolve-deadlocks&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60439/programming-languages-and-credible-data-on-market-conditions&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92580/are-there-any-studies-that-correlate-time-spent-coding-and-productivity&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91758/debugging-facts-and-statistics&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/109615/what-factors-can-make-mid-project-join-successful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35501/non-english-based-programming-languages&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Closed and deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Are there any languages, frameworks, techniques, or any kind of research designed specifically for organic growth of large systems over time?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99102/are-there-any-languages-frameworks-techniques-or-any-kind-of-research-designe)&#xD;&#xA;* [What motivates students to choose a CS/IT track?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55062/what-motivates-students-to-choose-a-cs-it-track)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is IT/programming the profession with the least happy people?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14299/why-is-it-programming-the-profession-with-the-least-happy-people)&#xD;&#xA;* [How many developers should a software company have?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108991/how-many-developers-should-a-software-company-have)&#xD;&#xA;* [Programming can cause a decrease in spelling and grammar skills?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50863/programming-can-cause-a-decrease-in-spelling-and-grammar-skills)&#xD;&#xA;* [Which specific programming activities do women, on average, perform better than men?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57420/which-specific-programming-activities-do-women-on-average-perform-better-than)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So there's a bit of an inconsistency in how these are dealt with. Are these on-topic? If so, why? If not, why not?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6575" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2599" RevisionGUID="aaccc157-2d24-48a0-bdc9-8d3985cabd1d" CreationDate="2011-11-28T16:26:06.810" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Are &quot;I need data on X phenomenon&quot; questions on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6576" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2599" RevisionGUID="aaccc157-2d24-48a0-bdc9-8d3985cabd1d" CreationDate="2011-11-28T16:26:06.810" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6577" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2600" RevisionGUID="f9201366-874f-492e-8145-502765ef1931" CreationDate="2011-11-28T16:28:03.620" UserId="2673" Text="On SO when a search returns &gt; 5,000 results it indicates the results have been capped a 5,000 by displaying the number of results as &quot;5,000+&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On P.SE it only displays the &quot;5,000&quot; without the plus at the end. This lead be to believe there was only 5,000 non-closed questions on P.SE when searching on 'closed:0'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cosmetic issue, put I thought I'd raise it since it can cause confusion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6578" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2600" RevisionGUID="f9201366-874f-492e-8145-502765ef1931" CreationDate="2011-11-28T16:28:03.620" UserId="2673" Text="Doesn't indicate results are capped at 5,000 results" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6579" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2600" RevisionGUID="f9201366-874f-492e-8145-502765ef1931" CreationDate="2011-11-28T16:28:03.620" UserId="2673" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6580" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2600" RevisionGUID="b3aa86bf-26d7-4b4b-991d-b017f4f92767" CreationDate="2011-11-28T16:29:28.687" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|search|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6581" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2601" RevisionGUID="5bd6e57c-919a-4497-807f-ab668195c394" CreationDate="2011-11-28T16:32:32.977" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I don't think these are on-topic here: while they are about software development, the answers they are looking for require a specialty and expertise outside of that of a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, they're looking for statistics and data to support a claim, not for a software development solution. Programmers are not necessarily versed in the data that's been collected about their field: they're the subjects, not the researchers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Coming up with evidence to support or dispute a claim is the domain of our sister site, [Skeptics.SE](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com). Of course, they have their own quality guidelines, and I don't think automatically migrating any question looking for data is going to work: it'd have to be done on a case-by-case basis in coordination with Skeptics." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6582" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2601" RevisionGUID="5257847b-833d-4da2-811c-bab16a89f113" CreationDate="2011-11-28T18:51:27.850" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 137 characters in body" Text="I don't think these are on-topic here: while they are about software development, the answers they are looking for require a specialty and expertise outside of that of a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, they're looking for statistics and data to support a claim, not for a software development solution. Programmers are not necessarily versed in the data that's been collected about their field: they're the subjects, not the researchers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Coming up with evidence to support or dispute a claim is the domain of our sister site, [Skeptics.SE](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com). Of course, they have their own quality guidelines, and I don't think automatically migrating any question looking for data is going to work: it'd have to be done on a case-by-case basis in coordination with Skeptics. Particularly, claims have to be *notable* (i.e. X prominent figure believes Y, what evidence supports this), which most of these aren't." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6590" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2588" RevisionGUID="70b13999-bca8-4748-8003-1cdbd11834dd" CreationDate="2011-11-28T23:22:41.740" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/141295981168820224" />
  <row Id="6591" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2604" RevisionGUID="fd1c2abf-95c1-4e38-80f7-1747d21187e6" CreationDate="2011-11-29T12:31:56.747" UserId="4" Text="I'm torn. Some of the questions seem good, most others don't. But I can't exactly figure out where that line is. I think it has to do with localization (time and space), topicality, and specificality of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of the questions are vague or wide reaching. Like the ones about [cowboy coding][1], [chosing to study IT][2], and [happiness in the IT industry][3]. Either there's not a significant body of research, it's mostly polls/surveys, or they are so broad that there's a gratitutious amount of information out there. I don't see how these questions make the Internet a better place by being asked/answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Others are off-topic. The [programming linguistics question][4] is clearly asking about things from a linguist's perspective, not a programmer's perspective, for example.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few are too localized in time and space. Things like [geographic differences in work environments][5] and [market conditions][6] fall into this category, especially in today's world where communication and cultural exchange is so easy and the technological landscape changes rapidly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there are good ones. [Deadlock resolution][9] came up in not one, but two software engineering courses that I took as an undergraduate (concurrent systems and real-time/embedded systems). [Coding productivity][10] might also fall into this category - maximizing productivity of an employee is a concern of managers, but I'm not sold on it as it's very individualized and specific to a given programmer and team. There are also good questions about people making cases - I frequently need to present improvement suggestions in terms of software quality, productivity, and the bottom line (among other things), so questions like the [debugging question][11] that help identify reputable sources that can be cited in such a document might be useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As long as the question is about something that's on-topic, it's targeted to/about software development professionals, and it's specific enough to provide pointed answers, I don't see why it shouldn't stay (unless, of course, it has a better home somewhere else).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like I said, I typically need to provide reputable, citable data as to why X is better/worse than Y (if such data exists), and &quot;because Bob on Programmers told his success/failure story&quot; isn't good enough, although it does help to make the point. The collective Internet (ie: Programmers) has read more reputable, published material than any single individual, and would be able to point me toward citable resources (including things that indicate the opposite).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also wonder if there's a student angle here. I can't come up with a question that's not &quot;do my research for me&quot;, but there might be something I'm not thinking of. I don't think Programmers should be a place for someone to ask the Internet for every resource they need to write a paper, but there might be some take on how questions like this can add value to students, especially those writing Masters or Ph.D. level work if they hit a block (especially in applied topics and case studies, rather than just academic research). But perhaps not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I don't know about other people, but I love when I get my IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering or ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology in the mail. Although take what I say with a grain of salt - I'm an empirical software engineer that specializes in process and methodology. So, to me, these numbers and research results drive what I do. I might be a bit biased.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/121953/what-data-is-available-regarding-cowboy-coding&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55062/what-motivates-students-to-choose-a-cs-it-track&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14299/why-is-it-programming-the-profession-with-the-least-happy-people&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60282/has-there-been-research-into-programming-linguistics&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87851/is-there-any-research-out-there-on-geographic-differences-in-work-environments&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60439/programming-languages-and-credible-data-on-market-conditions&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108991/how-many-developers-should-a-software-company-have&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57420/which-specific-programming-activities-do-women-on-average-perform-better-than&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108735/schemes-to-resolve-deadlocks&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92580/are-there-any-studies-that-correlate-time-spent-coding-and-productivity&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91758/debugging-facts-and-statistics" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6592" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2599" RevisionGUID="352ae7b3-c658-4b17-b80b-944cb2617913" CreationDate="2011-11-29T16:01:01.113" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 108 characters in body" Text="A question was recently asked (now closed) that requested data bout the prevalence of cowboy coding and its affect on the apps markets:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/121953/what-data-is-available-regarding-cowboy-coding&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've had a few other questions around the same request as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Open&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122326/survival-rate-of-open-source-projects&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60282/has-there-been-research-into-programming-linguistics&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87851/is-there-any-research-out-there-on-geographic-differences-in-work-environments&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108735/schemes-to-resolve-deadlocks&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60439/programming-languages-and-credible-data-on-market-conditions&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92580/are-there-any-studies-that-correlate-time-spent-coding-and-productivity&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91758/debugging-facts-and-statistics&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/109615/what-factors-can-make-mid-project-join-successful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/121953/what-data-is-available-regarding-cowboy-coding&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35501/non-english-based-programming-languages&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Closed and deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Are there any languages, frameworks, techniques, or any kind of research designed specifically for organic growth of large systems over time?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99102/are-there-any-languages-frameworks-techniques-or-any-kind-of-research-designe)&#xD;&#xA;* [What motivates students to choose a CS/IT track?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55062/what-motivates-students-to-choose-a-cs-it-track)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is IT/programming the profession with the least happy people?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14299/why-is-it-programming-the-profession-with-the-least-happy-people)&#xD;&#xA;* [How many developers should a software company have?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108991/how-many-developers-should-a-software-company-have)&#xD;&#xA;* [Programming can cause a decrease in spelling and grammar skills?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50863/programming-can-cause-a-decrease-in-spelling-and-grammar-skills)&#xD;&#xA;* [Which specific programming activities do women, on average, perform better than men?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57420/which-specific-programming-activities-do-women-on-average-perform-better-than)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So there's a bit of an inconsistency in how these are dealt with. Are these on-topic? If so, why? If not, why not?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6593" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2599" RevisionGUID="16c33a26-3ca6-40a4-91d7-534f9ea67092" CreationDate="2011-11-29T17:23:00.703" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/141567852216991744" />
  <row Id="6594" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2605" RevisionGUID="d73c7dca-563b-4992-8a8a-6ddd677caea9" CreationDate="2011-11-29T18:59:29.867" UserId="28571" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112998/to-php-or-not-to-php/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have an answer to the question that has a decent number of upvotes on it.  The question is erratic in its flow and it isn't clear on what the real question is.  It was moved from SO to here and then closed for a good reason.  However, it is a really good question *in essence* and is one I've seen come up numerous times.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it may be of better help to reword the question and then close it as a duplicate of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36034/what-are-the-benefits-of-php, especially because both mention web applications specifically.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also might not be worth doing anything.  Thoughts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6595" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2605" RevisionGUID="d73c7dca-563b-4992-8a8a-6ddd677caea9" CreationDate="2011-11-29T18:59:29.867" UserId="28571" Text="Salvaging a closed question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6596" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2605" RevisionGUID="d73c7dca-563b-4992-8a8a-6ddd677caea9" CreationDate="2011-11-29T18:59:29.867" UserId="28571" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6597" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2606" RevisionGUID="fe7ee7db-bc26-43d1-ae55-35231278debe" CreationDate="2011-11-29T19:34:15.550" UserId="2314" Text="I just answered the question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122378/whats-the-point-of-initializing-a-variable-with-the-same-value-twice here on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was going to answer it anyway, then saw that Morons suggested it be migrated to StackOverflow.  I agreed, so I added my migration vote.  Then I answered the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, it exists on StackOverflow as well, and my answer exists in two different places.  You can see from the [revision history](http://stackoverflow.com/posts/8316463/revisions) that it was migrated, but it doesn't say by whom.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, it's still open on Programmers.  Thankfully, Mark Trapp has locked it in the mean time.  But, I don't really know what happened - even after the migration happened, I still saw &quot;close(2)&quot; in the question links.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6598" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2606" RevisionGUID="fe7ee7db-bc26-43d1-ae55-35231278debe" CreationDate="2011-11-29T19:34:15.550" UserId="2314" Text="Why does this question exist twice? Stack Exchange Multiverse?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6599" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2606" RevisionGUID="fe7ee7db-bc26-43d1-ae55-35231278debe" CreationDate="2011-11-29T19:34:15.550" UserId="2314" Text="|bug|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6600" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2607" RevisionGUID="ed5d6d40-73a7-4843-9efa-86a0ac710199" CreationDate="2011-11-29T19:44:40.070" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This question has caused a bit of an adverse reaction here: within 5 or so minutes of being asked, it was migrated to Stack Overflow before I should short circuit the migration and settle the dispute here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cleared the migration history, which removed the trace of the migration from the question and reopened it. This didn't remove the migrated version on Stack Overflow, which now exists separately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Within a minute or two of doing that, it gained another 3 migrate votes to Stack Overflow, which prompted my lock: there's no point in migrating the question twice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Overflow moderators there have opted not to delete this artifact because they feel it's just barely on-topic for Stack Overflow. So what we're left with is the functional equivalent of a cross-post that you happened to answer on both sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6601" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2608" RevisionGUID="08befa7e-230c-44c5-941a-570ae2c9c97c" CreationDate="2011-11-29T19:57:28.390" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="There was a bit of a tussle earlier about a specific question related to why a specific line of JavaScript code was crafted the way that it was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122378/whats-the-point-of-initializing-a-variable-with-the-same-value-twice#question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [details are documented elsewhere](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2606/8), but suffice it to say there's obviously some confusion about whether these questions are on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our FAQ states the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about…   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, the blog post that introduces Programmers defines the distinction between Programmers and Stack Overflow as such:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In a nutshell, Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues. Hence the (awesome) whiteboard inspired design!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have actual source code in the questions or answers. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this specific question, the asker isn't working through issues with their code, they're asking a higher-level conceptual question about why the code was designed that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, after speaking with the Stack Overflow moderators, they believed it was only just barely on-topic on Stack Overflow, but on the subjective side.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given this background, are these questions on-topic here? If so, why? If not, why not?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6602" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2608" RevisionGUID="08befa7e-230c-44c5-941a-570ae2c9c97c" CreationDate="2011-11-29T19:57:28.390" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Are &quot;Why is X code snippet done this way?&quot; questions on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6603" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2608" RevisionGUID="08befa7e-230c-44c5-941a-570ae2c9c97c" CreationDate="2011-11-29T19:57:28.390" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6604" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2607" RevisionGUID="c2d46e8f-349b-4d92-bf5e-4796fd4b84e0" CreationDate="2011-11-29T19:58:13.977" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 183 characters in body" Text="This question has caused a bit of an adverse reaction here: within 5 or so minutes of being asked, it was migrated to Stack Overflow before I could short circuit the migration and settle the dispute here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cleared the migration history, which removed the trace of the migration from the question and reopened it. This didn't remove the migrated version on Stack Overflow, which now exists separately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Within a minute or two of doing that, it gained another 3 migrate votes to Stack Overflow, which prompted my lock: there's no point in migrating the question twice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Overflow moderators there have opted not to delete this artifact because they feel it's just barely on-topic for Stack Overflow. So what we're left with is the functional equivalent of a cross-post that you happened to answer on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: I've opened up a [new question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2608/are-why-is-x-code-snippet-done-this-way-questions-on-topic) to discuss the dispute. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6605" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2606" RevisionGUID="3763138a-97d4-458a-9775-9055bb31ad1e" CreationDate="2011-11-29T20:02:35.993" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6606" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2609" RevisionGUID="890b78ee-913f-40c6-81e3-de9da0018bcf" CreationDate="2011-11-29T20:04:01.493" UserId="7748" Text="JoeMo asked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's happening here and how are these two declarations different?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I see this as asking :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&quot;What does this code do?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**NOT**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why the code was designed that way?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is why i voted for the migration... Just my 2 cents." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6607" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2610" RevisionGUID="e2a431ae-b3c8-4391-998c-a926ddecab95" CreationDate="2011-11-29T20:04:41.443" UserId="1204" Text="I personally think that these kinds of questions, and this question in particular, is a better fit for Stack Overflow, as it deals specifically with code syntax and usage.  Had it been a more &quot;conceptual&quot; question (in the vein of &quot;How is this technique useful in my software design?&quot;), I would consider it a better fit here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6609" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2608" RevisionGUID="8e490f1c-05ca-45f4-b2ab-a378cedd9bd0" CreationDate="2011-11-29T20:05:32.697" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add link to blog post" Text="There was a bit of a tussle earlier about a specific question related to why a specific line of JavaScript code was crafted the way that it was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122378/whats-the-point-of-initializing-a-variable-with-the-same-value-twice#question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [details are documented elsewhere](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2606/8), but suffice it to say there's obviously some confusion about whether these questions are on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our FAQ states the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about…   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, the [blog post that introduces Programmers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/) defines the distinction between Programmers and Stack Overflow as such:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In a nutshell, Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues. Hence the (awesome) whiteboard inspired design!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have actual source code in the questions or answers. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this specific question, the asker isn't working through issues with their code, they're asking a higher-level conceptual question about why the code was designed that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, after speaking with the Stack Overflow moderators, they believed it was only just barely on-topic on Stack Overflow, but on the subjective side.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given this background, are these questions on-topic here? If so, why? If not, why not?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6611" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2612" RevisionGUID="2a73d91e-3da9-4e8b-bf9e-6a37bcc7a12e" CreationDate="2011-11-29T20:07:14.287" UserId="4" Text="I think they are off-topic here. They aren't about the whiteboard-level design questions. Once you move from system architecture and design to having your IDE open, you move from Programmers to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also don't see which category of on-topic question the JavaScript snippit question falls under. In your quote of the FAQ, you left design patterns, development methodologies, and software architecture. It's none of those. I could be mistaken, but if it doesn't fall into a category of question that is called out in the FAQ, then it's off-topic and should be closed/migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly, Stack Overflow is the best place for this question as it stands now. I would rather honestly see it on Code Review, but their FAQ explicit disallows questions about &quot;trouble-shooting, debugging, or understanding code snippets&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6612" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2610" RevisionGUID="9cfd6681-f452-4a49-bf1d-03f313f9496e" CreationDate="2011-11-29T20:13:50.990" UserId="1204" Comment="added 164 characters in body" Text="I personally think that these kinds of questions, and this question in particular, is a better fit for Stack Overflow, as it deals specifically with code syntax and usage.  Had it been a more &quot;conceptual&quot; question (in the vein of &quot;How is this technique useful in my software design?&quot;), I would consider it a better fit here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, questions should be migrated, not because they are a better fit on some other site, but because they are *clearly off-topic* on the originating site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6613" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2613" RevisionGUID="430ff1c9-81f7-4560-8ffd-4aa3a2f31840" CreationDate="2011-11-29T20:25:13.767" UserId="3965" Text="I think part of the problem with this particular question is that the title didn't match the body.  The title asked a conceptual design question, but the body asked a syntax question.  An edit to make them match one way or the other would make things much more clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I voted to migrate was because without the basic syntax understanding he didn't have the background knowledge necessary to debate the merits of the conceptual design.  Hence, I let the body text take precedence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I know not everyone subscribes to this philosophy, but one way I judge a question is by the answers it receives.  In this case, the answer was directed toward the syntax end of the spectrum, rather than the conceptual design side, which means the answerer saw it as more of a syntax question as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6614" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2608" RevisionGUID="c8e911f8-0f93-4d95-a51b-bf5b0b20d821" CreationDate="2011-11-29T23:23:03.443" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/141658458838679552" />
  <row Id="6615" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2614" RevisionGUID="f5ee9569-c952-4894-8ff9-21b44943a55b" CreationDate="2011-11-30T00:35:40.117" UserId="25936" Text="Editing a closed question just to close it as a duplicate doesn't make much sense. You could try and edit it, but I don't think you'll get enough support to reopen it, unless of course you make an original and on topic question out of it. The close reason is less important than the fact that the question is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this particular question, I think the sooner it gets &lt;strike&gt;deleted&lt;/strike&gt; downvoted to oblivion the better. Almost all the answers have large amounts of misinformation and unsubstantiated opinions, and it gets a lot worse in the comments, as its usually the norm with holy war questions. And if you had sensed the holy war potential before answering, you shouldn't have contributed to the madness. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it's far from being a good question, &quot;what language you should learn next, including which technology is better&quot; questions are off topic, as per the [faq][1]. That being said, I've also voted to close the other question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6616" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2615" RevisionGUID="e1fd9eef-f465-4fe7-adb0-ffd73e6d28e5" CreationDate="2011-11-30T14:45:36.500" UserId="12436" Text="I recently marked [a question][1] (subsequently closed as not constructive) as an exact duplicate of another, closed question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another user questioned this as being nonsensical. While the question wasn't an *exact* duplicate, the response to it would be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any reason why not to mark a question as duplicate of an already closed question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122524/i-studied-electrical-engineering-can-i-work-as-a-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6617" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2615" RevisionGUID="e1fd9eef-f465-4fe7-adb0-ffd73e6d28e5" CreationDate="2011-11-30T14:45:36.500" UserId="12436" Text="Voting to close - duplicate of a closed question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6618" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2615" RevisionGUID="e1fd9eef-f465-4fe7-adb0-ffd73e6d28e5" CreationDate="2011-11-30T14:45:36.500" UserId="12436" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6619" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2616" RevisionGUID="e78b7abe-b022-4d34-ac0b-c9c51ce1816e" CreationDate="2011-11-30T14:49:17.783" UserId="226" Text="I swear I just saw this come up somewhere else... but anyway, it doesn't terribly matter either way. If the duplicate was closed, that means it doesn't belong on the site so it's likely that the new question doesn't either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some exceptions (like, the duplicate is closed but is on topic and might get reopened with edits), but in general you can really go either way and there's nothing inherently wrong with voting to close as a duplicate of a closed question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6620" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2617" RevisionGUID="7464045c-f859-4a05-bc71-e7d382bcbc39" CreationDate="2011-11-30T15:34:42.297" UserId="25936" Text="Let's assume q2 to be an exact duplicate of q1, which is closed for any other reason. We close q2 as a duplicate of q1. And then q1 is edited and reopened. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Assuming the system works*, q1 wasn't closed for a trivial reason, if there was a chance to salvage it, we would have instead of closing it in the first place. So any edits that led to reopening must have been substantial. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So at this point we have a substantially altered open q1 that might or might not be duplicate of q2, which is still marked as duplicate. I think the &quot;might not be&quot; chance is enough to lead to messy situations. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my mind, &quot;exact duplicate&quot; is a weak close reason, and all the others are strong. If a question should be closed for two reasons, the strong one should be chosen. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And since comments are ephemeral, I was the one questioning closing the question as a duplicate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6621" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2617" RevisionGUID="c5040eeb-daab-40d5-a462-b0d8b78b5a7b" CreationDate="2011-11-30T15:39:54.820" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="Let's assume Q2 to be an exact duplicate of Q1, which is closed for any other reason. We close Q2 as a duplicate of Q1. And then Q1 is edited and reopened. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Assuming the system works*, Q1 wasn't closed for a trivial reason, if there was a chance to salvage it, we would have instead of closing it in the first place. So any edits that led to reopening must have been substantial. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So at this point we have a substantially altered open Q1 that might or might not be an *exact* duplicate of Q2, which is still marked as duplicate. I think the &quot;might not be&quot; chance is enough to lead to messy situations. And that's what I think is *inherently wrong* with voting to close as a duplicate of a closed question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my mind &quot;exact duplicate&quot; is a weak close reason, and all the others are strong. If a question should be closed for two reasons, the stronger one should be chosen. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And since comments are ephemeral, I was the one questioning closing the question as a duplicate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6632" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2621" RevisionGUID="3162870d-2904-47b3-a2e5-74ba6812be18" CreationDate="2011-11-30T17:28:34.260" UserId="2673" Text="I can commit to an occasional post (every 2-3 months) and will assist in the editorial process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To see an example of my writing when I put in some effort, skip to page 12 of this mag: [Spectrum Nov/Dec 2011][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.intl-spectrum.com/t/136837/link.aspx" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6635" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2623" RevisionGUID="5fde45e8-6be1-489c-8d61-c1f6f84f40fc" CreationDate="2011-11-30T17:55:36.903" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="There are two ways I see it not being helpful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **It's not actually a duplicate.** But I mean this in a pretty loose manner: if the original question covers the same ground as the new question, starting with the same set of assumptions, it's a duplicate. If the question is asking about a different problem but still has the same answer as the original, it's not a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **The original question is worse than the new question.** Generally, this happens when the older question was terribly worded, contained no useful information, or was otherwise unsalvageable whereas the new question was borderline or had far more useful answers, and has a chance to be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second one requires a little bit of a judgement call, but I think it comes down to effort expended. If you took a look at both questions side-by-side, which one has the least amount of work ahead of it to get it to meet our quality standards? If it's the older one, close the new question as a duplicate. If it's the new one, close it for one of the other reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in many cases, this is largely a pragmatic decision: in a perfect world, we wouldn't have unsalvageable questions lying around, and all questions that have a chance to be reopened with a heroic edit would, in fact, be open. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But due to questions slipping through the cracks or lack of community effort, we still do have a lot of the former and salvageable questions that simply aren't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it's okay, in some cases, to rely on a closed question as a resource particularly for closing as an exact duplicate. If the question is bad, but there happened to be an existing question that—while also bad—actually answers the new question, I say point it out." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6637" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2625" RevisionGUID="5ddf7678-68bf-4740-8d41-cd9147f69c8e" CreationDate="2011-11-30T19:57:45.860" UserId="3965" Text="Even if you choose &quot;off topic&quot; as the reason to close, I would still at least point out the duplicate if you know about it.  There are two goals to closing a question:  keeping the question from getting further attention, and educating the asker so they'll be a better contributor.  Pointing out the duplicate is a nicer way of saying, &quot;Next time, look to see if similar questions have been closed.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6638" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2626" RevisionGUID="c0271c22-1073-4c27-8705-e56ef2f6515b" CreationDate="2011-11-30T22:17:29.903" UserId="7748" Text="What happens to reputation gained\lost from that question or answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6639" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2626" RevisionGUID="c0271c22-1073-4c27-8705-e56ef2f6515b" CreationDate="2011-11-30T22:17:29.903" UserId="7748" Text="What is the impact of deleting an answer\question on Reputation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6640" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2626" RevisionGUID="c0271c22-1073-4c27-8705-e56ef2f6515b" CreationDate="2011-11-30T22:17:29.903" UserId="7748" Text="|discussion|reputation|deleted-questions|deleted-answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6641" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2626" RevisionGUID="6dbafaaa-d407-4643-a50e-3b03a571e855" CreationDate="2011-11-30T22:18:49.903" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="What is the impact of deleting an answer or question on reputation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6642" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2626" RevisionGUID="6dbafaaa-d407-4643-a50e-3b03a571e855" CreationDate="2011-11-30T22:18:49.903" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|support|reputation|deleted-questions|deleted-answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6643" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2627" RevisionGUID="db6bc963-9c92-49db-b543-50c2a25f8ef7" CreationDate="2011-11-30T22:21:21.020" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="When  a post is deleted, it no longer counts towards your reputation: that includes both up votes and down votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, reputation is cached, and any reputation changes will not reflect in your total until your reputation is manually recalculated. This can occur from:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* You manually doing it yourself by going to the [reputation page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/reputation) and pressing the *Trigger Reputation Recalc* button&#xD;&#xA;* A moderator or Stack Exchange employee doing it, generally as part of other action done to your account (think suspension)&#xD;&#xA;* A global recalculation, usually due to some major change in how reputation is handled. This is extremely rare: once or year or less." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6647" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2628" RevisionGUID="79c2ee8b-fe67-4b45-b53a-915c570d36c3" CreationDate="2011-12-01T17:36:45.967" UserId="7748" Text="What are the guidelines for down-voting? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it completely arbitrary to the user down voting?&#xD;&#xA;I I ask be cause of maple_shaft down vote of my Answer on this Question:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122734/some-who-can-help-me-program-a-game-in-c/122736#122736&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;His Justification for the Down-vote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am downvoting this just because you basically enabled the OP to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cheat on what was very clearly his homework assignment. All of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; code is right there for him to plagiarize.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is right? Is this Fair?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is arbitrary... **Am i justified and going to his profile picking one of his answers at random and Down-voteing for revenge?** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6648" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2628" RevisionGUID="79c2ee8b-fe67-4b45-b53a-915c570d36c3" CreationDate="2011-12-01T17:36:45.967" UserId="7748" Text="Is Down Voting supposed to be Completely Arbitrary? IE: &quot;I don't like your Avatar Image! DOWN VOTE”" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6649" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2628" RevisionGUID="79c2ee8b-fe67-4b45-b53a-915c570d36c3" CreationDate="2011-12-01T17:36:45.967" UserId="7748" Text="|discussion|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6650" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2629" RevisionGUID="19544e87-7cd5-4362-8c3b-c5ddcc850355" CreationDate="2011-12-01T17:40:00.617" UserId="47" Text="The only guidelines are in the tooltip:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful (click again to undo)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are mechanisms to detect serial down-voting, but beyond that it's everyone for themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case the down-voter justified his down-vote. If that's the way he saw the answer then that's up to him." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6651" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2630" RevisionGUID="e2b3ae69-6112-4978-80c8-e53d298bf4a2" CreationDate="2011-12-01T17:46:08.917" UserId="25476" Text="My reasoning for the downvote is simply following precedent that it was not a useful answer.  Besides the fact that you handed a lazy student his homework assignment on a silver platter, I personally just dislike single sentence answers that consist of a link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A link to an answer is not a good answer because it shows too little effort.  Links to outside sources should be used as supplementing your own answer, or provided as a comment for additional information supplementing an existing answer, or providing context to an existing question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6655" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2628" RevisionGUID="21c67993-8822-4296-be15-c983da0cd8db" CreationDate="2011-12-01T18:00:43.200" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body; edited title" Text="What are the guidelines for down-voting? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it completely arbitrary to the user down voting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask because of maple_shaft down vote of my answer on this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122734/some-who-can-help-me-program-a-game-in-c/122736#122736&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;His justification for the down-vote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am downvoting this just because you basically enabled the OP to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cheat on what was very clearly his homework assignment. All of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; code is right there for him to plagiarize.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is right? Is this fair?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is arbitrary... **Am I justified in going to his profile picking one of his answers at random and down voting for revenge?** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6656" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2628" RevisionGUID="21c67993-8822-4296-be15-c983da0cd8db" CreationDate="2011-12-01T18:00:43.200" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body; edited title" Text="Is down voting supposed to be completely arbitrary? IE: &quot;I don't like your Avatar Image! DOWN VOTE!”" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6657" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2633" RevisionGUID="28565c9e-5889-4de7-b223-90f7cdbb9a9a" CreationDate="2011-12-01T18:14:54.110" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; **What are the guidelines for down-voting?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tooltip when downvoting an answer reads: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer is not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the only guideline and it's open to individual interpretation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is it completely arbitrary to the user down voting?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, in a sense. The only actual requirement to down vote is to have 125 rep. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is right? Is this fair?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think @maple_shaft's down vote is justified. You are a 6k user, hence an experienced user, and you answered a clearly bad question with a bad answer (just a link). Of course the question doesn't give any reason for a detailed answer, but that alone should have been a strong hint that the question was very poor. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your answer could have been a comment, if you really thought that it would be helpful to point the op to the link. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Am I justified in going to his profile picking one of his answers at random and down voting for revenge?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That wouldn't be the nicest thing to do, but if you avoid a down voting pattern detectable by whatever background process catches those, no one will ever know... Go for it, but always remember that karma is a bitch." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6658" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2633" RevisionGUID="ab613897-c504-4afa-b8df-c12f3c5b475d" CreationDate="2011-12-01T18:20:31.280" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 14 characters in body" Text="&gt; **What are the guidelines for down-voting?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tooltip when downvoting an answer reads: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer is not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the only guideline and it's open to individual interpretation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is it completely arbitrary to the user down voting?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, in a sense. The only actual requirement to down vote is to have 125 rep. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is right? Is this fair?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think @maple_shaft's down vote is justified. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was extremely poor, any way you see it. You are not a Programmers noob, you are a 6k user and you should be well versed on the mechanics of the site. Your answer is of no benefit to anyone but the OP. And a &quot;just a link&quot; answer? Really?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your answer could have been a comment, if you really thought that it would be helpful to point the op to that link. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Am I justified in going to his profile picking one of his answers at random and down voting for revenge?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That wouldn't be the nicest thing to do, but if you avoid a down voting pattern detectable by whatever background process catches those, no one will ever know... Go for it, but always remember that karma is a bitch." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6659" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2629" RevisionGUID="4596a5bc-a48f-42c9-bda7-056ba1433d6d" CreationDate="2011-12-01T19:07:36.307" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="The only guidelines are in the tooltip - for a question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful (click again to undo)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or for an answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer is not useful (click again to undo)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are mechanisms to detect serial down-voting, but beyond that it's everyone for themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if someone thought your answer wasn't useful they could down-vote and not tell you why. In this case the down-voter justified his down-vote. If that's the way he saw the answer then that's up to him." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6660" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2633" RevisionGUID="28008666-80d7-43dd-abed-c6b6a8c27656" CreationDate="2011-12-01T19:38:36.617" UserId="25936" Comment="added 627 characters in body" Text="&gt; **What are the guidelines for down-voting?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tooltip when downvoting an answer reads: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer is not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the only guideline and it's open to individual interpretation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is it completely arbitrary to the user down voting?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, in a sense. The only actual requirement to down vote is to have 125 rep. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is right? Is this fair?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think @maple_shaft's down vote is justified. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was extremely poor, any way you see it. You are not a Programmers noob, you are a 6k user and you should be well versed on the mechanics of the site. Your answer is of no benefit to anyone but the OP. And a &quot;just a link&quot; answer? Really?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your answer could have been a comment, if you really thought that it would be helpful to point the op to that link. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Am I justified in going to his profile picking one of his answers at random and down voting for revenge?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That wouldn't be the nicest thing to do, but if you avoid a down voting pattern detectable by whatever background process catches those, no one will ever know... Go for it, but always remember that karma is a bitch.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Something that you may not know but it might be important: If a question has an answer, the OP can't delete it. So by providing an answer to a clearly poor question, you've robed him / her of the choice to later delete it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's something important to me, because my first question was a poor one, by any standard, but it got a few answers (and a few upvotes - it wasn't that bad). Now that I'm a little bit more familiar with the site I wish I could delete it, it's kind of pure noise. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a bit of a judgement call, but the question in question (pun intended) was clearly a very poor one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6661" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2628" RevisionGUID="0a66e4bc-29a0-41a7-a21d-b10b94283922" CreationDate="2011-12-01T20:24:01.160" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Clearer title, remove personal attack" Text="Is down-voting supposed to be completely arbitrary to the user down voting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask because I received a down vote of my answer on this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122734/some-who-can-help-me-program-a-game-in-c/122736#122736&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The justification for the down-vote was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am downvoting this just because you basically enabled the OP to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cheat on what was very clearly his homework assignment. All of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; code is right there for him to plagiarize.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this right or fair?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is arbitrary, am I justified in going to the user's profile picking one of his answers at random and down voting for revenge?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6662" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2628" RevisionGUID="0a66e4bc-29a0-41a7-a21d-b10b94283922" CreationDate="2011-12-01T20:24:01.160" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Clearer title, remove personal attack" Text="What are the guidelines for down-voting?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6663" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2633" RevisionGUID="fad9fddd-8d24-4c0f-8ca9-858bcea31dc3" CreationDate="2011-12-01T20:37:19.237" UserId="25936" Comment="added 180 characters in body" Text="&gt; **What are the guidelines for down-voting?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tooltip when downvoting an answer reads: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer is not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the only guideline and it's open to individual interpretation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is it completely arbitrary to the user down voting?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, in a sense. The only actual requirement to down vote is to have 125 rep. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is right? Is this fair?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think @maple_shaft's down vote is justified. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was extremely poor, any way you see it. You are not a Programmers noob, you are a 6k user and you should be well versed on the mechanics of the site. Your answer is of no benefit to anyone but the OP. And a &quot;just a link&quot; answer? Really?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your answer could have been a comment, if you really thought that it would be helpful to point the op to that link. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Am I justified in going to his profile picking one of his answers at random and down voting for revenge?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That wouldn't be the nicest thing to do. And the probability of you getting caught is very high and the consequences severe (I've heard that Atwood delivers the spanking personally, but it could be just a rumour). But if somehow you manage to not get caught, _no one will ever know_... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Except, of course, all of us who read the question were you advertise your intention to serially down vote...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Something that you may not know but it might be important: If a question has an answer, the OP can't delete it. So by providing an answer to a clearly poor question, you've robed him / her of the choice to later delete it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's something important to me, because my first question was a poor one, by any standard, but it got a few answers (and a few upvotes - it wasn't that bad). Now that I'm a little bit more familiar with the site I wish I could delete it, it's kind of pure noise. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a bit of a judgement call, but the question in question (pun intended) was clearly a very poor one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6664" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2634" RevisionGUID="731db6c5-3184-446f-8282-b1ef4015221c" CreationDate="2011-12-01T20:57:16.467" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I just deleted the question: it's way below our quality standards, had a tremendous amount of down-votes, and was never going to be saved. Feel free to [recalculate your reputation](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2627/8) to get your points back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mention that because when you answer a question like that, you're only setting yourself up for pain: the question's going to get closed amd deleted, and you're not doing yourself any favors by answering it before it does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, you just open yourself up for something like what happened: bad question, you leave an answer most people don't like, and now you've got a negative-scored answer on a question that really wasn't worth anyone's time of day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And your answer was nothing more than a link to an external resource: even barring the implications of cheating or what-have-you, it's not an answer. From [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * commentary on the question or other answers&#xD;&#xA;* asking another, different question&#xD;&#xA;* “thanks!” or “me too!” responses&#xD;&#xA;* exact duplicates of other answers&#xD;&#xA;* **barely more than a link to an external site**&#xD;&#xA;* not even a partial answer to the actual question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As others have said, people can vote however they like, but in reality, people should've flagged your answer as &quot;not an answer.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if you left that as a *comment*, it wouldn't have been subject to downvotes or have affected your reputation, and would've been perfectly fine. Keep that in mind in the future: if you just want to link to something that might help the OP, just do it as a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To your final question, about whether it's acceptable to revenge down-vote someone who's done you wrong: no, it's not. It'll almost certainly be caught and reversed, and you'll likely wind up getting a message from one of us moderators about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And in reality, it wasn't *just* the person who said they down-voted that did it: there were 4 people who did. At least one person had the courtesy to tell you why they did it: why retaliate against them when clearly several people felt the same way about your answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6665" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2633" RevisionGUID="79a7e302-943e-4029-8d94-06eb6622ecda" CreationDate="2011-12-01T21:33:24.573" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 19 characters in body" Text="&gt; **What are the guidelines for down-voting?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tooltip when downvoting an answer reads: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer is not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the only guideline and it's open to individual interpretation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is it completely arbitrary to the user down voting?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, in a sense. The only actual requirement to down vote is to have 125 rep. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is right? Is this fair?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think @maple_shaft's down vote is justified. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was extremely poor, any way you see it. You are not a Programmers noob, you are a 6k user and you should be well versed on the mechanics of the site. Your answer is of no benefit to anyone but the OP. And a &quot;just a link&quot; answer? Really?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your answer could have been a comment, if you really thought that it would be helpful to point the op to that link. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Am I justified in going to his profile picking one of his answers at random and down voting for revenge?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That wouldn't be the nicest thing to do. And the probability of you getting caught is very high and the consequences severe - I've heard a rumour that Atwood delivers the spanking personally.... But if somehow you manage to not get caught, _no one will ever know_... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Except, of course, all of us who read the question were you advertise your intention to serially down vote...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Something that you may not know but it might be important: If a question has an answer, the OP can't delete it. So by providing an answer to a clearly poor question, you've robed him / her of the choice to later delete it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's something important to me, because my first question was a poor one, by any standard, but it got a few answers (and a few upvotes - it wasn't that bad). Now that I'm a little bit more familiar with the site I wish I could delete it, it's kind of pure noise. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a bit of a judgement call, but the question in question (pun intended) was clearly a very poor one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6666" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2634" RevisionGUID="12238c28-41f2-4039-b345-c71c30273c9c" CreationDate="2011-12-01T22:25:43.537" UserId="25936" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="I just deleted the question: it's way below our quality standards, had a tremendous amount of down-votes, and was never going to be saved. Feel free to [recalculate your reputation](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2627/8) to get your points back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mention that because when you answer a question like that, you're only setting yourself up for pain: the question's going to get closed and deleted, and you're not doing yourself any favors by answering it before it does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, you just open yourself up for something like what happened: bad question, you leave an answer most people don't like it, and now you've got a negative-scored answer on a question that really wasn't worth anyone's time of day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And your answer was nothing more than a link to an external resource: even barring the implications of cheating or what-have-you, it's not an answer. From [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * commentary on the question or other answers&#xD;&#xA;* asking another, different question&#xD;&#xA;* “thanks!” or “me too!” responses&#xD;&#xA;* exact duplicates of other answers&#xD;&#xA;* **barely more than a link to an external site**&#xD;&#xA;* not even a partial answer to the actual question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As others have said, people can vote however they like, but in reality, people should've flagged your answer as &quot;not an answer.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if you left that as a *comment*, it wouldn't have been subject to downvotes or have affected your reputation, and would've been perfectly fine. Keep that in mind in the future: if you just want to link to something that might help the OP, just do it as a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To your final question, about whether it's acceptable to revenge down-vote someone who's done you wrong: no, it's not. It'll almost certainly be caught and reversed, and you'll likely wind up getting a message from one of us moderators about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And in reality, it wasn't *just* the person who said they down-voted that did it: there were 4 people who did. At least one person had the courtesy to tell you why they did it: why retaliate against them when clearly several people felt the same way about your answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6669" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2635" RevisionGUID="ec073494-07df-4d25-9897-07a3cb33da35" CreationDate="2011-12-02T11:52:07.197" UserId="33171" Text="### What in the Wide, Wide World of Sports is Going On Here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;TL;DR -- put images and links in the answers. If they get voted up enough, they will appear on the main site as community promotion ads.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### But whyyyyyyy?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA;- cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA;- anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. And to click on it for great justice!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unlike the Open Source ads on Meta Stack Overflow, there is no requirement for the Programmers Community Ads to be a coding project of your own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be **220 x 250 pixels**&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ads/display/2635" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6670" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2635" RevisionGUID="ec073494-07df-4d25-9897-07a3cb33da35" CreationDate="2011-12-02T11:52:07.197" UserId="33171" Text="Community Promotion Ads - 1H 2012" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6671" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2635" RevisionGUID="ec073494-07df-4d25-9897-07a3cb33da35" CreationDate="2011-12-02T11:52:07.197" UserId="33171" Text="|discussion|community-ads|promotion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6672" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="2635" RevisionGUID="ec073494-07df-4d25-9897-07a3cb33da35" CreationDate="2011-12-02T11:52:07.197" UserId="33171" />
  <row Id="6673" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2636" RevisionGUID="25de3c8c-11cf-4461-baf3-cb4b360537bd" CreationDate="2011-12-02T17:46:42.623" UserDisplayName="user39685" Text="I gave a [bad answer][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - flame-bait quote&#xD;&#xA; - mostly off-topic&#xD;&#xA; - originally didn't even answer the actual question (now it kinda does)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is, **how bad is this answer?**  Is it bad enough that it should be deleted, or should it just be downvoted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A point in favor of deletion is that the answer itself may be flame-bait; it's drawn a few *unhappy* comments (which seem to have been deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just want to emphasize that the answer was actually intended to be helpful, and not rude or offensive.  I sincerely apologize that it missed its mark.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122788/is-this-a-correct-situation-to-use-a-constant/122793#122793" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6674" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2636" RevisionGUID="25de3c8c-11cf-4461-baf3-cb4b360537bd" CreationDate="2011-12-02T17:46:42.623" UserDisplayName="user39685" Text="What to do with a bad answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6675" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2636" RevisionGUID="25de3c8c-11cf-4461-baf3-cb4b360537bd" CreationDate="2011-12-02T17:46:42.623" UserDisplayName="user39685" Text="|discussion|answers|answer-quality|deleted-answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6676" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2636" RevisionGUID="b437302d-1d9c-49e0-828d-f610251179b1" CreationDate="2011-12-02T17:56:16.333" UserDisplayName="user39685" Comment="edited title" Text="Bad answer:  so bad that it should be deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6677" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2637" RevisionGUID="f609197b-1eaa-4393-ac08-09e5f426b7ad" CreationDate="2011-12-02T18:28:31.123" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The core of the question, once you get past the stated problems with the teacher was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is was my code. Someone said X is wrong, but I think X is right. What's the correct way to do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather than answering that question, you addressed whether or not it's okay to question your teacher. Even if that was the focus of the question, it's off-topic here: our expertise is not in how deal with teachers, it's in software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I do agree with the votes you've received: your answer is not useful in solving the actual problem (determining which code is correct). It hasn't been flagged, but *had* it been flagged as &quot;not an answer&quot;, I would've commented asking you to address the actual question or risk having the answer deleted. (Consider me asking you to do that now :))" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6678" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2636" RevisionGUID="514ecb70-382a-49ff-9c41-1c178858195d" CreationDate="2011-12-02T19:06:17.627" UserDisplayName="user39685" Comment="added 28 characters in body" Text="I gave a [bad answer][1], because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - it had a flame-bait quote&#xD;&#xA; - it was mostly off-topic&#xD;&#xA; - it originally didn't even answer the actual question (now it kinda does)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is, **how bad is this answer?**  Is it bad enough that it should be deleted, or should it just be downvoted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A point in favor of deletion is that the answer itself may be flame-bait; it's drawn a few *unhappy* comments (which seem to have been deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just want to emphasize that the answer was actually intended to be helpful, and not rude or offensive.  I sincerely apologize that it missed its mark.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122788/is-this-a-correct-situation-to-use-a-constant/122793#122793" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6679" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2636" RevisionGUID="cf1aa556-35f6-441c-b39a-436c28b8e7f8" CreationDate="2011-12-02T19:11:20.680" UserDisplayName="user39685" Comment="emphasized question" Text="I gave a [bad answer][1], because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - it had a flame-bait quote&#xD;&#xA; - it was mostly off-topic&#xD;&#xA; - it originally didn't even answer the actual question (now it kinda does)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is, how bad is this answer?  **Is it bad enough that it should be deleted, or should it just be downvoted?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A point in favor of deletion is that the answer itself may be flame-bait; it's drawn a few *unhappy* comments (which seem to have been deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just want to emphasize that the answer was actually intended to be helpful, and not rude or offensive.  I sincerely apologize that it missed its mark.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122788/is-this-a-correct-situation-to-use-a-constant/122793#122793" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6680" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2636" RevisionGUID="936751a7-febd-4858-802c-81cae3b48b61" CreationDate="2011-12-02T19:29:02.670" UserDisplayName="user39685" Comment="added 11 characters in body" Text="I gave a [bad answer][1]. It was bad because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - it had a flame-bait quote&#xD;&#xA; - it was mostly off-topic&#xD;&#xA; - it originally didn't even answer the actual question (now it kinda does)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is, how bad is this answer?  **Is it bad enough that it should be deleted, or should it just be downvoted?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A point in favor of deletion is that the answer itself may be flame-bait; it's drawn a few *unhappy* comments (which seem to have been deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just want to emphasize that the answer was actually intended to be helpful, and not rude or offensive.  I sincerely apologize that it missed its mark.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122788/is-this-a-correct-situation-to-use-a-constant/122793#122793" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6681" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2638" RevisionGUID="b48b7626-a573-431a-a115-0eb9ebb50bc1" CreationDate="2011-12-02T20:58:48.947" UserId="20065" Text="I have seen [this request][1], but the [tag:holy-war]is still there. Therefore I guess it should be somehow used. My question is in what kind of questions should that tag be used?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1702/blacklist-holy-war" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6682" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2638" RevisionGUID="b48b7626-a573-431a-a115-0eb9ebb50bc1" CreationDate="2011-12-02T20:58:48.947" UserId="20065" Text="What is a point of the holy war tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6683" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2638" RevisionGUID="b48b7626-a573-431a-a115-0eb9ebb50bc1" CreationDate="2011-12-02T20:58:48.947" UserId="20065" Text="|support|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6684" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2639" RevisionGUID="528aa09a-2417-4946-8dce-3bad1e2d755e" CreationDate="2011-12-02T21:47:53.267" UserId="63" Text="Y'know the kind of question where there's no real answer, everyone just states a preference, and then argues vehemently that it's the One True Way? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Endianness is a holy war of sorts][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They're great fun of course. Nothing beats layin' a good beating on those fools who think curly braces should be put at the ends of lines to save space. But rarely is anything accomplished or truly answered. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see a question that matches this description, don't tag it [tag:holy-war] - just close it / delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/O6vBA.jpg&#xD;&#xA;       &quot;And if you break your eggs on the side, there is just no hope&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6685" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2635" RevisionGUID="ddff4bf0-de70-4f95-811c-d748a51cb869" CreationDate="2011-12-02T23:26:41.490" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|community-ads|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6686" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2314" RevisionGUID="31615930-b84d-4093-9cab-3b5e6ad87696" CreationDate="2011-12-02T23:26:48.837" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|conferences|site-promotion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6691" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2635" RevisionGUID="e5110a2d-e660-4982-ba82-fdc9dbf72a69" CreationDate="2011-12-03T05:23:21.630" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/142836297151676416" />
  <row Id="6693" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2641" RevisionGUID="920ad010-6350-4945-99cc-1cbc49128fe5" CreationDate="2011-12-03T20:11:31.470" UserId="30062" Text="I post an answer to [Adding components to JPanels dynamically during runtime][1], but before or during migration this post was deleted or lost, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and this message isn't accesible for me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;can moderator answer ma what's happened&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8368717/adding-components-to-jpanels-dynamically-during-runtime&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ze62R.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6694" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2641" RevisionGUID="920ad010-6350-4945-99cc-1cbc49128fe5" CreationDate="2011-12-03T20:11:31.470" UserId="30062" Text="missing my answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6695" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2641" RevisionGUID="920ad010-6350-4945-99cc-1cbc49128fe5" CreationDate="2011-12-03T20:11:31.470" UserId="30062" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6696" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2642" RevisionGUID="9d4aaf0d-70f5-48fb-825c-ca27627fa863" CreationDate="2011-12-03T20:16:00.850" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="You should be able to read the entire comment by going directly to the [deleted post](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/123093/8). Your post was deleted prior to migration as it didn't directly answer the question but was a critique on the supplied code. Stack Exchange isn't a discussion board: if you don't have an direct answer, please don't use the answer section to add commentary. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a direct answer to the question now, feel free to post it on [the migrated question on Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8368717/adding-components-to-jpanels-dynamically-during-runtime)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6697" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2641" RevisionGUID="69398a57-0198-4a71-9fa5-ebba6a703efe" CreationDate="2011-12-03T20:16:35.810" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="Where did my answer to a now-migrated question go?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6698" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2641" RevisionGUID="69398a57-0198-4a71-9fa5-ebba6a703efe" CreationDate="2011-12-03T20:16:35.810" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|support|deleted-answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6699" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2314" RevisionGUID="5fe6ef28-b130-487e-801c-bc3d824763b4" CreationDate="2011-12-04T06:18:55.863" UserId="226" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:226,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Anna Lear&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="6700" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2643" RevisionGUID="22db82b5-9ae3-4e8b-b20d-8b6977d361cc" CreationDate="2011-12-04T21:50:18.210" UserId="7748" Text="[![Crazy on tap][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/WK7qG.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://crazyontap.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6701" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="2643" RevisionGUID="3124ceed-7f2c-4cbb-bc70-ef8510acbbad" CreationDate="2011-12-04T21:50:18.210" UserId="7748" />
  <row Id="6702" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2644" RevisionGUID="1b8bcfbe-c5df-4d5e-b774-c3022ebb4fb7" CreationDate="2011-12-05T19:55:25.880" UserId="1973" Text="It ought to have been a self-referential best-of sort of tag for those who know that what they're getting in to is the stuff that will raise the most possible eyebrows and generate the maximum amount of vitriol.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;AKA flamebait. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance, I asked [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9521/what-constitutes-a-dead-programming-language) back when programmer.SE had a spark of tempered genius (that, by the way, was never in any way headed toward programmers Reddit or 4Chan or anything web-despicable no matter what they tell ya).  I asked it because I was waiting for someone to say something cruel about Delphi and then have an excuse to tell them why they're wrong.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some may say that's trolling, but as a [Catechist][1], I can tell you that sometimes all you can do is ask leading questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://christianity.stackexchange.com/users/4/peter-turner" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6703" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2645" RevisionGUID="914583e4-daea-411f-919d-96f9bfbe1f50" CreationDate="2011-12-05T20:10:55.997" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="I've [noticed][1] [several][2] [questions][3] along the lines of `What did &lt;Person&gt; mean when he said X`. The questions are asking for some explanation of the quote. They seem a bit trivial (and in the case of Python seem more like an English question). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can these questions truly be answered? Unless there is an interview or blog post where the speaker explains himself, wouldn't any answer be merely speculation? Are questions of this nature appropriate for the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53517/what-does-tim-peters-mean-by-complex-is-better-than-complicated&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92126/what-did-bjarne-stroustrup-mean-by-his-characterization-of-c-and-c&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10998/what-does-the-jamie-zawinskis-quotation-about-regular-expressions-mean" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6704" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2645" RevisionGUID="914583e4-daea-411f-919d-96f9bfbe1f50" CreationDate="2011-12-05T20:10:55.997" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="Are &quot;What did &lt;Person&gt; mean&quot; Question on Topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6705" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2645" RevisionGUID="914583e4-daea-411f-919d-96f9bfbe1f50" CreationDate="2011-12-05T20:10:55.997" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6706" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2646" RevisionGUID="bceb49fd-0860-4574-a562-f80bfd9f9b75" CreationDate="2011-12-05T20:19:53.743" UserId="6591" Text="&gt; *Can these questions truly be answered?*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes. Many of our users are not native-English speakers. Many of our users are new to programming and have heard the sayings but not where they came from. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6707" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2645" RevisionGUID="856c2d48-b355-4773-84e8-c32ee8fbb862" CreationDate="2011-12-05T20:21:09.120" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="Are &quot;what did &lt;person&gt; mean&quot; questions on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6708" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2645" RevisionGUID="856c2d48-b355-4773-84e8-c32ee8fbb862" CreationDate="2011-12-05T20:21:09.120" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6709" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2647" RevisionGUID="05c7eca8-0752-4f2a-9217-31aceddfb130" CreationDate="2011-12-05T20:39:49.117" UserId="1204" Text="They are on-topic, *[provided they meet the six guidelines.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example of a marginal &quot;What does this mean&quot; question, demonstrating no research effort:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What does &quot;Premature optimization is the root of all evil&quot; mean?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of good alternative questions, meeting the six guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33020/when-is-optimization-not-premature-and-therefore-not-evil&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45259/is-premature-optimization-always-bad&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80084/is-premature-optimization-really-the-root-of-all-evil&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79938/what-optimizations-are-premature" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6710" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2648" RevisionGUID="38e38637-8682-47ff-b0ed-8e41742ef1aa" CreationDate="2011-12-05T20:44:00.677" UserId="22493" Text="I think that if the question is essentially about the meaning of the words themselves, i.e. the use of the English language, then the question should be on [English Language &amp; Usage][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is more about the *meaning* of a quotation as a whole and the concepts underlying that quotation then (in the case of programming related question) [Programmers][2] would be a better place for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To my mind, [What does Tim Peters mean by “complex is better than complicated”?][3] seems to tend towards being an English language question, whereas [What did Bill Gosper mean by saying a data structure is just a stupid programming language?][4] seems to be a deeper question about the meaning in a programming context. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thinking of it another way, if the question can be answered by just explaining the meaning of the words (it is not subjective) then it it is a good option for [EL&amp;U][5], otherwise it is probably better off handled as a [subjective question][6] in the most appropriate stack exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://english.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/53517/22493&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/123390/22493&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://english.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6711" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2649" RevisionGUID="0a18f3a2-5cc9-49cd-a03f-5741038eae7d" CreationDate="2011-12-05T20:44:18.040" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I think these questions are *just* barely on-topic, and are definitely at the bottom end of the quality spectrum. My particular issue with them is that they don't explain what's wrong or what the problem is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider on Stack Overflow when someone pastes a wall of code and says, &quot;This isn't working. Can someone tell me what's wrong?&quot; Everyone's first comment, provided the question isn't immediately closed as &quot;not a real question&quot;, is &quot;What have you tried? What specifically is giving you trouble?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Pasting a quotation and saying &quot;What does this mean?&quot; is the same thing. What, specifically, about the quotation is indecipherable? What have you found so far about the subject? What are you looking to get out of knowing the answer to the question? Give us *something* to work with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is some value in knowing what popular quotations about software development mean: programmers like to invoke them as shibboleths in documentation and discussions. But without *some* context, these questions leave the door wide open to arm-chair philosophizing about what the author could've meant. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6712" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2650" RevisionGUID="d5a4c4cb-1641-40da-9678-d588ea97cbf7" CreationDate="2011-12-05T20:47:11.507" UserId="4" Text="Aside from deleting or ignoring spam messages, any recommendations on dealing with? Does the Stack Exchange team track this activity somehow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I suggest not going to the domain name mentioned below. I'm not sure what the content is or if the site is safe, in terms of content or malware.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This particular email came from elise@paydayloansresource.net, probably from scraping my profile. I've never gotten any kind of spam directed at me regarding a Stack Exchange site before, only legitimate emails about questions/answers on a couple of sites, and deleting messages like this and dealing with spam is fairly easy in Gmail.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hello,  I am emailing you regarding the possibility of submitting a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; guest post for your site, programmers.stackexchange.com. I noticed&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that you have accepted guest posts in the past and I would like to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; write one for you as well. If your site has submission criteria for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; guest posts, I apologize that I missed it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please know that I am willing to write an article on any topic you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; choose. In exchange, I only ask that you allow me to place a discrete&#xD;&#xA;&gt; link to my website in my bio at the bottom of the post.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I should also clarify that no work is required on your part. Once I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; complete the article, then you can review it to make sure that it fits&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your website's style, content, and quality.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you would like to see some samples of past articles I have written,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or if you have any questions or concerns regarding this matter please&#xD;&#xA;&gt; don't hesitate to email me. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thanks and make it a great day! Elise Brown Blogger | Owner Payday&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Loans Resource" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6713" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2650" RevisionGUID="d5a4c4cb-1641-40da-9678-d588ea97cbf7" CreationDate="2011-12-05T20:47:11.507" UserId="4" Text="Getting some typical blog spam via email. Any suggestions from the team, other than to ignore it/flag it in my email client?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6714" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2650" RevisionGUID="d5a4c4cb-1641-40da-9678-d588ea97cbf7" CreationDate="2011-12-05T20:47:11.507" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|support|spam|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6715" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2651" RevisionGUID="9d74e8bb-8481-44bd-8775-1631b73d6cd3" CreationDate="2011-12-05T21:12:58.093" UserId="226" Text="It looks like you're exposing your email address in the &quot;About Me&quot; field in your profile. That's available to anyone to use as they see fit, which unfortunately includes scraping and spam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A [similar case](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/106943/spam-from-tc-vectors-jeff-please-protect-our-email-addresses-from-spambots) turned up on Meta Stack Overflow a couple months ago, and the general consensus there was that Stack Exchange protects the &quot;email&quot; field of your profile, but there's not much they can do about publicly displayed email in the &quot;About&quot; section.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting [Jeff Atwood's answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/107334/155160):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;There is absolutely no way I can think of that we'd be exposing email addresses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;As others have noted, be careful about putting your email in your &quot;About Me&quot; field if you are concerned about unwanted email contact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't *think* there's any data being collected on the address scrapers, but I can't say for sure since I'm not an SE employee." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6716" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2599" RevisionGUID="ce8952c4-7d4a-49ed-9d2e-f25c6d993e6a" CreationDate="2011-12-05T21:53:27.753" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 1 characters in body; edited tags" Text="A question was recently asked (now closed) that requested data bout the prevalence of cowboy coding and its affect on the apps markets:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/121953/what-data-is-available-regarding-cowboy-coding&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've had a few other questions around the same request as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Open&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60282/has-there-been-research-into-programming-linguistics&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87851/is-there-any-research-out-there-on-geographic-differences-in-work-environments&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108735/schemes-to-resolve-deadlocks&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60439/programming-languages-and-credible-data-on-market-conditions&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92580/are-there-any-studies-that-correlate-time-spent-coding-and-productivity&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91758/debugging-facts-and-statistics&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/109615/what-factors-can-make-mid-project-join-successful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122326/survival-rate-of-open-source-projects&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/121953/what-data-is-available-regarding-cowboy-coding&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35501/non-english-based-programming-languages&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Closed and deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Are there any languages, frameworks, techniques, or any kind of research designed specifically for organic growth of large systems over time?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99102/are-there-any-languages-frameworks-techniques-or-any-kind-of-research-designe)&#xD;&#xA;* [What motivates students to choose a CS/IT track?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55062/what-motivates-students-to-choose-a-cs-it-track)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is IT/programming the profession with the least happy people?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14299/why-is-it-programming-the-profession-with-the-least-happy-people)&#xD;&#xA;* [How many developers should a software company have?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108991/how-many-developers-should-a-software-company-have)&#xD;&#xA;* [Programming can cause a decrease in spelling and grammar skills?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50863/programming-can-cause-a-decrease-in-spelling-and-grammar-skills)&#xD;&#xA;* [Which specific programming activities do women, on average, perform better than men?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57420/which-specific-programming-activities-do-women-on-average-perform-better-than)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So there's a bit of an inconsistency in how have beenn dealt with. Are these on-topic? If so, why? If not, why not?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6717" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2599" RevisionGUID="ce8952c4-7d4a-49ed-9d2e-f25c6d993e6a" CreationDate="2011-12-05T21:53:27.753" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 1 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6718" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2599" RevisionGUID="0306dc85-97e2-4066-bcb9-96c11b582b9b" CreationDate="2011-12-05T22:07:55.407" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6719" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2528" RevisionGUID="d334461e-7bd2-4301-96c9-bb08ebd684ff" CreationDate="2011-12-05T23:55:04.843" UserId="44" Comment="added 289 characters in body" Text="The FAQ reports the following sentence:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I take it means you should not ask a question just for curiosity, but only if it is pertinent with an actual problem you are facing, and trying to resolve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ also says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means that if the question is too generic, the question should be avoided. Make the question less generic, and more scoped." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6720" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2528" RevisionGUID="61c1acb0-8a6e-4788-9058-d01c186c5edc" CreationDate="2011-12-06T00:04:38.900" UserId="44" Comment="expanded the answer" Text="The FAQ reports the following sentence:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I take it means you should not ask a question just for curiosity, but only if it is pertinent with an actual problem you are facing, and trying to resolve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ also says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means that if the question is too generic, the question should be avoided. Make the question less generic, and more scoped. The more details you add to your questions, the better it is.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, if you are asking about a method to do something, and you say you want to avoid a specific method, you should report why you want to avoid the specific method, and which other methods you eventually used; details about why you discarded the methods you tried, or the reason why you find them not helpful for you.  &#xD;&#xA;To make a comparison with cooking, your question should not be &quot;How do I prepare a cake?&quot; but &quot;How do I prepare a St. Honoré Cake like the one I have eaten when I was in Paris?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6721" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2652" RevisionGUID="bf6c57ed-9fb5-42ed-9a8a-d208c9411074" CreationDate="2011-12-06T06:36:30.930" UserId="25936" Text="Couple of tricks:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. If you put a + in your email address, gmail ignores everything after it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    So if you use `actualemail+somethingelse@gmail.com` in your profile, emails will still reach your actual email account, but gmail will keep `actualemail+somethingelse@gmail.com` in the `to` field, so you can easily identify that the email came via your SO profile. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Set up a secondary gmail account just for your SO profile and link it with your primary account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of the tricks will actually help you fight spam, but you'll be able to identify its source. That said, I don't think there's anything that the SO team can do to protect our emails - or any site owner when users opt to publicise their emails. But they should take action for the email you've received now that you've shared it, since it's obvious that your email was taken from your Programmers SE profile.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6722" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2653" RevisionGUID="dd8b86a4-81d6-482a-893c-5bcad5b36c8b" CreationDate="2011-12-06T22:40:49.150" UserId="7748" Text="[This][1] Question Should be tagged as a SQL question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should there be an &quot;Edit question Tags Privilege&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Is there currently one?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/123630/how-can-i-improve-this-set-of-queries-in-php" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6723" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2653" RevisionGUID="dd8b86a4-81d6-482a-893c-5bcad5b36c8b" CreationDate="2011-12-06T22:40:49.150" UserId="7748" Text="Should there be an &quot;Edit question Tags Privilege&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6724" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2653" RevisionGUID="dd8b86a4-81d6-482a-893c-5bcad5b36c8b" CreationDate="2011-12-06T22:40:49.150" UserId="7748" Text="|feature-request|privlages|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6725" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2654" RevisionGUID="b67a9810-9e2b-4854-94dd-fcb171a28e23" CreationDate="2011-12-06T22:42:53.360" UserId="226" Text="You should be able to edit tags by editing the post or by clicking the &quot;edit tags&quot; link that shows up when you mouse over the tags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6726" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2653" RevisionGUID="f25e8422-a142-4c42-b064-268f9eb7fd62" CreationDate="2011-12-06T22:43:04.047" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|privileges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6727" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2654" RevisionGUID="6308c02e-a529-4cde-8ef4-2723c0b031bd" CreationDate="2011-12-06T22:50:06.290" UserId="226" Comment="added 85 characters in body" Text="You should be able to edit tags by editing the post or by clicking the &quot;edit tags&quot; link that shows up when you mouse over the tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/371Nm.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6728" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2645" RevisionGUID="52b2eb9c-6bba-4939-8f6a-d90acaca6250" CreationDate="2011-12-07T05:23:40.060" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/144285925197889536" />
  <row Id="6729" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2655" RevisionGUID="907e8e56-af5f-4a93-aea5-4652924d86c3" CreationDate="2011-12-07T06:41:23.137" UserId="92" Text="The question [What hurts maintainability?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/123293/what-hurts-maintainability) recently got closed as being not constructive. In the comments two reasons were suggested:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The fact that it has 18 answers is an indication that it's not constructive.&#xD;&#xA; 2. wound up being a honey pot for creating a list of possible things that can hurt maintainability: lists aren't really what we do here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I'd like to know is why is it different from [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has even more answers, and pretty much invites the users to create lists, yet it also clearly gave people lots of value for their time, and the maintainability question seems to have done the same, judging by the votes. I personally don't see a good reason to close it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6730" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2655" RevisionGUID="907e8e56-af5f-4a93-aea5-4652924d86c3" CreationDate="2011-12-07T06:41:23.137" UserId="92" Text="Why was the maintainability question closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6731" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2655" RevisionGUID="907e8e56-af5f-4a93-aea5-4652924d86c3" CreationDate="2011-12-07T06:41:23.137" UserId="92" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6732" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2656" RevisionGUID="1cf98ba6-3508-4e1d-b508-3b76750b7783" CreationDate="2011-12-07T07:13:37.367" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="If you'll bear with me, there are two different answers: the official answer and the realistic answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The official answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no difference between the two questions: the web developer question *should* be closed. We originally had a lock reason for this, but this was removed and [we were told to close as not constructive any question that started to amass too many answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question). The web developer question [*was* closed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/46716/revisions), but was later reopened by the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it seems pointless to keep closing a question that can easily be reversed—even though that's the official policy—we haven't bothered to re-close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The realistic answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The value in the Stack Exchange engine is that, for every question, there's going to be an answer that floats to the top. That answer has been vetted by the community (through voting) or by the asker (though accepting) as being the correct answer. So, when a visitor comes along in the future and has the same problem, they can just read the top answer and have their problem solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so the major difference between the maintainability question and the web developer question is that in the web developer question, [there is one answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/46760/8) that compiled all the knowledge from every other answer, effectively providing a definitive and comprehensive answer. You don't need to read any of the other answers because the first one covers them all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, despite the question essentially being a poll, one answer is so damn good we overlook the question's other flaws. It's a rarity: an exception to the rule. [One out of every hundred or so similar questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/) has the community actually take the time to meticulously maintain such an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But 99 times out of 100, we just get a poll, where every answer just lists one small piece of the puzzle. If you wanted to even begin to understand the full answer, you have to read all the answers. But since none of the answers actually fully solve the problem, all the things we cherish on Stack Exchange—community vetting and voting—are meaningless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everybody's answer is equally valid and invalid at the same time because there's no way to judge what the correct answer *would* be: if you have an opinion about the subject, you technically provided an answer. [Not really ideal at all](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), and not really [what Stack Exchange is about](http://stackexchange.com/about).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what the maintainability question turned into. Despite ignoring early flags and putting up a post notice, we still got junky answers we had to delete and nobody stepped up to provide a comprehensive answer. So when 3 members of the community voted to close and we got a flag pointing out what it turned into, we closed it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Moving forward&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thankfully, there's a really easy workaround for getting questions like this to be on-topic and avoid the trappings of being labeled a poll and amassing a bunch of answers that don't quite cover everything: just provide a specific problem the answers can be tested against:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm working on project A, where I'm trying to do B. I want to make sure that when I pass it off to my client or the next developer, that all my bases are covered with respect to C. How can I make sure my project A is maintainable for the next guy?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Straightforward, to the point, and more importantly, testable. Someone can look at the situation, read the answers, and judge whether any specific answer actually helps the situation.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6733" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2656" RevisionGUID="4653acb5-47e1-47a6-860d-7c689365139a" CreationDate="2011-12-07T07:21:50.810" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 818 characters in body" Text="If you'll bear with me, there are two different answers: the official answer and the realistic answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The official answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no difference between the two questions: the web developer question *should* be closed. We originally had a lock reason for this, but this was removed and [we were told to close as not constructive any question that started to amass too many answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question). The web developer question [*was* closed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/46716/revisions), but was later reopened by the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it seems pointless to keep closing a question that can easily be reversed—even though that's the official policy—we haven't bothered to re-close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The realistic answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The value in the Stack Exchange engine is that, for every question, there's going to be an answer that floats to the top. That answer has been vetted by the community (through voting) or by the asker (though accepting) as being the correct answer. So, when a visitor comes along in the future and has the same problem, they can just read the top answer and have their problem solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so the major difference between the maintainability question and the web developer question is that in the web developer question, [there is one answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/46760/8) that compiled all the knowledge from every other answer, effectively providing a definitive and comprehensive answer. You don't need to read any of the other answers because the first one covers them all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, despite the question essentially being a poll, one answer is so damn good we overlook the question's other flaws. It's a rarity: an exception to the rule. [One out of every hundred or so similar questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/) has the community actually take the time to meticulously maintain such an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But 99 times out of 100, we just get a poll, where every answer just lists one small piece of the puzzle. If you wanted to even begin to understand the full answer, you have to read all the answers. But since none of the answers actually fully solve the problem, all the things we cherish on Stack Exchange—community vetting and voting—are meaningless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everybody's answer is equally valid and invalid at the same time because there's no way to judge what the correct answer *would* be: if you have an opinion about the subject, you technically provided an answer. [Not really ideal at all](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), and not really [what Stack Exchange is about](http://stackexchange.com/about).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what the maintainability question turned into. Despite ignoring early flags and putting up a post notice, we still got junky answers we had to delete and nobody stepped up to provide a comprehensive answer. So when 3 members of the community voted to close and we got a flag pointing out what it turned into, we closed it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Moving forward&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thankfully, there's a really easy workaround for getting questions like this to be on-topic and avoid the trappings of being labeled a poll and amassing a bunch of answers that don't quite cover everything: just provide a specific problem the answers can be tested against:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm working on project A, where I'm trying to do B. I want to make sure that when I pass it off to my client or the next developer, that all my bases are covered with respect to C. How can I make sure my project A is maintainable for the next guy?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Straightforward, to the point, and more importantly, testable. Someone can look at the situation, read the answers, and judge whether any specific answer actually helps the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While this would've been helpful to prevent the state it's in now, what we have now is a ton of answers that don't really fully answer the question. We can fix that, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question automatically gets converted to community wiki (after getting 15 answers), it's *supposed* to be a not-so-subtle hint from the engine to the community that existing answers should be improved and/or consolidated: once a question goes community wiki, nobody gets any reputation anymore and post ownership gets heavily downplayed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So while none of the 18 answers fully solve the problem, if we could create one comprehensive answer from all of them, then we'd be cooking with gas. If someone would like to do this, feel free to flag any answers that have been incorporated into the comprehensive answer and we'll delete them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6734" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2655" RevisionGUID="663fd8b7-45f1-42f0-93e5-eb8be8e795c5" CreationDate="2011-12-07T07:22:11.903" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6735" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2656" RevisionGUID="c502daa2-ea39-478c-9f8e-53b1df1774b8" CreationDate="2011-12-07T07:27:49.513" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 36 characters in body" Text="If you'll bear with me, there are two different answers: the official answer and the realistic answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The official answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no difference between the two questions: the web developer question *should* be closed. We originally had a lock reason for this, but this was removed and [we were told to close as not constructive any question that started to amass too many answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question). The web developer question [*was* closed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/46716/revisions), but was later reopened by the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it seems pointless to keep closing a question that can easily be reversed—even though that's the official policy—we haven't bothered to re-close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The realistic answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The value in the Stack Exchange engine is that, for every question, there's going to be an answer that floats to the top. That answer has been vetted by the community (through voting) or by the asker (though accepting) as being the correct answer. So, when a visitor comes along in the future and has the same problem, they can just read the top answer and have their problem solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so the major difference between the maintainability question and the web developer question is that in the web developer question, [there is one answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/46760/8) that compiled all the knowledge from every other answer, effectively providing a definitive and comprehensive answer. You don't need to read any of the other answers because the first one covers them all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, despite the question essentially being a poll, one answer is so damn good we overlook the question's other flaws. It's a rarity: an exception to the rule. [One out of every hundred or so similar questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/) has the community actually take the time to meticulously maintain such an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But 99 times out of 100, we just get a poll, where every answer just lists one small piece of the puzzle. If you wanted to even begin to understand the full answer, you have to read all the answers. But since none of the answers actually fully solve the problem, all the things we cherish on Stack Exchange—community vetting and voting—are meaningless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everybody's answer is equally valid and invalid at the same time because there's no way to judge what the correct answer *would* be: if you have an opinion about the subject, you technically provided an answer. [Not really ideal at all](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), and not really [what Stack Exchange is about](http://stackexchange.com/about).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what the maintainability question turned into. Despite deferring early flags and putting up a post notice to help keep the question on point, we still got junky answers we had to delete and nobody stepped up to provide a comprehensive answer. So when 3 members of the community voted to close and we got a flag pointing out what it turned into, we closed it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Moving forward&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thankfully, there's a really easy workaround for getting questions like this to be on-topic and avoid the trappings of being labeled a poll and amassing a bunch of answers that don't quite cover everything: just provide a specific problem the answers can be tested against:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm working on project A, where I'm trying to do B. I want to make sure that when I pass it off to my client or the next developer, that all my bases are covered with respect to C. How can I make sure my project A is maintainable for the next guy?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Straightforward, to the point, and more importantly, testable. Someone can look at the situation, read the answers, and judge whether any specific answer actually helps the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, while this would've been helpful to prevent the state it's in now, what we have now is a ton of answers that don't really fully answer the question. We can fix that, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question automatically gets converted to community wiki (after getting 15 answers), it's *supposed* to be a not-so-subtle hint from the engine to the community that existing answers should be improved and/or consolidated: once a question goes community wiki, nobody gets any reputation anymore and post ownership gets heavily downplayed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So while none of the 18 answers fully solve the problem, if we could create one comprehensive answer from all of them, then we'd be cooking with gas. If someone would like to do this, feel free to flag any answers that have been incorporated into the comprehensive answer and we'll delete them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6740" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2658" RevisionGUID="417e9196-4cec-44eb-a9e7-04c9c6d9f358" CreationDate="2011-12-07T10:15:28.360" UserId="25936" Text="Posts I've already voted on are not marked as such (red arrow) in the [review page][1]. It's more of an annoyance than a bug, if I try to vote again I get the &quot;already voted, vote is locked&quot; notification and the vote arrow becomes red. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's a waste of a second, and those are extremely valuable these days... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6741" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2658" RevisionGUID="417e9196-4cec-44eb-a9e7-04c9c6d9f358" CreationDate="2011-12-07T10:15:28.360" UserId="25936" Text="Review page doesn't indicate already voted posts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6742" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2658" RevisionGUID="417e9196-4cec-44eb-a9e7-04c9c6d9f358" CreationDate="2011-12-07T10:15:28.360" UserId="25936" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6743" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2658" RevisionGUID="1d9092c0-b21f-408e-a817-3cc66b9065dd" CreationDate="2011-12-07T10:20:29.840" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6744" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2658" RevisionGUID="4f2481d3-ab33-4289-bd29-fe477de96aef" CreationDate="2011-12-07T10:24:18.673" UserId="25936" Comment="added 38 characters in body" Text="Posts I've already voted on through normal browsing of the site, are not marked as such (red arrow) in the [review page][1]. It's more of an annoyance than a bug, if I try to vote again I get the &quot;already voted, vote is locked&quot; notification and the vote arrow becomes red. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's a waste of a second, and those are extremely valuable these days... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6746" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2635" RevisionGUID="9a6125cd-f9cb-44ad-b806-02cd67e04159" CreationDate="2011-12-07T14:49:17.283" UserId="33171" Comment="Changing to a yearly cycle~" Text="Community Promotion Ads - 2012" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6755" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2660" RevisionGUID="4dbd6a42-53fc-48a2-9c68-ded022d21c19" CreationDate="2011-12-08T01:53:22.600" UserId="7748" Text="Why would you migrate a Meta Question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6odtQ.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6756" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2660" RevisionGUID="4dbd6a42-53fc-48a2-9c68-ded022d21c19" CreationDate="2011-12-08T01:53:22.600" UserId="7748" Text="Why would you migrate a Meta Question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6757" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2660" RevisionGUID="4dbd6a42-53fc-48a2-9c68-ded022d21c19" CreationDate="2011-12-08T01:53:22.600" UserId="7748" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6758" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2661" RevisionGUID="d018e80b-a1af-480a-bae9-a623bb56d2e4" CreationDate="2011-12-08T02:01:31.780" UserId="30278" Text="I have noticed recently several questions about &quot;architects&quot; and &quot;architectures&quot;, which is just fine! Except the term &quot;Architecture&quot; covers a vast range of activities from deciding whether the Private Banking division should have its own IT department, to specifying the make, model and configuration of a network switch in the Springfield branch.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the architecture questions would answer themselves if they used the correct terminology. For example the vague &quot;Should an Architect specify network switches&quot; becomes &quot;Should an Infrastructure Architect specify network switches&quot; which more or less answers itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IS it worth adding some guidelines in the FAQ to improve the quality of such questions and allow for more precise answers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6759" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2661" RevisionGUID="d018e80b-a1af-480a-bae9-a623bb56d2e4" CreationDate="2011-12-08T02:01:31.780" UserId="30278" Text="How can we encourage posters to be more specific about &quot;Architecture&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6760" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2661" RevisionGUID="d018e80b-a1af-480a-bae9-a623bb56d2e4" CreationDate="2011-12-08T02:01:31.780" UserId="30278" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6761" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2662" RevisionGUID="7e879f72-75b8-4ec1-9f27-3dce3c41a7bd" CreationDate="2011-12-08T02:45:52.663" UserId="226" Text="If the question applies to the network as a whole it's sometimes better to migrate it to Meta Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, though, I'm really not sure why it got migrated. There's been a few bugs related to the reputation display over the last couple weeks, so maybe that's it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6762" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2663" RevisionGUID="fb144dc6-a3e6-4820-b903-380d7d646350" CreationDate="2011-12-08T02:52:57.183" UserId="226" Text="Network switches are probably a poor example. Programmers is a site about software development, so architecture here refers specifically to [application architecture](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_architecture). Things like setting up an IT department or deciding on a network topology are entirely off-topic. The latter might find a home at [ServerFault](http://serverfault.com) or [SuperUser](http://superuser.com), while the former could potentially land on [Answers OnStartups](http://answers.onstartups.com) (though I'm not 100% sure).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to come down to determining what makes a good question and applying that to the architecture topic. The same guidelines apply there as everywhere else. &quot;What's your favourite design pattern?&quot; is not constructive while &quot;I have an application that does X, how should I design aspect Y and lay out the modules required?&quot; is much better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there any architecture questions you're thinking of specifically that would make good examples of questions that are too general to be meaningfully answered?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6763" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2662" RevisionGUID="5bb905b7-b8c9-4c41-8054-9ca7d984724c" CreationDate="2011-12-08T03:54:01.927" UserId="226" Comment="Answer update. Now with moar facts!" Text="If the question applies to the network as a whole it's sometimes better to migrate it to Meta Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, though, it looks like the poster was asking about reputation display for his Stack Overflow account, so the question was moved to the appropriate meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6764" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2664" RevisionGUID="6287085c-857c-450f-b379-6769d97263db" CreationDate="2011-12-08T15:33:43.780" UserId="33171" Text="[![Follow us on Twitter!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://twitter.com/#!/stackprogrammer&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/yYx5g.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6765" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="2664" RevisionGUID="7008f684-2bfc-452f-a195-8f5e8e062ef9" CreationDate="2011-12-08T15:33:43.780" UserId="33171" />
  <row Id="6766" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2665" RevisionGUID="aac44a8d-6f7a-42b1-afd8-e46439310ba8" CreationDate="2011-12-08T19:54:11.207" UserId="3965" Text="There have been a ton of book recommendation questions, some fairly old with helpful answers, flagged as not constructive today.  According to the [last discussion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic) on this, most of these qualify as specialized enough to remain on topic, in my opinion.  Has that policy changed?  How are people handling those flags?  Is there any explanation for the sudden burst?  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6767" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2665" RevisionGUID="aac44a8d-6f7a-42b1-afd8-e46439310ba8" CreationDate="2011-12-08T19:54:11.207" UserId="3965" Text="What's up with all the book recommendation flags?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6768" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2665" RevisionGUID="aac44a8d-6f7a-42b1-afd8-e46439310ba8" CreationDate="2011-12-08T19:54:11.207" UserId="3965" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6769" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2665" RevisionGUID="e429d9b6-f448-498d-8959-c710861dcfe0" CreationDate="2011-12-08T20:06:56.117" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|flagging|recommendations|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6770" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2666" RevisionGUID="6d7f3fbe-1a59-4dd5-aec8-dabde586adda" CreationDate="2011-12-08T20:14:55.637" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="According to the last discussion, most of these *don't* meet our quality guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, like programming language questions, if you have specialised requirements (you want to go into LINQ, or networking, or.. in great depth) then perhaps those should be allowed. **They should inspire answers that explain why a book is good for this topic and shouldn't just produce a list of everyone's favourite.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a *lot* of book recommendation questions that aren't specialized (&quot;What's a good book for C?&quot;, &quot;How can I learn Java?&quot;, &quot;Is there a book that'll make me a good programmer?&quot;, etc.) and a *lot* of book recommendation questions that didn't get any love and/or didn't produce explanatory answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions where all the answers are pictures of books, or links to books with no explanation&#xD;&#xA;* Questions that are worded poorly, never got love in the form of votes, views, or answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So someone is going through and thankfully flagging those questions for review. Having evaluated the flags that have come in, I'd say it's about 9/10 are just terrible book recommendation questions. One out of ten meet the basic requirements set out in the meta discussion question you linked and have been revised to be clearer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to help review and get these questions up to shape, here's what I've been doing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Determine if the question is about a specialized or niche topic in program&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the subject of the recommendation is covered in hundreds of online tutorials, thousands of books, or is likely a topic every programmer has been exposed to, it's too general. They're not going to produce a *canonical* book, they're going to create a small subset of the list of books about the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, when a person asks &quot;What's a good book on Java?&quot; and it attracts 5 answers, we're not doing the internet a solid. There are way more than 5 books on Java that are passable. I think we all know this. These aren't the type of questions we want here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if a person asks about a niche topic and it gets a few answers, that's valuable: if there have only been a dozen people writing about the subject, we have a high chance of capturing what is the canon for the subject. *That's* the type of recommendations we want here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Clean up the question to invite and demand the type of answers we want&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if a recommendation question is about a niche topic, a badly worded question can doom it. What I've seen is a question that essentially asks for a book recommendation for a niche topic but clouds that question with things like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* rants and personal life stories&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;I want a book, but if you have any other advice you can give me&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;one book per answer please&quot; (aside: ugh)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not good. In [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq), there are several guidelines our questions need to meet:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;* tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;* have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;* invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;* insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;* are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what I've done on the questions that are about niche and specialized topics is rewrite it to follow a set format:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Is there a canonical book on [insert subject here]?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Insert brief paragraph about what the user is trying to do and what they're trying to learn.]&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on [insert subject here]? What about that book makes it special?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And tagging it with [tag:books] and the subject of the recommendation. This way, we can transform the book tag from being a catch-all for recommendations that wildly vary in quality and scope to a really great library, where you can just search for the topic you want and find a list of books for that niche topic you need to know more about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6771" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2666" RevisionGUID="ffc4a35b-7206-4b6d-ac15-fb8f686a4660" CreationDate="2011-12-08T20:21:44.887" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 339 characters in body" Text="According to the last discussion, most of these *don't* meet our quality guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, like programming language questions, if you have specialised requirements (you want to go into LINQ, or networking, or.. in great depth) then perhaps those should be allowed. **They should inspire answers that explain why a book is good for this topic and shouldn't just produce a list of everyone's favourite.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the discussion on meta, we started to apply the litmus test to incoming questions, but we have a *huge* backlog of book recommendation questions that aren't specialized (&quot;What's a good book for C?&quot;, &quot;How can I learn Java?&quot;, &quot;Is there a book that'll make me a good programmer?&quot;, etc.) and a *lot* of book recommendation questions that didn't get any love and/or didn't produce explanatory answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions where all the answers are pictures of books, or links to books with no explanation&#xD;&#xA;* Questions that are worded poorly, never got love in the form of votes, views, or answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because there are other problems we wanted to focus on first, the backlog hasn't been brought up on meta, but someone is taking the initiative to go through and review those questions (for which we are grateful: if you see something, say something and all that). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having evaluated the flags that have come in, I'd say it's about 9/10 are just terrible book recommendation questions. There is a small number of flagged posts that meet the basic requirements set out in the meta discussion question you linked, and [have been revised to be clearer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;q=%22is%20there%20a%20canonical%20book%22).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since we're on the subject *anyway*....&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to help review and get these questions up to shape, here's what I've been doing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Determine if the question is about a specialized or niche topic in program&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the subject of the recommendation is covered in hundreds of online tutorials, thousands of books, or is likely a topic every programmer has been exposed to, it's too general. They're not going to produce a *canonical* book, they're going to create a small subset of the list of books about the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, when a person asks &quot;What's a good book on Java?&quot; and it attracts 5 answers, we're not doing the internet a solid. There are way more than 5 books on Java that are passable, and I think we all know this. These aren't the type of questions we want here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if a person asks about a niche topic and it gets a few answers, that's valuable: if there have only been a dozen people writing about the subject, we have a high chance of capturing what is the canon for the subject. *That's* the type of recommendations we want here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Clean up the question to invite and demand the type of answers we want&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if a recommendation question is about a niche topic, a badly worded question can doom it. What I've seen is a question that essentially asks for a book recommendation for a niche topic but clouds that question with things like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* rants and personal life stories&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;I want a book, but if you have any other advice you can give me&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;one book per answer please&quot; (aside: ugh)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not good. In [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq), there are several guidelines our questions need to meet:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;* tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;* have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;* invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;* insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;* are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what I've done on the questions that are about niche and specialized topics is rewrite it to follow a set template:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Is there a canonical book on [insert subject here]?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Insert brief paragraph about what the user is trying to do and what they're trying to learn.]&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on [insert subject here]? What about that book makes it special?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And tagging it with [tag:books] and the subject of the recommendation. This way, we can transform the book tag from being a catch-all for recommendations that wildly vary in quality and scope to a really great library, where you can just search for the topic you want and find a list of books for that niche topic you need to know more about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6772" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2666" RevisionGUID="763cc918-20c0-4bd5-a050-732ed950d431" CreationDate="2011-12-08T20:28:53.573" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 20 characters in body" Text="According to the last discussion, most of these *don't* meet our quality guidelines (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, like programming language questions, if you have **specialised requirements** (you want to go into LINQ, or networking, or.. in great depth) then perhaps those should be allowed. **They should inspire answers that explain why a book is good for this topic and shouldn't just produce a list of everyone's favourite.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the discussion on meta, we started to apply the litmus test to incoming questions, but we have a *huge* backlog of book recommendation questions that aren't specialized (&quot;What's a good book for C?&quot;, &quot;How can I learn Java?&quot;, &quot;Is there a book that'll make me a good programmer?&quot;, etc.) and a *lot* of book recommendation questions that didn't get any love and/or didn't produce explanatory answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions where all the answers are pictures of books, or links to books with no explanation&#xD;&#xA;* Questions that are worded poorly, never got love in the form of votes, views, or answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because there are other problems we wanted to focus on first, the backlog hasn't been brought up on meta, but someone is taking the initiative to go through and review those questions (for which we are grateful: if you see something, say something and all that). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having evaluated the flags that have come in, I'd say it's about 9/10 are just terrible book recommendation questions. There is a small number of flagged posts that meet the basic requirements set out in the meta discussion question you linked, and [have been revised to be clearer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;q=%22is%20there%20a%20canonical%20book%22).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since we're on the subject *anyway*....&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to help review and get these questions up to shape, here's what I've been doing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Determine if the question is about a specialized or niche topic in program&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the subject of the recommendation is covered in hundreds of online tutorials, thousands of books, or is likely a topic every programmer has been exposed to, it's too general. They're not going to produce a *canonical* book, they're going to create a small subset of the list of books about the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, when a person asks &quot;What's a good book on Java?&quot; and it attracts 5 answers, we're not doing the internet a solid. There are way more than 5 books on Java that are passable, and I think we all know this. These aren't the type of questions we want here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if a person asks about a niche topic and it gets a few answers, that's valuable: if there have only been a dozen people writing about the subject, we have a high chance of capturing what is the canon for the subject. *That's* the type of recommendations we want here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Clean up the question to invite and demand the type of answers we want&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if a recommendation question is about a niche topic, a badly worded question can doom it. What I've seen is a question that essentially asks for a book recommendation for a niche topic but clouds that question with things like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* rants and personal life stories&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;I want a book, but if you have any other advice you can give me&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;one book per answer please&quot; (aside: ugh)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not good. In [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq), there are several guidelines our questions need to meet:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;* tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;* have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;* invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;* insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;* are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what I've done on the questions that are about niche and specialized topics is rewrite it to follow a set template:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Is there a canonical book on [insert subject here]?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Insert brief paragraph about what the user is trying to do and what they're trying to learn.]&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on [insert subject here]? What about that book makes it special?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And tagging it with [tag:books] and the subject of the recommendation. This way, we can transform the book tag from being a catch-all for recommendations that wildly vary in quality and scope to a really great library, where you can just search for the topic you want and find a list of books for that niche topic you need to know more about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6773" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2667" RevisionGUID="2dd7d41e-7b76-4d4f-ba71-3f122c7dc5c7" CreationDate="2011-12-09T19:22:49.393" UserId="13181" Text="When I click the questions link, only one question shows on the list. The rest are still there if you navigate to them through other means. Is anyone else observing this problem?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6774" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2667" RevisionGUID="2dd7d41e-7b76-4d4f-ba71-3f122c7dc5c7" CreationDate="2011-12-09T19:22:49.393" UserId="13181" Text="Just one Question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6775" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2667" RevisionGUID="2dd7d41e-7b76-4d4f-ba71-3f122c7dc5c7" CreationDate="2011-12-09T19:22:49.393" UserId="13181" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6776" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2668" RevisionGUID="256f0d9c-d053-45fe-9ab7-53c74355a484" CreationDate="2011-12-09T19:23:56.740" UserId="13181" Text="And like that it's fixed. Does anyone know what caused this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6777" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2669" RevisionGUID="842daf5f-68b0-4622-a06d-ba29e29440dc" CreationDate="2011-12-09T19:47:06.017" UserId="7454" Text="Considering [this question - *Explain Big O notation in your words*][1], are questions in this form considered constructive ? There are quality answers, but in the end, everyone has their own words to describe something. Questions like this have a good chance to end up with a plethora of different answers that basically tell the same thing. Would there be a way to improve this kind of question ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;N.B. : As pointed out in the comments of the question, an [alternative version of it][2] exists as well on [StackOverflow][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14682/explain-big-o-notation-in-your-words&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/487258/plain-english-explanation-of-big-o&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6778" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2669" RevisionGUID="842daf5f-68b0-4622-a06d-ba29e29440dc" CreationDate="2011-12-09T19:47:06.017" UserId="7454" Text="&quot;In your own words&quot; Questions - Are they considered constructive?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6779" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2669" RevisionGUID="842daf5f-68b0-4622-a06d-ba29e29440dc" CreationDate="2011-12-09T19:47:06.017" UserId="7454" Text="|discussion|flagging|improvement|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6780" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2670" RevisionGUID="7cb13f60-bb8c-4540-ad1d-d44640004831" CreationDate="2011-12-09T19:52:43.457" UserId="47" Text="That sounds like it could be a homework question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually on reading it now it certainly reads like a homework/interview question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think you've identified the problem with this type of question in that it will end up with a &quot;plethora of answers&quot; each pretty much as valid as the next. In addition there doesn't seem to be a real problem to be solved here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've now closed that question. If you have any others flag it for moderator attention - or better still cast a close vote yourself (assuming you have enough rep).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6781" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2667" RevisionGUID="bacd6b9e-39d5-4046-8044-c1e602df2a1d" CreationDate="2011-12-09T22:10:26.477" UserId="226" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:226,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Anna Lear&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="6782" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2671" RevisionGUID="ee32a7a3-6dfc-429d-a75b-0f0c9ac83133" CreationDate="2011-12-10T04:47:43.673" UserId="226" Text="##Part 1: Opening Keynote&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Cross-posted at http://annalear.ca/2011/12/09/scna-2011-part-1-opening-keynote/&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SCNA 2011 opened with a keynote by Corey Haines. He talked about the past and the future of software development as a profession, the trends that are emerging in the current economic climate and how that affects us as professional developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Where We Came From**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back in the 90s the tech sector virtually exploded and a lot of people got into software development with the help of all those “Learn X in 24 hours” books. This was great, but it did result in a lot of people quickly learning how to code and getting jobs without learning much about the profession overall.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That gave the impression that it was very easy to become a programmer. With the increasing numbers of new developers, there weren’t enough older, more experienced developers to train them. At the same time, companies employing developers at the time (and even now) just want results. They trust that the people they hire know what they’re doing, so it is rather up to us to self-organize and recognize that it’s relatively easy to learn how to program but there’s a difference between being able to write some code and developing maintainable software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Where We Are Today**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tech bubble of the 90s is long gone and since then the economy has come down again. A lot of people got laid off from their jobs and either out of opportunity or necessity are starting up their own small businesses. Those businesses often need software, so developers are once again in demand. So are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, maybe. But it doesn’t have to be that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What Next?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More and more trends are emerging that are promoting software development as a craft, something that needs to be practiced and learned and cannot be taught with a book and 24 hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apprenticeship programs are starting up in various places and many companies are more open to the idea of hiring apprentices and having some of their developers spend time on training. There are also online organizations like [Girl Develop It](http://girldevelopit.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, that’s all well and good, but why do we care? Didn’t the tech boom work out in the end? Aren’t we better for it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why Bother?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It turns out that software development is not easy. In fact, it’s quite hard. But companies are starting to wake up to that fact. As software becomes more and more ubiquitous every day, it’s easy to see good, maintainable applications and discover the badly written ones by  comparison.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For those of us who spend time practicing and learning new techniques, having untrained developers enter the workforce can be actively harmful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So What Can One Person Do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Learn as much as possible&#xD;&#xA;- Reclaim professional values:&#xD;&#xA;    - build communities, connect with others&#xD;&#xA;    - add value, do things that matter&#xD;&#xA;- Practice the craft&#xD;&#xA;    - [code retreats](http://coderetreat.com/), [coding dojos](http://codingdojo.org/)&#xD;&#xA;    - work on personal projects&#xD;&#xA;    - attend interesting conferences&#xD;&#xA;- Be awesome." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6783" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2671" RevisionGUID="09299860-e2a0-4576-941c-165ec19c7235" CreationDate="2011-12-10T04:57:07.337" UserId="226" Comment="Part 1 -&gt; Part 0" Text="##Part 0: Introduction&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Originally posted at http://annalear.ca/2011/11/26/scna-2011-part-0-introduction/. Reposted here with minor edits.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SCNA is the exact opposite of a vendor-focused conference. It is a conference full of developers who actively want to be there. It’s amazing how much difference that makes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The conference runs for two days and both days are pretty full of stuff to do. You’re on your own in the evenings, but I haven’t found that to be a problem — talking to a few people during the day more or less guarantees having company for dinner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This year there were two tracks of talks with an unfortunate overlap between speakers. It wasn’t a problem for me for the most part, but I did have to leave a couple talks before they finished in order to get to the next one on time. There was also an “open space” room set up for hanging out, hacking on random things, and ad hoc pairing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Despite the name, it wasn’t a traditional open space, well, space. Typically you’d see a board and some sticky notes for people to propose their own mini-sessions. This time, there were a few smaller groups getting together, but I found it difficult to figure out if there was anything special going on at a given time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the talks weren’t announced ahead of time, which made choosing ones to attend a bit odd. Still, a little mystery never hurt anyone, and I attended the following sessions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The opening keynote by [Corey Haines](http://coreyhaines.com/) in which he talked about developers: where we came from, where we’re going, and whether or not we are about to repeat some of the mistakes of the past.&#xD;&#xA;- A demonstration of functional programming style by [Michael Feathers](http://www.objectmentor.com/omTeam/feathers_m.html).&#xD;&#xA;- An interesting look at the evolution of programming languages by [Gary Bernhardt](http://blog.extracheese.org/).&#xD;&#xA;- The apprenticeship panel that gathered several prominent developers and company owners to talk about why they take on apprentices and what they’re looking for when they do.&#xD;&#xA;- “Architecture: The Lost Years” by [Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin](http://cleancoder.posterous.com/).&#xD;&#xA;- A demonstration of the Roman Numerals kata in Ruby by [Jim Weirich](http://onestepback.org/).&#xD;&#xA;- A discussion of parallels between learning and practicing a musical instrument vs practicing programming by [David Chelimsky](http://davidchelimsky.net/).&#xD;&#xA;- A critical look at software development education and propagation of popular methodologies by [Zed Shaw](http://www.zedshaw.com/).&#xD;&#xA;- The closing keynote by [Chad Fowler](http://chadfowler.com/) in which he talked about the values held by passionate developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll post my summaries of other sessions here as well where possible. If anything's unclear or you have questions or comments, feel free to leave comments or catch me in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6784" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2598" RevisionGUID="c37fb0d2-dfe4-4d3a-80d4-71aa9a9d7351" CreationDate="2011-12-10T04:59:23.717" UserId="226" Comment="added 6 characters in body" Text="Last week I attended Software Craftsmanship North America 2011 (thanks again, Stack Exchange!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I spoke to a number of people about Stack Exchange in general and Programmers in particular, and handed out some stickers and a few of my shiny and new moderator business cards. I don't know if this is going to translate into many new users for us, but the word's now out there. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a lot to go through, so it's going to take me a bit to get it all out there, but I'm going to post session summaries here as answers to this question. They'll also be cross-posted to [my blog](http://annalear.ca).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had grand plans to keep up with Programmers during the conference, but it really moved way too quickly to do any meaningful knowledge sharing then. Between my blog series and searching for existing related questions to add an answer to, I hope to bring back some value to the community here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, I had a blast at the conference. If the [Stack Exchange sponsorship grant](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/supporting-community-conferences/) still runs next year, I highly recommend applying for it. The sponsorship program is available to regular community users, not just moderators, so for that matter... if you know of a relevant conference you'd like to attend and help promote Programmers at, please make a meta post and tell us all about it! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime... enjoy the summaries here. I hope you'll find them interesting." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6785" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2672" RevisionGUID="d08f55b6-d44d-40a1-bc4a-0efb25880ec5" CreationDate="2011-12-10T05:01:17.193" UserId="226" Text="##Part 1: Opening Keynote&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Cross-posted at http://annalear.ca/2011/12/09/scna-2011-part-1-opening-keynote/&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SCNA 2011 opened with a keynote by Corey Haines. He talked about the past and the future of software development as a profession, the trends that are emerging in the current economic climate and how that affects us as professional developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Where We Came From**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back in the 90s the tech sector virtually exploded and a lot of people got into software development with the help of all those &quot;Learn X in 24 hours&quot; books. This was great, but it did result in a lot of people quickly learning how to code and getting jobs without learning much about the profession overall.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That gave the impression that it was very easy to become a programmer. With the increasing numbers of new developers, there weren't enough older, more experienced developers to train them. At the same time, companies employing developers at the time (and even now) just want results. They trust that the people they hire know what they're doing, so it is rather up to us to self-organize and recognize that it's relatively easy to learn how to program but there's a difference between being able to write some code and developing maintainable software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Where We Are Today**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tech bubble of the 90s is long gone and since then the economy has come down again. A lot of people got laid off from their jobs and either out of opportunity or necessity are starting up their own small businesses. Those businesses often need software, so developers are once again in demand. So are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, maybe. But it doesn't have to be that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What Next?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More and more trends are emerging that are promoting software development as a craft, something that needs to be practiced and learned and cannot be taught with a book and 24 hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apprenticeship programs are starting up in various places and many companies are more open to the idea of hiring apprentices and having some of their developers spend time on training. There are also online organizations like [Girl Develop It](http://girldevelopit.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, that's all well and good, but why do we care? Didn't the tech boom work out in the end? Aren't we better for it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why Bother?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It turns out that software development is not easy. In fact, it's quite hard. But companies are starting to wake up to that fact. As software becomes more and more ubiquitous every day, it's easy to see good, maintainable applications and discover the badly written ones by  comparison.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For those of us who spend time practicing and learning new techniques, having untrained developers enter the workforce can be actively harmful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So What Can One Person Do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Learn as much as possible&#xD;&#xA;- Reclaim professional values:&#xD;&#xA;    - build communities, connect with others&#xD;&#xA;    - add value, do things that matter&#xD;&#xA;- Practice the craft&#xD;&#xA;    - [code retreats](http://coderetreat.com/), [coding dojos](http://codingdojo.org/)&#xD;&#xA;    - work on personal projects&#xD;&#xA;    - attend interesting conferences&#xD;&#xA;- Be awesome." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6786" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2671" RevisionGUID="f0c5ccc1-3cd9-41f4-91e2-76fa02825246" CreationDate="2011-12-10T05:02:27.910" UserId="226" Comment="Part 1 -&gt; Part 0" Text="##Part 0: Introduction&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Originally posted at http://annalear.ca/2011/11/26/scna-2011-part-0-introduction/. Reposted here with minor edits.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SCNA is the exact opposite of a vendor-focused conference. It is a conference full of developers who actively want to be there. It's amazing how much difference that makes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The conference runs for two days and both days are pretty full of stuff to do. You're on your own in the evenings, but I haven't found that to be a problem — talking to a few people during the day more or less guarantees having company for dinner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This year there were two tracks of talks with an unfortunate overlap between speakers. It wasn't a problem for me for the most part, but I did have to leave a couple talks before they finished in order to get to the next one on time. There was also an &quot;open space&quot; room set up for hanging out, hacking on random things, and ad hoc pairing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Despite the name, it wasn't a traditional open space, well, space. Typically you'd see a board and some sticky notes for people to propose their own mini-sessions. This time, there were a few smaller groups getting together, but I found it difficult to figure out if there was anything special going on at a given time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the talks weren't announced ahead of time, which made choosing ones to attend a bit odd. Still, a little mystery never hurt anyone, and I attended the following sessions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The opening keynote by [Corey Haines](http://coreyhaines.com/) in which he talked about developers: where we came from, where we're going, and whether or not we are about to repeat some of the mistakes of the past.&#xD;&#xA;- A demonstration of functional programming style by [Michael Feathers](http://www.objectmentor.com/omTeam/feathers_m.html).&#xD;&#xA;- An interesting look at the evolution of programming languages by [Gary Bernhardt](http://blog.extracheese.org/).&#xD;&#xA;- The apprenticeship panel that gathered several prominent developers and company owners to talk about why they take on apprentices and what they're looking for when they do.&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Architecture: The Lost Years&quot; by [Robert &quot;Uncle Bob&quot; Martin](http://cleancoder.posterous.com/).&#xD;&#xA;- A demonstration of the Roman Numerals kata in Ruby by [Jim Weirich](http://onestepback.org/).&#xD;&#xA;- A discussion of parallels between learning and practicing a musical instrument vs practicing programming by [David Chelimsky](http://davidchelimsky.net/).&#xD;&#xA;- A critical look at software development education and propagation of popular methodologies by [Zed Shaw](http://www.zedshaw.com/).&#xD;&#xA;- The closing keynote by [Chad Fowler](http://chadfowler.com/) in which he talked about the values held by passionate developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll post my summaries of other sessions here as well where possible. If anything's unclear or you have questions or comments, feel free to leave comments or catch me in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6787" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2598" RevisionGUID="46384a44-4ccc-45f8-bb9e-e00f10b793b3" CreationDate="2011-12-10T05:15:39.340" UserId="226" Comment="added 211 characters in body" Text="Last week I attended Software Craftsmanship North America 2011 (thanks again, Stack Exchange!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I spoke to a number of people about Stack Exchange in general and Programmers in particular, and handed out some stickers and a few of my shiny and new moderator business cards. I don't know if this is going to translate into many new users for us, but the word's now out there. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a lot to go through, so it's going to take me a bit to get it all out there, but I'm going to post session summaries here as answers to this question. They'll also be cross-posted to [my blog](http://annalear.ca).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had grand plans to keep up with Programmers during the conference, but it really moved way too quickly to do any meaningful knowledge sharing then. Between my blog series and searching for existing related questions to add an answer to, I hope to bring back some value to the community here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, I had a blast at the conference. If the [Stack Exchange sponsorship grant](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/supporting-community-conferences/) still runs next year, I highly recommend applying for it. The sponsorship program is available to regular community users, not just moderators, so for that matter... if you know of a relevant conference you'd like to attend and help promote Programmers at, please make a meta post and tell us all about it! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime... enjoy the summaries here. I hope you'll find them interesting. If this is your first time in this question thread, sorting the answers [by oldest](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2598/scna-2011-conference-report?answertab=oldest#tab-top) is recommended." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6788" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2599" RevisionGUID="bd87bb4c-b2c7-4c5d-b354-652b6ea0e4ca" CreationDate="2011-12-10T05:20:47.027" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Fix typo. mention both cases of community closures" Text="Two questions were recently asked regarding research or studies about a specific topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/121953/what-data-is-available-regarding-cowboy-coding&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122326/survival-rate-of-open-source-projects&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both were closed by the community in short order.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've had a few other questions with the same type request in the past:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Open&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60282/has-there-been-research-into-programming-linguistics&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87851/is-there-any-research-out-there-on-geographic-differences-in-work-environments&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108735/schemes-to-resolve-deadlocks&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60439/programming-languages-and-credible-data-on-market-conditions&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92580/are-there-any-studies-that-correlate-time-spent-coding-and-productivity&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91758/debugging-facts-and-statistics&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/109615/what-factors-can-make-mid-project-join-successful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122326/survival-rate-of-open-source-projects&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/121953/what-data-is-available-regarding-cowboy-coding&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35501/non-english-based-programming-languages&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Closed and deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Are there any languages, frameworks, techniques, or any kind of research designed specifically for organic growth of large systems over time?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99102/are-there-any-languages-frameworks-techniques-or-any-kind-of-research-designe)&#xD;&#xA;* [What motivates students to choose a CS/IT track?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55062/what-motivates-students-to-choose-a-cs-it-track)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is IT/programming the profession with the least happy people?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14299/why-is-it-programming-the-profession-with-the-least-happy-people)&#xD;&#xA;* [How many developers should a software company have?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108991/how-many-developers-should-a-software-company-have)&#xD;&#xA;* [Programming can cause a decrease in spelling and grammar skills?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50863/programming-can-cause-a-decrease-in-spelling-and-grammar-skills)&#xD;&#xA;* [Which specific programming activities do women, on average, perform better than men?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57420/which-specific-programming-activities-do-women-on-average-perform-better-than)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So there's a bit of an inconsistency in how they've been dealt with. Are these on-topic? If so, why? If not, why not?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6789" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2598" RevisionGUID="6df5adb0-a9d0-4d34-9700-779446a7009a" CreationDate="2011-12-10T23:24:04.470" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/145644982110392320" />
  <row Id="6790" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2673" RevisionGUID="aeaf99d4-4f90-455c-912a-2c08da8aad86" CreationDate="2011-12-11T04:09:18.950" UserId="1996" Text="In order to solve the problem that you described, I recently proposed that moderators should have to *defend their seat*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2540/should-p-se-moderators-have-to-defend-their-seat&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to make two additional points:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It's unfair to paint all moderators with the same broad brush. Some are quite good.&#xD;&#xA;2. Recently, it seems like the moderation has improved." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6795" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2675" RevisionGUID="c00e4602-8a82-4ae0-920e-e16483bd58d1" CreationDate="2011-12-12T21:56:21.387" UserId="6184" Text="My question [Is there such a thing as a super programmer?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/14052/6184) is currently closed as not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Why? The question invites explanation; has inspired reasonably long answers; is worded in a fair way; and invites sharing experiences. In fact, in my _subjective_ opinion it satisfies all guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Was the edit containing referring to the answers the part which made the question seem not constructive? In other words, would you accept the original question as open but vote for closure of the edited version because it now seems too wordy, all over the place or inviting opinionating?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Can the same question be opened if worded differently? Is the topic itself not constructive or just the expression of it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6796" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2675" RevisionGUID="c00e4602-8a82-4ae0-920e-e16483bd58d1" CreationDate="2011-12-12T21:56:21.387" UserId="6184" Text="Why is the question &quot;Is there such a thing as a super programmer?&quot; closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6797" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2675" RevisionGUID="c00e4602-8a82-4ae0-920e-e16483bd58d1" CreationDate="2011-12-12T21:56:21.387" UserId="6184" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6798" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2675" RevisionGUID="343a26cd-8091-4f2e-9f41-3b0d31045b02" CreationDate="2011-12-12T22:10:09.880" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6799" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2676" RevisionGUID="2b8765b7-2664-439e-9938-3693328db147" CreationDate="2011-12-12T22:21:57.503" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The question asks three things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Have you come across a super programmer? What identifies him or her as such, compared to &quot;normal&quot; experienced/great programmers?&#xD;&#xA;2. How do you deal with a person in your team who believes he is a super programmer?&#xD;&#xA;3. [After everyone responded to your question,] given two competing definitions of what a super programmer is, which do you think is better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question 1&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have you come across a super programmer? What identifies him or her as such, compared to &quot;normal&quot; experienced/great programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a poll. You're asking people to take a word without context and define it however they want. What's the correct answer to this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question 2&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  How do you deal with a person in your team who believes he is a super programmer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 1 asks how to define a super programmer, but you want to know how to deal with them even without a general agreement of terms. This isn't answerable since you didn't define who you're trying to manage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question 3&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [After everyone responded to your question,] given two competing definitions of what a super programmer is, which do you think is better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having identified the flaw in asking the first question, you then polled people, after they already answered the question, which definition they like better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not constructive. There are no markers or identifiers for being able to answer the first question, your second question assumes the answer to the first question is already answered (which it isn't), and the third question asks people to ignore the first question in favor of now talking about only two of the answers provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The post is not really a question, but a discussion: a jumping off point for talking about a general topic. Once you were done with one aspect of the topic, the question morphed into something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Real questions have answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), not ideas or opinions. They reference specific problems and don't morph and solicit feedback disparate and broad-stroke items about a topic. Questions are a good fit for Stack Exchange, not discussion topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was asked back in October of last year; back then, these questions were tolerated, even encouraged: over the past year, we've been [enforcing](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) and [clarifying](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) the quality guidelines that were created as a result of the free-for-all discussion-forum nature of the early site. This question slipped through the cracks: a few days ago, someone flagged it, and it was closed after review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6800" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2676" RevisionGUID="f7530d29-7102-4f43-a4f1-14bd44bc35a9" CreationDate="2011-12-12T22:27:48.453" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 134 characters in body" Text="The question asks three things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have you come across a super programmer? What identifies him or her as such, compared to &quot;normal&quot; experienced/great programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also. how do you deal with a person in your team who believes he is a super programmer? Both in case he actually is or if he isn't?&#xD;&#xA;3. [After everyone responded to your question,] given two competing definitions of what a super programmer is, which do you think is better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question 1&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have you come across a super programmer? What identifies him or her as such, compared to &quot;normal&quot; experienced/great programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a poll. You're asking people to take a word without context and define it however they want. What's the correct answer to this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question 2&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  How do you deal with a person in your team who believes he is a super programmer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 1 asks how to define a super programmer, but you want to know how to deal with them even without a general agreement of terms. This isn't answerable: you didn't define who you're trying to manage or what the actual problem is. How can I tell you how to manage a class of people when you're not even sure what the definition of that class of people is?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question 3&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [After everyone responded to your question,] given two competing definitions of what a super programmer is, which do you think is better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having identified the flaw in asking the first question, you then polled people, after they already answered the question, which definition they like better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not constructive. There are no markers or identifiers for being able to answer the first question, your second question assumes the answer to the first question is already answered (which it isn't), and the third question asks people to ignore the first question in favor of now talking about only two of the answers provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The post is not really a question, but a discussion: a jumping off point for talking about a general topic. Once you were done with one aspect of the topic, the question morphed into something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Real questions have answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), not ideas or opinions. They reference specific problems and don't morph and solicit feedback disparate and broad-stroke items about a topic. Questions are a good fit for Stack Exchange, not discussion topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was asked back in October of last year; back then, these questions were tolerated, even encouraged: over the past year, we've been [enforcing](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) and [clarifying](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) the quality guidelines that were created as a result of the free-for-all discussion-forum nature of the early site. This question slipped through the cracks: a few days ago, someone flagged it, and it was closed after review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6801" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2676" RevisionGUID="eef89d97-8595-45b6-a995-6ad4b164c7ed" CreationDate="2011-12-12T22:37:40.103" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 134 characters in body" Text="The question asks three things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have you come across a super programmer? What identifies him or her as such, compared to &quot;normal&quot; experienced/great programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also. how do you deal with a person in your team who believes he is a super programmer? Both in case he actually is or if he isn't?&#xD;&#xA;3. [After everyone responded to your question,] given two competing definitions of what a super programmer is, which do you think is better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question 1&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have you come across a super programmer? What identifies him or her as such, compared to &quot;normal&quot; experienced/great programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a poll. You're asking people to take a word without context and define it however they want. What's the correct answer to this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question 2&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  How do you deal with a person in your team who believes he is a super programmer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 1 asks how to define a super programmer, but you want to know how to deal with them even without a general agreement of terms. This isn't answerable: you didn't define who you're trying to manage or what the actual problem is. How can I tell you how to manage a class of people when you're not even sure what the definition of that class of people is?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question 3&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [After everyone responded to your question,] given two competing definitions of what a super programmer is, which do you think is better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having identified the flaw in asking the first question, you then polled people, after they already answered the question, which definition they like better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not constructive. There are no markers or identifiers for being able to answer the first question, your second question assumes the answer to the first question is already answered (which it isn't), and the third question asks people to ignore the first question in favor of now talking about only two of the answers provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The post is not really a question, but a discussion: a jumping off point for talking about a general topic. Once you were done with one aspect of the topic, the question morphed into something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Real questions have answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), not ideas or opinions. They reference specific problems and don't morph and solicit feedback disparate and broad-stroke items about a topic. Questions are a good fit for Stack Exchange, not discussion topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was asked back in October of last year; back then, these questions were tolerated, even encouraged: over the past year, we've been [enforcing](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) and [clarifying](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) the quality guidelines that were created as a result of the free-for-all discussion-forum nature of the early site. This question slipped through the cracks: a few days ago, someone flagged it, and it was closed after review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Moving forward&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point, there's not much point in trying to save the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* every answer tried to address the first, completely not constructive question, many *only* addressing the first question.&#xD;&#xA;* there hasn't been any activity on the question, save for one answer in August, since it was asked last October.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this is still a pressing problem for you, ask a new question. Be sure to specify the exact nature of the problem you're having and what you're looking for in terms of an answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Be warned, though: questions that are just about dealing with other co-workers (even if those co-workers happen to be programmers) aren't on-topic here, either. If you you want help dealing with co-workers, I suggest committing to the upcoming proposal, [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6802" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2676" RevisionGUID="fcd3deb1-6b56-4672-96c8-db42d2b7e53e" CreationDate="2011-12-12T22:52:59.597" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 19 characters in body" Text="The question asks three things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have you come across a super programmer? What identifies him or her as such, compared to &quot;normal&quot; experienced/great programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also. how do you deal with a person in your team who believes he is a super programmer? Both in case he actually is or if he isn't?&#xD;&#xA;3. [After everyone responded to your question,] given two competing definitions of what a super programmer is, which do you think is better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question 1&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have you come across a super programmer? What identifies him or her as such, compared to &quot;normal&quot; experienced/great programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a poll. It's asking people to take a word without context and define it however they want. What's the correct answer to this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question 2&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  How do you deal with a person in your team who believes he is a super programmer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question asks how to define a super programmer, but this one wants to know how to deal with them even without a general agreement of terms. This isn't answerable: the question didn't define who is being managed or what the actual problem is. How can an answerer explain how to manage a class of people when there isn't even a working definition of who counts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question 3&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [After everyone responded to your question,] given two competing definitions of what a super programmer is, which do you think is better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having identified the flaw in asking the first question, people were then polled, after they already answered the question, which definition they like better. Supplementing a question with another one that *should* be already accounted for by voting isn't helpful and just adds chaos. Answers should respond to the question, not other answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While the addendum question didn't help, there isn't very much in this question that's constructive. There are no markers or identifiers for being able to answer the first question, the second question assumes the answer to the first question is already answered (which it isn't), and the third question asks people to ignore the first question in favor of now talking about only two of the answers provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The post is not really a question, but a discussion: a jumping off point for talking about a general topic. Once one aspect of the topic was exhausted, the question morphed into something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Real questions have answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), not ideas or opinions. They reference specific problems and don't morph and solicit feedback disparate and broad-stroke items about a topic. Questions are a good fit for Stack Exchange, not discussion topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was asked back in October of last year; back then, these questions were tolerated, even encouraged: over the past year, we've been [enforcing](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) and [clarifying](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) the quality guidelines that were created as a result of the free-for-all discussion-forum nature of the early site. This question slipped through the cracks: a few days ago, someone flagged it, and it was closed after review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Moving forward&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point, there's not much point in trying to save the question: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* every answer tried to address the first, completely not constructive question, many *only* addressing the first question.&#xD;&#xA;* there hasn't been any activity on the question, save for one answer in August, since it was asked last October.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this is still a pressing problem, a new question should probably be asked. It should specify the exact nature of the problem and provide some parameters for determining a correct answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Be warned, though: questions that are just about dealing with other co-workers (even if those co-workers happen to be programmers) aren't on-topic here, either. For questions about dealing with co-workers, the upcoming [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2) site proposal is probably the best option." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6804" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2677" RevisionGUID="6970011c-0f07-4a23-9cab-1e4760946a9b" CreationDate="2011-12-12T23:47:16.370" UserId="3" Text="Did you know Programmer SE's birthday is coming up on **December 16th**? Congratulations!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How about a contest or some other fun activity to stir things up a little? After a year of great Q&amp;A, **we'd like the opportunity to &quot;give back&quot; for everyone's hard work.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anniversary events area a great way to spark some interest in the extracurricular activity in your site (more meta participation). An “anniversary event&quot; can be just about anything. Take a look at [**Super User’s 2nd Birthday Super Contest**](http://blog.superuser.com/2011/08/19/super-users-2nd-birthday-super-contest/) for inspiration. It doesn’t have to be a contest. Dream up whatever *you* feel the community will find interesting, and go for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Start a meta post or chat event to work out the details. Rally support for your event and bring it to our attention (community@stackexchange.com). We're really interested in community-lead initiatives, so let’s just say, if you can work out the details, we’re very motivated to say “go for it!”" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6805" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2677" RevisionGUID="6970011c-0f07-4a23-9cab-1e4760946a9b" CreationDate="2011-12-12T23:47:16.370" UserId="3" Text="Programmers Birthday Celebration?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6806" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2677" RevisionGUID="6970011c-0f07-4a23-9cab-1e4760946a9b" CreationDate="2011-12-12T23:47:16.370" UserId="3" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6807" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2677" RevisionGUID="fec9edf4-df66-48f0-8e54-acc6675ce988" CreationDate="2011-12-13T05:24:24.560" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/146460439184814080" />
  <row Id="6808" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2665" RevisionGUID="beef43a7-e278-4dac-bb74-2729ef7e93da" CreationDate="2011-12-13T11:24:25.963" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/146551041943539713" />
  <row Id="6809" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="370" RevisionGUID="53411ffc-09eb-412b-a50e-8608d4a8e3b0" CreationDate="2011-12-14T01:01:02.137" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="6810" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2678" RevisionGUID="af04e913-7779-4d29-a7bb-350b533c65e8" CreationDate="2011-12-14T01:03:58.313" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="It only took a year to answer this, but I found the answer! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[It's ordered by your reputation.](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/85872/149432) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Presumably, sites where you have the most reputation are the ones you want to access most frequently." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6811" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="570" RevisionGUID="0463aad2-319f-435d-bef9-f9abca897a0e" CreationDate="2011-12-14T01:05:54.007" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="At the top of the screen there is a &quot;Stack Exchange&quot; dropdown menu. It contains &quot;hot questions&quot;, &quot;all sites&quot;, and &quot;inbox&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm using the &quot;all sites&quot; to switch between the different Stack Exchange sites im intrested in, but finding the right one is more difficult than it needs to be. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why is this list not sorted alphabetically?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6812" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="570" RevisionGUID="0463aad2-319f-435d-bef9-f9abca897a0e" CreationDate="2011-12-14T01:05:54.007" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Why is &quot;all sites&quot; not in alphabetical order in the Stack Exchange button menu?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6813" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="570" RevisionGUID="0463aad2-319f-435d-bef9-f9abca897a0e" CreationDate="2011-12-14T01:05:54.007" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6814" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2679" RevisionGUID="b6bfd466-b6b5-4393-8b8c-6317c12d38b2" CreationDate="2011-12-14T01:09:03.100" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This now exists as part of the [privileges FAQ page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clicking on the [create tag synonyms](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/suggest-tag-synonyms) privilege explains how synonyms work in greater detail." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6815" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="635" RevisionGUID="39c63703-f973-416d-bbe3-a4a663dce4d5" CreationDate="2011-12-14T01:09:14.507" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6816" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2680" RevisionGUID="f52bb03e-8ea3-448b-aad0-a6149750bd68" CreationDate="2011-12-14T08:18:46.377" UserId="26621" Text="IMO it's condescending form of question. Whose words would you use if not your own? Are you a plagiarizer? An android? Or maybe they want you to make up something ridiculous? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't remember the last time I was asked such a question, but if anyone did ask me one, I'd chafe at it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6817" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2681" RevisionGUID="1149c0f4-c7b2-438e-b709-1cb452c37860" CreationDate="2011-12-14T14:16:26.223" UserId="7748" Text="What is the rational behind the P.SE menu system?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it annoying and Counter intuitive. Should Default and Question menu Be merged into one menu?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![meuns][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/06lcE.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6818" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2681" RevisionGUID="1149c0f4-c7b2-438e-b709-1cb452c37860" CreationDate="2011-12-14T14:16:26.223" UserId="7748" Text="What is the rational behind the P.SE menu system?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6819" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2681" RevisionGUID="1149c0f4-c7b2-438e-b709-1cb452c37860" CreationDate="2011-12-14T14:16:26.223" UserId="7748" Text="|discussion|feature-request|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6820" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2682" RevisionGUID="0824cb0e-7b75-4107-a06e-e192c39dd340" CreationDate="2011-12-14T15:58:09.167" UserId="25936" Text="I'm with you on that. The homepage is actually &quot;Questions -&gt; active&quot;, and that should be shown when a new user first lands on the homepage (Questions marked as active, active tab marked as active).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't really care for the &quot;Unanswered&quot; menu item but the &quot;unanswered&quot; tab on Questions is kind of redundant. But it's the same across the Stack Exchange network and I don't see any of this changing, as it will take a lot of work for something that is annoying but not really a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've introduced a couple of non technical friends to different Stack Exchange sites and they did had some trouble navigating, especially in the first hour. The general user experience for any Stack Exchange site feels geared towards technical people, stuck to the era where it was only StackOverflow (or just the original triad).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was one major redesign since then, the recent update to the profile page. I wouldn't call it an improvement, but it does prove that the Stack Exchange people are actively working on changing major parts of the interface. And of course there are small interface improvements at each new build.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you should do is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Post related questions on the Stack Exchange interface to [User Experience Stack Exchange][1]. They have a more educated crowd on user experience, and it would help to back up your claims with some answers from there. But keep your questions [on topic][2].&#xD;&#xA; - And then arm yourself with those educated answers and post a question to [Meta StackOverflow][3], which acts as Meta StackExchange (yet another relic from when it was just StackOverflow and not a network of sites). Since the change would be network wide, it's a better place to post such questions than the Programmers meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will need major community support to change the menu, established sites generally don't like changing their navigation elements, as there's always the possibility of massively losing members. The &quot;if it's not broken, don't fix it&quot; principle is especially true for user experience, after a couple of months of using the site I know exactly where everything is and although I fully agree with you that the menu system is counter intuitive I don't really know if I will welcome a major change, which will mean that I will have to re learn where everything is and what it does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But with enough support from the community, any change to the system is possible. Go for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6821" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2681" RevisionGUID="67000988-18c9-4ebc-a6e8-d4a7bd656320" CreationDate="2011-12-14T17:33:10.827" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 21 characters in body; edited title" Text="What is the rationale behind the Stack Exchange menu system?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it annoying and counterintuitive. Should the front page menu and the question menu be merged into one?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![meuns][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/06lcE.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6822" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2681" RevisionGUID="67000988-18c9-4ebc-a6e8-d4a7bd656320" CreationDate="2011-12-14T17:33:10.827" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 21 characters in body; edited title" Text="What is the rationale behind the menu system?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6823" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2683" RevisionGUID="a01fae47-be01-416e-865d-55bcfa4d05e5" CreationDate="2011-12-14T18:08:21.023" UserId="33171" Text="The discrepancy between the front page and the questions page comes from the fact they are not, and are not meant to be, one in the same. One is meant as **a general landing page that gives a taste of the site** - it has an excerpt of questions along with a much more occupied sidebar that includes meta, ads, and chat (slightly different for beta sites). Above all, this is the page that almost any new user will first land on. Meanwhile, **the questions list is just focused on questions**, and also meant to access the whole set of questions. It's geared more towards the power users or at least those who have gotten a taste of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, onto the parts of your screencapture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Selection of elements&#xD;&#xA;The front page isn't any of those sections. It stands to reason that highlighting any of them would be misrepresentative of its function. It is not the Questions section because it only has an *excerpt* of the questions, and at the bottom it even tells you to go to the Questions section to see more. On the actual Questions section, you'd just get pagination navigation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Different sort orders&#xD;&#xA;This is because of the goal of each of the sections is different. Remember, the front page is only there to show you the recent activity on the site as an excerpt. Its focus on activity is why the timestamp links to the most recent activity on the question, and also why all of its sort options (`active`, `featured`, and all the hotness variants, as well as Stack Overflow's `interesting`) are focused on activity level. It's all geared towards the illustration of &quot;What's happening now?&quot;. What questions just got posted, what just got answered, what cool bounties are available right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Questions section on the other hand, it is meant to give you access to the full library of questions. So it has things like `votes`, `faq`, and `unanswered` which are measured across all of the site's history. It also has the `newest` sort and pagination on its `active` and `featured` sorts to aid in seeing the complete picture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Redundancy of Unanswered&#xD;&#xA;Originally, the questions section didn't have an `unanswered` filter - adding it has proven beneficial to the ability to browse and search through it. There had even been plans to [completely phase out the top-level &quot;Unanswered&quot; navigation in favor of &quot;Review&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/84693/eeeek-i-sense-an-eeeek-question-about-missing-a-unanswered-tab). It's a recognized point of text duplication that we'll probably fix down the road.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In summary, the rationale is that we have two separate goals to accomplish, which is why we have two separate pages. Their designs are intended to work with the intents of those pages. Is it necessarily perfect? Perhaps not. It's open to change now and then (I reassert the aforementioned plan to phase out the Unanswered section). But here's at least the rationale of the current design pattern." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6824" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2681" RevisionGUID="01ca7af3-22c1-4c06-99b8-bf5ea9ee5187" CreationDate="2011-12-15T05:24:33.800" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/147185253910446080" />
  <row Id="6825" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="2684" RevisionGUID="0671da81-2feb-41e4-955f-ddb0cba3745e" CreationDate="2011-12-15T15:18:05.803" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125385/difference-between-programmers-and-stackoverflow" Text="" />
  <row Id="6826" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2684" RevisionGUID="eb1b8a97-1684-4b45-b941-54b592fe222c" CreationDate="2011-12-15T14:32:57.987" UserId="43115" Text="What is the difference between &quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com&quot; and StackOverFlow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6827" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2684" RevisionGUID="eb1b8a97-1684-4b45-b941-54b592fe222c" CreationDate="2011-12-15T14:32:57.987" UserId="43115" Text="Difference between Programmers and StackOverFlow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6828" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2684" RevisionGUID="eb1b8a97-1684-4b45-b941-54b592fe222c" CreationDate="2011-12-15T14:32:57.987" UserId="43115" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6829" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2684" RevisionGUID="591a0e69-7301-44db-9cf4-43e4db4274b6" CreationDate="2011-12-15T15:18:33.477" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;What is the difference between &quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com&quot; and StackOverFlow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6830" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2684" RevisionGUID="ae327cd8-3275-466d-bf43-9280ac7336d5" CreationDate="2011-12-15T15:18:32.633" UserId="226" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[171],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:226,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Anna Lear&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="6831" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2685" RevisionGUID="9788f58a-ae5b-4778-adaf-f99050574378" CreationDate="2011-12-16T11:14:13.640" UserId="37342" Text="Does the Programmers StackExchange site support syntax-highlighting for C++?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I ask is that the code in my question ([125569][1]) isn't highlighted in Firefox 8.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125569/programmically-generating-htmlcss" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6832" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2685" RevisionGUID="9788f58a-ae5b-4778-adaf-f99050574378" CreationDate="2011-12-16T11:14:13.640" UserId="37342" Text="No syntax highlighting for C++" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6833" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2685" RevisionGUID="9788f58a-ae5b-4778-adaf-f99050574378" CreationDate="2011-12-16T11:14:13.640" UserId="37342" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6834" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2686" RevisionGUID="95e2874f-9ca6-4704-82c8-592a412c5611" CreationDate="2011-12-16T11:29:02.687" UserId="47" Text="Yes it does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, unless you explicitly tell the highlighter which language it is by including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- language: lang-cpp --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;at the start of your code snippet, it uses the tags to decide which language the code is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you've tagged the question [tag:html] and [tag:css] it's going to assume that the code is either HTML or CSS, not C++.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So either retag the question or use the language hint." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6835" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2687" RevisionGUID="e6a20edd-d531-46fe-ab77-3d526a15c84f" CreationDate="2011-12-16T14:10:16.103" UserId="7454" Text="I have [two][1] [answers][2] that are late answers, from the same 1-rep user (usually they are greedy enough to set their website to the project homepage, but not this one...), and that don't give much information about the product, but promoting it the same way. Is it enough to consider it as spam?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/125564/7454&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/123362/7454" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6836" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2687" RevisionGUID="e6a20edd-d531-46fe-ab77-3d526a15c84f" CreationDate="2011-12-16T14:10:16.103" UserId="7454" Text="How to tell that an answer is from an enthusiastic user or from a spammer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6837" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2687" RevisionGUID="e6a20edd-d531-46fe-ab77-3d526a15c84f" CreationDate="2011-12-16T14:10:16.103" UserId="7454" Text="|discussion|flagging|spam|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6838" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2688" RevisionGUID="f16bc86f-3b5d-4418-9032-ed2c5345bb52" CreationDate="2011-12-16T14:17:03.900" UserId="47" Text="The &quot;answer&quot; was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think [KanbanTool][1] a quite good solution. It helps me to **organise teamwork**. I can use boards to **share and collaborate on work**. It has also a feature of **file sharing**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bold alone make be think it might be spam :) I've removed the bold for now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strikes against the user:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. They are late answers.&#xD;&#xA;2. They are **exactly** the same answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the answer is relevant and there's no indication on the users profile that this is his product. The answers were also posted several days apart.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm tempted to leave the answers for now, but if they get any (more) flags or attention I reserve the right to change my mind." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6839" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2689" RevisionGUID="8f481109-7716-4e1e-83b2-42223ce95fd8" CreationDate="2011-12-16T15:47:41.250" UserId="7748" Text="The subject of forcing a comment with all down votes has been [discussed and rejected several times][1]. The conclusion (and rightly so)  is always that we should not force this. But it is almost universally agreed that doing so benefits the community as well as the poster. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*I hereby pledge to never Down Vote any Question or Answer without leaving a comment explaining why.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I will be putting this in my “About me”, linking back to this question, and I urge you to do the same.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159/should-we-force-adding-a-comment-with-every-down-vote" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6840" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2689" RevisionGUID="8f481109-7716-4e1e-83b2-42223ce95fd8" CreationDate="2011-12-16T15:47:41.250" UserId="7748" Text="My pledge to the SE Community, and I urge you to do the same" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6841" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2689" RevisionGUID="8f481109-7716-4e1e-83b2-42223ce95fd8" CreationDate="2011-12-16T15:47:41.250" UserId="7748" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6842" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2690" RevisionGUID="5171251c-c131-4f16-8ed1-34c0e9bb4869" CreationDate="2011-12-16T16:36:47.247" UserId="25936" Text="&gt;  But it is almost universally agreed that doing so benefits the community as well as the poster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually I don't think so. Quite a few times my downvote comment's, especially on answers, lead to unhappy responses which turn into lengthy comment wars. I've used the &quot;let's continue in chat&quot; feature more times than I would want want to. That's a byproduct of the downvote comment that's common enough to be taken into consideration. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same doesn't happen (as much) in questions, but there where a couple of instances that: I was the first to happen upon the question, downvoted and left a message. And then the question was deleted by the op. That's the op's right, but not why I took the time to write the comment, which was to help the op improve the question. Imagine my frustration when I've written a lengthy comment with links and helpful tips, just to find out a few minutes later that the question (and my comment) was gone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, when it comes to answers, the faq states (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting **expert answers** on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*I hereby pledge to aggressively downvote every answer that in my mind is not an expert answer, without feeling any obligation to explain why I did so*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's in the faq, I don't care if an asker is unclear on the guidelines, but imho an answerer must be. People should answer only if they are 100% certain of what they are saying, otherwise leave a comment instead. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And when it comes to questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*I hereby pledge to aggressively downvote every question that could be easily answered with a simple Google search, or the Wikipedia article on the matter, or something that would require similarly minimal effort*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will consider taking the time to accompany my downvote with a helpful comment if and only if the asker is clearly a noob.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvotes are the StackExchange way of saying &quot;your answer is not helpful&quot; and &quot;your question doesn't meet the criteria&quot;. I'm getting increasingly tired of all the whining, all those &quot;why the downvote&quot; comments, especially when there's only one downvote. (if it's more than one, well it should be obvious). But if it's just one, the correct question the op should be asking would be &quot;how come no one cancelled out that downvote with an upvote?&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6843" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2690" RevisionGUID="ab2983dd-fdc2-4438-a726-f4cf13347441" CreationDate="2011-12-16T16:52:32.930" UserId="25936" Comment="added 792 characters in body" Text="&gt;  But it is almost universally agreed that doing so benefits the community as well as the poster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually I don't think so. Quite a few times my downvote comments, especially on answers, lead to unhappy responses which may turn into lengthy comment wars (for which I am as much to blame as the op). I've used the &quot;let's continue in chat&quot; feature more times than I would want to. That's a byproduct of the downvote comment that's common enough to be taken into consideration. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same doesn't happen (as much) in questions, but there where a couple of instances that: I was the first to happen upon the question, downvoted and left a message. And then the question was deleted by the op. That's the op's right, but not why I took the time to write the comment, which was to help the op improve the question. Imagine my frustration when I've written a lengthy comment with links and helpful tips, just to find out a few minutes later that the question (and my comment) was gone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, when it comes to answers, the faq states (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting **expert answers** on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*I hereby pledge to aggressively downvote every answer that in my mind is not an expert answer, without feeling any obligation to explain why I did so*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's in the faq, I don't care if an asker is unclear on the guidelines, but imho an answerer must be. People should answer only if they are 100% certain of what they are saying, otherwise leave a comment instead. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And when it comes to questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*I hereby pledge to aggressively downvote every question that could be easily answered with a simple Google search, or the Wikipedia article on the matter, or something that would require similarly minimal effort*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will consider taking the time to accompany my downvote with a helpful comment if and only if the asker is clearly a noob.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvotes are the StackExchange way of saying &quot;your answer is not helpful&quot; and &quot;your question doesn't meet the criteria&quot;. I'm getting increasingly tired of all the whining, all those &quot;why the downvote&quot; comments, especially when there's only one downvote - if it's more than one, well it should be obvious. But if it's just one, the correct question the op should be asking would be &quot;how come no one cancelled out that downvote with an upvote?&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;btw I don't have any opinion on if you choose to leave a comment explaining a downvote or not. I'm just saying that in my experience sometimes it's not as helpful as intended, people get hung up on the one downvote disregarding the fact that it doesn't really matter. And I've seen more than enough sad instances of op's responding aggresively to the one downvoter that was kind enough to leave a comment, without taking into account the fact that their post was downvoted into oblivion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A comment is personal - it identifies one individual's thoughts on the post. Whether that will lead into an improvement of the post or a comment war highly depends on the op and the commenter. It can't be safely predicted or assumed that it will by default benefit the community and the op.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6844" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2691" RevisionGUID="83edaf24-e102-48dd-ab9e-71979e00b330" CreationDate="2011-12-16T17:14:57.743" UserId="25936" Text="[One of the answers][1] does give some information about the product (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I can recommend KanbanTool. You can organize your work with **colored sticky notes** placed on a kanban board to visualize, control and optimize your workflow. It also **provides analytics with breakdown charts and cumulative flow diagram**. You can also **invite people to build project teams and share online documents**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's quite a lot more information than some of the other answers to the [question][2]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/112479/25936&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/123367/25936&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/123366/25936&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/112474/25936&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/112475/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are more spammy than cloue's answer. That's not to say that the answer is a good one, but I wouldn't go as far as calling it spam. It feels more like a fanboy / fangirl answer, the &quot;I'm using this great thing and the world must know&quot; type.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112472/what-kanban-specific-software-is-out-there/123362#123362&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112472/what-kanban-specific-software-is-out-there" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6845" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2691" RevisionGUID="2bc59107-1706-4eb7-8f70-925745c8b5ff" CreationDate="2011-12-16T17:31:41.180" UserId="25936" Comment="added 196 characters in body" Text="[One of the answers][1] does give some information about the product (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I can recommend KanbanTool. You can organize your work with **colored sticky notes** placed on a kanban board to visualize, control and optimize your workflow. It also **provides analytics with breakdown charts and cumulative flow diagram**. You can also **invite people to build project teams and share online documents**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's quite a lot more information than some of the other answers to the [question][2]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/112479/25936&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/123367/25936&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/123366/25936&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/112474/25936&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/112475/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are more spammy than cloue's answer. That's not to say that the answer is a good one, but I wouldn't go as far as calling it spam. It feels more like a fanboy / fangirl answer, the &quot;I'm using this great thing and the world must know&quot; type. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of the answers I linked to are from high reputation users, and some have quite a few upvotes, and that might have lead less experienced users to think it's ok to provide so poor answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112472/what-kanban-specific-software-is-out-there/123362#123362&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112472/what-kanban-specific-software-is-out-there" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6846" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2690" RevisionGUID="68087c83-b2ea-4ced-a92f-d58888dba8e2" CreationDate="2011-12-16T17:43:55.513" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="&gt;  But it is almost universally agreed that doing so benefits the community as well as the poster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually I don't think so. Quite a few times my downvote comments, especially on answers, lead to unhappy responses which may turn into lengthy comment wars (for which I am as much to blame as the op). I've used the &quot;let's continue in chat&quot; feature more times than I would want to. That's a byproduct of the downvote comment that's common enough to be taken into consideration. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same doesn't happen (as much) in questions, but there where a couple of instances that: I was the first to happen upon the question, downvoted and left a message. And then the question was deleted by the op. That's the op's right, but not why I took the time to write the comment, which was to help the op improve the question. Imagine my frustration when I've written a lengthy comment with links and helpful tips, just to find out a few minutes later that the question (and my comment) was gone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, when it comes to answers, the faq states (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting **expert answers** on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*I hereby pledge to aggressively downvote every answer that in my mind is not an expert answer, without feeling any obligation to explain why I did so*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's in the faq, I don't care if an asker is unclear on the guidelines, but imho an answerer must be. People should answer only if they are 100% certain of what they are saying, otherwise leave a comment instead. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And when it comes to questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*I hereby pledge to aggressively downvote every question that could be easily answered with a simple Google search, or the Wikipedia article on the matter, or something that would require similarly minimal effort*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will consider taking the time to accompany my downvote with a helpful comment if and only if the asker is clearly a noob.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvotes are the StackExchange way of saying &quot;your answer is not helpful&quot; and &quot;your question doesn't meet the criteria&quot;. I'm getting increasingly tired of all the whining, all those &quot;why the downvote&quot; comments, especially when there's only one downvote - if it's more than one, well it should be obvious. But if it's just one, the correct question the op should be asking would be &quot;how come no one cancelled out that downvote with an upvote?&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;btw I don't have any opinion on if you choose to leave a comment explaining a downvote or not. I'm just saying that in my experience sometimes it's not as helpful as intended, people get hung up on the one downvote disregarding the fact that it doesn't really matter. And I've seen more than enough sad instances of ops responding aggresively to the one downvoter that was kind enough to leave a comment, without taking into account the fact that their post was downvoted into oblivion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A comment is personal - it identifies one individual's thoughts on the post. Whether that will lead into an improvement of the post or a comment war highly depends on the op and the commenter. It can't be safely predicted or assumed that it will by default benefit the community and the op.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6847" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2692" RevisionGUID="ec55f171-04d1-443e-86c3-b0b2ff90a2db" CreationDate="2011-12-16T17:54:41.003" UserId="1204" Text="I would resist any effort to tie downvotes to comments.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's why: every time I've explained my downvote in a comment, I've gotten into an argument with the OP.  So I don't do it anymore.  It just causes unnecessary and unwanted noise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strictly speaking, using comments to explain downvotes is not a proper use of the comments system; it is meta discussion.  Comments should generally only be used to clarify a post or ask for additional information." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6848" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2691" RevisionGUID="42d1366f-62ae-4563-8859-c9c08eb19fa6" CreationDate="2011-12-16T18:55:58.563" UserId="25936" Comment="does give? what was I thinking..." Text="[One of the answers][1] gives some information about the product (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I can recommend KanbanTool. You can **organize your work with colored sticky notes** placed on a kanban board to **visualize, control and optimize your workflow**. It also **provides analytics with breakdown charts and cumulative flow diagram**. You can also **invite people to build project teams and share online documents**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's quite a lot more information than some of the other answers to the [question][2]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/112479/25936&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/123367/25936&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/123366/25936&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/112474/25936&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/112475/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are more spammy than cloue's answer. That's not to say that the answer is a good one, but I wouldn't go as far as calling it spam. It feels more like a fanboy / fangirl answer, the &quot;I'm using this great thing and the world must know&quot; type. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of the answers I linked to are from high reputation users, and some have quite a few upvotes, and that might have lead less experienced users to think it's ok to provide so poor answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112472/what-kanban-specific-software-is-out-there/123362#123362&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112472/what-kanban-specific-software-is-out-there" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6849" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2685" RevisionGUID="dd465685-b32d-45d2-ae50-d4f469ed27de" CreationDate="2011-12-17T03:57:20.080" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 12 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Does Programmers Stack Exchange site support syntax-highlighting for C++?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I ask is that the code in [my question][1] isn't highlighted in Firefox 8.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125569/programmically-generating-htmlcss" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6850" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2685" RevisionGUID="dd465685-b32d-45d2-ae50-d4f469ed27de" CreationDate="2011-12-17T03:57:20.080" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 12 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Why isn't syntax highlighting for C++ working?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6851" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2685" RevisionGUID="dd465685-b32d-45d2-ae50-d4f469ed27de" CreationDate="2011-12-17T03:57:20.080" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 12 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|support|syntax-highlighting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6852" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2693" RevisionGUID="35d93f34-2ba8-4906-a9a3-b60113546d4d" CreationDate="2011-12-17T15:04:08.277" UserId="25936" Text="Are questions on simple class hierarchies, like this [recent one][1], on topic? I think they are perfectly on topic here, but also that they might find a much better home at [Code Review SE][2]. As @YamMarcovic notes in a comment to the question, a class diagram is essentially code. Initially I agreed, but now I'm a little bit undecided. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Code Review SE is still in it's early days, and unfortunately they still haven't decided if class hierarchies are on topic there, as the [relevant meta discussion][3] is still open. Their faq [specifically disqualifies questions][4] on &quot;Higher-level architecture and design of software systems&quot;, and a [meta question on those][5] points to Programmers as the appropriate site. But can we really classify a simple class hierarchy question as a &quot;Higher-level architecture and design of software systems&quot; question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we decide that they are off topic here, should we care that they might not find a better home at Code Review? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125726/review-my-class-hierarchy&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/74/should-design-questions-be-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/faq#questions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/213/where-do-high-level-architecture-and-design-questions-go" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6853" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2693" RevisionGUID="35d93f34-2ba8-4906-a9a3-b60113546d4d" CreationDate="2011-12-17T15:04:08.277" UserId="25936" Text="Are class hierarchies on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6854" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2693" RevisionGUID="35d93f34-2ba8-4906-a9a3-b60113546d4d" CreationDate="2011-12-17T15:04:08.277" UserId="25936" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6855" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2694" RevisionGUID="8e3baa63-b939-4f83-9c39-3974af1d402a" CreationDate="2011-12-18T05:08:10.310" UserId="12063" Text="Who else is this question going to help? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Seems too focused a question to be on topic here.  There are some good answers but they don't work if you rewrite the question to be more general.  It would be nice if this works on code review and could be moved but no matter what, it doesn't belong here.  Voted to close." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6856" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2694" RevisionGUID="9959e6cb-8f15-4234-945c-78a2328e953a" CreationDate="2011-12-18T05:39:34.487" UserId="12063" Comment="added 120 characters in body" Text="Who else is this question going to help? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Seems too focused a question to be on topic here.  There are some good answers but they don't work if you rewrite the question to be more general.  It would be nice if this works on code review and could be moved but no matter what, it doesn't belong here.  Voted to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;General questions on the subject should be fine, these validate my homework answers don't meet the faq requirements." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6857" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2686" RevisionGUID="1be7e717-8c9e-4222-ade5-d9b4e18555b3" CreationDate="2011-12-18T10:31:58.707" UserId="25936" Comment="added 96 characters in body" Text="Yes it does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, unless you [explicitly tell the highlighter which language it is][1] by including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- language: lang-cpp --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;at the start of your code snippet, it uses the tags to decide which language the code is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you've tagged the question [tag:html] and [tag:css] it's going to assume that the code is either HTML or CSS, not C++.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So either retag the question or use the language hint.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/981/syntax-highlighting-language-hints" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6858" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2695" RevisionGUID="d9ca6650-8439-4e22-866a-86e24c9fc35a" CreationDate="2011-12-18T13:32:10.113" UserId="37342" Text="Can you bold-ify the first line of the about page?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I would be interested in knowing which question to post on stackoverflow, and which to post on programmers (see my last 2 questions)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6859" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2695" RevisionGUID="d9ca6650-8439-4e22-866a-86e24c9fc35a" CreationDate="2011-12-18T13:32:10.113" UserId="37342" Text="Bold-ify first line of the About page" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6860" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2695" RevisionGUID="d9ca6650-8439-4e22-866a-86e24c9fc35a" CreationDate="2011-12-18T13:32:10.113" UserId="37342" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6861" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2695" RevisionGUID="c3b6e30e-3c27-49df-b877-954655ae8dd1" CreationDate="2011-12-18T13:43:04.267" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Remove duplicate and tangential question" Text="Can you bold-ify the first line of the about page?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6862" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2695" RevisionGUID="c3b6e30e-3c27-49df-b877-954655ae8dd1" CreationDate="2011-12-18T13:43:04.267" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Remove duplicate and tangential question" Text="|feature-request|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6863" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2696" RevisionGUID="5a45453f-fbba-42ca-839f-39bbbd091957" CreationDate="2011-12-18T14:29:57.747" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Like DKnight, I think this type of question is too localized to be a fit here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this to be on-topic here, it'd have to be asking about something far more general or high-level: &quot;I'm working on this UML diagram, and I'm not sure whether I should do X or Y. Which way is better if I want to demonstrate Z?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Posting a picture of a UML diagram and asking for critiques is way too specific and unlikely to help other people in the future, and I would say in general code/diagram critiques are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Code Review.SE is currently unique on the network in its focus on helping people with very localized, non-generalizable problems like this: I'm not totally convinced it's on-topic there, but I can definitely see why people would think that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've reached out to the moderators on Code Review to look at this question and provide their thoughts, but it's the weekend and they haven't responded yet." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6864" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2695" RevisionGUID="947dc838-1698-430c-8411-b6a39ce5e689" CreationDate="2011-12-18T18:28:11.153" UserId="25936" Comment="added 90 characters in body" Text="Can you bold-ify the first line of the about page?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that first line is more important than any other line (for stackoverflow ppl)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6865" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2697" RevisionGUID="0d7eba3c-9c10-4841-ae66-75390a17055c" CreationDate="2011-12-18T18:52:29.563" UserId="226" Text="Assuming that by &quot;Stack Overflow people&quot; you mean users who visit Programmers from Stack Overflow... I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that people will realize that a different site would have different scope and might behave differently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers Stack Exchange is still a part of the Stack Exchange network and so is Stack Overflow. Both sites work the same in the sense that there's an FAQ that describes what the site is about. Anyone interested in finding out what Programmers is about just needs to check the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even when looking at the [About](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about) page, I think it's reasonable to expect visitors to read the first sentence without it being bolded. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Incidentally, it looks like the About link in the top bar on the site has been replaced with a link to this meta site, so the About page is even less emphasized than before. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;TL;DR: I don't think we should make the first line in the About page or the FAQ bold." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6866" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2698" RevisionGUID="63e8e2bd-3e14-47e1-aa2a-0e108a938893" CreationDate="2011-12-18T18:53:27.557" UserId="25936" Text="The first line of the [about page][1] is: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a free, community driven Q&amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the first line of the [faq][2] is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't really tell which one you are referring to, both are equally important: The about page is worded to be a little bit friendlier to people who don't really know what StackExchange is and the faq page assumes you already know that and goes on to distinguish this from other sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you commented that your question is `for stackoverflow ppl`, I'm assuming you mean the faq, as I think they'll probably skip the about page when first visiting Programmers. But it doesn't really matter, as the answer to bold-*ifying* both lines is: **Nope**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [Jakob Nielsen][3] [best put it][4] (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Text Should be Scannable**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Scanning can save users time. During the study, 15 participants always approached unfamiliar Web text by trying to scan it before reading it. Only 3 participants started reading text word by word, from the top of the page to the bottom, without scanning. Elements that enhance scanning include headings, large type, **bold text**, highlighted text, bulleted lists, graphics, captions, topic sentences, and tables of contents.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; One user from Study 1 who scanned an article but failed to find what he was looking for said, &quot;If this happened to me at work, where I get 70 emails and 50 voicemails a day, then that would be the end of it. If it doesn't come right out at me, I'm going to give up on it.&quot; &quot;Give me bulleted items,&quot; another user said. While looking at a news site, one person said, &quot;**This is easy to read because it uses bold to highlight certain points.**&quot; An essay containing long blocks of text prompted this response: &quot;The whole way it looked made it kind of boring. It's intimidating. People want to read things that are broken up. It gets the points across better.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At first the quote may seem to support your point, but it doesn't: Bold should be used sparingly as a mechanism to enhance *scannability* and *readability*, and it's completely useless for sentences or other elements that already stand out. And the first line of the faq page and the about page stand out just because they are the *first lines*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No need to emphasize more. Users that won't bother reading the first line, won't bother reading it even if it looks like that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I don't think it's worth spending any time emphasizing text for people who don't bother reading the first line of a text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Nielsen_%28usability_consultant%29&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6867" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2699" RevisionGUID="e3a84a37-01da-438a-a476-1189092b60fb" CreationDate="2011-12-19T04:26:40.370" UserId="43243" Text="The FAQ of **Programmers** describes this site as *a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development* .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since business logic is an important part (in fact its the foremost deciding factor in software) of the programming model, I think there must be certain guidelines as to which parts of the business logic may and may not be discussed here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6868" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2699" RevisionGUID="e3a84a37-01da-438a-a476-1189092b60fb" CreationDate="2011-12-19T04:26:40.370" UserId="43243" Text="Basic guidelines for discussing business logic and programming" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6869" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2699" RevisionGUID="e3a84a37-01da-438a-a476-1189092b60fb" CreationDate="2011-12-19T04:26:40.370" UserId="43243" Text="|feature-request|design|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6871" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2699" RevisionGUID="1bb7887d-b361-499e-be01-c8226e0a29c7" CreationDate="2011-12-19T05:54:13.130" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6872" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2699" RevisionGUID="685a4b5a-27b0-47cf-abf3-537ab2722b38" CreationDate="2011-12-19T08:57:12.503" UserId="43243" Comment="example added" Text="The FAQ of **Programmers** describes this site as *a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development* .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since business logic is an important part (in fact its the foremost deciding factor in software) of the programming model, I think there must be certain guidelines as to which parts of the business logic may and may not be discussed here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit 1: Example**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming a simple e-ticketing system for an event. The business logic here is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Check ticket  availability -&gt; If available book an order and proceed to checkout -&gt; If checkout successful reduce ticket qty else cancel transaction&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the most probable design (for simplicity's sake) would be to have a counter for tickets, a order system and a checkout module. Now just have a list of questions and where they fall?(parenthesis indicate my suggestion)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * When to update my counter; before or after transaction? (possibly Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA; * How to implement a queue algorithm? (Theoretical Computer Science)&#xD;&#xA; * Should I create separate tables for orders and counters (belongs at Code Review)&#xD;&#xA; * What to do when two users simultaneously access the system? (cannot decide)&#xD;&#xA; * What is the generally accepted practice (vague but a general answer be provided)&#xD;&#xA; * What checkout module is available in Python? (definitely Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I believe the following questions be asked here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Can I implement a single queue or a multiple queue? (architecture)&#xD;&#xA; * How can I prioritize my queue? (algorithm)&#xD;&#xA; * Should I completely lock the counter when a transaction is in place or have a cached copy? (design)&#xD;&#xA; * Shoud I isolate orders from counter (design)&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Can these questions be asked about business logic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * I have implemented the above logic for a single event. How to apply it for multiple events?&#xD;&#xA; * If ticket not available, the user must be put in a waiting list and must be allocated when a user cancels transaction. How about this implementation?&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;I believe these questions must never be asked here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Is my business logic right?&#xD;&#xA; * What web application should I use?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could even give an elaborate example if required" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6873" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2701" RevisionGUID="d5024808-f9fc-46e2-9992-abefa5d318a9" CreationDate="2011-12-19T09:13:07.513" UserId="6909" Text="90% likely to be spam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - User not active otherwise. &#xD;&#xA; - User has done nothing other than promote one commercial product. Big warning sign!&#xD;&#xA; - Late answers imply a marketer was keyword-searching for forums / posts containing the word &quot;KanBan&quot; or &quot;collaboration&quot; or similar&#xD;&#xA; - Not a particularly tailored answer, could easily be from a product brochure. Spammers are paid on quantity, not quality so you can expect cut &amp; paste." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6874" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2702" RevisionGUID="9a9ec8a8-2f57-4cdb-80e3-63c788323bc8" CreationDate="2011-12-19T09:40:50.040" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; When to update my counter; before or after transaction? (possibly Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nope, Stack Overflow is for &quot;[I've built this, doesn't work, tried this and that, still doesn't work, please help][1]&quot; type of questions. The one above is possibly on topic here - it's a whiteboard decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to implement a queue algorithm? (Theoretical Computer Science)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nope, Theoretical Computer Science is [for *research-level* questions][2]. `How to implement a queue algorithm` is not research-level, by any definition. I think it's on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should I create separate tables for orders and counters (belongs at Code Review)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definitely doesn't belong at Code Review. Code Review is strictly for [reviews of working code][3], in this instance it *might* be acceptable to post your table structure for review, but even that might not be on topic there - Code Review is still in beta, what's on/off topic is still a work in progress.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Depending on what exactly is being asked, it might be acceptable here or [Database Administrators - Stack Exchange][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What to do when two users simultaneously access the system? (cannot decide)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If `what to do` is asking for code, and it presents problematic code plus some effort to fix it, StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;- If the question asks for a conceptual design, a workflow, anything language agnostic, it's on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the generally accepted practice (vague but a general answer be provided)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Depends on the practice, really.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What checkout module is available in Python? (definitely Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definitely doesn't belong here. Most similar questions are of extreme low quality (can be answered with minimal effort), for that alone I'm hesitant to say it belongs anywhere. Most of these are shopping advice questions, and those definitely don't belong on any Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can these questions be asked about business logic?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I have implemented the above logic for a single event. How to apply it for multiple events?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - If ticket not available, the user must be put in a waiting list and must be allocated when a user cancels transaction. How about this implementation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeap, I think these would fit here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I believe these questions must never be asked here&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Is my business logic right?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What web application should I use?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These cannot be safely decided on, they are extremely vague and we should approach them per case. Most `What web application should I use` are of low quality, but not as bad as the `What checkout module is available in Python?` type, and there are some that are quite good - those that present a very specific scenario and can only be answered by truly experienced developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6875" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2702" RevisionGUID="5257c6a8-a66b-4267-bc5c-a829643aeb59" CreationDate="2011-12-19T09:47:01.543" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="&gt; When to update my counter; before or after transaction? (possibly Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nope, Stack Overflow is for &quot;[I've built this, doesn't work, tried this and that, still doesn't work, please help][1]&quot; type of questions. The one above is possibly on topic here - it's a whiteboard decision. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to implement a queue algorithm? (Theoretical Computer Science)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nope, Theoretical Computer Science is [for *research-level* questions][2]. `How to implement a queue algorithm` is not research-level, by any definition. I think it's on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should I create separate tables for orders and counters (belongs at Code Review)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definitely doesn't belong at Code Review. Code Review is strictly for [reviews of working code][3], in this instance it *might* be acceptable to post your table structure for review, but even that might not be on topic there - Code Review is still in beta, what's on/off topic is still a work in progress.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Depending on what exactly is being asked, it might be acceptable here or [Database Administrators - Stack Exchange][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What to do when two users simultaneously access the system? (cannot decide)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If `what to do` is asking for code, and it presents problematic code plus some effort to fix it, StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;- If the question asks for a conceptual design, a workflow, anything language agnostic, it's on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the generally accepted practice (vague but a general answer be provided)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Depends on the practice, really.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What checkout module is available in Python? (definitely Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definitely doesn't belong here. Most similar questions are of extreme low quality (can be answered with minimal effort), for that alone I'm hesitant to say it belongs anywhere. Most of these are shopping advice questions, and those definitely don't belong on any Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can these questions be asked about business logic?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I have implemented the above logic for a single event. How to apply it for multiple events?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - If ticket not available, the user must be put in a waiting list and must be allocated when a user cancels transaction. How about this implementation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeap, I think these would fit here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I believe these questions must never be asked here&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Is my business logic right?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What web application should I use?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These cannot be safely decided on, they are extremely vague and we should approach them per case. Most `What web application should I use` are of low quality, but not as bad as the `What checkout module is available in Python?` type, and there are some that are quite good - those that present a very specific scenario and can only be answered by truly experienced developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6876" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2703" RevisionGUID="9e40b0b9-71dc-41ea-a124-369a07eb27fe" CreationDate="2011-12-19T09:52:03.263" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Given your example questions, I think you correctly identified where you want to ask them and what's on (and off) topic here; or at the very least I agree with your assessment. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the three you couldn't decide:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What to do when two users simultaneously access the system? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would depend on the specifics of the question, but it sounds like high-level stuff that would be a fit here. If it was implementation specific (like really heavy into code), you might be better suited on Stack Overflow, but it likely would be fine here even still.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have implemented the above logic for a single event. How to apply it for multiple events?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, if you're supplying code and you want to know how to adapt it, Stack Overflow is the better choice. If you're still talking abstractly, it's on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If ticket not available, the user must be put in a waiting list and must be allocated when a user cancels transaction. How about this implementation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit tricky: it's definitely not a fit for us, but as to where it's on-topic it could either go Stack Overflow or Code Review. The safe bet would likely be Stack Overflow, but if flagged, I'd still run it by the mods on Code Review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6877" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2702" RevisionGUID="2018b1b4-ba69-471f-999d-c849ca03bf24" CreationDate="2011-12-19T10:11:55.980" UserId="25936" Comment="added 386 characters in body" Text="&gt; When to update my counter; before or after transaction? (possibly Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Possibly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to implement a queue algorithm? (Theoretical Computer Science)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nope, Theoretical Computer Science is [for *research-level* questions][2]. I *don't think* that `How to implement a queue algorithm` qualifies as research-level. Probably on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should I create separate tables for orders and counters (belongs at Code Review)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definitely doesn't belong at Code Review. Code Review is strictly for [reviews of working code][3], in this instance it *might* be acceptable to post your table structure for review, but even that might not be on topic there - Code Review is still in beta, what's on topic definition is still a *work in progress*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Depending on what exactly is being asked, it might be acceptable here or [Database Administrators - Stack Exchange][4] - database design is on topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What to do when two users simultaneously access the system? (cannot decide)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If `what to do` is asking for code, and it presents problematic code plus some effort to fix it, StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;- If the question asks for a conceptual design, a workflow, anything language agnostic, it should be on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the generally accepted practice (vague but a general answer be provided)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Depends on the practice, really.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What checkout module is available in Python? (definitely Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definitely doesn't belong here. Most similar questions are of extreme low quality (can be answered with minimal effort), for that alone I'm hesitant to say it belongs anywhere. Most of these are shopping advice questions, and those definitely don't belong on any Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can these questions be asked about business logic?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I have implemented the above logic for a single event. How to apply it for multiple events?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - If ticket not available, the user must be put in a waiting list and must be allocated when a user cancels transaction. How about this implementation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeap, I think these would fit here. `How about this implementation?` would qualify a question for Code Review, if and only if it's actual working code. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I believe these questions must never be asked here&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Is my business logic right?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What web application should I use?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These cannot be safely decided on, they are extremely vague and we should approach them per case. Most `What web application should I use` are of low quality, but not as bad as the `What checkout module is available in Python?` type, and there are some that are quite good - those that present a very specific scenario and can only be answered by truly experienced developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't really think there's an easy answer to this. Your example is theoretical, it'd be a lot easier if you could identify existing example questions that fit your titles (if such exist). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And of course it's always possible for a borderline question to find a good home here, if it generates a great answers. More often than not it's a judgement call, and questions get re-opened all the time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6878" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2702" RevisionGUID="7dacb910-e528-4138-88ca-32e8acb50b7c" CreationDate="2011-12-19T10:30:18.743" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="&gt; When to update my counter; before or after transaction? (possibly Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Possibly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to implement a queue algorithm? (Theoretical Computer Science)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nope, Theoretical Computer Science is [for *research-level* questions][2]. I *don't think* that `How to implement a queue algorithm` qualifies as research-level. Probably on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should I create separate tables for orders and counters (belongs at Code Review)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definitely doesn't belong at Code Review. Code Review is strictly for [reviews of working code][3], in this instance it *might* be acceptable to post your table structure for review, but even that might not be on topic there - Code Review is still in beta, what's on topic definition is still a *work in progress*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Depending on what exactly is being asked, it might be acceptable here or [Database Administrators - Stack Exchange][4] - database design is on topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What to do when two users simultaneously access the system? (cannot decide)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If `what to do` is asking for code, and it presents problematic code plus some effort to fix it, StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;- If the question asks for a conceptual design, a workflow, anything language agnostic, it should be on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the generally accepted practice (vague but a general answer be provided)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Depends on the practice, really.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What checkout module is available in Python? (definitely Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definitely doesn't belong here. Most similar questions are of extreme low quality (can be answered with minimal effort), for that alone I'm hesitant to say it belongs anywhere. Most of these are shopping advice questions, and those definitely don't belong on any Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can these questions be asked about business logic?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I have implemented the above logic for a single event. How to apply it for multiple events?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - If ticket not available, the user must be put in a waiting list and must be allocated when a user cancels transaction. How about this implementation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeap, I think these would fit here. `How about this implementation?` would qualify a question for Code Review, if and only if it's actual working code. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I believe these questions must never be asked here&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Is my business logic right?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What web application should I use?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These cannot be safely decided on, they are extremely vague and we should approach them per case. Most `What web application should I use` are of low quality, but not as bad as the `What checkout module is available in Python?` type, and there are some that are quite good - those that present a very specific scenario and can only be answered by truly experienced developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't really think there's an easy answer to this. Your example is theoretical, it'd be a lot easier if you could identify existing example questions that fit your titles (if such exist). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And of course it's always possible for a borderline question to find a good home here, if it generates great answers. More often than not it's a judgement call, and questions get re-opened all the time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6879" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2702" RevisionGUID="52da4594-585f-41ff-a7a9-25e961636bbb" CreationDate="2011-12-19T11:00:28.367" UserId="25936" Comment="added 93 characters in body" Text="&gt; When to update my counter; before or after transaction? (possibly Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Possibly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to implement a queue algorithm? (Theoretical Computer Science)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nope, Theoretical Computer Science is [for *research-level* questions][2]. I *don't think* that `How to implement a queue algorithm` qualifies as research-level. Probably on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should I create separate tables for orders and counters (belongs at Code Review)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definitely doesn't belong at Code Review. Code Review is strictly for [reviews of working code][3], in this instance it *might* be acceptable to post your table structure for review, but even that might not be on topic there - Code Review is still in beta, what's on topic definition is still a *work in progress*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Depending on what exactly is being asked, it might be acceptable here or [Database Administrators - Stack Exchange][4] - database design is on topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What to do when two users simultaneously access the system? (cannot decide)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If `what to do` is asking for code, and it presents problematic code plus some effort to fix it, StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;- If the question asks for a conceptual design, a workflow, anything language agnostic, it should be on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the generally accepted practice (vague but a general answer be provided)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Depends on the practice, really.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What checkout module is available in Python? (definitely Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definitely doesn't belong here. Most similar questions are of extreme low quality (can be answered with minimal effort), for that alone I'm hesitant to say it belongs anywhere. Most of these are shopping advice questions, and those definitely don't belong on any Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can these questions be asked about business logic?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I have implemented the above logic for a single event. How to apply it for multiple events?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - If ticket not available, the user must be put in a waiting list and must be allocated when a user cancels transaction. How about this implementation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeap, I think these would fit here. `How about this implementation?` would qualify a question for Code Review, if and only if it's actual working code. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I believe these questions must never be asked here&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Is my business logic right?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What web application should I use?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These cannot be safely decided on, they are extremely vague and we should approach them per case. Most `What web application should I use` are of low quality, but not as bad as the `What checkout module is available in Python?` type, and there are some that are quite good - those that present a very specific scenario and can only be answered by truly experienced developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't really think there's an easy answer to this. Your example is theoretical, it'd be a lot easier if you could identify existing example questions that fit your titles (if such exist). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And of course it's always possible for a borderline question to find a good home here, if it generates great answers. More often than not it's a judgement call, and questions get re-opened all the time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, there are rare cases that might be perfectly on topic here and on another site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6881" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2702" RevisionGUID="c8e9517d-21d3-4ad1-ae84-a60b0c15fd63" CreationDate="2011-12-19T13:21:26.880" UserId="25936" Comment="added 327 characters in body" Text="&gt; When to update my counter; before or after transaction? (possibly Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Possibly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to implement a queue algorithm? (Theoretical Computer Science)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nope, Theoretical Computer Science is [for *research-level* questions][1]. I *don't think* that `How to implement a queue algorithm` qualifies as research-level. [Clustering algorithm for non-dimensional data][2] is one example question they consider on topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, depending on complexity, it could be on topic here and there (and some on both sites). Ultimately it's about where the question has more chances to generate good answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should I create separate tables for orders and counters (belongs at Code Review)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definitely doesn't belong at Code Review. Code Review is strictly for [reviews of working code][3], in this instance it *might* be acceptable to post your table structure for review, but even that might not be on topic there - Code Review is still in beta, what's on topic definition is still a *work in progress*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Depending on what exactly is being asked, it might be acceptable here or [Database Administrators - Stack Exchange][4] - database design is on topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What to do when two users simultaneously access the system? (cannot decide)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If `what to do` is asking for code, and it presents problematic code plus some effort to fix it, StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;- If the question asks for a conceptual design, a workflow, anything language agnostic, it should be on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the generally accepted practice (vague but a general answer be provided)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Depends on the practice, really.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What checkout module is available in Python? (definitely Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definitely doesn't belong here. Most similar questions are of extreme low quality (can be answered with minimal effort), for that alone I'm hesitant to say it belongs anywhere. Most of these are shopping advice questions, and those definitely don't belong on any Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can these questions be asked about business logic?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I have implemented the above logic for a single event. How to apply it for multiple events?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - If ticket not available, the user must be put in a waiting list and must be allocated when a user cancels transaction. How about this implementation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeap, I think these would fit here. `How about this implementation?` would qualify a question for Code Review, if and only if it's actual working code. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I believe these questions must never be asked here&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Is my business logic right?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What web application should I use?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These cannot be safely decided on, they are extremely vague and we should approach them per case. Most `What web application should I use` are of low quality, but not as bad as the `What checkout module is available in Python?` type, and there are some that are quite good - those that present a very specific scenario and can only be answered by truly experienced developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't really think there's an easy answer to this. Your example is theoretical, it'd be a lot easier if you could identify existing example questions that fit your titles (if such exist). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And of course it's always possible for a borderline question to find a good home here, if it generates great answers. More often than not it's a judgement call, and questions get re-opened all the time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, there are rare cases that might be perfectly on topic here and on another site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/2364/clustering-algorithm-for-non-dimensional-data&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6882" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2703" RevisionGUID="d66d2386-3bfa-49d3-a1ba-7ee6f48a01b8" CreationDate="2011-12-19T16:49:51.257" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Expand with disagreements" Text="Given your example questions, I think you mostly correctly identified where you want to ask them and what's on (and off) topic here; or at the very least I mostly agree with your assessment. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Where I disagree&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to implement a queue algorithm? (Theoretical Computer Science)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like [Yannis mentions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2702/8), Theoretical Computer Science is research-level only: unless you're talking about it at a graduate-level or higher, this wouldn't be on-topic there. If you're talking about putting it into code, you'll want Stack Overflow. If you're talking about putting it into programming terms (but still at the conceptual stage), it'll likely be fine here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the generally accepted practice (vague but a general answer be provided)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9 times out of 10, this isn't a real question, or at best it's a non-constructive question. Questions need to provide specific, solvable problems: if that's missing, the answer to most &quot;best practices&quot; questions is &quot;it depends&quot; which really doesn't help anyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But given the set that *are* answerable, some are going to be Stack Overflow (I have X problem, my code isn't working, what's the generally accepted way to fix it?), some Code Review (What's the generally accepted way to refactor this code?), and some us (more whiteboard stuff)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What checkout module is available in Python? (definitely Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They're definitely off-topic here, but recommendation questions have been asked so many times on Stack Overflow, it's hard to imagine one that would actually be high quality or not duplicated. The best way to ask these are, &quot;I'm doing X. Here is my code with solution Y, but it doesn't do Z requirement. Is there a better way to accomplish what I'm doing?&quot; and let the recommendation of a different library come from the answers provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How can I prioritize my queue? (algorithm)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There really isn't a good place to ask these types of questions on the network, but I think right now it's settled on Programmers being the best fit, even though it's unlikely to get a very good answer. There's a [non-research level Computer Science](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/35636/computer-science-non-programming?referrer=RaYobbitpqczXN85c5ibxQ2) site proposal in the works, where non-implementation questions about algorithms will probably wind up being best answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The ones you couldn't decide on&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What to do when two users simultaneously access the system? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would depend on the specifics of the question, but it sounds like high-level stuff that would be a fit here. If it was implementation specific (like really heavy into code), you might be better suited on Stack Overflow, but it likely would be fine here even still.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have implemented the above logic for a single event. How to apply it for multiple events?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, if you're supplying code and you want to know how to adapt it, Stack Overflow is the better choice. If you're still talking abstractly, it's on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If ticket not available, the user must be put in a waiting list and must be allocated when a user cancels transaction. How about this implementation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit tricky: it's definitely not a fit for us, but as to where it's on-topic it could either go Stack Overflow or Code Review. The safe bet would likely be Stack Overflow, but if flagged, I'd still run it by the mods on Code Review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6883" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="2703" RevisionGUID="d66d2386-3bfa-49d3-a1ba-7ee6f48a01b8" CreationDate="2011-12-19T16:49:51.257" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="6884" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2703" RevisionGUID="1678b352-bb02-4c9a-86bd-f1f5ad5ebe96" CreationDate="2011-12-19T16:56:00.867" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Expand with disagreements" Text="Given your example questions, I think you mostly correctly identified where you want to ask them and what's on (and off) topic here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Where there's disagreement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to implement a queue algorithm? (Theoretical Computer Science)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like [Yannis mentions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2702/8), Theoretical Computer Science is research-level only: unless you're talking about it at a graduate-level or higher, this wouldn't be on-topic there. If you're talking about putting it into code, you'll want Stack Overflow. If you're talking about putting it into programming terms (but still at the conceptual stage), it'll likely be fine here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the generally accepted practice (vague but a general answer be provided)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9 times out of 10, this isn't a real question, or at best it's a non-constructive question. Questions need to provide specific, solvable problems: if that's missing, the answer to most &quot;best practices&quot; questions is &quot;it depends&quot; which really doesn't help anyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But given the set that *are* answerable, some are going to be Stack Overflow (I have X problem, my code isn't working, what's the generally accepted way to fix it?), some Code Review (What's the generally accepted way to refactor this code?), and some us (more whiteboard stuff)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What checkout module is available in Python? (definitely Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They're definitely off-topic here, but recommendation questions have been asked so many times on Stack Overflow, it's hard to imagine one that would actually be high quality or not duplicated. The best way to ask these are, &quot;I'm doing X. Here is my code with solution Y, but it doesn't do Z requirement. Is there a better way to accomplish what I'm doing?&quot; and let the recommendation for a different library come naturally from the answers provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How can I prioritize my queue? (algorithm)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There really isn't a good place to ask these types of questions on the network, but I think right now it's settled on Programmers being the best fit, even though it's unlikely to get a very good answer. There's a [non-research level Computer Science](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/35636/computer-science-non-programming?referrer=RaYobbitpqczXN85c5ibxQ2) site proposal in the works, where non-implementation questions about algorithms will probably wind up being best answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The ones you couldn't decide on&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What to do when two users simultaneously access the system? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would depend on the specifics of the question, but it sounds like high-level stuff that would be a fit here. If it was implementation specific (like really heavy into code), you might be better suited on Stack Overflow, but it likely would be fine here even still.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have implemented the above logic for a single event. How to apply it for multiple events?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, if you're supplying code and you want to know how to adapt it, Stack Overflow is the better choice. If you're still talking abstractly, it's on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If ticket not available, the user must be put in a waiting list and must be allocated when a user cancels transaction. How about this implementation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit tricky: it's definitely not a fit for us, but as to where it's on-topic it could either go Stack Overflow or Code Review. The safe bet would likely be Stack Overflow, but if flagged, I'd still run it by the mods on Code Review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6885" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2695" RevisionGUID="83b1ea81-7327-490b-8b05-eff6765da5ff" CreationDate="2011-12-19T17:56:41.063" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6888" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2705" RevisionGUID="09d94227-3494-4495-a4a2-e3bb35ad3183" CreationDate="2011-12-20T09:54:46.190" UserId="39802" Text="Why do I only have 31 in reputation, when I got totally five upvotes? On my user page it says I answered two questions with scores of 2 and 3. I think you get 10 rep for upvotes on answers. One answer could be that I do not get rep from the answer scoring 2 ups because that questions has got so many answers already. But it says &quot;21 answers&quot; and I think the limit is 30." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6889" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2705" RevisionGUID="09d94227-3494-4495-a4a2-e3bb35ad3183" CreationDate="2011-12-20T09:54:46.190" UserId="39802" Text="Why is my rep lower than it should?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6890" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2705" RevisionGUID="09d94227-3494-4495-a4a2-e3bb35ad3183" CreationDate="2011-12-20T09:54:46.190" UserId="39802" Text="|discussion|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6891" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2706" RevisionGUID="40fb08ad-4f50-43d7-9ab8-aa644cda2448" CreationDate="2011-12-20T10:03:17.277" UserId="25936" Text="[One of your answers][1] is on a question that was community wiki before you answered (or before you got any upvotes). You don't earn or lose rep for those - but you can still earn badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But it says &quot;21 answers&quot; and I think the limit is 30.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The limit is [actually 15][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/117440/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1596/the-15-answer-cw-conversion-really-sucks" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6892" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2706" RevisionGUID="abb982bd-cfa2-42ec-94f3-97ac304697e7" CreationDate="2011-12-20T10:08:21.187" UserId="25936" Comment="added 361 characters in body" Text="[One of your answers][1], the one with the 2 upvotes, is on a question that was community wiki before you answered (or before you got any upvotes). You don't earn or lose rep for those - but you can still earn badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually the question was made community wiki on [Nov 1 at 23:06][2], and you answered on Nov 2 at 10:21, so it was automatically turned to community wiki, as shown in the [revision history][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But it says &quot;21 answers&quot; and I think the limit is 30.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The limit is [actually 15][4]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/117440/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117243/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117243/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1596/the-15-answer-cw-conversion-really-sucks" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6893" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2706" RevisionGUID="f439bd2b-8d1f-48d2-90cd-47b7cd7539a7" CreationDate="2011-12-20T10:09:16.210" UserId="47" Comment="more explanation" Text="[One of your answers][1], the one with the 2 upvotes, is on a question that was community wiki before you answered (or before you got any upvotes). You don't earn or lose rep for those - but you can still earn badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually the question was made community wiki on [Nov 1 at 23:06][2], and you answered on Nov 2 at 10:21, so it was automatically turned to community wiki, as shown in the [revision history][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But it says &quot;21 answers&quot; and I think the limit is 30.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The limit is [actually 15][4] on Programmers as opposed to 30 on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/117440/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117243/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117243/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1596/the-15-answer-cw-conversion-really-sucks" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6894" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2706" RevisionGUID="a65f60dd-0fbe-4e6f-a7f5-7248570ca336" CreationDate="2011-12-20T10:09:24.680" UserId="25936" Comment="added 361 characters in body" Text="[One of your answers][1], the one with the 2 upvotes, is on a question that was made [community wiki][2] before you answered (or before you got any upvotes). You don't earn or lose rep for those - but you can still earn badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually the question was made community wiki on [Nov 1 at 23:06][3], and you answered on Nov 2 at 10:21, so it was automatically turned to community wiki, as shown in the [revision history][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But it says &quot;21 answers&quot; and I think the limit is 30.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The limit is [actually 15][5], here. 30 is the limit at [StackOverflow][6], and can be different at different sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/117440/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117243/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117243/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1596/the-15-answer-cw-conversion-really-sucks&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6895" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2706" RevisionGUID="ce4fcebf-1a65-4351-a5e7-d3467f90f5e2" CreationDate="2011-12-20T10:14:42.360" UserId="25936" Comment="added 361 characters in body" Text="[One of your answers][1], the one with the 2 upvotes, is on a question that was made [community wiki][2] before you answered (or before you got any upvotes). You don't earn or lose rep for those - but you can still earn badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further investigating, the question was made community wiki on [Nov 1 at 23:06][3], and you answered on Nov 2 at 10:21, so it was automatically turned to community wiki, as shown in the [revision history][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But it says &quot;21 answers&quot; and I think the limit is 30.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The limit [here is 15][5]. 30 is the limit at [StackOverflow][6], and can be different at different sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/117440/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117243/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117243/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1596/the-15-answer-cw-conversion-really-sucks&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6896" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2706" RevisionGUID="588b5bcc-4372-44bf-a15b-bae0c0cec147" CreationDate="2011-12-20T14:03:20.427" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body" Text="[One of your answers][1], the one with the 2 upvotes, is on a question that was made [community wiki][2] before you answered (or before you got any upvotes). You don't earn or lose rep for those - but you can still earn badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further investigating, the question was made community wiki on [Nov 1 at 23:06][3], and you answered on Nov 2 at 10:21, so it was automatically turned to community wiki, as shown in the [revision history][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But it says &quot;21 answers&quot; and I think the limit is 30.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The limit [here is 15][5]. 30 is the limit at [StackOverflow][6], and can be different at different sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/117440/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117243/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117440/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1596/the-15-answer-cw-conversion-really-sucks&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6897" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2705" RevisionGUID="2b31a93f-bb32-4595-bc65-44e764767762" CreationDate="2011-12-20T20:31:01.267" UserId="226" Comment="added 6 characters in body; edited title" Text="Why do I only have 31 in reputation when I got a total of five upvotes? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On my user page it says I answered two questions with scores of 2 and 3. I think you get 10 rep for upvotes on answers. One answer could be that I do not get rep from the answer scoring 2 ups because that questions has got so many answers already. But it says &quot;21 answers&quot; and I think the limit is 30." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6898" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2705" RevisionGUID="2b31a93f-bb32-4595-bc65-44e764767762" CreationDate="2011-12-20T20:31:01.267" UserId="226" Comment="added 6 characters in body; edited title" Text="Why is my rep lower than it should be?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6899" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2705" RevisionGUID="2b31a93f-bb32-4595-bc65-44e764767762" CreationDate="2011-12-20T20:31:01.267" UserId="226" Comment="added 6 characters in body; edited title" Text="|support|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6900" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2707" RevisionGUID="66fe7a23-65b8-4b73-8efa-b3371e4b4b5c" CreationDate="2011-12-21T00:29:25.700" UserId="41811" Text="The question [How do I resolve an “expected expression before 'unsigned'” error? \[migrated\]][1] appears right now on [programmers/questions/active][2] as having zero answers, and as having been posted by me, while in fact it has 6 answers and it was NOT posted by me. If you look at it at [programmers/questions/newest][3] it appears as posted by the correct poster, but still as having zero answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126210/how-do-i-resolve-an-expected-expression-before-unsigned-error&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6901" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2707" RevisionGUID="66fe7a23-65b8-4b73-8efa-b3371e4b4b5c" CreationDate="2011-12-21T00:29:25.700" UserId="41811" Text="Question appears with wrong number of answers and user icon" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6902" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2707" RevisionGUID="66fe7a23-65b8-4b73-8efa-b3371e4b4b5c" CreationDate="2011-12-21T00:29:25.700" UserId="41811" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6903" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2708" RevisionGUID="281e68bf-676b-4962-ba37-247e9d29eb6e" CreationDate="2011-12-21T01:49:26.300" UserId="25936" Text="![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the active page and the homepage, the avatar is of the one that last modified the question, not necessarily the original asker. Modified can be a number of things, an edit to the question or any of the answers, a new answer, closing the question, making it [community wiki][2] (automatically or by hand), etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the answers count, the question has a new home at [StackOverflow][3], and all its answers followed the migration, so essentially zero answers here. They exist there now, and not here. The same goes with any downvotes to the question, they don't follow the migration, kind of a fresh start thing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/E1ONm.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8583017/how-do-i-resolve-an-expected-expression-before-unsigned-error" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6904" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2709" RevisionGUID="a6d5f672-6dc0-4691-9067-f35eca129516" CreationDate="2011-12-21T01:49:43.957" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The question was migrated to Stack Overflow: when a question is migrated, all of its answers on the source site will be deleted and reposted on the destination site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if you look at [the question right now on Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126210/how-do-i-resolve-an-expected-expression-before-unsigned-error?noredirect=1), it really does have 0 answers, and both the active questions list and the newest questions list are accurately reporting that fact. You can find the answers (including yours) [on Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8583017/how-do-i-resolve-an-expected-expression-before-unsigned-error).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, why one shows you're the last poster and one doesn't:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* the active questions list is sorted by the last time the question was modified. Since you were the last person to modify the question (by posting an answer), you're listed.&#xD;&#xA;* the newest questions list is sorted by when the question was first posted. Since you're not the person who asked the question, you're not listed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6905" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2707" RevisionGUID="a31d0635-1736-4e11-9f88-fadda2957216" CreationDate="2011-12-21T01:52:25.113" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="The question [How do I resolve an “expected expression before 'unsigned'” error? \[migrated\]][1] appears right now on the [active questions list][2] as having zero answers, and as having been posted by me, while in fact it has 6 answers and it was NOT posted by me. If you look at it at on the [newest questions list][3] it appears as posted by the correct poster, but still as having zero answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126210/how-do-i-resolve-an-expected-expression-before-unsigned-error&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6906" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2707" RevisionGUID="a31d0635-1736-4e11-9f88-fadda2957216" CreationDate="2011-12-21T01:52:25.113" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Why does a migrated question appear to have no answers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6907" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2707" RevisionGUID="a31d0635-1736-4e11-9f88-fadda2957216" CreationDate="2011-12-21T01:52:25.113" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|support|user-interface|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6908" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2708" RevisionGUID="0145672d-e59b-484c-84c7-f2762f324a09" CreationDate="2011-12-21T01:55:55.260" UserId="25936" Comment="added 209 characters in body" Text="![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the active page and the homepage, the avatar is of the one that last modified the question, not necessarily the original asker. Modified can mean a number of things, an edit to the question or any of its answers, a new answer, closing the question, making it [community wiki][2] (automatically or by hand), etc&lt;sup&gt;(?)&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, when visiting the newest page you are explicitly asking for the questions to be ordered on when they where asked, so it makes a little bit more sense&lt;sup&gt;(?)&lt;/sup&gt; to show the original asker's avatar.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the answers count, the question has found a new home at [StackOverflow][3], and all its answers followed the migration, so essentially zero answers here. They exist there now, and not here. The same goes with any downvotes to the question, they don't follow the migration, kind of a fresh start. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the way it is. I don't necessarily like it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/E1ONm.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8583017/how-do-i-resolve-an-expected-expression-before-unsigned-error" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6909" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2710" RevisionGUID="ab9517f8-36ef-44ee-9047-4f85b2ce5ef0" CreationDate="2011-12-21T03:37:59.403" UserId="25936" Text="Based on the [Are “name that thing” questions on-topic?][1] question I think [tag:naming] questions that don't qualify as [tag:terminology] questions are off topic / too localised, and quite a few of them are closed as such. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I can't find an example of an on topic [tag:naming] question that I wouldn't also consider a [tag:terminology] question. Are there any?&#xD;&#xA; - Can they be considered synonyms? I'd say not, but as a non native English speaker I'd like some back up.&#xD;&#xA; - Should we try and clean up [tag:naming]? There are 133 questions currently and I think some minor clean up effort would be in order, even if only to re-tag some of those as [tag:terminology] - happy to do it, in small steps, if I get some basic guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've just removed the [tag:naming] from [this question][2], it felt more like a proper [tag:terminology] question, to my mind [tag:terminology] is more serious and on topic than [tag:naming] and my edit may discourage less serious naming suggestions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not really sure if [tag:naming] should die, that's was my instictual reaction when I first stumbled upon it, but if there are reasons for it to stay hopefully we'll get a tag wiki for it out of this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126194/need-help-with-naming-marshaling-interface-calls" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6910" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2710" RevisionGUID="ab9517f8-36ef-44ee-9047-4f85b2ce5ef0" CreationDate="2011-12-21T03:37:59.403" UserId="25936" Text="Is there a point to the naming tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6911" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2710" RevisionGUID="ab9517f8-36ef-44ee-9047-4f85b2ce5ef0" CreationDate="2011-12-21T03:37:59.403" UserId="25936" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6912" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2710" RevisionGUID="7c9f3fef-83e1-4614-8b74-c332f88222f3" CreationDate="2011-12-21T06:50:30.027" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body" Text="Based on the [Are “name that thing” questions on-topic?][1] question I think [tag:naming] questions that don't qualify as [tag:terminology] questions are off topic / too localised, and quite a few of them are closed as such. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I can't find an example of an on topic [tag:naming] question that I wouldn't also consider a [tag:terminology] question. Are there any?&#xD;&#xA; - Can they be considered synonyms? I'd say not, but as a non native English speaker I'd like some back up.&#xD;&#xA; - Should we try and clean up [tag:naming]? There are 133 questions currently and I think some minor clean up effort would be in order, even if only to re-tag some of those as [tag:terminology] - happy to do it, in small steps, if I get some basic guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've just removed [tag:naming] from [this question][2], it felt more like a proper [tag:terminology] question, to my mind [tag:terminology] is more serious and on topic than [tag:naming] and my edit may discourage less serious naming suggestions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not really sure if [tag:naming] should die, that's was my instictual reaction when I first stumbled upon it, but if there are reasons for it to stay hopefully we'll get a tag wiki for it out of this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126194/need-help-with-naming-marshaling-interface-calls" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6913" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2711" RevisionGUID="3ee59745-7372-4b69-8d18-2a604014b745" CreationDate="2011-12-21T08:02:34.273" UserId="26852" Text="In the [main list of questions][1], we have dark blue for visited and light blue for not. Okay. But in the [related tab for any question][2], it's light blue for visited and dark blue for not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is seriously confusing me. Argh.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24681/charles-barkley-syndrome" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6914" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2711" RevisionGUID="3ee59745-7372-4b69-8d18-2a604014b745" CreationDate="2011-12-21T08:02:34.273" UserId="26852" Text="The visited link colors... why are they swapped" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6915" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2711" RevisionGUID="3ee59745-7372-4b69-8d18-2a604014b745" CreationDate="2011-12-21T08:02:34.273" UserId="26852" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6916" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2592" RevisionGUID="6247b745-35bc-4273-94ca-75ad8e0f7fd0" CreationDate="2011-12-21T08:38:03.983" UserId="25936" Comment="added 495 characters in body" Text="I've asked the crowd over at [User Experience Stack Exchange][1] on our link colours, and they seem to agree that our colour scheme is pretty poor. So it's not just you, and I think the issue is worth reopening.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update: The question there was closed and now reopened as a more general one. It was kind of a rant in disguise, I failed it see it at first but after a [heroic edit][2] it became a much better question. There are quite a few suggestions on how to evaluate our colour scheme and all seem to agree it's a poor one, I'll try to find some time and do a concrete evaluation here, after the latest version of the question matures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/14194/colour-of-links-on-programmers-stack-exchange&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/posts/14194/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6917" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2711" RevisionGUID="90f1d363-bf47-41c7-98b3-acf9a8d387c1" CreationDate="2011-12-21T08:44:28.263" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6918" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2711" RevisionGUID="ada72b72-f090-43c1-9d4d-87ecb5970ebe" CreationDate="2011-12-21T09:09:42.090" UserId="25936" Comment="edited title" Text="Why are the visited link colors swapped?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6920" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2713" RevisionGUID="359911c6-832c-4f60-8086-21e417e3bdc9" CreationDate="2011-12-21T12:00:41.190" UserId="4" Text="It looks like [tag:naming] should be cleaned up, with questions about words and phrases going into [tag:terminology], questions about naming variables/methods/blocks going into [tag:code-style] or [tag:code-quality], and maybe a few other tags. I only looked at a couple of handfuls of questions tagged with naming, so there might be some other cleanups." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6922" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2711" RevisionGUID="3aa5d654-b3c8-4577-a2cb-9928f7ce695b" CreationDate="2011-12-21T14:50:00.630" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|design|css|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6923" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="1489" RevisionGUID="3e963c3b-e9f0-4bef-944a-e93b1b4b681f" CreationDate="2011-12-21T19:43:06.093" UserId="41785" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:41785,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Aarthi&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="6928" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2715" RevisionGUID="cc9e4922-7b67-4631-9ac7-8030a0b63686" CreationDate="2011-12-22T12:32:00.087" UserId="34340" Text="I noticed that answers with the same amount of upvotes are ordered according to order they were published (i.e., older ones on top).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Wouldn't it make sense to order those according to the rep of the person posting the answer? After all a member with a higher rep is likely to give a better answer, and if this is not the case a single upvote would already be enough to shift the answer of the member with less rep to the top.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By the way if this is not the right channel to make suggestions sorry about that, but I couldn't find a better one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6929" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2715" RevisionGUID="cc9e4922-7b67-4631-9ac7-8030a0b63686" CreationDate="2011-12-22T12:32:00.087" UserId="34340" Text="How about considering rep when ordering answers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6930" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2715" RevisionGUID="cc9e4922-7b67-4631-9ac7-8030a0b63686" CreationDate="2011-12-22T12:32:00.087" UserId="34340" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6932" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2715" RevisionGUID="277b6339-f044-484c-ad86-650750bdd6df" CreationDate="2011-12-22T13:19:48.013" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 119 characters in body" Text="I noticed that answers with the same amount of upvotes are ordered according to order they were published (i.e., older ones on top).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Wouldn't it make sense to order those according to the rep of the person posting the answer? After all a member with a higher rep is likely to give a better answer, and if this is not the case a single upvote would already be enough to shift the answer of the member with less rep to the top." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6933" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2717" RevisionGUID="73bbb733-ac8c-41da-8df7-b75825dee297" CreationDate="2011-12-22T13:22:23.193" UserId="47" Text="There are three ways of ordering answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Votes - the default. Answers are ordered by vote with answers on equal votes being displayed randomly.&#xD;&#xA;2. Oldest. Answers are displayed in the order they were posted - oldest first - regardless of their vote count.&#xD;&#xA;3. Active. Answers are displayed so the ones that were changed most recently are displayed first - regardless of vote count." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6937" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2717" RevisionGUID="478f9a1e-7ddd-47cc-9784-3e3f846b024e" CreationDate="2011-12-22T16:04:31.787" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="There are three ways of ordering answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Votes - the default. Answers are ordered by vote with answers on equal votes being displayed randomly until there are multiple pages.&#xD;&#xA;2. Oldest. Answers are displayed in the order they were posted - oldest first - regardless of their vote count.&#xD;&#xA;3. Active. Answers are displayed so the ones that were changed most recently are displayed first - regardless of vote count." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6939" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2718" RevisionGUID="198314a2-eaa7-4a03-820f-054626f6ba1e" CreationDate="2011-12-23T00:21:47.263" UserId="27072" Text="Since technology develops at such a quick pace these days, it seems that the answers to many questions, including those which received useful responses at the time they were asked, can be updated based on recent developments. For example, someone might have asked for a book recommendation on a given topic in 2010, but by 2012, there might be a better one on the market. Perhaps there should be a way of &quot;refreshing&quot; a question to learn whether a fresher answer is available?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6940" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2718" RevisionGUID="198314a2-eaa7-4a03-820f-054626f6ba1e" CreationDate="2011-12-23T00:21:47.263" UserId="27072" Text="&quot;Refresh&quot; Question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6941" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2718" RevisionGUID="198314a2-eaa7-4a03-820f-054626f6ba1e" CreationDate="2011-12-23T00:21:47.263" UserId="27072" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6942" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2719" RevisionGUID="0f8587a0-5e67-4921-a35c-4bc10a27664d" CreationDate="2011-12-23T00:40:03.883" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; For example, someone might have asked for a book recommendation on a given topic in 2010, but by 2012, there might be a better one on the market.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strictly speaking, questions on book recommendations that would fall under that category are [probably off topic][1]. I don't see that how a question on a book that got outdated in such sort time would be a good one, even if it is on topic. Examples? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Perhaps there should be a way of &quot;refreshing&quot; a question to learn whether a fresher answer is available?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You can edit any question at any time, if you think you're improving it in any way. &#xD;&#xA; - You can ask again, with a link to the earlier question and an explanation why it and its answer don't answer your new question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you opt to ask a new question, you can always flag the earlier one, if you feel it somehow doesn't fit here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In conclusion: If questions that fit your description exist, they are probably bad ones that slipped through and we should clean them up. I think.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6943" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2718" RevisionGUID="d372e6c7-fca0-460c-a307-14e6b04fe95b" CreationDate="2011-12-23T00:40:39.190" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6944" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2719" RevisionGUID="121e84dd-a606-4441-bd50-184019132403" CreationDate="2011-12-23T01:54:35.920" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="&gt; For example, someone might have asked for a book recommendation on a given topic in 2010, but by 2012, there might be a better one on the market.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strictly speaking, questions on book recommendations that would fall under that category are [probably off topic][1]. I don't see that how a question on a book that got outdated in such short time would be a good one, even if it is on topic. Examples? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Perhaps there should be a way of &quot;refreshing&quot; a question to learn whether a fresher answer is available?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You can edit any question at any time, if you think you're improving it in any way. &#xD;&#xA; - You can ask again, with a link to the earlier question and an explanation why it and its answer don't answer your new question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you opt to ask a new question, you can always flag the earlier one, if you feel it somehow doesn't fit here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In conclusion: If questions that fit your description exist, they are probably bad ones that slipped through and we should clean them up. I think.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6945" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2719" RevisionGUID="874b5fb2-55dd-4bd7-9692-fc9f27a4e3ee" CreationDate="2011-12-23T04:05:14.647" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="&gt; For example, someone might have asked for a book recommendation on a given topic in 2010, but by 2012, there might be a better one on the market.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strictly speaking, questions on book recommendations that would fall under that category are [probably off topic][1]. I don't see that how a question on a book that got outdated in such short time would be a good one, even if it is on topic. Do you have any examples of existing questions that would fit your description? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Perhaps there should be a way of &quot;refreshing&quot; a question to learn whether a fresher answer is available?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You can edit any question at any time, if you think you're improving it in any way. &#xD;&#xA; - You can ask again, with a link to the earlier question and an explanation why it and its answers don't answer your new question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you opt to ask a new question, you can always flag the earlier one, if you feel it somehow doesn't fit here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In conclusion: If questions that fit your description exist, they are probably bad ones that slipped through and we should clean them up. I *think*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6946" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2719" RevisionGUID="7adebe5c-f7f1-49b1-b637-143ac29fe0ea" CreationDate="2011-12-23T04:12:18.770" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="&gt; For example, someone might have asked for a book recommendation on a given topic in 2010, but by 2012, there might be a better one on the market.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strictly speaking, questions on book recommendations that would fall under that category are [probably off topic][1]. I don't see that how a question on a book that got outdated in such short time would be a good one, even if it is on topic. Do you have any examples of existing questions that would fit your description? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Perhaps there should be a way of &quot;refreshing&quot; a question to learn whether a fresher answer is available?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You can edit any question at any time, and any answer, if you think you're improving them in any way. &#xD;&#xA; - You can ask again, with a link to the earlier question and an explanation why it and its answers don't answer your new question. If you opt to ask a new question, you can always flag the earlier one, if you feel it somehow doesn't fit here. &#xD;&#xA; - And of course, if you have a more current answer to an outdated question, you can always just answer. A new answer will bump the question at the top of the homepage and if your answer is a good one it will get the attention it deserves. It may even outvote the old highest voted one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In conclusion: If questions that fit your description exist, they are probably bad ones that slipped through and we should clean them up. I *think* - but I reserve the right to change my opinion if you provide an example of an existing question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6947" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2720" RevisionGUID="50fb4cf2-2a87-4345-93dc-bc21a9f98e3e" CreationDate="2011-12-23T04:58:49.333" UserId="226" Text="&gt; After all a member with a higher rep is likely to give a better answer, and if this is not the case a single upvote would already be enough to shift the answer of the member with less rep to the top.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not always the case that the person with higher reputation provides a better answer. It happens often enough that someone new to the site but an expert in whatever the question's about gives an excellent answer instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By your own logic, if the person with the higher reputation gave a better answer, they only need a single upvote to shift their answer to the top.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6948" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2719" RevisionGUID="61766222-9378-4102-bc22-732c90539238" CreationDate="2011-12-23T09:01:11.677" UserId="25936" Comment="added 15 characters in body" Text="&gt; For example, someone might have asked for a book recommendation on a given topic in 2010, but by 2012, there might be a better one on the market.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thin that questions on book recommendations that would fit your description are [probably off topic][1]. I don't see how a book question becomes deprecated in such short time would be a good one, even if it is on topic. Technology may be moving at an extreme pace, but high level concepts don't change that often. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you have any examples of existing open questions that would fit your description, i.e. are in need of &quot;refreshing&quot;? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Perhaps there should be a way of &quot;refreshing&quot; a question to learn whether a fresher answer is available?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You can edit any question at any time, and any answer, if you think you're improving them in any way. &#xD;&#xA; - You can ask a new question with a link to the earlier question and an explanation why it and its answers don't answer the new one.  &#xD;&#xA; - And of course, if you have a more current answer to an outdated question, you can always just answer. A new answer will bump the question at the top of the homepage and if your answer is a good one it will get the attention it deserves. It may even outvote the previously highest voted one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In conclusion: If questions that fit your description exist, they are probably bad ones that slipped through and we should clean them up. I *think* - but I reserve the right to change my opinion if you provide an example of an existing question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6949" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2719" RevisionGUID="d01d4f80-b668-40dd-ad81-e90ff11eb160" CreationDate="2011-12-23T09:46:50.213" UserId="25936" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="&gt; For example, someone might have asked for a book recommendation on a given topic in 2010, but by 2012, there might be a better one on the market.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that questions on book recommendations that would fit your description are [probably off topic][1]. I don't see how a book question that becomes deprecated in such short time would be a good one, even if it's on topic. Technology may be moving at an extreme pace, but high level concepts don't change that often. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you have any examples of existing open questions that would fit your description, i.e. are in need of &quot;refreshing&quot;? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Perhaps there should be a way of &quot;refreshing&quot; a question to learn whether a fresher answer is available?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You can edit any question at any time, and any answer, if you think you're improving them in any way. &#xD;&#xA; - You can ask a new question with a link to the earlier question and an explanation why it and its answers don't answer the new one.  &#xD;&#xA; - And of course, if you have a more current answer to an outdated question, you can always just answer. A new answer will bump the question at the top of the homepage and if your answer is a good one it will get the attention it deserves. It may even outvote the previously highest voted one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In conclusion: If questions that fit your description exist, they are probably bad ones that slipped through and we should clean them up. I *think* - but I reserve the right to change my opinion if you provide an example of an existing question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6950" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2721" RevisionGUID="5665090b-7c6e-461d-8073-8bc11834f878" CreationDate="2011-12-24T01:53:50.973" UserId="1685" Text="This is indeed a UX snafu. The fix will be in the next production build." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6951" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2722" RevisionGUID="f17fa0da-d7e4-4387-bd8e-6d85de8c63a2" CreationDate="2011-12-24T10:13:49.597" UserId="20065" Text="[This answer][1] was awarded 25 points by the community user. How does it happen?&#xD;&#xA;Which answers are awarded?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/124770/20065" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6952" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2722" RevisionGUID="f17fa0da-d7e4-4387-bd8e-6d85de8c63a2" CreationDate="2011-12-24T10:13:49.597" UserId="20065" Text="Why is the community user awarding bounties?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6953" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2722" RevisionGUID="f17fa0da-d7e4-4387-bd8e-6d85de8c63a2" CreationDate="2011-12-24T10:13:49.597" UserId="20065" Text="|support|bounty-awards|community|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6954" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2723" RevisionGUID="fda83d39-e6c2-41bb-a0bd-5c62997cde67" CreationDate="2011-12-24T11:41:51.057" UserId="25936" Text="If the bounty expires, half of it is awarded automatically to the highest voted answer supplied since the bounty was set.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question's [revision history][1] shows a 50 rep bounty set on Dec 13 at 1:53, and the answer's [revision history][2] shows 25 rep awarded on Dec 21 at 3:51.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/124429/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/124770/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6955" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2723" RevisionGUID="4f8870d3-8879-4299-a491-c4f2f9d06731" CreationDate="2011-12-24T11:49:14.150" UserId="25936" Comment="added 446 characters in body" Text="If the bounty expires, half of it is awarded automatically to the highest voted answer since the bounty was set. From the [blog][1]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the bounty owner does not award the bounty within the 7 day bounty period, the same auto-award rules apply, as before: any answers to the question posted after the bounty started, with at least 2 upvotes, are eligible for auto-accept and earn half the bounty amount. If there aren’t any answers meeting that criteria, no bounty is awarded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question's [revision history][2] shows a 50 rep bounty set on Dec 13 at 1:53, and the answer's [revision history][3] shows the 25 rep awarded on Dec 21 at 3:51. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/improvements-to-bounty-system/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/124429/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/124770/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6956" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2722" RevisionGUID="6cb369a6-d15e-4858-887f-f934e239bf38" CreationDate="2011-12-24T11:55:01.500" UserId="25936" Comment="added 71 characters in body" Text="[This answer][1] was awarded 25 points by the [community user][2]. How does it happen?&#xD;&#xA;Which answers are awarded?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/124770/20065&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/-1/community" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6957" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2724" RevisionGUID="1aa83b36-d439-4d66-b183-bcce31ccf4d8" CreationDate="2011-12-24T23:16:52.687" UserId="226" Text="I'm looking at http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126513/form-screenshot-for-legal-proof-of-clicking-one-of-the-checkboxes and it feels like a mostly legal problem rather than a software development question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have visited legal questions here on meta before ([here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here) and [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here)) and the general consensus seems to be that questions pertaining to copyright, trademark, and licensing are fine but other legal concerns are best left to lawyers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our FAQ has also been adjusted to only mention software licensing as a suggested on-topic subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So with that in mind and considering that we aren't legal experts, is the question above actually on-topic? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are other problems with it as well, like being phrased as poll and attracting answers that do nothing but address that &quot;yes or no&quot; part of it, which is not really what Stack Exchange is here to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we, as a community, want to keep this question as is? Is it going to be helpful to future visitors? Is there an answer to it or is it more of a discussion topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6958" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2724" RevisionGUID="1aa83b36-d439-4d66-b183-bcce31ccf4d8" CreationDate="2011-12-24T23:16:52.687" UserId="226" Text="Should this question be closed or stay open (with or without edits)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6959" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2724" RevisionGUID="1aa83b36-d439-4d66-b183-bcce31ccf4d8" CreationDate="2011-12-24T23:16:52.687" UserId="226" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|specific-question|legal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6960" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2725" RevisionGUID="f62ff1de-79bd-4dde-926a-01c372fcd20e" CreationDate="2011-12-25T07:16:20.517" UserId="2964" Text="As the OP, I'd like to put in my 2 cents: This question wasn't meant as seeking legal advice. It was meant to find out if this client's request was technically logical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've gotten plenty of answers, and they all back up my gut feeling that the request doesn't [make][1] [sense][2], and also gave me [solid][3] [explanations][4] as to why screenshots aren't more reliable than saving in DB. In addition, some posters gave me [good][5] [alternatives][6], and some gave me a direction to look in, in case I *do* go with the client's request (in the comments to my question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having said that, if you do decide to close the question, I won't mind, since - as I said - I feel I got what I came for: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Solid evidence as to the illogicality of the client's request, &#xD;&#xA; 2. Good alternatives to that request&#xD;&#xA; 3. Ways to go about implementing the request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126518/2964&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126522/2964&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126515/2964&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126573/2964&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126527/2964&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126534/2964" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6961" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2726" RevisionGUID="983ae2a0-2ce9-44f5-82a2-84f67093333a" CreationDate="2011-12-25T09:01:05.953" UserId="25936" Text="I think the question falls under the &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; category. I didn't read it as a request for any of kind legal aid, my interpretation was quite close to what the [OP actually meant][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are some evidence it's not a very good question (in SE terms): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Although there are some very good answers, I don't think it's clearly evident which one (or two or three) are the &quot;best&quot;. &#xD;&#xA; 2. Several answers overlap,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Some of [the][2] [latter][3] [answers][4] don't really add much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the main problem is that the question is actually three very good and somewhat broad questions, and they would have been better answered as individual questions. Currently the answers are either concentrated on parts of the question, or vaguely addressing all three issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, several answers comment on the absurdity of the claim, something that's useless in answering the question. I can't really blame any of the answerers, but future visitors may perceive the answers as too noisy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the grand scheme of things, I think the question and most answers are (way) above the average, in terms of quality. I'd prefer for it to stay open, and propose to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Add a mod notification for longer answers,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Protect it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm aware that protecting it doesn't really mean much, but in my mind it does serve as an additional  &quot;if you don't have a great answer, please don't bother&quot; warning. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In conclusion, it doesn't get my close vote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126582/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126598/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126586/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6962" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2726" RevisionGUID="6ca5cabb-b13a-4776-8646-2daf343925a9" CreationDate="2011-12-25T09:08:16.143" UserId="25936" Comment="added 253 characters in body" Text="I think the question falls under the &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; category. I didn't read it as a request for any of kind legal aid, my interpretation was quite close to what the [OP actually meant][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are some evidence it's not a very good question (in SE terms): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Although there are some very good answers, I don't think it's clearly evident which one (or two or three) are the &quot;best&quot;. &#xD;&#xA; 2. Several answers overlap,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Some of [the][2] [latter][3] [answers][4] don't really add much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the main problem is that the question is actually three very good and somewhat broad questions, and they would have been better answered as individual questions. Currently the answers are either concentrated on parts of the question, or vaguely addressing all three issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, several answers comment on the absurdity of the claim, something that's useless in answering the question. I can't really blame any of the answerers, but future visitors may perceive the answers as too noisy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A minor clean up effort could help, for example remove all comments that fail their purpose, or became obsolete. If there's a general feeling that the question asks for legal aid, we could update it to the [more concise and to the point version][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the grand scheme of things, I think the question and most answers are (way) above the average, in terms of quality. I'd prefer for it to stay open, and propose to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Add a mod notification for longer answers,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Protect it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm aware that protecting it doesn't really mean much, but in my mind it does serve as an additional  &quot;if you don't have a great answer, please don't bother&quot; warning. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In conclusion, it doesn't get my close vote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126582/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126598/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126586/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6963" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2726" RevisionGUID="df29b071-869c-4c0e-a587-9d6a65d11c0a" CreationDate="2011-12-25T09:39:42.237" UserId="25936" Comment="added 166 characters in body" Text="I think that the &quot;not obviously on topic&quot; parts of question, fall under the &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; category. I didn't read it as a request for any of kind legal aid, my interpretation was quite close to what the [OP actually meant][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some answers did treat the question as a purely legal one, but most went into legal territory to illustrate that the best way to convince the client would be to propose whatever alternative the law considers reliable, which would be a fine answer to the question, without going into any legal details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are some evidence it's not a very good question (in SE terms): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Although there are some very good answers, I don't think it's clearly evident which one (or two or three) are the &quot;best&quot;. &#xD;&#xA; 2. Several answers overlap,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Some of [the][2] [latter][3] [answers][4] don't really add much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the main problem is that the question is actually three (and possibly more) very good questions, and they would have been better answered as individual questions. Currently the answers are either concentrated on parts of the question, or vaguely addressing all distinct issues. But the different questions are somewhat coupled, and individually they might have raised several requests for clarifications.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, several answers comment on the absurdity of the claim, something that's useless in answering the question. I can't really blame any of the answerers, but future visitors may perceive the answers as too noisy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A minor clean up effort could help, for example remove all comments that fail their purpose, or became obsolete. If there's a general feeling that the question asks for legal aid, we could update it to the [more concise and to the point version][6]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the grand scheme of things, I think the question and most answers are (way) above the average, in terms of quality. I'd prefer for it to stay open, and propose to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Add a mod notification for longer answers,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Protect it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm aware that protecting it doesn't really mean much, but in my mind it does serve as an additional  &quot;if you don't have a great answer, please don't bother&quot; warning. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In conclusion, it doesn't get my close vote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126582/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126598/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126586/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126515/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6964" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2726" RevisionGUID="1d8ecb2d-332f-4765-9450-30de4e02e69c" CreationDate="2011-12-25T09:46:57.323" UserId="25936" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="I think that the &quot;not obviously on topic&quot; parts of question, fall under the &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; category. I didn't read it as a request for any of kind legal aid, my interpretation was quite close to what the [OP actually meant][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some answers did treat the question as a purely legal one, but most went into legal territory to illustrate that the best way to convince the client would be to propose whatever alternative local law considers reliable, which would be a fine answer to the question, without going into any legal details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are some evidence it's not a very good question (in SE terms): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Although there are some very good answers, I don't think it's clearly evident which one (or two or three) are the &quot;best&quot;. &#xD;&#xA; 2. Several answers overlap,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Some of [the][2] [latter][3] [answers][4] don't really add much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the main problem is that the question is actually three (and possibly more) very good questions, and they would have been better answered as individual questions. Currently the answers are either concentrated on parts of the question, or vaguely addressing all distinct issues. But the different questions are somewhat coupled, and individually they might have raised several requests for clarifications.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, several answers comment on the absurdity of the claim, something that's useless in answering the question. I can't really blame any of the answerers, but future visitors may perceive the answers as too noisy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A minor clean up effort could help, for example remove all comments that fail their purpose, or became obsolete. If there's a general feeling that the question asks for legal aid, we could update it to the [more concise and to the point version][6]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the grand scheme of things, I think the question and most answers are (way) above the average, in terms of quality. I'd prefer for it to stay open, and propose to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Add a mod notification for longer answers,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Protect it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm aware that protecting it doesn't really mean much, but in my mind it does serve as an additional  &quot;if you don't have a great answer, please don't bother&quot; warning. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In conclusion, it doesn't get my close vote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126582/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126598/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126586/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126515/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6965" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2726" RevisionGUID="7a3f32a7-a41c-4b53-86cc-7c7261dfd400" CreationDate="2011-12-25T09:55:08.137" UserId="25936" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="I think that the &quot;not obviously on topic&quot; parts of question, fall under the &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; category. I didn't read it as a request for any of kind legal aid, my interpretation was quite close to what the [OP actually meant][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some answers did treat the question as a purely legal one, but most went into legal territory to illustrate that the best way to convince the client would be to propose whatever alternative local law considers reliable, which would be a fine answer to the question, without going into any legal details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are some evidence it's not a very good question (in SE terms): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Although there are some very good answers, I don't think it's clearly evident which one (or two or three) are the &quot;best&quot;. &#xD;&#xA; 2. Several answers overlap,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Some of [the][2] [latter][3] [answers][4] don't really add much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the main problem is that the question is actually three (and possibly more) very good questions, and they would have been better answered as individual questions. Currently the answers are either concentrated on parts of the question, or vaguely addressing all distinct issues. But the different questions are somewhat coupled, and individually they might have raised several requests for clarifications.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, several answers comment on the absurdity of the claim, something that's useless in answering the question. I can't really blame any of the answerers, but future visitors may perceive the answers as too noisy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A minor clean up effort could help, for example remove all comments that fail their purpose, or became obsolete. If there's a general feeling that the question asks for legal aid, we could update it to the [more concise and to the point version][6]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the grand scheme of things, I think the question and most answers are (way) above the average, in terms of quality. I'd prefer for it to stay open, and propose to add a mod notification for longer answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, it doesn't get my close vote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126582/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126598/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126586/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126515/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6966" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2726" RevisionGUID="4bcbe19e-cd21-4228-8f31-f993187ee491" CreationDate="2011-12-25T10:02:04.303" UserId="25936" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="I think that the &quot;not obviously on topic&quot; parts of question, fit under the &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; category. I didn't read it as a request for any of kind legal aid, my interpretation was quite close to what the [OP actually meant][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some answers did treat the question as a purely legal one, but most went into legal territory to illustrate that the best way to convince the client would be to propose whatever alternative local law considers reliable, which would be a fine answer to the question, without going into any legal details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are some evidence it's not a very good question (in SE terms): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Although there are some very good answers, I don't think it's clearly evident which one (or two or three) are the &quot;best&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Several answers overlap,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Some of [the][2] [latter][3] [answers][4] don't really add much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the main problem is that the question is actually three (and possibly more) very good questions, and they would have been better answered as individual questions. Currently the answers are either concentrated on parts of the question, or vaguely addressing all distinct issues. But the different questions are somewhat coupled, and individually they might have raised several requests for clarifications.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, several answers comment on the absurdity of the claim, something that's useless in answering the question. I can't really blame any of the answerers, but future visitors may perceive the answers as too noisy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A minor clean up effort could help, for example remove all comments that fail their purpose, or became obsolete. If there's a general feeling that the question asks for legal aid, we could update it to the [more concise and to the point version][6]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the grand scheme of things, I think the question and most answers are (way) above the average, in terms of quality. I'd prefer for it to stay open, and propose to add a mod notification for longer answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, it doesn't get my close vote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126582/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126598/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126586/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126515/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6967" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2726" RevisionGUID="9234c6de-d962-465e-92bb-7352bb7dcf7d" CreationDate="2011-12-25T11:14:49.143" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1107 characters in body" Text="I think that the &quot;not obviously on topic&quot; parts of question, fit under the &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; category. I didn't read it as a request for any of kind legal aid, my interpretation was quite close to what the [OP actually meant][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some answers did treat the question as a purely legal one, but most went into legal territory to illustrate that the best way to convince the client would be to propose whatever alternative local law considers reliable, which would be a fine answer to the question, without going into any legal details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are some evidence it's not a very good question (in SE terms): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Although there are some very good answers, I don't think it's clearly evident which one (or two or three) are the &quot;best&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Several answers overlap,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Some of [the][2] [latter][3] [answers][4] don't really add much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the main problem is that the question is actually three (and possibly more) very good questions, and they would have been better answered as individual questions. Currently the answers are either concentrated on parts of the question, or vaguely addressing all distinct issues. But the different questions are somewhat coupled, and individually they might have raised several requests for clarifications.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, several answers comment on the absurdity of the claim, something that's useless in answering the question. I can't really blame any of the answerers, but future visitors may perceive the answers as too noisy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A minor clean up effort could help, for example remove all comments that fail their purpose, or became obsolete. If there's a general feeling that the question asks for legal aid, we could update it to the [more concise and to the point version][6]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the grand scheme of things, I think the question and most answers are (way) above the average, in terms of quality. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In conclusion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do we, as a community, want to keep this question as is? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The question has been visited by several 3k+ users (answerers + commenters), no close votes. (but if there where flags, I wouldn't know)&#xD;&#xA; 2. Although popularity is not a good measurement, the fact that there isn't a single downvote on the question or any answer should be considered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd say we definitely *want* to keep the question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there an answer to it or is it more of a discussion topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the question has been answered, not by a single answer unfortunately, but still answered sufficiently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it going to be helpful to future visitors?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, predicting the future is off topic :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strictly speaking, it should be closed. It's overly broad and I don't think it will generate any more good answers. But far worse questions slip through all the time, and there are all these old ones that still survive. I'd prefer for this one to stay open. We could just add a notification for longer answers instead (seeing how there isn't an accepted answer yet). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it's community wiki already, I guess one approach would be to write an answer that definitively answers the question. Any volunteers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126582/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126598/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126586/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126515/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6968" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2726" RevisionGUID="a057bf63-f8ea-4057-aea9-ad7bb7445603" CreationDate="2011-12-26T09:05:10.043" UserId="25936" Comment="added 126 characters in body" Text="I think that the &quot;not obviously on topic&quot; parts of question, fit under the &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; category. I didn't read it as a request for any of kind legal aid, my interpretation was quite close to what the [OP actually meant][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some answers did treat the question as a purely legal one, but most went into legal territory to illustrate that the best way to convince the client would be to propose whatever alternative local law considers reliable, which would be a fine answer to the question, without going into any legal details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are some evidence it's not a very good question (in SE terms): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Although there are some very good answers, I don't think it's clearly evident which one (or two or three) are the &quot;best&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Several answers overlap,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Some of [the][2] [latter][3] [answers][4] don't really add much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the main problem is that the question is actually three (and possibly more) very good questions, and they would have been better answered as individual questions. Currently the answers are either concentrated on parts of the question, or vaguely addressing all distinct issues. But the different questions are somewhat coupled, and individually they might have raised several requests for clarifications.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, several answers comment on the absurdity of the claim, something that's useless in answering the question. I can't really blame any of the answerers, but future visitors may perceive the answers as too noisy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A minor clean up effort could help, for example remove all comments that fail their purpose, or became obsolete. If there's a general feeling that the question asks for legal aid, we could update it to the [more concise and to the point version][6]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the grand scheme of things, I think the question and most answers are (way) above the average, in terms of quality. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In conclusion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do we, as a community, want to keep this question as is? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The question has been visited by several 3k+ users (answerers + commenters), no close votes. (but if there where flags, I wouldn't know)&#xD;&#xA; 2. Although popularity is not a good measurement, the fact that there isn't a single downvote on the question or any answer should be considered. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd say we definitely *want* to keep the question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**update**: Two downvotes on answers appeared after I wrote this. Still, too few, considering the total sum of upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there an answer to it or is it more of a discussion topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the question has been answered, not by a single answer unfortunately, but still answered sufficiently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it going to be helpful to future visitors?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, predicting the future is off topic :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strictly speaking, it should be closed. It's overly broad and I don't think it will generate any more good answers. But far worse questions slip through all the time, and there are all these old ones that still survive. I'd prefer for this one to stay open. We could just add a notification for longer answers instead (seeing how there isn't an accepted answer yet). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it's community wiki already, I guess one approach would be to write an answer that definitively answers the question. Any volunteers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126582/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126598/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126586/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126515/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6969" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2719" RevisionGUID="4415f404-68fb-49a0-bc91-6b411597916a" CreationDate="2011-12-27T11:23:50.433" UserId="25936" Comment="added 802 characters in body" Text="&gt; For example, someone might have asked for a book recommendation on a given topic in 2010, but by 2012, there might be a better one on the market.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that questions on book recommendations that would fit your description are [probably off topic][1]. I don't see how a book question that becomes deprecated in such short time would be a good one, even if it's on topic. Technology may be moving at an extreme pace, but high level concepts don't change that often. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you have any examples of existing open questions that would fit your description, i.e. are in need of &quot;refreshing&quot;? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Perhaps there should be a way of &quot;refreshing&quot; a question to learn whether a fresher answer is available?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You can edit any question at any time, and any answer, if you think you're improving them in any way. &#xD;&#xA; - You can ask a new question with a link to the earlier question and an explanation why it and its answers don't answer the new one.  &#xD;&#xA; - And of course, if you have a more current answer to an outdated question, you can always just answer. A new answer will bump the question at the top of the homepage and if your answer is a good one it will get the attention it deserves. It may even outvote the previously highest voted one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In conclusion: If questions that fit your description exist, they are probably bad ones that slipped through and we should clean them up. I *think* - but I reserve the right to change my opinion if you provide an example of an existing question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've tried to find questions that would fit the general description while still being on-topic, and I think the best example is certifications. It's reasonable that there are going to be a lot of cases where answers on `certification exam x` in 2010 are going to be very different than in 2012. Most reputable certification bodies will slightly change the code or the title of the certification / exam, in which case you should ask a new question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if that's not the case, I don't think that the set of questions that actually need &quot;refreshing&quot; is large enough to require some sort of unique approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, if you manage to find at least one existing question that fits the description and is on topic, all of the above may make less sense. But although I tried, I didn't find any (not even a certification one).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6970" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2727" RevisionGUID="54030164-cdcb-4764-823f-7b10eda06977" CreationDate="2011-12-27T15:44:11.347" UserId="7748" Text="The last 10 questions asked have all been down-voted. I think maybe we are being a bit too aggressive is down-voting questions, particularly for new users. What can we do to improve the situation.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Personally I never down-vote a question. If its off topic I Vote to close. To me Down-voting a question seem to be saying &quot;This is a bad Question.&quot;. I'm in the &quot;there no such thing as a bad question&quot; camp) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/UR89C.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6971" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2727" RevisionGUID="54030164-cdcb-4764-823f-7b10eda06977" CreationDate="2011-12-27T15:44:11.347" UserId="7748" Text="Are we scarring off new users?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6972" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2727" RevisionGUID="54030164-cdcb-4764-823f-7b10eda06977" CreationDate="2011-12-27T15:44:11.347" UserId="7748" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6973" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2727" RevisionGUID="a08b8432-c68c-40f2-8bff-e9aa9cecf7b2" CreationDate="2011-12-27T15:50:46.873" UserId="7748" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body; edited title" Text="The last 10 questions asked have all been down-voted. I think maybe we are being a bit too aggressive is down-voting questions, particularly for new users. What can we do to improve the situation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Personally I never down-vote a question. If its off topic I Vote to close. To me Down-voting a question seem to be saying &quot;This is a bad Question.&quot;. I'm in the &quot;there no such thing as a bad question&quot; camp) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/UR89C.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6974" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2727" RevisionGUID="a08b8432-c68c-40f2-8bff-e9aa9cecf7b2" CreationDate="2011-12-27T15:50:46.873" UserId="7748" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body; edited title" Text="Are we scaring off new users?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6975" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2728" RevisionGUID="aa77f6b2-3f47-46f4-b4c0-55a63e1095f7" CreationDate="2011-12-27T16:53:36.687" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; Are we scaring off new users?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No we are not. It's just how the system works, bad questions get down votes. Whether some of them get closed or not is irrelevant, closed doesn't necessarily mean bad. Up and down votes is how we comment on a post's quality, and close votes are how we denote that a question is outside the scope of the site. Different things, that may sometimes overlap, but not always.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today is just a bad day, a [particularly bad day][1]. I've went through all the questions, and I'm fairly confident that all down votes are justified, and happy that there are helpful comments in most. I don't know if there's an actual problem, but if there is I'd say that's more that new users don't read the guidelines as careful as they should or that the guidelines aren't as clear as we think. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;why the down votes?&quot; question is a wrong one, imho, the correct one is &quot;why no upvotes?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/2826763#2826763" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6976" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2728" RevisionGUID="45e870a5-35ee-4c22-87fc-1b4437e3aa76" CreationDate="2011-12-27T17:01:53.773" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="&gt; Are we scaring off new users?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No we are not. It's just how the system works, bad questions get down votes. Whether some of them get closed or not is irrelevant, closed doesn't necessarily mean bad. Up and down votes is how we comment on a post's quality, and close votes are how we denote that a question is outside the scope of the site. Different things, that may sometimes overlap, but not always.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today is just a bad day, a [particularly bad day][1]. I've went through all the questions, and I'm fairly confident that all down votes are justified, and happy that there are helpful comments in most. I don't know if there's an actual problem, but if there is I'd say that's more that new users don't read the guidelines as careful as they should or that the guidelines aren't as clear as we think. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;why the down votes?&quot; question is a wrong one, a better one would be &quot;why no upvotes?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/2826763#2826763" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6977" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2728" RevisionGUID="f36f7904-cc6c-466b-ac2f-0e490ac3dbd9" CreationDate="2011-12-27T17:07:14.367" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="&gt; Are we scaring off new users?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**No we are not.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's just how the system works, bad questions get down votes. Whether some of them get closed or not is irrelevant, closed doesn't necessarily mean bad. Up and down votes is how we comment on a post's quality, and close votes are how we denote that a question is outside the scope of the site. Different things, that may sometimes overlap, but not always.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a very simple reason more and more people come here for help, the system works. You can't please everybody, obviously, today is just a bad day. [I've also noticed, some time before you did][1]. I've went through all the questions, and I'm fairly confident that all down votes are justified, and happy that there are some helpful comments that guide askers on how to ask better questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know if there's an actual problem, but if there is I'd say it's more that new users don't read the guidelines as careful as they should or that the guidelines aren't as clear as we think. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nevertheless, the &quot;why the down votes?&quot; question is a wrong one, a better one would be &quot;why no upvotes?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/2826763#2826763" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6978" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2729" RevisionGUID="16c947b1-6c07-42b5-8f01-78760b005c04" CreationDate="2011-12-27T17:08:18.797" UserId="4" Text="The text of the down arrow on a question does read &quot;This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&quot;. Strictly speaking, questions that do not belong here aren't useful to this community and there's no problem with downvoting them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't vote that way. Questions that I downvote are questions that are too unclear, too simplistic (easily solved with a search), or so argumentative or blog-like that they, in my opinion, can't be fixed. I might not be able to fix it because I don't have the knowledge or expertise in the topic area to understand the question, but if I open a question and see a possibly good question hiding in there, I don't downvote. Likewise, a clear, well-written question that doesn't belong here doesn't get a downvote from me, but I do vote it as off-topic so it gets closed (and hopefully moved to the appropriate site, if one exists).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps people are being too aggressive with the downvote and not trying to fix questions to make them viable. Or perhaps these are questions that can't be reasonable fixed to find a place here. I do hope that people aren't downvoting questions that can be fixed or edited, especially shortly after they are asked, but I'm not sure there's any way to be sure." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6979" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2728" RevisionGUID="c0150394-405b-4a3d-925c-7444dec101d1" CreationDate="2011-12-27T17:18:03.560" UserId="25936" Comment="added 133 characters in body" Text="&gt; Are we scaring off new users?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**No we are not.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's just how the system works, bad questions get down votes. Whether some of them get closed or not is irrelevant, closed doesn't necessarily mean bad. Up and down votes is how we comment on a post's quality, and close votes are how we denote a question outside the scope of the site. Different things, that may sometimes overlap, but not always.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a very simple reason more and more people come here for help, the system works. You can't please everybody, obviously, today is just a bad day. [I've also noticed, some time before you did][1]. I've went through all the questions, and I'm fairly confident that all down votes are justified, and happy that there are some helpful comments that guide askers on how to ask better questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know if there's an actual problem, but if there is I'd say it's more that new users don't read the guidelines as careful as they should or that the guidelines aren't as clear as we think. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nevertheless, the &quot;why the down votes?&quot; question is a wrong one, a better one would be &quot;why no upvotes?&quot;. Down votes, as is everything, are peer reviewed, it takes just one up vote to cancel out one down vote - or five down votes, reputation wise. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/2826763#2826763" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6980" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2730" RevisionGUID="ee69e6ff-235c-44cb-a9df-cb9dbd101e77" CreationDate="2011-12-27T17:24:11.470" UserId="43845" Text="I asked a question about Windows Communication Foundation (WCF):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127165/is-windows-communication-foundation-wcf-used-often&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have much work experience outside of my current job so I don't know what technologies are being used besides what I'm doing in my shop. Half the answers are helpful, the other half think the topic isn't constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok that's fine I have NO issues with people thinking the topic is not constructive. To make it clear what I'm looking for, is there anywhere on stackoverflow I can post these type of questions? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really like the format of the site and the people on here seem experience in the field&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6981" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2730" RevisionGUID="ee69e6ff-235c-44cb-a9df-cb9dbd101e77" CreationDate="2011-12-27T17:24:11.470" UserId="43845" Text="Need clarification on what I can ask here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6982" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2730" RevisionGUID="ee69e6ff-235c-44cb-a9df-cb9dbd101e77" CreationDate="2011-12-27T17:24:11.470" UserId="43845" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6983" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2731" RevisionGUID="edb2b074-6237-4da8-b742-a4f5d1df1d62" CreationDate="2011-12-27T17:36:09.773" UserId="4" Text="There's Stack Exchange site for this type of question. It is too localized, specifically it only applies to a specific moment in time. It's also dependent on industry and geographic location as to what technologies are used. There's also no objective criteria for &quot;often&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there might already be questions about how to determine what technologies and languages are popular in given areas, and the answers to those questions point to different resources that you can use. I'd search around for those as a starting point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6984" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2731" RevisionGUID="8981836d-64c3-470b-a51c-d8032a99d8fb" CreationDate="2011-12-27T17:39:27.717" UserId="25936" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="There's no Stack Exchange site for this type of question. It is too localized, specifically it only applies to a specific moment in time. It's also dependent on industry and geographic location as to what technologies are used. There's also no objective criteria for &quot;often&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there might already be questions about how to determine what technologies and languages are popular in given areas, and the answers to those questions point to different resources that you can use. I'd search around for those as a starting point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6985" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2732" RevisionGUID="fabce6ad-454b-426c-a845-164a10976ae8" CreationDate="2011-12-27T17:40:55.373" UserId="40190" Text="I don't think we are. However, personally, I don't down-vote anything. Instead I try to find the good stuff and vote it up. I know the first time one of my questions was down-voted didn't feel very good and I guess when people see no up-votes on their question they will get the message eventually.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if a question is really bad and/or doesn't belong on the site, I just flag it appropriately. I have also been trying to (time permitting) leave a comment to point the OP in the right direction, if I can't improve the question myself through suggesting an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I actually kind of wish there was an option on the flag dialog à la &quot;Do you want to leave a comment notifying the OP of this flag?&quot; with a kindly worded comment template to make this easier." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6986" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2733" RevisionGUID="a46a22b6-9db0-44cf-93bb-4532b7538966" CreationDate="2011-12-27T17:54:14.713" UserId="43845" Text="If someone is going to down vote something, at the very least give a reason why? Some questions can be questionable so it's hard to figure out what is wrong with the question so some feedback would be nice." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6987" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2734" RevisionGUID="3001e31c-b5fe-4564-aede-69f6077e4305" CreationDate="2011-12-27T18:04:50.373" UserId="25936" Text="Some clarifications:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Half the answers are helpful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your questions (the one here and the one on StackOverflow) generated no answers, but [comments][1]. It's good that some of the comments were helpful, but comments don't follow the same quality guidelines as answers. For example, there are no down votes on comments, so you can't really say if the community disagrees with a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the other half think the topic isn't constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, regardless of how interesting a question may be, it doesn't have a single answer, and those kind of questions often lead to lengthy debates. We can't really safely measure a technology's popularity, your question is asking for opinions rather than experiences and facts. The pointers you got in the comments are valuable, but there's no objective way of judging them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding to that, it's also too localized, as @ThomasOwens [explained][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the [faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][3] blog post that is linked to the close notification and always keep in mind that &quot;not constructive&quot; is Stack Exchange lingo, it refers to how your question measures up to those guidelines. It's not a comment on the actual quality of your question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And you can always try asking around in [chat][4]. Same crowd there, and your question is interesting enough to start a discussion (I hope). Of course the discussion will probably be more casual. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2731/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6988" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2734" RevisionGUID="1959be25-763c-48a7-9c09-8fb9c2a3c5b8" CreationDate="2011-12-27T18:10:57.240" UserId="25936" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="Some clarifications:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Half the answers are helpful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your questions (the one here and the one on StackOverflow) generated no answers, but [comments][1]. It's good that some of the comments were helpful, but comments don't follow the same quality guidelines as answers. For example, there are no down votes on comments, so you can't really say if the community disagrees with a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the other half think the topic isn't constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, regardless of how interesting your question may be, it doesn't have a single answer, and those kind of questions often lead to lengthy debates. We can't really safely measure a technology's popularity, your question is asking for opinions rather than experiences and facts. The pointers you got in the comments are valuable, but there's no objective way of judging them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding to that, it's also too localized, as @ThomasOwens [explained][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the [faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][3] blog post that is linked to the close notification and always keep in mind that &quot;not constructive&quot; is Stack Exchange lingo, it refers to how your question measures up to those guidelines. It's not a comment on the actual quality of your question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And you can always try asking around in [chat][4]. Same crowd there, and your question is interesting enough to start a discussion (I hope). Of course the discussion will probably be more casual. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2731/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6989" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2734" RevisionGUID="08984c08-1860-4f39-8446-7d85579782c2" CreationDate="2011-12-27T18:20:04.483" UserId="25936" Comment="added 349 characters in body" Text="Some clarifications:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Half the answers are helpful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your questions (the one here and the one on StackOverflow) generated no answers, but [comments][1]. It's good that some of the comments were helpful, but comments don't follow the same quality guidelines as answers. For example, there are no down votes on comments, so you can't really say if the community disagrees with a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the other half think the topic isn't constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, regardless of how interesting your question may be, it doesn't have a single answer, and those kind of questions often lead to lengthy debates. We can't really safely measure a technology's popularity, your question is asking for opinions rather than experiences and facts. The pointers you got in the comments are valuable, but there's no objective way of judging them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding to that, it's also too localized, as @ThomasOwens [explained][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the [faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][3] blog post that is linked to the close notification and always keep in mind that &quot;not constructive&quot; is Stack Exchange lingo, it refers to how your question measures up to those guidelines. It's not a comment on the actual quality of your question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And you can always try asking around in [chat][4]. Same crowd there, and your question is interesting enough to start a discussion (I hope). Of course the discussion will probably be more casual. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**As a sidenote**: Avoid [cross posting][5]. If your question was closed on StackOverflow, chances are it will get closed here as well. Otherwise it would have been migrated instead of getting closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2731/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2531/what-is-the-current-policy-for-questions-that-are-duplicates-of-stack-overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6990" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2735" RevisionGUID="655b5f89-f9af-467b-b116-1adcb361cbaa" CreationDate="2011-12-27T18:48:46.887" UserId="40190" Text="When flagging a question to be closed, migrated et cetera, I often want to leave comment with a suggestion for the OP about how to improve their question or where it would be more appropriate to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wish there was an option on the flag dialog à la &quot;Do you want to leave a comment notifying the OP of this flag?&quot;. It could contain a **kindly worded comment template** to make it easier for the flagger  and more helpful for the OP." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6991" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2735" RevisionGUID="655b5f89-f9af-467b-b116-1adcb361cbaa" CreationDate="2011-12-27T18:48:46.887" UserId="40190" Text="Suggest leaving a templated comment when flagging a question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6992" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2735" RevisionGUID="655b5f89-f9af-467b-b116-1adcb361cbaa" CreationDate="2011-12-27T18:48:46.887" UserId="40190" Text="|feature-request|flagging|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6993" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2736" RevisionGUID="8089812e-1071-4c55-8d07-9be31645e948" CreationDate="2011-12-27T18:50:29.900" UserId="47" Text="What's wrong with adding your comment via the usual &quot;add comment&quot; link and then voting/closing/flagging?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding an extra, optional, step into these actions would be making the workflow more complicated." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6994" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2737" RevisionGUID="9c809a25-1261-437c-8ddb-c4ded63022f8" CreationDate="2011-12-27T18:52:09.047" UserId="226" Text="I don't think it really needs a separate feature, since it's pretty easy to just click &quot;add comment&quot; after you flag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can store and customize comments you leave most often using [this user script](http://stackapps.com/questions/2116/autoreviewcomments-pro-forma-comments-for-se), although I recommend still tailoring comments to the question when needed/possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could probably come up with the most common comments that apply to questions erroneously posted to Programmers (e.g. career advice) and share those here on meta to help others set up their script as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6995" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2738" RevisionGUID="c5b94ecd-f9e2-40c1-83a6-990cf122281d" CreationDate="2011-12-27T19:41:53.413" UserId="226" Text="##Part 2: Michael Feathers, &quot;The Readability Gulf&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Originally posted at http://annalear.ca/2011/12/27/scna-2011-part-2-michael-feathers-the-readability-gulf/.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second session of the first day was by Michael Feathers giving a demo of using functional approaches to different problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I took two main lessons out of it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. &quot;Clever code&quot; is relative.&#xD;&#xA;2. Functional programming can help establish a common base of understanding that doesn't vary from one problem domain to another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Clever code&quot; is something that's [often looked down upon](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25276/why-is-cleverness-considered-harmful-in-programming-by-some-people) because it can make it more difficult for multiple developers to maintain an application and read its code. But what is &quot;clever&quot;, exactly? Michael Feathers made the point that anything that's unfamiliar to us will at first look as strange and weird. But if we take the time to learn new functions and patterns, they will quickly become familiar and comfortable instead of too clever and complicated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another way to mitigate the gap between unfamiliar and comfortable is to use common functions. [Functional programming](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9730/functional-programming-vs-oop) is a good example of that: it is more about manipulating data without worrying about setting up abstractions to model it first. Functions built into a functional language aren’t trying to represent the domain of the problem. Instead, they simply perform common operations that do the same thing regardless of what kind of problem they're applied to. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, the zip function is the same in [Ruby](http://ruby-doc.org/core-1.9.3/Array.html#method-i-zip), [Python](http://docs.python.org/library/functions.html#zip), [Scala](http://abel-perez.com/scala-zip-function), [Haskell](http://zvon.org/other/haskell/Outputprelude/zip_f.html), and other languages. This means that you can learn how it works once and if you find yourself working in another language or another domain, you can easily apply it there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same holds true for design patterns and, to an extent, frameworks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Establishing a common base of understanding is important for ensuring that we write the best code possible. Sometimes this requires compromises to favour readability over efficiency or style, but other times we're better off using some clever code on the assumption that we and our fellow developers will learn how it works and become better for it.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6996" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2739" RevisionGUID="cbe30dd3-f2dd-41f4-bace-66bd08b52144" CreationDate="2011-12-28T04:32:04.537" UserId="25936" Text="Well, I'd definitely use it :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tailored comments would be preferable, and the user script Anna shared is more or less the feature as I want it, but I think there would be some value in assembling a list of template comments to better guide users write helpful comments (and use in the script).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm always struggling with my English, several of my comments have been misunderstood as snarky, my syntax and spelling may be good, but more often than not my comments are verbatim translations of what I'm thinking in Greek, and that doesn't always work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I usually go one of three ways:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Down / close vote with no comment (just won't bother),&#xD;&#xA; - Copy someone else's comment, with slight adjustments,&#xD;&#xA; - Comment with my broken English and hope for the best :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, I have to think, even slightly, and I would love it if I didn't have to think, at all. Comment wars are more than usual, and tailored comments could help, and get more users to participate. There's one example of an auto generated comment, the one that appears when a possible duplicate vote is cast.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm playing around with the script now, and it seems more than enough. I'll try and compile a list of comments and share at some point, hope others will use / improve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6997" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2739" RevisionGUID="d04c00a8-eeff-40dd-bd9e-b25ceffcc4dd" CreationDate="2011-12-28T09:33:17.497" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body" Text="Well, I'd definitely use it :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tailored comments would be preferable, and the user script Anna shared is more or less the feature as I want it, but I think there would be some value in assembling a list of template comments to better guide users write helpful comments (and use in the script).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm always struggling with my English, several of my comments have been misunderstood as snarky, my syntax and spelling may be good, but more often than not my comments are verbatim translations of what I'm thinking in Greek, and that doesn't always work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I usually go one of three ways:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Down / close vote with no comment (just won't bother),&#xD;&#xA; - Copy someone else's comment, with slight adjustments,&#xD;&#xA; - Comment with my broken English and hope for the best :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, I have to think, even slightly, and I would love it if I didn't have to think, at all. Comment wars are more than usual, and template comments could help, and get more users to participate. There's one example of an auto generated comment, the one that appears when a possible duplicate vote is cast.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm playing around with the script now, and it seems more than enough. I'll try and compile a list of comments and share at some point, hope others will use / improve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6998" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2740" RevisionGUID="42ace9bd-7eea-4329-acd1-181e47447254" CreationDate="2011-12-28T18:48:48.360" UserId="41542" Text="I've just been awarded the &quot;Create tags&quot; privilege but I think that it should be granted after the ability to &quot;retag questions&quot; as this in my mind is related more closely to review ability.  Not sure this qualifies as a question but as a suggestion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone has any opinions for or against?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6999" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2740" RevisionGUID="42ace9bd-7eea-4329-acd1-181e47447254" CreationDate="2011-12-28T18:48:48.360" UserId="41542" Text="&quot;Retag Questions&quot; vs &quot;Create your own tags&quot; privileges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7000" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2740" RevisionGUID="42ace9bd-7eea-4329-acd1-181e47447254" CreationDate="2011-12-28T18:48:48.360" UserId="41542" Text="|discussion|tags|retag-request|privileges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7001" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2740" RevisionGUID="8c8ed072-de5a-4401-9be2-22269cca0807" CreationDate="2011-12-28T19:15:05.087" UserId="41542" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|tags|privileges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7002" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2741" RevisionGUID="2d615e8c-d298-4fdd-a42f-257b06e31813" CreationDate="2011-12-28T19:21:17.473" UserId="1463" Text="I have [tag:scrum], [tag:agile], [tag:unit-testing] and [tag:tdd] set as favorite tags. When I browse to [tag:tdd], I get two questions highlighted, followed by two not highlighted, followed by one highlighted, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like it's only highlighting questions which are in more than one of my favorite tags.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7003" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2741" RevisionGUID="2d615e8c-d298-4fdd-a42f-257b06e31813" CreationDate="2011-12-28T19:21:17.473" UserId="1463" Text="Odd Highlighting of Questions with Favorite Tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7004" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2741" RevisionGUID="2d615e8c-d298-4fdd-a42f-257b06e31813" CreationDate="2011-12-28T19:21:17.473" UserId="1463" Text="|bug|questions|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7005" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2742" RevisionGUID="102f5956-11de-4048-917f-de8745fcb357" CreationDate="2011-12-28T19:34:46.373" UserId="47" Text="The reputation needed to create tags is only greater than the reputation needed to retag on Stack Overflow where there is a problem with people creating bad tags, but even there it only needs 1,500 points (as opposed to 300 everywhere else).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's seen to be a problem with low reputation users creating bad tags then the reputation score needed can be raised - but it's a developer function." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7006" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2743" RevisionGUID="ae438e3c-af64-4237-8522-417c38f03407" CreationDate="2011-12-28T19:38:08.333" UserId="2673" Text="When you click on a tag to view, it will not highlight questions with that tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The ones you have highlighted will also have other tags, such as  [tag:scrum], [tag:agile] or [tag:unit-testing] that is making them be highlighted as a favorite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The ones that are not highlighted will only have [tag:tdd] from your list of favorites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;when you think about it, this makes sense. If it didn't behave this way, when you browse to one of your favorite tags everything would be highlighted, making highlighting useless." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7007" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2744" RevisionGUID="9f43aa4f-c92a-49da-8005-07ebb783cefc" CreationDate="2011-12-28T22:18:33.960" UserId="20636" Text="How would i achieve an additional (perhaps own created?) filter on the inner filter menu? Like stick a custom filter, created from data.stackexchange.com, into the menu. Or like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Top Questions active featured hot week month`&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;I which filter out some common noise, especially [closed] and negative votes.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reason,&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Some periods Programmers SA 'active' is (that's what I think) quite noisy and messed up with **[closed]**,  **negative downvotes** and so on. This post is really NOT a debate on why, it about  make SA visits more enjoyable without that reason to &quot;what post would i jump to know?&quot;. Exactly like I do by drunks and noisy people in the city by night. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I always ken a curious feeling over active posts view on this SA, and think it still can be  :). &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7008" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2744" RevisionGUID="9f43aa4f-c92a-49da-8005-07ebb783cefc" CreationDate="2011-12-28T22:18:33.960" UserId="20636" Text="Create and use an custom filtered view" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7009" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2744" RevisionGUID="9f43aa4f-c92a-49da-8005-07ebb783cefc" CreationDate="2011-12-28T22:18:33.960" UserId="20636" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7010" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2745" RevisionGUID="3e97822e-3e25-46e3-87d3-7f4d115c630a" CreationDate="2011-12-28T22:59:10.383" UserId="897" Text="I downvote questions quite often.  Though interestingly, I dont think I downvoted any of the questions in your screenshot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some say 'there are no bad questions'.  I say there sure as heck are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of being a good developer is knowing how to ask good questions.  When you work with technical subjects, questions must provide enough context to receive a technical answer.  If I see a question where the poster has clearly not stopped for a minute to think if they've provided all the necessary information for someone to answer their question without a bunch of back and forth conversation, I downvote.  If I see a question thats clearly off topic, thus indicating the poster didnt read the site's FAQ, I also downvote.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that scaring users off?  I have no way of knowing.  What I do know, though, is that if there is no feedback about good vs bad questions, you will not encourage good questions, and only encourage the lazy question writers who find it easier to ask a bad question than to do a few minutes worth of research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7011" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2744" RevisionGUID="9cc36468-e595-43c3-9777-35f554236fcf" CreationDate="2011-12-29T00:16:20.773" UserId="226" Comment="edited body; edited tags" Text="How would i achieve an additional (perhaps own created?) filter on the inner filter menu? Like stick a custom filter, created from data.stackexchange.com, into the menu. Or like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Top Questions active featured hot week month`&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;I which filter out some common noise, especially [closed] and negative votes.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reason,&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Some periods Programmers' 'active' is (that's what I think) quite noisy and messed up with **[closed]**,  **negative downvotes** and so on. This post is really NOT a debate on why, it about  make SE visits more enjoyable without that reason to &quot;what post would i jump to know?&quot;. Exactly like I do by drunks and noisy people in the city by night. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I always ken a curious feeling over active posts view on this site, and think it still can be  :). &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7012" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2746" RevisionGUID="6c6147e2-70f9-432f-911c-c254775bd86f" CreationDate="2011-12-29T00:18:35.713" UserId="226" Text="There is no way to create another filter that'll show up on the site, but you could create a search and bookmark the URL in your browser of choice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, this will show all open questions with score 0 or more, sorted by activity. So it's basically like an active sort for the front page but only for non-negatively scored open questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;q=closed%3a0%20votes%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can read about additional search options [here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7013" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2744" RevisionGUID="9cc36468-e595-43c3-9777-35f554236fcf" CreationDate="2011-12-29T00:16:20.773" UserId="226" Comment="edited body; edited tags" Text="|support|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7014" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2747" RevisionGUID="484f46c1-eda1-4689-91f4-adf165c730a0" CreationDate="2011-12-29T01:15:30.213" UserId="8402" Text="Why did you close this question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127424/yearly-commitments-for-software-engineers-better-to-set-low-and-hit-home-runs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you not care about your careers? Do you have a career at all, or are you just a web 'developer'? Some of us haven't given up on life yet and have a software engineer career worth growing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7015" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2747" RevisionGUID="484f46c1-eda1-4689-91f4-adf165c730a0" CreationDate="2011-12-29T01:15:30.213" UserId="8402" Text="Why did you close this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7016" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2747" RevisionGUID="484f46c1-eda1-4689-91f4-adf165c730a0" CreationDate="2011-12-29T01:15:30.213" UserId="8402" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7017" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2747" RevisionGUID="3f940787-2e3a-43f7-be9b-9442066b9142" CreationDate="2011-12-29T01:16:33.927" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7018" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2748" RevisionGUID="d1b910f8-f42a-4b31-86df-ca259024ec1c" CreationDate="2011-12-29T01:59:10.930" UserId="2673" Text="I didn't vote to close, but I agree with it decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question is more general career performance review related than software development rated. Programmers.SE is for subjective questions about software development, not subjective questions on careers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, I'm not a web developer either, although I find your statement doesn't exactly reflect kindly on you - I'd suggest finding a more productive method to vent. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7019" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2749" RevisionGUID="34fa53d5-ed67-48d4-876a-c22f29305e8f" CreationDate="2011-12-29T06:30:14.370" UserId="25936" Text="There are quite a few comments on the question explaining why it's off topic, and Dan McGrath gives an excellent summation in his [answer][1]. I would also have voted to close, if I happened upon the question while it was still open. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I care for my career, maybe a little too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently I found out that my boss twitted on a couple of my answers, in a very positive tone. That's obviously kind of a big deal to me. I tried to lure almost everyone from my team here (and on other Stack Exchange sites, depending on speciality). We are a relatively small team, but an expert team nonetheless (each on his field). No one really bothered, and most of them nagged about the amount of noise here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In parallel, I've introduced Programmers SE to quite a few core developers of my favourite platform through an internals mailing list, hoping to get actual experts to look our way. I'm saying &quot;actual&quot;, because I sit atop the list of &quot;top users&quot; for the platform's tag, and I can tell you I'm no expert. Anyways, most where not impressed, for the same reasons. And quite a few noticed how skewed the list I sit atop is, where number three is that Spolsky character, with a single answer, that albeit being a great one, shows no actual familiarity with the platform.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, you obviously think you asked a great question (I'm not saying it isn't, or that it is). It's interesting, and possibly useful, but it's not a question the crowd here can expertly answer. Certainly there are quite a few people here who can provide educated guesses, but the possibility of someone giving a definitive answer is fairly small, if there's actually a definitive answer. That would have been ok, if the question was about software development, as quite a few people here have long careers in the field. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, for argument's sake, let's say an expert came along and gave a great answer to your question. The whole point of Stack Exchange is that answers are peer reviewed, you expect every answer to be reviewed by experts and you can safely assume that if the answer is good it will get up voted. So we don't just need one expert to answer the question, we also need a few others to review the answer. The possibility of that happening (correctly) is even smaller.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to attract more and more experts, we need to concentrate on definitively answerable questions. And for all of us who participate with our real names, and our participation is visible to people we work with, it's extremely important to keep Programmers SE from turning into yet another forum. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are at least three [Area51][2] proposals where your question might find a better home:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Professional Matters][3],&#xD;&#xA;- [IT Careers &amp; Training][4], and&#xD;&#xA;- [Career development][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Familiarize yourself][6] with Area51, and help the proposals grow into full sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, more importantly, if you want to be taken seriously as a professional, be nice(r). Your company is also a community, and I don't think people there will appreciate your tone, even if you get perfect grades on your evaluation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2748/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/12887/it-careers-training&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/21141/career-development&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7020" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2749" RevisionGUID="0760fe66-838d-419e-8798-6ce68520da81" CreationDate="2011-12-29T06:51:57.247" UserId="25936" Comment="added 42 characters in body" Text="There are quite a few comments on the question explaining why it's off topic, and Dan McGrath gives an excellent summation in his [answer][1]. I would also have voted to close, if I happened upon the question while it was still open. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I care for my career, maybe a little too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently I found out that my boss twitted on a couple of my answers, in a very positive tone. That's obviously kind of a big deal to me. I tried to lure almost everyone from my team here (and on other Stack Exchange sites, depending on speciality). We are a relatively small team, but an expert team nonetheless (each on his field). No one really bothered, and most of them nagged about the amount of noise here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In parallel, I've introduced Programmers SE to quite a few core developers of my favourite platform through an internals mailing list, hoping to get actual experts to look our way. I'm saying &quot;actual&quot;, because I sit atop the list of &quot;top users&quot; for the platform's tag, and I can tell you I'm no expert. Anyways, most where not impressed, for the same reasons. And quite a few noticed how skewed the list I sit atop is, where number three is that Spolsky character, with a single answer, that albeit being a great one, shows no actual familiarity with the platform.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, you obviously think you asked a great question (I'm not saying it isn't, or that it is). It's interesting, and possibly useful, but it's not a question the crowd here can expertly answer. Certainly there are quite a few people here who can provide educated guesses, but the possibility of someone giving a definitive answer is fairly small, if there's actually a definitive answer. That would have been ok, if the question was about software development, as quite a few people here have long careers in the field. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, for argument's sake, let's say an expert came along and gave a great answer to your question. The whole point of Stack Exchange is that answers are peer reviewed, you expect every answer to be reviewed by experts and you can safely assume that if the answer is good it will get up voted. So we don't just need one expert to answer the question, we also need a few others to review the answer. The possibility of that happening (correctly) is even smaller.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to attract more and more experts, we need to concentrate on definitively answerable questions. And for all of us who participate with our real names, and our participation is visible to people we work with, it's extremely important to keep Programmers SE from turning into yet another forum. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are at least three [Area51][2] proposals where your question might find a better home:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Professional Matters][3],&#xD;&#xA;- [IT Careers &amp; Training][4], and&#xD;&#xA;- [Career development][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Familiarize yourself][6] with Area51, and help the proposals grow into full sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, more importantly, if you want to be taken seriously as a professional, be nice(r). Your company is also a community, and I don't think people there will appreciate your tone, even if you get perfect grades on your evaluation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-1 to you, from a lowly web developer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2748/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/12887/it-careers-training&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/21141/career-development&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7021" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2729" RevisionGUID="7c9bc102-7c23-4053-9c29-363aaf6b3c8f" CreationDate="2011-12-29T07:04:15.783" UserId="37" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="The text of the down arrow on a question does read&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strictly speaking, questions that do not belong here aren't useful to this community and there's no problem with downvoting them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't vote that way. Questions that I downvote are questions that are too unclear, too simplistic (easily solved with a search), or so argumentative or blog-like that they, in my opinion, can't be fixed. I might not be able to fix it because I don't have the knowledge or expertise in the topic area to understand the question, but if I open a question and see a possibly good question hiding in there, I don't downvote. Likewise, a clear, well-written question that doesn't belong here doesn't get a downvote from me, but I do vote it as off-topic so it gets closed (and hopefully moved to the appropriate site, if one exists).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps people are being too aggressive with the downvote and not trying to fix questions to make them viable. Or perhaps these are questions that can't be reasonable fixed to find a place here. I do hope that people aren't downvoting questions that can be fixed or edited, especially shortly after they are asked, but I'm not sure there's any way to be sure." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7022" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2748" RevisionGUID="59195c2a-6e89-4b56-ace8-ab2fcef1f7e7" CreationDate="2011-12-29T14:10:28.170" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body" Text="I didn't vote to close, but I agree with the decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question is more general career performance review related than software development. Programmers.SE is for subjective questions about software development, not subjective questions on careers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, I'm not a web developer either, although I find your statement doesn't exactly reflect kindly on you - I'd suggest finding a more productive method to vent. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7023" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2741" RevisionGUID="8837f343-e016-45bc-af57-ca653ab80762" CreationDate="2011-12-30T11:31:12.773" UserId="48" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|questions|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7024" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2750" RevisionGUID="361b2d3c-efc1-43ca-8dc4-a1c9087c2984" CreationDate="2011-12-30T13:04:56.057" UserDisplayName="user42865" Text="I think part of the problem is that it's not obvious what this site is about so new users end up asking 'bad' questions. This results in a lot of downvoting and closed or migrated questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The solution is to either allow a broader range of questions or clarify  what the site is about." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7025" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2751" RevisionGUID="574bfcca-1124-42be-9767-46b14f523cc8" CreationDate="2011-12-30T16:08:47.600" UserId="42904" Text="I think downvotes on questions (and answers) improve the quality of stackexchange sites.  It probably does scare off some users but the ones who can't see what was wrong with their questions and ask better ones - those are the people whose absence adds value.  I looked at a couple of the questions in your screen shot, and it might have occurred to me to ask them but I would have thought it thru and not asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7026" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2744" RevisionGUID="dce989ed-3b73-4c0f-bae4-bd069ef500df" CreationDate="2011-12-30T18:10:27.283" UserId="20636" Comment="added text" Text="How would i achieve an additional (perhaps own created?) filter on the inner filter menu? Like stick a custom filter, created from data.stackexchange.com, into the menu. Or like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Top Questions active featured hot week month`&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;I which filter out some common noise, especially [closed] and negative votes.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reason,&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Some periods Programmers' 'active' is (that's what I think) quite noisy and messed up with **[closed]**,  **negative downvotes** and so on. This post is really NOT a debate on why, it about  make SE visits more enjoyable without that reason to &quot;what post would i jump to know?&quot;. Exactly like I do by drunks and noisy people in the city by night. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I always ken a curious feeling over active posts view on this site, and think it still can be  :). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT**&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Should a tag work this way? Or would it disturb on other kind of reason? Because we can store ignored and favorite tags.. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7027" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2752" RevisionGUID="548118c3-8f22-4c59-8265-1554b3bf212f" CreationDate="2011-12-30T20:29:22.873" UserId="6591" Text="Yes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect that stackoverflow has so many newly asked questions that it is: hard to find questions you (know enough about and) can answer, hard to find similar questions that might have been answerd in the past, as well as previously asked similar questions go unanswered. This forum has a lot less traffic (in the form of new questions).  One of the questions I was looking at here, belonged on SO, but while I was downloading the SDK for the answer to verify it was where the asker should look for their answer, the question was downvoted and closed. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7028" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2753" RevisionGUID="e1d1a7dd-70c1-4d63-98a5-f20c8de88939" CreationDate="2011-12-30T21:13:54.143" UserId="226" Text="Our &quot;not constructive&quot; close reasons is as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not meet enough of our six guidelines for constructive subjective questions. All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. See the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The description on Stack Overflow is different:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit to our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. See the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that it is still quite applicable to the kinds of questions that get closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; on Programmers and it's more comprehensive and clear than the one we've got. Although at the same time it's important to mention the guidelines for good subjective questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can ask the SE team to update our description if we think it's worth doing and can come up with a better wording. Do you think we should? Do you have any wording suggestions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7029" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2753" RevisionGUID="e1d1a7dd-70c1-4d63-98a5-f20c8de88939" CreationDate="2011-12-30T21:13:54.143" UserId="226" Text="Should we clarify the wording of our &quot;Not Constructive&quot; close reason?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7030" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2753" RevisionGUID="e1d1a7dd-70c1-4d63-98a5-f20c8de88939" CreationDate="2011-12-30T21:13:54.143" UserId="226" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7031" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2754" RevisionGUID="1761429f-d1ab-4f84-9efd-1206fa51b7c2" CreationDate="2011-12-30T21:15:44.700" UserId="47" Text="&gt; This question is not a good fit to our Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this phrase is key, it's this that shows that Stack Exchange is different to forums and emphasises the fact that we are a question and answer site. Even if we don't get the exact same wording we should get this included." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7032" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2755" RevisionGUID="bb1c48ac-9e3d-4ad5-b11a-02b51ca875c5" CreationDate="2011-12-30T21:18:22.233" UserId="226" Text="I think it's worth it to try and improve the wording. Some of the questions we get may indeed be of educational value, but too discussion-oriented or attracting opinions over references. For example, a lot of the questions we get about someone's specific employment situation or future options can fall into this category.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My proposed wording change is a blend of what we have now and Stack Overflow's version:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not meet enough of our [six guidelines for constructive subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) and is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. [Please see the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#close)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7033" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2756" RevisionGUID="de4a8de2-791c-4ac2-b1c8-0e9d79140c93" CreationDate="2011-12-30T21:19:50.143" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The Six Subjective Guidelines (6SG) are great and still applicable, but there's been a year of clarifications and expansions to them that it doesn't make sense to keep it in the close reason. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, the 6SG is just one tool to judge the constructiveness of a question, not the only tool. The FAQ describes several others. It'd be unreasonable to place all the guidelines in the close reason, so the close reason should just describe the general reason and point people to the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end, I say we just use the global NC reason: the general spirit is still captured, and it points people to the FAQ (and subsequently meta and blog posts) where its explained in more detail." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7034" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2757" RevisionGUID="2f377174-2a6c-42f9-ae28-4922753c9077" CreationDate="2011-12-30T22:51:55.587" UserId="36057" Text="Questions sorted by votes:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not spending much time here, so maybe I'm missing something. But looking at the top questions - the best adjective I can come up with to describe them in my poor English is - &quot;populistic&quot;. I guess the only reason they get so many upvotes is because everyone understands them. Otherwise I feel that there is not much difference between questions that get lot's of upvotes and those that are downvoted and closed immediately. It's a random process for me.&#xD;&#xA;(I have a theory though that it's partially a crowd psychology effect - the initial voting determines whether the question will be going seriously up or seriously down.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions/answers that require some research effort and expertise aren't upvoted that much, perhaps for the very reason that very few can understand/answer them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7035" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2757" RevisionGUID="2f377174-2a6c-42f9-ae28-4922753c9077" CreationDate="2011-12-30T22:51:55.587" UserId="36057" Text="Should there be a cap on upvotes per question to deal with populistic questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7036" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2757" RevisionGUID="2f377174-2a6c-42f9-ae28-4922753c9077" CreationDate="2011-12-30T22:51:55.587" UserId="36057" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7037" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2758" RevisionGUID="8eedae66-80d5-492b-9645-8a19e8d021a6" CreationDate="2011-12-30T23:47:51.697" UserId="226" Text="Looking at the top-voted questions on this site, the problem with some of them isn't how many votes they got. It's that they got posted in the first place. Mind you, a lot of them were posted over a year ago, in the early days of the site before the current rules were established.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Popularity doesn't determine the quality of the question in part for the reasons you mention. A question can be popular, interesting, easy (or hard) to answer and entirely off-topic. We need to find a way to deal with the extremely highly voted questions we have that have been closed. Some of them have to remain on the site for historical reasons and it's always difficult to determine which ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm starting to digress. The point is, if a question is on-topic and otherwise fits our Q&amp;A format, there's nothing wrong with it getting upvoted. It's unfortunate that some other questions might not receive as many votes, but that's the nature of voluntary voting. Placing a cap on the number of upvotes on the popular questions will not fix the fact that some questions that should get upvotes don't receive them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7038" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2757" RevisionGUID="ac12dcce-0db5-4e5c-8ddb-272170e7bb91" CreationDate="2011-12-31T01:38:27.387" UserId="36057" Comment="added 134 characters in body" Text="Questions sorted by votes:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not spending much time here, so maybe I'm missing something. But looking at the top questions - the best adjective I can come up with to describe them in my poor English is - &quot;populistic&quot;. I guess the only reason they get so many upvotes is because everyone understands them. Otherwise I feel that there is not much difference between questions that get lot's of upvotes and those that are downvoted and closed immediately. It's a random process for me.&#xD;&#xA;(I have a theory though that it's partially a crowd psychology effect - the initial voting determines whether the question will be going seriously up or seriously down.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions/answers that require some research effort and expertise aren't upvoted that much, perhaps for the very reason that very few can understand/answer them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: Looking at those top-voted questions one gets confused about what questions are welcomed here. I know that I was and still am.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7039" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2753" RevisionGUID="8add3ae1-6967-4535-b042-d901190da575" CreationDate="2011-12-31T08:26:34.697" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/153029264533487616" />
  <row Id="7040" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2759" RevisionGUID="96a44ebb-78fd-4e35-9207-1f77d5f8351d" CreationDate="2012-01-02T11:13:57.407" UserId="41811" Text="I have been hanging around SE for some time now, waiting to get the hang of it before I express any opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose that there is a philosophy behind SE: this is a place where someone will come if they have a specific question to which they want to get a specific, quick, and if possible definitive, answer. It is not a site for debates. If someone wants a debate, they can always go to a forum. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once this philosophy has been decided upon, (and I believe it has, hasn't it?) the course of action is clear: if the question is not suitable for SE, it should be booed, downvoted, closed, deleted, obliterated and forgotten.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it seems as if the vox populi suggests otherwise.  There seems to be a huge number of people who will ask unsuitable questions, and also people who are happy to answer, if they are quick enough, before the questions get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, let me suggest something: create forums, and move questions unsuitable to SE there. Also, if a question suitable for SE gets posted on the forums, bring it to SE. This way, you would be keeping everyone happy. You would not be alienating people who failed to read the entire FAQ and get a clear understanding of &quot;what SE is all about&quot; before daring to ask their (in their mind, undoubtedly:) innocent question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7041" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2760" RevisionGUID="381d1c40-47ef-4abe-986e-c1e787c081de" CreationDate="2012-01-02T17:08:33.827" UserId="34364" Text="Thanks to the [Programmer Contest Conspiracy Room][1], I think we have found a celebration activity. It is a &quot;Concept a Week&quot; event, based on that of [Philosophy.SE][2] (I am not sure if it is going on still, though). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically, each week there will be a new &quot;concept&quot;. If you ask a question about, or having to do with this concept, there is an incentive (I'm not sure what that will be, leave a comment if you have an idea).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will help the Programmers.SE information grow in categories that are needed, and it's a fun event!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leave comments to help work-out the details and let's get this going!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2050/programmer-contest-conspiracy-room&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7042" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2760" RevisionGUID="cd4cbd2f-c741-42fd-9181-2ee35bf3b850" CreationDate="2012-01-02T17:17:46.807" UserId="34364" Comment="added 622 characters in body" Text="Thanks to the [Programmer Contest Conspiracy Room][1], I think we have found a celebration activity. It is a &quot;Concept a Week&quot; event, based on that of [Philosophy.SE][2] (I am not sure if it is going on still, though). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically, each week there will be a new &quot;concept&quot;. If you ask a question about, or having to do with this concept, there is an incentive (I'm not sure what that will be, leave a comment if you have an idea).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will help the Programmers.SE information grow in categories that are needed, and it's a fun event!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So far we have this figured out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The questions must abide by the rules stated in the FAQ to get an incentive.&#xD;&#xA; - The incentive will not be big. It will be either your name in a drawing or a virtual prize having to do with SE.&#xD;&#xA; - You may NOT get an incentive if the question was already asked.&#xD;&#xA; - If your question is part of the contest, you will include something like *[contest]* in your title. If not, and your question has to do with the current topic, no incentive will be earned.&#xD;&#xA; - Bounties on previous questions on the topic do NOT count. Neither do edits to a previously written question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a chat room for working out details that [can be found here.][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2050/programmer-contest-conspiracy-room&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2116/concept-of-the-week-contest-details" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7043" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2761" RevisionGUID="bc8db34a-c245-4ed3-92eb-7abccbfb9a86" CreationDate="2012-01-02T17:30:41.060" UserId="4" Text="I agree with [Anna Lear's idea of combining the Stack Overflow and current Programmers messages][1]. However, I have two alternative wordings that are very similar, with the exception of one sentence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format because it does not involve facts, references, specific expertise, or meet enough of our six guidelines for constructive subjective questions. All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. This question will likely solicit opinion, debate, argument, polling, or extended discussion. See the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format because it does not generally involve facts, references, specific expertise, or meet enough of our six guidelines for constructive subjective questions. All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. See the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a few other wordings, but something that combines the need to involve facts, references, expertise, and/or the guidelines for constructive subjective questions would be best.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2755/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7044" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2762" RevisionGUID="b25c8093-a278-45e6-974e-401dcb17188f" CreationDate="2012-01-02T17:30:56.850" UserDisplayName="user4051" Text="&gt;  I think maybe we are being a bit too aggressive is down-voting&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions, particularly for new users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've checked in a few times recently, and decided not to participate because the first page features questions that have mainly been closed, migrated or downvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What can we do to improve the situation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's partly to do with improving questions before destroying them, and partly to do with ensuring that newcomers are aware of the site's scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Are we scaring off new users?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The moderators have access to the analytics tools that can answer that question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7045" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2727" RevisionGUID="85c8d1e4-f120-4143-9ba4-3134f4879fe5" CreationDate="2012-01-03T02:26:57.187" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/154025925565095936" />
  <row Id="7046" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2763" RevisionGUID="3557e54b-adfe-465f-beef-0d72a62534f9" CreationDate="2012-01-03T06:19:22.143" UserId="37342" Text="I know the idea of *stackexchange* sites, and the concept of `ranking`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I see a question that really interests me, I might put a bounty on it, and if someone answers it to my liking, give them the bounty. This way I benefit and the community benefit. Even the question asker benefits, as the bounty makes more people view the question originally asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I propose the facility to add bounties to questions asked by others.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7047" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2763" RevisionGUID="3557e54b-adfe-465f-beef-0d72a62534f9" CreationDate="2012-01-03T06:19:22.143" UserId="37342" Text="Put a bounty on OTHER peoples question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7048" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2763" RevisionGUID="3557e54b-adfe-465f-beef-0d72a62534f9" CreationDate="2012-01-03T06:19:22.143" UserId="37342" Text="|discussion|feature-request|bounty|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7049" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2763" RevisionGUID="626694e3-de06-4d74-aa71-75cc107c2329" CreationDate="2012-01-03T07:53:03.207" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 19 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="I know the idea of *Stack Exchange* sites, and the concept of `ranking`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I see a question that really interests me, I might put a bounty on it, and if someone answers it to my liking, give them the bounty. This way I benefit and the community benefit. Even the question asker benefits, as the bounty makes more people view the question originally asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can I add bounties to questions asked by others?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7050" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2763" RevisionGUID="626694e3-de06-4d74-aa71-75cc107c2329" CreationDate="2012-01-03T07:53:03.207" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 19 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="How can I put a bounty on other people's questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7051" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2763" RevisionGUID="626694e3-de06-4d74-aa71-75cc107c2329" CreationDate="2012-01-03T07:53:03.207" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 19 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|support|bounty|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7052" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2764" RevisionGUID="8c19dace-e1ff-486d-8990-f633c13c0049" CreationDate="2012-01-03T07:55:32.017" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="You can already do this—provided you and the question meet the [usual bounty criteria](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/set-bounties)—by clicking the &quot;add a bounty&quot; link at the bottom of the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Bounty link][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7gSm9.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7053" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2765" RevisionGUID="5d5e2651-eefb-4e82-aac3-2dde213968b5" CreationDate="2012-01-03T12:07:49.933" UserId="22665" Text="Here's my question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128080/naming-an-operation-hibernate-archive-freeze&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have created a process within a system and wanted to establish if there was some precedent or existing nomenclature for it.  I haven't been able to come up with a good idea, and believing that it might not be a very uncommon process, figured I'd see if anyone else had come across it before or had a good idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I believe that naming classes and processes well is important in a medium-to-large scale system, and IS a part of programming, and valid for asking questions about.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, Mark Trapp decided it's not a valid question, saying that it doesn't matter, and that I should ask my team.  My problems with this judgement:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It matters to me&#xD;&#xA;* I am the team&#xD;&#xA;* I believe the question was closed simply because the mod could not think of a suitable answer&#xD;&#xA;* It was closed, then I was immediately directed to the meta site (personally making a decision, then hiding behind the meta site IMO)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it was crappy to close the question within an hour.. I think this is the perfect platform to ask such a question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7054" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2765" RevisionGUID="5d5e2651-eefb-4e82-aac3-2dde213968b5" CreationDate="2012-01-03T12:07:49.933" UserId="22665" Text="Why is it not suitable for ask how to name a process?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7055" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2765" RevisionGUID="5d5e2651-eefb-4e82-aac3-2dde213968b5" CreationDate="2012-01-03T12:07:49.933" UserId="22665" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7056" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2766" RevisionGUID="7d39a16f-4b1b-470d-96d0-95e8de1390aa" CreationDate="2012-01-03T12:12:07.173" UserId="47" Text="Your question is not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As well as the link to the blog post there are the following two lines in the close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question is not &quot;of some education value to the greater community&quot;. What you name your operations isn't *that* important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question is a chatty, open-ended discussion where there is no &quot;right&quot; answer. There doesn't have to be a single right answer to a question (there are often many ways of doing things after all), but there should be some answers that are &quot;more&quot; correct than others." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7057" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2765" RevisionGUID="7b4ab268-6cac-4ec9-ae4a-171be42f3d34" CreationDate="2012-01-03T12:35:00.260" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7058" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2767" RevisionGUID="a2ab6a34-286c-49b6-b988-3272f4e88ff1" CreationDate="2012-01-03T13:33:22.843" UserId="22665" Text="Here's my meta question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2765/why-is-it-not-suitable-for-ask-how-to-name-a-process&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm presuming it's been downvoted because it's not appropriate to ask questions about questions in meta, despite a mod pointing me at it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess I'm doing it again here (there's no meta-meta that I'm aware of), but if someone could fill me in.." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7059" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2767" RevisionGUID="a2ab6a34-286c-49b6-b988-3272f4e88ff1" CreationDate="2012-01-03T13:33:22.843" UserId="22665" Text="Why is it not suitable to ask why a question is not suitable to be asked?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7060" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2767" RevisionGUID="a2ab6a34-286c-49b6-b988-3272f4e88ff1" CreationDate="2012-01-03T13:33:22.843" UserId="22665" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7061" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2768" RevisionGUID="b0c8f6b9-3268-44bb-ab96-3f59c0b67afa" CreationDate="2012-01-03T13:38:19.507" UserId="47" Text="Votes on Meta have a different meaning to votes on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As well as the usual meaning (not enough research, unclear or not useful) down-votes on meta mean things like (but not limited to):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I disagree with your proposal&#xD;&#xA;* I don't think this is a good feature request&#xD;&#xA;* It's not a bug&#xD;&#xA;* I don't think there is a problem to be solved&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's one of the reasons why there is no independent reputation on meta sites (apart from Meta Stack Overflow, but that because it's *special*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can only guess why people have down-voted your first meta question, but it likely to be because they don't think there's a problem." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7062" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2769" RevisionGUID="7ba84a66-4af7-452a-831c-24fa3820bc67" CreationDate="2012-01-03T21:57:42.993" UserId="6385" Text="First of all, we need to stop confusing the question of &quot;are we scaring off new users&quot; with the question of &quot;are liberal downvotes good&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Obviously* we are scaring off new users. I don't think there should be any debate about that. Heck, I've been here for over a year and I've only asked two questions here because I'm afraid of the down votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for whether or not this is a good thing, it isn't. Sure downvoting has benefits, but they don't outweigh the problems that they cause when they're done as often as they are now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cons of downvotes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - They have no informational content to address what the asker could have done differently with their question.&#xD;&#xA; - They condemn a question, however reparable, to having no realistic chance of being looked at ever again.&#xD;&#xA; - They make the website's content look poor in quality.&#xD;&#xA; - They discourage other people from asking questions.&#xD;&#xA; - They squelch controversial but otherwise good questions.&#xD;&#xA; - They affect other users' opinions irrationally.&#xD;&#xA; - They're a vehicle for public humiliation. Only the asker and the question's viewers needs to know that their question needs improvement -- not everyone visiting the site root.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Pros of downvotes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - They provide a way for moderators to know what needs attention or to discover other trends.&#xD;&#xA; - They let people sift through and find readily answerable questions.&#xD;&#xA; - Are quicker than writing a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could probably list a few more pros that I might have missed, but there's not a chance that they'll ever outweigh the cons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvotes are socially damaging. It makes a lot more sense to leave a comment on the question either asking for elaboration or clarification, or linking to the FAQ and/or voting to close." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7063" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2768" RevisionGUID="9d05c9cd-e25d-4421-9770-f6d0e31aeb9b" CreationDate="2012-01-03T22:51:27.930" UserId="47" Comment="link to FAQ" Text="Votes on Meta have a different meaning to votes on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As well as the usual meaning (not enough research, unclear or not useful) down-votes on meta mean things like (but not limited to):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I disagree with your proposal&#xD;&#xA;* I don't think this is a good feature request&#xD;&#xA;* It's not a bug&#xD;&#xA;* I don't think there is a problem to be solved&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's even a section in the [meta FAQ](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#vote-differences) about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's one of the reasons why there is no independent reputation on meta sites (apart from Meta Stack Overflow, but that because it's *special*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can only guess why people have down-voted your first meta question, but it likely to be because they don't think there's a problem." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7064" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2753" RevisionGUID="85e567cb-bc4d-4cb2-a25b-3377f9c8d6d9" CreationDate="2012-01-03T23:24:39.033" UserId="2" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7065" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2770" RevisionGUID="70763f7e-6674-47bb-b9d7-0c50748bb086" CreationDate="2012-01-03T23:25:09.827" UserId="2" Text="After the next deploy we will sync the not constructive close reason network wide with the one from the programmers main site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7066" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2770" RevisionGUID="8fd3cbff-0d2b-452d-a329-d197863a3de2" CreationDate="2012-01-04T00:22:55.317" UserId="2" Comment="added 440 characters in body" Text="After the next deploy we will sync the not constructive close reason the new description from Anna:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not meet enough of our [six guidelines for constructive subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) and is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. [Please see the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#close).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7067" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2770" RevisionGUID="ac1cdc9f-d94b-49a4-939c-bfe83e6d5a2b" CreationDate="2012-01-04T01:07:29.510" UserId="2" Comment="deleted 227 characters in body" Text="After the next deploy we will sync the not constructive close reason with the rest of the network:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit to our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; extended discussion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7072" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2771" RevisionGUID="1c6625f4-c326-4982-9dc0-dea05626d89d" CreationDate="2012-01-04T14:16:55.113" UserId="25936" Text="We have a [tag:good] tag! Only two questions so far, the second one [appeared today][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's just get rid of it, sooner than later.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128321/how-do-i-get-the-whole-picture" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7073" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2771" RevisionGUID="1c6625f4-c326-4982-9dc0-dea05626d89d" CreationDate="2012-01-04T14:16:55.113" UserId="25936" Text="Blacklist [good]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7074" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2771" RevisionGUID="1c6625f4-c326-4982-9dc0-dea05626d89d" CreationDate="2012-01-04T14:16:55.113" UserId="25936" Text="|feature-request|tags|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7075" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2772" RevisionGUID="73216074-911b-4b74-8e3b-688c3add3ec2" CreationDate="2012-01-04T14:19:24.210" UserId="47" Text="There are now no questions with that tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only high(ish) rep users will be able to recreate it now, but it is a good candidate for blacklisting." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7076" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2773" RevisionGUID="a5b1906a-fdfa-47bd-bb16-c76a5bd94acc" CreationDate="2012-01-04T17:15:39.373" UserId="25936" Text="We currently have 121 questions tagged [tag:software]. I can't think of any valid (on topic) use for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cleanup? Purge? Are there valid uses for it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7077" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2773" RevisionGUID="a5b1906a-fdfa-47bd-bb16-c76a5bd94acc" CreationDate="2012-01-04T17:15:39.373" UserId="25936" Text="Is there a point to [software]?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7078" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2773" RevisionGUID="a5b1906a-fdfa-47bd-bb16-c76a5bd94acc" CreationDate="2012-01-04T17:15:39.373" UserId="25936" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7079" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2774" RevisionGUID="31f7e898-f843-417c-896d-c24194f32944" CreationDate="2012-01-04T18:25:17.727" UserId="23251" Text="It's not explicit in the question but, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128344/would-smalltalk-be-a-good-introduction-to-programming, to me is just another form of &quot;Which language should I learn next?&quot;  The OP has found an online resource and is, I think, really asking &quot;is this a good introduction to programming for me&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I flagged it as &quot;off topic&quot;, which was the closest match to what I was trying to express." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7080" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2774" RevisionGUID="31f7e898-f843-417c-896d-c24194f32944" CreationDate="2012-01-04T18:25:17.727" UserId="23251" Text="Forms of &quot;what language should I learn next&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7081" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2774" RevisionGUID="31f7e898-f843-417c-896d-c24194f32944" CreationDate="2012-01-04T18:25:17.727" UserId="23251" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7082" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2775" RevisionGUID="65e6bdca-c87d-43d6-b5af-4be2b9b6460e" CreationDate="2012-01-04T18:28:48.520" UserId="2654" Text="Saw your flag. I think it's closer to not constructive though, and as a rule of thumb I wait for a few other people to vote before I do. I'm leaving the flag open so the question can be referenced though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7083" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2776" RevisionGUID="6c3c6c8e-1613-4eab-a444-e6fd4a06c49a" CreationDate="2012-01-04T18:57:26.893" UserId="12063" Text="&gt; Are we scaring off new users?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, of course we are.  You have a burning question, you ask it, it gets down-voted and closed... you think what a bunch of jerks I don't need them.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What can we do to improve the situation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a Q&amp;A site with a social component, not a Social site with a Q&amp;A component.  The **down-votes and closures are imperative to ensure the quality of the questions and answers**, we leave that alone.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what does that leave? **LOTS:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Lower the barriers of entry: Make it easier for new users to understand what the site is about, how it should and should not be used.  This is a hard problem and I see continuous improvements here - kudos to the staff.  Leave a suggestion on meta if you think of something good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Edit: If you take that burning question and alter it so that it meets their needs and the needs of the site you create a good question, help the user get an answer, and help them understand the site better.  There are a few people that do this often, thank you!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Comment (Nicely): If you have the time leave a comment about your vote or edit.  BUT, The votes and edits are the most important part of the process so don't let your lack of commenting time stop you from cleaning house.  I know some of you do this and the mods do more than anyone (thank you mods!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Flag: Is there a comment where someone is being a jerk to a new user?  Flag that thing and get it out of here.  It happens and there are some users that do this regularly, I'm sure I'm not the only one that checks their other activity for things to flag when I come across them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Think of new badges and ways to earn reputation to reward the items above and anything else that you can think of, drop these suggestions on meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7084" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2777" RevisionGUID="25847fd8-330f-4cdb-bd10-1a202c240aab" CreationDate="2012-01-04T19:27:23.260" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="It's a junk tag, and it's a honeypot for junk questions and junk tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Closed questions: 21](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsoftware%5D+closed%3A1)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:software-development]: [9 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+software-development)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:career]: [5 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+career)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:development]: [4 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+development)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:best-practices]: [4 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+best-practices)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:experience]: [3 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+experience)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:developer]: [3 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+developer)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:company]: [2 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+company)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kill it with fire. Please [observe normal tag cleanup rules](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7085" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2778" RevisionGUID="ff34fcc8-2aca-44f8-a98c-26eda01f5033" CreationDate="2012-01-04T19:28:42.057" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="It's clearly off-topic per &quot;What language should I learn next?&quot; Closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7086" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2779" RevisionGUID="99deccde-a34e-4cea-a94a-44d4ba4d51fa" CreationDate="2012-01-04T20:03:56.633" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="As part of a cleanup of the [tag:software] tag [mentioned earlier on meta](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2773/is-there-a-point-to-software), we need to clean up the [closed questions found therein](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsoftware%5D+closed%3A1).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's no point in shuffling around tags on questions that are off-topic or bad to begin with: if we can save these highly-upvoted questions, now's the time to do it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###1.  Merge candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two questions that were closed as being exactly duplicates of earlier questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26076/what-are-some-handy-tools-in-windows-that-makes-programmers-life-easy &amp;rarr; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1913/what-are-the-must-have-development-tools-for-windows&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25181/what-are-the-symptoms-events-or-actions-of-a-software-death-cycle &amp;rarr; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1371/what-are-the-warning-signs-of-impending-doom-to-watch-out-for-on-a-project&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any reason why these questions should not be merged, effectively deleting the [tag:software] tagged versions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not, can these questions be improved so that they can be reopened? Otherwise, flag or vote for deletion so we can clean them up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 2. The rest&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60303/what-are-nets-starlibs&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19408/what-are-must-have-tools-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26076/what-are-some-handy-tools-in-windows-that-makes-programmers-life-easy&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5168/whats-the-biggest-software-security-vulnerabilty-youve-personally-discovered&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can these questions be saved by a heroic edit and community pruning?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If any of these questions can be saved, please be bold and do so: flag bad answers for deletion, combine piecemeal answers into a single canonical one, rewrite the question, flag for reopening.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, the end game for these questions is deletion; so if there's something about these questions that necessitate them being here, let's whip them into shape." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7087" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2779" RevisionGUID="99deccde-a34e-4cea-a94a-44d4ba4d51fa" CreationDate="2012-01-04T20:03:56.633" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="What can be done about the remaining closed questions in the &quot;software&quot; tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7088" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2779" RevisionGUID="99deccde-a34e-4cea-a94a-44d4ba4d51fa" CreationDate="2012-01-04T20:03:56.633" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|tags|posse|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7089" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2780" RevisionGUID="24bcbec4-aba2-4108-8214-3faab05043ff" CreationDate="2012-01-04T20:49:57.263" UserId="4" Text="I feel too many questions are being closed, voted to close, and people are being pointed toward Project Management inappropriately. PM.SE is still a beta site, and [isn't doing stellar in the metrics][1]. I think people are being too hasty, so here are a few points to consider:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Software project management is a part of software engineering, which is explicitly listed as something that is on topic. Admittedly, there are no single, universally accepted standard definitions of software engineering, but project management topics are explicitly addressed in two knowledge areas of the Software Engineering Body of Knowlege ([Software Engineering Management][2], [Software Engineering Process][3]), and the SWEBOK is the closest thing that exists to defining what is and is not a part of software engineering that I'm aware of.&#xD;&#xA;- There's a large body of work built exclusively around managing and controlling software projects. Work by people such as Barry Boehm, Thomas Glib, Steve McConnell, Frederick Brooks, and Watts Humphrey focus on software projects. There are also organizations such as the [SEI][4] and [CSSE][5] dedicated to software (and systems) engineering. I searched Amazon for works about [&quot;mechanical engineering management&quot;][6] and [&quot;electrical engineering management&quot;][7] and couldn't find very many resources related specifically to these engineering fields. Of the engineering fields that I looked for, I found specific resources about civil engineering management and systems engineering management (systems engineering being a combination of mechanical, electrical, and/or software systems).&#xD;&#xA;- Tags related to project management are popular here already. Nearly 500 questions are tagged [tag:project-management]. Nearly 300 are tagged [tag:agile]. Nearly 200 tagged [tag:scrum]. Some less popular tags include [tag:waterfall] with 17 questions, [tag:rational-unified-process] with 11, [tag:extreme-programming] with 17, and [tag:development-methodologies] with 39.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although there is nothing precluding software project management questions from PM.SE [in their FAQ][8], I don't think it's wise to migrate questions to that site nor close questions that are about software project management until PM.SE is out of beta. If a question is applicable to a software-intensive project, I think it should remain here. If it's a question applicable to a project that involves software (a systems engineering project) but is focused on the software side, it should also remain here. Other questions are debatable, but I see no reason to splinter the software engineering management questions to a site that isn't even open yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/10947/project-management&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/swebok/html/contentsch8#ch8&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/swebok/html/contentsch9#ch9&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://csse.usc.edu/csse/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&amp;field-keywords=mechanical%20engineering%20management&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&amp;field-keywords=mechanical%20engineering%20management#/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&amp;field-keywords=electrical%20engineering%20management&amp;rh=i:aps,k:electrical%20engineering%20management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7090" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2780" RevisionGUID="24bcbec4-aba2-4108-8214-3faab05043ff" CreationDate="2012-01-04T20:49:57.263" UserId="4" Text="Is there an official stance on software project management questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7091" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2780" RevisionGUID="24bcbec4-aba2-4108-8214-3faab05043ff" CreationDate="2012-01-04T20:49:57.263" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7092" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2781" RevisionGUID="135f9933-1790-4f63-b46b-e0c6e9171628" CreationDate="2012-01-04T21:43:11.133" UserId="3965" Text="These questions fall into the more general category of questions that might be a &quot;better fit&quot; for another site, but are not off topic here either.  I can't find a reference at the moment, but it was my understanding that the policy on those is not to close, that closing should be reserved for topics that are *clearly* off topic here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7093" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2782" RevisionGUID="b9c199ef-496c-4211-b6ff-90a812759378" CreationDate="2012-01-04T22:00:32.340" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Speaking in broad generalities, the [value of Stack Exchange](http://stackexchange.com/about) is to get answers from experts on a subject: it's why we don't have one site for all questions and have 80+ sites all targeting specific types of people. One of the first questions one must ask when determining if a question is on-topic is, &quot;Is the audience of this site experts in the topic of the question?&quot; If they aren't, it's not a fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if a question is on-topic here and on-topic on another site, it's the asker's choice: if they ask it here, it should stay here, if they ask it on the other site, it should stay on the other site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is off-topic here and a possible good fit for another site on the network, we consult with the destination site's moderators and see whether they think the question would do well on their site. If they say &quot;yes, it'd be a perfect fit!&quot; we migrate it. If they say &quot;nah, it's not going to do well&quot;, we leave don't: either it gets closed for any number of reasons or it stays in hopes a heroic edit or answer can save it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To get into specifics, the key issue is whether any specific question is on-topic here: we're a site for Programmers, not Project Managers. Programmers are not the same thing as project managers While there are a number of project management-related issues that are programmer-specific, there are a *ton* that aren't. That's why we have [Project Management.SE](http://pm.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, just because programmers might use a project management technique like Kanban or Agile does not automatically make it on-topic here. If there's something particular to the problem that requires a programmer to answer, by all means it should stay here. Otherwise, Project Management.SE is a perfectly fine candidate for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end: the example you provided, [What do you do if the Product Owner is ill?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128349/what-do-you-do-if-the-product-owner-is-ill), lacks any indication on why it necessitates the expertise of a programmer and not an actual project manager.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it can be revised to clearly explain that connection (and I do not mean simply adding &quot;(as a programmer)&quot; to the question), by all means it should be done. Otherwise, Project Management.SE is a great place to ask questions about general topics in project management." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7094" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2782" RevisionGUID="f45fa8a7-fee1-47c9-b45d-1286fc61ca36" CreationDate="2012-01-04T22:05:47.620" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 11 characters in body" Text="Speaking in broad generalities, the [value of Stack Exchange](http://stackexchange.com/about) is to get answers from experts on a subject: it's why we don't have one site for all questions and have 80+ sites all targeting specific types of people. One of the first questions one must ask when determining if a question is on-topic is, &quot;Is the audience of this site experts in the topic of the question?&quot; If they aren't, it's not a fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is off-topic here and a possible good fit for another site on the network, we consult with the destination site's moderators and see whether they think the question would do well on their site. If they say &quot;yes, it'd be a perfect fit!&quot; we migrate it. If they say &quot;nah, it's not going to do well&quot;, we leave don't: either it gets closed for any number of reasons or it stays in hopes a heroic edit or answer can save it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, if a question is on-topic here and on-topic on another site, it's the asker's choice: if they ask it here, it should stay here, if they ask it on the other site, it should stay on the other site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To get into specifics, the key issue is whether any specific question is on-topic here: we're a site for Programmers, not Project Managers, and our expertise is in programming. While there are a number of project management-related issues that are programmer-specific, there are a *ton* that aren't. That's why [Project Management.SE](http://pm.stackexchange.com) was created.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, just because programmers might use a project management technique like Kanban or Agile does not automatically make it on-topic here. If there's something particular to the problem that specifically requires a programmer to answer, by all means it should stay here. Otherwise, Project Management.SE is a perfectly fine candidate for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end: the example you provided, [What do you do if the Product Owner is ill?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128349/what-do-you-do-if-the-product-owner-is-ill), lacks any indication on why it necessitates the expertise of a programmer and not an actual project manager.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it can be revised to clearly explain that connection (and I do not mean simply adding &quot;(as a programmer)&quot; to the question), by all means it should be done. Otherwise, it's perfectly reasonable to migrate it away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And speaking in generalities again, the default action—when you see a question closed that you think shouldn't be—is to always, **always** edit it to make it clear why it's on-topic. A question that is attracting close votes, flags, or comments saying it's off-topic is a question that needs to be revised to be made better and more plain why it's on-topic. As a community-run site, we can't just assert questions are on topic without clearly expressing the specific problem in a way that convinces others it is, in fact, on-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7095" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2658" RevisionGUID="808ac8c3-618a-4af0-9934-3f9b8fc9236f" CreationDate="2012-01-05T04:11:40.697" UserId="102" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7096" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2783" RevisionGUID="2371aec3-f876-4536-a0dc-2a56357ed603" CreationDate="2012-01-05T04:13:53.157" UserId="102" Text="This was an issue with html-encoding some javascript data in the fetched post.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A fix will be deployed tonight or tomorrow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7097" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2773" RevisionGUID="3b0b91f6-6a6d-4108-b49b-d969366c7639" CreationDate="2012-01-05T05:27:22.747" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/154796108072239105" />
  <row Id="7098" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2771" RevisionGUID="c9924d0c-c07c-411c-9339-c3501f03a3f5" CreationDate="2012-01-05T08:27:23.230" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/154841408119902208" />
  <row Id="7099" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2784" RevisionGUID="0eaa9a38-19c2-414c-a778-4b9b8c7c6f5b" CreationDate="2012-01-05T14:43:46.677" UserId="25936" Text="Initially I was going to suggest that migrating questions that are more on topic to PMSE than here, was actually a good thing and it would help PMSE kick off as a full site sooner. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then I found a [couple][1] [of][2] MSO discussions that seem to support your view. PMSE is not doing that bad, according to my interpretation of [the stats][3], but I wouldn't say it's doing particurarly well either. So, at this point I'm rather confused :) The only thing I found that's close to official stance is that we don't get migration paths to beta sites, and migration to those should always be per case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it would be easier to clarify if we want to migrate to beta sites first, and discuss PMSE later. Sites that somehow overlap with PSE will keep popping up, and any stance should be adjustable, but let's clarify that part first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When (and if) PMSE comes out of beta, I'd prefer it if we migrated all non programmers specific questions there, and limit our PM scope to questions that can *only* be answered from a programming perspective. But that's a future discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/84405/migrating-project-management-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/113427/to-migrate-or-not-to-migrate&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackexchange.com/sites?expand=true" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7100" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2784" RevisionGUID="e9b6257b-80b9-40cf-8fda-1f62326f3c33" CreationDate="2012-01-05T19:30:18.513" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 156 characters in body" Text="Initially I was going to suggest that migrating questions that are more on topic to PMSE than here, was actually a good thing and it would help PMSE kick off as a full site sooner. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then I found a [couple][1] [of][2] MSO discussions that seem to support your view. PMSE is not doing that bad, according to my interpretation of [the stats][3], but I wouldn't say it's doing particurarly well either. So, at this point I'm rather confused :) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it would be easier to clarify if we want to migrate to beta sites first, and discuss PMSE later. Sites that somehow overlap with PSE will keep popping up, and any stance should be adjustable, but let's clarify that part first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When (and if) PMSE comes out of beta, I'd prefer it if we migrated all non programmers specific questions there, and limit our PM scope to questions that can *only* be answered from a programming perspective. But that's a future discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/84405/migrating-project-management-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/113427/to-migrate-or-not-to-migrate&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackexchange.com/sites?expand=true" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7101" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2785" RevisionGUID="b7de9cee-9823-4a19-b7a5-d582e3902da6" CreationDate="2012-01-05T20:22:05.713" UserId="17662" Text="I appreciate that the community moderates itself, that is part of what makes stack exchange great.  Sometimes though, moderators can be careless and/or wrong and there really isn't a way to fix it. Certainly, this edge case could be handled better making stack exchange a more pleasant and useful place. I know it is technically possible for questions to be reopened, but no one ever looks at those closed questions again. If you made it easier for the user, maybe there would be more hope. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**An Example**&#xD;&#xA;-----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Original Question:** http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128634/what-do-you-need-to-know-when-you-begin-contracting&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm trying to ask a question that is clearly allowed according to the FAQ, but it has been closed twice.  Just today, I read a few similar questions that helped me a great deal. My question was upvoted 4 times before being closed. Clearly, not every one agrees with those who closed it.  It has now virtually vanished, with no hope of being reopened.  I think the majority would have chosen to do so if given a better opportunity. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**More Specific Version:** http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128665/how-to-write-a-freelance-contract&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Still, I tried to take the constructive criticism and re-posted it as a more specific and broadly useful question. Unfortunately, it was closed again almost instantly.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**From The FAQ**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions can I ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **====&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;freelancing and business concerns&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;====**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7102" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2785" RevisionGUID="b7de9cee-9823-4a19-b7a5-d582e3902da6" CreationDate="2012-01-05T20:22:05.713" UserId="17662" Text="Is it too difficult to reopen a question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7103" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2785" RevisionGUID="b7de9cee-9823-4a19-b7a5-d582e3902da6" CreationDate="2012-01-05T20:22:05.713" UserId="17662" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7104" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2786" RevisionGUID="f3259cb4-3a0a-4363-a3c3-53d9c79e13b1" CreationDate="2012-01-05T20:30:11.010" UserId="40190" Text="Regarding your second question, I can see while it was closed. It is almost extactly the same question as the first one, if just a little more specific. Hence, Closed as Duplicate seems reasonanble.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding your first question though, I wouldn't have closed that one. At first. In fact I was one of the people you voted the question up. I feel it is on topic, because as you pointed out, freelancing is mentioned in the FAQ as being one of the topic areas of Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I also have to agree with the assesment that the question is extremely broad. Too broad for the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A format. There are entire books on this subject (which, incidentally, is also mentioned in the FAQ as a close-reason)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7105" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2787" RevisionGUID="2620d259-27bd-45ec-9bcf-73ac6b857c20" CreationDate="2012-01-05T20:39:06.233" UserId="47" Text="The question was closed by five members of the community (well four + a moderator) so it was a  community decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think that the question is on topic then raising it here is the right thing to do. However, you have asked several questions in one which doesn't work well in the Stack Exchange model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firstly, you should search the site to see if there are any other questions that answer any of the parts. If there are then use those answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, you could then edit the question to concentrate on one aspect that hasn't been covered - but be careful make sure you are asking about something that uniquely affects software developers and/or software development. Alternatively ask a new question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question has already got a couple of reopen votes. With three more it will get reopened. If, when you have edited the question, you still think it should be reopened sooner, flag it for a moderator to review. If we agree we can reopen it for you.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7106" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2786" RevisionGUID="d830bd1d-a33b-41a5-98cd-c465059a8542" CreationDate="2012-01-05T20:42:36.273" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="Regarding your second question, I can see why it was closed. It is almost extactly the same question as the first one, if just a little more specific. Hence, Closed as Duplicate seems reasonable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding your first question though, I wouldn't have closed that one. At first. In fact I was one of the people you voted the question up. I feel it is on topic, because as you pointed out, freelancing is mentioned in the FAQ as being one of the topic areas of Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I also have to agree with the assesment that the question is extremely broad. Too broad for the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A format. There are entire books on this subject (which, incidentally, is also mentioned in the FAQ as a close-reason)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7107" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2788" RevisionGUID="211bca5e-778c-417a-9cab-240f4d141425" CreationDate="2012-01-05T21:02:05.403" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; Sometimes though, moderators can be careless and/or wrong and there really isn't a way to fix it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes it does happen, and posting a meta question is exactly the way to fix it. Not saying this is one of those times, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I know it is technically possible for questions to be reopened, but no one ever looks at those closed questions again. If you made it easier for the user, maybe there would be more hope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please post another meta question with your suggestions on how it could be easier for the user or exactly what you think it's hard, that would be equally important. There's definately room for improvement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My question was upvoted 4 times before being closed. Clearly, not every one agrees with those who closed it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes I upvote a question while also voting to close. And more oftenly, I downvote without voting to close. Popularity (or lack of) does not indicate that your question is on topic, in any way. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for your questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Avoid posting a slightly different version of an earlier closed question. Instead, edit and improve the original question. Then post a meta question and ask for it to be reopened. It takes five 3K+ users to reopen it, that's all you need. Most 3K+ users check out meta often enough, and revised questions have good chances of getting re-opened. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Editing the old question will also bump it up the top of the front page, so it will get a lot of visibillity, regardless of it being an old one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I will probably not contribute any re-open votes. You ask too much, even in the second version of the question. Some of your questions are already answered, search the site, and some of your questions are probably off topic (hint: those that should be asked to a lawyer, instead of a bunch of programmers). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7108" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2788" RevisionGUID="f0d84817-a2ae-42e4-8922-348adcf6c167" CreationDate="2012-01-05T21:09:27.850" UserId="25936" Comment="added 137 characters in body" Text="&gt; Sometimes though, moderators can be careless and/or wrong and there really isn't a way to fix it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes it does happen, and posting a meta question is exactly the way to fix it. Not saying this is one of those times, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I know it is technically possible for questions to be reopened, but no one ever looks at those closed questions again. If you made it easier for the user, maybe there would be more hope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please post another meta question with your suggestions on how it could be easier for the user or exactly what you think it's hard, that would be equally important. There's definately room for improvement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My question was upvoted 4 times before being closed. Clearly, not every one agrees with those who closed it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes I upvote a question while also voting to close. And more oftenly, I downvote without voting to close. Popularity (or lack of) does not indicate that your question is on topic, in any way. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for your questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Avoid posting a slightly different version of an earlier closed question. Instead, edit and improve the original question. Then post a meta question and ask for it to be reopened. It takes five 3K+ users to reopen it, that's all you need. Most 3K+ users check out meta often enough, and revised questions have good chances of getting re-opened. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Editing the old question will also bump it up the top of the front page, so it will get a lot of visibillity, regardless of it being an old one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I will probably not contribute any re-open votes. You ask too much, even in the second version of the question. Some of your questions are already answered, search the site, and some of your questions are probably off topic (hint: those that should be asked to a lawyer, instead of a bunch of programmers). I wont go into any detail, the two other answers cover me perfectly, but feel free to ask if you want clarifications.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kudos for the very constructive way you chose to raise your concerns, unfortunately it isn't the norm when it comes to closed questions. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7109" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2789" RevisionGUID="2b267a91-1886-4c57-9379-dff8cc3b9d6a" CreationDate="2012-01-05T22:30:43.977" UserId="25885" Text="Mark recently deleted one of my answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/128440/25885&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questioner was asking roughly: _by not finishing my degree, what is the long-term effect on my career?_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He also appended: &quot;_I apologies for the poor punctuation._&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For those without 10k privileges, my response was along the lines that clear writing skills are vital to business and come through practice; I ended with: &quot;_Nothing improves one's writing skills as much as practice and University is an excellent place to get practice writing, re-writing, and editing._&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought my answer was well-written, addressed this specific questioner's question, made specific suggestions how to improve the clarity of his writing, and it had an aggregate score of +4 (I can't yet view my actual scores here) so at least some others thought my answer had merit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In what way did I fail to address the questioner's question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7110" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2789" RevisionGUID="2b267a91-1886-4c57-9379-dff8cc3b9d6a" CreationDate="2012-01-05T22:30:43.977" UserId="25885" Text="Please help me understand my deleted answer better" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7111" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2789" RevisionGUID="2b267a91-1886-4c57-9379-dff8cc3b9d6a" CreationDate="2012-01-05T22:30:43.977" UserId="25885" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7112" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2790" RevisionGUID="72e153bb-a267-4473-8c06-e97c017dc2e4" CreationDate="2012-01-06T00:08:55.237" UserId="2654" Text="Your answer addressed primarily punctuation issues, rather then experience vs. degree. Mark left a comment to this effect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; While this is all and good, the question is about experience versus degree, not the merits of proper punctuation and commend of the English language. – Mark Trapp ♦" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7113" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2791" RevisionGUID="e875040b-62c6-4f17-8e86-c14bfd4c05bd" CreationDate="2012-01-06T01:28:23.510" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="When your question was closed, I left specific feedback about why it was closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi Evan, general professional advice isn't on-topic here: for that, you might be interested in an upcoming site proposal, [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2). However, bear in mind Stack Exchange is about getting help with *specific* problems: cataloging everything that one needs to know about contracting is too broad a scope for the Stack Exchange style of Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically, it comes down to two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 1. We're not a general-purpose professional matters site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You quoted a part of the FAQ, but missed the very first line, which says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   That is, the part you emphasized should be read as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; freelancing and business concerns **[that are about software development]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's something *specific* to software development, you need to make that clear in your question. You can do that be revising it to explain what, specifically about software development, you want to know. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it another way (also mentioned in the FAQ), we're trying to hit the blue region on this diagram:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Scope diagram](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, many people on the network have recognized there is a demand for a general-purpose professional questions site, and [that site proposal is currently in commitment](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2). If there is nothing about contracting that's specific to software development that you want to know, it is your best shot for getting help about the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 2. Cataloging everything about a subject is too broad a scope for Stack Exchange&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The body of your question asks 6 different things, including the ultra broad, open ended prompt: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anything else that caught you by surprise when you started contracting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not in any way definitively answerable. As the [FAQ says](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask),&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Getting your question reopened&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number one reason a question doesn't get reopened has nothing to do with mods being drunk on power or community apathy or any other malicious or nefarious reason: it's because the reasons why the question was closed in the first place is never addressed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing is meant to be a way to say &quot;this question, *as it is written now*, is not a fit for the site. If you can address the problems stated and revise your question, it's just as easy to reopen it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the case of this specific question, it's very easy to get it into shape:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Explain what you need to know about contracting that requires the expertise of the site's audience (i.e. programmers)&#xD;&#xA;2. Narrow the scope of your question down to asking about a specific, *solvable* problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You do that, and I'll be the first to reopen and upvote it.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7114" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2792" RevisionGUID="6811b9d6-3edc-4df8-a012-bddddbe4e797" CreationDate="2012-01-06T16:00:06.793" UserId="41381" Text="Your answer strictly speaking didn't answer the question, though it did offer helpful advice and would be better served as a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;if your answer was one of only a couple I would advocate not deleting it, but on the degree vs experience type questions that tend to attract tons of answers those that are less than stellar need to be culled or the entire question becomes useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number and quality of answers has an effect on what is an acceptable answer, a mediocre answer is better than no answer, but another mediocre answer among 10 is not desirable and should be discouraged, similarly adding a mediocre answer to a question with a great answer(s) already should be discouraged. deleting poor answers is a way to discourage them from spreading, and its a judgement call for moderators, one that I'm glad I don't have to make." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7115" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2793" RevisionGUID="42fe358d-2be8-4499-ba5c-723a2f6d2807" CreationDate="2012-01-07T01:11:54.510" UserId="32353" Text="It might be worth considering that you don't always want the most specialized expert possible to answer your question, if you yourself are only in a related field.  If I have a question about some math typically used by programmers, I don't want it answered to a god-like level of purity by the world's leading mathematician in that area, I want an answer from a schlub programmer who, though he knows the answer, is as blissfully ignorant of how it relates to topology and group theory as I am, and I'll know what the heck he's talking about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pretty sure for project management questions, I don't want answers that assume I've read the top 200 project management books in the world and am familiar with the Humptey, Schmeyburg, Dumpty metric, I just want to know what those Scrum guys do in real world situations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if the same people post on Programmers, at least when they do they'll know their audience.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, PM.SE may be a place where programmers who aren't unusual knowledgeable about project management can read happily, in which case there's better reason to migrate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I think it's quite possible that people might intentionally want project management questions answered on Programmers rather than PM.SE, and even that people googling something who understand the distinction might prefer those answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7116" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2794" RevisionGUID="85ed0bd4-33f9-4a1b-af57-895dfa1ab75d" CreationDate="2012-01-07T12:12:06.310" UserId="22695" Text="This is my opinion, you can take it or leave it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My impression is that a lot of moderators on stackexchange sites overuse their powers. It seems they browse the site for fun in their free time, and close questions trying to find a reason. They rationalize that they are doing good community service but in my opinion they are effectively deterring new users and choking off the tiniest seeds of discussion when they do so. Thereby, they are preventing the creation of value on the site, which inhibits the growth of stack exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, moderator powers should be used responsibly and sparingly. It is not something that is fun to play with when someone is bored. In most cases, other users who are more knowledgeable in the given topic have time to answer the question, before a moderator comes in and does harm by closing or deleting it, though I'm sure his intentions are good. This just results a lot of users leaving the site, and moving to other programming forums, (such as reddit), where moderators are more liberal. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that moderation is a fine balance, because in too much noise the signal gets lost which results in ghosts towns. Therefore, moderation is necessary. But at the same time, too much moderation also suppresses the signal all together.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an example of what I mean. I asked this question a few hours ago. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128935/why-are-machine-learning-quant-researchers-paid-so-much It got closed by a moderator, because it's too localized. At the same time, another question was also closed by the same moderator, stating that it's not a real question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128922/why-c-is-called-c-sharp&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cannot see why either questions are offtopic, other than that the moderator couldn't answer it, so he closed it. In the first case, I don't see why interviews are ontopic but salary is offtopic. This question concerns everyone with CS degree as they could apply for this job. That specifically includes programmers. In addition, machine learning quants are highly compensated all over the world, not just in specific regions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, I can't see why the second question is offtopic either. In my opinion, it's a perfectly good question. Just because there's an answer for it on wikipedia, it's doesn't make it not a real question.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Anyway, this is my opinion and you can take it or leave it. I just wanted to draw attention to the dangers of too eager moderation that I have noticed on stack exchange lately" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7117" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2794" RevisionGUID="85ed0bd4-33f9-4a1b-af57-895dfa1ab75d" CreationDate="2012-01-07T12:12:06.310" UserId="22695" Text="Dangers of too eager moderation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7118" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2794" RevisionGUID="85ed0bd4-33f9-4a1b-af57-895dfa1ab75d" CreationDate="2012-01-07T12:12:06.310" UserId="22695" Text="|discussion|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7119" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2795" RevisionGUID="b2d79d76-4cc4-4f94-8b63-e1f559727f1c" CreationDate="2012-01-07T12:36:24.400" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; My impression is that a lot of moderators on stackexchange sites overuse their powers. It seems they browse the site for fun in their free time, and close questions trying to find a reason. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most questions are closed by regular members, moderators close only but a few of them, and unless the questions are blatantly off topic (like your own) they always wait for at least a couple of close votes from regular members.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; They rationalize that they are doing good community service but in my opinion they are effectively deterring new users and choking off the tiniest seeds of discussion when they do so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever your opinion may be, the stats show otherwise. In a comment on your closed question you write `machine learning quants are highly compensated all over the world, not just in specific regions.` How the hell do you know that? Where's the data to support that statement? That's not discussion amongst professionals, that's something else, something I don't have any problem if it get's choked off.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thereby, they are preventing the creation of value on the site, which inhibits the growth of stack exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or they are doing a good job cleaning the crap, and allowing good questions to gain more exposure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Therefore, moderator powers should be used responsibly and sparingly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are. 3K+ users are doing most of the cleaning up. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I understand that moderation is a fine balance, because in too much noise the signal gets lost which results in ghosts towns. Therefore, moderation is necessary. But at the same time, too much moderation also suppresses the signal all together.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But at the same time you don't allow even for the slightest possibility that your own question is actually pure noise, and instead of asking for it to be reopened in a constructive way, you post this rant. Hint, if people knew their questions where pure noise, they wouldn't post them in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In the first case, I don't see why interviews are ontopic but salary is offtopic. This question concerns everyone with CS degree as they could apply for this job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Salary is highly localized. Mark explained that in a comment, I tried as well. That's it, plain an simple. If you can't back up your opinions on salary with hard facts, don't expect anyone to take them seriously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Similarly, I can't see why the second question is offtopic either. In my opinion, it's a perfectly good question. Just because there's an answer for it on wikipedia, it's doesn't make it not a real question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's off topic, because Programmers SE is not a replacement for Wikipedia, or any other reference. Why does the internet need yet another place that explains why C# is called C Sharp? What's the point? The question is trivial and answerable via a very simple web search. Hence, not suitable for Programmers SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You spent quite some time in telling us what's wrong with moderation. I'm quite puzzled on why there isn't a single constructive suggestion in your rant. Just one, and I'd be happy. But you've chosen to just vent your frustration, cry wolf. Yeah, ok, for arguments sake let's say the mods are all you think of them. So what? What are you doing to help remedy the situation? Yap, yap, yap... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is my opinion, you can take it or leave it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7120" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2792" RevisionGUID="1b084422-f540-4eda-a790-46d370c702f2" CreationDate="2012-01-07T13:04:55.647" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body" Text="Your answer strictly speaking didn't answer the question, though it did offer helpful advice and would better serve as a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your answer was one of only a couple I would advocate against deleting it, but on the degree vs experience type questions that tend to attract tons of answers those that are less than stellar need to be culled or the entire question becomes useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number and quality of answers has an effect on what is an acceptable answer, a mediocre answer is better than no answer, but another mediocre answer among 10 is not desirable and should be discouraged, similarly adding a mediocre answer to a question with a great answer(s) already should be discouraged. Deleting poor answers is a way to discourage them from spreading, and it's a judgement call for moderators, one that I'm glad I don't have to make." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7121" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2795" RevisionGUID="4cee9817-e35f-4455-97d8-1ab4fce3c8ac" CreationDate="2012-01-07T14:57:40.143" UserId="25936" Comment="added 100 characters in body" Text="&gt; My impression is that a lot of moderators on stackexchange sites overuse their powers. It seems they browse the site for fun in their free time, and close questions trying to find a reason. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most questions are closed by regular members, moderators close only but a few of them, and unless the questions are blatantly off topic (like your own) they always wait for at least a couple of close votes from regular members.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; They rationalize that they are doing good community service but in my opinion they are effectively deterring new users and choking off the tiniest seeds of discussion when they do so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever your opinion may be, the stats show otherwise. In a comment on your closed question you write `machine learning quants are highly compensated all over the world, not just in specific regions.` How the hell do you know that? Where's the data to support that statement? That's not discussion amongst professionals, that's something else, something I don't have any problem if it get's choked off.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thereby, they are preventing the creation of value on the site, which inhibits the growth of stack exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or they are doing a good job cleaning the crap, and allowing good questions to gain more exposure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Therefore, moderator powers should be used responsibly and sparingly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are. 3K+ users are doing most of the cleaning up, when it comes to closing questions. And almost every 3K- user helps by editing / flagging / voting. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I understand that moderation is a fine balance, because in too much noise the signal gets lost which results in ghosts towns. Therefore, moderation is necessary. But at the same time, too much moderation also suppresses the signal all together.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But at the same time you don't allow even for the slightest possibility that your own question is actually pure noise, and instead of asking for it to be reopened in a constructive way, you post this rant. Hint, if people knew their questions where pure noise, they wouldn't post them in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In the first case, I don't see why interviews are ontopic but salary is offtopic. This question concerns everyone with CS degree as they could apply for this job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Salary is highly localized. Mark explained that in a comment, I tried as well. That's it, plain an simple. If you can't back up your opinions on salary with hard facts, don't expect anyone to take them seriously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Similarly, I can't see why the second question is offtopic either. In my opinion, it's a perfectly good question. Just because there's an answer for it on wikipedia, it's doesn't make it not a real question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's off topic, because Programmers SE is not a replacement for Wikipedia, or any other reference. Why does the internet need yet another place that explains why C# is called C Sharp? What's the point? The question is trivial and answerable via a very simple web search. Hence, not suitable for Programmers SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You spent quite some time in telling us what's wrong with moderation. I'm quite puzzled on why there isn't a single constructive suggestion in your rant. Just one, and I'd be happy. But you've chosen to just vent your frustration, cry wolf. Yeah, ok, for arguments sake let's say the mods are all you think of them. So what? What are you doing to help remedy the situation? Yap, yap, yap... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is my opinion, you can take it or leave it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7122" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2796" RevisionGUID="11dec96e-7b9c-4dda-8bba-a42310a68709" CreationDate="2012-01-07T19:26:30.183" UserId="19936" Text="I noticed my reputation activity over the last 24 hrs, and it looks as though some user has followed every question on my profile and targeted it for downvote. This behavior is hilarious, but the down-votes seem more like a personal attack than a reflection on the quality of the questions, which may take away from the intent of the voting system.  Should such behavior be tolerated @ Programmers and if not, how would you address this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7123" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2796" RevisionGUID="11dec96e-7b9c-4dda-8bba-a42310a68709" CreationDate="2012-01-07T19:26:30.183" UserId="19936" Text="stalked and downvoted by upset users?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7124" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2796" RevisionGUID="11dec96e-7b9c-4dda-8bba-a42310a68709" CreationDate="2012-01-07T19:26:30.183" UserId="19936" Text="|discussion|support|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7125" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2797" RevisionGUID="47c38041-b342-40e0-a5f0-91004a8869a0" CreationDate="2012-01-07T20:07:15.620" UserId="2654" Text="The user has been contacted privately. The system should resolve the downvotes within the next few days." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7126" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2798" RevisionGUID="c8e355e8-43c1-4a7f-895d-44915a1b2bfe" CreationDate="2012-01-08T07:34:55.157" UserId="20673" Text="I just answered a question and then another SE user pointed out it was a duplicate.  Not only was the question asking about almost the same topic, but question body was literally copy/pasted. Usually, I wouldn't support such a question and immediately point out to OP to go read the other one and stop doing such things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in this specific case, I took the time to write a relatively lengthy and maybe even helpful answer. Would be a shame for that answer to go to waste.  At the same time, I have an ingrained distaste for copy/pasting, so I don't know if I should repost my answer in the proper place now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should I copy the answer over?  Should I copy it over and then delete it from duplicate post? Or should I just let it be where it is and move on?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7127" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2798" RevisionGUID="c8e355e8-43c1-4a7f-895d-44915a1b2bfe" CreationDate="2012-01-08T07:34:55.157" UserId="20673" Text="If you realize you answered a duplicate question, should you move your answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7128" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2798" RevisionGUID="c8e355e8-43c1-4a7f-895d-44915a1b2bfe" CreationDate="2012-01-08T07:34:55.157" UserId="20673" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7129" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2799" RevisionGUID="1ba7e014-5801-44e8-a948-48104ba6d7d7" CreationDate="2012-01-08T07:56:45.880" UserId="40190" Text="Three people have upvoted your answer, so it appears useful. Since the two questions are (almost) exact duplicates, your answer should be equally applicable to the original.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I were in your position I would therefore delete my answer on the duplicate and re-post it on the original, as the duplicate is likely to get closed or even deleted. I would wait though for a moderator to chime in whether such a migration can be done by them in a way that you don't lose those three upvotes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7130" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2800" RevisionGUID="0b0026aa-8e00-486d-be4a-c6c4d9207759" CreationDate="2012-01-08T09:47:16.920" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="If the question has no chance to be opened (like, it's definitely a duplicate and it's not going to get reopened), it's going to eventually be deleted and your answer deleted along with it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, &quot;eventually&quot; can wind up being a very long time, but it's something to keep in mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we can't copy over answers individually, if the question is closed as a duplicate and all the existing answers (including yours) would work without modification on the older question, consider flagging the closed question so we can merge the two questions, which will copy your answer (and all the others) to the older question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if your answer, or any of the other answers, need to be modified somewhat, just copy your answer and make any changes necessary to make your answer wholly applicable to the new one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7131" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2798" RevisionGUID="d9d86c87-79a7-4fa1-bbda-ed4d242814db" CreationDate="2012-01-08T09:47:58.837" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="If you realize you answered a duplicate question, should you move your answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7132" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2798" RevisionGUID="d9d86c87-79a7-4fa1-bbda-ed4d242814db" CreationDate="2012-01-08T09:47:58.837" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7133" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2800" RevisionGUID="cea0b36f-ed02-4afd-8d8d-8b2a9f058f15" CreationDate="2012-01-08T09:54:31.133" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 293 characters in body" Text="While we can't copy over answers individually, if the question is closed as a duplicate and all the existing answers (including yours) would work without modification on the older question, consider flagging the closed question so we can merge the two questions, which will copy your answer (and all the others) to the older question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if your answer, or any of the other answers, need to be modified somewhat, just copy your answer and make any changes necessary to make your answer wholly applicable to the new one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7134" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2794" RevisionGUID="e5df0827-c580-4828-b747-6b829f1158ed" CreationDate="2012-01-08T19:04:00.933" UserId="1996" Comment="deleted 52 characters in body" Text="My impression is that a lot of moderators on stackexchange sites overuse their powers. It seems they browse the site for fun in their free time, and close questions trying to find a reason. They rationalize that they are doing good community service but in my opinion they are effectively deterring new users and choking off the tiniest seeds of discussion when they do so. Thereby, they are preventing the creation of value on the site, which inhibits the growth of stack exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, moderator powers should be used responsibly and sparingly. It is not something that is fun to play with when someone is bored. In most cases, other users who are more knowledgeable in the given topic have time to answer the question, before a moderator comes in and does harm by closing or deleting it, though I'm sure his intentions are good. This just results a lot of users leaving the site, and moving to other programming forums, (such as reddit), where moderators are more liberal. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that moderation is a fine balance, because in too much noise the signal gets lost which results in ghosts towns. Therefore, moderation is necessary. But at the same time, too much moderation also suppresses the signal all together.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an example of what I mean. I asked this question a few hours ago. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128935/why-are-machine-learning-quant-researchers-paid-so-much It got closed by a moderator, because it's too localized. At the same time, another question was also closed by the same moderator, stating that it's not a real question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128922/why-c-is-called-c-sharp&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cannot see why either questions are offtopic, other than that the moderator couldn't answer it, so he closed it. In the first case, I don't see why interviews are ontopic but salary is offtopic. This question concerns everyone with CS degree as they could apply for this job. That specifically includes programmers. In addition, machine learning quants are highly compensated all over the world, not just in specific regions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, I can't see why the second question is offtopic either. In my opinion, it's a perfectly good question. Just because there's an answer for it on wikipedia, it's doesn't make it not a real question.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Anyway, this is my opinion and you can take it or leave it. I just wanted to draw attention to the dangers of too eager moderation that I have noticed on stack exchange lately" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7135" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2801" RevisionGUID="22a68c81-2945-48ee-b53e-775d6828c7c1" CreationDate="2012-01-08T20:43:22.650" UserId="34364" Text="Currently on Programmers.SE we have a [code] tag and a [coding] tag. Are they both needed? If so, why should I use on over another?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7136" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2801" RevisionGUID="22a68c81-2945-48ee-b53e-775d6828c7c1" CreationDate="2012-01-08T20:43:22.650" UserId="34364" Text="What is the difference between the [code] tag and the [coding] tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7137" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2801" RevisionGUID="22a68c81-2945-48ee-b53e-775d6828c7c1" CreationDate="2012-01-08T20:43:22.650" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7138" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2801" RevisionGUID="404790b7-db10-4f7c-8a62-9ce9c4a52828" CreationDate="2012-01-08T20:49:33.550" UserId="25936" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="Currently on Programmers.SE we have a [code] tag and a [coding] tag. Are they both needed? If so, why should I use one over the other?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7139" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2801" RevisionGUID="1830bb20-9df8-4433-81d1-5f5838f7bed7" CreationDate="2012-01-08T20:55:14.650" UserId="25936" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="Currently on Programmers.SE we have a [tag:code] tag and a [tag:coding] tag. Are they both needed? If so, why should I use one over the other?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7140" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2801" RevisionGUID="ce4e6511-5e97-45dc-a97c-1eeaf9e8672b" CreationDate="2012-01-09T01:39:27.557" UserId="34364" Comment="added 85 characters in body; edited title" Text="Currently on Programmers.SE we have a [tag:code] tag and a [tag:coding] tag. Are either of them needed? If so, why should I use one over the other? If not, let's just get rid of them. Is there a tag we can just merge them with?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7141" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2801" RevisionGUID="ce4e6511-5e97-45dc-a97c-1eeaf9e8672b" CreationDate="2012-01-09T01:39:27.557" UserId="34364" Comment="added 85 characters in body; edited title" Text="Do we need a [code] or [coding] tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7142" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2802" RevisionGUID="2e0727e3-1246-427d-8dec-7b370fe62a12" CreationDate="2012-01-09T06:18:28.303" UserId="11447" Text="This might be better suited for Meta.SO, but the problem is particularly bad here, so that's where I'm asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the active questions on the Programmers home page, 7 are closed and another 2 are in negative voting territory. This is a given as the scope of Programmers is much tighter than the other sites. But it's a pain to navigate. Is there any way to filter the questions so that only open questions are visible?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7143" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2802" RevisionGUID="2e0727e3-1246-427d-8dec-7b370fe62a12" CreationDate="2012-01-09T06:18:28.303" UserId="11447" Text="Cain I filter/hide closed questions on Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7144" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2802" RevisionGUID="2e0727e3-1246-427d-8dec-7b370fe62a12" CreationDate="2012-01-09T06:18:28.303" UserId="11447" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7145" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2802" RevisionGUID="98fa0160-6dce-4855-b7c1-bc2434fad2a1" CreationDate="2012-01-09T06:23:39.450" UserId="11447" Comment="spelling" Text="Can I filter/hide closed questions on Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7146" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2803" RevisionGUID="2c066a59-354f-41ea-be4d-169e74044e5e" CreationDate="2012-01-09T06:50:31.363" UserId="226" Text="There's no preference setting to show or hide closed questions, but you can bookmark a search:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;q=closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This shows you the open question sorted in the descending order by recent activity. See more search tips [here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7147" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2802" RevisionGUID="942d9a92-e231-4b55-a90c-3bee908b6980" CreationDate="2012-01-09T06:50:44.543" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7148" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2744" RevisionGUID="189379ac-87e1-4bc5-9fac-ad8ace9a0f5c" CreationDate="2012-01-09T06:52:45.150" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Clean up question" Text="How would I create an filtered view of Programmers.SE, like perhaps with a query from the [Stack Exchange Data Explorer](http://data.stackexchange.com)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I'm looking for this is because when Programmers.SE is active, the front page gets messed up with closed and negatively voted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not interested in why that is, but just about making the front page less noisy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since we can favorite and ignore tags, perhaps setting up a tag would be a possible solution. Or would it be a disruption? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7149" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2744" RevisionGUID="189379ac-87e1-4bc5-9fac-ad8ace9a0f5c" CreationDate="2012-01-09T06:52:45.150" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Clean up question" Text="How can I create a custom filtered view of questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7150" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2744" RevisionGUID="189379ac-87e1-4bc5-9fac-ad8ace9a0f5c" CreationDate="2012-01-09T06:52:45.150" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Clean up question" Text="|support|feature-request|search|filtering|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7151" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2802" RevisionGUID="cdaf337d-bc69-4153-bc7b-161b8fe4484c" CreationDate="2012-01-09T06:53:19.843" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|search|filtering|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7152" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2804" RevisionGUID="96a16e49-2c5c-4121-b229-1a33633f1185" CreationDate="2012-01-09T07:01:04.357" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Like the [software development](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist) and [programming](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2147/blacklist-programming-and-programmers) tags, these add zero content to the question and should not exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We really [don't have a great way to deal with our crappy meta tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags); even though [tag:software-development] needs to die, I'm tempted to just merge [tag:code] and [tag:coding] into it, as—in practice—it's come to mean exactly the same thing (i.e., nothing). This way we'd be dealing with two less tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the end, we're going to need to clean it up, just like [we've perpetually been doing with the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7153" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2805" RevisionGUID="0ffdf25d-1eb5-4f70-8768-073377cfa8be" CreationDate="2012-01-09T08:17:42.073" UserId="23251" Text="I know that there's a perpetual problem of questions that are really not a good fit getting migrated over from SO, so I don't think this is news to anyone.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there seems to be a recent influx of migrated questions (I can probably count 10+ over the past 3 days, at least) pertaining to highly localized situations (career-oriented, but I won't pick on anyone) that can only help the individual that is asking the question.  Normally, I think that these questions are closed on SO and not migrated.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a situation that has changed very recently that has prompted this influx?  Is this worth re-addressing on Meta.SO?   " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7154" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2805" RevisionGUID="0ffdf25d-1eb5-4f70-8768-073377cfa8be" CreationDate="2012-01-09T08:17:42.073" UserId="23251" Text="Recent shift in off-topic migrations?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7155" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2805" RevisionGUID="0ffdf25d-1eb5-4f70-8768-073377cfa8be" CreationDate="2012-01-09T08:17:42.073" UserId="23251" Text="|discussion|migration|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7156" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2806" RevisionGUID="ec5ba2d9-5ee2-4a48-8004-91d4963f17f1" CreationDate="2012-01-09T08:59:22.377" UserId="47" Text="Migrations from Stack Overflow are overwhelmingly by five community members - moderators from either site aren't involved. Where moderators do get involved is usually to *stop* these migrations from occurring.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It could well be that moderators on both sides are spotting less of these potential migrations and hence more of them are going through.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can be done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well - if you have enough reputation of Stack Overflow you can use the `/review` pages to look for potentially bad migrations and either add a non-migratory close vote or flag the question for a Stack Overflow moderator to stop the migration. Don't forget that it takes 4 migration votes for a question to be moved so if two (or more) people vote to just close as off topic the migration won't happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could also add a comment to the question explaining that it's a bad migration. This might educate a few more Stack Overflow users, but I wouldn't hold my breath.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately the solution is for us all to be more active on Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7157" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2807" RevisionGUID="04e92e2d-e03e-4c3b-a41b-8f1bbffc48c5" CreationDate="2012-01-09T09:12:35.220" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="(Tongue in cheek): _this is all my fault, ask ChrisF ..._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Really, I do try to stop bad migrations, so do the rest of the mods. We just don't get to them in time in some cases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think bringing this up on Meta SO again is going to help much. While some bad migrations _are_ happening, we're stopping a large number of them. Take [this](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8776115/java-grails-or-erlang-elixir-on-short-web-requests-speed-scalability) for example, where I was on the fence and wanted to check with the mods before sending it over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Chris is spot on with leaving comments indicating doubt that the question would be well received here. That leaves breadcrumbs for our users, as well as us [the moderators].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The people that vote against bad migrations (or flag us to stop them) are the people that keep up on meta. I think what needs to be addressed are the people that _don't_ keep up with meta, and comments would work quite well with that. Feel free to also follow up with an 'other' flag to alert us that you feel the question would not be a good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, Anna having a diamond on both sites has really helped. Still, even with all of that in place, a few are going to get shipped over that really should have been closed. I do concur with the number going up a bit recently, so we [as moderators] will try to be sure to leave comments when blocking bad migrations. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7158" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2808" RevisionGUID="be0cbc2e-1b7e-4d4e-b1bd-27a538ea0927" CreationDate="2012-01-09T19:21:36.070" UserId="41381" Text="should we remove the [canadian-law] tag that was created per request of [this][1] question? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it just opens the door to create too many different [country-law] tags that aren't that useful. I think [law] is good enough for legal questions on programmers.se since every question about legal issues more or less comes with an ask a lawyer anyway disclaimer, and legal questions while allowed aren't a primary focus of this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/129215/41381" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7159" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2808" RevisionGUID="be0cbc2e-1b7e-4d4e-b1bd-27a538ea0927" CreationDate="2012-01-09T19:21:36.070" UserId="41381" Text="remove [canadian-law] tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7160" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2808" RevisionGUID="be0cbc2e-1b7e-4d4e-b1bd-27a538ea0927" CreationDate="2012-01-09T19:21:36.070" UserId="41381" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7161" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2808" RevisionGUID="3de8187d-5fce-485b-a71c-5e1853f4385b" CreationDate="2012-01-09T19:22:24.437" UserId="226" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="should we remove the [tag:canadian-law] tag that was created per request of [this][1] question? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it just opens the door to create too many different [country-law] tags that aren't that useful. I think [law] is good enough for legal questions on pPogrammers.SE since every question about legal issues more or less comes with an ask a lawyer anyway disclaimer, and legal questions while allowed aren't a primary focus of this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/129215/41381" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7162" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2809" RevisionGUID="6c2930d3-ebfd-4c62-8259-05d1c93b8edd" CreationDate="2012-01-09T19:28:02.743" UserId="226" Text="Yeah, I agree. I don't think the tag makes any sense in the long term.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We certainly don't want to encourage more general legal questions after we already reduced the scope in the FAQ from &quot;software law&quot; to &quot;software licensing&quot;. (Though I'm having trouble finding the meta reference for that change.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7163" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2808" RevisionGUID="281107c7-d603-4b8d-910a-dabf7f5d0419" CreationDate="2012-01-09T19:28:04.333" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="should we remove the [tag:canadian-law] tag that was created per request of [this][1] question? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it just opens the door to create too many different [country-law] tags that aren't that useful. I think [law] is good enough for legal questions on Pogrammers.SE since every question about legal issues more or less comes with an ask a lawyer anyway disclaimer, and legal questions while allowed aren't a primary focus of this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/129215/41381" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7164" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2809" RevisionGUID="45de86a9-caaa-443b-adc9-bcb264934ff7" CreationDate="2012-01-09T19:37:11.327" UserId="226" Comment="added 30 characters in body" Text="Yeah, I agree. I don't think the tag makes any sense in the long term.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We certainly don't want to encourage more general legal questions after [we already reduced the scope in the FAQ from &quot;software law&quot; to &quot;software licensing&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7165" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2809" RevisionGUID="ff1c9aee-baf7-4927-a8e7-2864b86253eb" CreationDate="2012-01-09T19:45:49.267" UserId="226" Comment="added 116 characters in body" Text="Yeah, I agree. I don't think the tag makes any sense in the long term.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We certainly don't want to encourage more general legal questions after [we already reduced the scope in the FAQ from &quot;software law&quot; to &quot;software licensing&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update: I went ahead and removed the tag from the question. The tag will disappear from the site in a day or so." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7166" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2808" RevisionGUID="99e3b278-3f1c-4189-a118-270c1abb3d89" CreationDate="2012-01-09T20:28:05.190" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/156472328648261632" />
  <row Id="7167" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2810" RevisionGUID="18de1b5f-90ba-4bb5-bb48-674c2d5c4869" CreationDate="2012-01-09T20:50:00.590" UserId="40190" Text="When I come across a post with poor grammar and/or spelling errors (maybe because the author is not a native speaker), I usually suggest an edit to fix them (since I lack edit privileges myself). I noticed others post a comment instead, asking the author to fix their post. I was wondering which approach was prefered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the one hand, the OP might learn something from fixing their own mistakes and they are also in the best position to edit to provide clarification, if the wording isn't clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, when I edit it myself, it is usually faster ([broken windows][1] disappearing quicker from the home page). Also, I assume that when someone posts something on the site, they already tried to write to the best of their abilities. telling them to fix their spelling won't do much then.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should I continue fixing posts myself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Should you find grammatical and/or spelling errors in this question, feel free to fix them yourself.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7168" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2810" RevisionGUID="18de1b5f-90ba-4bb5-bb48-674c2d5c4869" CreationDate="2012-01-09T20:50:00.590" UserId="40190" Text="Who should fix grammar and spelling in a post?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7169" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2810" RevisionGUID="18de1b5f-90ba-4bb5-bb48-674c2d5c4869" CreationDate="2012-01-09T20:50:00.590" UserId="40190" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7170" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2811" RevisionGUID="8210a526-1337-42cf-a62a-6d9f20ace7dd" CreationDate="2012-01-09T20:52:49.703" UserId="47" Text="Yes, you should continue editing posts yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only case where you *might* want to comment instead is if you notice you're editing the 10&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; post from the same user and they've made no apparent improvement. However, as you point out, fixing the broken windows is fairly important." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7171" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2812" RevisionGUID="277343c9-fe07-46be-85b1-a8bc6ab9c901" CreationDate="2012-01-09T21:40:10.583" UserId="25936" Text="Comments that are only intended to point out spelling / syntax fixes, are [discouraged][1]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When *shouldn't* I comment?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are not recommended for any of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Suggesting corrections that don't fundamentally change the meaning of the post; instead, make or suggest an edit;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Go ahead and do the edits yourself, and flag such comments as obsolete (if you can spare the time).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7172" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2812" RevisionGUID="8aae4e0e-5611-40b7-96d2-ec0e5e223e85" CreationDate="2012-01-09T22:43:42.350" UserId="25936" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="Comments with the sole intention of pointing out spelling / syntax fixes are [discouraged][1]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When *shouldn't* I comment?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are not recommended for any of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Suggesting corrections that don't fundamentally change the meaning of the post; instead, make or suggest an edit;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Go ahead and do the edits yourself, and flag such comments as obsolete (if you can spare the time).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7173" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2813" RevisionGUID="a6d35669-cba6-46dd-abfe-9e735b26175e" CreationDate="2012-01-10T07:36:16.553" UserId="25936" Text="[tag:software] questions that should probably be closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60698/sound-samples-for-application&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50397/what-are-some-essential-tools-for-database-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43457/programming-icons&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/100551/will-this-referral-code-scheme-work&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56302/where-does-the-name-solr-come-from&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll keep updating the list as I go through the tag, all of the above got my close vote for one reason or the other. 3K+ users please review...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7174" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2810" RevisionGUID="dd17a861-38b2-429e-8055-8c285ea8efd6" CreationDate="2012-01-10T11:28:07.853" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/156698833202593792" />
  <row Id="7175" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2814" RevisionGUID="0fd31bad-6aa6-4c52-b671-5916e38da073" CreationDate="2012-01-10T11:31:12.107" UserId="12436" Text="I'm assuming that since SO is for technical issues, that http://facebook.stackoverflow.com/ would be off-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7176" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2815" RevisionGUID="8a9f3500-abce-4e26-8818-261204580280" CreationDate="2012-01-10T11:42:37.150" UserId="25936" Text="Probably irrelevant to the question, but the latest answer to it [is clearly spam][1]. It's not obvious at first, but checkout the user's [other answer][2] on a question that's actually about promoting Android apps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should consider the possibility that promotion questions have a very high potential of attracting spammers. I wouldn't mind declaring them off topic just for that, as I completely agree with Craige and Steven A. Lowe. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/129312/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/129313/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7177" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2814" RevisionGUID="583cc13e-38f9-4e1c-9559-dadbab8f73dc" CreationDate="2012-01-10T11:48:42.630" UserId="12436" Comment="added 46 characters in body" Text="I'm assuming that since SO is for technical issues, that http://facebook.stackoverflow.com/ would be off-topic for those relating to promoting facebook apps?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7178" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2814" RevisionGUID="bd7bf3bd-e310-4d9d-b824-186b5afa0d36" CreationDate="2012-01-10T11:59:40.650" UserId="12436" Comment="added 46 characters in body" Text="I propose that since SO is for technical issues, that http://facebook.stackoverflow.com/ would be **off-topic** for those relating to promoting facebook apps?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7179" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2815" RevisionGUID="43db0602-9c12-464d-9868-dd24205837e0" CreationDate="2012-01-10T12:07:59.013" UserId="25936" Comment="added 104 characters in body" Text="Probably irrelevant to the question, but the latest answer to it [is clearly spam][1]. It's not obvious at first, but checkout the user's [other answer][2]&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; on a question that's actually about promoting Android apps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should consider the possibility that promotion questions have a very high potential of attracting spammers. I wouldn't mind declaring them off topic just for that, as I completely agree with Craige and Steven A. Lowe. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Now deleted, it was almost exactly the same as the first answer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/129312/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/129313/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7180" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2816" RevisionGUID="f6237436-0719-4e70-a876-1501c949df44" CreationDate="2012-01-10T14:02:42.523" UserId="25936" Text="I just rejected [this edit][1] that was suggested on this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129349/how-can-i-tell-bad-code-from-good-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The edit did correct a spelling mistake in the title (as the edit comment suggested), but also removed the duplicate notification that was applied automatically when the question was closed. My reasoning was that there wasn't any significant improvement on the edit that made the question not a dupe, and even if there was, there's no reason to remove the notification until (and if) the question is reopened. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Was rejecting the edit justified? &#xD;&#xA; 2. What if there were far more significant edits?&#xD;&#xA; 3. Are there any repercussions for the user who suggested the edit? I'm only asking because of the scary reject dialog. I hope not, otherwise I'd probably approve the edit and reapply the notification in a subsequent edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/129349/3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7181" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2816" RevisionGUID="f6237436-0719-4e70-a876-1501c949df44" CreationDate="2012-01-10T14:02:42.523" UserId="25936" Text="Should we reject edits that remove the automatic duplicate notification?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7182" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2816" RevisionGUID="f6237436-0719-4e70-a876-1501c949df44" CreationDate="2012-01-10T14:02:42.523" UserId="25936" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7183" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2817" RevisionGUID="eec9d4c2-0aa9-4d19-ad99-59904033648f" CreationDate="2012-01-10T14:06:10.973" UserId="47" Text="Yes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Manual edits should ***never*** remove the auto inserted duplicate text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only mitigating factor might be that he started his edit before the question was closed as a duplicate. The edit time and close time are approximately the same so that's entirely possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only ramifications for the user would be if he had multiple consecutive edits rejected. Then he would be barred from suggesting edits for a week." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7184" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2816" RevisionGUID="60d51376-02a5-4dde-a8a7-3b1f4ab6b236" CreationDate="2012-01-10T14:11:33.443" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 105 characters in body" Text="I just rejected [this edit][1] that was suggested on this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129349/how-can-i-tell-bad-code-from-good-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The edit did correct a spelling mistake in the title (as the edit comment suggested), but also removed the duplicate notification that was applied automatically when the question was closed. My reasoning was that there wasn't any significant improvement on the edit that made the question not a dupe, and even if there was, there's no reason to remove the notification until (and if) the question is reopened. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Was rejecting the edit justified? &#xD;&#xA; 2. What if there were far more significant edits?&#xD;&#xA; 3. Are there any repercussions for the user who suggested the edit? I'm only asking because of the scary reject dialog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/129349/3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7185" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2816" RevisionGUID="b3d1534d-6282-47a7-9e95-9530bf2d70e5" CreationDate="2012-01-10T14:18:46.647" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|suggested-edits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7186" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2810" RevisionGUID="ea3ae1c1-4ca3-4ec0-acf9-e66e480c9461" CreationDate="2012-01-10T14:19:12.713" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7187" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2798" RevisionGUID="a1a39412-b734-4286-bd3c-ee41af76f4f1" CreationDate="2012-01-10T14:28:08.273" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/156744132558200832" />
  <row Id="7188" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2818" RevisionGUID="d0a627c2-b891-4234-b6c9-971c61eda0c7" CreationDate="2012-01-10T14:52:41.787" UserId="1973" Text="Now that's really annoying, I'm on the SE network all the time, why can't I get some sort of notification that some code snippet that I'd like to have gone back to is likely to disappear forever?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was a question about using strange code constructs or something to that effect and I had an answer where a guy returned the session ID using delphi assembly and I'd like to know how he did it, any chance someone could resurrect that answer for me, at least so I can see if it's a good idea?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7189" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2818" RevisionGUID="d0a627c2-b891-4234-b6c9-971c61eda0c7" CreationDate="2012-01-10T14:52:41.787" UserId="1973" Text="Had a question I remembered asking a few months ago that had an answer and both are gone" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7190" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2818" RevisionGUID="d0a627c2-b891-4234-b6c9-971c61eda0c7" CreationDate="2012-01-10T14:52:41.787" UserId="1973" Text="|support|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7191" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2819" RevisionGUID="6132ef28-a7ce-443d-bb49-e41f171252cd" CreationDate="2012-01-10T16:20:21.413" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="It appears you're misremembering your question: I checked every deleted question you have, and the only one with answers containing code and comes close to what you're describing is [What's your best unnecessary code?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8384/whats-your-best-unnecessary-code) from October 2010, but none of the answers provided are about Delphi." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7192" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2819" RevisionGUID="4a90cdfe-084b-4750-824d-00d24a1beb3a" CreationDate="2012-01-10T16:26:12.997" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 54 characters in body" Text="It appears you're misremembering your question, or at least where it was asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I checked every deleted question you have here on Programmers, and the only one with answers containing code, or comes close to what you're describing, is [What's your best unnecessary code?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8384/whats-your-best-unnecessary-code) from October 2010.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, none of the answers provided were about Delphi.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7193" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2819" RevisionGUID="763d80a9-bb27-4f45-a199-160248a1d653" CreationDate="2012-01-10T16:52:08.133" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Found the answer" Text="On a second look, it looks like [What's your best unnecessary code?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8384/whats-your-best-unnecessary-code), from October 2010, is it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    function GetCurrentSessionId: DWORD;&#xD;&#xA;    asm&#xD;&#xA;      mov     eax,fs:[$00000018];   // Get TEB&#xD;&#xA;      mov     eax,[eax+$30];        // PPEB&#xD;&#xA;      mov     eax,[eax+$1d4];       // PEB.SessionId&#xD;&#xA;    end;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Normally, however, you'd want to get [10k reputation to see deleted posts](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7194" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2820" RevisionGUID="2f00fe05-8983-4eb9-9033-9f45b23e4527" CreationDate="2012-01-11T01:09:18.287" UserId="34364" Text="I don't have edit privileges. Can I see this? Not just recent but the whole list. I just want to know why some may not have been approved..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7195" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2820" RevisionGUID="2f00fe05-8983-4eb9-9033-9f45b23e4527" CreationDate="2012-01-11T01:09:18.287" UserId="34364" Text="Can I See Which of my Edit Suggestions was Approved?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7196" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2820" RevisionGUID="2f00fe05-8983-4eb9-9033-9f45b23e4527" CreationDate="2012-01-11T01:09:18.287" UserId="34364" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7197" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2820" RevisionGUID="de77782f-16e4-42dc-8368-436c30cc1d64" CreationDate="2012-01-11T01:46:32.477" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="I don't have edit privileges. Can I see this? Not just recent but the whole list. I just want to know why some may not have been approved." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7198" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2820" RevisionGUID="de77782f-16e4-42dc-8368-436c30cc1d64" CreationDate="2012-01-11T01:46:32.477" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Can I see which of my edit suggestions were approved?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7199" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2820" RevisionGUID="de77782f-16e4-42dc-8368-436c30cc1d64" CreationDate="2012-01-11T01:46:32.477" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|support|suggested-edits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7200" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2821" RevisionGUID="01e86083-abd4-429f-9479-0ac9e159b53a" CreationDate="2012-01-11T02:20:35.777" UserId="23251" Text="Under your Programmer's profile, click `activity` in the middle of the page, click `suggestions` and click on any of the `suggested edit` links to determine the information about the accepted or rejected status:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/G5zcv.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7201" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2822" RevisionGUID="9feaab5d-50c2-49b5-9e14-184fb39ac854" CreationDate="2012-01-11T02:40:03.623" UserId="226" Text="##Part 3: Gary Bernhardt, &quot;Expansion and Contraction&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Originally posted at http://annalear.ca/2012/01/10/scna-2011-part-3-gary-bernhardt-expansion-and-contraction/&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Gary Bernhardt took the stage to talk about the evolution of programming languages and technologies. He talked about the fact that languages and technologies evolve in waves: first there’s a wave of expansion where a new language comes along and increases the number of things we can do, and it is followed by a contraction that reduces the number of things we can do but also removes a lot of confusion and therefore enables us to deliver more reliable software with the new toolset.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, expansion increases capability – our power to express an idea. Over time abundant resources and confusion drive change and we see a contraction that removes 5% of the capability and 85% of the confusion to enhance suitability – the power to deliver reliable software that works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many expansions are initially dismissed by the developer community. For example, looking back at Djikstra’s proposal for structured programming, it was met with the following [review](http://www.fang.ece.ufl.edu/reject.html):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Structured programming is a nice academic exercise, which works well for small examples, but I doubt that any real-world program will ever be written in such a style.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The relational model was met with similar criticism and the same quote can be paraphrased and applied almost universally to new technologies coming out today. Instead of focusing on how something can’t possibly be workable, we should consider what larger purpose it may be serving: either by improving capability or suitability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some examples from history:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 1957: Fortran increases capability vs Assembly.&#xD;&#xA;- 1968: Structured programming increases suitability vs Fortran.&#xD;&#xA;- 1970: Relational model comes out as more suitable vs flat files.&#xD;&#xA;- 1985: C++ is more capable vs C by adding object-oriented concepts.&#xD;&#xA;- 1995: Java is more suitable vs C++ by removing some of the complexity and introducing automatic memory management.&#xD;&#xA;- 2004: Rails extends the capability vs existing ways to develop web applications.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rails displays a culture of capability. The focus is on new gems and new features all the time and when something breaks, it’s easier to just move on to the new working thing than fix the broken one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Gary made a point that capable systems generate a lot of activity (for example, the gem explosion in Rails), but then a contraction into more suitable tools creates suitable systems where the real progress happens. He described the difference between activity and progress as a developer who commits code lots of times a day but doesn’t necessarily produce a lot of value. That developer is certainly active but may not be making much progress.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what happens after Rails? Gary suggested that there’s frustration building in the developer community and it’s likely going to lead to a contraction step. Up next are the functional revolution and outside-in top-down London style test-driven development. Which are, of course, impossible since they are nice academic exercises, which work well for small examples, but no real-world program would ever be written in such styles." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7202" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2823" RevisionGUID="6fc7e440-cbcc-41bf-b1ed-a25b249481a5" CreationDate="2012-01-11T04:30:24.050" UserId="25936" Text="Check out these two recent questions (and their answers): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129497/looking-for-advice-about-my-employment-salary-situation&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129500/java-developer-interview-questions-regarding-sql&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The text of the first question has [been replaced by the OP][1] to &quot;Please delete thanks&quot;. In this instance OP cannot delete the question himself because there is an answer to it. The answer starts by saying: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is off-topic for Programmers, but I'll give you my advice:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have an opinion on the rest of the answer, there's some good advice in there, but that's irrelevant to this discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question is a wall of text, story of OP's life type of question. It's still open at the time I'm writing this, but if not improved it will be closed. There's also an answer to it that appeared after a comment clearly pointed out the (obvious) problems with the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strictly speaking, we shouldn't try to answer obviously off topic questions, as discussed in [this earlier meta question][2]. For question (1) the answerer even acknowledged the question was off topic, and I fail to see any point to the answer whatsoever, other than rep-farming.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For question (2) it's a little bit more complicated. There's a core question in there that might even be a good question for StackOverflow. I can't blame an answerer for going for it, if (s)he truly believes the answer will be migrated. But there are all sorts of wrong with the question and chances are it will be closed very soon and the answer is NOT one that would fly well on StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I've personally answered [quite][3] [a][4] [few][5] [extremely][6] [low][7] [hanging][8] [fruits][9], I'm no stranger to rep-farming and I don't really have any problem with answerers. But to me, both questions were obviously at the very low end of the quality spectrum, and I'd prefer it if people refrain from answering those, especially with casual answers (i.e. short, without facts and references). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For question (1) the OP lost the ability to delete his post because of the casual answer, and now we have a question that says &quot;please delete&quot; and a judgement call for a moderator/10K users, as deleting the question will also delete a positively voted answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm fully aware that answers can be updated as well, and that several of us opt to answer fast and improve later, and I hope that's the case with these two answers. If not, please don't post answers on obviously off topic / bad questions, especially casual ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts? Arguments? Cookies?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/129497/2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2223/are-useful-answers-to-off-topic-questions-useful-to-the-community&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118212/s-shaped-perl-program/118214#118214&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128376/benefits-pitfalls-of-include/128377#128377&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119357/what-are-silverlight-wcf-ria-services-or-applications/119361#119361&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122270/creating-a-library-that-requires-other-libraries-php/122273#122273&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78183/what-is-the-best-method-for-releasing-free-extension-or-example-code-based-on/79306#79306&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118449/is-php-and-mysql-web-development-4th-ed-an-outdated-book-to-learn-from/118462#118462&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/117289/does-the-session-implicit-objects-are-examples-of-the-model-objects-of-mvc/117306#117306" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7203" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2823" RevisionGUID="6fc7e440-cbcc-41bf-b1ed-a25b249481a5" CreationDate="2012-01-11T04:30:24.050" UserId="25936" Text="Please don't post answers on obviously off topic / bad questions!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7204" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2823" RevisionGUID="6fc7e440-cbcc-41bf-b1ed-a25b249481a5" CreationDate="2012-01-11T04:30:24.050" UserId="25936" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7205" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2823" RevisionGUID="6ef28579-4912-4ad4-a2c2-395da25a23ab" CreationDate="2012-01-11T04:36:30.640" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 132 characters in body" Text="Check out these two recent questions (and their answers): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129497/looking-for-advice-about-my-employment-salary-situation&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129500/java-developer-interview-questions-regarding-sql&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The text of the first question has [been replaced by the OP][1] to &quot;Please delete thanks&quot;. In this instance OP cannot delete the question himself because there is an answer to it. The answer starts by saying: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is off-topic for Programmers, but I'll give you my advice:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question is a wall of text, story of OP's life type of question. It's still open at the time I'm writing this, but if not improved it will be closed. There's also an answer to it that appeared after a comment clearly pointed out the (obvious) problems with the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strictly speaking, we shouldn't try to answer obviously off topic questions, as discussed in [this earlier meta question][2]. For question (1) the answerer even acknowledged the question was off topic, and I fail to see any point to the answer whatsoever, other than rep-farming.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For question (2) it's a little bit more complicated. There's a core question in there that might even be a good question for StackOverflow. I can't blame an answerer for going for it, if (s)he truly believes the answer will be migrated. But there are all sorts of wrong with the question and chances are it will be closed very soon and the answer is NOT one that would fly well on StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I've personally answered [quite][3] [a][4] [few][5] [extremely][6] [low][7] [hanging][8] [fruits][9], I'm no stranger to rep-farming and I don't really have any problem with answerers. But to me, both questions were obviously at the very low end of the quality spectrum, and I'd prefer it if people refrain from answering those, especially with casual answers (i.e. short, without facts and references). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For question (1) the OP lost the ability to delete his post because of the casual answer, and now we have a question that says &quot;please delete&quot; and a judgement call for a moderator/10K users, as deleting the question will also delete a positively voted answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm fully aware that answers can be updated as well, and that several of us opt to answer fast and improve later, and I hope that's the case with these two answers. If not, please don't post answers on obviously off topic / bad questions, especially casual ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts? Arguments? Cookies?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/129497/2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2223/are-useful-answers-to-off-topic-questions-useful-to-the-community&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118212/s-shaped-perl-program/118214#118214&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128376/benefits-pitfalls-of-include/128377#128377&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119357/what-are-silverlight-wcf-ria-services-or-applications/119361#119361&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122270/creating-a-library-that-requires-other-libraries-php/122273#122273&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78183/what-is-the-best-method-for-releasing-free-extension-or-example-code-based-on/79306#79306&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118449/is-php-and-mysql-web-development-4th-ed-an-outdated-book-to-learn-from/118462#118462&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/117289/does-the-session-implicit-objects-are-examples-of-the-model-objects-of-mvc/117306#117306" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7206" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2823" RevisionGUID="2b74135c-a26e-4d5e-92d6-51517488072e" CreationDate="2012-01-11T05:00:30.033" UserId="25936" Comment="added 14 characters in body" Text="Check out these two recent questions (and their answers): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129497/looking-for-advice-about-my-employment-salary-situation (now deleted)&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129500/java-developer-interview-questions-regarding-sql&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The text of the first question has [been replaced by the OP][1] to &quot;Please delete thanks&quot;. In this instance OP cannot delete the question himself because there is an answer to it. The answer starts by saying: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is off-topic for Programmers, but I'll give you my advice:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question is a wall of text, story of OP's life type of question. It's still open at the time I'm writing this, but if not improved it will be closed. There's also an answer to it that appeared after a comment clearly pointed out the (obvious) problems with the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strictly speaking, we shouldn't try to answer obviously off topic questions, as discussed in [this earlier meta question][2]. For question (1) the answerer even acknowledged the question was off topic, and I fail to see any point to the answer whatsoever, other than rep-farming.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For question (2) it's a little bit more complicated. There's a core question in there that might even be a good question for StackOverflow. I can't blame an answerer for going for it, if (s)he truly believes the answer will be migrated. But there are all sorts of wrong with the question and chances are it will be closed very soon and the answer is NOT one that would fly well on StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I've personally answered [quite][3] [a][4] [few][5] [extremely][6] [low][7] [hanging][8] [fruits][9], I'm no stranger to rep-farming and I don't really have any problem with answerers. But to me, both questions were obviously at the very low end of the quality spectrum, and I'd prefer it if people refrain from answering those, especially with casual answers (i.e. short, without facts and references). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For question (1) the OP lost the ability to delete his post because of the casual answer, and now we have a question that says &quot;please delete&quot; and a judgement call for a moderator/10K users, as deleting the question will also delete a positively voted answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm fully aware that answers can be updated as well, and that several of us opt to answer fast and improve later, and I hope that's the case with these two answers. If not, please don't post answers on obviously off topic / bad questions, especially casual ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts? Arguments? Cookies?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/129497/2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2223/are-useful-answers-to-off-topic-questions-useful-to-the-community&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118212/s-shaped-perl-program/118214#118214&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128376/benefits-pitfalls-of-include/128377#128377&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119357/what-are-silverlight-wcf-ria-services-or-applications/119361#119361&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122270/creating-a-library-that-requires-other-libraries-php/122273#122273&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78183/what-is-the-best-method-for-releasing-free-extension-or-example-code-based-on/79306#79306&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118449/is-php-and-mysql-web-development-4th-ed-an-outdated-book-to-learn-from/118462#118462&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/117289/does-the-session-implicit-objects-are-examples-of-the-model-objects-of-mvc/117306#117306" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7207" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2813" RevisionGUID="b487e1d0-98df-401e-a866-cac1db84afd0" CreationDate="2012-01-11T05:45:58.897" UserId="25936" Comment="added 605 characters in body" Text="[tag:software] questions that should probably be closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60698/sound-samples-for-application&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50397/what-are-some-essential-tools-for-database-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43457/programming-icons&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/100551/will-this-referral-code-scheme-work&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56302/where-does-the-name-solr-come-from&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46463/are-programming-languages-perfect&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67299/competitions-about-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11062/two-weeks-as-a-software-estimation-rule-of-thumb&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16596/software-to-collect-keystroke-data&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58318/software-that-helps-rebuild-someones-life&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128760/should-programmers-be-fluent-users-of-office-suites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll keep updating the list as I go through the tag, all of the above got my close vote for one reason or the other. 3K+ users please review...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7208" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2824" RevisionGUID="fa690a98-74ea-4997-b573-6d1c8cffa8fc" CreationDate="2012-01-11T14:03:51.873" UserId="4" Text="Flagging a post always results in a message indicating that the flag comment text must be greater than 10 characters, even when it is. This might be more suited to Meta.SO, but until I have the chance to see if it's affecting other sites, I figured I'd post it on the site where I noticed the problem." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7209" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2824" RevisionGUID="fa690a98-74ea-4997-b573-6d1c8cffa8fc" CreationDate="2012-01-11T14:03:51.873" UserId="4" Text="I'm not sure if this is affecting multiple sites (and I don't know a good way to test), but it appears that flagging is broken" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7210" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2824" RevisionGUID="fa690a98-74ea-4997-b573-6d1c8cffa8fc" CreationDate="2012-01-11T14:03:51.873" UserId="4" Text="|support|bug|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7211" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2823" RevisionGUID="ba903974-3caf-4372-8744-0bae05968595" CreationDate="2012-01-11T14:28:11.330" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/157106533300314112" />
  <row Id="7212" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2825" RevisionGUID="51adfdb7-4d6b-4634-87ed-b9cdfabc4c4a" CreationDate="2012-01-11T16:55:42.533" UserId="6591" Text="At the office, I'm stuck using IE7 (all other browsers are banned by group policy).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was trying to flag [this question][1], but am unable to do so. Flagging it for &quot;it needs moderator attention&quot; sometimes gives me 1, and sometimes 3 options. Typing in the &quot;other&quot; box gives the same message that Thomas is reporting. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Issue: too many first time posters, all within an hour of each other, praising &quot;About Objects&quot;. They might be legit, but it looks like an astroturf situation. I voted to close the thread, and tried to flag the post for mod approval, then tried to flag some of the answers as spam, but not everything seemed to work. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124028/is-big-nerd-ranch-or-aboutobjects-ios-training-worth-it/129583" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7213" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2824" RevisionGUID="d5a0164e-537f-4904-9204-ba5adae7e49d" CreationDate="2012-01-11T17:11:55.300" UserId="4" Comment="added 73 characters in body" Text="Flagging a post always results in a message indicating that the flag comment text must be greater than 10 characters, even when it is. This might be more suited to Meta.SO, but until I have the chance to see if it's affecting other sites, I figured I'd post it on the site where I noticed the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm in the office, so I'm (pretty much stuck) with IE7 on Windows XP." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7214" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2826" RevisionGUID="eadaaeee-8274-4438-846c-a9a12669e786" CreationDate="2012-01-11T17:25:29.537" UserId="366" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129576/c-character-count&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to flag this as &quot;Move to CodeReview&quot;, but the only options were StackOverflow and Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The ability to migrate code review questions from here would be really handy." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7215" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2826" RevisionGUID="eadaaeee-8274-4438-846c-a9a12669e786" CreationDate="2012-01-11T17:25:29.537" UserId="366" Text="Flagging off-topic should allow you to migrate to CodeReview" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7216" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2826" RevisionGUID="eadaaeee-8274-4438-846c-a9a12669e786" CreationDate="2012-01-11T17:25:29.537" UserId="366" Text="|feature-request|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7217" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2827" RevisionGUID="356801e4-5f33-4862-bf58-1cca971393dd" CreationDate="2012-01-11T17:30:27.117" UserId="47" Text="The user [cross posted](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/7670/c-character-count-project-euler-problem-17-wrong-answer) the question so a migration wouldn't have been a good idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, Code Review as a migration target might be a good idea - if only the site were out of beta ;) Beta sites can't be the target of migrations from the dialog, it will always take a moderator to do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The top five migration targets in the last 90 days are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Stack Overflow (obviously as it's in the list)&#xD;&#xA;* Super User&#xD;&#xA;* User Experience&#xD;&#xA;* Project Management (beta)&#xD;&#xA;* Code Review (beta)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next two live sites are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* IT Security&#xD;&#xA;* Unix and Linux.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the numbers I'd say that there was a case for Super User and User Experience being added to the dialog.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7218" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2828" RevisionGUID="9be41b39-9f6c-480f-9d21-29a0919ec79d" CreationDate="2012-01-11T20:04:20.780" UserId="25936" Text="Adding to everything [ChrisF wrote][1], the question wasn't really on topic on CodeReview. [The other question][2], the one posted on CodeReview originally, is now migrated to StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, although the ability to migrate to sites other than StackOverflow would be handy, in this case it would have been an incorrect migration (even if it wasn't a cross post).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2827/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8824332/c-character-count-project-euler-17-wrong-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7219" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2813" RevisionGUID="274ba1a5-20b4-41d8-94ac-9ca2bb5e447b" CreationDate="2012-01-11T21:15:41.207" UserId="25936" Comment="added 625 characters in body" Text="[tag:software] questions that should probably be closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60698/sound-samples-for-application&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50397/what-are-some-essential-tools-for-database-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43457/programming-icons&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/100551/will-this-referral-code-scheme-work&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56302/where-does-the-name-solr-come-from&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46463/are-programming-languages-perfect&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67299/competitions-about-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11062/two-weeks-as-a-software-estimation-rule-of-thumb&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16596/software-to-collect-keystroke-data&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58318/software-that-helps-rebuild-someones-life&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128760/should-programmers-be-fluent-users-of-office-suites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57653/registering-in-the-ios-developer-program-as-a-minor&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56979/create-software-without-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55666/how-do-you-name-brand-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54487/whats-the-best-way-of-marketing-to-programmers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48100/which-skills-would-you-expect-and-appreciate-in-a-junior-software-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47963/recommendations-for-a-web-based-help-system&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46965/how-do-big-companies-of-software-developers-check-for-bugs-in-thier-programs&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46434/why-is-it-that-software-is-still-easily-pirated-today&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll keep updating the list as I go through the tag, all of the above got my close vote for one reason or the other. 3K+ users please review...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7220" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2829" RevisionGUID="9cc85963-ce8e-4c7f-9e7a-1be5fde38b6f" CreationDate="2012-01-12T00:12:04.510" UserId="572" Text="I'd like to move away from using my Google login for authentication but this is the mechanism I use to auth all of the StackExchange sites I participate in. I already created a StackExchange account with the same name but see no way to migrate accounts to it. Am I missing something obvious?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7221" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2829" RevisionGUID="9cc85963-ce8e-4c7f-9e7a-1be5fde38b6f" CreationDate="2012-01-12T00:12:04.510" UserId="572" Text="Is it possible to migrate my auth from Google to StackExchange ID?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7222" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2829" RevisionGUID="9cc85963-ce8e-4c7f-9e7a-1be5fde38b6f" CreationDate="2012-01-12T00:12:04.510" UserId="572" Text="|support|openid|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7223" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2830" RevisionGUID="c470e5cf-1e57-49d9-9c29-7ae99ddb933b" CreationDate="2012-01-12T00:13:26.333" UserId="226" Text="Use the &quot;my logins&quot; link from your profile and add your Stack Exchange sign-in. That should do it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7224" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2813" RevisionGUID="57287643-4270-44c5-8f05-86eff94c5ac9" CreationDate="2012-01-12T05:03:49.867" UserId="25936" Comment="added 367 characters in body" Text="[tag:software] questions that should probably be closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60698/sound-samples-for-application&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50397/what-are-some-essential-tools-for-database-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43457/programming-icons&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/100551/will-this-referral-code-scheme-work&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56302/where-does-the-name-solr-come-from&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46463/are-programming-languages-perfect&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67299/competitions-about-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11062/two-weeks-as-a-software-estimation-rule-of-thumb&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16596/software-to-collect-keystroke-data&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58318/software-that-helps-rebuild-someones-life&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128760/should-programmers-be-fluent-users-of-office-suites&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57653/registering-in-the-ios-developer-program-as-a-minor&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56979/create-software-without-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55666/how-do-you-name-brand-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54487/whats-the-best-way-of-marketing-to-programmers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48100/which-skills-would-you-expect-and-appreciate-in-a-junior-software-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47963/recommendations-for-a-web-based-help-system&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46965/how-do-big-companies-of-software-developers-check-for-bugs-in-thier-programs&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46434/why-is-it-that-software-is-still-easily-pirated-today&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81919/is-there-a-source-for-user-opinions-on-commercial-enterprise-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72967/i-want-to-create-a-software-company-what-are-the-basic-things-that-i-should-kno&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63602/entry-into-software-field-after-7-years-gap&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll keep updating the list as I go through the tag, all of the above got my close vote for one reason or the other. 3K+ users please review... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7225" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2813" RevisionGUID="0e90e8c0-b620-4047-bebe-5b8ef60adaa9" CreationDate="2012-01-12T23:19:27.070" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 166 characters in body" Text="[tag:software] questions that should probably be closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/100551/will-this-referral-code-scheme-work&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46463/are-programming-languages-perfect&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67299/competitions-about-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11062/two-weeks-as-a-software-estimation-rule-of-thumb&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16596/software-to-collect-keystroke-data&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58318/software-that-helps-rebuild-someones-life&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128760/should-programmers-be-fluent-users-of-office-suites&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57653/registering-in-the-ios-developer-program-as-a-minor&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56979/create-software-without-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55666/how-do-you-name-brand-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54487/whats-the-best-way-of-marketing-to-programmers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48100/which-skills-would-you-expect-and-appreciate-in-a-junior-software-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47963/recommendations-for-a-web-based-help-system&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46965/how-do-big-companies-of-software-developers-check-for-bugs-in-thier-programs&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46434/why-is-it-that-software-is-still-easily-pirated-today&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81919/is-there-a-source-for-user-opinions-on-commercial-enterprise-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72967/i-want-to-create-a-software-company-what-are-the-basic-things-that-i-should-kno&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63602/entry-into-software-field-after-7-years-gap&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll keep updating the list as I go through the tag, all of the above got my close vote for one reason or the other. Everyone please review and:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Try to salvage, or&#xD;&#xA; 2. Flag / Vote to close&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please do not vote to migrate, most of the questions are really old and there is no point in migrating them on StackOverflow, or anywhere else. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7226" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2779" RevisionGUID="b4e13e83-a5b5-4bfb-96c0-f248deb59287" CreationDate="2012-01-12T23:28:18.117" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/157604840225243136" />
  <row Id="7227" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2828" RevisionGUID="ca09c7a9-ff45-486e-8fa7-bf05cb7decb7" CreationDate="2012-01-13T00:21:41.213" UserId="25936" Comment="added 46 characters in body" Text="Adding to everything [ChrisF wrote][1], the question wasn't really on topic on CodeReview. [The other question][2], the one posted on CodeReview originally, is now migrated to StackOverflow, **where it was closed almost immediately**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, although the ability to migrate to sites other than StackOverflow would be handy, in this case it would have been an incorrect migration (even if it wasn't a cross post). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2827/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8824332/c-character-count-project-euler-17-wrong-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7228" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2828" RevisionGUID="533a2ee0-2def-4dcd-8db8-a3d333e7f17f" CreationDate="2012-01-13T02:38:04.033" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 7 characters in body" Text="Adding to everything [ChrisF wrote][1], the question wasn't really on topic on CodeReview. [The other question][2], the one posted on CodeReview originally, was migrated to StackOverflow, where it was closed almost immediately. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, although the ability to migrate to sites other than StackOverflow would be handy, in this case it would have been an incorrect migration (even if it wasn't a cross post). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2827/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8824332/c-character-count-project-euler-17-wrong-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7229" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2831" RevisionGUID="4c353c65-a09e-405f-a4f6-9d4af3e4d24e" CreationDate="2012-01-13T04:50:43.160" UserId="25936" Text="Count me in, for both proofreading and (occasional) writing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of my writing style, use of language, obsessive compulsive approach to fact checking and (on topic) interests are all my questions and answers on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1709/any-chance-of-a-programmers-community-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7230" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2831" RevisionGUID="0330972f-e350-4c62-bccd-584b2d3d80d0" CreationDate="2012-01-13T04:56:49.297" UserId="25936" Comment="added 80 characters in body" Text="Count me in, for both proofreading and (occasional) writing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of my writing style, use of language, obsessive compulsive approach to fact checking and (on topic) interests are all my questions and answers on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And as per Morons p.s., I'd also change my handle to something less juvenile. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1709/any-chance-of-a-programmers-community-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7231" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2832" RevisionGUID="cac285a1-fd3f-48d1-9c69-a7cdeb4d478f" CreationDate="2012-01-13T05:17:01.900" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; More importantly, how does a Programmers.SE blog make the Internet a better place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By making Programmers.SE a better place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd love it if we could use the blog to provide definitive and comprehensive blog posts on several aspects of the site. Examples of such posts would be: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Tutorial like posts, for newer users,&#xD;&#xA; - Adaptations of commonly cited blog posts, like [Help Vampires: A Spotter’s Guide][1] and [Writing the perfect question][2], with permission of course.&#xD;&#xA; - Comprehensive answers built up from separate answers (credit: Ivo Flipse).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recycling existing information should not be the blog's primary focus, but the tutorial like posts could help bring order to the chaos of fragmented information. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7232" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2833" RevisionGUID="aff0e83f-9ef1-4154-8b70-4d2c927411ba" CreationDate="2012-01-13T09:41:03.740" UserId="25936" Text="Although I have no idea if that's what causing the issue, IE7 is [not _fully_ supported][1]. The (somewhat) [official policy on browser support][2] is: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We support current and previous versions (and possibly previous-previous version) of all popular web browsers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - IE&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Chrome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Safari&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Firefox&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Opera&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Where &quot;popular&quot; means &quot;has some reasonable amount of market share&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, right now IE8 (previous) and IE9 (current stable) are the versions officially supported, and IE7 specific issues will probably never be resolved. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As IE10 Platform Preview 4 was released in November, I think you should start considering browsing StackExchange with Chrome or Safari, since I'm guessing you have a pretty good reason to not upgrade IE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/71208/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/56161/which-browsers-are-officially-supported-and-what-else-do-i-need/56192#56192" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7233" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2834" RevisionGUID="31158e89-a7ff-4e9d-a6b7-e6b120e4d843" CreationDate="2012-01-13T15:16:04.020" UserId="43243" Text="&gt; How do we prevent it from being just another blog about programming (or programmers)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the blogs (on any subject) turn out be either tutorials or personal experiences and most often they are maintained by a single person or a group of few persons and most of them are just a huge rant of text. So for the programmers blog to reverse this trend and to be a blog by programmers (not entirely a blog for or to programmers), it could be grown upon the following snippets of thought&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Big Picture**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An introduction to important topics explained both from a theoretical view and the industry view such as explaining AI and how it is used in a house-hold robot. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Same problem, different solutions**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Different approaches to solve the same problem using different methodologies such as how could a problem be solved in the OOP way and the functional way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Different problems, same solution**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How different problems could be solved by a single solution. Design patters and their usage could be explained here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**A programmer meets an alien**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Drawn from personal experiences, this section can give some interesting insight into how a programmer could/should approach an another programmer, the boss, the chief architect, the marketing manager, the newcomer and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Things made simple**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A simplistic metaphorical explanation of what happens behind the scenes from a user perspective&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programming - A way of life**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could deal with project management, software cost estimation, stress reduction, productivity tips and a lot of psychology and programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programming for other disciplines**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on programming, for people from other disciplines (experts and newbies alike).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Real-world projects**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A description of how real-world software projects are developed, implemented and maintained&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following are also worth thinking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Tips and tricks&#xD;&#xA; - Cheat sheets&#xD;&#xA; - It worked in production but not in deployment cases&#xD;&#xA; - Most common programming errors&#xD;&#xA; - Impress your boss cases&#xD;&#xA; - Standard conventions and practices&#xD;&#xA; - Technical books &#xD;&#xA; - Multi-paradigm programming&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that most of the above might already be thought over so the following could also be thought of thought they aren't totally related to programming(a few of these things may be controversial and this may seem to be a big rant from a freak)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programming Humans by the Digital Divide**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this Age of Information, information is just being rammed into the minds of people as authentic facts fueled by the digital divide. Instant access to information includes access to wrong information also and a lot of people are using this technology to spread more falsities than ever before. So the underprivileged are likely to accept them as facts since there is huge information that isn't veritable by the common people. So how could facts can be distorted to make people believe in something. Can computers and programming turn out to be evil? (This is partly inspired by Orwell)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The State and the Computer**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How could the State use the computer to better the lives of its people. How could computing be used in the context of Governments to enhance security and prosperity?. How could the data be used in a meaningful context? What and how could be the rules in creating software for the State? (By State I also include groups and communities)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programming and Research**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More insight into how programming is used in research and sciences. How huge data is dealt with? Can innovation be made faster and more questions? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; More importantly, how does a Programmers.SE blog make the Internet a better place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Best practices that could be adopted by a new-comer (IMHO, there is a lot of bad code around since most of the early programmers are self-taught and followed their own principle). This could be done by guiding new-comers with a full-fledged real-world project (Need to discuss more)&#xD;&#xA; - Making programming fun and easier for all so that it is as ubiquitous as a spreadsheet&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if some of us could agree upon a few of the above ideas, we can work towards building a programmers blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7234" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2835" RevisionGUID="ef8934b2-2a9f-433e-bb76-a75e10155b74" CreationDate="2012-01-13T15:45:04.727" UserId="39294" Text="Today i saw the Yellow box started to appear to say &quot;Daily voting limit reached&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;I just saw in some earlier question that daily voting limit is 40. But then i saw that my actual votes for today are only 38 (not 40). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am just curious:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there any other rules associated to it?  &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7235" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2835" RevisionGUID="ef8934b2-2a9f-433e-bb76-a75e10155b74" CreationDate="2012-01-13T15:45:04.727" UserId="39294" Text="Daily voting limit" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7236" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2835" RevisionGUID="ef8934b2-2a9f-433e-bb76-a75e10155b74" CreationDate="2012-01-13T15:45:04.727" UserId="39294" Text="|discussion|voting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7237" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2836" RevisionGUID="8e400701-80a9-40f4-b8a3-6e9ce210aaa5" CreationDate="2012-01-13T15:51:04.933" UserId="47" Text="Originally you were restricted to 30 votes per day. These votes could be distributed between questions and answers in any ratio.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To encourage voting on questions an extra 10, question only votes were introduced taking the total to 40. However, because they are question only votes if you have voted on answers and then start voting on questions you can't always get to the full 40 votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are posts on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) that explain this a lot better.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7238" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2824" RevisionGUID="8338cf7a-2d34-41ec-8382-b7806e70ef8c" CreationDate="2012-01-13T15:57:06.610" UserId="48" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|bug|status-norepro|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7239" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2837" RevisionGUID="a6a69a4a-714b-4315-ab84-81448aa307b1" CreationDate="2012-01-14T01:26:40.823" UserId="25105" Text="First off, let me say I love the community moderation system. I think it's tops.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I feel like too many questions that could elicit interesting answers (specifically, interesting as a **programmer**) are being closed prematurely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I get that polling and extended discussion are Bad Things. I also get that argument is probably not going to be helpful because, hey, this is the internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it seems to me that a lot of the value of having a programmers SE site separate from SO is to get the opinion of one's peers on some topics. Ultimately, what are 'best practices' but 'opinions most of us kinda agree with strongly'?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of the questions I was disappointed to see closed (for instance, [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130018/book-on-network-cryptographic-protocols) or [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130061/how-can-i-branch-out-from-ui-into-other-areas-of-development)) seem like thay would be of general interest to many programmers; the first cited, because it deals with technologies of particular interest to programmers who code for network infrastructure; the second, because asking a career-development question to people *who don't know you* can only elicit generic responses that, while possibly (even probably) helpful to the questioning party, must by nature be rather abstract. So I feel like it fits the scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know. Programmers is my favorite SE site by far, but I feel like it either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. needs a name change (programming?) if questions directly related to programmers being programmers are going to get routinely closed&#xD;&#xA;2. Needs to revise its policies or, create a peer review policy for question closings so that if enough users disagree with closing an question, it can be re-opened, or&#xD;&#xA;3. Widen the scope of available SE sites to migrate questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe I'm alone here... but I feel like there are good questions being swept aside because of an over-zealous interpretation/application of the FAQ guidelines, and that's no service to anyone." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7240" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2837" RevisionGUID="a6a69a4a-714b-4315-ab84-81448aa307b1" CreationDate="2012-01-14T01:26:40.823" UserId="25105" Text="Should the 'good question' criteria be revised, or, has flagging become over-zealous?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7241" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2837" RevisionGUID="a6a69a4a-714b-4315-ab84-81448aa307b1" CreationDate="2012-01-14T01:26:40.823" UserId="25105" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|flagging|closing-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7242" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2838" RevisionGUID="5899f2d6-ad19-431b-af2f-3b68e179ff6f" CreationDate="2012-01-14T02:17:32.223" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main point of Stack Exchange, and why there are 80+ sites, is that when you ask a question on one of the sites, you're going to get expert-level answers about the subject of your question. Uniquely targeted content attracts experts in the field who can then help those seeking expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if you go to [Biology.SE](http://biology.stackexchange.com), and ask a question about biology, you're going to get an answer from an expert biologist vetted by other experts in the field. There's a higher chance the answer is correct—and more importantly, high quality—than if you went to a general purpose site like [Quora](http://quora.com) or [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the other side of this coin is that if you ask about music or the arts on Biology.SE, you're not going to get an expert answer (if you even *get* an answer) because the audience of the site isn't music. For that, you want to go to [Music.SE](http://music.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this framework, our site is for experts in programming. You ask a question *about* programming, you're ostensibly going to get answers from expert programmers vetted by other expert programmers. If you ask a question about anything else, you're going to get low quality answers vetted by people who aren't experts in the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, we programmers tend to be a pretty confident and self-involved bunch. There a lot of things we do, like, or believe that we think are unique; that by virtue of asking about something *as a programmer* it is much different than asking about it *as anything else*. And of course, that because it's in the context of a *programmer* involved, we must be experts and qualified to answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The truth is that this isn't actually the case: we aren't special snowflakes who see the world qualitatively differently from everyone else. Yes, there are a lot of things that are directly about programming, but there are an awful lot of things that really have nothing to do with it and require the expertise of people who aren't programmers, or require expertise outside the scope of programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are off-topic: if you're asking about cryptographic protocols in general, you want to ask our site for cryptography experts, where they will cater to you. If you want to ask about HAL 9000, you want to ask on our site for experts on science fiction and fantasy, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then there are questions that don't request expertise, or require an expertise that can't be found on Stack Exchange given the way we're structured. Things like personal career advice, polls, workplace therapy and the like require the expertise of people who know the asker on a personal level, or at least knows the situation from all sides. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, I can't tell you what's going to be good for your career because I don't know you. I don't know what you like to do, what motivates you, what your current life situation is, how many bridges you've burned, and so on. I *could* get to know you and find all those things out, but that'll take forever. What you *really* need is a mentor. Stack Exchange is not a mentoring service: we're a Q&amp;A service. The &quot;A&quot; stands for answers, not advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Suggestion 1: Rename the site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So given all this background, there's no need for a name change because we really do only allow questions directly to programming. We even have a handy chart in [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Programmers scope](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is, people tend to think their question fits the blue, &quot;All programmers&quot; area when really it's in the white &quot;Just You&quot;, &quot;All Careers&quot;, or &quot;All People&quot; areas.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Suggestion 2: Allow closures to be peer-reviewed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Anna noted in the comments, if you have enough reputation to vote to close (currently 3,000), you also have the ability to vote to reopen any close questions. It takes five community members to reopen any question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alternatively, if you'd like to make your case and try and convince others (including moderators, who can reopen any question unilaterally), create a meta discussion and explain why the question is on-topic and how you've revised the question to address the concerns that it's not. This way, we as a community can discuss the closure and come to a consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Suggestion 3: Provide more sites for migration&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also exists: we moderators can, and often do, migrate questions anywhere else on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is flagged for closure, we check to see if it might be a better fit elsewhere on the network. If we find a potential match, we contact the moderators on the candidate site and see if they want the question. If they do, it goes, if they don't we close it here as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally, the reasons sites don't want questions falls into two categories:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **The question is low quality.** There's a network-wide golden rule: don't migrate crap. If a question isn't a stellar fit for the destination site, it shouldn't get migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **The question is actually off-topic on the destination site.** Tying into the background above, each site is a community of experts. We here on Programmers are not experts in all the subjects that might take off-topic questions that have been asked here. What might look like a question that's on-topic on one place might actually be out of scope there, for whatever reason. We can't force people to accept questions on other sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, in short, if you think a question's closed but is really, truly about programming (and not about something else asked by a programmer), revise the question to explain what, specifically, is being asked that requires the unique insights of a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see a question that might be a good fit on another site on the network, flag it for moderator attention and we'll contact the appropriate people and make the arrangements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Specifics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130018/book-on-network-cryptographic-protocols   &#xD;&#xA;General question about cryptography asking for book recommendations. General cryptography questions are on-topic on our sister site, [Cryptography.SE](http://crypto.stackexchange.com). However, like us, broad-stroke book recommendation questions are off-topic there because they're open-ended polls for opinions instead of definitively answerable with expertise. I contacted the moderators on Cryptography.SE and they declined the migration.&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130061/how-can-i-branch-out-from-ui-into-other-areas-of-development   &#xD;&#xA;Broad career advice question about a person's specific situation dealing with their team and how they can get into the any-programming-that-isn't-UI-programming business. Beyond the issue of not knowing the person well enough to tell them how they should develop their career or deal with their coworkers, &quot;how do I get better at programming?&quot; is way broad for a site about programming. Asking specific questions about learning a specific subsection of programming would be on-topic, instead.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7243" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2839" RevisionGUID="f8ccd2f7-d0c2-47a9-9957-6eb1d2419a28" CreationDate="2012-01-14T02:34:38.400" UserId="10572" Text="I have rewritten my question so as to remove any polling type questions. Can this question be reopened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129152/are-there-open-source-alternatives-to-bitbucket-github-kiln-and-similar-dvcs" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7244" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2839" RevisionGUID="f8ccd2f7-d0c2-47a9-9957-6eb1d2419a28" CreationDate="2012-01-14T02:34:38.400" UserId="10572" Text="Can this question be reopened: &quot;Are there open source alternatives to Bitbucket, Github, Kiln, and similar DVCS browsing and management tools&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7245" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2839" RevisionGUID="f8ccd2f7-d0c2-47a9-9957-6eb1d2419a28" CreationDate="2012-01-14T02:34:38.400" UserId="10572" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7246" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2840" RevisionGUID="4bdde506-f7cb-4249-9490-5f70ed7959c5" CreationDate="2012-01-14T02:38:05.560" UserId="226" Text="Thanks for coming back to edit your question. I think that with the clearly defined criteria you provided, we can give it another go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7247" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2839" RevisionGUID="56886bc8-2f19-45d8-8cdd-72375852dead" CreationDate="2012-01-14T02:38:23.983" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7248" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2838" RevisionGUID="7febe5f9-2a11-443f-bc70-ba6df3fdb156" CreationDate="2012-01-14T02:40:03.590" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add links" Text="### Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [main point of Stack Exchange](http://stackexchange.com/about), and why there are 80+ sites, is that when you ask a question on one of the sites, you're going to get expert-level answers about the subject of your question. Uniquely targeted content attracts experts in the field who can then help those seeking expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if you go to [Biology.SE](http://biology.stackexchange.com), and ask a question about biology, you're going to get an answer from an expert biologist vetted by other experts in the field. There's a higher chance the answer is correct—and more importantly, high quality—than if you went to a general purpose site like [Quora](http://quora.com) or [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the other side of this coin is that if you ask about music or the arts on Biology.SE, you're not going to get an expert answer (if you even *get* an answer) because the audience of the site isn't music. For that, you want to go to [Music.SE](http://music.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this framework, our site is for experts in programming. You ask a question *about* programming, you're ostensibly going to get answers from expert programmers vetted by other expert programmers. If you ask a question about anything else, you're going to get low quality answers vetted by people who aren't experts in the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, we programmers tend to be a pretty confident and self-involved bunch. There a lot of things we do, like, or believe that we think are unique; that by virtue of asking about something *as a programmer* it is much different than asking about it *as anything else*. And of course, that because it's in the context of a *programmer* involved, we must be experts and qualified to answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The truth is that this isn't actually the case: we aren't special snowflakes who see the world qualitatively differently from everyone else. Yes, there are a lot of things that are directly about programming, but there are an awful lot of things that really have nothing to do with it and require the expertise of people who aren't programmers, or require expertise outside the scope of programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are off-topic: if you're asking about cryptographic protocols in general, you want to ask [our site for cryptography experts](http://crypto.stackexchange.com), where they will cater to you. If you want to ask about HAL 9000, you want to ask on [our site for experts on science fiction and fantasy](http://scifi.stackexchange.com), not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then there are questions that don't request expertise, or, given the way we're structured, require an expertise that can't be found on Stack Exchange. Things like personal career advice, polls, workplace therapy and the like require the expertise of people who know the asker on a personal level, or at least knows the situation from all sides. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, I can't tell you what's going to be good for your career because I don't know you. I don't know what you like to do, what motivates you, what your current life situation is, how many bridges you've burned, and so on. I *could* get to know you and find all those things out, but that'll take forever. What you *really* need is a mentor. Stack Exchange is not a mentoring service: we're a Q&amp;A service. The &quot;A&quot; stands for answers, not advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Suggestion 1: Rename the site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So given all this background, there's no need for a name change because we really do only allow questions directly to programming. We even have a handy chart in [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Programmers scope](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is, people tend to think their question fits the blue, &quot;All Programmers&quot; area when really it's in the white &quot;Just You&quot;, &quot;All Careers&quot;, or &quot;All People&quot; areas.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Suggestion 2: Allow closures to be peer-reviewed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [Anna noted in the comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2837/should-the-good-question-criteria-be-revised-or-has-flagging-become-over-zea#comment-7096), if you have enough reputation to vote to close ([currently 3,000](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/close-questions)), you also have the ability to vote to reopen any close questions. It takes five community members to reopen any question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alternatively, if you'd like to make your case and try and convince others (including moderators, who can reopen any question unilaterally), create a meta discussion question here and explain why the question is on-topic and how you've revised the question to address the concerns that it's not. This way, we as a community can discuss the closure and come to a consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Suggestion 3: Provide more sites for migration&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We moderators can, and often do, migrate questions anywhere else on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is flagged for closure, we check to see if it might be a better fit elsewhere on the network. If we find a potential match, we contact the moderators on the candidate site and see if they want the question. If they do, it goes; if they don't, we close it here as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally, the reasons sites don't want questions fall into two categories:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **The question is low quality.** There's a network-wide golden rule: [don't migrate crap](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1901/8). If a question isn't a stellar fit for the destination site, it shouldn't get migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **The question is actually off-topic on the destination site.** Tying into the background above, each site is a community of experts. We're not experts in all the subjects that might take off-topic questions that have been asked here. What might look like, to us, a question that's on-topic on one site might actually be out of scope there, for whatever reason. We can't force people to accept questions on other sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, in short, if you think a question's closed but is really, truly about programming (and not about something else asked by a programmer), revise the question to explain what, specifically, is being asked that requires the unique insights of a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see a question that might be a good fit on another site on the network, flag it for moderator attention and we'll contact the appropriate people and make the arrangements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Specifics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130018/book-on-network-cryptographic-protocols   &#xD;&#xA;General question about cryptography asking for book recommendations. General cryptography questions are on-topic on our sister site, [Cryptography.SE](http://crypto.stackexchange.com). However, like us, broad-stroke book recommendation questions are off-topic there because they're open-ended polls for opinions instead of definitively answerable with expertise. I contacted the moderators on Cryptography.SE and they declined the migration.&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130061/how-can-i-branch-out-from-ui-into-other-areas-of-development   &#xD;&#xA;Broad career advice question about a person's specific situation dealing with their team and how they can get into the any-programming-that-isn't-UI-programming business. Beyond the issue of not knowing the person well enough to tell them how they should develop their career or deal with their coworkers, &quot;how do I get better at programming?&quot; is way broad for a site about programming. Asking specific questions about learning a specific subsection of programming would be on-topic, instead.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7249" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2832" RevisionGUID="1670a554-8374-47e4-b0e1-8dc67503c04c" CreationDate="2012-01-14T09:00:57.700" UserId="25936" Comment="added 343 characters in body" Text="&gt; More importantly, how does a Programmers.SE blog make the Internet a better place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By making Programmers.SE a better place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd love it if we could use the blog to provide definitive and comprehensive blog posts on several aspects of the site. Examples of such posts would be: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Tutorial like posts, for newer users,&#xD;&#xA; - Adaptations of commonly cited blog posts, like [Help Vampires: A Spotter’s Guide][1] and [Writing the perfect question][2], with permission of course.&#xD;&#xA; - Comprehensive answers built up from separate answers (credit: Ivo Flipse).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recycling existing information should not be the blog's primary focus, but the tutorial like posts could help bring order to the chaos of fragmented information. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another possibly interesting blog topic would be open source projects users are actively involved with. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rough outline: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Author must be heavily involved (an ohloh page would be nice) &#xD;&#xA; 2. Strictly for non commercial projects (we don't want to go there)&#xD;&#xA; 3. Author should be from the wider community (SOpedians welcome)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7250" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2832" RevisionGUID="ef37f9a4-cc9a-4d12-b6a6-7f3fbd57b0c3" CreationDate="2012-01-14T09:30:26.327" UserId="25936" Comment="added 191 characters in body" Text="&gt; More importantly, how does a Programmers.SE blog make the Internet a better place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By making Programmers.SE a better place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd love it if we could use the blog to provide definitive and comprehensive blog posts on several aspects of the site. Examples of such posts would be: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Tutorial like posts, for newer users,&#xD;&#xA; - Adaptations of commonly cited blog posts, like [Help Vampires: A Spotter’s Guide][1] and [Writing the perfect question][2], with permission of course.&#xD;&#xA; - Comprehensive answers built up from separate answers (credit: Ivo Flipse).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recycling existing information should not be the blog's primary focus, but the tutorial like posts could help bring order to the chaos of fragmented information. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another possibly interesting blog topic would be open source projects users are actively involved with. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rough outline: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Author must be heavily involved (an ohloh page would be nice) &#xD;&#xA; 2. Strictly for non commercial projects (we don't want to go there)&#xD;&#xA; 3. Author should be from the wider Stack Exchange community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The third point could be expanded in that we should welcome posts that are on topic for our blog from people active on other sites, regardless if (s)he is particularly active on Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7251" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2841" RevisionGUID="2864ff4d-a7da-4d1c-9a14-c9259c4ff8be" CreationDate="2012-01-14T12:04:10.747" UserId="886" Text="A user has been going around on [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/104867/what-does-the-latest-c-renaissance-mean) and trolling -- posting anti-C++ answers -- to a question whose activity ended ~3 months ago, with no technical basis, to every possible comment box. However, when we flag for moderator attention, we flag only a single comment. What's the best way to tell a moderator that while a comment might itself be okay on it's face, but that the comments taken as a whole amount to trolling?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7252" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2841" RevisionGUID="2864ff4d-a7da-4d1c-9a14-c9259c4ff8be" CreationDate="2012-01-14T12:04:10.747" UserId="886" Text="How does one deal with trolling, when more than a single comment is involved?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7253" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2841" RevisionGUID="2864ff4d-a7da-4d1c-9a14-c9259c4ff8be" CreationDate="2012-01-14T12:04:10.747" UserId="886" Text="|support|moderation|flagging|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7254" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2842" RevisionGUID="3d242c6e-9295-47fb-960c-daa1b521ec8e" CreationDate="2012-01-14T12:12:39.110" UserId="25936" Text="Amazingly we have almost 5 times more [tag:bug-tracking] questions than [tag:issue-tracking] ones, 57 and 17 respectively. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm aware that bug tracking is not *exactly* the same thing as issue tracking (some perceive it as a subset of), but all questions are actually on issue tracking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So could we merge [tag:bug-tracking] questions into [tag:issue-tracking], and make them synonyms?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bug_tracking_system" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7255" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2842" RevisionGUID="3d242c6e-9295-47fb-960c-daa1b521ec8e" CreationDate="2012-01-14T12:12:39.110" UserId="25936" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [bug-tracking] → [issue-tracking]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7256" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2842" RevisionGUID="3d242c6e-9295-47fb-960c-daa1b521ec8e" CreationDate="2012-01-14T12:12:39.110" UserId="25936" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7257" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2843" RevisionGUID="e018dc2a-d9d0-4574-90fb-9138b77ad453" CreationDate="2012-01-14T12:14:24.990" UserId="25936" Text="Flag any of the user's comments for moderation attention, and explain the situation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if all comments are relevant to their respective posts and follow the [normal comment guidelines][1] there might not be much a moderator can do. But do flag anyway, if the behaviour is persistent it will most likely lead to a temporary suspension.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if you think there's trolling in C++ questions, you really don't want to know what goes on in PHP questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7258" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2843" RevisionGUID="307c28f5-fe2f-445d-a447-8d0e1e7bd96d" CreationDate="2012-01-14T12:20:50.220" UserId="25936" Comment="added 349 characters in body" Text="Flag any of the user's comments for moderation attention, and explain the situation. Make sure to point out that there are other comments and provide the user's handle, they can take it from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if all comments are relevant to their respective posts and follow the [normal comment guidelines][1] there might not be much a moderator can do. But do flag anyway, if the behaviour is persistent it will most likely lead to a temporary suspension. If not, at the very least the moderators will clean up the flame-ish comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From what you describe, and without checking the question to see the comments myself, it's definitely a troll. Generic &quot;anti-whatever&quot; comments clearly fail the purpose of the comments, as does any comment without a technical basis. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if you think there's trolling in C++ questions, you really don't want to know what goes on in PHP questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7259" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2843" RevisionGUID="4283719e-93ba-4445-b37b-9850297171a8" CreationDate="2012-01-14T12:30:54.807" UserId="25936" Comment="added 293 characters in body" Text="Flag any of the user's comments for moderation attention, and explain the situation. Make sure to point out that there are other comments and provide the user's handle, they can take it from there. Flagging all the user's comments will also make the moderators aware of the behaviour, but describing the situation is obviously quicker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if all comments are relevant to their respective posts and follow the [normal comment guidelines][1] there might not be much a moderator can do. But do flag anyway, if the behaviour is persistent it will most likely lead to a temporary suspension. If not, at the very least the moderators will clean up the flame-ish comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From what you describe, and without checking the question to see the comments myself, it's definitely a troll. Generic &quot;anti-whatever&quot; comments clearly fail the purpose of the comments, as does any comment without a technical basis. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if you think there's trolling in C++ questions, you really don't want to know what goes on in PHP questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Checked every comment in there, flagged about 10 of them... It's not as bad as you describe it (imho), but definitely worth noting. Several poor comments, not just from the one user, and some blame for that should be attributed to the not so very high quality of the question itself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7260" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2844" RevisionGUID="7dd75615-414e-49da-b348-9a517df6e2a5" CreationDate="2012-01-14T17:29:00.890" UserId="226" Text="Flagging the comments is the right way to go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I kind of took a shotgun approach to this and just purged comments on most answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that (nearly) every answer generated extended discussion is a sign that the question itself is a poor fit for Q&amp;A and should perhaps be closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7261" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2823" RevisionGUID="35865ac0-bb1b-43fa-b3a7-9e88c7722c85" CreationDate="2012-01-15T06:14:32.820" UserId="25936" Comment="added 196 characters in body" Text="Check out these two recent questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129497/looking-for-advice-about-my-employment-salary-situation (now deleted)&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129500/java-developer-interview-questions-regarding-sql&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The text of the first question has [been replaced by the OP][1] to &quot;Please delete thanks&quot;. In this instance OP cannot delete the question himself because there is an answer to it. The answer starts by saying: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is off-topic for Programmers, but I'll give you my advice:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question is a wall of text, story of OP's life type of question. It's still open at the time I'm writing this, but if not improved it will be closed. There's also an answer to it that appeared after a comment clearly pointed out the (obvious) problems with the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strictly speaking, we shouldn't try to answer obviously off topic questions, as discussed in [this earlier meta question][2]. For question (1) the answerer even acknowledged the question was off topic, and I fail to see any point to the answer whatsoever, other than rep-farming.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For question (2) it's a little bit more complicated. There's a core question in there that might even be a good question for StackOverflow. I can't blame an answerer for going for it, if (s)he truly believes the answer will be migrated. But there are all sorts of wrong with the question and chances are it will be closed very soon and the answer is NOT one that would fly well on StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I've personally answered [quite][3] [a][4] [few][5] [extremely][6] [low][7] [hanging][8] [fruits][9], I'm no stranger to rep-farming and I don't really have any problem with answerers. But to me, both questions were obviously at the very low end of the quality spectrum, and I'd prefer it if people refrain from answering those, especially with casual answers (i.e. short, without facts and references). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For question (1) the OP lost the ability to delete his post because of the casual answer, and now we have a question that says &quot;please delete&quot; and a judgement call for a moderator/10K users, as deleting the question will also delete a positively voted answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm fully aware that answers can be updated as well, and that several of us opt to answer fast and improve later, and I hope that's the case with these two answers. If not, please don't post answers on obviously off topic / bad questions, especially casual ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts? Arguments? Cookies?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question and one or possibly more answers on the second one were deleted. although that's more of a guess, as the current answers where posted as is (no edits) and wouldn't have sparked that post. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/129497/2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2223/are-useful-answers-to-off-topic-questions-useful-to-the-community&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118212/s-shaped-perl-program/118214#118214&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128376/benefits-pitfalls-of-include/128377#128377&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119357/what-are-silverlight-wcf-ria-services-or-applications/119361#119361&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122270/creating-a-library-that-requires-other-libraries-php/122273#122273&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78183/what-is-the-best-method-for-releasing-free-extension-or-example-code-based-on/79306#79306&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118449/is-php-and-mysql-web-development-4th-ed-an-outdated-book-to-learn-from/118462#118462&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/117289/does-the-session-implicit-objects-are-examples-of-the-model-objects-of-mvc/117306#117306" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7272" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2813" RevisionGUID="d1e1cedc-5675-40f1-9aff-df500dec3bdb" CreationDate="2012-01-16T06:24:15.477" UserId="25936" Comment="added 526 characters in body" Text="[tag:software] questions that should probably be closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/100551/will-this-referral-code-scheme-work&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46463/are-programming-languages-perfect&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67299/competitions-about-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11062/two-weeks-as-a-software-estimation-rule-of-thumb&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16596/software-to-collect-keystroke-data&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58318/software-that-helps-rebuild-someones-life&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128760/should-programmers-be-fluent-users-of-office-suites&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57653/registering-in-the-ios-developer-program-as-a-minor&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56979/create-software-without-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55666/how-do-you-name-brand-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54487/whats-the-best-way-of-marketing-to-programmers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48100/which-skills-would-you-expect-and-appreciate-in-a-junior-software-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47963/recommendations-for-a-web-based-help-system&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46965/how-do-big-companies-of-software-developers-check-for-bugs-in-thier-programs&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46434/why-is-it-that-software-is-still-easily-pirated-today&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81919/is-there-a-source-for-user-opinions-on-commercial-enterprise-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72967/i-want-to-create-a-software-company-what-are-the-basic-things-that-i-should-kno&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63602/entry-into-software-field-after-7-years-gap&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40134/information-on-small-business-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67054/work-division-horizontal-vs-vertical&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40593/do-you-use-mathematica-during-the-software-development-process&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20476/why-is-it-so-hard-to-get-people-to-pay-for-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24002/program-to-create-diagram-for-database&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll keep updating the list as I go through the tag, all of the above got my close vote for one reason or the other. Everyone please review and:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Try to salvage, or&#xD;&#xA; 2. Flag / Vote to close&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please do not vote to migrate, most of the questions are really old and there is no point in migrating them on StackOverflow, or anywhere else. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7273" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2813" RevisionGUID="16be3919-d3e6-4124-a65e-3d101c14af20" CreationDate="2012-01-16T06:34:18.413" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 498 characters in body" Text="[tag:software] questions that should probably be closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/100551/will-this-referral-code-scheme-work&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16596/software-to-collect-keystroke-data&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57653/registering-in-the-ios-developer-program-as-a-minor&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56979/create-software-without-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55666/how-do-you-name-brand-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54487/whats-the-best-way-of-marketing-to-programmers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48100/which-skills-would-you-expect-and-appreciate-in-a-junior-software-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47963/recommendations-for-a-web-based-help-system&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46965/how-do-big-companies-of-software-developers-check-for-bugs-in-thier-programs&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46434/why-is-it-that-software-is-still-easily-pirated-today&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81919/is-there-a-source-for-user-opinions-on-commercial-enterprise-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72967/i-want-to-create-a-software-company-what-are-the-basic-things-that-i-should-kno&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63602/entry-into-software-field-after-7-years-gap&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40134/information-on-small-business-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67054/work-division-horizontal-vs-vertical&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40593/do-you-use-mathematica-during-the-software-development-process&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20476/why-is-it-so-hard-to-get-people-to-pay-for-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24002/program-to-create-diagram-for-database&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll keep updating the list as I go through the tag, all of the above got my close vote for one reason or the other. Everyone please review and:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Try to salvage, or&#xD;&#xA; 2. Flag / Vote to close&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please do not vote to migrate, most of the questions are really old and there is no point in migrating them on StackOverflow, or anywhere else. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7274" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="2813" RevisionGUID="16be3919-d3e6-4124-a65e-3d101c14af20" CreationDate="2012-01-16T06:34:18.413" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="7275" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2848" RevisionGUID="4b8b0ce8-235b-4a63-a9de-cb8cd3189264" CreationDate="2012-01-16T06:53:00.650" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This has been completed: [tag:bug-tracking] has been merged into and made a synonym of [tag:issue-tracking]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7276" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2842" RevisionGUID="39aa2672-edc2-405b-a8cd-0ae801e752b7" CreationDate="2012-01-16T06:53:09.200" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7277" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2849" RevisionGUID="610f19ee-6203-46d8-97f4-c1285195d57b" CreationDate="2012-01-16T13:27:44.763" UserId="6605" Text="The fact is, in most cases what is obvious to someone is not to another person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take [this question][1] as en example. ChrisF commented that the question is off-topic. Is it? Well, as it was at the beginning and with `php` tag, it strongly feels as Stack Overflow or Webmasters.SE related question, which has nothing to do with programming in general. Remove the tag, slightly reformulate the question, and it doesn't seem off-topic any longer (even if I would rather say it belongs more to Webmasters.SE).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question was &quot;How to set different languages for different crawlers in PHP?&quot;, then yes, it would be a Stack Overflow question. As is, it's not the best candidate to be closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even in much more obvious situations, there are still a few reasons to answer anywhere:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Imagine the question belongs to Stack Overflow, and it *will* &amp;nbsp;be migrated, for sure. I have an account on both Stack Overflow and here. Do I really need to wait until the question is migrated, then search for it on SO, and then answer? It's much easier to answer now and, at the same time, to vote to migrate. For the community, it doesn't change anything, except that the question is answered earlier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- I don't answer for reputation. I answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. To help people,&#xD;&#xA;  2. Because I like answering questions related to general programming,&#xD;&#xA;  3. Because some of my answers might be useful for community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It means that there is no reason to not answering a question before it's closed: the answer helps the OP, I enjoy writing the answer (well, I don't enjoy receiving &quot;The answer is closed&quot; notification while writing the answer for the last ten minutes) and the community may still read the question and the answer, since closed questions remain accessible by every user, unless deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If you answer just to get rep, then yes, you may want to avoid doing it on a question which will be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If there is a good answer to a closed question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. It will bring people to Programmers.SE when they search for the same subject on Google,&#xD;&#xA;  2. It will be useful if somebody wants to post a similar question: not only he'll know it's not constructive, too localized or whatsoever, but his question will be already answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/130355/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7278" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2850" RevisionGUID="cc724379-e91a-462c-b491-8f82f38ffd92" CreationDate="2012-01-16T13:28:36.493" UserId="47" Text="The [tag:homework] tag is a [meta tag](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/), it adds nothing to the question and can removed without adversely affecting the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I made a start removing the tag from the most recently asked questions and deleting some older closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of this writing there are 22 questions left with the tag so they can be address by editing rather than getting the development team to delete the tag that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that there's agreement that it should be removed feel free to remove it from any question you find.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7279" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2850" RevisionGUID="cc724379-e91a-462c-b491-8f82f38ffd92" CreationDate="2012-01-16T13:28:36.493" UserId="47" Text="Removing the [homework] tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7280" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2850" RevisionGUID="cc724379-e91a-462c-b491-8f82f38ffd92" CreationDate="2012-01-16T13:28:36.493" UserId="47" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7281" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2849" RevisionGUID="fa4d752a-8292-4023-b7b3-7b868cee4f00" CreationDate="2012-01-16T13:35:23.613" UserId="6605" Comment="added 640 characters in body" Text="The fact is, in most cases what is obvious to someone is not to another person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take [this question][1] as en example. ChrisF commented that the question is off-topic. Is it? Well, as it was at the beginning and with `php` tag, it strongly feels as Stack Overflow or Webmasters.SE related question, which has nothing to do with programming in general. Remove the tag, slightly reformulate the question, and it doesn't seem off-topic any longer (even if I would rather say it belongs more to Webmasters.SE).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question was &quot;How to set different languages for different crawlers in PHP?&quot;, then yes, it would be a Stack Overflow question. As is, it's not the best candidate to be closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even in much more obvious situations, there are still a few reasons to answer anywhere:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Imagine the question belongs to Stack Overflow, and it *will* &amp;nbsp;be migrated, for sure. I have an account on both Stack Overflow and here. Do I really need to wait until the question is migrated, then search for it on SO, and then answer? It's much easier to answer now and, at the same time, to vote to migrate. For the community, it doesn't change anything, except that the question is answered earlier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- I don't answer for reputation. I answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. To help people,&#xD;&#xA;  2. Because I like answering questions related to general programming,&#xD;&#xA;  3. Because some of my answers might be useful for community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It means that there is no reason to not answering a question before it's closed: the answer helps the OP, I enjoy writing the answer (well, I don't enjoy receiving &quot;The answer is closed&quot; notification while writing the answer for the last ten minutes) and the community may still read the question and the answer, since closed questions remain accessible by every user, unless deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If you answer just to get rep, then yes, you may want to avoid doing it on a question which will be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If there is a good answer to a closed question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. It will bring people to Programmers.SE when they search for the same subject on Google,&#xD;&#xA;  2. It will be useful if somebody wants to post a similar question: not only he'll know it's not constructive, too localized or whatsoever, but his question will be already answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What will hurt, is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If people would answer to the old low-quality questions, making them appear on the home page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If the sole purpose of answering a question which will be closed would be to gain reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first point may be a problem, but from what I've seen, the low-quality questions are closed quickly enough for that. The second point is a non-issue, IMO. Most users who post low quality questions rarely accept or upvote answers, and other people won't upvote your answer just because you made an effort answering a closed question: they upvote if your answer is good; if it's good, it's welcome on SE websites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/130355/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7282" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2850" RevisionGUID="17874e4b-a6d2-417d-a9e2-eb20a8bbb599" CreationDate="2012-01-16T14:33:16.267" UserId="47" Comment="more evidence for why we don't need the tag" Text="The [tag:homework] tag is a [meta tag](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/), it adds nothing to the question and can removed without adversely affecting the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I made a start removing the tag from the most recently asked questions and deleting some older closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of this writing there are 22 questions left with the tag so they can be address by editing rather than getting the development team to delete the tag that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that there's agreement that it should be removed feel free to remove it from any question you find.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [Stack Overflow `homework` tag](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/homework) has the following wiki:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Homework means the asker is requesting help with school homework. This lets potential answerers know that they should guide the student in solving the problem, rather than simply showing the complete answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that answers aren't as hard and fast here the chances of posting a &quot;complete&quot; answer are rarer, making this warning unnecessary.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7283" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2851" RevisionGUID="9e57a4ec-25dd-42f0-ad3d-1e3bff55a6b5" CreationDate="2012-01-16T19:53:29.140" UserId="39757" Text="Looking now at the first page of newest questions on Programmers, 8 questions have been downvoted and 9 have been closed (out of 15 questions). I've noticed that this is a problem that plagues this particular Stack Exchange. It makes the site particularly hard to use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Has anyone else noticed this? Does this site just have bad members or is the purpose unclear? What can be done to remedy this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7284" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2851" RevisionGUID="9e57a4ec-25dd-42f0-ad3d-1e3bff55a6b5" CreationDate="2012-01-16T19:53:29.140" UserId="39757" Text="What can be done about bad questions on Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7285" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2851" RevisionGUID="9e57a4ec-25dd-42f0-ad3d-1e3bff55a6b5" CreationDate="2012-01-16T19:53:29.140" UserId="39757" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7286" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2852" RevisionGUID="3b44bbb2-e6ad-48a9-932e-9504695e5aa8" CreationDate="2012-01-16T21:52:21.720" UserId="6605" Text="I see very often some minor edits awaiting validation, including edits that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Spell check of one or two words,&#xD;&#xA;- Remove of one or two typos,&#xD;&#xA;- Add a link to a term,&#xD;&#xA;- Add a single tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I always reject them as being too minor. Sometimes, it fails, displaying a message saying that the edit was accepted meanwhile, which indicates that while I was sure that the edit must be rejected, another high-rep user was convinced that the edit must be accepted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are edits like this valid edits?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If yes, what would be an edit being &quot;too minor&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Spell check is not minor when the mistakes seriously affect the question/answer. If somebody wrote &quot;he have&quot;, it's an error, but it doesn't worth an edit of a long answer, since we still understand what's being said.&#xD;&#xA;- Edit is not minor when it removes several typos (the number of typos being related to the length of the original question/answer).&#xD;&#xA;- Edit is not minor when adding multiple links which are undoubtedly useful, or one link of an extremely high importance (i.e. if the term is ambiguous and is subject to wrong interpretation by a large part of the audience). On the other hand, a link to Wikipedia of a mostly known term isn't worth it.&#xD;&#xA;- Edit is not minor when adding a tag which gives the meaning to the question. For example a simple &quot;php&quot; tag can change a meaning of [the whole question][1]: in one case, it appears off-topic. In other one, it seems valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just don't get the idea that we can receive +2 rep by adding just another tag or correcting one or two typos, compared to the effort to write a question or an answer to receive +5 or +10/+15.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have I misunderstood the &quot;too minor&quot; concept?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/130355/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7287" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2852" RevisionGUID="3b44bbb2-e6ad-48a9-932e-9504695e5aa8" CreationDate="2012-01-16T21:52:21.720" UserId="6605" Text="When can I reject a suggested edit for being minor?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7288" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2852" RevisionGUID="3b44bbb2-e6ad-48a9-932e-9504695e5aa8" CreationDate="2012-01-16T21:52:21.720" UserId="6605" Text="|discussion|editing|suggested-edits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7289" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2853" RevisionGUID="271585b4-9a22-40c5-8254-944c1bfff21d" CreationDate="2012-01-16T21:57:34.253" UserId="47" Text="They are valid edits in the sense that they are making the post better, but are they making the post better enough?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there are spelling mistakes or typos or a missing tag then there's probably something else wrong with the post as well. You have to ask why weren't these other areas addressed at the same time. However, this isn't always the case - an otherwise perfect post *may* just be missing a link to Wikipedia or the canonical reference site for the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have three options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Reject either with the &quot;too minor&quot; response or the &quot;other&quot; with an explanation to the user.&#xD;&#xA;2. Hit the &quot;Accept&quot; button and move on.&#xD;&#xA;3. Hit the &quot;Improve&quot; button and make the other changes yourself. This still gives the editor 2 points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All options are valid and which one you take just depends on the circumstances of the edit. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7290" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2854" RevisionGUID="e7a565fc-95b6-4434-9822-8b50d87592b5" CreationDate="2012-01-17T04:04:17.317" UserId="25936" Text="Well, if there is a trend, it might be [my fault][1]!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Insofar I've rejected only two edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. One that only [removed the automated duplicate notification][2],&#xD;&#xA; 2. A weird one that revised *only* two words, that where referenced in a comment to the question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those where too minor, but obviously also otherwise problematic. But I can't really say I happened upon really minor edits. For argument's sake, here's a few examples I'd consider too minor:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Links that don't add anything valuable, an example would be someone adding Amazon links to [this answer][3].&#xD;&#xA; - Spelling &amp; grammar corrections on a post that has a lot more of such errors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question I would ask myself, if I happened upon those is if they where made in good faith. The Amazon links I would probably reject, but the minor spelling &amp; grammar corrections I would improve, or if lacking the time I would simply approve. To my mind, these edits would be from someone not very confident with his/her English but stll eager to contribute in any way (s)he could, and I don't mind that. But I wouldn't mind anyone rejecting them either, and if such rejection ever made it to Meta, I would defend it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Special cases that I would reject outright, would be minor edits on old posts. If someone is on a badge run for [Strunk &amp; White](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/12/strunk-white) and or [Archaeologist](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/92/archaeologist) and spamming the front page with minor edits, that wouldn't be very nice. Assuming I noticed repeated such edits from the same user, I would flag one of his posts for moderation attention, and continue my own run towards the elusive [Marshal][4] badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for tags: Retagging is possible at a lower rep threshold. If it's an edit that's mostly retagging I'd assume the user was going to do that originally, but just went ahead and capitalized those I's as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recently found out that suggested edits on StackOverflow require approval from two users. To be honest I would prefer that would be the case here as well, only if for the process to be peer reviewed, as is (almost) everything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2588/are-micro-edits-on-new-posts-insignificant&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2816/should-we-reject-edits-that-remove-the-automatic-duplicate-notification&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124109/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-design-patterns/124114#124114&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/94/marshal" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7291" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2854" RevisionGUID="48d1eb99-6082-499e-84ff-bd7aa59a003a" CreationDate="2012-01-17T04:09:48.557" UserId="25936" Comment="added 140 characters in body" Text="Well, if there is a trend, it might be [my fault][1]!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Insofar I've rejected only two edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. One that only [removed the automated duplicate notification][2],&#xD;&#xA; 2. A weird one that revised *only* two words, that where referenced in a comment to the question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those where too minor, but obviously also otherwise problematic. But I can't really say I happened upon really minor edits. For argument's sake, here's a few examples I'd consider too minor:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Links that don't add anything valuable, an example would be someone adding Amazon links to [this answer][3].&#xD;&#xA; - Spelling &amp; grammar corrections on a post that has a lot more of such errors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question I would ask myself, if I happened upon those is if they where made in good faith. The Amazon links I would probably reject, but the minor spelling &amp; grammar corrections I would improve, or if lacking the time I would simply approve. To my mind, these edits would be from someone not very confident with his/her English but stll eager to contribute in any way (s)he could, and I don't mind that. But I wouldn't mind anyone rejecting them either, and if such rejection ever made it to Meta, I would defend it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Special cases that I would reject outright, would be minor edits on old posts. If someone is on a badge run for [Strunk &amp; White](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/12/strunk-white) and or [Archaeologist](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/92/archaeologist) and spamming the front page with minor edits, that wouldn't be very nice. Assuming I noticed repeated such edits from the same user, I would flag one of his posts for moderation attention, and continue my own run towards the elusive [Marshal][4] badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for tags: Retagging is possible at a lower rep threshold. If it's an edit that's mostly retagging I'd assume the user was going to do that originally, but just went ahead and capitalized those I's as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recently found out that suggested edits on StackOverflow [require approval from two users][5]. To be honest I would prefer that would be the case here as well, only if for the process to be peer reviewed, as is (almost) everything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2588/are-micro-edits-on-new-posts-insignificant&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2816/should-we-reject-edits-that-remove-the-automatic-duplicate-notification&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124109/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-design-patterns/124114#124114&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/94/marshal&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/119232/why-cant-i-edit-a-question-answer-after-i-voted-approve-in-review-suggested-edi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7292" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2855" RevisionGUID="aa8e5eec-0f97-4e1d-931c-3c615f94ad35" CreationDate="2012-01-17T04:55:41.103" UserId="25936" Text="Let's see what *you* can do: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Contribute longer answers. You [have][1] [a][2] [few][3] [really][4] [short][5] [ones][6].&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;    This is not a comment on the quality of your answers, only their length. Shorter answers may create the perception that the site is one where you can get quick &amp; casual answers (i.e. a forum).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Contribute on topic questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    4 out of 6 of your questions are closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Actively participate on Meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is your first post here, keep'em coming! Every constructive Meta post makes Programmers a better place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 4. Lurk around the Programmers chat room. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    There are newer users in there asking on how to improve their questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 5. [How to reconcile guidelines, community opinion and moderation][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And some more general tips:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you happen upon an off topic open question, flag it as such immediately. &#xD;&#xA;- If you happen upon a bad question (open or closed), do your best to improve it. If it's beyond improving, don't be afraid to down vote. That will alert other users, mostly via the review page but also users casually browsing the site, and your down vote may lead to the question getting improved by someone else. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a resident question killer, I don't think there is a problem. We certainly don't have &quot;bad&quot; users, and I was kind of annoyed when I first read your question. That said, there is a *mini* plague, but it's not something we can control, at least not directly. Most recent bad questions where migrated (directly or indirectly) from StackOverflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just yesterday I happened upon a question that was somewhat incomprehensible. I voted to close, and left a friendly (?!) comment. The OP responded revealing his frustration that he was down voted across the network. I checked his StackOverflow profile and found out that he had posted the exact same question there. The question was closed, but there where two comments by high-*ish* rep users suggesting Programmers as a better site for the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That would be a case of *indirect* migration. I left them both angry (but polite, I think) messages, pointing out that their comments lead to the question getting closed again, and that what they thought where helpful comments resulted in the OP getting even more frustrated. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of us are battling this mini plague through various means: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Being active on StackOverflow, and hunting down all these friendly suggestions that incorrectly point to Programmers.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Alerting the crowd there for the situation via Meta StackOverflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although at first I though of boycotting Anna Lear's bid on the latest moderation elections on StackOverflow (because I wanted her concentrated here, I don't like sharing), I went on and voted for her in the end just because she would have more direct control over migrations. I did notice the situation getting better, well done Anna.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And all our other mods are doing their best to spam Meta StackOverflow with friendly reminders that Programmers should not be treated as a place where StackOverflow question come to die.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only Programmers specific problem that leads to bad questions I can think of, is that there are quite a few highly voted old questions that currently wouldn't be on topic. Historically Programmers was supposed to be something of an anti-StackOverflow, and many of the posts of that time survive and are amongst the more popular. Some we close, some we leave as is. There is no point in hunting them down, as time goes by they will become less significant by default.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in a few cases, users defended their questions, on Meta or in comment threads, providing some of these old questions as similar to their own. Well, that doesn't happen often enough to be concerning. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are certainly bad days. We [noticed before][8]. But I don't think it's a major problem, we still have quite a few more good days than bad ones. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120265/easter-eggs-as-ip-protection-in-software/120279#120279&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119253/where-to-go-from-here-how-to-improve-learn-more/119293#119293&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122740/whats-the-idiomatic-name-for-a-throwaway-variable/122744#122744&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122740/whats-the-idiomatic-name-for-a-throwaway-variable/122744#122744&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122313/advice-needed-software-development/122323#122323&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122009/developing-a-feature-which-sole-purpose-to-be-taken-out/122069#122069&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2727/are-we-scaring-off-new-users" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7293" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2856" RevisionGUID="999d18cf-ace8-4086-a774-94e07c77b8a9" CreationDate="2012-01-17T04:58:21.460" UserId="7454" Text="As an extension to this previous question - [Should our FAQ contain a list of what's off topic and if so what should that list contain?][1], can we add two categories of questions that are often asked by new users but not on topic :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- homework questions - [recent question][2] / [Recent discussion about homework tag][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specific enough questions can be migrated to [StackOverfow][4]. Vague one like [this one][5] could be reworked or closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- personalized lesson plan / school guidance - [recent question][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same idea as career questions. If it generalized enough, why not. If it's too localized, it's off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-lis&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130468/lottery-program&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/homework&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82462/architecture-model-in-android&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130454/what-are-some-ways-to-get-started-learning-java-and-where-should-i-go-from-ther" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7294" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2856" RevisionGUID="999d18cf-ace8-4086-a774-94e07c77b8a9" CreationDate="2012-01-17T04:58:21.460" UserId="7454" Text="Addendum to off topic themes in the FAQ" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7295" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2856" RevisionGUID="999d18cf-ace8-4086-a774-94e07c77b8a9" CreationDate="2012-01-17T04:58:21.460" UserId="7454" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|homework|school|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7296" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2856" RevisionGUID="5a9dfc24-5467-4abd-a7d1-4bea661d457d" CreationDate="2012-01-17T05:11:23.467" UserId="7454" Comment="more specfic about homework questions" Text="As an extension to this previous question - [Should our FAQ contain a list of what's off topic and if so what should that list contain?][1], can we add two categories of questions that are often asked by new users but not on topic :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;coding homework&quot; questions - [recent question][2] / [Recent discussion about homework tag][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specific enough questions can be migrated to [StackOverfow][4]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- personalized lesson plan / school guidance - [recent question][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same idea as career questions. If it generalized enough, why not. If it's too localized, it's off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-lis&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130468/lottery-program&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/homework&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82462/architecture-model-in-android&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130454/what-are-some-ways-to-get-started-learning-java-and-where-should-i-go-from-ther" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7297" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2854" RevisionGUID="8fd6a13c-50d2-4316-ba88-48d1e0b3a9a6" CreationDate="2012-01-17T05:26:43.843" UserId="25936" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="Well, if there is a trend, it might be [my fault][1]!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Insofar I've rejected only two edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. One that only [removed the automated duplicate notification][2],&#xD;&#xA; 2. A weird one that revised *only* two words, that where referenced in a comment to the question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those where too minor, but obviously also otherwise problematic. But I can't really say I happened upon really minor edits. For argument's sake, here's a few examples I'd consider too minor:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Links that don't add anything valuable, an example would be someone adding Amazon links to [this answer][3].&#xD;&#xA; - Spelling &amp; grammar corrections on a post that has a lot more of such errors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question I would ask myself, if I happened upon those is if they where made in good faith. The Amazon links I would probably reject, but the minor spelling &amp; grammar corrections I would improve, or if lacking the time I would simply approve. To my mind, these edits would be from someone not very confident with his/her English but stll eager to contribute in any way (s)he could, and I don't mind that. But I wouldn't mind anyone rejecting them either, and if such a rejection ever made it to Meta, I would defend it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Special cases that I would reject outright, would be minor edits on old posts. If someone is on a badge run for [Strunk &amp; White](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/12/strunk-white) and or [Archaeologist](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/92/archaeologist) and spamming the front page with minor edits, that wouldn't be very nice. Assuming I noticed repeated such edits from the same user, I would flag one of his posts for moderation attention, and continue my own run towards the elusive [Marshal][4] badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for tags: Retagging is possible at a lower rep threshold. If it's an edit that's mostly retagging I'd assume the user was going to do that originally, but just went ahead and capitalized those I's as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recently found out that suggested edits on StackOverflow [require approval from two users][5]. To be honest I would prefer that would be the case here as well, only if for the process to be peer reviewed, as is (almost) everything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2588/are-micro-edits-on-new-posts-insignificant&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2816/should-we-reject-edits-that-remove-the-automatic-duplicate-notification&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124109/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-design-patterns/124114#124114&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/94/marshal&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/119232/why-cant-i-edit-a-question-answer-after-i-voted-approve-in-review-suggested-edi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7298" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2856" RevisionGUID="9dfba5fb-cd31-4fe4-9cd0-b927a5721d58" CreationDate="2012-01-17T05:27:31.737" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7299" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2856" RevisionGUID="75ed1f87-aecc-4ec6-a328-81875c6f339e" CreationDate="2012-01-17T05:28:20.350" UserId="7454" Comment="added 657 characters in body; edited tags" Text="As an extension to this previous question - [Should our FAQ contain a list of what's off topic and if so what should that list contain?][1], can we add two categories of questions that are often asked by new users but not on topic :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;coding homework&quot; questions - [recent question][2] / [Recent discussion about homework tag][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specific enough questions can be migrated to [StackOverfow][4]. They accept coding homework questions with this politic as the tag description explains :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Homework means the asker is requesting help with school homework. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lets potential answerers know that they should guide the student in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solving the problem, rather than simply showing the complete answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means people shouldn't answer directly a question that looks like homework before migration. But I don't know how to enforce that (in the FAQ ?). Any ideas are welcome on that subject, and may be part of another question if it proves extensive =) (There is an [extensive discussion about how to answer homework questions on Meta-SO][5])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- personalized lesson plan / school guidance - [recent question][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same idea as career questions. If it generalized enough, why not. If it's too localized, it's off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-lis&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130468/lottery-program&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/homework&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130454/what-are-some-ways-to-get-started-learning-java-and-where-should-i-go-from-ther" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7300" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2856" RevisionGUID="75ed1f87-aecc-4ec6-a328-81875c6f339e" CreationDate="2012-01-17T05:28:20.350" UserId="7454" Comment="added 657 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7301" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2857" RevisionGUID="8e9a2936-3f9e-4984-aeab-696936d2465e" CreationDate="2012-01-17T05:30:28.877" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I don't think we need to make a special mention of homework in the FAQ: if it's about a specific implementation, it's off-topic here anyway whether ot not it's homework. If it's about a conceptual problem, it's on-topic here even if it's homework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where askers run into trouble is when they expect people to help them from start to finish without providing anything (or very little) up-front. To that end, I think FAQ covers it already, under [What kind of questions should I *not* ask here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, although it's not directly related to homework tags, I would support making it more explicit that this site is not for questions about specific coded implementations. Something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [and is not about...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * A specific problem you're having with your source code (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which would cover all the homework—and non-homework—questions we get that really ought to have been asked on Stack Overflow first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding Stack Overflow's sanction of the [tag:homework] tag: it's due to [baggage from the time before the Great Meta-tag Culling](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/60422/is-homework-an-exception) that has never been removed. Much like they [hold onto the &quot;Good C++ books&quot; questions and such like grim death](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/112910/do-not-lock-old-questions). Thankfully, while our baggage is great, we don't have to deal with this specific Stack Overflow curiosity." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7302" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2856" RevisionGUID="137961bb-5100-4424-9ecc-1a2d34ee0c56" CreationDate="2012-01-17T05:36:21.413" UserId="7454" Comment="added bold for the two points, as the second one looks lost aside the homework blob" Text="As an extension to this previous question - [Should our FAQ contain a list of what's off topic and if so what should that list contain?][1], can we add two categories of questions that are often asked by new users but not on topic :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **&quot;coding homework&quot; questions** - [recent question][2] / [Recent discussion about homework tag][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specific enough questions can be migrated to [StackOverfow][4]. They accept coding homework questions with this politic as the tag description explains :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Homework means the asker is requesting help with school homework. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lets potential answerers know that they should guide the student in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solving the problem, rather than simply showing the complete answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means people shouldn't answer directly a question that looks like homework before migration. But I don't know how to enforce that (in the FAQ ?). Any ideas are welcome on that subject, and may be part of another question if it proves extensive =) (There is an [extensive discussion about how to answer homework questions on Meta-SO][5])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **personalized lesson plan / school guidance** - [recent question][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same idea as career questions. If it generalized enough, why not. If it's too localized, it's off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-lis&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130468/lottery-program&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/homework&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130454/what-are-some-ways-to-get-started-learning-java-and-where-should-i-go-from-ther" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7303" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2857" RevisionGUID="fab9793a-1d8a-49ab-ab29-41577d578d88" CreationDate="2012-01-17T05:36:32.080" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 471 characters in body" Text="I don't think we need to make a special mention of homework in the FAQ: if it's about a specific implementation, it's off-topic here anyway whether ot not it's homework. If it's about a conceptual problem, it's on-topic here even if it's homework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where askers run into trouble is when they expect people to help them from start to finish without providing anything (or very little) up-front. To that end, I think FAQ covers it already, under [What kind of questions should I *not* ask here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding Stack Overflow's sanction of the [tag:homework] tag: it's due to [baggage from the time before the Great Meta-tag Culling](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/60422/is-homework-an-exception) that has never been removed. Much like they [hold onto the &quot;Good C++ books&quot;-esque questions and such like grim death](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/112910/do-not-lock-old-questions). Thankfully, while our baggage is great, we don't have to deal with this specific Stack Overflow curiosity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, I'd rather we treat homework questions on their merits like we do every other question. It's not important how the asker came to ask the question, but whether they define the problem clearly and succinctly and provided enough information and background on what they've done so far in order to help them. In reality, we get a *ton* of questions that are worse quality than many homework questions, and we don't make a special dispensation for them, so why homework specifically?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, although it's not directly related to homework tags, I would support making it more explicit that this site is not for questions about specific coded implementations. Something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [and is not about...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * A specific problem you're having with your source code (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which would cover all the homework—and non-homework—questions we get that really ought to have been asked on Stack Overflow first.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7304" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2856" RevisionGUID="ca9fdeb9-2522-4e1f-8258-f28528562c4e" CreationDate="2012-01-17T05:57:19.897" UserId="7454" Comment="added 98 characters in body" Text="As an extension to this previous question - [Should our FAQ contain a list of what's off topic and if so what should that list contain?][1], can we add two categories of questions that are often asked by new users but not on topic :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **&quot;coding homework&quot; questions** - [recent question][2] / [Recent discussion about homework tag][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specific enough questions can be migrated to [StackOverfow][4]. They accept coding homework questions with this politic as the tag description explains :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Homework means the asker is requesting help with school homework. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lets potential answerers know that they should guide the student in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solving the problem, rather than simply showing the complete answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means people shouldn't answer directly a question that looks like homework before migration. But I don't know how to enforce that (in the FAQ ?). Any ideas are welcome on that subject, and may be part of another question if it proves extensive =) (There is an [extensive discussion about how to answer homework questions on Meta-SO][5])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **personalized lesson plan / school guidance** - `What courses should I follow/ What should I start with to learn X with my specific background` - [recent question][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same idea as career questions. If it generalized enough, why not. If it's too localized, it's off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-lis&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130468/lottery-program&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/homework&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130454/what-are-some-ways-to-get-started-learning-java-and-where-should-i-go-from-ther" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7305" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2858" RevisionGUID="b523d1ea-c01f-4bee-8d02-f177fe37849c" CreationDate="2012-01-17T06:04:13.613" UserId="226" Text="We're a month behind, but that's no excuse to not celebrate our first birthday. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Following the discussion [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2677/programmers-birthday-celebration), it looks like we have most of a proposal in place that we can go to the community team at Stack Exchange with. I'm going to summarize what we have so far here and pose a couple more questions that need sorting out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Idea**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can do a &quot;topic of the week&quot; contest where users old and new alike ask questions about a topic (TBD). Every question that meets the criteria below grants an entry into a random draw at the end of the week that will determine 3 lucky prize (TBD) winners.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Criteria**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each qualifying question must:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- meet the site guidelines established in [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com);&#xD;&#xA;- be positively scored (&gt; 0);&#xD;&#xA;- be tagged with the pre-determined tags appropriate for the topic;&#xD;&#xA;- be posted while the contest is running. Older questions don't count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Topics**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can propose topics in the answers here. The highest voted one will be chosen. Naturally, topics must also fit the scope of Programmers, so no code golf please. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Prizes**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each good question you post will increase your chances of winning. For the prizes, I'm thinking we can offer a choice of a book (perhaps related to the topic) or a development tool in the, say, $50 ballpark. I haven't pitched this price point to Stack Exchange, but I know similarly priced prizes have done well in the past on other sites so it seems like a reasonable starting point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the topic is chosen, I'd like to come up with 5 books and/or tools to choose from that are related and offer the 3 winners to choose from that list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mark Trapp suggested in comments on the original discussion post, we may also do a bountyathon a la [Gaming's bounty giveaway](http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/3506/omg-its-the-holiday-bounty-giveaway).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Next Steps**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you agree with this? Anything you'd change? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please let us know what you think and propose ideas for topics and prizes that would fit well with what we do here on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7306" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2858" RevisionGUID="b523d1ea-c01f-4bee-8d02-f177fe37849c" CreationDate="2012-01-17T06:04:13.613" UserId="226" Text="Belated birthday celebration proposal" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7307" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2858" RevisionGUID="b523d1ea-c01f-4bee-8d02-f177fe37849c" CreationDate="2012-01-17T06:04:13.613" UserId="226" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7308" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2859" RevisionGUID="81e3cc6f-0571-48da-a52f-0032ccb9bb6d" CreationDate="2012-01-17T06:43:00.400" UserId="25936" Text="What I don't like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. A predetermined topic might encourage people to abuse voting on said topic questions, &#xD;&#xA; 2. More often than not, questions are brought up to shape by reviewers, either by commenting or editing. Awarding the OP seems unfair to them. &#xD;&#xA; 3. Randomly choosing the winners goes against the peer review philosophy.&#xD;&#xA; 4. Weekly contest with cash prizes wouldn't be viable as a repeat event. I'd prefer a repeat event, or something that would last longer. We don't get that many questions per week, and with a predetermined concept I don't think we could realistically expect more than a few eligible questions, and stellar questions will be no more than a couple. &#xD;&#xA; 5. I've posted 1 question for every 22.6 answers, my chances of winning are pretty slim. I'm clearly more of an answerer than an asker, and I might be encouraged to post a question just to win the sweet prize.&#xD;&#xA; 6. No development tools. They belong on StackOverflow, we want books :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, I propose we blatantly copy the [Super User birthday contest][1]. As is, I wouldn't change anything. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.superuser.com/2011/08/19/super-users-2nd-birthday-super-contest/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7309" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2854" RevisionGUID="66c1f030-b6ad-4bf9-b403-582632a4baeb" CreationDate="2012-01-17T06:47:44.027" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body" Text="Well, if there is a trend, it might be [my fault][1]!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Insofar I've rejected only two edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. One that only [removed the automated duplicate notification][2],&#xD;&#xA; 2. A weird one that revised *only* two words, that where referenced in a comment to the question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those where too minor, but obviously also otherwise problematic. But I can't really say I happened upon really minor edits. For argument's sake, here's a few examples I'd consider too minor:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Links that don't add anything valuable, an example would be someone adding Amazon links to [this answer][3].&#xD;&#xA; - Spelling &amp; grammar corrections on a post that has a lot more of such errors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question I would ask myself, if I happened upon those is if they where made in good faith. The Amazon links I would probably reject, but the minor spelling &amp; grammar corrections I would improve, or if lacking the time I would simply approve. To my mind, these edits would be from someone not very confident with his/her English but stll eager to contribute in any way (s)he could, and I don't mind that. But I wouldn't mind anyone rejecting them either, and if such a rejection ever made it to Meta, I would defend it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Special cases that I would reject outright, would be minor edits on old posts. If someone is on a badge run for [Strunk &amp; White](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/12/strunk-white) and / or [Archaeologist](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/92/archaeologist) and spamming the front page with minor edits, it wouldn't be very nice. Assuming I noticed repeated such edits from the same user, I would flag one of his posts for moderation attention, and continue my own run towards the elusive [Marshal][4] badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for tags: Retagging is possible at a lower rep threshold. If it's an edit that's mostly retagging I'd assume the user was going to do that originally, but just went ahead and capitalized those I's as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recently found out that suggested edits on StackOverflow [require approval from two users][5]. To be honest I would prefer that would be the case here as well, only if for the process to be peer reviewed, as is (almost) everything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2588/are-micro-edits-on-new-posts-insignificant&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2816/should-we-reject-edits-that-remove-the-automatic-duplicate-notification&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124109/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-design-patterns/124114#124114&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/94/marshal&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/119232/why-cant-i-edit-a-question-answer-after-i-voted-approve-in-review-suggested-edi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7310" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2859" RevisionGUID="b380a30c-a827-4c32-9013-5875a281e4aa" CreationDate="2012-01-17T08:03:59.050" UserId="25936" Comment="added 318 characters in body" Text="What I don't like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. A predetermined topic might encourage people to abuse voting on said topic questions, &#xD;&#xA; 2. More often than not, questions are brought up to shape by reviewers, either by commenting or editing. Awarding the OP seems unfair to them. &#xD;&#xA; 3. Randomly choosing the winners goes against the peer review philosophy.&#xD;&#xA; 4. Weekly contest with cash prizes wouldn't be viable as a repeat event. I'd prefer a repeat event, or something that would last longer. We don't get that many questions per week, and with a predetermined concept I don't think we could realistically expect more than a few eligible questions, and stellar questions will be no more than a couple. &#xD;&#xA; 5. I've posted 1 question for every 22.6 answers, my chances of winning are pretty slim. I'm clearly more of an answerer than an asker, and I might be encouraged to post a question just to win the sweet prize.&#xD;&#xA; 6. No development tools. They belong on StackOverflow, we want books :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, I propose we blatantly copy the [Super User birthday contest][1]. As is, I wouldn't change anything. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Addendum: The less obvious point of the answer is to serve as down vote fodder. If you love the &quot;contest of the week&quot; idea, please down vote this to oblivion and help set up the contest sooner, as down voting this answer will serve as documentation that the community took notice and chose to dismiss my concerns. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.superuser.com/2011/08/19/super-users-2nd-birthday-super-contest/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7311" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2860" RevisionGUID="68000592-a16a-41eb-a92e-c6213c3f3e83" CreationDate="2012-01-17T09:50:06.630" UserId="43243" Text="Can Programmers.SE be extended to include more features. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is there an API available?&#xD;&#xA; 2. If available, What can be done with the API?&#xD;&#xA; 3. What languages does it support?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7312" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2860" RevisionGUID="68000592-a16a-41eb-a92e-c6213c3f3e83" CreationDate="2012-01-17T09:50:06.630" UserId="43243" Text="Can programmers.SE be extended?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7313" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2860" RevisionGUID="68000592-a16a-41eb-a92e-c6213c3f3e83" CreationDate="2012-01-17T09:50:06.630" UserId="43243" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7314" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2861" RevisionGUID="c5111441-6db8-4936-ae75-78eaf3d9eaeb" CreationDate="2012-01-17T10:00:01.300" UserId="47" Text="What do you want to do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is an API - [Stack Apps](http://stackapps.com/) with which you can write **read-only** applications.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People have also written Greasemonkey scripts to extend the UI - also listed on the Apps site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Translation isn't currently available, but I would be very surprised if there hadn't been discussions about this as it's been raised several times on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7315" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2860" RevisionGUID="3befb826-ff84-4a9e-96b3-129ec842d110" CreationDate="2012-01-17T13:12:52.550" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7316" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2855" RevisionGUID="5e004c08-3dae-436c-82d6-b983565e5de3" CreationDate="2012-01-17T14:00:07.577" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="Let's see what *you* can do: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Contribute longer answers. You [have][1] [a][2] [few][3] [really][4] [short][5] [ones][6].&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;    This is not a comment on the quality of your answers, only their length. Shorter answers may create the perception that the site is one where you can get quick &amp; casual answers (i.e. a forum).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Contribute on topic questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    4 out of 6 of your questions are closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Actively participate on Meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is your first post here, keep'em coming! Every constructive Meta post makes Programmers a better place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 4. Lurk around the Programmers chat room. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    There are newer users in there asking on how to improve their questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 5. [How to reconcile guidelines, community opinion and moderation][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And some more general tips:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you happen upon an off topic open question, flag it as such immediately. &#xD;&#xA;- If you happen upon a bad question (open or closed), do your best to improve it. If it's beyond improving, don't be afraid to down vote. That will alert other users, mostly via the review page but also users casually browsing the site, and your down vote may lead to the question getting improved by someone else. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a resident question killer, I don't think there is a problem. We certainly don't have &quot;bad&quot; users, and I was kind of annoyed when I first read your question. That said, there is a *mini* plague, but it's not something we can control, at least not directly. Most recent bad questions where migrated (directly or indirectly) from StackOverflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just yesterday I happened upon a question that was somewhat incomprehensible. I voted to close, and left a friendly (?!) comment. The OP responded revealing his frustration that he was down voted across the network. I checked his StackOverflow profile and found out that he had posted the exact same question there. The question was closed, but there where two comments by high-*ish* rep users suggesting Programmers as a better site for the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That would be a case of *indirect* migration. I left them both angry (but polite, I think) messages, pointing out that their comments lead to the question getting closed again, and that what they thought were helpful comments resulted in the OP getting even more frustrated. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of us are battling this mini plague through various means: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Being active on StackOverflow, and hunting down all these friendly suggestions that incorrectly point to Programmers.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Alerting the crowd there for the situation via Meta StackOverflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although at first I though of boycotting Anna Lear's bid on the latest moderation elections on StackOverflow (because I wanted her concentrated here, I don't like sharing), I went on and voted for her in the end just because she would have more direct control over migrations. I did notice the situation getting better, well done Anna.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And all our other mods are doing their best to spam Meta StackOverflow with friendly reminders that Programmers should not be treated as a place where StackOverflow question come to die.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only Programmers specific problem that leads to bad questions I can think of, is that there are quite a few highly voted old questions that currently wouldn't be on topic. Historically Programmers was supposed to be something of an anti-StackOverflow, and many of the posts of that time survive and are amongst the more popular. Some we close, some we leave as is. There is no point in hunting them down, as time goes by they will become less significant by default.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in a few cases, users defended their questions, on Meta or in comment threads, providing some of these old questions as similar to their own. Well, that doesn't happen often enough to be concerning. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are certainly bad days. We [noticed before][8]. But I don't think it's a major problem, we still have quite a few more good days than bad ones. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120265/easter-eggs-as-ip-protection-in-software/120279#120279&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119253/where-to-go-from-here-how-to-improve-learn-more/119293#119293&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122740/whats-the-idiomatic-name-for-a-throwaway-variable/122744#122744&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122740/whats-the-idiomatic-name-for-a-throwaway-variable/122744#122744&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122313/advice-needed-software-development/122323#122323&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122009/developing-a-feature-which-sole-purpose-to-be-taken-out/122069#122069&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2727/are-we-scaring-off-new-users" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7317" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2856" RevisionGUID="1cbac33d-f37e-4417-938f-66955599dec4" CreationDate="2012-01-17T14:14:34.267" UserId="7454" Comment="added 1074 characters in body" Text="As an extension to this previous question - [Should our FAQ contain a list of what's off topic and if so what should that list contain?][1], can we add two categories of questions that are often asked by new users but not on topic :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **&quot;coding homework&quot; questions** - [recent question][2] / [Recent discussion about homework tag][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specific enough questions can be migrated to [StackOverfow][4]. They accept coding homework questions with this politic as the tag description explains :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Homework means the asker is requesting help with school homework. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lets potential answerers know that they should guide the student in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solving the problem, rather than simply showing the complete answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means people shouldn't answer directly a question that looks like homework before migration. But I don't know how to enforce that (in the FAQ ?). Any ideas are welcome on that subject, and may be part of another question if it proves extensive =) (There is an [extensive discussion about how to answer homework questions on Meta-SO][5])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **personalized lesson plan / school guidance** - `What courses should I follow/ What should I start with to learn X with my specific background` - [recent question][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same idea as career questions. If it generalized enough, why not. If it's too localized, it's off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also close to this point :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;[and is not about...] what language you should learn next, including&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which technology is better&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But people seems to miss the point that &quot;part of a language&quot; is about the same as a language itself, and will mostly end up with a generic answer that looks like &quot;You should learn everything about this language&quot;. For example those questions :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What do I need to learn of C# for ASP.NET?][7] &#xD;&#xA;- [What do you need to learn to become professional ASP.NET programmer?][8] &#xD;&#xA;- [Should I be a professional in C# programming in order to build good web applications using ASP.NET?][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ends up with the same generic answer : &quot;Be the best as you can in C#&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-lis&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130468/lottery-program&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/homework&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130454/what-are-some-ways-to-get-started-learning-java-and-where-should-i-go-from-ther&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130080/what-do-i-need-to-learn-of-c-for-asp-net&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44701/what-do-you-need-to-learn-to-become-professional-asp-net-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62170/should-i-be-a-professional-in-c-programming-in-order-to-build-good-web-applicat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7318" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2858" RevisionGUID="4b454b39-9c8e-4a77-be54-f710c85148a8" CreationDate="2012-01-17T14:28:45.087" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/159281002588540928" />
  <row Id="7319" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2862" RevisionGUID="faee65a1-93c3-444d-8a83-9be46f61a205" CreationDate="2012-01-17T14:39:36.700" UserId="43243" Text="Why can't there be a live home-work session or a practical real-time application development session to give a feel to new-comers of what actually development is. This could also help in the imparting best industry practices at an early time" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7320" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2862" RevisionGUID="faee65a1-93c3-444d-8a83-9be46f61a205" CreationDate="2012-01-17T14:39:36.700" UserId="43243" Text="Can there be a live home-work session on programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7321" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2862" RevisionGUID="faee65a1-93c3-444d-8a83-9be46f61a205" CreationDate="2012-01-17T14:39:36.700" UserId="43243" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7322" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2863" RevisionGUID="76830d13-bc95-4766-aac2-421c548bccd5" CreationDate="2012-01-17T14:42:31.127" UserId="17561" Text="In my view there is a disparity between what Programmers actually is, and what people perceive it to be. This is possibly at the root of confusion on StackOverflow when migrating. I've seen SO more as a syntax zone than anything and Programmers for higher level discussions than raw code. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, that's a pretty wide zone and the impression I get is that there are limits to those discussions, not recognised by users on SO, for example, hence the migrations. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One other point is that I have noticed the large number of closed and what I would consider bad/questions lately. My view is there are two issues here a) new users and b) users who do not have English as a mother language. I'm not sure there's any easy solution to either issue. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7323" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2864" RevisionGUID="7f1d3102-0750-4c38-a4f6-2a2316a3c8a3" CreationDate="2012-01-17T14:48:13.273" UserId="47" Text="This could be something to organise in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On DIY we have a regular [Project Update Thursday](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/schedule/export/111/188) where people come along and talk about their latest DIY projects (or not).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If people think that this might work, then we'll need to come up with some guidelines on:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* how often the sessions were run&#xD;&#xA;* how long the sessions would be&#xD;&#xA;* what sort of topics to discuss&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;etc." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7324" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2865" RevisionGUID="26e21b9e-38d7-4ef9-9bc5-ae843c9a2965" CreationDate="2012-01-17T15:46:01.783" UserId="45417" Text="I'm new to Programmers and asked a question that was considered off topic according to the Programmer's FAQ -- unfortunate cause I was directed to Programmers from StackOverflow (see my comment in the question [here][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, my question was downvoted multiple times. Is there anyway to recover my reputation considering the circumstances?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130527/how-can-i-find-programming-work-in-south-america" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7325" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2865" RevisionGUID="26e21b9e-38d7-4ef9-9bc5-ae843c9a2965" CreationDate="2012-01-17T15:46:01.783" UserId="45417" Text="Is there anyway to recover from multiple downvotes on an off-topic question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7326" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2865" RevisionGUID="26e21b9e-38d7-4ef9-9bc5-ae843c9a2965" CreationDate="2012-01-17T15:46:01.783" UserId="45417" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7327" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2866" RevisionGUID="7614da5e-15d1-45a9-96e2-67231dc43bcb" CreationDate="2012-01-17T15:48:28.783" UserId="47" Text="If you delete the question and then perform a recalculation: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/reputation (click on the button at the bottom of the page) you'll get your reputation back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can only do this once in any 24 hour period." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7328" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2866" RevisionGUID="76886657-e830-4c55-9f8f-0744d6f2eff3" CreationDate="2012-01-17T16:55:07.533" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="If you delete the question and then perform a recalculation: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/reputation (click on the button at the bottom of the page) you'll get your reputation back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can only do this once in any 24 hour period.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can only delete a question 48 hours after it was closed. You should have got a message stating this. After 48 hours you'll be able to delete and do a reputation recalculation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7329" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2865" RevisionGUID="658e5c51-fa7a-4521-bc23-420532199749" CreationDate="2012-01-18T04:20:07.917" UserId="31260" Comment="minor spelling cleanup" Text="I'm new to Programmers and asked a question that was considered off topic according to the Programmer's FAQ -- unfortunate cause I was directed to Programmers from StackOverflow (see my comment in the question [here][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, my question was downvoted multiple times. Is there any way to recover my reputation considering the circumstances?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130527/how-can-i-find-programming-work-in-south-america" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7330" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2865" RevisionGUID="658e5c51-fa7a-4521-bc23-420532199749" CreationDate="2012-01-18T04:20:07.917" UserId="31260" Comment="minor spelling cleanup" Text="Is there any way to recover from multiple downvotes on an off-topic question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7331" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2867" RevisionGUID="0bf8f5ea-3d38-4bc7-ae83-051cc0f4fbef" CreationDate="2012-01-18T08:07:35.473" UserId="43527" Text="Flagging has definitely become over-zealous.  It happens on programmers, on codereview, and on Stack Overflow.  And the same user names appear over and over among the closers.  In other words, there are a small group of users on these sites who are taking delight in closing whatever questions they don't like, instead of just downvoting them.  Given the large number of IT-related sites in the stack exchange network, it can be difficult for a new user to decide exactly which is the right one, and discouraging to see that the question that they need an answer to has been closed, often after less than an hour.  I find it sad when I see a really interesting question, that's maybe a little different from the everyday Stack Overflow or Programmers questions, that has been closed before the discussion really got going.  And often, the reasons given for closure are just not good reasons, or not even true.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, closing a question should be more difficult, and downvoting a question should be encouraged more.  Perhaps users could get only a limited number of &quot;closure votes&quot; per day, so that they think more carefully about what they close - and frankly I think the limit should be just one vote.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand the need to keep &quot;on-topic&quot; questions within the purview of the experts here; but isn't that the whole point of the tag system?  If I'm an expert in XYZ, I'll look for questions on Stack Overflow with the XYZ tag, and maybe questions on Programmers with the XYZ tag, and so on.  I know that each of these sites will have questions which I am not expert enough to answer; that's why I search by tag.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7332" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2868" RevisionGUID="5d52e000-8b7d-4058-bfa7-1618db40d497" CreationDate="2012-01-18T13:46:57.733" UserId="1338" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130676/starting-a-new-project-in-python-and-qt-where-can-i-find-a-good-code-layout-for&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7333" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2868" RevisionGUID="5d52e000-8b7d-4058-bfa7-1618db40d497" CreationDate="2012-01-18T13:46:57.733" UserId="1338" Text="Can anyone explain what's wrong with this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7334" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2868" RevisionGUID="5d52e000-8b7d-4058-bfa7-1618db40d497" CreationDate="2012-01-18T13:46:57.733" UserId="1338" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7335" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2869" RevisionGUID="048aff2f-2ec6-475c-87a1-82a95bde38e8" CreationDate="2012-01-18T14:16:39.770" UserId="12436" Text="You do seem to be asking for a solution for how to best architect a python application and how best to deploy it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's too broad a question and can't be asked since architecture and deployment depends on the content of the project." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7336" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2870" RevisionGUID="b96ebc75-c8ab-443c-808b-a43d6ad4fb45" CreationDate="2012-01-18T14:27:18.727" UserId="41381" Text=" 1. As your question is now, it is asking for build/deployment management solutions, which is extremely broad.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Do you intend to use a solution that someone would provide, or do you just want to see it as an example for something you want to create, those should be separate questions and if you only want one of those make it more clear. also you are asking for general advice/suggestions, which should be yet another question, which would have to be asked carefully or it would be closed because the answers it invites are not ones that are wanted on this site.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Your question shows no research effort that you have tried to find a good solution, you say you have done research, but the question doesn't show that. Edit your question to explain that you tried using X to manage deployments, but you didn't like how it requires Y or doesn't work well with Z. You could also list some solutions you have found and ask which is the better.&#xD;&#xA; 4. Listing a bit about your target architecture would help, if you are renting from a hosting service that is different than using a converted desktop turned server, which is different than having your own clustered/distributed servers.&#xD;&#xA; 5. Your accept rate is not helping you get quality answers to begin with, going back to other questions and accepting an answer to raise your accept % will help you in the long run." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7337" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2868" RevisionGUID="c99893ae-025b-4463-8720-ac080a426bee" CreationDate="2012-01-18T14:27:49.117" UserId="1338" Comment="added 1614 characters in body" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130676/starting-a-new-project-in-python-and-qt-where-can-i-find-a-good-code-layout-for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit for ZaphodBeeblebrox: &#xD;&#xA;ok, so one starts a new project, from scratch. Empty dir. This project must be laid out so that the programmers can work with it and test it, it must sport most likely something like the libraries the project is going to be dependent on and that will be added to the delivered package, it must have a set of scripts and techniques to make the program compile on the target platforms one ships to, and so on. This is such a common problem, but never in my career of programming I've met the &quot;proper way to do it&quot;. Plenty of books on proper code design and testing and code style, but never I found an example of actual industrial-level deployment from source to product. Everyone reimplements his own solution, oftenmost a huge hack which stays together with spit. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I simply don't believe this is a problem that is not documented or explained everywhere, and I also think that it's an important and well presented issue that any programmer that is involved in shipping an application, and not just coding it, must face potentially at a very complex level, since a single error may mean inability to compile on a new platform, to test, shipping the wrong files and so on. It is a programming question that most likely has a well definite answer, which can range from &quot;The best practices are defined in this book, or this website&quot; to &quot;this package which is publicly accessible uses a strategy which is the recommended best practice for such application&quot;. I can accept if nobody answers because nobody knows the answer, but I can't accept that the question is not fit for this site.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7338" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2868" RevisionGUID="5b452bf4-21b3-4bb2-98fe-4c8135273a9f" CreationDate="2012-01-18T14:32:09.983" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 29 characters in body" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130676/starting-a-new-project-in-python-and-qt-where-can-i-find-a-good-code-layout-for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ok, so one starts a new project, from scratch. Empty dir. This project must be laid out so that the programmers can work with it and test it, it must sport most likely something like the libraries the project is going to be dependent on and that will be added to the delivered package, it must have a set of scripts and techniques to make the program compile on the target platforms one ships to, and so on. This is such a common problem, but never in my career of programming I've met the &quot;proper way to do it&quot;. Plenty of books on proper code design and testing and code style, but never I found an example of actual industrial-level deployment from source to product. Everyone reimplements his own solution, oftenmost a huge hack which stays together with spit. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I simply don't believe this is a problem that is not documented or explained everywhere, and I also think that it's an important and well presented issue that any programmer that is involved in shipping an application, and not just coding it, must face potentially at a very complex level, since a single error may mean inability to compile on a new platform, to test, shipping the wrong files and so on. It is a programming question that most likely has a well definite answer, which can range from &quot;The best practices are defined in this book, or this website&quot; to &quot;this package which is publicly accessible uses a strategy which is the recommended best practice for such application&quot;. I can accept if nobody answers because nobody knows the answer, but I can't accept that the question is not fit for this site.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7339" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2871" RevisionGUID="c2d3d163-c9e4-4c83-92bd-86657848df15" CreationDate="2012-01-18T18:30:57.023" UserId="31260" Text="As one of close-voters I can share what would definitely stop me from voting back then - or make me vote to reopen now that question is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given your comments in this question it feels quite doable:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **I did my research and I am still open on this question since years, and nobody wants to give me a decent example to know how this is done in an appropriate way. All the repos I found generally are either made by people who does not care about quality (it's just a bunch of really hacked up scripts) nor platform transferability, nor addressing the different phases (development, testing, deployment, installing). In alternative, they give you fully CI/IDE solutions that are unreachable by a single developer.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, let's see...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. _All the repos I found..._  &#xD;&#xA;   - List these repos in your question.  &#xD;&#xA;   - If list is very long, list a few that looked best to you.  &#xD;&#xA;   - If it's very long and you can't select a few, just list them all in a &quot;references&quot; section at the bottom ([it's not really hard to do](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/108298/31260))&#xD;&#xA;1. _...either 1) made by people who does not care about quality nor 2) platform transferability, nor 3) addressing the different phases 4) In alternative, they give you fully CI/IDE solutions that are unreachable by a single developer_  &#xD;&#xA;  - Above makes your requirements - just list these in the question.  &#xD;&#xA;  - If you not only list reqs but also clarify which particular requirements aren't met by particular repos in previous list I mentioned then I would **upvote** your question instead of closing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...well - that's it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7340" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2870" RevisionGUID="f6c483ff-fb74-4dc4-83e9-e47cf679822c" CreationDate="2012-01-18T21:22:12.657" UserId="41381" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text=" 1. As your question is now, it is asking for build/deployment management solutions, which is extremely broad.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Do you intend to use a solution that someone would provide, or do you just want to see it as an example for something you want to create, those should be separate questions and if you only want one of those make it more clear. also you are asking for general advice/suggestions, which should be yet another question, which would have to be asked carefully or it would be closed because the answers it invites are not ones that are wanted on this site.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Your question shows no research effort that you have tried to find a good solution, you say you have done research, but the question doesn't show that. Edit your question to explain that you tried using X to manage deployments, but you didn't like how it requires Y or doesn't work well with Z. You could also list some solutions you have found and ask which is the better.&#xD;&#xA; 4. Listing a bit about your target architecture would help, if you are renting from a hosting service that is different than using a converted desktop turned server, which is different than having your own clustered/distributed servers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. Your accept rate is not helping you get quality answers to begin with, going back to other questions and accepting an answer to raise your accept % will help you in the long run." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7341" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2872" RevisionGUID="e87e2abb-4bc9-4546-a036-6fd518a05f7d" CreationDate="2012-01-19T03:35:09.087" UserId="39178" Text="Opinion can be divided on many things, and even when people agree on principal they may have valid reasons to disagree in other ways.  That's human nature, and differing experiences which result simply in differing points of view. It becomes hard though where the edge cases exist, and where we see the most polarized positions which make it harder in some ways for the moderators to do their thing. If however there is a  system in place to deal with such issues, then it all comes out in the wash so to speak.  My concern is that often the questions can be seen as subjectively generalized, and also subjectively specialized. It might not be very clear where you can ask such questions without getting voted out from every place your question goes to, even when there will be a large group of people who actually want to know the answer, or to participate in some way.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I weighed into this issue when I found that this [question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130645/what-you-should-do-if-your-junior-did-not-adopt-your-suggestion) had been closed.  It seemed a little premature and on the surface, given my reputation points are quite low at this time, I am unable to see the stuff that goes on behind the scenes so my understanding of why a question I found to be pertinent and - in the view of some - barely on topic, why the question would be closed.  It even prompted me to create a [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2242/allowable-topics-on-programmersse) about it, where I hope we can as a community come to a general consensus about what to do in these cases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is - as has been pointed out already - a system via this meta to deal with closures and making a case to reopen questions.  It just seems to me that this question v answers format doesn't really work so well when attempting to solicit opinion and engage in a healthy debate about an issue.  The chat seems better suited to a more conversational approach to dealing with problems, but really limits how much you can type in a single post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I am hoping to achieve if at all possible is a little more transparency.  Moderators work together it seems, so it isn't like a single individual arbitrarily shuts a question down, but from the view of the question, when your reputation points are quite low, you don't get to see all these goings on.  Perhaps that is for the better for the most part, however it does leave many feeling frustrated and perhaps a little disillusioned about the process.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps what is needed is a lower reputation to allow people to vote on closures (not necessarily with an actual right to close the issue mind you). Perhaps a short period of notification before the closure with a link to an issue chat or a question on the meta.  I don't have a ready answer, and the question is whether any of this would actually devalue the site as a whole.  Something we certainly wouldn't want to happen, although I feel that adding a little more transparency seems IMHO a small price to pay to ensure that the reputation of the site doesn't suffer unnecessarily. I wouldn't dream for a minute of abandoning this site for reddit, as I feel this format works much better and is much cleaner.  Such responses are I think more of a knee-jerk reaction born more of frustration than anything else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As all programmers probably know, small problems left unchecked become ticking time bombs later on.  In this case however, we are talking about a sociological issue which may be considered a minor problem yet I believe highlights an underlying concern that perhaps could be addressed for the betterment of this site. My understanding is that ProgrammersSE was split from StackOverflow due to similar dissatisfaction, and while creating a new stack exchange isn't necessarily a bad thing, it might be overkill for the edge cases that could possibly be dealt with in a more sensitive manner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Side Note:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Re: my last paragraph, I don't really believe the moderators are&#xD;&#xA;    insensitive.  I think you guys do a terrific job on the whole. I'd just like to see &#xD;&#xA;    less questions shifted when they arguably might be considered more of an edge case,&#xD;&#xA;    and perhaps the better option is to err: on the side of caution and not close without &#xD;&#xA;    searching for other options." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7342" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2872" RevisionGUID="c772749d-3a85-4f54-83c9-254e158dc383" CreationDate="2012-01-19T05:40:38.227" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 26 characters in body" Text="Opinion can be divided on many things, and even when people agree on principal they may have valid reasons to disagree in other ways.  That's human nature, and differing experiences which result simply in differing points of view. It becomes hard though where the edge cases exist, and where we see the most polarized positions which make it harder in some ways for the moderators to do their thing. If however there is a  system in place to deal with such issues, then it all comes out in the wash so to speak.  My concern is that often the questions can be seen as subjectively generalized, and also subjectively specialized. It might not be very clear where you can ask such questions without getting voted out from every place your question goes to, even when there will be a large group of people who actually want to know the answer, or to participate in some way.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I weighed into this issue when I found that this [question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130645/what-you-should-do-if-your-junior-did-not-adopt-your-suggestion) had been closed.  It seemed a little premature and on the surface, given my reputation points are quite low at this time, I am unable to see the stuff that goes on behind the scenes so my understanding of why a question I found to be pertinent and - in the view of some - barely on topic, why the question would be closed.  It even prompted me to create a [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2242/allowable-topics-on-programmersse) about it, where I hope we can as a community come to a general consensus about what to do in these cases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is - as has been pointed out already - a system via this meta to deal with closures and making a case to reopen questions.  It just seems to me that this question v answers format doesn't really work so well when attempting to solicit opinion and engage in a healthy debate about an issue.  The chat seems better suited to a more conversational approach to dealing with problems, but really limits how much you can type in a single post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I am hoping to achieve if at all possible is a little more transparency.  Moderators work together it seems, so it isn't like a single individual arbitrarily shuts a question down, but from the view of the question, when your reputation points are quite low, you don't get to see all these goings on.  Perhaps that is for the better for the most part, however it does leave many feeling frustrated and perhaps a little disillusioned about the process.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps what is needed is a lower reputation to allow people to vote on closures (not necessarily with an actual right to close the issue mind you). Perhaps a short period of notification before the closure with a link to an issue chat or a question on the meta.  I don't have a ready answer, and the question is whether any of this would actually devalue the site as a whole.  Something we certainly wouldn't want to happen, although I feel that adding a little more transparency seems IMHO a small price to pay to ensure that the reputation of the site doesn't suffer unnecessarily. I wouldn't dream for a minute of abandoning this site for reddit, as I feel this format works much better and is much cleaner.  Such responses are I think more of a knee-jerk reaction born more of frustration than anything else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As all programmers probably know, small problems left unchecked become ticking time bombs later on.  In this case however, we are talking about a sociological issue which may be considered a minor problem yet I believe highlights an underlying concern that perhaps could be addressed for the betterment of this site. My understanding is that ProgrammersSE was split from StackOverflow due to similar dissatisfaction, and while creating a new stack exchange isn't necessarily a bad thing, it might be overkill for the edge cases that could possibly be dealt with in a more sensitive manner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Side Note:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Re: my last paragraph, I don't really believe the moderators are insensitive.  I think you guys do a terrific job on the whole. I'd just like to see less questions shifted when they arguably might be considered more of an edge case, and perhaps the better option is to err: on the side of caution and not close without searching for other options." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7343" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2873" RevisionGUID="e996aed6-b092-4576-a6ca-90cc4c143d96" CreationDate="2012-01-19T12:38:22.610" UserId="160" Text="Win xp sp 3 FF 9, ABP disabled&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just got prompted with the &quot;are you human?&quot; page but the captchas were not visible" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7344" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2873" RevisionGUID="e996aed6-b092-4576-a6ca-90cc4c143d96" CreationDate="2012-01-19T12:38:22.610" UserId="160" Text="Am not seeing CAPTCHA codes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7345" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2873" RevisionGUID="e996aed6-b092-4576-a6ca-90cc4c143d96" CreationDate="2012-01-19T12:38:22.610" UserId="160" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7346" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2873" RevisionGUID="b973d02a-a1cb-44d1-bde7-112bd82f7365" CreationDate="2012-01-19T12:38:50.783" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7347" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2837" RevisionGUID="72af8ab4-7752-4a24-8a00-fe0adcd9a5f6" CreationDate="2012-01-19T14:28:55.070" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/160005819444903937" />
  <row Id="7348" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2874" RevisionGUID="22e62840-44ca-49e0-ab04-7918f9e615dc" CreationDate="2012-01-19T20:33:28.840" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="We have two separate questions asking whether you need to know/like/enjoy math to be a good programmer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4680/is-it-possible-to-become-a-good-programmer-if-you-dont-like-math   &#xD;&#xA;Asked in the Antedisciplining period&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89158/do-you-have-to-be-good-at-math-to-be-a-good-programmer#question   &#xD;&#xA;&quot;Lovingly&quot; migrated to us from Stack Overflow a few months ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From my standpoint, these look like 1:1 duplicates and could be merged. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any reason to have both of these questions? Is there some exclusivity to either question that I'm not seeing which would warrant having both around?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7349" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2874" RevisionGUID="22e62840-44ca-49e0-ab04-7918f9e615dc" CreationDate="2012-01-19T20:33:28.840" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Can we merge the two &quot;Do you have to like math?&quot; questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7350" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2874" RevisionGUID="22e62840-44ca-49e0-ab04-7918f9e615dc" CreationDate="2012-01-19T20:33:28.840" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|merge-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7351" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2850" RevisionGUID="3daf078e-6181-42bb-bc33-d1a0efafb022" CreationDate="2012-01-19T20:35:24.017" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|tags|posse|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7352" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2875" RevisionGUID="ac2038bb-094b-42e1-bae3-fc49b1cfc5e5" CreationDate="2012-01-19T21:15:33.733" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Good news, everyone!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everyone's favorite Programmers mod, [Anna Lear](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/226/anna-lear), has joined the [Stack Exchange Team](http://stackexchange.com/about/team) as a Community Manager, where she'll be working her magic across the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anna's been an active user here since the beginning, and a dedicated moderator since our first elections way back in January of 2011.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately for us, this news means she'll be stepping down as a moderator here on Programmers (but hopefully she'll still be stopping by frequently anyway!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We all wish Anna the best of luck on her new role, and thank her for her service here!&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7353" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2875" RevisionGUID="ac2038bb-094b-42e1-bae3-fc49b1cfc5e5" CreationDate="2012-01-19T21:15:33.733" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Congratulations, Anna Lear!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7354" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2875" RevisionGUID="ac2038bb-094b-42e1-bae3-fc49b1cfc5e5" CreationDate="2012-01-19T21:15:33.733" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|featured|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7355" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2876" RevisionGUID="2729d8c8-b565-4cca-abe5-b9dc11a6fa0e" CreationDate="2012-01-19T21:27:38.727" UserId="47" Text="As it's almost a year since our first election there *probably* won't be any special arrangements made to replace Anna. What will *probably* happen is that an extra moderator space will be up for election when the election does come round.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So start thinking whether you want to be part of the moderation team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is an informed guess on my part and could well be superseded by official announcements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**NOTE:** Under normal circumstances being a moderator is a lifetime appointment, you carry on until you don't want to do the job any more. There have been occasions where moderators have been asked to step down." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7356" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2876" RevisionGUID="d12a041a-a24f-4964-bbed-530fab846bf4" CreationDate="2012-01-19T22:19:16.317" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="As it's almost a year since our first election there *probably* won't be any special arrangements made to replace Anna. What will *probably* happen is that an extra moderator space will be up for election when the election does come round.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So start thinking whether you want to be part of the moderation team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is an informed guess on my part and could well be superseded by official announcements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**NOTE:** Under normal circumstances being a moderator is a lifetime appointment, you carry on until you don't want to do the job any more or get hired by Stack Exchange. There have been occasions where moderators have been asked to step down." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7357" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2877" RevisionGUID="52865d57-427d-4ef5-a318-894a6db5657d" CreationDate="2012-01-19T23:11:17.727" UserId="226" Text="Thanks for the kind words, Mark.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll definitely still be dropping by to answer questions and the like. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7358" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2875" RevisionGUID="818c9ed8-5aaf-4b13-b105-f83f9b4ffc4a" CreationDate="2012-01-20T02:28:55.597" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/160187016724754435" />
  <row Id="7359" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2878" RevisionGUID="642db3ae-956f-4470-a843-fb9c8bc6db7f" CreationDate="2012-01-20T02:45:46.757" UserId="1996" Text="Wow!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Congratulations Anna!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anna was the best programmers.se moderator **by a long shot.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;She always tempered her powers as a moderator, and bothered to try to understand why people posted what they did.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anna - You're leaving big shoes to fill. I'm probably speaking for many others, but I sincerely hope that somebody with comparable wisdom and prudence fills your shoes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In closing, thanks for the effort!&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7360" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2879" RevisionGUID="ad5354d8-44fe-4ba6-b0f4-ff718a208055" CreationDate="2012-01-20T07:41:51.720" UserId="25936" Text="I've spent some time reading the highly voted answers, and I think the questions should be merged. Questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Both have accepted answers. Which one gets the green shiny tick? &#xD;&#xA; 2. Several answers are substandard, iterating what's already been said on earlier questions, plain wrong, or otherwise bellow what we usually expect from answers. I'm assuming, since there's a total of 53 answers, some will be deleted? &#xD;&#xA; 3. Can we migrate both to Stack Overflow? I know _you_ want to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And how can we prevent the following Stack Overflow questions of getting migrated here? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/157354/is-mathematics-necessary-for-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/137550/is-programming-a-subset-of-math&#xD;&#xA;- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/500519/do-programmers-inherently-love-mathematics&#xD;&#xA;- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1114191/how-do-i-think-about-math-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1876336/in-what-areas-of-programming-is-a-knowledge-of-mathematics-helpful&#xD;&#xA;- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2436867/what-is-the-the-relation-between-programming-and-mathematics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sure there are others. They seem off topic for Stack Overflow, and apart from the last one they are all open. Could you please be so kind as to point the Stack Overflow mods to them and ask them to close (if they are indeed off topic)? I'm a bit afraid to flag, in case that leads them here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7361" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2871" RevisionGUID="ee3eab4f-0c6e-4c01-8342-bb20650df87b" CreationDate="2012-01-20T08:24:24.477" UserId="31260" Comment="added 399 characters in body" Text="* note the answer update below&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As one of close-voters I can share what would definitely stop me from voting back then - or make me vote to reopen now that question is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given your comments in this question it feels quite doable:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **I did my research and I am still open on this question since years, and nobody wants to give me a decent example to know how this is done in an appropriate way. All the repos I found generally are either made by people who does not care about quality (it's just a bunch of really hacked up scripts) nor platform transferability, nor addressing the different phases (development, testing, deployment, installing). In alternative, they give you fully CI/IDE solutions that are unreachable by a single developer.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, let's see...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. _All the repos I found..._  &#xD;&#xA;   - List these repos in your question.  &#xD;&#xA;   - If list is very long, list a few that looked best to you.  &#xD;&#xA;   - If it's very long and you can't select a few, just list them all in a &quot;references&quot; section at the bottom ([it's not really hard to do](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/108298/31260))&#xD;&#xA;1. _...either 1) made by people who does not care about quality nor 2) platform transferability, nor 3) addressing the different phases 4) In alternative, they give you fully CI/IDE solutions that are unreachable by a single developer_  &#xD;&#xA;  - Above makes your requirements - just list these in the question.  &#xD;&#xA;  - If you not only list reqs but also clarify which particular requirements aren't met by particular repos in previous list I mentioned then I would **upvote** your question instead of closing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...well - that's it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above applies only to old version of the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Revision 1: Starting a new project in python and qt. Where can I find...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/130676/1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Since then it has been revised and I think improved sufficiently for reopening.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My downvote and vote to close are revoked at rev 2. At rev 3, I upvoted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7362" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2880" RevisionGUID="f528ee60-0b8b-4656-9a1f-4c05f9cd47c6" CreationDate="2012-01-20T11:07:48.493" UserId="40327" Text="----&#xD;&#xA;**Moderators Diary**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Questions they **Correct**, &#xD;&#xA;- Answers they **Inspect**,&#xD;&#xA;- Improvements they **Direct**, &#xD;&#xA;- Based on the **Subject**, &#xD;&#xA;- Ultimately making the website **Perfect**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;*I have been an active member for the past two months and I really like the quality of posts that is maintained [here][1] and thats' because of **good moderators.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From my experience in these two months, many questions have her touch of quality as **corrections or answers** and I really appreciate her for her _**dedication**_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Anna - Congratulations and Best of luck for your new role at Stack Exchange Team!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7363" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2881" RevisionGUID="65434f24-bec2-4f1b-a483-67b31aa0fe0e" CreationDate="2012-01-20T11:36:27.417" UserId="34364" Text="Lately, I've noticed that a lot of people have been answering (for lack of a better term) stupidly. Since I am such a lucky person, I can't find an example right now, but I'll give you an idea of what I'm seeing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - sarcasm&#xD;&#xA; - troll&#xD;&#xA; - trying to be funny&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if, technically, they answer the question, should they still be flagged? Or should I just let it go?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7364" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2881" RevisionGUID="65434f24-bec2-4f1b-a483-67b31aa0fe0e" CreationDate="2012-01-20T11:36:27.417" UserId="34364" Text="Should &quot;Stupid&quot; Answers be Flagged?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7365" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2881" RevisionGUID="65434f24-bec2-4f1b-a483-67b31aa0fe0e" CreationDate="2012-01-20T11:36:27.417" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7366" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2882" RevisionGUID="152a0e61-560d-401f-8ccd-7f2b33789e53" CreationDate="2012-01-20T11:43:20.853" UserId="47" Text="There are three standard reasons for declining a flag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ignoring the second for now, the first is used in cases where someone has flagged rather than down-voting or editing the post to correct the inaccuracies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The third would clearly cover your second case - tolling - so flag away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other two - sarcasm and jokes - are (to me) less clear cut. However, if they answer the question then you shouldn't flag (see point 1 above). If they don't answer the question then flag away." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7367" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2881" RevisionGUID="664226e0-36a5-47b0-b8be-c71a61989035" CreationDate="2012-01-20T11:43:28.450" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7368" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2882" RevisionGUID="660543e8-427a-4bd4-95e5-55263f060431" CreationDate="2012-01-20T11:46:32.430" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="There are three standard reasons for declining a flag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ignoring the second for now, the first is used in cases where someone has flagged rather than down-voting or editing the post to correct the inaccuracies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The third would clearly cover your second case - trolling - so flag away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other two - sarcasm and jokes - are (to me) less clear cut. However, if they answer the question then you shouldn't flag (see point 1 above). If they don't answer the question then flag away." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7369" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2882" RevisionGUID="c64232a3-d053-4103-adf4-9323cc45617a" CreationDate="2012-01-20T11:53:03.130" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="There are three standard reasons for declining a flag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ignoring the second for now, the first is used in cases where someone has flagged rather than down-voting or editing the post to correct the inaccuracies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The third would clearly cover your second case - trolling - so flag away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other two - sarcasm and jokes - are (to me) less clear cut. However, if they answer the question then you shouldn't flag (see point 1 above). If they don't answer the question then flag away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To take your example from the comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Q. What do I do when X happens?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A. Nothing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could be a valid answer - however it's not a useful answer as it doesn't explain anything. It's just a statement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case a flag would **not** be valid. Just comment and/or down-vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Take them out for a beer and see what happens.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is clearly **not** and answer and should be flagged. If I saw a flag on that I would delete the answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7370" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2882" RevisionGUID="97c4e815-54aa-4bf8-96a2-36fb39495fc1" CreationDate="2012-01-20T11:59:28.813" UserId="47" Comment="more nuanced answer" Text="There are three standard reasons for declining a flag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ignoring the second for now, the first is used in cases where someone has flagged rather than down-voting or editing the post to correct the inaccuracies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The third would clearly cover your second case - trolling - so flag away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other two - sarcasm and jokes - are (to me) less clear cut. However, if they answer the question then you shouldn't flag (see point 1 above). If they don't answer the question then flag away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To take your example from the comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Q. What do I do when X happens?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A. Nothing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could be a valid answer - however it's not a useful answer as it doesn't explain anything. It's just a statement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case you should really just comment and/or down-vote. However, if the poster shows no sign of coming back and making it an answer then flag it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Take them out for a beer and see what happens.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is clearly **not** and answer and should be flagged. If I saw a flag on that I would delete the answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7371" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2365" RevisionGUID="8d01f39b-fa5a-4388-a642-a5e2a78c42f1" CreationDate="2012-01-20T13:47:18.977" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Typos" Text="While it sucks we can't get them blacklisted, I'm pretty sure we've already ruled out the &quot;nuke the tags&quot; and &quot;use a dummy tag&quot; options, and we've already had stabs at disambiguating the tags (without enumerating every single question):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Iteration the first: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/work-job-career-development-employment-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Iteration the second:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Aaronaught's answer on http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While those questions started with thinking we could merge everything into career and sort out the rest, in both iterations, the idea of merging them into one giant supercrap tag was considered to be worse than leaving the tags as they are while we sort through and disamiguate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Nuke the tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nuking the tag seems to be the worst of these options: while we'd have lower number of questions with onerous tags on them, we'd have several hundred questions with no career-related tag floating out there, without any way to track them. It &quot;solves&quot; the problem of the tag being available to users &lt; 1,500 rep, but it doesn't actually deal with the questions or tag them correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Disambiguate the tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We already have lists of tags that need dealing with: the tag pages. We need people to use their best judgement while working through those tags to clean them up. That's what we're currently doing. Manually relisting all the questions in the tags just to avoid a blacklist seems to me to be a non-starter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Rename the tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rebecca mentioned in her comment, having [please-remove-this-tag] doesn't seem to be a great user experience either, and I don't see how synonymizing tags to it would be any less disruptive to users. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we can just rename [jobs] and [career] (which have been used interchangeably anyway), it'd get people to stop using those tags while still leaving us with the questions to deal with, but it's still not ideal and has its own set of problems: namely that [please-remove-this-tag] becomes the most-used tag, being on about 1 out of every 10 existing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a bit bikesheddy, but calling it [please-remove-this-tag] seems to be counterproductive: if people see the tag and have no idea about the disambiguation process, they'll do what the tag says: remove it. It becomes a slower version of the &quot;nuke the tags&quot; option. Not sure what else it could be called to clue people into it being a tag you shouldn't use and you shouldn't just remove without replacing it with one of the approved career-related tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;We have a problem with 1,300 questions that's going to take many manhours and months to fix whether they're called [career], [jobs], [please-remove-this-tag], or [untagged]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these are our only options, disambiguating the tags on the fly—as we've been doing—still seems to be the least onerous of the three. I'd be okay with renaming the tags to some master crap tag and working through that tag in the same manner as we've been doing, but I don't see how that's any less disruptive to the user experience than just blacklisting [career] and [jobs].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Addendum&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Talking with Aaronaught about the Seasoned Advice cleanups, they were only working with 150-200 questions, which is a lot of questions, but a fraction of the problem set we have. It is, however, close to the number of [jobs] questions we currently have: 245. There are also 92 [jobs] questions tagged with [career].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we did the rename *just* for [jobs] for now, we'd at least collapse this problem down to one tag. Removing the 92 questions from the [career] pile would bring the total number questions left to be dealt with through only disambiguation  down to 1,000." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7372" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2813" RevisionGUID="49f4b6a4-e34e-458c-84c5-e42578512a8a" CreationDate="2012-01-20T16:46:20.870" UserId="25936" Comment="added 430 characters in body" Text="[tag:software] questions that should probably be closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/100551/will-this-referral-code-scheme-work&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16596/software-to-collect-keystroke-data&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57653/registering-in-the-ios-developer-program-as-a-minor&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56979/create-software-without-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55666/how-do-you-name-brand-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54487/whats-the-best-way-of-marketing-to-programmers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48100/which-skills-would-you-expect-and-appreciate-in-a-junior-software-engineer (tagged career + software, kill, kill, destroy)&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47963/recommendations-for-a-web-based-help-system&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46965/how-do-big-companies-of-software-developers-check-for-bugs-in-thier-programs&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46434/why-is-it-that-software-is-still-easily-pirated-today&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81919/is-there-a-source-for-user-opinions-on-commercial-enterprise-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72967/i-want-to-create-a-software-company-what-are-the-basic-things-that-i-should-kno&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63602/entry-into-software-field-after-7-years-gap (tagged career + software, kill, kill, destroy)&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40134/information-on-small-business-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67054/work-division-horizontal-vs-vertical&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40593/do-you-use-mathematica-during-the-software-development-process&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20476/why-is-it-so-hard-to-get-people-to-pay-for-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24002/program-to-create-diagram-for-database&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2932/why-is-free-software-good-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14705/do-you-use-mind-mapping-software-for-solving-programming-problems&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43752/where-do-i-begin-when-dealing-with-my-first-corporate-client&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll keep updating the list as I go through the tag, all of the above got my close vote for one reason or the other. Everyone please review and:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Try to salvage, or&#xD;&#xA; 2. Flag / Vote to close&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please do not vote to migrate, most of the questions are really old and there is no point in migrating them on StackOverflow, or anywhere else. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7376" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2813" RevisionGUID="102bf914-4f11-46d6-b6c9-7ead2b2c0a2f" CreationDate="2012-01-20T17:36:59.977" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1177 characters in body" Text="[tag:software] questions that should probably be closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/100551/will-this-referral-code-scheme-work&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16596/software-to-collect-keystroke-data&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57653/registering-in-the-ios-developer-program-as-a-minor&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56979/create-software-without-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55666/how-do-you-name-brand-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54487/whats-the-best-way-of-marketing-to-programmers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48100/which-skills-would-you-expect-and-appreciate-in-a-junior-software-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47963/recommendations-for-a-web-based-help-system&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46965/how-do-big-companies-of-software-developers-check-for-bugs-in-thier-programs&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46434/why-is-it-that-software-is-still-easily-pirated-today&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81919/is-there-a-source-for-user-opinions-on-commercial-enterprise-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72967/i-want-to-create-a-software-company-what-are-the-basic-things-that-i-should-kno&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63602/entry-into-software-field-after-7-years-gap &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40134/information-on-small-business-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67054/work-division-horizontal-vs-vertical&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40593/do-you-use-mathematica-during-the-software-development-process&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20476/why-is-it-so-hard-to-get-people-to-pay-for-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24002/program-to-create-diagram-for-database&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2932/why-is-free-software-good-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14705/do-you-use-mind-mapping-software-for-solving-programming-problems&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43752/where-do-i-begin-when-dealing-with-my-first-corporate-client&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64653/looking-for-a-truly-fast-mandelbrot-set-generator-to-show-my-daughter&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17434/the-useful-tools-for-windows-device-driver-developers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39122/post-commit-code-review-tools&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39829/how-to-sell-distribute-my-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41678/how-to-implement-software-for-my-vehicle&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46200/qa-manual-tester-career-progression &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14705/do-you-use-mind-mapping-software-for-solving-programming-problems&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66673/measuring-the-reliance-of-an-enterprise-upon-software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll keep updating the list as I go through the tag, all of the above got my close vote for one reason or the other. Everyone please review and:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Try to salvage, or&#xD;&#xA; 2. Flag / Vote to close&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please do not vote to migrate, most of the questions are really old and there is no point in migrating them on StackOverflow, or anywhere else. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Done.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've gone through each and every one of the questions. The only open ones still tagged [tag:software] are the ones in this list. They all got _my_ close vote, but of course I'm not assuming they will be closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will revisit the list in a couple of weeks, and clean up all the remaining open questions. And then we can discuss what to do with the closed ones. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators (and everyone, really), please review the list." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7378" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2884" RevisionGUID="e00148e8-af3f-4b12-85dc-fbefa0cfd7cf" CreationDate="2012-01-20T19:37:52.133" UserId="399" Text="Are you using HTTPS-Everywhere?  This has been known to cause problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Specific problem and fix found:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; HTTPS-Everywhere forces the use of the secure reCAPTCHA API. The problem with this is the invalid certificate used; specifically, it is expired as of 09-05-04 13:32:04 (GMT).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This can be worked around by navigating to https://api-secure.recaptcha.net/ and adding a permanent exception for the certificate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tested on Firefox 4 final on Ubuntu 10.10 to http://superuser.com/captcha.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Courtesy of [Hello71](http://meta.superuser.com/users/36565/hello71) on [Super User's meta](http://meta.superuser.com/a/2460/42458)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7379" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2885" RevisionGUID="730f6981-5240-46ca-bc45-826b6c3283b7" CreationDate="2012-01-20T21:49:39.847" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="After 2.5 weeks of no objections or attempts to salvage the questions, I went ahead and did the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Merged&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What are some handy tools in Windows that makes programmers life easy?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26076/what-are-some-handy-tools-in-windows-that-makes-programmers-life-easy) &amp;rarr; [What are the must have development tools for Windows](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1913/what-are-the-must-have-development-tools-for-windows)&#xD;&#xA;* [What are the symptoms, events or actions of a software death cycle?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25181/what-are-the-symptoms-events-or-actions-of-a-software-death-cycle) &amp;rarr; [What are the warning signs of impending doom to watch out for on a project?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1371/what-are-the-warning-signs-of-impending-doom-to-watch-out-for-on-a-project)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What are .NET's #starlibs?][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [What are must have tools for web development?][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the worst software bug in history?][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [What are some handy tools in Windows that makes programmers life easy?][4]&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the biggest software security vulnerabilty you've personally discovered?][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next step is to work through [Yannis's list of close candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2813/8): we will be closing questions that are off-topic, not constructive, or too localized as written. After a month, they will be deleted. So now's the time to save any questions there with heroic edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60303/what-are-nets-starlibs&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19408/what-are-must-have-tools-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26076/what-are-some-handy-tools-in-windows-that-makes-programmers-life-easy&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5168/whats-the-biggest-software-security-vulnerabilty-youve-personally-discovered" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7380" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2886" RevisionGUID="be37fcb3-5ce1-41ca-8f89-72c60290cb4a" CreationDate="2012-01-20T22:31:05.707" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="So one of the major problems we have on Programmers is the proliferation of bad tags. We've had a number of [discussions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/tags) and [posse requests](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/posse) for different tags, but killing a tag—when it's even possible—tends to be incredibly ad hoc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, based on the recent [software tag cleanup](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2779/what-can-be-done-about-the-remaining-closed-questions-in-the-software-tag), I'd like to propose a more structured cleanup process for tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 1: determine a tag needs to die&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Create a question here, tagged with [meta-tag:tags], that identifies the tag for cleanup and why it's bad for the site. The community will decide based on that discussion if a cleanup is needed or if there's a different way to handle the tag (like, for example, a merge or a synonym).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 2: create a cleanup notice for the tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once a tag is identified as needing to die, a moderator will create a new question that starts the cleanup. The ground rules of the cleanup would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* One cleanup notice active at a time&#xD;&#xA;* If a question in the tag is closed as anything other than &quot;exact duplicate&quot;, has less than 20 score, and has been closed for a month or more, it can be deleted at any time&#xD;&#xA;* If a question's been closed as an exact duplicate, it'll be listed as a &quot;merge candidate&quot; in the cleanup notice.&#xD;&#xA;* If a question is closed and has a score of 20 or higher, it'll be listed as a &quot;deletion candidate&quot; in the cleanup notice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once this post notice is created, a two-week cleanup timer begins.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 3: cleaning up the tags, identifying close candidates, and the last call for heroic edits&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;During the two-week cleanup period, the community will be tasked with doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Cleaning up the tags: if a question is on-topic for the site, it needs to be revised and retagged with more meaningful tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Identifying close candidates: if a tagged question just slipped through the cracks and needs to be closed, it needs to be listed as a close candidate on the cleanup notice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. For any tagged closed question or close candidate, the cleanup period is the last chance to save them with heroic edits: consolidate lists into canonical answers and flag duplicate answers for deletion and substantially improve the quality of the question. If an attempt to save a question has been made, flag the question and list it as a &quot;saved question&quot; on the cleanup notice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 4: cleanup aftermath&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the two-week cleanup period:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* any questions marked saved will be reviewed and reopened if the edits have, in fact, substantially improved the question and addressed the original reasons why the question was closed&#xD;&#xA;* any deletion candidates not saved will be deleted&#xD;&#xA;* any merge candidates not saved will be merged&#xD;&#xA;* any close candidates not saved will be reviewed by moderators and closed if found to be off-topic, not constructive, too localized, not real questions, or exact duplicates of other questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any questions closed during the cleanup will stick around for a month to give one final chance to save them. If they haven't been reopened after that, they'll be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Wrap up and feedback&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is pretty close to what we've been doing for other tag cleanups, just in a more structured manner that keeps everyone in the loop about what's going to happen at any specific time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think? What concerns do you have? Are there specific implementation details that need tweaking?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7381" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2886" RevisionGUID="be37fcb3-5ce1-41ca-8f89-72c60290cb4a" CreationDate="2012-01-20T22:31:05.707" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Request for comment: structured tag cleanups" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7382" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2886" RevisionGUID="be37fcb3-5ce1-41ca-8f89-72c60290cb4a" CreationDate="2012-01-20T22:31:05.707" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|featured|moderation|tags|posse|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7383" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2886" RevisionGUID="cf4347a0-a052-43c8-be99-34b3563e09fa" CreationDate="2012-01-20T22:37:42.560" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 43 characters in body" Text="So one of the major problems we have on Programmers is the proliferation of bad tags. We've had a number of [discussions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/tags) and [posse requests](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/posse) for different tags, but killing a tag—when it's even possible—tends to be incredibly ad hoc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, based on the recent [software tag cleanup](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2779/what-can-be-done-about-the-remaining-closed-questions-in-the-software-tag), I'd like to propose a more structured cleanup process for tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 1: determine a tag needs to die&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Create a question here, tagged with [meta-tag:tags], that identifies the tag for cleanup and why it's bad for the site. The community will decide based on that discussion if a cleanup is needed or if there's a different way to handle the tag (like, for example, a merge or a synonym).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 2: create a cleanup notice for the tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once a tag is identified as needing to die, a moderator will create a new meta-discussion question tagged [meta-tag:featured] that starts the cleanup. The ground rules of the cleanup would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* One cleanup notice active at a time&#xD;&#xA;* If a question in the tag is closed as anything other than &quot;exact duplicate&quot;, has less than 20 score, and has been closed for a month or more, it can be deleted at any time&#xD;&#xA;* If a question's been closed as an exact duplicate, it'll be listed as a &quot;merge candidate&quot; in the cleanup notice.&#xD;&#xA;* If a question is closed and has a score of 20 or higher, it'll be listed as a &quot;deletion candidate&quot; in the cleanup notice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once this post notice is created, a two-week cleanup timer begins.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 3: cleaning up the tags, identifying close candidates, and the last call for heroic edits&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;During the two-week cleanup period, the community will be tasked with doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Cleaning up the tags: if a question is on-topic for the site, it needs to be revised and retagged with more meaningful tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Identifying close candidates: if a tagged question just slipped through the cracks and needs to be closed, it needs to be listed as a close candidate on the cleanup notice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. For any tagged closed question or close candidate, the cleanup period is the last chance to save them with heroic edits: consolidate lists into canonical answers and flag duplicate answers for deletion and substantially improve the quality of the question. If an attempt to save a question has been made, flag the question and list it as a &quot;saved question&quot; on the cleanup notice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 4: cleanup aftermath&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the two-week cleanup period:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* any questions marked saved will be reviewed and reopened if the edits have, in fact, substantially improved the question and addressed the original reasons why the question was closed&#xD;&#xA;* any deletion candidates not saved will be deleted&#xD;&#xA;* any merge candidates not saved will be merged&#xD;&#xA;* any close candidates not saved will be reviewed by moderators and closed if found to be off-topic, not constructive, too localized, not real questions, or exact duplicates of other questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any questions closed during the cleanup will stick around for a month to give one final chance to save them. If they haven't been reopened after that, they'll be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Wrap up and feedback&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is pretty close to what we've been doing for other tag cleanups, just in a more structured manner that keeps everyone in the loop about what's going to happen at any specific time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think? What concerns do you have? Are there specific implementation details that need tweaking?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7384" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2886" RevisionGUID="294006a9-f82b-40e2-8b0b-da16cc9777d5" CreationDate="2012-01-20T23:28:58.187" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/160504112939679744" />
  <row Id="7385" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2887" RevisionGUID="13e8ffb5-1e6d-4947-a86f-3d9bdec5725c" CreationDate="2012-01-20T23:35:21.343" UserId="32353" Text="I've been looking through some of the questions, and a lot of them just have a bad tag, but aren't otherwise noteworthy.  So why &quot;heroic&quot; edit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would prefer waiting a little longer before deleting the closed questions - if a &quot;deleter&quot; hits the questions before an &quot;editor&quot; gets there then there's nothing to edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any worries about spamming the front page?  Any guidance on that?  (Note that throttling edits just gives the &quot;deleters&quot; an edge if there is a race)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7386" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2888" RevisionGUID="52006745-5c80-4bd1-87cd-4c25a2808b9b" CreationDate="2012-01-21T00:21:38.337" UserId="4" Text="I like it, generally, but Step 1 might be refined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps we could prioritize with a single question here on meta? Someone (you or another mod, I'd assume) posts a question asking for the bad tags. This question should be featured. Every answer consists of a single bad tag, a reason why it's bad, and a proposal to properly clean it up (remove it, suggestions for possible replacements, etc.). Comments on each answer can be used to discuss if the tag is actually bad, improvements to how to clean it up, and so on. Everyone votes on the answers/tags. At some point in time, the top voted tag (which would represent the most important tag to clean up) would be deleted and copied into its own question for questions, status, and clarification, and this question would also be featured.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This prevents a number of meta questions exclusively about &quot;X tag is bad&quot; and probably makes it much easier to prioritize tags to clean up. Steps 2-4 happen just as you described. When the clean-up is complete, the question created in Step 1 gets closed for &quot;archival&quot; (I suppose is a good analogy)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7387" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2888" RevisionGUID="2e76ba6c-fe57-4fc5-9040-91e54fd1e71d" CreationDate="2012-01-21T01:02:05.930" UserId="4" Comment="added 354 characters in body" Text="I like it, generally, but Step 1 might be refined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps we could prioritize with a single question here on meta? Someone (you or another mod, I'd assume) posts a question asking for the bad tags. This question should be featured. Every answer consists of a single bad tag, a reason why it's bad, and a proposal to properly clean it up (remove it, suggestions for possible replacements, etc.). Comments on each answer can be used to discuss if the tag is actually bad, improvements to how to clean it up, and so on. Everyone votes on the answers/tags. At some point in time, the top voted tag (which would represent the most important tag to clean up) would be deleted and copied into its own question for questions, status, and clarification, and this question would also be featured.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This prevents a number of meta questions exclusively about &quot;X tag is bad&quot; and probably makes it much easier to prioritize tags to clean up. Steps 2-4 happen just as you described. When the clean-up is complete, the tag-specific question created in Step 1 gets closed for &quot;archival&quot; (I suppose is a good analogy).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another advantage of having a per-tag question during the cleanup promotes discussing particular questions. In the event that there's an individual question that needs to be discussed, it can be posted as an answer, voted on, and discussed using comments to try to decide if and how to make it a good question or if it's not salvageable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7388" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2888" RevisionGUID="7d4740e2-2444-4740-8e49-08bc38f5ea62" CreationDate="2012-01-21T19:43:52.500" UserId="4" Comment="added 448 characters in body" Text="I like it, generally, but Step 1 might be refined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps we could prioritize with a single question here on meta? Someone (you or another mod, I'd assume) posts a question asking for the bad tags. This question should be featured. Every answer consists of a single bad tag, a reason why it's bad, and a proposal to properly clean it up (remove it, suggestions for possible replacements, etc.). Comments on each answer can be used to discuss if the tag is actually bad, improvements to how to clean it up, and so on. Everyone votes on the answers/tags. At some point in time, the top voted tag (which would represent the most important tag to clean up) would be deleted and copied into its own question for questions, status, and clarification, and this question would also be featured.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the comments, Yannis Rizos suggests not deleting the &quot;answer&quot; in the organization question until after the cleanup. This would help make sure that the reason for the clean up is captured in its original intent. Of course, the content of the discussion and key points should be captured and moved into the cleanup-specific question. Once the cleanup is done, that would be the point where you delete the question in the organization question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This prevents a number of meta questions exclusively about &quot;X tag is bad&quot; and probably makes it much easier to prioritize tags to clean up. Steps 2-4 happen just as you described. When the clean-up is complete, the tag-specific question created in Step 1 gets closed for &quot;archival&quot; (I suppose is a good analogy).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another advantage of having a per-tag question during the cleanup promotes discussing particular questions. In the event that there's an individual question that needs to be discussed, it can be posted as an answer, voted on, and discussed using comments to try to decide if and how to make it a good question or if it's not salvageable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7394" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2600" RevisionGUID="15e94c0e-92ae-46a9-bfc4-ef62f486b034" CreationDate="2012-01-22T09:36:02.860" UserId="37" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|search|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7395" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2890" RevisionGUID="2d504412-8473-4c1a-bc8d-e5a3fe1de458" CreationDate="2012-01-22T09:36:32.437" UserId="37" Text="I suspect a font issue, since the code is identical, but apparently fixed one way or the other." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7396" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2891" RevisionGUID="6b058e21-ef5b-4d10-93fe-53ddfe0dacff" CreationDate="2012-01-22T12:34:04.067" UserId="9589" Text="In the [Stack Exchange Podcast #06][1] (at the end) they talk about the role of a new SE &quot;community evangelism team&quot;. Is this what a &quot;community manager&quot; does? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/se-podcast-06/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7397" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2891" RevisionGUID="9558cdc0-7e22-4ddf-87a0-664532a931fb" CreationDate="2012-01-22T13:12:15.643" UserId="9589" Comment="removed question mark" Text="In the [Stack Exchange Podcast #06][1] (at the end) they talk about the role of a new SE &quot;community evangelism team&quot;. (Not sure if this is the same as what a &quot;community manager&quot; does)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/se-podcast-06/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7398" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2892" RevisionGUID="ddec1d93-3943-4109-b8ff-9d5a8be15793" CreationDate="2012-01-22T17:19:30.313" UserId="4" Text="This seems to be something that could very easily be coupled with [Mark Trapp's idea for Structured Tag Clean-Up][1]. In addition to identifying bad tags, we can also identify and prioritize good tags that have a bad tag description and tag wiki entry. There are a few questions about tag wikis, [such as this one about including books][2]. Of course, tag descriptions/wikis would be cleaned up with the tag (if the tag is actually potentially a good tag with bag questions), and good tags with good questions with poor descriptions and wikis might be a lower priority than getting rid of the bad tags, but I think it's something to talk about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So perhaps kick off a discussion about what should (and should not) go into tag excerpts, descriptions, and wiki pages. Thoughts, comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2028/should-we-include-an-introductory-book-list-in-each-topical-tag-wiki" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7399" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2892" RevisionGUID="ddec1d93-3943-4109-b8ff-9d5a8be15793" CreationDate="2012-01-22T17:19:30.313" UserId="4" Text="Should we consider cleaning up tag wikis and tag descriptions as well?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7400" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2892" RevisionGUID="ddec1d93-3943-4109-b8ff-9d5a8be15793" CreationDate="2012-01-22T17:19:30.313" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-wikis|posse|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7401" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2893" RevisionGUID="541b1ba6-a4ec-4231-9dc5-fc2871f35f4a" CreationDate="2012-01-22T19:11:46.877" UserId="25936" Text="I search Meta Stack Overflow for structured guidelines on tag wikis recently and didn't find any. The only thing that comes close is the sticky note when editing a tag wiki&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What are Tag Wikis?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The tag wiki excerpt is a brief plain text introduction to the topic that the tag represents. It is shown at the top of tag question lists, and as a tooltip wherever the tag appears. Complete this first!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The full tag wiki is a detailed introduction to the topic, suitable as a destination for those curious about it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what questions should have this tag?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - some basic definitions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - brief introduction to the subject&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - important links for learning more&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - one reasonably sized page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; See our advice on [writing great tag wikis][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The link is to the blog post that introduced tag wikis, and it offers _some_ vague advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I'm editing the occasional tag wiki, I look at similar tags for inspiration, here and on Stack Overflow. What I end up with is usually: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. An introduction to the concept, adapted from the relevant Wikipedia article,&#xD;&#xA; 2. A list of links to common resources,&#xD;&#xA; 3. A list of highly voted and representative questions,&#xD;&#xA; 4. A list of relevant sister sites.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example is my very recent edit on the [web-development wiki][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some tags that don't even have a wiki, and if something is a priority is those. Any tag wiki would be better than no tag wiki, especially for the more popular tags. An example is [tag:development-process] which has 222 questions currently and seeing how you are the [tag's top user][3], this one is up to you :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But seeing how new users continue to use [tag:career] and [tag:advice], when both their tag wikis say &quot;Don't use this tag&quot;, I'll say not many actually read them. Informative tag wikis would be nice to have, but other than offering some basic guidance they don't really solve any actual problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And seeing how cleaning up [tag:career] is only halfway through, I'd say we already have our hands full as it is. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Posted here for completion's sake&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/03/redesigned-tags-page/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/web-development/info&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/development-process/topusers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7402" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2892" RevisionGUID="3efb0981-96b2-4284-aa7e-192890fc1516" CreationDate="2012-01-22T19:25:08.097" UserId="4" Comment="added 419 characters in body" Text="This seems to be something that could very easily be coupled with [Mark Trapp's idea for Structured Tag Clean-Up][1]. In addition to identifying bad tags, we can also identify and prioritize good tags that have a bad tag description and tag wiki entry. There are a few questions about tag wikis, [such as this one about including books][2]. Of course, tag descriptions/wikis would be cleaned up with the tag (if the tag is actually potentially a good tag with bag questions), and good tags with good questions with poor descriptions and wikis might be a lower priority than getting rid of the bad tags, but I think it's something to talk about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is already [some generic advice about tags and tag wiki pages][3] on the Stack Overflow blog. I think that refining that guidance to be specific to this group of experts, along with an assessment of the quality of the tag and its questions would be helpful to maintaining a thriving community of people who are able to provide expert advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So perhaps kick off a discussion about what should (and should not) go into tag excerpts, descriptions, and wiki pages. Thoughts, comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2028/should-we-include-an-introductory-book-list-in-each-topical-tag-wiki&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/03/redesigned-tags-page/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7403" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2813" RevisionGUID="7d0053d3-fe97-41ca-82b0-c41aa2cbc969" CreationDate="2012-01-22T22:15:32.143" UserId="25936" Comment="removed closed questions" Text="[tag:software] questions that should probably be closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57653/registering-in-the-ios-developer-program-as-a-minor&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54487/whats-the-best-way-of-marketing-to-programmers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48100/which-skills-would-you-expect-and-appreciate-in-a-junior-software-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47963/recommendations-for-a-web-based-help-system&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46965/how-do-big-companies-of-software-developers-check-for-bugs-in-thier-programs&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46434/why-is-it-that-software-is-still-easily-pirated-today&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81919/is-there-a-source-for-user-opinions-on-commercial-enterprise-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72967/i-want-to-create-a-software-company-what-are-the-basic-things-that-i-should-kno&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63602/entry-into-software-field-after-7-years-gap &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40134/information-on-small-business-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67054/work-division-horizontal-vs-vertical&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40593/do-you-use-mathematica-during-the-software-development-process&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20476/why-is-it-so-hard-to-get-people-to-pay-for-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2932/why-is-free-software-good-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43752/where-do-i-begin-when-dealing-with-my-first-corporate-client&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17434/the-useful-tools-for-windows-device-driver-developers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39122/post-commit-code-review-tools&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41678/how-to-implement-software-for-my-vehicle&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll keep updating the list as I go through the tag, all of the above got my close vote for one reason or the other. Everyone please review and:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Try to salvage, or&#xD;&#xA; 2. Flag / Vote to close&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please do not vote to migrate, most of the questions are really old and there is no point in migrating them on StackOverflow, or anywhere else. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Done.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've gone through each and every one of the questions. The only open ones still tagged [tag:software] are the ones in this list. They all got _my_ close vote, but of course I'm not assuming they will be closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators (and everyone, really), please review the list." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7404" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2894" RevisionGUID="cc8b8570-f77d-424f-9295-328624726ca0" CreationDate="2012-01-23T04:41:16.787" UserId="44303" Text="We've had [recent](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2856/addendum-to-off-topic-themes-in-the-faq) [discussions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag) here on meta regarding how to handle homework questions, but I would like to turn the discussion around a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of discussing _how_ to handle these kinds of questions, I'd like to discuss _if_ Programmers.SE can be a viable option for students seeking help. [Robert Harvey](http://stackoverflow.com/users/102937/robert-harvey) brought this question up on [Meta.SO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/119976/how-can-stack-overflow-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments) and I'd like to put it in the context of P.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Can Programmers.SE be used by students to assist them with their class assignments, and if so, how can it be done in a way that respects the P.SE community? What rules and regulations would the students need to follow?_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_How well would P.SE accomodate the influx of students, each having questions about the same homework assignment?_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: Please feel free to edit the wording or formatting as needed.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7405" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2894" RevisionGUID="cc8b8570-f77d-424f-9295-328624726ca0" CreationDate="2012-01-23T04:41:16.787" UserId="44303" Text="How can Programmers.SE be used to assist students with class assignments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7406" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2894" RevisionGUID="cc8b8570-f77d-424f-9295-328624726ca0" CreationDate="2012-01-23T04:41:16.787" UserId="44303" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7407" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2894" RevisionGUID="b9df09f9-b88b-4000-8196-00d9bb8bf8f4" CreationDate="2012-01-23T05:06:02.443" UserId="44303" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="We've had [recent](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2856/addendum-to-off-topic-themes-in-the-faq) [discussions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag) here on meta regarding how to handle homework questions, but I would like to turn the discussion around a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of discussing _how_ to handle these kinds of questions, I'd like to discuss _if_ Programmers.SE can be a viable option for students seeking help. [Robert Harvey](http://stackoverflow.com/users/102937/robert-harvey) brought this question up on [Meta.SO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/119976/how-can-stack-overflow-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments) and I'd like to put it in the context of P.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Can Programmers.SE be used by students to get help with their class assignments, and if so, how can it be done in a way that respects the P.SE community? What rules and regulations would the students need to follow?_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_How well would P.SE accomodate the influx of students, each having questions about the same homework assignment?_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: Please feel free to edit the wording or formatting as needed.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7408" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2895" RevisionGUID="0ada08d4-de98-4d94-86c2-7841058889ce" CreationDate="2012-01-23T05:39:34.587" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="We [recently had a discussion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2411/removing-expert-from-the-site-description) about the usage of the word &quot;expert&quot; in the FAQ: the consensus being that this site, while not necessarily only for experts, is for professionals. [Aaronaught's excellent answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1994/would-the-general-reference-close-reason-be-useful-here-on-programmers/2000#2000) to whether we need a &quot;General Reference&quot; close reason also discusses the importance of this site being both &quot;advanced&quot; and &quot;disciplined&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not to say if you're not a classically-identified &quot;professional&quot; (i.e., you're a hobbyist or someone who does programming as a tangential job duty) your questions aren't welcome here, but that the site doesn't cater to non-professional-level questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, for the most part, people using Programmers for homework help or class supplements are probably in the wrong place: stuff like &quot;can you explain to me when I would need an array?&quot; or &quot;What's a good language to learn as a teenager?&quot; are routinely closed as being either too broad or not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the same time, we shouldn't be calling people out with the scarlet [tag:homework] tag or closing questions for something that happens to be part of a class assignment. If someone's asking a question that's similar in scope and expertise as other questions on the site, they're fine, even if they happen to be homework. Treat them as you would any other question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7409" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2896" RevisionGUID="bfaf532b-96fe-4e80-beaa-b2ee29ac6179" CreationDate="2012-01-23T06:01:23.647" UserId="25936" Text="I've retagged every [tag:homework] question that I thought was on topic, and assembled a list of the ones I _think_ slipped through. Take a look at the list and ping me a when you're through, to retag the survivors. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Close candidates**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60405/job-interview-challenges&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68506/best-way-to-do-a-text-code-mixed-document&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40947/c-homework-problems&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43273/what-is-a-good-project-in-ruby&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60532/question-related-to-software-engineers-roles-in-companies&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98222/first-big-project-how-to-get-started-make-menus-save-to-harddrive-etc&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85309/java-design-patterns&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81674/do-you-create-a-design-with-uml-before-you-start&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7410" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2895" RevisionGUID="fd593e38-c0cc-4917-9805-0cf28c5ac948" CreationDate="2012-01-23T06:18:46.397" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add some clarifications" Text="We [recently had a discussion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2411/removing-expert-from-the-site-description) about the usage of the word &quot;expert&quot; in the FAQ: the consensus being that this site, while not necessarily only for experts, is for professionals. [Aaronaught's excellent answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1994/would-the-general-reference-close-reason-be-useful-here-on-programmers/2000#2000) to whether we need a &quot;General Reference&quot; close reason also discusses the importance of this site being both &quot;advanced&quot; and &quot;disciplined&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not to say if you're not a classically-identified &quot;professional&quot; (i.e., you're a hobbyist or someone who does programming as a tangential job duty) your questions aren't welcome here, but that the site doesn't cater to non-professional-level questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, for the most part, people using Programmers for homework help or class supplements are probably in the wrong place: stuff like &quot;can you explain to me when I would need an array?&quot; or &quot;What's a good language to learn as a teenager?&quot; are routinely closed as being either too broad or not constructive, and I have a hard time imagining questions that would be class assignments and on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the same time, we shouldn't be calling people out with the scarlet [tag:homework] tag, adjusting the level of content in answers, or closing questions for something that happens to be part of a class assignment. If someone's asking a question that's similar in scope and expertise as other questions on the site, they're fine, even if they happen to be homework: treat them as you would any other question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for educators, I think it's important to realize we can't know if a question is homework or not, and given the intended audience of the site and the [goals of the network](http://stackexchange.com/about), it'd be untenable for us to accommodate special homework-only rules (like not providing full and complete answers, or using the Socratic method). If a student happens to ask a question here and it meets the site's quality guidelines, it'll definitely be answered." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7411" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2897" RevisionGUID="cc933ad5-1567-4851-892e-7a26ff5f06a0" CreationDate="2012-01-23T10:08:19.717" UserDisplayName="user12278" Text="I want print out a question with answers. But, when I push ctrl-P then I see few part of some answer cannot be printed out. How can I print all the question with all answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;extra information:on ubuntu, unix" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7412" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2897" RevisionGUID="cc933ad5-1567-4851-892e-7a26ff5f06a0" CreationDate="2012-01-23T10:08:19.717" UserDisplayName="user12278" Text="printing out question | how" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7413" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2897" RevisionGUID="cc933ad5-1567-4851-892e-7a26ff5f06a0" CreationDate="2012-01-23T10:08:19.717" UserDisplayName="user12278" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7414" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2898" RevisionGUID="54269281-01b4-46cc-bf7c-68959e75ff44" CreationDate="2012-01-23T10:11:28.287" UserId="47" Text="If you can see it on the screen your browser should be able to print it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Check out [Stackprinter](http://stackapps.com/questions/179/stackprinter-the-stack-exchange-printer-suite)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7415" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2897" RevisionGUID="901ff9fc-c095-4a63-924a-4a5e50928109" CreationDate="2012-01-23T10:11:44.890" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7416" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2898" RevisionGUID="88f6ceb9-32b6-4579-9b01-cb07ab3e8280" CreationDate="2012-01-23T12:46:13.137" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="If you can see it on the screen your browser should be able to print it - subject to any limitations of your browser. Does it have issues printing other web pages?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Check out [Stackprinter](http://stackapps.com/questions/179/stackprinter-the-stack-exchange-printer-suite) which is an application written using the Stack Exchange API specifically for printing out questions and answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7417" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2899" RevisionGUID="781e0a6a-fc6e-4f3c-ac21-6012d9b60a20" CreationDate="2012-01-23T20:07:10.977" UserId="41381" Text="some things that wouldn't hurt to add to this process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. tags selected for cleanup have their wiki edited to a do not use message.&#xD;&#xA; 2. create some additional incentive to participate in a cleanup, like a clean-up mvp medal  for most heroic edits.&#xD;&#xA; 3. for tags with very large amounts of questions, designate a time where the front page will get destroyed for an hour or two.&#xD;&#xA; 4. questions below -1 can not be saved." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7418" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2900" RevisionGUID="b9b3d207-6ea7-4a69-ba09-62068e1a4599" CreationDate="2012-01-23T20:10:41.437" UserId="-1" Text="The 2012 Community Moderator Election is now underway!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community moderator elections have three phases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Nomination phase&#xD;&#xA;2. Primary phase&#xD;&#xA;3. Election phase&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please visit the official election page at&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;for more detail, and to participate!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged [meta-tag:election]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7419" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2900" RevisionGUID="b9b3d207-6ea7-4a69-ba09-62068e1a4599" CreationDate="2012-01-23T20:10:41.437" UserId="-1" Text="2012 Community Moderator Election" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7420" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2900" RevisionGUID="b9b3d207-6ea7-4a69-ba09-62068e1a4599" CreationDate="2012-01-23T20:10:41.437" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|featured|moderators|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7421" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2901" RevisionGUID="c97a64eb-6f1b-4e6b-90f0-a2417352e4c1" CreationDate="2012-01-23T20:17:38.627" UserId="34364" Text="How many Moderators will be elected this year?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7422" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2901" RevisionGUID="c97a64eb-6f1b-4e6b-90f0-a2417352e4c1" CreationDate="2012-01-23T20:17:38.627" UserId="34364" Text="How many will be elected in 2012?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7423" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2901" RevisionGUID="c97a64eb-6f1b-4e6b-90f0-a2417352e4c1" CreationDate="2012-01-23T20:17:38.627" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7424" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2902" RevisionGUID="daec9698-b844-4f51-bcfc-c254876f03b4" CreationDate="2012-01-23T20:18:50.910" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="In the sidebar of [the election page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election), it says it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###moderator positions available   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7425" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2901" RevisionGUID="716b414c-6a16-4ea0-aac4-9b49677aaafe" CreationDate="2012-01-23T20:19:03.263" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7426" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2173" RevisionGUID="c79ee6ea-94e5-4609-b786-bb1d781c4ddb" CreationDate="2012-01-23T22:00:30.770" UserId="47" Comment="character twiddling" Text="### Update - October 20th, 2011&#xD;&#xA;Current statistics:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Total Questions: 13,440&#xD;&#xA;* Total Closed but not deleted: 1,321&#xD;&#xA;* Closed Percentage: 9.38% (▼ 7.56% from September 20th, ▼ 10.81% since this post was written)&#xD;&#xA;* SE 2.0 Closed Percentage (no Trilogy): 5.36% (▼ 0.72%)&#xD;&#xA;* Network Closed Percentage (w/Trilogy): 2.56% (▼ 0.04%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point, we have a lower close percentage than Web Applications, Android, English, and Webmasters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was some concern that we're bleeding users: not sure how long they've been tracking it, but [the Stack Exchange site tracks](http://stackexchange.com/sites?sort=newengagedusers&amp;expand=true) new 200+ users over a rolling two weeks period: Programmers has consistently had the second highest number of 200+ users (only Stack Overflow itself has beaten us), and the number has gone up since I've been tracking it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've also updated [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) to be much more straightforward, which will hopefully alleviate some confusion about what is and isn't on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I don't think it's particularly constructive to approach a problem this way, I think it's important, if we do, to work with accurate numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of right now, there are 2,816 closed—but not deleted—questions on Programmers. There are 13,925 questions total on Programmers. This makes the closed, but not deleted ratio of questions 20.2%. In the 10 days since you measured this, it's gone down 3%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on the same metrics you did your post, here are number closed with at least 5 score and number closed with less than or equal to 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 774 (27.5%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 265 (9.4%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This puts the ratio of 5+ score questions closed higher than what you had and the ratio of &lt;= 0 score questions much lower than what you had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand why, we need to include data you didn't have access to when you did this survey: the number of deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of deleted questions on Programmers.SE is 2,975: more than the number of closed questions you see. If we also include these numbers into the mix, we get a different story:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 891. % of closed or deleted: 15.3%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 2,223. % of closed or deleted: 38.3%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This paints a bit of a different picture than measuring just the closed questions and the results presented in your survey. Why? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's because we routinely delete low-scoring questions as they are uncontroversially bad for the site, and the scores on those questions agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we don't delete nearly as many high-scoring answers is because [&quot;closed&quot; doesn't mean &quot;bad&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed). It means the question doesn't meet the site's guidelines in some way, but there's some value, and it could even be improved and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, *deletion*—not closure—is where bad questions go to spend eternity in Hell. Closure, on the other hand, is the purgatory of questions. They're not on-topic, but they're providing *some* value: enough to stick around while we figure out what to do with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A Comparison&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that we're working with accurate numbers, how do they compare to other sites, particularly Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From a purely quantitative standpoint, Stack Overflow's numbers are in a different league:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Publicly viewable questions: 1,997,856&#xD;&#xA;* Closed, but not deleted: ~39,048 (2%)&#xD;&#xA;* Deleted: 194,008 (8.9%)&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~1,964 (5%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~4,142 (1.8%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~26,123 (67%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~199,326 (85.5%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like Programmers, Stack Overflow's ratios skew a lot higher when  deleted low-scoring questions are added, and lower when it deleted high-voted questions are added. This isn't coincidence: the same moderation style is used on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Some context&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's important, from a qualitative standpoint, to put these numbers into context. Stack Overflow is not qualitatively similar to Programmers.SE, and comparing their closed/deleted percentage to ours is about as meaningless as comparing our percentages to [Quora](http://quora.com) or [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com). We just simply don't have the same issues or types of questions they have. If we did, there wouldn't be a separate site: we'd just be part of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also important to put Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE into historical context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was the first, and for a long period of time, the only Stack Exchange site. It did not, for much of its history, have the benefit of knowledge gleaned from the year of trial and error with the Stack Exchange 2.0 project. And notably, it did not have the benefit of 40+ other sites with 40+ other sets of problems to crystalize what makes and doesn't make a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This difference in background and two year head start is [a constant cause of problems](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow): 27% of all questions migrated here from Stack Overflow are closed and/or deleted. Thousands upon thousands of questions that should be off-topic there and on-topic here never get closed or migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of its history as the flagship Stack Exchange site, it also has enormous scaling issues. They have [~10 volunteer moderators for 2 million questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/101431/should-stack-overflow-moderators-have-a-standard-of-duty): one for every 200,000 asked. We have 4 for 16,000: one for every 4,000. We are just better equipped to close bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The history of Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But going into [our history](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) a little bit: Stack Overflow had a serious problem with popular questions that didn't really belong anywhere: &quot;What's your favorite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What do you like about programming?&quot;, etc. When Stack Exchange 2.0 and the Area 51 engine launched, one of the first proposals to gain traction was [*Not Programming Related*](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related), intended to house all of these types of questions. It launched on September 1st, 2010 and for a period of 3 weeks, surged in popularity as all the questions repressed on Stack Overflow were asked on this new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the quality was all over the place: the site had some of the worst questions and some of the best questions. After a few weeks of this, [new guidelines were put into place](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) to try to raise the level of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the rest of the beta period, these guidelines were enforced sporadically as the community tried to come to terms with its original charter and what it would take to make a useful site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On December 16, 2010, [Programmers.SE was launched](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/) under its new mission, having been the test-bed for a number of guidelines about questions that later generations of Stack Exchange sites benefitted from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left 3.5 months of questions asked during a particularly formative point in the Stack Exchange network: more than a quarter of our site's lifespan. Compare this to Stack Overflow, which has had the benefit of 2.5 years of maturity and wasn't originally created to be [the toilet bowl of a different site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we're slowly resolving those initial growing pains, it's going to take some more time. The ratios will normalize, but they aren't going to normalize in the next month: it going to take several months to a couple of years to stabilize into a site as mature as the currently-three-year-old Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The situation isn't as dire as it might seem from one reading of the numbers. It was dire at one time, but that was last year. Now, we're moving forward: our traffic is increasing and our closed ratio is decreasing. More and more, people are taking ownership of Programmers.SE as something to be proud of, and the quality of questions and answers is noticeably rising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there's a lot we can improve, but it's going to be far more constructive and productive to isolate specific failings and correct those, not to make generalizations about the site as a whole. If we stick to generalizations, we might as well just shut this site down and start over." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7427" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2900" RevisionGUID="58ee50e6-6926-47bf-9425-694ba0dc1382" CreationDate="2012-01-24T05:29:24.160" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/161681986359009282" />
  <row Id="7428" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2903" RevisionGUID="53209b09-9c52-4af4-9a28-06064000f1ea" CreationDate="2012-01-24T14:59:38.637" UserId="855" Text="There is a potential to have a separate version of every question or topic that focuses on: scientific evidence, research, or some other reference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't this get handled in the OP's evaluation of the answers? Answers that include support should be encouraged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a work-around to appear to avoid a flame war? &quot;What are some references to scientific evidence supporting that Java is the greatest language?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7429" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2903" RevisionGUID="53209b09-9c52-4af4-9a28-06064000f1ea" CreationDate="2012-01-24T14:59:38.637" UserId="855" Text="&quot;Scientific Evidence&quot; versions of each question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7430" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2903" RevisionGUID="53209b09-9c52-4af4-9a28-06064000f1ea" CreationDate="2012-01-24T14:59:38.637" UserId="855" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7431" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2904" RevisionGUID="479471a5-4b9c-4481-95ef-30331f8d6b44" CreationDate="2012-01-24T15:30:36.947" UserId="4" Text="I think that a question should be about something, not asking for a specific type of resource. Depending on the wording, it might be OK to say &quot;I want to learn about X, what are the best places to start learning?&quot; (depending on topicality, subjectivity, and ensuring that it actually adds community value and not easily findable on Google).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers should contain a combination of personal experiences, reputable references to books and websites (with appropriate links and summaries), and academic research. I wouldn't expect one answer to contain all of the above, but these should be found across all answers to all questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not a place for someone to do your research, but at the same time, it might be of importance to the asker to have things other than personal experiences. For example, if I'm trying to learn something that I need to present to management, I can't really say &quot;because people on the Internet said so&quot;, but I can point to accepted and published writings. In those cases, it's very much OK for the asker to call out for published work. However, I still feel the question needs to be accepting of personal experiences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, the subjective guidelines and topicality always apply." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7432" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2905" RevisionGUID="51908042-c45d-4f64-98cc-e2a04238074c" CreationDate="2012-01-24T19:43:22.360" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Sprinkling &quot;Science&quot; on top of something does not automatically render it correct. As an example, one of the best and clearest introductions to Haskell is &quot;Learn You A Haskell for Great Good&quot; which is decidedly informal. However, it doesn't matter if you use that or directly grok the Haskell documentation, it's still an overly broad question to ask for a list of resources for a language. It's also fairly redundant as Stackoverflow maintains legacy and tag lists for such things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With any learning process, it's important to be correct sure, but it's also important to be clear and to be usable to the learner. The usual reasons for asking for &quot;Scientific Answers&quot; is the idea that math can't be argued with. This is a colossal fallacy, particularly when Statistics are involved which is what many of these kinds of questions mean by &quot;Scientific&quot;. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7449" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2813" RevisionGUID="fb05f201-7408-48e2-8692-50524100361d" CreationDate="2012-01-25T10:07:38.283" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 97 characters in body" Text="[tag:software] questions that should probably be closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57653/registering-in-the-ios-developer-program-as-a-minor&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54487/whats-the-best-way-of-marketing-to-programmers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48100/which-skills-would-you-expect-and-appreciate-in-a-junior-software-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47963/recommendations-for-a-web-based-help-system&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46965/how-do-big-companies-of-software-developers-check-for-bugs-in-thier-programs&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46434/why-is-it-that-software-is-still-easily-pirated-today&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81919/is-there-a-source-for-user-opinions-on-commercial-enterprise-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72967/i-want-to-create-a-software-company-what-are-the-basic-things-that-i-should-kno&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63602/entry-into-software-field-after-7-years-gap &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40134/information-on-small-business-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67054/work-division-horizontal-vs-vertical&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40593/do-you-use-mathematica-during-the-software-development-process&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20476/why-is-it-so-hard-to-get-people-to-pay-for-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43752/where-do-i-begin-when-dealing-with-my-first-corporate-client&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17434/the-useful-tools-for-windows-device-driver-developers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39122/post-commit-code-review-tools&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41678/how-to-implement-software-for-my-vehicle&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll keep updating the list as I go through the tag, all of the above got my close vote for one reason or the other. Everyone please review and:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Try to salvage, or&#xD;&#xA; 2. Flag / Vote to close&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please do not vote to migrate, most of the questions are really old and there is no point in migrating them on StackOverflow, or anywhere else. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Done.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've gone through each and every one of the questions. The only open ones still tagged [tag:software] are the ones in this list. They all got _my_ close vote, but of course I'm not assuming they will be closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators (and everyone, really), please review the list." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7450" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2373" RevisionGUID="6049db72-a745-4548-8783-794a245aa214" CreationDate="2012-01-25T11:35:37.787" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add homework" Text="While we [continue our work on cleaning up the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup), I thought I'd bring up the next tag clean-up project: killing the catch-all tags that could be applied to every question on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through the first two pages of tags, these include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-languages] (773 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:learning] (616 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:best-practices] (538 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-development] (308 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-practices] (198 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-engineering] (188 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:recommendations] (138 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:advice] (135 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:development] (78 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:holy-war] (35 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:homework] (10 questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I'm bringing these up now instead of waiting for the first project to complete is that I believe we can exercise the first option—[presented earlier for the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags)—on these tags: nuke them from orbit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, these tags can be applied to every single question on the site. Disambiguating these tags would entail replacing them with *anything else*, not simply a set of pre-defined disambiguation targets. With these tags, we're no better off if they're untagged or left tagged: they tell us nothing about the content of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you think? Is this a good idea, or is there a better way to approach killing these tags? Are there tags that should be on the list but aren't? Is there a serious case to be made for taking tags *off* this list?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea/1940#1940&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2152/blacklist-advice&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/421/is-a-recommendations-tag-really-necessary&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7451" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2373" RevisionGUID="6049db72-a745-4548-8783-794a245aa214" CreationDate="2012-01-25T11:35:37.787" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add homework" Text="Let's nuke the catch-all tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7452" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2373" RevisionGUID="98750d7b-4271-4ff8-aba1-4e0579508077" CreationDate="2012-01-25T11:42:11.303" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Update counts" Text="While we [continue our work on cleaning up the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup), I thought I'd bring up the next tag clean-up project: killing the catch-all tags that could be applied to every question on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through the first two pages of tags, these include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:best-practices] (740 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-languages] (710 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:learning] (633 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-development] (335 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-practices] (222 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:recommendations] (129 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:advice] (113 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-engineering] (96 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:development] (77 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:homework] (10 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:holy-war] (7 questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I'm bringing these up now instead of waiting for the first project to complete is that I believe we can exercise the first option—[presented earlier for the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags)—on these tags: nuke them from orbit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, these tags can be applied to every single question on the site. Disambiguating these tags would entail replacing them with *anything else*, not simply a set of pre-defined disambiguation targets. With these tags, we're no better off if they're untagged or left tagged: they tell us nothing about the content of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you think? Is this a good idea, or is there a better way to approach killing these tags? Are there tags that should be on the list but aren't? Is there a serious case to be made for taking tags *off* this list?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea/1940#1940&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2152/blacklist-advice&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/421/is-a-recommendations-tag-really-necessary&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7453" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2896" RevisionGUID="53a23161-08fc-478e-a3a3-ae87855ce2a0" CreationDate="2012-01-25T11:51:57.003" UserId="25936" Comment="added 61 characters in body" Text="I've retagged every [tag:homework] question that I thought was on topic, and assembled a list of the ones I _think_ slipped through. Take a look at the list and ping me a when you're through, to retag the survivors. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Close candidates**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60405/job-interview-challenges&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60532/question-related-to-software-engineers-roles-in-companies&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98222/first-big-project-how-to-get-started-make-menus-save-to-harddrive-etc&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85309/java-design-patterns&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81674/do-you-create-a-design-with-uml-before-you-start&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I removed the ones that where closed from the list. There are now only [5 open \[homework\],  questions][1]. Reviewers do your best to salvage them (and appropriately retag), and cast your close vote only if there's no hope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bhomework%5D%20closed:0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7454" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2896" RevisionGUID="6734c14a-aeaf-433c-8106-f46254eb5dee" CreationDate="2012-01-25T14:18:39.557" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 126 characters in body" Text="I've retagged every [tag:homework] question that I thought was on topic, and assembled a list of the ones I _think_ slipped through. Take a look at the list and ping me a when you're through, to retag the survivors. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Close candidates**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60405/job-interview-challenges&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60532/question-related-to-software-engineers-roles-in-companies&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85309/java-design-patterns&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81674/do-you-create-a-design-with-uml-before-you-start&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I removed the ones that where closed from the list. There are now only [4 open \[homework\],  questions][1]. Reviewers do your best to salvage them (and appropriately retag), and cast your close vote only if there's no hope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bhomework%5D%20closed:0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7455" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2896" RevisionGUID="64aac009-176c-4deb-8efa-345837635942" CreationDate="2012-01-25T15:40:29.907" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 526 characters in body" Text="I've retagged every [tag:homework] question that I thought was on topic, and assembled a list of the ones I _think_ slipped through. Take a look at the list and ping me a when you're through, to retag the survivors. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update #2**: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only closed [tag:homework] questions remain. Moderators, it's now up to you :) And of course as Thomas suggested in the comments, we want the tag blacklisted as soon as possible.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7459" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2912" RevisionGUID="37fcb33d-220e-4d0a-a0b3-38448b84eee2" CreationDate="2012-01-25T18:25:13.477" UserId="4" Text="At one point, software law topics were on-topic, but [that was replaced with &quot;software licensing&quot;][1] to differentiate questions about various licensing issues and creating or using software under a specific license from questions about copyright of code, patents on algorithms, and so on. However, people do still ask questions about copyright, trademark, or other legal issues that are best answered by a lawyer and not by software developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that something should be added to the list of things that this site is not about to cover this. My personal suggestion is something along the lines of &quot;copyright, patent, or trademark law&quot; with a footnote that legal questions should be directed toward a lawyer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7460" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2912" RevisionGUID="37fcb33d-220e-4d0a-a0b3-38448b84eee2" CreationDate="2012-01-25T18:25:13.477" UserId="4" Text="Should &quot;legal advice&quot; or &quot;copyright, trademark, and patent law&quot; be added to the list of things this site is not about?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7461" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2912" RevisionGUID="37fcb33d-220e-4d0a-a0b3-38448b84eee2" CreationDate="2012-01-25T18:25:13.477" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7462" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2903" RevisionGUID="0a90757c-a03d-47c9-b880-7828f7d31065" CreationDate="2012-01-25T19:27:49.857" UserId="855" Comment="added 478 characters in body" Text="There is a potential to have a separate version of every question or topic that focuses on: scientific evidence, research, or some other reference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't this get handled in the OP's evaluation of the answers? Answers that include support should be encouraged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a work-around to appear to avoid a flame war? &quot;What are some references to scientific evidence supporting that Java is the greatest language?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example: This [question wants Scientific Evidence about variable length.][1]. Another just asks [can variables be too long][2] and does give specific examples which I hope the focus is not on the particular variable names themselves. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33349/scientific-evidence-that-supports-using-long-variable-names-instead-of-abbreviat&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20206/are-my-method-or-variable-names-too-long" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7463" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2912" RevisionGUID="e6b72431-3031-4e57-a632-e082a38be40f" CreationDate="2012-01-25T20:26:08.300" UserId="4" Comment="added 907 characters in body" Text="At one point, software law topics were on-topic, but [that was replaced with &quot;software licensing&quot;][1] to differentiate questions about various licensing issues and creating or using software under a specific license from questions about copyright of code, patents on algorithms, and so on. However, people do still ask questions about copyright, trademark, or other legal issues that are best answered by a lawyer and not by software developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that something should be added to the list of things that this site is not about to cover this. My personal suggestion is something along the lines of &quot;copyright, patent, or trademark law&quot; with a footnote that legal questions should be directed toward a lawyer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the comments, Yannis Rizos brings up the point that people will still ask off-topic questions. However, I believe that it will be easier to deal with if such topics are specifically identified as on-topic/off-topic as appropriate. This will give the community and the moderators something concrete to point to and say that something is not allowed, leaving no room for contention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of recent questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Question about ownership][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [Was there any plagiarism committed in the Rybka vs ICGA saga?][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [Copyright Code to an Unregistered Organization][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/131802/question-about-ownership&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128797/was-there-any-plagiarism-committed-in-the-rybka-vs-icga-saga&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126693/copyright-code-to-an-unregistered-organization" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7464" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2903" RevisionGUID="7e35c088-164c-4868-95ab-7e8906ecdf01" CreationDate="2012-01-25T20:29:31.493" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/162270897598767104" />
  <row Id="7465" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2912" RevisionGUID="93ab119a-3a61-4775-8288-a4bb1d2b60a2" CreationDate="2012-01-25T20:38:58.897" UserId="25936" Comment="retagged as faq-proposed, as this wasn't really about on-topic defintion..." Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7467" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2913" RevisionGUID="597b3fd3-a237-44c0-acde-ac037535f3cc" CreationDate="2012-01-25T21:05:49.327" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Last election, there was [a suggestion that nominees should have their reputations recalculated](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1071/8) to accurately reflect their current totals and take into account all activity taken on the site thus far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back then, it wasn't done automatically, but several candidates took it upon themselves to do it anyway by going to the [Reputation page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/reputation) and clicking &quot;Trigger Reputation Recalc&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't remember if the feature existed back then, but moderators *can* recalculate anyone's reputation now: should it be done for nominees? If you're a nominee, would you mind recalculating your reputation yourself?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7468" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2913" RevisionGUID="597b3fd3-a237-44c0-acde-ac037535f3cc" CreationDate="2012-01-25T21:05:49.327" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Should moderator nominees have their reputations recalculated?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7469" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2913" RevisionGUID="597b3fd3-a237-44c0-acde-ac037535f3cc" CreationDate="2012-01-25T21:05:49.327" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|reputation|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7470" PostHistoryTypeId="11" PostId="1071" RevisionGUID="6f4d7246-1465-4ae0-83e6-afe0b84a7882" CreationDate="2012-01-25T21:08:21.600" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7471" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1071" RevisionGUID="5ff96255-6bfd-4b02-bd38-d73c2098939b" CreationDate="2012-01-25T21:08:34.517" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Should moderator nominees have their reputations recalculated?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2913/should-moderator-nominees-have-their-reputations-recalculated)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Well, I just recalced and lost a few hundred points, it might not be a bad idea for everyone else to do the same in the interest of full disclosure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Purely voluntary of course." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7472" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="1071" RevisionGUID="1a7de764-503f-443d-9a2c-b8ae2fae5d26" CreationDate="2012-01-25T21:08:31.600" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[2913],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7473" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2914" RevisionGUID="b25f8300-139f-4d39-85ac-8ed8a0d8c136" CreationDate="2012-01-25T21:16:50.660" UserId="25936" Text="I have only one concern about this: Our FAQ is pretty long as it is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a quick look at the trilogy and sites of similar scope &amp; size, you'll notice that the site definition part of their FAQ is extremely concise. For example: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Stack Overflow][1]&#xD;&#xA; - [Super User][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [Server Fault][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [Ask Ubuntu][4]&#xD;&#xA; - [Web Applications][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [CrossValidated][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [Mathematics][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [Ask Different][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not arguing against clearing up ambiguity, and better defining the scope of Programmers, but adding every possible off topic category in the FAQ will eventually make it too long for anyone to bother reading it carefully. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've identified three questions that are along the lines of &quot;copyright, patent, or trademark law&quot;, posted in a span of a month. I don't think it's a large enough group of questions to justify adding any clarifications to the FAQ, or that it will actually stop people from asking those questions; The FAQ has a list of topics that are welcome, and I can't even begin to imagine why the three OPs though their questions would be.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;(all) That said, we can simply add a &quot;legal advice&quot; bullet point in the &quot;and it is not about…&quot; list.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. [tag:legal] is atop my list of future clean ups. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://superuser.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://serverfault.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://askubuntu.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://math.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7474" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2915" RevisionGUID="7bb05c40-b0ec-401a-8844-41adf51a3e38" CreationDate="2012-01-25T21:32:18.193" UserId="41381" Text="Would this even matter? Given the list of current candidates, most are active enough that their presence is far more telling than their reputation anyway, I really don't think the change would be a significant change either way.  Also we only have 9 nominations so far, so I doubt we are going to get to the point where someone might get left out of a primary due to rep inaccuracies which would be the only concern I would have." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7475" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2916" RevisionGUID="e2fa8e62-0313-4b4d-a850-b711d01f51b0" CreationDate="2012-01-25T21:44:23.820" UserId="41381" Text="If these posts are intended as off topic I think they should be listed as such in the FAQ, our FAQ is going to inherently be longer than other sites simply because it seems the definition of Programers has been changed a lot. It would be nicer to say &quot;sorry this is off topic because we tried having questions like this and it didn't work well for the community, and the FAQ was updated accordingly&quot; rather than &quot;this is off topic.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though I'm not a fan of having programing related questions labeled off topic that don't have an appropriate home elsewhere, but that is another discussion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7476" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2917" RevisionGUID="c5e3d130-55be-469d-8ac0-78d426c3508f" CreationDate="2012-01-25T21:55:12.797" UserId="1996" Text="Just wondering...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Do any of the moderator candidates intend to moderate differently than the incumbents?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7477" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2917" RevisionGUID="c5e3d130-55be-469d-8ac0-78d426c3508f" CreationDate="2012-01-25T21:55:12.797" UserId="1996" Text="Do any of the moderator candidates intend to moderately differently?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7478" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2917" RevisionGUID="c5e3d130-55be-469d-8ac0-78d426c3508f" CreationDate="2012-01-25T21:55:12.797" UserId="1996" Text="|discussion|moderators|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7479" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2917" RevisionGUID="77d4f5c8-96bf-4561-b253-596f7a363059" CreationDate="2012-01-25T22:09:52.773" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 21 characters in body" Text="Moderating is a very subjective activity. Some candidates may feel that they can uphold the programmers.se charter, but do it in a way that differs from the way that the incumbents do it today. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, if a candidate spots a troubled question, they may endeavor to understand the intent behind the troubled question, rather than rapidly choosing to close that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this in mind, do any of the moderator candidates intend to moderate differently than the incumbents?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7480" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2918" RevisionGUID="303aa349-4a89-4391-9d2d-aabb317dc54e" CreationDate="2012-01-25T22:12:00.737" UserId="4" Text="I was personally planning on doing it closer to the transition from nomination to either primary or election, and if there was a primary, again just before the election if I made it that far. If anyone wants me to do it sooner, comment here and I'd be more than happy to do it immediately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I would be in favor of a recalc right before the voting begins for everyone. Might as well give the voters a complete picture and accurate stats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't plan on releasing my long-form birth certificate nor my income taxes for any number of years. So, yeah. That's off the table. :P" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7481" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2912" RevisionGUID="a05df0c9-7bbf-4c4a-ae66-e5d6ab4f0ea0" CreationDate="2012-01-25T22:15:59.823" UserId="4" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="At one point, software law topics were on-topic, but [that was replaced with &quot;software licensing&quot;][1] to differentiate questions about various licensing issues and creating or using software under a specific license from questions about copyright of code, patents on algorithms, and so on. However, people do still ask questions about copyright, trademark, or other legal issues that are best answered by a lawyer and not by software developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I think that something should be added to the &quot;and it is not about…&quot; list, as a one line bullet point.** My personal suggestion is something along the lines of &quot;copyright, patent, or trademark law&quot; with a footnote that legal questions should be directed toward a lawyer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the comments, Yannis Rizos brings up the point that people will still ask off-topic questions. However, I believe that it will be easier to deal with if such topics are specifically identified as on-topic/off-topic as appropriate. This will give the community and the moderators something concrete to point to and say that something is not allowed, leaving no room for contention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of recent questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Question about ownership][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [Was there any plagiarism committed in the Rybka vs ICGA saga?][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [Copyright Code to an Unregistered Organization][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/131802/question-about-ownership&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128797/was-there-any-plagiarism-committed-in-the-rybka-vs-icga-saga&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126693/copyright-code-to-an-unregistered-organization" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7482" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2919" RevisionGUID="3f386dd9-278e-417b-ac8f-7347f04cf68b" CreationDate="2012-01-25T22:30:42.867" UserId="4" Text="&gt; Moderating is a very subjective activity. Some candidates may feel that they can uphold the programmers.se charter, but do it in a way that differs from the way that the incumbents do it today. Specifically, if a candidate spots a troubled question, they may endeavor to understand the intent behind the troubled question, rather than rapidly choosing to close that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My personal goal is to minimize the times when a post is closed by one or two users and a moderator. It's not that the decision to close those questions is wrong, as I usually agree with it. If I don't agree with it, I've voted to reopen or raised the concern on Meta. However, I think it looks really bad to see questions closed by one or two users and a diamond mod and it looks worse to see it closed by just a diamond mod, especially if it's a very new question with a low view count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Preferably, I'd like to give the community a chance to salvage the question, and I'd be more than happy to help with that effort. That could be asking for more information in comments and encouraging the asker to work more details in. It could also be taking comments attached to other answers and working them into the original question so it's easier to understand and read. Or it might just be cleaning up the spelling and grammar. Regardless of what it is, I'd like the community to have a chance to work its magic before I would close most questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I said most. Questions that are blatantly off-topic - I wouldn't have a problem closing them. People trying to avoid post restrictions on another site, hoping for a migration - I wouldn't have a problem closing them without a migration. Helping to move a question to the appropriate site so it gets good answers soon - I'd move it if it was appropriate to do so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, I'd like to see the community begin to stand up on its own in terms of closing and cleaning up posts. I'd support them in any way I could, but I don't want to act as an individual unless it was absolutely necessary to ensure the health and awesome of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; With this in mind, do any of the moderator candidates intend to moderate differently than the incumbents?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to generalize our current moderators into one group. They are all individuals and should be treated as such. They just happen to work together to support this community. As a moderator, I'd support the decisions of both the community and the Stack Exchange network staff. Above, I described how I would moderate. If you have any questions, please ask for clarification on this post, or [ask me a more directed question on my nomination][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election/2#post-131468" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7483" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2920" RevisionGUID="042e8109-019f-404f-b87a-6bf854be9b38" CreationDate="2012-01-25T22:32:31.270" UserId="47" Text="&gt; Specifically, if a candidate spots a troubled question, they may endeavor to understand the intent behind the troubled question, rather than rapidly choosing to close that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is something **all** members of the community could be doing. Anyone can suggest an edit, those with 2K reputation don't need approval. Anyone with over 50 reputation can comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is unclear then **you** should be doing one (or all) of these:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Comment - ask for clarification, highlight what's wrong with the post.&#xD;&#xA;2. Edit - make the post better. Fix grammatical and spelling errors, remove any unnecessary back story.&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote. Up-vote good questions, down-vote bad.&#xD;&#xA;4. Vote to close. If you have more than 3K you can and should do this. Closure is **not** the end of the road for a question. It does mean that no new answers can be posted, but that's a good thing. If the question is improved it can **and should** be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;5. Flag. If the question is irredeemable and needs to be closed or even deleted straight away let the moderators know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: the moderators are there at the end of the steps that you, as a high reputation user, should be taking first. We are the exception handlers. I don't want to be closing questions all day. I'd like to answer a few from time to time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7484" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2921" RevisionGUID="1edfdeba-b39c-465d-b870-ba406f9af236" CreationDate="2012-01-25T23:54:37.140" UserId="25936" Text="Well, let me start by saying I voted to close this question as &quot;not constructive&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are implying that there is something wrong with how our current moderators and asking the candidates to confirm your opinions by saying what they would do differently, or alternatively paint a huge bullseye on their backs by saying they are satisfied with things as is. It's a rant in disguise, by definition. But I'll play along, since it wouldn't be a true election without those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have written a rather extensive [nomination stump][1], and I think it's evident that I'm largely satisfied with our current crop of moderators. There would be absolutely no way I could have done the work I've done in the non-rewarding aspects of the site if I was somehow dissatisfied or disgruntled. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, there's always room for improvement. Every one of us, if elected, will bring something new to the table, that's only natural. But the role of the moderator is to intervene only when absolutely necessary, and there isn't much room for differentiation. We will all be bound by the Stack Exchange vision and rules, the scope of the site and, of course by the community. As I wrote in my nomination stump, I realize that the role is clearly defined and largely restrictive, and that if elected I will need to take a step back and stop acting autonomously. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, I refuse to answer to the specifics of how I will handle closing questions. I have voted to close quite a few questions, participated in a number of clean up efforts, and I feel that the question is sufficiently answered by my participation. At the same time, I am the top editor amongst the candidates, while being relatively new to the site. If, as a moderator, you notice that I do not keep on doing what I've been doing for the past eight months, feel free to bring it up on Meta or contact the Stack Exchange team directly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm particularly proud to be part of the process, and amongst such fine company. All of us are extremely active and dedicated to the site and the community, and our participation speaks louder than anything else. Let's keep politics out of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election/2#post-131517" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7485" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2922" RevisionGUID="88f214af-07df-4f1d-944d-6cfd25abf76c" CreationDate="2012-01-26T00:28:43.387" UserId="399" Text="In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session with the candidates.  This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.  I am working with the candidates to find a time that allows the most participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;**Candidates:**  please be on the lookout for an email from me! (:&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the details so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I would like to schedule this towards the beginning of the primary phase.  This means that I am looking at the 30th-1st. As soon as I coordinate with the existing moderators and candidates to find a best fit based on availability, I will edit this post with details on the &quot;when&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;* The Town Hall Chat will be a one-hour event using our [chat platform](http://chat.stackexchange.com/?tab=site&amp;sort=active&amp;host=programmers.stackexchange.com).  I will update this post with a direct link to the chat room once the event is scheduled.&#xD;&#xA;* The format will be an open discussion.  Users are encouraged to pose questions to the candidates regarding their thoughts on moderation.&#xD;&#xA;* After the chat session, a digest of the event will be permanently linked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7486" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2922" RevisionGUID="88f214af-07df-4f1d-944d-6cfd25abf76c" CreationDate="2012-01-26T00:28:43.387" UserId="399" Text="2012 Moderator Election: Town Hall Chat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7487" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2922" RevisionGUID="88f214af-07df-4f1d-944d-6cfd25abf76c" CreationDate="2012-01-26T00:28:43.387" UserId="399" Text="|discussion|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7488" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2923" RevisionGUID="f717d198-eb26-46aa-8370-29ca9a5cf7e9" CreationDate="2012-01-26T00:28:55.900" UserId="7454" Text="I was reviewing answers and questions, and found a few questions related to game development. Some of them tagged with [tag:game-development], some not, but most of them would perhaps have better answers, and a better visibility on [GameDev.SE][1] .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example those questions :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Good Game that has Scripting Support][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [Create a behavior/Component based system for games][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How would you handle those questions ? Are they worth flagging for migration to [GameDev.SE][4] ? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80068/good-game-that-has-scripting-support&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89423/create-a-behavior-component-based-system-for-games/126071&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7489" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2923" RevisionGUID="f717d198-eb26-46aa-8370-29ca9a5cf7e9" CreationDate="2012-01-26T00:28:55.900" UserId="7454" Text="Game Development Tag and how to handle questions about game development" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7490" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2923" RevisionGUID="f717d198-eb26-46aa-8370-29ca9a5cf7e9" CreationDate="2012-01-26T00:28:55.900" UserId="7454" Text="|discussion|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7491" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2924" RevisionGUID="812fed19-bf2f-44df-ba1d-b614933d596b" CreationDate="2012-01-26T00:36:23.973" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="In general, there's going to be some overlap in what we cover and what Game Development covers: after all, game development is software development. I think a good question to ask is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If this wasn't about a game, or the poster didn't mention it was a game, would it be on-topic for Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If yes, it's fine here, and the poster's not wrong for asking it here. People can point out that he or she might get better answers on GameDev.SE, and if flagged by the poster, we'd definitely check with the GameDev.SE mods to see if they wanted it, but that's pretty much it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also keep in mind the golden rule of migrations: don't migrate crap. Questions should only be migrated if there's a reasonable chance it's going to do well on the destination site. This should block:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Low quality questions that are about Game Development&#xD;&#xA;* Old, dead questions that might've gotten better answers on Game Development, but the issue is resolved or the timeliness of the question is gone&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I'd definitely rule out any sort of bulk-migration of questions in the [tag:game-development] tag, and maybe really only consider last few days of questions in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To get to the specific questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The first question is off-topic: it's a thinly veiled game recommendation question. Off-topic all the way and not worth migrating. I closed it.&#xD;&#xA;* The second one, had it been asked today, I probably would've pinged the GameDev.SE mods to see if they want it: it's ostensibly on-topic here, but they might've had better expertise. Not worth migrating now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7492" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2921" RevisionGUID="f91cb6d6-05ce-4398-9c40-4f095f647b02" CreationDate="2012-01-26T01:56:21.450" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 56 characters in body" Text="Well, let me start by saying I voted to close this question as &quot;not constructive&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are implying that there is something wrong with how our current moderators and asking the candidates to confirm your opinions by saying what they would do differently, or alternatively paint a huge bullseye on their backs by saying they are satisfied with things as is. It's a rant in disguise, by definition. But I'll play along, since it wouldn't be a true election without those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have written a rather extensive [nomination stump][1], and I think it's evident that I'm largely satisfied with our current crop of moderators. There would be absolutely no way I could have done the work I've done in the non-rewarding aspects of the site if I was somehow dissatisfied or disgruntled. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, there's always room for improvement. Every one of us, if elected, will bring something new to the table, that's only natural. But the role of the moderator is to intervene only when absolutely necessary, and there isn't much room for differentiation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We will all be bound by the Stack Exchange vision and rules, the scope of the site and, of course by the community. As I wrote in my nomination stump, I realize that the role is clearly defined and largely restrictive, and that if elected I will need to take a step back and stop acting autonomously. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, I don't see any point in answering to the specifics of how I will handle closing questions. I have voted to close quite a few questions, participated in a number of clean up efforts, and I feel that the question is sufficiently answered by my participation. At the same time, I am the top editor amongst the candidates, while being relatively new to the site. Improve first, close only when necessary, is an approach I feel all the candidates and the moderators share. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm particularly proud to be part of the process, and amongst such fine company. All of us are extremely active and dedicated to the site and the community, and our participation speaks louder than anything else. Let's keep politics out of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election/2#post-131517" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7493" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2917" RevisionGUID="aa8103f8-ee87-46af-b42e-54b0021e02b5" CreationDate="2012-01-26T03:51:18.507" UserId="1996" Comment="edited title" Text="Do any of the moderator candidates intend to moderate differently?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7494" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2850" RevisionGUID="ae7c556b-aeaa-46a4-8e45-6e897139ef77" CreationDate="2012-01-26T05:29:32.637" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/162406797561446400" />
  <row Id="7495" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2922" RevisionGUID="b2985062-37bc-42f0-bdea-ed08683f9d38" CreationDate="2012-01-26T08:29:33.400" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/162452099014201345" />
  <row Id="7496" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2925" RevisionGUID="be790b8b-9636-4825-a6d5-7ed58e939b1d" CreationDate="2012-01-26T11:26:00.270" UserId="34364" Text="I don't believe any of the candidates are looking to be too completely different, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our moderators have been doing a great job. I'm sure there are things that some candidates, and even I, want to change, but there would be **nothing** wrong with not completely changing our ways. In fact, it might be a bad thing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you look at any of the candidates, most of them ave something(s) different they want to do. That's great! But specifically changing the ways we moderate would not drastically help, if it helps at all. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at ChrisF's answer to this question, I agree, and I plan to follow a similar approach. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have any questions, please [see my nomination][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election/2#post-131555" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7497" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2912" RevisionGUID="49eb1a99-ec1d-4e37-8d76-1387f1541d27" CreationDate="2012-01-26T11:29:33.773" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/162497398994771968" />
  <row Id="7498" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2926" RevisionGUID="d29beae3-743e-41f6-8b73-77d2008954d3" CreationDate="2012-01-26T11:39:30.733" UserId="31260" Text="&gt; do any of the moderator candidates intend to moderate differently than the incumbents&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well to me above is not of a major importance thing. My primary expectations of moderator actions are as expressed [in one of the answers at &quot;big&quot; Meta](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/119089/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **something that a mod needs to develop by themselves - quick, competent and independent judgement of a situation**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Compared to above, consistency plays rather secondary role. I mean, as long as moderator is capable to justify their decision in the face of community review (eg here at Meta) I wouldn't mind if this decision has a personal touch.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* With above said, I would also like to make it perfectly clear that I am against total dismissal of consistency expectation. I believe that in (rare) cases when moderator actions [fail to meet primary expectations](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2JQ86.jpg) - in cases like that concerns of consistency, shared understanding, majority agreement and such can make a perfect ground for respective _corrective actions_." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7499" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2927" RevisionGUID="577e4acf-b6de-4b41-aacb-284b1e01203a" CreationDate="2012-01-26T14:07:37.230" UserId="1130" Text="Personally I think those questions are fine for the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason is that most developers will face a legal question at some point in their career, and although the obvious answer is to get legal advice, a lot of people don't think of doing that right away. I know I didn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my opinion would be to leave the good questions related to legal programming issues open or closed as duplicates to a better question that asks the same thing, and to close the poor quality or extremely localized ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Afterall, isn't that what Programmers.SE is for? To answer general questions about software development, even if that answer is to go ask someone else, such as a laywer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7501" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2913" RevisionGUID="b40a2d3e-a2b3-40ca-9c65-b27eb8ce8e3c" CreationDate="2012-01-26T14:29:34.620" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/162542701177339905" />
  <row Id="7502" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2927" RevisionGUID="a9536597-7a95-4bff-9cfe-8c04f3ac9cb0" CreationDate="2012-01-26T14:40:39.953" UserId="1130" Comment="added 969 characters in body" Text="Personally I think those questions are fine for the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason is that most developers will face a legal question at some point in their career, and although the obvious answer is to get legal advice, a lot of people don't think of doing that right away. I know I didn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my opinion would be to leave the good questions related to legal programming issues open or closed as duplicates to a better question that asks the same thing, and to close the poor quality or extremely localized ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Afterall, isn't that what Programmers.SE is for? To answer general questions about software development, even if that answer is to go ask someone else, such as a laywer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some of the legal questions I have found quite interesting on this site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/111434/is-it-legal-to-recreate-opensource-a-program-that-you-previously-coded-for-anoth&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124936/do-i-really-need-a-disclaimer-for-free-software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118136/should-i-accept-to-write-unsecure-code-if-my-employer-requests-me-to-do-so&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were a few more that I can't find.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One was about building in some kind of kill switch for an application that the user could trigger if they didn't get paid. Its the sort of thing I can see freelance programmers asking about, and there were some good answers to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And another was about who owns code a developer creates in their spare time if the code was created outside of working ours, but used for work projects (it's not the one linked in the original question, but similar)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7503" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2373" RevisionGUID="1c837ed7-44a5-4b86-a659-d46212c3dadb" CreationDate="2012-01-26T14:45:13.723" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Add fun. We hate fun." Text="While we [continue our work on cleaning up the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup), I thought I'd bring up the next tag clean-up project: killing the catch-all tags that could be applied to every question on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through the first two pages of tags, these include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:best-practices] (740 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-languages] (710 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:learning] (633 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-development] (335 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-practices] (222 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:recommendations] (129 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:advice] (113 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-engineering] (96 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:development] (77 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:fun] (18 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:homework] (10 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:holy-war] (7 questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I'm bringing these up now instead of waiting for the first project to complete is that I believe we can exercise the first option—[presented earlier for the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags)—on these tags: nuke them from orbit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, these tags can be applied to every single question on the site. Disambiguating these tags would entail replacing them with *anything else*, not simply a set of pre-defined disambiguation targets. With these tags, we're no better off if they're untagged or left tagged: they tell us nothing about the content of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you think? Is this a good idea, or is there a better way to approach killing these tags? Are there tags that should be on the list but aren't? Is there a serious case to be made for taking tags *off* this list?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea/1940#1940&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2152/blacklist-advice&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/421/is-a-recommendations-tag-really-necessary&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7504" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2927" RevisionGUID="3a5cb766-f77e-4f29-b856-62fa514e1df6" CreationDate="2012-01-26T15:13:37.047" UserId="1130" Comment="added 242 characters in body" Text="Personally I think some of those questions are fine for the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason is that most developers will face a legal question at some point in their career, and although the obvious answer is to get legal advice, a lot of people don't think of doing that right away. I know I didn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my opinion would be to leave the good questions related to legal programming issues open or closed as duplicates to a better question that asks the same thing, and to close the poor quality or extremely localized ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel if the same question about software development is asked by enough programmers, a good copy of that question should be left open with good answers. Don't try to stop the question from getting asked altogether because it won't happen and it seems to contradict what Programmers.SE stands for - to answer general questions about software development, even if that answer is to go seek legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some of the legal questions I have found quite interesting on this site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/111434/is-it-legal-to-recreate-opensource-a-program-that-you-previously-coded-for-anoth&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124936/do-i-really-need-a-disclaimer-for-free-software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118136/should-i-accept-to-write-unsecure-code-if-my-employer-requests-me-to-do-so&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were a few more that I can't find.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One was about building in some kind of kill switch for an application that the user could trigger if they didn't get paid. Its the sort of thing I can see freelance programmers asking about, and there were some good answers to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And another was about who owns code a developer creates in their spare time if the code was created outside of working ours, but used for work projects (it's not the one linked in the original question, but similar)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7505" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2929" RevisionGUID="0feb76e2-cabf-4079-90b8-6ae44af9b5ff" CreationDate="2012-01-26T16:07:11.513" UserId="1685" Text="I have decreased the code block font size. This change will be deployed after our next production build." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7506" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2130" RevisionGUID="9b937546-77fa-43d6-ae95-0af581f0a639" CreationDate="2012-01-26T16:07:23.103" UserId="1685" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7507" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2930" RevisionGUID="aba100b0-4ef2-4098-ac2f-751d2724f41c" CreationDate="2012-01-26T17:05:35.937" UserId="39294" Text="I was referring to a question here: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/131746/how-to-correct-a-junior-but-encourage-him-to-think-for-himself/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was closed as off topic! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see it received 38 reps and there were great participation, about 10 questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can a &quot;good question&quot; be closed? I agree that one can say similar thing *can* happen on other industry; but that doesn't mean this is not what programmers face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Isn't this being harsh just for the sake of being definition of off-topic? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7508" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2930" RevisionGUID="aba100b0-4ef2-4098-ac2f-751d2724f41c" CreationDate="2012-01-26T17:05:35.937" UserId="39294" Text="How can a good question be closed for being Off topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7509" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2930" RevisionGUID="aba100b0-4ef2-4098-ac2f-751d2724f41c" CreationDate="2012-01-26T17:05:35.937" UserId="39294" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7510" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2930" RevisionGUID="576ba432-d41b-4615-a977-c71191007f1b" CreationDate="2012-01-26T17:37:05.350" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="I was referring to a question here: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/131746/how-to-correct-a-junior-but-encourage-him-to-think-for-himself/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was closed as off topic! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see it received 38 reps and there were great participation, about 10 answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can a &quot;good question&quot; be closed? I agree that one can say similar thing *can* happen on other industry; but that doesn't mean this is not what programmers face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Isn't this being harsh just for the sake of being definition of off-topic? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7511" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2931" RevisionGUID="377d11a2-b484-43a4-bcda-947940145b60" CreationDate="2012-01-26T17:57:43.493" UserId="25936" Text="First of all, popularity doesn't say much when it comes to whether a question is on topic or not. Consider these questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-programming-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are all great! Why are these closed? One less obvious reason is that these highly rated but off topic questions will keep generating lesser quality questions on similar topics. People will keep asking those, as long as they feel they are on topic, and it will be impossible to explain why their questions were closed when similar popular questions are open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [FAQ][1] very clearly defines that on topic questions should be on topics that apply uniquely to programming: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The whole point of Stack Exchange is for questions to be _expertly_ answer. Although the question in question is an extremely interesting one, I fail to see how it can be expertly answered by software developers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The core question is: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I need a team who can learn to do things right autonomously, not just follow instructions. How does one correct a junior developer, but still encourage him to think for himself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you tell me how this question is any different that this: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I need a team who can learn to do things right autonomously, not just follow instructions. How does one correct a junior member, but still encourage him to think for himself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7jTZE.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7512" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2931" RevisionGUID="a3a1df8d-edfb-4e9e-83a4-44052f82662e" CreationDate="2012-01-26T18:02:50.583" UserId="25936" Comment="added 118 characters in body" Text="First of all, popularity doesn't say much when it comes to whether a question is on topic or not. Consider these questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-programming-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are all great! [And there are a lot more][1]! Why are these closed? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One less obvious reason is that these highly rated but off topic questions will keep generating lesser quality questions on similar topics. People will keep asking those, as long as they feel they are on topic, and it will be impossible to explain why their questions were closed when similar popular questions are open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [FAQ][2] very clearly defines that on topic questions should be discussing topics that apply uniquely to programming: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The whole point of Stack Exchange is for questions to be _expertly_ answer. Although the question in question is an extremely interesting one, I fail to see how it can be expertly answered by software developers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The core question is: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I need a team who can learn to do things right autonomously, not just follow instructions. How does one correct a junior developer, but still encourage him to think for himself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you tell me how this question is any different than this: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I need a team who can learn to do things right autonomously, not just follow instructions. How does one correct a junior member, but still encourage him to think for himself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=closed:1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7jTZE.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7513" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2931" RevisionGUID="a2b997e3-824e-436c-a518-7e2c450778e4" CreationDate="2012-01-26T18:08:03.647" UserId="25936" Comment="Flow. English sucks! " Text="First of all, popularity doesn't say much when it comes to whether a question is on topic or not. Consider these questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-programming-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are all great! [And there are a lot more][1]! Why are these closed? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One less obvious reason is that these highly rated but off topic questions will keep generating lesser quality questions on similar topics. People will keep asking those, as long as they feel they are on topic, and it will be impossible to explain why their questions were closed when similar popular questions are open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And of course the [FAQ][2] very clearly defines that on topic questions should be discussing topics that apply uniquely to programming: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The whole point of Stack Exchange is for questions to be _expertly_ answer. Although the question in question is an extremely interesting one, I fail to see how it can be expertly answered by software developers. And even if one amongst us can expertly answer it, it still doesn't matter, because most of as aren't knowledgeable enough to verify if the answer is a good one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The core question is: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I need a team who can learn to do things right autonomously, not just follow instructions. How does one correct a junior developer, but still encourage him to think for himself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you tell me how this question is any different than this: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I need a team who can learn to do things right autonomously, not just follow instructions. How does one correct a junior member, but still encourage him to think for himself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=closed:1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7jTZE.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7514" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2930" RevisionGUID="e806a2d9-3dec-4da4-ad62-d15a18166a72" CreationDate="2012-01-26T18:10:53.173" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7515" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2925" RevisionGUID="ed8f7ce2-b688-4fc4-a393-d16673b03be8" CreationDate="2012-01-26T18:45:50.170" UserId="1996" Comment="corrected spelling" Text="I don't believe any of the candidates are looking to be too completely different, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our moderators have been doing a great job. I'm sure there are things that some candidates, and even I, want to change, but there would be **nothing** wrong with not completely changing our ways. In fact, it might be a bad thing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you look at any of the candidates, most of them have something(s) different they want to do. That's great! But specifically changing the ways we moderate would not drastically help, if it helps at all. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at ChrisF's answer to this question, I agree, and I plan to follow a similar approach. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have any questions, please [see my nomination][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election/2#post-131555" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7516" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2932" RevisionGUID="91303f49-e088-4b3e-b2d1-346a97b9ca5e" CreationDate="2012-01-26T22:07:14.707" UserId="6591" Text="I think we're getting a bit too hostile and closing all sorts of things that would have been perfectly normal discussion a few months ago. In addition, at least one of the mods likes to edit answers to the closed questions and then delete the questions so that closed questions show up with no answers (I know this because I had over 10k for a few hours before a recalc zapped about 800-900 rep, and with over 10k rep you can see deleted answers and questions). " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7517" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2933" RevisionGUID="c952a82d-6bb6-4058-8b97-32fe9e0b0111" CreationDate="2012-01-27T01:11:45.200" UserId="7454" Text="Considering this question :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is the best ORM for .NET?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion it is off topic as it is a [shopping][2] [tool][3] question. On the other hand the [best answer][4] answers what should have been the question &quot;What are the criterias for choosing an ORM for.NET?&quot;, but that would be too much of a change ? Most answers wouldn't fit anymore with the question... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should it be edited ? closed ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related question (but old and in a somewhat different context of migration and different subject) : [Rewording other people's questions][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9498/what-is-the-best-orm-for-net&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/9531/7454&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/987/rewording-other-peoples-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7518" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2933" RevisionGUID="c952a82d-6bb6-4058-8b97-32fe9e0b0111" CreationDate="2012-01-27T01:11:45.200" UserId="7454" Text="Heavily editing a question to avoid closing or not?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7519" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2933" RevisionGUID="c952a82d-6bb6-4058-8b97-32fe9e0b0111" CreationDate="2012-01-27T01:11:45.200" UserId="7454" Text="|discussion|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7520" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2934" RevisionGUID="4c2f0f15-fe39-490f-b3f1-3132a8cb372e" CreationDate="2012-01-27T01:51:23.533" UserId="2654" Text="Editing is encouraged! If the question is off topic but has good answers, editing the question to make it relate better to the good answers is fine." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7521" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2935" RevisionGUID="4f25900f-47a8-4f34-94ca-f998ec96347d" CreationDate="2012-01-27T07:52:14.787" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I just added a post notice to [a question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124109/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-design-patterns) and saw the font had dropped down a size:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Post notice font problem][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't added a post notice in several days so I don't know when it started doing this, but could it be related to the [change in code block font size](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2130/could-we-get-the-new-coding-font-style)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Kaho2.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7522" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2935" RevisionGUID="4f25900f-47a8-4f34-94ca-f998ec96347d" CreationDate="2012-01-27T07:52:14.787" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The post notice font size has shrunk" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7523" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2935" RevisionGUID="4f25900f-47a8-4f34-94ca-f998ec96347d" CreationDate="2012-01-27T07:52:14.787" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7524" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2936" RevisionGUID="26345c0f-f9e6-44ef-94d1-3c4a4f68b69c" CreationDate="2012-01-27T08:13:02.347" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="These questions have now been merged:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89158/do-you-have-to-be-good-at-math-to-be-a-good-programmer#question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7525" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2874" RevisionGUID="6f7b60e6-8e7d-4436-ba11-ee5d027410ec" CreationDate="2012-01-27T08:13:19.383" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|merge-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7526" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2937" RevisionGUID="e3fddc7f-b77a-418c-b8dc-3b13d506aa42" CreationDate="2012-01-27T08:48:55.910" UserId="47" Text="As Josh says editing is good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if the question already has answers care is needed to avoid invalidating any existing answers - these were provided in good face and their owners deserve that respect. This does mean that if edits to salvage the post cause this then the correct course of action is to close the existing question and post a new one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7527" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2886" RevisionGUID="cf7dd95b-a168-4de3-97db-b8c07ff762f5" CreationDate="2012-01-27T08:58:03.677" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Revise step 1" Text="So one of the major problems we have on Programmers is the proliferation of bad tags. We've had a number of [discussions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/tags) and [posse requests](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/posse) for different tags, but killing a tag—when it's even possible—tends to be incredibly ad hoc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, based on the recent [software tag cleanup](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2779/what-can-be-done-about-the-remaining-closed-questions-in-the-software-tag), I'd like to propose a more structured cleanup process for tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 1: determine a tag needs to die&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once a quarter-ish, we'll create a question here, tagged [meta-tag:featured], that'll request candidate tags for cleanup. Each tag will get its own answer so they can be discussed in comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After two weeks, the question will be closed, and any tag with a score of 5 or higher will move onto the next round. We'll work through each of these tags in the same way: once these are complete, we'll create a new call for candidate tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 2: create a cleanup notice for the tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once a tag is identified as needing to die, a moderator will create a new meta-discussion question tagged [meta-tag:featured] that starts the cleanup. The ground rules of the cleanup would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* One cleanup notice active at a time&#xD;&#xA;* If a question in the tag is closed as anything other than &quot;exact duplicate&quot;, has less than 20 score, and has been closed for a month or more, it can be deleted at any time&#xD;&#xA;* If a question's been closed as an exact duplicate, it'll be listed as a &quot;merge candidate&quot; in the cleanup notice.&#xD;&#xA;* If a question is closed and has a score of 20 or higher, it'll be listed as a &quot;deletion candidate&quot; in the cleanup notice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once this post notice is created, a two-week cleanup timer begins.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 3: cleaning up the tags, identifying close candidates, and the last call for heroic edits&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;During the two-week cleanup period, the community will be tasked with doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Cleaning up the tags: if a question is on-topic for the site, it needs to be revised and retagged with more meaningful tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Identifying close candidates: if a tagged question just slipped through the cracks and needs to be closed, it needs to be listed as a close candidate on the cleanup notice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. For any tagged closed question or close candidate, the cleanup period is the last chance to save them with heroic edits: consolidate lists into canonical answers and flag duplicate answers for deletion and substantially improve the quality of the question. If an attempt to save a question has been made, flag the question and list it as a &quot;saved question&quot; on the cleanup notice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 4: cleanup aftermath&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the two-week cleanup period:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* any questions marked saved will be reviewed and reopened if the edits have, in fact, substantially improved the question and addressed the original reasons why the question was closed&#xD;&#xA;* any deletion candidates not saved will be deleted&#xD;&#xA;* any merge candidates not saved will be merged&#xD;&#xA;* any close candidates not saved will be reviewed by moderators and closed if found to be off-topic, not constructive, too localized, not real questions, or exact duplicates of other questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any questions closed during the cleanup will stick around for a month to give one final chance to save them. If they haven't been reopened after that, they'll be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Wrap up and feedback&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is pretty close to what we've been doing for other tag cleanups, just in a more structured manner that keeps everyone in the loop about what's going to happen at any specific time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think? What concerns do you have? Are there specific implementation details that need tweaking?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7528" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2937" RevisionGUID="7eb17538-d4b4-4aa0-95d8-4da24b65716e" CreationDate="2012-01-27T09:38:44.723" UserId="47" Comment="spelling" Text="As Josh says editing is good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if the question already has answers care is needed to avoid invalidating any existing answers - these were provided in good faith and their owners deserve that respect. This does mean that if edits to salvage the post cause this then the correct course of action is to close the existing question and post a new one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7529" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2938" RevisionGUID="aecf7494-ec68-4e9c-a415-349425f00746" CreationDate="2012-01-27T10:16:49.897" UserId="25936" Text="That's a tricky one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your edit invalidated most answers - I counted 10 out of the total 14. I'm a bit uncomfortable with that. In this instance, I think it would be preferable to rollback your edit, close the question and re-ask your far better version.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, well, let's hope people will [refrain from answering obviously off topic / bad questions][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. Your edit is fantastic, and obviously in good faith. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2823/please-dont-post-answers-on-obviously-off-topic-bad-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7530" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2938" RevisionGUID="b94d4fd2-ce99-4789-a6ba-078734c4d28f" CreationDate="2012-01-27T10:53:47.900" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 27 characters in body" Text="That's a tricky one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your edit, although obviously in good faith, invalidated most answers - I counted 10 out of the total 14. I'm a bit uncomfortable with that. In this instance, I think it would be preferable to rollback your edit, close the question and re-ask your far better version.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, let's hope people will [refrain from answering obviously off topic / bad questions][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2823/please-dont-post-answers-on-obviously-off-topic-bad-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7531" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2939" RevisionGUID="707a9784-9faf-4a8e-9cce-f28a0d841f76" CreationDate="2012-01-27T11:05:47.257" UserId="4" Text="Although I like [ChrisF's][1] and [Yannis Rizos's][2] answers, I'm concerned with reasking questions, unless you actually have the same problem and can provide clarifications or are an expert and can ensure it's sufficiently detailed. If you aren't in a position to respond to comments, to provide more details, or to determine if an answer is at least viable, you probably shouldn't ask the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, there's no way to tell in advance, so it's up to the asker to be sure they can provide anything that the people with the knowledge and experiences need to provide a useful answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2937/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2938/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7532" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2937" RevisionGUID="fcf00769-3359-4c4b-9e8e-ff9f7ac050c4" CreationDate="2012-01-27T11:19:11.900" UserId="47" Comment="clarification" Text="As Josh says editing is good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if the question already has answers care is needed to avoid invalidating any existing answers - these were provided in good faith and their owners deserve that respect. This does mean that if edits to salvage the post cause this then the correct course of action is to close the existing question and post a new one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That does assume that the underlying more general question is worth asking in the first place." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7534" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2940" RevisionGUID="83a58ea6-d4a2-4a92-a0b7-ae5da8904dde" CreationDate="2012-01-27T13:17:43.963" UserId="468" Text="I am referring to [this question:What you should do if your junior did not adopt your suggestion? ][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was asked to take this question to [Parenting SE][2] or [Professional Matters SE][3], because the question is a workplace issue. You can read the comments for a debate on whether this question should be closed or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, I can't take the issue to Parenting SE because I am not a parent to those juniors whom I am responsible for. Second, the Professional Matters does not exist yet, so I can't take the issue to a site that hasn't been created yet. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I was asked to refer to this [meta answer][4] for a reasoning as to the closure of the question. I agree with the answer's definition of the Programmer SE's characterization, and I believe that my question applies uniquely to programmers in particular and to creative workers in general. Closing a question as such because this question doesn't just apply to programmers but to other creative workers will only restrict unnecessarily the scope of Programmer SE and make it less useful for the programmers. Not to mention that closing a question because it belongs to a still-not-yet-exist site doesn't sound too good a practice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, the question should be reopened and must remain open until at least the Professional Matters SE is on-live.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130645/what-you-should-do-if-your-junior-did-not-adopt-your-suggestion&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://parenting.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2483/why-are-all-of-the-good-career-related-threads-closed/2484#2484" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7535" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2940" RevisionGUID="83a58ea6-d4a2-4a92-a0b7-ae5da8904dde" CreationDate="2012-01-27T13:17:43.963" UserId="468" Text="Why is the question regarding mentoring closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7536" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2940" RevisionGUID="83a58ea6-d4a2-4a92-a0b7-ae5da8904dde" CreationDate="2012-01-27T13:17:43.963" UserId="468" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7537" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2941" RevisionGUID="aa5f6e58-13e3-4140-ab40-7cc3a92e3796" CreationDate="2012-01-27T13:25:37.227" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; Therefore, the question should be reopened and must remain open until at least the Professional Matters SE is on-live.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have absolutely no way to tell if Professional Matters will make it to beta, and if it does, we also cannot predict that the question will be on topic there at that time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Area51 proposals are just that; They are shaped during their Area51 lifetime, and they might end up being a completely different site than originally intended. Case in point, well, Programmers Stack Exchange. Check out the [proposal][1], to get an idea how many things changed along the way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7538" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2940" RevisionGUID="0a09ea4e-4198-47f6-b25b-f38e9ac7fd56" CreationDate="2012-01-27T13:25:46.100" UserId="468" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="I am referring to [this question:What you should do if your junior did not adopt your suggestion? ][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was asked to take this question to [Parenting SE][2] or [Professional Matters SE][3], because the question is a workplace issue. You can read the comments for a debate on whether this question should be closed or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, I can't take the issue to Parenting SE because I am not a parent to those juniors whom I am responsible for. Second, the Professional Matters does not exist yet, so I can't take the issue to a site that hasn't been created yet. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I was asked to refer to this [meta answer][4] for a reasoning as to the closure of the question. I agree with the answer's definition of the Programmer SE's characterization, and I believe that my question applies uniquely to programmers in particular and to creative workers in general. Closing a question as such because this question doesn't just apply to programmers but to other creative workers will only restrict unnecessarily the scope of Programmer SE and make it less useful for the programmers. Not to mention that closing a question because it belongs to a still-not-yet-exist site doesn't sound too good a practice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, the question should be reopened and must remain opened until at least the Professional Matters SE goes onlive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130645/what-you-should-do-if-your-junior-did-not-adopt-your-suggestion&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://parenting.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2483/why-are-all-of-the-good-career-related-threads-closed/2484#2484" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7539" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2942" RevisionGUID="a9c56a6e-b0de-4bef-92d6-ddfe093b2d8a" CreationDate="2012-01-27T13:25:54.170" UserId="41381" Text="welcome to the void of good questions semi related to programming that have no home on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It exists not everyone likes that it exists, but powers greater than I decided it should exist." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7540" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2940" RevisionGUID="058401a0-291c-4d7b-bef0-1bad935e8a54" CreationDate="2012-01-27T13:31:11.757" UserId="468" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="I am referring to [this question:What you should do if your junior did not adopt your suggestion? ][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was asked to take this question to [Parenting SE][2] or [Professional Matters SE][3], because the question is a workplace issue. You can read the comments for a debate on whether this question should be closed or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, I can't take the issue to Parenting SE because I am not a parent to those juniors whom I am responsible for. Second, the Professional Matters does not exist yet, so I can't take the issue to a site that hasn't been created yet. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I was asked to refer to this [meta answer][4] for a reasoning as to the closure of the question. I agree with the answer's definition of the Programmer SE's characterization, and I believe that my question applies uniquely to programmers in particular and to creative workers in general. Closing a question as such because this question doesn't just apply to programmers but to other creative workers will only restrict unnecessarily the scope of Programmer SE and make it less useful for the programmers. Not to mention that closing a question because it belongs to a still-not-yet-exist site doesn't sound too good a practice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**AND** if the career-related site didn't get created there would be no place for my question to go to, which makes the SE rather &quot;incomplete&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, the question should be reopened and must remain opened until at least the Professional Matters SE goes onlive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130645/what-you-should-do-if-your-junior-did-not-adopt-your-suggestion&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://parenting.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2483/why-are-all-of-the-good-career-related-threads-closed/2484#2484" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7541" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2941" RevisionGUID="87299957-4d64-4678-b860-7687f4398b7d" CreationDate="2012-01-27T13:31:38.417" UserId="25936" Comment="added 969 characters in body" Text="&gt; First, I can't take the issue to Parenting SE because I am not a parent to those juniors whom I am responsible for. Second, the Professional Matters does not exist yet, so I can't take the issue to a site that hasn't been created yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Parenting.SE is still in beta, which means that it's still forming. You should ask a Meta question there and ask the community if they want the question or not. Even if they don't want it, they will most probably give you feedback on how to reformulate and re-ask it there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing a question as such because this question doesn't just apply to programmers but to other creative workers will only restrict unnecessarily the scope of Programmer SE and make it less useful for the programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Restricting the scope of Programmers.SE to questions that only apply uniquely to our professional fields is a decision that the community took a while ago. Although many disagree with it, there is little point in restarting the debate, especially since it was a decision that was encouraged by the powers that be. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Therefore, the question should be reopened and must remain open until at least the Professional Matters SE is on-live.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have absolutely no way to tell if Professional Matters will make it to beta, and if it does, we cannot predict that the question will be on topic there at that time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Area51 proposals are just that; they are shaped during their Area51 lifetime, and they might end up being a completely different site than originally intended. Case in point, well, Programmers.SE. Check out the [proposal][1], to get an idea how many things changed along the way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7542" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2943" RevisionGUID="7f93c098-e71d-43cb-bf6b-60d84354ec0c" CreationDate="2012-01-27T13:33:37.840" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="A few, quick clarifications:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* You weren't told to take it to [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2): I suggested that you might be interested in the proposal, which aims to cover workplace questions of a more general nature.&#xD;&#xA;* Likewise, you weren't told to take it to [Parenting](http://parenting.stackexchange.com) either: an active user on Parenting suggested to me that [this question](http://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/1027/what-is-the-best-way-to-calmly-respond-to-a-pre-schooler-who-will-not-listen) had some good, general advice  that might be related to your situation, and it was added as a comment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To quote from [the answer I linked](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2484/8):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [T]here are a great many things about careers that are applicable to *any* job, which dilutes the core focus of this site and diminishes the [value Stack Exchange brings](http://stackexchange.com/about) to the Q&amp;A space: focused sites filled with experts on that one particular subject. Programmers's expertise is software development, not general career advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're not a general purpose career site: we never have been, and we never will be. For the past 18 months, we've *always* been about questions requiring the *unique* experience of those in software development. It's worked out pretty well for us so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I think everyone acknowledges that there is a pent-up demand for a Q&amp;A site for more general workplace questions, which is why the [Professional Matters site proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2) was created. The way we get to a point where general professional questions are accepted on Stack Exchange is to *commit and promote that proposal*, not redefining a random site on the network that superficially looks similar to the expertise required to answer such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you want to ask general professional questions, I strongly encourage you to support [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2). It's highly unlikely it won't ever be created, but it'll be created a whole lot sooner if people—such as yourself—who are interested in the topic commit to it and help build critical mass for it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7543" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2943" RevisionGUID="28e010e1-f0fe-4048-9363-a4bebb2af19e" CreationDate="2012-01-27T13:39:12.883" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="A few, quick clarifications:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* You weren't told to take it to [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2): I suggested that you might be interested in the proposal, which aims to cover workplace questions of a more general nature.&#xD;&#xA;* Likewise, you weren't told to take it to [Parenting](http://parenting.stackexchange.com) either: an active user on Parenting suggested to me that [this question](http://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/1027/what-is-the-best-way-to-calmly-respond-to-a-pre-schooler-who-will-not-listen) had some good, general advice  that might be related to your situation, and it was added as a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To quote from [the answer I linked](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2484/8):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [T]here are a great many things about careers that are applicable to *any* job, which dilutes the core focus of this site and diminishes the [value Stack Exchange brings](http://stackexchange.com/about) to the Q&amp;A space: focused sites filled with experts on that one particular subject. Programmers's expertise is software development, not general career advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're not a general purpose career site: we never have been, and we never will be. For the past 18 months, we've *always* been about questions requiring the *unique* experience of those in software development. It's worked out pretty well for us so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I think everyone acknowledges that there is a pent-up demand for a Q&amp;A site for more general workplace questions, which is why the [Professional Matters site proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2) was created. The way we get to a point where general professional questions are accepted on Stack Exchange is to *commit to and promote that proposal*, not redefining a random site on the network that superficially looks similar to the expertise required to answer such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you want to ask general professional questions, I strongly encourage you to support [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2). It's highly unlikely it won't ever be created, but it'll be created a whole lot sooner if people—such as yourself—who are interested in the topic commit to it and help build critical mass for it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7544" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2944" RevisionGUID="1c55a571-336b-484f-ab33-37c072f4d340" CreationDate="2012-01-27T13:44:29.057" UserId="4" Text="I think the other answers, especially [Mark's][1] and [Yannis's][2] hit most of the points, but I'd just like to weigh in on two things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing a question as such because this question doesn't just apply to programmers but to other creative workers will only restrict unnecessarily the scope of Programmer SE and make it less useful for the programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By allowing questions about things that are relevant to more than just software development professionals, we are creating a major problem. It becomes more difficult for the software development professionals to find answers to questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's take an example of teamwork. If I'm a software project manager or technical lead, I might be interested in how to manage my team in the context of something like Scrum or RUP to maximize quality and improve on-time delivery, or how implementing a specific change to my development process will influence my team's productivity or defect injection rate. If there were lots of questions about generic teamwork, it would become that much harder for me to search this site to find out if my question had been answered and get to those answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Therefore, the question should be reopened and must remain open until at least the Professional Matters SE is on-live.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You don't dump tangentially related questions on a Stack Exchange site because they are &quot;close enough&quot; and then move them later. You let each community focus on its expertise and only its expertise. As the demand for something arises, a new site is proposed, members of existing communities can come together to stand it up, and new experts, practitioners, and curious individuals can be brought in from outside the network to create a new and vibrant community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2943/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2941/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7545" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2945" RevisionGUID="61a8015b-a657-4af1-b31b-ceafef850679" CreationDate="2012-01-27T14:04:16.123" UserId="3688" Text="I just saw a question on [how to have more fun at work][1], which I was about to vote to close, when I read the comments, and saw that it had been closed/re-opened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think closing it was the right move (for reason in my comment to it). But, given that it *was* re-opened, should I *not* vote to re-close, at least for a period of time? Or just vote as I think it deserves, regardless?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/77486/3688" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7546" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2945" RevisionGUID="61a8015b-a657-4af1-b31b-ceafef850679" CreationDate="2012-01-27T14:04:16.123" UserId="3688" Text="Guidelines on voting to close a re-opened question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7547" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2945" RevisionGUID="61a8015b-a657-4af1-b31b-ceafef850679" CreationDate="2012-01-27T14:04:16.123" UserId="3688" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7548" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2946" RevisionGUID="604f4bd6-50b8-422d-9035-9900120eeac2" CreationDate="2012-01-27T14:06:47.693" UserId="47" Text="You should vote as you think. So vote to close if that's what you think should be the correct response in this case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if it looks like the post is going to yo-yo between states then raising here on meta or flagging for moderator attention is the right thing to do. Then it can be discussed and we (as moderators) can act on the result of that discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case it was re-opened by a moderator, so we probably wouldn't override that unless the post gained a lot of flags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7549" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2941" RevisionGUID="8f96ad40-597d-43f5-93a7-c479535e5ee2" CreationDate="2012-01-27T16:59:05.473" UserId="25936" Comment="added 115 characters in body" Text="&gt; First, I can't take the issue to Parenting SE because I am not a parent to those juniors whom I am responsible for. Second, the Professional Matters does not exist yet, so I can't take the issue to a site that hasn't been created yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Parenting.SE is still in beta, which means that it's still forming. You should ask a Meta question there and ask the community if they want the question or not. Even if they don't want it, they will most probably give you feedback on how to reformulate and re-ask it there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing a question as such because this question doesn't just apply to programmers but to other creative workers will only restrict unnecessarily the scope of Programmer SE and make it less useful for the programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Restricting the scope of Programmers.SE to questions that only apply uniquely to our professional fields is a decision that the community took a while ago. Although many disagree with it, there is little point in restarting the debate, especially since it was a decision that was encouraged by the powers that be. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Therefore, the question should be reopened and must remain open until at least the Professional Matters SE is on-live.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have absolutely no way to tell if [Professional Matters][1] will make it to beta, and if it does, we cannot predict that the question will be on topic there at that time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Area51 proposals are just that; they are shaped during their Area51 lifetime, and they might end up being a completely different site than originally intended. Case in point, well, Programmers.SE. Check out the [proposal][2], to get an idea how many things changed along the way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=eeaqg1pbrZqJS6wd42Y-3w2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7550" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2947" RevisionGUID="de263e5f-a6be-4ddd-b878-54fd8e35fc99" CreationDate="2012-01-27T17:07:49.293" UserId="1130" Text="Perhaps part of the disconnect is that the site is called **Programmers**.StackExchange, so people assume the site is about Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In reality, the FAQ says the site is about &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;, and questions that aren't related to that get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we have a community that thinks the site is about Programmers, and moderators that think the site is about conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It probably wouldn't be a popular solution, but if you want a site that's about software development I feel it should be called something like `softwaredevelopment.stackexchange.com`, not `programmers.stackexchange.com`. `Programmers.stackexchange` should be a site about programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And personally, I want to participate in a site about programmers, not one about software development :)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7551" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="8267131c-a305-42ec-beb0-6ab33eadef97" CreationDate="2012-01-27T17:15:17.377" UserId="1130" Text="I was answering [another question][1], and realized perhaps I should post my answer in a suggestion on Meta&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the thing: this site is called **programmers**.stackexchange, while the FAQ states that this site is about &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since a large number of people never read the FAQ, or don't read it before posting, this means we have a community of people that think the site is about Programmers, but a team of moderators that try and maintain a site on &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This causes a large number of unhappy people who don't understand why their questions, or other questions they think are good, get closed, downvoted, etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my suggestion is to rename the site to something that matches it's FAQ, like `softwaredevelopement.stackexchange`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I hate the suggestion. I want to participate in a site about programmers, not software development. However as long as the site is called one thing, and the FAQ states another, we're never going to be at peace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2131/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7552" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="8267131c-a305-42ec-beb0-6ab33eadef97" CreationDate="2012-01-27T17:15:17.377" UserId="1130" Text="Renaming the site to match it's FAQ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7553" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="8267131c-a305-42ec-beb0-6ab33eadef97" CreationDate="2012-01-27T17:15:17.377" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7554" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2932" RevisionGUID="0d17b678-5be9-4d9b-af78-da861f53d7b2" CreationDate="2012-01-27T17:22:56.527" UserId="6591" Comment="fixed typo. " Text="I think we're getting a bit too hostile and closing all sorts of things that would have been perfectly normal discussion a few months ago. In addition, at least one of the mods likes to edit answers to the closed questions and then delete the answers so that closed questions show up with zero answers (I know this because I had over 10k for a few hours before a recalc zapped about 800-900 rep, and with over 10k rep you can see deleted answers). I only noticed this because one question I was typing an answer to, already had one other answer, then got closed before I could submit my answer. When I looked at it, the previously submitted answer was gone, and it question didn't even show up on the front page - even though other closed questions showed up on the front page, and this question was still newer than the other questions near the bottom of the page. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the number of downvotes this is getting, I suspect that the goal of the &quot;[community][1]&quot; this board represents has changed since I joined. Perhaps this means it is time to depart? Are we turning into Digg?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7555" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="d47e1561-848f-4162-a04a-b0ce17f100cf" CreationDate="2012-01-27T17:36:31.883" UserId="1130" Comment="added 458 characters in body" Text="I was answering [another question][1], and realized perhaps I should post my answer in a suggestion on Meta&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the thing: this site is called **programmers**.stackexchange, while the FAQ states that this site is about &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since a large number of people never read the FAQ, or don't read it before posting, this means we have a community of people that think the site is about Programmers, but a team of moderators that try and maintain a site on &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This causes a large number of unhappy people who don't understand why their questions, or other questions they think are good, get closed, downvoted, etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my suggestion is to either rename the site to something that matches it's FAQ, like `softwaredevelopement.stackexchange`, or change the FAQ so that this site is about Programmers, not software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I hate the suggestion of renaming the site. I want to participate in a site about programmers, not software development. But as long as the site is called one thing, and the FAQ states another, we're never going to be at peace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2131/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7556" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="d47e1561-848f-4162-a04a-b0ce17f100cf" CreationDate="2012-01-27T17:36:31.883" UserId="1130" Comment="added 458 characters in body" Text="Renaming the site to match it's FAQ or changing the FAQ to match the site name?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7557" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2949" RevisionGUID="3310939e-cb29-45a2-b06e-d008a40ee048" CreationDate="2012-01-27T18:14:36.550" UserId="4" Text="This isn't the first time the name of the site has been questioned. See [here][1] and [here][2]. Part of the confusion/problem comes from the origin of the site. Originally, it was supposed to be a home to those fun questions about programmers that were closed on Stack Overflow. However, that wasn't a good fit for the Stack Exchange site. So this site became focused on non-coding questions about software development and software engineering (see here for a [discussion about software engineering][3]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that the name is a poor reflection of what the site has become. However, the FAQ and Meta discussions, not the name of the site, is the true reflection of topicality and appropriate questions. I would suspect that most professions have found this site to be more helpful than a site about programmers/programmer culture - I know I have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do also agree with Yannis's comment - changing the (domain) name will probably have an impact on SEO and the automated indexing. That's far outside my area of expertise, but the great thing about SE sites is how quickly they are indexed and appear in searches - I've searched for additional information to include in posts that I know exists, and come across the question I was answering as a top hit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think the best thing for us to do would be to improve the FAQ and identify key Meta discussions that went into defining the site. Something to be careful of (and Yannis and I had this discussion) is increasing the size of the FAQ - it's already very long compared to other sites. Ultimately, the FAQ needs to clearly define the scope (it does an OK/solid job right now) regardless of what this site is called.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7558" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2949" RevisionGUID="a961c92a-5253-448b-b0e7-8af2b737a21a" CreationDate="2012-01-27T18:29:59.083" UserId="4" Comment="added 1052 characters in body" Text="This isn't the first time the name of the site has been questioned. See [here][1] and [here][2]. Part of the confusion/problem comes from the origin of the site. Originally, it was supposed to be a home to those fun questions about programmers that were closed on Stack Overflow. However, that wasn't a good fit for the Stack Exchange site. So this site became focused on non-coding questions about software development and software engineering (see here for a [discussion about software engineering][3]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that the name is a poor reflection of what the site has become. However, the FAQ and Meta discussions, not the name of the site, is the true reflection of topicality and appropriate questions. I would suspect that most professions have found this site to be more helpful than a site about programmers/programmer culture - I know I have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do also agree with Yannis's comment - changing the (domain) name will probably have an impact on SEO and the automated indexing. That's far outside my area of expertise, but the great thing about SE sites is how quickly they are indexed and appear in searches - I've searched for additional information to include in posts that I know exists, and come across the question I was answering as a top hit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think the best thing for us to do would be to improve the FAQ and identify key Meta discussions that went into defining the site. Something to be careful of (and Yannis and I had this discussion) is increasing the size of the FAQ - it's already very long compared to other sites. Ultimately, the FAQ needs to clearly define the scope (it does an OK/solid job right now) regardless of what this site is called.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose there are a number of questions to ask, and I think a Stack Exchange employee would be the one to have to answer them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is it technically feasible to change the name and domain name of a Stack Exchange site, while preserving all of the content?&#xD;&#xA;2. What damage, particularly to the indexing and SEO of the site, would be done by changing the domain name? Would any damage be done by simply changing the name and look of the site without changing the domain name?&#xD;&#xA;3. Is it acceptable to have a site name that is different than the site's domain name? There are some examples of minor differences, such as &quot;cstheory.se.com&quot; having the full name of Theoretical Computer Science, but there is no precidence for having a domain name &quot;programmers.se.com&quot; and a site name of Software Development (as an example).&#xD;&#xA;4. Is it possible, feasible, and appropriate to totally rebrand a site post-launch to reflect a change in direction?&#xD;&#xA;5. Would doing any of the above set a precident for other current or future SE sites that is inappropriate?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7559" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="08993906-0d06-4fc6-b279-4195d50be907" CreationDate="2012-01-27T18:47:54.060" UserId="1130" Comment="added 1591 characters in body" Text="I was answering [another question][1], and realized perhaps I should post my answer in a suggestion on Meta&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the thing: this site is called **programmers**.stackexchange, while the FAQ states that this site is about &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since a large number of people never read the FAQ, or don't read it before posting, this means we have a community of people that think the site is about Programmers, but a team of moderators that try and maintain a site on &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This causes a large number of unhappy people who don't understand why their questions, or other questions they think are good, get closed, downvoted, etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my suggestion is to either rename the site to something that matches it's FAQ, like `softwaredevelopement.stackexchange`, or change the FAQ so that this site is about Programmers, not software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I hate the suggestion of renaming the site. I want to participate in a site about programmers, not software development. But as long as the site is called one thing, and the FAQ states another, we're never going to be at peace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By suggesting changing the FAQ to be about Programmers instead of Software Development, I am not suggesting we bring back the silly/fun questions such as which language is better, or what IDE is preferred, but rather that we allow questions on topics such as [mentoring junior programmers][2], [code ownership][3], and [career advice related to programming careers][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's some other questions which I feel contain valuable information to any programmer, but are simply closed since they don't match our FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30355/how-to-become-a-faster-programmer&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45776/why-do-business-analysts-and-project-managers-get-higher-salaries-than-programme&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114819/are-9-to-5-programmers-looked-down-upon&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/93983/why-dont-all-companies-buy-developers-the-best-hardware&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/36662/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2131/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/130645/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86555/do-i-own-copyright-of-program-i-made-in-own-time&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/94832/will-staying-in-this-position-affect-my-career-negatively" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7560" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2949" RevisionGUID="05b8000e-8b23-4fa9-8664-884a3111a105" CreationDate="2012-01-27T18:54:51.383" UserId="4" Comment="added 32 characters in body" Text="This isn't the first time the name of the site has been questioned. See [here][1] and [here][2]. Part of the confusion/problem comes from the origin of the site. Originally, it was supposed to be a home to those fun questions about programmers that were closed on Stack Overflow. However, that wasn't a good fit for the Stack Exchange site. So this site became focused on the more subjective, non-coding questions that are faced by those in the software development profession (see here for a [discussion about software engineering][3]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that the name is a poor reflection of what the site has become. However, the FAQ and Meta discussions, not the name of the site, is the true reflection of topicality and appropriate questions. I would suspect that most professions have found this site to be more helpful than a site about programmers/programmer culture - I know I have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do also agree with Yannis's comment - changing the (domain) name will probably have an impact on SEO and the automated indexing. That's far outside my area of expertise, but the great thing about SE sites is how quickly they are indexed and appear in searches - I've searched for additional information to include in posts that I know exists, and come across the question I was answering as a top hit. Doing anything that compromises this would probably be a bad idea, for the Good of the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think the best thing for us to do would be to improve the FAQ and identify key Meta discussions that went into defining the site. Something to be careful of (and Yannis and I had this discussion) is increasing the size of the FAQ - it's already long compared to other sites. Ultimately, the FAQ needs to clearly define the scope (it does an OK/solid job right now) regardless of what this site is called or looks like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose there are a number of questions to ask, and I think a Stack Exchange employee would be the one to have to answer them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is it technically feasible to change the name and domain name of a Stack Exchange site, while preserving all of the content?&#xD;&#xA;2. What damage, particularly to the indexing and SEO of the site, would be done by changing the domain name? Would any damage be done by simply changing the name and look of the site without changing the domain name?&#xD;&#xA;3. Is it acceptable to have a site name that is different than the site's domain name? There are some examples of minor differences, such as &quot;cstheory.se.com&quot; having the full name of Theoretical Computer Science, but there is no precidence for having a domain name &quot;programmers.se.com&quot; and a site name of Software Development (as an example).&#xD;&#xA;4. Is it possible, feasible, and appropriate to totally rebrand a site post-launch to reflect a change in direction?&#xD;&#xA;5. Would doing any of the above set a precident for other current or future SE sites that is inappropriate?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7561" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2950" RevisionGUID="57496870-9f7b-4d63-b52d-1f35ea9ad028" CreationDate="2012-01-27T18:58:44.510" UserId="31260" Text="I think it's OK not to worry about stuff like that. I mean,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#just look at the Trilogy and their FAQ's&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Stack Overflow is for ...people who write code because they love it...&quot; ([FAQ](http://stackoverflow.com/faq))  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Do they feel the need to rename site to &quot;Coding Lovers&quot; or rephrase FAQ to &quot;...discussions about stack overflow&quot;? I don't think so&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users&quot; ([FAQ](http://superuser.com/faq))  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Do they feel the need to rename site to &quot;Power Users&quot; or rephrasing FAQ to &quot;Super User is for super users&quot;? I don't think so&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Server Fault is for system administrators and desktop support professionals&quot; ([FAQ](http://serverfault.com/faq))  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Do they feel the need to rename site to &quot;Desktop Support&quot; or rephrasing FAQ to &quot;...for discussions about server faults&quot;? I don't think so&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7562" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="a8da3379-a829-4408-9367-6ec1d6bd39e8" CreationDate="2012-01-27T19:30:16.143" UserId="1130" Comment="deleted 918 characters in body" Text="I was answering [another question][1], and realized perhaps I should post my answer in a suggestion on Meta&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the thing: this site is called **programmers**.stackexchange, while the FAQ states that this site is about &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since a large number of people never read the FAQ, or don't read it before posting, this means we have a community of people that think the site is about Programmers, but a team of moderators that try and maintain a site on &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This causes a large number of unhappy people who don't understand why their questions, or other questions they think are good, get closed, downvoted, etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my suggestion is to either rename the site to something that matches it's FAQ, like `softwaredevelopement.stackexchange`, or change the FAQ so that this site is about Programmers, not software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I hate the suggestion of renaming the site. I want to participate in a site about programmers, not software development. But as long as the site is called one thing, and the FAQ states another, we're never going to be at peace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By suggesting changing the FAQ to be about Programmers instead of Software Development, I am not suggesting we bring back the silly/fun questions such as which language is better, or what IDE is preferred, but rather that we allow questions on topics such as [mentoring junior programmers][2], [code ownership][3], and [career advice related to programming careers][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2131/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/130645/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86555/do-i-own-copyright-of-program-i-made-in-own-time&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/94832/will-staying-in-this-position-affect-my-career-negatively" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7563" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2945" RevisionGUID="fb374df4-ae62-4e75-a2e2-bbcd1cf6cf1e" CreationDate="2012-01-27T20:44:58.163" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/162999558639591424" />
  <row Id="7564" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="7cecce99-7062-4010-a077-e1b96a8425ac" CreationDate="2012-01-27T21:12:55.833" UserId="1130" Comment="removed links, since I don't want to stay focused on site name not matching FAQ, not on closed questions" Text="I was answering [another question][1], and realized perhaps I should post my answer in a suggestion on Meta&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the thing: this site is called **programmers**.stackexchange, while the FAQ states that this site is about &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since a large number of people never read the FAQ, or don't read it before posting, this means we have a community of people that think the site is about Programmers, but a team of moderators that try and maintain a site on &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This causes a large number of unhappy people who don't understand why their questions, or other questions they think are good, get closed, downvoted, etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my suggestion is to either rename the site to something that matches it's FAQ, like `softwaredevelopement.stackexchange`, or change the FAQ so that this site is about Programmers, not software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I hate the suggestion of renaming the site. I want to participate in a site about programmers, not software development. But as long as the site is called one thing, and the FAQ states another, we're never going to be at peace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2131/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7565" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="1099980a-98ec-4279-b51a-eadd744c8785" CreationDate="2012-01-28T02:12:37.293" UserId="1996" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="I was answering [another question][1], and realized perhaps I should post my answer in a suggestion on Meta&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the thing: this site is called **programmers**.stackexchange, while the FAQ states that this site is about &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since a large number of people never read the FAQ, or don't read it before posting, this means we have a community of people that think the site is about Programmers, but a team of moderators that try and maintain a site on &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This causes a large number of unhappy people who don't understand why their questions, or other questions they think are good, get closed, downvoted, etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my suggestion is to either rename the site to something that matches it's FAQ, like `softwaredevelopment.stackexchange`, or change the FAQ so that this site is about Programmers, not software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I hate the suggestion of renaming the site. I want to participate in a site about programmers, not software development. But as long as the site is called one thing, and the FAQ states another, we're never going to be at peace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2131/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7566" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2945" RevisionGUID="423b8f67-106e-41f3-8922-417a4523b8b8" CreationDate="2012-01-28T03:10:18.323" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7567" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2940" RevisionGUID="24026826-0fff-4a6a-8279-7f87fb4bbea1" CreationDate="2012-01-28T03:10:41.460" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7568" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="58eb0b22-90f6-4373-a0d6-e21929e63453" CreationDate="2012-01-28T03:11:43.410" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7569" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2951" RevisionGUID="dc2b5027-997a-45f3-886d-5d7064245fed" CreationDate="2012-01-28T14:31:38.887" UserId="47" Text="&gt; Therefore, the question should be reopened and must remain opened until at least the Professional Matters SE goes onlive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This statement is just wrong. Would you expect a question that was off topic on Stack Overflow to remain open until an Area 51 site launched? What holds for one site on the network holds for all sites on the network. An off-topic question gets closed and ultimately deleted. We can't make exceptions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;NOTE: I'm not addresses the question of whether *this* question is on topic or not here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7570" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2922" RevisionGUID="e65c99e1-52b2-43f1-9399-52c10289da8d" CreationDate="2012-01-28T19:32:15.217" UserId="399" Comment="scheduled (:" Text="In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session with the candidates.  This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.  I am working with the candidates to find a time that allows the most participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Town Hall Chat will take place Tuesday the 31st at 22:00 UTC / 5:00pm EST&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[view in other timezones](http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=1&amp;day=31&amp;year=2012&amp;hour=22&amp;min=0&amp;sec=0&amp;p1=0)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[register here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/251/programmers-town-hall-chat?tab=schedule)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the details so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I would like to schedule this towards the beginning of the primary phase.  This means that I am looking at the 30th-1st. As soon as I coordinate with the existing moderators and candidates to find a best fit based on availability, I will edit this post with details on the &quot;when&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;* The Town Hall Chat will be a one-hour event using our [chat platform](http://chat.stackexchange.com/?tab=site&amp;sort=active&amp;host=programmers.stackexchange.com).  I will update this post with a direct link to the chat room once the event is scheduled.&#xD;&#xA;* The format will be an open discussion.  Users are encouraged to pose questions to the candidates regarding their thoughts on moderation.&#xD;&#xA;* After the chat session, a digest of the event will be permanently linked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7571" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2922" RevisionGUID="e65c99e1-52b2-43f1-9399-52c10289da8d" CreationDate="2012-01-28T19:32:15.217" UserId="399" Comment="scheduled (:" Text="2012 Moderator Election: Town Hall Chat - Tuesday 22:00 UTC / 5pm EST" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7572" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2922" RevisionGUID="e65c99e1-52b2-43f1-9399-52c10289da8d" CreationDate="2012-01-28T19:32:15.217" UserId="399" Comment="scheduled (:" Text="|discussion|featured|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7573" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2933" RevisionGUID="5bc7089e-be33-4978-8765-d5d4c3666d59" CreationDate="2012-01-28T20:45:08.860" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/163361991883358208" />
  <row Id="7574" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2952" RevisionGUID="667b96da-4f81-4a5e-9735-607d00fbc8b3" CreationDate="2012-01-28T23:23:05.777" UserId="4942" Text="Title of the Question was: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do community managed product backlogs exist?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The body of the question was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do community managed Scrum product backlogs exist? If so, what would&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be an example of a successful community managed product backlog, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what are key factors in it's success? If they don't exist, why, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; are there any reason that would make using a community managed Scrum&#xD;&#xA;&gt; product backlog problematic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the tags were:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; product-backlog scrum" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7575" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2952" RevisionGUID="667b96da-4f81-4a5e-9735-607d00fbc8b3" CreationDate="2012-01-28T23:23:05.777" UserId="4942" Text="Why did this question get two off-topic votes before I deleted it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7576" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2952" RevisionGUID="667b96da-4f81-4a5e-9735-607d00fbc8b3" CreationDate="2012-01-28T23:23:05.777" UserId="4942" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7577" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2952" RevisionGUID="ccf886c7-6d43-42bb-92ab-7f80b8e548cb" CreationDate="2012-01-28T23:44:52.330" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Clearer title, retag, link to question, remove irrelevant tags" Text="I just [deleted my question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132310/do-community-managed-product-backlogs-exist) after it received two close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Title of the Question was: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do community managed product backlogs exist?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The body of the question was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do community managed Scrum product backlogs exist? If so, what would&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be an example of a successful community managed product backlog, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what are key factors in it's success? If they don't exist, why, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; are there any reason that would make using a community managed Scrum&#xD;&#xA;&gt; product backlog problematic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What was wrong with it? Why was it on its way to closure?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7578" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2952" RevisionGUID="ccf886c7-6d43-42bb-92ab-7f80b8e548cb" CreationDate="2012-01-28T23:44:52.330" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Clearer title, retag, link to question, remove irrelevant tags" Text="Why did my question about community-managed product backlogs get close votes?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7579" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2952" RevisionGUID="ccf886c7-6d43-42bb-92ab-7f80b8e548cb" CreationDate="2012-01-28T23:44:52.330" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Clearer title, retag, link to question, remove irrelevant tags" Text="|support|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7580" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2953" RevisionGUID="89eee5e8-fe9c-4222-9b9b-60fbb9009d0f" CreationDate="2012-01-28T23:50:22.293" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Putting your specific question aside for a moment, two community close votes doesn't *necessarily* mean your question is off-topic: otherwise it wouldn't take five community close votes or action from a moderator to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see your question attracting close votes and you're pretty sure what you want to know is on-topic for the site, consider modifying your question somewhat to shore up any weak points, or ask [in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21) or even here on the meta-discussion site for help improving your question so it'll stay open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Getting back to your question: in general, questions need to demonstrate the necessity of the unique perspective of programmers to answer. General project management questions [aren't really a fit here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2782/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it wasn't flagged, had it been, I would've checked with [Project Management.SE](http://pm.stackexchange.com) to see if it could be migrated, as I think it'd do quite well there. Even though you deleted the question, consider asking it there anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, this part is a bit bad for the Stack Exchange format:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If so, what would be an example of a successful community managed product backlog, and what are key factors in it's success?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for lists of examples, even if that's just one part of the question, tends to be the part answerers focus on because it's easy. Solid PM question otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7581" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2954" RevisionGUID="637555d1-cf4a-43bf-875e-039730e9f399" CreationDate="2012-01-29T05:02:11.067" UserId="1996" Text="The upcoming 'Moderator Election: Town Hall Chat' got me thinking:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Should Programmers.se hold a meet-and-greet?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As others have mentioned, there are *so* many misunderstandings on this Q&amp;A Forum. I feel like if Programmers.se members got a chance to meet the moderators, and perhaps share a quick drink, it would engender a tremendous amount of good will. Perhaps people wouldn't act so hostile to one another?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that there's the obvious problem of meeting in a defined physical space. [Travel arrangements and arranging for time of from work could be issues.]  But I feel like it would be worth it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do others agree?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, if this is not possible, perhaps we could just organize a Google Hangout?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7582" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2954" RevisionGUID="637555d1-cf4a-43bf-875e-039730e9f399" CreationDate="2012-01-29T05:02:11.067" UserId="1996" Text="Should Programmers.se hold a meet-and-greet?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7583" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2954" RevisionGUID="637555d1-cf4a-43bf-875e-039730e9f399" CreationDate="2012-01-29T05:02:11.067" UserId="1996" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7584" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2955" RevisionGUID="b80f0d74-6bea-4c3a-b09d-af853afa4b50" CreationDate="2012-01-29T05:14:37.493" UserId="1130" Text="I definitely agree with you about some of the tags posted, although not all of them. Here's my suggestions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:best-practices] Keep. Usually questions in this tag mean a question about how things would ideally be done in a perfect world, not necessarily how they could be done. I like browsing this tag for tips on best practices since I usually work alone and don't have someone else to double-check my work and tell me that I'm doing things wrong.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-languages] Keep. There are many questions on this site not related to programming languages, and this tag can be used to identify questions that are specifically related to programming languages.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:learning] This one is iffy... I guess it depends if you count questions about how to learn/teach off-topic here. I don't, so would keep it, however its up to you.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-development] If this site were solely about software development, I'd ditch this tag. However if this site is about programmers in general, I'd keep it.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-practices] Nuke it. Or perhaps re-tag with best-practices if applicable.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:recommendations] Nuke it. Everything on here is a recommendation.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:advice] Nuke it. Everything on here is advice.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-engineering] I'm not a software engineer, so I don't pay attention to those kinds of questions. I'd defer the answer of this to someone who knows what they're talking about.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:development] Nuke it. It's too ambiguous&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:fun] Nuke it. I think every question I've seen with this tag has been a bad question for this site.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:homework] Nuke it. Do your homework, don't expect someone else to do it for you.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:holy-war] Nuke it. These are likely opinion/poll questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7585" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2917" RevisionGUID="458b67d8-b6e8-4901-8e51-c0f6e601daea" CreationDate="2012-01-29T05:45:09.410" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/163497890835206146" />
  <row Id="7586" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2954" RevisionGUID="040595d0-84a3-49cd-aee4-de877e210337" CreationDate="2012-01-29T08:00:38.983" UserId="1996" Comment="Corrected spelling" Text="The upcoming 'Moderator Election: Town Hall Chat' got me thinking:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Should Programmers.se hold a meet-and-greet?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As others have mentioned, there are *so* many misunderstandings on this Q&amp;A Forum. I feel like if Programmers.se members got a chance to meet the moderators, and perhaps share a quick drink, it would engender a tremendous amount of goodwill. Perhaps people wouldn't act so hostile to one another?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that there's the obvious problem of meeting in a defined physical space. [Travel arrangements and arranging for time of from work could be issues.]  But I feel like it would be worth it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do others agree?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, if this is not possible, perhaps we could just organize a Google Hangout?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7587" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2956" RevisionGUID="460dfdb5-2578-4d18-8ea0-4a1b93c76259" CreationDate="2012-01-29T17:08:17.837" UserId="4" Text="I don't see how such a thing is feasible in the context of a moderator election. I'm looking at the first 10 users with a location in their profile: Belgium, Denmark, Hungary, Virginia, Tennessee, United Kingdom, California, Washington (state), New Hampshire, and Russia. If you take a look at the moderator candidates with locations available to the public, you have Australia, Georgia (state), Pennsylvania, Ohio, Greece, Canada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond the logistics of coordinating a time and a space (highly unlikely to do in such a short timeframe), you need to deal with the cost of getting people there (as much as I love Programmers, I wouldn't pay for a hotel and plane ticket to the location to talk to people to get a volunteer position). And then, you need to get interested users there - you need to pick a location and time where people can actually show up and participate. I don't see how the cost and effort is worth it, at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for a Google Hangout, the purpose of using the SE chat system is to keep it on the network. In addition, the convention Google Hangouts have limited moderation ability and limited size - these don't apply to SE chat system. The only advantage would be video chat capabilities, but I'm not sure how relevant or useful that is for the purposes of the moderator election.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that doesn't mean that meetups would be bad. DevDays was cancelled this year, so there were no organized groups of people from the development-related Stack Exchange sites meeting. I would have to dig, but I believe some people discussed organizing local hangouts with various purposes, ranging from socializing to professional development and presentations a la TED Talks. I know that I would attend these if they were held between Manchester, NH and Boston or Worcester, MA, and I would suspect other users would attend them if they were local. And if you combined all of the development-oriented SE sites - Stack Overflow, Programmers, maybe Game Development, Code Review, Software Quality Assurance and Testing, some users of Project Management who are in the software industry, and so on - you would probably hit critical mass. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7588" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2954" RevisionGUID="877d351f-df4a-4654-bc21-44ab176ea984" CreationDate="2012-01-29T17:54:28.970" UserId="1996" Comment="Corrected spelling" Text="The upcoming 'Moderator Election: Town Hall Chat' got me thinking:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Should Programmers.se hold a meet-and-greet?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As others have mentioned, there are *so* many misunderstandings on this Q&amp;A Forum. I feel like if Programmers.se members got a chance to meet the moderators, and perhaps share a quick drink, it would engender a tremendous amount of goodwill. Perhaps people wouldn't act so hostile to one another?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that there's the obvious problem of meeting in a defined physical space. [Travel arrangements and arranging for time off from work could be issues.]  But I feel like it would be worth it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do others agree?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, if this is not possible, perhaps we could just organize a Google Hangout?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7589" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2957" RevisionGUID="237743de-628d-47c3-af0e-11540f64c6c8" CreationDate="2012-01-30T11:03:10.020" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="We have two general &quot;web&quot; tags&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; in the context of software development:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:web-development] (680 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:web] (104 questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any reason why these can't be merged? Are there specific examples of [tag:web] questions that aren't [tag:web-development] questions and can't be tagged with anything else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note 1&lt;/sup&gt;: I know there are a number of more specialized tags, like [tag:web-applications], [tag:web-framework], and [tag:web-design], but this is specifically about the general topic of web software development, not subsets of that topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7590" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2957" RevisionGUID="237743de-628d-47c3-af0e-11540f64c6c8" CreationDate="2012-01-30T11:03:10.020" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Tag merge: [web] → [web-development]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7591" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2957" RevisionGUID="237743de-628d-47c3-af0e-11540f64c6c8" CreationDate="2012-01-30T11:03:10.020" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7592" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2958" RevisionGUID="bde5f122-d5ec-4725-8e86-9af7d5dd59fc" CreationDate="2012-01-30T11:25:45.843" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="We have a tag, [tag:dealing-with-clients], that's for questions about developer-client interactions: how to manage expectations, provide client services, and other such things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:dealing-with-clients] is not very discoverable: is there a better name we can give this tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Note: you don't need to manually retag questions in this tag: we can merge the tag into the new one we decide upon)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7593" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2958" RevisionGUID="bde5f122-d5ec-4725-8e86-9af7d5dd59fc" CreationDate="2012-01-30T11:25:45.843" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Can we do better than [dealing-with-clients]?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7594" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2958" RevisionGUID="bde5f122-d5ec-4725-8e86-9af7d5dd59fc" CreationDate="2012-01-30T11:25:45.843" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-rename|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7595" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2959" RevisionGUID="adf0df1f-11f8-4ea0-822c-1a752dc9a7ec" CreationDate="2012-01-30T11:39:15.030" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="With the election in full swing and a number of tagging projects being discussed, we've had some bad tagging sprees, and a number of people have asked how best they can help with tag cleanups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're trying to come up with a structured way to deal with the bad tags through the [Structured Tag Cleanup initiative](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2886/8), but in the meantime, if you want to help with tag cleanups, the golden rule is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Only make substantial edits to questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end, these things are helpful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging new questions asked that have bad tags&#xD;&#xA;* Substantively revising a question to address multiple issues, from bad tags to bad titles to copyediting issues&#xD;&#xA;* Small spurts of edits (5 or so) to prevent the front page from being flooded with old content&#xD;&#xA;* Proposing tag merges and synonyms here on meta&#xD;&#xA;* Voting to close questions in bad tags that have slipped through the cracks&#xD;&#xA;* Flagging closed questions in bad tags that have no chance of getting reopened for deletion&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Heroic&quot; edits on closed questions in bad tags to attempt to get them re-opened&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not helpful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Mass retagging in a short period of time&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging questions without doing anything else&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging closed questions that have no chance of ever getting opened again&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging questions and replacing bad tags with [even worse ones](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definitely check out the [Structured Tag Cleanup proposal](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2886/8), but otherwise, please try to keep the above in mind if you've got an urge to clean up some tags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7596" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2959" RevisionGUID="adf0df1f-11f8-4ea0-822c-1a752dc9a7ec" CreationDate="2012-01-30T11:39:15.030" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Reminder about mass retags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7597" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2959" RevisionGUID="adf0df1f-11f8-4ea0-822c-1a752dc9a7ec" CreationDate="2012-01-30T11:39:15.030" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7598" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2960" RevisionGUID="da176d58-c5ea-458b-abd5-646efa05f68b" CreationDate="2012-01-30T12:08:47.240" UserId="4" Text="There's already a tag called [tag:customer-relations]. They seem to be pretty similar in nature, to me. I think customer relations might also be more discoverable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7600" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2960" RevisionGUID="533fd35a-4ba8-431d-a943-b5db2ecaf44e" CreationDate="2012-01-30T12:23:19.623" UserId="4" Comment="added 320 characters in body" Text="There's already a tag called [tag:customer-relations]. They seem to be pretty similar in nature, to me. I think customer relations might also be more discoverable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In his comment, Mark points out that customers aren't necessarily clients, pointing out that customers refer to people who products are sold to while clients are people who hire you to perform services. He also identified [tag:client-relations] as a possible tag, to have consistency with the customer relations tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7601" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2959" RevisionGUID="522ef801-8413-486e-8b5f-3925b69c5f90" CreationDate="2012-01-30T14:45:19.433" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/163996216026341376" />
  <row Id="7602" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2962" RevisionGUID="897c3f51-88ec-453e-a5c2-b7caa3a33487" CreationDate="2012-01-30T14:45:55.090" UserId="25476" Text="Why even have this tag or anything similar to it.  It condones a category of question so general that even if it does happen to be on topic, it is likely ontopic by accident or after some amount of editing out localized and off topic bits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site is Programmers.SE not Freelancers.SE or Contractors.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMO, a more granule set of common client frustrations specific to programming and software development should be encouraged.  Eg. Gathering Requirements, Changing Requirements, Change Control, etc..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7603" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2963" RevisionGUID="e807dd09-e77b-4b16-885c-d6e4fabc54b6" CreationDate="2012-01-30T15:04:54.873" UserId="25936" Text="Open [tag:web] questions that are not about [tag:web-development]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91143/ms-certifications-for-non-it-students&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105264/trying-to-evaluate-answers-provided-by-an-online-technology-school&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80303/is-there-a-beta-testing-community&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/94397/online-advertising-and-marketing-your-services&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45228/do-microsofts-desktop-platforms-have-as-much-potential-as-web-platforms&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110675/overcoming-general-lack-of-ui-design-skill-in-developers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76822/i-need-a-true-random-number-generator-web-service&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125545/evaluating-software-maintenance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a first step I retagged all [web]+[development], [web]+[applications], [web]+[app] questions. Eight of them in total, so I spammed the frontpage a bit. If the list above are appropriately retagged or closed or are deemed [web-development] questions, I'd say it's safe to merge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:web-development] and all related tags would be my first proposal for a structured cleanup anyway, so merging the tags would make my life a bit easier when the time comes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7604" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2963" RevisionGUID="11f3ef72-fe29-4f63-b248-3e3098055c10" CreationDate="2012-01-30T15:44:13.920" UserId="25936" Comment="added 17 characters in body" Text="Open [tag:web] questions that are not about [tag:web-development]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91143/ms-certifications-for-non-it-students&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105264/trying-to-evaluate-answers-provided-by-an-online-technology-school&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80303/is-there-a-beta-testing-community&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/94397/online-advertising-and-marketing-your-services&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45228/do-microsofts-desktop-platforms-have-as-much-potential-as-web-platforms&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110675/overcoming-general-lack-of-ui-design-skill-in-developers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76822/i-need-a-true-random-number-generator-web-service&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125545/evaluating-software-maintenance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a first step I retagged all [web]+[development], [web]+[applications], [web]+[app] questions. Eight of them in total, so I spammed the frontpage a bit. If the questions I've listed above are appropriately retagged or closed or are deemed [web-development] questions, I'd say it's safe to merge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:web-development] and all related tags would be my first proposal for a structured cleanup anyway, so merging the tags would make my life a bit easier when the time comes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7605" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2962" RevisionGUID="60058439-5597-4035-9cfb-9beaedac6d1f" CreationDate="2012-01-30T15:47:06.287" UserId="25476" Comment="added 352 characters in body" Text="Why even have this tag or anything similar to it.  It condones a category of question so general that even if it does happen to be on topic, it is likely ontopic by accident or after some amount of editing out localized and off topic bits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site is Programmers.SE not Freelancers.SE or Contractors.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMO, a more granule set of common client frustrations specific to programming and software development should be encouraged.  Eg. Gathering Requirements, Changing Requirements, Change Control, etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** Yannis right that Freelancing and Business Concerns are listed as ontopic per the FAQ, however it is hard to deny that besides interview and career related questions, *Business Concerns* is one of the more misused excuses for off topic questions on the site.  Perhaps a tag such as *Freelancing* and *Business Concerns* is general enough?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7606" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2964" RevisionGUID="36cce6af-6975-40d6-a474-15809f6b4e2f" CreationDate="2012-01-30T15:47:13.670" UserId="4942" Text="According to a Community Manager for the Stack Exchange Network, &quot;[**unless a question has some chance to be considered for reopening, it should be deleted**][1].&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on this query for [closed questions][2] and [16,210 questions count here][3], it appears possible that some closed questions are not being deleted, which based on my understanding goes against [SE practices][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Just to be clear, this is not a question about why questions are closed, or if too many are closed** -- but instead why there are so many closed questions that have not been deleted, given it appears to be SE policy to delete closed questions if it's clear they will not be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.security.stackexchange.com/a/683/2742&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed:1&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.security.stackexchange.com/a/683/2742" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7607" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2964" RevisionGUID="36cce6af-6975-40d6-a474-15809f6b4e2f" CreationDate="2012-01-30T15:47:13.670" UserId="4942" Text="Why are closed questions not being deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7608" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2964" RevisionGUID="36cce6af-6975-40d6-a474-15809f6b4e2f" CreationDate="2012-01-30T15:47:13.670" UserId="4942" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7609" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2965" RevisionGUID="afc72a93-f568-4639-ba13-0b8aa80a1145" CreationDate="2012-01-30T15:51:21.287" UserId="25936" Text="**Short answer**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh, they are deleted :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But not immediately, there is always a chance someone will step up and salvage a closed question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(longer answer in a bit)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7610" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2966" RevisionGUID="ac41a86b-1cda-4486-a3c7-083578ff256f" CreationDate="2012-01-30T15:53:03.913" UserId="47" Text="There are many reasons why closed questions aren't deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. We have to give time for the OP (and others) to improve the question so it can be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;2. The closure may have been incorrect in the first place. Having the question visible means it can be reopened if necessary.&#xD;&#xA;3. It takes time to work through all the closed questions, working out which are salvageable and which need to be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;4. People complain bitterly if highly upvoted closed questions are deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't believe me - check out Meta Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately these questions will be deleted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7611" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2964" RevisionGUID="2f18149d-f505-47ea-b5ed-03b7ce314321" CreationDate="2012-01-30T16:09:43.873" UserId="4942" Comment="added 32 characters in body" Text="According to a Community Manager for the Stack Exchange Network, &quot;[**unless a question has some chance to be considered for reopening, it should be deleted**][1].&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on this query for [closed questions][2] (which returns 2,682 questions) and [16,210 questions count here][3], it appears possible that some closed questions are not being deleted, which based on my understanding goes against [SE practices][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Just to be clear, this is not a question about why questions are closed, or if too many are closed** -- but instead why there are so many closed questions that have not been deleted, given it appears to be SE policy to delete closed questions if it's clear they will not be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.security.stackexchange.com/a/683/2742&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed:1&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.security.stackexchange.com/a/683/2742" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7612" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2965" RevisionGUID="b84efdd7-7cfc-4812-b9d9-c652c7498a59" CreationDate="2012-01-30T16:12:59.393" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1529 characters in body" Text="Closed questions are deleted, at some point. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But not immediately, there is always a chance someone will step up and salvage a closed question. There is indeed a very large number of closed questions, mostly due to historical reasons. [Mark Trapp's answer][1] on [How to reconcile guidelines, community opinion and moderation][2] gives an excellent outline of those reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As ChrisF mentions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - It takes time to work through all the closed questions, working out which are salvageable and which need to be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - People complain bitterly if highly upvoted closed questions are deleted. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a gigantic clean up effort going on for at least six months, involving [career related questions][3]. This and other clean ups have generated a fair share of Meta drama,  so right now we are focused on better [organizing clean up efforts][4], and part of that effort is for community consensus to be crystal clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The path to deletion is simple, every closed question will be deleted at some point. But that doesn't mean that every closed question can't be re-opened, so we must allow for some time before a question is deleted. We may be a bit slower in deleting questions than the trilogy crowd, but it's only a matter of pace and not one of going against common SE practices. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2173/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7613" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2965" RevisionGUID="3b50b0e7-afa1-4556-a171-5ee26034671b" CreationDate="2012-01-30T16:17:59.760" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1529 characters in body" Text="Closed questions are deleted, at some point. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But not immediately, there is always a chance someone will step up and salvage a closed question. There is indeed a very large number of closed questions, mostly due to historical reasons. [Mark Trapp's answer][1] on [How to reconcile guidelines, community opinion and moderation][2] gives an excellent outline of those reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As ChrisF mentions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - It takes time to work through all the closed questions, working out which are salvageable and which need to be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - People complain bitterly if highly upvoted closed questions are deleted. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a gigantic clean up effort going on for at least six months, involving [career related questions][3]. This and other clean ups have generated a fair share of Meta drama,  so right now we are focused on better [organizing clean up efforts][4], and part of that effort is for community consensus to be crystal clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The path to deletion is simple, every closed question will be deleted at some point. But that doesn't mean that every closed question can't be re-opened, so we must allow for some time before a question is deleted. We may be a bit slower in deleting questions than the trilogy crowd, but it's only a matter of pace and not one of going against common SE practices. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. We have a lot to clean up,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Let's worry about deletions after that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2173/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7614" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2965" RevisionGUID="2dcd59a8-8443-45dd-a898-b09e5ae6a095" CreationDate="2012-01-30T16:30:15.980" UserId="25936" Comment="added 473 characters in body" Text="Closed questions are deleted, at some point. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But not immediately, there is always a chance someone will step up and salvage a closed question. There is indeed a very large number of closed questions, mostly due to historical reasons. [Mark Trapp's answer][1] on [How to reconcile guidelines, community opinion and moderation][2] gives an excellent outline of those reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As ChrisF mentions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - It takes time to work through all the closed questions, working out which are salvageable and which need to be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - People complain bitterly if highly upvoted closed questions are deleted. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a gigantic clean up effort going on for at least six months, involving [career related questions][3]. This and other clean ups have generated a fair share of Meta drama,  so right now we are focused on better [organizing clean up efforts][4], and part of that effort is for community consensus to be crystal clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The path to deletion is simple, every closed question will be deleted at some point. But that doesn't mean that every closed question can't be re-opened, so we must allow for some time before a question is deleted. We may be a bit slower in deleting questions than the trilogy crowd, but it's only a matter of pace and not one of going against common SE practices. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. We have a lot to clean up,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Let's worry about deletions after that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Searching for closed questions doesn't distinguish between close reasons. Duplicates, for example are not prime candidates for deletion, for SEO reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've build a [SEDE query][5] that doesn't count duplicates, and the close total is fairly smaller: 1936. The current SEDE data are valid up to Dec 22, but I don't think we closed a lot of questions since then (?!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2173/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/60095/closed-non-dupe-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7615" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2967" RevisionGUID="89211f71-8aaf-4937-a882-964dcebf40c9" CreationDate="2012-01-30T16:46:41.120" UserId="25936" Text="As a sidenote, a large number of deleted questions may get you [question banned][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Are deleted questions taken into account too?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Yes. It's not a problem to have deleted questions. But if a large percentage of your questions are deleted by yourself or the community, then apparently they were not suitable for the site. But meanwhile they might have wasted time from users who read them, or even answered them. Therefore deleted questions might have an effect on the filter, among many other secret factors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Beware that an account with a high public reputation might very well have many deleted questions, including auto-deleted old low-score questions, all of which are only visible to moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously, you have nothing to worry about, all your questions, even the very few closed ones, are highly up voted - the algorithm may be secret(ish) but I don't think it would be so blatantly naive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I though I'd share for everyone else who might happen upon this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7616" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2967" RevisionGUID="4a7b75c1-ffdd-4f81-b969-fbd47e3c27a6" CreationDate="2012-01-30T16:52:32.043" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 77 characters in body" Text="As a sidenote, a large number of deleted questions may get you [question banned][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Are deleted questions taken into account too?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Yes. It's not a problem to have deleted questions. But if a large percentage of your questions are deleted by yourself or the community, then apparently they were not suitable for the site. But meanwhile they might have wasted time from users who read them, or even answered them. Therefore deleted questions might have an effect on the filter, among many other secret factors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Beware that an account with a high public reputation might very well have many deleted questions, including auto-deleted old low-score questions, all of which are only visible to moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously, you have nothing to worry about, all your questions, even the very few closed ones, are highly up voted - the algorithm may be secret(ish) but I don't think it would be so blatantly naive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7617" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2968" RevisionGUID="58b0ef20-7507-4dab-909b-d0250e503126" CreationDate="2012-01-30T20:26:58.610" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="ChrisF and Yannis both talked about the general problem, but I just wanted to say that closed questions are, in fact, being deleted: we've even [advertised this](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1806/8) here on meta ([see here too](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2173/8)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, as ChrisF mentioned, [the rules for automatic deletions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1807/8) are incredibly strict, which leaves most closed question deletions done manually by moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The general criteria we use when determining if a question can be deleted is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Is the question more than 30 days old?** A month gives people enough time to contest a closure and give a chance for people to save the question&#xD;&#xA;* **Is the question highly upvoted?** As ChrisF mentioned, people get very vocal about the highly upvoted stuff. We have generally made it a point to leave things that have a ton of upvotes, under the assumption that [we'd eventually get around to taking care of them](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2051/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, these are just loose guidelines, and sometimes questions outside those get deleted or inside those stay. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the goals of the [Structured Tag Cleanup](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2886/8) initiative is to make deletions of old, crappy questions more streamlined." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7622" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2964" RevisionGUID="c3a67e57-969c-4e7a-8160-199501af6b70" CreationDate="2012-01-31T02:46:04.720" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/164177600405712896" />
  <row Id="7628" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2957" RevisionGUID="98a1ed77-3752-4d5f-af38-17c3863e2b86" CreationDate="2012-01-31T05:46:04.847" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/164222898486251520" />
  <row Id="7629" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2958" RevisionGUID="0430fdea-a16e-49ea-a864-7606c8aa6664" CreationDate="2012-01-31T12:46:40.227" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 556 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="We have a tag, [tag:client-relations]&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, that's for questions about developer-client interactions: how to manage expectations, provide client services, and other such things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also have a tag, [tag:customer-relations], that's for questions about developer-customer interactions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Technically, clients and customers are two separate things (clients being people who hire someone to perform a service, and customers being people that products are sold to). But do we need to make this distinction on this site? If not, is [tag:customer-relations] a &quot;good enough&quot; catch-all tag for these types of questions, or is there a better one?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note 1:&lt;/sup&gt; Previously, this was [tag:dealing-with-clients], but I renamed it in the interests of dealing with one issue at a time. Since people want to discuss merging it with [tag:customer-relations], this question is now about that merge instead of getting rid of a crappy tag name." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7630" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2958" RevisionGUID="0430fdea-a16e-49ea-a864-7606c8aa6664" CreationDate="2012-01-31T12:46:40.227" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 556 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Should [client-relations] be merged into [customer-relations]?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7631" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2958" RevisionGUID="0430fdea-a16e-49ea-a864-7606c8aa6664" CreationDate="2012-01-31T12:46:40.227" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 556 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7632" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2971" RevisionGUID="55448da3-7b1f-4856-a71f-dd461922ba10" CreationDate="2012-01-31T12:47:37.313" UserId="25476" Text="I ran into this question on StackOverflow that was offtopic there, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/132657/25476&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By the time I saw it, it was less than 2 minutes old but already received 3 migration votes to Programmers which I found utterly astounding.  I tried to write a quick comment telling people that it was offtopic for Programmers as well and I intended to flag a moderator for them to close the question on their side.  Before I could even finish my one sentence comment it had already migrated over by non-moderator intervention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly anybody that took 5 minutes to read the [Programmers FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) would realize that this **could** be offtopic here as well and maybe wouldn't have been so quick to migrate the question.  I would hope that the moderators on StackOverflow would know better than this, but then this isn't a moderator problem, these are users with reasonably high reputation on StackOverflow who are allowed to make close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you feel that something can be done differently to prevent Programmers from getting dumped on with questions that are clearly not fit for our site?  Here is one suggestion off the top of my head:  Do not automatically migrate a question to the selected site unless the vote is unanimous or a moderator voted for migration.  If the vote is for majority migration then automatically flag a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me know what you think or if you think I am 110% off the mark." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7633" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2971" RevisionGUID="55448da3-7b1f-4856-a71f-dd461922ba10" CreationDate="2012-01-31T12:47:37.313" UserId="25476" Text="Community perception of Programmers.SE, the StackOverflow landfill?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7634" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2971" RevisionGUID="55448da3-7b1f-4856-a71f-dd461922ba10" CreationDate="2012-01-31T12:47:37.313" UserId="25476" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7635" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2960" RevisionGUID="2f3a0d73-a4d1-4d32-9ea4-76a0e840e96f" CreationDate="2012-01-31T13:00:53.927" UserId="4" Comment="added 1139 characters in body" Text="There seems to be significant overlap between [tag:customer-relations] and [tag:client-relations], at least from the perspective of a software developer. The distinction appears to be more at a project, program, or some other business level. To a developer, a customer or a client is simply a stakeholder that is receiving the products/services and paying for them. I'm dealing with someone, often outside of the development team or development organization, who is funding the project. The business-level relationship (client versus customer) doesn't matter to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yannis Rizos found [a question on English.SE that's relevant][1]. The primary difference seems to be economical or business in nature, not technical. [One answer even says that the dictionary refers to both as having the same meaning][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, the dictionary does list &quot;customer&quot; as one of the meanings of &quot;client&quot;, so they are very close in meaning if not identical. - Hellion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For our purposes, I think it's a good idea to lump them together. If this was a business-oriented SE site, I'd want the distinction to be made. I feel that tags that are only tangentially related to the core topics of thie site should be kept in larger pools than tags about core concepts, which should be more granular and differentiated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of that said, having the consistency between customer relations and client relations is infinitly better than the previous tag of dealing-with-clients.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/15187/whats-the-difference-between-client-and-customer&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://english.stackexchange.com/a/15201/13357" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7636" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2972" RevisionGUID="7370e7fd-0715-49d5-9c57-5d8a58b2a1cb" CreationDate="2012-01-31T13:07:03.980" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This has been a recurring problem since the site's inception: in reality, Programmers.SE [was originally conceived](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/64046/149432) to *be* the dumping ground for Stack Overflow, and even though that purpose was [dropped a couple of weeks after the site went into private beta](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/350/8), old habits die hard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past year, there have been a few things that have been done to combat the problem:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Migrations used to only require a first-past-the-post method of resolving: for example, if 2 people voted to migrate to Programmers, 1 voted to close as off-topic, 1 voted as not-constructive, and 1 voted as too-localized, it'd be migrated. Now, migrations require 4 people to agree to the migration before it happens. Otherwise, it gets closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We Programmers mods, much to the annoyance of them I'm sure, have worked with/conditioned the Stack Overflow mods to not migrate anything to us without checking with us first. So, any mod-led migration from Stack Overflow was likely approved by us and you can blame us if the question's bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, we can't prevent 4 people agreeing to use the migration path to us as their dumping ground, and our rejection rate from Stack Overflow hovers [around 32%](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been a number of requests to remove us as the migration path, or to provide some mechanism to &quot;approve&quot; or &quot;reject&quot; migrations:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/73382/149432)&#xD;&#xA;* [A way to cut down on the inappropriate migrations](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/84846/a-way-to-cut-down-on-inappropriate-migrations)&#xD;&#xA;* [Allow diamond moderators to reverse question migrations?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/35744/allow-diamond-moderators-to-reverse-question-migrations)&#xD;&#xA;* [Require migrated questions to be accepted by the destination site's moderators](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73391/require-migrated-questions-to-be-accepted-by-the-destination-sites-moderators)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to date, only small changes to the requirements for community migration (like the 4-person agreement, and having tags in common on the destination site) have been made. I have heard rumors that SE is planning to tackle migrations in a big way this year, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in lieu of some fundamental change in how migrations work, I think education and proactive moderation is the best strategy:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you have 10k+ rep on Stack Overflow, check the [Review queue](http://stackoverflow.com/review) for questions getting &quot;off topic; belongs on Programmers&quot; votes. It only takes two people to short circuit a migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Check [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) often. Every once in a while, someone gets the idea that the best way to clean up Stack Overflow is to migrate everything in a tag (usually [career-development]) to Programmers: we've been able to put a stop to a couple of those projects by [voicing our displeasure there](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/119725/149432) and explaining what is and isn't on-topic here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7637" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2973" RevisionGUID="ba8791d5-a021-42c0-89d0-0b4d16c09192" CreationDate="2012-01-31T13:13:53.193" UserId="4" Text="Personally, I think that this continues to show something that I've said multiple times since the migration paths were set up: letting users vote to move a question is a bad idea. Having a migration path requires users to understand, in detail, what other communities are about and what types of questions they accept at present. There are people on Stack Overflow that don't know what we are about, and I'm sure some think of us as the dumping ground that we were a year and a half ago. Expecting people to keep up-to-date on communities that they aren't actively involved in of is a flawed concepts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've (and others, in various posts on MSO) said time and time again that users should only be able to vote as off-topic and say &quot;this doesn't belong here&quot; and somehow let moderators find and move questions to the appropriate sites (if they are actually good questions), either via push or pull. But so far, nothing has ever come from this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In terms of this specific question, it's a rather vague question and doesn't show any explicit ties to software developers, but I don't think an exit interview question is always off-topic here. If we accept questions about interviews (presently [439 tagged][1], [345 open][2]), there's no reason why we can't accept good questions about how to best gather relevant and useful information from software developers in an exit interview. I don't know what such a question would look like, as every exit interview I've done has only been done with HR and not a technical person, but I would presume that there might be some questions out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/interview&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Binterview%5D%20closed:0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7638" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2974" RevisionGUID="0a7b053f-e372-40a6-8f96-b26f9bcfb3e6" CreationDate="2012-01-31T14:34:20.843" UserId="25476" Text="I just thought of something novel and decided to provide a competing answer to my own question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What if we restricted the ability of an SO user to vote for migration to Programmers to only those that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Have an account on Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Have 300 reputation or more on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This way the person voting for migration may be significantly more likely to be aware of the FAQ and better able to make that judgment call?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7639" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="551fbd8b-67ef-4e90-822f-58dfeae84570" CreationDate="2012-01-31T19:02:05.093" UserId="1130" Comment="added 160 characters in body" Text="I was answering [another question][1], and realized perhaps I should post my answer in a suggestion on Meta&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the thing: this site is called **programmers**.stackexchange, while the FAQ states that this site is about &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since a large number of people never read the FAQ, or don't read it before posting, this means we have a community of people that think the site is about Programmers, but a team of moderators that try and maintain a site on &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This causes a large number of unhappy people who don't understand why their questions, or other questions they think are good, get closed, downvoted, etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my suggestion is to either rename the site to something that matches it's FAQ, like `softwaredevelopment.stackexchange`, or change the FAQ so that this site is about Programmers, not software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I hate the suggestion of renaming the site. I want to participate in a site about programmers, not software development. But as long as the site is called one thing, and the FAQ states another, we're never going to be at peace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted this on the main meta site. Feel free to [read it and up-vote if you agree][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2131/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/120862/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7640" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="5343ab1f-1fa4-4015-89c3-ef62a1cde873" CreationDate="2012-01-31T19:33:59.327" UserId="1130" Comment="deleted 160 characters in body" Text="I was answering [another question][1], and realized perhaps I should post my answer in a suggestion on Meta&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the thing: this site is called **programmers**.stackexchange, while the FAQ states that this site is about &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since a large number of people never read the FAQ, or don't read it before posting, this means we have a community of people that think the site is about Programmers, but a team of moderators that try and maintain a site on &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This causes a large number of unhappy people who don't understand why their questions, or other questions they think are good, get closed, downvoted, etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my suggestion is to either rename the site to something that matches it's FAQ, like `softwaredevelopment.stackexchange`, or change the FAQ so that this site is about Programmers, not software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I hate the suggestion of renaming the site. I want to participate in a site about programmers, not software development. But as long as the site is called one thing, and the FAQ states another, we're never going to be at peace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2131/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7641" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2975" RevisionGUID="f9fdd009-848e-49be-b144-235e6bf05fcc" CreationDate="2012-01-31T20:04:02.707" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This site, as it is now, *is* for programmers. Programmers do software development: that's our expertise. Similarly:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Cooking.SE is for *cooks* who have questions about *cooking*&#xD;&#xA;* DIY.SE is for *DIYers* who have questions about *home improvement*&#xD;&#xA;* Bicycles.SE is *cyclists* who have questions about *cycling*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could change &quot;software development&quot; to &quot;programming&quot;, but that minor change doesn't seem to match the level of disagreement presented.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And to clarify, the way the site is now isn't due to a team of moderators constantly enforcing new policies on a site that nobody in the community wants: the site's scope and position statement were adjusted [two weeks after the site went into public beta](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/350/8), now almost 18 months ago. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site scope hasn't changed since then, and the site's been doing fine since:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We're routinely either number one or number two in new 200+ users&#xD;&#xA;* We've been in the top 10 SE sites for traffic, answers, questions, and % answered since launch&#xD;&#xA;* Our closure rates are in line with the rest of the network&#xD;&#xA;* We've handled thousands of flags from hundreds of community members who are interested in maintaining the site's scope as it's written now&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is all to say that the site, as it is now, most people—particularly newer active users—get and understand. There are still a few who choose to ignore the vast majority of Programmers's history and focus on some outdated idea of a much more broader site than what launched, but a site name change isn't going to suddenly change their minds.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not to say tweaks here and there to clarify points in the FAQ aren't welcome: [they are](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2411/8), and [we've adjusted the FAQ accordingly](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2422/8). But the [old version of Programmers](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352?phase=definition) (so-called &quot;Not Programming Related&quot;), where anything a programmer might be interested in is on-topic, died an ignoble death in September of 2010.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is dead. Long live Programmers!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7642" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2439" RevisionGUID="97ddddc4-1695-4b44-9f68-e1c903525407" CreationDate="2012-01-31T20:16:15.547" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Update to new site name" Text="Do you have a question about your career or your workplace that isn't really about software development or being a programmer? Have you tried asking it on Programmers only to have it get closed because it's not on-topic here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good news! A proposal has been created on [Area 51](http://area51.stackexchange.com)—Stack Exchange's site incubator—to serve as a home for general career and workplace questions for all professions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [The Workplace](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/the-workplace?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for members of the workforce navigating the professional setting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; This includes questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How should I approach my boss about a raise/promotion?&#xD;&#xA;* How to deal with noisy or irritating co-workers?&#xD;&#xA;* How do you define business casual?&#xD;&#xA;* My coworker comes to work while high on drugs sometimes. What should I do?&#xD;&#xA;* What to do when you are asked “what is your desired salary” before you even get to the interview?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you're interested in asking and answering questions like these and seeing that there's a home for all those general career advice questions we get here on Programmers, consider committing to this proposal. The more people commit, the faster it'll launch.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once launched, you'll have an opportunity to participate in its private beta, where you'll work with other committers to &quot;seed&quot; the site and fill in the site's scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what are you waiting for? Go check it out!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7643" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2439" RevisionGUID="97ddddc4-1695-4b44-9f68-e1c903525407" CreationDate="2012-01-31T20:16:15.547" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Update to new site name" Text="The Workplace is now in the commitment phase" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7644" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2439" RevisionGUID="97ddddc4-1695-4b44-9f68-e1c903525407" CreationDate="2012-01-31T20:16:15.547" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Update to new site name" Text="|discussion|career|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7645" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2976" RevisionGUID="3ce9d991-4ab3-4615-8de6-52bca238a040" CreationDate="2012-01-31T20:50:34.553" UserId="28877" Text="We've had quite a bit of [discussion][1] about getting the Programmers Stack Exchange blog up and running. There has been a [discussion][2] of topic/theme, and there has even been a [call for volunteers][3] - to which there was (in my opinion) a fantastic first response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Several months have gone by since the last forward progress - and I feel that its time to get the ball rolling again and **see this thing happen**. We will never get that flywheel spinning until we have actual work being done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe its time to go forward and start publishing content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - We've had ample discussion on the direction, tone, and topic of the blog.&#xD;&#xA; - There are a significant number of volunteers for both writing and proofreading/editing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's what I believe are the next steps forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Let's go to the powers that be and get the actual **blog system up and running**. This will let us start writing and a team of editors can start proofreading and getting content into the &quot;publication pipeline&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Decide on a small team of editors who will proofread and approve content for publication.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts? Comments? Objections?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1709/any-chance-of-a-programmers-community-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2108/what-should-a-programmers-se-blog-be-about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7646" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2976" RevisionGUID="3ce9d991-4ab3-4615-8de6-52bca238a040" CreationDate="2012-01-31T20:50:34.553" UserId="28877" Text="Let's Get The Blog Kicked Off" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7647" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2976" RevisionGUID="3ce9d991-4ab3-4615-8de6-52bca238a040" CreationDate="2012-01-31T20:50:34.553" UserId="28877" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7648" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2971" RevisionGUID="9a1df1dc-a1ee-4eb2-9bf2-c23f5e2fe946" CreationDate="2012-01-31T23:46:09.007" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/164494706544349184" />
  <row Id="7649" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2977" RevisionGUID="430de260-0dfb-4e04-b8fc-1c0235a1828b" CreationDate="2012-02-01T04:12:43.410" UserId="43243" Text="I honestly believe a timeline and a structured procedure would do the difference and get things moving. Its a case of [belling the cat][1]. Lets agree upon a few guidelines, a topic and we can start working. If there's a chat room, we could just have few exchanges and could start publishing. Clarity of thought and a few Zen-style rules would give the throughst.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belling_the_cat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7650" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2831" RevisionGUID="19147458-f698-4108-a5f4-c2fe2ad43c6f" CreationDate="2012-02-01T05:28:49.057" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 82 characters in body" Text="Count me in, for both proofreading and (occasional) writing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of my writing style, use of language, obsessive compulsive approach to fact checking and (on topic) interests are all my questions and answers on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1709/any-chance-of-a-programmers-community-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7651" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="c31f50ee-b820-4f8b-8477-1cb06a1d63eb" CreationDate="2012-02-01T05:46:10.160" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/164585309537972224" />
  <row Id="7652" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2978" RevisionGUID="03d678cf-7d36-4fab-a83e-79a12c09e478" CreationDate="2012-02-01T05:48:55.390" UserId="25936" Text="A few thoughts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The volunteers should reaffirm their commitment. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It's been 5 months since the [post calling for contributors][1], and things might have changed. For example, Anna is now a Community Manager and I don't know if she still wishes to contribute. Everyone could do a small edit on their answers, saying &quot;I'm still in!&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Editorial team&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Assuming all volunteers reaffirm their commitment, we have a ready team + Jarrod, no need to waste any more time discussing that. Let's see how the first couple of months go, and we can discuss a new team if need be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Schedule&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The guidelines [propose a post per week][2], minimum. Let's ignore that and target a post per fortnight. Some of the [other blogs][3] have a faster pace, some slower. Let's start with a reasonably low goal and if there's interest pick up the pace later on. I think it would be sensible to post on Mondays, so editors can check posts during the weekend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blogoverflow.com/getting-started/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blogoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7653" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2979" RevisionGUID="92324745-b7fd-4b3c-b0c3-9baea89a0ae4" CreationDate="2012-02-01T05:58:34.963" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Okay, I just spoke with Rebecca Chernoff about the blog, and I have a *game plan*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 1: we need a point person&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This person will be in charge of coordinating the blog's direction: getting drafts in order, setting up the schedule, making sure everything is running smoothly, and communicating directly with the moderators and SE about any issues with the blog. This will likely be a good amount of work, so consider whether or not you'll be around regularly to help make sure the blog doesn't die a horrible death.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 2: we need to coordinate the launch of the blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We should have at least five solid ideas that'll make the first five blog posts for the blog. The blog point person will need to coordinate with everyone who wants to contribute and come up with a schedule for when blog posts go out: I've [created a chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog) for those activities. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's likely going to be a good thing to have a scheduled meeting with the first round of contributors to figure out who's covering what: whoever is the point person should coordinate that meeting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 3: we launch(-ish)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the blog point person is in place and all the initial logistics have been worked out, I'll work with Rebecca to get the blog actually up and running, and set up the users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So yeah, first things first: decide amongst yourselves who wants to be the dude or dudette who'll run the show." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7654" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2977" RevisionGUID="f10a2469-b026-467b-b11c-aa07866dd50c" CreationDate="2012-02-01T06:04:13.383" UserId="43243" Comment="added 82 characters in body" Text="I honestly believe a timeline and a structured procedure would do the difference and get things moving. Its a case of [belling the cat][1]. Lets agree upon a few guidelines, a topic and we can start working. If there's a chat room, we could just have few exchanges and could start publishing. Clarity of thought and a few Zen-style rules would give the thrust.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Agree with Mark Trapp's suggestion of providing a definite structure to work upon&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belling_the_cat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7655" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2979" RevisionGUID="8a177ea6-0c12-4c3a-8a43-169161011e6d" CreationDate="2012-02-01T06:09:29.630" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 183 characters in body" Text="Okay, I just spoke with Rebecca Chernoff about the blog, and I have a *game plan*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 1: we need a point person&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This person will be in charge of coordinating the blog's direction: getting drafts in order, setting up the schedule, making sure everything is running smoothly, and communicating directly with the moderators and SE about any issues with the blog. This will likely be a good amount of work, so consider whether or not you'll be around regularly to help make sure the blog doesn't die a horrible death.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:** [Jarrod Nettles](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/28877/jarrod-nettles) has graciously stepped up to be the blog &lt;strike&gt;whipping boy&lt;/strike&gt; overlord!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 2: we need to coordinate the launch of the blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We should have at least five solid ideas that'll make the first five blog posts for the blog. The blog point person will need to coordinate with everyone who wants to contribute and come up with a schedule for when blog posts go out: I've [created a chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog) for those activities. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's likely going to be a good thing to have a scheduled meeting with the first round of contributors to figure out who's covering what: whoever is the point person should coordinate that meeting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 3: we launch(-ish)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the blog point person is in place and all the initial logistics have been worked out, I'll work with Rebecca to get the blog actually up and running, and set up the users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So yeah, first things first: decide amongst yourselves who wants to be the dude or dudette who'll run the show." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7656" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2979" RevisionGUID="35166676-a971-4a97-ba01-acf6b4c92f42" CreationDate="2012-02-01T06:23:14.807" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="Okay, I just spoke with Rebecca Chernoff about the blog, and I have a *game plan*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 1: we need a point person&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This person will be in charge of coordinating the blog's direction: getting drafts in order, setting up the schedule, making sure everything is running smoothly, and communicating directly with the moderators and SE about any issues with the blog. This will likely be a good amount of work, so consider whether or not you'll be around regularly to help make sure the blog doesn't die a horrible death.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 2: we need to coordinate the launch of the blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We should have at least five solid ideas that'll make the first five blog posts for the blog. The blog point person will need to coordinate with everyone who wants to contribute and come up with a schedule for when blog posts go out: I've [created a chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog) for those activities. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's likely going to be a good thing to have a scheduled meeting with the first round of contributors to figure out who's covering what: whoever is the point person should coordinate that meeting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 3: we launch(-ish)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the blog point person is in place and all the initial logistics have been worked out, I'll work with Rebecca to get the blog actually up and running, and set up the users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;strike&gt;So yeah, first things first: decide amongst yourselves who wants to be the dude or dudette who'll run the show.&lt;/strike&gt; [Jarrod Nettles](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/28877/jarrod-nettles) has graciously stepped up to be the blog &lt;strike&gt;whipping boy&lt;/strike&gt; overlord!&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7657" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2980" RevisionGUID="3b432f98-561f-4951-8f6b-05f4aa1a7834" CreationDate="2012-02-01T07:15:19.977" UserId="28877" Text="The blog [is moving forward][1]. **The wheels are moving** higher up to get us a Wordpress instance created for a dedicated blog here are Programmers.StackExchange. I'm excited about the prospects and what this can do for our community at large.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of things to note.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. There is now a [chat room][2] for discussions regarding the P.SE blog. There has already been a healthy discussion and if you're interested I would suggest that you peruse the transcripts.&#xD;&#xA;2. I have [been anointed][3] the community &quot;point of contact&quot; for the blog. All this means is that I'll be putting in some dedicated hours to organizing and communicating with people about getting the blog published.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some time ago, I posted [a call for volunteers][4] for the blog - and we received a great response from potential writers and proofreaders. However, it has been some time since those &quot;commitments&quot; were made and situations may have changed. If you're still interested - or have become interested - please refer to that [original post][5] and post a comment to the affirmative if you are still willing to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here's where we're at**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was recommended that we find time for everyone who is interested to sit down and have a discussion about the direction of the blog. We've already had several discussions about this here on Meta but I agree that it probably is a good idea to schedule a chat room session where we can have a meeting and intimately discuss the details of this new project - i.e. definite plans for articles (aka blog posts), proofreading, and publication.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose that we hold this meeting **Friday, February 3rd at 4 PM GMT** (that's 11 AM for United States East Coast) in the new Programmers Blog chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are intending to be a participant in this project, please give me feedback on whether this date and time works for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2976/lets-get-the-blog-kicked-off/2979#2979&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3214146#3214146&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7658" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2980" RevisionGUID="3b432f98-561f-4951-8f6b-05f4aa1a7834" CreationDate="2012-02-01T07:15:19.977" UserId="28877" Text="Blog Volunteers - Unite" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7659" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2980" RevisionGUID="3b432f98-561f-4951-8f6b-05f4aa1a7834" CreationDate="2012-02-01T07:15:19.977" UserId="28877" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7660" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2981" RevisionGUID="97b338b3-5d5c-4614-b388-83f23c5abc42" CreationDate="2012-02-01T07:17:52.987" UserId="48" Text="For the [sake of sanity](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/120339/when-did-stack-overflow-start-advertising-for-wikipedia), we recently [switched from using full-blown Markdown](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/119684/what-markdown-formatting-features-are-available-for-bounty-remarks) to using MarkdownMini (that's the version used in comments and in chat) in post notices.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While full Markdown wraps (almost) everything in `&lt;p&gt;` tags, MarkdownMini does not (since there aren't really paragraphs in comments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The style rules in the CSS however expect the text to be in `&lt;p&gt;` tags. In the next built, that expectation will be met again." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7661" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2935" RevisionGUID="15d6fefe-25c0-4e36-bec8-a5bb436091ba" CreationDate="2012-02-01T07:17:58.730" UserId="48" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7662" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2980" RevisionGUID="dcbdf247-b0ea-4780-a69a-1979d8f9e8cd" CreationDate="2012-02-01T07:23:51.273" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7663" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2980" RevisionGUID="bcf9f577-a153-4c7f-a960-10bda88ef63f" CreationDate="2012-02-01T11:46:12.303" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/164675913819230208" />
  <row Id="7664" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2351" RevisionGUID="de36fa8e-7aa4-44f8-8b82-62db6bbc1f69" CreationDate="2012-02-01T12:08:15.760" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 245 characters in body" Text="I'd volunteer as a proofreader and/or a writer. I'm not sure exactly what I'd write about or the frequency, but my interests are listed in my profile. I'd also be more than happy to proofread about any topic at all." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7665" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2982" RevisionGUID="5f9c2325-7705-4155-867f-50b883eace98" CreationDate="2012-02-01T16:08:20.980" UserId="4471" Text="I [asked the following][1] in the town hall chat for the moderator election, but there were no responses.  I guess it is possible that the candidates, [like this one][2], merely felt that the question was not &quot;deserving of time and energy.&quot;  But, maybe my question (which did get starred, like other questions) was merely overlooked among all the others, so I'll ask again here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some people find it important to ensure that all people who participate in a community process feel they are heard and considered, even when the final decision in a matter does not go their way. [Rules of Parliamentary Procedure][3], for instance, are instituted in part for this reason (though not necessarily here). How will you attempt to ensure that people feel they are being heard and considered when attempting to shape the community through, for example, meta?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209584#3209584&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213822#3213822&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_procedure" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7666" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2982" RevisionGUID="5f9c2325-7705-4155-867f-50b883eace98" CreationDate="2012-02-01T16:08:20.980" UserId="4471" Text="Unanswered town hall question regarding acknowledgment of dissenting opinions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7667" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2982" RevisionGUID="5f9c2325-7705-4155-867f-50b883eace98" CreationDate="2012-02-01T16:08:20.980" UserId="4471" Text="|discussion|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7668" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2982" RevisionGUID="77e79e5f-c0cf-4e8b-bba9-d9a96bb27dc2" CreationDate="2012-02-01T16:24:16.033" UserId="47" Comment="clarify the question" Text="I [asked the following][1] in the town hall chat for the moderator election, but there were no responses.  I guess it is possible that the candidates, [like this one][2], merely felt that the question was not &quot;deserving of time and energy.&quot;  But, maybe my question (which did get starred, like other questions) was merely overlooked among all the others, so I'll ask again here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some people find it important to ensure that all people who participate in a community process feel they are heard and considered, even when the final decision in a matter does not go their way. [Rules of Parliamentary Procedure][3], for instance, are instituted in part for this reason (though not necessarily here). How will you attempt to ensure that people feel they are being heard and considered when attempting to shape the community through, for example, meta?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209584#3209584&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213822#3213822&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_procedure" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7669" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2982" RevisionGUID="77e79e5f-c0cf-4e8b-bba9-d9a96bb27dc2" CreationDate="2012-02-01T16:24:16.033" UserId="47" Comment="clarify the question" Text="|discussion|featured|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7670" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2983" RevisionGUID="276ea761-f32e-4388-a735-8c9f9b326c61" CreationDate="2012-02-01T16:26:56.450" UserId="4" Text="I think the system already does this. If you take a look at how voting is used, customarily, on Meta. If the question is simply asking about something, an up vote means that it's something that should be considered and is important to the community while a down vote means that it's not important or irrelevant. On answers, up votes are signs of approval or support while down votes are signs of dissent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As long as people use Meta to raise concerns that they have, vote on questions/answers, and leave comments asking for clarification or to enumerate concerns, people are already being heard. If you have a look through some of the past decisions, the implemented ideas often come from the top voted ideas. If the top voted idea isn't feasible in its entirety, then I would suspect that it would be implemented in the most feasible possible manner, with work to see what else needs to be done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I wouldn't change anything. What we have appears to be working - I'm more than satisfied with it. It has led to changes to the FAQ with regards to topicality, it's gotten questions reopened, it's gotten new ideas for how to approach problems (see the tag clean up efforts). Meta works - it's just a matter of people participating. Those who care about the community will participate, and others won't. There's no way to force people to participate - using the featured tag would help, and perhaps organized events (chat events, question of the week, and so on) to build a stronger sense of community would help, but you can't force people to participate if they don't want to." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7671" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2984" RevisionGUID="4aae8490-f947-461e-97db-5e812692030e" CreationDate="2012-02-01T16:29:58.377" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="I think a dose of Talmudic style commentary records would be a good idea. For example we have a question and then some answers to that question and we accept that answer but we make sure to keep in mind and acknowledge the other answers. No reason to not be even-handed, it may well be that the answer we pick it wrong down the line and that we should have picked one of the others. Good to have them available for the record and to acknowledge that there is now a need for that answer rather than the other. I think detailed lines of reasoning and personal acknowledgement of ideas are the key to avoiding feelings of being &quot;left out&quot;. I do think that meta should serve as a place we grievances can and should be heard and acknowledged." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7672" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2985" RevisionGUID="bf813ce2-c300-4e97-9852-fb446314e080" CreationDate="2012-02-01T17:12:55.053" UserId="3764" Text="As a blogger on the DIY site, let me suggest that you build a queue of entries before launch and get your writing schedule down.  http://diy.blogoverflow.com exploded out of the gate and is in a post-holiday lull right now - two users have written all but one of the last two month's worth of posts and it's been difficult to scrape a weekly entry together when people get busy.  If you think you need six regular writers, I would suggest enlisting a number closer to 10 :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm looking forward to reading the blog, and if you have any issues with organizing, I'd suggest checking in at the other SE blog contributor chats, there's usually some good advice to be found.  Along with the StackExchange Community chat, I've found good tips in gaming, scifi, and super user.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This DIY meta [question](http://meta.diy.stackexchange.com/questions/493/how-can-i-contribute-to-the-diy-community-blog) describes a bit about how we use email, wordpress, chat, and trello to organize." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7673" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2976" RevisionGUID="09a89490-9de5-4cc4-8037-2ae4c81471df" CreationDate="2012-02-01T17:46:13.570" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/164766518171807744" />
  <row Id="7677" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2987" RevisionGUID="be73ae89-bb68-4d46-91ad-2e1ec9a8a47b" CreationDate="2012-02-01T19:49:56.477" UserId="39757" Text="This question seems to suffer from all the same pitfalls as questions I see closed regularly:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132852/dealing-with-management-that-does-not-see-value-in-improvements-that-are-not-imm&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though I think the question and answers are interesting, this doesn't need to be programming specific - same can be true of other fields. Also, just what an &quot;improvement&quot; consists of is unclear - too general?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have seen many questions on meta that refer to the validity of questions and this example is a good counterpoint to those who claim there is no problem on this SE. I really want to know how this can remain open based on other questions I have seen closed, as I am to the point where I am not really sure what can be asked on this site (and I have read the FAQ and followed meta). I think that I am not alone." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7678" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2987" RevisionGUID="be73ae89-bb68-4d46-91ad-2e1ec9a8a47b" CreationDate="2012-02-01T19:49:56.477" UserId="39757" Text="How did this general question not get closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7679" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2987" RevisionGUID="be73ae89-bb68-4d46-91ad-2e1ec9a8a47b" CreationDate="2012-02-01T19:49:56.477" UserId="39757" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7680" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2988" RevisionGUID="6ddbe4b6-dd48-4b87-a865-51a461cc87d3" CreationDate="2012-02-01T19:52:05.433" UserId="3965" Text="For the record, the town hall was at an inconvenient time for me.  I didn't purposely skip your question, just didn't have time to get to them all.  I find it ironic your unanswered question was about making sure people feel heard :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I [wrote an answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/131810/3965) last week regarding listening and leadership, and the same principles apply here.  Don't just tell people their ideas are wrong.  Give in sometimes.  Incorporate the good parts of what they say if possible.  If not, explain your reasoning behind it.  Address all their concerns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other way to make people feel heard is to lead by example, and ask for input on decisions even if you feel you already know the right way to go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[That question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/131746/3965) is a good illustration of listening to the community.  In the last 10 days, only 2 questions were voted higher, yet it was closed as off topic.  To me, getting that many votes and good answers essentially makes it on topic by community fiat, especially on a question that has nowhere else to go until professional matters launches, and is certainly something programmers deal with at work.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why I made an exception to the rule and answered instead of voting to close, even though I would have closed if I got there before it gathered any attention.  As long as it doesn't get out of hand, I have no problem with deferring to the community and letting a few popular borderline questions slip through every once in a while." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7681" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2989" RevisionGUID="bdc12a44-a16b-494d-aac0-78a4e87184be" CreationDate="2012-02-01T19:56:12.323" UserId="47" Text="If you think a question doesn't belong then you should do the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Edit it into shape. Anyone can edit. If you have less than 2,000 reputation it has to be approved, but if it's a good edit it will probably go through.&#xD;&#xA;2. Comment. Ask the OP to improve it themselves. This is for where there is something major wrong with the post and you might destroy all the goodness if you edit.&#xD;&#xA;3. Down-vote. If the post is really bad this is a good way to get people's attention. Both the OP and other community members. If others see a down-vote on the post it might spur them on to do step #1.&#xD;&#xA;4. Vote to close. Obviously only available if you have more then 3,000 reputation.&#xD;&#xA;5. Flag for moderator attention. The last resort. If the post is that bad that it needs to be removed straight away then flag it. If it spam flag it as spam, we see those flags as well. Users with 10,000 reputation can see flags as well and do some or all of the steps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People don't see every post and people don't always agree on what's a good post or not so it's not surprising that some posts &quot;slip through the net&quot; (so to speak)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7682" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2990" RevisionGUID="13a1e606-d38e-4a01-b76a-ac794b599f2a" CreationDate="2012-02-01T19:59:18.743" UserId="399" Text="The following is a &quot;digest&quot; version of the [2012 Moderator Election Town Hall Chat](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2922/2012-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-tuesday-2200-utc-5pm-est). The format, [as described on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests), is one *answer* to this question *for every question* asked in the Town Hall, containing all the candidate's answers to that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**To view the digest chronologically, please sort the answers by &quot;oldest&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have questions or comments about this, **please do not answer this question** as the answers are designed to be used for the questions from the Town hall itself. Instead, please ask on [the parent question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests) or in [the Town Hall Discussion Room](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/352/town-hall-discussion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see any corrections which need to be made to this digest, or if you were a candidate who was unable to attend the town hall and would like your answers included, please @Rebecca or @TimStone [in the chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/251/programmers-town-hall-chat) and let us know!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7683" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="2990" RevisionGUID="13a1e606-d38e-4a01-b76a-ac794b599f2a" CreationDate="2012-02-01T19:59:18.743" UserId="399" Text="2012 Moderator Election - Town Hall Chat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7684" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="2990" RevisionGUID="13a1e606-d38e-4a01-b76a-ac794b599f2a" CreationDate="2012-02-01T19:59:18.743" UserId="399" Text="|discussion|featured|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7685" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2991" RevisionGUID="70345ffe-407f-4b5d-85e3-fcbefd637398" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:01:56.603" UserId="399" Text="## *![Mark Trapp](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ef8d7a735c5ec71cb59105872900187b?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Mark Trapp](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/2334/mark-trapp) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209040#3209040):* How do you feel about Programmers today? Headed in the right direction? Wrong direction? Needs a lot of work, or not so much?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209049#3209049):** Generally, we're in the right direction. I just think we need a bit of refinement in what qualifies as on or off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - **![Anna Lear](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/66c88a90c2bad25fd0eadd696e7a5f50?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Anna Lear](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/4143/anna-lear) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209079#3209079):** What sort of refinement do you have in mind?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [responded](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209100#3209100):** I just feel that there is not a true consensus on where the line is drawn in the sand. There are guidelines, and they are largely fine, but it seems as though what one may consider fine another considers off-topic is not certain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209061#3209061):** I think it's going in the right direction. There's always plenty of things to do, though. I see the blog being discussed again. You (Mark) have a great idea for keeping tag cleanups organized so they can continue. I would like to see some topicality cleanup, though, to reduce some ambiguities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209083#3209083):** Well, I have no idea if it will be the right direction in the long run, but I like where we are heading. We do need a lot of work, especially with cleaning up our broken windows. Lately we've been doing a lot of work clarifying the FAQ, there's always room for improvement, but I think we are very near &quot;good enough&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209096#3209096):** I think it is a little of both. Mostly the right direction, we've risen out the quagmire that was the beginning of the site but we are still seen as rather brutal or elitist toward new users even if that response is warranted. We also get great deal of misunderstanding in terms of the site's purpose and scope. Getting Stack Overflow to quit using us as a dumping ground is definitely a top priority. Getting some kind of extremely clear &quot;algorithmic&quot; asking guide should be done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209101#3209101):** I'm still here, so I'm quite happy. On/Off topic has been a controversy for a long time, for better or worse. At best it keeps a focus on certain topics, at worst it can drive away some topics and askers that are programming/programmer related that are very interesting and insightful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jonathan Khoo](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/41b424cd29d5662d6dda30a366302082?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jonathan Khoo](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7453/jonathan-khoo) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213572#3213572):** P.SE hosts a great deal of quality content. However, in recent times with SE doing an awesome job of marketing, the sites continue to attract the high- and low-quality participants. The so-called 'work' required is tricky to define, but isoutside the realm of a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jae](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jae](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/jae) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3215360#3215360):** I think, overall, we're in the right direction. There are a few things we may have to do in the long run, but basically, this site is doing a great job." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7686" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2992" RevisionGUID="d638f916-25b5-48ed-9858-16bd7673a148" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:02:32.453" UserId="399" Text="## *![ChrisF](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/5db15a88a151cbc6b35b92eb0f9e2100?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [ChrisF](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/40/chrisf) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209099#3209099):* How do you think being a moderator will affect your voting and posting patterns?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209116#3209116):**  The thing I will miss the most is the non binding close vote... When it comes to up/down voting I don't think there will be much to change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209120#3209120):** No affect. I upvote what I feel is interesting, I vote to close what I feel is off-topic. It's likely that I'll upvote an interesting question, and vote to close as off-topic. I downvote what I feel is harmful or very ill-informed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - **![ChrisF](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/5db15a88a151cbc6b35b92eb0f9e2100?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [ChrisF](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/40/chrisf) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209147#3209147):** So even if you're the first to see an off topic question you'll vote despite it being binding? Wouldn't it be better to wait for other members of the community to vote first?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [responded](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209188#3209188):** It may depend on the question, but for the average case, the rules are fairly 'set in stone' so no.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209124#3209124):** I would have to say I'd vote less often (to close that is) because of the binding vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209133#3209133):** I don't know that it will really change them all that much. I will provide more detail about why I post, I will definitely think more before I take action on bad posts as my actions will now reflect the community rather than just me. My posting will stay about the same, I'll answer when I have an answer and ask a question when I have one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209156#3209156):** I don't see it doesn't affect my answering or voting that much. It won't affect the content of any answers, that's for sure. Depending on the current state of the site, I might choose to moderate instead of answer, and if someone else posts a really good answer before I get a chance to answer, I'll just comment and upvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jonathan Khoo](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/41b424cd29d5662d6dda30a366302082?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jonathan Khoo](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7453/jonathan-khoo) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213601#3213601):** Up- and down-voting questions? None at all. Posting answers? None at all. Closing questions? I wouldn't like to see myself singlehandedly close too many questions, so I'd wait for another member or two to express concern on a question. Commenting? More care would have to be taken, since it's obvious to users that I'm a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jae](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jae](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/jae) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3215384#3215384):** I don't think my habits of answering and voting will change too much at all.  I will still vote when I think it should be voted on, and I will still answer questions that I feel I am able to answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7687" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2993" RevisionGUID="ca2d2dd1-64f5-4bff-a31d-11f445e49642" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:03:01.470" UserId="399" Text="## *![Morons](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b0f8778dc88c99dbe477722c3e831392?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Morons](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7519/morons) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209113#3209113):* Should we be encouraging more “High level” Questions? I personally feel there is a lack of design\architecture type questions.. if yes, how?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - **![Robert Harvey](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/1233ec65168f4aae4d939ae8fe6cde1e?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Robert Harvey](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/1805/robert-harvey) [asked for clarification](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209125#3209125):** What do you mean by &quot;high-level&quot; questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![Morons](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b0f8778dc88c99dbe477722c3e831392?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Morons](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7519/morons) [clarified](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209143#3209143):** Real System Design\Architecture type questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209174#3209174):** I think our name is partially to blame, this is not &quot;Software Engineering.SE&quot;. I do think we could address that with more specifics in the FAQ and maybe something along the lines of a &quot;question of the week&quot; and set it to architecture topics for a while.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209185#3209185):** I don't know if there's anything that you can do to force questions. Perhaps looking at themed weeks for asking and answering questions in a particular category might be an answer, as it has worked on other SE sites. However, I want to make sue the questions stay real and not forced or pressured.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209230#3209230):** I would like that, but I don't think it's part of a moderators responsibilities to encourage a higher level of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jonathan Khoo](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/41b424cd29d5662d6dda30a366302082?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jonathan Khoo](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7453/jonathan-khoo) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213617#3213617):** Sorry, but I don't know what you're saying here. If you're talking about higher-level questions from the users, I think that's outside of the moderator's scope." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7689" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2994" RevisionGUID="91d51e16-87a0-45ec-ba73-135557ea37a8" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:04:24.667" UserId="399" Text="## *![Anna Lear](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/66c88a90c2bad25fd0eadd696e7a5f50?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Anna Lear](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/4143/anna-lear) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209141#3209141):* What will you do if the community can't or won't vote on a question that falls outside the Stack Exchange/site guidelines?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209181#3209181):** It depends on just how far. If it is total mismatch for the site, I would be inclined to close/migrate/delete depending on the context. If it is a &quot;fringe&quot; question, I say let the community be the judge on that one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209196#3209196):** I think it's pretty clear to everyone that moderators are supposed to be the one's making the unpopular decisions. If I honestly believe that a question is outside the scope of the site, or otherwise troublesome, I will close it. If it's a borderline question, I'll probably wait for a couple of close votes or a few flags. If there's anywhere else it fits, I'll probably ask their mods before migrating.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - **![psr](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/1004149ded257aa5765e2ca5674744e0?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [psr](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20726/psr) [asked for clarification](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209239#3209239):** It's pretty clear to everyone that moderators are supposed to be the one's making the unpopular decisions?  Isn't that a logical contradiction?  If it's clear to everyone isn't it popular by definition?  What do you mean?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![Anna Lear](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/66c88a90c2bad25fd0eadd696e7a5f50?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Anna Lear](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/4143/anna-lear) [suggested](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209253#3209253):** The decisions aren't popular, but the fact that moderators make them is clear. Does that help?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [responded](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209278#3209278):** A question may be extremely popular, but that has nothing to do with how a moderator should handle it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209199#3209199):** I'll try and address the question if it a near miss, get the poster to change it to something acceptable. Otherwise I will go ahead and purge it if it is way off base whilst providing a precise reason as to why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209212#3209212):** If it's extremely obvious or needs action, I would close or delete as appropriate. However, I would tend to defer to the community. I don't want to be the only close vote on a question, though, unless it's absolutely necessary - I think seeing questions closed by fewer than 3 non-moderators looks bad (it isn't in actuality, but has that appearance).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209214#3209214):** The site guidelines are the guidelines. It's my view that debating them is left to meta and it's a mod's responsibility to vote-to-close in line with the guidelines set forth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - **![Jarrod](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/36bdf51149681a167294c2bc0f9a3d36?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jarrod](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/18644/jarrod) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209266#3209266):** So would say that you take more of a &quot;policeman&quot; moderator view, rather than a &quot;judge&quot; view?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [responded](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209282#3209282):** I'd like to think of it as more of a traffic cop. Directing people to better questions/answers and stopping traffic if things are going to get messy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jonathan Khoo](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/41b424cd29d5662d6dda30a366302082?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jonathan Khoo](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7453/jonathan-khoo) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213625#3213625):** Make sure one of the more-experienced moderator sees it. Learn from how they deal with the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jae](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jae](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/jae) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3215415#3215415):** If there is somewhere that the question can be migrated, it will be edited and migrated. If not, basically the question will be closed, or possibly edited to make them on-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7690" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2995" RevisionGUID="15f58cf8-1239-4e7e-8ed7-7265d117bb6a" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:04:42.823" UserId="399" Text="## *![BlackJack](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/f209d39cdab9710f9a01e733e9bafe96?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [BlackJack](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/17599/blackjack) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209184#3209184):* How can we get more users involved in community efforts? For example, it was mentioned earlier that we'll have more organized tag clean-up. How can we encourage newer/younger members (such as myself) to participate?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209206#3209206):** Lead by example. Additionally, I think have providing clear direction on the objectives of a cleanup will help encourage new participants who may not be sure of what the proper actions are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209229#3209229):** A great many users don't check meta from what I can tell so it might behoove us to have some way of encouraging meta discussion. I do think leading by example is important but at the same time we have a lot of veteran users who are already active on meta. I think meta needs to seem to matter to new users in a way that it may not now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209233#3209233):** I agree with @GlennNelson - lead by example. Setting down good examples is the best way. That means moderators and non-moderators alike. Even if I don't get a diamond mod position, I still plan on helping with cleanups, writing tag wikis, meta discussions, and the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209385#3209385):** I've noticed a couple of newer users doing some great edits, so I approached them through chat and gave some basic guidelines, mostly pointing out to relevant meta discussions. I'd like to do that in a more organized effort, possibly chat events for major cleanup efforts...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jae](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jae](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/jae) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3215451#3215451):** I don't think you can force anybody to visit the Meta and do these things. Yes, you can lead by example, but even so, newbies to the site barely know how the main site works. So really, before we can get more Meta participants, we must have more active Main site participants." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7691" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2996" RevisionGUID="f7603af4-df36-42c0-9c47-ff65abdbb7d2" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:05:05.383" UserId="399" Text="## *![Robert Harvey](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/1233ec65168f4aae4d939ae8fe6cde1e?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Robert Harvey](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/1805/robert-harvey) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209235#3209235):* How will your moderation style differ from the existing mods?  How will the site change as a result of the way your style differs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - **![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [asked for clarification](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209255#3209255):** I'm not sure what you mean by 'style'&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![Robert Harvey](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/1233ec65168f4aae4d939ae8fe6cde1e?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Robert Harvey](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/1805/robert-harvey) [clarified](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209279#3209279):** When you decided to become a mod, you must have had the notion, *&quot;If I ever become a mod, here's what I'll do differently.&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209245#3209245):** As I mentioned in my &quot;speech&quot; on the election page, I will moderate moderately, taking action where only definitively necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209272#3209272):** I'm going to try to defer to the community as much as I can. For example, minimizing the number of times I close a question without at least two or three other members voting first, or if I notice a trend, raise a question on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209294#3209294):** I refuse to use downvotes and I try to explain in detail why things happen and what to do about them if it is possible to do something about it. I want questions to be answered even if they are bad fits. I do realize that there are people who will never be able ask a good question but I think there are a great deal more who can be shaped into good questioners. I generally refer to community will but people get angry and vindictive, as a moderator I can't let emotion cloud my judgement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209316#3209316):** Not really. It was a bit of the opposite actually. I see people that I admire for their technical skills, people skills and community involvement - and aspire to emulate it. Will my personality come through? Certainly, but I can't say how that will affect my moderating style.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209417#3209417):** There was a similar meta question, and my answer there was that there isn't really much room for differentiation. Moderators are exception handlers and janitors, not much room for personal style...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jonathan Khoo](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/41b424cd29d5662d6dda30a366302082?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jonathan Khoo](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7453/jonathan-khoo) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213640#3213640):** It won't. I'm applying to be part of a team, not an individual enforcer who has the audacity to &quot;do things my way&quot;. The moderation required by everyone will be less - we're just sharing the work." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7692" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2997" RevisionGUID="481a4d88-a395-4c59-91d5-18b2639deb39" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:06:24.083" UserId="399" Text="## *![Mark Trapp](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ef8d7a735c5ec71cb59105872900187b?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Mark Trapp](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/2334/mark-trapp) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209292#3209292):* What do you think the moderator's role is in community building? Should they stick to the janitorial duties, or be actively involved in the decision making process and promotion of the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209318#3209318):** When it comes to making decisions, the voice of a moderator shouldn't be any stronger than anyone else in the community. The only difference between a diamond moderator and anyone else is that they have access to tools to help keep the community moving forward in times of crisis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209327#3209327):** The moderator should ideally be both a user and a &quot;janitor&quot;. Any site needs some level of cleaning up, but should also be involved in promotion of the site which is just as important as cleaning in maintaining and cultivating a good community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209341#3209341):** Moderators should act as the morale officers in the army of stack-exchange, meting out justice and encouragement in equal measure. We should be the very best that the community has to offer and try to set examples in all things. Good ideas should be taken to the next level and bad ideas should be composted into good ones or incinerated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209343#3209343):** Certainly similar to an evangelist, but I don't know what the relationship is personally between a mod and SE staff, so I wouldn't be so bold as to attempt to step on their toes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209483#3209483):** Janitorial duties should be a priority. But moderators are also users, and they should be involved in the decision making process as much as everyone. By default (?!) moderators are experienced users and their opinion may carry a bit more weight, but that has (or should have) nothing to do with the diamond...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jonathan Khoo](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/41b424cd29d5662d6dda30a366302082?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jonathan Khoo](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7453/jonathan-khoo) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213647#3213647):** A moderator should stick to his her moderator duties. However, as a P.SE user, enables me to share opinions regarding the site via Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jae](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jae](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/jae) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3215485#3215485):** I think the moderator needs to do it all. Janitorial duties are important. Promotion is important. Decision making is very important. So why not?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7693" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2998" RevisionGUID="4aff0826-ac8e-467c-a9b1-2f6672b18f6c" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:06:41.640" UserId="399" Text="## *![Andrew](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/df6824013714d2e2a4faae8bbb28fbac?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Andrew](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6864/andrew) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209296#3209296):* To follow @AnnaLear's question: There is an apparent dichotomy between the site being a &quot;community&quot; site and a site governed by a set of &quot;guidelines.&quot;  In theory, the guidelines are set by the community, so governing by the guidelines should be governing by the community.  If that were actually the case, @AnnaLear's question would be meaningless.  When the community, or at least a vocal subset of the community, appears to be at odds with the guidelines, how do you resolve the conflict?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209352#3209352):** The guidelines exist, and at any given moment in time, the community needs to function within those guidelines. However, if any user (moderator or otherwise) has a problem with those guidelines, it should be raised on meta and discussed. However, there's also the overarching goals/objectives of Stack Exchange that must be supported.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - **![psr](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/1004149ded257aa5765e2ca5674744e0?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [psr](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20726/psr) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209403#3209403):** Which overarching goals of Stack exchange are you referring to and how would you support them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [responded](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209439#3209439):** There are some guidelines in place. For example, the six guidelines for subjective questions, the desire for expert answers, and the general making the Internet a better place. Regardless of what we, as a community, decide to do, we can't break any rules or guidelines set down by a higher power.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [continued](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209399#3209399):** What I would like to see is more of a dialog between moderators and the rest of the community, though. These types of town halls on a regular basis. I'm just beginning to see the actual value of the chat, so I think that putting everyone in the same location at a coordinated time might help community building (and consensus building.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209406#3209406):** I try to get to the bottom of the reasoning behind the behavior and work out some kind of lasting solution. Care needs to be taken in both strengthening the community and living within the bounds that the stack exchange sets. It's a fine and tricky line to walk I'll admit but I feel I can handle it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7694" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="2999" RevisionGUID="3ce6c0bf-45b1-4d25-94f3-fcd0cbc2803b" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:07:04.830" UserId="399" Text="## *![BlackJack](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/f209d39cdab9710f9a01e733e9bafe96?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [BlackJack](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/17599/blackjack) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209445#3209445):* Say a user posts 3-4 questions which are all closed for being off-topic. If this user continues posting questions that are somewhat related but still off topic, even after you show them the FAQ and all that, what do you do with them, if anything at all?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209460#3209460):** I'm not sure what the exact facilities are, but if after explaining to the user (and making sure they understand the situation) I would have to perform a temporary ban in some form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209469#3209469):** As far as I'm aware users who abuse the stack exchange can be banned but I'd definitely take serious care to make sure that we were doing so correctly and not just repeatedly misunderstanding each other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209474#3209474):** At that point, I believe there are moderator (or automatic) methods for limiting their posting ability. It really would be required at that point. One or two questions, especially borderline ones, I can see. But after 3 or 4, you should have learned and stronger action is needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209510#3209510):** Tough call. I've personally had trouble adapting to the six guidelines, so in the past a number of my questions were closed. In the end, there needs to be a cut-off point where it can be determined that the person is posting maliciously and if the case, banning is an option that I'd consider with caution (depending on the content of the questions). If it's deemed not malicious, continuing to close their questions by vote of the community seems reasonable to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Karl Bielefeldt](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/54b490131b024e2fa1527cff057790b4?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Karl Bielefeldt](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7057/karl-bielefeldt) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209536#3209536):** one thing that often happens is questions are closed for being off topic, but there's a part of the question that's on topic.  I would try to edit to make it on topic, or redirect to a better place to ask, rather than just close and say &quot;those questions aren't welcome here.&quot;  Only after that doesn't work would I consider reprimands like temporary bans.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209599#3209599):** It's always a per case decision. If there are a few helpful comments by community members (moderators or not, it doesn't really matter) and the user failed to improve his / her participation after a sensible amount of time, a temporary suspension would be justified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jae](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jae](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/jae) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3215506#3215506):** As was said by @ThomasOwens: There is already an &quot;auto-ban&quot; for those who have many low-quality questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7695" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3000" RevisionGUID="8820a9e4-2a03-494c-a069-db5d5a1fa044" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:07:19.510" UserId="399" Text="## *![Mark Trapp](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ef8d7a735c5ec71cb59105872900187b?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Mark Trapp](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/2334/mark-trapp) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209482#3209482):* Many of the candidates have very low flag counts and very low meta participation. Do you see flagging and meta participation as an important part of being part of the community? Why or why not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209501#3209501):** Flagging, not so much. I have less than 50 flags because I only flag things that need immediate or drastic action. Most of the time, the community can take care of things on their own, without moderator intervention. Meta is far more important since that's how the community is defined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209531#3209531):** I do see flagging and meta as important. Regarding flagging, unless I saw something that was truly inappropriate, I used my &quot;vote to close&quot; option. Meta is what plays a role in how the site is run which I feel is more important. As for my low count on the matter, that is simply my lack of formal involvement (I've tended to lurk in the past) but regardless of the outcome of the election, I intend to become much more involved in Programmers overall.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209541#3209541):** I think flagging is definitely an important task, without it, moderation would be exhausting and difficult to keep up with bad posts. It gives new users a feeling that they can stop bad stuff from happening. Meta is definitely important but as I said in reference for other questions, I post when I have a question and answer when I have an answer. I do read through meta to make sure that I'm keeping up though and encourage others to do likewise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209544#3209544):** There are many ways to participate. Flagging and meta are some of the ways. Do I believe that moderator status requires a higher level of such participation? Yes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Karl Bielefeldt](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/54b490131b024e2fa1527cff057790b4?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Karl Bielefeldt](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7057/karl-bielefeldt) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209596#3209596):** I have generally reserved flags for things that can't be addressed via other means, like spam or not real answers.  I prefer voting to close, editing, or commenting as a means of participation in site improvement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Karl Bielefeldt](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/54b490131b024e2fa1527cff057790b4?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Karl Bielefeldt](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7057/karl-bielefeldt) [continued](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209637#3209637):** As for meta, I read meta far more often than I post, mostly because there are usually sufficient answers given, or I don't feel I'm the right person to answer.  If I were a moderator, I would feel like &quot;the right person&quot; much more often.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209869#3209869):** Well, having over 300 helpful flags, you'll allow me to skip that one...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jonathan Khoo](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/41b424cd29d5662d6dda30a366302082?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jonathan Khoo](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7453/jonathan-khoo) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213673#3213673):** Flagging is certainly important. In order to learn the stance of the existing moderators, I have watched the result of each flag I've casted (whether it has been accepted or rejected). So, when I reached the reputation ability to cast my own close votes, I could do so with confidence. Meta reading is certain required because you learn how to deal with controversial matters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jae](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jae](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/jae) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3215553#3215553):** Flagging is important for any user. Honestly, the fact that your flagging and editing rates are low (of course, based on the amount of time you've been here) shows that you are not very used to the janitorial duties of a moderator. As for Meta, it is very important. You cannot make too many major decisions without a strong meta backing you up." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7696" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3001" RevisionGUID="3834d2c6-ef85-4bdc-a32e-85af6b870118" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:07:36.140" UserId="399" Text="## *![Jarrod](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/36bdf51149681a167294c2bc0f9a3d36?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jarrod](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/18644/jarrod) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209579#3209579):* How much time do you feel you can dedicate to P.SE on average? And do you feel that it is an appropriate amount of time to properly moderate the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209604#3209604):** I have a window open to stack exchange a huge amount of the time. Pretty much any time I'm on a computer that I own I'm on P.SE. I'd say that's enough time to moderate it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209607#3209607):** I can dedicate an hour or so in the morning, and mid-day. The evening allows for more time as well. I feel at least 2-3 hours would be a good amount for both moderation and participation in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209629#3209629):** Various SE sites are usually open in a browser when I'm at work. I pop on in when I need to jump out of work for a few minutes. SE sites are usually open when I'm at home, too. If I was on and things needed attention, or there were new interesting posts (on main or meta), I'd respond. As a diamond mod, I'd probably spend more time here than on any other SE site (I already do, but it would shift more).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209656#3209656):** 2-4 hours a day on average. I can't say for certain, but that seems sufficient for P.SE. I'd be interested to hear from existing mods to hear if they think that's accurate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  -  **![ChrisF](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/5db15a88a151cbc6b35b92eb0f9e2100?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [ChrisF](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/40/chrisf) [replied](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209674#3209674):** I don't keep track. I tend to moderate in the odd minutes I have during the day when I'm waiting for builds/inspiration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![Mark Trapp](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ef8d7a735c5ec71cb59105872900187b?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Mark Trapp](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/2334/mark-trapp) [replied](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209687#3209687):** ~an hour a day, usually&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [responded](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209697#3209697):** I find that surprising. You seem to do a lot in that hour.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![Anna Lear](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/66c88a90c2bad25fd0eadd696e7a5f50?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Anna Lear](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/4143/anna-lear) [added](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209709#3209709):** I probably spent 15-20 hours a week on SE... maybe half that on actual moderation. I'm not sure anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![Josh K](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/55db06ceffe066c53bf7121fb3e23eea?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Josh K](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/1632/josh-k) [replied](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209724#3209724):** Typically about an hour total a day. Maybe less. I normally drop in 3-4 times a day and if something comes up I check it. That's why flags rock, it's a simple little note that I need to check something instead of digging through stats to find something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Karl Bielefeldt](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/54b490131b024e2fa1527cff057790b4?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Karl Bielefeldt](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7057/karl-bielefeldt) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209703#3209703):** I check it several times per day, and am often the first or second close vote, answer, or comment, so I think I'm getting to the site often enough to moderate effectively.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209812#3209812):** About an hour per day, for moderation duties. So far I'm spending about a couple of hours each day, and if there's need for more time for moderation, well I'll remove Sceptics and Code Review from my bookmarks..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7697" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3002" RevisionGUID="3df26e24-fdae-4ab4-890c-aedc40fb581f" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:08:07.293" UserId="399" Text="## *![Michael Mrozek](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/dd7e03fbbfcabd4675844173ec5390d2?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Michael Mrozek](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/26/michael-mrozek) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209581#3209581):* A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209595#3209595):** Excited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209641#3209641):** Not a problem at all. I have never said anything that isn't fully honest and my thoughts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209661#3209661):** I'm entirely okay with that. I've nothing to hide and I do still update some of my better old answers to make them ever more useful. I realize that I will probably be resented more by many people but being a moderator is a duty and an honor not some weekend cruise. I will put a note in my profile to treat my oldest posts with a grain of salt since I was learning the ropes here at the time as to not mislead people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Karl Bielefeldt](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/54b490131b024e2fa1527cff057790b4?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Karl Bielefeldt](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7057/karl-bielefeldt) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209800#3209800):** I've always made how my actions reflect on the site a major consideration, because I want it to be a site people come back to.  I like to think I already behave as if my activity is in the spotlight, and having a diamond by my name wouldn't change that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209920#3209920):** I'll probably be a bit more careful &amp;amp; detailed in covering all my bases, before sharing my opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jonathan Khoo](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/41b424cd29d5662d6dda30a366302082?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jonathan Khoo](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7453/jonathan-khoo) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213688#3213688):** All my interaction has been professional on this site; I would hope that SE would be proud to stick a diamond next to my name." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7698" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3003" RevisionGUID="5c9343fc-2a3d-4127-8ad7-9ecd028ff647" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:08:36.933" UserId="399" Text="## *![Morons](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b0f8778dc88c99dbe477722c3e831392?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Morons](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7519/morons) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209606#3209606):* As a Balance of Power.. Do you feel that upon reaching a certain reputation a privilege should be given that allows the user to view moderator activities?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - **![Robert Harvey](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/1233ec65168f4aae4d939ae8fe6cde1e?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Robert Harvey](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/1805/robert-harvey) [remarked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209627#3209627):** Moderator actions are always completely visible (except stats and private mod messages).  Are you asking about something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209632#3209632):** A moderators activities can be viewed by anyone of any reputation via our profiles, unless you meant something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209988#3209988):** It's not about balance of power. Moderators have a very well defined set of responsibilities, and all their activities are monitored constantly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jonathan Khoo](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/41b424cd29d5662d6dda30a366302082?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jonathan Khoo](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7453/jonathan-khoo) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213705#3213705):** You're asking a question about an already-implemented system here. This is irrelevant to the election." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7699" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3004" RevisionGUID="050703c7-5ff7-4a32-aef7-e1e2562fc882" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:08:52.673" UserId="399" Text="## *![kiamlaluno](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/f5ef1b81e1aeb3b921a3034d460ce6af?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [kiamlaluno](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6266/kiamlaluno) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209686#3209686):* In which areas do you think that a Stack Exchange site should allow non 10k users to participate more in the decisions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209711#3209711):** I think one of the most important things is deciding what constitutes on-topic and what is not, which a user can do with 3.000 reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209713#3209713):** What exactly do you mean? Anyone can participate on Meta. The big thing is that as you are trusted by the community to ask good questions and give good answers, you get more tools. But everyone can participate fully in the core functionality and decision making.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   - **![kiamlaluno](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/f5ef1b81e1aeb3b921a3034d460ce6af?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [kiamlaluno](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6266/kiamlaluno) [clarified](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209758#3209758):** For example, 5k users don't see the flagged posts. I am referring to the main site, not the meta site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209784#3209784):** I'm perfectly fine with that. Until someone is more familiar and comfortable with the community, there's no need to give someone access to more powerful community management/participation tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209744#3209744):** I think the system works well as it is now in that regard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209750#3209750):** As someone with less than 10k, I don't feel like I am being shorted on discussions or not having my voice heard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jonathan Khoo](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/41b424cd29d5662d6dda30a366302082?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jonathan Khoo](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7453/jonathan-khoo) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213725#3213725):** You're also talking about the system already implemented. We can speculate or whine about it as much as we want. I, however, think this is irrelevant to the election." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7700" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3005" RevisionGUID="1b99692a-6ba7-432e-a5a7-0f41921d80a9" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:09:09.773" UserId="399" Text="## *![Mark Trapp](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ef8d7a735c5ec71cb59105872900187b?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Mark Trapp](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/2334/mark-trapp) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209774#3209774):* As [Robert Harvey alluded to](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209235#3209235), you'll be joining an existing moderation team, unlike the last election. Do you see yourself fitting in to the existing team, or going against the grain?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209798#3209798):** I see myself doing a bit of both. I like the current mods in terms of discussions I've had with them but I'm sure there will be the odd conflict in terms what should or shouldn't be done at a given point in time. Experience will be an excellent teacher.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209801#3209801):** I think the current moderation team has done a fine job and will continue to do so. I personally don't agree on the level of closing questions that are on the margin, but I don't see that being a conflict.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209827#3209827):** Depends on the moderator. I've disagreed with you personally a number of times on the site and meta, while the opposite is the case with some other mods. I've always had a good amount of respect for both however and when I haven't agreed, I've enjoyed the discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209834#3209834):** I've tended to have some very...strong (good word, guys) opinions on various policies and how things should be. However, once the community makes a decision, I'll fall into line and support it as appropriate. So in a discussion, I might go against the grain, but I'd fall in line when it comes to upholding those decisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Karl Bielefeldt](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/54b490131b024e2fa1527cff057790b4?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Karl Bielefeldt](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7057/karl-bielefeldt) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209891#3209891):** I think my meta answer here sums up how I will fit in perfectly.  When I disagree with official policy, I will say so, but I'm still supportive of the consensus.  In other words, I can disagree without being disagreeable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jae](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jae](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/jae) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3215588#3215588):** I think it will take a small bit of time to get used to the flow of things. But, I don't think it will take too long since I will be able to get help from experienced mods." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7701" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3006" RevisionGUID="420d4224-13f9-48c7-9483-f7cb66de686d" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:13:56.303" UserId="399" Text="## *![Anna Lear](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/66c88a90c2bad25fd0eadd696e7a5f50?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Anna Lear](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/4143/anna-lear) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209820#3209820):* And further to [Mark's question](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209774#3209774), do you plan to be available in chat for frequent communication or do you prefer to be more autonomous?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209840#3209840):** I haven't been in chat much, but I'm not averse to it at all if it's required or needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209843#3209843):** I think being a monitor warrants an active communication between other members of the site and moderators. That said being available in-chat is a must.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209854#3209854):** I basically live in chat so I'm always up for a good talk. I can act as my own agent when necessary as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209860#3209860):** Chat, probably not so much. If there were chat events, I would be around. I wouldn't be against more activity though. I'd be more responsive on Meta (and anyone can ping me via email if they want my input or take on a question - it's already in my profile).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Karl Bielefeldt](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/54b490131b024e2fa1527cff057790b4?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Karl Bielefeldt](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7057/karl-bielefeldt) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209938#3209938):** I have not spent much time in chat before because honestly, there's not often much going on.  If elected moderator, I would make an effort to keep a chat window open anyway, because I think that's part of the job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210017#3210017):** Chat! Chat! Chat! I always have a tab open in chat as a user, and I don't see a reason to change that habit as a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jonathan Khoo](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/41b424cd29d5662d6dda30a366302082?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jonathan Khoo](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7453/jonathan-khoo) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213742#3213742):** Most definitely! I applied to join a team. I would love the opportunity to get to know the current moderators more - the easiest being accessible via chat or wherever else they're active.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jae](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jae](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/jae) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3215595#3215595):** Frequent communication is key. You must communicate with the community to get things done." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7702" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3007" RevisionGUID="a281d832-bb13-41c0-8412-63aec89c8b1f" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:14:18.580" UserId="399" Text="## *![Steve Jackson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9a6add24fb8d0ffd4bd3befe09ea31d5?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Steve Jackson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/71/steve-jackson) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209821#3209821):* What facet of Programmers.SE do you feel deserves the most attention / needs improvement? Tags, community building, on-topic definition, etc?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209866#3209866):** A better understanding of what is on-topic throughout the entire site is a must and needs  work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209880#3209880):** Tags and on-topic definition first. Broken windows, and all that. Topicality is 80% there, but there are ambiguities. Community building needs to be on going thing that's never going to be done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209890#3209890):** Tough call. The community seems to be most vocal about on-topic definition, but I don't know if it's the most important. Being an active member and contributing the best quality possible as a user is probably most important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209896#3209896):** I think interception of bad questions before they get asked is a good idea. People ask a lot of the same bad questions over and over. Some way of providing a stock answer that doesn't feel negative along with a close would be good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - **![Steve Jackson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9a6add24fb8d0ffd4bd3befe09ea31d5?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Steve Jackson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/71/steve-jackson) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209949#3209949):** How would you steer them in the right direction and avoid dismissing their question as a &quot;same old&quot; bad question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210001#3210001):** Have some guides ask to exactly why bad questions are bad, not just question off topic/question bad. Explain carefully why it is that there question is bad and try and help them make it better. I realize that it means more work for me but I'm willing to take that on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210103#3210103):** We haven't fully recuperated from the good old days, so I'd say that on-topic definition would be my first priority, but cleaning up our broken windows would be the best way to start. I've already volunteered for the blog as a user, and will do my best to be as much involved as a moderator, if elected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jae](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jae](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/jae) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3215616#3215616):** The tag cleanups need some work. Community building is pretty good. On-topic definition needs a lot of work." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7703" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3008" RevisionGUID="eef732c5-a3a2-4ac9-a23b-e84e965f32b6" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:14:39.970" UserId="399" Text="## *![kiamlaluno](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/f5ef1b81e1aeb3b921a3034d460ce6af?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [kiamlaluno](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6266/kiamlaluno) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209872#3209872):* What is the main problem (including problems on how users use the site) that you actually see in the site you would be moderating, if you are elected moderator?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - **![Anna Lear](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/66c88a90c2bad25fd0eadd696e7a5f50?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Anna Lear](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/4143/anna-lear) [remarked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209894#3209894):** Seems like Steve just asked that. Are you aiming for something different?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![kiamlaluno](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/f5ef1b81e1aeb3b921a3034d460ce6af?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [kiamlaluno](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6266/kiamlaluno) [responded](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209903#3209903):** I was referring to problems with the users using the site too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209915#3209915):** Are you referring to people? Separate the people from the problem. People usually aren't the problem, it's usually communication.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209926#3209926):** The main problem I see is a misunderstanding what it is that programmers is about. We tend to see bad posts, react to them and that gives an impression that we are elitist/evil. This in turn turns away many people who might be given valuable contributors if they could be steered in the right direction without scaring them off." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7704" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3009" RevisionGUID="aab9722d-e82d-46ad-b04d-9ccdd90eef45" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:14:55.647" UserId="399" Text="## *![Mark Trapp](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ef8d7a735c5ec71cb59105872900187b?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Mark Trapp](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/2334/mark-trapp) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210000#3210000):* Why do you want to be a moderator? What motivated you to take this big leap?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210041#3210041):** A desire to become more active in something that I consider to be a great part of the internet. I've learned a good bit from this site and continue to offer what I can when I can&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210056#3210056):** I want to help get this site into a form where we are no longer seen as SO's dumping ground or those meanies over on programmers. I love being on this site and feel that this is a natural next step in my service toward helping people get questions answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210060#3210060):** I've been a member of Programmers since Day 1. I saw it go from this confused mess of who knows to one of the most interesting SE sites out there. I just want the opportunity to take on a new role in the community to make it more awesome. Regardless of the outcome, I still plan on participating on the main site, on meta, and in community initiatives, but hopefully the community will elect me to serve them in a new way..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210136#3210136):** I have been doing a lot of clean up work, and for the most part I enjoy it. As I wrote in my nomination stub, becoming a moderator will allow me to do what I've already been doing with a lot more flexibility. Everything else I love about the site, I can do as a user, so it has nothing to do with my desire to become a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jonathan Khoo](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/41b424cd29d5662d6dda30a366302082?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jonathan Khoo](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7453/jonathan-khoo) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213774#3213774):** I respect the mindsets and aptitude of the current moderators (except one). I believe that like-minded people naturally gravitate together too. Aside from that, P.SE has taught me a lot and continues to do so now; moderating would be my (minimal) way of serving it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jae](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jae](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/jae) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3215622#3215622):** I'm running because I think that I can make an already great site and network a better place." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7705" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3010" RevisionGUID="93685f6c-b81f-43fb-ad26-b451643131bb" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:15:07.957" UserId="399" Text="## *![Anna Lear](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/66c88a90c2bad25fd0eadd696e7a5f50?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Anna Lear](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/4143/anna-lear) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210021#3210021):* Suppose that someone objects to one of your actions and makes an incensed meta post calling you out. How would you handle this situation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210043#3210043):** They're free to do that. That's what meta is for. I'd answer (re)stating my viewpoint or the rationale behind the decision and let the meta community further decide.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210064#3210064):** Again I'm not sure what facilities moderators are provided to communicate with users, but I would do my best to explain my reasoning for my decision and do my best to answer questions or issues the user has with my decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Karl Bielefeldt](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/54b490131b024e2fa1527cff057790b4?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Karl Bielefeldt](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7057/karl-bielefeldt) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210079#3210079):** I would point to the appropriate faq entry or precedent to support my action, and give them an honest hearing, possibly reversing or modifying my decision if they make a good case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210080#3210080):** First, I'd chill out a bit. Then, I'd explain my reasoning in detail and let the community decide. If, for some reason, I was out of line, I would admit my mistake and undo it (if it hadn't been undone by another mod already).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210082#3210082):** Calmly, I've worked a long time in customer service. You've not seen irate until you reject returns. If I can stand my ground with someone screaming at me in real life, I can handle it on the internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210260#3210260):** Leave the question mature for a couple of hours and then come back to it. If there is a satisfactory answer describing my actions, upvote it. If not, provide one describing my actions. If there is community consensus that my actions were incorrect, revert and apologize.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jonathan Khoo](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/41b424cd29d5662d6dda30a366302082?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jonathan Khoo](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7453/jonathan-khoo) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213789#3213789):** Thoroughly explain the notion behind the action(s). Be polite and open to feedback, but also accept that I may have done something wrong. Then, also get one of the P.SE godfathers or another moderator to review the case. And, apologise, if needed!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jae](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jae](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/jae) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3215629#3215629):** They're supposed to object if they want to. But if I, and the majority of the community, think it's the right thing to do, then I'll do it. But yes, you need the majority vote." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7706" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3011" RevisionGUID="66e9898a-9b30-48a0-89df-ecec627ffec8" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:15:20.233" UserId="399" Text="## *![Jarrod](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/36bdf51149681a167294c2bc0f9a3d36?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jarrod](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/18644/jarrod) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210053#3210053):* A very wide range of programming topics are discussed on this site - do you feel you have a wide enough range of experience in the world of programming to appropriately guide and moderate topics that you might not necessarily be well versed in?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - **![Robert Harvey](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/1233ec65168f4aae4d939ae8fe6cde1e?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Robert Harvey](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/1805/robert-harvey) [remarked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210070#3210070):** That's a trick question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![Jarrod](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/36bdf51149681a167294c2bc0f9a3d36?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jarrod](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/18644/jarrod) [responded](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210078#3210078):** Sorry, I don't mean it to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![Robert Harvey](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/1233ec65168f4aae4d939ae8fe6cde1e?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Robert Harvey](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/1805/robert-harvey) [later explained](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210259#3210259):** Moderation has surprisingly little to do with technical knowledge.  Crap content is crap content, regardless of the subject matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210095#3210095):** I have a comprehensive knowledge of programming topics and software engineering. I am good at doing research quickly and accurately so if I don't know something I will know it very very soon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210098#3210098):** I suppose that would be a tough one on my part considering my young age and relative lack of experience in the industry. I think that largely, I can tell what is and what is not related to the world of programmers, but some times I will just have to step back and look into something if I am not sure of something or knowledgeable on the matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210109#3210109):** I think so. I think I would bring a unique perspective to the moderation team in terms of my topic area knowledge to help better define topicality in gray areas. And if I see a gray area, I'd defer to the community members and moderators who understands the subject matter better to make an informed decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210114#3210114):** I don't think anyone knows everything, but someone has to do the job of moderating. I don't necessarily think it's a moderator's job to verify the accuracy of all questions and answers. That said, I'd like to think that I'm knowledgable and more-so every day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Karl Bielefeldt](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/54b490131b024e2fa1527cff057790b4?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Karl Bielefeldt](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7057/karl-bielefeldt) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210116#3210116):** I have answers in 333 tags, most with upvotes.  Does that answer your question?  Also, I think moderation is less about subject matter and more about site quality.  You don't have to know the subject to know a bad question or answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210285#3210285):** Isn't that why every member is encouraged to participate in the moderation aspects of the site? There are quite a few topics I have no clue about, and when issues arise on those topics I would either refer them to fellow moderators or wait for a sensible amount of flags / votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7707" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3012" RevisionGUID="19c8ef15-7c69-4c1a-b93c-e4a60f8453d1" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:15:31.310" UserId="399" Text="## *![kiamlaluno](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/f5ef1b81e1aeb3b921a3034d460ce6af?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [kiamlaluno](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6266/kiamlaluno) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210057#3210057):* Do you think that participating on Meta Stack Overflow helps with being a better moderator?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210089#3210089):** Certainly. Some users see it as 'the complaint bucket' so addressing those complaints is a major part of the job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210119#3210119):** I think we need to make a concerted effort to be appear gracious on Meta.SO while definitely tackling the issue of out negative perception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210126#3210126):** I think that participating on the meta for a site will help get a better understanding of how Stack Exchange operates, as well as the particular &quot;branch&quot; of the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210143#3210143):** Yes. I've started lurking around MSO a couple of months ago and I got a far better understanding of Stack Exchange than before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210146#3210146):** Participation on MSO is important for a moderator - that's where the decisions that affect all SE sites are made. I think moderators should keep an eye on the metas of other SE sites that are related to ours to assist with the process of moving questions and guiding users to the right place to get the best answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7708" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3013" RevisionGUID="84de2712-72c8-49e5-847e-8c5b5e20b55f" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:15:45.350" UserId="399" Text="## *![Gilles](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a717291747c76567bb0f086e15ae6e43?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Gilles](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/240/gilles) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210097#3210097):* Do you think the existence of Programmers has affected the scope of Stack Overflow? Should it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210129#3210129):** Absolutely not. The act of writing code is a fraction of what I do. Well, these days, it's an insanely small fraction of what I do. There's plenty of room questions about writing code, tests, and so on. But there's also plenty of room for the whiteboard and soft issues in software development and we here fill that niche.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210154#3210154):** I honestly don't feel I can offer my opinion on that matter as I haven't concurrently spent  significant time on Programmers and SO. I also did not engage on SO in a serious manner before Programmers came about so I can't offer a true opinion on any changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210161#3210161):** I do think we need to make sure that SO understands what they can and can't migrate here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210339#3210339):** What is this Stack Overflow you are speaking of?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jonathan Khoo](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/41b424cd29d5662d6dda30a366302082?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jonathan Khoo](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7453/jonathan-khoo) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213800#3213800):** Yes, P.SE is where the subjective questions is asked." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7709" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3014" RevisionGUID="8cf38a5d-f14f-4107-9699-34cfe2f23249" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:15:59.390" UserId="399" Text="## *![Robert Harvey](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/1233ec65168f4aae4d939ae8fe6cde1e?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Robert Harvey](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/1805/robert-harvey) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210151#3210151):* Are you familiar with the protocol for migrating a question?  What is the first principle?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210164#3210164):** Don't migrate crap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210166#3210166):** My only experience with migration has been on a &quot;vote to close &amp;amp; migrate manner&quot;, so not to any real extent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210175#3210175):** Check with the site in question before you migrate it. Read their FAQ, at least twice. Ask questions about fine lined stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210177#3210177):** Only with respect to &quot;off topic - belongs on so&quot; when voting to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jonathan Khoo](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/41b424cd29d5662d6dda30a366302082?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jonathan Khoo](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7453/jonathan-khoo) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213808#3213808):** I haven't read an official guideline/rule for migrating questions, but I assume that only migrating questions that belong on P.SE would be part of the decision-making process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jae](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jae](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/jae) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3215654#3215654):** Basically, make sure the question is quality before you migrate it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7710" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3015" RevisionGUID="d47e1ae3-fc8d-4f81-b771-9297df438505" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:16:09.920" UserId="399" Text="## *![Rebecca Chernoff](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/dabd223496ac04bc7ae811f815008a2b?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Rebecca Chernoff](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/23/rebecca-chernoff) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210153#3210153):* Final thoughts from the candidates?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210195#3210195):** Thanks for coming everyone! Get out there and vote. There are plenty of awesome candidates, and it was really hard to decide (well, my first vote was easy...). I hope you choose me to be one of the next moderators, but just get out there and get your voice heard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Thomas Owens](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8579087f6aad114044755cd7d64a36c9?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Thomas Owens](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/815/thomas-owens) [continued](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210248#3210248):** It was fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - **![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [added](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210267#3210267):** Fun and a challenge. To all questioners I hope I did well. To everyone else, I hope I answered your implicit concerns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210203#3210203):** There's a good group of candidates (both here, and not here). I don't think the community can go *wrong* with any of us. That said, vote SnOrfus! He's better!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![SnOrfus](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/9f841250f16164ae270f1ce286171165?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [SnOrfus](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12367/snorfus) [continued](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210237#3210237):** I'd like to thank everyone for coming out. Some good questions. I hope I didn't miss any.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210209#3210209):** I think Programmers is a great site with a garbage problem and an image problem. If elected as moderator I will do everything I can to help with those issues. Particularly tag clean-ups, new user management and pushing toward the launch and continuance of the blog. Communication is the core of what conceptual software is about. It should be the core of what we are too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Glenn Nelson](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/8a6291fecf6418e4f1c650d81e1df4bb?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Glenn Nelson](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/6679/glenn-nelson) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210224#3210224):** Programmers is a great site and a great addition to the SE network. There is a problem with inconsistency and difference of opinions, but we can work to fix it by being more active in the process either as a user or moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3210320#3210320):** Thanks for taking the time to organize this...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jonathan Khoo](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/41b424cd29d5662d6dda30a366302082?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jonathan Khoo](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/7453/jonathan-khoo) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213822#3213822):** I've done my best to answer most of the questions. There are a few in there that aren't deserving of time and energy. Sorry for not being available at the appointed time - blame the timezones!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Jae](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;amp;d=identicon&amp;amp;r=PG) [Jae](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/jae) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3215661#3215661):** Thanks for the opportunity to do this! I hope I can get your vote soon :-)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7711" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2989" RevisionGUID="53c6bfe7-abf1-453a-b269-97ab2814c756" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:23:25.243" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="If you think a question doesn't belong then you should do the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Edit it into shape. Anyone can edit. If you have less than 2,000 reputation it has to be approved, but if it's a good edit it will probably go through.&#xD;&#xA;2. Comment. Ask the OP to improve it themselves. This is for where there is something major wrong with the post and you might destroy all the goodness if you edit.&#xD;&#xA;3. Down-vote. If the post is really bad this is a good way to get people's attention. Both the OP and other community members. If others see a down-vote on the post it might spur them on to do step #1.&#xD;&#xA;4. Vote to close. Obviously only available if you have more than 3,000 reputation.&#xD;&#xA;5. Flag for moderator attention. The last resort. If the post is that bad that it needs to be removed straight away then flag it. If it spam flag it as spam, we see those flags as well. Users with 10,000 reputation can see flags as well and do some or all of the steps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People don't see every post and people don't always agree on what's a good post or not so it's not surprising that some posts &quot;slip through the net&quot; (so to speak).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see a question that has already been closed, but you think is OK then it's still worth doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Up vote. Give it some positive reinforcement.&#xD;&#xA;2. Edit it into shape. This will bump the question to the home page where more people will see it and if they also think it's on topic they can vote to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote to reopen. Again for those with more than 3,000 reputation.&#xD;&#xA;4. Post a question here on meta to get others to see the question. This also has the benefit of getting a discussion going on the edge cases. Moderators get notified of all questions posted on meta so we **will** look at it.&#xD;&#xA;5. Post a message in chat.&#xD;&#xA;6. Flag the post for moderator attention. We'll consider the flag and any supporting evidence. If you've done some or all of the above then that's a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions do get closed by mistake. If someone reads the question wrong and flags it then as it only take one moderator to close it might get closed incorrectly. That's why I usually wait for multiple flags and/or several existing close votes before adding mine." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7712" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2989" RevisionGUID="c77addf6-e720-46d7-ba3c-11243e81b997" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:30:28.850" UserId="47" Comment="spelling" Text="If you think a question doesn't belong then you should do the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Edit it into shape. Anyone can edit. If you have less than 2,000 reputation it has to be approved, but if it's a good edit it will probably go through.&#xD;&#xA;2. Comment. Ask the OP to improve it themselves. This is for where there is something major wrong with the post and you might destroy all the goodness if you edit.&#xD;&#xA;3. Down-vote. If the post is really bad this is a good way to get people's attention. Both the OP and other community members. If others see a down-vote on the post it might spur them on to do step #1.&#xD;&#xA;4. Vote to close. Obviously only available if you have more than 3,000 reputation.&#xD;&#xA;5. Flag for moderator attention. The last resort. If the post is that bad that it needs to be removed straight away then flag it. If it spam flag it as spam, we see those flags as well. Users with 10,000 reputation can see flags as well and do some or all of the steps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People don't see every post and people don't always agree on what's a good post or not so it's not surprising that some posts &quot;slip through the net&quot; (so to speak).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see a question that has already been closed, but you think is OK then it's still worth doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Up vote. Give it some positive reinforcement.&#xD;&#xA;2. Edit it into shape. This will bump the question to the home page where more people will see it and if they also think it's on topic they can vote to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote to reopen. Again for those with more than 3,000 reputation.&#xD;&#xA;4. Post a question here on meta to get others to see the question. This also has the benefit of getting a discussion going on the edge cases. Moderators get notified of all questions posted on meta so we **will** look at it.&#xD;&#xA;5. Post a message in chat.&#xD;&#xA;6. Flag the post for moderator attention. We'll consider the flag and any supporting evidence. If you've done some or all of the above then that's a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions do get closed by mistake. If someone reads the question wrong and flags it then as it only takes one moderator to close it might get closed incorrectly. That's why I usually wait for multiple flags and/or several existing close votes before adding mine." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7713" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2982" RevisionGUID="7f2f1edb-8d98-40b0-8c89-9642dfec4a77" CreationDate="2012-02-01T20:46:13.910" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/164811817250590722" />
  <row Id="7714" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3016" RevisionGUID="697ea8ff-ba72-4ce0-8169-eec898fa1dfb" CreationDate="2012-02-01T21:07:10.097" UserId="25936" Text="Andrew, sorry I missed that, questions were appearing very fast and yours is the only one that the whole message is not bold. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I wrote in my nomination stub:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If anything, my participation as a user has been highly visible. As a moderator I will take a step back, encourage users to take ownership of the community and intervene only when necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not up to the moderators to ensure that your voice is heard, or even shape the community. That's completely up to you and every other user, and the moderators should intervene only when absolutely necessary. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just yesterday we appointed our [Blog Overlord][1], Jarrod Nettles. Why? Well, if you take a look at [blog related Meta discussions][2], you'll notice that he has been pushing for the blog since early on. To be fair, Thomas Owens started the discussion back in June, and would be perfectly capable of taking point, as would quite a few other members. But that doesn't really matter, we needed a point man, Jarrod was around yesterday when we had the discussion, case closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The moderators, in this case Mark Trapp, only stepped in after there was clear community consensus for the blog, plus a comprehensive list of topics and a sufficient list of volunteers. He contacted the team, [reported back][3], and in a couple of hours we went from having no idea of whether the blog will kick off to [discussing logistics][4].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's pretty close to how things should work. You may consider this a lame example, because there wasn't really anyone opposing the blog, but I think my point still gets across: Participation is key. It's not the moderators' job to handheld anyone, as a user I have been extremely active on Meta, and I've explored ways to get [even more people to participate][5]. As a moderator, if elected, I will try to encourage people to do exactly what I've been doing so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't really handle dissenting opinions any differently than any other user, the voting system is perfectly suited for that. The only reason I would wear the moderator's hat on Meta would be when discussions are getting out of hand, rude or otherwise offensive. Other than that, I'd be yet another user, and it would be completely up to the community to decide if my opinions have merit or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2980/blog-volunteers-unite&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2979/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3214146#3214146&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/119817/how-can-we-get-people-to-participate-on-meta" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7715" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3017" RevisionGUID="d113a9cf-b6e4-47bf-a574-3d58d0f9de7b" CreationDate="2012-02-01T21:23:04.443" UserId="32353" Text="I didn't vote to close because the issue of code quality not being easily visible, and most people not being aware it's not easily visible, is pretty specific to software and would not apply to other professions.  Note that the answers, unlike most career type questions, are pretty much all about software development, including the two most up-voted, which talk about technical debt and the &quot;iceberg secret&quot;, which are specific to programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would consider it on-topic for either programmers or software development (whichever we are), but I'm quite sure everyone would not agree. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7716" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2990" RevisionGUID="f7d91439-cd6f-4803-8a74-6cf4256f1514" CreationDate="2012-02-01T21:34:56.007" UserId="399" Comment="edited title" Text="2012 Moderator Election - Town Hall Chat Digest" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7717" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2987" RevisionGUID="89b9692c-e48e-475d-bf84-fbcffc55ce6c" CreationDate="2012-02-01T21:44:00.563" UserId="39757" Comment="added 452 characters in body" Text="This question seems to suffer from all the same pitfalls as questions I see closed regularly:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132852/dealing-with-management-that-does-not-see-value-in-improvements-that-are-not-imm&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though I think the question and answers are interesting, this doesn't need to be programming specific - same can be true of other fields. Also, just what an &quot;improvement&quot; consists of is unclear - too general?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have seen many questions on meta that refer to the validity of questions and this example is a good counterpoint to those who claim there is no problem on this SE. I really want to know how this can remain open based on other questions I have seen closed, as I am to the point where I am not really sure what can be asked on this site (and I have read the FAQ and followed meta). I think that I am not alone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:&#xD;&#xA;Here is an example of a very similar question that I just pulled off the newest questions page that was closed as not specific to software development:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132878/how-to-sell-yourself-to-the-manager&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is perplexing to me. It seems the answer is that there is no rhyme or reason. You'll have a better shot of having your question accepted by the community if you include a reference to iOS." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7718" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3016" RevisionGUID="b8bb184f-7d1b-42f6-907a-79fcdcba2796" CreationDate="2012-02-02T00:34:01.960" UserId="25936" Comment="added 4 characters in body; added 69 characters in body" Text="Andrew, sorry I missed that, questions were appearing very fast and yours is the only one that the whole message is not bold. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I wrote in my nomination stub:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If anything, my participation as a user has been highly visible. As a moderator I will take a step back, encourage users to take ownership of the community and intervene only when necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not up to the moderators to ensure that your voice is heard, or even shape the community. That's completely up to you and every other user, and the moderators should intervene only when absolutely necessary. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just yesterday we appointed our [Blog Overlord][1], Jarrod Nettles. Why him? Well, if you take a look at [blog related Meta discussions][2], you'll notice that he has been pushing for the blog since early on. To be fair, Thomas Owens started the discussion back in June, and would be perfectly capable of taking point, as would quite a few other members. But that doesn't really matter, we needed a point man, Jarrod was around yesterday when we had the discussion, case closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The moderators, in this case Mark Trapp, only stepped in after there was clear community consensus for the blog, plus a comprehensive list of topics and a sufficient list of volunteers. He contacted the team, [reported back][3], and in a couple of hours we went from having no idea of whether the blog will kick off to [discussing logistics][4].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's pretty close to how things should work. You may consider this a lame example, because there wasn't really anyone opposing the blog, but I think my point still gets across: Participation is key and it's not the moderators' job to hand hold anyone. As a user I have been extremely active on Meta, and I've explored ways to get [even more people to participate][5]. As a moderator, if elected, I will try to encourage people to do exactly what I've been doing so far, but that can only happen if people actually care to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't really handle dissenting opinions any differently than any other user, the voting system is perfectly suited for that. The only reason I would wear the moderator's hat on Meta would be when discussions are getting out of hand, rude or otherwise offensive. Other than that, I'd be yet another user, and it would be completely up to the community to decide if my opinions have merit or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2980/blog-volunteers-unite&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2979/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3214146#3214146&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/119817/how-can-we-get-people-to-participate-on-meta" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7723" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="2990" RevisionGUID="3cf38aa5-a73e-4046-99b9-bf68deeba08c" CreationDate="2012-02-02T05:46:17.093" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/164947726402990080" />
  <row Id="7724" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3019" RevisionGUID="eca98b7b-fad2-4467-8dc9-4df22a31036f" CreationDate="2012-02-02T09:54:56.407" UserId="39810" Text="I recently asked [this question][1] which got very bad responses from the respectable moderators and moderators-to-be of this very good site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;my question was something like &quot;how to deal with a colleague when having repeating design confrontations&quot;, [eople said it's off-topic, and even not related to software or programming.&#xD;&#xA;you can notice that after Yannis' remarks I edited the question to be an entirely different one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I accepted it being closed, but I got to some questions, which I read kind of the same:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[&quot;how to deal with a boss that only seek to please users&quot;][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[&quot;I have a colleague who makes bad decisions - what to do?&quot;][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[&quot;How to make management do the decisions we think are right&quot;][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think all of them are good questions, why is mine so bad? I think they all deal with team communication. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope you will see this question not as a rant, but as a real and honest intent to improve my questions and make them better, and also choose the right type of questions in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132923/how-to-deal-with-a-teammate-who-rather-has-his-design-ideas-over-good-ideas&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132852/dealing-with-management-that-does-not-see-value-in-improvements-that-are-not-imm&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75866/how-to-deal-with-terrible-design-decisions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2082/guiding-management-to-the-correct-decision" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7725" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3019" RevisionGUID="eca98b7b-fad2-4467-8dc9-4df22a31036f" CreationDate="2012-02-02T09:54:56.407" UserId="39810" Text="Understanding differences between a good question and a bad question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7726" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3019" RevisionGUID="eca98b7b-fad2-4467-8dc9-4df22a31036f" CreationDate="2012-02-02T09:54:56.407" UserId="39810" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7727" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3020" RevisionGUID="a9147ef4-0606-47c6-a6f9-f2cdfae75a58" CreationDate="2012-02-02T09:58:58.610" UserId="47" Text="While they might be good questions as they deal with team communications they are off topic for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you read the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) you'll see this diagram:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question falls squarely in the &quot;All Careers&quot; circle (well actually the &quot;All Careers that involve working with a team&quot; circle, but that's nit-picking).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While there might be a unique software development aspect to this you have to make sure you bring it out in your question so that it moves into the blue &quot;All Programmers&quot; circle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/V97HN.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7728" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2982" RevisionGUID="38098f29-aeff-4e3a-8ca7-27f668ee1a9b" CreationDate="2012-02-02T10:03:52.357" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Replace overbolding with proper blockquote" Text="I [asked the following][1] in the town hall chat for the moderator election, but there were no responses.  I guess it is possible that the candidates, [like this one][2], merely felt that the question was not &quot;deserving of time and energy.&quot;  But, maybe my question (which did get starred, like other questions) was merely overlooked among all the others, so I'll ask again here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Some people find it important to ensure that all people who participate in a community process feel they are heard and considered, even when the final decision in a matter does not go their way. [Rules of Parliamentary Procedure][3], for instance, are instituted in part for this reason (though not necessarily here). How will you attempt to ensure that people feel they are being heard and considered when attempting to shape the community through, for example, meta?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3209584#3209584&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3213822#3213822&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_procedure" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7729" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3020" RevisionGUID="5339f879-936b-4be7-a820-603cff4ee5b3" CreationDate="2012-02-02T10:06:43.233" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="While they might be good questions unless they deal with team communications as it specifically and uniquely affects software development and developers they are off topic for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you read the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) you'll see this diagram:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question falls squarely in the &quot;All Careers&quot; circle (well actually the &quot;All Careers that involve working with a team&quot; circle, but that's nit-picking).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While there might be a unique software development aspect to this you have to make sure you bring it out in your question so that it moves into the blue &quot;All Programmers&quot; circle. If you can do this then there's a good chance your question will get reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other questions you have linked to may have done this or elicited answers that do this. However, it's a *very* fine line and one we are clearly not getting right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now whether the solution is to change the FAQ or not I don't know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/V97HN.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7730" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3019" RevisionGUID="b04d06b3-0d2d-4936-a3ed-eb14a1fb6366" CreationDate="2012-02-02T10:21:24.090" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="I recently asked [this question][1] which got very bad responses from the respectable moderators and moderators-to-be of this very good site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was something like &quot;how to deal with a colleague when having repeating design confrontations&quot;, people said it's off-topic, and even not related to software or programming.  &#xD;&#xA;You can notice that after Yannis' remarks I edited the question to be an entirely different one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I accepted it being closed, but I got to some questions, which I read kind of the same:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[&quot;how to deal with a boss that only seek to please users&quot;][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[&quot;I have a colleague who makes bad decisions - what to do?&quot;][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[&quot;How to make management do the decisions we think are right&quot;][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think all of them are good questions, why is mine so bad? I think they all deal with team communication. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope you will see this question not as a rant, but as a real and honest intent to improve my questions and make them better, and also choose the right type of questions in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132923/how-to-deal-with-a-teammate-who-rather-has-his-design-ideas-over-good-ideas&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132852/dealing-with-management-that-does-not-see-value-in-improvements-that-are-not-imm&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75866/how-to-deal-with-terrible-design-decisions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2082/guiding-management-to-the-correct-decision" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7737" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3023" RevisionGUID="7cbea334-a15c-418b-9dc5-6af6e22ef49c" CreationDate="2012-02-02T13:16:08.890" UserId="4" Text="* [tag:development-process] (223x)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:development-methodologies] (47x)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:methodology] (47x)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:development-methodology] (1x)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are also questions tagged [tag:process] (3x) and [tag:processes] (5x). All 3 questions tagged process are about development methodologies. 4 of the 5 questions tagged processes are about development methodologies and software engineering process, while the fifth is about emulating UNIX processes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ uses the term &quot;development methodologies&quot; to describe what's on-topic, merging all into the development-methodologies tag might be appropriate. However, development-process is much more widely used. Although the formal name is &quot;software engineering process&quot;, I'd shy away from that name because the descriptor &quot;software engineering&quot; is redundant here and &quot;process&quot; alone is too vague (development processes versus business processes versus system processes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, I think that this tag might need manual clean up as part of the Structured Tag Clean Up effort to capture the breadth of software engineering process: process improvement, software development life cycles, process assessment, process quality. It would be easier to see if this was necessary and then implement it if we had everything in one tag, though, rather than across 5 or 6.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Proposal:** Automatically merge development-methodologies, methodology, development-methodology, and process into development-process. Manually retag the 4 development methodology questions in processes into development-methodologies. Evaluate the quality of the development-methodologies tag as part of Structured Tag Clean Up at a later date." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7738" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3023" RevisionGUID="7cbea334-a15c-418b-9dc5-6af6e22ef49c" CreationDate="2012-02-02T13:16:08.890" UserId="4" Text="Tag Merge: development-process, development-methodologies, methodology, development-methodology" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7739" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3023" RevisionGUID="7cbea334-a15c-418b-9dc5-6af6e22ef49c" CreationDate="2012-02-02T13:16:08.890" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|tags|retag-request|clean-up|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7740" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3023" RevisionGUID="bb88e415-8cdb-43dc-8c73-272dd48aabbe" CreationDate="2012-02-02T13:24:45.673" UserId="4" Comment="added 81 characters in body" Text="* [tag:development-process] (223x)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:development-methodologies] (47x)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:methodology] (47x)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:development-methodology] (1x)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are also questions tagged [tag:process] (3x) and [tag:processes] (5x). All 3 questions tagged process are about development methodologies. 4 of the 5 questions tagged processes are about development methodologies and software engineering process, while the fifth is about emulating UNIX processes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ uses the term &quot;development methodologies&quot; to describe what's on-topic, merging all into the development-methodologies tag might be appropriate. However, development-process is much more widely used. Although the formal name is &quot;software engineering process&quot;, I'd shy away from that name because the descriptor &quot;software engineering&quot; is redundant here and &quot;process&quot; alone is too vague (development processes versus business processes versus system processes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, I think that this tag might need manual clean up as part of the Structured Tag Clean Up effort to capture the breadth of software engineering process: process improvement, software development life cycles, process assessment, process quality. It would be easier to see if this was necessary and then implement it if we had everything in one tag, though, rather than across 5 or 6.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Proposal:** Automatically merge development-methodologies, methodology, development-methodology, and process into development-process. Synonymoize development-methodologies, methodology, and development-methodology. Manually retag the 4 development methodology questions in processes into development-methodologies. Evaluate the quality of the development-methodologies tag as part of Structured Tag Clean Up at a later date." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7741" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3023" RevisionGUID="cfd487eb-c433-4099-b750-43393ab473f3" CreationDate="2012-02-02T13:32:35.630" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo correction" Text="* [tag:development-process] (223x)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:development-methodologies] (47x)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:methodology] (47x)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:development-methodology] (1x)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are also questions tagged [tag:process] (3x) and [tag:processes] (5x). All 3 questions tagged process are about development methodologies. 4 of the 5 questions tagged processes are about development methodologies and software engineering process, while the fifth is about emulating UNIX processes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ uses the term &quot;development methodologies&quot; to describe what's on-topic, merging all into the development-methodologies tag might be appropriate. However, development-process is much more widely used. Although the formal name is &quot;software engineering process&quot;, I'd shy away from that name because the descriptor &quot;software engineering&quot; is redundant here and &quot;process&quot; alone is too vague (development processes versus business processes versus system processes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, I think that this tag might need manual clean up as part of the Structured Tag Clean Up effort to capture the breadth of software engineering process: process improvement, software development life cycles, process assessment, process quality. It would be easier to see if this was necessary and then implement it if we had everything in one tag, though, rather than across 5 or 6.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Proposal:** Automatically merge development-methodologies, methodology, development-methodology, and process into development-process. Synonymize development-methodologies, methodology, and development-methodology. Manually retag the 4 development methodology questions in processes into development-methodologies. Evaluate the quality of the development-methodologies tag as part of Structured Tag Clean Up at a later date." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7743" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3024" RevisionGUID="d47e4821-1ab5-4f4c-a2b4-2a632a264be9" CreationDate="2012-02-02T13:41:50.633" UserId="41381" Text="Some questions get to survive because they hit the perfect storm and got 10+ up votes almost instantly while avoiding mod attention to get closed pre-5 votes. Then they manage to get a good answer, so they are allowed to stay even though they don't meet the &quot;Uniquely related&quot; part." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7745" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3019" RevisionGUID="a8942bb9-7983-4bff-b5d0-dd540ba5f82d" CreationDate="2012-02-02T14:46:17.650" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/165083624146870272" />
  <row Id="7748" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3025" RevisionGUID="249796e0-7eb4-497c-842a-755bb924f35b" CreationDate="2012-02-02T15:46:59.993" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I don't understand what you want us to do here: close this question? Reopen all questions that might possibly look like this one because *one question* stayed open?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People, not automatons, run this site. Regular people, such as yourself, determine—based on their understanding of the scope of the site—what is and isn't on-topic. There is never going to be 100% consistency as long as human error exists, and expecting any community—much less any site on Stack Exchange where human moderation is the core of how a site works—to always handle everything exactly the same way is untenable and unreasonable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally, *some* community action has to happen on a question for it to get closed: close votes, flags for moderator review, or the attraction a ton of down-votes. Nearly every question that gets closed has this. This question—for whatever reason—has received no flags, no close votes (even after this post was created), and very little down-voting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's good to bring up a problematic question here on meta: it helps bring exposure to the question and lets people hash out whether it's on-topic or not. But people can and will disagree with your assessment of a situation, and using *one* question as the basis argument that the site is inscrutable doesn't make any sense." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7749" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3025" RevisionGUID="5bcbe8c1-1dfd-4444-a2a1-dfc8eba82924" CreationDate="2012-02-02T15:52:11.343" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 201 characters in body" Text="I don't understand what you want us to do here: close this question? Reopen all questions that might possibly look like this one because *one question* stayed open?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People, not automatons, run this site. Regular people, such as yourself, determine—based on their understanding of the scope of the site—what is and isn't on-topic. There is never going to be 100% consistency as long as human error exists, and expecting any community—much less any site on Stack Exchange where human moderation is the core of how a site works—to always handle everything exactly the same way is untenable and unreasonable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally, *some* community action has to happen on a question for it to get closed: close votes, flags for moderator review, or the attraction a ton of down-votes. Nearly every question that gets closed has this. This question—for whatever reason—has received no flags, no close votes (even after this post was created), and very little down-voting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's good to bring up a problematic question here on meta: it helps bring exposure to the question and lets people hash out whether it's on-topic or not. But people can and will disagree with your assessment of a situation, and using *one* question as the basis for an argument that the site is inscrutable doesn't make any sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, I think if there's a way we can make the open question better and more on-topic, let's do it. If there's a way we can get the closed question back on-topic and reopened, let's do that too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7750" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3023" RevisionGUID="7d48c4ed-1a75-4ada-a94b-b3fbb89a808c" CreationDate="2012-02-02T16:03:41.370" UserId="4" Comment="added 25 characters in body" Text="* [tag:development-process] (223x)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:development-methodologies] (47x)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:methodology] (47x)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:development-methodology] (1x)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are also questions tagged [tag:process] (3x) and [tag:processes] (5x). All 3 questions tagged process are about development methodologies. 4 of the 5 questions tagged processes are about development methodologies and software engineering process, while the fifth is about emulating UNIX processes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ uses the term &quot;development methodologies&quot; to describe what's on-topic, merging all into the development-methodologies tag might be appropriate. However, development-process is much more widely used. Although the formal name is &quot;software engineering process&quot;, I'd shy away from that name because the descriptor &quot;software engineering&quot; is redundant here and &quot;process&quot; alone is too vague (development processes versus business processes versus system processes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, I think that this tag might need manual clean up as part of the Structured Tag Clean Up effort to capture the breadth of software engineering process: process improvement, software development life cycles, process assessment, process quality. It would be easier to see if this was necessary and then implement it if we had everything in one tag, though, rather than across 5 or 6.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Proposal:** Automatically merge development-methodologies, methodology, development-methodology, and process into development-process. Synonymize development-methodologies, methodology, and development-methodology with development-process. Manually retag the 4 development methodology questions in processes into development-methodologies. Evaluate the quality of the development-methodologies tag as part of Structured Tag Clean Up at a later date." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7751" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3026" RevisionGUID="b3720c7b-b6ed-4b35-a024-42896961468c" CreationDate="2012-02-02T16:55:42.080" UserId="31260" Text="The [acid test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_test_%28gold%29#Figurative_meanings) I use is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. remove / replace all the phrases feeling like _for-programmers_, _as-a-developer_&#xD;&#xA;1. review the remainder&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's see how it works using your examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* your question. **Fails** the test - nothing programming-related in the remainder:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We have a situation in our team in which one member prefers his own ideas no matter what problems it has.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; When confronted with issues about a specific work he made - this teammate can get very protective and does not see the problems.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; In a result, this is a serious work issue for our team, because in the end some of the teammate's work will fall through to the end-result, and it will damage our work result.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should we confront the teammate about his overall behavior?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should we go the boss and tell him we can't deal with it and it's hurting our work results?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;boss that only seek to please users&quot;. **Passes** - no amount of my acid can wipe out:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Automatic Reference Counting for iOS programs. This is a major improvement over the manual retain/release calls one previously had to use. The code is easier to write and easier to maintain. The changeover itself is likely to produce some crashes. But once those are worked out, the number of random weird crashes is likely to go down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;colleague who makes bad decisions&quot;. **Passes** - because of:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; M:M relationships are being stored in the database as a comma-delimited string rather than using a conjunction table to hold the relationships&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;decisions we think are right&quot;. **Fails** - nothing programming-related, nothing at all  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Saved only by [clearly programming-related answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2096/31260). And by the fact that it isn't damaged (yet?) by another dozen of _not so good_ answers that somehow just tend to stick to off-topic questions like that.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; prototyped/implemented things my way ahead of time (on my own time) so that when a decision meeting comes, we could say: &quot;Well, this already written code...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not that passing the test necessarily guarantees the question is good. Rather, failing it indicates that question is likely bad.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7752" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3023" RevisionGUID="c529cf53-4989-4a04-a29a-90e16ce43bc9" CreationDate="2012-02-02T17:02:16.337" UserId="4" Comment="added 191 characters in body" Text="* [tag:development-process] (223x)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:development-methodologies] (47x)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:methodology] (47x)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:development-methodology] (1x)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;strike&gt;There are also questions tagged [tag:process] (3x) and [tag:processes] (5x). All 3 questions tagged process are about development methodologies. 4 of the 5 questions tagged processes are about development methodologies and software engineering process, while the fifth is about emulating UNIX processes.&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yannis (and others) have cleaned up the `process` and `processes` tags so there are no more questions with these tags applied to them. This leaves four tags to deal with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ uses the term &quot;development methodologies&quot; to describe what's on-topic, merging all into the development-methodologies tag might be appropriate. However, development-process is much more widely used. Although the formal name is &quot;software engineering process&quot;, I'd shy away from that name because the descriptor &quot;software engineering&quot; is redundant here and &quot;process&quot; alone is too vague (development processes versus business processes versus system processes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, I think that this tag might need manual clean up as part of the Structured Tag Clean Up effort to capture the breadth of software engineering process: process improvement, software development life cycles, process assessment, process quality. It would be easier to see if this was necessary and then implement it if we had everything in one tag, though, rather than across 5 or 6.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Proposal:** Automatically merge development-methodologies, methodology, development-methodology, and process into development-process. Synonymize development-methodologies, methodology, and development-methodology with development-process. Manually retag the 4 development methodology questions in processes into development-methodologies. Evaluate the quality of the development-methodologies tag as part of Structured Tag Clean Up at a later date." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7753" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3027" RevisionGUID="2b650f2d-4b6a-46a9-949b-697a9679fc5b" CreationDate="2012-02-02T17:17:54.467" UserId="25936" Text="Went ahead and:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Retagged the [lone unix process question][1] to [tag:system-processes] &#xD;&#xA;- Retagged the [tag:process] questions to [tag:development-process]&#xD;&#xA;- Retagged the [tag:processes] questions to [tag:development-process]&#xD;&#xA;- Retagged the [lone development-methodology question][2] to [tag:development-methodologies]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And removed some deprecated tags, like [tag:software-engineering] in the way. Now we can concentrate on the major tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:development-process]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:development-methodologies]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:methodology]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First things first, [tag:methodology] should be merged into [tag:development-methodologies], obviously. But all three tags are generic catch-all tags and I don't see any point in keeping them around. From our discussion in comments, I get that you want them merged so it will be easier to clean up later, and apply more relevant and specific tags. That's fine by me, and it will help the clean up process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Still, I don't think everyone will agree with your definitions of process and methodology. When I see a question tagged as methodology (or variants of) I expect it to be about one of the common structured methodologies, not about implementation, which is part of the software development process. Having two tags instead of one, won't really hurt the clean up effort, will it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/93801/are-concurrency-abstractions-emulating-unix-processes&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/109378/should-we-adopt-an-agile-methodology-when-rewriting-an-existing-application-from" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7754" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3026" RevisionGUID="08e49107-0a01-45bf-8b19-861f519226da" CreationDate="2012-02-02T17:26:35.930" UserId="31260" Comment="minor polishing" Text="The [acid test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_test_%28gold%29#Figurative_meanings) I use is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. remove / replace all the phrases feeling like _for-programmers_, _as-a-developer_&#xD;&#xA;1. review the remainder&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's see how it works using your examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* your question. **Fails** the test - nothing programming-related in the remainder:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We have a situation in our team in which one member prefers his own ideas no matter what problems it has.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; When confronted with issues about a specific work he made - this teammate can get very protective and does not see the problems.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; In a result, this is a serious work issue for our team, because in the end some of the teammate's work will fall through to the end-result, and it will damage our work result.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should we confront the teammate about his overall behavior?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should we go the boss and tell him we can't deal with it and it's hurting our work results?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;boss that only seek to please users&quot;. **Passes** - no amount of _my acid_ can wipe out:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Automatic Reference Counting for iOS programs. This is a major improvement over the manual retain/release calls one previously had to use. The code is easier to write and easier to maintain. The changeover itself is likely to produce some crashes. But once those are worked out, the number of random weird crashes is likely to go down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;colleague who makes bad decisions&quot;. **Passes** - because of:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; M:M relationships are being stored in the database as a comma-delimited string rather than using a conjunction table to hold the relationships&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;decisions we think are right&quot;. **Fails** - nothing programming-related, nothing at all  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Saved only by [clearly programming-related answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2096/31260). And by the fact that it isn't damaged (yet?) by another dozen of _not so good_ answers that somehow just tend to stick to off-topic questions like that.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; prototyped/implemented things my way ahead of time (on my own time) so that when a decision meeting comes, we could say: &quot;Well, this already written code...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not that passing the test necessarily guarantees the question is good. Rather, failing it indicates that question is likely bad.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7755" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3027" RevisionGUID="482433e1-fc84-4522-8fea-5155f90338ac" CreationDate="2012-02-02T17:32:24.183" UserId="25936" Comment="added 75 characters in body" Text="Went ahead and:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Retagged the [lone unix process question][1] to [tag:system-processes] &#xD;&#xA;- Retagged the [tag:process] questions to [tag:development-process]&#xD;&#xA;- Retagged the [tag:processes] questions to [tag:development-process]&#xD;&#xA;- Retagged the [lone development-methodology question][2] to [tag:development-methodologies]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And removed some deprecated tags, like [tag:software-engineering] in the way. Now we can concentrate on the major tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:development-process]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:development-methodologies]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:methodology]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First things first, [tag:methodology] should be merged into [tag:development-methodologies], obviously. But all three tags are generic catch-all tags and I don't see any point in keeping them around. From our discussion in comments, I get that you want them merged so it will be easier to clean up later, and apply more relevant and specific tags. That's fine by me, and it will help the clean up process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Still, I don't think everyone will agree with your definitions of process and methodology. When I see a question tagged as methodology (or variants of) I expect it to be about one of the common structured methodologies, not about implementation, which is part of the software development process. Having two tags instead of one, won't really hurt the clean up effort, will it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And we should probably blacklist [tag:process] &amp; [tag:processes]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/93801/are-concurrency-abstractions-emulating-unix-processes&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/109378/should-we-adopt-an-agile-methodology-when-rewriting-an-existing-application-from" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7756" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3023" RevisionGUID="d3730d08-43c8-42e3-8764-47ca0f02b464" CreationDate="2012-02-02T17:38:53.303" UserId="4" Comment="added 44 characters in body" Text="* [tag:development-process] (223x)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:development-methodologies] (47x)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:methodology] (47x)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;strike&gt;[tag:development-methodology] (1x)&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;strike&gt;There are also questions tagged [tag:process] (3x) and [tag:processes] (5x). All 3 questions tagged process are about development methodologies. 4 of the 5 questions tagged processes are about development methodologies and software engineering process, while the fifth is about emulating UNIX processes.&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yannis (and others) have cleaned up the `development-methodology`, `process` and `processes` tags so there are no more questions with these tags applied to them. This leaves four tags to deal with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ uses the term &quot;development methodologies&quot; to describe what's on-topic, merging all into the development-methodologies tag might be appropriate. However, development-process is much more widely used. Although the formal name is &quot;software engineering process&quot;, I'd shy away from that name because the descriptor &quot;software engineering&quot; is redundant here and &quot;process&quot; alone is too vague (development processes versus business processes versus system processes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, I think that this tag might need manual clean up as part of the Structured Tag Clean Up effort to capture the breadth of software engineering process: process improvement, software development life cycles, process assessment, process quality. It would be easier to see if this was necessary and then implement it if we had everything in one tag, though, rather than across 5 or 6.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Proposal:** Automatically merge development-methodologies, methodology, development-methodology, and process into development-process. Synonymize development-methodologies, methodology, and development-methodology with development-process. Manually retag the 4 development methodology questions in processes into development-methodologies. Evaluate the quality of the development-methodologies tag as part of Structured Tag Clean Up at a later date." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7757" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3028" RevisionGUID="c480610b-1240-4cff-8ffb-af470a2f7c8f" CreationDate="2012-02-02T18:16:38.280" UserId="30160" Text="My question was close because it was off topic. Here it is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132878/how-to-sell-yourself-to-the-manager&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was asked in the context as developer. I have quoted example of development and I have reference software in my question. But it was closed. I was asked to check the faq. I did and I realized, ok it was off-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then looked at other question, some of them are these&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/133014/looking-for-suggestions-on-how-to-better-handle-developers-questions-from-out-o&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does this question fit the criteria. Isn't it work related issue?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132977/how-to-convince-company-to-start-documenting-for-legacy-software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this algorithm related question as well or it is plainly related to work atmosphere?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are not just two! There are a ton of question like that. My question is are programmers [faq][1] followed when they don't close such question as off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Here are some more examples][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://hammadk.com/programmers-stackoverflow-off-topic-moderation/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7758" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3028" RevisionGUID="c480610b-1240-4cff-8ffb-af470a2f7c8f" CreationDate="2012-02-02T18:16:38.280" UserId="30160" Text="Do moderators discretely neglect the FAQ when they close certain question and not others?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7759" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3028" RevisionGUID="c480610b-1240-4cff-8ffb-af470a2f7c8f" CreationDate="2012-02-02T18:16:38.280" UserId="30160" Text="|discussion|moderation|moderators|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7760" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3029" RevisionGUID="032d3cf1-04f0-4745-a90c-5cea0a282e1d" CreationDate="2012-02-02T18:24:07.067" UserId="25936" Text="Your question was closed by five regular users, so I fail to see how the moderators have anything to do with that. ChrisF commented:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this a problem that's unique to software developers? Doesn't the situation also apply to other professions? Check the FAQ for more information on our target audience and where your question should be aimed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To which you replied:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It is unique to software development, and I am asking only in that context. But it could be applied to other technical fields as well such as Design Engineer etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I ask, if the question applies to other technical fields, how is it unique to software development?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the other questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/133014/looking-for-suggestions-on-how-to-better-handle-developers-questions-from-out-o &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  A downvote and two close votes already. Probably will be closed soon, unless of course it's revised to fit the scope of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132977/how-to-convince-company-to-start-documenting-for-legacy-software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The question may be a bit borderline, but the way I read it it's on topic. It asks for an evaluation of common arguments on code documentation, maybe in a bit rantish tone, but still the topics discussed are clearly within the scope of the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7761" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3029" RevisionGUID="b88ad1a6-7281-474e-b10b-5cb0e0bb57aa" CreationDate="2012-02-02T18:33:07.587" UserId="25936" Comment="added 332 characters in body" Text="Your question was closed by five regular users, so I fail to see how the moderators have anything to do with that. ChrisF commented:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this a problem that's unique to software developers? Doesn't the situation also apply to other professions? Check the FAQ for more information on our target audience and where your question should be aimed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To which you replied:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It is unique to software development, and I am asking only in that context. But it could be applied to other technical fields as well such as Design Engineer etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I ask, if the question applies to other technical fields, how is it unique to software development?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the other questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/133014/looking-for-suggestions-on-how-to-better-handle-developers-questions-from-out-o &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;strike&gt;A downvote and two close votes already&lt;/strike&gt;. Couple of downvotes and three close votes. Probably will be closed soon, unless of course it's revised to fit the scope of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132977/how-to-convince-company-to-start-documenting-for-legacy-software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The question may be a bit borderline, but the way I read it it's on topic. It asks for an evaluation of common arguments on code documentation, maybe in a bit rantish tone, but still the topics discussed are clearly within the scope of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several off topic open questions, and quite a few clean up efforts summarized in a recent Meta question: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups. We would appreciate your help in any of these efforts, you should flag every question you think is off topic.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7762" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3028" RevisionGUID="ae3a118c-4124-49aa-b772-bfdea124f021" CreationDate="2012-02-02T19:47:34.403" UserId="30160" Comment="added 174 characters in body" Text="My question was close because it was off topic. Here it is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132878/how-to-sell-yourself-to-the-manager&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was asked in the context as developer. I have quoted example of development and I have reference software in my question. But it was closed. I was asked to check the faq. I did and I realized, ok it was off-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then looked at other question, some of them are these&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/133014/looking-for-suggestions-on-how-to-better-handle-developers-questions-from-out-o&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does this question fit the criteria. Isn't it work related issue?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132977/how-to-convince-company-to-start-documenting-for-legacy-software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this algorithm related question as well or it is plainly related to work atmosphere?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are not just two! There are a ton of question like that. My question is are programmers [faq][1] followed when they don't close such question as off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Here are some more examples][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;Let me add this steller question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1386/how-do-you-share-your-craft-with-non-programmers#comment249050_1386 (23 upvotes)&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://hammadk.com/programmers-stackoverflow-off-topic-moderation/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7763" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3030" RevisionGUID="26f69d70-7a72-4b29-8410-8ed7dcaf7317" CreationDate="2012-02-02T20:50:32.147" UserId="1130" Text="Can we stop closing good questions simply because they *could* be applied to more than just programmers, if the answer is something that would be unique to developers, or if the question itself is valuable to programmers in general?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, [this question about obtaining feedback from an external developer][1] got closed because the question *could* be asked about any profession, however I feel the answer for a contract developer is very different than the answer for a contract builder.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As another example, [this question about handling junior programmers][2] could apply to more than one profession, however I feel it is valuable to programmers in particular because it is fairly common practice to have a senior programmer work with 1..* junior programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**These are just examples. I am not trying to get these questions re-opened** (although I have voted to re-open both of them).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I love [the image in our FAQ][3] since it does sum up whats on-topic and what isn't pretty well, however some questions that could fall in the All Careers circle are quite good questions for programmers, or should be answered differently by a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many users follow the lead set by our moderators and more active users, so I want to ask you guys to please consider the possible value of a question to programmers and software developers, and if there are answers that would be specific to programmers only, before voting to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/132657/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/130645/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7764" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3030" RevisionGUID="26f69d70-7a72-4b29-8410-8ed7dcaf7317" CreationDate="2012-02-02T20:50:32.147" UserId="1130" Text="Questions that might fall in the &quot;All Careers&quot; circle of FAQ" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7765" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3030" RevisionGUID="26f69d70-7a72-4b29-8410-8ed7dcaf7317" CreationDate="2012-02-02T20:50:32.147" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7766" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3031" RevisionGUID="d6fbb6ab-0f53-475a-a8a9-8758f3ee78ac" CreationDate="2012-02-02T21:58:42.187" UserId="2654" Text="### Go commit to [The Workplace](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/the-workplace?referrer=3W9WUOYdtaLSFYIFeuk_RQ2)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's been lagging, and while we have some excellent referrers it needs to get pushed through and into beta. After that we can see how well it works and if it is suitable bucketing for these kinds of general questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7767" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3032" RevisionGUID="c5c48f52-2ebc-4b4a-9611-2bc154ed51e2" CreationDate="2012-02-02T21:59:26.333" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This is a little bit of a tautological request: there are always going to be things that programmers deal with that are similar or overlap with other professions. The fact that it might overlap with another profession is not grounds for closure, and the questions you listed weren't closed for that reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But this [specific issue has come up before](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1697/is-a-question-always-off-topic-when-it-applies-to-other-professions-too), and as [Jeff mentions there](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1716/8), you **must** make a case that your question **requires** the unique perspective of programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question that fails to do that is not specific enough, and it's not on-topic here. The vast, vast majority of the time people don't to do that: they assume that—by virtue of asking *as a programmer*—it's on-topic and the answers will be uniquely programmer-centric.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But we're not special flowers: the majority of issues a programmer will face in his or her lifetime—or even in his or her career—are not programmer-specific. Erring on the side of &quot;well there *could* be a programmer-specific answer&quot; is the road to ruin, and re-scopes the site from &quot;a site for programmers&quot; to a &quot;a site for general advice that happens to have programmers on it&quot;. That's not [expertise](http://stackexchange.com/about), that's [Yahoo! Answers with less teens](http://quora.com). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't need a scope change: we need more heroic editors. What I'd love to see is people editing questions that attract close votes and flags to clearly explain what specific unique programmer expertise is being asked for. Why can't it be answered by anyone else? I don't think that's asking for the moon, and it'd do a whole lot to improve the quality of the site without having to close as often." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7768" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3033" RevisionGUID="2fea8267-bb67-49c4-ae86-803cd3490d29" CreationDate="2012-02-02T22:43:45.987" UserId="3965" Text="I like the idea of having a more clear test that can be applied, but I don't think &quot;answers might be different for programmers&quot; is the right test.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What about a test of &quot;Could this question be answered effectively by non-programmers?&quot;  Put another way, &quot;If no programmers answered questions on The Workplace, would you still get a good answer if it were migrated there?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your first example would meet that test.  An accountant isn't going to know what exit interview questions to ask about someone's development process, other than &quot;what do you think about our development process,&quot; which I'm pretty sure they've already thought of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your second example wouldn't meet that test.  That could be answered by anyone supervising people doing sub-par work against their suggestion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7769" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2980" RevisionGUID="dc67c431-87f7-48a7-b247-4b8868fe0404" CreationDate="2012-02-02T23:58:13.660" UserId="25936" Comment="added 89 characters in body" Text="The blog [is moving forward][1]. **The wheels are moving** higher up to get us a Wordpress instance created for a dedicated blog here are Programmers.StackExchange. I'm excited about the prospects and what this can do for our community at large.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of things to note.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. There is now a [chat room][2] for discussions regarding the P.SE blog. There has already been a healthy discussion and if you're interested I would suggest that you peruse the transcripts.&#xD;&#xA;2. I have [been anointed][3] the community &quot;point of contact&quot; for the blog. All this means is that I'll be putting in some dedicated hours to organizing and communicating with people about getting the blog published.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some time ago, I posted [a call for volunteers][4] for the blog - and we received a great response from potential writers and proofreaders. However, it has been some time since those &quot;commitments&quot; were made and situations may have changed. If you're still interested - or have become interested - please refer to that [original post][5] and post a comment to the affirmative if you are still willing to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here's where we're at**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was recommended that we find time for everyone who is interested to sit down and have a discussion about the direction of the blog. We've already had several discussions about this here on Meta but I agree that it probably is a good idea to schedule a chat room session where we can have a meeting and intimately discuss the details of this new project - i.e. definite plans for articles (aka blog posts), proofreading, and publication.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose that we hold this meeting **[Friday, February 3rd at 4 PM GMT][6]** (that's 11 AM for United States East Coast) in the new Programmers Blog chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are intending to be a participant in this project, please give me feedback on whether this date and time works for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2976/lets-get-the-blog-kicked-off/2979#2979&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3214146#3214146&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/2359/programmers-blog?tab=schedule" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7770" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3023" RevisionGUID="43fd4180-4c1d-493b-af66-e59f490bead4" CreationDate="2012-02-03T08:46:24.670" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/165355445018574848" />
  <row Id="7771" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3030" RevisionGUID="10516e69-0e8c-4513-89c0-c537191cc7c3" CreationDate="2012-02-03T12:23:43.923" UserId="1130" Comment="Tried to clarify title so this is about voting patterns, not about closed questions" Text="Voting on questions that might fall in the &quot;All Careers&quot; circle of FAQ" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7772" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="3034" RevisionGUID="771e43b9-b8ca-4df5-ac5a-e69d915fe445" CreationDate="2012-02-03T14:01:17.143" UserId="-1" Comment="from https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/121190/why-are-book-related-questions-being-edited-with-the-text-is-there-a-canonical" Text="" />
  <row Id="7773" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3034" RevisionGUID="d00be7df-8b80-43c5-9eaa-9e89465860c7" CreationDate="2012-02-03T13:58:36.430" UserId="6300" UserDisplayName="Gary Willoughby" Text="I've noticed that some people ([Matthieu][1]), even mods such ([Mark Trapp][2]) keep adding the text 'Is there a canonical book on..' on many book related questions. Sometimes fundamentally changing the question that was originally asked. Sometimes the person asking the question justs want a list of resources to follow in reading, not one particular volume that he *must* read and which is considered canonical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also this is highly subjective, one person's answer to what is canonical may differ wildly to another's.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any good reason for these edits?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we are searching for a canonical text on any given subject shouldn't there just be one community wiki question with all others closed as exact duplicates? I can't understand why these words keep being added to these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reference:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/116328/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/103133/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/74308/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/69203/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/94071/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/37787/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/36356/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/99337/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/83787/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/27410/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/102916/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/12172/revisions    &#xD;&#xA;and on and on...    &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=canonical  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/7454/matthieu&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8/mark-trapp&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/116328/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7774" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3034" RevisionGUID="d00be7df-8b80-43c5-9eaa-9e89465860c7" CreationDate="2012-02-03T13:58:36.430" UserId="6300" UserDisplayName="Gary Willoughby" Text="Why are book related questions being edited with the text 'Is there a canonical book...' etc" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7775" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3034" RevisionGUID="d00be7df-8b80-43c5-9eaa-9e89465860c7" CreationDate="2012-02-03T13:58:36.430" UserId="6300" UserDisplayName="Gary Willoughby" Text="|discussion|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7776" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3034" RevisionGUID="ff420926-fd70-45e0-8f7b-ae2bc9ab35e8" CreationDate="2012-02-03T14:01:48.260" UserId="257" Comment="reformatted the list" Text="I've noticed that some people ([Matthieu][1]), even mods such ([Mark Trapp][2]) keep adding the text 'Is there a canonical book on..' on many book related questions. Sometimes fundamentally changing the question that was originally asked. Sometimes the person asking the question justs want a list of resources to follow in reading, not one particular volume that he *must* read and which is considered canonical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also this is highly subjective, one person's answer to what is canonical may differ wildly to another's.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any good reason for these edits?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we are searching for a canonical text on any given subject shouldn't there just be one community wiki question with all others closed as exact duplicates? I can't understand why these words keep being added to these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reference:  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/116328/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/103133/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/74308/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/69203/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/94071/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/37787/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/36356/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/99337/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/83787/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/27410/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/102916/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/12172/revisions    &#xD;&#xA;and on and on...    &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=canonical  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/7454/matthieu&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8/mark-trapp&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/116328/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7777" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3035" RevisionGUID="01fc1e20-ede7-490d-bb31-3e0d25f918fd" CreationDate="2012-02-03T14:13:26.903" UserId="41381" Text="book suggestions are only allowed for canonical books on a topic, this is done because book questions aren't the goal of programmers and having questions that encourage lists/discussion results in closing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;book questions are allowed to exist because they are a nice resource to point to but also need to be restricted or they become a pile of crap." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7778" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3036" RevisionGUID="f80d3a8a-9b71-4127-9880-ba62d6d34ae6" CreationDate="2012-02-03T14:15:18.597" UserId="4" Text="Asking for the creation of a list or a poll of &quot;best of&quot; things is not appropriate on any Stack Exchange site. Some think that questions about asking for a book that covers a very niche area or is the defining book for some field is allowed - a stance that I used to have. However, I now feel that resource lists should be included on a tag's tag wiki page so that you can find books, websites, podcasts, and other top-notch or &quot;must read&quot; publications about a particular topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7779" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3037" RevisionGUID="922ca019-29cb-486b-b7c8-48450ac1459f" CreationDate="2012-02-03T14:33:48.710" UserId="39340" Text="I'm curious as to if the FAQ can ever be amended by some process set forth by the community. This [question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3030/voting-on-questions-that-might-fall-in-the-all-careers-circle-of-faq) got be me thinking. There is a community divide here. Wouldn't the best thing be, to ask the community to vote on whether the FAQ should be updated to make such &quot;All Careers&quot; questions on-topic when it relates to programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead we just go back and forth without any resolve. We have high rep users who would like such questions to be on-topic. If a large portion of the active community doesn't mind such questions shouldn't they stay open and the FAQ be updated (*I don't know if this is true, that's why a vote would help*). If a vote should fail then obviously the majority of the community is OK with the current FAQ and that settles it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just don't think it's very good for the community to see questions where one knows that it probably will be closed (*Not always right away*) because it falls into the &quot;All Careers&quot; category. Then to see someone write a beautiful, helpful answer only to see the question closed. Then a 20 comment argument ensues between the closer, the OP, and the person who wrote the long thought out answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is not already some process, I think that if several high rep users want the FAQ to be updated then they should be able to set forth some motion where the community is able to vote on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7780" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3037" RevisionGUID="922ca019-29cb-486b-b7c8-48450ac1459f" CreationDate="2012-02-03T14:33:48.710" UserId="39340" Text="Can the FAQ be Amended by a Vote?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7781" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3037" RevisionGUID="922ca019-29cb-486b-b7c8-48450ac1459f" CreationDate="2012-02-03T14:33:48.710" UserId="39340" Text="|feature-request|voting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7782" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3038" RevisionGUID="7fd6f039-8422-4789-aa7c-d48354c3ad99" CreationDate="2012-02-03T14:44:44.217" UserId="47" Text="The simple answer is &quot;yes&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think there is some part of the FAQ that need removing or amending or you think that there's something missing then post it as a question here on meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community can then vote and discuss the change, suggesting improvements, providing counter arguments etc. When there's a consensus a moderator can then make the necessary changes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7783" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3039" RevisionGUID="8f5bfe22-fd0e-4c96-9369-0c71122849f6" CreationDate="2012-02-03T14:47:55.260" UserId="4" Text="FAQ changes have been propsed by community members, voted on, and incorporated. An example that I have easy access to is [my suggestion to replace &quot;software law&quot; with &quot;software licensing&quot;][1] to eliminate questions about patents, trademarks, and copyrights that vary around the world and often need the expert advice of a lawyer, rather than a software development professional.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However user reputation should have little to do with the process. It needs to be agreed upon by active, participating members of the community, whether their rep is in the hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands. Often, reputation is indicative of participation, but it's possible for a new user who is extremely active to still have a small amount of reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7784" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3040" RevisionGUID="d5d3a3db-e9a7-40bc-ad19-0805682b8d33" CreationDate="2012-02-03T16:47:15.807" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="I volunteer for writing and anything else that needs doing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7785" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3041" RevisionGUID="5f200b39-b365-42e8-87cf-0f80bcf8d62c" CreationDate="2012-02-03T19:00:10.413" UserId="30160" Text="Ok I wasn't asking a question but tried the link anyhow and it said&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account. See&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://goo.gl/C1Kwu to learn more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the questions that I have asked in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112336/creating-a-blog-for-software-changes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/93788/should-i-update-this-code-or-continue-with-current-design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132878/how-to-sell-yourself-to-the-manager&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My last question got closed, should I be banned just because of that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7786" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3041" RevisionGUID="5f200b39-b365-42e8-87cf-0f80bcf8d62c" CreationDate="2012-02-03T19:00:10.413" UserId="30160" Text="No longer can ask question on Programmers:SE, what is the reason" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7787" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3041" RevisionGUID="5f200b39-b365-42e8-87cf-0f80bcf8d62c" CreationDate="2012-02-03T19:00:10.413" UserId="30160" Text="|discussion|bad-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7788" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3042" RevisionGUID="112583a7-11eb-4014-b63d-b2f15e071441" CreationDate="2012-02-03T19:09:51.680" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The [canonical answer to this is on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi), which is where the link in the notice takes you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An automatic filter is in place to ban questions from IP addresses or accounts with a history of extremely poor questions. To avoid bypassing the filter its internal rules are a secret, but it is partly based on downvotes cast by other members of the communities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Once you have posted too many bad quality questions, you will be banned from asking more, and see the error message. You can then still use the site, except for asking questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at [your profile](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/30160/dave), you've asked 6 questions, only one of which has been upvoted, 4 of which were closed, and 3 of which were deleted. You've provided few answers, and only one of which was up-voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you'd like to ask questions in the future, focus on helping others first by providing high-quality answers and taking [the feedback you've received on your past closures](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3029/8) to heart.  While the details of the low-quality ban are purposefully kept secret, creating a trend of high-quality answers generally will help towards getting it removed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7789" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3041" RevisionGUID="6c9ed17c-2e22-4320-97f0-a943ae739920" CreationDate="2012-02-03T19:11:24.940" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|asking-questions|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7790" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3041" RevisionGUID="6c9ed17c-2e22-4320-97f0-a943ae739920" CreationDate="2012-02-03T19:11:24.940" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="Why am I getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account”?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7793" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3044" RevisionGUID="2494069c-fc0d-49a9-8e84-abaa83d6e33e" CreationDate="2012-02-03T20:00:44.690" UserId="28877" Text="Today we had a [productive discussion][1] about the direction in which we will be taking the blog. We also had a fair number of volunteers come forward in addition to the ones who have already submitted [their interest][2]. This post is a summary of our discussion of how you can contribute to the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All blog posts will go through the following process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Submission of idea.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Approval of idea by an editor.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Author will submit article based on that idea.&#xD;&#xA; 4. Article will undergo review and proofreading.&#xD;&#xA; 5. Publication.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I submit an article idea?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a couple of different ways to submit an idea. The first, and easiest, is to send an email to **blog.pse.se [at] gmail.com** with your name, a suggested title for your idea, and a brief description of your idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-- or --&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jump into the [P.SE blog chat room][3] and send a message to me (@JarrodNettles) with the same information. I may not respond right away but rest assured that I will see it and get it into the pipeline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are intending to write the article yourself, **please say so** - otherwise I will assume that it is just an idea and it will be &quot;up for grabs&quot; on our Trello board.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I want to write but can't think of a topic...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No problem! We're using [Trello][4] to organize our efforts and we already have a decent sized list of topics just itching to be written about. Just send an email that you're interested in writing for the blog and we'll set you up with access to Trello and a contributor account on WordPress.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I don't want to write but I'm a good proofreader.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Go ahead and send the email explaining, and we can set you up with an account on Wordpress that will allow you to proofread articles that are in the publication pipeline. We really want this blog to come across professionally and good proofreading and editing are **critical** contributions that we will need. Nothing kills the professionalism of an article like a misspelled word or severe grammatical errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/2359/2-19&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://trello.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7794" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3044" RevisionGUID="2494069c-fc0d-49a9-8e84-abaa83d6e33e" CreationDate="2012-02-03T20:00:44.690" UserId="28877" Text="Contributing to the Blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7795" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3044" RevisionGUID="2494069c-fc0d-49a9-8e84-abaa83d6e33e" CreationDate="2012-02-03T20:00:44.690" UserId="28877" Text="|support|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7796" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3044" RevisionGUID="a607c39d-747a-4f99-ab15-478be2bc74f6" CreationDate="2012-02-03T20:29:55.967" UserId="28877" Comment="added more information" Text="Today we had a [productive discussion][1] about the direction in which we will be taking the blog. We also had a fair number of volunteers come forward in addition to the ones who have already submitted [their interest][2]. This post is a summary of our discussion of how you can contribute to the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All blog posts will go through the following process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Submission of idea.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Approval of idea by an editor.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Author will submit article based on that idea.&#xD;&#xA; 4. Article will undergo review and proofreading.&#xD;&#xA; 5. Publication.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I submit an article idea?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a couple of different ways to submit an idea. The first, and easiest, is to send an email to **blog.pse.se [at] gmail.com** with your name, a suggested title for your idea, and a brief description of your idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-- or --&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jump into the [P.SE blog chat room][3] and send a message to me (@JarrodNettles) with the same information. I may not respond right away but rest assured that I will see it and get it into the pipeline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are intending to write the article yourself, **please say so** - otherwise I will assume that it is just an idea and it will be &quot;up for grabs&quot; on our Trello board.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I want to write!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Excellent, writers are the lifeblood of any good blog. Without great content, our blog will be empty and dry. If you want to write email us as at **blog.pse.se [at] gmail.com** or contact me in the P.SE blog room (@JarrodNettles) and I can walk you through getting started (I will have a tutorial up soon on how to use [Trello][4] effectively for the blog).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**...but can't think of a topic**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No problem! We're using Trello to organize our efforts and we already have a decent sized list of topics just itching to be written about. Just send an email that you're interested in writing for the blog and we'll set you up with access to Trello and a contributor account on WordPress.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I don't want to write but I'm a good proofreader.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Go ahead and send the email explaining, and we can set you up with an account on Wordpress that will allow you to proofread articles that are in the publication pipeline. We really want this blog to come across professionally and good proofreading and editing are **critical** contributions that we will need. Nothing kills the professionalism of an article like a misspelled word or severe grammatical errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/2359/2-19&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://trello.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7797" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2922" RevisionGUID="13b66b36-2dce-4d8b-a012-cf83e3f357f3" CreationDate="2012-02-03T21:17:10.910" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7799" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3045" RevisionGUID="e1bbdc3a-2bc6-443d-84d8-d56d7783b072" CreationDate="2012-02-03T21:19:22.530" UserId="47" Text="The number of badges is expanding and any new badge will be rolled out network wide." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7800" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="156" RevisionGUID="c6e53dfd-eb85-44cf-9be1-d5fbaebaf104" CreationDate="2012-02-03T21:19:33.903" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-bydesign|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7801" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="329" RevisionGUID="4436f52a-4c06-4abe-bf45-cf4a55fd9edb" CreationDate="2012-02-03T21:19:49.783" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7802" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1311" RevisionGUID="21d026c8-d778-4f93-8d97-7ba3ff0840a3" CreationDate="2012-02-03T21:20:24.383" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-bydesign|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7803" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="919" RevisionGUID="44ce050a-f9d2-46ef-9aa9-0062561ca77d" CreationDate="2012-02-03T21:21:40.140" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7804" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2548" RevisionGUID="87fa24e4-304c-4d18-92fb-e36df81bb63a" CreationDate="2012-02-03T21:22:45.037" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags; edited tags" Text="|discussion|data-explorer|clean-up|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7806" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3046" RevisionGUID="8d8c4512-ff11-4c39-a22d-ce90db748cad" CreationDate="2012-02-03T23:15:36.413" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This question (now deleted) shouldn't have been too localized: as you mentioned, just because it's a niche problem or a subset of the programmer audience in the world, it's not necessarily too localized for Stack Exchange. As [Joel Spolsky wrote](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1916/8) on another question about localized questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stop abusing &quot;Too Localized.&quot; That is meant to close questions that are so specific to a particular place and time that they can only possible benefit the poster, or questions which would be obsolete in a matter of seconds. Just because there is a location in a question doesn't mean it's too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it *should've* been closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;: broad comparisons like that are a [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/) and are prone to too open-ended of a discussion, which isn't a good fit for the Stack Exchange style of Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there was a specific problem being faced—like perhaps moving out to a startup in New York City or Silicon Valley and wanting to better understand the culture in the place you're moving to—that'd likely work out a little better." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7807" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="829" RevisionGUID="56ae8310-01b2-4c4c-8ae3-20ff2edeeab0" CreationDate="2012-02-03T23:43:00.143" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|migration|user-interface|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7808" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3047" RevisionGUID="c453e66b-e5a9-4fea-acf2-d2362830b6ae" CreationDate="2012-02-03T23:47:55.363" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="While not exactly what you're looking for, if you have 10k reputation, you have access to [a list of migrated questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=migrated).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [questions list](http://programmers.stackexchnage.com/questions), however, is unlikely to change from its current definition of &quot;newest questions in absolute terms&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7809" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="894" RevisionGUID="c24e85b1-8c3f-424d-9046-d54b7332d4ad" CreationDate="2012-02-03T23:50:51.350" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 36 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="When I tried to post my [last question on etiquette](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/893/whats-the-etiquette-for-reusing-your-answers), I got this warning:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the warning shouldn't appear anywhere, you'd think Meta Programmers.SE would be it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7810" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="894" RevisionGUID="c24e85b1-8c3f-424d-9046-d54b7332d4ad" CreationDate="2012-02-03T23:50:51.350" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 36 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Why is there a subjective warning for questions on a meta-discussion site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7811" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="894" RevisionGUID="c24e85b1-8c3f-424d-9046-d54b7332d4ad" CreationDate="2012-02-03T23:50:51.350" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 36 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|bug|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7812" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3048" RevisionGUID="4c9ea667-f6c8-4356-9e37-a0734d6f8a06" CreationDate="2012-02-03T23:52:50.193" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="While I don't know when it was fixed, this apparently no longer occurs, so: [meta-tag:status-completed]!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7813" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1702" RevisionGUID="e6bc61ff-92c6-4b3f-b04f-7fb8660fd7cf" CreationDate="2012-02-04T00:01:28.903" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Let&amp;#39;s nuke the catch-all tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;We have an artifact from the Antedisciplining period that should be removed: [tag:holy-war], which is obviously not the type of question we're looking for here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can it be purged with the fire from a thousand suns?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7814" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="1702" RevisionGUID="4c273bf7-ea72-4539-a631-cad83da3d6ba" CreationDate="2012-02-04T00:01:27.280" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[2373],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7816" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2118" RevisionGUID="e7fb59a3-1d96-409f-8e91-e6fe2bc2592f" CreationDate="2012-02-04T00:11:22.290" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Fix screenshot and title to reflect it's the opposite" Text="When asking a question, the &quot;similar questions&quot; side bar scrolls down, which is cool, but if I go all the way down to the bottom of the page, then the side bar covers up the link to the wiki, the &quot;ubuntu&quot; link, the &quot;programmers&quot; link, and one other link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you guys could fix it so that it does not go down beyond the &quot;post your question&quot; button, that would be really useful. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/b7tTi.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7817" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2118" RevisionGUID="e7fb59a3-1d96-409f-8e91-e6fe2bc2592f" CreationDate="2012-02-04T00:11:22.290" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Fix screenshot and title to reflect it's the opposite" Text="The &quot;similar question&quot; sections overlaps the footer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7818" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3049" RevisionGUID="e9a286b3-a6b2-4d22-961c-302d2cae2152" CreationDate="2012-02-04T00:15:30.290" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="As [Anna mentioned in the comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1211/ability-to-review-questions-being-transferred-from-so-before-they-appear#comment2894_1211), similar feature requests come up from time to time on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) and—while popular—almost never get a warm response from Stack Exchange. This request should be another example of that. :P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've heard rumors that migrations will be tackled some time this year, so while it's unlikely this specific feature would ever be implemented, hopefully another, comparable solution will be implemented in the future." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7819" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1119" RevisionGUID="1cc4c4ee-ded4-4b7e-9fe2-3a654e959b67" CreationDate="2012-02-04T00:18:12.267" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|popular-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7820" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3050" RevisionGUID="5fb2e690-77a1-4741-8a00-63944d94e8cb" CreationDate="2012-02-04T00:21:32.637" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Moderators do have access to analytics, [including referral data](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/114257/149432), but this information is considered confidential information and is likely never to be made available to the public.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you ask a moderator in chat, we can see about providing glimpses of that on a case-by-case basis." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7821" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2052" RevisionGUID="dffcdbd8-05ef-4db7-8423-12153ee76c8d" CreationDate="2012-02-04T00:23:32.993" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Let&amp;#39;s nuke the catch-all tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Every question on this site should be related to [tag:software-engineering] (or something tangentially related to software engineering), and/or [tag:software-development]. These are just the ones on the front page of the &quot;popular&quot; tags, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I get some free time this week or weekend, I would honestly like to go through all (currently 52) pages of tags and come up with a list of tags that add little or no value, and let the community decide. Perhaps as a part of the Summer Cleaning. I would like to see a major effort to clean up tags and write some good tag wiki pages, but I'm not going to ask other people to jump in on this until I get a feel for how much value this would add or what the community thinks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In response to Matt Ellen's answer, the [tag:programming] tag makes sense if it is referring to issues that arise during the construction of software. I would still want to go through the questions tagged with it and make sure that its used appropriately, but I can now see it being a valid tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other two, [tag:software-engineering] and [tag:software-development] I still feel are two general. More specific tags, such as [tag:requirements], [tag:architecture], [tag:programming], [tag:testing], [tag:maintenance], [tag:process], [tag:quality], [tag:tools], and [tag:education], along with a number of others should probably be used instead to get at the root of the topic of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And this brings up another issue: the [tag:design] tag being used to refer to architectural design, component/module design, and UI design. This is kind of blowing up the scope a little bit (well, a ton, but we'll overlook that for a second), but I think it does underscore a need to take a good hard look at tags and how they are used to make it easier to search and sort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the reasons why I don't have favorite tags here is because it's too hard to use them. Cleaning up would make this easier." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7822" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2052" RevisionGUID="03f8db14-cad3-4ce9-bd63-7ce333a5188e" CreationDate="2012-02-04T00:23:31.653" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[2373],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7823" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2980" RevisionGUID="39462e1d-8521-44bd-b51f-a75e8f341e82" CreationDate="2012-02-04T00:28:06.357" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7824" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2980" RevisionGUID="04ce6b7c-18fb-4a1a-b3c7-4e70576e0456" CreationDate="2012-02-04T00:28:22.893" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Contributing to the Blog](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;The blog [is moving forward][1]. **The wheels are moving** higher up to get us a Wordpress instance created for a dedicated blog here are Programmers.StackExchange. I'm excited about the prospects and what this can do for our community at large.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of things to note.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. There is now a [chat room][2] for discussions regarding the P.SE blog. There has already been a healthy discussion and if you're interested I would suggest that you peruse the transcripts.&#xD;&#xA;2. I have [been anointed][3] the community &quot;point of contact&quot; for the blog. All this means is that I'll be putting in some dedicated hours to organizing and communicating with people about getting the blog published.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some time ago, I posted [a call for volunteers][4] for the blog - and we received a great response from potential writers and proofreaders. However, it has been some time since those &quot;commitments&quot; were made and situations may have changed. If you're still interested - or have become interested - please refer to that [original post][5] and post a comment to the affirmative if you are still willing to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here's where we're at**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was recommended that we find time for everyone who is interested to sit down and have a discussion about the direction of the blog. We've already had several discussions about this here on Meta but I agree that it probably is a good idea to schedule a chat room session where we can have a meeting and intimately discuss the details of this new project - i.e. definite plans for articles (aka blog posts), proofreading, and publication.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose that we hold this meeting **[Friday, February 3rd at 4 PM GMT][6]** (that's 11 AM for United States East Coast) in the new Programmers Blog chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are intending to be a participant in this project, please give me feedback on whether this date and time works for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2976/lets-get-the-blog-kicked-off/2979#2979&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3214146#3214146&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/2359/programmers-blog?tab=schedule" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7825" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2980" RevisionGUID="6a60144d-252f-4140-839c-5f1a8a3bb336" CreationDate="2012-02-04T00:28:21.537" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[3044],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7826" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3044" RevisionGUID="562d4533-9016-472e-b084-9ac529730c20" CreationDate="2012-02-04T00:28:48.633" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|featured|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7827" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="27" RevisionGUID="10f0957c-1239-4b47-81c5-98256c999d65" CreationDate="2012-02-04T08:12:44.023" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Too localized: by population size instead of geographical area](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1057/too-localized-by-population-size-instead-of-geographical-area)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Should questions that depend on a specific location (continent, country, city) or time (anything that changes rapidly over time) be allowed? I'm specifically referring to questions about how much to charge or what a job market looks like." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7828" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="27" RevisionGUID="4b159f00-f8da-4139-9aca-43ce7975280b" CreationDate="2012-02-04T08:12:42.963" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[1057],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7829" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="58" RevisionGUID="db21994a-33c4-4cd2-b27c-ea72e22b9cb6" CreationDate="2012-02-04T08:15:45.210" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Request for comment: structured tag cleanups](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I think we're starting to already get some duplication and unnecessary tagging; we should use this post as a means to figure out what should be combined and what should be blacklisted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Questions to consider&#xD;&#xA;* Are meta-tags allowed? (e.g. *poll*, *discussion*, [*quotes*](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/quotes), [*humor*](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/humor), etc.)&#xD;&#xA;* Given this site is called **Programmers**, should the word *programming* and its synonyms be avoided in tags? (e.g. [*programming languages*](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming-languages), [*programming tool*](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming-tool), [*programmers*](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programmers), etc.)&#xD;&#xA;* What tags should be merged as synonyms?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7830" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="58" RevisionGUID="ef984b18-bb63-47c8-a07e-6f159ad8ca4c" CreationDate="2012-02-04T08:15:44.133" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[2886],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7831" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="153" RevisionGUID="e710aba9-b5cf-4e28-a2c0-07dcf9400988" CreationDate="2012-02-04T08:18:47.677" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Request for comment: structured tag cleanups](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;[[language]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/language)  &#xD;&#xA;[[languages]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/languages)  &#xD;&#xA;[[programming-languages]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming-languages)  &#xD;&#xA;[[spoken-languages]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/spoken-languages)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7832" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="153" RevisionGUID="7422fbd2-97bc-4694-a36d-221ecf532768" CreationDate="2012-02-04T08:18:45.647" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[2886],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7833" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="163" RevisionGUID="a2765150-0c6f-4dea-bdcc-060ebf6436ea" CreationDate="2012-02-04T08:19:40.907" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Posse request: jobs/career/etc. tag cleanup](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;[`career`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career): 29 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`work`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/work): 5 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`job`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/job): 15 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`career-development`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career-development): 8 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`employment`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/employment): 3 questions  &#xD;&#xA;`hiring` and `work-environment` are somewhat related, but I think may have a better case for independent existence. I propose the other tags be merged into `career`, the most populated one, with individual questions retagged as appropriate (for example, several of the `work` questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58/tag-consolidation-and-blacklist/59#59. I created this question so that this issue could be discussed/voted on separately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7834" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="163" RevisionGUID="bfa8ab3f-d96e-4922-8052-32c6db622d7b" CreationDate="2012-02-04T08:19:39.407" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[1963],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7835" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="176" RevisionGUID="36150def-ebc8-4f8a-b4ba-41aaad5a04a5" CreationDate="2012-02-04T08:20:47.380" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;It seems like half of this site should be community wiki. Also, what kind of questions are supposed to go here that don't already fit into StackOverflow or Webmasters? Webmasters is loosely defined as it is. This site only means to complicate it even more." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7836" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="176" RevisionGUID="fe8a8ea2-51ec-4fd1-889d-98611af6e605" CreationDate="2012-02-04T08:20:46.553" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[171],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7837" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="220" RevisionGUID="fb008858-1299-4ce6-8b7d-818064109733" CreationDate="2012-02-04T08:23:03.663" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Let&amp;#39;s nuke the catch-all tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Surely all questions here are polls, in the sense that people vote for answers they agree with?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7838" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="220" RevisionGUID="464b91c8-4e56-4ed4-90c4-56973fa2989c" CreationDate="2012-02-04T08:23:02.137" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[2373],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7839" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="266" RevisionGUID="27de60f6-df7e-4dc4-847d-9c9f6dd83d92" CreationDate="2012-02-04T08:24:02.230" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Programmers.SE is often seen as a dumping ground for anything not suitable for StackOverflow. How would you more clearly define the type of questions that this site is intended for?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA; - [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable)&#xD;&#xA; - [Lots of subjective questions here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176/lots-of-subjective-questions-here)&#xD;&#xA; - [What's the difference between Programmers and SO](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7840" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="266" RevisionGUID="a4f0dfbc-acc1-4523-a96b-29cb573e62e9" CreationDate="2012-02-04T08:24:01.230" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[171],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7843" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3051" RevisionGUID="34f9b024-c959-43d7-a9ec-1a3ab99f2b8c" CreationDate="2012-02-04T15:44:45.370" UserId="1725" Text="`Please participate in the Programmers 2012 community moderator election`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have already cast my vote in the moderator election, why am I still seeing this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it should be removed after casting my vote." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7844" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3051" RevisionGUID="34f9b024-c959-43d7-a9ec-1a3ab99f2b8c" CreationDate="2012-02-04T15:44:45.370" UserId="1725" Text="Remove the election notification after casting vote" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7845" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3051" RevisionGUID="34f9b024-c959-43d7-a9ec-1a3ab99f2b8c" CreationDate="2012-02-04T15:44:45.370" UserId="1725" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7846" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="919" RevisionGUID="c3376459-6997-40e3-8d0d-575a8475d0f5" CreationDate="2012-02-04T15:51:15.557" UserId="47" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7847" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3052" RevisionGUID="3a44a21e-275c-46a7-a02e-4021a7452a50" CreationDate="2012-02-04T15:53:49.237" UserId="47" Text="The message is a system message and, as such, cannot be dismissed by individual users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been brought up before [on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64118/allow-us-an-exit-hatch-to-dismiss-the-system-message-notification-bar) and has always been declined." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7848" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3051" RevisionGUID="42f65896-ba7e-45e1-bb2a-c404cdadc2a0" CreationDate="2012-02-04T15:53:59.580" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|feature-request|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7849" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3053" RevisionGUID="a5861700-db0b-4f38-bf13-b484f8030ac3" CreationDate="2012-02-04T16:21:37.223" UserId="28877" Text="I voted the first day but it was handy for me to have there because I went back and changed my vote around a couple of times. May as well leave it up." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7850" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3044" RevisionGUID="cf81472a-1ff9-43d3-acaa-72725f36ac25" CreationDate="2012-02-04T18:32:39.343" UserId="28877" Comment="added more information about how to use Trello with the blog" Text="Today we had a [productive discussion][1] about the direction in which we will be taking the blog. We also had a fair number of volunteers come forward in addition to the ones who have already submitted [their interest][2]. This post is a summary of our discussion of how you can contribute to the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All blog posts will go through the following process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Submission of idea.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Approval of idea by an editor.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Author will submit article based on that idea.&#xD;&#xA; 4. Article will undergo review and proofreading.&#xD;&#xA; 5. Publication.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Getting Involved&#xD;&#xA;================&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I submit an article idea?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a couple of different ways to submit an idea. The first, and easiest, is to send an email to **blog.pse.se [at] gmail.com** with your name, a suggested title for your idea, and a brief description of your idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-- or --&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jump into the [P.SE blog chat room][3] and send a message to me (@JarrodNettles) with the same information. I may not respond right away but rest assured that I will see it and get it into the pipeline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are intending to write the article yourself, **please say so** - otherwise I will assume that it is just an idea and it will be &quot;up for grabs&quot; on our Trello board.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I want to write!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Excellent, writers are the lifeblood of any good blog. Without great content, our blog will be empty and dry. If you want to write email us as at **blog.pse.se [at] gmail.com** or contact me in the P.SE blog room (@JarrodNettles) and I can walk you through getting started (I will have a tutorial up soon on how to use [Trello][4] effectively for the blog).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**...but can't think of a topic**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No problem! We're using Trello to organize our efforts and we already have a decent sized list of topics just itching to be written about. Just send an email that you're interested in writing for the blog and we'll set you up with access to Trello and a contributor account on WordPress.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I don't want to write but I'm a good proofreader.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Go ahead and send the email explaining, and we can set you up with an account on Wordpress that will allow you to proofread articles that are in the publication pipeline. We really want this blog to come across professionally and good proofreading and editing are **critical** contributions that we will need. Nothing kills the professionalism of an article like a misspelled word or severe grammatical errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using Trello&#xD;&#xA;================&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![trello meta question please][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I'm in Trello - what do I do now?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once you have access to Trello you'll be able to see the entire &quot;publication process&quot; of the P.SE blog. We have Seven Columns for organizing our blogging efforts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Misc Work (*this column is only used for things like, &quot;write a meta post about X&quot;*)&#xD;&#xA; - Post Ideas&#xD;&#xA; - Approved Post Ideas&#xD;&#xA; - Being Written&#xD;&#xA; - Ready for Review&#xD;&#xA; - Ready for Publication&#xD;&#xA; - Published&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each of these columns is filled with &quot;cards&quot;, which represent blog articles. The column the card is in represents that article's current position in the pipeline. Suppose you have an idea for a new article - before you start writing you should put it into the &quot;Post Ideas&quot; column as a **new card** so that you can get some feedback on the topic. This isn't a super-strict process - think of it as a code review where you might be asked to explain a point or two.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Click the &quot;Add card&quot; button at the bottom of the &quot;Post Ideas&quot; column to start a new card.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![add card][6] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, type in the name of the article that you would like to write, and hit enter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![name the card][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point you have a working Post Idea, and can be seen by every other Trello board member. Although you have an idea up, its usually a good idea to provide a little extra information about your idea in the card description. You can do this by writing a *very* brief synopsis - for example, Pierre wrote a great description for his article idea about &quot;planning poker&quot;. Just click on your card and a window will pop up where you can provide more information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![card description][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is also a good time to assign the card to yourself - **if you plan to write the article.** If you don't assign it to yourself, we'll assume that it is &quot;Up For Grabs&quot; and somebody may come along, think its a good idea, and start to write it themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most ideas are good and clear enough to get a pretty quick &quot;go ahead&quot;, but you should wait for feedback from other board members. At worst, we may ask you to clarify your meaning a bit, or that you narrow the focus of the article somewhat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the moment we're using the Trello voting system to give approval for Post Ideas. This is still a very loose arrangement without any hard and fast rules but in general, once your idea has two votes its considered approved, and can be moved over the &quot;Approved Post Ideas&quot; column.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![approved post][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I see an idea in Trello I want write about - now what?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see a topic in the Approved Post Ideas column that is not assigned to anybody (it will have their picture next to the card) you are free to assign it to yourself. You don't need permission - just click on the card, click &quot;Assign&quot; and then select yourself. At that point, the idea is now yours and you are free to write. Drag the card over to the &quot;Being Written&quot; column so that everyone knows that this article is now being produced. If you feel so inclined, add a Due Date so that the editors can know when to reasonably expect that the article will be completed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/2359/2-19&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://trello.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nxp7M.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kMfhC.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ys4cF.png&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EjIPW.png&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/E5r3U.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7851" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3044" RevisionGUID="2247be6a-ca11-4d1a-815b-2c36ffaddce1" CreationDate="2012-02-04T19:24:25.863" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="7852" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3054" RevisionGUID="31f33781-42c0-4ae9-ad1a-ee65b982ce0c" CreationDate="2012-02-04T19:25:19.527" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Using Trello&#xD;&#xA;================&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![trello meta question please][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I'm in Trello - what do I do now?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once you have access to Trello you'll be able to see the entire &quot;publication process&quot; of the P.SE blog. We have Seven Columns for organizing our blogging efforts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Misc Work (*this column is only used for things like, &quot;write a meta post about X&quot;*)&#xD;&#xA; - Post Ideas&#xD;&#xA; - Approved Post Ideas&#xD;&#xA; - Being Written&#xD;&#xA; - Ready for Review&#xD;&#xA; - Ready for Publication&#xD;&#xA; - Published&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each of these columns is filled with &quot;cards&quot;, which represent blog articles. The column the card is in represents that article's current position in the pipeline. Suppose you have an idea for a new article - before you start writing you should put it into the &quot;Post Ideas&quot; column as a **new card** so that you can get some feedback on the topic. This isn't a super-strict process - think of it as a code review where you might be asked to explain a point or two.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Click the &quot;Add card&quot; button at the bottom of the &quot;Post Ideas&quot; column to start a new card.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![add card][6] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, type in the name of the article that you would like to write, and hit enter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![name the card][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point you have a working Post Idea, and can be seen by every other Trello board member. Although you have an idea up, its usually a good idea to provide a little extra information about your idea in the card description. You can do this by writing a *very* brief synopsis - for example, Pierre wrote a great description for his article idea about &quot;planning poker&quot;. Just click on your card and a window will pop up where you can provide more information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![card description][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is also a good time to assign the card to yourself - **if you plan to write the article.** If you don't assign it to yourself, we'll assume that it is &quot;Up For Grabs&quot; and somebody may come along, think its a good idea, and start to write it themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most ideas are good and clear enough to get a pretty quick &quot;go ahead&quot;, but you should wait for feedback from other board members. At worst, we may ask you to clarify your meaning a bit, or that you narrow the focus of the article somewhat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the moment we're using the Trello voting system to give approval for Post Ideas. This is still a very loose arrangement without any hard and fast rules but in general, once your idea has two votes its considered approved, and can be moved over the &quot;Approved Post Ideas&quot; column.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![approved post][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I see an idea in Trello I want write about - now what?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see a topic in the Approved Post Ideas column that is not assigned to anybody (it will have their picture next to the card) you are free to assign it to yourself. You don't need permission - just click on the card, click &quot;Assign&quot; and then select yourself. At that point, the idea is now yours and you are free to write. Drag the card over to the &quot;Being Written&quot; column so that everyone knows that this article is now being produced. If you feel so inclined, add a Due Date so that the editors can know when to reasonably expect that the article will be completed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/2359/2-19&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://trello.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nxp7M.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kMfhC.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ys4cF.png&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EjIPW.png&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/E5r3U.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7853" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3054" RevisionGUID="ee0a12a2-982d-4c3f-84f6-2e11b482e721" CreationDate="2012-02-04T19:25:19.527" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="7854" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3044" RevisionGUID="974fabe3-dafa-483e-888c-48ad79bb8cdc" CreationDate="2012-02-04T19:25:51.273" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 5052 characters in body" Text="Today we had a [productive discussion][1] about the direction in which we will be taking the blog. We also had a fair number of volunteers come forward in addition to the ones who have already submitted [their interest][2]. This post is a summary of our discussion of how you can contribute to the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All blog posts will go through the following process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Submission of idea.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Approval of idea by an editor.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Author will submit article based on that idea.&#xD;&#xA; 4. Article will undergo review and proofreading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### FAQ Index&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Getting Involved](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3055/8)&#xD;&#xA;* [Using Trello](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3054/8)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/2359/2-19&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://trello.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nxp7M.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kMfhC.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ys4cF.png&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EjIPW.png&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/E5r3U.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7855" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3055" RevisionGUID="35be0774-2ccc-4abd-a973-344ac1eb0b56" CreationDate="2012-02-04T19:26:51.677" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Getting Involved&#xD;&#xA;================&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I submit an article idea?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a couple of different ways to submit an idea. The first, and easiest, is to send an email to **blog.pse.se [at] gmail.com** with your name, a suggested title for your idea, and a brief description of your idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-- or --&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jump into the [P.SE blog chat room][3] and send a message to me (@JarrodNettles) with the same information. I may not respond right away but rest assured that I will see it and get it into the pipeline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are intending to write the article yourself, **please say so** - otherwise I will assume that it is just an idea and it will be &quot;up for grabs&quot; on our Trello board.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I want to write!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Excellent, writers are the lifeblood of any good blog. Without great content, our blog will be empty and dry. If you want to write email us as at **blog.pse.se [at] gmail.com** or contact me in the P.SE blog room (@JarrodNettles) and I can walk you through getting started (I will have a tutorial up soon on how to use [Trello][4] effectively for the blog).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**...but can't think of a topic**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No problem! We're using Trello to organize our efforts and we already have a decent sized list of topics just itching to be written about. Just send an email that you're interested in writing for the blog and we'll set you up with access to Trello and a contributor account on WordPress.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I don't want to write but I'm a good proofreader.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Go ahead and send the email explaining, and we can set you up with an account on Wordpress that will allow you to proofread articles that are in the publication pipeline. We really want this blog to come across professionally and good proofreading and editing are **critical** contributions that we will need. Nothing kills the professionalism of an article like a misspelled word or severe grammatical errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/2359/2-19&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://trello.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nxp7M.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kMfhC.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ys4cF.png&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EjIPW.png&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/E5r3U.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7856" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3055" RevisionGUID="960434c2-19e4-44e5-94d2-79a5321f042d" CreationDate="2012-02-04T19:26:51.677" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="7857" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3044" RevisionGUID="974fabe3-dafa-483e-888c-48ad79bb8cdc" CreationDate="2012-02-04T19:25:51.273" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 5052 characters in body" Text="|support|faq|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7858" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3047" RevisionGUID="1f188bbc-4828-44e1-a52f-10818af054e7" CreationDate="2012-02-04T19:38:05.643" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 223 characters in body" Text="While not exactly what you're looking for, if you have 10k reputation, you have access to [a list of migrated questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=migrated). You also have [the active tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active) in the questions list, which sorts the questions by their last activity, including their migration date.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The default sort for the [questions list](http://programmers.stackexchnage.com/questions), however, is unlikely to change from its current definition of &quot;newest questions in absolute terms&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7859" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2959" RevisionGUID="6622f5b5-2364-4ef0-b320-340cfe67af78" CreationDate="2012-02-04T19:55:08.833" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 1508 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="I'd like to help deal with many of the bad tags on Programmers, but I'm not sure how to deal with them properly. What should I keep in mind as I work through a bad tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7860" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2959" RevisionGUID="6622f5b5-2364-4ef0-b320-340cfe67af78" CreationDate="2012-02-04T19:55:08.833" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 1508 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="How should I go about getting rid of bad tags en masse?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7861" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2959" RevisionGUID="6622f5b5-2364-4ef0-b320-340cfe67af78" CreationDate="2012-02-04T19:55:08.833" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 1508 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|support|tags|faq-proposed|posse|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7862" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3056" RevisionGUID="f74f8537-f58c-44b6-bbdf-22abdbc1698f" CreationDate="2012-02-04T19:55:19.910" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="We're trying to come up with a structured way to deal with the bad tags through the [Structured Tag Cleanup initiative](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2886/8), but in the meantime, if you want to help with tag cleanups, the golden rule is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Only make substantial edits to questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end, these things are helpful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging new questions asked that have bad tags&#xD;&#xA;* Substantively revising a question to address multiple issues, from bad tags to bad titles to copyediting issues&#xD;&#xA;* Small spurts of edits (5 or so) to prevent the front page from being flooded with old content&#xD;&#xA;* Proposing tag merges and synonyms here on meta&#xD;&#xA;* Voting to close questions in bad tags that have slipped through the cracks&#xD;&#xA;* Flagging closed questions in bad tags that have no chance of getting reopened for deletion&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Heroic&quot; edits on closed questions in bad tags to attempt to get them re-opened&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not helpful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Mass retagging in a short period of time&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging questions without doing anything else&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging closed questions that have no chance of ever getting opened again&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging questions and replacing bad tags with [even worse ones](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definitely check out the [Structured Tag Cleanup proposal](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2886/8), but otherwise, please try to keep the above in mind if you've got an urge to clean up some tags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7863" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2922" RevisionGUID="dbc9e9c0-a6a4-429a-a59c-d23faa2c0e87" CreationDate="2012-02-04T20:22:48.287" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [2012 Moderator Election - Town Hall Chat Digest](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2990/2012-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-digest)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session with the candidates.  This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.  I am working with the candidates to find a time that allows the most participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Town Hall Chat will take place Tuesday the 31st at 22:00 UTC / 5:00pm EST&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[view in other timezones](http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=1&amp;day=31&amp;year=2012&amp;hour=22&amp;min=0&amp;sec=0&amp;p1=0)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[register here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/251/programmers-town-hall-chat?tab=schedule)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the details so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I would like to schedule this towards the beginning of the primary phase.  This means that I am looking at the 30th-1st. As soon as I coordinate with the existing moderators and candidates to find a best fit based on availability, I will edit this post with details on the &quot;when&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;* The Town Hall Chat will be a one-hour event using our [chat platform](http://chat.stackexchange.com/?tab=site&amp;sort=active&amp;host=programmers.stackexchange.com).  I will update this post with a direct link to the chat room once the event is scheduled.&#xD;&#xA;* The format will be an open discussion.  Users are encouraged to pose questions to the candidates regarding their thoughts on moderation.&#xD;&#xA;* After the chat session, a digest of the event will be permanently linked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7864" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2922" RevisionGUID="7a6d5ec2-f6c4-4c09-9398-7e8a706e3d24" CreationDate="2012-02-04T20:22:45.710" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[2990],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7865" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2548" RevisionGUID="ae98d435-2608-4ee8-949c-299df07660d5" CreationDate="2012-02-04T21:36:44.710" UserId="25936" Comment="Posted &quot;answer&quot; part as, well, an answer..." Text="I have been playing around with [Stack Exchange Data Explorer][1] lately. Any interesting queries you found and care to share? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7866" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2548" RevisionGUID="ae98d435-2608-4ee8-949c-299df07660d5" CreationDate="2012-02-04T21:36:44.710" UserId="25936" Comment="Posted &quot;answer&quot; part as, well, an answer..." Text="What SEDE queries do you use?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7867" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3057" RevisionGUID="f3dfb231-f030-4b3d-a470-ff243fa82a04" CreationDate="2012-02-04T21:36:49.403" UserId="25936" Text="This is a small list of [Stack Exchange Data Explorer][1] queries I've compiled for my run towards the elusive [Marshal badge][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Duplicates**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Find suggested duplicates that haven't led to question closure][3] &#xD;&#xA;- [Find suggested duplicates that haven't led to question closure in a tag][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Controversial posts**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Most controversial posts][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Self answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Forum style questions - multiple self answers from asker][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Recent self answers][7]&#xD;&#xA;- [You're probably doing it wrong (Questions with Multiple Answers by the OP)][8]&#xD;&#xA;- [Not accepted self answers with negative votes][9]&#xD;&#xA;- [Recent Not accepted self answers with negative votes][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Not an answer**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Posts that could be marked as 'not an answer' to help get the Marshal badge][11]&#xD;&#xA;- [Seek and Destroy: Comments with the phrase &quot;not an answer&quot;][12]&#xD;&#xA;- [Something to Flag &quot;Not an answer&quot; in the body of an answer][13]&#xD;&#xA;- [Answers With Questions][14]&#xD;&#xA;- [Find Something to Flag 1][15] (small answers with links)&#xD;&#xA;- [Find &quot;me too&quot; (so-called) answers][16]&#xD;&#xA;- [Finding bad answers through comments][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Downvote Comments][19] (all those -1 comments)&#xD;&#xA;- [Find obsolete &quot;should be wiki&quot; comments][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/94/marshal&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/2036/find-suggested-duplicates-that-havent-led-to-question-closure&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/2037/find-suggested-duplicates-that-havent-led-to-question-closure-in-a-tag&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/18/most-controversial-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1950/forum-style-questions-multiple-self-answers-from-asker&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1949/recent-self-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1844/youre-probably-doing-it-wrong-something-to-flag&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1595/not-accepted-self-answers-with-negative-votes&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1662/recent-not-accepted-self-answers-with-negative-votes&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1818/posts-that-could-be-marked-as-not-an-answer-to-help-get-the-marshal-badge&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1636/seek-and-destroy-comments-with-the-phrase-not-an-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1816/something-to-flag-not-an-answer-in-the-body-of-an-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1741/answers-with-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1300/find-something-to-flag-1&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/2008/find-me-too-so-called-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1925/finding-bad-answers-through-comments&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/447/why-the-downvotes&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/2053/downvote-comments&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/2006/find-obsolete-should-be-wiki-comments&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/2420275#2420275" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7868" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3058" RevisionGUID="85ffd82f-da22-494a-82fa-d5c7c09be987" CreationDate="2012-02-05T00:01:55.267" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I [posted this to Meta Stack Overflow when it was asked there](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/121291/149432), but it's probably good to have it here on this question as well. In general, understanding the meaning of well-known programming terminology used in names would be on-topic for Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is a delegate? What things count as delegates?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, understanding the appropriate use of design patterns (which would likely indirectly lead to answering a question about naming) would be on-topic for Programmers as well: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm working on X problem: would using the observer pattern be the most appropriate way to handle it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And finding the correct terminology to describe a concept is *usually* on-topic on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've used this pattern that looks similar to other code I've seen, but I'm not sure how to refer to it so I don't look dumb in front of my coworkers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But many of these types of &quot;concept naming&quot; questions get too far into bike-shedding and neologisms and thus aren't constructive:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can you think of a name to call this pattern I just made up?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Likewise, naming advice for your classes, methods, et al is not constructive anywhere, including Programmers. It ultimately rests on who's reading the code and what the internal naming conventions for the project are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  What should I call this method that does X?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subsequently, understanding people's code would not be on-topic for Programmers (or Stack Overflow) either as it requires private knowledge about the intent of a person we don't know:   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why did my coworker name this method `punchFluffyBunnies()`?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7871" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="333" RevisionGUID="a779618a-18a4-4080-8ff9-fb78391e7138" CreationDate="2012-02-05T04:22:05.760" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7872" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5" RevisionGUID="b55843bf-875d-40a3-a2c6-d7458454c4f0" CreationDate="2012-02-05T04:24:05.117" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Moderator Pro Tem Announcement](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311/moderator-pro-tem-announcement)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;In about two weeks, this community will receive some provisional moderators to help get this site started prior to the elections at the end of the beta. Please read this: **[Moderators Pro Tempore](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/moderator-pro-tempore/)**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please suggest some members of this community you feel would make excellent moderators *(self nominations are okay).***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some basic guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Each nomination should be a separate answer. Link the name to the user’s profile (parent and meta) so we can see their activity.&#xD;&#xA; - The nominee should indicate their acceptance by editing the answer, adding that they accept the nomination. Optionally they can write something about themselves.&#xD;&#xA; - Self nominations are okay, and even encouraged. Most sites have not had sufficient time for many users to stand out. Self nomination is simply a way to say, “I’m interested. Let my record speak for itself.” Links to other activities may be helpful: Area 51 participation, participation in other sites, blog posts reviewing or announcing the site, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is what we are looking for in a Moderator...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are seeking out members who are deeply engaged in the community’s development; members who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Have a reasonably high reputation score to indicate active, consistent participation.&#xD;&#xA; - Show an interest in their meta’s community-building activities.&#xD;&#xA; - Lead by example, showing patience and respect for their fellow community members in everything they write.&#xD;&#xA; - Exhibit those intangible traits discussed in A Theory of Moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bonus points for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Members with participation in both meta and the parent site (i.e. interest in both community building and expertise in the field).&#xD;&#xA; - Area 51 participation, social network referrals, or blogging about the site.&#xD;&#xA; - Members who have already shown an interest or ability to promote their community." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7873" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5" RevisionGUID="da9bfb47-d932-41fb-a9aa-5de8254c9675" CreationDate="2012-02-05T04:24:03.887" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[311],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7874" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="581" RevisionGUID="26a15035-528d-4be9-8a51-e8a6ba121c40" CreationDate="2012-02-05T04:28:27.110" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7875" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="559" RevisionGUID="17f17809-30cd-41b4-a590-8613f14692de" CreationDate="2012-02-05T04:31:45.187" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="3" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7876" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="548" RevisionGUID="61e03caa-963b-40c8-94c2-16bb4269762f" CreationDate="2012-02-05T04:33:04.653" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Purpose of Community Wiki](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I just posted [this][1] question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I saw no options to make it community wiki. I remember that option. Why I don't see it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20363/what-is-the-most-inspiring-speech-from-a-developer-you-ever-watched" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7877" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="548" RevisionGUID="e9bffa57-4c2b-4744-895c-174787c8e399" CreationDate="2012-02-05T04:33:01.550" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[8],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7878" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3055" RevisionGUID="95426960-986f-4804-ba12-977fe2b3e2c3" CreationDate="2012-02-05T09:18:34.063" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 79 characters in body" Text="Getting Involved&#xD;&#xA;================&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I submit an article idea?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a couple of different ways to submit an idea. The first, and easiest, is to send an email to **blog.pse.se [at] gmail.com** with your name, a suggested title for your idea, and a brief description of your idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-- or --&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jump into the [P.SE blog chat room][3] and send a message to me (@JarrodNettles) with the same information. I may not respond right away but rest assured that I will see it and get it into the pipeline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are intending to write the article yourself, **please say so** - otherwise I will assume that it is just an idea and it will be &quot;up for grabs&quot; on our Trello board.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I want to write!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Excellent, writers are the lifeblood of any good blog. Without great content, our blog will be empty and dry. If you want to write email us as at **blog.pse.se [at] gmail.com** or contact me in the P.SE blog room (@JarrodNettles) and I can walk you through getting started.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**...but can't think of a topic**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No problem! We're using [Trello][4] to organize our efforts and we already have a decent sized list of topics just itching to be written about. Just send an email that you're interested in writing for the blog and we'll set you up with access to Trello and a contributor account on WordPress.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I don't want to write but I'm a good proofreader.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Go ahead and send the email explaining, and we can set you up with an account on Wordpress that will allow you to proofread articles that are in the publication pipeline. We really want this blog to come across professionally and good proofreading and editing are **critical** contributions that we will need. Nothing kills the professionalism of an article like a misspelled word or severe grammatical errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/2359/2-19&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://trello.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nxp7M.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kMfhC.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ys4cF.png&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EjIPW.png&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/E5r3U.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7879" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="465" RevisionGUID="1360d3be-1d49-4db6-8b51-a6b20c666ebd" CreationDate="2012-02-06T06:30:05.583" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Renaming the site to match it&amp;#39;s FAQ or changing the FAQ to match the site name?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Right now, it's &quot;Programmers&quot;, which was a good name at the beginning. However, the FAQ contains so much more now (and I love the new topics for discussion here, except for code golf): software engineering, testing, tools/techniques, algorithms and data structures, design patterns, architecture, methodologies, QA, law, business concerns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although many people who are interested in these are programmers, I think a name that invokes engineering, craftsmanship, or development would be better. Lots of people interested in these topics are or were programmers, but these topics go far beyond programming and include people who aren't programmers (architects typically aren't programmers, but were at one time, as an example).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7880" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="465" RevisionGUID="e72e28e8-7197-46ad-a9cf-95e38ec981ee" CreationDate="2012-02-06T06:30:04.757" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[2948],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7881" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="596" RevisionGUID="b403066a-9b2e-4f66-b6af-00c11b542401" CreationDate="2012-02-06T06:34:25.250" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="3" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7882" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="609" RevisionGUID="ae3d6ade-c92a-4eb7-a36d-16052cab2dc6" CreationDate="2012-02-06T06:42:02.543" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [New Design Launched](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/687/new-design-launched)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Hi all. I'm [Jin][1], and I'll be working on the designs for the Stack Exchange sites as they graduate from the beta phase. Each site will have its own unique theme that will reflect its topic. However, all sites will share quite a bit of common elements so they feel like they're part of the Stack Exchange family.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since most user of the base on this site is familiar with Stackoverflow.com, I decided to go with a clean and simple design similar to SO, but with slightly more visual elements. The focus is still on readability and keeping the familiarity you have with SO.com. Layout structure-wise, I'm not changing much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also read the suggestions from the [logo thread][2]. I like the idea of using symbols as part of the logo. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(click image to view full resolution version)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/m0xSo.png&quot;&gt;![alt text][3]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;update&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you for your feedback. I have revise the initial mockup per your suggestions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RoM17.png&quot;&gt;![alt text][4]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;some changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Green in the header is changed to cyan, I think it contrasts well against the darker background. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Updated the logo treatment to &quot;} Programmers {&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Added &amp;lt;!- --&amp;gt; around the tag line.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Removed monospace font in top nav&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Question link color is now in blue instead of green.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Redid the tag treatment, so they're less boxy. I feel simpler () treament makes the home/question pages airier. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll be hanging out in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&quot;&gt;chatroom&lt;/a&gt;, feel free to drop by.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;UPDATE 2&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you for the feedback! I've decided to go with a different approach with the design which I think will work better for the Programmers site. I'm locking this thread so no additional feedback will be posted about the old mockup. I'll start a new post for the next design. Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/our-designer-in-residence-jin-yang/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/m0xSo.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RoM17.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7883" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="609" RevisionGUID="51384e79-2962-4514-936a-33ae823a8a6b" CreationDate="2012-02-06T06:42:02.013" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[687],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7884" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="655" RevisionGUID="74a633bb-6983-4f2e-ad9d-5c7dc2d6c11a" CreationDate="2012-02-06T06:43:08.377" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [New Design Launched](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/687/new-design-launched)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;First, I want to thank you for your valuable feedback for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed&quot;&gt;first design concept&lt;/a&gt;. Programmers.SE is a site about people and conceptual design more than coding. The old design simply did not reflect that; so it failed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I talked to Jeff about this, and he agrees that Programmers.se is much different from Stackoverflow. I quote him:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is when you sit down in front of the compiler,&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is when you sit down in front of the whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Dan Grossman and Jon Purdy also thought a whiteboard theme was more appropriate from their comments regarding the first design review, and I agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since late last week I've been working on a whiteboard theme, and I'm pleased with the outcome. I feel it gives the site a more positive and personal touch, and has some similarities from the Beta theme. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(click to see full res version.)*&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MQPlw.png&quot;&gt;![alt text][2]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The handwritten font in the title, top nav and section header is &lt;a href=&quot;http://callsignkatejones.deviantart.com/art/House-Whiteboard-font-64929545&quot;&gt;House Whiteboard&lt;/a&gt;. Yes, it is actually Hugh Laurie's handwriting. (&quot;It's Not Lupus!&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the question title typeface, I tried a few &quot;handwritten&quot; ones; they looked great visually, but they scored rather poorly on readability. I eventually went with &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/webfonts/family?family=Yanone+Kaffeesatz&amp;subset=latin&quot;&gt;Yanone Kaffeesatz&lt;/a&gt;. I feel it has that soft look, and works well with the whiteboard theme.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please let me know what you think. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**bonus:** (the making of)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/hmenW.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MQPlw.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7885" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="655" RevisionGUID="69eb64a5-dc48-400f-86ff-fe6ef4eae295" CreationDate="2012-02-06T06:43:07.737" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[687],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7886" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3059" RevisionGUID="3c3079bc-8366-4578-b493-1fd58305f007" CreationDate="2012-02-06T15:59:56.727" UserId="47" Text="So one thing that keeps coming up is the number of questions that are closed solely by moderator action on this site. We've already been over some of the issues, but I'm going to take this opportunity to &lt;s&gt;write up a guide here on meta&lt;/s&gt; blatantly rip off a guide to closing from [Ninefingers' post on Cryptography meta](http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/129/a-guide-to-moderating-crypto-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7887" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3059" RevisionGUID="3c3079bc-8366-4578-b493-1fd58305f007" CreationDate="2012-02-06T15:59:56.727" UserId="47" Text="A guide to moderation: Voting to close a question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7888" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3059" RevisionGUID="3c3079bc-8366-4578-b493-1fd58305f007" CreationDate="2012-02-06T15:59:56.727" UserId="47" Text="|discussion|faq|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7889" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3060" RevisionGUID="9fdcf2fa-685d-410c-9948-a8d9dc9ad3db" CreationDate="2012-02-06T16:02:52.450" UserId="47" Text="&lt;sub&gt;Adapted from [Cryptography meta](http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/a/130), originally posted by [Ninefingers](http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/users/46/ninefingers)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Rationale: why do we close questions?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are really two ways to do moderation. If you've been on any of the `.moderated` newsgroups you'll be well aware that to get a post on there, it needs to undergo a review process first and be accepted. The aim is to keep problem discussions from arising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE is slightly different - it works the other way. *Anyone* can ask a question on SE and closing a question is the equivalent of putting that question *back into review/improve mode*. It's a feedback mechanism designed to react to problem cases only, so the usual business of asking and answering good questions can just... *happen*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why do we close a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The philosophy of SE is that each site handles questions on *problems you face* or things you are trying to understand. The [don't ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section of the FAQ gives you a good overview of things that don't work - to summarise:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions invite arguments or extended debate that suck up time when members could be helping other people.&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions are too broad, too narrow or have other content problems.&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions belong elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These have been worked out over time and with a lot of experience from Stack Overflow and are, *broadly speaking* true. Sometimes, exceptions are made - it is always a case-by-case thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is closing like deletion?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, and this is an important distinction, deletion is a different concept on SE. Closed questions are put &quot;into improve mode&quot; if you like, and are still visible for *anyone* to improve. That's the idea. Deleted questions are different - they have a red background and are invisible to all but high reputation users. So deletion is different and solves a slightly different problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What are the requirements for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have 3000 reputation on the site you can vote to close any question for the reasons above. More on that in a moment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you do not have this level of reputation, you will find that under the flag menu, you have an option &quot;this question does not belong here&quot;. That will raise a flag for users who can vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why can anyone vote to close/reopen**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firstly, anyone can vote to close or reopen (or flag as such) because it is *your site*. This is really important - it's about expressing what you feel works and doesn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How are moderators different?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderator close votes complete the required vote count immediately, no matter how many people have voted. This applies for both close/reopen votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially, as the reputation requirement rules out many users, you will see moderators doing most of the closing to guide the site and look after the content. As you gain in reputation, you get to join in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Ok, so how does it work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Example close button][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, the important piece. Voting to close works like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Underneath the question, there will be a close link. When you click on this, you will be presented with a list of options from which you can pick a close reason most appropriate to the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Close vote reasons dialog][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * If other people have voted, you will see blue numbers against the reason they chose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Other votes][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The exact duplicate page takes you to a page that allows you to specify a question to close as an exact duplicate against.&#xD;&#xA; * The &quot;off topic&quot; page will present you with two options - one to migrate here, to meta, and one just off topic. On SE betas, only moderators can send questions elsewhere, so feel free to cast a vote here and flag if you have a target in mind.&#xD;&#xA; * The other options are straight out closes.&#xD;&#xA; * Once you pick your option and click &quot;close&quot;, your vote is registered. You cannot retract it at this stage, but nobody else, including moderators, will know it was you who voted.&#xD;&#xA; * If five people agree, the question will be closed. You've seen the effect of these before.&#xD;&#xA; * Your name, and the name of other closers, will appear on the bottom of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Close banner][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How does vote to re-open work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A closed question has a &quot;reopen&quot; link underneath it. If you click this, a dialog box will ask you if you are sure - click yes and your vote will be registered to re-open the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below, you can see an example of the re-open link with two votes registered for re-opening (out of five).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Re-open link][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What happens if I make a mistake?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't worry! Unless five people agree, or a moderator agrees, the question won't be closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I've seen a closed question and I disagree. What can I do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, one option is to use your re-open vote! You can also always raise a discussion here on meta to seek clarification on why a question is closed and hopefully either a resolution will be reached, or you will get an explanation for the closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My name appears on the bottom - isn't this going to cause problems with other users?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually, surprisingly few closed questions generate any response at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you experience difficulties as a result of closing a question, you can and should contact a moderator via the flag mechanism (which is anonymous). We can then take any necessary action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I find questions I might need to close? What about re-opens?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually there are two tools for this. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Review][6]. Here, there are a number of options for seeing things that might need say editing. One of these is a tab for all questions with close votes. You are then free to look at the question and decide if you agree.&#xD;&#xA; * [Tools][7]. Commonly referred to as the &quot;10k tools&quot;, this page let's you see even more information - certain anonymous flags, re-open votes, delete votes etc. The important one for this is the re-open page. Here, you can see questions that might have been closed incorrectly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qogGL.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/THms0.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/69Kak.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/K3F4V.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/syw4O.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7890" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3059" RevisionGUID="ea5217f3-55a5-42f2-ab0b-612f63368452" CreationDate="2012-02-06T16:11:25.950" UserId="47" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="One thing that keeps coming up is the number of questions that are closed solely by moderator action on this site. We've already been over some of the issues, but I'm going to take this opportunity to &lt;s&gt;write up a guide here on meta&lt;/s&gt; blatantly rip off a guide to closing from [Ninefingers' post on Cryptography meta](http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/129/a-guide-to-moderating-crypto-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7891" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3060" RevisionGUID="71f7056f-33ab-4689-901d-fb3b271671c1" CreationDate="2012-02-06T16:41:39.750" UserId="31260" Comment="&quot;off topic&quot; page will present you with [three options][8] -&gt; [8]: http://i.stack.imgur.com/lKScm.jpg &quot;screen shot&quot;" Text="&lt;sub&gt;Adapted from [Cryptography meta](http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/a/130), originally posted by [Ninefingers](http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/users/46/ninefingers)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Rationale: why do we close questions?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are really two ways to do moderation. If you've been on any of the `.moderated` newsgroups you'll be well aware that to get a post on there, it needs to undergo a review process first and be accepted. The aim is to keep problem discussions from arising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE is slightly different - it works the other way. *Anyone* can ask a question on SE and closing a question is the equivalent of putting that question *back into review/improve mode*. It's a feedback mechanism designed to react to problem cases only, so the usual business of asking and answering good questions can just... *happen*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why do we close a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The philosophy of SE is that each site handles questions on *problems you face* or things you are trying to understand. The [don't ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section of the FAQ gives you a good overview of things that don't work - to summarise:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions invite arguments or extended debate that suck up time when members could be helping other people.&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions are too broad, too narrow or have other content problems.&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions belong elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These have been worked out over time and with a lot of experience from Stack Overflow and are, *broadly speaking* true. Sometimes, exceptions are made - it is always a case-by-case thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is closing like deletion?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, and this is an important distinction, deletion is a different concept on SE. Closed questions are put &quot;into improve mode&quot; if you like, and are still visible for *anyone* to improve. That's the idea. Deleted questions are different - they have a red background and are invisible to all but high reputation users. So deletion is different and solves a slightly different problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What are the requirements for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have 3000 reputation on the site you can vote to close any question for the reasons above. More on that in a moment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you do not have this level of reputation, you will find that under the flag menu, you have an option &quot;this question does not belong here&quot;. That will raise a flag for users who can vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why can anyone vote to close/reopen**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firstly, anyone can vote to close or reopen (or flag as such) because it is *your site*. This is really important - it's about expressing what you feel works and doesn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How are moderators different?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderator close votes complete the required vote count immediately, no matter how many people have voted. This applies for both close/reopen votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially, as the reputation requirement rules out many users, you will see moderators doing most of the closing to guide the site and look after the content. As you gain in reputation, you get to join in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Ok, so how does it work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Example close button][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, the important piece. Voting to close works like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Underneath the question, there will be a close link. When you click on this, you will be presented with a list of options from which you can pick a close reason most appropriate to the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Close vote reasons dialog][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * If other people have voted, you will see blue numbers against the reason they chose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Other votes][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The exact duplicate page takes you to a page that allows you to specify a question to close as an exact duplicate against.&#xD;&#xA; * The &quot;off topic&quot; page will present you with [three options][8] - one to migrate here, to meta, one to migrate to Stack Overflow and one just off topic. On SE betas, only moderators can send questions elsewhere, so feel free to cast a vote here and flag if you have a target in mind.&#xD;&#xA; * The other options are straight out closes.&#xD;&#xA; * Once you pick your option and click &quot;close&quot;, your vote is registered. You cannot retract it at this stage, but nobody else, including moderators, will know it was you who voted.&#xD;&#xA; * If five people agree, the question will be closed. You've seen the effect of these before.&#xD;&#xA; * Your name, and the name of other closers, will appear on the bottom of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Close banner][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How does vote to re-open work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A closed question has a &quot;reopen&quot; link underneath it. If you click this, a dialog box will ask you if you are sure - click yes and your vote will be registered to re-open the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below, you can see an example of the re-open link with two votes registered for re-opening (out of five).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Re-open link][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What happens if I make a mistake?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't worry! Unless five people agree, or a moderator agrees, the question won't be closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I've seen a closed question and I disagree. What can I do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, one option is to use your re-open vote! You can also always raise a discussion here on meta to seek clarification on why a question is closed and hopefully either a resolution will be reached, or you will get an explanation for the closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My name appears on the bottom - isn't this going to cause problems with other users?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually, surprisingly few closed questions generate any response at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you experience difficulties as a result of closing a question, you can and should contact a moderator via the flag mechanism (which is anonymous). We can then take any necessary action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I find questions I might need to close? What about re-opens?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually there are two tools for this. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Review][6]. Here, there are a number of options for seeing things that might need say editing. One of these is a tab for all questions with close votes. You are then free to look at the question and decide if you agree.&#xD;&#xA; * [Tools][7]. Commonly referred to as the &quot;10k tools&quot;, this page let's you see even more information - certain anonymous flags, re-open votes, delete votes etc. The important one for this is the re-open page. Here, you can see questions that might have been closed incorrectly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qogGL.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/THms0.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/69Kak.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/K3F4V.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/syw4O.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/lKScm.jpg &quot;screen shot&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7892" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3061" RevisionGUID="fa202d53-31c1-4157-a3d5-458deed0e38e" CreationDate="2012-02-06T19:47:47.600" UserId="39651" Text="I'm an Independent Software Vender. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Can I ask for advice on tax-related matters on Programmers? &#xD;&#xA;2. If not, is there a place on the SE network where I can?&#xD;&#xA;3. My question is specifically about Apple's App Store and some tax details there. Would that change the answer to either #1 or #2 above?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7893" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3061" RevisionGUID="fa202d53-31c1-4157-a3d5-458deed0e38e" CreationDate="2012-02-06T19:47:47.600" UserId="39651" Text="ISV - can I ask tax-related questions on Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7894" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3061" RevisionGUID="fa202d53-31c1-4157-a3d5-458deed0e38e" CreationDate="2012-02-06T19:47:47.600" UserId="39651" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7895" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3062" RevisionGUID="affb3928-ddda-4535-badc-2ad11f571223" CreationDate="2012-02-06T19:52:54.553" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="1. No, that'd be off-topic here: Programmers's expertise is in software development, not accounting or tax law.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Again, and unfortunately, no: legal issues like this don't fit into the Stack Exchange model very well: they almost always rely on knowing your specific situation, and people trying to Google that information later on are either going to be misled at best or be given harmful advice at worst.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. It would not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange can do a lot of things, but unfortunately, we're not a substitute for a good CPA. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7896" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3061" RevisionGUID="ac095007-7500-4ae4-9b56-f5694f169682" CreationDate="2012-02-06T19:55:08.043" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7897" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3063" RevisionGUID="94db320d-e372-4679-9c1e-12f8a72019eb" CreationDate="2012-02-06T19:56:28.493" UserId="41381" Text="it would be on topic is the tax related part was unrelated to the rest of the question. Like &quot;should i keep all tax related logic in a separate module?&quot; or something." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7898" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3062" RevisionGUID="2976d9cf-0047-482f-9dd6-4021e1d22e70" CreationDate="2012-02-06T20:10:43.330" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 182 characters in body" Text="1. No, that'd be off-topic here: Programmers's expertise is in software development, not accounting or tax law.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Legal issues like this don't fit into the Stack Exchange model very well: they almost always rely on knowing your specific situation, and people trying to Google that information later on are either going to be misled at best or be given harmful advice at worst.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  However, you might want to try over at [Personal Finance &amp; Money.SE](http://money.stackexchange.com): they're likely not going to entertain specifics, but they might be able to help with general tax issues. I'd ask on their [meta-discussion site](http://meta.money.stackexchange.com) first, like you did here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. It would not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange can do a lot of things, but unfortunately, we're not a substitute for a good CPA. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7899" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3060" RevisionGUID="a8915f6e-b056-4ead-8d60-a289b2fa105a" CreationDate="2012-02-06T21:09:38.107" UserId="47" />
  <row Id="7900" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3060" RevisionGUID="a8915f6e-b056-4ead-8d60-a289b2fa105a" CreationDate="2012-02-06T21:09:38.107" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="&lt;sub&gt;Adapted from [Cryptography meta](http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/a/130), originally posted by [Ninefingers](http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/users/46/ninefingers)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Rationale: why do we close questions?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are really two ways to do moderation. If you've been on any of the `.moderated` newsgroups you'll be well aware that to get a post on there, it needs to undergo a review process first and be accepted. The aim is to keep problem discussions from arising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE is slightly different - it works the other way. *Anyone* can ask a question on SE and closing a question is the equivalent of putting that question *back into review/improve mode*. It's a feedback mechanism designed to react to problem cases only, so the usual business of asking and answering good questions can just... *happen*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why do we close a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The philosophy of SE is that each site handles questions on *problems you face* or things you are trying to understand. The [don't ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section of the FAQ gives you a good overview of things that don't work - to summarise:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions invite arguments or extended debate that suck up time when members could be helping other people.&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions are too broad, too narrow or have other content problems.&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions belong elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These have been worked out over time and with a lot of experience from Stack Overflow and are, *broadly speaking* true. Sometimes, exceptions are made - it is always a case-by-case thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is closing like deletion?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, and this is an important distinction, deletion is a different concept on SE. Closed questions are put &quot;into improve mode&quot; if you like, and are still visible for *anyone* to improve. That's the idea. Deleted questions are different - they have a red background and are invisible to all but high reputation users. So deletion is different and solves a slightly different problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What are the requirements for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have 3000 reputation on the site you can vote to close any question for the reasons above. More on that in a moment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you do not have this level of reputation, you will find that under the flag menu, you have an option &quot;this question does not belong here&quot;. That will raise a flag for users who can vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why can anyone vote to close/reopen**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firstly, anyone can vote to close or reopen (or flag as such) because it is *your site*. This is really important - it's about expressing what you feel works and doesn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How are moderators different?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderator close votes complete the required vote count immediately, no matter how many people have voted. This applies for both close/reopen votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially, as the reputation requirement rules out many users, you will see moderators doing most of the closing to guide the site and look after the content. As you gain in reputation, you get to join in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Ok, so how does it work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Example close button][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, the important piece. Voting to close works like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Underneath the question, there will be a close link. When you click on this, you will be presented with a list of options from which you can pick a close reason most appropriate to the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Close vote reasons dialog][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * If other people have voted, you will see blue numbers against the reason they chose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Other votes][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The exact duplicate page takes you to a page that allows you to specify a question to close as an exact duplicate against.&#xD;&#xA; * The &quot;off topic&quot; page will present you with [three options][8] - one to migrate here, to meta, one to migrate to Stack Overflow and one just off topic. On SE betas, only moderators can send questions elsewhere, so feel free to cast a vote here and flag if you have a target in mind.&#xD;&#xA; * The other options are straight out closes.&#xD;&#xA; * Once you pick your option and click &quot;close&quot;, your vote is registered. You cannot retract it at this stage, but nobody else, including moderators, will know it was you who voted.&#xD;&#xA; * If five people agree that the question needs closing, the question will be closed, even if they don't agree on the reason. You've seen the effect of these before.&#xD;&#xA; * The majority vote is chosen as the published close reason. This is a simple 3/2 split for all reasons except for migration, which requires a 4/1 majority. In the case of a 2/2/1 split the the last voted reason wins.&#xD;&#xA; * Your name, and the name of other closers, will appear on the bottom of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Close banner][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How does vote to re-open work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A closed question has a &quot;reopen&quot; link underneath it. If you click this, a dialog box will ask you if you are sure - click yes and your vote will be registered to re-open the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below, you can see an example of the re-open link with two votes registered for re-opening (out of five).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Re-open link][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What happens if I make a mistake?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't worry! Unless five people agree, or a moderator agrees, the question won't be closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I've seen a closed question and I disagree. What can I do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, one option is to use your re-open vote! You can also always raise a discussion here on meta to seek clarification on why a question is closed and hopefully either a resolution will be reached, or you will get an explanation for the closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My name appears on the bottom - isn't this going to cause problems with other users?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually, surprisingly few closed questions generate any response at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you experience difficulties as a result of closing a question, you can and should contact a moderator via the flag mechanism (which is anonymous). We can then take any necessary action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I find questions I might need to close? What about re-opens?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually there are two tools for this. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Review][6]. Here, there are a number of options for seeing things that might need say editing. One of these is a tab for all questions with close votes. You are then free to look at the question and decide if you agree.&#xD;&#xA; * [Tools][7]. Commonly referred to as the &quot;10k tools&quot;, this page let's you see even more information - certain anonymous flags, re-open votes, delete votes etc. The important one for this is the re-open page. Here, you can see questions that might have been closed incorrectly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qogGL.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/THms0.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/69Kak.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/K3F4V.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/syw4O.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/lKScm.jpg &quot;screen shot&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7901" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3060" RevisionGUID="8fdfbffb-5fff-4f1a-b780-f2356d97ae68" CreationDate="2012-02-06T22:04:38.157" UserId="47" Comment="correction to migration rules" Text="&lt;sub&gt;Adapted from [Cryptography meta](http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/a/130), originally posted by [Ninefingers](http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/users/46/ninefingers)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Rationale: why do we close questions?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are really two ways to do moderation. If you've been on any of the `.moderated` newsgroups you'll be well aware that to get a post on there, it needs to undergo a review process first and be accepted. The aim is to keep problem discussions from arising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE is slightly different - it works the other way. *Anyone* can ask a question on SE and closing a question is the equivalent of putting that question *back into review/improve mode*. It's a feedback mechanism designed to react to problem cases only, so the usual business of asking and answering good questions can just... *happen*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why do we close a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The philosophy of SE is that each site handles questions on *problems you face* or things you are trying to understand. The [don't ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section of the FAQ gives you a good overview of things that don't work - to summarise:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions invite arguments or extended debate that suck up time when members could be helping other people.&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions are too broad, too narrow or have other content problems.&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions belong elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These have been worked out over time and with a lot of experience from Stack Overflow and are, *broadly speaking* true. Sometimes, exceptions are made - it is always a case-by-case thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is closing like deletion?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, and this is an important distinction, deletion is a different concept on SE. Closed questions are put &quot;into improve mode&quot; if you like, and are still visible for *anyone* to improve. That's the idea. Deleted questions are different - they have a red background and are invisible to all but high reputation users. So deletion is different and solves a slightly different problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What are the requirements for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have 3000 reputation on the site you can vote to close any question for the reasons above. More on that in a moment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you do not have this level of reputation, you will find that under the flag menu, you have an option &quot;this question does not belong here&quot;. That will raise a flag for users who can vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why can anyone vote to close/reopen**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firstly, anyone can vote to close or reopen (or flag as such) because it is *your site*. This is really important - it's about expressing what you feel works and doesn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How are moderators different?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderator close votes complete the required vote count immediately, no matter how many people have voted. This applies for both close/reopen votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially, as the reputation requirement rules out many users, you will see moderators doing most of the closing to guide the site and look after the content. As you gain in reputation, you get to join in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Ok, so how does it work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Example close button][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, the important piece. Voting to close works like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Underneath the question, there will be a close link. When you click on this, you will be presented with a list of options from which you can pick a close reason most appropriate to the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Close vote reasons dialog][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * If other people have voted, you will see blue numbers against the reason they chose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Other votes][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The exact duplicate page takes you to a page that allows you to specify a question to close as an exact duplicate against.&#xD;&#xA; * The &quot;off topic&quot; page will present you with [three options][8] - one to migrate here, to meta, one to migrate to Stack Overflow and one just off topic. Moderators can send questions elsewhere, so feel free to cast a vote here and flag if you have a target in mind.&#xD;&#xA; * The other options are straight out closes.&#xD;&#xA; * Once you pick your option and click &quot;close&quot;, your vote is registered. You cannot retract it at this stage, but nobody else, including moderators, will know it was you who voted.&#xD;&#xA; * If five people agree that the question needs closing, the question will be closed, even if they don't agree on the reason. You've seen the effect of these before.&#xD;&#xA; * The majority vote is chosen as the published close reason. This is a simple 3/2 split for all reasons except for migration, which requires a 4/1 majority. In the case of a 2/2/1 split the the last voted reason wins.&#xD;&#xA; * Your name, and the name of other closers, will appear on the bottom of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Close banner][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How does vote to re-open work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A closed question has a &quot;reopen&quot; link underneath it. If you click this, a dialog box will ask you if you are sure - click yes and your vote will be registered to re-open the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below, you can see an example of the re-open link with two votes registered for re-opening (out of five).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Re-open link][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What happens if I make a mistake?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't worry! Unless five people agree, or a moderator agrees, the question won't be closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I've seen a closed question and I disagree. What can I do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, one option is to use your re-open vote! You can also always raise a discussion here on meta to seek clarification on why a question is closed and hopefully either a resolution will be reached, or you will get an explanation for the closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My name appears on the bottom - isn't this going to cause problems with other users?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually, surprisingly few closed questions generate any response at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you experience difficulties as a result of closing a question, you can and should contact a moderator via the flag mechanism (which is anonymous). We can then take any necessary action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I find questions I might need to close? What about re-opens?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually there are two tools for this. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Review][6]. Here, there are a number of options for seeing things that might need say editing. One of these is a tab for all questions with close votes. You are then free to look at the question and decide if you agree.&#xD;&#xA; * [Tools][7]. Commonly referred to as the &quot;10k tools&quot;, this page let's you see even more information - certain anonymous flags, re-open votes, delete votes etc. The important one for this is the re-open page. Here, you can see questions that might have been closed incorrectly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qogGL.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/THms0.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/69Kak.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/K3F4V.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/syw4O.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/lKScm.jpg &quot;screen shot&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7902" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3060" RevisionGUID="ee857077-9b03-4c84-94cc-369eb0b531ec" CreationDate="2012-02-06T23:32:38.450" UserId="47" Comment="correction" Text="&lt;sub&gt;Adapted from [Cryptography meta](http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/a/130), originally posted by [Ninefingers](http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/users/46/ninefingers)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Rationale: why do we close questions?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are really two ways to do moderation. If you've been on any of the `.moderated` newsgroups you'll be well aware that to get a post on there, it needs to undergo a review process first and be accepted. The aim is to keep problem discussions from arising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE is slightly different - it works the other way. *Anyone* can ask a question on SE and closing a question is the equivalent of putting that question *back into review/improve mode*. It's a feedback mechanism designed to react to problem cases only, so the usual business of asking and answering good questions can just... *happen*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why do we close a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The philosophy of SE is that each site handles questions on *problems you face* or things you are trying to understand. The [don't ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section of the FAQ gives you a good overview of things that don't work - to summarise:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions invite arguments or extended debate that suck up time when members could be helping other people.&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions are too broad, too narrow or have other content problems.&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions belong elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These have been worked out over time and with a lot of experience from Stack Overflow and are, *broadly speaking* true. Sometimes, exceptions are made - it is always a case-by-case thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is closing like deletion?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, and this is an important distinction, deletion is a different concept on SE. Closed questions are put &quot;into improve mode&quot; if you like, and are still visible for *anyone* to improve. That's the idea. Deleted questions are different - they have a red background and are invisible to all but high reputation users. So deletion is different and solves a slightly different problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What are the requirements for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have 3000 reputation on the site you can vote to close any question for the reasons above. More on that in a moment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you do not have this level of reputation, you will find that under the flag menu, you have an option &quot;this question does not belong here&quot;. That will raise a flag for users who can vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why can anyone vote to close/reopen**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firstly, anyone can vote to close or reopen (or flag as such) because it is *your site*. This is really important - it's about expressing what you feel works and doesn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How are moderators different?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderator close votes complete the required vote count immediately, no matter how many people have voted. This applies for both close/reopen votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially, as the reputation requirement rules out many users, you will see moderators doing most of the closing to guide the site and look after the content. As you gain in reputation, you get to join in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Ok, so how does it work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Example close button][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, the important piece. Voting to close works like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Underneath the question, there will be a close link. When you click on this, you will be presented with a list of options from which you can pick a close reason most appropriate to the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Close vote reasons dialog][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * If other people have voted, you will see blue numbers against the reason they chose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Other votes][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The exact duplicate page takes you to a page that allows you to specify a question to close as an exact duplicate against.&#xD;&#xA; * The &quot;off topic&quot; page will present you with [three options][8] - one to migrate here, to meta, one to migrate to Stack Overflow and one just off topic. Moderators can send questions elsewhere, so feel free to cast a vote here and flag if you have a target in mind.&#xD;&#xA; * The other options are straight out closes.&#xD;&#xA; * Once you pick your option and click &quot;close&quot;, your vote is registered. You cannot retract it at this stage, but nobody else, including moderators, will know it was you who voted.&#xD;&#xA; * If five people agree that the question needs closing, the question will be closed, even if they don't agree on the reason. You've seen the effect of these before.&#xD;&#xA; * The majority vote is chosen as the published close reason. This is a simple 3/2 split. In the case of a 2/2/1 split the the last voted reason wins.&#xD;&#xA; * Your name, and the name of other closers, will appear on the bottom of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Close banner][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How does vote to re-open work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A closed question has a &quot;reopen&quot; link underneath it. If you click this, a dialog box will ask you if you are sure - click yes and your vote will be registered to re-open the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below, you can see an example of the re-open link with two votes registered for re-opening (out of five).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Re-open link][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What happens if I make a mistake?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't worry! Unless five people agree, or a moderator agrees, the question won't be closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I've seen a closed question and I disagree. What can I do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, one option is to use your re-open vote! You can also always raise a discussion here on meta to seek clarification on why a question is closed and hopefully either a resolution will be reached, or you will get an explanation for the closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My name appears on the bottom - isn't this going to cause problems with other users?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually, surprisingly few closed questions generate any response at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you experience difficulties as a result of closing a question, you can and should contact a moderator via the flag mechanism (which is anonymous). We can then take any necessary action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I find questions I might need to close? What about re-opens?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually there are two tools for this. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Review][6]. Here, there are a number of options for seeing things that might need say editing. One of these is a tab for all questions with close votes. You are then free to look at the question and decide if you agree.&#xD;&#xA; * [Tools][7]. Commonly referred to as the &quot;10k tools&quot;, this page let's you see even more information - certain anonymous flags, re-open votes, delete votes etc. The important one for this is the re-open page. Here, you can see questions that might have been closed incorrectly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qogGL.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/THms0.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/69Kak.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/K3F4V.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/syw4O.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/lKScm.jpg &quot;screen shot&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7903" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3061" RevisionGUID="30f478ec-eab2-4b83-a8c3-017157fdb5f0" CreationDate="2012-02-06T23:45:46.997" UserId="39651" Comment="added 176 characters in body" Text="I'm an Independent Software Vender. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [&quot;FAQ&quot; page on Programmer's Meta][1] states that appropriate questions include &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Can I ask for advice on tax-related matters on Programmers? &#xD;&#xA;2. If not, is there a place on the SE network where I can?&#xD;&#xA;3. My question is specifically about Apple's App Store and some tax details there. Would that change the answer to either #1 or #2 above?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7904" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3064" RevisionGUID="7c679ac6-562b-4df6-b4a7-2dafa7dcd647" CreationDate="2012-02-07T09:13:30.077" UserId="20065" Text="How to decide whether a question belongs on [programmers][1] or [cs][2] site? Is there a general rule on how to decide what kind of questions belong on these two?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have read both FAQs, and it looks like these two SE sites have many things in common. Or, am I mistaken?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7905" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3064" RevisionGUID="7c679ac6-562b-4df6-b4a7-2dafa7dcd647" CreationDate="2012-02-07T09:13:30.077" UserId="20065" Text="How is programmers different from CS?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7906" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3064" RevisionGUID="7c679ac6-562b-4df6-b4a7-2dafa7dcd647" CreationDate="2012-02-07T09:13:30.077" UserId="20065" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7907" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3065" RevisionGUID="ff5fa8e7-ecb6-4f07-85a3-3c1fb8408115" CreationDate="2012-02-07T09:19:34.770" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="**CSTheory.SE** is for research- and graduate-level questions in theoretical computer science. If you're not a graduate student or a person with a PhD in computer science, the site's not the place you're looking to ask a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE** is for professional-level, high-level questions in software development and programming. If you're working on a practical problem in a professional setting and trying to figure out some high-level question, this is where you want to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Stack Overflow** is for programming questions of all levels that deal with working directly with code: if you want help with code not compiling, specific implementation issues, and other low-level stuff, you'll want to ask there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no site currently that best serves undergraduate-level computer science questions. They're on-topic here and on Stack Overflow, but they do fair-to-middling at best. There is [a site proposal currently in the commitment phase](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/35636/computer-science?referrer=RaYobbitpqczXN85c5ibxQ2) for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7908" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3064" RevisionGUID="e73962bc-741e-424f-851a-86240130cc19" CreationDate="2012-02-07T09:19:55.127" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|on-topic-definition|computer-science|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7909" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3065" RevisionGUID="b22c5244-360e-4243-8f96-c8b537001182" CreationDate="2012-02-07T09:24:44.137" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited body" Text="**CSTheory.SE** is for research- and graduate-level questions in theoretical computer science. If you're not a graduate student or a person with a PhD in computer science, the site's not the place you're looking to ask a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE** is for professional-level, high-level questions in software development and programming. If you're working on a practical problem in a professional setting and trying to figure out some high-level question, this is where you want to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Stack Overflow** is for programming questions of all levels that deal with working directly with code: if you want help with code not compiling, specific implementation issues, and other low-level stuff, you'll want to ask there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no site that best serves undergraduate-level computer science questions currently. They're on-topic here and on Stack Overflow, but they do fair-to-middling at best. There is [a site proposal currently in the commitment phase](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/35636/computer-science?referrer=RaYobbitpqczXN85c5ibxQ2) for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7910" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3064" RevisionGUID="64b08496-5cdb-476c-becb-192631641b06" CreationDate="2012-02-07T09:33:39.750" UserId="31260" Comment="CS -&gt; Theoretical CS" Text="How to decide whether a question belongs on [Programmers.SE][1] or [CSTheory.SE][2] site? Is there a general rule on how to decide what kind of questions belong on these two?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have read both FAQs, and it looks like these two SE sites have many things in common. Or, am I mistaken?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7911" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3064" RevisionGUID="64b08496-5cdb-476c-becb-192631641b06" CreationDate="2012-02-07T09:33:39.750" UserId="31260" Comment="CS -&gt; Theoretical CS" Text="How is Programmers different from Theoretical CS?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7912" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3066" RevisionGUID="db291db5-77ec-499c-a81b-43107aa46a60" CreationDate="2012-02-07T13:34:50.257" UserId="40989" Text="I agree that Math formatting could be a very nice feature, as it is available in numerous SE sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is helpful to formalize some problems, and I personnaly do not understand the workaround that is suggested." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7913" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3066" RevisionGUID="4dd06551-e08f-4661-a4e1-2d038bc3073a" CreationDate="2012-02-07T13:43:17.257" UserId="40989" Comment="added 382 characters in body" Text="I agree that Math formatting could be a very nice feature, as it is available in numerous SE sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is helpful to formalize some problems, and I personnaly do not understand the workaround that is suggested.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example in this [question][1] I'd have preferred to explain my solution mathematically without actually giving the code. And I would have like to be able to provide the formula for computing the performances: $p_t = \frac{p_{t+1}}{p_t}$&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/133738/how-to-unit-test-computational-libraries-when-the-return-type-is-double" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7914" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3067" RevisionGUID="44d5e363-71e0-466e-ae53-5cb53b4af7de" CreationDate="2012-02-07T14:13:10.013" UserId="25936" Text="Could we merge [tag:team] with [tag:teamwork]? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Went quickly through their questions, they seem to discuss exactly the same topic. And they are high on my list of cleanup candidates, merging them into a single tag would help a bit.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7915" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3067" RevisionGUID="44d5e363-71e0-466e-ae53-5cb53b4af7de" CreationDate="2012-02-07T14:13:10.013" UserId="25936" Text="Synonym / merge request: [team] → [teamwork]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7916" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3067" RevisionGUID="44d5e363-71e0-466e-ae53-5cb53b4af7de" CreationDate="2012-02-07T14:13:10.013" UserId="25936" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7917" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3068" RevisionGUID="fdfb0b3b-e793-45ac-878e-f38d3130423e" CreationDate="2012-02-07T15:45:56.853" UserId="29" Text="Back in the day, the Programmers site was initially created as the Off-Topic site for Stackoverflow. Many of the [most interesting and most favorited questions][1] form early in this site's life have now been closed as subjective or not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand why the questions have been closed. While I may disagree with closing many of them, that is not what I am arguing for. What I am suggesting is that there needs to be a new site in the stackExhange network specifically for interesting programming questions that are subjective. I know that the theory is that the SO engine doesn't work well for subjective questions, but the evidence shows that there is an audience that enjoys them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/60785/top-40-closed-questions-most-favorited" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7918" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3068" RevisionGUID="fdfb0b3b-e793-45ac-878e-f38d3130423e" CreationDate="2012-02-07T15:45:56.853" UserId="29" Text="Do we need a new Off-Topic site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7919" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3068" RevisionGUID="fdfb0b3b-e793-45ac-878e-f38d3130423e" CreationDate="2012-02-07T15:45:56.853" UserId="29" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7920" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3069" RevisionGUID="efe0d52b-dfbf-46d6-a901-d5fcbfa1acb5" CreationDate="2012-02-07T15:49:13.733" UserId="2654" Text="I think the results from the Programmers “off-topic” experiment showed that off-topic questions can't be bucketed together by the singluar fact that they are off-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7922" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3068" RevisionGUID="066127a2-365b-4461-9184-e5f54bbee0f0" CreationDate="2012-02-07T15:52:02.533" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Offtopic posts - Can they be moved rather than closed?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2304/offtopic-posts-can-they-be-moved-rather-than-closed)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Back in the day, the Programmers site was initially created as the Off-Topic site for Stackoverflow. Many of the [most interesting and most favorited questions][1] form early in this site's life have now been closed as subjective or not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand why the questions have been closed. While I may disagree with closing many of them, that is not what I am arguing for. What I am suggesting is that there needs to be a new site in the stackExhange network specifically for interesting programming questions that are subjective. I know that the theory is that the SO engine doesn't work well for subjective questions, but the evidence shows that there is an audience that enjoys them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/60785/top-40-closed-questions-most-favorited" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7923" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3068" RevisionGUID="17deaeb4-95e3-417e-bbbb-367c5493ceda" CreationDate="2012-02-07T15:52:01.440" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[2304],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7924" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3068" RevisionGUID="8c129464-ca4d-4e01-8d59-d8ef8acbf0be" CreationDate="2012-02-07T15:52:43.937" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 129 characters in body" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicates:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Offtopic posts - Can they be moved rather than closed?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2304/offtopic-posts-can-they-be-moved-rather-than-closed)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back in the day, the Programmers site was initially created as the Off-Topic site for Stackoverflow. Many of the [most interesting and most favorited questions][1] form early in this site's life have now been closed as subjective or not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand why the questions have been closed. While I may disagree with closing many of them, that is not what I am arguing for. What I am suggesting is that there needs to be a new site in the stackExhange network specifically for interesting programming questions that are subjective. I know that the theory is that the SO engine doesn't work well for subjective questions, but the evidence shows that there is an audience that enjoys them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/60785/top-40-closed-questions-most-favorited" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7927" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3071" RevisionGUID="8d624a21-5804-4e6e-a1aa-ee26d6673d37" CreationDate="2012-02-07T16:32:39.393" UserId="1130" Text="I don't think [tag:team] is the same as [tag:teamwork]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see [tag:team] as being about interactions between the team, team dynamics, or team composition, while [tag:teamwork] is about working together as a team to accomplish a similar goal." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7928" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3068" RevisionGUID="613a7126-c201-496c-a4b8-7cf472b2d2df" CreationDate="2012-02-07T18:09:30.940" UserId="226" Comment="added 122 characters in body" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicates:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Offtopic posts - Can they be moved rather than closed?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2304/offtopic-posts-can-they-be-moved-rather-than-closed)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2508/should-there-be-another-stackexchange-site-for-programmers &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back in the day, the Programmers site was initially created as the Off-Topic site for Stackoverflow. Many of the [most interesting and most favorited questions][1] form early in this site's life have now been closed as subjective or not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand why the questions have been closed. While I may disagree with closing many of them, that is not what I am arguing for. What I am suggesting is that there needs to be a new site in the stackExhange network specifically for interesting programming questions that are subjective. I know that the theory is that the SO engine doesn't work well for subjective questions, but the evidence shows that there is an audience that enjoys them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/60785/top-40-closed-questions-most-favorited" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7929" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3072" RevisionGUID="d843e986-b31f-492a-a26d-514746975ff8" CreationDate="2012-02-07T20:10:20.807" UserId="34364" Text="Congrats to Yannis Rizos and Thomas Owens! They are our newest members to the P.SE Moderator Team. I have a feeling this site is only going to get better." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7930" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3072" RevisionGUID="d843e986-b31f-492a-a26d-514746975ff8" CreationDate="2012-02-07T20:10:20.807" UserId="34364" Text="Congratulations Yannis Rizos and Thomas Owens: Our Newest Community Moderators!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7931" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3072" RevisionGUID="d843e986-b31f-492a-a26d-514746975ff8" CreationDate="2012-02-07T20:10:20.807" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7932" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3073" RevisionGUID="1a3110fa-25b2-4083-be77-c6cdc51ba1b8" CreationDate="2012-02-07T20:43:55.467" UserId="1130" Text="For those interested in election results:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    OpenSTV version 1.7 (http://www.OpenSTV.org/)&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Suggested donation for using OpenSTV for an election is $50.  Please go to &#xD;&#xA;    http://www.OpenSTV.org/donate to donate via PayPal, Google Checkout, or&#xD;&#xA;    Amazon Payments.  &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Certified election reports are also available.  Please go to &#xD;&#xA;    http://www.openstv.org/certified-reports for more information.&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Loading ballots from file programmers-stackexchange-com-2012-election-results.blt.&#xD;&#xA;    Ballot file contains 9 candidates and 298 ballots.&#xD;&#xA;    No candidates have withdrawn.&#xD;&#xA;    Ballot file contains 298 non-empty ballots.&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Counting votes for Programmers Moderator Election 2012 using Meek STV.&#xD;&#xA;    9 candidates running for 2 seats.&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;     R|Thomas Owens|maple_shaft |Yannis Rizos|World Engine|Jae         |Jonathan Kho&#xD;&#xA;      |            |            |            |er          |            |o           &#xD;&#xA;      |------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------&#xD;&#xA;      |SnOrfus     |Karl Bielefe|Glenn Nelson|Exhausted   |Surplus     |Threshold   &#xD;&#xA;      |            |ldt         |            |            |            |            &#xD;&#xA;    ================================================================================&#xD;&#xA;     1|   80.000000|   34.000000|   69.000000|   13.000000|    8.000000|   20.000000&#xD;&#xA;      |   31.000000|   22.000000|   21.000000|    0.000000|    0.000000|   99.333334&#xD;&#xA;      |-----------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;      | Count of first choices.&#xD;&#xA;    ================================================================================&#xD;&#xA;     2|   81.000000|   34.000000|   69.000000|   14.000000|            |   22.000000&#xD;&#xA;      |   31.000000|   23.000000|   23.000000|    1.000000|    0.000000|   99.000001&#xD;&#xA;      |-----------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;      | Count after eliminating Jae and transferring votes. All losing candidates&#xD;&#xA;      | are eliminated.&#xD;&#xA;    ================================================================================&#xD;&#xA;     3|   83.000000|   36.000000|   74.000000|            |            |   26.000000&#xD;&#xA;      |   31.000000|   23.000000|   23.000000|    2.000000|    0.000000|   98.666667&#xD;&#xA;      |-----------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;      | Count after eliminating World Engineer and transferring votes. All losing&#xD;&#xA;      | candidates are eliminated.&#xD;&#xA;    ================================================================================&#xD;&#xA;     4|   86.000000|   37.000000|   76.000000|            |            |   28.000000&#xD;&#xA;      |   32.000000|   33.000000|            |    6.000000|    0.000000|   97.333334&#xD;&#xA;      |-----------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;      | Count after eliminating Glenn Nelson and transferring votes. All losing&#xD;&#xA;      | candidates are eliminated. Candidates Karl Bielefeldt and Glenn Nelson were&#xD;&#xA;      | tied when choosing candidates to eliminate. Candidate Glenn Nelson was&#xD;&#xA;      | chosen by breaking the tie at round 1.&#xD;&#xA;    ================================================================================&#xD;&#xA;     5|   93.000000|   40.000000|   80.000000|            |            |            &#xD;&#xA;      |   38.000000|   37.000000|            |   10.000000|    0.000000|   96.000001&#xD;&#xA;      |-----------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;      | Count after eliminating Jonathan Khoo and transferring votes. All losing&#xD;&#xA;      | candidates are eliminated.&#xD;&#xA;    ================================================================================&#xD;&#xA;     6|   95.000000|   47.000000|   90.000000|            |            |            &#xD;&#xA;      |   44.000000|            |            |   22.000000|    2.999999|   92.000001&#xD;&#xA;      |-----------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;      | Count after eliminating Karl Bielefeldt and transferring votes. All losing&#xD;&#xA;      | candidates are eliminated. Candidate Thomas Owens has reached the threshold&#xD;&#xA;      | and is elected.&#xD;&#xA;    ================================================================================&#xD;&#xA;     7|  112.000000|   53.000000|   98.000000|            |            |            &#xD;&#xA;      |            |            |            |   35.000000|   34.666666|   87.666667&#xD;&#xA;      |-----------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;      | Count after eliminating SnOrfus and transferring votes. All losing&#xD;&#xA;      | candidates are eliminated. Candidate Yannis Rizos has reached the threshold&#xD;&#xA;      | and is elected.&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Winners are Thomas Owens and Yannis Rizos." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7933" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3072" RevisionGUID="5fb22ced-8c80-4cbe-98e2-3511d2bfd756" CreationDate="2012-02-07T21:02:42.313" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7934" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3074" RevisionGUID="18b9bbec-dc88-4a51-97bf-398468640aae" CreationDate="2012-02-07T21:22:44.077" UserId="1554" Text="I couldn't have lost to a better group of people. Congratulations guys!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7935" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3075" RevisionGUID="7af3795a-2dba-498b-80a6-208e12e85549" CreationDate="2012-02-07T23:45:54.233" UserId="28877" Text="I [noticed][1] and [so did several others][2] that vote counts seemed very low for the 2012 moderator elections. Here are some statistics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Moderator Election for 2012**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 5,874 voters were eligible  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2,198 visited the site during the election  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 652 visited the election page  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **297** voted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems like a depressingly low participation rate for our site and I'll admit that I was shocked when I saw the results. I was interested and decided to a small case study to see how we compared to other sites on the StackExchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Just as a note - I am not a statistician and the numbers presented here are rather basic computations. However, I believe that they communicate an encouraging trend for our community.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I visited election pages for every other full, non-beta site on the network that held an election at some point in early to mid 2011. The following graph is a scatter plot for each of these sites of what I call **Interested User Conversion (IUC)** rate. This percentage is computed by:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Number of Votes Cast* **/** *Number of People Who Visited the Election Page*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![2011 interested user conversion][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Where was Programmers.SE IUC in 2011?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stackoverflow - 35.173%  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Serverfault - 54.770%  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE - **55.448%**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; *StackExchange Overall* - 63.483%  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means that in 2011, roughly 55% of people who were eligible to vote and visited our election page actually bothered to vote. That's actually a very strong percentage and not that surprising - people involved with the site in its earliest phases tend to be stronger supporters and more interested in things like elections.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does this stack up to our 2012 elections? Only a handful of sites have completed elections so far, so I only have Stack Overflow and Server Fault to compare ourselves against.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Basic 2012 Comparisons**  &#xD;&#xA;![2012 runoff][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had 66% more eligible voters this election than in 2011, and we increased our number of votes by about 23%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Compare this with Stack Overflow which added around 40% more eligible voters and only managed to increase their votes by **.48%**. That's right - Stack Overflow participation remained **virtually static** in spite of their increased voter base. Our own numbers are even stronger when looked at in this light:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Stack Overflow** added 29,130 eligible voters **but only had 24 additional people vote**.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Serverfault** added 2,516 eligible voters and had 102 **FEWER** people vote.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Programmers.SE** added 3,944 eligible voters and had 68 additional people vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now lets look at the **IUC** statistic I brought up with 2011 a little earlier.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Where was Programmers.SE IUC in 2012?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stackoverflow - 27.953%  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Serverfault - 43.882%  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE - **45.552%**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had a decrease in the ratio of our participation - this is to be expected. We will always add more users than will participate in things like elections. However, our growth rate is very encouraging, especially compared to Stack Overflow and Serverfault.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election/2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3303991#3303991&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PH68A.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/R1AZK.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7936" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3075" RevisionGUID="7af3795a-2dba-498b-80a6-208e12e85549" CreationDate="2012-02-07T23:45:54.233" UserId="28877" Text="What do our &quot;low&quot; 2012 election numbers mean?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7937" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3075" RevisionGUID="7af3795a-2dba-498b-80a6-208e12e85549" CreationDate="2012-02-07T23:45:54.233" UserId="28877" Text="|discussion|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7938" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3076" RevisionGUID="2018960a-e5f0-40af-b6c2-913ddafcc3a5" CreationDate="2012-02-08T00:13:53.327" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="I called it but I didn't expect that big a margin; well done." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7939" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3075" RevisionGUID="cdbf1cb6-3976-46d4-871d-3692a8278a2d" CreationDate="2012-02-08T00:59:03.243" UserId="28877" Comment="added 6 characters in body" Text="I [noticed][1] and [so did several others][2] that vote counts seemed very low for the 2012 moderator elections. Here are some statistics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Moderator Election for 2012**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 5,874 voters were eligible  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2,198 visited the site during the election  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 652 visited the election page  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **297** voted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems like a depressingly low participation rate for our site and I'll admit that I was shocked when I saw the results. I was interested and decided to a small case study to see how we compared to other sites on the StackExchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Just as a note - I am not a statistician and the numbers presented here are rather basic computations. However, I believe that they communicate an encouraging trend for our community.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I visited election pages for every other full, non-beta site on the network that held an election at some point in early to mid 2011. The following graph is a scatter plot for each of these sites of what I call **Interested User Conversion (IUC)** rate. This percentage is computed by:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Number of People Who Voted* **/** *Number of People Who Visited the Election Page*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**StackExchange IUC Scatterplot**&#xD;&#xA;![2011 interested user conversion][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Where was Programmers.SE IUC in 2011?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stackoverflow - 35.173%  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Serverfault - 54.770%  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE - **55.448%**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; *StackExchange Overall* - 63.483%  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means that in 2011, roughly 55% of people who were eligible to vote and visited our election page actually bothered to vote. That's actually a very strong percentage and not that surprising - people involved with the site in its earliest phases tend to be stronger supporters and more interested in things like elections.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does this stack up to our 2012 elections? Only a handful of sites have completed elections so far, so I only have Stack Overflow and Server Fault to compare ourselves against.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Basic 2012 Comparisons**  &#xD;&#xA;![2012 runoff][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had 66% more eligible voters this election than in 2011, and we increased our number of votes by about 23%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Compare this with Stack Overflow which added around 40% more eligible voters and only managed to increase their votes by **.48%**. That's right - Stack Overflow participation remained **virtually static** in spite of their increased voter base. Our own numbers are even stronger when looked at in this light:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Stack Overflow** added 29,130 eligible voters **but only had 24 additional people vote**.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Serverfault** added 2,516 eligible voters and had 102 **FEWER** people vote.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Programmers.SE** added 3,944 eligible voters and had 68 additional people vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now lets look at the **IUC** statistic I brought up with 2011 a little earlier.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Where was Programmers.SE IUC in 2012?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stackoverflow - 27.953%  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Serverfault - 43.882%  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE - **45.552%**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had a decrease in the ratio of our participation - this is to be expected. We will always add more users than will participate in things like elections. However, our growth rate is very encouraging, especially compared to Stack Overflow and Serverfault.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election/2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3303991#3303991&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PH68A.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/R1AZK.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7940" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3077" RevisionGUID="6c7bfcba-0c8e-442a-9e6c-457ad599b135" CreationDate="2012-02-08T01:46:15.217" UserId="8016" Text="My question [here][1] was closed as a duplicate. However, my question is &quot;what is the best approach&quot; where the supposed duplicate is &quot;are there benefits&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Already know many of the benefits, I'm trying to best implement them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/133782/github-workflow-for-solo-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7941" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3077" RevisionGUID="6c7bfcba-0c8e-442a-9e6c-457ad599b135" CreationDate="2012-02-08T01:46:15.217" UserId="8016" Text="Consider reopening my question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7942" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3077" RevisionGUID="6c7bfcba-0c8e-442a-9e6c-457ad599b135" CreationDate="2012-02-08T01:46:15.217" UserId="8016" Text="|support|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7943" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3077" RevisionGUID="8f539cbf-d3d6-46ea-8941-584cfcb975f2" CreationDate="2012-02-08T01:57:28.697" UserId="8016" Comment="added 114 characters in body" Text="My question [here][1] was closed as a duplicate. However, I feel strongly that the close is inaccurate. The linked question doesn't answer my question in the slightest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is &quot;what is the best approach&quot; where the supposed duplicate is &quot;are there benefits&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Already know many of the benefits, I'm trying to best implement them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/133782/github-workflow-for-solo-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7944" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3077" RevisionGUID="8f539cbf-d3d6-46ea-8941-584cfcb975f2" CreationDate="2012-02-08T01:57:28.697" UserId="8016" Comment="added 114 characters in body" Text="Should this question be closed? Consider reopening" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7945" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3077" RevisionGUID="a5676db6-2d7f-43d7-9d64-4f1473069d64" CreationDate="2012-02-08T04:37:15.570" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7946" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3078" RevisionGUID="2640f160-10d6-4da9-8163-8d1f7235692a" CreationDate="2012-02-08T05:32:05.537" UserId="2654" Text="There were a couple possible choices to close with, duplicate seemed the easiest. There is also http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114258/as-a-sole-developer-for-now-how-should-i-be-using-git which might help you best.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're asking a few different questions rolled into one. How to relate git to svn, what is a good branch / commit / merge workflow for a single developer, how “master” works or should work in a repo. You need to edit the question to make one of these the main point, and then check to see if it isn't answered by one of the many other git related questions. I've listed a few here I think can be helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46039/git-in-non-distributed-independent-lone-programming-best-practices&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89025/what-should-be-the-workflow-with-a-git-repository&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37564/what-is-the-best-way-to-do-development-with-git&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7947" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2900" RevisionGUID="7a1e299e-8d6a-4b63-92bd-99231112c0ef" CreationDate="2012-02-08T06:31:22.043" UserId="226" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:226,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Anna Lear&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7948" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3079" RevisionGUID="15538a86-6456-4ad0-8699-492ccef8e9fa" CreationDate="2012-02-08T08:22:28.897" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Analysing those numbers, without actually talking to non-voters is useless. You should create a survey or make few phone calls.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are few hypothesis that should be verified:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Non voters just don't care.&#xD;&#xA;- Non voters did not find any interesting candidate.&#xD;&#xA;- Non voters were disapointed how previous moderators converted their promises.&#xD;&#xA;- Non voters were unable to vote &quot;technically&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;- Non voters were not aware that an election was currently running.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I personally think the first and last one are the most likely to occurs. After all, 297 voters is not so far to the number of &quot;really&quot; active users here isn't?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7949" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3080" RevisionGUID="ce8427ad-398d-44b7-951f-aac0f3d93db0" CreationDate="2012-02-08T14:23:11.243" UserId="6605" Text="Currently, there are five tags containing &quot;performance&quot; in their title:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:performance] (141, 38) *“Questions related to improving application performance [...]”*,&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-performance] **(10, 4)** No wiki summary,&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:web-performance] **(9, 0)** No wiki summary,&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:performance-tools] **(4, 1)** No wiki summary,&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:job-performance] **(7)** *“Questions related to excelling at one's current job [...] performance review”*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [tag:software-performance] and [tag:web-performance] brings nothing useful compared to the more popular [tag:performance], and so they must be merged. [tag:web-performance] might be more specific (for example, a question about CSS sprites is better tagged [tag:web-performance] then [tag:performance] since the technique is directly related to web, but still, the tag was not used very often to show its benefit. As for [tag:software-performance], I believe [Does object-orientation really affect algorithm performance?][1] question illustrates quite well how a more general [tag:performance] would be more appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [tag:performance-tools] may be removed too, since it probably encourages off-topic questions of two types: [the ones][2] where people will ask for product recommendations (off-topic), and the ones where people will ask how to use a specific product related to performance (off-topic, belongs to Superuser).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. [tag:job-performance] is a very different kind. It's not related to [tag:performance] as it is defined in its wiki summary, but to the job, specifically the job of a developer. Therefore, this tag must remain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/125753/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/105285/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7950" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3080" RevisionGUID="ce8427ad-398d-44b7-951f-aac0f3d93db0" CreationDate="2012-02-08T14:23:11.243" UserId="6605" Text="Performance, website-performance, software-performance, performance-tools and job-performance tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7951" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3080" RevisionGUID="ce8427ad-398d-44b7-951f-aac0f3d93db0" CreationDate="2012-02-08T14:23:11.243" UserId="6605" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7952" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3080" RevisionGUID="0469e356-6779-4f05-a039-2906f6e732b5" CreationDate="2012-02-08T14:26:00.560" UserId="47" Comment="spelling" Text="Currently, there are five tags containing &quot;performance&quot; in their title:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:performance] (141, 38) *“Questions related to improving application performance [...]”*,&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-performance] **(10, 4)** No wiki summary,&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:web-performance] **(9, 0)** No wiki summary,&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:performance-tools] **(4, 1)** No wiki summary,&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:job-performance] **(7)** *“Questions related to excelling at one's current job [...] performance review”*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [tag:software-performance] and [tag:web-performance] brings nothing useful compared to the more popular [tag:performance], and so they must be merged. [tag:web-performance] might be more specific (for example, a question about CSS sprites is better tagged [tag:web-performance] than [tag:performance] since the technique is directly related to web, but still, the tag was not used very often to show its benefit. As for [tag:software-performance], I believe [Does object-orientation really affect algorithm performance?][1] question illustrates quite well how a more general [tag:performance] would be more appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [tag:performance-tools] may be removed too, since it probably encourages off-topic questions of two types: [the ones][2] where people will ask for product recommendations (off-topic), and the ones where people will ask how to use a specific product related to performance (off-topic, belongs to Super User).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. [tag:job-performance] is a very different kind. It's not related to [tag:performance] as it is defined in its wiki summary, but to the job, specifically the job of a developer. Therefore, this tag must remain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/125753/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/105285/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7953" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3081" RevisionGUID="2f9b8885-f83b-4b65-97e0-b8740e718004" CreationDate="2012-02-08T14:53:06.373" UserId="25476" Text=" &gt; We had 66% more eligible voters this election than in 2011, and we increased our number of votes by about 23%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Compare this with Stack Overflow which added around 40% more eligible voters and only managed to increase their votes by .48%. That's right - Stack Overflow participation remained virtually static in spite of their increased voter base.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This shouldn't surprise at all considering the average user of both sites.  Eligible voters are based on a meager amount of repuation at the site.  Consider the active userbase at Programmers, we are highly active, mostly self moderating, and IMHO a cut above your average software developer in that we tend to be more concerned with algorithms, software design, architecture, software project management ideologies, and higher order conceptual discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We tend to heavily vote up good and interesting questions, and mercilessly downvote poorly thought out inappropriate questions.  Considering that I can be a user for one week, and if I ask one good question and a good answer, I am already more than half the way there to becoming eligible from my participation in maybe a few questions or answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow is a completely different animal.  The barrier to entry is orders of magnitude greater.  Even for very specific questions, they tend to get detailed answers extremely quickly so the unanswered questions either are hopelessly vague and should be closed, or inordinately difficult problems that require a lot of work to answer well.  Now consider that the userbase is much larger and comprised of mostly people who have posted many questions and have provided 0 answers, questions with content like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - `Plz teh codez`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - `Urgently PLZZZZ!!!`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - `I am trying to write a regular expression that will help me parse HTML`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - `I need to do something extremely common and am allergic to Google searches`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now consider that this same mob never upvotes ... ANYTHING ... and they only accept answers when pressured to.  Add on top of that a flood of simply awful questions that present no meaningful information, have no use to anybody else and do not demonstrate what was attempted.  Because of this, those of us like myself who upvote GOOD questions when we can are greatly outnumbered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point I am ultimately trying to make is that it is much harder to get a high reputation on SO than on Programmers, and that considering the majority of SO users do not show even the slightest modicum of gratitude and appreciation to the selfless SO users who tirelessly work to solve their problems for them, well... I can't say it is surprising that so few of them bother to vote." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7954" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3082" RevisionGUID="3c3fd7df-d271-41d4-a221-23683e282202" CreationDate="2012-02-08T16:06:52.533" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Given that the blog is finally getting underway. I was wondering; how will we access it when it launches? Will it be up with the chat/faq bar or will it be somewhere else? How will people know that we have one? Side link? Banner ad?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7955" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3082" RevisionGUID="3c3fd7df-d271-41d4-a221-23683e282202" CreationDate="2012-02-08T16:06:52.533" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="How will the blog be accessed when it is launched?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7956" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3082" RevisionGUID="3c3fd7df-d271-41d4-a221-23683e282202" CreationDate="2012-02-08T16:06:52.533" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7957" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3083" RevisionGUID="fb157dc8-121e-47f8-adb7-210bff816347" CreationDate="2012-02-08T16:09:19.823" UserId="47" Text="The `blog` link in the footer will change from:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackexchange.com/?blb=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/?blb=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then when there's a new post the `chat` link in the header will be replaced by the `blog` link for 24 hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Contributors will have to bookmark the link for accessing the blog dashboard themselves." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7958" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3084" RevisionGUID="fc8233a8-f7ae-48eb-a6f7-65c8d6919eb9" CreationDate="2012-02-08T17:33:37.433" UserId="1130" Text="I joined the chat at `dba.stackexchange.com` and was quite surprised to find it was pretty active (at least during work hours, which is usually when I'm around)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I soon figured out that was because the users would spend time browsing SO questions looking for ones they'd like migrated to their site, discuss the question and its answers in chat, and if they liked it they would flag the question so a moderator would move it to their site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure if any of our users do this already, but I do know I've seen some great questions on SO which would be better on P.SE. This not only attracts users who find the question via Google to the site, but also kept the chat active since people would talk about the question and its answers before deciding if they should flag it or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, it wouldn't work without some moderator participation. I would not want to be flagging questions for our site unless a moderator had already approved the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if you guys are ok with it, I would probably spend a few minutes a day searching for good SO questions for our site and bring them up in chat for discussion, and hope other users pick up the trend :)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7959" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3084" RevisionGUID="fc8233a8-f7ae-48eb-a6f7-65c8d6919eb9" CreationDate="2012-02-08T17:33:37.433" UserId="1130" Text="Improving user participation in chat (and getting some good questions for the site)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7960" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3084" RevisionGUID="fc8233a8-f7ae-48eb-a6f7-65c8d6919eb9" CreationDate="2012-02-08T17:33:37.433" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7961" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3085" RevisionGUID="d0d93af9-fc89-411c-aca6-026c95a329ce" CreationDate="2012-02-08T17:36:27.233" UserId="47" Text="I know that for dba the SO were told that if a question gets flagged for migration by user X, Y or Z then treat it as though the mods had asked for the migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously it has to be based on evidence that these users are flagging great questions that will improve this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is something I'm happy to discuss with you and the other mods to see whether we can set something up like this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7962" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3084" RevisionGUID="87f2a905-ca47-4110-a933-615410a61e5f" CreationDate="2012-02-08T17:36:40.807" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|migration|chat|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7963" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3086" RevisionGUID="ea74921b-e2fe-40bf-b0db-c8d361417730" CreationDate="2012-02-08T20:22:23.867" UserId="1130" Text="There are some highly-voted questions on our site that don't match the FAQ, but I feel are extremely valuable to programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not want to see these go away in a purge, so can we keep these questions opened, but locked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/44177/1130&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/11312/1130&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/30355/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've found quite a few useful StackOverflow questions like this. They are locked with the following message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. More&#xD;&#xA;&gt; info: FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [List of freely available programming books](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books)&#xD;&#xA; - [Hidden Features of C#?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/9033/302677)&#xD;&#xA; - [Questions every good .NET developer should be able to answer?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/365489/302677)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7964" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3086" RevisionGUID="ea74921b-e2fe-40bf-b0db-c8d361417730" CreationDate="2012-02-08T20:22:23.867" UserId="1130" Text="Can we keep highly voted valuable questions open but locked?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7965" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3086" RevisionGUID="ea74921b-e2fe-40bf-b0db-c8d361417730" CreationDate="2012-02-08T20:22:23.867" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7966" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3059" RevisionGUID="9cf1ec7c-df48-4029-9f27-d40e6f9bccd1" CreationDate="2012-02-08T20:47:01.873" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/167348731828641792" />
  <row Id="7967" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3051" RevisionGUID="028e7228-e40e-4f46-a3ce-6ed10de9b03b" CreationDate="2012-02-08T23:47:03.737" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/167394039426064384" />
  <row Id="7968" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3087" RevisionGUID="c1f503b0-4dd7-4c44-b5fd-9e7cbab380db" CreationDate="2012-02-09T01:05:48.127" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This is a call for proposals for the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Provide one proposal per post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A tag cleanup proposal is a tag, or a collection of *highly* related tags (e.g., tags all sharing the same stem) that needs to be dealt with *en masse*. Besides naming the tag or tags to be handled, your proposal must specify:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **What the problem is.** Why does the tag need to be dealt with? What problems has it caused? Why can't it be handled by a tag merge/rename?&#xD;&#xA;2. **What the solution is.** Does the tag need to go away and replaced with set of new tags? What are those tags? Does it just need a quality review to make it less of a honeypot? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Discuss and vote on proposals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Use the comments on the proposal to discuss any improvements that can be made to the proposal. Be bold and revise proposals based off of those discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote up proposals you think should be done this round, and vote down proposals you don't think have merit, or should not be handled yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Clean up!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**On February 22nd, 2012 at 00:00 UTC or when a proposal gets a 5 score, whichever comes last, this call for proposals will be closed.** We will then handle each proposal with 5 score or higher one at a time in order of their score. A new post will be created that will detail the cleanup activities for the cleanup.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **This is not the place to discuss the merits of or improvements to the Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative.** If you'd like to propose changes to this process for future rounds, please do so on the [RFC for the initiative](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups).&#xD;&#xA;* **This is not a to-do list for unilateral action.** The purpose of the Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative is to be more transparent and organized about cleaning up tags. In order for this to work, it's important we work within the framework and achieve community consensus.&#xD;&#xA;* **Proposals should be reasonable in scope and clearly defined.** &quot;I think we should do something about low quality questions&quot; is not a proposal. &quot;Here's 50 tags someone should do about&quot; is too broad. &quot;I think X tag should be handled but I don't know how&quot; is too vague. [Use chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21) to flesh out an idea.&#xD;&#xA;* **Any proposals that don't meet the threshold can be suggested on later cleanups.** Once the proposals from this round have been handled, a new call for proposals round will begin. Use the time in between to refine and improve any proposal that doesn't make the cut.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7969" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3087" RevisionGUID="c1f503b0-4dd7-4c44-b5fd-9e7cbab380db" CreationDate="2012-02-09T01:05:48.127" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Structured Tag Cleanup — Call for proposals #1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7970" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3087" RevisionGUID="c1f503b0-4dd7-4c44-b5fd-9e7cbab380db" CreationDate="2012-02-09T01:05:48.127" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|featured|tags|posse|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7971" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3088" RevisionGUID="f2c51e13-9089-429f-b7e2-00944ded8235" CreationDate="2012-02-09T01:06:16.987" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Proposed tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:career], 626 questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not a general career advice site, but this tag has routinely been a honeypot for low-quality, broad, and general career questions; from career advice to workplace politics. We've attempted to clean this tag up a number of times in the past, and while we've made a significant dent in it (down from a high of 1,400 questions in July 2011), we still have a lot of work to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previous attempts to clean up the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/work-job-career-development-employment-career&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Solution&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Many questions in the tag are off-topic here and should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;* There are a number of highly upvoted—but closed—questions in the tag that need a final resolution: heroic edits to be reopened or deletion&#xD;&#xA;* The questions that do belong here need to be disambiguated:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:career-development] for questions about taking steps to improve one's programming career and *requires* the unique insights of a programmer   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:interview] for questions about interviewing for a software development position   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:hiring] for questions about hiring programmers and other software developers   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market] for questions about the prospects or what one needs to do to get a specific job in software development   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-title] for questions about what a specific type of software development job entails   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:project-management] for questions about managing the scope and requirements of a specific project   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:teamwork] for questions about working within a software development team&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and other, more specific tags as needed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7972" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3087" RevisionGUID="0870ad03-8c25-422f-8c5b-3ccac63fdbdf" CreationDate="2012-02-09T01:06:25.973" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="7973" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3088" RevisionGUID="eed5a0b4-8c8c-496e-ad39-b0decf846d54" CreationDate="2012-02-09T01:06:25.973" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="7976" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2990" RevisionGUID="b20a85b0-6b85-4bee-86c6-ebaf839f02eb" CreationDate="2012-02-09T01:53:13.187" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7977" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2982" RevisionGUID="2b84a188-62b8-4bc9-a2c7-c9088766a12f" CreationDate="2012-02-09T01:53:26.650" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7978" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2982" RevisionGUID="c8099195-8def-4aad-9c2f-ea79221a6fca" CreationDate="2012-02-09T01:53:32.700" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="7979" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3075" RevisionGUID="573cd189-9eb1-40ca-94b9-c4c23fa4f563" CreationDate="2012-02-09T02:47:04.430" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/167439341256323073" />
  <row Id="7980" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3090" RevisionGUID="524ea670-721b-4c6a-a4dd-320383fad803" CreationDate="2012-02-09T04:27:03.353" UserId="40327" Text="I read the question on [What is the best way to handle product versioning and branching of long term projects?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129543/what-is-the-best-way-to-handle-product-versioning-and-branching-of-long-term-pro)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I saw all the answers but I wanted to make a value edition to it by [proving the a support answer relevant to the question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/133947/40327) but I was down voted for the same. When I deleted it it still remains there to be marked in red stating &quot;deleted by owner X hours ago&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;May I understand the logic behind why my answer not getting removed completely ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7981" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3090" RevisionGUID="524ea670-721b-4c6a-a4dd-320383fad803" CreationDate="2012-02-09T04:27:03.353" UserId="40327" Text="What happens to answers if they are deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7982" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3090" RevisionGUID="524ea670-721b-4c6a-a4dd-320383fad803" CreationDate="2012-02-09T04:27:03.353" UserId="40327" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7983" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3091" RevisionGUID="0a677576-7b7e-4525-a136-2dc8552b8a5f" CreationDate="2012-02-09T04:31:21.053" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Almost everything in Stack Exchange has an undo for transparency purposes: for example, many posts can be deleted by the community as part of our community moderation process. Being able to see the deleted posts and undelete it helps keep that in check.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But deleted posts are generally not available to the public, even thought it might look like it at first blush. The only people who can see it are: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* You, because it's your post&#xD;&#xA;* People with over 10k reputation, because they have the ability to vote to undelete posts&#xD;&#xA;* Community-elected moderators, like me&#xD;&#xA;* Stack Exchange employees" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7985" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2373" RevisionGUID="901c5b82-e645-4532-bb28-262ee5c4d36d" CreationDate="2012-02-09T04:35:49.317" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Best practices is dead. Long live best practices" Text="While we [continue our work on cleaning up the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup), I thought I'd bring up the next tag clean-up project: killing the catch-all tags that could be applied to every question on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through the first two pages of tags, these include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-languages] (710 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:learning] (633 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-development] (335 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-practices] (222 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:recommendations] (129 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:advice] (113 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-engineering] (96 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:development] (77 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:fun] (18 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:homework] (10 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:holy-war] (7 questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I'm bringing these up now instead of waiting for the first project to complete is that I believe we can exercise the first option—[presented earlier for the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags)—on these tags: nuke them from orbit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, these tags can be applied to every single question on the site. Disambiguating these tags would entail replacing them with *anything else*, not simply a set of pre-defined disambiguation targets. With these tags, we're no better off if they're untagged or left tagged: they tell us nothing about the content of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you think? Is this a good idea, or is there a better way to approach killing these tags? Are there tags that should be on the list but aren't? Is there a serious case to be made for taking tags *off* this list?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea/1940#1940&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2152/blacklist-advice&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/421/is-a-recommendations-tag-really-necessary&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7986" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3091" RevisionGUID="9ed72857-7e01-4f4b-a539-6209a671ce92" CreationDate="2012-02-09T04:44:37.963" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Fix typo" Text="Almost everything in Stack Exchange has an undo for transparency purposes: for example, many posts can be deleted by the community as part of our community moderation process. Being able to see the deleted posts and undelete it helps keep that in check.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But deleted posts are generally not available to the public, even though it might look like it at first blush. The only people who can see it are: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* You, because it's your post&#xD;&#xA;* People with over 10k reputation, because they have the ability to vote to undelete posts&#xD;&#xA;* Community-elected moderators, like me&#xD;&#xA;* Stack Exchange employees" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7987" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3072" RevisionGUID="a3a8b3f9-066c-41af-94c0-8ae192d2081f" CreationDate="2012-02-09T05:47:04.470" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/167484640590970880" />
  <row Id="7988" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3092" RevisionGUID="8509579f-ee29-42ea-b7fd-f7e7f756ea43" CreationDate="2012-02-09T06:23:03.770" UserId="25936" Text="**Proposed tag**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:software-development], 343 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Problem**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's possibly the worst _on topic_ tag we have. _Every_ question is (or should be) about software-development, hence redundant. Furthermore the tag is oftenly coupled with other troublesome / ambiguous tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:best-practices] = [21 questions][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:software-engineering] = [17 questions][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:career] = [7 questions][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:productivity] = [8 questions][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:self-improvement] = [16 questions][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:jobs] = [3 questions][6] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, ~ 21% of [tag:software-development] questions attracted other clean up worthy tags. Also explicitly mentioned in the &quot;[The Death of Meta Tags][7]&quot; post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Solution** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Most open questions are perfectly on topic and otherwise appropriately tagged, appropriately retagging would suffice.  &#xD;&#xA;- There are about 30 questions that are only tagged [tag:software-development], those are going to be tricky ones. I went through them and the topics discussed on most of them are clear, so we can easily retag.&#xD;&#xA;- There are 75 closed questions that may or may not be salvageable. The tag may be bad, but it's mostly used on topic questions, so the closed ones are clearly problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the tag is no longer used, we should ask SE to burninate it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+best-practices&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+career&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+productivity&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+self-improvement&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://%5Bsoftware-development%5D%20%5Bjobs%5D&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7989" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3092" RevisionGUID="2ca2c31f-b88d-49d0-a5d6-b61f56f6f9c8" CreationDate="2012-02-09T06:23:03.770" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="7990" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3093" RevisionGUID="1a3fda16-8080-48af-a9db-00c36cddb4bc" CreationDate="2012-02-09T08:44:15.713" UserId="43367" Text="I am one of those non-voters; I didn't vote because I'm not really involved in the site (most of the time I lurk the Q&amp;A) even though I have the reputation required to vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I read the election page, but I haven't heard before of any of the candidates, the only things I knew about them were what they wrote on their &quot;cover letters&quot;; should I have voted, basing my choice only on those words? I didn't feel like that, so I passed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What am I trying to say is you should look a bit more at the behaviour of the users: are the ones who didn't vote regular users who actively engages in the site activities? Or are they much more like me, lurkers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A reputation of 100 is really easy to get, you get a 100 reputation bonus by registering to the site through StackExchange, so you can be eligible to vote even if you never ever visited the site after the first time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think an in-depth analysis of who those non-voters (and voters) are could help you understand the trend." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7991" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3087" RevisionGUID="e6e89b31-9f5f-4e2c-bbba-61637d85aa86" CreationDate="2012-02-09T08:47:06.400" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/167529945957011456" />
  <row Id="7992" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3094" RevisionGUID="f852f4f8-9ef4-4fe1-84e9-9149b4a6bcf9" CreationDate="2012-02-09T13:01:06.227" UserId="4" Text="**Proposed Tag**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:software-engineering]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Problem**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag is too vague to be meaningful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Solution**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag should be removed and replaced with more specific tags that more adequately describe what the question is about, whether its a methodology, a lifecycle phase, a career question, and so on. We already have several tags for each of these, but they are too numerous to name all of. A few examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:requirements]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:agile]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:project-management]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:architecture]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:metrics]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7993" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3094" RevisionGUID="4a1acf07-4146-4b3f-ab9c-1d56a53ef777" CreationDate="2012-02-09T13:01:06.227" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="7994" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3086" RevisionGUID="1e7a28c6-e183-45ae-8ca8-086275ff1de3" CreationDate="2012-02-09T15:35:00.950" UserId="1130" Comment="Made my question more specific so I am asking about specific questions, instead of list questions in general" Text="There are some highly-voted questions on our site that don't match the FAQ, but I feel are extremely valuable to programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've only been programming a few years, and when I came across these questions I felt like I found a goldmine of information. There's so much out there that I don't know I don't know, and having a bunch of things that can improve me as a programmer in a central location is extremely valuable to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not want to see these go away in a purge, so can we keep these questions opened, but locked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/11312/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I first saw this question a year or two back, and at the time I was fairly new to programmering, and usually worked by myself. Some of the answers to this questions are extremely useful to new programmers, and are a huge help in productivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; For example, I had no idea the kind of value an extra monitor would give me. When I saw that was rated one of the highest-voted answers, I asked for a 2nd monitor at work and was amazed at how much more productive it made me. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Another answer that assisted me was I didn't realize it was common for programmers to wear headphones or listen to music at work to help keep distractions out. I always thought that kind of behavior was rude and unprofessional, and would have never considered bring headphones in to work to shut out the distractions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Other answers that were of value to me was allocating time for research, and the value of having my own personal whiteboard. I now have both :) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/44177/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; There's so much good information in these answers that have helped me, but I'll try and highlight the ones that made the biggest change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; *Try to work with people smarter than yourself.* This helped me when the company decided it wanted to increase the size of their programming team, and I was responsible for finding a candidate. At first I considered hiring a few interns or juniors to help with the workload, and then I remembered this and decided to go for one person with more experience than myself to try and improve my own programming skills. The company was fine with that and I got my way, and I working with someone that has more experience than me has has taught me so much that I didn't realize I didn't know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; *listen to what others have to say, regardless of job title* I noticed I was weighing opinions based on who was telling me things. For example, we had a network guy who started dabbling in programming, and at the time I discounted some of his opinions because didn't think he knew what he was talking about. But I soon realized that just because someone is inexperienced does not mean they don't know what they're talking about, and we ended up implementing some of his suggestions after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; *Start a pet project* and *teaching others*. I think these were the two that lead me to starting my own programming blog, although I really couldn't pinpoint the exact answers because at the time there wasn't nearly this many answers and upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/30355/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Again, another one of those questions with so much good advice for new programmers that I don't even know where to start. But here are some of the answers that made the biggest impact on my programming style:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; *Avoid gold plating - do only what is asked of you (in terms of requirements)* I can't tell you how many times I would try and add extra features, or suggest things that weren't actually required. After reading this (and many other similar answers) I really started simplifying things and only building what was asked for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; *Don't reinvent the wheel, consider reusing past work and the work of others* I was one of those people who always liked to build stuff myself to using pre-made stuff. Answers like this were the reason I started using 3rd party libraries more, and I've actually managed to talk my company into purchasing a commercial library (Telerik) which has reduced development times by quite a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; *Avoid switching tasks too often. Distractions and task switching can kill a day* / *Eliminate distractions* I started noticing how much distractions and interruptions were affecting my productivity (I got interrupted a lot), and started doing things like putting my phone on DND for hours at a time when I needed to get stuff done. I noticed an immediate increase in productivity, and now most people know to email me if they want something that isn't an emergency instead of calling me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I realize much of this information can be found online, however seeing the suggestions with such a high amount of support from programmers (upvotes) really made me think about them again, and instead of simply taking note of it and moving on I actively went out and tried to make changes in my work environment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've found quite a few [open][1]-[but][2]-[locked][3] questions on StackOverflow which were are clearly not a good fit for the site, but contain so much useful information that they are locked with the following message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. More&#xD;&#xA;&gt; info: FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was hoping we could do the same for these questions since I think they contain a lot of good information for new programmers, and would hate to see them go away because they're a bad fit for the current site scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://tp://stackoverflow.com/q/9033/302677&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/365489/302677" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7995" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3086" RevisionGUID="1e7a28c6-e183-45ae-8ca8-086275ff1de3" CreationDate="2012-02-09T15:35:00.950" UserId="1130" Comment="Made my question more specific so I am asking about specific questions, instead of list questions in general" Text="Can we keep these highly voted valuable questions open, but locked?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7996" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3086" RevisionGUID="2bedfd14-18f0-427b-871c-c7f9679fe2dc" CreationDate="2012-02-09T16:04:15.320" UserId="1130" Comment="edited title" Text="Can we keep these questions open, but locked?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7997" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3085" RevisionGUID="8b17586d-633c-4632-9482-0a7025578565" CreationDate="2012-02-09T17:24:51.447" UserId="47" Comment="edited for sense" Text="I know that for dba the SO mods were told that if a question gets flagged for migration by user X, Y or Z then treat it as though the dba mods had asked for the migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously it has to be based on evidence that these users are flagging great questions that will improve this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is something I'm happy to discuss with you and the other mods to see whether we can set something up like this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7998" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3095" RevisionGUID="24d113ae-ac64-4437-a85c-ec67901cb4e0" CreationDate="2012-02-09T20:48:53.530" UserId="1458" Text="I'm not going to take a stance on whether these questions are welcome on Programmers Stack Exchange. However, consider this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * If the questions are worth having on the site, then you should not block them from gaining new answers, or from being commented on, or from being improved through edition.&#xD;&#xA; * If the questions are not worth having on the site, then they should be removed from the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Locking is not at all appropriate for questions that do not belong here, even if it was once thought they did. Locking was practiced on Stack Overflow as a **temporary** measure while the site's scope was settling. It has unfortunately lasted longer than it should have, but really, do not take example from that. Locking is appropriate as a temporary measure to prevent content wars. Locked questions with useful information buried inside dozens of answers do not help anyone. The information should be in answers to focused, searchable questions. Make up your mind: either the questions are useful, and then they should be **maintained** (hence open); or they are not, and then they should be **deleted**. Locking bad questions just for historical value makes no sense: you're [framing garbage](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/112910/do-not-lock-old-questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![framed garbage](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xYpi3.jpg &quot;framed garbage&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to retain the present content — sure, it probably does have nuggets of wisdom if you dig deep enough — a questions and answers platform is not the right place. Take it offsite! I hear there are plenty of companies who'll host your content for a small monetary consideration.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7999" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3096" RevisionGUID="0ae04ec0-4b8f-47ee-a985-4a5b095d24ab" CreationDate="2012-02-10T04:50:49.280" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I've heard there's a way to get questions reopened by doing something called a heroic edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is it, how can I do it properly, and how does it help?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8000" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3096" RevisionGUID="0ae04ec0-4b8f-47ee-a985-4a5b095d24ab" CreationDate="2012-02-10T04:50:49.280" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="What's all this about heroic edits?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8001" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3096" RevisionGUID="0ae04ec0-4b8f-47ee-a985-4a5b095d24ab" CreationDate="2012-02-10T04:50:49.280" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|support|closed-questions|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8002" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3096" RevisionGUID="cfe894cf-76bf-44fd-8188-359c95046b52" CreationDate="2012-02-10T04:50:55.740" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="8003" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3097" RevisionGUID="5a2d8438-db9d-4a99-992e-146317647d75" CreationDate="2012-02-10T04:51:15.567" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### What's a heroic edit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A heroic edit is any edits, or set of edits, that goes beyond the normal call of duty to help save a post from itself. They generally substantially revise a post to extract and make clear what, exactly, is so special about the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What's the point?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To maintain the quality and scope of a site, routine closures are a part of Stack Exchange. Closures are a way to signal from the community that a question has problems that must be addressed before it can accept new answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not a homogeneous community, and people do disagree. If a person disagrees that there's a problem with a question, they can vote to reopen the question (if they have enough rep) and/or convince other members of the community to vote to reopen. If 5 members of the community or one moderator is convinced, the question will be reopnened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If or when that fails, that's when the heroic edit comes in. By addressing the problems already identified by the closure, people will be more likely to be convinced the question should be ropened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### But I don't think there's anything wrong with the post!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fair enough: you can try to keep looking for people who agree with your assessment and can vote to reopen the question to do so. But by taking other people's concerns with the question seriously and addressing them, you're likely to convince more people about the value of the post faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Can I just do some minor copyediting and be done with it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Copyediting is a relatively minor issue and almost never the reason why a question gets closed. While improving the copy helps any post, it's unlikely to be enough to get a question reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So what do I need to do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Posts can be closed for a variety of reasons: there is no single type of heroic edit that'll work for all cases. The goal is to address why the post was closed, so understanding why others closed the question is essential. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Start by looking at the close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Exact duplicate:** people have determined the question duplicates the content of another one, or has enough overlap  that there is no point in rehashing the topic. Try to revise the question to avoid as much overlap with the earlier question as possible.&#xD;&#xA;* **Off topic:** people have determined the question does not fit within the site's scope. Try to think about the audience of the site and whether or not they have the unique expertise to answer the question . Revise the question to more clearly ask something about the subject the audience is an expert in.&#xD;&#xA;* **Not constructive:** people have determined that, while potentially on-topic, the question and answer pair not a good fit for the Stack Exchange style of Q&amp;A: it's not a practical problem, it's an open-ended question, it's a list, or it's a discussion. Review &quot;[Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&quot; and &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&quot;, identify how the question as it is now fails the guidance there, and address it.&#xD;&#xA;* **Not a real question:** people have determined that it's not clear the question is actually a question, is way too broad to be answered in the Stack Exchange format, or what the question is asking for. Revise the question to tease out the potential you see between the lines.&#xD;&#xA;* **Too localized:** people have determined the problem is so local to the user it's not going to help anyone in the future. Revise the question to generalize the problem and make it clear it's common other programmers face the same issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then check the comments on the question, or check the meta-discussion site to see what people have said about it. Try to address those concerns as well in your revisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, talk to the people who closed the question: they can explain what reservations they had with the question and help you address their concerns in your edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Your advice for heroically editing questions closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; is weak. What specifically can I do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not constructive covers a lot of issues. While talking with the people who closed the question can make the problems specific, there's some general advice:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **The question has a ton of answers, many of them short:** The question and answer pair has become a list, so it needs to be revised to not be one anymore. Ping a moderator in chat to work with them to help remove duplicate answers and consolidate answers into one canonical answer.&#xD;&#xA;* **The question is a rant or inflammatory:** Try to identify the legitimate problem the asker has and rewrite the question from a neutral point of view.&#xD;&#xA;* **The answers have dismissed the question and answered a different one:** If all the answers have addressed a different question because the question asked something unanswerable, revise the question to match the answers received.&#xD;&#xA;* **Many of the answers have dismissed the question by providing [non-answers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion):** Flag non-answers, no matter how upvoted they are, for deletion. Xkcd, Dilbert, overused clichés, and one-line adages are not answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Okay, so I've made my heroic edit. What now?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most really good heoric edits will attract reopen votes quickly and automatically. You can also flag it for moderator review or [post the question in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21) to see if you can get others to reopen the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I made all these edits, but it's still not reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all questions can be saved, even with the most heroic of edits. Other times, people still aren't convinced the issues have been addressed. If you think the question should be reopened and talking to individual people hasn't made that happen, open up a question on meta to discuss what—if anything—can be done to get the question reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8004" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3097" RevisionGUID="17b19058-c458-470c-9f02-800701b28c41" CreationDate="2012-02-10T04:51:15.567" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="8005" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3097" RevisionGUID="a3cd0acb-d675-4bec-9520-a7d55157dbea" CreationDate="2012-02-10T04:56:23.347" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited body" Text="### What's a heroic edit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A heroic edit is any edits, or set of edits, that goes beyond the normal call of duty to help save a post from itself. They generally substantially revise a post to extract and make clear what, exactly, is so special about the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What's the point?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To maintain the quality and scope of a site, routine closures are a part of Stack Exchange. Closures are a way to signal from the community that a question has problems that must be addressed before it can accept new answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not a homogeneous community, and people do disagree. If a person disagrees that there's a problem with a question, they can vote to reopen the question (if they have enough rep) and/or convince other members of the community to vote to reopen. If 5 members of the community or one moderator is convinced, the question will be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If or when that fails, that's when the heroic edit comes in. By addressing the problems already identified by the closure, people will be more likely to be convinced the question should be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### But I don't think there's anything wrong with the post!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fair enough: you can try to keep looking for people who agree with your assessment and can vote to reopen the question to do so. But by taking other people's concerns with the question seriously and addressing them, you're likely to convince more people about the value of the post faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Can I just do some minor copyediting and be done with it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Copyediting is a relatively minor issue and almost never the reason why a question gets closed. While improving the copy helps any post, it's unlikely to be enough to get a question reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So what do I need to do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Posts can be closed for a variety of reasons: there is no single type of heroic edit that'll work for all cases. The goal is to address why the post was closed, so understanding why others closed the question is essential. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Start by looking at the close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Exact duplicate:** people have determined the question duplicates the content of another one, or has enough overlap  that there is no point in rehashing the topic. Try to revise the question to avoid as much overlap with the earlier question as possible.&#xD;&#xA;* **Off topic:** people have determined the question does not fit within the site's scope. Try to think about the audience of the site and whether or not they have the unique expertise to answer the question . Revise the question to more clearly ask something about the subject the audience is an expert in.&#xD;&#xA;* **Not constructive:** people have determined that, while potentially on-topic, the question and answer pair not a good fit for the Stack Exchange style of Q&amp;A: it's not a practical problem, it's an open-ended question, it's a list, or it's a discussion. Review &quot;[Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&quot; and &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&quot;, identify how the question as it is now fails the guidance there, and address it.&#xD;&#xA;* **Not a real question:** people have determined that it's not clear the question is actually a question, is way too broad to be answered in the Stack Exchange format, or what the question is asking for. Revise the question to tease out the potential you see between the lines.&#xD;&#xA;* **Too localized:** people have determined the problem is so local to the user it's not going to help anyone in the future. Revise the question to generalize the problem and make it clear it's common other programmers face the same issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then check the comments on the question, or check the meta-discussion site to see what people have said about it. Try to address those concerns as well in your revisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, talk to the people who closed the question: they can explain what reservations they had with the question and help you address their concerns in your edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Your advice for heroically editing questions closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; is weak. What specifically can I do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not constructive covers a lot of issues. While talking with the people who closed the question can make the problems specific, there's some general advice:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **The question has a ton of answers, many of them short:** The question and answer pair has become a list, so it needs to be revised to not be one anymore. Ping a moderator in chat to work with them to help remove duplicate answers and consolidate answers into one canonical answer.&#xD;&#xA;* **The question is a rant or inflammatory:** Try to identify the legitimate problem the asker has and rewrite the question from a neutral point of view.&#xD;&#xA;* **The answers have dismissed the question and answered a different one:** If all the answers have addressed a different question because the question asked something unanswerable, revise the question to match the answers received.&#xD;&#xA;* **Many of the answers have dismissed the question by providing [non-answers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion):** Flag non-answers, no matter how upvoted they are, for deletion. Xkcd, Dilbert, overused clichés, and one-line adages are not answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Okay, so I've made my heroic edit. What now?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most really good heroic edits will attract reopen votes quickly and automatically. You can also flag it for moderator review or [post the question in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21) to see if you can get others to reopen the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I made all these edits, but it's still not reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all questions can be saved, even with the most heroic of edits. Other times, people still aren't convinced the issues have been addressed. If you think the question should be reopened and talking to individual people hasn't made that happen, open up a question on meta to discuss what—if anything—can be done to get the question reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8006" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3097" RevisionGUID="609c98fe-08d2-4512-ae89-078a35aa6596" CreationDate="2012-02-10T05:00:34.137" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 9 characters in body" Text="### What's a heroic edit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A heroic edit is any edits, or set of edits, that goes beyond the normal call of duty to help save a post from itself. They generally substantially revise a post to extract and make clear what, exactly, is so special about the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What's the point?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To maintain the quality and scope of a site, routine closures are a part of Stack Exchange. Closures are a way to signal from the community that a question has problems that must be addressed before it can accept new answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not a homogeneous community, and people do disagree. If a person disagrees that there's a problem with a question, they can vote to reopen the question (if they have enough rep) and/or convince other members of the community to vote to reopen. If 5 members of the community or one moderator is convinced, the question will be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If or when that fails, that's when the heroic edit comes in. By addressing the problems already identified by the closure, people will be more likely to be convinced the question should be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### But I don't think there's anything wrong with the post!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fair enough: you can try to keep looking for people who agree with your assessment and can vote to reopen the question to do so. But by taking other people's concerns with the question seriously and addressing them, you're likely to convince more people about the value of the post faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Can I just do some minor copyediting and be done with it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Copyediting is a relatively minor issue and almost never the reason why a question gets closed. While improving the copy helps any post, it's unlikely to be enough to get a question reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So what do I need to do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Posts can be closed for a variety of reasons: there is no single type of heroic edit that'll work for all cases. The goal is to address why the post was closed, so understanding why others closed the question is essential. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Start by looking at the close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Exact duplicate:** people have determined the question duplicates the content of another one, or has enough overlap  that there is no point in rehashing the topic. Try to revise the question to avoid as much overlap with the earlier question as possible.&#xD;&#xA;* **Off topic:** people have determined the question does not fit within the site's scope. Try to think about the audience of the site and whether or not they have the unique expertise to answer the question . Revise the question to more clearly ask something about the subject the audience is an expert in.&#xD;&#xA;* **Not constructive:** people have determined that, while potentially on-topic, the question and answer pair not a good fit for the Stack Exchange style of Q&amp;A: it's not a practical problem, it's an open-ended question, it's a list, or it's a discussion. Review &quot;[Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&quot; and &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&quot;, identify how the question as it is now fails the guidance there, and address it.&#xD;&#xA;* **Not a real question:** people have determined that it's not clear the question is actually a question, is way too broad to be answered in the Stack Exchange format, or what the question is asking for. Revise the question to tease out the potential you see between the lines.&#xD;&#xA;* **Too localized:** people have determined the problem is so local to the user it's not going to help anyone in the future. Revise the question to generalize the problem and make it clear it's common other programmers face the same issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then check the comments on the question, or check the meta-discussion site to see what people have said about it. Try to address those concerns as well in your revisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, talk to the people who closed the question: they can explain what reservations they had with the question and help you address their concerns in your edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Your advice for heroically editing questions closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; is weak. What specifically can I do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not constructive covers a lot of issues. While talking with the people who closed the question can make the problems specific, there's some general advice:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **The question has a ton of answers, many of them short:** The question and answer pair has become a list, so it needs to be revised to not be one anymore. Ping a moderator in chat to work with them to help remove duplicate answers and consolidate answers into one canonical answer.&#xD;&#xA;* **The question is a rant or inflammatory:** Try to identify the legitimate problem the asker has and rewrite the question from a neutral point of view.&#xD;&#xA;* **The answers have dismissed the question and answered a different one:** If all the answers have addressed a different question because the question asked something unanswerable, revise the question to match the answers received.&#xD;&#xA;* **Many of the answers have dismissed the question by providing [non-answers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion):** Flag non-answers, no matter how upvoted they are, for deletion. Xkcd, Dilbert, clichés, and one-line adages are not answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Okay, so I've made my heroic edit. What now?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most really good heroic edits will attract reopen votes quickly and automatically. You can also flag it for moderator review or [post the question in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21) to see if you can get others to reopen the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I made all these edits, but it's still not reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all questions can be saved, even with the most heroic of edits. Other times, people still aren't convinced the issues have been addressed. If you think the question should be reopened and talking to individual people hasn't made that happen, open up a question on meta to discuss what—if anything—can be done to get the question reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8007" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3097" RevisionGUID="03f9e9ee-f05a-4e51-ae0e-419e9a0b4c5f" CreationDate="2012-02-10T05:09:19.930" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 30 characters in body" Text="### What's a heroic edit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A heroic edit is any edits, or set of edits, that goes beyond the normal call of duty to help save a post from itself. They generally substantially revise a post to extract and make clear what, exactly, is so special about the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What's the point?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To maintain the quality and scope of a site, routine closures are a part of Stack Exchange. Closures are a way to signal from the community that a question has problems that must be addressed before it can accept new answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not a homogeneous community, and people do disagree. If a person disagrees that there's a problem with a question, they can vote to reopen the question (if they have enough rep) and/or convince other members of the community to vote to reopen. If 5 members of the community or one moderator is convinced, the question will be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If or when that fails, that's when the heroic edit comes in. By addressing the problems already identified by the closure, people will be more likely to be convinced that the question should be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### But I don't think there's anything wrong with the post!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fair enough: you can try to keep looking for people who agree with your assessment, and can vote to reopen the question, to do so. But by taking other people's concerns with the question seriously and addressing them, you're likely to convince more people about the value of the post faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Can I just do some minor copyediting and be done with it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Copyediting is a relatively minor issue, and it's almost never the reason why a question gets closed. While improving the copy helps any post, it's unlikely to be enough to get a question reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So what do I need to do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Posts can be closed for a variety of reasons: there is no single type of heroic edit that'll work for all cases. The goal is to address why the post was closed, so understanding why others closed the question is essential. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Start by looking at the close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Exact duplicate:** people have determined the question duplicates the content of another one, or has enough overlap  that there is no point in rehashing the topic. Try to revise the question to avoid as much overlap with the earlier question as possible.&#xD;&#xA;* **Off topic:** people have determined the question does not fit within the site's scope. Try to think about the audience of the site and whether or not they have the unique expertise to answer the question. Revise the question to more clearly ask something about the subject the audience is an expert in.&#xD;&#xA;* **Not constructive:** people have determined that, while potentially on-topic, the question and answer pair is not a good fit for the Stack Exchange style of Q&amp;A: it's not a practical problem, it's an open-ended question, it's a list, or it's a discussion. Review &quot;[Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&quot; and &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&quot;, identify how the question as it is now fails the guidance there, and address it.&#xD;&#xA;* **Not a real question:** people have determined that it's not clear the post is actually a question, what the question is asking for, or that the question  is way too broad to be answered in the Stack Exchange format. Revise the question to tease out the potential you see between the lines.&#xD;&#xA;* **Too localized:** people have determined the problem is so local to the user it's not going to help anyone in the future. Revise the question to generalize the problem and make it clear it's common other programmers face the same issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then check the comments on the question, or check the meta-discussion site to see what people have said about it. Try to address those concerns as well in your revisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, talk to the people who closed the question: they can explain what reservations they had with the question and help you address their concerns in your edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Your advice for heroically editing questions closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; is weak. What specifically can I do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not constructive covers a lot of issues. While talking with the people who closed the question can make the problems specific, there's some general advice:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **The question has a ton of answers, many of them short:** The question and answer pair has become a list, so it needs to be revised to not be one anymore. Ping a moderator in chat to work with them to help remove duplicate answers and consolidate answers into one canonical answer.&#xD;&#xA;* **The question is a rant or inflammatory:** Try to identify the legitimate problem the asker has and rewrite the question from a neutral point of view.&#xD;&#xA;* **The answers have dismissed the question and answered a different one:** If all the answers have addressed a different question because the question asked something unanswerable, revise the question to match the answers received.&#xD;&#xA;* **Many of the answers have dismissed the question by providing [non-answers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion):** Flag non-answers, no matter how upvoted they are, for deletion. Xkcd, Dilbert, clichés, and one-line adages are not answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Okay, so I've made my heroic edit. What now?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most really good heroic edits will attract reopen votes quickly and automatically. You can also flag it for moderator review or [post the question in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21) to see if you can get others to reopen the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I made all these edits, but it's still not reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all questions can be saved, even with the most heroic of edits. Other times, people still aren't convinced the issues have been addressed. If you think the question should be reopened and talking to individual people hasn't made that happen, open up a question on meta to discuss what—if anything—can be done to get the question reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8016" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3059" RevisionGUID="bb448a43-ea5b-443e-860c-acfcad7b809b" CreationDate="2012-02-10T11:48:16.060" UserId="47" Comment="better title" Text="A guide to moderating programmers.stackexchange yourself - close voting" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8017" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3082" RevisionGUID="c78cd72d-2ac3-4d11-a0a7-5bb8131e2c00" CreationDate="2012-02-10T12:59:15.757" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8018" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3086" RevisionGUID="a29ec3c6-b3d4-49cf-84ee-f5367d40b70d" CreationDate="2012-02-10T12:59:48.767" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderation|locking|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8019" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3090" RevisionGUID="ab748fd7-4c07-47fb-8131-2baff05a7e14" CreationDate="2012-02-10T13:00:07.190" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|deleted-answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8020" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3100" RevisionGUID="a7befe3a-d5a2-47ef-a253-b0cd19168885" CreationDate="2012-02-10T14:43:58.683" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8021" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3101" RevisionGUID="52725a6d-0506-42ed-802e-2e29e3842a64" CreationDate="2012-02-10T14:43:58.683" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8022" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3100" RevisionGUID="0d444600-2228-45b4-8436-08f77fb1676e" CreationDate="2012-02-10T15:00:28.537" UserId="31260" Comment="added 94 characters in body" Text="find more information at SO Meta:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/deleted-answers/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8023" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="3100" RevisionGUID="0d444600-2228-45b4-8436-08f77fb1676e" CreationDate="2012-02-10T15:00:28.537" Comment="Proposed by 31260 approved by 25936 edit id of 1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8024" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3101" RevisionGUID="311d9047-3bd5-48e9-b58b-5109aa399419" CreationDate="2012-02-10T15:00:38.007" UserId="31260" Comment="added 76 characters in body" Text="is the tag to use for any questions related to deleted answers specifically." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8025" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="3101" RevisionGUID="311d9047-3bd5-48e9-b58b-5109aa399419" CreationDate="2012-02-10T15:00:38.007" Comment="Proposed by 31260 approved by 25936 edit id of 2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8026" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3102" RevisionGUID="a5b3efce-4ed5-4ace-a802-672d9dc472a7" CreationDate="2012-02-10T18:16:35.530" UserId="41542" Text="There seem to be a few questions concerning Software Development Certification(s) that people want to get.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since quite a few people have hired software developers and quite a few more people have interviewed for the positions wouldn't be better to come up with a list of certifications that people actually look at and would give a salary bump then just suggesting based on individual questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted this question is probably better for [IT Careers &amp; Training](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/12887/it-careers-training), but since this site is not yet public these questions are far more likely to come to this site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8027" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3102" RevisionGUID="a5b3efce-4ed5-4ace-a802-672d9dc472a7" CreationDate="2012-02-10T18:16:35.530" UserId="41542" Text="Certification Quesiton and Canonical List" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8028" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3102" RevisionGUID="a5b3efce-4ed5-4ace-a802-672d9dc472a7" CreationDate="2012-02-10T18:16:35.530" UserId="41542" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8029" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3103" RevisionGUID="f7dc5e74-e280-4b34-beb7-965504e4289d" CreationDate="2012-02-10T18:27:25.143" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="I think this would a good topic for the blog. At least until IT Careers or the Workplace launches." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8030" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3104" RevisionGUID="69c3aef7-7d34-4fb6-ba14-a18fb5d55f98" CreationDate="2012-02-10T18:34:32.950" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Some topics such as Certification standards and the like are potentially better written by committee than by a single person. Is this a doable thing?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8031" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3104" RevisionGUID="69c3aef7-7d34-4fb6-ba14-a18fb5d55f98" CreationDate="2012-02-10T18:34:32.950" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Can Blog Posts be community authored?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8032" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3104" RevisionGUID="69c3aef7-7d34-4fb6-ba14-a18fb5d55f98" CreationDate="2012-02-10T18:34:32.950" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8033" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3104" RevisionGUID="35a858fc-3f3b-4975-9858-dcef7972a5c7" CreationDate="2012-02-10T18:35:23.063" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8034" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3102" RevisionGUID="c91b51d5-e124-43ec-9d8d-dd1b37901c52" CreationDate="2012-02-10T18:36:48.300" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="Quesiton sounds like some kind of particle." Text="Certification Question and Canonical List" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8035" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3105" RevisionGUID="94d4c115-f7fd-461f-ac99-7c2231434053" CreationDate="2012-02-10T18:42:54.063" UserId="25476" Text="I have gotten in the habit of editing out curse words and other foul language from questions and answers when I come across them.  Sometimes it is a great question or answer, just that unnecessary expletive, and I usually replace it with something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From:&#xD;&#xA; &gt; It's plenty easy to find **shit** JS developers. The good ones are rare.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To:&#xD;&#xA; &gt; It's plenty easy to find **crap** JS developers. The good ones are rare.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel that I haven't changed the meaning but perhaps it may be deemed and inappropriate edit or too minor of being worthy of the edit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, I am not a moral crusader or a white knight by any means, however a small subset of people may be offended by such language or may be behind work proxies that flag internet usage with foul or obscene language.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't been noticing anybody else making these kinds of edits, and I didn't see anything in the spec calling it out specifically." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8036" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3105" RevisionGUID="94d4c115-f7fd-461f-ac99-7c2231434053" CreationDate="2012-02-10T18:42:54.063" UserId="25476" Text="Is it a good idea to edit out curse words and foul language?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8037" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3105" RevisionGUID="94d4c115-f7fd-461f-ac99-7c2231434053" CreationDate="2012-02-10T18:42:54.063" UserId="25476" Text="|discussion|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8038" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3106" RevisionGUID="24ac79c4-e139-4a42-b571-b8ccd3fa0d2f" CreationDate="2012-02-10T18:43:34.877" UserId="25936" Text="In a sense, all posts on our community blog will be written by a committee, as every post will be proofread and possibly edited by the editorial team. There is absolutely no reason we can't co-author posts, provided that at least two people are interested in writing the same post, obviously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if you can't get someone interested in splitting a blog post, we can chime in and help in smaller ways. Only thing you have to do is ask for help, in the [blog chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are already synergies forming on some of the post proposals on Trello." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8039" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3107" RevisionGUID="d62cd1d9-c0b8-4644-8411-7a19cbb63912" CreationDate="2012-02-10T18:53:54.893" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="You did the correct thing: [expletives are verboten here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/22233/149432), except in a [purely academic context](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/q/253/2512) (e.g., if you asking about the etymology of one on [English.SE](http://english.stackexchange.com)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Expletives are not acceptable behavior on meta or any other Stack Overflow site. If you can't effectively communicate what you need to say without resorting to lowest common denominator cursing, then keep it to yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you use expletives, you will get a warning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you continue to use expletives, you will be placed on [timed suspension](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/a-day-in-the-penalty-box/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whether or not you agree with the belief you can effectively communicate without cursing, you've identified the practical reason why cursing is more-or-less banned on Stack Exchange: overactive internet filters in people's workplaces, when this site is meant to be used as a professional resource.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see it in a post, always edit it out. If you see it in a comment, flag it so it can be edited or deleted by a moderator." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8040" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3108" RevisionGUID="5720deef-030f-499e-963f-f24dcc3ce0af" CreationDate="2012-02-10T18:55:47.010" UserId="25936" Text="Your edit was more than appropriate, hopefully others will be inspired by this Meta question to do similar edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [FAQ][1] explicitly states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Etiquette**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Civility is required at all times; rudeness will not be tolerated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that a reasonable person would find the language used in a post rude, even slightly, feel free to edit. There is absolutely no need to use expletives in a professional setting, hence no need on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you notice a user *repeatedly* using harsh language, please flag one of his / her posts for moderation attention and let us know of the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8041" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3109" RevisionGUID="820e44ab-f302-480e-abce-45ae8ab10b82" CreationDate="2012-02-10T19:32:18.660" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Asking &quot;what certification should I get?&quot; doesn't really fit with the Stack Exchange model of Q&amp;A: strangers telling people how they should plan their career is always a bad idea and usually too localized to the asker's specific circumstances.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way to make such questions not too localized, or at least more general, is to create a list of certifications, like you suggest, to let people decide on their own which ones seem interesting. Canonical lists do have their uses, but they're an exception to the rule, and generally reserved for [a last-ditch effort](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3096/8) to try and save a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a few problems with trying to use lists as the &quot;go-to&quot; method to solve a question quality problem like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's untenable for us to create a canonical list of every single certification a person can get, and more importantly, provide a reason why it's on the list (instead of just adding a link)&#xD;&#xA;* What criteria are used to generate the list is an open question, making the list dubious in quality or accuracy&#xD;&#xA;* While everybody likes the idea of lists, very few people take the non-trivial amount of effort to actively maintain the list&#xD;&#xA;* Lists are still [outside the Stack Exchange style of Q&amp;A](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of telling people what they should do, or providing a long list of stuff and telling them &quot;have fun!&quot;, it's almost always going to be better to ask questions that informs someone how to find and decide for themselves. Stuff like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How do I go about identifying whether a certification is  useful in my line of work?&#xD;&#xA;* [Are certifications worth it?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/44/8)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8042" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3102" RevisionGUID="4db5418f-a8b0-4ecc-8e49-74d5d12d810b" CreationDate="2012-02-10T19:32:50.407" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="Should we have a canonical certification list?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8043" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3102" RevisionGUID="4db5418f-a8b0-4ecc-8e49-74d5d12d810b" CreationDate="2012-02-10T19:32:50.407" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|list-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8044" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3110" RevisionGUID="508d9206-e072-440b-b2cc-2669b041d166" CreationDate="2012-02-10T19:36:03.083" UserId="4" Text="To add to [what Mark said][1], consider writing a tag excerpt and starting a tag wiki for the [certification tag][2]. Both are currently empty. Perhaps organize a list by topic area, write a short description including the name of the certification, who sponsors/offers it, and provide a link to the official website to learn more. That seems like it would add plenty of value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.comhttp://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3109/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/certification/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8045" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3111" RevisionGUID="e5fb5518-6966-4f85-9673-dcbc279f9af3" CreationDate="2012-02-10T20:17:24.113" UserId="34364" Text="I have this idea that just might be a benefit to P.SE, as well as the Stack Exchage Community as a whole:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**A List of Canonical Lists**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, when a Canonical list is made, it is not exactly the easiest thing to find, so why not put them all in one place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It will make it more useful to more people, whether they were looking for it or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me here your thoughts." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8046" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3111" RevisionGUID="e5fb5518-6966-4f85-9673-dcbc279f9af3" CreationDate="2012-02-10T20:17:24.113" UserId="34364" Text="List of Canonical Lists" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8047" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3111" RevisionGUID="e5fb5518-6966-4f85-9673-dcbc279f9af3" CreationDate="2012-02-10T20:17:24.113" UserId="34364" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8048" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3110" RevisionGUID="1036d2fd-27ad-40a3-b807-a285cedfb322" CreationDate="2012-02-10T20:31:40.223" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 41 characters in body" Text="To add to [what Mark said][1], consider writing a tag excerpt and starting a tag wiki for the [certification tag][2]. Both are currently empty. Perhaps organize a list by topic area, write a short description including the name of the certification, who sponsors/offers it, and provide a link to the official website to learn more. That seems like it would add plenty of value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3109/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/certification/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8049" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3112" RevisionGUID="175010a1-1bad-441a-9526-7a0053798d4c" CreationDate="2012-02-10T21:56:42.643" UserId="41381" Text="I like the idea of one community wiki question to house all the lists called &quot;The canonical list of lists&quot;  and then linking it in the FAQ under things that shouldn't be asked as &quot;Questions answerable by 'The Canonical list of lists'&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;it would be a great way to give people answers to questions without clogging up the site with unwanted questions, and be a lot nicer to link them to a helpful source and closing rather than outright closing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8050" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3105" RevisionGUID="a72aa107-727d-41e3-8570-02e232bf2936" CreationDate="2012-02-11T02:47:22.710" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/168164194317910016" />
  <row Id="8051" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3111" RevisionGUID="dc588cd3-d9a6-443a-9434-605418987850" CreationDate="2012-02-11T08:33:29.360" UserId="25936" Comment="please use [feature-request] only when actually asking for a new feature to be implemented by the Stack Exchange team" Text="|discussion|list-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8052" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3111" RevisionGUID="c5f0b95b-e77b-47b3-9604-d1e0b205255c" CreationDate="2012-02-11T12:12:38.893" UserId="34364" Comment="added 80 characters in body" Text="I have this idea that just might be a benefit to P.SE, as well as the Stack Exchage Community as a whole:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**A List of Canonical Lists**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, when a Canonical list is made, it is not exactly the easiest thing to find, so why not put them all in one place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are not looking to make new Canonical Lists. Just organize the old ones. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It will make it more useful to more people, whether they were looking for it or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me here your thoughts." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8054" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3113" RevisionGUID="36d9f8e1-d04c-40ee-a061-01f556bb6bb4" CreationDate="2012-02-12T11:35:20.937" UserId="13421" Text="I voted on SF&amp;F but not here or anywhere else - I guess the question is, why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess you could call me a lurker here on Programmers - I mostly read a selection of questions on a daily basis, voting on questions and answers, but infrequently commenting or answering/asking questions myself. I guess I felt that I didn't even recognise the candidates - most of them were just names, with long cover letters, and some statistics. Reputation is a difficult metric - because it not only indicates quality in answers, but the time since registering and also prolificacy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over on SF&amp;F, however, I felt I knew most of the candidates - I could easily recall their questions and answers and comments. Their statistics hardly came into it - their posts indicated their characters, and the cover letters were nice little manifestos, but it was their posts that swung my votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for SO - I don't think I even bothered. I rarely look at questions that aren't tagged as PHP, and so don't interact with a large part of the community there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want my suggestions for better voter interaction: shorten the cover letters, and post a couple of their best answers or provide links to their top five." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8055" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3114" RevisionGUID="5344c4e6-d860-4991-8432-b93e4a36115c" CreationDate="2012-02-13T02:52:18.383" UserId="23251" Text="I'm not fond of calling users out, but with [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134702/how-should-i-design-my-rpn-calculator), I'm a bit confused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It came across initially as fitting the &quot;I'm question banned on SO, so I'm parking it here&quot; category to be honest and frank.  I understand that it looks like it could be more of a conceptual question, but I think at the heart, it's looking for someone to code the majority of the procedures.  There was some great editing, and I agree that doing so gets it out of the irretrievable box a bit, but at what cost?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the interest of transparency, I did flag this question, and the flag was rejected, so that's not the issue here.  I do wonder why it passed muster, though. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8056" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3114" RevisionGUID="5344c4e6-d860-4991-8432-b93e4a36115c" CreationDate="2012-02-13T02:52:18.383" UserId="23251" Text="Encouraging the &quot;unpolished&quot; question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8057" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3114" RevisionGUID="5344c4e6-d860-4991-8432-b93e4a36115c" CreationDate="2012-02-13T02:52:18.383" UserId="23251" Text="|discussion|questions|quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8058" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3115" RevisionGUID="6df2f342-5319-4ff4-a455-52d5ef4aaabb" CreationDate="2012-02-13T03:05:45.547" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I was the moderator who handled the flags on the question. The question was flagged with three different things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **too localized:** Well, it's not too localized. While it might not be a problem every single programmer faces, how to design an RPN calculator is applicable to more than just [a vanishingly small number of people](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1916/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **off topic, belongs on Stack Overflow:** the guy's not asking about a coding issue but how to design the problem, and if it *is* a crappy question, migrating it to Stack Overflow goes against [the golden rule](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1901/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **not a real question:** this one had the most merit, but given a quick edit cleared things up, it really didn't warrant bringing a moderator's attention to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I suspect that the user is trying to do homework&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, I disagree that the question is so irretrievable it needed a moderator to intervene. The guy needed a little bit of help to get a question that—while not great—is on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note 1&lt;/sup&gt;: I suspect there's a bit of an inherent bias at play when people suspect that someone is trying to get homework help, but homework questions [shouldn't be discounted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2895/8) or treated any differently than other questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8059" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3115" RevisionGUID="a89dcc05-ec38-4ddb-8fe4-510ea3623a30" CreationDate="2012-02-13T03:11:11.517" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 89 characters in body" Text="I was the moderator who handled the flags on the question.  From what I can tell, he just needed a little bit of help to clarify that his question—while not great—is on-topic here. It didn't appear need a moderator to intervene at first blush.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the flags, though:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **too localized:** Well, it's not too localized. While it might not be a problem every single programmer faces, how to design an RPN calculator is applicable to more than just [a vanishingly small number of people](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1916/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **off topic, belongs on Stack Overflow:** the guy's not asking about a coding issue but how to design the problem, and if it *is* a crappy question, migrating it to Stack Overflow goes against [the golden rule](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1901/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **not a real question:** this one had the most merit, but given a quick edit cleared things up, it really didn't warrant bringing a moderator's attention to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I suspect that the user is trying to do homework&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, based on seeing the question and evaluating the flags raised, I disagree that the question is irredeemable required the swift hand of justice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, it's likely to be closed by the community anyway in short order.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note 1&lt;/sup&gt;: I suspect there's a bit of an inherent bias at play when people suspect that someone is trying to get homework help, but homework questions [shouldn't be discounted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2895/8) or treated any differently than other questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8060" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3115" RevisionGUID="dab99c15-ca64-4db4-87ee-716b7c75b2ea" CreationDate="2012-02-13T03:16:25.253" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 89 characters in body" Text="I was the moderator who handled the flags on the question.  From what I can tell, he just needed a little bit of help to clarify that his question—while not great—is on-topic here. It didn't appear need a moderator to intervene at first blush.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I looked at the flags, though, I saw:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **too localized:** Well, it's not too localized. While it might not be a problem every single programmer faces, how to design an RPN calculator is applicable to more than just [a vanishingly small number of people](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1916/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **off topic, belongs on Stack Overflow:** the guy's not asking about a coding issue but how to design the problem, and if it *is* a crappy question, migrating it to Stack Overflow goes against [the golden rule](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1901/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **not a real question:** this one had the most merit, but given a quick edit cleared things up, it really didn't warrant bringing a moderator's attention to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I suspect that the user is trying to do homework&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, based on seeing the question and evaluating the flags raised, I disagree that the question is so irredeemable that it required the swift hand of justice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, it's likely to be closed by the community anyway in short order.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note 1&lt;/sup&gt;: I suspect there's a bit of an inherent bias at play when people suspect that someone is trying to get homework help, but homework questions [shouldn't be discounted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2895/8) or treated any differently than other questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8062" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3114" RevisionGUID="f3e063bd-dfaf-4e72-ac7f-bbed5a255831" CreationDate="2012-02-13T07:46:56.870" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|quality|declined-flags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8064" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3117" RevisionGUID="78909783-8506-4fa6-9dca-bc2aa7389dd0" CreationDate="2012-02-13T07:59:12.607" UserId="32008" Text="Regarding http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3075/what-do-our-low-2012-election-numbers-mean. (I posted it as an answer, but I then deleted it and post it now as a question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;297/5874, yes, that's really a very low percentage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think Pierre303 is right in that people don't care enough about the votes and that it's certainly the main reason. I thought about it a little and maybe there could be some incentive to vote (that is more incentive than just having some new people we believe in for moderating the website we like), a &quot;carrot&quot; of some sort. I thought about this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why not - next time - offer a badge for those that voted ?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next year, on the main page, it could be written:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The 2013 Community Moderator Election is now underway! Elect your representatives and earn a &quot;*Voter*&quot; badge!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know some people don't care, but I'm pretty sure we could attract a significant number of voters next time. I don't know if it's done in other countries in the world, but in France, you have what could be called an &quot;Electorate Card&quot; that you keep with you, and that you bring with you to all elections. When you vote you get a stamp which effectively shows that you have voted. I've seen older people happily show their card to indicate they voted for the 1980's elections...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8065" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3117" RevisionGUID="78909783-8506-4fa6-9dca-bc2aa7389dd0" CreationDate="2012-02-13T07:59:12.607" UserId="32008" Text="Why not offer a &quot;voter&quot; badge for participating in the moderators election?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8066" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3117" RevisionGUID="78909783-8506-4fa6-9dca-bc2aa7389dd0" CreationDate="2012-02-13T07:59:12.607" UserId="32008" Text="|feature-request|badges|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8067" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3118" RevisionGUID="56b9fc30-342c-4b3e-9ba8-12c37be756d3" CreationDate="2012-02-13T08:08:39.850" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Because the apathetic majority of the people would almost certainly vote blindly for the sake of getting a badge instead of ignoring the election because they couldn't care less who won.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not voting is, I would think, clearly better than voting randomly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8068" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3119" RevisionGUID="94a2004d-8a5b-44cf-a805-f17bca406c88" CreationDate="2012-02-13T08:12:12.347" UserId="25936" Text="Voting is, and it should be, anonymous. That includes the fact that you voted, not just who you voted for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think of all the snarky comments after the election: &quot;But you didn't even voted, what makes you think your opinion matters in _random Meta issue_&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People should vote because they care for the site, not the election process itself.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8069" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3120" RevisionGUID="f1f4c0f4-e021-4297-b4ab-595b6c17d9d5" CreationDate="2012-02-13T08:48:29.943" UserId="6617" Text="I voted, but was close to not doing so... because it seems a bit pointless to elect a moderator who has to play by the rules anyway. It feels like electing a policeman or tax officer - since the scope for decision-making for a moderator is relatively small, I suspect it hardly makes a difference who actually wins." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8070" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3104" RevisionGUID="50a4911d-d3e8-4f7c-b25a-c4d3b392b675" CreationDate="2012-02-13T20:47:49.007" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/169160869631098881" />
  <row Id="8071" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3121" RevisionGUID="1cec3d5f-5cd0-4db8-929c-f765b41dabc3" CreationDate="2012-02-14T13:25:29.210" UserId="28038" Text="In the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) it plainly states that career advice questions are not appropriate.  Yet when a new question is being asked you are prompted to input a tag, including the [tag:career-development].  Perhaps we shouldn't prompt users to input this tag if it is not appropriate for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![A screenshot showing improper tag prompt][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/JLULM.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8072" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3121" RevisionGUID="1cec3d5f-5cd0-4db8-929c-f765b41dabc3" CreationDate="2012-02-14T13:25:29.210" UserId="28038" Text="Improperly prompting for career development tags in new questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8073" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3121" RevisionGUID="1cec3d5f-5cd0-4db8-929c-f765b41dabc3" CreationDate="2012-02-14T13:25:29.210" UserId="28038" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8074" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3122" RevisionGUID="7198120f-0318-4f0d-84cf-e6bf3f0310ac" CreationDate="2012-02-14T13:36:11.113" UserId="47" Text="I think that these suggestions come from the existing tag base somehow. It's not the [most popular tags](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags) and if I ask a question I get a different set:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;so there might be a random element in there as well (if you notice mine even suggests the [tag:career] tag - even worse!) though these tags persist for me when I open the Ask Question page again. It doesn't seem to be based on the tags I've asked questions in previously or answered questions in either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the bad tags are removed from all questions (hint, hint) then they shouldn't appear in the list again, so get retagging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the developers will see this question and be able to give a definitive answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/a2l15.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8075" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3122" RevisionGUID="2b09c3ba-4751-4a0e-8f43-1e94c63762f7" CreationDate="2012-02-14T14:03:48.133" UserId="31260" Comment="hint, hint -&gt; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3088/31260 &quot;career related tag cleanup proposal&quot;" Text="I think that these suggestions come from the existing tag base somehow. It's not the [most popular tags](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags) and if I ask a question I get a different set:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;so there might be a random element in there as well (if you notice mine even suggests the [tag:career] tag - even worse!) though these tags persist for me when I open the Ask Question page again. It doesn't seem to be based on the tags I've asked questions in previously or answered questions in either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the bad tags are removed from all questions ([hint, hint][2]) then they shouldn't appear in the list again, so get retagging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the developers will see this question and be able to give a definitive answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/a2l15.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3088/31260 &quot;career related tag cleanup proposal&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8076" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3123" RevisionGUID="c0eff6e5-1e74-47de-8e39-13431311853c" CreationDate="2012-02-14T18:12:15.517" UserId="13815" Text="My understanding of the policy is that questions that are too subjective should be closed but not deleted, because they might still contain useful information for people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why was [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14856/what-popular-best-practices-are-not-always-best-and-why) deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8077" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3123" RevisionGUID="c0eff6e5-1e74-47de-8e39-13431311853c" CreationDate="2012-02-14T18:12:15.517" UserId="13815" Text="Why was &quot;What popular best practices are not always best and why&quot; deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8078" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3123" RevisionGUID="c0eff6e5-1e74-47de-8e39-13431311853c" CreationDate="2012-02-14T18:12:15.517" UserId="13815" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8079" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3124" RevisionGUID="da3be76a-8240-4668-881f-8f95d5ad7fdc" CreationDate="2012-02-14T18:19:23.053" UserId="4" Text="Closed is meant as a temporary state for question. A question that is closed is on the chopping block, so to speak. Either someone should make heroic edits to the question to fix the reason why it was closed, or the question will eventually get deleted. As to why this particular question was deleted at this particular time, I'm not sure." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8080" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3124" RevisionGUID="dafddee8-d567-49d6-859c-7135a20a91fa" CreationDate="2012-02-14T18:25:18.803" UserId="25936" Comment="heroic edits link" Text="Closed is meant as a temporary state for question. A question that is closed is on the chopping block, so to speak. Either someone should make [heroic edits][1] to the question to fix the reason why it was closed, or the question will eventually get deleted. As to why this particular question was deleted at this particular time, I'm not sure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8081" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3125" RevisionGUID="e80d7c2e-7760-4aa5-b57f-7ae9291bcd94" CreationDate="2012-02-14T18:35:43.427" UserId="25936" Text="As Thomas [already mentioned][1], there is no policy in keeping around closed questions indefinitely. If a question was closed, it's on a path to deletion, regardless of the specific close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We allow for a fair amount of time for [the community to step up and salvage the question][2], for this specific question a little less than three months. The question was closed on Nov 20 '11 at 17:22 and deleted on Feb 9 at 17:01, and although there were edits in between, none addressed the its &quot;non constructive&quot; issues significantly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore the question was one of the highest voted of the [best-practices] tag, one of the more troublesome [meta tags][3] we had, a honey pot for extremely low quality questions. There might have been _some_ useful information in there, but [popularity alone not a good question makes][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3124/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8082" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3125" RevisionGUID="e9d9c2f1-77ab-425f-af36-a3333c1eae8e" CreationDate="2012-02-14T18:40:57.370" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body" Text="As Thomas [already mentioned][1], there is no policy in keeping around closed questions indefinitely. If a question was closed, it's on a path to deletion, regardless of the specific close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We allow for a fair amount of time for [the community to step up and salvage the question][2], for this specific question a little less than three months. The question was closed on Nov 20 '11 at 17:22 and deleted on Feb 9 at 17:01, and although there were edits in between, none addressed its &quot;non constructive&quot; issues significantly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore the question was one of the highest voted of the [best-practices] tag, one of the more troublesome [meta tags][3] we had, a honey pot for extremely low quality questions. There might have been _some_ useful information in there, but [popularity alone not a good question makes][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3124/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8083" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3123" RevisionGUID="3b690ad8-01b9-4e57-9196-93f43f84f547" CreationDate="2012-02-14T18:50:14.333" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8084" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3122" RevisionGUID="7d464974-97fe-4dc9-ba5a-4f5cc5c8522d" CreationDate="2012-02-14T21:21:29.867" UserId="47" Comment="proper answer" Text="These suggestions come from the existing tag base. It's certainly not based on the tags I've asked questions in previously or answered questions, and it's not the [most popular tags](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags). If I ask a question I get a different set:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;so there is be a random element in there - in fact the three example tags are chosen randomly from the top thirty tags on the site. If you notice mine even suggests the [tag:career] tag - even worse! - these tags persist for me when I open the Ask Question page again, so there is an element of caching in there as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the bad tags are removed from all questions ([hint, hint][2]) then they shouldn't appear in the list again, so get retagging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the developers will see this question and be able to give a definitive answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/a2l15.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3088/31260 &quot;career related tag cleanup proposal&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8085" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3126" RevisionGUID="b102c873-c914-41f3-84ec-948a04dd5084" CreationDate="2012-02-15T01:39:56.623" UserId="7748" Text="Morons, This is great idea! I support you 100%" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8086" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3127" RevisionGUID="6bec8603-9e46-45bb-9a80-1eb513a8a408" CreationDate="2012-02-15T03:47:54.550" UserId="102" Text="As ChrisF has said, the example tags are randomly pulled from the top 30 tags on the site, but they're usage counts from all **undeleted** questions - closed questions are still included!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've checked in a change that excludes closed questions from these usage counts.  While it won't remove [tag:career] from the list, it will push [tag:career-development] out of the top 30.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8091" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3129" RevisionGUID="d7ebcf8d-2a1c-4619-b656-e385647e351f" CreationDate="2012-02-15T12:22:07.653" UserId="1720" Text="I just asked a question that was clearly not suited for stack overflow, so I figured I'd ask here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135173/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;instead of a helpful advice it got immediately closed and downvoted. **Where** do I ask this? Off topic, I get that and am sorry, but that's all the feedback I received: a &quot;GTFO&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question's at least semi-programming-related and I need a concrete answer: ways to implement and a reference to charity organizations that accept online donations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please help me, guys, I can't think of a more proper place to ask this than in Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8092" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3129" RevisionGUID="d7ebcf8d-2a1c-4619-b656-e385647e351f" CreationDate="2012-02-15T12:22:07.653" UserId="1720" Text="Where in the stack exchange network does one ask questions about donations to charity" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8093" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3129" RevisionGUID="d7ebcf8d-2a1c-4619-b656-e385647e351f" CreationDate="2012-02-15T12:22:07.653" UserId="1720" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8094" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3129" RevisionGUID="7f50ab8e-2bfd-428f-a79c-e970a7269402" CreationDate="2012-02-15T12:24:47.603" UserId="4" Comment="added 58 characters in body" Text="I just asked a question that was clearly not suited for stack overflow, so I figured I'd ask here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135173/i-want-to-put-up-a-donation-link-to-a-charitable-cause-in-my-site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;instead of a helpful advice it got immediately closed and downvoted. **Where** do I ask this? Off topic, I get that and am sorry, but that's all the feedback I received: a &quot;GTFO&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question's at least semi-programming-related and I need a concrete answer: ways to implement and a reference to charity organizations that accept online donations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please help me, guys, I can't think of a more proper place to ask this than in Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8095" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3130" RevisionGUID="35da0119-a940-4e5c-bd2f-66d253055da4" CreationDate="2012-02-15T12:26:53.793" UserId="47" Text="There are some questions that are off topic *everywhere* on the current Stack Exchange network. We haven't got 100% topic coverage yet (and I don't think we will), and some questions that aren't suited to the Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You might get some joy on Webmasters - but check out the site first before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also try asking in chat - either [Programmers](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21) or [Stack Overflow](http://chat.stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The concrete implementation issue should be on topic on Stack Overflow. However, the request for charity organisations that accept online donations would be one of those questions that doesn't fit the Q&amp;A model." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8097" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3131" RevisionGUID="551d4436-54f7-4406-956e-a0befaa62294" CreationDate="2012-02-15T22:48:35.067" UserId="1204" Text="These questions have a number of problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  They are questions about legal issues, and none of us are lawyers.&#xD;&#xA;2.  They are proxy support questions for the FSF and other such organizations, who should be spending their own hard-earned dollars fielding questions about their opaque agreements.&#xD;&#xA;3.  We are taking money out of the pockets of starving ambulance chas.. er, lawyers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;tl;dr: **IANAL.** " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8098" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3131" RevisionGUID="551d4436-54f7-4406-956e-a0befaa62294" CreationDate="2012-02-15T22:48:35.067" UserId="1204" Text="Can we put &quot;Software Licensing Questions are off-topic&quot; in the FAQ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8099" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3131" RevisionGUID="551d4436-54f7-4406-956e-a0befaa62294" CreationDate="2012-02-15T22:48:35.067" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8100" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3132" RevisionGUID="5df7e87c-91e5-4f1c-a01b-cd00e0f37b0d" CreationDate="2012-02-16T08:06:10.030" UserId="6617" Text="Your arguments 2. and 3. hardly make sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we put &quot;.net/Java questions off topic&quot; in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. (deliberately left blank)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. They are proxy support questions for Microsoft/Oracle who should be spending their own hard-earned dollars fielding questions about their tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. We are taking money out of the pockets of starving .net/Java trainers, book authors, ExpertSexchange etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we are left with 1. No, we are not lawyers, but for many questions, answers already exist, e.g. on FSF's own website, and pointing to those answers (probably written or reviewed by a lawyer) is good enough for many purposes. Considering the many misconceptions existing about e.g. the implications of using a GPL-based product, I think it would be sad not to allow such questions here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8101" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3133" RevisionGUID="812deb21-9bea-450c-b036-a2221f3eda54" CreationDate="2012-02-16T08:39:46.977" UserId="40327" Text="Since I have a lower reputation **all my edits are peer reviewed**. Some changes I make are accepted but **some others are rejected** but do not indicate **why they are rejected** which leaves the editor clueless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[I can illustrate this with the following example][1] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How to build a career path to be an Architect?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which I changed to,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How to build a career path to be a Software Architect?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The change Software Architect was clarified by the author in the comments specified in the question section and I applied the change to the question but yet my edit was rejected in the peer review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a **feedback system of why are certain edits rejected to help editors improve their editing skills?** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79916/how-to-build-a-career-path-to-be-an-architect" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8102" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3133" RevisionGUID="812deb21-9bea-450c-b036-a2221f3eda54" CreationDate="2012-02-16T08:39:46.977" UserId="40327" Text="Is there a feedback system to know why edits are rejected?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8103" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3133" RevisionGUID="812deb21-9bea-450c-b036-a2221f3eda54" CreationDate="2012-02-16T08:39:46.977" UserId="40327" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8104" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3134" RevisionGUID="0d0fe943-145f-463c-bdba-4ec4ad1d9db6" CreationDate="2012-02-16T08:42:48.190" UserId="47" Text="Go to the [suggestions tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/40327/karthik-sreenivasan?tab=activity&amp;sort=suggestions) on your profile page. This lists all the suggested edits you've made.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you click on the [suggested edit](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/4066) link you'll see your edit and how it was resolved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case the reason was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This edit is too minor; suggested edits should be substantive improvements addressing multiple issues in the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically you only added one word to the title rather than looking at the whole post and correcting other errors." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8105" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3133" RevisionGUID="b0547602-b916-45ce-92e5-eca466517c77" CreationDate="2012-02-16T08:42:58.097" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|suggested-edits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8106" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3134" RevisionGUID="52257fc5-c8a8-4adc-b54a-8ea9dd166a18" CreationDate="2012-02-16T08:53:52.170" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="Go to the [suggestions tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/40327/karthik-sreenivasan?tab=activity&amp;sort=suggestions) on your profile page. This lists all the suggested edits you've made.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you click on the [suggested edit](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/4066) link you'll see your edit and how it was resolved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case the reason was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This edit is too minor; suggested edits should be substantive improvements addressing multiple issues in the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically you only added one word to the title rather than looking at the whole post and correcting other errors. That, coupled with the fact is was an old question were the reasons I would have rejected the edit had I seen it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8107" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3135" RevisionGUID="95295330-9711-4af8-bf49-c405cf4ed89a" CreationDate="2012-02-16T11:22:48.303" UserId="4" Text="The only point that seems to be one to consider is the first one, since the other points can be applied to nearly any question asked on any Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even though none of us are lawyers, we still deal with software licenses on a regular basis. As an engineer, I'm expected to know if I am able to use an open source tool or project based on its license. For any software developer who contributes to or publishes open source projects, an understanding of the license is also important to know how the code can be reused or redistributed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a particular question relies on local or national laws or requires the specific knowledge of a lawyer, I wouldn't have a problem closing it. However, there are many questions that I would expect a software development professional to be able to answer or provide experiences about." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8108" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2875" RevisionGUID="09d1aa76-5097-41a8-a19b-e46e651f51a7" CreationDate="2012-02-16T11:41:42.407" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8109" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2875" RevisionGUID="4aa6117e-e717-4da9-ae30-8bac007bfc89" CreationDate="2012-02-16T11:41:51.367" UserId="47" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8110" PostHistoryTypeId="11" PostId="2875" RevisionGUID="9ae7d3a7-de56-4b3d-bcd2-4676538d3e8e" CreationDate="2012-02-16T11:42:14.667" UserId="47" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8111" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3136" RevisionGUID="7a2ed06a-01f2-467d-853c-4fcd08ff78ea" CreationDate="2012-02-16T13:56:09.747" UserId="7748" Text="From what I was seeing overall question quality is going downhill, so on that hunch,&#xD;&#xA;Using [Stack exchange's Data explore][1]r ran the Following Query:&#xD;&#xA;Select&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    CAST(year(CreationDate) as char(4))+'-'+CAST(DATEPART(wk,CreationDate) as char(2)) as week&#xD;&#xA;      ,count(1) as Cnt&#xD;&#xA;      ,avg(score) as Avg&#xD;&#xA;    from Posts&#xD;&#xA;    where CreationDate&gt;dateadd(yy,-1,getdate())&#xD;&#xA;    group by &#xD;&#xA;      year(CreationDate) &#xD;&#xA;      ,DATEPART(wk,CreationDate) &#xD;&#xA;     order by year(CreationDate),DATEPART(wk,CreationDate) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I then Graphed The Count and Average:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Count of Posts][2]&#xD;&#xA;![Average Post Score][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our Average Question Score is Down a **full point over the last year**, whats going on?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/new&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/coyUk.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RIDdp.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8112" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3136" RevisionGUID="7a2ed06a-01f2-467d-853c-4fcd08ff78ea" CreationDate="2012-02-16T13:56:09.747" UserId="7748" Text="Are we Going down hill?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8113" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3136" RevisionGUID="7a2ed06a-01f2-467d-853c-4fcd08ff78ea" CreationDate="2012-02-16T13:56:09.747" UserId="7748" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8114" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3137" RevisionGUID="b4f7e8f4-abfd-40fc-a78b-9d09be18ede9" CreationDate="2012-02-16T13:59:50.617" UserId="47" Text="This is a trend we're seeing on Stack Overflow too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rate of increase in questions is greater than the rate of increase in users so there are less votes per question available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8115" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3138" RevisionGUID="fb0ceda5-d466-43da-99d3-baeb5c449668" CreationDate="2012-02-16T14:12:50.577" UserId="25476" Text="With the exception of StackOverflow, I find this information promising actually...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question scores are merely falling in line with the **actual** average quality of questions in Programmers.  There have always been bad questions on Programmers, but up until recently, more active users finally understand the scope of the site and care enough to participate in meeting that vision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an example of a question that should have been heavily downvoted and closed with impunity.  The answers are by far and away **even WORSE**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9409/what-was-the-worst-experience-youve-had-with-a-customer-user&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No offense Pierre, but we were all fresh users at one point before we really understood what this place was about." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8116" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3139" RevisionGUID="900238a6-54e9-4931-86de-7d37dd1c2585" CreationDate="2012-02-16T14:42:35.800" UserId="31260" Text="I guess it's all my fault&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Given that I rarely downvote answers, I think I subtracted **600+ nice shiny points** from total questions score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ouf5W.jpg &quot;screen shot - 698 downvotes&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8117" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3136" RevisionGUID="3d535033-4468-4d64-81f2-ae8bc1d6327d" CreationDate="2012-02-16T14:46:34.270" UserId="7748" Comment="added 40 characters in body" Text="From what I was seeing overall question quality is going downhill, so on that hunch,&#xD;&#xA;Using [Stack exchange's Data explore][1]r ran the Following Query:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Select&#xD;&#xA;        CAST(year(CreationDate) as char(4))+'-'+CAST(DATEPART(wk,CreationDate) as char(2)) as week&#xD;&#xA;          ,count(1) as Cnt&#xD;&#xA;          ,avg(score) as Avg&#xD;&#xA;        from Posts&#xD;&#xA;        where CreationDate&gt;dateadd(yy,-1,getdate())&#xD;&#xA;        group by &#xD;&#xA;          year(CreationDate) &#xD;&#xA;          ,DATEPART(wk,CreationDate) &#xD;&#xA;         order by year(CreationDate),DATEPART(wk,CreationDate) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I then Graphed The Count and Average:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Count of Posts][2]&#xD;&#xA;![Average Post Score][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our Average Question Score is Down a **full point over the last year**, whats going on?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/new&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/coyUk.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RIDdp.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8118" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3136" RevisionGUID="65d46025-a4c8-4475-ab4e-e37302d91a6a" CreationDate="2012-02-16T15:10:45.270" UserId="7748" Comment="added 258 characters in body" Text="From what I was seeing overall question quality is going downhill, so on that hunch,&#xD;&#xA;Using [Stack exchange's Data explore][1]r ran the Following Query:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Select&#xD;&#xA;    CAST(year(p.CreationDate) as char(4))+'-'+CAST(DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) as char(2)) as week&#xD;&#xA;      ,count(1) as Cnt&#xD;&#xA;      ,avg(score) as Avg&#xD;&#xA;      ,avg(VoteCount) as AvgVoteCount&#xD;&#xA;    from Posts p&#xD;&#xA;    JOIN (Select postid,count(1) as VoteCount from Votes group by postid) v on v.postid=p.id&#xD;&#xA;    where p.CreationDate&gt;dateadd(yy,-1,getdate())&#xD;&#xA;    group by &#xD;&#xA;      year(p.CreationDate) &#xD;&#xA;      ,DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) &#xD;&#xA;     order by year(p.CreationDate),DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I then Graphed The Count and Average:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our Average Question Score is Down a **full point over the last year**, whats going on?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Count of Posts][2]&#xD;&#xA;![Average Post Score][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:** I Updated the SQL and Added Average Vote count..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Average Vote Count][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;**Edit 2:** For Thomas SO Results&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][5]&#xD;&#xA;----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/new&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/coyUk.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RIDdp.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ssf1P.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/35vb6.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8119" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3137" RevisionGUID="888f9c73-89e9-4e62-bd7f-853af79a6ba5" CreationDate="2012-02-16T15:21:49.970" UserId="47" Comment="better" Text="This is a trend we're seeing on Stack Overflow too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the rate of increase in questions is greater than the rate of increase in users so there are less votes per question available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8120" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3140" RevisionGUID="48531dfe-0792-4e7c-9c97-f51feb705e4e" CreationDate="2012-02-16T15:31:16.313" UserId="1130" Text="I think we are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The strict enforcement of keeping questions on-topic combined with the fact [our site name doesn't match the FAQ][1] is causing a lot of users to misunderstand what the site is meant for, and to lose interest and stop asking/answering questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, here's a graph of our new user growth. It remains fairly steady, because many programmers are interested in a site for programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And here's a graph of new questions asked. It is going down hill fairly steadily for a while now, and I don't believe it's because all the good questions have been asked/answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our number of votes (both up and down) is also declining, showing less user participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OlKXf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0y9Oj.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/HPUpe.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8121" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3140" RevisionGUID="3239a6a0-e20d-4307-9f3b-5ef4a8e353cb" CreationDate="2012-02-16T16:03:37.597" UserId="1130" Comment="added 483 characters in body" Text="I think we are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The strict enforcement of keeping questions on-topic combined with the fact [our site name doesn't match the FAQ][1] is causing a lot of users to misunderstand what the site is meant for, and to lose interest and stop asking/answering questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, here's a graph of our new user growth. It remains fairly steady, because many programmers are interested in a site for programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And here's a graph of new questions asked. It is going down hill fairly steadily for a while now, and I don't believe it's because all the good questions have been asked/answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our number of votes (both up and down) is also declining, showing less user participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is yours, so you can run it however you want, however I strongly believe that the downward nature of the graphs is caused by a lot of misunderstanding and confusion about the site scope. The site was meant to be a site for programmers about programmers, and it has since changed to a site for programmers about software development only. A lot of old active users have lost interest, and a lot of new users don't understand the site scope and ask low quality questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OlKXf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0y9Oj.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/HPUpe.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8122" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3141" RevisionGUID="9ee89759-8ef5-41b1-bd38-16aa00af5f06" CreationDate="2012-02-16T16:10:14.660" UserId="7748" Text="**I agree with Rachel**... As new sites pop up its takes from this more generic one..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Carrer Questions get Closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PM Questions get migrated out (PM)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Db Question get migrated (DBA)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Code Questions get migrated (SO) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;UI Questions get migrated (UI) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;App specific stuff gets Migrated (Superuser)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Whats left?, Not Much.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Has any new site proposal ever been rejected because `We already have programmers?`" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8123" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3142" RevisionGUID="b0f54019-b112-4528-a441-268677ba78ed" CreationDate="2012-02-16T16:25:56.753" UserId="1204" Text="All of the graph results can be explained by the consistent, persistent effort by the community and the moderators to remove bikeshed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I personally think this is a good thing.  While the potential audience is smaller, the audience that remains has a higher percentage of experts in the field, and not just people who want to talk about the &quot;best eraser for programmers.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8124" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3140" RevisionGUID="769af17f-e1f2-490d-b064-497f3fd5e897" CreationDate="2012-02-16T16:37:00.910" UserId="1130" Comment="edited body" Text="I think we are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The strict enforcement of keeping questions on-topic combined with the fact [our site name doesn't match the FAQ][1] is causing a lot of users to misunderstand what the site is meant for, and to lose interest and stop asking/answering questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, here's a graph of our new user growth. It remains fairly steady, because many programmers are interested in a site for programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And here's a graph of new questions asked. It is going down hill fairly steadily for a while now, and I don't believe it's because all the good questions have been asked/answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our number of votes (both up and down) is also declining, showing less user participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is yours, so you can run it however you want, however I strongly believe that the downward nature of the graphs is caused by a lot of misunderstanding and confusion about the site scope. The site was meant to be a site for programmers about programmers, and it has since changed to a site for programmers about software development only. A lot of old active users have lost interest, and a lot of new users don't understand the site scope and ask low quality questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OlKXf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0y9Oj.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/gvnGr.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8125" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3140" RevisionGUID="653f668f-4cf8-45a7-8539-1b9dd56b0f82" CreationDate="2012-02-16T17:26:02.720" UserId="1130" Comment="added 161 characters in body" Text="I think we are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The strict enforcement of keeping questions on-topic combined with the fact [our site name doesn't match the FAQ][1] is causing a lot of users to misunderstand what the site is meant for, and to lose interest and stop asking/answering questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, here's a graph of our new user growth. It remains fairly steady, because many programmers are interested in a site for programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And here's a graph of new questions asked. It is going down hill fairly steadily for a while now, and I don't believe it's because all the good questions have been asked/answered. I think it's instead people being aware of stricter rules, and/or being uncertain about if they should post something for fear of just getting downvoted and closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our number of votes is also declining, which is the result of less user participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is yours, so you can run it however you want, however I strongly believe that the downward nature of the graphs is caused by a lot of misunderstanding and confusion about the site scope. The site was meant to be a site for programmers about programmers, and it has since changed to a site for programmers about software development only. A lot of old active users have lost interest, and a lot of new users don't understand the site scope and ask low quality questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OlKXf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0y9Oj.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/gvnGr.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8126" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3140" RevisionGUID="5995b7a8-6bd1-47df-a011-c02ea13c3440" CreationDate="2012-02-16T17:49:43.253" UserId="1130" Comment="added 243 characters in body" Text="I think we are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The strict enforcement of keeping questions on-topic combined with the fact [our site name doesn't match the FAQ][1] is causing a lot of users to misunderstand what the site is meant for, and to lose interest and stop asking/answering questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, here's a graph of our new user growth. It remains fairly steady, because many programmers are interested in a site for programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And here's a graph of new questions asked. It is going down hill fairly steadily for a while now, and I don't believe it's because all the good questions have been asked/answered. I think it's instead people being aware of stricter rules, and/or being uncertain about if they should post something for fear of just getting downvoted and closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't speak for others, but personally I've gotten frustrated with the way our site is going and have kind of given up. I don't think I'm alone either judging by questions on meta, and the disappearance of several formerly-active users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our number of votes is also declining, which is the result of less user participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is yours, so you can run it however you want, however I strongly believe that the downward nature of the graphs is caused by a lot of misunderstanding and confusion about the site scope. The site was meant to be a site for programmers about programmers, and it has since changed to a site for programmers about software development only. A lot of old active users have lost interest, and a lot of new users don't understand the site scope and ask low quality questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OlKXf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0y9Oj.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/gvnGr.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8127" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3143" RevisionGUID="6ae48f43-ab3e-4722-905e-7c499c2419a9" CreationDate="2012-02-16T22:07:26.370" UserId="191" Text="The prohibition of giving legal advice relates to US laws regarding practicing law without a license and it seems to have morphed into a social convention for idle chit chat even when people are obviously not pretending to be lawyers or trying to evade professional licensing laws.  This is an international website and it would be unfair to people who live in jurisdictions that don't give a flying *f* about who is professional enough to give advice about software licensing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8128" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3144" RevisionGUID="802e864e-7673-4796-bfe8-a1e800ed9334" CreationDate="2012-02-16T22:10:30.680" UserId="39294" Text="There is a difference between *legal advice* and an *answer*. I have answered many questions based on reading the licenses as well as lot of other literature that discusses them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you ask me &quot;Whether can i use Apache licensed code in my commercial project&quot; the correct answer is Yes. This is neither a mere opinion nor does it need that i must be a lawyer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point is that understanding of the subject is usually good and often more important than all fine print. Usually lawyer never make you understand! You seek answer for the purpose of understanding but seek lawyer's help to prepare the notice to be submitted to court. And which is why even if i have lawyer at my disposal i would like to ask this question to P.SE about people's view on it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe since we work in software development day in day out; issue about piracy, jail breaking, copy right and licensing, all affect our lives and we must be prepared to learn these subjects pretty much the same way we must learn software methodologies even apart of our programming skills. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is to enable such learning that we must allow P.SE to permit such questions. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8129" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3131" RevisionGUID="a9aede49-35fc-4442-a865-f9809bad892f" CreationDate="2012-02-16T22:27:31.857" UserId="1204" Comment="added 490 characters in body" Text="These questions have a number of problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  They are questions about legal issues, and none of us are lawyers.&#xD;&#xA;2.  They are proxy support questions for the FSF and other such organizations, who should be spending their own hard-earned dollars fielding questions about their opaque agreements.&#xD;&#xA;3.  We are taking money out of the pockets of starving ambulance chas.. er, lawyers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I claim that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Without legal expertise, any answers are going to be merely *opinions,* unless the answerer is reading the text of the license and interpreting it as &quot;plain language,&quot; something the OP ought to be able to do himself. We're running an SE site, not Yahoo Answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  The experts capable of answering these questions properly (licensing lawyers and organizations such as the Free Software Foundation) are not particularly interested in Programmers.SE. We're not &quot;attracting the experts&quot; with these questions. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8130" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3131" RevisionGUID="62d2104a-d077-4dab-9235-2cca46826dcb" CreationDate="2012-02-16T22:41:01.197" UserId="1204" Comment="edited body" Text="These questions have a number of problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  They are questions about legal issues, and none of us are lawyers.&#xD;&#xA;2.  They are proxy support questions for the FSF and other such organizations, who should be spending their own hard-earned dollars fielding questions about their opaque agreements.&#xD;&#xA;3.  We are taking money out of the pockets of starving ambulance chas.. er, lawyers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I claim that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Without legal expertise, any answers are going to be merely *opinions,* unless the answerer is reading the text of the license and interpreting it in &quot;plain language,&quot; something the OP ought to be able to do himself. We're running an SE site, not Yahoo Answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  The experts capable of answering these questions properly (licensing lawyers and organizations such as the Free Software Foundation) are not particularly interested in Programmers.SE. We're not &quot;attracting the experts&quot; with these questions. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8131" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3145" RevisionGUID="542dfe5e-c38a-441c-8b96-2689afcb42b8" CreationDate="2012-02-16T23:35:42.113" UserId="24028" Text="As I see it the answers in comments are usually poor quality and not of significant value. They detract from using comments to get to the real question. &#xD;&#xA;I have also see controversial answers posted in comments, possibly as you cannot be down voted and loose points for a comment.  I feel that they should be discouraged, and ideally comment able to be up/down voted and points allocated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8132" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="3146" RevisionGUID="4554dfd4-391e-4796-bd9b-692b4d18a2a0" CreationDate="2012-02-17T04:28:41.623" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135503/is-there-a-forum-for-teachers-and-programmers-to-collaborate" Text="" />
  <row Id="8133" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3146" RevisionGUID="557b0893-ef52-474c-934c-91aed207cb7b" CreationDate="2012-02-17T03:53:59.870" UserDisplayName="user47930" Text="I teach middle and high school math.  From time to time I have ideas for little applets that I would like for my students to be able to use and explore.  Sometimes I'm able to create these in mathematics software packages, like GeoGebra or Mathematica.  Other times, the project is beyond my (current) capacities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could learn more programming, and I'm interested in doing so.  I could of course ask someone local.  But sometimes I've had the thought that crowd sourcing such projects would be both fun and useful.  Does anyone know of a good forum for this to happen in?  Is this stackexchange a good one?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8134" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3146" RevisionGUID="557b0893-ef52-474c-934c-91aed207cb7b" CreationDate="2012-02-17T03:53:59.870" UserDisplayName="user47930" Text="Is there a forum for teachers and programmers to collaborate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8135" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3146" RevisionGUID="557b0893-ef52-474c-934c-91aed207cb7b" CreationDate="2012-02-17T03:53:59.870" UserDisplayName="user47930" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8136" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3147" RevisionGUID="8234655a-1366-4a23-8f0e-cc8e41fb2e71" CreationDate="2012-02-17T05:02:41.643" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="It really depends on what you mean by &quot;crowdsourcing:&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you're looking to get help for yourself with specific programming issues in code, ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you need help understanding or solving higher-level conceptual issues in software development, ask here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you're an a computer science educator and want to ask questions about how best to teach students in the field, consider contributing to the [Computer Science Education](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2529/computer-science-education?referrer=9koS4R99dbpfaFMnraYe6w2) site proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you're looking for a platform to ask questions of your students, Stack Exchange is not the place for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Similarly, asking for large-scale critiques of your work as you learn programming, Stack Exchange will likely be of little use to you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8137" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3147" RevisionGUID="6318949e-6c15-48ad-b1f3-14058659ecb7" CreationDate="2012-02-17T05:08:24.567" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 329 characters in body" Text="It really depends on what you mean by &quot;crowdsourcing.&quot; Stack Exchange works when you have a a specific question you need you need an expert answer to: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you're looking to get help for yourself with specific programming issues in code, ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you need help understanding or solving higher-level conceptual issues in software development, ask here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you're an a computer science educator and want to ask questions about how best to teach students in the field, consider contributing to the [Computer Science Education](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2529/computer-science-education?referrer=9koS4R99dbpfaFMnraYe6w2) site proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it's not a jobs board or a way to get people to do exercises you prescribe or request. These things are outside the scope of the platform:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Asking questions of your students in a structured format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Getting help with critiques of your work or ideas&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Providing an idea and expecting people to code it for you&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinction being that on Stack Exchange, you're expected to do the work yourself: the answers you receive are merely facilitators towards that. For getting people to do work for you, consider looking at any of the multitudes of job boards out there, including the one Stack Exchange offers, [Careers 2.0](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/employer)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8138" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3148" RevisionGUID="424fc9ff-298e-4091-b846-dbe5a7cc7269" CreationDate="2012-02-17T15:50:35.820" UserId="7748" Text="[In my last post][1] a few people pointed out the that decline in average score and question count was not a good metric for showing the decline of this site.. So here is some additional evidence. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I Basically classified every question as  **Good**, **Bad** or **Ok**  &#xD;&#xA;**Good**= A score &gt;1 and Open&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Ok**= A score =1 and Open&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Bad**= A score &lt;0 or Closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here is The Graph (Including a Line for total)**&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the SQL:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Select&#xD;&#xA;    	week.week&#xD;&#xA;        ,good.cnt as Good&#xD;&#xA;        ,ok.cnt as ok&#xD;&#xA;        ,bad.cnt as bad&#xD;&#xA;    from &#xD;&#xA;    	(select distinct &#xD;&#xA;    		CAST(year(p.CreationDate) as char(4))+'-'+CAST(DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) as char(2)) as week &#xD;&#xA;    		from Posts p&#xD;&#xA;    		where p.CreationDate&gt;dateadd(yy,-1,getdate())) week&#xD;&#xA;    join &#xD;&#xA;    	(select  &#xD;&#xA;    		CAST(year(p.CreationDate) as char(4))+'-'+CAST(DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) as char(2)) as week &#xD;&#xA;    		 ,count(1) as Cnt&#xD;&#xA;    		from Posts p&#xD;&#xA;    		where score&gt;1 and Closeddate is Null&#xD;&#xA;    		group by   year(p.CreationDate),DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) &#xD;&#xA;    	) good on good.week=week.week&#xD;&#xA;    join &#xD;&#xA;    	(select  &#xD;&#xA;    		CAST(year(p.CreationDate) as char(4))+'-'+CAST(DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) as char(2)) as week &#xD;&#xA;    		 ,count(1) as Cnt&#xD;&#xA;    		from Posts p&#xD;&#xA;    		where score=0 and Closeddate is Null&#xD;&#xA;    		group by   year(p.CreationDate),DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) &#xD;&#xA;    	) ok on ok.week=week.week&#xD;&#xA;    join &#xD;&#xA;    	(select  &#xD;&#xA;    		CAST(year(p.CreationDate) as char(4))+'-'+CAST(DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) as char(2)) as week &#xD;&#xA;    		 ,count(1) as Cnt&#xD;&#xA;    		from Posts p&#xD;&#xA;    		where score&lt;0 or Closeddate is not Null&#xD;&#xA;    		group by   year(p.CreationDate),DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) &#xD;&#xA;    	) bad on bad.week=week.week&#xD;&#xA;    order by week.week&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3136/are-we-going-down-hill&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/uY1aI.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8139" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3148" RevisionGUID="424fc9ff-298e-4091-b846-dbe5a7cc7269" CreationDate="2012-02-17T15:50:35.820" UserId="7748" Text="More Evidence we are going down Hill" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8140" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3148" RevisionGUID="424fc9ff-298e-4091-b846-dbe5a7cc7269" CreationDate="2012-02-17T15:50:35.820" UserId="7748" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8141" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3149" RevisionGUID="62cbbd25-3fed-4677-8186-d7a1df560281" CreationDate="2012-02-17T16:09:25.240" UserId="257" Text="I think the top answers on your previous post already explain the trends in this graph.  More people (myself included) are beginning to understand the direction that the Programmers community wants the site to go in, and we're voting and flagging accordingly.  The actual proportion of Good/Bad questions *asked* may have stayed the same (or even gotten a little better), but your data only shows how we're *reacting* to it with downvoting and close votes.  I've been spending a little bit of time each day voting on **new** questions that are good or bad.  I don't go back and vote on old ones nearly as much." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8142" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3148" RevisionGUID="8214952b-e77d-4c8e-b991-170052b7e540" CreationDate="2012-02-17T16:11:03.343" UserId="226" Comment="edited title" Text="More evidence that we are going downhill" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8143" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3148" RevisionGUID="cd77cb7c-6e62-4152-a26b-b94ba44a1a39" CreationDate="2012-02-17T16:42:16.760" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Are we Going down hill?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3136/are-we-going-down-hill)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;[In my last post][1] a few people pointed out the that decline in average score and question count was not a good metric for showing the decline of this site.. So here is some additional evidence. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I Basically classified every question as  **Good**, **Bad** or **Ok**  &#xD;&#xA;**Good**= A score &gt;1 and Open&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Ok**= A score =1 and Open&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Bad**= A score &lt;0 or Closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here is The Graph (Including a Line for total)**&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the SQL:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Select&#xD;&#xA;    	week.week&#xD;&#xA;        ,good.cnt as Good&#xD;&#xA;        ,ok.cnt as ok&#xD;&#xA;        ,bad.cnt as bad&#xD;&#xA;    from &#xD;&#xA;    	(select distinct &#xD;&#xA;    		CAST(year(p.CreationDate) as char(4))+'-'+CAST(DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) as char(2)) as week &#xD;&#xA;    		from Posts p&#xD;&#xA;    		where p.CreationDate&gt;dateadd(yy,-1,getdate())) week&#xD;&#xA;    join &#xD;&#xA;    	(select  &#xD;&#xA;    		CAST(year(p.CreationDate) as char(4))+'-'+CAST(DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) as char(2)) as week &#xD;&#xA;    		 ,count(1) as Cnt&#xD;&#xA;    		from Posts p&#xD;&#xA;    		where score&gt;1 and Closeddate is Null&#xD;&#xA;    		group by   year(p.CreationDate),DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) &#xD;&#xA;    	) good on good.week=week.week&#xD;&#xA;    join &#xD;&#xA;    	(select  &#xD;&#xA;    		CAST(year(p.CreationDate) as char(4))+'-'+CAST(DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) as char(2)) as week &#xD;&#xA;    		 ,count(1) as Cnt&#xD;&#xA;    		from Posts p&#xD;&#xA;    		where score=0 and Closeddate is Null&#xD;&#xA;    		group by   year(p.CreationDate),DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) &#xD;&#xA;    	) ok on ok.week=week.week&#xD;&#xA;    join &#xD;&#xA;    	(select  &#xD;&#xA;    		CAST(year(p.CreationDate) as char(4))+'-'+CAST(DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) as char(2)) as week &#xD;&#xA;    		 ,count(1) as Cnt&#xD;&#xA;    		from Posts p&#xD;&#xA;    		where score&lt;0 or Closeddate is not Null&#xD;&#xA;    		group by   year(p.CreationDate),DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) &#xD;&#xA;    	) bad on bad.week=week.week&#xD;&#xA;    order by week.week&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3136/are-we-going-down-hill&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/uY1aI.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8144" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3148" RevisionGUID="81126ffd-154d-44dd-8001-dd793893cafa" CreationDate="2012-02-17T16:42:14.670" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[3136],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:6415,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Michael the Ghost&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8145" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3150" RevisionGUID="9ba0c2a1-c69f-469e-87ed-27f2bd8388ee" CreationDate="2012-02-17T17:40:29.253" UserId="34364" Text="I recently came across [this answer][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It states an untrue statement in which, I think, was in a joking manor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should I do when I see an answer like this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/49425/34364" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8146" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3150" RevisionGUID="9ba0c2a1-c69f-469e-87ed-27f2bd8388ee" CreationDate="2012-02-17T17:40:29.253" UserId="34364" Text="Should untrue answers be flagged/deleted/edited?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8147" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3150" RevisionGUID="9ba0c2a1-c69f-469e-87ed-27f2bd8388ee" CreationDate="2012-02-17T17:40:29.253" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8148" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3151" RevisionGUID="01100c2b-484d-4a2b-9e30-63f71475575c" CreationDate="2012-02-17T17:43:19.953" UserId="47" Text="Your choice are (as ever)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Leave a comment&#xD;&#xA;* Down-vote&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the answer has a negative score and you have more than 20K reputation then you can vote to delete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you shouldn't do is flag for moderator attention unless it clearly doesn't answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case it *could* be an answer (albeit a wrong one)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8149" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3151" RevisionGUID="95044c75-fd9a-439f-91db-3122ce57be64" CreationDate="2012-02-17T17:48:24.997" UserId="47" Comment="caveat" Text="Your choice are (as ever)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Leave a comment&#xD;&#xA;* Down-vote&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the answer has a negative score and you have more than 20K reputation then you can vote to delete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you shouldn't do is flag for moderator attention unless it clearly doesn't answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case it *could* be an answer (albeit a wrong one) - so there is always going to be a judgement call as to which side of the line it lies." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8150" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3152" RevisionGUID="fcb2815d-45d1-4aa5-9787-3e3def55dc39" CreationDate="2012-02-17T17:49:26.740" UserId="4" Text="The reasons for flagging an answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- It's not an answer. It makes no attempt to answer the original question. It could be a comment or clarification that should be merged into the original question or added to the original question.&#xD;&#xA;- It's spam. It's advertising something with only promotion. If it's something that legitimately helps the person asking the question, there should be disclosure if the provider is associated with the thing linked to.&#xD;&#xA;- It's abusive or offensive to other members of the community.&#xD;&#xA;- It's otherwise suspicious and a moderator should look at it in more depth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A wrong answer is not a reason to flag an answer. Wrong answers should not be flagged just because they are wrong. Leave a comment asking for references or providing a reputable reference that disproves the answer and downvote as appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I deleted the provided answer since it wasn't an answer to the question. It was an attempt to be funny, and pretty much failed. If it was a comment, I would have left it alone, but I didn't feel that it added any value, so rather than migrating it to a comment, I just removed it entirely." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8151" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3153" RevisionGUID="ca14cde7-8874-4686-b4fc-a01ce6ad0952" CreationDate="2012-02-18T00:01:20.220" UserId="34364" Text="According to my profile I have 132 suggested edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to my progress towards Strunk &amp; White on the [review][1] page, I have edited 79 posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why don't these numbers match up. Is this my fault or the sites's?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8152" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3153" RevisionGUID="ca14cde7-8874-4686-b4fc-a01ce6ad0952" CreationDate="2012-02-18T00:01:20.220" UserId="34364" Text="Edit Total on Profile Not Matching Up" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8153" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3153" RevisionGUID="ca14cde7-8874-4686-b4fc-a01ce6ad0952" CreationDate="2012-02-18T00:01:20.220" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8154" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3153" RevisionGUID="c5c916f5-e76a-4346-ae42-6eecdc9525d0" CreationDate="2012-02-18T00:13:16.950" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|bug|badges|suggested-edits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8155" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3154" RevisionGUID="56ca7aa1-2a46-4ce1-b11f-cc0ad83f79dc" CreationDate="2012-02-18T00:15:44.700" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Not every edit [counts towards the editor badges](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/442/what-kind-of-edits-contribute-to-the-editor-badges):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - does not include edits to your own posts&#xD;&#xA;- does not include edits to tags &#xD;&#xA;- community-wiki posts are eligible&#xD;&#xA;- tag wiki posts are eligible&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To count for S&amp;W/Copy Editor, the edit must cover the title, the body or both.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm looking through your profile now, but any suggested edits you may have had approved that only consisted of a retag would not count towards the total for *Strunk &amp; White*." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8156" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3154" RevisionGUID="ef6ddca7-311c-49c7-a63b-10a7534e5a49" CreationDate="2012-02-18T00:22:15.473" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 170 characters in body" Text="According to [your profile](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/34364/jae?tab=activity), you only have 93 suggested edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Jae's Profile][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A number of those were also rejected, which would get you to the 79 edits listed on the Review page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the future, also keep in mind that not every edit [counts towards the editor badges](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/442/what-kind-of-edits-contribute-to-the-editor-badges):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - does not include edits to your own posts&#xD;&#xA;- does not include edits to tags &#xD;&#xA;- community-wiki posts are eligible&#xD;&#xA;- tag wiki posts are eligible&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To count for S&amp;W/Copy Editor, the edit must cover the title, the body or both.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Dfop5.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8157" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3153" RevisionGUID="7a9b0488-d861-43e7-a810-671b4c4db12b" CreationDate="2012-02-18T00:22:20.840" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|badges|suggested-edits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8158" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3155" RevisionGUID="cf7762e9-ae61-42c6-9385-6855dd1a0fd0" CreationDate="2012-02-18T15:47:47.187" UserId="6390" Text="**The questions are on-topic, and appropriate for understanding by any practicing professional programmer.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks to Richard Stallman and the GNU Manifesto, all programmers have to have a the same level of understanding legal issues of code use that any businessperson needs to have of contracts.  If there were a Small Business Stack Exchange, I suspect simple contract questions, purchase order mechanics discussions, and requests for advice about factoring accounts receivable would be on-topic.  I also expect many answers would start, &quot;*IANAL, but ...*&quot;.  There are certainly topics of discussion at small-business groups all around the USA, even when there are no lawyers in the room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For programmers, it was not always so - the 1970s and early 1980s were a wonderful time of free sharing of code among practicing programmers, often with the code being explicitly in the public domain.  But it is now, as the GPL and every other license it inspired have forced these kinds of decisions upon us.  And so we need to have places to discuss them, and the Programmers Stack Exchange is an appropriate venue." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8159" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3156" RevisionGUID="39236ed0-d1ff-4028-ba04-b3b6e49e3f6a" CreationDate="2012-02-18T23:15:55.383" UserId="17275" Text="On a few of the stack exchange sites I have come across posts where the links within the postings are dead.  How should these be handled?  Is this something that you should flag for moderator attention?  There are cases like dead links in comments (where it looks like this is the only option), answers and questions.  I know I can edit in cases of questions/answers, but that's only if it's not truly dead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically, I don't want to annoy you with moderator flags on dead links if all it is going to do is annoy you.  What is your preferred approach to dealing with dead links?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;TIA." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8160" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3156" RevisionGUID="39236ed0-d1ff-4028-ba04-b3b6e49e3f6a" CreationDate="2012-02-18T23:15:55.383" UserId="17275" Text="How Should Dead Links Be Handled?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8161" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3156" RevisionGUID="39236ed0-d1ff-4028-ba04-b3b6e49e3f6a" CreationDate="2012-02-18T23:15:55.383" UserId="17275" Text="|support|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8162" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3157" RevisionGUID="bda72055-aa9c-474b-a193-747991a6f5d2" CreationDate="2012-02-18T23:21:35.917" UserId="47" Text="In the first instance you should have a quick look to see if you can work out what link should be now - however, don't spend much time on this. It might be that there's a new version of the documentation out and changing the version number in the URL might be all that's needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that you can't find the new URL leave a comment. The poster will be notified (assuming they are still active) and hopefully they'll fix it. If the flair isn't a link then the poster doesn't have an account so there's no point in commenting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case - or if it's a link only answer, flag the post for moderator attention. Ultimately if the post can't be salvaged we'll delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the answer stands without the link then all of this is less of an issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;BTW - This shows why link only answers are a &quot;bad thing&quot;. I the links go dead the answer becomes useless. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8163" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3157" RevisionGUID="43f0cf5a-294a-4cf4-9ca8-26375d23c5da" CreationDate="2012-02-19T14:51:13.050" UserId="47" Comment="edited for sense" Text="In the first instance you should have a quick look to see if you can work out what link should be now - however, don't spend much time on this. It might be that there's a new version of the documentation out and changing the version number in the URL might be all that's needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that you can't find the new URL leave a comment. The poster will be notified (assuming they are still active) and hopefully they'll fix it. If the flair isn't a link (the gravatar is a silhouette) then the poster doesn't have an account so there's no point in commenting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case - or if it's a link only answer, flag the post for moderator attention. Ultimately if the post can't be salvaged we'll delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the answer stands without the link then all of this is less of an issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;BTW - This shows why link only answers are a &quot;bad thing&quot;. When the links go dead the answer becomes useless. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8164" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3158" RevisionGUID="954715ab-cc29-42b3-96d4-e22e0de6c053" CreationDate="2012-02-20T21:33:13.993" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="So our [first round of proposals](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1) for the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups) is about to close, and it's looking like [tag:career] will be first up to the chopping block. Career questions are tricky in that people, despite the tag wikis and tag wiki excerpts and the constant retags, still use it on a constant basis. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange won't lock (i.e. blacklist) a tag from getting new questions if it has hundreds of questions in it, as it provides a bad experience to the user. So instead, what I'd like to propose is renaming [tag:career] to something more jargony—[tag:stci-career] in order to help dissuade random passersby from using it while we clean it up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag would be temporary, and would be renamed back to [tag:career] once the cleanup is finished should there be any questions left. We'd of course have the usual slate of (ineffective) tag wiki warnings saying not to use the tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good idea, bad idea?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8165" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3158" RevisionGUID="954715ab-cc29-42b3-96d4-e22e0de6c053" CreationDate="2012-02-20T21:33:13.993" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Should we rename tags subjected to the Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8166" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3158" RevisionGUID="954715ab-cc29-42b3-96d4-e22e0de6c053" CreationDate="2012-02-20T21:33:13.993" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|tags|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8167" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3087" RevisionGUID="97167a47-dde6-4327-86a9-e2721f9bd9c7" CreationDate="2012-02-20T21:33:31.827" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|tags|posse|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8168" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2886" RevisionGUID="ac1c5e48-4f2c-4c66-8e29-78858b14a700" CreationDate="2012-02-20T21:33:52.357" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|tags|posse|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8169" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3159" RevisionGUID="da657fda-09b9-45f4-b0d2-13e3a4a83545" CreationDate="2012-02-20T21:35:04.170" UserId="2654" Text="Good idea, I like it. Maybe throw a non-printing invisible in the middle of that tag as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8170" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3160" RevisionGUID="c41cf53c-e387-4bf1-afa9-c67f800bff9b" CreationDate="2012-02-20T21:35:58.800" UserId="47" Text="The only drawback I can think of is that the autocomplete is fairly intelligent and if the user types &quot;career&quot; will match &quot;stci-**career**&quot; anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think editing the tag wiki excerpt (and perhaps even body) to make it clear that this was not the &quot;career&quot; tag might work. The user would be looking for &quot;career&quot; and when it didn't come up as a suggestion they *might* be more likely to read the excerpt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would setting up a synonym be a good idea too? Just in case someone decides to recreate the tag anyway." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8171" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3161" RevisionGUID="f1329134-2436-456f-914b-7f86616bbdfb" CreationDate="2012-02-20T21:37:42.087" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups) (STCI) is an on-going program devoted to stamping out bad, honeypot tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Calls for proposals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Round 1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8172" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3162" RevisionGUID="f308e90d-9631-46b3-8153-0f765233db6d" CreationDate="2012-02-20T21:37:42.087" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Questions regarding the Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative, a program to systematically destroy bad, honeypot tags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8173" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3158" RevisionGUID="3710f0a4-d39b-41c4-82e5-e40ba6a4bbcd" CreationDate="2012-02-20T21:38:47.107" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="So our [first round of proposals](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1) for the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups) is about to close, and it's looking like [tag:career] will be first up to the chopping block. Career questions are tricky in that people, despite the tag wikis and tag wiki excerpts and the constant retags, still use it on a constant basis. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange won't lock (i.e. blacklist) a tag from getting new questions if it has hundreds of questions in it as it provides a bad experience to the user. So instead, what I'd like to propose is renaming [tag:career] to something more jargony—[tag:stci-career]—in order to help dissuade random passersby from using it while we clean it up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag would be temporary, and—should there be any questions left—would be renamed back to [tag:career] once the cleanup is finished. We'd of course have the usual slate of (ineffective) tag wiki warnings saying not to use the tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good idea, bad idea?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8174" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3163" RevisionGUID="d0f23bb2-f8f8-403d-bfdd-175723d1f4e8" CreationDate="2012-02-20T21:45:51.387" UserId="4" Text="Why not just rename is to &quot;stci&quot;? Remove career entirely, yet make it easy to find. If there are any questions deserving of the &quot;career&quot; tag, it can be added, but since general career advice is off-topic, it seems like the &quot;career&quot; tag would be pointless." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8175" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2886" RevisionGUID="ee5516fc-281a-437b-8391-d15d56f0ae91" CreationDate="2012-02-20T21:53:17.073" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|tags|posse|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8176" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3164" RevisionGUID="b54401b1-17a3-427d-bb12-f22647c39b3a" CreationDate="2012-02-20T23:07:10.717" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="[tag:best-practices] was recently burninated and removed from all 700+ questions that had it. However, it's sprung up again like wild fire on 6 new questions in the last week.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can this tag be blacklisted, so it doesn't keep coming back?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8177" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3164" RevisionGUID="b54401b1-17a3-427d-bb12-f22647c39b3a" CreationDate="2012-02-20T23:07:10.717" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Please blacklist [best-practices]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8178" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3164" RevisionGUID="b54401b1-17a3-427d-bb12-f22647c39b3a" CreationDate="2012-02-20T23:07:10.717" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|support|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8179" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3165" RevisionGUID="6443d3d2-32ad-4f28-ac98-760f1b3617a8" CreationDate="2012-02-21T05:19:52.403" UserId="399" Text="Unlike [this cat](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bETCusT5kNM), this tag will not come back the very next day." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8180" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3166" RevisionGUID="9d2ed62c-bd84-458b-bc14-cbe8f13cf088" CreationDate="2012-02-21T15:41:32.807" UserId="2471" Text="Quick question but can someone provide a bit of clarity in regards to how the flagging review works? I recently flagged a question as off-topic, it was closed by community vote as off topic, but then the flag was declined as &quot;a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now I'm assuming that it was closed before it was reviewed, but still the phrasing rubs the wrong way a bit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8181" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3166" RevisionGUID="9d2ed62c-bd84-458b-bc14-cbe8f13cf088" CreationDate="2012-02-21T15:41:32.807" UserId="2471" Text="How does flagging review work?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8182" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3166" RevisionGUID="9d2ed62c-bd84-458b-bc14-cbe8f13cf088" CreationDate="2012-02-21T15:41:32.807" UserId="2471" Text="|support|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8183" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3167" RevisionGUID="3bb06174-ebbc-4a03-98ab-f939817b6c4f" CreationDate="2012-02-21T15:46:49.103" UserId="47" Text="It could be that a moderator reviewed your flag before the post was closed by other members of the community. If you flag and then the community effectively agrees with you by voting to close regardless of whether they saw the flag or not, then it should be resolved has &quot;helpful&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you link to the question in question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8184" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3168" RevisionGUID="be1c907f-e7b2-4f3a-9c03-93eed8b9fb13" CreationDate="2012-02-21T16:34:12.553" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Do more tags mean a better question? a worse question? Is this even a relevant metric? I feel like more tags are indicative of an unfocused question or a question that is desperate for answers. Any data to support or refute this assertion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8185" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3168" RevisionGUID="be1c907f-e7b2-4f3a-9c03-93eed8b9fb13" CreationDate="2012-02-21T16:34:12.553" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Is there any correlation with the number of tags used and the quality of a question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8186" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3168" RevisionGUID="be1c907f-e7b2-4f3a-9c03-93eed8b9fb13" CreationDate="2012-02-21T16:34:12.553" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8187" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3169" RevisionGUID="b387a1c3-579a-4f01-b56f-e5ea586b7a66" CreationDate="2012-02-21T17:13:28.633" UserId="25936" Text="It's not a relevant metric, quantitative metrics rarely are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Empirically, questions that have five tags (the upper limit) tend to be better quality wise from questions that have a single or two tags, because the OP put a little bit more effort in categorizing the question. Four/five good tags is a hint that the OP is familiar with the site, but just a hint, the question itself may be crappy. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then again, it's not extremely rare to see questions with three or four useless tags (think: [meta tags][1]). I don't remember seeing a question with five useless tags, let's hope the [tag:career][tag:career-development][tag:software-development][tag:software-engineering][tag:best-practices] beast remains a mythical one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We seem to have a bigger problem with tagging than other sites, at least the sites I frequent. If you take a look at [meta-tag:stci], [meta-tag:tags], [meta-tag:tag-blacklist] and [meta-tag:tag-merge] questions you'll get a better idea of the various tagging issues we've had (and in some cases continue to have). The first [Structured Tag Cleanup][2] starts tomorrow, hopefully we will get rid of some of the most troublesome tags. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, let's see how we can retag this question, because [meta-tag:discussion] alone doesn't say much...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8188" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3168" RevisionGUID="f23ad63c-9990-45ba-85b8-b59d7fdc57bf" CreationDate="2012-02-21T17:13:48.883" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8189" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3169" RevisionGUID="45f54491-3ed4-4cc9-9a20-36c2204762c0" CreationDate="2012-02-21T17:32:05.320" UserId="25936" Comment="added 606 characters in body" Text="It's not a relevant metric, quantitative metrics rarely are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Empirically, questions that have five tags (the upper limit) tend to be better quality wise from questions that have a single or two tags, because the OP put a little bit more effort in categorizing the question. Four/five good tags is a hint that the OP is familiar with the site, but just a hint, the question itself may be crappy. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then again, it's not extremely rare to see questions with three or four useless tags (think: [meta tags][1]). I don't remember seeing a question with five useless tags, let's hope the [tag:career][tag:career-development][tag:software-development][tag:software-engineering][tag:best-practices] beast remains a mythical one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We seem to have a bigger problem with tagging than other sites, at least the sites I frequent. If you take a look at [meta-tag:stci], [meta-tag:tags], [meta-tag:tag-blacklist] and [meta-tag:tag-merge] questions you'll get a better idea of the various tagging issues we've had (and in some cases continue to have). The first [Structured Tag Cleanup][2] starts tomorrow, hopefully we will get rid of some of the most troublesome tags. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, let's see how we can retag this question, because [meta-tag:discussion] alone doesn't say much...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Interesting SEDE queries**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How many tags per question][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [Average tag count per question][4]&#xD;&#xA; - [How many tags per question for top questions?][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [Close count per tag with close rate &gt;= 10%][6] (irrelevant but still interesting!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/61441/how-many-tags-per-question&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/61442/average-tag-count-per-question&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/59225/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/52897/close-count-per-tag-with-close-rate-10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8190" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3169" RevisionGUID="809ec72a-2e72-493e-9802-cff74b15a4b8" CreationDate="2012-02-21T17:38:46.653" UserId="25936" Comment="added 15 characters in body" Text="It's not a relevant metric, quantitative metrics rarely are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Empirically, questions that have five tags (the upper limit) tend to be better quality wise from questions that have a single or two tags, because the OP put a little bit more effort in categorizing the question. Four/five good tags is a hint that the OP is familiar with the site, but just a hint, the question itself may be crappy. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then again, it's not extremely rare to see questions (good and bad) with three or four useless tags (think: [meta tags][1]). I don't remember seeing a question with five useless tags, let's hope the [tag:career][tag:career-development][tag:software-development][tag:software-engineering][tag:best-practices] beast remains a mythical one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We seem to have a bigger problem with tagging than other sites, at least the sites I frequent. If you take a look at [meta-tag:stci], [meta-tag:tags], [meta-tag:tag-blacklist] and [meta-tag:tag-merge] questions you'll get a better idea of the various tagging issues we've had (and in some cases continue to have). The first [Structured Tag Cleanup][2] starts tomorrow, hopefully we will get rid of some of the most troublesome tags. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, let's see how we can retag this question, because [meta-tag:discussion] alone doesn't say much...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Interesting SEDE queries**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How many tags per question][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [Average tag count per question][4]&#xD;&#xA; - [How many tags per question for top questions?][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [Close count per tag with close rate &gt;= 10%][6] (irrelevant but still interesting!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/61441/how-many-tags-per-question&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/61442/average-tag-count-per-question&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/59225/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/52897/close-count-per-tag-with-close-rate-10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8191" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3170" RevisionGUID="b9ab2a9d-7dcd-4a6a-a4e1-0bb9f47feea2" CreationDate="2012-02-21T17:43:04.973" UserId="1130" Text="I doubt it indicates a better/worse question, although it might indicate a newer user. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before I understood how SE worked, I used to always use 5 tags because I thought it meant I would get more views. I'd actually spend extra time trying to figure out a 4th or 5th tag, even if one wasn't actually needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I understand how SE works better, and only use more tags if the question warrents more tags. And it turns out, most questions I ask don't need more than 2, maybe 3, tags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8192" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3166" RevisionGUID="f99f0036-e9a5-4d44-a363-58819883f613" CreationDate="2012-02-21T17:50:11.070" UserId="25936" Comment="added 99 characters in body" Text="Quick question but can someone provide a bit of clarity in regards to how the flagging review works? I recently flagged a [question as off-topic][1], it was closed by community vote as off topic, but then the flag was declined as &quot;a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now I'm assuming that it was closed before it was reviewed, but still the phrasing rubs the wrong way a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136082/java-interview-fundamentals" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8193" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3150" RevisionGUID="bbdc9a4f-bdf9-4fe1-bc2a-bb700790c0bc" CreationDate="2012-02-21T23:48:51.343" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/172105533413789696" />
  <row Id="8194" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3092" RevisionGUID="86316bb3-3730-43f4-b10b-10e526fb055a" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:10:21.937" UserId="63" Comment="burninating a tag that isn't used doesn't do much. Blacklisting, otoh, keeps it from coming back..." Text="**Proposed tag**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:software-development], 343 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Problem**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's possibly the worst _on topic_ tag we have. _Every_ question is (or should be) about software-development, hence redundant. Furthermore the tag is oftenly coupled with other troublesome / ambiguous tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:best-practices] = [21 questions][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:software-engineering] = [17 questions][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:career] = [7 questions][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:productivity] = [8 questions][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:self-improvement] = [16 questions][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:jobs] = [3 questions][6] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, ~ 21% of [tag:software-development] questions attracted other clean up worthy tags. Also explicitly mentioned in the &quot;[The Death of Meta Tags][7]&quot; post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Solution** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Most open questions are perfectly on topic and otherwise appropriately tagged, appropriately retagging would suffice.  &#xD;&#xA;- There are about 30 questions that are only tagged [tag:software-development], those are going to be tricky ones. I went through them and the topics discussed on most of them are clear, so we can easily retag.&#xD;&#xA;- There are 75 closed questions that may or may not be salvageable. The tag may be bad, but it's mostly used on topic questions, so the closed ones are clearly problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the tag is no longer used, we should ask SE to blacklist it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+best-practices&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+career&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+productivity&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+self-improvement&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://%5Bsoftware-development%5D%20%5Bjobs%5D&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8195" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3094" RevisionGUID="e15748d5-4cc1-4bb5-8e74-3414b28d45b1" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:22:34.697" UserId="25936" Comment="hopefully it won't be a career question... ;)" Text="**Proposed Tag**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:software-engineering]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Problem**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag is too vague to be meaningful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Solution**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag should be removed and replaced with more specific tags that more adequately describe what the question is about, whether its a methodology, a lifecycle phase, and so on. We already have several tags for each of these, but they are too numerous to name all of. A few examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:requirements]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:agile]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:project-management]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:architecture]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:metrics]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8196" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3087" RevisionGUID="04797548-59ff-4d64-8f40-40d40b41eae1" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:28:56.047" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|posse|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8197" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3158" RevisionGUID="5a6553ca-0f40-43c5-a4ee-69c07751020b" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:29:14.597" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8198" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3171" RevisionGUID="e2d20176-908a-4e8e-b736-8ed7d71920fe" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:32:42.970" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Welcome to the first structured tag cleanup! Based on the voting in the [call for proposals](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1), the first round goes to the [tag:career] tag, with 567 current questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a means to contain the disaster, the tag has been renamed to [stci-c​areer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci-career), which should prevent people from adding any more questions to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ground rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of this cleanup is to systematically clean up the career tag without causing disruption to the rest of the site.  Your job, should you choose to accept it, is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [deletion candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3172/8) below and see if there's a way to save any of the questions before they go gently into that good night through [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits). At the end of the clean up period, any questions not sufficiently improved will be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [merge candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3173/8) to see if can be merged into one question. If they shouldn't be, revise the questions to demonstrate how it's not in any way like the question it's been duplicated to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [closure candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3174/8) list to see if you agree with what others have identified as being out of the site's scope. If you agree, vote to close. If you don't agree, use [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to address the problems the question has and bring it back into scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the currently open questions and see which ones do not fit our site scope. Vote to close them and add them to the closure candidates list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Improve the leftover questions by copyediting, fixing spelling, flow, adding clearer titles, etc. while replacing [tag:stci-c​areer] with something more meaningful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    [tag:career-development] for questions about taking steps to improve one's programming career and *requires* the unique insights of a programmer   &#xD;&#xA;    [tag:interview] for questions about interviewing for a software development position   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:hiring] for questions about hiring programmers and other software developers   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market] for questions about the prospects or what one needs to do to get a specific job in software development   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-title] for questions about what a specific type of software development job entails   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:project-management] for questions about managing the scope and requirements of a specific project   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:teamwork] for questions about working within a software development team&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ...and other, more specific tags as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Finally, and this is perhaps the most important of all the rules: **do not just remove the stci-c​areer tag without improving the question.** If all our tag problems were solved by retagging, we would've done so months ago. Every time you retag without improving a question, I silently judge you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ## ಠ_ಠ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### End date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This round of cleanups will end on **Wednesday, March 7th at 04:00 UTC.** At that time, all the default actions will be done: deletions, merges, closures, and such. If the [tag:stci-c​areer] is not empty by then, it'll be renamed back to [tag:career] and be saved for later rounds of cleanups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good luck, and godspeed!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8199" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3171" RevisionGUID="e2d20176-908a-4e8e-b736-8ed7d71920fe" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:32:42.970" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Structured Tag Cleanup: [career]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8200" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3171" RevisionGUID="e2d20176-908a-4e8e-b736-8ed7d71920fe" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:32:42.970" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|featured|tags|posse|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8201" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3171" RevisionGUID="097594d0-6716-4d84-96c1-096b3d08d9de" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:32:52.220" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="8202" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3172" RevisionGUID="5e82bc58-4918-466b-bf79-61d90d9170e7" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:33:06.307" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Deletion candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions to see which can be saved through [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) and reopened. If no improvement would make them on topic, vote to delete if you have the reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18120/what-is-the-good-bad-decision-you-made-in-your-mid-20s-about-your-career&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88798/am-i-an-idealist&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63657/i-made-a-mistake-accepting-this-job&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36007/which-are-the-best-investments-you-have-done-for-your-career-as-programmer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18502/who-wants-to-keep-developing&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23075/what-is-the-coolest-way-to-handle-a-failure&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39992/are-there-too-many-qualified-software-development-engineers-chasing-too-few-jobs&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11425/burned-out-on-programming-and-given-up&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14827/typical-hours-week-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20866/the-job-is-stressing-me-out-and-i-am-unable-to-get-enough-sleep-at-night&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69500/dont-make-me-write-bad-code-is-that-all-programmers-really-want&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49105/how-do-you-apply-to-a-company-way-out-of-your-league&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21782/stagnating-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46514/what-to-do-when-youre-the-interviewer-and-you-dont-like-your-job&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22714/what-are-the-telltale-signs-that-the-code-youre-writing-is-already-obsolete&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1006/how-do-you-motivate-yourself-to-program-when-youd-really-rather-be-doing-somet&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63592/how-do-senior-developers-keep-up-to-learning-as-much-as-a-junior&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53168/what-are-some-good-performance-goals-for-a-software-engineer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5920/how-do-you-manage-your-resume-cv&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16222/how-to-remain-calm-in-all-situations&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1360/what-are-the-top-motivators-for-a-programmer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8203" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3172" RevisionGUID="39a95b11-e120-46ef-8de3-dcd29406f812" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:33:06.307" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="8204" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3173" RevisionGUID="3245a5c3-95a7-4387-b2e7-4acac0910c5c" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:33:31.033" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Merge candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions closed as duplicates to see if they can be merged. If they shouldn't be merged, please use [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to clarify why the questions aren't duplicates of each other and vote to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86502/move-on-and-look-elsewhere-or-confront-the-boss &amp;rarr; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4765/when-do-you-know-its-time-to-move-on-from-your-current-job&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11153/will-programmers-be-around-in-a-few-years &amp;rarr; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81160/does-being-a-jack-of-all-trades-hurt-your-career &amp;rarr; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20653/is-it-better-to-specialize-in-a-single-field-i-like-or-expand-into-other-fields&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/361/ive-graduated-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-im-even-clo &amp;rarr; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8205" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3173" RevisionGUID="3fe890b5-e9de-4692-8968-98ad21202284" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:33:31.033" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="8206" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="967a76c5-5623-4132-bfe9-077d66ec5542" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:33:56.337" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [tag:stci-c​areer] tag that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* insert question here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8207" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="8ba9cc50-c01d-493b-bb88-1dfc4d3143af" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:33:56.337" UserDisplayName="user8" />
  <row Id="8208" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3087" RevisionGUID="d3826383-b839-4057-91d6-540ef04861f8" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:36:05.930" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Structured Tag Cleanup: \[career\]](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;This is a call for proposals for the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Provide one proposal per post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A tag cleanup proposal is a tag, or a collection of *highly* related tags (e.g., tags all sharing the same stem) that needs to be dealt with *en masse*. Besides naming the tag or tags to be handled, your proposal must specify:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **What the problem is.** Why does the tag need to be dealt with? What problems has it caused? Why can't it be handled by a tag merge/rename?&#xD;&#xA;2. **What the solution is.** Does the tag need to go away and replaced with set of new tags? What are those tags? Does it just need a quality review to make it less of a honeypot? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Discuss and vote on proposals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Use the comments on the proposal to discuss any improvements that can be made to the proposal. Be bold and revise proposals based off of those discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote up proposals you think should be done this round, and vote down proposals you don't think have merit, or should not be handled yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Clean up!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**On February 22nd, 2012 at 00:00 UTC or when a proposal gets a 5 score, whichever comes last, this call for proposals will be closed.** We will then handle each proposal with 5 score or higher one at a time in order of their score. A new post will be created that will detail the cleanup activities for the cleanup.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **This is not the place to discuss the merits of or improvements to the Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative.** If you'd like to propose changes to this process for future rounds, please do so on the [RFC for the initiative](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups).&#xD;&#xA;* **This is not a to-do list for unilateral action.** The purpose of the Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative is to be more transparent and organized about cleaning up tags. In order for this to work, it's important we work within the framework and achieve community consensus.&#xD;&#xA;* **Proposals should be reasonable in scope and clearly defined.** &quot;I think we should do something about low quality questions&quot; is not a proposal. &quot;Here's 50 tags someone should do about&quot; is too broad. &quot;I think X tag should be handled but I don't know how&quot; is too vague. [Use chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21) to flesh out an idea.&#xD;&#xA;* **Any proposals that don't meet the threshold can be suggested on later cleanups.** Once the proposals from this round have been handled, a new call for proposals round will begin. Use the time in between to refine and improve any proposal that doesn't make the cut.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8209" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3087" RevisionGUID="f015cbee-2ed9-4f0e-926d-af2e3d0dae49" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:36:03.963" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[3171],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8210" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3171" RevisionGUID="86c12545-48ac-4d26-889e-458419a695db" CreationDate="2012-02-22T03:38:21.887" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Tag markdown fails for our tricksy temp tag" Text="Welcome to the first structured tag cleanup! Based on the voting in the [call for proposals](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1), the first round goes to the [tag:career] tag, with 567 current questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a means to contain the disaster, the tag has been renamed to [stci-c​areer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci-career), which should prevent people from adding any more questions to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ground rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of this cleanup is to systematically clean up the career tag without causing disruption to the rest of the site.  Your job, should you choose to accept it, is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [deletion candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3172/8) below and see if there's a way to save any of the questions before they go gently into that good night through [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits). At the end of the clean up period, any questions not sufficiently improved will be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [merge candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3173/8) to see if can be merged into one question. If they shouldn't be, revise the questions to demonstrate how it's not in any way like the question it's been duplicated to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [closure candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3174/8) list to see if you agree with what others have identified as being out of the site's scope. If you agree, vote to close. If you don't agree, use [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to address the problems the question has and bring it back into scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the currently open questions and see which ones do not fit our site scope. Vote to close them and add them to the closure candidates list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Improve the leftover questions by copyediting, fixing spelling, flow, adding clearer titles, etc. while replacing the `stci-c​areer` tag with something more meaningful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    [tag:career-development] for questions about taking steps to improve one's programming career and *requires* the unique insights of a programmer   &#xD;&#xA;    [tag:interview] for questions about interviewing for a software development position   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:hiring] for questions about hiring programmers and other software developers   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market] for questions about the prospects or what one needs to do to get a specific job in software development   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-title] for questions about what a specific type of software development job entails   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:project-management] for questions about managing the scope and requirements of a specific project   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:teamwork] for questions about working within a software development team&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ...and other, more specific tags as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Finally, and this is perhaps the most important of all the rules: **do not just remove the stci-c​areer tag without improving the question.** If all our tag problems were solved by retagging, we would've done so months ago. Every time you retag without improving a question, I silently judge you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ## ಠ_ಠ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### End date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This round of cleanups will end on **Wednesday, March 7th at 04:00 UTC.** At that time, all the default actions will be done: deletions, merges, closures, and such. If the `stci-c​areer` tag is not empty by then, it'll be renamed back to [tag:career] and be saved for later rounds of cleanups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good luck, and godspeed!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8211" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3173" RevisionGUID="4e746dea-9e80-4fdc-9010-8c6ffc225b82" CreationDate="2012-02-22T04:10:43.500" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Improved formatting, add other duplicates" Text="### Merge candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions closed as duplicates to see if they can be merged. If they shouldn't be merged, please use [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to clarify why the questions aren't duplicates of each other and vote to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86502/move-on-and-look-elsewhere-or-confront-the-boss &amp;rarr;   &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4765/when-do-you-know-its-time-to-move-on-from-your-current-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11153/will-programmers-be-around-in-a-few-years &amp;rarr;   &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81160/does-being-a-jack-of-all-trades-hurt-your-career &amp;rarr;   &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20653/is-it-better-to-specialize-in-a-single-field-i-like-or-expand-into-other-fields&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/361/ive-graduated-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-im-even-clo &amp;rarr;   &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15857/did-microsoft-kill-silverlight &amp;rarr;   &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28078/does-silverlight-have-a-future&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20723/how-do-i-get-better-at-acing-technical-interviews &amp;rarr;   &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/93384/how-can-i-really-wow-an-employer-at-an-interview&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41720/which-order-would-you-teach-programming-languages-in-when-teaching-a-newbie &amp;rarr;   &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10675/ideal-programming-language-learning-sequence&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61678/can-a-developer-move-into-a-fast-paced-career-later-in-life &amp;rarr;   &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/370/how-old-is-too-old" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8212" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3166" RevisionGUID="84e48154-3489-4158-a631-36538cc667d6" CreationDate="2012-02-22T07:52:35.423" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/declined-flags" Text="|support|flagging|declined-flags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8213" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3175" RevisionGUID="cb34ea59-f6de-468f-952c-2531702de375" CreationDate="2012-02-22T08:00:42.107" UserId="31260" Text="As far as I can tell moderator who declined your flag made two mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First mistake was not catching that [question is off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136082/java-interview-fundamentals) indeed. I believe it's minor because topicality at Programmers is quite slippery.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second mistake as far as I can tell is being too easy at casting decline to [your](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2471/rob-z) flag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Clarifications for declining flags given in **[September 2011 Newsletter](http://moderator.stackexchange.com/2011/09/september-2011-newsletter/)** of SE Community Moderator Blog look pretty straightforward:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; #Flags Too Often Marked `[declined]`  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Marking a flag `[declined]` was designed to deter serial abusers of the flagging system, but we find that this “slap on the wrist” is being used more often than is beneficial.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Flags should be closed as `[helpful]` under most circumstances. If you feel strongly that a question was flagged in bad faith, it is okay to mark it `[declined]`. But try to err on the side of clearing as `[helpful]` whenever the user is trying to be genuinely helpful, _even if you do not necessarily act on the flag_..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8214" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3175" RevisionGUID="dfd891dc-0253-4f46-b96e-1d649f485112" CreationDate="2012-02-22T08:11:45.980" UserId="31260" Comment="both cast a close vote and flagged" Text="As far as I can tell moderator who declined your flag made two mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First mistake was not catching that [question is off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136082/java-interview-fundamentals) indeed. I believe it's minor because topicality at Programmers is quite slippery.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second mistake as far as I can tell is being too easy at casting decline to [your](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2471/rob-z) flag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Clarifications for declining flags given in **[September 2011 Newsletter](http://moderator.stackexchange.com/2011/09/september-2011-newsletter/)** of SE Community Moderator Blog look pretty straightforward:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; #Flags Too Often Marked `[declined]`  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Marking a flag `[declined]` was designed to deter serial abusers of the flagging system, but we find that this “slap on the wrist” is being used more often than is beneficial.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Flags should be closed as `[helpful]` under most circumstances. If you feel strongly that a question was flagged in bad faith, it is okay to mark it `[declined]`. But try to err on the side of clearing as `[helpful]` whenever the user is trying to be genuinely helpful, _even if you do not necessarily act on the flag_...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness - given that you both cast a close vote and flagged, I can imagine that moderator considered this as _abuse_ but I've yet to see from credible sources if this indeed qualifies as such." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8216" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3175" RevisionGUID="d9bc354b-646e-4a7f-8e55-1a024b0da7e6" CreationDate="2012-02-22T08:22:08.200" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/123073/is-it-an-abuse-of-flagging-system-to-both-cast-a-close-vote-and-flag" Text="As far as I can tell moderator who declined your flag made two mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First mistake was not catching that [question is off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136082/java-interview-fundamentals) indeed. I believe it's minor because topicality at Programmers is quite slippery.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second mistake as far as I can tell is being too easy at casting decline to [your](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2471/rob-z) flag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Clarifications for declining flags given in **[September 2011 Newsletter](http://moderator.stackexchange.com/2011/09/september-2011-newsletter/)** of SE Community Moderator Blog look pretty straightforward:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; #Flags Too Often Marked `[declined]`  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Marking a flag `[declined]` was designed to deter serial abusers of the flagging system, but we find that this “slap on the wrist” is being used more often than is beneficial.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Flags should be closed as `[helpful]` under most circumstances. If you feel strongly that a question was flagged in bad faith, it is okay to mark it `[declined]`. But try to err on the side of clearing as `[helpful]` whenever the user is trying to be genuinely helpful, _even if you do not necessarily act on the flag_...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness - given that you both cast a close vote and flagged, I can imagine that moderator considered this as _abuse_ but I've yet to see from credible sources if this indeed qualifies as such.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;update&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Follow-up question at SO Meta:  &#xD;&#xA;  http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/123073/is-it-an-abuse-of-flagging-system-to-both-cast-a-close-vote-and-flag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8217" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3175" RevisionGUID="0df33112-6ac2-4f19-b0f0-0ac892ff5fa5" CreationDate="2012-02-22T09:56:08.037" UserId="31260" Comment="wordsmithing" Text="As far as I can tell moderator who declined your flag made two mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First mistake was not catching that [question is off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136082/java-interview-fundamentals) indeed. I believe it's minor because topicality at Programmers is quite slippery.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second mistake per my understanding is being too easy at casting decline to [your](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2471/rob-z) flag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Clarifications for declining flags given in **[September 2011 Newsletter](http://moderator.stackexchange.com/2011/09/september-2011-newsletter/)** of SE Community Moderator Blog look pretty straightforward:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; #Flags Too Often Marked `[declined]`  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Marking a flag `[declined]` was designed to deter serial abusers of the flagging system, but we find that this “slap on the wrist” is being used more often than is beneficial.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Flags should be closed as `[helpful]` under most circumstances. If you feel strongly that a question was flagged in bad faith, it is okay to mark it `[declined]`. But try to err on the side of clearing as `[helpful]` whenever the user is trying to be genuinely helpful, _even if you do not necessarily act on the flag_...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness - given that you both cast a close vote and flagged, I can imagine that moderator considered this as _abuse_ but I've yet to see from credible sources if this indeed qualifies as such.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;update&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Follow-up question at SO Meta:  &#xD;&#xA;  http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/123073/is-it-an-abuse-of-flagging-system-to-both-cast-a-close-vote-and-flag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8218" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3158" RevisionGUID="16755d4e-0606-487e-b389-c9c5478da860" CreationDate="2012-02-22T11:48:53.257" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/172286734376255488" />
  <row Id="8219" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3176" RevisionGUID="9ecae5aa-9d70-4c14-9ca2-ce76a5faf418" CreationDate="2012-02-22T12:05:05.513" UserId="25708" Text="&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:svn] has 71 questions with a wiki summary.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:subversion] has 29 questions but no wiki summary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should [tag:subversion] map to [tag:svn]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If yes, please could someone with enough rep do so?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8220" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3176" RevisionGUID="9ecae5aa-9d70-4c14-9ca2-ce76a5faf418" CreationDate="2012-02-22T12:05:05.513" UserId="25708" Text="Should [svn] and [subversion] be tag synonyms?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8221" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3176" RevisionGUID="9ecae5aa-9d70-4c14-9ca2-ce76a5faf418" CreationDate="2012-02-22T12:05:05.513" UserId="25708" Text="|support|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8222" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3176" RevisionGUID="16956c06-31f5-497f-b71e-00b046077d84" CreationDate="2012-02-22T12:08:53.053" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8223" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3177" RevisionGUID="e2ec24ef-bca8-4262-a86e-4f48cfb4a66c" CreationDate="2012-02-22T12:09:17.280" UserId="47" Text="The same mapping exists on Stack Overflow so I've gone ahead and done this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8227" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3171" RevisionGUID="d6fdd150-5ec6-4020-b7be-865342656d11" CreationDate="2012-02-22T14:48:53.950" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/172332035770286081" />
  <row Id="8232" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="109fc39f-fbf1-4beb-94d1-addcc9ee687c" CreationDate="2012-02-22T17:01:27.543" UserId="25936" Comment="added 58 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [tag:stci-c​areer] tag that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8233" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3172" RevisionGUID="6ead1ad9-4d24-42a0-91a8-7847eb656d78" CreationDate="2012-02-22T17:15:17.563" UserId="1130" Comment="Moved some of the questions into a category to identify that we are interested in expanding the answers into a blog post before deleting them" Text="### Deletion candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions to see which can be saved through [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) and reopened. If no improvement would make them on topic, vote to delete if you have the reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18120/what-is-the-good-bad-decision-you-made-in-your-mid-20s-about-your-career&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88798/am-i-an-idealist&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63657/i-made-a-mistake-accepting-this-job&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18502/who-wants-to-keep-developing&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39992/are-there-too-many-qualified-software-development-engineers-chasing-too-few-jobs&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11425/burned-out-on-programming-and-given-up&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14827/typical-hours-week-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20866/the-job-is-stressing-me-out-and-i-am-unable-to-get-enough-sleep-at-night&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69500/dont-make-me-write-bad-code-is-that-all-programmers-really-want&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21782/stagnating-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46514/what-to-do-when-youre-the-interviewer-and-you-dont-like-your-job&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53168/what-are-some-good-performance-goals-for-a-software-engineer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5920/how-do-you-manage-your-resume-cv&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16222/how-to-remain-calm-in-all-situations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Possible blog posts that should still be deleted**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leave Closed until we get the post written and published, then delete. We're more interested in the content of the answers than the quality of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36007/which-are-the-best-investments-you-have-done-for-your-career-as-programmer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1360/what-are-the-top-motivators-for-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1006/how-do-you-motivate-yourself-to-program-when-youd-really-rather-be-doing-somet&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22714/what-are-the-telltale-signs-that-the-code-youre-writing-is-already-obsolete&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63592/how-do-senior-developers-keep-up-to-learning-as-much-as-a-junior&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49105/how-do-you-apply-to-a-company-way-out-of-your-league&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23075/what-is-the-coolest-way-to-handle-a-failure&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8234" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="3172" RevisionGUID="a28dac77-25da-4cee-838e-8bdaa355c588" CreationDate="2012-02-22T18:02:27.700" UserId="25936" Comment="Rollback to [5e82bc58-4918-466b-bf79-61d90d9170e7]" Text="### Deletion candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions to see which can be saved through [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) and reopened. If no improvement would make them on topic, vote to delete if you have the reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18120/what-is-the-good-bad-decision-you-made-in-your-mid-20s-about-your-career&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88798/am-i-an-idealist&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63657/i-made-a-mistake-accepting-this-job&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36007/which-are-the-best-investments-you-have-done-for-your-career-as-programmer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18502/who-wants-to-keep-developing&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23075/what-is-the-coolest-way-to-handle-a-failure&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39992/are-there-too-many-qualified-software-development-engineers-chasing-too-few-jobs&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11425/burned-out-on-programming-and-given-up&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14827/typical-hours-week-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20866/the-job-is-stressing-me-out-and-i-am-unable-to-get-enough-sleep-at-night&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69500/dont-make-me-write-bad-code-is-that-all-programmers-really-want&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49105/how-do-you-apply-to-a-company-way-out-of-your-league&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21782/stagnating-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46514/what-to-do-when-youre-the-interviewer-and-you-dont-like-your-job&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22714/what-are-the-telltale-signs-that-the-code-youre-writing-is-already-obsolete&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1006/how-do-you-motivate-yourself-to-program-when-youd-really-rather-be-doing-somet&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63592/how-do-senior-developers-keep-up-to-learning-as-much-as-a-junior&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53168/what-are-some-good-performance-goals-for-a-software-engineer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5920/how-do-you-manage-your-resume-cv&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16222/how-to-remain-calm-in-all-situations&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1360/what-are-the-top-motivators-for-a-programmer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8235" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3179" RevisionGUID="2524ace2-cf4f-4bbd-aced-5fc375132cac" CreationDate="2012-02-22T20:21:27.333" UserId="34364" Text="Recently I have come across the [tag:untagged] tag. Why do we have this tag? Isn't the point of tags to keep the site organized? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, there are only 2 questions with this tag. It shouldn't be to hard to just get rid of it, and find better tags to fit (in fact, it'll take like 5 minutes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8236" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3179" RevisionGUID="2524ace2-cf4f-4bbd-aced-5fc375132cac" CreationDate="2012-02-22T20:21:27.333" UserId="34364" Text="Get rid of [untagged] tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8237" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3179" RevisionGUID="2524ace2-cf4f-4bbd-aced-5fc375132cac" CreationDate="2012-02-22T20:21:27.333" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8238" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3180" RevisionGUID="4eae18bf-a3f4-44db-8017-1640ec743a83" CreationDate="2012-02-22T20:31:36.430" UserId="25936" Text="This is a tag that appears automatically when tags disappear. We recently burninated [tag:best-practices], I think the one question remaining is probably leftover from that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another way for [tag:untagged] to appear is when questions are migrated here and we don't have any of their original tags (just found out a minute ago).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By all means replace [tag:untagged] with more sensible tags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8239" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3179" RevisionGUID="67ab240e-0476-470a-bee6-5ef889803c63" CreationDate="2012-02-22T20:34:05.353" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8240" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3181" RevisionGUID="adfd71ad-1617-4a20-b941-c5dec1184963" CreationDate="2012-02-22T21:35:26.300" UserId="43096" Text="Recently one of my questions was closed as not constructive:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136309/why-dont-software-libraries-solve-all-our-problems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could someone please help me rephrase this question so that it is a good fit for this community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8241" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3181" RevisionGUID="adfd71ad-1617-4a20-b941-c5dec1184963" CreationDate="2012-02-22T21:35:26.300" UserId="43096" Text="Need help rephrasing question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8242" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3181" RevisionGUID="adfd71ad-1617-4a20-b941-c5dec1184963" CreationDate="2012-02-22T21:35:26.300" UserId="43096" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8243" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3182" RevisionGUID="2fcfe0e9-7775-44c8-9c53-04a71915ac50" CreationDate="2012-02-22T21:47:54.100" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Stack Exchange works based on solving specific, practical problems: &quot;I'm working on project X, I ran into problem Y, I've tried Z, but now I'm stuck. How can I solve Y?&quot; Open-ended discussion topics, while great for forums and blog posts and conversations after work, aren't the niche Stack Exchange aims to fill.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be pretty clear whether you're asking a practical question about a specific problem or you're looking for people's opinions or thoughts about discussion topic, but a couple of good guiding questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Did you mention the particular problem you're working on that you're trying to solve in your question?&#xD;&#xA;* What would a correct (and not merely insightful or interesting) answer look like? Did you mention the criteria for correctness in your post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this end, I don't see how you can rephrase your question in a way that would not invalidate all activity thus far on it, and would advise instead to ask a new question about the particular problem you're working on that has you thinking about the general issue. What particular thing are you working on that has you thinking everything about it can be solved by libraries? Is there a concrete problem you have in mind that you'd like people to provide a solution for?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8246" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3184" RevisionGUID="b73c8353-7cd5-4b46-9d16-793deef60ac4" CreationDate="2012-02-22T22:25:59.633" UserId="4" Text="I reviewed the flag, and this was my thought process:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is this question actually off-topic? I determined that no, in my opinion, it was not off-topic. Business concerns&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; are listed as something that is acceptable to ask about. Interviewing techniques are absolutely a business concern. In addition, I have participated in screens and interviews as an engineer, as have my colleagues. Since it was about a technical interview, and not general interviewing, I decided that it would best be answered by technical people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Is it constructive? Absolutely. There's not a narrow scope of answers, but I believe that there might be some common threads across answers as to what constitutes a &quot;9&quot; or a &quot;10&quot; for a Java developer, and some expert Java developers or those who frequently interview Java developers would know what ideas of topics should be included. Of course, one of the things that I would have asked in a clarifying question would be more about the toolchains and environments used, the external libraries used, the domain of the system, what kinds of applications were being built, and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Is it a question that makes sense? From the perspective of a technical interviewer, yes, it does. First, in interviewing, there is the concept of [illusory superiority][1] that any interviewer must deal with. Asking an individual to rate themselves and then basing the interview on that is a valid technique. In addition, the most proficient Java developers and those who have hired other Java developers would be able to share their expertise as to what makes a &quot;1&quot;, a &quot;5&quot;, and a &quot;10&quot; and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Who flagged the question? I saw that the community was expressing their opinion on the question through votes to close and downvotes. I also saw that the flagger had voted to close the question. I felt that it was inappropriate to flag a moderator for a new, still active, question that the community was dealing with. There was still opportunities to enhance the question, ask for more detail, or provide feedback as to how to make it better. I'm not going to step on the community when the community is handling it just fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Was it a perfect question? Absolutely not. If I had more time when I was reviewing flags, I would have edited the question or asked clarifying questions in comments. If it was a low reputation user flagging, I would have dismissed it as helpful, but taken no action to let the community respond through voting (up/down and closure). I just saw no need to support the community's efforts to police themselves and was not about to step in with a binding vote for a moderator. If things were slow or it was a question that I was sure couldn't be salvaged, I'd have stepped in, but that was not the case in this instance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1: Business concerns is vague. My rule of thumb to determine if a business question should remain open is two fold. First, is it something that would be discussed in a business course or known by people with a background in some kind of business (management, finances, accounting, human resources, etc). Second, is the education and experiences of a software development professional pertinent to the question. If both are yes, it's on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8247" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="e502f765-f625-44bc-934a-016fa4a837e4" CreationDate="2012-02-23T04:35:50.920" UserId="25936" Comment="added 2734 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [tag:stci-c​areer] tag that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81644/internships-between-sophomore-and-junior-years    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79487/quitting-a-small-start-up-where-you-are-a-primary-developer    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77886/how-to-network-effectively-to-get-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77014/doing-a-passive-job-search-while-employed-dealing-with-the-barrage-of-messages    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76254/most-effective-way-to-increase-programmer-salary-besides-just-doing-your-job   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74954/what-does-remote-position-with-possibility-of-re-locating-mean    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74583/good-questions-to-ask-the-ceo-and-cto-of-a-start-up-during-an-interview    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73838/job-in-other-country-relocation-package    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72874/what-is-better-mba-vs-mis-right-after-grad-or-gap    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72001/so-theyre-trying-to-pull-me-into-management    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/71925/i-want-to-have-a-career-not-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66794/employee-vs-contractor-mentality-and-career   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64412/how-to-handle-a-workaholic-supervisor-who-is-your-good-friend   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64383/i-quit-my-job-but-took-back-my-resignation-during-the-notice-period-did-i-mad   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62999/what-benefits-should-an-intern-look-for-aside-from-pay    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62399/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60324/moving-from-a-small-to-a-large-company   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58250/what-percentage-should-a-consulting-company-take-off-the-top-of-your-pay&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8249" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3175" RevisionGUID="2bea112b-a7dd-40ae-a792-419ca1fa3825" CreationDate="2012-02-23T05:37:29.980" UserId="31260" Comment="[quite slippery](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3184/31260)" Text="As far as I can tell moderator who declined your flag made two mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First mistake was not catching that [question is off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136082/java-interview-fundamentals) indeed. I believe it's minor because topicality at Programmers is [quite slippery](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3184/31260).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second mistake per my understanding is being too easy at casting decline to [your](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2471/rob-z) flag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Clarifications for declining flags given in **[September 2011 Newsletter](http://moderator.stackexchange.com/2011/09/september-2011-newsletter/)** of SE Community Moderator Blog look pretty straightforward:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; #Flags Too Often Marked `[declined]`  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Marking a flag `[declined]` was designed to deter serial abusers of the flagging system, but we find that this “slap on the wrist” is being used more often than is beneficial.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Flags should be closed as `[helpful]` under most circumstances. If you feel strongly that a question was flagged in bad faith, it is okay to mark it `[declined]`. But try to err on the side of clearing as `[helpful]` whenever the user is trying to be genuinely helpful, _even if you do not necessarily act on the flag_...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness - given that you both cast a close vote and flagged, I can imagine that moderator considered this as _abuse_ but I've yet to see from credible sources if this indeed qualifies as such.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;update&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Follow-up question at SO Meta:  &#xD;&#xA;  http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/123073/is-it-an-abuse-of-flagging-system-to-both-cast-a-close-vote-and-flag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8250" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3185" RevisionGUID="69e9ba4c-53b1-4532-97f4-8c29333aa59d" CreationDate="2012-02-23T05:49:27.967" UserId="39294" Text="Yesterday i flaged a lot of questions (which are now here http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career) to get closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No doubt, many from this list are actually useful and of good quality. The primary criteria i choose is the misfit as per our definition - which is that questions must *NOT* be belonging to *all careers*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are not closed deleted yet, but they might be closed and/or eventually get heroic edits and or complete deletion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is now generally accepted that most of these questions are good candidates for &quot;The Workplace&quot; so eventually they will all belong there. Earlier there was no such a thing so people posted them here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, the issue is that &quot;The workplace&quot; is still not there yet live. While we may close these questions - even delete these questions, but they all might be of great value. Alternatively we may apply heroic edits that may destroy the real value of the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many are not bad questions, they are just in the wrong place; and while their new home is still under construction, should we shelter them? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically is there a possibility that we can kind of hibernate them, unaffected but not visible or something; but preserve them as is? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, there is one more thing: Area51 has it's own problem. What if &quot;The Workplace&quot; doesn't take off - or more likely take too long to get up. This happens to a lot of sites which are otherwise seems to be quite promising.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We all must realize, that while these questions do help all others - it *will* help programmers in any case. As long as they are better placed it is fine, but destroying them will mean we are doing harm to humanity just due to a definition of on-topic.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8251" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3185" RevisionGUID="69e9ba4c-53b1-4532-97f4-8c29333aa59d" CreationDate="2012-02-23T05:49:27.967" UserId="39294" Text="Structured Tag Cleanup: [career] - what happens to good off-topic quesitons?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8252" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3185" RevisionGUID="69e9ba4c-53b1-4532-97f4-8c29333aa59d" CreationDate="2012-02-23T05:49:27.967" UserId="39294" Text="|discussion|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8253" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3186" RevisionGUID="6b5f1532-9eb0-4ade-840e-4e2b034c7c94" CreationDate="2012-02-23T05:57:09.297" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The Workplace is not going to be a &quot;home&quot; (dumping ground) for our off-topic questions: Programmers is the shining example of how that system does not work and actively harms a site trying to bootstrap. None of the questions that are part of this cleanup will be migrated to the new site when it opens.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a few options for questions that just are off-topic and cannot be saved:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Save the contents and add it to a blog post or archive somewhere off-site. I know a number of people are trying to save the contents of our wildly-popular-yet-off-topic questions by making blog posts out of them for our blog: consider contributing to that effort, or creating a separate site to house them. Also check out [Stack Printer](http://stackprinter.com), which archives most (if not all) questions, even after they get deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Reask the questions, keeping in mind the guidelines created during private beta, on The Workplace. Let them live again organically on the new site. Some may do just well, others might falter, but at least they'd be judged on equal footing with the rest of the new content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should also be said that The Workplace isn't simply Programmers.SE but without moderation (like people thought Programmers was going to be Stack Overflow without moderation): the site has a very specific scope and will be subject to the same quality guidelines as the rest of the network. It's just that we've found—on all the professional sites—there are a lot of general workplace and career questions that necessitates a cross-discipline site devoted to the subject." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8254" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3186" RevisionGUID="a60076ab-826d-427c-bbdb-4a8884baf17d" CreationDate="2012-02-23T06:02:55.437" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 288 characters in body" Text="The Workplace is not going to be a &quot;home&quot; (dumping ground) for our off-topic questions: Programmers is the shining example of how that system does not work and actively harms a site trying to bootstrap. None of the questions that are part of this cleanup will be migrated to the new site when it opens.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of this, doing nothing and expecting these questions will be migrated will guarantee more questions are deleted than saved. The time for increasing the quality of these questions and bringing them within our scope is now, because there isn't going to be a later for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are a few options for questions that just are off-topic and cannot be saved:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Save the contents and add it to a blog post or archive somewhere off-site. I know a number of people are trying to save the contents of our wildly-popular-yet-off-topic questions by making blog posts out of them for our blog: consider contributing to that effort, or creating a separate site to house them. Also check out [Stack Printer](http://stackprinter.com), which archives most (if not all) questions, even after they get deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Reask the questions, keeping in mind the guidelines created during private beta, on The Workplace. Let them live again organically on the new site. Some may do just as well as they did here, others might falter, but at least they'd be judged on equal footing with the rest of the site's content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should also be said that The Workplace isn't simply Programmers.SE but without moderation (like people thought Programmers was going to be Stack Overflow without moderation): the site has a very specific scope and will be subject to the same quality guidelines as the rest of the network. It's just that we've found—on all the professional sites, not just Programmers—there are a lot of general workplace and career questions that necessitates a cross-discipline site devoted to the subject." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8255" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3187" RevisionGUID="4c25d8fd-d086-4f4f-8393-60e49255a57c" CreationDate="2012-02-23T09:08:40.290" UserId="39294" Text="Referring to this: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3164/please-blacklist-best-practices&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why is tags [best practices] tag blacklisted anyway? Does it define any ambiguity or does it cater to poor quality answers? Or is there some other reason?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8256" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3187" RevisionGUID="4c25d8fd-d086-4f4f-8393-60e49255a57c" CreationDate="2012-02-23T09:08:40.290" UserId="39294" Text="Why is Best-Practices Tags black listed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8257" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3187" RevisionGUID="4c25d8fd-d086-4f4f-8393-60e49255a57c" CreationDate="2012-02-23T09:08:40.290" UserId="39294" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8258" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3188" RevisionGUID="f07f0a2b-c1fc-487a-9d75-75ebfe2ef958" CreationDate="2012-02-23T09:14:06.350" UserId="47" Text="See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/should-we-nuke-the-catch-all-tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a tag that could theoretically be added to every question on the site. If you think about it all questions are ultimately asking for the &quot;best&quot; way to do something.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8259" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="1af2aa48-b89c-4c07-834d-b69af22916e4" CreationDate="2012-02-23T09:58:35.933" UserId="25936" Comment="added 3397 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [tag:stci-c​areer] tag that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81644/internships-between-sophomore-and-junior-years    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79487/quitting-a-small-start-up-where-you-are-a-primary-developer    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77886/how-to-network-effectively-to-get-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77014/doing-a-passive-job-search-while-employed-dealing-with-the-barrage-of-messages    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76254/most-effective-way-to-increase-programmer-salary-besides-just-doing-your-job   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74954/what-does-remote-position-with-possibility-of-re-locating-mean    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74583/good-questions-to-ask-the-ceo-and-cto-of-a-start-up-during-an-interview    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73838/job-in-other-country-relocation-package    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72874/what-is-better-mba-vs-mis-right-after-grad-or-gap    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72001/so-theyre-trying-to-pull-me-into-management    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/71925/i-want-to-have-a-career-not-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66794/employee-vs-contractor-mentality-and-career   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64412/how-to-handle-a-workaholic-supervisor-who-is-your-good-friend   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64383/i-quit-my-job-but-took-back-my-resignation-during-the-notice-period-did-i-mad   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62999/what-benefits-should-an-intern-look-for-aside-from-pay    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62399/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60324/moving-from-a-small-to-a-large-company   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58250/what-percentage-should-a-consulting-company-take-off-the-top-of-your-pay&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85978/should-i-be-an-algorithm-developer-or-java-web-frameworks-type-developer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84468/what-defines-a-skill-technology&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83786/career-help-for-an-experienced-professional&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81555/what-should-i-learn-if-im-thinking-of-going-into-networking&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54168/specialized-course-in-web-programming-or-generalized-course-in-computer-science&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45715/educational-qualification-of-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44028/future-direction-for-a-developer-who-is-expert-in-latest-software-technologies&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43739/experienced-keeping-up-with-the-times-or-new-to-the-game-only-using-the-newe&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37968/should-i-stay-in-my-degree-or-take-an-opportunity-for-management-experience&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33488/entity-type-for-freelance-programmer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24277/web-programming-vs-oracle-courses&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24066/project-dotnetnuke-module-selling-website-problem-staying-motivated&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86432/web-security-course&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86412/transition-from-maintenance-programming-to-design&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85995/matching-my-skills-with-java-and-web-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82150/career-switch-from-high-level-to-kernel-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75334/how-much-does-the-calibre-of-a-masters-program-matter-to-an-employer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74016/will-cfa-add-any-value-to-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73763/how-to-pick-which-mcpd-certification-is-appropriate&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73654/php-interview-test-any-advice&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72122/integration-projects-consulting-and-biztalk-good-or-bad-for-career&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70432/seeking-advice-for-a-student&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69992/web-to-sql-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68906/graduate-versus-undergraduate-for-career-change&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68818/a-job-in-big-company-like-ibm-microsoft-vs-own-small-1-2-people-software-compan&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68370/case-studies-for-successful-service-project-based-businesses-without-constant&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66886/how-do-you-handle-the-problem-of-abstraction-when-you-learn-a-techonology-lang&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62816/how-to-conduct-a-good-tech-workshop&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62560/c-pigeonholing&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61349/interview-recruiter-to-ask-series-of-technical-questions&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68370/case-studies-for-successful-service-project-based-businesses-without-constant&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8260" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="9328b55f-3e20-468c-89a5-2e3573d6255a" CreationDate="2012-02-23T10:12:03.873" UserId="25936" Comment="added 100 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [tag:stci-c​areer] tag that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81644/internships-between-sophomore-and-junior-years    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79487/quitting-a-small-start-up-where-you-are-a-primary-developer    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77886/how-to-network-effectively-to-get-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77014/doing-a-passive-job-search-while-employed-dealing-with-the-barrage-of-messages    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76254/most-effective-way-to-increase-programmer-salary-besides-just-doing-your-job   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74954/what-does-remote-position-with-possibility-of-re-locating-mean    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74583/good-questions-to-ask-the-ceo-and-cto-of-a-start-up-during-an-interview    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73838/job-in-other-country-relocation-package    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72874/what-is-better-mba-vs-mis-right-after-grad-or-gap    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72001/so-theyre-trying-to-pull-me-into-management    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/71925/i-want-to-have-a-career-not-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66794/employee-vs-contractor-mentality-and-career   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64412/how-to-handle-a-workaholic-supervisor-who-is-your-good-friend   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64383/i-quit-my-job-but-took-back-my-resignation-during-the-notice-period-did-i-mad   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62999/what-benefits-should-an-intern-look-for-aside-from-pay    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62399/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60324/moving-from-a-small-to-a-large-company   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58250/what-percentage-should-a-consulting-company-take-off-the-top-of-your-pay&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85978/should-i-be-an-algorithm-developer-or-java-web-frameworks-type-developer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84468/what-defines-a-skill-technology&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83786/career-help-for-an-experienced-professional&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81555/what-should-i-learn-if-im-thinking-of-going-into-networking&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54168/specialized-course-in-web-programming-or-generalized-course-in-computer-science&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45715/educational-qualification-of-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44028/future-direction-for-a-developer-who-is-expert-in-latest-software-technologies&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43739/experienced-keeping-up-with-the-times-or-new-to-the-game-only-using-the-newe&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37968/should-i-stay-in-my-degree-or-take-an-opportunity-for-management-experience&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33488/entity-type-for-freelance-programmer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24277/web-programming-vs-oracle-courses&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24066/project-dotnetnuke-module-selling-website-problem-staying-motivated&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86432/web-security-course&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86412/transition-from-maintenance-programming-to-design&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85995/matching-my-skills-with-java-and-web-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82150/career-switch-from-high-level-to-kernel-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75334/how-much-does-the-calibre-of-a-masters-program-matter-to-an-employer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74016/will-cfa-add-any-value-to-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73763/how-to-pick-which-mcpd-certification-is-appropriate&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73654/php-interview-test-any-advice&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72122/integration-projects-consulting-and-biztalk-good-or-bad-for-career&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70432/seeking-advice-for-a-student&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69992/web-to-sql-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68906/graduate-versus-undergraduate-for-career-change&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68818/a-job-in-big-company-like-ibm-microsoft-vs-own-small-1-2-people-software-compan&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68370/case-studies-for-successful-service-project-based-businesses-without-constant&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66886/how-do-you-handle-the-problem-of-abstraction-when-you-learn-a-techonology-lang&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62816/how-to-conduct-a-good-tech-workshop&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62560/c-pigeonholing&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61349/interview-recruiter-to-ask-series-of-technical-questions&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68370/case-studies-for-successful-service-project-based-businesses-without-constant&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85946/independent-projects-as-a-student-to-show-off-abilities&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8261" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="5bd25c2a-4d65-4d9b-ab65-4959d3cc58a2" CreationDate="2012-02-23T10:40:33.917" UserId="25936" Comment="added 100 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing [the \[stci-c​areer\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81644/internships-between-sophomore-and-junior-years    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79487/quitting-a-small-start-up-where-you-are-a-primary-developer    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77886/how-to-network-effectively-to-get-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77014/doing-a-passive-job-search-while-employed-dealing-with-the-barrage-of-messages    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76254/most-effective-way-to-increase-programmer-salary-besides-just-doing-your-job   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74954/what-does-remote-position-with-possibility-of-re-locating-mean    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74583/good-questions-to-ask-the-ceo-and-cto-of-a-start-up-during-an-interview    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73838/job-in-other-country-relocation-package    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72874/what-is-better-mba-vs-mis-right-after-grad-or-gap    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72001/so-theyre-trying-to-pull-me-into-management    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/71925/i-want-to-have-a-career-not-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66794/employee-vs-contractor-mentality-and-career   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64412/how-to-handle-a-workaholic-supervisor-who-is-your-good-friend   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64383/i-quit-my-job-but-took-back-my-resignation-during-the-notice-period-did-i-mad   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62999/what-benefits-should-an-intern-look-for-aside-from-pay    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62399/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60324/moving-from-a-small-to-a-large-company   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58250/what-percentage-should-a-consulting-company-take-off-the-top-of-your-pay&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85978/should-i-be-an-algorithm-developer-or-java-web-frameworks-type-developer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84468/what-defines-a-skill-technology&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83786/career-help-for-an-experienced-professional&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81555/what-should-i-learn-if-im-thinking-of-going-into-networking&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54168/specialized-course-in-web-programming-or-generalized-course-in-computer-science&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45715/educational-qualification-of-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44028/future-direction-for-a-developer-who-is-expert-in-latest-software-technologies&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43739/experienced-keeping-up-with-the-times-or-new-to-the-game-only-using-the-newe&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37968/should-i-stay-in-my-degree-or-take-an-opportunity-for-management-experience&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33488/entity-type-for-freelance-programmer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24277/web-programming-vs-oracle-courses&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24066/project-dotnetnuke-module-selling-website-problem-staying-motivated&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86432/web-security-course&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86412/transition-from-maintenance-programming-to-design&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85995/matching-my-skills-with-java-and-web-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82150/career-switch-from-high-level-to-kernel-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75334/how-much-does-the-calibre-of-a-masters-program-matter-to-an-employer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74016/will-cfa-add-any-value-to-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73763/how-to-pick-which-mcpd-certification-is-appropriate&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73654/php-interview-test-any-advice&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72122/integration-projects-consulting-and-biztalk-good-or-bad-for-career&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70432/seeking-advice-for-a-student&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69992/web-to-sql-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68906/graduate-versus-undergraduate-for-career-change&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68818/a-job-in-big-company-like-ibm-microsoft-vs-own-small-1-2-people-software-compan&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68370/case-studies-for-successful-service-project-based-businesses-without-constant&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66886/how-do-you-handle-the-problem-of-abstraction-when-you-learn-a-techonology-lang&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62816/how-to-conduct-a-good-tech-workshop&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62560/c-pigeonholing&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61349/interview-recruiter-to-ask-series-of-technical-questions&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68370/case-studies-for-successful-service-project-based-businesses-without-constant&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85946/independent-projects-as-a-student-to-show-off-abilities&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48918/getting-started-on-large-projects&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43409/dealing-with-engineers-that-frequently-leave-their-jobs&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39939/how-to-move-ahead-in-project-product-management-after-3-yrs-of-programming-exper&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21970/the-donts-of-it-project-management&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20178/how-can-i-quickly-weed-out-copy-paste-coders&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18578/pmp-certificate-how-did-you-achieve-it-how-was-the-preparation&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8142/from-programmer-to-programmers-coach&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1474/about-the-book-peopleware-productive-projects-and-teams&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50168/what-roles-do-people-take-after-scrum-master-technical-lead&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39888/job-title-inflation-and-fluffing&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38382/system-analyst-vs-computer-programmer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=%5Bstci-career%5D%20closed:0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8262" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="7c0215a5-719e-4312-a3a4-40905c549b33" CreationDate="2012-02-23T16:34:38.340" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 128 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing [the \[stci-c​areer\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81644/internships-between-sophomore-and-junior-years    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79487/quitting-a-small-start-up-where-you-are-a-primary-developer    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77886/how-to-network-effectively-to-get-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77014/doing-a-passive-job-search-while-employed-dealing-with-the-barrage-of-messages    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76254/most-effective-way-to-increase-programmer-salary-besides-just-doing-your-job   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74954/what-does-remote-position-with-possibility-of-re-locating-mean    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74583/good-questions-to-ask-the-ceo-and-cto-of-a-start-up-during-an-interview    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73838/job-in-other-country-relocation-package    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72874/what-is-better-mba-vs-mis-right-after-grad-or-gap    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72001/so-theyre-trying-to-pull-me-into-management    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/71925/i-want-to-have-a-career-not-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66794/employee-vs-contractor-mentality-and-career   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64412/how-to-handle-a-workaholic-supervisor-who-is-your-good-friend   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64383/i-quit-my-job-but-took-back-my-resignation-during-the-notice-period-did-i-mad   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62999/what-benefits-should-an-intern-look-for-aside-from-pay    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62399/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60324/moving-from-a-small-to-a-large-company   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58250/what-percentage-should-a-consulting-company-take-off-the-top-of-your-pay&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85978/should-i-be-an-algorithm-developer-or-java-web-frameworks-type-developer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84468/what-defines-a-skill-technology&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83786/career-help-for-an-experienced-professional&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81555/what-should-i-learn-if-im-thinking-of-going-into-networking&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54168/specialized-course-in-web-programming-or-generalized-course-in-computer-science&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45715/educational-qualification-of-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44028/future-direction-for-a-developer-who-is-expert-in-latest-software-technologies&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43739/experienced-keeping-up-with-the-times-or-new-to-the-game-only-using-the-newe&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37968/should-i-stay-in-my-degree-or-take-an-opportunity-for-management-experience&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33488/entity-type-for-freelance-programmer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24277/web-programming-vs-oracle-courses&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24066/project-dotnetnuke-module-selling-website-problem-staying-motivated&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86432/web-security-course&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86412/transition-from-maintenance-programming-to-design&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85995/matching-my-skills-with-java-and-web-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82150/career-switch-from-high-level-to-kernel-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75334/how-much-does-the-calibre-of-a-masters-program-matter-to-an-employer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74016/will-cfa-add-any-value-to-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73763/how-to-pick-which-mcpd-certification-is-appropriate&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73654/php-interview-test-any-advice&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72122/integration-projects-consulting-and-biztalk-good-or-bad-for-career&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70432/seeking-advice-for-a-student&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69992/web-to-sql-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68906/graduate-versus-undergraduate-for-career-change&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68818/a-job-in-big-company-like-ibm-microsoft-vs-own-small-1-2-people-software-compan&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68370/case-studies-for-successful-service-project-based-businesses-without-constant&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66886/how-do-you-handle-the-problem-of-abstraction-when-you-learn-a-techonology-lang&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62816/how-to-conduct-a-good-tech-workshop&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62560/c-pigeonholing&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61349/interview-recruiter-to-ask-series-of-technical-questions&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68370/case-studies-for-successful-service-project-based-businesses-without-constant&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85946/independent-projects-as-a-student-to-show-off-abilities&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48918/getting-started-on-large-projects&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43409/dealing-with-engineers-that-frequently-leave-their-jobs&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39939/how-to-move-ahead-in-project-product-management-after-3-yrs-of-programming-exper&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21970/the-donts-of-it-project-management&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20178/how-can-i-quickly-weed-out-copy-paste-coders&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18578/pmp-certificate-how-did-you-achieve-it-how-was-the-preparation&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8142/from-programmer-to-programmers-coach&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1474/about-the-book-peopleware-productive-projects-and-teams&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50168/what-roles-do-people-take-after-scrum-master-technical-lead&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39888/job-title-inflation-and-fluffing&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38382/system-analyst-vs-computer-programmer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27317/is-there-a-future-for-full-time-software-configuration-managers-engineers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=%5Bstci-career%5D%20closed:0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="8265" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="92f3d1f5-fab8-4f4d-96c1-c6350ebe3f03" CreationDate="2012-02-23T19:10:01.717" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 130 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing [the \[stci-c​areer\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    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http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62399/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go    &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60324/moving-from-a-small-to-a-large-company   &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58250/what-percentage-should-a-consulting-company-take-off-the-top-of-your-pay&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85978/should-i-be-an-algorithm-developer-or-java-web-frameworks-type-developer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84468/what-defines-a-skill-technology&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83786/career-help-for-an-experienced-professional&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81555/what-should-i-learn-if-im-thinking-of-going-into-networking&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54168/specialized-course-in-web-programming-or-generalized-course-in-computer-science&#xD;&#xA;- 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here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=%5Bstci-career%5D%20closed:0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8266" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3189" RevisionGUID="4460a8a6-42b5-4950-abcb-a5802139de31" CreationDate="2012-02-23T23:01:07.857" UserId="4942" Text="**Background on polling questions:** Stack Exchange by it's very nature to a voting Q&amp;A site, which is to say every question is a poll. The best explanation of the difference [Aarobot answer here][1]; which is referenced by [Jeff Atwood here][2] on the Stack Overflow blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Question this question is about:** [Google Code Search Replacement][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here's why I do not believe it's a poll:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Question is looking for a replacement for a now discontinued programing  tool, [Google Code Search][4].&#xD;&#xA; - Google Code Search's is a well defined solution, and to search for a replacement is not subjective; meaning the best answer would be an exact clone of the tool.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I might be wrong, I believe [Yannis Rizos comment on an answer][5] points to my observations above: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; provide the link for reference. Especially since you are the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; co-founder, you should expand the answer a bit and tell us why your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; service is a good alternative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meaning for a good answer it must be in the context of being an alternative to Google Code Search, and every answer is not as good as another answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/75179/152184&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114629/google-code-search-replacement&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.google.com/codesearch&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/130588/4942" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8267" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3189" RevisionGUID="4460a8a6-42b5-4950-abcb-a5802139de31" CreationDate="2012-02-23T23:01:07.857" UserId="4942" Text="Is this question a poll?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8268" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3189" RevisionGUID="4460a8a6-42b5-4950-abcb-a5802139de31" CreationDate="2012-02-23T23:01:07.857" UserId="4942" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8269" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3190" RevisionGUID="2931a7d4-64db-4763-b3d8-b8cbcc6231ee" CreationDate="2012-02-23T23:17:47.850" UserId="1130" Text="I don't think it's a poll. It's asking for an alternative to an API that is being discontinued.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for if it's on-topic for P.SE, I don't know the answer to that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I would have said it's fine, but I consider a lot of things on-topic that others do not, so I would not go by my opinion in this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8270" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3189" RevisionGUID="d33a7445-0d66-42ba-8f5f-e918a71366de" CreationDate="2012-02-23T23:21:03.697" UserId="4942" Comment="added 65 characters in body" Text="**Background on polling questions:** Stack Exchange by it's very nature to a voting Q&amp;A site, which is to say every question is a poll. The best explanation of the difference between a &quot;polling&quot; question and a SE question might be found in [Aarobot answer here][1]; which is referenced by [Jeff Atwood here][2] on the Stack Overflow blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Question this question is about:** [Google Code Search Replacement][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here's why I do not believe it's a poll:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Question is looking for a replacement for a now discontinued programing  tool, [Google Code Search][4].&#xD;&#xA; - Google Code Search's is a well defined solution, and to search for a replacement is not subjective; meaning the best answer would be an exact clone of the tool.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I might be wrong, I believe [Yannis Rizos comment on an answer][5] points to my observations above: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; provide the link for reference. Especially since you are the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; co-founder, you should expand the answer a bit and tell us why your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; service is a good alternative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meaning for a good answer it must be in the context of being an alternative to Google Code Search, and every answer is not as good as another answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/75179/152184&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114629/google-code-search-replacement&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.google.com/codesearch&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/130588/4942" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8271" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3191" RevisionGUID="e7e4b4db-3a9c-4139-92b8-12ed3726783d" CreationDate="2012-02-23T23:23:58.153" UserId="25936" Text="Yes it's a poll. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are asking for a recommendation without specifying any parameters, other than the service should be similar to Google Code Search. Anyone can search for &quot;Google Code Search alternative&quot;, reach a site like [alternativeto.net][1] and post the six services presented there. Each answer is equally valid, none of them is better than the other. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not realistic to expect an exact clone to exist, and although someone familiar with Google Code Search _may_ imagine what you have in mind, that doesn't mean you don't have to actually tell us in the text of your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both answerers could expand their answers to include several information on why their suggestions are good alternatives, but since you don't define the exact parameters of what you are looking for we can't tell which answer is &quot;better&quot; in the context of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recommendation questions are incredibly hard to get right (~ fit the Stack Exchange format). Even when similar questions specify the parameters adequately, answers tend to be crappy &quot;just a link&quot;, and gather populist votes. So, even if you do everything right, answerers may spoil the question for everyone... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [Gorilla vs. Shark][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://alternativeto.net/software/google-code-search/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8272" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3192" RevisionGUID="4d387cc6-6747-44f1-a8d1-d4ac18322270" CreationDate="2012-02-24T00:17:14.623" UserId="1130" Text="The question [What is the coolest way to handle a failure?][1] is currently [flagged for deletion][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The title is definitely worded badly, however I think the actual question seems on-topic. Dealing with project failures or your code being rejected seems like something that comes up a lot as a developer, and I like the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what can I do to the question to make it on-topic? Does it just need a better title? Or should I edit the content of the question itself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23075/what-is-the-most-productive-way-to-handle-mistakes-or-setbacks-in-your-career&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3172/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8273" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3192" RevisionGUID="4d387cc6-6747-44f1-a8d1-d4ac18322270" CreationDate="2012-02-24T00:17:14.623" UserId="1130" Text="What needs to be done &quot;What is the coolest way to handle a failure?&quot; to make it on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8274" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3192" RevisionGUID="4d387cc6-6747-44f1-a8d1-d4ac18322270" CreationDate="2012-02-24T00:17:14.623" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8275" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3193" RevisionGUID="abcf60b2-969c-4a0a-b90c-0979caa0608d" CreationDate="2012-02-24T00:20:07.103" UserId="1130" Text="The question [Burned out on programming and given up?][1] is currently [flagged for deletion][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be considered on-topic if the personal wall-of-text... er.. information was removed, and it is turned into a question about how to get past programming burnout, which seems to be what the OP was asking in the first place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/11425/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3172/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8276" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3193" RevisionGUID="abcf60b2-969c-4a0a-b90c-0979caa0608d" CreationDate="2012-02-24T00:20:07.103" UserId="1130" Text="Will this edit to “Burned out on programming and given up?” make it on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8277" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3193" RevisionGUID="abcf60b2-969c-4a0a-b90c-0979caa0608d" CreationDate="2012-02-24T00:20:07.103" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8281" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3195" RevisionGUID="e2415e99-d1fe-4875-bea9-dd8d0041a995" CreationDate="2012-02-24T00:25:37.937" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The biggest obstacle this question has is the list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Your project failed.&#xD;&#xA;* You failed 10 interviews in a row.&#xD;&#xA;* What you have spent days coding was rejected by your team.&#xD;&#xA;* Nobody listens to your ideas in your company.&#xD;&#xA;* The design pattern you introduced with force in your team created a mess.&#xD;&#xA;* Your colleague (you don't like) got the promotion that you wanted to get.&#xD;&#xA;* You deleted the production database.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each one of those could be a separate question: heck,  every question on the site is arguably about a personal failing; failing to get the right answer, failure to find the right solution, failure to lead a development team, etc. And several of the examples on that list are in no way programmer-specific.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's some interesting answers, but they all cover different things. Not to mention the very high number of pithy feel-good advice answers and the excessive amount of commenting and conversation due to the sheer size of the scope of the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think this question is savable, but it could definitely do with a mass culling of the crap answers and comments, and a rewrite of the question to be about a singular, specific problem." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8282" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3192" RevisionGUID="f62cf93d-2d1f-41cf-9e76-6f2e9733622b" CreationDate="2012-02-24T00:30:42.783" UserId="1130" Comment="added 10 characters in body; edited title" Text="The question [What is the coolest way to handle a failure?][1] is currently [flagged for deletion][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The title is definitely worded badly, however I think the actual question seems on-topic. Dealing with project failures or your code being rejected seems like something that comes up a lot as a developer, and I like the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what can I do to the question to salvage it? Does it just need a better title? Or should I edit the content of the question and answers completely?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23075/what-is-the-most-productive-way-to-handle-mistakes-or-setbacks-in-your-career&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3172/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8283" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3192" RevisionGUID="f62cf93d-2d1f-41cf-9e76-6f2e9733622b" CreationDate="2012-02-24T00:30:42.783" UserId="1130" Comment="added 10 characters in body; edited title" Text="What needs to be done &quot;What is the coolest way to handle a failure?&quot; to salvage it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8284" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3196" RevisionGUID="628aef7a-156f-4190-b685-8a0a17cdc7be" CreationDate="2012-02-24T00:31:34.453" UserId="1204" Text="1.  Delete all answers with a score less than 2.&#xD;&#xA;2.  Delete the &quot;Go to a Pub&quot; answer.  Sheesh, you people vote these things up?  This is the chief reason people hate bikeshed questions.&#xD;&#xA;3.  Eliminate the list of failures, or at least pare them down greatly.  We all know what failure looks like.&#xD;&#xA;4.  Make the question specific to the programming profession (somehow). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: I've edited the question to improve its focus on the programming profession.  I've tried to preserve Pierre's intent." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8285" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3195" RevisionGUID="10badfb9-1abd-4f37-abc8-47c87f3bd8c6" CreationDate="2012-02-24T00:31:37.617" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 402 characters in body" Text="The biggest obstacle this question has is the list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Your project failed.&#xD;&#xA;* You failed 10 interviews in a row.&#xD;&#xA;* What you have spent days coding was rejected by your team.&#xD;&#xA;* Nobody listens to your ideas in your company.&#xD;&#xA;* The design pattern you introduced with force in your team created a mess.&#xD;&#xA;* Your colleague (you don't like) got the promotion that you wanted to get.&#xD;&#xA;* You deleted the production database.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each one of those could be a separate question: heck,  every question on the site is arguably about a personal failing; failing to get the right answer, failure to find the right solution, failure to lead a development team, etc. And several of the examples on that list are in no way programmer-specific.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The top-voted answers—before I just deleted the second top-voted answer—consist of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A one line answer with feel-good advice for each of the scenarios. If the question was broken up, every single answer would've been deleted as none of them provide any amount of detail or explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A one-line answer saying to go to the pub.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These, to me, are not the hallmarks of a great question with lasting value and deep insights.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's some interesting answers further down, but they all cover different things. And there's a very high number of pithy feel-good advice answers, not to mention the excessive amount of commenting and conversation due to the sheer size of the scope of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think this question is savable, but it could definitely do with a mass culling of the crap answers and comments, and a rewrite of the question to be about a singular, specific problem." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8286" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3197" RevisionGUID="1860cded-9301-4007-83a7-d667847754b9" CreationDate="2012-02-24T00:40:48.753" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; Would it be considered on-topic if the personal wall-of-text... er.. information was removed, and it is turned into a question about how to get past programming burnout, which seems to be what the OP was asking in the first place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, but then it would be an exact duplicate of [Active steps to prevent a burn-out?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56677/active-steps-to-prevent-a-burn-out" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8287" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3192" RevisionGUID="8b99a848-5a4b-4d03-8d9d-208a7c686046" CreationDate="2012-02-24T00:46:52.903" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8288" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3197" RevisionGUID="a585c1a4-687b-41fa-b92c-ea29ef6e70be" CreationDate="2012-02-24T00:57:24.347" UserId="25936" Comment="added 101 characters in body" Text="We are not looking for an on topic version of this question, but for a constructive version. How to survive a burnout is essentially asking for war stories, and that doesn't really fit the Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only way I see salvaging the question would be to make it about preventing burn out, but that would make it an exact duplicate of [Active steps to prevent a burn-out?][1], which is obviously _not_ what the OP intended. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56677/active-steps-to-prevent-a-burn-out" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8289" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3193" RevisionGUID="0a12b2af-84aa-4ea0-8bf3-80e7f3426c0f" CreationDate="2012-02-24T01:07:29.213" UserId="1130" Comment="added 156 characters in body" Text="The question [Burned out on programming and given up?][1] is currently [flagged for deletion][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be considered on-topic if the personal wall-of-text... er.. information was removed, and it is turned into a question about how to get past programming burnout, which seems to be what the OP was asking in the first place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have heavily edited the question in an attempt to bring it back on-topic. Please let me know if you think of anything else I can do to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/11425/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3172/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8290" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3192" RevisionGUID="a95f3296-3ac7-4c6f-8884-c807001c40e6" CreationDate="2012-02-24T01:09:59.187" UserId="1130" Comment="added 535 characters in body" Text="The question [What is the coolest way to handle a failure?][1] is currently [flagged for deletion][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The title is definitely worded badly, however I think the actual question seems on-topic. Dealing with project failures or your code being rejected seems like something that comes up a lot as a developer, and I like the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what can I do to the question to salvage it? Does it just need a better title? Or should I edit the content of the question and answers completely?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've edited the question to remove examples that are not related to software development, and flagged a lot of the low quality or duplicate answers for deletion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also made an edit to the accepted answer because I felt it was missing a key piece (learning from your failures), and edited a few other answers as well to bring them in line with the edited question. If I have time, I will attempt to go through the remaining answers and clean them up as well, although please feel free to step in and do it yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23075/what-is-the-most-productive-way-to-handle-mistakes-or-setbacks-in-your-career&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3172/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8291" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3192" RevisionGUID="7c3054e6-dfc0-42f8-bbb5-ed1fe5afb0dc" CreationDate="2012-02-24T01:32:47.580" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 109 characters in body; edited title" Text="The question [What is the most productive way to handle development-related failures?][1] is currently [flagged for deletion][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Dealing with project failures or your code being rejected seems like something that comes up a lot as a developer, and I like the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what can I do to the question to salvage it? Should I edit the content of the question and answers completely?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've edited the question to remove examples that are not related to software development, and flagged a lot of the low quality or duplicate answers for deletion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also made an edit to the accepted answer because I felt it was missing a key piece (learning from your failures), and edited a few other answers as well to bring them in line with the edited question. If I have time, I will attempt to go through the remaining answers and clean them up as well, although please feel free to step in and do it yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23075/what-is-the-most-productive-way-to-handle-development-related-failures&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3172/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8292" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3192" RevisionGUID="7c3054e6-dfc0-42f8-bbb5-ed1fe5afb0dc" CreationDate="2012-02-24T01:32:47.580" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 109 characters in body; edited title" Text="What needs to be done &quot;What is the most productive way to handle development-related failures?&quot; to salvage it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8293" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3197" RevisionGUID="655263f8-30b0-4a78-ab21-8381a82cbba7" CreationDate="2012-02-24T01:55:15.757" UserId="25936" Comment="added 164 characters in body" Text="We are not looking for an on topic version of this question, but for a constructive version. How to survive a burnout is essentially asking for war stories, and that doesn't really fit the Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only way I see salvaging the question would be to make it about preventing burn out, but that would make it an exact duplicate of [Active steps to prevent a burn-out?][1], which is obviously _not_ what the OP intended. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good edit. Obsolete comments removed, as was the single &quot;not an answer&quot; answer... Noise reduced, although I still don't see the question as salvageable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56677/active-steps-to-prevent-a-burn-out" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8294" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="b7e012d3-a10f-4b0e-a29b-b8db0d37d3de" CreationDate="2012-02-24T03:26:14.957" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1243 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing [the \[stci-c?areer\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81644/internships-between-sophomore-and-junior-years    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79487/quitting-a-small-start-up-where-you-are-a-primary-developer    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77886/how-to-network-effectively-to-get-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77014/doing-a-passive-job-search-while-employed-dealing-with-the-barrage-of-messages    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76254/most-effective-way-to-increase-programmer-salary-besides-just-doing-your-job   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74954/what-does-remote-position-with-possibility-of-re-locating-mean    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74583/good-questions-to-ask-the-ceo-and-cto-of-a-start-up-during-an-interview    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73838/job-in-other-country-relocation-package    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72874/what-is-better-mba-vs-mis-right-after-grad-or-gap    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72001/so-theyre-trying-to-pull-me-into-management    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/71925/i-want-to-have-a-career-not-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66794/employee-vs-contractor-mentality-and-career   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64412/how-to-handle-a-workaholic-supervisor-who-is-your-good-friend   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64383/i-quit-my-job-but-took-back-my-resignation-during-the-notice-period-did-i-mad   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62999/what-benefits-should-an-intern-look-for-aside-from-pay    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62399/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60324/moving-from-a-small-to-a-large-company   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58250/what-percentage-should-a-consulting-company-take-off-the-top-of-your-pay&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85978/should-i-be-an-algorithm-developer-or-java-web-frameworks-type-developer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84468/what-defines-a-skill-technology&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83786/career-help-for-an-experienced-professional&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81555/what-should-i-learn-if-im-thinking-of-going-into-networking&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54168/specialized-course-in-web-programming-or-generalized-course-in-computer-science&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45715/educational-qualification-of-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44028/future-direction-for-a-developer-who-is-expert-in-latest-software-technologies&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43739/experienced-keeping-up-with-the-times-or-new-to-the-game-only-using-the-newe&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37968/should-i-stay-in-my-degree-or-take-an-opportunity-for-management-experience&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33488/entity-type-for-freelance-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24277/web-programming-vs-oracle-courses&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24066/project-dotnetnuke-module-selling-website-problem-staying-motivated&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86432/web-security-course&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86412/transition-from-maintenance-programming-to-design&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85995/matching-my-skills-with-java-and-web-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82150/career-switch-from-high-level-to-kernel-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75334/how-much-does-the-calibre-of-a-masters-program-matter-to-an-employer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74016/will-cfa-add-any-value-to-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73763/how-to-pick-which-mcpd-certification-is-appropriate&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73654/php-interview-test-any-advice&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72122/integration-projects-consulting-and-biztalk-good-or-bad-for-career&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70432/seeking-advice-for-a-student&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69992/web-to-sql-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68906/graduate-versus-undergraduate-for-career-change&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68818/a-job-in-big-company-like-ibm-microsoft-vs-own-small-1-2-people-software-compan&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68370/case-studies-for-successful-service-project-based-businesses-without-constant&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66886/how-do-you-handle-the-problem-of-abstraction-when-you-learn-a-techonology-lang&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62816/how-to-conduct-a-good-tech-workshop&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62560/c-pigeonholing&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61349/interview-recruiter-to-ask-series-of-technical-questions&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68370/case-studies-for-successful-service-project-based-businesses-without-constant&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85946/independent-projects-as-a-student-to-show-off-abilities&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48918/getting-started-on-large-projects&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43409/dealing-with-engineers-that-frequently-leave-their-jobs&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39939/how-to-move-ahead-in-project-product-management-after-3-yrs-of-programming-exper&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21970/the-donts-of-it-project-management&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20178/how-can-i-quickly-weed-out-copy-paste-coders&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18578/pmp-certificate-how-did-you-achieve-it-how-was-the-preparation&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8142/from-programmer-to-programmers-coach&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1474/about-the-book-peopleware-productive-projects-and-teams&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50168/what-roles-do-people-take-after-scrum-master-technical-lead&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39888/job-title-inflation-and-fluffing&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38382/system-analyst-vs-computer-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27317/is-there-a-future-for-full-time-software-configuration-managers-engineers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21412/why-im-not-selected-in-an-interview&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24922/how-to-deal-with-interviews-where-hr-is-missing&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14047/how-you-prepared-for-your-net-interview&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20564/when-being-a-technical-genius-is-not-enough-to-be-a-successful-developer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35038/what-can-i-do-when-the-interviewer-doesnt-know-the-answer-to-his-her-own-questi&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47778/why-are-sw-engineering-interviews-disproportionately-difficult-vs-research-int&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56876/how-do-you-know-a-company-is-worth-working-at-or-not&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57953/should-i-include-c-private-tutoring-experience-on-my-cv-resume&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58667/im-scared-for-my-technical-phone-interview-for-an-internship&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62217/interview-question-which-is-the-time-period-estimated-by-you-to-learn-java&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47176/do-you-count-a-masters-in-cs-as-a-negative&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=%5Bstci-career%5D%20closed:0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8295" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="02959aac-ae87-4bc8-8ffe-46d7dff1efe5" CreationDate="2012-02-24T03:51:58.500" UserId="25936" Comment="added 4857 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing [the \[stci-career\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81644/internships-between-sophomore-and-junior-years    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79487/quitting-a-small-start-up-where-you-are-a-primary-developer    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77886/how-to-network-effectively-to-get-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77014/doing-a-passive-job-search-while-employed-dealing-with-the-barrage-of-messages    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76254/most-effective-way-to-increase-programmer-salary-besides-just-doing-your-job   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74954/what-does-remote-position-with-possibility-of-re-locating-mean    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74583/good-questions-to-ask-the-ceo-and-cto-of-a-start-up-during-an-interview    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73838/job-in-other-country-relocation-package    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72874/what-is-better-mba-vs-mis-right-after-grad-or-gap    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72001/so-theyre-trying-to-pull-me-into-management    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/71925/i-want-to-have-a-career-not-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66794/employee-vs-contractor-mentality-and-career   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64412/how-to-handle-a-workaholic-supervisor-who-is-your-good-friend   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64383/i-quit-my-job-but-took-back-my-resignation-during-the-notice-period-did-i-mad   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62999/what-benefits-should-an-intern-look-for-aside-from-pay    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62399/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60324/moving-from-a-small-to-a-large-company   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58250/what-percentage-should-a-consulting-company-take-off-the-top-of-your-pay&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85978/should-i-be-an-algorithm-developer-or-java-web-frameworks-type-developer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84468/what-defines-a-skill-technology&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83786/career-help-for-an-experienced-professional&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81555/what-should-i-learn-if-im-thinking-of-going-into-networking&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54168/specialized-course-in-web-programming-or-generalized-course-in-computer-science&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45715/educational-qualification-of-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44028/future-direction-for-a-developer-who-is-expert-in-latest-software-technologies&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43739/experienced-keeping-up-with-the-times-or-new-to-the-game-only-using-the-newe&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37968/should-i-stay-in-my-degree-or-take-an-opportunity-for-management-experience&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33488/entity-type-for-freelance-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24277/web-programming-vs-oracle-courses&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24066/project-dotnetnuke-module-selling-website-problem-staying-motivated&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86432/web-security-course&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86412/transition-from-maintenance-programming-to-design&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85995/matching-my-skills-with-java-and-web-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82150/career-switch-from-high-level-to-kernel-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75334/how-much-does-the-calibre-of-a-masters-program-matter-to-an-employer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74016/will-cfa-add-any-value-to-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73763/how-to-pick-which-mcpd-certification-is-appropriate&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73654/php-interview-test-any-advice&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72122/integration-projects-consulting-and-biztalk-good-or-bad-for-career&#xD;&#xA;1. 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&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=%5Bstci-career%5D%20closed:0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=%5Bstci-career%5D%20closed:0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72033/is-it-okay-to-put-all-your-spare-time-projects-under-an-umbrella-name-that-is-no&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73032/how-to-handle-arrogant-managers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73787/how-do-you-know-you-have-what-it-takes-to-be-a-professional-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74611/how-to-present-self-taught-knowledge&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79745/from-an-outsider-how-where-to-enter-the-sw-development-field&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78928/working-as-a-programmer-for-gas-and-oil&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79011/industry-switch-to-space-technologies&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=%5Bstci-career%5D%20closed:0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8298" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3198" RevisionGUID="9b45048f-cf6f-4af1-ad6d-eff866f69ea3" CreationDate="2012-02-24T13:22:14.633" UserId="41381" Text="Your question may not be a poll, but it is likely off topic as well. Questions about tools or which technology is better are both off topic, and your questions is a bit of both." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8299" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3199" RevisionGUID="5e3ed3ff-6076-4f27-9a3b-644160e6ca21" CreationDate="2012-02-24T14:18:58.010" UserId="1130" Text="I have high hopes for [this meta proposal suggesting a read-only archive site for good off-topic questions][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd suggest going there and casting your vote to support it :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/122249/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8300" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2850" RevisionGUID="0fd3be1e-fce6-42bc-beb0-abf22a084f07" CreationDate="2012-02-24T15:21:48.623" UserId="47" Comment="bump" Text="The [tag:homework] tag is a [meta tag](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/), it adds nothing to the question and can removed without adversely affecting the question. It has recently resurfaced.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I made a start removing the tag from the most recently asked questions and deleting some older closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of this writing there are 22 questions left with the tag so they can be address by editing rather than getting the development team to delete the tag that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that there's agreement that it should be removed feel free to remove it from any question you find.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [Stack Overflow `homework` tag](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/homework) has the following wiki:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Homework means the asker is requesting help with school homework. This lets potential answerers know that they should guide the student in solving the problem, rather than simply showing the complete answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that answers aren't as hard and fast here the chances of posting a &quot;complete&quot; answer are rarer, making this warning unnecessary.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8301" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3200" RevisionGUID="de992a21-c46a-4864-bc32-d1db00a880a0" CreationDate="2012-02-24T17:25:46.007" UserId="7748" Text="[This Question][2] was Migrated to DBA.. By mmy answer got lost in the Migration, What Gives?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/a1uAp.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/13876/complex-sql-query-need-help" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8302" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3200" RevisionGUID="de992a21-c46a-4864-bc32-d1db00a880a0" CreationDate="2012-02-24T17:25:46.007" UserId="7748" Text="Answer Lost on Migration" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8303" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3200" RevisionGUID="de992a21-c46a-4864-bc32-d1db00a880a0" CreationDate="2012-02-24T17:25:46.007" UserId="7748" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8304" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3201" RevisionGUID="fab1a99a-42a1-4efe-9d54-d9d0f94a229a" CreationDate="2012-02-24T17:29:51.320" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="If you [click back to Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136760/complex-sql-query-need-help?noredirect=1) from [the migrated question on DBA](http://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/13876/complex-sql-query-need-help), you'll see your deleted answer and a comment explaining why it was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, your answer was a commentary on the asker's choice of language and not a direct answer to the question, so it was deleted as part of the preparation of the question for migration to DBA.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The banner doesn't seem right, though. In a migration, deleted answers are not migrated with the question, so the banner is incorrect (and of course, a bad user experience)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8305" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3200" RevisionGUID="32ddd8c2-223a-4c90-b478-ef014ca0a5e6" CreationDate="2012-02-24T17:30:40.613" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body; edited tags" Text="[This question][2] was migrated to DBA, but my answer got lost in the migration. What Gives?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/a1uAp.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/13876/complex-sql-query-need-help" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8306" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3200" RevisionGUID="32ddd8c2-223a-4c90-b478-ef014ca0a5e6" CreationDate="2012-02-24T17:30:40.613" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|support|migration|deleted-answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8307" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2850" RevisionGUID="fe1345c7-a6ec-4552-8ac6-cdeda392a3d7" CreationDate="2012-02-24T18:01:53.253" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|tags|posse|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8308" PostHistoryTypeId="9" PostId="2850" RevisionGUID="6d5dcc29-e954-403f-9582-fce67b61d97b" CreationDate="2012-02-24T18:02:15.220" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Rollback to [0fd3be1e-fce6-42bc-beb0-abf22a084f07]" Text="|discussion|tags|posse|" />
  <row Id="8309" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3202" RevisionGUID="37c73eac-11ab-418c-b900-fa572b933b9b" CreationDate="2012-02-24T19:08:53.880" UserId="25936" Text="[tag:homework] was [recently cleaned up][1], and as meta tags usually do it found it's way back to us, on at least three questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can this tag be blacklisted, so it doesn't keep coming back?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8310" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3202" RevisionGUID="37c73eac-11ab-418c-b900-fa572b933b9b" CreationDate="2012-02-24T19:08:53.880" UserId="25936" Text="Blacklist [homework]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8311" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3202" RevisionGUID="37c73eac-11ab-418c-b900-fa572b933b9b" CreationDate="2012-02-24T19:08:53.880" UserId="25936" Text="|support|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8312" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2373" RevisionGUID="82fd45d7-2494-41b9-ae47-be376f93b4ed" CreationDate="2012-02-24T19:36:23.900" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Remove recently killed tags" Text="While we [continue our work on cleaning up the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup), I thought I'd bring up the next tag clean-up project: killing the catch-all tags that could be applied to every question on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through the first two pages of tags, these include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-languages] (710 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:learning] (633 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-development] (335 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-practices] (222 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:recommendations] (129 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:advice] (113 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-engineering] (96 questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I'm bringing these up now instead of waiting for the first project to complete is that I believe we can exercise the first option—[presented earlier for the career and jobs tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags)—on these tags: nuke them from orbit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, these tags can be applied to every single question on the site. Disambiguating these tags would entail replacing them with *anything else*, not simply a set of pre-defined disambiguation targets. With these tags, we're no better off if they're untagged or left tagged: they tell us nothing about the content of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you think? Is this a good idea, or is there a better way to approach killing these tags? Are there tags that should be on the list but aren't? Is there a serious case to be made for taking tags *off* this list?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea/1940#1940&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2152/blacklist-advice&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/421/is-a-recommendations-tag-really-necessary&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8313" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="da0e733e-1c28-4c5c-92e4-0bfa28dce9f4" CreationDate="2012-02-24T19:59:52.520" UserId="25936" Comment="added 4452 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing [the \[stci-career\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81644/internships-between-sophomore-and-junior-years    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79487/quitting-a-small-start-up-where-you-are-a-primary-developer    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77886/how-to-network-effectively-to-get-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77014/doing-a-passive-job-search-while-employed-dealing-with-the-barrage-of-messages    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76254/most-effective-way-to-increase-programmer-salary-besides-just-doing-your-job   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74954/what-does-remote-position-with-possibility-of-re-locating-mean    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74583/good-questions-to-ask-the-ceo-and-cto-of-a-start-up-during-an-interview    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73838/job-in-other-country-relocation-package    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72874/what-is-better-mba-vs-mis-right-after-grad-or-gap    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72001/so-theyre-trying-to-pull-me-into-management    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/71925/i-want-to-have-a-career-not-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66794/employee-vs-contractor-mentality-and-career   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64412/how-to-handle-a-workaholic-supervisor-who-is-your-good-friend   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64383/i-quit-my-job-but-took-back-my-resignation-during-the-notice-period-did-i-mad   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62999/what-benefits-should-an-intern-look-for-aside-from-pay    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62399/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60324/moving-from-a-small-to-a-large-company   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58250/what-percentage-should-a-consulting-company-take-off-the-top-of-your-pay&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85978/should-i-be-an-algorithm-developer-or-java-web-frameworks-type-developer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84468/what-defines-a-skill-technology&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83786/career-help-for-an-experienced-professional&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81555/what-should-i-learn-if-im-thinking-of-going-into-networking&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54168/specialized-course-in-web-programming-or-generalized-course-in-computer-science&#xD;&#xA;1. 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http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61349/interview-recruiter-to-ask-series-of-technical-questions&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68370/case-studies-for-successful-service-project-based-businesses-without-constant&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85946/independent-projects-as-a-student-to-show-off-abilities&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48918/getting-started-on-large-projects&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43409/dealing-with-engineers-that-frequently-leave-their-jobs&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39939/how-to-move-ahead-in-project-product-management-after-3-yrs-of-programming-exper&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21970/the-donts-of-it-project-management&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20178/how-can-i-quickly-weed-out-copy-paste-coders&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18578/pmp-certificate-how-did-you-achieve-it-how-was-the-preparation&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8142/from-programmer-to-programmers-coach&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1474/about-the-book-peopleware-productive-projects-and-teams&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50168/what-roles-do-people-take-after-scrum-master-technical-lead&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39888/job-title-inflation-and-fluffing&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38382/system-analyst-vs-computer-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27317/is-there-a-future-for-full-time-software-configuration-managers-engineers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21412/why-im-not-selected-in-an-interview&#xD;&#xA;1. 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http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20369/career-advice-stay-with-php-or-start-a-new-career-in-something-else-net&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75963/career-in-robotics&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26003/career-advice-should-i-relearn-xhtml-and-css-for-my-career&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17715/career-advice-needed-startups-clients-making-moves-the-whole-ball-of-wax&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28217/career-advice-what-can-i-do-to-ensure-i-am-able-to-provide-for-my-family-when-i&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61764/moving-your-career-to-another-programming-language&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20677/need-some-advice-for-next-big-thing-and-career-advancement&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80296/a-developer-as-it-manager-advice&#xD;&#xA;1. 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Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=%5Bstci-career%5D%20closed:0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=%5Bstci-career%5D%20closed:0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8316" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3203" RevisionGUID="663d8e60-13bb-429c-bdb6-4c361be7d289" CreationDate="2012-02-24T20:03:16.277" UserId="47" Text="It has been added to the blacklist." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8317" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2850" RevisionGUID="b9a2ba7a-6c99-4125-ac67-2b893dffc4dd" CreationDate="2012-02-24T20:03:29.800" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|posse|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8323" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3191" RevisionGUID="345891c2-e07d-4171-8928-d9ab92e81365" CreationDate="2012-02-25T01:54:32.187" UserId="25936" Comment="added 112 characters in body" Text="Yes it's a poll. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are asking for a recommendation without specifying any parameters, other than the service should be similar to Google Code Search. Anyone can search for &quot;Google Code Search alternative&quot;, reach a site like [alternativeto.net][1] and post the six services presented there. Each answer is equally valid, none of them is better than the other. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not realistic to expect an exact clone to exist, and although someone familiar with Google Code Search _may_ imagine what you have in mind, that doesn't mean you don't have to actually tell us in the text of your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both answerers could expand their answers to include several information on why their suggestions are good alternatives, but since you don't define the exact parameters of what you are looking for we can't tell which answer is &quot;better&quot; in the context of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recommendation questions are incredibly hard to get right (~ fit the Stack Exchange format). Even when similar questions specify the parameters adequately, answers tend to be crappy &quot;just a link&quot;, and gather populist votes. So, even if you do everything right, answerers may spoil the question for everyone... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Real Questions Have Answers][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [Gorilla vs. Shark][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://alternativeto.net/software/google-code-search/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8325" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="c4d58402-7969-447f-aafc-8c375802c737" CreationDate="2012-02-25T22:44:04.440" UserId="25936" Comment="added 3375 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing [the \[stci-career\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81644/internships-between-sophomore-and-junior-years    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79487/quitting-a-small-start-up-where-you-are-a-primary-developer    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77886/how-to-network-effectively-to-get-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77014/doing-a-passive-job-search-while-employed-dealing-with-the-barrage-of-messages    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76254/most-effective-way-to-increase-programmer-salary-besides-just-doing-your-job   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74954/what-does-remote-position-with-possibility-of-re-locating-mean    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74583/good-questions-to-ask-the-ceo-and-cto-of-a-start-up-during-an-interview    &#xD;&#xA;1. 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http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50311/does-it-really-takes-5-10-years-or-more-to-be-really-good-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50461/advice-for-how-to-handle-company-pride&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51546/how-do-you-handle-developer-that-has-taken-an-early-retirement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently we hit the character limit, [closure candidates continue in another answer][1]. Please don't add anything to this answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3206/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65607/volunteering-with-a-non-profit-to-expand-skills&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64936/how-can-i-make-myself-better-at-programming-working-at-a-shi-job&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65250/as-a-professional-net-developer-should-you-learn-to-work-with-msil-using-refle&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66297/im-a-professional-software-engineer-how-can-i-take-it-to-the-next-level&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66274/10-years-out-of-programming-wanting-to-return-how-to-best-approach-it&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66465/experienced-programmer-taking-classes-at-community-college-useful-or-too-basi&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67060/im-applying-for-a-position-at-a-startup-to-whom-should-i-address-my-cover-lett&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69918/how-do-i-increase-my-chances-of-getting-a-job-after-being-out-of-work-for-a-long&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69295/does-aiming-at-non-glamorous-positions-improve-chances-of-being-hired&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/71304/is-creating-automated-tests-a-good-way-to-begin-a-career-as-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70471/where-am-i-as-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/71580/why-there-are-no-real-software-companies-in-europe&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/71096/msc-worth-going-back-for&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72040/how-many-skills-should-i-list-on-my-resume-cv&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74021/reacting-to-question-will-you-act-as-an-on-call-consultant-after-you-leave&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74105/is-it-legal-for-me-to-contribute-to-open-source-software-while-employed&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74970/how-do-i-use-programming-experience-at-a-non-programming-position-on-my-resume-f&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75639/what-is-the-value-of-consulting-for-your-career&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75647/which-is-a-better-degree-a-computer-science-degree-or-an-it-degree&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76245/anyone-been-through-the-net-program-with-setfocus&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76467/how-to-interpret-programmer-salary-survey-data-especially-concerning-different&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77564/essential-java-skills-for-future-career-advancement&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77938/developer-defecting-to-the-client-side&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77992/searching-for-job-openings-beyond-those-that-just-specific-programming-language&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75260/ive-got-my-masters-in-software-engineering-now-what&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77820/how-can-i-make-the-transition-from-being-a-beginner-to-an-intermediate-advanced&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79916/how-to-build-a-career-path-to-be-an-architect&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80410/what-is-expected-out-of-an-intern-know-everything&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80482/ways-for-self-taught-coder-to-build-a-portfolio-with-the-purpose-of-landing-an-e&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84841/to-be-strict-or-pragmatic&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83724/making-the-move-to-team-leading&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84909/jobs-that-use-programming-which-arent-in-the-technology-sector&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86042/switching-domains-in-ones-career&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23691/why-are-more-programmers-not-freelance-these-days&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1189/what-should-i-do-to-be-language-agnostic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;1. 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http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8330" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3207" RevisionGUID="e47afd1e-0f64-4537-94cb-687b7566f4f3" CreationDate="2012-02-27T00:46:04.273" UserId="4" Text="There are a few points to consider here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Is it a poll?** I don't think so. This isn't a matter of &quot;what's better&quot; or &quot;what do you think about X&quot;, but asking for a very specific replacement for a tool. Not every answer is equally valid, as various search engines have differing capacities for scanning and searching source code. In [the second blog post about good subjective questions][1], there is discussion of the [Six Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions][2] as well as [MetaFilter's &quot;chatfilter&quot;][3]. The answers aren't going to be overly long, but the question is asking for a very specific feature set and good answers will explain how the recommended tool meets (or fails to meet) each feature and (hopefully) provide experiences with using the recommended tool.&#xD;&#xA;- **Is it a good subjective question?** It can be, assuming the answers are good. Of the six guidelines, 3 rest on the answers and 4 rest on the wording of the question (there's an overlap of one). The currently provided answers are don't explain why these searches are good or how they meet the needs, but that's on the answerers and not the asker. The answers to the question isn't going to be overly long, but they should be a link and a description of how the tools meet the needs of the asker. The question has a fair and impartial tone and is worded so that answers add value. It's not just mindless social fun, but tries to find relevant, useful tools.&#xD;&#xA;- **Is it on-topic?** Although programming tools are meant for Stack Overflow, I'm not sure if this is more appropriate there. A code search engine for public/open-source code isn't what I think of when I hear the term &quot;programming tool&quot;. To me, a programming tool is an IDE, an editor, a debugger, a static analyzer - things that help you write, test, and deploy code. I'd call it on-topic here, since it fits in with the general topics and is relevant to the users of this site. I would ask Stack Overflow if they wanted it, and move it if they did, but if they said no, I would leave it here.&#xD;&#xA;- **Are the current answers good?** No. Both answers are link-only answers. They need to be expanded significantly to be considered good answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure yet if I'm going to reopen it, but if it gets reopened (or I decide it should be opened after thinking about it more), I would add an &quot;insufficient explanation&quot; notice so that people know that answers should be more than a link and add comments to the posted questions to give the users a chance to elaborate before they get deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://faq.metafilter.com/tags/chatfilter" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8331" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3208" RevisionGUID="2c5f7a8e-3ce4-4376-9b00-c3553eb07fe3" CreationDate="2012-02-27T16:58:24.803" UserId="13181" Text="I just noticed that my P.SE score is 7337. While not as awesome as 1337, it got me to thinking that it would be nice to be able to lock your P.SE score at a certain value. Either discarding upvotes or having a private score that you can set public once you get over the novelty of being &quot;1337&quot;. I don't know just a thought." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8332" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3208" RevisionGUID="2c5f7a8e-3ce4-4376-9b00-c3553eb07fe3" CreationDate="2012-02-27T16:58:24.803" UserId="13181" Text="Lock your visible score" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8333" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3208" RevisionGUID="2c5f7a8e-3ce4-4376-9b00-c3553eb07fe3" CreationDate="2012-02-27T16:58:24.803" UserId="13181" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8334" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3209" RevisionGUID="833b575e-cb49-49b4-8a41-5a54d054aa7f" CreationDate="2012-02-27T17:02:29.147" UserId="47" Text="I think I can safely say that this will be marked [meta-tag:status-declined].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are really that bothered, then don't ask or answer any more questions. In addition you'll have to mark all of your existing answers community wiki so you'll get no more reputation from them. You can't turn your questions directly into CW posts and I can't see moderators helping out either." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8335" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3208" RevisionGUID="0255c30d-9507-441f-9346-69507935123a" CreationDate="2012-02-28T05:23:11.353" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8340" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3211" RevisionGUID="d8a63b58-c246-4201-bb15-1f9fda2012db" CreationDate="2012-02-28T21:18:22.533" UserId="1130" Text="The question [Is taking frequent breaks really that beneficial when programming?][1] got closed as off-topic today. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a valid question for software developers, and that the answers provide some good advice to developers wondering the same thing. In fact, I saw a question today that was asking advice about what to do during the 5-10 minutes they took for a break, and I pointed them to the answers to this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question is, what can I do to this question to make it on-topic and get it re-opened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/16595/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8341" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3211" RevisionGUID="d8a63b58-c246-4201-bb15-1f9fda2012db" CreationDate="2012-02-28T21:18:22.533" UserId="1130" Text="What can I do the question &quot;Is taking frequent breaks really that beneficial when programming?&quot; to make it on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8342" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3211" RevisionGUID="d8a63b58-c246-4201-bb15-1f9fda2012db" CreationDate="2012-02-28T21:18:22.533" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8343" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3212" RevisionGUID="3d040369-7193-46d7-9e9c-8ecbb438f4c2" CreationDate="2012-02-29T03:58:54.883" UserId="25936" Text="Well, you'd have to revise the question to require the unique expertise of software developers. Of course it's a question relevant to software developers, but unfortunately that doesn't make it on topic. And you'd have to remove all the non constructive / list building (&quot;Is that the same for you&quot;) elements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It could be on topic (as is) at [Personal Productivity][1], I could ask the Personal Productivity mods and you can also drop by their [chat][2] and ask yourself. If you can find a reference to a notable claim it could even be on topic for [Skeptics][3]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Last option would be turning it into a blog post, as I'm sure you've already guessed. It's not a question that will be deleted soon, if you are worrying about that (although I'm only speaking for myself here).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/598/personal-productivity&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8344" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3211" RevisionGUID="6f8efae9-7aec-40b9-9abc-5c3570469a12" CreationDate="2012-02-29T03:59:50.747" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8346" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3193" RevisionGUID="c1a81390-b82d-4b30-ad55-d90fa2e54044" CreationDate="2012-02-29T04:01:22.103" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8347" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3192" RevisionGUID="92d008c3-af1c-4090-a377-6c989d320c8c" CreationDate="2012-02-29T04:01:42.290" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8348" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3213" RevisionGUID="86ccb57e-ba11-40b6-9a5f-b0dd7d1ae080" CreationDate="2012-02-29T08:45:33.977" UserId="3530" Text="I only saw the &quot;good subjective - bad subjective&quot; warning next to book recommendation questions. Do they form an exception? For example [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil) question is a &quot;recommendation&quot;-kind, which is indeed not a good fit for Q&amp;A, but then again, so aren't book recommendation questions (you can't really select a single good answer)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8349" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3213" RevisionGUID="86ccb57e-ba11-40b6-9a5f-b0dd7d1ae080" CreationDate="2012-02-29T08:45:33.977" UserId="3530" Text="When does a question fall into &quot;allowable recommendation&quot; category (good subjective) and when does it not?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8350" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3213" RevisionGUID="86ccb57e-ba11-40b6-9a5f-b0dd7d1ae080" CreationDate="2012-02-29T08:45:33.977" UserId="3530" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8351" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3214" RevisionGUID="d33ca1a8-0423-4a25-b15a-eb3b72d89a24" CreationDate="2012-02-29T09:12:39.793" UserId="25936" Text="We welcome _some_ book recommendations, as described in the [accepted answer][1] on [&quot;Are book recommendations on-topic?&quot;][2] (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would say that like &quot;what language should I learn&quot; questions, questions that effectively ask for a list of books on X should be closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, like programming language questions, if you have **specialised requirements** (you want to go into LINQ, or networking, or.. in great depth) then perhaps those should be allowed. They should inspire answers that explain why a book is good for this topic and shouldn't just produce a list of everyone's favourite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On book questions that we feel are borderline there are two equally valid options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Add the &quot;good subjective - bad subjective&quot; warning and hope for the best,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close the question as not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is getting down / close votes, flags, or very bad answers (think: just a link), option 2 is the better choice. The process is about the same for every borderline question and it's always a judgement call. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2004/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8352" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3215" RevisionGUID="ab8d5d70-72ac-4653-a367-6441c8dc2848" CreationDate="2012-02-29T09:34:23.993" UserId="47" Text="The key here is that we don't want a list of everyone's favourite book. What we want is the question to bring out *the* book on a given topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means that the the question has to be specific and to the point so:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's the best book for networking?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;would be closed whereas:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What book will help me with X?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;where &quot;X&quot; is something specific and clear cut." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8353" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3216" RevisionGUID="df4e222f-d465-43f4-9cda-674db9c9da86" CreationDate="2012-02-29T11:11:39.270" UserId="28833" Text="I was told to post a meta question to disassociate my email that I am not using anymore. I have associated a new email to this account, and would like my old email of gmail to be removed from this account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8354" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3216" RevisionGUID="df4e222f-d465-43f4-9cda-674db9c9da86" CreationDate="2012-02-29T11:11:39.270" UserId="28833" Text="How to disassociate my email that I am not using anymore" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8355" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3216" RevisionGUID="df4e222f-d465-43f4-9cda-674db9c9da86" CreationDate="2012-02-29T11:11:39.270" UserId="28833" Text="|support|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8356" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3213" RevisionGUID="effcbc8e-3b29-493e-8409-93c5093e3a07" CreationDate="2012-02-29T12:55:09.840" UserId="31260" Comment="[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective)" Text="I only saw the &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective)&quot; warning next to book recommendation questions. Do they form an exception? For example [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil) question is a &quot;recommendation&quot;-kind, which is indeed not a good fit for Q&amp;A, but then again, so aren't book recommendation questions (you can't really select a single good answer)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8357" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3217" RevisionGUID="b1d35399-efc1-4310-858a-9ba9d046116e" CreationDate="2012-02-29T13:14:26.823" UserId="31260" Text="To me, the most enlightening guidance on asking and answering _recommendation_ type questions appears to be one given in [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...consider the voluminous amount of information you need to even begin properly answering...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Let’s say the question asker provided all that information. Fat chance, I know, but let’s pretend for a moment they did — and we were able to provide the perfect, ideal shopping recommendation to them. Even if that was the case, technology moves so rapidly that the best shopping recommendations will be utterly obsolete within a year! What’s the point of a bunch of labor intensive questions that provide only temporary benefit to a limited (some might say Too Localized) audience? There isn’t any...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... **there _is_ a way to ask these questions that avoids the inherent problems with shopping recommendations**. For example, let’s say you wanted — as I did — to buy a point-and-shoot camera that takes good low light photos. So we’re going to ask on photo.stackexchange.com, naturally!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Here’s one way to ask:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; **Q: What’s the best low light point-and-shoot camera?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...Here’s another way to ask:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; **Q: How do I tell which point-and-shoot cameras take good low light photos?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...The former question provides the path of least resistance: a laundry list of products I can buy without thinking about it too much. But that answer will only be valid for a year at best. The latter question may take some thinking, but its answer will be valid _forever_ … or at least until camera technology somehow shifts beyond lenses and sensors as we know them today. Thus, when it comes to shopping questions, don’t ask us what you should buy — ask us _what you need to learn_ to tell what you should buy...&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8359" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3219" RevisionGUID="117ad5a9-b79d-4d99-97ca-8050bea60385" CreationDate="2012-02-29T13:44:57.207" UserId="63" Text="You can easily take care of this yourself. See [the instructions here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/22223/how-do-i-remove-an-openid-or-login):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Open your profile page&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. Click the &quot;my logins&quot; link near the top&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3. Click the little (x) to the right of the login you wish to remove." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8361" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3220" RevisionGUID="8f4c385f-b076-4599-a9af-0ac64f3dd03b" CreationDate="2012-02-29T13:58:08.983" UserId="1130" Text="I get upset when I look for a particular question of mine to link to another question, only to find that it's been closed and I probably shouldn't be sending people to it. It's even worse if the question I'm looking for has been deleted and I can't find it at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many questions that were asked back when the site scope allowed questions about programmers, not just software development, and questions were encouraged to [invite sharing experiences over opinions][1], something that is discouraged today because it sounds more like a poll. They got many upvotes because they were on-topic at that time and contained some good information. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that the site scope has changed since then, and these questions are no longer seen as on-topic, however I'd like to request that mods leave a comment on questions they want to close if it was asked back when the question would have been on-topic and has a decent number of upvotes. This would give the OP a few days to try and edit the question to make it on-topic before the question actually gets closed/deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it extremely hard to get questions re-opened here, so would rather try and make a question on-topic to prevent the closure in the first place instead of trying to re-open it after an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/350/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8362" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3220" RevisionGUID="8f4c385f-b076-4599-a9af-0ac64f3dd03b" CreationDate="2012-02-29T13:58:08.983" UserId="1130" Text="Can mods give us a chance to edit upvoted questions that were asked back when they were on-topic before closing/deleting them?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8363" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3220" RevisionGUID="8f4c385f-b076-4599-a9af-0ac64f3dd03b" CreationDate="2012-02-29T13:58:08.983" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8364" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3221" RevisionGUID="106f978d-ad9b-42a4-842b-0c541af14c7a" CreationDate="2012-02-29T15:14:42.517" UserId="4" Text="A closed question won't immediately get deleted (unless it's otherwise offensive or rude). This provides the opportunity to try to save a question from deletion. However, once a question has answers, it becomes extremely hard to save the question. It's much easier to delete the question and wait for it to be reasked in an appropriate manner than it is to either edit the question in a way that preserves the answers or go through all of the answers and delete the ones that no longer fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's a closed question, anyone (including the original poster) has the opportunity to try to fix it. There are many tools to find questions in need of saving, such as helping with the structured tag clean-ups or using the search to find popular, [highly voted closed questions][1]. If you manage to fix one, flag it for moderator review and briefly explain your edits and why it should be reopened. If you have successfully fixed the question without invalidating answers, it'll be reopened. If you haven't, it won't be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In terms of leaving a comment prior to closing - no. If someone flags it or it absolutely needs to be closed since it is by no means a good question for the SE format, I won't hesitate to close it. However, if it's not obvious as to why, I'll leave a comment explaining the close in more detail. The quick closing will prevent people from posting answers making it exponentially easier to save the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=closed:1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8365" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3208" RevisionGUID="820fa678-b033-4b41-984a-57f954f948d7" CreationDate="2012-02-29T17:01:24.050" UserId="31260" Comment="1337 -&gt; [1337](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet)" Text="I just noticed that my P.SE score is 7337. While not as awesome as [1337](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet), it got me to thinking that it would be nice to be able to lock your P.SE score at a certain value. Either discarding upvotes or having a private score that you can set public once you get over the novelty of being &quot;1337&quot;. I don't know just a thought." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8366" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3216" RevisionGUID="3cd190fe-f996-45dd-a539-88adabc407b2" CreationDate="2012-02-29T18:34:03.590" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8367" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3222" RevisionGUID="212f4b22-db15-4c68-bdcf-3e39595e69f3" CreationDate="2012-03-01T03:51:11.967" UserId="48843" Text="I believe that my SO and Programmers accounts are already as linked as they get, but the Careers one is a different thing entirely, it seems." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8368" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3222" RevisionGUID="212f4b22-db15-4c68-bdcf-3e39595e69f3" CreationDate="2012-03-01T03:51:11.967" UserId="48843" Text="Is it possible to link my Careers 2.0 account, Stack Overflow, and Programmers Stack accounts together?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8369" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3222" RevisionGUID="212f4b22-db15-4c68-bdcf-3e39595e69f3" CreationDate="2012-03-01T03:51:11.967" UserId="48843" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8370" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3223" RevisionGUID="9bd13ce9-6e43-4a21-8f8d-b4888f93023c" CreationDate="2012-03-01T04:13:20.550" UserId="63" Text="Fortunately, you can have 2 OpenIDs associated with your Careers account, and [*any number of them*][1] associated with your Stack Exchange account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you're using two different IDs in two different places right now, just add them both (to your account here for sure, but slapping them both on Careers won't hurt either). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/01/we-now-support-multiple-openids/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8371" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3224" RevisionGUID="ef7b3264-a326-44c6-96ea-09b431bfdb9c" CreationDate="2012-03-01T17:16:05.890" UserId="1130" Text="I have [posted a question on meta][3] asking to lower standards for re-opening questions on smaller SE sites, and wish to provide a link here because the question was generated from the frustration I feel towards being unable to re-open older questions here on Programmers, even after significant edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please visit the question and vote to support if you agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize, currently users get a **[single re-open vote for the lifetime of a question][1]**, and that **[re-open vote will expire][2]** in 4 days. This 4-day limit can be extended if someone else votes to re-open within that 4 days, however this only resets the 4-day timer and once it expires, all votes expire at a rate of 1-per-day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've made a few suggestions in the MSO question that would make it easier for smaller SE communities to reopen their questions, although the one I'd like to see implemented the most would be to allow more than 1 re-open vote per question during the questions lifetime.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just a FYI, I have been part of this site since beta and do not ever remember seeing an older question get re-opened by the community. I have seen a handful of newer questions get re-opened by getting the 5 votes needed, however I have never seen an older one get re-opened without moderator intervention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/124077/158605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/123784/158605&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/124100/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8372" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3224" RevisionGUID="ef7b3264-a326-44c6-96ea-09b431bfdb9c" CreationDate="2012-03-01T17:16:05.890" UserId="1130" Text="Is it too hard for the community to re-open questions here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8373" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3224" RevisionGUID="ef7b3264-a326-44c6-96ea-09b431bfdb9c" CreationDate="2012-03-01T17:16:05.890" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8374" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="c2abb08d-1108-4289-bea6-5bd754e79b3b" CreationDate="2012-03-01T18:23:33.427" UserId="1512" Comment="fixed title" Text="Renaming the site to match its FAQ or changing the FAQ to match the site name?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8375" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3225" RevisionGUID="43dd992f-315c-4588-bee1-e3a6e70a9c01" CreationDate="2012-03-01T19:11:21.040" UserId="1130" Text="No answer so far states the opinion defined in the question, so I am posting one because I am tired of people telling me the top answer on this question is that the site name doesn't matter, or that none of the answers seem to agree with the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The site name matters.** It is the first thing someone has to judge a SE site by, so I feel it should accurately represent what the site is about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Cooking.SE` is a site about cooking, `Databases.SE` is a site about databases, and `Bicycles.SE` is a site about cycling, however `Programmers.SE` is NOT a site about programmers. It is a site about conceptual, whiteboard-styled software development questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So either change the site name to something like `softwaredevelopment.SE` to accurately reflect what the site is about, or change the site scope so that this  is a Q&amp;A site for programmers, about programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8379" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3227" RevisionGUID="3c1f9345-532c-4a95-b286-671ea7e92c96" CreationDate="2012-03-01T20:26:15.483" UserId="17275" Text="When do you stop receiving reputation for editing posts?  I haven't come anywhere near the +1000 rep cap, but I appear to not get any reputation for edits (not that I do that many).  I read this in the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The other way to gain reputation is by suggesting edits to existing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; posts as a new registered user. Each edit will be peer reviewed, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; if it is accepted, you will earn +2 reputation. You can only earn a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; maximum of +1000 total reputation through suggested edits, however.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm assuming &quot;new registered user&quot; has something to do with it, but that is not clear what it means; that phrase is vague.  I don't have that much rep here to qualify for much other than a newer user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For an edit example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I modified this [post](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9853/free-alternative-to-bugzilla), received an excavator badge, but no rep for the edit.  Maybe I'm not supposed to get rep for that and I just don't know the rules." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8380" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3227" RevisionGUID="3c1f9345-532c-4a95-b286-671ea7e92c96" CreationDate="2012-03-01T20:26:15.483" UserId="17275" Text="Reputation for Edits" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8381" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3227" RevisionGUID="3c1f9345-532c-4a95-b286-671ea7e92c96" CreationDate="2012-03-01T20:26:15.483" UserId="17275" Text="|support|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8382" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3228" RevisionGUID="1722b7c3-7993-4f94-85fd-2058c7d03285" CreationDate="2012-03-01T20:37:53.893" UserId="17275" Text="How do I know what tags should and should not be used on this site?  I know you discuss a few here in meta, but what makes that official?  I have re-tagged two posts in the last week to only see issues with using those tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's preferred and easier that I don't retag anything then I can do that too.  I'm not trying to make more work for others (as it appears it must, since it was pointed it out)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8383" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3228" RevisionGUID="1722b7c3-7993-4f94-85fd-2058c7d03285" CreationDate="2012-03-01T20:37:53.893" UserId="17275" Text="How to know what tags are valid?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8384" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3228" RevisionGUID="1722b7c3-7993-4f94-85fd-2058c7d03285" CreationDate="2012-03-01T20:37:53.893" UserId="17275" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8385" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3229" RevisionGUID="ce8e1333-04db-4b73-a55c-6c6dcfc2dc7d" CreationDate="2012-03-01T20:41:44.463" UserId="4" Text="The tags that should not be used should all have a description stating that in the tag description that appears when you are typing the tag. Examples include [tag:career] and [tag:software-engineering]. There are others, but I don't know what they all are off the top of my head.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also follow the [Structured Tag Clean-Up Initiative][1] here on Meta if you are interested in helping to clean up the bad tags that exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8386" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3230" RevisionGUID="5d092dc6-47c2-4d64-8f0e-83b091d8bb69" CreationDate="2012-03-01T21:20:37.120" UserId="47" Text="You have more than 2,000 reputation so you are trusted to make edits on your own now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because there's no review there's no +2 for suggesting a good edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can still get +2 for suggesting tag wiki edits (up to the cap of 1,000 points of course)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8387" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3231" RevisionGUID="584079fe-0f54-4eb6-952a-182cd77a4623" CreationDate="2012-03-01T22:16:14.097" UserId="41542" Text="I had a reputation change today by which I lost 42 reputation points.  The only problem is I can't find any trail as to what exactly has happened.  I can probably guess which questions were removed but I can't be sure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any way to find that out?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8388" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3231" RevisionGUID="584079fe-0f54-4eb6-952a-182cd77a4623" CreationDate="2012-03-01T22:16:14.097" UserId="41542" Text="Odd Reputation change with no trail" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8389" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3231" RevisionGUID="584079fe-0f54-4eb6-952a-182cd77a4623" CreationDate="2012-03-01T22:16:14.097" UserId="41542" Text="|support|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8390" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3232" RevisionGUID="82c4e8eb-acad-4a01-8c49-38599334cdcf" CreationDate="2012-03-01T22:19:57.233" UserId="47" Text="The [reputation tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/41542/karlson?tab=reputation) on your profile should tell you all you need to know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, you will have to check through the entire list to be sure. A quick look shows that Jan 20th might be one of the occasions where posts were deleted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8391" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3233" RevisionGUID="9366e606-e610-4e79-b959-94e9fc9d1c97" CreationDate="2012-03-01T22:28:57.230" UserId="1554" Text="The mods posting here have well-linked answers, but unfortunately, they don't *actually* answer the question... even the mod to &quot;blame&quot; (for lack of a better word) can't really provide an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The truth is that **it was deleted because it was closed.** In time, that happens to most or all question that get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was closed because there was, and still is, a difference between what the community considers a good, constructive question and what the moderators consider a good, constructive question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was closed by one mod, reopened by 5 users, and closed again by one mod. That decision is not likely to change. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly, what your take away should be is that it doesn't matter if the community thought the question was helpful, informative or constructive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't matter if new, upcoming, devs that work with you fervently apply one-return per function, or write O(n^3) functions when O(n) exists because `premature optimization is the root of all evil`... or any of the other pieces of solid wisdom that potentially hundreds of users thought was important enough to upvote and then re-open. It's gone now, go figure out how to be a professional developer somewhere else. This is not the place for those kinds of things. &quot;Not constructive&quot; or &quot;Too much like a list&quot; they'll tell you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also hope you didn't get any reputation from that question - or think that reputation matters - because it's gone now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8400" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3229" RevisionGUID="998e26d4-99f8-4b7f-8bba-67ea4054a19e" CreationDate="2012-03-02T01:10:02.507" UserId="25936" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="The tags that should not be used should all have a description stating that in the tag description that appears when you are typing the tag. Examples include [tag:stci-career] and [tag:software-engineering]. There are others, but I don't know what they all are off the top of my head.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also follow the [Structured Tag Clean-Up Initiative][1] here on Meta if you are interested in helping to clean up the bad tags that exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8401" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3229" RevisionGUID="61484577-6623-40ee-bcb2-66a01f7580a5" CreationDate="2012-03-02T03:18:41.360" UserId="25936" Comment="added [software-development] to have all three approved proposals... " Text="The tags that should not be used should all have a description stating that in the tag description that appears when you are typing the tag. Examples include [tag:stci-career],  [tag:software-engineering] and [tag:software-development]. There are others, but I don't know what they all are off the top of my head.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also follow the [Structured Tag Clean-Up Initiative][1] here on Meta if you are interested in helping to clean up the bad tags that exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8402" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3224" RevisionGUID="bd1a68b6-0658-46bf-9c62-836f9223d9ba" CreationDate="2012-03-02T06:58:55.140" UserId="25936" Comment="removed [feature-request] as you don't actually ask for a feature to be implemented (which you did on your MSO question, so it's redundant anyway)" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8403" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3235" RevisionGUID="d8e95a31-494c-44e3-831f-5cd85d3507b3" CreationDate="2012-03-02T08:04:56.637" UserId="35809" Text="I came here just to report what I think is an anomaly, and found this question. And I decided not t put my own just to avoid a &quot;closure because duplicate&quot; etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I have to (in the sens to &quot;feel the moral need to&quot;) let you know that, yes , WE HAVE SOME PROBLEM.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know if it's just my perception, a technical problem about certain mechanisms or some psychological effect on useres and mods, but we MUST HAVE SOME PROBLEM:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today (2nd March 2012) I cliked the C++ tag, and I camed into a **FULL PAGE of 15 CLOSED QUESTIONS**, and going to the second page things doesn't change a lot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I **don't want to think** about any of the two hypothesis of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- peolple becamed so brainless to be anymore able to place in-topic question or ...&#xD;&#xA;- mods become dictator to avoid to admit whatever quesition they dont' like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So **WE** have to admit that we have a serious communication problem inside the community that makes we unable to communicate in proper way to the user what this site is for (and perhaps even makes we anymore able to understand ourselves what we are doing!). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is the FAQ that explains it but, if it is becoming virtually impossible to post proper question, it means the FAQ have to be restructured  in term of contents since &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- There is the clear need to find a better way to explain what we do here and&#xD;&#xA;- Whatever we may think about, people NEED SOMETHING ELSE, (yes: this is also called &quot;marketing&quot;), since *they are actually ALL asking* something else we systematically close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All that said, I don't want to pretend to have the key to any sort of solution, but I want to encourage some auto-critics about the way we are managing the questions since either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - we are becoming too much selective or&#xD;&#xA; - the way we call this site attract off-topic things&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In both the cases, this is not just a user-side problem.&#xD;&#xA;Is a clean community communication problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8404" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3228" RevisionGUID="c9fdbceb-f932-4dfc-a641-df72175556da" CreationDate="2012-03-02T08:50:01.753" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/175503214031020032" />
  <row Id="8405" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3236" RevisionGUID="339318be-0850-470c-be8f-22bed426d996" CreationDate="2012-03-02T13:21:54.283" UserId="855" Text="There are the FAQ's, plenty of closed questions (heads on top of spears), and comments about what types of questions are appropriate, but since so many questions of the same type are closed, should they just get deleted? I'm assuming this would reduce clutter. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing questions may not be providing the intended disincentive. Seeing so many closed questions appears to put some users off:  http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2389/how-long-will-this-forum-survive-if-the-moderators-keep-closing-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hate to sweep them under the rug and would like to hear what is being done it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8406" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3236" RevisionGUID="339318be-0850-470c-be8f-22bed426d996" CreationDate="2012-03-02T13:21:54.283" UserId="855" Text="Delete instead of just closing questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8407" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3236" RevisionGUID="339318be-0850-470c-be8f-22bed426d996" CreationDate="2012-03-02T13:21:54.283" UserId="855" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8408" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3237" RevisionGUID="0d7279ce-89ac-4498-a63d-32fe66710dcb" CreationDate="2012-03-02T13:28:19.197" UserId="41381" Text="Part of the problem is so many questions are closed by moderators as a unilateral decision often times quite soon after the question was asked. When this happens there isn't much of a chance for a question since few people even get a chance to see it before its closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8409" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3238" RevisionGUID="eb3d07ae-dabc-4690-a83e-6775a8b1db64" CreationDate="2012-03-02T13:29:58.310" UserId="41381" Text="Alternatively less questions could be closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8410" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3239" RevisionGUID="d26699cc-fd2e-4c7b-ba6e-838a798b3840" CreationDate="2012-03-02T13:33:46.550" UserId="6415" Text="Yes, yes, yes. These questions should be deleted - they are [broken windows](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows) on the site. If they cannot be edited to meet the standards in the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq), they don't belong! As you say, they clutter up the site and hide the good information from everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for users that have a problem with closing questions: closing is a [fundamental operation](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/) on Stack Exchange. It allows a community to reject questions that are off topic or are bad quality. If you let them remain, the scope of the community gradually implicitly increases until you have Yahoo! Answers. The quality of both the questions and the answers also goes down, to the same hole. I'm not talking about basic vs. advanced questions here; the quality of communication (how well the OP describes his problem and whether the answers fix it in a way he can understand) is at stake.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, these questions should be removed so that the best questions can get more attention." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8411" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3239" RevisionGUID="b16ab4a9-dc77-4ad8-b835-ff6b118dc5e7" CreationDate="2012-03-02T13:45:36.930" UserId="6415" Comment="added 1425 characters in body" Text="Yes, yes, yes. These questions should be deleted - they are [broken windows](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows) on the site. If they cannot be edited to meet the standards in the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq), they don't belong! As you say, they clutter up the site and hide the good information from everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for users that have a problem with closing questions: closing is a [fundamental operation](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/) on Stack Exchange. It allows a community to reject questions that are off topic or are bad quality. If you let them remain, the scope of the community gradually implicitly increases until you have Yahoo! Answers. The quality of both the questions and the answers also goes down, to the same hole. I'm not talking about basic vs. advanced questions here; the quality of communication (how well the OP describes his problem and whether the answers fix it in a way he can understand) is at stake.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, these questions should be removed so that the best questions can get more attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [SE post on deletion](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Why would you delete a question? Isn’t closing it enough?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; * Some questions are of such poor quality that they cannot be salvaged. They’re literally nonsense. Not every byte of data that is created in the world is infinite and sacred.&#xD;&#xA; &gt; * Some questions are so incredibly off topic that they add no value to a programming community.*&#xD;&#xA; &gt; * The mental cost of processing these closed questions is not zero, particularly for users who are actively engaged and scanning questions to find things they can help answer.&#xD;&#xA; &gt; *If users see a lot of closed questions, they’ll note that we don’t enforce the guidelines, so why should they? Without any final resolution, asking questions that get closed becomes something we are implicitly encouraging — a broken windows problem. If this goes on for long enough, we’re no longer a community of programmers who ask and answer programming questions, we’re a community of random people discussing.. whatever. That’s toxic.&#xD;&#xA; &gt; * If enough of these closed questions are allowed to hang around, they become clutter that reduces the overall signal to noise ratio — which further reduces confidence in the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;*I believe this can be generalized to &quot;that specific community&quot; throughout the post, now that SE has sites for more than just programming.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8412" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3240" RevisionGUID="e2e1934c-d770-4611-91ab-5e2effbe8d66" CreationDate="2012-03-02T14:18:57.200" UserId="1130" Text="There are many reasons for closing a question instead of deleting it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Closed questions can be edited to be brought back on-topic, and re-opened. This would never happen with a deleted question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It is not always agreed upon that the question should be closed. By allowing more users to see the question, it can be evaluated by the community and determined if the question should actually be closed or open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Closed questions can be viewed by any user, while deleted questions can only be viewed by users with over 10K reputation. This would restrict a large number of our users from editing or voting to reopen closed questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; In addition, many people come here seeking answers which can be found in our closed questions. Having a closed question with answers they can read discourages them from posting new questions, and sets an example.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In summary, I would strongly disagree with any decision such as this. You would be cutting the community out of a large part of the moderation process, and the SE sites are meant to be community-run Q&amp;A sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8413" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3241" RevisionGUID="354e8999-db6e-4280-93de-aa00de849423" CreationDate="2012-03-02T14:32:12.460" UserId="4" Text="Some closed questions [get deleted by the system over time][1]. At 30 days, unlocked and unanswered questions with a negative score get deleted. At 365 days, questions with a score of 0 or less (or 1 with a deleted owner), no answers, not locked, has limited comments, and a small view count will get automatically deleted. The checks are not run daily, but weekly, so there might be a few days between it hitting the point for automatic deletion and it actually getting deleted automatically.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here on Programmers, we also have the [Structured Tag Clean-Up Initiative][2], which deals with poor tags on the site. Part of this process is also identifying questions within the tag that can not be salvaged and deleting them manually. However, this only addresses one tag at a time. Also, there are closed questions in good tags that are both inappropriate for this site and unsalvagable - these won't get caught by STCI.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed is meant as a temporary state. Most questions should not go from closed to deleted quickly. The purpose of closed is to give the community a chance to turn the question into something good, while preventing answers. It's much easier to save a question with no or few answers than one with a lot of answers - edits to a question that invalidate answers don't make sense. The reason is that invalidating answers would lead to answers getting downvoted because the answerer was unaware the question changed and didn't delete or change their answer - these would be unwarranted downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, perhaps someone could build a Data Explorer query to show all closed questions, ordered by date (oldest first) and then votes (most negative first). Perhaps an additional piece would be to restrain it to those questions that are at least 3 or 4 months old. Questions that show up in this query could be targets for immediate editing or deletion. I'm not sure if we want to stack this clean up initiative on top of STCI, but it might give us some data to work with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/78048/auto-deleting-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year/92006#92006&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=stci" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8414" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3236" RevisionGUID="f4d853c1-508b-4b0a-a6e5-e3a84ea9eb3a" CreationDate="2012-03-02T14:56:13.707" UserId="855" Comment="added 201 characters in body" Text="There are the FAQ's, plenty of closed questions (heads on top of spears), and comments about what types of questions are appropriate, but since so many questions of the same type are closed, should they just get deleted? I'm assuming this would reduce clutter. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing questions may not be providing the intended disincentive. Seeing so many closed questions appears to put some users off:  http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2389/how-long-will-this-forum-survive-if-the-moderators-keep-closing-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hate to sweep them under the rug and would like to hear what is being done it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: I don't think the closing question process should be replaced with deletion. Most are in a grey area, but some are just obviously wrong. They're voted to close and get downvoted immediately. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8415" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3136" RevisionGUID="b8784e22-1874-4aa5-9da0-5ad06ace8569" CreationDate="2012-03-02T17:50:42.117" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/175639279278620673" />
  <row Id="8416" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3242" RevisionGUID="5351ef59-49e2-469d-8157-3f3349a8330e" CreationDate="2012-03-02T19:11:07.303" UserId="1130" Text="@MarkTrapp, I just heard you're stepping down from your position as moderator and have to say, I'm sorry to see you go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We may not always see eye-to-eye, and I hated the fact you used your ability to close questions as much as you did, but I still think you did a great job as a moderator, particularly in your meta responses. You did your best to keep the site within the scope that was defined in the FAQ, and its not your fault that many in the community didn't agree with scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good luck to you with whatever you do, and don't leave P.SE entirely :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8417" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3242" RevisionGUID="5351ef59-49e2-469d-8157-3f3349a8330e" CreationDate="2012-03-02T19:11:07.303" UserId="1130" Text="No more &quot;Chairman Mao reincarnate&quot; :(" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8418" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3242" RevisionGUID="5351ef59-49e2-469d-8157-3f3349a8330e" CreationDate="2012-03-02T19:11:07.303" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8419" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3242" RevisionGUID="8447a4d7-1613-463e-8998-d28e2c85660c" CreationDate="2012-03-02T19:41:54.820" UserId="25936" Comment="@username doesn't generate inbox notifications when used in questions, so better to use full name." Text="Mark Trapp, I just heard you're stepping down from your position as moderator and have to say, I'm sorry to see you go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We may not always see eye-to-eye, and I hated the fact you used your ability to close questions as much as you did, but I still think you did a great job as a moderator, particularly in your meta responses. You did your best to keep the site within the scope that was defined in the FAQ, and it's not your fault that many in the community didn't agree with scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good luck to you with whatever you do, and don't leave P.SE entirely :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8420" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3242" RevisionGUID="7a49c26a-6c43-4ad8-82dc-2ea3483d4df6" CreationDate="2012-03-02T19:49:25.413" UserId="1130" Comment="Bad YannisRizzo, leave me @MarkTrapp be! :)" Text="[@MarkTrapp][1] I just heard you're stepping down from your position as moderator and have to say, I'm sorry to see you go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We may not always see eye-to-eye, and I hated the fact you used your ability to close questions as much as you did, but I still think you did a great job as a moderator, particularly in your meta responses. You did your best to keep the site within the scope that was defined in the FAQ, and it's not your fault that many in the community didn't agree with scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good luck to you with whatever you do, and don't leave P.SE entirely :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8/mark-trapp" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8421" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3243" RevisionGUID="e13f4612-7a27-40f3-88ba-b8c1a2bf0676" CreationDate="2012-03-02T19:57:53.687" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This post made me chuckle: in leaving, I think my deepest regret is that I was never able to explain sufficiently or clearly enough to people like yourself who still cling to &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; what the site is or how Stack Exchange works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ isn't what moderators—including me—act on. [They act](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/) based on what they understand the scope of the site—decided by regular community users like yourself—to be. Moderators were elected—twice—to act in accordance with that scope. The FAQ is a summary—a cheat sheet if you will—of what the community-decided scope is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The scope of the site was [solidified two weeks after private beta ended](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/350/8). Since then, moderators and other community members have worked to contain the severe cancer that was produced from &quot;Not Programming Related&quot;. After months and months of effort, the cancer's gone into remission and now people are [cleaning up the dead cells](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The people, like yourself, who wish this was still the &quot;Not Programmers Related&quot; site from *September 2010* are in the very, very small minority. A vocal minority, but a small one, and one that shrinks as time goes on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange isn't for everyone: if there's one piece of advice I could instill now that I'm no longer a moderator, it's that perhaps—after 18 months of seeing the wind blow the other way—maybe it's time to cut your losses and find or [create a new home](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/977/8)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8422" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3244" RevisionGUID="3eabac45-6395-45fa-bcd2-173c050f5897" CreationDate="2012-03-02T20:12:03.053" UserId="43885" Text="I've been a long time SO and stack user in general. I'm REALLY disappointed that &quot;Full Time Employee versus Contract Work?&quot; on SO was deleted instead of migrated to Programmers. I don't care about the rep, I care about the answers. That one really mattered to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see that &quot;career advice&quot; is on the don't list, but questions about &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; are good. I very much think this question should be allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Freelancing and contracting have massive overlaps. What does &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; even mean if this kind of extremely useful question is not allowed? I can see rejecting specific career advice (simply under the too localized reason), but this was VERY close to being **specifically about the business concerns of freelancing**.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8423" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3244" RevisionGUID="3eabac45-6395-45fa-bcd2-173c050f5897" CreationDate="2012-03-02T20:12:03.053" UserId="43885" Text="I STRONGLY feel &quot; Full Time Employee versus Contract Work?&quot; on SO should have been migrated here instead of deleted" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8424" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3244" RevisionGUID="3eabac45-6395-45fa-bcd2-173c050f5897" CreationDate="2012-03-02T20:12:03.053" UserId="43885" Text="|discussion|migration|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8425" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3245" RevisionGUID="8c9057a9-7e53-4315-8221-996972190c5d" CreationDate="2012-03-02T20:13:35.110" UserId="47" Text="Please take this up with the Stack Overflow moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's nothing we can do at this end." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8426" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3244" RevisionGUID="1b24d3bc-3deb-41f0-8903-e05606d866f2" CreationDate="2012-03-02T20:26:47.147" UserId="1130" Comment="Added link for those with the rep to view it" Text="I've been a long time SO and stack user in general. I'm REALLY disappointed that [Full Time Employee versus Contract Work?][1] on SO was deleted instead of migrated to Programmers. I don't care about the rep, I care about the answers. That one really mattered to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see that &quot;career advice&quot; is on the don't list, but questions about &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; are good. I very much think this question should be allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Freelancing and contracting have massive overlaps. What does &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; even mean if this kind of extremely useful question is not allowed? I can see rejecting specific career advice (simply under the too localized reason), but this was VERY close to being **specifically about the business concerns of freelancing**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/201088/302677" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8427" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3245" RevisionGUID="442812f9-52e6-480a-b0c2-2f623f39e186" CreationDate="2012-03-02T20:50:14.393" UserId="47" Comment="oops" Text="Please take this up with the Stack Overflow moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's nothing we can do at this end.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After further reflection I don't think that that specific question should be migrated. It's old and the question isn't sufficiently unique to software developers for it to be 100% on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Search Programmers for any similar questions and if there aren't any that address your specific concerns then please ask a new question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8428" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3244" RevisionGUID="fa4ee73d-46d2-425b-9716-3c6c0725fbab" CreationDate="2012-03-02T21:38:54.190" UserId="43885" Comment="added 453 characters in body; edited title" Text="I've been a long time SO and stack user in general. I'm REALLY disappointed that [Full Time Employee versus Contract Work?][1] on SO was deleted instead of migrated to Programmers. I don't care about the rep, I care about the answers. That one really mattered to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see that &quot;career advice&quot; is on the don't list, but questions about &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; are good. I very much think this question should be allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Freelancing and contracting have massive overlaps. What does &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; even mean if this kind of extremely useful question is not allowed? I can see rejecting specific career advice (simply under the too localized reason), but this was VERY close to being **specifically about the business concerns of freelancing**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT** After seeing a screen capture of that question again (I was going off memory before) I can see Bill's objection that it's not unique enough to programming. I remembered a heavier emphasis on IP concerns, which to me can be much more unique to the software field. It's been suggested that I try to clean it up and resubmit it... I'd feel odd about asking a question and immediately supplying my own answer, but if that's what it takes...  :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/201088/302677" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8429" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3244" RevisionGUID="fa4ee73d-46d2-425b-9716-3c6c0725fbab" CreationDate="2012-03-02T21:38:54.190" UserId="43885" Comment="added 453 characters in body; edited title" Text="&quot;Full Time Employee versus Contract Work?&quot; on SO should have been migrated here instead of deleted" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8430" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3242" RevisionGUID="e469662b-d3fc-4bc0-9310-2a12503535ab" CreationDate="2012-03-03T14:43:41.997" UserId="1130" Comment="deleted 157 characters in body" Text="[@MarkTrapp][1] I just heard you're stepping down from your position as moderator and have to say, I'm sorry to see you go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We may not always see eye-to-eye, and I hated the fact you used your ability to close questions as much as you did, but I still think you did a great job as a moderator, particularly in your meta responses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good luck to you with whatever you do, and don't leave P.SE entirely :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8/mark-trapp" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8431" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3246" RevisionGUID="fd48eec7-5ea4-413d-a21f-f7e68adb421b" CreationDate="2012-03-03T14:53:31.420" UserId="31260" Text="Absolutely!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Mark** - I accuse you of making Programmers the place it is now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I blame you for making it too attractive to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without you, there could be so much more GTKY, resume advice and workplace questions, so that I could happily hang somewhere else, without breaking my mind over complicated conceptual topics that flood P.SE now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Guilty as charged...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;! **...thank you Mark!**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8432" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3246" RevisionGUID="ca7b1a8a-0de3-4e24-9e07-45895a42ac2b" CreationDate="2012-03-03T15:43:14.103" UserId="31260" Comment="wordsmithing" Text="Absolutely!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Mark** - I accuse you of making Programmers the place it is now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I blame you for making it too attractive to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without you, there could be so much more GTKY, resume advice and workplace questions, so that I could happily hang somewhere else, without breaking my mind over complicated conceptual topics that flood P.SE now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Guilty as charged...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;! **...thanks for that, Mark!**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8433" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3247" RevisionGUID="341554ed-cad4-4de8-a887-f2e1eb395cb6" CreationDate="2012-03-03T16:47:39.110" UserId="30160" Text="**I fully agree. I did not know about the 4 day timeout time and I think that is almost the killer to reopen a closed question.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I am not entirely sure but I am under impressions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. If a question get 5 up votes by regular user like who (who do not see open and close votes), does that open the question as well?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. If it does, does it has timeout period of 4 days for reopening.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to me, a closed question is 90% dead. It will never revive for a number of reasons. Moderators tend to look after each other and tend to agree. Common user can't do much even if they want to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However I do not agree where I can cast more than one vote to open a question. A vote is a vote and should always be a vote." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8434" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3248" RevisionGUID="75717d3a-181d-4992-98fb-127e85eff0f9" CreationDate="2012-03-03T16:47:59.860" UserId="19265" Text="I've just seen a question closed by a moderator because &quot;Career advice is explicitly off-topic, per the FAQ&quot; ([link][1]), which is simply incorrect: the FAQ makes clear that career advice specific to programmers is relevant, by linking to an answer, the first sentence of which is &quot;First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate directly to software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing the question did nothing to make this a better site, and was taken on the basis of a clearly incorrect understanding of what is defined as on-topic. What mechanisms currently exist, or should exist, to prevent moderators from simply pursuing their own agenda?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138152/choosing-between-an-msc-and-an-industry-job/138153#comment259728_138152" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8435" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3248" RevisionGUID="75717d3a-181d-4992-98fb-127e85eff0f9" CreationDate="2012-03-03T16:47:59.860" UserId="19265" Text="What can we do about incorrectly pedantic moderation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8436" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3248" RevisionGUID="75717d3a-181d-4992-98fb-127e85eff0f9" CreationDate="2012-03-03T16:47:59.860" UserId="19265" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8437" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3247" RevisionGUID="75219b81-4c29-482d-8931-b668d7eebe5f" CreationDate="2012-03-03T17:05:57.493" UserId="30160" Comment="added 46 characters in body" Text="**I fully agree. I did not know about the 4 day timeout time and I think that is almost the killer to reopen a closed question.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I am not entirely sure but I am under impressions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. If a question get 5 up votes by regular user(who do not see open and close votes), does that open the question as well?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. If it does, does it has timeout period of 4 days as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Is reopen vote different that question Up Vote?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to me, a closed question is 90% dead. It will never revive for a number of reasons. Moderators tend to look after each other and agree. Common user can't do much even if they want to open a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However I do not agree where I can cast more than one vote to open a question. A vote is a vote and should always be a vote." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8438" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3236" RevisionGUID="83949f4e-38bc-4925-863c-7911d45d452d" CreationDate="2012-03-03T17:46:53.123" UserId="855" Comment="added 4 characters in body; edited title" Text="There are the FAQ's, plenty of closed questions (heads on top of spears), and comments about what types of questions are appropriate, but since so many questions of the same type are closed, should they just get deleted? I'm assuming this would reduce clutter. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing questions may not be providing the intended disincentive. Seeing so many closed questions appears to put some users off:  http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2389/how-long-will-this-forum-survive-if-the-moderators-keep-closing-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hate to sweep them under the rug and would like to hear what is being done it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: **I don't think the closing question process should be replaced with deletion.** Most are in a grey area, but some are just obviously wrong. They're voted to close and get downvoted immediately. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8439" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3236" RevisionGUID="83949f4e-38bc-4925-863c-7911d45d452d" CreationDate="2012-03-03T17:46:53.123" UserId="855" Comment="added 4 characters in body; edited title" Text="Delete some questions instead of just closing them" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8440" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3249" RevisionGUID="81be8739-6534-45b8-b555-c4507f7bbe8c" CreationDate="2012-03-03T20:11:46.170" UserId="31260" Text="As a high rep / long term user at two other Stack Exchange sites, you probably already know how things work there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At Programmers, it works pretty much the same way: community members cast votes, up or down, close or re-open, flag and raise meta discussions, contact SE team etc etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators here act pretty much the same way as at other sites: processing flags, casting their votes and participating in meta discussions. Can't tell for _English Language_, but compared to eg _Stack Overflow_ I did not notice much difference so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for particular question you ask about, if memory serves I voted to close it as not constructive. I recall also considering whether to vote to close it as off-topic but it felt that I would have to drill too deep into tricky topicality discussions I've followed here at Meta to be sure about that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8441" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3250" RevisionGUID="c913d4a7-c330-425d-8785-14399cfb762b" CreationDate="2012-03-03T20:30:39.080" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; *I've just seen a question closed by a moderator because &quot;Career advice is explicitly off-topic, per the FAQ&quot; (link), which is simply incorrect: the FAQ makes clear that career advice specific to programmers is relevant, by linking to an answer, the first sentence of which is &quot;First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate directly to software development&quot;.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Closing the question did nothing to make this a better site, and was taken on the basis of a clearly incorrect understanding of what is defined as on-topic.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [Meta answer][1] you reference is not an one liner, I really don't understand why you choose to build an argument around a single sentence. You could have at least gone with the first paragraph (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate directly to software development: **general career advice questions with no relation to software development or where software development is a minor facet of the question are off-topic**. A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;**Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as off-topic.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The core questions in the [closed question][2] are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So basically here are my questions: 1. Will getting an MSc in AI hurt my chances in getting an SE job (in case I decide to leave academia)? 2. What are the job prospects in SE in Canada in comparison with the US.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is nothing in those two questions that _requires_ the unique expertise of software developers, as software development has absolutely nothing to do with predicting job perspectives. There is a [single answer][3] in that question, coincidentally yours: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To be honest, if you want to do a PhD, just do a PhD. There's no reason to do a master's first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; From your question, it sounds like you really want to study more, and that this is a one-shot thing. You might as well go for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The amazing thing here is that, even if you are not convinced the question is off topic, your answer actually proves it, since there is nothing in there that shows any specific software development related expertise. That's not a comment on whether you have or don't have software development expertise, but only if that's visible in that specific answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I certainly I agree with the three users and the fellow moderator who voted to close the question. Unfortunately there are quite a few similar questions that are still open, and that may have confused you on whether we consider them on or off topic. Fortunately, the [Structured Tag Cleanup][4] of the [career] tag take care of a lot of that crap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize on career related questions: They are off topic, unless they explicitly require the unique expertise of software developers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138152/choosing-between-an-msc-and-an-industry-job&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/138153/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://Structured%20Tag%20Cleanup:%20%5Bcareer%5D" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8442" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3250" RevisionGUID="9b99f1ff-2b9d-4f6e-89f0-6bf37a2e32e8" CreationDate="2012-03-03T20:39:59.957" UserId="25936" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="&gt; *I've just seen a question closed by a moderator because &quot;Career advice is explicitly off-topic, per the FAQ&quot; (link), which is simply incorrect: the FAQ makes clear that career advice specific to programmers is relevant, by linking to an answer, the first sentence of which is &quot;First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate directly to software development&quot;.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Closing the question did nothing to make this a better site, and was taken on the basis of a clearly incorrect understanding of what is defined as on-topic.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [Meta answer][1] you reference is not an one liner, I really don't understand why you choose to build an argument around a single sentence. You could have at least gone with the first paragraph (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate directly to software development: **general career advice questions with no relation to software development or where software development is a minor facet of the question are off-topic**. A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;**Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as off-topic.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The core questions in the [closed question][2] are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So basically here are my questions: 1. Will getting an MSc in AI hurt my chances in getting an SE job (in case I decide to leave academia)? 2. What are the job prospects in SE in Canada in comparison with the US.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is nothing in those two questions that _requires_ the unique expertise of software developers, as software development has absolutely nothing to do with predicting job perspectives. There is a [single answer][3] in that question, coincidentally yours: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To be honest, if you want to do a PhD, just do a PhD. There's no reason to do a master's first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; From your question, it sounds like you really want to study more, and that this is a one-shot thing. You might as well go for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The amazing thing here is that, even if you are not convinced the question is off topic, your answer actually proves it, since there is nothing in there that shows any specific software development related expertise. That's not a comment on whether you have or don't have software development expertise, but only if that's visible in that specific answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I certainly I agree with the **three users** and the fellow moderator who voted to close the question. Unfortunately there are quite a few similar questions that are still open, and that may have confused you on whether we consider them on or off topic. Fortunately, the [Structured Tag Cleanup][4] of the [career] tag take care of a lot of that crap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize on career related questions: They are off topic, unless they explicitly require the unique expertise of software developers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138152/choosing-between-an-msc-and-an-industry-job&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/138153/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://Structured%20Tag%20Cleanup:%20%5Bcareer%5D" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8443" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3251" RevisionGUID="484acb58-cdf6-4230-8d80-86c51bfef6ef" CreationDate="2012-03-04T03:18:45.487" UserId="226" Text="Hooboy. Lots of stuff happened since I made this proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After additional discussion with the remaining moderators, it appears that there's too much going on right now to hold a contest that still hasn't been clearly defined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point it is too late to hold an anniversary contest. There hasn't been enough consensus from the community in general on what should happen or how it would run. So that boat has unfortunately sailed, but on the upside, there's only 9 months before the next birthday (December 16, 2012). :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime, I know other sites have done contests/events tied to site clean-ups and there is one [going on right now here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career), so perhaps everyone here can come up with something to do to celebrate a cleaner site when it's all done - for example, target old unanswered questions and give them some love.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If/when the details of that are hashed out, please give us (the community team) a shout and we'll work with you to make it happen." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8444" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2858" RevisionGUID="9ac15e12-0939-47eb-a556-600c4204890c" CreationDate="2012-03-04T03:18:57.887" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-declined|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8445" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3246" RevisionGUID="539eccfc-5129-4581-aabd-3e03e72a48af" CreationDate="2012-03-04T07:36:50.443" UserId="31260" Comment="minor wordsmithing" Text="Absolutely!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Mark** - I accuse you of making Programmers the place it is now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I blame you for making it too attractive to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without you, there could be so much more GTKY, resume advice and workplace questions, so that I could happily hang elsewhere, without breaking my mind over complicated conceptual topics that flood P.SE now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Guilty as charged...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;! **...thanks for that, Mark!**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8446" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3250" RevisionGUID="1474ed44-dd73-4161-843f-f4f00b0428ea" CreationDate="2012-03-04T16:23:40.803" UserId="25936" Comment="added 35 characters in body" Text="&gt; *I've just seen a question closed by a moderator because &quot;Career advice is explicitly off-topic, per the FAQ&quot; (link), which is simply incorrect: the FAQ makes clear that career advice specific to programmers is relevant, by linking to an answer, the first sentence of which is &quot;First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate directly to software development&quot;.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Closing the question did nothing to make this a better site, and was taken on the basis of a clearly incorrect understanding of what is defined as on-topic.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [Meta answer][1] you reference is not an one liner, I really don't understand why you choose to build an argument around a single sentence. You could have at least gone with the first paragraph (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate directly to software development: **general career advice questions with no relation to software development or where software development is a minor facet of the question are off-topic**. A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;**Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as off-topic.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The core questions in the [closed question][2] are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So basically here are my questions: 1. Will getting an MSc in AI hurt my chances in getting an SE job (in case I decide to leave academia)? 2. What are the job prospects in SE in Canada in comparison with the US.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is nothing in those two questions that _requires_ the unique expertise of software developers, as software development has absolutely nothing to do with predicting job perspectives. There is a [single answer][3] in that question, coincidentally yours: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To be honest, if you want to do a PhD, just do a PhD. There's no reason to do a master's first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; From your question, it sounds like you really want to study more, and that this is a one-shot thing. You might as well go for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The amazing thing here is that, even if you are not convinced the question is off topic, your answer actually proves it, since there is nothing in there that shows any specific software development related expertise. That's not a comment on whether you have or don't have software development expertise, but only if that's visible in that specific answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I certainly agree with the **three users** and the fellow moderator who voted to close the question. Unfortunately there are quite a few similar questions that are still open, and that may have confused you on whether we consider them on or off topic. Fortunately, the [Structured Tag Cleanup][4] of the [career] tag take care of a lot of that crap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize on career related questions: They are off topic, unless they explicitly require the unique expertise of software developers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138152/choosing-between-an-msc-and-an-industry-job&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/138153/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8447" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3252" RevisionGUID="65735016-fd74-4c79-91d8-77d222f2d8f6" CreationDate="2012-03-05T00:23:23.380" UserId="44541" Text="Like 634 others, I follow @StackProgrammer on Twitter to read and retweet [hot questions][1]. However, it's been nagging at me recently that I perceived &quot;a lot&quot; of these tweets -- tweets ostensibly meant to focus attention on those questions and bring both veteran and new users into the site -- were leading to questions already closed or deleted by the time I read them (and my tweetstream is always on).&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;I looked at the last 100 tweets of hot questions, which only takes us back to Feb 21st, and 14 were closed and 1 was deleted.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not questioning whether or not the questions should've been closed, or even the speed with which they are closed (I agree with the community in all of the instances), but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Should we be concerned that 15% of our tweeted hot questions will lead users to closed or deleted questions?&#xD;&#xA; - If we should be concerned, and knowing that the moderators &amp; community members are doing their jobs, is there any tuning that can be done to what I assume is an automated process at the SE level?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bear in mind that I only looked at the last 100 because I only noticed it happening recently -- it could very well be that this isn't an issue at all and is just an off week.  But if it continues to happen at a similar pace, I think from a community promotion standpoint it might be a problem we should consider trying to solve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1274/questions-being-tweeted" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8448" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3252" RevisionGUID="65735016-fd74-4c79-91d8-77d222f2d8f6" CreationDate="2012-03-05T00:23:23.380" UserId="44541" Text="Should we be concerned that @StackProgrammer tweets lead to closed/deleted questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8449" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3252" RevisionGUID="65735016-fd74-4c79-91d8-77d222f2d8f6" CreationDate="2012-03-05T00:23:23.380" UserId="44541" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8454" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3242" RevisionGUID="b2f458ac-dc29-4dfb-b947-5e0697ca5471" CreationDate="2012-03-05T04:46:01.437" UserId="1130" Comment="Added link to where the &quot;Chairman Mao&quot; reference came from" Text="[@MarkTrapp][1] I just heard you're stepping down from your position as moderator and have to say, I'm sorry to see you go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We may not always see eye-to-eye, and I hated the fact you used your ability to close questions as much as you did, but I still think you did a great job as a moderator, particularly in your meta responses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good luck to you with whatever you do, and don't leave P.SE entirely :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For those who don't know, the &quot;Chairman Mao reincarnate&quot; was [Mark's description of himself][2] in chat once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8/mark-trapp&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=3547172#3547172" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8455" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3255" RevisionGUID="1a68adea-0a15-47f3-8a9f-d4304effad7e" CreationDate="2012-03-05T05:24:58.843" UserId="1130" Text="Unfortunately, [the site name does not match the site FAQ][1]. Questions on programmers.SE should be about software development, not about programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The essence of your question was if you should continue your education in Canada, or get a job in the US. While this might be a decent question if this were a Q&amp;A site about programmers, it doesn't fit in a site about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site was originally designed to be a site about programmers, hence the site name, however it was determined by the powers-that-be that this was not a good fit for the stack exchange system and they changed it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been trying to get them to either change the site name or the site scope, however I feel until they do that, there will always be misunderstandings like this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8456" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3224" RevisionGUID="694a0fb4-0cc3-421d-a54b-9eab1d3da3d2" CreationDate="2012-03-05T05:30:24.453" UserId="1130" Comment="Realized I had the wording wrong on the feature request I'd like to see implemented" Text="I have [posted a question on meta][3] asking to lower standards for re-opening questions on smaller SE sites, and wish to provide a link here because the question was generated from the frustration I feel towards being unable to re-open older questions here on Programmers, even after significant edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please visit the question and vote to support if you agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize, currently users get a **[single re-open vote for the lifetime of a question][1]**, and that **[re-open vote will expire][2]** in 4 days. This 4-day limit can be extended if someone else votes to re-open within that 4 days, however this only resets the 4-day timer and once it expires, all votes expire at a rate of 1-per-day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've made a few suggestions in the MSO question that would make it easier for smaller SE communities to reopen their questions, although the one I'd like to see implemented the most would be to [refund re-open votes if they don't actually get used][4], so users can participate in other re-open attempts at a later date if the question gets more attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just a FYI, I have been part of this site since beta and do not ever remember seeing an older question get re-opened by the community. I have seen a handful of newer questions get re-opened by getting the 5 votes needed, however I have never seen an older one get re-opened without moderator intervention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/124077/158605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/123784/158605&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/124100/158605&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/99333/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8458" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3256" RevisionGUID="32d6e8e1-0557-4951-b649-e1fb91aa8ef9" CreationDate="2012-03-05T09:02:34.267" UserId="47" Text="I am concerned as it seems to affect all sites, not just ours. I don't like the fact that questions that aren't the best advertisement for the site being Tweeted or posted to Google+.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been raised by moderators several times in the past and we have be told that changes to the way questions are Tweeted are in the pipeline. I thought that there was supposed to be a change where questions with close votes weren't Tweeted - but obviously if a question is closed by a single moderator vote that rule won't apply. I will double check what the situation is and report back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other request that has been made is to give diamond moderators some control over what questions get Tweeted. At the very least this would give a pair of human eyes on what goes out for a sanity check.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to point out that I rarely close questions without there being at least one moderator flag being raised. My job isn't to trawl the site looking for things to do, but to react to flags and questions here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8459" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3257" RevisionGUID="4d9921a2-3e3c-49a8-b6c3-19335abf2589" CreationDate="2012-03-05T09:29:42.300" UserId="25936" Text="Yes it is a bit concerning, although 15% is not too much. I went through some of the questions and there is a minor pattern there, several of the closed questions that made it to Tweeter were migrated from Stack Overflow and they carried upvotes and upvoted answers from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is in the &quot;hot questions&quot; algorithm and as [ChrisF mentioned][1] it affects all sites, not just Programmers. Some things we could do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close questions quicker&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   There seems to be a deep rooted perception that closing questions is a bad thing. It's not, and it should happen fast. Closing is just a peer review mechanism, a signal that a question is a bit problematic and in need of improvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Re-open questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Don't dismiss closed questions, they are not dead. If you feel a question can be re-opened, please try to get it re-opened. Bring it up on chat or Meta, find others that can help. Not every closed question will be re-opened, obviously, but some will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote sensibly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Upvote questions that show research effort, are clear and useful. Don't upvote questions that you feel are interesting / fun but blatantly off topic. Similarly with downvotes, they are a comment to the question, not the person asking the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [A guide to moderating programmers.stackexchange yourself - close voting][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [What's all this about heroic edits?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, we prefer to be called diamond moderators ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3256/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8460" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3252" RevisionGUID="2a7eec53-04de-4295-8f26-d947b13bc2fd" CreationDate="2012-03-05T09:54:22.080" UserId="25936" Comment="added link to twitter account, tags" Text="Like 634 others, I follow [@StackProgrammer][1] on Twitter to read and retweet [hot questions][2]. However, it's been nagging at me recently that I perceived &quot;a lot&quot; of these tweets -- tweets ostensibly meant to focus attention on those questions and bring both veteran and new users into the site -- were leading to questions already closed or deleted by the time I read them (and my tweetstream is always on).&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;I looked at the last 100 tweets of hot questions, which only takes us back to Feb 21st, and 14 were closed and 1 was deleted.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not questioning whether or not the questions should've been closed, or even the speed with which they are closed (I agree with the community in all of the instances), but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Should we be concerned that 15% of our tweeted hot questions will lead users to closed or deleted questions?&#xD;&#xA; - If we should be concerned, and knowing that the moderators &amp; community members are doing their jobs, is there any tuning that can be done to what I assume is an automated process at the SE level?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bear in mind that I only looked at the last 100 because I only noticed it happening recently -- it could very well be that this isn't an issue at all and is just an off week.  But if it continues to happen at a similar pace, I think from a community promotion standpoint it might be a problem we should consider trying to solve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1274/questions-being-tweeted" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8461" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3252" RevisionGUID="2a7eec53-04de-4295-8f26-d947b13bc2fd" CreationDate="2012-03-05T09:54:22.080" UserId="25936" Comment="added link to twitter account, tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|twitter|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8462" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3257" RevisionGUID="90abb957-8452-43f7-8a49-8c6abc028886" CreationDate="2012-03-05T10:05:40.493" UserId="25936" Comment="added 115 characters in body" Text="Yes it is a bit concerning, although 15% is not too much. I went through some of the questions and there is a minor pattern there, several of the closed questions that made it to Tweeter were migrated from Stack Overflow and they carried upvotes and upvoted answers from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is in the &quot;hot questions&quot; algorithm and as [ChrisF mentioned][1] it affects all sites, not just Programmers. Some things we could do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close questions quicker&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   There seems to be a deep rooted perception that closing questions is a bad thing. It's not, and it should happen fast. Closing is just a peer review mechanism, a signal that a question is a bit problematic and in need of improvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Re-open questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Don't dismiss closed questions, they are not dead. If you feel a question can be re-opened, please try to get it re-opened. Bring it up on chat or Meta, find others that can help. Not every closed question will be re-opened, obviously, but some will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote sensibly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Upvote questions that show research effort, are clear and useful. Don't upvote questions that you feel are interesting / fun but blatantly off topic. Similarly with downvotes, they are a comment to the question, not the person asking the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [A guide to moderating programmers.stackexchange yourself - close voting][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [What's all this about heroic edits?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, we prefer to be called [diamond moderators][4] ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3256/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75189/who-are-the-diamond-moderators-and-what-is-their-role" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8463" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3257" RevisionGUID="3d55be6d-6ec8-43af-9da3-41daa88a985a" CreationDate="2012-03-05T10:21:25.667" UserId="25936" Comment="Did I really write Tweeter? Need more coffee... " Text="Yes it is a bit concerning, although 15% is not too much. I went through some of the questions and there is a minor pattern there, several of the closed questions that made it to Twitter were migrated from Stack Overflow and they carried upvotes and upvoted answers from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is in the &quot;hot questions&quot; algorithm and as [ChrisF mentioned][1] it affects all sites, not just Programmers. Some things we could do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close questions quicker&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   There seems to be a deep rooted perception that closing questions is a bad thing. It's not, and it should happen fast. Closing is just a peer review mechanism, a signal that a question is a bit problematic and in need of improvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Re-open questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Don't dismiss closed questions, they are not dead. If you feel a question can be re-opened, please try to get it re-opened. Bring it up on chat or Meta, find others that can help. Not every closed question will be re-opened, obviously, but some will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote sensibly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Upvote questions that show research effort, are clear and useful. Don't upvote questions that you feel are interesting / fun but blatantly off topic. Similarly with downvotes, they are a comment to the question, not the person asking the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [A guide to moderating programmers.stackexchange yourself - close voting][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [What's all this about heroic edits?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, we prefer to be called [diamond moderators][4] ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3256/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75189/who-are-the-diamond-moderators-and-what-is-their-role" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8464" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3258" RevisionGUID="d07bdb1b-3d89-4b16-9b0d-7d2c0da448b8" CreationDate="2012-03-05T10:41:52.177" UserId="25936" Text="There are some extremely poor questions that unfortunately won't be automatically deleted. I've used [this SEDE query](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/62567/closed-questions-that-wont-be-auto-deleted-within-a-month) to identify them and I deleted quite a few questions that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Were closed at least two months ago, and&#xD;&#xA;1. There were no edits since they were closed, and&#xD;&#xA;1. Didn't have a single re-open vote, and&#xD;&#xA;1. They weren't duplicates or migrations (migrations are a bit tricky), and&#xD;&#xA;1. They had no highly upvoted answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However this is way outside a moderator's responsibilities, deletions should happen by the community (10K+ users) and we should intervene only in exceptional circumstances. I would really appreciate it if you started using your delete votes. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8465" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3257" RevisionGUID="a85bedbc-5528-4afb-8133-23ebf0865e63" CreationDate="2012-03-05T10:43:15.077" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="Yes it is a bit concerning, although 15% is not that much. I went through some of the questions and there is a minor pattern there, several of the closed questions that made it to Twitter were incorrectly migrated from Stack Overflow and they carried upvotes and upvoted answers from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is in the &quot;hot questions&quot; algorithm and as [ChrisF mentioned][1] it affects all sites, not just Programmers. Some things we could do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close questions quicker&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   There seems to be a deep rooted perception that closing questions is a bad thing. It's not, and it should happen fast. Closing is just a peer review mechanism, a signal that a question is a bit problematic and in need of improvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Re-open questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Don't dismiss closed questions, they are not dead. If you feel a question can be re-opened, please try to get it re-opened. Bring it up on chat or Meta, find others that can help. Not every closed question will be re-opened, obviously, but some will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote sensibly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Upvote questions that show research effort, are clear and useful. Don't upvote questions that you feel are interesting / fun but blatantly off topic. Similarly with downvotes, they are a comment to the question, not the person asking the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [A guide to moderating programmers.stackexchange yourself - close voting][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [What's all this about heroic edits?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, we prefer to be called [diamond moderators][4] ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3256/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75189/who-are-the-diamond-moderators-and-what-is-their-role" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8466" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3248" RevisionGUID="2ebc88a7-f143-427f-a8fe-e268d4fc4da2" CreationDate="2012-03-05T11:11:52.563" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8468" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3242" RevisionGUID="fa29f4e2-b4c8-4f8c-a721-c0b5e38b31b7" CreationDate="2012-03-05T11:12:17.727" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8469" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3236" RevisionGUID="f3fbe672-4955-4c70-98c3-754afe978329" CreationDate="2012-03-05T11:12:38.100" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8470" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3224" RevisionGUID="b1098c35-d06c-43a8-97d6-fcd13c6b1206" CreationDate="2012-03-05T11:13:03.623" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8471" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3189" RevisionGUID="d8267460-55e8-4c79-a1d9-5bf4534dc486" CreationDate="2012-03-05T11:14:22.950" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8472" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3252" RevisionGUID="e4274d30-a7da-4ac9-b18f-e75670498ba7" CreationDate="2012-03-05T11:51:16.440" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/176635989769461761" />
  <row Id="8473" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3256" RevisionGUID="681ad563-1678-4d6e-b941-a099e90263c8" CreationDate="2012-03-05T12:25:34.673" UserId="47" Comment="clarification" Text="I am concerned as it seems to affect all sites, not just ours. I don't like the fact that questions that aren't the best advertisement for the site being Tweeted or posted to Google+.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been raised by moderators several times in the past and we have be told that changes to the way questions are Tweeted are in the pipeline. I thought that there was supposed to be a change where questions with pending close votes weren't Tweeted - but obviously if a question is closed by a single moderator vote that rule won't apply. I will double check what the situation is and report back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm fairly sure that closed questions aren't Tweeted, but that doesn't help if the question is closed *after* it has been publicised.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other request that has been made is to give diamond moderators some control over what questions get Tweeted. At the very least this would give a pair of human eyes on what goes out for a sanity check.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to point out that I rarely close questions without there being at least one moderator flag being raised. My job isn't to trawl the site looking for things to do, but to react to flags and questions here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8474" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3252" RevisionGUID="902634c7-9d89-4d48-a974-238cbc037edc" CreationDate="2012-03-05T13:13:43.773" UserId="44541" Comment="added links to closed questions, per request" Text="Like 634 others, I follow [@StackProgrammer][1] on Twitter to read and retweet [hot questions][2]. However, it's been nagging at me recently that I perceived &quot;a lot&quot; of these tweets -- tweets ostensibly meant to focus attention on those questions and bring both veteran and new users into the site -- were leading to questions already closed or deleted by the time I read them (and my tweetstream is always on).&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;I looked at the last 100 tweets of hot questions, which only takes us back to Feb 21st, and 14 were closed and 1 was deleted.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not questioning whether or not the questions should've been closed, or even the speed with which they are closed (I agree with the community in all of the instances), but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Should we be concerned that 15% of our tweeted hot questions will lead users to closed or deleted questions?&#xD;&#xA; - If we should be concerned, and knowing that the moderators &amp; community members are doing their jobs, is there any tuning that can be done to what I assume is an automated process at the SE level?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bear in mind that I only looked at the last 100 because I only noticed it happening recently -- it could very well be that this isn't an issue at all and is just an off week.  But if it continues to happen at a similar pace, I think from a community promotion standpoint it might be a problem we should consider trying to solve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edited to add links** to most of the 14 closed questions, per @Rachel's request in a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Version Number Soup in RoR: Is Grails Better? Django? \[closed\]][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [Online Code Editor \[closed\]][4]&#xD;&#xA; - [Is it a good idea to generate code with the help of your IDE? \[closed\]][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [What do you do when you can't seem to understand a certain part of programming? \[closed\]][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [Is Object Oriented stuff really that important? \[closed\]][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [why do some job posts say “high pressure environment”? \[closed\]][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [A Class named Class? \[closed\]][9]&#xD;&#xA; - [Offshoring a Software Project — Conflict Resolution \[closed\]][10]&#xD;&#xA; - [How long did it take you to get kernel programming down \[closed\]][11]&#xD;&#xA; - [Software engineer, already in late thirties, would I have trouble finding a new position? \[closed\]][12]&#xD;&#xA; - [Does Object Oriented Programming Really Model The Real World? \[closed\]][13]&#xD;&#xA; - [List of the really big and really small discrepancies with JS in the big 5 browsers \[closed\]][14]&#xD;&#xA; - [Python is slowly replacing C in universities. Does this move degrade the quality of CS students? \[closed\]][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1274/questions-being-tweeted&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136610/version-number-soup-in-ror-is-grails-better-django&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136736/online-code-editor&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137252/is-it-a-good-idea-to-generate-code-with-the-help-of-your-ide&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137385/what-do-you-do-when-you-cant-seem-to-understand-a-certain-part-of-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137372/is-object-oriented-stuff-really-that-important&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137520/why-do-some-job-posts-say-high-pressure-environment&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137715/a-class-named-class&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137794/offshoring-a-software-project-conflict-resolution&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137864/how-long-did-it-take-you-to-get-kernel-programming-down&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137896/software-engineer-already-in-late-thirties-would-i-have-trouble-finding-a-new&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137994/does-object-oriented-programming-really-model-the-real-world&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138132/list-of-the-really-big-and-really-small-discrepancies-with-js-in-the-big-5-brows&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138229/python-is-slowly-replacing-c-in-universities-does-this-move-degrade-the-quality" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8475" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3255" RevisionGUID="9e404cac-1d99-4052-92d6-5fed4b75361f" CreationDate="2012-03-05T14:37:07.570" UserId="1130" Comment="added 1100 characters in body" Text="Unfortunately, [the site name does not match the site FAQ][1]. Questions on programmers.SE should be about software development, not about programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The essence of your question was if you should continue your education in Canada, or get a job in the US. While this might be a decent question if this were a Q&amp;A site about programmers, it doesn't fit in a site about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site was originally designed to be a site about programmers, hence the site name, however it was determined by the powers-that-be that this was not a good fit for the stack exchange system and they changed it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been trying to get them to either change the site name or the site scope, however I feel until they do that, there will always be misunderstandings like this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some quotes from both the FAQ and the linked question that I hope will help clarify the issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[FAQ][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert **answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development**.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **career advice**, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[Question on Career advice questions][3]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; First and foremost, **any career advice questions need to relate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; directly to software development**: general career advice questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with no relation to software development or where software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is a minor facet of the question are off-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, a career-related question needs to be directly related to software development to be on-topic. Career-related questions that only relate to programmers are not on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8476" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3257" RevisionGUID="27010dca-2556-4285-b003-0a2c65404a92" CreationDate="2012-03-05T15:08:26.793" UserId="25936" Comment="added 3895 characters in body" Text="Yes it is a bit concerning, although 15% is not that much. I went through some of the questions and there is a minor pattern there, several of the closed questions that made it to Twitter were incorrectly migrated from Stack Overflow and they carried upvotes and upvoted answers from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is in the &quot;hot questions&quot; algorithm and as [ChrisF mentioned][1] it affects all sites, not just Programmers. Some things we could do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close questions quicker&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   There seems to be a deep rooted perception that closing questions is a bad thing. It's not, and it should happen fast. Closing is just a peer review mechanism, a signal that a question is a bit problematic and in need of improvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Re-open questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Don't dismiss closed questions, they are not dead. If you feel a question can be re-opened, please try to get it re-opened. Bring it up on chat or Meta, find others that can help. Not every closed question will be re-opened, obviously, but some will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote sensibly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Upvote questions that show research effort, are clear and useful. Don't upvote questions that you feel are interesting / fun but blatantly off topic. Similarly with downvotes, they are a comment to the question, not the person asking the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [A guide to moderating programmers.stackexchange yourself - close voting][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [What's all this about heroic edits?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, we prefer to be called [diamond moderators][4] ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the list of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136610/version-number-soup-in-ror-is-grails-better-django&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Typical &quot;which technology is better&quot; question, it could have been closed as off topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136736/online-code-editor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Blatantly off topic question, but borderline on Stack Overflow. Closed by a moderator, and I trust that it was never migrated to SO because the SO mods rejected it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137252/is-it-a-good-idea-to-generate-code-with-the-help-of-your-ide&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as a duplicate by a moderator. This shouldn't really be an issue for someone coming to the site from Twitter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137385/what-do-you-do-when-you-cant-seem-to-understand-a-certain-part-of-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Extremely vague and open ended question, gentle reminder to everyone: Programmers Stack Exchange is not a free for all discussion forum. Closed by a user and a moderator, and it makes me sad that it got as many upvotes as it did (question &amp; answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137372/is-object-oriented-stuff-really-that-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Extremely open ended and argumentative question, comment wars on the question and almost every answer (and a particularly nasty &quot;discussion&quot;, that has since been removed). Closed by a user and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137520/why-do-some-job-posts-say-high-pressure-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Blatantly off topic, typical example of a populist question. Closed by five users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137715/a-class-named-class&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I closed this one because it was getting a bit out of hand, and there wasn't any need for further answers. It had three re-open votes, and I've just re-opened it with a notice for longer answers. If it starts gathering poor answers again, I won't hesitate to close it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137794/offshoring-a-software-project-conflict-resolution&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Very open ended. Closed by two users and a moderator. Potentially salvageable, but it requires a lot of work, and OP seems satisfied with the existing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137864/how-long-did-it-take-you-to-get-kernel-programming-down&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Open ended and quite difficult to understand what it's actually about. Closed by five users. I don't understand why this was tweeted, it's a zero scored question with no answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137896/software-engineer-already-in-late-thirties-would-i-have-trouble-finding-a-new&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Duplicate, closed by four users and a moderator. Same as (3).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137994/does-object-oriented-programming-really-model-the-real-world&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I closed this one because it started gathering answers that re-iterated earlier answers. It's not a question that will be deleted soon (if ever). It's a question that deserves the community's attention (wink).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138132/list-of-the-really-big-and-really-small-discrepancies-with-js-in-the-big-5-brows&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Vague, overly broad, argumentative and mostly off topic. Closed by five users, I wonder if the fact that the single answer was negatively voted should have prevented tweeting it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138229/python-is-slowly-replacing-c-in-universities-does-this-move-degrade-the-quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Vague, speculative, argumentative, wrong. Close by five users, I suspect it got twitted because of the highly upvoted answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There where flags on all questions, including the three questions that where closed by a single moderator. I will keep an eye on the one I re-opened, hopefully answerers will not fail to read the notice for yet another time...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3256/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75189/who-are-the-diamond-moderators-and-what-is-their-role" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8477" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3257" RevisionGUID="b60a2b65-f5be-45ea-97ea-1094a6be2a02" CreationDate="2012-03-05T15:43:37.863" UserId="25936" Comment="added 33 characters in body" Text="Yes it is a bit concerning, although 15% is not that much. I went through some of the questions and there is a minor pattern there, several of the closed questions that made it to Twitter were incorrectly migrated from Stack Overflow and they carried upvotes and upvoted answers from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is in the &quot;hot questions&quot; algorithm and as [ChrisF mentioned][1] it affects all sites, not just Programmers. Some things we could do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close questions quicker&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   There seems to be a deep rooted perception that closing questions is a bad thing. It's not, and it should happen fast. Closing is just a peer review mechanism, a signal that a question is a bit problematic and in need of improvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Re-open questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Don't dismiss closed questions, they are not dead. If you feel a question can be re-opened, please try to get it re-opened. Bring it up on chat or Meta, find others that can help. Not every closed question will be re-opened, obviously, but some will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote sensibly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Upvote questions that show research effort, are clear and useful. Don't upvote questions that you feel are interesting / fun but blatantly off topic. Similarly with downvotes, they are a comment to the question, not the person asking the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [A guide to moderating programmers.stackexchange yourself - close voting][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [What's all this about heroic edits?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, we prefer to be called [diamond moderators][4] ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the list of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136610/version-number-soup-in-ror-is-grails-better-django&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Typical &quot;which technology is better&quot; question, it could have been closed as off topic. Closed by a user and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136736/online-code-editor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Blatantly off topic question, but borderline on Stack Overflow. Closed by a moderator, and I trust that it was never migrated to SO because the SO mods rejected it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137252/is-it-a-good-idea-to-generate-code-with-the-help-of-your-ide&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as a duplicate by a moderator. This shouldn't really be an issue for someone coming to the site from Twitter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137385/what-do-you-do-when-you-cant-seem-to-understand-a-certain-part-of-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Extremely vague and open ended question, gentle reminder to everyone: Programmers Stack Exchange is not a free for all discussion forum. Closed by a user and a moderator, and it makes me sad that it got as many upvotes as it did (question &amp; answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137372/is-object-oriented-stuff-really-that-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Extremely open ended and argumentative question, comment wars on the question and almost every answer (and a particularly nasty &quot;discussion&quot;, that has since been removed). Closed by a user and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137520/why-do-some-job-posts-say-high-pressure-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Blatantly off topic, typical example of a populist question. Closed by five users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137715/a-class-named-class&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I closed this one because it was getting a bit out of hand, and there wasn't any need for further answers. It had three re-open votes, and I've just re-opened it with a notice for longer answers. If it starts gathering poor answers again, I won't hesitate to close it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137794/offshoring-a-software-project-conflict-resolution&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Very open ended. Closed by two users and a moderator. Potentially salvageable, but it requires a lot of work, and OP seems satisfied with the existing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137864/how-long-did-it-take-you-to-get-kernel-programming-down&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Open ended and quite difficult to understand what it's actually about. Closed by five users. I don't understand why this was tweeted, it's a zero scored question with no answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137896/software-engineer-already-in-late-thirties-would-i-have-trouble-finding-a-new&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Duplicate, closed by four users and a moderator. Same as (3).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137994/does-object-oriented-programming-really-model-the-real-world&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I closed this one because it started gathering answers that re-iterated earlier answers. It's not a question that will be deleted soon (if ever). It deserves the community's attention (wink).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138132/list-of-the-really-big-and-really-small-discrepancies-with-js-in-the-big-5-brows&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Vague, overly broad, argumentative and mostly off topic. Closed by five users, I wonder if the fact that the single answer was negatively voted should have prevented tweeting it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138229/python-is-slowly-replacing-c-in-universities-does-this-move-degrade-the-quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Vague, speculative, argumentative, wrong. Close by five users, I suspect it got twitted because of the highly upvoted answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There where flags on all questions, including the three questions that where closed by a single moderator. I will keep an eye on the one I re-opened, hopefully answerers will not fail to read the notice for yet another time...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3256/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75189/who-are-the-diamond-moderators-and-what-is-their-role" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8478" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3257" RevisionGUID="4164d47e-0e9f-4cec-9fbf-b5207e0044c1" CreationDate="2012-03-05T16:11:08.347" UserId="31260" Comment="data on community flags copied at the beginning of the questions list to let reader easier understand context of &quot;single-mod&quot; action" Text="Yes it is a bit concerning, although 15% is not that much. I went through some of the questions and there is a minor pattern there, several of the closed questions that made it to Twitter were incorrectly migrated from Stack Overflow and they carried upvotes and upvoted answers from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is in the &quot;hot questions&quot; algorithm and as [ChrisF mentioned][1] it affects all sites, not just Programmers. Some things we could do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close questions quicker&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   There seems to be a deep rooted perception that closing questions is a bad thing. It's not, and it should happen fast. Closing is just a peer review mechanism, a signal that a question is a bit problematic and in need of improvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Re-open questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Don't dismiss closed questions, they are not dead. If you feel a question can be re-opened, please try to get it re-opened. Bring it up on chat or Meta, find others that can help. Not every closed question will be re-opened, obviously, but some will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote sensibly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Upvote questions that show research effort, are clear and useful. Don't upvote questions that you feel are interesting / fun but blatantly off topic. Similarly with downvotes, they are a comment to the question, not the person asking the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [A guide to moderating programmers.stackexchange yourself - close voting][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [What's all this about heroic edits?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, we prefer to be called [diamond moderators][4] ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the list of questions, there where flags on all questions, including the three questions that where closed by a single moderator:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136610/version-number-soup-in-ror-is-grails-better-django&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Typical &quot;which technology is better&quot; question, it could have been closed as off topic. Closed by a user and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136736/online-code-editor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Blatantly off topic question, but borderline on Stack Overflow. Closed by a moderator, and I trust that it was never migrated to SO because the SO mods rejected it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137252/is-it-a-good-idea-to-generate-code-with-the-help-of-your-ide&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as a duplicate by a moderator. This shouldn't really be an issue for someone coming to the site from Twitter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137385/what-do-you-do-when-you-cant-seem-to-understand-a-certain-part-of-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Extremely vague and open ended question, gentle reminder to everyone: Programmers Stack Exchange is not a free for all discussion forum. Closed by a user and a moderator, and it makes me sad that it got as many upvotes as it did (question &amp; answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137372/is-object-oriented-stuff-really-that-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Extremely open ended and argumentative question, comment wars on the question and almost every answer (and a particularly nasty &quot;discussion&quot;, that has since been removed). Closed by a user and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137520/why-do-some-job-posts-say-high-pressure-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Blatantly off topic, typical example of a populist question. Closed by five users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137715/a-class-named-class&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I closed this one because it was getting a bit out of hand, and there wasn't any need for further answers. It had three re-open votes, and I've just re-opened it with a notice for longer answers. If it starts gathering poor answers again, I won't hesitate to close it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137794/offshoring-a-software-project-conflict-resolution&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Very open ended. Closed by two users and a moderator. Potentially salvageable, but it requires a lot of work, and OP seems satisfied with the existing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137864/how-long-did-it-take-you-to-get-kernel-programming-down&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Open ended and quite difficult to understand what it's actually about. Closed by five users. I don't understand why this was tweeted, it's a zero scored question with no answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137896/software-engineer-already-in-late-thirties-would-i-have-trouble-finding-a-new&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Duplicate, closed by four users and a moderator. Same as (3).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137994/does-object-oriented-programming-really-model-the-real-world&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I closed this one because it started gathering answers that re-iterated earlier answers. It's not a question that will be deleted soon (if ever). It deserves the community's attention (wink).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138132/list-of-the-really-big-and-really-small-discrepancies-with-js-in-the-big-5-brows&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Vague, overly broad, argumentative and mostly off topic. Closed by five users, I wonder if the fact that the single answer was negatively voted should have prevented tweeting it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138229/python-is-slowly-replacing-c-in-universities-does-this-move-degrade-the-quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Vague, speculative, argumentative, wrong. Close by five users, I suspect it got twitted because of the highly upvoted answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is worth reiterating that there where flags on all questions, including ones closed by a single moderator. I will keep an eye on the one I re-opened, hopefully answerers will not fail to read the notice for yet another time...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3256/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75189/who-are-the-diamond-moderators-and-what-is-their-role" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8479" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3259" RevisionGUID="40f4d6ab-ffd7-4c3d-abf5-4d13579505ad" CreationDate="2012-03-05T17:10:14.743" UserId="25476" Text="you may be familiar with me, but in case you aren't I am maple_shaft and I was asked to be the new community moderator.  I am very excited to take this responsibility and I hope that I do not let anyone down.  I believe in the purpose and scope of Programmers and wish to help guide it in the right direction going forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of you may have noticed that Mark Trapp decided to step down, http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3242/no-more-chairman-mao-reincarnate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wish the circumstances were different, and I want it to be said that I feel that I couldn't ever replace his true role here.  I would be an awful replacement if that were the case, but the wealth of information he provided on Meta is a guiding step so that I can at least benefit from his years of experience in this role.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If any of you have any questions for me, about me, or just want to offer some help or guidance then please do.  I look forward to working closely with the users of the site to make this a better place for all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`&lt;joke&gt;` With that being said, I intend to rule with an iron fist.  All infractions of the FAQ will be met with swift and brutal punishment.  Users will bow before my might.  I have the power!&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;`&lt;/joke&gt;`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kidding aside I am pretty jovial and personable too!  I look forward to getting to know you all better in chat!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/YtkMe.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8480" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3259" RevisionGUID="40f4d6ab-ffd7-4c3d-abf5-4d13579505ad" CreationDate="2012-03-05T17:10:14.743" UserId="25476" Text="Introduction to new community moderator" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8481" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3259" RevisionGUID="40f4d6ab-ffd7-4c3d-abf5-4d13579505ad" CreationDate="2012-03-05T17:10:14.743" UserId="25476" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8482" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3259" RevisionGUID="ed76ed60-e06f-40d5-a31c-d5fc2facd9fa" CreationDate="2012-03-05T17:21:56.677" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8483" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3260" RevisionGUID="3039954e-9597-4cbe-a03b-88b66d61cf8d" CreationDate="2012-03-05T21:13:45.157" UserId="30160" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138359/how-can-i-demonstrate-my-productivity-to-management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this on topic? There is no reference to programming. It can be extended to other fields as well, not just programming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask a question in the past&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132878/how-to-present-your-development-work-to-your-it-manager-in-an-effective-way&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which was closed as off topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please do not think that I want to get this question closed. But I want is to have some rules and regulations as well as standards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As or right now, it was asked today and has 417 views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8484" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3260" RevisionGUID="3039954e-9597-4cbe-a03b-88b66d61cf8d" CreationDate="2012-03-05T21:13:45.157" UserId="30160" Text="Why is this question open?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8485" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3260" RevisionGUID="3039954e-9597-4cbe-a03b-88b66d61cf8d" CreationDate="2012-03-05T21:13:45.157" UserId="30160" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8486" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3261" RevisionGUID="b99b16c0-e2b1-46ed-b2c5-818a390f2d85" CreationDate="2012-03-05T21:45:14.170" UserId="4" Text="I'm not going to compare this question to the other question, since I wasn't involved in closing it. However, I will address why I did not close the more recent question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Measuring and demonstrating productivity or output in software engineering is inherently different than measuring and demonstrating productivity in nearly any other field. Think about a number of other fields - manufacturing, electrical engineering, baking. You can count your outputs very easily - widgets produced, drawings created or hardware connected, cookies baked. In software, it's not as clear cut as to what defines being productive and it's not as evidently visible as any other field working with physical, tangible things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of this, I'd consider most questions about measuring productivity and assessing productivity on-topic, since it applies to all programmers, but not all careers. Some answers might contain information that is relevant to other careers, the question is inherently problematic in software development far moreso than other careers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8487" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3261" RevisionGUID="db3ec029-0c30-496b-b5ec-a5e8d931aff0" CreationDate="2012-03-05T22:19:45.187" UserId="4" Comment="added 588 characters in body" Text="I'm not going to compare this question to the other question, since I wasn't involved in closing it. However, I will address why I did not close the more recent question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Measuring and demonstrating productivity or output in software engineering is inherently different than measuring and demonstrating productivity in nearly any other field. Think about a number of other fields - manufacturing, electrical engineering, baking. You can count your outputs very easily - widgets produced, drawings created or hardware connected, cookies baked. In software, it's not as clear cut as to what defines being productive and it's not as evidently visible as any other field working with physical, tangible things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of this, I'd consider most questions about measuring productivity and assessing productivity on-topic, since it applies to all programmers, but not all careers. Some answers might contain information that is relevant to other careers, the question is inherently problematic in software development far moreso than other careers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reading that question's latest edits, it probably should be closed. The edit changed the entire tone of the question from productivity to team dynamics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's clearly not about demonstrating productivity, but a lack of responsiveness. It's no longer about measuring and demonstrating one's productivity in developing software, but general team dynamics that apply to any team based field of study. If flagged or if it gets one or two more close votes, I would probably also vote to close it. I'm hesitant to close such a borderline question as the second vote to close." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8488" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3261" RevisionGUID="a8da79a1-a4c7-4845-b3e2-00e0f48a143f" CreationDate="2012-03-05T22:36:16.027" UserId="4" Comment="added 139 characters in body" Text="I'm not going to compare this question to your question, since I wasn't involved in closing it. I have my opinions, but want to address one question at a time. However, I will address why I did not close the more recent question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Measuring and demonstrating productivity or output in software engineering is inherently different than measuring and demonstrating productivity in nearly any other field. Think about a number of other fields - manufacturing, electrical engineering, baking. You can count your outputs very easily - widgets produced, drawings created or hardware connected, cookies baked. In software, it's not as clear cut as to what defines being productive and it's not as evidently visible as any other field working with physical, tangible things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of this, I'd consider most questions about measuring productivity and assessing productivity on-topic, since it applies to all programmers, but not all careers. Some answers might contain information that is relevant to other careers, the question is inherently problematic in software development far moreso than other careers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reading that question's latest edits, it probably should be closed. The edit changed the entire tone of the question from productivity to team dynamics, something that moves it from the &quot;all programmers&quot; category into &quot;all careers&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's clearly not about demonstrating productivity, but a lack of responsiveness. It's no longer about measuring and demonstrating one's productivity in developing software, but general team dynamics that apply to any team based field of study. If flagged or if it gets one or two more close votes, I would probably also vote to close it. I'm hesitant to close such a borderline question as the second vote to close." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8489" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3261" RevisionGUID="409e93fa-d74a-4794-8e81-5bd7c0a0c20b" CreationDate="2012-03-05T23:48:47.550" UserId="4" Comment="added 1218 characters in body" Text="In its current state, the question about [demonstrating productivity to management][1] should probably be closed for off-topic. However, I don't feel that it's appropriate for me to close that question because I participated in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;if you start with [revision 1][2] or my edits at [revision 3][3] which improved the readability, the question was about demonstrating productivity and measuring one's work output. This problem is very specific to software development. Unlike most other fields, it's much more difficult to count the output of software developers. Look at manufacturing or electrical engineering - you can could widgets produced or components built and tested fairly easily. In addition, there's a distinct relationship between producing these physical things and being productive. This is something that does not exist in software engineering - creating more UML diagrams or writing more lines of code and unit tests does not make one more productive, at least with regards to adding business value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in [revision 4][4] of the question, the topic was changed drastically with the addition of the last paragraph. It no longer became about demonstrating or quantifying productivity to management. Instead, it became a question about teamwork and team dynamics. These are not topics unique to software development, and are therefore off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, onto your question. I don't think it should have been closed as off-topic for the same reasons I discussed above - measuring and demonstrating the productivity of a software developer is inherently difficult and unique (although I do think this question has been asked before, so it's probably a duplicate). However, it's not a good question in its present form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, most people assume IT manager is usually a technical person. Your question isn't explicit about the role of the person that you are interfacing with, along with what your role is. Then, you go on to provide solutions - it's best served if your question asks a question without presenting solutions (the exception being if you've come up with solutions that are unacceptable - present these and explain why they aren't acceptable). Finally, the final sentence opens the door for a survey of responses, instead of presenting people with an explicit situation and problem that must be overcome, and surveys/getting to know you type questions are not appropriate for Stack Exchanges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would say that your question is far more salvagable than the original, especially since it has two answers and only one of which even has a vote. The impact of editing and reopening would be far less than the first question I discussed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138359/how-can-i-demonstrate-my-productivity-to-management&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/138359/1&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/138359/3&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/138359/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8490" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3259" RevisionGUID="8940d191-1d1c-4deb-b3ea-33bb82a27176" CreationDate="2012-03-06T08:51:25.187" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/176953115692634112" />
  <row Id="8491" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3262" RevisionGUID="83a40ec7-f9a1-4ba4-a705-58969e97306e" CreationDate="2012-03-06T21:17:08.347" UserId="41381" Text="[This][1] is my answer to a similar question posted here. the main takeaway point is questions are also judged by the quality of their answers, its unfair but there isn't really a better solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The ability to eloquently phrase a question helps too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3024/41381" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8492" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3263" RevisionGUID="fd8abb11-a6a1-4664-acb3-e0624aac91b8" CreationDate="2012-03-07T04:04:02.633" UserId="25936" Text="Welcome to the second structured tag cleanup! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the voting in the [call for proposals](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1), the second round goes to the [tag:software-engineering] tag, with 84 current questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tag has been renamed to [stci-software-engineering](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci-software-engineering), which should prevent people from adding any more questions to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ground rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of this cleanup is to systematically clean up the software engineering tag without causing disruption to the rest of the site.  Your job, should you choose to accept it, is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [deletion candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3266/25936) below and see if there's a way to save any of the questions before they go gently into that good night through [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits). At the end of the clean up period, any questions not sufficiently improved will be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [merge candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3265/25936) to see if can be merged into one question. If they shouldn't be, revise the questions to demonstrate how it's not in any way like the question it's been duplicated to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [closure candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3264/25936) list to see if you agree with what others have identified as being out of the site's scope. If you agree, vote to close. If you don't agree, use [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to address the problems the question has and bring it back into scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the currently open questions and see which ones do not fit our site scope. Vote to close them and add them to the closure candidates list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Improve the leftover questions by copyediting, fixing spelling, flow, adding clearer titles, etc. while replacing the `stci-software-engineering` tag with something more meaningful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:architecture] for questions relating to system level architecture, documenting architecture, view models, architectural quality, and product line development.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:design] for questions relating to software design.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:documentation] for questions about documentation. &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:requirements] for questions about requirements engineering and documenting requirements.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:testing] for questions about unit, integration, smoke, and system testing using white box or black box techniques.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:maintenance] for questions about maintaining legacy software systems.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:quality] for questions about process quality, product quality, code quality, or measuring the quality of any of these.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:education] for questions about formal education, self-teaching, and self-improvement as a software developer.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:metrics] for questions about software metrics.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:patterns] for questions on design patterns.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:agile] for questions on agile methodologies.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:project-management] for questions on project management.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ...and other, more specific tags as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Finally, and this is perhaps the most important of all the rules: **do not just remove the stci-software-engineering tag without improving the question and its answers.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### End date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This round of cleanups will end on **Wednesday, March 21th at 04:00 UTC.** At that time, all the default actions will be done: deletions, merges, closures, and such. If [tag:stci-software-engineering] is not empty by then, it'll be renamed back to [tag:software-engineering] and be saved for later rounds of cleanups." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8493" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3263" RevisionGUID="fd8abb11-a6a1-4664-acb3-e0624aac91b8" CreationDate="2012-03-07T04:04:02.633" UserId="25936" Text="Structured Tag Cleanup: [software-engineering]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8494" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3263" RevisionGUID="fd8abb11-a6a1-4664-acb3-e0624aac91b8" CreationDate="2012-03-07T04:04:02.633" UserId="25936" Text="|discussion|featured|tags|posse|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8495" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3264" RevisionGUID="f80e2835-882c-4ddb-8cdb-8acc1129e6fe" CreationDate="2012-03-07T04:06:27.717" UserId="25936" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-engineering\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8496" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3265" RevisionGUID="89427436-a802-4802-9bd0-cccfed9f8cea" CreationDate="2012-03-07T04:06:45.907" UserId="25936" Text="### Merge candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions closed as duplicates to see if they can be merged. If they shouldn't be merged, please use [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to clarify why the questions aren't duplicates of each other and vote to reopen." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8497" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3266" RevisionGUID="df9f761c-4a30-42b0-bd26-633b56aeef4a" CreationDate="2012-03-07T04:07:16.500" UserId="25936" Text="### Deletion candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions to see which can be saved through [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) and reopened. If no improvement would make them on topic, vote to delete if you have the reputation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8498" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3171" RevisionGUID="ba843018-aed0-4e5f-a222-22c5e4d59920" CreationDate="2012-03-07T04:10:24.867" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Structured Tag Cleanup: \[software-engineering\]](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3263/structured-tag-cleanup-software-engineering)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Welcome to the first structured tag cleanup! Based on the voting in the [call for proposals](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1), the first round goes to the [tag:career] tag, with 567 current questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a means to contain the disaster, the tag has been renamed to [stci-c​areer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci-career), which should prevent people from adding any more questions to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ground rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of this cleanup is to systematically clean up the career tag without causing disruption to the rest of the site.  Your job, should you choose to accept it, is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [deletion candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3172/8) below and see if there's a way to save any of the questions before they go gently into that good night through [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits). At the end of the clean up period, any questions not sufficiently improved will be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [merge candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3173/8) to see if can be merged into one question. If they shouldn't be, revise the questions to demonstrate how it's not in any way like the question it's been duplicated to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [closure candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3174/8) list to see if you agree with what others have identified as being out of the site's scope. If you agree, vote to close. If you don't agree, use [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to address the problems the question has and bring it back into scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the currently open questions and see which ones do not fit our site scope. Vote to close them and add them to the closure candidates list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Improve the leftover questions by copyediting, fixing spelling, flow, adding clearer titles, etc. while replacing the `stci-c​areer` tag with something more meaningful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    [tag:career-development] for questions about taking steps to improve one's programming career and *requires* the unique insights of a programmer   &#xD;&#xA;    [tag:interview] for questions about interviewing for a software development position   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:hiring] for questions about hiring programmers and other software developers   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market] for questions about the prospects or what one needs to do to get a specific job in software development   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-title] for questions about what a specific type of software development job entails   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:project-management] for questions about managing the scope and requirements of a specific project   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:teamwork] for questions about working within a software development team&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ...and other, more specific tags as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Finally, and this is perhaps the most important of all the rules: **do not just remove the stci-c​areer tag without improving the question.** If all our tag problems were solved by retagging, we would've done so months ago. Every time you retag without improving a question, I silently judge you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ## ಠ_ಠ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### End date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This round of cleanups will end on **Wednesday, March 7th at 04:00 UTC.** At that time, all the default actions will be done: deletions, merges, closures, and such. If the `stci-c​areer` tag is not empty by then, it'll be renamed back to [tag:career] and be saved for later rounds of cleanups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good luck, and godspeed!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8499" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3171" RevisionGUID="bf5e132c-bc53-4129-ba70-b8d7a7643d1f" CreationDate="2012-03-07T04:10:23.370" UserId="25936" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[3263],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8500" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3171" RevisionGUID="e651d4a8-0856-44d4-8d35-ffb194911528" CreationDate="2012-03-07T04:10:38.440" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|posse|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8501" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3267" RevisionGUID="f37cf690-e965-49c0-8636-ac9c9b61791c" CreationDate="2012-03-07T04:26:59.250" UserId="25936" Text="The question will not be deleted, at least not as a result of the career structured cleanup. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree that it should be re-opened, I'm keeping it closed because I don't see how it would receive any better answers in the future. Five re-open votes can change that, obviously." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8502" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3192" RevisionGUID="d96a8a2c-ee09-4695-89ab-236f383af50f" CreationDate="2012-03-07T04:27:25.287" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8503" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3192" RevisionGUID="6bf80c75-6781-48c8-9baa-f2d95ae84813" CreationDate="2012-03-07T05:21:42.100" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|closed-questions|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8504" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3197" RevisionGUID="873ecf30-382c-47ce-bbb2-9ae5313edc80" CreationDate="2012-03-07T05:24:47.230" UserId="25936" Comment="added 130 characters in body" Text="We are not looking for an on topic version of this question, but for a constructive version. How to survive a burnout is essentially asking for war stories, and that doesn't really fit the Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only way I see salvaging the question would be to make it about preventing burn out, but that would make it an exact duplicate of [Active steps to prevent a burn-out?][1], which is obviously _not_ what the OP intended. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good edit. Obsolete comments removed, as was the single &quot;not an answer&quot; answer... Noise reduced, although I still don't see the question as salvageable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is now deleted as the only attention that the question received (other than your edit) was a delete vote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56677/active-steps-to-prevent-a-burn-out" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8505" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3193" RevisionGUID="664183e3-98fc-4336-b6b5-bf8b9583e82b" CreationDate="2012-03-07T05:25:02.517" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|closed-questions|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8506" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3193" RevisionGUID="5da3d199-f8f9-4163-975d-21a672ffbd26" CreationDate="2012-03-07T05:25:15.997" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8508" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3192" RevisionGUID="1087bdfd-0fce-4aed-99a3-920b994f22bb" CreationDate="2012-03-07T05:33:04.347" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8509" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3185" RevisionGUID="9c9b2fee-bd0c-4e72-8fec-cca994da3368" CreationDate="2012-03-07T05:33:23.113" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8510" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3193" RevisionGUID="d79faf57-5859-4031-bbf7-183d22c55ab2" CreationDate="2012-03-07T05:35:07.107" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8511" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3266" RevisionGUID="213b54e0-3df0-426e-bf21-100869b34e5b" CreationDate="2012-03-07T05:48:24.703" UserId="25936" Comment="added 26 characters in body" Text="### Deletion candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions to see which can be saved through [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) and reopened. If no improvement would make them on topic, vote to delete if you have the reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8512" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3265" RevisionGUID="b80e2600-f19c-464d-8e1a-9a5d3751f747" CreationDate="2012-03-07T05:48:31.630" UserId="25936" Comment="added 26 characters in body" Text="### Merge candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions closed as duplicates to see if they can be merged. If they shouldn't be merged, please use [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to clarify why the questions aren't duplicates of each other and vote to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8513" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3263" RevisionGUID="5d804211-8218-4194-8724-74de8b328e1f" CreationDate="2012-03-07T05:51:41.237" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/177270273580609536" />
  <row Id="8514" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3263" RevisionGUID="0066202f-a9f4-4496-bc47-bcc69ac83518" CreationDate="2012-03-07T06:32:01.170" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="8515" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3264" RevisionGUID="b8e50945-982a-46a5-a77d-6a5f961916f5" CreationDate="2012-03-07T06:32:01.170" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="8516" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3265" RevisionGUID="d206942c-240c-4e21-9e47-3b02ec38687f" CreationDate="2012-03-07T06:32:01.170" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="8517" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3266" RevisionGUID="cf903713-e188-4795-8fa7-e140c916d0c1" CreationDate="2012-03-07T06:32:01.170" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="8518" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3264" RevisionGUID="133f45e9-c6f1-4f4f-875a-44048ac0d156" CreationDate="2012-03-07T06:51:58.900" UserId="25936" Comment="added 3756 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-engineering\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136425/architectural-patterns-for-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135709/multi-threaded-applications&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132314/methods-to-prevent-programmers-from-capturing-user-entered-data&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130128/a-java-programmer-shifting-to-c&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127075/what-percentage-of-code-and-runtime-do-you-typically-allow-for-testing&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125903/applying-for-software-engineer-positions-without-being-a-qualified-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68638/how-do-you-design-your-database&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67298/what-do-you-do-when-there-is-a-last-minute-request-to-exclude-a-feature-from-a-r&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67284/value-of-computer-science-degree-for-non-programmer-software-architect-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65348/design-architecture-patterns-practices-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64944/studies-on-breakdown-of-various-costs-associated-with-a-software-project&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61195/in-a-software-engineering-view-what-are-all-the-steps-in-a-state-of-the-art-sdl&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60648/is-software-better-designed-and-developed-by-people-who-will-use-it&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58030/mom-vs-soa-is-soa-the-latest-mom&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58006/im-doing-hobby-programming-what-programming-methodologies-e-g-xp-agile&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55518/where-i-will-get-petshop-net-4-application&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55408/filling-the-gaps-in-terms-of-software-planning-and-feeling-the-machine&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54231/what-do-you-do-to-get-your-software-design-robust-flexible-and-clear&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51839/how-do-you-keep-cool-when-production-system-goes-down&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49763/how-to-recognize-my-performance-plateau&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49226/green-engineering-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47535/implementation-of-a-rules-engine-in-your-business-applications&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47355/how-can-i-make-a-compiler&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46126/software-engineering-and-independence&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44160/at-what-point-does-constructive-criticism-of-your-code-become-unhelpful&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44066/why-is-implementing-copy-paste-in-a-touch-screen-based-smartphone-such-a-big-dea&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43867/good-book-for-debugging-disassembling-proprietary-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37451/telecommuting-with-a-foreign-employer-as-a-permanent-job&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37008/will-people-respect-a-masters-of-science-in-it-w-software-engineering-concentrat&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36491/what-can-programmers-learn-from-the-construction-industry&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30853/relation-between-developers-and-clients&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28978/is-anyone-actively-developing-software-to-be-used-with-the-emotiv-headset&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25233/computer-science-vs-computer-engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8519" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="3deb6de2-8ea5-4579-ba82-6c77f88ac562" CreationDate="2012-03-07T07:46:32.337" UserId="25936" Comment="added 9 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing [the \[stci-career\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81644/internships-between-sophomore-and-junior-years    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79487/quitting-a-small-start-up-where-you-are-a-primary-developer    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77886/how-to-network-effectively-to-get-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77014/doing-a-passive-job-search-while-employed-dealing-with-the-barrage-of-messages    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76254/most-effective-way-to-increase-programmer-salary-besides-just-doing-your-job   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74954/what-does-remote-position-with-possibility-of-re-locating-mean    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74583/good-questions-to-ask-the-ceo-and-cto-of-a-start-up-during-an-interview    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73838/job-in-other-country-relocation-package    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72874/what-is-better-mba-vs-mis-right-after-grad-or-gap    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72001/so-theyre-trying-to-pull-me-into-management    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/71925/i-want-to-have-a-career-not-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66794/employee-vs-contractor-mentality-and-career   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64412/how-to-handle-a-workaholic-supervisor-who-is-your-good-friend   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64383/i-quit-my-job-but-took-back-my-resignation-during-the-notice-period-did-i-mad   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62999/what-benefits-should-an-intern-look-for-aside-from-pay    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62399/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60324/moving-from-a-small-to-a-large-company   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58250/what-percentage-should-a-consulting-company-take-off-the-top-of-your-pay&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85978/should-i-be-an-algorithm-developer-or-java-web-frameworks-type-developer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84468/what-defines-a-skill-technology&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83786/career-help-for-an-experienced-professional&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81555/what-should-i-learn-if-im-thinking-of-going-into-networking&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54168/specialized-course-in-web-programming-or-generalized-course-in-computer-science&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45715/educational-qualification-of-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44028/future-direction-for-a-developer-who-is-expert-in-latest-software-technologies&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43739/experienced-keeping-up-with-the-times-or-new-to-the-game-only-using-the-newe&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37968/should-i-stay-in-my-degree-or-take-an-opportunity-for-management-experience&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33488/entity-type-for-freelance-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24277/web-programming-vs-oracle-courses&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24066/project-dotnetnuke-module-selling-website-problem-staying-motivated&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86432/web-security-course&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86412/transition-from-maintenance-programming-to-design&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85995/matching-my-skills-with-java-and-web-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82150/career-switch-from-high-level-to-kernel-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75334/how-much-does-the-calibre-of-a-masters-program-matter-to-an-employer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74016/will-cfa-add-any-value-to-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73763/how-to-pick-which-mcpd-certification-is-appropriate&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73654/php-interview-test-any-advice&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72122/integration-projects-consulting-and-biztalk-good-or-bad-for-career&#xD;&#xA;1. 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Please don't add anything to this answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3206/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8520" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="37551202-6411-4648-862e-48b285e2f238" CreationDate="2012-03-07T09:29:59.507" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing [the \[stci-career\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;1. 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http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50461/advice-for-how-to-handle-company-pride&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51546/how-do-you-handle-developer-that-has-taken-an-early-retirement&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53123/how-important-is-studying-algorithms-and-theory-is-to-becoming-a-great-programme&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently we hit the character limit, [closure candidates continue in another answer][1]. Please don't add anything to this answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3206/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;1. 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Please don't add anything to this answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3206/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;1. 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http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50461/advice-for-how-to-handle-company-pride&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51546/how-do-you-handle-developer-that-has-taken-an-early-retirement&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53123/how-important-is-studying-algorithms-and-theory-is-to-becoming-a-great-programme&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently we hit the character limit, [closure candidates continue in another answer][1]. Please don't add anything to this answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3206/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8523" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="bfcdbd25-f085-44c2-9536-0128d82e9581" CreationDate="2012-03-07T13:27:14.613" UserId="25476" Comment="edited body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing [the \[stci-career\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;1. 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Please don't add anything to this answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3206/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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Please don't add anything to this answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3206/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8525" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="ad8d0b04-4b81-4693-96a4-ac3275461fa1" CreationDate="2012-03-07T13:44:09.587" UserId="25476" Comment="edited body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing [the \[stci-career\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;1. 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http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50311/does-it-really-takes-5-10-years-or-more-to-be-really-good-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50461/advice-for-how-to-handle-company-pride&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51546/how-do-you-handle-developer-that-has-taken-an-early-retirement&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53123/how-important-is-studying-algorithms-and-theory-is-to-becoming-a-great-programme&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently we hit the character limit, [closure candidates continue in another answer][1]. Please don't add anything to this answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3206/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;1. 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http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21398/can-i-contribute-to-a-startup-besides-my-daily-job&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22498/using-stackoverflow-reputation-for-college-applications&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22055/mid-career-job-change-any-suggestions&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22569/masters-program-theory-track-vs-artifical-intelligence-track&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22412/working-with-fubar-refuctored-code&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23270/should-a-programmer-know-linux&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23848/being-a-good-mentee-a-protege&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27656/how-to-find-entry-level-positions-in-a-new-city&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27161/moving-beyond-business-logic-or-am-i-a-programmer-or-a-computer-scientist&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27757/how-do-you-sell-the-idea-of-sending-developers-to-user-conferences&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29601/first-90-days-of-a-new-hire-searching-for-blog-post&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29682/does-it-make-sense-to-focus-career-around-mainframes&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/31530/obtaining-embedded-linux-experience&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33216/computer-security-and-c&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33436/how-to-decide-if-i-should-take-a-profit-sharing-offer-or-insist-on-hard-cash&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34805/what-to-do-if-youre-burnt-out&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34084/what-strategies-you-followed-to-keep-your-programming-skills-fresh-during-a-long&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35691/been-doing-net-for-several-years-and-am-thinking-about-a-platform-change-where&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35561/a-good-course-on-html-css-js-ux-worth-it-in-part-time&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35731/is-it-a-bad-idea-to-get-a-masters-and-bachelors-degree-from-the-same-universit&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36288/is-there-such-a-thing-as-too-much-experience&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37051/looking-for-jobs-after-a-project-ending-badly&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38178/what-are-the-best-rural-career-opportunities-for-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39262/what-are-good-personality-types-for-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38661/is-it-fair-to-use-shortened-url-to-mention-and-give-links-of-live-projects-in-my&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40431/finding-time-to-use-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40644/how-similar-are-programming-and-architecture&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41855/what-approaches-can-i-take-to-lower-the-odds-of-introducing-new-bugs-in-a-comple&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41898/when-does-a-programmer-know-when-a-new-job-is-not-right&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43959/is-client-side-html5-javascript-too-lame-after-youve-worked-on-server-side-c&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43133/programming-as-a-minor&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43482/software-development-company-business-plan&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45263/qa-engineer-road-ahead&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46167/how-to-deal-with-learning-a-new-platform-that-is-not-free&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46203/rule-of-thumb-to-estimate-cost-of-a-website&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47033/transitioning-from-internal-to-public-speaking&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49012/what-are-the-best-microsoft-certifications-to-start-with&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47477/why-do-employers-care-so-much-about-gpa&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50311/does-it-really-takes-5-10-years-or-more-to-be-really-good-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50461/advice-for-how-to-handle-company-pride&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51546/how-do-you-handle-developer-that-has-taken-an-early-retirement&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53123/how-important-is-studying-algorithms-and-theory-is-to-becoming-a-great-programme&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently we hit the character limit, [closure candidates continue in another answer][1]. Please don't add anything to this answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3206/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8527" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3268" RevisionGUID="6e40587b-76e3-41f0-8140-3b5695d7bfa9" CreationDate="2012-03-07T14:22:31.053" UserId="47304" Text="I was surprised to see that the top _five_ questions on programmers.SE this morning were closed as off topic.  As is often the case, they were all career development questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since there seems to be a demand for these types of questions, should we perhaps be moving them to a career development stackexchange (if one exists)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8528" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3268" RevisionGUID="6e40587b-76e3-41f0-8140-3b5695d7bfa9" CreationDate="2012-03-07T14:22:31.053" UserId="47304" Text="Career Development Questions - Moving rather than closing?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8529" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3268" RevisionGUID="6e40587b-76e3-41f0-8140-3b5695d7bfa9" CreationDate="2012-03-07T14:22:31.053" UserId="47304" Text="|discussion|career|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8530" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3269" RevisionGUID="95f6e307-f1f3-4b3b-9d30-54e7b8579b26" CreationDate="2012-03-07T14:29:33.097" UserId="4" Text="It appears that these closures were part of the Structured [Tag Clean-Up Initiative for the careers tag][1], so this was coming. The short story is that having a career tag invited a number of off-topic questions, so it was decided to go through and remove the tag and evaluate all of the questions to make sure it was appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this time, there is no general purpose career Stack Exchange site. The closest thing is [The Workpace][2], which is still in the committal phase. It's about 70% to completion at this point. However, the general practice is to not move questions until the site is out of beta (or at least it is well-established as to what is on-topic and what is off-topic on the other site). In addition, older questions or non-constructive questions are never moved (first rule of migrations: never migrate crap). There's a more detailed discussion of this concern [here, in another Meta question][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, at this time, all career questions that apply to all careers and do not require the specific expertise of professional software developers will be closed because they are off-topic here. If you feel that you can salvage one through the use of [heroic edits][4] to make it constructive and on-topic, please do so and try to get it reopened (including using chat, Meta, and moderator flags as appropriate).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3185/structured-tag-cleanup-career-what-happens-to-good-off-topic-quesitons&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8531" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3270" RevisionGUID="b6e2c78b-ff7d-49da-aa96-b4e832004be4" CreationDate="2012-03-07T14:31:17.947" UserId="47" Text="These questions are being cleaned up as part of the [structured tag cleanup](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3263/structured-tag-cleanup-software-engineering) that's going on at the moment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means that there will be times when the home page has old, closed questions on it as we remove the offending tag - in this case &quot;careers&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general old questions are not migrated to new sites - either to seed the site or once they've settled on their final scope. This is because these questions skew the reputation of participants - they've had longer to exist than questions on the new site and thus tend to have more votes. We found out this to our cost when old questions were migrated from Stack Overflow to us." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8532" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3185" RevisionGUID="3187d4ec-e5b9-4551-8a65-2c31d7befd83" CreationDate="2012-03-07T14:36:24.840" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo fixed" Text="Yesterday I flagged a lot of questions (which are now here http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career) to get closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No doubt, many from this list are actually useful and of good quality. The primary criteria i choose is the misfit as per our definition - which is that questions must *NOT* be belonging to *all careers*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are not closed deleted yet, but they might be closed and/or eventually get heroic edits and or complete deletion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is now generally accepted that most of these questions are good candidates for &quot;The Workplace&quot; so eventually they will all belong there. Earlier there was no such a thing so people posted them here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, the issue is that &quot;The workplace&quot; is still not there yet live. While we may close these questions - even delete these questions, but they all might be of great value. Alternatively we may apply heroic edits that may destroy the real value of the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many are not bad questions, they are just in the wrong place; and while their new home is still under construction, should we shelter them? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically is there a possibility that we can kind of hibernate them, unaffected but not visible or something; but preserve them as is? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, there is one more thing: Area51 has it's own problem. What if &quot;The Workplace&quot; doesn't take off - or more likely take too long to get up. This happens to a lot of sites which are otherwise seems to be quite promising.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We all must realize, that while these questions do help all others - it *will* help programmers in any case. As long as they are better placed it is fine, but destroying them will mean we are doing harm to humanity just due to a definition of on-topic.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8533" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3236" RevisionGUID="ba58a2c6-53da-437a-bc02-807c8878e264" CreationDate="2012-03-07T14:51:43.933" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/177406179436265472" />
  <row Id="8534" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="d4fab10c-faf7-42f6-a121-86a77c2eb0bb" CreationDate="2012-03-07T15:18:11.817" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing [the \[stci-career\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81644/internships-between-sophomore-and-junior-years    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79487/quitting-a-small-start-up-where-you-are-a-primary-developer    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77886/how-to-network-effectively-to-get-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77014/doing-a-passive-job-search-while-employed-dealing-with-the-barrage-of-messages    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76254/most-effective-way-to-increase-programmer-salary-besides-just-doing-your-job   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74954/what-does-remote-position-with-possibility-of-re-locating-mean    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74583/good-questions-to-ask-the-ceo-and-cto-of-a-start-up-during-an-interview    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73838/job-in-other-country-relocation-package    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72874/what-is-better-mba-vs-mis-right-after-grad-or-gap    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72001/so-theyre-trying-to-pull-me-into-management    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/71925/i-want-to-have-a-career-not-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66794/employee-vs-contractor-mentality-and-career   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64412/how-to-handle-a-workaholic-supervisor-who-is-your-good-friend   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64383/i-quit-my-job-but-took-back-my-resignation-during-the-notice-period-did-i-mad   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62999/what-benefits-should-an-intern-look-for-aside-from-pay    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62399/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60324/moving-from-a-small-to-a-large-company   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58250/what-percentage-should-a-consulting-company-take-off-the-top-of-your-pay&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85978/should-i-be-an-algorithm-developer-or-java-web-frameworks-type-developer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84468/what-defines-a-skill-technology&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83786/career-help-for-an-experienced-professional&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81555/what-should-i-learn-if-im-thinking-of-going-into-networking&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54168/specialized-course-in-web-programming-or-generalized-course-in-computer-science&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45715/educational-qualification-of-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44028/future-direction-for-a-developer-who-is-expert-in-latest-software-technologies&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43739/experienced-keeping-up-with-the-times-or-new-to-the-game-only-using-the-newe&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37968/should-i-stay-in-my-degree-or-take-an-opportunity-for-management-experience&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33488/entity-type-for-freelance-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24277/web-programming-vs-oracle-courses&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24066/project-dotnetnuke-module-selling-website-problem-staying-motivated&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86432/web-security-course&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86412/transition-from-maintenance-programming-to-design&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85995/matching-my-skills-with-java-and-web-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82150/career-switch-from-high-level-to-kernel-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75334/how-much-does-the-calibre-of-a-masters-program-matter-to-an-employer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74016/will-cfa-add-any-value-to-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73763/how-to-pick-which-mcpd-certification-is-appropriate&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73654/php-interview-test-any-advice&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72122/integration-projects-consulting-and-biztalk-good-or-bad-for-career&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70432/seeking-advice-for-a-student&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69992/web-to-sql-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68906/graduate-versus-undergraduate-for-career-change&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68818/a-job-in-big-company-like-ibm-microsoft-vs-own-small-1-2-people-software-compan&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66886/how-do-you-handle-the-problem-of-abstraction-when-you-learn-a-techonology-lang&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62816/how-to-conduct-a-good-tech-workshop&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62560/c-pigeonholing&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61349/interview-recruiter-to-ask-series-of-technical-questions&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68370/case-studies-for-successful-service-project-based-businesses-without-constant&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85946/independent-projects-as-a-student-to-show-off-abilities&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48918/getting-started-on-large-projects&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43409/dealing-with-engineers-that-frequently-leave-their-jobs&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39939/how-to-move-ahead-in-project-product-management-after-3-yrs-of-programming-exper&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21970/the-donts-of-it-project-management&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20178/how-can-i-quickly-weed-out-copy-paste-coders&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18578/pmp-certificate-how-did-you-achieve-it-how-was-the-preparation&#xD;&#xA;1. 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http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27161/moving-beyond-business-logic-or-am-i-a-programmer-or-a-computer-scientist&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27757/how-do-you-sell-the-idea-of-sending-developers-to-user-conferences&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29601/first-90-days-of-a-new-hire-searching-for-blog-post&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29682/does-it-make-sense-to-focus-career-around-mainframes&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/31530/obtaining-embedded-linux-experience&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33216/computer-security-and-c&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33436/how-to-decide-if-i-should-take-a-profit-sharing-offer-or-insist-on-hard-cash&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34805/what-to-do-if-youre-burnt-out&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34084/what-strategies-you-followed-to-keep-your-programming-skills-fresh-during-a-long&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35691/been-doing-net-for-several-years-and-am-thinking-about-a-platform-change-where&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35561/a-good-course-on-html-css-js-ux-worth-it-in-part-time&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35731/is-it-a-bad-idea-to-get-a-masters-and-bachelors-degree-from-the-same-universit&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36288/is-there-such-a-thing-as-too-much-experience&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37051/looking-for-jobs-after-a-project-ending-badly&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38178/what-are-the-best-rural-career-opportunities-for-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39262/what-are-good-personality-types-for-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38661/is-it-fair-to-use-shortened-url-to-mention-and-give-links-of-live-projects-in-my&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40431/finding-time-to-use-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40644/how-similar-are-programming-and-architecture&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41855/what-approaches-can-i-take-to-lower-the-odds-of-introducing-new-bugs-in-a-comple&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41898/when-does-a-programmer-know-when-a-new-job-is-not-right&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43959/is-client-side-html5-javascript-too-lame-after-youve-worked-on-server-side-c&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43133/programming-as-a-minor&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43482/software-development-company-business-plan&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45263/qa-engineer-road-ahead&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46167/how-to-deal-with-learning-a-new-platform-that-is-not-free&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46203/rule-of-thumb-to-estimate-cost-of-a-website&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47033/transitioning-from-internal-to-public-speaking&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49012/what-are-the-best-microsoft-certifications-to-start-with&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47477/why-do-employers-care-so-much-about-gpa&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50311/does-it-really-takes-5-10-years-or-more-to-be-really-good-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50461/advice-for-how-to-handle-company-pride&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51546/how-do-you-handle-developer-that-has-taken-an-early-retirement&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53123/how-important-is-studying-algorithms-and-theory-is-to-becoming-a-great-programme&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently we hit the character limit, [closure candidates continue in another answer][1]. Please don't add anything to this answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3206/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8535" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3257" RevisionGUID="1f5e3be4-faab-4237-8197-28a307666708" CreationDate="2012-03-07T16:24:58.713" UserId="25936" Comment="added vote after &quot;single moderator&quot; because I read it as &quot;a moderator who is single&quot;. Don't know about Mark, but I'm not ;P" Text="Yes it is a bit concerning, although 15% is not that much. I went through some of the questions and there is a minor pattern there, several of the closed questions that made it to Twitter were incorrectly migrated from Stack Overflow and they carried upvotes and upvoted answers from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is in the &quot;hot questions&quot; algorithm and as [ChrisF mentioned][1] it affects all sites, not just Programmers. Some things we could do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close questions quicker&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   There seems to be a deep rooted perception that closing questions is a bad thing. It's not, and it should happen fast. Closing is just a peer review mechanism, a signal that a question is a bit problematic and in need of improvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Re-open questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Don't dismiss closed questions, they are not dead. If you feel a question can be re-opened, please try to get it re-opened. Bring it up on chat or Meta, find others that can help. Not every closed question will be re-opened, obviously, but some will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote sensibly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Upvote questions that show research effort, are clear and useful. Don't upvote questions that you feel are interesting / fun but blatantly off topic. Similarly with downvotes, they are a comment to the question, not the person asking the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [A guide to moderating programmers.stackexchange yourself - close voting][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [What's all this about heroic edits?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, we prefer to be called [diamond moderators][4] ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the list of questions, there where flags on all questions, including the three questions that where closed by a single moderator vote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136610/version-number-soup-in-ror-is-grails-better-django&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Typical &quot;which technology is better&quot; question, it could have been closed as off topic. Closed by a user and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136736/online-code-editor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Blatantly off topic question, but borderline on Stack Overflow. Closed by a moderator, and I trust that it was never migrated to SO because the SO mods rejected it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137252/is-it-a-good-idea-to-generate-code-with-the-help-of-your-ide&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as a duplicate by a moderator. This shouldn't really be an issue for someone coming to the site from Twitter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137385/what-do-you-do-when-you-cant-seem-to-understand-a-certain-part-of-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Extremely vague and open ended question, gentle reminder to everyone: Programmers Stack Exchange is not a free for all discussion forum. Closed by a user and a moderator, and it makes me sad that it got as many upvotes as it did (question &amp; answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137372/is-object-oriented-stuff-really-that-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Extremely open ended and argumentative question, comment wars on the question and almost every answer (and a particularly nasty &quot;discussion&quot;, that has since been removed). Closed by a user and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137520/why-do-some-job-posts-say-high-pressure-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Blatantly off topic, typical example of a populist question. Closed by five users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137715/a-class-named-class&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I closed this one because it was getting a bit out of hand, and there wasn't any need for further answers. It had three re-open votes, and I've just re-opened it with a notice for longer answers. If it starts gathering poor answers again, I won't hesitate to close it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137794/offshoring-a-software-project-conflict-resolution&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Very open ended. Closed by two users and a moderator. Potentially salvageable, but it requires a lot of work, and OP seems satisfied with the existing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137864/how-long-did-it-take-you-to-get-kernel-programming-down&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Open ended and quite difficult to understand what it's actually about. Closed by five users. I don't understand why this was tweeted, it's a zero scored question with no answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137896/software-engineer-already-in-late-thirties-would-i-have-trouble-finding-a-new&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Duplicate, closed by four users and a moderator. Same as (3).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137994/does-object-oriented-programming-really-model-the-real-world&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I closed this one because it started gathering answers that re-iterated earlier answers. It's not a question that will be deleted soon (if ever). It deserves the community's attention (wink).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138132/list-of-the-really-big-and-really-small-discrepancies-with-js-in-the-big-5-brows&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Vague, overly broad, argumentative and mostly off topic. Closed by five users, I wonder if the fact that the single answer was negatively voted should have prevented tweeting it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138229/python-is-slowly-replacing-c-in-universities-does-this-move-degrade-the-quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Vague, speculative, argumentative, wrong. Close by five users, I suspect it got twitted because of the highly upvoted answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is worth reiterating that there where flags on all questions, including ones closed by a single moderator. I will keep an eye on the one I re-opened, hopefully answerers will not fail to read the notice for yet another time...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3256/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75189/who-are-the-diamond-moderators-and-what-is-their-role" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8536" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3271" RevisionGUID="0ee632d2-191d-45ef-b974-7bd565ba1d58" CreationDate="2012-03-07T17:27:08.067" UserId="36006" Text="As I write this post, out of 48 questions on the main page, there are are 27 that are closed.  Is the FAQ is not clear?  Are closing votes too generous?  Is it a blip?  ..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8537" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3271" RevisionGUID="0ee632d2-191d-45ef-b974-7bd565ba1d58" CreationDate="2012-03-07T17:27:08.067" UserId="36006" Text="Closed questions: What is wrong?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8538" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3271" RevisionGUID="0ee632d2-191d-45ef-b974-7bd565ba1d58" CreationDate="2012-03-07T17:27:08.067" UserId="36006" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8539" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3272" RevisionGUID="996c5d6b-fecd-485a-94bd-6d61178ff22e" CreationDate="2012-03-07T17:28:29.003" UserId="4" Text="Questions are being closed and edited with respect to the [Structured Tag Clean-Up Initiative for the careers tag][1]. It should subside soon, although the frequency of edits might be a bit too high this time around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8540" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3271" RevisionGUID="d0442be5-89c5-4148-81dc-7dc56b0b5e26" CreationDate="2012-03-07T17:28:30.300" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Career Development Questions - Moving rather than closing?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3268/career-development-questions-moving-rather-than-closing)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;As I write this post, out of 48 questions on the main page, there are are 27 that are closed.  Is the FAQ is not clear?  Are closing votes too generous?  Is it a blip?  ..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8541" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3271" RevisionGUID="68c449f0-a1d3-4695-b2aa-edda200b7ceb" CreationDate="2012-03-07T17:28:29.643" UserId="47" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[3268],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8542" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3268" RevisionGUID="f5768d44-fb45-402b-82f4-80eec88de46e" CreationDate="2012-03-07T17:28:44.533" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8543" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3270" RevisionGUID="19f2217e-e19d-497f-81e2-6de326847d1f" CreationDate="2012-03-07T17:59:51.867" UserId="25936" Comment="link" Text="These questions are being cleaned up as part of the [structured tag cleanup](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career) that's going on at the moment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means that there will be times when the home page has old, closed questions on it as we remove the offending tag - in this case &quot;careers&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general old questions are not migrated to new sites - either to seed the site or once they've settled on their final scope. This is because these questions skew the reputation of participants - they've had longer to exist than questions on the new site and thus tend to have more votes. We found out this to our cost when old questions were migrated from Stack Overflow to us." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8544" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="c0de52f6-6b47-4481-b8d7-07db83f15979" CreationDate="2012-03-07T18:20:16.960" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 9 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing [the \[stci-career\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81644/internships-between-sophomore-and-junior-years    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79487/quitting-a-small-start-up-where-you-are-a-primary-developer    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77886/how-to-network-effectively-to-get-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77014/doing-a-passive-job-search-while-employed-dealing-with-the-barrage-of-messages    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76254/most-effective-way-to-increase-programmer-salary-besides-just-doing-your-job   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74954/what-does-remote-position-with-possibility-of-re-locating-mean    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74583/good-questions-to-ask-the-ceo-and-cto-of-a-start-up-during-an-interview    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73838/job-in-other-country-relocation-package    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72874/what-is-better-mba-vs-mis-right-after-grad-or-gap    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72001/so-theyre-trying-to-pull-me-into-management    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/71925/i-want-to-have-a-career-not-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66794/employee-vs-contractor-mentality-and-career   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64412/how-to-handle-a-workaholic-supervisor-who-is-your-good-friend   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64383/i-quit-my-job-but-took-back-my-resignation-during-the-notice-period-did-i-mad   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62999/what-benefits-should-an-intern-look-for-aside-from-pay    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62399/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60324/moving-from-a-small-to-a-large-company   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58250/what-percentage-should-a-consulting-company-take-off-the-top-of-your-pay&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85978/should-i-be-an-algorithm-developer-or-java-web-frameworks-type-developer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84468/what-defines-a-skill-technology&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83786/career-help-for-an-experienced-professional&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81555/what-should-i-learn-if-im-thinking-of-going-into-networking&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54168/specialized-course-in-web-programming-or-generalized-course-in-computer-science&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45715/educational-qualification-of-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44028/future-direction-for-a-developer-who-is-expert-in-latest-software-technologies&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43739/experienced-keeping-up-with-the-times-or-new-to-the-game-only-using-the-newe&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37968/should-i-stay-in-my-degree-or-take-an-opportunity-for-management-experience&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33488/entity-type-for-freelance-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24277/web-programming-vs-oracle-courses&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24066/project-dotnetnuke-module-selling-website-problem-staying-motivated&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86432/web-security-course&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86412/transition-from-maintenance-programming-to-design&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85995/matching-my-skills-with-java-and-web-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82150/career-switch-from-high-level-to-kernel-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75334/how-much-does-the-calibre-of-a-masters-program-matter-to-an-employer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74016/will-cfa-add-any-value-to-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73763/how-to-pick-which-mcpd-certification-is-appropriate&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73654/php-interview-test-any-advice&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72122/integration-projects-consulting-and-biztalk-good-or-bad-for-career&#xD;&#xA;1. 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http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34084/what-strategies-you-followed-to-keep-your-programming-skills-fresh-during-a-long&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35691/been-doing-net-for-several-years-and-am-thinking-about-a-platform-change-where&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35561/a-good-course-on-html-css-js-ux-worth-it-in-part-time&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35731/is-it-a-bad-idea-to-get-a-masters-and-bachelors-degree-from-the-same-universit&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36288/is-there-such-a-thing-as-too-much-experience&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37051/looking-for-jobs-after-a-project-ending-badly&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38178/what-are-the-best-rural-career-opportunities-for-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39262/what-are-good-personality-types-for-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38661/is-it-fair-to-use-shortened-url-to-mention-and-give-links-of-live-projects-in-my&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40431/finding-time-to-use-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40644/how-similar-are-programming-and-architecture&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41855/what-approaches-can-i-take-to-lower-the-odds-of-introducing-new-bugs-in-a-comple&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41898/when-does-a-programmer-know-when-a-new-job-is-not-right&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43959/is-client-side-html5-javascript-too-lame-after-youve-worked-on-server-side-c&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43133/programming-as-a-minor&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43482/software-development-company-business-plan&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45263/qa-engineer-road-ahead&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46167/how-to-deal-with-learning-a-new-platform-that-is-not-free&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46203/rule-of-thumb-to-estimate-cost-of-a-website&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47033/transitioning-from-internal-to-public-speaking&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49012/what-are-the-best-microsoft-certifications-to-start-with&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47477/why-do-employers-care-so-much-about-gpa&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50311/does-it-really-takes-5-10-years-or-more-to-be-really-good-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50461/advice-for-how-to-handle-company-pride&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51546/how-do-you-handle-developer-that-has-taken-an-early-retirement&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53123/how-important-is-studying-algorithms-and-theory-is-to-becoming-a-great-programme&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently we hit the character limit, [closure candidates continue in another answer][1]. Please don't add anything to this answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3206/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8545" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3256" RevisionGUID="de854bbe-8a11-4895-b241-daa0708e6578" CreationDate="2012-03-07T21:58:08.463" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="I am concerned as it seems to affect all sites, not just ours. I don't like the fact that questions that aren't the best advertisement for the site being Tweeted or posted to Google+.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been raised by moderators several times in the past and we have be told that changes to the way questions are Tweeted are in the pipeline. I thought that there was supposed to be a change where questions with pending close votes weren't Tweeted - but obviously if a question is closed by a single moderator vote that rule won't apply. I will double check what the situation is and report back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm fairly sure that closed questions aren't Tweeted, but that doesn't help if the question is closed *after* it has been publicised.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other request that has been made is to give diamond moderators some control over what questions get Tweeted. At the very least this would give a pair of human eyes on what goes out for a sanity check.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to point out that I rarely close questions without there being at least one moderator flag being raised. My job isn't to trawl the site looking for things to do, but to react to flags and questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A search of Meta (not by me - my meta searches suck) has turned up this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/115722/avoid-tweeting-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears that the bot shouldn't be Tweeting closed questions. The only thing I can think of is that the question has had enough activity to be Tweeted ([the rules are here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/101340/140548)), but the question has also picked up flags as well. We see the flags and close the question but it's out there in the Twitterverse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The sequence will be something like (assuming it doesn't look at flags):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Question gets posted.&#xD;&#xA;2. Question gets flagged.&#xD;&#xA;3. Question gets enough activity to be Tweeted.&#xD;&#xA;4. Question gets close votes.&#xD;&#xA;5. Question gets closed by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it appears that the bot is pimping closed questions. Therefore, it would useful if the bot could look at any existing flags and not Tweet it if there are any. Obviously it won't help if the question gets flagged *after* it's Tweeted, but questions that don't fit tend to get flagged quite quickly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8546" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3273" RevisionGUID="a4f77c1c-f70f-440c-b699-e19868a5c469" CreationDate="2012-03-07T22:05:07.307" UserId="30160" Text="I just landed on Area51, and checked programmers.stackexchange description.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So are we being unfair to close question which are related to career and indirectly related to software? Those are exactly in scope questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know the FAQ says something else, the name itself says it is about programmers, the description says it is not about programming. Want to define an agenda.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/iRJM0.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8547" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3273" RevisionGUID="a4f77c1c-f70f-440c-b699-e19868a5c469" CreationDate="2012-03-07T22:05:07.307" UserId="30160" Text="Not programming related" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8548" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3273" RevisionGUID="a4f77c1c-f70f-440c-b699-e19868a5c469" CreationDate="2012-03-07T22:05:07.307" UserId="30160" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8549" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3274" RevisionGUID="7448223e-0f81-4c9e-9d7b-f6a7577eb62c" CreationDate="2012-03-07T22:09:53.487" UserId="47" Text="You are a year and a half to late.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the site was first proposed it *was* as described on Area 51. There was a large demand for somewhere to ask all the questions that developers had that weren't related to the code in front of them on their screens.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it was soon clearly apparent that a site defined by what it's *not* isn't a good site in Stack Exchange terms. It was completed unfocused and descending into anarchy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was therefore decided to repurpose the site into what you see today. It didn't happen overnight and, to a certain extent, it's still happening today. However, we believe that we have a site that is *useful* to software developers and going back would be the wrong thing to do." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8550" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3274" RevisionGUID="bbf2743d-aa4a-4011-9a9f-370d3e7df3ca" CreationDate="2012-03-07T22:15:40.047" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="You are a year and a half to late.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the site was first proposed it *was* as described on Area 51. There was a large demand for somewhere to ask all the questions that developers had that weren't related to the code in front of them on their screens.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it was soon clearly apparent that a site defined by what it's *not* isn't a good site in Stack Exchange terms. It was completed unfocused and descending into anarchy. Rather than attracting all the good not programming related questions it was attracting all the *bad* ones like &quot;What's you favourite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What chair do you have?&quot; etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was therefore decided to repurpose the site into what you see today. It didn't happen overnight and, to a certain extent, it's still happening today. However, we believe that we have a site that is *useful* to software developers and going back would be the wrong thing to do." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8551" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3275" RevisionGUID="88019c59-6afd-4f0e-a14f-7e4e6079d4db" CreationDate="2012-03-07T22:17:57.960" UserId="63" Text="Ah, you missed the best part...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![This big blue box appears above the title on Area 51][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The title, description, definition questions, and discussions on Area51 are of purely historic interest. [The FAQ][2] here is the definitive reference for the site as it exists today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LSqYc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8552" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3274" RevisionGUID="a2192abb-23f4-4a56-9c75-5ef7c520b2bd" CreationDate="2012-03-07T23:46:26.277" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="You are a year and a half too late.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the site was first proposed it *was* as described on Area 51. There was a large demand for somewhere to ask all the questions that developers had that weren't related to the code in front of them on their screens.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it was soon clearly apparent that a site defined by what it's *not* isn't a good site in Stack Exchange terms. It was completed unfocused and descending into anarchy. Rather than attracting all the good not programming related questions it was attracting all the *bad* ones like &quot;What's you favourite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What chair do you have?&quot; etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was therefore decided to repurpose the site into what you see today. It didn't happen overnight and, to a certain extent, it's still happening today. However, we believe that we have a site that is *useful* to software developers and going back would be the wrong thing to do." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8553" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3256" RevisionGUID="a9885c47-dd90-4d33-aed5-49945fe94f8c" CreationDate="2012-03-08T12:16:25.787" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="I am concerned as it seems to affect all sites, not just ours. I don't like the fact that questions that aren't the best advertisement for the site being Tweeted or posted to Google+.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been raised by moderators several times in the past and we have be told that changes to the way questions are Tweeted are in the pipeline. I thought that there was supposed to be a change where questions with pending close votes weren't Tweeted - but obviously if a question is closed by a single moderator vote that rule won't apply. I will double check what the situation is and report back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm fairly sure that closed questions aren't Tweeted, but that doesn't help if the question is closed *after* it has been publicised.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other request that has been made is to give diamond moderators some control over what questions get Tweeted. At the very least this would give a pair of human eyes on what goes out for a sanity check.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to point out that I rarely close questions without there being at least one moderator flag being raised. My job isn't to trawl the site looking for things to do, but to react to flags and questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A search of Meta (not by me - my meta searches suck) has turned up this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/115722/avoid-tweeting-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears that the bot shouldn't be Tweeting closed questions. The only thing I can think of is that the question has had enough activity to be Tweeted ([the rules are here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/101340/140548)), but the question has also picked up flags as well. We see the flags and close the question but it's out there in the Twitterverse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The sequence will be something like (assuming it doesn't look at flags):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Question gets posted.&#xD;&#xA;2. Question gets flagged.&#xD;&#xA;3. Question gets enough activity to be Tweeted.&#xD;&#xA;4. Question gets close votes.&#xD;&#xA;5. Question gets closed by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it appears that the bot is pimping closed questions. Therefore, it would useful if the bot could look at any existing flags and not Tweet it if there are any. Obviously it won't help if the question gets flagged *after* it's Tweeted, but questions that don't fit tend to get flagged quite quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE 2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've reported this problem on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/124994/the-twitter-bot-should-not-tweet-posts-that-have-flags-on-them) as its clearly Tweeting posts with flags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8554" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3206" RevisionGUID="a07b03d8-a96a-4511-9dad-722320248a50" CreationDate="2012-03-08T14:46:50.787" UserId="25936" Comment="added 141 characters in body" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62662/does-anyone-work-in-know-much-about-programming-jobs-for-scientific-medical&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Closure candidates #2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53692/i-need-some-career-guidance-please&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/52657/what-would-you-recommend-to-someone-looking-to-work-with-java&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54612/how-to-capitalize-maximally-on-location-independence-my-personal-1-incentive&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56557/advancing-my-embedded-knowledge-with-a-cs-degree&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57456/what-should-i-quote-for-a-project-i-hope-to-get-a-job-at-the-end-of&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56941/are-highly-capable-programmers-paid-more-than-their-managers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57651/open-source-consensus-based-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57715/do-you-slowdown-after-you-decide-to-quit&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58956/will-a-programming-professional-certificate-from-a-university-enhance-my-resume&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60157/will-design-patterns-help-me-in-this-case&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60760/how-do-you-calculate-the-overhead-of-an-employee-in-a-software-consulting-firm&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62176/how-to-resolve-a-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place-situation&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63589/finding-this-kind-of-companies-to-apply-to&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65607/volunteering-with-a-non-profit-to-expand-skills&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64936/how-can-i-make-myself-better-at-programming-working-at-a-shi-job&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65250/as-a-professional-net-developer-should-you-learn-to-work-with-msil-using-refle&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66297/im-a-professional-software-engineer-how-can-i-take-it-to-the-next-level&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66274/10-years-out-of-programming-wanting-to-return-how-to-best-approach-it&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66465/experienced-programmer-taking-classes-at-community-college-useful-or-too-basi&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67060/im-applying-for-a-position-at-a-startup-to-whom-should-i-address-my-cover-lett&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69918/how-do-i-increase-my-chances-of-getting-a-job-after-being-out-of-work-for-a-long&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69295/does-aiming-at-non-glamorous-positions-improve-chances-of-being-hired&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/71304/is-creating-automated-tests-a-good-way-to-begin-a-career-as-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70471/where-am-i-as-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/71580/why-there-are-no-real-software-companies-in-europe&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/71096/msc-worth-going-back-for&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72040/how-many-skills-should-i-list-on-my-resume-cv&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74021/reacting-to-question-will-you-act-as-an-on-call-consultant-after-you-leave&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74105/is-it-legal-for-me-to-contribute-to-open-source-software-while-employed&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74970/how-do-i-use-programming-experience-at-a-non-programming-position-on-my-resume-f&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75639/what-is-the-value-of-consulting-for-your-career&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75647/which-is-a-better-degree-a-computer-science-degree-or-an-it-degree&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76245/anyone-been-through-the-net-program-with-setfocus&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76467/how-to-interpret-programmer-salary-survey-data-especially-concerning-different&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77564/essential-java-skills-for-future-career-advancement&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77938/developer-defecting-to-the-client-side&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77992/searching-for-job-openings-beyond-those-that-just-specific-programming-language&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75260/ive-got-my-masters-in-software-engineering-now-what&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77820/how-can-i-make-the-transition-from-being-a-beginner-to-an-intermediate-advanced&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79916/how-to-build-a-career-path-to-be-an-architect&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80410/what-is-expected-out-of-an-intern-know-everything&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80482/ways-for-self-taught-coder-to-build-a-portfolio-with-the-purpose-of-landing-an-e&#xD;&#xA;1. 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http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42755/applying-to-a-company-while-personally-working-on-a-comparable-project&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44692/have-you-tried-to-switch-to-different-kind-of-language-and-find-a-job-in-a-new&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55555/how-can-i-transition-from-being-a-9-5er-to-being-self-employed&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59597/anyone-been-successful-changing-their-career-without-having-to-start-over-from-s&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66669/how-to-tackle-an-experienced-c-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70147/career-change-after-years-as-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72164/junior-programmer-working-with-a-poor-senior-programmer-and-poor-code&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8556" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3276" RevisionGUID="637a7815-71ec-494a-8374-abe122c3b8f2" CreationDate="2012-03-08T15:56:50.953" UserId="1130" Text="The [proposal][1] to the [tag:software-engineering] tag was to remove the tag because it was too broad, and retag the questions with more appropriate tags. I voted this one up because I agree with this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The actual [solution][2] that appears to be being implemented is to close/delete questions in this tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through the [list of closure candidates][3], I see many which are asking about design patterns, and the SDLC, which are on-topic for this site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are we focusing our time on closing these questions, especially since this was not the proposed solution for this tag? I feel user and moderator resources could be better spent elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted this as a comment to the question itself, but was asked to [&quot;refrain from posting irrelevant comments on the cleanup questions&quot;][4], which is why I am making a meta question about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3094/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3263/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3264/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3743767#3743767" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8557" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3276" RevisionGUID="637a7815-71ec-494a-8374-abe122c3b8f2" CreationDate="2012-03-08T15:56:50.953" UserId="1130" Text="Why are we closing/deleting questions in the software-engineering tag? That wasn't the proposed solution" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8558" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3276" RevisionGUID="637a7815-71ec-494a-8374-abe122c3b8f2" CreationDate="2012-03-08T15:56:50.953" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8559" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3277" RevisionGUID="4524a585-6906-44e3-b0b2-a1bd3e5169e2" CreationDate="2012-03-08T16:04:51.040" UserId="4" Text="I haven't looked through all of them yet, but the majority of closure candidates are not on the list because they are off-topic, but because they are not constructive. For example, this question on [architectural patterns][1] is on-topic, but it's also asking for a list of things. Using a question to generate a list is not constructive. Another example is this question about [what methodologies read up][2] on, which is far too broad and general for a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The purpose of a STCI action is to fully improve the tag - remove the bad tag, retag good questions with appropriate tags, and either fix or remove bad questions from the site so they don't remain as bad examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think that you can make a [heroic edit][3] to anything on the closure list, please do so. It will get reviewed before anything happens. However, keep in mind that many have answers and that it's often better to close/delete and re-ask questions that have answers that will be destroyed/rendered invalid by a heroic edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136425/architectural-patterns-for-software-development&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58006/im-doing-hobby-programming-what-programming-methodologies-e-g-xp-agile&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8560" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3278" RevisionGUID="6920e054-73f6-4d21-8ab4-d0270232efee" CreationDate="2012-03-08T16:08:20.453" UserId="25936" Text="The cleanup proposal is part of the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative][1], which includes closing, merging and deleting questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Step 3: cleaning up the tags, identifying close candidates, and the last call for heroic edits**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; During the two-week cleanup period, the community will be tasked with doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cleaning up the tags: if a question is on-topic for the site, it needs to be revised and retagged with more meaningful tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Identifying close candidates: if a tagged question just slipped through the cracks and needs to be closed, it needs to be listed as a close candidate on the cleanup notice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any tagged closed question or close candidate, the cleanup period is the last chance to save them with heroic edits: consolidate lists into canonical answers and flag duplicate answers for deletion and substantially improve the quality of the question. If an attempt to save a question has been made, flag the question and list it as a &quot;saved question&quot; on the cleanup notice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;STCI is well documented in that question, and I directed you in posting an answer there instead of posting comments in the specific proposal, as it seemed to me that you were contesting whether the initiative in itself had anything to do with weeding out questions that somehow don't belong. I felt it was extremely counter productive to post comments on specific proposal questions when there was a Meta question where you could summarize your concerns, as comments are ephemeral, don't allow for consensus, and are quite less visible than Meta answers.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Going through a tag is a great opportunity to clean up questions that don't belong to the site, for whatever reason. I agree that almost every question under [tag:software-engineering] is on topic, however topicality is not the only issue with close worthy questions. Several of the questions that are identified in the closure candidates list fall under the not constructive category, but as I told you if you want to discuss specific questions [feel free to ping me in chat][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3263/structured-tag-cleanup-software-engineering#comment8466_3263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8561" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3276" RevisionGUID="ef638b38-98d8-4b89-aaa7-944edf7bf731" CreationDate="2012-03-08T16:45:28.007" UserId="1130" Comment="Removed rant. Will place as comment in case anyone wonders where the comments below came from" Text="The [proposal][1] to the [tag:software-engineering] tag was to remove the tag because it was too broad, and retag the questions with more appropriate tags. I voted this one up because I agree with this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The actual [solution][2] that appears to be being implemented is to close/delete questions in this tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through the [list of closure candidates][3], I see many which are asking about design patterns, and the SDLC, which are on-topic for this site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are we focusing our time on closing these questions, especially since this was not the proposed solution for this tag? I feel user and moderator resources could be better spent elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3094/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3263/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3264/1130&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8562" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3279" RevisionGUID="af9ca55e-743f-49d5-a5a3-c189a6e8b351" CreationDate="2012-03-08T16:49:47.327" UserId="25936" Text="[tag:career] was recently [cleaned up][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we please kill it now? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8563" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3279" RevisionGUID="af9ca55e-743f-49d5-a5a3-c189a6e8b351" CreationDate="2012-03-08T16:49:47.327" UserId="25936" Text="Blacklist [career]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8564" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3279" RevisionGUID="af9ca55e-743f-49d5-a5a3-c189a6e8b351" CreationDate="2012-03-08T16:49:47.327" UserId="25936" Text="|support|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8565" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3279" RevisionGUID="d6ad47d8-f1e4-482d-81af-98d322b86f46" CreationDate="2012-03-08T17:01:23.770" UserId="25936" Comment="added 670 characters in body" Text="[tag:career] was recently cleaned up, through the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a rather troublesome tag that we've been trying to get rid of [for quite some time][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Previous attempts to clean up the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/work-job-career-development-employment-career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we please kill it now? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3088/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8566" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3280" RevisionGUID="ceecc6ad-2f76-4b19-9a75-e5496967370d" CreationDate="2012-03-08T18:50:12.570" UserId="4" Text="I disagree with the merge. Like [SnOrfus pointed out in a comment][1], there are two things to consider: the structure/organization of the team and the relationships between members of the team. However, I think there might be a better tag (or even better tags) than &quot;team&quot; and &quot;teamwork&quot;, but I'm not sure what they are at this point. There is, however, a need for tags to differentiate between structuring and organizing a team and working on/with a team as they are very different concepts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although, there is another side to the argument. This isn't a site about organizational behavior, social psychology, or sociology. Do we really need to differentiate between these concepts on a site that is ultimately about software development? Perhaps not, and the merge should be the other way: [tag:teamwork] into [tag:team].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3071/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8567" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3067" RevisionGUID="ea774a5c-3656-4db3-877a-311e91dfadec" CreationDate="2012-03-08T19:02:23.497" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-declined|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8568" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="3281" RevisionGUID="bb38ad3b-d9c3-4fca-9589-b10120335b73" CreationDate="2012-03-08T19:59:46.433" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138855/where-can-i-have-discussion-about-code-libraries" Text="" />
  <row Id="8569" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3281" RevisionGUID="57abd41c-4f45-4fda-83a4-5cd28c0b129c" CreationDate="2012-03-08T19:28:31.560" UserDisplayName="user2528" Text="I don't have a question about code. I want to talk about the pros/cons about a design or library and hear the opinion of others. Discussions are off topic on Programmers.SE so my question is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where can programmers have discussion about code and libraries?&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8570" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3281" RevisionGUID="57abd41c-4f45-4fda-83a4-5cd28c0b129c" CreationDate="2012-03-08T19:28:31.560" UserDisplayName="user2528" Text="Where can I have discussion about code/libraries?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8571" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3281" RevisionGUID="57abd41c-4f45-4fda-83a4-5cd28c0b129c" CreationDate="2012-03-08T19:28:31.560" UserDisplayName="user2528" Text="|discussion|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8572" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3282" RevisionGUID="3fdd022a-b12a-477d-b208-776a55bcb7be" CreationDate="2012-03-08T20:02:44.177" UserId="4" Text="No Stack Exchange site is suitable for holding a discussion, but if you have specific and answerable questions about architecture, design, and testing, those are more than welcome here on Programmers. In fact, those conceptual questions are why this site exists." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8573" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3283" RevisionGUID="7ed87e56-8595-4a4b-aa18-66c6dd45da87" CreationDate="2012-03-08T20:55:56.087" UserId="32353" Text="There is a Programmers blog.  If you want to write a blog post on the design of an open source project that is of somewhat general interest (so, not the library you are thinking about writing) then it might get approved (odds would rise dramatically the more of the work you were willing to do yourself).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you wrote a good enough original article you might attract people to add to it.  This would be somewhat like a discussion, though more work and ultimately of higher quality." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8574" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3284" RevisionGUID="4818ce26-4f83-4a4f-a384-fd8160d6088d" CreationDate="2012-03-09T00:03:38.563" UserId="7846" Text="I have programmers as a pinned tab. Since some hours I got it highlighted that keeps blinking.&#xD;&#xA;First I thought of a bug in chrome but than I saw this message which was totally new for me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1 question with new activity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every time this kind of message appears on the top of the question list, my tab starts blinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am way too often in my browser to get such an extreme low priority information (so low that using the word priority is way to much).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A chat should use the highlighting of a tab when someone &quot;pinged&quot; me (which the chat does) but please not a regular SE site!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I searched and can't find a way do disable that. If this &quot;feature&quot; stay, I need to remove programmers from my standard open tabs... this drives me nuts!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8575" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3284" RevisionGUID="4818ce26-4f83-4a4f-a384-fd8160d6088d" CreationDate="2012-03-09T00:03:38.563" UserId="7846" Text="Disable &quot;1 question with new activity&quot; highlighting - PLEASE" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8576" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3284" RevisionGUID="4818ce26-4f83-4a4f-a384-fd8160d6088d" CreationDate="2012-03-09T00:03:38.563" UserId="7846" Text="|feature-request|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8584" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3284" RevisionGUID="64c11061-bbe5-4a99-899b-db1d03f09661" CreationDate="2012-03-09T00:10:17.950" UserId="7846" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="I have programmers as a pinned tab. Since some hours I got it highlighted that keeps blinking.&#xD;&#xA;First I thought of a bug in chrome but than I saw this message which was totally new for me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1 question with new activity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every time this kind of message appears on the top of the question list, my tab starts blinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am way too often in my browser to get such an extreme low priority information (so low that using the word priority is way too much).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A chat should use the highlighting of a tab when someone &quot;pinged&quot; me (which the chat does) but please not a regular SE site!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I searched and can't find a way do disable that. If this &quot;feature&quot; stay, I need to remove programmers from my standard open tabs... this drives me nuts!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8585" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3285" RevisionGUID="74fcc81d-ab0d-48a1-8f37-7465af55238a" CreationDate="2012-03-09T00:36:02.797" UserId="2" Text="We do not do anything explicit with regards to flashing.  This may be default browser behavior but not any we have experienced thus far.  Do you have any plugins that make the browser flash in chat?  We use the same method as chat where we change the title of the page based on the number of new active posts." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8586" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3286" RevisionGUID="41dc0c7c-b2cb-4312-8176-7d3766350d04" CreationDate="2012-03-09T06:18:06.187" UserId="25936" Text="I might be missing something because no one mention the obvious option, but here it goes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How about [chat][1]? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The language specific [chat rooms][2] on Stack Overflow would be ideal, as would be our [own chat room][3]. And you can create your own chat room&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8587" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3286" RevisionGUID="c3f01113-d540-412a-bbfd-b0e8f345e57b" CreationDate="2012-03-09T07:23:09.303" UserId="25936" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="I might be missing something because no one mention the obvious option, but here it goes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How about [chat][1]? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The language specific [chat rooms][2] on Stack Overflow would be ideal, as would be our [own chat room][3]. And you can even create your own chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8588" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3286" RevisionGUID="d92f1ffd-3e09-40d4-b037-88f3bec90bc8" CreationDate="2012-03-09T10:57:54.777" UserId="25936" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="I might be missing something because no one mentioned the obvious option, but here it goes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How about [chat][1]? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The language specific [chat rooms][2] on Stack Overflow would be ideal, as would be our [own chat room][3]. And you can even create your own chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8589" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3287" RevisionGUID="f5e54272-7f38-4e89-a332-60aa5c5ddc09" CreationDate="2012-03-09T12:39:54.510" UserId="25476" Text="Not sure if this would be a good idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am convinced that the majority of programmers are more concerned and/or clueless about career direction and general workplace issues than discussions of design, algorithms, and programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you blacklist the tag they are just going to post the same question with [tag:dvcs] or [tag:software-engineering] or something else that is entirely inappropriate.  Then we have a real problem on our hands that we can no longer group these problem questions together by a simple tag search anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps a better idea would be to leave it open as a strategic honeypot where we can quickly and easily pick off these questions before they get upvoted 2000 times and get 68 answers all along the lines of, &quot;Ya my boss totally sucks too!&quot; or &quot;You should learn PHP because Java sucks&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8590" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3287" RevisionGUID="f9936afb-bf75-4a44-bfa8-3a47e7d8c18f" CreationDate="2012-03-09T13:56:33.213" UserId="25476" Comment="explanation" Text="Not sure if this would be a good idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am convinced that the majority of programmers are more concerned and/or clueless about career direction and general workplace issues than discussions of design, algorithms, and programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you blacklist the tag they are just going to post the same question with [tag:dvcs] or [tag:software-engineering] or something else that is entirely inappropriate.  Then we have a real problem on our hands that we can no longer group these problem questions together by a simple tag search anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps a better idea would be to leave it open as a strategic honeypot where we can quickly and easily pick off these questions before they get upvoted 2000 times and get 68 answers all along the lines of, &quot;Ya my boss totally sucks too!&quot; or &quot;You should learn PHP because Java sucks&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not convinced that a career tag will mislead users.  The order in which a question is asked is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Title (about 1 minute)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Question (about 5-25 minutes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Tags *&quot;Huh?  What is this Tags for?  It says I need to add one before asking my question.  I can't find a career tag anywhere so lets just put algorithms.  I took all the time writing this question and there isn't any other official SE site yet for software development career questions so hopefully this will go through.&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tags are an afterthought for most users because intelligently picking an appropriate tag requires even the slightest modicum of effort and research on their part.  These users are a constant.  No amount of education or hand holding will make them a productive member of this site who understands or cares what we are about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would you rather they just start posting terrible questions in random tags?  I predict that is what will happen if you start blacklisting these tags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8591" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3264" RevisionGUID="c41f0c11-80d9-40e9-a749-a585b270468e" CreationDate="2012-03-09T14:27:10.320" UserId="25476" Comment="added 98 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-engineering\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136425/architectural-patterns-for-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135709/multi-threaded-applications&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132314/methods-to-prevent-programmers-from-capturing-user-entered-data&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130128/a-java-programmer-shifting-to-c&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127075/what-percentage-of-code-and-runtime-do-you-typically-allow-for-testing&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125903/applying-for-software-engineer-positions-without-being-a-qualified-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68638/how-do-you-design-your-database&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67298/what-do-you-do-when-there-is-a-last-minute-request-to-exclude-a-feature-from-a-r&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67284/value-of-computer-science-degree-for-non-programmer-software-architect-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65348/design-architecture-patterns-practices-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64944/studies-on-breakdown-of-various-costs-associated-with-a-software-project&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61195/in-a-software-engineering-view-what-are-all-the-steps-in-a-state-of-the-art-sdl&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60648/is-software-better-designed-and-developed-by-people-who-will-use-it&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58030/mom-vs-soa-is-soa-the-latest-mom&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58006/im-doing-hobby-programming-what-programming-methodologies-e-g-xp-agile&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55518/where-i-will-get-petshop-net-4-application&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55408/filling-the-gaps-in-terms-of-software-planning-and-feeling-the-machine&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54231/what-do-you-do-to-get-your-software-design-robust-flexible-and-clear&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51839/how-do-you-keep-cool-when-production-system-goes-down&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49763/how-to-recognize-my-performance-plateau&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49226/green-engineering-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47535/implementation-of-a-rules-engine-in-your-business-applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;maple_shaft: I will handle these if thats alright, I will post a comment when I am done&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47355/how-can-i-make-a-compiler&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46126/software-engineering-and-independence&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44160/at-what-point-does-constructive-criticism-of-your-code-become-unhelpful&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44066/why-is-implementing-copy-paste-in-a-touch-screen-based-smartphone-such-a-big-dea&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43867/good-book-for-debugging-disassembling-proprietary-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37451/telecommuting-with-a-foreign-employer-as-a-permanent-job&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37008/will-people-respect-a-masters-of-science-in-it-w-software-engineering-concentrat&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36491/what-can-programmers-learn-from-the-construction-industry&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30853/relation-between-developers-and-clients&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28978/is-anyone-actively-developing-software-to-be-used-with-the-emotiv-headset&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25233/computer-science-vs-computer-engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8592" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3264" RevisionGUID="4a21f902-8d59-4eb9-ab71-abc895af914d" CreationDate="2012-03-09T15:57:56.190" UserId="25476" Comment="added 7 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-engineering\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136425/architectural-patterns-for-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135709/multi-threaded-applications&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132314/methods-to-prevent-programmers-from-capturing-user-entered-data&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130128/a-java-programmer-shifting-to-c&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127075/what-percentage-of-code-and-runtime-do-you-typically-allow-for-testing&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125903/applying-for-software-engineer-positions-without-being-a-qualified-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68638/how-do-you-design-your-database&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67298/what-do-you-do-when-there-is-a-last-minute-request-to-exclude-a-feature-from-a-r&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67284/value-of-computer-science-degree-for-non-programmer-software-architect-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65348/design-architecture-patterns-practices-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64944/studies-on-breakdown-of-various-costs-associated-with-a-software-project&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61195/in-a-software-engineering-view-what-are-all-the-steps-in-a-state-of-the-art-sdl&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60648/is-software-better-designed-and-developed-by-people-who-will-use-it&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58030/mom-vs-soa-is-soa-the-latest-mom&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58006/im-doing-hobby-programming-what-programming-methodologies-e-g-xp-agile&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55518/where-i-will-get-petshop-net-4-application&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55408/filling-the-gaps-in-terms-of-software-planning-and-feeling-the-machine&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54231/what-do-you-do-to-get-your-software-design-robust-flexible-and-clear&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51839/how-do-you-keep-cool-when-production-system-goes-down&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49763/how-to-recognize-my-performance-plateau&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49226/green-engineering-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47535/implementation-of-a-rules-engine-in-your-business-applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;maple_shaft: I will handle these if thats alright, I will post a comment when I am done&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47355/how-can-i-make-a-compiler&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46126/software-engineering-and-independence&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44160/at-what-point-does-constructive-criticism-of-your-code-become-unhelpful&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44066/why-is-implementing-copy-paste-in-a-touch-screen-based-smartphone-such-a-big-dea&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43867/good-book-for-debugging-disassembling-proprietary-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37451/telecommuting-with-a-foreign-employer-as-a-permanent-job&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37008/will-people-respect-a-masters-of-science-in-it-w-software-engineering-concentrat&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36491/what-can-programmers-learn-from-the-construction-industry&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30853/relation-between-developers-and-clients&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28978/is-anyone-actively-developing-software-to-be-used-with-the-emotiv-headset&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25233/computer-science-vs-computer-engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8593" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3264" RevisionGUID="c940910a-d33a-4649-967d-80ce40d73526" CreationDate="2012-03-09T16:06:43.313" UserId="4" Comment="added 613 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-engineering\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132314/methods-to-prevent-programmers-from-capturing-user-entered-data&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130128/a-java-programmer-shifting-to-c&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127075/what-percentage-of-code-and-runtime-do-you-typically-allow-for-testing&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68638/how-do-you-design-your-database&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67284/value-of-computer-science-degree-for-non-programmer-software-architect-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65348/design-architecture-patterns-practices-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64944/studies-on-breakdown-of-various-costs-associated-with-a-software-project&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60648/is-software-better-designed-and-developed-by-people-who-will-use-it&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58030/mom-vs-soa-is-soa-the-latest-mom&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55518/where-i-will-get-petshop-net-4-application&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55408/filling-the-gaps-in-terms-of-software-planning-and-feeling-the-machine&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54231/what-do-you-do-to-get-your-software-design-robust-flexible-and-clear&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51839/how-do-you-keep-cool-when-production-system-goes-down&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49763/how-to-recognize-my-performance-plateau&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49226/green-engineering-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47535/implementation-of-a-rules-engine-in-your-business-applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;maple_shaft: I will handle these if thats alright, I will post a comment when I am done&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47355/how-can-i-make-a-compiler&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46126/software-engineering-and-independence&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44160/at-what-point-does-constructive-criticism-of-your-code-become-unhelpful&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44066/why-is-implementing-copy-paste-in-a-touch-screen-based-smartphone-such-a-big-dea&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43867/good-book-for-debugging-disassembling-proprietary-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37451/telecommuting-with-a-foreign-employer-as-a-permanent-job&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37008/will-people-respect-a-masters-of-science-in-it-w-software-engineering-concentrat&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36491/what-can-programmers-learn-from-the-construction-industry&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30853/relation-between-developers-and-clients&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28978/is-anyone-actively-developing-software-to-be-used-with-the-emotiv-headset&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25233/computer-science-vs-computer-engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@Thomas Owens here. I had some time, so I went through some questions on this list. I'll update this little block as I read and think about each question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136425/architectural-patterns-for-software-development - Closed, not constructive - asking for a list&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135709/multi-threaded-applications - Should be niche enough to generate useful answers.&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125903/applying-for-software-engineer-positions-without-being-a-qualified-engineer - Keeping open after some work. It's a legitimate question unique to the software development profession.&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67298/what-do-you-do-when-there-is-a-last-minute-request-to-exclude-a-feature-from-a-r - Keeping open after edits. Don't see a good reason to close it.&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61195/in-a-software-engineering-view-what-are-all-the-steps-in-a-state-of-the-art-sdl - Closed. There's no such thing as a state of the art SDLC. Every one is different.&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58006/im-doing-hobby-programming-what-programming-methodologies-e-g-xp-agile - Closed, not a real question. Asking for a list of things to learn, which is way too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8594" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3264" RevisionGUID="8dec023e-444c-4651-932d-3047749d07a6" CreationDate="2012-03-09T16:12:21.053" UserId="25476" Comment="added 149 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-engineering\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132314/methods-to-prevent-programmers-from-capturing-user-entered-data&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130128/a-java-programmer-shifting-to-c&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127075/what-percentage-of-code-and-runtime-do-you-typically-allow-for-testing&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68638/how-do-you-design-your-database&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67284/value-of-computer-science-degree-for-non-programmer-software-architect-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65348/design-architecture-patterns-practices-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64944/studies-on-breakdown-of-various-costs-associated-with-a-software-project&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60648/is-software-better-designed-and-developed-by-people-who-will-use-it&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58030/mom-vs-soa-is-soa-the-latest-mom&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55518/where-i-will-get-petshop-net-4-application&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55408/filling-the-gaps-in-terms-of-software-planning-and-feeling-the-machine&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54231/what-do-you-do-to-get-your-software-design-robust-flexible-and-clear&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51839/how-do-you-keep-cool-when-production-system-goes-down&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49763/how-to-recognize-my-performance-plateau&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49226/green-engineering-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47535/implementation-of-a-rules-engine-in-your-business-applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;maple_shaft: I will handle these if thats alright, I will post a comment when I am done&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47355/how-can-i-make-a-compiler&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46126/software-engineering-and-independence&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44160/at-what-point-does-constructive-criticism-of-your-code-become-unhelpful&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44066/why-is-implementing-copy-paste-in-a-touch-screen-based-smartphone-such-a-big-dea&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43867/good-book-for-debugging-disassembling-proprietary-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37451/telecommuting-with-a-foreign-employer-as-a-permanent-job&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37008/will-people-respect-a-masters-of-science-in-it-w-software-engineering-concentrat&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36491/what-can-programmers-learn-from-the-construction-industry&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30853/relation-between-developers-and-clients&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28978/is-anyone-actively-developing-software-to-be-used-with-the-emotiv-headset&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25233/computer-science-vs-computer-engineering - The question is quite literally about &quot;software engineering&quot; but we can't use that tag.  I can't think of an appropriate retag for this one  @_@ !&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@Thomas Owens here. I had some time, so I went through some questions on this list. I'll update this little block as I read and think about each question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136425/architectural-patterns-for-software-development - Closed, not constructive - asking for a list&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135709/multi-threaded-applications - Should be niche enough to generate useful answers.&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125903/applying-for-software-engineer-positions-without-being-a-qualified-engineer - Keeping open after some work. It's a legitimate question unique to the software development profession.&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67298/what-do-you-do-when-there-is-a-last-minute-request-to-exclude-a-feature-from-a-r - Keeping open after edits. Don't see a good reason to close it.&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61195/in-a-software-engineering-view-what-are-all-the-steps-in-a-state-of-the-art-sdl - Closed. There's no such thing as a state of the art SDLC. Every one is different.&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58006/im-doing-hobby-programming-what-programming-methodologies-e-g-xp-agile - Closed, not a real question. Asking for a list of things to learn, which is way too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8595" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="3264" RevisionGUID="fa381710-8fcb-439f-ae23-89b3003ce094" CreationDate="2012-03-09T17:49:37.470" UserId="25936" Comment="Rollback to [4a21f902-8d59-4eb9-ab71-abc895af914d]" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-engineering\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136425/architectural-patterns-for-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135709/multi-threaded-applications&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132314/methods-to-prevent-programmers-from-capturing-user-entered-data&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130128/a-java-programmer-shifting-to-c&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127075/what-percentage-of-code-and-runtime-do-you-typically-allow-for-testing&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125903/applying-for-software-engineer-positions-without-being-a-qualified-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68638/how-do-you-design-your-database&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67298/what-do-you-do-when-there-is-a-last-minute-request-to-exclude-a-feature-from-a-r&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67284/value-of-computer-science-degree-for-non-programmer-software-architect-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65348/design-architecture-patterns-practices-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64944/studies-on-breakdown-of-various-costs-associated-with-a-software-project&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61195/in-a-software-engineering-view-what-are-all-the-steps-in-a-state-of-the-art-sdl&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60648/is-software-better-designed-and-developed-by-people-who-will-use-it&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58030/mom-vs-soa-is-soa-the-latest-mom&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58006/im-doing-hobby-programming-what-programming-methodologies-e-g-xp-agile&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55518/where-i-will-get-petshop-net-4-application&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55408/filling-the-gaps-in-terms-of-software-planning-and-feeling-the-machine&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54231/what-do-you-do-to-get-your-software-design-robust-flexible-and-clear&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51839/how-do-you-keep-cool-when-production-system-goes-down&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49763/how-to-recognize-my-performance-plateau&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49226/green-engineering-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47535/implementation-of-a-rules-engine-in-your-business-applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;maple_shaft: I will handle these if thats alright, I will post a comment when I am done&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47355/how-can-i-make-a-compiler&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46126/software-engineering-and-independence&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44160/at-what-point-does-constructive-criticism-of-your-code-become-unhelpful&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44066/why-is-implementing-copy-paste-in-a-touch-screen-based-smartphone-such-a-big-dea&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43867/good-book-for-debugging-disassembling-proprietary-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37451/telecommuting-with-a-foreign-employer-as-a-permanent-job&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37008/will-people-respect-a-masters-of-science-in-it-w-software-engineering-concentrat&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36491/what-can-programmers-learn-from-the-construction-industry&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30853/relation-between-developers-and-clients&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28978/is-anyone-actively-developing-software-to-be-used-with-the-emotiv-headset&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25233/computer-science-vs-computer-engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8596" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="3264" RevisionGUID="04f3ecb6-10dd-41e6-9415-d5561f7d6829" CreationDate="2012-03-09T17:50:28.967" UserId="25936" Comment="Rollback to [133f45e9-c6f1-4f4f-875a-44048ac0d156]" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-engineering\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136425/architectural-patterns-for-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135709/multi-threaded-applications&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132314/methods-to-prevent-programmers-from-capturing-user-entered-data&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130128/a-java-programmer-shifting-to-c&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127075/what-percentage-of-code-and-runtime-do-you-typically-allow-for-testing&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125903/applying-for-software-engineer-positions-without-being-a-qualified-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68638/how-do-you-design-your-database&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67298/what-do-you-do-when-there-is-a-last-minute-request-to-exclude-a-feature-from-a-r&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67284/value-of-computer-science-degree-for-non-programmer-software-architect-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65348/design-architecture-patterns-practices-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64944/studies-on-breakdown-of-various-costs-associated-with-a-software-project&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61195/in-a-software-engineering-view-what-are-all-the-steps-in-a-state-of-the-art-sdl&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60648/is-software-better-designed-and-developed-by-people-who-will-use-it&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58030/mom-vs-soa-is-soa-the-latest-mom&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58006/im-doing-hobby-programming-what-programming-methodologies-e-g-xp-agile&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55518/where-i-will-get-petshop-net-4-application&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55408/filling-the-gaps-in-terms-of-software-planning-and-feeling-the-machine&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54231/what-do-you-do-to-get-your-software-design-robust-flexible-and-clear&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51839/how-do-you-keep-cool-when-production-system-goes-down&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49763/how-to-recognize-my-performance-plateau&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49226/green-engineering-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47535/implementation-of-a-rules-engine-in-your-business-applications&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47355/how-can-i-make-a-compiler&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46126/software-engineering-and-independence&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44160/at-what-point-does-constructive-criticism-of-your-code-become-unhelpful&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44066/why-is-implementing-copy-paste-in-a-touch-screen-based-smartphone-such-a-big-dea&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43867/good-book-for-debugging-disassembling-proprietary-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37451/telecommuting-with-a-foreign-employer-as-a-permanent-job&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37008/will-people-respect-a-masters-of-science-in-it-w-software-engineering-concentrat&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36491/what-can-programmers-learn-from-the-construction-industry&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30853/relation-between-developers-and-clients&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28978/is-anyone-actively-developing-software-to-be-used-with-the-emotiv-headset&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25233/computer-science-vs-computer-engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8597" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3288" RevisionGUID="7ec32f56-f5ca-4172-80d3-bca36f31c089" CreationDate="2012-03-09T21:03:34.843" UserId="1130" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/139000/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is asking what language to use for small, in-browser games, such as tower-defense  games, RPGs, and multi-user dungeons. The OP was told somewhere online that ASP.Net MVC would be suited for this, however is (rightfully) questioning that answer since it doesn't seem right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the question, in it's current form, is a decent one for this site and should not be closed. The only suggestion I would really make is to write out the example game types because not everyone knows what `muds, tds, and roguelikes` are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not think this is too broad of a question since the answer the OP seems to be looking for is to use an RIA technology. Which one to use is up to her. I also don't think it should be edited to include a specific example because it would limit the question to only being useful to the OP, and not to any programmer wishing to build small browser games.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3764419#3764419" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8598" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3288" RevisionGUID="7ec32f56-f5ca-4172-80d3-bca36f31c089" CreationDate="2012-03-09T21:03:34.843" UserId="1130" Text="Can we reopen the question about what technology is the best fit for small, browser-based games?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8599" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3288" RevisionGUID="7ec32f56-f5ca-4172-80d3-bca36f31c089" CreationDate="2012-03-09T21:03:34.843" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8600" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3289" RevisionGUID="c39a4586-520f-482d-891d-170c41490409" CreationDate="2012-03-09T21:48:11.980" UserId="32353" Text="Here are some things I can think of that would be required to determine which language would be best for your small browser game:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. You would want to know what features you plan to use, and what browsers or plug-ins can be used to implement them, plus how much utility each provides you so that you make the trade-off between that utility and how many people actually have said browser/plug-in combination (ideally the percentages would be for your target demographic rather than all browser users).  On the server side you would want to know platform and library out there and which fits best with what you are doing on the client (though you can do more or less everything you need on any server platform, some will perform better or be easier to implement).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. You would also want to know how everything mentioned in item 1 is going to change in the future.  For example, it currently appears that HTML5 has a shinier future than Flash or Silverlight but especially for Silverlight it's complicated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. You would want to factor in you own personal skill set, both now and in the future, what skills you would like to learn, and to what degree learning one skill helps you with others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. You would want to know you prioritize all of this when it comes to trade-offs.  Do I want a technology that is easy now but in decline, something not ideal for the game but teaches me marketable skills, something usable by few people but has more features (browser version, PC/tablet/phone)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given all of these factors, I don't think we can give someone a good answer in the format we have, unless they give us enough information that for their case it's pretty obvious.  And I don't think we can give blanket advice for all programmers building browser games because the answer will depend on all these factors, and we can't cover all the combinations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It could maybe be a blog post but it would still be a fair amount of work without limited the scope further." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8601" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3290" RevisionGUID="8f790d5c-301b-4a49-8789-a6afb2a70854" CreationDate="2012-03-09T21:49:49.420" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Everyone and their mother (and their dog and their robot dog and that dog's AI subroutines and their subroutines and their subroutines and their circuits and their atoms) has a favorite programming language. My answer to the question would be HTML 5 and Javascript but others will disagree and most of the answers would be equally valid. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People are forever looking for that one &quot;true&quot; language that will split the atom and instantiate Rainbow Unicorns all in one statement. When people typically ask &quot;what language should I learn&quot; they are really asking &quot;how can get other people (compiler writers, language designers, library developers, etc) to work for me so I don't actually have to learn how to do this.&quot; It's one thing if your boss says learn language X. It's another thing if you are learning language X on your own so that you can enrich yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are not a substitute for reading the manual(s). It's a hard manual to be sure and I've been looking into some kind of chart or application to make it easier. Until that can happen this stuff gets closed. Another problem is that much of the time we don't know what the Questioner knows or how much they understand. Are they an expert programmer looking for the ideal tool? Are they are a newbie who literally doesn't know the difference between an array and a list? There are no magic bullets; only hard work and experience." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8602" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3288" RevisionGUID="5aa69d83-e6e8-4fc5-a40b-c23bdcc75302" CreationDate="2012-03-09T22:17:46.213" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8603" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3291" RevisionGUID="df309b31-eca2-4f17-b594-ce1e0a9d5d6a" CreationDate="2012-03-10T12:52:28.913" UserId="30160" Text="**This question should have not been closed**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is a good programming question and encouraging for young budding programmers. The fact that they can't ask simple question that can broaden their horizons and point of view is not good for programmers site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have seen a trend lately that this was not the only question that was closed as off topic, there were a couple of others which probably were ok questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me address some of the issues raised by @wordengineer in his answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets not talk about absoluteness. Everyone has an answer and every answer is a valid answer. Some answer can be too out of the way, that might get negative votes. Others will be dead on target, they will get up votes. The reason that we have up/down voting system, strengthen the idea that the right answer get selected. Let say I answer this question with C++. I am sure I will get a couple of negative votes and that way I will realized c++ is not a good language to program the browser. May be another person says, JavaScript and HTML. May be he gets a few up votes and the OP realizes well, this might be it. Why would you close this question off topic? If the community can vote a answer up/down to make it clear to the OP that this might be the answer, why is such question not answerable or off topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139000/what-programming-language-would-be-the-best-fit-for-small-browser-games/139002#139002&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What is in this question that is off topic? I totally disagree.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And by the way there is an absolute answer for this question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/113839/explain-to-a-non-technical-manager-that-the-tool-he-chose-isnt-apt&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Doesn't it work on the same principle. You post your answer, I post mine. The one that gets voted up, might be a good candidate for correct asnwer? Or you think there really was only one answer and the rest were just totally useless?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8604" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2801" RevisionGUID="557b8ff5-f467-4c14-8fad-309281ba42b7" CreationDate="2012-03-10T22:03:18.927" UserId="34364" Comment="added 6 characters in body" Text="Currently on Programmers.SE we have a [tag:code] tag and a [tag:coding] tag. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither of them are needed. If somebody has a question on code issues, go to Stackoverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I say kill them, but what do you think? Are they useful? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8605" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3292" RevisionGUID="6c59c3d1-7973-4cbc-92de-5cf6fb61654e" CreationDate="2012-03-11T17:00:35.093" UserId="1130" Text="I found [this post][1] on SO's meta site, and since the question was about meta participation on P.SE, I thought I'd post the same question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to improve meta participation on P.SE's meta site? Try and keep one suggestion per answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/119817/158605&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8606" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3292" RevisionGUID="6c59c3d1-7973-4cbc-92de-5cf6fb61654e" CreationDate="2012-03-11T17:00:35.093" UserId="1130" Text="How can we get more people to participate in P.SE meta?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8607" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3292" RevisionGUID="6c59c3d1-7973-4cbc-92de-5cf6fb61654e" CreationDate="2012-03-11T17:00:35.093" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|meta|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8608" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3293" RevisionGUID="a060f0f7-cb8a-4dd3-b46d-3d96a4eb3715" CreationDate="2012-03-11T17:00:44.950" UserId="1130" Text="&#xD;&#xA;**Make the meta link more noticeable and inviting in the FAQ.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current description tells you to go there if you're looking for &quot;excruciating detail&quot;, which doesn't sound fun at all.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What if I need more help?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you’re looking for excruciating detail, our meta-discussion site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hosts a section of constantly evolving frequently asked questions that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; document everything about the site. Or, maybe you’d just like to learn&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a little more about us?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps we can change this to something more inviting, like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Have more questions about the site?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Come visit us on our [meta discussion site][2] for more Q&amp;A about how&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.StackExchange works, or to provide us with feedback about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the site. You can even&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participate in community events such as [our blog][4]! View the [meta&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FAQ][3] for more info.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8609" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3294" RevisionGUID="a6fdfde1-d383-4130-877a-8a166c1a7ec5" CreationDate="2012-03-11T17:02:36.603" UserId="1130" Text="**Stop being so aggressive with downvotes**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;New users don't understand why they're getting downvotes. We've trained them to think of downvotes as negative, so when they ask/answer something and it gets downvoted, they think that they are doing something wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The very first meta question I posted was asking about the possibility of implementing some kind of poll-of-the-day option to P.SE. It was downvoted, and even though it was explained to me that downvotes simply mean users disagree, it still made not want to participate in meta for a year or more afterwards because I felt I had somehow done something wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A much more welcoming solution would be to post an answer/comment disagreeing with the question, and let it gather upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically what I'm saying is, use comments/answers to answer the question, not up/down votes. In addition, I'd prefer to use votes to see how much support an idea has, not have it show a skewed sum of people who upvote - people who downvote. I have no idea if a question has 100 upvotes and 100 downvotes, or simply no votes at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may or may not agree with me on this, but I also feel that it is too easy to drive away people with different opinions. If someone posts something contrary to what the active meta group believes, the question will get a lot of downvotes and end up driving the user away. This makes the meta community smaller and less diverse." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8610" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3295" RevisionGUID="645b8bde-54f5-4df7-af6d-f469f18c371a" CreationDate="2012-03-11T17:03:47.037" UserId="1130" Text="**Add some kind of description about what Meta actually is on its home page**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As it stands now, a user's opinion on meta will be shaped by what questions happen to be on the front page, and if the user doesn't find any of those questions interesting, they're likely to assume the site is uninteresting and not come back&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We might need to get the SE team to help us with this, but I was thinking a small banner or box on the sidebar explaining in a single line what the site is and what it's for, like `Q&amp;A site to discuss programmers.stackexchange`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know I first came to meta by clicking the link next to the FAQ at the very top of the page, and the questions all looked way over my head so I just left, satisfied that I had at least seen what the link was and thought it was for people who ran the site, not me." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8611" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3296" RevisionGUID="8fa1e642-58f5-4d11-be81-cf064de20429" CreationDate="2012-03-11T17:04:31.217" UserId="1130" Text="**Link meta in comments more frequently**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, if you are closing a question, provide a meta link with your comment on why the question was closed, and point them to either an existing meta question which explains why their questions was closed (or better yet, one that tells them how to revise their question to get it re-opened)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8612" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3292" RevisionGUID="041882cc-2a67-4951-9b38-34c9d35262e0" CreationDate="2012-03-11T17:10:28.510" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 39 characters in body" Text="I found [this post][1] on SO's meta site, and since the question was about meta participation on P.SE, I thought I'd post the same question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to improve meta participation on P.SE's meta site? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/119817/158605&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8613" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3294" RevisionGUID="a810c733-a4eb-469b-a1b3-963cf9882659" CreationDate="2012-03-11T17:30:31.170" UserId="1130" Comment="Realized I didn't specify I was talking about downvotes on questions, not answers" Text="**Stop being so aggressive with downvotes on questions**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;New users don't understand why their questions are getting downvotes. We've trained them to think of downvotes as negative, so when they ask/answer something and it gets downvoted, they think that they are doing something wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The very first meta question I posted was asking about the possibility of implementing some kind of poll-of-the-day option to P.SE. It was downvoted, and even though it was explained to me that downvotes simply mean users disagree, it still made not want to participate in meta for a year or more afterwards because I felt I had somehow done something wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A much more welcoming solution would be to post an answer/comment disagreeing with the question, and let it gather upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically what I'm saying is, use comments/answers to answer the question, not up/down votes. In addition, I'd prefer to use votes to see how much support an idea has, not have it show a skewed sum of people who upvote - people who downvote. I have no idea if a question has 100 upvotes and 100 downvotes, or simply no votes at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may or may not agree with me on this, but I also feel that it is too easy to drive away people with different opinions. If someone posts something contrary to what the active meta group believes, the question will get a lot of downvotes and end up driving the user away. This makes the meta community smaller and less diverse." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8614" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3294" RevisionGUID="54fdd111-b15b-468f-89ce-e0f43af8263c" CreationDate="2012-03-11T17:38:23.267" UserId="1130" Comment="Realized I didn't specify I was talking about downvotes on questions, not answers" Text="**Stop being so aggressive with downvotes on questions**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;New users don't understand why their questions are getting downvotes. We've trained them to think of downvotes as negative, so when they ask/answer something and it gets downvoted, they think that they are doing something wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The very first meta question I posted was asking about the possibility of implementing some kind of poll-of-the-day option to P.SE. It was downvoted, and even though it was explained to me that downvotes simply mean users disagree, it still made not want to participate in meta for a year or more afterwards because I felt I had somehow done something wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A much more welcoming solution would be to post an answer/comment disagreeing with the question, and let it gather upvotes. It would be far better to have an answer posted disagreeing with the question to gain a lot of upvotes, than the question itself gain a lot of downvotes, because then you are providing positive feedback which actually answers the question instead of negative feedback to the person asking the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically what I'm saying is, use comments/answers to answer the question, not up/down votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, I'd prefer to use votes to see how much support an idea has, not have it show a skewed sum of people who upvote - people who downvote. I have no idea if a question has 100 upvotes and 100 downvotes, or simply no votes at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may or may not agree with me on this, but I also feel that it is too easy to drive away people with different opinions. If someone posts something contrary to what the active meta group believes, the question will get a lot of downvotes and end up driving the user away. This makes the meta community smaller and less diverse. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8615" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3294" RevisionGUID="f9585674-df52-49e6-9e90-c290040092a6" CreationDate="2012-03-11T17:50:57.967" UserId="1130" Comment="Really wanted to highlight one long sentence, so made it bold :)" Text="**Stop being so aggressive with downvotes on questions**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;New users don't understand why their questions are getting downvotes. We've trained them to think of downvotes as negative, so when they ask/answer something and it gets downvoted, they think that they are doing something wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The very first meta question I posted was asking about the possibility of implementing some kind of poll-of-the-day option to P.SE. It was downvoted, and even though it was explained to me that downvotes simply mean users disagree, it still made not want to participate in meta for a year or more afterwards because I felt I had somehow done something wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A much more welcoming solution would be to post an answer/comment disagreeing with the question, and let it gather upvotes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**It is far better to have an answer posted disagreeing with the question to gain a lot of upvotes, than the question itself gain a lot of downvotes, because then you are providing positive feedback which actually answers the question instead of negative feedback to the person asking the question.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically what I'm saying is, use comments/answers to answer the question, not up/down votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, I'd prefer to use votes to see how much support an idea has, not have it show a skewed sum of people who upvote - people who downvote. If I didn't have as much rep as I do now, I would have no idea if a question has 100 upvotes and 100 downvotes, or simply no votes at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may or may not agree with me on this, but I feel that it is too easy to drive away people with different opinions. If someone posts something contrary to what the active meta group believes, the question will get a lot of downvotes and end up driving the user away. This makes the meta community smaller and less diverse, which I feel is worse for the site. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8616" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3297" RevisionGUID="35a7cfab-f428-48dd-ab3f-480328b6aade" CreationDate="2012-03-11T18:04:09.233" UserId="1996" Text="Your question was a good one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Some moderators strictly interpret the Programmers.se charter, which has undergone massive changes during its short lifetime.&#xD;&#xA;- Interestingly enough, @Mark Trapp is no longer a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;- In the future, I recommend that you appeal to either @Thomas Owens or @mapleshaft. They'll give you a fair shake." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8617" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="3292" RevisionGUID="6b858656-3f41-4c8f-b20b-add23f8e14cc" CreationDate="2012-03-11T18:08:19.713" UserId="1996" Comment="Rollback to [6c59c3d1-7973-4cbc-92de-5cf6fb61654e]" Text="I found [this post][1] on SO's meta site, and since the question was about meta participation on P.SE, I thought I'd post the same question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to improve meta participation on P.SE's meta site? Try and keep one suggestion per answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/119817/158605&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8618" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3295" RevisionGUID="86764001-e1df-469c-98af-ad86dacc8a8f" CreationDate="2012-03-11T19:56:44.770" UserId="25936" Comment="added 198 characters in body" Text="**Add some kind of description about what Meta actually is on its home page**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As it stands now, a user's opinion on meta will be shaped by what questions happen to be on the front page, and if the user doesn't find any of those questions interesting, they're likely to assume the site is uninteresting and not come back&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We might need to get the SE team to help us with this, but I was thinking a small banner or box on the sidebar explaining in a single line what the site is and what it's for, like `Q&amp;A site to discuss programmers.stackexchange`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know I first came to meta by clicking the link next to the FAQ at the very top of the page, and the questions all looked way over my head so I just left, satisfied that I had at least seen what the link was and thought it was for people who ran the site, not me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could be similar to the &quot;Welcome&quot; notification people see when they visit Meta without having logged in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/glezF.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8619" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3298" RevisionGUID="d864930b-b913-4601-ab9e-d1c2a9cd34cb" CreationDate="2012-03-12T03:37:29.063" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Due to a huge amount of feedback received on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) regarding the deletion of massively-upvoted but off-topic/not-constructive questions, questions locked for historical reasons have taken on [new behavior](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/reputation-and-historical-archives/) that could be beneficial for Programmers (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Last but not least, we’re experimenting with ways to keep some of the more useful – [or even just fun](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/) – questions from the site’s history accessible in some way. To be clear: most of these are not great examples of questions that should be asked today… But some of them are, quite frankly, brilliant – and losing them entirely just because they aren’t a good fit for our strict Q&amp;A format is wrong. **For now, we’ve provided a “Historical Artifact” lock that completely freezes a question and its answers, preventing all further editing, voting, answering, and flagging. It will also remove it from the usual lists of questions on the site while allowing it to remain fully accessible and visible to everyone with a link to it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This, to me, obviates at least in part [previous guidance](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question) that locks should not be a substitute for closure and eventual deletion even on the whale questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since these questions are unlikely to be deleted any time soon, I'd like to propose locking for historical reasons the site's most popular closed questions—and thus removing them from the site's top questions list and helping to mitigate some user confusion—that have 100 score or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would be the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-programming-career&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/93983/why-dont-all-companies-buy-developers-the-best-hardware&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/perks-for-new-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91350/what-should-every-programmer-know&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20407/will-high-reputation-in-stack-overflow-help-to-get-a-good-job&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47197/are-there-any-famous-one-man-army-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64727/windows-azure-vs-amazon-ec2-vs-google-app-engine&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106202/my-boss-wants-a-narrated-line-by-line-english-explanation-of-our-code&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101988/should-developers-accept-overtime-weekend-work-denied-bonus-payments&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114819/are-9-to-5-programmers-looked-down-upon&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30355/how-to-become-a-faster-programmer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81929/is-it-normal-for-people-to-not-work&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36612/what-kind-of-innovative-non-cash-financial-benefits-do-i-offer-to-my-developers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32425/i-still-cant-figure-out-how-to-program&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11312/stuff-every-programmer-needs-while-working&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110804/why-are-zero-based-arrays-the-norm&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12807/make-a-big-deal-out-of-true&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50831/how-do-programmers-in-the-west-see-programmers-in-the-east&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1745/whats-the-most-absurd-myth-about-programming-issues&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Doing so should substantially clean up one of the major broken windows on the site: the [highest voted questions list](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8620" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3298" RevisionGUID="d864930b-b913-4601-ab9e-d1c2a9cd34cb" CreationDate="2012-03-12T03:37:29.063" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Lock the top-voted questions that are closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8621" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3298" RevisionGUID="d864930b-b913-4601-ab9e-d1c2a9cd34cb" CreationDate="2012-03-12T03:37:29.063" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|locking|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8622" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3299" RevisionGUID="5baf28d5-e1fe-4bc1-b8f3-3505d143f85f" CreationDate="2012-03-12T05:49:40.360" UserId="1130" Text="I love this idea, how soon can we implement it? :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8623" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3300" RevisionGUID="e1176651-5795-4aa9-a597-3fb76ee2609c" CreationDate="2012-03-12T09:52:53.103" UserId="25936" Text="For reference, the historical lock notification reads as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Historical significance**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but **it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site**, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: [FAQ][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the Meta Stack Overflow discussion I was in favour of deleting all the whales, mainly because the arguments in favour of keeping them around didn't convince me. However we are not Stack Overflow, we had a somewhat sudden change of direction and most of these questions are actually of historical significance, mostly as a reminder of the early days of our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would really love to keep them around, locked, but keep in mind that this only applies to currently closed questions that are scored over 100, similar questions that were deleted in the past should stay deleted. The historical lock is not an excuse to bring every crap back from the grave.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, since locking requires moderation intervention, I would expect the community to prune the questions before I consider locking them. All of the questions you referenced have several pages of answers, and most of this answers are quite pointless. We are not going to go around and delete answers and comments on our own, if the community wants these questions to stay, some effort is required: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Flag one-line answers as &quot;Not an answer&quot;,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Flag answers that just re-iterate earlier answers as &quot;Not an answer&quot;,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Flag obsolete / not constructive / too chatty comments,&#xD;&#xA; 4. Fix even the most minor mistakes in the question and its top answers,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And we can apply the historical lock. If no one bothers, the question will remain closed and may be deleted in the future, following the normal deletion process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8624" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3300" RevisionGUID="0e5bf84e-fee2-4f70-b697-80eac1a5dbcb" CreationDate="2012-03-12T10:02:02.047" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="For reference, the historical lock notification reads as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Historical significance**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but **it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site**, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: [FAQ][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the Meta Stack Overflow discussion I was in favour of deleting all the whales, mainly because the arguments in favour of keeping them around didn't convince me. However we are not Stack Overflow, we had a somewhat sudden change of direction and most of these questions are actually of historical significance, mostly as a reminder of the early days of our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would really love to keep them around, locked, but keep in mind that this only applies to currently closed questions that are scored over 100, similar questions that were deleted in the past should stay deleted. The historical lock is not an excuse to bring every crap back from the grave.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, since locking requires moderation intervention, I would expect the community to prune the questions before I consider locking them. All of the questions you referenced have several pages of answers, and most of the answers are quite pointless. We are not going to go around and delete answers and comments on our own, if the community wants these questions to stay, some effort is required: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Flag one-line answers as &quot;Not an answer&quot;,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Flag answers that just re-iterate earlier answers as &quot;Not an answer&quot;,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Flag obsolete / not constructive / too chatty comments,&#xD;&#xA; 4. Fix even the most minor mistakes in the question and its top answers,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And we can apply the historical lock. If no one bothers, the question will remain closed and may be deleted in the future, following the normal deletion process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8625" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3300" RevisionGUID="811dac30-d2bd-4359-a3f9-e8aed31ef39f" CreationDate="2012-03-12T11:04:34.373" UserId="25936" Comment="added 363 characters in body" Text="For reference, the historical lock notification reads as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Historical significance**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but **it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site**, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: [FAQ][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the Meta Stack Overflow discussion I was in favour of deleting all the whales, mainly because the arguments in favour of keeping them around didn't convince me. However we are not Stack Overflow, we had a somewhat sudden change of direction and most of these questions are actually of historical significance, mostly as a reminder of the early days of our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would really love to keep them around, locked, but keep in mind that this only applies to currently closed questions that are scored over 100, similar questions that were deleted in the past should stay deleted. The historical lock is not an excuse to bring every crap back from the grave.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, since locking requires moderation intervention, I would expect the community to prune the questions before I consider locking them. All of the questions you referenced have several pages of answers, and most of the answers are quite pointless. We are not going to go around and delete answers and comments on our own, if the community wants these questions to stay, some effort is required: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Flag one-line answers&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Flag answers that just re-iterate earlier answers&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Flag obsolete / not constructive / too chatty comments,&#xD;&#xA; 4. Fix even the most minor mistakes in the question and its top answers,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And we can apply the historical lock. If no one bothers, the question will remain closed and may be deleted in the future, following the normal deletion process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Normal flagging protocol applies. An one-line answer can still be a great answer, don't flag blindly. Flag as &quot;not an answer&quot; if the answer is clearly not an answer, or flag as other and give us a short explanation of why the answer doesn't belong, if you feel there's need for an explanation (e.g. &quot;this answer is a duplicate of that earlier answer&quot;)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8626" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3300" RevisionGUID="d447c4a2-f46b-41da-a1d3-7b8742a06bb3" CreationDate="2012-03-12T12:22:14.640" UserId="25936" Comment="added 145 characters in body" Text="For reference, the historical lock notification reads as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Historical significance**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but **it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site**, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: [FAQ][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the Meta Stack Overflow discussion I was in favour of deleting all the whales, mainly because the arguments in favour of keeping them around didn't convince me. However we are not Stack Overflow, we had a somewhat sudden change of direction and most of these questions are actually of historical significance, mostly as a reminder of the early days of our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would really love to keep them around, locked, but keep in mind that this only applies to currently closed questions that are scored over 100, similar questions that were deleted in the past should stay deleted. The historical lock is not an excuse to bring every crap back from the grave.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, since locking requires moderation intervention, I would expect the community to prune the questions before I consider locking them. All of the questions you referenced have several pages of answers, and most of the answers are quite pointless. We are not going to go around and delete answers and comments on our own, if the community wants these questions to stay, some effort is required: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Flag one-line answers&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Flag answers that just re-iterate earlier answers&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Flag obsolete / not constructive / too chatty comments,&#xD;&#xA; 4. Fix even the most minor mistakes in the question and its top answers,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And we can apply the historical lock. If no one bothers, the question will remain closed and may be deleted in the future, following the normal deletion process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel a question has been sufficiently cleaned up and it should be locked, please flag it for moderation attention so we can review it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Normal flagging protocol applies. An one-line answer can still be a great answer, don't flag blindly. Flag as &quot;not an answer&quot; if the answer is clearly not an answer, or flag as other and give us a short explanation of why the answer doesn't belong, if you feel there's need for an explanation (e.g. &quot;this answer is a duplicate of that earlier answer&quot;)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8627" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3300" RevisionGUID="f3eebc75-7be3-400a-b4cc-7918626ac260" CreationDate="2012-03-12T12:33:12.130" UserId="25936" Comment="added 385 characters in body" Text="For reference, the historical lock notification reads as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Historical significance**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but **it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site**, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: [FAQ][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the Meta Stack Overflow discussion I was in favour of deleting all the whales, mainly because the arguments in favour of keeping them around didn't convince me. However we are not Stack Overflow, we had a somewhat sudden change of direction and most of these questions are actually of historical significance, mostly as a reminder of the early days of our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would really love to keep them around, locked, but keep in mind that this only applies to currently closed questions that are scored over 100, similar questions that were deleted in the past should stay deleted. The historical lock is not an excuse to bring every crap back from the grave.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, since locking requires moderation intervention, I would expect the community to prune the questions before I consider locking them. All of the questions you referenced have several pages of answers, and most of the answers are quite pointless. We are not going to go around and delete answers and comments on our own, if the community wants these questions to stay, some effort is required: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Flag one-line answers&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Flag answers that just re-iterate earlier answers&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Flag obsolete / not constructive / too chatty comments&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;,&#xD;&#xA; 4. Fix even the most minor mistakes in the question and its top answers,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And we can apply the historical lock. If no one bothers, the question will remain closed and may be deleted in the future, following the normal deletion process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel a question has been sufficiently cleaned up and it should be locked, please flag it for moderation attention so we can review it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Normal flagging protocol applies. An one-line answer can still be a great answer, don't flag blindly. Flag as &quot;not an answer&quot; if the answer is clearly not an answer, or flag as other and give us a short explanation of why the answer doesn't belong, if you feel there's need for an explanation (e.g. &quot;this answer is a duplicate of that earlier answer&quot;)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Look at the &quot;When shouldn't I comment?&quot; section on [comment privilege page][2] for guidance on what comments are noisy and don't add anything to the discussion. All this &quot;+1 I like this&quot; / &quot;-1 I don't like this&quot; comments should be deleted before we consider locking the question.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8628" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3300" RevisionGUID="bf2afeb6-9fce-41b9-b480-8d2ad6623681" CreationDate="2012-03-12T12:42:18.127" UserId="25936" Comment="added 385 characters in body" Text="For reference, the historical lock notification reads as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Historical significance**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but **it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site**, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: [FAQ][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the Meta Stack Overflow discussion I was in favour of deleting all the whales, mainly because the arguments in favour of keeping them around didn't convince me. However we are not Stack Overflow, we had a somewhat sudden change of direction and most of these questions are actually of historical significance, mostly as a reminder of the early days of our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would really love to keep them around, locked, but keep in mind that this only applies to currently closed questions that are scored over 100, similar questions that were deleted in the past should stay deleted. The historical lock is not an excuse to bring every crap back from the grave.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, since locking requires moderation intervention, I would expect the community to prune the questions before I consider locking them. All of the questions you referenced have several pages of answers, and most of the answers are quite pointless. We are not going to go around and delete answers and comments on our own, if the community wants these questions to stay, some effort is required: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Flag answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  One-line answers, answers that just re-iterate earlier answers or otherwise do not belong, look at our [&quot;how to answer&quot; page][2] for guidance. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The normal flagging protocol applies. An one-line answer can still be a great answer, don't flag blindly. Flag as &quot;not an answer&quot; if the answer is clearly not an answer, or flag as other and give us a short explanation of why the answer doesn't belong, if you feel there's need for an explanation (e.g. &quot;this answer is a duplicate of that earlier answer&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Flag comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Flag obsolete / not constructive / too chatty comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Look at the &quot;When shouldn't I comment?&quot; section on [comment privilege page][3] for guidance on what comments are noisy and don't add anything to the discussion. All the &quot;+1 I like this&quot; / &quot;-1 I don't like this&quot; comments should be cleaned up before we consider locking the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. **Edit the question and its answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If we are keeping the questions around as historically significant, it makes sense to fix even the most minor mistakes in the question and its top answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. **When done, flag the question for moderation review**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If you feel a question has been sufficiently cleaned up and it should be locked, please flag it for moderation attention so we can review it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If no one bothers, the question will remain closed and may be deleted in the future, following the normal deletion process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8629" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3301" RevisionGUID="b03331fe-5a6d-4f5c-9c7a-25a7dd26ccbe" CreationDate="2012-03-12T14:14:05.733" UserId="1130" Text="A while back I made a suggestion to [either rename the site to match the FAQ, or change the FAQ so it matches the site name][1] to help clear up a lot of the confusion I see over what P.SE is for. That question was asked to see if this idea had any support, and I believe it does judging by the 25 upvotes it currently has, and the [other][2] [questions][3] which were pointed out that ask the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site name is the first, and often only, piece of information a user has to judge our site on. Since we can't change the site's name, this question is to ask **what kind of changes can we make to the FAQ to make it accurately reflect the site name, without going back to the mindless fun this site began as?**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see a lot of confusion over the scope of P.SE, and I think [this recent MSO comment][20] sums up what I've seen:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; no one recommends Programmers anymore because it's unclear what the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site's scope is and some of its users disagree strongly with what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others of its users think the site's scope entails&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So to be clear, I would like to make some changes to the FAQ, which will ultimately make changes to the site scope. The changes I want would broaden the scope of P.SE to allow questions that require the unique expertise of a programmer, even if it's not about software development specifically, but are not ones that would allow mindless fun. All questions should still be about a programmer's professional growth, not their entertainment. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this would go a long ways towards making the site scope match the site name, and clear up the confusion caused by the current differences. In addition, I am hoping this will help reconcile users from both sides of the site scope argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My suggestions are below. I wanted to post them all together in one answer since they I feel the suggestions make the most sense if you read them in order, but ultimately decided to separate them so we can comment, evaluate, and vote on each suggestion individually. Please review and vote on the suggestions, or add your own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/124923/where-in-the-stack-exchange-world-can-i-initiate-a-programming-related-discuss/124927#comment336347_124925&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8630" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3301" RevisionGUID="b03331fe-5a6d-4f5c-9c7a-25a7dd26ccbe" CreationDate="2012-03-12T14:14:05.733" UserId="1130" Text="Changing the FAQ to reflect the site's name" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8631" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3301" RevisionGUID="b03331fe-5a6d-4f5c-9c7a-25a7dd26ccbe" CreationDate="2012-03-12T14:14:05.733" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8632" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3302" RevisionGUID="bd3e2c9d-044e-4659-840d-8db5bee97816" CreationDate="2012-03-12T14:14:21.473" UserId="1130" Text="&#xD;&#xA;**1) Change opening paragraph**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To start with, the existing opening line in the FAQ immediately limits questions to software-development questions only. If this were a site about software development only, I would expect it to be called `softwaredevelopment.se`, not `programmers.se`, and to be honest, I do not fully see why I should ask many of our questions on `softwaredevelopment.se` instead of stackoverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel the starting line should go more along the lines of this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.StackExchange is a site for professional programmers who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; are interested in collaborating and learning from each other to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; improve their understanding of the software development process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should immediately be followed by this, which is one of the most frequently asked questions I have seen from users who participate in the stack exchange network: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[What's the difference between Programmers and StackOverflow?][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; When you are sitting at a keyboard and writing code, you should go&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to StackOverflow. If you are standing at a whiteboard, or discussing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; design concepts with your team, come to Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These two lines are very brief and easy to read, and sets a standard for what the site is about and the type of material found here. If users do not read any further, they should at least have a general idea of who and what the site is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/173/1130&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8633" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3303" RevisionGUID="45771561-b794-4c41-a63e-0f24331fbaa2" CreationDate="2012-03-12T14:14:55.313" UserId="1130" Text="&#xD;&#xA;**2) Change the style of how we define site scope**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity. It seems unrealistic to have a comprehensive list of what types of questions are on-topic and what is not, especially since I think our site is best defined by the type of answer needed, not by the question topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So instead of trying to make a list of absolutely everything about programmers and if its on/off topic, I feel we should instead define what makes a question good for this site, which happens to be the type of answer they require.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions can I ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asked should:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; yourself**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to your programming career to stay in one job too long][5].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **They should ask for a single answer, not a list of answers**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    For example, asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer?][6] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list&#xD;&#xA;&gt; will get outdated as time and technology progresses.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a single answer][7] that can only be answered by a programmer. For&#xD;&#xA;&gt; example, asking [What are some good books about development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies?][8] would be closed, however asking for a *specific*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; book with a limited scope, such as [Is there a canonical book on the Agile software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development methodology?][9] is OK.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Should be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    The question should relate to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare&#xD;&#xA;&gt; time. Does that make me a bad developer?][10].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Has a clear answer can be agreed upon by the majority of programmers**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  [We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][11]. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Don't ask questions about [What &#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/technology should I learn next?][12] or [Is A better than B?][13]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended &#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussions&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Instead, visit our [chat][14] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Should be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  In other words, don't give us your life story with your question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be referenced by any programmer, not just you. Help us maintain our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop the number of &quot;but so and so is on/off topic in the FAQ&quot; comments I see, because the scope of this site is really defined by the answers, not the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/12833/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7859/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8634" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3304" RevisionGUID="c4981662-2599-4687-9323-344f7f33f79d" CreationDate="2012-03-12T14:15:07.060" UserId="1130" Text="&#xD;&#xA;**3) Remove the blue and white &quot;Question Applies To:&quot; graphic**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As much as I like our fancy blue circle showing a question should apply to &quot;All Programmers&quot;, I think we should get rid of it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is very large, quite eye-catching, and promotes too many career-related questions since one of the circles is &quot;All Careers&quot;. I feel if we are going to have a graphic this large and colorful in our FAQ, it'd better be one that clearly and completely defines the site scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps if we made it much smaller we could fit it next to the careers-is-off-topic section, but in its current state I don't think it should be in our FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Fancy blue circle][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/NO4Os.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8635" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3305" RevisionGUID="8313eef3-36e0-40ce-b851-32251b050094" CreationDate="2012-03-12T14:15:19.320" UserId="1130" Text="&#xD;&#xA;**4) Remove the &quot;What about subjective questions?&quot; section**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are no longer as tolerant as we once were on subjective questions, and I think the guidelines listed lead to problem questions, particularly the bit telling users that questions should &quot;invite sharing experiences over opinions&quot; (I think every one of these I've seen has been closed as a poll). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel we can do better by merging key parts of this section in with the &quot;what kind of questions can I ask here&quot; section.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing I think we should keep from this section is the line that says&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please [look around][17] to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to [ask and answer your own question][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I have no idea why this is in the &quot;subjective questions&quot; section anyways)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8636" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3306" RevisionGUID="8b11eda6-4c7f-4c11-bd7f-92586778e2ad" CreationDate="2012-03-12T14:15:39.070" UserId="1130" Text="&#xD;&#xA;**5) Remove the &quot;What kind of questions should I not ask here?&quot; section**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've already listed what kind of questions can be asked here. We should not need to list the kind of questions that cannot be asked here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/its-ok-to-ask-and-answer-your-own-questions/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8637" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3302" RevisionGUID="4a504658-9ed0-47ec-b07c-a5c47b792c74" CreationDate="2012-03-12T14:24:07.780" UserId="1130" Comment="deleted 751 characters in body" Text="**1) Change opening line**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To start with, the existing opening line in the FAQ immediately limits questions to software-development questions only. If this were a site about software development only, I would expect it to be called `softwaredevelopment.se`, not `programmers.se`, and to be honest, I do not fully see why I should ask many of our questions on `softwaredevelopment.se` instead of stackoverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel the starting line should be something less limiting, such as this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.StackExchange is a site for professional programmers who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; are interested in collaborating and learning from each other to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; improve their understanding of the software development process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8638" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3307" RevisionGUID="745a95ac-d00d-484d-890d-05fb18cef228" CreationDate="2012-03-12T14:24:57.623" UserId="1130" Text="**1.5) Add the difference between Programmers.SE and SO**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The opening sentence should immediately be followed by this, which is one of the most frequently asked questions I have seen from users who participate in the stack exchange network: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[What's the difference between Programmers and StackOverflow?][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; When you are sitting at a keyboard and writing code, you should go&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to StackOverflow. If you are standing at a whiteboard, or discussing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; design concepts with your team, come to Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If users do not read any further, they should at least have a general idea of who and what the site is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/173/1130&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8639" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="941" RevisionGUID="7949099b-7a51-4c58-a64f-deeb95edf19a" CreationDate="2012-03-12T14:32:37.627" UserId="47" />
  <row Id="8640" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="941" RevisionGUID="7949099b-7a51-4c58-a64f-deeb95edf19a" CreationDate="2012-03-12T14:32:37.627" UserId="47" Comment="remove commentary and retag" Text="I've just noticed that [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/35471/47) converted to Community Wiki after 16 answers had been posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought that the threshold was after the 30th answer had been posted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8641" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="941" RevisionGUID="7949099b-7a51-4c58-a64f-deeb95edf19a" CreationDate="2012-03-12T14:32:37.627" UserId="47" Comment="remove commentary and retag" Text="|support|faq|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8642" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="942" RevisionGUID="b787fffc-05ae-479e-b6f5-1e83d666378a" CreationDate="2012-03-12T14:32:48.313" UserId="47" />
  <row Id="8643" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3306" RevisionGUID="ed08fe5e-8f6f-4dee-8ca5-22a7efea9853" CreationDate="2012-03-12T14:35:52.557" UserId="1130" Comment="added 48 characters in body" Text="**5) Remove the &quot;What kind of questions should I not ask here?&quot; section**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've already listed what kind of questions can be asked here. We should not need to list the kind of questions that cannot be asked here. It only adds to the wall-of-text that is our FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/its-ok-to-ask-and-answer-your-own-questions/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8644" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3301" RevisionGUID="da696c2b-59e1-471f-aac5-ea9ec5e369fe" CreationDate="2012-03-12T14:38:59.917" UserId="1130" Comment="added 393 characters in body" Text="A while back I made a suggestion to [either rename the site to match the FAQ, or change the FAQ so it matches the site name][1] to help clear up a lot of the confusion I see over what P.SE is for. That question was asked to see if this idea had any support, and I believe it does judging by the 25 upvotes it currently has, and the [other][2] [questions][3] which were pointed out that ask the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site name is the first, and often only, piece of information a user has to judge our site on. Since we can't change the site's name, this question is to ask **what kind of changes can we make to the FAQ to make it accurately reflect the site name, without going back to the mindless fun this site began as?**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see a lot of confusion over the scope of P.SE, and I think [this recent MSO comment][20] sums up what I've seen:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; no one recommends Programmers anymore because it's unclear what the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site's scope is and some of its users disagree strongly with what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others of its users think the site's scope entails&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So to be clear, I would like to make some changes to the FAQ, which will ultimately tweak the site scope. The changes I want would broaden the scope of P.SE to allow questions that require the unique expertise of a programmer, even if it's not about software development specifically, but are not ones that would allow mindless fun. All questions should still be about a programmer's professional growth, not their entertainment.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, questions like [How to mentor a Junior Developer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138396/how-to-mentor-a-junior-developer/138406#138406) is actually off-topic for our current scope, however is a great question for programmers so was left open. Questions such as these could no longer be pointed out as &quot;but this one is left open even though the FAQ says it shouldn't be&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this would go a long ways towards making the site scope match the site name, and clear up the confusion caused by the current differences. In addition, I am hoping this will help reconcile users from both sides of the site scope argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My suggestions are below. I wanted to post them all together in one answer since they I feel the suggestions make the most sense if you read them in order, but ultimately decided to separate them so we can comment, evaluate, and vote on each suggestion individually. Please review and vote on the suggestions, or add your own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/124923/where-in-the-stack-exchange-world-can-i-initiate-a-programming-related-discuss/124927#comment336347_124925&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8645" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3305" RevisionGUID="ccc9edf0-cfa2-4367-90e1-5d109cfe22e1" CreationDate="2012-03-12T16:16:37.500" UserId="1130" Comment="fixed broken link" Text="**4) Remove the &quot;What about subjective questions?&quot; section**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are no longer as tolerant as we once were on subjective questions, and I think the guidelines listed lead to problem questions, particularly the bit telling users that questions should &quot;invite sharing experiences over opinions&quot; (I think every one of these I've seen has been closed as a poll). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel we can do better by merging key parts of this section in with the &quot;what kind of questions can I ask here&quot; section.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing I think we should keep from this section is the line that says&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please [look around][17] to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to [ask and answer your own question][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I have no idea why this is in the &quot;subjective questions&quot; section anyways)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/its-ok-to-ask-and-answer-your-own-questions/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8646" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3301" RevisionGUID="ed861e00-2ba8-4b4d-b0b0-df501f769d40" CreationDate="2012-03-12T16:37:12.217" UserId="1130" Comment="Removed stuff about changing site scope since I want to stay focused on the topic of changing FAQ to match site name, and it seems to be causing problems" Text="A while back I made a suggestion to [either rename the site to match the FAQ, or change the FAQ so it matches the site name][1] to help clear up a lot of the confusion I see over what P.SE is for. That question was asked to see if this idea had any support, and I believe it does judging by the 25 upvotes it currently has, and the [other][2] [questions][3] which were pointed out that ask the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site name is the first, and often only, piece of information a user has to judge our site on. Since we can't change the site's name, this question is to ask **what kind of changes can we make to the FAQ to make it accurately reflect the site name, without going back to the mindless fun this site began as?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see a lot of confusion over the scope of P.SE, and I think [this recent MSO comment][20] sums up what I've seen:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; no one recommends Programmers anymore because it's unclear what the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site's scope is and some of its users disagree strongly with what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others of its users think the site's scope entails&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My suggestions are below. I wanted to post them all together in one answer since they I feel the suggestions make the most sense if you read them in order, but ultimately decided to separate them so we can comment, evaluate, and vote on each suggestion individually. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this would go a long ways towards making the site scope match the site name, and clear up the confusion caused by the current differences. In addition, I am hoping this will help reconcile users from both sides of the site scope argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review and vote on the suggestions, or add your own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/124923/where-in-the-stack-exchange-world-can-i-initiate-a-programming-related-discuss/124927#comment336347_124925" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8647" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3307" RevisionGUID="b25baeb7-7010-4913-8ae0-7c0fbd67c3ea" CreationDate="2012-03-12T16:54:11.027" UserId="1130" Comment="rearranged order of suggestion per jcmeloni's suggestion in comments below" Text="**1.5) Add the difference between Programmers.SE and SO**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The opening sentence should immediately be followed by this, which is one of the most frequently asked questions I have seen from users who participate in the stack exchange network: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[What's the difference between Programmers and StackOverflow?][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are standing at a whiteboard or discussing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; design concepts with your team, come to Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are sitting at a keyboard and writing code, you should go&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to StackOverflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If users do not read any further, they should at least have a general idea of who and what the site is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/173/1130&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8648" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3303" RevisionGUID="0c9cdc03-ee33-457f-8882-b153550b2620" CreationDate="2012-03-12T19:02:01.880" UserId="1130" Comment="added 232 characters in body" Text="**2) Change the style of how we define site scope**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity. It seems unrealistic to have a comprehensive list of what types of questions are on-topic and what is not, especially since I think our site is best defined by the type of answer needed, not by the question topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So instead of trying to make a list of absolutely everything about programmers and if its on/off topic, I feel we should instead define what makes a question good for this site, which happens to be the type of answer they require.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions can I ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asked should:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; yourself**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to your programming career to stay in one job too long][5].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **They should ask for a single answer, not a list of answers**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    For example, asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer?][6] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list&#xD;&#xA;&gt; will get outdated as time and technology progresses.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a single answer][7] that can only be answered by a programmer. For&#xD;&#xA;&gt; example, asking [What are some good books about development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies?][8] would be closed, however asking for a *specific*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; book with a limited scope, such as [Is there a canonical book on the Agile software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development methodology?][9] is OK.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Should be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    The question should relate to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare&#xD;&#xA;&gt; time. Does that make me a bad developer?][10].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Has a clear answer can be agreed upon by the majority of programmers**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  [We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][11]. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Don't ask questions about [What &#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/technology should I learn next?][12] or [Is A better than B?][13]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended &#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussions&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Instead, visit our [chat][14] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Should be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  In other words, don't give us your life story with your question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be referenced by any programmer, not just you. Help us maintain our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop the number of &quot;but so and so is on/off topic in the FAQ&quot; comments I see, because the scope of this site is really defined by the answers, not the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some concerns below about this becoming a big wall of text, and I agree. Perhaps we could use [more][6]/[less][6] links like we have in the current FAQ to hide examples unless the user is looking for examples&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/12833/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7859/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8649" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3303" RevisionGUID="8a5881ce-4f84-4ebf-a957-89017b44d481" CreationDate="2012-03-12T19:18:34.087" UserId="1130" Comment="added 155 characters in body" Text="**2) Change the style of how we define site scope**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity. It seems unrealistic to have a comprehensive list of what types of questions are on-topic and what is not, especially since I think our site is best defined by the type of answer needed, not by the question topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So instead of trying to make a list of absolutely everything about programmers and if its on/off topic, I feel we should instead define what makes a question good for this site, which happens to be the type of answer they require.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions can I ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asked should:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; yourself**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to your programming career to stay in one job too long][5].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **They should ask for a single answer, not a list of answers**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    For example, asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer?][6] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list&#xD;&#xA;&gt; will get outdated as time and technology progresses.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a single answer][7] that can only be answered by a programmer. For&#xD;&#xA;&gt; example, asking [What are some good books about development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies?][8] would be closed, however asking for a *specific*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; book with a limited scope, such as [Is there a canonical book on the Agile software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development methodology?][9] is OK.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Should be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    The question should relate to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare&#xD;&#xA;&gt; time. Does that make me a bad developer?][10].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Has a clear answer can be agreed upon by the majority of programmers**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  [We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][11]. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Don't ask questions about [What &#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/technology should I learn next?][12] or [Is A better than B?][13]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended &#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussions&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Instead, visit our [chat][14] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Should be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  In other words, don't give us your life story with your question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be referenced by any programmer, not just you. Help us maintain our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop the number of &quot;but so and so is on/off topic in the FAQ&quot; comments I see, because the scope of this site is really defined by the answers, not the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some concerns below about this becoming a big wall of text, and I agree. Perhaps we could use [more][6]/[less][6] links like we have in the current FAQ to hide examples unless the user is looking for examples. If we are unable to collapse the text or make this easy to read, we could also just display bullet points that link to meta questions on relevant topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/12833/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7859/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8650" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3308" RevisionGUID="52889beb-c8a6-4607-8441-800ecfcf0f95" CreationDate="2012-03-12T19:31:19.067" UserId="147" Text="About the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [In hindsight, is XAML a mistake or a good approach?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139382)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this is a solicitation of constructive criticism and praise for an existing technology. We want to know what lessons we learnt, what good ideas to replicate and what mistakes to avoid in future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why was this very constructive question closed as “not constructive”?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8651" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3308" RevisionGUID="52889beb-c8a6-4607-8441-800ecfcf0f95" CreationDate="2012-03-12T19:31:19.067" UserId="147" Text="Why was the XAML question closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8652" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3308" RevisionGUID="52889beb-c8a6-4607-8441-800ecfcf0f95" CreationDate="2012-03-12T19:31:19.067" UserId="147" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8653" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3306" RevisionGUID="440a3778-6a73-4231-8958-e02e33a4b24d" CreationDate="2012-03-12T19:38:53.303" UserId="1130" Comment="added 61 characters in body" Text="**5) Remove the &quot;What kind of questions should I not ask here?&quot; section**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've already listed what kind of questions can be asked here. We should not need to list the kind of questions that cannot be asked here. It only adds to the wall-of-text that is our FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggestion dropped due to strong disagreement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/its-ok-to-ask-and-answer-your-own-questions/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8654" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3309" RevisionGUID="14811b6e-caf1-4fcf-9384-728c0fe0ecf2" CreationDate="2012-03-12T19:47:47.533" UserId="25936" Text="From our [FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions should I not ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is very open ended, doesn't present an actual problem, and the only motivation behind it appears to be a discussion as OP appears to have already made up their mind. There is nothing inherently wrong with the question or questions of similar characteristics, they just don't fit the Q&amp;A philosophy and format of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [Is Programmers.SE a discussion board or a Q&amp;A board?][3] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8655" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3310" RevisionGUID="cabc9d23-80ba-4b3f-a488-f187aa6880fc" CreationDate="2012-03-12T19:48:23.990" UserId="25476" Text="An example of an unconstructive subjective question is defined in the FAQ as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; • there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question listed above really isn't solving a problem, it is just encouraging a broad discussion on a very complex issue.  It would be suitable for a forum post but not for the format of this site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8656" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1838" RevisionGUID="ace6fe30-e8a7-4f92-a9ce-ec94f9327906" CreationDate="2012-03-12T20:11:25.633" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited title" Text="Can something highlighting the difference between Programmers and SO be added to the FAQ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8657" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1838" RevisionGUID="ace6fe30-e8a7-4f92-a9ce-ec94f9327906" CreationDate="2012-03-12T20:11:25.633" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited title" Text="As many, I had a question migrated from Stack Overflow to Programmers.SE. I actually liked the fact it was migrated, as I initially also had the gut feeling it was more appropriate on Programmers.SE than Stack Overflow, but I couldn't find anything backing up this feeling in either Programmers.SE or Stack Overflow FAQ. On the contrary, I could find indication that the question was a better fit for Stack Overflow on their FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  if your question generally covers matters that are unique to the programming profession then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I [asked][1] clarifications on why the question was migrated a user came up with a dead easy explanation that I am proposing to include in both Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE FAQs:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If it's a question about *programming* belongs on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA; - If it's a question about *programmers* belongs on Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/96845/why-was-my-question-migrated" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8658" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1840" RevisionGUID="98430582-8077-4cef-91a9-ba09c169e85f" CreationDate="2012-03-12T20:18:11.507" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Switch the clauses" Text="Like Jon, I don't think that's a correct definition. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do not *only* allow questions about *programmers*. Algorithm design and application licensing, for example, are both on topic without being about people and at least algorithm design is definitely about *programming*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I agree that there we need to better communicate the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow. I'm personally partial to Jeff's own statement from [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In a nutshell, Programmers is for when you're in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues, Stack Overflow is for when you're front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe our tag line could use an update to something along those lines as well. Currently it is &quot;Q&amp;A for programmers interested in professional discussions on software development&quot;, which is bad both for being extremely vague and including the word &quot;discussions&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should put more emphasis on conceptual *programming* questions or else we will be forever seeing millions of variations on &quot;what's the best language for me&quot; and &quot;should I take this job&quot;. Not saying that those aren't real problems for people, but they're not questions that either fit very well in the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A model or require the software development expertise and talent that we're trying to draw in and build in the community here on Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8659" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1840" RevisionGUID="d3ea7137-5fce-4184-9405-d65a61b83032" CreationDate="2012-03-12T20:21:19.443" UserId="1130" Comment="My OCD was kicking in about the lack of an &quot;and&quot;" Text="Like Jon, I don't think that's a correct definition. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do not *only* allow questions about *programmers*. Algorithm design and application licensing, for example, are both on topic without being about people and at least algorithm design is definitely about *programming*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I agree that there we need to better communicate the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow. I'm personally partial to Jeff's own statement from [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In a nutshell, Programmers is for when you're in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues, and Stack Overflow is for when you're front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe our tag line could use an update to something along those lines as well. Currently it is &quot;Q&amp;A for programmers interested in professional discussions on software development&quot;, which is bad both for being extremely vague and including the word &quot;discussions&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should put more emphasis on conceptual *programming* questions or else we will be forever seeing millions of variations on &quot;what's the best language for me&quot; and &quot;should I take this job&quot;. Not saying that those aren't real problems for people, but they're not questions that either fit very well in the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A model or require the software development expertise and talent that we're trying to draw in and build in the community here on Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8660" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3300" RevisionGUID="9495183d-cb20-4476-ad8b-d4e3de424864" CreationDate="2012-03-12T20:38:21.527" UserId="25936" Comment="added 429 characters in body" Text="For reference, the historical lock notification reads as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Historical significance**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but **it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site**, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: [FAQ][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the Meta Stack Overflow discussion I was in favour of deleting all the whales, mainly because the arguments in favour of keeping them around didn't convince me. However we are not Stack Overflow, we had a somewhat sudden change of direction and most of these questions are actually of historical significance, mostly as a reminder of the early days of our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would really love to keep them around, locked, but keep in mind that this only applies to currently closed questions that are scored over 100, similar questions that were deleted in the past should stay deleted. The historical lock is not an excuse to bring every crap back from the grave.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, since locking requires moderation intervention, I would expect the community to prune the questions before I consider locking them. All of the questions you referenced have several pages of answers, and most of the answers are quite pointless. We are not going to go around and delete answers and comments on our own, if the community wants these questions to stay, some effort is required: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Flag answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  One-line answers, answers that just re-iterate earlier answers or otherwise do not belong, look at our [&quot;how to answer&quot; page][2] for guidance. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The normal flagging protocol applies. An one-line answer can still be a great answer, don't flag blindly. Flag as &quot;not an answer&quot; if the answer is clearly not an answer, or flag as other and give us a short explanation of why the answer doesn't belong, if you feel there's need for an explanation (e.g. &quot;this answer is a duplicate of that earlier answer&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Flag comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Flag obsolete / not constructive / too chatty comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Look at the &quot;When shouldn't I comment?&quot; section on [comment privilege page][3] for guidance on what comments are noisy and don't add anything to the discussion. All the &quot;+1 I like this&quot; / &quot;-1 I don't like this&quot; comments should be cleaned up before we consider locking the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. **Edit the question and its answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If we are keeping the questions around as historically significant, it makes sense to fix even the most minor mistakes in the question and its top answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. **When done, flag the question for moderation review**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If you feel a question has been sufficiently cleaned up and it should be locked, please flag it for moderation attention so we can review it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If no one bothers, the question will remain closed and may be deleted in the future, following the normal deletion process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've went ahead and locked these questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106202/my-boss-wants-a-narrated-line-by-line-english-explanation-of-our-code&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114819/are-9-to-5-programmers-looked-down-upon&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bulk of the required effort was made by [gnat][4], thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8661" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3298" RevisionGUID="92918504-bcdc-43c3-be98-3df8a7f1c480" CreationDate="2012-03-12T20:52:12.357" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/179308834601447426" />
  <row Id="8662" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3300" RevisionGUID="d5a469c5-a6a8-402e-b824-17c927794694" CreationDate="2012-03-12T21:01:42.777" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 12 characters in body" Text="For reference, the historical lock notification reads as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Historical significance**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but **it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site**, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: [FAQ][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the Meta Stack Overflow discussion I was in favour of deleting all the whales, mainly because the arguments in favour of keeping them around didn't convince me. However we are not Stack Overflow, we had a somewhat sudden change of direction and most of these questions are actually of historical significance, mostly as a reminder of the early days of our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would really love to keep them around, locked, but keep in mind that this only applies to currently closed questions that are scored over 100, similar questions that were deleted in the past should stay deleted. The historical lock is not an excuse to bring every crap back from the grave.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, since locking requires moderation intervention, I would expect the community to prune the questions before I consider locking them. All of the questions you referenced have several pages of answers, and most of the answers are quite pointless. We are not going to go around and delete answers and comments on our own, if the community wants these questions to stay, some effort is required: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Flag answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  One-line answers, answers that just re-iterate earlier answers or otherwise do not belong, look at our [&quot;how to answer&quot; page][2] for guidance. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The normal flagging protocol applies. An one-line answer can still be a great answer, don't flag blindly. Flag as &quot;not an answer&quot; if the answer is clearly not an answer, or flag as other and give us a short explanation of why the answer doesn't belong, if you feel there's need for an explanation (e.g. &quot;this answer is a duplicate of that earlier answer&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Flag comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Flag obsolete / not constructive / too chatty comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Look at the &quot;When shouldn't I comment?&quot; section on [comment privilege page][3] for guidance on what comments are noisy and don't add anything to the discussion. All the &quot;+1 I like this&quot; / &quot;-1 I don't like this&quot; comments should be cleaned up before we consider locking the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. **Edit the question and its answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If we are keeping the questions around as historically significant, it makes sense to fix even the most minor mistakes in the question and its top answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. **When done, flag the question for moderation review**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If you feel a question has been sufficiently cleaned up and it should be locked, please flag it for moderation attention so we can review it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If no one bothers, the question will remain closed and may be deleted in the future, following the normal deletion process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I went ahead and locked these questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106202/my-boss-wants-a-narrated-line-by-line-english-explanation-of-our-code&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114819/are-9-to-5-programmers-looked-down-upon&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bulk of the effort was made by [gnat][4], thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8663" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3308" RevisionGUID="343da09e-f2d1-4462-b238-16bebf43232f" CreationDate="2012-03-12T21:09:59.383" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8664" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="3311" RevisionGUID="bdd1484f-d0b1-412c-8828-c48ef959bc8d" CreationDate="2012-03-13T00:49:44.163" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139433/does-login-for-stackoverflow-also-carry-over-for-programmers-stackexchange" Text="" />
  <row Id="8665" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="3312" RevisionGUID="fbe4808d-2a78-4e35-ad1c-69488db6e134" CreationDate="2012-03-13T00:49:44.163" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139433/does-login-for-stackoverflow-also-carry-over-for-programmers-stackexchange/139434#139434" Text="" />
  <row Id="8666" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="3313" RevisionGUID="03996ef8-2c64-4f42-9143-1f3b3e2bfbbe" CreationDate="2012-03-13T00:49:44.163" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139433/does-login-for-stackoverflow-also-carry-over-for-programmers-stackexchange/139436#139436" Text="" />
  <row Id="8667" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3312" RevisionGUID="f0b1fc97-8082-4504-ae5e-294512ba39c8" CreationDate="2012-03-13T00:43:51.580" UserId="3171" Text="This should go in meta, but yes, you need a separate account for every sub-site on the stack exchange network. (they can be linked though)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8668" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3313" RevisionGUID="84b03f55-2a7b-4b1d-87ae-d6486984a43f" CreationDate="2012-03-13T00:49:12.870" UserId="13181" Text="If you use the same openid that's linked to one of your other accounts the platform will recognize it and give you the opportunity to link the accounts together." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8669" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3311" RevisionGUID="b16cef18-dde1-489d-bb1e-6a94c1e967a7" CreationDate="2012-03-13T00:41:49.773" UserDisplayName="user49584" Text="I am logged in at stackoverflow, I switch over to here, does not appear to retain my login info?&#xD;&#xA;Need separate account?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8670" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3311" RevisionGUID="b16cef18-dde1-489d-bb1e-6a94c1e967a7" CreationDate="2012-03-13T00:41:49.773" UserDisplayName="user49584" Text="Does Login For StackOverflow also carry over for Programmers.Stackexchange?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8671" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3311" RevisionGUID="b16cef18-dde1-489d-bb1e-6a94c1e967a7" CreationDate="2012-03-13T00:41:49.773" UserDisplayName="user49584" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8672" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3311" RevisionGUID="2211e4c0-10a1-475c-815e-d6d17ce2b307" CreationDate="2012-03-13T00:50:26.067" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 8 characters in body; edited tags" Text="I am logged in at stackoverflow, I switch over to here, does not appear to retain my login info?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Need separate account?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8673" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3311" RevisionGUID="2211e4c0-10a1-475c-815e-d6d17ce2b307" CreationDate="2012-03-13T00:50:26.067" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 8 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|support|user-accounts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8674" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3298" RevisionGUID="c5e53b77-be47-4f9a-80fa-d404e7492e24" CreationDate="2012-03-13T07:10:48.430" UserId="31260" Comment="update - marked questions that are now locked // to simplify picking ones that remain for garbage collection review" Text="Due to a huge amount of feedback received on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) regarding the deletion of massively-upvoted but off-topic/not-constructive questions, questions locked for historical reasons have taken on [new behavior](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/reputation-and-historical-archives/) that could be beneficial for Programmers (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Last but not least, we’re experimenting with ways to keep some of the more useful – [or even just fun](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/) – questions from the site’s history accessible in some way. To be clear: most of these are not great examples of questions that should be asked today… But some of them are, quite frankly, brilliant – and losing them entirely just because they aren’t a good fit for our strict Q&amp;A format is wrong. **For now, we’ve provided a “Historical Artifact” lock that completely freezes a question and its answers, preventing all further editing, voting, answering, and flagging. It will also remove it from the usual lists of questions on the site while allowing it to remain fully accessible and visible to everyone with a link to it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This, to me, obviates at least in part [previous guidance](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question) that locks should not be a substitute for closure and eventual deletion even on the whale questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since these questions are unlikely to be deleted any time soon, I'd like to propose locking for historical reasons the site's most popular closed questions—and thus removing them from the site's top questions list and helping to mitigate some user confusion—that have 100 score or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would be the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-programming-career&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/93983/why-dont-all-companies-buy-developers-the-best-hardware&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/perks-for-new-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91350/what-should-every-programmer-know&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20407/will-high-reputation-in-stack-overflow-help-to-get-a-good-job&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47197/are-there-any-famous-one-man-army-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64727/windows-azure-vs-amazon-ec2-vs-google-app-engine&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106202/my-boss-wants-a-narrated-line-by-line-english-explanation-of-our-code (**update:** locked)&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101988/should-developers-accept-overtime-weekend-work-denied-bonus-payments&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114819/are-9-to-5-programmers-looked-down-upon (**update:** locked)&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30355/how-to-become-a-faster-programmer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81929/is-it-normal-for-people-to-not-work&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36612/what-kind-of-innovative-non-cash-financial-benefits-do-i-offer-to-my-developers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32425/i-still-cant-figure-out-how-to-program&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11312/stuff-every-programmer-needs-while-working&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110804/why-are-zero-based-arrays-the-norm&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12807/make-a-big-deal-out-of-true&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50831/how-do-programmers-in-the-west-see-programmers-in-the-east&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1745/whats-the-most-absurd-myth-about-programming-issues&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Doing so should substantially clean up one of the major broken windows on the site: the [highest voted questions list](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8675" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3314" RevisionGUID="cbf0bd08-8a58-454d-8efb-febd71a475d3" CreationDate="2012-03-13T11:18:43.930" UserId="25476" Text="The following question was asked and then flagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/139459/25476&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By all accounts it is inappropriate for Programmers, more appropriate for Stack Overflow but still should be considered &quot;Not a Real Question&quot; on SO.  Moderator Thomas Owens added a comment with the hopes of the question being improved before migration, however this occurred after somebody had *already* provided an equally bad answer that shortly after was *accepted* by the user who wrote the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the right thing to do here?  The question DOES NOT belong here but by all accounts it would just fall like a terrible needle into a stack of needles on SO.  The question and answer are so poor that it will never benefit anybody and it will never get appropriate moderator attention over there.  The active SO community that actively participates and flags bad questions is hopelessly outnumbered by the legion so it like every other bad question over there will fall into obscurity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we close and delete it because it doesn't belong on SO?  If we do then are we setting the precedent then that we may be making moderation decisions for questions that belong *on a different* SE site than Programmers?  Is this acceptable because we know that if we don't then we are just adding to the growing malignant &quot;Plz teh codez! Plz teh designz!&quot; cancer on SO?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8676" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3314" RevisionGUID="cbf0bd08-8a58-454d-8efb-febd71a475d3" CreationDate="2012-03-13T11:18:43.930" UserId="25476" Text="&quot;Not a Real Question&quot; that should be migrated over to StackOverflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8677" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3314" RevisionGUID="cbf0bd08-8a58-454d-8efb-febd71a475d3" CreationDate="2012-03-13T11:18:43.930" UserId="25476" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8678" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3315" RevisionGUID="4070cbb5-4f14-4561-8b99-6da90a832e73" CreationDate="2012-03-13T11:23:55.353" UserId="47" Text="The first rule of migration is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't migrate crap *&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if the question is on topic for somewhere else, but is a &quot;bad&quot; question then it should be just closed as off topic in place rather than migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments should be posted to encourage the user to either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Improve the question so it can be migrated.&#xD;&#xA;2. Go to the target site and search there for similar questions that might answer their question. This should also demonstrate that they need to ask a better question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;\* Here &quot;crap&quot; covers a multitude of sins and basically means &quot;bad question&quot; where &quot;bad&quot; is relative to the other questions on the target site.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8679" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3316" RevisionGUID="7a9b55f7-47d8-4484-9432-44f95091b3bd" CreationDate="2012-03-13T12:21:18.003" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Few suggestions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Use same &quot;downvotes&quot; rules here than on the main site**. I'm sure that most people, even if they know that the downvote here hasn't the same signification, feel it like a personnal mini failure. Most people don't like it.&#xD;&#xA;- **Be more kind with newcomers**. There are some &quot;strong&quot; user group here that are far too agressive in my point of view. It's like entering in a small pub, and get everyone in the pub look at you. Sometimes, when I see how people are threated here, I feel annoyed for them. Some posted once or twice, and will never come again, ever.&#xD;&#xA;- **Let others talk**. Some users here seems to have an opinion on everything and want to share it everytime. Sometimes, it's better to let other write a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will conclude by telling you that, since very few users are participating here (usually the same group), there is a very high **meta bias** in the discussions that take place here. Therefore, **nothing** here can be taken as the voice of the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My 2 cents." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8680" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3317" RevisionGUID="a80d7df4-b93f-4a09-afa3-975c8f4cd920" CreationDate="2012-03-13T12:27:47.677" UserId="4" Text="To add to Chris's answer, should the question have been cleaned up, I would have also cleaned up the answers as well prior to migration. The rule `Don't migrate crap` should extend to answers as well as questions. Although it's likely some suboptimal answers get migrated alongside a good question, the migration of bad answers should be minimized at the point of origin.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, at this point, the person asking the question has been seen after I posted the comment, had what I considered sufficient time to improve the question, and has not. Because of that, I simply closed the question as off-topic so crap wasn't migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as deciding if migration is in order goes: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Look at the question. Is the question a good one? Is it well written? Does it have what I would consider sufficient detail? &#xD;&#xA;2. Check the comments and answers. Are there crap answers? Are there link only answers? Are there any invalid, rude, or unncessary comments? If there are any, clean them up before migration. &#xD;&#xA;3. Check the user's status on the potential target site. If they appear to be trying to evade a block, I close as off-topic without migration. Otherwise, I can potentially migrate.&#xD;&#xA;4. If I'm not pretty sure the question is a good fit, I can ping the other mods (when I'm not at work, since WebSense blocks chat.stackexchange.com these days, sadly) and confirm with them that the question is now in good shape. However, I'd probably close for off-topic and leave a comment letting the user know what other sites exist and that I'm consulting with the mods on those sites to see if it's good in its present form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, when it comes to migration, a few things do bother me (and I've cleaned some up in the past):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Users that don't understand another community suggesting the poster ask there. Don't! First of all, you don't know what that community accepts. I (or any other mod) might not either, but it's easy for us to check. Second, cross-posting is bad - migration is better.&#xD;&#xA;2. Duplicates of good, on-topic questions are a good thing, except for exact, word-for-word copy duplicates. Once in the right place, the question can be closed as a duplicate. Now, there are more indexed search terms that people can use to find answers.&#xD;&#xA;3. One community can't be expected to police another community. There are only simple checks that I can do to see if a question belongs. I can check the FAQ of another community, I can check the user's profile, and I can ping their mods. I'm not going to construct lots of searches and and hunt around their Meta for 20 minutes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**TLDR:** Don't migrate crap extends to answers and comments as well as questions. Moderators on one site shouldn't be expected to fully police another site, but some basic checks are in order to ensure any migration is appropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8681" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3300" RevisionGUID="43e32461-c847-434f-8f07-92762c62e407" CreationDate="2012-03-13T13:16:49.680" UserId="25936" Comment="added 92 characters in body" Text="For reference, the historical lock notification reads as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Historical significance**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but **it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site**, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: [FAQ][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the Meta Stack Overflow discussion I was in favour of deleting all the whales, mainly because the arguments in favour of keeping them around didn't convince me. However we are not Stack Overflow, we had a somewhat sudden change of direction and most of these questions are actually of historical significance, mostly as a reminder of the early days of our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would really love to keep them around, locked, but keep in mind that this only applies to currently closed questions that are scored over 100, similar questions that were deleted in the past should stay deleted. The historical lock is not an excuse to bring every crap back from the grave.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, since locking requires moderation intervention, I would expect the community to prune the questions before I consider locking them. All of the questions you referenced have several pages of answers, and most of the answers are quite pointless. We are not going to go around and delete answers and comments on our own, if the community wants these questions to stay, some effort is required: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Flag answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  One-line answers, answers that just re-iterate earlier answers or otherwise do not belong, look at our [&quot;how to answer&quot; page][2] for guidance. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The normal flagging protocol applies. An one-line answer can still be a great answer, don't flag blindly. Flag as &quot;not an answer&quot; if the answer is clearly not an answer, or flag as other and give us a short explanation of why the answer doesn't belong, if you feel there's need for an explanation (e.g. &quot;this answer is a duplicate of that earlier answer&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Flag comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Flag obsolete / not constructive / too chatty comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Look at the &quot;When shouldn't I comment?&quot; section on [comment privilege page][3] for guidance on what comments are noisy and don't add anything to the discussion. All the &quot;+1 I like this&quot; / &quot;-1 I don't like this&quot; comments should be cleaned up before we consider locking the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. **Edit the question and its answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If we are keeping the questions around as historically significant, it makes sense to fix even the most minor mistakes in the question and its top answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. **When done, flag the question for moderation review**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If you feel a question has been sufficiently cleaned up and it should be locked, please flag it for moderation attention so we can review it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If no one bothers, the question will remain closed and may be deleted in the future, following the normal deletion process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I went ahead and locked these questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106202/my-boss-wants-a-narrated-line-by-line-english-explanation-of-our-code&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114819/are-9-to-5-programmers-looked-down-upon&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81929/is-it-normal-for-people-to-not-work&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bulk of the effort was made by [gnat][4], thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8682" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3298" RevisionGUID="fc994b8c-53bd-473d-807b-abe13709e814" CreationDate="2012-03-13T13:17:32.457" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 15 characters in body" Text="Due to a huge amount of feedback received on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) regarding the deletion of massively-upvoted but off-topic/not-constructive questions, questions locked for historical reasons have taken on [new behavior](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/reputation-and-historical-archives/) that could be beneficial for Programmers (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Last but not least, we’re experimenting with ways to keep some of the more useful – [or even just fun](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/) – questions from the site’s history accessible in some way. To be clear: most of these are not great examples of questions that should be asked today… But some of them are, quite frankly, brilliant – and losing them entirely just because they aren’t a good fit for our strict Q&amp;A format is wrong. **For now, we’ve provided a “Historical Artifact” lock that completely freezes a question and its answers, preventing all further editing, voting, answering, and flagging. It will also remove it from the usual lists of questions on the site while allowing it to remain fully accessible and visible to everyone with a link to it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This, to me, obviates at least in part [previous guidance](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question) that locks should not be a substitute for closure and eventual deletion even on the whale questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since these questions are unlikely to be deleted any time soon, I'd like to propose locking for historical reasons the site's most popular closed questions—and thus removing them from the site's top questions list and helping to mitigate some user confusion—that have 100 score or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would be the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-programming-career&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/93983/why-dont-all-companies-buy-developers-the-best-hardware&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/perks-for-new-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91350/what-should-every-programmer-know&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20407/will-high-reputation-in-stack-overflow-help-to-get-a-good-job&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47197/are-there-any-famous-one-man-army-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64727/windows-azure-vs-amazon-ec2-vs-google-app-engine&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106202/my-boss-wants-a-narrated-line-by-line-english-explanation-of-our-code (locked)&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101988/should-developers-accept-overtime-weekend-work-denied-bonus-payments&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114819/are-9-to-5-programmers-looked-down-upon (locked)&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30355/how-to-become-a-faster-programmer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81929/is-it-normal-for-people-to-not-work (locked)&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36612/what-kind-of-innovative-non-cash-financial-benefits-do-i-offer-to-my-developers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32425/i-still-cant-figure-out-how-to-program&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11312/stuff-every-programmer-needs-while-working&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110804/why-are-zero-based-arrays-the-norm&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12807/make-a-big-deal-out-of-true&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50831/how-do-programmers-in-the-west-see-programmers-in-the-east&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1745/whats-the-most-absurd-myth-about-programming-issues&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Doing so should substantially clean up one of the major broken windows on the site: the [highest voted questions list](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8683" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3316" RevisionGUID="c9e71241-972d-4114-9ac0-91c410fa1037" CreationDate="2012-03-13T14:21:13.453" UserId="31260" Comment="minor spelling correction" Text="Few suggestions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Use same &quot;downvotes&quot; rules here than on the main site**. I'm sure that most people, even if they know that the downvote here hasn't the same signification, feel it like a personal mini failure. Most people don't like it.&#xD;&#xA;- **Be more kind with newcomers**. There are some &quot;strong&quot; user group here that are far too aggressive in my point of view. It's like entering in a small pub, and get everyone in the pub look at you. Sometimes, when I see how people are treated here, I feel annoyed for them. Some posted once or twice, and will never come again, ever.&#xD;&#xA;- **Let others talk**. Some users here seems to have an opinion on everything and want to share it every time. Sometimes, it's better to let other write a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will conclude by telling you that, since very few users are participating here (usually the same group), there is a very high **meta bias** in the discussions that take place here. Therefore, **nothing** here can be taken as the voice of the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My 2 cents." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8685" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3300" RevisionGUID="e5c280f6-5c63-40b7-a140-c4ed7a987a21" CreationDate="2012-03-13T19:59:18.537" UserId="25936" Comment="added 78 characters in body" Text="For reference, the historical lock notification reads as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Historical significance**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but **it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site**, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: [FAQ][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the Meta Stack Overflow discussion I was in favour of deleting all the whales, mainly because the arguments in favour of keeping them around didn't convince me. However we are not Stack Overflow, we had a somewhat sudden change of direction and most of these questions are actually of historical significance, mostly as a reminder of the early days of our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would really love to keep them around, locked, but keep in mind that this only applies to currently closed questions that are scored over 100, similar questions that were deleted in the past should stay deleted. The historical lock is not an excuse to bring every crap back from the grave.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, since locking requires moderation intervention, I would expect the community to prune the questions before I consider locking them. All of the questions you referenced have several pages of answers, and most of the answers are quite pointless. We are not going to go around and delete answers and comments on our own, if the community wants these questions to stay, some effort is required: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Flag answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  One-line answers, answers that just re-iterate earlier answers or otherwise do not belong, look at our [&quot;how to answer&quot; page][2] for guidance. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The normal flagging protocol applies. An one-line answer can still be a great answer, don't flag blindly. Flag as &quot;not an answer&quot; if the answer is clearly not an answer, or flag as other and give us a short explanation of why the answer doesn't belong, if you feel there's need for an explanation (e.g. &quot;this answer is a duplicate of that earlier answer&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Flag comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Flag obsolete / not constructive / too chatty comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Look at the &quot;When shouldn't I comment?&quot; section on [comment privilege page][3] for guidance on what comments are noisy and don't add anything to the discussion. All the &quot;+1 I like this&quot; / &quot;-1 I don't like this&quot; comments should be cleaned up before we consider locking the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. **Edit the question and its answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If we are keeping the questions around as historically significant, it makes sense to fix even the most minor mistakes in the question and its top answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. **When done, flag the question for moderation review**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If you feel a question has been sufficiently cleaned up and it should be locked, please flag it for moderation attention so we can review it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If no one bothers, the question will remain closed and may be deleted in the future, following the normal deletion process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I went ahead and locked these questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106202/my-boss-wants-a-narrated-line-by-line-english-explanation-of-our-code&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114819/are-9-to-5-programmers-looked-down-upon&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81929/is-it-normal-for-people-to-not-work&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8686" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3300" RevisionGUID="4e22fb93-268a-4ea0-9b41-e4e757968319" CreationDate="2012-03-13T20:13:03.777" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 205 characters in body" Text="For reference, the historical lock notification reads as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Historical significance**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but **it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site**, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: [FAQ][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the Meta Stack Overflow discussion I was in favour of deleting all the whales, mainly because the arguments in favour of keeping them around didn't convince me. However we are not Stack Overflow, we had a somewhat sudden change of direction and most of these questions are actually of historical significance, mostly as a reminder of the early days of our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would really love to keep them around, locked, but keep in mind that this only applies to currently closed questions that are scored over 100, similar questions that were deleted in the past should stay deleted. The historical lock is not an excuse to bring every crap back from the grave.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, since locking requires moderation intervention, I would expect the community to prune the questions before I consider locking them. All of the questions you referenced have several pages of answers, and most of the answers are quite pointless. We are not going to go around and delete answers and comments on our own, if the community wants these questions to stay, some effort is required: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Flag answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  One-line answers, answers that just re-iterate earlier answers or otherwise do not belong, look at our [&quot;how to answer&quot; page][2] for guidance. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The normal flagging protocol applies. An one-line answer can still be a great answer, don't flag blindly. Flag as &quot;not an answer&quot; if the answer is clearly not an answer, or flag as other and give us a short explanation of why the answer doesn't belong, if you feel there's need for an explanation (e.g. &quot;this answer is a duplicate of that earlier answer&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Flag comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Flag obsolete / not constructive / too chatty comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Look at the &quot;When shouldn't I comment?&quot; section on [comment privilege page][3] for guidance on what comments are noisy and don't add anything to the discussion. All the &quot;+1 I like this&quot; / &quot;-1 I don't like this&quot; comments should be cleaned up before we consider locking the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. **When done, flag the question for moderation review**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If you feel a question has been sufficiently cleaned up and it should be locked, please flag it for moderation attention so we can review it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If no one bothers, the question will remain closed and may be deleted in the future, following the normal deletion process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I went ahead and locked these questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106202/my-boss-wants-a-narrated-line-by-line-english-explanation-of-our-code&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114819/are-9-to-5-programmers-looked-down-upon&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81929/is-it-normal-for-people-to-not-work&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8687" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3298" RevisionGUID="55934f48-366e-4060-bd7e-0bd2547df359" CreationDate="2012-03-13T20:57:56.187" UserId="25936" Comment="removed (locked) markers." Text="Due to a huge amount of feedback received on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) regarding the deletion of massively-upvoted but off-topic/not-constructive questions, questions locked for historical reasons have taken on [new behavior](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/reputation-and-historical-archives/) that could be beneficial for Programmers (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Last but not least, we’re experimenting with ways to keep some of the more useful – [or even just fun](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/) – questions from the site’s history accessible in some way. To be clear: most of these are not great examples of questions that should be asked today… But some of them are, quite frankly, brilliant – and losing them entirely just because they aren’t a good fit for our strict Q&amp;A format is wrong. **For now, we’ve provided a “Historical Artifact” lock that completely freezes a question and its answers, preventing all further editing, voting, answering, and flagging. It will also remove it from the usual lists of questions on the site while allowing it to remain fully accessible and visible to everyone with a link to it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This, to me, obviates at least in part [previous guidance](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question) that locks should not be a substitute for closure and eventual deletion even on the whale questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since these questions are unlikely to be deleted any time soon, I'd like to propose locking for historical reasons the site's most popular closed questions—and thus removing them from the site's top questions list and helping to mitigate some user confusion—that have 100 score or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would be the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-programming-career&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/93983/why-dont-all-companies-buy-developers-the-best-hardware&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/perks-for-new-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91350/what-should-every-programmer-know&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20407/will-high-reputation-in-stack-overflow-help-to-get-a-good-job&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47197/are-there-any-famous-one-man-army-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64727/windows-azure-vs-amazon-ec2-vs-google-app-engine&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106202/my-boss-wants-a-narrated-line-by-line-english-explanation-of-our-code&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101988/should-developers-accept-overtime-weekend-work-denied-bonus-payments&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114819/are-9-to-5-programmers-looked-down-upon&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30355/how-to-become-a-faster-programmer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81929/is-it-normal-for-people-to-not-work&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36612/what-kind-of-innovative-non-cash-financial-benefits-do-i-offer-to-my-developers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32425/i-still-cant-figure-out-how-to-program&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11312/stuff-every-programmer-needs-while-working&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110804/why-are-zero-based-arrays-the-norm&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12807/make-a-big-deal-out-of-true&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50831/how-do-programmers-in-the-west-see-programmers-in-the-east&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1745/whats-the-most-absurd-myth-about-programming-issues&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Doing so should substantially clean up one of the major broken windows on the site: the [highest voted questions list](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8688" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3300" RevisionGUID="f7ab0dfa-d87c-41fe-a081-f720816d7558" CreationDate="2012-03-13T20:58:35.797" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="8689" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3300" RevisionGUID="f7ab0dfa-d87c-41fe-a081-f720816d7558" CreationDate="2012-03-13T20:58:35.797" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1957 characters in body" Text="For reference, the historical lock notification reads as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Historical significance**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but **it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site**, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: [FAQ][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the Meta Stack Overflow discussion I was in favour of deleting all the whales, mainly because the arguments in favour of keeping them around didn't convince me. However we are not Stack Overflow, we had a somewhat sudden change of direction and most of these questions are actually of historical significance, mostly as a reminder of the early days of our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would really love to keep them around, locked, but keep in mind that this only applies to currently closed questions that are scored over 100, similar questions that were deleted in the past should stay deleted. The historical lock is not an excuse to bring every crap back from the grave.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All the questions are now locked. It did make much more sense to do that from the beginning as they were unsalvageable and had gone long enough without anyone stepping in to improve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8690" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="d1bb8d39-b672-4c72-9011-e6452b81e1c1" CreationDate="2012-03-14T13:34:39.513" UserId="1130" Text="Can we change the way we define what is on/off topic in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity, so questions on our site are best defined as on-topic by the type of answer they need, not by the subject of their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, many freelancing or business concerns are off-topic here, and some career questions are actually on-topic. The deciding factor is the type of answer the question requires. I see this causing a lot of confusion about what is actually considered on/off topic for our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think it would be better to define what is on topic by the type of answer needed, instead of the subject of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What kind of questions can I ask here?][1]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions asked should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][3].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][5] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][6] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][8]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][6]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][9]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][10] or [Is A better than B?][11] because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][12] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][13]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each of those bullet points should be a link that points to a [meta-faq][14] post containing more details on the subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were some concerns about this reverting to the old wall of text our FAQ once was. I think using small text will help avoid that since users can skip reading the smaller print if they don't actually care to read the details, but it still includes some short examples for users who need a bullet point explained further and don't want to navigate away from the page. In addition, the link colors on the FAQ are a bit darker than here on meta, so I think the bullet points headers will stand out a bit better from the small-print content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop some of the confusion I see about our site scope, and the number of &quot;but so and so is on/off topic in the FAQ&quot; comments I see, because the scope of this site is really defined by the answers, not the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1646/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8691" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="d1bb8d39-b672-4c72-9011-e6452b81e1c1" CreationDate="2012-03-14T13:34:39.513" UserId="1130" Text="Changing our FAQ to define on-topic by type of answer required, not question subject" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8692" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="d1bb8d39-b672-4c72-9011-e6452b81e1c1" CreationDate="2012-03-14T13:34:39.513" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8693" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="0eb2399b-eed8-41f9-89d6-dda06f1e0ca0" CreationDate="2012-03-14T14:11:44.613" UserId="1130" Comment="added 98 characters in body" Text="Can we change the way we define what is on/off topic in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity, so questions on our site are best defined as on-topic by the type of answer they need, not by the subject of their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, many freelancing or business concerns are off-topic here, and some career questions are actually on-topic. The deciding factor is the type of answer the question requires. I see this causing a lot of confusion about what is actually considered on/off topic for our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think it would be better to define what is on topic by the type of answer needed, instead of the subject of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What kind of questions can I ask here?][1]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions asked should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][3].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][5] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][6] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][8]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][6]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][9]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][10] or [Is A better than B?][11] because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][12] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][13]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each of those bullet points should be a link that points to a [meta-faq][14] post containing more details on the subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were some concerns about this reverting to the old wall of text our FAQ once was. I think using small text will help avoid that since users can skip reading the smaller print if they don't actually care to read the details, but it still includes some short examples for users who need a bullet point explained further and don't want to navigate away from the page. In addition, the link colors on the FAQ are a bit darker than here on meta, so I think the bullet points headers will stand out a bit better from the small-print content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop some of the confusion I see about our site scope, and reduce the number of upset users who asked a question which was in the &quot;on-topic&quot; list of the FAQ, but the question still got closed as off-topic. The scope of this site is really defined by the type of answers required, not the subject of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1646/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8694" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3319" RevisionGUID="1a23ac24-b06d-4cc0-97ac-78e56e260908" CreationDate="2012-03-14T14:24:02.637" UserId="44541" Text="I see and understand the argument, but I *wouldn't* remove the bullet list because if that is the only thing a user reads in the FAQ (and it probably is, being a) first and b) a quick list) then they are getting more of an indicator what to do/not do than seeing a &quot;wall of text&quot; that is more likely to be ignored.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However.  That wall of text really isn't that big of a wall, and can be refined somewhat, and to my mind adds a great deal of value for those who keep on reading OR for those who would be pointed to something *more specific than currently exists in the FAQ* about why their question was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'd like to counter my downvote for the idea with a compromise: create an entry in the FAQ like exists in some other SE FAQs (UX comes to mind, although ironically that FAQ needs its own help) called &quot;What makes a good question?&quot;  It could replace the current &quot;What kind of questions should I not ask here?&quot; entry and include that content (massaged, of course) while also pointing out the positive (good question) versus the negative (what not to do)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8695" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="5de0ab63-7b03-49a3-bfc5-426bcf098214" CreationDate="2012-03-14T14:32:45.493" UserId="1130" Comment="added 699 characters in body" Text="Can we change the way we define what is on/off topic in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity, so questions on our site are best defined as on-topic by the type of answer they need, not by the subject of their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, many freelancing or business concerns are off-topic here, and some career questions are actually on-topic. The deciding factor is the type of answer the question requires. I see this causing a lot of confusion about what is actually considered on/off topic for our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think it would be better to define what is on topic by the type of answer needed, instead of the subject of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What kind of questions can I ask here?][1]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions asked should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][3].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][5] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][6] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][8]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][6]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][9]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][10] or [Is A better than B?][11] because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][12] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][13]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each of those bullet points should be a link that points to a [meta-faq][14] post containing more details on the subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were some concerns about this reverting to the old wall of text our FAQ once was. I think using small text will help avoid that since users can skip reading the smaller print if they don't actually care to read the details, but it still includes some short examples for users who need a bullet point explained further and don't want to navigate away from the page. In addition, the link colors on the FAQ are a bit darker than here on meta, so I think the bullet points headers will stand out a bit better from the small-print content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this still looks like a wall-of-text to users that isn't easy to read, then we could just get rid of the definitions altogether and leave the bullet points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What kind of questions can I ask here?][1]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions asked should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][4]&#xD;&#xA;* [Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][7]&#xD;&#xA;* [Be asking for an answer, not opinions][6]&#xD;&#xA;* [Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop some of the confusion I see about our site scope, and reduce the number of upset users who asked a question which was in the &quot;on-topic&quot; list of the FAQ, but the question still got closed as off-topic. The scope of this site is really defined by the type of answers required, not the subject of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1646/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8696" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3320" RevisionGUID="44af4a73-f117-4a00-b133-9df26bbdaf1a" CreationDate="2012-03-14T14:40:22.737" UserId="41381" Text="This is a great idea, much better than the current somewhat hidden/vague idea that everything must be uniquely related to programmers, which is a poor idea to begin with. Requiring that questions be best answered by programmers makes a lot more sense, and would allow more room for community moderation, and seems to fit better with most of the questions that get asked." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8697" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="5640457e-d0c4-4978-ab99-deb1ed773bef" CreationDate="2012-03-14T14:48:50.030" UserId="1130" Comment="added 699 characters in body" Text="Can we change the way we define what is on/off topic in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity, so questions on our site are best defined as on-topic by the type of answer they need, not by the subject of their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, many freelancing or business concerns are off-topic here, and some career questions are actually on-topic. The deciding factor is the type of answer the question requires. I see this causing a lot of confusion about what is actually considered on/off topic for our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think it would be better to define what is on topic by the type of answer needed, instead of the subject of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What kind of questions can I ask here?][1]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions asked should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][3].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][5] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][6] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][8]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][9]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][11] or [Is A better than B?][12] because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][13] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][14]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each of those bullet points should be a link that points to a [meta-faq][15] post containing more details on the subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were some concerns about this reverting to the old wall of text our FAQ once was. I think using small text will help avoid that since users can skip reading the smaller print if they don't actually care to read the details, but it still includes some short examples for users who need a bullet point explained further and don't want to navigate away from the page. In addition, the link colors on the FAQ are a bit darker than here on meta, so I think the bullet points headers will stand out a bit better from the small-print content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop some of the confusion I see about our site scope, and reduce the number of upset users who asked a question which was in the &quot;on-topic&quot; list of the FAQ, but the question still got closed as off-topic. The scope of this site is really defined by the type of answers required, not the subject of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[jcmeloni's answer below][16] made the suggestion to make this a new FAQ section instead of replacing the existing section, like [UX.SE's FAQ][17] does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this proposal, so instead of changing the existing bullet-point list, what about simply adding a new section titled &quot;What makes a good question&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What makes a good question?][1]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should elicit definitive answers or solutions rather than prolonged discussions. Remember, [this a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. We are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions (visit our [chat][13] instead for programming-related discussions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][3].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][5] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][6] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][8]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][9]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][11] or [Is A better than B?][12] because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][13] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][14]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1646/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3319/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8698" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="9dc07b3a-2be5-48d7-9786-8584aaf4cbf2" CreationDate="2012-03-14T14:53:55.733" UserId="1130" Comment="added 699 characters in body" Text="**Edited proposal**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[jcmeloni's answer below][16] made the suggestion to make this a new FAQ section instead of replacing the existing section, like [UX.SE's FAQ][17] does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this proposal, so instead of changing the existing bullet-point list, what about simply adding a new section titled &quot;What makes a good question&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What makes a good question?][1]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should elicit definitive answers or solutions rather than prolonged discussions. Remember, [this a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. We are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions (visit our [chat][13] instead for programming-related discussions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][3].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][5] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][6] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][8]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][9]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][11] or [Is A better than B?][12] because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][13] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][14]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**(Old proposal, which I still support but don't mind implementing the new suggestion instead. If you post an answer supporting this proposal, be sure to specify that)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we change the way we define what is on/off topic in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity, so questions on our site are best defined as on-topic by the type of answer they need, not by the subject of their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, many freelancing or business concerns are off-topic here, and some career questions are actually on-topic. The deciding factor is the type of answer the question requires. I see this causing a lot of confusion about what is actually considered on/off topic for our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think it would be better to define what is on topic by the type of answer needed, instead of the subject of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What kind of questions can I ask here?][1]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions asked should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][3].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][5] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][6] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][8]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][9]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][11] or [Is A better than B?][12] because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][13] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][14]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each of those bullet points should be a link that points to a [meta-faq][15] post containing more details on the subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were some concerns about this reverting to the old wall of text our FAQ once was. I think using small text will help avoid that since users can skip reading the smaller print if they don't actually care to read the details, but it still includes some short examples for users who need a bullet point explained further and don't want to navigate away from the page. In addition, the link colors on the FAQ are a bit darker than here on meta, so I think the bullet points headers will stand out a bit better from the small-print content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop some of the confusion I see about our site scope, and reduce the number of upset users who asked a question which was in the &quot;on-topic&quot; list of the FAQ, but the question still got closed as off-topic. The scope of this site is really defined by the type of answers required, not the subject of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1646/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3319/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8699" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="9dc07b3a-2be5-48d7-9786-8584aaf4cbf2" CreationDate="2012-03-14T14:53:55.733" UserId="1130" Comment="added 699 characters in body" Text="(Edited) Updating our FAQ to include a definition of what makes a question good for this site" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8700" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="6d83ebc8-9f15-4b16-8704-0fbcb1662807" CreationDate="2012-03-14T14:57:27.037" UserId="31260" Comment="reference to P.SE FAQ, to make it easier to evaluate proposed changes against what is there now" Text="**Edited proposal**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[jcmeloni's answer below][16] made the suggestion to make this a new section in [Programmers FAQ][18] instead of replacing the existing section, like [UX.SE's FAQ][17] does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this proposal, so instead of changing the existing bullet-point list, what about simply adding a new section titled &quot;What makes a good question&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What makes a good question?][1]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should elicit definitive answers or solutions rather than prolonged discussions. Remember, [this a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. We are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions (visit our [chat][13] instead for programming-related discussions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][3].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][5] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][6] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][8]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][9]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][11] or [Is A better than B?][12] because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][13] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][14]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**(Old proposal, which I still support but don't mind implementing the new suggestion instead. If you post an answer supporting this proposal, be sure to specify that)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we change the way we define what is on/off topic in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity, so questions on our site are best defined as on-topic by the type of answer they need, not by the subject of their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, many freelancing or business concerns are off-topic here, and some career questions are actually on-topic. The deciding factor is the type of answer the question requires. I see this causing a lot of confusion about what is actually considered on/off topic for our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think it would be better to define what is on topic by the type of answer needed, instead of the subject of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What kind of questions can I ask here?][1]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions asked should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][3].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][5] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][6] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][8]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][9]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][11] or [Is A better than B?][12] because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][13] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][14]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each of those bullet points should be a link that points to a [meta-faq][15] post containing more details on the subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were some concerns about this reverting to the old wall of text our FAQ once was. I think using small text will help avoid that since users can skip reading the smaller print if they don't actually care to read the details, but it still includes some short examples for users who need a bullet point explained further and don't want to navigate away from the page. In addition, the link colors on the FAQ are a bit darker than here on meta, so I think the bullet points headers will stand out a bit better from the small-print content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop some of the confusion I see about our site scope, and reduce the number of upset users who asked a question which was in the &quot;on-topic&quot; list of the FAQ, but the question still got closed as off-topic. The scope of this site is really defined by the type of answers required, not the subject of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1646/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3319/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8701" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3321" RevisionGUID="11c6f467-8c29-4d3b-a741-28628f5eeb31" CreationDate="2012-03-14T14:59:34.563" UserId="4" Text="I think it's getting better, but I'm not sold yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that this should replace the &quot;what kinds of questions can I ask here&quot;. In order to facilitate that, the first bullet point after &quot;Question should:&quot; should be something along the lines of &quot;Be about a conceptual topic in software development&quot;. The subscript test would include A short paragraph saying that questions about the design of data structures and algorithms, software architecture and design, requirements, developer testing, configuration management and version control, managing software projects, development processes and methodologies, and software licensing are on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Together with the other bullet points, this should include everything we allow and exclude everything that's currently off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8702" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3319" RevisionGUID="5b596403-68f6-456e-9080-34af7123f21f" CreationDate="2012-03-14T15:06:14.143" UserId="44541" Comment="added 78 characters in body" Text="**note:** answer based on first proposal; I'm upvoting the second proposal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see and understand the argument, but I *wouldn't* remove the bullet list because if that is the only thing a user reads in the FAQ (and it probably is, being a) first and b) a quick list) then they are getting more of an indicator what to do/not do than seeing a &quot;wall of text&quot; that is more likely to be ignored.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However.  That wall of text really isn't that big of a wall, and can be refined somewhat, and to my mind adds a great deal of value for those who keep on reading OR for those who would be pointed to something *more specific than currently exists in the FAQ* about why their question was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'd like to counter my downvote for the idea with a compromise: create an entry in the FAQ like exists in some other SE FAQs (UX comes to mind, although ironically that FAQ needs its own help) called &quot;What makes a good question?&quot;  It could replace the current &quot;What kind of questions should I not ask here?&quot; entry and include that content (massaged, of course) while also pointing out the positive (good question) versus the negative (what not to do)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8703" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3320" RevisionGUID="8f1f734b-b82a-40a2-9ec9-27876b1f010c" CreationDate="2012-03-14T15:09:23.327" UserId="41381" Comment="added 84 characters in body" Text="This is a great idea, the edited proposal based on jcmeloi's idea is a better refinement of the original, much better than the current somewhat hidden/vague idea that everything must be uniquely related to programmers, which is a poor idea to begin with. Requiring that questions be best answered by programmers makes a lot more sense, and would allow more room for community moderation, and seems to fit better with most of the questions that get asked." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8704" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="1e2bdc8d-c067-4125-9ddd-19bf63a2c452" CreationDate="2012-03-14T15:10:33.980" UserId="1130" Comment="added 196 characters in body" Text="**Edited proposal**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[jcmeloni's answer below][16] made the suggestion to make this a new section in [Programmers FAQ][18] instead of replacing the existing section, like [UX.SE's FAQ][17] does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this proposal, so instead of changing the existing bullet-point list, what about simply adding a new section titled &quot;What makes a good question&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What makes a good question?][1]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should elicit definitive answers or solutions rather than prolonged discussions. Remember, [this a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. We are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions (visit our [chat][13] instead for programming-related discussions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][3].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][5] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][6] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][8]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][9]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][11] or [Is A better than B?][12] because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][13] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][14]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**(Old proposal, which I still support but don't mind implementing the new suggestion instead. If you post an answer supporting this proposal, be sure to specify that)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we change the way we define what is on/off topic in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity, so questions on our site are best defined as on-topic by the type of answer they need, not by the subject of their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, many freelancing or business concerns are off-topic here, and some career questions are actually on-topic. The deciding factor is the type of answer the question requires. I see this causing a lot of confusion about what is actually considered on/off topic for our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think it would be better to define what is on topic by the type of answer needed, instead of the subject of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What kind of questions can I ask here?][1]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions asked be about a conceptual topics in software development, such as software architecture and design concepts, algorithms and data structure design, and the software development lifecycle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][3].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][5] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][6] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][8]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][9]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][11] or [Is A better than B?][12] because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][13] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][14]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each of those bullet points should be a link that points to a [meta-faq][15] post containing more details on the subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were some concerns about this reverting to the old wall of text our FAQ once was. I think using small text will help avoid that since users can skip reading the smaller print if they don't actually care to read the details, but it still includes some short examples for users who need a bullet point explained further and don't want to navigate away from the page. In addition, the link colors on the FAQ are a bit darker than here on meta, so I think the bullet points headers will stand out a bit better from the small-print content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop some of the confusion I see about our site scope, and reduce the number of upset users who asked a question which was in the &quot;on-topic&quot; list of the FAQ, but the question still got closed as off-topic. The scope of this site is really defined by the type of answers required, not the subject of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1646/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3319/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8705" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3321" RevisionGUID="d9c54332-e47f-49ea-9a8c-956997a2dd57" CreationDate="2012-03-14T15:21:36.377" UserId="4" Comment="added 269 characters in body" Text="I think it's getting better, but I'm not sold yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that this should replace the &quot;what kinds of questions can I ask here&quot;. In order to facilitate that, the first bullet point after &quot;Question should:&quot; should be something along the lines of &quot;Be about a conceptual topic in software development&quot;. The subscript test would include A short paragraph saying that questions about the design of data structures and algorithms, software architecture and design, requirements, developer testing, configuration management and version control, managing software projects, development processes and methodologies, and software licensing are on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Together with the other bullet points, this should include everything we allow and exclude everything that's currently off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually, now that I think about it, perhaps they shouldn't be. They are two separate questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;What is on topic?&quot; and &quot;What is a good on-topic question?&quot; are two different things that should be answered sequentially in the FAQ. So now I'm not too sure.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8706" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3303" RevisionGUID="2616a33c-9d37-473b-b1b2-a9f8c9e4d9d8" CreationDate="2012-03-14T15:50:20.153" UserId="1130" Comment="added 296 characters in body" Text="**Edit:** Proposal seems to have support, so I've made a [separate meta post][1] to propose this change. The actual proposal put forth has been adjusted a bit based on user feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2) Change the style of how we define site scope**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity. It seems unrealistic to have a comprehensive list of what types of questions are on-topic and what is not, especially since I think our site is best defined by the type of answer needed, not by the question topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So instead of trying to make a list of absolutely everything about programmers and if its on/off topic, I feel we should instead define what makes a question good for this site, which happens to be the type of answer they require.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions can I ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asked should:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; yourself**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to your programming career to stay in one job too long][2].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **They should ask for a single answer, not a list of answers**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    For example, asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer?][3] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list&#xD;&#xA;&gt; will get outdated as time and technology progresses.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a single answer][4] that can only be answered by a programmer. For&#xD;&#xA;&gt; example, asking [What are some good books about development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies?][5] would be closed, however asking for a *specific*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; book with a limited scope, such as [Is there a canonical book on the Agile software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development methodology?][6] is OK.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Should be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    The question should relate to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare&#xD;&#xA;&gt; time. Does that make me a bad developer?][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Has a clear answer can be agreed upon by the majority of programmers**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  [We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][8]. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Don't ask questions about [What &#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/technology should I learn next?][9] or [Is A better than B?][10]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended &#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussions&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Instead, visit our [chat][11] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Should be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  In other words, don't give us your life story with your question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be referenced by any programmer, not just you. Help us maintain our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop the number of &quot;but so and so is on/off topic in the FAQ&quot; comments I see, because the scope of this site is really defined by the answers, not the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some concerns below about this becoming a big wall of text, and I agree. Perhaps we could use [more][12]/[less][13] links like we have in the current FAQ to hide examples unless the user is looking for examples. If we are unable to collapse the text or make this easy to read, we could also just display bullet points that link to meta questions on relevant topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3318/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/12833/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7859/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://a.b" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8707" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="7312b699-4fa7-4696-8e05-7459d2ee517c" CreationDate="2012-03-14T15:52:15.550" UserId="1130" Comment="Cleaned up opening paragraph of proposal" Text="**Edited proposal**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[jcmeloni's answer below][16] made the suggestion to make this a new section in [Programmers FAQ][18] instead of replacing the existing section, like [UX.SE's FAQ][17] does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this proposal, so instead of changing the existing bullet-point list, what about simply adding a new section titled &quot;What makes a good question&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What makes a good question?][1]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should elicit definitive answers or solutions rather than prolonged discussions. Remember, [this a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. If you want to participate in chatty, open-ended discussions on programming-related topics, visit our [chat][13].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][3].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][5] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][6] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][8]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][9]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][11] or [Is A better than B?][12] because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][13] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][14]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**(Old proposal, which I still support but don't mind implementing the new suggestion instead. If you post an answer supporting this proposal, be sure to specify that)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we change the way we define what is on/off topic in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity, so questions on our site are best defined as on-topic by the type of answer they need, not by the subject of their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, many freelancing or business concerns are off-topic here, and some career questions are actually on-topic. The deciding factor is the type of answer the question requires. I see this causing a lot of confusion about what is actually considered on/off topic for our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think it would be better to define what is on topic by the type of answer needed, instead of the subject of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What kind of questions can I ask here?][1]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions asked be about a conceptual topics in software development, such as software architecture and design concepts, algorithms and data structure design, and the software development lifecycle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][3].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][5] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][6] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][8]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][9]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][11] or [Is A better than B?][12] because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][13] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][14]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each of those bullet points should be a link that points to a [meta-faq][15] post containing more details on the subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were some concerns about this reverting to the old wall of text our FAQ once was. I think using small text will help avoid that since users can skip reading the smaller print if they don't actually care to read the details, but it still includes some short examples for users who need a bullet point explained further and don't want to navigate away from the page. In addition, the link colors on the FAQ are a bit darker than here on meta, so I think the bullet points headers will stand out a bit better from the small-print content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop some of the confusion I see about our site scope, and reduce the number of upset users who asked a question which was in the &quot;on-topic&quot; list of the FAQ, but the question still got closed as off-topic. The scope of this site is really defined by the type of answers required, not the subject of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1646/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3319/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8708" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="c947a295-a2ba-48ba-b4ba-b6807ac08c16" CreationDate="2012-03-14T16:03:41.590" UserId="1130" Comment="Made edited proposal more clear for users who didn't read the original one" Text="**Edited proposal**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[jcmeloni's answer below][16] made the suggestion to make this a new section in the [Programmers.SE FAQ][18] instead of replacing the existing section, like [UX.SE's FAQ][17] does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this proposal, so instead of changing the existing bullet-point list defining what is an on-topic question, what about simply adding a new section titled &quot;What makes a good question&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What makes a good question?][1]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should elicit definitive answers or solutions rather than prolonged discussions. Remember, [this a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. If you want to participate in chatty, open-ended discussions on programming-related topics, visit our [chat][13].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][3].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][5] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][6] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][8]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][9]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][11] or [Is A better than B?][12] because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][13] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][14]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**(Old proposal, which I still support but don't mind implementing the new suggestion instead. If you post an answer supporting this proposal, be sure to specify that)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we change the way we define what is on/off topic in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity, so questions on our site are best defined as on-topic by the type of answer they need, not by the subject of their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, many freelancing or business concerns are off-topic here, and some career questions are actually on-topic. The deciding factor is the type of answer the question requires. I see this causing a lot of confusion about what is actually considered on/off topic for our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think it would be better to define what is on topic by the type of answer needed, instead of the subject of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What kind of questions can I ask here?][1]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions asked be about a conceptual topics in software development, such as software architecture and design concepts, algorithms and data structure design, and the software development lifecycle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][3].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][5] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][6] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][8]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][9]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][11] or [Is A better than B?][12] because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][13] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][14]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each of those bullet points should be a link that points to a [meta-faq][15] post containing more details on the subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were some concerns about this reverting to the old wall of text our FAQ once was. I think using small text will help avoid that since users can skip reading the smaller print if they don't actually care to read the details, but it still includes some short examples for users who need a bullet point explained further and don't want to navigate away from the page. In addition, the link colors on the FAQ are a bit darker than here on meta, so I think the bullet points headers will stand out a bit better from the small-print content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop some of the confusion I see about our site scope, and reduce the number of upset users who asked a question which was in the &quot;on-topic&quot; list of the FAQ, but the question still got closed as off-topic. The scope of this site is really defined by the type of answers required, not the subject of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1646/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3319/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8709" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="74066a38-b1d4-49fe-abc5-926f93a85d32" CreationDate="2012-03-14T20:12:54.603" UserId="1130" Comment="Didn't like title :)" Text="(Edited) Update our FAQ to improve the on-topic definition" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8710" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="47fd5236-fa1d-49e1-823b-269a9abb7c1c" CreationDate="2012-03-15T07:22:32.497" UserId="31260" Comment="reference to UX.SE FAQ made more prominent; relevant example section quoted explicitly" Text="**Edited proposal**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[jcmeloni's answer below][16] made the suggestion to make this a new section in the [Programmers.SE FAQ][18] instead of replacing the existing section.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* This new section could be like in [UX.SE's FAQ][17]:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###What makes a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Prefer questions that elicit definitive answers or solutions rather than prolonged discussions. Remember, this a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; More context yields better answers. Fill your question with details such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Description of the users' experience levels and goals&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Mockups, screenshots, or photos of existing designs&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Software platform, if applicable (Is it an Android app? A web form? A kiosk with a 20&quot;×20&quot; touch screen?)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you're familiar with other Stack Exchange sites, questions on UX tend to be a little more subjective than usual. That's okay, as long as the question follows the guidelines outlined in [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this proposal, so instead of changing the existing bullet-point list defining what is an on-topic question, what about simply adding a new section titled &quot;What makes a good question&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What makes a good question?][1]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should elicit definitive answers or solutions rather than prolonged discussions. Remember, [this a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. If you want to participate in chatty, open-ended discussions on programming-related topics, visit our [chat][13].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][3].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][5] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][6] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][8]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][9]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][11] or [Is A better than B?][12] because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][13] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][14]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**(Old proposal, which I still support but don't mind implementing the new suggestion instead. If you post an answer supporting this proposal, be sure to specify that)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we change the way we define what is on/off topic in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity, so questions on our site are best defined as on-topic by the type of answer they need, not by the subject of their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, many freelancing or business concerns are off-topic here, and some career questions are actually on-topic. The deciding factor is the type of answer the question requires. I see this causing a lot of confusion about what is actually considered on/off topic for our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think it would be better to define what is on topic by the type of answer needed, instead of the subject of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What kind of questions can I ask here?][1]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions asked be about a conceptual topics in software development, such as software architecture and design concepts, algorithms and data structure design, and the software development lifecycle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][3].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][4]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][5] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][6] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][8]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][9]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][10]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][11] or [Is A better than B?][12] because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][13] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][14]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each of those bullet points should be a link that points to a [meta-faq][15] post containing more details on the subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were some concerns about this reverting to the old wall of text our FAQ once was. I think using small text will help avoid that since users can skip reading the smaller print if they don't actually care to read the details, but it still includes some short examples for users who need a bullet point explained further and don't want to navigate away from the page. In addition, the link colors on the FAQ are a bit darker than here on meta, so I think the bullet points headers will stand out a bit better from the small-print content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop some of the confusion I see about our site scope, and reduce the number of upset users who asked a question which was in the &quot;on-topic&quot; list of the FAQ, but the question still got closed as off-topic. The scope of this site is really defined by the type of answers required, not the subject of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1646/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3319/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8711" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3292" RevisionGUID="0981a7b7-48af-4eda-ae93-16653cfb1336" CreationDate="2012-03-15T11:52:20.893" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/180260140166037504" />
  <row Id="8712" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3322" RevisionGUID="475a4429-4cb9-4695-a4c3-fc403841c78e" CreationDate="2012-03-15T14:33:52.663" UserId="49469" Text="I've been in the community for only few days, and I really enjoyed how the system works. I was wondering if there is any variant from the stack system that could be installed locally, say in a university? I saw few variations such as the one from Stanford online classes, but I was really more interested in the particular philosophy of this one of users privileges defining the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My university has many departments that are self managed by students, I believe a tool like this could increase greatly the interaction between students here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One may say that instead of requesting to create a new tool, rather invite them to collaborate here and on other parts of the stack community too, but in my country english is not a native language, and this unfortunately still separate many students from nice things such as this community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this questions end up not belonging to meta (I really got confused on the allowed question 'is subject X allowed' and actually asking this since it doesn't directly benefit (maybe on the long run it does), this community (since Im talking about computer science students here), please could I get a pointer on where this is appropriated, or know if it is not possible or where would be possible? Or maybe the topic moved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8713" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3322" RevisionGUID="475a4429-4cb9-4695-a4c3-fc403841c78e" CreationDate="2012-03-15T14:33:52.663" UserId="49469" Text="Is it possible to have a local 'programmers' running on a university local server only for students?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8714" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3322" RevisionGUID="475a4429-4cb9-4695-a4c3-fc403841c78e" CreationDate="2012-03-15T14:33:52.663" UserId="49469" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8715" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3323" RevisionGUID="10c79d0b-5005-4510-ba17-ba12e8f3f42f" CreationDate="2012-03-15T14:45:18.277" UserId="47" Text="Unless you have lots of money you cannot self host the Stack Exchange engine. This was tried for SE 1.0 but it didn't work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The business model is built around communities coming to a single location (Stack Exchange) and building within the existing framework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When SE 2.0 (of which Programmers is just one site out of 80+) was started there was no possibility of self hosting, but there have been comments that indicate that large corporations (we're talking the size of Microsoft, Oracle, etc.) could - though I can't find the reference right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you really like the model then check out the list of [Stack Exchange clones](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/2267/stack-overflow-clones) on Meta Stack Overflow. You should be able to find one you can install and use." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8716" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3314" RevisionGUID="85ea48be-b717-493b-95cc-8921ff0c4601" CreationDate="2012-03-15T14:52:21.043" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/180305437856505856" />
  <row Id="8717" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3323" RevisionGUID="da71d1f9-5186-464f-bc0b-6e49f66a3d4f" CreationDate="2012-03-15T16:52:45.283" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Added reference" Text="Unless you have lots of money you cannot self host the Stack Exchange engine. This was tried for SE 1.0 but it didn't work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The business model is built around communities coming to a single location (Stack Exchange) and building within the existing framework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When SE 2.0 (of which Programmers is just one site out of 80+) was started there was no possibility of self hosting, but there have been [comments that indicate](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/16054/is-the-stack-exchange-engine-available/16055#16055) that large corporations (we're talking the size of Microsoft, Oracle, etc.) could:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There is a Stack Exchange Enterprise option for internal use. The pricing makes this feasible for large organizations only. You can email team at stackoverflow and your inquiry will be routed to the correct place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you really like the model then check out the list of [Stack Exchange clones](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/2267/stack-overflow-clones) on Meta Stack Overflow. You should be able to find one you can install and use." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8718" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3324" RevisionGUID="e23a899a-cc11-4f04-af0f-74c501feb4bd" CreationDate="2012-03-15T18:17:58.640" UserId="226" Text="[tag:career] has been blacklisted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*/throws a party*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8719" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3279" RevisionGUID="dcea92ec-eacd-42f0-8857-df6a657c667d" CreationDate="2012-03-15T18:18:08.143" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8720" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3325" RevisionGUID="d9211bdc-aa95-47c2-a5fd-d46e4bcf3a08" CreationDate="2012-03-16T13:02:22.260" UserId="4" Text="After consideration of both the questions and answers and taking into account the [mission statements][1] and [About page for Stack Exchange][2], the [Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions][3], voting and flagging, I have closed the question regarding [why statements are terminated by semicolons in most programming languages][4] pending a further discussion here on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the mission statement of Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We build libraries of high-quality questions and answers, focused on the most important topics in each area of expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the About page of Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We welcome questions that are clear and specific, representing real problems that you face&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm having difficulty seeing how this qualifies as an important topic to professional software developers, nor how it relates to a real problem being faced by any software development professional. Perhaps if it focused more on the aspects of programming language design that led to the use of special characters and why a semicolon might be more appropriate than another character. However, this is not emphasized in the question nor in the majority of the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reviewing the Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions, I scored it a 4 out of 6. I gave it credit for inspiring answers that explain why, generating lengthy and detailed answers, having a constructive tone, and can be (in theory anyway) backed up with facts and references. It is doing very poorly in the category of reliable references being generated. I was not able to find a way how it was inviting the sharing of experiences nor how it was contributing to a problem being solved (or how it was more than mindless fun). To me, a score of 4/6 is only about 67% - the equivalent of a C.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I looked at the answers, the top answer was a mostly discussion of the English language, with a small component discussing parsing and syntax of languages. Other top answers discussed the history of programming languages and other options for terminating statements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts and comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139482/why-are-statements-in-most-programming-languages-terminated-by-semicolons#question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8721" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3325" RevisionGUID="d9211bdc-aa95-47c2-a5fd-d46e4bcf3a08" CreationDate="2012-03-16T13:02:22.260" UserId="4" Text="Is the question about statements being terminated by semicolons appropriate for Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8722" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3325" RevisionGUID="d9211bdc-aa95-47c2-a5fd-d46e4bcf3a08" CreationDate="2012-03-16T13:02:22.260" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8723" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3326" RevisionGUID="6409ae3a-59d9-4851-825d-5a46625ef1aa" CreationDate="2012-03-16T14:25:22.817" UserId="41381" Text="I think the question should be opened, I think the massive amounts off up votes is a sign that a majority of the community thinks this question should exist.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8724" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3327" RevisionGUID="76350f9c-d850-485b-9355-36cce895fc5b" CreationDate="2012-03-16T15:01:26.987" UserId="1130" Text="I'm torn. On one hand it's a clear-cut question which is related to programming and has some interesting answers, but on the other hand, I don't see it as being constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Ryathal][1] made a good point that a few flags is not uncommon with the question having over 4k views and so many votes, particularly with some of the strong opinions over the site's scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think I would rather see the question open, and a meta post made to ask higher-rep users to evaluate the question and vote to close if they think it should be closed. Once it gets a few close votes, then close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really want to try to get away from the stigma this site seems to have that our moderators are our janitors or enforcers, because that really isn't what they're for. They're for handling exceptions that the community itself can't handle. I'd rather train the community to start evaluating questions like this than to have our moderators have to handle every borderline question themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3325/is-the-question-about-statements-being-terminated-by-semicolons-appropriate-for#comment8786_3325" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8725" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3328" RevisionGUID="5e6040c0-3ffd-469d-8733-139f2e0b4424" CreationDate="2012-03-16T15:44:43.820" UserId="25476" Text="You were right to close it, and I was watching this one very closely as well.  Problem was that it was so popular that I was afraid of a user backlash for closing it before everybody got all their opinions out.  I was about to close it before you did because of just how many flags it was getting as well.  It really couldn't be ignored anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I certainly didn't want it to community wiki on us either though because it would be yet another example of a top question on this site that doesn't fit the FAQ." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8726" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3329" RevisionGUID="eb7f2cea-109e-4bd3-8473-b5efcd2e1cd9" CreationDate="2012-03-16T17:48:08.473" UserId="25936" Text="Typically we evaluate questions on research effort and usefulness:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Research effort**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The question shows no research effort at all. It's a curiosity question, which I'm perfectly fine with in general, but that doesn't mean that OP still doesn't have to do at least some minor research prior to asking. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A simple web search for &quot;programming languages semicolon&quot; revealed the [Comparison of programming languages (syntax)][1] and [Syntactic sugar][2] Wikipedia articles that discuss semicolons as terminating characters, and the very interesting [The Semicolon Wars][3] article. The lack of proper terminology (statement terminators) and vagueness of the question tells me that there wasn't any research effort at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Usefulness** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It could be argued that the question would be useful to someone researching language design, but that would be a very weak argument since there's nothing in the question to even hint towards language design and every answer that approached the question from a language design perspective did so in extremely vague terms. Furthermore, even from a language design angle the question is a [typical bikeshed question][4], and amazingly it fits [Wadler's Law][5] perfectly, as it's a question on syntax rather than semantics: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; In any language design, the total time spent discussing a feature in this list is proportional to two raised to the power of its position.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; 0\. Semantics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; 1\. Syntax&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; 2\. Lexical syntax&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; 3\. Lexical syntax of comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, let's take a look at our [FAQ][6]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions should I not ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We _tend to forget_ that part once in a while, but for me it's the most important part of the FAQ, one that clearly indicates that we are not a discussion forum but a Q&amp;A site. The question in question is a great example of why that paragraph is important: It's a barely useful question, no research effort at all, but highly upvoted. However there is no actual problem to be solved, it's a typical discussion oriented question, and even if it wasn't otherwise troublesome it should have been closed as not constructive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which brings us to the notorious [6SG][7]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question itself fails all but the last one. It's simply too short to guide answers in a constructive manner, and although some of the answers are not bad, that has little (if anything) to do with the question. I won't evaluate the answers themselves, because I feel we kinda failed in protecting people from wasting their time in answering a question that clearly doesn't belong to the site, and that's not the answerers fault.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**In conclusion:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I fully support closing the question, and if I wasn't on the road when the question appeared I would have closed it sooner, it's not a type of question I would want to encourage on Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It gathered quite a few upvotes and so did the three top answers, so it's not a question I would delete, but I don't think there's a point in trying to rewrite and re-open as I think it has run it's circle and there's little (if any) chance it will gather any more good answers. &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Further reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [The Trouble With Popularity][8]&#xD;&#xA;- [Parkinson's Law of Triviality][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_languages_%28syntax%29&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_sugar&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/the-semicolon-wars&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/31253/the-bike-shed-problem-and-so&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Wadlers_Law&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8727" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3325" RevisionGUID="036351f8-d2ea-4e96-bab1-40b3afaad416" CreationDate="2012-03-16T17:52:21.343" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/180713125476179969" />
  <row Id="8728" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3325" RevisionGUID="f85ff4a5-1735-4be1-bc40-cfb8e1518c6d" CreationDate="2012-03-16T18:03:39.000" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8729" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3330" RevisionGUID="8d904f8b-5cd4-4c57-9da1-55ac119526d8" CreationDate="2012-03-16T18:47:29.677" UserId="39340" Text="My issue with these type of closings is that it happens long after the answers and community involvement have occurred.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was probably closed correctly, however it was closed long after it should have been.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After so much popularity I don't think its really fair to just close it because &quot;It doesn't fit the FAQ&quot;. I understand that not every question, that should be closed, can be caught immediately. But this question has been on the front page for 3 days now. In my opinion the chance to close it before it became popular was missed. The community obviously likes the question, so why can't it just live?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8730" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3331" RevisionGUID="1441aa84-b38a-43e4-98f4-4f50ab8a3558" CreationDate="2012-03-16T22:57:42.977" UserId="175" Text="I haven't had much progress with my architecture question on SO.  Is it a good fit for Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/q/9271961/328397" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8731" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3331" RevisionGUID="1441aa84-b38a-43e4-98f4-4f50ab8a3558" CreationDate="2012-03-16T22:57:42.977" UserId="175" Text="Is this in-scope for Programmers: Imitating Exchange AuthZ in my own app" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8732" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3331" RevisionGUID="1441aa84-b38a-43e4-98f4-4f50ab8a3558" CreationDate="2012-03-16T22:57:42.977" UserId="175" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8733" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3332" RevisionGUID="57a61889-3f3c-467c-88ef-3aaf9c9da38c" CreationDate="2012-03-16T23:14:27.523" UserId="47" Text="From the very first line in the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'd say yes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want it migrating flag it for a Stack Overflow moderator to migrate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8734" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3325" RevisionGUID="00b16b78-eadf-4e1c-8eea-e9ef795f4ecc" CreationDate="2012-03-17T15:01:40.167" UserId="4" Comment="added 491 characters in body" Text="After consideration of both the questions and answers and taking into account the [mission statements][1] and [About page for Stack Exchange][2], the [Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions][3], voting and flagging, I have closed the question regarding [why statements are terminated by semicolons in most programming languages][4] pending a further discussion here on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the mission statement of Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We build libraries of high-quality questions and answers, focused on the most important topics in each area of expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the About page of Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We welcome questions that are clear and specific, representing real problems that you face&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm having difficulty seeing how this qualifies as an important topic to professional software developers, nor how it relates to a real problem being faced by any software development professional. Perhaps if it focused more on the aspects of programming language design that led to the use of special characters and why a semicolon might be more appropriate than another character. However, this is not emphasized in the question nor in the majority of the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reviewing the Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions, I scored it a 4 out of 6. I gave it credit for inspiring answers that explain why, generating lengthy and detailed answers, having a constructive tone, and can be (in theory anyway) backed up with facts and references. It is doing very poorly in the category of reliable references being generated. I was not able to find a way how it was inviting the sharing of experiences nor how it was contributing to a problem being solved (or how it was more than mindless fun). To me, a score of 4/6 is only about 67% - the equivalent of a C.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I looked at the answers, the top answer was a mostly discussion of the English language, with a small component discussing parsing and syntax of languages. Other top answers discussed the history of programming languages and other options for terminating statements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts and comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, **to summarize the discussion**, it appears the general idea is that a question like this can be interesting, but it's not really the best question for the site. However, we probably should have closed or locked the question and discussed it on Meta sooner than I did, so the community would have a chance to make it a good question. That's something that I'll try to do in the future. In the meantime, the question will remain closed since it's not the best fit for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139482/why-are-statements-in-most-programming-languages-terminated-by-semicolons#question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8735" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3325" RevisionGUID="6877f4b2-b5bd-4a1a-ac1d-b77dafe52dbe" CreationDate="2012-03-17T15:08:54.120" UserId="4" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8736" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3333" RevisionGUID="3973dbe5-7439-4ccd-a76c-d010c10a7f17" CreationDate="2012-03-18T05:52:10.023" UserId="49469" Text="I saw that there were up votes in this question, does that means people agree this is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just got one at http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140237/most-useful-guides-to-learn-python-pdf-books-which-one but I'm starting to get confused currently whether I should answer this sort of question or not. Is there any new opinion about this?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8737" PostHistoryTypeId="11" PostId="3325" RevisionGUID="1f9713d9-90e2-4998-8493-2f61b8d34f76" CreationDate="2012-03-18T07:21:33.927" UserId="25936" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:2314,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;NickC&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8738" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3325" RevisionGUID="641012ad-829f-42c3-84a8-32a10365a541" CreationDate="2012-03-18T12:21:26.013" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 491 characters in body" Text="After consideration of both the questions and answers and taking into account the [mission statements][1] and [About page for Stack Exchange][2], the [Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions][3], voting and flagging, I have closed the question regarding [why statements are terminated by semicolons in most programming languages][4] pending a further discussion here on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the mission statement of Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We build libraries of high-quality questions and answers, focused on the most important topics in each area of expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the About page of Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We welcome questions that are clear and specific, representing real problems that you face&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm having difficulty seeing how this qualifies as an important topic to professional software developers, nor how it relates to a real problem being faced by any software development professional. Perhaps if it focused more on the aspects of programming language design that led to the use of special characters and why a semicolon might be more appropriate than another character. However, this is not emphasized in the question nor in the majority of the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reviewing the Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions, I scored it a 4 out of 6. I gave it credit for inspiring answers that explain why, generating lengthy and detailed answers, having a constructive tone, and can be (in theory anyway) backed up with facts and references. It is doing very poorly in the category of reliable references being generated. I was not able to find a way how it was inviting the sharing of experiences nor how it was contributing to a problem being solved (or how it was more than mindless fun). To me, a score of 4/6 is only about 67% - the equivalent of a C.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I looked at the answers, the top answer was a mostly discussion of the English language, with a small component discussing parsing and syntax of languages. Other top answers discussed the history of programming languages and other options for terminating statements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts and comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139482/why-are-statements-in-most-programming-languages-terminated-by-semicolons#question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8739" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3334" RevisionGUID="8d67d970-c582-446e-bc9f-3daee63adcbf" CreationDate="2012-03-18T12:22:17.587" UserId="4" Text="To summarize the discussion, it appears the general idea is that a question like this can be interesting, but it's not really the best question for the site. However, we probably should have closed or locked the question and discussed it on Meta sooner than I did, so the community would have a chance to make it a good question before it received many answers and views. That's something that I'll try to do in the future. In the meantime, the question will remain closed since it's not the best fit for the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8740" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3335" RevisionGUID="68be6652-bce0-4cad-8444-faf8f5d6eb26" CreationDate="2012-03-18T21:57:36.177" UserId="4" Text="I was just doing some STCI cleanup for [tag:stci-software-engineering] and noticed that there was both a [tag:unit-tests] and [tag:unit-testing] tag. There are only 8 questions tagged [tag:unit-tests], 7 of which are also tagged [tag:unit-testing]. There are also over 250 questions tagged [tag:unit-testing].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see the need to keep both, but wanted to see the community's take on this before I did anything. Is there a reason why both tags are relevant, especially when one almost always exists with the other?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8741" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3335" RevisionGUID="68be6652-bce0-4cad-8444-faf8f5d6eb26" CreationDate="2012-03-18T21:57:36.177" UserId="4" Text="Tag Synonym: unit-tests -&gt; unit-testing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8742" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3335" RevisionGUID="68be6652-bce0-4cad-8444-faf8f5d6eb26" CreationDate="2012-03-18T21:57:36.177" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8743" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3264" RevisionGUID="58e1af07-53a0-42f5-8551-b66eeaa3c453" CreationDate="2012-03-18T22:08:40.923" UserId="4" Comment="added 126 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-engineering\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136425/architectural-patterns-for-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135709/multi-threaded-applications&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132314/methods-to-prevent-programmers-from-capturing-user-entered-data&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130128/a-java-programmer-shifting-to-c&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127075/what-percentage-of-code-and-runtime-do-you-typically-allow-for-testing&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125903/applying-for-software-engineer-positions-without-being-a-qualified-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68638/how-do-you-design-your-database&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67298/what-do-you-do-when-there-is-a-last-minute-request-to-exclude-a-feature-from-a-r&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67284/value-of-computer-science-degree-for-non-programmer-software-architect-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65348/design-architecture-patterns-practices-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64944/studies-on-breakdown-of-various-costs-associated-with-a-software-project&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61195/in-a-software-engineering-view-what-are-all-the-steps-in-a-state-of-the-art-sdl&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60648/is-software-better-designed-and-developed-by-people-who-will-use-it&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58030/mom-vs-soa-is-soa-the-latest-mom&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58006/im-doing-hobby-programming-what-programming-methodologies-e-g-xp-agile&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55518/where-i-will-get-petshop-net-4-application&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55408/filling-the-gaps-in-terms-of-software-planning-and-feeling-the-machine&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54231/what-do-you-do-to-get-your-software-design-robust-flexible-and-clear&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51839/how-do-you-keep-cool-when-production-system-goes-down&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49763/how-to-recognize-my-performance-plateau&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49226/green-engineering-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47535/implementation-of-a-rules-engine-in-your-business-applications&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47355/how-can-i-make-a-compiler&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46126/software-engineering-and-independence&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44160/at-what-point-does-constructive-criticism-of-your-code-become-unhelpful&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44066/why-is-implementing-copy-paste-in-a-touch-screen-based-smartphone-such-a-big-dea&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43867/good-book-for-debugging-disassembling-proprietary-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37451/telecommuting-with-a-foreign-employer-as-a-permanent-job&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37008/will-people-respect-a-masters-of-science-in-it-w-software-engineering-concentrat&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36491/what-can-programmers-learn-from-the-construction-industry&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30853/relation-between-developers-and-clients&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28978/is-anyone-actively-developing-software-to-be-used-with-the-emotiv-headset&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25233/computer-science-vs-computer-engineering&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28018/what-are-effective-strategies-for-setting-software-project-priorities&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8744" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3336" RevisionGUID="8ceca7bf-bffa-49c3-b013-fd06915d47aa" CreationDate="2012-03-19T02:12:04.053" UserId="25476" Text="I see no difference really unless we want to assume that [tag:unit-testing] is a methodology or practice and [tag:unit-tests] is actually about unit tests as an individual programming artifact of unit testing.  Unit testing could also encompass such things as Mocking, which is an important strategy for handling dependencies in unit tests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It all depends on where we want to draw the line.  Personally I feel that discerning between the two is just too granular.  I believe this even more so in that it is probably universal that one cannot be practicing unit testing without creating unit tests, the core functionality.  I do feel however that mocking is different enough to deserve its own tag because it is a clear strategy to approach certain unit tests." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8745" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3335" RevisionGUID="533df6e0-688c-4c24-9dde-5f9fb4ce2b97" CreationDate="2012-03-19T05:52:21.950" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/181619097472212993" />
  <row Id="8746" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3337" RevisionGUID="60ff4391-4511-43da-be0d-9a16e0e864ad" CreationDate="2012-03-19T09:08:41.473" UserId="31260" Text="I created an &quot;official&quot; suggestion for proposed synonym.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's now up to those having a right to vote whether to approve or reject,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...Users with a total answer score (total upvotes minus total downvotes) of 5 or more on the tag, can vote for tag synonyms. Suggestions will be automatically approved when they reach a score of 4, and automatically deleted when they reach a score of -2.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/pdKuA.jpg][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pdKuA.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/unit-testing/synonyms &quot;click to proceed to synonym suggestion for voting&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8747" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3337" RevisionGUID="1baffc46-4355-46c4-b1b6-abb6dfa37625" CreationDate="2012-03-19T09:47:09.593" UserId="31260" Comment="I am all for making these synonyms" Text="I am all for making these synonyms - created an &quot;official&quot; suggestion for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's now up to those having a right to vote whether to approve or reject,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...Users with a total answer score (total upvotes minus total downvotes) of 5 or more on the tag, can vote for tag synonyms. Suggestions will be automatically approved when they reach a score of 4, and automatically deleted when they reach a score of -2.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/pdKuA.jpg][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pdKuA.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/unit-testing/synonyms &quot;click to proceed to synonym suggestion for voting&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8748" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3338" RevisionGUID="ac2d5cd7-3636-4c4e-a424-8a7d4689baff" CreationDate="2012-03-19T17:25:17.567" UserId="20096" Text="This question was closed: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140512/can-it-be-a-good-idea-to-lease-a-house-rather-than-a-standard-office-space-for-a#comment264887_140512&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was a little surprised, as I did read the [FAQ][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does the question fall under &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; without falling victim to &quot;career advice, including general workplace issues&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought it did, was I wrong? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, these types of questions are useful because they are about providing programmers with the best environment possible without making the shop as a whole too inefficient. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8749" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3338" RevisionGUID="ac2d5cd7-3636-4c4e-a424-8a7d4689baff" CreationDate="2012-03-19T17:25:17.567" UserId="20096" Text="Looking for clarification on programmers stackexchange scope" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8750" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3338" RevisionGUID="ac2d5cd7-3636-4c4e-a424-8a7d4689baff" CreationDate="2012-03-19T17:25:17.567" UserId="20096" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8751" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3339" RevisionGUID="fbf85eb4-896d-41e5-879e-b46890a82cca" CreationDate="2012-03-19T17:57:31.093" UserId="4" Text="I think that closing this question was an appropriate action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, the question requires knowledge beyond the education and/or experience of software developers. Although I'm sure there are people that use this site that can answer this question, it generally falls outside of what is considered software development knowledge. I ask myself if the question relies on knowledge or experience that someone would get in some combination of education in computer science, software engineering, or information technology or in professional experience in some capacity on a software development team (ranging from a programmer to a manager).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next, the question is too localized. In everyplace I've ever lived, zoning has been done at a city (or ocassionally county) level. We can't be sure what the laws are in your city, county, and state, and if someone comes across this question, the answers might or might not help them. Part of &quot;too localized&quot; is a &quot;small geographic area&quot;. You can probably make the argument that a country or continent is sufficiently large, but not a city or even a state. The number of people that would benefit is not &quot;the general population of software developers&quot; but &quot;you and maybe some other software developers in your exact geopolitical area&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, I don't think this question is exclusive to software developers. It wouldn't apply to every career - it would be hard for a manufacturing team to move into a house. But the same considerations apply to a number of professions. I can see how accountants, lawyers, and graphic designers could also ask the same question. I'm not expert in these professions, but I would suspect the answers would be similar for other professions that tend toward &quot;desk work&quot; and &quot;thought work&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I do think that &quot;freelance and business concerns&quot; being in the FAQ is awfully vague and might be something to look at in the future for clarifying. Your question is clearly a &quot;business concern&quot;, but the phrase &quot;make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general&quot; from a few lines down in the FAQ helps to eliminate a number of questions from being allowed. I think it's potentially problematic that one could scan the FAQ (and the &quot;what kind of questions to ask&quot; is pretty long), see one or two bullet points, miss a line, and easily stray into off-topic territory.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8754" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3338" RevisionGUID="bc950423-e0ad-4eba-9107-b21d69e02dfa" CreationDate="2012-03-19T22:25:10.230" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8755" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3338" RevisionGUID="b9457299-8c16-4374-a7f8-63c883a07cac" CreationDate="2012-03-20T04:23:19.933" UserId="25936" Comment="official name in title" Text="This question was closed: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140512/can-it-be-a-good-idea-to-lease-a-house-rather-than-a-standard-office-space-for-a#comment264887_140512&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was a little surprised, as I did read the [FAQ][1]. Does the question fall under &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; without falling victim to &quot;career advice, including general workplace issues&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought it did, was I wrong? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, these types of questions are useful because they are about providing programmers with the best environment possible without making the shop as a whole too inefficient. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8756" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3338" RevisionGUID="b9457299-8c16-4374-a7f8-63c883a07cac" CreationDate="2012-03-20T04:23:19.933" UserId="25936" Comment="official name in title" Text="Looking for clarification on Programmers Stack Exchange scope" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8757" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3337" RevisionGUID="b6610daf-ad34-418a-877d-2957bcaf0029" CreationDate="2012-03-20T09:49:33.487" UserId="31260" Comment="added 61 characters in body" Text="I am all for making these synonyms - created an &quot;official&quot; suggestion for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's now up to those having a right to vote whether to approve or reject,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...Users with a total answer score (total upvotes minus total downvotes) of 5 or more on the tag, can vote for tag synonyms. Suggestions will be automatically approved when they reach a score of 4, and automatically deleted when they reach a score of -2.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/pdKuA.jpg][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, suggestion scored 3 of required 4.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pdKuA.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/unit-testing/synonyms &quot;click to proceed to synonym suggestion for voting&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8758" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3341" RevisionGUID="3e51ad1b-d0e4-4c0e-a19e-9d981e9d0f66" CreationDate="2012-03-20T13:00:29.453" UserId="7748" Text="People Asking the community to do their homework are shut down fast.. Why wasn't this Question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Software solution from the 2000's, should I attempt to patch or remake the whole thing?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;His job was to :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discuss a system that a certain company is currently using and [determine] what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be done with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He basically had a meeting and threw the question here. Is that\should that be allowed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140621/software-solution-from-the-2000s-should-i-attempt-to-patch-or-remake-the-whole" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8759" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3341" RevisionGUID="3e51ad1b-d0e4-4c0e-a19e-9d981e9d0f66" CreationDate="2012-03-20T13:00:29.453" UserId="7748" Text="Is it OK to ask P.SE to do your job?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8760" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3341" RevisionGUID="3e51ad1b-d0e4-4c0e-a19e-9d981e9d0f66" CreationDate="2012-03-20T13:00:29.453" UserId="7748" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8761" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3342" RevisionGUID="c59866dc-b18c-4f71-8db6-3c36e46ecdeb" CreationDate="2012-03-20T13:07:18.977" UserId="47" Text="Ultimately all Stack Exchange sites where professional matters are discussed (Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Webmasters, Game Development, here) exist because people are having trouble with an aspect of their job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some people will post a question hoping for a complete solution, others will be happy with a pointer in the right direction. Here on Programmers you are more likely to get the latter than the former and a &quot;complete solution&quot; question may well be too broad to be answered using the Stack Exchange format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At first glance this question does seem rather broad, but it could elicit some good points about how to go about deciding whether a system should be patched or rewritten. Currently there are no close votes or flags on the question and four people have answered and two upvoted so at least some of the community thinks that it's OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the only reason for voting to close would be that the question was too broad - so if you think that's the case vote to close." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8762" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3343" RevisionGUID="8fc42b47-a51b-4c58-b6c6-b7e9af28a24e" CreationDate="2012-03-20T13:20:11.717" UserId="25476" Text="There is a far cry different from the question about an existing system, its faults and the best way to design a better solution, vs. PLZZZ TEH CODEZ!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The question cited above clearly described the issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. The OP didn't get too localized&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. While potentially broad, the question narrowed the focus a bit by describing what he had already tried.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 4. The OP put in some effort yet still needed expert answers that could potentially benefit others in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets compare that to this Emmy Nominated question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140500/how-to-check-string-for-space-in-ruby&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. No effort whatsoever put into figuring out the answer on his own&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. No effort at all into even proper command of the English language for that matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Not even on on topic for Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 4. No way that the question can be answered without literally writing the code for the OP, thus doing his homework for him.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No comparison IMHO but like others have said, vote to close or flag if you feel that it is not a good question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8764" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3341" RevisionGUID="0fbaddb8-ce4a-4611-81db-a93edfbceb4b" CreationDate="2012-03-20T22:51:29.513" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8765" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3344" RevisionGUID="7f94af40-3ced-4897-b9bd-1dcc46bed5cf" CreationDate="2012-03-20T23:08:08.663" UserDisplayName="user39741" Text="I have 313 points listed here on Programmers, but on StackOverflow when I look at my summary it's showing 309 points for Programers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other stack exchange sites I'm on are updating properly, but not this one?  Any ideas as to why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also need to explain, it's showing up properly under Programmers with the other sites I'm on, but on StackOverflow the value for Programmers is off." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8766" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3344" RevisionGUID="7f94af40-3ced-4897-b9bd-1dcc46bed5cf" CreationDate="2012-03-20T23:08:08.663" UserDisplayName="user39741" Text="Programmers total points not listed properly on StackOverflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8767" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3344" RevisionGUID="7f94af40-3ced-4897-b9bd-1dcc46bed5cf" CreationDate="2012-03-20T23:08:08.663" UserDisplayName="user39741" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8768" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3344" RevisionGUID="3143085a-2c75-47d4-99cb-61c774c09264" CreationDate="2012-03-20T23:17:21.307" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8769" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3345" RevisionGUID="b800c993-30ba-4341-aed3-83e6c35a8ce3" CreationDate="2012-03-20T23:30:17.407" UserId="25936" Text="Small inconsistencies like that are not uncommon, reputation synchronization is not immediate and what you are seeing on your SO profile is probably a cached version.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the missing +4 is a refund from a post that was deleted on March 17, and since there where some [recent changes to reputation regarding deleted posts][1], this might be a bug after all. If your reputation on SO isn't listed correctly in a couple of days, post a comment to this answer so I can notify the developers about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/123319/recent-reputation-history-changes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8770" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3345" RevisionGUID="1f1fad49-0724-4108-aa91-c8e248da09d2" CreationDate="2012-03-21T01:24:06.000" UserId="25936" Comment="added 184 characters in body" Text="Small inconsistencies like that are not uncommon, reputation synchronization is not immediate and what you are seeing on your SO profile is probably a cached version.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the missing +4 is a refund from a post that was deleted on March 17, and since there where some [recent changes to reputation regarding deleted posts][1], this might be a bug after all. If your reputation on SO isn't listed correctly in a couple of days, post a comment to this answer so I can notify the developers about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your P.SE reputation is listed correctly on [your SO profile][2] now, so it was caching after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/123319/recent-reputation-history-changes&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/543572/james-drinkard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8771" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3335" RevisionGUID="e0111672-9fec-4201-a03e-c15f0832531a" CreationDate="2012-03-21T03:34:54.183" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8772" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3344" RevisionGUID="931cc7d5-6acb-49fc-8ebf-daa2d3bea161" CreationDate="2012-03-21T04:32:03.660" UserId="102" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8773" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3337" RevisionGUID="02d57a9e-a473-4632-920e-910924daa226" CreationDate="2012-03-21T07:12:20.337" UserId="31260" Comment="synonymizing is done" Text="I am all for making these synonyms - created an &quot;official&quot; suggestion for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's now up to those having a right to vote whether to approve or reject,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...Users with a total answer score (total upvotes minus total downvotes) of 5 or more on the tag, can vote for tag synonyms. Suggestions will be automatically approved when they reach a score of 4, and automatically deleted when they reach a score of -2.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/pdKuA.jpg][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, suggested synonymizing is done (thanks to [Thomas][3] and all who voted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pdKuA.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/unit-testing/synonyms &quot;click to proceed to synonym suggestion for voting&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3335/tag-synonym-unit-tests-unit-testing/3337#comment8857_3337" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8774" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3346" RevisionGUID="851fcd4f-bc14-402a-afb9-1f33901b5d47" CreationDate="2012-03-21T12:27:41.680" UserId="41381" Text="just because you have a suspicion that a question may have answers resulting in doing the asker's job/homework is no reason to close or hate on an otherwise good question. If someone manages to get some free work out of this site more power to them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8775" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3346" RevisionGUID="4e10399e-ddfb-43c1-8aa2-87747ca4c49e" CreationDate="2012-03-21T14:58:28.447" UserId="41381" Comment="added 257 characters in body" Text="Just because you have a suspicion that a question may have answers resulting in doing the asker's job/homework is no reason to close or hate on a question. A question is either good or bad for other reasons not related to whether answering it may do the asker's job/homework. I believe [Mark Trap's Answer][1] regarding homework questions is also relevant here. If someone manages to get some free work out of this site more power to them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2857/41381" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8780" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3263" RevisionGUID="3e350478-b19e-4239-81cd-66cbab699b03" CreationDate="2012-03-22T04:44:41.987" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|tags|posse|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8781" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3348" RevisionGUID="8bc0aa04-f0c7-4c7b-9a5e-0d9a91009d33" CreationDate="2012-03-22T13:35:56.023" UserId="1130" Text="This question came up in chat yesterday, and a point was made that Programming History is often overlooked on P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To [quote Mark Trapp][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Save for the accepted answer, I thought the semicolons question was&#xD;&#xA;&gt; pretty good. Programming history has always been an overlooked aspect&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of Programmers's scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So although the question is probably not relevant to a programmer job in today's world, it does provide some insight into the history of programming languages, and I feel it should be left open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3908862#3908862" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8782" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3348" RevisionGUID="b2347be4-95e8-4f89-af6a-d8bc178d8efc" CreationDate="2012-03-22T13:41:57.110" UserId="1130" Comment="added 260 characters in body" Text="This question came up in chat yesterday, and a point was made that Programming History is often overlooked on P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To [quote Mark Trapp][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Save for the accepted answer, I thought the semicolons question was&#xD;&#xA;&gt; pretty good. Programming history has always been an overlooked aspect&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of Programmers's scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So although the question is probably not relevant to a programmer job in today's world, it does provide some insight into the history of programming languages, which can possibly be used for future decisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Originally I thought the question was clear and on-topic, and the only real downside was it wasn't constructive, however I have changed my mind since then and feel it should be left open, since I don't think we should ever forget our history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3908862#3908862" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8783" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3325" RevisionGUID="a8db9341-b782-4ebc-b70a-2444fed3a575" CreationDate="2012-03-22T18:34:49.300" UserId="31260" Comment="update: major edit in question in rev 5, reopen at rev 6 // http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3348/31260" Text="###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At Rev 5, there was a major edit to question text, based on discussion in [comments made to this answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3348/31260).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of Rev 6, question has been reopened. Reference: [question timeline](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/139482/timeline).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Below applies to question prior to revision 5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After consideration of both the questions and answers and taking into account the [mission statements][1] and [About page for Stack Exchange][2], the [Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions][3], voting and flagging, I have closed the question regarding [why statements are terminated by semicolons in most programming languages][4] pending a further discussion here on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the mission statement of Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We build libraries of high-quality questions and answers, focused on the most important topics in each area of expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the About page of Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We welcome questions that are clear and specific, representing real problems that you face&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm having difficulty seeing how this qualifies as an important topic to professional software developers, nor how it relates to a real problem being faced by any software development professional. Perhaps if it focused more on the aspects of programming language design that led to the use of special characters and why a semicolon might be more appropriate than another character. However, this is not emphasized in the question nor in the majority of the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reviewing the Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions, I scored it a 4 out of 6. I gave it credit for inspiring answers that explain why, generating lengthy and detailed answers, having a constructive tone, and can be (in theory anyway) backed up with facts and references. It is doing very poorly in the category of reliable references being generated. I was not able to find a way how it was inviting the sharing of experiences nor how it was contributing to a problem being solved (or how it was more than mindless fun). To me, a score of 4/6 is only about 67% - the equivalent of a C.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I looked at the answers, the top answer was a mostly discussion of the English language, with a small component discussing parsing and syntax of languages. Other top answers discussed the history of programming languages and other options for terminating statements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts and comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139482/why-are-statements-in-most-programming-languages-terminated-by-semicolons#question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8784" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3349" RevisionGUID="1a7e4648-c8e4-42f7-92b9-dcb45c080a0c" CreationDate="2012-03-23T13:04:19.527" UserId="1130" Text="I think those kind of questions largely depend on the answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They're usually too open-ended to be answered well, and often just lead to a list of everyone's favorite resource, which will get outdated over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**However**, if someone does take the time to write a comprehensive list of how to get started with a specific language or technology, then I'd leave the question open." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8785" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3350" RevisionGUID="8f778ac7-069e-475d-bb46-c58ac859b860" CreationDate="2012-03-23T14:39:11.630" UserId="31260" Text="Studying similar ([faq-proposed](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/faq-proposed/info)) question at SO Meta and especially its accepted answer helped me to make my mind on that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Where can I ask a “how to get started” question on a Stack Exchange site with respect to technology?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/121705/where-can-i-ask-a-how-to-get-started-question-on-a-stack-exchange-site-with-re)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...tag wiki's is perhaps the best we can do.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the wiki for a topic doesn't already contain this information - links to web sites, books, tutorials etc. then perhaps we should be making all efforts to ensure that it does...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Above brought peace and light into my life.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if I can imagine an answer making good tag wiki, it means question is OK to me. &lt;sup&gt;assuming it is on-topic&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, I take a deeper look into the question and try to find out if there's something wrong with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for [the question you referred to](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84739/what-is-the-preferable-mobile-android-iphone-game-development-tool-for-a-c-ne), well, it doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While casting close vote I have been choosing between not constructive and too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Per re-reading [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) I was rather inclined to vote for _too localized_ but the statement &quot;Which development tool is widely used now?&quot; made me feel that _not constructive_ would be a better match.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8786" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3341" RevisionGUID="29944242-ece3-4730-bdd8-0559f511147b" CreationDate="2012-03-23T23:52:23.113" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/183340445500317697" />
  <row Id="8787" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3351" RevisionGUID="043f8c6e-1bf5-4e92-8162-aaa17c5bb6d8" CreationDate="2012-03-24T13:15:47.117" UserId="27940" Text="I tried repeatedly to answer a question today and 3 times in a row got the source code for the CAPTCHA page redirection instead of actually being redirected there. Today I hit similar issues on a number of pages on the StackExchange network. It seems that for some reason your web server (or the content distribution network's server) is inserting a 0 and some blank lines before the HTTP headers, and Chrome then renders source code instead of the web page. Example below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Kw9Yh.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8788" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3351" RevisionGUID="043f8c6e-1bf5-4e92-8162-aaa17c5bb6d8" CreationDate="2012-03-24T13:15:47.117" UserId="27940" Text="Pages rendering as source code in Chrome" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8789" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3351" RevisionGUID="043f8c6e-1bf5-4e92-8162-aaa17c5bb6d8" CreationDate="2012-03-24T13:15:47.117" UserId="27940" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8790" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3279" RevisionGUID="9038b227-c381-464a-ac5d-b122ebc85779" CreationDate="2012-03-25T00:43:29.467" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-blacklist|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8791" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3352" RevisionGUID="8947f220-31ce-40be-9239-a51de50576d8" CreationDate="2012-03-25T00:48:35.030" UserId="25936" Text="[tag:software-engineering] was recently cleaned up, through the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative][1]. Obviously since we [already identified it as a tag that doesn't belong][2] and we went through the trouble of cleaning it up, there is no point in keeping it around anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we please kill it now? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3263/structured-tag-cleanup-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3094/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8792" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3352" RevisionGUID="8947f220-31ce-40be-9239-a51de50576d8" CreationDate="2012-03-25T00:48:35.030" UserId="25936" Text="Blacklist [software-engineering]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8793" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3352" RevisionGUID="8947f220-31ce-40be-9239-a51de50576d8" CreationDate="2012-03-25T00:48:35.030" UserId="25936" Text="|support|stci|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8794" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3353" RevisionGUID="0dc9aad3-03ec-491b-812c-351ae4de221d" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:01:13.530" UserId="2654" Text="I think it's safe to kill it now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8795" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3354" RevisionGUID="7d486824-ab19-4f21-a815-41bec53b2fa7" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:11:25.890" UserId="25936" Text="Welcome to the third structured tag cleanup! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the voting in the [call for proposals](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1), the second round goes to the [tag:software-development] tag, with 342 current questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tag has been renamed to [stci-software-development](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci-software-development), which hopefully should prevent people from adding any more questions to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ground rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of this cleanup is to systematically clean up the software development tag without causing disruption to the rest of the site. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [deletion candidates]() below and see if there's a way to save any of the questions before they go gently into that good night through [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits). At the end of the clean up period, any questions not sufficiently improved will be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [merge candidates]() to see if can be merged into one question. If they shouldn't be, revise the questions to demonstrate how it's not in any way like the question it's been duplicated to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [closure candidates]() list to see if you agree with what others have identified as being out of the site's scope. If you agree, vote to close. If you don't agree, use [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to address the problems the question has and bring it back into scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the currently open questions and see which ones do not fit our site scope. Vote to close them and add them to the closure candidates list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Improve the leftover questions by copyediting, fixing spelling, flow, adding clearer titles, etc. while replacing the `stci-software-development` tag with something more meaningful&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:architecture] for questions relating to system level architecture, documenting architecture, view models, architectural quality, and product line development.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:design] for questions relating to software design.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:documentation] for questions about documentation. &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:requirements] for questions about requirements engineering and documenting requirements.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:testing] for questions about unit, integration, smoke, and system testing using white box or black box techniques.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:maintenance] for questions about maintaining legacy software systems.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:quality] for questions about process quality, product quality, code quality, or measuring the quality of any of these.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:education] for questions about formal education, self-teaching, and self-improvement as a software developer.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:metrics] for questions about software metrics.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:patterns] for questions on design patterns.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:agile] for questions on agile methodologies.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:project-management] for questions on project management.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ...and other, more specific tags as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Finally, and this is perhaps the most important of all the rules: **do not just remove the stci-software-engineering tag without improving the question and its answers.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### End date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This round of cleanups will end on **Sunday, April 8th at 04:00 UTC.** At that time, all the default actions will be done: deletions, merges, closures, and such. If [tag:stci-software-development] is not empty by then, it'll be renamed back to [tag:software-development] and be saved for later rounds of cleanups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is empty, we will move on to getting it blacklisted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; These are the same suggestions as for the [software-engineering] cleanup - I felt they make sense for [software-development] and couldn't find any other tags that would be common candidates for [software-development] questions. If you have suggestions, please edit them in.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8796" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3354" RevisionGUID="7d486824-ab19-4f21-a815-41bec53b2fa7" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:11:25.890" UserId="25936" Text="Structured Tag Cleanup: [software-development]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8797" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3354" RevisionGUID="7d486824-ab19-4f21-a815-41bec53b2fa7" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:11:25.890" UserId="25936" Text="|discussion|featured|tags|posse|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8798" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3354" RevisionGUID="d9f7fff3-7da2-47c6-98c7-2f7034d575d1" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:11:54.907" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="8799" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3355" RevisionGUID="06ace762-1805-4773-9118-6e00976c5f25" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:13:10.803" UserId="25936" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-development\] tag](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bstci-software-development%5D+closed%3A0) that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8800" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3355" RevisionGUID="61e27cd4-08eb-4a2d-98d5-6bbc37e1b101" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:13:10.803" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="8801" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3356" RevisionGUID="9c26a71f-d352-4582-b5e7-7a1d1f978674" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:14:16.573" UserId="25936" Text="### Merge candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions closed as duplicates to see if they can be merged. If they shouldn't be merged, please use [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to clarify why the questions aren't duplicates of each other and vote to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8802" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3356" RevisionGUID="7e9673e4-9a0f-4880-ad8d-270a371a3007" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:14:16.573" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="8803" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3357" RevisionGUID="2cdda560-5c49-4366-b84a-298f314806e2" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:14:38.490" UserId="25936" Text="### Deletion candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions to see which can be saved through [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) and reopened. If no improvement would make them on topic, vote to delete if you have the reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8804" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3357" RevisionGUID="2f08d9ca-691e-4a52-8381-bb0ed0dfbb07" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:14:38.490" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="8805" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3263" RevisionGUID="11ce58f7-4913-4441-bc05-0e2dc0d83cec" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:16:25.087" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|posse|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8806" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3263" RevisionGUID="e7996f54-9858-4b54-ac8a-21717f533269" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:16:37.053" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8807" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3087" RevisionGUID="4ef8f4d5-e170-4573-bd96-9b86eba54583" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:22:24.707" UserId="-1" Comment="remove duplicate link" Text="This is a call for proposals for the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Provide one proposal per post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A tag cleanup proposal is a tag, or a collection of *highly* related tags (e.g., tags all sharing the same stem) that needs to be dealt with *en masse*. Besides naming the tag or tags to be handled, your proposal must specify:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **What the problem is.** Why does the tag need to be dealt with? What problems has it caused? Why can't it be handled by a tag merge/rename?&#xD;&#xA;2. **What the solution is.** Does the tag need to go away and replaced with set of new tags? What are those tags? Does it just need a quality review to make it less of a honeypot? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Discuss and vote on proposals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Use the comments on the proposal to discuss any improvements that can be made to the proposal. Be bold and revise proposals based off of those discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote up proposals you think should be done this round, and vote down proposals you don't think have merit, or should not be handled yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Clean up!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**On February 22nd, 2012 at 00:00 UTC or when a proposal gets a 5 score, whichever comes last, this call for proposals will be closed.** We will then handle each proposal with 5 score or higher one at a time in order of their score. A new post will be created that will detail the cleanup activities for the cleanup.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **This is not the place to discuss the merits of or improvements to the Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative.** If you'd like to propose changes to this process for future rounds, please do so on the [RFC for the initiative](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups).&#xD;&#xA;* **This is not a to-do list for unilateral action.** The purpose of the Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative is to be more transparent and organized about cleaning up tags. In order for this to work, it's important we work within the framework and achieve community consensus.&#xD;&#xA;* **Proposals should be reasonable in scope and clearly defined.** &quot;I think we should do something about low quality questions&quot; is not a proposal. &quot;Here's 50 tags someone should do about&quot; is too broad. &quot;I think X tag should be handled but I don't know how&quot; is too vague. [Use chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21) to flesh out an idea.&#xD;&#xA;* **Any proposals that don't meet the threshold can be suggested on later cleanups.** Once the proposals from this round have been handled, a new call for proposals round will begin. Use the time in between to refine and improve any proposal that doesn't make the cut.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8808" PostHistoryTypeId="11" PostId="3087" RevisionGUID="8b6236a0-b0de-4c7e-933d-d72d5fcb848c" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:22:24.567" UserId="25936" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8809" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3087" RevisionGUID="71030ea9-56ba-4f09-b9c9-8352205569ec" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:22:34.317" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8810" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3171" RevisionGUID="a4c7a2fc-be4f-4c57-9f8a-7330721ae5ef" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:25:25.543" UserId="25936" Comment="added 100 characters in body" Text="&gt; **Related:**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  [Request for comment: structured tag cleanups](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Structured Tag Cleanup — Call for proposals #1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Welcome to the first structured tag cleanup! Based on the voting in the [call for proposals](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1), the first round goes to the [tag:career] tag, with 567 current questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a means to contain the disaster, the tag has been renamed to [stci-c​areer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci-career), which should prevent people from adding any more questions to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ground rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of this cleanup is to systematically clean up the career tag without causing disruption to the rest of the site.  Your job, should you choose to accept it, is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [deletion candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3172/8) below and see if there's a way to save any of the questions before they go gently into that good night through [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits). At the end of the clean up period, any questions not sufficiently improved will be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [merge candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3173/8) to see if can be merged into one question. If they shouldn't be, revise the questions to demonstrate how it's not in any way like the question it's been duplicated to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [closure candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3174/8) list to see if you agree with what others have identified as being out of the site's scope. If you agree, vote to close. If you don't agree, use [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to address the problems the question has and bring it back into scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the currently open questions and see which ones do not fit our site scope. Vote to close them and add them to the closure candidates list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Improve the leftover questions by copyediting, fixing spelling, flow, adding clearer titles, etc. while replacing the `stci-c​areer` tag with something more meaningful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    [tag:career-development] for questions about taking steps to improve one's programming career and *requires* the unique insights of a programmer   &#xD;&#xA;    [tag:interview] for questions about interviewing for a software development position   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:hiring] for questions about hiring programmers and other software developers   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market] for questions about the prospects or what one needs to do to get a specific job in software development   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-title] for questions about what a specific type of software development job entails   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:project-management] for questions about managing the scope and requirements of a specific project   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:teamwork] for questions about working within a software development team&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ...and other, more specific tags as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Finally, and this is perhaps the most important of all the rules: **do not just remove the stci-c​areer tag without improving the question.** If all our tag problems were solved by retagging, we would've done so months ago. Every time you retag without improving a question, I silently judge you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ## ಠ_ಠ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### End date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This round of cleanups will end on **Wednesday, March 7th at 04:00 UTC.** At that time, all the default actions will be done: deletions, merges, closures, and such. If the `stci-c​areer` tag is not empty by then, it'll be renamed back to [tag:career] and be saved for later rounds of cleanups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good luck, and godspeed!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8811" PostHistoryTypeId="11" PostId="3171" RevisionGUID="8295aa93-61e8-42f4-a6ef-7f31f517eefb" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:25:33.767" UserId="25936" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8812" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3171" RevisionGUID="b5e99d53-df84-4c38-8a40-18c419344c35" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:25:42.953" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8813" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3087" RevisionGUID="afa8d9f8-7828-4a67-bba8-c6631732a2c5" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:27:19.397" UserId="25936" Comment="added 479 characters in body" Text="&gt; **Related:**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  [Request for comment: structured tag cleanups](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a call for proposals for the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Provide one proposal per post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A tag cleanup proposal is a tag, or a collection of *highly* related tags (e.g., tags all sharing the same stem) that needs to be dealt with *en masse*. Besides naming the tag or tags to be handled, your proposal must specify:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **What the problem is.** Why does the tag need to be dealt with? What problems has it caused? Why can't it be handled by a tag merge/rename?&#xD;&#xA;2. **What the solution is.** Does the tag need to go away and replaced with set of new tags? What are those tags? Does it just need a quality review to make it less of a honeypot? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Discuss and vote on proposals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Use the comments on the proposal to discuss any improvements that can be made to the proposal. Be bold and revise proposals based off of those discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote up proposals you think should be done this round, and vote down proposals you don't think have merit, or should not be handled yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Clean up!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**On February 22nd, 2012 at 00:00 UTC or when a proposal gets a 5 score, whichever comes last, this call for proposals will be closed.** We will then handle each proposal with 5 score or higher one at a time in order of their score. A new post will be created that will detail the cleanup activities for the cleanup.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **This is not the place to discuss the merits of or improvements to the Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative.** If you'd like to propose changes to this process for future rounds, please do so on the [RFC for the initiative](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups).&#xD;&#xA;* **This is not a to-do list for unilateral action.** The purpose of the Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative is to be more transparent and organized about cleaning up tags. In order for this to work, it's important we work within the framework and achieve community consensus.&#xD;&#xA;* **Proposals should be reasonable in scope and clearly defined.** &quot;I think we should do something about low quality questions&quot; is not a proposal. &quot;Here's 50 tags someone should do about&quot; is too broad. &quot;I think X tag should be handled but I don't know how&quot; is too vague. [Use chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21) to flesh out an idea.&#xD;&#xA;* **Any proposals that don't meet the threshold can be suggested on later cleanups.** Once the proposals from this round have been handled, a new call for proposals round will begin. Use the time in between to refine and improve any proposal that doesn't make the cut." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8814" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3354" RevisionGUID="055b382f-de43-4678-abca-f6d8576ca7c5" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:27:51.703" UserId="25936" Comment="added 331 characters in body" Text="&gt; **Related:**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  [Request for comment: structured tag cleanups](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Structured Tag Cleanup — Call for proposals #1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Welcome to the third structured tag cleanup! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the voting in the [call for proposals](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1), the second round goes to the [tag:software-development] tag, with 342 current questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tag has been renamed to [stci-software-development](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci-software-development), which hopefully should prevent people from adding any more questions to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ground rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of this cleanup is to systematically clean up the software development tag without causing disruption to the rest of the site. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [deletion candidates]() below and see if there's a way to save any of the questions before they go gently into that good night through [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits). At the end of the clean up period, any questions not sufficiently improved will be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [merge candidates]() to see if can be merged into one question. If they shouldn't be, revise the questions to demonstrate how it's not in any way like the question it's been duplicated to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [closure candidates]() list to see if you agree with what others have identified as being out of the site's scope. If you agree, vote to close. If you don't agree, use [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to address the problems the question has and bring it back into scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the currently open questions and see which ones do not fit our site scope. Vote to close them and add them to the closure candidates list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Improve the leftover questions by copyediting, fixing spelling, flow, adding clearer titles, etc. while replacing the `stci-software-development` tag with something more meaningful&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:architecture] for questions relating to system level architecture, documenting architecture, view models, architectural quality, and product line development.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:design] for questions relating to software design.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:documentation] for questions about documentation. &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:requirements] for questions about requirements engineering and documenting requirements.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:testing] for questions about unit, integration, smoke, and system testing using white box or black box techniques.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:maintenance] for questions about maintaining legacy software systems.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:quality] for questions about process quality, product quality, code quality, or measuring the quality of any of these.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:education] for questions about formal education, self-teaching, and self-improvement as a software developer.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:metrics] for questions about software metrics.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:patterns] for questions on design patterns.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:agile] for questions on agile methodologies.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:project-management] for questions on project management.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ...and other, more specific tags as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Finally, and this is perhaps the most important of all the rules: **do not just remove the stci-software-engineering tag without improving the question and its answers.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### End date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This round of cleanups will end on **Sunday, April 8th at 04:00 UTC.** At that time, all the default actions will be done: deletions, merges, closures, and such. If [tag:stci-software-development] is not empty by then, it'll be renamed back to [tag:software-development] and be saved for later rounds of cleanups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is empty, we will move on to getting it blacklisted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; These are the same suggestions as for the [software-engineering] cleanup - I felt they make sense for [software-development] and couldn't find any other tags that would be common candidates for [software-development] questions. If you have suggestions, please edit them in.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8815" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3088" RevisionGUID="53b87b47-cb72-4929-9d46-0ee537e295a6" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:29:27.613" UserId="25936" Comment="added 117 characters in body" Text="### Proposed tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:career], 626 questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not a general career advice site, but this tag has routinely been a honeypot for low-quality, broad, and general career questions; from career advice to workplace politics. We've attempted to clean this tag up a number of times in the past, and while we've made a significant dent in it (down from a high of 1,400 questions in July 2011), we still have a lot of work to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previous attempts to clean up the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/work-job-career-development-employment-career&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Solution&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Many questions in the tag are off-topic here and should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;* There are a number of highly upvoted—but closed—questions in the tag that need a final resolution: heroic edits to be reopened or deletion&#xD;&#xA;* The questions that do belong here need to be disambiguated:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:career-development] for questions about taking steps to improve one's programming career and *requires* the unique insights of a programmer   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:interview] for questions about interviewing for a software development position   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:hiring] for questions about hiring programmers and other software developers   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market] for questions about the prospects or what one needs to do to get a specific job in software development   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-title] for questions about what a specific type of software development job entails   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:project-management] for questions about managing the scope and requirements of a specific project   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:teamwork] for questions about working within a software development team&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and other, more specific tags as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cleanup question: &#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8816" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3094" RevisionGUID="f6aefbcb-7557-4c1a-95fa-e36fd017358f" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:29:48.830" UserId="25936" Comment="added 132 characters in body" Text="**Proposed Tag**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:software-engineering]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Problem**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag is too vague to be meaningful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Solution**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag should be removed and replaced with more specific tags that more adequately describe what the question is about, whether its a methodology, a lifecycle phase, and so on. We already have several tags for each of these, but they are too numerous to name all of. A few examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:requirements]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:agile]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:project-management]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:architecture]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:metrics]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cleanup question: &#xD;&#xA; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3263/structured-tag-cleanup-software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8817" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3092" RevisionGUID="36ea0a2d-e8fb-4dcb-97b2-bd7dcfd2ab02" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:30:19.127" UserId="25936" Comment="added 121 characters in body" Text="**Proposed tag**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:software-development], 343 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Problem**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's possibly the worst _on topic_ tag we have. _Every_ question is (or should be) about software-development, hence redundant. Furthermore the tag is oftenly coupled with other troublesome / ambiguous tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:best-practices] = [21 questions][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:software-engineering] = [17 questions][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:career] = [7 questions][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:productivity] = [8 questions][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:self-improvement] = [16 questions][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:jobs] = [3 questions][6] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, ~ 21% of [tag:software-development] questions attracted other clean up worthy tags. Also explicitly mentioned in the &quot;[The Death of Meta Tags][7]&quot; post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Solution** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Most open questions are perfectly on topic and otherwise appropriately tagged, appropriately retagging would suffice.  &#xD;&#xA;- There are about 30 questions that are only tagged [tag:software-development], those are going to be tricky ones. I went through them and the topics discussed on most of them are clear, so we can easily retag.&#xD;&#xA;- There are 75 closed questions that may or may not be salvageable. The tag may be bad, but it's mostly used on topic questions, so the closed ones are clearly problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the tag is no longer used, we should ask SE to blacklist it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cleanup question: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3354/structured-tag-cleanup-software-development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+best-practices&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+career&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+productivity&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+self-improvement&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://%5Bsoftware-development%5D%20%5Bjobs%5D&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8818" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3357" RevisionGUID="7ebdfc57-917c-4b4f-a43d-70f5fca4b128" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:49:53.940" UserId="25936" Comment="added 330 characters in body" Text="### Deletion candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions to see which can be saved through [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) and reopened. If no improvement would make them on topic, vote to delete if you have the reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118962/is-it-normal-to-think-about-a-design-problem-for-days-with-no-code-written&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97484/why-are-bad-developers-offended-by-flaws-in-their-code&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125383/how-to-get-rogues-to-use-good-programming-practices" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8819" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3354" RevisionGUID="ab62e032-26d8-4320-ad2c-ea7d07e7162c" CreationDate="2012-03-25T01:51:45.230" UserId="25936" Comment="added 268 characters in body" Text="&gt; **Related:**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  [Request for comment: structured tag cleanups](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Structured Tag Cleanup — Call for proposals #1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Welcome to the third structured tag cleanup! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the voting in the [call for proposals](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1), the second round goes to the [tag:software-development] tag, with 289 current questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tag has been renamed to [stci-software-development](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci-software-development), which hopefully should prevent people from adding any more questions to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ground rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of this cleanup is to systematically clean up the software development tag without causing disruption to the rest of the site. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [deletion candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3357/25936) below and see if there's a way to save any of the questions before they go gently into that good night through [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits). At the end of the clean up period, any questions not sufficiently improved will be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [merge candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3356/25936) to see if can be merged into one question. If they shouldn't be, revise the questions to demonstrate how it's not in any way like the question it's been duplicated to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [closure candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3355/25936) list to see if you agree with what others have identified as being out of the site's scope. If you agree, vote to close. If you don't agree, use [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to address the problems the question has and bring it back into scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [currently open questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bstci-software-development%5D+closed%3A0&amp;submit=search) and see which ones do not fit our site scope. Vote to close them and add them to the closure candidates list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Improve the leftover questions by copyediting, fixing spelling, flow, adding clearer titles, etc. while replacing the `stci-software-development` tag with something more meaningful&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:architecture] for questions relating to system level architecture, documenting architecture, view models, architectural quality, and product line development.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:design] for questions relating to software design.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:documentation] for questions about documentation. &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:requirements] for questions about requirements engineering and documenting requirements.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:testing] for questions about unit, integration, smoke, and system testing using white box or black box techniques.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:maintenance] for questions about maintaining legacy software systems.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:quality] for questions about process quality, product quality, code quality, or measuring the quality of any of these.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:education] for questions about formal education, self-teaching, and self-improvement as a software developer.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:metrics] for questions about software metrics.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:patterns] for questions on design patterns.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:agile] for questions on agile methodologies.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:project-management] for questions on project management.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ...and other, more specific tags as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Finally, and this is perhaps the most important of all the rules: **do not just remove the stci-software-engineering tag without improving the question and its answers.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### End date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This round of cleanups will end on **Sunday, April 8th at 04:00 UTC.** At that time, all the default actions will be done: deletions, merges, closures, and such. If [tag:stci-software-development] is not empty by then, it'll be renamed back to [tag:software-development] and be saved for later rounds of cleanups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is empty, we will move on to getting it blacklisted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; These are the same suggestions as for the [software-engineering] cleanup - I felt they make sense for [software-development] and couldn't find any other tags that would be common candidates for [software-development] questions. If you have suggestions, please edit them in.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8820" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3356" RevisionGUID="bcfb8e4e-af4b-4eb1-b5e0-446f7bec802c" CreationDate="2012-03-25T02:00:13.927" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1594 characters in body" Text="### Merge candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions closed as duplicates to see if they can be merged. If they shouldn't be merged, please use [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to clarify why the questions aren't duplicates of each other and vote to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83167/is-cowboy-programming-a-senior-approach → http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7217/frankly-do-you-prefer-cowboy-coding&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102348/my-lead-does-not-co-operate-may-be-lack-of-knowledge-or-unwillingness → http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78547/how-do-you-tell-if-advice-from-a-senior-developer-is-bad&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64275/standalone-developers-whats-are-your-methods-of-development → http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63048/design-and-development-methodologies-for-the-single-developer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/103095/why-there-is-a-testing-team → http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77146/why-to-let-not-let-developers-test-their-own-work&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101602/can-i-be-too-old-to-be-just-a-programmer → http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/370/how-old-is-too-old&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125435/what-is-a-good-way-to-refactor-a-large-terribly-written-code-base-by-myself → http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66438/techniques-to-re-factor-garbage-and-maintain-sanity&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105862/online-code-reviews → http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/104975/website-for-code-review&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128044/how-to-protect-own-software-from-copying  → http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10340/how-do-you-prevent-the-piracy-of-your-software" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8821" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3354" RevisionGUID="be2391e2-4f18-4619-9de9-8d23fdf0c06a" CreationDate="2012-03-25T02:04:03.187" UserId="25936" Comment="number change: deleted closed questions scored &lt; 20, see http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups for details." Text="&gt; **Related:**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  [Request for comment: structured tag cleanups](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Structured Tag Cleanup — Call for proposals #1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Welcome to the third structured tag cleanup! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the voting in the [call for proposals](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1), the second round goes to the [tag:software-development] tag, with 282 current questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tag has been renamed to [stci-software-development](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci-software-development), which hopefully should prevent people from adding any more questions to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ground rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of this cleanup is to systematically clean up the software development tag without causing disruption to the rest of the site. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [deletion candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3357/25936) below and see if there's a way to save any of the questions before they go gently into that good night through [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits). At the end of the clean up period, any questions not sufficiently improved will be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [merge candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3356/25936) to see if can be merged into one question. If they shouldn't be, revise the questions to demonstrate how it's not in any way like the question it's been duplicated to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [closure candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3355/25936) list to see if you agree with what others have identified as being out of the site's scope. If you agree, vote to close. If you don't agree, use [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to address the problems the question has and bring it back into scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [currently open questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bstci-software-development%5D+closed%3A0&amp;submit=search) and see which ones do not fit our site scope. Vote to close them and add them to the closure candidates list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Improve the leftover questions by copyediting, fixing spelling, flow, adding clearer titles, etc. while replacing the `stci-software-development` tag with something more meaningful&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:architecture] for questions relating to system level architecture, documenting architecture, view models, architectural quality, and product line development.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:design] for questions relating to software design.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:documentation] for questions about documentation. &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:requirements] for questions about requirements engineering and documenting requirements.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:testing] for questions about unit, integration, smoke, and system testing using white box or black box techniques.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:maintenance] for questions about maintaining legacy software systems.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:quality] for questions about process quality, product quality, code quality, or measuring the quality of any of these.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:education] for questions about formal education, self-teaching, and self-improvement as a software developer.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:metrics] for questions about software metrics.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:patterns] for questions on design patterns.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:agile] for questions on agile methodologies.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:project-management] for questions on project management.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ...and other, more specific tags as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Finally, and this is perhaps the most important of all the rules: **do not just remove the stci-software-engineering tag without improving the question and its answers.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### End date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This round of cleanups will end on **Sunday, April 8th at 04:00 UTC.** At that time, all the default actions will be done: deletions, merges, closures, and such. If [tag:stci-software-development] is not empty by then, it'll be renamed back to [tag:software-development] and be saved for later rounds of cleanups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is empty, we will move on to getting it blacklisted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; These are the same suggestions as for the [software-engineering] cleanup - I felt they make sense for [software-development] and couldn't find any other tags that would be common candidates for [software-development] questions. If you have suggestions, please edit them in.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8822" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3355" RevisionGUID="3a002fa5-a916-4659-ac76-4300f5b6ce06" CreationDate="2012-03-25T02:38:37.933" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1315 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-development\] tag](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bstci-software-development%5D+closed%3A0) that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139201/how-to-become-very-strong-in-middleware-java-coding&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140582/writing-drivers-for-a-printer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80575/when-to-remove-programmer-access-in-dev-sandbox&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29167/need-repository-layout-references&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32785/first-time-application-where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40235/development-cost-for-ipad-application-and-on-going-maintenance&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47993/best-software-development-methodology-environment-for-fresh-graduates&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57828/your-software-problem-solution-approach&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61891/how-and-where-to-organize-a-team-to-make-a-website&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65600/using-personal-blog-as-well-as-software-company&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76108/decisions-affecting-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88198/advice-on-how-to-understand-in-general-and-in-practice-it-infrastructure&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126751/what-technologies-and-what-languages-should-i-choose-to-make-web-application-por&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- add questions here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8823" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3354" RevisionGUID="383e2849-77eb-4304-b80d-1fba4c1ae3b7" CreationDate="2012-03-25T02:40:01.380" UserId="25936" Comment="added 132 characters in body" Text="&gt; **Related:**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  [Request for comment: structured tag cleanups](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Structured Tag Cleanup — Call for proposals #1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Welcome to the third structured tag cleanup! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the voting in the [call for proposals](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1), the second round goes to the [tag:software-development] tag, with 282 current questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tag has been renamed to [stci-software-development](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci-software-development), which hopefully should prevent people from adding any more questions to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ground rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of this cleanup is to systematically clean up the software development tag without causing disruption to the rest of the site. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [deletion candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3357/25936) below and see if there's a way to save any of the questions before they go gently into that good night through [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits). At the end of the clean up period, any questions not sufficiently improved will be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [merge candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3356/25936) to see if can be merged into one question. If they shouldn't be, revise the questions to demonstrate how it's not in any way like the question it's been duplicated to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [closure candidates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3355/25936) list to see if you agree with what others have identified as being out of the site's scope. If you agree, vote to close. If you don't agree, use [heroic edits](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to address the problems the question has and bring it back into scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [currently open questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bstci-software-development%5D+closed%3A0&amp;submit=search) and see which ones do not fit our site scope. Vote to close them and add them to the closure candidates list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Improve the leftover questions by copyediting, fixing spelling, flow, adding clearer titles, etc. while replacing the `stci-software-development` tag with something more meaningful&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:web-development] for questions relating to web development,&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:mobile] for questions relating to mobile development,&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:architecture] for questions relating to system level architecture, documenting architecture, view models, architectural quality, and product line development.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:design] for questions relating to software design.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:documentation] for questions about documentation. &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:requirements] for questions about requirements engineering and documenting requirements.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:testing] for questions about unit, integration, smoke, and system testing using white box or black box techniques.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:maintenance] for questions about maintaining legacy software systems.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:quality] for questions about process quality, product quality, code quality, or measuring the quality of any of these.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:education] for questions about formal education, self-teaching, and self-improvement as a software developer.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:metrics] for questions about software metrics.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:patterns] for questions on design patterns.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:agile] for questions on agile methodologies.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:project-management] for questions on project management.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ...and other, more specific tags as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Finally, and this is perhaps the most important of all the rules: **do not just remove the stci-software-engineering tag without improving the question and its answers.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### End date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This round of cleanups will end on **Sunday, April 8th at 04:00 UTC.** At that time, all the default actions will be done: deletions, merges, closures, and such. If [tag:stci-software-development] is not empty by then, it'll be renamed back to [tag:software-development] and be saved for later rounds of cleanups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is empty, we will move on to getting it blacklisted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; These are (mostly) the same suggestions as for the [software-engineering] cleanup - I felt they make sense for [software-development] and couldn't find any other tags that would be common candidates for [software-development] questions. If you have suggestions, please edit them in.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8824" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3355" RevisionGUID="fe11d66d-8cce-433d-8cbd-640882c44bb6" CreationDate="2012-03-25T02:52:21.707" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1315 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-development\] tag](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bstci-software-development%5D+closed%3A0) that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139201/how-to-become-very-strong-in-middleware-java-coding&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140582/writing-drivers-for-a-printer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80575/when-to-remove-programmer-access-in-dev-sandbox&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29167/need-repository-layout-references&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32785/first-time-application-where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40235/development-cost-for-ipad-application-and-on-going-maintenance&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47993/best-software-development-methodology-environment-for-fresh-graduates&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57828/your-software-problem-solution-approach&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61891/how-and-where-to-organize-a-team-to-make-a-website&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65600/using-personal-blog-as-well-as-software-company&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76108/decisions-affecting-software-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88198/advice-on-how-to-understand-in-general-and-in-practice-it-infrastructure&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126751/what-technologies-and-what-languages-should-i-choose-to-make-web-application-por&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134060/is-there-a-snippets-program-that-allows-for-tab-entry-of-variables-across-the-ma&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134093/to-develop-a-front-end-web-application-with-tablets-in-mind-or-not&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134940/can-a-company-deny-that-you-teach-people-how-to-use-a-software-under-mit-license&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25733/where-can-i-get-people-to-test-my-software-for-free&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43113/looking-software-for-making-an-animated-cartoon-to-present-a-new-application-sce&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50427/books-on-software-development-is-code-complete-good-or-should-i-read-something&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66902/project-management-and-team-connecting-tools-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136015/standard-c-tools-frameworks-in-2012&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. add questions here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8825" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3355" RevisionGUID="d9fa8709-49f9-4ae6-bb9d-b7ebbbc41120" CreationDate="2012-03-25T04:28:12.477" UserId="25936" Comment="added 133 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-development\] tag](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bstci-software-development%5D+closed%3A0) that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139201/how-to-become-very-strong-in-middleware-java-coding&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140582/writing-drivers-for-a-printer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80575/when-to-remove-programmer-access-in-dev-sandbox&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29167/need-repository-layout-references&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32785/first-time-application-where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40235/development-cost-for-ipad-application-and-on-going-maintenance&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47993/best-software-development-methodology-environment-for-fresh-graduates&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57828/your-software-problem-solution-approach&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61891/how-and-where-to-organize-a-team-to-make-a-website&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65600/using-personal-blog-as-well-as-software-company&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76108/decisions-affecting-software-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88198/advice-on-how-to-understand-in-general-and-in-practice-it-infrastructure&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126751/what-technologies-and-what-languages-should-i-choose-to-make-web-application-por&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134060/is-there-a-snippets-program-that-allows-for-tab-entry-of-variables-across-the-ma&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134093/to-develop-a-front-end-web-application-with-tablets-in-mind-or-not&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134940/can-a-company-deny-that-you-teach-people-how-to-use-a-software-under-mit-license&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25733/where-can-i-get-people-to-test-my-software-for-free&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43113/looking-software-for-making-an-animated-cartoon-to-present-a-new-application-sce&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50427/books-on-software-development-is-code-complete-good-or-should-i-read-something&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66902/project-management-and-team-connecting-tools-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136015/standard-c-tools-frameworks-in-2012&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43214/how-do-you-educate-your-teammates-without-seeming-condescending-or-superior&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. add questions here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8826" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3354" RevisionGUID="a99aab0d-63bf-4970-89ca-5822a4f4a7e9" CreationDate="2012-03-25T05:52:23.577" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/183793432702091264" />
  <row Id="8827" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3358" RevisionGUID="f40cb70c-e390-44eb-bd4d-bfcaf585358d" CreationDate="2012-03-26T01:21:29.170" UserId="10572" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/68370/10572 was recently closed as off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However I believe that the question is on topic. It relates to business issues as defined in the FAQ and it is specifically related to case studies for successful software development businesses. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is materially different than other general questions about forced overtime as  the steps, procedures, and policies that would apply to a successful software development  would not necessarily apply to other businesses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this question truly off topic? If not can it be reopened. If it is, how can it be improved to make it more on topic. While the accepted answer does not specifically list any case studies the accuracy of the predication was uncanny and I believe that it was helpful to me and I hope that it might be helpful to others that find themselves in a similar situation.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8828" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3358" RevisionGUID="f40cb70c-e390-44eb-bd4d-bfcaf585358d" CreationDate="2012-03-26T01:21:29.170" UserId="10572" Text="Can this question be reopened: &quot;Case studies for successful service based development businesses without constant overtime from its employees&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8829" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3358" RevisionGUID="f40cb70c-e390-44eb-bd4d-bfcaf585358d" CreationDate="2012-03-26T01:21:29.170" UserId="10572" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8830" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3359" RevisionGUID="43b66a7d-233a-4cba-9ea2-2aae4b434e47" CreationDate="2012-03-26T01:54:50.410" UserId="25936" Text="The question was identified as a [closure candidate][1] (#54) in the [recent structured cleanup of the \[career\] tag][2]. It received no attention from the community during the two week period of the cleanup and it was closed a few hours after the cleanup ended. I should have left a comment pointing to the cleanup Meta question when I closed it, sorry about that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for why it's off topic: From our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although the question is on a business concern, it doesn't require the unique expertise of software developers, it falls in the &quot;all careers&quot; part of the diagram. You may state in the question text that you want answers that are specific to software development companies but the actual parameters of the question aren't unique to software development companies, but apply to all service oriented businesses. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not see how it could be rewritten to be on topic, but I'm open to suggestions. For further details on why we decided to close career related questions that were open for quite a long time, please read [the \[career\] cleanup proposal][4] and the linked Meta discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3174/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kJ3Ze.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3088/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8831" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3360" RevisionGUID="0243dc1c-653d-4618-a595-07a0bdc72c88" CreationDate="2012-03-26T14:39:38.920" UserId="1130" Text="As Yannis stated in his answer, the question was closed because it could apply to more than just programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for your second request about how it could be modified to be reopened, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - First of all you'd have to edit the question so that it applies to just programmers, or uniquely to programmers. As it currently stands, the question could apply to more than just programmers so is considered off-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Second, it should be a question that can be best answered by a programmer, and not be better answered by another profession such as a HR manager.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - And third, the question should be fairly specific and asking for a single answer, not one that asks for a list of opinions/answers. For example, asking &quot;How can a software company increase its productivity without increasing developer hours&quot; would probably get closed as too broad to be answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A possible way to rephrase the question would be to start by saying you know there are many studies related to work-life balance and productivity, but you are looking specifically for a study that looks into how the number of hours affects the work-life balance and productivity of heavily intellectual jobs such as software development. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would upvote such a question since I would find the answers relevant to my job, however this might still be seen as some as not specific enough to programmers, who might close it. You can always check in [chat][1] to find out if your question would be on/off topic before posting it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the top-voted and accepted answer to the existing question is related to the effects of the increase in developer hours, and not to any particular case studies, you would probably have better luck making a new question than revising your existing one, which would invalidate the top voted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And as a final option, you could check if your question would be on-topic at [Productivity.SE][2] and ask there&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8832" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3361" RevisionGUID="86b21e4c-0ab9-4225-a55e-2e7d52656c79" CreationDate="2012-03-26T23:53:36.283" UserId="50190" Text="If someone raises new ideas of innovation , to improve usability or productivity, especially in a category of programming languages where it is pretty badly needed (and problems haven't been solved for 25 years),&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and the moderator removes it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;that is CENSORSHIP. Let's be honest about that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also hostile towards those who bring practical innovations to society, which I don't think any of the moderators do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just be honest to yourselves about what you are doing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8833" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3361" RevisionGUID="86b21e4c-0ab9-4225-a55e-2e7d52656c79" CreationDate="2012-03-26T23:53:36.283" UserId="50190" Text="Issues of possible innovation via new programming languages, removal=censorship?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8834" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3361" RevisionGUID="86b21e4c-0ab9-4225-a55e-2e7d52656c79" CreationDate="2012-03-26T23:53:36.283" UserId="50190" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8835" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3362" RevisionGUID="8cc89968-5d1f-4faa-b8e1-e83d12285d24" CreationDate="2012-03-27T00:18:21.807" UserId="4" Text="I believe you are referring to [this question][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not a forum for the discussion of new ideas. This is a question and answer site, designed for people who are facing a current problem or dilemma to get the answer to their problem from experts in the field of software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you posted was not a question at all - there was nothing to answer. In addition, it received multiple flags, 6 downvotes, no upvotes, and the comment explaining why it was not appropriate for Programmers received 3 upvotes. It was extremely clear that the community did not want it on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141388/which-is-better-for-an-open-standard-for-data-cleaning-r-or-sas-or-python" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8836" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3361" RevisionGUID="e960b45f-4cca-4b1b-ab85-f9554ffd1e75" CreationDate="2012-03-27T06:37:32.120" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|moderators|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8837" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3363" RevisionGUID="1c3f36c7-e4b0-4a44-bec6-e11594c9948f" CreationDate="2012-03-27T06:45:33.013" UserId="25936" Text="From our [FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Why are some questions or answers removed?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are [extremely off topic][2], or of very low quality, may be removed at the discretion of the community and moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Over time, closed questions that are not useful as signpoints to other questions may also be removed, as well as questions which have no significant activity over a very long period after being asked. For additional guidance, see [How to Ask][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The link under &quot;extremely off topic&quot; leads to this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions should I not ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And your question was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Which is better for an open standard for data cleaning: R or SAS or Python?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Actually, none of the above. SAS has a lot of room for improvement for usability (learning curve and readability). Moreover, it's too expensive. R has serious usability problems for cleaning data and preparing it for analysis. Once the data is cleaned, R is great. For usability, Python is a work of sheer genius. But it lacks a smoothly-integrated data processing paragraph (think: SAS data step, or for many-many join SQL SELECT).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An open standard for data cleaning, that's designed to be easy for learning and reading (kind of pythonic, but for data preparation/cleaning with data tables): this would be a valuable benefit for scientific researchers who work with data. It would be my 3rd language. And since it's positioned as a public good, and would benefit science, I want to get a research grant for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If SQL is well designed for data management DURING data collection (not after), this could be SPL. ( P = Preparation ).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only question in there is the rhetorical one in the title. Programmers Stack Exchange is neither a free for all discussion forum, your personal blog or any other platform for self promotion, **you should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than the 6 downvotes (and no upvotes) the post received two &quot;not a real question flags&quot; and one spam flag, as Thomas already mentioned. I'm also very confident in saying that the post wasn't welcomed by the community and fully support Thomas' decision to close and delete it. This was as a clear cut moderation action as they get, and I would have closed it regardless of its down votes and flags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore you need to understand that every post you make on a Stack Exchange site is  [licensed under Creative Commons][4], and can be edited by every other member, closed by members with close privileges, and deleted by members with delete privileges. To quote the [FAQ][5] (for yet another time): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are not comfortable with the idea of your contributions being collaboratively edited by other trusted users, this may not be the site for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same goes for every other action, not just edits. Either you trust the community, and will play by our rules, or you don't. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't feel free to raise issues whenever you want to (in a *constructive* manner), (almost) every action on the site is reversible. We could even undeleted your question, if we reviewed the deletion and decided that it was incorrect, every deleted post is available to users with more than 10K reputation and to moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And now that I included it in this answer, it's available to every member of the community, let's see what everyone thinks of it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#editing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8838" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3364" RevisionGUID="ae1a71d5-9a9f-4879-8fca-97ffa1e59549" CreationDate="2012-03-27T14:40:04.160" UserId="5385" Text="I noticed [my question][1] was automatically updated to Community Wiki after 15 answers, and that prevents me from  enjoying the upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to remove this status?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54506/how-to-market-yourself-as-a-software-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8839" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3364" RevisionGUID="ae1a71d5-9a9f-4879-8fca-97ffa1e59549" CreationDate="2012-03-27T14:40:04.160" UserId="5385" Text="Is it possible to remove the Community Wiki status of a question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8840" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3364" RevisionGUID="ae1a71d5-9a9f-4879-8fca-97ffa1e59549" CreationDate="2012-03-27T14:40:04.160" UserId="5385" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8841" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3365" RevisionGUID="4f9eda33-85c9-4d25-b867-e7532c40ab88" CreationDate="2012-03-27T14:46:24.570" UserId="47" Text="With more than 15 answers (20 in this case) posted, this question is tending to the &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions with many answers are an indication that they are not a good fit for the Stack Exchange question and answer model where there is supposed to be a few &quot;correct&quot; answers provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are getting many answers then this is a sign that the question is inviting discussion and debate. If you check the &quot;not constructive&quot; close reason you will see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit to our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not saying that this **is** true of your question, but it is generally true. If we change the threshold then potentially more bad questions will be left on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*In my opinion the CW threshold on other sites is too high - it should be 15 answers network wide (except for perhaps Code Golf).*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8842" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3364" RevisionGUID="31ab5ab8-b0ff-4300-b59b-63952f9d407c" CreationDate="2012-03-27T14:46:35.290" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8843" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3365" RevisionGUID="8440ec32-790c-414c-ae1e-b81b12e96dea" CreationDate="2012-03-27T15:10:58.690" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="Yes, it is possible to remove the community wiki status of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**However**, it is a very rare thing to do. I've done it in the past when someone has made too many edits to their own question or they've been the &quot;victim&quot; of several other users making essentially duplicate edits in a short period of time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for your question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With more than 15 answers (20 in this case) posted, this question is tending to the &quot;not constructive&quot; and the CW threshold on the number of answers is designed to reflect this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions with many answers are an indication that they are not a good fit for the Stack Exchange question and answer model where there is supposed to be a few &quot;correct&quot; answers provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are getting many answers then this is a sign that the question is inviting discussion and debate. If you check the &quot;not constructive&quot; close reason you will see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit to our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not saying that this **is** true of your question, but it is generally true. If we change the threshold then potentially more bad questions will be left on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*In my opinion the CW threshold on other sites is too high - it should be 15 answers network wide (except for perhaps Code Golf).*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8844" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3364" RevisionGUID="4f536895-2c26-4dcf-a45f-3b0852ed0822" CreationDate="2012-03-27T16:44:12.260" UserId="5385" Comment="Added note." Text="I noticed [my question][1] was automatically updated to Community Wiki after 15 answers, and that prevents me from  enjoying the upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to remove this status?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Note**: the question only had that many answers because I've set a bounty for it 3 times already. And as you know, bounties tend to get people's attention...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54506/how-to-market-yourself-as-a-software-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8845" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3366" RevisionGUID="1c343658-820a-4310-a2bc-48ca0438fc6b" CreationDate="2012-03-27T16:47:44.053" UserId="32353" Text="I would like to point out that the top voted and accepted answer included mention of the high ratio of productivity between more talented and less talented programmers.  Though many Workplaces have more and less talented people, programming has an unusually high productivity ratio, and that fact was vital to the answer to the question being what is was.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that high skill to low skill productivity ration uniquely high for programmers, such that it fits perfectly in the famous Venn diagram from the FAQ?  No, but fairly close.  And if we really demand perfect adherence to that diagram we basically need to exclude all questions with any real world or business component to the question, since the real world doesn't fit in that diagram.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, knowledge of the skill level productivity ratio for programmers isn't widespread outside the programming community.  So programmers actually are among the most expert of those one might consult.  In point of fact, the answers successfully predicted what would (and eventually did) happen in that situation.  So programmers were expert *enough*.  Would a random business executive from a Workplace or Productivity site do as well?  I'm dubious.  Yet the question was closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anyone wants to join me in voting to re-open ping me in chat.  It's too hard to get enough people that I want to waste my vote before we have enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8847" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3368" RevisionGUID="a9fffa64-0070-4869-a397-21c21d02bef1" CreationDate="2012-03-28T07:04:43.430" UserDisplayName="user1041" Text="The moderators have closed following [question][1], which was, in Oct 2010 apprently a valid question. &#xD;&#xA;I would like to know the reasoning behind the closing as &quot;not a real question&quot;. I have made a defence in the actual question but in my view the question is about improve your ability to write better code, which I thought this site was about. At the time quite a few answered my question and at that time no-one expressed any doubt about being a &quot;non-real question&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;At the same time I would like to ask the moderators closing my question for any pointers how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9290/how-to-write-less-code" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8848" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3368" RevisionGUID="a9fffa64-0070-4869-a397-21c21d02bef1" CreationDate="2012-03-28T07:04:43.430" UserDisplayName="user1041" Text="Closed question on programmers how-to-write-less-code, explanation please" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8849" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3368" RevisionGUID="a9fffa64-0070-4869-a397-21c21d02bef1" CreationDate="2012-03-28T07:04:43.430" UserDisplayName="user1041" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8850" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3368" RevisionGUID="22103aec-3d27-4eae-bd9c-16bd4e7089f6" CreationDate="2012-03-28T07:25:50.017" UserDisplayName="user1041" Comment="added moderators action" Text="The moderators have closed following [question][1], which was, in Oct 2010 apprently a valid question. &#xD;&#xA;I would like to know the reasoning behind the closing as &quot;not a real question&quot;. I have made a defence in the actual question (which was afterwards deleted) but in my view the question is about improve your ability to write better code, which I thought this site was about. At the time quite a few answered my question and at that time no-one expressed any doubt about being a &quot;non-real question&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;At the same time I would like to ask the moderators closing my question for any pointers how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9290/how-to-write-less-code" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8851" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3369" RevisionGUID="5ee89854-da7c-4dcf-b511-dd7d5cc0cb46" CreationDate="2012-03-28T07:38:50.770" UserId="25936" Text="First of all, the question was closed by two regular members and a moderator, it wasn't just &quot;the moderators&quot;. Now, the notification for the close reason reads as: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **closed as not a real question**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. [See the FAQ][1] for guidance on how to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Not a real question&quot; is just a title, you should be concentrating on the text and not the title. Your question, at least the way I read it, is ambiguous, vague, and overly broad, so I'd say that the close reason applies perfectly. The &quot;not constructive&quot; close reason applies equally, as you are polling for people's opinions and you don't present us with an actual practical problem. It's more of a discussion oriented question, not a bad one, don't get me wrong, just not specific enough to be sufficiently answered on a Stack Exchange site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot have changed since Oct 2010, obviously. I wasn't a member back then so I can't really comment on whether the question was acceptable, but I imagine it was. Right now, it's not, the scope of the site has been better defined, we have a lot more experience on what questions work well with the Q&amp;A format and what do not, etc. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a bit frustrating that this question was closed after being open for so long, I guess it's because it hadn't had any activity until very recently and the [tag:self-improvement] tag hasn't been targeted for a cleanup. What brought the question to our attention are the two [recent][2] [answers][3], which bumped the question on the front page and (probably) attracted the close votes and flags. Both answers are, let's say less than stellar, and when a question starts attracting low quality answers it's a very good sign that it has run it's circle. We typically don't judge a question by its answers, but if a question is borderline, then the answers may be what triggers the closing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would have closed this question as well, probably as &quot;not constructive&quot;, I think for this specific question the &quot;not constructive&quot; text would better convey why the question is not a good fit for the site. But that's not to say that I have any issues with the question being closed as &quot;not a real question&quot;, both close reasons apply and closed is closed, regardless of the reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, please [don't edit messages to moderators][4] (or anyone) in your questions, there's little chance your message will reach us this way and the text of your questions should only have information that are relevant to what you are looking for. If you wish to contact the moderators you can flag your question for moderation attention, ping us in chat or post a Meta question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/141669/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/141689/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/9290/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8852" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3368" RevisionGUID="8ca901e5-1bf9-4ff0-9932-11a7d64e5c7d" CreationDate="2012-03-28T08:30:06.273" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling, formatting" Text="The moderators have closed following [question][1], which was, in Oct 2010 apparently a valid question.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;I would like to know the reasoning behind the closing as &quot;not a real question&quot;. I have made a defense in the actual question (which was afterwards deleted) but in my view the question is about improve your ability to write better code, which I thought this site was about. At the time quite a few answered my question and at that time no-one expressed any doubt about being a &quot;non-real question&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the same time I would like to ask the moderators closing my question for any pointers how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9290/how-to-write-less-code" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8853" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3370" RevisionGUID="056dd254-caea-43b6-8410-bca5da3985bf" CreationDate="2012-03-28T13:32:40.880" UserId="1996" Text="Please close [this question][1] ASAP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure if I've ever seen a non-spam question that was more off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/28579/1996" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8854" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3370" RevisionGUID="056dd254-caea-43b6-8410-bca5da3985bf" CreationDate="2012-03-28T13:32:40.880" UserId="1996" Text="Please Close This Question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8855" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3370" RevisionGUID="056dd254-caea-43b6-8410-bca5da3985bf" CreationDate="2012-03-28T13:32:40.880" UserId="1996" Text="|support|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8856" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3371" RevisionGUID="e14ba3a7-4803-4531-a720-c7c26b5b03ac" CreationDate="2012-03-28T14:08:41.253" UserId="30000" Text="Out brain is pretty much the only tool we use. Sure a computer and an editor/IDE are necessary, but have nothing to do with being a successful or expert programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, are questions about how to develop our brain skills (which are programming meta-skills) like memory and problem-solving relevant to this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ does not mention them as relevant or not:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;- algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;- design patterns&#xD;&#xA;- developer testing&#xD;&#xA;- development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;- freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;- quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;- software architecture&#xD;&#xA;- software engineering&#xD;&#xA;- software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;- career advice, including general workplace issues1&#xD;&#xA;- personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;- what language you should learn next, including which technology is better1&#xD;&#xA;- salary or compensation1&#xD;&#xA;- résumé help&#xD;&#xA;- what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;- programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8857" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3371" RevisionGUID="e14ba3a7-4803-4531-a720-c7c26b5b03ac" CreationDate="2012-03-28T14:08:41.253" UserId="30000" Text="Is a question about how to develop your brain relevant to Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8858" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3371" RevisionGUID="e14ba3a7-4803-4531-a720-c7c26b5b03ac" CreationDate="2012-03-28T14:08:41.253" UserId="30000" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8859" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3372" RevisionGUID="dedbcb8e-acab-491d-bb39-60ff5d589b98" CreationDate="2012-03-28T14:09:52.633" UserId="47" Text="No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I saw such a question I'd close it straight away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not about the **profession** of software development in any way, shape or form." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8860" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3373" RevisionGUID="18186785-c6a5-4866-88ef-7ce9d97fa328" CreationDate="2012-03-28T14:27:19.123" UserId="25936" Text="A little background on the bounty: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier today I closed the question referenced in [this Meta question][1], which is the same question @karlphillip mentions on his bounty. He felt he should award one last bounty to one of the answerers, but as the question was closed [I advised him to find another one of the answerer's answers][2], on an open question, and award the bounty there. Didn't really want to re-open the original question for 24 hours, as we both agreed on the closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously that failed miserably since he chose an even more close worthy question to set the bounty on ;P That's on me, I should have mentioned that he should find a good on topic question as I'm painfully aware that there are still a lot of open questions that don't belong to the site. Apologies for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back to the question in question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that it's off topic and the proper way to handle this would be to refund the bounty and close the question. If no one objects though, I'd prefer to wait for 5 hours for @karlphillip to award the bounty and then close it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3364/is-it-possible-to-remove-the-community-wiki-status-of-a-question&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3988916#3988916" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8861" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3370" RevisionGUID="1edef9d0-7229-4de2-ae00-ef5a96c51618" CreationDate="2012-03-28T14:28:44.927" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|specific-question|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8862" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3374" RevisionGUID="520fba32-13e6-41a7-b24f-e7dbb3956302" CreationDate="2012-03-28T15:31:08.197" UserDisplayName="user39741" Text="I had an answer to my question in a comment, but the author never put it as an answer?  I tried to reach him via chat with no success.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do I do now?  I want him to get the credit for the answer, but it's still a comment and I don't know the right way to contact him?  Does this need to be a feature for the site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8863" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3374" RevisionGUID="520fba32-13e6-41a7-b24f-e7dbb3956302" CreationDate="2012-03-28T15:31:08.197" UserDisplayName="user39741" Text="Comment never put into an answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8864" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3374" RevisionGUID="520fba32-13e6-41a7-b24f-e7dbb3956302" CreationDate="2012-03-28T15:31:08.197" UserDisplayName="user39741" Text="|feature-request|questions|accepted-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8865" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3375" RevisionGUID="8800e9b7-894a-4a88-9222-0027e4fd53ab" CreationDate="2012-03-28T15:37:30.467" UserId="47" Text="If the poster of the comment hasn't replied/converted the comment to an answer after a &quot;few&quot; days (where the value of a &quot;few&quot; depends on all sorts of things) then you are free to post it as an answer yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel bad about getting reputation from someone else's work then mark the answer as Community Wiki and reference the comment and poster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact there's nothing stopping someone else posting it as an answer either, so get in there quick before someone else does :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8866" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3376" RevisionGUID="c97e4001-a203-4748-b364-01b59f154f28" CreationDate="2012-03-28T17:44:54.940" UserId="38148" Text="I asked [a question][1] and it got some answers. But none of them was what I really wanted. After investigating by myself, I found a solution that best fit my needs, so [I answered my own question][2] and marked my own answer as the accepted one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My answer is not the first one at the top. Why ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139603/google-analytics-with-multiple-environments&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/141949/38148" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8867" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3376" RevisionGUID="c97e4001-a203-4748-b364-01b59f154f28" CreationDate="2012-03-28T17:44:54.940" UserId="38148" Text="I ansewered my own question and accepted the answer. Why is it not at the top?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8868" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3376" RevisionGUID="c97e4001-a203-4748-b364-01b59f154f28" CreationDate="2012-03-28T17:44:54.940" UserId="38148" Text="|discussion|accepted-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8869" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3377" RevisionGUID="106112ff-1443-4e55-985a-fdb9284b6f86" CreationDate="2012-03-28T18:03:18.163" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="To prevent gaming the system, self-accepts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* don't float up the top&#xD;&#xA;* don't award you 15 reputation for the acceptance&#xD;&#xA;* don't award you 2 reputation for accepting an answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like to think of it as resolving a conflict of interest: it's assumed you think it's the best answer because you answered it, so the fact that you accepted your own answer is useful information to future visitors." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8870" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3376" RevisionGUID="64ab684b-cbbb-451c-89db-122a646286ad" CreationDate="2012-03-28T20:51:21.927" UserId="31260" Comment="minor spelling cleanup" Text="I asked [a question][1] and it got some answers. But none of them was what I really wanted. After investigating by myself, I found a solution that best fit my needs, so [I answered my own question][2] and marked my own answer as the accepted one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My answer is not the first one at the top. Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139603/google-analytics-with-multiple-environments&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/141949/38148" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8871" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3376" RevisionGUID="64ab684b-cbbb-451c-89db-122a646286ad" CreationDate="2012-03-28T20:51:21.927" UserId="31260" Comment="minor spelling cleanup" Text="I answered my own question and accepted the answer. Why is it not at the top?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8872" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3373" RevisionGUID="ec6d0dc3-ced7-4c88-99d5-a869581171c8" CreationDate="2012-03-29T12:25:34.973" UserId="25936" Comment="added 16 characters in body" Text="A little background on the bounty: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier today I closed the question referenced in [this Meta question][1], which is the same question @karlphillip mentions on his bounty. He felt he should award one last bounty to one of the answerers, but as the question was closed [I advised him to find another one of the answerer's answers][2], on an open question, and award the bounty there. Didn't really want to re-open the original question for 24 hours, as we both agreed on the closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously that failed miserably since he chose an even more close worthy question to set the bounty on ;P That's on me, I should have mentioned that he should find a good on topic question as I'm painfully aware that there are still a lot of open questions that don't belong to the site. Apologies for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back to the question in question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that it's off topic and the proper way to handle this would be to refund the bounty and close the question. If no one objects though, I'd prefer to wait for 5 hours for @karlphillip to award the bounty and then close it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3364/is-it-possible-to-remove-the-community-wiki-status-of-a-question&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3988916#3988916" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8873" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3370" RevisionGUID="278c6535-7e7e-48f9-b87a-e3da2c200644" CreationDate="2012-03-29T12:48:32.790" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|specific-question|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8874" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3378" RevisionGUID="c5e5d4cb-bf47-44e7-87ee-954372f3a925" CreationDate="2012-03-29T15:02:26.883" UserId="30000" Text="When I answer a question, it appears near the bottom among the 0 votes answers (because it is new). However, it does not appear at the very bottom, nor are the 0 vote answers ordered by reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How are the answers ordered?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is specifically for programmers.SE (not meta), but does it work the same for all SE (and meta) sites?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not really a bug, but must include one tag from &quot;bug feature-request discussion support&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8875" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3378" RevisionGUID="c5e5d4cb-bf47-44e7-87ee-954372f3a925" CreationDate="2012-03-29T15:02:26.883" UserId="30000" Text="In what order do answers appear?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8876" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3378" RevisionGUID="c5e5d4cb-bf47-44e7-87ee-954372f3a925" CreationDate="2012-03-29T15:02:26.883" UserId="30000" Text="|bug|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8880" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3378" RevisionGUID="7d03aaf3-4d68-4566-b515-463b948370d8" CreationDate="2012-03-29T15:14:03.607" UserId="25936" Comment="support is more appropriate for this one " Text="|support|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8881" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3378" RevisionGUID="7d03aaf3-4d68-4566-b515-463b948370d8" CreationDate="2012-03-29T15:14:03.607" UserId="25936" Comment="support is more appropriate for this one " Text="When I answer a question, it appears near the bottom among the 0 votes answers (because it is new). However, it does not appear at the very bottom, nor are the 0 vote answers ordered by reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How are the answers ordered?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is specifically for programmers.SE (not meta), but does it work the same for all SE (and meta) sites?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8882" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3380" RevisionGUID="feb287af-6d7b-4713-853e-5b8d3c5ac4dc" CreationDate="2012-03-29T15:31:00.523" UserId="47" Text="This has been discussed many times before but there are three sort modes for answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Active - answers that have been most recently modified are displayed first.&#xD;&#xA;* Oldest - answers are displayed in the order they were posted.&#xD;&#xA;* Votes - answers are displayed with the highest voted answers first. Answers on equal votes are ordered randomly, except when there are more than 30 answers (i.e. more than one page of answers). This so that no one answer is favoured.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Votes* is the default." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8883" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3381" RevisionGUID="a28cb292-2fb9-443c-855d-2dc3922b3589" CreationDate="2012-03-29T19:00:29.657" UserId="36934" Text="It's purely management question to the moderators team. In topic [&quot;Can we set up svn server on a local computer without any network access?&quot;][1] (and probably some other places) I'm under [downvoting attack][2] from person, known as [Mark Booth][3]. He decrease rating of my correct answer in retaliation for criticism ([here][4] and [here][5]) of his response, which contains offtopic partially and for my -1 on other offtopic answers in this topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I ask for support and protection** from dishonest personalized attacks on the results of my labor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry to distract you with my problems and taking up your time - I can't see another way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268265_142131&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/22493/mark-booth&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268263_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268271_142128" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8884" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3381" RevisionGUID="a28cb292-2fb9-443c-855d-2dc3922b3589" CreationDate="2012-03-29T19:00:29.657" UserId="36934" Text="I'm under attack. I ask help" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8885" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3381" RevisionGUID="a28cb292-2fb9-443c-855d-2dc3922b3589" CreationDate="2012-03-29T19:00:29.657" UserId="36934" Text="|support|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8886" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3361" RevisionGUID="4f791e9d-5b41-4b4f-8cdc-7a4dfa88229b" CreationDate="2012-03-29T19:28:30.810" UserId="-1" Comment="3" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:101,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Walter&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:7454,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Matthieu&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:6415,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Michael K&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8887" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3382" RevisionGUID="fa6285a3-cef8-4b68-9fe7-0e93f4296c62" CreationDate="2012-03-29T20:13:12.127" UserId="25936" Text="Let's see if we can get something of a timeline here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. 15:40:40 - The [question is asked][1].&#xD;&#xA;1. 16:34:23 - Mark posts [his answer][2].&#xD;&#xA;1. 16:58:39 - You post [your answer][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From here on I'll split the timeline to the two answers, starting with Marks:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:27:19 - [&quot;-1 for answer on non-asked by OP question. Do not consider yourself smarter than others&quot;][4] - Comment by you on Mark's answer.&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:38:42 - [&quot;When I said about non-answered, I had in mind Mercurial recommendation only. Because rest is just my stolen and expanded correct answer&quot;][5]&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:44:13 - Mark responds to your comment with [&quot;Unlike others here, I provided a solution with svn and then suggested an alternative.&quot;][6].&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:48:59 - Mark [expands his answer][7] a little bit. &#xD;&#xA;1. 18:50:33 - Mark informs you of his edit with this comment: [&quot;@LazyBadger - Happy now? I actually answer the specific question asked, along with the other suggestions for alternative solutions.&quot;][8]&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:53:30 - Another user steps in, [informing you that Mark's answer is actually earlier than yours][9].&#xD;&#xA;1. 19:00:29 - You post this meta question.&#xD;&#xA;1. 19:06:22 - I check to see what the heck is going on, and [inform you that you can see the actual timelines by hovering over &quot;x hours ago&quot;][10].&#xD;&#xA;1. 19:14:33 - You apologize to Mark for accusing him of stealing your answer with this comment: [&quot;@MarkBooth - I'm sorry, you did not steal my answer. It is incomprehensible for me confusion in the update-interface of the page&quot;][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And now let's see what has been happening on your answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:02:34 - Mark, oblivious of what would follow, [graciously fixes grammar mistakes in your answer][12].&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:29:35 - [&quot;-1 for answer on non-asked by OP question. Do not consider yourself smarter than others.&quot;][13] - Mark posts this comment, obviously referencing [your comment][14] in his answer, a couple of minutes earlier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, while all these where taking place someone flagged _every_ comment that was addressed to you as &quot;rude/offensive&quot;. Then you flagged two answers on the same question for moderation attention, which I declined as &quot;flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer&quot; - that's what down votes are for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that we reconstructed the timeline, I feel extremely confident that Mark did not do anything wrong here. He _improved_ your answer, even though it was a competing _later_ answer that re-iterated his own answer, and even expanded his own answer after you falsely accused him of stealing it from you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You, on the other hand, really need to **calm down**. You accused another user of stealing you answer, although you never adequately checked to see if your answer was actually earlier, posted some rather snarky comments, flagged _perfectly valid_ competing answers and I'm pretty sure that you were the one flagging almost every comment that was addressed to you, although people where generally being nice and _none_ of the flagged comments was either rude or offensive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The culmination of course is this Meta question, where you ask us to intervene for a single down vote. I'll recognize that you apologized to Mark after you found out you were in the wrong, however your overall behavior is unacceptable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need [to be nice(r)][15]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Etiquette&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Civility is required at all times; rudeness will not be tolerated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Be nice.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Treat others with the same respect you’d want them to treat you. We’re all here to learn together. Be tolerant of others who may not know everything you know. Bring your sense of humor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Be honest.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Above all, be honest. If you see misinformation, vote it down. Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong. Provide better answers of your own. Best of all — edit and improve the existing questions and answers! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I appreciate your passion, however the hostility you displayed today was both unwarranted and non nonsensical, and our community has a very low tolerance threshold for such behaviours. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Calm down and be nice**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/142123/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/142128/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/142131/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268263_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268271_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268275_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/142128/5&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268282_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268285_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268292_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268297_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/142131/2&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268265_142131&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268263_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#etiquette" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8890" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3355" RevisionGUID="e490dea4-6fe1-4a66-988b-7f4cddca6d98" CreationDate="2012-03-30T08:57:56.980" UserId="25936" Comment="added 132 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-development\] tag](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bstci-software-development%5D+closed%3A0) that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139201/how-to-become-very-strong-in-middleware-java-coding&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140582/writing-drivers-for-a-printer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80575/when-to-remove-programmer-access-in-dev-sandbox&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29167/need-repository-layout-references&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32785/first-time-application-where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40235/development-cost-for-ipad-application-and-on-going-maintenance&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47993/best-software-development-methodology-environment-for-fresh-graduates&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57828/your-software-problem-solution-approach&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61891/how-and-where-to-organize-a-team-to-make-a-website&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65600/using-personal-blog-as-well-as-software-company&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76108/decisions-affecting-software-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88198/advice-on-how-to-understand-in-general-and-in-practice-it-infrastructure&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126751/what-technologies-and-what-languages-should-i-choose-to-make-web-application-por&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134060/is-there-a-snippets-program-that-allows-for-tab-entry-of-variables-across-the-ma&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134093/to-develop-a-front-end-web-application-with-tablets-in-mind-or-not&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134940/can-a-company-deny-that-you-teach-people-how-to-use-a-software-under-mit-license&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25733/where-can-i-get-people-to-test-my-software-for-free&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43113/looking-software-for-making-an-animated-cartoon-to-present-a-new-application-sce&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50427/books-on-software-development-is-code-complete-good-or-should-i-read-something&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66902/project-management-and-team-connecting-tools-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136015/standard-c-tools-frameworks-in-2012&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43214/how-do-you-educate-your-teammates-without-seeming-condescending-or-superior&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136441/can-anybody-recommend-an-application-for-laying-out-algorithms-on-a-mac&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. add questions here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8891" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3382" RevisionGUID="a23c92ec-5bfa-4110-bee4-8c094a023f42" CreationDate="2012-03-30T12:21:52.733" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="Let's see if we can get something of a timeline here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. 15:40:40 - The [question is asked][1].&#xD;&#xA;1. 16:34:23 - Mark posts [his answer][2].&#xD;&#xA;1. 16:58:39 - You post [your answer][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From here on I'll split the timeline to the two answers, starting with Mark's:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:27:19 - [&quot;-1 for answer on non-asked by OP question. Do not consider yourself smarter than others&quot;][4] - Comment by you on Mark's answer.&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:38:42 - [&quot;When I said about non-answered, I had in mind Mercurial recommendation only. Because rest is just my stolen and expanded correct answer&quot;][5]&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:44:13 - Mark responds to your comment with [&quot;Unlike others here, I provided a solution with svn and then suggested an alternative.&quot;][6].&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:48:59 - Mark [expands his answer][7] a little bit. &#xD;&#xA;1. 18:50:33 - Mark informs you of his edit with this comment: [&quot;@LazyBadger - Happy now? I actually answer the specific question asked, along with the other suggestions for alternative solutions.&quot;][8]&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:53:30 - Another user steps in, [informing you that Mark's answer is actually earlier than yours][9].&#xD;&#xA;1. 19:00:29 - You post this meta question.&#xD;&#xA;1. 19:06:22 - I check to see what the heck is going on, and [inform you that you can see the actual timelines by hovering over &quot;x hours ago&quot;][10].&#xD;&#xA;1. 19:14:33 - You apologize to Mark for accusing him of stealing your answer with this comment: [&quot;@MarkBooth - I'm sorry, you did not steal my answer. It is incomprehensible for me confusion in the update-interface of the page&quot;][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And now let's see what has been happening on your answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:02:34 - Mark, oblivious of what would follow, [graciously fixes grammar mistakes in your answer][12].&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:29:35 - [&quot;-1 for answer on non-asked by OP question. Do not consider yourself smarter than others.&quot;][13] - Mark posts this comment, obviously referencing [your comment][14] in his answer, a couple of minutes earlier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, while all these where taking place someone flagged _every_ comment that was addressed to you as &quot;rude/offensive&quot;. Then you flagged two answers on the same question for moderation attention, which I declined as &quot;flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer&quot; - that's what down votes are for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that we reconstructed the timeline, I feel extremely confident that Mark did not do anything wrong here. He _improved_ your answer, even though it was a competing _later_ answer that re-iterated his own answer, and even expanded his own answer after you falsely accused him of stealing it from you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You, on the other hand, really need to **calm down**. You accused another user of stealing you answer, although you never adequately checked to see if your answer was actually earlier, posted some rather snarky comments, flagged _perfectly valid_ competing answers and I'm pretty sure that you were the one flagging almost every comment that was addressed to you, although people where generally being nice and _none_ of the flagged comments was either rude or offensive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The culmination of course is this Meta question, where you ask us to intervene for a single down vote. I'll recognize that you apologized to Mark after you found out you were in the wrong, however your overall behavior is unacceptable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need [to be nice(r)][15]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Etiquette&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Civility is required at all times; rudeness will not be tolerated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Be nice.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Treat others with the same respect you’d want them to treat you. We’re all here to learn together. Be tolerant of others who may not know everything you know. Bring your sense of humor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Be honest.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Above all, be honest. If you see misinformation, vote it down. Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong. Provide better answers of your own. Best of all — edit and improve the existing questions and answers! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I appreciate your passion, however the hostility you displayed today was both unwarranted and non nonsensical, and our community has a very low tolerance threshold for such behaviours. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Calm down and be nice**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/142123/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/142128/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/142131/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268263_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268271_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268275_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/142128/5&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268282_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268285_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268292_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268297_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/142131/2&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268265_142131&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268263_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#etiquette" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8892" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3355" RevisionGUID="61e542ed-ca56-4bd0-9791-30a2f2c50cc7" CreationDate="2012-03-30T13:38:39.377" UserId="25936" Comment="added 215 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-development\] tag](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bstci-software-development%5D+closed%3A0) that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139201/how-to-become-very-strong-in-middleware-java-coding&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140582/writing-drivers-for-a-printer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80575/when-to-remove-programmer-access-in-dev-sandbox&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29167/need-repository-layout-references&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32785/first-time-application-where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40235/development-cost-for-ipad-application-and-on-going-maintenance&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47993/best-software-development-methodology-environment-for-fresh-graduates&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57828/your-software-problem-solution-approach&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61891/how-and-where-to-organize-a-team-to-make-a-website&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65600/using-personal-blog-as-well-as-software-company&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76108/decisions-affecting-software-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88198/advice-on-how-to-understand-in-general-and-in-practice-it-infrastructure&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126751/what-technologies-and-what-languages-should-i-choose-to-make-web-application-por&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134060/is-there-a-snippets-program-that-allows-for-tab-entry-of-variables-across-the-ma&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134093/to-develop-a-front-end-web-application-with-tablets-in-mind-or-not&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134940/can-a-company-deny-that-you-teach-people-how-to-use-a-software-under-mit-license&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25733/where-can-i-get-people-to-test-my-software-for-free&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43113/looking-software-for-making-an-animated-cartoon-to-present-a-new-application-sce&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50427/books-on-software-development-is-code-complete-good-or-should-i-read-something&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66902/project-management-and-team-connecting-tools-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136015/standard-c-tools-frameworks-in-2012&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43214/how-do-you-educate-your-teammates-without-seeming-condescending-or-superior&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136441/can-anybody-recommend-an-application-for-laying-out-algorithms-on-a-mac&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49457/learning-to-program-in-the-modern-era&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64875/what-are-your-examples-of-great-companies-with-work-environments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. add questions here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8893" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3382" RevisionGUID="cc4eb03b-5929-4f2e-a6e3-d29b12884bca" CreationDate="2012-03-30T13:58:16.280" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body" Text="Let's see if we can get something of a timeline here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. 15:40:40 - The [question is asked][1].&#xD;&#xA;1. 16:34:23 - Mark posts [his answer][2].&#xD;&#xA;1. 16:58:39 - You post [your answer][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From here on I'll split the timeline to the two answers, starting with Mark's:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:27:19 - [&quot;-1 for answer on non-asked by OP question. Do not consider yourself smarter than others&quot;][4] - Comment by you on Mark's answer.&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:38:42 - [&quot;When I said about non-answered, I had in mind Mercurial recommendation only. Because rest is just my stolen and expanded correct answer&quot;][5]&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:44:13 - Mark responds to your comment with [&quot;Unlike others here, I provided a solution with svn and then suggested an alternative.&quot;][6].&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:48:59 - Mark [expands his answer][7] a little bit. &#xD;&#xA;1. 18:50:33 - Mark informs you of his edit with this comment: [&quot;@LazyBadger - Happy now? I actually answer the specific question asked, along with the other suggestions for alternative solutions.&quot;][8]&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:53:30 - Another user steps in, [informing you that Mark's answer is actually earlier than yours][9].&#xD;&#xA;1. 19:00:29 - You post this meta question.&#xD;&#xA;1. 19:06:22 - I check to see what the heck is going on, and [inform you that you can see the actual timelines by hovering over &quot;x hours ago&quot;][10].&#xD;&#xA;1. 19:14:33 - You apologize to Mark for accusing him of stealing your answer with this comment: [&quot;@MarkBooth - I'm sorry, you did not steal my answer. It is incomprehensible for me confusion in the update-interface of the page&quot;][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And now let's see what has been happening on your answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:02:34 - Mark, oblivious of what would follow, [graciously fixes grammar mistakes in your answer][12].&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:29:35 - [&quot;-1 for answer on non-asked by OP question. Do not consider yourself smarter than others.&quot;][13] - Mark posts this comment, obviously referencing [your comment][14] in his answer, a couple of minutes earlier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, while all these where taking place someone flagged _every_ comment that was addressed to you as &quot;rude/offensive&quot;. Then you flagged two answers on the same question for moderation attention, which I declined as &quot;flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer&quot; - that's what down votes are for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that we reconstructed the timeline, I feel extremely confident that Mark did not do anything wrong here. He _improved_ your answer, even though it was a competing _later_ answer that re-iterated his own answer, and even expanded his own answer after you falsely accused him of stealing it from you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You, on the other hand, really need to **calm down**. You accused another user of stealing you answer, although you never adequately checked to see if your answer was actually earlier, posted some rather snarky comments, flagged _perfectly valid_ competing answers and I'm pretty sure that you were the one flagging almost every comment that was addressed to you, although people where generally being nice and _none_ of the flagged comments was either rude or offensive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The culmination of course is this Meta question, where you ask us to intervene for a single down vote. I'll recognize that you apologized to Mark after you found out you were in the wrong, however your overall behavior is unacceptable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need [to be nice(r)][15]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Etiquette&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Civility is required at all times; rudeness will not be tolerated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Be nice.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Treat others with the same respect you’d want them to treat you. We’re all here to learn together. Be tolerant of others who may not know everything you know. Bring your sense of humor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Be honest.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Above all, be honest. If you see misinformation, vote it down. Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong. Provide better answers of your own. Best of all — edit and improve the existing questions and answers! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I appreciate your passion, however the hostility you displayed today was both unwarranted and nonsensical, and our community has a very low tolerance threshold for such behaviours. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Calm down and be nice**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/142123/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/142128/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/142131/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268263_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268271_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268275_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/142128/5&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268282_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268285_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268292_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268297_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/142131/2&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268265_142131&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268263_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#etiquette" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8894" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3383" RevisionGUID="ee342074-9d80-46d2-830f-db9e3fe48b6b" CreationDate="2012-03-30T14:12:14.623" UserId="1130" Text="I've seen a few of these and often up-vote them because I've had the same questions and am interested in the answers, however these questions frequently get closed as not constructive, and one is currently [marked for deletion][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it off-topic to ask if something is normal for programmers, and if a programmer should be concerned about it? If not, what is the criteria used to determine if these sorts of questions are constructive or not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples are&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it normal to think about a design problem for days with no code written?][2] - Closed as Not Constructive and marked for deletion&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it normal for a company to have programmers on such a rigid schedule?][3] - Closed as NC&#xD;&#xA;* [Should I be concerned that I can't program very fast without Google?][4]  - Closed as duplicate, but when I pointed out it wasn't an exact duplicate [on meta][5], a moderator said he thought it should still be closed as off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it “normal” for people to not work?][6] - Was closed as NC, but now [locked][7]&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it normal for programmer to work on multiple projects simultaneously][8] - Open&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the “normal” range for typing speed for developers?][9] - Open&#xD;&#xA;* [Should I be concerned if I have nothing to do during an internship?][10] - Open&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3357/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118962/is-it-normal-to-think-about-a-design-problem-for-days-with-no-code-written&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/88329/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/141860/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3379/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/81929/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3298/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/38647/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26243/whats-the-normal-range-for-typing-speed-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/100725/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8895" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3383" RevisionGUID="ee342074-9d80-46d2-830f-db9e3fe48b6b" CreationDate="2012-03-30T14:12:14.623" UserId="1130" Text="Are questions asking if something is normal for programmers on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8896" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3383" RevisionGUID="ee342074-9d80-46d2-830f-db9e3fe48b6b" CreationDate="2012-03-30T14:12:14.623" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8897" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3384" RevisionGUID="cdae61d1-c8c4-4e83-a64e-e682beab1830" CreationDate="2012-03-30T14:20:54.553" UserId="47" Text="I'd say that for the questions that have been closed the correct decision has been reached.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reviewing the questions that are still open I'd vote to close as Not Constructive on those as well. (I'll wait to see if anyone else votes to close or flags before acting though).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well - while each of these could well be an interesting question they don't fit in with the Stack Exchange model, as the Not Constructive close reason states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit to our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To take one question as an example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26243/whats-the-normal-range-for-typing-speed-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does typing speed really matter when writing software? Most of your time is going to be spent thinking, designing algorithms, testing and debugging - none of which require fast typing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8898" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3384" RevisionGUID="cb773f59-9355-4ee9-ac08-cd294231e7dc" CreationDate="2012-03-30T14:37:33.923" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="I'd say that for the questions that have been closed the correct decision has been reached.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reviewing the questions that are still open I'd vote to close as Not Constructive on those as well. (I'll wait to see if anyone else votes to close or flags before acting though).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well - while each of these could well be an interesting question they don't fit in with the Stack Exchange model, as the Not Constructive close reason states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit to our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To take some of the questions as an example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26243/whats-the-normal-range-for-typing-speed-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does typing speed really matter when writing software? Most of your time is going to be spent thinking, designing algorithms, testing and debugging - none of which require fast typing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/38647/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will depend on where you work, what industry you work in and all sorts of other things. In some places it's perfectly normal and in others it will be quite rare. Knowing this doesn't really help the OP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/141860/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well the answer to this one is probably that the OP is in the wrong industry, but s/he probably suspected that already - otherwise they wouldn't have posted the question!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8899" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3384" RevisionGUID="5a56042c-420c-4b74-b2b0-087503cdd303" CreationDate="2012-03-30T14:53:53.593" UserId="47" Comment="clarification" Text="I'd say that for the questions that have been closed the correct decision has been reached.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reviewing the questions that are still open I'd vote to close as Not Constructive on those as well. (I'll wait to see if anyone else votes to close or flags before acting though).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well - while each of these could well be an interesting question they don't fit in with the Stack Exchange model, as the Not Constructive close reason states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit to our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To take some of the questions as an example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26243/whats-the-normal-range-for-typing-speed-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does typing speed really matter when writing software? Most of your time is going to be spent thinking, designing algorithms, testing and debugging - none of which require fast typing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/38647/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will depend on where you work, what industry you work in and all sorts of other things. In some places it's perfectly normal and in others it will be quite rare. Knowing this doesn't really help the OP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/141860/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well the answer to this one might be that the OP is in the wrong industry, but s/he could have suspected that already - otherwise they wouldn't have posted the question! Equally (as you point out in the comments) it might be that it's not a big deal and a few more months experience (plus some reading and even - shock, horror! - training) will put it right." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8900" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3384" RevisionGUID="e21515e8-ebe9-488e-90d8-c5387212026f" CreationDate="2012-03-30T15:10:18.720" UserId="47" Comment="remove not constructive argument" Text="I'd say that for the questions that have been closed the correct decision has been reached.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reviewing the questions that are still open I'd vote to close as Not Constructive on those as well. (I'll wait to see if anyone else votes to close or flags before acting though).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well - while each of these could well be an interesting question they don't fit in with the Stack Exchange model, as the Not Constructive close reason states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit to our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To take some of the questions as an example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26243/whats-the-normal-range-for-typing-speed-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does typing speed really matter when writing software? Most of your time is going to be spent thinking, designing algorithms, testing and debugging - none of which require fast typing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/38647/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will depend on where you work, what industry you work in and all sorts of other things. In some places it's perfectly normal and in others it will be quite rare. Knowing this doesn't really help the OP.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8901" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3355" RevisionGUID="4280f6e7-9a05-4369-85d3-bd25980ca1e0" CreationDate="2012-03-30T23:34:46.113" UserId="25936" Comment="added 483 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-development\] tag](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bstci-software-development%5D+closed%3A0) that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139201/how-to-become-very-strong-in-middleware-java-coding&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140582/writing-drivers-for-a-printer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80575/when-to-remove-programmer-access-in-dev-sandbox&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29167/need-repository-layout-references&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32785/first-time-application-where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40235/development-cost-for-ipad-application-and-on-going-maintenance&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47993/best-software-development-methodology-environment-for-fresh-graduates&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57828/your-software-problem-solution-approach&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61891/how-and-where-to-organize-a-team-to-make-a-website&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65600/using-personal-blog-as-well-as-software-company&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76108/decisions-affecting-software-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88198/advice-on-how-to-understand-in-general-and-in-practice-it-infrastructure&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126751/what-technologies-and-what-languages-should-i-choose-to-make-web-application-por&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134060/is-there-a-snippets-program-that-allows-for-tab-entry-of-variables-across-the-ma&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134093/to-develop-a-front-end-web-application-with-tablets-in-mind-or-not&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134940/can-a-company-deny-that-you-teach-people-how-to-use-a-software-under-mit-license&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25733/where-can-i-get-people-to-test-my-software-for-free&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43113/looking-software-for-making-an-animated-cartoon-to-present-a-new-application-sce&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50427/books-on-software-development-is-code-complete-good-or-should-i-read-something&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66902/project-management-and-team-connecting-tools-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136015/standard-c-tools-frameworks-in-2012&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43214/how-do-you-educate-your-teammates-without-seeming-condescending-or-superior&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136441/can-anybody-recommend-an-application-for-laying-out-algorithms-on-a-mac&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49457/learning-to-program-in-the-modern-era&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64875/what-are-your-examples-of-great-companies-with-work-environments&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60906/productivity-and-communication-in-teamwork-vs-individual-concentration-and-list&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46429/is-porting-a-windows-application-to-mac-worth-it&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43113/looking-software-for-making-an-animated-cartoon-to-present-a-new-application-sce&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38140/can-a-freelancer-use-agile-development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. add questions here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8902" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3355" RevisionGUID="1584c51b-d5b1-4e8e-b38c-8c6ea9a95497" CreationDate="2012-03-30T23:56:49.750" UserId="25936" Comment="added 628 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-development\] tag](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bstci-software-development%5D+closed%3A0) that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139201/how-to-become-very-strong-in-middleware-java-coding&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140582/writing-drivers-for-a-printer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80575/when-to-remove-programmer-access-in-dev-sandbox&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29167/need-repository-layout-references&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32785/first-time-application-where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40235/development-cost-for-ipad-application-and-on-going-maintenance&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47993/best-software-development-methodology-environment-for-fresh-graduates&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57828/your-software-problem-solution-approach&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61891/how-and-where-to-organize-a-team-to-make-a-website&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65600/using-personal-blog-as-well-as-software-company&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76108/decisions-affecting-software-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88198/advice-on-how-to-understand-in-general-and-in-practice-it-infrastructure&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126751/what-technologies-and-what-languages-should-i-choose-to-make-web-application-por&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134060/is-there-a-snippets-program-that-allows-for-tab-entry-of-variables-across-the-ma&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134093/to-develop-a-front-end-web-application-with-tablets-in-mind-or-not&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134940/can-a-company-deny-that-you-teach-people-how-to-use-a-software-under-mit-license&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25733/where-can-i-get-people-to-test-my-software-for-free&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43113/looking-software-for-making-an-animated-cartoon-to-present-a-new-application-sce&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50427/books-on-software-development-is-code-complete-good-or-should-i-read-something&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66902/project-management-and-team-connecting-tools-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136015/standard-c-tools-frameworks-in-2012&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43214/how-do-you-educate-your-teammates-without-seeming-condescending-or-superior&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136441/can-anybody-recommend-an-application-for-laying-out-algorithms-on-a-mac&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49457/learning-to-program-in-the-modern-era&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64875/what-are-your-examples-of-great-companies-with-work-environments&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60906/productivity-and-communication-in-teamwork-vs-individual-concentration-and-list&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46429/is-porting-a-windows-application-to-mac-worth-it&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43113/looking-software-for-making-an-animated-cartoon-to-present-a-new-application-sce&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38140/can-a-freelancer-use-agile-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30046/developing-for-research-vs-developing-a-product&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22224/recommended-bounty-site&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97658/how-do-i-host-a-project-on-github-or-sourceforge&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58593/how-much-knowledge-do-you-need-to-call-yourself-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86170/security-programming-jobs&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60694/what-is-the-correlation-between-the-quality-of-the-software-development-process&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. add questions here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8903" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3355" RevisionGUID="90c90a04-22c8-4e13-b894-a4eee194f5ee" CreationDate="2012-03-31T10:49:08.380" UserId="25936" Comment="added 452 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-development\] tag](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bstci-software-development%5D+closed%3A0) that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139201/how-to-become-very-strong-in-middleware-java-coding&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140582/writing-drivers-for-a-printer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80575/when-to-remove-programmer-access-in-dev-sandbox&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29167/need-repository-layout-references&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32785/first-time-application-where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40235/development-cost-for-ipad-application-and-on-going-maintenance&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47993/best-software-development-methodology-environment-for-fresh-graduates&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57828/your-software-problem-solution-approach&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61891/how-and-where-to-organize-a-team-to-make-a-website&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65600/using-personal-blog-as-well-as-software-company&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76108/decisions-affecting-software-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88198/advice-on-how-to-understand-in-general-and-in-practice-it-infrastructure&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126751/what-technologies-and-what-languages-should-i-choose-to-make-web-application-por&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134060/is-there-a-snippets-program-that-allows-for-tab-entry-of-variables-across-the-ma&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134093/to-develop-a-front-end-web-application-with-tablets-in-mind-or-not&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134940/can-a-company-deny-that-you-teach-people-how-to-use-a-software-under-mit-license&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25733/where-can-i-get-people-to-test-my-software-for-free&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43113/looking-software-for-making-an-animated-cartoon-to-present-a-new-application-sce&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50427/books-on-software-development-is-code-complete-good-or-should-i-read-something&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66902/project-management-and-team-connecting-tools-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136015/standard-c-tools-frameworks-in-2012&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43214/how-do-you-educate-your-teammates-without-seeming-condescending-or-superior&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136441/can-anybody-recommend-an-application-for-laying-out-algorithms-on-a-mac&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49457/learning-to-program-in-the-modern-era&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64875/what-are-your-examples-of-great-companies-with-work-environments&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60906/productivity-and-communication-in-teamwork-vs-individual-concentration-and-list&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46429/is-porting-a-windows-application-to-mac-worth-it&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43113/looking-software-for-making-an-animated-cartoon-to-present-a-new-application-sce&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38140/can-a-freelancer-use-agile-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30046/developing-for-research-vs-developing-a-product&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22224/recommended-bounty-site&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97658/how-do-i-host-a-project-on-github-or-sourceforge&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58593/how-much-knowledge-do-you-need-to-call-yourself-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86170/security-programming-jobs&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60694/what-is-the-correlation-between-the-quality-of-the-software-development-process&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61698/remote-job-opportunities-for-software-developers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92696/how-to-grow-after-failing-in-a-software-development-shop&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90559/why-dont-modern-software-developers-follow-the-advice-of-alan-cooper-and-jef-ra&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101725/is-there-any-tv-channel-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. add questions here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8904" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3355" RevisionGUID="b33a8ae6-cfdc-4418-bfbb-2a5b4cbbe62f" CreationDate="2012-03-31T11:04:53.790" UserId="25936" Comment="added 195 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-development\] tag](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bstci-software-development%5D+closed%3A0) that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139201/how-to-become-very-strong-in-middleware-java-coding&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140582/writing-drivers-for-a-printer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80575/when-to-remove-programmer-access-in-dev-sandbox&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29167/need-repository-layout-references&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32785/first-time-application-where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40235/development-cost-for-ipad-application-and-on-going-maintenance&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47993/best-software-development-methodology-environment-for-fresh-graduates&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57828/your-software-problem-solution-approach&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61891/how-and-where-to-organize-a-team-to-make-a-website&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65600/using-personal-blog-as-well-as-software-company&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76108/decisions-affecting-software-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88198/advice-on-how-to-understand-in-general-and-in-practice-it-infrastructure&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126751/what-technologies-and-what-languages-should-i-choose-to-make-web-application-por&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134060/is-there-a-snippets-program-that-allows-for-tab-entry-of-variables-across-the-ma&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134093/to-develop-a-front-end-web-application-with-tablets-in-mind-or-not&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134940/can-a-company-deny-that-you-teach-people-how-to-use-a-software-under-mit-license&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25733/where-can-i-get-people-to-test-my-software-for-free&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43113/looking-software-for-making-an-animated-cartoon-to-present-a-new-application-sce&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50427/books-on-software-development-is-code-complete-good-or-should-i-read-something&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66902/project-management-and-team-connecting-tools-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136015/standard-c-tools-frameworks-in-2012&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43214/how-do-you-educate-your-teammates-without-seeming-condescending-or-superior&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136441/can-anybody-recommend-an-application-for-laying-out-algorithms-on-a-mac&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49457/learning-to-program-in-the-modern-era&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64875/what-are-your-examples-of-great-companies-with-work-environments&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60906/productivity-and-communication-in-teamwork-vs-individual-concentration-and-list&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46429/is-porting-a-windows-application-to-mac-worth-it&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43113/looking-software-for-making-an-animated-cartoon-to-present-a-new-application-sce&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38140/can-a-freelancer-use-agile-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30046/developing-for-research-vs-developing-a-product&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22224/recommended-bounty-site&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97658/how-do-i-host-a-project-on-github-or-sourceforge&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58593/how-much-knowledge-do-you-need-to-call-yourself-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86170/security-programming-jobs&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60694/what-is-the-correlation-between-the-quality-of-the-software-development-process&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61698/remote-job-opportunities-for-software-developers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92696/how-to-grow-after-failing-in-a-software-development-shop&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90559/why-dont-modern-software-developers-follow-the-advice-of-alan-cooper-and-jef-ra&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101725/is-there-any-tv-channel-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36317/what-are-some-good-online-tech-talks&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57987/which-db-should-i-use-for-my-newbie-program&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. add questions here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8905" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3355" RevisionGUID="411a4c54-d2b0-4765-abe4-2a584786046d" CreationDate="2012-03-31T11:26:46.023" UserId="25936" Comment="added 195 characters in body" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-development\] tag](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bstci-software-development%5D+closed%3A0) that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139201/how-to-become-very-strong-in-middleware-java-coding&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140582/writing-drivers-for-a-printer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80575/when-to-remove-programmer-access-in-dev-sandbox&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29167/need-repository-layout-references&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32785/first-time-application-where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40235/development-cost-for-ipad-application-and-on-going-maintenance&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47993/best-software-development-methodology-environment-for-fresh-graduates&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57828/your-software-problem-solution-approach&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61891/how-and-where-to-organize-a-team-to-make-a-website&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65600/using-personal-blog-as-well-as-software-company&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76108/decisions-affecting-software-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88198/advice-on-how-to-understand-in-general-and-in-practice-it-infrastructure&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126751/what-technologies-and-what-languages-should-i-choose-to-make-web-application-por&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134060/is-there-a-snippets-program-that-allows-for-tab-entry-of-variables-across-the-ma&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134093/to-develop-a-front-end-web-application-with-tablets-in-mind-or-not&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134940/can-a-company-deny-that-you-teach-people-how-to-use-a-software-under-mit-license&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25733/where-can-i-get-people-to-test-my-software-for-free&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43113/looking-software-for-making-an-animated-cartoon-to-present-a-new-application-sce&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50427/books-on-software-development-is-code-complete-good-or-should-i-read-something&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66902/project-management-and-team-connecting-tools-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136015/standard-c-tools-frameworks-in-2012&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43214/how-do-you-educate-your-teammates-without-seeming-condescending-or-superior&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136441/can-anybody-recommend-an-application-for-laying-out-algorithms-on-a-mac&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49457/learning-to-program-in-the-modern-era&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64875/what-are-your-examples-of-great-companies-with-work-environments&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60906/productivity-and-communication-in-teamwork-vs-individual-concentration-and-list&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46429/is-porting-a-windows-application-to-mac-worth-it&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43113/looking-software-for-making-an-animated-cartoon-to-present-a-new-application-sce&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38140/can-a-freelancer-use-agile-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30046/developing-for-research-vs-developing-a-product&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22224/recommended-bounty-site&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97658/how-do-i-host-a-project-on-github-or-sourceforge&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58593/how-much-knowledge-do-you-need-to-call-yourself-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86170/security-programming-jobs&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60694/what-is-the-correlation-between-the-quality-of-the-software-development-process&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61698/remote-job-opportunities-for-software-developers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92696/how-to-grow-after-failing-in-a-software-development-shop&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90559/why-dont-modern-software-developers-follow-the-advice-of-alan-cooper-and-jef-ra&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101725/is-there-any-tv-channel-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36317/what-are-some-good-online-tech-talks&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57987/which-db-should-i-use-for-my-newbie-program&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58584/how-can-i-change-my-career-from-windows-server-admin-to-software-developer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/94197/how-to-i-build-a-sudoku-solver-software-using-c&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66286/as-a-developer-which-version-of-windows-has-everything-needed-for-standard-pro&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95336/what-are-the-research-components-involved-in-a-software-product-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72451/sources-of-information-for-flight-hotel-reservation-recommendation-sites&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/115509/what-are-some-group-oriented-project-development-sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. add questions here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8906" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3385" RevisionGUID="740aa53a-a11e-4f66-b347-b7ad6ff8b226" CreationDate="2012-03-31T17:39:18.090" UserId="50029" Text="I have posted [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140483/is-it-a-waste-of-time-to-free-resources-before-i-exit-a-process/141014) not long ago. And I got some really interesting answers. One got a lot of up votes, but after some investigation, I asked my instructor at the university, and got [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140483/is-it-a-waste-of-time-to-free-resources-before-i-exit-a-process/141014#141014) which actually proves the most up-voted answer wrong. I don't want to down-vote that guy, because he showed an interesting aspect. But I think that my answer should at least appear a little higher, so people at least see it. Because if we're honest, who reads all the answers through and really thinks about them?!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not concerned about other answers because most of them answered about &quot;good software engineering&quot; and not my theoretical question. But they are worth reading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question is actually: why is the accepted answer so low in the thread?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8907" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3385" RevisionGUID="740aa53a-a11e-4f66-b347-b7ad6ff8b226" CreationDate="2012-03-31T17:39:18.090" UserId="50029" Text="What if a wrong answer gets a lot of upvotes?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8908" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3385" RevisionGUID="740aa53a-a11e-4f66-b347-b7ad6ff8b226" CreationDate="2012-03-31T17:39:18.090" UserId="50029" Text="|discussion|accepted-answer|up-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8909" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3385" RevisionGUID="e78a46b4-67ce-41e6-a780-71e223307d84" CreationDate="2012-03-31T17:56:23.137" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [I answered my own question and accepted the answer. Why is it not at the top?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3376/i-answered-my-own-question-and-accepted-the-answer-why-is-it-not-at-the-top)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I have posted [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140483/is-it-a-waste-of-time-to-free-resources-before-i-exit-a-process/141014) not long ago. And I got some really interesting answers. One got a lot of up votes, but after some investigation, I asked my instructor at the university, and got [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140483/is-it-a-waste-of-time-to-free-resources-before-i-exit-a-process/141014#141014) which actually proves the most up-voted answer wrong. I don't want to down-vote that guy, because he showed an interesting aspect. But I think that my answer should at least appear a little higher, so people at least see it. Because if we're honest, who reads all the answers through and really thinks about them?!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not concerned about other answers because most of them answered about &quot;good software engineering&quot; and not my theoretical question. But they are worth reading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question is actually: why is the accepted answer so low in the thread?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8910" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3385" RevisionGUID="0a21c98a-db22-43a1-83e7-dc41f929b3e3" CreationDate="2012-03-31T17:56:22.450" UserId="25936" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[3376],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8911" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3386" RevisionGUID="d01e4484-e2c5-4b44-8e7f-01ac4b4517b3" CreationDate="2012-04-02T02:58:10.377" UserId="226" Text="It's been blacklisted. Enjoy. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8912" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3352" RevisionGUID="3581b1e6-b030-47b1-85ad-12e8a619800b" CreationDate="2012-04-02T02:58:16.727" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|stci|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8913" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3387" RevisionGUID="0483a7ed-97d5-4e74-9a31-5a74346e7191" CreationDate="2012-04-02T09:52:39.990" UserId="22493" Text="I am curious as to the reasoning behind closing  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/142186/22493 as an *exact duplicate* of  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/47370/22493 when they are clearly asking the *exact opposite*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I realise that both questions *could* easily cover the same ground, but despite the flaws in http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/142186/22493, none of the answers to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/47370/22493 really provide an answer to it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8914" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3387" RevisionGUID="0483a7ed-97d5-4e74-9a31-5a74346e7191" CreationDate="2012-04-02T09:52:39.990" UserId="22493" Text="How can something be an exact duplicate when it is asking the exact opposite?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8915" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3387" RevisionGUID="0483a7ed-97d5-4e74-9a31-5a74346e7191" CreationDate="2012-04-02T09:52:39.990" UserId="22493" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8916" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3388" RevisionGUID="439d953e-4b94-444b-bd80-6d2303945ad0" CreationDate="2012-04-02T09:53:24.340" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Over the past 24h, **22** questions have been posted and **15** have been closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**That's means more than 68% of them have been closed.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*All those people couldn't be all wrong.* I think it's how we present stuff on the homepage that leads them to posting off topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our problem is that we are selling chinese food in a restaurant that looks like an indian flavor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When we arrive on the website, we see the big letters &quot;Programmers&quot;. We should change this and put something more explicit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any suggestions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8917" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3388" RevisionGUID="439d953e-4b94-444b-bd80-6d2303945ad0" CreationDate="2012-04-02T09:53:24.340" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="Can we make some concrete actions to adjust the website topic perception?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8918" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3388" RevisionGUID="439d953e-4b94-444b-bd80-6d2303945ad0" CreationDate="2012-04-02T09:53:24.340" UserDisplayName="user2567" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8919" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3389" RevisionGUID="3b064366-a6c9-4a61-ab80-a5643584e4ea" CreationDate="2012-04-02T11:12:47.423" UserId="25476" Text="I can't speak for ChrisF about closing this as Exact Duplicate, but if I had to guess, he probably agreed with me that it was too localized in its present form but was merely offerring a helpful link to a very similar question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had asked for the OP to revise his/her question and after almost 24 hours there was no attempt to improve the question.  I suppose I might have tried but I wanted to give the OP a chance to change it in his/her own words." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8920" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3390" RevisionGUID="ae12742b-5ab4-4890-8848-1f28e21b7255" CreationDate="2012-04-02T11:46:24.090" UserId="47" Text="I was responding to flags on the question and at one of them referred to the linked question as a possible duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the existing close votes *may* have been close as a duplicate as well - unfortunately I have no way of checking this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm quite happy to admit that I got it wrong, but as maple_shaft says the question would have got closed for another reason anyway - there were *three* close votes on the question before I saw it. Either way this question was going to get closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8921" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3391" RevisionGUID="84788da7-3e56-4bfb-8f52-3edb82be7bf6" CreationDate="2012-04-02T11:56:46.213" UserId="34327" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142475/item-2-scott-myers-effective-c-question&#xD;&#xA;title of the question: `Item 2, Scott Myers Effective C++ question`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suggested the following title: `storage of const objects`.&#xD;&#xA;The goal was to descibe the actual problem of the OP, and not some item in a book. The edit was rejected with the following comment: `The change do the title does not improve it - it removes some information that is useful when browsing.`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is the first title good enough? How can it be improved?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8922" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3391" RevisionGUID="84788da7-3e56-4bfb-8f52-3edb82be7bf6" CreationDate="2012-04-02T11:56:46.213" UserId="34327" Text="title based on book item" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8923" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3391" RevisionGUID="84788da7-3e56-4bfb-8f52-3edb82be7bf6" CreationDate="2012-04-02T11:56:46.213" UserId="34327" Text="|discussion|question-title|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8924" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3391" RevisionGUID="0662cb67-ef76-49ae-9c35-cac028556414" CreationDate="2012-04-02T11:58:38.923" UserId="47" Comment="added link to suggested edit" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142475/item-2-scott-myers-effective-c-question&#xD;&#xA;title of the question: `Item 2, Scott Myers Effective C++ question`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I [suggested](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/4568) the following title: `storage of const objects`.&#xD;&#xA;The goal was to descibe the actual problem of the OP, and not some item in a book. The edit was rejected with the following comment: `The change do the title does not improve it - it removes some information that is useful when browsing.`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is the first title good enough? How can it be improved?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8925" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3391" RevisionGUID="b18ec298-9e55-4348-9976-acf763c69696" CreationDate="2012-04-02T11:59:47.410" UserId="34327" Comment="removed redundant title" Text="I find this title not very informative:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142475/item-2-scott-myers-effective-c-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suggested the following title: `storage of const objects`.&#xD;&#xA;The goal was to descibe the actual problem of the OP, and not some item in a book. The edit was rejected with the following comment: `The change do the title does not improve it - it removes some information that is useful when browsing.`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is the first title good enough? How can it be improved?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8926" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3391" RevisionGUID="0e7b9152-7b76-42bb-b61b-f2b30ee1bb13" CreationDate="2012-04-02T12:43:59.700" UserId="47" Comment="added link to suggested edit back in" Text="I find this title not very informative:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142475/item-2-scott-myers-effective-c-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I [suggested](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/4568) the following title: `storage of const objects`.&#xD;&#xA;The goal was to descibe the actual problem of the OP, and not some item in a book. The edit was rejected with the following comment: `The change do the title does not improve it - it removes some information that is useful when browsing.`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is the first title good enough? How can it be improved?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8927" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3392" RevisionGUID="2f1cea45-5662-4c4b-803b-1776e924753a" CreationDate="2012-04-02T13:02:53.757" UserId="41381" Text="The existing title is bad, and yours is better, but it could get a bit better. Titles are preferred in question form if possible. `How does const storage work?` or `Why is const better than #define?` seem like better titles to me. Also since the title of the book is in the title and not the question it would need to be added to the body in order for it to make sense, which may be the reason your edit was rejected." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8928" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3393" RevisionGUID="aea07e81-a21d-48be-b975-cae3f5ef4732" CreationDate="2012-04-02T13:27:27.003" UserId="25936" Text="Let's go through the questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142533/which-is-the-best-book-to-learn-ooad-including-design-patterns&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Not constructive for Stack Exchange, and that won't change whatever action we take. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142524/horizontal-navigation-menu-with-sub-menus&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  We are not a replacement for Google, and that won't change whatever we may do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142522/how-to-count-the-number-of-affected-rows-in-mysql&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Off topic, clearly belongs on Stack Overflow, were OP has successfully asked 6 questions (!?). Extremely trivial question (we don't migrate crap) and OP posted an answer immediately after they posted the question (rep-whoring?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142516/grouping-a-comma-separated-value-on-common-data&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Exactly the same as (3), same OP (off topic, belongs on SO, self-answer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142513/video-codec-price&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Too localized for Stack Exchange, and that won't change whatever action we take.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142512/keyboard-shortcut-to-focus-on-side-bar-for-sublime-text-2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Off topic, a far better version of it could belong on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142510/what-is-the-lowest-icq-number-that-was-ever-used&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I don't even know where to start with this one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;8. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142498/how-to-learn-the-math-behind-the-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not constructive and there's a ton of duplicates on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142493/should-i-go-back-to-college-and-graduate-with-a-poor-gpa-or-try-to-jump-into-an&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Good question (the first so far that shows at least some effort), but unfortunately off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142487/decimal-to-hex-with-same-value&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The full text of the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;  How can I do the below in c, 12 in decimal to 0x12 or 20 in decimal to 0x20&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;11. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142483/is-it-worth-the-time-to-learn-to-program-ios-apps&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Not constructive for Stack Exchange, and that won't change whatever action we take. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;12. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142470/frustrated-where-i-am-but-not-sure-where-to-go-with-my-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Career advice, off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;13. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142461/how-to-effectively-design-a-piece-of-software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Vague, open ended, not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;14. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142451/error-mpicc-command-not-found&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Off topic, a far better version of it might belong on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;15. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142447/what-web-technology-to-use-for-web-app&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Vague, open ended, not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This list of closed questions has little to do with Programmers. Most off topic, belongs on Stack Overflow questions are from unregistered users. There is a trend of people posting their Stack Overflow questions here to sidestep question blocks on Stack Overflow, and if I had to guess I'd say they are getting smarter and posting from unregistered accounts (so we can't find duplicates, or even the fact they have an Stack Overflow account).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know if it's possible but if there's consensus we could require users to register before asking, that way we would at least be certain that OP is trying to sidestep a Stack Overflow ban and we could be deleting these questions ASAP, instead of waiting for them to be down voted to oblivion or attract delete votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyways, we have four of those, that far better versions of which could possibly fit on Stack Overflow. Then there are the herp derp questions (2), (7), (10), which brings us to 7 questions that are worth no one's time. That's almost half of the list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions (1), (5), (11), (13), and (15) are not a good fit for Stack Exchange in general, there's little (if anything) we can do there. That brings us to 12 questions that we can't really do much about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And questions (9) and (12) are career advice, the first item on our &quot;do not ask&quot; list and question (8) may be salvageable with a heroic edit, but I'm pretty sure any sane edit would make it a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see how any action we take will stop people from asking low quality questions, 7 out of 15 show no effort at all, other than typing the question itself. For the 5 questions that aren't a good fit for the Q&amp;A format of the site, there has been a ton of debates on Meta Stack Overflow, I don't see the format or philosophy of Stack Exchange changing any time soon to accommodate such questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which brings us to the two career advice questions. We can do a lot of things, but there are always going to be some topics that are off topic, regardless of what those are. If people fail to read the FAQ, why should we spent any time and effort on them? Why should the site change for the few that don't care enough to even skim through the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought the whole point of this was quality, not quantity. We don't need more people or more questions just for the numbers, we are a mature Stack Exchange site with a steady crowd and a steady flow of great questions and even greater answers. There is no point in trying to accommodate every user who doesn't care enough to spend 5 minutes reading the FAQ. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are not the only Stack Exchange site there is, there are 84 other sites currently, most of which have largely non technical crowds. _Somehow_ people find it quite easy to participate on English Language and Usage, Bicycles, Photography and Cooking, but when we ask them to [RTFM][1] on a site called Programmers, we ask too much?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8929" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3394" RevisionGUID="95292f76-4a53-4c53-8403-078717ffdc91" CreationDate="2012-04-02T13:59:38.537" UserId="1130" Text="Yes, please change the site's name from `Programmers` to something that more accurately represents what this site is about (`Software Development`?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have seen this issue many times in the past and feel the same way. Our site name does not accurately represent what our site is about, and I think it is misleading and confusing for both new users and existing SE users" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8930" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3394" RevisionGUID="506f736b-7abd-4d3b-9522-3db0ed2a5bec" CreationDate="2012-04-02T14:06:58.980" UserId="1130" Comment="Wanted to add links to show previous efforts to make a change like this" Text="Yes, please change the site's name from `Programmers` to something that more accurately represents what this site is about (`Software Development`?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have seen this issue many times in the past and feel the same way. Our site name does not accurately represent what our site is about, and I think it is misleading and confusing for both new users and existing SE users&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way our site name is now, it sounds like we are a place for programmers to meet and discuss programmers. Sure it won't stop all the bad questions, but it will stop the off-topic questions that people ask because they think the site is about programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a side note, I've made the request to [change the site name or the site scope][1] in the past, with quite a few upvotes, however nothing got done. Since I can't change the site name, I've also tried to suggest some [actual][2] [changes][3] we could make to align the site scope more with the site name, however nothing still got done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is meant to be a community-run site, but that's getting increasing hard to do when we don't take the time to make sure new users understand what the site is actually about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3301/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3318/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8931" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3394" RevisionGUID="7f68c17b-37b7-4f36-84a1-4dc71f7dd05e" CreationDate="2012-04-02T14:22:54.857" UserId="1130" Comment="Wanted to keep answer on-topic with question asked, so removed a section and will post as comment below" Text="Yes, please change the site's name from `Programmers` to something that more accurately represents what this site is about (`Software Development`?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have seen this issue many times in the past and feel the same way. Our site name does not accurately represent what our site is about, and I think it is misleading and confusing for both new users and existing SE users&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way our site name is now, it sounds like we are a place for programmers to meet and discuss programmers. Sure it won't stop all the bad questions, but it will stop the off-topic questions that people ask because they think the site is about programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is meant to be a community-run site, but that's getting increasing hard to do when we don't take the time to make sure new users understand what the site is actually about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3301/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3318/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8932" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3307" RevisionGUID="0c41f5ad-6024-4a53-9298-29e35a95c461" CreationDate="2012-04-02T14:26:07.583" UserId="1130" Comment="added 228 characters in body" Text="**Edit**: [Existing proposal][1] for this already exists, so I'm not making a new one. Go vote there to show your support if you'd like to implement this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1.5) Add the difference between Programmers.SE and SO**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The opening sentence should immediately be followed by this, which is one of the most frequently asked questions I have seen from users who participate in the stack exchange network: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[What's the difference between Programmers and StackOverflow?][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are standing at a whiteboard or discussing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; design concepts with your team, come to Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are sitting at a keyboard and writing code, you should go&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to StackOverflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If users do not read any further, they should at least have a general idea of who and what the site is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1838/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/173/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8933" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3395" RevisionGUID="3bdc8145-880a-43a6-a049-ec29b0b215de" CreationDate="2012-04-03T18:49:38.533" UserId="29020" Text="A [recent question][1] of mine has been closed as non-constructive. The question was IMO very clear: what are / would be the technical problems in dropping backward compatibility from C++. I got a quite satisfactorily and to-the-point answer from user AProgrammer, which I have accepted. Seeing that some users were starting to go out of topic, I have reformulated the question to bring the answers back to the point: technical reasons why dropping backward compatibility is not possible / difficult.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first version of the question contained a motivation that might have distracted from the main focus of the question, so I rephrased it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the question was specific enough to require a precise answer (&quot;Are there technical problems (e.g. ...) that make such a change too difficult or even impossible?&quot;). So, I was not suggesting a discussion whether backward compatibility should be dropped or not, I was asking specifically what kinds of technical / practical problems it would involve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would have found it more appropriate to invite the users that could not stick to the question to give a precise answer rather than close the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In any case, I would like to ask for suggestions how to formulate a question even better or about possible measures to take, in case a similar situation (answers not sticking to the point) should occur again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142698/why-is-c-backward-compatibility-important-necessary/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8934" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3395" RevisionGUID="3bdc8145-880a-43a6-a049-ec29b0b215de" CreationDate="2012-04-03T18:49:38.533" UserId="29020" Text="Why has this question been closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8935" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3395" RevisionGUID="3bdc8145-880a-43a6-a049-ec29b0b215de" CreationDate="2012-04-03T18:49:38.533" UserId="29020" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8936" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3396" RevisionGUID="5335dfab-33be-4fea-a447-253e4b7bd5a0" CreationDate="2012-04-03T19:20:06.667" UserId="25936" Text="The close notification for &quot;not constructive&quot; reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit to our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. See the FAQ for guidance on how to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. 6 answers, and most of them missed the point of your question (judging from your comments to them),&#xD;&#xA; 1. 23 comments on the question (+1 deleted),&#xD;&#xA; 1. 31 comments on all answers (+1 deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6 answers and 56 comments in total is a good sign that the question solicits opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion, which is why it was closed. Although you make a very good point that it would be more appropriate to invite the users that could not stick to the question to give a precise answer rather than close the question, you need to consider that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Closure is a temporary state, it _might_ lead to deletion after a while, but initially it's just a temporary state that has a single goal: no more answers. &#xD;&#xA; - It's always preferable to close early, review, improve and re-open. Not every closed question is salvageable, obviously, but some are, and closing early protects people from wasting time answering a question that may be deleted if not improved, and protects the question itself from spiraling into an uncontrollable mess.&#xD;&#xA; - Sometimes on borderline questions the answers are the deciding factor. It may not be fair to the asker, but if more people miss the point of the question than those who actually got it, well, perhaps the point of the question wasn't very clear to begin with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question had 3 close votes and 1 flag (for the extended discussion in the comments) when I first visited it, and I considered all of the above before closing it. If I had seen the flame bait in the [original version][1], I would have closed it asap. I'm guessing that some of the close votes were directed at the original version, although there isn't really a way to verify that, but in any case it's irrelevant.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question will need 5 re-open votes from regular users to be re-opened, or a single re-open vote from a fellow moderator. I won't cast mine, this is still a community closure and I'm not convinced that the question is constructive, at least not to the point of reversing a community closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In any case, I would like to ask for suggestions how to formulate a question even better or about possible measures to take, in case a similar situation (answers not sticking to the point) should occur again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Avoid flame bait, stick to the point and always try to back your subjective claims with references. And no, comments to Programmers questions and answers don't count as references,&#xD;&#xA;- Flag off topic / chatty / not constructive / obsolete comments as such,&#xD;&#xA;- Down vote answers that completely missed the point of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/142698/1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8937" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3395" RevisionGUID="40614c92-37b6-4833-9af0-6ddc551fb256" CreationDate="2012-04-03T19:20:34.750" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8938" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3396" RevisionGUID="5800dd39-98de-48bc-a6bc-2b810043816c" CreationDate="2012-04-03T19:27:15.053" UserId="25936" Comment="added 321 characters in body" Text="The close notification for &quot;not constructive&quot; reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit to our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. See the FAQ for guidance on how to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. 6 answers, and most of them missed the point of your question (judging from your comments to them),&#xD;&#xA; 1. 23 comments on the question (+1 deleted),&#xD;&#xA; 1. 31 comments on all answers (+1 deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6 answers and 56 comments in total is a good sign that the question solicits opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion, which is why it was closed. Although you make a very good point that it would be more appropriate to invite the users that could not stick to the question to give a precise answer rather than close the question, you need to consider that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Closure is a temporary state, it _might_ lead to deletion after a while, but initially it's just a temporary state that has a single goal: no more answers. &#xD;&#xA; - It's always preferable to close early, review, improve and re-open. Not every closed question is salvageable, obviously, but some are, and closing early protects people from wasting time answering a question that may be deleted if not improved, and protects the question itself from spiraling into an uncontrollable mess.&#xD;&#xA; - Sometimes on borderline questions the answers are the deciding factor. It may not be fair to the asker, but if more people miss the point of the question than those who actually got it, well, perhaps the point of the question wasn't very clear to begin with.&#xD;&#xA; - Closing a question is the fastest option, when a question is troublesome. Please don't take this the wrong way, but we are all volunteering our time here, and closure does serve as a signal to other users that the question is in need of help. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question had 3 close votes and 1 flag (for the extended discussion in the comments) when I first visited it, and I considered all of the above before closing it. If I had seen the flame bait in the [original version][1], I would have closed it asap. I'm guessing that some of the close votes were directed at the original version, although there isn't really a way to verify that, but in any case it's irrelevant.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question will need 5 re-open votes from regular users to be re-opened, or a single re-open vote from a fellow moderator. I won't cast mine, this is still a community closure and I'm not convinced that the question is constructive, at least not to the point of reversing a community closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In any case, I would like to ask for suggestions how to formulate a question even better or about possible measures to take, in case a similar situation (answers not sticking to the point) should occur again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as this question is concerned, I honestly don't know. Closing the question bumped it on the front page, and it will get some extra visibility through this Meta question, so hopefully the community will find ways to improve it (which might not have much to do with the question itself).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For future reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Avoid flame bait, stick to the point and always try to back your subjective claims with references. And no, comments to Programmers questions and answers don't count as references,&#xD;&#xA;- Flag off topic / chatty / not constructive / obsolete comments as such,&#xD;&#xA;- Down vote answers that completely missed the point of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/142698/1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8939" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3354" RevisionGUID="86861f43-d6bc-4a90-ba49-042ada9c28eb" CreationDate="2012-04-04T04:02:50.957" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|tags|posse|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8940" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3354" RevisionGUID="6aefed73-370f-4092-aad9-17c61f8d30ff" CreationDate="2012-04-04T04:02:57.937" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="8941" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3354" RevisionGUID="064e48f9-74ab-4979-8b2c-6cfc44b8e496" CreationDate="2012-04-04T04:45:34.750" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|posse|stci|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8945" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3388" RevisionGUID="a1242a7f-53a4-4895-ba47-56a1553edfc3" CreationDate="2012-04-04T05:52:23.460" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/187417309785231361" />
  <row Id="8955" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3400" RevisionGUID="6942c6e5-6079-4438-9e7a-e51bca7d75b0" CreationDate="2012-04-04T19:59:36.727" UserId="41899" Text="We're having a Stack Overflow meetup to get together with fellow programming, web, and other technology enthusiasts. But not all of our programmers and technology enthusiasts live on Stack Overflow, so this year we're explicitly expanding the Meetup Everywhere to include the whole Stack Exchange tech family. As a Programmers participant, you're invited, too!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We [recently announced][1] the Second Annual Stack Overflow Meetup Everywhere day. This year, it will be on Saturday, April 28 (though local groups are welcome to pick any other day that week if a Saturday doesn't work for most of your members). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What:** Stack Overflow worldwide meetups&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**When:** Saturday, April 28, 2012&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Where:** your city!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Who:** All users on Stack Exchange technology sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can visit the [official Meetup.com page][2] to find existing groups near you (or start a new one). Keep an eye on the Stack Exchange blog for more information as we move closer to the event - I'll post tips on what we learned from last year's event and some things to keep in mind when organizing your local meetup. See the [blog announcement][3] for some ideas about what your meetup can look like, why we're doing this, and some help navigating the meetup.com interface.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We'd love to see as many of you as possible participate in our Meetup Everywhere. We had over 2,000 people meet up around the world last year, and we've grown a lot since then. Help us spread the word by sharing info about this event through your blogs, social media accounts, lunches with coworkers, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As always, if you have any questions or comments, do not hesitate to get in touch, and I hope to see you there!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/stack-overflow-meetup-everywhere-april-28-2012/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.meetup.com/stackoverflow/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/stack-overflow-meetup-everywhere-april-28-2012/&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8956" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3400" RevisionGUID="6942c6e5-6079-4438-9e7a-e51bca7d75b0" CreationDate="2012-04-04T19:59:36.727" UserId="41899" Text="Stack Overflow Worldwide Meetups 2012" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8957" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3400" RevisionGUID="6942c6e5-6079-4438-9e7a-e51bca7d75b0" CreationDate="2012-04-04T19:59:36.727" UserId="41899" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8958" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3400" RevisionGUID="7986219b-684e-4eaa-97c4-47fba528ae07" CreationDate="2012-04-04T20:07:15.087" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8959" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3401" RevisionGUID="722ec792-be0d-4124-bd25-7bb1756ac144" CreationDate="2012-04-04T20:09:38.967" UserId="4" Text="I'm planning on attending the [Cambridge, MA meetup][1], assuming nothing else comes up. If anyone from Programmers will be there, be sure to let me know - I'd love to say hi. I'm hoping that people from southern New Hampshire and eastern Massachusetts, if not all the way from Connecticut and Rhode Island, will be there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.meetup.com/stackoverflow/Cambridge-MA/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8960" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3402" RevisionGUID="9c980fe9-bc2d-4d24-8bb3-96f6f041c3e3" CreationDate="2012-04-04T20:15:33.980" UserId="44541" Text="I'll be at the [Washington DC meetup][1] and hope to see folks from Programmers!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.meetup.com/stackoverflow/DHS-MD/653302/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8963" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="3404" RevisionGUID="045c8970-559e-43d9-bca0-b32328219a66" CreationDate="2012-04-05T00:19:02.333" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143063/where-can-i-ask-for-programming-advice" Text="" />
  <row Id="8964" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3404" RevisionGUID="03dfdaea-0d25-4e99-af6e-3fd0ebcbfc50" CreationDate="2012-04-04T23:27:57.593" UserId="40098" Text="I dont want spend my time asking a question just so that I can get it closed. I really need some advice but dont know where to ask it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8965" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3404" RevisionGUID="03dfdaea-0d25-4e99-af6e-3fd0ebcbfc50" CreationDate="2012-04-04T23:27:57.593" UserId="40098" Text="Where Can I ask for programming advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8966" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3404" RevisionGUID="03dfdaea-0d25-4e99-af6e-3fd0ebcbfc50" CreationDate="2012-04-04T23:27:57.593" UserId="40098" Text="|discussion|computer-science|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8967" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3405" RevisionGUID="e28bef83-87d7-4950-9d85-c7234cf52131" CreationDate="2012-04-05T00:24:09.863" UserId="4" Text="There are at least 6 Stack Exchange sites that address software development and programming topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Stack Overflow][1] for programming questions, algorithm and data structure implementations, and software development tools.&#xD;&#xA;- [Programmers][2] for architecture, design, process and methodology, software project management, software licensing, and other &quot;whiteboard&quot; questions&#xD;&#xA;- [Code Review][3] for best practices, security reviews, performance, correctness&#xD;&#xA;- [Software Quality Assurance][4] for quality control, automation, and testing&#xD;&#xA;- [Programming Puzzles and Code Golf][5] for different puzzles&#xD;&#xA;- [Computer Science][6] for the mathematical and scientific foundations of computing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8968" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3400" RevisionGUID="8a8062c0-84a2-4886-a966-8a8422edb8b4" CreationDate="2012-04-05T02:52:24.053" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/187734403148025856" />
  <row Id="8970" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3407" RevisionGUID="f5e29e77-8fa3-4961-bdf5-be71ea1d38d6" CreationDate="2012-04-05T05:50:36.600" UserId="13421" Text="A question from yesterday about what to call different focuses in development was closed as off-topic - but I can't see where in the FAQ this would fall foul.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142876/terms-for-different-types-of-development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To quote the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one of the closing moderators had deigned to comment on the question, maybe I'd better understand how this question is off-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8971" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3407" RevisionGUID="f5e29e77-8fa3-4961-bdf5-be71ea1d38d6" CreationDate="2012-04-05T05:50:36.600" UserId="13421" Text="Software development terminology is off-topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8972" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3407" RevisionGUID="f5e29e77-8fa3-4961-bdf5-be71ea1d38d6" CreationDate="2012-04-05T05:50:36.600" UserId="13421" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8973" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3404" RevisionGUID="79579673-fefc-46f3-9404-1692fe8dcb07" CreationDate="2012-04-05T06:42:24.710" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="I don't want to spend my time asking a question just so that I can get it closed. I really need some advice but don't know where to ask it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8974" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3404" RevisionGUID="79579673-fefc-46f3-9404-1692fe8dcb07" CreationDate="2012-04-05T06:42:24.710" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="Where can I ask for programming advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8975" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3408" RevisionGUID="09a5f171-6d1f-4c3d-993f-c92425105174" CreationDate="2012-04-05T07:09:34.797" UserId="31260" Text="Your question is tagged **resume** and starts with&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm working on a **resume**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which puts it into off-topic per [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...is **not about**...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _For answers to common programming career advice questions, please see &quot;[Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/)&quot; by Patrick McKenzie._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;As for software development [tag:terminology], it is typically considered on-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8976" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3408" RevisionGUID="4112f7a8-315a-43c2-836b-026eef724671" CreationDate="2012-04-05T08:49:07.090" UserId="25936" Comment="Changed it to &quot;the question&quot;, as HorusKol is not the one who asked the question in question." Text="The question is tagged **resume** and starts with&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm working on a **resume**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which puts it into off-topic per [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...is **not about**...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _For answers to common programming career advice questions, please see &quot;[Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/)&quot; by Patrick McKenzie._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;As for software development [tag:terminology], it is typically considered on-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8977" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3409" RevisionGUID="2419e2ae-d2a4-4d3c-8426-35877c082151" CreationDate="2012-04-05T11:41:16.217" UserId="25476" Text="I can promise you that if you are confused about which language/technology to choose and the available information online about the language technology isn't enough for you to make a choice that you will only be **more confused** if you ask this question on Programmers and we do not close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will have over 10 answers, filled with unverifiable claims, baseless opinions, jokes, arguments over pedantics, and comment discussions that have little to nothing to do with the answer or question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will more than likely mess you up more than if you just read a Wikipedia article about the two.  It will mess up other users too, nothing good is built of allowing it, nobody will ever benefit from it other than general amusement.  Then of course, the goal of this site isn't for the entertainment of the bored now is it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is what we mean by Not Constructive and we try to discourage such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My best advice to you is to list out features that you want from a language/technology, then list pros and cons of each.  Look at the results and make an informed decision.  Recognize what is know as [Analysis Paralysis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis) and also recognize it in yourself to avoid it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8978" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3410" RevisionGUID="a0f8c105-fa7a-457f-9e32-a106c80c63b2" CreationDate="2012-04-05T12:27:04.247" UserId="1130" Text="I would suggest asking in the programmers [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers) about help identifying some good languages to look into giving your situation. You may not get a response right away, but there's a fairly good chance someone will help you out with your question when they get a minute.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're still having trouble deciding after that, then sit down and figure out what you want to build, and narrow your language/technology choices down to 2 or so. Then create a question on Programmers telling us the specs of the project you want to build, and ask us if language A or B would be a better choice (and why) given the project and the situation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's important to include specific project specs, such as hardware requirements and estimated number of simultaneous users, and details about your situation, such as developer familiarity with the languages, how important deadlines are, etc. Keep in mind that the correct answer may be &quot;both are equally valid, so pick whichever one you prefer&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's an [example of a question][1] I asked a while back which was asking which language/technology was better for a specific project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/19893/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8979" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3411" RevisionGUID="60bf4b85-1b2a-498b-ad2f-2555d684523b" CreationDate="2012-04-05T12:29:05.787" UserId="27940" Text="A better phrasing of the question might be &quot;How do I choose a programming language to learn?&quot; and then give your constraints. I think this would be an appropriate question for programmers.stackexchange.com (and first check that someone else has not asked it - I would be surprised)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are wanting to learn a language just for personal satisfaction or to test the waters, any widely used general purpose language with nice friendly development environments will do. Don't pick really niche languages, as you generally won't have good documentation a broad community to help you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are thinking of a career change you should research job adverts in your area or that you would be willing to relocate to, and see what languages they require - though typically they will want someone with a few years' development experience in the language, and that won't be easy to get unless you do some projects on your own or do some freelance work for people you know that will be patient while you learn.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are already an experienced programmer looking for the right tool for a very specific job, and you know for a fact your current language / platform will not be able to achieve the result you need, that would be an ideal question to ask this community in my view, but you need to spell out exactly why your existing language will not cut it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8980" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3411" RevisionGUID="4fc4cf99-bdab-4171-9382-b3626113bcbb" CreationDate="2012-04-05T12:46:30.587" UserId="27940" Comment="Improved formatting" Text="A ***better phrasing*** of the question might be **&quot;How do I choose a programming language to learn?&quot;** and then **give your constraints**. I think this would be an appropriate question for programmers.stackexchange.com (and first check that someone else has not asked it - I would be surprised)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are wanting to learn a language just for **personal satisfaction** or to test the waters, any widely used general purpose language with nice friendly development environments will do. Don't pick really niche languages, as you generally won't have good documentation a broad community to help you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are **thinking of a career change** you should research job adverts in your area or that you would be willing to relocate to, and see what languages they require - though typically they will want someone with a few years' development experience in the language, and that won't be easy to get unless you do some projects on your own or do some freelance work for people you know that will be patient while you learn.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are already an **experienced programmer** looking for the **right tool** for a very **specific job**, and you know for a fact your current language / platform will not be able to achieve the result you need, that would be an ideal question to ask this community in my view, but you need to spell out exactly why your existing language will not cut it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8981" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3404" RevisionGUID="fe8e5ae2-4f2a-4b04-8695-c3f5875fe2d1" CreationDate="2012-04-05T14:12:32.177" UserId="31260" Comment="clarification copied into question from comments // http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3404/where-can-i-ask-for-programming-advice/3411#comment9088_3404" Text="I don't want to spend my time asking a question just so that I can get it closed. I really need some advice but don't know where to ask it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Question I have in mind is about choosing a programming language to learn given the conditions that I am in. Which I would explain. I am sure a question like this would get closed here at Programmers. But doing my own research on the manner has me spinning in circles and I feel I need some direction form an expert.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8982" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3412" RevisionGUID="f3b68b82-6c29-40b3-955e-aecec8df7998" CreationDate="2012-04-05T14:13:18.420" UserId="1130" Text="How did the topic of this site to change from &quot;Not-Programming-Related&quot; to &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've tried looking through meta questions to find where the change in site scope was discussed, but haven't found much. The biggest change in site scope I see on meta is the [Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice][1], which doesn't really discuss site scope at all other than rules for subjective questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this was a community-decision, I would expect there to be a lot of meta questions related to the site scope change. If this was an executive decision, I would expect to see some kind of notice posted that got a lot of attention. Maybe I'm just using the wrong keywords in my meta searches.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone explain the history of how this site changed from the original &quot;Not-Programming-Related&quot; proposal to be a site for programmers about issues not directly related to programming, to the current site scope of &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/350/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8983" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3412" RevisionGUID="f3b68b82-6c29-40b3-955e-aecec8df7998" CreationDate="2012-04-05T14:13:18.420" UserId="1130" Text="What is the history behind the site scope change from NPR to &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8984" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3412" RevisionGUID="f3b68b82-6c29-40b3-955e-aecec8df7998" CreationDate="2012-04-05T14:13:18.420" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8985" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3407" RevisionGUID="cc9b16eb-09d9-4af4-8470-81aa986a95c4" CreationDate="2012-04-05T14:17:01.590" UserId="13421" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body" Text="A question from yesterday about what to call different focuses in development was closed as off-topic - but I can't see where in the FAQ this would fall foul.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/142876/terms-for-different-types-of-development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To quote the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one of the closing users had deigned to comment on the question, maybe I'd better understand how this question is off-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8986" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3413" RevisionGUID="d6d9cd33-f460-422a-8142-cb4308687c0b" CreationDate="2012-04-05T14:32:50.110" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of NPR. I know not how it was --but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me --upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain --upon the bleak walls --upon the vacant eye-like windows --upon a few rank sedges --and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees --with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium --the bitter lapse into everyday life --the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart --an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it --I paused to think --what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of NPR? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down --but with a shudder even more thrilling than before --upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is *probably* how Edgar Allan Poe would [have described it][1]. If he was a programmer (on a boat).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_of_the_House_of_Usher" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8987" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3408" RevisionGUID="1b9f67fc-a024-4257-909c-51817e2dbd45" CreationDate="2012-04-05T15:10:22.433" UserId="31260" Comment="After major edit done in rev 3, question has been reopened // http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/142876/timeline" Text="The [version of the question that has been closed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/142876/2 &quot;Revision 2&quot;) is tagged **resume** and starts with&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm working on a **resume**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which puts it into off-topic per [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...is **not about**...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _For answers to common programming career advice questions, please see &quot;[Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/)&quot; by Patrick McKenzie._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;As for software development [tag:terminology], it is typically considered on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;##update&#xD;&#xA;After major edit done in rev 3, question has been reopened (reference: [post timeline](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/142876/timeline)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;! I also revoked question downvote thanks to edit mentioned above." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8988" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3414" RevisionGUID="26fb9152-cbcf-41b8-b357-ac8a61813817" CreationDate="2012-04-05T15:35:21.747" UserId="31260" Text="September 2010 appears to be a _turning point_, with [Joel's blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/ &quot;Merging Season&quot;) mentioning&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which was further followed by [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic) and [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8989" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3412" RevisionGUID="6c28112c-c425-4c73-85a9-a2d7172bbe6f" CreationDate="2012-04-05T17:04:03.600" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8990" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3415" RevisionGUID="abd9dcc7-8c6b-4256-8857-13f6f516c0f3" CreationDate="2012-04-05T17:32:12.643" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The timeline of this was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* September 1, 2010 — NPR enters private beta&#xD;&#xA;* September 7, 2010 — NPR enters public beta&#xD;&#xA;* September 13, 2010 — MSO starts to grapple with how bad NPR is [when trying to dupe Software Engineering proposals to it](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* September 15, 2010 — We on Meta Programmers.SE [start to deal with that perception](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* September 17, 2010 — SE [makes a blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/) announcing the decision to start merging programming-related proposals to improve NPR&#xD;&#xA;* September 18, 2010 — We begin to [redefine the scope of the site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* September 29, 2010 — &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&quot; is published and new scope and guidelines [begin to be enforced](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) and the free-for-all NPR proposal dies and becomes Programmers, the site for expert programmers who are interested in subjective questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;* December 16, 2010 — Programmers launches, and the position statement is tweaked from &quot;subjective questions&quot; to &quot;conceptual questions&quot; to [make it easier to explain why it exists compared to Stack Overflow](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Within 29 days the site went from programmers hanging out and discussing their lifestyle to programmers discussing software development issues, now over 18 months ago, which is why I'm always surprised people still cling to that old proposal. I would've thought they'd all move on by now: the writing was on the wall almost immediately after the site left private beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8991" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3415" RevisionGUID="b6297023-f229-4c37-ab9c-3560398a436f" CreationDate="2012-04-05T17:40:08.313" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 757 characters in body" Text="The timeline of this was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* September 1, 2010 — NPR enters private beta as &quot;Programmers&quot; (will continue to call it NPR for the sake of distinguishing it from the current site)&#xD;&#xA;* September 7, 2010 — NPR enters public beta&#xD;&#xA;* September 13, 2010 — MSO starts to grapple with how bad NPR is [when trying to dupe Software Engineering proposals to it](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* September 15, 2010 — We on Meta Programmers.SE [start to deal with that perception](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* September 17, 2010 — SE [makes a blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/) announcing the decision to start merging programming-related proposals to improve NPR&#xD;&#xA;* September 18, 2010 — We begin to [redefine the scope of the site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* September 29, 2010 — &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&quot; is published, new scope and guidelines [begin to be enforced](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice), and the free-for-all NPR proposal dies. It's replaced with Programmers, the site for expert programmers who are interested in subjective questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;* December 16, 2010 — Programmers launches, and the position statement is tweaked from &quot;subjective questions&quot; to &quot;conceptual questions&quot; to [make it easier to explain why it exists compared to Stack Overflow](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/).&#xD;&#xA;* December 17, 2010–Present — Clean-up of the colossal mess left over from beta, including [incorrect UI strings and FAQ wordings](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio/3415#comment9139_3414), [crappy questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning), [awful tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups), [misconceptions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl), and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Within 29 days the site went from programmers hanging out and discussing their lifestyle to programmers discussing software development issues, now over 18 months ago, which is why I'm always surprised people still cling to that old proposal. I would've thought they'd all move on by now: the writing was on the wall almost immediately after the site left private beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8992" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3415" RevisionGUID="2aee67e5-3e8a-4d4c-b4ec-ebf976b60de3" CreationDate="2012-04-05T17:41:53.193" UserId="1130" Comment="Added Area51 proposal date since I think that's relevant" Text="The timeline of this was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* June 3, 2010 — [NPR proposal][1] created in Area51&#xD;&#xA;* September 1, 2010 — NPR enters private beta as &quot;Programmers&quot; (will continue to call it NPR for the sake of distinguishing it from the current site)&#xD;&#xA;* September 7, 2010 — NPR enters public beta&#xD;&#xA;* September 13, 2010 — MSO starts to grapple with how bad NPR is [when trying to dupe Software Engineering proposals to it](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* September 15, 2010 — We on Meta Programmers.SE [start to deal with that perception](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* September 17, 2010 — SE [makes a blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/) announcing the decision to start merging programming-related proposals to improve NPR&#xD;&#xA;* September 18, 2010 — We begin to [redefine the scope of the site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* September 29, 2010 — &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&quot; is published, new scope and guidelines [begin to be enforced](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice), and the free-for-all NPR proposal dies. It's replaced with Programmers, the site for expert programmers who are interested in subjective questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;* December 16, 2010 — Programmers launches, and the position statement is tweaked from &quot;subjective questions&quot; to &quot;conceptual questions&quot; to [make it easier to explain why it exists compared to Stack Overflow](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/).&#xD;&#xA;* December 17, 2010–Present — Clean-up of the colossal mess left over from beta, including [incorrect UI strings and FAQ wordings](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio/3415#comment9139_3414), [crappy questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning), [awful tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups), [misconceptions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl), and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Within 29 days the site went from programmers hanging out and discussing their lifestyle to programmers discussing software development issues, now over 18 months ago, which is why I'm always surprised people still cling to that old proposal. I would've thought they'd all move on by now: the writing was on the wall almost immediately after the site left private beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8993" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3415" RevisionGUID="c8049987-6461-4762-940e-764138cd1ee3" CreationDate="2012-04-05T18:03:48.843" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 192 characters in body" Text="The timeline of this was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* June 3, 2010 — [NPR proposal][1] created in Area51&#xD;&#xA;* September 1, 2010 — NPR enters private beta as &quot;Programmers&quot; (will continue to call it NPR for the sake of distinguishing it from the current site)&#xD;&#xA;* September 7, 2010 — NPR enters public beta&#xD;&#xA;* September 13, 2010 — MSO starts to grapple with how bad NPR is [when trying to dupe Software Engineering proposals to it](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* September 15, 2010 — We on Meta Programmers.SE [start to deal with that perception](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* September 17, 2010 — SE [makes a blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/) announcing the decision to start merging programming-related proposals to improve NPR&#xD;&#xA;* September 18, 2010 — We begin to [redefine the scope of the site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* September 23, 2010 — MSO and SE [do the same](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site), with different results&#xD;&#xA;* September 29, 2010 — &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&quot; is published, new scope and guidelines [begin to be enforced](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice), and the free-for-all NPR proposal dies. It's replaced with Programmers, the site for expert programmers who are interested in subjective questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;* December 16, 2010 — Programmers launches, and the position statement is tweaked from &quot;subjective questions&quot; to &quot;conceptual questions&quot; to [make it easier to explain why it exists compared to Stack Overflow](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/).&#xD;&#xA;* December 17, 2010–Present — Clean-up of the colossal mess left over from beta, including [incorrect UI strings and FAQ wordings](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio/3415#comment9139_3414), [crappy questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning), [awful tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups), [misconceptions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl), and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Within 29 days the site went from programmers hanging out and discussing their lifestyle to programmers discussing software development issues, now over 18 months ago, which is why I'm always surprised people still cling to that old proposal. I would've thought they'd all move on by now: the writing was on the wall almost immediately after the site left private beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8995" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3412" RevisionGUID="8ebb164d-610c-4448-af25-4a69ea1f181d" CreationDate="2012-04-05T20:12:47.777" UserId="1130" Comment="Removed on-topic-definition tag. Not interested in defining the site, just want to know the history behind the change to the site's definition" Text="|discussion|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8996" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3387" RevisionGUID="5ff3277b-a858-4492-bb68-8055c7c60eac" CreationDate="2012-04-05T23:52:23.677" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/188051490307457024" />
  <row Id="8997" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="bf6468bf-a6d1-45d6-9d3e-5022a3fe0485" CreationDate="2012-04-06T00:17:22.120" UserId="34364" Text="The [last celebration proposal][1] we had never got off of it's feet. In fact, the Birthday Celebration Proposal's time has come, and it left a long time ago. So a few other P.SE members and I came up with an idea: let's have a contest!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We realize that other sites that have had contests have had a lot of support, and the community didn't have to do too much of the dirty work. But that's the beauty of it. If we follow through with something like this, we will get more publicity and support from [higher powers][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have, somewhat, became the ugly little brother of Stack Overflow. We have had to rebuild, and clean up the mess from the early days of P.SE, before the [revolution][3]. A lot of other sites did too, but most are done. Mainly because they had SE backing them up. Or a CHAOS member.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why this contest will be great. We, as a community, will set the entire thing up, give it to SE, and let them serve it up. Overall, this is going to give us:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A stronger community.&#xD;&#xA; - More &quot;power users&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - A fun activity.&#xD;&#xA; - More executive support from SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;because they saw that we put it together ourselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you think? Comments? Questions? Concerns? If we get enough input, contest details will come in a later post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2858/belated-birthday-celebration-proposal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8998" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="bf6468bf-a6d1-45d6-9d3e-5022a3fe0485" CreationDate="2012-04-06T00:17:22.120" UserId="34364" Text="Programmers.SE Contest: New Proposal" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8999" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="bf6468bf-a6d1-45d6-9d3e-5022a3fe0485" CreationDate="2012-04-06T00:17:22.120" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9000" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2677" RevisionGUID="dfb371dd-1264-4c0d-b5e4-848e5c845805" CreationDate="2012-04-06T00:19:13.837" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|contest|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9001" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2858" RevisionGUID="bd3c652e-14c0-456c-8f39-6f682a199901" CreationDate="2012-04-06T00:19:26.300" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-declined|contest|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9002" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="b1e11332-05be-4d56-a56e-95aa7d8f9de1" CreationDate="2012-04-06T00:19:32.370" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|contest|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9003" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="47e8457b-cdef-4381-ae47-21987e92a318" CreationDate="2012-04-06T02:30:15.817" UserId="34364" Comment="added proposal" Text="The [last celebration proposal][1] we had never got off of it's feet. In fact, the Birthday Celebration Proposal's time has come, and it left a long time ago. So a few other P.SE members and I came up with an idea: let's have a contest!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We realize that other sites that have had contests have had a lot of support, and the community didn't have to do too much of the dirty work. But that's the beauty of it. If we follow through with something like this, we will get more publicity and support from [higher powers][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have, somewhat, became the ugly little brother of Stack Overflow. We have had to rebuild, and clean up the mess from the early days of P.SE, before the [revolution][3]. A lot of other sites did too, but most are done. Mainly because they had SE backing them up. Or a CHAOS member.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why this contest will be great. We, as a community, will set the entire thing up, give it to SE, and let them serve it up. Overall, this is going to give us:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A stronger community.&#xD;&#xA; - More &quot;power users&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - A fun activity.&#xD;&#xA; - More executive support from SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;because they saw that we put it together ourselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here is my proposal:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Each week a new tag or general topic is chosen.&#xD;&#xA; - Throughout the week, questions using the tag that want to be part of the contest will be marked with a special [contest] tag.&#xD;&#xA; - At the end of the week, the questions with the most upvotes (or some other kind of feedback) will go into a &quot;final round&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - After a certain amount of weeks, the community will vote on the 3 questions they thought helped the community the most, and 3 answers that they thought were the most helpful.&#xD;&#xA; - Winners will receive some form of incentive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you think? Comments? Questions? Concerns? &#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2858/belated-birthday-celebration-proposal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9004" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1556" RevisionGUID="4a070139-ae5b-4f11-b48f-09a27ca33fd0" CreationDate="2012-04-06T07:44:36.880" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|career|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9005" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="a141ed24-cbfb-4a18-9540-3230c1868662" CreationDate="2012-04-06T12:16:16.637" UserId="34364" Comment="added 68 characters in body" Text="The [last celebration proposal][1] we had never got off of it's feet. In fact, the Birthday Celebration Proposal's time has come, and it left a long time ago. So a few other P.SE members and I came up with an idea: let's have a contest!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We realize that other sites that have had contests have had a lot of support, and the community didn't have to do too much of the dirty work. But that's the beauty of it. If we follow through with something like this, we will get more publicity and support from [higher powers][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have, somewhat, became the ugly little brother of Stack Overflow. We have had to rebuild, and clean up the mess from the early days of P.SE, before the [revolution][3]. A lot of other sites did too, but most are done. Mainly because they had SE backing them up. Or a CHAOS member.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why this contest will be great. We, as a community, will set the entire thing up, give it to SE, and let them serve it up. Overall, this is going to give us:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A stronger community.&#xD;&#xA; - More &quot;power users&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - A fun activity.&#xD;&#xA; - More executive support from SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;because they saw that we put it together ourselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here is my proposal:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Each week a new tag or general topic is chosen.&#xD;&#xA; - Throughout the week, questions using the tag that want to be part of the contest will be marked with a special [contest] tag.&#xD;&#xA; - At the end of the week, the questions with the most upvotes (or some other kind of feedback) will go into a &quot;final round&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - After a certain amount of weeks, the community will vote on the 3 questions they thought helped the community the most, and 3 answers that they thought were the most helpful.&#xD;&#xA; - Winners will receive some form of incentive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an idea, please post it as an answer to this question. Structure it in the same (or similar) format as I did. If you want to edit my idea, do the same.&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2858/belated-birthday-celebration-proposal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9006" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="11b85828-d53f-41a2-bfb5-81e45791652b" CreationDate="2012-04-06T13:41:12.107" UserId="34364" Comment="added a 3rd proposal" Text="The [last celebration proposal][1] we had never got off of it's feet. In fact, the Birthday Celebration Proposal's time has come, and it left a long time ago. So a few other P.SE members and I came up with an idea: let's have a contest!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We realize that other sites that have had contests have had a lot of support, and the community didn't have to do too much of the dirty work. But that's the beauty of it. If we follow through with something like this, we will get more publicity and support from [higher powers][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have, somewhat, became the ugly little brother of Stack Overflow. We have had to rebuild, and clean up the mess from the early days of P.SE, before the [revolution][3]. A lot of other sites did too, but most are done. Mainly because they had SE backing them up. Or a CHAOS member.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why this contest will be great. We, as a community, will set the entire thing up, give it to SE, and let them serve it up. Overall, this is going to give us:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A stronger community.&#xD;&#xA; - More &quot;power users&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - A fun activity.&#xD;&#xA; - More executive support from SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;because they saw that we put it together ourselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here is my proposal:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Each week a new tag or general topic is chosen.&#xD;&#xA; - Throughout the week, questions using the tag that want to be part of the contest will be marked with a special [contest] tag.&#xD;&#xA; - At the end of the week, the questions with the most upvotes (or some other kind of feedback) will go into a &quot;final round&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - After a certain amount of weeks, the community will vote on the 3 questions they thought helped the community the most, and 3 answers that they thought were the most helpful.&#xD;&#xA; - Winners will receive some form of incentive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Proposal 2:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A panel of judges is chosen (diamond moderators and maybe a couple others).&#xD;&#xA; - Each week, the judges make picks on certain topics (best answer, best question, most edits, etc.). Of course, some of these topics may not even need judges.&#xD;&#xA; - We do this for about 4 weeks. &#xD;&#xA; - Incentives are given to winners at the end of the month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an idea, please post it as an answer to this question. Structure it in the same (or similar) format as I did. If you want to edit my idea, do the same.&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2858/belated-birthday-celebration-proposal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9007" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3412" RevisionGUID="aae66cf5-b492-4256-9156-540db63f1928" CreationDate="2012-04-06T13:47:41.260" UserId="1130" Comment="Added summary of answers since I feel Mark's answer is missing a key point (that the scope change was not a P.SE user decision) but want to accept it" Text="How did the topic of this site to change from &quot;Not-Programming-Related&quot; to &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've tried looking through meta questions to find where the change in site scope was discussed, but haven't found much. The biggest change in site scope I see on meta is the [Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice][1], which doesn't really discuss site scope at all other than rules for subjective questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this was a community-decision, I would expect there to be a lot of meta questions related to the site scope change. If this was an executive decision, I would expect to see some kind of notice posted that got a lot of attention. Maybe I'm just using the wrong keywords in my meta searches.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone explain the history of how this site changed from the original &quot;Not-Programming-Related&quot; proposal to be a site for programmers about issues not directly related to programming, to the current site scope of &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Mark's answer][2] provides the timeline I was looking for, along with some great links, however [Walter's comment][3] pretty much sums it up:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There really wasn't discussion on Meta about the site change, it was&#xD;&#xA;&gt; an edict from above saying this must change... and so it did&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can further be seen in the links Mark provides where site scope was discussed on P.SE meta, and the general consensus was [not to change anything][4], other than to crack down on some of the nonsense questions that just had &quot;as a programmer&quot; tacked on. To [quote Mark][5]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A few days ago, I created the question, &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [&quot;How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?&quot;][6]. There, the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; consensus was to not change anything. Unfortunately, SOIS has spoken,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it looks like that sentiment will not be able to sustain the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I am disappointed in this, at least now I know where the change came from. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I actually didn't realize the change in site scope went that far back, because I never saw any kind of announcement telling us that NPR was no longer going to be tolerated. The only thing I saw was an [announcement about subjective questions guidelines][7], which I thought was the attempt to crack down on the &quot;as a programmer&quot; nonsense questions, and many subsequent battles on meta over site scope where it seemed the users had one opinion, and the moderators had another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I did see the [blog post][8] when P.SE finally left beta, however I thought it was merely trying to advertise the more constructive side of P.SE, not that the NPR side was no longer valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/350/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3415/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio#comment9142_3414&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/214/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/237/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9008" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="aeb1f14f-08db-4e07-94c0-b90fdc822000" CreationDate="2012-04-06T14:52:24.023" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/188277982840897536" />
  <row Id="9009" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3417" RevisionGUID="d40f8c3f-052e-4271-97e2-a81066d98c7c" CreationDate="2012-04-06T15:24:26.520" UserId="7649" Text="The [Computer Science][1] Stack Exchange site has launched and is now in public beta (note that this is a different site than [TCS][2]). I'm an active user there, and we were wondering about the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE currently allows questions about &quot;algorithm and data structure concepts&quot;; in fact, it's the first bullet point on the [FAQ][3]. It seems to me that most of these questions would be on-topic for the new Computer Science site. To illustrate this: the majority of the 17 answers I have posted on this site are answers to questions that would be on-topic for the new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should these questions still be on-topic for this site, considering that there is now a good home for them on Computer Science?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, this is quite a nontrivial thing, as this would change the scope of this site. As I don't consider myself an active part of Programmers.SE, I will defer to the opinions of this community: I just wanted to bring up the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9010" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3417" RevisionGUID="d40f8c3f-052e-4271-97e2-a81066d98c7c" CreationDate="2012-04-06T15:24:26.520" UserId="7649" Text="Should algorithm and data structure concepts still be on-topic for Programmers now that Computer Science has launched?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9011" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3417" RevisionGUID="d40f8c3f-052e-4271-97e2-a81066d98c7c" CreationDate="2012-04-06T15:24:26.520" UserId="7649" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9012" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3418" RevisionGUID="fd028ae5-d348-4d80-b75f-8aa3f31ddc4f" CreationDate="2012-04-06T15:33:42.330" UserId="1130" Text="I think a better way to approach it might be like how [Gaming.SE does their contests][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You start by picking a timeframe and a tag. The tag could be a design pattern, a development methodology, or any broad category you'd like to promote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two winners: One for best question, and one for best answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Best Question** is won by the person who asked a question with the contest tag within the contest timeframe, that has the most Views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Best Answer** is won by the the person who answered a question containing the contest tag within the contest timeframe, that has the most votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Winners get the software development Book or eBook of their choice (within a reasonable price range) from Amazon&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The beauty of this is very little user participation or work is needed. You'll need someone to determine the contest tags and timeframe, and to create the announcement for it. You'll also need someone that knows how to get the top question and answer based on the criteria mentioned above (I'm not sure if that can be done with SE's search, or if you'd need the help of an SE employee to query the database)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, it's just regular SE Q&amp;A&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/q/3908/8462" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9013" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3419" RevisionGUID="b3b8bc85-5fdb-48ee-95bd-ff3eb6c03dc2" CreationDate="2012-04-06T15:42:51.523" UserId="25936" Text="I'm very excited that Computer Science Stack Exchange reached public beta, but it's too early for such a discussion, although I honestly hope Computer Science will graduate to a full site there isn't any way to know that for sure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, as far as Programmers is concerned, we won't be changing our scope until Computer Science graduates. When that happens we can evaluate algorithm and data structure questions on both sites and if there's significant overlap we can discuss what's the better home for them. It won't be surprising if both sites are equally good for those questions, which will create a minor overlap issue, but let's deal with that when the time comes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Congrats and welcome to Stack Exchange!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9014" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="22c887a2-0e4f-425d-9e95-fbab73561d40" CreationDate="2012-04-06T15:51:01.557" UserId="34364" Comment="added 91 characters in body" Text="The [last celebration proposal][1] we had never got off of it's feet. In fact, the Birthday Celebration Proposal's time has come, and it left a long time ago. So a few other P.SE members and I came up with an idea: let's have a contest!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We realize that other sites that have had contests have had a lot of support, and the community didn't have to do too much of the dirty work. But that's the beauty of it. If we follow through with something like this, we will get more publicity and support from [higher powers][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have, somewhat, became the ugly little brother of Stack Overflow. We have had to rebuild, and clean up the mess from the early days of P.SE, before the [revolution][3]. A lot of other sites did too, but most are done. Mainly because they had SE backing them up. Or a CHAOS member.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why this contest will be great. We, as a community, will set the entire thing up, give it to SE, and let them serve it up. Overall, this is going to give us:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A stronger community.&#xD;&#xA; - More &quot;power users&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - A fun activity.&#xD;&#xA; - More executive support from SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;because they saw that we put it together ourselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here is my proposal:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Each week a new tag or general topic is chosen.&#xD;&#xA; - Throughout the week, questions using the tag that want to be part of the contest will be marked with a special [contest] tag.&#xD;&#xA; - At the end of the week, the questions with the most upvotes (or some other kind of feedback) will go into a &quot;final round&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - After a certain amount of weeks, the community will vote on the 3 questions they thought helped the community the most, and 3 answers that they thought were the most helpful.&#xD;&#xA; - Winners will receive some form of incentive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Proposal 2:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A panel of judges is chosen (diamond moderators and maybe a couple others).&#xD;&#xA; - Each week, the judges make picks on certain topics (best answer, best question, most edits, etc.). Of course, some of these topics may not even need judges.&#xD;&#xA; - We do this for about 4 weeks. &#xD;&#xA; - Incentives are given to winners at the end of the month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you agree with any of these ideas please upvote. If you disagree, please downvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an idea, please post it as an answer to this question. Structure it in the same (or similar) format as I did. If you want to edit my idea, do the same.&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2858/belated-birthday-celebration-proposal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9015" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3419" RevisionGUID="020a6f32-5e68-4c0c-a089-6f2e4ff45b5a" CreationDate="2012-04-06T15:54:12.820" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 23 characters in body" Text="I'm very excited that Computer Science Stack Exchange reached public beta, but it's too early for such a discussion. I hope Computer Science will graduate to a full site , but there isn't any way to know that for sure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, as far as Programmers is concerned, this is a non issue until Computer Science graduates. When that happens we can evaluate algorithm and data structure questions on both sites and if there's significant overlap we can discuss what's the better home for them. It won't be surprising if both sites are equally good for those questions, which will create a minor overlap issue, but let's deal with that when the time comes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Congrats and welcome to Stack Exchange!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9016" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3420" RevisionGUID="3ab18f43-a8e3-48f0-81c7-204021076807" CreationDate="2012-04-06T20:02:54.087" UserId="1458" Text="I don't see why the existence of a site would change what's on-topic on another. Programmers and CS have different audiences, even though their topics overlap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On overlapping topics, if you wonder what site to pick, ask yourself who you want an answer from. Do you want to reach the guy in the trenches, used to doing whatever it takes to meet the deadline and hopes that he'll be sufficiently anonymous when his code ends up on the Daily WTF? Ask on Programmers. Do you want to reach the guy who invented the stuff and will launch into a three-page explanation full of math? Ask on Computer Science.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could see it this way:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * If you expect the question or the answers to contain code, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA; * If you expect the question or the answers to contain math, ask on CS.&#xD;&#xA; * If you expect only text, lean towards Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do, in fact, think that a majority of algorithm and data structure questions would get better answers on CS. So if you see someone who doesn't seem to have heard of the CS site, please refer him to it. But if someone chooses to ask on Programmers, and the question is on-topic here, so be it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's up to the Programmers community to decide on the scope of Programmers. While I would support redirecting algorithm questions to CS, I do not consider myself a member of the Programmers community and will not presume to decide what's on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9017" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3421" RevisionGUID="3b8eae45-7e31-45c1-98a0-1095c24bef5c" CreationDate="2012-04-06T20:49:40.727" UserId="34364" Text="**Here is my proposal:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Each week a new tag or general topic is chosen.&#xD;&#xA; - Throughout the week, questions using the tag that want to be part of&#xD;&#xA;   the contest will be marked with a special [contest] tag.&#xD;&#xA; - At the end of the week, the questions with the most upvotes (or some&#xD;&#xA;   other kind of feedback) will go into a &quot;final round&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - After a certain amount of weeks, the community will vote on the 3&#xD;&#xA;   questions they thought helped the community the most, and 3 answers&#xD;&#xA;   that they thought were the most helpful.&#xD;&#xA; - Winners will receive some form of incentive." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9018" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3422" RevisionGUID="937af180-ec84-4138-90c1-b8b35eb687cc" CreationDate="2012-04-06T20:51:03.610" UserId="34364" Text="**This is my proposal:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A panel of judges is chosen (diamond moderators and maybe a couple&#xD;&#xA;   others).&#xD;&#xA; - Each week, the judges make picks on certain topics (best answer, best&#xD;&#xA;   question, most edits, etc.). Of course, some of these topics may not&#xD;&#xA;   even need judges.&#xD;&#xA; - We do this for about 4 weeks.&#xD;&#xA; - Incentives are given to winners at the end of the month." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9019" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="60bb232b-c21e-41db-b63b-5c7d26e591bd" CreationDate="2012-04-06T20:51:53.097" UserId="34364" Comment="deleted 925 characters in body" Text="The [last celebration proposal][1] we had never got off of it's feet. In fact, the Birthday Celebration Proposal's time has come, and it left a long time ago. So a few other P.SE members and I came up with an idea: let's have a contest!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We realize that other sites that have had contests have had a lot of support, and the community didn't have to do too much of the dirty work. But that's the beauty of it. If we follow through with something like this, we will get more publicity and support from [higher powers][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have, somewhat, became the ugly little brother of Stack Overflow. We have had to rebuild, and clean up the mess from the early days of P.SE, before the [revolution][3]. A lot of other sites did too, but most are done. Mainly because they had SE backing them up. Or a CHAOS member.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why this contest will be great. We, as a community, will set the entire thing up, give it to SE, and let them serve it up. Overall, this is going to give us:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A stronger community.&#xD;&#xA; - More &quot;power users&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - A fun activity.&#xD;&#xA; - More executive support from SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;because they saw that we put it together ourselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you agree with any of these ideas please upvote. If you disagree, please downvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an idea, please post it as an answer to this question. Structure it in the same (or similar) format as I did. If you want to edit my idea, do the same.&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2858/belated-birthday-celebration-proposal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9020" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3422" RevisionGUID="ece2a327-f8f4-424e-9c61-dee879266f94" CreationDate="2012-04-06T21:47:17.530" UserId="34364" Comment="deleted 39 characters in body" Text="**This is my proposal:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A panel of judges is chosen (volunteers).&#xD;&#xA; - Each week, the judges make picks on certain topics (best answer, best&#xD;&#xA;   question, most edits, etc.). Of course, some of these topics may not&#xD;&#xA;   even need judges.&#xD;&#xA; - We do this for about 4 weeks.&#xD;&#xA; - Incentives are given to winners at the end of the month." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9021" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3423" RevisionGUID="1b04a057-74ec-4b01-abd2-3ea4f07eb908" CreationDate="2012-04-06T22:20:13.577" UserId="29020" Text="Recently [this question][1] has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summary of the question: &quot;I want to use the actor model in C++ (more precisely, remote actors), can someone indicate a framework supporting this concept?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not understand in what sense this question does not &quot;involve facts, references, or specific expertise&quot; or why it &quot;will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whether such a framework exists or not is a **fact** which I would like to know&#xD;&#xA;before we start to implement some ad-hoc solution in our team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143170/actor-library-framework-for-c" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9022" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3423" RevisionGUID="1b04a057-74ec-4b01-abd2-3ea4f07eb908" CreationDate="2012-04-06T22:20:13.577" UserId="29020" Text="Why is this question non-constructive?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9023" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3423" RevisionGUID="1b04a057-74ec-4b01-abd2-3ea4f07eb908" CreationDate="2012-04-06T22:20:13.577" UserId="29020" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9025" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3423" RevisionGUID="66033e0f-6894-47fd-a21c-79b671095c39" CreationDate="2012-04-06T22:53:30.290" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9026" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3424" RevisionGUID="48eaeb1d-f720-4458-bf2d-eb2da42016b2" CreationDate="2012-04-06T23:23:01.517" UserId="25936" Text="The summary of the question is inaccurate, your question ends with: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; On wikipedia I have found some links to actor libraries for C++ and I have started to look at Theron. Before I dive too deep into the details and build an extended example with Theron, I wanted to ask if anybody has experience with any of these libraries and which one they would recommend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two other libraries in the Wikipedia article, what's stopping you from trying them out? How can we possibly recommend any of the three, or anything else if we don't have no idea what your building? The only information you give us for your project is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Being able to use remote actors (actors living in different processes, possibly on different machines and communicating via TCP/IP) has higher priority for us because we have an application consisting of several processes deployed on different machines. Being able to use several actors living in the same process (possibly different threads) is also interesting, but has lower priority for the moment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any recommendation based on these parameters will be heavily opinion based, simply because there aren't enough parameters, there isn't an actual problem to be solved. It's really unanswerable, in the Stack Exchange sense, as there isn't a sane way for the best answer to make it to the top. And when I say best, I don't mean popular or favourite, but the answer or answers that actually solve the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For further detail, please read: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Real Questions Have Answers][1],&#xD;&#xA;- [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9030" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3426" RevisionGUID="74895ed1-22b3-412f-abba-da77d9d18701" CreationDate="2012-04-07T04:34:20.070" UserId="32353" Text="I propose we do something a little more different than business as usual.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In honor of April Fools Day, we have a Foolish question contest.  To avoid disrupting the site, we post the questions on Meta, labeled with the Fool tag.  The goal is to ask the worst questions related or tenuously related to programming. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, &quot;Should qBits be renamed to [mechicka][1] booleans?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whoever gets the most downvotes wins.  The prize is to be deleted last in the structured tag cleanup that immediately follows.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9033" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3423" RevisionGUID="35d5692c-918e-4ecf-a9d3-f0bd01f8b6bc" CreationDate="2012-04-07T09:04:11.290" UserId="29020" Comment="Added comment regarding the discussion following this question." Text="Recently [this question][1] has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summary of the question: &quot;I want to use the actor model in C++ (more precisely, remote actors), can someone indicate a framework supporting this concept?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not understand in what sense this question does not &quot;involve facts, references, or specific expertise&quot; or why it &quot;will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whether such a framework exists or not is a **fact** which I would like to know&#xD;&#xA;before we start to implement some ad-hoc solution in our team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks to the moderator for the discussion. The question has been edited.&#xD;&#xA;One of the main problems that have been identified in the original question is that the actor model, while quite well-understood, is not main stream, and&#xD;&#xA;some background information was needed to make the focus of the question&#xD;&#xA;clearer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143170/actor-library-framework-for-c" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9034" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3428" RevisionGUID="13bee1b7-f9b0-4082-93ec-7abdf16bb52e" CreationDate="2012-04-07T13:10:23.527" UserId="4" Text="[I agree with Yannis on this one][1]. Until CS Stack Exchange actually graduates from beta into a launched site, we shouldn't exclude these questions from what is on-topic here. Once CS launches as a full site and gets out of beta, we can work things out in more detail, I would suggest including one of the Stack Exchange staff members, the moderators of Programmers, and the moderators of Computer Science.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if someone posts an algorithm or data structures question, we might want to consider letting them know that their question is on-topic here, but that there is another group of experts out there that might also be able to provide a unique answer. We shouldn't encourage cross-posting of identical questions on two sites as our expertise varies. I see Programmers addressing more system-level concerns, while Computer Science focuses on more specific details (at least, as far as data structures and algorithms go).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I feel that the relationship between the two sites is going to be very much like the relationship between software engineering and computer science. They are two sides of the same coin.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3419/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9035" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3429" RevisionGUID="2d075f8e-026f-4f7a-8f6d-cb122eab9c77" CreationDate="2012-04-08T03:06:48.773" UserId="3134" Text="[Repost from meta.wordpress.stackexchange][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Recommended Reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Blog][2] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [I Move to Close This Question][3]  &#xD;&#xA;    How and why closing was introduced on Stack Overflow in 2008.&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; It’s important to note here that closing a question is a step on the road to deletion. Closing is effectively “nominate to delete”, as a question that can’t be answered is no longer truly “alive”. That said, some closed questions should be kept around. For example, duplicate questions that have totally different wording are sometimes useful. With the duplicates, people can find either variation with search terms and link through to the original.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions][4]  &#xD;&#xA;    About duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; Don’t answer questions that have already been answered elsewhere. Yeah, you might earn a couple of points of reputation, but, because you are duplicating content, you are actually making the internet worse. Why? Because that answer might be true today, but as technology changes, it might not be true tomorrow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Stack Overflow Question Lifecycle][5]  &#xD;&#xA;    How and when questions are closed or deleted.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Gorilla vs. Shark][6]  &#xD;&#xA;    About the _not constructive_ close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Meta Stack Overflow][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is a “closed” question?][8] &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; * 24 votes to close per day (50 on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * 5 votes are required to close or reopen&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * Votes will expire after 4 days if the question does not reach 5 votes&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * Questions containing a bounty cannot be closed&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * You can only vote to close once per question&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * You can only vote to reopen once per question&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How do you reopen a closed question?][9] &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; The owner must have 250 rep in order to vote to reopen their own question. Other users can also vote to reopen, but they must have a minimum 3000 reputation points.&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; Leaving comments about voting to reopen does nothing in and of itself. You can try and [address a specific user](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/2035/notify-user-when-their-name-is-mentioned-in-comment-closed) who may have left a comment as to why they voted to close and ask them to help cast reopen votes if you think they voted in error.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;	See also: [How do you challenge the closing of one of your questions?][10], [Why was my question closed and how to contact the closer][11] and [My question has been closed. What do I do now?][12] (on meta.crypto.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Closing/Migrating question instructions/guidance][13]  &#xD;&#xA;    A long explanation of the close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What can cause my question to be bumped?][14]  &#xD;&#xA;    Close/reopen votes on the question do not bump the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Etiquette for closing your own questions][15] &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I don't think you should close your questions lightly. There are very few questions that have a definite answer that will never change, or that cannot be improved upon.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How to handle duplicate questions?][16]  &#xD;&#xA;    Not by tagging or editing, vote to close or flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Please add the ability to filter \[Closed\] questions out of my results][17] &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Stick the closed:0 parameter in your search pipe and you're smoking out the closed questions:  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt;    [closed:0](http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A0)  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; But if you're in the mood of puffing around the closed:  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt;    [closed:1](http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1)&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;	See also our [search tips][18]. &#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Allow question askers to close their own questions unilaterally][19]  &#xD;&#xA;    Short answer: No.&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; Once you post a question it is not exactly YOURS in every sense of the word anymore, it belongs to EVERYONE.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;	But you can _delete_ your own question as long as there are no upvoted answers.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How useful must a question be to be allowed?][20]  &#xD;&#xA;    About the _too localized_ close reason, derived from [this question on Gaming][21]. &#xD;&#xA;	&gt; What value does this question have to anyone else on the planet, other than the one person who asked? In other words, what internet user is going to be searching for and finding information about a game one person vaguely remembers playing in broad terms?&#xD;&#xA;    See also: [What questions should be closed with reason “too localized”?][22]&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Remove/downweight closed questions in “hot” question sort][23]  &#xD;&#xA;    Short answer: No.&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; I think there's a misconception here -- closing does not mean &quot;get this off my screen ASAP&quot;, closing means, &quot;this question should be re-evaluated by the community&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Can we have the ability to rescind a close vote before it closes?][24]  &#xD;&#xA;    Short answer: No.&#xD;&#xA;	See Jeff’s answer … with a lot of negative votes. :)&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Close Votes expire too soon for low-traffic tags][25]  &#xD;&#xA;    Short answer: Fixed.&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; Close votes (and probably reopen votes) only expire after all of these conditions are met:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;    1. 4 days have passed since the last close vote.  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt;    2. The question has more than 100 views.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Auto-deleting old, unanswered zero-score questions after a year?][26]  &#xD;&#xA;    There is a garbage collector which works as follows:&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; If the question is more than 30 days old, and ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;	&gt;	* has -1 or lower score&#xD;&#xA;	&gt;	* has no answers&#xD;&#xA;	&gt;	* is not locked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; If the question is more than 365 days old, and ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;	&gt;	* has a score of 0 or a score of 1 with a deleted owner&#xD;&#xA;	&gt;	* has no answers&#xD;&#xA;	&gt;	* is not locked&#xD;&#xA;	&gt;	* has a viewcount &lt;= the age of the question in days times 1.5&#xD;&#xA;	&gt;	* has 1 or 0 comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; This check is run every week across all sites.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;	**Each time you misuse the answer field for pseudo-comments you break the garbage collector.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Do “fix my code pleeese!” questions qualify for closure as “too localized”?][27]  &#xD;&#xA;    Yes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## My own summary after a long reading session&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing is not deleting. A closed question is still visible, it can be improved and reopened. It [doesn’t affect the accept rate][28] but prevents potentially useless answers. Help us to stay [on focus][29], use your close votes.  &#xD;&#xA;As a moderator (on WordPress Stack Exchange) I don’t like to act unilaterally. Your close votes are helping me and the other moderators to decide and we don’t feel so bad if we close a question. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.wordpress.stackexchange.com/a/1035/73&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/10582/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/36415/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/19126/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/119638/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/q/144/1910&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/32490/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/48578/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/5215/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/10841/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/7913/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/10363/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/70521/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/q/1455&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/4818/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/107153/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/915/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/97556/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/78048/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/82874/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/08/new-question-asker-features/&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9036" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3429" RevisionGUID="6f24b2e8-e47b-4318-ad00-f412728c5fa5" CreationDate="2012-04-08T03:36:53.497" UserId="25936" Comment="added 265 characters in body" Text="Adapted from [meta.wordpress.stackexchange][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Recommended Reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Blog][2] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [I Move to Close This Question][3] &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;    How and why closing was introduced on Stack Overflow in 2008.&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; It’s important to note here that closing a question is a step on the road to deletion. Closing is effectively “nominate to delete”, as a question that can’t be answered is no longer truly “alive”. That said, some closed questions should be kept around. For example, duplicate questions that have totally different wording are sometimes useful. With the duplicates, people can find either variation with search terms and link through to the original.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions][4]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    About duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; Don’t answer questions that have already been answered elsewhere. Yeah, you might earn a couple of points of reputation, but, because you are duplicating content, you are actually making the internet worse. Why? Because that answer might be true today, but as technology changes, it might not be true tomorrow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Stack Overflow Question Lifecycle][5]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How and when questions are closed or deleted.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers][6], [Gorilla vs. Shark][7] and [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    About the _not constructive_ close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Meta Stack Overflow][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is a “closed” question?][10] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; * 24 votes to close per day (50 on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * 5 votes are required to close or reopen&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * Votes will expire after 4 days if the question does not reach 5 votes&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * Questions containing a bounty cannot be closed&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * You can only vote to close once per question&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * You can only vote to reopen once per question&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How do you reopen a closed question?][11] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; The owner must have 250 rep in order to vote to reopen their own question. Other users can also vote to reopen, but they must have a minimum 3000 reputation points.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Leaving comments about voting to reopen does nothing in and of itself. You can try and [address a specific user](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/2035/notify-user-when-their-name-is-mentioned-in-comment-closed) who may have left a comment as to why they voted to close and ask them to help cast reopen votes if you think they voted in error.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  See also: [How do you challenge the closing of one of your questions?][12], [Why was my question closed and how to contact the closer][13] and [My question has been closed. What do I do now?][14] (on meta.crypto.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Closing/Migrating question instructions/guidance][15]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  A long explanation of the close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What can cause my question to be bumped?][16]  &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;  Close/reopen votes on the question do not bump the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Etiquette for closing your own questions][17] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; I don't think you should close your questions lightly. There are very few questions that have a definite answer that will never change, or that cannot be improved upon.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How to handle duplicate questions?][18]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not by tagging or editing, vote to close or flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Please add the ability to filter \[Closed\] questions out of my results][19] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Stick the closed:0 parameter in your search pipe and you're smoking out the closed questions: [closed:0](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A0)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; But if you're in the mood of puffing around the closed: [closed:1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1)&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  See also our [search tips][20]. &#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Allow question askers to close their own questions unilaterally][21]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Once you post a question it is not exactly YOURS in every sense of the word anymore, it belongs to EVERYONE.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  But you can _delete_ your own question as long as there are no upvoted answers.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How useful must a question be to be allowed?][22]  &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;  About the _too localized_ close reason, derived from [this question on Gaming][23]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; What value does this question have to anyone else on the planet, other than the one person who asked? In other words, what internet user is going to be searching for and finding information about a game one person vaguely remembers playing in broad terms?&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;  See also: [What questions should be closed with reason “too localized”?][24]&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Remove/downweight closed questions in “hot” question sort][25]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; I think there's a misconception here -- closing does not mean &quot;get this off my screen ASAP&quot;, closing means, &quot;this question should be re-evaluated by the community&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Can we have the ability to rescind a close vote before it closes?][26]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No. See Jeff’s answer … with a lot of negative votes. :)&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Close Votes expire too soon for low-traffic tags][27]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: Fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Close votes (and probably reopen votes) only expire after all of these conditions are met:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1. 4 days have passed since the last close vote.  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2. The question has more than 100 views.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Auto-deleting old, unanswered zero-score questions after a year?][28]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There is a garbage collector which works as follows:&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; If the question is more than 30 days old, and ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has -1 or lower score&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has no answers&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* is not locked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; If the question is more than 365 days old, and ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has a score of 0 or a score of 1 with a deleted owner&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has no answers&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* is not locked&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has a viewcount &lt;= the age of the question in days times 1.5&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has 1 or 0 comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; This check is run every week across all sites.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  **Each time you misuse the answer field for pseudo-comments you break the garbage collector.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Do “fix my code pleeese!” questions qualify for closure as “too localized”?][29]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Yes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## My own summary after a long reading session&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing is not deleting. A closed question is still visible, it can be improved and reopened. It [doesn’t affect the accept rate][30] but prevents potentially useless answers. Help us to stay [on focus][31], use your close votes.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a moderator (on WordPress Stack Exchange) I don’t like to act unilaterally. Your close votes are helping me and the other moderators to decide and we don’t feel so bad if we close a question. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.wordpress.stackexchange.com/a/1035/73&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/10582/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/36415/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/19126/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/119638/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/q/144/1910&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/32490/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/48578/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/5215/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/10841/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/7913/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/10363/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/70521/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/q/1455&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/4818/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/107153/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/915/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/97556/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/78048/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/82874/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/08/new-question-asker-features/&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9037" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3430" RevisionGUID="c33ee8f9-aa4c-497b-9a7e-1da2d1fa62db" CreationDate="2012-04-08T11:45:42.057" UserId="32135" Text="[This question][1] seems to me to be the sort of thing that should be discouraged, because it will have no value in a year (when everyone will be using a version of PHP that's cutting edge right now).  However, I can't find a basis in the FAQ for this opinion; am I wrong? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143327/using-php-version-5-2-or-5-3-for-commercial-products" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9038" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3430" RevisionGUID="c33ee8f9-aa4c-497b-9a7e-1da2d1fa62db" CreationDate="2012-04-08T11:45:42.057" UserId="32135" Text="Should questions whether &quot;it's ok to use the latest version of X yet&quot; be closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9039" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3430" RevisionGUID="c33ee8f9-aa4c-497b-9a7e-1da2d1fa62db" CreationDate="2012-04-08T11:45:42.057" UserId="32135" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9040" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3431" RevisionGUID="5bc689d6-2cb0-4e12-a5e9-abae8b7cf5ed" CreationDate="2012-04-08T11:53:49.723" UserId="47" Text="I'd say that these sort of questions are too localised, and are already covered in the close reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is unlikely to ever help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, **a specific moment in time**, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've bolded the bit that applies in this case." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9041" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3432" RevisionGUID="d1649211-8a4b-48dc-a0a2-55aac23f8e54" CreationDate="2012-04-08T17:47:28.017" UserId="44541" Text="Given that [The Workplace][1] is days away from its private beta, which I *think* (**please** correct me if I'm wrong) means it will be public beta relatively soon after, how should we as community members help guide relevant questions over to The Workplace?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previously, we could only say in comments that there's this site that will *someday* be available...now that it's almost available, I'm looking for guidance or best practices as to how we might help guide users *while not making The Workplace a dumping ground*.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should The Workplace be one of the selections for off-topic-here-but-belongs-on-X-SE-site flags?  (I'm not sure it should be, or even if it could be, given it's a beta.) Should questions that are closed but not migrated have some language attached to the closure notice that says something to the effect of &quot;hey, read the FAQ, edit your question, and try at The Workplace&quot;?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically, now that The Workplace is (almost) here, I want myself and us as a community to be ready to help it reach its full potential.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/the-workplace" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9042" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3432" RevisionGUID="d1649211-8a4b-48dc-a0a2-55aac23f8e54" CreationDate="2012-04-08T17:47:28.017" UserId="44541" Text="How should we guide questions toward The Workplace?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9043" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3432" RevisionGUID="d1649211-8a4b-48dc-a0a2-55aac23f8e54" CreationDate="2012-04-08T17:47:28.017" UserId="44541" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9044" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3433" RevisionGUID="7d89e15c-42df-44a1-9961-faccad4c9cf0" CreationDate="2012-04-08T19:22:32.653" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="The Workplace is [launching Tuesday or Wednesday](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/4823/what-is-coworking#comment9210_4847), barring any unforeseen problems. During the private beta, it'll be up to the community there to quickly figure out their scope and how they'll ensure the site will be viable if/when it goes public, and there will be no involvement from other Stack Exchange sites (save for active people here who also committed to the proposal).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Public betas are never added as migration paths: the public beta is the time for the site to bootstrap itself without becoming a dumping ground for other sites,  and normal users generally don't understand what to migrate [even when sites are launched](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The lack of a migration path does not, however, prevent moderators from migrating questions to a beta site. Historically, [we worked with moderators on beta sites](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2782/8) to determine if a question would be a better fit for them. This tended to be a win-win situation for all involved, as it let the destination sites get questions they want and it prevented unnecessary drama when a question gets unceremoniously closed here for being off-topic or sits around with no answers (or worse, bad answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like [the current moderators](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3419/8) are [loathe to do this](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3428/8), and it's unlikely very many, if any, questions would be migrated to the Workplace while it's in beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind, however, that The Workplace was [created specifically to house questions that are categorically off-topic here](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/a/1401/16359): there should be very little, if any, overlap between the two sites. Off-topic questions that would be a fit for The Workplace have historically gotten comments from closers directing the asker to support the proposal: perhaps the only real change to that workflow is to modify the wording to indicate it's already live.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9045" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3433" RevisionGUID="22e71bd9-9320-4035-818b-ae5f582d85b9" CreationDate="2012-04-08T19:37:11.420" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="The Workplace is [launching Tuesday or Wednesday](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/4823/what-is-coworking#comment9210_4847), barring any unforeseen problems. During the private beta, there will be no involvement from other Stack Exchange sites (save for active people here who also committed to the proposal): it'll be up to the community there to quickly figure out their scope and how they'll ensure the site will be viable if/when it goes public.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But even sites in public beta are never added as migration paths. The beta period is the time for the site to bootstrap itself without becoming a dumping ground for other sites: normal users generally don't understand what to migrate [even when sites are launched](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The lack of a migration path does not, however, prevent moderators from migrating questions to a beta site. Historically, [we worked with moderators on beta sites](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2782/8) to determine if a question would be a better fit for them. This tended to be a win-win situation for all involved, as it let the destination sites get questions they want and it prevented unnecessary drama when a question gets unceremoniously closed here for being off-topic or sits around with no answers (or worse, bad answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like [the current moderators](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3419/8) are [loath to do this](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3428/8), and it's unlikely very many, if any, questions would be migrated to the Workplace while it's in beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind, however, that The Workplace was [created specifically to house questions that are categorically off-topic here](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/a/1401/16359): there should be very little, if any, overlap between the two sites. Off-topic questions that would be a fit for The Workplace have historically gotten comments from closers directing the asker to support the proposal: perhaps the only real change needed to that workflow is to modify the wording to indicate it's already live.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9046" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3434" RevisionGUID="7edd354d-5e7b-4295-b65b-8fff5c4b3b3a" CreationDate="2012-04-08T22:00:10.303" UserId="4" Text="There's not much that we can do until The Workplace is in at least Public Beta. Unless they explicitly ask for a question from us, we probably won't be migrating anything until the community on The Workplace has a good definition of what a good question is and a nice description of what is on-topic (and what is off-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Until then, I'd be careful about directing people to The Workplace. When the site was in committal phase, it is perfectly fine to invite people to help form the core base of the site and define a direction. However, once the Private Beta starts, those people will be defining what The Workplace is. Telling people that there is a site for certain types of questions might not be true if The Workplace community decides that a particular subject is off-topic during this Private Beta phase.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would encourage everyone who is genuinely interested in The Workplace to commit before the Private Beta starts and be part of the definition of this new site and to learn what this new community wants so that we can properly direct people to the appropriate Stack Exchange site to get the best answers to their questions and problems." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9047" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3432" RevisionGUID="7bd606fa-9163-46dd-b629-25eeae5788bb" CreationDate="2012-04-09T02:36:31.473" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9048" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3430" RevisionGUID="4e3ac393-9184-45f6-b3cf-5d3c9c53edf2" CreationDate="2012-04-09T10:13:24.847" UserId="32135" Comment="added 60 characters in body" Text="This question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Using PHP version 5.2 or 5.3 for commercial products?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;seems to me to be the sort of thing that should be discouraged, because it will have no value in a year (when everyone will be using a version of PHP that's cutting edge right now).  However, I can't find a basis in the FAQ for this opinion; am I wrong? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143327/using-php-version-5-2-or-5-3-for-commercial-products" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9049" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3435" RevisionGUID="4c0e2746-de42-4e50-a949-c5779ac2b256" CreationDate="2012-04-09T16:19:52.997" UserId="50029" Text="I asked [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143520/a-talk-about-observer-pattern) about Observer pattern, so I could get some help with my talk that I have to hold. I understand the problematic part that its teasing a debate, but I tried really hard to phrase it in a way it does fit Q&amp;A format, by specifying 2 things I want to know, so nobody would start a arguing. What can I improve there so it will not get closed? (I have another talk I have to hold in a month or so - and I would be really happy to get peoples support)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9050" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3435" RevisionGUID="4c0e2746-de42-4e50-a949-c5779ac2b256" CreationDate="2012-04-09T16:19:52.997" UserId="50029" Text="My question was closed. Is there a way to ask something similar that dose fit Q&amp;A?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9051" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3435" RevisionGUID="4c0e2746-de42-4e50-a949-c5779ac2b256" CreationDate="2012-04-09T16:19:52.997" UserId="50029" Text="|support|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9052" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3436" RevisionGUID="a376681c-24e7-49a8-b925-331da14e8346" CreationDate="2012-04-09T16:33:33.640" UserId="4" Text="As mentioned in the FAQ, your questions [should be about problems that you face that relate to software development][1]. Putting together a presentation or discussion is not an aspect of professional software development, which makes the current wording off-topic. Phrasing your question to only gather opinions or thoughts is also not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the subject matter (in this example, design patterns) is on-topic. So if there's some aspect to the subject that you don't understand or need clarified, that would be acceptable to ask. In your example question, the problem is that you simply ask for suggestions - that's not a suitable question for a Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9053" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3140" RevisionGUID="34e47c2b-e2a7-4bba-8ac5-84889fdfdc77" CreationDate="2012-04-09T16:45:49.783" UserId="1130" Comment="Wanted to add perma-links to Data.SE queries to make monitoring these queries easier for myself" Text="I think we are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The strict enforcement of keeping questions on-topic combined with the fact [our site name doesn't match the FAQ][1] is causing a lot of users to misunderstand what the site is meant for, and to lose interest and stop asking/answering questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, here's a graph of our [new user growth][2]. It remains fairly steady, because many programmers are interested in a site for programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And here's a graph of [new questions asked][4]. It is going down hill fairly steadily for a while now, and I don't believe it's because all the good questions have been asked/answered. I think it's instead people being aware of stricter rules, and/or being uncertain about if they should post something for fear of just getting downvoted and closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't speak for others, but personally I've gotten frustrated with the way our site is going and have kind of given up. I don't think I'm alone either judging by questions on meta, and the disappearance of several formerly-active users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our [number of votes][6] is also declining, which is the result of less user participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is yours, so you can run it however you want, however I strongly believe that the downward nature of the graphs is caused by a lot of misunderstanding and confusion about the site scope. The site was meant to be a site for programmers about programmers, and it has since changed to a site for programmers about software development only. A lot of old active users have lost interest, and a lot of new users don't understand the site scope and ask low quality questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/66279&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OlKXf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/66282&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0y9Oj.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/66286&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/gvnGr.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9054" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3437" RevisionGUID="e2b58571-31e9-4468-bd26-6c84cd84f813" CreationDate="2012-04-09T16:48:23.150" UserId="32353" Text="I don't see how &quot;I'm giving a talk, (details), any suggestions?&quot; isn't a polling question (&quot;polling&quot; as stated in the section of the FAQ cited as the close reason&quot;).  A question asking if there are alternatives to the observer pattern other than polling still *might* get closed as a list question, but I personally probably wouldn't vote to close it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9055" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3438" RevisionGUID="7bb26b41-7477-4c5e-a00d-2ecf66cd19bc" CreationDate="2012-04-09T17:19:21.550" UserId="1130" Text="Activity for our blog was great initially, however it died down a month or two ago and never seemed to recover.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know at the time of writing this question, there is 1 post done, 2 being reviewed, and 3 being written, however that list has not had a changed in over a month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is the Programmers blog currently not going to happen?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am asking because I am the author of the post which is done, and wanted to post the article on my own blog. I had planned on waiting until it posted to the P.SE blog so I could provide a link to it as well, however I've been waiting for a few months now and the situation doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9056" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3438" RevisionGUID="7bb26b41-7477-4c5e-a00d-2ecf66cd19bc" CreationDate="2012-04-09T17:19:21.550" UserId="1130" Text="What's the current status of the P.SE blog?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9057" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3438" RevisionGUID="7bb26b41-7477-4c5e-a00d-2ecf66cd19bc" CreationDate="2012-04-09T17:19:21.550" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9058" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3439" RevisionGUID="1935ebe1-0e41-4efc-841c-85060ea00dde" CreationDate="2012-04-09T18:29:58.487" UserId="50929" Text="One way is to separate it into multiple questions, the question itself has a ton of subquestions inside of it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9059" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3440" RevisionGUID="56b05cc7-038b-4102-9f7b-533283c6359f" CreationDate="2012-04-09T18:31:00.560" UserId="50929" Text="[This][1]&#xD;&#xA;is still Area 51, but it has general questions about the workplace, just what you wanted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/the-workplace" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9060" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="b4654d19-789a-4cd9-b9bc-2f70ab64eb3d" CreationDate="2012-04-09T20:01:43.230" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="9061" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3441" RevisionGUID="d2769b51-eda4-4613-9f92-a457b4d88c2b" CreationDate="2012-04-10T08:56:56.953" UserId="31260" Text="Could we merge [tag:off-shore] questions (10 total) into [tag:offshore] (3 total), and make them synonyms?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Side note. [tag:distributed-development] looks also worth considering as merge / synonym candidate for above." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9062" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3441" RevisionGUID="d2769b51-eda4-4613-9f92-a457b4d88c2b" CreationDate="2012-04-10T08:56:56.953" UserId="31260" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [off-shore] → [offshore]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9063" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3441" RevisionGUID="d2769b51-eda4-4613-9f92-a457b4d88c2b" CreationDate="2012-04-10T08:56:56.953" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9064" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3441" RevisionGUID="9bb1125a-62b2-47ed-9caf-1550bb7ebfca" CreationDate="2012-04-10T09:21:54.950" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9065" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3442" RevisionGUID="994ca86a-d7d1-4e8c-806f-ee59125d04d6" CreationDate="2012-04-10T09:48:05.590" UserId="31260" Text="Done - according to [offshore tag synonyms page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/offshore/synonyms),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The following tags will be remapped to [tag:offshore]  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [tag:off-shore]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/wzEe0.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/wzEe0.jpg &quot;synonyms page screen shot&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9066" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3442" RevisionGUID="3109f5d8-ebd4-4902-8afe-b29782c14a8e" CreationDate="2012-04-10T09:48:05.590" UserId="31260" />
  <row Id="9067" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3443" RevisionGUID="e2cb873e-beaf-44ec-81a3-e8f190e8e1e9" CreationDate="2012-04-10T12:39:34.477" UserId="41381" Text="[tag:distributed-development] seems like a tag for distributed systems development not developers themselves being distributed in general. This is a completely different tag. Though looking at the question it seems to be used in the latter sense so merging it may be good or just nuking it altogether." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9068" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3444" RevisionGUID="e00f6894-dd86-413a-aaaa-f4fe929e482c" CreationDate="2012-04-10T17:24:55.233" UserId="1130" Text="I noticed [Why do we need private variables?][1] got closed as a duplicate of [Do ALL your variables need to be declared private?][2], but I thought the first question and its answers were much better than the second one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't the first time I've noticed a question getting closed as a duplicate to what I view as a worse version of the question. This is probably because new questions get more attention, so are more likely to attract close-as-duplicate votes than older questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this something we should be concerned about? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I'd rather have the best version of the question left open, and the worse versions closed as duplicates, but I'm not sure if that's something to flag moderators over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143736/why-do-we-need-private-variables&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57491/do-all-your-variables-need-to-be-declared-private" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9069" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3444" RevisionGUID="e00f6894-dd86-413a-aaaa-f4fe929e482c" CreationDate="2012-04-10T17:24:55.233" UserId="1130" Text="Should we care if good questions get closed as duplicates to worse questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9070" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3444" RevisionGUID="e00f6894-dd86-413a-aaaa-f4fe929e482c" CreationDate="2012-04-10T17:24:55.233" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9071" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3445" RevisionGUID="7714f4ca-0240-41b9-b4cd-4ca40951b481" CreationDate="2012-04-10T17:27:44.727" UserId="47" Text="Flag one of the questions and suggest that the closing be reversed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9072" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3444" RevisionGUID="54e6bdd8-2278-4c1a-a5c1-0c89b9659696" CreationDate="2012-04-10T18:31:16.397" UserId="1130" Comment="Rephrased the title since I didn't like it :)" Text="I noticed [Why do we need private variables?][1] got closed as a duplicate of [Do ALL your variables need to be declared private?][2], but I thought the first question and its answers were much better than the second one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't the first time I've noticed a question getting closed as a duplicate to what I view as a worse version of the question. This is probably because new questions get more attention, so are more likely to attract close-as-duplicate votes than older questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this something I should be concerned about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I'd rather have the best version of the question left open, and the worse versions closed as duplicates, but I'm not sure if that's something I should flag moderators over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143736/why-do-we-need-private-variables&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57491/do-all-your-variables-need-to-be-declared-private" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9073" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3444" RevisionGUID="54e6bdd8-2278-4c1a-a5c1-0c89b9659696" CreationDate="2012-04-10T18:31:16.397" UserId="1130" Comment="Rephrased the title since I didn't like it :)" Text="What should I do if I think a good question got closed as a duplicate to a worse question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9074" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3446" RevisionGUID="6b8d7f0f-8e53-4fda-8cfd-b67a1143c54e" CreationDate="2012-04-10T20:16:47.297" UserId="32353" Text="[This question][1] is one that a HR person would most likely *ask*.  But wouldn't programmers be the best at *answering* it?  What % of programmers think they can do a better job than HR at writing a job posting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll admit the question asked for references to articles answering the question, rather than direct answers.  In this case I think the direct question would be better.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I imagine it would have been closed anyway.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, are programmers the people best suited to write job postings for programming positions?  If so, should the question have been closed?  (Since meta votes are agree/disagree, in this case agree means the question should have been left open, though possibly edited to ask the real question directly instead of asking for references to articles).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143845/any-good-articles-on-how-to-write-a-good-job-description-for-a-web-developer-pos" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9075" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3446" RevisionGUID="6b8d7f0f-8e53-4fda-8cfd-b67a1143c54e" CreationDate="2012-04-10T20:16:47.297" UserId="32353" Text="Should the article on writing a good job description for a web developer position have been closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9076" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3446" RevisionGUID="6b8d7f0f-8e53-4fda-8cfd-b67a1143c54e" CreationDate="2012-04-10T20:16:47.297" UserId="32353" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9077" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3447" RevisionGUID="87b5127e-bc3d-46f9-b684-5e122951b6e4" CreationDate="2012-04-10T20:37:43.213" UserId="32353" Text="The question is one that a HR person would most likely *ask*. But wouldn't programmers be the best at *answering* it? What % of programmers think they can do a better job than HR at writing a job posting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll admit the question asked for references to articles answering the question, rather than direct answers. In this case I think the direct question would be better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I imagine it would have been closed anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, are programmers the people best suited to write job postings for programming positions? If so, should the question have been closed?  I think the question should have been left open, but ideally edited to ask the real question directly instead of asking for references to articles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9078" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3448" RevisionGUID="597601ac-cfc5-4e7a-bbe5-aa0e251608df" CreationDate="2012-04-10T20:39:39.733" UserId="1130" Text="In this particular instance, the question is badly worded and provides very little context, so I think an HR manager would be better at giving general advice for the job posting tips the OP is asking for. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing I think programmers could answer better is perhaps job title advice based on what someone is looking for, or perhaps advice on what development details that should go into the posting based on actual project requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the faq states this site is about conceptual questions on software development, in which case this question wouldn't belong, however it also states that some career advice questions are on-topic, providing it's unique to developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I usually don't vote to close unless something clearly doesn't belong here, and would be happy to help you re-open it providing you edit the question so it requires the unique expertise of a programmer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9079" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3446" RevisionGUID="e90f639d-6855-45e1-a6a4-b7b93b1193f7" CreationDate="2012-04-10T20:39:49.920" UserId="32353" Comment="deleted 745 characters in body" Text="[This is the question I'm referring to][1].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are developers the best suited for answering questions about job postings for developers?  Should the question therefore have been left open?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143845/any-good-articles-on-how-to-write-a-good-job-description-for-a-web-developer-pos" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9080" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="912b58c5-49ce-4b90-9ec7-c79b50baf414" CreationDate="2012-04-10T22:50:34.950" UserId="34364" Comment="added 167 characters in body" Text="The [last celebration proposal][1] we had never got off of it's feet. In fact, the Birthday Celebration Proposal's time has come, and it left a long time ago. So a few other P.SE members and I came up with an idea: let's have a contest!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We realize that other sites that have had contests have had a lot of support, and the community didn't have to do too much of the dirty work. But that's the beauty of it. If we follow through with something like this, we will get more publicity and support from [higher powers][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have, somewhat, became the ugly little brother of Stack Overflow. We have had to rebuild, and clean up the mess from the early days of P.SE, before the [revolution][3]. A lot of other sites did too, but most are done. Mainly because they had SE backing them up. Or a CHAOS member.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why this contest will be great. We, as a community, will set the entire thing up, give it to SE, and let them serve it up. Overall, this is going to give us:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A stronger community.&#xD;&#xA; - More &quot;power users&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - A fun activity.&#xD;&#xA; - More executive support from SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;because they saw that we put it together ourselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you agree with any of these ideas please upvote. If you disagree, please downvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an idea, please post it as an answer to this question. Structure it in the same (or similar) format as I did. If you want to edit my idea, do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update: We have some really good ideas here. If you agree/disagree with any of them, please vote. And please add more ideas! We will make a decision very soon!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2858/belated-birthday-celebration-proposal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9081" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="ece055f7-a06b-43f7-a3eb-ccca6c899dd3" CreationDate="2012-04-10T23:51:02.193" UserId="34364" Comment="added 233 characters in body" Text="The [last celebration proposal][1] we had never got off of it's feet. In fact, the Birthday Celebration Proposal's time has come, and it left a long time ago. So a few other P.SE members and I came up with an idea: let's have a contest!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We realize that other sites that have had contests have had a lot of support, and the community didn't have to do too much of the dirty work. But that's the beauty of it. If we follow through with something like this, we will get more publicity and support from [higher powers][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have, somewhat, became the ugly little brother of Stack Overflow. We have had to rebuild, and clean up the mess from the early days of P.SE, before the [revolution][3]. A lot of other sites did too, but most are done. Mainly because they had SE backing them up. Or a CHAOS member.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why this contest will be great. We, as a community, will set the entire thing up, give it to SE, and let them serve it up. Overall, this is going to give us:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A stronger community.&#xD;&#xA; - More &quot;power users&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - A fun activity.&#xD;&#xA; - More executive support from SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;because they saw that we put it together ourselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you agree with any of these ideas please upvote. If you disagree, please downvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an idea, please post it as an answer to this question. Structure it in the same (or similar) format as I did. If you want to edit my idea, do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update: We have some really good ideas here. If you agree/disagree with any of them, please vote. And please add more ideas! We will make a decision very soon!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update2: I have another contest motive (AKA why we are doing this). How about a site retagging? Not another STCI, but a group effort to add and remove tags that are relevant to the question. Please comment or send me to chat.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2858/belated-birthday-celebration-proposal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9082" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3449" RevisionGUID="3aded6d5-9186-4270-a881-7c40ecbb762e" CreationDate="2012-04-11T00:15:04.750" UserId="25476" Text="I saw the flag, but perhaps we could merge the questions?  I am unsure if the answers will make sense or be terribly redundant if we do however.  Please vote up or down on this to convey your opinion on merging the two." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9083" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3450" RevisionGUID="d62329c6-9507-472a-aa55-139a40699d70" CreationDate="2012-04-11T05:10:20.927" UserId="49469" Text="I noticed that lately every time I want to click it doesn't belongs here as a flag I can't find the appropriate community I would suggest. So I find myself writing on other what I think it belongs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this an okay workaround? Please up vote for agreement or down vote for disagreement on this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can comment a better way to deal with this, please tell me. Also, isn't there a way to add the new communities to the list that are more related to the 'doesn't belong here'? CrossValidated has Data Mining, and Computer Science &lt;beta&gt; seems like things software engineers might want to ask instead only about tools. The last flags I marked (which I hope are right) were for those cases. (Feature request) Can't we have a open field where we can just give the link on the flag such as we have for the category other?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9084" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3450" RevisionGUID="d62329c6-9507-472a-aa55-139a40699d70" CreationDate="2012-04-11T05:10:20.927" UserId="49469" Text="It doesn't belong here doesn't allows me to select a suggestion that is not listed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9085" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3450" RevisionGUID="d62329c6-9507-472a-aa55-139a40699d70" CreationDate="2012-04-11T05:10:20.927" UserId="49469" Text="|discussion|feature-request|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9086" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3435" RevisionGUID="212aac49-3cef-404f-b153-30f63d31021f" CreationDate="2012-04-11T05:44:52.317" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo correction" Text="My question was closed. Is there a way to ask something similar that does fit Q&amp;A?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9087" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3350" RevisionGUID="5c897f9e-21ba-4f94-bc5f-3627182d4436" CreationDate="2012-04-11T05:48:15.293" UserId="31260" Comment="FAQ discourages questions that are too wide" Text="Studying similar ([faq-proposed](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/faq-proposed/info)) question at SO Meta and especially its accepted answer helped me to make my mind on that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Where can I ask a “how to get started” question on a Stack Exchange site with respect to technology?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/121705/where-can-i-ask-a-how-to-get-started-question-on-a-stack-exchange-site-with-re)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...tag wiki's is perhaps the best we can do.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the wiki for a topic doesn't already contain this information - links to web sites, books, tutorials etc. then perhaps we should be making all efforts to ensure that it does...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Above brought peace and light into my life.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if I can imagine an answer making good tag wiki, it means question is OK to me. &lt;sup&gt;assuming it is on-topic&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, I take a deeper look into the question and try to find out if there's something wrong with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for [the question you referred to](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84739/what-is-the-preferable-mobile-android-iphone-game-development-tool-for-a-c-ne), well, it doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While casting close vote I have been choosing between not constructive and too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Per re-reading [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) I was rather inclined to vote for _too localized_ but the statement &quot;Which development tool is widely used now?&quot; made me feel that _not constructive_ would be a better match.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Understanding scope of the question helps to find out if it's appropriate or not. _&quot;I am a newbie, how do I get started writing new programming language?&quot;_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[FAQ discourages](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask &quot;`What kind of questions should I _not_ ask here?`&quot;) questions that are too wide:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an _entire book_ that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that _not constructive_ close reasons description matches above with _&quot;this question will likely solicit... extended discussion&quot;_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![https://i.stack.imgur.com/BWAjl.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Not a real question_ can also match in blatant cases, with _&quot;overly broad&quot;_ close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/BWAjl.jpg &quot;FAQ quidance about question scope&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9088" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3451" RevisionGUID="d7f0625f-0f63-462c-a55f-400523258450" CreationDate="2012-04-11T05:55:32.853" UserId="25936" Text="The feature already exists, but only for diamond moderators. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every time a similar feature has been asked for regular users, it has been declined summarily, although I'm certain that everyone who votes to migrate means well, incorrect migrations are quite often. Programmers especially [has suffered a lot][1] from incorrect migrations from Stack Overflow, the past 90 days we have rejected more than 1/3 of questions coming here from Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main problem is that although you are required to have at least 3,000 reputation at the source to vote to migrate, you aren't even required to have an account at the target site, and people seem eager to vote to migrate without thinking if the question is actually suitable for the target site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'd say that flagging for moderation attention is not only an acceptable workaround, but imho it's actually the preferred action. We can notify the other site's moderators and only migrate the question if they verify that it is suitable for their site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In theory, we could discuss adding another migration target. Right now our most popular migration target is Stack Overflow with 170 questions the past 90 days, and our second most popular is Code Review with 9 questions over the same period, too few to justify a migration path. If we start getting a lot of Code Review questions, trust me I'll be the first to nag about it ;) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9089" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3350" RevisionGUID="366c4807-4f30-4c10-969a-140b4987ea77" CreationDate="2012-04-11T05:57:43.423" UserId="31260" Comment="&quot;Need help getting started with programming.&quot;" Text="Studying similar ([faq-proposed](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/faq-proposed/info)) question at SO Meta and especially its accepted answer helped me to make my mind on that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Where can I ask a “how to get started” question on a Stack Exchange site with respect to technology?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/121705/where-can-i-ask-a-how-to-get-started-question-on-a-stack-exchange-site-with-re)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...tag wiki's is perhaps the best we can do.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the wiki for a topic doesn't already contain this information - links to web sites, books, tutorials etc. then perhaps we should be making all efforts to ensure that it does...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Above brought peace and light into my life.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if I can imagine an answer making good tag wiki, it means question is OK to me. &lt;sup&gt;assuming it is on-topic&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, I take a deeper look into the question and try to find out if there's something wrong with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for [the question you referred to](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84739/what-is-the-preferable-mobile-android-iphone-game-development-tool-for-a-c-ne), well, it doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While casting close vote I have been choosing between not constructive and too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Per re-reading [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) I was rather inclined to vote for _too localized_ but the statement &quot;Which development tool is widely used now?&quot; made me feel that _not constructive_ would be a better match.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Understanding scope of the question helps to find out if it's appropriate or not. _&quot;I am a newbie, how do I get started writing new programming language?&quot;_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[FAQ discourages](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask &quot;`What kind of questions should I not ask here?'&quot;) questions that are too wide:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an _entire book_ that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that _not constructive_ close reasons description matches above with _&quot;this question will likely solicit... extended discussion&quot;_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![https://i.stack.imgur.com/BWAjl.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Not a real question_ can also match in blatant cases, with _&quot;overly broad&quot;_ close reason. _&quot;Need help getting started with programming.&quot;_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/BWAjl.jpg &quot;FAQ quidance about question scope&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9090" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3452" RevisionGUID="e2bb3929-bd86-4f16-a0ef-8c2b7903c7c5" CreationDate="2012-04-11T06:16:44.127" UserId="30278" Text="Its a fact that the number of closures puts off posters, and, it puts people off answering. What is the point of spending ten minutes carefully considering the question, re-wording, correcting your spelling (or not, in my case) only to find the question closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately it puts people of visiting the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programming and related professions (DBAs, Analysts, Systems Architects etc.) are fairly unique, its techie a bit like engineering but we don't have rules engineers have to follow. There is no empirical way to judge a programmers work. Even stuff that plain doesn't work may be good quality programming which was specified poorly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we cannot discuss these type of topic here, whats left?  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9091" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3446" RevisionGUID="fd33fbea-522e-41a9-af17-4510a45b1202" CreationDate="2012-04-11T09:23:30.440" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="[This is the question I'm referring to][1].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are developers the best suited for answering questions about job postings for developers? Should the question therefore have been left open?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143845/any-good-articles-on-how-to-write-a-good-job-description-for-a-web-developer-pos" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9092" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3446" RevisionGUID="fd33fbea-522e-41a9-af17-4510a45b1202" CreationDate="2012-04-11T09:23:30.440" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Should the question asking for articles on writing a good job description for a web developer position have been closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9093" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3446" RevisionGUID="fd33fbea-522e-41a9-af17-4510a45b1202" CreationDate="2012-04-11T09:23:30.440" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9094" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3453" RevisionGUID="e14bc60e-7e73-41d8-b6d4-b52425b9e1cb" CreationDate="2012-04-11T11:32:22.830" UserId="25936" Text="## The great Stack Overflow treasure hunt&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How would this work:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. We set up a contest chat room,&#xD;&#xA; 1. We explore the vast wilderness that is Stack Overflow for questions that rightfully belong to us,&#xD;&#xA; 1. If we find a great question we post it to the chat room,&#xD;&#xA; 1. People periodically check the chat room and if they agree the questions are more suitable for Programmers they vote to migrate. &#xD;&#xA; 1. Who ever salvages more questions wins.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rules:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; 1. No crap. If it's closed on Stack Overflow, it's crap. &#xD;&#xA; 1. No old questions, nothing older than three months. You can always post them in the chat room, but they won't count towards the big prize.&#xD;&#xA; 1. No flags, no need to bother the SO mods with our contest, just post the questions you find in the chat room.&#xD;&#xA; 1. Contest period: A month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What we gain:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Super awesome questions (hopefully)&#xD;&#xA; 1. The immense satisfaction of stealing the questions from Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One volunteer from the community will be responsible for counting each user's salvaged questions.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9095" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3453" RevisionGUID="6f32bed4-db1a-40fb-b397-bcdce775720c" CreationDate="2012-04-11T11:32:22.830" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="9096" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3454" RevisionGUID="d0aa87de-4524-4fb6-9c09-f048a0af586d" CreationDate="2012-04-11T11:55:50.293" UserId="25936" Text="## Answer all the things&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How this would work: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. We set up a contest chat room,&#xD;&#xA;1. We answer previously unanswered questions, and post our answers to the chat room.&#xD;&#xA;1. Highest voted answer on a previously unanswered questions win the super awesome prize!&#xD;&#xA;1. Contest lasts for a month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clarifications:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Unanswered means no answers at all, but we can work something out for questions that have no positively scored answers (a volunteer should verify).&#xD;&#xA; 2. Obviously, eligible questions must have been posted before the contest starts, as every new question is essentially unanswered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9097" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3454" RevisionGUID="a3314ff5-f321-4c5b-8100-4913c74b3d54" CreationDate="2012-04-11T11:55:50.293" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="9098" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3453" RevisionGUID="c61c4b6b-20fd-4ca9-9bea-6e8d0d7bcd7d" CreationDate="2012-04-11T12:00:07.433" UserId="25936" Comment="added 23 characters in body" Text="## The great Stack Overflow treasure hunt&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How this would work: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. We set up a contest chat room,&#xD;&#xA; 1. We explore the vast wilderness that is Stack Overflow for questions that rightfully belong to us,&#xD;&#xA; 1. If we find a great question we post it to the chat room,&#xD;&#xA; 1. People periodically check the chat room and if they agree the questions are more suitable for Programmers they vote to migrate,&#xD;&#xA; 1. Whoever salvages more questions wins the super awesome prize.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rules:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; 1. No crap. If it's closed on Stack Overflow, it's crap. &#xD;&#xA; 1. No old questions, nothing older than three months. You can always post them in the chat room, but they won't count towards the big prize.&#xD;&#xA; 1. No flags, no need to bother the SO mods with our contest, just post the questions you find in the chat room.&#xD;&#xA; 1. Contest period: A month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What we gain:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Super awesome questions (hopefully)&#xD;&#xA; 1. The immense satisfaction of stealing the questions from Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One volunteer from the community will be responsible for counting each user's salvaged questions.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9099" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3418" RevisionGUID="252f4860-a4f7-4622-b91e-d18cb4d62e1f" CreationDate="2012-04-11T12:58:42.357" UserId="1130" Comment="Wanted to be clear that contest is supposed to promote user participation, however it is not supposed to create extra work for contest participants or administrators" Text="I think a better way to approach it might be like how [Gaming.SE does their contests][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You start by picking a timeframe and a tag. The tag could be a design pattern, a development methodology, or any broad category you'd like to promote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two winners: One for best question, and one for best answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Best Question** is won by the person who asked a question with the contest tag within the contest timeframe, that has the most Views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Best Answer** is won by the the person who answered a question containing the contest tag within the contest timeframe, that has the most votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Winners get the software development Book or eBook of their choice (within a reasonable price range) from Amazon&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The beauty of this is users don't have to do anything extra to participate in the contest, and very little administrative work is needed to manage the contest. You'll need someone to determine the contest tags and timeframe, and create the announcement for it, and you'll need someone that knows how to get the top question and answer based on the criteria mentioned above (I'm not sure if that can be done with SE's search, or if you'd need the help of an SE employee to query the database)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, it's just regular SE Q&amp;A. The only difference is users are encouraged to post questions and answers within a specific tag to win prizes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/q/3908/8462" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9100" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3455" RevisionGUID="7f25eb29-0b9e-4baf-b43a-281b1c1ba207" CreationDate="2012-04-11T14:06:24.207" UserId="48960" Text="A total waste and confusing for most. Should have just expanded stack overflow to allow conceptual questions. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9101" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3388" RevisionGUID="66fee04a-60e2-49a3-bdb4-ec801ce3ad95" CreationDate="2012-04-11T16:41:56.573" UserId="1130" Comment="Yeah that's right, this is a shameless bump of the question under the pretense of better tagging :)" Text="|discussion|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9102" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3456" RevisionGUID="709a6c54-a52e-4ae5-a80a-fed249794155" CreationDate="2012-04-12T00:34:48.017" UserId="50929" Text="I have edited a couple tag wikis today, and was trying to edit some more, but now, when I try to edit them, the same screen that usually comes up comes up, but without the box to edit the tag wiki…Why is this? I tried switching browsers, but that didn't do anything." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9103" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3456" RevisionGUID="709a6c54-a52e-4ae5-a80a-fed249794155" CreationDate="2012-04-12T00:34:48.017" UserId="50929" Text="Why Can't I Edit Tag Wikis?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9104" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3456" RevisionGUID="709a6c54-a52e-4ae5-a80a-fed249794155" CreationDate="2012-04-12T00:34:48.017" UserId="50929" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9105" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3404" RevisionGUID="ef2424e9-c362-4b27-89a8-c7f4051390e0" CreationDate="2012-04-12T00:40:43.677" UserId="40098" Comment="deleted 308 characters in body; edited title" Text="/* this is an edit recommended by an admin, sorry for the misleading original topic. */&#xD;&#xA;What considerations should be made if I do plan to get a Job Programming?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9106" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3404" RevisionGUID="ef2424e9-c362-4b27-89a8-c7f4051390e0" CreationDate="2012-04-12T00:40:43.677" UserId="40098" Comment="deleted 308 characters in body; edited title" Text="How do I choose a programming language to learn?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9107" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3404" RevisionGUID="46c33011-9f0e-478d-a6ae-f1dca2ea6420" CreationDate="2012-04-12T00:46:57.070" UserId="40098" Comment="added 69 characters in body" Text="/* this is an edit recommended by an admin, sorry for the misleading original topic. */&#xD;&#xA;What considerations should be made in choosing a language if I do plan to get a Job Programming? Particularly application and web devleopment." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9108" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3456" RevisionGUID="4e1d89db-66ab-4740-b758-5c7ddc86bede" CreationDate="2012-04-12T02:31:16.160" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|tag-wikis|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9109" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3388" RevisionGUID="d477ee2f-e0a0-4153-ae30-9c4acedb2f85" CreationDate="2012-04-12T06:54:11.750" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling corrected" Text="Over the past 24h, **22** questions have been posted and **15** have been closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**That means more than 68% of them have been closed.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*All those people couldn't be all wrong.* I think it's how we present stuff on the homepage that leads them to posting off topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our problem is that we are selling chinese food in a restaurant that looks like an indian flavor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When we arrive on the website, we see the big letters &quot;Programmers&quot;. We should change this and put something more explicit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any suggestions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9110" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3388" RevisionGUID="d477ee2f-e0a0-4153-ae30-9c4acedb2f85" CreationDate="2012-04-12T06:54:11.750" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling corrected" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9111" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="3404" RevisionGUID="29daa3b4-3f89-4be0-b9c7-3a647ffcfc10" CreationDate="2012-04-12T07:32:04.483" UserId="25936" Comment="Rollback to [ef2424e9-c362-4b27-89a8-c7f4051390e0]" Text="/* this is an edit recommended by an admin, sorry for the misleading original topic. */&#xD;&#xA;What considerations should be made if I do plan to get a Job Programming?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9112" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="3404" RevisionGUID="21cd8fd9-20ee-4d8b-b475-dc0716315791" CreationDate="2012-04-12T07:32:31.017" UserId="25936" Comment="Rollback to [fe8e5ae2-4f2a-4b04-8695-c3f5875fe2d1]" Text="I don't want to spend my time asking a question just so that I can get it closed. I really need some advice but don't know where to ask it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Question I have in mind is about choosing a programming language to learn given the conditions that I am in. Which I would explain. I am sure a question like this would get closed here at Programmers. But doing my own research on the manner has me spinning in circles and I feel I need some direction form an expert.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9113" PostHistoryTypeId="7" PostId="3404" RevisionGUID="21cd8fd9-20ee-4d8b-b475-dc0716315791" CreationDate="2012-04-12T07:32:31.017" UserId="25936" Comment="Rollback to [fe8e5ae2-4f2a-4b04-8695-c3f5875fe2d1]" Text="Where can I ask for programming advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9114" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3457" RevisionGUID="e7dbf1c5-a66b-4710-a839-f81719ebfa9d" CreationDate="2012-04-12T08:16:34.093" UserId="1996" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/26782/goma&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. How did this user amass more than 2k worth of reputation?&#xD;&#xA;2. Does their history of asking non-constructive questions put them at risk of getting banned?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9115" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3457" RevisionGUID="e7dbf1c5-a66b-4710-a839-f81719ebfa9d" CreationDate="2012-04-12T08:16:34.093" UserId="1996" Text="How did this user amass more than 2k worth of reputation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9116" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3457" RevisionGUID="e7dbf1c5-a66b-4710-a839-f81719ebfa9d" CreationDate="2012-04-12T08:16:34.093" UserId="1996" Text="|support|user-accounts|bad-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9117" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3458" RevisionGUID="fa85704f-a346-4328-9d87-209549a4dc22" CreationDate="2012-04-12T08:25:10.010" UserId="1996" Text="Simple: This question is just way too open-ended (and most programmers should understand why it's too open-ended)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9120" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3460" RevisionGUID="4058df97-8d95-4245-a19e-92d2a3bfbacf" CreationDate="2012-04-12T09:58:14.250" UserId="48" Text="The fix for this is being deployed right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See [this post on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/129002/new-tag-wikis-cannot-be-created)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9121" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3456" RevisionGUID="fae5c698-90f1-4dbf-94ad-f3e6a1ff66c9" CreationDate="2012-04-12T09:58:48.243" UserId="48" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|tag-wikis|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9122" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3461" RevisionGUID="af09ef55-6c39-4887-80dd-719a0b9a6357" CreationDate="2012-04-12T11:38:20.463" UserId="25476" Text="![mordor goma macro][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The mods are privy to certain statistics about users that others do not have.  Goma is an unusual case of somebody who goes above and beyond to continue spamming Programmers with garbage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He has used over 50 unique IP's most of them behind proxy servers located in Saudi Arabia.  He has opened multiple SE accounts with numerous unique email addresses.  Previous attempts at notification and suspension have simply resulted in him changing IP and email address.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He leaves a pretty reliable pattern though, almost always IP address that originates in Saudi Arabia among other tells.  His questions are easy to spot too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe we keep this account open and merge duplicates into it so that we have a single consistent record of his activities for study and future consideration.  This is why he has posted so many questions -- because many of them were on duplicate accounts that we had merged into Goma.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/x9uKP.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9123" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3461" RevisionGUID="a31b1be4-7774-4e31-a60e-c54ba11dbba0" CreationDate="2012-04-12T14:45:03.680" UserId="41785" Comment="took out a few tells" Text="![mordor goma macro][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The mods are privy to certain statistics about users that others do not have.  Goma is an unusual case of somebody who goes above and beyond to continue spamming Programmers with garbage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He has used over 50 unique IP's most of them behind proxy servers located in Saudi Arabia.  He has opened multiple SE accounts with numerous unique email addresses.  Previous attempts at notification and suspension have simply resulted in him changing IP and email address.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He leaves a pretty reliable pattern though, almost always IP address that originates in Saudi Arabia among other tells.  His questions are easy to spot too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe we keep this account open and merge duplicates into it so that we have a single consistent record of his activities for study and future consideration.  This is why he has posted so many questions -- because many of them were on duplicate accounts that we had merged into Goma.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/x9uKP.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9124" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3432" RevisionGUID="58b62f17-ec15-406e-8023-a0146d7e80e8" CreationDate="2012-04-12T17:52:30.150" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/190497635306713089" />
  <row Id="9125" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3444" RevisionGUID="a1ace6a5-470a-4185-abf3-ae4fce72965a" CreationDate="2012-04-12T20:30:42.293" UserId="31260" Comment="update: Question has been reopened. // http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3444/what-should-i-do-if-i-think-a-good-question-got-closed-as-a-duplicate-to-a-worse#comment9279_3449" Text="I noticed [Why do we need private variables?][1] got closed as a duplicate of [Do ALL your variables need to be declared private?][2], but I thought the first question and its answers were much better than the second one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't the first time I've noticed a question getting closed as a duplicate to what I view as a worse version of the question. This is probably because new questions get more attention, so are more likely to attract close-as-duplicate votes than older questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this something I should be concerned about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I'd rather have the best version of the question left open, and the worse versions closed as duplicates, but I'm not sure if that's something I should flag moderators over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;Question has been [reopened]().&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143736/why-do-we-need-private-variables&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57491/do-all-your-variables-need-to-be-declared-private&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3444/what-should-i-do-if-i-think-a-good-question-got-closed-as-a-duplicate-to-a-worse#comment9279_3449 &quot;related clarification in comments&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9126" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3444" RevisionGUID="6ccbc9af-2943-4dd9-83f3-9573fb34c220" CreationDate="2012-04-12T20:47:07.593" UserId="31260" Comment="missed [3] in previous edit" Text="I noticed [Why do we need private variables?][1] got closed as a duplicate of [Do ALL your variables need to be declared private?][2], but I thought the first question and its answers were much better than the second one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't the first time I've noticed a question getting closed as a duplicate to what I view as a worse version of the question. This is probably because new questions get more attention, so are more likely to attract close-as-duplicate votes than older questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this something I should be concerned about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I'd rather have the best version of the question left open, and the worse versions closed as duplicates, but I'm not sure if that's something I should flag moderators over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;Question has been [reopened][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143736/why-do-we-need-private-variables&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57491/do-all-your-variables-need-to-be-declared-private&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3444/what-should-i-do-if-i-think-a-good-question-got-closed-as-a-duplicate-to-a-worse#comment9279_3449 &quot;related clarification in comments&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9127" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3438" RevisionGUID="a0d1316d-b69b-419f-87e8-2cb539bb26bb" CreationDate="2012-04-12T23:52:30.583" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/190588233485258753" />
  <row Id="9129" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3462" RevisionGUID="be6ce533-cbef-4967-b7a2-2c0edb527a31" CreationDate="2012-04-13T16:27:33.860" UserId="31260" Text="##The great tag wiki edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How this would work: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Set up a contest time frame and chat room,&#xD;&#xA; 1. discuss and evaluate tag wiki edits submitted during time frame set,&#xD;&#xA; 1. set up a &quot;voting question&quot; with nominees list (like [elections town hall](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2990/2012-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-digest) or [SCNA wish list](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2473/what-do-you-want-to-see-from-scna)),&#xD;&#xA; 1. whoever edit scores best &lt;strike&gt;gets kissed by Anna Lear and Mark Trapp&lt;/strike&gt; wins.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rules:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; 1. No edits outside the time frame. &#xD;&#xA; 1. Contest period: A month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What we gain:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. tag wiki improvements&#xD;&#xA; 1. more [publicity](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73261/how-to-motivate-users-to-write-tag-wikis &quot;How to motivate users to write tag wikis?&quot;), better understanding of [Tag Wiki best practices](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/69584/tag-wiki-best-practices&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Background&#xD;&#xA;* definition from page with a _really nice_ title: [&amp;#39;tag-wiki&amp;#39; tag wiki - Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/tag-wiki/info &quot;title is full of meta isn't it&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An editable page that briefly summarizes the topic of the tag and that may provide links to existing questions that are often useful to many people...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tag wikis are made of 2 parts:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The Excerpt - which is displayed on question lists and tag hover menu.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The Body - which contains detailed information about a tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* definition that inspired me, from a [tag homepage/FAQ](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/1195/create-a-tag-homepage-faq) request at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a community-wiki editable home page... where we could place essentially the tag-specific FAQ and other tag-specific links" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9130" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3462" RevisionGUID="34575965-fd0d-495e-9ec3-2edf7e3a097b" CreationDate="2012-04-13T16:27:33.860" UserId="31260" />
  <row Id="9131" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="61f18a38-5ec5-4263-8c77-b2be308757ea" CreationDate="2012-04-13T16:32:46.520" UserId="34364" Comment="deleted 303 characters in body" Text="The [last celebration proposal][1] we had never got off of it's feet. In fact, the Birthday Celebration Proposal's time has come, and it left a long time ago. So a few other P.SE members and I came up with an idea: let's have a contest!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We realize that other sites that have had contests have had a lot of support, and the community didn't have to do too much of the dirty work. But that's the beauty of it. If we follow through with something like this, we will get more publicity and support from [higher powers][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have, somewhat, became the ugly little brother of Stack Overflow. We have had to rebuild, and clean up the mess from the early days of P.SE, before the [revolution][3]. A lot of other sites did too, but most are done. Mainly because they had SE backing them up. Or a CHAOS member.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why this contest will be great. We, as a community, will set the entire thing up, give it to SE, and let them serve it up. Overall, this is going to give us:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A stronger community.&#xD;&#xA; - More &quot;power users&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - A fun activity.&#xD;&#xA; - More executive support from SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;because they saw that we put it together ourselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you agree with any of these ideas please upvote. If you disagree, please downvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an idea, please post it as an answer to this question. Structure it in the same (or similar) format as I did. If you want to edit my idea, do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Important Notice: The deadline for all ideas and voting will be Wednesday at 5:00 PM EST.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2858/belated-birthday-celebration-proposal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9132" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="79f12c27-90a6-4ec9-8f8b-2eb41f3cca03" CreationDate="2012-04-13T16:33:05.180" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|contest|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9133" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="343c7127-ab5c-4b5a-95de-048300392877" CreationDate="2012-04-13T16:36:54.563" UserId="34364" Comment="added important notice" Text="The [last celebration proposal][1] we had never got off of it's feet. In fact, the Birthday Celebration Proposal's time has come, and it left a long time ago. So a few other P.SE members and I came up with an idea: let's have a contest!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We realize that other sites that have had contests have had a lot of support, and the community didn't have to do too much of the dirty work. But that's the beauty of it. If we follow through with something like this, we will get more publicity and support from [higher powers][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have, somewhat, became the ugly little brother of Stack Overflow. We have had to rebuild, and clean up the mess from the early days of P.SE, before the [revolution][3]. A lot of other sites did too, but most are done. Mainly because they had SE backing them up. Or a CHAOS member.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why this contest will be great. We, as a community, will set the entire thing up, give it to SE, and let them serve it up. Overall, this is going to give us:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A stronger community.&#xD;&#xA; - More &quot;power users&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - A fun activity.&#xD;&#xA; - More executive support from SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;because they saw that we put it together ourselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you agree with any of these ideas please upvote. If you disagree, please downvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an idea, please post it as an answer to this question. Structure it in the same (or similar) format as I did. If you want to edit my idea, do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Important Notice: The deadline for all ideas and voting will be Wednesday at 10:00 PM GMT (5:00 PM EST).**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2858/belated-birthday-celebration-proposal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9134" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="59ecfc67-82cc-43e8-a617-ca4e5dfa546d" CreationDate="2012-04-13T17:08:10.947" UserId="1130" Comment="added date to deadline" Text="The [last celebration proposal][1] we had never got off of it's feet. In fact, the Birthday Celebration Proposal's time has come, and it left a long time ago. So a few other P.SE members and I came up with an idea: let's have a contest!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We realize that other sites that have had contests have had a lot of support, and the community didn't have to do too much of the dirty work. But that's the beauty of it. If we follow through with something like this, we will get more publicity and support from [higher powers][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have, somewhat, became the ugly little brother of Stack Overflow. We have had to rebuild, and clean up the mess from the early days of P.SE, before the [revolution][3]. A lot of other sites did too, but most are done. Mainly because they had SE backing them up. Or a CHAOS member.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why this contest will be great. We, as a community, will set the entire thing up, give it to SE, and let them serve it up. Overall, this is going to give us:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A stronger community.&#xD;&#xA; - More &quot;power users&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - A fun activity.&#xD;&#xA; - More executive support from SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;because they saw that we put it together ourselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you agree with any of these ideas please upvote. If you disagree, please downvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an idea, please post it as an answer to this question. Structure it in the same (or similar) format as I did. If you want to edit my idea, do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Important Notice: The deadline for all ideas and voting will be Wednesday April 18 at 10:00 PM GMT (5:00 PM EST).**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2858/belated-birthday-celebration-proposal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9135" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3462" RevisionGUID="66fa009c-9e45-463d-a166-6efde89e90c0" CreationDate="2012-04-13T17:14:05.130" UserId="31260" Comment="short-list ones to be presented in nominees list at next step" Text="##The great tag wiki edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How this would work: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Set up a contest time frame and chat room,&#xD;&#xA; 1. discuss and evaluate tag wiki edits submitted during time frame set,  &#xD;&#xA;    in order to short-list ones to be presented in nominees list at next step,&#xD;&#xA; 1. set up a &quot;voting question&quot; with nominees list (like [elections town hall](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2990/2012-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-digest) or [SCNA wish list](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2473/what-do-you-want-to-see-from-scna)),&#xD;&#xA; 1. whoever edit scores best &lt;strike&gt;gets kissed by Anna Lear and Mark Trapp&lt;/strike&gt; wins.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rules:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; 1. No edits outside the time frame. &#xD;&#xA; 1. Contest period: A month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What we gain:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. tag wiki improvements&#xD;&#xA; 1. more [publicity](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73261/how-to-motivate-users-to-write-tag-wikis &quot;How to motivate users to write tag wikis?&quot;), better understanding of [Tag Wiki best practices](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/69584/tag-wiki-best-practices&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Background&#xD;&#xA;* definition from page with a _really nice_ title: [&amp;#39;tag-wiki&amp;#39; tag wiki - Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/tag-wiki/info &quot;title is full of meta isn't it&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An editable page that briefly summarizes the topic of the tag and that may provide links to existing questions that are often useful to many people...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tag wikis are made of 2 parts:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The Excerpt - which is displayed on question lists and tag hover menu.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The Body - which contains detailed information about a tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* definition that inspired me, from a [tag homepage/FAQ](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/1195/create-a-tag-homepage-faq) request at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a community-wiki editable home page... where we could place essentially the tag-specific FAQ and other tag-specific links" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9136" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3463" RevisionGUID="3bbe9df5-86d0-483d-a349-5bb77bfd83e4" CreationDate="2012-04-13T17:40:59.280" UserId="34364" Text="The Great Programmers.SE User Fest&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What the goal is:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - To create more site activity.&#xD;&#xA; - To give existing users a more enjoyable time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What we do:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Throughout a 2 week period, we find the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;       - Best Question (based on views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;       - Best Answer (based on votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;       - Best Editors (most edits in certain time)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;       - Best Rep Racker (user with most rep in certain time)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;       - Any other idea that I get from comments...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the contest, incentives will be given to the winners. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9137" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3463" RevisionGUID="2081990d-438e-449d-94a5-8245c1f2d0d8" CreationDate="2012-04-13T17:40:59.280" UserId="34364" />
  <row Id="9138" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3463" RevisionGUID="ee5b1256-f8af-4e27-bdfb-572a5c3933f9" CreationDate="2012-04-13T17:46:19.253" UserId="34364" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="The Great Programmers.SE User Fest&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What the goal is:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - To create more site activity.&#xD;&#xA; - To give existing users a more enjoyable time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What we do:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Throughout a 2 week period, we find the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;       - Best Question (based on views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;       - Best Answer (based on votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;       - Best Editors (most edits in certain time)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;       - Best Rep Racker (user with most rep in certain time)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;       - Any other idea that I get from comments...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the contest, incentives will be given to the winners. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9139" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3418" RevisionGUID="c730d012-41d6-4e27-888d-929b392a480a" CreationDate="2012-04-13T18:21:33.473" UserId="1130" Comment="Wanted to point out the added benefit of promoting on-topic tags for the site" Text="I think a better way to approach it might be like how [Gaming.SE does their contests][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You start by picking a timeframe and a tag. The tag could be a design pattern, a development methodology, or any broad category you'd like to promote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two winners: One for best question, and one for best answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Best Question** is won by the person who asked a question with the contest tag within the contest timeframe, that has the most Views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Best Answer** is won by the the person who answered a question containing the contest tag within the contest timeframe, that has the most votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Winners get the software development Book or eBook of their choice (within a reasonable price range) from Amazon&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The beauty of this is users don't have to do anything extra to participate in the contest, and very little administrative work is needed to manage the contest. You'll need someone to determine the contest tags and timeframe, and create the announcement for it, and you'll need someone that knows how to get the top question and answer based on the criteria mentioned above (I'm not sure if that can be done with SE's search, or if you'd need the help of an SE employee to query the database)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, it's just regular SE Q&amp;A. The only difference is users are encouraged to post questions and answers within a specific tag to win prizes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an added bonus, you will be promoting tags which are clearly on-topic for the site, such as design-patterns or algorithms, and this will hopefully generate some great on-topic questions and answers for P.SE, which I think we need more of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/q/3908/8462" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9140" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3462" RevisionGUID="26adf35a-c671-4e8c-9842-7cfd365cd298" CreationDate="2012-04-14T03:52:54.170" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="##The great tag wiki edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How this would work: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Set up a contest time frame and chat room,&#xD;&#xA; 1. discuss and evaluate tag wiki edits submitted during time frame set,  &#xD;&#xA;    &lt;sub&gt;in order to short-list ones to be presented in nominees list at next step,&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA; 1. set up a &quot;voting question&quot; with nominees list (like [elections town hall](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2990/2012-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-digest) or [SCNA wish list](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2473/what-do-you-want-to-see-from-scna)),&#xD;&#xA; 1. whoever edit scores best &lt;strike&gt;gets kissed by Anna Lear and Mark Trapp&lt;/strike&gt; wins.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rules:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; 1. No edits outside the time frame. &#xD;&#xA; 1. Contest period: A month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What we gain:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. tag wiki improvements&#xD;&#xA; 1. more [publicity](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73261/how-to-motivate-users-to-write-tag-wikis &quot;How to motivate users to write tag wikis?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA; 1. better understanding of [Tag Wiki best practices](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/69584/tag-wiki-best-practices&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Background&#xD;&#xA;* definition from page with a _really nice_ title: [&amp;#39;tag-wiki&amp;#39; tag wiki - Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/tag-wiki/info &quot;title is full of meta isn't it&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An editable page that briefly summarizes the topic of the tag and that may provide links to existing questions that are often useful to many people...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tag wikis are made of 2 parts:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The Excerpt - which is displayed on question lists and tag hover menu.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The Body - which contains detailed information about a tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* definition that inspired me, from a [tag homepage/FAQ](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/1195/create-a-tag-homepage-faq) request at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a community-wiki editable home page... where we could place essentially the tag-specific FAQ and other tag-specific links" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9141" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3376" RevisionGUID="96e61655-c160-46e7-b83f-3d72db694529" CreationDate="2012-04-14T05:52:40.350" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/191041259266252800" />
  <row Id="9142" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3422" RevisionGUID="beb74c91-5793-4849-b7e2-93d5e17512d9" CreationDate="2012-04-15T01:12:47.307" UserId="34364" />
  <row Id="9143" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3421" RevisionGUID="95df4efc-e558-477a-a48b-d26eb328f928" CreationDate="2012-04-15T01:13:08.150" UserId="34364" />
  <row Id="9149" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3465" RevisionGUID="fe8278bd-1205-401b-b08b-7ed612c9d6c1" CreationDate="2012-04-16T11:48:23.773" UserId="7336" Text="I am referring to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/144649/what-icon-would-you-use-to-denote-an-xml-not-rss-feed-available&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which was closed - and when I (not having seen the warning that asking about icons was off topic at UX too) re-asked it at UX it of course also got closed. It is really amazing how quickly that took place. As if I was being punished for having the gall to ask for an opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All I want is to poll the programmer community for what they would pay attention to when I try to help them choose a service on my site over screen scraping. So I used the word ICON and get slapped. Very disappointing and unhelpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9150" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3465" RevisionGUID="fe8278bd-1205-401b-b08b-7ed612c9d6c1" CreationDate="2012-04-16T11:48:23.773" UserId="7336" Text="Would it be possible to get the mods to wait like 2 hours before closing a question in case it might be answered anyway?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9151" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3465" RevisionGUID="fe8278bd-1205-401b-b08b-7ed612c9d6c1" CreationDate="2012-04-16T11:48:23.773" UserId="7336" Text="|discussion|closing-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9152" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3466" RevisionGUID="73f04627-89e6-48c9-be7c-be05a21f74f8" CreationDate="2012-04-16T11:53:21.940" UserId="9062" Text="Polls aren't useful here. In fact the opposite is true. That is one of the reasons you got such a quick response." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9153" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3467" RevisionGUID="af4ccbed-ae47-406c-8597-fc533d631016" CreationDate="2012-04-16T11:54:58.240" UserId="4609" Text="Bluntly, no. Actually it is in the best interest of the community to close off topic questions as soon as possible so as not waste the time of people who would potentially answer if the content isn't going to be kept around on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, **SE sites are not the place for poll questions** of any kind. These kind of questions are specifically outside the scope and focus of the sites. Please take this kind of activity elsewhere on the internet so as not to dilute the focus that makes these sites what they are." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9154" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3465" RevisionGUID="8f452021-3bd7-4d41-9f80-585690cc8e12" CreationDate="2012-04-16T12:04:22.317" UserId="7336" Comment="added 26 characters in body" Text="I am referring to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/144649/what-icon-would-you-use-to-denote-an-xml-not-rss-feed-available&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which was closed - and when I (not having seen the warning that asking about icons was off topic at UX too) re-asked it at UX it of course also got closed. It is really amazing how quickly that took place. As if I was being punished for having the gall to ask for an opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All I want is to -poll- (ohh I cannot poll) ASK the programmer community for what they would pay attention to when I try to help them choose a service on my site over screen scraping. So I used the word ICON and get slapped. Very disappointing and unhelpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9155" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3465" RevisionGUID="912cabe4-25a9-4f40-9d2f-b214ba2832e9" CreationDate="2012-04-16T12:11:04.323" UserId="7336" Comment="added 191 characters in body" Text="I am referring to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/144649/what-icon-would-you-use-to-denote-an-xml-not-rss-feed-available&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which was closed - and when I (not having seen the warning that asking about icons was off topic at UX too) re-asked it at UX it of course also got closed. It is really amazing how quickly that took place. As if I was being punished for having the gall to ask for an opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All I want is to -poll- (ohh I cannot poll) ASK the programmer community for what they would pay attention to when I try to help them choose a service on my site over screen scraping. So I used the word ICON and get slapped. Very disappointing and unhelpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would this be a valid question anywhere at SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What is the most recognisable graphical element spring 2012 that would make you realise that this page exists in XML format too (not rss)**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9156" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3466" RevisionGUID="c735a004-e19d-47af-b19e-42161c134844" CreationDate="2012-04-16T12:16:48.777" UserId="9062" Comment="added 584 characters in body" Text="Polls aren't useful here. In fact the opposite is true. That is one of the reasons you got such a quick response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a read of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq you will see the very first section is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development. If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; algorithm and data structure concepts design patterns developer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; testing development methodologies freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; quality assurance software architecture software engineering software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; licensing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9157" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3466" RevisionGUID="5caeb4cf-0da0-48fd-ae5b-f6c0aad6fae0" CreationDate="2012-04-16T12:23:05.117" UserId="25936" Comment="added 33 characters in body" Text="Polls aren't useful here. In fact the opposite is true. That is one of the reasons you got such a quick response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a read of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq you will see the very first section is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development. If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software licensing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9158" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3468" RevisionGUID="5eaaabca-9166-4762-8e8f-32fe23d5aef4" CreationDate="2012-04-16T12:56:37.993" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; Would this be a valid question anywhere at SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What is the most recognisable graphical element spring 2012 that would make you realise that this page exists in XML format too (not rss)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, no version of your question would be suitable for Stack Exchange, the problem wasn't its wording. You are polling for people's opinions and that [doesn't really work with the Q&amp;A format][1]. The main problem with your question is that there is no sane way of validating the answers, as every possible answer is equally valid. For example let's say that I posted this as an answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then I ask 20 of my buddies who are active on various Stack Exchange sites to upvote it. How would you know that this +20 answer is what you are looking for? How would any one else know? There simply aren't any actual parameters in your question to test answers against, other than the extremely vague and unmeasurable &quot;most recognisable&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange sites work when the best answers float at the top, and they fail miserably on questions like yours, as there's simply no way to ensure that the highest voted answer is the best. [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, while we welcome _some_ subjective questions on Programmers, we expect all questions to require the unique expertise of software developers. And choosing an icon has nothing to do with our professional expertise, regardless of the fact that a part of your target audience (may be) programmers. It's a user experience question, but for all the  reasons I explained above and because icon questions tend to be too localized, your question [isn't suitable for User Experience Stack Exchange][4] as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kkO62.gif&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.ux.stackexchange.com/questions/629/is-it-time-to-put-an-end-to-icon-for-x-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9159" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3465" RevisionGUID="5f0af6cc-f752-4aab-a85e-a2e1e94b4691" CreationDate="2012-04-16T14:51:04.430" UserId="7336" Comment="edited title" Text="Would it be possible to get the mods to be a LITTLE slower in closing a question in case it might be answered or edited to be answerable anyway?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9160" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3453" RevisionGUID="c16a22bd-9a3c-4782-a542-1dbab68acf6c" CreationDate="2012-04-16T19:02:19.950" UserId="34364" Comment="added 12 characters in body" Text="## The great Stack Overflow treasure hunt&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How this would work: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. We set up a contest chat room;&#xD;&#xA; 1. We explore the vast wilderness that is Stack Overflow for questions that rightfully belong to us;&#xD;&#xA; 1. If we find a great question we post it to the chat room;&#xD;&#xA; 1. People periodically check the chat room and if they agree the questions are more suitable for Programmers they vote to migrate;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Whoever salvages more questions wins the super awesome prize.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rules:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; 1. No crap. **If it's closed on Stack Overflow, it's crap**. &#xD;&#xA; 1. **No old questions**, nothing older than three months. You can always post them in the chat room, but they won't count towards the big prize.&#xD;&#xA; 1. **No flags**, no need to bother the SO mods with our contest, just post the questions you find in the chat room.&#xD;&#xA; 1. Contest period: A month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What we gain:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Super awesome questions (hopefully)&#xD;&#xA; 1. The immense satisfaction of stealing the questions from Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One volunteer from the community will be responsible for counting each user's salvaged questions.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9161" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3400" RevisionGUID="b78d1fa0-9ff7-442b-afe1-3d89919973d2" CreationDate="2012-04-16T21:14:32.923" UserId="41899" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9162" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3469" RevisionGUID="197394b6-ffd0-4bfb-884d-668d28d792cd" CreationDate="2012-04-16T21:55:12.077" UserId="47" Text="![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is supposed to read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Admin &gt; Upcoming &amp; Current Community Events.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know what the symbol is in there, but it certainly doesn't look like &quot;&amp;&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/u84NP.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9163" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3469" RevisionGUID="197394b6-ffd0-4bfb-884d-668d28d792cd" CreationDate="2012-04-16T21:55:12.077" UserId="47" Text="The &quot;&amp;&quot; in the title font doesn't look anything link an ampserand" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9164" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3469" RevisionGUID="197394b6-ffd0-4bfb-884d-668d28d792cd" CreationDate="2012-04-16T21:55:12.077" UserId="47" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9165" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3470" RevisionGUID="36551600-1a77-45cf-a24f-8ea797c0ab95" CreationDate="2012-04-17T01:48:29.263" UserId="102" Text="This is will be fixed in the next build.  I blame [Jin][1] and his wonky fonts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/147574/jin" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9166" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3469" RevisionGUID="1e3e9c4f-e743-4122-936d-d30d30a0b578" CreationDate="2012-04-17T01:49:22.460" UserId="102" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9167" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3471" RevisionGUID="28295f03-38cd-4bb1-a043-371409f12f18" CreationDate="2012-04-17T14:41:03.283" UserId="30000" Text="There should be strong language in this site to motivate against the answer &quot;Have you tried Google?&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everyone knows how to use Google. This response is just arrogance and a lack of helpfulness.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe they have a good reason for asking the question. Maybe they did Google and didn't find a good answer. Maybe they found too many answers. Maybe they found conflicting information. Maybe they want a good answer from an expert, rather than a answer of questionable quality. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe they didn't understand the information that they found because it is too technical, or wordy, or too long and detailed. Maybe the answers they found were difficult for them to understand because they were not at the right level of knowledge and experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe they are Googling while waiting for a reply. Maybe they have concerns that you are not aware of, like they believe that there is a lot of mis-information on the topic (which is often true).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The whole point of this site is to answer questions, not to be obnoxious. &quot;Did you Google it?&quot; is just obnoxious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone wants to answer &quot;Did you Google it?&quot;, that is a perfectly natural reaction. But it is not an ***answer***. This site should tell them that it's not an answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9168" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3472" RevisionGUID="f1b7ef33-5bb5-468c-b9c7-aac18572522f" CreationDate="2012-04-17T19:16:07.393" UserId="21030" Text="IMHO a one line answer that is not backed up by references and doesn't show significant research efforts doesn't fit to P.SE. An example (no offense to Thorbjørn who is actually one of the best contributors): [How would you know if you've written readable and easily maintainable code?][1]. Peer code reviews is indeed one of the best ways but this answer doesn't explain why, doesn't give any references, etc. It seems like the contributor didn't have the time to work on the answer. In that case I think that a comment would be more appropriate. Am I right or I'm missing something here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/141010/21030" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9169" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3472" RevisionGUID="f1b7ef33-5bb5-468c-b9c7-aac18572522f" CreationDate="2012-04-17T19:16:07.393" UserId="21030" Text="One line answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9170" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3472" RevisionGUID="f1b7ef33-5bb5-468c-b9c7-aac18572522f" CreationDate="2012-04-17T19:16:07.393" UserId="21030" Text="|discussion|answer-quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9171" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3473" RevisionGUID="4fe85f63-1930-4fed-b53e-cb636ff00dec" CreationDate="2012-04-17T19:23:06.157" UserId="4" Text="I think that you are partially correct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A one line answer without any demonstration of experiences or citations of references isn't an example of a great answer. I wouldn't go so far as to say it doesn't fit the site, but it would be something to look at. A short answer that doesn't share experiences or references could be a bad answer, or it could be indicative of a bad question that doesn't elicit the need to share experiences or references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, no answer should be posted as a comment, even if it is short enough. Comments are for asking clarification or providing additional information, not providing answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9172" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3474" RevisionGUID="90ed2414-45e5-4e3c-8241-8cc2e1c4d975" CreationDate="2012-04-17T19:28:02.167" UserId="6415" Text="One-line answers show a lack of work, and you're right - they should be comments. You should flag them as such - moderators can convert them to comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This MSO discussion](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/129021/154388) sums it up well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Of course, obviously the better answers will generally be longer than one line. To bulk up the content, you might consider doing things like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- linking to the appropriate documentation&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- including a code sample&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- suggesting a superior alternative approach&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- cautioning against some things that people in the same situation commonly do wrong&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- adding superfluous bulleted lists&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many good answers that can be written in one sentence. However, the *best* answers explain the reasoning behind that one line. They explain the thought process that is required to arrive at the correct decision. They may include a personal experience that supports the conclusion reached. I've seen some good answers that take the approach the OP originally thought of and show how it leads to failure, and then present a better solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best defense against one-liners, as with many things on SE, is your voting powers. Don't be afraid to downvote the one-liners!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9173" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3474" RevisionGUID="38ddeb42-01b7-47c4-8b8d-eafae48887ad" CreationDate="2012-04-17T19:33:13.407" UserId="6415" Comment="deleted 157 characters in body" Text="[This MSO discussion](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/129021/154388) sums it up well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Of course, obviously the better answers will generally be longer than one line. To bulk up the content, you might consider doing things like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- linking to the appropriate documentation&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- including a code sample&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- suggesting a superior alternative approach&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- cautioning against some things that people in the same situation commonly do wrong&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- adding superfluous bulleted lists&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many good answers that can be written in one sentence. However, the *best* answers explain the reasoning behind that one line. They explain the thought process that is required to arrive at the correct decision. They may include a personal experience that supports the conclusion reached. I've seen some good answers that take the approach the OP originally thought of and show how it leads to failure, and then present a better solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best defense against _harmful_ one-liners, as with many things on SE, is your voting powers. Don't be afraid to downvote the one-liners!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9174" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3475" RevisionGUID="88c4b455-fc72-4c67-ad3b-7c4b217f0cb2" CreationDate="2012-04-17T20:22:17.607" UserId="1130" Text="Judge an answer by it's quality and correctness, not it's length. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvote it if the quality is below an acceptable standard, or the answer is incorrect, but don't discriminate against answers just because of their length.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also don't forget, you can always leave a comment requesting the user expand their one-line answer into a more detailed response that covers the hows and the whys of the situation. I find many users are quite willing to do this if asked, and it will probably lead to them writing better quality answers in the future." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9175" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3476" RevisionGUID="01296141-2bab-4ecb-9645-530099cba32d" CreationDate="2012-04-17T20:35:56.013" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="[The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com) has now entered public beta. Yay! Check out their [meta discussion site](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com) for more information about how they're handling these types of questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9176" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3472" RevisionGUID="93db0f26-e334-4c3e-b9d1-28b6d7384ce6" CreationDate="2012-04-18T05:07:44.760" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/192479504852197376" />
  <row Id="9177" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3477" RevisionGUID="ffa1240c-a23a-4b61-9317-ba24a3cb3a0d" CreationDate="2012-04-18T09:51:25.520" UserId="31260" Text="Your example looks like an awesome answer to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; \- How would you know if you've written readable and easily maintainable code?  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; \- [Your peer tells you after reviewing the code.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/141010/2 &quot;original version of the answer&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only does it answer the question, it also introduces important notions of peers, code review and feedback, ties them together and presents in a way that is easy to understand and use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer style is not quite typical, in the sense that most other good answers I've seen at Programmers, tend to be more verbose. But since stylistic consistency is **not the only criteria** I use, this doesn't worry me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For the sake of completeness need to note that this one-liner is pretty exceptional; vast majority of other one-liners I deal with at P.SE are not like that - easy targets for downvote, flag or &quot;expanding edit&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9178" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3477" RevisionGUID="9120bdd9-39c9-43af-b4bd-d11b7ef36bee" CreationDate="2012-04-18T10:41:37.253" UserId="31260" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="Your example looks like an awesome answer to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; \- How would you know if you've written readable and easily maintainable code?  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; \- [Your peer tells you after reviewing the code.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/141010/2 &quot;original version of the answer&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only does it answer the question, it also introduces important notions of peers, code review and feedback, ties them together and presents in a way that is easy to understand and use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer style is not quite typical, in the sense that most other good answers I've seen at Programmers tend to be more verbose. But since stylistic consistency is **not the only criteria** I use, this doesn't worry me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For the sake of completeness need to note that this one-liner is pretty exceptional; vast majority of other one-liners I deal with at P.SE are not like that - easy targets for downvote, flag or &quot;expanding edit&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9179" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3478" RevisionGUID="68a1e8b4-13a2-4420-b19b-f3c8794dee38" CreationDate="2012-04-18T12:24:40.510" UserId="41381" Text="Writing a novel when a sentence will do is a bad answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9180" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3479" RevisionGUID="f28b3467-7d3c-421b-b4dd-003b0519f733" CreationDate="2012-04-18T12:28:02.193" UserDisplayName="user1249" Text="Note:  I only found this discussion accidentally.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it interesting that you consider _my_ answer to be an example of &quot;...a one line answer that is not backed up by references and doesn't show significant research efforts..&quot;, and I believe this is not so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps the misunderstanding is that you would like explicit mentioning of all the references and all the research effort _in the answer_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this particular case it is simply not necessary.  The laconic style is intentional since lots of wording will just muddle the point being made, namely that you as the author of the code cannot tell, and the computer being a victim of the halting problem cannot either.  You MUST ask another human (or yourself when you have forgotten sufficiently of what you knew when you wrote it).   I believe the number of upvotes reflect that other programmers have enough experience to recognize this too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, in _this_ case a one-liner is the most precise way of mentoring the asker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9181" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3480" RevisionGUID="2f58a7bf-1118-438e-8847-379b7d9132e3" CreationDate="2012-04-18T13:17:13.340" UserId="6617" Text="I'd argue that an one-line-answer with many upvotes is an indication of a bad question. An answer that doesn't need citations, explanations or references to be deemed correct is most likely either an obvious answer (&quot;yes, a compiler compiles&quot;) or a highly subjective/religious answer (&quot;Linux *is* better&quot;). Good questions do not provoke such answers, at least not with that many upvotes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9182" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3477" RevisionGUID="0ebb02ff-1680-4ba0-804b-82525c81e2bb" CreationDate="2012-04-18T15:20:47.993" UserId="31260" Comment="minor wordsmithing" Text="Your example looks like an awesome answer to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; \- How would you know if you've written readable and easily maintainable code?  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; \- [Your peer tells you after reviewing the code.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/141010/2 &quot;original version of the answer&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only does it answer the question, it also introduces important notions of peers, code review and feedback, ties them together and presents in a way that is easy to understand and use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer style is not quite typical, in the sense that most other good answers I've seen at Programmers tend to be more verbose. But since stylistic consistency is **not the only criteria** I use, this doesn't worry me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For the sake of completeness need to note that this particular one-liner is pretty exceptional; vast majority of other one-liners I deal with at P.SE are not like that - easy targets for downvote, flag or &quot;expanding edit&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9183" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3477" RevisionGUID="0b8fdcda-f264-4431-91cd-413680351e30" CreationDate="2012-04-18T18:00:11.590" UserId="31260" Comment="Should we expect from the readers to infer the needed context?" Text="Your example looks like an awesome answer to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; \- How would you know if you've written readable and easily maintainable code?  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; \- [Your peer tells you after reviewing the code.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/141010/2 &quot;original version of the answer&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only does it answer the question, it also introduces important notions of peers, code review and feedback, ties them together and presents in a way that is easy to understand and use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer style is not quite typical, in the sense that most other good answers I've seen at Programmers tend to be more verbose. But since stylistic consistency is **not the only criteria** I use, this doesn't worry me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For the sake of completeness need to note that this particular one-liner is pretty exceptional; vast majority of other one-liners I deal with at P.SE are not like that - easy targets for downvote, flag or &quot;expanding edit&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question is: Should we expect from the readers to infer the needed context? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good question. My take is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. in more typical cases it's better to just err on safe side and provide context explicitly  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Mainly because expanding **typical** one-liner does no harm.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;1. in this particular case - yes, it looks reasonable to expect that from a reader  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Because expanding **high quality** one-liner could do more harm than good.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9184" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3477" RevisionGUID="5b9847e8-4168-419d-9352-cd1fe7011887" CreationDate="2012-04-18T18:27:33.063" UserId="31260" Comment="minor wordsmithing" Text="Your example looks like an awesome answer to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; \- How would you know if you've written readable and easily maintainable code?  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; \- [Your peer tells you after reviewing the code.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/141010/2 &quot;original version of the answer&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only does it answer the question, it also introduces important notions of peers, code review and feedback, ties them together and presents in a way that is easy to understand and use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer style is not quite typical, in the sense that most other good answers I've seen at Programmers tend to be more verbose. But since stylistic consistency is **not the only criteria** I use, this doesn't worry me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For the sake of completeness need to note that this particular one-liner is pretty exceptional; vast majority of other one-liners I deal with at P.SE are not like that - easy targets for downvote, flag or &quot;expanding edit&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question is: Should we expect from the readers to infer the needed context? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good question. My take is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. in more typical cases it's better to just err on safe side and provide context explicitly  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Mainly because expanding **average** one-liner does no harm.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;1. in this particular case - yes, it looks reasonable to expect that from a reader  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Because expanding **high quality** one-liner could do more harm than good.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9185" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3481" RevisionGUID="fcf6b4b6-7eaa-41be-ab67-4c4e39c1b287" CreationDate="2012-04-18T20:09:52.897" UserId="52068" Text="I ask the question because I'm curious to know what kind of background from a technical standpoint does it take to create, manage, scale something like SE. Are there a lot of engineers drawing UML diagrams, programmers pounding away at their keyboards, a bunch of late nights for everybody, etc." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9186" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3481" RevisionGUID="fcf6b4b6-7eaa-41be-ab67-4c4e39c1b287" CreationDate="2012-04-18T20:09:52.897" UserId="52068" Text="What is the educational background of software developers at the SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9187" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3481" RevisionGUID="fcf6b4b6-7eaa-41be-ab67-4c4e39c1b287" CreationDate="2012-04-18T20:09:52.897" UserId="52068" Text="|discussion|support|feature-request|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9188" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3481" RevisionGUID="76628379-9bfd-4f96-8275-356ebb8d09b4" CreationDate="2012-04-18T20:12:13.313" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9189" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3481" RevisionGUID="99a53f9d-fef9-49c0-9bf4-6a87f67eb7e1" CreationDate="2012-04-18T20:12:58.930" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|stackexchange|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9190" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3477" RevisionGUID="abb01060-b546-49be-9ce3-fd88d4571691" CreationDate="2012-04-19T07:02:28.560" UserId="31260" Comment="I support general guidelines you mentioned so far..." Text="Your example looks like an awesome answer to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; \- How would you know if you've written readable and easily maintainable code?  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; \- [Your peer tells you after reviewing the code.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/141010/2 &quot;original version of the answer&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only does it answer the question, it also introduces important notions of peers, code review and feedback, ties them together and presents in a way that is easy to understand and use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer style is not quite typical, in the sense that most other good answers I've seen at Programmers tend to be more verbose. But since stylistic consistency is **not the only criteria** I use, this doesn't worry me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For the sake of completeness need to note that this particular one-liner is pretty exceptional; vast majority of other one-liners I deal with at P.SE are not like that - easy targets for downvote, flag or &quot;expanding edit&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question is: Should we expect from the readers to infer the needed context? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good question. My take is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. in more typical cases it's better to just err on safe side and provide context explicitly  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Mainly because expanding **average** one-liner does no harm.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;1. in this particular case - yes, it looks reasonable to expect that from a reader  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Because expanding **high quality** one-liner could do more harm than good.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To avoid misunderstanding, I would like to make it perfectly clear that I **support** general guidelines you referred to. I believe that one-liners are typically not a good fit for Programmers. I also think that providing explicit answer context is as a rule beneficial for the answer quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that I may occasionally encounter particular exceptional case (like it was with your example answer) won't stop me from following these guidelines." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9191" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="156920c8-4da8-4a3c-8425-649c18626077" CreationDate="2012-04-19T09:18:23.680" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|contest|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9192" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="88d71ad4-da50-4c63-bad6-91bea86a0285" CreationDate="2012-04-19T10:32:58.903" UserId="34364" Comment="added 105 characters in body" Text="The [last celebration proposal][1] we had never got off of it's feet. In fact, the Birthday Celebration Proposal's time has come, and it left a long time ago. So a few other P.SE members and I came up with an idea: let's have a contest!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We realize that other sites that have had contests have had a lot of support, and the community didn't have to do too much of the dirty work. But that's the beauty of it. If we follow through with something like this, we will get more publicity and support from [higher powers][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have, somewhat, became the ugly little brother of Stack Overflow. We have had to rebuild, and clean up the mess from the early days of P.SE, before the [revolution][3]. A lot of other sites did too, but most are done. Mainly because they had SE backing them up. Or a CHAOS member.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why this contest will be great. We, as a community, will set the entire thing up, give it to SE, and let them serve it up. Overall, this is going to give us:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A stronger community.&#xD;&#xA; - More &quot;power users&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - A fun activity.&#xD;&#xA; - More executive support from SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;because they saw that we put it together ourselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you agree with any of these ideas please upvote. If you disagree, please downvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an idea, please post it as an answer to this question. Structure it in the same (or similar) format as I did. If you want to edit my idea, do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## And the winner is... Rachel! ##&#xD;&#xA;We will implement this contest as soon as possible. Hope everybody has a little fun and we can help the whole community. Thanks to everyone who voted and submitted ideas!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2858/belated-birthday-celebration-proposal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9193" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3482" RevisionGUID="8bc4518a-562d-44e6-9e9e-8375ff897abc" CreationDate="2012-04-19T15:21:27.047" UserId="41785" Text="Uh, are you seriously asking what the education background is of the Stack Exchange developers? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our core development team is: Jarrod, Sam, Marc, Emmett, Geoff, Nick, Ben, Kevin, and Rebecca (sometimes). All of them have at least a bachelor's degree from accredited universities. Many of them brings with them years of experience, either at large corporations (pharmaceuticals conglomerates, Microsoft, etc.) or in open source / personal projects prior to joining SE. A number of them were super-major-top users on SO when we pulled them onto the team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm closing this question because, seriously, anything you need to know about our dev team you can find out from http://stackexchange.com/about/team and by checking out their Stack Overflow profiles." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9194" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3481" RevisionGUID="cb6ca3ff-ab53-4d30-a63e-98c6d30d87c2" CreationDate="2012-04-19T15:21:40.570" UserId="41785" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:41785,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Aarthi&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="9195" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3482" RevisionGUID="7b96f1bc-d2f6-413a-b1d8-3506e3b60566" CreationDate="2012-04-19T15:27:58.147" UserId="41785" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="Uh, are you seriously asking what the education background is of the Stack Exchange developers? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our core development team is: Jarrod, Sam, Marc, Emmett, Geoff, Nick, Ben, Kevin, and Rebecca (sometimes). All of them have at least a bachelor's degree from accredited universities. Many of them bring with them years of experience, either at large corporations (pharmaceuticals conglomerates, Microsoft, etc.) or in open source / personal projects prior to joining SE. A number of them were super-major-top users on SO when we pulled them onto the team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm closing this question because, seriously, anything you need to know about our dev team you can find out from http://stackexchange.com/about/team and by checking out their Stack Overflow profiles." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9196" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3469" RevisionGUID="dbce11d8-9e9c-4f98-8f87-48e9b16d1ad8" CreationDate="2012-04-20T13:30:04.313" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body; edited title" Text="![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is supposed to read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Admin &gt; Upcoming &amp; Current Community Events.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know what the symbol is in there, but it certainly doesn't look like &quot;&amp;&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/u84NP.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9197" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3469" RevisionGUID="dbce11d8-9e9c-4f98-8f87-48e9b16d1ad8" CreationDate="2012-04-20T13:30:04.313" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body; edited title" Text="The &quot;&amp;&quot; in the title font doesn't look anything like an ampserand" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9198" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3483" RevisionGUID="21f6d6e9-6a0e-418a-a56c-fba540ae46de" CreationDate="2012-04-20T16:05:23.993" UserId="3965" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145359/which-revision-control-system-to-use-for-2-semester-capstone-course/145368#comment274842_145368) was closed as a duplicate, but I'm not seeing it.  One's asking us to consider issues for a college group project for people who have little to no experience with version control.  The [alleged duplicate][1] is an experienced version control user wondering whether to switch to something more powerful for one-man non-academic projects.  Even though both questions fall into the broad category of &quot;version control,&quot; the evaluation criteria are completely different, and therefore the &quot;why&quot; and &quot;how&quot; explanations are going to be different.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It wouldn't surprise me if the question has been asked before, but the [linked duplicate][2] isn't it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69308/git-for-personal-one-man-projects-overkill&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69308/git-for-personal-one-man-projects-overkill" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9199" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3483" RevisionGUID="21f6d6e9-6a0e-418a-a56c-fba540ae46de" CreationDate="2012-04-20T16:05:23.993" UserId="3965" Text="How are these duplicates?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9200" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3483" RevisionGUID="21f6d6e9-6a0e-418a-a56c-fba540ae46de" CreationDate="2012-04-20T16:05:23.993" UserId="3965" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9201" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3484" RevisionGUID="0013db3a-f3a3-46fd-90a4-f81a4df81b5a" CreationDate="2012-04-20T16:17:31.207" UserId="47" Text="That would be my slip up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question had three close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One as a duplicate of the question you linked to, the other two as &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I saw the question took a quick look at the duplicate and thought that it was probably was a duplicate. However, looking at it now I see that it's not really.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I would have closed as not constructive, so I'm going to go ahead and and reopen and reclose with the correct close reason.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9202" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3485" RevisionGUID="c300d344-096e-4919-beeb-1f9ae115eb7a" CreationDate="2012-04-20T16:20:03.133" UserId="25476" Text="I agree with you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They do seem like altogether different questions to me, however the original question still seems terribly Not Constructive.  It is basically inviting a bunch of answers with peoples opinions on their favorite source control with high general metrics:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; easy to use (ie this should be a tool they can use rather than spend a lot of time fighting it)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Easy to install and maintain for the person who does this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; still be relevant for subsequent professional work once they graduate &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are desirable traits in a good laptop let alone source control software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question should still be closed in my opinion but I just feel the reason listed is wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** ChrisF posted his response before me, this answer is now defunct!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9203" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3484" RevisionGUID="ff325b09-8809-4b2e-b72d-79489e14d207" CreationDate="2012-04-20T16:22:27.733" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo correction" Text="That would be my slip up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question had three close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One as a duplicate of the question you linked to, the other two as &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I saw the question took a quick look at the duplicate and thought that it was probably a duplicate. However, looking at it now I see that it's not really.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I would have closed as not constructive, so I'm going to go ahead and and reopen and reclose with the correct close reason.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9204" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3486" RevisionGUID="1f50f4fd-1b8f-43d1-82d6-815a16b4588e" CreationDate="2012-04-20T19:52:15.290" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Other Stack Exchange sites have interesting and descriptive names for their chat rooms while ours is just &quot;Programmers&quot;. Would it be possible to change it to something more like those sites? Perhaps &quot;The Whiteboard&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9205" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3486" RevisionGUID="1f50f4fd-1b8f-43d1-82d6-815a16b4588e" CreationDate="2012-04-20T19:52:15.290" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Can we change the name of the chat room?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9206" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3486" RevisionGUID="1f50f4fd-1b8f-43d1-82d6-815a16b4588e" CreationDate="2012-04-20T19:52:15.290" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9207" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3486" RevisionGUID="db4d9cc8-a1bf-498b-9d60-60cedc16330c" CreationDate="2012-04-20T19:53:45.803" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|chat|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9208" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3487" RevisionGUID="1eee137f-1eb4-40d4-be69-ffbc653a45e8" CreationDate="2012-04-20T19:57:08.247" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="I propose &quot;The Whiteboard&quot; as the new name of the chat room." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9209" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3486" RevisionGUID="771039c1-3198-42b0-a284-8a9213473710" CreationDate="2012-04-20T19:57:27.700" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="added 72 characters in body" Text="Other Stack Exchange sites have interesting and descriptive names for their chat rooms while ours is just &quot;Programmers&quot;. Would it be possible to change it to something more like those sites? Perhaps &quot;The Whiteboard&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's call a deadline of a week. That's a poll but I've mod backing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9210" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3486" RevisionGUID="75511787-7cf7-49a3-bd93-3d2af966f529" CreationDate="2012-04-20T20:04:18.023" UserId="25936" Comment="added 29 characters in body" Text="Other Stack Exchange sites have interesting and descriptive names for their chat rooms while ours is just &quot;Programmers&quot;. Would it be possible to change it to something more like those sites?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's call a deadline of a week, we'll have to decide by Friday 27th @ 20:00 (UTC). That's a poll but I've got mod backing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9211" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3486" RevisionGUID="75511787-7cf7-49a3-bd93-3d2af966f529" CreationDate="2012-04-20T20:04:18.023" UserId="25936" Comment="added 29 characters in body" Text="|discussion|featured|chat|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9212" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3486" RevisionGUID="b0660a1d-df68-4937-a533-16ca19fd50b2" CreationDate="2012-04-20T20:09:04.580" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/193431107637739521" />
  <row Id="9216" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3490" RevisionGUID="31e79f7b-e839-4f67-af5a-e2aff079badf" CreationDate="2012-04-21T00:33:36.640" UserId="34364" Text="Really. We just cleaned up the [tag:career] tag, and now we have a [tag:carreer] tag? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's poke it with a stick. Or better yet, just kill the dang thing. It has [one question][1] and that question is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145288/boring-vs-cool-ratio" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9217" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3490" RevisionGUID="31e79f7b-e839-4f67-af5a-e2aff079badf" CreationDate="2012-04-21T00:33:36.640" UserId="34364" Text="Kill The [carreer] Tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9218" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3490" RevisionGUID="31e79f7b-e839-4f67-af5a-e2aff079badf" CreationDate="2012-04-21T00:33:36.640" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9219" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3491" RevisionGUID="46add29b-98c8-4f23-a2c3-9cbccd2e17ea" CreationDate="2012-04-21T00:58:10.713" UserId="25936" Text="I don't know what's worst, the tag, the other tags on the question, the question itself, or the fact that it has 2 reopen votes (really, people?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I removed the tag from the question, it will die on its own. Unless of course someone brings it back, in which case we'll have to deal with it a bit more severely. As a rule of thumb, if a tag is so obviously wrong and it's on less than, let's say, 5 questions, go ahead and remove it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9220" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3492" RevisionGUID="8011fdf3-bad8-4ecf-892d-1ec9c61ce764" CreationDate="2012-04-21T12:17:19.540" UserId="31260" Text="Could we merge [tag:interfaces] questions (10 total) into [tag:interface] (41 total), and make them synonyms?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note given the number of questions, I'd bet 4:1 that &quot;interface&quot; makes better master tag.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9221" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3492" RevisionGUID="8011fdf3-bad8-4ecf-892d-1ec9c61ce764" CreationDate="2012-04-21T12:17:19.540" UserId="31260" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [interfaces] -&gt; [interface]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9222" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3492" RevisionGUID="8011fdf3-bad8-4ecf-892d-1ec9c61ce764" CreationDate="2012-04-21T12:17:19.540" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9223" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3493" RevisionGUID="71b1cd0e-4adf-4d52-8c10-1c2dcc304df2" CreationDate="2012-04-21T12:19:59.537" UserId="47" Text="I've suggested the synonym but with [tag:interfaces] as the master (as it's more usual to have the plural as the tag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll wait a little while to get some more feedback before finalising it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9224" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3492" RevisionGUID="e5a0aa69-fde4-41d7-a131-bc67570b7191" CreationDate="2012-04-21T12:22:43.480" UserId="31260" Comment="added 249 characters in body" Text="Could we merge [tag:interfaces] questions (10 total) into [tag:interface] (41 total), and make them synonyms?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note given the number of questions, I'd bet 4:1 that &quot;interface&quot; makes better master tag. But since [the usual rule is to have the plural as the tag](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3492/tag-merge-synonym-request-interfaces-interface/3493#comment9388_3492 &quot;as pointed by Chris&quot;), I wouldn't mind it done the other way.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9226" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3492" RevisionGUID="93610baf-7cf7-4854-9188-45ef31b87e18" CreationDate="2012-04-21T17:46:00.933" UserId="31260" Comment="adjusted direction [interface] -&gt; [interfaces]" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [interface] -&gt; [interfaces]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9227" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3492" RevisionGUID="93610baf-7cf7-4854-9188-45ef31b87e18" CreationDate="2012-04-21T17:46:00.933" UserId="31260" Comment="adjusted direction [interface] -&gt; [interfaces]" Text="Could we merge [tag:interface] questions (41 total) into [tag:interfaces] (10 total), and make them synonyms?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note given the number of questions, I'd bet 4:1 that &quot;interface&quot; makes better master tag. But since [the usual rule is to have the plural as the tag](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3492/tag-merge-synonym-request-interfaces-interface/3493#comment9388_3492 &quot;as pointed by Chris&quot;), I wouldn't mind it done the other way.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9228" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3494" RevisionGUID="781ed491-fb61-48af-b7d3-3ff953e1b5b8" CreationDate="2012-04-21T21:30:06.487" UserId="29020" Text="I have written a comment to a question a few months ago and I remember one user had an interesting answer (also as a comment) but I cannot find that question any more. Is there a way to have a list of all questions in which I have posted a comment?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have found nothing about this in my profile." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9229" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3494" RevisionGUID="781ed491-fb61-48af-b7d3-3ff953e1b5b8" CreationDate="2012-04-21T21:30:06.487" UserId="29020" Text="Is it possible to find a list of all questions in which I have written a comment?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9230" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3494" RevisionGUID="781ed491-fb61-48af-b7d3-3ff953e1b5b8" CreationDate="2012-04-21T21:30:06.487" UserId="29020" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9231" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3495" RevisionGUID="aef6f6f0-e879-4b40-9882-8d5aab230281" CreationDate="2012-04-21T21:38:15.040" UserId="47" Text="There's a list of all the comments you've posted on your profile:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Go to [Activity &gt; Comments](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/29020/giorgio?tab=activity&amp;sort=comments)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it doesn't distinguish between comments on questions and comments on answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9232" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3490" RevisionGUID="062426fc-97b8-4d72-b11d-99cc6e7ee619" CreationDate="2012-04-22T17:09:26.210" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/194110675327528960" />
  <row Id="9233" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3496" RevisionGUID="b53cdbf4-6395-4f56-8170-ae8d6619c295" CreationDate="2012-04-23T05:40:17.763" UserId="31260" Text="I think it would be nice to merge tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [tag:vcs] (14 questions) -&gt; [tag:version-control] (307 questions)&#xD;&#xA;2. [tag:vm] (7 questions) -&gt; [tag:virtual-machine] (24 questions)&#xD;&#xA;3. [tag:foss] (11 questions) -&gt; [tag:open-source] (462 questions)  &#xD;&#xA;   that one looks tricky, see older discussion: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1405/we-have-an-open-source-a-free-software-and-a-foss-tag-are-philosophical-reason&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9234" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3496" RevisionGUID="b53cdbf4-6395-4f56-8170-ae8d6619c295" CreationDate="2012-04-23T05:40:17.763" UserId="31260" Text="few loose ends tags that seem to be synonyms - vcs, vm and maybe foss" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9235" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3496" RevisionGUID="b53cdbf4-6395-4f56-8170-ae8d6619c295" CreationDate="2012-04-23T05:40:17.763" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9236" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3497" RevisionGUID="4c40e552-179d-4bc9-aed4-2d8887d941c4" CreationDate="2012-04-23T07:43:24.737" UserId="4" Text="I've proposed the synonyms for mapping [vcs to version-control][1] and [vm to virtual-machine][2]. I figure we'll give it some time. If it gets voted on as approved by the community, great. If it's really close in a day or two and there aren't any objections, I (or another mod) can help it along by forcing the synonym.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as FOSS and open-source, I would need to dig deeper into how the tags are used and if there are any others related to open source software that need to be considered. On the surface, it seems like a good idea. I agree with the top voted answer in the question you linked to, but I'd want to investigate a bit more before making a final answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/version-control/synonyms&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/virtual-machine/synonyms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9238" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3497" RevisionGUID="42101ad8-e01c-4743-b409-aab9f96a82c1" CreationDate="2012-04-23T12:35:49.007" UserId="4" Comment="added 409 characters in body" Text="I've proposed the synonyms for mapping [vcs to version-control][1] and [vm to virtual-machine][2]. I figure we'll give it some time. If it gets voted on as approved by the community, great. If it's really close in a day or two and there aren't any objections, I (or another mod) can help it along by forcing the synonym.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, virtual-machine might need a clean-up at some point. It appears some questions are about virtual machines in a development environment while others are about the JVM or CLR virtual machines. It might be a good idea to consolidate into virtual-machine and then cleanup to consolidate into &quot;jvm&quot;, &quot;clr&quot;, other specific programming language VMs, and &quot;virtualization&quot;. But we'll cross that bridge later.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as FOSS and open-source, I would need to dig deeper into how the tags are used and if there are any others related to open source software that need to be considered. On the surface, it seems like a good idea. I agree with the top voted answer in the question you linked to, but I'd want to investigate a bit more before making a final answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/version-control/synonyms&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/virtual-machine/synonyms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9239" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3498" RevisionGUID="10638836-0b4a-42fe-96be-6366b48dd2da" CreationDate="2012-04-23T12:42:08.347" UserId="30160" Text="I post a question here a while ago when I was banned. Then somehow my ban was lifted. After that I have been answering questions for the most part. Today I felt the need to ask a question, and there is goes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account. See&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://goo.gl/C1Kwu to learn more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before, I was skeptical of the ban process. I thought it has to do with moderators. I even asked a question about this on skeptics.SE site as well which was deleted. However the discussion there before my question was deleted convinced me that the ban is totally automatic and nothing to do with moderators. I just want to point out that the ban process is quite flawed in my opinion. Here are all my previous questions![enter image description here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/SO6dw.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9240" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3498" RevisionGUID="10638836-0b4a-42fe-96be-6366b48dd2da" CreationDate="2012-04-23T12:42:08.347" UserId="30160" Text="banned again on Programmers.SE" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9241" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3498" RevisionGUID="10638836-0b4a-42fe-96be-6366b48dd2da" CreationDate="2012-04-23T12:42:08.347" UserId="30160" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9242" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3499" RevisionGUID="c76e9435-d800-4752-a591-f0c5b549f183" CreationDate="2012-04-23T12:58:46.747" UserId="47" Text="The ban only concerns your questions, not all your posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at your questions I see 11 in total, of which 6 have been deleted leaving 5 still visible on the site. Of the delete ones three had negative scores, one quite a large negative score. The question ban looks at **all** your questions, not just the undeleted ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know the details of the algorithm - I'm merely a moderator - but I *think* that if you improve your existing questions and provide high quality answers the question ban will be lifted. So you need to do the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Edit your remaining questions, particularly the low scoring ones, to make them better questions.&#xD;&#xA;2. Edit your answers to improve them so that they gain upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;3. Provide more *good quality* answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9243" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3500" RevisionGUID="faacb538-2362-4676-9fcc-c37557d918cf" CreationDate="2012-04-23T13:05:04.107" UserId="1130" Text="I was looking through questions on Workplaces.SE and saw two users that will probably be [beta moderators][1] were both under the mistaken impression that P.SE is a site for programmers, and were [suggesting to move an off-topic question here][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand that assumption since our tag line that shows in Google and in our welcome message for users not logged is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes it sound like we are a SE site about a specific type of programmer, not about conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we remove the words &quot;professional programmers interested in&quot; to make it more clear what the site is actually for?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/135/316&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/360/316" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9244" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3500" RevisionGUID="faacb538-2362-4676-9fcc-c37557d918cf" CreationDate="2012-04-23T13:05:04.107" UserId="1130" Text="P.SE tag line is misleading. Can we rephrase it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9245" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3500" RevisionGUID="faacb538-2362-4676-9fcc-c37557d918cf" CreationDate="2012-04-23T13:05:04.107" UserId="1130" Text="|feature-request|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9246" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3501" RevisionGUID="99956c9c-638b-4655-b64c-99d2db7772f3" CreationDate="2012-04-23T13:12:38.897" UserId="4" Text="The typical tag line should define who the target audience of the site is and what types of questions are allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In our tagline, the who is &quot;professional programmers&quot; (although I'd support changing that to something more like &quot;professional software developers&quot; to capture the non-programmers such as process improvement specialists, architects, designers, project managers managing software-intensive projects, software testers...) and the allowed questions are &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Removing the who part would lose part of the key definition of this site. The questions here, although they might be relevant to hobbiest software developers, are geared toward software developers in a working environment. That is a core definition of our audience and shouldn't be removed from the tagline." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9248" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3500" RevisionGUID="3f9b87cf-28b3-48f3-bb38-1830ed08cfcc" CreationDate="2012-04-23T13:19:24.900" UserId="1130" Comment="added 469 characters in body" Text="I was looking through questions on Workplaces.SE and saw two users that will probably be [beta moderators][1] were both under the mistaken impression that P.SE is a site for programmers, and were [suggesting to move an off-topic question here][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand that assumption since our tag line that shows in Google and in our welcome message for users not logged is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes it sound like we are a SE site about a specific type of programmer, not about conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we remove the words &quot;professional programmers interested in&quot; to make it more clear what the site is actually for?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thomas pointed out that the tag line should describe who the site is for, so perhaps we could just change &quot;interested in&quot; to &quot;about&quot; to clarify that the site is about software development, not about programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional programmers about conceptual questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional software developers about conceptual questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/135/316&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/360/316" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9249" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3498" RevisionGUID="320bb54d-c365-41a1-9f14-983d34ca1236" CreationDate="2012-04-23T13:22:33.150" UserId="30160" Comment="added 921 characters in body" Text="I post a question here a while ago when I was banned. Then somehow my ban was lifted. After that I have been answering questions for the most part. Today I felt the need to ask a question, and there is goes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account. See&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://goo.gl/C1Kwu to learn more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before, I was skeptical of the ban process. I thought it has to do with moderators. I even asked a question about this on skeptics.SE site as well which was deleted. However the discussion there before my question was deleted convinced me that the ban is totally automatic and nothing to do with moderators. I just want to point out that the ban process is quite flawed in my opinion. Here are all my previous questions![enter image description here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Adding my asked questions as well. I did go to reputation tab, show removed post and I do not see any deleted post there. But I know I had a couple of deleted questions that contributed to my banned in the first place months ago. Since then most of my activity is positive. In fact all of the activity you see here is after that ban. As general, you can see it is positive. My only old question that got -2 votes was http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112336/creating-a-blog-for-software-changes which has +2 votes on it but is still not negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a person like me, the reason one should be banned is if he spams, overposts, does not do research before asking. However that is not that case with my questions. Or may be I am too dumb to be a member of this site according to SE standards, which is good to know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/SO6dw.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ReYyU.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9251" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3498" RevisionGUID="f3887fe4-6b71-4cfa-95d1-ea0448df7b09" CreationDate="2012-04-23T13:28:17.307" UserId="30160" Comment="edited body" Text="I post a question here a while ago when I was banned. Then somehow my ban was lifted. After that I have been answering questions for the most part. Today I felt the need to ask a question, and there is goes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account. See&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://goo.gl/C1Kwu to learn more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before, I was skeptical of the ban process. I thought it has to do with moderators. I even asked a question about this on skeptics.SE site as well which was deleted. However the discussion there before my question was deleted convinced me that the ban is totally automatic and nothing to do with moderators. I just want to point out that the ban process is quite flawed in my opinion. Here are all my previous questions![enter image description here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Adding my asked questions as well. I did go to reputation tab, show removed post and I do not see any deleted post there. But I know I had a couple of deleted questions that contributed to my banned in the first place months ago. Since then most of my activity is positive. In fact all of the activity you see here is after that ban. As general, you can see it is positive. My only old question that got -2 votes was http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112336/creating-a-blog-for-software-changes which had +2 votes on it but is still not negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a person like me, the reason one should be banned is if he spams, overposts, does not do research before asking. However that is not that case with my questions. Or may be I am too dumb to be a member of this site according to SE standards, which is good to know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/SO6dw.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ReYyU.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9252" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3500" RevisionGUID="75e7d2e9-0146-44af-9bde-0937ef7b4f86" CreationDate="2012-04-23T13:46:25.257" UserId="1130" Comment="Cleaned up question" Text="I was looking through questions on Workplaces.SE and saw two users that will probably be [beta moderators][1] were both under the mistaken impression that P.SE is a site for programmers, and were [suggesting to move an off-topic question here][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand that assumption since our tag line that shows in Google and in our welcome message for users not logged is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes it sound like we are a SE site about a specific type of programmer, not about conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since a tag line should ideally be in the form of `This is a site for [acceptable skill level of audience] about [topic]`, can we rephrase it to clarify that the site is **for** professional programmers and **about** conceptual questions on software development?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional programmers about conceptual questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/135/316&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/360/316" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9253" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3500" RevisionGUID="ffcff70c-b640-440d-a164-41ebfd520c6e" CreationDate="2012-04-23T16:20:31.303" UserId="25936" Comment="Nothing to do with the tag line (unless you provide some evidence it does)" Text="Our tag line that shows in Google and in our welcome message for users not logged is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes it sound like we are a SE site about a specific type of programmer, not about conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since a tag line should ideally be in the form of `This is a site for [acceptable skill level of audience] about [topic]`, can we rephrase it to clarify that the site is **for** professional programmers and **about** conceptual questions on software development?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional programmers about conceptual questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/135/316&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/360/316" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9254" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3500" RevisionGUID="043decc7-c379-4ad3-9568-41e8a99a1159" CreationDate="2012-04-23T17:37:51.957" UserId="1130" Comment="Tried to highlight the changes more since some people aren't seeing the difference" Text="Our tag line that shows in Google and in our welcome message for users not logged is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes it sound like we are a Q&amp;A site about a specific type of programmer (professional ones, interested in conceptual questions about software development), and does not describe the actual site scope, which is conceptual software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since a tag line should ideally be in the form of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a site for [acceptable skill level of audience] about [topic]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;can we rephrase it to clarify that the site is **for** professional programmers and **about** conceptual questions on software development?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site **for**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional programmers **about** conceptual questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/135/316&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/360/316" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9255" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3500" RevisionGUID="68adb59d-c0cf-41e3-9309-38a87185fd1e" CreationDate="2012-04-23T17:53:01.110" UserId="25936" Comment="P.SE is also used for Physics Stack Exchange. I know, it's a travesty, but let's use the full name instead..." Text="Programmers tag line is misleading. Can we rephrase it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9256" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3503" RevisionGUID="93d60275-e547-4846-b5cf-d1d99592c959" CreationDate="2012-04-23T18:22:05.053" UserId="39133" Text="Why was this [question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145645/records-of-daily-work-of-programmers) closed as off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was tagged `training` and when you look at the definition of the tag `training`:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You may use this tag when your question revolves around for example:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Where can I find materials to train for ... ? Asking which training&#xD;&#xA;&gt; course is best for you is off topic or not constructive at best as the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers will be equally valid and only apply to you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;you can see that my question is on-topic and wasn't asking for the &quot;best&quot; thing for me." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9257" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3503" RevisionGUID="93d60275-e547-4846-b5cf-d1d99592c959" CreationDate="2012-04-23T18:22:05.053" UserId="39133" Text="Question tagged training was closed as off topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9258" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3503" RevisionGUID="93d60275-e547-4846-b5cf-d1d99592c959" CreationDate="2012-04-23T18:22:05.053" UserId="39133" Text="|support|closed-questions|tags|close-reasons|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9259" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3500" RevisionGUID="3a585abc-0afe-4b22-b5f1-a9a7a222882c" CreationDate="2012-04-23T19:31:30.480" UserId="25936" Comment="this isn't a feature request (you are not asking for a new feature to be implemented)" Text="|discussion|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9260" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3498" RevisionGUID="3ba10234-5384-4d9e-b58e-241983452f71" CreationDate="2012-04-23T22:37:52.623" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="I post a question here a while ago when I was banned. Then somehow my ban was lifted. After that I have been answering questions for the most part. Today I felt the need to ask a question, and there is goes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account. See&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://goo.gl/C1Kwu to learn more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before, I was skeptical of the ban process. I thought it has to do with moderators. I even asked a question about this on skeptics.SE site as well which was deleted. However the discussion there before my question was deleted convinced me that the ban is totally automatic and nothing to do with moderators. I just want to point out that the ban process is quite flawed in my opinion. Here are all my previous answers ![enter image description here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Adding my asked questions as well. I did go to reputation tab, show removed post and I do not see any deleted post there. But I know I had a couple of deleted questions that contributed to my banned in the first place months ago. Since then most of my activity is positive. In fact all of the activity you see here is after that ban. As general, you can see it is positive. My only old question that got -2 votes was http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112336/creating-a-blog-for-software-changes which had +2 votes on it but is still not negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a person like me, the reason one should be banned is if he spams, overposts, does not do research before asking. However that is not that case with my questions. Or may be I am too dumb to be a member of this site according to SE standards, which is good to know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/SO6dw.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ReYyU.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9261" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="3500" RevisionGUID="b2fb4c85-4d8c-4afc-84b4-20a1e9064a79" CreationDate="2012-04-24T12:05:21.013" UserId="1130" Comment="Rollback to [3f9b87cf-28b3-48f3-bb38-1830ed08cfcc]" Text="I was looking through questions on Workplaces.SE and saw two users that will probably be [beta moderators][1] were both under the mistaken impression that P.SE is a site for programmers, and were [suggesting to move an off-topic question here][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand that assumption since our tag line that shows in Google and in our welcome message for users not logged is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes it sound like we are a SE site about a specific type of programmer, not about conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we remove the words &quot;professional programmers interested in&quot; to make it more clear what the site is actually for?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thomas pointed out that the tag line should describe who the site is for, so perhaps we could just change &quot;interested in&quot; to &quot;about&quot; to clarify that the site is about software development, not about programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional programmers about conceptual questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional software developers about conceptual questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/135/316&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/360/316" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9262" PostHistoryTypeId="7" PostId="3500" RevisionGUID="b2fb4c85-4d8c-4afc-84b4-20a1e9064a79" CreationDate="2012-04-24T12:05:21.013" UserId="1130" Comment="Rollback to [3f9b87cf-28b3-48f3-bb38-1830ed08cfcc]" Text="P.SE tag line is misleading. Can we rephrase it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9263" PostHistoryTypeId="9" PostId="3500" RevisionGUID="b2fb4c85-4d8c-4afc-84b4-20a1e9064a79" CreationDate="2012-04-24T12:05:21.013" UserId="1130" Comment="Rollback to [3f9b87cf-28b3-48f3-bb38-1830ed08cfcc]" Text="|feature-request|site-definition|" />
  <row Id="9264" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3500" RevisionGUID="3180e629-9496-4571-b50b-3f4d0fa6ca32" CreationDate="2012-04-24T12:07:13.803" UserId="1130" Comment="Decided to rollback to the full post to show where the change idea came from" Text="Programmers tag line is misleading. Can we rephrase it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9265" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3504" RevisionGUID="d19d56af-6408-4414-87b6-a9479c4e8b1a" CreationDate="2012-04-24T12:30:53.990" UserId="4" Text="Even though the tag wiki says that you can use this tag for asking where to find resources, I don't think that's valid. [Stack Exchange sites are not search engines][1]. What you are asking for is simply asking for external resources - the best place to do that is in the search bar of your favorite search engine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also sounds like you're asking for a list of things. [Stack Exchange sites are also not for generating lists of things][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/128548/what-stack-overflow-is-not/128549#128549&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/128548/what-stack-overflow-is-not/128561#128561" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9266" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3505" RevisionGUID="70e82d29-b1ad-4fea-9965-b58869501d1c" CreationDate="2012-04-24T12:38:12.153" UserId="29558" Text="When people vote to close a question, and more importantly when it is closed, a link to the duplicate question should be displayed in all cases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This should one, reduce the number of claims of &quot;exact duplicate&quot;, should the voters fail to agree on which one the question is a duplicate of.  Two, this will allow those of us encountering the question to go an find the answer(s)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9267" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3505" RevisionGUID="70e82d29-b1ad-4fea-9965-b58869501d1c" CreationDate="2012-04-24T12:38:12.153" UserId="29558" Text="Require a link to the question it is a duplicate of" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9268" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3505" RevisionGUID="70e82d29-b1ad-4fea-9965-b58869501d1c" CreationDate="2012-04-24T12:38:12.153" UserId="29558" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9269" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3506" RevisionGUID="ac4aa7cc-1d1d-47bc-8586-08ca74847166" CreationDate="2012-04-24T12:43:15.170" UserId="47" Text="It is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you vote to close a comment is added with the link to the question you picked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the question is closed this is converted into an edit on the question (for example):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; [In the absense of a CS degree, how can I &amp;ldquo;fill in the gaps&amp;rdquo; so to speak?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81591/in-the-absense-of-a-cs-degree-how-can-i-fill-in-the-gaps-so-to-speak)  &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145784/how-to-be-a-successful-programmer-without-a-cs-degree)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can be edited out (either maliciously or by accident). If you see a closed as a duplicate question without this text check the revision history and edit it back in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LocJX.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9270" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3500" RevisionGUID="379e174f-5d0a-444f-911c-47b61a3b8a30" CreationDate="2012-04-24T13:55:32.093" UserId="1130" Comment="deleted 27 characters in body; edited tags" Text="I was looking through questions on Workplaces.SE and saw two users that will probably be [beta moderators][1] were both under the mistaken impression that P.SE is a site for programmers, and were [suggesting to move an off-topic question here][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand that assumption since our tag line that shows in Google and in our welcome message for users not logged is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes it sound like we are a SE site about a specific type of programmer, not about conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we remove the words &quot;professional programmers interested in&quot; to make it more clear what the site is actually for?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thomas pointed out that the tag line should describe who the site is for, so perhaps we could just change &quot;interested in&quot; to &quot;about&quot; to clarify that the site is about software development, not about programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers about professional software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software developers about conceptual questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/135/316&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/360/316" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9271" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3500" RevisionGUID="379e174f-5d0a-444f-911c-47b61a3b8a30" CreationDate="2012-04-24T13:55:32.093" UserId="1130" Comment="deleted 27 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9272" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3507" RevisionGUID="dbc500e4-0065-473b-b4b6-30e8d708def1" CreationDate="2012-04-24T16:19:15.290" UserId="7048" Text="I just glanced at my [profile][1] a moment ago and noticed a significant stream of 20 downvotes on answers all within the same 1 minute.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could these be automatic, or simply a malicious user with a grudge?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/7048/craige?tab=reputation&amp;StartDate=2012-04-24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9273" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3507" RevisionGUID="dbc500e4-0065-473b-b4b6-30e8d708def1" CreationDate="2012-04-24T16:19:15.290" UserId="7048" Text="Were these downvotes automatic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9274" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3507" RevisionGUID="dbc500e4-0065-473b-b4b6-30e8d708def1" CreationDate="2012-04-24T16:19:15.290" UserId="7048" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9275" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3508" RevisionGUID="85f2fc12-3efe-415e-ad7e-f4c86daf1b06" CreationDate="2012-04-24T16:22:05.463" UserId="47" Text="They'll probably be malicious, however, don't worry about them. There are automatic processes that spot this sort of thing and reverse serial up votes and serial down votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the votes are still there tomorrow morning (UTC) then let us know and we'll take it up with the development team." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9276" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3509" RevisionGUID="6e1ae2f4-bc40-4201-b79d-b39b33d10cf5" CreationDate="2012-04-24T18:15:35.753" UserDisplayName="user9682" Text="I was thinking, so many questions are closed on SE it is becoming a finely tuned art to craft a question which isn't abused with downvotes and eventually closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too general, too specific, open-ended, shopping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand maybe SE isn't begging for more traffic, but would a section for semi-policed questions make sense? Each website on SE, or a website in itself, would be for any and all questions, and questions would only be removed if recent duplicates were found (same question can have entirely different answers depending when it was asked)? This would increase content on the site and give the users who, like me, cannot be bothered with thinking about the question to the point where we find the answer from analyzing it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The vote could be something like &quot;Throw to the lions&quot;, and people might be more inclined to click that instead of close. The asker at least has some answers to go from, people can be more casual with their answers, and SE builds more content and likely more users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me guess..you're going to downvote and vote to close?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9277" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3509" RevisionGUID="6e1ae2f4-bc40-4201-b79d-b39b33d10cf5" CreationDate="2012-04-24T18:15:35.753" UserDisplayName="user9682" Text="Idea? New option as an alternative to closing a question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9278" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3509" RevisionGUID="6e1ae2f4-bc40-4201-b79d-b39b33d10cf5" CreationDate="2012-04-24T18:15:35.753" UserDisplayName="user9682" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9279" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3510" RevisionGUID="84658735-34be-423d-95bb-2c28ad2dca35" CreationDate="2012-04-24T18:39:51.013" UserId="4" Text="I can't find the post right now (it was either on MSO or on the blog), but the idea of a general purpose Q&amp;A site is beyond the scope of Stack Exchange. The idea of Stack Exchange is to get a group of experts on a particular topic in one place to answer specific, relevant, useful questions that people have on that subject. The whole point is to have a place for those thought out questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, even if you analyze your question and come up with an answer yourself, you should still post it on the appropriate site, and even provide an answer for it - [that behavior is encouraged][1]. There might be other answers out there that others will post that might be more useful to someone else. People might also help you refine your answer through comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/its-ok-to-ask-and-answer-your-own-questions/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9280" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3509" RevisionGUID="6baa07a2-c558-4444-90d7-778a3b99dc3e" CreationDate="2012-04-24T18:52:07.503" UserDisplayName="user9682" Comment="added 191 characters in body" Text="EDIT: I'm not talking a catch-all site for any Q&amp;A, I mean questions still related to SE. But, perhaps the community option for a question (can't remember what its called) would make this suggestion completely useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was thinking, so many questions are closed on SE it is becoming a finely tuned art to craft a question which isn't abused with downvotes and eventually closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too general, too specific, open-ended, shopping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand maybe SE isn't begging for more traffic, but would a section for semi-policed questions make sense? Each website on SE, or a website in itself, would be for any and all questions, and questions would only be removed if recent duplicates were found (same question can have entirely different answers depending when it was asked)? This would increase content on the site and give the users who, like me, cannot be bothered with thinking about the question to the point where we find the answer from analyzing it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The vote could be something like &quot;Throw to the lions&quot;, and people might be more inclined to click that instead of close. The asker at least has some answers to go from, people can be more casual with their answers, and SE builds more content and likely more users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me guess..you're going to downvote and vote to close?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9281" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3511" RevisionGUID="fb2d35c2-553c-49a3-b03e-ecf287c27f46" CreationDate="2012-04-24T18:59:47.243" UserId="25476" Text="The scope of the site is for expert answers on conceptual questions regarding software development, so it is essentially a Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The catch is that the &quot;asking questions&quot; part is there primarily not to serve an immediate and singular persons needs, it is there to serve an entire community and an entire web full of software developers who are scouring the internet for answers to their conceptual questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you ask a good question and it helps you personally, then **GREAT!**  I feel good about that, but it absolutely has to be unique to some degree and not drown out exceptional content.  Basically, we don't want this site to become StackOverflow, where every day there are hundreds of new beginner Objective-C questions that can be answered by the first result in a Google search, and meanwhile an exceptional question that could benefit many gets drowned out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is nothing against beginners, but if you are having beginner problems then the site **best** serves you by searching it for questions similar to your issue.  I consider myself a &quot;beginner&quot; when it comes to Sci-Fi/Fantasy, so I opened an account on the scifi SE site to ask a question, only to find that nearly any question I had was already asked and answered in exquisite detail.  I spend a LOT of time on that site just *reading*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And that is ultimately what it comes down to.  Beginners at any discipline must really learn to **read** more and **talk** less." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9282" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3512" RevisionGUID="241f22d7-3713-4c51-9203-f7538f1fab82" CreationDate="2012-04-24T20:43:19.293" UserId="32353" Text="I propose &quot;My code's compiling&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9283" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3507" RevisionGUID="2047735b-b8da-4abb-9add-13d2d1528138" CreationDate="2012-04-25T06:14:33.193" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9284" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3509" RevisionGUID="ad953b55-712d-4779-9531-18855eb39333" CreationDate="2012-04-25T10:19:19.593" UserId="34364" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|closing-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9285" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3505" RevisionGUID="e53733eb-17b9-471f-b277-0680aaf9b028" CreationDate="2012-04-25T10:20:08.617" UserId="34364" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|closed-questions|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9286" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3513" RevisionGUID="784461ea-d5a6-4b45-9cf8-66344a96aa76" CreationDate="2012-04-25T12:11:35.497" UserId="31260" Text="To me [&quot;the essence of question&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/145784/6 &quot;current revision of the question&quot;) somehow does not feel quite right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###This in essence, is my question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - How do I objectively determine what areas of study, general knowledge, and other skills I would have gained through a CS degree that I may or may not be lacking in now? &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - How do I sort these skills in order of most importance?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - What is the best way (over the next two years) to supplement my education to attain those attributes in such a way to match or even surpass the level of a CS undergrad from a top university?...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way they are spelled now, first and third bullets of above seem to have nothing to do with programming. Also, third bullet doesn't look constructive - &quot;what is the best way&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the second bullet - &quot;...order of most importance?&quot; - this doesn't look constructive nor even remotely specific. &quot;Importance&quot; - not specific. &quot;Most&quot; - not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this question OK for Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9287" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3513" RevisionGUID="784461ea-d5a6-4b45-9cf8-66344a96aa76" CreationDate="2012-04-25T12:11:35.497" UserId="31260" Text="is this question OK? (&quot;how to be... without a CS degree&quot;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9288" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3513" RevisionGUID="784461ea-d5a6-4b45-9cf8-66344a96aa76" CreationDate="2012-04-25T12:11:35.497" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9289" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3513" RevisionGUID="7e77148c-7ea9-4bda-9a66-eba836e423fd" CreationDate="2012-04-25T12:13:53.213" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9290" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3514" RevisionGUID="31c2c695-0ad0-428b-ac3f-a59faf6a2f52" CreationDate="2012-04-25T12:16:47.250" UserId="47" Text="I think not, but it was originally closed as a duplicate of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81591/in-the-absense-of-a-cs-degree-how-can-i-fill-in-the-gaps-so-to-speak but reopened by 5 members of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am inclined to agree with you that it's not a good question - despite, or perhaps because of, it's length. However, I think the OP has to be the one that edits it down to a more manageable length, otherwise there is a real risk that the essence of the question will be lost.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the question is edited, *then* we'll be able to make an informed decision on it's suitability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't propose to close it again unless it gets new close votes from the community." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9291" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3513" RevisionGUID="7cf7e0e2-a74c-4525-9b18-50fa495ebdb2" CreationDate="2012-04-25T12:18:06.520" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3513/is-this-question-ok-how-to-be-without-a-cs-degree#comment9490_3513" Text="To me [&quot;the essence of question&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/145784/6 &quot;revision of the question used in quote below&quot;) somehow does not feel quite right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###This in essence, is my question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - How do I objectively determine what areas of study, general knowledge, and other skills I would have gained through a CS degree that I may or may not be lacking in now? &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - How do I sort these skills in order of most importance?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - What is the best way (over the next two years) to supplement my education to attain those attributes in such a way to match or even surpass the level of a CS undergrad from a top university?...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way they are spelled now, first and third bullets of above seem to have nothing to do with programming. Also, third bullet doesn't look constructive - &quot;what is the best way&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the second bullet - &quot;...order of most importance?&quot; - this doesn't look constructive nor even remotely specific. &quot;Most&quot; - not constructive. &quot;Importance&quot; - not specific.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this question OK for Programmers? http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145784/how-to-be-a-successful-programmer-without-a-cs-degree" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9292" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3500" RevisionGUID="7fb60fc5-68fd-4601-8b9a-5c2673b5c83e" CreationDate="2012-04-25T12:25:42.090" UserId="47" Comment="3" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="9293" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3515" RevisionGUID="34ccc8b8-8558-4429-9fce-ef735347bdc6" CreationDate="2012-04-25T13:45:19.873" UserId="51660" Text="Might as well throw my own answer in here... As I commented on the marked answer to the question, after thinking for a full day about this topic (felt **really** bad having my first question ever on Programmers get closed) I came to the conclusion that according to the FAQ my question does not belong on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I maintain (and the community supported the claim by re-opening the question) that it is *not* a duplicate question. However I think the inappropriate locale takes precedent. That being said, I think there may exist a fair amount of confusion in the community here on Programmers, because from my observation there is a large disparity between what Programmers **should** be, and what Programmers **is**. By de facto standards, I think there's a lot of reasoning for keeping it on Programmers. By officially stated purposes of the site, it's absolutely out of place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have a preference one way or the other, so I hope the moderators are able to do whatever they collectively think is best. My one request is that you don't talk about the question I asked as a **&quot;bad question&quot;**. Perhaps a **&quot;bad question for this site&quot;**, but it is clear from the responses (and people who flat out said it) that both the questions, and moreover the answers, contain a lot of value to a lot of people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Edit:&#xD;&#xA;Now that the question is answered, my chief concern is that the question and the answer remain discoverable by future people who might have the same question as myself (and I think there will be such people). So please moderators keep that in mind as you determine if it should be move, and if so where to.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9294" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3513" RevisionGUID="c6c28aa5-e73a-42f1-a91f-e3181b0f13f5" CreationDate="2012-04-25T14:01:59.760" UserId="31260" Comment="reordered for readability" Text="Is this question OK for Programmers? http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145784/how-to-be-a-successful-programmer-without-a-cs-degree&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me [&quot;the essence of question&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/145784/6 &quot;revision of the question used in quote below&quot;) somehow does not feel quite right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###This in essence, is my question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - How do I objectively determine what areas of study, general knowledge, and other skills I would have gained through a CS degree that I may or may not be lacking in now? &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - How do I sort these skills in order of most importance?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - What is the best way (over the next two years) to supplement my education to attain those attributes in such a way to match or even surpass the level of a CS undergrad from a top university?...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way they are spelled now, first and third bullets of above seem to have nothing to do with programming. Also, third bullet doesn't look constructive - &quot;what is the best way&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the second bullet - &quot;...order of most importance?&quot; - this doesn't look constructive nor even remotely specific. &quot;Most&quot; - not constructive. &quot;Importance&quot; - not specific.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9295" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3516" RevisionGUID="19d263f6-fe00-4c97-9703-b3a0dc8ef589" CreationDate="2012-04-25T14:02:14.040" UserId="4" Text="It's getting flags and close votes now, so I've opted to close the question. Here is a summary of my thoughts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Most of the body is a personal background. If such a personal background is necessary for the question, the question is most likely too localized. Questions must be relevant to a number of people, so if you have to explain, in great detail, your educational and occupational history, that indicates that perhaps your question is only relevant to the subset of people with a similar educational or occupational history and not appropriate for a Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;* There are multiple questions being asked. Although they are related, they are distinct enough that they should be presented as multiple questions, with the answer(s) to one driving the next. The three questions that I'm seeing are to first how to determine the difference between a math degree and a CS degree, how to prioritize the importance of the things missing in one degree, and methods for learning each of those tasks.&#xD;&#xA;* Questions about these topics have already been asked. There's not a single duplicate of this question, but each of the parts appear to have been asked. A example is this question about [how to fill in the gaps left by not having a degree][1]. Admittedly, it's not an exact duplicate, but a good question would include cross-references to indicate that the asker has searched the site, found and read related questions, and explain the differences as to why the answers to the related question don't work. This also goes back to my previous point about asking one question (or a small number of very closely related questions) at a time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the current state, I wouldn't recommend editing this post. The substantial edits needed to salvage the question would invalidate answers that have already been posted. I would recommend going through the answers that you have now and thinking up narrower questions that can be addressed in a manner useful to a wider audience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overall, I think the nature of the questions is very appropriate for this site. However, the presentation of those questions is the driving factor leading me to close the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81591/in-the-absense-of-a-cs-degree-how-can-i-fill-in-the-gaps-so-to-speak" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9296" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3517" RevisionGUID="7222de8c-26b2-44d1-9d10-42bef9603c55" CreationDate="2012-04-25T18:56:26.937" UserId="20636" Text="I found this question today&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145832/find-a-hole-in-a-list-of-numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me, it's a very StackOverflow specific question. The op have a very specific task to solve and created a technique-specific-question (algorithm to find holes). The short question and hence the title. I will agree that the answers and reaction of the question is very interesting and contains a strong kind of &quot;Programmers&quot;-style, then it would(?) achieve in StackOverflow. Even I favorited the answer of bit comparision in between 256 integers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though, does it make the question more adequate to Programmers, then SO?&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;I would just like to bring some clearance for later judgement calls,&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9297" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3517" RevisionGUID="7222de8c-26b2-44d1-9d10-42bef9603c55" CreationDate="2012-04-25T18:56:26.937" UserId="20636" Text="How to decide this (link provided) specific topic as a programmers-related question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9298" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3517" RevisionGUID="7222de8c-26b2-44d1-9d10-42bef9603c55" CreationDate="2012-04-25T18:56:26.937" UserId="20636" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9299" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3418" RevisionGUID="42107775-f7f5-44ab-9d4d-5494971d7c30" CreationDate="2012-04-25T19:12:48.197" UserId="1130" Comment="Updated suggestion with exact details" Text="I think a better way to approach it might be like how [Gaming.SE does their contests][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You start by picking a timeframe and a tag. The tag could be a design pattern, a development methodology, or any broad category you'd like to promote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two winners: One for best question, and one for best answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Best Question** is won by the person who asked a question with the contest tag within the contest timeframe, that has the most Views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Best Answer** is won by the the person who answered a question containing the contest tag within the contest timeframe, that has the most votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Winners get the software development Book or eBook of their choice (within a reasonable price range) from Amazon&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The beauty of this is users don't have to do anything extra to participate in the contest, and very little administrative work is needed to manage the contest. You'll need someone to determine the contest tags and timeframe, and create the announcement for it, and you'll need someone that knows how to get the top question and answer based on the criteria mentioned above (I'm not sure if that can be done with SE's search, or if you'd need the help of an SE employee to query the database)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, it's just regular SE Q&amp;A. The only difference is users are encouraged to post questions and answers within a specific tag to win prizes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an added bonus, you will be promoting tags which are clearly on-topic for the site, such as design-patterns or algorithms, and this will hopefully generate some great on-topic questions and answers for P.SE, which I think we need more of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per discussions in the programmers contest chat room, the final decision was to run a contest for a 4-week period, with one tag being highlighted per week. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tags will be [tag:programming-history], [tag:data-structures], [tag:algorithms], and [tag:documentation]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the 4-week period, two prizes will be awarded:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The **Best Question** prize will be awarded to the user who asked the question with the most **views** in any of the 4 contest tags during that tag's contest week (so feel free to advertise your question any way you can to get more views!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The **Best Answer** prize will be awarded to the user who posted the answer with the most **votes** that was answered to any question with one of the 4 contest tags during that tag's contest week&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prizes will be determined by the SE team. I am hoping for a software development book of choice from Amazon (free shipping, right? :)), however the final decision of what to award will be up to SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prizes will only be awarded to open questions, so be sure what you post is on-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/q/3908/8462" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9300" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3418" RevisionGUID="7c895313-929d-4ec9-9b68-4bb77730d1bc" CreationDate="2012-04-25T19:27:34.917" UserId="1130" Comment="Some confusion about contest scope and tags. Am discussing in chat and will re-add edit if it still applies" Text="I think a better way to approach it might be like how [Gaming.SE does their contests][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You start by picking a timeframe and a tag. The tag could be a design pattern, a development methodology, or any broad category you'd like to promote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two winners: One for best question, and one for best answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Best Question** is won by the person who asked a question with the contest tag within the contest timeframe, that has the most Views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Best Answer** is won by the the person who answered a question containing the contest tag within the contest timeframe, that has the most votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Winners get the software development Book or eBook of their choice (within a reasonable price range) from Amazon&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The beauty of this is users don't have to do anything extra to participate in the contest, and very little administrative work is needed to manage the contest. You'll need someone to determine the contest tags and timeframe, and create the announcement for it, and you'll need someone that knows how to get the top question and answer based on the criteria mentioned above (I'm not sure if that can be done with SE's search, or if you'd need the help of an SE employee to query the database)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, it's just regular SE Q&amp;A. The only difference is users are encouraged to post questions and answers within a specific tag to win prizes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an added bonus, you will be promoting tags which are clearly on-topic for the site, such as design-patterns or algorithms, and this will hopefully generate some great on-topic questions and answers for P.SE, which I think we need more of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/q/3908/8462" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9301" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3517" RevisionGUID="f78096b8-3144-435a-a593-614c5275eaaa" CreationDate="2012-04-25T20:13:50.617" UserId="20636" Comment="I try to change the title" Text="I found this question today&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145832/find-a-hole-in-a-list-of-numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me, it's a very StackOverflow specific question. The op have a very specific task to solve and created a technique-specific-question (algorithm to find holes). The short question and hence the title. I will agree that the answers and reaction of the question is very interesting and contains a strong kind of &quot;Programmers&quot;-style, then it would(?) achieve in StackOverflow. Even I favorited the answer of bit comparision in between 256 integers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though, does it make the question more adequate to Programmers, then SO?&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;I would just like to bring some clearance for later judgement calls,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Edit]&#xD;&#xA;Ok I try to change the title.." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9302" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3517" RevisionGUID="f78096b8-3144-435a-a593-614c5275eaaa" CreationDate="2012-04-25T20:13:50.617" UserId="20636" Comment="I try to change the title" Text="One stand-point to decide if it's a &quot;Programmers&quot;-related question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9303" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3518" RevisionGUID="ad419e5c-ef89-4118-9b2f-ee3ec09fdca4" CreationDate="2012-04-25T20:41:09.830" UserId="4" Text="Stack Overflow questions are typically expected to be more specific, involving particular languages, libraries, and development tools. Programmers questions tend to be more abstract - things that you would talk about around a whiteboard or when brainstorming or at a level beyond sitting at your computer writing code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right from [the Programmers FAQ][1], `algorithm and data structure concepts` are on-topic. Since it's not about implementation details, it belongs here more than it does on Stack Overflow. Although answers might contain an implementation in a given programming language, that's not required in this case - a textual or pseudocode description of the algorithm would be just as good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9304" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3519" RevisionGUID="ecdf001a-d5e9-4a9b-8f42-49a6ff8a3833" CreationDate="2012-04-26T02:17:26.090" UserId="1996" Text="Answers to this question involved facts, and yet it was closed as 'Not Constructive'. Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/146009/a-single-language-to-learn-to-develop-desktop-and-mobile-phone-applications" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9305" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3519" RevisionGUID="ecdf001a-d5e9-4a9b-8f42-49a6ff8a3833" CreationDate="2012-04-26T02:17:26.090" UserId="1996" Text="Answers to this question involved facts, and yet it was closed as 'Not Constructive'. Why?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9306" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3519" RevisionGUID="ecdf001a-d5e9-4a9b-8f42-49a6ff8a3833" CreationDate="2012-04-26T02:17:26.090" UserId="1996" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9307" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3520" RevisionGUID="17b2a195-3f7d-4306-87fa-218b2a01f19d" CreationDate="2012-04-26T02:24:47.457" UserId="25476" Text="The basis of closing a question really doesn't have to do with the quality of the existing answers, it has to do with the quality of the current state of the question itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree there are some very high quality answers that manage to stay subjective, but anytime a question asks &quot;the best language for X&quot;, well that is a highly opinionated thing.  One can make a valid argument for why Scala is superior because of Y and Z but in the end I may be super effective with Groovy just because I know it so well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides that it had already gotten a close vote and it was flagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question can be improved then maybe it can be considered for reopening." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9309" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="3418" RevisionGUID="af1cdd19-9202-44c0-9b6d-010b99d2a0f2" CreationDate="2012-04-26T19:03:39.933" UserId="1130" Comment="Rollback to [42107775-f7f5-44ab-9d4d-5494971d7c30]" Text="I think a better way to approach it might be like how [Gaming.SE does their contests][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You start by picking a timeframe and a tag. The tag could be a design pattern, a development methodology, or any broad category you'd like to promote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two winners: One for best question, and one for best answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Best Question** is won by the person who asked a question with the contest tag within the contest timeframe, that has the most Views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Best Answer** is won by the the person who answered a question containing the contest tag within the contest timeframe, that has the most votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Winners get the software development Book or eBook of their choice (within a reasonable price range) from Amazon&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The beauty of this is users don't have to do anything extra to participate in the contest, and very little administrative work is needed to manage the contest. You'll need someone to determine the contest tags and timeframe, and create the announcement for it, and you'll need someone that knows how to get the top question and answer based on the criteria mentioned above (I'm not sure if that can be done with SE's search, or if you'd need the help of an SE employee to query the database)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, it's just regular SE Q&amp;A. The only difference is users are encouraged to post questions and answers within a specific tag to win prizes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an added bonus, you will be promoting tags which are clearly on-topic for the site, such as design-patterns or algorithms, and this will hopefully generate some great on-topic questions and answers for P.SE, which I think we need more of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per discussions in the programmers contest chat room, the final decision was to run a contest for a 4-week period, with one tag being highlighted per week. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tags will be [tag:programming-history], [tag:data-structures], [tag:algorithms], and [tag:documentation]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the 4-week period, two prizes will be awarded:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The **Best Question** prize will be awarded to the user who asked the question with the most **views** in any of the 4 contest tags during that tag's contest week (so feel free to advertise your question any way you can to get more views!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The **Best Answer** prize will be awarded to the user who posted the answer with the most **votes** that was answered to any question with one of the 4 contest tags during that tag's contest week&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prizes will be determined by the SE team. I am hoping for a software development book of choice from Amazon (free shipping, right? :)), however the final decision of what to award will be up to SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prizes will only be awarded to open questions, so be sure what you post is on-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/q/3908/8462" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9310" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2858" RevisionGUID="282d6ec2-8062-4f83-ae12-c99c57e46077" CreationDate="2012-04-27T02:16:41.037" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="9311" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3498" RevisionGUID="c973599c-8856-4b78-81b7-c6335894ee82" CreationDate="2012-04-27T06:25:28.807" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Why am I getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account”?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3041/why-am-i-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this-account)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I post a question here a while ago when I was banned. Then somehow my ban was lifted. After that I have been answering questions for the most part. Today I felt the need to ask a question, and there is goes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account. See&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://goo.gl/C1Kwu to learn more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before, I was skeptical of the ban process. I thought it has to do with moderators. I even asked a question about this on skeptics.SE site as well which was deleted. However the discussion there before my question was deleted convinced me that the ban is totally automatic and nothing to do with moderators. I just want to point out that the ban process is quite flawed in my opinion. Here are all my previous answers ![enter image description here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Adding my asked questions as well. I did go to reputation tab, show removed post and I do not see any deleted post there. But I know I had a couple of deleted questions that contributed to my banned in the first place months ago. Since then most of my activity is positive. In fact all of the activity you see here is after that ban. As general, you can see it is positive. My only old question that got -2 votes was http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112336/creating-a-blog-for-software-changes which had +2 votes on it but is still not negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a person like me, the reason one should be banned is if he spams, overposts, does not do research before asking. However that is not that case with my questions. Or may be I am too dumb to be a member of this site according to SE standards, which is good to know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/SO6dw.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ReYyU.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9312" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3498" RevisionGUID="a0a141e3-93a8-48bc-95ba-e84543e6dd36" CreationDate="2012-04-27T06:25:27.357" UserId="25936" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[3041],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="9313" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3509" RevisionGUID="0de58d82-1695-4ba1-a73b-1b5302b58063" CreationDate="2012-04-27T06:26:03.097" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [A place for the subjective, fun questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/971/a-place-for-the-subjective-fun-questions)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;EDIT: I'm not talking a catch-all site for any Q&amp;A, I mean questions still related to SE. But, perhaps the community option for a question (can't remember what its called) would make this suggestion completely useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was thinking, so many questions are closed on SE it is becoming a finely tuned art to craft a question which isn't abused with downvotes and eventually closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too general, too specific, open-ended, shopping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand maybe SE isn't begging for more traffic, but would a section for semi-policed questions make sense? Each website on SE, or a website in itself, would be for any and all questions, and questions would only be removed if recent duplicates were found (same question can have entirely different answers depending when it was asked)? This would increase content on the site and give the users who, like me, cannot be bothered with thinking about the question to the point where we find the answer from analyzing it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The vote could be something like &quot;Throw to the lions&quot;, and people might be more inclined to click that instead of close. The asker at least has some answers to go from, people can be more casual with their answers, and SE builds more content and likely more users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me guess..you're going to downvote and vote to close?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9314" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3509" RevisionGUID="b6d4e390-ca08-4cfa-8b00-f4e3ebc1ab75" CreationDate="2012-04-27T06:26:01.973" UserId="25936" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[971],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:101,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Walter&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:9682,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Zenph&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="9315" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3521" RevisionGUID="0cbb5cb6-1351-4b3e-9af6-a300b56a62ea" CreationDate="2012-04-27T06:59:07.100" UserId="26494" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/146235/mac-os-x-certification) was closed as not a real question, but it seems obvious enough? Restated it's asking if Apple offers the equivalent of Suns java programming certificates.  The question could be stated a bit more clearly (Apple only, or anyone offering such for iPhone/objective c), but on the whole it doesn't seem like a bad question, it would not be hard at all to anwser in such a way as to cover the possible answers to the question, even without it being editted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems like a good fit to the site to me (unlike SO, where it started), so why was it closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9316" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3521" RevisionGUID="0cbb5cb6-1351-4b3e-9af6-a300b56a62ea" CreationDate="2012-04-27T06:59:07.100" UserId="26494" Text="Why was this question closed, it is clear and has factual answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9317" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3521" RevisionGUID="0cbb5cb6-1351-4b3e-9af6-a300b56a62ea" CreationDate="2012-04-27T06:59:07.100" UserId="26494" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9318" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3521" RevisionGUID="ff08c66f-6df6-4d86-8bef-aea0a5426611" CreationDate="2012-04-27T07:01:32.570" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1 characters in body; edited tags" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/146235/mac-os-x-certification) was closed as not a real question, but it seems obvious enough? Restated it's asking if Apple offers the equivalent of Sun's Java programming certificates.  The question could be stated a bit more clearly (Apple only, or anyone offering such for iPhone/objective C), but on the whole it doesn't seem like a bad question, it would not be hard at all to anwser in such a way as to cover the possible answers to the question, even without it being editted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems like a good fit to the site to me (unlike SO, where it started), so why was it closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9319" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3521" RevisionGUID="ff08c66f-6df6-4d86-8bef-aea0a5426611" CreationDate="2012-04-27T07:01:32.570" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9320" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3522" RevisionGUID="69638738-ea4c-40e1-9ee5-d8d0f4060b73" CreationDate="2012-04-27T07:16:21.473" UserId="25936" Text="The question shows no effort at all, Programmers is not a replacement for a basic web search. The &quot;not a real question&quot; close reason reads as: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case I'd say the question is incomplete, lacking any visible effort and explanation on why the obvious answers aren't enough, and vague and overly broad as Oracle (and not Sun) has a ton of certifications. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It could have also been closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; as it's a request for external resources that doesn't present us with an actual, practical problem to be solved, what we lovingly call a [shopping recommendation][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9321" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3414" RevisionGUID="82b42f62-2197-4560-8509-c81ad3b36dd7" CreationDate="2012-04-27T16:17:56.847" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio/3414#comment9532_3414" Text="September 2010 appears to be a _turning point_, indicated by [Joel's blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/ &quot;Merging Season&quot;) mentioning&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which was further followed by [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic) and [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9322" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3523" RevisionGUID="db195523-d9fd-48c7-a08d-b82ec811cec6" CreationDate="2012-04-27T19:03:56.360" UserId="4767" Text="I have seen [this user][1] posting _many_ low quality/off-topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of these are getting closed and subsequently deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Out of his 80 questions, about 40 are closed, though there are several that have been highly upvoted (over 5 upvoted). But from the amount of questions asked, it appears to me that it is more by chance that he post some good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have posted a comment on one of his (now closed) [questions][2] asking why he is posting such question, but got no reply.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do about his activity? Should he be post banned? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/26782/goma&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/146296/abstract-comparison-between-three-server-side-languages" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9323" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3523" RevisionGUID="db195523-d9fd-48c7-a08d-b82ec811cec6" CreationDate="2012-04-27T19:03:56.360" UserId="4767" Text="User who asks many low quality questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9324" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3523" RevisionGUID="db195523-d9fd-48c7-a08d-b82ec811cec6" CreationDate="2012-04-27T19:03:56.360" UserId="4767" Text="|discussion|bad-questions|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9325" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3524" RevisionGUID="d15dffa1-d562-4c94-ab9f-f1cf4bfd2959" CreationDate="2012-04-27T19:09:22.517" UserId="47" Text="The history of Goma is long and tortuous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suffice to say that he has been suspended in the past for poor quality questions, sock puppetry and trying to evade previous suspensions. His latest activity comes immediately after the lifting of his latest suspension (for a year), so clearly the normal procedures don't work with him.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most, if not all, of his reputation comes from questions asked before the low quality filters were implemented so there is little, if not no, chance of him being automatically question banned now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All the moderators, past and present, have been involved with this - as have several Stack Exchange employees - we are well aware of him and his activities." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9326" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3486" RevisionGUID="840a58d5-7c12-4122-8fb1-b33d700d3ffb" CreationDate="2012-04-27T20:11:49.520" UserId="25936" Comment="added 48 characters in body; edited tags" Text="Other Stack Exchange sites have interesting and descriptive names for their chat rooms while ours is just &quot;Programmers&quot;. Would it be possible to change it to something more like those sites?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's call a deadline of a week, we'll have to decide by Friday 27th @ 20:00 (UTC). That's a poll but I've got mod backing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And we have a winner: The Whiteboard!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9327" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3486" RevisionGUID="840a58d5-7c12-4122-8fb1-b33d700d3ffb" CreationDate="2012-04-27T20:11:49.520" UserId="25936" Comment="added 48 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|chat|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9328" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3486" RevisionGUID="af8bb44f-64ce-40a5-b6c6-1f83ded41fd5" CreationDate="2012-04-27T20:11:57.540" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="9329" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3523" RevisionGUID="bec3bbe5-7237-49d7-b71b-0b799ee5be7d" CreationDate="2012-04-27T20:41:20.917" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [How did this user amass more than 2k worth of reputation?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3457/how-did-this-user-amass-more-than-2k-worth-of-reputation)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I have seen [this user][1] posting _many_ low quality/off-topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of these are getting closed and subsequently deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Out of his 80 questions, about 40 are closed, though there are several that have been highly upvoted (over 5 upvoted). But from the amount of questions asked, it appears to me that it is more by chance that he post some good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have posted a comment on one of his (now closed) [questions][2] asking why he is posting such question, but got no reply.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do about his activity? Should he be post banned? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/26782/goma&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/146296/abstract-comparison-between-three-server-side-languages" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9330" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3523" RevisionGUID="18aead9e-8944-4669-a262-f60956126d3c" CreationDate="2012-04-27T20:41:18.797" UserId="25936" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[3457],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="9331" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3525" RevisionGUID="da52e616-9628-45e2-94f8-b7839c3105e1" CreationDate="2012-04-28T03:22:06.143" UserId="26494" Text="So, the reason why it was closed has been answered, but since this is Meta, I'll express my response as another answer...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer to the question is &quot;No, there isn't&quot;.  But Apple doesn't specifically say they don't offer certificates for developers, and are unlikely to ever do so. Likewise for Wikipedia, where an article on a non existent certificate would not fit their site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which means that unless the answer changes, a developer looking for a certificate from Apple for Objective-C/iPhone development is not going to find an official answer, at best they are going to find random people who say the answer is &quot;no&quot; or even worse &quot;not that I know of&quot;, and they aren't going to be able to weigh how reliable that answer is...and are going to be left wondering if maybe if they just add the right term, would they find the that Apple does, but only .... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE offers an alternate authority -- someone that has an interest in providing a negative answer, and whose reliability can be at least somewhat weighed, both by their rep and by the fact that it hasn't been contradicted by someone with higher rep.  In short the question is of interest to programmers and because the answer is no, a P.SE answer would be as close to an official answer as there is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If such a certificate existed, the programmers of SE would know..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9332" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3526" RevisionGUID="26438974-9f9d-487c-b7e2-1a6b12b3f5d3" CreationDate="2012-04-28T07:31:46.770" UserId="31260" Text="A word of caution, based on an [advice given in comments in another question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3523/user-who-asks-many-low-quality-questions#comment9549_3523):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...just don't go on a down voting spree..., last time he made it into Meta three people started downvoting everything and they were caught by the serial voting script.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##It ain't that easy:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/6brWm.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6brWm.jpg &quot;screen shot - recent reversal of serial downvote&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9333" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3526" RevisionGUID="3d62ae78-9802-4459-8e07-925f44a2d6e1" CreationDate="2012-04-28T07:52:44.043" UserId="31260" Comment="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/26782/goma?tab=reputation&amp;sort=time &quot;click to view the reputation tab for the user&quot;" Text="A word of caution, based on an [advice given in comments in another question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3523/user-who-asks-many-low-quality-questions#comment9549_3523):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...just don't go on a down voting spree..., last time he made it into Meta three people started downvoting everything and they were caught by the serial voting script.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##It ain't that easy:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/6brWm.jpg][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6brWm.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/26782/goma?tab=reputation&amp;sort=time &quot;click to view the reputation tab for the user&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9334" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3526" RevisionGUID="7f32b93f-969b-4ef9-8dcf-13279076470f" CreationDate="2012-04-28T08:45:00.273" UserId="31260" Comment="wordsmithing" Text="A word of caution, based on an [advice given in comments in another question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3523/user-who-asks-many-low-quality-questions#comment9549_3523):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...just don't go on a down voting spree..., last time he made it into Meta three people started downvoting everything and they were caught by the serial voting script.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##It ain't that easy...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/6brWm.jpg][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;...not that I suggest to stop downvoting bad questions, just when you do that, better make sure that it works as you intended.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6brWm.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/26782/goma?tab=reputation&amp;sort=time &quot;click to view the reputation tab for the user&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9335" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3526" RevisionGUID="f60f2e00-c85e-4417-a914-59e3540fdc93" CreationDate="2012-04-28T09:00:56.497" UserId="31260" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="A word of caution, based on an [advice given in comments in another question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3523/user-who-asks-many-low-quality-questions#comment9549_3523):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...just don't go on a down voting spree..., last time he made it into Meta three people started downvoting everything and they were caught by the serial voting script.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##It ain't _that_ easy...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/6brWm.jpg][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;...not that I suggest to stop downvoting bad questions, just when you do that, better make sure that it works as you intended.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6brWm.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/26782/goma?tab=reputation&amp;sort=time &quot;click to view the reputation tab for the user showing downvotes, reversals etc...&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9337" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3527" RevisionGUID="7f7f6924-97df-4352-88b8-59b6a0d697ab" CreationDate="2012-04-28T16:48:12.273" UserId="31260" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49550/what-hashing-algorithm-is-good-for-uniqueness-and-speed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particular answer to above question has been made CW per automatic rule ([quote source](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/11741/165773 &quot;MSO answer to 'What are “Community Wiki” posts?'&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The post has been edited ten (10) times by the original owner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Automatically applying generic rule in this particular case looks unfair.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;In case of doubt, check the answer to decide whether you agree with above.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* answer: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/145633/31260&#xD;&#xA;* timeline: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/49550/timeline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##This answer looks exceptionally good to me,&#xD;&#xA; and I wonder if it possible to clear CW status to recognize an extraordinary contribution of the author?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/CRw3X.jpg][1]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/145633/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CRw3X.jpg &quot;screen shot - top part of the answer. And there's more, much much more...&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9338" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3527" RevisionGUID="7f7f6924-97df-4352-88b8-59b6a0d697ab" CreationDate="2012-04-28T16:48:12.273" UserId="31260" Text="remove CW status for this answer? (hashing algorithms testing by Jon Boyd)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9339" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3527" RevisionGUID="7f7f6924-97df-4352-88b8-59b6a0d697ab" CreationDate="2012-04-28T16:48:12.273" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|support|community-wiki|specific-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9340" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3527" RevisionGUID="329152d7-161c-423c-8f11-f51017d1104c" CreationDate="2012-04-28T16:59:13.123" UserId="31260" Comment="edited title" Text="remove CW status for this answer? (hashing algorithms testing by Ian Boyd)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9341" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3527" RevisionGUID="142da350-1485-4ef6-9e1f-90318897bb77" CreationDate="2012-04-28T17:54:52.987" UserId="31260" Comment="minor wordsmithing" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49550/what-hashing-algorithm-is-good-for-uniqueness-and-speed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particular answer to above question has been made CW per automatic rule ([quote source](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/11741/165773 &quot;MSO answer to 'What are “Community Wiki” posts?'&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The post has been edited ten (10) times by the original owner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Automatically applying generic rule in this particular case looks unfair.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;In case of doubt, check the answer to decide whether you agree with above.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* answer: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/145633/31260&#xD;&#xA;* timeline: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/49550/timeline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##This answer looks exceptionally good&#xD;&#xA; to me, and not only to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to clear CW status to recognize an extraordinary contribution of the author?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/CRw3X.jpg][1]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/145633/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CRw3X.jpg &quot;screen shot - top part of the answer. And there's more, much much more...&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9342" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3527" RevisionGUID="0951627b-2de6-4f88-b84f-501be98ac982" CreationDate="2012-04-28T20:13:21.550" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|community-wiki|specific-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9343" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3528" RevisionGUID="d7136007-d704-4fb8-8f09-ef1338bc043f" CreationDate="2012-04-28T20:44:32.680" UserId="25936" Text="The answer is exceptional and all edits added information to it. Even if the author intended to bump the answer, he did so with significant improvements and I think in this particular instance CW feels more like a penalty than an incentive for other users to continue evolving the answer. So, I've removed the CW status from the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think there is a reason to refund the reputation the answer gained while it was CW, but it doesn't really matter, given the quality of the answer I think it's obvious that Ian couldn't care less for reputation (and the existing bounty will award him some of the missing reputation). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For future reference, this is the kind of answer I would remove CW from without second thought, if you have an answer out there that's CW and would like the status removed, please measure it against Ian's answer before flagging it or bringing it to Meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9344" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3527" RevisionGUID="e1ec2c05-6f6d-467e-acfb-e1759212098a" CreationDate="2012-04-28T20:44:41.947" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|community-wiki|specific-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9345" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3528" RevisionGUID="005abdae-416b-47c2-8247-af79740eb17a" CreationDate="2012-04-28T22:57:52.420" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="The answer is exceptional and all edits added information to it. Even if the author intended to bump the answer, he did so with significant improvements and I think in this particular instance CW feels more like a penalty than an incentive for other users to continue evolving the answer. So, I've removed the CW status from the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think there is a way to refund the reputation the answer gained while it was CW, but it doesn't really matter, given the quality of the answer I think it's obvious that Ian couldn't care less for reputation (and the existing bounty will award him some of the missing reputation). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For future reference, this is the kind of answer I would remove CW from without second thought, if you have an answer out there that's CW and would like the status removed, please measure it against Ian's answer before flagging it or bringing it to Meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9346" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3211" RevisionGUID="6b119c65-ac07-46c5-bddc-a54cf70eba17" CreationDate="2012-04-29T14:57:10.930" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9347" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3492" RevisionGUID="a0820a6b-140d-47ee-9582-804d50d5ceb1" CreationDate="2012-04-29T17:12:58.047" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9348" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3529" RevisionGUID="ed8af45d-ebf9-4931-af91-4b9698ea9586" CreationDate="2012-04-30T19:40:30.547" UserId="1973" Text="I thought it was some sort of joke I'd missed out on because I'd pursuing glory in other SE's, but no... It's just community bulletin... So, is anyone going to do anything about the fact that the font is almost illegible? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a programmer, I hate calling this a bug, but seriously Programmers Cohhunity you need to do something about this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps someone has asked a Sihilar question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vo6l6.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9349" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3529" RevisionGUID="ed8af45d-ebf9-4931-af91-4b9698ea9586" CreationDate="2012-04-30T19:40:30.547" UserId="1973" Text="What's this cohhunity bulletin?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9350" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3529" RevisionGUID="ed8af45d-ebf9-4931-af91-4b9698ea9586" CreationDate="2012-04-30T19:40:30.547" UserId="1973" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9352" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3530" RevisionGUID="ce1345ca-d445-4b19-a3e1-8cc4b51b373d" CreationDate="2012-04-30T21:59:00.450" UserId="12230" Text="By submitting content that was upvoted by the community of users who ostensibly run the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9353" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3531" RevisionGUID="aeff4176-1dc6-49d2-8e81-7d3a27f013dc" CreationDate="2012-04-30T23:32:06.033" UserId="34364" Text="As you may already know, Programmers.SE will soon hold it's first ever, [site-wide contest][1]. However, there is one more thing we need community input on: **prizes**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, until Thursday, at 20:00 GMT (4:00 EST), we will be accepting recommendations for incentives. But:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It has to be a book.&#xD;&#xA; - Keep it in a reasonable price range (let's say under $30.00)&#xD;&#xA; - Has to be somewhat on topic with the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The top 4 books voted will be the ones given out during the contest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Get going!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3418/34364" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9354" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3531" RevisionGUID="aeff4176-1dc6-49d2-8e81-7d3a27f013dc" CreationDate="2012-04-30T23:32:06.033" UserId="34364" Text="Books for Programmers Contest" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9355" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3531" RevisionGUID="aeff4176-1dc6-49d2-8e81-7d3a27f013dc" CreationDate="2012-04-30T23:32:06.033" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|contest|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9357" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3533" RevisionGUID="b10d1675-041e-4a25-a2c9-e8b88206f592" CreationDate="2012-05-01T01:47:02.057" UserId="17275" Text="[The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master](http://www.amazon.com/The-Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-Master/dp/020161622X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1335836569&amp;sr=8-1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Straight from the programming trenches, The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master cuts through the increasing specialization and technicalities of modern software development to examine the core process—what do you do, as an individual and as a team, if you want to create software that’s easy to work with and good for your users.][1][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://imagery.pragprog.com/products/59/tpp.jpg?1298589715&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://pragprog.com/book/tpp/the-pragmatic-programmer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9358" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3534" RevisionGUID="ff6475b5-46e9-4bb6-808f-079e9483692b" CreationDate="2012-05-01T01:51:01.160" UserId="17275" Text="[Code Complete](http://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Construction/dp/0735619670/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1335836893&amp;sr=1-1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![x][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Widely considered one of the best practical guides to programming,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Steve McConnell’s original CODE COMPLETE has been helping developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; write better software for more than a decade. Now this classic book&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been fully updated and revised with leading-edge practices—and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hundreds of new code samples—illustrating the art and science of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software construction. Capturing the body of knowledge available from&#xD;&#xA;&gt; research, academia, and everyday commercial practice, McConnell&#xD;&#xA;&gt; synthesizes the most effective techniques and must-know principles&#xD;&#xA;&gt; into clear, pragmatic guidance. No matter what your experience level,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development environment, or project size, this book will inform and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; stimulate your thinking—and help you build the highest quality code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://books.google.com/books?id=QnghAQAAIAAJ&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;img=1&amp;zoom=1&amp;l=220" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9359" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3533" RevisionGUID="5a2913bb-e41f-408a-95f7-a8f4a708f2bc" CreationDate="2012-05-01T01:52:10.350" UserId="17275" Comment="smaller image" Text="[The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master](http://www.amazon.com/The-Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-Master/dp/020161622X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1335836569&amp;sr=8-1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![x][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Straight from the programming trenches, The Pragmatic Programmer: From&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Journeyman to Master cuts through the increasing specialization and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technicalities of modern software development to examine the core&#xD;&#xA;&gt; process—what do you do, as an individual and as a team, if you want to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; create software that’s easy to work with and good for your users. [2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8f/The_pragmatic_programmer.jpg/220px-The_pragmatic_programmer.jpg&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://pragprog.com/book/tpp/the-pragmatic-programmer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9361" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3535" RevisionGUID="1b49adbb-f99b-4fd9-8dff-72667839df27" CreationDate="2012-05-01T02:08:54.710" UserId="17275" Text="[Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming](http://www.amazon.com/Coders-Work-Reflections-Craft-Programming/dp/1430219483/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1335837998&amp;sr=1-1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![x][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Peter Seibel interviews 15 of the most interesting computer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers alive today in Coders at Work, offering a companion volume&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to Apress’s highly acclaimed best-seller Founders at Work by Jessica&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Livingston. As the words “at work” suggest, Peter Seibel focuses on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; how his interviewees tackle the day-to-day work of programming, while&#xD;&#xA;&gt; revealing much more, like how they became great programmers, how they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recognize programming talent in others, and what kinds of problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they find most interesting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266839478l/6713575.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9362" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3531" RevisionGUID="61e411ff-2216-4c67-b914-094299eab506" CreationDate="2012-05-01T02:23:48.653" UserId="25936" Comment="Damn you Americans ;)" Text="|discussion|featured|contest|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9363" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3531" RevisionGUID="61e411ff-2216-4c67-b914-094299eab506" CreationDate="2012-05-01T02:23:48.653" UserId="25936" Comment="Damn you Americans ;)" Text="As you may already know, Programmers.SE will soon hold it's first ever, [site-wide contest][1]. However, there is one more thing we need community input on: **prizes**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, until Thursday, at 20:00 UTC, we will be accepting recommendations for incentives. But:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It has to be a book.&#xD;&#xA; - Keep it in a reasonable price range (let's say under $30.00)&#xD;&#xA; - Has to be somewhat on topic with the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The top 4 books voted will be the ones given out during the contest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Get going!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3418/34364" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9365" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3536" RevisionGUID="7871a8f9-985e-45da-8c09-abd9c86c5e76" CreationDate="2012-05-01T02:41:04.623" UserId="63" Text="Blame it on [the font used for titles][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The handwritten font in the title, top nav and section header is House Whiteboard. Yes, it is actually Hugh Laurie's handwriting. (&quot;It's Not Lupus!&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh. Well then, blame it on Hugh Laurie. The limey bastard!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/655/site-design-round-2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9366" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3537" RevisionGUID="2f44cdc6-0638-4db6-89a0-c2d7b0dcec52" CreationDate="2012-05-01T03:32:33.640" UserId="1973" Text="&lt;img src=&quot;http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/boxed-set-thumb.jpg&quot;/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don Knuth's Art of Computer Programming.  Why?  Because I want it and I'll never buy it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a whole it's more expensive than the paltry sum you mentioned. But seriously, this is the book that will get people doing your contest. If you're gonna do 4 at a time, you could just give it away every time! " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9367" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3531" RevisionGUID="b0fdfb1f-4fde-498d-838e-195ff5ee9283" CreationDate="2012-05-01T05:13:28.047" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/197191987168940032" />
  <row Id="9368" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3531" RevisionGUID="71bd65e0-2425-4a16-96a4-4ca3931a6853" CreationDate="2012-05-01T09:46:48.060" UserId="34364" Comment="deleted 24 characters in body" Text="As you may already know, Programmers.SE will soon hold it's first ever, [site-wide contest][1]. However, there is one more thing we need community input on: **prizes**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, until Thursday, at 20:00 UTC, we will be accepting recommendations for incentives. But:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It has to be a book.&#xD;&#xA; - Keep it in a reasonable price range &#xD;&#xA; - Has to be somewhat on topic with the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The top 4 books voted will be the ones given out during the contest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Get going!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3418/34364" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9369" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3538" RevisionGUID="097b3cfa-2696-442c-a789-9ff7c0b49977" CreationDate="2012-05-01T10:43:30.203" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="[Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Even bad code can function. But if code isn’t clean, it can bring a development organization to its knees. Every year, countless hours and significant resources are lost because of poorly written code. But it doesn’t have to be that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Noted software expert Robert C. Martin presents a revolutionary paradigm with Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship. Martin has teamed up with his colleagues from Object Mentor to distill their best agile practice of cleaning code “on the fly” into a book that will instill within you the values of a software craftsman and make you a better programmer—but only if you work at it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.amazon.com/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software-Craftsmanship/dp/0132350882/ref=pd_sim_b_5&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/hONLL.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9370" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3539" RevisionGUID="05d0668d-6e03-4c54-8264-83a7d8afcde2" CreationDate="2012-05-01T11:24:05.123" UserId="53085" Text="[The Practice of Programming][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![The Practice of Programming Front Cover][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; With the same insight and authority that made their book The Unix Programming Environment a classic, Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike have written The Practice of Programming to help make individual programmers more effective and productive. This book is full of practical advice and real-world examples in C, C++, Java, and a variety of special-purpose languages. Kernighan and Pike have distilled years of experience writing programs, teaching, and working with other programmers to create this book. Anyone who writes software will profit from its principles and guidance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/tpop/index.html&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8OH4Y.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9371" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3540" RevisionGUID="11ef07cc-191f-4644-a562-e3138c920c53" CreationDate="2012-05-01T12:05:53.743" UserId="47" Text="I have noticed on a number of occasions that people complain that their question or answer has received attention from people asking them to fix it up, when there are other questions that are just as bad or worse that have managed to pass by unnoticed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me this is directly analogous to the driver who has been pulled over by the police complaining that other drivers are breaking the law too, and why aren't they getting tickets?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope it is clear that two wrongs do not make a right. If there are other posts that are of poor quality, the correct response is to fix both, rather than neither.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes these posts will have escaped unnoticed because they are old and were written before the community standards were established. Sometimes, it is because they just managed to slip past while no-one was looking; there are only so many resources to go around. Sometimes, it is because one person has a genuine insight into a flawed answer that no-one else noticed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The moderators (and I hope much of the community) are concerned about the occasional &quot;broken windows&quot; giving the wrong impression to visitors about what they can expect here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**You can help out.** If you see a question or answer that doesn't meet our community standards, use a (polite!) comment to **ask the author to fix it**, or be bold and **edit it yourself**, or **flag it** to bring it to the attention of the sleeping busy moderators." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9372" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3540" RevisionGUID="11ef07cc-191f-4644-a562-e3138c920c53" CreationDate="2012-05-01T12:05:53.743" UserId="47" Text="Two Wrong Posts Don't Make A Right" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9373" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3540" RevisionGUID="11ef07cc-191f-4644-a562-e3138c920c53" CreationDate="2012-05-01T12:05:53.743" UserId="47" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9374" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3541" RevisionGUID="2531eee3-4ac0-46d5-9c11-a482dadcc738" CreationDate="2012-05-01T13:09:44.997" UserId="1130" Text="[Mythical Man-Month][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Mythical Man Month][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Mythical-Man-Month-Engineering-Anniversary/dp/0201835959&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/HtrLb.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9375" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3540" RevisionGUID="0eb70446-dd69-4288-99fc-355c153249bb" CreationDate="2012-05-01T14:13:30.193" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/197327890881327106" />
  <row Id="9376" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3542" RevisionGUID="f62f8019-4949-4cf0-91a2-552801189789" CreationDate="2012-05-01T14:46:08.527" UserId="9302" Text="I agree that Ian's answer is excellent, continues to get better, and deserves as much rep as it can gather. However, I would warn that picking winners for which the rules don't apply is probably dangerous. There are many Programmers users trying to improve the overall signal-to-noise ratio by arguing that the site's rules are well-defined and regular. When the most active users start bending the rules, that's harder to defend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why not consider doing away with the CW rule? If rep truly doesn't matter, who cares if a few rep-hungry users over-edit to keep their posts on the front page? If tiny edits start to dominate the front page, confront the micro-editors directly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consistency seems important given Programmers high close rate and the occasional contentious argument over what belongs, the site's purpose, and how we continue to improve." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9377" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3543" RevisionGUID="289c3d3a-ff6a-4424-a52d-4ee1bee7f18f" CreationDate="2012-05-01T15:44:40.547" UserId="21030" Text="![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/JMQ8a.jpg&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should learn a programming language every year, as recommended by The Pragmatic Programmer. But if one per year is good, how about Seven Languages in Seven Weeks? In this book you’ll get a hands-on tour of Clojure, Haskell, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, and Ruby. Whether or not your favorite language is on that list, you’ll broaden your perspective of programming by examining these languages side-by-side. You’ll learn something new from each, and best of all, you’ll learn how to learn a language quickly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9378" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3544" RevisionGUID="5638619e-8886-4f45-91bb-0d14bf4f62ba" CreationDate="2012-05-01T15:49:22.503" UserId="53084" Text="Introduction to Algorithms by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, and Clifford Stein.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![CRLS book](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/41/Clrs3.jpeg/220px-Clrs3.jpeg)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Introduction to Algorithms, the 'bible' of the field, is a comprehensive textbook covering the full spectrum of modern algorithms: from the fastest algorithms and data structures to polynomial-time algorithms for seemingly intractable problems, from classical algorithms in graph theory to special algorithms for string matching, computational geometry, and number theory. The revised third edition notably adds a chapter on van Emde Boas trees, one of the most useful data structures, and on multithreaded algorithms, a topic of increasing importance.&quot;--Daniel Spielman, Department of Computer Science, Yale University&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9384" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3531" RevisionGUID="f4984b01-490f-4e5a-b936-72345ff5169e" CreationDate="2012-05-01T19:15:45.643" UserId="4" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="9385" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3418" RevisionGUID="ddb1c098-c3cf-40c2-a2ac-8f0b0d733985" CreationDate="2012-05-01T20:23:10.513" UserId="1130" Comment="Updated contest details with the # of prizes being awarded based on some recent discussions in chat" Text="I think a better way to approach it might be like how [Gaming.SE does their contests][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You start by picking a timeframe and a tag. The tag could be a design pattern, a development methodology, or any broad category you'd like to promote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two winners: One for best question, and one for best answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Best Question** is won by the person who asked a question with the contest tag within the contest timeframe, that has the most Views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Best Answer** is won by the the person who answered a question containing the contest tag within the contest timeframe, that has the most votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Winners get the software development Book or eBook of their choice (within a reasonable price range) from Amazon&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The beauty of this is users don't have to do anything extra to participate in the contest, and very little administrative work is needed to manage the contest. You'll need someone to determine the contest tags and timeframe, and create the announcement for it, and you'll need someone that knows how to get the top question and answer based on the criteria mentioned above (I'm not sure if that can be done with SE's search, or if you'd need the help of an SE employee to query the database)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, it's just regular SE Q&amp;A. The only difference is users are encouraged to post questions and answers within a specific tag to win prizes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an added bonus, you will be promoting tags which are clearly on-topic for the site, such as design-patterns or algorithms, and this will hopefully generate some great on-topic questions and answers for P.SE, which I think we need more of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per discussions in the programmers contest chat room, the final decision was to run a contest for a 4-week period, with one tag being highlighted per week. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tags will be [tag:programming-history], [tag:data-structures], [tag:algorithms], and [tag:documentation]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of each week, two prizes will be awarded:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The **Best Question** prize will be awarded to the user who asked the question with the most **views** in the contest tag during that tag's contest week (so feel free to advertise your question any way you can to get more views!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The **Best Answer** prize will be awarded to the user who posted the answer with the most **votes** that was answered to any question with one the contest tags during that tag's contest week&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prizes will be determined by the SE team, and as of right now it looks like they will be **$50** worth of programming-related stuff from Amazon (winners choice!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prizes will only be awarded to open questions, so be sure what you post is on-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/q/3908/8462" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9386" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3531" RevisionGUID="3a959377-fc92-4d40-a0f5-54ecebec6360" CreationDate="2012-05-01T20:51:36.223" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|contest|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9387" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="9e8404a8-8e8f-452f-9327-d6060ec18eff" CreationDate="2012-05-01T21:30:14.957" UserId="34364" Text="## Wait! Programmers.SE is having a contest!? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*What have you been living under a rock?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just kidding (maybe). Yes, Programmers is having a contest. And it's going to be awesome! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So how will this contest work? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will be divided into 4 weeks. For each of the 4 weeks, there will be a tag dedicated to it. The schedule will go like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [tag:data-structures]&#xD;&#xA; 2. [tag:documentation]&#xD;&#xA; 3. [tag:history] (yes it has to be *programming history*)&#xD;&#xA; 4. [tag:algorithms]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each week, users who post questions and answers for that weeks tag will have their post entered into the contest. The following categories can win:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Best Answer:** The best answer from the week will be a winner. Best answer is judged by **votes**. Any answer to a closed question is ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - **Best Question:** The best question from the week will also be awarded. Best question is not judged on votes, but instead **views**. Closed questions will be disqualified. ***We encourage advertising your question (on non-SE sites) to get more views. Please do not spam the chat rooms.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, you are only eligible if you post under the current weeks tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Prizes! ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best of all, we try to get you the best prizes possible. In order to do that, we had to put on a few restrictions. But **winners can choose their own site-related prize from Amazon, as long as it:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is under $50 (including shipping and handling)&#xD;&#xA; - Is related to the site and it's topic&#xD;&#xA; - Isn't written by you&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your one prize does not use up the $50, you may choose up to 3 different things (still has to be under $50 all total).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So when do we start? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will start Monday, May 7th, at 12:00 AM GMT.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Important Notes of Eligibility and Such##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You must have a valid email address in your profile so that we can contact you and ask you what you want from Amazon (if you win).&#xD;&#xA; - No closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have fun!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9388" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="9e8404a8-8e8f-452f-9327-d6060ec18eff" CreationDate="2012-05-01T21:30:14.957" UserId="34364" Text="Programmers.SE Contest: The Complete Outline" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9389" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="9e8404a8-8e8f-452f-9327-d6060ec18eff" CreationDate="2012-05-01T21:30:14.957" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|contest|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9390" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="1e16d003-cb23-410a-ae08-028697acebbe" CreationDate="2012-05-01T21:30:53.163" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|contest|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9391" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="05582527-9ded-455a-9bc2-b4045238047b" CreationDate="2012-05-01T21:36:38.553" UserId="25936" Comment="added that SE employees are ineligible." Text="## Wait! Programmers.SE is having a contest!? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*What have you been living under a rock?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just kidding (maybe). Yes, Programmers is having a contest. And it's going to be awesome! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So how will this contest work? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will be divided into 4 weeks. For each of the 4 weeks, there will be a tag dedicated to it. The schedule will go like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [tag:data-structures]&#xD;&#xA; 2. [tag:documentation]&#xD;&#xA; 3. [tag:history] (yes it has to be *programming history*)&#xD;&#xA; 4. [tag:algorithms]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each week, users who post questions and answers for that weeks tag will have their post entered into the contest. The following categories can win:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Best Answer:** The best answer from the week will be a winner. Best answer is judged by **votes**. Any answer to a closed question is ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - **Best Question:** The best question from the week will also be awarded. Best question is not judged on votes, but instead **views**. Closed questions will be disqualified. ***We encourage advertising your question (on non-SE sites) to get more views. Please do not spam the chat rooms.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, you are only eligible if you post under the current weeks tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Prizes! ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best of all, we try to get you the best prizes possible. In order to do that, we had to put on a few restrictions. But **winners can choose their own site-related prize from Amazon, as long as it:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is under $50 (including shipping and handling)&#xD;&#xA; - Is related to the site and it's topic&#xD;&#xA; - Isn't written by you&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your one prize does not use up the $50, you may choose up to 3 different things (still has to be under $50 all total).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So when do we start? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will start Monday, May 7th, at 12:00 AM GMT.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Important Notes of Eligibility and Such##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You must have a valid email address in your profile so that we can contact you and ask you what you want from Amazon (if you win).&#xD;&#xA; - No closed questions.&#xD;&#xA; - SE employees are ineligible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have fun!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9392" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="7d618d4e-d3ab-44f8-a572-a89ba7efe9a9" CreationDate="2012-05-01T22:03:32.193" UserId="25936" Comment="added 54 characters in body" Text="## Wait! Programmers.SE is having a contest!? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*What have you been living under a rock?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just kidding (maybe). Yes, Programmers is having a contest. And it's going to be awesome! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So how will this contest work? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will be divided into 4 weeks. For each of the 4 weeks, there will be a tag dedicated to it. The schedule will go like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [tag:data-structures]&#xD;&#xA; 2. [tag:documentation]&#xD;&#xA; 3. [tag:history] (yes it has to be *programming history*)&#xD;&#xA; 4. [tag:algorithms]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each week, users who post questions and answers for that weeks tag will have their post entered into the contest. The following categories can win:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Best Answer:** The best answer from the week will be a winner. Best answer is judged by **votes**. Any answer to a closed question is ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - **Best Question:** The best question from the week will also be awarded. Best question is not judged on votes, but instead **views**. Closed questions will be disqualified. ***We encourage advertising your question (on non-SE sites) to get more views. Please do not spam the chat rooms.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, you are only eligible if you post under the current weeks tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Prizes! ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best of all, we try to get you the best prizes possible. In order to do that, we had to put on a few restrictions. But **winners can choose their own site-related prize from Amazon, as long as it:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is under $50 (including shipping and handling)&#xD;&#xA; - Is related to the site and it's topic&#xD;&#xA; - Isn't written by you&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your one prize does not use up the $50, you may choose up to 3 different things (still has to be under $50 all total).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So when do we start? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will start Monday, May 7th, at 12:00 AM GMT.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Important Notes of Eligibility and Such##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You must have a valid email address in your profile so that we can contact you and ask you what you want from Amazon (if you win).&#xD;&#xA; - No closed questions or negatively scored questions (regardless of views). &#xD;&#xA; - SE employees are ineligible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have fun!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9393" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="cd84398f-6e65-4f74-bdf0-faaed76dee88" CreationDate="2012-05-01T23:17:07.770" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="9394" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3400" RevisionGUID="b39b7e7b-cc67-4d69-99bb-8c6aaeabd16c" CreationDate="2012-05-01T23:38:16.697" UserId="4" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="9395" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="c4f1617c-7c66-46fa-ab5d-3a9557c432f3" CreationDate="2012-05-02T01:08:26.950" UserId="25936" Comment="For the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, use UTC, not GMT or EST... The Stack Exchange clock is in UTC, nuff said." Text="## Wait! Programmers.SE is having a contest!? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*What have you been living under a rock?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just kidding (maybe). Yes, Programmers is having a contest. And it's going to be awesome! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So how will this contest work? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will be divided into 4 weeks. For each of the 4 weeks, there will be a tag dedicated to it. The schedule will go like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [tag:data-structures]&#xD;&#xA; 2. [tag:documentation]&#xD;&#xA; 3. [tag:history] (yes it has to be *programming history*)&#xD;&#xA; 4. [tag:algorithms]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each week, users who post questions and answers for that weeks tag will have their post entered into the contest. The following categories can win:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Best Answer:** The best answer from the week will be a winner. Best answer is judged by **votes**. Any answer to a closed question is ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - **Best Question:** The best question from the week will also be awarded. Best question is not judged on votes, but instead **views**. Closed questions will be disqualified. ***We encourage advertising your question (on non-SE sites) to get more views. Please do not spam the chat rooms.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, you are only eligible if you post under the current weeks tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Prizes! ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best of all, we try to get you the best prizes possible. In order to do that, we had to put on a few restrictions. But **winners can choose their own site-related prize from Amazon, as long as it:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is under $50 (including shipping and handling)&#xD;&#xA; - Is related to the site and it's topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your one prize does not use up the $50, you may choose up to 3 different things (still has to be under $50 all total).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So when do we start? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will start Monday, May 7th, at 12:00 AM UTC.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Important Notes of Eligibility and Such##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You must have a valid email address in your profile so that we can contact you and ask you what you want from Amazon (if you win).&#xD;&#xA; - No closed questions or negatively scored questions (regardless of views). &#xD;&#xA; - SE employees are ineligible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have fun!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9396" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="0fbfaf1c-8f0a-44be-85e5-b800ff59d99b" CreationDate="2012-05-02T02:13:52.853" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/197509180846903296" />
  <row Id="9397" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3547" RevisionGUID="795bca7a-e107-48a7-9016-1bd11bb51282" CreationDate="2012-05-02T14:42:17.410" UserId="25476" Text="I have noticed that we are getting a lot more questions being posted that are interesting, engaging but ultimately amount to a glorified &quot;Shopping List&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/146908/in-memory-object-persistence-frameworks-pros-cons-implementations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Examples:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Can anyone recommend a good framework for X?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Can you provide a list of books that are good for a beginner?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find myself wanting to send them to the FAQ but I don't feel that it does a good job currently of really explaining that these types of questions are not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the communities opinion on adding this definition to the FAQ as an example of Questions that should not be asked here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9398" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3547" RevisionGUID="795bca7a-e107-48a7-9016-1bd11bb51282" CreationDate="2012-05-02T14:42:17.410" UserId="25476" Text="Adding the definition of a &quot;shopping list/request&quot; to the FAQ" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9399" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3547" RevisionGUID="795bca7a-e107-48a7-9016-1bd11bb51282" CreationDate="2012-05-02T14:42:17.410" UserId="25476" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9400" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3548" RevisionGUID="d0fb3d29-4425-45f3-a3b9-6aa990078a31" CreationDate="2012-05-02T15:48:51.473" UserId="1130" Text="I think there's a difference between **Can anyone recommend a good framework for X** and **Can anyone recommend a good framework for using X with Y parameters**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason why the first is usually closed is because the end result is simply a list of everyone's favorite X&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason why the second should be left open, is because only a few X are actually valid for the situation, and that short list is helpful to anyone looking for X with Y parameters&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, a question asking **Can you recommend a good framework for Javascript** should be closed, because there are no details involved and the end result is a not-constructive list of everyone's favorite javascript framework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In contrast, a question which asks **Can you recommend a good Javascript framework that uses databinding like what WPF/XAML uses** should be left open because the specific parameters make the question become answerable and become useful to future visitors with the same question. Perhaps the end result is a few different answers, however the list should be short, and the best answer will get voted to the top.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that said, perhaps we could add a bullet point to the **what this site is not about** section that says something like **broad recommendations**, and include a link to either a meta-faq post, or the [Q&amp;A is Hard, Lets go Shopping question][1] blog post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9401" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3548" RevisionGUID="a08b8269-c7aa-4c97-b3e8-8b170cb11b2b" CreationDate="2012-05-02T16:29:27.943" UserId="1130" Comment="deleted 7 characters in body" Text="I think there's a difference between **Can anyone recommend a good framework for X** and **Can anyone recommend a good framework for using X with Y parameters**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason why the first is usually closed is because the end result is simply a list of everyone's favorite X&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason why the second should be left open, is because only a few X are actually valid for the situation, and that short list is helpful to anyone looking for X with Y parameters&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, a question asking **Can you recommend a good framework for Javascript** should be closed, because there are no details involved and the end result is a not-constructive list of everyone's favorite javascript framework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In contrast, a question which asks **Can you recommend a good Javascript framework that uses databinding like what WPF/XAML uses** should be left open because the specific parameters make the question become answerable and useful to future visitors with the same question. Perhaps the end result is a few different answers, however the list should be short, and the best answer will get voted to the top.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that said, perhaps we could add a bullet point to the **what this site is not about** section that says something like **broad recommendations**, and include a link to either a meta-faq post, or the [Q&amp;A is Hard, Lets go Shopping question][1] blog post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps it could even shorten the list by bundling in &quot;what language should I learn next&quot; and &quot;what project should I do next&quot; into the line somehow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is **not about**…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * broad recommendations, such as what language to learn, or what project to do&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9402" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3549" RevisionGUID="70e49b3b-187f-4550-aebe-fcb6984b614a" CreationDate="2012-05-02T17:26:32.333" UserId="41381" Text="I think questions like this tend to fall into &quot;which technology is better&quot; or &quot;programming tools&quot; questions. Additionally you could also point them to the section on subjective questions, and for books specifically [this][1] question and [this][2] one provide further explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2665/whats-up-with-all-the-book-recommendation-flags&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3034/why-are-book-related-questions-being-edited-with-the-text-is-there-a-canonical" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9403" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3457" RevisionGUID="c64743f9-3f4e-4b99-995a-f04d2925bc4e" CreationDate="2012-05-03T12:43:13.457" UserId="101" Comment="Added update" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/26782/goma&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. How did this user amass more than 2k worth of reputation?&#xD;&#xA;2. Does their history of asking non-constructive questions put them at risk of getting banned?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;UPDATE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This user is suspended again for their activity." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9410" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3551" RevisionGUID="84309160-4d99-4060-aa8d-609cd51d3931" CreationDate="2012-05-04T15:20:04.157" UserId="1130" Text="As of right now, the close/migrated question rate for the past month or so is around 46% (see notes below)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of the closures are valid based on our site standards, however the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of questions are closed because they are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Code questions** - These should be asked on SO, and get migrated there if they are suitable for SO. If the question quality is not suitable for SO, they simply get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Requests for broad recommendations**, like book suggestions, what to learn next, or general advice in X situation. Any kind of broad question like this is usually closed on SE sites as unanswerable since there is no one right answer to the question, and they usually turn into a poll with everyone chiming in with their own recommendation or opinion&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions about or for programmers, that are unrelated to conceptual software development.** The site is meant for Q&amp;A on conceptual software development, so questions asked should be related to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If I missed something in that list, let me know in a comment and I'll add it)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So my question is, what can we do to improve the way we present the site to users, and prevent so many bad questions from being asked?**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;For those who want to know how the close/migration percentage was determined:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;46% is the number is obtained by going to the question list, sorting by Newest, and counting the number of questions since 4/4, then filtering for `closed:1` and doing the same thing. There are roughly 21.5 pages of questions, at 50 questions per page, so around 1075 questions total, while about 10 pages of questions closed, at 50 questions per page, so about 500 questions closed. `500 / 1075 = 46.5%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`closed:1` includes `migrated:1`, so a separate filter for `migrated:1` returns 1.5 pages of results in the past month, so about 75 questions. `(500 - 75) / 1075 = 39.5%`&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9411" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3551" RevisionGUID="84309160-4d99-4060-aa8d-609cd51d3931" CreationDate="2012-05-04T15:20:04.157" UserId="1130" Text="What can we do to help users understand our site better?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9412" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3551" RevisionGUID="84309160-4d99-4060-aa8d-609cd51d3931" CreationDate="2012-05-04T15:20:04.157" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9413" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3552" RevisionGUID="c4b2a7f3-cc39-4916-8629-0a9396b521ad" CreationDate="2012-05-04T15:34:28.660" UserId="47" Text="A big problem is that the majority of Stack Overflow users neither know nor care what our site standards are now. They did (or thought they did) once and are still using those to judge whether to vote to migrate questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to educate Stack Overflow users on the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. What our site scope and standards are now.&#xD;&#xA;2. What constitutes a good question - i.e. one that's constructive, answerable, etc. etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically we need to teach them that you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Don't migrate crap**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9414" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3551" RevisionGUID="f71f68c7-1094-4aeb-8329-4c869b09de75" CreationDate="2012-05-04T15:51:47.533" UserId="1130" Comment="Added numbers provided by Yannis below" Text="As of right now, the close/migrated question rate for the past month or so is around 43% (see notes below)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of the closures are valid based on our site standards, however the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of questions are closed because they are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Code questions** - These should be asked on SO, and get migrated there if they are suitable for SO. If the question quality is not suitable for SO, they simply get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Requests for broad recommendations**, like book suggestions, what to learn next, or general advice in X situation. Any kind of broad question like this is usually closed on SE sites as unanswerable since there is no one right answer to the question, and they usually turn into a poll with everyone chiming in with their own recommendation or opinion&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions about or for programmers, that are unrelated to conceptual software development.** The site is meant for Q&amp;A on conceptual software development, so questions asked should be related to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If I missed something in that list, let me know in a comment and I'll add it)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So my question is, what can we do to improve the way we present the site to users, and prevent so many bad questions from being asked?**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;For those who want to know how the close/migration percentage was determined:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;46% is the number is obtained by going to the question list, sorting by Newest, and counting the number of questions since 4/4, then filtering for `closed:1` and doing the same thing. There are 1029 questions total, while 441 are closed, so `441 / 1029 = 42.8%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`closed:1` includes `migrated:1`, so a separate filter for `migrated:1` shows 77 migrated questions in the past month, so `(441 - 77) / 1029 = 35%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, I didn't count those one at a time. :) I sorted by date, found the date I wanted to go back to, and multiplied the page number by the number of questions per day, and only counted the # of questions on the final page.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9415" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3551" RevisionGUID="aab0418b-b265-4f9f-9a5f-dd3fc4f66dc9" CreationDate="2012-05-04T15:58:26.403" UserId="1130" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="As of right now, the close/migrated question rate for the past month or so is around 43% (see notes below)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of the closures are valid based on our site standards, however the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for. Most people don't willingly post unwelcome questions on a Q&amp;A site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of questions are closed because they are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Code questions** - These should be asked on SO, and get migrated there if they are suitable for SO. If the question quality is not suitable for SO, they simply get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Requests for broad recommendations**, like book suggestions, what to learn next, or general advice in X situation. Any kind of broad question like this is usually closed on SE sites as unanswerable since there is no one right answer to the question, and they usually turn into a poll with everyone chiming in with their own recommendation or opinion&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions about or for programmers, that are unrelated to conceptual software development.** The site is meant for Q&amp;A on conceptual software development, so questions asked should be related to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If I missed something in that list, let me know in a comment and I'll add it)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So my question is, what can we do to improve the way we present the site to users, and prevent so many bad questions from being asked?**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;For those who want to know how the close/migration percentage was determined:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;46% is the number is obtained by going to the question list, sorting by Newest, and counting the number of questions since 4/4, then filtering for `closed:1` and doing the same thing. There are 1029 questions total, while 441 are closed, so `441 / 1029 = 42.8%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`closed:1` includes `migrated:1`, so a separate filter for `migrated:1` shows 77 migrated questions in the past month, so `(441 - 77) / 1029 = 35%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, I didn't count those one at a time. :) I sorted by date, found the date I wanted to go back to, and multiplied the page number - 1 by the number of questions per page, and only counted the # of questions on the final page.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9416" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3553" RevisionGUID="ac7ec2a0-0193-4dad-ae92-bfc264955c5d" CreationDate="2012-05-04T16:14:51.687" UserId="25936" Text="I've been noticing that more and more people are posting questions on Programmers to circumvent the automatic question ban or suspensions on Stack Overflow. When that happens, we only find out when trying to migrate the question, the migration is rejected and we get a message that the OP is banned, and the question is closed as off topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, it's not a _big_ issue, say we get one of those every two/three days, but it's still an issue and it's growing over time. What I would like is the community's blessing to delete those questions asap, and not wait for a couple of months, as we usually do. Again, only when we have confirmation that the OP is trying to circumvent a ban or a suspension. This will only take care of a very small amount of our closures, but it's something we can do easily if you want us to." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9417" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3551" RevisionGUID="f2b967c4-bebc-4600-b21d-db5291126e16" CreationDate="2012-05-04T16:20:08.293" UserId="1130" Comment="added 281 characters in body" Text="As of right now, the close/migrated question rate for the past month or so is around 43% (see notes below)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of the closures are valid based on our site standards, however the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for. Most people don't willingly post unwelcome questions on a Q&amp;A site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of questions are closed because they are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Code questions** - These should be asked on SO, and get migrated there if they are suitable for SO. If the question quality is not suitable for SO, they simply get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; This also includes questions that are asked by users who have been suspended on SO, or are banned from asking questions. Yannis said they get one of those every few days or so, so its not a lot but it does contribute to the problem (around 10-15 questions over the past month)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Requests for broad recommendations**, like book suggestions, what to learn next, or general advice in X situation. Any kind of broad question like this is usually closed on SE sites as unanswerable since there is no one right answer to the question, and they usually turn into a poll with everyone chiming in with their own recommendation or opinion&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions about or for programmers, that are unrelated to conceptual software development.** The site is meant for Q&amp;A on conceptual software development, so questions asked should be related to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If I missed something in that list, let me know in a comment and I'll add it)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So my question is, what can we do to improve the way we present the site to users, and prevent so many bad questions from being asked?**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;For those who want to know how the close/migration percentage was determined:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;46% is the number is obtained by going to the question list, sorting by Newest, and counting the number of questions since 4/4, then filtering for `closed:1` and doing the same thing. There are 1029 questions total, while 441 are closed, so `441 / 1029 = 42.8%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`closed:1` includes `migrated:1`, so a separate filter for `migrated:1` shows 77 migrated questions in the past month, so `(441 - 77) / 1029 = 35%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, I didn't count those one at a time. :) I sorted by date, found the date I wanted to go back to, and multiplied the page number - 1 by the number of questions per page, and only counted the # of questions on the final page.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9418" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3551" RevisionGUID="81c6a284-15fe-4ae4-929b-38629c58fe8f" CreationDate="2012-05-04T16:46:25.283" UserId="1130" Comment="Added section for reasons for high close rate so we can remove them from being answers" Text="As of right now, the close/migrated question rate for the past month or so is around 43% (see notes below)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of the closures are valid based on our site standards, however the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for. Most people don't willingly post unwelcome questions on a Q&amp;A site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of questions are closed because they are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Code questions** - These should be asked on SO, and get migrated there if they are suitable for SO. If the question quality is not suitable for SO, they simply get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Requests for broad recommendations**, like book suggestions, what to learn next, or general advice in X situation. Any kind of broad question like this is usually closed on SE sites as unanswerable since there is no one right answer to the question, and they usually turn into a poll with everyone chiming in with their own recommendation or opinion&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions about or for programmers, that are unrelated to conceptual software development.** The site is meant for Q&amp;A on conceptual software development, so questions asked should be related to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Possible reasons for the high close/migration rate include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Users not reading the FAQ, and not understanding what this site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Users migrating bad questions from Stack Overflow because they don't understand our site's scope (per Yannis, 41% of migrations from SO were rejected in the past 90 days, however he doesn't know what the exact number is)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Users who have been suspended on SO, or are banned from asking questions, so are asking code questions here insetad. Yannis said they get one of those every few days or so, so its not a lot but it does contribute to the problem (around 10-15 questions over the past month)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If I missed something in either list list, let me know in a comment and I'll add it)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So my question is, what can we do to improve the way we present the site to users, and prevent so many bad questions from being asked?**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;For those who want to know how the close/migration percentage was determined:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;46% is the number is obtained by going to the question list, sorting by Newest, and counting the number of questions since 4/4, then filtering for `closed:1` and doing the same thing. There are 1029 questions total, while 441 are closed, so `441 / 1029 = 42.8%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`closed:1` includes `migrated:1`, so a separate filter for `migrated:1` shows 77 migrated questions in the past month, so `(441 - 77) / 1029 = 35%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, I didn't count those one at a time. :) I sorted by date, found the date I wanted to go back to, and multiplied the page number - 1 by the number of questions per page, and only counted the # of questions on the final page.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9419" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3553" RevisionGUID="50f6f08d-b01c-4c17-97d5-8453eda1c0cc" CreationDate="2012-05-04T16:59:02.443" UserId="1130" Comment="Rephrased answer to clarify how this answers the question" Text="In regards to the people posting questions on Programmers to circumvent the automatic question ban or suspensions on Stack Overflow, I'd like to delete those questions asap and not wait a couple of months like we usually do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a _big_ issue (I'd say we get one of those every two/three days), but it's still an issue and it's growing over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We usually only find that out about the ban/suspension when trying to migrate the question. The migration is rejected and we get a message that the OP is banned, and the question is closed as off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deleting these immediately will only take care of a very small amount of our closures, but it's something we can do easily if you want us to." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9420" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3547" RevisionGUID="a880b0d4-3559-46a7-9866-889d990c13a7" CreationDate="2012-05-04T17:14:57.197" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/198460719799353344" />
  <row Id="9427" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3551" RevisionGUID="dcbc33b9-c60d-4550-9fbb-5b024bf8a366" CreationDate="2012-05-04T18:20:38.037" UserId="25936" Comment="never said I don't know the number... I said &quot;that's the only stat we have&quot; meaning that we only know about the 90 days period, not the month you are examining." Text="As of right now, the close/migrated question rate for the past month or so is around 43% (see notes below)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of the closures are valid based on our site standards, however the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for. Most people don't willingly post unwelcome questions on a Q&amp;A site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of questions are closed because they are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Code questions** - These should be asked on SO, and get migrated there if they are suitable for SO. If the question quality is not suitable for SO, they simply get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Requests for broad recommendations**, like book suggestions, what to learn next, or general advice in X situation. Any kind of broad question like this is usually closed on SE sites as unanswerable since there is no one right answer to the question, and they usually turn into a poll with everyone chiming in with their own recommendation or opinion&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions about or for programmers, that are unrelated to conceptual software development.** The site is meant for Q&amp;A on conceptual software development, so questions asked should be related to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Possible reasons for the high close/migration rate include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Users not reading the FAQ, and not understanding what this site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Users migrating bad questions from Stack Overflow because they don't understand our site's scope (per Yannis, 41% of migrations from SO were rejected in the past 90 days)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Users who have been suspended on SO, or are banned from asking questions, so are asking code questions here insetad. Yannis said they get one of those every few days or so, so its not a lot but it does contribute to the problem (around 10-15 questions over the past month)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If I missed something in either list list, let me know in a comment and I'll add it)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So my question is, what can we do to improve the way we present the site to users, and prevent so many bad questions from being asked?**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;For those who want to know how the close/migration percentage was determined:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;46% is the number is obtained by going to the question list, sorting by Newest, and counting the number of questions since 4/4, then filtering for `closed:1` and doing the same thing. There are 1029 questions total, while 441 are closed, so `441 / 1029 = 42.8%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`closed:1` includes `migrated:1`, so a separate filter for `migrated:1` shows 77 migrated questions in the past month, so `(441 - 77) / 1029 = 35%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, I didn't count those one at a time. :) I sorted by date, found the date I wanted to go back to, and multiplied the page number - 1 by the number of questions per page, and only counted the # of questions on the final page.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9428" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="3553" RevisionGUID="9f5cb415-fe28-43df-90ce-5474374785f8" CreationDate="2012-05-04T18:55:03.733" UserId="25936" Comment="Rollback to [ac7ec2a0-0193-4dad-ae92-bfc264955c5d]" Text="I've been noticing that more and more people are posting questions on Programmers to circumvent the automatic question ban or suspensions on Stack Overflow. When that happens, we only find out when trying to migrate the question, the migration is rejected and we get a message that the OP is banned, and the question is closed as off topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, it's not a _big_ issue, say we get one of those every two/three days, but it's still an issue and it's growing over time. What I would like is the community's blessing to delete those questions asap, and not wait for a couple of months, as we usually do. Again, only when we have confirmation that the OP is trying to circumvent a ban or a suspension. This will only take care of a very small amount of our closures, but it's something we can do easily if you want us to." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9429" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3551" RevisionGUID="c7c0b824-24a7-4771-aa22-22ad36c94ef8" CreationDate="2012-05-04T20:20:38.213" UserId="1130" Comment="added 212 characters in body" Text="As of right now, the close/migrated question rate for the past month or so is around 43% (see notes below)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of the closures are valid based on our site standards, however the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for. Most people don't willingly post unwelcome questions on a Q&amp;A site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of questions are closed because they are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Code questions** - These should be asked on SO, and get migrated there if they are suitable for SO. If the question quality is not suitable for SO, they simply get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Requests for broad recommendations**, like book suggestions, what to learn next, or general advice in X situation. Any kind of broad question like this is usually closed on SE sites as unanswerable since there is no one right answer to the question, and they usually turn into a poll with everyone chiming in with their own recommendation or opinion&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions about or for programmers, that are unrelated to conceptual software development.** The site is meant for Q&amp;A on conceptual software development, so questions asked should be related to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things that contribute to our high close/migration rate include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Users not reading the FAQ, and not understanding what this site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Users migrating bad questions from Stack Overflow because they don't understand our site's scope ([per Yannis][1], 41% of migrations from SO were rejected in the past 90 days, but he didn't say what % of our closed questions are migrations)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Users who have been suspended on SO, or are banned from asking questions, so are asking code questions here insetad. Yannis said they get one of those every few days or so, so its not a lot but it does contribute to the problem (around 10-15 questions over the past month)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If I missed something in either list list, let me know in a comment and I'll add it)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So my question is, what can we do to improve the way we present the site to users, and prevent so many bad questions from being asked?**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;For those who want to know how the close/migration percentage was determined:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;46% is the number is obtained by going to the question list, sorting by Newest, and counting the number of questions since 4/4, then filtering for `closed:1` and doing the same thing. There are 1029 questions total, while 441 are closed, so `441 / 1029 = 42.8%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`closed:1` includes `migrated:1`, so a separate filter for `migrated:1` shows 77 migrated questions in the past month, so `(441 - 77) / 1029 = 35%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, I didn't count those one at a time. :) I sorted by date, found the date I wanted to go back to, and multiplied the page number - 1 by the number of questions per page, and only counted the # of questions on the final page.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better#comment9644_3552" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9430" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3551" RevisionGUID="a327aead-d153-4fbc-8077-c01a3adc8fbc" CreationDate="2012-05-04T20:33:27.950" UserId="1130" Comment="added 91 characters in body" Text="As of right now, the close/migrated question rate for the past month or so is around 43% (see notes below)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of the closures are valid based on our site standards, however the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for. Most people don't willingly post unwelcome questions on a Q&amp;A site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of questions are closed because they are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Code questions** - These should be asked on SO, and get migrated there if they are suitable for SO. If the question quality is not suitable for SO, they simply get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Requests for broad recommendations**, like book suggestions, what to learn next, or general advice in X situation. Any kind of broad question like this is usually closed on SE sites as unanswerable since there is no one right answer to the question, and they usually turn into a poll with everyone chiming in with their own recommendation or opinion&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions about or for programmers, that are unrelated to conceptual software development.** The site is meant for Q&amp;A on conceptual software development, so questions asked should be related to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things that contribute to our high close/migration rate include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Users not reading the FAQ, and not understanding what this site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Users migrating bad questions from Stack Overflow because they don't understand our site's scope ([per Yannis][1], 41% of migrations ([about 70-80 questions][2]) from SO were rejected in the past 90 days, but that's for a 90-day period, not the last 30 days)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Users who have been suspended on SO, or are banned from asking questions, so are asking code questions here instead. Yannis said they get one of those every few days or so, so its not a lot but it does contribute to the problem (around 10-15 questions over the past month)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If I missed something in either list list, let me know in a comment and I'll add it)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So my question is, what can we do to improve the way we present the site to users, and prevent so many bad questions from being asked?**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;For those who want to know how the close/migration percentage was determined:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;46% is the number is obtained by going to the question list, sorting by Newest, and counting the number of questions since 4/4, then filtering for `closed:1` and doing the same thing. There are 1029 questions total, while 441 are closed, so `441 / 1029 = 42.8%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`closed:1` includes `migrated:1`, so a separate filter for `migrated:1` shows 77 migrated questions in the past month, so `(441 - 77) / 1029 = 35%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, I didn't count those one at a time. :) I sorted by date, found the date I wanted to go back to, and multiplied the page number - 1 by the number of questions per page, and only counted the # of questions on the final page.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better#comment9644_3552&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/4476129#4476129" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9431" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3551" RevisionGUID="832ee705-7950-4439-b731-fff1c18b3298" CreationDate="2012-05-04T20:39:48.330" UserId="1130" Comment="added 62 characters in body" Text="As of right now, the close/migrated question rate for the past month or so is around 43% (see notes below)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of the closures are valid based on our site standards, however the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for. Most people don't willingly post unwelcome questions on a Q&amp;A site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of questions are closed because they are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Code questions** - These should be asked on SO, and get migrated there if they are suitable for SO. If the question quality is not suitable for SO, they simply get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Requests for broad recommendations**, like book suggestions, what to learn next, or general advice in X situation. Any kind of broad question like this is usually closed on SE sites as unanswerable since there is no one right answer to the question, and they usually turn into a poll with everyone chiming in with their own recommendation or opinion&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions about or for programmers, that are unrelated to conceptual software development.** The site is meant for Q&amp;A on conceptual software development, so questions asked should be related to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things that contribute to our high close/migration rate include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Users not reading the FAQ, and not understanding what this site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Users migrating bad questions from Stack Overflow because they don't understand our site's scope. [Per Yannis][1], 41% of migrations from SO were rejected in the past 90 days ([about 70-80 questions][2]), but that's for a 90-day period, not the last 30 days. The average for a 30-day period would be somewhere around 25&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Users who have been suspended on SO, or are banned from asking questions, so are asking code questions here instead. Yannis said they get one of those every few days or so, so its not a lot but it does contribute to the problem (around 10-15 questions over the past month)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If I missed something in either list list, let me know in a comment and I'll add it)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So my question is, what can we do to improve the way we present the site to users, and prevent so many bad questions from being asked?**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;For those who want to know how the close/migration percentage was determined:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;46% is the number is obtained by going to the question list, sorting by Newest, and counting the number of questions since 4/4, then filtering for `closed:1` and doing the same thing. There are 1029 questions total, while 441 are closed, so `441 / 1029 = 42.8%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`closed:1` includes `migrated:1`, so a separate filter for `migrated:1` shows 77 migrated questions in the past month, so `(441 - 77) / 1029 = 35%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, I didn't count those one at a time. :) I sorted by date, found the date I wanted to go back to, and multiplied the page number - 1 by the number of questions per page, and only counted the # of questions on the final page.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better#comment9644_3552&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/4476129#4476129" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9432" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3553" RevisionGUID="b8451435-d68c-48f0-8457-959738c5f0a6" CreationDate="2012-05-05T04:05:28.400" UserId="25936" Comment="added 7926 characters in body" Text="I went through all closed questions of the past month and deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Cross posts**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Questions that were identified as having asked on other sites before being asked on Programmers. None had answers, all were downvoted (which is good), and they were quite a few of them (didn't count, but aproximately 1/10).&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Questions posted here to avoid bans or suspensions on Stack Overflow**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Argh.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Rejected migrations**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions that were migrated here, mostly from Stack Overflow, and we closed them. Those stayed around locked, and there were quite a few of them.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Succesful migrations**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Questions that were migrated away and had found a better home at the target site, which means that they were got a few up votes (&gt;3), and up voted answers (and in _most_ cases accepted answers). Yes I checked each and every one of them.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Downvoted questions with no answers or no upvoted answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  All hopelessly off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Heavily downvoted questions with no answers with no highlish upvoted answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Heavily downvoted &lt;= -3, highlish upvoted &lt;= +2, all hopelessly off topic.&#xD;&#xA;	   	&#xD;&#xA;Questions that satisfied any of the above criteria were _not_ deleted if they had at least one re-open vote, and of course duplicates were left untouched. I asked The Workplace mods if they wanted a couple of questions, one was deleted by the OP before we get a chance to migrate (which is funny as the mod I talked with liked the question) and the other was rejected (but not deleted, as with some rewording it _might_ fit another site, waiting confirmation). I've also re-opened a question that was closed as not constructive, as it had two re-open votes and a good(ish) answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was honestly curious to see what was going on with the closed questions, I'm happy with _all_ closures, they are all justified, regardless if they were delete worthy or not. However deleting the questions was only a by product of the process, I only did it because it made sense to clean up while going through the closed questions, my primary motivation was to get a better feel of our closures and our overal closing attitude. My conclusions and thoughts are (in no particular order):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Snarky comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I saw _a lot_ of comments I didn't really like. The majority of commenters were being nice and helping OPs understand why their question was off topic, but there were a lot of comments that were... umph. Not outright rude, but not particularly helpful either. I do enjoy sarcasm as much as everyone, and perhaps a little more, but I think we should be a bit kinder to newer users. I understand that several of us are getting increasingly tired of having to deal with the same crap questions over and over, but I would like to ask everyone to refrain from commenting on newer users questions if they are not feeling productive. &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  I would like to suggest a very easy workflow: If you happen upon a snarky comment, and you feel you can provide better guidance to the OP, please do, even if it means re-iterating the earlier comment. And after you post your comment, flag the earlier one so we can remove it. Simple as that, and please avoid responding to the snarky comment with an even snarkier. A few of our higher rep users already do that, and I think they are setting a perfect example for the rest of us.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Stack Overflow sucks**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not the _real_ Stack Overflow, that's a wonderful place, but the part of it that finds it's way here. The questions I deleted were of extreme low quality to begin with, but those that came from Stack Overflow were the worst of the worst. That includes direct migrations, questions asked here because of Stack Overflow bans or suspensions, and questions asked here after being closed on Stack Overflow because some &quot;friendly&quot; commenter pointed OP to Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Most Programmers regulars are probably aware of how troublesome our migration relationship with Stack Overflow is, however it's worth noting that 59% of migrations from there the past 90 days were good migrations, and Stack Overflow is our top referring site (excluding search engines). So it's not all bad.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **We should be deleting some questions more quickly**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Cross posts, questions that were asked here to circumvent bans or suspensions on other sites, and failed migrations don't really serve any purpose staying around for long. All they do is contribute in our questions lists looking like a battlefield, without having any chance of being salvageable. 10K+ users please contribute delete votes when you see a comment identifying a question in one of the first two categories, lower rep users please flag if you happen upon those questions a week after they were asked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Not constructive**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  We have some not constructive questions that I think could be salvaged. I didn't have the energy to look deeper into them, but I invite everyone to go through [highly upvoted closed questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1) and see if you can help bring them up to shape. Don't go at it alone, if you find a question you think could be re-opened, post it in chat and ask others to evaluate and help. Don't go blindly casting re-open votes, always keep in mind that re-open votes are more powerfull in twos (and even more in threes).&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course deleting the questions changed the numbers Rachel references, the current numbers are (for the last 30 days, and at the time of writing this, new questions may have popped up):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Open questions         = 599&#xD;&#xA;    Closed questions (all) = 283&#xD;&#xA;    Total questions        = 882&#xD;&#xA;    ----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;    Migrated questions     = 37&#xD;&#xA;    Closed (excl. migrat.) = 246&#xD;&#xA;    ----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;    Closed % (incl. migr.) = 32%&#xD;&#xA;    Closed % (excl. migr.) = 27,8%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**27,8%** is our current close rate, having deleted an abudance of crap. Again this wasn't about hiding things under the carpet, this was about getting a clear idea of how many questions we close excluding:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions we have little control over (first three categories of the deletions),&#xD;&#xA;1. Migrations,&#xD;&#xA;1. Hopelessly off topic questions that aren't salvageable (last two categories of the deletions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am excluding migrations (from us to other sites), because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The questions are labeled [migrated] and not [closed], it's reasonable to assume that they don't contribute to scaring newer users off (which is the basis of this question)&#xD;&#xA;- Migrations are cool, we are only trying to find a better place for the question, and most OPs really appreciate that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And don't forget that our closure rate includes duplicates, something that's not really cool, I _strongly_ believe that most OPs appreciate finding quick answers or at least don't scare off because of duplicates. However duplicates are still labeled [closed] and they might contribute in giving the wrong idea for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which leaves us with the hopelessly off topic questions, the heart of the matter, and of course the rest of the closed questions that I didn't delete. Yes, there is room for improvement. Yes, our expectations are a bit higher than most other Stack Exchange sites. Yes, we all want more people to love the site as much as we do, and yes we all want less closed questions. But is it a problem? I think not, at least not a major one and certainly not one we can't deal with efficiently. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start by being a bit more helpful when guiding newer users, and a bit more aggresive when protecting borderline not constructive questions. We (the mods) have said countless times that bad answers may lead to a borderline question getting closed, however the community hasn't really been responsive in defending those magnificently interesting questions by vehemently cleaning up the crap answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Use your down votes people, and please for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, resist the urge to add yet another opinion heavy answer to the pile. Great answers with references and _relevant_ experiences is what we are looking for, treat everything else like it should be treated. **The best way of lowering our close rate is by re-opening borderline questions.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [upcoming contest](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/programmers-se-contest-the-complete-outline) will probably bring us a lot new users, the coming month is a perfect opportunity to help the site grow. Be nice(r) to the newcomers, spend a few more seconds explaining why their questions might not fit or better yet, edit them to fit. Please avoid completely un-productive comments &amp; discussion about stuff only a handful of people may find interesting, long comment discussions, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9433" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3555" RevisionGUID="84477040-ac9a-430c-990f-37bd974985ac" CreationDate="2012-05-05T14:56:32.127" UserId="34148" Text="When I did not like someone answer and I demoted that answer, my score was reduced by 1 - What is the idea behind this? Thanks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9434" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3555" RevisionGUID="84477040-ac9a-430c-990f-37bd974985ac" CreationDate="2012-05-05T14:56:32.127" UserId="34148" Text="Why does demoting an answer of another person demote my score by 1?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9435" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3555" RevisionGUID="84477040-ac9a-430c-990f-37bd974985ac" CreationDate="2012-05-05T14:56:32.127" UserId="34148" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9436" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3556" RevisionGUID="9ba92fc7-7e38-4f93-8ff3-c351aae89c52" CreationDate="2012-05-05T15:08:31.310" UserId="86" Text="There is discussion of creating a separate App Stores site. This proposal seems to be far too narrow a topic to sustain engagement and to be something within the scope of programmers (objective questions related, but not directly about programming). Are these questions on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9437" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3556" RevisionGUID="9ba92fc7-7e38-4f93-8ff3-c351aae89c52" CreationDate="2012-05-05T15:08:31.310" UserId="86" Text="Are App Store questions on topic on programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9438" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3556" RevisionGUID="9ba92fc7-7e38-4f93-8ff3-c351aae89c52" CreationDate="2012-05-05T15:08:31.310" UserId="86" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9439" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3557" RevisionGUID="e0e0dc41-759a-4cbc-8b66-63127557360d" CreationDate="2012-05-05T15:31:53.363" UserId="25936" Text="Down voting answers costs you 1 reputation point, this is [meta-tag:status-bydesign]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reasoning is that it makes revenge / retaliatory / otherwise abusive down voting less attractive, as discussed in a [very early Stack Overflow podcast][1] (circa 2008). Furthermore it emphasizes up voting over down voting, as does every other voting related mechanism we have (up votes earn you more rep than down votes cost you, etc). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, the penalty is too small to matter when you have legitimate reasons to down vote. It might matter a bit more to newer users, but I'm sure you having quite a lot of reputation wouldn't think twice before down voting a bad answer. And of course if you down vote sensibly and the community agrees with you, it's highly probable that the answer will be removed and your reputation will be refunded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There used to be a reputation penalty when down voting questions as well. This [changed a year ago][2]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thus, to incentivize more balanced question voting, we are considering removing the -1 cost of casting a downvote on a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know if it worked or not, but I enjoy free down votes on questions too much to care ;) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/15866/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/90324/should-downvotes-on-questions-be-free" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9440" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3555" RevisionGUID="47b553e2-21ba-4cbb-8551-0aca3bcd7375" CreationDate="2012-05-05T15:36:40.647" UserId="31260" Comment="personal stuff removed" Text="When I did not like someone answer and I demoted that answer, my score was reduced by 1 - What is the idea behind this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9441" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3555" RevisionGUID="43b8c2e1-74a0-48a4-82e2-88b6940659ed" CreationDate="2012-05-05T16:07:16.813" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9442" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3556" RevisionGUID="5d41cb6f-5c35-4dd0-a1b7-79b511fea67b" CreationDate="2012-05-05T17:56:51.100" UserId="86" Comment="added 76 characters in body" Text="There is [discussion][1] of creating a separate App Stores site. This proposal seems to be far too narrow a topic to sustain engagement and to be something within the scope of programmers (objective questions related, but not directly about programming). Are these questions on topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30702/app-stores" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9443" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3558" RevisionGUID="4e43703e-14af-4bb7-912f-3e02bd9d7965" CreationDate="2012-05-05T22:27:10.140" UserId="10199" Text="My question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45138/worst-practices-in-c-common-mistakes was closed for being &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually, my sole intent was to get answers that &quot;generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise&quot; and not &quot;opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have edited the question and changed the vague term &quot;bad things&quot; to the word &quot;pitfalls&quot;, which I hope is somewhat clearer. What other things could I change to emphasize that I'm not looking for subjective arguments in the answers, but real facts and knowledge which is truly beneficial to C++ learners, and thus make the question on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9444" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3558" RevisionGUID="4e43703e-14af-4bb7-912f-3e02bd9d7965" CreationDate="2012-05-05T22:27:10.140" UserId="10199" Text="Suggestions on how to improve my &quot;not constructive&quot; question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9445" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3558" RevisionGUID="4e43703e-14af-4bb7-912f-3e02bd9d7965" CreationDate="2012-05-05T22:27:10.140" UserId="10199" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|improvement|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9446" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3559" RevisionGUID="a8e779de-10bf-4e35-945f-716d7756c110" CreationDate="2012-05-05T22:30:35.897" UserId="47" Text="See the first bullet point in the [What kind of questions should I *not* ask here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's no **one** &quot;correct&quot; answer to your question - you are asking for a list of equally valid answers, and as such your question is not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a perfectly valid question to ask, but there are some kinds of questions that Stack Exchange is not suited to answer and this is one of them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9447" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3553" RevisionGUID="dbbaaf5e-51db-4876-b19e-c30fae2b6371" CreationDate="2012-05-05T22:33:19.730" UserId="1130" Comment="basis of question is not about scaring new users, but improving how we communicate with them" Text="I went through all closed questions of the past month and deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Cross posts**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Questions that were identified as having asked on other sites before being asked on Programmers. None had answers, all were downvoted (which is good), and they were quite a few of them (didn't count, but aproximately 1/10).&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Questions posted here to avoid bans or suspensions on Stack Overflow**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Argh.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Rejected migrations**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions that were migrated here, mostly from Stack Overflow, and we closed them. Those stayed around locked, and there were quite a few of them.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Succesful migrations**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Questions that were migrated away and had found a better home at the target site, which means that they were got a few up votes (&gt;3), and up voted answers (and in _most_ cases accepted answers). Yes I checked each and every one of them.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Downvoted questions with no answers or no upvoted answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  All hopelessly off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Heavily downvoted questions with no answers with no highlish upvoted answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Heavily downvoted &lt;= -3, highlish upvoted &lt;= +2, all hopelessly off topic.&#xD;&#xA;	   	&#xD;&#xA;Questions that satisfied any of the above criteria were _not_ deleted if they had at least one re-open vote, and of course duplicates were left untouched. I asked The Workplace mods if they wanted a couple of questions, one was deleted by the OP before we get a chance to migrate (which is funny as the mod I talked with liked the question) and the other was rejected (but not deleted, as with some rewording it _might_ fit another site, waiting confirmation). I've also re-opened a question that was closed as not constructive, as it had two re-open votes and a good(ish) answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was honestly curious to see what was going on with the closed questions, I'm happy with _all_ closures, they are all justified, regardless if they were delete worthy or not. However deleting the questions was only a by product of the process, I only did it because it made sense to clean up while going through the closed questions, my primary motivation was to get a better feel of our closures and our overal closing attitude. My conclusions and thoughts are (in no particular order):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Snarky comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I saw _a lot_ of comments I didn't really like. The majority of commenters were being nice and helping OPs understand why their question was off topic, but there were a lot of comments that were... umph. Not outright rude, but not particularly helpful either. I do enjoy sarcasm as much as everyone, and perhaps a little more, but I think we should be a bit kinder to newer users. I understand that several of us are getting increasingly tired of having to deal with the same crap questions over and over, but I would like to ask everyone to refrain from commenting on newer users questions if they are not feeling productive. &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  I would like to suggest a very easy workflow: If you happen upon a snarky comment, and you feel you can provide better guidance to the OP, please do, even if it means re-iterating the earlier comment. And after you post your comment, flag the earlier one so we can remove it. Simple as that, and please avoid responding to the snarky comment with an even snarkier. A few of our higher rep users already do that, and I think they are setting a perfect example for the rest of us.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Stack Overflow sucks**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not the _real_ Stack Overflow, that's a wonderful place, but the part of it that finds it's way here. The questions I deleted were of extreme low quality to begin with, but those that came from Stack Overflow were the worst of the worst. That includes direct migrations, questions asked here because of Stack Overflow bans or suspensions, and questions asked here after being closed on Stack Overflow because some &quot;friendly&quot; commenter pointed OP to Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Most Programmers regulars are probably aware of how troublesome our migration relationship with Stack Overflow is, however it's worth noting that 59% of migrations from there the past 90 days were good migrations, and Stack Overflow is our top referring site (excluding search engines). So it's not all bad.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **We should be deleting some questions more quickly**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Cross posts, questions that were asked here to circumvent bans or suspensions on other sites, and failed migrations don't really serve any purpose staying around for long. All they do is contribute in our questions lists looking like a battlefield, without having any chance of being salvageable. 10K+ users please contribute delete votes when you see a comment identifying a question in one of the first two categories, lower rep users please flag if you happen upon those questions a week after they were asked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Not constructive**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  We have some not constructive questions that I think could be salvaged. I didn't have the energy to look deeper into them, but I invite everyone to go through [highly upvoted closed questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1) and see if you can help bring them up to shape. Don't go at it alone, if you find a question you think could be re-opened, post it in chat and ask others to evaluate and help. Don't go blindly casting re-open votes, always keep in mind that re-open votes are more powerfull in twos (and even more in threes).&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course deleting the questions changed the numbers Rachel references, the current numbers are (for the last 30 days, and at the time of writing this, new questions may have popped up):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Open questions         = 599&#xD;&#xA;    Closed questions (all) = 283&#xD;&#xA;    Total questions        = 882&#xD;&#xA;    ----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;    Migrated questions     = 37&#xD;&#xA;    Closed (excl. migrat.) = 246&#xD;&#xA;    ----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;    Closed % (incl. migr.) = 32%&#xD;&#xA;    Closed % (excl. migr.) = 27,8%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**27,8%** is our current close rate, having deleted an abudance of crap. Again this wasn't about hiding things under the carpet, this was about getting a clear idea of how many questions we close excluding:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions we have little control over (first three categories of the deletions),&#xD;&#xA;1. Migrations,&#xD;&#xA;1. Hopelessly off topic questions that aren't salvageable (last two categories of the deletions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am excluding migrations (from us to other sites), because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The questions are labeled [migrated] and not [closed], it's reasonable to assume that they don't contribute to scaring newer users off&#xD;&#xA;- Migrations are cool, we are only trying to find a better place for the question, and most OPs really appreciate that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And don't forget that our closure rate includes duplicates, something that's not really cool, I _strongly_ believe that most OPs appreciate finding quick answers or at least don't scare off because of duplicates. However duplicates are still labeled [closed] and they might contribute in giving the wrong idea for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which leaves us with the hopelessly off topic questions, the heart of the matter, and of course the rest of the closed questions that I didn't delete. Yes, there is room for improvement. Yes, our expectations are a bit higher than most other Stack Exchange sites. Yes, we all want more people to love the site as much as we do, and yes we all want less closed questions. But is it a problem? I think not, at least not a major one and certainly not one we can't deal with efficiently. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start by being a bit more helpful when guiding newer users, and a bit more aggresive when protecting borderline not constructive questions. We (the mods) have said countless times that bad answers may lead to a borderline question getting closed, however the community hasn't really been responsive in defending those magnificently interesting questions by vehemently cleaning up the crap answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Use your down votes people, and please for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, resist the urge to add yet another opinion heavy answer to the pile. Great answers with references and _relevant_ experiences is what we are looking for, treat everything else like it should be treated. **The best way of lowering our close rate is by re-opening borderline questions.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [upcoming contest](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/programmers-se-contest-the-complete-outline) will probably bring us a lot new users, the coming month is a perfect opportunity to help the site grow. Be nice(r) to the newcomers, spend a few more seconds explaining why their questions might not fit or better yet, edit them to fit. Please avoid completely un-productive comments &amp; discussion about stuff only a handful of people may find interesting, long comment discussions, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9448" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="7f93ceb2-b82d-42b0-8c86-e6060e92b427" CreationDate="2012-05-05T22:37:26.187" UserId="8575" Comment="Apostrophes" Text="## Wait! Programmers.SE is having a contest!? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*What have you been living under a rock?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just kidding (maybe). Yes, Programmers is having a contest. And it's going to be awesome! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So how will this contest work? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will be divided into 4 weeks. For each of the 4 weeks, there will be a tag dedicated to it. The schedule will go like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [tag:data-structures]&#xD;&#xA; 2. [tag:documentation]&#xD;&#xA; 3. [tag:history] (yes it has to be *programming history*)&#xD;&#xA; 4. [tag:algorithms]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each week, users who post questions and answers for that weeks tag will have their post entered into the contest. The following categories can win:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Best Answer:** The best answer from the week will be a winner. Best answer is judged by **votes**. Any answer to a closed question is ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - **Best Question:** The best question from the week will also be awarded. Best question is not judged on votes, but instead **views**. Closed questions will be disqualified. ***We encourage advertising your question (on non-SE sites) to get more views. Please do not spam the chat rooms.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, you are only eligible if you post under the current week's tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Prizes! ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best of all, we try to get you the best prizes possible. In order to do that, we had to put on a few restrictions. But **winners can choose their own site-related prize from Amazon, as long as it:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is under $50 (including shipping and handling)&#xD;&#xA; - Is related to the site and its topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your one prize does not use up the $50, you may choose up to 3 different things (still has to be under $50 all total).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So when do we start? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will start Monday, May 7th, at 12:00 AM UTC.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Important Notes of Eligibility and Such##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You must have a valid email address in your profile so that we can contact you and ask you what you want from Amazon (if you win).&#xD;&#xA; - No closed questions or negatively scored questions (regardless of views). &#xD;&#xA; - SE employees are ineligible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have fun!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9449" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3560" RevisionGUID="2f4aaf0d-0c6d-44e3-bebd-9c19d345a3dc" CreationDate="2012-05-05T23:02:22.287" UserId="8575" Text="I was curious as to whether the closure rate has been getting worse over time, so I wrote this [Data Explorer query][1]. There has definitely been a surge during the past year. (Note that this includes deleted questions; also, the explorer dump stops at March 15 right now.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![percent of questions closed][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had to deal with a similar surge on [Quant.SE][3], where I am a moderator. We dealt with it by revamping our FAQ to be extremely clear about what we did not want on our site. We've also been vigilant about getting the wrong people off the site with a combination of persuasion and suspensions. It was pretty harsh, but it worked. We have halved our closure rate in the past few months while maintaining a steady visitors growth rate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One thing I notice on Programmers.SE is that there is *still* disagreement about what's on-topic. Many of the what-language-should-I-use and career advice questions get a few answers before being shut down! It might be instructive for the poor souls who mistakenly answered an off-topic question to be told exactly why they should not have bothered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/69182/percentage-of-closed-questions-per-date&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/WIuF9.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://quant.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9450" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="3553" RevisionGUID="98865514-c484-4a93-8608-c547908301db" CreationDate="2012-05-06T06:21:22.137" UserId="25936" Comment="Rollback to [b8451435-d68c-48f0-8457-959738c5f0a6]" Text="I went through all closed questions of the past month and deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Cross posts**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Questions that were identified as having asked on other sites before being asked on Programmers. None had answers, all were downvoted (which is good), and they were quite a few of them (didn't count, but aproximately 1/10).&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Questions posted here to avoid bans or suspensions on Stack Overflow**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Argh.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Rejected migrations**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions that were migrated here, mostly from Stack Overflow, and we closed them. Those stayed around locked, and there were quite a few of them.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Succesful migrations**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Questions that were migrated away and had found a better home at the target site, which means that they were got a few up votes (&gt;3), and up voted answers (and in _most_ cases accepted answers). Yes I checked each and every one of them.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Downvoted questions with no answers or no upvoted answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  All hopelessly off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Heavily downvoted questions with no answers with no highlish upvoted answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Heavily downvoted &lt;= -3, highlish upvoted &lt;= +2, all hopelessly off topic.&#xD;&#xA;	   	&#xD;&#xA;Questions that satisfied any of the above criteria were _not_ deleted if they had at least one re-open vote, and of course duplicates were left untouched. I asked The Workplace mods if they wanted a couple of questions, one was deleted by the OP before we get a chance to migrate (which is funny as the mod I talked with liked the question) and the other was rejected (but not deleted, as with some rewording it _might_ fit another site, waiting confirmation). I've also re-opened a question that was closed as not constructive, as it had two re-open votes and a good(ish) answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was honestly curious to see what was going on with the closed questions, I'm happy with _all_ closures, they are all justified, regardless if they were delete worthy or not. However deleting the questions was only a by product of the process, I only did it because it made sense to clean up while going through the closed questions, my primary motivation was to get a better feel of our closures and our overal closing attitude. My conclusions and thoughts are (in no particular order):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Snarky comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I saw _a lot_ of comments I didn't really like. The majority of commenters were being nice and helping OPs understand why their question was off topic, but there were a lot of comments that were... umph. Not outright rude, but not particularly helpful either. I do enjoy sarcasm as much as everyone, and perhaps a little more, but I think we should be a bit kinder to newer users. I understand that several of us are getting increasingly tired of having to deal with the same crap questions over and over, but I would like to ask everyone to refrain from commenting on newer users questions if they are not feeling productive. &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  I would like to suggest a very easy workflow: If you happen upon a snarky comment, and you feel you can provide better guidance to the OP, please do, even if it means re-iterating the earlier comment. And after you post your comment, flag the earlier one so we can remove it. Simple as that, and please avoid responding to the snarky comment with an even snarkier. A few of our higher rep users already do that, and I think they are setting a perfect example for the rest of us.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Stack Overflow sucks**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not the _real_ Stack Overflow, that's a wonderful place, but the part of it that finds it's way here. The questions I deleted were of extreme low quality to begin with, but those that came from Stack Overflow were the worst of the worst. That includes direct migrations, questions asked here because of Stack Overflow bans or suspensions, and questions asked here after being closed on Stack Overflow because some &quot;friendly&quot; commenter pointed OP to Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Most Programmers regulars are probably aware of how troublesome our migration relationship with Stack Overflow is, however it's worth noting that 59% of migrations from there the past 90 days were good migrations, and Stack Overflow is our top referring site (excluding search engines). So it's not all bad.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **We should be deleting some questions more quickly**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Cross posts, questions that were asked here to circumvent bans or suspensions on other sites, and failed migrations don't really serve any purpose staying around for long. All they do is contribute in our questions lists looking like a battlefield, without having any chance of being salvageable. 10K+ users please contribute delete votes when you see a comment identifying a question in one of the first two categories, lower rep users please flag if you happen upon those questions a week after they were asked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Not constructive**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  We have some not constructive questions that I think could be salvaged. I didn't have the energy to look deeper into them, but I invite everyone to go through [highly upvoted closed questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1) and see if you can help bring them up to shape. Don't go at it alone, if you find a question you think could be re-opened, post it in chat and ask others to evaluate and help. Don't go blindly casting re-open votes, always keep in mind that re-open votes are more powerfull in twos (and even more in threes).&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course deleting the questions changed the numbers Rachel references, the current numbers are (for the last 30 days, and at the time of writing this, new questions may have popped up):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Open questions         = 599&#xD;&#xA;    Closed questions (all) = 283&#xD;&#xA;    Total questions        = 882&#xD;&#xA;    ----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;    Migrated questions     = 37&#xD;&#xA;    Closed (excl. migrat.) = 246&#xD;&#xA;    ----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;    Closed % (incl. migr.) = 32%&#xD;&#xA;    Closed % (excl. migr.) = 27,8%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**27,8%** is our current close rate, having deleted an abudance of crap. Again this wasn't about hiding things under the carpet, this was about getting a clear idea of how many questions we close excluding:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions we have little control over (first three categories of the deletions),&#xD;&#xA;1. Migrations,&#xD;&#xA;1. Hopelessly off topic questions that aren't salvageable (last two categories of the deletions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am excluding migrations (from us to other sites), because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The questions are labeled [migrated] and not [closed], it's reasonable to assume that they don't contribute to scaring newer users off (which is the basis of this question)&#xD;&#xA;- Migrations are cool, we are only trying to find a better place for the question, and most OPs really appreciate that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And don't forget that our closure rate includes duplicates, something that's not really cool, I _strongly_ believe that most OPs appreciate finding quick answers or at least don't scare off because of duplicates. However duplicates are still labeled [closed] and they might contribute in giving the wrong idea for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which leaves us with the hopelessly off topic questions, the heart of the matter, and of course the rest of the closed questions that I didn't delete. Yes, there is room for improvement. Yes, our expectations are a bit higher than most other Stack Exchange sites. Yes, we all want more people to love the site as much as we do, and yes we all want less closed questions. But is it a problem? I think not, at least not a major one and certainly not one we can't deal with efficiently. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start by being a bit more helpful when guiding newer users, and a bit more aggresive when protecting borderline not constructive questions. We (the mods) have said countless times that bad answers may lead to a borderline question getting closed, however the community hasn't really been responsive in defending those magnificently interesting questions by vehemently cleaning up the crap answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Use your down votes people, and please for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, resist the urge to add yet another opinion heavy answer to the pile. Great answers with references and _relevant_ experiences is what we are looking for, treat everything else like it should be treated. **The best way of lowering our close rate is by re-opening borderline questions.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [upcoming contest](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/programmers-se-contest-the-complete-outline) will probably bring us a lot new users, the coming month is a perfect opportunity to help the site grow. Be nice(r) to the newcomers, spend a few more seconds explaining why their questions might not fit or better yet, edit them to fit. Please avoid completely un-productive comments &amp; discussion about stuff only a handful of people may find interesting, long comment discussions, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9451" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3561" RevisionGUID="78754129-b81d-4bc3-bad0-ae777d689a5c" CreationDate="2012-05-06T07:49:28.163" UserId="51770" Text="&gt; Users not reading the FAQ, and not understanding what this site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am pretty new here, so I might be completely off, but I think that's the main problem. When I first found the site, I read the FAQ, it was pretty easy to find and quite informative (but very long!). I'm not an expert on what is on topic for Programmers, but I still haven't stumbled upon a closed question that would have been asked if the OP had read the FAQ in the first place. I don't know if this is possible but one statistic I would be very interested to see would be the exactly that, how many people actually visited the FAQ before they asked their questions, and how many of the questions asked by people not visiting the FAQ were closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My experience with the site is very limited, and so is my data set, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to familiarize themselves with the guidelines before asking. I haven't asked a question here yet, and do not know if I will soon (most of my questions are already asked and answered) but when I do I will give the FAQ another look to see if my question is ok. I think it's the sensible thing to do, it will only cost me a few seconds and it will help me get better answers, as from what I've seen so far the questions that are disallowed are those that don't generate useful answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site, Meta, is also very useful, there are several past discussions that are applicable to this one and I'm surprised no one mentioned them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Can the migration path from SO be reconsidered?][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [How can we help people who ask “What language should I learn next” ask a better question?][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [How to prevent “Why is my question being closed?” and User Frustration?][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [What can be done about bad questions on Programmers?][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [Questions barely or not related directly to programming. We need handling them.][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also seems to me that people keep answering obviously off topic questions, although that has already been identified as something that we shouldn't do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Should we seek for alternatives to propose to OP when closing their off-topic question?][6] &#xD;&#xA;- [Please don't post answers on obviously off topic / bad questions!][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is not really helpful, although I understand that most people will think to answer first and clean up later, it's very misguiding to the person asking especially when answers are from senior members. It's like saying your question is off topic, but no problem, you got your answers. I've already lost 25 reputation points from answering a very bad question by [this guy][8], and I'm really glad the community and the moderators re-acted and other people didn't waste their time answering his questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm getting a bit off topic, so I will stop here, with [this amazing find][9]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not supposed to be a beginners site, and a lot of closed questions come from beginners. I don't think there is anything we can do here it is only natural that the site will have more closed questions than others. I like the advanced aspect of the site, and the work that is being done in the disciplined aspect of it, questions like [this one][11] should be the norm not the exception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2048/can-the-migration-path-from-so-be-reconsidered&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1580/how-can-we-help-people-who-ask-what-language-should-i-learn-next-ask-a-better&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/492/how-to-prevent-why-is-my-question-being-closed-and-user-frustration&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/642/questions-barely-or-not-related-directly-to-programming-we-need-handling-them&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1722/51770&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2823/please-dont-post-answers-on-obviously-off-topic-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3457/how-did-this-user-amass-more-than-2k-worth-of-reputation&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2000/51770&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Jd0eV.png&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147205/what-were-the-core-api-packages-of-java-1-0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9452" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="345f4014-c8bd-468b-b15a-bee829114fb2" CreationDate="2012-05-07T01:27:31.243" UserId="34364" Comment="deleted 37 characters in body" Text="## Wait! Programmers.SE is having a contest!? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*What have you been living under a rock?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just kidding (maybe). Yes, Programmers is having a contest. And it's going to be awesome! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So how will this contest work? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will be divided into 4 weeks. For each of the 4 weeks, there will be a tag dedicated to it. The schedule will go like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [tag:data-structures]&#xD;&#xA; 2. [tag:documentation]&#xD;&#xA; 3. [tag:history] (yes it has to be *programming history*)&#xD;&#xA; 4. [tag:algorithms]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each week, users who post questions and answers for that weeks tag will have their post entered into the contest. The following categories can win:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Best Answer:** The best answer from the week will be a winner. Best answer is judged by **votes**. Any answer to a closed question is ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - **Best Question:** The best question from the week will also be awarded. Best question is not judged on votes, but instead **views**. Closed questions will be disqualified. ***We encourage advertising your question (on non-SE sites) to get more views. Please do not spam the chat rooms.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, you are only eligible if you post under the current week's tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Prizes! ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best of all, we try to get you the best prizes possible. In order to do that, we had to put on a few restrictions. But **winners can choose their own site-related prize from Amazon, as long as it:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is under $50 (including shipping and handling)&#xD;&#xA; - Is related to the site and its topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your one prize does not use up the $50, you may choose up to 3 different things (still has to be under $50 all total).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So when do we start? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest is going on now!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Important Notes of Eligibility and Such##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You must have a valid email address in your profile so that we can contact you and ask you what you want from Amazon (if you win).&#xD;&#xA; - No closed questions or negatively scored questions (regardless of views). &#xD;&#xA; - SE employees are ineligible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9453" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3562" RevisionGUID="d4e64d54-638c-4bc3-b81d-53f0018a992c" CreationDate="2012-05-07T02:30:49.297" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This was [a discussion on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/131388/would-questions-about-app-store-approval-be-appropriate-for-so) a few days ago which had comments that mirrored an earlier [discussion we had here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2575/8), and while I don't want to say *every* app store question is off-topic here, it's unlikely many of the questions people would *want* to ask—namely questions about app store policies and such—would be on-topic anywhere on Stack Exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main issue is that we are not Apple, or RIM, or Amazon, or any of the other private entities that make or enforce those policies, so we'd only be speculating and a poor substitute for the people developers *should* be asking, which are the people who work for those companies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the example questions for the proposal, it looks like the App Stores proposal is going to suffer from this right from the get-go:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is there a limit on how long you can hold on to an app name in &lt;App market&gt;?&#xD;&#xA;2. Can an app name have special characters?&#xD;&#xA;3. I created an app that only works with third-party hardware. Do I have to send the hardware to Apple to get approval? How do they test such apps?&#xD;&#xA;4. Is there any hard evidence on how much individual app developers have actually earned?&#xD;&#xA;5. Will my app be deleted from [store] if no one downloads it for [x time]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions 1, 2, 3, and 5 are all questions for the companies running the App Stores and making the policies, not random strangers on the internet who aren't in the know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 4 is just a bad SE question in general: taken at its face value, it's a simple yes or no question (there is evidence or there isn't). Reading between the lines, someone asking that likely wants to know how much they're going to make as an app developer, which is highly localized (and more often than not, [attributable to pure dumb luck](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/05/ios-app-success-is-a-lottery-and-60-of-developers-dont-break-even.ars)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have high hopes for the App Store proposal: I don't think it's going to fail because of lack of interest, but because it's not a topic that Stack Exchange handles well. I don't think trying to redirect people from that proposal to here does anyone any favors." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9454" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="8b93dfd1-038d-4efd-a37a-9988b863dfdd" CreationDate="2012-05-07T09:43:56.247" UserId="34364" Comment="added dates for all tags" Text="## Wait! Programmers.SE is having a contest!? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*What have you been living under a rock?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just kidding (maybe). Yes, Programmers is having a contest. And it's going to be awesome! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So how will this contest work? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will be divided into 4 weeks. For each of the 4 weeks, there will be a tag dedicated to it. The schedule will go like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [tag:data-structures] -- Now!&#xD;&#xA; 2. [tag:documentation] -- May 14&#xD;&#xA; 3. [tag:history] (yes it has to be *programming history*) -- May 21&#xD;&#xA; 4. [tag:algorithms] -- May 28&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each week, users who post questions and answers for that weeks tag will have their post entered into the contest. The following categories can win:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Best Answer:** The best answer from the week will be a winner. Best answer is judged by **votes**. Any answer to a closed question is ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - **Best Question:** The best question from the week will also be awarded. Best question is not judged on votes, but instead **views**. Closed questions will be disqualified. ***We encourage advertising your question (on non-SE sites) to get more views. Please do not spam the chat rooms.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, you are only eligible if you post under the current week's tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Prizes! ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best of all, we try to get you the best prizes possible. In order to do that, we had to put on a few restrictions. But **winners can choose their own site-related prize from Amazon, as long as it:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is under $50 (including shipping and handling)&#xD;&#xA; - Is related to the site and its topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your one prize does not use up the $50, you may choose up to 3 different things (still has to be under $50 all total).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So when do we start? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest is going on now!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Important Notes of Eligibility and Such##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You must have a valid email address in your profile so that we can contact you and ask you what you want from Amazon (if you win).&#xD;&#xA; - No closed questions or negatively scored questions (regardless of views). &#xD;&#xA; - SE employees are ineligible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9455" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="d4a43467-3de1-4227-9212-b05d2aa03eab" CreationDate="2012-05-07T13:25:59.293" UserId="1130" Comment="added 89 characters in body" Text="## Wait! Programmers.SE is having a contest!? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*What have you been living under a rock?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just kidding (maybe). Yes, Programmers is having a contest. And it's going to be awesome! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So how will this contest work? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will be divided into 4 weeks. For each of the 4 weeks, there will be a tag dedicated to it. The schedule will go like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [tag:data-structures] -- Now!&#xD;&#xA; 2. [tag:documentation] -- May 14&#xD;&#xA; 3. [tag:history] (yes it has to be *programming history*) -- May 21&#xD;&#xA; 4. [tag:algorithms] -- May 28&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each week, users who post questions and answers for that weeks tag will have their post entered into the contest. The following categories can win:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Best Answer:** The best answer from the week will be a winner. Best answer is judged by **votes**. Any answer to a closed question is ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - **Best Question:** The best question from the week will also be awarded. Best question is not judged on votes, but instead **views**. Closed questions will be disqualified. ***We encourage advertising your question (on non-SE sites) to get more views. Please do not spam the chat rooms.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, you are only eligible if you post under the current week's tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Prizes! ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best of all, we try to get you the best prizes possible. In order to do that, we had to put on a few restrictions. But **winners can choose their own site-related prize from Amazon, as long as it:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is under $50 (including shipping and handling)&#xD;&#xA; - Is related to the site and its topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your one prize does not use up the $50, you may choose up to 3 different things (still has to be under $50 all total).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So when do we start? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest is going on now!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Important Notes of Eligibility and Such##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You must have a valid email address in your profile so that we can contact you and ask you what you want from Amazon (if you win).&#xD;&#xA; - No closed questions or negatively scored questions (regardless of views). &#xD;&#xA; - SE employees are ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - The question you are asking or answering must contain the contest tag to be eligible&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9456" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="30f85457-3b15-4782-a364-8a094a429b63" CreationDate="2012-05-07T13:25:59.590" UserId="1130" Comment="added 89 characters in body" Text="## Wait! Programmers.SE is having a contest!? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*What have you been living under a rock?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just kidding (maybe). Yes, Programmers is having a contest. And it's going to be awesome! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So how will this contest work? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will be divided into 4 weeks. For each of the 4 weeks, there will be a tag dedicated to it. The schedule will go like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [tag:data-structures] -- Now!&#xD;&#xA; 2. [tag:documentation] -- May 14&#xD;&#xA; 3. [tag:history] (yes it has to be *programming history*) -- May 21&#xD;&#xA; 4. [tag:algorithms] -- May 28&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each week, users who post questions and answers for that weeks tag will have their post entered into the contest. The following categories can win:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Best Answer:** The best answer from the week will be a winner. Best answer is judged by **votes**. Any answer to a closed question is ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - **Best Question:** The best question from the week will also be awarded. Best question is not judged on votes, but instead **views**. Closed questions will be disqualified. ***We encourage advertising your question (on non-SE sites) to get more views. Please do not spam the chat rooms.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, you are only eligible if you post under the current week's tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Prizes! ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best of all, we try to get you the best prizes possible. In order to do that, we had to put on a few restrictions. But **winners can choose their own site-related prize from Amazon, as long as it:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is under $50 (including shipping and handling)&#xD;&#xA; - Is related to the site and its topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your one prize does not use up the $50, you may choose up to 3 different things (still has to be under $50 all total).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So when do we start? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest is going on now!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Important Notes of Eligibility and Such##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You must have a valid email address in your profile so that we can contact you and ask you what you want from Amazon (if you win).&#xD;&#xA; - No closed questions or negatively scored questions (regardless of views). &#xD;&#xA; - SE employees are ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - The question you are asking or answering must contain the contest tag to be eligible&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9464" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3564" RevisionGUID="5481659f-7ed9-4704-8df4-c4e8bd0eae87" CreationDate="2012-05-09T07:49:32.733" UserId="36979" Text="I'm here to help others by answering their questions to my best ability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel like I'm contributing to the community. Some of my answers get down-voted with no feedback. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that when somebody disagrees with your opinion, they should be required to leave their reason for down-voting. I'll be equally happy if reason is anonymous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the day I'm here to share knowledge as much as learn. I don't normally ask questions, so when I get down-voted I would like to see some structured criticism explaining the down-vote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, often it's obvious why answer is down-voted, but this is not always the case and it would be nice to get some feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are your thoughts on this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9465" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3564" RevisionGUID="5481659f-7ed9-4704-8df4-c4e8bd0eae87" CreationDate="2012-05-09T07:49:32.733" UserId="36979" Text="Should down votes require feedback?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9466" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3564" RevisionGUID="5481659f-7ed9-4704-8df4-c4e8bd0eae87" CreationDate="2012-05-09T07:49:32.733" UserId="36979" Text="|feature-request|voting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9467" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3565" RevisionGUID="f06290e4-3078-4582-83b5-4c289de4cde2" CreationDate="2012-05-09T07:52:58.267" UserId="53638" Text="The Economist recently posted [a non-technical explanation of programming concepts behind the Oracle Vs. Google case on their site.](http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/05/oracle-v-google)  It has detailed descriptions of what APIs and virtual machines are, in the context of Java programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the widespread implications of the rulings in that case (whether APIs of programming languages should be copyrightable or not) and the fact that the jury is made of entirely lay people, I think the Economist's effort at simplifying jargon for the rest of us is commendable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I am not sure how much of that non-technical information is correct. I don't program too much (indeed, the only program I know well is R). So I would like to ask all of you, who are programming experts, about how much of that explanation is accurate and how you would change it if you had to explain the same concepts to a lay person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would the main site be a good place to ask this question? If yes, would it be classifiable as a community wiki? &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9468" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3565" RevisionGUID="f06290e4-3078-4582-83b5-4c289de4cde2" CreationDate="2012-05-09T07:52:58.267" UserId="53638" Text="Where to ask: Is the explanation on the Economist about APIs and VMs accurate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9469" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3565" RevisionGUID="f06290e4-3078-4582-83b5-4c289de4cde2" CreationDate="2012-05-09T07:52:58.267" UserId="53638" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9470" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3566" RevisionGUID="1ed30d56-b551-4580-9795-47347480dfe5" CreationDate="2012-05-09T07:53:14.460" UserId="47" Text="See this Meta Stack Overflow question for more than you'll ever want to know on this subject:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Encouraging people to explain down-votes](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votes)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9471" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3567" RevisionGUID="ee92dd61-4795-4748-81b6-041ca5fca066" CreationDate="2012-05-09T08:08:06.980" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="This, I think, would be off-topic here, for a number of reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The site's audience is professional programmers, so a question should be targeting them, not people who are unfamiliar with programming. If the question *were* on-topic, the answers would assume you are a practicing programmer: if the misunderstanding at the core of the question is based on *not* being a practicing programmer, the answers would be at best unhelpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Our scope is centered conceptual questions in software development: problems you personally have with a software development project you're working on. This really isn't a software development problem, it's more of a problem of understanding a court case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Related to the previous point, [software law is off-topic here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2099/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vetting notable claims, however, is the domain of our sister site, [Skeptics.SE](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com): personally, I'd check with them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9472" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3565" RevisionGUID="5f964b9c-e44e-41e9-a55f-94363b2111b1" CreationDate="2012-05-09T08:10:18.617" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9473" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3567" RevisionGUID="01b247a4-290f-4e69-84d2-45b144af2771" CreationDate="2012-05-09T08:13:11.437" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 6 characters in body" Text="This, I think, would be off-topic here, for a number of reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The site's audience is professional programmers, so a question should be targeting them, not people who are unfamiliar with programming. If the question *were* on-topic, the answers would ideally assume you are a practicing programmer. If the basis of the question is due to *not* being a practicing programmer, any in-scope answers would be, at best, unhelpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Our scope is centered conceptual questions in software development: problems you personally have with a software development project you're working on. This really isn't a software development problem, it's more of a problem of understanding a court case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Related to the previous point, [software law is off-topic here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2099/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vetting notable claims, however, is the domain of our sister site, [Skeptics.SE](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com): personally, I'd check with them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9474" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3567" RevisionGUID="5ab32893-4126-45ea-846c-fdc045c5a3d6" CreationDate="2012-05-09T08:20:32.363" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 796 characters in body" Text="I think this would be off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site's audience is professional programmers, so a question should be targeting them, not people who are unfamiliar with programming. If the question *were* on-topic, the answers would ideally assume you are a practicing programmer. If the basis for the question is founded upon a lack of knowledge due to *not* being a practicing programmer, any in-scope answers would be, at best, unhelpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A contrived example, but consider 2 + 2 = 4. If you were unfamiliar with addition, you might want to ask a mathematician, &quot;Is 2 + 2 = 4 accurate?&quot; Now, if you went to a place that catered to mathematicians and assumed anyone asking a question was a mathematician, asking that question would likely produce a blank, incredulous stare.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't say for sure—not having read the article—that what's discussed is patently obvious for any practicing programmer, but even parts of it aren't, any explanation would presume you were somewhat of an expert, as it were, of programming and would gloss over the parts that most programmers would understand as obvious. If those are the parts you're having trouble with, you're sort of out of luck asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond the issue of audience, our scope is centered around conceptual questions in software development: problems you personally have with a software development project you're working on. This really isn't a software development problem *per se*, it's more of a problem of understanding a court case. And to that point, [software law is off-topic here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2099/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Verifying notable claims, however, is the domain of our sister site, [Skeptics.SE](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com): personally, I'd check with them.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9475" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3564" RevisionGUID="92862add-135e-4096-8611-51d3a29ebeda" CreationDate="2012-05-09T11:52:43.013" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Should we force adding a comment with every down-vote?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159/should-we-force-adding-a-comment-with-every-down-vote)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I'm here to help others by answering their questions to my best ability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel like I'm contributing to the community. Some of my answers get down-voted with no feedback. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that when somebody disagrees with your opinion, they should be required to leave their reason for down-voting. I'll be equally happy if reason is anonymous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the day I'm here to share knowledge as much as learn. I don't normally ask questions, so when I get down-voted I would like to see some structured criticism explaining the down-vote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, often it's obvious why answer is down-voted, but this is not always the case and it would be nice to get some feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are your thoughts on this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9476" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3564" RevisionGUID="3444170d-bc9c-40db-8719-776a8061cc97" CreationDate="2012-05-09T11:52:42.157" UserId="25936" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[159],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:1996,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Jim G.&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="9477" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3568" RevisionGUID="d5b59df1-1b75-4113-9930-9509f84630a7" CreationDate="2012-05-09T15:03:17.853" UserId="1130" Text="Software terminology is on-topic here, however my question [When programmers talk about &quot;data structures&quot;, what are they referring to?][1] got closed as &quot;not a real question&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was asked because when looking up the exact definition of a data structure, I noticed that wikipedia provides a list of data structures which includes [composite types][2] (class objects, structs, enums, etc) and [primitive types][3] (boolean, int, char, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think I've ever heard of programmers using the term &quot;data structures&quot; to refer to primitive types, and very rarely when referring to classes, so this got me wondering about the exact definition of a data structure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since [software terminology is on-topic here][4], I thought programmers would be a good place to ask, but it got closed as not-a-real-question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree with this assessment because the question is on-topic for Programmers, and the answer is actually not as clear as you would think, and not easily found by a Google search. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Data Structures&quot; is a broad term used to cover structures that hold data, however it is also used as a term to reference abstract data types like `Lists`, `Trees`, `Graphs`, etc. When programmers talk about &quot;data structures&quot;, they are usually referring to the more specific term for abstract data types, which is why I almost always hear it being used in reference to abstract data types.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I am incorrect and software terminology is off-topic here, than it's fine being closed, but if this is incorrect then can we get the question reopened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/147886/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_structures#Composite_types&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_structures#Primitive_types&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/4534590#4534590" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9478" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3568" RevisionGUID="d5b59df1-1b75-4113-9930-9509f84630a7" CreationDate="2012-05-09T15:03:17.853" UserId="1130" Text="Reopening &quot;When programmers talk about &quot;data structures&quot;, what are they referring to?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9479" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3568" RevisionGUID="d5b59df1-1b75-4113-9930-9509f84630a7" CreationDate="2012-05-09T15:03:17.853" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9480" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3569" RevisionGUID="083ac0f0-bb9c-4971-8309-439a5c4ba0b8" CreationDate="2012-05-09T15:24:42.553" UserId="4" Text="Software terminology is indeed on-topic, but the audience of this site is (from the FAQ) professionals in the software development field. The question is rather basic for the target audience of this site, which is probably why it was closed. Any professional software developer should already have an understanding of the definition of data structure." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9481" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3568" RevisionGUID="0ab9031e-3990-4c96-87f8-e874f609de8a" CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:36:00.413" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9482" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3570" RevisionGUID="a49f8963-7677-4820-8aac-bf0b87754e21" CreationDate="2012-05-09T23:29:13.647" UserId="464" Text="[Link to the 20%-time question.][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10166/introducing-20-time-at-a-workplace" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9483" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3570" RevisionGUID="a49f8963-7677-4820-8aac-bf0b87754e21" CreationDate="2012-05-09T23:29:13.647" UserId="464" Text="Is this &quot;20% time&quot; question on-topic or off?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9484" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3570" RevisionGUID="a49f8963-7677-4820-8aac-bf0b87754e21" CreationDate="2012-05-09T23:29:13.647" UserId="464" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9485" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3571" RevisionGUID="870f90cf-e77d-4042-a9e7-ce0be409e901" CreationDate="2012-05-09T23:33:28.447" UserId="464" Text="**It is on topic.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The FAQ][1] provides nine on-topic categories and seven off-topic categories.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [the top answer to this question shows][2], the 20% time -- perhaps this is an insight unexpected by the OP -- is clearly not a workplace perk, but an important element of a software development process.  How it is understood and implemented affects the performance of a software organization, its agility, and the quality of their products.  As such, this question fits into &quot;development methodologies&quot; or &quot;software engineering&quot; on-topic categories and is therefore on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the seven off-topic categories, this question clearly doesn't fit the last six categories and, as the top answer clearly explains, is not a &quot;general workplace issue.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The closing moderator's suggestion that this is more of a [Workplace][3] question is most certainly misguided.  This is very serious software engineering question -- again, its seriousness may not have been fully anticipated by the OP -- and is a useful contribution to the Programmers' site.  **It belongs here rather than next to the following**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How should I go about bringing my espresso machine to a new job?][4]&#xD;&#xA; - [How should I ask my boss about bringing in a pet?][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [How to select interview attire?][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/125495/464&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/1183/how-should-i-go-about-bringing-my-espresso-machine-to-a-new-job&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/1190/how-should-i-ask-my-boss-about-bringing-in-a-pet&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/83/how-to-select-interview-attire-for-a-technical-job-interview" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9486" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3570" RevisionGUID="0b010fd6-ad2f-4755-ae3e-22ef53db8765" CreationDate="2012-05-09T23:37:20.920" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9487" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3572" RevisionGUID="0f7b573d-f10c-47a4-b549-100ea296770d" CreationDate="2012-05-09T23:41:17.480" UserId="4" Text="That question is off-topic because it does not depend on the expertise of professional software engineers. It can apply to many professions - 20% time can be used by an electrical engineer, a software engineer, or a graphic designer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9488" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3570" RevisionGUID="c53ddb3e-99ad-42ba-b401-1fa1b6870945" CreationDate="2012-05-10T10:50:08.433" UserId="34364" Comment="How can you ask a question with just a link?" Text="Is [this question][1] off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10166/introducing-20-time-at-a-workplace" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9489" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3573" RevisionGUID="fffd4a11-6407-418c-bd96-c99bd6275e4c" CreationDate="2012-05-10T13:17:49.543" UserId="1130" Text="Based on the current faq, it would be **off-topic**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current faq states that the site is for conceptual questions about software development, which includes things like design patterns, architecture decisions, data structures, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice and workplace issues are explicitly off-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site used to allow some career or workplace advice questions providing the answer required a programmer-specific answer and not an all-careers-specific answer, however that no longer appears to be the case since the [example on-topic career question][1] provided in the [linked meta post][2] of the faq for career advice questions has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I am mistaken and they really do allow some career or workplace advice questions  providing the answer is specific to programmers and not all careers, then I would consider the question would be on-topic. The question itself does not apply to all careers (not all careers find it beneficial to have a 20% time rule), and so therefore the answer does not apply to all careers. If &quot;Freelancing and Business Concerns&quot; are on-topic here, than I would expect questions on how to implement a popular development work strategy to also be on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8886/can-someone-find-a-job-as-a-programmer-without-an-education&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/590/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9490" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3140" RevisionGUID="e1e7ef40-bb7c-406a-873c-e7e12f1ae62c" CreationDate="2012-05-10T15:39:03.767" UserId="1130" Comment="Wanted to reference the major changes to scope and link to the history behind them since this answer is still getting views/votes" Text="I think we are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site scope was [changed dramatically][1] from its original proposal, without the consent of the Programmers community, which drove many users away. Since then, strict enforcement of keeping questions on-topic with the new site scope, combined with the fact [our site name doesn't match the FAQ][2] has been causing a lot of users to misunderstand what the site is meant for, and to lose interest and stop asking/answering questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, here's a graph of our [new user growth][3]. It remains fairly steady, because many programmers are interested in a site for programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And here's a graph of [new questions asked][5]. It is going down hill fairly steadily for a while now, and I don't believe it's because all the good questions have been asked/answered. I think it's instead people being aware of stricter rules, and/or being uncertain about if they should post something for fear of just getting downvoted and closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our [number of votes][7] is also declining, which is the result of less user participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't speak for others, but personally I've gotten frustrated with the way our site is going and have kind of given up. I don't think I'm alone either judging by questions on meta, and the disappearance of several formerly-active users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is yours, so you can run it however you want, however I strongly believe that the downward nature of the graphs is caused by a lot of misunderstanding and confusion about the site scope, and the way SE treated the Programmers community when they decided to change the site scope without their consent. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site was meant to be a site for programmers about programmers, and it has since changed to a site for programmers about software development only. A lot of old active users have lost interest, and a lot of new users don't understand the site scope and ask low quality questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/66279&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OlKXf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/66282&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0y9Oj.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/66286&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/gvnGr.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9491" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3140" RevisionGUID="0fd41cae-492d-499b-9a3f-dc4bc40b4196" CreationDate="2012-05-10T16:54:41.113" UserId="1130" Comment="Realized I was including answers in the &quot;new questions asked&quot; graph and query" Text="I think we are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site scope was [changed dramatically][1] from its original proposal, without the consent of the Programmers community, which drove many users away. Since then, strict enforcement of keeping questions on-topic with the new site scope, combined with the fact [our site name doesn't match the FAQ][2] has been causing a lot of users to misunderstand what the site is meant for, and to lose interest and stop asking/answering questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, here's a graph of our [new user growth][3]. It remains fairly steady, because many programmers are interested in a site for programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And here's a graph of [new questions asked][5]. It is going down hill fairly steadily for a while now, and I don't believe it's because all the good questions have been asked/answered. I think it's instead people being aware of stricter rules, and/or being uncertain about if they should post something for fear of just getting downvoted and closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our [number of votes][8] is also declining, which is the result of less user participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't speak for others, but personally I've gotten frustrated with the way our site is going and have kind of given up. I don't think I'm alone either judging by questions on meta, and the disappearance of several formerly-active users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is yours, so you can run it however you want, however I strongly believe that the downward nature of the graphs is caused by a lot of misunderstanding and confusion about the site scope, and the way SE treated the Programmers community when they decided to change the site scope without their consent. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site was meant to be a site for programmers about programmers, and it has since changed to a site for programmers about software development only. A lot of old active users have lost interest, and a lot of new users don't understand the site scope and ask low quality questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/66279&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OlKXf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/69756&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0y9Oj.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vgvp4.png&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/66286&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/gvnGr.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9492" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3140" RevisionGUID="151105d6-b054-4687-bf90-4976cb063920" CreationDate="2012-05-10T17:09:48.973" UserId="1130" Comment="The Closed/Open graph isn't that helpful since it only shows closed/open questions at a point in time, so added graph of post history as well" Text="I think we are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site scope was [changed dramatically][1] from its original proposal, without the consent of the Programmers community, which drove many users away. Since then, strict enforcement of keeping questions on-topic with the new site scope, combined with the fact [our site name doesn't match the FAQ][2] has been causing a lot of users to misunderstand what the site is meant for, and to lose interest and stop asking/answering questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, here's a graph of our [new user growth][3]. It remains fairly steady, because many programmers are interested in a site for programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And here's a graph of [new questions asked][5]. It is going down hill fairly steadily for a while now, and I don't believe it's because all the good questions have been asked/answered. I think it's instead people being aware of stricter rules, and/or being uncertain about if they should post something for fear of just getting downvoted and closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be noted that the above graph shows posts which were closed as of 5/10/12 (which is when I noticed I was including answers in my old graph). To view a graph of actual open/close post history, use [this query][7], which was added in May. It should also be noted that some of the larger spikes of posts getting closed can be attributed to the massive cleanup that some users undertook.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our [number of votes][9] is also declining, which is the result of less user participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't speak for others, but personally I've gotten frustrated with the way our site is going and have kind of given up. I don't think I'm alone either judging by questions on meta, and the disappearance of several formerly-active users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is yours, so you can run it however you want, however I strongly believe that the downward nature of the graphs is caused by a lot of misunderstanding and confusion about the site scope, and the way SE treated the Programmers community when they decided to change the site scope without their consent. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site was meant to be a site for programmers about programmers, and it has since changed to a site for programmers about software development only. A lot of old active users have lost interest, and a lot of new users don't understand the site scope and ask low quality questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/66279&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OlKXf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/69756&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vgvp4.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/69764&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RZyPg.png&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/66286&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/gvnGr.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9493" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3574" RevisionGUID="33dd17c9-e585-4c37-8d3e-4332d731aac1" CreationDate="2012-05-10T23:05:41.083" UserId="34364" Text="Most, if not all, people that use the site need help. So why do we have [tag:help]? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's kill it!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9494" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3574" RevisionGUID="33dd17c9-e585-4c37-8d3e-4332d731aac1" CreationDate="2012-05-10T23:05:41.083" UserId="34364" Text="Kill the [help] tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9495" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3574" RevisionGUID="33dd17c9-e585-4c37-8d3e-4332d731aac1" CreationDate="2012-05-10T23:05:41.083" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9496" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3574" RevisionGUID="b0dff6b8-f318-445d-996c-6bd638a6929f" CreationDate="2012-05-11T02:15:10.780" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/200770998323265537" />
  <row Id="9497" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3575" RevisionGUID="ba2dabae-291f-45e8-a3f2-fc2aea9051c2" CreationDate="2012-05-11T12:17:23.073" UserId="41381" Text="this looks like a good tag to just nuke, only 16 questions and they all have more relevant tags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9498" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3576" RevisionGUID="ea5f47b4-2cf2-4600-b410-4676ddfc8c4c" CreationDate="2012-05-11T16:18:27.097" UserId="29558" Text="Where should the http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29177/the-programmers-bill-of-responsibilities question be asked?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the internet in general? If that is the case a blog dealing with such questions would certainly be considered to be about Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reading the FAQ over again again for this post, I find myself compelled to ask:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A sight about algorithm and data structure concepts is the domain of [cs.se] or [cstheory.se], no? Design patterns, developer testing, development methodologies, quality assurance and software architecture should all be considered part of software engineering, right? Surely, software licensing is a freelancing and business concern?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site appears to have been simply a bucket into which we dumped things we didn't want on SO.  It is time to recognize that the title no longer fits the subject matter, and possibly that the subject matter no longer has any cohesion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this were an OO system implementation I would seriously weigh the costs of a complete rewrite before attempting to refactor... even believing [Joel](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9499" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3576" RevisionGUID="ea5f47b4-2cf2-4600-b410-4676ddfc8c4c" CreationDate="2012-05-11T16:18:27.097" UserId="29558" Text="If we cannot ask about The Programmers Bill of Responsibilities on this site why is it called Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9500" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3576" RevisionGUID="ea5f47b4-2cf2-4600-b410-4676ddfc8c4c" CreationDate="2012-05-11T16:18:27.097" UserId="29558" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9501" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3577" RevisionGUID="a95f54c7-19b2-4f8c-89da-959b89cfac46" CreationDate="2012-05-11T16:23:05.033" UserId="47" Text="The questions is not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's asking for a list of items to be added to this &quot;Bill of Responsibilities&quot; each one equally valid - well nearly each one equally valid, plus it's inviting discussion and debate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of these things are a good fit for the Stack Exchange question and answer model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm surprised that it took this long to be closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9502" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3576" RevisionGUID="d8274180-bc46-4af5-b922-5879ac46193e" CreationDate="2012-05-11T16:26:42.197" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body; edited tags" Text="Where should the http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29177/the-programmers-bill-of-responsibilities question be asked?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the internet in general? If that is the case a blog dealing with such questions would certainly be considered to be about Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reading the FAQ over again again for this post, I find myself compelled to ask:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A site about algorithm and data structure concepts is the domain of [cs.se] or [cstheory.se], no? Design patterns, developer testing, development methodologies, quality assurance and software architecture should all be considered part of software engineering, right? Surely, software licensing is a freelancing and business concern?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site appears to have been simply a bucket into which we dumped things we didn't want on SO.  It is time to recognize that the title no longer fits the subject matter, and possibly that the subject matter no longer has any cohesion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this were an OO system implementation I would seriously weigh the costs of a complete rewrite before attempting to refactor... even believing [Joel](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9503" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3576" RevisionGUID="d8274180-bc46-4af5-b922-5879ac46193e" CreationDate="2012-05-11T16:26:42.197" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9504" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="3576" RevisionGUID="56588f7e-40a2-455a-9c0c-1322b24ac6b8" CreationDate="2012-05-11T16:27:17.133" UserId="29558" Comment="Rollback to [ea5f47b4-2cf2-4600-b410-4676ddfc8c4c]" Text="Where should the http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29177/the-programmers-bill-of-responsibilities question be asked?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the internet in general? If that is the case a blog dealing with such questions would certainly be considered to be about Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reading the FAQ over again again for this post, I find myself compelled to ask:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A sight about algorithm and data structure concepts is the domain of [cs.se] or [cstheory.se], no? Design patterns, developer testing, development methodologies, quality assurance and software architecture should all be considered part of software engineering, right? Surely, software licensing is a freelancing and business concern?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site appears to have been simply a bucket into which we dumped things we didn't want on SO.  It is time to recognize that the title no longer fits the subject matter, and possibly that the subject matter no longer has any cohesion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this were an OO system implementation I would seriously weigh the costs of a complete rewrite before attempting to refactor... even believing [Joel](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9505" PostHistoryTypeId="9" PostId="3576" RevisionGUID="56588f7e-40a2-455a-9c0c-1322b24ac6b8" CreationDate="2012-05-11T16:27:17.133" UserId="29558" Comment="Rollback to [ea5f47b4-2cf2-4600-b410-4676ddfc8c4c]" Text="|bug|" />
  <row Id="9506" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3576" RevisionGUID="ff5ffc08-2ad2-41f1-9c8a-c3e956da1b7a" CreationDate="2012-05-11T16:38:05.777" UserId="29558" Comment="bold for those who cannot read" Text="**Where should the http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29177/the-programmers-bill-of-responsibilities question be asked?**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the internet in general? If that is the case a blog dealing with such questions would certainly be considered to be about Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reading the FAQ over again again for this post, I find myself compelled to ask:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A sight about algorithm and data structure concepts is the domain of [cs.se] or [cstheory.se], no? Design patterns, developer testing, development methodologies, quality assurance and software architecture should all be considered part of software engineering, right? Surely, software licensing is a freelancing and business concern?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site appears to have been simply a bucket into which we dumped things we didn't want on SO.  It is time to recognize that the title no longer fits the subject matter, and possibly that the subject matter no longer has any cohesion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this were an OO system implementation I would seriously weigh the costs of a complete rewrite before attempting to refactor... even believing [Joel](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9507" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3578" RevisionGUID="b3df3347-26f1-4fd5-90d3-f56792d9c854" CreationDate="2012-05-11T16:41:20.287" UserId="1130" Text="The site is called **Programmers** because it was originally created to be a site for programmers to ask and answer non-programming questions that relate to their career choice or self-identity as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange later decided this wasn't a good use of their framework and changed the site scope to be about conceptual questions on software development, so the scope of the site changed however the name and design did not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site's [faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) contains a current list of what is on/off topic for this site, and you can view the full history behind the scope change [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That specific question was valid when it got asked, so got a lot of attention, however is deemed not suitable for the site now. I do not think there is anyone on the SE network where a question like that would be welcome because it reads like a poll, asking for many answers each with one piece of the answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9508" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3576" RevisionGUID="52ad476a-edee-495f-9826-cc2014550dd8" CreationDate="2012-05-11T16:42:40.820" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9509" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3578" RevisionGUID="399ad9c9-bba5-4299-bea2-61d35ebc3bcb" CreationDate="2012-05-11T16:51:59.337" UserId="1130" Comment="added 281 characters in body" Text="The site is called **Programmers** because it was originally created to be a site for programmers to ask and answer non-programming questions that relate to their career choice or self-identity as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange later decided this wasn't a good use of their framework and changed the site scope to be about conceptual questions on software development, so the scope of the site changed however the name and design did not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site's [faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) contains a current list of what is on/off topic for this site, and you can view the full history behind the scope change [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That specific question was valid when it got asked, so got a lot of attention, however is deemed not suitable for the site now. I do not think there is anywhere on the SE network where a question like that would be welcome because it reads like a poll, asking for many answers each with one piece of the answer, and SE does not like polls.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You would probably have better luck on someplace like [Quora][1] &lt;strike&gt;or [Reddit][2]&lt;/strike&gt; or [Yahoo Answers][3], however I have not used any of those sites enough to tell you much about them. You could also try asking in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), where discussion is encouraged, although your question and its answers probably won't be easily found by others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.quora.com/home/getting_started/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.reddit.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://answers.yahoo.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9510" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3579" RevisionGUID="640924bc-f551-4f04-8960-4025558c7f3c" CreationDate="2012-05-11T17:17:34.210" UserId="25936" Text="As ChrisF [already mentioned][1] the question is &quot;not constructive&quot;, which to us means:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit to our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. See the FAQ for guidance on how to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is nothing inherently wrong with these questions, they just don't fit the philosophy and available tools of a Stack Exchange site. For further details on what &quot;not constructive&quot; means for us, you should read these two blog posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Real Questions Have Answers][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I have found that Quora is a solid alternative for these questions. I'm fairly new there, but it seems that their platform was designed with discussion oriented questions in mind, and more or less works as expected. It's a bit noisy, and I can't really say that I'm satisfied by the overall quality of the discussions, but I have found some gems that would never work in the Stack Exchange format. Worth a try.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, for the issue of the confusion with the site's name and design: It is true that the site's brand targeted it's original scope, and I partially agree with you that it doesn't really serve the current scope. It's just too friendly, and we are not ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, although it has been theorized that some people find the site confusing, no solid evidence have been brought forth that this is the case for a lot of people _or_ that even for the few that are confused that the confusion doesn't go away after reading the FAQ and browsing the site for a few days. Very recently, a fairly new user came to Meta and, well, [described the site like a pro][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is an [open discussion on the matter][4], feel free to contribute your thoughts there if you wish. Notice however that the overwhelming majority of the community, either through answers or upvotes, dismiss the matter as a non issue, or at least as something of a quirk that only affects a handful of people, and only for a very short time, what we like to call &quot;too localized&quot; ;P Don't get me wrong, I too was confused initially. Well, after about a week of staying around, no problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3576/if-we-cannot-ask-about-the-programmers-bill-of-responsibilities-on-this-site-why/3577#3577&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3561/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9511" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3575" RevisionGUID="e22b072f-6130-4fc9-846e-ef73d6c59def" CreationDate="2012-05-11T18:39:33.593" UserId="34364" Comment="added 11 characters in body" Text="This looks like a good tag to just nuke. There are only 16 questions and they all have more relevant tags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9512" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3574" RevisionGUID="7ff7ba2d-3416-4593-b2bd-d4e3bd9d39cb" CreationDate="2012-05-11T18:52:44.077" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9513" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3580" RevisionGUID="d93fba02-d42f-4241-9e4e-e26a0e930000" CreationDate="2012-05-11T19:39:31.637" UserId="29558" Text="So since we've been round about today on Constructive Questions, should http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148108/why-is-global-state-so-evil be closed?  It is essentially a subjective matter, likely to result in a list, and seems to be geared toward a discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should I vote to close, merely laugh at the responses, or pile on?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9514" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3580" RevisionGUID="d93fba02-d42f-4241-9e4e-e26a0e930000" CreationDate="2012-05-11T19:39:31.637" UserId="29558" Text="Should Why is Global State so Evil? be closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9515" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3580" RevisionGUID="d93fba02-d42f-4241-9e4e-e26a0e930000" CreationDate="2012-05-11T19:39:31.637" UserId="29558" Text="|support|specific-question|closing-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9519" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3582" RevisionGUID="935e171c-70d1-42d9-b500-33709084da6a" CreationDate="2012-05-11T20:37:29.007" UserId="29558" Text="I'll summarize [my answer over on SO Meta][1] here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I started out believing that SE could support a recommend X... In the end these questions can only ever be considered subjective, and therefore not a good fit for the SE format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/113678/how-to-request-book-recommendations/131432#131432" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9520" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3583" RevisionGUID="baef3b77-688c-43fb-871d-701a7209f756" CreationDate="2012-05-11T21:14:14.983" UserId="4" Text="That question is an example of a [good subjective question][1]. Yes, such questions might generate a lot of answers and even some discussion in the comments. However, there are criteria that make these types of questions appropriate, and those reasons are outlined in the blog post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep one thing in mind - a question is not judged only on the question itself, but the content and the quality of the answers that it produces. This question isn't asking for a list of things, and the people answering are providing high-quality answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9521" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3579" RevisionGUID="2cd2a8a5-057f-436b-8224-3190cc429eb5" CreationDate="2012-05-11T21:16:07.017" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="As ChrisF [already mentioned][1] the question is &quot;not constructive&quot;, which to us means:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit to our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. See the FAQ for guidance on how to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is nothing inherently wrong with these questions, they just don't fit the philosophy and available tools of a Stack Exchange site. For further details on what &quot;not constructive&quot; means for us, you should read these two blog posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Real Questions Have Answers][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I have found that Quora is a solid alternative for these questions. I'm fairly new there, but it seems that their platform was designed with discussion oriented questions in mind, and more or less works as expected. It's a bit noisy, and I can't really say that I'm satisfied by the overall quality of the discussions, but I have found some gems that would never work in the Stack Exchange format. Worth a try.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, for the issue of the confusion with the site's name and design: It is true that the site's brand targeted its original scope, and I partially agree with you that it doesn't really serve the current scope. It's just too friendly, and we are not ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, although it has been theorized that some people find the site confusing, no solid evidence have been brought forth that this is the case for a lot of people _or_ that even for the few that are confused that the confusion doesn't go away after reading the FAQ and browsing the site for a few days. Very recently, a fairly new user came to Meta and, well, [described the site like a pro][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is an [open discussion on the matter][4], feel free to contribute your thoughts there if you wish. Notice however that the overwhelming majority of the community, either through answers or upvotes, dismiss the matter as a non issue, or at least as something of a quirk that only affects a handful of people, and only for a very short time, what we like to call &quot;too localized&quot; ;P Don't get me wrong, I too was confused initially. Well, after about a week of staying around, no problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3576/if-we-cannot-ask-about-the-programmers-bill-of-responsibilities-on-this-site-why/3577#3577&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3561/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9524" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3584" RevisionGUID="dad9403c-aa85-4a3c-9fe9-20eb49a6893f" CreationDate="2012-05-12T02:57:43.013" UserId="34069" Text="This kind of question is _exactly_ why I wanted to create  &#xD;&#xA;http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/40388/programming-education" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9525" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3585" RevisionGUID="e71700de-a993-4bf6-8353-48fd48602c02" CreationDate="2012-05-12T17:23:45.937" UserId="12917" Text="I notice that the site has a creative commons license.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does this also mean that any user code placed on the site is also released by a creative commons license?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9526" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3585" RevisionGUID="e71700de-a993-4bf6-8353-48fd48602c02" CreationDate="2012-05-12T17:23:45.937" UserId="12917" Text="Copyright of posted code" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9527" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3585" RevisionGUID="e71700de-a993-4bf6-8353-48fd48602c02" CreationDate="2012-05-12T17:23:45.937" UserId="12917" Text="|discussion|copyright|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9528" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3586" RevisionGUID="048ccefb-d771-4c05-be0e-530f6ab5df52" CreationDate="2012-05-12T19:09:35.177" UserId="34364" Text="[Profile in question.][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This guy's bio contains the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.SE, where 2/3 of all questions are summarily closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why am I here? I like to piss off twits. Does that make you mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do we do with that? That is trolling in my opinion... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/9293/crazy-eddie" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9529" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3586" RevisionGUID="048ccefb-d771-4c05-be0e-530f6ab5df52" CreationDate="2012-05-12T19:09:35.177" UserId="34364" Text="Troll in profile" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9530" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3586" RevisionGUID="048ccefb-d771-4c05-be0e-530f6ab5df52" CreationDate="2012-05-12T19:09:35.177" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|user-profile|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9531" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3587" RevisionGUID="79c1b58d-08c3-4228-8747-1d240a22382c" CreationDate="2012-05-12T19:38:43.247" UserId="2654" Text="I believe that is correct as code is included in the content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; to Remix — to adapt the work  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; to make commercial use of the work  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9532" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3588" RevisionGUID="afa7d588-3a68-4f61-9a8c-81111814b8f5" CreationDate="2012-05-12T20:34:35.377" UserId="47" Text="The person is known to us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the profile is where a user can say (almost) what they like and this doesn't come anywhere close to crossing that line.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd just ignore it - most people don't view user profiles anyway." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9533" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3589" RevisionGUID="69088839-faaf-472f-bd65-d18a861bb44f" CreationDate="2012-05-12T20:38:15.053" UserId="1130" Text="I went browsing Meta SO for any profile rules, and it appears there really aren't any. A user's profile is a reflection of the user, not a reflection of the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can put pretty much anything in there, [even profanity][1], although since it is a reflection of the you, you may want to consider carefully what you put in there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Rules for Profiles?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/31504/158605)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Generally speaking, your profile is (to an extent) fair game, as it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a reflection of you as a person, not the site as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Self-promotion, your e-mail address, humor, (if you know HTML) imagery&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and even the f-bomb are allowed there.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are reasonable limitations for all of those, but generally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; speaking, unless you're a hard-core spammer or you put something truly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; offensive / crazy in there (like hate speech or pornography), you'll&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/31209/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9534" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3586" RevisionGUID="29bbad2f-de45-4d0c-ba56-4689df969ae9" CreationDate="2012-05-12T23:20:00.567" UserId="31260" Comment="http://i.stack.imgur.com/Gw57Q.jpg &quot;screen shot for user-card popup&quot;" Text="[Profile in question.][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This guy's bio contains the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.SE, where 2/3 of all questions are summarily closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why am I here? I like to piss off twits. Does that make you mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do we do with that? That is trolling in my opinion... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gw57Q.jpg][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/9293/crazy-eddie&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gw57Q.jpg &quot;screen shot for user-card popup&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9535" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3590" RevisionGUID="d8a91483-5294-48b3-b1d0-31e82c561c5b" CreationDate="2012-05-13T23:39:50.173" UserId="34364" Text="**Active!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And getting ready for launch!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9536" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3591" RevisionGUID="38fa9604-b669-4d82-8455-d7faf34b0f11" CreationDate="2012-05-14T00:17:38.643" UserId="25936" Text="## Results for Week 1 [data-structures]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148250/how-should-i-build-the-data-structure-for-a-dynamic-unlimited-size-maze&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Views: 795, Top voted answer: [Bubblewrap][1] (31)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148045/programming-language-with-pattern-matching-in-trees&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Views: 163, Top voted answer: [SK-logic][2] (4)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147988/data-structure-for-file-search&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Views: 99, Top voted answer: [Izkata][3] (10)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147886/when-programmers-talk-about-data-structures-what-are-they-referring-to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Views: 590, Top voted answer: [Alex][4] (15)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147708/are-trees-organised-by-a-firstchild-nextsibling-structure-if-not-why-not&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Views: 300, Top voted answer: [arnaud][5] (6)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147678/is-there-a-way-to-track-data-structure-dependencies-from-the-database-through-t&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Views: 178, Top voted answers: [Pratik][6] (2) &amp; [Old Pro][7] (2)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147668/what-is-the-bible-of-hashing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Views: 271, Top voted answers: [Chris][8] (1) &amp; [Randall Cook][9] (1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147667/where-would-i-typically-use-a-deque-in-production-software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Views: 252, Top voted answer: [jmq][10] (6) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148313/what-is-the-most-space-efficient-way-to-implement-a-graph-data-structure&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Views: 147, Top voted answer: [mikera][11] (4)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147645/what-is-the-difference-between-an-array-and-a-stack&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Views: 600, Top voted answer: [Mason Wheeler][12] (32)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147627/what-is-an-aguri-tree&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Views: 370, Top voted answer: [World Engineer][13] (12)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147537/what-is-the-canonical-reference-on-probabilistic-data-structures&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Views: 184, Top voted answer: [Dynamic][14] (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Question with the most views&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148250/how-should-i-build-the-data-structure-for-a-dynamic-unlimited-size-maze&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/flair/1130.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Rachel at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot; title=&quot;profile for Rachel at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Top voted answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147645/what-is-the-difference-between-an-array-and-a-stack/147647#147647 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/935/mason-wheeler&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/flair/935.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Mason Wheeler at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot; title=&quot;profile for Mason Wheeler at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148251/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148061/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/147995/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/147887/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/147714/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/147731/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148290/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/147680/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/147711/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/147747/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148316/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/147647/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/147632/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/147654/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9537" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="923d77e6-27db-4d99-b8d7-f8be19753e82" CreationDate="2012-05-14T00:19:12.853" UserId="25936" Comment="added 81 characters in body" Text="## Wait! Programmers.SE is having a contest!? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*What have you been living under a rock?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just kidding (maybe). Yes, Programmers is having a contest. And it's going to be awesome! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So how will this contest work? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will be divided into 4 weeks. For each of the 4 weeks, there will be a tag dedicated to it. The schedule will go like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [tag:data-structures] -- May 7 ([results][1]).&#xD;&#xA; 2. [tag:documentation] -- May 14 (now!)&#xD;&#xA; 3. [tag:history] (yes it has to be *programming history*) -- May 21&#xD;&#xA; 4. [tag:algorithms] -- May 28&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each week, users who post questions and answers for that weeks tag will have their post entered into the contest. The following categories can win:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Best Answer:** The best answer from the week will be a winner. Best answer is judged by **votes**. Any answer to a closed question is ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - **Best Question:** The best question from the week will also be awarded. Best question is not judged on votes, but instead **views**. Closed questions will be disqualified. ***We encourage advertising your question (on non-SE sites) to get more views. Please do not spam the chat rooms.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, you are only eligible if you post under the current week's tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Prizes! ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best of all, we try to get you the best prizes possible. In order to do that, we had to put on a few restrictions. But **winners can choose their own site-related prize from Amazon, as long as it:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is under $50 (including shipping and handling)&#xD;&#xA; - Is related to the site and its topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your one prize does not use up the $50, you may choose up to 3 different things (still has to be under $50 all total).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So when do we start? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest is going on now!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Important Notes of Eligibility and Such##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You must have a valid email address in your profile so that we can contact you and ask you what you want from Amazon (if you win).&#xD;&#xA; - No closed questions or negatively scored questions (regardless of views). &#xD;&#xA; - SE employees are ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - The question you are asking or answering must contain the contest tag to be eligible&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3591/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9538" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3586" RevisionGUID="83ad02a7-55f3-4d87-9c43-0adcdfcda289" CreationDate="2012-05-14T05:15:09.377" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/201903455323951104" />
  <row Id="9539" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="4f5ff245-bac1-45f9-9c2a-d3b74fe8eded" CreationDate="2012-05-14T08:43:00.910" UserId="25936" Comment="added 55 characters in body" Text="## Wait! Programmers.SE is having a contest!? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*What have you been living under a rock?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just kidding (maybe). Yes, Programmers is having a contest. And it's going to be awesome! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So how will this contest work? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will be divided into 4 weeks. For each of the 4 weeks, there will be a tag dedicated to it. The schedule will go like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [tag:data-structures] -- May 7 ([results][1]).&#xD;&#xA; 2. [tag:documentation] -- May 14 (now!)&#xD;&#xA; 3. [tag:history] (yes it has to be *programming history*) -- May 21&#xD;&#xA; 4. [tag:algorithms] -- May 28&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each week, users who post questions and answers for that weeks tag will have their post entered into the contest. The following categories can win:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Best Answer:** The best answer from the week will be a winner. Best answer is judged by **votes**. Any answer to a closed question is ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - **Best Question:** The best question from the week will also be awarded. Best question is not judged on votes, but instead **views**. Closed questions will be disqualified. ***We encourage advertising your question (on non-SE sites) to get more views. Please do not spam the chat rooms.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, you are only eligible if you post under the current week's tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Prizes! ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best of all, we try to get you the best prizes possible. In order to do that, we had to put on a few restrictions. But **winners can choose their own site-related prize from Amazon, as long as it:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is under $50 (including shipping and handling)&#xD;&#xA; - Is related to the site and its topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your one prize does not use up the $50, you may choose up to 3 different things (still has to be under $50 all total).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So when do we start? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest is going on now!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Important Notes of Eligibility and Such##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You must have a valid email address in your profile so that we can contact you and ask you what you want from Amazon (if you win).&#xD;&#xA; - No closed questions or negatively scored questions (regardless of views). &#xD;&#xA; - SE employees are ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - The question you are asking or answering must contain the contest tag to be eligible&#xD;&#xA; - Bounties on contest questions are more than welcome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3591/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9540" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3592" RevisionGUID="6d6ff5ff-fe35-4692-83de-37bffacc7fe2" CreationDate="2012-05-14T17:37:52.627" UserId="1130" Text="**Change the Programmers.SE tagline**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tagline is usually the first thing users see when they learn about our site. It currently is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is used in our site description on Google&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Tagline in Google][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;in the welcome message displayed to new users&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Tagline in Welcome message][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and in the Migration path for the site from SO ([according to Yannis][5], Stack Overflow is currently our largest referring site, excluding search engines)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Tagline in Migration path from SO][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes it sound like we are a SE site for Professional Programmers [interested in conceptual questions about software development], and not a Q&amp;A site for conceptual questions on software development only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To further the confusion, the site is named and branded with Programmers in mind (whiteboard-look, triple-monitor logo, coffee mugs, comment marks around site name, etc), so by all first impressions, we are a site for programmers to ask questions and get answers from other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea that it is misleading can also be backed up just by looking at our [closed questions][1], where the majority of closed questions seem to come from new users that are looking for an answer from a programmer. I've started leaving comments on closed questions clarifying the site scope, and have received many replies from users not aware of the site scope, including [from some long-term users][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most people won't willingly post or migrate bad questions to a site, so I think changing the tag line to make it clear that this is a site for Q&amp;A on conceptual software development will go a long ways towards reducing the number of bad questions that get asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples I can think of would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **This is a question and answer site for ...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... conceptual questions about professional software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... software professionals to get answers on conceptual software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... conceptual software development questions by professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(These are just examples. If enough people agree that the tag line is misleading and should be modified, we'll discuss what it should be then)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=closed:1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/4567828#4567828&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/K8n2k.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/j590S.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better#comment9662_3552&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/N9VxK.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9541" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3585" RevisionGUID="e1e7cb2d-239a-4725-bc90-cf76ed10aa68" CreationDate="2012-05-15T23:15:10.707" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/202537638660550656" />
  <row Id="9542" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3593" RevisionGUID="2480fc64-e4ca-4aee-855f-cdff20b2b4be" CreationDate="2012-05-16T12:18:06.003" UserId="50030" Text="&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nice timing.  I came across this question while trying to determine for myself whether I should post *my* question on P.SE or on SO.  For *me*, (and yes, this is anecdotal and unsupported by researching existing questions -- I'm just speaking from the heart as a P.SE newbie) there are two problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) I find P.SE's mandate to be vague and confusing.  I've read the P.SE and SO faqs repeatedly just now, but am still uncertain about the difference between the two sites.  I *think* the difference is that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* P.SE is for Q&amp;A on the Software Development **Process** (methodology, concepts)&#xD;&#xA;* SO if for Q&amp;A on **specific** programming problems/tools&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I'm right, then I'd like to propose placing the words &quot;Q&amp;A on the Software Development **Process**&quot; prominently, e.g. in the site masthead.  (Incidentally, I don't see the &quot;Welcome!&quot; post-it note (and its tagline) that Rachel screen-captured.  I do not have the tagline anywhere on the P.SE homepage -- finding the word &quot;interested&quot; turns up nothing.)  Now, I'm sure that the authors of the current tagline put their heart and soul into it and find it meaningful, but for me, an outsider, it does not successfully introduce the site.  Why emphasize &quot;**Professional** Programmers&quot;?  If the site is on process/concepts (and explicitly *not* on career advice), why differentiate between professional and amateur/student programmers?   And what is added by including the words &quot;interested in conceptual questions about&quot;?  The only words in the tagline that truly matter are &quot;software development [concepts]&quot;, or as I've rendered it, &quot;Software Development Process&quot;.  Bottom line, consider rewriting the tagline and showing it more prominently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I'm wrong about the difference between P.SE and SO, then perhaps we could rewrite the opening FAQ to clarify the distinction.  In fact, either way it should be clarified, because clearly us nubes ain't getting it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The mandate is also unclear in that (independent of SO) it's unclear what topics are in/out.  e.g. Q's on &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; are allowed, but &quot;career advice&quot; is not.  The former is out of place here, as it is unrelated to process/methodology/concepts, and yet seems closely related to the latter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) The stated goal of P.SE seems self-contradictory.  The directive &quot;You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&quot; is incompatible with such broad, abstract concepts as software architecture/engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks for your work putting together P.SE.  I'm sure it serves a necessary niche in the SE network.  It just needs a little bit more work to clarify the parameters of that niche and to present itself well within the network.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9543" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3594" RevisionGUID="d452fcb5-b995-4cd4-9d63-95c9443af63f" CreationDate="2012-05-17T08:24:01.973" UserId="53381" Text="I wanted to upload a nice picture to my profile, but apparently I cannot. What is the purpose of that &quot;gravatar&quot;. Why wouldn't I be able to have a picture displayed on all my accounts, just like my profile is?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9544" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3594" RevisionGUID="d452fcb5-b995-4cd4-9d63-95c9443af63f" CreationDate="2012-05-17T08:24:01.973" UserId="53381" Text="Why is changing profile picture so fastidious?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9545" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3594" RevisionGUID="d452fcb5-b995-4cd4-9d63-95c9443af63f" CreationDate="2012-05-17T08:24:01.973" UserId="53381" Text="|feature-request|user-profile|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9546" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3595" RevisionGUID="59236c3b-9cbe-4bda-a433-9455ae4a1614" CreationDate="2012-05-17T08:53:01.323" UserId="25936" Text="[Gravatar][1] is a third party service for global avatars:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The benefits are outlined in [this blog post][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I’ve used Gravatar for a while myself, and over time I’ve really grown to appreciate their approach:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - They’re global. They work across every website that supports gravatars. Sign up once, benefit everywhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - They’re easy. It’s totally straightforward; you simply build a URL that contains a hash of your email address (or IP address, if you didn’t provide email) add a few mostly optional preferences in the querystring, and that’s it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - They’re safe. The Gravatar service vets the images so nothing, er.. disturbing.. shows up in your browser. You can specify whether you want a maximum rating of G, PG, R, or X for gravatars displayed on your site. We’re going with PG; I hope you guys and gals can handle that kind of intensity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - It does one thing. Gravatar isn’t about social networking, mp3s, news, or any mashups thereof. It’s trying to solve one tiny problem on the web with laser-like focus: providing a web-friendly Globally Recognized Avatar for you across all the websites you visit. It’s almost a single serving website, and I say that with the utmost respect. So many websites fail because they try to do everything and be everything.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;So, you can of course upload a picture and have it displayed on all your Stack Exchange accounts, the only thing you need to do is sign up for Gravatar and upload the picture there, taking care to use the same email you use for your Stack Exchange account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.gravatar.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/06/gravatars-identicons-and-you/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9547" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3590" RevisionGUID="bc42d29a-c122-498c-9d58-3cfef07c502a" CreationDate="2012-05-17T19:03:41.357" UserId="31260" Comment="added 119 characters in body" Text="**Active!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And getting ready for launch!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Blog meeting chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog), going on right now.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9548" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3590" RevisionGUID="79f8b71a-b930-4419-b83a-d5a0bc39e3b0" CreationDate="2012-05-17T20:19:01.107" UserId="34364" Comment="deleted 115 characters in body" Text="**Active!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And getting ready for launch!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9549" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3596" RevisionGUID="4ea483ef-b381-4242-b59c-6e54618f7bb2" CreationDate="2012-05-17T21:52:09.483" UserDisplayName="user54262" Text="Anonymous down voting is not constructive, and the individuals who choose to hide behind the click, most often never up vote a revised question or answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think if you anonymously down vote a question and it begins to receive up votes, each up vote should cost you rep, because in that case, your down vote is standing against the reputation of your peers. Now that's community moderation!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am requesting these as a StackExchange feature of community moderation. There are (known to me) individuals who's job performance ratings depend on their reputation. The lack of such a feature invites harassment, embarrassment, and defamation of character.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This should not go ignored IMHO. If this isn't something that can be implemented then the act of down voting should pop-up a comment box asking why the question/answer was down voted so that the proper course of action can be taken by the author, and anonymous voting is rendered as an unacceptable practice.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9550" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3596" RevisionGUID="4ea483ef-b381-4242-b59c-6e54618f7bb2" CreationDate="2012-05-17T21:52:09.483" UserDisplayName="user54262" Text="Anonymous Down Votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9551" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3596" RevisionGUID="4ea483ef-b381-4242-b59c-6e54618f7bb2" CreationDate="2012-05-17T21:52:09.483" UserDisplayName="user54262" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9552" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3596" RevisionGUID="54c02cf3-ead5-4755-bc2d-5c1039494193" CreationDate="2012-05-17T21:59:18.880" UserDisplayName="user54262" Comment="fixed grammar" Text="Anonymous down voting is not constructive, and the individuals who choose to hide behind the click, most often never up vote a revised question or answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think if you anonymously down vote a question and it begins to receive up votes, each up vote should cost you rep, because in that case, your down vote is standing against the reputation of your peers. Now that's community moderation!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am requesting this as a StackExchange feature of community moderation. There are (known to me) individuals who's job performance ratings depend on their reputation. The lack of such a feature invites harassment, embarrassment, and defamation of character.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This should not go ignored IMHO. If this isn't something that can be implemented then the act of down voting should pop-up a comment box asking why the question/answer was down voted so that the proper course of action can be taken by the author, and anonymous down voting is rendered as an unacceptable practice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many community members have already taken to the (+1/-1) notation in their comments about voting. I find this to be acceptable, positively constructive, and a feature worth implementing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9553" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3597" RevisionGUID="444997a3-e83e-4046-8017-f7a62b53395e" CreationDate="2012-05-17T23:01:10.020" UserId="3" Text="You're showing your bias &amp;mdash; There's nothing inherently *wrong* with down-voting. I could just as easily argue that unwarranted **up-votes** should receive the penalty you prescribe &amp;mdash; Maybe even *more so*. After all, the pity up-vote (inappropriately saying something is *correct and useful* just to counteract a down-vote) is a much more nefarious &quot;problem&quot; than the random disagreement someone expresses on occasion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would you really really go down this road where someone is penalized for disagreeing with the majority? That's not voting at all! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Voting is a personal preference, and we already greatly underweight the effects of a down-vote *specifically* to allay these kinds of disproportionate responses (-2 points for a downvote, vs +5/+10 points for an upvote). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When someone down-votes, we already do the *&quot;please consider adding a comment if you think this post can be improved&quot;* thing. If someone does ot choose to explicitly justify their judgement to you, that's their prerogative. Nobody's suggesting that you have to justify why you would *up-vote* this sort of thing &amp;hellip; so I don't see the difference. I just don't buy the *anonymous up-vote=good, down-vote=unacceptable* argument. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9554" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3598" RevisionGUID="48d2c18f-90a6-4de8-be5d-024643a5a79f" CreationDate="2012-05-17T23:15:51.453" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Being able to downvote bad stuff without fear of reprisal from people who take it too seriously is part of what keeps the quality on Stack Exchange high: bad content gets quickly filtered out while good content gets rewarded. Any friction you add to that process threatens to harm what makes Stack Exchange so valuable in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider the following situation: there's a bad question written by someone who is outwardly confrontational and doesn't demonstrate any ability to learn. He picks fights with anyone who tries to explain what's wrong with his content and sucks them into arguments that go nowhere. What value is there in requiring people to engage that person in what will inevitably be a waste of everyone's time? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There isn't any.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And therein, I think, lies the problem: rather than forcing people to get into discussions about 2 measly reputation points, you'd just get a place where nobody downvotes anything just to avoid the pointless arguments with internet tough guys who browbeat anyone who dares leave negative feedback, however deserving.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No thanks: I'd rather people feel like their only duty here is to preserve the site's quality by freely voting, not to preserve their own sanity by not participating." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9555" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3596" RevisionGUID="67fb1b3b-0959-4dec-9302-bb6bde44fb0f" CreationDate="2012-05-18T02:03:28.243" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Should we force adding a comment with every down-vote?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159/should-we-force-adding-a-comment-with-every-down-vote)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Anonymous down voting is not constructive, and the individuals who choose to hide behind the click, most often never up vote a revised question or answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think if you anonymously down vote a question and it begins to receive up votes, each up vote should cost you rep, because in that case, your down vote is standing against the reputation of your peers. Now that's community moderation!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am requesting this as a StackExchange feature of community moderation. There are (known to me) individuals who's job performance ratings depend on their reputation. The lack of such a feature invites harassment, embarrassment, and defamation of character.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This should not go ignored IMHO. If this isn't something that can be implemented then the act of down voting should pop-up a comment box asking why the question/answer was down voted so that the proper course of action can be taken by the author, and anonymous down voting is rendered as an unacceptable practice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many community members have already taken to the (+1/-1) notation in their comments about voting. I find this to be acceptable, positively constructive, and a feature worth implementing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9556" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3596" RevisionGUID="747154f0-7e31-4e03-a8ad-3f777a84b1d2" CreationDate="2012-05-18T02:03:27.573" UserId="2654" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[159],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:2654,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Josh K&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="9557" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3596" RevisionGUID="9d50d437-d1e2-4630-b894-e7b092adf91a" CreationDate="2012-05-18T07:15:05.973" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9558" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3599" RevisionGUID="80299276-e07f-4d50-8960-cd2bcccc565b" CreationDate="2012-05-18T13:25:18.283" UserId="38148" Text="I have seen many questions/answers on programmers.stackexchange and on stackoverflow that are older (maybe 2 years and more) and that are not so good questions and are up-voted like 30+ times. Today, I see better questions with a lot less votes. Is this a matter of people up-voting less easily these days ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9559" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3599" RevisionGUID="80299276-e07f-4d50-8960-cd2bcccc565b" CreationDate="2012-05-18T13:25:18.283" UserId="38148" Text="Are people less easy on the up-vote button?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9560" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3599" RevisionGUID="80299276-e07f-4d50-8960-cd2bcccc565b" CreationDate="2012-05-18T13:25:18.283" UserId="38148" Text="|discussion|up-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9561" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3600" RevisionGUID="56686904-7c1e-4dd0-a070-1d5c2e84b605" CreationDate="2012-05-18T14:22:09.197" UserId="25936" Text="Yes, that's true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers had a troubled start, fully documented in [this answer][1]. In the beginning the site was called &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; and it was a very relaxed place where questions that didn't belong on Stack Overflow found a home. Inane (but populist) questions were migrated here from Stack Overflow en masse, carrying ridiculous amounts of upvotes with them, and for a short while NPR was the one place in the Stack Exchange universe where you'd go for mindless fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it soon became evident that people flocked around the [bike shed][2] ones and ignored any serious questions or answers, and the site was quickly filling up with crap. Which led to a somewhat sudden and drastic scope change, the site was essentially rebooted to be what it is today. The redefined scope meant higher quality standards, which for Stack Exchange usually translates to less down votes and more up votes. Combined with the fact that down votes on questions [became free][3] about a year ago, people are down voting a lot more liberally than in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course you should also consider that older questions had obviously more time to gather up votes, they aren't all bad, newer questions will get there in time. But the main reason for the few whales that remain was the undisciplined culture of the early days, people would upvote just about anything. To give you an idea, one of that era's questions was &quot;What's your most controversial programming opinion?&quot;, which had 391 upvotes and 414 answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As time goes by we become even more sharply focused, and we set our standards even higher. Useful and well research questions may not get a lot of up votes, but they do get a lot more visibility and quite more useful answers than a couple of years ago, as they are a lot easier to discover when you don't have to look for hours amongst an ocean of pointless questions like &quot;What's your most controversial programming opinion?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3415/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/31253/the-bike-shed-problem-and-so&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3557/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9562" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3600" RevisionGUID="a1b988a6-2d03-44b0-9241-1482428985b6" CreationDate="2012-05-18T14:56:04.397" UserId="31260" Comment="ridiculous amounts of upvotes += http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/ &quot;see SE blog post: The Trouble With Popularity&quot;" Text="Yes, that's true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers had a troubled start, fully documented in [this answer][1]. In the beginning the site was called &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; and it was a very relaxed place where questions that didn't belong on Stack Overflow found a home. Inane (but populist) questions were migrated here from Stack Overflow en masse, carrying [ridiculous amounts of upvotes][4] with them, and for a short while NPR was the one place in the Stack Exchange universe where you'd go for mindless fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it soon became evident that people flocked around the [bike shed][2] ones and ignored any serious questions or answers, and the site was quickly filling up with crap. Which led to a somewhat sudden and drastic scope change, the site was essentially rebooted to be what it is today. The redefined scope meant higher quality standards, which for Stack Exchange usually translates to less down votes and more up votes. Combined with the fact that down votes on questions [became free][3] about a year ago, people are down voting a lot more liberally than in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course you should also consider that older questions had obviously more time to gather up votes, they aren't all bad, newer questions will get there in time. But the main reason for the few whales that remain was the undisciplined culture of the early days, people would upvote just about anything. To give you an idea, one of that era's questions was &quot;What's your most controversial programming opinion?&quot;, which had 391 upvotes and 414 answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As time goes by we become even more sharply focused, and we set our standards even higher. Useful and well research questions may not get a lot of up votes, but they do get a lot more visibility and quite more useful answers than a couple of years ago, as they are a lot easier to discover when you don't have to look for hours amongst an ocean of pointless questions like &quot;What's your most controversial programming opinion?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3415/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/31253/the-bike-shed-problem-and-so&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3557/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/ &quot;see SE blog post: The Trouble With Popularity&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9563" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3601" RevisionGUID="3e7f5437-f7fb-440f-a248-54d06d2728b4" CreationDate="2012-05-18T15:57:16.813" UserId="20011" Text="Quality of questions and standards is surely a factor, but consider that a question that's been hanging around for two years has had a long time to accumulate votes. As time goes on, people will do searches that turn up older questions and still vote them up if they're good. And when someone asks a new question that seems familiar, somebody is likely to dig up the old one and vote to close the new one as a duplicate, thus directing more people to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to judge the quality of a question, you have to consider both the number of up votes and the number of views. A +30 question that's only had 100 views is more likely to be of high quality than a +30 question with 3,000 views." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9564" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3602" RevisionGUID="68156a51-9055-4b8c-9170-d3230b1cf7df" CreationDate="2012-05-18T17:47:57.090" UserId="1996" Text="@Rachel probably has some statistics to back this up, but these days, highly voted questions are usually either closed or converted to 'Community Wiki'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why it's harder to accrue reputation points now, than it was at the beginning." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9569" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3597" RevisionGUID="ce3e3418-27ac-4c79-9a13-c5bb23100d64" CreationDate="2012-05-19T00:31:54.990" UserId="3" Comment="deleted 7 characters in body" Text="You're showing your bias &amp;mdash; There's nothing inherently *wrong* with down-voting. I could just as easily argue that unwarranted **up-votes** should receive the penalty you prescribe &amp;mdash; Maybe even *more so*. After all, the pity up-vote (inappropriately saying something is *correct and useful* just to counteract a down-vote) is a much more nefarious &quot;problem&quot; than the random disagreement someone expresses on occasion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would you really go down this road where someone is penalized for disagreeing with the majority? That's not voting at all! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Voting is a personal preference, and we already greatly underweight the effects of a down-vote *specifically* to allay these kinds of disproportionate responses (-2 points for a downvote, vs +5/+10 points for an upvote). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When someone down-votes, we already do the *&quot;please consider adding a comment if you think this post can be improved&quot;* thing. If someone does ot choose to explicitly justify their judgement to you, that's their prerogative. Nobody's suggesting that you have to justify why you would *up-vote* this sort of thing &amp;hellip; so I don't see the difference. I just don't buy the *anonymous up-vote=good, down-vote=unacceptable* argument. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9571" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3594" RevisionGUID="4420e4a8-0441-4805-8694-6a3eaa438a9d" CreationDate="2012-05-19T03:17:43.957" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|user-profile|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9572" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3599" RevisionGUID="159546e7-2ecf-422d-9591-dc95e91d558f" CreationDate="2012-05-19T16:16:48.190" UserId="34364" Comment="general rewrite" Text="I have seen many questions and answers on Programmers.SE and on Stack Overflow that I would consider older (maybe 2 years and more) and that are not so good compared to more recent posts. The funny thing is, they have a lot of votes. Today, I see better questions with a lot less votes. Is this a matter of people up-voting less these days?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9573" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3604" RevisionGUID="626ce999-99b1-4af6-a296-95164cb02156" CreationDate="2012-05-21T06:44:02.087" UserId="25936" Text="## Results for Week 2 [documentation]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148978/what-is-the-connection-between-literate-programming-and-the-semantic-web&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 303, Top voted answer: [Robert Harvey](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148980/25936) (11)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148900/should-i-follow-an-open-source-projects-documentation-patterns-even-if-they-are&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 175, Top voted answer: [MainMa](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148905/25936) (8)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148894/how-to-use-unit-tests-as-a-source-of-information&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 133, Top voted answer: [Mert](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148899/25936) (7)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148881/how-do-you-handle-what-do-you-charge-for-documentation-training-warranty-ch&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 80, Top voted answer: [Ryathal](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148893/25936) (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148799/what-exactly-comprises-documentation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 157, Top voted answer: [Graham Lee](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148828/25936) (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148607/alternative-to-perls-pod-documentation-in-other-languages&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 72, Top voted answer: [World Engineer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148612/25936) (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148534/does-msdn-follow-documentation-conventions-for-net-and-if-so-is-it-publicly-av&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 197, Top voted answer: [SnOrfus](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148583/25936) (4)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148488/documenting-a-programming-language-reference-manual&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 324, Top voted answer: [gnat](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148513/25936) (7) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148477/how-do-i-document-necessarily-complex-code-structures&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 126, Top voted answer: [Kirk Broadhurst](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148491/25936) (4)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148471/are-comments-considered-a-form-of-documentation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 562, Top voted answer: [Oleksi](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148473/25936) (19)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Question with the most views &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148471/are-comments-considered-a-form-of-documentation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/34364/dynamic&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/flair/34364.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Dynamic at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot; title=&quot;profile for Dynamic at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Top voted answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148473/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/47555/oleksi&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/flair/47555.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Oleksi at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot; title=&quot;profile for Oleksi at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9574" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3604" RevisionGUID="0abc7aaa-eca3-4fb5-ad90-5d63bd6ee496" CreationDate="2012-05-21T07:01:48.970" UserId="25936" Comment="added 52 characters in body" Text="## Results for Week 2 [documentation]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148978/what-is-the-connection-between-literate-programming-and-the-semantic-web&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 303, Top voted answer: [Robert Harvey](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148980/25936) (11)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148900/should-i-follow-an-open-source-projects-documentation-patterns-even-if-they-are&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 175, Top voted answer: [MainMa](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148905/25936) (8)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148894/how-to-use-unit-tests-as-a-source-of-information&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 133, Top voted answer: [Mert](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148899/25936) (7)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148881/how-do-you-handle-what-do-you-charge-for-documentation-training-warranty-ch&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 80, Top voted answer: [Ryathal](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148893/25936) (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148799/what-exactly-comprises-documentation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 157, Top voted answer: [Graham Lee](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148828/25936) (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148607/alternative-to-perls-pod-documentation-in-other-languages&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 72, Top voted answer: [World Engineer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148612/25936) (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148534/does-msdn-follow-documentation-conventions-for-net-and-if-so-is-it-publicly-av&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 197, Top voted answer: [SnOrfus](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148583/25936) (4)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148488/documenting-a-programming-language-reference-manual&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 324, Top voted answer: [gnat](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148513/25936) (7) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148477/how-do-i-document-necessarily-complex-code-structures&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 126, Top voted answer: [Kirk Broadhurst](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148491/25936) (4)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148471/are-comments-considered-a-form-of-documentation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 562, Top voted answer: [Oleksi](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148473/25936) (19)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Question with the most views &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148471/are-comments-considered-a-form-of-documentation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/34364/dynamic&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/flair/34364.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Dynamic at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot; title=&quot;profile for Dynamic at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Top voted answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Are comments considered a form of documentation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148473/25936)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/47555/oleksi&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/flair/47555.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Oleksi at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot; title=&quot;profile for Oleksi at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9575" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="f6a58b00-972d-4f7d-a613-0b70143bf6ce" CreationDate="2012-05-21T07:48:23.853" UserId="25936" Comment="added 79 characters in body" Text="## Wait! Programmers.SE is having a contest!? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*What have you been living under a rock?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just kidding (maybe). Yes, Programmers is having a contest. And it's going to be awesome! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So how will this contest work? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will be divided into 4 weeks. For each of the 4 weeks, there will be a tag dedicated to it. The schedule will go like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [tag:data-structures] -- May 7 ([results][1])&#xD;&#xA; 2. [tag:documentation] -- May 14 ([results][2])&#xD;&#xA; 3. [tag:history] (yes it has to be *programming history*) -- May 21 (now!)&#xD;&#xA; 4. [tag:algorithms] -- May 28&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each week, users who post questions and answers for that weeks tag will have their post entered into the contest. The following categories can win:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Best Answer:** The best answer from the week will be a winner. Best answer is judged by **votes**. Any answer to a closed question is ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - **Best Question:** The best question from the week will also be awarded. Best question is not judged on votes, but instead **views**. Closed questions will be disqualified. ***We encourage advertising your question (on non-SE sites) to get more views. Please do not spam the chat rooms.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, you are only eligible if you post under the current week's tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Prizes! ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best of all, we try to get you the best prizes possible. In order to do that, we had to put on a few restrictions. But **winners can choose their own site-related prize from Amazon, as long as it:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is under $50 (including shipping and handling)&#xD;&#xA; - Is related to the site and its topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your one prize does not use up the $50, you may choose up to 3 different things (still has to be under $50 all total).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So when do we start? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest is going on now!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Important Notes of Eligibility and Such##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You must have a valid email address in your profile so that we can contact you and ask you what you want from Amazon (if you win).&#xD;&#xA; - No closed questions or negatively scored questions (regardless of views). &#xD;&#xA; - SE employees are ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - The question you are asking or answering must contain the contest tag to be eligible&#xD;&#xA; - Bounties on contest questions are more than welcome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3591/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3604/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9576" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3605" RevisionGUID="002e9c39-b5ea-4795-8d20-db1fe8330fca" CreationDate="2012-05-21T18:15:57.357" UserId="32353" Text="The problem with shopping list questions is that there is no possible definitive answer because no one will ever be able to come up with an exhaustive list - and if they did it would be to long for the site's format, or change so quickly that the question is too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if the question could be considered a &quot;shopping list&quot; question but it doesn't have those problems, it should be O.K.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In practice, this pretty much amounts to having a short and unambiguous list.  You can get there because the full list is naturally short, or because you qualify your question sufficiently that the filtered list is short enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as explaining this in the FAQ, we should just say &quot;for shopping list questions, it should be a list that you can send your husband out at 2:00 A.M. and be confident he will return with exactly those items&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;O.K., probably not.  I don't know what to say on the FAQ.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe the FAQ is O.K., since the problems with shopping list questions *do* fall under things that are listed in the FAQ, even if making the connection can require some explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9577" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3606" RevisionGUID="9ddf33d9-26a3-471c-8112-0f83f1d61178" CreationDate="2012-05-21T20:21:32.807" UserId="3970" Text="I asked [the question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/149534/is-just-publishing-my-program-on-github-enough-for-it-to-be-searchable-for-users), but instead of answers/comments got only downvotes and close votes. I though programmers.SE is just right place for this question because of, being not technical (so SO is not good option), it is about what programmers should do with their projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the problem with that question? Where should I ask it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9578" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3606" RevisionGUID="9ddf33d9-26a3-471c-8112-0f83f1d61178" CreationDate="2012-05-21T20:21:32.807" UserId="3970" Text="Why is this (&quot;is just publishing on github enough&quot;) question offtopic? Where should I ask it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9579" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3606" RevisionGUID="9ddf33d9-26a3-471c-8112-0f83f1d61178" CreationDate="2012-05-21T20:21:32.807" UserId="3970" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9580" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3607" RevisionGUID="06d4f537-de7a-45e6-906b-8135d690a13e" CreationDate="2012-05-21T20:23:27.793" UserId="47" Text="My problem with the question (I haven't down-voted but did vote to close - obviously) is that it's not a real question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You ramble on for most of the question and only in the last sentence actually come up with a question that seems more suited for Meta Super User than Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What **exactly** are you trying to ask?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9581" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3608" RevisionGUID="40418a16-6889-47de-b67c-99c3a7108e13" CreationDate="2012-05-22T13:27:31.370" UserId="1767" Text="I think that part of the problem may be the implicit focus from the site name. The site name is Programmers, which is different from every other successful SE site. Generally, the other SE sites talk about *an action*, where our title is talking about *a group of people*. I think that this leads to some of the confusing -- calling it &quot;Programming&quot; might be a better choice." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9582" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="2d3437f2-a025-4f68-b1c9-895263ab915a" CreationDate="2012-05-23T12:53:52.363" UserId="1130" Comment="updated request since it still gets many views/votes today" Text="This site is called **programmers**.stackexchange, while the FAQ states that this site is about &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since a large number of people never read the FAQ, or don't read it before posting, this means we have a community of people that think the site is about Programmers, but a team of moderators that try and maintain a site on &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This causes a large number of unhappy people who don't understand why their questions, or other questions they think are good, get closed, downvoted, etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my suggestion is to either rename the site to something that matches it's FAQ, like `softwaredevelopment.SE`, or change the FAQ so that this site is about Programmers, not software development only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I hate the suggestion of renaming the site. I want to participate in a site about programmers, not software development. But as long as the site is called one thing, and the FAQ states another, we're never going to be at peace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since posting this, I have learned [the history behind the site scope change][2], and doubt SE will ever allow it to go back to simply being a Q&amp;A site for programmers to get answers from other programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So please, change the name of the site to something that better reflects the site's scope&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2131/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9583" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3225" RevisionGUID="6aa8f1b1-f18c-4b23-afd4-b5970124dfdd" CreationDate="2012-05-23T12:54:04.717" UserId="1130" Comment="added 552 characters in body" Text="No answer so far states the opinion defined in the question, so I am posting one&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The site name matters.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is the first, and sometimes only thing someone judges a SE site by, so I feel it should accurately represent what the site is about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a descriptive site name does not match its content, then the site is not at its full potential since they are losing what could potentially be a large part of their user base. The loss could occur because the content is not what the user expects, so they leave, or it could occur because users actually searching for a site like the one you provide are not finding your site, or maybe are seeing it, but are assuming it is something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Cooking.SE` is a site about cooking, `Databases.SE` is a site about databases, and `Bicycles.SE` is a site about cycling, however `Programmers.SE` is NOT a site about programmers. It is a site about conceptual, whiteboard-styled software development questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best analogy I can think of is creating an `Athletes.SE`, which is only for conceptual questions about sports, while questions about athletes themselves, or technical questions about sports are off-topic. It's very confusing, especially to new users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So either change the site name to something like `softwaredevelopment.SE` to accurately reflect what the site is about, or change the site scope so that this  is a Q&amp;A site for programmers, about programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9584" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3608" RevisionGUID="61a3a0c6-2c30-41f1-8813-c6d2cca53e67" CreationDate="2012-05-23T20:08:12.550" UserId="1767" Comment="added 123 characters in body" Text="I think that part of the problem may be the implicit focus from the site name. The site name is Programmers, which is different from every other successful SE site. Generally, the other SE sites talk about *an action*, where our title is talking about *a group of people*. I think that this leads to some of the confusing -- calling it &quot;Programming&quot; might be a better choice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of this might affect Programmers more than other sites because of the site history as random-crap-as-a-programmer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9590" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3599" RevisionGUID="e1da54a9-8632-4d10-96e3-2a37cbed2d97" CreationDate="2012-05-24T05:15:11.503" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/205527341714255872" />
  <row Id="9591" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3611" RevisionGUID="669ee26d-1ec7-4db1-8875-135c1f47fab6" CreationDate="2012-05-24T07:47:21.730" UserId="607" Text="I really don't know why you need to close questions at all. If a question is related to programming, even if quite tenuously, then it should be left to the users of the site to arbiter whether it is relevant or not. The mechanism for that is quite simple and already exists - people will vote for questions they like, downvote questions they don't and, most importantly, provide answers to questions they feel are interesting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it totally ridiculous that you can have a question that has lots of answers and is provoking discussion to be suddenly closed because some unelected moderator decides to exert their power. No wonder we are at the ludicrous situation where so many questions are being closed. Personally I hardly even bother coming here any more (and I know for a fact other people feel the same) as half the questions I'm interested in are suddenly closed (without often the mundane and dull questions left). Why should people bother wasting time supplying an answer to a question when they know that it could (seemingly) arbitrarily be closed at any moment?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I subscribe to the StackExchange twitter feed and it's amazing how many of the questions selected to appear in that feed (presumably automatically based on popularity) end up being closed. If people are interested in it, contributing and provoking discussion then what gives someone else the right to stamp down on that? I remember when this site was set up it was to act as an &quot;overflow&quot; for the questions that weren't quite suitable for StackOverflow yet were programming related (with an example cited as the (in)famous &quot;[What is your favourite programming cartoon?][1]&quot;). The irony is that [questions like that][2] would never be allowed here any more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sure moderators think they are doing their best by following some &quot;charter&quot;, but who wrote that? Who was consulted? Again I come back to **letting the people decide** what should be here via the mechanisms that already exist with moderators only needing to close the most egregious violations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/84556/whats-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate/71733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9592" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3612" RevisionGUID="8af3684c-f0c3-4938-af1f-d1bc664c1cd4" CreationDate="2012-05-24T20:19:34.857" UserId="902" Text="Let me start by giving just a little bit of background. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away I was a moderator myself. My job as moderator was a bit different from moderators here though -- as moderator I was absolute dictator. I was free to make essentially *any* rules I wanted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect that total freedom led to a bit of soul searching about the role a moderator *should* take. Since I was free to do anything I wanted, I needed to think about what I really should do, rather than just operating within a given set of guidelines and dealing with whatever arose day to day. In any case, regardless of the reason, I *did* think about it quite a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Giving credit where due, I should probably also add that I took a fair amount of inspiration from at least a couple of former moderators there. The first was Bob Stout. Before I met Bob, I think I sort of implicitly believed a view that I think is shared by many: that most programmers are basically sort of idiot savants -- good at coding, but not much else. Bob made it clear that almost the opposite was true: the best programmers are good at a lot of other things as well. The other former moderator I found inspirational was Thad Smith, who made two things clear. First that at least among programmers, showing an *exceptional* level of competence at writing code led to such respect that it simply eliminated most arguments on any other subjects. Second, that providing positive direction was much more important, and accomplished far more, than any amount of problem fixing you could possibly do (unfortunately, it wasn't until long after I'd stepped down as moderator that I realized the latter to nearly the degree I should have).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, I decided that leading by example was absolutely crucial, including enforcing the rules on myself *much* more strictly than I did on anybody else. If there was behavior that might be allowed part of the time, but might be considered even marginally questionable under some circumstances, then as moderator I would not/could not/should not engage in that kind of behavior under any circumstances at any time. With anybody else, minor infractions of the rules were best tolerated until/unless they really caused a problem -- but for myself, there could never be any question that I followed them absolutely, and never ever took advantage of my position to &quot;get away&quot; with anything that I couldn't/wouldn't have done if I wasn't the moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, I thought a bit about who I should think of as a role model. I considered the possibility of a policeman, but rejected it. I've known a fair number of real-life policemen, and based on that have concluded that police work leads almost inevitably to a high degree of cynicism and in many cases also to people acting like petty tyrants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I eventually decided that the Dalai Lama was a much better role model. Rather than giving anything that might even be mistaken for an order, I needed to remember that I was acting in a purely advisory role to people who were entirely free to depart the environs and ignore my very existence if they found me or what I had to say particularly objectionable. I needed to *convince* people that following my advice would lead to better lives for everybody involved, not just order them to do what I thought was right. To accomplish that, however, I needed to spend most of the time listening to them about what they wanted rather than assuming that the rules I'd made were (even close to) the final word on what should or shouldn't be. Ultimately, most of what I did was listen, summarize the highest ideals out of what I heard, and reflect those back as the ideals toward which we as a group should aspire.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Somewhat paradoxically, one other point I found particularly valuable was learned while I was in the military, where it was considered something close to the 11&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; commandment: Praise in public, punish in private. In other words, if I had anything to say that could *possibly* be perceived as negative about anybody, I needed to do that as privately as I possibly could. At the same time, when I had positive things to say (which I tried to make as often as possible) that should be done in public -- preferably as loudly and publicly as possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, although I certainly tried to maintain maximum quality from a technical viewpoint, I concluded that the social aspects outweighed the technical aspects. People simply having some fun should be accepted as long as it didn't actively detract from the technical content. For a fair number of people it quickly became a game to discuss the most outlandish topic possible and still figure out a way to show that it was still really related to programming (interestingly, in many cases the more outlandish they initially appeared, the deeper the lesson they taught in the end).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lest I be misunderstood, I don't intend to say that Chris is wrong and I'm right, nor that I was or would be a better moderator than him. At the same time I was more or less accused of simply saying &quot;this sucks&quot; without providing anything positive. While I don't think that characterization is entirely accurate, I'd rather make an attempt at a clearly positive contribution than something that's obviously been perceived as negative. Given the difference in circumstances, I'm not sure that my experience applies very well, but perhaps one or two little bits and pieces may (with suitable interpretation and modification) accomplish something useful -- and if not, maybe somebody at least found it mildly entertaining so maybe it still wasn't a complete waste of bits." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9617" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3619" RevisionGUID="73656cd1-ea96-409d-8e07-526e63618563" CreationDate="2012-05-25T18:15:17.873" UserDisplayName="user48179" Text="I recently came across a question on [Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com) asking what the first known pornographic video game/software/etc. was (wasn't able to find that particular question).  A comment on there asked if there were moderation for such NSFW topics. This question (and others I have found, like [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49990/what-are-the-technical-contributions-of-the-pornography-industry), or [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136711/would-working-for-an-adult-website-hurt-my-future-employability)) promoted legitimate answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't ever foreshadow that this forum will begin to include adult content, but I believe it would be a good idea to moderate for it. Imagine your boss walking by and sees **pornography** included in the title of the question you are reading." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9618" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3619" RevisionGUID="73656cd1-ea96-409d-8e07-526e63618563" CreationDate="2012-05-25T18:15:17.873" UserDisplayName="user48179" Text="Moderation for NSFW topics" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9619" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3619" RevisionGUID="73656cd1-ea96-409d-8e07-526e63618563" CreationDate="2012-05-25T18:15:17.873" UserDisplayName="user48179" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9620" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3619" RevisionGUID="3a72485c-76cf-49b7-98dc-e92e55a6f5f5" CreationDate="2012-05-25T18:30:05.933" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9622" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3620" RevisionGUID="92a885c2-69b8-4dc9-a9c4-d70a79928db3" CreationDate="2012-05-25T18:37:17.807" UserId="25476" Text="Well in a way we do moderate for offensive and objectionable material on the site so I am sure that if one of my fellow mods were to come across porn they would quickly remove it and take appropriate action against the user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as the wording and title of the questions are considered, I would probably seek and encourage less than explicit ways to convey the questions and answers, especially the title.  Many of us go to the Stack Exchange sites while we are at work and many of us happen to work in offices that have content filtering of objectionable and lewd material.  The most common of these is site blacklisting but some of the more sensitive software packages out there will go so far as scanning documents for the prevalence of key words.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The word &quot;Pornography&quot; seems safe.  Describing in explicit detail a pornographic story or scene is more than likely not relevant to any ontopic conversation on this site anyway so it can be promptly removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also try to moderate by removing curse words as well, at least I do.  I want the site to be as family friendly as possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bottom line is that our users are the front line of moderation on this site.  Our active users take the initiative to promptly flag material that needs our attention and are not afraid to edit questions and answers or approve edits to questions and answers where they feel is appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderation on this site can be directly attributed to these individuals, you guys know who you are, I see your names all the time in the flag queue so keep up the good work ;-)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9623" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3620" RevisionGUID="e696edc9-3780-4097-ae9f-a196ac003eb5" CreationDate="2012-05-25T18:49:56.607" UserId="25476" Comment="added 189 characters in body" Text="Well in a way we do moderate for offensive and objectionable material on the site so I am sure that if one of my fellow mods were to come across porn they would quickly remove it and take appropriate action against the user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as the wording and title of the questions are considered, I would probably seek and encourage less than explicit ways to convey the questions and answers, especially the title.  Many of us go to the Stack Exchange sites while we are at work and many of us happen to work in offices that have content filtering of objectionable and lewd material.  The most common of these is site blacklisting but some of the more sensitive software packages out there will go so far as scanning documents for the prevalence of key words.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The word &quot;Pornography&quot; seems safe.  Describing in explicit detail a pornographic story or scene is more than likely not relevant to any ontopic conversation on this site anyway so it can be promptly removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also try to moderate by removing curse words as well, at least I do.  I want the site to be as family friendly as possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bottom line is that our users are the front line of moderation on this site.  Our active users take the initiative to promptly flag material that needs our attention and are not afraid to edit questions and answers or approve edits to questions and answers where they feel is appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderation on this site can be directly attributed to these individuals, you guys know who you are, I see your names all the time in the flag queue so keep up the good work ;-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:**  On a somewhat unrelated note, if you think we have a problem with this you should check out Skeptics on the sexuality tag.  Its like the backroom of the video rental store :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9624" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3621" RevisionGUID="32609caf-a6e4-47d0-ad2b-21bdb10187d2" CreationDate="2012-05-25T19:27:51.160" UserId="9293" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150266/is-c-too-hard&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You keep editing it to bring back the question, yet insisted it be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You won't let me delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ridiculous." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9625" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3621" RevisionGUID="32609caf-a6e4-47d0-ad2b-21bdb10187d2" CreationDate="2012-05-25T19:27:51.160" UserId="9293" Text="If you hate the question so much, why bring it back?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9626" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3621" RevisionGUID="32609caf-a6e4-47d0-ad2b-21bdb10187d2" CreationDate="2012-05-25T19:27:51.160" UserId="9293" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9627" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3622" RevisionGUID="a5dafded-a136-4904-bad6-8542a5f1097e" CreationDate="2012-05-25T19:30:44.403" UserId="47" Text="Post vandalism is not allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By posting on the site you cede certain rights to the post - see the [cc-by-wiki](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) link at the foot of every page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't worry, the post will be deleted - but it will be deleted in the form you posted it, not the form you vandalised into." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9628" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3619" RevisionGUID="327ca64e-bab2-4388-b32e-d858b1444999" CreationDate="2012-05-25T19:32:46.723" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9629" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3620" RevisionGUID="36923f4f-0b49-4d59-96e8-d087783290cc" CreationDate="2012-05-25T19:33:57.753" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo correction" Text="Well in a way we do moderate for offensive and objectionable material on the site so I am sure that if one of my fellow mods were to come across porn they would quickly remove it and take appropriate action against the user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as the wording and title of the questions are considered, I would probably seek and encourage less than explicit ways to convey the questions and answers, especially the title.  Many of us go to the Stack Exchange sites while we are at work and many of us happen to work in offices that have content filtering of objectionable and lewd material.  The most common of these is site blacklisting but some of the more sensitive software packages out there will go so far as scanning documents for the prevalence of key words.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The word &quot;Pornography&quot; seems safe.  Describing in explicit detail a pornographic story or scene is more than likely not relevant to any ontopic conversation on this site anyway so it can be promptly removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also try to moderate by removing curse words as well, at least I do.  I want the site to be as family friendly as possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bottom line is that our users are the front line of moderation on this site.  Our active users take the initiative to promptly flag material that needs our attention and are not afraid to edit questions and answers or approve edits to questions and answers where they feel is appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderation on this site can be directly attributed to these individuals, you guys know who you are, I see your names all the time in the flag queue so keep up the good work ;-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:**  On a somewhat unrelated note, if you think we have a problem with this you should check out Skeptics on the sexuality tag.  It's like the backroom of the video rental store :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9630" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3621" RevisionGUID="ddf0cb2d-09c7-4f5e-ac10-178426310c42" CreationDate="2012-05-25T19:36:37.327" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|moderation|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9631" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3622" RevisionGUID="213ecca5-33bd-428b-9bf6-efad4c1758a4" CreationDate="2012-05-25T19:52:01.957" UserId="47" Comment="deleted the post" Text="Post vandalism is not allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By posting on the site you cede certain rights to the post - see the [cc-by-wiki](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) link at the foot of every page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't worry, the post &lt;strike&gt;will be&lt;/strike&gt; has been deleted - but it will be deleted in the form you posted it, not the form you vandalised into." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9632" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3623" RevisionGUID="ae32c5b9-ebad-490c-a82c-16d13af7c69c" CreationDate="2012-05-25T20:24:33.250" UserId="41381" Text="We should be able to talk about subjects as adults and not have breakdowns, because someone used the word pornography or sex or some other word deemed offensive by someone. The particular question you ask about probably was off topic, but there are plenty of questions related to programming history that could legitimately involve talking about pornographic sites. These questions should be allowed to exist and prosper along with all the others, IMO we would be doing a disservice to the site and all users if we were to ban uncomfortable but on topic questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9633" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3623" RevisionGUID="d4c3b9b7-d831-4ed5-bdbf-260f37f29c78" CreationDate="2012-05-25T20:43:26.743" UserId="41381" Comment="added 360 characters in body" Text="We should be able to talk about subjects as adults and not have breakdowns, because someone used the word pornography or sex or some other word deemed offensive by someone. The particular question you ask about probably was off topic, but there are plenty of questions related to programming history that could legitimately involve talking about pornographic sites. These questions should be allowed to exist and prosper along with all the others, IMO we would be doing a disservice to the site and all users if we were to ban uncomfortable but on topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally talking about pornography or a subject in which pornography is related is an entirely different thing than having pictures/videos/stories/whatever. Even 13 year-olds should be capable of speaking in a civilized fashion about things like pornography's contribution to the internet as we know it today,  and is a perfectly family-friendly discussion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9636" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3624" RevisionGUID="db42b609-ad9b-43d1-9e67-2effa5131f70" CreationDate="2012-05-26T14:48:15.317" UserId="51770" Text="When we add an image to a post, the resulting markdown is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6ySkR.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And in order to add a tooltip, you'll need to do this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6ySkR.png &quot;tooltip&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Very easy to do, but I most images I see on Programmers have neither a description nor a tool tip, I guess people don't care much to add any more information after the image is uploaded. I think it would be far more easier if the image dialog had an extra field for description / tooltip: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Venn diagram from FAQ][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the resulting markdown would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ![Venn diagram from FAQ][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png &quot;Venn diagram from FAQ&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that the image's description is not the same as the tooltip, but the poster can always change one or the other afterwards. That would bring us back to where we are today, but only for a tiny fraction of posted images, with the added value of all images having a description and a tooltip, even if they are the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7HFz8.jpg &quot;Venn diagram from FAQ&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9637" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3624" RevisionGUID="db42b609-ad9b-43d1-9e67-2effa5131f70" CreationDate="2012-05-26T14:48:15.317" UserId="51770" Text="Add a description / tooltip field in the image uploader" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9638" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3624" RevisionGUID="db42b609-ad9b-43d1-9e67-2effa5131f70" CreationDate="2012-05-26T14:48:15.317" UserId="51770" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9639" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3624" RevisionGUID="121fa228-ad04-4561-96e4-a1de4ca2fa79" CreationDate="2012-05-26T14:50:17.950" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|design|images|markdown|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9640" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3624" RevisionGUID="c48a081e-f39c-4200-a38b-7610aaa18896" CreationDate="2012-05-26T14:55:06.480" UserId="51770" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="When we add an image to a post, the resulting markdown is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6ySkR.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And in order to add a tooltip, you'll need to do this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6ySkR.png &quot;tooltip&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Very easy to do, but I most images I see on Programmers have neither a description nor a tooltip, I guess people don't care much to add any more information after the image is uploaded. I think it would be far more easier if the image dialog had an extra field for description / tooltip: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Venn diagram from FAQ][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the resulting markdown would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ![Venn diagram from FAQ][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png &quot;Venn diagram from FAQ&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that the image's description is not the same as the tooltip, but the poster can always change one or the other afterwards. That would bring us back to where we are today, but only for a tiny fraction of posted images, with the added value of all images having a description and a tooltip, even if they are the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7HFz8.jpg &quot;Venn diagram from FAQ&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9641" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3625" RevisionGUID="106a34a2-e164-4caa-b932-086f51414d76" CreationDate="2012-05-26T15:53:55.047" UserId="35414" Text="I like this idea but the `title` attribute really shouldn't be set identically to the `alt` attribute. Just for accessibility reasons I'd support leaving the alt text box there but I'm not sure how much value the tooltip provides; you should be explaining the reason for the image in your body copy anyway, so tooltips shouldn't be as necessary." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9642" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3625" RevisionGUID="b8811410-0635-44f5-adf1-d37b75971d7a" CreationDate="2012-05-26T16:14:32.470" UserId="35414" Comment="added 330 characters in body" Text="I like this idea but the `title` attribute really shouldn't be set identically to the `alt` attribute. Just for accessibility reasons I'd support leaving the alt text box there but I'm not sure how much value the tooltip provides; you should be explaining the reason for the image in your body copy anyway, so tooltips shouldn't be as necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Agree with Yannis as well that it should be optional, maybe &quot;enter a description here&quot; in *placeholder text*. I'm not convinced a billion images with alt text of &quot;enter a description here&quot; is good either... (and yes, that's what alt text is set to and what screen readers announce if you leave the default text at the moment)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9643" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3624" RevisionGUID="4ce45b6f-f102-43ba-bf1b-ffe1dc5e20be" CreationDate="2012-05-26T20:15:11.203" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/206478611019087873" />
  <row Id="9644" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3626" RevisionGUID="880597c3-4c3d-499f-a732-82dd0c9fac25" CreationDate="2012-05-27T06:11:01.423" UserId="12611" Text="From [Chris F's Meta Post](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3540/12611):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can help out. If you see a question or answer that doesn't meet our community standards, use a (polite!) comment to ask the author to fix it, or be bold and edit it yourself, or flag it to bring it to the attention of the sleeping busy moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What constitutes a good, polite, guiding comment? After reading Chris F's post urging the community to step up and help with community moderation, his question, and the [inspirational response by Jerry Coffin](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3612/12611), got me thinking about how and where to  begin. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it may seem like common sense, I believe that all of us could use a refresher or some ideas on how exactly to leave this type of comment. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Communicating over the Internet, where there's no body language or other social cues, is hard! One thing I've personally noticed is that users are more receptive to polite, carefully worded comments, and I feel like the community has more to gain if those users come back a second and third time and put more effort into correcting their question-asking or answer-giving shortcomings, than if they were just left with nothing more than a link, a stern warning, and a bitter, angry feeling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So, here are a few pointers that I've put together that I hope will be helpful:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- When leaving a comment, say &quot;hi&quot; and use the person's name, if provided. Since @username doesn't work anymore, I find that this approach is much more personable and sets the tone for the rest of the comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Welcome the person to the site if he or she is new. This helps disarm the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Use the first sentence to use what the person did or didn't do to describe what it is about StackExchange that's great, but without pointing out the behavior.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you can see that his or her attempt at participating on the site was done in good faith, use that in your suggestion as well. Using a sentence beginning with a dependent-clause followed by an independent clause is a great tool to acknowledge something positive while also pointing out an area that needs improvement.  (While X was very helpful, we really encourage people to do Y)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Offer a suggestion for improvement. This is important, and I really think this strategy is *really* helpful for people who are *not* moderators, simply because a person who makes a *suggestion* to another person helps bring the other person *up* to his or her level, with both people on the same level playing field. In other words, suggestions imply choice, and suggestions imply respect and equality. Suggestions imply that you're giving this person helpful, friendly advice that can improve that person's experiences on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Lastly, if there's enough space, consider following up with another welcome message, see you around, good luck, or some other positive closure. This approach also implies that you don't expect nor intend to respond or follow up, which is really helpful, since there isn't much a regular user can do beyond that, other than flagging for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here is an example of a comment that I recently left while using the *review* tab:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi John, welcome to Programmers! The StackExchange sites strive to become a repository of knowledge for years to come. While the links you've posted are helpful, if they ever break, your answer won't quite be as valuable. Consider editing your answer to include a few highlights from the links in the body of your answer such that it's valuable for years to come. Again, welcome to our site! :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of these points were inspired by Chris F and Jerry's responses, but also from the blog post titled, [A Theory of Moderation](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what other suggestions are there for empowering community moderation -- as in moderation by non-diamond community members -- through polite, respectful comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9645" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3626" RevisionGUID="880597c3-4c3d-499f-a732-82dd0c9fac25" CreationDate="2012-05-27T06:11:01.423" UserId="12611" Text="What Are Some Examples of Good &quot;Guiding Comments&quot; to Leave Users To Help Understand The Site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9646" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3626" RevisionGUID="880597c3-4c3d-499f-a732-82dd0c9fac25" CreationDate="2012-05-27T06:11:01.423" UserId="12611" Text="|discussion|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9647" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3626" RevisionGUID="a72bee63-cf41-4bec-93a3-41b5ee7add9d" CreationDate="2012-05-27T06:16:10.857" UserId="12611" Comment="added more clarity in bullet points and emphasis on community participation in moderation" Text="From [Chris F's Meta Post](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3540/12611):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can help out. If you see a question or answer that doesn't meet our community standards, use a (polite!) comment to ask the author to fix it, or be bold and edit it yourself, or flag it to bring it to the attention of the sleeping busy moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What constitutes a good, polite, guiding comment? After reading Chris F's post urging the community to step up and help with community moderation, his question, and the [inspirational response by Jerry Coffin](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3612/12611), got me thinking about how and where to  begin. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it may seem like common sense, I believe that all of us could use a refresher or some ideas on how exactly to leave this type of comment. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Communicating over the Internet, where there's no body language or other social cues, is hard! One thing I've personally noticed is that users are more receptive to polite, carefully worded comments, and I feel like the community has more to gain if those users come back a second and third time and put more effort into correcting their question-asking or answer-giving shortcomings, than if they were just left with nothing more than a link, a stern warning, and a bitter, angry feeling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So, here are a few pointers that I've put together that I hope will be helpful:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- When leaving a comment, say &quot;hi&quot; and use the person's name, if provided. Since @username doesn't work anymore, I find that this approach is much more personable and sets the tone for the rest of the comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Welcome the person to the site if he or she is new. This helps disarm the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Use the first sentence to use what the person did or didn't do to describe what it is about StackExchange that's great, but without pointing out the behavior.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you can see that his or her attempt at participating on the site was done in good faith, use that in your suggestion, which you could make in the second sentence. Using a sentence beginning with a dependent-clause followed by an independent clause is a great tool to acknowledge something positive while also pointing out an area that needs improvement.  (While X was very helpful, we really encourage people to do Y)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Next, offer a suggestion for improvement. This is important, and I really think this strategy is *really* helpful for people who are *not* moderators, simply because a person who makes a *suggestion* to another person helps bring the other person *up* to his or her level, with both people on the same level playing field. In other words, suggestions imply choice, and suggestions imply respect and equality. Suggestions imply that you're giving this person helpful, friendly advice that can improve that person's experiences on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Lastly, if there's enough space, consider following up with another welcome message, see you around, good luck, or some other positive closure. This approach also implies that you don't expect nor intend to respond or follow up, which is really helpful, since there isn't much a regular user can do beyond that, other than flagging for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here is an example of a comment that I recently left while using the *review* tab:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi John, welcome to Programmers! The StackExchange sites strive to become a repository of knowledge for years to come. While the links you've posted are helpful, if they ever break, your answer won't quite be as valuable. Consider editing your answer to include a few highlights from the links in the body of your answer such that it's valuable for years to come. Again, welcome to our site! :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of these points were inspired by Chris F and Jerry's responses, but also from the blog post titled, [A Theory of Moderation](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what other suggestions are there for empowering community moderation -- as in moderation by *non-diamond community members* -- through polite, respectful comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9648" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3627" RevisionGUID="8c467f66-80d0-4db3-901c-100d357ab5bd" CreationDate="2012-05-27T14:10:13.660" UserId="34364" Text="&gt;Please don't add &quot;thanks&quot; as answers. Invest some time in the site and you will gain sufficient privileges to upvote answers you like, which is the Programmers Meta way of saying thank you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt;Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;This is really a comment, not an answer. With a bit more rep, you will be able to post comments. For the moment I've added the comment for you, and I'm flagging this post for deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt;Please use the Post answer button only for actual answers. You should modify your original question to add additional information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If you have a NEW question, please ask it by clicking the Ask Question button. If you have sufficient reputation, you may upvote the question. Alternatively, &quot;star&quot; it as a favorite and you will be notified of any new answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9649" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3628" RevisionGUID="9caf63da-2025-45ae-a3f1-6eb0668bc89d" CreationDate="2012-05-27T14:21:42.347" UserId="1130" Text="I use some variation of this one a lot when I see new users posting off-topic questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi Person, welcome to Programmers! Unfortunately, our site is a Q&amp;A&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site for conceptual software development questions, and not a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; place to simply get answers from programmers about any topic. I am&#xD;&#xA;&gt; going to vote to close your question for being off-topic, however feel&#xD;&#xA;&gt; free to check out our [faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or browse the site to learn more about us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It begins with a friendly welcome, followed by &quot;unfortunately&quot; to show you see the users point of view and sympathize with them, clarifies the site topic, explains the close vote, shows them where they should start to use the site, and invites them to stay on the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9650" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3624" RevisionGUID="dc617554-5099-48d5-83da-f2bb31dfb871" CreationDate="2012-05-27T15:53:43.807" UserId="51770" Comment="deleted 364 characters in body; edited title" Text="When we add an image to a post, the resulting markdown is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6ySkR.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And in order to add a tooltip, you'll need to do this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6ySkR.png &quot;tooltip&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Very easy to do, but I most images I see on Programmers have neither a description nor a tooltip, I guess people don't care much to add any more information after the image is uploaded. I think it would be far more easier if the image dialog had an extra field for description: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Venn diagram from FAQ][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the resulting markdown would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ![Venn diagram from FAQ][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7HFz8.jpg &quot;Venn diagram from FAQ&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9651" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3624" RevisionGUID="dc617554-5099-48d5-83da-f2bb31dfb871" CreationDate="2012-05-27T15:53:43.807" UserId="51770" Comment="deleted 364 characters in body; edited title" Text="Could we add a description field in the image uploader?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9652" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3626" RevisionGUID="c1afe366-2e35-41a0-b67a-d50cb604debd" CreationDate="2012-05-27T17:15:12.597" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/206795706047016962" />
  <row Id="9653" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3629" RevisionGUID="ba8a41c2-b122-4169-9601-b992a455c9d7" CreationDate="2012-05-27T22:16:31.710" UserId="47" Text="A while ago we cleaned up the [tag:beginners] tag, but it has returned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1473/do-we-need-to-ban-the-beginners-tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is now the time to request it gets added to the black list (after another clean up)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9654" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3629" RevisionGUID="ba8a41c2-b122-4169-9601-b992a455c9d7" CreationDate="2012-05-27T22:16:31.710" UserId="47" Text="Do we need to black list the [beginners] tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9655" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3629" RevisionGUID="ba8a41c2-b122-4169-9601-b992a455c9d7" CreationDate="2012-05-27T22:16:31.710" UserId="47" Text="|discussion|featured|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9656" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3630" RevisionGUID="1829e2c7-2b7d-4584-99eb-9fba7bf77ff8" CreationDate="2012-05-27T22:32:43.517" UserId="4" Text="Yes, since it's [meta tag](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/). In fact, [tag:beginner] is explicitly mentioned in the blog post. Although I would suspect that the clean up wouldn't be that much cleaning up. I looked at the questions and most and otherwise appropriately tagged. Perhaps it could just be obliterated rather than a full clean-up." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9657" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3631" RevisionGUID="628ed4a1-a529-428b-80f3-b5e08aad7a9f" CreationDate="2012-05-28T00:11:43.523" UserId="25936" Text="##Results for Week 3 [history]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/150254/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 678, Top voted answer: [Mason Wheeler][1] (17)&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/149998/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 305, Top voted answer: [Alan B][2] (1)&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/149895/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 259, Top voted answer: [Steve314][3] (9)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/149888/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 290, Top voted answer: [GordonM][4] (5)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/149880/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 392, Top voted answer: [Thomas Owens][5] (15)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/149827/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 774, Top voted answer: [Yannis Rizos][6] (43)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/149594/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 117, Top voted answer: [James Anderson][7] (8)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/149465/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 1958, Top voted answer: [Yannis Rizos][8] (60)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/149457/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 5487, Top voted answer: [maple_shaft][9] (40)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/149420/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 549, Top voted answer: [rtperson][10] (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Question with the most views&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/149457/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/users/25466&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/users/flair/25466.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for user281377 on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&amp;amp;A sites&quot; title=&quot;profile for user281377 on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&amp;amp;A sites&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Top voted answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Who created the idea(s) of the first loop constructs?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/149484/25936)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/25936/yannis-rizos&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/flair/25936.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Yannis Rizos at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot; title=&quot;profile for Yannis Rizos at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/150264/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/150008/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/149904/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/149915/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/149899/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/149828/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/149601/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/149484/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/149475/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/149502/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9658" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="1fe337a3-4aa2-4723-a4a1-9734c0b68d3e" CreationDate="2012-05-28T00:12:22.657" UserId="25936" Comment="added 37 characters in body" Text="## Wait! Programmers.SE is having a contest!? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*What have you been living under a rock?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just kidding (maybe). Yes, Programmers is having a contest. And it's going to be awesome! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So how will this contest work? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will be divided into 4 weeks. For each of the 4 weeks, there will be a tag dedicated to it. The schedule will go like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [tag:data-structures] -- May 7 ([results][1])&#xD;&#xA; 2. [tag:documentation] -- May 14 ([results][2])&#xD;&#xA; 3. [tag:history] -- May 21 ([results][3])&#xD;&#xA; 4. [tag:algorithms] -- May 28 (now!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each week, users who post questions and answers for that weeks tag will have their post entered into the contest. The following categories can win:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Best Answer:** The best answer from the week will be a winner. Best answer is judged by **votes**. Any answer to a closed question is ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - **Best Question:** The best question from the week will also be awarded. Best question is not judged on votes, but instead **views**. Closed questions will be disqualified. ***We encourage advertising your question (on non-SE sites) to get more views. Please do not spam the chat rooms.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, you are only eligible if you post under the current week's tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Prizes! ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best of all, we try to get you the best prizes possible. In order to do that, we had to put on a few restrictions. But **winners can choose their own site-related prize from Amazon, as long as it:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is under $50 (including shipping and handling)&#xD;&#xA; - Is related to the site and its topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your one prize does not use up the $50, you may choose up to 3 different things (still has to be under $50 all total).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So when do we start? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest is going on now!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Important Notes of Eligibility and Such##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You must have a valid email address in your profile so that we can contact you and ask you what you want from Amazon (if you win).&#xD;&#xA; - No closed questions or negatively scored questions (regardless of views). &#xD;&#xA; - SE employees are ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - The question you are asking or answering must contain the contest tag to be eligible&#xD;&#xA; - Bounties on contest questions are more than welcome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3591/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3604/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3631/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9659" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3632" RevisionGUID="67e87eac-0a09-4338-94ec-f73cfbdff76c" CreationDate="2012-05-28T00:19:42.260" UserId="35414" Text="Sort of following up on http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3432/how-should-we-guide-questions-toward-the-workplace I was thinking our FAQ's bit that says we're NOT about &quot;career advice, including general workplace issues&quot; to explicitly reference The Workplace, where those questions, when constructive, *are* on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Workplace currently gets a substantial amount of traffic from Programmers (directly), so while I'm a bit concerned that some of the &quot;off topic anywhere on SE&quot; questions will spill over into workplace, it seems people have behaved themselves reasonable well so far. I also think this is a great time to *try* this arrangement right now as question volume is low on Workplace so, as a pro temp moderator on Workplace, it's pretty easy to manage if a few problems slip over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a good idea? How can we word it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9660" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3632" RevisionGUID="67e87eac-0a09-4338-94ec-f73cfbdff76c" CreationDate="2012-05-28T00:19:42.260" UserId="35414" Text="Should we mention The Workplace in our FAQ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9661" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3632" RevisionGUID="67e87eac-0a09-4338-94ec-f73cfbdff76c" CreationDate="2012-05-28T00:19:42.260" UserId="35414" Text="|discussion|faq-contents|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9662" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3633" RevisionGUID="ddb60e7e-033e-43a4-bbec-2b138a3c6af5" CreationDate="2012-05-28T00:34:22.397" UserId="34364" Text="How about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;...and is **not about**...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career advice, including general workplace issues (ask on The Workplace instead)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So basically, just add the `(ask on The Workplace instead)`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9663" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3634" RevisionGUID="7667605c-556f-4d03-9a2e-1ffc7e00a390" CreationDate="2012-05-28T00:41:03.903" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Having lived through [Stack Overflow summarily directing their trash to us][1], I'd be leery to do the same to another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, however, the Workplace wants that mention in our FAQ, I'm all for it. I do think they should propose the wording, as they know best what types of workplace and career questions are on-topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9664" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3632" RevisionGUID="8f414ef0-dcce-485c-856f-773958266143" CreationDate="2012-05-28T00:43:55.540" UserId="35414" Comment="added 261 characters in body" Text="Sort of following up on http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3432/how-should-we-guide-questions-toward-the-workplace I was thinking our FAQ's bit that says we're NOT about &quot;career advice, including general workplace issues&quot; to explicitly reference The Workplace, where those questions, when constructive, *are* on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Workplace currently gets a substantial amount of traffic from Programmers (directly), so while I'm a bit concerned that some of the &quot;off topic anywhere on SE&quot; questions will spill over into workplace, it seems people have behaved themselves reasonable well so far. I also think this is a great time to *try* this arrangement right now as question volume is low on Workplace so, as a pro temp moderator on Workplace, it's pretty easy to manage if a few problems slip over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a good idea? How can we word it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also started a recieving discussion on [Workplace Meta][1]; I want the blessing of both sites before we continue with this of course.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/274/would-we-want-to-be-mentioned-in-the-programmers-faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9665" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3629" RevisionGUID="ecdd57a2-fbe7-4ded-bfb4-586127b5e5dc" CreationDate="2012-05-28T02:15:13.813" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/206931604726226944" />
  <row Id="9666" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3632" RevisionGUID="022446d8-ae4d-4d72-af15-8830b17affe7" CreationDate="2012-05-28T11:15:13.977" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/207067501698351104" />
  <row Id="9667" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3635" RevisionGUID="45616575-8298-4e96-b8ec-4929f30f5ec0" CreationDate="2012-05-28T14:30:39.883" UserId="25936" Text="Right now our off topic list is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including which technology is better1&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the topics from the list that the Workplace welcomes are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - office politics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which I think should be combined in one item:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, career advice, office politics, résumé help (check out The Workplace instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including which technology is better,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've re-ordered the items, putting the two we have alternative suggestions for at the top, and the rest in order of occurrence. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9668" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3635" RevisionGUID="8d98f161-ac50-4157-91fd-2d9dbd1ec20f" CreationDate="2012-05-28T14:41:19.430" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="Right now our off topic list is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the topics from the list that the Workplace welcomes are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - office politics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which I think should be combined in one item:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, career advice, office politics, résumé help (check out The Workplace instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including which technology is better,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've re-ordered the items, putting the two we have alternative suggestions for at the top, and the rest in order of occurrence. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9669" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3632" RevisionGUID="43f6a69b-b3c3-4503-9d98-887532b36f29" CreationDate="2012-05-28T14:41:49.117" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body" Text="Sort of following up on http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3432/how-should-we-guide-questions-toward-the-workplace I was thinking our FAQ's bit that says we're NOT about &quot;career advice, including general workplace issues&quot; to explicitly reference The Workplace, where those questions, when constructive, *are* on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Workplace currently gets a substantial amount of traffic from Programmers (directly), so while I'm a bit concerned that some of the &quot;off topic anywhere on SE&quot; questions will spill over into workplace, it seems people have behaved themselves reasonable well so far. I also think this is a great time to *try* this arrangement right now as question volume is low on Workplace so, as a pro temp moderator on Workplace, it's pretty easy to manage if a few problems slip over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a good idea? How can we word it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also started a receiving discussion on [Workplace Meta][1]; I want the blessing of both sites before we continue with this of course.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/274/would-we-want-to-be-mentioned-in-the-programmers-faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9670" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3636" RevisionGUID="2f714f86-1edd-46d1-87bc-4e7f9108ab8b" CreationDate="2012-05-28T19:39:50.063" UserId="1508" Text="(waves hands)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You must imagining it... I see no &quot;beginner&quot; / &quot;beginners&quot; tags... indeed you can't even enter those - they're rejected at the point of entry!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...these aren't the tags you're looking for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(in unrelated news, you might want to clean up [tag:untagged])" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9671" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3629" RevisionGUID="38dbef34-a96e-4361-802a-6aa1da56553c" CreationDate="2012-05-28T19:55:48.297" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9672" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3636" RevisionGUID="26afa5b7-2d02-4ef9-90b7-ea118281b632" CreationDate="2012-05-28T20:32:47.760" UserId="34364" Comment="added 11 characters in body" Text="(waves hands)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You must be imagining it... I see no [tag:beginner] or [tag:beginners] tag... indeed you can't even enter those - they're rejected at the point of entry!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...these aren't the tags you're looking for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(in unrelated news, you might want to clean up [tag:untagged])" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9673" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3636" RevisionGUID="6385554f-4ff4-40a4-8908-8f74cc59c71f" CreationDate="2012-05-29T04:12:28.373" UserId="25936" Comment="(waves hands) What untagged?" Text="(waves hands)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You must be imagining it... I see no [tag:beginner] or [tag:beginners] tag... indeed you can't even enter those - they're rejected at the point of entry!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...these aren't the tags you're looking for..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9674" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3633" RevisionGUID="d64533c8-44d7-48da-824e-e85020bb5683" CreationDate="2012-05-29T05:14:03.943" UserId="31260" Comment="&quot;ask on&quot; -&gt; &quot;check out&quot; as suggested in comments // http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3632/should-we-mention-the-workplace-in-our-faq#comment10008_3633" Text="How about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;...and is **not about**...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career advice, including general workplace issues (check out The Workplace instead)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So basically, just add the `(check out The Workplace instead)`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9681" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3639" RevisionGUID="f24d90c0-f28b-49f6-9431-7cd6bfcbaf8a" CreationDate="2012-05-29T12:41:42.723" UserId="41381" Text="I don't think we should consider linking to The Workplace until after they pass the beta stage and become a full site. While The Workplace is in beta it should be largely left on its own to develop into its final form without outside influence from other sites. If The Workplace proves to be a viable site with its own audience then we should consider linking to it to help make it an even bigger site, and linking in beta may cause the site to become the overflow site for programmers which is something that SE has been working to prevent with any site after what happened to our site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9682" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3640" RevisionGUID="a116796a-2286-47c7-8ed0-ce86e24b307d" CreationDate="2012-05-30T01:01:36.793" UserId="51770" Text="I've just found out about flair, here's mine:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/51770/roc-marti&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/flair/51770.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot; title=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/users/1399093&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/users/flair/1399093.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&amp;amp;A sites&quot; title=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&amp;amp;A sites&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like it! But I would like it even more if my Meta badges were shown in there!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that [Meta reputation is derived from the main website][1], but I don't think it would be a problem to show badges in the flair, the site one or the combined one. Of course there is the option of Meta flair, but I don't think anyone would ever use that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. I tried to add a flair tag, but I got an error: users with less than 300 reputation can't create new tags. The tag 'flair' is new. Try using an existing tag instead. Could someone add it please? Or a more appropriate one?&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9683" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3640" RevisionGUID="a116796a-2286-47c7-8ed0-ce86e24b307d" CreationDate="2012-05-30T01:01:36.793" UserId="51770" Text="Can we add Meta badges to flair?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9684" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3640" RevisionGUID="a116796a-2286-47c7-8ed0-ce86e24b307d" CreationDate="2012-05-30T01:01:36.793" UserId="51770" Text="|feature-request|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9685" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3641" RevisionGUID="164f8c6a-9992-4f6f-9b2b-fa2024d3a1e0" CreationDate="2012-05-30T06:59:14.610" UserId="37315" Text="I was scrolling through my badges today and noticed that beside the &quot;Archaeologist&quot; badge, it said x0. I checked SO and there was a plausible number beside the same badge but not on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bug?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9686" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3641" RevisionGUID="164f8c6a-9992-4f6f-9b2b-fa2024d3a1e0" CreationDate="2012-05-30T06:59:14.610" UserId="37315" Text="0 users have archaeologist badge" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9687" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3641" RevisionGUID="164f8c6a-9992-4f6f-9b2b-fa2024d3a1e0" CreationDate="2012-05-30T06:59:14.610" UserId="37315" Text="|bug|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9688" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3642" RevisionGUID="32853af8-75bf-4133-bf95-d081b7d970fd" CreationDate="2012-05-30T07:35:36.560" UserId="47" Text="I'm not seeing any number beside the badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that the requirements are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Edited **100** posts that were inactive for **6** months&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(emphasis mine), and the more ephemeral nature of posts on Programmers as compared to Stack Overflow (for example), I'm not surprised that there are no recipients of this badge. There are only 189 recipients of the badge on Stack Overflow with its 3,000,000+ questions, four year history and many 1,000s of users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The thing to do is compare the number of &quot;Excavator&quot; badges (Edited first post that was inactive for 6 months) that have been awarded. It's 260 here on programmers compared to 15,244 on Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9689" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3640" RevisionGUID="3fe39b73-6e74-4513-a6cc-51eadd73cc4e" CreationDate="2012-05-30T10:13:38.183" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9690" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3640" RevisionGUID="55001825-05e9-4795-89f0-56dceb3038af" CreationDate="2012-05-30T12:59:39.897" UserId="31260" Comment="flair tag added =&gt; obsolete PS removed" Text="I've just found out about flair, here's mine:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/51770/roc-marti&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/flair/51770.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot; title=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/users/1399093&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/users/flair/1399093.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&amp;amp;A sites&quot; title=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&amp;amp;A sites&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like it! But I would like it even more if my Meta badges were shown in there!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that [Meta reputation is derived from the main website][1], but I don't think it would be a problem to show badges in the flair, the site one or the combined one. Of course there is the option of Meta flair, but I don't think anyone would ever use that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9691" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3641" RevisionGUID="8af58089-18c3-47a4-a6ef-b0b1f7ac7bed" CreationDate="2012-05-30T15:06:42.780" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9692" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3627" RevisionGUID="529f2b90-36a7-4042-9bac-b94c043bc8a9" CreationDate="2012-05-31T04:11:57.353" UserId="25936" Comment="added 50 characters in body" Text="&gt;Please don't add &quot;thanks&quot; as answers. Invest some time in the site and you will gain sufficient privileges to upvote answers you like, which is the Programmers Meta way of saying thank you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is really a comment, not an answer. With a bit more rep, you will be able to post comments. For the moment I've added the comment for you, and I'm flagging this post for deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please use the Post answer button only for actual answers. You should modify your original question to add additional information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a NEW question, please ask it by clicking the Ask Question button. If you have sufficient reputation, you may upvote the question. Alternatively, &quot;star&quot; it as a favorite and you will be notified of any new answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9693" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3643" RevisionGUID="a2a8afb6-1880-4c31-b22e-204ff4c7641b" CreationDate="2012-06-01T13:05:39.817" UserId="7426" Text="I have begun using this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to Programmers! Please check out the [FAQ], as it seems like your question is off-topic here. Perhaps [SO] is a better place to find your answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a per-case basis I contemplate saying *why* it is off-topic, or why it would be on topic on the suggested site. However, by not doing it I think it encourages people to actually read the FAQ because they are either genuinely curious, or want to find evidence to refute my claim.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also like phrasing where to they should go as a question. This way it feels more like an offer than a demand. It also leaves it open for debate in case you were incorrect or a better place can be suggested. As part of the question is specifically say &quot;is a better place to **find** your answer&quot;. My hope is that it is concise and doesn't imply that you should just re-post your question, but that you should search for it first." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9694" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3643" RevisionGUID="690daeb1-0c76-490d-b389-332a5e8d2e22" CreationDate="2012-06-01T13:11:16.923" UserId="7426" Comment="added 7 characters in body" Text="I have begun using this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to Programmers! Please check out the [FAQ], as it seems like your question is off-topic here. Perhaps [SO] is a better place to find your answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My goal with this comment is to remove any possible negative tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a per-case basis I contemplate saying *why* it is off-topic, or why it would be on topic for the suggested site. However, by not saying why I think it encourages people to actually read the FAQ because they are either genuinely curious, or want to find evidence to refute my claim.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also like phrasing where to they should go as a question. This way it feels more like an offer than a demand. It also leaves it open for debate in case I was incorrect, or a better place can be suggested. As part of the question I specifically say &quot;is a better place to **find** your answer&quot;. My hope is that it is concise, but doesn't imply that you should just re-post your question, and that you should search for an answer first.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9695" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3643" RevisionGUID="1fd57e7f-cb59-4981-884f-8d4b29b0e6ac" CreationDate="2012-06-01T13:16:36.167" UserId="7426" Comment="added 7 characters in body" Text="I have begun using this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to Programmers! Please check out the [FAQ], as it seems like your question is off-topic here. Perhaps [SO] is a better place to find your answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My goal with this comment is to remove any possible negative tone, and be as constructive as possible. It's also short and easy to remember. Of course, `[SO]` should be replaced with the proper site to suggest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a per-case basis I contemplate saying *why* it is off-topic, or why it would be on topic for the suggested site. However, by not saying why I think it encourages people to actually read the FAQ because they are either genuinely curious, or want to find evidence to refute my claim.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also like phrasing where to they should go as a question. This way it feels more like an offer than a demand. It also leaves it open for debate in case I was incorrect, or a better place can be suggested. As part of the question I specifically say &quot;is a better place to **find** your answer&quot;. My hope is that it is concise, but doesn't imply that you should just re-post your question, and that you should search for an answer first.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9696" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3643" RevisionGUID="cb26f8ea-508c-44e0-9745-3e386e508d6e" CreationDate="2012-06-01T13:38:58.667" UserId="7426" Comment="added 7 characters in body" Text="I have begun using this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to Programmers! Please check out the [FAQ], as it seems like your question is off-topic here. Perhaps [SO] is a better place to find your answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My goal with this comment is to remove any possible negative tone, and be as constructive as possible. It's also short and easy to remember. Of course, `[SO]` should be replaced with the proper site to suggest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a per-case basis I contemplate saying *why* it is off-topic, or why it would be on topic for the suggested site. However, by not saying why I think it encourages people to actually read the FAQ because they are either genuinely curious, or want to find evidence to refute my claim.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also like phrasing where to they should go as a question. This way it feels more like an offer than a demand. It also leaves it open for debate in case I was incorrect, or a better place can be suggested. As part of the question I specifically say &quot;is a better place to **find** your answer&quot;. My hope is that it is concise, but doesn't imply that you should just re-post your question, and that you should search for an answer first. In some odd way, for me at least, it is an acceptance on my part that you are on a &quot;journey&quot; to find an answer, and that I am not just shutting you down, but offering advice &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9697" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3643" RevisionGUID="927e1bec-7e3e-4fa1-81dd-b360667a0b15" CreationDate="2012-06-01T13:54:56.337" UserId="7426" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="I have begun using this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to Programmers! Please check out the [FAQ], as it seems like your question is off-topic here. Perhaps [SO] is a better place to find your answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My goal with this comment is to remove any possible negative tone, and be as constructive as possible. It's also short and easy to remember. Of course, `[SO]` should be replaced with the proper site to suggest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a per-case basis I contemplate saying *why* it is off-topic, or why it would be on topic for the suggested site. However, by not saying why, I think it encourages people to actually read the FAQ because they are either genuinely curious, or want to find evidence to refute my claim.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also like phrasing where to they should go as a question. This way it feels more like an offer than a demand. It also leaves it open for debate in case I was incorrect, or a better place can be suggested. As part of the question I specifically say &quot;is a better place to **find** your answer&quot;. My hope is that it is concise, but doesn't imply that you should just re-post your question, and that you should search for an answer first. In some odd way, for me at least, it is an acceptance on my part that you are on a &quot;journey&quot; to find an answer, and that I am not just shutting you down, but offering advice &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9698" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3643" RevisionGUID="13c0a7e5-01a0-4b21-a3a4-53d379bfec71" CreationDate="2012-06-01T14:03:08.153" UserId="7426" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="I have begun using this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to Programmers! Please check out the [FAQ], as it seems like your question is off-topic here. Perhaps [SO] is a better place to find your answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My goal with this comment is to remove any possible negative tone, and be as constructive as possible. It's also short and easy to remember. Of course, `[SO]` should be replaced with the proper site to suggest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a per-case basis I contemplate saying *why* it is off-topic, or why it would be on topic for the suggested site. However, by not saying why, I think it encourages people to actually read the FAQ because they are either genuinely curious, or want to find evidence to refute my claim.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also like phrasing where I am suggesting they look for an answer as a question. This way my suggestion feels more like an offer, which is more accurate to my intentions, rather than a demand. It also leaves where the question should open for debate in case a better place is suggested.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As part of the question I specifically say &quot;is a better place to **find** your answer&quot;. My hope is that it is concise, but doesn't imply that you should just re-post your question, and that you should search for an answer first. In some odd way, for me at least, it is an acceptance on my part that you are on a &quot;journey&quot; to find an answer, and that I am not just shutting you down, but offering advice and doing what I can to guide you.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9699" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3217" RevisionGUID="39e5fc1b-07af-40ef-852f-4f9cff06fab5" CreationDate="2012-06-01T14:41:14.513" UserId="31260" Comment="ask us what you need to learn to tell what you should buy..." Text="##ask us _what you need to learn_ to tell what you should buy...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, the most enlightening guidance on asking and answering _recommendation_ type questions appears to be one given in [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...consider the voluminous amount of information you need to even begin properly answering...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Let’s say the question asker provided all that information. Fat chance, I know, but let’s pretend for a moment they did — and we were able to provide the perfect, ideal shopping recommendation to them. Even if that was the case, technology moves so rapidly that the best shopping recommendations will be utterly obsolete within a year! What’s the point of a bunch of labor intensive questions that provide only temporary benefit to a limited (some might say Too Localized) audience? There isn’t any...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... **there _is_ a way to ask these questions that avoids the inherent problems with shopping recommendations**. For example, let’s say you wanted — as I did — to buy a point-and-shoot camera that takes good low light photos. So we’re going to ask on photo.stackexchange.com, naturally!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Here’s one way to ask:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; **Q: What’s the best low light point-and-shoot camera?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...Here’s another way to ask:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; **Q: How do I tell which point-and-shoot cameras take good low light photos?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...The former question provides the path of least resistance: a laundry list of products I can buy without thinking about it too much. But that answer will only be valid for a year at best. The latter question may take some thinking, but its answer will be valid _forever_ … or at least until camera technology somehow shifts beyond lenses and sensors as we know them today. Thus, when it comes to shopping questions, don’t ask us what you should buy — ask us _what you need to learn_ to tell what you should buy...&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9700" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3644" RevisionGUID="b150ccaa-df0d-45be-99bb-00e8b1646047" CreationDate="2012-06-01T14:49:50.653" UserId="36051" Text="Take for example [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151157/what-is-the-equivalent-word-for-compile-in-an-interpreted-language).  This user knows they are cross posting and the question is word for word the same as the one on english.se.  I wanted to say something, but I figured someone else would have already since he admits to cross posting.  Is this allowed? The consensus seems to be the same on both sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9701" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3644" RevisionGUID="b150ccaa-df0d-45be-99bb-00e8b1646047" CreationDate="2012-06-01T14:49:50.653" UserId="36051" Text="Do we allow cross posting from non-tech SEs?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9702" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3644" RevisionGUID="b150ccaa-df0d-45be-99bb-00e8b1646047" CreationDate="2012-06-01T14:49:50.653" UserId="36051" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9703" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3645" RevisionGUID="7d2ec4f7-9df4-46eb-9e9e-f01e31b439f6" CreationDate="2012-06-01T15:03:37.490" UserId="47" Text="Cross posting is not to be encouraged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same question can be asked on multiple sites, but it should be tailored to each site's audience. It's the rare question that can be asked &quot;as is&quot; on multiple sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem here is that the OP was encouraged to ask by comments such as this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This should be posted to StackOverflow or Programmers.SE](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/69549/what-is-the-equivalent-word-for-compile-in-an-interpreted-language#comment134149_69549)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The correct approach should have been for the users on English to flag the post for moderator attention so that it could be migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see that it's now got identical answers on both sites - hardly useful.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9704" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3646" RevisionGUID="527c2a01-e161-4b45-bca6-88474f65ab85" CreationDate="2012-06-01T15:03:41.590" UserId="1130" Text="I think the question should have been migrated instead of cross-posted, but that said, cross-posting is discouraged but not against the rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per [this answer by ChrisF](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2105/1130)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There's nothing wrong with posting the same question on multiple sites&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **as long as it's tailored for each site and not a cut and paste repost**.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Each site is unique. It has it's own community and own guidelines for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what is on and off topic. It would be a very rare question indeed that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was on topic on more than one site *if posted without modification for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that site*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer given by one site could be different than the answer given by another site. For example, an English professor might give a different answer to that question than a programmer would. In addition, I wouldn't expect an English professor to know programming terms." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9705" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3643" RevisionGUID="2d6f1d40-9abc-451e-a5ed-082358866c36" CreationDate="2012-06-01T15:40:11.153" UserId="7426" Comment="added 89 characters in body" Text="As a regular user, I have begun using this comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to Programmers! Please check out the [FAQ], as it seems like your question is off-topic here. Perhaps [SO] is a better place to find your answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My goal with this comment is to remove any possible negative tone, and be as constructive as possible. It's also short and easy to remember. Of course, `[SO]` should be replaced with the proper site to suggest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a per-case basis I contemplate saying *why* it is off-topic, or why it would be on topic for the suggested site. However, by not saying why, I think it encourages people to actually read the FAQ because they are either genuinely curious, or want to find evidence to refute my claim.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also like phrasing where I think the question should be as a question. This way my suggestion feels more like an offer, which is more accurate to my intentions, rather than a demand. It also leaves it open for debate. I don't know everything, so it's possible that there is a better place to suggest finding the answer, or that maybe someone from the place I suggested doesn't agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As part of the question I specifically say &quot;to **find** your **answer**&quot;. My hope is that it implies that the person should search the site first, instead of just blindly re-posting the question. Overall, for me at least, it is an acceptance on my part that the person is on a &quot;journey&quot; to find an answer, and that I am not just shutting them down, but instead offering advice.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9706" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3647" RevisionGUID="7bc42e46-f805-4948-8192-d2600ccb7b6c" CreationDate="2012-06-01T18:04:16.050" UserId="20108" Text="These are just my related thoughts in a spirit of sharing them...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Sometimes you just look at a site like this as a resource that may or may not yield a desired result.  In this light, the FAQ is irrelevant.  It sounds disrespectful but I don't mean it to be - it's just pragmatism of someone trying to solve a problem with available means.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The closing of a question has an impact on the person who authored it.  It's pretty harsh to have your peers reject you, even if it doesn't really mean anything outside of a sandbox, it makes a person less and less likely to want to interact.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9707" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3553" RevisionGUID="5dc48834-f314-4360-94bc-e622ab1cb1e9" CreationDate="2012-06-02T04:52:05.383" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 16 characters in body" Text="I went through all closed questions of the past month and deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Cross posts**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Questions that were identified as having asked on other sites before being asked on Programmers. None had answers, all were downvoted (which is good), and they were quite a few of them (didn't count, but aproximately 1/10).&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Questions posted here to avoid bans or suspensions on Stack Overflow**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Argh.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Rejected migrations**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions that were migrated here, mostly from Stack Overflow, and we closed them. Those stayed around locked, and there were quite a few of them.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Succesful migrations**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Questions that were migrated away and had found a better home at the target site, which means that they were got a few up votes (&gt;3), and up voted answers (and in _most_ cases accepted answers). Yes I checked each and every one of them.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Downvoted questions with no answers or no upvoted answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  All hopelessly off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Heavily downvoted questions with no highlish upvoted answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Heavily downvoted &lt;= -3, highlish upvoted &lt;= +2, all hopelessly off topic.&#xD;&#xA;	   	&#xD;&#xA;Questions that satisfied any of the above criteria were _not_ deleted if they had at least one re-open vote, and of course duplicates were left untouched. I asked The Workplace mods if they wanted a couple of questions, one was deleted by the OP before we get a chance to migrate (which is funny as the mod I talked with liked the question) and the other was rejected (but not deleted, as with some rewording it _might_ fit another site, waiting confirmation). I've also re-opened a question that was closed as not constructive, as it had two re-open votes and a good(ish) answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was honestly curious to see what was going on with the closed questions, I'm happy with _all_ closures, they are all justified, regardless if they were delete worthy or not. However deleting the questions was only a by product of the process, I only did it because it made sense to clean up while going through the closed questions, my primary motivation was to get a better feel of our closures and our overal closing attitude. My conclusions and thoughts are (in no particular order):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Snarky comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I saw _a lot_ of comments I didn't really like. The majority of commenters were being nice and helping OPs understand why their question was off topic, but there were a lot of comments that were... umph. Not outright rude, but not particularly helpful either. I do enjoy sarcasm as much as everyone, and perhaps a little more, but I think we should be a bit kinder to newer users. I understand that several of us are getting increasingly tired of having to deal with the same crap questions over and over, but I would like to ask everyone to refrain from commenting on newer users questions if they are not feeling productive. &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  I would like to suggest a very easy workflow: If you happen upon a snarky comment, and you feel you can provide better guidance to the OP, please do, even if it means re-iterating the earlier comment. And after you post your comment, flag the earlier one so we can remove it. Simple as that, and please avoid responding to the snarky comment with an even snarkier. A few of our higher rep users already do that, and I think they are setting a perfect example for the rest of us.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Stack Overflow sucks**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not the _real_ Stack Overflow, that's a wonderful place, but the part of it that finds it's way here. The questions I deleted were of extreme low quality to begin with, but those that came from Stack Overflow were the worst of the worst. That includes direct migrations, questions asked here because of Stack Overflow bans or suspensions, and questions asked here after being closed on Stack Overflow because some &quot;friendly&quot; commenter pointed OP to Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Most Programmers regulars are probably aware of how troublesome our migration relationship with Stack Overflow is, however it's worth noting that 59% of migrations from there the past 90 days were good migrations, and Stack Overflow is our top referring site (excluding search engines). So it's not all bad.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **We should be deleting some questions more quickly**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Cross posts, questions that were asked here to circumvent bans or suspensions on other sites, and failed migrations don't really serve any purpose staying around for long. All they do is contribute in our questions lists looking like a battlefield, without having any chance of being salvageable. 10K+ users please contribute delete votes when you see a comment identifying a question in one of the first two categories, lower rep users please flag if you happen upon those questions a week after they were asked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Not constructive**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  We have some not constructive questions that I think could be salvaged. I didn't have the energy to look deeper into them, but I invite everyone to go through [highly upvoted closed questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1) and see if you can help bring them up to shape. Don't go at it alone, if you find a question you think could be re-opened, post it in chat and ask others to evaluate and help. Don't go blindly casting re-open votes, always keep in mind that re-open votes are more powerfull in twos (and even more in threes).&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course deleting the questions changed the numbers Rachel references, the current numbers are (for the last 30 days, and at the time of writing this, new questions may have popped up):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Open questions         = 599&#xD;&#xA;    Closed questions (all) = 283&#xD;&#xA;    Total questions        = 882&#xD;&#xA;    ----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;    Migrated questions     = 37&#xD;&#xA;    Closed (excl. migrat.) = 246&#xD;&#xA;    ----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;    Closed % (incl. migr.) = 32%&#xD;&#xA;    Closed % (excl. migr.) = 27,8%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**27,8%** is our current close rate, having deleted an abudance of crap. Again this wasn't about hiding things under the carpet, this was about getting a clear idea of how many questions we close excluding:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions we have little control over (first three categories of the deletions),&#xD;&#xA;1. Migrations,&#xD;&#xA;1. Hopelessly off topic questions that aren't salvageable (last two categories of the deletions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am excluding migrations (from us to other sites), because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The questions are labeled [migrated] and not [closed], it's reasonable to assume that they don't contribute to scaring newer users off (which is the basis of this question)&#xD;&#xA;- Migrations are cool, we are only trying to find a better place for the question, and most OPs really appreciate that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And don't forget that our closure rate includes duplicates, something that's not really cool, I _strongly_ believe that most OPs appreciate finding quick answers or at least don't scare off because of duplicates. However duplicates are still labeled [closed] and they might contribute in giving the wrong idea for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which leaves us with the hopelessly off topic questions, the heart of the matter, and of course the rest of the closed questions that I didn't delete. Yes, there is room for improvement. Yes, our expectations are a bit higher than most other Stack Exchange sites. Yes, we all want more people to love the site as much as we do, and yes we all want less closed questions. But is it a problem? I think not, at least not a major one and certainly not one we can't deal with efficiently. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start by being a bit more helpful when guiding newer users, and a bit more aggresive when protecting borderline not constructive questions. We (the mods) have said countless times that bad answers may lead to a borderline question getting closed, however the community hasn't really been responsive in defending those magnificently interesting questions by vehemently cleaning up the crap answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Use your down votes people, and please for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, resist the urge to add yet another opinion heavy answer to the pile. Great answers with references and _relevant_ experiences is what we are looking for, treat everything else like it should be treated. **The best way of lowering our close rate is by re-opening borderline questions.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [upcoming contest](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/programmers-se-contest-the-complete-outline) will probably bring us a lot new users, the coming month is a perfect opportunity to help the site grow. Be nice(r) to the newcomers, spend a few more seconds explaining why their questions might not fit or better yet, edit them to fit. Please avoid completely un-productive comments &amp; discussion about stuff only a handful of people may find interesting, long comment discussions, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9708" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3644" RevisionGUID="67547898-650b-4cf8-bae3-5c2287c633bc" CreationDate="2012-06-02T05:58:59.043" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|cross-posting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9709" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3640" RevisionGUID="7886e8fd-de5e-4d10-a3bd-4f375b5f18ee" CreationDate="2012-06-02T08:15:14.397" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/208834144564809728" />
  <row Id="9710" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3551" RevisionGUID="f1bbf635-c0c7-47ab-a6a7-53075dabe063" CreationDate="2012-06-02T14:15:13.973" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/208924739148845056" />
  <row Id="9711" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3648" RevisionGUID="29fdc222-7eec-4ca0-8f16-f442a98e5a1c" CreationDate="2012-06-02T17:54:00.187" UserId="8553" Text="I've seen many questions which are too localized go un-closed. For example, [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/151312/8553) is much too localized. It's only ever helpful to that one guy doing that one professor's homework that one time, and is worthless to everyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'd like to ask why the above question hasn't been closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9712" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3648" RevisionGUID="29fdc222-7eec-4ca0-8f16-f442a98e5a1c" CreationDate="2012-06-02T17:54:00.187" UserId="8553" Text="Why isn't this question closed as too localized?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9713" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3648" RevisionGUID="29fdc222-7eec-4ca0-8f16-f442a98e5a1c" CreationDate="2012-06-02T17:54:00.187" UserId="8553" Text="|discussion|question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9714" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3649" RevisionGUID="5c338d5f-e92a-4216-857c-276d072c02b6" CreationDate="2012-06-02T18:42:40.893" UserId="25476" Text="When it was flagged, I decided not to close it because it seems like a fairly common homework assignment with a twist.  It also resembles very closely the same concepts behind the famous [FizzBuzz Problem a.k.a Why Can't Programmers... Program?](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/02/why-cant-programmers-program.html).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The twist of course that the OP presented is to not use a conditional statement which seems like another really interesting variation of the FizzBuzz question that can be used by programmers to test basic programming skills in entry level applicants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I admit there are a few problems with the question, and I would be disgusted if the users started blatantly answering homework questions, but I hold out hope that somebody can edit the question to perhaps make it a bit more generic and useful to others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course this was my take on this so feel free to downvote my answer to oblivion if you feel that I am off the mark here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9715" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3650" RevisionGUID="f1fab43d-b2f0-4466-bba4-ccca639dd458" CreationDate="2012-06-02T19:22:02.797" UserDisplayName="user20891" Text="The question [How to solve this problem without the use of if-else statements?][1]&#xD;&#xA;was recently asked. And somebody [answered][2] with the full solution to their problem, code and all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think they kind of behavior should be allowed as it does not benefit the student at all. It almost seems like people who do that are doing it for the reputation. And not for the good of the student, since it does no good for the student to be handed the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what is the official consensus on this? Am I totally in the wrong here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151312/how-to-solve-this-problem-without-the-use-of-if-else-statements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151312/how-to-solve-this-problem-without-the-use-of-if-else-statements/151328#151328" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9716" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3650" RevisionGUID="f1fab43d-b2f0-4466-bba4-ccca639dd458" CreationDate="2012-06-02T19:22:02.797" UserDisplayName="user20891" Text="Are answers to homework questions acceptable?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9717" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3650" RevisionGUID="f1fab43d-b2f0-4466-bba4-ccca639dd458" CreationDate="2012-06-02T19:22:02.797" UserDisplayName="user20891" Text="|discussion|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9718" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3650" RevisionGUID="8cb53baa-1aec-4f7c-8940-0095f9e7a26d" CreationDate="2012-06-02T20:32:24.007" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [How can Programmers.SE be used to assist students with class assignments?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2894/how-can-programmers-se-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;The question [How to solve this problem without the use of if-else statements?][1]&#xD;&#xA;was recently asked. And somebody [answered][2] with the full solution to their problem, code and all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think they kind of behavior should be allowed as it does not benefit the student at all. It almost seems like people who do that are doing it for the reputation. And not for the good of the student, since it does no good for the student to be handed the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what is the official consensus on this? Am I totally in the wrong here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151312/how-to-solve-this-problem-without-the-use-of-if-else-statements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151312/how-to-solve-this-problem-without-the-use-of-if-else-statements/151328#151328" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9719" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3650" RevisionGUID="4ec3593d-060f-466a-98c4-b698615c028b" CreationDate="2012-06-02T20:32:22.680" UserId="25936" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[2894],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:20891,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;dunsmoreb&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="9720" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3651" RevisionGUID="43c1f1fd-4193-445f-ac0b-ee7acc67e634" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:22:28.863" UserId="34364" Text=" - [tag:programming-languages] - 790 questions&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:languages] - 68 questions&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:languages] and [tag:programming-languages] - 8 questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**They're the same thing people!** At least in the sense that we use it (seeing that we have a [tag:spoken-languages] tag), they are used the same way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we merge it all into one big [tag:languages] tag? Or maybe into the [tag:programming-languages] tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9721" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3651" RevisionGUID="43c1f1fd-4193-445f-ac0b-ee7acc67e634" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:22:28.863" UserId="34364" Text="Tag merge / Synonym request: [programming-languages] --&gt; [languages]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9722" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3651" RevisionGUID="43c1f1fd-4193-445f-ac0b-ee7acc67e634" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:22:28.863" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9723" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3652" RevisionGUID="3d5a10da-20ee-4662-ab4c-effdd5f80792" CreationDate="2012-06-03T23:19:10.613" UserId="34364" Text="## Results for Week 4 [algorithms] ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Number crunching algo for learning multithreading?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 67, Top voted answer: [Rocket Surgeon][2] (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Given number which equals the sum of some of the 10 numbers. How to determine that given number contains one of 10 numbers?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 59, Top voted answer: [MainMa][4] (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Efficient Bus Loading][5]&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;   Views: 194, Top voted answer: [philosodad][6] (7)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How common are generic-case exponential time algorithms in production software?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 2221, Top voted answer: [Raphael][8] (4)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [What is the algorithm for expiring items in key-value storage?][9]&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;   Views: 178, Top voted answer: [vartec][10] (5)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Improving grepping over a huge file performance][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 94, Top voted answer: [Steven Burnap][12] (4)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Strategy/algorithm to divide fair teams based on history][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 459, Top voted answer: [Steven Burnap][14] (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Return random `list` item by its `weight`][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 417, Top voted answer: [Benjamin Kloster][16] (14)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Why is quicksort better than other sorting algorithms in practice?][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 5726, Top voted answer: [Doc Brown][18] (12)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Question with most views ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why is quicksort better than other sorting algorithms in practice?][19]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Most voted answer ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Return random `list` item by its `weight`][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151396/number-crunching-algo-for-learning-multithreading&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/7071/rocket-surgeon&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151308/given-number-which-equals-the-sum-of-some-of-the-10-numbers-how-to-determine-th&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6605/mainma&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151050/efficient-bus-loading&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6883/philosodad&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150939/how-common-are-generic-case-exponential-time-algorithms-in-production-software&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/55137/raphael&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150811/what-is-the-algorithm-for-expiring-items-in-key-value-storage&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/14510/vartec&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150746/improving-grepping-over-a-huge-file-performance&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/53141/steven-burnap&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150732/strategy-algorithm-to-divide-fair-teams-based-on-history&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/53141/steven-burnap&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150616/return-random-list-item-by-its-weight&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/55140/benjamin-kloster&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150615/why-is-quicksort-better-than-other-sorting-algorithms-in-practice&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/9113/doc-brown&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150615/why-is-quicksort-better-than-other-sorting-algorithms-in-practice&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/150618/34364" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9724" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3652" RevisionGUID="a7e993f9-854a-424d-8b17-4efa55c8b6b4" CreationDate="2012-06-03T23:48:33.047" UserId="34364" Comment="added 29 characters in body" Text="## Results for Week 4 [algorithms] ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Number crunching algo for learning multithreading?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 67, Top voted answer: [Rocket Surgeon][2] (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Given number which equals the sum of some of the 10 numbers. How to determine that given number contains one of 10 numbers?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 59, Top voted answer: [MainMa][4] (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Efficient Bus Loading][5]&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;   Views: 194, Top voted answer: [philosodad][6] (7)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How common are generic-case exponential time algorithms in production software?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 2221, Top voted answer: [Raphael][8] (4)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [What is the algorithm for expiring items in key-value storage?][9]&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;   Views: 178, Top voted answer: [vartec][10] (5)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Improving grepping over a huge file performance][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 94, Top voted answer: [Steven Burnap][12] (4)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Strategy/algorithm to divide fair teams based on history][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 459, Top voted answer: [Steven Burnap][14] (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Return random `list` item by its `weight`][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 417, Top voted answer: [Benjamin Kloster][16] (14)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Why is quicksort better than other sorting algorithms in practice?][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 5726, Top voted answer: [Doc Brown][18] (12)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Question with most views ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why is quicksort better than other sorting algorithms in practice?][19]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Raphael&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Most voted answer ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Return random `list` item by its `weight`][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Benjamin Kloster&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151396/number-crunching-algo-for-learning-multithreading&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/7071/rocket-surgeon&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151308/given-number-which-equals-the-sum-of-some-of-the-10-numbers-how-to-determine-th&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6605/mainma&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151050/efficient-bus-loading&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6883/philosodad&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150939/how-common-are-generic-case-exponential-time-algorithms-in-production-software&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/55137/raphael&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150811/what-is-the-algorithm-for-expiring-items-in-key-value-storage&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/14510/vartec&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150746/improving-grepping-over-a-huge-file-performance&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/53141/steven-burnap&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150732/strategy-algorithm-to-divide-fair-teams-based-on-history&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/53141/steven-burnap&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150616/return-random-list-item-by-its-weight&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/55140/benjamin-kloster&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150615/why-is-quicksort-better-than-other-sorting-algorithms-in-practice&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/9113/doc-brown&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150615/why-is-quicksort-better-than-other-sorting-algorithms-in-practice&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/150618/34364" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9725" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3652" RevisionGUID="358608e1-0071-458e-963f-05e3b636b034" CreationDate="2012-06-04T01:29:26.490" UserId="25936" Comment="added 910 characters in body" Text="## Results for Week 4 [algorithms] ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Number crunching algo for learning multithreading?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 67, Top voted answer: [Rocket Surgeon][2] (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Given number which equals the sum of some of the 10 numbers. How to determine that given number contains one of 10 numbers?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 59, Top voted answer: [MainMa][4] (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Efficient Bus Loading][5]&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;   Views: 194, Top voted answer: [philosodad][6] (7)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How common are generic-case exponential time algorithms in production software?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 2221, Top voted answer: [Raphael][8] (4)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [What is the algorithm for expiring items in key-value storage?][9]&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;   Views: 178, Top voted answer: [vartec][10] (5)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Improving grepping over a huge file performance][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 94, Top voted answer: [Steven Burnap][12] (4)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Strategy/algorithm to divide fair teams based on history][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 459, Top voted answer: [Steven Burnap][14] (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Return random `list` item by its `weight`][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 417, Top voted answer: [Benjamin Kloster][16] (14)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Why is quicksort better than other sorting algorithms in practice?][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Views: 5726, Top voted answer: [Doc Brown][18] (12)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Question with most views ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why is quicksort better than other sorting algorithms in practice?][19]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/55137/raphael&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/flair/55137.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Raphael at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot; title=&quot;profile for Raphael at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Most voted answer ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Return random `list` item by its `weight`][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/55140/benjamin-kloster&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/flair/55140.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Benjamin Kloster at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot; title=&quot;profile for Benjamin Kloster at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151396/number-crunching-algo-for-learning-multithreading&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/7071/rocket-surgeon&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151308/given-number-which-equals-the-sum-of-some-of-the-10-numbers-how-to-determine-th&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6605/mainma&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151050/efficient-bus-loading&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6883/philosodad&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150939/how-common-are-generic-case-exponential-time-algorithms-in-production-software&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/55137/raphael&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150811/what-is-the-algorithm-for-expiring-items-in-key-value-storage&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/14510/vartec&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150746/improving-grepping-over-a-huge-file-performance&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/53141/steven-burnap&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150732/strategy-algorithm-to-divide-fair-teams-based-on-history&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/53141/steven-burnap&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150616/return-random-list-item-by-its-weight&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/55140/benjamin-kloster&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150615/why-is-quicksort-better-than-other-sorting-algorithms-in-practice&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/9113/doc-brown&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150615/why-is-quicksort-better-than-other-sorting-algorithms-in-practice&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/150618/34364" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9726" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="b0aa1ac8-7c61-4fe3-8473-758cb7b79d69" CreationDate="2012-06-04T01:29:54.133" UserId="25936" Comment="added 71 characters in body; edited tags" Text="## Wait! Programmers.SE is having a contest!? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*What have you been living under a rock?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just kidding (maybe). Yes, Programmers is having a contest. And it's going to be awesome! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So how will this contest work? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will be divided into 4 weeks. For each of the 4 weeks, there will be a tag dedicated to it. The schedule will go like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [tag:data-structures] -- May 7 ([results][1])&#xD;&#xA; 2. [tag:documentation] -- May 14 ([results][2])&#xD;&#xA; 3. [tag:history] -- May 21 ([results][3])&#xD;&#xA; 4. [tag:algorithms] -- May 28 ([results][4])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each week, users who post questions and answers for that weeks tag will have their post entered into the contest. The following categories can win:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Best Answer:** The best answer from the week will be a winner. Best answer is judged by **votes**. Any answer to a closed question is ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - **Best Question:** The best question from the week will also be awarded. Best question is not judged on votes, but instead **views**. Closed questions will be disqualified. ***We encourage advertising your question (on non-SE sites) to get more views. Please do not spam the chat rooms.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, you are only eligible if you post under the current week's tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Prizes! ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best of all, we try to get you the best prizes possible. In order to do that, we had to put on a few restrictions. But **winners can choose their own site-related prize from Amazon, as long as it:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is under $50 (including shipping and handling)&#xD;&#xA; - Is related to the site and its topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your one prize does not use up the $50, you may choose up to 3 different things (still has to be under $50 all total).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So when do we start? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest is going on now!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Important Notes of Eligibility and Such##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You must have a valid email address in your profile so that we can contact you and ask you what you want from Amazon (if you win).&#xD;&#xA; - No closed questions or negatively scored questions (regardless of views). &#xD;&#xA; - SE employees are ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - The question you are asking or answering must contain the contest tag to be eligible&#xD;&#xA; - Bounties on contest questions are more than welcome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3591/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3604/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3631/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3652/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9727" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="b0aa1ac8-7c61-4fe3-8473-758cb7b79d69" CreationDate="2012-06-04T01:29:54.133" UserId="25936" Comment="added 71 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|contest|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9728" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="6a6ea4a0-23b6-416f-b0c5-4f5e9d0e9bce" CreationDate="2012-06-04T01:35:04.173" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="9729" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3651" RevisionGUID="9adfe7c7-5090-412f-ac50-7214752c4ed0" CreationDate="2012-06-04T01:44:26.893" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted some old closed downvoted questions, and removed [languages] from [programming-languages] questions" Text=" - [tag:programming-languages] - 774 questions&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:languages] - 52 questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**They're the same thing people!** At least in the sense that we use it (seeing that we have a [tag:spoken-languages] tag), they are used the same way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we merge it all into one big [tag:languages] tag? Or maybe into the [tag:programming-languages] tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9730" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3651" RevisionGUID="ae29106c-8cff-48f9-b300-22b6affe48da" CreationDate="2012-06-04T04:07:52.063" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9731" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3653" RevisionGUID="73fee375-fd15-42ee-9a34-6e4a42c5528e" CreationDate="2012-06-04T08:05:01.520" UserId="25936" Text="Our contest ended a few hours ago, the winners should be getting their prizes soon(ish). Hopefully you've all enjoyed the contest as much as I did, and we can organize similar events again in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What did you think? Did you like it? What could we have done better, and what should we be more careful with in the future?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To get an idea of how the contest was organized (it was no simple task), you should check out all the [meta-tag:contest] questions and the [contest chat room][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2050/programmer-contest-conspiracy-room" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9732" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3653" RevisionGUID="73fee375-fd15-42ee-9a34-6e4a42c5528e" CreationDate="2012-06-04T08:05:01.520" UserId="25936" Text="What did you think of the contest?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9733" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3653" RevisionGUID="73fee375-fd15-42ee-9a34-6e4a42c5528e" CreationDate="2012-06-04T08:05:01.520" UserId="25936" Text="|discussion|featured|contest|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9734" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3653" RevisionGUID="2d51abde-f319-4721-840c-20679a4ade1c" CreationDate="2012-06-04T08:15:14.193" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/209558917871706112" />
  <row Id="9735" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3654" RevisionGUID="4b360ec4-6a16-40b3-944d-b9d26f42dfb3" CreationDate="2012-06-04T12:24:09.447" UserId="6617" Text="Well, it was kind of funny, but naturally, such a contest attracts &quot;troll&quot; questions, which do not address an immediate problem the asker wishes to solve, but are provocatively phrased to attract views and therefore win the contest. (I'm not excluding my own questions during the contest ;-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMO, precautions should be made that next time, mods do not close competing questions unless they are really very bad; i.e. mods should be less strict than normal during the contest." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9736" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3655" RevisionGUID="d09cd033-8082-49c7-a62e-846185c8fa31" CreationDate="2012-06-04T12:55:45.703" UserId="25476" Text="I think a lot of the issues with the closure of contest questions isn't so much that mods weren't up to speed on what was going on, but that the majority of users didn't seem to be aware of the contest and the purpose of the [tag:history] tag at that point in time.  What I saw were a good number of questions that I would have closed if not for the contest, yet the users were doing their *normal* excellent job of downvoting, close voting and incessantly flagging these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think in the future if we do this again, that the [tag:contest] should probably be used to temporarily identify contest questions on the main site, so that users who are aware of the contest will see it and not flag, while users who haven't heard of the contest can check it out and see if it is something they would like to participate in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also I would suggest that we put a disclaimer for those of us that dislike the contest idea to remind everybody who doesn't want to participate that they can put the [tag:contest] tag in their Ignored list of tags to avoid seeing these questions on the main page." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9737" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3656" RevisionGUID="966da280-572a-457f-a089-97ea692c1dc8" CreationDate="2012-06-04T13:48:35.037" UserId="1130" Text="I would have liked to see each contest tag go a little bit longer, since I felt that you had to ask a question towards the beginning of the week to maximize your views. Perhaps Tuesday through next Saturday or something like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the contest did a good job at attracting new users to the site, as seen by some of the contest questions [with][2] [high][3] [view][4] [counts][1], and it was nice to see a lot of on-topic questions being asked instead of the newest question list always being half full of closed questions. I also enjoyed the fact that mods were a little more relaxed with question closures, and let the community take care of the on-the-fence questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as what we could do better with in the future, I think we could do a better job at picking tags. The [tag:history] was probably a bad idea in hindsight since it did promote some off-topic questions, although overall it didn't go as badly as I thought it would and I learned a bit from the questions asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really enjoyed the [tag:data-structures] and [tag:algorithms] contests since they gave me some interesting puzzles to think on, but wasn't overly fond of [tag:documentation] since I hate documentation as it is, so spending time reading about documentation is not my idea of fun :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/149465/who-created-the-ideas-of-the-first-loop-constructs&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150939/how-common-are-generic-case-exponential-time-algorithms-in-production-software&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150615/why-is-quicksort-better-than-other-sorting-algorithms-in-practice&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/149457/was-classical-basic-ever-used-for-commercial-software-development-and-if-so-how" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9738" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3657" RevisionGUID="6b4bb3cd-f276-40c8-aaa1-2858f4bf88d7" CreationDate="2012-06-04T19:39:52.770" UserId="34364" Text="I think there were a few flaws in the contest. That doesn't mean it wasn't fun (it was), but it wasn't perfect. For example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **The tags were not perfect.** [tag:history] produced some really good, constructive, awesome questions. But it also produced crap, and we don't want crap. Now, I'm not saying that I didn't expect crap. But, next time we need to find a way to get less of it.&#xD;&#xA; - **People were not aware of the contest.** Honestly, I have no clue why. I mean, think about it. It was in the Community Bulletin since a week before the contest, there was a whole chat room about the contest, there were several Meta posts about the contest, and there were even alerts in the sites main chat room. We're not [Gaming.SE][1]. We can't just change the whole site design for the contest.&#xD;&#xA; - **There were complaints about the way the contest was run. During the contest.** I think this is what bothered me the most. A few users were basically complaining about how the contest was set up, during the contest. Come on guys, *we made the setup public.* No chats were made private, and anybody who could chat could join. There were *several* Meta posts on the topic. I mean, I'm not trying to rant or anything (really I'm not), but seriously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;OK, enough complaining, let's see what we **did right**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Timing.** I think 1 week per tag is perfect. You really don't need the whole week to get views. Most of the time, if you have a popular question, you get the bulk of your views within the first 1-2 days.&#xD;&#xA; - **Prizes.** Prizes were awesome! I mean, $50 to get whatever Programming related thing you wanted. Pretty cool...&#xD;&#xA; - **Everything else...** I know I missed something, but if I didn't think it was bad, it was probably right :P.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Conclusion**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the contest in general went great! Next time, I think we will be able to do a lot better (I'm going to push that next time won't be too far off). Hopefully the community as a whole will show more support for the dirty work of the contest next time (we could've used a little more input this time). But, all in all, ***IT WAS AWESOME!***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://gaming.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9740" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3659" RevisionGUID="c062b155-524c-4b10-ae15-c9f5e0c34536" CreationDate="2012-06-04T23:45:11.827" UserId="3631" Text="Unfortunately didn't notice there was a contest until I noticed this thread.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe a more prominent in the right-hand menu could have helped. If the target audience was new users, then maybe have a custom banner warn them during their first visits, or ads on external sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even as a normal user, while I usually do strongly mind &quot;unusual&quot; and unrequested deviations of notification systems, I wouldn't have minded too much to get an extra banner showing up at the top of the page like the ones warning of newly earned badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I'm late to the party, but were there any features to allow the contest to be broadcasted/shared to others?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9741" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3660" RevisionGUID="e5ff3c9e-65ab-42fe-8dbd-7b28e59df036" CreationDate="2012-06-05T00:41:19.693" UserId="34364" Text="After doing the contest, I was wondering if there was any kind of spike in traffic over the past few weeks. I could've asked a mod (I did) to see if they could tell me, but then I wondered: *are these stats publicly available?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly, all I'm looking for is views, but details would be nice. I know SE has access to them, but why not allow the public to see it? Would it hurt? If we can see it, where is it?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9742" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3660" RevisionGUID="e5ff3c9e-65ab-42fe-8dbd-7b28e59df036" CreationDate="2012-06-05T00:41:19.693" UserId="34364" Text="Are site analytics publicly available?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9743" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3660" RevisionGUID="e5ff3c9e-65ab-42fe-8dbd-7b28e59df036" CreationDate="2012-06-05T00:41:19.693" UserId="34364" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9744" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3660" RevisionGUID="54d61a7a-987a-447a-881f-1895c52119f7" CreationDate="2012-06-05T00:47:59.277" UserId="34364" Comment="deleted 11 characters in body" Text="After doing the contest, I was wondering if there was any kind of spike in traffic over the past few weeks. I could've asked a mod (I did) to see if they could tell me, but then I wondered: *are these stats publicly available?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be specific, incoming links, views bar graphs, etc.. I know SE has access to them, but why not allow the public to see it? Would it hurt? If we can see it, where is it?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9746" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3662" RevisionGUID="ff063caa-fd01-4ddf-bff1-90e67ebab625" CreationDate="2012-06-05T04:11:31.910" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="[Stack Exchange's aggregate traffic is public and available on Quantcast][1], but it may or may not be an accurate or up-to-date picture at any moment in time. It should, however, be accurate enough for the purposes of figuring out if a contest helped: [it was used a lot on Gaming.SE][2] during the [Skyrim vs. Modern Warfare 3 promotion][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Much more detailed analytics are indeed available to SE employees and to moderators, but they're not available likely due to analytics usually being considered trade secrets. As you mentioned, they'll generally provide a 10,000-foot picture of those analytics upon request, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.quantcast.com/programmers.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/a/3205/3389&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://skyrimvsmw3.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9747" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3662" RevisionGUID="43e85937-8974-491c-94f4-98ba3b91d4e1" CreationDate="2012-06-05T04:20:44.533" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 1892 characters in body" Text="[Stack Exchange's aggregate traffic is public and available on Quantcast][1], but it may or may not be an accurate or up-to-date picture at any moment in time. It should, however, be accurate enough for the purposes of figuring out if a contest helped: [it was used a lot on Gaming.SE][2] during the [Skyrim vs. Modern Warfare 3 promotion][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Much more detailed analytics are indeed available to SE employees and to moderators, but they're not available mostly for the reasons outlined in the answers to the MSO question, [Why are stats not public information?][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, [cwallenpoole's answer][5]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I might hazard some guesses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. This might have to do with the same reason that SE sites are &quot;not about the rep&quot;. If exact numbers are used, that could lead to someone gaming the system, realizing that x and y conditions lead to condition z. In the context of a blog, this can lead to especially perverse aberrations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. It also could have to do with principles similar to those outlined in Tufte's *Visual Explanations.* The quantifiable, without appropriate contextualization can lead to grossly inaccurate conclusions. (you can see his discussion on pg. 36, if you care. A better example from a different book is the stock-market to sun-spot ratio chart at the beginning of *Visual Display of Quantitative Information*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. One rule to rule them all means both that you don't have to micro-manage what is and is not appropriate and you don't have the complaint, &quot;But *`&lt;pronoun&gt;`* gets to do it *`&lt;possesive-pronoun&gt;`* way...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Of course, these are more guesses as to/justification of the reasoning than they are the rationale themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, [Jeff Atwood's answer][6]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Pretty much what cwallenpoole said in his answer; in my mind, this is like arguing for full disclosure of people's salaries. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And anyway, what's the *problem?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Those who need to know, can get the information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Those who wish to know, can ask those that have it for a summary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Just because you *can* get the information doesn't mean you *need* it. Information porn can be harmful. And having it can cause a distraction from the stuff that matters, just like real porn...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you mentioned, they'll generally provide a 10,000-foot picture of those analytics upon request, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.quantcast.com/programmers.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/a/3205/3389&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://skyrimvsmw3.com&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/106306/why-are-stats-not-public-information&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/106314/149432&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/107437/149432" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9749" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3660" RevisionGUID="bd58be2d-4653-4d16-963b-014e7c6fd608" CreationDate="2012-06-05T05:06:57.393" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9750" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3587" RevisionGUID="19f5ab48-9d53-4aa0-8a63-91232f146d06" CreationDate="2012-06-05T14:02:16.163" UserId="2654" Comment="added 402 characters in body" Text="I believe that is correct as code is included in the content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; to Remix — to adapt the work  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; to make commercial use of the work  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anything that you post to StackOverflow will be under the terms of the creative commons license. You can find more info by looking at the bottom right of the page and clicking the cc-wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Do I have to worry about copyright issues for code posted to StackOverflow?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/12527/do-i-have-to-worry-about-copyright-issues-for-code-posted-on-stackoverflow)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9751" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3663" RevisionGUID="03ff3ef4-a051-496b-8e70-baebf65ee832" CreationDate="2012-06-05T23:31:22.323" UserId="7426" Text="I noticed that there are some tags that are the same as an existing tag but with a version number. I would think that this kind of specificity isn't necessary here at Programmers. On StackOveflow I think these type of tags make sense because questions can be tagged with both the general and specific tag because of volume. That is, having tags with specific versions are *useful*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, with that in mind, I gathered a list of tags that might be worth merging (or perhaps just have the &quot;extra&quot; tags untagged from questions). However, I do think there are special cases and have grouped some of them separately below. Feel free to contest any of these, as I am not 100% sure about a few of them. If this is just stupid, let me know and I'll walk away. It just didn't make sense when I saw a couple of these tags today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Candidates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:css] and [tag:css3]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:flex] and [tag:flex4]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:html] and [tag:html5]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:python] and [tag:python-3.x]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:visual-studio], [tag:visual-studio-2008], and [tag:visual-studio-2010]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:windows] , [tag:windows-7], and [tag:windows-8]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:visual-basic] and [tag:visual-basic-6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Special Cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c++], [tag:c++0x], and [tag:c++11] - The language and the name of specific standards documents.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c] and [tag:c99] - The language and one of its standards documents.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:db] and [tag:db2] - One is a synonym for [tag:database], the other *is* a database.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:struts] and [tag:struts2] -  These are entirely different frameworks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9752" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3663" RevisionGUID="03ff3ef4-a051-496b-8e70-baebf65ee832" CreationDate="2012-06-05T23:31:22.323" UserId="7426" Text="Should there be tags for language and framework versions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9753" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3663" RevisionGUID="03ff3ef4-a051-496b-8e70-baebf65ee832" CreationDate="2012-06-05T23:31:22.323" UserId="7426" Text="|discussion|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9755" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3663" RevisionGUID="309f856c-0ac8-4bb4-86fb-5eda7665dfb9" CreationDate="2012-06-06T00:01:48.950" UserId="7426" Comment="added 6 characters in body" Text="I noticed that there are some tags that are the same as an existing tag but with a version number. I would think that this kind of specificity isn't necessary here at Programmers. On StackOveflow I think these type of tags make sense because questions can be tagged with both the general and specific tag because of volume. That is, having tags with specific versions are *useful* there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, with that in mind, I gathered a list of tags that might be worth merging (or perhaps just have the &quot;extra&quot; tags untagged from questions). However, I do think there are special cases and have grouped some of them separately below. Feel free to contest any of these, as I am not 100% sure about a few of them. If this is just stupid, let me know and I'll walk away. It just didn't make sense when I saw a couple of these tags today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Candidates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:css] and [tag:css3]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:flex] and [tag:flex4]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:html] and [tag:html5]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:python] and [tag:python-3.x]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:visual-studio], [tag:visual-studio-2008], and [tag:visual-studio-2010]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:windows] , [tag:windows-7], and [tag:windows-8]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:visual-basic] and [tag:visual-basic-6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Special Cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c++], [tag:c++0x], and [tag:c++11] - The language and the name of specific standards documents.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c] and [tag:c99] - The language and one of its standards documents.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:db] and [tag:db2] - One is a synonym for [tag:database], the other *is* a database.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:struts] and [tag:struts2] -  These are entirely different frameworks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9756" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3663" RevisionGUID="1435f978-f554-44cc-be1e-ba331bb36fed" CreationDate="2012-06-06T03:45:05.747" UserId="7426" Comment="added 235 characters in body" Text="I noticed that there are some tags that are the same as an existing tag but with a version number. I would think that this kind of specificity isn't necessary here at Programmers. Version information can be more accurately expressed in the question title or the question itself *if it is relevant*. Since we focus on *conceptual questions about software development*, I can't imagine specific version information is helpful when tagging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Oveflow I think these type of tags make sense because questions can be tagged with both the general and specific tag due to volume and the direct nature of many question. That is, having tags with specific versions is *useful* and *complementary* to the un-versioned tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, with that in mind, I gathered a list of tags that might be worth taking a look at. However, I do think there are special cases and have grouped some of them separately. Feel free to contest any of these, as I am not 100% sure about a few of them. If this is just stupid, let me know and I'll walk away. It just didn't make sense when I saw a couple of these tags today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Candidates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:css] and [tag:css3]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:flex] and [tag:flex4]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:html] and [tag:html5]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:python] and [tag:python-3.x]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:visual-studio], [tag:visual-studio-2008], and [tag:visual-studio-2010]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:windows] , [tag:windows-7], and [tag:windows-8]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:visual-basic] and [tag:visual-basic-6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Special Cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c++], [tag:c++0x], and [tag:c++11] - The language and the name of specific standards documents.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c] and [tag:c99] - The language and one of its standards documents.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:db] and [tag:db2] - One is a synonym for [tag:database], the other *is* a database.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:struts] and [tag:struts2] -  These are entirely different frameworks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9757" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3665" RevisionGUID="f57fcb98-617a-4f8d-b16f-aaf1d1c2cde0" CreationDate="2012-06-06T04:54:24.820" UserId="25936" Text="- [tag:html] and [tag:html5] should be separate tags. HTML5 is a major overhaul of HTML, and it introduces some quite unique features and design considerations. Furthermore, when I see a question tagged [tag:html5] I expect it to be about a bit more than HTML, as the popular meaning of the term implies the use of technologies like Ajax and CSS3, not just HTML. More or less the same for [tag:css] and [tag:css3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:windows], [tag:windows-7], and [tag:windows-8] could be merged or stay separate. Windows 8 introduces some design considerations that are unique and have little to do with previous windows versions, e.g. Metro. I don't consider myself a windows developer, so take this with a grain of salt. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:visual-basic] and [tag:visual-basic-6] should definitely stay separate. VB6 is a quite different beast from what we think of as Visual Basic today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:visual-studio], [tag:visual-studio-2008], and [tag:visual-studio-2010] should be merged, and we should probably clean them up as well, last time I checked questions on programming tools are off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know enough about Flex and Python to comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with the general sentiment that Programmers have little use for version specific tags, however I think that when a language / framework version introduces unique design / architecture considerations, the tag should stay. And there isn't a one size fits all solution, you say that [tag:struts] and [tag:struts2] are entirely different frameworks, but would you say the same if you haven't worked with both? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9758" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3666" RevisionGUID="4fd9dd84-d53e-4a68-8295-c70faf6c78dd" CreationDate="2012-06-06T14:58:37.617" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Yes, any user contributed code is released under the CCASA.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the ToS ( http://stackexchange.com/legal ) &#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;You agree that all Subscriber Content that You contribute to the Network is perpetually and&#xD;&#xA;irrevocably licensed to Stack Exchange under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike &#xD;&#xA;license. You grant Stack Exchange the perpetual and irrevocable right and license to use, &#xD;&#xA;copy, cache, publish, display, distribute, modify, create derivative works and store such &#xD;&#xA;Subscriber Content and to allow others to do so in any medium now known or hereinafter &#xD;&#xA;developed (“Content License”) in order to provide the Services, even if such Subscriber &#xD;&#xA;Content has been contributed and subsequently removed by You&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, the key parts.&#xD;&#xA;You grant everything to SE under a CCASA license.&#xD;&#xA;You can never revoke that grant.&#xD;&#xA;(As Josh points out) CCASA allows you to use and abuse, even for commercial work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One interesting exception is SE's Network Content.  That portion, which includes a source code clause, is NOT released under a CCASA.  That section allows for personal use of the NC.  Keep in mind that Network Content != Subscriber Content, so it's really a non-issue unless you like to obsess over those details." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9759" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3667" RevisionGUID="a000395d-3c16-445a-b0eb-dfa83dfbd343" CreationDate="2012-06-06T15:08:47.703" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="With the exceptions that Yannis notes for [tag:html], [tag:css], and [tag:VB] , I agree with your reasoning on merging the candidates.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:C] and [tag:C++] are language tags whereas [tag:C99], [tag:c++0x], and [tag:c++11] are (or should be) about the spec and could / should remain separate.  Now that C++11 is approved, merging [tag:c++0x] and [tag:c++11] would make sense to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that [tag:db], [tag:DB2], [tag:struts], or [tag:struts2] should be merged for the reasons you point out." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9760" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3663" RevisionGUID="fa790981-2539-43bc-b82e-8dd08626aa74" CreationDate="2012-06-06T15:10:33.613" UserId="7426" Comment="added 32 characters in body" Text="I noticed that there are some tags that are the same as an existing tag but with a version number. I would think that this kind of specificity isn't necessary here at Programmers. Version information can be more accurately expressed in the question title or the question itself *if it is relevant*. Since we focus on *conceptual questions about software development*, I can't imagine specific version information is helpful when tagging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Oveflow I think these type of tags make sense because questions can be tagged with both the general and specific tag due to volume and the direct nature of many question. That is, having tags with specific versions is *useful* and *complementary* to the un-versioned tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, with that in mind, I gathered a list of tags that might be worth taking a look at. However, I do think there are special cases and have grouped some of them separately. Feel free to contest any of these, as I am not 100% sure about a few of them. If this is just stupid, let me know and I'll walk away. It just didn't make sense when I saw a couple of these tags today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Candidates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:css] and [tag:css3]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:flex] and [tag:flex4]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:html] and [tag:html5]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:python] and [tag:python-3.x]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:visual-studio], [tag:visual-studio-2008], and [tag:visual-studio-2010]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:windows] , [tag:windows-7], and [tag:windows-8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Complete:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:flex] and [tag:flex4] - There were only three [tag:flex4] questions, two already tagged [tag:flex]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Special Cases (as in, they should be separate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c++], [tag:c++0x], and [tag:c++11] - The language and the name of specific standards documents.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c] and [tag:c99] - The language and one of its standards documents.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:db] and [tag:db2] - One is a synonym for [tag:database], the other *is* a database.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:struts] and [tag:struts2] -  These are entirely different frameworks.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:visual-basic] and [tag:visual-basic-6] (per Yannis' answer)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9761" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3663" RevisionGUID="c97b1456-6db8-4d39-bd2b-0cb9a62bcdff" CreationDate="2012-06-06T15:20:01.653" UserId="7426" Comment="deleted 30 characters in body" Text="I noticed that there are some tags that are the same as an existing tag but with a version number. I would think that this kind of specificity isn't necessary here at Programmers. Version information can be more accurately expressed in the question title or the question itself *if it is relevant*. Since we focus on *conceptual questions about software development*, I can't imagine specific version information is helpful when tagging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Oveflow I think these type of tags make sense because questions can be tagged with both the general and specific tag due to volume and the direct nature of many question. That is, having tags with specific versions is *useful* and *complementary* to the un-versioned tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, with that in mind, I gathered a list of tags that might be worth taking a look at. However, I do think there are special cases and have grouped some of them separately. Feel free to contest any of these, as I am not 100% sure about a few of them. If this is just stupid, let me know and I'll walk away. It just didn't make sense when I saw a couple of these tags today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Candidates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:css] and [tag:css3] (5)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:html] and [tag:html5] (78)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:python] and [tag:python-3.x] (3)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:visual-studio], [tag:visual-studio-2008] (3), and [tag:visual-studio-2010] (77)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:windows] , [tag:windows-7] (8), and [tag:windows-8] (18)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Complete:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:flex] and [tag:flex4] - There were only three [tag:flex4] questions, two already tagged [tag:flex]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Special Cases (as in, they should be separate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c++], [tag:c++0x], and [tag:c++11] - The language and its specifications&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c] and [tag:c99] - The language and one of its specifications&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:db] and [tag:db2] - One is a synonym for [tag:database], the other *is* a database&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:struts] and [tag:struts2] -  These are entirely different frameworks, similar in name only.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:visual-basic] and [tag:visual-basic-6] (per Yannis' answer)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9762" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3663" RevisionGUID="231bb6a4-3e69-4f2e-9f28-cf4d2b1cc062" CreationDate="2012-06-06T15:30:47.633" UserId="7426" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="I noticed that there are some tags that are the same as an existing tag but with a version number. I would think that this kind of specificity isn't necessary here at Programmers. Version information can be more accurately expressed in the question title or the question itself *if it is relevant*. Since we focus on *conceptual questions about software development*, I can't imagine specific version information is helpful when tagging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Oveflow I think these type of tags make sense because questions can be tagged with both the general and specific tag due to volume and the direct nature of many question. That is, having tags with specific versions is *useful* and *complementary* to the un-versioned tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, with that in mind, I gathered a list of tags that might be worth taking a look at. However, I do think there are special cases and have grouped some of them separately. Feel free to contest any of these, as I am not 100% sure about a few of them. If this is just stupid, let me know and I'll walk away. It just didn't make sense when I saw a couple of these tags today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Candidates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:css] and [tag:css3] (5)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:html] and [tag:html5] (78)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:python] and [tag:python-3.x] (3)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:visual-studio], [tag:visual-studio-2008] (3), and [tag:visual-studio-2010] (77)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:windows] , [tag:windows-7] (8), and [tag:windows-8] (18)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Complete:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:flex] and [tag:flex4] - There were only three [tag:flex4] questions, two already tagged [tag:flex]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Special Cases (as in, they should be separate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c++], [tag:c++0x], and [tag:c++11] - The language and its specifications&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c] and [tag:c99] - The language and one of its specifications&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:db] and [tag:db2] - One is a synonym for [tag:database], the other *is* a database&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:struts] and [tag:struts2] -  These are entirely different frameworks, similar in name only.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:visual-basic] and [tag:visual-basic-6] (per Yannis' answer)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9763" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3663" RevisionGUID="c2a23433-4e95-477b-be75-98b4f8fb55d6" CreationDate="2012-06-06T18:13:58.863" UserId="7426" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="I noticed that there are some tags that are the same as an existing tag but with a version number. I would think that this kind of specificity isn't necessary here at Programmers. Version information can be more accurately expressed in the question title or the question itself *if it is relevant*. Since we focus on *conceptual questions about software development*, I can't imagine specific version information is helpful when tagging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Oveflow I think these type of tags make sense because questions can be tagged with both the general and specific tag due to volume and the direct nature of many questions. That is, having tags with specific versions is *useful* and *complementary* to the un-versioned tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, with that in mind, I gathered a list of tags that might be worth taking a look at. However, I do think there are special cases and have grouped some of them separately. Feel free to contest any of these, as I am not 100% sure about a few of them. If this is just stupid, let me know and I'll walk away. It just didn't make sense when I saw a couple of these tags today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Candidates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:css] (104) and [tag:css3] (5)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:html] (155) and [tag:html5] (78)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:python] (368) and [tag:python-3.x] (3)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:visual-studio] (83), [tag:visual-studio-2008] (3), and [tag:visual-studio-2010] (77)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:windows] (146) , [tag:windows-7] (8), and [tag:windows-8] (18)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Complete:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:flex] (18) and [tag:flex4] - There were only three [tag:flex4] questions, two already tagged [tag:flex]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Special Cases (as in, they should be separate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c++], [tag:c++0x], and [tag:c++11] - The language and its specifications&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c] and [tag:c99] - The language and one of its specifications&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:db] and [tag:db2] - One is a synonym for [tag:database], the other *is* a database&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:struts] and [tag:struts2] -  These are entirely different frameworks, similar in name only.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:visual-basic] and [tag:visual-basic-6] (per Yannis' answer)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9772" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3663" RevisionGUID="4c6e4e8d-6fc3-4408-97f5-460cf9d95452" CreationDate="2012-06-06T19:34:44.307" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/210454696316514304" />
  <row Id="9775" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3671" RevisionGUID="c7438560-8175-4893-87a9-11c177fb272e" CreationDate="2012-06-07T01:35:59.930" UserId="7426" Text="There are 9 questions tagged with [tag:compensation] and 5 ([about to be 6][1]) are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, compensation is *literally* off-topic according to the FAQ: *salary or compensation*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The 3 questions that remain open seem as if they are appropriate for this site, but I am a bit conflicted given that the FAQ explicitly forbids them. Are these special cases, or are these now considered off-topic? If they are off-topic, should we burn/blacklist the [tag:compensation] tag all together?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a side note, there is no [tag:salary] tag. I don't know if it ever existed or  was addressed in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151860/a-potential-new-hire-may-make-more-money-you-do-what-should-i-do" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9776" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3671" RevisionGUID="c7438560-8175-4893-87a9-11c177fb272e" CreationDate="2012-06-07T01:35:59.930" UserId="7426" Text="Should the [compensation] tag be burned?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9777" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3671" RevisionGUID="c7438560-8175-4893-87a9-11c177fb272e" CreationDate="2012-06-07T01:35:59.930" UserId="7426" Text="|discussion|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9778" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3671" RevisionGUID="36633f65-7f41-45da-8280-bf855b63094a" CreationDate="2012-06-07T01:42:21.140" UserId="7426" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body; edited title" Text="There are 9 questions tagged with [tag:compensation] and 5 ([about to be 6][1]) are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, compensation is *literally* off-topic according to the FAQ: *salary or compensation*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The 3 questions that remain open seem as if they are appropriate for this site, but I am a bit conflicted given that the FAQ explicitly forbids them. Are these special cases, or are these now considered off-topic? If they are off-topic, should we blacklist the [tag:compensation] tag all together?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a side note, there is no [tag:salary] tag. I don't know if it ever existed or  was addressed in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151860/a-potential-new-hire-may-make-more-money-you-do-what-should-i-do" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9779" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3671" RevisionGUID="36633f65-7f41-45da-8280-bf855b63094a" CreationDate="2012-06-07T01:42:21.140" UserId="7426" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body; edited title" Text="Should the [compensation] tag be blacklisted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9783" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3673" RevisionGUID="ce6afab6-6c9f-49d2-9474-2142d20a970a" CreationDate="2012-06-07T07:36:30.023" UserId="47" Text="If you think that the questions that are still open are appropriate then simply edit them to remove the tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can edit and reopen or delete the closed questions (as appropriate) to remove the tag completely from the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the tag has been removed from all live questions it won't be suggested to people when they enter the tags for their question. This should discourage it's use. However, if the tag reappears *then* we can consider blacklisting." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9784" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="3674" RevisionGUID="585ffeb6-afb7-4042-a0c9-2edfb456e2a3" CreationDate="2012-06-07T11:10:05.447" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151907/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead" Text="" />
  <row Id="9785" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3674" RevisionGUID="392bf734-57b8-4bfe-837a-95c5d998cc01" CreationDate="2012-06-07T11:09:29.643" UserDisplayName="user56057" Text="I asked this [question][1] and someone closed it. Why asking for books recommendation is OffTopic and be closed instead? I see a lot of books recommendation still open and receiving answers!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;WTF stackexchange???!!! Here is the list of example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150510/learning-to-build-real-time-web-applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150225/what-is-a-comprehensive-book-on-concurrent-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143553/what-are-good-books-for-learning-c11&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141060/book-to-get-started-with-mongodb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135762/learning-asynchronous-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135673/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-requirements-gathering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151899/i-need-books-for-procedural-programming" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9786" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3674" RevisionGUID="392bf734-57b8-4bfe-837a-95c5d998cc01" CreationDate="2012-06-07T11:09:29.643" UserDisplayName="user56057" Text="Why asking for books recommendation is OffTopic and be closed instead?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9787" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3674" RevisionGUID="392bf734-57b8-4bfe-837a-95c5d998cc01" CreationDate="2012-06-07T11:09:29.643" UserDisplayName="user56057" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9788" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3675" RevisionGUID="78a5cc5a-2b66-44a5-a7ed-5539c9aed567" CreationDate="2012-06-07T11:13:52.413" UserId="4" Text="Questions about books (or any other thing) that will only generate a list of things are not allowed, as discussed in [a previous Meta post][1]. The posts that you link to are about very specific topics and tend to have books that can be considered canonical references, which limits the available options significantly and makes it more likely that there is one best answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question should have been closed as not constructive and not off topic - that was my mistake (but I'm not going to reopen and close under the right reason).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9789" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3676" RevisionGUID="d92e2f15-91b7-44ad-955f-8c972a29bb87" CreationDate="2012-06-07T11:14:30.353" UserId="47" Text="The problem with book recommendations is that they are either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;a) Too broad and hence not constructive as you'll simply get a list of everyone's favourite book. This doesn't help you as you still have to pick one from the list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;b) Too narrow and hence too localised as the conditions you've set make the situation only applicable to you and, more significantly, only applicable to you at this moment in time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have tried to allow some book recommendations but, as you've pointed out, it can lead to inconsistencies where one question is closed but another remains open. Ultimately we may have to review the situation and see if we should allow book recommendations at all.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9790" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3671" RevisionGUID="b7ac101c-2e24-4636-a8d4-77b284d2a638" CreationDate="2012-06-07T14:43:30.093" UserId="7426" Comment="deleted 21 characters in body" Text="There are 8 questions tagged with [tag:compensation] and 5 are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, compensation is *literally* off-topic according to the FAQ: *salary or compensation*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The 3 questions that remain open seem as if they are appropriate for this site, but I am a bit conflicted given that the FAQ explicitly forbids them. Are these special cases, or are these now considered off-topic? If they are off-topic, should we blacklist the [tag:compensation] tag all together?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a side note, there is no [tag:salary] tag. I don't know if it ever existed or  was addressed in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151860/a-potential-new-hire-may-make-more-money-you-do-what-should-i-do" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9791" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3677" RevisionGUID="a36b9595-4f02-4dca-9a0e-d4392576cb7a" CreationDate="2012-06-07T15:11:47.783" UserId="7426" Text="If we were going to execute a name change, how would we do it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's fairly clear that the domain would be the *last* think to go. And nobody really feels comfortable enough to just pull the trigger, albeit for valid reasons. So what can we do to test the waters?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the answer is to do it gradually. Once we agree (with some value of agree) on a name that would fit, we could start by grafting it onto the current site title. And by title, I mean the HTML `&lt;title&gt;` tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suppose we all agreed that &quot;Software Development&quot; was the name we wanted. We could then change the title to reflect that. This can be done by appending to the current title.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers on Software Development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Afterwards, or maybe at the same time, we can change the site banner to reflect the same thing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; # Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on Software Development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The important thing would be to figure out if it actually made a difference. I am not sure how we could go about doing that, but it's important that we figure that out, I think. If over time it turns out to well received (say after 6 months), then switch the text around in the title and the banner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; # Software Development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This way the change isn't very drastic, and people can see it coming and become acquainted to it. If all this works out, only *then* we should consider changing the domain. Heck, maybe we'll like one of the intermediary names so much that it sticks. But if nobody likes it, it's easy to just revert it back to Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, I personally don't know if a name change is something that *must* be done. I am just considering *how* it could be done if it ends up being the right thing to do. Also, the examples are just examples." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9792" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3677" RevisionGUID="1cbf5bb3-a05b-49eb-9071-5927d05ec0fc" CreationDate="2012-06-07T16:07:00.973" UserId="7426" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="If we were going to execute a name change, how would we do it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's fairly clear that the domain would be the *last* think to go. And nobody really feels comfortable enough to just pull the trigger, albeit for valid reasons. So what can we do to test the waters?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the answer is to do it gradually. Once we agree (with some value of agree) on a name that would fit, we could start by grafting it onto the current site title. And by title, I mean the HTML `&lt;title&gt;` tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suppose we all agreed that &quot;Software Development&quot; was the name we wanted. We could then change the title to reflect that. This can be done by appending to the current title.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers on Software Development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Afterwards, or maybe at the same time, we can change the site banner to reflect the same thing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; # Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on Software Development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The important thing would be to figure out if it actually made a difference. I am not sure how we could go about doing that, but it's important that we figure that out, I think. If over time it turns out to be well received (say after 6 months), then switch the text around in the title and the banner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; # Software Development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This way the change isn't very drastic, and people can see it coming and become acquainted to it. If all this works out, only *then* we should consider changing the domain. Heck, maybe we'll like one of the intermediary names so much that it sticks. But if nobody likes it, it's easy to just revert it back to Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, I personally don't know if a name change is something that *must* be done. I am just considering *how* it could be done if it ends up being the right thing to do. Also, the examples are just examples." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9793" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3671" RevisionGUID="17c4b7f5-a40d-485f-b86a-971a2dd822dc" CreationDate="2012-06-07T16:37:51.730" UserId="7426" Comment="added 1254 characters in body" Text="There are 8 questions tagged with [tag:compensation] and 5 are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, compensation is *literally* off-topic according to the FAQ: *salary or compensation*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The 3 questions that remain open seem as if they are appropriate for this site, but I am a bit conflicted given that the FAQ explicitly forbids them. Are these special cases, or are these now considered off-topic? If they are off-topic, should we blacklist the [tag:compensation] tag all together?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a side note, there is no [tag:salary] tag. I don't know if it ever existed or  was addressed in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have edited the tag out of all the closed questions. Here is the list of them for reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why do business analysts and project managers get higher salaries than programmers?][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it possible/likely to be paid fairly without a college degree?][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Salary Negotiation; How Best to Broach the Subject?][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [Is there any site which tells or highlights by zone developer income source? I think i am getting less yearly][4]&#xD;&#xA;* [Jobs asking for web design and development skills, should it be doubling the pay? ][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will start looking into them to see if they can be made on-topic or should be deleted. Any advice or help would be appreciated! Next would be the ones that aren't closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45776/why-do-business-analysts-and-project-managers-get-higher-salaries-than-programme&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70377/is-it-possible-likely-to-be-paid-fairly-without-a-college-degree&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127775/salary-negotiation-how-best-to-broach-the-subject&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132346/is-there-any-site-which-tells-or-highlights-by-zone-developer-income-source-i-t&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137928/jobs-asking-for-web-design-and-development-skills-should-it-be-doubling-the-pay" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9794" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3671" RevisionGUID="17c4b7f5-a40d-485f-b86a-971a2dd822dc" CreationDate="2012-06-07T16:37:51.730" UserId="7426" Comment="added 1254 characters in body" Text="Should the [compensation] tag be removed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9795" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3671" RevisionGUID="7020ba00-6b01-4243-ac35-d7ebc5ac32d5" CreationDate="2012-06-07T16:48:03.247" UserId="7426" Comment="added 26 characters in body" Text="There are 8 questions tagged with [tag:compensation] and 5 are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, compensation is *literally* off-topic according to the FAQ: *salary or compensation*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The 3 questions that remain open seem as if they are appropriate for this site, but I am a bit conflicted given that the FAQ explicitly forbids them. Are these special cases, or are these now considered off-topic? If they are off-topic, should we blacklist the [tag:compensation] tag all together?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a side note, there is no [tag:salary] tag. I don't know if it ever existed or  was addressed in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have edited the tag out of all the closed questions. Here is the list of them for reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why do business analysts and project managers get higher salaries than programmers?][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it possible/likely to be paid fairly without a college degree?][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Salary Negotiation; How Best to Broach the Subject?][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [Is there any site which tells or highlights by zone developer income source? I think i am getting less yearly][4]&#xD;&#xA;* [Jobs asking for web design and development skills, should it be doubling the pay? ][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think any of these questions should be reopened. They are basically consulting a programmers perspective, and not really about software development. At least that's how I am interpreting the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45776/why-do-business-analysts-and-project-managers-get-higher-salaries-than-programme&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70377/is-it-possible-likely-to-be-paid-fairly-without-a-college-degree&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127775/salary-negotiation-how-best-to-broach-the-subject&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132346/is-there-any-site-which-tells-or-highlights-by-zone-developer-income-source-i-t&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137928/jobs-asking-for-web-design-and-development-skills-should-it-be-doubling-the-pay" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9796" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3590" RevisionGUID="ca627093-32b4-4781-aa65-13826a292831" CreationDate="2012-06-07T17:51:17.117" UserId="34364" Comment="deleted 16 characters in body" Text="**Launched!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now go read it!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9797" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3438" RevisionGUID="8b7e5be6-6432-4210-b2f4-6da1027e644d" CreationDate="2012-06-07T17:53:11.310" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9798" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3678" RevisionGUID="df346985-1c64-422c-8574-b72efd0291a2" CreationDate="2012-06-07T17:54:38.773" UserId="41381" Text="compensation falls under `freelancing and business concerns` though so it also on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not saying all compensation question should be aloud with this line of thought, just that not all possible questions where a compensation tag would work are off topic, there is a set probably a really small one that this tag would work for." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9799" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3590" RevisionGUID="dc1f936f-2433-43dc-9df0-79e9bc03d543" CreationDate="2012-06-07T19:11:23.367" UserId="25936" Comment="added 54 characters in body" Text="**Launched!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now go [read it][1]!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9800" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3678" RevisionGUID="e7ba4f94-5ef3-4686-bfc9-4689442c311a" CreationDate="2012-06-07T20:34:23.103" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="Compensation falls under `freelancing and business concerns` though so it also on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not saying all compensation question should be allowed with this line of thought, just that not all possible questions where a compensation tag would work are off topic, there is a set probably a really small one that this tag would work for." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9801" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3671" RevisionGUID="a6993a5b-4d1b-472e-9fcc-b686daab48fa" CreationDate="2012-06-08T05:26:01.860" UserId="7426" Comment="added 93 characters in body" Text="There are 8 questions tagged with [tag:compensation] and 5 are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, compensation is *literally* off-topic according to the FAQ: *salary or compensation*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The 3 questions that remain open seem as if they are appropriate for this site, but I am a bit conflicted given that the FAQ explicitly forbids them. Are these special cases, or are these now considered off-topic? If they are off-topic, should we blacklist the [tag:compensation] tag all together?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a side note, there is no [tag:salary] tag. I don't know if it ever existed or  was addressed in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have edited the tag out of all the closed questions. Here is the list of them for reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why do business analysts and project managers get higher salaries than programmers?][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it possible/likely to be paid fairly without a college degree?][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Salary Negotiation; How Best to Broach the Subject?][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [Is there any site which tells or highlights by zone developer income source? I think i am getting less yearly][4]&#xD;&#xA;* [Jobs asking for web design and development skills, should it be doubling the pay? ][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think any of these questions should be reopened. They are basically consulting a programmers perspective, and not really about software development. At least that's how I am interpreting them against the FAQ. I'll report on the other open questions when I have time to really digest them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45776/why-do-business-analysts-and-project-managers-get-higher-salaries-than-programme&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70377/is-it-possible-likely-to-be-paid-fairly-without-a-college-degree&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127775/salary-negotiation-how-best-to-broach-the-subject&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132346/is-there-any-site-which-tells-or-highlights-by-zone-developer-income-source-i-t&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137928/jobs-asking-for-web-design-and-development-skills-should-it-be-doubling-the-pay" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9802" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3671" RevisionGUID="374d65e7-c5b6-4bef-b753-60aabcad1eb6" CreationDate="2012-06-08T07:34:44.170" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/210998277649350656" />
  <row Id="9803" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="fe97f663-b0ac-44d0-8d8f-9b047a95eb57" CreationDate="2012-06-08T14:01:57.660" UserId="1130" Comment="Cleaned up proposal since I want to link to it from elsewhere. Also made a few updates." Text="**There are two proposals here:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original proposal was to change the FAQ to more accurately reflect the site's name. It was created because of the votes and responses received on [this question][1], however since posting this I've learned of the [history behind the site scope change][2], and am not sure if this is something SE would allow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second alternative proposal is for adding a section to the FAQ to help clarify what makes a good question for Programmers.SE. It was added based on an [answer below][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you post an answer supporting either proposal, be sure to specify which one.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;**Original proposal**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we change the way we define what is on/off topic in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity, so questions on our site are best defined as on-topic by the type of answer they need, not by the subject of their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, many freelancing or business concerns are off-topic here even though they're listed as on-topic in the FAQ, and some career-development questions are actually on-topic despite being in the off-topic list. The deciding factor is the type of answer the question requires. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see this causing a lot of confusion about what is actually considered on/off topic for our site, so I think it would be better to define what is on topic by the type of answer needed, instead of the subject of the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What kind of questions can I ask here?][4]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is a site for programmers to ask questions and get answers from other programmers about non-code issues that are related to their career choice, or self-identity, as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We welcome questions about conceptual topics in software development, such as software architecture and design concepts, algorithms and data structure design, the software development lifecycle, testing and QA, and freelancing &amp; business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][5]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][6].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][8]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][9] or [Is A better than B?][10] because we do not want questions that lead to chatty, open-ended discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][11] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][12]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][13]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][14]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][15] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][16] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Not be a coding problem][17]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;[Programmers][18] was created to be a site about non-code issues programmers face, while its sister site, [Stack Overflow][19], is for coding questions. To put it another way, [Programmers][20] is for when you're in front of a whiteboard working through higher-level conceptual programming issues, while [Stack Overflow][21] is for when you're in front of a compiler or editor working through code issues.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][22]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each of those bullet points should be a link that points to a [meta-faq][23] post containing more details on the subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop some of the confusion I see about our site scope, and reduce the number of upset users who asked a question which was in the &quot;on-topic&quot; list of the FAQ, but the question still got closed as off-topic. The scope of this site is really defined by the type of answers required, not the subject of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was a site created for programmers to get answers from other programmers about issues related to their career choice (or self identity) as a programmer. The scope was changed due to the deteriorating quality of questions being asked, however I think it has changed far beyond the original proposal, and the site has [gone downhill][24] since then. I believe we can still be the site this was meant to be, while maintaining SE quality guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit: Alternative proposal**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[jcmeloni's answer below][25] made the suggestion to make this a new section in the [Programmers.SE FAQ][26] instead of replacing the existing section.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section would be like the [UX.SE's FAQ][27] section titled **What makes a good question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this proposal as well, so instead of changing the existing bullet-point list defining what is an on-topic question, what about simply adding a new section titled &quot;What makes a good question&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What makes a good question?][28]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should elicit definitive answers or solutions rather than prolonged discussions. Remember, [this a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][29]. To participate in open-ended discussions on programming-related topics, please visit our [chat][30] instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][31]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][32].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][33]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][34] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][35] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][36]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][37]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][38]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][39]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][40] or [Is A better than B?][41] because we do not want questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][42] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Not be a coding problem][43]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;[Programmers][44] was created to be a site about non-code issues programmers face, while its sister site, [Stack Overflow][45], is for coding questions. To put it another way, [Programmers][46] is for when you're in front of a whiteboard working through higher-level conceptual programming issues, while [Stack Overflow][47] is for when you're in front of a compiler or editor working through code issues.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][48]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3319/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/171/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1646/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3136/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3319/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [32]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [33]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [34]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [35]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [36]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [37]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [38]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [39]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [40]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [41]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [42]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [43]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/171/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [44]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [45]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [46]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [47]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [48]: http://a.b" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9804" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="fe97f663-b0ac-44d0-8d8f-9b047a95eb57" CreationDate="2012-06-08T14:01:57.660" UserId="1130" Comment="Cleaned up proposal since I want to link to it from elsewhere. Also made a few updates." Text="Update our FAQ to improve the on-topic definition" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9805" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="b09b2af9-da2d-42ba-a902-14987dacf661" CreationDate="2012-06-08T14:11:53.110" UserId="1130" Comment="added 163 characters in body" Text="**There are two proposals here:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original proposal was to change the FAQ to more accurately reflect the site's name. It was created because of the votes and responses received on [this question][1], however since posting this I've learned of the [history behind the site scope change][2], and am not sure if this is something SE would allow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second alternative proposal is for adding a section to the FAQ to help clarify what makes a good question for Programmers.SE. It was added based on an [answer below][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you post an answer supporting either proposal, be sure to specify which one.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;**Original proposal**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we change the way we define what is on/off topic in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity, so questions on our site are best defined as on-topic by the type of answer they need, not by the subject of their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, many freelancing or business concerns are off-topic here even though they're listed as on-topic in the FAQ, and some career-development questions are actually on-topic despite being in the off-topic list. The deciding factor is the type of answer the question requires. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see this causing a lot of confusion about what is actually considered on/off topic for our site, so I think it would be better to define what is on topic by the type of answer needed, instead of the subject of the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What kind of questions can I ask here?][4]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is a site for programmers to ask questions and get answers from other programmers about non-code issues that are related to their career choice, or self-identity, as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We welcome questions about conceptual topics in software development, such as software architecture and design concepts, algorithms and data structure design, the software development lifecycle, testing and QA, and freelancing &amp; business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][5]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][6].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][7]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][8]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][9] or [Is A better than B?][10] because we do not want questions that lead to chatty, open-ended discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][11] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][12]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][13]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][14]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][15] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][16] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Not be a coding problem][17]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;[Programmers][18] was created to be a site about non-code issues programmers face, while its sister site, [Stack Overflow][19], is for coding questions. To put it another way, [Programmers][20] is for when you're in front of a whiteboard working through higher-level conceptual programming issues, while [Stack Overflow][21] is for when you're in front of a compiler or editor working through code issues.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][22]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each of those bullet points should be a link that points to a [meta-faq][23] post containing more details on the subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop some of the confusion I see about our site scope, and reduce the number of upset users who asked a question which was in the &quot;on-topic&quot; list of the FAQ, but the question still got closed as off-topic. The scope of this site is really defined by the type of answers required, not the subject of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was a site created for programmers to get answers from other programmers about issues related to their career choice (or self identity) as a programmer. The scope was changed due to the deteriorating quality of questions being asked, however I think it has changed far beyond the original proposal, and the site has [gone downhill][24] since then. I believe we can still be the site this was meant to be, while maintaining SE quality guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE works best with communities, and I think a community called Programmers should be one about Programmers, not be only about one part of what Programmers do&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit: Alternative proposal**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[jcmeloni's answer below][25] made the suggestion to make this a new section in the [Programmers.SE FAQ][26] instead of replacing the existing section.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section would be like the [UX.SE's FAQ][27] section titled **What makes a good question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this proposal as well, so instead of changing the existing bullet-point list defining what is an on-topic question, what about simply adding a new section titled &quot;What makes a good question&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&lt;h2&gt;[What makes a good question?][28]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should elicit definitive answers or solutions rather than prolonged discussions. Remember, [this a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][29]. To participate in open-ended discussions on programming-related topics, please visit our [chat][30] instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by yourself][31]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay in one job too long][32].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][33]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a programmer?][34] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses. Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking a single answer][35] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][36]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][37]. We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][38]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][39]. Don't ask questions about [What  language/technology should I learn next?][40] or [Is A better than B?][41] because we do not want questions that lead to chatty, open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][42] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Not be a coding problem][43]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;[Programmers][44] was created to be a site about non-code issues programmers face, while its sister site, [Stack Overflow][45], is for coding questions. To put it another way, [Programmers][46] is for when you're in front of a whiteboard working through higher-level conceptual programming issues, while [Stack Overflow][47] is for when you're in front of a compiler or editor working through code issues.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][48]**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA; &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3319/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/171/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1646/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3136/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3319/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [32]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [33]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [34]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [35]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [36]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [37]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [38]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [39]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [40]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [41]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [42]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [43]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/171/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [44]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [45]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [46]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [47]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [48]: http://a.b" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9806" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="63ddb551-18a0-4602-b4a5-b767d3d5fc7d" CreationDate="2012-06-08T14:13:09.720" UserId="1130" Comment="added 212 characters in body" Text="This site is called **programmers**.stackexchange, while the FAQ states that this site is about &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since a large number of people never read the FAQ, or don't read it before posting, this means we have a community of people that think the site is about Programmers, but a team of moderators that try and maintain a site on &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This causes a large number of unhappy people who don't understand why their questions, or other questions they think are good, get closed, downvoted, etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my suggestion is to either rename the site to something that matches it's FAQ, like `softwaredevelopment.SE`, or change the FAQ so that this site is about Programmers, not software development only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I hate the suggestion of renaming the site. I want to participate in a site about programmers, not software development. But as long as the site is called one thing, and the FAQ states another, we're never going to be at peace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since I can't personally do anything about the site name, I have made a [meta proposal to update the FAQ so it matches the site name](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3318/1130)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit #2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since posting this, I have learned [the history behind the site scope change][2], and doubt SE will ever allow it to go back to simply being a Q&amp;A site for programmers to get answers from other programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So please, change the name of the site to something that better reflects the site's scope&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2131/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9807" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3679" RevisionGUID="c6b00d22-5abe-4ec1-a2b6-aeb85d5b4f4f" CreationDate="2012-06-08T14:21:19.913" UserId="25476" Text="Typically certain user actions may result in a temporary suspension of your account:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A trend of low quality questions and answers after the user has been shown how to write a question or answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other activities can also land a suspension or ban:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Repeated infractions against the rules of the site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A serious infraction Eg. Obvious spamming, threats, sock puppetting, etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly for the latter two we should have zero tolerance, but there is no clear rule about when a suspension is warranted for repeatedly bad content.  Sometimes we suspend after only two consecutive closed negative score questions depending on if they seemed to acknowledge our feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel three such instances of clearly poor content, with no improvement in quality and negative votes is more fair.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does the community agree or should we continue to take it on a case by case basis?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9808" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3679" RevisionGUID="c6b00d22-5abe-4ec1-a2b6-aeb85d5b4f4f" CreationDate="2012-06-08T14:21:19.913" UserId="25476" Text="Three-Strike moderation suspension policy" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9809" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3679" RevisionGUID="c6b00d22-5abe-4ec1-a2b6-aeb85d5b4f4f" CreationDate="2012-06-08T14:21:19.913" UserId="25476" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9810" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3680" RevisionGUID="1d80f714-1b14-46a3-bc2a-d8c3b9a9dd7e" CreationDate="2012-06-08T14:29:50.123" UserId="4" Text="I tend to look at time as a factor as well. It seems silly to suspend if a person asks two questions close in time to each other that both get closed (as an example). There needs to be some time involved for the person to realize they broke some guidelines and try to fix their actions. Otherwise, I think it would just scare off the users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, it might be a good idea to look at the types of closures. This is not only the reason for closure, but who closed it (5 community members or a moderator action) and how bad the questions/answers are (with respect to votes, usually). If there are some potentially borderline questions, it might not be a good idea to suspend (but perhaps send a moderator notice without a suspension). If all of the questions are pretty bad, then three is a good number.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally, it's case-by-case, but I think that three is a good number to start looking and determine a course of action, whether it's suspension or a mod message or nothing at all." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9811" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3681" RevisionGUID="28eb3544-faae-49e9-9ed8-2c822baefdef" CreationDate="2012-06-08T14:40:07.893" UserId="35414" Text="As a general soft guideline this is sort of okay, but this is the sort of thing I would never want to write in stone, as a mod on other sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As soon as you have a three strike rule, if you suspend someone you're likely to get endless arguments to the effect of &quot;what were my three strikes&quot;. This either leads to *constant* affirming of &quot;this is strike X&quot; which is either humiliating in public or excessive (usually) as private mod messages. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the end it creates more work, either through more &quot;paper trail&quot; accountability or through more explaining your every action as a moderator. IMO both of those are a good enough reason to avoid this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9812" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3682" RevisionGUID="bb394198-af96-4925-b380-bcd99d2dcd5b" CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:15:01.743" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; Sometimes we suspend after only two consecutive closed negative score questions depending on if they seemed to acknowledge our feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hm, no we don't. Mod messages may carry a suspension or be just warnings, and that's no immediately clear from, let's say, the list of recent mod messages. We typically go with a warning first, and suspend only if the behaviour is repeating. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The typical dance is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. A mod message warning for first offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Suspension for a week for second time offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Suspension for a month for third time offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 4. Suspension for a year or more for the absolutely nefarious ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course that may vary a bit per offence, and you're right, our &quot;policy&quot; is mostly a mixup of instinct, looking at past mod messages, TL chats. Generally I go for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Consistently low quality questions over time**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The most common abusive pattern, and the one where we've gone with the typical warning/suspension dance almost every time. I don't think there's need for a change in policy here, warn first, suspend if the behaviour persists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Question repetition**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is mostly a noob mistake, and I don't think it's worth a mod message, it's easily resolved with a comment (or two). I'd go for a suspension only if the user blatantly ignores the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Sockpuppet upvoting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Although I haven't had to deal with this one yet, I'd say it makes sense to skip the warning and suspend all participants. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Abusive to others**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Per case, and I'd prefer if there was some mod discussion before a warning or a suspension, this one almost always demands a second set of eyes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Revenge downvoting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The last time I mod messaged someone for revenge downvoting, I went for just a warning, and regretted it a week later when he did something else, equally suspension worthy (this time, I pulled the trigger). I wouldn't mind if we skip the warning for revenge downvoting in general and suspend on first offence, but I also wouldn't object to warn first timers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Self-destruction of own content**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Also a common noob mistake, that's rarely repeated. Warn, and only suspend if (s)he does it again. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Using signatures or taglines**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I'm only mentioning this one because there's a template for it. The time to edit out the signature or tagline is less than mod messaging the user...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Excessive self-promotion**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If the only contributions from the user is spam, destroy the account.&#xD;&#xA; - If there are non spam contributions, delete the spam ones and warn or suspend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Excessive discussion in comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  My favourite one. Warning the first time, and possibly the second time, not necessarily via a mod message, a comment on the post the discussion is going on _or_ a superping in chat would be enough (imho). For people who just won't shut up, and keep pestering others with borderline rude comments, a suspension should be considered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Something else...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Strictly per case, obviously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If an issue can be discussed publicly, a comment or a superping in chat is preferable and if not, there's always the option of a private chat, a completely tedious and cumbersome process that doesn't however leave a permanent black mark on the user's record, the way mod messages do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9813" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3682" RevisionGUID="ccb59701-48a7-48b1-b312-e903a6b95b68" CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:20:08.413" UserId="25936" Comment="added 37 characters in body" Text="&gt; Sometimes we suspend after only two consecutive closed negative score questions depending on if they seemed to acknowledge our feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hm, no we don't, unless I missed a memo or something. Mod messages may carry a suspension or be just warnings, and that's no immediately clear from, let's say, the list of recent mod messages. We typically go with a warning first, and suspend only if the behaviour is repeating. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The typical dance is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. A mod message warning for first offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Suspension for a week for second time offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Suspension for a month for third time offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 4. Suspension for a year or more for the absolutely nefarious ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course that may vary a bit per offence, and you're right, our &quot;policy&quot; is mostly a mixup of instinct, looking at past mod messages, TL chats. Generally I go for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Consistently low quality questions over time**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The most common abusive pattern, and the one where we've gone with the typical warning/suspension dance almost every time. I don't think there's need for a change in policy here, warn first, suspend if the behaviour persists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Question repetition**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is mostly a noob mistake, and I don't think it's worth a mod message, it's easily resolved with a comment (or two). I'd go for a suspension only if the user blatantly ignores the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Sockpuppet upvoting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Although I haven't had to deal with this one yet, I'd say it makes sense to skip the warning and suspend all participants. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Abusive to others**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Per case, and I'd prefer if there was some mod discussion before a warning or a suspension, this one almost always demands a second set of eyes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Revenge downvoting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The last time I mod messaged someone for revenge downvoting, I went for just a warning, and regretted it a week later when he did something else, equally suspension worthy (this time, I pulled the trigger). I wouldn't mind if we skip the warning for revenge downvoting in general and suspend on first offence, but I also wouldn't object to warn first timers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Self-destruction of own content**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Also a common noob mistake, that's rarely repeated. Warn, and only suspend if (s)he does it again. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Using signatures or taglines**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I'm only mentioning this one because there's a template for it. The time to edit out the signature or tagline is less than mod messaging the user...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Excessive self-promotion**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If the only contributions from the user is spam, destroy the account.&#xD;&#xA; - If there are non spam contributions, delete the spam ones and warn or suspend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Excessive discussion in comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  My favourite one. Warning the first time, and possibly the second time, not necessarily via a mod message, a comment on the post the discussion is going on _or_ a superping in chat would be enough (imho). For people who just won't shut up, and keep pestering others with borderline rude comments, a suspension should be considered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Something else...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Strictly per case, obviously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If an issue can be discussed publicly, a comment or a superping in chat is preferable and if not, there's always the option of a private chat, a completely tedious and cumbersome process that doesn't however leave a permanent black mark on the user's record, the way mod messages do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9814" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3682" RevisionGUID="f0722c7d-02e6-4b95-b709-7b4565f8ae29" CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:34:21.183" UserId="25936" Comment="added 617 characters in body" Text="&gt; Sometimes we suspend after only two consecutive closed negative score questions depending on if they seemed to acknowledge our feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hm, no we don't, unless I missed a memo or something. Mod messages may carry a suspension or be just warnings, and that's no immediately clear from, let's say, the [list of recent mod messages][1]. We typically go with a warning first, and suspend only if the behaviour is repeating. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The typical dance is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. A mod message warning for first offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Suspension for a week for second time offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Suspension for a month for third time offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 4. Suspension for a year or more for the absolutely nefarious ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course that may vary a bit per offence, and you're right, our &quot;policy&quot; is mostly a mixup of instinct, looking at past mod messages, TL chats. Generally I go for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Consistently low quality questions over time**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The most common abusive pattern, and the one where we've gone with the typical warning/suspension dance almost every time. I don't think there's need for a change in policy here, warn first, suspend if the behaviour persists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Question repetition**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is mostly a noob mistake, and I don't think it's worth a mod message, it's easily resolved with a comment (or two). I'd go for a suspension only if the user blatantly ignores the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Sockpuppet upvoting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Although I haven't had to deal with this one yet, I'd say it makes sense to skip the warning and suspend all participants. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Abusive to others**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Per case, and I'd prefer if there was some mod discussion before a warning or a suspension, this one almost always demands a second set of eyes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Revenge downvoting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The last time I mod messaged someone for revenge downvoting, I went for just a warning, and regretted it a week later when he did something else, equally suspension worthy (this time, I pulled the trigger). I wouldn't mind if we skip the warning for revenge downvoting in general and suspend on first offence, but I also wouldn't object to warn first timers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Self-destruction of own content**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Also a common noob mistake, that's rarely repeated. Warn, and only suspend if (s)he does it again. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Using signatures or taglines**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I'm only mentioning this one because there's a template for it. The time to edit out the signature or tagline is less than mod messaging the user...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Excessive self-promotion**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If the only contributions from the user is spam, destroy the account.&#xD;&#xA; - If there are non spam contributions, delete the spam ones and warn or suspend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Excessive discussion in comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  My favourite one. Warning the first time, and possibly the second time, not necessarily via a mod message, a comment on the post the discussion is going on _or_ a superping in chat would be enough (imho). For people who just won't shut up, and keep pestering others with borderline rude comments, a suspension should be considered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Something else...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Strictly per case, obviously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If an issue can be discussed publicly, a comment or a superping in chat is preferable and if not, there's always the option of a private chat, a completely tedious and cumbersome process that doesn't however leave a permanent black mark on the user's record, the way mod messages do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To clarify for non mods: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a few of your questions get closed / down voted, an automatic mod only flag is raised. The first time that happens, you may get a mod warning (or not), but a suspension is unwarranted (imho), unless of course the questions is of the &quot;[how is babby formed][2]&quot; variety.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; The second time the flag is raised you will be suspended for a short time (week or less) _or_ you may get by with a warning, if we forget to send it the first time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/admin/users&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080329181633AAdYPKu" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9815" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3682" RevisionGUID="f9d0eb75-018b-4b5e-9150-f1bba7b3c235" CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:40:29.440" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="&gt; Sometimes we suspend after only two consecutive closed negative score questions depending on if they seemed to acknowledge our feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hm, no we don't, unless I missed a memo or something. Mod messages may carry a suspension or be just warnings, and that's no immediately clear from, let's say, the [list of recent mod messages][1]. We typically go with a warning first, and suspend only if the behaviour is repeating. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The typical dance is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. A mod message warning for first offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Suspension for a week for second time offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Suspension for a month for third time offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 4. Suspension for a year or more for the absolutely nefarious ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course that may vary a bit per offence, and you're right, our &quot;policy&quot; is mostly a mixup of instinct, looking at past mod messages, TL chats. Generally I go for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Consistently low quality questions over time**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The most common abusive pattern, and the one where we've gone with the typical warning/suspension dance almost every time. I don't think there's need for a change in policy here, warn first, suspend if the behaviour persists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Question repetition**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is mostly a noob mistake, and I don't think it's worth a mod message, it's easily resolved with a comment (or two). I'd go for a suspension only if the user blatantly ignores the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Sockpuppet upvoting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Although I haven't had to deal with this one yet, I'd say it makes sense to skip the warning and suspend all participants. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Abusive to others**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Per case, and I'd prefer if there was some mod discussion before a warning or a suspension, this one almost always demands a second set of eyes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Revenge downvoting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The last time I mod messaged someone for revenge downvoting, I went for just a warning, and regretted it a week later when he did something else, equally suspension worthy (this time, I pulled the trigger). I wouldn't mind if we skip the warning for revenge downvoting in general and suspend on first offence, but I also wouldn't object to warn first timers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Self-destruction of own content**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Also a common noob mistake, that's rarely repeated. Warn, and only suspend if (s)he does it again. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Using signatures or taglines**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I'm only mentioning this one because there's a template for it. The time to edit out the signature or tagline is less than mod messaging the user...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Excessive self-promotion**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If the only contributions from the user is spam, destroy the account.&#xD;&#xA; - If there are non spam contributions, delete the spam ones and warn or suspend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Excessive discussion in comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  My favourite one. Warning the first time, and possibly the second time, not necessarily via a mod message, a comment on the post the discussion is going on _or_ a superping in chat would be enough (imho). For people who just won't shut up, and keep pestering others with borderline rude comments, a suspension should be considered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Something else...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Strictly per case, obviously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If an issue can be discussed publicly, a comment or a superping in chat is preferable and if not, there's always the option of a private chat, a completely tedious and cumbersome process that doesn't however leave a permanent black mark on the user's record, the way mod messages do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To clarify for non mods: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a few of your questions get closed / down voted, an automatic mod only flag is raised. The first time that happens, you may get a mod warning (or not), but a suspension is unwarranted (imho), unless of course the questions are of the [&quot;how is babby formed&quot;][2] variety.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second time the flag is raised you will be suspended for a short time (week or less) _or_ you may get by with a warning, if we forget to send it the first time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/admin/users&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080329181633AAdYPKu" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9816" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3682" RevisionGUID="4ffaac16-d2ec-4300-bbfa-156a113078dd" CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:45:30.930" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="&gt; Sometimes we suspend after only two consecutive closed negative score questions depending on if they seemed to acknowledge our feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hm, no we don't, unless I missed a memo or something. Mod messages may carry a suspension or be just warnings, and that's no immediately clear from, let's say, the [list of recent mod messages][1]. We typically go with a warning first, and suspend only if the behaviour is repeating. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The typical dance is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. A mod message warning for first offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Suspension for a week for second time offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Suspension for a month for third time offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 4. Suspension for a year or more for the absolutely nefarious ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course that may vary a bit per offence, and you're right, our &quot;policy&quot; is mostly a mixup of instinct, looking at past mod messages, TL chats. Generally I go for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Consistently low quality questions over time**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The most common abusive pattern, and the one where we've gone with the typical warning/suspension dance almost every time. I don't think there's need for a change in policy here, warn first, suspend if the behaviour persists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Question repetition**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is mostly a noob mistake, and I don't think it's worth a mod message, it's easily resolved with a comment (or two). I'd go for a suspension only if the user blatantly ignores the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Sockpuppet upvoting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Although I haven't had to deal with this one yet, I'd say it makes sense to skip the warning and suspend all participants. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Abusive to others**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Per case, and I'd prefer if there was some mod discussion before a warning or a suspension, this one almost always demands a second set of eyes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Revenge downvoting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The last time I mod messaged someone for revenge downvoting, I went for just a warning, and regretted it a week later when he did something else, equally suspension worthy (this time, I pulled the trigger). I wouldn't mind if we skip the warning for revenge downvoting in general and suspend on first offence, but I also wouldn't object to warn first timers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Self-destruction of own content**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Also a common noob mistake, that's rarely repeated. Warn, and only suspend if (s)he does it again. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Using signatures or taglines**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I'm only mentioning this one because there's a template for it. The time to edit out the signature or tagline is less than mod messaging the user...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Excessive self-promotion**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If the only contributions from the user is spam, destroy the account.&#xD;&#xA; - If there are non spam contributions, delete the spam ones and warn or suspend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Excessive discussion in comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  My favourite one. Warning the first time, and possibly the second time, not necessarily via a mod message, a comment on the post the discussion is going on _or_ a superping in chat would be enough (imho). For people who just won't shut up, and keep pestering others with borderline rude comments, a suspension should be considered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Something else...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Strictly per case, obviously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If an issue can be discussed publicly, a comment or a superping in chat is preferable and if not, there's always the option of a private chat, a completely tedious and cumbersome process that doesn't however leave a permanent black mark&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; on the user's record, the way mod messages do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Worth noting that SE takes the black mark thingy seriously, I got in trouble for suspending a fellow SE mod and a user who volunteered while testing a [rather obnoxious bug][2]. Apparently for science isn't a good reason for a suspension, even for a day.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To clarify for non mods: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a few of your questions get closed / down voted, an automatic mod only flag is raised. The first time that happens, you may get a mod warning (or not), but a suspension is unwarranted (imho), unless of course the questions are of the [&quot;how is babby formed&quot;][3] variety.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second time the flag is raised you will be suspended for a short time (week or less) _or_ you may get by with a warning, if we forget to send it the first time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/admin/users&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/133291/mod-message-header-notification-is-missing&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080329181633AAdYPKu" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9817" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3679" RevisionGUID="44c8da02-270a-40b4-ae00-4bf5b25072ab" CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:47:50.083" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags; edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderation|suspensions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9818" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3682" RevisionGUID="cdead01b-aceb-4c4b-8ea4-3184f8f01cea" CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:56:23.627" UserId="25936" Comment="added 146 characters in body" Text="&gt; Sometimes we suspend after only two consecutive closed negative score questions depending on if they seemed to acknowledge our feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hm, no we don't, unless I missed a memo or something. Mod messages may carry a suspension or be just warnings, and that's no immediately clear from, let's say, the [list of recent mod messages][1]. We typically go with a warning first, and suspend only if the behaviour is repeating. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The typical dance is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. A mod message warning for first offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Suspension for a week for second time offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Suspension for a month for third time offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 4. Suspension for a year or more for the absolutely nefarious ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course that may vary a bit per offence, and you're right, our &quot;policy&quot; is mostly a mixup of instinct, looking at past mod messages, TL chats. Generally I go for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Consistently low quality questions over time**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The most common abusive pattern, and the one where we've gone with the typical warning/suspension dance almost every time. I don't think there's need for a change in policy here, warn first, suspend if the behaviour persists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Question repetition**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is mostly a noob mistake, and I don't think it's worth a mod message, it's easily resolved with a comment (or two). I'd go for a suspension only if the user blatantly ignores the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Sockpuppet upvoting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Although I haven't had to deal with this one yet, I'd say it makes sense to skip the warning and suspend all participants. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Abusive to others**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Per case, and I'd prefer if there was some mod discussion before a warning or a suspension, this one almost always demands a second set of eyes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Revenge downvoting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The last time I mod messaged someone for revenge downvoting, I went for just a warning, and regretted it a week later when he did something else, equally suspension worthy (this time, I pulled the trigger). I wouldn't mind if we skip the warning for revenge downvoting in general and suspend on first offence, but I also wouldn't object to warn first timers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Self-destruction of own content**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Also a common noob mistake, that's rarely repeated. Warn, and only suspend if (s)he does it again. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Using signatures or taglines**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I'm only mentioning this one because there's a template for it. The time to edit out the signature or tagline is less than mod messaging the user...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Excessive self-promotion**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If the only contributions from the user is spam, destroy the account.&#xD;&#xA; - If there are non spam contributions, delete the spam ones and warn or suspend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Excessive discussion in comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  My favourite one. Warning the first time, and possibly the second time, not necessarily via a mod message, a comment on the post the discussion is going on _or_ a superping in chat would be enough (imho). For people who keep pestering others with borderline rude comments, a suspension should be considered even for first time offenders and especially if they've already ignored a comment by a mod asking them to calm down and be nice (which is what all of us go for at first).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Something else...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Strictly per case, obviously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If an issue can be discussed publicly, a comment or a superping in chat is preferable and if not, there's always the option of a private chat, a completely tedious and cumbersome process that doesn't however leave a permanent black mark&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; on the user's record, the way mod messages do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Worth noting that SE takes the black mark thingy seriously, I got in trouble for suspending a fellow SE mod and a user who volunteered while testing a [rather obnoxious bug][2]. Apparently for science isn't a good reason for a suspension, even for a day.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To clarify for non mods: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a few of your questions get closed / down voted, an automatic mod only flag is raised. The first time that happens, you may get a mod warning (or not), but a suspension is unwarranted (imho), unless of course the questions are of the [&quot;how is babby formed&quot;][3] variety.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second time the flag is raised you will be suspended for a short time (week or less) _or_ you may get by with a warning, if we forget to send it the first time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/admin/users&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/133291/mod-message-header-notification-is-missing&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080329181633AAdYPKu" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9819" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3674" RevisionGUID="adf1c7a0-cfe0-473f-a58d-ffdb4a625083" CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:56:50.443" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Are book recommendations on-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I asked this [question][1] and someone closed it. Why asking for books recommendation is OffTopic and be closed instead? I see a lot of books recommendation still open and receiving answers!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;WTF stackexchange???!!! Here is the list of example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150510/learning-to-build-real-time-web-applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150225/what-is-a-comprehensive-book-on-concurrent-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143553/what-are-good-books-for-learning-c11&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141060/book-to-get-started-with-mongodb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135762/learning-asynchronous-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135673/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-requirements-gathering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151899/i-need-books-for-procedural-programming" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9820" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3674" RevisionGUID="02ed002b-01d5-442c-bc70-12114ccc0314" CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:56:49.430" UserId="25936" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[2003],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="9821" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3683" RevisionGUID="7998debb-d83c-4f3b-b78e-785545a4deb3" CreationDate="2012-06-08T16:29:51.703" UserId="17485" Text="[This question][1] got me nostalgic about the days of built-in BASIC interpreters in home computers, and typing in programs from books (glory days!), then I remembered a series of books from my youth aimed at teaching BASIC to young kids. While I have a clear recollection of the content, I no longer remember titles or publisher. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would asking about this on P.SE be on topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23816/fiction-that-includes-basic-programs" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9822" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3683" RevisionGUID="7998debb-d83c-4f3b-b78e-785545a4deb3" CreationDate="2012-06-08T16:29:51.703" UserId="17485" Text="Would an &quot;Identify Book&quot; question be on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9823" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3683" RevisionGUID="7998debb-d83c-4f3b-b78e-785545a4deb3" CreationDate="2012-06-08T16:29:51.703" UserId="17485" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9824" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3684" RevisionGUID="bd6abf94-928d-44d5-8f55-a5175e602744" CreationDate="2012-06-08T16:30:25.460" UserId="34865" Text="Is there a central location where the various acronyms used on this site are defined?  I was reading a post today which referenced SOLID (which I recognized). It then used SRP (able to find searching wikipedia).  The rest of the post and several answers then contained:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - IoC&#xD;&#xA; - OP&#xD;&#xA; - KISS&#xD;&#xA; - CRC&#xD;&#xA; - ORM&#xD;&#xA; - DTO&#xD;&#xA; - DAO&#xD;&#xA; - IMO&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recognize some, can guess at others, and am completely lost on the rest." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9825" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3684" RevisionGUID="bd6abf94-928d-44d5-8f55-a5175e602744" CreationDate="2012-06-08T16:30:25.460" UserId="34865" Text="Acronyms and Slang" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9826" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3684" RevisionGUID="bd6abf94-928d-44d5-8f55-a5175e602744" CreationDate="2012-06-08T16:30:25.460" UserId="34865" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9827" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3685" RevisionGUID="0befa1f3-3de8-4383-a8b4-8a51c8e09741" CreationDate="2012-06-08T16:33:21.070" UserId="47" Text="No it wouldn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other sites that have had &quot;identify the X&quot; (where X is a game, book or whatever) have found that they don't work with the Stack Exchange question and answer model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They produce bad answers - which are basically guesses, and only really help the poster - which makes them incredibly localised.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, they're not *necessarily* bad questions - they might be a real problem you are facing, it's just that they really don't fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is probably the perfect place for such a question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9828" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3686" RevisionGUID="c14448ac-995e-4d02-906a-d87a75898479" CreationDate="2012-06-08T16:34:59.930" UserId="47" Text="No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I know there aren't any acronyms that are specific to Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have you tried http://acronymfinder.com?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9829" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3687" RevisionGUID="f0c2e07b-5761-4a57-8a52-d41653f0c31d" CreationDate="2012-06-08T16:45:06.433" UserId="25936" Text="Some of the acronyms are widely recognizable programming terms:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- IoC = Inversion of Control&#xD;&#xA;- KISS = Keep It Simple, Stupid!&#xD;&#xA;- CRC = Cyclic Redundancy Check&#xD;&#xA;- ORM = Object-Relational Mapping &#xD;&#xA;- DTO = Data Transfer Object (I'll admit, I looked this one up)&#xD;&#xA;- DAO = Data Access Object&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And you should easily find out what they mean with a simple web search or in a reference source, like Wikipedia. The other two acronyms are indeed internet slang:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- OP = Original Poster&#xD;&#xA;- IMO / IMHO = In My Opinion / In My Humble Opinion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those may not be as easy to find, but shouldn't be very hard either, and you can always post a comment asking what the acronym means. Some other acronyms you'll see often on Programmers are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- SE = Stack Exchange&#xD;&#xA;- PSE / P.SE / Prog.SE / ProgSE = Programmers &#xD;&#xA;- SO = Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;- SU = Super User&#xD;&#xA;- SF = Server Fault&#xD;&#xA;- NC = Not Constructive&#xD;&#xA;- NARQ = Not A Real Question&#xD;&#xA;- OT = Off Topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9830" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3686" RevisionGUID="c0056202-c839-4c8c-b076-3f2b84dba81b" CreationDate="2012-06-08T16:45:59.413" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I know there aren't many acronyms that are specific to Stack Exchange (apart from the obvious use of site initials - e.g. SO for Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have you tried http://acronymfinder.com?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if someone uses an acronym in a post that you're not familiar with leave them a comment asking them to explain what it means. There are far too many of these TLAs* for us all to remember them all and some have multiple meanings.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Three Letter Acronyms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9831" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3688" RevisionGUID="0f5c89ed-1060-440d-8b15-2f4f8a997d03" CreationDate="2012-06-08T17:13:06.513" UserId="4" Text="I'd suggest that if you see an acronym that you don't understand, you should leave a comment asking for someone to edit it into the post. If you also see an acronym that you do understand but isn't defined previously in the post, I would recommend editing it in so that it's defined for people who might not recognize it. Not only will this make it easier to read the questions, but also help other people find relevant questions when searching." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9832" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3659" RevisionGUID="c23f17d4-c98e-4753-9473-29188349b09d" CreationDate="2012-06-09T04:07:36.320" UserId="34364" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body" Text="Unfortunately didn't notice there was a contest until I noticed this thread.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe a more prominent in the right-hand menu could have helped. If the target audience was new users, then maybe have a custom banner warn them during their first visits, or ads on external sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even as a normal user, while I usually do strongly mind &quot;unusual&quot; and unrequested deviations of notification systems, I wouldn't have minded too much to get an extra banner showing up at the top of the page like the ones warning of newly earned badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm late to the party, but were there any features to allow the contest to be broadcasted/shared to others?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9833" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3119" RevisionGUID="b360c863-a743-449d-a94d-52ed95dd01c8" CreationDate="2012-06-09T08:41:11.350" UserId="25936" Comment="added 728 characters in body" Text="Voting is, and it should be, anonymous. That includes the fact that you voted, not just who you voted for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think of all the snarky comments after the election: &quot;But you didn't even voted, what makes you think your opinion matters in _random Meta issue_&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People should vote because they care for the site, not the election process itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange just introduced two [election participation badges][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The Caucus Badge is awarded for visiting the election page. This is important at every stage of the process, as even during the nomination phase comment discussions helps to flesh out the nominations. If you can’t vote, you can at least make your voice heard. This is a bronze badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The Constituent Badge is awarded for voting - at least once - in the final phase of the election. Recognizing the importance of the action it rewards, this is a silver badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can't say I like it much, but I just got 7 new shiny badges, so I won't complain ;) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/06/election-participation-badges/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9834" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3117" RevisionGUID="1702b537-2817-4449-8acb-79b5af31ffb1" CreationDate="2012-06-09T08:41:22.427" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|badges|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9835" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3687" RevisionGUID="32e7aa8e-4fac-4abf-a146-de6f4c9f788b" CreationDate="2012-06-11T11:39:24.103" UserId="25936" Comment="added 158 characters in body" Text="Some of the acronyms are widely recognizable programming terms:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- IoC = Inversion of Control&#xD;&#xA;- KISS = Keep It Simple, Stupid!&#xD;&#xA;- CRC = Cyclic Redundancy Check&#xD;&#xA;- ORM = Object-Relational Mapping &#xD;&#xA;- DTO = Data Transfer Object (I'll admit, I looked this one up)&#xD;&#xA;- DAO = Data Access Object&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And you should easily find out what they mean with a simple web search or in a reference source, like Wikipedia. The other two acronyms are indeed internet slang:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- OP = Original Poster&#xD;&#xA;- IMO / IMHO = In My Opinion / In My Humble Opinion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those may not be as easy to find, but shouldn't be very hard either, and you can always post a comment asking what the acronym means. Some other acronyms you'll see often on Programmers are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- SE = Stack Exchange&#xD;&#xA;- PSE / P.SE / Prog.SE / ProgSE = Programmers &#xD;&#xA;- SO = Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;- SU = Super User&#xD;&#xA;- SF = Server Fault&#xD;&#xA;- NC = Not Constructive&#xD;&#xA;- NARQ = Not A Real Question&#xD;&#xA;- OT = Off Topic&#xD;&#xA;- FAQ = Frequently Asked Questions&#xD;&#xA;- TL;DR = Too Long; Didn't Read&#xD;&#xA;- IANAL = I Am Not A Lawyer&#xD;&#xA;- IIRC = If I Recall Correctly&#xD;&#xA;- AFAIK = As Far As I Know&#xD;&#xA;- HTH = Hope That Helps" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9836" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3689" RevisionGUID="5ae8db32-e96c-4d4c-8781-1e9871b29b07" CreationDate="2012-06-11T18:25:09.150" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="As a participant, I would encourage sticking with a case-by-case basis.  Based upon the other answers / comments, the moderators are more or less of the same light-handed approach to moderation.  (I think Ben Brocka has an excellent soliloquy on the matter, but I'm too lazy to look up the link, sorry.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, there is the risk that an otherwise average user will unnecessarily earn / receive a banning from a mod on a bad day.  I would rather risk that potential abuse than see recurring delinquency caused by someone deserving an immediate ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Presumably, other mods can see when a user is banned so there is a degree of transparency within the mod group.  IMO, the mod group can still be accountable and fair by being transparent within itself but not necessarily to the user base as a whole.  Goma is evidence that some folk have nothing better to do than cause problems for P.SE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9837" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3690" RevisionGUID="4f40876e-05a1-4f9b-86cf-b8a4ef755ef9" CreationDate="2012-06-12T15:45:15.037" UserId="11732" Text="Suddenly I'm getting '99 notifications', though only 4 are shown, 3 of these stale.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot as of 11:40 EST][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was only seen  on programmers.SO; other sites show no new notifications, as they should.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was a freshly opened tab, not an auto-updated previously open one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/sO0Uf.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9838" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3690" RevisionGUID="4f40876e-05a1-4f9b-86cf-b8a4ef755ef9" CreationDate="2012-06-12T15:45:15.037" UserId="11732" Text="99 notifications?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9839" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3690" RevisionGUID="4f40876e-05a1-4f9b-86cf-b8a4ef755ef9" CreationDate="2012-06-12T15:45:15.037" UserId="11732" Text="|bug|notifications|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9840" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3690" RevisionGUID="97ebccf7-66e4-4d5e-ad31-9cc387f9425c" CreationDate="2012-06-12T21:05:54.583" UserId="226" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:226,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Anna Lear&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="9841" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3690" RevisionGUID="f7b46b9c-cb83-4928-b6f1-ac716934370b" CreationDate="2012-06-12T21:06:01.010" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|notifications|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9842" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3691" RevisionGUID="576ae4ab-bebc-4f23-b87d-880edb4de121" CreationDate="2012-06-12T21:11:51.813" UserId="226" Text="I strongly recommend handling these on a case-by-case basis. There are many gray areas here and establishing a black &amp; white policy seems difficult at best. If a mod ever makes a mistake, another mod (or even themselves) can always undo the suspension and there's no harm done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to that, we (the community team) will notice if there are suddenly too many suspensions for frivolous reasons coming in from a site. Rest assured we'll come knocking on your door if that happens here. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9843" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3686" RevisionGUID="d78fff66-74be-44d7-9d5e-8679dce2abef" CreationDate="2012-06-13T14:48:08.000" UserId="47" Comment="added link" Text="&lt;strike&gt;No.&lt;/strike&gt; Apparently there is on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/40353/stack-overflow-glossary-dictionary-of-commonly-used-terms)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I know there aren't many acronyms that are specific to Stack Exchange (apart from the obvious use of site initials - e.g. SO for Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have you tried http://acronymfinder.com?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if someone uses an acronym in a post that you're not familiar with leave them a comment asking them to explain what it means. There are far too many of these TLAs* for us all to remember them all and some have multiple meanings.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Three Letter Acronyms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9844" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="3692" RevisionGUID="342d87f3-762d-4e28-bbd5-65dec11c28ca" CreationDate="2012-06-13T20:26:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/152786/stackoverflow-filler-to-make-title-15-chars-long" Text="" />
  <row Id="9845" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="3693" RevisionGUID="4f6ce597-5571-487f-b9f4-f1b794a47c9c" CreationDate="2012-06-13T20:26:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/152786/stackoverflow-filler-to-make-title-15-chars-long/152787#152787" Text="" />
  <row Id="9846" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3693" RevisionGUID="a4a519c7-b8c0-4db4-b644-2c77a8c80acf" CreationDate="2012-06-13T20:25:59.797" UserId="3631" Text="Because: it's a companion site also managed by StackExchange, but with a different purpose, as evidenced by the [FAQ][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9847" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3692" RevisionGUID="5fde9827-b8ec-4444-9cb6-54c9e2a21c48" CreationDate="2012-06-13T20:21:59.800" UserDisplayName="user56735" Text="Why does this site look exactly like stackoverflow.com.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore why does this site not validate fields before it does human verification with the image. This took 15 mins to get posted when it should have taken 2 minutes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9848" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3692" RevisionGUID="5fde9827-b8ec-4444-9cb6-54c9e2a21c48" CreationDate="2012-06-13T20:21:59.800" UserDisplayName="user56735" Text="stackoverflow [filler to make title 15 chars long]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9849" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3692" RevisionGUID="5fde9827-b8ec-4444-9cb6-54c9e2a21c48" CreationDate="2012-06-13T20:21:59.800" UserDisplayName="user56735" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9850" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3692" RevisionGUID="b7013325-f75d-43f5-b144-6e4397b60f56" CreationDate="2012-06-13T20:27:15.587" UserId="226" Comment="edited body; edited title" Text="Why does this site look exactly like stackoverflow.com?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore why does this site not validate fields before it does human verification with the image. This took 15 mins to get posted when it should have taken 2 minutes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9851" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3692" RevisionGUID="b7013325-f75d-43f5-b144-6e4397b60f56" CreationDate="2012-06-13T20:27:15.587" UserId="226" Comment="edited body; edited title" Text="Why does this site look like Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9852" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3693" RevisionGUID="fd5763d9-d32e-4d6f-8df7-12c347136480" CreationDate="2012-06-13T20:31:48.900" UserId="3631" Comment="added 387 characters in body" Text="Because it's a companion site to [StackOverflow][1], but with a different purpose, as evidenced by the [FAQ][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both are managed by [StackExchange][3], like many other sites, which are hosted under their own top-level domain (like [MathOverflow][4]) or a sub-domain of `stackexchange.com`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See [the list of all sites on the StackExchange network][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, new sites appear regularly spawned by the [StackExchange Area 51][6] based on community involvement, and may then undergo a &quot;beta&quot; period to be live-tested until they become a site of their own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.stackexchangecom/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.mathoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackexchange.com/sites&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9853" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3694" RevisionGUID="738b52a0-6448-4dbd-bb33-7551c41fac3e" CreationDate="2012-06-13T20:32:29.070" UserId="25936" Text="Programmers Stack Exchange is one of the 84 (currently) Q&amp;A sites of the Stack Exchange network, that includes Stack Overflow. You can find more details about Stack Exchange at [stackexchange.com](http://stackexchange.com/) and more specifically: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [About Stack Exchange][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [List of all Stack Exchange sites][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are interested in finding out what Programmers is about, you should read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Our [about page][3], &#xD;&#xA;- Our [FAQ][4], and &#xD;&#xA;- Our frequently asked Meta questions, assembled in this [index][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the &quot;human verification&quot; thingy, it pop ups occasionally (and it's a bit annoying!), but it pops up less frequently if you register for an account. If you already have a Stack Overflow account, you can use the same credentials for Programmers, and your two accounts will be automatically linked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#answers&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1647/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9854" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3692" RevisionGUID="54fe5965-cb2d-4778-90a6-6ccad5b1fafb" CreationDate="2012-06-13T21:08:36.860" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9855" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3695" RevisionGUID="827c3526-e420-44b4-8b19-af9feb5fecd3" CreationDate="2012-06-14T14:27:10.167" UserId="6393" Text="A couple years ago, I wrote an answer to a question that appears to have been deleted. I was just thinking that I wanted to write a blog post based on that answer, and I'd rather not have to rewrite it from scratch.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does the answer still live somewhere? Is it recoverable? If not, should I start keeping external copies of my answers for archive?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9856" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3695" RevisionGUID="827c3526-e420-44b4-8b19-af9feb5fecd3" CreationDate="2012-06-14T14:27:10.167" UserId="6393" Text="Is it possible to retrieve an answer to a deleted question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9857" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3695" RevisionGUID="827c3526-e420-44b4-8b19-af9feb5fecd3" CreationDate="2012-06-14T14:27:10.167" UserId="6393" Text="|support|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9858" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3696" RevisionGUID="d7bede0f-ce1f-4966-9b5e-49eb452c7196" CreationDate="2012-06-14T14:33:13.333" UserId="47" Text="Except in *very* rare circumstances nothing is truly deleted from database.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If an answer you post is deleted (but the question remains) you'll always be able to see it when you revisit the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you get 10,000 reputation you'll be able to see deleted answers on the questions you visit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will never be able to see deleted questions unless you have the link, and you'll never see deleted posts in your profile unless you are a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You might be able to see deleted posts if their deletion removed reputation - go to the &quot;reputation -&gt; posts&quot; tab on your profile and enable the &quot;Show removed posts&quot; option. You'll then have to scan the list to see if you can spot the missing answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you think you might ever need to use something you post on Stack Exchange it might be worth keeping a bookmark to the post *outside* of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If all that doesn't work give us a clue to which question it was and I'm sure one of us moderators will either post a link or post the text :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9859" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3696" RevisionGUID="29a85da7-3963-4ab4-85d7-b8f922e9e22a" CreationDate="2012-06-14T14:47:53.637" UserId="47" Comment="correction" Text="Except in *very* rare circumstances nothing is truly deleted from database.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If an answer you post is deleted (but the question remains) you'll always be able to see it when you revisit the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you get 10,000 reputation you'll be able to see deleted answers on the questions you visit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will never be able to see deleted questions even if you have the link, and you'll never see deleted posts in your profile unless you are a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You might be able to see deleted posts if their deletion removed reputation - go to the &quot;reputation -&gt; posts&quot; tab on your profile and enable the &quot;Show removed posts&quot; option. You'll then have to scan the list to see if you can spot the missing answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you think you might ever need to use something you post on Stack Exchange it might be worth keeping a bookmark to the post *outside* of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If all that doesn't work give us a clue to which question it was and I'm sure one of us moderators will either post a link or post the text :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9860" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3697" RevisionGUID="efcdbff7-7364-4b3c-ad17-d3edf9a79804" CreationDate="2012-06-14T14:51:37.173" UserId="47" Text="Your answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As a salaried employee, I refuse to work more than 40 hours per week unless there is a very exceptional circumstance to account for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Whether employers like it or not, my annual salary translates to a dollar-per-hour figure for me, and I am not interested in diluting my income to help out with their poor planning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also, my life -- which includes a wife and three kids -- is far, far more important than putting more dollars in their pockets, especially when it is at the expense of my own pocket.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Interesting. What's your role? – JBRWilkinson Oct 26 '10 at 17:52&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am a Senior Software Engineer. I perform major customization of and create new functionality for a Windows Desktop application that is used by state governments. I have had many jobs in many companies in two states (two of the most significant ones for technology), and since I was 30 years old, I have refused to work overtime as a usual practice. Software engineering is not indentured servitude. – Adam Crossland Oct 26 '10 at 17:59&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Adam: Playing devil's advocate for a second. It's not indentured servitude, but it is a job. Since it's salaried, you've presumably signed papers exempting yourself from labor laws that entitle you to overtime and the like. Just like you can refuse overtime, they can demand it. I have no reason to assume that you're anything but top-notch, but I wouldn't want to be searching for a job in this market if I played chicken and flinched first. Unemployment tends to bleed over into one's life a little bit, no? – John Oct 26 '10 at 21:26&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.&quot; I have been on both sides of this one, and have pulled the monster hours on occasion. I think there is a bit of an escape valve in Adam's statement that in certain circumstances he will go more than the standard forty hours. I have asked people to do so when we've hit unexpected issues but I strove to make it an unusual experience. I have also been at places that expected me to pull 50+ hours as a mater of course. There is a balance to be struck, I believe, as much by management as by the developer. – Todd Williamson Oct 26 '10 at 21:47&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't &quot;refuse&quot; to work longer - I just found a company that doesn't push me to (in Aus). Sometimes if I'm really into the work I'll do an extra ~5hrs/week. Sometimes I remote in from home because there's something in my head I have to get out. But that's my choice – Ben Hughes Oct 26 '10 at 22:10&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As @Todd noted, I did say that I will work overtime as an exceptional circumstance. If there is an emergency of some kind, even if it was caused by some act of blatant incompetence on someone else's part, I will pitch in to get the problem solved. However, if crunch-time is the norm rather than the exception, i will have no part of it. And I'll be glad to move on. – Adam Crossland Oct 26 '10 at 22:55&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; +1 - A number of employers will be happy to take in your extra hours at no cost to them, but will make sure to meticulously take any of your extra days off out of your vacation days. Sheesh. – Jas Oct 27 '10 at 0:09&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @John, when you entered the job you and the employer agreed to 40 hours a week. Shouldn't that be the norm then? – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Oct 27 '10 at 6:09&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @John at CashCommons, if you're THAT far away from the 40-hour week that you think it's do-or-die on the overtime, then... don't stop cold turkey. Scale management back little by little. Management has MANY objectives and some of them are conflicting. Your objectives are quite straightforward: to start working less hours, and to continue kicking ass at your job. Try skipping ONE session of overtime with NO excuse (&quot;I have to get home, unfortunately,&quot; for instance) per week. When they're ready (when it's become normal), give 'em more (I mean, less :)) Don't convince others to do this, though! – Yar Oct 27 '10 at 6:42&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @John, you don't have to sign papers. Federal law says that in the absense of a union contract to the contrary, programmers/software developers are de jure exempt from overtime: codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/29/8/213 (see A 17). – Tangurena Oct 27 '10 at 17:56&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; +1. I'm on contract, max 40 hours per week chargeable. That's all I do. If they want me to work longer hours, fine - but if they ever started doing that on a regular basis, they're very likely to find that I don't renew the contract. – Jeffrey Kemp Oct 28 '10 at 1:51&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It seems to be a thing that happens as you get a little older- you realise that there is a lot more important stuff to life than your job and that the more time you spend at work the less time you have for the important things. My contract has a number of hours on it. My aim is to honour that absolutely, but not to go beyond it so if I spend more over a few weeks I'll cut back a little subsequently. The important things are that the work gets done and that life gets enjoyed. – glenatron Oct 28 '10 at 9:59&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; +1 - I have more or less the same opinion. I even stated it during my job interviews. I am gainfully employed. It has been suggested many times that the team I work should be working overtime (uncompensated of course...) as the norm and each it it is more or less laughed at. With that said, I average 40-45 hours a week. I will do what it takes to make sure the company I work for benefits from my employment but at the same time work is NOT my life. :) – Tony Oct 28 '10 at 12:13&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a few more, but they really are noise." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9865" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3695" RevisionGUID="8f670ef2-910d-490b-a979-8922deb0cfde" CreationDate="2012-06-14T20:01:14.863" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9866" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3699" RevisionGUID="76c49ca6-8d7a-4478-a104-41514cbc2d5a" CreationDate="2012-06-15T15:18:34.577" UserId="1093" Text="I know it's not really a choice in the offtopic while it's in Beta, but could we have a way to specify that we want it to go there (maybe one that is dependant on reputation, only people who have over 10000 rep can see beta sites or a comment block for where else it should go). Yeah right now we can put it comments, but not everyone knows to do that as not everyone even knows about the Beta and weeding through all the comments to see if anyone mentioned where tehy thought it would go when it is easier to specify in the close requests seems a waste of voluteer moderators time. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9867" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3699" RevisionGUID="76c49ca6-8d7a-4478-a104-41514cbc2d5a" CreationDate="2012-06-15T15:18:34.577" UserId="1093" Text="Closing questions that should go to Workplace" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9868" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3699" RevisionGUID="76c49ca6-8d7a-4478-a104-41514cbc2d5a" CreationDate="2012-06-15T15:18:34.577" UserId="1093" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9869" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3700" RevisionGUID="e63e6597-b078-4e53-ae78-6737ff71c134" CreationDate="2012-06-15T15:20:13.123" UserId="47" Text="Flag it for moderator attention - but still vote to close as &quot;off topic&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We'll double check with The Workplace mods and if they agree we can migrate it. If not we'll simply close as Off Topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9870" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3700" RevisionGUID="8a11021a-2139-4062-b67d-238bc57841ec" CreationDate="2012-06-15T15:31:25.693" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="Flag it for moderator attention - but still vote to close as &quot;off topic&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We'll double check with The Workplace mods and if they agree we can migrate it. If not we'll simply close as Off Topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has to be the policy for beta sites as there is always the chance that the beta site might be closed down." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9871" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3699" RevisionGUID="7fbdf633-9a8b-441e-afb0-f8fa1378e526" CreationDate="2012-06-15T15:44:28.963" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9872" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3701" RevisionGUID="0897cf5e-d41e-45f6-a685-c1c1e545707d" CreationDate="2012-06-15T16:20:52.133" UserId="25936" Text="**Migrating to beta sites and sites that are not in our migration target list**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Showing the full list of sites in the off topic dialog has been asked for a ton of times, and has been declined each time. I don't think any &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; maybe one that is dependant on reputation, only people who have over 10000 rep can see beta sites or a comment block for where else it should go&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, no, unless you mean reputation on the target site. We've suffered enough from bad migrations from Stack Overflow to know that reputation on the source site says absolutely nothing about whether a question belongs on the target site or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Migration comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are an extremely bad habit, and I really (really) dislike them. The typical dance is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. A question that includes the word &quot;career&quot; is closed, or is gathering down / close votes fast.&#xD;&#xA; 1. An (un)helpful commenter posts something like &quot;this belongs on the Workplace&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; 1. OP, being new and having no idea we can migrate, posts on the Workplace. &#xD;&#xA; 1. The question is closed on the Workplace as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same dance happens for OnStartups, for questions that include the word &quot;business&quot;. Cross posting is not something we like very much, but the important thing here is that the OP has been rejected by two sites. If getting your question closed in one site sucks, imagine how much it stinks when it happens twice in a day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main issue here is that people feel they are being nice by proposing an alternative, and they are, however migration is _not_ an alternative to closing poor questions that don't belong on Stack Exchange in general. What annoys me the most is that 99% of the times I see a migration comment from a high(ish) rep member, they haven't taken the time to bring the question to shape, even if just by fixing obvious spelling / grammar mistakes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously this doesn't apply to you, comments like [this one][1]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://workplace.stackexchange.com/ is a better fit for most work questions, but I'm not sure this is really a work question. I think it is a very poor idea to get a Masters immediately after you graduate. Get a few years of work experience first. I would not hire someone with a masters and no professional work experience over someone with a BA or BS for an entry level job because they expect more money and still only have entry level skills. And wanting what pays best and is easiest is a conflict, the hard stuff pays best. -  HLGEM 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;are exactly what a migration comment should be like. Thanks for taking the time to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Point to the workplace, but also pointing out that the question might not fit there.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Provide a mini answer to the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do we migrate to the Workplace, then?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll answer the same way [I've answered for Programmers][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Flag for moderation attention, or&#xD;&#xA;1. Drop the questions in the [Water Cooler][3], the Workplace's main chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both options involve the Workplace community having a say in whether the question belongs on their site or not, and that's a good thing, and far better than a random migration comment, that more often than not is more obnoxious than useful. I realize you are part of the Workplace community, and currently the top user by reputation there, however you can't decide on your own if the question should or should be not migrated. Lacking an option for users to vote to migrate to the Workplace, flagging or visiting the Water Cooler are what's left, and are good enough solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`&lt;/rant&gt;`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/153085/master-degree-in-software-engineering-vs-game-development-vs-web-development#comment291063_153085&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/135239/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9873" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3701" RevisionGUID="5ae238e3-d608-4cc8-8d5f-2b5a1ed303dd" CreationDate="2012-06-15T16:26:07.710" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 18 characters in body" Text="**Migrating to beta sites and sites that are not in our migration target list**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Showing the full list of sites in the off topic dialog has been asked for a ton of times, and has been declined each time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; maybe one that is dependant on reputation, only people who have over 10000 rep can see beta sites or a comment block for where else it should go&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, no, unless you mean reputation on the target site. We've suffered enough from bad migrations from Stack Overflow to know that reputation on the source site says absolutely nothing about whether a question belongs on the target site or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Migration comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are an extremely bad habit, and I really (really) dislike them. The typical dance is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. A question that includes the word &quot;career&quot; is closed, or is gathering down / close votes fast.&#xD;&#xA; 1. An (un)helpful commenter posts something like &quot;this belongs on the Workplace&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; 1. OP, being new and having no idea we can migrate, posts on the Workplace. &#xD;&#xA; 1. The question is closed on the Workplace as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same dance happens for OnStartups, for questions that include the word &quot;business&quot;. Cross posting is not something we like very much, but the important thing here is that the OP has been rejected by two sites. If getting your question closed in one site sucks, imagine how much it stinks when it happens twice in a day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main issue here is that people feel they are being nice by proposing an alternative, and they are, however migration is _not_ an alternative to closing poor questions that don't belong on Stack Exchange in general. What annoys me the most is that 99% of the times I see a migration comment from a high(ish) rep member, they haven't taken the time to bring the question to shape, even if just by fixing obvious spelling / grammar mistakes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously this doesn't apply to you, comments like [this one][1]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://workplace.stackexchange.com/ is a better fit for most work questions, but I'm not sure this is really a work question. I think it is a very poor idea to get a Masters immediately after you graduate. Get a few years of work experience first. I would not hire someone with a masters and no professional work experience over someone with a BA or BS for an entry level job because they expect more money and still only have entry level skills. And wanting what pays best and is easiest is a conflict, the hard stuff pays best. -  HLGEM 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;are exactly what a migration comment should be like. Thanks for taking the time to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Point to the workplace, but also pointing out that the question might not fit there.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Provide a mini answer to the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do we migrate to the Workplace, then?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll answer the same way [I've answered for Programmers][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Flag for moderation attention, or&#xD;&#xA;1. Drop the questions in the [Water Cooler][3], the Workplace's main chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both options involve the Workplace community having a say in whether the question belongs on their site or not, and that's a good thing, and far better than a random migration comment, that more often than not is more obnoxious than useful. I realize you are part of the Workplace community, and currently the top user by reputation there, however you can't decide on your own if the question should or should be not migrated. Lacking an option for users to vote to migrate to the Workplace, flagging or visiting the Water Cooler are what's left, and are good enough solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`&lt;/rant&gt;`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/153085/master-degree-in-software-engineering-vs-game-development-vs-web-development#comment291063_153085&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/135239/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9874" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3702" RevisionGUID="5862e335-d717-4f21-8b0a-6e7b50dd265d" CreationDate="2012-06-15T18:29:26.580" UserId="41381" Text="Migrating to beta sites in general should not have any streamlined process, precisely because the site is in beta. Each site needs to prove that it can create and mange an active community without injecting large quantities of questions from other sites, once they become a live site its  completely different. If beta sites aren't somewhat regulated in migrations there is a greater chance they become dumping grounds for live sites and that doesn't end well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9875" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3702" RevisionGUID="53c4d5e3-01c3-4675-9043-c0e62e05d7b5" CreationDate="2012-06-15T18:31:08.140" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="Migrating to beta sites in general should not have any streamlined process, precisely because the site is in beta. Each site needs to prove that it can create and manage an active community without injecting large quantities of questions from other sites, once they become a live site it's completely different. If beta sites aren't somewhat regulated in migrations there is a greater chance they become dumping grounds for live sites and that doesn't end well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9876" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3703" RevisionGUID="9788b52c-ccd1-4fb4-98dc-ea05deccb94c" CreationDate="2012-06-16T17:35:15.973" UserId="37315" Text="When I go to my user page at stackexchange.com, it says I have 16 accounts. I know all Meta sites share the reputation with their main site, except SO, but considering the badges are NOT shared, why doesn't it show up as a separate account?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It makes it hard for people to see if I am active in Metas other than SO's and from my perspective, its misleading. If the Stack Exchange site is only going to show my Programmers account, then it needs to show my Meta Programmers' badges as well. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9877" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3703" RevisionGUID="9788b52c-ccd1-4fb4-98dc-ea05deccb94c" CreationDate="2012-06-16T17:35:15.973" UserId="37315" Text="Meta Programmers not listed under my Stack Exchange accounts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9878" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3703" RevisionGUID="9788b52c-ccd1-4fb4-98dc-ea05deccb94c" CreationDate="2012-06-16T17:35:15.973" UserId="37315" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9879" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3703" RevisionGUID="98842044-f5b4-4614-8879-60508d2237e4" CreationDate="2012-06-16T17:42:06.880" UserId="37315" Comment="added 27 characters in body" Text="When I go to my user page at stackexchange.com, it says I have 16 accounts, omitting Meta Programmers. I know all Meta sites share the reputation with their main site, except SO, but considering the badges are NOT shared, why doesn't it show up as a separate account?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It makes it hard for people to see if I am active in Metas other than SO's and from my perspective, its misleading. If the Stack Exchange site is only going to show my Programmers account, then it needs to show my Meta Programmers' badges as well. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9880" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3703" RevisionGUID="67f35fc2-81fa-4f68-aca9-35cffc30a3a0" CreationDate="2012-06-16T17:52:00.203" UserId="37315" Comment="added 9 characters in body" Text="When I go to my user page at stackexchange.com, it says I have 16 accounts, but does not list Meta Programmers. I know all Meta sites share the reputation with their main site, except SO, but considering the badges are NOT shared, why doesn't it show up as a separate account?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It makes it hard for people to see if I am active in Metas other than SO's and from my perspective, its misleading. If the Stack Exchange site is only going to show my Programmers account, then it needs to show my Meta Programmers' badges as well. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9881" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3703" RevisionGUID="4a669407-0ef9-4a02-af6a-6b04ce60344f" CreationDate="2012-06-16T17:58:48.553" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9882" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3704" RevisionGUID="56fa2c8e-59fd-4212-b4a5-f688ca26573c" CreationDate="2012-06-16T18:00:08.210" UserId="25936" Text="This is [meta-tag:status-bydesign], Meta Stack Overflow is the only Meta listed in the network profile, and that's because it's a bit special. Per site Metas are considered an extension of the main site, and your per site Meta accounts an extension of your site account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know how useful it would be to list per site Metas in the network profile, your Meta participation is interesting only to the specific community, and your Meta account is linked to from your [main account][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/37315/austin-henley" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9883" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="85e8eaf1-67dd-4c68-9b46-a08bf97b1825" CreationDate="2012-06-18T14:34:26.293" UserId="1130" Comment="Changing this to a feature-request due to the large number of up-votes (one of the top-voted questions on P.SE meta)" Text="|feature-request|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9884" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="85e8eaf1-67dd-4c68-9b46-a08bf97b1825" CreationDate="2012-06-18T14:34:26.293" UserId="1130" Comment="Changing this to a feature-request due to the large number of up-votes (one of the top-voted questions on P.SE meta)" Text="Rename the site to match its FAQ or change the FAQ to match the site name?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9885" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3705" RevisionGUID="de70cf10-c428-4f65-9641-fac414346f5c" CreationDate="2012-06-18T17:58:16.417" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="[Open Source related question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/153311/53019)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is the linked question an appropriate question for P.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In it's current / original form, I think it's partially there since it relates to business decisions and software licensing.  OTOH, the question is a shade too close to a rant." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9886" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3705" RevisionGUID="de70cf10-c428-4f65-9641-fac414346f5c" CreationDate="2012-06-18T17:58:16.417" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Is this linked Q an appropriate question for P.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9887" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3705" RevisionGUID="de70cf10-c428-4f65-9641-fac414346f5c" CreationDate="2012-06-18T17:58:16.417" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9888" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3706" RevisionGUID="75f5001a-d843-4f0f-a2fb-2ab18e1e6b34" CreationDate="2012-06-18T19:55:26.483" UserId="1130" Text="I think it is on-topic, however needs to be cleaned up to reduce the big wall of text and to stop it from being too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The basis of the question seems to be &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We think it would be a great idea to release some of our lesser-used&#xD;&#xA;&gt; products as open-source because of A, B, and C. What are the downsides &#xD;&#xA;&gt; of doing something like this?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9889" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3707" RevisionGUID="1582d02b-c120-4d57-9a36-0dc4117e5a58" CreationDate="2012-06-18T21:14:25.803" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="No, it's not on-topic and it should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The wall of text is a treatise on the asker's own thoughts about the topic, and doesn't actually ask about any specific problem the author is personally having. Rather than creating an answerable question, it creates a prompt for discussion: as an answerer, you *must* engage in the asker's own personal beliefs about the subject to answer comprehensively, which only leads to more discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is why [this section][1] is in the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite `______`?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use `______` for `______`, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if `______` happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* it is a rant disguised as a question: “`______` sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One possible way you can fix that is to remove the asker's own answer to whatever the question is and encourage him or her to add it as their own answer. If you do that, this is what you're left with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My company has a very broad range of products and there are a few that are not strategic to us so I wanted to open source them (so we can focus on what makes us unique and open source the products that every firm has).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our industry does not open source(we would be the first firm to try this) and the feedback I'm getting from my management team is either 1) we'll destroy the industry or 2) all competitive commercial firms will unite against us and we'll be wiped out either way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our industry is very secretive and I don't want to put anyone(even my competitors employees) out of a job yet I don't want to protect inefficient people by not being open with everyone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts(doesn't have to be to my specific situation, I'm looking for the general lessons). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what are your thoughts? Does open sourcing apply generally or is it only really applicable to software? Is it overall good for people in the industry and outside? I'm actually more interested in the negativeness effects(although positive are welcomed as well)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing that strikes me is that the asker *never defines the industry they're in*. So we're provided a picture of a secretive industry that would—according to the asker's managers—would completely implode if whatever the asker does was open-sourced.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then we're asked a series of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what are your thoughts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Not a real question.** We're not a discussion board: we don't provide &quot;thoughts&quot; on vague situations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does open sourcing apply generally or is it only really applicable to software?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Not a real question/off-topic.** Here's where *knowing the industry the asker's in* really helps. If you read the rest of the story, you should assume we're talking about a software development firm because we're on Programmers.SE. But this question presents a dichotomy of open source applying to software only or &quot;generally&quot;. If we're not talking about software development, this is off-topic. If we *are* talking about software development, this dichotomy doesn't make any sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it overall good for people in the industry and outside? I'm actually more interested in the negativeness effects(although positive are welcomed as well)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Not a real question.** Asker never defines the industry they're in, and even if they did, &quot;overall good&quot; and &quot;negativeness [sic] effects&quot; are vague and broad correctness criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is bad as written, and trying to save it by keeping the asker's intent is not going to help. Is there a way to substantially rewrite the question in a way that could work here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think there is. If you remove all the discussion prompts and the asker's really long answer to their own discussion prompts, what you're left with is a simple question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is open source bad for business?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, if you scope to a problem someone actually faces, can be reformulated as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should [my company|I] adopt open source as part of [my company's|my] business model?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't know. Programmers.SE users have opinions about that, sure, but there is no generally-applicable answer that can be provided in the &quot;fun size unit of work&quot; answer that Stack Exchange strives in.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People write books about it, make a living as consultants defending one side or the other, or even devote their entire life to the idea. We can't possibly hope to provide a useful answer here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why we have this line in the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an *entire book* that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, it's like asking:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Should my company standardize on .NET?&#xD;&#xA;* Should I learn Python?&#xD;&#xA;* Is creating a Facebook killer worth it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All things we close here regularly because we're not equipped to decide life for people: we can only answer specific questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Final housekeeping note: &quot;is open source good/bad?&quot; is such a popular question in software development that the first thing you should be doing when you see a question like this nearly two years after this site launched is searching for duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And indeed, there are several:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139058/isnt-open-source-bad-for-developers-themselves&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61091/to-open-source-or-not-to-open-source-that-is-the-question&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139912/the-reason-to-make-some-code-open-source&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2682/does-making-source-code-available-affect-your-ability-to-generate-revenue&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130341/open-source-or-closed-source-for-saas&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114804/in-what-situations-is-it-a-bad-idea-to-use-open-source-code-for-a-corporate-proj&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So even if you don't find my argument convincing, at least close the question as a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9890" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3707" RevisionGUID="7ff02a11-f397-4b42-bdbb-1d7e7166869c" CreationDate="2012-06-18T21:25:44.243" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 11 characters in body" Text="No, it's not on-topic and it should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The wall of text is a treatise on the asker's own thoughts about the topic, and doesn't actually ask about any specific problem the author is personally having. Rather than creating an answerable question, it creates a prompt for discussion: as an answerer, you *must* engage in the asker's own personal beliefs about the subject to answer comprehensively, which only leads to more discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is why [this section][1] is in the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite `______`?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use `______` for `______`, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if `______` happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* it is a rant disguised as a question: “`______` sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One possible way you can fix that is to remove the asker's own answer to whatever the question is and encourage him or her to add it as their own answer. If you do that, this is what you're left with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My company has a very broad range of products and there are a few that are not strategic to us so I wanted to open source them (so we can focus on what makes us unique and open source the products that every firm has).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our industry does not open source(we would be the first firm to try this) and the feedback I'm getting from my management team is either 1) we'll destroy the industry or 2) all competitive commercial firms will unite against us and we'll be wiped out either way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our industry is very secretive and I don't want to put anyone(even my competitors employees) out of a job yet I don't want to protect inefficient people by not being open with everyone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts(doesn't have to be to my specific situation, I'm looking for the general lessons). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what are your thoughts? Does open sourcing apply generally or is it only really applicable to software? Is it overall good for people in the industry and outside? I'm actually more interested in the negativeness effects(although positive are welcomed as well)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing that strikes me is that the asker *never defines the industry they're in*. So we're provided a picture of a secretive industry that would—according to the asker's managers—completely implode if whatever the asker does was open-sourced.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then we're asked a series of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what are your thoughts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Not a real question.** We're not a discussion board: we don't provide &quot;thoughts&quot; on vague situations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does open sourcing apply generally or is it only really applicable to software?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Not a real question/off-topic.** Here's where *knowing industry the asker's in* really helps. Because we're on Programmers.SE, it *should* be assumed the question's about software development, but this question presents a comparsion between open source applying to software only or &quot;generally&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does &quot;generally&quot; mean? Open source food? Open source cars? Open source plumbing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we're not talking about software development, this is off-topic. If we *are* talking about software development, this comparison doesn't make any sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it overall good for people in the industry and outside? I'm actually more interested in the negativeness effects(although positive are welcomed as well)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Not a real question.** Asker never defines the industry they're in, and even if they did, &quot;overall good&quot; and &quot;negativeness [sic] effects&quot; are vague and broad correctness criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is bad as written, and trying to save it by keeping the asker's intent is not going to help. Is there a way to substantially rewrite the question in a way that could work here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think there is. If you remove all the discussion prompts and the asker's really long answer to their own discussion prompts, what you're left with is a simple question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is open source bad for business?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, if you scope to a problem someone actually faces, can be reformulated as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should [my company|I] adopt open source as part of [my company's|my] business model?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't know. Programmers.SE users have opinions about that, sure, but there is no generally-applicable answer that can be provided in the &quot;fun size unit of work&quot; answer that Stack Exchange specializes in.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People write books about it, make a living as consultants defending one side or the other, or even devote their entire life to the idea. We can't possibly hope to provide a useful answer here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why we have this line in the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an *entire book* that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, it's like asking:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Should my company standardize on .NET?&#xD;&#xA;* Should I learn Python?&#xD;&#xA;* Is creating a Facebook killer worth it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All things we close here regularly because we're not equipped to decide life for people: we can only answer specific questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Final housekeeping note: &quot;is open source good/bad?&quot; is such a popular question in software development that the first thing you should be doing when you see a question like this nearly two years after this site launched is searching for duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And indeed, there are several:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139058/isnt-open-source-bad-for-developers-themselves&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61091/to-open-source-or-not-to-open-source-that-is-the-question&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139912/the-reason-to-make-some-code-open-source&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2682/does-making-source-code-available-affect-your-ability-to-generate-revenue&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130341/open-source-or-closed-source-for-saas&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114804/in-what-situations-is-it-a-bad-idea-to-use-open-source-code-for-a-corporate-proj&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So even if you don't find my argument convincing, at least close the question as a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9891" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3707" RevisionGUID="bec1e302-697e-4bd9-9958-28441edbdf60" CreationDate="2012-06-19T06:50:49.747" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Asker does mention industry" Text="No, it's not on-topic and it should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The wall of text is a treatise on the asker's own thoughts about the topic, and doesn't actually ask about any specific problem the author is personally having. Rather than creating an answerable question, it creates a prompt for discussion: as an answerer, you *must* engage in the asker's own personal beliefs about the subject to answer comprehensively, which only leads to more discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is why [this section][1] is in the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite `______`?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use `______` for `______`, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if `______` happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* it is a rant disguised as a question: “`______` sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One possible way you can fix that is to remove the asker's own answer to whatever the question is and encourage him or her to add it as their own answer. If you do that, this is what you're left with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My company has a very broad range of products and there are a few that are not strategic to us so I wanted to open source them (so we can focus on what makes us unique and open source the products that every firm has).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our industry (quant) does not open source(we would be the first firm to try this) and the feedback I'm getting from my management team is either 1) we'll destroy the industry or 2) all competitive commercial firms will unite against us and we'll be wiped out either way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our industry is very secretive and I don't want to put anyone(even my competitors employees) out of a job yet I don't want to protect inefficient people by not being open with everyone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts(doesn't have to be to my specific situation, I'm looking for the general lessons). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what are your thoughts? Does open sourcing apply generally or is it only really applicable to software? Is it overall good for people in the quant industry and outside? I'm actually more interested in the negativeness effects(although positive are welcomed as well)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're provided a picture of a secretive quant industry that would—according to the asker's managers—completely implode if whatever the asker does was open-sourced.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then we're asked a series of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what are your thoughts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Not a real question.** We're not a discussion board: we don't provide &quot;thoughts&quot; on vague situations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does open sourcing apply generally or is it only really applicable to software?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Not a real question/off-topic.** Because we're on Programmers.SE, it *should* be assumed the question's about software development, but this question presents a comparsion between open source applying to software only or &quot;generally&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does &quot;generally&quot; mean? Open source food? Open source cars? Open source plumbing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we're not talking about software development, this is off-topic. If we *are* talking about software development, this comparison doesn't make any sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it overall good for people in the quant industry and outside? I'm actually more interested in the negativeness effects(although positive are welcomed as well)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Not a real question.** &quot;Overall good&quot; and &quot;negativeness [sic] effects&quot; are vague and broad correctness criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is bad as written, and trying to save it by keeping the asker's intent is not going to help. Is there a way to substantially rewrite the question in a way that could work here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think there is. If you remove all the discussion prompts and the asker's really long answer to their own discussion prompts, what you're left with is a simple question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is open source bad for business?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, if you scope to a problem someone actually faces, can be reformulated as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should [my company|I] adopt open source as part of [my company's|my] business model?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't know. Programmers.SE users have opinions about that, sure, but there is no generally-applicable answer that can be provided in the &quot;fun size unit of work&quot; answer that Stack Exchange specializes in.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People write books about it, make a living as consultants defending one side or the other, or even devote their entire life to the idea. We can't possibly hope to provide a useful answer here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why we have this line in the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an *entire book* that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, it's like asking:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Should my company standardize on .NET?&#xD;&#xA;* Should I learn Python?&#xD;&#xA;* Is creating a Facebook killer worth it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All things we close here regularly because we're not equipped to decide life for people: we can only answer specific questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Final housekeeping note: &quot;is open source good/bad?&quot; is such a popular question in software development that the first thing you should be doing when you see a question like this nearly two years after this site launched is searching for duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And indeed, there are several:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139058/isnt-open-source-bad-for-developers-themselves&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61091/to-open-source-or-not-to-open-source-that-is-the-question&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139912/the-reason-to-make-some-code-open-source&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2682/does-making-source-code-available-affect-your-ability-to-generate-revenue&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130341/open-source-or-closed-source-for-saas&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114804/in-what-situations-is-it-a-bad-idea-to-use-open-source-code-for-a-corporate-proj&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So even if you don't find my argument convincing, at least close the question as a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9892" PostHistoryTypeId="7" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="9b2dbdb4-3f31-41d7-8cbc-068e89a47342" CreationDate="2012-06-19T13:05:21.617" UserId="25936" Comment="Rollback to [63ddb551-18a0-4602-b4a5-b767d3d5fc7d]" Text="Renaming the site to match its FAQ or changing the FAQ to match the site name?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9893" PostHistoryTypeId="9" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="9b2dbdb4-3f31-41d7-8cbc-068e89a47342" CreationDate="2012-06-19T13:05:21.617" UserId="25936" Comment="Rollback to [63ddb551-18a0-4602-b4a5-b767d3d5fc7d]" Text="|discussion|site-attributes|" />
  <row Id="9894" PostHistoryTypeId="7" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="454236fc-c819-415a-8ad2-d30664077564" CreationDate="2012-06-19T13:08:47.187" UserId="1130" Comment="Rollback to [85e8eaf1-67dd-4c68-9b46-a08bf97b1825]" Text="Rename the site to match its FAQ or change the FAQ to match the site name?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9895" PostHistoryTypeId="9" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="454236fc-c819-415a-8ad2-d30664077564" CreationDate="2012-06-19T13:08:47.187" UserId="1130" Comment="Rollback to [85e8eaf1-67dd-4c68-9b46-a08bf97b1825]" Text="|feature-request|site-attributes|" />
  <row Id="9896" PostHistoryTypeId="7" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="00b2ba7f-a7e9-4ffd-96a4-d075357e0275" CreationDate="2012-06-19T13:15:25.017" UserId="25936" Comment="Rollback to [63ddb551-18a0-4602-b4a5-b767d3d5fc7d]" Text="Renaming the site to match its FAQ or changing the FAQ to match the site name?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9897" PostHistoryTypeId="9" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="00b2ba7f-a7e9-4ffd-96a4-d075357e0275" CreationDate="2012-06-19T13:15:25.017" UserId="25936" Comment="Rollback to [63ddb551-18a0-4602-b4a5-b767d3d5fc7d]" Text="|discussion|site-attributes|" />
  <row Id="9898" PostHistoryTypeId="14" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="dbd3deb7-2482-4aee-8c14-c3903c40991b" CreationDate="2012-06-19T13:15:43.173" UserId="25936" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="9899" PostHistoryTypeId="33" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="f1a147f0-bf08-44db-82d7-a9ddfdc3df24" CreationDate="2012-06-19T13:15:43.313" UserId="25936" Comment="1" />
  <row Id="9900" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="308" RevisionGUID="9b6b4fe8-005d-4257-8e7b-7a275d4b0eec" CreationDate="2012-06-19T16:28:42.390" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|code|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9901" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2971" RevisionGUID="16bf2b6a-c53d-419f-8132-91aa4b7ecd20" CreationDate="2012-06-19T16:31:23.447" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|feature-request|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9902" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3547" RevisionGUID="bccdd6d5-2f9d-4d0a-9453-82290982229d" CreationDate="2012-06-19T16:32:12.090" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9903" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1263" RevisionGUID="979bf8fc-dee2-4c94-b3cf-56f2160712b3" CreationDate="2012-06-19T16:33:44.833" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 7 characters in body; edited tags" Text="Is it possible to hide questions asked in the user profile?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have some questions that I posted recently that I wouldn't like potential employer's to find as they could impact one's ability to be hired." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9904" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1263" RevisionGUID="979bf8fc-dee2-4c94-b3cf-56f2160712b3" CreationDate="2012-06-19T16:33:44.833" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 7 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|support|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9905" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="851" RevisionGUID="4d6c8211-2d34-414e-907b-3e93168d9ce0" CreationDate="2012-06-19T16:34:09.620" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9906" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2711" RevisionGUID="7bce3ff2-9ec2-4969-9575-e1d5cbd30ab2" CreationDate="2012-06-19T16:35:21.303" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|css|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9907" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3708" RevisionGUID="3de041e4-1544-48e1-b5ed-16cea1852c26" CreationDate="2012-06-20T00:31:01.253" UserId="25936" Text="[meta-tag:status-completed] (somewhat)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are [no longer a migration target][1] on Stack Overflow, and the difference is already showing, last time we rejected a Stack Overflow question was May 22. Of course we get a lot less migrations now than before, but the ones we get are definitely on topic and of good/high quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SOpedians can still _suggest_ migrating to Programmers, either by flagging for moderation attention or through comments, and the latter is still a problem (&quot;my question was closed on Stack Overflow, let's copy paste it verbatim on another site that helpful commenter pointed me to&quot;), but it's a far lesser problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/134636/update-migration-path-list-for-non-moderators" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9908" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3708" RevisionGUID="a4a7524e-ac76-4291-b842-49cae2aa6887" CreationDate="2012-06-20T01:18:56.027" UserId="25936" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="[meta-tag:status-completed] (somewhat)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are [no longer a migration target][1] on Stack Overflow, and the difference is already showing, last time we rejected a Stack Overflow question was May 22. Of course we get a lot less migrations now than before, but the ones we get are definitely on topic and of good/high quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SOpedians can still _suggest_ migrating to Programmers, either by flagging for moderation attention or through comments, and the latter is still a problem (&quot;my question was closed on Stack Overflow, let's copy paste it verbatim on that other site the helpful commenter pointed me to&quot;), but it's a far lesser problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/134636/update-migration-path-list-for-non-moderators" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9909" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3653" RevisionGUID="518eac86-2903-43d2-8596-e4142cf150fa" CreationDate="2012-06-20T05:24:49.400" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|contest|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9910" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3709" RevisionGUID="ee1e880a-a629-4073-9e7a-8a91ab8c230f" CreationDate="2012-06-20T05:36:23.390" UserId="43604" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/153532/how-to-deal-with-bad-developers-who-hold-back-the-project&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I supose that it could have gone on workplace (I didn't realize that site existed until it was commented on) but considering the list of questions in the related questions list, it seemed ok. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where did this question go wrong? It seems like once a down vote occurs, they flood in and you're toast!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to move it to workplace if it isn't appropriate for programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9911" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3709" RevisionGUID="ee1e880a-a629-4073-9e7a-8a91ab8c230f" CreationDate="2012-06-20T05:36:23.390" UserId="43604" Text="Where did this question go wrong?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9912" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3709" RevisionGUID="ee1e880a-a629-4073-9e7a-8a91ab8c230f" CreationDate="2012-06-20T05:36:23.390" UserId="43604" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9913" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3709" RevisionGUID="44164aca-b1fe-49c2-8b1d-c6b3fce5ee43" CreationDate="2012-06-20T05:38:40.687" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9914" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3710" RevisionGUID="4ff6f252-3bd4-4c0d-9097-9e79da4ca1e7" CreationDate="2012-06-20T05:45:06.840" UserId="25936" Text="First of all, thank you for not cross posting on The Workplace. I've written [a rant][1] recently on how to get a question migrated there, the gist of it is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Flag for moderation attention, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Drop the questions in the [Water Cooler][2], the Workplace's main chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the question in question I'd go with option 2, asking in the Water Cooler. It's a bit lonely in there, but _if_ there's a version of your question that fits The Workplace, the regulars will guide you to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for why it's not a good fit for Programmers, well as always, the [FAQ][3] puts it best:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question is about a _people_ problem, not a software development problem, and that the people involved happen to be programmers doesn't make it unique to our profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3701/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8giiE.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9915" PostHistoryTypeId="34" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="2ec285f0-204e-428f-9a70-797445f2a20d" CreationDate="2012-06-20T13:35:21.643" UserId="-1" Comment="1" />
  <row Id="9916" PostHistoryTypeId="15" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="a9eae9e5-19ca-4d27-b67c-17e794623166" CreationDate="2012-06-20T13:35:21.833" UserId="-1" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="9917" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3711" RevisionGUID="03d9b1d4-fc7b-48c1-b95e-c6a006c47c7e" CreationDate="2012-06-20T20:30:01.247" UserId="43604" Text="With my recent question issue  (see http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3709/where-did-this-question-go-wrong)&#xD;&#xA; it seems like a nice feature for users would be to auto suggest the correct site for a question. This could happen any number of ways, but I would think a quick and dirty implementation would use the tags the user has decided to use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, my question was apparently better suited for workplace. I used the people-management tag. If people management type of questions are not suitable for P.SE it would have been helpful (since I didn't know about workplace initially) for P.SE to suggest, &quot;Hey, you're using a tag that might make your question off-topic for this site. Maybe XYZ would be a better choice?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just my thoughts. I realize it could be a huge job, but could help new users and anyone who isn't familiar with the 50 SE sites that are available. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9918" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3711" RevisionGUID="03d9b1d4-fc7b-48c1-b95e-c6a006c47c7e" CreationDate="2012-06-20T20:30:01.247" UserId="43604" Text="Auto recommend the correct site for a question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9919" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3711" RevisionGUID="03d9b1d4-fc7b-48c1-b95e-c6a006c47c7e" CreationDate="2012-06-20T20:30:01.247" UserId="43604" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9920" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3712" RevisionGUID="9624f5db-4337-419c-b086-61af4d09f419" CreationDate="2012-06-20T21:29:43.180" UserId="41381" Text="This wouldn't really be possible because sites overlap to some degree so some question may fit many sites. Furthermore sites shouldn't have tags that cannot contain any on topic questions, programmers is a bit of a mess with tags because the SE definition of the site and the user definition of the site weren't always in sync, and there are also a lot of general topics that specific subsets are acceptable which is also a bit of an exception. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best way to determine if a question is on topic is to read the [FAQ][1]. If you do receive comments that another site may be better simply flag your post and ask it to be considered for migration. Don't feel to bad about posting an off topic question, thats why closing and deleting are separate, or not being aware of site X, just learn from it and the community will generally help you with that and also try to get questions to places where they will do the most good for everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9921" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3711" RevisionGUID="dbea9dea-7d72-4627-955c-ba7624770996" CreationDate="2012-06-20T21:48:44.343" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9922" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3574" RevisionGUID="03bdedec-8f86-4d00-9a8e-b82a4240eec3" CreationDate="2012-06-20T22:26:53.267" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9928" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3709" RevisionGUID="2f1eb8a6-7e8c-4751-8828-d37cd5875335" CreationDate="2012-06-21T19:40:43.250" UserId="31260" Comment="[Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/faq &quot;The Workplace - Stack Exchange is for members of the workforce navigating the professional setting...&quot;)" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/153532/how-to-deal-with-bad-developers-who-hold-back-the-project&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose that it could have gone on [Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/faq &quot;The Workplace - Stack Exchange is for members of the workforce navigating the professional setting...&quot;) (I didn't realize that site existed until it was commented on) but considering the list of questions in the related questions list, it seemed OK. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where did this question go wrong? It seems like once a down vote occurs, they flood in and you're toast!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to move it to workplace if it isn't appropriate for Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9929" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="851" RevisionGUID="215337a6-e2b4-4504-b570-19958a6a036b" CreationDate="2012-06-21T19:43:07.023" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|closed-questions|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9930" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3714" RevisionGUID="ab3092fc-2dd2-4d42-b161-2763906cd8cd" CreationDate="2012-06-21T20:55:22.813" UserId="4191" Text="I'd rather not have to deal with closed questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9931" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3714" RevisionGUID="ab3092fc-2dd2-4d42-b161-2763906cd8cd" CreationDate="2012-06-21T20:55:22.813" UserId="4191" Text="How do I get closed questions out of my RSS feed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9932" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3714" RevisionGUID="ab3092fc-2dd2-4d42-b161-2763906cd8cd" CreationDate="2012-06-21T20:55:22.813" UserId="4191" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9933" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3714" RevisionGUID="9d16c7e9-33d8-4b48-9a40-a23f0d0c178b" CreationDate="2012-06-21T21:03:22.227" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|closed-questions|rss|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9934" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3715" RevisionGUID="c4208c97-c72f-4f69-9985-bac8b7f839b0" CreationDate="2012-06-21T21:06:12.487" UserId="25936" Text="I don't think there's a way, the point being that closed questions are _not_ dead, they may even be extremely useful &amp; interesting questions that just don't fit the topic or format of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One thing you could try would be to build your own feed by using our [API][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://api.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9935" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3716" RevisionGUID="22f49bfa-d87e-4539-95be-d0868c58e817" CreationDate="2012-06-24T20:31:29.023" UserId="53039" Text="I did not see the following covered in the faq. Hence, I felt the need to ask here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to ask a question in Programmers about the thought that was involved in a particular, somewhat recent, programming language. The question is not to start a flame war, but to ask people who might use the language to comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that Okay for Programmers, or should I go to that language's Google groups?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9936" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3716" RevisionGUID="22f49bfa-d87e-4539-95be-d0868c58e817" CreationDate="2012-06-24T20:31:29.023" UserId="53039" Text="Asking questions involving the comparision of and/or design decisions behind programming languages" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9937" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3716" RevisionGUID="22f49bfa-d87e-4539-95be-d0868c58e817" CreationDate="2012-06-24T20:31:29.023" UserId="53039" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9938" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3717" RevisionGUID="a6ff343d-ccd1-4990-84f1-d8c7a5e2d665" CreationDate="2012-06-25T02:16:38.363" UserId="4" Text="It doesn't sound appropriate for Programmers since it seems like you're trying to have a discussion. Stack Exchange sites are designed to address practical, answerable questions and not to have an extended discussion on a topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9939" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3716" RevisionGUID="411a739b-f899-4866-a2cf-a7db270470a7" CreationDate="2012-06-25T02:52:47.850" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 16 characters in body; edited tags" Text="I did not see the following covered in the faq. Hence, I felt the need to ask here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to ask a question in Programmers about the thought that was involved in a particular, somewhat recent, programming language. The question is not to start a flame war, but to ask people who might use the language to comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that Okay for Programmers, or should I go to that language's Google groups?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9940" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3716" RevisionGUID="411a739b-f899-4866-a2cf-a7db270470a7" CreationDate="2012-06-25T02:52:47.850" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 16 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9941" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3718" RevisionGUID="22236a23-6fae-4bc9-a70d-5702495e20b0" CreationDate="2012-06-25T14:53:25.283" UserId="1130" Text="This is a follow-up to the discussion on [renaming the site to match its FAQ, or changing the FAQ to match the site name][1]. The question is one of the highest voted questions on here, and moderators have told me to post a separate question proposing the actual name change to keep it separate from the discussion about if we should make our Name and FAQ match.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name &quot;Programmers&quot; was selected for our site back when this was a Q&amp;A site meant for programmers to ask and answer questions that were not related to programming. The [site scope has changed dramatically since then][2] to be for conceptual questions on software development only, and the descriptive name of **Programmers** no longer fits our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&amp;A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best analogy I can think of is creating an `Athletes.SE` which is only for conceptual questions about sports, while questions about athletes themselves, or technical questions about sports, are both off-topic. It's very confusing, especially to new users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't like sifting through so many off-topic questions to find ones that won't get closed, so would like to pick a new name for our site that better matches the site's scope, and change our site's name by doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Change the Name displayed on our site from Programmers to something else. This would be a cosmetic change only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Register the name as a new SE domain name for the site to use&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Keep the `programmers.stackexchange` domain name active, and simply redirect it to the new site's domain name for SEO and to maintain old links&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for what name to use, I think the name should be something the community decides. If we get the OK to do something like this from SE, we can create a meta thread to determine a new name for the site. (My personal preference right now is something like **Software Development**)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize, we advertise as a Q&amp;A site about programmers, however we are not a site about programmers. We are a site for getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. Lets change our name to clarify that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9942" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3718" RevisionGUID="22236a23-6fae-4bc9-a70d-5702495e20b0" CreationDate="2012-06-25T14:53:25.283" UserId="1130" Text="Change the name of Programmers to something that more accurately reflects the site scope?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9943" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3718" RevisionGUID="22236a23-6fae-4bc9-a70d-5702495e20b0" CreationDate="2012-06-25T14:53:25.283" UserId="1130" Text="|feature-request|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9944" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="79d320a7-16a0-4a14-a060-45bf98a3de78" CreationDate="2012-06-25T15:09:09.693" UserId="1130" Comment="added 222 characters in body" Text="This site is called **programmers**.stackexchange, while the FAQ states that this site is about &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since a large number of people never read the FAQ, or don't read it before posting, this means we have a community of people that think the site is about Programmers, but a team of moderators that try and maintain a site on &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This causes a large number of unhappy people who don't understand why their questions, or other questions they think are good, get closed, downvoted, etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my suggestion is to either rename the site to something that matches it's FAQ, like `softwaredevelopment.SE`, or change the FAQ so that this site is about Programmers, not software development only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I hate the suggestion of renaming the site. I want to participate in a site about programmers, not software development. But as long as the site is called one thing, and the FAQ states another, we're never going to be at peace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit #1**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been told by a few different users to create separate specific requests to try and implement these changes, so&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Here's the proposal to change the FAQ so it matches the site name](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3318/1130)&#xD;&#xA;* [Here's the proposal to change the site name to match the FAQ][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit #2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since posting this, I have learned [the history behind the site scope change][2], and doubt SE will ever allow it to go back to simply being a Q&amp;A site for programmers to get answers from other programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So please, change the name of the site to something that better reflects the site's scope to stop the number of frustrated and confused users we have posting bad and off-topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3718/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9945" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3718" RevisionGUID="819da3ab-c7ab-4858-80db-204b53288d48" CreationDate="2012-06-25T15:16:25.300" UserId="1130" Comment="deleted 78 characters in body" Text="This is a follow-up to the discussion on [renaming the site to match its FAQ, or changing the FAQ to match the site name][1]. The question is one of the highest voted questions on here, and moderators have told me to post a separate question proposing the actual name change to keep it separate from the discussion about if we should make our Name and FAQ match.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name &quot;Programmers&quot; was selected for our site back when this was a Q&amp;A site meant for programmers to ask and answer questions that were not related to programming. The [site scope has changed dramatically since then][2] to be for conceptual questions on software development only, and the descriptive name of **Programmers** no longer fits our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&amp;A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best analogy I can think of is creating an `Athletes.SE` which is only for conceptual questions about sports, while questions about athletes themselves, or technical questions about sports, are both off-topic. It's very confusing, especially to new users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't like sifting through so many off-topic questions to find ones that won't get closed, so would like to pick a new name for our site that better matches the site's scope, and change our site's name by doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Change the Name displayed on our site from Programmers to something else. This would be a cosmetic change only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Register the name as a new SE domain name for the site to use&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Keep the `programmers.stackexchange` domain name active, and simply redirect it to the new site's domain name for SEO and to maintain old links&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for what name to use, I think the name should be something the community decides. If we get the OK to do something like this from SE, we can create a meta thread to determine a new name for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize, we advertise as a Q&amp;A site about programmers, however we are not a site about programmers. We are a site for getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. Lets change our name to clarify that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9946" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3719" RevisionGUID="33d803d9-350e-4815-a291-dd4e16e87280" CreationDate="2012-06-25T15:42:46.637" UserId="36051" Text="I saw [this question][1] and thought it was going somewhere.  It was closed, and with good reason I believe, but I still think that there is a nugget of a usable question in there somewhere.  Would I be justified in editing the question even if it requires almost a complete rewrite in order to get it off of a career question?  I would just write my own question, but I don't want to ask a question that doesn't pertain to my situation since the FAQ says that we shouldn't ask &quot;random&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154132/job-change-problem" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9947" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3719" RevisionGUID="33d803d9-350e-4815-a291-dd4e16e87280" CreationDate="2012-06-25T15:42:46.637" UserId="36051" Text="Complete Rewrite/Edit for a Question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9948" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3719" RevisionGUID="33d803d9-350e-4815-a291-dd4e16e87280" CreationDate="2012-06-25T15:42:46.637" UserId="36051" Text="|discussion|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9949" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3720" RevisionGUID="4dc056ca-5879-4a61-9855-98fe0a8c09c8" CreationDate="2012-06-25T16:18:00.983" UserId="4" Text="If you think that you can salvage the question through an edit and not destroy any existing answers (which doesn't apply in this case since it was closed before any answers were posted), go for it. It's called a &quot;heroic edit&quot; (search on Meta and you can find a few posts about them). The point of closing a question is to give people the opportunity to turn a poor question into a good question. After you edit, it might be a good idea to flag it for moderator review - if it's a good edit, we'll reopen the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9950" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3721" RevisionGUID="e9662322-c68b-4d2c-b268-10205a11d3de" CreationDate="2012-06-25T17:13:30.617" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Two suggestions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Blame Yannis&quot; .SE  &#xD;&#xA;Programming.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the first, I do suspect he'd feel quite honored with the honorific, but it's just a joke based upon the comments from the OP.  OTOH, I now fear that any questions I may ask for the next millennium will be auto-closed.  :-P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the second, P.SE is really about programm-ING not necessarily programm-ERS. I don't know that it's worth the effort to setup all the redirects and whatnot.  The off-topic questions can be annoying though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And FWIW, I'm praying the up / down votes on this answer will balance each other out...." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9951" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3722" RevisionGUID="d72fbe69-1b9d-4cc6-9651-d534781659e8" CreationDate="2012-06-25T17:21:26.927" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="I think you'll struggle to find a non-career question in there, but I don't want to discourage you if you see something I'm not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some elements that tie in with Ambler's Generalizing Specialist, but it will be a fine line between career / &quot;what technology next&quot; vs. what is on-topic within the guidelines of the FAQ.  There might be something in there from a methodologies point of view." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9952" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3723" RevisionGUID="68be516f-eaa4-412c-911d-051c519d42ca" CreationDate="2012-06-25T18:34:55.143" UserId="25936" Text="I don't see how any version of the question could be on topic for Programmers. Even a less localized version of it wouldn't really be about an issue that's unique to our profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nugget of a usable question you see in there _might_ be on topic for our sister site, [The Workplace][1], but I'm not sure. You could ask around in their main chat room, [The Water Cooler][2], verify whether the question could be on topic for them and get some suggestions on how to edit it or, if the question is blatantly off topic for them, point you to similar questions that might sufficiently answer the question in question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9953" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3718" RevisionGUID="d6619a7e-f493-4671-b60d-72e37540a6b9" CreationDate="2012-06-26T04:09:34.817" UserId="20011" Comment="Removed &quot;This would be a cosmetic change only.&quot; from first bullet. It's not cosmetic only -- the next two bullets describe steps to change the domain name." Text="This is a follow-up to the discussion on [renaming the site to match its FAQ, or changing the FAQ to match the site name][1]. The question is one of the highest voted questions on here, and moderators have told me to post a separate question proposing the actual name change to keep it separate from the discussion about if we should make our Name and FAQ match.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name &quot;Programmers&quot; was selected for our site back when this was a Q&amp;A site meant for programmers to ask and answer questions that were not related to programming. The [site scope has changed dramatically since then][2] to be for conceptual questions on software development only, and the descriptive name of **Programmers** no longer fits our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&amp;A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best analogy I can think of is creating an `Athletes.SE` which is only for conceptual questions about sports, while questions about athletes themselves, or technical questions about sports, are both off-topic. It's very confusing, especially to new users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't like sifting through so many off-topic questions to find ones that won't get closed, so would like to pick a new name for our site that better matches the site's scope, and change our site's name by doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Change the Name displayed on our site from Programmers to something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Register the name as a new SE domain name for the site to use&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Keep the `programmers.stackexchange` domain name active, and simply redirect it to the new site's domain name for SEO and to maintain old links&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for what name to use, I think the name should be something the community decides. If we get the OK to do something like this from SE, we can create a meta thread to determine a new name for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize, we advertise as a Q&amp;A site about programmers, however we are not a site about programmers. We are a site for getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. Lets change our name to clarify that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9954" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3724" RevisionGUID="69ad8bfb-75ad-4d6d-b948-1a883694bbf2" CreationDate="2012-06-26T07:40:33.940" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="&gt; I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&amp;A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prove it. Show hard data that demonstrates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Programmers' closure rates are directly attributable to the site name, and&#xD;&#xA;2. Changing the name to anything else will significantly affect closure rates on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless there's actual data to support this hypothesis, making an extremely disruptive change like this is unwarranted and should not be done." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9955" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3725" RevisionGUID="fbf45269-8410-4101-af06-5ee34ed9dc7b" CreationDate="2012-06-26T08:45:28.183" UserId="20011" Text="&gt; we advertise as a Q&amp;A site about programmers, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do? I must have missed those ads.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What kinds of questions would one ask on &quot;a Q&amp;A site about programmers&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What's a programmer's favorite letter? *01010010*&#xD;&#xA;- How many programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb? *None! It's hardware problem.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seriously... I *never* got the impression that this was a site *about* programmers, and I don't see much evidence that new users do either. If your thesis were correct, most off topic questions would be *about programmers*; my own unscientific impression is that such questions are only a fraction of the off topic questions we see here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; however we are not a site about programmers. We are a site for getting&#xD;&#xA;&gt; expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you wanted an expert answer on a conceptual questions relating to software development, who would you ask? A lawyer? A chef? No... a programmer! *Programmers* may not be the best, most descriptive name for this site as it exists now, but it's the name we've got and it's really not a bad one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of searching for a name whose meaning gives identity to the site, lets continue to build a strong identity for the site that will give meaning to the name." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9956" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="3718" RevisionGUID="46fdfec6-e056-4ef7-96fc-c576a8004d78" CreationDate="2012-06-26T11:55:32.290" UserId="1130" Comment="Rollback to [819da3ab-c7ab-4858-80db-204b53288d48]" Text="This is a follow-up to the discussion on [renaming the site to match its FAQ, or changing the FAQ to match the site name][1]. The question is one of the highest voted questions on here, and moderators have told me to post a separate question proposing the actual name change to keep it separate from the discussion about if we should make our Name and FAQ match.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name &quot;Programmers&quot; was selected for our site back when this was a Q&amp;A site meant for programmers to ask and answer questions that were not related to programming. The [site scope has changed dramatically since then][2] to be for conceptual questions on software development only, and the descriptive name of **Programmers** no longer fits our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&amp;A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best analogy I can think of is creating an `Athletes.SE` which is only for conceptual questions about sports, while questions about athletes themselves, or technical questions about sports, are both off-topic. It's very confusing, especially to new users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't like sifting through so many off-topic questions to find ones that won't get closed, so would like to pick a new name for our site that better matches the site's scope, and change our site's name by doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Change the Name displayed on our site from Programmers to something else. This would be a cosmetic change only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Register the name as a new SE domain name for the site to use&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Keep the `programmers.stackexchange` domain name active, and simply redirect it to the new site's domain name for SEO and to maintain old links&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for what name to use, I think the name should be something the community decides. If we get the OK to do something like this from SE, we can create a meta thread to determine a new name for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize, we advertise as a Q&amp;A site about programmers, however we are not a site about programmers. We are a site for getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. Lets change our name to clarify that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9957" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3718" RevisionGUID="f26801ca-56db-4f14-b584-75e17bb4b94f" CreationDate="2012-06-26T11:57:25.547" UserId="1130" Comment="added 10 characters in body" Text="This is a follow-up to the discussion on [renaming the site to match its FAQ, or changing the FAQ to match the site name][1]. The question is one of the highest voted questions on here, and moderators have told me to post a separate question proposing the actual name change to keep it separate from the discussion about if we should make our Name and FAQ match.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name &quot;Programmers&quot; was selected for our site back when this was a Q&amp;A site meant for programmers to ask and answer questions that were not related to programming. The [site scope has changed dramatically since then][2] to be for conceptual questions on software development only, and the descriptive name of **Programmers** no longer fits our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&amp;A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best analogy I can think of is creating an `Athletes.SE` which is only for conceptual questions about sports, while questions about athletes themselves, or technical questions about sports, are both off-topic. It's very confusing, especially to new users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't like sifting through so many off-topic questions to find ones that won't get closed, so would like to pick a new name for our site that better matches the site's scope, and change our site's name by doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Change the Title and Logo displayed on our site from Programmers to something else. This would be a cosmetic change only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Register the name as a new SE domain name for the site to use&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Keep the `programmers.stackexchange` domain name active, and simply redirect it to the new site's domain name for SEO and to maintain old links&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for what name to use, I think the name should be something the community decides. If we get the OK to do something like this from SE, we can create a meta thread to determine a new name for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize, we advertise as a Q&amp;A site about programmers, however we are not a site about programmers. We are a site for getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. Lets change our name to clarify that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9958" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3726" RevisionGUID="c1c11f7c-4b82-47d7-a29e-bc99569ac3c6" CreationDate="2012-06-26T12:17:02.677" UserId="4" Text="To be explicitly clear, this post is coming exclusively from me as member of the Programmers community, not as a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&amp;A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like [Mark Trapp][1], I want to see data to support this. I'm not convinced that the name has anything to do with the closure rate. Anyone who spends a couple of minutes looking at the FAQ or reading existing questions should see what the site is about, and anyone posting here should take a few minutes to understand the site before they post. The very first line in the FAQ even says that &quot;Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we advertise as a Q&amp;A site about programmers, however we are not a site about programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see that anywhere. Every place I see refers to the site being &quot;for professional programmers&quot; and a place to ask &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;. If there is a place that makes it seem like this site is for questions about programmers or being a programmer, please provide a link to it. If there is any ambiguity, it should be cleared up. However, I haven't found any yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, from my personal experiences (about a dozen or so data points, which is most likely statistically insignificant), the name does cause a **small** problem when pitching the site to people with professional titles such as &quot;Software Architect&quot;, &quot;Systems Architect&quot;, &quot;Software Quality Assurance Engineer&quot;, &quot;Software Process Improvement Specialist&quot;, &quot;Process Engineer&quot;, and so on. These people all could ask and answer questions that are on-topic here, however none of them consider themselves programmers. It's not impossible to pitch the site after mentioning &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot; and highlighting specific topics that they would be interested in, but the name requires an explanation of the acceptable content to people who aren't programmers. It makes an elevator pitch (&lt;2 minutes) more difficult, but not impossible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If any reason exists to consider changing the name, I think that it would be to rebrand the site to better encompass the things that [we consider on topic][2]. Many of the people who are professionals in areas of architecture, process, software licenses, and the business side of software developers might not consider themselves programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be curious about what experiences people have had pitching this site to non-programming software development professionals (anyone who has the potential to ask and answer on-topic questions, but does not professionally build software) and if there were any difficulties creating an elevator pitch (30-120 seconds) to get them interested in the site. I think that such information could be used to make a case for rebranding - if a member of this community can't easily convey the purpose of this community to someone who would be interested in it, that could be problematic to the continued growth and development of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3724/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9959" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3718" RevisionGUID="c766012b-3ddd-4b9c-b0b0-c29b32654fda" CreationDate="2012-06-26T12:18:02.527" UserId="1130" Comment="Edited per Yannis' suggestion in chat" Text="This is a follow-up to the discussion on [renaming the site to match its FAQ, or changing the FAQ to match the site name][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is one of the highest voted questions on here, and moderators have told me to post a separate question proposing the actual name change to keep it separate from the discussion about if we should make our Name and FAQ match. I was told such a feature-request would not be a duplicate because it is requesting a concrete change instead of simply discussing if a change should occur or not.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name &quot;Programmers&quot; was selected for our site back when this was a Q&amp;A site meant for programmers to ask and answer questions that were not related to programming. The [site scope has changed dramatically since then][2] to be for conceptual questions on software development only, and the descriptive name of **Programmers** no longer fits our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&amp;A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best analogy I can think of is creating an `Athletes.SE` which is only for conceptual questions about sports, while questions about athletes themselves, or technical questions about sports, are both off-topic. It's very confusing, especially to new users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't like sifting through so many off-topic questions to find ones that won't get closed, so would like to pick a new name for our site that better matches the site's scope, and change our site's name by doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Change the Title and Logo displayed on our site from Programmers to something else. This would be a cosmetic change only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Register the name as a new SE domain name for the site to use&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Keep the `programmers.stackexchange` domain name active, and simply redirect it to the new site's domain name for SEO and to maintain old links&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for what name to use, I think the name should be something the community decides. If we get the OK to do something like this from SE, we can create a meta thread to determine a new name for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize, we advertise as a Q&amp;A site about programmers, however we are not a site about programmers. We are a site for getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. Lets change our name to clarify that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9960" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3718" RevisionGUID="c8522ee3-7f9a-4f2b-a5c8-eefde517aa25" CreationDate="2012-06-26T12:55:43.237" UserId="1130" Comment="added 40 characters in body" Text="This is a follow-up to the discussion on [renaming the site to match its FAQ, or changing the FAQ to match the site name][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That discussion is one of the highest voted questions on here, so this [meta-tag:feature-request] is to try and get a definitive answer from Stack Exchange about the possibility of getting this implemented. I apologize if sounds like a duplicate, however I was told to make a separate clear proposal for the feature-request, and not edit the existing question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you'd like to discuss the topic itself, please see the linked question &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name &quot;Programmers&quot; was selected for our site back when this was a Q&amp;A site meant for programmers to ask and answer questions that were not related to programming. The [site scope has changed dramatically since then][2] to be for conceptual questions on software development only, and the descriptive name of **Programmers** no longer fits our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&amp;A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best analogy I can think of is creating an `Athletes.SE` which is only for conceptual questions about sports, while questions about athletes themselves, or technical questions about sports, are both off-topic. It's very confusing, especially to new users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't like sifting through so many off-topic questions to find ones that won't get closed, so would like to pick a new name for our site that better matches the site's scope, and change our site's name by doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Change the Title and Logo displayed on our site from Programmers to something else. This would be a cosmetic change only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Register the name as a new SE domain name for the site to use&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Keep the `programmers.stackexchange` domain name active, and simply redirect it to the new site's domain name for SEO and to maintain old links&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for what name to use, I think the name should be something the community decides. If we get the OK to do something like this from SE, we can create a meta thread to determine a new name for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize, we advertise as a Q&amp;A site about programmers, however we are not a site about programmers. We are a site for getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. Lets change our name to clarify that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9961" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3726" RevisionGUID="38b6b4cc-7762-4ef0-973d-a9e5e3d0d1c5" CreationDate="2012-06-26T13:01:14.450" UserId="4" Comment="added 252 characters in body" Text="To be explicitly clear, this post is coming exclusively from me as member of the Programmers community, not as a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&amp;A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like [Mark Trapp][1], I want to see data to support this. I'm not convinced that the name has anything to do with the closure rate. Anyone who spends a couple of minutes looking at the FAQ or reading existing questions should see what the site is about, and anyone posting here should take a few minutes to understand the site before they post. The very first line in the FAQ even says that &quot;Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we advertise as a Q&amp;A site about programmers, however we are not a site about programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see that anywhere. Every place I see refers to the site being &quot;for professional programmers&quot; and a place to ask &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;. If there is a place that makes it seem like this site is for questions about programmers or being a programmer, please provide a link to it. If there is any ambiguity, it should be cleared up. However, I haven't found any yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, from my personal experiences (about a dozen or so data points, which is most likely statistically insignificant), the name does cause a **small** problem when pitching the site to people with professional titles such as &quot;Software Architect&quot;, &quot;Systems Architect&quot;, &quot;Software Quality Assurance Engineer&quot;, &quot;Software Process Improvement Specialist&quot;, &quot;Process Engineer&quot;, and so on. These people all could ask and answer questions that are on-topic here, however none of them consider themselves programmers. It's not impossible to pitch the site after mentioning &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot; and highlighting specific topics that they would be interested in, but the name requires an explanation of the acceptable content to people who aren't programmers. It makes an elevator pitch (&lt;2 minutes) more difficult, but not impossible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that this is the same point that [jmort253 brought up in the comments][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If any reason exists to consider changing the name, I think that it would be to rebrand the site to better encompass the things that [we consider on topic][3]. Many of the people who are professionals in areas of architecture, process, software licenses, and the business side of software developers might not consider themselves programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be curious about what experiences people have had pitching this site to non-programming software development professionals (anyone who has the potential to ask and answer on-topic questions, but does not professionally build software) and if there were any difficulties creating an elevator pitch (30-120 seconds) to get them interested in the site. I think that such information could be used to make a case for rebranding - if a member of this community can't easily convey the purpose of this community to someone who would be interested in it, that could be problematic to the continued growth and development of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3724/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3718/change-the-name-of-programmers-to-something-that-more-accurately-reflects-the-si#comment10281_3718&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9962" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3727" RevisionGUID="798d437d-28a0-4331-936c-7db9abb3bd65" CreationDate="2012-06-26T13:05:22.117" UserId="41381" Text="We wouldn't be the first site to try a new name, and I don't see the harm in trying it out if we can agree on a new one. Its not unprecedented that a sites name gets changed after launch." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9963" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3726" RevisionGUID="96825e4b-0fb9-42f1-b069-5a1a3e3a03a2" CreationDate="2012-06-26T13:07:17.267" UserId="4" Comment="added 630 characters in body" Text="To be explicitly clear, this post is coming exclusively from me as member of the Programmers community, not as a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&amp;A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like [Mark Trapp][1], I want to see data to support this. I'm not convinced that the name has anything to do with the closure rate. Anyone who spends a couple of minutes looking at the FAQ or reading existing questions should see what the site is about, and anyone posting here should take a few minutes to understand the site before they post. The very first line in the FAQ even says that &quot;Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have any numbers, but I get the feeling that most people who visit this site learn what it's about. Even if you look at other sites, [like Stack Overflow][2], you can see that there are closed questions that can be avoided if people read the FAQ and understand the site before randomly posting. You don't spend effort dealing with (and I'm borrowing some ideas from some corporate HR policies) the 5% of the people who are the &quot;bad apples&quot;. You focus on the 95% of the people who are good contributors and make it possible for them to do what they do best.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we advertise as a Q&amp;A site about programmers, however we are not a site about programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see that anywhere. Every place I see refers to the site being &quot;for professional programmers&quot; and a place to ask &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;. If there is a place that makes it seem like this site is for questions about programmers or being a programmer, please provide a link to it. If there is any ambiguity, it should be cleared up. However, I haven't found any yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, from my personal experiences (about a dozen or so data points, which is most likely statistically insignificant), the name does cause a **small** problem when pitching the site to people with professional titles such as &quot;Software Architect&quot;, &quot;Systems Architect&quot;, &quot;Software Quality Assurance Engineer&quot;, &quot;Software Process Improvement Specialist&quot;, &quot;Process Engineer&quot;, and so on. These people all could ask and answer questions that are on-topic here, however none of them consider themselves programmers. It's not impossible to pitch the site after mentioning &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot; and highlighting specific topics that they would be interested in, but the name requires an explanation of the acceptable content to people who aren't programmers. It makes an elevator pitch (&lt;2 minutes) more difficult, but not impossible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that this is the same point that [jmort253 brought up in the comments][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If any reason exists to consider changing the name, I think that it would be to rebrand the site to better encompass the things that [we consider on topic][4]. Many of the people who are professionals in areas of architecture, process, software licenses, and the business side of software developers might not consider themselves programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be curious about what experiences people have had pitching this site to non-programming software development professionals (anyone who has the potential to ask and answer on-topic questions, but does not professionally build software) and if there were any difficulties creating an elevator pitch (30-120 seconds) to get them interested in the site. I think that such information could be used to make a case for rebranding - if a member of this community can't easily convey the purpose of this community to someone who would be interested in it, that could be problematic to the continued growth and development of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3724/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=closed:1&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3718/change-the-name-of-programmers-to-something-that-more-accurately-reflects-the-si#comment10281_3718&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9964" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3728" RevisionGUID="0fef1b5f-1a2a-4157-ac30-d921ab1790c1" CreationDate="2012-06-26T15:13:35.420" UserId="12230" Text="Summary: Go for a more abstract name that invites users to consult the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;--&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One thing that seems to be established, both by the data and the experience of posters here is that there is considerable confusion about the scope of the site.  The primary evidence is the high closure/deletion rate for new questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is disputed is the root cause of this confusion.  @Rachel hypothesizes that the name/URL of the site is a contributing factor, and others have asked for evidence to support this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think it is possible, without any kind of budget, to tease out the reasons for this confusion.  My intuition suggests that it is surprising that a site entitled &quot;programmers&quot; is in reality a lower scope.  I also suspect that the history of programmers.SE, which started as non-programming-related.SE, a release valve for software-related questions that don't belong on Stack Overflow, plays a role in that.  In fact, [the founders even recently suggested the programmers.se be used in this way][1].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Changing the name from programmers.se would have the advantage of both moving away from a general term and making a break from this legacy.  This would have the downside of some work and some confusion.  My judgement is it's worth it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some commentators have noted that the most popular sites, StackOverflow, have even less specific names, yet do not suffer from this confusion, and therefore a name change is unnecessary.  What I think this, [as well as things like the Arqade rebranding][2], suggests is that if a site's scope can not be easily captured in two short words or less, it may be better to have a more more abstract name that invites users to consult the FAQ to get a more concrete idea of what the site is about.  This may also help the site to form a unique brand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What type of name might work for this community?  Some have suggested things like &quot;The Whiteboard&quot; which doesn't excite me, but I don't have any better ideas.  The celebration of Alan Turing this past week leads me to consider the possibility that we could use the name to honor those who have gone before us in software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In any instance, I think both the past track record of SE sites and the current future direction suggests this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/#comment-65470&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/06/welcome-to-the-arqade/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9965" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3728" RevisionGUID="cbd73ff1-a89c-4195-b9d9-8b063df404b4" CreationDate="2012-06-26T15:13:59.507" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 9 characters in body" Text="##Go for a more abstract name that invites users to consult the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One thing that seems to be established, both by the data and the experience of posters here is that there is considerable confusion about the scope of the site.  The primary evidence is the high closure/deletion rate for new questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is disputed is the root cause of this confusion.  @Rachel hypothesizes that the name/URL of the site is a contributing factor, and others have asked for evidence to support this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think it is possible, without any kind of budget, to tease out the reasons for this confusion.  My intuition suggests that it is surprising that a site entitled &quot;programmers&quot; is in reality a lower scope.  I also suspect that the history of programmers.SE, which started as non-programming-related.SE, a release valve for software-related questions that don't belong on Stack Overflow, plays a role in that.  In fact, [the founders even recently suggested the programmers.se be used in this way][1].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Changing the name from programmers.se would have the advantage of both moving away from a general term and making a break from this legacy.  This would have the downside of some work and some confusion.  My judgement is it's worth it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some commentators have noted that the most popular sites, StackOverflow, have even less specific names, yet do not suffer from this confusion, and therefore a name change is unnecessary.  What I think this, [as well as things like the Arqade rebranding][2], suggests is that if a site's scope can not be easily captured in two short words or less, it may be better to have a more more abstract name that invites users to consult the FAQ to get a more concrete idea of what the site is about.  This may also help the site to form a unique brand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What type of name might work for this community?  Some have suggested things like &quot;The Whiteboard&quot; which doesn't excite me, but I don't have any better ideas.  The celebration of Alan Turing this past week leads me to consider the possibility that we could use the name to honor those who have gone before us in software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In any instance, I think both the past track record of SE sites and the current future direction suggests this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/#comment-65470&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/06/welcome-to-the-arqade/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9966" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3728" RevisionGUID="326ee0e3-e4fc-46e7-bf26-5a341d83be83" CreationDate="2012-06-26T15:23:44.767" UserId="12230" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="##Go for a more abstract name that invites users to consult the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One thing that seems to be established, both by the data and the experience of posters here is that there is considerable confusion about the scope of the site.  The primary evidence is the high closure/deletion rate for new questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is disputed is the root cause of this confusion.  @Rachel hypothesizes that the name/URL of the site is a contributing factor, and others have asked for evidence to support this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think it is possible, without any kind of budget, to tease out the reasons for this confusion.  My intuition suggests that it is surprising that a site entitled &quot;programmers&quot; is in reality a lower scope.  I also suspect that the history of programmers.SE, which started as non-programming-related.SE, a release valve for software-related questions that don't belong on Stack Overflow, plays a role in that.  In fact, [the founders even recently suggested the programmers.se be used in this way][1].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Changing the name from programmers.se would have the advantage of both moving away from a general term and making a break from this legacy.  This would have the downside of some work and some confusion.  My judgement is it's worth it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some commentators have noted that the most popular sites, e.g. StackOverflow, have even less specific names, yet do not suffer from this confusion, and therefore a name change is unnecessary.  What I think this, [as well as things like the Arqade rebranding][2], suggests is that if a site's scope can not be easily captured in two short words or less, it may be better to have a more more abstract name that invites users to consult the FAQ to get a more concrete idea of what the site is about.  This may also help the site to form a unique brand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What type of name might work for this community?  Some have suggested things like &quot;The Whiteboard&quot; which doesn't excite me, but I don't have any better ideas.  The celebration of Alan Turing this past week leads me to consider the possibility that we could use the name to honor those who have gone before us in software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In any instance, I think both the past track record of SE sites and the current future direction suggests this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/#comment-65470&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/06/welcome-to-the-arqade/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9967" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3718" RevisionGUID="15d6b7d3-3d7d-4762-a0b7-62cc4082650b" CreationDate="2012-06-26T15:24:20.047" UserId="1130" Comment="Added edit based on Thomas' answer below" Text="This is a follow-up to the discussion on [renaming the site to match its FAQ, or changing the FAQ to match the site name][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That discussion is one of the highest voted questions on here, so this [meta-tag:feature-request] is to try and get a definitive answer from Stack Exchange about the possibility of getting this implemented. I apologize if sounds like a duplicate, however I was told to make a separate clear proposal for the feature-request, and not edit the existing question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you'd like to discuss the topic itself, please see the linked question &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name &quot;Programmers&quot; was selected for our site back when this was a Q&amp;A site meant for programmers to ask and answer questions that were not related to programming. The [site scope has changed dramatically since then][2] to be for conceptual questions on software development only, and the descriptive name of **Programmers** no longer fits our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&amp;A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best analogy I can think of is creating an `Athletes.SE` which is only for conceptual questions about sports, while questions about athletes themselves, or technical questions about sports, are both off-topic. It's very confusing, especially to new users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't like sifting through so many off-topic questions to find ones that won't get closed, so would like to pick a new name for our site that better matches the site's scope, and change our site's name by doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Change the Title and Logo displayed on our site from Programmers to something else. This would be a cosmetic change only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Register the name as a new SE domain name for the site to use&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Keep the `programmers.stackexchange` domain name active, and simply redirect it to the new site's domain name for SEO and to maintain old links&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for what name to use, I think the name should be something the community decides. If we get the OK to do something like this from SE, we can create a meta thread to determine a new name for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize, we advertise as a Q&amp;A site about programmers, however we are not a site about programmers. We are a site for getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. Lets change our name to clarify that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Thomas' answer][3] also brings up a valid point, that not all software developers consider themselves to be programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Many of the people who are professionals in areas of architecture,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; process, software licenses, and the business side of software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development might not consider themselves programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're limiting our potential by not being clear that this site is for more than just Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3726/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9968" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3729" RevisionGUID="b49ce988-f596-415d-a259-8f673a00adaf" CreationDate="2012-06-26T17:14:49.387" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="I edited a post to help make it on-topic _after_ I had flagged it as being off-topic. [tag:Guilty-Conscience] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tried to re-flag the Q to indicate that I had made some edits, but the re-flag failed since I had already flagged the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the moderators investigate my flag request, will they see that I edited after raising the flag?  Or did I create more work for them and they'll have to dig into the Q to figure out what's going on?  What should I have done differently?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9969" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3729" RevisionGUID="b49ce988-f596-415d-a259-8f673a00adaf" CreationDate="2012-06-26T17:14:49.387" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="what information is presented with a flag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9970" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3729" RevisionGUID="b49ce988-f596-415d-a259-8f673a00adaf" CreationDate="2012-06-26T17:14:49.387" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|discussion|flagging|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9971" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3730" RevisionGUID="61632ca4-5e30-4fb8-9b66-ba928597c2aa" CreationDate="2012-06-26T17:47:44.827" UserId="41381" Text="I was under the impression that edits to a question caused flags to be revoked automatically that were flagged prior to the edit so they might not see anything. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the future I would reserve flags for their place a &quot;last resort&quot; and not flag something I would be willing to edit or could edit into something better." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9972" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3730" RevisionGUID="6f754d50-c215-45cd-9d02-34ccd014bb4b" CreationDate="2012-06-26T18:38:10.410" UserId="41381" Comment="added 17 characters in body" Text="&lt;strike&gt;I was under the impression that edits to a question caused flags to be revoked automatically that were flagged prior to the edit so they might not see anything. &lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the future I would reserve flags for their place a &quot;last resort&quot; and not flag something I would be willing to edit or could edit into something better." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9973" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3731" RevisionGUID="8bbe610f-d7b0-4459-beab-f7cb45e689e8" CreationDate="2012-06-26T18:41:12.970" UserId="4" Text="There doesn't appear to be any indication that the post has been edited until I click through to the post from the list of flags. I always handle flags from within the question, so I have a full context, so I can easily see that there are changes and to get a better picture of what's going on. Of course, depending on when the flag/edit happened, we see the granularity of time indicators that you see on a post until we hover over and get the full time stamp.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, if you are going to edit and try to save a question, I'd hold off on flagging. The way I see it, an edit on a bad question should be one that mitigates the need to flag a post (at least in your opinion). If it's still not good enough to make it, someone else will either edit some more or flag if they can't think of a good way to make it acceptable. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9974" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3732" RevisionGUID="c638de06-fc54-41c4-94c5-8c5a8f8eaa81" CreationDate="2012-06-26T18:52:17.690" UserId="25936" Text="The information we see is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Your username,&#xD;&#xA; 1. The close reason or your message, if you flagged for moderation attention,&#xD;&#xA; 1. How long ago you flagged,&#xD;&#xA; 1. If you also voted to close (for question flags, and only for users with 3K+ rep), and&#xD;&#xA; 1. If you posted one or more comments (just a count).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything else, including edits, we see exactly like you do, by visiting the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know why you couldn't re-flag, I'm 99% certain that you can flag for moderation attention even if you flagged the post previously. You can't flag a question as off topic twice, that wouldn't make much sense, but you can use the custom flag as many times as you want. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You shouldn't worry (much) about re-flagging to contradict an earlier flag, although if you do you should expect at least one of your flags to be declined. However, please don't make a habit of flagging when you can edit first. It's perfectly understandable if it happens once or twice, some times the edit is not immediately evident, but if it happens all the time, you'll get on someone's nerves (and if you are really unlucky, that'd be me ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the question in question, the moderator who handled your flag did notice your edit, and even acknowledged it in a comment, all is good ;) That said, if you happen to regret another flag in the future, flag for moderation attention, and thoroughly explain in your message why you're flagging, mentioning edits and everything else that's relevant. It'd be quite puzzling to see two flags on the same post from the same user, and you'll help us understand what's going on with a clear and to the point message.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9975" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3732" RevisionGUID="edcc8503-873f-4d43-9f4b-d7c451b14619" CreationDate="2012-06-26T19:21:39.903" UserId="25936" Comment="added 137 characters in body" Text="The information we see is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Your username,&#xD;&#xA; 1. The close reason or your message, if you flagged for moderation attention,&#xD;&#xA; 1. How long ago you flagged,&#xD;&#xA; 1. If you also voted to close (for question flags, and only for users with 3K+ rep), and&#xD;&#xA; 1. If you posted one or more comments (just a count).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything else, including edits, we see exactly like you do, by visiting the post. We don't have to actually visit the post to action the flag, but AFAIK all of us do, we don't get _that_ many flags per day (about 50 or so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know why you couldn't re-flag, I'm 99% certain that you can flag for moderation attention even if you flagged the post previously. You can't flag a question as off topic twice, that wouldn't make much sense, but you can use the custom flag as many times as you want. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You shouldn't worry (much) about re-flagging to contradict an earlier flag, although if you do you should expect at least one of your flags to be declined. However, please don't make a habit of flagging when you can edit first. It's perfectly understandable if it happens once or twice, some times the edit is not immediately evident, but if it happens all the time, you'll get on someone's nerves (and if you are really unlucky, that'd be me ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the question in question, the moderator who handled your flag did notice your edit, and even acknowledged it in a comment, all is good ;) That said, if you happen to regret another flag in the future, flag for moderation attention, and thoroughly explain in your message why you're flagging, mentioning edits and everything else that's relevant. It'd be quite puzzling to see two flags on the same post from the same user, and you'll help us understand what's going on with a clear and to the point message.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9976" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3733" RevisionGUID="ed44ac7a-66bf-4893-b072-3f952f6d7ea5" CreationDate="2012-06-26T20:49:13.117" UserId="226" Text="I write this both as a 20,000+ user and former elected moderator on Programmers and as a community manager at Stack Exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First and foremost: **we will not be changing this site's name**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why? Well, let's talk about that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As others have brought up here, there is no evidence right now to support the claim that the site's name is leading to its problems. If anything, I have a counterexample - the site itself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think by now we all know how [the site came about](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/64046/155160). When [the new scope was handed down](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/), it was not received terribly well and we're still sorting some of that out. The fact is, though, that throughout most of last year, the site slowly evolved to move away from the [&quot;Stack Overflow's toilet bowl&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl) image and to what it is today. It happened through comments, (sometimes bitter) meta arguments, flag handling, etc., and look at what we have now - there's an engaged, active community involved in moderation and governance. Even though there were a [couple](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title) [discussions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site), the site name did not matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I remember when most of the front page would be closed questions and I'd be somewhere promoting the site and trying not to feel embarrassed to point people to it. I wouldn't be embarrassed now. I look at the front page and I see 6 closed questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154283/should-i-demand-unit-testing-from-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; and in my opinion rightly so - it's a discussion-oriented question designed to affirm the asker's existing belief. Discouraging questions like this one is a part of our core principles at Stack Exchange to the point where it's written down in the shared FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, **avoid** asking subjective questions where ...  &#xD;&#xA;  &gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154339/advice-on-scrum-for-the-solitary-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as a duplicate of a [canonical, open question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/220/agile-for-the-solo-developer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154342/are-there-references-discussing-the-use-parallel-programming-as-a-development-me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Reference-seeking question. I don't have a strong feeling on this one. Could go either way, personally, but usually questions like this result in poorly curated lists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154338/identifying-methods-with-a-specified-id-in-d&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Migrated to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154282/if-variable-type-not-working-properly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Off-topic, though opted to not migrate, which is fair enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154270/is-learning-blackberry-programming-a-good-choice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Canonically off-topic for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I look at these questions, I see a pattern: **all of them are about some aspect of software development**. Changing your name to &quot;Software Development Stack Exchange&quot; or anything of that ilk will not stop questions like these. Changing your name to an abstract concept will not automatically draw people in. What attracts experts to a site is the content. Focus on that instead and you will continue to grow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, Gaming SE is currently in the spotlight after having been [rebranded to Arqade](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/06/welcome-to-the-arqade/), so it's natural that that's prompting other sites to ask about getting a brand and a domain of their own. Our official answer is that you can ask, but there is no definite answer. **Name changes will happen exceedingly rarely at best, and you should not plan on, depend on, or even anticipate it.** There's no fixed traffic criteria or an &quot;awesome meter&quot; that will say definitively that you've *earned* your name change and that it *will* happen. If we do it again, it will likely be an act-of-god kind of scenario. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example is Fitness &amp; Nutrition now known as Physical Fitness. In that case, part of the site's name explicitly mentioned a subject that was off-topic on the site. The site's community rallied together to start enforcing that and we eventually matched their efforts with a new name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not in either of these situations. So the bottom line is, stop fixating on the name. A name change isn't a silver bullet that will fix your problems. Keep growing the site, solidifying the scope, addressing whatever other issues you (as a community) perceive to exist, but don't worry about the name. It is not holding you back." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9977" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3718" RevisionGUID="a84d69f2-4baf-4e3e-bfad-6d4b5a53d9e6" CreationDate="2012-06-26T20:50:19.760" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9978" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3733" RevisionGUID="9aa54525-afd7-42eb-91bf-e430cf8d32ea" CreationDate="2012-06-26T20:55:57.147" UserId="226" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="I write this both as a 20,000+ user and former elected moderator on Programmers, and as a community manager at Stack Exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First and foremost: **we will not be changing this site's name**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why? Well, let's talk about that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As others have brought up here, there is no evidence right now to support the claim that the site's name is leading to its problems. If anything, I have a counterexample - the site itself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think by now we all know how [the site came about](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/64046/155160). When [the new scope was handed down](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/), it was not received terribly well and we're still sorting some of that out. The fact is, though, that throughout most of last year, the site slowly evolved to move away from the [&quot;Stack Overflow's toilet bowl&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl) image and to what it is today. It happened through comments, (sometimes bitter) meta arguments, flag handling, etc., and look at what we have now - there's an engaged, active community involved in moderation and governance. Even though there were a [couple](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title) [discussions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site), the site name did not matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I remember when most of the front page would be closed questions and I'd be somewhere promoting the site and trying not to feel embarrassed to point people to it. I wouldn't be embarrassed now. I look at the front page and I see 6 closed questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154283/should-i-demand-unit-testing-from-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; and in my opinion rightly so - it's a discussion-oriented question designed to affirm the asker's existing belief. Discouraging questions like this one is a part of our core principles at Stack Exchange to the point where it's written down in the shared FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, **avoid** asking subjective questions where ...  &#xD;&#xA;  &gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154339/advice-on-scrum-for-the-solitary-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as a duplicate of a [canonical, open question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/220/agile-for-the-solo-developer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154342/are-there-references-discussing-the-use-parallel-programming-as-a-development-me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Reference-seeking question. I don't have a strong feeling on this one. Could go either way, personally, but usually questions like this result in poorly curated lists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154338/identifying-methods-with-a-specified-id-in-d&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Migrated to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154282/if-variable-type-not-working-properly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Off-topic, though opted to not migrate, which is fair enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154270/is-learning-blackberry-programming-a-good-choice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Canonically off-topic for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I look at these questions, I see a pattern: **all of them are about some aspect of software development**. Changing your name to &quot;Software Development Stack Exchange&quot; or anything of that ilk will not stop questions like these. Changing your name to an abstract concept will not automatically draw people in. What attracts experts to a site is the content. Focus on that instead and you will continue to grow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, Gaming SE is currently in the spotlight after having been [rebranded to Arqade](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/06/welcome-to-the-arqade/), so it's natural that that's prompting other sites to ask about getting a brand and a domain of their own. Our official answer is that you can ask, but there is no definite answer. **Name changes will happen exceedingly rarely at best, and you should not plan on, depend on, or even anticipate it.** There's no fixed traffic criteria or an &quot;awesome meter&quot; that will say definitively that you've *earned* your name change and that it *will* happen. If we do it again, it will likely be an act-of-god kind of scenario. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example is Fitness &amp; Nutrition now known as Physical Fitness. In that case, part of the site's name explicitly mentioned a subject that was off-topic on the site. The site's community rallied together to start enforcing that and we eventually matched their efforts with a new name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not in either of these situations. So the bottom line is, stop fixating on the name. A name change isn't a silver bullet that will fix your problems. Keep growing the site, solidifying the scope, addressing whatever other issues you (as a community) perceive to exist, but don't worry about the name. It is not holding you back." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9979" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3734" RevisionGUID="b94c7b4b-6ed5-4b6e-867e-06e13f86ff6f" CreationDate="2012-06-27T13:54:12.330" UserId="11110" Text="Before posting [my question][1] I searched to see if I could find some similar question (which I did not). I read the faq, and I did read the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][2] blog. I phrased the question in a way so that I cannot see how I stronger could try to stimulate &quot;Back It Up!&quot; answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Was it overly broad? I do not think so, I both provided a project context which limits it as well as I specifically limited it to not include thinks like working conditions etc. Maybe it was a bit short, but do I have to write a novel to ask subjective questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Despite my effort to keep the question on topic it was closed. What have I missed? What could I have done differently to not have it closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154424/new-code-base-what-experiences-recommendations-do-you-have&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9980" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3734" RevisionGUID="b94c7b4b-6ed5-4b6e-867e-06e13f86ff6f" CreationDate="2012-06-27T13:54:12.330" UserId="11110" Text="What have I missed in asking a subjective question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9981" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3734" RevisionGUID="b94c7b4b-6ed5-4b6e-867e-06e13f86ff6f" CreationDate="2012-06-27T13:54:12.330" UserId="11110" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9982" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3735" RevisionGUID="cba180ea-be5a-4116-a93c-fcc698465231" CreationDate="2012-06-27T14:22:46.523" UserId="51770" Text="I don't think the question is really answerable, you are essentially asking for &quot;war stories&quot;, that's more appropriate for a discussion forum, imho. What is the problem you are trying to solve and how are you going to pick a solution from all our experiences? Is there an answer to the question, or just an endless lists of what everyone's experience was?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a follow up to the *Good Subjective, Bad Subjective* blog post, [Real Questions Have Answers][1], that I think is a lot more clear than the *Good Subjective, Bad Subjective* and ends with: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I realize this is a lot of rules, a lot of guidelines, a lot of thinking. But it’s simpler than it looks. As Aarobot said in his post: **real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are asking for items, the answers your question would generate would be equal - how can you say one's experiences are better or worse than an other's? That is discouraged in the [FAQ][2]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions should I not ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9984" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3734" RevisionGUID="e5a8360a-a5d3-424b-baee-de59e09972c0" CreationDate="2012-06-27T14:45:55.230" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9985" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3737" RevisionGUID="d6e3a6dc-32d3-4853-bf38-adf97a0180dc" CreationDate="2012-06-27T15:04:05.440" UserId="25936" Text="Are you particularly concerned with a specific aspect of approaching a new code base? If, yes, why? What's troubling you and how can we help? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assembling a list of every challenge every one ever had, when approaching a new code base, is not constructive, in the sense that it has minimal (if any) chance of building up to a useful Q&amp;A thread. Some of the problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - When does it end? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Every user who ever had to face a new code base can add their answer, why wouldn't they? But how is that helpful? It would be _extremely_ interesting to read (for a while) but after a point it would be just a big pile of repetitive answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - How do we vote? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   We are not looking for a single answer to every question, but we are looking for a clear set of parameters to decide if an answer is useful or not (not interesting, useful). We need those parameters so we can vote, sensibly, and help the most useful answer(s) float at the top. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Certainly you can pick the best answer (for you) by marking it as accepted, but that doesn't really mean much, the community has final say in choosing the best answer. For me to vote, I need to know if the answer is useful, i.e. if I can refer back to it when I face a similar problem or not. If I don't know that, I don't know how to vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - What are you _really_ looking for?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Several times I've answered such questions, I quickly found out that the asker only needed a small part of my answer. They might have not realized it themselves initially, but not having clear parameters in the question, a specific problem to solve, can easily lead to such situations, and for me, the answerer, it's particularly nasty. Simply put I've wasted my time writing a long but mostly unnecessary answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are facing a specific problem, we would love to help! But as it is, your question, albeit being very interesting, it's not suitable for the Q&amp;A format and philosophy of Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9987" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3737" RevisionGUID="22c7b431-dc1d-48e8-9feb-0135c1b83c42" CreationDate="2012-06-27T15:14:49.170" UserId="25936" Comment="added 123 characters in body" Text="Are you particularly concerned with a specific aspect of approaching a new code base? If, yes, why? What's troubling you and how can we help? In other words, what is the problem you are trying to solve?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assembling a list of every challenge every one ever had, when approaching a new code base, is not constructive, in the sense that it has minimal (if any) chance of building up to a useful Q&amp;A thread. Some of the problems with questions that fall into the &quot;equal answers&quot; category are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - When does it end? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Every user who ever had to face a new code base can add their answer, why wouldn't they? But how is that helpful? It would be _extremely_ interesting to read (for a while) but after a point it would be just a big pile of repetitive answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - How do we vote? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   We are not looking for a single answer to every question, but we are looking for a clear set of parameters to decide if an answer is useful or not (not interesting, useful). We need those parameters so we can vote, sensibly, and help the most useful answer(s) float at the top. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Certainly you can pick the best answer (for you) by marking it as accepted, but that doesn't really mean much, the community has final say in choosing the best answer. For me to vote, I need to know if the answer is useful, i.e. if I can refer back to it when I face a similar problem or not. If I don't know that, I don't know how to vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - What are you _really_ looking for?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Several times I've answered such questions, I quickly found out that the asker only needed a small part of my answer. They might have not realized it themselves initially, but not having clear parameters in the question, a specific problem to solve, can easily lead to such situations, and for me, the answerer, it's particularly nasty. Simply put I've wasted my time writing a long but mostly unnecessary answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are facing a specific problem, we would love to help! But as it is, your question, albeit being very interesting, it's not suitable for the Q&amp;A format and philosophy of Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9988" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3738" RevisionGUID="92e4f23b-1327-4daf-9719-2d275c886ff8" CreationDate="2012-06-30T19:42:55.753" UserId="52949" Text="In my opinion, most new users who post their first question generally fall into one of two categories:&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;1. People who post the question, get an answer they like, then ignore the site whatsoever. This is obviously counter-productive to the community, but there's not really much we can do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. People who care about the site's rules, post the question, follow answers and comments, participate in the discussion, upvote, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The **problem** I see is that most newcomers of the second category accept an answer to their question within minutes of seeing the first one (just my observation). And on a site that hosts questions that are more subjective than these on SO, this is a **bad thing** (again, IMO). Honestly, I'd say even on SO this is a bad thing, but this is off topic. Many people don't bother answering questions with an accepted answer. And even if they do, the OP is less likely to change the accepted answer. And even if he did, this has stopped some potentially good answers from materializing at all. Furthermore, the answer/question ratio is used as a metric for new SE sites (and a healthy value from what I understand is about 5-6).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, **shouldn't there be something in the FAQ** that mentions to new users they should not mark the first posted answer as accepted, just because it makes sense?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean, great answers take time to be written. On *my* questions, I wait until either the question seems to have little new views, no new answers and few comments, or I've seen an answer that covers the question in its entirety flawlessly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a real issue, or is it just me?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9989" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3738" RevisionGUID="92e4f23b-1327-4daf-9719-2d275c886ff8" CreationDate="2012-06-30T19:42:55.753" UserId="52949" Text="Accepting answers too fast" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9990" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3738" RevisionGUID="92e4f23b-1327-4daf-9719-2d275c886ff8" CreationDate="2012-06-30T19:42:55.753" UserId="52949" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9991" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3738" RevisionGUID="c391b653-c5ed-45f1-8384-171567ca0491" CreationDate="2012-06-30T20:34:27.847" UserId="52949" Comment="added tags" Text="|discussion|questions|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9992" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3739" RevisionGUID="f98832e5-d823-47c1-9d3b-27e23a9af61f" CreationDate="2012-06-30T23:26:58.943" UserId="50424" Text="Here is an example of a question that is strictly related to the workplace -- the topic is essentially meta-programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154565/where-does-a-technical-programmer-fit-in-and-what-does-the-title-mean&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And here is another one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154822/does-it-work-when-a-developer-is-the-project-managers-boss&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice both questions are extremely similar in topic, but the first question has been deemed off topic and closed while the second seems to be just fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm a little confused where the line (if any) is drawn.  Can someone explain the difference between the two questions to me?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9993" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3739" RevisionGUID="f98832e5-d823-47c1-9d3b-27e23a9af61f" CreationDate="2012-06-30T23:26:58.943" UserId="50424" Text="Why are some questions about the workplace allowed, and some not?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9994" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3739" RevisionGUID="f98832e5-d823-47c1-9d3b-27e23a9af61f" CreationDate="2012-06-30T23:26:58.943" UserId="50424" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9995" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3740" RevisionGUID="d0c46044-cd87-4966-aa61-5302227d8c12" CreationDate="2012-06-30T23:35:10.340" UserId="47" Text="The line is vague and blurry and comes down to how you and other community members place the question on this diagram (which is prominently displayed in the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![the off-centre target that is our goal](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of questions *do* fall outside the blue area, but there are some general sounding questions that do fall inside it as they do require the expertise and experience that only another software developer can bring. It's difficult to describe what such a question would look like and I don't always see it even when others point it out, but they do exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know why one question attracted close votes (and possibly flags) and the other didn't, but clearly at least two community members thought that the first question didn't fit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9996" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3740" RevisionGUID="2fa3b89a-32f8-4d70-a356-c470a576738f" CreationDate="2012-07-01T00:02:17.793" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="The line is vague and blurry and comes down to how you and other community members place the question on this diagram (which is prominently displayed in the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![the off-centre target that is our goal](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of questions *do* fall outside the blue area, but there are some general sounding questions that do fall inside it as they do require the expertise and experience that only another software developer can bring. It's difficult to describe what such a question would look like and I don't always see it even when others point it out, but they do exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know why one question attracted close votes (and possibly flags) and the other didn't, but clearly at least two community members thought that the first question didn't fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There isn't a &quot;one size fits all&quot; solution to this problem. Each question must be taken on it's merits and treated individually. What you should consider doing (in no particular order):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Edit the question so that it does fit - but without losing the intent of the author.&#xD;&#xA;2. Vote to close where the question cannot be made to fit. Flag if you have less than 3,000 reputation.&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote to reopen where you think a question has been incorrectly closed. You may want to discuss in in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21) or here on meta to get other user's views. If absolutely necessary flag it for moderator attention. Please note however, that you are more likely to get a question reopened if you have edited it to correct the original defects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if you think that http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154565/where-does-a-technical-programmer-fit-in-and-what-does-the-title-mean was unfairly closed, do items 1 and 3 above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Equally if you think that http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154822/does-it-work-when-a-developer-is-the-project-managers-boss should be closed, do item 2 above." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9997" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3729" RevisionGUID="de0e19ce-1f0e-416c-912d-344e68fb75dd" CreationDate="2012-07-01T01:35:06.453" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/219242690829746180" />
  <row Id="9998" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3709" RevisionGUID="ae27b71a-ae38-499f-980c-6a3d195a4ed9" CreationDate="2012-07-01T19:35:06.257" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/219514484388134913" />
  <row Id="9999" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3741" RevisionGUID="fbbb1a50-2387-4079-bc24-3d6a09912a12" CreationDate="2012-07-01T21:49:00.847" UserId="3631" Text="I don't see this as a real issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess we could block people from accepting answers for X days or hours, but the immediate downside to this would be that even more 1st time users wouldn't return to select an accepted answer. Or they would just realize once they start asking more questions and people point out their poor accept rate to them (or they might re-create new accounts).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I think changes would make things works, and that things are OK as they are, from a tooling and process perspective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe, as you mention, could it be made clearer to the users in the FAQ, but I'd bet a rather small percentage of first time users read the FAQ, especially for the &quot;I post and want an answer fast and don't even care if it fits the scope of P.SE (or other SE sites)&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only good alternative I'd see would be to have, when the first answer to be posted appears (as a live refresh or in their inbox), a notification / pop-up pointing them to guidelines about accepting answers to address the common issues (like accepting too fast, upvoting AND accepting, etc...).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But so far I have to say I haven't been too bugged by &quot;fast&quot;-closes. You can't **force** askers, who may not be here to commit to the SE community and may just be in search of a one-off answer, to do just that: commit to following a long list of guidelines. It's already good enough (or at least not bad) if they at least post decent questions, format them properly without using SMS-style and poor grammar, and give proper feedback and accept an answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10000" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3739" RevisionGUID="7106e31a-60bb-4457-ae04-3a58ecb65852" CreationDate="2012-07-01T22:35:05.837" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/219559781516578817" />
  <row Id="10001" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3742" RevisionGUID="1a0a7eba-f211-48f9-90a9-966f9f4b082e" CreationDate="2012-07-02T12:19:25.063" UserId="41381" Text="Don't worry about accepted answers being chosen early, its just an opportunity for some of the more illusive badges." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10002" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3743" RevisionGUID="a3c08c7e-3ef0-46e9-bebe-1ff30eff9e68" CreationDate="2012-07-02T14:10:22.763" UserId="6591" Text="When you get above 10k reputation, you *can* see deleted questions. I think some of the mods have been far too delete-happy. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10003" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3744" RevisionGUID="c313633c-4449-47bb-b48f-86c149731f9e" CreationDate="2012-07-02T20:26:54.290" UserId="41381" Text="Some questions are allowed because business and freelancing concerns are on topic provided they relate enough to programmers that answers would be sufficiently different because of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also and more importantly &quot;We are not a perfect example of our own rules.&quot; Though the relevant post that explained this in detail has been deleted unfortunately. Essentially being able to find a counter-example is not justification that something is allowed, its evidence that rules are sometimes loosely enforced (particularly with older content), however they may still be enforced on any examples you find or future questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10004" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3738" RevisionGUID="e619a5d5-49fc-493a-a1d5-9f5f8f14670e" CreationDate="2012-07-03T01:35:07.753" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/219967476031692800" />
  <row Id="10005" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3742" RevisionGUID="dfa623dd-ab53-4913-852c-f7eff4ac80e9" CreationDate="2012-07-03T21:05:04.740" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="Don't worry about accepted answers being chosen early, its just an opportunity for some of the more elusive badges." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10006" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3745" RevisionGUID="5b3b9def-c229-4ee5-bb8f-4c147cd3a975" CreationDate="2012-07-04T19:49:14.017" UserId="4767" Text="Look at the linked [suggested edit][1] by [this user][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The user essentially changed a rotted link (404) to what appears to me to be a commercial site that has nothing to do with the previously linked document.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the user doesn't have any posts on programmers, I felt this was the only way to bring attention to this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/5512&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2571/gertschi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10007" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3745" RevisionGUID="5b3b9def-c229-4ee5-bb8f-4c147cd3a975" CreationDate="2012-07-04T19:49:14.017" UserId="4767" Text="The suggested edit appears to be spam" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10008" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3745" RevisionGUID="5b3b9def-c229-4ee5-bb8f-4c147cd3a975" CreationDate="2012-07-04T19:49:14.017" UserId="4767" Text="|discussion|suggested-edits|spam|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10009" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3746" RevisionGUID="ee164d05-89f8-4dc7-9f11-e02c50936925" CreationDate="2012-07-04T19:53:45.327" UserId="47" Text="There's not a lot we (as moderators) can do other than reject the edits as they appear. Suspending the user would be overkill for one bad edit, however if the behaviour persisted then it might be in order.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A history of bad suggested edits will also result in a ban from suggesting edits so rejection is exactly the right thing to do in these circumstances.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10010" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3747" RevisionGUID="a89050ce-0522-4685-8f44-fdbbf119b2bc" CreationDate="2012-07-04T20:13:35.787" UserId="47" Text="There's nothing much more that I can add to this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As haylem points out there isn't anything we can do to force people to accept or not accept answers. There is a time limit built in - but it's not very long.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is nothing to stop you providing another answer if you think the accepted one isn't good enough. If others agree it will get votes and other visitors to the site will see an answer with more votes than the accepted answer and (hopefully) reach their own conclusion as to which is better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't forget that all acceptance means is &quot;this answer helped *me* (the question asker) the most&quot;. It doesn't make the answer more (or less) correct than other answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10011" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3748" RevisionGUID="11ea4751-263f-4c29-9072-b0289d20affc" CreationDate="2012-07-05T10:50:46.630" UserId="1996" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155693/sending-mail-by-host-is-true&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll grant you that the grammar isn't perfect, but the question speaks to a real programming (or programmer's) problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/04/so-youd-like-to-send-some-email-through-code.html&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often, businesses are reluctant to spend money to outsource their email operations; and so, they task one of their programmers to reduce their spam volume.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10012" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3748" RevisionGUID="11ea4751-263f-4c29-9072-b0289d20affc" CreationDate="2012-07-05T10:50:46.630" UserId="1996" Text="Why is this question off-topic? Jeff Atwood blogged about it!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10013" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3748" RevisionGUID="11ea4751-263f-4c29-9072-b0289d20affc" CreationDate="2012-07-05T10:50:46.630" UserId="1996" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10014" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3749" RevisionGUID="806da868-167c-4e11-81d7-668558ddff2c" CreationDate="2012-07-05T11:01:48.680" UserId="47" Text="I closed it because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It's not at all clear what you are asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. What I *thought* it was asking was more of a business question &quot;Do I need an e-mail marketing service?&quot; which is off topic for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it was asking about how to design a system then it would be on topic, but at the moment - as the question currently stands - it's not a good fit at all for the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10015" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3749" RevisionGUID="2a83e33c-4d18-4f13-af35-c6dc29c4cfae" CreationDate="2012-07-05T11:37:19.057" UserId="47" Comment="oops" Text="I closed it because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It's not at all clear what the OP is asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. What I *thought* it was asking was more of a business question &quot;Do I need an e-mail marketing service?&quot; which is off topic for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it was asking about how to design a system then it would be on topic, but at the moment - as the question currently stands - it's not a good fit at all for the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10016" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3750" RevisionGUID="782f8380-bc3f-4d5c-a369-c1a47a33e3a3" CreationDate="2012-07-05T16:43:50.863" UserDisplayName="user7519" Text="Actually if Oded had looked carefully at the content of the link. That page has a button that links to the previous PDF that is now 404.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was not SPAM and it isn't a &quot;bad edit&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://www.maestrodev.com/support/ has the link to the PDF that went 404." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10017" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3751" RevisionGUID="372ffbc1-050c-4ea0-8086-af09fa496e9e" CreationDate="2012-07-06T03:49:14.350" UserId="40651" Text="I had a question closed today, which I do not understandy why. People keep responding the question, and for me the explanation for the closing makes no sense at all. Actually all the answers were very useful for me, and most of them were based on facts and based on each one knowledge. So I'd like to ask for reopen the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why did visual programming never take off and what future paradigms might change that?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119463/why-did-visual-programming-never-take-off-and-what-future-paradigms-might-change" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10018" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3751" RevisionGUID="372ffbc1-050c-4ea0-8086-af09fa496e9e" CreationDate="2012-07-06T03:49:14.350" UserId="40651" Text="Closed question about visual programming paradigms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10019" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3751" RevisionGUID="372ffbc1-050c-4ea0-8086-af09fa496e9e" CreationDate="2012-07-06T03:49:14.350" UserId="40651" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10020" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3752" RevisionGUID="e3f0cd6b-1172-479e-8ba8-e4fe7cb6ca5e" CreationDate="2012-07-06T04:12:26.903" UserId="40651" Text="I would like to suggest:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    For (all people which vote for closing a question){&#xD;&#xA;      If (the reason for closing is not valid AND&#xD;&#xA;          the question comes to be closed (by the same unfare reason) AND&#xD;&#xA;          the question comes to be reopened after (because the reason for closing was unfare))&#xD;&#xA;          {loses 100 points when the question is reopened, for punishment for a wrong judgement}&#xD;&#xA;      }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because it's very annoying when someone gets his question closed for a non-sense reason, so the person has to lose a precious time explaining why the question is useful, why there is no sense in closing it and asking for a reopening. That's very very bugging. This way people would think a little before destroying something rather than building something." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10021" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3752" RevisionGUID="e3f0cd6b-1172-479e-8ba8-e4fe7cb6ca5e" CreationDate="2012-07-06T04:12:26.903" UserId="40651" Text="Negative points for erroneous voting for closing a question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10022" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3752" RevisionGUID="e3f0cd6b-1172-479e-8ba8-e4fe7cb6ca5e" CreationDate="2012-07-06T04:12:26.903" UserId="40651" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10023" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3751" RevisionGUID="6d56d47b-33fb-4c66-8a6b-260004d9f1df" CreationDate="2012-07-06T04:14:37.213" UserId="40651" Comment="improve question" Text="I had a question closed today, [Why did visual programming never take off and what future paradigms might change that?][1] which I do not understandy why. People keep responding the question, and for me the explanation for the closing makes no sense at all. Actually all the answers were very useful for me, and most of them were based on facts and based on each one knowledge. So I'd like to ask for reopen the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119463/why-did-visual-programming-never-take-off-and-what-future-paradigms-might-change" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10029" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3755" RevisionGUID="ca764c15-5c95-46c6-853d-124614be9579" CreationDate="2012-07-06T07:54:50.263" UserId="47" Text="Well the close reason says it all:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange isn't the right place for a discussion or argument. This doesn't mean that the question isn't interesting or of interest to programmers, just that it doesn't fit the Stack Exchange model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10030" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3756" RevisionGUID="060aa337-d9af-4955-8e9e-0843f169735c" CreationDate="2012-07-06T10:30:39.910" UserId="28308" Text="My score is 212. Yes there is one day I asked 3 questions that is downvoted. However, I don't even know why it's downvoted. It seems like a fine question to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then boom I am suspended for 1 week. No biggy. I'll just learn from my lesson. I didn't post anything anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now permanent ban?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's pretty fast&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10031" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3756" RevisionGUID="060aa337-d9af-4955-8e9e-0843f169735c" CreationDate="2012-07-06T10:30:39.910" UserId="28308" Text="I am banned in programmers stackexchange?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10032" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3756" RevisionGUID="060aa337-d9af-4955-8e9e-0843f169735c" CreationDate="2012-07-06T10:30:39.910" UserId="28308" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10033" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3756" RevisionGUID="9d3249b4-43a2-468e-a555-1e7329fc184b" CreationDate="2012-07-06T10:55:30.497" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10034" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3757" RevisionGUID="584943f1-4174-4e02-8f2b-30c64e780574" CreationDate="2012-07-06T11:20:34.183" UserId="25476" Text="You seriously have no idea why you were suspended?  This came as a complete surprise?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85296/what-does-uitable-reloaddata-really-do-anyway&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150873/model-view-controller-application-in-objective-c-sorting-which-one-is-which&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151097/how-to-handle-key-in-php-array-if-the-key-contains-japanese-characters&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151115/whats-typical-work-hour-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/153860/what-questions-i-should-ask-apple-tech-support&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/153862/does-ios-has-api-to-access-contacts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/153863/do-we-have-api-to-close-all-background-software-in-ios&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In less than two months you were able to achieve the astounding feat of posting 7 questions which have resulted in deletion.  There are a few more which were closed.  More than half of your questions were closed or deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your questions have been either of low quality or completely offtopic as was laid out in the [Frequently Asked Questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq).  You were also contacted privately where we asked you to better familiarize yourself with the FAQ so that you can understand what kinds of questions we look for on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You were given ample warning and multiple people have tried to give you direction." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10037" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3756" RevisionGUID="ab406a81-446e-4e88-b9dc-3c279fd973d5" CreationDate="2012-07-06T12:05:08.853" UserId="31260" Comment="tags per clarification in comments // http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3756/i-am-banned-in-programmers-stackexchange/3757#comment10382_3756" Text="|discussion|suspensions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10038" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3758" RevisionGUID="d37d29a6-622e-4638-910c-1b589624f9c5" CreationDate="2012-07-06T12:06:30.570" UserId="25936" Text="The question ban is automatic, and it's not something the moderators control. We don't even know that you are question banned, unless you tell us. To lift the question ban you will need to follow the instructions given in this [link][1], that should have appeared when you tried to ask a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question history is troubling, as maple_shaft [already mentioned][2], from your 16 questions in total:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 9 were closed and deleted,&#xD;&#xA;- from the remaining 7, one is down voted and all but two were edited to fix obvious and not so obvious issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and you have provided no answers. We don't require you to answer questions, provided you ask great ones, but when your questions are not really welcomed by the community, we do expect you to give back by providing some good answers. We are a community of volunteers, and it's only reasonable to expect you to give something back for all the help you have been getting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't even know the exact algorithm of the question ban, and at this point it's all up to you. If you feel the ban is unfair, you will have to contact Stack Exchange directly, at `team+programmers@stackexchange.com`.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3757/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10039" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3759" RevisionGUID="af10ba53-7374-4bed-b776-aef6250c8892" CreationDate="2012-07-06T12:07:01.630" UserId="41381" Text="I don't think I've ever seen a question that was closed that couldn't have benefited from an edit to some degree, and that is what closing is for. Closing gives time for a question to be improved without getting as much crap from the community, once it is improved it can and should get reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10040" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3758" RevisionGUID="7539c46e-0cc6-46ea-82db-3f08ddcda08d" CreationDate="2012-07-06T12:12:32.200" UserId="25936" Comment="added 685 characters in body; added 8 characters in body" Text="The question ban is automatic, and it's not something the moderators control. We don't even know that you are question banned, unless you tell us. To lift the question ban you will need to follow the instructions given in this [link][1], that should have appeared when you tried to ask a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question history is troubling, as maple_shaft [already mentioned][2], from your 16 questions in total:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 9 were closed and deleted,&#xD;&#xA;- from the remaining 7, one is down voted and all but two were edited to fix obvious and not so obvious issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and you have provided no answers. We don't require you to answer questions, provided you ask great ones, but when your questions are not really welcomed by the community, we do expect you to give back by providing some good answers. We are a community of volunteers, and it's only reasonable to expect you to give something back for all the help you have been getting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems that this time the troubling question pattern kicked off both the manual suspension process&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _and_ the automatic question ban. That's a bit harsh, and about a month ago I asked Stack Exchange to let moderators know when a user is question banned, as I feel it's quite annoying to come back from a suspension only to find out that a secondary and silent ban is in place, but my request was ignored. I honestly had no idea that you were question banned when I suspended you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't even know the exact algorithm of the question ban and can't even guess if a user is banned or not, and at this point it's all up to you. If you feel the ban is unfair, you will have to contact Stack Exchange directly, at `team+programmers@stackexchange.com`. &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; There were a lot of user flags on your questions, which brought the pattern to my attention, and I decided to suspend you.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3757/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10041" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3752" RevisionGUID="1c27f11a-c2a6-4278-9bf1-a1721d5719b8" CreationDate="2012-07-06T13:29:24.193" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10042" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3760" RevisionGUID="ae277fbf-4e10-43be-bed2-de41e7c292d3" CreationDate="2012-07-06T14:06:46.643" UserId="25936" Text="This has already been [proposed and declined][1], a brief summary of the answers there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The feature would do more to encourage crap questions that discourage incorrect closures,&#xD;&#xA; 1. We can't penalise people for a process we don't award them for. People are voting to close to help the site maintain it's quality standards, they don't get _any_ reward for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every asker that had their question closed thought it was interesting, useful and on-topic before asking it. If five people decided it's not, it will take five other people to review the closure, the asker's opinion alone won't overcome the community's. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have examples of questions that you feel were wrongly closed, feel free to bring them up on Meta for review. That may sound like a waste of time to you, but we are a community of volunteers, freely volunteering our time to help others. If you are not interested in spending some time improving the question, I'm sorry, but there isn't much we can do about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/9817/suggestion-if-you-voted-to-close-a-question-and-it-gets-re-opened-you-lose-100" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10043" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3761" RevisionGUID="4f59be4b-6a81-44cb-8a4f-c65ff0ed9fc2" CreationDate="2012-07-06T14:16:39.800" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Please, if you're going to offer up pseudo-code, then at least try to get the formatting close to what we'd expect to see.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;May I suggest:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;ref pseQuestion question;&#xD;&#xA;int repLoss = 100;&#xD;&#xA;int opScaleFactor = 5;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;//nail the buggers / gits for voting to close when&#xD;&#xA;// arbitrary user deemed question worthwhile.&#xD;&#xA;foreach( pseUser user in CloseVoters )&#xD;&#xA;{&#xD;&#xA;     if( user.CloseVote.Reason != arbitraryUserJudgement.isValid &amp;&amp;&#xD;&#xA;          question.wasClosed( user.CloseVote.Reason ) &amp;&amp;&#xD;&#xA;          question.wasReopened( arbitraryUserJudgement.Unfair(user.CloseVote.Reason) ) &#xD;&#xA;     )&#xD;&#xA;          user.Reputation -= repLoss;&#xD;&#xA;}&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(apologies in advance for the trailing paranthesis on the if, not my preferred style)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And while we're at it, let's give the closed question's author a chance for some extra retribution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;if( arbitraryUserJudgement.currentUser == question.OP )&#xD;&#xA;     uesr.Reputation -= ( opScaleFactor * repLoss );&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or maybe instead of all of that, we could just focus on editing the questions that can be saved.  If you feel that you (or the OP) are spending an excessive amount of time justifying the question, then maybe that's a sign that the question wasn't very well poised to begin with.  Here's a good [checklist](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask) to start with to make sure your questions are good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;FWIW, I think Yannis' answer is pretty spot-on.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The part of your question that I object to is &quot;who decides what is unfair?&quot;  5 close votes by the community is about as close to fair as we're going to get.  If you have an alternative approach to deeming what is fair, please bring it up for the community to discuss." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10044" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3762" RevisionGUID="d4e8613e-f83d-4ec6-a77d-510672589075" CreationDate="2012-07-06T15:03:39.100" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="So let's run through the [good question checklist](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Do your homework  &#xD;&#xA;I give you a grade of C on this one.  Yes, you pulled together the context, but you didn't cite any references. Your question didn't show any real level of research effort. &#xD;&#xA;- Be specific  &#xD;&#xA;Here you missed big time.  You asked two very big-answer questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of which is difficult to prove.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;Why did visual programming never take off&lt;/pre&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;The second of which is almost unanswerable.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;So, how advanced should be the &quot;new&quot; visual programming languages paradigms? &#xD;&#xA;Which characteristics these new paradigms would be required?&lt;/pre&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;Guessing at the future is fun, but it's not on-topic for P.SE.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Make it relevant to others  &#xD;&#xA;Definitely a programming related question, and kind of an interesting one too.  A+.  &#xD;&#xA;- Be on-topic  &#xD;&#xA;Another D or F here for the same reasons as in item 2 - Be Specific.&#xD;&#xA;- Keep an open mind  &#xD;&#xA;I'm giving you a D or a C here because I don't currently see any comments / replies from you in that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why did it get closed?  Take a deep look into #2 and #4.  You have asked interesting, but essentially unanswerable questions.  Unanswerable questions don't belong in a Q&amp;A format no matter how interesting." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10045" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3760" RevisionGUID="5883543d-b8fd-42a9-9686-31c05d761143" CreationDate="2012-07-06T15:03:45.823" UserId="25936" Comment="added 121 characters in body" Text="This has already been [proposed and declined][1], a brief summary of the answers there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The feature would do more to encourage crap questions than discourage incorrect closures, people would be hesitant to vote to close even the most obvious closeworthy questions in fear of the reputation penalty,&#xD;&#xA; 1. We can't penalise people for a process we don't award them for. People are voting to close to help the site maintain it's quality standards, they don't get _any_ reward for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every asker that had their question closed thought it was interesting, useful and on-topic before asking it. If five people decided it's not, it will take five other people to review the closure, the asker's opinion alone won't overcome the community's. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have examples of questions that you feel were wrongly closed, feel free to bring them up on Meta for review. That may sound like a waste of time to you, but we are a community of volunteers, freely volunteering our time to help others. If you are not interested in spending some time improving the question, I'm sorry, but there isn't much we can do about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/9817/suggestion-if-you-voted-to-close-a-question-and-it-gets-re-opened-you-lose-100" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10046" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3751" RevisionGUID="23d7fb8a-fd4d-4a13-b423-709bf9a4813b" CreationDate="2012-07-06T15:16:50.050" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10047" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3763" RevisionGUID="5c945e3b-5bd3-4361-87b5-2365332a483e" CreationDate="2012-07-06T20:45:03.223" UserId="3631" Text="I seem to have reached this limit while editing my answer to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit frustrating, as the editor didn't warn me, so I typed away and submitted... and it truncated the end of the text AND the links...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So now I'll gladly rewrite this quickly, and make sections more concise to fit everything in, but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What exactly is the limit?&#xD;&#xA; * Maybe the editor should warn and block submission, like the comment section does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Though I agree such long posts probably do not happen too often. Sorry. got interested in this question more and more :)_" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10048" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3763" RevisionGUID="5c945e3b-5bd3-4361-87b5-2365332a483e" CreationDate="2012-07-06T20:45:03.223" UserId="3631" Text="What's the upper character limit for a post's size? (and implement a warning system for it)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10049" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3763" RevisionGUID="5c945e3b-5bd3-4361-87b5-2365332a483e" CreationDate="2012-07-06T20:45:03.223" UserId="3631" Text="|feature-request|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10050" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3764" RevisionGUID="f1091c9c-f905-4bff-a491-c4208fdccb1c" CreationDate="2012-07-06T20:51:13.017" UserId="4" Text="Unless things have changed (and given the status-declined tag, it doesn't appear that way), [an answer is limited to 30,000 characters][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The explanation given is that posts that exceed 30,000 characters are rare and might indicate other problems with the question. Like [the FAQ says][2], if a book is more suited to answer the question, then it's not an appropriate question for a Stack Exchange site. 30,000 characters is (by my estimate) 12 pages of double-spaced 12 point Times New Roman text - if a question actually requires that much text, it probably has problems. For example, it might be asking multiple questions that should be broken out into independent questions or it might be overly broad (one of the reasons for closing as a non-constructive question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're right that truncation is not the answer, though. It's not very user-friendly when content gets chopped off without warning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/13784/please-increase-the-maximum-allowed-length-for-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10051" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3765" RevisionGUID="ec900654-830e-4c39-823e-dd455499fd27" CreationDate="2012-07-07T03:25:28.767" UserId="1996" Text="You committed two big sins here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. You asked more than one question.  &#xD;&#xA;2. Your second question solicited debate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you did neither of those, the moderators probably would have left your question alone." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10052" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3766" RevisionGUID="e071bfc3-f1e4-48cd-b582-bee8d915a492" CreationDate="2012-07-07T04:07:11.343" UserId="25936" Text="This isn't really an answer, but didn't fit in a comment. Lots of strange things happened to the question as it was originally migrated here from Stack Overflow and when it was closed, it was also locked. That's supposed to happen with rejected migrations, however rejected migrations aren't supposed to survive that long (asked Nov 13 '11), and while locked, the question couldn't be edited. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Overflow version of the question was deleted, so I cleared the migration history, to unlock the question and untie it from Stack Overflow, but that also re-opened the question automatically, and since this was originally a community closure, I closed it again. If re-opened, it should be re-opened by five votes, and not by a dumb side-effect of clearing its migration path.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On top of everything else, the question was automatically deleted, being an old closed question, apparently the fact that it was only closed fairly recently didn't really matter. I've un-deleted it, and now it's finally where it should be: closed and unlocked, ready to be improved, and possibly re-opened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Check the [question's revisions][1] to see its history. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/119463/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10053" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3765" RevisionGUID="41318fe4-f5ab-45d9-8eb6-e405c3201a61" CreationDate="2012-07-07T14:09:08.337" UserId="1996" Comment="added 27 characters in body" Text="You committed two big sins here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. You asked more than one question.  &#xD;&#xA;2. Your second question solicited debate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you did neither of those, the &lt;strike&gt;moderators&lt;/strike&gt; community probably would have left your question alone." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10054" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3529" RevisionGUID="98af5fc1-e7c7-44b8-8d78-4b616177642a" CreationDate="2012-07-09T03:18:19.663" UserId="1996" Comment="added 85 characters in body" Text="I thought it was some sort of joke I'd missed out on because I'd pursuing glory in other SE's, but no... It's just community bulletin... So, is anyone going to do anything about the fact that the font is almost illegible? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a programmer, I hate calling this a bug, but seriously Programmers Cohhunity you need to do something about this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps someone has asked a Sihilar question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** It's been over two months. Could somebody please choose a legible font?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vo6l6.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10055" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3767" RevisionGUID="010022c6-c037-4dae-ab75-bae9b3a06959" CreationDate="2012-07-09T16:50:17.587" UserId="63" Text="I can't reproduce this; trying to submit several chapters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland produces,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Oops! Your answer couldn't be submitted because:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - body is limited to 30000 characters; you entered 34491&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Submitting an edit using the default inline editor behaves a little differently - I got a little pop-up reading,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; body is limited to 30000 characters; you entered 34701&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Opening the editor in a separate tab reverts to the submission failing with an error:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Oops! Your edit couldn't be submitted because:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - body is limited to 30000 characters; you entered 34837&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even here, the text wasn't *truncated* - the submission was flat-out rejected. It may be that some combination of formatting or link markup specific to your answer allowed it to bypass the first check and be accepted (but truncated); if you can reproduce this, please post details." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10056" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3529" RevisionGUID="0bd5b4b2-1ed9-43a0-99f4-f3235e906ec2" CreationDate="2012-07-09T23:44:01.680" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10057" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3768" RevisionGUID="16492cbe-bf3e-4ea7-9971-06f10c1cc404" CreationDate="2012-07-10T21:58:47.137" UserId="2366" Text="[I asked a question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/156336/2366) about the historical perspective of a feature in C# and Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was closed as “not constructive”. Needless to say, I disagree. But more importantly, I don’t understand the reasons. I fail to see what distinguishes this question from, say, [“Why does F# have an interactive mode but not C#?”](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/156303/2366)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, I was hoping for the same kind of answer. The latter question had the enormous luck of having Eric Lippert answer it authoritatively – but the same *kind* of answer would fit my own question perfectly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what’s the criterion here? Was I just unlucky / the other question lucky? Or is there a distinction that I fail to see? Or could I improve the way the question is asked? I’d be more than happy to." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10058" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3768" RevisionGUID="16492cbe-bf3e-4ea7-9971-06f10c1cc404" CreationDate="2012-07-10T21:58:47.137" UserId="2366" Text="What is “not constructive”?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10059" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3768" RevisionGUID="16492cbe-bf3e-4ea7-9971-06f10c1cc404" CreationDate="2012-07-10T21:58:47.137" UserId="2366" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10060" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3769" RevisionGUID="0aba276f-5b65-462d-ad26-fc12c583ed52" CreationDate="2012-07-10T22:02:34.733" UserId="47" Text="It had a couple of close votes and a flag - hence my final close vote. However, if it hadn't attracted the flag I wouldn't have closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can (and should) vote to reopen and perhaps look again at the language you used in the question. It could be that the voters and flaggers were under the impression that you were after a discussion rather than something concrete. Unfortunately because of the migration and subsequent close the question is locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In that case I'll reopen it, but if it attracts new close votes and/or flags it's likely to get closed again.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10061" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3768" RevisionGUID="f894e69a-6671-4282-9422-4ca001445490" CreationDate="2012-07-10T22:10:35.737" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10063" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3770" RevisionGUID="92a93f4c-5e10-4029-813b-4fce57605ee2" CreationDate="2012-07-11T00:29:51.767" UserId="3631" Text="**_THIS IS A TEST CASE, please do not screw with this answer._**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_See the comments under in Shog9's answer, and other answers for details._**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Foreword&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This whole thing sounds like a daunting task indeed, and there's&#xD;&#xA;a lot of ground to cover. So I'm humbly going to suggest what&#xD;&#xA;I think could be a rather comprehensive guide to use for your team,&#xD;&#xA;with pointers to appropriate tools (and alternatives) and appropriate&#xD;&#xA;reading or educational material to share.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Please do keep in mind that these are guidelines, and that as such&#xD;&#xA;they are meant to adapted, adopted, or dropped based on circumstances.&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, dumping all this on a team at once would have no effect,&#xD;&#xA;except if they are ready to listen. It's more likely that you should&#xD;&#xA;try to cherry-pick some elements that would give you the best bang&#xD;&#xA;for your sweat, and introduce them slowly, one at a time._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Note also that not all of this is easy to apply to Visual or Graphical Programming Systems, like G2. For more specific details on how to deal with these, see the **Addendum** section at the bottom._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Executive Summary for the Impatient&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Define a **rigid project structure**, with:&#xD;&#xA;   * **project templates**,&#xD;&#xA;   * **coding conventions**,&#xD;&#xA;   * familiar **build systems**,&#xD;&#xA;   * and sets of **usage guidelines** for your infrastructure and tools.&#xD;&#xA; * Install a good **SCM** and make sure they know how to use it.&#xD;&#xA; * Point them to good **IDEs** for their technology, and make sure they know how to use them.&#xD;&#xA; * Implement **code quality checkers** and **automatic reporting** in the build system.&#xD;&#xA; * Couple the build system to **continuous integration** and **continuous inspection** systems.&#xD;&#xA; * With the help of the above, identify **code quality &quot;hotspots&quot;** and **refactor**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Now for the long version... Caution, brace yourselves!_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Rigidity is (Often) Good&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_This is a rather controversial opinion, as rigidity is often seen as&#xD;&#xA;a force working against you and slowing you down. It's true for some&#xD;&#xA;phases of some projects. But once you see rigidity as a structure, a&#xD;&#xA;framework that takes away the guesswork, it greatly reduces the amount&#xD;&#xA;of wasted time and effort. Make rigidity work for you, not against&#xD;&#xA;you._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another way to think of this, is that Rigidity = Process / Procedure.&#xD;&#xA;In a chemical plant, you are likely to have a lot of manuals and procedure for how to do things.  i.e. A) Turn this valve B) Check this gauge C) adjust this temperature.&#xD;&#xA;The reason for this is quality and safety.  You want everyone to do it the same way, ever time.  This reduces bad outcomes (injuries, poor quality production, etc.) and maximizes good outcomes.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software development needs good process and procedures for exactly the same reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Rigidity of the Project Structure&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If each project comes with its own structure, you are lost and need to&#xD;&#xA;pick up from scratch every time you look at it, and the same applies&#xD;&#xA;to each newcomer. You don't want this in a professional software&#xD;&#xA;engineering shop, and you don't want this in a research lab either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Rigidity of the Build Systems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned above, if each project **looks** different, there's a&#xD;&#xA;good chance they also **build differently**. A project's build&#xD;&#xA;shouldn't require too much research or too much guesswork. In general,&#xD;&#xA;you want to be able to do the canonical thing and not need to worry&#xD;&#xA;about specifics: `configure; make install`, `ant`, `mvn install`,&#xD;&#xA;etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A quick `README` at the root to point to things that differ, but&#xD;&#xA;that's all there should be (in an ideal world).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Plus, this also greatly facilitates other parts of your build infrastructure, namely:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [continuous integration][1],&#xD;&#xA; * [continuous inspection][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also helps to ensure that all projects are built to the same level&#xD;&#xA;of quality, but re-using the same build system for all of them and&#xD;&#xA;making it evolve over the time. Not only do you keep it (and all your&#xD;&#xA;projects) up to date, you also make it stricter over time, and more&#xD;&#xA;efficient at reporting potential mistakes and enhancements. Do no&#xD;&#xA;reinvent the wheel for each project, and reuse what you have already&#xD;&#xA;done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Recommended Reading:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * _[Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk][3]_ (Duval, Matyas, Glover, 2007)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Rigidity in the Choice of Programming Languages&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You probably can't expect, especially in a research environment, to&#xD;&#xA;have all teams (and even less individual developers) use the same&#xD;&#xA;language and technology stack. However, you can identify a set of&#xD;&#xA;&quot;officially supported&quot; languages and frameworks, and encourage their&#xD;&#xA;use. The rest of other languages, without a good rationale, shouldn't&#xD;&#xA;be permitted beyond prototyping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is essential to keep your build system simple, and the maintenance&#xD;&#xA;and breadth of required skills to a bare minimum, a core of&#xD;&#xA;technologies and tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Rigidity of the Coding Conventions and Guidelines&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Coding conventions and guidelines are what allow you to develop both&#xD;&#xA;an identity as a team, and a shared _lingo_. You don't want to err&#xD;&#xA;into _terra incognita_ every time you open a source file.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's no use trying to enforce non-sensical rules that will make&#xD;&#xA;things harder or to forbid things to the extent that commits would be&#xD;&#xA;refused based on a single violation. However is takes away a lot of&#xD;&#xA;the whining and of the thinking if you identify a clear, concise set&#xD;&#xA;of ground rules that **nobody** should break under no circumstances,&#xD;&#xA;and a set of recommended rules that are advised to be followed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am fairly aggressive when it comes to coding conventions, some even&#xD;&#xA;say _nazi_ &lt;sup&gt;(without wanting to offend anyone with the&#xD;&#xA;evocation)&lt;/sup&gt;, because I do believe in having a _lingua franca_ and&#xD;&#xA;a recognizable style for my team. When crap code gets checked-in, it&#xD;&#xA;stands out like a cold sore on the face of an hollywood star, which&#xD;&#xA;helps you to identify that a quick review and action are required. In&#xD;&#xA;fact, I've sometimes gone as far as to advocate the use of pre-commit&#xD;&#xA;hooks to reject commits if they do not satisfy some common rules. As&#xD;&#xA;mentioned before, it shouldn't be overly crazy and get too much in the&#xD;&#xA;way, especially as you try to introduce these measures. But it may be&#xD;&#xA;well-worth it if you spend so much time reviewing and dealing with&#xD;&#xA;crap code that you can't work on real issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some languages enforce some rules by design. Java was meant to reduce&#xD;&#xA;the amount of dull crap you can write with it (though no doubt it can&#xD;&#xA;be done, as evidenced here and on SO), for instance. Python's block&#xD;&#xA;structure by indentation is another idea in this sense. Or the Go&#xD;&#xA;programming language with its `gofmt` tool, which completely takes&#xD;&#xA;away any styling work - **and ego!!** - out of coding effort: if&#xD;&#xA;you run it before every commit, things are sure to be always looking&#xD;&#xA;fine for everybody.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Be sure to make it so that **critical code gore** cannot slip&#xD;&#xA;through. **Code conventions**, **continuous integration** and&#xD;&#xA;**continuous inspection**, and **pair programming** and **code&#xD;&#xA;reviews** are your best weapon against this demon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Plus, as you'll see below, **code is documentation**, and that's&#xD;&#xA;another area where your conventions should encourage proper&#xD;&#xA;readability and clarity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Rigidity of the Documentation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Documentation goes hand in hand with code. Code itself can be&#xD;&#xA;documentation. But there must be clear-cut instructions on how to&#xD;&#xA;build things, how to use things, and how to maintain things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using a single point of control for documentation (like a WikiWiki or&#xD;&#xA;DMS) is a good thing. Create separates spaces for projects, separate&#xD;&#xA;spaces for more random banter and experimentation. And make sure that&#xD;&#xA;each of these spaces reuses a set of common rules, and that people&#xD;&#xA;take care of following them when they edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, most of the instructions that apply to code and tooling here&#xD;&#xA;apply to documentation as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Rigidity in Code Comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Code comments, as mentioned above, are also documentation. Developers&#xD;&#xA;like to express their feelings about their code (mostly pride and&#xD;&#xA;frustration, if you ask me). So it's not unusual for them to express&#xD;&#xA;these in no uncertain terms in comments (or even code), when a more&#xD;&#xA;formal piece of text could have conveyed the same meaning with less&#xD;&#xA;expletives or drama. It's OK to let a few slip through for fun and&#xD;&#xA;historical reasons: it's also part of **developing a team&#xD;&#xA;culture**. But it's very important that everybody knows what is&#xD;&#xA;acceptable and what isn't, and that comment noise is just that:&#xD;&#xA;**noise**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Rigidity in Commit Logs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Commits logs are not this annoying thing of the usage lifecycle of an&#xD;&#xA;SCM that you just need to skip to get home on time or get on with the&#xD;&#xA;next task, or to catch up with the buddies who left for lunch. They&#xD;&#xA;matter, and, like (most) good wine, the more time passes the more&#xD;&#xA;value they have. So make sure they are done right. I'm always&#xD;&#xA;flabbergasted when I see co-workers writing one-liners for giant&#xD;&#xA;commits, or for non-obvious things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All commits are done for a reason, and that reason may not be clearly&#xD;&#xA;expressed in the one line of code you added and the one line of commit&#xD;&#xA;log you entered. There's more to it than that. **Each line of code has&#xD;&#xA;a story, and a history**. The diffs can tell its history, but you have&#xD;&#xA;to write its story.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why did you need to update this line? Because the interface changed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why did the interface changed? Because the library that provides it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was updated.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why was this library updated? Because it's a dependency on another&#xD;&#xA;&gt; library that we needed to implement feature X.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And what's feature X? All about it is in `TASK_KEY_HERE`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Git` actually gets this right in that it is more geared towards&#xD;&#xA;providing good logs than any other SCM. Though it's not my SCM of&#xD;&#xA;choice, and not necessarily the best one for your lab either; but it&#xD;&#xA;gets this right. It lets you provide a short log, and long log. Leave&#xD;&#xA;the general update to the `shortlog`, with the reference task IDs to&#xD;&#xA;link to your issue tracker (yes, you need one), and expand in the long&#xD;&#xA;log. Write the changeset's **story**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For crying out loud, if you can do it on a blog, you can do it in a&#xD;&#xA;log. It's the same origin for (We)Blogs, after all: just keeping track&#xD;&#xA;of things.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Really ask yourself the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I were searching for something about this change later, would&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this log answer my questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Documentation and Code, and Projects as a Whole, Are ALIVE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to keep them in sync, otherwise they do not form that&#xD;&#xA;symbiotic entity anymore. That's why it works wonders when you have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * clear commits logs in your SCM, with links to task IDs in your&#xD;&#xA;   issue tracker,&#xD;&#xA; * where this tracker's tickets themselves link to the changesets in&#xD;&#xA;   your SCM, and possibly to the builds in your continuous integration&#xD;&#xA;   system,&#xD;&#xA; * and a documentation system that links to all of these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Code and documentation need to be cohesive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Rigidity in Testing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any new code shall come with (at least) unit tests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any refactored legacy code shall come with unit tests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Period.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, these tests need to actually test something valuable, and&#xD;&#xA;to not be just a waste ot time and energy. They need to be well&#xD;&#xA;written and commented, just like any other code you check in. They are&#xD;&#xA;documentation as well, and they help to outline the contract of your&#xD;&#xA;code. Especially if you use [Test Driven Development][4]. But even if you&#xD;&#xA;don't, you need them for your peace of mind. They are your safety net&#xD;&#xA;for the future (for maintenance, for future enhancements) and your&#xD;&#xA;antibiotic against normal code rot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And of course, you should go further and have [integration tests][5],&#xD;&#xA;and [regression tests][6] for each reproducible bug you fix.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Rigidity in the Use of the Tools&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, it's OK for the occasional developer/scientist to want to try&#xD;&#xA;some new static checker on the source, generate some graph or model&#xD;&#xA;using another, or implement a new module using a DSL. But it's best if&#xD;&#xA;there's a canonical set of tools that **all** team members are&#xD;&#xA;expected to know about and to use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I regard it as generally OK to **recommend** a default working&#xD;&#xA;environment with these tools, but to let each developer use their IDE&#xD;&#xA;or editor of choice, **as long as they are productive** AND **do not&#xD;&#xA;require regular assistance** to adjust to your general infrastructure&#xD;&#xA;AND **do not modify the common areas (code, build system,&#xD;&#xA;documentation...) in ways that affect other developers**. If that's&#xD;&#xA;not the case, then it's fair to enforce that they fallback to your&#xD;&#xA;defaults.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Note:** Of course, some flexibility is good. Letting someone&#xD;&#xA;occasionally use a shortcut, a quick-n-dirty approach, or a favorite&#xD;&#xA;pet tool because it **gets the job done** is fine... But **never**&#xD;&#xA;let it become a habit, and don't let this snippet of code or&#xD;&#xA;prototype become the actual codebase to support.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Team Spirit Matters&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Develop a Sense of Pride in Your Codebase&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Develop a sense of Pride in Code&#xD;&#xA;   * Use wallboards&#xD;&#xA;     * leader board for a continuous integration game&#xD;&#xA;     * wallboards for issue management and defect counting&#xD;&#xA;   * Use an [issue tracker][7] / [bug tracker][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Avoid Blame Games&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * DO use Continuous Integration / Continuous Inspection games: it fosters good-mannered and [productive competition][9].&#xD;&#xA; * DO keep track defects: it's just good house-keeping.&#xD;&#xA; * DO **identifying root causes**: it's just future-proofing processes.&#xD;&#xA; * BUT DO NOT [assign blame][10]: it's counter productive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### It's About the Code, Not About the Developers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The whole point to make developers be conscious of the quality of their code, but to see it as a detached entity and not as an extension of themselves (and react badly when a part of this extension is criticized. Encourage [ego-less programming][11] for a healty workplace but do rely on ego for motivation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# From Scientist to Programmer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can't expect people who do not value and take pride in code to&#xD;&#xA;produce good code. They need to discover how valuable (and fun) it can&#xD;&#xA;be, for this property to emerge. Sheer professionalism and desire to&#xD;&#xA;do good is not enough: good code needs passion. So you need to turn&#xD;&#xA;your scientists into **programmers** (in the large sense).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone argued in comments that after spending 10 to 20 years on a&#xD;&#xA;project and its code, anyone would feel attachment to the code. Maybe&#xD;&#xA;I'm wrong but I assume they are proud of the code's outcomes and of&#xD;&#xA;the work and legacy it represents, not of the code itself and of the&#xD;&#xA;act of writing it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From experience, most researchers regard coding as a necessity, or at&#xD;&#xA;best as a fun distraction, except for the ones who are already pretty&#xD;&#xA;verse and attacted by it. They just want it to work. The ones who have&#xD;&#xA;an interest in programming are a lot easier to persuade of adopting&#xD;&#xA;best practices and switching technologies. You need to get them there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Code Maintenance is Part of Research Work&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody wants to read a crappy research paper. They are proof-read,&#xD;&#xA;refined, rewritten, resent for re-approval countless times until they&#xD;&#xA;reach this final state that's deemed good enough for publication. The&#xD;&#xA;same applies to a thesis. And **the same applies for a codebase!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You want to make it clear that constant refactoring and refreshing of&#xD;&#xA;a codebase is what prevents code rot and technical debt, and what&#xD;&#xA;facilitates future re-use and adaptation of the work for other&#xD;&#xA;projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Why All This??!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the end, why do we need all the above? For the Holy Grail: **code&#xD;&#xA;quality**. Or is it **quality code**...?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of the above aims at driving your team towards this goal. Some&#xD;&#xA;aspects of it does it by genuinely wanting them do it themselves&#xD;&#xA;(which is much better) and others by slightly taking them by the hand&#xD;&#xA;(but that's how you educate people and develop habits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But how do you know if you have found the Holy Grail, and not some&#xD;&#xA;cheap knock-off (which might make you turn to dust quickly, which is&#xD;&#xA;unpleasant)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Quality is Measurable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not always quantitatively, but it **is measurable**. As mentioned&#xD;&#xA;above, you need to develop a sense of pride in your team(s), and&#xD;&#xA;showing progress and good results is key. Measure code quality at&#xD;&#xA;point T, and show progress between intervals. Show how it matters. Do&#xD;&#xA;retrospectives to reflect on what has been done, and how it made&#xD;&#xA;things better or worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are great tools out there for **continuous inspection**. [Sonar][12]&#xD;&#xA;being one of them, quite popular in the Java world, but it can adapt&#xD;&#xA;to other technologies; and there are many others. Keep your code under&#xD;&#xA;the microscope and look for these pesky annoying bugs and microbes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# But What if My Code is Already Crap??&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, all of the above is fun and cute like a trip to Never Land,&#xD;&#xA;but it's not that easy to do when you already have (a big pile of&#xD;&#xA;steamy and smelly) crap code, and possibly a team reluctant to change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the secret: **you need to start somewhere**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Personal anecdote:** In our current project, we are working with a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; codebase that originally was more than 650,000 lines of Java code,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more than 200,000 lines of JSPs, more than 40,000 lines of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; JavaScript, and more than 400 MBs of binary dependencies on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; external projects and libraries.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Today, after about 18 months, we have 500,000 lines of **(MOSTLY&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CLEAN)** Java code, around 150,000 lines of JSPs, and still about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 38,000 lines of JavaScript, and our dependencies are down to barely&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more than 100MBs (and these dependencies are not in our SCM&#xD;&#xA;&gt; anymore!).&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **How did we do it?** _We just did all of the above, or we try to._&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's a huge team effort, but we slowly **inject** new regulations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and new tools that help us to monitor the heart-rate of our product,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; while we hastily **slash** away the fat of the crap code and useless&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dependencies we can find. We didn't stop all development to do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that. We have occasional periods of relative peace and quiet where&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we are more or less free to go crazy on the codebase and tear it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; apart, but most of the time we just do it all by defaulting to sort&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of a &quot;review and refactor&quot; mode every chance we get: when things&#xD;&#xA;&gt; build, over lunch, during team bug fixing sessions, when Friday&#xD;&#xA;&gt; afternoons get drowsy...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We did have a few big construction sites... Switching our build&#xD;&#xA;&gt; system from a giant Ant build of more than 8500 lines of code to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; multi-module Maven build was one of them. We now have clear-cut&#xD;&#xA;&gt; modules (or at least it's already a lot better than before, and we&#xD;&#xA;&gt; still have big plans for the future), automatic dependency&#xD;&#xA;&gt; management (which allows for easy maintenance and updates, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; allowed to remove lots of them), and faster builds that are easier&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to get started with and to reproduce on demand, and to integrate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with code quality tools.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Injecting some &quot;utility tool-belts&quot; into the codebase, even though&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we were trying to reduce dependencies, was another: Google Guava and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Apache Commons can help you code slim down to a much smaller size,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and reduce surface for bugs in **your** code a lot.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Persuading our IT department that maybe using the tools we use today&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (JIRA, Fisheye, Crucible, Confluence, Jenkins) was better than the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ones in place. We still need to deal with a few ones we despise (I'm&#xD;&#xA;&gt; looking at you, QC, Sharepoint and SupportWorks), but it's still&#xD;&#xA;&gt; been a huge improvement, and we believe there's still room for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; improvement.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And every day, there's a trickle of between one to dozens of commits&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that deal only with fixing and refactoring things. We do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; occasionally break stuff (remember, you need unit tests kids, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; better write them **before** you refactor stuff away), but overall&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the benefit for our morale AND for the product has been enormous. We&#xD;&#xA;&gt; get there one fraction of a code quality percentage at a time. **And&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it's fun to see it increase!!!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_It's indeed important to note that every once in a while, rigidity&#xD;&#xA;needs to be shaken to make room for new and better things. In my anecdote,&#xD;&#xA;our IT department is partly right in trying to impose **some** things on&#xD;&#xA;us, and wrong for others. Or maybe they **used to be right**.&#xD;&#xA;The point is you need to prove that they are indeed better, and will&#xD;&#xA;boost your productivity. **Trial-runs and prototypes** are here for this._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# The Super-Secret Incremental Spaghetti Code Refactoring Cycle for Awesome Quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;           +-----------------+                     +-----------------+&#xD;&#xA;           |                 |                     |                 |&#xD;&#xA;           |  A N A L Y Z E  +--------------------&gt;| I D E N T I F Y |&#xD;&#xA;           |                 |                     |                 |&#xD;&#xA;           +-----------------+                     +---------+-------+&#xD;&#xA;                    ^                                        |&#xD;&#xA;                    |                                        v&#xD;&#xA;           +--------+--------+                     +-----------------+&#xD;&#xA;           |                 |                     |                 |&#xD;&#xA;           |    C L E A N    +--------------------&gt;|      F I X      |&#xD;&#xA;           |                 |                     |                 |&#xD;&#xA;           +-----------------+                     +-----------------+&#xD;&#xA;Once you have some quality tools at your toolbelt:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. **Analyze** your code with code quality checkers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     Linters, static analyzers, or what have you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. **Identify** your **critical** hotspots AND **low-hanging** fruits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     Violations have severity levels, and large classes with a large number&#xD;&#xA;     of high-severity ones are a big red-flag: as such, they appear as&#xD;&#xA;     &quot;hot-spots&quot; on radiator/heat-map types of views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. **Fix** the hotspots first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     It maximizes your impact in a short time-frame as they have&#xD;&#xA;     the highest-business value. Ideally, critical violations should&#xD;&#xA;     dealt with as soon as they appear, as they are potential security&#xD;&#xA;     vulnerabilities or crash causes, and present a high risk of inducing a&#xD;&#xA;     liability (and in your case, bad performance for the lab).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 4. **Fix** the low-level violations with **automated codebase sweeps**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     It reduces the **noise-to-signal ratio** so you are be able to&#xD;&#xA;     see significant violations on your radar as they appear. There's often&#xD;&#xA;     a large army of minor violations at first if they were never taken care&#xD;&#xA;     of and your codebase was left loose in the wild. They do not present a&#xD;&#xA;     real &quot;risk&quot;, but they impair the code's readability and maintainability.&#xD;&#xA;     Fix them either as you meet them while working on a task, or by do large&#xD;&#xA;     cleaning quests with automated code sweeps if possible. Do be&#xD;&#xA;     careful with large auto-sweeps if you don't have a good test suite&#xD;&#xA;     and integration system, and make sure to agree with co-workers&#xD;&#xA;     on the right time to run them to minimze the annoyance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 5. **Repeat** until you are satisfied. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     Which, ideally, you should never be, if this is still an&#xD;&#xA;     active product: it will keep evolving.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Quick Tips for Good House-Keeping&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * **When in hotfix-mode**, based on a customer support request, it's usually a best practice to **NOT** go around fixing other issues, as you might introduce new ones unwillingly. Go at it **SEAL-style: get in, kill the bug, get out**, and ship your patch. It's a surgical and tactical strike.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * **But for all other cases**, if you open a file, make it your duty to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * _imperatively:_ **review** it (take notes, file issue reports),&#xD;&#xA;  * _maybe:_ **clean** it (style cleanups and minor violations),&#xD;&#xA;  * _ideally:_ **refactor** it (re-organize large sections and their neigbors).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just don't get sidetracked into spending a week from file to file and&#xD;&#xA;ending up with a massive changeset of thousands of fixes spanning multiple&#xD;&#xA;features and modules, or it makes future tracking difficult. One issue in&#xD;&#xA;code = 1 ticket in your tracker. Sometimes, a changeset can impact multiple&#xD;&#xA;tickets; but if it happens to often, then you're probably doing something wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Addendum: Managing Visual Programming Environments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The Walled Gardens of Bespoke Programming Systems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Multiple programming systems, like the OP's G2, are different beasts...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * **No Source &quot;Code&quot;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Often they do not give you access to a textual representation of your source&#xD;&#xA;    &quot;code&quot;: it might be stored in a proprietary binary format, or maybe it does&#xD;&#xA;    store things in text format but hides them away from you. Bespoke graphical&#xD;&#xA;    programming systems are actually not uncommon in research labs, as they simplify&#xD;&#xA;    the automation of repetitive data processing workflows.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * **No Tooling**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Aside from their own, that is. You are often constrained by their programming&#xD;&#xA;    environment, their own debugger, their own interpreter, their own documentation&#xD;&#xA;    tools and formats. They are **walled gardens**, except if they eventually&#xD;&#xA;    capture the interest of someone motivated enough to reverse engineer their&#xD;&#xA;    formats and builds external tools... If the license permits it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * **Lack of Documentation**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Quite often, these are niche programming systems, which are used in fairly&#xD;&#xA;    closed environments. People who use them sign NDAs a dime a dozen and never speak&#xD;&#xA;    about what they do, and programming communities are them are rare. So resources&#xD;&#xA;    are scarce. You're stuck with your official reference, and that's it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The ironic (and often frustrating) bit is that all the things these systems do could obviously be achieved by using mainstream and general purpose programming languages, and quite probqbly more efficiently. But it requires a deeper knowledge of programming, whereas you can't expect your biologist, chemist or physiscit (to name a few) to know enough about programming, and even less to have the time (and desire) to implement (and maintain) complex systems, that may or may not be long-lived. For the same reason we use DSLs, we have these bespoke programming systems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Personal Anecdote 2:** Actually, I worked on one of these myself... I didn't do the link with the OP's request, but my the project was a set of inter-connected large pieces of data-processing and data-storage software (primarily for bio-informatics research, healthcare and cosmetics, but also for business intelligence, or any domain implying the tracking of large volumes of research data of any kind and the preparation of data-processing workflows and ETLs). One of these software was, quite simply, a visual IDE that used the usual bells and whistles: drag and drop interfaces, versioned project workspaces (using text and XML files for metadata storage), lots of pluggable drivers to heterogeneous datasources, and a visual canvas to design pipelines to process data from N datasources and in the end generate M transformed outputs, and possible shiny visualizations and complex (and interactive) online reports. Your typical bespoke visual programming system, suffering from a bit of NIH syndrome under the pretense of designing a system adapted to the users' needs.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; And, as you would expect, it's a nice system, quite flexible for its needs though sometimes a bit over-the-top so that you wonder &quot;why not use command-line tools instead?&quot;, and unfortunately always leading in medium-sized teams working on large projects to a lot of different people using it with different &quot;best&quot; practices.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Great, We're Doomed! - What Do We Do About It?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, in the end, all of the above still holds. If you cannot extract most of the programming from this system to use more mainstream tools and languages, you &quot;just&quot; need to adapt it to the constraints of your system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the end, you can almost always **version** things, even with the most constrained and walled environment. Most often than not, these systems still come with their own versioning (which is unfortunately often rather basics, and just offers to revert to previous versions without much visibility, just keeping previous snapshots). It's not exactly using differential changesets like your SCM of choice might, and it's probably not suited for multiple users submitting changes simultaneously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But still. If they do provide such a functionality, maybe your solution is to follow our beloved guidelines, and to transpore them to this programming system!! Implement your tests within the platform itself, and use external tools and background jobs to set up regular backups. Sure, it's a hack job and definitely to up to the standard of what is common for &quot;normal&quot; programming, but the idea is to adapt to the system while trying to maintain a semblance of professional software development process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the storage system is a database, it probably exposes export functionalities, or can be backed-up at the file-system level. If it's using a custom binary format, maybe you can simply try to version it with a VCS that has good support for binary data. You won't have fine-grained control, but at least you'll have your back sort of covered against catastrophes and have a certain degree of disaster recovery compliance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_WARNING: this section is still in progress. Check again later... again. Sorry._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-ap08016/index.html&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Integration-Improving-Software-Signature/dp/0321336380&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integration_testing&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://en.wikipedia.org" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10064" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3770" RevisionGUID="460b6730-c5e7-449f-96c1-713c5bb6d9fc" CreationDate="2012-07-11T00:37:35.423" UserId="3631" Comment="Well, just a note to clarify... my assumption was wrong, it just fails to warn and truncates. The bug must lie somewhere else. Sorry. And good luck with it :)" Text="**_THIS IS A TEST CASE, please do not screw with this answer._**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_See the comments under in Shog9's answer, and other answers for details._**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Foreword&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This whole thing sounds like a daunting task indeed, and there's&#xD;&#xA;a lot of ground to cover. So I'm humbly going to suggest what&#xD;&#xA;I think could be a rather comprehensive guide to use for your team,&#xD;&#xA;with pointers to appropriate tools (and alternatives) and appropriate&#xD;&#xA;reading or educational material to share.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Please do keep in mind that these are guidelines, and that as such&#xD;&#xA;they are meant to adapted, adopted, or dropped based on circumstances.&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, dumping all this on a team at once would have no effect,&#xD;&#xA;except if they are ready to listen. It's more likely that you should&#xD;&#xA;try to cherry-pick some elements that would give you the best bang&#xD;&#xA;for your sweat, and introduce them slowly, one at a time._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Note also that not all of this is easy to apply to Visual or Graphical Programming Systems, like G2. For more specific details on how to deal with these, see the **Addendum** section at the bottom._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Executive Summary for the Impatient&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Define a **rigid project structure**, with:&#xD;&#xA;   * **project templates**,&#xD;&#xA;   * **coding conventions**,&#xD;&#xA;   * familiar **build systems**,&#xD;&#xA;   * and sets of **usage guidelines** for your infrastructure and tools.&#xD;&#xA; * Install a good **SCM** and make sure they know how to use it.&#xD;&#xA; * Point them to good **IDEs** for their technology, and make sure they know how to use them.&#xD;&#xA; * Implement **code quality checkers** and **automatic reporting** in the build system.&#xD;&#xA; * Couple the build system to **continuous integration** and **continuous inspection** systems.&#xD;&#xA; * With the help of the above, identify **code quality &quot;hotspots&quot;** and **refactor**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Now for the long version... Caution, brace yourselves!_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Rigidity is (Often) Good&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_This is a rather controversial opinion, as rigidity is often seen as&#xD;&#xA;a force working against you and slowing you down. It's true for some&#xD;&#xA;phases of some projects. But once you see rigidity as a structure, a&#xD;&#xA;framework that takes away the guesswork, it greatly reduces the amount&#xD;&#xA;of wasted time and effort. Make rigidity work for you, not against&#xD;&#xA;you._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another way to think of this, is that Rigidity = Process / Procedure.&#xD;&#xA;In a chemical plant, you are likely to have a lot of manuals and procedure for how to do things.  i.e. A) Turn this valve B) Check this gauge C) adjust this temperature.&#xD;&#xA;The reason for this is quality and safety.  You want everyone to do it the same way, ever time.  This reduces bad outcomes (injuries, poor quality production, etc.) and maximizes good outcomes.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software development needs good process and procedures for exactly the same reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Rigidity of the Project Structure&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If each project comes with its own structure, you are lost and need to&#xD;&#xA;pick up from scratch every time you look at it, and the same applies&#xD;&#xA;to each newcomer. You don't want this in a professional software&#xD;&#xA;engineering shop, and you don't want this in a research lab either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Rigidity of the Build Systems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned above, if each project **looks** different, there's a&#xD;&#xA;good chance they also **build differently**. A project's build&#xD;&#xA;shouldn't require too much research or too much guesswork. In general,&#xD;&#xA;you want to be able to do the canonical thing and not need to worry&#xD;&#xA;about specifics: `configure; make install`, `ant`, `mvn install`,&#xD;&#xA;etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A quick `README` at the root to point to things that differ, but&#xD;&#xA;that's all there should be (in an ideal world).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Plus, this also greatly facilitates other parts of your build infrastructure, namely:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [continuous integration][1],&#xD;&#xA; * [continuous inspection][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also helps to ensure that all projects are built to the same level&#xD;&#xA;of quality, but re-using the same build system for all of them and&#xD;&#xA;making it evolve over the time. Not only do you keep it (and all your&#xD;&#xA;projects) up to date, you also make it stricter over time, and more&#xD;&#xA;efficient at reporting potential mistakes and enhancements. Do no&#xD;&#xA;reinvent the wheel for each project, and reuse what you have already&#xD;&#xA;done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Recommended Reading:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * _[Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk][3]_ (Duval, Matyas, Glover, 2007)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Rigidity in the Choice of Programming Languages&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You probably can't expect, especially in a research environment, to&#xD;&#xA;have all teams (and even less individual developers) use the same&#xD;&#xA;language and technology stack. However, you can identify a set of&#xD;&#xA;&quot;officially supported&quot; languages and frameworks, and encourage their&#xD;&#xA;use. The rest of other languages, without a good rationale, shouldn't&#xD;&#xA;be permitted beyond prototyping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is essential to keep your build system simple, and the maintenance&#xD;&#xA;and breadth of required skills to a bare minimum, a core of&#xD;&#xA;technologies and tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Rigidity of the Coding Conventions and Guidelines&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Coding conventions and guidelines are what allow you to develop both&#xD;&#xA;an identity as a team, and a shared _lingo_. You don't want to err&#xD;&#xA;into _terra incognita_ every time you open a source file.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's no use trying to enforce non-sensical rules that will make&#xD;&#xA;things harder or to forbid things to the extent that commits would be&#xD;&#xA;refused based on a single violation. However is takes away a lot of&#xD;&#xA;the whining and of the thinking if you identify a clear, concise set&#xD;&#xA;of ground rules that **nobody** should break under no circumstances,&#xD;&#xA;and a set of recommended rules that are advised to be followed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am fairly aggressive when it comes to coding conventions, some even&#xD;&#xA;say _nazi_ &lt;sup&gt;(without wanting to offend anyone with the&#xD;&#xA;evocation)&lt;/sup&gt;, because I do believe in having a _lingua franca_ and&#xD;&#xA;a recognizable style for my team. When crap code gets checked-in, it&#xD;&#xA;stands out like a cold sore on the face of an hollywood star, which&#xD;&#xA;helps you to identify that a quick review and action are required. In&#xD;&#xA;fact, I've sometimes gone as far as to advocate the use of pre-commit&#xD;&#xA;hooks to reject commits if they do not satisfy some common rules. As&#xD;&#xA;mentioned before, it shouldn't be overly crazy and get too much in the&#xD;&#xA;way, especially as you try to introduce these measures. But it may be&#xD;&#xA;well-worth it if you spend so much time reviewing and dealing with&#xD;&#xA;crap code that you can't work on real issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some languages enforce some rules by design. Java was meant to reduce&#xD;&#xA;the amount of dull crap you can write with it (though no doubt it can&#xD;&#xA;be done, as evidenced here and on SO), for instance. Python's block&#xD;&#xA;structure by indentation is another idea in this sense. Or the Go&#xD;&#xA;programming language with its `gofmt` tool, which completely takes&#xD;&#xA;away any styling work - **and ego!!** - out of coding effort: if&#xD;&#xA;you run it before every commit, things are sure to be always looking&#xD;&#xA;fine for everybody.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Be sure to make it so that **critical code gore** cannot slip&#xD;&#xA;through. **Code conventions**, **continuous integration** and&#xD;&#xA;**continuous inspection**, and **pair programming** and **code&#xD;&#xA;reviews** are your best weapon against this demon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Plus, as you'll see below, **code is documentation**, and that's&#xD;&#xA;another area where your conventions should encourage proper&#xD;&#xA;readability and clarity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Rigidity of the Documentation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Documentation goes hand in hand with code. Code itself can be&#xD;&#xA;documentation. But there must be clear-cut instructions on how to&#xD;&#xA;build things, how to use things, and how to maintain things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using a single point of control for documentation (like a WikiWiki or&#xD;&#xA;DMS) is a good thing. Create separates spaces for projects, separate&#xD;&#xA;spaces for more random banter and experimentation. And make sure that&#xD;&#xA;each of these spaces reuses a set of common rules, and that people&#xD;&#xA;take care of following them when they edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, most of the instructions that apply to code and tooling here&#xD;&#xA;apply to documentation as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Rigidity in Code Comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Code comments, as mentioned above, are also documentation. Developers&#xD;&#xA;like to express their feelings about their code (mostly pride and&#xD;&#xA;frustration, if you ask me). So it's not unusual for them to express&#xD;&#xA;these in no uncertain terms in comments (or even code), when a more&#xD;&#xA;formal piece of text could have conveyed the same meaning with less&#xD;&#xA;expletives or drama. It's OK to let a few slip through for fun and&#xD;&#xA;historical reasons: it's also part of **developing a team&#xD;&#xA;culture**. But it's very important that everybody knows what is&#xD;&#xA;acceptable and what isn't, and that comment noise is just that:&#xD;&#xA;**noise**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Rigidity in Commit Logs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Commits logs are not this annoying thing of the usage lifecycle of an&#xD;&#xA;SCM that you just need to skip to get home on time or get on with the&#xD;&#xA;next task, or to catch up with the buddies who left for lunch. They&#xD;&#xA;matter, and, like (most) good wine, the more time passes the more&#xD;&#xA;value they have. So make sure they are done right. I'm always&#xD;&#xA;flabbergasted when I see co-workers writing one-liners for giant&#xD;&#xA;commits, or for non-obvious things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All commits are done for a reason, and that reason may not be clearly&#xD;&#xA;expressed in the one line of code you added and the one line of commit&#xD;&#xA;log you entered. There's more to it than that. **Each line of code has&#xD;&#xA;a story, and a history**. The diffs can tell its history, but you have&#xD;&#xA;to write its story.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why did you need to update this line? Because the interface changed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why did the interface changed? Because the library that provides it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was updated.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why was this library updated? Because it's a dependency on another&#xD;&#xA;&gt; library that we needed to implement feature X.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And what's feature X? All about it is in `TASK_KEY_HERE`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Git` actually gets this right in that it is more geared towards&#xD;&#xA;providing good logs than any other SCM. Though it's not my SCM of&#xD;&#xA;choice, and not necessarily the best one for your lab either; but it&#xD;&#xA;gets this right. It lets you provide a short log, and long log. Leave&#xD;&#xA;the general update to the `shortlog`, with the reference task IDs to&#xD;&#xA;link to your issue tracker (yes, you need one), and expand in the long&#xD;&#xA;log. Write the changeset's **story**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For crying out loud, if you can do it on a blog, you can do it in a&#xD;&#xA;log. It's the same origin for (We)Blogs, after all: just keeping track&#xD;&#xA;of things.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Really ask yourself the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I were searching for something about this change later, would&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this log answer my questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Documentation and Code, and Projects as a Whole, Are ALIVE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to keep them in sync, otherwise they do not form that&#xD;&#xA;symbiotic entity anymore. That's why it works wonders when you have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * clear commits logs in your SCM, with links to task IDs in your&#xD;&#xA;   issue tracker,&#xD;&#xA; * where this tracker's tickets themselves link to the changesets in&#xD;&#xA;   your SCM, and possibly to the builds in your continuous integration&#xD;&#xA;   system,&#xD;&#xA; * and a documentation system that links to all of these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Code and documentation need to be cohesive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Rigidity in Testing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any new code shall come with (at least) unit tests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any refactored legacy code shall come with unit tests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Period.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, these tests need to actually test something valuable, and&#xD;&#xA;to not be just a waste ot time and energy. They need to be well&#xD;&#xA;written and commented, just like any other code you check in. They are&#xD;&#xA;documentation as well, and they help to outline the contract of your&#xD;&#xA;code. Especially if you use [Test Driven Development][4]. But even if you&#xD;&#xA;don't, you need them for your peace of mind. They are your safety net&#xD;&#xA;for the future (for maintenance, for future enhancements) and your&#xD;&#xA;antibiotic against normal code rot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And of course, you should go further and have [integration tests][5],&#xD;&#xA;and [regression tests][6] for each reproducible bug you fix.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Rigidity in the Use of the Tools&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, it's OK for the occasional developer/scientist to want to try&#xD;&#xA;some new static checker on the source, generate some graph or model&#xD;&#xA;using another, or implement a new module using a DSL. But it's best if&#xD;&#xA;there's a canonical set of tools that **all** team members are&#xD;&#xA;expected to know about and to use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I regard it as generally OK to **recommend** a default working&#xD;&#xA;environment with these tools, but to let each developer use their IDE&#xD;&#xA;or editor of choice, **as long as they are productive** AND **do not&#xD;&#xA;require regular assistance** to adjust to your general infrastructure&#xD;&#xA;AND **do not modify the common areas (code, build system,&#xD;&#xA;documentation...) in ways that affect other developers**. If that's&#xD;&#xA;not the case, then it's fair to enforce that they fallback to your&#xD;&#xA;defaults.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Note:** Of course, some flexibility is good. Letting someone&#xD;&#xA;occasionally use a shortcut, a quick-n-dirty approach, or a favorite&#xD;&#xA;pet tool because it **gets the job done** is fine... But **never**&#xD;&#xA;let it become a habit, and don't let this snippet of code or&#xD;&#xA;prototype become the actual codebase to support.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Team Spirit Matters&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Develop a Sense of Pride in Your Codebase&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Develop a sense of Pride in Code&#xD;&#xA;   * Use wallboards&#xD;&#xA;     * leader board for a continuous integration game&#xD;&#xA;     * wallboards for issue management and defect counting&#xD;&#xA;   * Use an [issue tracker][7] / [bug tracker][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Avoid Blame Games&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * DO use Continuous Integration / Continuous Inspection games: it fosters good-mannered and [productive competition][9].&#xD;&#xA; * DO keep track defects: it's just good house-keeping.&#xD;&#xA; * DO **identifying root causes**: it's just future-proofing processes.&#xD;&#xA; * BUT DO NOT [assign blame][10]: it's counter productive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### It's About the Code, Not About the Developers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The whole point to make developers be conscious of the quality of their code, but to see it as a detached entity and not as an extension of themselves (and react badly when a part of this extension is criticized. Encourage [ego-less programming][11] for a healty workplace but do rely on ego for motivation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# From Scientist to Programmer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can't expect people who do not value and take pride in code to&#xD;&#xA;produce good code. They need to discover how valuable (and fun) it can&#xD;&#xA;be, for this property to emerge. Sheer professionalism and desire to&#xD;&#xA;do good is not enough: good code needs passion. So you need to turn&#xD;&#xA;your scientists into **programmers** (in the large sense).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone argued in comments that after spending 10 to 20 years on a&#xD;&#xA;project and its code, anyone would feel attachment to the code. Maybe&#xD;&#xA;I'm wrong but I assume they are proud of the code's outcomes and of&#xD;&#xA;the work and legacy it represents, not of the code itself and of the&#xD;&#xA;act of writing it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From experience, most researchers regard coding as a necessity, or at&#xD;&#xA;best as a fun distraction, except for the ones who are already pretty&#xD;&#xA;verse and attacted by it. They just want it to work. The ones who have&#xD;&#xA;an interest in programming are a lot easier to persuade of adopting&#xD;&#xA;best practices and switching technologies. You need to get them there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Code Maintenance is Part of Research Work&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody wants to read a crappy research paper. They are proof-read,&#xD;&#xA;refined, rewritten, resent for re-approval countless times until they&#xD;&#xA;reach this final state that's deemed good enough for publication. The&#xD;&#xA;same applies to a thesis. And **the same applies for a codebase!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You want to make it clear that constant refactoring and refreshing of&#xD;&#xA;a codebase is what prevents code rot and technical debt, and what&#xD;&#xA;facilitates future re-use and adaptation of the work for other&#xD;&#xA;projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Why All This??!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the end, why do we need all the above? For the Holy Grail: **code&#xD;&#xA;quality**. Or is it **quality code**...?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of the above aims at driving your team towards this goal. Some&#xD;&#xA;aspects of it does it by genuinely wanting them do it themselves&#xD;&#xA;(which is much better) and others by slightly taking them by the hand&#xD;&#xA;(but that's how you educate people and develop habits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But how do you know if you have found the Holy Grail, and not some&#xD;&#xA;cheap knock-off (which might make you turn to dust quickly, which is&#xD;&#xA;unpleasant)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Quality is Measurable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not always quantitatively, but it **is measurable**. As mentioned&#xD;&#xA;above, you need to develop a sense of pride in your team(s), and&#xD;&#xA;showing progress and good results is key. Measure code quality at&#xD;&#xA;point T, and show progress between intervals. Show how it matters. Do&#xD;&#xA;retrospectives to reflect on what has been done, and how it made&#xD;&#xA;things better or worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are great tools out there for **continuous inspection**. [Sonar][12]&#xD;&#xA;being one of them, quite popular in the Java world, but it can adapt&#xD;&#xA;to other technologies; and there are many others. Keep your code under&#xD;&#xA;the microscope and look for these pesky annoying bugs and microbes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# But What if My Code is Already Crap??&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, all of the above is fun and cute like a trip to Never Land,&#xD;&#xA;but it's not that easy to do when you already have (a big pile of&#xD;&#xA;steamy and smelly) crap code, and possibly a team reluctant to change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the secret: **you need to start somewhere**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Personal anecdote:** In our current project, we are working with a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; codebase that originally was more than 650,000 lines of Java code,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more than 200,000 lines of JSPs, more than 40,000 lines of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; JavaScript, and more than 400 MBs of binary dependencies on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; external projects and libraries.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Today, after about 18 months, we have 500,000 lines of **(MOSTLY&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CLEAN)** Java code, around 150,000 lines of JSPs, and still about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 38,000 lines of JavaScript, and our dependencies are down to barely&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more than 100MBs (and these dependencies are not in our SCM&#xD;&#xA;&gt; anymore!).&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **How did we do it?** _We just did all of the above, or we try to._&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's a huge team effort, but we slowly **inject** new regulations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and new tools that help us to monitor the heart-rate of our product,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; while we hastily **slash** away the fat of the crap code and useless&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dependencies we can find. We didn't stop all development to do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that. We have occasional periods of relative peace and quiet where&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we are more or less free to go crazy on the codebase and tear it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; apart, but most of the time we just do it all by defaulting to sort&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of a &quot;review and refactor&quot; mode every chance we get: when things&#xD;&#xA;&gt; build, over lunch, during team bug fixing sessions, when Friday&#xD;&#xA;&gt; afternoons get drowsy...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We did have a few big construction sites... Switching our build&#xD;&#xA;&gt; system from a giant Ant build of more than 8500 lines of code to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; multi-module Maven build was one of them. We now have clear-cut&#xD;&#xA;&gt; modules (or at least it's already a lot better than before, and we&#xD;&#xA;&gt; still have big plans for the future), automatic dependency&#xD;&#xA;&gt; management (which allows for easy maintenance and updates, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; allowed to remove lots of them), and faster builds that are easier&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to get started with and to reproduce on demand, and to integrate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with code quality tools.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Injecting some &quot;utility tool-belts&quot; into the codebase, even though&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we were trying to reduce dependencies, was another: Google Guava and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Apache Commons can help you code slim down to a much smaller size,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and reduce surface for bugs in **your** code a lot.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Persuading our IT department that maybe using the tools we use today&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (JIRA, Fisheye, Crucible, Confluence, Jenkins) was better than the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ones in place. We still need to deal with a few ones we despise (I'm&#xD;&#xA;&gt; looking at you, QC, Sharepoint and SupportWorks), but it's still&#xD;&#xA;&gt; been a huge improvement, and we believe there's still room for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; improvement.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And every day, there's a trickle of between one to dozens of commits&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that deal only with fixing and refactoring things. We do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; occasionally break stuff (remember, you need unit tests kids, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; better write them **before** you refactor stuff away), but overall&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the benefit for our morale AND for the product has been enormous. We&#xD;&#xA;&gt; get there one fraction of a code quality percentage at a time. **And&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it's fun to see it increase!!!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_It's indeed important to note that every once in a while, rigidity&#xD;&#xA;needs to be shaken to make room for new and better things. In my anecdote,&#xD;&#xA;our IT department is partly right in trying to impose **some** things on&#xD;&#xA;us, and wrong for others. Or maybe they **used to be right**.&#xD;&#xA;The point is you need to prove that they are indeed better, and will&#xD;&#xA;boost your productivity. **Trial-runs and prototypes** are here for this._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# The Super-Secret Incremental Spaghetti Code Refactoring Cycle for Awesome Quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;           +-----------------+                     +-----------------+&#xD;&#xA;           |                 |                     |                 |&#xD;&#xA;           |  A N A L Y Z E  +--------------------&gt;| I D E N T I F Y |&#xD;&#xA;           |                 |                     |                 |&#xD;&#xA;           +-----------------+                     +---------+-------+&#xD;&#xA;                    ^                                        |&#xD;&#xA;                    |                                        v&#xD;&#xA;           +--------+--------+                     +-----------------+&#xD;&#xA;           |                 |                     |                 |&#xD;&#xA;           |    C L E A N    +--------------------&gt;|      F I X      |&#xD;&#xA;           |                 |                     |                 |&#xD;&#xA;           +-----------------+                     +-----------------+&#xD;&#xA;Once you have some quality tools at your toolbelt:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. **Analyze** your code with code quality checkers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     Linters, static analyzers, or what have you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. **Identify** your **critical** hotspots AND **low-hanging** fruits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     Violations have severity levels, and large classes with a large number&#xD;&#xA;     of high-severity ones are a big red-flag: as such, they appear as&#xD;&#xA;     &quot;hot-spots&quot; on radiator/heat-map types of views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. **Fix** the hotspots first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     It maximizes your impact in a short time-frame as they have&#xD;&#xA;     the highest-business value. Ideally, critical violations should&#xD;&#xA;     dealt with as soon as they appear, as they are potential security&#xD;&#xA;     vulnerabilities or crash causes, and present a high risk of inducing a&#xD;&#xA;     liability (and in your case, bad performance for the lab).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 4. **Fix** the low-level violations with **automated codebase sweeps**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     It reduces the **noise-to-signal ratio** so you are be able to&#xD;&#xA;     see significant violations on your radar as they appear. There's often&#xD;&#xA;     a large army of minor violations at first if they were never taken care&#xD;&#xA;     of and your codebase was left loose in the wild. They do not present a&#xD;&#xA;     real &quot;risk&quot;, but they impair the code's readability and maintainability.&#xD;&#xA;     Fix them either as you meet them while working on a task, or by do large&#xD;&#xA;     cleaning quests with automated code sweeps if possible. Do be&#xD;&#xA;     careful with large auto-sweeps if you don't have a good test suite&#xD;&#xA;     and integration system, and make sure to agree with co-workers&#xD;&#xA;     on the right time to run them to minimze the annoyance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 5. **Repeat** until you are satisfied. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     Which, ideally, you should never be, if this is still an&#xD;&#xA;     active product: it will keep evolving.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Quick Tips for Good House-Keeping&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * **When in hotfix-mode**, based on a customer support request, it's usually a best practice to **NOT** go around fixing other issues, as you might introduce new ones unwillingly. Go at it **SEAL-style: get in, kill the bug, get out**, and ship your patch. It's a surgical and tactical strike.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * **But for all other cases**, if you open a file, make it your duty to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * _imperatively:_ **review** it (take notes, file issue reports),&#xD;&#xA;  * _maybe:_ **clean** it (style cleanups and minor violations),&#xD;&#xA;  * _ideally:_ **refactor** it (re-organize large sections and their neigbors).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just don't get sidetracked into spending a week from file to file and&#xD;&#xA;ending up with a massive changeset of thousands of fixes spanning multiple&#xD;&#xA;features and modules, or it makes future tracking difficult. One issue in&#xD;&#xA;code = 1 ticket in your tracker. Sometimes, a changeset can impact multiple&#xD;&#xA;tickets; but if it happens to often, then you're probably doing something wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Addendum: Managing Visual Programming Environments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The Walled Gardens of Bespoke Programming Systems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Multiple programming systems, like the OP's G2, are different beasts...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * **No Source &quot;Code&quot;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Often they do not give you access to a textual representation of your source&#xD;&#xA;    &quot;code&quot;: it might be stored in a proprietary binary format, or maybe it does&#xD;&#xA;    store things in text format but hides them away from you. Bespoke graphical&#xD;&#xA;    programming systems are actually not uncommon in research labs, as they simplify&#xD;&#xA;    the automation of repetitive data processing workflows.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * **No Tooling**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Aside from their own, that is. You are often constrained by their programming&#xD;&#xA;    environment, their own debugger, their own interpreter, their own documentation&#xD;&#xA;    tools and formats. They are **walled gardens**, except if they eventually&#xD;&#xA;    capture the interest of someone motivated enough to reverse engineer their&#xD;&#xA;    formats and builds external tools... If the license permits it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * **Lack of Documentation**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Quite often, these are niche programming systems, which are used in fairly&#xD;&#xA;    closed environments. People who use them sign NDAs a dime a dozen and never speak&#xD;&#xA;    about what they do, and programming communities are them are rare. So resources&#xD;&#xA;    are scarce. You're stuck with your official reference, and that's it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The ironic (and often frustrating) bit is that all the things these systems do could obviously be achieved by using mainstream and general purpose programming languages, and quite probqbly more efficiently. But it requires a deeper knowledge of programming, whereas you can't expect your biologist, chemist or physiscit (to name a few) to know enough about programming, and even less to have the time (and desire) to implement (and maintain) complex systems, that may or may not be long-lived. For the same reason we use DSLs, we have these bespoke programming systems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Personal Anecdote 2:** Actually, I worked on one of these myself... I didn't do the link with the OP's request, but my the project was a set of inter-connected large pieces of data-processing and data-storage software (primarily for bio-informatics research, healthcare and cosmetics, but also for business intelligence, or any domain implying the tracking of large volumes of research data of any kind and the preparation of data-processing workflows and ETLs). One of these software was, quite simply, a visual IDE that used the usual bells and whistles: drag and drop interfaces, versioned project workspaces (using text and XML files for metadata storage), lots of pluggable drivers to heterogeneous datasources, and a visual canvas to design pipelines to process data from N datasources and in the end generate M transformed outputs, and possible shiny visualizations and complex (and interactive) online reports. Your typical bespoke visual programming system, suffering from a bit of NIH syndrome under the pretense of designing a system adapted to the users' needs.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; And, as you would expect, it's a nice system, quite flexible for its needs though sometimes a bit over-the-top so that you wonder &quot;why not use command-line tools instead?&quot;, and unfortunately always leading in medium-sized teams working on large projects to a lot of different people using it with different &quot;best&quot; practices.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Great, We're Doomed! - What Do We Do About It?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, in the end, all of the above still holds. If you cannot extract most of the programming from this system to use more mainstream tools and languages, you &quot;just&quot; need to adapt it to the constraints of your system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the end, you can almost always **version** things, even with the most constrained and walled environment. Most often than not, these systems still come with their own versioning (which is unfortunately often rather basics, and just offers to revert to previous versions without much visibility, just keeping previous snapshots). It's not exactly using differential changesets like your SCM of choice might, and it's probably not suited for multiple users submitting changes simultaneously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But still. If they do provide such a functionality, maybe your solution is to follow our beloved guidelines, and to transpore them to this programming system!! Implement your tests within the platform itself, and use external tools and background jobs to set up regular backups. Sure, it's a hack job and definitely to up to the standard of what is common for &quot;normal&quot; programming, but the idea is to adapt to the system while trying to maintain a semblance of professional software development process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the storage system is a database, it probably exposes export functionalities, or can be backed-up at the file-system level. If it's using a custom binary format, maybe you can simply try to version it with a VCS that has good support for binary data. You won't have fine-grained control, but at least you'll have your back sort of covered against catastrophes and have a certain degree of disaster recovery compliance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_WARNING: this section is still in progress. Check again later... again. Sorry._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;NOW ADDING CRAP CONTENT HERE TO PUSH THE **BODY**'s char count higher than 30K, and ensure we don't have (body &lt; 30K) but a ((body + links) &gt; 30K).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: Well, just a note to clarify... my assumption was wrong, it just fails to warn and truncates. The bug must lie somewhere else. Sorry. And good luck with it :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;loremp ipsum whatever and so on... loremp ipsum whate" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10065" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3763" RevisionGUID="3dc4cfce-fb05-48e0-b4c2-d93cff2cb101" CreationDate="2012-07-11T00:55:37.880" UserId="3631" Comment="added details about creating a test case to reproduce, and links to discussions with JeffAtwood and Shog9. Also adding the &quot;bug&quot; tag (hoping that's OK to do so)." Text="I seem to have reached this limit while editing my answer to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit frustrating, as the editor didn't warn me, so I typed away and submitted... and it truncated the end of the text AND the links...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So now I'll gladly rewrite this quickly, and make sections more concise to fit everything in, but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What exactly is the limit?&#xD;&#xA; * Maybe the editor should warn and block submission, like the comment section does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Though I agree such long posts probably do not happen too often. Sorry. got interested in this question more and more :)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update 2012/07/11:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * See [Shog9's answer][1] and comments below it for more details.&#xD;&#xA; * See this [answer from JeffAtwood][2] on another similar Meta.SO thread, where a fix is said to have been implemented, and the discussion we have in comments.&#xD;&#xA; * And finally see my [&quot;test-case answer&quot;][3] below and in particular its [revision log][4].&#xD;&#xA;   * It was created by simply identifying where things went wrong in [my answer][5] to the [question linked above][6] and I narrowed it down to between revisions [12][7] and [13][8].&#xD;&#xA;   * So I created a question with content from revision 12 (+disclaimer a the top about testing),&#xD;&#xA;   * then edited it with content from revision 13 (but with the link table of revision 12, to get the untrucated ones in there as well, as the revision 13 was obviously damaged),&#xD;&#xA;   * the submission went through just fine and without warning, and the content was indeed truncated again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3767/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/26723/151515&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3770/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/3770/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/155505/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/7b75c2e1-15ac-408d-807a-4cd83a2494bc/view-source&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/596bbe49-17a3-4c25-8175-d6242d796064/view-source" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10066" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3763" RevisionGUID="3dc4cfce-fb05-48e0-b4c2-d93cff2cb101" CreationDate="2012-07-11T00:55:37.880" UserId="3631" Comment="added details about creating a test case to reproduce, and links to discussions with JeffAtwood and Shog9. Also adding the &quot;bug&quot; tag (hoping that's OK to do so)." Text="|feature-request|bug|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10067" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3763" RevisionGUID="a5401a8d-8912-414c-b3eb-52c60955abeb" CreationDate="2012-07-11T01:01:43.253" UserId="3631" Comment="added 663 characters in body" Text="I seem to have reached this limit while editing my answer to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit frustrating, as the editor didn't warn me, so I typed away and submitted... and it truncated the end of the text AND the links...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So now I'll gladly rewrite this quickly, and make sections more concise to fit everything in, but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What exactly is the limit?&#xD;&#xA; * Maybe the editor should warn and block submission, like the comment section does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Though I agree such long posts probably do not happen too often. Sorry. got interested in this question more and more :)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Update 2012/07/11:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * See [Shog9's answer][1] and comments below it for more details.&#xD;&#xA; * See this [answer from JeffAtwood][2] on another similar Meta.SO thread, where a fix is said to have been implemented, and the discussion we have in comments.&#xD;&#xA; * And finally see my [&quot;test-case answer&quot;][3] below and in particular its [revision log][4]. See steps below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Steps to reproduce:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   * The [&quot;test-case answer&quot;][3] was created by simply identifying where things went wrong in [my answer][5] to the [question linked above][6] and I narrowed it down to between revisions [12][7] and [13][8].&#xD;&#xA;   * So I created a question with content from revision 12 (+disclaimer a the top about testing),&#xD;&#xA;   * then edited it with content from revision 13 (but with the link table of revision 12, to get the untrucated ones in there as well, as the revision 13 was obviously damaged),&#xD;&#xA;   * the submission went through just fine and without warning, and the content was indeed truncated again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Update 2012/07/11 - continued:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Crap, it appears the revision log of my test-case doesn't show all the steps, and doesn't show the messages I had left in the &quot;change logs&quot;. Probably because I did them without a big interval between them, and when that's the case the SE systems seem to merge them in one changeset (probably so we don't hit the `10 edits =&gt; CW` rule when editing answers rapidly while they're new).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, that's annoying here for looking at the test-case (maybe SE gods have a way to see full logs), but the **steps I gave above should be enough to reproduce it** anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3767/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/26723/151515&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3770/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/3770/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/155505/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/7b75c2e1-15ac-408d-807a-4cd83a2494bc/view-source&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/596bbe49-17a3-4c25-8175-d6242d796064/view-source" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10068" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3767" RevisionGUID="0d760ec6-0c0c-48b9-b503-6e25e6a30dc8" CreationDate="2012-07-11T01:23:15.613" UserId="63" Comment="added 228 characters in body" Text="I can't reproduce this; trying to submit several chapters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland produces,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Oops! Your answer couldn't be submitted because:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - body is limited to 30000 characters; you entered 34491&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Submitting an edit using the default inline editor behaves a little differently - I got a little pop-up reading,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; body is limited to 30000 characters; you entered 34701&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Opening the editor in a separate tab reverts to the submission failing with an error:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Oops! Your edit couldn't be submitted because:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - body is limited to 30000 characters; you entered 34837&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even here, the text wasn't *truncated* - the submission was flat-out rejected. It may be that some combination of formatting or link markup specific to your answer allowed it to bypass the first check and be accepted (but truncated); if you can reproduce this, please post details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;haylem managed to reproduce this quite effectively! I've written up a full bug report on MSO: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/139320/post-maximum-length-check-ignores-markdown-results-in-long-formatted-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10069" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3763" RevisionGUID="5ab228f4-5898-4238-99c3-bb0c45b7142e" CreationDate="2012-07-11T01:24:23.443" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags; added 276 characters in body" Text="|bug|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10070" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3763" RevisionGUID="5ab228f4-5898-4238-99c3-bb0c45b7142e" CreationDate="2012-07-11T01:24:23.443" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags; added 276 characters in body" Text="I seem to have reached this limit while editing my answer to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit frustrating, as the editor didn't warn me, so I typed away and submitted... and it truncated the end of the text AND the links...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So now I'll gladly rewrite this quickly, and make sections more concise to fit everything in, but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What exactly is the limit?&#xD;&#xA; * Maybe the editor should warn and block submission, like the comment section does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Though I agree such long posts probably do not happen too often. Sorry. got interested in this question more and more :)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Update 2012/07/11:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * See [Shog9's answer][1] and comments below it for more details.&#xD;&#xA; * See this [answer from JeffAtwood][2] on another similar Meta.SO thread, where a fix is said to have been implemented, and the discussion we have in comments.&#xD;&#xA; * And finally see my [&quot;test-case answer&quot;][3] below and in particular its [revision log][4]. See steps below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Steps to reproduce:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   * The [&quot;test-case answer&quot;][5] was created by simply identifying where things went wrong in [my answer][6] to the [question linked above][7] and I narrowed it down to between revisions [12][8] and [13][9].&#xD;&#xA;   * So I created a question with content from revision 12 (+disclaimer a the top about testing),&#xD;&#xA;   * then edited it with content from revision 13 (but with the link table of revision 12, to get the untrucated ones in there as well, as the revision 13 was obviously damaged),&#xD;&#xA;   * the submission went through just fine and without warning, and the content was indeed truncated again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Update 2012/07/11 - continued:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Crap, it appears the revision log of my test-case doesn't show all the steps, and doesn't show the messages I had left in the &quot;change logs&quot;. Probably because I did them without a big interval between them, and when that's the case the SE systems seem to merge them in one changeset (probably so we don't hit the `10 edits =&gt; CW` rule when editing answers rapidly while they're new).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, that's annoying here for looking at the test-case (maybe SE gods have a way to see full logs), but the **steps I gave above should be enough to reproduce it** anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Update by Shog9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reproduced, definitely a bug, [written up on MSO][10].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3767/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/26723/151515&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3770/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/3770/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3770/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/155505/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/7b75c2e1-15ac-408d-807a-4cd83a2494bc/view-source&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/596bbe49-17a3-4c25-8175-d6242d796064/view-source&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/139320/post-maximum-length-check-ignores-markdown-results-in-long-formatted-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10071" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="3771" RevisionGUID="22c91229-b0da-4776-ac27-df07314c0878" CreationDate="2012-07-11T04:33:31.150" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156364/does-anyone-else-not-enjoy-this-required-15-reputation-to-vote-situation" Text="" />
  <row Id="10072" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3771" RevisionGUID="511bccf5-cd4c-4787-a9a1-8307f4504878" CreationDate="2012-07-11T04:29:37.707" UserId="58625" Text="I know, it's most likely the reason stackexchange has become so popular, by forcing people to actually contribute. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as a full-time lurker, and long time user (only recently signed up), it kind of bums me out that I don't get to give credit where credit is due.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't generally asks questions because I always find a related question before I get myself into the situation where I need to ask and I don't like to answer questions myself as I don't consider myself experienced enough to be contributing effectively. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully the first response to this post is a quick solution to getting 15 reputation points that I haven't seen, and I can just quickly delete this useless question, or maybe a concise paragraph explaining why my question is redundant and that I should go back to my lurky shadows of which I came from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All I want to do, is give credit to helpful comments/questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10073" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3771" RevisionGUID="511bccf5-cd4c-4787-a9a1-8307f4504878" CreationDate="2012-07-11T04:29:37.707" UserId="58625" Text="Does anyone else not enjoy this 'Required 15 Reputation' to vote situation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10074" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3771" RevisionGUID="511bccf5-cd4c-4787-a9a1-8307f4504878" CreationDate="2012-07-11T04:29:37.707" UserId="58625" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10075" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3771" RevisionGUID="ffcbce21-08da-4ce2-88eb-1d5d8770c950" CreationDate="2012-07-11T04:35:30.320" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body; edited tags" Text="I know, it's most likely the reason stackexchange has become so popular, by forcing people to actually contribute. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as a full-time lurker, and long time user (only recently signed up), it kind of bums me out that I don't get to give credit where credit is due.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't generally ask questions because I always find a related question before I get myself into the situation where I need to ask and I don't like to answer questions myself as I don't consider myself experienced enough to be contributing effectively. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully the first response to this post is a quick solution to getting 15 reputation points that I haven't seen, and I can just quickly delete this useless question, or maybe a concise paragraph explaining why my question is redundant and that I should go back to my lurky shadows of which I came from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All I want to do, is give credit to helpful comments/questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10076" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3771" RevisionGUID="ffcbce21-08da-4ce2-88eb-1d5d8770c950" CreationDate="2012-07-11T04:35:30.320" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|voting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10077" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3772" RevisionGUID="bed01039-5048-4bdc-9451-d74c2e184eba" CreationDate="2012-07-11T04:38:19.577" UserDisplayName="user7519" Text="### Reworded slightly better but still not a good Q &amp; A format question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@KonradRudolph this is reworded slightly better, and slightly more on topic on programmers, but still comes off as your ranty opinion on why *( in your opinion )* why others made *mistakes* in these implementations you asking for justifications for other peoples design choices and decisions that can't be answered definitively. If they could it would be very easily Googled, which you would of already found the answer quickly, therefore all this is going to generate, even on programmers is speculation and supposition ( this is what all the answers currently are ) and no true *answer*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Comments to the contrary of the claimed intent in the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a comment to this [answer][1]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&quot;As I said, I’m not convinced by that at all. Objects do get instantiated before, and code gets executed before. It’d need a quote from one of the original developers to convince me that this was the reason.&quot;* this comment from an answer below kind of proves you aren't going to get the answer you want unless you contact the original designers in question, anyone else is going to be speculating; this is still **not constructive** and **off topic** even with the attempt at re-wording it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And other comments are just more discussion arguments on why the OP doesn't **buy** the answer/argument. Matter of fact, all the comments are just arguments support or &quot;debunking&quot; complaints even on the deleted question. I would vote to close again if I could.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/156339/7519" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10078" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3773" RevisionGUID="c3c19454-11f5-45b9-81f5-092531032ac8" CreationDate="2012-07-11T04:45:15.380" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; Hopefully the first response to this post is a quick solution to getting 15 reputation points that I haven't seen&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All you need is 8 good edits! While under 2,000 reputation points, you gain 2 points for each edit you make, and with just 8 good edits you'll get the required reputation to up vote (plus 1 ;). There's a small catch, though, your edits must be approved by higher rep members, so don't just do minor edits in hopes of getting some cheap rep, or they'll be outright rejected. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you decide to start editing, scout for questions and answers with multiple problems, grammatical, syntactical or whatever else, and try your best to fix them, without changing the original intent of the post. Check out the [edit privilege page][1] for a summary of what a good edit makes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10079" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3772" RevisionGUID="080fd959-4550-43c3-bb09-16027ae2a409" CreationDate="2012-07-11T04:51:08.187" UserDisplayName="user7519" Comment="added 425 characters in body; added 252 characters in body" Text="### Reworded slightly better but still not a good Q &amp; A format question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@KonradRudolph this is reworded slightly better, and slightly more on topic on programmers, but still comes off as your ranty opinion on why *( in your opinion )* why others made *mistakes* in these implementations you asking for justifications for other peoples design choices and decisions that can't be answered definitively. If they could it would be very easily Googled, which you would of already found the answer quickly, therefore all this is going to generate, even on programmers is speculation and supposition ( this is what all the answers currently are ) and no true *answer*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Comments to the contrary of the claimed intent in the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a comment to this [answer][1]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&quot;As I said, I’m not convinced by that at all. Objects do get instantiated before, and code gets executed before. It’d need a quote from one of the original developers to convince me that this was the reason.&quot;* this comment from an answer below kind of proves you aren't going to get the answer you want unless you contact the original designers in question, anyone else is going to be speculating; this is still **not constructive** and **off topic** even with the attempt at re-wording it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And other comments are just more discussion arguments on why the OP doesn't **buy** the answer/argument. Matter of fact, all the comments are just arguments support or &quot;debunking&quot; complaints even on the deleted question. I would vote to close again if I could.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&quot;@Yannis True. I had somewhat hoped for an answer from one of the people originally involved (maybe from Eric? though his would probably be “because we copied Java”).&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then mail the people that did what they did, why do you think polling here will provide the answer you are looking for?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The following quote from the re-worded answer are just unqualified opinion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&quot;... the following answers don’t satisfy me, as I deem them incorrect: ...&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the only viable answer I could come up with, I avoided putting it the actual question so as not to contribute to the noise there, but meta is about noise right :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![The Dude](http://i.qkme.me/355dvh.jpg)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/156339/7519" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10080" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3774" RevisionGUID="4ac2c557-a226-4e35-b84e-cc06526f022f" CreationDate="2012-07-11T06:30:12.267" UserId="58839" Text="Participe to any of the exchange site, join another one with same profile : kabam, you're awarded 100 points, so I had fully forgotten about this &quot;15 points&quot; rule.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    +100 	08:36 	assoc 	Association Bonus" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10081" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3750" RevisionGUID="32bbc717-4fdf-4b28-8775-954ed8e61c58" CreationDate="2012-07-11T07:24:56.593" UserDisplayName="user7519" Comment="added 59 characters in body; added 123 characters in body" Text="Actually if Oded had looked carefully at the content of the link. That page has a button that links to the previous PDF that is now 404.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was not SPAM and it isn't a &quot;bad edit&quot;. The domain was the exact same as the one that replaced it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://www.maestrodev.com/support/ has the link to the PDF that went 404.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think the support page is a better link than a direct link to the PDF anyway, as it probably won't change." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10082" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3775" RevisionGUID="757557e1-3683-4f71-b8a0-007709c0f366" CreationDate="2012-07-11T08:20:15.440" UserId="26494" Text="I agree, I had even thought of asking a somewhat similar question.  To me, the only &quot;good&quot; it does is keep people with low rep from downvoting because they don't want the rep hit.  And to me, if you don't want low rep downvotes the solution is to not allow downvoting without a rep that exceeds some cap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A compromise might be to give 1 &quot;free&quot; downvote for every upvote on a daily basis.  This will still inhibit downbvoting by low rep users as they only get 1 free per upvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think a good downvote is just as valuable, if not more so, than an upvote -- every loves a winner, but most people don't even think about picking on the bad answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10083" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3776" RevisionGUID="da3db86e-fbfd-47d8-a367-5a55a5c4d59b" CreationDate="2012-07-11T08:37:04.267" UserId="5240" Text="I understand that you dislike our current situation, but the '15 rep requirement' has it's benefits, which hugely outweigh the disadvantages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rule is derived from the initial ideas that are the basis of all StackExchange sites: You need to earn trust, before you are allowed to vote. That ideas has been proven to work very well; It keeps out a big amount of people who would otherwise abuse their privileges, thus affecting the sites' usefulness very badly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it is great that you want to give credit where it is due - in fact, I think that this is exactly the kind of attitude SE needs! As others have pointed out, there are several ways of gaining 15 rep points, so I suggest you *go for it!* And once you have enough rep, you can still accept answers on all the questions you asked before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10084" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3756" RevisionGUID="fad31f2a-66d9-42e2-9ebd-b93e54268895" CreationDate="2012-07-11T12:53:42.213" UserId="28308" Comment="added 479 characters in body" Text="My score is 212. Yes there is one day I asked 3 questions that is downvoted. However, I don't even know why it's downvoted. It seems like a fine question to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then boom I am suspended for 1 week. No biggy. I'll just learn from my lesson. I didn't post anything anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now permanent ban?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's pretty fast&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: In other places like sceptic stack exchanges I asked really REALLY politically incorrect questions even sceptics refused to be scepticals. Even THERE, I don't get banned. They must have thought I am a troll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am a programmer and programmer is a field I am actually an expert. So I am surprised that I am banned here instead. First time ever in stackexchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like the rapidity of downvoted questions is what triggers it. I got -5 for asking this question, and I think I should really move on." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10085" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3763" RevisionGUID="f591ba37-4c6b-4eaa-8095-f819c87c06ce" CreationDate="2012-07-11T15:00:38.617" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10086" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3777" RevisionGUID="2a4eac81-afcb-49ce-8f22-bac5f1f12542" CreationDate="2012-07-12T12:11:53.110" UserId="34364" Text="First of all, if you didn't know (and I can only hope you did), Programmers Stack Exchange has it's [own community blog][1] that anybody can contribute to. So, if you haven't been reading it, start now :-)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyways, currently we have very few solid contributors to the blog. We started with about 7 posts, and that number is quickly falling. Basically, if we don't get more community help with this, we are going to be on the verge of dying. So if you want to contribute, now is the time to start.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, we are in need of mainly writers, although if you would like to sign-up as an editor or proofreader, that would be fine. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To sign up, set up your answer as so:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Name&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ====&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ***Position (either editor/proofreader or writer or both)***&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Description. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are a writer, your description area is where you should put how many posts you'll be able to dish out per month or another time span. For example, `1 post every 1-2 months`. If you only want to write one post, and then stop helping, that's also fine, although we would love to see you stay. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once you sign up, we will contact you with your Wordpress account details and Trello account details. For more info on those services, and on how you will be helping, [see here][2]. If you have any questions, ping me in the [Programmers Blog Room][3], or leave a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's about it! Enjoy the blog, and start signing up :-)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10087" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3777" RevisionGUID="2a4eac81-afcb-49ce-8f22-bac5f1f12542" CreationDate="2012-07-12T12:11:53.110" UserId="34364" Text="Programmers Blog: Second Call for Contributors" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10088" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3777" RevisionGUID="2a4eac81-afcb-49ce-8f22-bac5f1f12542" CreationDate="2012-07-12T12:11:53.110" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10089" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3778" RevisionGUID="a56129df-fb30-41c3-9483-e299ede96585" CreationDate="2012-07-12T16:00:02.510" UserId="6294" Text="I've noticed that Programmers has a whole lot of [Closed] questions hanging around. It's better than it has been in the past (I'm seeing about 25% of the front page, as opposed to more like [40% a while back][1]). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not complaining about the number of closed questions, just the fact that they take up an annoying amount of the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there some way that we can have the front page not show closed items? Or perhaps not allow them to get above the half way point on the page? I often hit programmers &amp; SO during compiles, and it's not useful when 3 of the top 5 items are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/841/why-are-almost-half-the-questions-on-the-front-page-marked-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10090" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3778" RevisionGUID="a56129df-fb30-41c3-9483-e299ede96585" CreationDate="2012-07-12T16:00:02.510" UserId="6294" Text="Can we have some way to not show closed questions on the front page?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10091" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3778" RevisionGUID="a56129df-fb30-41c3-9483-e299ede96585" CreationDate="2012-07-12T16:00:02.510" UserId="6294" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10092" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3779" RevisionGUID="97c57b8e-4d1a-4c2d-ab58-98fbbbbd06ab" CreationDate="2012-07-12T16:07:51.193" UserId="47" Text="There are three ways to get closed questions off the home page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Down-vote them. Once a question reaches a certain threshold score (-5 I think) they won't get shown on the home page. This is a double edged sword as without views there's no chance that the question will get improved by editing.&#xD;&#xA;2. Delete them. Deleted questions aren't shown (obviously). If the question is not salvageable then this is the only recourse.&#xD;&#xA;3. Edit them into shape and get them reopened. You can try to gather reopen votes by posting a link the question in chat (or perhaps here) or flagging the question. But you will have had to make significant improvement to the post for that.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10093" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3779" RevisionGUID="3ee71a2f-af3c-48fe-ac86-9e4e7c1a96da" CreationDate="2012-07-12T16:30:46.027" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="There are three ways to get closed questions off the home page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Down-vote them. Once a question reaches a certain threshold score (-5 I think) they won't get shown on the home page. This is a double edged sword as without views there's no chance that the question will get improved by editing.&#xD;&#xA;2. Delete them. Deleted questions aren't shown (obviously). If the question is not salvageable then this is the only recourse.&#xD;&#xA;3. Edit them into shape and get them reopened. You can try to gather reopen votes by posting a link the question in chat (or perhaps here) or flagging the question. But you will have had to make significant improvement to the post for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed questions have to be visible so that one of the above actions can be taken on them **by the community**. They also serve as a visible marker to show people what kinds of questions *shouldn't* be asked on the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10094" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3780" RevisionGUID="eb4d0c00-d092-47e7-b9bd-fd4246223c6a" CreationDate="2012-07-12T18:47:05.930" UserId="101" Text="I've been following the Meta discussions that have been taking place for quite a while about the creation of our community blog.  And recently Dynamic posted here [asking for more contributors][1] to the blog.  I had no idea the blog was up and running and that there'd already been several good entries posted.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I can't find the Blog, what chance does someone have of finding it who isn't familiar with the site or even know that discussions have taken place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it would be a good idea to have our [community blog][2] be made visible somewhere on the main site.  More visibility would drive more interest and probably make requests for more contributors a thing of the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3777&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10095" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3780" RevisionGUID="eb4d0c00-d092-47e7-b9bd-fd4246223c6a" CreationDate="2012-07-12T18:47:05.930" UserId="101" Text="Programmers Blog visibility" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10096" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3780" RevisionGUID="eb4d0c00-d092-47e7-b9bd-fd4246223c6a" CreationDate="2012-07-12T18:47:05.930" UserId="101" Text="|feature-request|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10097" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3781" RevisionGUID="daab3862-f37d-412b-96e6-fc0aa3f34bea" CreationDate="2012-07-12T18:54:00.630" UserId="3124" Text="Justin Kohlhepp&#xD;&#xA;---------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Writer, 1 post every 1-2 months**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I maintain my own blog at the moment at [RationalGeek.com][1].  The topics I write about are pretty well aligned to the subject matter of Programmers.SE.  I'd be glad to contribute some posts to P.SE blog as long as I can also post them on my site.  Not sure if that is allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://rationalgeek.com/blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10098" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3777" RevisionGUID="8827d1a1-9b3e-4624-b410-96499183ab31" CreationDate="2012-07-12T19:35:15.857" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/223500791451893760" />
  <row Id="10099" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3782" RevisionGUID="7d2bfb3a-c5e6-4d5a-a2be-8abe53bfd9ba" CreationDate="2012-07-12T19:45:00.460" UserId="44541" Text="Julie Meloni (that's me)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;writer, 1 post every 1-2 months; editor/proofreader as much as you want it" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10100" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3783" RevisionGUID="be1eb528-5323-4d03-b41c-6b44e7a55ad2" CreationDate="2012-07-12T22:56:53.630" UserId="50055" Text="I am (marginally) color-blind and have great difficulty distinguishing between hyperlinks and normal text on the SE-Programmers site. I can barely tell when the text is actually a link. To my eyes, there just isn't enough visual contrast. (Unlike on [StackOverflow](http://stackoverflow.com/), for instance, where the blue links stand out vividly to me. For that matter, the orange(?)-colored links on this meta-page are easily distinguishable as well.) Can anyone suggest a workaround for this situation (for example, a browser-hack of some sort)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: I am (unfortunately) obliged to use IE at work, so no non-IE browser-specific workarounds will suffice." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10101" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3783" RevisionGUID="be1eb528-5323-4d03-b41c-6b44e7a55ad2" CreationDate="2012-07-12T22:56:53.630" UserId="50055" Text="accomodations for visually impaired" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10102" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3783" RevisionGUID="be1eb528-5323-4d03-b41c-6b44e7a55ad2" CreationDate="2012-07-12T22:56:53.630" UserId="50055" Text="|support|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10103" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3783" RevisionGUID="47a2508a-af75-42e4-95be-827210a7307f" CreationDate="2012-07-13T03:50:55.867" UserId="50055" Comment="update" Text="I am (marginally) color-blind and have great difficulty distinguishing between hyperlinks and normal text on the SE-Programmers site. I can barely tell when the text is actually a link. To my eyes, there just isn't enough visual contrast. (Unlike on [StackOverflow](http://stackoverflow.com/), for instance, where the blue links stand out vividly to me. For that matter, the orange(?)-colored links on this meta-page are easily distinguishable as well.) Can anyone suggest a workaround for this situation (for example, a browser-hack of some sort)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: I am (unfortunately) obliged to use IE at work, so no non-IE browser-specific workarounds will suffice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:** As Yannis pointed out, my question is very similar in nature to [this question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1487/it-is-possible-to-change-the-colors-of-hypertext-links), but in my case, I'm not asking for a global site-wide change (though that would be nice), but rather just a workaround for my own setup." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10104" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3783" RevisionGUID="5fb7594d-b275-4dc3-8afc-b8250e4eb879" CreationDate="2012-07-13T07:34:56.717" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|feature-request|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10109" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3785" RevisionGUID="b9f09dbe-ee78-4720-94d6-793f22697e54" CreationDate="2012-07-13T11:16:22.553" UserId="25476" Text="This is one of those things that I really didn't put much stock into until I saw this award-winning question posted...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156673/which-editor-is-best-for-php&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... and yes the question itself contains as many words as the title.  It would make Yahoo Answers proud.  I am all about short, sweet and to the point but that is absolutely ridiculous that we actually allow 6 word questions to be posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We already have a minimum character feature for comments, so why not a minimum word feature for posting a question or answer?  If you agree, what should the limit be?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10110" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3785" RevisionGUID="b9f09dbe-ee78-4720-94d6-793f22697e54" CreationDate="2012-07-13T11:16:22.553" UserId="25476" Text="Minimum word feature when posting a question or answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10111" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3785" RevisionGUID="b9f09dbe-ee78-4720-94d6-793f22697e54" CreationDate="2012-07-13T11:16:22.553" UserId="25476" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10112" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3785" RevisionGUID="c407d509-ed9f-437b-8a7d-68d78f8da1af" CreationDate="2012-07-13T11:20:01.203" UserId="25936" Comment="As a Yahoo! Answers enthusiast, I couldn't resist the urge to fix that..." Text="|feature-request|quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10113" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3785" RevisionGUID="c407d509-ed9f-437b-8a7d-68d78f8da1af" CreationDate="2012-07-13T11:20:01.203" UserId="25936" Comment="As a Yahoo! Answers enthusiast, I couldn't resist the urge to fix that..." Text="This is one of those things that I really didn't put much stock into until I saw this award-winning question posted...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156673/which-editor-is-best-for-php&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... and yes the question itself contains as many words as the title.  It would make Yahoo! Answers proud.  I am all about short, sweet and to the point but that is absolutely ridiculous that we actually allow 6 word questions to be posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We already have a minimum character feature for comments, so why not a minimum word feature for posting a question or answer?  If you agree, what should the limit be?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10114" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3786" RevisionGUID="fbf6a624-b361-4a57-a1ba-9c1719074d05" CreationDate="2012-07-13T11:25:16.067" UserId="4" Text="There already is a 30 character limit on answers. I would suspect that this limit also applies to questions (and if it doesn't, it's probably a bug). Given how he added spaces, it looks like that question body is exactly 30 characters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps a word count would be better than a character count - split on whitespace, disregard &quot;words&quot; that contain only non-alphanumeric content (as long as there is at least one letter or number, consider the element a word). A good question would probably need to contain at least a handful of sentences, so perhaps a 30-50 word count would make for a good body?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10115" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3787" RevisionGUID="7c19bdd0-df8f-448f-8cd8-21db5314bd32" CreationDate="2012-07-14T00:20:22.917" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="How about a split feed from the Community Bulletin on the upper right of the page?  So it would be a line or two from the blog and a line or two from Meta.  MetaP.SE is fairly low-volume anyway, so devoting some of the real-estate to the blog seems like a good use." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10116" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3788" RevisionGUID="f5d23676-b8e4-4a21-90bc-cc90d05697e7" CreationDate="2012-07-14T06:19:41.230" UserId="1996" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156740/reducing-power-consumption&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Indeed, as currently constituted, this question probably *should* be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet the OP seemed genuinely curious, and the answers and comments that were provided were exactly what the OP was looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Couldn't a well-placed edit have saved this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10117" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3788" RevisionGUID="f5d23676-b8e4-4a21-90bc-cc90d05697e7" CreationDate="2012-07-14T06:19:41.230" UserId="1996" Text="The OP Seemed Genuinely Curious: Couldn't An Edit Have Saved This Question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10118" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3788" RevisionGUID="f5d23676-b8e4-4a21-90bc-cc90d05697e7" CreationDate="2012-07-14T06:19:41.230" UserId="1996" Text="|discussion|specific-question|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10119" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3768" RevisionGUID="77d60a90-0fa2-4201-83b7-692671b20062" CreationDate="2012-07-14T07:35:15.807" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/224044372944101376" />
  <row Id="10120" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3789" RevisionGUID="313a6687-a020-4780-b117-a6fee42b54cf" CreationDate="2012-07-14T13:27:24.797" UserId="25476" Text="It looks like Jarrod Roberson actually did a good edit too it to make it a good constructive question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/156740/revisions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I went ahead and reopened it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10126" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="309" RevisionGUID="684b31f0-7bde-437f-904f-e0bbb71db711" CreationDate="2012-07-15T11:17:56.273" UserId="666" Comment="Syntax highlighting!; edited body" Text="Yes, there should be syntax highlighting for any code-related posts...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll use the rest of this answer as a CW sandbox... (Haven't fount the meta.SO counterpart yet)  &#xD;&#xA;Feel free to improve examples with more syntax, add other languages or correct mistakes, etc.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**C++**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- language: lang-cpp --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    #include &lt;iostream&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    #include &quot;SyntaxHighlightingTest.h&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    int main(int argc, const char * argv[])&#xD;&#xA;    {&#xD;&#xA;        SyntaxHighlightingTest * sht = new SyntaxHighlightingTest();&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        cout &lt;&lt; sht-&gt;useString(&quot;Syntax Highlighting Test&quot;) &lt;&lt; endl;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        delete sht;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        return 0;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**C#**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- language: lang-cs --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    class TestSyntaxHighlighting&#xD;&#xA;    {&#xD;&#xA;        static void Main(string[] args)&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;            // Display a string.&#xD;&#xA;            System.Console.WriteLine(&quot;Syntax Highlighting Test&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**F#**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- language: lang-cs --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    let getTriple m n =&#xD;&#xA;        let a = 2 * m * n&#xD;&#xA;        let b = m * m - n * n&#xD;&#xA;        let c = m * m + n * n&#xD;&#xA;        a, b, c&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**LISP**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- language: lang-lisp --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    (defun factorial (n)&#xD;&#xA;        (if (= n 1)&#xD;&#xA;            1&#xD;&#xA;            (* n (factorial (- n 1)))))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**PHP**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- language: lang-php --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;?php&#xD;&#xA;        // Display a string.&#xD;&#xA;        die(&quot;Syntax Highlighting Test&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;    ?&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10127" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="309" RevisionGUID="09eaeee2-00a8-4646-8248-0e7eebc4b2a5" CreationDate="2012-07-15T11:32:44.487" UserId="666" Comment="deleted 992 characters in body" Text="Yes, there should be syntax highlighting for any code-related posts...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll use the rest of this answer as a CW sandbox... (Haven't fount the meta.SO counterpart yet)  &#xD;&#xA;Feel free to improve examples with more syntax, add other languages or correct mistakes, etc.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;s&gt;Testing code removed, syntax highlighting does not work on meta.&lt;/s&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10128" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3792" RevisionGUID="0ff1bbe5-4999-4d05-9c50-607e90eb9b9d" CreationDate="2012-07-15T14:25:32.827" UserId="34488" Text="I am unsure about the rules pertaining to questions related to education.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially I searched the site for questions related to MS and MSC degrees, and saw many questions from members seeking education advice. However, none of them dealt with the topic of school's ranking &amp; being online programs; therefore, I posted my question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156895/online-msc-from-a-top-school-vs-in-person-from-unranked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was closed within a few minutes as offtopic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not quite sure why it was considered offtopic, and something like this isn't:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37482/having-msc-or-bsc-with-experience-whats-it-worth-in-industrial-environments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also read the FAQ, which brought me here:&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;That post states: `A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot;`&#xD;&#xA;The answer to that question is a yes, as my question specifically asks about the level of challenge in these programs &amp; affects on the rest of the programming career. If I was to post the question in &quot;The Workplace,&quot; I would not get field specific answers there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the proper place to ask a question such as mine?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10129" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3792" RevisionGUID="0ff1bbe5-4999-4d05-9c50-607e90eb9b9d" CreationDate="2012-07-15T14:25:32.827" UserId="34488" Text="Questions about education" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10130" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3792" RevisionGUID="0ff1bbe5-4999-4d05-9c50-607e90eb9b9d" CreationDate="2012-07-15T14:25:32.827" UserId="34488" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10131" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3793" RevisionGUID="28b4df54-0c4e-4232-9ed0-d16f63a3d679" CreationDate="2012-07-15T14:52:05.097" UserId="4" Text="The first thing I noticed was that your questions about education are not unique to the software development profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first involves the quality of education at a ranked university versus an unranked university - this is something that would apply equally to every academic program. I don't see a difference between asking about comparing the quality of education in a ranked/unranked computer science program than a business management program, an electrical engineering program, or a criminal justice program.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your second question, again, can be equally applied to any degree program. It's only about getting your degree exclusively online versus in a classroom setting when considering the prestige of the university offering it. Again, I don't see how this would be different if you considered any academic program.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only part of your question that mentions anything related to software development is the fact that you're employed as a software engineer and are working toward a graduate degree in computer science. Just because you are a software developer doesn't mean that other people can't answer your question. If you don't need to have the knowledge and experience unique to professional software developers, it's not appropriate for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The below chart is in the FAQ, and I think it explains it pretty well. This question bleeds into the All Careers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Who does this question apply to?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/zYWuh.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10132" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3785" RevisionGUID="93b11ee6-b94a-45b5-959e-b5aed4d75525" CreationDate="2012-07-16T10:35:19.090" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/224814461234577408" />
  <row Id="10133" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3794" RevisionGUID="5b58703c-79dc-4913-ad5a-f5555b634483" CreationDate="2012-07-16T14:00:23.870" UserId="55105" Text="Given the enormous amount of people who are unsatisfied with the current question closing policy, I am thinking if it wouldn't be better to have a 4-status system:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **open**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **frozen** (less demoralizing than &quot;closed&quot;). No more answers will be accepted until the question is edited and improved. Very easy to re-open after edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. **closed**, for different possible reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    - It had been frozen, but after x time the author has not improved it yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    - Nothing can be done to improve it (for example it is a duplicate).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    - It has generated too much debate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. **deleted**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10134" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3794" RevisionGUID="5b58703c-79dc-4913-ad5a-f5555b634483" CreationDate="2012-07-16T14:00:23.870" UserId="55105" Text="Proposal for new question statuses" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10135" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3794" RevisionGUID="5b58703c-79dc-4913-ad5a-f5555b634483" CreationDate="2012-07-16T14:00:23.870" UserId="55105" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10136" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3795" RevisionGUID="bb1f4efd-3134-4d4e-855d-4146888d1122" CreationDate="2012-07-16T14:11:42.833" UserId="47255" Text="&gt; Given the enormous amount of people who are unsatisfied with the current question closing policy, I am thinking if it wouldn't be better to have a 4-status system:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is probably an even larger amount of people who are satisfied with it. A high volume of &quot;closing questions sucks&quot; posts doesn't mean much. Nobody has the need to post &quot;closing questions rocks&quot; posts, so you don't see that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; less demoralizing than &quot;closed&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing is not supposed to be demoralizing. For salvageable questions, closing is a pit stop--it's basically &quot;frozen&quot;, as you say.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do you plan on making it easy to reopen on edit? Giving the power to the OP makes no sense, s/he may just keep hitting reopen. Very few non-mod actions are unilateral, so you'd still need voting for it. And getting a post reopened isn't that hard--you can always flag it for mod attention and it'll be reopened pretty quickly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10137" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3796" RevisionGUID="e4cc7711-ca34-4f98-8b47-60ed8adb4978" CreationDate="2012-07-16T14:12:21.323" UserId="35414" Text="While I agree that frozen might make it sounds slightly less permanent it could also carry the connotation that you can't edit it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overall I don't think this would have a significant impact on people's responses to closed questions; I can certainly see a lot of people simply saying &quot;why you freeze my question&quot; instead of &quot;why you close my question&quot;. I don't think this solves anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Plus what's &quot;closed&quot; mean now? Is it functionally no different? I assume not, it seems to just mean &quot;it's old and we don't like it&quot;. Then why have it at all?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10138" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3797" RevisionGUID="b14e0bf5-5279-4964-855e-96c0e821d992" CreationDate="2012-07-16T14:15:10.473" UserId="4" Text="Closed is the same as your &quot;frozen&quot;. The idea behind closing a question is to prevent answers to a question that is not a good fit for Programmers (or, more generally, to the Stack Exchange format). Closed is meant as a temporary state. Either the question gets sufficient corrections and reopened or it can't be salvaged and gets deleted. There are even some [automatic procedures in place to clean up some questions][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing early (as in before any answers have been posted) is a very good thing. It enables people (preferably the author, otherwise the community members) to fix the question and make it a good question. Once there are answers, it takes more work to make the question good, since edits will either have to be sure to not invalidate any existing answers or the community will also have to clean up the existing answers to make them valid (otherwise, a moderator would have to delete them).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are also two other states for questions - protected and locked. Protected questions can not be answered by users who have not hit a reputation threshold. Locked questions are to resolve extremely serious problems and prevent all voting and editing (and for questions, new answers) and provides for questions that are being discussed on Meta, questions that have historical significance but are not good questions, or have generated a large number of off-topic or chatty comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're trying to save old questions, [go through the list of closed questions][2]. If you see a question that you don't think should have been closed, ask about the reasoning in Chat or on Meta. If you can save it, make a heroic edit, clean it up, and vote to reopen (and maybe share your work on chat to get more feedback, edits, and reopen votes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From my perspective as a moderator, I rarely see flags to reopen a closed question. If you make a heroic edit and aren't getting reopen votes, flag it for review by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, something that we haven't been doing (and perhaps should consider) is looking at the old closed questions that don't meet the criteria for automatic deletion and either salvaging them or deleting them. However, that would need to be a new discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/78048/auto-deleting-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year/92006#92006&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed:1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10139" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3794" RevisionGUID="4f7e8ea6-b961-4a65-b63e-d45418aad753" CreationDate="2012-07-16T14:26:22.310" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|feature-request|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10140" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3794" RevisionGUID="4f7e8ea6-b961-4a65-b63e-d45418aad753" CreationDate="2012-07-16T14:26:22.310" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="Provide a &quot;frozen&quot; status that closes a question until it is edited" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10141" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3796" RevisionGUID="89a6d8de-35c3-49d1-8c19-ecccad168233" CreationDate="2012-07-16T15:04:35.933" UserId="35414" Comment="added 89 characters in body" Text="While I agree that frozen might make it sounds slightly less permanent it could also carry the connotation that you can't edit it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overall I don't think this would have a significant impact on people's responses to closed questions; I can certainly see a lot of people simply saying &quot;why you freeze my question&quot; instead of &quot;why you close my question&quot;. I don't think this solves anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Plus what's &quot;closed&quot; mean now? Is it functionally no different? I assume not, it seems to just mean &quot;it's old and we don't like it&quot;. Then why have it at all? Suddenly &quot;closed&quot; *does* mean something bad, since you have &quot;failed&quot; your edited window." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10142" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3780" RevisionGUID="3b071bad-9ff4-454e-98c1-3bfb8330fe8b" CreationDate="2012-07-16T19:35:21.640" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/224950367832645632" />
  <row Id="10143" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3792" RevisionGUID="52c8211c-27e2-4442-8a5e-715a00247288" CreationDate="2012-07-17T04:41:17.343" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10147" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3799" RevisionGUID="325de3a7-26c8-4f87-8f4d-75417dbf1105" CreationDate="2012-07-17T14:39:49.690" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="A [recent question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/157022/53019) was posted about coding for charity and finding organizations that help coordinate those activities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, it's closed as off-topic.  An attempt has been made (by me) to make the question more on-topic and trigger a reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is to spark a discussion on whether or not the question can be salvaged and made on-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10148" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3799" RevisionGUID="325de3a7-26c8-4f87-8f4d-75417dbf1105" CreationDate="2012-07-17T14:39:49.690" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="The coding for chrity Q. Any hope of ever being OT?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10149" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3799" RevisionGUID="325de3a7-26c8-4f87-8f4d-75417dbf1105" CreationDate="2012-07-17T14:39:49.690" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10150" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3799" RevisionGUID="93c4db14-890a-4c2c-a432-b7ac699d1413" CreationDate="2012-07-17T14:43:36.800" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="The coding for charity Q. Any hope of ever being OT?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10151" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3799" RevisionGUID="93c4db14-890a-4c2c-a432-b7ac699d1413" CreationDate="2012-07-17T14:43:36.800" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10153" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3799" RevisionGUID="64cb2bf1-898c-42cc-8487-939b20a2d9af" CreationDate="2012-07-17T15:04:41.663" UserId="226" Comment="edited title" Text="The coding for charity Q. Any hope of ever being on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10154" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3800" RevisionGUID="cabd43d8-30b0-4432-8207-40fdd872527e" CreationDate="2012-07-17T15:07:46.730" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="I would agree that the question is a list style question, which are generally discouraged.  But I feel it is an exception case, list type question that is on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some notable exception cases on SO where list questions are allowed, such as the [Definitive C++ book guide](http://stackoverflow.com/q/388242/1345223).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The scope of the question is fairly broad since Coding for charity is a subject that could apply to all programmers and the answers are a resource that all could consider.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that it falls into the category of &quot;good subjective&quot; since the OP wasn't asking for opinions on this one versus that one, but was simply looking for a listing of organizations to consider.  That approach effectively removed the potential for rants and counter-productive dialogue.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, when googling related terms, I ran into difficulty in coming up with good results.  That kind of anchored the need for the question in my mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So because of the applicability to all programmers, I think the question is on topic and should be reopened.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Counter and supporting opinions welcome!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10155" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3801" RevisionGUID="c06f1197-b963-45c7-9e13-678d394a7c87" CreationDate="2012-07-17T15:31:58.233" UserId="4" Text="I locked the post pending the outcome of this discussion here on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see how this question can be a good subjective question, as identified in [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][1] and [Real Questions Have Answers][2]. Of the six guidelines, I can only make the case for this question having a constructive tone, invite sharing experiences over opinions, and being more than mindless social fun. Ultimately, this question is just asking for a list of resources. There is little indication of a &quot;why or how&quot; emphasis, the answers appear to be shorter, facts and references can only be provided and verified by people who have used the particular service or attended the particular event. Given this, I rate it as a 50% on the &quot;good subjective question&quot; guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although the question does have uses, it's still a list question and list questions go against the nature of Stack Exchange sites, where people are supposed to ask practical and answerable questions. Questions where every answer is equally valid is not answerable and therefore not appropriate for a Stack Exchange site. If we open a useful question that clearly doesn't meet the guidelines for remaining open, that leaves opportunities for people to point to it and say if it can stay open, their question should also stay open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even though the question can be useful, given that I scored it low on the guidelines for constructive questions and the need for consistency across questions (and, to some extent, sites), I don't see how the reopening can be justified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10156" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3802" RevisionGUID="38bb029f-d6ed-4830-850a-0a93ef75b5b1" CreationDate="2012-07-17T16:29:54.503" UserId="1130" Text="I think the question should be rephrased from &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What are** some good open source projects, code-a-thons, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; organizations which create software used for charity purposes or to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; help out charities?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **How can I find** open source projects, code-a-thons, or organizations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which create software used for charity purposes or to help out&#xD;&#xA;&gt; charities?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first form is asking for a list of items. The second form is asking for a way to find and identify the list of items for yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To quote from the blog post [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][1], and I think the last paragraph sums it up nicely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, there is a way to ask these questions that avoids the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; inherent problems with shopping recommendations. For example, let’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; say you wanted — as I did — to buy a point-and-shoot camera that takes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; good low light photos. So we’re going to ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; photo.stackexchange.com, naturally!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Here’s one way to ask:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Q: What’s the best low light point-and-shoot camera?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; A: Canon S90 and Lumix LX3.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Here’s another way to ask:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Q: How do I tell which point-and-shoot cameras take good low light&#xD;&#xA;&gt; photos?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; A: I strongly recommend looking for something with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * a fast lens (2.0 at least)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * reasonable ISO handling (at least 400, but preferably 800)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * the biggest sensor available&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The sum of these factors are really critical for low light situations.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The former question provides the path of least resistance: a laundry&#xD;&#xA;&gt; list of products I can buy without thinking about it too much. But&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that answer will only be valid for a year at best. The latter question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; may take some thinking, but its answer will be valid forever … or at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; least until camera technology somehow shifts beyond lenses and sensors&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as we know them today. Thus, when it comes to shopping questions,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; don’t ask us what you should buy — ask us what you need to learn to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tell what you should buy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10157" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3803" RevisionGUID="cab24f80-80c1-4bec-bb56-a7abed114ab6" CreationDate="2012-07-17T17:59:32.723" UserId="3627" Text="This is me stepping in. While I appreciate and support the idea of keeping the quality of questions high, I don't think this is always necessary. If I do ask for a list of good X, I do not want to know how to identify the best X. *Maybe it's freakin easy to see if something is good. The hard part may be finding it* (which is the case with active charity coding clubs/organizations). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do agree that list style answers indicate bad questions. However, many of the coolest pages on SO are list style answers and it would have helped nothing if they were transformed to good questions. Two things may happen to this questions: If they are worth it they are made CW (a resource for the community) or they're closed. Have a look:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-book-guide-and-list][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/549/the-definitive-guide-to-forms-based-website-authentication][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many examples of list style questions around on SO which are such a great resource but where closed because of a FAQ entry. They should have been made CW instead. Now they die slowly. But a few did in fact survive because someone did value the gathered content. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I was googling for charity coding sites and the first hit was my question with a few links to start I would be more than happy. Mission accomplished!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand if the question stays closed. However, changing it so that the answers stay the same (because they are fine!) but the question applies to some random FAQ entry is dogmatic. I would'nt like the question anymore ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-book-guide-and-list&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/549/the-definitive-guide-to-forms-based-website-authentication" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10158" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3803" RevisionGUID="b4a42be6-3814-46a5-8836-7906110cf1f3" CreationDate="2012-07-17T18:04:41.767" UserId="3627" Comment="edited body" Text="This is me stepping in. While I appreciate and support the idea of keeping the quality of questions high, I don't think this is always necessary. If I do ask for a list of good X, I do not want to know how to identify the best X. *Maybe it's freakin easy to see if something is good. The hard part may be finding it* (which is the case with active charity coding clubs/organizations). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do agree that list style answers indicate bad questions. However, many of the coolest pages on SO are list style answers and it would have helped nothing if they were transformed to good questions. Two things may happen to this questions: If they are worth it they are made CW (a resource for the community) or they're closed. Have a look:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-book-guide-and-list][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/549/the-definitive-guide-to-forms-based-website-authentication][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many examples of list style questions around on SO which are such a great resource but where closed because of a FAQ entry. They should have been made CW instead. Now they die slowly. But a few did in fact survive because someone did value the gathered content. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I was googling for charity coding sites and the first hit was my question with a few links to start I would be more than happy. Mission accomplished!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand if the question stays closed. However, changing it so that the answers stay the same (because they are fine!) but the question applies to some random FAQ entry is dogmatic. I wouldn't like the question anymore ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-book-guide-and-list&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/549/the-definitive-guide-to-forms-based-website-authentication" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10159" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3803" RevisionGUID="0b9326d3-ce02-4789-9d0c-8a28cf73de3e" CreationDate="2012-07-17T18:09:59.780" UserId="3627" Comment="added 6 characters in body" Text="This is me stepping in. While I appreciate and support the idea of keeping the quality of questions high, I don't think this is always necessary. If I do ask for a list of good X, I do not want to know how to identify the best X. *Maybe it's freakin easy to see if something is good. The hard part may be finding it* (which is the case with active charity coding clubs/organizations). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do agree that list style answers indicate bad questions. However, many of the coolest pages on SO are list style answers and it would have helped nothing if they were transformed to good questions. Two things may happen to this questions: If they are worth it they are made CW (a resource for the community) or they're closed. Have a look:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-book-guide-and-list][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/549/the-definitive-guide-to-forms-based-website-authentication][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many examples of list style questions around on SO which are such a great resource but where closed because of a FAQ entry. They should have been made CW instead. Now they die slowly. But a few did in fact survive because someone did value the gathered content. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***If I was googling for charity coding sites and the first hit was my question with a few links to start I would be more than happy. Mission accomplished!***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand if the question stays closed. However, changing it so that the answers stay the same (because they are fine!) but the question applies to some random FAQ entry is dogmatic. I wouldn't like the question anymore ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-book-guide-and-list&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/549/the-definitive-guide-to-forms-based-website-authentication" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10163" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3805" RevisionGUID="dad29217-3823-42f6-b432-1395e22b2a07" CreationDate="2012-07-18T09:49:20.057" UserId="6184" Text="Muhammad Alkarouri&#xD;&#xA;==================&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***Writer, 1 post per month***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will take one question from P.SE or SO and expand on it, giving my own understanding and/or reviewing some literature about it.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10164" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3800" RevisionGUID="3227f53b-2ce1-47de-b11d-96461247379b" CreationDate="2012-07-18T11:50:15.273" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="add'l thoughts" Text="I would agree that the question is a list style question, which are generally discouraged.  But I feel it is an exception-case, list-type question that is on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some notable exception cases on SO where list questions are allowed, such as the [Definitive C++ book guide](http://stackoverflow.com/q/388242/1345223).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The scope of the question is fairly broad since Coding for charity is a subject that could apply to all programmers and the answers are a resource that all could consider.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that it falls into the category of &quot;good subjective&quot; since the OP wasn't asking for opinions on this one versus that one, but was simply looking for a listing of organizations to consider.  That approach effectively removed the potential for rants and counter-productive dialogue.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, when googling related terms, I ran into difficulty in coming up with good results.  That kind of anchored the need for the question in my mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So because of the applicability to all programmers, I think the question is on topic and should be reopened.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Counter and supporting opinions welcome!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Update:_  &#xD;&#xA;I think it's worth pointing out that a list of answers can be _the_ answer to a particular question.  &#xD;&#xA;The challenge is that the SE experience is oriented towards finding just one answer.  While I'm tempted to call that a remnant of darker times &lt;jk&gt;, I recall that SO was the first site and there are many cases where there is more than one answer.  SO was created to draw out the subjective best answer when there was more than one possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm still struggling with where to draw a line on what types of list questions to allow, if they are to be allowed at all.  It's not a hard stretch to see allowing canonical book reference lists with a similar justification.  From there the slope starts getting slippier." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10165" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3799" RevisionGUID="2e8ed884-1bbc-4c61-b153-e9cf85d98135" CreationDate="2012-07-18T11:54:21.120" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="helping focus the discussion" Text="A [recent question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/157022/53019) was posted about coding for charity and finding organizations that help coordinate those activities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, it's closed as off-topic.  An attempt has been made (by me) to make the question more on-topic and trigger a reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is to spark a discussion on whether or not the question can be salvaged and made on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Edit:_  &#xD;&#xA;There is a fair degree of agreement that the question is a list style question.  To help focus additional answers and comments, I'm adding the following questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to define a narrow set of circumstances where list style questions may be appropriate?  If so, what would those conditions need to be?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10166" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="3806" RevisionGUID="e6609198-e5ce-4e0f-bfa8-810b3f30a75d" CreationDate="2012-07-18T12:29:49.383" UserId="-1" Comment="from https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/140227/not-able-to-comment-on-my-own-question-without-reputation" Text="" />
  <row Id="10167" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3806" RevisionGUID="d8d54b74-ad2a-4b66-b687-b0b2cd3fc6ec" CreationDate="2012-07-18T11:32:47.030" UserId="59406" Text="I am not able to comment on my own question. So the flow goes like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Posted a question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Someone posted a comment to my question asking for some more details or some suggestions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) I am not able to reply to them because I don't have 15 reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it will be good to remove this constraint atleast for the my own posts. No? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10168" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3806" RevisionGUID="d8d54b74-ad2a-4b66-b687-b0b2cd3fc6ec" CreationDate="2012-07-18T11:32:47.030" UserId="59406" Text="Not able to comment on my own question without reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10169" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3806" RevisionGUID="d8d54b74-ad2a-4b66-b687-b0b2cd3fc6ec" CreationDate="2012-07-18T11:32:47.030" UserId="59406" Text="|support|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10170" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3806" RevisionGUID="2c56506e-2ddc-449a-b2c4-d0e4a7480264" CreationDate="2012-07-18T12:38:12.197" UserId="59406" Comment="added 149 characters in body" Text="I am not able to comment on my own question. So the flow goes like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Posted a question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Someone posted a comment to my question asking for some more details or some suggestions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) I am not able to reply to them because I don't have 15 reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it will be good to remove this constraint atleast for the my own posts. No? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Link to the question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/157171/java-bufferedreader-vs-separate-producer-consumer-thread/157207#157207" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10171" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3807" RevisionGUID="e8b8dc20-b7a9-4b33-b3fd-a27e8943ce2e" CreationDate="2012-07-18T12:51:38.623" UserId="41381" Text="Any and all new list questions should be terminated with extreme prejudice. This is a list question and its best case scenario is to make a it a slightly better list question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10172" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3808" RevisionGUID="1b3affd9-297f-45f7-a7fd-79ecd3a815b6" CreationDate="2012-07-18T16:10:08.753" UserId="366" Text="[The Workplace][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10173" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3809" RevisionGUID="91bee80d-aa8f-4e6f-9036-f3c874f07c78" CreationDate="2012-07-18T16:14:56.203" UserId="31260" Text="As of now, the issue appears resolved:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. you were able to comment on the question: [Added details in the question...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/157171/java-bufferedreader-vs-separate-producer-consumer-thread/157207#comment299775_157171 &quot;proof link&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;1. you were able to comment on the answer to your question: [As you say, It depends on the IO wait...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/157171/java-bufferedreader-vs-separate-producer-consumer-thread/157207#comment299796_157207 &quot;proof link&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For the sake of completeness, adding also a reference to question timeline:  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/157171/timeline  &#xD;&#xA;Sudden breakthrough in ability to comment could possibly be triggered by question upvote  &#xD;&#xA;but I wouldn't bet on that given that [privileges page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges) doesn't show any statement about this.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10174" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3810" RevisionGUID="77d19706-f304-46bc-9f1a-ae460acc9a08" CreationDate="2012-07-18T17:59:17.637" UserId="34614" Text="Matt Davey&#xD;&#xA;==================&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***Writer, 1 post per month***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I maintain a blog at http://mattdavey.me/ I'd be happy to submit all my future posts to Programmers blog first and then clone them on my personal blog.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10175" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3806" RevisionGUID="dd5b7a82-0ddd-4a5d-bcc2-b9d6df7d52b4" CreationDate="2012-07-18T19:08:41.300" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="Added feature request tag" Text="|support|feature-request|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10176" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3811" RevisionGUID="540ad4bb-0f9c-4487-8691-c6cbdeeb4962" CreationDate="2012-07-19T00:47:02.507" UserId="31260" Text="If the question would be reopened, I'd probably write an answer like below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#TL;DR&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In Java, the reason of `public static void main(String[] args)` is that&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Gosling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling &quot;who's that?&quot;) wanted&#xD;&#xA;1. the code written by someone experienced in C (not in Java)&#xD;&#xA;1. to be executed by someone used to running [PostScript](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript &quot;scripts&quot;) on [NeWS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS &quot;Networked Extensible Window System&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/qcmzP.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;#Long version&#xD;&#xA; expanding above and backed up with boring references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;VM Spec, [2.17.1 Virtual Machine Start-up](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Concepts.doc.html#19042)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...The manner in which the initial class is specified to the Java virtual machine is beyond the scope of this specification, but it is typical, in host environments that use command lines, for the fully qualified name of the class to be specified as a command-line argument and for subsequent command-line arguments to be used as strings to be provided as the argument to the method main. For example, using Sun's Java 2 SDK for Solaris, the command line&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; will start a Java virtual machine by invoking the method main of class `Terminator` (a class in an unnamed package) and passing it an array containing the four strings &quot;Hasta&quot;, &quot;la&quot;, &quot;vista&quot;, and &quot;Baby!&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...see also: _Appendix: I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  execution targeted for use like typical scripts in command line interface.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;###important sidestep&#xD;&#xA;...that helps avoid a couple of false traces in our investigation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;VM Spec, [1.2 The Java Virtual Machine](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Introduction.doc.html#3057)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Java virtual machine knows nothing of the Java programming language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;I noticed above when studying prior chapter - _1.1 History_ which I thought could be helpful (but turned out useless).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  execution is governed by VM spec alone, which  &#xD;&#xA;  explicitly declares that it has nothing to do with Java language  &#xD;&#xA;  =&gt; OK to ignore JLS and anything Java language related at all&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Gosling: a compromise between C and scripting language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on above, I began searching the web for _JVM history_. This didn't help, too much garbage were there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, I recalled legends about Gosling and narrowed search to _Gosling JVM history_. Eureka!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How The JVM Spec Came To Be](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/gosling-jvm-lang-summit-keynote)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In this keynote from the JVM Languages Summit 2008, James Gosling discusses... Java's creation,... a compromise between C and scripting language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  explicit declaration that at the moment of creation,  &#xD;&#xA;  C and scripting have been considered most important influences.  &#xD;&#xA;  Already seen nod to scripting in VM Spec 2.17.1,  &#xD;&#xA;  command line arguments sufficiently explain `String[] args`  &#xD;&#xA;  but `static` and `main` aren't there yet, need to dig further...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note while typing this - connecting C, scripting and VM Spec 1.2 with its nothing-of-Java - I feel like something familiar, something... _object oriented_ is slowly passing away. [Take my hand and keep movin' Don't slow down we're nearly there now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93pE3npDRRs &quot;this is dedicated to Jon Lord, a Hard Lovin' Man who recently sadly passed away&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keynote slides are available online: [20_Gosling_keynote.pdf](http://wiki.jvmlangsummit.com/pdf/20_Gosling_keynote.pdf), quite convenient for copying key points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- language: lang-none --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 3&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         The Prehistory of Java&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * What shaped my thinking&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 9&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         NeWS&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * Networked Extensible Window System&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * A window system based on scripting....&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           PostScript (!!)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 16&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         A Big (but quiet) Goal:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           How close could I get to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           &quot;scripting&quot; feel...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 19&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         The original concept&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * Was all about building&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           networks of things,&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           orchestrated by a scripting&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           language&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * (Unix shells, AppleScript, ...)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 20&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * C syntax to make developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           comfortable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A-ha! Let's look closer at [C syntax](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_%28language%29).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The &quot;hello, world&quot; example...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     main()&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         printf(&quot;hello, world\n&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...a function named main is being defined. The [main](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_function_(programming)) function serves a special purpose in C programs; the run-time environment calls the main function to begin program execution.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...The main function actually has two arguments, `int argc` and `char *argv[]`, respectively, which can be used to handle command line arguments...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are we getting closer? you bet. It is also worth following &quot;main&quot; link from above quote:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the main function is where a program starts execution. It is responsible for the high-level organization of the program's functionality, and typically has access to the command arguments given to the program when it was executed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  To be comfortable for C developer, program entry point has to be `main`.  &#xD;&#xA;  Also, since Java requires any method to be in class, `Class.main` is  &#xD;&#xA;  as close as it gets (static invocation, just class name and dot,  &#xD;&#xA;  no constructors please - C knows nothing like that)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Readers thinking that familiar program entry point doesn't matter are kindly invited to search and check Stack Overflow questions where guys coming from Java SE are trying to write _Hello World_ for Java ME MIDP. Note [MIDP entry point](http://docs.oracle.com/javame/config/cldc/ref-impl/midp2.0/jsr118/javax/microedition/midlet/MIDlet.html &quot;try to guess how would one start the app&quot;) has no `main` nor `static`.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;Based on above I would say that `static`, `main` and `String[] args` were at the moment of Java creation most reasonable choices to define program entry point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Appendix: I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle&#xD;&#xA;Have to admit, reading VM Spec [2.17.1](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Concepts.doc.html#19042) was enormous fun.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...the command line&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; will start a Java virtual machine by invoking the method main of class `Terminator` (a class in an unnamed package) and passing it an array containing the four strings &quot;Hasta&quot;, &quot;la&quot;, &quot;vista&quot;, and &quot;Baby!&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We now outline the steps the virtual machine may take to execute `Terminator`, as an example of the loading, linking, and initialization processes that are described further in later sections.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The initial attempt... discovers that the class `Terminator` is not loaded...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; After `Terminator` is loaded, it must be initialized before main can be invoked, and a type (class or interface) must always be linked before it is initialized. Linking (§2.17.3) involves verification, preparation, and (optionally) resolution...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Verification (§2.17.3) checks that the loaded representation of `Terminator` is well formed...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Resolution (§2.17.3) is the process of checking symbolic references from class `Terminator`...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Symbolic references from `Terminator` oh yeah.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qcmzP.png &quot;'Java core'&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10177" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3811" RevisionGUID="88188cd3-9e33-4e8c-b03b-4691a64c9ebc" CreationDate="2012-07-19T09:20:13.750" UserId="31260" Comment="wordsmithing" Text="If the question would be reopened, I'd probably write an answer like below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#TL;DR&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In Java, the reason of `public static void main(String[] args)` is that&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Gosling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling &quot;who's that?&quot;) wanted&#xD;&#xA;1. the code written by someone experienced in C (not in Java)&#xD;&#xA;1. to be executed by someone used to running [PostScript](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript &quot;scripts&quot;) on [NeWS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS &quot;Networked Extensible Window System&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/qcmzP.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;#Long version&#xD;&#xA; expanding above and backed up with boring references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;VM Spec, [2.17.1 Virtual Machine Start-up](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Concepts.doc.html#19042)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...The manner in which the initial class is specified to the Java virtual machine is beyond the scope of this specification, but it is typical, in host environments that use command lines, for the fully qualified name of the class to be specified as a command-line argument and for subsequent command-line arguments to be used as strings to be provided as the argument to the method main. For example, using Sun's Java 2 SDK for Solaris, the command line&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; will start a Java virtual machine by invoking the method main of class `Terminator` (a class in an unnamed package) and passing it an array containing the four strings &quot;Hasta&quot;, &quot;la&quot;, &quot;vista&quot;, and &quot;Baby!&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...see also: _Appendix: I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  execution targeted for use like typical scripts in command line interface.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;###important sidestep&#xD;&#xA;...that helps avoid a couple of false traces in our investigation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;VM Spec, [1.2 The Java Virtual Machine](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Introduction.doc.html#3057)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Java virtual machine knows nothing of the Java programming language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;I noticed above when studying prior chapter - _1.1 History_ which I thought could be helpful (but turned out useless).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  execution is governed by VM spec alone, which  &#xD;&#xA;  explicitly declares that it has nothing to do with Java language  &#xD;&#xA;  =&gt; OK to ignore JLS and anything Java language related at all&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Gosling: a compromise between C and scripting language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on above, I began searching the web for _JVM history_. Didn't help, too much garbage in results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, I recalled legends about Gosling and narrowed down my search to _Gosling JVM history_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Eureka! **[How The JVM Spec Came To Be][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In this keynote from the JVM Languages Summit 2008, James Gosling discusses... Java's creation,... a compromise between C and scripting language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  explicit declaration that at the moment of creation,  &#xD;&#xA;  C and scripting have been considered most important influences.  &#xD;&#xA;  Already seen nod to scripting in VM Spec 2.17.1,  &#xD;&#xA;  command line arguments sufficiently explain `String[] args`  &#xD;&#xA;  but `static` and `main` aren't there yet, need to dig further...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note while typing this - connecting C, scripting and VM Spec 1.2 with its nothing-of-Java - I feel like something familiar, something... _object oriented_ is slowly passing away. [Take my hand and keep movin' Don't slow down we're nearly there now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93pE3npDRRs &quot;this is dedicated to Jon Lord, a Hard Lovin' Man who recently sadly passed away&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keynote slides are available online: [20_Gosling_keynote.pdf](http://wiki.jvmlangsummit.com/pdf/20_Gosling_keynote.pdf), quite convenient for copying key points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- language: lang-none --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 3&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         The Prehistory of Java&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * What shaped my thinking&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 9&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         NeWS&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * Networked Extensible Window System&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * A window system based on scripting....&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           PostScript (!!)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 16&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         A Big (but quiet) Goal:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           How close could I get to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           &quot;scripting&quot; feel...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 19&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         The original concept&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * Was all about building&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           networks of things,&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           orchestrated by a scripting&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           language&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * (Unix shells, AppleScript, ...)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 20&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * C syntax to make developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           comfortable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A-ha! Let's look closer at [C syntax](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_%28language%29).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The &quot;hello, world&quot; example...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     main()&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         printf(&quot;hello, world\n&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...a function named main is being defined. The [main](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_function_(programming)) function serves a special purpose in C programs; the run-time environment calls the main function to begin program execution.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...The main function actually has two arguments, `int argc` and `char *argv[]`, respectively, which can be used to handle command line arguments...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are we getting closer? you bet. It is also worth following &quot;main&quot; link from above quote:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the main function is where a program starts execution. It is responsible for the high-level organization of the program's functionality, and typically has access to the command arguments given to the program when it was executed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  To be comfortable for C developer, program entry point has to be `main`.  &#xD;&#xA;  Also, since Java requires any method to be in class, `Class.main` is  &#xD;&#xA;  as close as it gets (static invocation, just class name and dot,  &#xD;&#xA;  no constructors please - C knows nothing like that)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Readers thinking that familiar program entry point doesn't matter are kindly invited to search and check Stack Overflow questions where guys coming from Java SE are trying to write _Hello World_ for Java ME MIDP. Note [MIDP entry point](http://docs.oracle.com/javame/config/cldc/ref-impl/midp2.0/jsr118/javax/microedition/midlet/MIDlet.html &quot;try to guess how would one start the app&quot;) has no `main` nor `static`.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;Based on above I would say that `static`, `main` and `String[] args` were at the moment of Java creation most reasonable choices to define program entry point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Appendix: I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle&#xD;&#xA;Have to admit, reading VM Spec [2.17.1](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Concepts.doc.html#19042) was enormous fun.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...the command line&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; will start a Java virtual machine by invoking the method main of class `Terminator` (a class in an unnamed package) and passing it an array containing the four strings &quot;Hasta&quot;, &quot;la&quot;, &quot;vista&quot;, and &quot;Baby!&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We now outline the steps the virtual machine may take to execute `Terminator`, as an example of the loading, linking, and initialization processes that are described further in later sections.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The initial attempt... discovers that the class `Terminator` is not loaded...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; After `Terminator` is loaded, it must be initialized before main can be invoked, and a type (class or interface) must always be linked before it is initialized. Linking (§2.17.3) involves verification, preparation, and (optionally) resolution...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Verification (§2.17.3) checks that the loaded representation of `Terminator` is well formed...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Resolution (§2.17.3) is the process of checking symbolic references from class `Terminator`...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Symbolic references from `Terminator` oh yeah.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qcmzP.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/gosling-jvm-lang-summit-keynote &quot;key note&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10178" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3811" RevisionGUID="03c920ba-a81f-4eeb-ad22-9305be9aa915" CreationDate="2012-07-19T09:31:16.543" UserId="31260" Comment="also _transitively_ applies to C#..." Text="If the question would be reopened, I'd probably write an answer like below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#TL;DR&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In Java, the reason of `public static void main(String[] args)` is that&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Gosling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling &quot;who's that?&quot;) wanted&#xD;&#xA;1. the code written by someone experienced in C (not in Java)&#xD;&#xA;1. to be executed by someone used to running [PostScript](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript &quot;scripts&quot;) on [NeWS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS &quot;Networked Extensible Window System&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/qcmzP.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;#Long version&#xD;&#xA; expanding above and backed up with boring references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;VM Spec, [2.17.1 Virtual Machine Start-up](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Concepts.doc.html#19042)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...The manner in which the initial class is specified to the Java virtual machine is beyond the scope of this specification, but it is typical, in host environments that use command lines, for the fully qualified name of the class to be specified as a command-line argument and for subsequent command-line arguments to be used as strings to be provided as the argument to the method main. For example, using Sun's Java 2 SDK for Solaris, the command line&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; will start a Java virtual machine by invoking the method main of class `Terminator` (a class in an unnamed package) and passing it an array containing the four strings &quot;Hasta&quot;, &quot;la&quot;, &quot;vista&quot;, and &quot;Baby!&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...see also: _Appendix: I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  execution targeted for use like typical scripts in command line interface.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;###important sidestep&#xD;&#xA;...that helps avoid a couple of false traces in our investigation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;VM Spec, [1.2 The Java Virtual Machine](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Introduction.doc.html#3057)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Java virtual machine knows nothing of the Java programming language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;I noticed above when studying prior chapter - _1.1 History_ which I thought could be helpful (but turned out useless).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  execution is governed by VM spec alone, which  &#xD;&#xA;  explicitly declares that it has nothing to do with Java language  &#xD;&#xA;  =&gt; OK to ignore JLS and anything Java language related at all&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Gosling: a compromise between C and scripting language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on above, I began searching the web for _JVM history_. Didn't help, too much garbage in results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, I recalled legends about Gosling and narrowed down my search to _Gosling JVM history_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Eureka! **[How The JVM Spec Came To Be][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In this keynote from the JVM Languages Summit 2008, James Gosling discusses... Java's creation,... a compromise between C and scripting language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  explicit declaration that at the moment of creation,  &#xD;&#xA;  C and scripting have been considered most important influences.  &#xD;&#xA;  Already seen nod to scripting in VM Spec 2.17.1,  &#xD;&#xA;  command line arguments sufficiently explain `String[] args`  &#xD;&#xA;  but `static` and `main` aren't there yet, need to dig further...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note while typing this - connecting C, scripting and VM Spec 1.2 with its nothing-of-Java - I feel like something familiar, something... _object oriented_ is slowly passing away. [Take my hand and keep movin' Don't slow down we're nearly there now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93pE3npDRRs &quot;this is dedicated to Jon Lord, a Hard Lovin' Man who recently sadly passed away&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keynote slides are available online: [20_Gosling_keynote.pdf](http://wiki.jvmlangsummit.com/pdf/20_Gosling_keynote.pdf), quite convenient for copying key points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- language: lang-none --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 3&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         The Prehistory of Java&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * What shaped my thinking&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 9&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         NeWS&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * Networked Extensible Window System&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * A window system based on scripting....&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           PostScript (!!)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 16&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         A Big (but quiet) Goal:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           How close could I get to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           &quot;scripting&quot; feel...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 19&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         The original concept&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * Was all about building&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           networks of things,&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           orchestrated by a scripting&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           language&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * (Unix shells, AppleScript, ...)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 20&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * C syntax to make developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           comfortable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A-ha! Let's look closer at [C syntax](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_%28language%29).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The &quot;hello, world&quot; example...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     main()&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         printf(&quot;hello, world\n&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...a function named main is being defined. The [main](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_function_(programming)) function serves a special purpose in C programs; the run-time environment calls the main function to begin program execution.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...The main function actually has two arguments, `int argc` and `char *argv[]`, respectively, which can be used to handle command line arguments...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are we getting closer? you bet. It is also worth following &quot;main&quot; link from above quote:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the main function is where a program starts execution. It is responsible for the high-level organization of the program's functionality, and typically has access to the command arguments given to the program when it was executed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  To be comfortable for C developer, program entry point has to be `main`.  &#xD;&#xA;  Also, since Java requires any method to be in class, `Class.main` is  &#xD;&#xA;  as close as it gets (static invocation, just class name and dot,  &#xD;&#xA;  no constructors please - C knows nothing like that)).  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;  This also _transitively_ applies to C#, taking into account  &#xD;&#xA;  the idea of easy migration to it from Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Readers thinking that familiar program entry point doesn't matter are kindly invited to search and check Stack Overflow questions where guys coming from Java SE are trying to write _Hello World_ for Java ME MIDP. Note [MIDP entry point](http://docs.oracle.com/javame/config/cldc/ref-impl/midp2.0/jsr118/javax/microedition/midlet/MIDlet.html &quot;try to guess how would one start the app&quot;) has no `main` nor `static`.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;Based on above I would say that `static`, `main` and `String[] args` were at the moment of Java creation most reasonable choices to define program entry point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Appendix: I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle&#xD;&#xA;Have to admit, reading VM Spec [2.17.1](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Concepts.doc.html#19042) was enormous fun.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...the command line&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; will start a Java virtual machine by invoking the method main of class `Terminator` (a class in an unnamed package) and passing it an array containing the four strings &quot;Hasta&quot;, &quot;la&quot;, &quot;vista&quot;, and &quot;Baby!&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We now outline the steps the virtual machine may take to execute `Terminator`, as an example of the loading, linking, and initialization processes that are described further in later sections.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The initial attempt... discovers that the class `Terminator` is not loaded...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; After `Terminator` is loaded, it must be initialized before main can be invoked, and a type (class or interface) must always be linked before it is initialized. Linking (§2.17.3) involves verification, preparation, and (optionally) resolution...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Verification (§2.17.3) checks that the loaded representation of `Terminator` is well formed...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Resolution (§2.17.3) is the process of checking symbolic references from class `Terminator`...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Symbolic references from `Terminator` oh yeah.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qcmzP.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/gosling-jvm-lang-summit-keynote &quot;key note&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10179" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3812" RevisionGUID="43882eb3-b7cc-48dd-9af5-1c3683a93023" CreationDate="2012-07-19T10:44:36.450" UserId="13576" Text="I just noticed that two questions I asked at the beginning of last year were then removed 6-7 months later.  Is there any chance i can get a heads-up as to why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This one][1] may have been too subjective, but I certainly can't see why [this one][2] was nuked...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56847/outsourcing-a-private-project-can-it-be-done&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42685/sql-plan-guide-comparison-syncing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10180" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3812" RevisionGUID="43882eb3-b7cc-48dd-9af5-1c3683a93023" CreationDate="2012-07-19T10:44:36.450" UserId="13576" Text="Questions removed months later" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10181" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3812" RevisionGUID="43882eb3-b7cc-48dd-9af5-1c3683a93023" CreationDate="2012-07-19T10:44:36.450" UserId="13576" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10182" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3811" RevisionGUID="bf3cb209-c13d-4323-bcf9-4f50119628f4" CreationDate="2012-07-19T10:48:03.157" UserId="31260" Comment="TL;DR += C#..." Text="If the question would be reopened, I'd probably write an answer like below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#TL;DR&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In Java, the reason of `public static void main(String[] args)` is that&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Gosling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling &quot;who's that?&quot;) wanted&#xD;&#xA;1. the code written by someone experienced in C (not in Java)&#xD;&#xA;1. to be executed by someone used to running [PostScript](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript &quot;scripts&quot;) on [NeWS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS &quot;Networked Extensible Window System&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/qcmzP.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;For C#, the reasoning is _transitively similar_ so to speak. Language designers kept the [program entry point][3] syntax familiar for programmers coming from Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;#Long version&#xD;&#xA; expanding above and backed up with boring references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;VM Spec, [2.17.1 Virtual Machine Start-up](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Concepts.doc.html#19042)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...The manner in which the initial class is specified to the Java virtual machine is beyond the scope of this specification, but it is typical, in host environments that use command lines, for the fully qualified name of the class to be specified as a command-line argument and for subsequent command-line arguments to be used as strings to be provided as the argument to the method main. For example, using Sun's Java 2 SDK for Solaris, the command line&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; will start a Java virtual machine by invoking the method main of class `Terminator` (a class in an unnamed package) and passing it an array containing the four strings &quot;Hasta&quot;, &quot;la&quot;, &quot;vista&quot;, and &quot;Baby!&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...see also: _Appendix: I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  execution targeted for use like typical scripts in command line interface.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;###important sidestep&#xD;&#xA;...that helps avoid a couple of false traces in our investigation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;VM Spec, [1.2 The Java Virtual Machine](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Introduction.doc.html#3057)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Java virtual machine knows nothing of the Java programming language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;I noticed above when studying prior chapter - _1.1 History_ which I thought could be helpful (but turned out useless).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  execution is governed by VM spec alone, which  &#xD;&#xA;  explicitly declares that it has nothing to do with Java language  &#xD;&#xA;  =&gt; OK to ignore JLS and anything Java language related at all&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Gosling: a compromise between C and scripting language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on above, I began searching the web for _JVM history_. Didn't help, too much garbage in results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, I recalled legends about Gosling and narrowed down my search to _Gosling JVM history_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Eureka! **[How The JVM Spec Came To Be][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In this keynote from the JVM Languages Summit 2008, James Gosling discusses... Java's creation,... a compromise between C and scripting language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  explicit declaration that at the moment of creation,  &#xD;&#xA;  C and scripting have been considered most important influences.  &#xD;&#xA;  Already seen nod to scripting in VM Spec 2.17.1,  &#xD;&#xA;  command line arguments sufficiently explain `String[] args`  &#xD;&#xA;  but `static` and `main` aren't there yet, need to dig further...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note while typing this - connecting C, scripting and VM Spec 1.2 with its nothing-of-Java - I feel like something familiar, something... _object oriented_ is slowly passing away. [Take my hand and keep movin' Don't slow down we're nearly there now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93pE3npDRRs &quot;this is dedicated to Jon Lord, a Hard Lovin' Man who recently sadly passed away&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keynote slides are available online: [20_Gosling_keynote.pdf](http://wiki.jvmlangsummit.com/pdf/20_Gosling_keynote.pdf), quite convenient for copying key points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- language: lang-none --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 3&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         The Prehistory of Java&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * What shaped my thinking&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 9&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         NeWS&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * Networked Extensible Window System&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * A window system based on scripting....&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           PostScript (!!)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 16&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         A Big (but quiet) Goal:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           How close could I get to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           &quot;scripting&quot; feel...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 19&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         The original concept&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * Was all about building&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           networks of things,&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           orchestrated by a scripting&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           language&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * (Unix shells, AppleScript, ...)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 20&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * C syntax to make developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           comfortable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A-ha! Let's look closer at [C syntax](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_%28language%29).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The &quot;hello, world&quot; example...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     main()&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         printf(&quot;hello, world\n&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...a function named main is being defined. The [main][3] function serves a special purpose in C programs; the run-time environment calls the main function to begin program execution.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...The main function actually has two arguments, `int argc` and `char *argv[]`, respectively, which can be used to handle command line arguments...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are we getting closer? you bet. It is also worth following &quot;main&quot; link from above quote:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the main function is where a program starts execution. It is responsible for the high-level organization of the program's functionality, and typically has access to the command arguments given to the program when it was executed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  To be comfortable for C developer, program entry point has to be `main`.  &#xD;&#xA;  Also, since Java requires any method to be in class, `Class.main` is  &#xD;&#xA;  as close as it gets (static invocation, just class name and dot,  &#xD;&#xA;  no constructors please - C knows nothing like that)).  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;  This also _transitively_ applies to C#, taking into account  &#xD;&#xA;  the idea of easy migration to it from Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Readers thinking that familiar program entry point doesn't matter are kindly invited to search and check Stack Overflow questions where guys coming from Java SE are trying to write _Hello World_ for Java ME MIDP. Note [MIDP entry point](http://docs.oracle.com/javame/config/cldc/ref-impl/midp2.0/jsr118/javax/microedition/midlet/MIDlet.html &quot;try to guess how would one start the app&quot;) has no `main` nor `static`.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;Based on above I would say that `static`, `main` and `String[] args` were at the moment of Java creation most reasonable choices to define program entry point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Appendix: I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle&#xD;&#xA;Have to admit, reading VM Spec [2.17.1](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Concepts.doc.html#19042) was enormous fun.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...the command line&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; will start a Java virtual machine by invoking the method main of class `Terminator` (a class in an unnamed package) and passing it an array containing the four strings &quot;Hasta&quot;, &quot;la&quot;, &quot;vista&quot;, and &quot;Baby!&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We now outline the steps the virtual machine may take to execute `Terminator`, as an example of the loading, linking, and initialization processes that are described further in later sections.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The initial attempt... discovers that the class `Terminator` is not loaded...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; After `Terminator` is loaded, it must be initialized before main can be invoked, and a type (class or interface) must always be linked before it is initialized. Linking (§2.17.3) involves verification, preparation, and (optionally) resolution...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Verification (§2.17.3) checks that the loaded representation of `Terminator` is well formed...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Resolution (§2.17.3) is the process of checking symbolic references from class `Terminator`...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Symbolic references from `Terminator` oh yeah.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qcmzP.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/gosling-jvm-lang-summit-keynote &quot;key note&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_function_(programming) &quot;what's in the 'main'&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10183" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3811" RevisionGUID="d9215a48-433e-44f7-a78f-77861bcc427f" CreationDate="2012-07-19T11:09:07.413" UserId="31260" Comment="coup de grace // conclusion += C#" Text="If the question would be reopened, I'd probably write an answer like below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#TL;DR&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In Java, the reason of `public static void main(String[] args)` is that&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Gosling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling &quot;who's that?&quot;) wanted&#xD;&#xA;1. the code written by someone experienced in C (not in Java)&#xD;&#xA;1. to be executed by someone used to running [PostScript](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript &quot;scripts&quot;) on [NeWS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS &quot;Networked Extensible Window System&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/qcmzP.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;For C#, the reasoning is _transitively similar_ so to speak. Language designers kept the [program entry point][3] syntax familiar for programmers coming from Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;#Long version&#xD;&#xA; expanding above and backed up with boring references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;VM Spec, [2.17.1 Virtual Machine Start-up](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Concepts.doc.html#19042)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...The manner in which the initial class is specified to the Java virtual machine is beyond the scope of this specification, but it is typical, in host environments that use command lines, for the fully qualified name of the class to be specified as a command-line argument and for subsequent command-line arguments to be used as strings to be provided as the argument to the method main. For example, using Sun's Java 2 SDK for Solaris, the command line&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; will start a Java virtual machine by invoking the method main of class `Terminator` (a class in an unnamed package) and passing it an array containing the four strings &quot;Hasta&quot;, &quot;la&quot;, &quot;vista&quot;, and &quot;Baby!&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...see also: _Appendix: I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  execution targeted for use like typical scripts in command line interface.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;###important sidestep&#xD;&#xA;...that helps avoid a couple of false traces in our investigation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;VM Spec, [1.2 The Java Virtual Machine](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Introduction.doc.html#3057)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Java virtual machine knows nothing of the Java programming language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;I noticed above when studying prior chapter - _1.1 History_ which I thought could be helpful (but turned out useless).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  execution is governed by VM spec alone, which  &#xD;&#xA;  explicitly declares that it has nothing to do with Java language  &#xD;&#xA;  =&gt; OK to ignore JLS and anything Java language related at all&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Gosling: a compromise between C and scripting language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on above, I began searching the web for _JVM history_. Didn't help, too much garbage in results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, I recalled legends about Gosling and narrowed down my search to _Gosling JVM history_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Eureka! **[How The JVM Spec Came To Be][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In this keynote from the JVM Languages Summit 2008, James Gosling discusses... Java's creation,... a compromise between C and scripting language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  explicit declaration that at the moment of creation,  &#xD;&#xA;  C and scripting have been considered most important influences.  &#xD;&#xA;  Already seen nod to scripting in VM Spec 2.17.1,  &#xD;&#xA;  command line arguments sufficiently explain `String[] args`  &#xD;&#xA;  but `static` and `main` aren't there yet, need to dig further...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note while typing this - connecting C, scripting and VM Spec 1.2 with its nothing-of-Java - I feel like something familiar, something... _object oriented_ is slowly passing away. [Take my hand and keep movin' Don't slow down we're nearly there now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93pE3npDRRs &quot;this is dedicated to Jon Lord, a Hard Lovin' Man who recently sadly passed away&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keynote slides are available online: [20_Gosling_keynote.pdf](http://wiki.jvmlangsummit.com/pdf/20_Gosling_keynote.pdf), quite convenient for copying key points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- language: lang-none --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 3&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         The Prehistory of Java&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * What shaped my thinking&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 9&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         NeWS&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * Networked Extensible Window System&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * A window system based on scripting....&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           PostScript (!!)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 16&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         A Big (but quiet) Goal:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           How close could I get to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           &quot;scripting&quot; feel...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 19&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         The original concept&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * Was all about building&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           networks of things,&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           orchestrated by a scripting&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           language&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * (Unix shells, AppleScript, ...)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 20&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * C syntax to make developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           comfortable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A-ha! Let's look closer at [C syntax](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_%28language%29).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The &quot;hello, world&quot; example...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     main()&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         printf(&quot;hello, world\n&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...a function named main is being defined. The [main][3] function serves a special purpose in C programs; the run-time environment calls the main function to begin program execution.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...The main function actually has two arguments, `int argc` and `char *argv[]`, respectively, which can be used to handle command line arguments...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are we getting closer? you bet. It is also worth following &quot;main&quot; link from above quote:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the main function is where a program starts execution. It is responsible for the high-level organization of the program's functionality, and typically has access to the command arguments given to the program when it was executed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  To be comfortable for C developer, program entry point has to be `main`.  &#xD;&#xA;  Also, since Java requires any method to be in class, `Class.main` is  &#xD;&#xA;  as close as it gets (static invocation, just class name and dot,  &#xD;&#xA;  no constructors please - C knows nothing like that)).  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;  This also _transitively_ applies to C#, taking into account  &#xD;&#xA;  the idea of easy migration to it from Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Readers thinking that familiar program entry point doesn't matter are kindly invited to search and check Stack Overflow questions where guys coming from Java SE are trying to write _Hello World_ for Java ME MIDP. Note [MIDP entry point](http://docs.oracle.com/javame/config/cldc/ref-impl/midp2.0/jsr118/javax/microedition/midlet/MIDlet.html &quot;try to guess how would one start the app&quot;) has no `main` nor `static`.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;Based on above I would say that `static`, `main` and `String[] args` were at the moments of Java and C# creation most reasonable choices to define [program entry point][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Appendix: I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle&#xD;&#xA;Have to admit, reading VM Spec [2.17.1](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Concepts.doc.html#19042) was enormous fun.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...the command line&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; will start a Java virtual machine by invoking the method main of class `Terminator` (a class in an unnamed package) and passing it an array containing the four strings &quot;Hasta&quot;, &quot;la&quot;, &quot;vista&quot;, and &quot;Baby!&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We now outline the steps the virtual machine may take to execute `Terminator`, as an example of the loading, linking, and initialization processes that are described further in later sections.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The initial attempt... discovers that the class `Terminator` is not loaded...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; After `Terminator` is loaded, it must be initialized before main can be invoked, and a type (class or interface) must always be linked before it is initialized. Linking (§2.17.3) involves verification, preparation, and (optionally) resolution...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Verification (§2.17.3) checks that the loaded representation of `Terminator` is well formed...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Resolution (§2.17.3) is the process of checking symbolic references from class `Terminator`...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Symbolic references from `Terminator` oh yeah.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qcmzP.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/gosling-jvm-lang-summit-keynote &quot;key note&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_function_(programming) &quot;what's in the 'main'?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10184" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3813" RevisionGUID="362f3194-5810-4d40-ab49-a5824ac1756c" CreationDate="2012-07-19T11:10:58.620" UserId="25476" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56847/outsourcing-a-private-project-can-it-be-done&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one probably could have been improved and focused with a good edit to reword the question from:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Can it be done?  I don't know, can it be done to study the effects of Bengal Tiger mating practices in zero-G environments?  Certainly it could be with enough time, effort and money so *Can it be done?* is the wrong question to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - What is the best way to outsource development and manage potential quality issues?  This is a much better question and is probably what you really wanted to know anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regardless, it wasn't closed for quality, it was closed because this question has been asked before and there were a number of excellent answers that you could have benefited from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42685/sql-plan-guide-comparison-syncing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't speak for Mark, but I feel that he probably closed this because it is a very specific question about a very specific situation with a very specific software.  He felt it was too specific to be of any real benefit to future visitors.  For more information see the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as deletion, this may have been in an effort to clean up the culmination of closed questions that have no hope of improvement." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10186" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3812" RevisionGUID="31ed2989-6ef1-45c3-848d-e0468f75d06b" CreationDate="2012-07-19T11:44:51.667" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo correction" Text="I just noticed that two questions I asked at the beginning of last year were then removed 6-7 months later.  Is there any chance I can get a heads-up as to why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This one][1] may have been too subjective, but I certainly can't see why [this one][2] was nuked...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56847/outsourcing-a-private-project-can-it-be-done&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42685/sql-plan-guide-comparison-syncing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10187" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3812" RevisionGUID="31ed2989-6ef1-45c3-848d-e0468f75d06b" CreationDate="2012-07-19T11:44:51.667" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo correction" Text="|discussion|support|specific-question|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10188" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3811" RevisionGUID="bd7cad04-51bb-4837-96f1-a0be2d7a7bad" CreationDate="2012-07-19T13:39:06.233" UserId="31260" Comment="C# += backup reference // http://windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/oreilly/windows/news/hejlsberg_0800.html" Text="If the question would be reopened, I'd probably write an answer like below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#TL;DR&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In Java, the reason of `public static void main(String[] args)` is that&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Gosling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling &quot;who's that?&quot;) wanted&#xD;&#xA;1. the code written by someone experienced in C (not in Java)&#xD;&#xA;1. to be executed by someone used to running [PostScript](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript &quot;scripts&quot;) on [NeWS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS &quot;Networked Extensible Window System&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/qcmzP.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;For C#, the reasoning is _transitively similar_ so to speak. Language designers kept the [program entry point][3] syntax familiar for programmers coming from Java. As C# architect [Anders Hejlsberg puts it](http://windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/oreilly/windows/news/hejlsberg_0800.html &quot;An interview by O'Reilly editor John Osborn&quot;),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...our approach with C# has simply been to offer an alternative... to Java programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;#Long version&#xD;&#xA; expanding above and backed up with boring references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;VM Spec, [2.17.1 Virtual Machine Start-up](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Concepts.doc.html#19042)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...The manner in which the initial class is specified to the Java virtual machine is beyond the scope of this specification, but it is typical, in host environments that use command lines, for the fully qualified name of the class to be specified as a command-line argument and for subsequent command-line arguments to be used as strings to be provided as the argument to the method main. For example, using Sun's Java 2 SDK for Solaris, the command line&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; will start a Java virtual machine by invoking the method main of class `Terminator` (a class in an unnamed package) and passing it an array containing the four strings &quot;Hasta&quot;, &quot;la&quot;, &quot;vista&quot;, and &quot;Baby!&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...see also: _Appendix: I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  execution targeted for use like typical scripts in command line interface.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;###important sidestep&#xD;&#xA;...that helps avoid a couple of false traces in our investigation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;VM Spec, [1.2 The Java Virtual Machine](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Introduction.doc.html#3057)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Java virtual machine knows nothing of the Java programming language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;I noticed above when studying prior chapter - _1.1 History_ which I thought could be helpful (but turned out useless).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  execution is governed by VM spec alone, which  &#xD;&#xA;  explicitly declares that it has nothing to do with Java language  &#xD;&#xA;  =&gt; OK to ignore JLS and anything Java language related at all&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Gosling: a compromise between C and scripting language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on above, I began searching the web for _JVM history_. Didn't help, too much garbage in results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, I recalled legends about Gosling and narrowed down my search to _Gosling JVM history_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Eureka! **[How The JVM Spec Came To Be][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In this keynote from the JVM Languages Summit 2008, James Gosling discusses... Java's creation,... a compromise between C and scripting language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  explicit declaration that at the moment of creation,  &#xD;&#xA;  C and scripting have been considered most important influences.  &#xD;&#xA;  Already seen nod to scripting in VM Spec 2.17.1,  &#xD;&#xA;  command line arguments sufficiently explain `String[] args`  &#xD;&#xA;  but `static` and `main` aren't there yet, need to dig further...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note while typing this - connecting C, scripting and VM Spec 1.2 with its nothing-of-Java - I feel like something familiar, something... _object oriented_ is slowly passing away. [Take my hand and keep movin' Don't slow down we're nearly there now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93pE3npDRRs &quot;this is dedicated to Jon Lord, a Hard Lovin' Man who recently sadly passed away&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keynote slides are available online: [20_Gosling_keynote.pdf](http://wiki.jvmlangsummit.com/pdf/20_Gosling_keynote.pdf), quite convenient for copying key points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- language: lang-none --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 3&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         The Prehistory of Java&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * What shaped my thinking&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 9&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         NeWS&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * Networked Extensible Window System&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * A window system based on scripting....&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           PostScript (!!)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 16&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         A Big (but quiet) Goal:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           How close could I get to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           &quot;scripting&quot; feel...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 19&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         The original concept&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * Was all about building&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           networks of things,&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           orchestrated by a scripting&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           language&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * (Unix shells, AppleScript, ...)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 20&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * C syntax to make developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           comfortable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A-ha! Let's look closer at [C syntax](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_%28language%29).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The &quot;hello, world&quot; example...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     main()&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         printf(&quot;hello, world\n&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...a function named main is being defined. The [main][3] function serves a special purpose in C programs; the run-time environment calls the main function to begin program execution.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...The main function actually has two arguments, `int argc` and `char *argv[]`, respectively, which can be used to handle command line arguments...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are we getting closer? you bet. It is also worth following &quot;main&quot; link from above quote:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the main function is where a program starts execution. It is responsible for the high-level organization of the program's functionality, and typically has access to the command arguments given to the program when it was executed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  To be comfortable for C developer, program entry point has to be `main`.  &#xD;&#xA;  Also, since Java requires any method to be in class, `Class.main` is  &#xD;&#xA;  as close as it gets (static invocation, just class name and dot,  &#xD;&#xA;  no constructors please - C knows nothing like that)).  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;  This also _transitively_ applies to C#, taking into account  &#xD;&#xA;  the idea of easy migration to it from Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Readers thinking that familiar program entry point doesn't matter are kindly invited to search and check Stack Overflow questions where guys coming from Java SE are trying to write _Hello World_ for Java ME MIDP. Note [MIDP entry point](http://docs.oracle.com/javame/config/cldc/ref-impl/midp2.0/jsr118/javax/microedition/midlet/MIDlet.html &quot;try to guess how would one start the app&quot;) has no `main` nor `static`.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;Based on above I would say that `static`, `main` and `String[] args` were at the moments of Java and C# creation most reasonable choices to define [program entry point][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Appendix: I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle&#xD;&#xA;Have to admit, reading VM Spec [2.17.1](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Concepts.doc.html#19042) was enormous fun.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...the command line&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; will start a Java virtual machine by invoking the method main of class `Terminator` (a class in an unnamed package) and passing it an array containing the four strings &quot;Hasta&quot;, &quot;la&quot;, &quot;vista&quot;, and &quot;Baby!&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We now outline the steps the virtual machine may take to execute `Terminator`, as an example of the loading, linking, and initialization processes that are described further in later sections.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The initial attempt... discovers that the class `Terminator` is not loaded...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; After `Terminator` is loaded, it must be initialized before main can be invoked, and a type (class or interface) must always be linked before it is initialized. Linking (§2.17.3) involves verification, preparation, and (optionally) resolution...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Verification (§2.17.3) checks that the loaded representation of `Terminator` is well formed...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Resolution (§2.17.3) is the process of checking symbolic references from class `Terminator`...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Symbolic references from `Terminator` oh yeah.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qcmzP.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/gosling-jvm-lang-summit-keynote &quot;key note&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_function_(programming) &quot;what's in the 'main'?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10189" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3811" RevisionGUID="64d6fc28-39f2-4a9c-9157-a5708841c5a8" CreationDate="2012-07-19T17:57:32.880" UserId="31260" Comment="JLS += http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se5.0/html/j3TOC.html &quot;Java Language Specification&quot;" Text="If the question would be reopened, I'd probably write an answer like below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#TL;DR&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In Java, the reason of `public static void main(String[] args)` is that&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Gosling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling &quot;who's that?&quot;) wanted&#xD;&#xA;1. the code written by someone experienced in C (not in Java)&#xD;&#xA;1. to be executed by someone used to running [PostScript](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript &quot;scripts&quot;) on [NeWS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS &quot;Networked Extensible Window System&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/qcmzP.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;For C#, the reasoning is _transitively similar_ so to speak. Language designers kept the [program entry point][3] syntax familiar for programmers coming from Java. As C# architect [Anders Hejlsberg puts it](http://windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/oreilly/windows/news/hejlsberg_0800.html &quot;An interview by O'Reilly editor John Osborn&quot;),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...our approach with C# has simply been to offer an alternative... to Java programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;#Long version&#xD;&#xA; expanding above and backed up with boring references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;VM Spec, [2.17.1 Virtual Machine Start-up](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Concepts.doc.html#19042)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...The manner in which the initial class is specified to the Java virtual machine is beyond the scope of this specification, but it is typical, in host environments that use command lines, for the fully qualified name of the class to be specified as a command-line argument and for subsequent command-line arguments to be used as strings to be provided as the argument to the method main. For example, using Sun's Java 2 SDK for Solaris, the command line&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; will start a Java virtual machine by invoking the method main of class `Terminator` (a class in an unnamed package) and passing it an array containing the four strings &quot;Hasta&quot;, &quot;la&quot;, &quot;vista&quot;, and &quot;Baby!&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...see also: _Appendix: I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  execution targeted for use like typical scripts in command line interface.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;###important sidestep&#xD;&#xA;...that helps avoid a couple of false traces in our investigation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;VM Spec, [1.2 The Java Virtual Machine](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Introduction.doc.html#3057)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Java virtual machine knows nothing of the Java programming language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;I noticed above when studying prior chapter - _1.1 History_ which I thought could be helpful (but turned out useless).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  execution is governed by VM spec alone, which  &#xD;&#xA;  explicitly declares that it has nothing to do with Java language  &#xD;&#xA;  =&gt; OK to ignore [JLS](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se5.0/html/j3TOC.html &quot;Java Language Specification&quot;) and anything Java language related at all&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Gosling: a compromise between C and scripting language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on above, I began searching the web for _JVM history_. Didn't help, too much garbage in results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, I recalled legends about Gosling and narrowed down my search to _Gosling JVM history_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Eureka! **[How The JVM Spec Came To Be][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In this keynote from the JVM Languages Summit 2008, James Gosling discusses... Java's creation,... a compromise between C and scripting language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  explicit declaration that at the moment of creation,  &#xD;&#xA;  C and scripting have been considered most important influences.  &#xD;&#xA;  Already seen nod to scripting in VM Spec 2.17.1,  &#xD;&#xA;  command line arguments sufficiently explain `String[] args`  &#xD;&#xA;  but `static` and `main` aren't there yet, need to dig further...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note while typing this - connecting C, scripting and VM Spec 1.2 with its nothing-of-Java - I feel like something familiar, something... _object oriented_ is slowly passing away. [Take my hand and keep movin' Don't slow down we're nearly there now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93pE3npDRRs &quot;this is dedicated to Jon Lord, a Hard Lovin' Man who recently sadly passed away&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keynote slides are available online: [20_Gosling_keynote.pdf](http://wiki.jvmlangsummit.com/pdf/20_Gosling_keynote.pdf), quite convenient for copying key points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- language: lang-none --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 3&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         The Prehistory of Java&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * What shaped my thinking&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 9&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         NeWS&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * Networked Extensible Window System&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * A window system based on scripting....&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           PostScript (!!)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 16&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         A Big (but quiet) Goal:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           How close could I get to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           &quot;scripting&quot; feel...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 19&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         The original concept&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * Was all about building&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           networks of things,&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           orchestrated by a scripting&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           language&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * (Unix shells, AppleScript, ...)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 20&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * C syntax to make developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           comfortable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A-ha! Let's look closer at [C syntax](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_%28language%29).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The &quot;hello, world&quot; example...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     main()&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         printf(&quot;hello, world\n&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...a function named main is being defined. The [main][3] function serves a special purpose in C programs; the run-time environment calls the main function to begin program execution.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...The main function actually has two arguments, `int argc` and `char *argv[]`, respectively, which can be used to handle command line arguments...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are we getting closer? you bet. It is also worth following &quot;main&quot; link from above quote:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the main function is where a program starts execution. It is responsible for the high-level organization of the program's functionality, and typically has access to the command arguments given to the program when it was executed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  To be comfortable for C developer, program entry point has to be `main`.  &#xD;&#xA;  Also, since Java requires any method to be in class, `Class.main` is  &#xD;&#xA;  as close as it gets (static invocation, just class name and dot,  &#xD;&#xA;  no constructors please - C knows nothing like that)).  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;  This also _transitively_ applies to C#, taking into account  &#xD;&#xA;  the idea of easy migration to it from Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Readers thinking that familiar program entry point doesn't matter are kindly invited to search and check Stack Overflow questions where guys coming from Java SE are trying to write _Hello World_ for Java ME MIDP. Note [MIDP entry point](http://docs.oracle.com/javame/config/cldc/ref-impl/midp2.0/jsr118/javax/microedition/midlet/MIDlet.html &quot;try to guess how would one start the app&quot;) has no `main` nor `static`.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;Based on above I would say that `static`, `main` and `String[] args` were at the moments of Java and C# creation most reasonable choices to define [program entry point][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Appendix: I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle&#xD;&#xA;Have to admit, reading VM Spec [2.17.1](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Concepts.doc.html#19042) was enormous fun.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...the command line&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; will start a Java virtual machine by invoking the method main of class `Terminator` (a class in an unnamed package) and passing it an array containing the four strings &quot;Hasta&quot;, &quot;la&quot;, &quot;vista&quot;, and &quot;Baby!&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We now outline the steps the virtual machine may take to execute `Terminator`, as an example of the loading, linking, and initialization processes that are described further in later sections.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The initial attempt... discovers that the class `Terminator` is not loaded...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; After `Terminator` is loaded, it must be initialized before main can be invoked, and a type (class or interface) must always be linked before it is initialized. Linking (§2.17.3) involves verification, preparation, and (optionally) resolution...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Verification (§2.17.3) checks that the loaded representation of `Terminator` is well formed...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Resolution (§2.17.3) is the process of checking symbolic references from class `Terminator`...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Symbolic references from `Terminator` oh yeah.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qcmzP.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/gosling-jvm-lang-summit-keynote &quot;key note&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_function_(programming) &quot;what's in the 'main'?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10190" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3811" RevisionGUID="7e8af270-6f42-46f2-89a1-c643cc21c9a2" CreationDate="2012-07-19T21:45:21.407" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="If the question would be reopened, I'd probably write an answer like below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#TL;DR&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In Java, the reason of `public static void main(String[] args)` is that&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Gosling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling &quot;who's that?&quot;) wanted&#xD;&#xA;1. the code written by someone experienced in C (not in Java)&#xD;&#xA;1. to be executed by someone used to running [PostScript](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript &quot;scripts&quot;) on [NeWS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS &quot;Networked Extensible Window System&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/qcmzP.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;For C#, the reasoning is _transitively similar_ so to speak. Language designers kept the [program entry point][3] syntax familiar for programmers coming from Java. As C# architect [Anders Hejlsberg puts it](http://windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/oreilly/windows/news/hejlsberg_0800.html &quot;An interview by O'Reilly editor John Osborn&quot;),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...our approach with C# has simply been to offer an alternative... to Java programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;#Long version&#xD;&#xA; expanding above and backed up with boring references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;VM Spec, [2.17.1 Virtual Machine Start-up](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Concepts.doc.html#19042)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...The manner in which the initial class is specified to the Java virtual machine is beyond the scope of this specification, but it is typical, in host environments that use command lines, for the fully qualified name of the class to be specified as a command-line argument and for subsequent command-line arguments to be used as strings to be provided as the argument to the method main. For example, using Sun's Java 2 SDK for Solaris, the command line&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; will start a Java virtual machine by invoking the method main of class `Terminator` (a class in an unnamed package) and passing it an array containing the four strings &quot;Hasta&quot;, &quot;la&quot;, &quot;vista&quot;, and &quot;Baby!&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...see also: _Appendix: I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  execution targeted for use like typical scripts in command line interface.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;###important sidestep&#xD;&#xA;...that helps avoid a couple of false traces in our investigation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;VM Spec, [1.2 The Java Virtual Machine](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Introduction.doc.html#3057)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Java virtual machine knows nothing of the Java programming language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;I noticed above when studying prior chapter - _1.1 History_ which I thought could be helpful (but turned out useless).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  execution is governed by VM spec alone, which  &#xD;&#xA;  explicitly declares that it has nothing to do with Java language  &#xD;&#xA;  =&gt; OK to ignore [JLS](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se5.0/html/j3TOC.html &quot;Java Language Specification&quot;) and anything Java language related at all&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Gosling: a compromise between C and scripting language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on above, I began searching the web for _JVM history_. Didn't help, too much garbage in results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, I recalled legends about Gosling and narrowed down my search to _Gosling JVM history_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Eureka! **[How The JVM Spec Came To Be][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In this keynote from the JVM Languages Summit 2008, James Gosling discusses... Java's creation,... a compromise between C and scripting language...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  explicit declaration that at the moment of creation,  &#xD;&#xA;  C and scripting have been considered most important influences.  &#xD;&#xA;  &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;  Already seen nod to scripting in VM Spec 2.17.1,  &#xD;&#xA;  command line arguments sufficiently explain `String[] args`  &#xD;&#xA;  but `static` and `main` aren't there yet, need to dig further...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note while typing this - connecting C, scripting and VM Spec 1.2 with its nothing-of-Java - I feel like something familiar, something... _object oriented_ is slowly passing away. [Take my hand and keep movin' Don't slow down we're nearly there now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93pE3npDRRs &quot;this is dedicated to Jon Lord, a Hard Lovin' Man who recently sadly passed away&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keynote slides are available online: [20_Gosling_keynote.pdf](http://wiki.jvmlangsummit.com/pdf/20_Gosling_keynote.pdf), quite convenient for copying key points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- language: lang-none --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 3&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         The Prehistory of Java&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * What shaped my thinking&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 9&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         NeWS&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * Networked Extensible Window System&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * A window system based on scripting....&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           PostScript (!!)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 16&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         A Big (but quiet) Goal:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           How close could I get to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           &quot;scripting&quot; feel...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 19&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         The original concept&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * Was all about building&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           networks of things,&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           orchestrated by a scripting&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           language&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * (Unix shells, AppleScript, ...)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     page 20&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         * C syntax to make developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt;           comfortable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A-ha! Let's look closer at **[C syntax](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_%28language%29 &quot;presented in Wikipedia&quot;)**.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The &quot;hello, world&quot; example...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     main()&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         printf(&quot;hello, world\n&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...a function named main is being defined. The [main][3] function serves a special purpose in C programs; the run-time environment calls the main function to begin program execution.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...The main function actually has two arguments, `int argc` and `char *argv[]`, respectively, which can be used to handle command line arguments...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are we getting closer? you bet. It is also worth following &quot;main&quot; link from above quote:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the main function is where a program starts execution. It is responsible for the high-level organization of the program's functionality, and typically has access to the command arguments given to the program when it was executed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **My interpretation:**  &#xD;&#xA;  To be comfortable for C developer, program entry point has to be `main`.  &#xD;&#xA;  Also, since Java requires any method to be in class, `Class.main` is  &#xD;&#xA;  as close as it gets: static invocation, just class name and dot,  &#xD;&#xA;  no constructors please - C knows nothing like that.  &#xD;&#xA;  &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;  This also _transitively_ applies to C#, taking into account  &#xD;&#xA;  the idea of easy migration to it from Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Readers thinking that familiar program entry point doesn't matter are kindly invited to search and check Stack Overflow questions where guys coming from Java SE are trying to write _Hello World_ for Java ME MIDP. Note [MIDP entry point](http://docs.oracle.com/javame/config/cldc/ref-impl/midp2.0/jsr118/javax/microedition/midlet/MIDlet.html &quot;try to guess how would one start the app&quot;) has no `main` nor `static`.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;Based on above I would say that `static`, `main` and `String[] args` were at the moments of Java and C# creation most reasonable choices to define [program entry point][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;##Appendix: I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle&#xD;&#xA;Have to admit, reading VM Spec [2.17.1](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/Concepts.doc.html#19042) was enormous fun.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...the command line&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; will start a Java virtual machine by invoking the method main of class `Terminator` (a class in an unnamed package) and passing it an array containing the four strings &quot;Hasta&quot;, &quot;la&quot;, &quot;vista&quot;, and &quot;Baby!&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We now outline the steps the virtual machine may take to execute `Terminator`, as an example of the loading, linking, and initialization processes that are described further in later sections.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The initial attempt... discovers that the class `Terminator` is not loaded...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; After `Terminator` is loaded, it must be initialized before main can be invoked, and a type (class or interface) must always be linked before it is initialized. Linking (§2.17.3) involves verification, preparation, and (optionally) resolution...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Verification (§2.17.3) checks that the loaded representation of `Terminator` is well formed...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Resolution (§2.17.3) is the process of checking symbolic references from class `Terminator`...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Symbolic references from `Terminator` oh yeah.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qcmzP.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/gosling-jvm-lang-summit-keynote &quot;key note&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_function_(programming) &quot;what's in the 'main'?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10191" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3814" RevisionGUID="1ac58699-fb91-4c33-a176-026a029f9af9" CreationDate="2012-07-19T22:08:21.147" UserId="18006" Text="##James Kingsbery##&#xD;&#xA;***Writer, 1 post every 2 months***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a blog at [kingsbery.net][1]. I've been meaning to be better about posting regularly, this will give me incentive to do so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://kingsbery.net" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10192" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3815" RevisionGUID="f62616f7-f968-4b8b-bc72-753bd3eef77a" CreationDate="2012-07-19T22:30:22.857" UserId="2673" Text="Dan McGrath&#xD;&#xA;===========&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***Proofreader, occasionally a writer***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To see an example of my writing when I put in some effort, skip to page 12 of this mag: [Spectrum Nov/Dec 2011][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.intl-spectrum.com/t/136837/link.aspx" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10193" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3768" RevisionGUID="4266153c-c271-4893-a50e-edc15e065b71" CreationDate="2012-07-19T22:41:49.663" UserId="31260" Comment="Jul 20 update: question has been unlocked per discussion in chat and reworded..." Text="**Jul 20 update:** [question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/156336/2366) has been unlocked [per discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/5436540#5436540) and reworded as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Looking for a definitive answer from a primary or secondary source for why did (notably) Java and C# decide to have a static method as their entry point – rather than representing an application instance by an instance of an `Application` class, with the entry point being an appropriate constructor?  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;[I asked a question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/156336/2366) about the historical perspective of a feature in C# and Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was closed as “not constructive”. Needless to say, I disagree. But more importantly, I don’t understand the reasons. I fail to see what distinguishes this question from, say, [“Why does F# have an interactive mode but not C#?”](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/156303/2366)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, I was hoping for the same kind of answer. The latter question had the enormous luck of having Eric Lippert answer it authoritatively – but the same *kind* of answer would fit my own question perfectly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what’s the criterion here? Was I just unlucky / the other question lucky? Or is there a distinction that I fail to see? Or could I improve the way the question is asked? I’d be more than happy to." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10194" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3768" RevisionGUID="0bf76220-0a2c-4a5c-b90d-63f02879940e" CreationDate="2012-07-19T22:50:52.957" UserId="31260" Comment="Feedback on revised wording would be much appreciated." Text="**Jul 20 update:** [question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/156336/2366) has been unlocked [per discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/5436540#5436540) and reworded as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Looking for a definitive answer from a primary or secondary source for why did (notably) Java and C# decide to have a static method as their entry point – rather than representing an application instance by an instance of an `Application` class, with the entry point being an appropriate constructor?  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Feedback on revised wording would be much appreciated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;[I asked a question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/156336/2366) about the historical perspective of a feature in C# and Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was closed as “not constructive”. Needless to say, I disagree. But more importantly, I don’t understand the reasons. I fail to see what distinguishes this question from, say, [“Why does F# have an interactive mode but not C#?”](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/156303/2366)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, I was hoping for the same kind of answer. The latter question had the enormous luck of having Eric Lippert answer it authoritatively – but the same *kind* of answer would fit my own question perfectly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what’s the criterion here? Was I just unlucky / the other question lucky? Or is there a distinction that I fail to see? Or could I improve the way the question is asked? I’d be more than happy to." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10195" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3816" RevisionGUID="42490a69-9865-416f-bbee-25a907c864bb" CreationDate="2012-07-19T22:58:31.560" UserDisplayName="user20891" Text="# Bryan Dunsmore&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***Editor/Proofreader***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a good command of the English language and would love to contribute. The End." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10196" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3811" RevisionGUID="d0498545-8e80-42b4-bec8-4f5732f88880" CreationDate="2012-07-20T16:38:19.767" UserId="31260" Comment="question has been edited and reopened and proposed &quot;draft&quot; has been posted as an answer" Text="**update** question has been edited and reopened and proposed &quot;draft&quot; has been posted as an answer there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/157606/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior answer revision is removed since it no longer applies, it is available in answer history:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Revision 8](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/3811/8)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the question would be reopened, I'd probably write an answer like&#xD;&#xA;&gt; below.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; #TL;DR&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; In Java, the reason of `public static void main(String[] args)` is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [Gosling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling &quot;who's that?&quot;) wanted&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. the code written by someone experienced in C (not in Java)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. to be executed by someone used to running [PostScript](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript &quot;scripts&quot;) on [NeWS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS &quot;Networked Extensible Window System&quot;)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...**[How The JVM Spec Came To Be][2]**...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/gosling-jvm-lang-summit-keynote &quot;key note&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10197" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3817" RevisionGUID="9b18d6de-beb2-4ce5-843c-cc96cf88491f" CreationDate="2012-07-21T08:48:58.587" UserId="54906" Text="I wonder if a question like this one is on topic, at programmers.stackexchange.com. (If not, do you know some other StackExchange site where I could ask?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;i&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;To which PHP frameworks would you port a better discussion system?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose that popular and growing/non-declining frameworks would be appropriate. However I don't know much about the PHP world.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The discussion system would manage the comments following a blog post, or forum thread.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I've ported to one PHP framework already.)&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/i&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;What kind of questions can I ask here?&quot; — &quot;[...] business concerns [...]&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10198" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3817" RevisionGUID="9b18d6de-beb2-4ce5-843c-cc96cf88491f" CreationDate="2012-07-21T08:48:58.587" UserId="54906" Text="Is this Q on topic at P.SE: Suggestions on which frameworks to port to" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10199" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3817" RevisionGUID="9b18d6de-beb2-4ce5-843c-cc96cf88491f" CreationDate="2012-07-21T08:48:58.587" UserId="54906" Text="|support|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10200" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3818" RevisionGUID="7d6cd2ee-0abb-4c11-8700-e0b12e949f4b" CreationDate="2012-07-21T11:04:05.157" UserId="4" Text="This sounds like a &quot;which technology is better&quot; question, which are called out in the FAQ as a type of question that is not appropriate for Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10201" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3819" RevisionGUID="c0266cc8-6793-4259-97bf-4331ca0b2db2" CreationDate="2012-07-21T19:16:53.677" UserId="4767" Text="Many of the recent suggested edits I have reviewed have been obvious spam attempts and all with similar looking content (gibberish and links).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been rejecting them as Vandalism, but am worried about the fact that there are many more of these than I have seen before, all of which seem to occur here on Programmers. I have not seen them on other Stack Exchange sites I am involved in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a known spammer? What more can we do?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10202" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3819" RevisionGUID="c0266cc8-6793-4259-97bf-4331ca0b2db2" CreationDate="2012-07-21T19:16:53.677" UserId="4767" Text="Increasing amount of edit spam attempts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10203" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3819" RevisionGUID="c0266cc8-6793-4259-97bf-4331ca0b2db2" CreationDate="2012-07-21T19:16:53.677" UserId="4767" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10204" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3820" RevisionGUID="c747c93f-ec14-487c-b83c-8715028104c4" CreationDate="2012-07-21T23:07:23.173" UserId="47" Text="They are suggestions by an anonymous user. There's nothing we (as moderators) can do. The team will have IP logs, but banning people by IP is a blunt instrument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We just have to keep vigilant and reject these edits. Based on the edits I've seen I can't see anyone approving the edits." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10205" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3821" RevisionGUID="f0996023-53b5-4233-ab1e-5bd5b69f2a55" CreationDate="2012-07-22T09:36:11.630" UserId="31260" Text="I fail to see any value in [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/157660). Do I miss something?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have to make database for data that are currently being kept in excel files, so I have to do some changes before writing into database. I'm going to read those files in java, and write them from java into db. Should I use hibernate for that job? Or how else to connect those read data in java, with database?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer (full text):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; LibreOffice and OpenOffice could scale you to the moon. Headless linux-Mac-win. You can get the contents of spreadsheet with licenses cost and about 200 lines of code." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10206" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3821" RevisionGUID="f0996023-53b5-4233-ab1e-5bd5b69f2a55" CreationDate="2012-07-22T09:36:11.630" UserId="31260" Text="is there a value in this answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10207" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3821" RevisionGUID="f0996023-53b5-4233-ab1e-5bd5b69f2a55" CreationDate="2012-07-22T09:36:11.630" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|answer-quality|specific-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10208" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3821" RevisionGUID="0e3d065e-ca6b-44bd-9771-9f06311ba774" CreationDate="2012-07-22T09:53:02.243" UserId="31260" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="I fail to see any value in [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/157660). Do I miss something?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have to make database for data that are currently being kept in excel files, so I have to do some changes before writing into database. I'm going to read those files in java, and write them from java into db. Should I use hibernate for that job? Or how else to connect those read data in java, with database?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer (full text):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **LibreOffice and OpenOffice could scale you to the moon. Headless linux-Mac-win. You can get the contents of spreadsheet with licenses cost and about 200 lines of code.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10209" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3822" RevisionGUID="7005c0e3-4fb4-4f15-911e-ac0c18ad7cc8" CreationDate="2012-07-22T09:54:53.130" UserId="4" Text="I believe that the poster of the answer might be suggesting using the OpenOffice.org (or LibreOffice) APIs to open the spreadsheet files, access the data, perform the transformations, and then write the proper data into the new database. Although it's not a very good explanation, I don't see how it's not an answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10210" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3819" RevisionGUID="8ed733c9-1a47-499c-9dd5-4b1a9a83e24c" CreationDate="2012-07-24T04:35:24.597" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/227622990035161089" />
  <row Id="10216" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3824" RevisionGUID="2e90b766-a683-41b1-8713-53ed31188cdd" CreationDate="2012-07-25T06:50:13.710" UserId="4392" Text="I encountered a special character notification in Stackexchange Notification --Inbox  which is displayed due to presence of apostrophe punctuation mark in a word &quot;it's&quot; below is the screen shot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/UMKAL.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10217" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3824" RevisionGUID="2e90b766-a683-41b1-8713-53ed31188cdd" CreationDate="2012-07-25T06:50:13.710" UserId="4392" Text="Special Character in StackExchange Notification --Inbox" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10218" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3824" RevisionGUID="2e90b766-a683-41b1-8713-53ed31188cdd" CreationDate="2012-07-25T06:50:13.710" UserId="4392" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10219" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3824" RevisionGUID="9aac0585-e7ed-44ec-a37a-f23848460c2d" CreationDate="2012-07-25T07:00:40.043" UserId="4392" Comment="added 134 characters in body" Text="I encountered a special character notification in Stackexchange Notification --Inbox  which is displayed due to presence of apostrophe punctuation mark in a word &quot;it's&quot; below is the screen shot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; `UPDATE`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; it might be because of the shortened statement ending with &quot;'&quot; and right after that &quot;...&quot; is being concatinated....&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/UMKAL.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10220" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3824" RevisionGUID="cbef4019-3ed9-4ebd-a60b-e3c4e6b6ddec" CreationDate="2012-07-25T07:38:42.410" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10222" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3825" RevisionGUID="f356e20e-07b5-4244-899f-33d569586ddc" CreationDate="2012-07-25T07:50:50.667" UserId="9202" Text="Le Do Hoang Long&#xD;&#xA;================&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Writer, 1 post every 1,2 months &amp; proofreader*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I maintain a simple blog at https://ledohoanglong.wordpress.com. My English writing skill may be not very good, but I'm willing to learn." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10223" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3826" RevisionGUID="39642093-3558-4e21-b430-ec59b15e3b15" CreationDate="2012-07-25T08:09:52.660" UserId="1480" Text="I am evaluating CouchDB. My evaluation covers many aspects, and one of these aspects is the maximum number of nodes that can be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I want to know how many nodes has the biggest real-world CouchDB application.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this kind of questions appropriate for Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10224" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3826" RevisionGUID="39642093-3558-4e21-b430-ec59b15e3b15" CreationDate="2012-07-25T08:09:52.660" UserId="1480" Text="Question about biggest known CouchDB (or other) cluster" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10225" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3826" RevisionGUID="39642093-3558-4e21-b430-ec59b15e3b15" CreationDate="2012-07-25T08:09:52.660" UserId="1480" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10226" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3827" RevisionGUID="2a2ac98f-d36d-4aef-a21c-13e67612b878" CreationDate="2012-07-25T10:47:01.343" UserId="25936" Text="Have you run into scaling issues with CouchDB? Then by all means ask about them, and we'll be glad to help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But &quot;how many nodes has the biggest application&quot; doesn't really work, you are not looking for a solution to an actual practical problem. Your question is vague (define biggest: by data volume, traffic, both?), time dependent (the biggest application today won't be the biggest tomorrow) and its answers won't really answer your question. Assuming application foo has a bazillion node, why is a bazillion the maximum number of supported nodes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers can be extremely helpful when you've already started designing or even building your project, but not so much before." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10227" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3826" RevisionGUID="fbe83eb7-0d2f-4971-ae14-f68212fed264" CreationDate="2012-07-25T10:52:52.617" UserId="1480" Comment="added 18 characters in body" Text="I am evaluating CouchDB. My evaluation covers many aspects, and one of these aspects is the maximum number of nodes that can be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I want to know how many nodes has the biggest (number of nodes) real-world CouchDB application.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this kind of questions appropriate for Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10230" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3828" RevisionGUID="33c9b019-3f39-48d6-bebd-a3fc3024033e" CreationDate="2012-07-26T19:12:50.143" UserId="37" Text="Is there a canonical &quot;related jobs where having programming skills can get you hired, that aren't programming&quot; question? I think that's what the OP needs in this question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158341/average-career-programmer-with-no-passion-try-harder-or-try-related-it-field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;hellip; and I think such a question should exist here on programmers. At the very least a lot of &quot;oh, I've lost the passion, what next?&quot; could be answered that way. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- it's concrete. Either having programming skills is something that is typically in the hiring requirements for such positions, or it is not. Either there is a documented record of ex-programmers moving into these positions and being successful, or there is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- it applies to &quot;all programmers&quot;. The root skill is programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- it has nothing to do with feelings or motivation. It's about skills, specifically programming skill, and how you use it. (Just not in the typical &quot;heads down coding all the time&quot; way.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I looked around a bit and I couldn't find such a question, but **I strongly believe it needs to exist** -- at the very least you could close-as-dupe a bunch of soft [tag:career-development] and [tag:career-transition] questions with something nice and hard and concrete." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10231" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3828" RevisionGUID="33c9b019-3f39-48d6-bebd-a3fc3024033e" CreationDate="2012-07-26T19:12:50.143" UserId="37" Text="Canonical &quot;related jobs where having programming skills can get you hired, that aren't programming&quot; question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10232" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3828" RevisionGUID="33c9b019-3f39-48d6-bebd-a3fc3024033e" CreationDate="2012-07-26T19:12:50.143" UserId="37" Text="|discussion|career|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10233" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3829" RevisionGUID="db504234-c719-4292-bf04-82b6513147e4" CreationDate="2012-07-26T19:26:31.490" UserId="57674" Text="[![netsniff-ng - the packet sniffing beast][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/zjo7j.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://netsniff-ng.org/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10234" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3829" RevisionGUID="94fb059d-70f8-4d44-8bf0-5504a11fbc82" CreationDate="2012-07-26T19:26:31.490" UserId="57674" />
  <row Id="10235" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3828" RevisionGUID="f4f4bf01-f789-4f45-aa56-911125494e29" CreationDate="2012-07-26T19:39:02.900" UserId="37" Comment="added 16 characters in body" Text="Is there a canonical &quot;related jobs where having programming skills can get you hired, that aren't programming&quot; question? I think that's what the OP needs in this question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158341/average-career-programmer-with-no-passion-try-harder-or-try-related-it-field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;hellip; and I think such a question should exist here on programmers. At the very least a lot of &quot;oh, I've lost the passion, what next?&quot; could be **CLOSED AS DUPLICATES** that way. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- it's concrete. Either having programming skills is something that is typically in the hiring requirements for such positions, or it is not. Either there is a documented record of ex-programmers moving into these positions and being successful, or there is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- it applies to &quot;all programmers&quot;. The root skill is programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- it has nothing to do with feelings or motivation. It's about skills, specifically programming skill, and how you use it. (Just not in the typical &quot;heads down coding all the time&quot; way.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I looked around a bit and I couldn't find such a question, but **I strongly believe it needs to exist** -- at the very least you could close-as-dupe a bunch of soft [tag:career-development] and [tag:career-transition] questions with something nice and hard and concrete." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10236" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3830" RevisionGUID="e65c6525-7cf7-4e92-9a64-f80402422ff0" CreationDate="2012-07-26T19:42:21.770" UserId="25476" Text="One of the very reasons that I committed to the Workplace proposal on Area51 was because I strongly believed that such questions needed to exist, but just not on Programmers where I feel that these kinds of questions don't fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In reality Programmers is actually about Software Development in general or IMHO anything that is involved in the process of turning a concept into working software without being muddied in implementation details.  This of course could be a general question about language features, a question about an algorithm, or even how to properly manage and navigate the SDLC.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In its current form and title the question is purely asking for career advice, which is explicitly off topic per the FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about… career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoted from Mark Trapp...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question as currently worded would not be materially different if a quality assurance tester were to have written it.  This is evident in some of the answers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You need to find what you DO have a passion for. Only you can figure that out. But getting better at a job you hate does not seem like a good deal to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the highest voted answer thus far, and it applies to underwater welders as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose if you could extrapolate or edit the answer to be more along the lines of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What common skills are shared between programmers and other IT fields&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That might be better, but only if it still applies to an actual problem that the person asking the question faces." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10237" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3830" RevisionGUID="e99a9fb9-afbb-49c5-b546-da87735df62d" CreationDate="2012-07-26T19:47:45.427" UserId="25476" Comment="added 97 characters in body" Text="One of the very reasons that I committed to the Workplace proposal on Area51 was because I strongly believed that such questions needed to exist, but just not on Programmers where I feel that these kinds of questions don't fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In reality Programmers is actually about Software Development in general or IMHO anything that is involved in the process of turning a concept into working software without being muddied in implementation details.  This of course could be a general question about language features, a question about an algorithm, or even how to properly manage and navigate the SDLC.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In its current form and title the question is purely asking for career advice, which is explicitly off topic per the FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about… career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoted from Mark Trapp...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question as currently worded would not be materially different if a quality assurance tester were to have written it.  This is evident in some of the answers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You need to find what you DO have a passion for. Only you can figure that out. But getting better at a job you hate does not seem like a good deal to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the highest voted answer thus far, and it applies to underwater welders as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose if you could extrapolate or edit the answer to be more along the lines of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What common skills are shared between programmers and other IT fields&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How can I use my programming skills in ways that aren't heads-down coding all day?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That might be better, but only if it still applies to an actual problem that the person asking the question faces." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10238" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3831" RevisionGUID="0e8659e1-1fec-46a3-bf86-7fcc736670f6" CreationDate="2012-07-26T19:57:53.170" UserId="1204" Text="There isn't, as of yet, any consensus on the existence of canonical questions (although some successful attempts have been executed on Stack Overflow), nor is there adequate system support for them (although the insta-answer checkbox is a step in the right direction).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact of the matter is, the question you linked is a broken window (being specifically off-topic as a career-advice question), and the fine distinction that is being applied here (namely, that it applies specifically to programmers by virtue of the bolded sentence at the end of the question body) is going to be difficult to explain to others who wish to post their &quot;I'm bored, what's my next career move&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Creating canonical questions so that other, off-topic questions can be closed as duplicates is a contradiction; the canonical question is almost certainly either going to be too general to be of any use to the OP in the specific, or too specific to apply to all duplicate instances.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10239" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3828" RevisionGUID="c06008ce-dc7d-45fb-9f80-ea98f19f518c" CreationDate="2012-07-26T20:29:33.113" UserId="37" Comment="added 1286 characters in body; added 27 characters in body; edited title; deleted 12 characters in body; deleted 115 characters in body" Text="Is there a canonical **&quot;What can I do with my programming skills if I'm weary of heads-down coding?&quot;** question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that's what the OP is really asking for in this question &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158341/average-career-programmer-with-no-passion-try-harder-or-try-related-it-field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;hellip; and I think such a canonical-form question should exist here on programmers. A very similar question was asked on Workplaced and closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What kind of business management fields are available to a programmer who no longer wants to program?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/2658)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this comment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineers should give you job options (other than programmers) such as: Business Analyst/Requirements Engineer, System Architect, Configuration/Build Manager, Project Manager, Test Engineer/Management, etc. Try looking for management jobs in IT, contractor/consultancy firms are big on this. Also, job fairs are a good place to start looking if you're still at the campus. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here on Workplace **they are asking for programmers to answer the question!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is kind of exactly my point. A single, canonical&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What can I do with my programming skills if I'm weary of heads-down coding?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question is, I think, something many programmers (not chefs, lawyers, or firemen) might ask themselves at some point in their lives. Such a question is valuable to, and entirely specific to, programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- it's concrete. Either having programming skills is something that is typically in the hiring requirements for such positions, or it is not. Either there is a documented record of ex-programmers moving into these positions and being successful, or there is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- it applies to &quot;all programmers&quot;. The root skill is programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- it has nothing to do with feelings or motivation. It's about skills, specifically programming skill, and how you use it. (Just not in the typical &quot;heads down coding all the time&quot; way.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I looked around a bit and I couldn't find such a question, but **I strongly believe it needs to exist** -- at the very least you could close-as-dupe a bunch of soft [tag:career-development] and [tag:career-transition] questions with something nice and hard and concrete." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10240" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3828" RevisionGUID="c06008ce-dc7d-45fb-9f80-ea98f19f518c" CreationDate="2012-07-26T20:29:33.113" UserId="37" Comment="added 1286 characters in body; added 27 characters in body; edited title; deleted 12 characters in body; deleted 115 characters in body" Text="Canonical &quot;What can I do with my programming skills if I'm weary of heads-down coding?&quot; question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10241" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3828" RevisionGUID="c07a3c25-9477-48f8-8e98-e4b422ce99f8" CreationDate="2012-07-26T20:49:15.547" UserId="37" Comment="added 120 characters in body" Text="Is there a canonical **&quot;What can I do with my programming skills if I'm weary of heads-down coding?&quot;** question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that's what the OP is really asking for in this question &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158341/average-career-programmer-with-no-passion-try-harder-or-try-related-it-field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;hellip; and I think such a canonical-form question should exist here on programmers. A very similar question was asked on Workplaced and closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What kind of business management fields are available to a programmer who no longer wants to program?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/2658)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this comment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineers should give you job options (other than programmers) such as: Business Analyst/Requirements Engineer, System Architect, Configuration/Build Manager, Project Manager, Test Engineer/Management, etc. Try looking for management jobs in IT, contractor/consultancy firms are big on this. Also, job fairs are a good place to start looking if you're still at the campus. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here on Workplace **they are asking for programmers to answer the question!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is kind of exactly my point. A single, canonical&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What can I do with my programming skills if I'm weary of heads-down coding?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question is, I think, something many programmers (not chefs, lawyers, or firemen) might ask themselves at some point in their lives. Such a question is valuable to, and entirely specific to, programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- it's concrete. There is data, there are facts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Either having programming skills is something that is typically in the hiring requirements for such positions, or it is not. &#xD;&#xA;   - Either there is a documented record of ex-programmers moving into these positions and being successful, or there is not. &#xD;&#xA;   - Either there are 100k such positions worldwide, or there are none.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- it applies to &quot;all programmers&quot;. The root skill is programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- it has nothing to do with feelings or motivation. It's about skills, specifically programming skill, and how you use it. (Just not in the typical &quot;heads down coding all the time&quot; way.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I looked around a bit and I couldn't find such a question, but **I strongly believe it needs to exist** -- at the very least you could close-as-dupe a bunch of soft [tag:career-development] and [tag:career-transition] questions with something nice and hard and concrete." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10242" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3832" RevisionGUID="d7d82f06-60d4-4517-9b7b-3bbc66814638" CreationDate="2012-07-26T21:19:55.343" UserId="47" Text="I don't think that there can be such a canonical question - the answer is always going to be either so general it doesn't help anyone (&quot;go into project management&quot;) or so specific it doesn't help anyone (&quot;my cousin Vinny got a job a lawyer&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't give advice because we don't really know what motivates the OP or what's the underlying reason he wants to move on to something else. With that level of detail the question is truly too localised as any answers will only be of use to the OP and no one else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another possible outcome is a list of anecdotes about what worked for the answerers. This leaves the OP no better off as they now still have to choose which one to pick.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately the answer to the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What can I do with my programming skills if I'm weary of heads-down coding?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anything and everything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, I think you'd agree isn't an answer at all." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10243" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3832" RevisionGUID="93dba24f-b66a-4eff-b6ba-b5be325adc7e" CreationDate="2012-07-26T21:23:08.443" UserId="1204" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="I don't think that there can be such a canonical question - the answer is always going to be either so general it doesn't help anyone (&quot;go into project management&quot;) or so specific it doesn't help anyone (&quot;my cousin Vinny got a job as a lawyer&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't give advice because we don't really know what motivates the OP or what's the underlying reason he wants to move on to something else. With that level of detail the question is truly too localized as any answers will only be of use to the OP and no one else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another possible outcome is a list of anecdotes about what worked for the answerers. This leaves the OP no better off as they now still have to choose which one to pick.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately the answer to the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What can I do with my programming skills if I'm weary of heads-down coding?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anything and everything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, I think you'd agree isn't an answer at all." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10247" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="590" RevisionGUID="775a16a0-0e2f-4520-aeb7-bdb863ee1f91" CreationDate="2012-07-26T23:03:30.270" UserId="1204" Comment="added 12 characters in body" Text="First and foremost, **any career advice questions need to relate directly to software development**; general career advice questions with no relation to software development or where software development is a minor facet of the question are off-topic. A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as *off-topic*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(This aspect is discussed in [Dealing with “What are some good types of pickles for programmers?” type questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/288/8).)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, the general rule of thumb should be **whether the question can help others in a similar situation**. If the circumstances surrounding the question are too specific to the question asker such that there is no way to generalize and answer the question, they should be closed as *too localized*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Applying that rule should put a theoretical limit on the amount of ways the question &quot;My job is X, what should I do?&quot; can be asked. Questions that have similar set of circumstances to already-asked questions should be closed as *exact duplicates*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, if there isn't something pointed being asked in the question, and the asker is merely using Programmers.SE as a means to **vent about whatever annoyed them at their job that day**, it should be closed as *not constructive*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, and only if, a career-advice question passes those three tests, should it stay open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example of on-topic career guidance questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Can someone find a job as a programmer without an education?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8886/can-someone-find-a-job-as-a-programmer-without-an-education)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of career guidance questions that should be closed: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Mid level IT lead](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20289/mid-level-it-lead)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the best qualification route for me to get back into programming? (UK)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22350/what-is-the-best-qualification-route-for-me-to-get-back-into-programming-uk)&#xD;&#xA;* [On programmers, INTJ personality, human interactions, and large companies.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18227/on-programmers-intj-personality-human-interactions-and-large-companies-close) (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should also be noted that most, if not all, of the other Stack Exchanges have elected to consider their versions of &quot;help my exact situation&quot;-type questions (gaming recommendations, code reviews, proofreading, etc.) to be off-topic on the basis that a Q&amp;A system does not lend well to the necessary discussion to tease out all the details to fully answer the question. I don't see why Programmers.SE should be any different." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10248" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="590" RevisionGUID="f42a6911-caf8-42c3-b20a-7fd183dbf6fe" CreationDate="2012-07-26T23:57:13.410" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="All the words I used were carefully chosen: reducing what I wrote to a few bolded phrases significantly distorts the intent and message of this post." Text="First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate directly to software development; general career advice questions with no relation to software development or where software development is a minor facet of the question are off-topic. A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as *off-topic*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(This aspect is discussed in [Dealing with “What are some good types of pickles for programmers?” type questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/288/8).)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, the general rule of thumb should be whether the question can help others in a similar situation. If the circumstances surrounding the question are too specific to the question asker such that there is no way to generalize and answer the question, they should be closed as *too localized*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Applying that rule should put a theoretical limit on the amount of ways the question &quot;My job is X, what should I do?&quot; can be asked. Questions that have similar set of circumstances to already-asked questions should be closed as *exact duplicates*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, if there isn't something pointed being asked in the question, and the asker is merely using Programmers.SE as a means to vent about whatever annoyed them at their job that day, it should be closed as *not constructive*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, and only if, a career-advice question passes those three tests, should it stay open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example of on-topic career guidance questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Can someone find a job as a programmer without an education?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8886/can-someone-find-a-job-as-a-programmer-without-an-education)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of career guidance questions that should be closed: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Mid level IT lead](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20289/mid-level-it-lead)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the best qualification route for me to get back into programming? (UK)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22350/what-is-the-best-qualification-route-for-me-to-get-back-into-programming-uk)&#xD;&#xA;* [On programmers, INTJ personality, human interactions, and large companies.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18227/on-programmers-intj-personality-human-interactions-and-large-companies-close) (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should also be noted that most, if not all, of the other Stack Exchanges have elected to consider their versions of &quot;help my exact situation&quot;-type questions (gaming recommendations, code reviews, proofreading, etc.) to be off-topic on the basis that a Q&amp;A system does not lend well to the necessary discussion to tease out all the details to fully answer the question. I don't see why Programmers.SE should be any different." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10249" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3788" RevisionGUID="f65aecbf-1323-486f-ba69-e1e4aedc6a68" CreationDate="2012-07-27T02:10:32.773" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/228673698138300416" />
  <row Id="10250" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3777" RevisionGUID="99e343b5-d291-40a6-a153-2c8bc8c8b481" CreationDate="2012-07-27T07:29:19.677" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="added 420 characters in body" Text="First of all, if you didn't know (and I can only hope you did), Programmers Stack Exchange has it's [own community blog][1] that anybody can contribute to. So, if you haven't been reading it, start now :-)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyways, currently we have very few solid contributors to the blog. We started with about 7 posts, and that number is quickly falling. Basically, if we don't get more community help with this, we are going to be on the verge of dying. So if you want to contribute, now is the time to start.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, we are in need of mainly writers, although if you would like to sign-up as an editor or proofreader, that would be fine. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To sign up, set up your answer as so:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Name&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ====&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ***Position (either editor/proofreader or writer or both)***&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Description. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are a writer, your description area is where you should put how many posts you'll be able to dish out per month or another time span. For example, `1 post every 1-2 months`. If you only want to write one post, and then stop helping, that's also fine, although we would love to see you stay. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once you sign up, we will contact you with your Wordpress account details and Trello account details. For more info on those services, and on how you will be helping, [see here][2]. If you have any questions, ping me in the [Programmers Blog Room][3], or leave a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's about it! Enjoy the blog, and start signing up :-)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Addendum**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Register on Trello with the handle you use here. I'll invite you once&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you ping me in the programmers blog chatroom. WP access can be gained&#xD;&#xA;&gt; by listing your email either in that chat or in your post here. If you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; want to be private about it send it to programmer.se.blog (at)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gmail.com with the subject line: Programmer Blog Sign-up. Please&#xD;&#xA;&gt; indicate your handle in the message as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10251" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3834" RevisionGUID="5aeb4d99-3831-43cc-b511-bc507a6ba798" CreationDate="2012-07-27T11:26:18.317" UserId="4" Text="The other posts have brought up the &quot;career advice, including general workplace issues&quot; as a reason to disallow them. However, I'm going to go the other route and say that even if we didn't highlight career advice questions as being disallowed, nothing in the list of what is considered an allowed question covers career advice questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ clearly defines Programmers as a site for &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;. Career development has absolutely nothing to do with the art, science, engineering, or craftsmanship of software development and falls outside of the scope of Programmers. Then, the FAQ goes on to define more specific examples of what is on topic - algorithms and data structures, design patterns, developer testing, development methodologies, business concerns, quality assurance, software architecture, software engineering, and software licensing. Looking at this more specific list of allowable topics, I don't see how career advice falls into any of those categories.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, even if such career development question were on-topic, most would probably be too localized to the individual's particular situation. There's no canonical answers to any career questions, since the right thing to do depends not only on the individual's knowledge and education (which can be shared among other people), but also their personality and other personality-related attributes (which are unique to the individual asking the question). If you were to generalize a question to the point where knowledge, experience, and personality are not important, you have a not-constructive list question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10252" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3835" RevisionGUID="9cfb5956-99c4-4159-8ef9-e2b59eddc82e" CreationDate="2012-07-27T14:28:40.477" UserId="31260" Text="&gt; ...this question &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158341/average-career-programmer-with-no-passion-try-harder-or-try-related-it-field&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;hellip; and I think such a canonical-form question should exist here on programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To reopen above question and to have its answers converge into useful _canon_ instead of diverging into garbage bits of unrelated advice, consider passing it through an [Atwood's transform](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/124930/165773 &quot;what's this?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;_What traits to look for in &quot;outside&quot; career fields in order to leverage programming experience_ - stuff like that.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need something, wording to effectively _repel_ answers like &quot;oh our company has a BA/QA/PM position opened, question is 10 years old, are you still interested in a new career?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need wording that would allow connecting different answers into some larger picture that makes sense." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10253" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3835" RevisionGUID="139d010c-8f1c-4a94-8f99-ce82dda9faaa" CreationDate="2012-07-27T14:33:59.280" UserId="31260" Comment="wording that would allow connecting different answers into some larger picture" Text="&gt; ...this question &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158341/average-career-programmer-with-no-passion-try-harder-or-try-related-it-field&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;hellip; and I think such a canonical-form question should exist here on programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To reopen above question and to have its answers converge into useful _canon_ instead of diverging into garbage bits of unrelated advice, consider passing it through an [Atwood's transform](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/124930/165773 &quot;what's this?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;_What traits to look for in &quot;outside&quot; career fields in order to leverage programming experience_ - stuff like that.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need something, wording to effectively _repel_ answers like &quot;oh our company has a BA/QA/PM position opened, question is 10 years old, are you still interested in a new career?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need wording that would allow connecting different answers into some larger picture that makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Question wording would ideally allow reader to connect advice like &quot;go QA&quot;, &quot;go BA&quot;, &quot;assess your current skill set&quot;, &quot;decide between fields involving some minor coding, or dealing with programmers, or dealing with software product / process&quot; - to buid something bigger on it, instead of leaving it lay as an unsorted heap of minor ideas.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10257" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3835" RevisionGUID="d16a47ba-a9f3-48a6-833d-e2e043916a20" CreationDate="2012-07-27T15:00:34.983" UserId="31260" Comment="repel garbage answers..." Text="&gt; ...this question &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158341/average-career-programmer-with-no-passion-try-harder-or-try-related-it-field&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;hellip; and I think such a canonical-form question should exist here on programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To reopen above question and to have its answers converge into useful _canon_ instead of diverging into garbage bits of unrelated advice, consider passing it through an [Atwood's transform](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/124930/165773 &quot;what's this?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;_What traits to look for in &quot;outside&quot; career fields in order to leverage programming experience_ - stuff like that.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need something, wording to effectively _repel_&lt;sup&gt; 1&lt;/sup&gt; answers like &quot;oh our company has a BA/QA/PM position opened, question is 10 years old, are you still interested in a new career?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need wording that would allow connecting different answers into some larger picture that makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Question wording would ideally allow reader to connect advice like &quot;go QA&quot;, &quot;go BA&quot;, &quot;assess your current skill set&quot;, &quot;decide between fields involving some minor coding, or dealing with programmers, or dealing with software product / process&quot; - to buid something bigger on it, instead of leaving it lay as an unsorted heap of minor ideas.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _repel_ garbage answers - one sure can not 100% protect a question from getting garbage answers. But at least try to phrase the question so that you can come to Meta, say _&quot;Here's the question, heres the answer, I don't feel like the answer is OK&quot;_ and have a good chance of garbage being downvoted by active community members who happen to read your post. Fair enough?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10258" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3835" RevisionGUID="c759f054-12f4-47eb-8f09-3d398032da89" CreationDate="2012-07-27T15:53:01.563" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="&gt; ...this question &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158341/average-career-programmer-with-no-passion-try-harder-or-try-related-it-field&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;hellip; and I think such a canonical-form question should exist here on programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To reopen above question and to have its answers converge into useful _canon_ instead of diverging into garbage bits of unrelated advice, consider passing it through an [Atwood's transform](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/124930/165773 &quot;what's this?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;_What traits to look for in &quot;outside&quot; career fields in order to leverage programming experience_ - stuff like that.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need something, some wording to effectively _repel_&lt;sup&gt; 1&lt;/sup&gt; answers like &quot;oh our company has a BA/QA/PM position opened, question is 10 years old, are you still interested in a new career?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need wording that would allow connecting different answers into some larger picture that makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Question wording would ideally allow reader to connect advice like &quot;go QA&quot;, &quot;go BA&quot;, &quot;assess your current skill set&quot;, &quot;decide between fields involving some minor coding, or dealing with programmers, or dealing with software product / process&quot; - to build something bigger on it, instead of leaving it lay as an unsorted heap of minor ideas.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _repel_ garbage answers - one sure can not 100% protect a question from getting garbage answers. But at least try to phrase the question so that you can come to Meta, say _&quot;Here's the question, here's the answer, I don't feel like the answer is OK&quot;_ and have a good chance of garbage being downvoted by active community members who happen to read your post. Fair enough?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10259" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3835" RevisionGUID="080fb869-54f7-4744-94ea-7b9c1b475e81" CreationDate="2012-07-27T21:29:13.300" UserId="31260" Comment="Atwood's transform += example" Text="&gt; ...this question &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158341/average-career-programmer-with-no-passion-try-harder-or-try-related-it-field&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;hellip; and I think such a canonical-form question should exist here on programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To reopen above question and to have its answers converge into useful _canon_ instead of diverging into garbage bits of unrelated advice, consider passing it through an [Atwood's transform](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/124930/165773 &quot;what's this?&quot;)&lt;sup&gt; 1&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;_What traits to look for in &quot;outside&quot; career fields in order to leverage programming experience_ - stuff like that.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need something, some wording to effectively _repel_&lt;sup&gt; 2&lt;/sup&gt; answers like &quot;oh our company has a BA/QA/PM position opened, question is 10 years old, are you still interested in a new career?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need wording that would allow connecting different answers into some larger picture that makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Question wording would ideally allow reader to connect advice like &quot;go QA&quot;, &quot;go BA&quot;, &quot;assess your current skill set&quot;, &quot;decide between fields involving some minor coding, or dealing with programmers, or dealing with software product / process&quot; - to build something bigger on it, instead of leaving it lay as an unsorted heap of minor ideas.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _Atwood's transform_ - here is a recent example for the reference: [a question at Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/posts/2799/revisions &quot;How can I tell if my shyness is an issue at a workplace?&quot;), revisions 3 through 5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; _repel_ garbage answers - one sure can not 100% protect a question from getting garbage answers. But at least try to phrase the question so that you can come to Meta, say _&quot;Here's the question, here's the answer, I don't feel like the answer is OK&quot;_ and have a good chance of garbage being downvoted by active community members who happen to read your post. Fair enough?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10260" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3835" RevisionGUID="626b5e92-9286-4dd6-9f92-604cac1c3c51" CreationDate="2012-07-27T22:50:57.440" UserId="31260" Comment="added 10 characters in body" Text="&gt; ...this question &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158341/average-career-programmer-with-no-passion-try-harder-or-try-related-it-field&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;hellip; and I think such a canonical-form question should exist here on programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To reopen / rewrite above question and to have its answers converge into useful _canon_ instead of diverging into garbage bits of unrelated advice, consider passing it through an [Atwood's transform](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/124930/165773 &quot;what's this?&quot;)&lt;sup&gt; 1&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;_What traits to look for in &quot;outside&quot; career fields in order to leverage programming experience_ - stuff like that.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need something, some wording to effectively _repel_&lt;sup&gt; 2&lt;/sup&gt; answers like &quot;oh our company has a BA/QA/PM position opened, question is 10 years old, are you still interested in a new career?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need wording that would allow connecting different answers into some larger picture that makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Question wording would ideally allow reader to connect advice like &quot;go QA&quot;, &quot;go BA&quot;, &quot;assess your current skill set&quot;, &quot;decide between fields involving some minor coding, or dealing with programmers, or dealing with software product / process&quot; - to build something bigger on it, instead of leaving it lay as an unsorted heap of minor ideas.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _Atwood's transform_ - here is a recent example for the reference: [a question at Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/posts/2799/revisions &quot;How can I tell if my shyness is an issue at a workplace?&quot;), revisions 3 through 5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; _repel_ garbage answers - one sure can not 100% protect a question from getting garbage answers. But at least try to phrase the question so that you can come to Meta, say _&quot;Here's the question, here's the answer, I don't feel like the answer is OK&quot;_ and have a good chance of garbage being downvoted by active community members who happen to read your post. Fair enough?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10261" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3836" RevisionGUID="bd6cae43-a147-4c4b-9448-7d328b26807d" CreationDate="2012-07-28T07:22:04.507" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Programmers.SE, we need to talk.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've had a rough couple of years, what with being originally a place to ask anything and everything and having to shape up. I get that it's annoying to still see off-topic question or questions that are unanswerable day in and day out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that's no excuse for the excessively rude and offensive comments and answers that currently happen on [questions like these](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/158554/8). Questions like that aren't great: they're probably off-topic. But when we have users with literally thousands of reputation leaving comments like the now-deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No thanks, I'm not your [expletive deleted].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And answers [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/158558/8) that link to extremely condescending and overtly hostile [GIFs like these](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LvpOO.gif), we have completely lost our way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me be clear: we make the internet a worse place when stuff like this happens. We make our site look like trash.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, stop it. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. Vote to close, flag, down-vote, or leave a polite comment explaining to the user where they went wrong and just *move on.* If you find yourself unable to resist leaving a snarky or hostile comment on a question or answer you don't like, I humbly suggest you do what I did: take a break from the site. It'll still be here when you come back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Kicking off the Summer of Love](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/07/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Etiquette for posting civil and informative comments](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/138173/etiquette-for-posting-civil-and-informative-comments/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10262" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3836" RevisionGUID="bd6cae43-a147-4c4b-9448-7d328b26807d" CreationDate="2012-07-28T07:22:04.507" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Programmers.SE and the Summer of Love" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10263" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3836" RevisionGUID="bd6cae43-a147-4c4b-9448-7d328b26807d" CreationDate="2012-07-28T07:22:04.507" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|discussion|comments|etiquette|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10264" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3836" RevisionGUID="b1ecf23e-ac42-410b-a452-6bf5c9e4ede2" CreationDate="2012-07-28T07:47:48.077" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|comments|etiquette|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10265" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3836" RevisionGUID="8b741586-026e-4833-aafa-7144001423a2" CreationDate="2012-07-28T08:10:33.207" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/229126685331709952" />
  <row Id="10266" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3780" RevisionGUID="cae7cba4-771b-4fcf-b0c1-859fcb753af1" CreationDate="2012-07-28T08:44:37.727" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|featured|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10267" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3777" RevisionGUID="6c597003-801f-4a3f-ba46-5ded98734e24" CreationDate="2012-07-28T08:45:46.273" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10268" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3836" RevisionGUID="230d8e79-90b3-4ae1-a492-04d29dcac771" CreationDate="2012-07-28T08:47:41.280" UserId="25936" Comment="added 139 characters in body" Text="Programmers.SE, we need to talk.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've had a rough couple of years, what with being originally a place to ask anything and everything and having to shape up. I get that it's annoying to still see off-topic question or questions that are unanswerable day in and day out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that's no excuse for the excessively rude and offensive comments and answers that currently happen on [questions like these](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/158554/8). Questions like that aren't great: they're probably off-topic. But when we have users with literally thousands of reputation leaving comments like the now-deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No thanks, I'm not your [expletive deleted].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And answers [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/158558/8) that link to extremely condescending and overtly hostile [GIFs like these](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LvpOO.gif), we have completely lost our way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me be clear: we make the internet a worse place when stuff like this happens. We make our site look like trash.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, stop it. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. Vote to close, flag, down-vote, or leave a polite comment explaining to the user where they went wrong and just *move on.* If you find yourself unable to resist leaving a snarky or hostile comment on a question or answer you don't like, I humbly suggest you do what I did: take a break from the site. It'll still be here when you come back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Kicking off the Summer of Love](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/07/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Etiquette for posting civil and informative comments](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/138173/etiquette-for-posting-civil-and-informative-comments/)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3626/what-are-some-examples-of-good-guiding-comments-to-leave-users-to-help-underst" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10269" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3626" RevisionGUID="a8daae6d-756b-4edc-a827-a7290b276948" CreationDate="2012-07-28T08:48:27.707" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderation|comments|etiquette|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10270" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3836" RevisionGUID="0ec8e88f-2c0c-496b-83ad-52297217c7fe" CreationDate="2012-07-28T12:52:08.780" UserId="31260" Comment="quoted the referred question to avoid link rot in case if it gets deleted" Text="Programmers.SE, we need to talk.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've had a rough couple of years, what with being originally a place to ask anything and everything and having to shape up. I get that it's annoying to still see off-topic question or questions that are unanswerable day in and day out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that's no excuse for the excessively rude and offensive comments and answers that currently happen on [questions like these](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/158554/8).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Write a program that displays the result of dividing two numbers and displays the remainder. Do the calculation and display in the same method, which is a separate method from the main() method?&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like that aren't great: they're probably off-topic. But when we have users with literally thousands of reputation leaving comments like the now-deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No thanks, I'm not your [expletive deleted].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And answers [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/158558/8) that link to extremely condescending and overtly hostile [GIFs like these](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LvpOO.gif), we have completely lost our way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me be clear: we make the internet a worse place when stuff like this happens. We make our site look like trash.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, stop it. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. Vote to close, flag, down-vote, or leave a polite comment explaining to the user where they went wrong and just *move on.* If you find yourself unable to resist leaving a snarky or hostile comment on a question or answer you don't like, I humbly suggest you do what I did: take a break from the site. It'll still be here when you come back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Kicking off the Summer of Love](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/07/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Etiquette for posting civil and informative comments](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/138173/etiquette-for-posting-civil-and-informative-comments/)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3626/what-are-some-examples-of-good-guiding-comments-to-leave-users-to-help-underst" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10271" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="3836" RevisionGUID="59553187-c96a-41dd-b387-c12403bc38fd" CreationDate="2012-07-28T13:23:10.847" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="Rollback to [230d8e79-90b3-4ae1-a492-04d29dcac771]" Text="Programmers.SE, we need to talk.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've had a rough couple of years, what with being originally a place to ask anything and everything and having to shape up. I get that it's annoying to still see off-topic question or questions that are unanswerable day in and day out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that's no excuse for the excessively rude and offensive comments and answers that currently happen on [questions like these](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/158554/8). Questions like that aren't great: they're probably off-topic. But when we have users with literally thousands of reputation leaving comments like the now-deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No thanks, I'm not your [expletive deleted].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And answers [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/158558/8) that link to extremely condescending and overtly hostile [GIFs like these](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LvpOO.gif), we have completely lost our way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me be clear: we make the internet a worse place when stuff like this happens. We make our site look like trash.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, stop it. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. Vote to close, flag, down-vote, or leave a polite comment explaining to the user where they went wrong and just *move on.* If you find yourself unable to resist leaving a snarky or hostile comment on a question or answer you don't like, I humbly suggest you do what I did: take a break from the site. It'll still be here when you come back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Kicking off the Summer of Love](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/07/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Etiquette for posting civil and informative comments](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/138173/etiquette-for-posting-civil-and-informative-comments/)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3626/what-are-some-examples-of-good-guiding-comments-to-leave-users-to-help-underst" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10272" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3635" RevisionGUID="b4512087-555b-4f56-9be0-017b49b4197b" CreationDate="2012-07-28T17:51:14.507" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1522 characters in body" Text="**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After discussing with The Workplace moderators, and given the positive feedback both this and the [Meta Workplace discussion][1] received, I went ahead and updated our [off topic list][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is **not about**...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check out [The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/) instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementation issues or programming tools (ask on [Stack Overflow](http://www.stackoverflow.com/) instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including [which technology is better](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [career advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590), salary or compensation&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; For answers to common programming career advice questions, please see &quot;[Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/)&quot; by Patrick McKenzie.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt; If you are still seeing the old FAQ, it's caching. It's always caching...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now our off topic list is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the topics from the list that the Workplace welcomes are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - office politics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which I think should be combined in one item:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, career advice, office politics, résumé help (check out The Workplace instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including which technology is better,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've re-ordered the items, putting the two we have alternative suggestions for at the top, and the rest in order of occurrence. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/274/would-we-want-to-be-mentioned-in-the-programmers-faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10273" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3632" RevisionGUID="9365363d-8033-4060-95c5-3b6e930b178b" CreationDate="2012-07-28T17:52:09.653" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|faq-contents|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10274" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3837" RevisionGUID="7fcf4d94-94d0-4333-aafb-2f781341b754" CreationDate="2012-07-29T06:27:34.160" UserId="1204" Text="While I'm all for civil behavior, if someone has the audacity to post a copy-paste of their homework assignment, they deserve whatever negative response they get.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, responding negatively is just a waste of time.  These people don't care how you react; they're looking for the one guy that's stupid enough to post an answer, but smart enough to post the correct one.  They're throwing spaghetti against the wall, just like a spammer.  In that regard, they are no better than a spammer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A better response is to cast a moderator flag with a custom explanation, like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Request for speedy deletion: this question is a copy-paste of a homework assignmment." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10275" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3837" RevisionGUID="d6284605-5cb9-41fb-b88e-9c90dc9de660" CreationDate="2012-07-29T06:56:22.453" UserId="1204" Comment="added 49 characters in body; added 40 characters in body" Text="While I'm all for civil behavior, if someone has the audacity to post a copy-paste of their homework assignment, they deserve whatever negative response they get.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, responding negatively is just a waste of time.  These people don't care how you react; they're looking for the one guy that's stupid enough to post an answer, but smart enough to post the correct one.  Consequently, your negative comment will have no effect on the OP, and will only succeed in irritating your fellow community members and alienating new visitors to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A better response is to downvote the question, and cast a moderator flag with a custom explanation, like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Request for speedy deletion: this question is a copy-paste of a homework assignmment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10276" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3837" RevisionGUID="0684f869-d559-43c3-8c0f-09bf3ac04968" CreationDate="2012-07-29T07:05:25.860" UserId="1204" Comment="added 68 characters in body" Text="While I'm all for civil behavior, if someone has the audacity to post a copy-paste of their homework assignment, they deserve whatever negative response they get.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, responding negatively is just a waste of time.  These people don't care how you react; they're looking for the one guy that's stupid enough to post an answer, but smart enough to post the correct one.  Consequently, your negative comment will have no effect on the OP, and will only succeed in irritating your fellow community members and alienating new visitors to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A better response is to downvote the question, and cast a moderator flag with a custom explanation, like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Request for speedy deletion: this question is a copy-paste of a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; homework assignmment, with no effort on the part of the OP to do the assignment himself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10277" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3837" RevisionGUID="d4c34ff1-ccf6-4a6c-be5c-3e7d586d6f82" CreationDate="2012-07-29T14:39:37.400" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 179 characters in body" Text="Responding negatively is just a waste of time.  These people don't care how you react; they're looking for the one guy that's stupid enough to post an answer, but smart enough to post the correct one.  Consequently, your negative comment will have no effect on the OP, and will only succeed in irritating your fellow community members and alienating new visitors to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A better response is to downvote the question, and cast a moderator flag with a custom explanation, like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Request for speedy deletion: this question is a copy-paste of a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; homework assignmment, with no effort on the part of the OP to do the assignment himself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10281" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3836" RevisionGUID="d6283c22-86c6-441d-9737-eb9358426572" CreationDate="2012-07-29T19:36:40.273" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 1854 characters in body; added 114 characters in body; added 181 characters in body" Text="Programmers.SE, we need to talk.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've had a rough couple of years, what with being originally a place to ask anything and everything and having to shape up. I get that it's annoying to still see off-topic question or questions that are unanswerable day in and day out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that's no excuse for the excessively rude and offensive comments and answers that currently happen on [questions like these](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/158554/8). Questions like that aren't great: they're probably off-topic. But when we have users with literally thousands of reputation leaving comments like the now-deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No thanks, I'm not your [expletive deleted].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And answers [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/158558/8) that link to extremely condescending and overtly hostile [GIFs like these](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LvpOO.gif), we have completely lost our way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't an isolated incident, either: hostile comments and answers like these happen all the time, and what appears to be increasing frequency, from people with enough reputation to know better:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [If I had a quarter for every time I've seen posts like this, I wouldn't need my job. Son, I suggest you learn to program if you want to create one.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154430/looking-for-a-programmer#comment294513_154430)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [A young, good looking developer could always work as a stripper but even then it is not a surefire way.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/152123/how-can-a-developer-realize-the-full-value-of-his-work#comment289122_152123) (+2)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [this is a rant ( there is not answerable question ) by someone with an inflated ego at best, and completely off topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/152123/how-can-a-developer-realize-the-full-value-of-his-work#comment289123_152123) (+5)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [There really isn't a question here, if under the thinly veiled bias and flamebait there is actually a small semblance of a real question then it not constructive and inviting of debate. And besides security being a non-issue - You keep believing that and high price consultants will be making bank for a long time cleaning up the mess.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/149956/stored-procedures-out-of-style#comment284230_149956) (+3)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [IMHO, if indeed it was asked like you quote it, this is a stupid question, and that should be the correct answer.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132905/situations-where-22-does-not-necessarily-equal-4#comment248793_132905)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [nice rant, now - where is the question?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/157143/dealing-with-technically-ignorant-and-apathetic-bosses-and-colleagues#comment299686_157143) (+1)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Answer that links to LMGTFY and Guru.com](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/153916/8) (+1)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Anything wrong with Google today? &quot;Javadoc for C++&quot; brings excellent results. ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155146/javadoc-for-c#comment295311_155146) (+3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me be clear: we make the internet a worse place when stuff like this happens. We make our site look like trash.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, stop it. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. Vote to close, flag, down-vote, or leave a polite comment explaining to the user where they went wrong and just *move on.* If you find yourself unable to resist leaving a snarky or hostile comment on a question or answer you don't like, I humbly suggest you do what I did: take a break from the site. It'll still be here when you come back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Kicking off the Summer of Love](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/07/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Etiquette for posting civil and informative comments](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/138173/etiquette-for-posting-civil-and-informative-comments/)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3626/what-are-some-examples-of-good-guiding-comments-to-leave-users-to-help-underst" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10282" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3839" RevisionGUID="6faf1114-1d45-4bbe-999f-2b739289c5c2" CreationDate="2012-07-30T03:04:58.100" UserId="12611" Text="Is this question on-topic here on Programmers SE: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/157531/issues-tracker-for-both-developers-and-end-users&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) doesn't explicitly disallow such questions nor does it seem to explicitly allow them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, shopping recommendations are considered off-topic for the Stack Exchange engines but some allowances are made for them if the question asks how to make a good shopping decision rather than simply crowdsourcing the community and letting random people on the Internet make a decision for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Every question and answer ultimately should be about teaching and learning — yes, even the shopping ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I noticed the question has been here for a week, is upvoted, and has no close votes on it. So, what's the verdict. Should this be closed? If it's on-topic, why? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10283" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3839" RevisionGUID="6faf1114-1d45-4bbe-999f-2b739289c5c2" CreationDate="2012-07-30T03:04:58.100" UserId="12611" Text="Are questions about issue tracker recommendations on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10284" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3839" RevisionGUID="6faf1114-1d45-4bbe-999f-2b739289c5c2" CreationDate="2012-07-30T03:04:58.100" UserId="12611" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10285" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3837" RevisionGUID="837fadb0-8cbb-4a06-a0db-2464d4bf6f40" CreationDate="2012-07-30T03:19:42.560" UserId="12611" Comment="dammit, sorry. I was confused. Yannis was quoting you. I rolled this back.... " Text="Responding negatively is just a waste of time.  These people don't care how you react; they're looking for the one guy that's stupid enough to post an answer, but smart enough to post the correct one.  Consequently, your negative comment will have no effect on the OP, and will only succeed in irritating your fellow community members and alienating new visitors to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A better response is to downvote the question, and cast a moderator flag with a custom explanation, like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Request for speedy deletion: this question is a copy-paste of a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; homework assignmment, with no effort on the part of the OP to do the assignment himself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10286" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3840" RevisionGUID="f4f3b3d2-1287-4f6a-b141-a174e6af9bb6" CreationDate="2012-07-30T03:57:19.440" UserId="1204" Text="It appears that the question is asked specifically enough so that it can be answered definitively; i.e. there are enough requirements specified in the question so that it won't generate an unbounded list of people's favorite Issue Trackers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shopping questions of the &quot;What is your favorite thing&quot; are definitely off-topic, but if a user can ask a question in such a way that they are asking *how* to make their shopping decision rather than asking *what* thing they should choose, then it's generally allowed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10288" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3837" RevisionGUID="6f580c60-ea3b-471e-bd1c-03f5fe3c18be" CreationDate="2012-07-30T12:15:01.310" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo correction" Text="Responding negatively is just a waste of time.  These people don't care how you react; they're looking for the one guy that's stupid enough to post an answer, but smart enough to post the correct one.  Consequently, your negative comment will have no effect on the OP, and will only succeed in irritating your fellow community members and alienating new visitors to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A better response is to downvote the question, and cast a moderator flag with a custom explanation, like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Request for speedy deletion: this question is a copy-paste of a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; homework assignment, with no effort on the part of the OP to do the assignment himself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10289" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3841" RevisionGUID="b4658824-7313-4add-a652-73a9e172ef8a" CreationDate="2012-07-30T12:29:01.073" UserId="41381" Text="I think you, and a lot of the others focused on the &quot;summer of love,&quot; are suffering for confirmation bias. You believe there is a problem with rudeness, so you go out of your way to find it. There is always going to be a handful of rude people among the many, nothing can be done to stop that. This &quot;rudeness epidemic&quot; is something that should be handled by the moderators on a per user basis, creating some big community with hunt of rudeness will not end well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10290" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3842" RevisionGUID="1c5514a4-ee0d-4c5d-8a32-c2271489d13d" CreationDate="2012-07-30T13:12:39.827" UserId="41381" Text="If you classify a bug tracker as a programming tool its off topic, if the question wants recommendations of which bug tracker is best its not constructive. Keeping track of bugs is art of software development so it should be possible to make an on topic question about bug trackers, but it would be difficult to make it constructive. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10291" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3843" RevisionGUID="cd082a85-bac8-4b93-a97a-9564c1456cc3" CreationDate="2012-07-30T13:43:35.787" UserId="1130" Text="Thank you for bring this up on meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am constantly seeing rude, snarky, condescending, and even hostile comments like these all over Programmers, and appreciate you taking the time to bring this issue to everyone's attention. Its not all users, but its enough users to make a noticeable difference in the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I couldn't agree more with this&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. Vote to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; close, flag, down-vote, or leave a polite comment explaining to the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; user where they went wrong and just move on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're actually interested in helping the user understand their problem so they can correct it, that's fine. But if you want to comment just to make a point and never see the question again, refrain from commenting altogether.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, here's another bit of advice stolen from [Arquade's Meta post on rude comments][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; #How should one react to rude comments?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't engage. **Don't upvote the rude comment**.  Remember even if a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rude comment is funny to you it may be irritating to others. Telling&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off the rude user will only make matters worse. If the rude comment&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also says something useful (e.g. &quot;Hey stupid butt, your question is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off topic&quot;) consider adding a *polite* comment that contains&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *constructive* information instead and flag the rude comment for removal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And a [comment][2] below explaining why you don't upvote rude comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&quot;Don't upvote the rude comment.&quot;** I feel this is really important. When we do that, we're pretty much giving tacit approval to whatever&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been posted and sending the message that the community approves of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this type of behavior&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of people I see posting questions on here are asking for help, and I hate seeing them turned away with sarcasm, rudeness, and a condescending or elitist attitude. I don't think SE would succeed if it wasn't for the millions of people that volunteer their time to help others solve their problems, and having these sort of comments all over the site, with frequent upvotes, is a good way to make volunteers think this site is not for them, and to leave the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also stolen from Arqade's post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; #Is there anything I can do to get rid of rude comments?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Just flag them; there's a little flag icon to the left of a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Click it and select &quot;rude or offensive&quot; in the menu that pops up.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The comment will be flagged for moderator attention, a moderator can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; remove the comment if they agree the post is rude/offensive. However&#xD;&#xA;&gt; if 3 or more users total flag the same comment as rude, it will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [automatically be deleted (see this comment for the formula)][4]. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the comment is very high scoring it might take a couple extra flags to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; automatically delete, but **it only takes 3 flags to delete most&#xD;&#xA;&gt; comments**.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that nothing bad can happen to you or even the poster of the rude&#xD;&#xA;&gt; comment when you flag. These flags are anonymous. By flagging a single&#xD;&#xA;&gt; comment you're not getting anyone into trouble, you're just helping&#xD;&#xA;&gt; keep the site a clean, civil place. If you feel someone is being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; persistently and problematically rude, flag one of their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; posts/comments (or one of your own posts) with an &quot;other&quot; flag and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; explain the situation; a moderator can privately contact the user&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about persistent rudeness.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[tl;dr][5]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all&#xD;&#xA; - Don't upvote rude comments&#xD;&#xA; - If you see rude comments, flag them as rude/offensive for removal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/a/5046/8462&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/5045/how-should-we-deal-with-rude-comments/5046#comment14552_5046&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CkmHj.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/138168/reduce-the-threshold-for-comment-deletion-with-flags#comment388193_138168&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Too_long;_didn%27t_read" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10292" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3841" RevisionGUID="b9fd6086-c9c3-48f0-a31e-5f5dcbde3712" CreationDate="2012-07-30T15:19:46.593" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="I think you, and a lot of the others focused on the &quot;summer of love,&quot; are suffering from confirmation bias. You believe there is a problem with rudeness, so you go out of your way to find it. There is always going to be a handful of rude people among the many, nothing can be done to stop that. This &quot;rudeness epidemic&quot; is something that should be handled by the moderators on a per user basis, creating some big community with hunt of rudeness will not end well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10293" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3837" RevisionGUID="88ece3e6-4566-4e0c-8e7c-43c67446d94e" CreationDate="2012-07-30T16:23:49.530" UserId="1204" Comment="added 61 characters in body; deleted 39 characters in body; added 19 characters in body" Text="Responding negatively to those folks who copy paste their homework assignments is just a waste of time.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These people don't care how you react; they're looking for the one guy that will actually do their homework for them (some people will).  Consequently, your negative comment will have no effect on the OP, and will only succeed in irritating your fellow community members and alienating new visitors to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A better response is to downvote the question, and cast a moderator flag with a custom explanation, like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Request for speedy deletion: this question is a copy-paste of a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; homework assignment, with no effort on the part of the OP to do the assignment himself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10294" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3844" RevisionGUID="ac0372a0-b5ca-4710-bfaa-555e141135f1" CreationDate="2012-07-30T17:44:30.697" UserId="32353" Text="Can Workplace not close questions about general workplace issues, career advice, office politics, or résumé help that are specific to programming then?  Because if they consider those off topic we should consider them on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm posting as an answer so people can vote on it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10295" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3845" RevisionGUID="03a76127-5201-4252-a59c-3a1d19c875ac" CreationDate="2012-07-30T21:08:40.193" UserId="32262" Text="I want to ask a question regarding best practises for working with Mercurial within a small team.  This is more about strategy for managing repositories rather than commands for using Mercurial.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a question better suited to Programmers or SO?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10296" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3845" RevisionGUID="03a76127-5201-4252-a59c-3a1d19c875ac" CreationDate="2012-07-30T21:08:40.193" UserId="32262" Text="Are questions about mercurial working practises on topic for Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10297" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3845" RevisionGUID="03a76127-5201-4252-a59c-3a1d19c875ac" CreationDate="2012-07-30T21:08:40.193" UserId="32262" Text="|discussion|support|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10298" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3846" RevisionGUID="90fb4f40-07b2-4504-8a45-3877b32fbe0a" CreationDate="2012-07-30T23:23:58.060" UserId="4" Text="If it's about strategies, policies, procedures, or methodologies, I'd ask it here on Programmers. The practices on how to use Mercurial, or any version control system, falls under the broad category of configuration management, which is a practice of software engineering, which is explicitly listed as on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if it involves deployment of a Mercurial environment, tool support, or how to use Mercurial and any supporting tools such as IDE integration, I'd suggest StackOverflow as the place to ask, since programming tool questions are on-topic there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10299" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3846" RevisionGUID="f58eacd7-c011-446d-91d9-77bae2292031" CreationDate="2012-07-31T08:55:59.417" UserId="12611" Comment="Peter Mortensen brought it to my attention that &quot;Stack Overflow&quot; is two words as per the trademark guidance:  http://stackexchange.com/legal/trademark-guidance" Text="If it's about strategies, policies, procedures, or methodologies, I'd ask it here on Programmers. The practices on how to use Mercurial, or any version control system, falls under the broad category of configuration management, which is a practice of software engineering, which is explicitly listed as on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if it involves deployment of a Mercurial environment, tool support, or how to use Mercurial and any supporting tools such as IDE integration, I'd suggest Stack Overflow as the place to ask, since programming tool questions are on-topic there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10300" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3847" RevisionGUID="646b6866-0ad9-4ee6-9d25-38ebf1e99b56" CreationDate="2012-07-31T12:15:50.857" UserId="41381" Text="In addition to what Thomas said make sure to keep the scope of the question fairly limited or there is good potential for it being closed as not constructive or not a real question, some topics involved with source control are borderline holy wars.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;simply asking how best to use Mercurial for a small team, is not a good question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10301" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3845" RevisionGUID="60f3b91b-5333-4d3a-95e6-4d015b20d5a5" CreationDate="2012-07-31T12:55:13.443" UserId="32262" Comment="added 187 characters in body" Text="I want to ask a question regarding best practises for working with Mercurial within a small team.  This is more about strategy for managing repositories rather than commands for using Mercurial.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a question better suited to Programmers or SO?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For reference, this is the question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158847/recommended-methodology-for-working-with-shared-libraries-and-mercurial#comment303129_158847" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10302" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3627" RevisionGUID="44616129-bc95-4ec5-b0fc-aae920603631" CreationDate="2012-07-31T14:57:12.553" UserId="34364" Comment="added 195 characters in body" Text="&gt;Please don't add &quot;thanks&quot; as answers. Invest some time in the site and you will gain sufficient privileges to upvote answers you like, which is the Programmers Meta way of saying thank you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is really a comment, not an answer. With a bit more rep, you will be able to post comments. For the moment I've added the comment for you, and I'm flagging this post for deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please use the Post answer button only for actual answers. You should modify your original question to add additional information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a NEW question, please ask it by clicking the Ask Question button. If you have sufficient reputation, you may upvote the question. Alternatively, &quot;star&quot; it as a favorite and you will be notified of any new answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [this script][1]. For more info, check out [Stack Apps][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackapps.com/questions/2116/autoreviewcomments-pro-forma-comments-for-se&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.stackapps.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10303" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3837" RevisionGUID="d4aef605-8662-41a5-9d05-f98e0e0832de" CreationDate="2012-07-31T15:01:30.323" UserId="31260" Comment="clarification copied into answer from comments // http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3836/programmers-se-and-the-summer-of-love/3837#comment10757_3837" Text="Responding negatively to those folks who copy paste their homework assignments is just a waste of time.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These people don't care how you react; they're looking for the one guy that will actually do their homework for them (some people will).  Consequently, your negative comment will have no effect on the OP, and will only succeed in irritating your fellow community members and alienating new visitors to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A better response is to downvote the question, and cast a moderator flag with a custom explanation, like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Request for speedy deletion: this question is a copy-paste of a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; homework assignment, with no effort on the part of the OP to do the assignment himself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;As an example, I cast a flag with this exact wording on the copy/paste homework assignment originally linked. Yannis deleted it ([see his answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3838)).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10304" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3835" RevisionGUID="f898d341-716a-4e95-b283-62cc6db16d22" CreationDate="2012-07-31T17:39:23.553" UserId="31260" Comment="http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/199/possible-career-transitions-for-a-seasoned-software-developer" Text="&gt; ...this question &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158341/average-career-programmer-with-no-passion-try-harder-or-try-related-it-field&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;hellip; and I think such a canonical-form question should exist here on programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To reopen / rewrite above question and to have its answers converge into useful _canon_ instead of diverging into garbage bits of unrelated advice, consider passing it through an [Atwood's transform](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/124930/165773 &quot;what's this?&quot;)&lt;sup&gt; 1&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;_What traits to look for in &quot;outside&quot; career fields in order to leverage programming experience_ - stuff like that.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need something, some wording to effectively _repel_&lt;sup&gt; 2&lt;/sup&gt; answers like &quot;oh our company has a BA/QA/PM position opened, question is 10 years old, are you still interested in a new career?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need wording that would allow connecting different answers into some larger picture that makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Question wording would ideally allow reader to connect advice like &quot;go QA&quot;, &quot;go BA&quot;, &quot;assess your current skill set&quot;, &quot;decide between fields involving some minor coding, or dealing with programmers, or dealing with software product / process&quot; - to build something bigger on it, instead of leaving it lay as an unsorted heap of minor ideas.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _Atwood's transform_ - here is a recent example for the reference: [a question at Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/posts/2799/revisions &quot;How can I tell if my shyness is an issue at a workplace?&quot;), revisions 3 through 5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; _repel_ garbage answers - one sure can not 100% protect a question from getting garbage answers. But at least try to phrase the question so that you can come to Meta, say _&quot;Here's the question, here's the answer, I don't feel like the answer is OK&quot;_ and have a good chance of garbage being downvoted by active community members who happen to read your post. Fair enough?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Incidentally, I've found an older question at _Workplace_ that sounds pretty close to what I would expect of &quot;canonical&quot; question of this kind:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Possible career transitions for a seasoned software developer?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/199/168)**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have been a software developer for 11 years...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...I am thinking of making a career change - ideally moving somewhere my technical skills would still be beneficial in some shape or form...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are the steps I can take to figure out what I really like and what can make an interesting career going further?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10305" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3848" RevisionGUID="1828d28a-f10c-484a-9c31-738c82478064" CreationDate="2012-07-31T20:57:09.657" UserDisplayName="user7519" Text="Why is the question [Pros and cons of PHP vs C,C++ as language in a programming interview? [closed]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57497/pros-and-cons-of-php-vs-c-c-as-language-in-a-programming-interview) locked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean it is one thing to close it, I agree with that, it meets at least 3 criteria for closing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Locking it means it can't be down voted off the front page! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also can't commented on or edited to correct mistakes or make it a better question for re-opening, even though I doubt that would happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is going to stay locked, it should just be deleted as it is just noise on the front page, and has been for a long time seeing as the actual question and last edit is a over a year old!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10306" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3848" RevisionGUID="1828d28a-f10c-484a-9c31-738c82478064" CreationDate="2012-07-31T20:57:09.657" UserDisplayName="user7519" Text="Why is the referred to question locked?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10307" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3848" RevisionGUID="1828d28a-f10c-484a-9c31-738c82478064" CreationDate="2012-07-31T20:57:09.657" UserDisplayName="user7519" Text="|support|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10308" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3848" RevisionGUID="cb529315-2a70-480e-98d2-a4608a623dc3" CreationDate="2012-07-31T21:40:09.040" UserId="31260" Comment="http://i.stack.imgur.com/jixbb.png &quot;screen shot - question is locked&quot;" Text="Why is the question [Pros and cons of PHP vs C,C++ as language in a programming interview? [closed]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57497/pros-and-cons-of-php-vs-c-c-as-language-in-a-programming-interview) locked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean it is one thing to close it, I agree with that, it meets at least 3 criteria for closing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Locking it means it can't be down voted off the front page! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also can't commented on or edited to correct mistakes or make it a better question for re-opening, even though I doubt that would happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is going to stay locked, it should just be deleted as it is just noise on the front page, and has been for a long time seeing as the actual question and last edit is a over a year old!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/jixbb.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/jixbb.png &quot;screen shot - question is locked&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10309" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3849" RevisionGUID="d9efb3b4-6aa6-4217-982b-4fb3c7dd2dfe" CreationDate="2012-07-31T23:52:21.620" UserId="4" Text="I think this behavior might have to do with the migration being rejected. But the behavior is not that intuitive, and it might be something different. My understanding is that if a question is migrated and then closed on the receiving site, the migration is rejected. The question simply ends up closed on both sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10310" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3848" RevisionGUID="255dc831-5018-4a3b-8e88-fe9f721798fc" CreationDate="2012-08-01T05:15:37.997" UserDisplayName="user7519" Comment="edited tags; added 107 characters in body; edited title" Text="|support|bug|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10311" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3848" RevisionGUID="255dc831-5018-4a3b-8e88-fe9f721798fc" CreationDate="2012-08-01T05:15:37.997" UserDisplayName="user7519" Comment="edited tags; added 107 characters in body; edited title" Text="Why is the question [Pros and cons of PHP vs C,C++ as language in a programming interview? [closed]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57497/pros-and-cons-of-php-vs-c-c-as-language-in-a-programming-interview) locked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean it is one thing to close it, I agree with that, it meets at least 3 criteria for closing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Locking it means it can't be down voted off the front page! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also can't commented on or edited to correct mistakes or make it a better question for re-opening, even though I doubt that would happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is going to stay locked, it should just be deleted as it is just noise on the front page, and has been for a long time seeing as the actual question and last edit is a over a year old!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/jixbb.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears that this question only exists on programmers and not stackoverflow, at least I can't find it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/jixbb.png &quot;screen shot - question is locked&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10312" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3848" RevisionGUID="255dc831-5018-4a3b-8e88-fe9f721798fc" CreationDate="2012-08-01T05:15:37.997" UserDisplayName="user7519" Comment="edited tags; added 107 characters in body; edited title" Text="Question closed and locked but can't down vote to get off front page after a year?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10313" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3850" RevisionGUID="46545d9e-5afa-476c-bb25-bebb1a132f7c" CreationDate="2012-08-01T06:20:16.070" UserId="3530" Text="I know I can remove flags from individual posts (given enough rep) but I mean to flag the tag itself. For example, there is a tag called [evil](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/evil) for which I can't imagine any useful cohesion between various tagged posts as with, say, the c++ tag (and indeed, the three tagged posts do not have anything in common really)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10314" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3850" RevisionGUID="46545d9e-5afa-476c-bb25-bebb1a132f7c" CreationDate="2012-08-01T06:20:16.070" UserId="3530" Text="Is there a way to flag &quot;bad&quot; tags?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10315" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3850" RevisionGUID="46545d9e-5afa-476c-bb25-bebb1a132f7c" CreationDate="2012-08-01T06:20:16.070" UserId="3530" Text="|support|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10316" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3851" RevisionGUID="6c363957-0bb4-45d5-9821-552b2a3038fd" CreationDate="2012-08-01T07:12:55.963" UserId="12611" Text="If you find a tag that you think doesn't belong on the site, bring it to meta, as you've done. This will allow the community to *discuss* the tag and determine *why* it is used and if it has value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that said, I see no value in such a tag. A better tag might be [tag:ethics], since it's more general and applies to a specific segment of software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:ethics] has 92 questions in it. Clearly, it's the closer tag people think of when they post questions about moral or ethical right or wrongs in programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, [tag:evil] only has 3 questions in it, so it would be really easy to retag those 3 or remove the unwanted tag. Since only 500 reputation is needed to retag a question, this is something that you could do yourself. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10317" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3850" RevisionGUID="d51171c0-87e6-4ebc-96ac-201e80a1ab3a" CreationDate="2012-08-01T07:35:28.720" UserId="47" Comment="tag link syntax" Text="I know I can remove flags from individual posts (given enough rep) but I mean to flag the tag itself. For example, there is a tag called [tag:evil] for which I can't imagine any useful cohesion between various tagged posts as with, say, the c++ tag (and indeed, the three tagged posts do not have anything in common really)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10318" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3852" RevisionGUID="25633d8a-29c5-4c43-b5b7-0fd1a9453c98" CreationDate="2012-08-01T07:45:35.840" UserId="47" Text="The question was migrated over a year ago - March 2011 - so the stub has long been deleted, April 2011 in fact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd unlock the question if it were newer and potentially more constructive, but I don't any amount of editing can salvage it now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10319" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3852" RevisionGUID="f557818d-e8f2-4d3b-946c-e795cc3e20f9" CreationDate="2012-08-01T13:30:29.983" UserId="47" Comment="oops" Text="The question was migrated over a year ago - March 2011 - so the stub has long been deleted, April 2011 in fact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd unlock the question if it were newer and potentially more constructive, but I don't think any amount of editing can salvage it now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10320" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3853" RevisionGUID="e5074fb7-528a-442c-9cec-efe1c8682eac" CreationDate="2012-08-01T14:16:27.363" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="In addition, you can flag the question itself and point out the errant tag.  The flag will automatically get moderator attention whereas posting in meta requires a moderator to see the question thread.  Both work, a meta question isn't quite as direct." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10321" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3854" RevisionGUID="907b11dc-8866-4473-bb94-e41d0de5489c" CreationDate="2012-08-01T20:36:58.347" UserId="60557" Text="According to a discussion I had in the comments on [this SO question][1], it seems that asking for a list of book recommendations is verboten on Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site's FAQ gives me the opposite impression.  To me, as long as it's asking for recommendations a topic like the ones listed in the bullet list under &quot;What kind of questions can I ask here?&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - design patterns&#xD;&#xA; - developer testing&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies&#xD;&#xA; - freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;then it seems like that should be fine.  It seems to me like a constructive type of question, and doesn't seem to violate the guidelines on what counts as a &quot;constructive subjective question&quot;. A good book recommendation would include some explanation for why it's being recommended, which would make it right in line with the list of 6 characteristics to look for in the kinds of answers that a constructive subjective question should inspire.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently what's supposed to tell me that the opposite is true is the sentence, &quot;Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&quot;  That doesn't communicate it to me, either.  To me, asking about books related to a certain topic doesn't seem open-ended at all.  After all, there's a defined topic being asked about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'd like to suggest that the FAQ be clarified a bit.  Perhaps an extra bullet point could be added to the list of things a question should not be about up at the top of the page?  Perhaps omething along the lines of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Reccomendations for learning resources, technologies, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11766136/what-should-i-learn-to-be-a-better-enterprise-worthy-software-developer#comment15625113_11766136" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10322" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3854" RevisionGUID="907b11dc-8866-4473-bb94-e41d0de5489c" CreationDate="2012-08-01T20:36:58.347" UserId="60557" Text="Can the rules on book advice be clarified in the FAQ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10323" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3854" RevisionGUID="907b11dc-8866-4473-bb94-e41d0de5489c" CreationDate="2012-08-01T20:36:58.347" UserId="60557" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10324" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3855" RevisionGUID="b99563b9-434a-4548-a5de-22cc966b3d15" CreationDate="2012-08-01T21:38:17.973" UserId="41381" Text="Book suggestions are adequately outlined between the **What about suggestive questions** and the **What kind of questions should I not ask here** sections. The 6 suggested guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Book recommendations don't fit this based on experience of what answers they generate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again book recommendations to to have very short &quot;this book was good&quot; type answers and worse link only answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Book recommendations are generally OK on this point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Book recommendations fail this point as it is mostly opinion based answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Book recommendations fail this as well answers reflect popular opinion not anything that could be cited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Book recommendations are OK here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So 4 out of 6 of the guidelines are a no, furthermore there is [this][1] Stack Exchange blog post that further clarifies these guidelines, which is also linked in the FAQ. [There are some ways to post book recommendations though.][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2003/41381" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10325" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3856" RevisionGUID="6ee660e8-fe52-43f4-beea-ebbc7b371309" CreationDate="2012-08-01T21:39:16.883" UserId="60218" Text="I'm confused as to why my recent [question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159053/file-naming-conventions-for-javascript-multi-word-names) on naming conventions in JavaScript was closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot; The best explanation I can find in the closed notice and FAQ is that &quot;this question will likely solicit debate [or] arguments,&quot; which I'm guessing has something to do with the fact that people might have many different opinions on the &quot;proper&quot; way to name JavaScript files. I understand that naming conventions can be a subjective topic, since a convention is by definition an opinion, but I only asked this question after searching around the site and finding that there are plenty of other questions on naming conventions that have been upvoted and answered. Can someone please explain why my question is not constructive but other questions about naming conventions are?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10326" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3856" RevisionGUID="6ee660e8-fe52-43f4-beea-ebbc7b371309" CreationDate="2012-08-01T21:39:16.883" UserId="60218" Text="Question about naming conventions &quot;not constructive&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10327" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3856" RevisionGUID="6ee660e8-fe52-43f4-beea-ebbc7b371309" CreationDate="2012-08-01T21:39:16.883" UserId="60218" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10328" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3806" RevisionGUID="c38069d3-229d-42a5-bca2-f0b2b1c3534c" CreationDate="2012-08-01T22:03:55.760" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10329" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3854" RevisionGUID="5e661a60-9fe1-4318-a028-eb6044ad80c2" CreationDate="2012-08-01T22:11:24.923" UserId="31260" Comment="added 1 characters in body; edited tags" Text="According to a discussion I had in the comments on [this SO question][1], it seems that asking for a list of book recommendations is verboten on Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site's FAQ gives me the opposite impression.  To me, as long as it's asking for recommendations a topic like the ones listed in the bullet list under &quot;What kind of questions can I ask here?&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - design patterns&#xD;&#xA; - developer testing&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies&#xD;&#xA; - freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;then it seems like that should be fine.  It seems to me like a constructive type of question, and doesn't seem to violate the guidelines on what counts as a &quot;constructive subjective question&quot;. A good book recommendation would include some explanation for why it's being recommended, which would make it right in line with the list of 6 characteristics to look for in the kinds of answers that a constructive subjective question should inspire.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently what's supposed to tell me that the opposite is true is the sentence, &quot;Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&quot;  That doesn't communicate it to me, either.  To me, asking about books related to a certain topic doesn't seem open-ended at all.  After all, there's a defined topic being asked about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'd like to suggest that the FAQ be clarified a bit.  Perhaps an extra bullet point could be added to the list of things a question should not be about up at the top of the page?  Perhaps something along the lines of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Recommendations for learning resources, technologies, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11766136/what-should-i-learn-to-be-a-better-enterprise-worthy-software-developer#comment15625113_11766136" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10330" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3854" RevisionGUID="5e661a60-9fe1-4318-a028-eb6044ad80c2" CreationDate="2012-08-01T22:11:24.923" UserId="31260" Comment="added 1 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|feature-request|on-topic-definition|recommendations|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10331" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3857" RevisionGUID="23a91ac5-dbcd-4993-98ac-c4f2d85dcf24" CreationDate="2012-08-02T01:05:29.083" UserDisplayName="user7519" Text="The following question is just a thinly veiled attempt at advertising!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159087/where-lies-the-future-of-angularjs" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10332" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3857" RevisionGUID="23a91ac5-dbcd-4993-98ac-c4f2d85dcf24" CreationDate="2012-08-02T01:05:29.083" UserDisplayName="user7519" Text="Thinly veiled attempt at spam advertising!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10333" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3857" RevisionGUID="23a91ac5-dbcd-4993-98ac-c4f2d85dcf24" CreationDate="2012-08-02T01:05:29.083" UserDisplayName="user7519" Text="|support|spam|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10334" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3858" RevisionGUID="eb2ed158-0a2f-465b-8466-df54d0650ee9" CreationDate="2012-08-02T12:15:50.117" UserId="31260" Text="Wording smells too much promotional, making reader feel more like at an ad board:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The javascript framework **a-product** has made a great start. but I am just wondering if this is just another framework like so many already available in javascript. Is **a-product** a competitor of jQuery in a broader sense or can it be compared to lesser known libraies like knockout.js or backbone.js. Do you see yourself moving to **a-product** sometime soon leaving the one that you are already using. I have seen the hello world example on **a-product** page and they compare **a-product** with jquery. Do they mean to say that **a-product** is the future. What is the overall scope of **a-product** in a broader sense and do you see **a-product** replacing jQuery in the longer run.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deletion of question worded like above would be the right move." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10335" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3859" RevisionGUID="2555640e-2e2c-4c06-abb1-4dec05648f17" CreationDate="2012-08-02T14:10:15.790" UserId="101" Text="Questions on StackExchange sites need to be presented in such a way that there can be an answer that is &quot;the answer&quot;.  As I read the question, every possible answer to it would be equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question asks: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; how should I represent the separate words in the filename?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see how this can be answered where there aren't 15 different answers, giving 15 different opinions, all equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for other naming convention questions being valid, thanks for bringing them up, we'll go through them and clean up those that slipped through the cracks.  The fact that they exist on the site, doesn't make this one or any future questions more constructive." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10336" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3860" RevisionGUID="287dc93f-96ca-47ea-9ca2-7acab832cf5b" CreationDate="2012-08-02T14:29:07.420" UserId="1130" Text="I don't think it is. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP has been a member of Programmers for 8 months, and they seem to be questioning how the framework compares to other javascript frameworks, not raving about its capabilities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure it's badly written and probably should be closed, but I don't think its an advertisement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The javascript framework angularjs has made a great start. but I am&#xD;&#xA;&gt; just **wondering if this is just another framework** like so many&#xD;&#xA;&gt; already available in javascript. **Is angularjs a competitor of jQuery**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in a broader sense **or can it be compared to lesser known libraies**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; like knockout.js or backbone.js. Do you see yourself moving to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; angularjs sometime soon leaving the one that you are already using. I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have seen the hello world example on anjularjs page and they compare&#xD;&#xA;&gt; angularjs with jquery. Do they mean to say that angularJS is the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; future. **What is the overall scope of angularjs** in a broader sense&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and **do you see angularJs replacing jQuery** in the longer run." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10337" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3861" RevisionGUID="b67683d2-a03c-4611-8c73-a9bf2a25c212" CreationDate="2012-08-02T14:40:19.543" UserId="1130" Text="Yes, I think something should be in the FAQ explicitly stating that questions asking for broad recommendations are not allowed on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see many questions getting closed because they're asking for a broad recommendation, such as book topics, framework advice, shopping advice, etc. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since they all get closed for being a broad recommendation, it makes more sense to explicitly state in the faq that broad recommendations are off-topic here, and not try to list every type of broad recommendation in its own bullet point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding such a line would actually shorten our faq a bit too, which is always a good thing since its so long already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is **not about**...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check out The Workplace instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * implementation issues or programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **broad recommendations, such as what language/technology you should learn next, what book you should read, or what project you should do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; next**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10338" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3855" RevisionGUID="b6d32b03-b672-4477-a6dc-63651d6bae82" CreationDate="2012-08-02T15:35:04.277" UserId="41381" Comment="add more links" Text="Book suggestions are adequately outlined between the **What about suggestive questions** and the **What kind of questions should I not ask here** sections. The 6 suggested guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Book recommendations don't fit this based on experience of what answers they generate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again book recommendations to to have very short &quot;this book was good&quot; type answers and worse link only answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Book recommendations are generally OK on this point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Book recommendations fail this point as it is mostly opinion based answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Book recommendations fail this as well answers reflect popular opinion not anything that could be cited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Book recommendations are OK here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So 4 out of 6 of the guidelines are a no, furthermore there is [this][1] Stack Exchange blog post that further clarifies these guidelines, which is also linked in the FAQ. [More][3] reading about book recommendations. There are [some ways][2] to post book recommendations though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3034/41381&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2003/41381" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10339" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3862" RevisionGUID="eaf69c11-8ca0-4cf9-9ee4-e1a4d02d8cdb" CreationDate="2012-08-02T16:03:52.430" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="I noticed the [tag:home-school] tag on a recent question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, there are [three questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/home-schooling) with that tag.  The first is OT for P.SE (belongs on codereview.SE) and the other two are already tagged with [tag:teaching].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suggest we get rid of the [tag:home-school] tag as it doesn't generate any meaningful distinction from the [tag:teaching] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question is to generate a discussion about the future of that tag in line with [jmort253's recent answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3851/53019) about tag discussions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10340" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3862" RevisionGUID="eaf69c11-8ca0-4cf9-9ee4-e1a4d02d8cdb" CreationDate="2012-08-02T16:03:52.430" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Review of home-school tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10341" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3862" RevisionGUID="eaf69c11-8ca0-4cf9-9ee4-e1a4d02d8cdb" CreationDate="2012-08-02T16:03:52.430" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|discussion|retag-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10342" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3863" RevisionGUID="3d647c50-dcf7-489f-88b2-174b11b7e520" CreationDate="2012-08-02T17:09:26.417" UserId="47" Text="To follow up on my comment. Now that the tag has been removed from all existing questions it will disappear from the suggestions after 24 hours and will require users with [more than 300 reputation](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/create-tags) to suggestion it again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it reappears we can request that it be blacklisted, but that's a last resort." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10343" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3862" RevisionGUID="c37a259c-dc0a-48c1-8a94-fdf5a3527fae" CreationDate="2012-08-02T17:10:35.240" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/231074526664994818" />
  <row Id="10344" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3864" RevisionGUID="345dc7bf-d62b-4f48-b021-0cff70640036" CreationDate="2012-08-02T18:22:36.990" UserId="213" Text="When I look at the history of some post and switch to markdown diff, the left half of the diff overlaps the right part and both continue outside the screen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, [this history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/158829/revisions) looks like this to me (notice the highlighted part and the scrollbar):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![History of the linked answer](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GwFFW.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes the markdown version of the diff pretty much unusable, could this be fixed?&#xD;&#xA;It's most likely some problem with CSS.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also seems to happen here on meta, but not on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm using Firefox 14.0.1 on Windows 7." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10345" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3864" RevisionGUID="345dc7bf-d62b-4f48-b021-0cff70640036" CreationDate="2012-08-02T18:22:36.990" UserId="213" Text="Post history markdown diffs overlapping" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10346" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3864" RevisionGUID="345dc7bf-d62b-4f48-b021-0cff70640036" CreationDate="2012-08-02T18:22:36.990" UserId="213" Text="|bug|user-interface|css|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10347" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3852" RevisionGUID="59e3d2d5-cd60-478e-b1cd-5ce0fc0828ce" CreationDate="2012-08-02T19:47:26.137" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="The question was migrated over a year ago - March 2011 - so the stub has long been deleted, April 2011 in fact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd unlock the question if it were newer and potentially more constructive, but I don't think any amount of editing can salvage it now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was waiting for somebody to spring to the question's defence, but as that wasn't forthcoming I've just deleted it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10348" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3865" RevisionGUID="5a787b7a-629d-4fe3-a95d-ff0e449a01a1" CreationDate="2012-08-03T14:12:38.373" UserId="60557" Text="I'd like to suggest that the most ubiquitous excessively rude comment on Stack Exchange is built into the software itself:  It's branding someone's honest attempt at soliciting help to improve their programming skills as &quot;not constructive&quot; simply because it doesn't fit an increasingly (and, let's face it, unintuitively) tight set of rules about the desired scope of questions on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The most context-appropriate definition for constructive that Webster's gives is &quot;promoting improvement or development.&quot;  Which is a perfect description of what any newcomer who comes here to ask a question is looking to do.  To respond to someone who came here because they feel they need help by immediately shutting down their question and branding it as &quot;not constructive&quot; is an *incredibly* brusque slap in the face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the delicious irony is that this rather harsh label largely serves as a catch-all phrase for a whole host of reasons that are not actually the same thing - the question is too open-ended, the question is scoped too broadly, the question is poorly worded so nobody's quite sure what's being asked - is not constructive.  (And what it's almost never used to flag is questions that don't have anything constructive about them.)  It provides the person with a slap on the wrist, but little useful feedback about what could be done to improve their attempt at asking for help.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can think of a few things to suggest that might help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First is to break add a few more labels.  Right now the &quot;not constructive&quot; flag is serving as a catch-all for a whole host of completely orthogonal complaints, such as &quot;too open-ended&quot;.  This would help cut down on the use of a phrase that can have rather insulting connotations, and also generally increase the constructiveness of the feedback provided by the type of flag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another would be to require someone to include an explanation, in their own words, of why they chose to flag the comment in that way.  For preference, some constructive advice on how to improve the question could also be included.  At the very least, this might help cut down on how frequently people like me come to the Meta site to air their genuine confusion about why all these questions are getting closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, what about encouraging people to first try advising the questioner about how to improve their question before flagging it?  This site's primary focus is Q&amp;A, and to that extent it seems like it should mostly be here for the newbies, and to that extent being able to flag a question without really having to engage or the person who's asking it first seems to run counter to what the site's culture should really be about. And the more skilled people are presumably mostly be here to share their skill with others.  One extremely useful skill to share is how best to seek advice.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10349" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3866" RevisionGUID="f7b27e9e-351e-4fb1-b89d-9cabee518ebc" CreationDate="2012-08-03T22:46:00.437" UserId="35414" Text="There's a [tag:work] tag. Looks like it was missed in the http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Burninate/cleanup? Seems like a likely target of off topic questions, so I'd recommend going through them and removing the tag as they're closed/edited. There's 80. As a mod from Workplace I can already tell you The Workplace won't be accepting any old questions with the tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10350" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3866" RevisionGUID="f7b27e9e-351e-4fb1-b89d-9cabee518ebc" CreationDate="2012-08-03T22:46:00.437" UserId="35414" Text="Burninate the [work] tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10351" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3866" RevisionGUID="f7b27e9e-351e-4fb1-b89d-9cabee518ebc" CreationDate="2012-08-03T22:46:00.437" UserId="35414" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10352" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3867" RevisionGUID="2b52f867-7a30-4180-b0df-88349ccd5200" CreationDate="2012-08-03T23:05:24.680" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I thought [tag:subjective] was blacklisted already, but it made its way onto [a recent question][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's one of the [unholy trinity of bad meta-tags][2]: can it be blacklisted here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/159183/1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10353" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3867" RevisionGUID="2b52f867-7a30-4180-b0df-88349ccd5200" CreationDate="2012-08-03T23:05:24.680" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Blacklist [subjective]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10354" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3867" RevisionGUID="2b52f867-7a30-4180-b0df-88349ccd5200" CreationDate="2012-08-03T23:05:24.680" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="|feature-request|tags|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10355" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3867" RevisionGUID="e439f1ee-4955-4915-8589-38cd7aacbdcd" CreationDate="2012-08-03T23:50:19.363" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|tags|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10356" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3868" RevisionGUID="3d6c59de-5631-4004-b0f7-594557e7c79d" CreationDate="2012-08-04T00:03:52.483" UserId="63" Text="Blacklisted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/bM4kh.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10357" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3866" RevisionGUID="8bd18d1e-9cc5-4de7-9a0e-68f417937377" CreationDate="2012-08-04T17:10:35.013" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/231799303012745217" />
  <row Id="10358" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="3869" RevisionGUID="3486101b-39de-4f77-be26-eb1a48fc1198" CreationDate="2012-08-04T17:47:19.057" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159511/questions-about-ides" Text="" />
  <row Id="10359" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3869" RevisionGUID="f77b6af4-a7c6-4ed8-b1bd-1115a3cb6cca" CreationDate="2012-08-04T17:04:25.113" UserId="57752" Text="Are questions about IDEs (integrated development environments) considered to be relevant to programmers.stackexchange.com, or would such questions be more relevant at superuser or stackoverflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10360" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3869" RevisionGUID="f77b6af4-a7c6-4ed8-b1bd-1115a3cb6cca" CreationDate="2012-08-04T17:04:25.113" UserId="57752" Text="Questions about IDEs" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10361" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3869" RevisionGUID="f77b6af4-a7c6-4ed8-b1bd-1115a3cb6cca" CreationDate="2012-08-04T17:04:25.113" UserId="57752" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10362" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3870" RevisionGUID="23b229d2-ecfb-4e86-baa7-3a32a587b20c" CreationDate="2012-08-04T19:47:33.863" UserId="60557" Text="Stack Overflow is the one that [specifically mentions software tools][1], so that's probably the most appropriate site.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it might depend on the specifics of your question - e.g., according to the official guidelines it's a bit ambiguous whether a question about a specific IDE in relation to some development methodology belongs at Programmers or SO, so you could ask it on either site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10363" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3870" RevisionGUID="f180ab5c-c4f4-4dac-b863-27deb5b0082f" CreationDate="2012-08-04T20:24:21.057" UserId="60557" Comment="deleted 273 characters in body" Text="Stack Overflow is the one that [specifically mentions software tools][1], so that's probably the most appropriate site.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10364" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3869" RevisionGUID="d2b69222-3059-4a45-beab-19f7251c4f62" CreationDate="2012-08-04T23:38:41.723" UserId="12611" Comment="Super User and Stack Overflow are both 2 words; See Trademark Guidance for more details: http://stackexchange.com/legal/trademark-guidance" Text="Are questions about IDEs (integrated development environments) considered to be relevant to programmers.stackexchange.com, or would such questions be more relevant at Super user or Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10365" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3867" RevisionGUID="d0db2ff3-ca0a-4216-9eb0-d6b380ec22c7" CreationDate="2012-08-05T02:10:36.490" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/231935203935916032" />
  <row Id="10366" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2364" RevisionGUID="6752751d-c3b0-4c0a-9b47-01373b982b8f" CreationDate="2012-08-05T11:41:40.997" UserId="47" Comment="correction" Text="You have several options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Stop doing whatever you were doing that resulted in the question being locked.&#xD;&#xA;2. Raise a question here on meta - with a link to the question concerned so we know what you are talking about.&#xD;&#xA;3. E-mail &quot;team+meta.programmers@stackexchange.com&quot; with your issue. This isn't seen by the moderators so you can say what you like about us ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I originally had:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Flag the post for moderator attention. One of the other moderators can then review the decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;as one of the things to do, but you can't actually flag a locked post so this isn't possible. You could flag another of your posts, but it's simpler to raise a question on meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10367" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3871" RevisionGUID="ddb7a0dc-cd8a-4a93-9549-d160d9ee4c10" CreationDate="2012-08-06T13:50:25.173" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Another tag for collective review:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:space] has [four links](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/space).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two are recent, and very similar to each other referencing space from the Mars probe.&#xD;&#xA;The third has space as the 5th tag, and it's discussing searching / branching.&#xD;&#xA;The last is in reference to outer space techniques.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My vote is to remove and delete the tag.&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10368" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3871" RevisionGUID="ddb7a0dc-cd8a-4a93-9549-d160d9ee4c10" CreationDate="2012-08-06T13:50:25.173" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="review of [space] tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10369" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3871" RevisionGUID="ddb7a0dc-cd8a-4a93-9549-d160d9ee4c10" CreationDate="2012-08-06T13:50:25.173" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10370" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3872" RevisionGUID="77c03449-2d48-4425-b163-d2bd2a14a89a" CreationDate="2012-08-06T15:40:16.783" UserId="47" Text="I'd vote for removing the tag. It doesn't add anything to any of the questions it's currently on and doesn't really work as the only tag on a question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10371" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3873" RevisionGUID="078818c0-554e-4b68-bd23-749b2712f628" CreationDate="2012-08-06T18:16:34.663" UserId="1996" Text="I'd vote for removing the tag because it's difficult to disambiguate the word 'space' when it exists within a tag that is among other &quot;programming&quot; tags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10372" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3874" RevisionGUID="b3431b34-3dfd-4513-b902-2388385541d4" CreationDate="2012-08-06T18:18:20.523" UserId="26034" Text="A question about how programmer's certs relate to a college degree was asked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I answered, I got upvoted. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it got deleted. It's not showing up in my history at least. That being a mystery kinda sucks. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, it was a decent question about the value of programming certificates. When asked for more detail, the guy made his question specific to a certain Java cert while leaving the question's title broad. The question was closed as &quot;too local&quot;, which is understandable if silly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed is one thing, deleted another. I was negative when it came to certs, and others agreed. I don't think I was overly critical, argumentative, or rude and I tried to offer constructive alternatives. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what gives? Is there some sort of bias for certs around here?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10373" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3874" RevisionGUID="b3431b34-3dfd-4513-b902-2388385541d4" CreationDate="2012-08-06T18:18:20.523" UserId="26034" Text="Deleted Question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10374" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3874" RevisionGUID="b3431b34-3dfd-4513-b902-2388385541d4" CreationDate="2012-08-06T18:18:20.523" UserId="26034" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10376" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3875" RevisionGUID="443d872d-f239-461a-8269-03623975f65f" CreationDate="2012-08-06T18:35:24.110" UserId="1996" Text="&gt; Is there some sort of bias for certs around here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kind of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The relevance of certs must be applied to a certain point in time, for which the question can be closed as 'Too Localized'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To my knowledge, @bethlakshmi has supplied [the best definition of 'Too Localized' for time reasons][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/354/437" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10377" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3876" RevisionGUID="e709c8af-de8f-49fa-aa4a-93551d3f5f13" CreationDate="2012-08-06T18:49:55.697" UserId="12402" Text="**TL;DR**: &quot;Summer of Love&quot; tries to solve not simply the wrong problem (very rare really bad comments are already self-policed well enough by community, and mildly rough ones more likely than not apply to content that is bad and should be deleted in the first place); but aims to offend and punish people **who are trying to solve the right problem** (Q&amp;A vampires). If you want to solve the problem of people posting &quot;We don't do homework&quot; comments, the only sustainable solution is to contain/eliminate the content asking to do homework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will try to do something which IMHO @Robert Harvey tried to allude to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a reason why some people feel **strongly negatively** about people posting &quot;Do my (home)?work for me&quot; &quot;I didn't bother with any effort myself&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, some people (myself included) feel that such questions (or more importantly, Q&amp;A vampires who produce them) are a significant negative - not **just** to SO/PSE site, but to, as Joel likes to put it, &quot;Better internet&quot; - or more specifically, &quot;better life and work experience to genuine software developers&quot;. They are a LOT bigger negative than even the mildly rude &quot;LMGTFY&quot; or &quot;What have you done&quot; comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Please note that I don't advocate outright crude language or &quot;you are stupid&quot; type insults. But most of the huffing and puffing issued by those pushing for &quot;Summer of Love&quot; seems to be over relatively mild comments only offensive to those looking very hard to be offended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   In the grand scheme of things, &quot;Here's my homework copy/pasted&quot; is a **lot** more evil than &quot;We don't do homework for people&quot; comment; while the actually problematic &quot;You are dumb/imbecile&quot; is a very rare occurrence that already doesn't stand much of a chance of not being deleted shortly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why are they are a LOT bigger negative?** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Giving those Q&amp;A vampires an ability to leech off of the community allows them to inflate their grades in school - frequently (given their skill) enough to allow them to graduate with CS degree they don't qualify for. I've interviewed enough of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, when they get hired as cheap resource by management, they create **significant** drain on life, time, effort and soul of those of us who are forced to &quot;team up&quot; with them; when it takes more time to explain every single task to them than to do it yourself; and any failure to &quot;help them succeed&quot; is seen by senior management as **your** failure, not theirs. And they always look JUST competent enough to avoid the sack, since SO allows them to &quot;do their work&quot; (by outsourcing it) well enough to justify their comparatively low salary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those of you who only work in a small company/startup may not necessarily grok this problem. Those who work for a large company more likely will. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10378" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3877" RevisionGUID="7bc1ca89-1093-4744-9030-81f80d8f0735" CreationDate="2012-08-06T19:11:43.353" UserId="25936" Text="There were two questions in the [question in question][1], a general one and a very specific and localized one. Unfortunately the emphasis was on the localized one, which lead to the question getting closed. I deleted it during a routine manual clean up, too localized questions are rarely salvaged, and this one didn't have a single edit, no effort to get it re-opened. Closed is a temporary state that leads to deletion, unless someone steps up and improves the question and gets it re-opened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your answer, or any of the other ones, had nothing to do with the question getting deleted, its the question that is closed and subsequently deleted, answers rarely play a part in it. I've made a small edit to bring the focus of the question to the general one and undeleted it. Hopefully others will continue improving it and it will be re-opened, but if it stays closed it may get deleted again in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/157835/can-programmer-certifications-substitute-for-degree-requirements" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10379" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3841" RevisionGUID="95e2512c-0b99-47a4-a8b1-c4010460eb74" CreationDate="2012-08-06T19:11:44.070" UserId="1996" Comment="added 64 characters in body" Text="I think you, and a lot of the others focused on the &quot;summer of love,&quot; are suffering from [confirmation bias][1]. You believe there is a problem with rudeness, so you go out of your way to find it. There is always going to be a handful of rude people among the many, nothing can be done to stop that. This &quot;rudeness epidemic&quot; is something that should be handled by the moderators on a per user basis, creating some big community with hunt of rudeness will not end well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10380" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3878" RevisionGUID="69ce41e9-145c-4c5a-b0f9-8873cacadc43" CreationDate="2012-08-07T01:52:11.110" UserId="25936" Text="How about we create a [space-technology] tag, and replace [space] with it? Our space technology questions are awesome, and I'd like to have an easy way of finding them. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10381" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3879" RevisionGUID="94b66740-fc7a-4d51-bfa1-c31f941e1a9b" CreationDate="2012-08-07T03:51:59.417" UserId="42031" Text="I have gone through and re-tagged the closed questions and put more appropriate tags where possible. I have also re-tagged a few of the questions that didn't really need improvement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will work on looking at the other questions in the list and editing/tagging/flagging where appropriate, and try not to spam the home page (or the review queue as my rep here is too low to edit)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10382" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3877" RevisionGUID="fa7cb84a-6625-4992-a560-763a27cba268" CreationDate="2012-08-07T05:41:56.460" UserId="31260" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="There were two questions in the [question in question][1], a general one and a very specific and localized one. Unfortunately the emphasis was on the localized one, which lead to the question getting closed. I deleted it during a routine manual clean up, too localized questions are rarely salvaged, and this one didn't have a single edit, no effort to get it re-opened. Closed is a temporary state that leads to deletion, unless someone steps up and improves the question and gets it re-opened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your answer, or any of the other ones, had nothing to do with the question getting deleted, it's the question that is closed and subsequently deleted, answers rarely play a part in it. I've made a small edit to bring the focus of the question to the general one and undeleted it. Hopefully others will continue improving it and it will be re-opened, but if it stays closed it may get deleted again in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/157835/can-programmer-certifications-substitute-for-degree-requirements" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10383" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3880" RevisionGUID="ee55c63d-be5b-40db-ba9e-8124aa3787f7" CreationDate="2012-08-07T07:44:18.177" UserId="31260" Text="Suggest to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. make [tag:patterns] synonym of [tag:design-patterns]  &#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sup&gt;because most of the questions in &quot;patterns&quot; tag currently fit&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;2. spin-off &quot;pattern&quot; questions that don't fall under &quot;design patterns&quot; into  &#xD;&#xA;   a dedicated tag  similar to [Stack Overflow 'pattern-matching'](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/pattern-matching/info &quot;tag wiki&quot;):  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Testing whether a data structure has a particular shape or contains particular values in certain locations. Many functional languages provide pattern matching constructs. Most questions in this tag should also have the tag for the language you are programming in. Do not use this tag for regular expression questions, use [tag:regex] instead..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10384" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3880" RevisionGUID="ee55c63d-be5b-40db-ba9e-8124aa3787f7" CreationDate="2012-08-07T07:44:18.177" UserId="31260" Text="can we please do something about [patterns] tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10385" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3880" RevisionGUID="ee55c63d-be5b-40db-ba9e-8124aa3787f7" CreationDate="2012-08-07T07:44:18.177" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10386" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3880" RevisionGUID="09994188-ca4f-4bea-856f-84bce2e84030" CreationDate="2012-08-07T08:11:28.020" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="Suggest to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. make [tag:patterns] synonym of [tag:design-patterns]  &#xD;&#xA;   &lt;sup&gt;because most of the questions in &quot;patterns&quot; tag currently fit&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;2. spin-off &quot;pattern&quot; questions that don't fall under &quot;design patterns&quot; into  &#xD;&#xA;   a dedicated tag  similar to [Stack Overflow 'pattern-matching'](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/pattern-matching/info &quot;tag wiki&quot;):  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Testing whether a data structure has a particular shape or contains particular values in certain locations. Many functional languages provide pattern matching constructs. Most questions in this tag should also have the tag for the language you are programming in. Do not use this tag for regular expression questions, use [tag:regex] instead...&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10387" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3871" RevisionGUID="25299852-21e2-4524-84ee-354d641f73ec" CreationDate="2012-08-07T09:45:44.110" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10388" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3881" RevisionGUID="2ea437d5-df3a-42fe-bea3-8f211b959245" CreationDate="2012-08-07T11:15:56.257" UserId="4" Text="I'm hesitant to do a simple synonymizing. There are more types of patterns than design patterns. Architectural patterns, user interaction patterns, requirements patterns are all examples of other types of patterns that exist in software engineering. Although perhaps it would be easier to get rid of patterns first and then clean up design patterns appropriately." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10389" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="3882" RevisionGUID="1de2c59f-fec5-475e-a2af-dbea9318e6e4" CreationDate="2012-08-07T12:33:05.037" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159850/how-do-i-migrate-a-question-posted-by-mistake-on-programmers-to-stack-overflow" Text="" />
  <row Id="10390" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3882" RevisionGUID="f1472d57-ef5b-4c4d-ae14-a907f21fcd9c" CreationDate="2012-08-07T12:32:04.823" UserId="26151" Text="I posted a question here on PROGRAMMERS which would rather fit into Stack Overflow. An user has pointed this out. Further, this question has also been answered.  How should i migrate this to Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10391" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3882" RevisionGUID="f1472d57-ef5b-4c4d-ae14-a907f21fcd9c" CreationDate="2012-08-07T12:32:04.823" UserId="26151" Text="How do i migrate a question posted by mistake on PROGRAMMERS to stack overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10392" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3882" RevisionGUID="f1472d57-ef5b-4c4d-ae14-a907f21fcd9c" CreationDate="2012-08-07T12:32:04.823" UserId="26151" Text="|discussion|migration|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10393" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3883" RevisionGUID="cb9f97c9-fb17-4922-b0e8-f5a78ef5b475" CreationDate="2012-08-07T12:34:37.640" UserId="47" Text="If you have enough reputation (3,000+) you can just vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not, flag the question for moderator attention and we'll migrate it for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In either case, if you posted by mistake flagging is good as we can get the question migrated quickly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10394" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3884" RevisionGUID="5ccab922-715d-4bfb-805b-380fa953289e" CreationDate="2012-08-07T12:34:59.443" UserId="4" Text="The correct course of action would be to flag the post for moderator review and explain this. The link to flag a post is below the post's tags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10395" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3882" RevisionGUID="b588178d-6566-4d1b-86eb-f32324f35149" CreationDate="2012-08-07T15:22:00.343" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [How do I properly migrate my question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1681/how-do-i-properly-migrate-my-question)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I posted a question here on PROGRAMMERS which would rather fit into Stack Overflow. An user has pointed this out. Further, this question has also been answered.  How should i migrate this to Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10396" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3882" RevisionGUID="7fa44775-7f30-4bb8-a077-282dc7a8e7e8" CreationDate="2012-08-07T15:22:00.343" UserId="25936" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[1681],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="10398" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3880" RevisionGUID="3c460eda-c172-4dc4-9042-5058e57c5c4d" CreationDate="2012-08-07T23:10:52.983" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/232977138209398784" />
  <row Id="10399" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3885" RevisionGUID="af7af28e-1e7c-4c31-bd8e-b5326020ea04" CreationDate="2012-08-07T23:28:17.000" UserId="60812" Text="Is there something I'm doing wrong? For the life of me everytime I post a question or answer, I can not figure out how to line break / return without the `&lt;p&gt;` tag. That's the only way to go to next line in the answer. Am I doing something wrong? or is this how it's supposed to work" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10400" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3885" RevisionGUID="af7af28e-1e7c-4c31-bd8e-b5326020ea04" CreationDate="2012-08-07T23:28:17.000" UserId="60812" Text="enter/return/line break" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10401" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3885" RevisionGUID="af7af28e-1e7c-4c31-bd8e-b5326020ea04" CreationDate="2012-08-07T23:28:17.000" UserId="60812" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10402" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3886" RevisionGUID="18021924-242d-4185-9337-6190ca313922" CreationDate="2012-08-07T23:38:27.973" UserId="25936" Text="**Paragraphs**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.&lt;kbd&gt;enter&lt;/kbd&gt;&lt;kbd&gt;enter&lt;/kbd&gt;Praesent in metus diam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will produce this: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Praesent in metus diam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Linebreaks**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.&lt;kbd&gt;space&lt;/kbd&gt;&lt;kbd&gt;space&lt;/kbd&gt;&lt;kbd&gt;enter&lt;/kbd&gt;Praesent in metus diam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will produce this: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Praesent in metus diam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't forget to check out our [Markdown editing help page][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/editing-help" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10403" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3871" RevisionGUID="8670e0c8-cd29-47b4-860a-cd42e6bc4309" CreationDate="2012-08-08T08:10:52.950" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/233113033449304064" />
  <row Id="10404" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3887" RevisionGUID="e2e89f60-6671-48c8-b158-d597e8faded9" CreationDate="2012-08-08T09:02:15.890" UserId="42031" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159956/radio-button-select-and-deselect-when-making-onchange-from-dropdown-list) was closed earlier today with a comment left on it by @YannisRizos advising:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Hello and welcome! Implementation questions are off topic, you should ask them on our sister site Stack Overflow, however please make sure you add your code in the question. Read our FAQ thoroughly to see what questions we welcome on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although the question itself is not that great, should we have tried to help the user rephrase their question and then flagged it for migration to SO instead of closing the question? The user is most likely going to ask the question as-is (if at all) on SO and probably receive similar down and close votes there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [this question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/441/can-we-get-a-belongs-on-stackoverflow-as-a-closing-reason) it's my understanding we have a migration path to SO, should we be using that rather than a normal close vote?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10405" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3887" RevisionGUID="e2e89f60-6671-48c8-b158-d597e8faded9" CreationDate="2012-08-08T09:02:15.890" UserId="42031" Text="Closed instead of migrated?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10406" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3887" RevisionGUID="e2e89f60-6671-48c8-b158-d597e8faded9" CreationDate="2012-08-08T09:02:15.890" UserId="42031" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10407" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3888" RevisionGUID="e7fcc3d8-6574-45b7-8a15-69ffcdadb1ab" CreationDate="2012-08-08T09:27:33.220" UserId="33930" Text="I'm wondering if some sort of change is needed to inform people the sorts of questions they should be asking, either improving the FAQ or placing it somewhere else more in your face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't visit programmers very frequently, but this time I noticed that 40% of the most recent questions that had been asked had been closed... which is a shocking percentage. Is there something that can be done to reduce this percentage and provide a better experience for new/existing users asking questions deemed inappropriate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10408" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3888" RevisionGUID="e7fcc3d8-6574-45b7-8a15-69ffcdadb1ab" CreationDate="2012-08-08T09:27:33.220" UserId="33930" Text="Improvement to &quot;What kind of questions can I ask here?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10409" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3888" RevisionGUID="e7fcc3d8-6574-45b7-8a15-69ffcdadb1ab" CreationDate="2012-08-08T09:27:33.220" UserId="33930" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10410" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3889" RevisionGUID="112df9a7-5eaf-4d18-919c-c84a9eba6eff" CreationDate="2012-08-08T10:51:11.130" UserId="4" Text="The [first rule of migration is &quot;don't migrate crap&quot;][1]. If a question isn't already a good question, it doesn't get migrated. I've actually stepped in and closed questions for off-topic without a migration even as people were voting to migrate because the question was not suitable for migration and would have been closed on the target site anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yannis posted a comment saying what needs to be done - ask the question on Stack Overflow and include code. There are really four things that I can see happening - the user doesn't do anything and never gets an answer, they repost the identical question on Stack Overflow and they get their new question closed, they repost on Stack Overflow after adding code and get an answer, or they edit their post on Programmers to include code and it gets migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm really not sure what other help we can provide, other than to ask on the appropriate site and include the relevant information (the code).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/115184/seriously-a-mod-wont-migrate#comment299931_115184" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10411" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3888" RevisionGUID="d407b63a-f229-4d37-969c-f5c106736bfd" CreationDate="2012-08-08T11:34:28.177" UserId="33930" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="I'm wondering if some sort of change is needed to inform people the sorts of questions they should be asking, either improving the FAQ or placing it somewhere else more in your face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't visit programmers very frequently, but this time I noticed that **40%** of the most recent questions that had been asked had been closed... which is a shocking percentage. Is there something that can be done to reduce this percentage and provide a better experience for new/existing users asking questions deemed inappropriate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10412" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3890" RevisionGUID="2032b38e-2677-4d98-8ba9-35ef28d2a800" CreationDate="2012-08-08T11:55:21.460" UserId="25476" Text="Even if this does get closed as duplicate, it is fine to bring up the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are aware that the home page has a lot of closed questions and if there were something that could be done to help this without sacrificing the vision and principles on which this site is based then we would do it in a heartbeat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; either improving the FAQ or placing it somewhere else more in your face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first one can be a good suggestion as the FAQ really is a living document of sorts.  We have a process that involves community input around changes to the FAQ.  The second suggestion I am not sure will help.  How many sites try to shove a Terms of Service agreement in your face?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How many users do you think actually **read** the TOS before utilizing the site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10413" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3890" RevisionGUID="072252ff-197e-4695-b3f0-a1eafcae59c8" CreationDate="2012-08-08T12:05:26.267" UserId="25476" Comment="added 1328 characters in body; added 26 characters in body" Text="Even if this does get closed as duplicate, it is fine to bring up the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are aware that the home page has a lot of closed questions and if there were something that could be done to help this without sacrificing the vision and principles on which this site is based then we would do it in a heartbeat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; either improving the FAQ or placing it somewhere else more in your face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first one can be a good suggestion as the FAQ really is a living document of sorts.  We have a process that involves community input around changes to the FAQ.  The second suggestion I am not sure will help.  How many sites try to shove a Terms of Service agreement in your face?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How many users do you think actually **read** the TOS before utilizing the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion there are a number of different types of common reasons that we get so many closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## THIS IS NOT A DISCUSSION FORUM ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is a Q&amp;A site to get expert answers from software developers to quality questions regarding software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I would like to have a discussion about...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Can anyone recommend a good book for ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - OMG someone PLZ decide my life for me!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Should I learn X technology next and is Y technology a waste of time?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I HATE MY BOSS AND MY COMPANY AND EVERBODY WRITES SPAGHETTI CODE BUT ME!  How do I deal with this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - X is a worthless programming language and I would rather eat horse manure than have to code in it.  Am I right guys?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Can someone please help me with this code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Can someone please help me with this code?  I posted on StackOverflow but nobody responded to me after 5 minutes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - What is the job market for COBOL programmers in Bangalore like?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of the above are mostly tongue in cheek and humorous exaggerations about commonly closed questions on Programmers.  It is not that many of them are fundamentally bad questions to ask... many of them are downright interesting and fun to try and answer but they don't lead to the kind of expert questions and answers that we are looking for on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are about quality over quantity." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10414" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3891" RevisionGUID="b47007e4-319c-4755-be85-71afb36c5da7" CreationDate="2012-08-08T12:25:06.117" UserId="41381" Text="the best thing we can do to fix this is to down vote crap when it shows up in addition to closing it. The faster hopelessly off topic questions like maple_shaft's examples get to -8 and drop off the front page the better." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10415" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3891" RevisionGUID="cdf14e98-f316-457c-a8ba-d42f5634d21a" CreationDate="2012-08-08T13:16:45.273" UserId="31260" Comment="maple_shaft's examples += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3890/31260 &quot;in this answer&quot;" Text="The best thing we can do to fix this is to down vote crap when it shows up in addition to closing it. The faster hopelessly off topic questions like [maple_shaft's examples](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3890/31260 &quot;in this answer&quot;) get to -8 and drop off the front page the better." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10416" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3882" RevisionGUID="a53f6718-328a-4113-85bc-a00ed2134c17" CreationDate="2012-08-08T13:52:10.410" UserId="31260" Comment="added 6 characters in body; edited title" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [How do I properly migrate my question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1681/how-do-i-properly-migrate-my-question)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted a question here on Programmers  which would rather fit into Stack Overflow. An user has pointed this out. Further, this question has also been answered.  How should I migrate this to Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10417" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3882" RevisionGUID="a53f6718-328a-4113-85bc-a00ed2134c17" CreationDate="2012-08-08T13:52:10.410" UserId="31260" Comment="added 6 characters in body; edited title" Text="How do I migrate a question posted by mistake on Programmers to Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10418" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3892" RevisionGUID="b72227a4-7e8f-4064-9ff1-dafa333bd5d2" CreationDate="2012-08-08T16:08:25.447" UserId="1204" Text="As an experiment, surf any SE site in incognito mode.  What you will find is that the instructions for posting questions are already in your face.  You even have to click an &quot;I understand&quot; checkbox.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is threefold:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  The charitable explanation: people have become desensitized to these &quot;legal agreements,&quot; and don't read them.  The cynical explanation: people ignore them, and ask what they want.  The truth is a little of both.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  The FAQ and &quot;How to Ask&quot; outline what you *should* do, not what you should *not* do (with the exception of &quot;questions you should not ask here,&quot; which can easily turn into a laundry list if not properly managed).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  People are presented with &quot;How to Ask&quot; when they ask a question, not the FAQ.  Many people who ask a question have never seen the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10419" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3893" RevisionGUID="6452825b-bbca-4f20-9eb2-821b72052382" CreationDate="2012-08-08T17:55:28.677" UserId="61386" Text="This is fairly easy to accomplish using IE's *Accessibility* options in *Tools » Internet Options » General » Accessibility*. If you follow the instructions to the letter, results look as blindingly amazing as this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot after settings applied][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Create a file named `userstyle-programmers.css` and enter the following contents:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    .question-page .post-text a {&#xD;&#xA;    text-decoration: underline !important;&#xD;&#xA;    color: orange !important;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;    .question-page .post-text a:hover {&#xD;&#xA;    color: yellow !important;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Select it in the aforementioned dialog under *User style sheet* and save.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot of settings dialog][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, one downside to this is that is it applied to all sites. While the CSS is probably restrictive enough to only actually apply the style to SE sites, it'll get applied to [all of them](http://superuser.com/questions/419070/transatlantic-ping-faster-than-sending-a-pixel-to-the-screen).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot of SU with same style applied][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To prevent this, create a new file named e.g. `userstyle-switcher.css` with the following contents that are actually a script executed for every `html` element loaded. Not as nice as domain selection in Greasemonkey, but at least it works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    html {&#xD;&#xA;       behavior:expression( (function(el){&#xD;&#xA;       var _doc = el.document;&#xD;&#xA;       if(_doc.location.host.toLowerCase() == 'programmers.stackexchange.com') {&#xD;&#xA;         var elmLink = _doc.createElement('link');&#xD;&#xA;         elmLink.rel='stylesheet';&#xD;&#xA;         elmLink.type='text/css';&#xD;&#xA;         elmLink.href= 'file://C:/Users/Daniel Beck/Documents/userstyle-programmers.css';&#xD;&#xA;         _doc.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(elmLink);&#xD;&#xA;       }&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;       el.runtimeStyle.behavior = 'none';&#xD;&#xA;      })(this));&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, replace `C:/Users/Daniel Beck/Documents/userstyle-programmers.css` with wherever you saved the other user style sheet file. Remember to use forward slashes and specify the actual path on disk, not what Explorer shows you (so no *My Documents* on e.g. Windows 7). Save, and select *this file* as the user style sheet for IE. The script will get execute on every web page, but the other CSS file will only get loaded when on `programmers.stackexchange.com`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/yjXWt.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/txs6M.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/jCPtt.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10420" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3894" RevisionGUID="d3076354-d26c-47ce-97d0-64d40cff77b3" CreationDate="2012-08-08T17:59:37.480" UserId="1130" Text="Something us regular users can do would be to make an ad for the blog in the [Community Promotion Ads](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2635/1130) meta post, and vote it up a few times so it shows up on occasion in the advertisement box on the right side of the screen." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10421" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3893" RevisionGUID="cd8cbbec-8a51-414b-b944-19664c0dae0a" CreationDate="2012-08-08T18:07:38.127" UserId="61386" Comment="added source" Text="This is fairly easy to accomplish using IE's *Accessibility* options in *Tools » Internet Options » General » Accessibility*. If you follow the instructions to the letter, results look as blindingly amazing as this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot after settings applied][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Create a file named `userstyle-programmers.css` and enter the following contents:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    .question-page .post-text a {&#xD;&#xA;    text-decoration: underline !important;&#xD;&#xA;    color: orange !important;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;    .question-page .post-text a:hover {&#xD;&#xA;    color: yellow !important;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Select it in the aforementioned dialog under *User style sheet* and save.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot of settings dialog][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, one downside to this is that is it applied to all sites. While the CSS is probably restrictive enough to only actually apply the style to SE sites, it'll get applied to [all of them](http://superuser.com/questions/419070/transatlantic-ping-faster-than-sending-a-pixel-to-the-screen).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot of SU with same style applied][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To prevent this, create a new file named e.g. `userstyle-switcher.css` with the following contents that are actually a script executed for every `html` element loaded. Not as nice as domain selection in Greasemonkey, but at least it works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    html {&#xD;&#xA;       behavior:expression( (function(el){&#xD;&#xA;       var _doc = el.document;&#xD;&#xA;       if(_doc.location.host.toLowerCase() == 'programmers.stackexchange.com') {&#xD;&#xA;         var elmLink = _doc.createElement('link');&#xD;&#xA;         elmLink.rel='stylesheet';&#xD;&#xA;         elmLink.type='text/css';&#xD;&#xA;         elmLink.href= 'file://C:/Users/Daniel Beck/Documents/userstyle-programmers.css';&#xD;&#xA;         _doc.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(elmLink);&#xD;&#xA;       }&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;       el.runtimeStyle.behavior = 'none';&#xD;&#xA;      })(this));&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, replace `C:/Users/Daniel Beck/Documents/userstyle-programmers.css` with wherever you saved the other user style sheet file. Remember to use forward slashes and specify the actual path on disk, not what Explorer shows you (so no *My Documents* on e.g. Windows 7). Save, and select *this file* as the user style sheet for IE. The script will get execute on every web page, but the other CSS file will only get loaded when on `programmers.stackexchange.com`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the &quot;CSS&quot; used in the switcher script is from [here](http://wiki.bit-hive.com/ie_user_css/), but I have no idea what that page says around the code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/yjXWt.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/txs6M.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/jCPtt.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10422" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3895" RevisionGUID="f78aa535-cff7-4516-b491-b2119df283f0" CreationDate="2012-08-08T19:36:13.963" UserId="41381" Text="I think creating a meta post linking to a new article with each posing would be acceptable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also there should be a line the FAQ about the blog, maybe under the what if I need more help section." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10423" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3893" RevisionGUID="c2f0f2c8-f165-4cd3-9c43-daddf6aaf18c" CreationDate="2012-08-09T08:34:10.593" UserId="31260" Comment="quote background and tooltip for screen shots" Text="This is fairly easy to accomplish using IE's *Accessibility* options in *Tools » Internet Options » General » Accessibility*. If you follow the instructions to the letter, results look as blindingly amazing as this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Screenshot after settings applied][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Create a file named `userstyle-programmers.css` and enter the following contents:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    .question-page .post-text a {&#xD;&#xA;    text-decoration: underline !important;&#xD;&#xA;    color: orange !important;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;    .question-page .post-text a:hover {&#xD;&#xA;    color: yellow !important;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Select it in the aforementioned dialog under *User style sheet* and save.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Screenshot of settings dialog][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, one downside to this is that is it applied to all sites. While the CSS is probably restrictive enough to only actually apply the style to SE sites, it'll get applied to [all of them](http://superuser.com/questions/419070/transatlantic-ping-faster-than-sending-a-pixel-to-the-screen).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Screenshot of SU with same style applied][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To prevent this, create a new file named e.g. `userstyle-switcher.css` with the following contents that are actually a script executed for every `html` element loaded. Not as nice as domain selection in Greasemonkey, but at least it works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    html {&#xD;&#xA;       behavior:expression( (function(el){&#xD;&#xA;       var _doc = el.document;&#xD;&#xA;       if(_doc.location.host.toLowerCase() == 'programmers.stackexchange.com') {&#xD;&#xA;         var elmLink = _doc.createElement('link');&#xD;&#xA;         elmLink.rel='stylesheet';&#xD;&#xA;         elmLink.type='text/css';&#xD;&#xA;         elmLink.href= 'file://C:/Users/Daniel Beck/Documents/userstyle-programmers.css';&#xD;&#xA;         _doc.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(elmLink);&#xD;&#xA;       }&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;       el.runtimeStyle.behavior = 'none';&#xD;&#xA;      })(this));&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, replace `C:/Users/Daniel Beck/Documents/userstyle-programmers.css` with wherever you saved the other user style sheet file. Remember to use forward slashes and specify the actual path on disk, not what Explorer shows you (so no *My Documents* on e.g. Windows 7). Save, and select *this file* as the user style sheet for IE. The script will get execute on every web page, but the other CSS file will only get loaded when on `programmers.stackexchange.com`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the &quot;CSS&quot; used in the switcher script is from [here](http://wiki.bit-hive.com/ie_user_css/), but I have no idea what that page says around the code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/yjXWt.png &quot;Screenshot after settings applied&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/txs6M.png &quot;Screenshot of settings dialog&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/jCPtt.png &quot;Screenshot of SU with same style applied&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10424" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3896" RevisionGUID="27a8d929-e0a7-4029-b0bf-d195285c08fa" CreationDate="2012-08-09T19:32:34.767" UserDisplayName="user61488" Text="I recently asked a question and it was closed and I cannot go back to view the answers in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just curious as to why it was closed, it was on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/error?aspxerrorpath=/questions/160205/file-comparison-tool-that-will-allow-me-to-manually-remap-lines-between-two-file)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10425" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3896" RevisionGUID="27a8d929-e0a7-4029-b0bf-d195285c08fa" CreationDate="2012-08-09T19:32:34.767" UserDisplayName="user61488" Text="Why was this questions closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10426" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3896" RevisionGUID="27a8d929-e0a7-4029-b0bf-d195285c08fa" CreationDate="2012-08-09T19:32:34.767" UserDisplayName="user61488" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10427" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3896" RevisionGUID="8c51d8e1-6d46-4124-9914-63ea49fdb097" CreationDate="2012-08-09T19:36:15.523" UserId="47" Comment="fix link" Text="I recently asked a question and it was closed and I cannot go back to view the answers in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just curious as to why it was closed, it was on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/160205/file-comparison-tool-that-will-allow-me-to-manually-remap-lines-between-two-file)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10428" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3896" RevisionGUID="a3a54a2d-daa0-417a-87c5-4d835e90babe" CreationDate="2012-08-09T19:38:17.390" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10429" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3896" RevisionGUID="a3a54a2d-daa0-417a-87c5-4d835e90babe" CreationDate="2012-08-09T19:38:17.390" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="Why was my question on file comparison tools closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10430" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3897" RevisionGUID="350090bd-2b62-401b-96af-69bbb1ad132d" CreationDate="2012-08-09T20:55:00.673" UserId="9673" Text="The question appears to have been closed because it was asking for “shopping recommendations”. That's a somewhat derogatory term, but it refers to questions where you can't have a single most correct answer since there can be many products that are suitable (and the Stack Exchange system tries to avoid direct product comparisons of any kind). It's often possible to word a question so that it asks for a definitive answer and where a product recommendation would be a good answer, but somewhat challenging. However, it is definitely the case that “shopping recommendations” make poor Subjective Questions; they tend to attract argument, not enlightenment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason you couldn't see it was just a site bug, now fixed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10431" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3898" RevisionGUID="485db246-300b-4411-8148-44ca8cd1bf04" CreationDate="2012-08-10T20:27:12.893" UserId="32455" Text="I just asked [this question][1] with regards to using cognitive enhancing drugs to assist with your coding job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It wasn't as good of a question as I thought it would be, considering I left out specific details to not bring attention to a possible ethical issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, should I reveal the source and name of medication in order to make this a better question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/160392/ethical-to-dope-to-increase-performance-while-coding" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10432" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3898" RevisionGUID="485db246-300b-4411-8148-44ca8cd1bf04" CreationDate="2012-08-10T20:27:12.893" UserId="32455" Text="Should I give more information to this question? How to improve" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10433" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3898" RevisionGUID="485db246-300b-4411-8148-44ca8cd1bf04" CreationDate="2012-08-10T20:27:12.893" UserId="32455" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10434" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3899" RevisionGUID="13eb53d9-2019-4017-aced-f35b1c0a5c1a" CreationDate="2012-08-10T21:12:31.793" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="So there are two questions:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is it ethical to use a drug to enhance programmer productivity  &#xD;&#xA;2. is it ethical to use _this.drug_ to enhance productivity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifying _this_ runs the risk of making things too localized, but it's also necessary information to properly evaluate the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could take the ultra strict stance of &quot;No, it's never ethical to use a drug to enhance your productivity.&quot;  But depending upon what drug you're talking about, like caffeine, you may have just indicted the entire programming community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Likewise, you could take the opposite stance of &quot;Yes, always okay because it _made you better_&quot; (whatever _better_ may be).  But that opens the door for many harmful substances that most would strongly disagree with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of an ethical question is understanding the ramifications of a decision.  And those ramifications span from the immediate to the long term as well as from the personal to others around the programmer.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By knowing the drug, we can weigh in on if the side-effects are sufficiently beneficial or not to merit use.  If a hypothetical drug would allow me to program like nothing else but leave me in an impaired start to where I may harm others, then I think the answer would be no.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An additional factor is by knowing the drug, we can know the potential legal ramifications of use.  Some might argue that cocaine makes them an amazing coder, but most jurisdictions and employment manuals have prohibitions against that.  Even with a legal drug, it's necessary to weigh the likely employment guidelines that would be in place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One final thing about disclosing more details of the drug and purported properties is that the disclosure acts as an anti-BS filter.  It's not some abstract, hypothetical, it's a concrete question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question alone is too broad to be answered in a single question; there's just too many variables.  The second becomes more interesting." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10435" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3900" RevisionGUID="ebb65739-a898-4572-8254-76fa80fc6ff8" CreationDate="2012-08-10T21:33:40.847" UserId="16247" Text="Asking about cognitive enchancing drugs is barely related to programming or software, if at all. Tacking &quot;... for coding&quot; at the end doesn't really make this question on-topic or constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, of course." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10436" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3901" RevisionGUID="484a90d8-9a04-4c74-b0fa-9bb08879eb5e" CreationDate="2012-08-11T03:16:08.930" UserId="1996" Text="This **is** a very good question that can be answered by programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, it solicits polling, extended discussion, and debate, so it's **not** a good question for this Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I 100% agree with two points that @Yannis Rizos made in the comments section beneath the actual question:&#xD;&#xA; 1. Just because it's closed doesn't make it an inherently bad question. It's just that it's not a good question for this site.&#xD;&#xA; 2. This might be a good fit for Workplace.SE. The moderators over there have a much different understanding of what's constructive for that site. You might have better luck over there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10437" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3901" RevisionGUID="eb8bce95-b86d-4c1b-966c-4564aafda2fa" CreationDate="2012-08-11T03:21:58.233" UserId="1996" Comment="added 2 characters in body; deleted 5 characters in body; added 144 characters in body; added 3 characters in body" Text="This **is** a very good question that can be answered by programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, it solicits polling, extended discussion, and debate, so it's **not** a good question for Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I 100% agree with two points that @Yannis Rizos made in the comments section beneath the actual question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [Just because it's closed doesn't make it an inherently bad question.][1] It's just that it's not a good question for this site.&#xD;&#xA; 2. This might be a good fit for Workplace.SE. The moderators over there have a much different understanding of what's constructive for that site. You might have better luck over there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/160392/determining-ethics-of-substance-use-to-enhance-programming#comment306471_160392" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10438" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3901" RevisionGUID="5815e1eb-dd4e-4d57-bbbd-46c8a45fe504" CreationDate="2012-08-11T03:27:52.987" UserId="1996" Comment="added 145 characters in body" Text="This **is** a very good question that can be answered by programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, it solicits polling, extended discussion, and debate, so it's **not** a good question for Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I 100% agree with two points that @Yannis Rizos made in the comments section beneath the actual question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [Just because it's closed doesn't make it an inherently bad question.][1] It's just that it's not a good question for this site.&#xD;&#xA; 2. [This might be a good fit for Workplace.SE.][2] The moderators over there have a much different understanding of what's constructive for that site. You might have better luck over there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/160392/determining-ethics-of-substance-use-to-enhance-programming#comment306471_160392&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/160392/determining-ethics-of-substance-use-to-enhance-programming#comment306466_160392" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10439" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3898" RevisionGUID="0b8d03b8-1a28-49df-9332-48dbcd24423b" CreationDate="2012-08-11T11:49:37.403" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="Notice of edits to the original question" Text="I just asked [this question][1] with regards to using cognitive enhancing drugs to assist with your coding job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It wasn't as good of a question as I thought it would be, considering I left out specific details to not bring attention to a possible ethical issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, should I reveal the source and name of medication in order to make this a better question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt; Edit&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;GlenH7 has attempted an [Atwood Transform][2] on the question in order to make it more on-topic to programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/160392/ethical-to-dope-to-increase-performance-while-coding&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/124930" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10440" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3902" RevisionGUID="d448676e-3180-4b88-beb5-e2d0d9985631" CreationDate="2012-08-13T07:55:09.803" UserId="36006" Text="Would a question on whether or not [TRIZ][1] was a useful framework to know for programmers be a good, bad, or off topic question? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.triz-journal.com/archives/what_is_triz/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10441" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3902" RevisionGUID="d448676e-3180-4b88-beb5-e2d0d9985631" CreationDate="2012-08-13T07:55:09.803" UserId="36006" Text="TRIZ for software engineers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10442" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3902" RevisionGUID="d448676e-3180-4b88-beb5-e2d0d9985631" CreationDate="2012-08-13T07:55:09.803" UserId="36006" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10443" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3903" RevisionGUID="8a767971-6913-445d-8a14-fcfe8a913258" CreationDate="2012-08-13T09:30:12.187" UserId="4" Text="Questions about the usefulness of TRIZ would probably be closed since they would lead to extended discussion or polling (making them non-constructive). However, if there was a specific question about how to apply TRIZ in a software development environment that had objective answers, it might be on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You might also be interested in the [Cognitive Sciences Stack Exchange][1], especially if you are looking for answers about TRIZ in a psychological sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10444" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3902" RevisionGUID="08a9f9c4-a7b2-4519-92bd-cc80964393e3" CreationDate="2012-08-13T10:25:07.010" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10445" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2355" RevisionGUID="86f5f668-e943-4e11-8fb2-efcdc73577f9" CreationDate="2012-08-13T13:31:39.757" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|voting|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10446" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3904" RevisionGUID="8d728245-9418-4f4d-918b-ed6d692adaef" CreationDate="2012-08-13T15:29:59.717" UserId="26304" Text="I think the only way to ask this question constructively would be to ask if there has been any professional that has published on the ethics of cognitive performance enhancing drugs in the workplace.  This question is asking for an opinion on a very subjective topic.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question could be asked on [Philosophy][1] by asking what would a specific philosopher (Kant, Nietzsche, etc) have said about the subject.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On [The Workplace][2] you could ask questions about policies that allow/disallow this.  You could also ask about how to present this to Management/HR when requesting a policy change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://philosophy.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10447" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3905" RevisionGUID="0be65e41-3fc2-447b-b4c5-b2884d1e2c5a" CreationDate="2012-08-13T20:53:44.247" UserId="7748" Text="[![Visit Our Blog][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ihs34.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]:http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10448" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3905" RevisionGUID="996f0e38-e6a5-4332-80e4-86d389a1c604" CreationDate="2012-08-13T20:53:44.247" UserId="7748" />
  <row Id="10449" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2152" RevisionGUID="25f485e4-56df-4063-b784-9ee16c1aa864" CreationDate="2012-08-14T11:22:16.450" UserId="25936" Comment="added 248 characters in body; edited title" Text="Every question is about advice: it'd be akin to tagging every question with [tag:help] or [tag:this-is-a-question-i-assure-you]. I would speculate the vast majority of questions tagged [tag:advice] are there because of misuse of the tag box (e.g. typing &quot;career advice&quot; instead of &quot;career-advice&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So can we kill [tag:advice] with fire?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A year later the [tag is still here][1] and is still a fan favourite (100+ questions). Can we please burninate and blacklist it asap?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/advice?page=1&amp;sort=newest&amp;pagesize=50" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10450" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2152" RevisionGUID="25f485e4-56df-4063-b784-9ee16c1aa864" CreationDate="2012-08-14T11:22:16.450" UserId="25936" Comment="added 248 characters in body; edited title" Text="Burninate and blacklist [advice]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10451" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3794" RevisionGUID="ef85ac50-f4dd-4c65-bcb6-bdb7ce72eda4" CreationDate="2012-08-14T11:31:24.643" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10452" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3778" RevisionGUID="b24bf081-015f-4d05-9a1a-bbd3eb71c6b1" CreationDate="2012-08-14T11:33:03.753" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10453" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2355" RevisionGUID="30d5ed09-5bc2-40de-9204-92778e51d024" CreationDate="2012-08-14T11:36:04.107" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Should we force adding a comment with every down-vote?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159/should-we-force-adding-a-comment-with-every-down-vote)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Why not let the site force the user to enter a comment (of min. 20 chars. or so) when demoting an answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10454" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2355" RevisionGUID="dea88f2f-94d0-4242-bf7f-00a72be3a488" CreationDate="2012-08-14T11:36:04.107" UserId="25936" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[159],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="10455" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3906" RevisionGUID="4969fc2a-4d00-4993-bc76-2a3d587065d0" CreationDate="2012-08-14T15:40:42.600" UserId="63" Text="Burninated and blacklisted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please [care for the orphans](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/untagged). " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10456" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2152" RevisionGUID="79b8239b-deb8-4959-b533-652330367185" CreationDate="2012-08-14T15:40:51.650" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|tags|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10457" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3888" RevisionGUID="9e090be5-58dc-47f7-81d5-0018c2da90c6" CreationDate="2012-08-14T17:54:02.070" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/235434115401404416" />
  <row Id="10458" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3866" RevisionGUID="c8a56a19-bf05-4443-bf98-235a5adb315a" CreationDate="2012-08-15T16:31:50.460" UserId="35414" Comment="added 18 characters in body" Text="There's a [tag:work] tag. Looks like it was missed in the http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Burninate/cleanup? Seems like a likely target of off topic questions, so I'd recommend going through them and removing the tag as they're closed/edited. There's &lt;del&gt;80&lt;/del&gt; **50**. As a mod from Workplace I can already tell you The Workplace won't be accepting any old questions with the tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10459" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3907" RevisionGUID="a71e0a59-feff-4c0e-be89-998a6f222110" CreationDate="2012-08-16T14:14:53.787" UserId="58568" Text="I suggest this edit yesterday:  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/5895&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that it is a very substantial edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In first reading the title, there is a substantial difference between how to unit test and how to unit test in a specific development environment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, if someone is following the visual-studio-2010 tag, then this is specifically applicable to what they are following.  If the visual-studio-2010 tag is not added to this post, then this post is not listed in their tagged items, even though this post is specifically applicable to that development environment and no other development environment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a platform or messaging system in which I can present these ideas to have the edit reconsidered?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10460" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3907" RevisionGUID="a71e0a59-feff-4c0e-be89-998a6f222110" CreationDate="2012-08-16T14:14:53.787" UserId="58568" Text="Is it possible to request an appeal to a rejected edit?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10461" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3907" RevisionGUID="a71e0a59-feff-4c0e-be89-998a6f222110" CreationDate="2012-08-16T14:14:53.787" UserId="58568" Text="|support|tags|editing|question-title|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10462" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3908" RevisionGUID="a00b3363-b4d8-4673-abc8-748c8c6bbb0c" CreationDate="2012-08-16T14:21:32.263" UserId="47" Text="Just changing the title and adding a tag isn't a &quot;very substantial edit&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While there are differences between unit testing in general and unit testing in a specific environment, are you 100% that that's what the OP intended?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10463" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3908" RevisionGUID="1d7a49e3-d62d-4c62-a871-e854de947559" CreationDate="2012-08-16T14:34:54.990" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="Just changing the title and adding a tag isn't a &quot;very substantial edit&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While there are differences between unit testing in general and unit testing in a specific environment, are you 100% that that's what the OP intended?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think that the edit is enough you can:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Raise a question here on meta (has you have done!)&#xD;&#xA;2. Suggest the edit again. It would be worth looking for other improvements to the body of the post and explaining more clearly why you think that the edit is required in the summary." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10464" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3909" RevisionGUID="1da29482-882d-4c36-a680-bf15b8e20e32" CreationDate="2012-08-16T14:50:04.547" UserId="101" Text="As the person who wrote the accepted answer I'll add my 2 cents...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While the question specifically mentions VS 2010, the solution is not restricted to that version alone.  The supporting article that I referenced in the answer was written for VS 2008 and works equally as well in VS 2010 as there are no differences.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think adding VS 2010 as a tag to the question would be a dis-service to the question.  I would consider adding the VS tag, without a version as that would be more approriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In either case I agree with ChrisF and ElYusubov that your edits were not substantial and additionally I would have rejected the edit as not appropriate for the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10465" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3910" RevisionGUID="42f6d3cf-d25a-46df-ac91-8f452b745e73" CreationDate="2012-08-17T01:14:18.517" UserId="31260" Text="The question is: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/154794/31260&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...I am not sure if that is a correct way to deal with problem. I think in above mentioned case user is anyway going to change the text, so why not force him while constructing the action?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not quite comfortable with [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/161121/31260). It contains nothing but code and the code does not look self-explanatory to me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     public abstract class Action {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	protected String text = &quot;Default action text&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	protected String toolTip = &quot;Default action tool tip&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	protected String imageURl = &quot;http://myserver.com/images/default.png&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	.... rest of code, I guess setters and getters&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     public class MyAction extends Action {&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction() {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction(String actionText) {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;             setText(actionText);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction(String actionText, String toolTip_) {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;             setText(actionText);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	      setToolTip(toolTip_);	&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction(String actionText, String toolTip_; String imageURL_) {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;             setText(actionText);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	      setToolTip(toolTip_);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	      setImageURL(imageURL_);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I missing something here? Could above be really a valuable answer to the question asked?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10466" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3910" RevisionGUID="42f6d3cf-d25a-46df-ac91-8f452b745e73" CreationDate="2012-08-17T01:14:18.517" UserId="31260" Text="Is this (code-only) answer OK?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10467" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3910" RevisionGUID="42f6d3cf-d25a-46df-ac91-8f452b745e73" CreationDate="2012-08-17T01:14:18.517" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|answer-quality|specific-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10468" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3911" RevisionGUID="ac7aaeb7-fc7a-4e10-a560-9e626f638a69" CreationDate="2012-08-17T01:49:04.633" UserId="1996" Text="As of the time of this posting, @ElYusubov has been a Programmers.SE member for **59 days.** Yet he has accumulated over 7600 in reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a record pace?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10469" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3911" RevisionGUID="ac7aaeb7-fc7a-4e10-a560-9e626f638a69" CreationDate="2012-08-17T01:49:04.633" UserId="1996" Text="Is ElYusubov accumulating reputation points at a record pace?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10470" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3911" RevisionGUID="ac7aaeb7-fc7a-4e10-a560-9e626f638a69" CreationDate="2012-08-17T01:49:04.633" UserId="1996" Text="|discussion|fun|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10471" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3911" RevisionGUID="4a8d8b8c-6152-4435-84aa-9f7d15dcd63b" CreationDate="2012-08-17T02:14:29.810" UserId="31260" Comment="added 61 characters in body; edited tags" Text="As of the time of this posting, [ElYusubov](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/57164/elyusubov) has been a Programmers.SE member for **59 days.** Yet he has accumulated over 7600 in reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a record pace?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10472" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3911" RevisionGUID="4a8d8b8c-6152-4435-84aa-9f7d15dcd63b" CreationDate="2012-08-17T02:14:29.810" UserId="31260" Comment="added 61 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|reputation|fun|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10473" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3912" RevisionGUID="73371005-e369-4a70-8392-0e5521527755" CreationDate="2012-08-17T02:39:08.940" UserId="42031" Text="The code doesn't really answer the asker's question or add value, IMO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A similar question has been asked on MSO [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/95473/189446). Generally on SO I see a lot of &quot;code only&quot; answers get down-voted and/or deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original question is more about &quot;why&quot; and &quot;is this correct&quot; rather than a &quot;I need the code to do this&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10474" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3913" RevisionGUID="86340450-5d51-48bf-ad20-778eb82efd4c" CreationDate="2012-08-17T07:42:45.220" UserId="47" Text="I don't know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can use the [Data Explorer](http://data.stackexchange.com/) to analyse historical data to see how this compares to other users in the past." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10475" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3914" RevisionGUID="a647d694-82d8-43b8-b869-3418c711afc8" CreationDate="2012-08-17T10:10:21.757" UserId="25936" Text="While extremely impressive, it's not a record. Our top user, [Pierre 303][1], had amassed 9500+ points his first couple of months, according to his [reputation graph][2]. Don't know if that's the record or not, dig around Data Explorer and let us know if you find someone with a faster pace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2567/pierre-303&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackexchange.com/users/132549/pierre?tab=reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10476" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3915" RevisionGUID="9632333c-3b20-43eb-a227-0efccf6ab0f5" CreationDate="2012-08-17T11:10:11.563" UserId="25476" Text="No.  He is not even in the top 20.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/77468/88106/reputation-per-day-average-from-highest-to-lowest&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following is a query ranking our top users by Average Reputation Per Day.  Here is the top 20 users by that measure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Pierre 303 56&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Péter Török 54&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;S.Lott 53&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen 46&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Robert Harvey 41&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;FrustratedWithFormsDesigner 40&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Mason Wheeler 38&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;ChrisF 37&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Thomas Owens 36&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Steven A. Lowe 35&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;maple_shaft 35&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;MainMa 35&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;tdammers 35&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Jeff O 33&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;pdr 33&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Jerry Coffin 31&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;user281377 31&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Caleb 30&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Oded 30&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Anna Lear 29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10477" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3915" RevisionGUID="dae24b7b-836a-415d-a1fc-1c2c44ed1ed8" CreationDate="2012-08-17T11:32:06.083" UserId="25476" Comment="added 425 characters in body" Text="No.  He is not even in the top 20.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/77468/88106/reputation-per-day-average-from-highest-to-lowest&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following is a query ranking our top users by Average Reputation Per Day.  Here is the top 20 users by that measure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Pierre 303 56&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Péter Török 54&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;S.Lott 53&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen 46&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Robert Harvey 41&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;FrustratedWithFormsDesigner 40&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Mason Wheeler 38&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;ChrisF 37&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Thomas Owens 36&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Steven A. Lowe 35&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;maple_shaft 35&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;MainMa 35&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;tdammers 35&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Jeff O 33&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;pdr 33&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Jerry Coffin 31&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;user281377 31&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Caleb 30&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Oded 30&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Anna Lear 29&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Data Explorer tool is not real time production data.  It is a limited subset of a snapshot at a specific point in time.  It looks like the last time the Data Explorer was refreshed was back in July, meaning that it will exclude some of ElYusubov's busiest weeks in his short time here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To rephrase, he may NOW be in the top 20, but we won't be able to find out until the next Data Explorer update :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10478" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3914" RevisionGUID="572ab2b0-4ecc-49b9-a059-685fb6002c4a" CreationDate="2012-08-17T17:24:38.307" UserId="31260" Comment="http://i.stack.imgur.com/Usogf.png &quot;~9.4 K rep / 59 days&quot;" Text="While extremely impressive, it's not a record. Our top user, [Pierre 303][1], had amassed 9500+ points his first couple of months, according to his [reputation graph][2]. Don't know if that's the record or not, dig around Data Explorer and let us know if you find someone with a faster pace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Usogf.png][3]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2567/pierre-303&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackexchange.com/users/132549/pierre?tab=reputation&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Usogf.png &quot;~9.4 K rep / 59 days&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10479" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3910" RevisionGUID="46f57b03-e78c-4393-acf2-543412120631" CreationDate="2012-08-17T17:37:23.283" UserId="31260" Comment="added 45 characters in body" Text="The question is: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/154794/31260&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...I am not sure if that is a correct way to deal with problem. I think in above mentioned case user is anyway going to change the text, so why not force him while constructing the action?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not quite comfortable with [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/161121/31260). It contains nothing but code and the code does not look self-explanatory to me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     public abstract class Action {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	protected String text = &quot;Default action text&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	protected String toolTip = &quot;Default action tool tip&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	protected String imageURl = &quot;http://myserver.com/images/default.png&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	.... rest of code, I guess setters and getters&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     public class MyAction extends Action {&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction() {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction(String actionText) {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;             setText(actionText);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction(String actionText, String toolTip_) {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;             setText(actionText);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	      setToolTip(toolTip_);	&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction(String actionText, String toolTip_; String imageURL_) {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;             setText(actionText);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	      setToolTip(toolTip_);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	      setImageURL(imageURL_);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I missing something here? Could above be really a valuable answer to the question asked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, answer is removed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10480" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3916" RevisionGUID="c2f401b5-1763-48fb-8520-95c55c2c4487" CreationDate="2012-08-17T21:35:39.100" UserId="3965" Text="[This post](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review-beta/low-quality-posts/268) came up while using the new &quot;Review Low Quality Posts&quot; tool, but it wouldn't let me vote because the post is locked.  If you can't vote on it, it shouldn't pop up for review in the first place." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10481" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3916" RevisionGUID="c2f401b5-1763-48fb-8520-95c55c2c4487" CreationDate="2012-08-17T21:35:39.100" UserId="3965" Text="Locked posts shouldn't show up for review" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10482" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3916" RevisionGUID="c2f401b5-1763-48fb-8520-95c55c2c4487" CreationDate="2012-08-17T21:35:39.100" UserId="3965" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10483" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3917" RevisionGUID="397e073c-f0f4-47a1-9b44-bcde0fa18314" CreationDate="2012-08-17T22:56:03.400" UserId="31260" Text="Please merge [tag:internationalisation] (3 questions) into [tag:internationalization] (25), and make them synonyms." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10484" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3917" RevisionGUID="397e073c-f0f4-47a1-9b44-bcde0fa18314" CreationDate="2012-08-17T22:56:03.400" UserId="31260" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [internationalisation] → [internationalization]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10485" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3917" RevisionGUID="397e073c-f0f4-47a1-9b44-bcde0fa18314" CreationDate="2012-08-17T22:56:03.400" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10486" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3918" RevisionGUID="8e78d685-08e6-4143-ba8b-3a7dc4e09853" CreationDate="2012-08-17T23:02:40.377" UserId="47" Text="I have approved the synonym.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will merge them later." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10487" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3919" RevisionGUID="5169f401-f2e9-454d-9644-f0b378da44c7" CreationDate="2012-08-18T02:47:21.460" UserId="102" Text="As a start, we've increased the duration new blog posts appear in the sidebar's Community Bulletin from 3 to 7 days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This number is open to experimentation, but we would like to avoid keeping items in the Bulletin for too long." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10488" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3916" RevisionGUID="0d59ff94-f1dc-4ef1-ac1d-29fb7a919008" CreationDate="2012-08-18T03:59:01.687" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|review|review-beta|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10489" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3920" RevisionGUID="0ec92528-9a74-430d-9f2b-977d665b1c18" CreationDate="2012-08-19T14:17:27.443" UserId="31260" Text="What kind reaction would you expect to a post looking [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/161525/31260)?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **This question would surely be considered off-topic, but... A friend of mine who lives in France is going to marry soon. And we (his friends) are looking for a nice place to make a geek party somewhere in Central Europe. If someone has had an experience like this please let us know.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvote, close-vote, flag for deletion? Yeah I did all that, &lt;sup&gt;yeah post closed, flag is marked helpful&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA; now guess what?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Post still hangs there, right at the front page. Guess what? it even attracted an upvote. Next thing would probably be some kind soul going to suggest something helpful in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You know, I spend _some_ time at Programmers, studying questions and answers. I learn a lot and where possible, I try to teach others by answering, I gain a reasonably high rep and I am proud of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I use every opportunity to refer colleagues to particular Programmers questions that relate to our day job, especially when there are my answers. I hope they get impressed by my my contribution and in particular with the fact that it is done in high-quality, high standard,&#xD;&#xA;##professional looking environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Now, next guy I point to some valuable answer, reads it, gets impressed, clicks &lt;kbd&gt;QUESTIONS&lt;/kbd&gt; to see what else is there and what they see is...&#xD;&#xA;##looking for a nice place to make a geek party&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Give me a break if I ever complain seeing snarky comments on a **visible** post like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Give me a freaking break.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The guy I mention above -- that guy I pointed to some good answer -- would better see that community has low tolerance for garbage like that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10490" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3920" RevisionGUID="1663a111-c28b-41a4-8d9e-26ab1ef64a1f" CreationDate="2012-08-19T14:25:22.983" UserId="31260" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="What kind reaction would you expect to a post looking [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/161525/31260)?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **This question would surely be considered off-topic, but... A friend of mine who lives in France is going to marry soon. And we (his friends) are looking for a nice place to make a geek party somewhere in Central Europe. If someone has had an experience like this please let us know.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvote, close-vote, flag for deletion? Yeah I did all that, &lt;sup&gt;yeah post closed, flag is marked helpful&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA; now guess what?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Post still hangs there, right at the front page. Guess what? it even attracted an upvote. Next thing would probably be some kind soul going to suggest something helpful in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You know, I spend _some_ time at Programmers, studying questions and answers. I learn a lot and where possible, I try to teach others by answering, I gain a reasonably high rep and I am proud of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I use every opportunity to refer colleagues to particular Programmers questions that relate to our day job, especially when there are my answers. I hope they get impressed by my contribution and in particular with the fact that it is done in high-quality, high standard,&#xD;&#xA;##professional looking environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Now, next guy I point to some valuable answer, reads it, gets impressed, clicks &lt;kbd&gt;QUESTIONS&lt;/kbd&gt; to see what else is there and what they see is...&#xD;&#xA;##looking for a nice place to make a geek party&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Give me a break if I ever complain seeing snarky comments on a **visible** post like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Give me a freaking break.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The guy I mention above -- that guy I pointed to some good answer -- would better see that community has low tolerance for garbage like that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10491" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3920" RevisionGUID="1a27d4bb-1f54-47af-9ff5-7dbd2ef43cc9" CreationDate="2012-08-19T14:52:28.267" UserId="31260" Comment="wordsmithing; added 4 characters in body" Text="What kind reaction would you expect to a post looking [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/161525/31260)?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **This question would surely be considered off-topic, but... A friend of mine who lives in France is going to marry soon. And we (his friends) are looking for a nice place to make a geek party somewhere in Central Europe. If someone has had an experience like this please let us know.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvote, close-vote, flag for deletion? Yeah I did all that, &lt;sup&gt;yeah post closed, flag is marked helpful&lt;/sup&gt; now guess what?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Post still hangs there, right at the front page. Guess what? it even attracted an upvote. Next thing would probably be some kind soul going to suggest something helpful in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You know, I spend _some_ time at Programmers, studying questions and answers. I learn a lot and where possible, I try to teach others by answering, I gain a reasonably high rep and I am proud of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I use every opportunity to refer colleagues to particular Programmers questions that relate to our day job, especially when there are my answers &lt;sup&gt;(for comparison I rarely did so with programming community I participated in prior to SE)&lt;/sup&gt;. By doing so, I hope they get impressed by my contribution and in particular with the fact that it is done in high-quality, high standard,&#xD;&#xA;##professional looking environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Now, next guy I point to some valuable answer, reads it, gets impressed, clicks &lt;kbd&gt;QUESTIONS&lt;/kbd&gt; to see what else is there and what they see is...&#xD;&#xA;##looking for a nice place to make a geek party&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Give me a break if I ever complain seeing snarky comments on a **visible** post like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Give me a freaking break.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The guy I mention above -- that colleague I pointed to some good answer -- would better see that community has low tolerance for garbage like that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10492" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3920" RevisionGUID="62788b99-a4a2-439e-b351-2469c4549e72" CreationDate="2012-08-19T15:33:22.773" UserId="31260" Comment="Extra low quality posts damage site image no matter if there are snarky comments there or not. Such posts should be quickly deleted." Text="What kind reaction would you expect to a post looking [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/161525/31260)?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **This question would surely be considered off-topic, but... A friend of mine who lives in France is going to marry soon. And we (his friends) are looking for a nice place to make a geek party somewhere in Central Europe. If someone has had an experience like this please let us know.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvote, close-vote, flag for deletion? Yeah I did all that, &lt;sup&gt;yeah post closed, flag is marked helpful&lt;/sup&gt; now guess what?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Post still hangs there, right at the front page. Guess what? it even attracted an upvote. Next thing would probably be some kind soul going to suggest something helpful in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You know, I spend _some_ time at Programmers, studying questions and answers. I learn a lot and where possible, I try to teach others by answering, I gain a reasonably high rep and I am proud of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I use every opportunity to refer colleagues to particular Programmers questions that relate to our day job, especially when there are my answers &lt;sup&gt;(for comparison I rarely did so with programming community I participated in prior to SE)&lt;/sup&gt;. By doing so, I hope they get impressed by my contribution and in particular with the fact that it is done in high-quality, high standard,&#xD;&#xA;##professional looking environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Now, next guy I point to some valuable answer, reads it, gets impressed, clicks &lt;kbd&gt;QUESTIONS&lt;/kbd&gt; to see what else is there and what they see is...&#xD;&#xA;##looking for a nice place to make a geek party&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Give me a break if I ever complain seeing snarky comments on a **visible** post like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Give me a freaking break.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The guy I mention above -- that colleague I pointed to some good answer -- would better see that community has low tolerance for garbage like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Extra low quality posts damage site image no matter if there are snarky comments there or not. Such posts should be quickly deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you worry about snarky comments on such posts, well the real solution is simply to delete these posts - the sooner the better. Whatever comments are there, will be deleted along the way, making it not an issue." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10493" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3920" RevisionGUID="432021cd-36bd-498e-9e63-e3b1e516aac8" CreationDate="2012-08-19T15:40:23.987" UserId="31260" Comment="http://i.stack.imgur.com/EcH5u.png &quot;downvoted, close-voted, flagged&quot;" Text="What kind reaction would you expect to a post looking [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/161525/31260)?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **This question would surely be considered off-topic, but... A friend of mine who lives in France is going to marry soon. And we (his friends) are looking for a nice place to make a geek party somewhere in Central Europe. If someone has had an experience like this please let us know.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvote, close-vote, flag for deletion? Yeah I did all that, &lt;sup&gt;yeah post closed, flag is marked helpful&lt;/sup&gt; now guess what?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/EcH5u.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guess what? Post still hangs there, right at the front page. Guess what? it even attracted an upvote. Next thing would probably be some kind soul going to suggest something helpful in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You know, I spend _some_ time at Programmers, studying questions and answers. I learn a lot and where possible, I try to teach others by answering, I gain a reasonably high rep and I am proud of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I use every opportunity to refer colleagues to particular Programmers questions that relate to our day job, especially when there are my answers &lt;sup&gt;(for comparison I rarely did so with programming community I participated in prior to SE)&lt;/sup&gt;. By doing so, I hope they get impressed by my contribution and in particular with the fact that it is done in high-quality, high standard,&#xD;&#xA;##professional looking environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Now, next guy I point to some valuable answer, reads it, gets impressed, clicks &lt;kbd&gt;QUESTIONS&lt;/kbd&gt; to see what else is there and what they see is...&#xD;&#xA;##looking for a nice place to make a geek party&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Give me a break if I ever complain seeing snarky comments on a **visible** post like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Give me a freaking break.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The guy I mention above -- that colleague I pointed to some good answer -- would better see that community has low tolerance for garbage like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Extra low quality posts damage site image no matter if there are snarky comments there or not. Such posts should be quickly deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you worry about snarky comments on such posts, well the real solution is simply to delete these posts - the sooner the better. Whatever comments are there, will be deleted along the way, making it not an issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EcH5u.png &quot;downvoted, close-voted, flagged&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10494" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3920" RevisionGUID="7448e293-6b24-4209-90f2-f94211291807" CreationDate="2012-08-19T15:58:45.530" UserId="31260" Comment="added 14 characters in body" Text="What kind reaction would you expect to a post looking [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/161525/31260)?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **This question would surely be considered off-topic, but... A friend of mine who lives in France is going to marry soon. And we (his friends) are looking for a nice place to make a geek party somewhere in Central Europe. If someone has had an experience like this please let us know.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvote, close-vote, flag for deletion? Yeah I did all that, &lt;sup&gt;yeah post closed, flag is marked helpful&lt;/sup&gt; now guess what?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/EcH5u.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guess what? Post still hangs there, right at the front page. Guess what? it even attracted an upvote. Next thing would probably be some kind soul going to suggest something helpful in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You know, I spend _some_ time at Programmers, studying questions and answers. I learn a lot and where possible, I try to teach others by answering, I gain a reasonably high rep and I am proud of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I use every opportunity to refer colleagues to particular Programmers questions that relate to our day job, especially when there are my answers &lt;sup&gt;(for comparison I rarely did so with programming community I participated in prior to SE)&lt;/sup&gt;. By doing so, I hope they get impressed by my contribution and in particular with the fact that it is done in high-quality, high standard,&#xD;&#xA;##professional looking environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Now, next guy I point to some valuable answer, reads it, gets impressed, clicks &lt;kbd&gt;QUESTIONS&lt;/kbd&gt; to see what else is there and what they see is...&#xD;&#xA;##looking for a nice place to make a geek party&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Would you expect me to complain seeing snarky comments on a **visible** post like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Give me a break. Give me a freaking break.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The guy I mention above -- that colleague I pointed to some good answer -- would better see that community has low tolerance for garbage like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Extra low quality posts damage site image no matter if there are snarky comments there or not. Such posts should be quickly deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you worry about snarky comments on such posts, well the real solution is simply to delete these posts - the sooner the better. Whatever comments are there, will be deleted along the way, making it not an issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EcH5u.png &quot;downvoted, close-voted, flagged&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10495" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3777" RevisionGUID="435b25cc-2b00-4b83-9236-d7bf7365191c" CreationDate="2012-08-19T16:18:45.717" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10496" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3780" RevisionGUID="ccdc99f0-fcea-46a5-9257-6d905ebb5a19" CreationDate="2012-08-19T16:18:49.790" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10497" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3836" RevisionGUID="5649e2b4-78f5-4334-b623-fcac1d618431" CreationDate="2012-08-19T16:18:54.297" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|comments|etiquette|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10498" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3920" RevisionGUID="8964f7f0-a6d5-4a7a-9865-694f8f442862" CreationDate="2012-08-19T16:31:52.670" UserId="31260" Comment="wordsmithing" Text="What kind reaction would you expect to a post looking [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/161525/31260)?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **This question would surely be considered off-topic, but... A friend of mine who lives in France is going to marry soon. And we (his friends) are looking for a nice place to make a geek party somewhere in Central Europe. If someone has had an experience like this please let us know.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvote, close-vote, flag for deletion? Yeah I did all that, &lt;sup&gt;yeah post closed, flag is marked helpful&lt;/sup&gt; now guess what?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/EcH5u.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guess what? Post still hangs there, right at the front page. Guess what? it even attracted an upvote. Next thing would probably be some kind soul going to suggest something helpful in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You know, I spend _some_ time at Programmers, studying questions and answers. I learn a lot and where possible, I try to teach others by answering, I gain a reasonably high rep and I am proud of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I use every opportunity to refer colleagues to particular Programmers questions that relate to our day job, especially when there are my answers &lt;sup&gt;(for comparison I rarely did so with programming community I participated in prior to SE)&lt;/sup&gt;. By doing so, I hope they get impressed by my contribution and in particular with the fact that it is done in high-quality, high standard,&#xD;&#xA;##professional looking environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Now, next guy I point to some valuable answer, reads it, gets impressed, clicks &lt;kbd&gt;QUESTIONS&lt;/kbd&gt; to see what else is there and what they see is...&#xD;&#xA;##looking for a nice place to make a geek party&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Would you expect me to complain seeing snarky comments on a **visible** post like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Give me a break. Give me a freaking break.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The guy I mention above -- that colleague I pointed to some good answer -- would better see that community has low tolerance for garbage like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultra low quality posts damage site image no matter if there are snarky comments there or not. Such posts should be quickly deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All eight example questions that were referred to since [revision 6](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/3836/6) are currently removed. If you worry about snarky comments on such posts, well the real solution is simply to delete these posts - the sooner the better. Whatever comments are there, will be deleted along the way, making it not an issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EcH5u.png &quot;downvoted, close-voted, flagged&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10499" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3910" RevisionGUID="330a1b74-a3f8-49e3-8054-d586acef19d3" CreationDate="2012-08-19T16:34:11.260" UserId="31260" Comment="removed ([self deleted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3910/is-this-code-only-answer-ok#comment10991_3910 &quot;according to clarification from moderator&quot;))" Text="The question is: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/154794/31260&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...I am not sure if that is a correct way to deal with problem. I think in above mentioned case user is anyway going to change the text, so why not force him while constructing the action?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not quite comfortable with [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/161121/31260). It contains nothing but code and the code does not look self-explanatory to me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     public abstract class Action {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	protected String text = &quot;Default action text&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	protected String toolTip = &quot;Default action tool tip&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	protected String imageURl = &quot;http://myserver.com/images/default.png&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	.... rest of code, I guess setters and getters&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     public class MyAction extends Action {&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction() {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction(String actionText) {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;             setText(actionText);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction(String actionText, String toolTip_) {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;             setText(actionText);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	      setToolTip(toolTip_);	&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction(String actionText, String toolTip_; String imageURL_) {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;             setText(actionText);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	      setToolTip(toolTip_);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	      setImageURL(imageURL_);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I missing something here? Could above be really a valuable answer to the question asked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, answer is removed ([self deleted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3910/is-this-code-only-answer-ok#comment10991_3910 &quot;according to clarification from moderator&quot;))." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10500" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3920" RevisionGUID="a9acd987-52dc-42df-8f74-7dbae7b1e120" CreationDate="2012-08-19T17:10:25.367" UserId="31260" Comment="wordsmithing" Text="What kind reaction would you expect to a post looking [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/161525/31260)?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **This question would surely be considered off-topic, but... A friend of mine who lives in France is going to marry soon. And we (his friends) are looking for a nice place to make a geek party somewhere in Central Europe. If someone has had an experience like this please let us know.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvote, close-vote, flag for deletion? Yeah I did all that, &lt;sup&gt;yeah post closed, flag is marked helpful&lt;/sup&gt; now guess what?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/EcH5u.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guess what? Post still hangs there, right at the front page. Guess what? it even attracted an upvote. Next thing would probably be some kind soul going to suggest something helpful in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You know, I spend _some_ time at Programmers, studying questions and answers. I learn a lot and where possible, I try to teach others by answering, I gain a reasonably high rep and I am proud of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I use every opportunity to refer colleagues to particular Programmers questions that relate to our day job, especially when there are my answers &lt;sup&gt;(for comparison I rarely did so with programming community I participated in prior to SE)&lt;/sup&gt;. By doing so, I hope they get impressed by my contribution and in particular with the fact that it is done in high-quality, high standard,&#xD;&#xA;##professional looking environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Now, next guy I point to some valuable answer, reads it, gets impressed, clicks &lt;kbd&gt;QUESTIONS&lt;/kbd&gt; to see what else is there and what they see is...&#xD;&#xA;##looking for a nice place to make a geek party&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Would you expect me to complain seeing snarky comments on a **visible** post like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Give me a break. Give me a freaking break.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The guy I mention above -- that colleague I pointed to some good answer -- would better see that community has low tolerance for garbage like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would sure worry about snarky / unprofessional stuff in reasonably (even remotely) appropriate posts - even downvoted, even not too high quality - exactly for the reasons explained above. I want others I refer to Programmers to see it following high professional standards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But ultra low quality posts are whole another game - these damage site image no matter if there are snarky comments there or not. Such posts should be quickly deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All eight example questions that were referred to since [revision 6](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/3836/6) are currently removed. If you worry about snarky comments on such posts, well the real solution is simply to delete these posts - the sooner the better. Whatever comments are there, will be deleted along the way, making it not an issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EcH5u.png &quot;downvoted, close-voted, flagged&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10501" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3920" RevisionGUID="b8af08bc-d0de-42d5-b2b2-a0fcb304bf6d" CreationDate="2012-08-19T18:29:01.237" UserId="31260" Comment="minor wordsmithing" Text="What kind reaction would you expect to a post looking [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/161525/31260)?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **This question would surely be considered off-topic, but... A friend of mine who lives in France is going to marry soon. And we (his friends) are looking for a nice place to make a geek party somewhere in Central Europe. If someone has had an experience like this please let us know.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvote, close-vote, flag for deletion? Yeah I did all that, &lt;sup&gt;yeah post closed, flag is marked helpful&lt;/sup&gt; now guess what?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/EcH5u.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guess what? Post still hangs there, right at the front page. Guess what? it even attracted an upvote. Next thing would probably be some kind soul going to suggest something helpful in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You know, I spend _some_ time at Programmers, studying questions and answers. I learn a lot and where possible, I try to teach others by answering, I gain a reasonably high rep and I am proud of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I use every opportunity to refer colleagues to particular Programmers questions that relate to our day job, especially when there are my answers &lt;sup&gt;(for comparison I rarely did so with programming community I participated in prior to SE)&lt;/sup&gt;. By doing so, I hope they get impressed by my contribution and in particular with the fact that it is done in high-quality, high standard,&#xD;&#xA;##professional looking environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Now, next guy I point to some valuable answer, reads it, gets impressed, clicks &lt;kbd&gt;QUESTIONS&lt;/kbd&gt; to see what else is there and what they see is...&#xD;&#xA;##looking for a nice place to make a geek party&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Would you expect me to complain seeing snarky comments on a **visible** post like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Give me a break. Give me a freaking break.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The guy I mention above -- that colleague I pointed to some good answer -- would better see that community has low tolerance for garbage like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would sure worry about snarky / unprofessional stuff in reasonably (even remotely) appropriate posts - even downvoted, even not too high quality - exactly for the reasons explained above. I want others I refer to Programmers to see it following high professional standards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But ultra low quality posts are whole another game - these damage site image no matter if there are snarky comments there or not. Such posts should be quickly deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All eight example questions that were referred to since [revision 6](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/3836/6) are currently **removed**. If you worry about snarky comments in posts like that, well the real solution is simply to delete these posts - the sooner the better. Whatever comments are there, will be deleted along the way, making it not an issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EcH5u.png &quot;downvoted, close-voted, flagged&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10502" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3921" RevisionGUID="b4529a2f-9420-44fe-8fc7-2540a2cfe5d1" CreationDate="2012-08-19T23:51:37.443" UserId="2406" Text="I asked a question about the [overlap between Free Software (as defined by the FSF) and Open Source Software (as defined by the OSI)][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Note that this question was **not** subjective. I was not asking about peope's personal idiosyncratic definitions of the terminology, nor about the difference between copyleft and permissive licencing, nor about which type of license was &quot;better&quot;. (I did get a bunch of off topic responses answering those questions which I hadn't asked, but I edited the question to clarify, and there's been no trouble since.)&#xD;&#xA;2. Note that the question has an excellent, simple, accepted answer.&#xD;&#xA;3. Note that, in general, good answers are voted up, and a bad answer is voted down.&#xD;&#xA;4. Note that the question is nearly two years old, and has stood without trouble that long.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why was it suddenly and unilaterally closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;? What does this achieve? Who is helped by this closure?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/21907/2406" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10503" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3921" RevisionGUID="b4529a2f-9420-44fe-8fc7-2540a2cfe5d1" CreationDate="2012-08-19T23:51:37.443" UserId="2406" Text="Why was my question on Free/Open Software closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10504" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3921" RevisionGUID="b4529a2f-9420-44fe-8fc7-2540a2cfe5d1" CreationDate="2012-08-19T23:51:37.443" UserId="2406" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10505" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3922" RevisionGUID="b82b7122-597e-4523-8f43-2e41f5a210d4" CreationDate="2012-08-20T01:09:35.150" UserId="12611" Text="Stack Exchange sites are really not good at handling questions that ask for a list of things. Here is the second part of your question, which is classic &quot;not constructive&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does any such software actually exist? Please give examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this one statement, you gave the community, as well as any random drive-by user/spammer, permission to post a link to software that fits the description you've provided, and none of those answers would solve a real problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other issue is that you're asking a programming community, not a lawyer, not someone licensed to give legal advice, to interpret lengthy and detailed licenses. This is not really what Programmers Stack Exchange is about. Legal questions in general don't really fit on *any* Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't to say your question wasn't interesting or that you didn't get a good answer, just that it's not generally the type of question that Programmers SE and Stack Exchange has had success with traditionally. In fact, it looks like the entire thread was turning into a debate, with 7 answers all interpreting things differently. Questions that solicit extended discussion and/or debate are not constructive and do not belong on Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addressing the actions of the moderator, there have been many discussions on meta about the site topic, which moderators use when making decisions on questions. It's a moderator's job to make decisions on material that clearly doesn't fit the scope. Additionally, we don't really know that it was closed unilaterally, as it's quite possible someone may have flagged it as off-topic or not constructive. It only takes 15 reputation for a user to flag a post, and flags don't show up in the post notice like when a 3k user votes to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, I'm not really sure how you could edit the question to make it fit the guidelines, but it's possible that it could be reopened if the problems were fixed. I'd suggest beginning by removing the part of the question asking for a list of examples and go from there. Then, you'd have to figure out a way to solve the discussion/debate issues. Good luck! :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10506" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3923" RevisionGUID="2803ab80-9caa-4436-9017-823e3c9981d9" CreationDate="2012-08-20T06:40:06.163" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; 1\. Note that this question was not subjective. I was not asking about peope's personal idiosyncratic definitions of the terminology, nor about the difference between copyleft and permissive licencing, nor about which type of license was &quot;better&quot;. (I did get a bunch of off topic responses answering those questions which I hadn't asked, but I edited the question to clarify, and there's been no trouble since.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually you are asking us to verify or dispute idiosyncratic definitions of the terminology, right here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; These definitions, although they derive from very different ideologies, are broadly compatible, and most Free Software is also Open Source Software and vice versa. I believe, however, that it is possible for this not to be the case: It is possible for software to be Open Source without being Free, or to be Free without being Open Source.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not a question, that's a confusing &amp; confused opinion based on unreferenced claims. Of course it's possible for software to be open source without being free, for the FSF's definition of free, no one ever claimed that the two definitions are &quot;broadly compatible&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2\. Note that the question has an excellent, simple, accepted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3\. Note that, in general, good answers are voted up, and a bad answer is voted down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also note that there are four deleted answers, two of them up voted. You confused a lot of people with your question, 11 answers in total, all answering to a slightly different question. That, by definition, is not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are not here to verify or dispute your personal beliefs, we are here to answer questions and solve problems. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4\. Note that the question is nearly two years old, and has stood without trouble that long.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sorry about that, we should have closed this one earlier. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So why was it suddenly and unilaterally closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;? What does this achieve? Who is helped by this closure?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It helps signal future readers understand that the question and its answers are problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FSF-approved_software_licenses" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10507" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3923" RevisionGUID="5426076f-6590-4be2-a459-b4ab48a20339" CreationDate="2012-08-20T07:00:25.863" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1194 characters in body; added 10 characters in body" Text="&gt; 1\. Note that this question was not subjective. I was not asking about peope's personal idiosyncratic definitions of the terminology, nor about the difference between copyleft and permissive licencing, nor about which type of license was &quot;better&quot;. (I did get a bunch of off topic responses answering those questions which I hadn't asked, but I edited the question to clarify, and there's been no trouble since.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually you are asking us to verify or dispute idiosyncratic definitions of the terminology, right here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; These definitions, although they derive from very different ideologies, are broadly compatible, and most Free Software is also Open Source Software and vice versa. I believe, however, that it is possible for this not to be the case: It is possible for software to be Open Source without being Free, or to be Free without being Open Source.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not a question, that's a confusing &amp; confused opinion based on unreferenced claims. Of course it's possible for software to be open source without being free, for the FSF's definition of free, no one ever claimed that the two definitions are &quot;broadly compatible&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2\. Note that the question has an excellent, simple, accepted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3\. Note that, in general, good answers are voted up, and a bad answer is voted down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also note that there are four deleted answers, two of them up voted. You confused a lot of people with your question, 11 answers in total, all answering to a slightly different question. That, by definition, is not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are not here to verify or dispute your personal beliefs, we are here to answer questions and solve practical problems. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4\. Note that the question is nearly two years old, and has stood without trouble that long.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sorry about that, we should have closed this one earlier. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So why was it suddenly and unilaterally closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;? What does this achieve? Who is helped by this closure?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It helps signal future readers understand that the question and its answers are problematic. You rushed in accepting an answer, and arriving at a hopelessly wrong conclusion: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And the answer, it seems, is that it's impossible to be Free without being Open, but possible to be Open without being Free. Thank you everyone who actually answered the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of licences that are approved by the FSF but not by OSI: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [WTFPL][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [original BSD license][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [CeCILL][3] &#xD;&#xA;- [Cryptix General License][4]&#xD;&#xA;- XFree86 1.1 License&#xD;&#xA;- [Netscape Public License][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [OpenSSL license][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact some of those where pointed to you in a [later answer][7], at which point you dismissed OSI approved as a parameter, and moved on to your own definition of what an open source license is. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are not here to discuss personal interpretations and ideologies, what is the **actual practical problem** you are trying to solve?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_What_The_Fuck_You_Want_To_Public_License&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_license&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CeCILL&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptix_General_License&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Public_License&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSSL_license#Licensing&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/134786/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10508" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3923" RevisionGUID="3461da98-5bbb-4c73-9a32-9167ee421a06" CreationDate="2012-08-20T07:05:46.433" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 175 characters in body; added 179 characters in body; deleted 126 characters in body" Text="&gt; 1\. Note that this question was not subjective. I was not asking about peope's personal idiosyncratic definitions of the terminology, nor about the difference between copyleft and permissive licencing, nor about which type of license was &quot;better&quot;. (I did get a bunch of off topic responses answering those questions which I hadn't asked, but I edited the question to clarify, and there's been no trouble since.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually you are asking us to verify or dispute your idiosyncratic definitions of the terminology, right here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; These definitions, although they derive from very different ideologies, are broadly compatible, and most Free Software is also Open Source Software and vice versa. I believe, however, that it is possible for this not to be the case: It is possible for software to be Open Source without being Free, or to be Free without being Open Source.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not a question, that's a confusing &amp; confused opinion based on unreferenced claims. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2\. Note that the question has an excellent, simple, accepted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3\. Note that, in general, good answers are voted up, and a bad answer is voted down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also note that there are four deleted answers, two of them up voted. You confused a lot of people with your question, 11 answers in total, all answering to a slightly different question. That, by definition, is not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4\. Note that the question is nearly two years old, and has stood without trouble that long.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sorry about that, we should have closed this one earlier. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So why was it suddenly and unilaterally closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;? What does this achieve? Who is helped by this closure?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It helps signal future readers understand that the question and its answers are problematic. You rushed in accepting an answer, and arriving at a hopelessly wrong conclusion: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And the answer, it seems, is that it's impossible to be Free without being Open, but possible to be Open without being Free. Thank you everyone who actually answered the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of licences that are approved by the FSF but not by OSI: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [WTFPL][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [original BSD license][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [CeCILL][3] &#xD;&#xA;- [Cryptix General License][4]&#xD;&#xA;- XFree86 1.1 License&#xD;&#xA;- [Netscape Public License][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [OpenSSL license][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact some of those where pointed to you in a [later answer][7], at which point you dismissed OSI approved as a parameter, and moved on to your own definition of what an open source license is. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are not here to discuss personal interpretations and ideologies, what is the **actual practical problem** you are trying to solve? Your question lacks well defined parameters, it's a very interesting discussion topic, but unfortunately discussions don't really work with the Q&amp;A philosophy and format of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_What_The_Fuck_You_Want_To_Public_License&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_license&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CeCILL&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptix_General_License&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Public_License&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSSL_license#Licensing&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/134786/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10509" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3923" RevisionGUID="77cf2728-63f3-4687-9d8c-6009811ee3e9" CreationDate="2012-08-20T07:49:00.670" UserId="25936" Comment="added 212 characters in body" Text="&gt; 1\. Note that this question was not subjective. I was not asking about peope's personal idiosyncratic definitions of the terminology, nor about the difference between copyleft and permissive licencing, nor about which type of license was &quot;better&quot;. (I did get a bunch of off topic responses answering those questions which I hadn't asked, but I edited the question to clarify, and there's been no trouble since.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually you are asking us to verify or dispute your idiosyncratic definitions of the terminology, right here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; These definitions, although they derive from very different ideologies, are broadly compatible, and most Free Software is also Open Source Software and vice versa. I believe, however, that it is possible for this not to be the case: It is possible for software to be Open Source without being Free, or to be Free without being Open Source.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not a question, that's a confusing &amp; confused opinion based on unreferenced claims. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2\. Note that the question has an excellent, simple, accepted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3\. Note that, in general, good answers are voted up, and a bad answer is voted down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also note that there are four deleted answers, two of them up voted. You confused a lot of people with your question, 11 answers in total, all answering to a slightly different question. That, by definition, is not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4\. Note that the question is nearly two years old, and has stood without trouble that long.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sorry about that, we should have closed this one earlier. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So why was it suddenly and unilaterally closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;? What does this achieve? Who is helped by this closure?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It helps signal future readers that the question and its answers are problematic. You rushed in accepting an answer, and arrived at a possibly wrong conclusion: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And the answer, it seems, is that it's impossible to be Free without being Open, but possible to be Open without being Free. Thank you everyone who actually answered the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of licences that are approved by the FSF but not by OSI: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [WTFPL][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [original BSD license][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [CeCILL][3] &#xD;&#xA;- [Cryptix General License][4]&#xD;&#xA;- XFree86 1.1 License&#xD;&#xA;- [Netscape Public License][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [OpenSSL license][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact some of those where pointed to you in a [later answer][7], at which point you dismissed OSI approved as a parameter, and moved on to your own definition of what an open source license is. That's unfair to the answerers, your question is build around the FSF and OSI definitions, and it's implied that one of the parameters of it is that the licences discussed should be approved by either the FSF or OSI, or both. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are not here to discuss personal interpretations and ideologies, what is the **actual practical problem** you are trying to solve? Your question lacks well defined parameters, it's a very interesting discussion topic, but unfortunately discussions don't really work with the Q&amp;A philosophy and format of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_What_The_Fuck_You_Want_To_Public_License&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_license&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CeCILL&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptix_General_License&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Public_License&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSSL_license#Licensing&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/134786/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10510" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3894" RevisionGUID="f054b1cf-7380-4f8c-874e-6130842d763d" CreationDate="2012-08-20T15:16:53.220" UserId="25936" Comment="added 254 characters in body" Text="Something us regular users can do would be to make an ad for the blog in the [Community Promotion Ads](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2635/1130) meta post, and vote it up a few times so it shows up on occasion in the advertisement box on the right side of the screen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Thanks to Morons][1], we now have an ad for the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2635/community-promotion-ads-2012/3905#3905&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Oj2dZ.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10511" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3894" RevisionGUID="11dbe9a3-5932-4793-909c-436b83ab0b0a" CreationDate="2012-08-20T16:38:26.410" UserId="31260" Comment="quote background and tooltip for screen shot" Text="Something us regular users can do would be to make an ad for the blog in the [Community Promotion Ads](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2635/1130) meta post, and vote it up a few times so it shows up on occasion in the advertisement box on the right side of the screen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Thanks to Morons][1], we now have an ad for the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Oj2dZ.png][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2635/community-promotion-ads-2012/3905#3905&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Oj2dZ.png &quot;ad for the blog&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10512" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3924" RevisionGUID="7d33d459-4d40-4e65-b738-31a667552b37" CreationDate="2012-08-20T16:46:10.880" UserId="58748" Text="Maybe I'm a bit late with my answer, but I think this would be a good idea:   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Analyze what kind of inappropriate questions get asked the most.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Summarize what's wrong with those questions in a few short sentences. *It has to be short.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. When a new user tries to post a question, display those sentences in a large font, maybe even forcing the user to check some boxes or whatever.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;New user&quot; could be, for example, someone who has asked less than three questions which got upvoted... Or whatever definition seems the most appropriate.  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10513" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3894" RevisionGUID="31b5856a-46cb-4c00-9394-8e2fa93ed304" CreationDate="2012-08-20T17:04:20.487" UserId="1130" Comment="Needed more red lines in picture to know what I'm supposed to be looking at" Text="Something us regular users can do would be to make an ad for the blog in the [Community Promotion Ads](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2635/1130) meta post, and vote it up a few times so it shows up on occasion in the advertisement box on the right side of the screen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Thanks to Morons][1], we now have an ad for the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Screenshot of ad][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2635/community-promotion-ads-2012/3905#3905&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/UPNBP.png &quot;ad for the blog&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Oj2dZ.png " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10514" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3925" RevisionGUID="5bdadeb6-4eb5-4d6b-b66d-c5ea7919fe13" CreationDate="2012-08-20T17:26:36.133" UserId="7748" Text="Last week I posted an [AD][1] for [our Blog][2] and it received the 6 votes need to run. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was a generic AD, now I am thinking that it would be a good idea to change the AD every time we have a new Blog posting mentioning the Post Name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is it ok to change the AD after it has been voted on?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Would it be better to create a new Template AD and put a comment that the Text will change regularly?** (Creating a new ad for every post seems like abuse even if we could get the votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Lastly, assuming this was allowed, would it work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2635/community-promotion-ads-2012/3905#3905&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10515" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3925" RevisionGUID="5bdadeb6-4eb5-4d6b-b66d-c5ea7919fe13" CreationDate="2012-08-20T17:26:36.133" UserId="7748" Text="Changing an Ad that has been approved by Voters" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10516" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3925" RevisionGUID="5bdadeb6-4eb5-4d6b-b66d-c5ea7919fe13" CreationDate="2012-08-20T17:26:36.133" UserId="7748" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10517" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3925" RevisionGUID="0c1b7f86-2890-430e-92c0-577fd7c72574" CreationDate="2012-08-20T17:34:02.613" UserId="7748" Comment="edited body" Text="Last week I posted an [AD][1] for [our Blog][2] and it received the 6 votes needed to run. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was a generic AD, now I am thinking that it would be a good idea to change the AD every time we have a new Blog posting mentioning the Post Name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is it ok to change the AD after it has been voted on?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Would it be better to create a new Template AD and put a comment that the Text will change regularly?** (Creating a new ad for every post seems like abuse even if we could get the votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Lastly, assuming this was allowed, would it work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2635/community-promotion-ads-2012/3905#3905&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10518" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3926" RevisionGUID="948746eb-add9-4190-b3ec-345e8ddde8af" CreationDate="2012-08-20T19:14:30.500" UserId="33171" Text="Generally changing *specifically* the community blog ad picture, I think, is okay. I highly doubt the community would loudly oppose keeping the Blog ad with a fresher image (unless you changed it to a terrible, terrible image, so you would be wise to just do an overview pass of the image before you change it). The ads now run for a whole year, so getting a new image isn't a bad idea now and then. In this very specific case, I think it's alright.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Changing it for every blog post, however, seems a bit overkill. This mostly comes from the fact we do not support the ability to run &quot;programmatic&quot; ads that update themselves (like our cross-site question ads) - we can only serve static images. Note that I don't think that this classifies as subverting the static image requirement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a sense, it is &quot;making this kind of thing work with what we have available&quot;, but I think it has the potential to permit a lot more behavior of &quot;repeatedly editing ads every couple of weeks&quot;. A fresh image is fine every now and then, but every couple of weeks is pushing it, especially when allowances are already being made. Also hard to justify letting this be a &quot;pseudo-programmatic ad&quot; and not letting others run &quot;pseudo-programmatic ads&quot; for free reign to change the details on the ad at any time - coming up with appropriate restrictions on this seems like it'd make the entire ad system a lot more complex than it truly needs to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the topic of blog article visibility though, we are looking into *possibly* increasing the amount of days they show up on the Community Bulletin. Baby steps that aren't guaranteed right now, but it's a thing that could happen." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10519" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3926" RevisionGUID="3d3f38f6-4a5b-422e-b118-760c645e5ae3" CreationDate="2012-08-20T19:31:16.697" UserId="33171" Comment="More accurate for updates that I missed. Hum." Text="Generally changing *specifically* the community blog ad picture, I think, is okay. I highly doubt the community would loudly oppose keeping the Blog ad with a fresher image (unless you changed it to a terrible, terrible image, so you would be wise to just do an overview pass of the image before you change it). The ads now run for a whole year, so getting a new image isn't a bad idea now and then. In this very specific case, I think it's alright.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Changing it for every blog post, however, seems a bit overkill. This mostly comes from the fact we do not support the ability to run &quot;programmatic&quot; ads that update themselves (like our cross-site question ads) - we can only serve static images. Note that I don't think that this classifies as subverting the static image requirement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a sense, it is &quot;making this kind of thing work with what we have available&quot;, but I think it has the potential to permit a lot more behavior of &quot;repeatedly editing ads every couple of weeks&quot;. A fresh image is fine every now and then, but every couple of weeks is pushing it, especially when allowances are already being made. Also hard to justify letting this be a &quot;pseudo-programmatic ad&quot; and not letting others run &quot;pseudo-programmatic ads&quot; for free reign to change the details on the ad at any time - coming up with appropriate restrictions on this seems like it'd make the entire ad system a lot more complex than it truly needs to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the topic of blog article visibility though, we did increase the amount of days they show up on the Community Bulletin. Small steps for now in that direction." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10520" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3927" RevisionGUID="0e96c2bd-c6ef-4a6d-bb55-68e17778fe99" CreationDate="2012-08-21T01:50:58.020" UserId="61852" Text="That answer was mine, what I tried to do was the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Superclass is abstract and has all three members set to a default value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subclass has different constructors so the programmer can instantiate it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If first constructor is used, all members will have the default values.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If second constructor is used, you give an initial value to actionText member leaving other two members with the default value...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;fF third constructor is used, you instantiate it with a new value for actionText and toolTip, leaving imageURl whith the default value...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so on." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10521" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3927" RevisionGUID="9d144683-456f-4ba0-8258-a350238caccb" CreationDate="2012-08-21T02:17:11.473" UserId="61852" Comment="edited body" Text="That answer was mine, what I tried to do was the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Superclass is abstract and has all three members set to a default value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subclass has different constructors so the programmer can instantiate it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If first constructor is used, all members will have the default values.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If second constructor is used, you give an initial value to actionText member leaving other two members with the default value...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If third constructor is used, you instantiate it with a new value for actionText and toolTip, leaving imageURl whith the default value...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so on." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10522" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3928" RevisionGUID="7efa71e9-9307-442a-8483-8854b3d9cf7e" CreationDate="2012-08-21T07:49:46.827" UserId="31260" Text="Please merge the following tags and make them synonyms:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  [tag:prototype] (14 questions) into [tag:prototyping] (25)&#xD;&#xA;2.  [tag:type-system] (18 questions) into [tag:type-systems] (6)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10523" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3928" RevisionGUID="7efa71e9-9307-442a-8483-8854b3d9cf7e" CreationDate="2012-08-21T07:49:46.827" UserId="31260" Text="Tag merge / synonym requests: [prototype] -&gt; [prototyping], [type-system] -&gt; [type-systems]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10524" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3928" RevisionGUID="7efa71e9-9307-442a-8483-8854b3d9cf7e" CreationDate="2012-08-21T07:49:46.827" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10525" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3929" RevisionGUID="b609e308-cc83-4438-a81f-815ad2346682" CreationDate="2012-08-21T18:43:11.077" UserId="4251" Text="I posted [a question][1] on StackOverflow that I think could have also been posted on Programmers.SE.  The question has gotten no answers on SO.  Is it bad practice to post the same question here after giving it time on SO?  Or should I flag my own question as off-topic to recommend it get migrated here?  Or should I leave it alone and not cross-post since it wasn't flagged as off-topic by others on SO?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11956543/smarty-template-inheritance-only-provides-local-scope-variables" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10526" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3929" RevisionGUID="b609e308-cc83-4438-a81f-815ad2346682" CreationDate="2012-08-21T18:43:11.077" UserId="4251" Text="What's the crossposting policy with SO?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10527" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3929" RevisionGUID="b609e308-cc83-4438-a81f-815ad2346682" CreationDate="2012-08-21T18:43:11.077" UserId="4251" Text="|discussion|cross-posting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10528" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3930" RevisionGUID="3f3373f6-840f-4c0c-9fec-59fcd648dae1" CreationDate="2012-08-21T18:57:37.907" UserId="4" Text="Questions shouldn't be cross-posted - if your question happens to be on-topic on more than one site, ask it based on the kinds of answers you want to get. Your question, however, doesn't appear to be on-topic here. It's best to continue to refine your question (if you can) and leave it on Stack Overflow. It looks like an implementation issue to me, and not a conceptual question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10529" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3931" RevisionGUID="3649563e-8337-4c35-9f87-0299c21555f9" CreationDate="2012-08-21T18:57:58.937" UserId="25936" Text="**Do not cross post.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general if a question is more suitable for Programmers than Stack Overflow then the appropriate action would be to flag it for moderation attention and ask for it to be moved here. However your question is about an implementation issue, which makes it off topic for Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10530" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3928" RevisionGUID="a903a233-dc2e-4384-95ef-cb24a395611f" CreationDate="2012-08-22T11:15:27.610" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10531" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3932" RevisionGUID="0fdc918b-1128-471a-b1c2-751b618c8e2f" CreationDate="2012-08-22T11:38:27.867" UserId="31260" Text="Done as requested.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* ['prototyping' tag synonyms](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/prototyping/synonyms) page:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  The following tags will be remapped to [tag:prototyping]  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:prototype]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* ['type-systems' tag synonyms](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/type-systems/synonyms) page:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  The following tags will be remapped to [tag:type-systems]  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:type-system]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10532" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3932" RevisionGUID="ed355c63-5d7e-4e7a-af7a-b8684748b6bb" CreationDate="2012-08-22T11:38:27.867" UserId="31260" />
  <row Id="10533" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3933" RevisionGUID="10f960d5-b20d-4e72-9243-e339a6491e72" CreationDate="2012-08-22T12:37:14.323" UserId="3530" Text="The answers I would except would describe the most popular licenses with bullet points (e.g. allows commercial use or not, viral or not etc.).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know this is more of a wiki-type thing, but SE is somewhere between a wiki and a Q&amp;A isn't it? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10534" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3933" RevisionGUID="10f960d5-b20d-4e72-9243-e339a6491e72" CreationDate="2012-08-22T12:37:14.323" UserId="3530" Text="Would a &quot;how to choose the best OSS license&quot;-type question be appropriate for PSE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10535" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3933" RevisionGUID="10f960d5-b20d-4e72-9243-e339a6491e72" CreationDate="2012-08-22T12:37:14.323" UserId="3530" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10536" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3934" RevisionGUID="ced619a6-ceaa-4a4f-8960-6e48e511fa25" CreationDate="2012-08-22T12:57:17.197" UserId="4" Text="I agree with Yannis's comment that a &quot;how to&quot; guide would be a better blog post than a question. It sounds like the question that you described would turn into a list question, which are called out in the definition of &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, the &quot;how do I choose a license&quot; boils down to &quot;read each license, decide which one best fits your need&quot;. There's no real process or methodology to explain, and there's really no alternative ways. There are some tools out there to help you find an appropriate license, but those are easily found by simple Google searches and resource requests are typically off-topic as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you need help choosing a particular license to meet a series of needs and you enumerated those requirements in the question (and there isn't a duplicate already on the site), then I don't see why the question wouldn't be appropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10537" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3920" RevisionGUID="e6bd1ec8-b10e-47bd-a0a9-7cfba02d93d7" CreationDate="2012-08-22T20:57:08.873" UserId="31260" Comment="your heads-up would be helpful if it was accompanied with relevant examples" Text="What kind reaction would you expect to a post looking [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/161525/31260)?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **This question would surely be considered off-topic, but... A friend of mine who lives in France is going to marry soon. And we (his friends) are looking for a nice place to make a geek party somewhere in Central Europe. If someone has had an experience like this please let us know.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvote, close-vote, flag for deletion? Yeah I did all that, &lt;sup&gt;yeah post closed, flag is marked helpful&lt;/sup&gt; now guess what?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/EcH5u.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guess what? Post still hangs there, right at the front page. Guess what? it even attracted an upvote. Next thing would probably be some kind soul going to suggest something helpful in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You know, I spend _some_ time at Programmers, studying questions and answers. I learn a lot and where possible, I try to teach others by answering, I gain a reasonably high rep and I am proud of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I use every opportunity to refer colleagues to particular Programmers questions that relate to our day job, especially when there are my answers &lt;sup&gt;(for comparison I rarely did so with programming community I participated in prior to SE)&lt;/sup&gt;. By doing so, I hope they get impressed by my contribution and in particular with the fact that it is done in high-quality, high standard,&#xD;&#xA;##professional looking environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Now, next guy I point to some valuable answer, reads it, gets impressed, clicks &lt;kbd&gt;QUESTIONS&lt;/kbd&gt; to see what else is there and what they see is...&#xD;&#xA;##looking for a nice place to make a geek party&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Would you expect me to complain seeing snarky comments on a **visible** post like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Give me a break. Give me a freaking break.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The guy I mention above -- that colleague I pointed to some good answer -- would better see that community has low tolerance for garbage like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would sure worry about snarky / unprofessional stuff in reasonably (even remotely) appropriate posts - even downvoted, even not too high quality - exactly for the reasons explained above. I want others I refer to Programmers to see it following high professional standards. In that sense, your heads-up would be helpful if it was accompanied with relevant examples. But it isn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultra low quality posts used as examples here are whole another game to me. These posts damage site image no matter if there are snarky comments there or not. Such posts should be quickly deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All eight example questions that were referred to since [revision 6](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/3836/6) are currently **removed**. If you worry about snarky comments in posts like that, well the real solution is simply to delete these posts - the sooner the better. Whatever comments are there, will be deleted along the way, making it not an issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EcH5u.png &quot;downvoted, close-voted, flagged&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10538" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3935" RevisionGUID="002eb3a0-520c-432b-a197-bf106d546051" CreationDate="2012-08-23T20:42:39.790" UserId="1996" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/160473/what-is-the-best-way-to-use-inheritance-with-orms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my view, this is a perfectly appropriate question for Programmers.SE that can yield an objective, constructive answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do people think that it would be more appropriate for Stackoverflow? Were people expecting code samples?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10539" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3935" RevisionGUID="002eb3a0-520c-432b-a197-bf106d546051" CreationDate="2012-08-23T20:42:39.790" UserId="1996" Text="Why are people voting to close this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10540" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3935" RevisionGUID="002eb3a0-520c-432b-a197-bf106d546051" CreationDate="2012-08-23T20:42:39.790" UserId="1996" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10541" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3936" RevisionGUID="e0fc0df3-cbbf-480a-97f4-6a3c083e9ae0" CreationDate="2012-08-24T01:35:23.150" UserId="101" Text="Preface: I did not vote to close this question... :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes using the word &quot;best&quot; in the title or main question will start a question down the slippery slope to closure.  What does &quot;best&quot; mean?  I don't know and the question doesn't help define it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think pdr's edits helped a great deal.  Hopefully the OP can add to the edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as being appropriate for our site, I think it is. It's a white board question that isn't looking for an implementation answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10542" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3937" RevisionGUID="56696793-3d6d-494f-a6eb-6c67e5ca9eea" CreationDate="2012-08-24T02:53:00.993" UserId="1996" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87107/what-are-the-differences-between-qa-engineers-and-software-engineers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just don't think that this is constructive; and I feel like there's a small rant embedded in the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10543" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3937" RevisionGUID="56696793-3d6d-494f-a6eb-6c67e5ca9eea" CreationDate="2012-08-24T02:53:00.993" UserId="1996" Text="Why did the community vote to reopen this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10544" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3937" RevisionGUID="56696793-3d6d-494f-a6eb-6c67e5ca9eea" CreationDate="2012-08-24T02:53:00.993" UserId="1996" Text="|discussion|specific-question|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10545" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3938" RevisionGUID="30a2c77b-f487-4528-a564-7bd16b735802" CreationDate="2012-08-24T23:18:18.640" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="It has been closed as an exact duplicate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10546" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3937" RevisionGUID="533d716d-0c94-4d17-bc31-89c0684e0bf0" CreationDate="2012-08-24T23:18:49.030" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10547" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3939" RevisionGUID="e92ef47f-e4f1-4904-92ed-a38b5f0055a3" CreationDate="2012-08-25T15:43:32.940" UserId="1996" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89266/comparing-ones-self-to-others-during-interviews&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Isn't this question a better fit for Workplace.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just don't see how this is specific to programmers or programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10548" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3939" RevisionGUID="e92ef47f-e4f1-4904-92ed-a38b5f0055a3" CreationDate="2012-08-25T15:43:32.940" UserId="1996" Text="Isn't this question a better fit for Workplace.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10549" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3939" RevisionGUID="e92ef47f-e4f1-4904-92ed-a38b5f0055a3" CreationDate="2012-08-25T15:43:32.940" UserId="1996" Text="|discussion|specific-question|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10550" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3940" RevisionGUID="87693ed7-70b5-4d3e-8b3b-d64716c5bd1f" CreationDate="2012-08-25T15:47:31.060" UserId="47" Text="Possibly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it's a relatively high scoring question with 14 answers - one of which has been accepted - asked over a year ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Migrating old questions - especially high scoring ones - is not a good idea as it skews the reputation on the target site. Users who aren't very active on the target site suddenly get a reputation boost. The people who voted might not be experts in the subject matter of the target site (less likely in this case) and might not even have accounts on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think the question is off topic please vote for it to be closed and/or flag it for moderator attention, but it's highly unlikely that we'll migrate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10556" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3879" RevisionGUID="9d710bfd-298d-449e-ac7a-cddb1dc9b4f6" CreationDate="2012-08-27T07:49:18.390" UserId="42031" Comment="updated progress" Text="I have gone through and re-tagged the closed questions and put more appropriate tags where possible. I have also re-tagged a few of the questions that didn't really need improvement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will work on looking at the other questions in the list and editing/tagging/flagging where appropriate, and try not to spam the home page (or the review queue as my rep here is too low to edit).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**: We're down to 35 now, still slowly working on it. Having troubles deciding whether some should be open or not, I'll seek clarification in chat. I've found a few where they are linked to questions that have been closed as duplicates of the question in context - so I just removed the tags on those ones." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10557" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3866" RevisionGUID="c2a953af-1405-45d9-bdf2-df224f141cdf" CreationDate="2012-08-27T15:44:49.157" UserId="25936" Comment="added 15 characters in body" Text="There's a [tag:work] tag. Looks like it was missed in the http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Burninate/cleanup? Seems like a likely target of off topic questions, so I'd recommend going through them and removing the tag as they're closed/edited. There's &lt;del&gt;80&lt;/del&gt;  &lt;del&gt;50&lt;/del&gt; **32**. As a mod from Workplace I can already tell you The Workplace won't be accepting any old questions with the tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10558" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3942" RevisionGUID="debc46e5-ca28-40b4-a6fe-1cf0c179fba4" CreationDate="2012-08-27T18:08:55.800" UserId="27881" Text="It will likely yield an answer per ORM.  The OP did mention Entity and Django in the question, but the net is cast quite wide overall, since he's thinking of it in terms of the database itself still.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, Django has a [built-in][1] way to do model inheritance - you never had to touch the foreign keys yourself.  But even if other frameworks also have their own ways, it isn't necessarily going to work the same as Django.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/db/models/#model-inheritance" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10559" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3943" RevisionGUID="da3a6192-98ae-428e-8633-dc179d4df461" CreationDate="2012-08-27T18:35:11.440" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="I killed all but 6 of these things. The remainder appear to be off topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10560" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3866" RevisionGUID="86b42a7e-c1c2-4ac5-b52d-4691275b4fba" CreationDate="2012-08-27T21:00:32.247" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 13 characters in body" Text="There's a [tag:work] tag. Looks like it was missed in the http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Burninate/cleanup? Seems like a likely target of off topic questions, so I'd recommend going through them and removing the tag as they're closed/edited. There's &lt;del&gt;80&lt;/del&gt;   **13**. As a mod from Workplace I can already tell you The Workplace won't be accepting any old questions with the tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10561" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3943" RevisionGUID="8475a37c-044f-4dab-8eb9-1f5ec4075954" CreationDate="2012-08-27T21:13:07.577" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="deleted 27 characters in body" Text="All questions have been retagged or destroyed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10562" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3944" RevisionGUID="de2b4db2-06df-45c2-8af1-157953273a1e" CreationDate="2012-08-28T18:09:14.120" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Is there some sort of cleanup / maintenance going on with the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today (8-28) and yesterday, I noticed a few drops in my reputation.  The first was 18-20 points, the second was about 45.  I checked my profile, but didn't see anything to indicate a reputation change.  Likewise, no notifications came through.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this occurs again, how would I be able to identify what's going on and what triggered the drop?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10563" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3944" RevisionGUID="de2b4db2-06df-45c2-8af1-157953273a1e" CreationDate="2012-08-28T18:09:14.120" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Is there any site maintenance going on currently?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10564" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3944" RevisionGUID="de2b4db2-06df-45c2-8af1-157953273a1e" CreationDate="2012-08-28T18:09:14.120" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|support|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10565" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3945" RevisionGUID="a03a0578-c5a8-47ce-8336-157d197fbc19" CreationDate="2012-08-28T18:23:56.890" UserId="25936" Text="There is a &quot;show removed posts&quot; checkbox at the bottom of your [profile's reputation tab][1], if you enable it you will see that two questions you had answers on were deleted. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Past couple of days I've been doing routine cleanups, deleting closed &amp; negatively scored questions. Most of them had no answers, I concentrated on old migration stubs, closed questions with no answers, horribly worded dupes and questions with zero voted answers, but somewhere along the way I deleted a handful of questions with positively scored answers that had pending delete votes (and no re-open votes) or were obviously unsalvageable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/53019/glenh7?tab=reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10566" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3946" RevisionGUID="cf982076-fde8-48ac-bf1a-9b562cf3ddb8" CreationDate="2012-08-28T21:40:17.037" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Suppose I have a vested interest in seeing a blog post about a particular subject be written by a domain expert who may be reluctant to do it of their own volition. Would there be a good way of awarding a bounty on this to incentivize its completion? I find this somewhat ethically spurious but at the same time it might be a good way of awarding for difficult topics." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10567" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3946" RevisionGUID="cf982076-fde8-48ac-bf1a-9b562cf3ddb8" CreationDate="2012-08-28T21:40:17.037" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Offering Bounties on Blog Topics?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10568" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3946" RevisionGUID="cf982076-fde8-48ac-bf1a-9b562cf3ddb8" CreationDate="2012-08-28T21:40:17.037" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10569" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3946" RevisionGUID="9273a03d-d1a7-43f4-9fa9-54d81eee6bf0" CreationDate="2012-08-28T21:41:20.127" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags; edited tags" Text="|discussion|blog|bounty|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10570" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3947" RevisionGUID="dc4d5470-9f37-4260-8863-b3c2165954a6" CreationDate="2012-08-28T22:12:57.043" UserId="25936" Text="**The problem**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tons of extremely low quality questions from *unregistered* accounts. A few recent examples: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162691/question-on-pl-sql-evaluate-the-pl-sql-block-given-above-and-determine-the-dat&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162604/help-me-make-a-choice-between-comp-science-and-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162555/programming-in-r-help&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162544/jsp-datagrid-tab-library&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162463/learning-the-java-language&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162413/java-unitilsexception-executed-scripts-table-public-dbmaintain-scripts-does&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161709/how-active-the-new-element-in-jquery&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161592/running-nuint-in-visual-studio-express-edition&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161540/how-to-display-hyperlink-field-for-download-pdf-file-in-gridview-control&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll stop here before it gets really painfull.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The pattern**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All these questions seem to me like Stack Overflow rejects, extremely low quality questions about implementation issues / programming tools. Stack Overflow requires users to register before they asked, and I _think_ that some of these questions appeared on Programmers after they were closed &amp; deleted on Stack Overflow and / or the askers' accounts were automatically question banned or suspended. It might just be that noobs are naturally more interested in implementation issues, and Stack Overflow has no involvement in this, but my spider sense is tingling. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a few confirmed cases of people posting off topic questions on Programmers to sidestep their question ban / suspension on Stack Overflow, but this isn't easy to confirm for unregistered accounts. Some smells:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- A handfull of cases where the unregistered accounts posting low quality Stack Overflow type questions shared IPs with quite a few other unregistered accounts that also did the same (it might be an accident, or it might be the same guy/gal taking advantage of the system),&#xD;&#xA;- A couple of cases where we confirmed the unregistered account was question banned on Stack Overflow, either by them admitting it in comments, or by asking someone with access to the database to confirm it for us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Moderation issues**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderating unregistered accounts is extremely inefficient: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Suspensions don't work, the only thing the suspendee has to do is clear their cookies and they can post again.&#xD;&#xA;- Automatic question bans are enforced at a deeper level, but they seem to also fail for unregistered accounts.&#xD;&#xA;- Deleting / destroying an account for posting very low quality questions is overkill, we typically only delete spam accounts or accounts that posted extremely offensive content. &#xD;&#xA;- Even for good but off topic questions, migrating to Stack Overflow is discouraged, the unregistered accounts will most likely lose ownership of the question if they don't register there. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestions**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. *Require users to register before asking, same as with Stack Overflow.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I personally don't like it, but it's the obvious solution. We could do a trial run for a couple of months and evaluate the results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. *Tweak the question ban algorithm to be a bit stricter for unregistered accounts.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is completely up to Stack Exchange, my thoughts would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Given the overlap with Stack Overflow, have the algorithm check question banned IPs on Stack Overflow, and not let the account post more than one question, if their first one was downvoted and closed as Off Topic or Not A Real Question.&#xD;&#xA;  - Be more aggresive with unregistered accounts in general. Couple of Off Topic questions, ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. ???&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Hard data**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't have any hard data available, I asked a community team member about how many of the questions from unregistered accounts end up closed and heavily downvoted and the number was surprisingly big. It was a casual conversation in Teacher's Lounge, I'm not sure if I can share the actual percentage, but it was large the point that it made me wonder if there's any real benefit from allowing questions from unregistered users. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anyone with access to the database cares to enlighten us with science, we would be very interested in finding out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What percentage of questions from unregistered accounts ends up closed and heavily downvoted, and has that percentage gone up or down over time?&#xD;&#xA;- Is there any correlation with Stack Overflow question bans / suspensions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10571" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3947" RevisionGUID="dc4d5470-9f37-4260-8863-b3c2165954a6" CreationDate="2012-08-28T22:12:57.043" UserId="25936" Text="What can we do about extremely low quality questions from unregistered users?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10572" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3947" RevisionGUID="dc4d5470-9f37-4260-8863-b3c2165954a6" CreationDate="2012-08-28T22:12:57.043" UserId="25936" Text="|discussion|support|closed-questions|question-quality|unregistered-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10573" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3948" RevisionGUID="ecd19ce7-0b87-4ddd-8f6f-6bace749d592" CreationDate="2012-08-28T23:36:01.337" UserId="32353" Text="Proposal to vote on: If Stack Exchange wants to invest in #2 try #2 before escalating to #1 if needed.  If they don't then go straight to #1, if SE allows it.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10574" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3947" RevisionGUID="0421a53c-cc92-45e7-abed-b8adf34046f8" CreationDate="2012-08-29T02:08:04.750" UserId="1996" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="**The problem**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tons of extremely low quality questions from *unregistered* accounts. A few recent examples: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162691/question-on-pl-sql-evaluate-the-pl-sql-block-given-above-and-determine-the-dat&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162604/help-me-make-a-choice-between-comp-science-and-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162555/programming-in-r-help&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162544/jsp-datagrid-tab-library&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162463/learning-the-java-language&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162413/java-unitilsexception-executed-scripts-table-public-dbmaintain-scripts-does&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161709/how-active-the-new-element-in-jquery&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161592/running-nuint-in-visual-studio-express-edition&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161540/how-to-display-hyperlink-field-for-download-pdf-file-in-gridview-control&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll stop here before it gets really painfull.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The pattern**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All these questions seem to me like Stack Overflow rejects, extremely low quality questions about implementation issues / programming tools. Stack Overflow requires users to register before they asked, and I _think_ that some of these questions appeared on Programmers after they were closed &amp; deleted on Stack Overflow and / or the askers' accounts were automatically question banned or suspended. It might just be that noobs are naturally more interested in implementation issues, and Stack Overflow has no involvement in this, but my spider sense is tingling. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a few confirmed cases of people posting off topic questions on Programmers to sidestep their question ban / suspension on Stack Overflow, but this isn't easy to confirm for unregistered accounts. Some smells:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- A handfull of cases where the unregistered accounts posting low quality Stack Overflow type questions shared IPs with quite a few other unregistered accounts that also did the same (it might be an accident, or it might be the same guy/gal taking advantage of the system),&#xD;&#xA;- A couple of cases where we confirmed the unregistered account was question banned on Stack Overflow, either by them admitting it in comments, or by asking someone with access to the database to confirm it for us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Moderation issues**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderating unregistered accounts is extremely inefficient: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Suspensions don't work, the only thing the suspendee has to do is clear their cookies and they can post again.&#xD;&#xA;- Automatic question bans are enforced at a deeper level, but they seem to also fail for unregistered accounts.&#xD;&#xA;- Deleting / destroying an account for posting very low quality questions is overkill, we typically only delete spam accounts or accounts that posted extremely offensive content. &#xD;&#xA;- Even for good but off topic questions, migrating to Stack Overflow is discouraged, the unregistered accounts will most likely lose ownership of the question if they don't register there. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestions**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. *Require users to register before asking, same as with Stack Overflow.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I personally don't like it, but it's the obvious solution. We could do a trial run for a couple of months and evaluate the results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. *Tweak the question ban algorithm to be a bit stricter for unregistered accounts.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is completely up to Stack Exchange, my thoughts would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Given the overlap with Stack Overflow, have the algorithm check question banned IPs on Stack Overflow, and not let the account post more than one question, if their first one was downvoted and closed as Off Topic or Not A Real Question.&#xD;&#xA;  - Be more aggresive with unregistered accounts in general. Couple of Off Topic questions, ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. ???&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Hard data**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't have any hard data available, I asked a community team member about how many of the questions from unregistered accounts end up closed and heavily downvoted and the number was surprisingly big. It was a casual conversation in Teacher's Lounge, I'm not sure if I can share the actual percentage, but it was large enough that it made me wonder if there's any real benefit from allowing questions from unregistered users. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anyone with access to the database cares to enlighten us with science, we would be very interested in finding out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What percentage of questions from unregistered accounts ends up closed and heavily downvoted, and has that percentage gone up or down over time?&#xD;&#xA;- Is there any correlation with Stack Overflow question bans / suspensions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10575" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3949" RevisionGUID="e879cadd-8580-4a46-841a-d4cfd219cd67" CreationDate="2012-08-29T04:11:01.140" UserId="2305" Text="I just came across this question that has already been closed: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162696/reading-code-on-an-interview&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that the question as it was worded wasn't very constructive but I think that if it had of been cleaned up, it could have provided some useful answers for programmers, both interviewers and interviewees. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Harvey was very quick to dismiss this question as off-topic and link to the FAQ. Fair enough, but our FAQ doesn't specifically say no interview questions that relate to programmers even though Robert Harvey states so in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there are many things in technical interview that wouldn't be relevant to other disciplines. But, are the questions generated by technical interviews useful to all programmers, I not sure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Either way, our FAQ as it is now, doesn't have a clear stance on interview questions. We have an interview tag that seems to be well used, but the majority of questions using this tag are closed. If these questions don't belong here, I feel we should be clear about that upfront. Remove the tag and update our FAQ. If there are cases where they fit this site, we should outline it in the FAQ. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10576" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3949" RevisionGUID="e879cadd-8580-4a46-841a-d4cfd219cd67" CreationDate="2012-08-29T04:11:01.140" UserId="2305" Text="Should &quot;No Interview Questions&quot; be added to our FAQ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10577" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3949" RevisionGUID="e879cadd-8580-4a46-841a-d4cfd219cd67" CreationDate="2012-08-29T04:11:01.140" UserId="2305" Text="|discussion|faq-contents|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10578" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3950" RevisionGUID="4ae718f3-2bef-4ed9-9794-60a4847cf17e" CreationDate="2012-08-29T04:50:24.593" UserId="25936" Text="The only interview questions I can think of that are unique to our profession are actually technical / conceptual questions (thus on topic on SO / ProgSE) that just happened to be asked during an interview. The rest are either off topic by virtue of not being unique to software development, or very non constructive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I don't think we have a clear stance on interview questions, and the majority of them is open, we currently have [374 open ones][1] and [108 closed ones][2]. Almost 4 out of 5 are open, I think we really need to closely inspect the tag before completely denouncing an entire category of questions. A lot of them might just be mis-tagged [interview] when they are only tangentially related to the interview process, and obviously there might be others that slipped through the cracks and need to be closed. And there might be some that are truly about the process, and are absolutely on topic (although I doubt it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's clean up the tag first, and worry about the FAQ later.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Binterview%5D%20closed:0&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Binterview%5D%20closed:1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10579" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3950" RevisionGUID="1250425f-d285-4ff2-b474-24080584989e" CreationDate="2012-08-29T07:13:37.527" UserId="25936" Comment="added 196 characters in body" Text="The only interview questions I can think of that are unique to our profession are actually technical / conceptual questions (thus on topic on SO / ProgSE) that just happened to be asked during an interview. The rest are either off topic by virtue of not being unique to software development, or very non constructive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I don't think we have a clear stance on interview questions, and the majority of them is open, we currently have [374 open ones][1] and [108 closed ones][2]. Almost 4 out of 5 are open, I think we really need to closely inspect the tag before completely denouncing an entire category of questions. A lot of them might just be mis-tagged [interview] when they are only tangentially related to the interview process, and obviously there might be others that slipped through the cracks and need to be closed. And there might be some that are truly about the process, and are absolutely on topic (although I doubt it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's clean up the tag first, and worry about the FAQ later. Worth noting that cleaning up [interview] was [first (?) mentioned more than a year ago][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Binterview%5D%20closed:0&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Binterview%5D%20closed:1&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10580" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3951" RevisionGUID="8abf9df6-4216-41b4-8ca3-342e6c7b5af9" CreationDate="2012-08-29T12:35:35.910" UserId="31260" Text="&gt; ...We could do a **trial run** for a couple of months and evaluate the results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that requiring registration for questions can be cancelled if trial run results turn out negative&lt;sup&gt; 1&lt;/sup&gt; above looks like a low risk test.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading, such a trial would fit the spirit of guidance provided in **[Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/ &quot;reference article at Stack Exchange blog&quot;)**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...we’re determined to keep question quality high, **even at the cost of refusing a little sand**. It’s true that you can’t have Q&amp;A without _questions_, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&amp;A site is to flood it with low-quality questions. I think [Mark Trapp](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/91808/about-new-downvote-policy-on-meta/91813#91813) summed it up best in [this meta answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/91808/about-new-downvote-policy-on-meta/91813#91813):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; To put it another way, when I go to a Stack Exchange home page, I see a **list of questions**. If most of those are terrible questions with little to no indication that I’d be wasting my time by reading them, the value proposition of visiting and participating is diminished: I have better things to do.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Compare that to _answers_ on a specific question: I’ve made a conscious choice to look into what I think is an interesting question. I already made the decision that the question is worth my time. If I find the answers to be useless, I have a few different options, as an interested party, to register my displeasure, including writing my own answer. Being able to write your own answer is key: if your answer is good enough, it’ll rise above the junk answers and everyone will be better off for it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; There is no such action for question lists. I can’t say “these questions suck, show me this question I just thought up instead”: that’d be silly. So, it’s imperative the question list have a high signal-to-noise ratio, and removing the penalty for those users who do take the time to read a question and later find it to be useless so they can down-vote is conducive to that. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Fundamentally, answers can be filtered in ways that questions cannot. While there is a tension between having “enough” questions and a bunch of amazing, highly skilled answerers twiddling their thumbs waiting around for something to do, in the long run we’d much rather err on the side of having _interesting_ and _on-topic_ questions for these folks to sink their teeth into.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&amp;A system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**. If this means aggressively downvoting or closing unworthy and uninteresting questions, so be it. Without a community of people willing to _answer_ questions, it really doesn’t matter if there are questions at all, does it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;_if trial run results turn out negative_ - (not incidentally,) above guidance also provides a criteria on how to judge trial run results: **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10581" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3952" RevisionGUID="9d445901-9e34-4adc-92ca-7710bc9ce3d5" CreationDate="2012-08-29T13:02:15.047" UserId="41381" Text="Due to our perception as a sort of second SO (deserved or otherwise) I think doing #1 would be a good idea, because we constantly have to deal with both our expected growing pains, and fallout from SO as they grow. I think this puts our site in a special category where requiring registration would be justified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our site definition seems difficult enough for registered users (SO and our own) of to grasp, hoping non registered users will magically be better at asking on topic questions seems like a pipe dream." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10582" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3953" RevisionGUID="0c72816d-8419-412b-b05e-173e5ef5c9aa" CreationDate="2012-08-29T15:25:27.720" UserId="50440" Text="This [question][1] was closed as non constructive with no comments or feedback of why it is considered of low quality.  &#xD;&#xA;IMHO, I believe the question is reasonable and answerable from anyone with good experience.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar question were posted on some time ago, but specific to certain languages:  &#xD;&#xA;[How can I test PHP skills in a interview?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118886/how-can-i-test-php-skills-in-a-interview) with a great answer provided by **Yannis Rizos**  one of the moderators.  &#xD;&#xA;[.net Interviews](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56797/net-interviews) a question about interviewing a senior .Net developer.  &#xD;&#xA;[How you prepared for your .NET interview?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14047/how-you-prepared-for-your-net-interview)  &#xD;&#xA;[What are some tasks you might ask a potential ruby developer hire to complete?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86294/what-are-some-tasks-you-might-ask-a-potential-ruby-developer-hire-to-complete)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why a question about a non-language specific interview was closed?&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162767/non-language-specific-interview-questions-for-a-senior-web-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10583" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3953" RevisionGUID="0c72816d-8419-412b-b05e-173e5ef5c9aa" CreationDate="2012-08-29T15:25:27.720" UserId="50440" Text="Why was this question closed as non constructive for no apparent reason?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10584" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3953" RevisionGUID="0c72816d-8419-412b-b05e-173e5ef5c9aa" CreationDate="2012-08-29T15:25:27.720" UserId="50440" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|specific-question|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10585" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3954" RevisionGUID="b377c68b-4dd6-44a3-b541-400bb2f56687" CreationDate="2012-08-29T15:30:40.810" UserId="4" Text="I closed it following a flag because it can be interpreted in one of two ways, both of which make it not a good question. It can either be viewed as asking for a list, which isn't a good fit on any Stack Exchange site since there's no singular right answer. It can also be viewed as a resource request question (asking for someone to provide you with an existing list), which is best accomplished using a search engine, since Stack Exchange sites are designed to support answers that rely on experiences and knowledge rather than links to outside resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other questions weren't closed because the community never voted on them nor were they flagged. However, I just read all of them (treating this post as a flag on all of them) and closed them as not constructive for the exact same reason that I closed yours for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I didn't feel there was a need to explicitly leave a comment on your post explaining the problem, since the close message clearly indicates the reason and the FAQ provides guidance as to what to do. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10586" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3955" RevisionGUID="8bc1beae-e5b2-441a-b71a-097146584fd6" CreationDate="2012-08-29T15:32:19.503" UserId="1204" Text="The way you get these kinds of questions to work is to ask **how,** not **what.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of asking:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Q: What’s the best low light point-and-shoot camera?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A: Canon S90 and Lumix LX3.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ask this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Q: How do I tell which point-and-shoot cameras take good low light photos?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A: I strongly recommend looking for something with&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        a fast lens (2.0 at least)&#xD;&#xA;        reasonable ISO handling (at least 400, but preferably 800)&#xD;&#xA;        the biggest sensor available&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    The sum of these factors are really critical for low light situations." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10587" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3955" RevisionGUID="8ef766b2-6f2e-433d-9d0d-a42f8266af46" CreationDate="2012-08-29T15:38:12.973" UserId="1204" Comment="added 75 characters in body" Text="The way you get these kinds of questions to work is to ask **how,** not **what.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of asking:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Q: What’s the best low light point-and-shoot camera?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A: Canon S90 and Lumix LX3.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ask this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Q: How do I tell which point-and-shoot cameras take good low light photos?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A: I strongly recommend looking for something with&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        a fast lens (2.0 at least)&#xD;&#xA;        reasonable ISO handling (at least 400, but preferably 800)&#xD;&#xA;        the biggest sensor available&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    The sum of these factors are really critical for low light situations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ref: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10588" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3956" RevisionGUID="4563e0af-54a9-44c6-8c2f-6dcd84fe1f39" CreationDate="2012-08-29T16:38:35.680" UserId="1130" Text="No, we should not outlaw all interview questions in the FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Career questions are allowed providing they apply to programmers specifically.][1] This includes interview questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mark Trapp phrased this well in [his answer][2] to another post about career questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; directly to software development; general career advice questions with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; no relation to software development or where software development is a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; minor facet of the question are off-topic. A good way to test this is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, our [faq][3] even contains an image to explain this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this particular case, evaluating a candidates ability to read code is not something that applies to &quot;All Careers&quot; or &quot;Just You&quot;, so I don't see a problem with this question being on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1165/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/590/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xEI0s.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10589" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3947" RevisionGUID="8a3c8f8d-1059-44ea-94ea-ec3ad2d66f97" CreationDate="2012-08-29T17:26:41.647" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|featured|closed-questions|unregistered-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10590" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3957" RevisionGUID="82f17932-e276-4fac-940b-5365c93c084c" CreationDate="2012-08-30T01:41:32.027" UserId="1996" Text="&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135260/server-response-as-return-value-for-function&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Preface: I'm **very** mindful of ['The Summer of Love'][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Problem: I feel like the OP has a genuine question [here][2]. It's just that it's obfuscated by extremely poor grammar and perhaps an incomplete understanding of how client-server architecture works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question: Is there a way that we could &quot;gently&quot; tell the OP that he must improve the grammar and the clarity of his question if he expects people to respond with constructive, helpful answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3836/programmers-se-and-the-summer-of-love&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135260/server-response-as-return-value-for-function" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10591" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3957" RevisionGUID="82f17932-e276-4fac-940b-5365c93c084c" CreationDate="2012-08-30T01:41:32.027" UserId="1996" Text="How can we &quot;gently&quot; tell the OP that he must improve the grammar of this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10592" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3957" RevisionGUID="82f17932-e276-4fac-940b-5365c93c084c" CreationDate="2012-08-30T01:41:32.027" UserId="1996" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10593" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3958" RevisionGUID="708bf13e-4f5d-4fdf-b45c-842f89fb5637" CreationDate="2012-08-30T04:02:14.093" UserId="12611" Text="When I encounter a post with some grammar issues, I first make some edits myself to try and improve it. If there are parts I'm not sure about, I'll leave them and then leave a comment asking the op to consider making an edit to clarify further.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This not only leads by example but also gives the op a demonstrated place to start. In this case, I'm not entirely sure what he's getting at, mostly because I've had a long day, but I don't think it would be out of the question to ask him to narrow his example or clarify a little further. Mentioning the overuse of commas would be okay as well.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll leave a comment to get the ball rolling! :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10594" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3951" RevisionGUID="9ee806b6-d9b3-4cfb-a8a8-f94d2c98c452" CreationDate="2012-08-30T08:25:36.727" UserId="31260" Comment="I am not particularly happy about current questions quality..." Text="&gt; ...We could do a **trial run** for a couple of months and evaluate the results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that requiring registration for questions can be cancelled if trial run results turn out negative&lt;sup&gt; 1&lt;/sup&gt; above looks like a low risk test.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading, such a trial would fit the spirit of guidance provided in **[Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/ &quot;reference article at Stack Exchange blog&quot;)**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...we’re determined to keep question quality high, **even at the cost of refusing a little sand**. It’s true that you can’t have Q&amp;A without _questions_, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&amp;A site is to flood it with low-quality questions. I think [Mark Trapp](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/91808/about-new-downvote-policy-on-meta/91813#91813) summed it up best in [this meta answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/91808/about-new-downvote-policy-on-meta/91813#91813):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; To put it another way, when I go to a Stack Exchange home page, I see a **list of questions**. If most of those are terrible questions with little to no indication that I’d be wasting my time by reading them, the value proposition of visiting and participating is diminished: I have better things to do.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Compare that to _answers_ on a specific question: I’ve made a conscious choice to look into what I think is an interesting question. I already made the decision that the question is worth my time. If I find the answers to be useless, I have a few different options, as an interested party, to register my displeasure, including writing my own answer. Being able to write your own answer is key: if your answer is good enough, it’ll rise above the junk answers and everyone will be better off for it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; There is no such action for question lists. I can’t say “these questions suck, show me this question I just thought up instead”: that’d be silly. So, it’s imperative the question list have a high signal-to-noise ratio, and removing the penalty for those users who do take the time to read a question and later find it to be useless so they can down-vote is conducive to that. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Fundamentally, answers can be filtered in ways that questions cannot. While there is a tension between having “enough” questions and a bunch of amazing, highly skilled answerers twiddling their thumbs waiting around for something to do, in the long run we’d much rather err on the side of having _interesting_ and _on-topic_ questions for these folks to sink their teeth into.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&amp;A system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**. If this means aggressively downvoting or closing unworthy and uninteresting questions, so be it. Without a community of people willing to _answer_ questions, it really doesn’t matter if there are questions at all, does it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;_if trial run results turn out negative_ - (not incidentally,) above guidance also provides a criteria on how to judge trial run results: **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. As an **answerer** like one of mentioned above (5+ K rep on answers), I am not particularly happy about current questions quality, which I think is clearly indicated by 5+ K downvotes I cast. One thing I find particularly frustrating is that sometimes, after downvoting bad questions, I find myself out of votes that I would use to upvote good ones - this happens frequently enough to make me feel that better prevention of low quality questions is needed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10595" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3959" RevisionGUID="5480b967-350a-4dc9-a3e2-ef068886ff4d" CreationDate="2012-08-30T20:02:25.213" UserId="4767" Text="Recently [Does C# give you “less rope to hang yourself” than C++?][1] was asked - I thought the question was too wide in scope, voted to close and commented as such:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; From the FAQ: Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.. I believe this qualifies as such a question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP, several days later responded with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Oded Being a n00b I almost deleted my question because of your comments. It was only happenstance that I did not -- I was interrupted, then took Sunday off. By Monday there were over 500 views, 7 answers, lots of up votes and 2 favorites. I humbly submit that immediately commenting new questions with a hypertechnical meta reason that it shouldn't have been asked actually damages the community more than it helps. If the question had been sitting for days or even hours it might have been more appropriate, but the above comments happened within minutes of the original post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is currently open, has over 800 views, 7 answers and only two close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Was I wrong to write what I did? Does it go against the Summer of Love? Does the question belong on Programmers and if so, why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not trying to close the question - I am looking for some enlightenment here. I see that both the OP and I have good points and that yes, the question appears to be a popular one and has some great answers. But I still feel it is overly broad in scope and not right for programmers (or Stack Exchange in general).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/162303/4767" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10596" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3959" RevisionGUID="5480b967-350a-4dc9-a3e2-ef068886ff4d" CreationDate="2012-08-30T20:02:25.213" UserId="4767" Text="Summer of love and questions that the FAQ says should not be asked" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10597" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3959" RevisionGUID="5480b967-350a-4dc9-a3e2-ef068886ff4d" CreationDate="2012-08-30T20:02:25.213" UserId="4767" Text="|discussion|questions|on-topic-definition|guidelines|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10598" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3960" RevisionGUID="ad966b3a-24fe-41b5-8ddb-736bfcc2f857" CreationDate="2012-08-30T21:39:41.587" UserId="35414" Text="You weren't rude, which is the *only* criteria for anything &quot;Summer of Love&quot; related, so no you didn't do anything wrong there. Personally I don't think you did anything wrong at all, though an optional addendum explaining how the question could be improved would be even more helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And frankly, discouraging *you* from trying to improve questions and the site, *is* pretty darn rude. But it's just a natural defensive reaction askers often have when questions are closed/questioned/downvoted. Don't take it personally.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are always popular questions that don't fit Stack Exchange's format. Their existence, and the existence of upvotes, does not invalidate your comment. See [The Trouble with Popularity][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While an interesting topic of discussion, I still believe the question could have been much more focused. This would leave the possibility for great answers, but level the playing field by making it clear *what* you're answering. When answers cover radically different ground, as is often the case in too-broad questions, voting tends to indicate popularity over the *best, most practical* answer to the question at hand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10599" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3961" RevisionGUID="a9a127bb-fb84-4cac-9033-48deed4b0be2" CreationDate="2012-08-30T23:12:24.750" UserId="62347" Text="I am the OP of that question.  First of all, I have developed a great deal of respect for everyone involved in the original question and the meta question so far, as well as for the SE technology itself.  How these edge cases are handled is exactly what separates good communities from bad.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###A Little Background...&#xD;&#xA;I happen to have borne witness to the first 70 episodes of the [stack overflow podcast](http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/series/stackoverflow.html?series=&amp;channel=&amp;offset=71) which chronicles Jeff and Joel's evolving philosophy of the goal of stack exchange.  I think the salient part of their philosophy for this particular matter can be summarized as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We want stack overflow to be the canonical source for the answers to long-tail questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm paraphrasing Joel there, but I don't think I'm putting words in his mouth (at least not as of the recording of the first 50 or so podcast episodes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###An Informed Decision&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The question I asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/162303/4767) came to be after about 40 hours of research on very closely related subject matter.  I was a tacit expert on exactly that question (and little else).  The following things were clear to me when I clicked submit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. even a half-decent answer to my question would fill a real void in documented knowledge&#xD;&#xA;2. my question was carefully crafted such that answers would fill the void exactly&#xD;&#xA;2. the bounded nature of the subject matter itself meant that a canonical answer could be achieved in the SE format&#xD;&#xA;3. the question was outside the _letter_ of the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and [&quot;good subjective guidelines&quot;](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/). &#xD;&#xA;4. the question was within the _spirit_ of Jeff and Joel's philosophy for stack overflow&#xD;&#xA;5. programmers.stackexchange.com was the most appropriate place to ask the question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the immediate comments cast doubt on that clarity but [chance avoided self-deletion of my question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162303/does-c-give-you-less-rope-to-hang-yourself-than-c#comment311246_162303).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What I Think We Should Learn From This&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. There is a class of questions that appear prima facie to be too broadly scoped, but are in fact quite nicely bounded by the nature of the topic itself. &#xD;&#xA;2. It might take an expert on the subject matter to determine whether a question fits that class.&#xD;&#xA;2. If it is possible that a question is of that class, wait a few hours or days before going all meta on it.  This will allow the most expert readers on the topic to provide some feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This really doesn't have to be overthought&amp;mdash;just wait a few hours or days and then, if it's crickets and confusion in there, cite the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10600" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3962" RevisionGUID="10a28356-da26-47fb-9580-b84f1460c3e4" CreationDate="2012-08-31T01:33:21.987" UserId="1996" Text="&gt; I see that both the OP and I have good points...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Correct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can completely relate to @user115232 's experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked a **great** question about the nature of the Penn State scandal on Workplace.SE. In spite of its &quot;greatness&quot;, as originally stated/phrased, it may not have been a perfect fit for Workplace.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather than give the question any chance to breathe, a diamond-mod unilaterally closed it, less than 10 minutes after I posted it, and marked it as 'Too Localized'. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every other user on the site (including the other moderators) agreed - There's no way &quot;On God's Green Earth&quot; that a question about the Penn State scandal could possibly be construed as 'Too Localized'. [i.e. The ramifications could not have been larger, People will be discussing it for hundreds of years after we're all in the ground, etc.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/334/too-localized-are-you-kidding-me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, rather than rehabilitate the question and follow @Mark Trapp 's 'Summer of Love' advice, the moderators decided to &quot;Circle the Wagons&quot; and keep it closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So eventually, after @Anna Lear intervened, I agreed and yielded. As stated/phrased, it wasn't a great fit for Workplace.SE. But similar to @user115232 's experience, the unnecessarily abrupt close action of the original mod really left a sour taste in my mouth. It was a **borderline** bad fit for Workplace.SE. There was just no need for the abrupt close and snarky 'Hi! Welcome to Workplace.SE! Please read the FAQ.' comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But then again, I'll remind Programmers.SE users: This is exactly what separates Programmers.SE from some other stackexchange sites. Programmers.SE moderators actually care!! We can all cite instances where @YannisRizos had doubts about a question, but waited for the Community to weigh in **before** wielding his unilateral close vote. [Emphasis: This is so refreshing, it's scary!]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in conclusion, @user115232: I understand your complaint and hope that you're able to work with the Programmers.SE mods and the community to get your question answered. [We have it good over here. :)]&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10601" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3961" RevisionGUID="1d4befe5-9787-42c4-8dc0-7048f3138069" CreationDate="2012-08-31T02:22:02.797" UserId="62347" Comment="Adding Jeff Atwood quote on the genesis of programmers.se.com" Text="I am the OP of that question.  First of all, I have developed a great deal of respect for everyone involved in the original question and the meta question so far, as well as for the SE technology itself.  How these edge cases are handled is exactly what separates good communities from bad.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###A Little Background...&#xD;&#xA;I happen to have borne witness to the first 70 episodes of the [stack overflow podcast](http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/series/stackoverflow.html?series=&amp;channel=&amp;offset=71) which chronicles Jeff and Joel's evolving philosophy of the goal of stack exchange.  I think the salient part of their philosophy for this particular matter can be summarized as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We want stack overflow to be the canonical source for the answers to long-tail questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm paraphrasing Joel there, but I don't think I'm putting words in his mouth (at least not as of the recording of the first 50 or so podcast episodes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Why programmers.stackexchange.com?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) which is linked to from the FAQ, he writes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&quot;But software and programming isn’t always a hard science, either. Once you get past the does this code compile or not questions, you’re dealing with issues of best practices, experiences, and behaviors. Perhaps because our communities have become so accustomed to getting quick, accurate, and timely answers, they feel that even a subjective Stack Overflow is better than the alternatives. So much so, that our fellow programmers [created a sister site specifically for their pent up subjective questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/).&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That sister site is indeed programmers.stackexchange.com.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###An Informed Decision&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The question I asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/162303/4767) came to be after about 40 hours of research on very closely related subject matter.  I was a tacit expert on exactly that question (and little else).  The following things were clear to me when I clicked submit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. even a half-decent answer to my question would fill a real void in documented knowledge&#xD;&#xA;2. my question was carefully crafted such that answers would fill the void exactly&#xD;&#xA;2. the bounded nature of the subject matter itself meant that a canonical answer could be achieved in the SE format&#xD;&#xA;3. the question was outside the _letter_ of the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and [&quot;good subjective guidelines&quot;](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/). &#xD;&#xA;4. the question was within the _spirit_ of Jeff and Joel's philosophy for stack overflow&#xD;&#xA;5. programmers.stackexchange.com was the most appropriate place to ask the question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the immediate comments cast doubt on that clarity but [chance avoided self-deletion of my question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162303/does-c-give-you-less-rope-to-hang-yourself-than-c#comment311246_162303).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What I Think We Should Learn From This&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. There is a class of questions that appear prima facie to be too broadly scoped, but are in fact quite nicely bounded by the nature of the topic itself. &#xD;&#xA;2. It might take an expert on the subject matter to determine whether a question fits that class.&#xD;&#xA;2. If it is possible that a question is of that class, wait a few hours or days before going all meta on it.  This will allow the most expert readers on the topic to provide some feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This really doesn't have to be overthought&amp;mdash;just wait a few hours or days and then, if it's crickets and confusion in there, cite the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10602" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3961" RevisionGUID="a93831d5-01e9-4276-92a0-be0b46ec62dd" CreationDate="2012-08-31T02:48:24.860" UserId="62347" Comment="added 33 characters in body" Text="I am the OP of that question.  First of all, I have developed a great deal of respect for everyone involved in the original question and the meta question so far, as well as for the SE technology itself.  How these edge cases are handled is exactly what separates good communities from bad.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###A Little Background...&#xD;&#xA;I happen to have borne witness to the first 70 episodes of the [stack overflow podcast](http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/series/stackoverflow.html?series=&amp;channel=&amp;offset=71) which chronicles Jeff and Joel's evolving philosophy of the goal of stack exchange.  I think the salient part of their philosophy for this particular matter can be summarized as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We want stack overflow to be the canonical source for the answers to long-tail questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm paraphrasing Joel there, but I don't think I'm putting words in his mouth (at least not as of the recording of the first 50 or so podcast episodes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Why programmers.stackexchange.com?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) which is linked to from the FAQ, he writes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&quot;But software and programming isn’t always a hard science, either. Once you get past the does this code compile or not questions, you’re dealing with issues of best practices, experiences, and behaviors. Perhaps because our communities have become so accustomed to getting quick, accurate, and timely answers, they feel that even a subjective Stack Overflow is better than the alternatives. So much so, that our fellow programmers [created a sister site specifically for their pent up subjective questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/).&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That sister site is indeed programmers.stackexchange.com.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###An Informed Decision&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The question I asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/162303/4767) came to be after about 40 hours of research on very closely related subject matter.  I was a tacit expert on exactly that question (and little else).  The following things were clear to me when I clicked submit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. even a half-decent answer to my question would fill a real void in documented knowledge (i.e. this is a long-tail topic)&#xD;&#xA;2. my question was carefully crafted such that answers would fill the void exactly&#xD;&#xA;2. the bounded nature of the subject matter itself meant that a canonical answer could be achieved in the SE format&#xD;&#xA;3. the question was outside the _letter_ of the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and [&quot;good subjective guidelines&quot;](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/). &#xD;&#xA;4. the question was within the _spirit_ of Jeff and Joel's philosophy for stack overflow&#xD;&#xA;5. programmers.stackexchange.com was the most appropriate place to ask the question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the immediate comments cast doubt on that clarity but [chance avoided self-deletion of my question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162303/does-c-give-you-less-rope-to-hang-yourself-than-c#comment311246_162303).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What I Think We Should Learn From This&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. There is a class of questions that appear prima facie to be too broadly scoped, but are in fact quite nicely bounded by the nature of the topic itself. &#xD;&#xA;2. It might take an expert on the subject matter to determine whether a question fits that class.&#xD;&#xA;2. If it is possible that a question is of that class, wait a few hours or days before going all meta on it.  This will allow the most expert readers on the topic to provide some feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This really doesn't have to be overthought&amp;mdash;just wait a few hours or days and then, if it's crickets and confusion in there, cite the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10603" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3963" RevisionGUID="8be911de-3a9c-4e6e-a13c-28439b953614" CreationDate="2012-08-31T03:53:37.957" UserId="25936" Text="**The comment and the Summer of Nonsense**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I consider the Summer of Love a mostly failed campaign, especially when it comes to the smaller sites of the network (I don't know if it benefited Stack Overflow, and I don't really care). Most people fixate on the whole &quot;niceness&quot; theme and forget that actively trying to help an asker, even just a tiny bit, is incredibly nice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We disqualify types &amp; categories of questions not because we are elitist --------&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, but because we've seen time and time again that these questions are more likely to turn to junk than anything useful. By closing these questions we help askers avoid having to read populist answers full of misinformation, something that could potentially hurt them a lot more than the slight sting of having their question closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A newer member of the community probably doesn't know all this. They haven't seen hundreds of `foo vs bar` questions turn to painfully moronic holy wars, they haven't seen populist but utterly useless answers getting tons of votes just because they were dropped in a similarly minded chat room, etc. Your comment, and I'm guessing your close vote, was a correct reaction to the question, and although the OP didn't immediately realize it at the time, I'm sure if they stay around they'll soon realize why we tend to disqualify overly broad / non constructive questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One small thing I would have done differently would be to remove the third question in the question in question right the moment I first read it. Since you immediately identified the question as overly broad, removing the lesser of the three questions would have been a good thing, and it would have helped make it a tiny bit more specific. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since all but one of the answers ignored that part, [I went ahead and removed it][1]. It would have been absolutely fine if you had removed it when you first saw the question, be bold and edit! The OP can just rollback if they wish...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Views, favourites and popularity in general**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ben already mentioned that there are [troubles with popularity][2] but I'd like to make a few points a bit more specific to Programmers. The subjective nature of the site unfortunately makes it a lot more attractive to [bikeshed questions][3] than Stack Overflow. We really need to always keep in mind that popularity alone says absolutely nothing at all about a question's usefulness and topicality, and ideally it shouldn't even be part of the discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having earned [17 gold Publicists badges][4] on Programmers (and a few on other sites), I think I'm more than qualified to discuss how amazingly worthless a metric popularity is. I've manipulated it more times than I can remember, and yes sometimes I've benefited from it with some sweet but mostly pointless rep. The gamification aspects of Stack Exchange is what keeps us all hooked, and all of us who've been around for a while understand that quality &gt; quantity, but it's also understandable that a newer user seeing their question getting tons of views, votes and being favourited will think that it's a good question&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;. Why wouldn't they?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well... Let's see some examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is ORM an Anti-Pattern?][5] (+28, 13 favourites and 6,215 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Is it a good question? No, it isn't and I [said it][6] when I first read it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; &quot;Your question is very broad and ambiguous&quot;, as noted in the SO question. ORM employs a variety of techniques, some may be considered to be antipatterns. Take a look at this related discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I remember hating that question with a passion the moment I first read it, good thing I was a regular user back then and my close vote didn't kill it. I still don't like it, but that didn't stop me from [posting an answer][7], one that is currently voted at +51. Why? It's very simple really, I was extremely bored at the time and had nothing better to do ;) Is it a _good_ answer? I don't know what the rest of you think, but I don't particularly like it, it's not the kind of answer for example that I'd choose to show to colleagues. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Even if you consider it a good answer, it's not worth +51 and although it got a decent amount of votes when I first posted it, it exploded when I shared it on Reddit, which also gave me my second gold Publicist. It's a pure populist answer, and the only reason the question is popular it's is noobesque quality and, well, Reddit. Today I'd just point to the Wikipedia article I reference, close the question and forget all about it (well technically if the same question was asked today I'd close it as a duplicate, but you get my point).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [What's up with the outburst of new programming languages and frameworks that's out/coming out lately?][8] (+10, 1 favourite, 1312 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A lesser example, that is now (rightfully) closed, but worth examining because it was [closed and re-opened, and then closed again][9]. I voted to close minutes, perhaps seconds, after I first saw it, but again being a regular user at the time my vote was not binding. And yet, there it is, [my +39 answer][10]! Yes, once again I was bored!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  But this time there's something more there, the answer is utter nonsense. And I even say so, publicly (but not so visibly) and a bit more privately: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - The third footnote, expanded reads as: *Could be wrong, though. Who knows? (is my actual answer)*.&#xD;&#xA;  - At the end of the answer there used to be an invisible html comment (since purged automagically by the system?) that in no uncertain terms declared: This is nonsense! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This was mostly a trolling answer, some people picked up on it's light hearted nature, but there wasn't ever any serious reaction to my absolutely unscientific analysis. I have no idea why the question was re-opened, and I can't say anyone benefited from the answers (although I must say that [Paul Nathan's answer][11] is very amusing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll stop using my answers as examples, in fear of a rain of downvotes, but in the spirit of completeness and just in case anyone is still reading this, here's a couple more examples of the problem with popularity, from our [community blog][12]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How we managed 24 software development trainees][13] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  An amazing post by a very skill full writer, providing unique insights of the training process, a must read for every software developer (imho). Currently it has been viewed 7 times (and I'm guessing only by the blog team) and has 1 comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [20 controversial programming opinions][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A bit of a meh post re-iterating not so controversial opinions, that was rushed in as other more useful posts were being written, mostly to keep up with our schedule. Currently it has been viewed more than 75K times (and counting), has 77 comments, generated a couple of questions (on [Math][15] and [Code Golf][16]), at least [one retort][17] and a [vibrant discussion][18] on Reddit. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A meh post, I slapped together from a deleted question with the sole intention of keeping up with our schedule...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The question in question (about time ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a bad question. Certainly it's of the `foo vs bar` flavour, naturally attractive to opinionated and populist answers with little actual usefulness and perhaps even off topic under the &quot;which technology is better&quot; clause in our [FAQ][19]. But this category of questions is off topic by virtue of being almost always not constructive, so let's examine whether it fits the not constructive description: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question does solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion, and we don't like that around these parts of the Internet ;) It's a question build around an opinion, how can it not solicit even more opinion? Effective C++ was published 20 years ago (1992), still a wonderfully useful book, but is there any point any more&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; to discuss an obviously light hearted comment from it? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And is there any point in generally comparing languages and platforms at all? I think not, unless of course you have an actual specific problem to solve, which is something we very clearly point out in our [FAQ][20]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A rule we so often forget, but really applies for the question in question, that currently has 7 answers, and all but one have quite a few comments. Is that wrong? No, not necessarily, but it does strongly hint that this isn't a question we'll easily find an answer to. And we do care about finding answers to questions, this is what essentially separates this site from a typical programming forum. We don't disqualify certain types and categories because we don't like them, or because we can't answer them, but because we are trying to build something different than a discussion forum, a high quality Q&amp;A site where questions get sufficiently and sometimes even definitively answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end we have build a certain set of tools and more importantly a community philosophy and culture that simply fails with overly broad and / or discussion oriented questions. Sometimes the reason is just plain trolling, sometimes it's opinionated answers that although not trolling are extremely hard to judge the quality of (how do you downvote someone's personal opinion?), sometimes it just get to a point where there are so many answers and comments that the whole thread is impossible to navigate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again this isn't a bad question, and it's one I personally like, which is why I edited it and spend some time to write all this. It certainly did _not_ turn terrible, and some of the answers I think are useful. But I do agree that the question doesn't really fit the scope and philosophy of the site, and I'll vote to close it. I don't think it will benefit from further answers and it already had four close votes when I started writing this. One of them expired while I was writing the answer (!) but this is still a community closure, I would _probably_ wouldn't have mod closed it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Finally a word to the OP (and I'll stop, I promise ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Exchange we have two peer review systems, one for quality and one for topicality, and both are voting based. Closing a question is not necessarily a comment on the question's overall quality and it's reversible, even if a moderator is involved in the closure. Furthermore closure is a temporary state, a closed question might be re-opened if improved, or simply if five members who can vote to re-open think it shouldn't have been closed in the first place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most closed questions do not get re-opened, and I can't promise yours will. However even if it doesn't the effort you put to it wasn't in waste:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You got 7 answers, and although some I don't find particularly useful, they were all thoughtful and added something (even if a tiny bit) to the discussion. &#xD;&#xA; - It generated this Meta discussion (and gave me the opportunity to write yet another short novel) that will hopefully help the community better understand the nature of overly broad questions, why we close them and perhaps even help us find a way to better cope with them in the future and not have to close them at all.&#xD;&#xA; - It's not a question we'd typically delete, I can't promise that it won't get delete votes but I don't see any reason why it would. &#xD;&#xA; - And you got some rep from it ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would have been a shame if you had self-deleted it, a fellow user pointing out some flaws in it wouldn't justify such an overreaction. At the end of the day what you suggested happened naturally, the question did sit for a couple of days before getting closed, Oded just expressed his opinion (both with his comment and his close votes), but you'll have to keep in mind that it (usually) takes five to tango ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly hope you won't get disheartened by the closure and decide to stick around, you've already done your bit to help the community grow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The end.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Not that there was any such accusation in this case, this is a more general rant. This whole Summer of Nonsense ended up being mostly a big troll party... [sigh] &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Not saying that the question in question isn't good, again a more general comment.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; And I'm not suggesting there was ever a point...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/162303/3&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/56/publicist?userid=25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/120321/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120321/is-orm-an-anti-pattern/120338#comment220944_120321&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/120338/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/126696/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/126696/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126716/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126792/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/07/how-we-managed-24-software-development-trainees/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://math.stackexchange.com/q/188858/24474&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/7112&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://prog21.dadgum.com/149.html&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/z0nng/20_controversial_programming_opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10604" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3963" RevisionGUID="f4325713-fcce-4ab6-820b-939c7c9a0786" CreationDate="2012-08-31T04:04:10.547" UserId="25936" Comment="added 141 characters in body" Text="**The comment and the Summer of Nonsense**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I consider the Summer of Love a mostly failed campaign, especially when it comes to the smaller sites of the network (I don't know if it benefited Stack Overflow, and I don't really care). Most people fixate on the whole &quot;niceness&quot; theme and forget that actively trying to help an asker, even just a tiny bit, is incredibly nice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We disqualify types &amp; categories of questions not because we are elitist --------&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, but because we've seen time and time again that these questions are more likely to turn to junk than anything useful. By closing these questions we help askers avoid having to read populist answers full of misinformation, something that could potentially hurt them a lot more than the slight sting of having their question closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A newer member of the community probably doesn't know all this. They haven't seen hundreds of `foo vs bar` questions turn to painfully moronic holy wars, they haven't seen populist but utterly useless answers getting tons of votes just because they were dropped in a similarly minded chat room, etc. Your comment, and I'm guessing your close vote, was a correct reaction to the question, and although the OP didn't immediately realize it at the time, I'm sure if they stay around they'll soon realize why we tend to disqualify overly broad / non constructive questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One small thing I would have done differently would be to remove the third question in the question in question right the moment I first read it. Since you immediately identified the question as overly broad, removing the lesser of the three questions would have been a good thing, and it would have helped make it a tiny bit more specific. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since all but one of the answers ignored that part, [I went ahead and removed it][1]. It would have been absolutely fine if you had removed it when you first saw the question, be bold and edit! The OP can just rollback if they wish...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Views, favourites and popularity in general**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ben already mentioned that there are [troubles with popularity][2] but I'd like to make a few points a bit more specific to Programmers. The subjective nature of the site unfortunately makes it a lot more attractive to [bikeshed questions][3] than Stack Overflow. We really need to always keep in mind that popularity alone says absolutely nothing at all about a question's usefulness and topicality, and ideally it shouldn't even be part of the discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having earned [17 gold Publicists badges][4] on Programmers (and a few on other sites), I think I'm more than qualified to discuss how amazingly worthless a metric popularity is. I've manipulated it more times than I can remember, and yes sometimes I've benefited from it with some sweet but mostly pointless rep. The gamification aspects of Stack Exchange is what keeps us all hooked, and all of us who've been around for a while understand that quality &gt; quantity, but it's also understandable that a newer user seeing their question getting tons of views, votes and being favourited will think that it's a good question&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;. Why wouldn't they?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well... Let's see some examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is ORM an Anti-Pattern?][5] (+28, 13 favourites and 6,215 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Is it a good question? No, it isn't and I [said it][6] when I first read it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; &quot;Your question is very broad and ambiguous&quot;, as noted in the SO question. ORM employs a variety of techniques, some may be considered to be antipatterns. Take a look at this related discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I remember hating that question with a passion the moment I first read it, good thing I was a regular user back then and my close vote didn't kill it. I still don't like it, but that didn't stop me from [posting an answer][7], one that is currently voted at +51. Why? It's very simple really, I was extremely bored at the time and had nothing better to do ;) Is it a _good_ answer? I don't know what the rest of you think, but I don't particularly like it, it's not the kind of answer for example that I'd choose to show to colleagues. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Even if you consider it a good answer, it's not worth +51 and although it got a decent amount of votes when I first posted it, it exploded when I shared it on Reddit, which also gave me my second gold Publicist. It's a pure populist answer, and the only reason the question is popular it's is noobesque quality and, well, Reddit. Today I'd just point to the Wikipedia article I reference, close the question and forget all about it (well technically if the same question was asked today I'd close it as a duplicate, but you get my point).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [What's up with the outburst of new programming languages and frameworks that's out/coming out lately?][8] (+10, 1 favourite, 1312 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A lesser example, that is now (rightfully) closed, but worth examining because it was [closed and re-opened, and then closed again][9]. I voted to close minutes, perhaps seconds, after I first saw it, but again being a regular user at the time my vote was not binding. And yet, there it is, [my +39 answer][10]! Yes, once again I was bored!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  But this time there's something more there, the answer is utter nonsense. And I even say so, publicly (but not so visibly) and a bit more privately: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - The third footnote, expanded reads as: *Could be wrong, though. Who knows? (is my actual answer)*.&#xD;&#xA;  - At the end of the answer there used to be an invisible html comment (since purged automagically by the system?) that in no uncertain terms declared: This is nonsense! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This was mostly a trolling answer, some people picked up on it's light hearted nature, but there wasn't ever any serious reaction to my absolutely unscientific analysis. I have no idea why the question was re-opened, and I can't say anyone benefited from the answers (although I must say that [Paul Nathan's answer][11] is very amusing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll stop using my answers as examples, in fear of a rain of downvotes, but in the spirit of completeness and just in case anyone is still reading this, here's a couple more examples of the problem with popularity, from our [community blog][12]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How we managed 24 software development trainees][13] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  An amazing post by a very skill full writer, providing unique insights of the training process, a must read for every software developer (imho). Currently it has been viewed 7 times (and I'm guessing only by the blog team) and has 1 comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [20 controversial programming opinions][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A bit of a meh post re-iterating not so controversial opinions, that was rushed in as other more useful posts were being written, mostly to keep up with our schedule. Currently it has been viewed more than 75K times (and counting), has 77 comments, generated a couple of questions (on [Math][15] and [Code Golf][16]), at least [one retort][17] and a [vibrant discussion][18] on Reddit. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A meh post, I slapped together from a deleted question with the sole intention of keeping up with our schedule...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The question in question (about time ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a bad question. Certainly it's of the `foo vs bar` flavour, naturally attractive to opinionated and populist answers with little actual usefulness and perhaps even off topic under the &quot;which technology is better&quot; clause in our [FAQ][19]. But this category of questions is off topic by virtue of being almost always not constructive, so let's examine whether it fits the not constructive description: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question does solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion, and we don't like that around these parts of the Internet ;) It's a question build around an opinion, how can it not solicit even more opinion? Effective C++ was published 20 years ago (1992), still a wonderfully useful book, but is there any point any more&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; to discuss an obviously light hearted comment from it? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And is there any point in generally comparing languages and platforms at all? I think not, unless of course you have an actual specific problem to solve, which is something we very clearly point out in our [FAQ][20]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A rule we so often forget, but really applies for the question in question, that currently has 7 answers, and all but one have quite a few comments. Is that wrong? No, not necessarily, but it does strongly hint that this isn't a question we'll easily find an answer to. And we do care about finding answers to questions, this is what essentially separates this site from a typical programming forum. We don't disqualify certain types and categories because we don't like them, or because we can't answer them, but because we are trying to build something different than a discussion forum, a high quality Q&amp;A site where questions get sufficiently and sometimes even definitively answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end we have build a certain set of tools and more importantly a community philosophy and culture that simply fails with overly broad and / or discussion oriented questions. Sometimes the reason is just plain trolling, sometimes it's opinionated answers that although not trolling are extremely hard to judge the quality of (how do you downvote someone's personal opinion?), sometimes it just get to a point where there are so many answers and comments that the whole thread is impossible to navigate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again this isn't a bad question, and it's one I personally like, which is why I edited it and spend some time to write all this. It certainly did _not_ turn terrible, and some of the answers I think are useful. But I do agree that the question doesn't really fit the scope and philosophy of the site, and I'll vote to close it. I don't think it will benefit from further answers and it already had four close votes when I started writing this. One of them expired while I was writing the answer (!) but this is still a community closure, I _probably_ wouldn't have mod closed it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Finally a word to the OP (and I'll stop, I promise ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Exchange we have two peer review systems, one for quality and one for topicality, and both are voting based. Closing a question is not necessarily a comment on the question's overall quality and it's reversible, even if a moderator is involved in the closure. Furthermore closure is a temporary state, a closed question might be re-opened if improved, or simply if five members who can vote to re-open think it shouldn't have been closed in the first place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most closed questions do not get re-opened, and I can't promise yours will. However even if it doesn't the effort you put to it wasn't in waste:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You got 7 answers, and although some I don't find particularly useful, they were all thoughtful and added something (even if a tiny bit) to the discussion. &#xD;&#xA; - It generated this Meta discussion (and gave me the opportunity to write yet another short novel) that will hopefully help the community better understand the nature of overly broad questions, why we close them and perhaps even help us find a way to better cope with them in the future and not have to close them at all.&#xD;&#xA; - It's not a question we'd typically delete, I can't promise that it won't get delete votes but I don't see any reason why it would. &#xD;&#xA; - And you got some rep from it ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would have been a shame if you had self-deleted it, a fellow user pointing out some flaws in it wouldn't justify such an overreaction. At the end of the day what you suggested happened naturally, the question did sit for a couple of days before getting closed, Oded just expressed his opinion (both with his comment and his close votes), but you'll have to keep in mind that it (usually) takes five to tango ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly hope you won't get disheartened by the closure and decide to stick around, you've already done your bit to help the community grow. And me closing the question doesn't really say much if the community doesn't agree with me. I have been wrong in the past (once or twice ;), and I may be wrong now. Who knows? ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The end.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Not that there was any such accusation in this case, this is a more general rant. This whole Summer of Nonsense ended up being mostly a big troll party... [sigh] &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Not saying that the question in question isn't good, again a more general comment.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; And I'm not suggesting there was ever a point...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/162303/3&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/56/publicist?userid=25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/120321/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120321/is-orm-an-anti-pattern/120338#comment220944_120321&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/120338/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/126696/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/126696/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126716/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126792/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/07/how-we-managed-24-software-development-trainees/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://math.stackexchange.com/q/188858/24474&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/7112&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://prog21.dadgum.com/149.html&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/z0nng/20_controversial_programming_opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10605" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3963" RevisionGUID="28f086c7-520f-4224-bb19-b133e85f4620" CreationDate="2012-08-31T04:25:51.680" UserId="25936" Comment="added 249 characters in body" Text="**The comment and the Summer of Nonsense**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I consider the Summer of Love a mostly failed campaign, especially when it comes to the smaller sites of the network (I don't know if it benefited Stack Overflow, and I don't really care). Most people fixate on the whole &quot;niceness&quot; theme and forget that actively trying to help an asker, even just a tiny bit, is incredibly nice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We disqualify types &amp; categories of questions not because we are elitist --------&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, but because we've seen time and time again that these questions are more likely to turn to junk than anything useful. By closing these questions we help askers avoid having to read populist answers full of misinformation, something that could potentially hurt them a lot more than the slight sting of having their question closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A newer member of the community probably doesn't know all this. They haven't seen hundreds of `foo vs bar` questions turn to painfully moronic holy wars, they haven't seen populist but utterly useless answers getting tons of votes just because they were dropped in a similarly minded chat room, etc. Your comment, and I'm guessing your close vote, was a correct reaction to the question, and although the OP didn't immediately realize it at the time, I'm sure if they stay around they'll soon realize why we tend to disqualify overly broad / non constructive questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One small thing I would have done differently would be to remove the third question in the question in question right the moment I first read it. Since you immediately identified the question as overly broad, removing the lesser of the three questions would have been a good thing, and it would have helped make it a tiny bit more specific. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since all but one of the answers ignored that part, [I went ahead and removed it][1]. It would have been absolutely fine if you had removed it when you first saw the question, be bold and edit! The OP can just rollback if they wish...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Views, favourites and popularity in general**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ben already mentioned that there are [troubles with popularity][2] but I'd like to make a few points a bit more specific to Programmers. The subjective nature of the site unfortunately makes it a lot more attractive to [bikeshed questions][3] than Stack Overflow. We really need to always keep in mind that popularity alone says absolutely nothing at all about a question's usefulness and topicality, and ideally it shouldn't even be part of the discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having earned [17 gold Publicists badges][4] on Programmers (and a few on other sites), I think I'm more than qualified to discuss how amazingly worthless a metric popularity is. I've manipulated it more times than I can remember, and yes sometimes I've benefited from it with some sweet but mostly pointless rep. The gamification aspects of Stack Exchange is what keeps us all hooked, and all of us who've been around for a while understand that quality &gt; quantity, but it's also understandable that a newer user seeing their question getting tons of views, votes and being favourited will think that it's a good question&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;. Why wouldn't they?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well... Let's see some examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is ORM an Anti-Pattern?][5] (+28, 13 favourites and 6,215 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Is it a good question? No, it isn't and I [said it][6] when I first read it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; &quot;Your question is very broad and ambiguous&quot;, as noted in the SO question. ORM employs a variety of techniques, some may be considered to be antipatterns. Take a look at this related discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I remember hating that question with a passion the moment I first read it, good thing I was a regular user back then and my close vote didn't kill it. I still don't like it, but that didn't stop me from [posting an answer][7], one that is currently voted at +51. Why? It's very simple really, I was extremely bored at the time and had nothing better to do ;) Is it a _good_ answer? I don't know what the rest of you think, but I don't particularly like it, it's not the kind of answer for example that I'd choose to show to colleagues. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Even if you consider it a good answer, it's not worth +51 and although it got a decent amount of votes when I first posted it, it exploded when I shared it on Reddit, which also gave me my second gold Publicist. It's a pure populist answer, and the only reason the question is popular it's is noobesque quality and, well, Reddit. Today I'd just point to the Wikipedia article I reference, close the question and forget all about it (well technically if the same question was asked today I'd close it as a duplicate, but you get my point).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [What's up with the outburst of new programming languages and frameworks that's out/coming out lately?][8] (+10, 1 favourite, 1312 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A lesser example, that is now (rightfully) closed, but worth examining because it was [closed and re-opened, and then closed again][9]. I voted to close minutes, perhaps seconds, after I first saw it, but again being a regular user at the time my vote was not binding. And yet, there it is, [my +39 answer][10]! Yes, once again I was bored!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  But this time there's something more there, the answer is utter nonsense. And I even say so, publicly (but not so visibly) and a bit more privately: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - The third footnote, expanded reads as: *Could be wrong, though. Who knows? (is my actual answer)*.&#xD;&#xA;  - At the end of the answer there used to be an invisible html comment (since purged automagically by the system?) that in no uncertain terms declared: This is nonsense! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This was mostly a trolling answer, some people picked up on it's light hearted nature, but there wasn't ever any serious reaction to my absolutely unscientific analysis. I have no idea why the question was re-opened, and I can't say anyone benefited from the answers&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll stop using my answers as examples, in fear of a rain of downvotes, but in the spirit of completeness and just in case anyone is still reading this, here's a couple more examples of the problem with popularity, from our [community blog][12]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How we managed 24 software development trainees][13] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  An amazing post by a very skill full writer, providing unique insights of the training process, a must read for every software developer (imho). Currently it has been viewed 7 times (and I'm guessing only by the blog team) and has 1 comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [20 controversial programming opinions][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A bit of a meh post re-iterating not so controversial opinions, that was rushed in as other more useful posts were being written, mostly to keep up with our schedule. Currently it has been viewed more than 75K times (and counting), has 77 comments, generated a couple of questions (on [Math][15] and [Code Golf][16]), at least [one retort][17] and a [vibrant discussion][18] on Reddit. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A meh post, I slapped together from a deleted question with the sole intention of keeping up with our schedule...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The question in question (about time ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a bad question. Certainly it's of the `foo vs bar` flavour, naturally attractive to opinionated and populist answers with little actual usefulness and perhaps even off topic under the &quot;which technology is better&quot; clause in our [FAQ][19]. But this category of questions is off topic by virtue of being almost always not constructive, so let's examine whether it fits the not constructive description: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question does solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion, and we don't like that around these parts of the Internet ;) It's a question build around an opinion, how can it not solicit even more opinion? Effective C++ was published 20 years ago (1992), still a wonderfully useful book, but is there any point any more&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; to discuss an obviously light hearted comment from it? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And is there any point in generally comparing languages and platforms at all? I think not, unless of course you have an actual specific problem to solve, which is something we very clearly point out in our [FAQ][20]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A rule we so often forget, but really applies for the question in question, that currently has 7 answers, and all but one have quite a few comments. Is that wrong? No, not necessarily, but it does strongly hint that this isn't a question we'll easily find an answer to. And we do care about finding answers to questions, this is what essentially separates this site from a typical programming forum. We don't disqualify certain types and categories because we don't like them, or because we can't answer them, but because we are trying to build something different than a discussion forum, a high quality Q&amp;A site where questions get sufficiently and sometimes even definitively answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end we have build a certain set of tools and more importantly a community philosophy and culture that simply fails with overly broad and / or discussion oriented questions. Sometimes the reason is just plain trolling, sometimes it's opinionated answers that although not trolling are extremely hard to judge the quality of&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;, sometimes it just gets to a point where there are so many answers and comments that the whole thread is impossible to navigate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again this isn't a bad question, and it's one I personally like, which is why I edited it and spend some time to write all this. It certainly did _not_ turn terrible, and some of the answers I think are useful. But I do agree that the question doesn't really fit the scope and philosophy of the site, and I voted to close it. I don't think it will benefit from further answers and it already had four close votes when I started writing this. One of them expired while I was writing the answer (!) but this is still a community closure, I _probably_ wouldn't have mod closed it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Finally a word to the OP (and I'll stop, I promise ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Exchange we have two peer review systems, one for quality and one for topicality, and both are based on voting. Closing a question is not necessarily a comment on the question's overall quality and it's reversible, even if a moderator is involved in the closure. Furthermore closure is a temporary state, a closed question might be re-opened if improved, or simply if five members who can [vote to re-open][21] think it shouldn't have been closed in the first place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, most closed questions do not get re-opened, and I can't promise yours will. However even if it doesn't the effort you put to it wasn't in waste:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You got 7 answers, and although some I don't find particularly useful, they were all thoughtful and added something (even if a tiny bit) to the discussion. &#xD;&#xA; - It generated this Meta discussion&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; that will hopefully help the community better understand the nature of overly broad questions, why we close them and perhaps even help us find a way to better cope with them in the future and not have to close them at all.&#xD;&#xA; - It's not a question we'd typically delete, I can't promise that it won't get delete votes from the community but I don't see any reason why it would. &#xD;&#xA; - And you got some rep from it ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would have been a shame if you had self-deleted it, a fellow user pointing out some flaws in it wouldn't justify such an overreaction. At the end of the day what you suggested happened naturally, the question did sit for a couple of days before getting closed, Oded just expressed his opinion (both with his comment and his close vote), but you'll have to keep in mind that it (usually) takes five to tango ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly hope you won't get disheartened by the closure and decide to stick around, you've already done your bit to help the community grow. And me closing the question doesn't really say much if the community doesn't agree with me. I have been wrong in the past (once or twice ;), and I may be wrong now. Who knows? ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The end.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Not that there was any such accusation in this case, this is a more general rant. This whole Summer of Summer thing ended up being mostly a big troll party... [sigh] &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Not saying that the question in question isn't good, again a more general comment.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Although I must say that [Paul Nathan's answer][11] is highly amusing&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; And I'm not suggesting there was ever a point...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; How do you downvote someone's personal opinion?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; ...and gave me the opportunity to write yet another short novel!&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/162303/3&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/56/publicist?userid=25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/120321/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120321/is-orm-an-anti-pattern/120338#comment220944_120321&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/120338/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/126696/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/126696/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126716/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126792/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/07/how-we-managed-24-software-development-trainees/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://math.stackexchange.com/q/188858/24474&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/7112&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://prog21.dadgum.com/149.html&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/z0nng/20_controversial_programming_opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/close-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10606" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3963" RevisionGUID="e2454e31-ca49-47ce-b4ae-3e301e57cfd1" CreationDate="2012-08-31T04:51:25.163" UserId="25936" Comment="added 229 characters in body" Text="**The comment and the Summer of Nonsense**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I consider the Summer of Love a mostly failed campaign, especially when it comes to the smaller sites of the network (I don't know if it benefited Stack Overflow, and I don't really care). Most people fixate on the whole &quot;niceness&quot; theme and forget that actively trying to help an asker, even just a tiny bit and even if only by pointing flaws in their question, is incredibly nice. No one is paying us to close questions, or comment on them or anything, if the comment is generally polite and points to the right direction, it's helpful (and nice, dammit!). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We disqualify types &amp; categories of questions not because we are elitist --------&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, but because we've seen time and time again that these questions are more likely to turn to junk than anything useful. By closing these questions we help askers avoid having to read populist answers full of misinformation, something that could potentially hurt them a lot more than the slight sting of having their question closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A newer member of the community probably doesn't know all this. They haven't seen hundreds of `foo vs bar` questions turn to painfully moronic holy wars, they haven't seen populist but utterly useless answers getting tons of votes just because they were dropped in a similarly minded chat room, etc. Your comment, and I'm guessing your close vote, was a correct reaction to the question, and although the OP didn't immediately realize it at the time, I'm sure if they stay around they'll soon realize why we tend to disqualify overly broad / non constructive questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One small thing I would have done differently would be to remove the third question in the question in question right the moment I first read it. Since you immediately identified the question as overly broad, removing the lesser of the three questions would have been a good thing, and it would have helped make it a tiny bit more specific. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since all but one of the answers ignored that part, [I went ahead and removed it][1]. It would have been absolutely fine if you had removed it when you first saw the question, be bold and edit! The OP can just rollback if they wish...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Views, favourites and popularity in general**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ben already mentioned that there are [troubles with popularity][2] but I'd like to make a few points a bit more specific to Programmers. The subjective nature of the site unfortunately makes it a lot more attractive to [bikeshed questions][3] than Stack Overflow. We really need to always keep in mind that popularity alone says absolutely nothing at all about a question's usefulness and topicality, and ideally it shouldn't even be part of the discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having earned [17 gold Publicists badges][4] on Programmers (and a few on other sites), I think I'm more than qualified to discuss how amazingly worthless a metric popularity is. I've manipulated it more times than I can remember, and yes sometimes I've benefited from it with some sweet but mostly pointless rep. The gamification aspects of Stack Exchange is what keeps us all hooked, and all of us who've been around for a while understand that quality &gt; quantity, but it's also understandable that a newer user seeing their question getting tons of views, votes and being favourited will think that it's a good question&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;. Why wouldn't they?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well... Let's see some examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is ORM an Anti-Pattern?][5] (+28, 13 favourites and 6,215 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Is it a good question? No, it isn't and I [said it][6] when I first read it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; &quot;Your question is very broad and ambiguous&quot;, as noted in the SO question. ORM employs a variety of techniques, some may be considered to be antipatterns. Take a look at this related discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I remember hating that question with a passion the moment I first read it, good thing I was a regular user back then and my close vote didn't kill it. I still don't like it, but that didn't stop me from [posting an answer][7], one that is currently voted at +51. Why? It's very simple really, I was extremely bored at the time and had nothing better to do ;) Is it a _good_ answer? I don't know what the rest of you think, but I don't particularly like it, it's not the kind of answer for example that I'd choose to show to colleagues. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Even if you consider it a good answer, it's not worth +51 and although it got a decent amount of votes when I first posted it, it exploded when I shared it on Reddit, which also gave me my second gold Publicist. It's a pure populist answer, and the only reason the question is popular it's is noobesque quality and, well, Reddit. Today I'd just point to the Wikipedia article I reference, close the question and forget all about it (well technically if the same question was asked today I'd close it as a duplicate, but you get my point).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [What's up with the outburst of new programming languages and frameworks that's out/coming out lately?][8] (+10, 1 favourite, 1312 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A lesser example, that is now (rightfully) closed, but worth examining because it was [closed and re-opened, and then closed again][9]. I voted to close minutes, perhaps seconds, after I first saw it, but again being a regular user at the time my vote was not binding. And yet, there it is, [my +39 answer][10]! Yes, once again I was bored!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  But this time there's something more there, the answer is utter nonsense. And I even say so, publicly (but not so visibly) and a bit more privately: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - The third footnote, expanded reads as: *Could be wrong, though. Who knows? (is my actual answer)*.&#xD;&#xA;  - At the end of the answer there used to be an invisible html comment (since purged automagically by the system?) that in no uncertain terms declared: This is nonsense! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This was mostly a trolling answer, some people picked up on it's light hearted nature, but there wasn't ever any serious reaction to my absolutely unscientific analysis. I have no idea why the question was re-opened, and I can't say anyone benefited from the answers&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll stop using my answers as examples, in fear of a rain of downvotes, but in the spirit of completeness and just in case anyone is still reading this, here's a couple more examples of the problem with popularity, from our [community blog][12]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How we managed 24 software development trainees][13] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  An amazing post by a very skill full writer, providing unique insights of the training process, a must read for every software developer (imho). Currently it has been viewed 7 times (and I'm guessing only by the blog team) and has 1 comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [20 controversial programming opinions][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A bit of a meh post re-iterating not so controversial opinions, that was rushed in as other more useful posts were being written, mostly to keep up with our schedule. Currently it has been viewed more than 75K times (and counting), has 77 comments, generated a couple of questions (on [Math][15] and [Code Golf][16]), at least [one retort][17] and a [vibrant discussion][18] on Reddit. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A meh post, I slapped together from a deleted question with the sole intention of keeping up with our schedule...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The question in question (about time ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a bad question. Certainly it's of the `foo vs bar` flavour, naturally attractive to opinionated and populist answers with little actual usefulness and perhaps even off topic under the &quot;which technology is better&quot; clause in our [FAQ][19]. But this category of questions is off topic by virtue of being almost always not constructive, so let's examine whether it fits the not constructive description: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question does solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion, and we don't like that around these parts of the Internet ;) It's a question build around an opinion, how can it not solicit even more opinion? Effective C++ was published 20 years ago (1992), still a wonderfully useful book, but is there any point any more&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; to discuss an obviously light hearted comment from it? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And is there any point in generally comparing languages and platforms at all? I think not, unless of course you have an actual specific problem to solve, which is something we very clearly point out in our [FAQ][20]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A rule we so often forget, but really applies for the question in question, that currently has 7 answers, and all but one have quite a few comments. Is that wrong? No, not necessarily, but it does strongly hint that this isn't a question we'll easily find an answer to. And we do care about finding answers to questions, this is what essentially separates this site from a typical programming forum. We don't disqualify certain types and categories because we don't like them, or because we can't answer them, but because we are trying to build something different than a discussion forum, a high quality Q&amp;A site where questions get sufficiently and sometimes even definitively answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end we have build a certain set of tools and more importantly a community philosophy and culture that simply fails with overly broad and / or discussion oriented questions. Sometimes the reason is just plain trolling, sometimes it's opinionated answers that although not trolling are extremely hard to judge the quality of&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;, sometimes it just gets to a point where there are so many answers and comments that the whole thread is impossible to navigate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again this isn't a bad question, and it's one I personally like, which is why I edited it and spend some time to write all this. It certainly did _not_ turn terrible, and some of the answers I think are useful. But I do agree that the question doesn't really fit the scope and philosophy of the site, and I voted to close it. I don't think it will benefit from further answers and it already had four close votes when I started writing this. One of them expired while I was writing the answer (!) but this is still a community closure, I _probably_ wouldn't have mod closed it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Finally a word to the OP (and I'll stop, I promise ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Exchange we have two peer review systems, one for quality and one for topicality, and both are based on voting. Closing a question is not necessarily a comment on the question's overall quality and it's reversible, even if a moderator is involved in the closure. Furthermore closure is a temporary state, a closed question might be re-opened if improved, or simply if five members who can [vote to re-open][21] think it shouldn't have been closed in the first place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, most closed questions do not get re-opened, and I can't promise yours will. However even if it doesn't the effort you put to it wasn't in waste:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You got 7 answers, and although some I don't find particularly useful, they were all thoughtful and added something (even if a tiny bit) to the discussion. &#xD;&#xA; - It generated this Meta discussion&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; that will hopefully help the community better understand the nature of overly broad questions, why we close them and perhaps even help us find a way to better cope with them in the future and not have to close them at all.&#xD;&#xA; - It's not a question we'd typically delete, I can't promise that it won't get delete votes from the community but I don't see any reason why it would. &#xD;&#xA; - And you got some rep from it ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would have been a shame if you had self-deleted it, a fellow user pointing out some flaws in it wouldn't justify such an overreaction. At the end of the day what you suggested happened naturally, the question did sit for a couple of days before getting closed, Oded just expressed his opinion (both with his comment and his close vote), but you'll have to keep in mind that it (usually) takes five to tango ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly hope you won't get disheartened by the closure and decide to stick around, you've already done your bit to help the community grow. And me closing the question doesn't really say much if the community doesn't agree with me. I have been wrong in the past (once or twice ;), and I may be wrong now. Who knows? ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The end.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Not that there was any such accusation in this case, this is a more general rant. This whole Summer of Summer thing ended up being mostly a big troll party... [sigh] &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Not saying that the question in question isn't good, again a more general comment.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Although I must say that [Paul Nathan's answer][11] is highly amusing&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; And I'm not suggesting there was ever a point...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; How do you downvote someone's personal opinion?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; ...and gave me the opportunity to write yet another short novel!&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/162303/3&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/56/publicist?userid=25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/120321/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120321/is-orm-an-anti-pattern/120338#comment220944_120321&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/120338/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/126696/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/126696/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126716/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126792/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/07/how-we-managed-24-software-development-trainees/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://math.stackexchange.com/q/188858/24474&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/7112&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://prog21.dadgum.com/149.html&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/z0nng/20_controversial_programming_opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/close-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10607" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3961" RevisionGUID="281cd7bb-221e-41f8-b20e-be560b076570" CreationDate="2012-08-31T05:07:09.927" UserId="31260" Comment="capitalization per http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/40353/stack-overflow-glossary-dictionary-of-commonly-used-terms" Text="I am the OP of that question.  First of all, I have developed a great deal of respect for everyone involved in the original question and the meta question so far, as well as for the SE technology itself.  How these edge cases are handled is exactly what separates good communities from bad.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###A Little Background...&#xD;&#xA;I happen to have borne witness to the first 70 episodes of the [Stack Overflow podcast](http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/series/stackoverflow.html?series=&amp;channel=&amp;offset=71) which chronicles Jeff and Joel's evolving philosophy of the goal of Stack Exchange.  I think the salient part of their philosophy for this particular matter can be summarized as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We want Stack Overflow to be the canonical source for the answers to long-tail questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm paraphrasing Joel there, but I don't think I'm putting words in his mouth (at least not as of the recording of the first 50 or so podcast episodes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Why programmers.stackexchange.com?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) which is linked to from the FAQ, he writes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&quot;But software and programming isn’t always a hard science, either. Once you get past the does this code compile or not questions, you’re dealing with issues of best practices, experiences, and behaviors. Perhaps because our communities have become so accustomed to getting quick, accurate, and timely answers, they feel that even a subjective Stack Overflow is better than the alternatives. So much so, that our fellow programmers [created a sister site specifically for their pent up subjective questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/).&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That sister site is indeed programmers.stackexchange.com.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###An Informed Decision&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The question I asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/162303/4767) came to be after about 40 hours of research on very closely related subject matter.  I was a tacit expert on exactly that question (and little else).  The following things were clear to me when I clicked submit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. even a half-decent answer to my question would fill a real void in documented knowledge (i.e. this is a long-tail topic)&#xD;&#xA;2. my question was carefully crafted such that answers would fill the void exactly&#xD;&#xA;2. the bounded nature of the subject matter itself meant that a canonical answer could be achieved in the SE format&#xD;&#xA;3. the question was outside the _letter_ of the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and [&quot;good subjective guidelines&quot;](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/). &#xD;&#xA;4. the question was within the _spirit_ of Jeff and Joel's philosophy for stack overflow&#xD;&#xA;5. programmers.stackexchange.com was the most appropriate place to ask the question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the immediate comments cast doubt on that clarity but [chance avoided self-deletion of my question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162303/does-c-give-you-less-rope-to-hang-yourself-than-c#comment311246_162303).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What I Think We Should Learn From This&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. There is a class of questions that appear prima facie to be too broadly scoped, but are in fact quite nicely bounded by the nature of the topic itself. &#xD;&#xA;2. It might take an expert on the subject matter to determine whether a question fits that class.&#xD;&#xA;2. If it is possible that a question is of that class, wait a few hours or days before going all meta on it.  This will allow the most expert readers on the topic to provide some feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This really doesn't have to be overthought&amp;mdash;just wait a few hours or days and then, if it's crickets and confusion in there, cite the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10608" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3963" RevisionGUID="ffbb6278-4cc1-46ea-95c2-c6fbf05a957b" CreationDate="2012-08-31T05:24:23.863" UserId="25936" Comment="crap, I was looking at the wrong stats, damn you Wordpress!" Text="**The comment and the Summer of Nonsense**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I consider the Summer of Love a mostly failed campaign, especially when it comes to the smaller sites of the network (I don't know if it benefited Stack Overflow, and I don't really care). Most people fixate on the whole &quot;niceness&quot; theme and forget that actively trying to help an asker, even just a tiny bit and even if only by pointing flaws in their question, is incredibly nice. No one is paying us to close questions, or comment on them or anything, if the comment is generally polite and points to the right direction, it's helpful (and nice, dammit!). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We disqualify types &amp; categories of questions not because we are elitist --------&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, but because we've seen time and time again that these questions are more likely to turn to junk than anything useful. By closing these questions we help askers avoid having to read populist answers full of misinformation, something that could potentially hurt them a lot more than the slight sting of having their question closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A newer member of the community probably doesn't know all this. They haven't seen hundreds of `foo vs bar` questions turn to painfully moronic holy wars, they haven't seen populist but utterly useless answers getting tons of votes just because they were dropped in a similarly minded chat room, etc. Your comment, and I'm guessing your close vote, was a correct reaction to the question, and although the OP didn't immediately realize it at the time, I'm sure if they stay around they'll soon realize why we tend to disqualify overly broad / non constructive questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One small thing I would have done differently would be to remove the third question in the question in question right the moment I first read it. Since you immediately identified the question as overly broad, removing the lesser of the three questions would have been a good thing, and it would have helped make it a tiny bit more specific. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since all but one of the answers ignored that part, [I went ahead and removed it][1]. It would have been absolutely fine if you had removed it when you first saw the question, be bold and edit! The OP can just rollback if they wish...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Views, favourites and popularity in general**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ben already mentioned that there are [troubles with popularity][2] but I'd like to make a few points a bit more specific to Programmers. The subjective nature of the site unfortunately makes it a lot more attractive to [bikeshed questions][3] than Stack Overflow. We really need to always keep in mind that popularity alone says absolutely nothing at all about a question's usefulness and topicality, and ideally it shouldn't even be part of the discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having earned [17 gold Publicists badges][4] on Programmers (and a few on other sites), I think I'm more than qualified to discuss how amazingly worthless a metric popularity is. I've manipulated it more times than I can remember, and yes sometimes I've benefited from it with some sweet but mostly pointless rep. The gamification aspects of Stack Exchange is what keeps us all hooked, and all of us who've been around for a while understand that quality &gt; quantity, but it's also understandable that a newer user seeing their question getting tons of views, votes and being favourited will think that it's a good question&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;. Why wouldn't they?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well... Let's see some examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is ORM an Anti-Pattern?][5] (+28, 13 favourites and 6,215 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Is it a good question? No, it isn't and I [said it][6] when I first read it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; &quot;Your question is very broad and ambiguous&quot;, as noted in the SO question. ORM employs a variety of techniques, some may be considered to be antipatterns. Take a look at this related discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I remember hating that question with a passion the moment I first read it, good thing I was a regular user back then and my close vote didn't kill it. I still don't like it, but that didn't stop me from [posting an answer][7], one that is currently voted at +51. Why? It's very simple really, I was extremely bored at the time and had nothing better to do ;) Is it a _good_ answer? I don't know what the rest of you think, but I don't particularly like it, it's not the kind of answer for example that I'd choose to show to colleagues. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Even if you consider it a good answer, it's not worth +51 and although it got a decent amount of votes when I first posted it, it exploded when I shared it on Reddit, which also gave me my second gold Publicist. It's a pure populist answer, and the only reason the question is popular it's is noobesque quality and, well, Reddit. Today I'd just point to the Wikipedia article I reference, close the question and forget all about it (well technically if the same question was asked today I'd close it as a duplicate, but you get my point).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [What's up with the outburst of new programming languages and frameworks that's out/coming out lately?][8] (+10, 1 favourite, 1312 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A lesser example, that is now (rightfully) closed, but worth examining because it was [closed and re-opened, and then closed again][9]. I voted to close minutes, perhaps seconds, after I first saw it, but again being a regular user at the time my vote was not binding. And yet, there it is, [my +39 answer][10]! Yes, once again I was bored!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  But this time there's something more there, the answer is utter nonsense. And I even say so, publicly (but not so visibly) and a bit more privately: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - The third footnote, expanded reads as: *Could be wrong, though. Who knows? (is my actual answer)*.&#xD;&#xA;  - At the end of the answer there used to be an invisible html comment (since purged automagically by the system?) that in no uncertain terms declared: This is nonsense! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This was mostly a trolling answer, some people picked up on it's light hearted nature, but there wasn't ever any serious reaction to my absolutely unscientific analysis. I have no idea why the question was re-opened, and I can't say anyone benefited from the answers&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll stop using my answers as examples, in fear of a rain of downvotes, but in the spirit of completeness and just in case anyone is still reading this, here's a couple more examples of the problem with popularity, from our [community blog][12]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How we managed 24 software development trainees][13] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  An amazing post by a very skill full writer, providing unique insights of the training process, a must read for every software developer (imho). Currently it has been viewed 1,034 times and has 1 comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [20 controversial programming opinions][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A bit of a meh post re-iterating not so controversial opinions, that was rushed in as other more useful posts were being written, mostly to keep up with our schedule. Currently it has been viewed 91,845 times (and counting), has 77 comments, generated a couple of questions (on [Math][15] and [Code Golf][16]), at least [one retort][17] and a [vibrant discussion][18] on Reddit. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  *A meh post, I slapped together from a deleted question with the sole intention of keeping up with our schedule...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The question in question (about time ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a bad question. Certainly it's of the `foo vs bar` flavour, naturally attractive to opinionated and populist answers with little actual usefulness and perhaps even off topic under the &quot;which technology is better&quot; clause in our [FAQ][19]. But this category of questions is off topic by virtue of being almost always not constructive, so let's examine whether it fits the not constructive description: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question does solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion, and we don't like that around these parts of the Internet ;) It's a question build around an opinion, how can it not solicit even more opinion? Effective C++ was published 20 years ago (1992), still a wonderfully useful book, but is there any point any more&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; to discuss an obviously light hearted comment from it? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And is there any point in generally comparing languages and platforms at all? I think not, unless of course you have an actual specific problem to solve, which is something we very clearly point out in our [FAQ][20]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A rule we so often forget, but really applies for the question in question, that currently has 7 answers, and all but one have quite a few comments. Is that wrong? No, not necessarily, but it does strongly hint that this isn't a question we'll easily find an answer to. And we do care about finding answers to questions, this is what essentially separates this site from a typical programming forum. We don't disqualify certain types and categories because we don't like them, or because we can't answer them, but because we are trying to build something different than a discussion forum, a high quality Q&amp;A site where questions get sufficiently and sometimes even definitively answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end we have build a certain set of tools and more importantly a community philosophy and culture that simply fails with overly broad and / or discussion oriented questions. Sometimes the reason is just plain trolling, sometimes it's opinionated answers that although not trolling are extremely hard to judge the quality of&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;, sometimes it just gets to a point where there are so many answers and comments that the whole thread is impossible to navigate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again this isn't a bad question, and it's one I personally like, which is why I edited it and spend some time to write all this. It certainly did _not_ turn terrible, and some of the answers I think are useful. But I do agree that the question doesn't really fit the scope and philosophy of the site, and I voted to close it. I don't think it will benefit from further answers and it already had four close votes when I started writing this. One of them expired while I was writing the answer (!) but this is still a community closure, I _probably_ wouldn't have mod closed it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Finally a word to the OP (and I'll stop, I promise ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Exchange we have two peer review systems, one for quality and one for topicality, and both are based on voting. Closing a question is not necessarily a comment on the question's overall quality and it's reversible, even if a moderator is involved in the closure. Furthermore closure is a temporary state, a closed question might be re-opened if improved, or simply if five members who can [vote to re-open][21] think it shouldn't have been closed in the first place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, most closed questions do not get re-opened, and I can't promise yours will. However even if it doesn't the effort you put to it wasn't in waste:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You got 7 answers, and although some I don't find particularly useful, they were all thoughtful and added something (even if a tiny bit) to the discussion. &#xD;&#xA; - It generated this Meta discussion&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; that will hopefully help the community better understand the nature of overly broad questions, why we close them and perhaps even help us find a way to better cope with them in the future and not have to close them at all.&#xD;&#xA; - It's not a question we'd typically delete, I can't promise that it won't get delete votes from the community but I don't see any reason why it would. &#xD;&#xA; - And you got some rep from it ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would have been a shame if you had self-deleted it, a fellow user pointing out some flaws in it wouldn't justify such an overreaction. At the end of the day what you suggested happened naturally, the question did sit for a couple of days before getting closed, Oded just expressed his opinion (both with his comment and his close vote), but you'll have to keep in mind that it (usually) takes five to tango ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly hope you won't get disheartened by the closure and decide to stick around, you've already done your bit to help the community grow. And me closing the question doesn't really say much if the community doesn't agree with me. I have been wrong in the past (once or twice ;), and I may be wrong now. Who knows? ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The end.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Not that there was any such accusation in this case, this is a more general rant. This whole Summer of Summer thing ended up being mostly a big troll party... [sigh] &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Not saying that the question in question isn't good, again a more general comment.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Although I must say that [Paul Nathan's answer][11] is highly amusing&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; And I'm not suggesting there was ever a point...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; How do you downvote someone's personal opinion?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; ...and gave me the opportunity to write yet another short novel!&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/162303/3&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/56/publicist?userid=25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/120321/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120321/is-orm-an-anti-pattern/120338#comment220944_120321&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/120338/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/126696/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/126696/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126716/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126792/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/07/how-we-managed-24-software-development-trainees/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://math.stackexchange.com/q/188858/24474&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/7112&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://prog21.dadgum.com/149.html&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/z0nng/20_controversial_programming_opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/close-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10609" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3964" RevisionGUID="8031db46-92b5-4352-bd1c-906a85856593" CreationDate="2012-08-31T05:46:02.487" UserId="38218" Text="No, interview questions should not be banned via the FAQ. As long as they're properly redacted and fall within the topic they are as viable as any other questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10610" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3959" RevisionGUID="7cbc6223-f41b-4964-947a-b480010d9d26" CreationDate="2012-08-31T05:56:35.807" UserId="25936" Comment="adding the etiquette tag since this touches on the whole Summer of Love nonsense. And some &quot;in your face&quot; bullet formatting for the distinct questions..." Text="Recently [Does C# give you “less rope to hang yourself” than C++?][1] was asked - I thought the question was too wide in scope, voted to close and commented as such:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; From the FAQ: Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.. I believe this qualifies as such a question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP, several days later responded with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Oded Being a n00b I almost deleted my question because of your comments. It was only happenstance that I did not -- I was interrupted, then took Sunday off. By Monday there were over 500 views, 7 answers, lots of up votes and 2 favorites. I humbly submit that immediately commenting new questions with a hypertechnical meta reason that it shouldn't have been asked actually damages the community more than it helps. If the question had been sitting for days or even hours it might have been more appropriate, but the above comments happened within minutes of the original post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is currently open, has over 800 views, 7 answers and only two close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Was I wrong to write what I did? Does it go against the Summer of Love? &#xD;&#xA;- Does the question belong on Programmers and if so, why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not trying to close the question - I am looking for some enlightenment here. I see that both the OP and I have good points and that yes, the question appears to be a popular one and has some great answers. But I still feel it is overly broad in scope and not right for Programmers (or Stack Exchange in general).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/162303/4767" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10611" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3959" RevisionGUID="7cbc6223-f41b-4964-947a-b480010d9d26" CreationDate="2012-08-31T05:56:35.807" UserId="25936" Comment="adding the etiquette tag since this touches on the whole Summer of Love nonsense. And some &quot;in your face&quot; bullet formatting for the distinct questions..." Text="Summer of Love and questions that the FAQ says should not be asked" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10612" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3959" RevisionGUID="7cbc6223-f41b-4964-947a-b480010d9d26" CreationDate="2012-08-31T05:56:35.807" UserId="25936" Comment="adding the etiquette tag since this touches on the whole Summer of Love nonsense. And some &quot;in your face&quot; bullet formatting for the distinct questions..." Text="|discussion|questions|on-topic-definition|guidelines|etiquette|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10613" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3963" RevisionGUID="ecd1645b-5a36-409e-b7e2-e6e402bca7ad" CreationDate="2012-08-31T05:58:23.717" UserId="25936" Comment="added 145 characters in body" Text="**The comment and the Summer of Nonsense**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I consider the Summer of Love a mostly failed campaign, especially when it comes to the smaller sites of the network (I don't know if it benefited Stack Overflow, and I don't really care). Most people fixate on the whole &quot;niceness&quot; theme and forget that actively trying to help an asker, even just a tiny bit and even if only by pointing flaws in their question, is incredibly nice. No one is paying us to close questions, or comment on them or anything, if the comment is generally polite and points to the right direction, it's helpful (and nice, dammit!). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't be walking on eggshells, afraid we might offend someone, just because we politely expressed an opinion on the topicality of a question. We disqualify types &amp; categories of questions not because we are elitist --------&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, but because we've seen time and time again that these questions are more likely to turn to junk than anything useful. By closing these questions we help askers avoid having to read populist answers full of misinformation, something that could potentially hurt them a lot more than the slight sting of having their question closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A newer member of the community probably doesn't know all this. They haven't seen hundreds of `foo vs bar` questions turn to painfully moronic holy wars, they haven't seen populist but utterly useless answers getting tons of votes just because they were dropped in a similarly minded chat room, etc. Your comment, and I'm guessing your close vote, was a correct reaction to the question, and although the OP didn't immediately realize it at the time, I'm sure if they stay around they'll soon realize why we tend to disqualify overly broad / non constructive questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One small thing I would have done differently would be to remove the third question in the question in question right the moment I first read it. Since you immediately identified the question as overly broad, removing the lesser of the three questions would have been a good thing, and it would have helped make it a tiny bit more specific. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since all but one of the answers ignored that part, [I went ahead and removed it][1]. It would have been absolutely fine if you had removed it when you first saw the question, be bold and edit! The OP can just rollback if they wish...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Views, favourites and popularity in general**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ben already mentioned that there are [troubles with popularity][2] but I'd like to make a few points a bit more specific to Programmers. The subjective nature of the site unfortunately makes it a lot more attractive to [bikeshed questions][3] than Stack Overflow. We really need to always keep in mind that popularity alone says absolutely nothing at all about a question's usefulness and topicality, and ideally it shouldn't even be part of the discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having earned [17 gold Publicists badges][4] on Programmers (and a few on other sites), I think I'm more than qualified to discuss how amazingly worthless a metric popularity is. I've manipulated it more times than I can remember, and yes sometimes I've benefited from it with some sweet but mostly pointless rep. The gamification aspects of Stack Exchange is what keeps us all hooked, and all of us who've been around for a while understand that quality &gt; quantity, but it's also understandable that a newer user seeing their question getting tons of views, votes and being favourited will think that it's a good question&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;. Why wouldn't they?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well... Let's see some examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is ORM an Anti-Pattern?][5] (+28, 13 favourites and 6,215 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Is it a good question? No, it isn't and I [said it][6] when I first read it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; &quot;Your question is very broad and ambiguous&quot;, as noted in the SO question. ORM employs a variety of techniques, some may be considered to be antipatterns. Take a look at this related discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I remember hating that question with a passion the moment I first read it, good thing I was a regular user back then and my close vote didn't kill it. I still don't like it, but that didn't stop me from [posting an answer][7], one that is currently voted at +51. Why? It's very simple really, I was extremely bored at the time and had nothing better to do ;) Is it a _good_ answer? I don't know what the rest of you think, but I don't particularly like it, it's not the kind of answer for example that I'd choose to show to colleagues. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Even if you consider it a good answer, it's not worth +51 and although it got a decent amount of votes when I first posted it, it exploded when I shared it on Reddit, which also gave me my second gold Publicist. It's a pure populist answer, and the only reason the question is popular it's is noobesque quality and, well, Reddit. Today I'd just point to the Wikipedia article I reference, close the question and forget all about it (well technically if the same question was asked today I'd close it as a duplicate, but you get my point).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [What's up with the outburst of new programming languages and frameworks that's out/coming out lately?][8] (+10, 1 favourite, 1312 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A lesser example, that is now (rightfully) closed, but worth examining because it was [closed and re-opened, and then closed again][9]. I voted to close minutes, perhaps seconds, after I first saw it, but again being a regular user at the time my vote was not binding. And yet, there it is, [my +39 answer][10]! Yes, once again I was bored!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  But this time there's something more there, the answer is utter nonsense. And I even say so, publicly (but not so visibly) and a bit more privately: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - The third footnote, expanded reads as: *Could be wrong, though. Who knows? (is my actual answer)*.&#xD;&#xA;  - At the end of the answer there used to be an invisible html comment (since purged automagically by the system?) that in no uncertain terms declared: This is nonsense! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This was mostly a trolling answer, some people picked up on it's light hearted nature, but there wasn't ever any serious reaction to my absolutely unscientific analysis. I have no idea why the question was re-opened, and I can't say anyone benefited from the answers&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll stop using my answers as examples, in fear of a rain of downvotes, but in the spirit of completeness and just in case anyone is still reading this, here's a couple more examples of the problem with popularity, from our [community blog][12]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How we managed 24 software development trainees][13] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  An amazing post by a very skill full writer, providing unique insights of the training process, a must read for every software developer (imho). Currently it has been viewed 1,034 times and has 1 comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [20 controversial programming opinions][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A bit of a meh post re-iterating not so controversial opinions, that was rushed in as other more useful posts were being written, mostly to keep up with our schedule. Currently it has been viewed 91,845 times (and counting), has 77 comments, generated a couple of questions (on [Math][15] and [Code Golf][16]), at least [one retort][17] and a [vibrant discussion][18] on Reddit. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  *A meh post, I slapped together from a deleted question with the sole intention of keeping up with our schedule...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The question in question (about time ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a bad question. Certainly it's of the `foo vs bar` flavour, naturally attractive to opinionated and populist answers with little actual usefulness and perhaps even off topic under the &quot;which technology is better&quot; clause in our [FAQ][19]. But this category of questions is off topic by virtue of being almost always not constructive, so let's examine whether it fits the not constructive description: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question does solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion, and we don't like that around these parts of the Internet ;) It's a question build around an opinion, how can it not solicit even more opinion? Effective C++ was published 20 years ago (1992), still a wonderfully useful book, but is there any point any more&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; to discuss an obviously light hearted comment from it? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And is there any point in generally comparing languages and platforms at all? I think not, unless of course you have an actual specific problem to solve, which is something we very clearly point out in our [FAQ][20]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A rule we so often forget, but really applies for the question in question, that currently has 7 answers, and all but one have quite a few comments. Is that wrong? No, not necessarily, but it does strongly hint that this isn't a question we'll easily find an answer to. And we do care about finding answers to questions, this is what essentially separates this site from a typical programming forum. We don't disqualify certain types and categories because we don't like them, or because we can't answer them, but because we are trying to build something different than a discussion forum, a high quality Q&amp;A site where questions get sufficiently and sometimes even definitively answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end we have build a certain set of tools and more importantly a community philosophy and culture that simply fails with overly broad and / or discussion oriented questions. Sometimes the reason is just plain trolling, sometimes it's opinionated answers that although not trolling are extremely hard to judge the quality of&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;, sometimes it just gets to a point where there are so many answers and comments that the whole thread is impossible to navigate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again this isn't a bad question, and it's one I personally like, which is why I edited it and spend some time to write all this. It certainly did _not_ turn terrible, and some of the answers I think are useful. But I do agree that the question doesn't really fit the scope and philosophy of the site, and I voted to close it. I don't think it will benefit from further answers and it already had four close votes when I started writing this. One of them expired while I was writing the answer (!) but this is still a community closure, I _probably_ wouldn't have mod closed it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Finally a word to the OP (and I'll stop, I promise ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Exchange we have two peer review systems, one for quality and one for topicality, and both are based on voting. Closing a question is not necessarily a comment on the question's overall quality and it's reversible, even if a moderator is involved in the closure. Furthermore closure is a temporary state, a closed question might be re-opened if improved, or simply if five members who can [vote to re-open][21] think it shouldn't have been closed in the first place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, most closed questions do not get re-opened, and I can't promise yours will. However even if it doesn't the effort you put to it wasn't in waste:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You got 7 answers, and although some I don't find particularly useful, they were all thoughtful and added something (even if a tiny bit) to the discussion. &#xD;&#xA; - It generated this Meta discussion&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; that will hopefully help the community better understand the nature of overly broad questions, why we close them and perhaps even help us find a way to better cope with them in the future and not have to close them at all.&#xD;&#xA; - It's not a question we'd typically delete, I can't promise that it won't get delete votes from the community but I don't see any reason why it would. &#xD;&#xA; - And you got some rep from it ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would have been a shame if you had self-deleted it, a fellow user pointing out some flaws in it wouldn't justify such an overreaction. At the end of the day what you suggested happened naturally, the question did sit for a couple of days before getting closed, Oded just expressed his opinion (both with his comment and his close vote), but you'll have to keep in mind that it (usually) takes five to tango ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly hope you won't get disheartened by the closure and decide to stick around, you've already done your bit to help the community grow. And me closing the question doesn't really say much if the community doesn't agree with me. I have been wrong in the past (once or twice ;), and I may be wrong now. Who knows? ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The end.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Not that there was any such accusation in this case, this is a more general rant. This whole Summer of Summer thing ended up being mostly a big troll party... [sigh] &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Not saying that the question in question isn't good, again a more general comment.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Although I must say that [Paul Nathan's answer][11] is highly amusing&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; And I'm not suggesting there was ever a point...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; How do you downvote someone's personal opinion?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; ...and gave me the opportunity to write yet another short novel!&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/162303/3&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/56/publicist?userid=25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/120321/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120321/is-orm-an-anti-pattern/120338#comment220944_120321&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/120338/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/126696/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/126696/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126716/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126792/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/07/how-we-managed-24-software-development-trainees/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://math.stackexchange.com/q/188858/24474&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/7112&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://prog21.dadgum.com/149.html&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/z0nng/20_controversial_programming_opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/close-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10614" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3949" RevisionGUID="ddbc9a45-38d8-4578-9b9a-64059c7612f2" CreationDate="2012-08-31T06:01:02.403" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/241415278284640256" />
  <row Id="10615" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3965" RevisionGUID="ed4f0a36-ce49-4f58-8c19-c4210166f197" CreationDate="2012-08-31T06:11:07.897" UserId="31260" Text="##Askers yield&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a [prolific answerer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4767/oded?tab=answers &quot;as clearly indicated by your profile&quot;), you better keep in mind that your satisfaction with questions quality is considered more important than that of the asker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the official statement on above, refer to Stack Exchange blog, **[Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/ &quot;reference article at Stack Exchange blog&quot;)**:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...we’re determined to keep question quality high, **even at the cost of refusing a little sand**. It’s true that you can’t have Q&amp;A without _questions_, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&amp;A site is to flood it with low-quality questions...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&amp;A system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**. If this means aggressively downvoting or closing unworthy and uninteresting questions, so be it. Without a community of people willing to _answer_ questions, it really doesn’t matter if there are questions at all, does it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, when asker and answerer disagree about question quality, asker [yield](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/give_way &quot;'give precedence to other road users'&quot;)&lt;sup&gt; [1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3962/31260 &quot;term inspired by analogy used in another answer&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt; and answerer's opinion is given a precedence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Answerers drive by rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just like it is with driving, having a precedence does not in any way means entitlement to break the rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that other cars should yield won't help one driving the wrong side of the road. For Stack Exchange, this analogy means that answerers should be civil when expressing their opinions about question quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Authoritative references&lt;sup&gt; [1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/07/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-is-not-a-forum-the-role-of-niceness-on-a-qa-site/)&lt;/sup&gt; for Summer of Love I've seen so far definitely reiterate just two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* That rudeness will not be tolerated:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **See someone being rude? Flag it!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* That niceness yields to honesty, just like it has been before:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Everyone loves to quote from [the FAQ’s etiquette section](http://stackoverflow.com/faq#etiquette), particularly the first “be nice” bit. But it’s the last section that has all the action items:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Be honest.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Above all, be honest. If you see misinformation, vote it down. Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Applied to the case you describe I would say you did OK. Asker having different opinion is expected, and it was reasonable that you expressed yours. You were civil which means you did not break rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, you did exactly as suggested in the FAQ on etiquette and as reiterated in Summer Of Love quote above:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10616" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3965" RevisionGUID="9b6f5f33-2070-4c70-8463-0f688303fade" CreationDate="2012-08-31T06:20:25.097" UserId="31260" Comment="added 6 characters in body" Text="##Askers yield&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a [prolific answerer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4767/oded?tab=answers &quot;as clearly indicated by your profile&quot;), you better keep in mind that your satisfaction with questions quality is considered more important than that of the asker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the official statement on above, refer to Stack Exchange blog, **[Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/ &quot;reference article at Stack Exchange blog&quot;)**:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...we’re determined to keep question quality high, **even at the cost of refusing a little sand**. It’s true that you can’t have Q&amp;A without _questions_, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&amp;A site is to flood it with low-quality questions...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&amp;A system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**. If this means aggressively downvoting or closing unworthy and uninteresting questions, so be it. Without a community of people willing to _answer_ questions, it really doesn’t matter if there are questions at all, does it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, when asker and answerer disagree about question quality, asker [yield](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/give_way &quot;'give precedence to other road users'&quot;)&lt;sup&gt; [1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3962/31260 &quot;term inspired by analogy used in another answer&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt; and answerer's opinion is given a precedence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Answerers drive by rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just like it is with driving, having a precedence does not in any way mean entitlement to break the rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that other cars should yield won't help one driving the wrong side of the road. For cases like we discuss, this analogy means that answerers should be civil when expressing their opinions about question quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Authoritative references&lt;sup&gt; [1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/07/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-is-not-a-forum-the-role-of-niceness-on-a-qa-site/)&lt;/sup&gt; for Summer of Love I've seen so far definitely reiterate just two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* That rudeness will not be tolerated:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **See someone being rude? Flag it!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* That niceness yields to honesty, just like it has been before:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Everyone loves to quote from [the FAQ’s etiquette section](http://stackoverflow.com/faq#etiquette), particularly the first “be nice” bit. But it’s the last section that has all the action items:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Be honest.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Above all, be honest. If you see misinformation, vote it down. Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Applied to the case you describe I would say you did OK. Asker having different opinion is expected, and it was reasonable that you expressed yours. You were civil which means you did not break rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, you did exactly as suggested in the FAQ on etiquette and as reiterated in Summer Of Love quote above:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10617" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3965" RevisionGUID="0a4bffd2-0783-4ee5-9afb-e778bc3cc787" CreationDate="2012-08-31T07:01:55.123" UserId="31260" Comment="added 14 characters in body" Text="##Askers yield&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a [prolific answerer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4767/oded?tab=answers &quot;as clearly indicated by your profile&quot;), you better keep in mind that your satisfaction with questions quality is considered more important than that of the asker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the official statement on above, refer to Stack Exchange blog, **[Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/ &quot;reference article at Stack Exchange blog&quot;)**:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...we’re determined to keep question quality high, **even at the cost of refusing a little sand**. It’s true that you can’t have Q&amp;A without _questions_, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&amp;A site is to flood it with low-quality questions...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&amp;A system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**. If this means aggressively downvoting or closing unworthy and uninteresting questions, so be it. Without a community of people willing to _answer_ questions, it really doesn’t matter if there are questions at all, does it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding of above is, when asker and answerer disagree about question quality, asker [yield](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/give_way &quot;'give precedence to other road users'&quot;)&lt;sup&gt; [1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3962/31260 &quot;term inspired by analogy used in another answer&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt; and answerer's opinion is given a precedence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Answerers drive by rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just like it is with driving, having a precedence does not in any way mean entitlement to break the rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that other cars should yield won't help one driving the wrong side of the road. For cases like we discuss, this analogy means answerers should be civil when expressing their opinions about question quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Authoritative references&lt;sup&gt; [1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/07/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-is-not-a-forum-the-role-of-niceness-on-a-qa-site/)&lt;/sup&gt; for Summer of Love I've seen so far definitely reiterate just two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* That rudeness will not be tolerated:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **See someone being rude? Flag it!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* That niceness yields to honesty, just like it has been before:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Everyone loves to quote from [the FAQ’s etiquette section](http://stackoverflow.com/faq#etiquette), particularly the first “be nice” bit. But it’s the last section that has all the action items:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Be honest.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Above all, be honest. If you see misinformation, vote it down. Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Applied to the case you describe I would say you did OK. Asker having different opinion is expected, and it was reasonable that you expressed yours. You were civil which means you did not break rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, you did exactly as suggested in the FAQ on etiquette and as reiterated in Summer Of Love quote above:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10618" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3965" RevisionGUID="335aaa4d-b8d9-4dee-8f4e-874fa310905a" CreationDate="2012-08-31T07:33:50.733" UserId="31260" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="##Askers yield&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a [prolific answerer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4767/oded?tab=answers &quot;as clearly indicated by your profile&quot;), you better keep in mind that your satisfaction with questions quality is considered more important than that of the asker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the official statement on above, refer to Stack Exchange blog, **[Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/ &quot;reference article at Stack Exchange blog&quot;)**:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...we’re determined to keep question quality high, **even at the cost of refusing a little sand**. It’s true that you can’t have Q&amp;A without _questions_, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&amp;A site is to flood it with low-quality questions...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&amp;A system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**. If this means aggressively downvoting or closing unworthy and uninteresting questions, so be it. Without a community of people willing to _answer_ questions, it really doesn’t matter if there are questions at all, does it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding of above is, when asker and answerer disagree about question quality, asker [yield](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/give_way &quot;'give precedence to other road users'&quot;)&lt;sup&gt; [1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3962/31260 &quot;term inspired by analogy used in another answer&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt; and answerer's opinion is given a precedence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Answerers drive by rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just like it is with driving, having a precedence does not in any way mean entitlement to break the rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that other cars should yield won't help one driving the wrong side of the road. For cases like we discuss, this analogy means answerers should be civil when expressing their opinions about question quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Authoritative references&lt;sup&gt; [1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/07/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-is-not-a-forum-the-role-of-niceness-on-a-qa-site/)&lt;/sup&gt; for Summer of Love I've seen so far definitely reiterate just two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* That rudeness will not be tolerated:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **See someone being rude? Flag it!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* That niceness yields to honesty, just like it has been before:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Everyone loves to quote from [the FAQ’s etiquette section](http://stackoverflow.com/faq#etiquette), particularly the first “be nice” bit. But it’s the last section that has all the action items:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; ###Be honest.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Above all, be honest. If you see misinformation, vote it down. Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Applied to the case you describe I would say you did OK. Asker having different opinion is expected, and it was reasonable that you expressed yours. You were civil which means you did not break rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, you did exactly as suggested in the FAQ on etiquette and as reiterated in Summer Of Love quote above:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10619" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3965" RevisionGUID="4ff8b456-bc32-4882-9653-a901f6ca6afc" CreationDate="2012-08-31T07:44:54.577" UserId="31260" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="##Askers yield&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a [prolific answerer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4767/oded?tab=answers &quot;as clearly indicated by your profile&quot;), you better keep in mind that your satisfaction with questions quality is considered more important than that of the asker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the official statement on above, refer to Stack Exchange blog, **[Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/ &quot;reference article at Stack Exchange blog&quot;)**:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...we’re determined to keep question quality high, **even at the cost of refusing a little sand**. It’s true that you can’t have Q&amp;A without _questions_, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&amp;A site is to flood it with low-quality questions...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&amp;A system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**. If this means aggressively downvoting or closing unworthy and uninteresting questions, so be it. Without a community of people willing to _answer_ questions, it really doesn’t matter if there are questions at all, does it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding of above is, when asker and answerer disagree about question quality, asker [yield](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/give_way &quot;'give precedence to other road users'&quot;)&lt;sup&gt; [1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3962/31260 &quot;term inspired by analogy used in another answer&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt; and answerer's opinion is given a precedence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Answerers drive by rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just like it is with driving, having a precedence does not in any way mean entitlement to break the rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that other cars should yield won't help one driving the wrong side of the road. For cases like we discuss, this analogy means answerers should be civil when expressing their opinions about question quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Authoritative references&lt;sup&gt; [1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/07/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-is-not-a-forum-the-role-of-niceness-on-a-qa-site/)&lt;/sup&gt; for Summer of Love I've seen so far definitely reiterate just two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* That rudeness will not be tolerated:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **See someone being rude? Flag it!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* That niceness yields to honesty, just like it has been before:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Everyone loves to quote from [the FAQ’s etiquette section](http://stackoverflow.com/faq#etiquette), particularly the first “be nice” bit. But it’s the last section that has all the action items:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; ###Be honest.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Above all, be honest. If you see misinformation, vote it down. Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Applied to the case you describe I would say you did OK. Asker having different opinion is expected, and it was reasonable that you expressed yours. You were civil which means you did not break rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, you did exactly as suggested in the _FAQ action items_ and as reiterated in Summer Of Love quote above:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10620" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3963" RevisionGUID="5f324dec-310c-4655-ac64-ccffbe6af74f" CreationDate="2012-08-31T09:49:13.263" UserId="25936" Comment="added 119 characters in body" Text="**The comment and the Summer of Nonsense**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I consider the Summer of Love a mostly failed campaign, especially when it comes to the smaller sites of the network (I don't know if it benefited Stack Overflow, and I don't really care). Most people fixate on the whole &quot;niceness&quot; theme and forget that actively trying to help an asker, even just a tiny bit and even if only by pointing flaws in their question, is incredibly nice. No one is paying us to close questions, or comment on them or anything, if the comment is generally polite and points to the right direction, it's helpful (and nice, dammit!). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't be walking on eggshells, afraid we might offend someone, just because we politely expressed an opinion on the topicality of a question. We disqualify types &amp; categories of questions not because we are elitist --------&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, but because we've seen time and time again that these questions are more likely to turn to junk than anything useful. By closing these questions we help askers avoid having to read populist answers full of misinformation, something that could potentially hurt them a lot more than the slight sting of having their question closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A newer member of the community probably doesn't know all this. They haven't seen hundreds of `foo vs bar` questions turn to painfully moronic holy wars, they haven't seen populist but utterly useless answers getting tons of votes just because they were dropped in a similarly minded chat room, etc. Your comment, and I'm guessing your close vote, was a correct reaction to the question, and although the OP didn't immediately realize it at the time, I'm sure if they stay around they'll soon realize why we tend to disqualify overly broad / non constructive questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One small thing I would have done differently would be to remove the third question in the question in question right the moment I first read it. Since you immediately identified the question as overly broad, removing the lesser of the three questions would have been a good thing, and it would have helped make it a tiny bit more specific. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since all but one of the answers ignored that part, [I went ahead and removed it][1]. It would have been absolutely fine if you had removed it when you first saw the question, be bold and edit! The OP can just rollback if they wish...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Views, favourites and popularity in general**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ben already mentioned that there are [troubles with popularity][2] but I'd like to make a few points a bit more specific to Programmers. The subjective nature of the site unfortunately makes it a lot more attractive to [bikeshed questions][3] than Stack Overflow. We really need to always keep in mind that popularity alone says absolutely nothing at all about a question's usefulness and topicality, and ideally it shouldn't even be part of the discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having earned [17 gold Publicists badges][4] on Programmers (and a few on other sites), I think I'm more than qualified to discuss how amazingly worthless a metric popularity is. I've manipulated it more times than I can remember, and yes sometimes I've benefited from it with some sweet but mostly pointless rep. The gamification aspects of Stack Exchange is what keeps us all hooked, and all of us who've been around for a while understand that quality &gt; quantity, but it's also understandable that a newer user seeing their question getting tons of views, votes and being favourited will think that it's a good question&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;. Why wouldn't they?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well... Let's see some examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is ORM an Anti-Pattern?][5] (+28, 13 favourites and 6,215 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Is it a good question? No, it isn't and I [said it][6] when I first read it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; &quot;Your question is very broad and ambiguous&quot;, as noted in the SO question. ORM employs a variety of techniques, some may be considered to be antipatterns. Take a look at this related discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I remember hating that question with a passion the moment I first read it, good thing I was a regular user back then and my close vote didn't kill it. I still don't like it, but that didn't stop me from [posting an answer][7], one that is currently voted at +51. Why? It's very simple really, I was extremely bored at the time and had nothing better to do ;) Is it a _good_ answer? I don't know what the rest of you think, but I don't particularly like it, it's not the kind of answer for example that I'd choose to show to colleagues. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Even if you consider it a good answer, it's not worth +51 and although it got a decent amount of votes when I first posted it, it exploded when I shared it on Reddit, which also gave me my second gold Publicist. It's a pure populist answer, and the only reason the question is popular it's is noobesque quality and, well, Reddit. Today I'd just point to the Wikipedia article I reference, close the question and forget all about it (well technically if the same question was asked today I'd close it as a duplicate, but you get my point).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [What's up with the outburst of new programming languages and frameworks that's out/coming out lately?][8] (+10, 1 favourite, 1312 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A lesser example, that is now (rightfully) closed, but worth examining because it was [closed and re-opened, and then closed again][9]. I voted to close minutes, perhaps seconds, after I first saw it, but again being a regular user at the time my vote was not binding. And yet, there it is, [my +39 answer][10]! Yes, once again I was bored!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  But this time there's something more there, the answer is utter nonsense. And I even say so, publicly (but not so visibly) and a bit more privately: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - The third footnote, expanded reads as: *Could be wrong, though. Who knows? (is my actual answer)*.&#xD;&#xA;  - At the end of the answer there used to be an invisible html comment (since purged automagically by the system?) that in no uncertain terms declared: This is nonsense! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This was mostly a trolling answer, some people picked up on it's light hearted nature, but there wasn't ever any serious reaction to my absolutely unscientific analysis. I have no idea why the question was re-opened, and I can't say anyone benefited from the answers&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll stop using my answers as examples, in fear of a rain of downvotes, but in the spirit of completeness and just in case anyone is still reading this, here's a couple more examples of the problem with popularity, from our [community blog][11]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How we managed 24 software development trainees][12] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  An amazing post by a very skill full writer, providing unique insights of the training process, a must read for every software developer (imho). Currently it has been viewed 1,034 times and has 1 comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [20 controversial programming opinions][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A bit of a meh post re-iterating not so controversial opinions, that was rushed in as other more useful posts were being written, mostly to keep up with our schedule. Currently it has been viewed 91,845 times (and counting), has 77 comments, generated a couple of questions (on [Math][14] and [Code Golf][15]), at least [one retort][16], a [vibrant discussion][17] on Reddit and [a translation in Chinese][18]! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  *A meh post, I slapped together from a deleted question with the sole intention of keeping up with our schedule...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The question in question (about time ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a bad question. Certainly it's of the `foo vs bar` flavour, naturally attractive to opinionated and populist answers with little actual usefulness and perhaps even off topic under the &quot;which technology is better&quot; clause in our [FAQ][19]. But this category of questions is off topic by virtue of being almost always not constructive, so let's examine whether it fits the not constructive description: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question does solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion, and we don't like that around these parts of the Internet ;) It's a question build around an opinion, how can it not solicit even more opinion? Effective C++ was published 20 years ago (1992), still a wonderfully useful book, but is there any point any more&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; to discuss an obviously light hearted comment from it? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And is there any point in generally comparing languages and platforms at all? I think not, unless of course you have an actual specific problem to solve, which is something we very clearly point out in our [FAQ][20]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A rule we so often forget, but really applies for the question in question, that currently has 7 answers, and all but one have quite a few comments. Is that wrong? No, not necessarily, but it does strongly hint that this isn't a question we'll easily find an answer to. And we do care about finding answers to questions, this is what essentially separates this site from a typical programming forum. We don't disqualify certain types and categories because we don't like them, or because we can't answer them, but because we are trying to build something different than a discussion forum, a high quality Q&amp;A site where questions get sufficiently and sometimes even definitively answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end we have build a certain set of tools and more importantly a community philosophy and culture that simply fails with overly broad and / or discussion oriented questions. Sometimes the reason is just plain trolling, sometimes it's opinionated answers that although not trolling are extremely hard to judge the quality of&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;, sometimes it just gets to a point where there are so many answers and comments that the whole thread is impossible to navigate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again this isn't a bad question, and it's one I personally like, which is why I edited it and spend some time to write all this. It certainly did _not_ turn terrible, and some of the answers I think are useful. But I do agree that the question doesn't really fit the scope and philosophy of the site, and I voted to close it. I don't think it will benefit from further answers and it already had four close votes when I started writing this. One of them expired while I was writing the answer (!) but this is still a community closure, I _probably_ wouldn't have mod closed it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Finally a word to the OP (and I'll stop, I promise ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Exchange we have two peer review systems, one for quality and one for topicality, and both are based on voting. Closing a question is not necessarily a comment on the question's overall quality and it's reversible, even if a moderator is involved in the closure. Furthermore closure is a temporary state, a closed question might be re-opened if improved, or simply if five members who can [vote to re-open][21] think it shouldn't have been closed in the first place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, most closed questions do not get re-opened, and I can't promise yours will. However even if it doesn't the effort you put to it wasn't in waste:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You got 7 answers, and although some I don't find particularly useful, they were all thoughtful and added something (even if a tiny bit) to the discussion. &#xD;&#xA; - It generated this Meta discussion&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; that will hopefully help the community better understand the nature of overly broad questions, why we close them and perhaps even help us find a way to better cope with them in the future and not have to close them at all.&#xD;&#xA; - It's not a question we'd typically delete, I can't promise that it won't get delete votes from the community but I don't see any reason why it would. &#xD;&#xA; - And you got some rep from it ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would have been a shame if you had self-deleted it, a fellow user pointing out some flaws in it wouldn't justify such an overreaction. At the end of the day what you suggested happened naturally, the question did sit for a couple of days before getting closed, Oded just expressed his opinion (both with his comment and his close vote), but you'll have to keep in mind that it (usually) takes five to tango ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly hope you won't get disheartened by the closure and decide to stick around, you've already done your bit to help the community grow. And me closing the question doesn't really say much if the community doesn't agree with me. I have been wrong in the past (once or twice ;), and I may be wrong now. Who knows? ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The end.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Not that there was any such accusation in this case, this is a more general rant. This whole Summer of Summer thing ended up being mostly a big troll party... [sigh] &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Not saying that the question in question isn't good, again a more general comment.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Although I must say that [Paul Nathan's answer][22] is highly amusing&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; And I'm not suggesting there was ever a point...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; How do you downvote someone's personal opinion?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; ...and gave me the opportunity to write yet another short novel!&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/162303/3&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/56/publicist?userid=25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/120321/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120321/is-orm-an-anti-pattern/120338#comment220944_120321&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/120338/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/126696/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/126696/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126716/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/07/how-we-managed-24-software-development-trainees/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://math.stackexchange.com/q/188858/24474&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/7112&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://prog21.dadgum.com/149.html&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/z0nng/20_controversial_programming_opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://www.caozhishi.com/2012/08/31/those-controversial-opinions-on-program/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/close-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126792/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10621" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3963" RevisionGUID="a961172a-cdc9-4db2-aa7c-456e06b44d17" CreationDate="2012-08-31T13:48:37.477" UserId="25936" Comment="Summer of *Summer* ;P" Text="**The comment and the Summer of Nonsense**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I consider the Summer of Love a mostly failed campaign, especially when it comes to the smaller sites of the network (I don't know if it benefited Stack Overflow, and I don't really care). Most people fixate on the whole &quot;niceness&quot; theme and forget that actively trying to help an asker, even just a tiny bit and even if only by pointing flaws in their question, is incredibly nice. No one is paying us to close questions, or comment on them or anything, if the comment is generally polite and points to the right direction, it's helpful (and nice, dammit!). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't be walking on eggshells, afraid we might offend someone, just because we politely expressed an opinion on the topicality of a question. We disqualify types &amp; categories of questions not because we are elitist --------&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, but because we've seen time and time again that these questions are more likely to turn to junk than anything useful. By closing these questions we help askers avoid having to read populist answers full of misinformation, something that could potentially hurt them a lot more than the slight sting of having their question closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A newer member of the community probably doesn't know all this. They haven't seen hundreds of `foo vs bar` questions turn to painfully moronic holy wars, they haven't seen populist but utterly useless answers getting tons of votes just because they were dropped in a similarly minded chat room, etc. Your comment, and I'm guessing your close vote, was a correct reaction to the question, and although the OP didn't immediately realize it at the time, I'm sure if they stay around they'll soon realize why we tend to disqualify overly broad / non constructive questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One small thing I would have done differently would be to remove the third question in the question in question right the moment I first read it. Since you immediately identified the question as overly broad, removing the lesser of the three questions would have been a good thing, and it would have helped make it a tiny bit more specific. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since all but one of the answers ignored that part, [I went ahead and removed it][1]. It would have been absolutely fine if you had removed it when you first saw the question, be bold and edit! The OP can just rollback if they wish...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Views, favourites and popularity in general**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ben already mentioned that there are [troubles with popularity][2] but I'd like to make a few points a bit more specific to Programmers. The subjective nature of the site unfortunately makes it a lot more attractive to [bikeshed questions][3] than Stack Overflow. We really need to always keep in mind that popularity alone says absolutely nothing at all about a question's usefulness and topicality, and ideally it shouldn't even be part of the discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having earned [17 gold Publicists badges][4] on Programmers (and a few on other sites), I think I'm more than qualified to discuss how amazingly worthless a metric popularity is. I've manipulated it more times than I can remember, and yes sometimes I've benefited from it with some sweet but mostly pointless rep. The gamification aspects of Stack Exchange is what keeps us all hooked, and all of us who've been around for a while understand that quality &gt; quantity, but it's also understandable that a newer user seeing their question getting tons of views, votes and being favourited will think that it's a good question&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;. Why wouldn't they?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well... Let's see some examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is ORM an Anti-Pattern?][5] (+28, 13 favourites and 6,215 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Is it a good question? No, it isn't and I [said it][6] when I first read it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; &quot;Your question is very broad and ambiguous&quot;, as noted in the SO question. ORM employs a variety of techniques, some may be considered to be antipatterns. Take a look at this related discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I remember hating that question with a passion the moment I first read it, good thing I was a regular user back then and my close vote didn't kill it. I still don't like it, but that didn't stop me from [posting an answer][7], one that is currently voted at +51. Why? It's very simple really, I was extremely bored at the time and had nothing better to do ;) Is it a _good_ answer? I don't know what the rest of you think, but I don't particularly like it, it's not the kind of answer for example that I'd choose to show to colleagues. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Even if you consider it a good answer, it's not worth +51 and although it got a decent amount of votes when I first posted it, it exploded when I shared it on Reddit, which also gave me my second gold Publicist. It's a pure populist answer, and the only reason the question is popular it's is noobesque quality and, well, Reddit. Today I'd just point to the Wikipedia article I reference, close the question and forget all about it (well technically if the same question was asked today I'd close it as a duplicate, but you get my point).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [What's up with the outburst of new programming languages and frameworks that's out/coming out lately?][8] (+10, 1 favourite, 1312 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A lesser example, that is now (rightfully) closed, but worth examining because it was [closed and re-opened, and then closed again][9]. I voted to close minutes, perhaps seconds, after I first saw it, but again being a regular user at the time my vote was not binding. And yet, there it is, [my +39 answer][10]! Yes, once again I was bored!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  But this time there's something more there, the answer is utter nonsense. And I even say so, publicly (but not so visibly) and a bit more privately: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - The third footnote, expanded reads as: *Could be wrong, though. Who knows? (is my actual answer)*.&#xD;&#xA;  - At the end of the answer there used to be an invisible html comment (since purged automagically by the system?) that in no uncertain terms declared: This is nonsense! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This was mostly a trolling answer, some people picked up on it's light hearted nature, but there wasn't ever any serious reaction to my absolutely unscientific analysis. I have no idea why the question was re-opened, and I can't say anyone benefited from the answers&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll stop using my answers as examples, in fear of a rain of downvotes, but in the spirit of completeness and just in case anyone is still reading this, here's a couple more examples of the problem with popularity, from our [community blog][11]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How we managed 24 software development trainees][12] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  An amazing post by a very skill full writer, providing unique insights of the training process, a must read for every software developer (imho). Currently it has been viewed 1,034 times and has 1 comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [20 controversial programming opinions][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A bit of a meh post re-iterating not so controversial opinions, that was rushed in as other more useful posts were being written, mostly to keep up with our schedule. Currently it has been viewed 91,845 times (and counting), has 77 comments, generated a couple of questions (on [Math][14] and [Code Golf][15]), at least [one retort][16], a [vibrant discussion][17] on Reddit and [a translation in Chinese][18]! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  *A meh post, I slapped together from a deleted question with the sole intention of keeping up with our schedule...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The question in question (about time ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a bad question. Certainly it's of the `foo vs bar` flavour, naturally attractive to opinionated and populist answers with little actual usefulness and perhaps even off topic under the &quot;which technology is better&quot; clause in our [FAQ][19]. But this category of questions is off topic by virtue of being almost always not constructive, so let's examine whether it fits the not constructive description: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question does solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion, and we don't like that around these parts of the Internet ;) It's a question build around an opinion, how can it not solicit even more opinion? Effective C++ was published 20 years ago (1992), still a wonderfully useful book, but is there any point any more&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; to discuss an obviously light hearted comment from it? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And is there any point in generally comparing languages and platforms at all? I think not, unless of course you have an actual specific problem to solve, which is something we very clearly point out in our [FAQ][20]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A rule we so often forget, but really applies for the question in question, that currently has 7 answers, and all but one have quite a few comments. Is that wrong? No, not necessarily, but it does strongly hint that this isn't a question we'll easily find an answer to. And we do care about finding answers to questions, this is what essentially separates this site from a typical programming forum. We don't disqualify certain types and categories because we don't like them, or because we can't answer them, but because we are trying to build something different than a discussion forum, a high quality Q&amp;A site where questions get sufficiently and sometimes even definitively answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end we have build a certain set of tools and more importantly a community philosophy and culture that simply fails with overly broad and / or discussion oriented questions. Sometimes the reason is just plain trolling, sometimes it's opinionated answers that although not trolling are extremely hard to judge the quality of&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;, sometimes it just gets to a point where there are so many answers and comments that the whole thread is impossible to navigate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again this isn't a bad question, and it's one I personally like, which is why I edited it and spend some time to write all this. It certainly did _not_ turn terrible, and some of the answers I think are useful. But I do agree that the question doesn't really fit the scope and philosophy of the site, and I voted to close it. I don't think it will benefit from further answers and it already had four close votes when I started writing this. One of them expired while I was writing the answer (!) but this is still a community closure, I _probably_ wouldn't have mod closed it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Finally a word to the OP (and I'll stop, I promise ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Exchange we have two peer review systems, one for quality and one for topicality, and both are based on voting. Closing a question is not necessarily a comment on the question's overall quality and it's reversible, even if a moderator is involved in the closure. Furthermore closure is a temporary state, a closed question might be re-opened if improved, or simply if five members who can [vote to re-open][21] think it shouldn't have been closed in the first place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, most closed questions do not get re-opened, and I can't promise yours will. However even if it doesn't the effort you put to it wasn't in waste:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You got 7 answers, and although some I don't find particularly useful, they were all thoughtful and added something (even if a tiny bit) to the discussion. &#xD;&#xA; - It generated this Meta discussion&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; that will hopefully help the community better understand the nature of overly broad questions, why we close them and perhaps even help us find a way to better cope with them in the future and not have to close them at all.&#xD;&#xA; - It's not a question we'd typically delete, I can't promise that it won't get delete votes from the community but I don't see any reason why it would. &#xD;&#xA; - And you got some rep from it ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would have been a shame if you had self-deleted it, a fellow user pointing out some flaws in it wouldn't justify such an overreaction. At the end of the day what you suggested happened naturally, the question did sit for a couple of days before getting closed, Oded just expressed his opinion (both with his comment and his close vote), but you'll have to keep in mind that it (usually) takes five to tango ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly hope you won't get disheartened by the closure and decide to stick around, you've already done your bit to help the community grow. And me closing the question doesn't really say much if the community doesn't agree with me. I have been wrong in the past (once or twice ;), and I may be wrong now. Who knows? ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The end.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Not that there was any such accusation in this case, this is a more general rant. This whole Summer of Love thing ended up being mostly a big troll party... [sigh] &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Not saying that the question in question isn't good, again a more general comment.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Although I must say that [Paul Nathan's answer][22] is highly amusing&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; And I'm not suggesting there was ever a point...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; How do you downvote someone's personal opinion?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; ...and gave me the opportunity to write yet another short novel!&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/162303/3&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/56/publicist?userid=25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/120321/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120321/is-orm-an-anti-pattern/120338#comment220944_120321&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/120338/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/126696/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/126696/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126716/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/07/how-we-managed-24-software-development-trainees/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://math.stackexchange.com/q/188858/24474&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/7112&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://prog21.dadgum.com/149.html&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/z0nng/20_controversial_programming_opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://www.caozhishi.com/2012/08/31/those-controversial-opinions-on-program/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/close-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126792/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="10625" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3966" RevisionGUID="3694b187-6e04-4693-a894-b7878255a528" CreationDate="2012-08-31T19:47:01.040" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Is there any site maintenance going on currently?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3944/is-there-any-site-maintenance-going-on-currently)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Last week, my reputation was about 550 and since then it's been decreasing down to 494, as of today. However, my profile shows no reputation changes since 3 weeks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can that be happening?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10626" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3966" RevisionGUID="c28fdb31-72f6-4a41-89e9-92390ea75912" CreationDate="2012-08-31T19:47:01.040" UserId="25936" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[3944],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="10627" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3963" RevisionGUID="d989599c-69f3-4aa2-a05c-a24191f47aa7" CreationDate="2012-08-31T23:38:20.360" UserId="25936" Comment="added 96 characters in body" Text="**The comment and the Summer of Nonsense**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I consider the Summer of Love a mostly failed campaign, especially when it comes to the smaller sites of the network (I don't know if it benefited Stack Overflow, and I don't really care). Most people fixate on the whole &quot;niceness&quot; theme and forget that actively trying to help an asker, even just a tiny bit and even if only by pointing flaws in their question, is incredibly nice. No one is paying us to close questions, or comment on them or anything, if the comment is generally polite and points to the right direction, it's helpful (and nice, dammit!). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't be walking on eggshells, afraid we might offend someone, just because we politely expressed an opinion on the topicality of a question. We disqualify types &amp; categories of questions not because we are elitist --------&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, but because we've seen time and time again that these questions are more likely to turn to junk than anything useful. By closing these questions we help askers avoid having to read populist answers full of misinformation, something that could potentially hurt them a lot more than the slight sting of having their question closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A newer member of the community probably doesn't know all this. They haven't seen hundreds of `foo vs bar` questions turn to painfully moronic holy wars, they haven't seen populist but utterly useless answers getting tons of votes just because they were dropped in a similarly minded chat room, etc. Your comment, and I'm guessing your close vote, was a correct reaction to the question, and although the OP didn't immediately realize it at the time, I'm sure if they stay around they'll soon realize why we tend to disqualify overly broad / non constructive questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One small thing I would have done differently would be to remove the third question in the question in question right the moment I first read it. Since you immediately identified the question as overly broad, removing the lesser of the three questions would have been a good thing, and it would have helped make it a tiny bit more specific. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since all but one of the answers ignored that part, [I went ahead and removed it][1]. It would have been absolutely fine if you had removed it when you first saw the question, be bold and edit! The OP can just rollback if they wish...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Views, favourites and popularity in general**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ben already mentioned that there are [troubles with popularity][2] but I'd like to make a few points a bit more specific to Programmers. The subjective nature of the site unfortunately makes it a lot more attractive to [bikeshed questions][3] than Stack Overflow. We really need to always keep in mind that popularity alone says absolutely nothing at all about a question's usefulness and topicality, and ideally it shouldn't even be part of the discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having earned [17 gold Publicists badges][4] on Programmers (and a few on other sites), I think I'm more than qualified to discuss how amazingly worthless a metric popularity is. I've manipulated it more times than I can remember, and yes sometimes I've benefited from it with some sweet but mostly pointless rep. The gamification aspects of Stack Exchange is what keeps us all hooked, and all of us who've been around for a while understand that quality &gt; quantity, but it's also understandable that a newer user seeing their question getting tons of views, votes and being favourited will think that it's a good question&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;. Why wouldn't they?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well... Let's see some examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is ORM an Anti-Pattern?][5] (+28, 13 favourites and 6,215 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Is it a good question? No, it isn't and I [said it][6] when I first read it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; &quot;Your question is very broad and ambiguous&quot;, as noted in the SO question. ORM employs a variety of techniques, some may be considered to be antipatterns. Take a look at this related discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I remember hating that question with a passion the moment I first read it, good thing I was a regular user back then and my close vote didn't kill it. I still don't like it, but that didn't stop me from [posting an answer][7], one that is currently voted at +51. Why? It's very simple really, I was extremely bored at the time and had nothing better to do ;) Is it a _good_ answer? I don't know what the rest of you think, but I don't particularly like it, it's not the kind of answer for example that I'd choose to show to colleagues. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Even if you consider it a good answer, it's not worth +51 and although it got a decent amount of votes when I first posted it, it exploded when I shared it on Reddit, which also gave me my second gold Publicist. It's a pure populist answer, and the only reason the question is popular it's is noobesque quality and, well, Reddit. Today I'd just point to the Wikipedia article I reference, close the question and forget all about it (well technically if the same question was asked today I'd close it as a duplicate, but you get my point).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [What's up with the outburst of new programming languages and frameworks that's out/coming out lately?][8] (+10, 1 favourite, 1312 views, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A lesser example, that is now (rightfully) closed, but worth examining because it was [closed and re-opened, and then closed again][9]. I voted to close minutes, perhaps seconds, after I first saw it, but again being a regular user at the time my vote was not binding. And yet, there it is, [my +39 answer][10]! Yes, once again I was bored!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  But this time there's something more there, the answer is utter nonsense. And I even say so, publicly (but not so visibly) and a bit more privately: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - The third footnote, expanded reads as: *Could be wrong, though. Who knows? (is my actual answer)*.&#xD;&#xA;  - At the end of the answer there used to be an invisible html comment (since purged automagically by the system?) that in no uncertain terms declared: This is nonsense! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This was mostly a trolling answer, some people picked up on it's light hearted nature, but there wasn't ever any serious reaction to my absolutely unscientific analysis. I have no idea why the question was re-opened, and I can't say anyone benefited from the answers&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;. I deleted the question a little after I posted this, as it quickly got 2 delete votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll stop using my answers as examples, in fear of a rain of downvotes, but in the spirit of completeness and just in case anyone is still reading this, here's a couple more examples of the problem with popularity, from our [community blog][11]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How we managed 24 software development trainees][12] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  An amazing post by a very skill full writer, providing unique insights of the training process, a must read for every software developer (imho). Currently it has been viewed 1,034 times and has 1 comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [20 controversial programming opinions][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A bit of a meh post re-iterating not so controversial opinions, that was rushed in as other more useful posts were being written, mostly to keep up with our schedule. Currently it has been viewed 91,845 times (and counting), has 77 comments, generated a couple of questions (on [Math][14] and [Code Golf][15]), at least [one retort][16], a [vibrant discussion][17] on Reddit and [a translation in Chinese][18]! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  *A meh post, I slapped together from a deleted question with the sole intention of keeping up with our schedule...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The question in question (about time ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a bad question. Certainly it's of the `foo vs bar` flavour, naturally attractive to opinionated and populist answers with little actual usefulness and perhaps even off topic under the &quot;which technology is better&quot; clause in our [FAQ][19]. But this category of questions is off topic by virtue of being almost always not constructive, so let's examine whether it fits the not constructive description: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question does solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion, and we don't like that around these parts of the Internet ;) It's a question build around an opinion, how can it not solicit even more opinion? Effective C++ was published 20 years ago (1992), still a wonderfully useful book, but is there any point any more&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; to discuss an obviously light hearted comment from it? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And is there any point in generally comparing languages and platforms at all? I think not, unless of course you have an actual specific problem to solve, which is something we very clearly point out in our [FAQ][20]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A rule we so often forget, but really applies for the question in question, that currently has 7 answers, and all but one have quite a few comments. Is that wrong? No, not necessarily, but it does strongly hint that this isn't a question we'll easily find an answer to. And we do care about finding answers to questions, this is what essentially separates this site from a typical programming forum. We don't disqualify certain types and categories because we don't like them, or because we can't answer them, but because we are trying to build something different than a discussion forum, a high quality Q&amp;A site where questions get sufficiently and sometimes even definitively answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end we have build a certain set of tools and more importantly a community philosophy and culture that simply fails with overly broad and / or discussion oriented questions. Sometimes the reason is just plain trolling, sometimes it's opinionated answers that although not trolling are extremely hard to judge the quality of&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;, sometimes it just gets to a point where there are so many answers and comments that the whole thread is impossible to navigate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again this isn't a bad question, and it's one I personally like, which is why I edited it and spend some time to write all this. It certainly did _not_ turn terrible, and some of the answers I think are useful. But I do agree that the question doesn't really fit the scope and philosophy of the site, and I voted to close it. I don't think it will benefit from further answers and it already had four close votes when I started writing this. One of them expired while I was writing the answer (!) but this is still a community closure, I _probably_ wouldn't have mod closed it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Finally a word to the OP (and I'll stop, I promise ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Exchange we have two peer review systems, one for quality and one for topicality, and both are based on voting. Closing a question is not necessarily a comment on the question's overall quality and it's reversible, even if a moderator is involved in the closure. Furthermore closure is a temporary state, a closed question might be re-opened if improved, or simply if five members who can [vote to re-open][21] think it shouldn't have been closed in the first place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, most closed questions do not get re-opened, and I can't promise yours will. However even if it doesn't the effort you put to it wasn't in waste:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You got 7 answers, and although some I don't find particularly useful, they were all thoughtful and added something (even if a tiny bit) to the discussion. &#xD;&#xA; - It generated this Meta discussion&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; that will hopefully help the community better understand the nature of overly broad questions, why we close them and perhaps even help us find a way to better cope with them in the future and not have to close them at all.&#xD;&#xA; - It's not a question we'd typically delete, I can't promise that it won't get delete votes from the community but I don't see any reason why it would. &#xD;&#xA; - And you got some rep from it ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would have been a shame if you had self-deleted it, a fellow user pointing out some flaws in it wouldn't justify such an overreaction. At the end of the day what you suggested happened naturally, the question did sit for a couple of days before getting closed, Oded just expressed his opinion (both with his comment and his close vote), but you'll have to keep in mind that it (usually) takes five to tango ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly hope you won't get disheartened by the closure and decide to stick around, you've already done your bit to help the community grow. And me closing the question doesn't really say much if the community doesn't agree with me. I have been wrong in the past (once or twice ;), and I may be wrong now. Who knows? ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The end.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Not that there was any such accusation in this case, this is a more general rant. This whole Summer of Love thing ended up being mostly a big troll party... [sigh] &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Not saying that the question in question isn't good, again a more general comment.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Although I must say that [Paul Nathan's answer][22] is highly amusing&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; And I'm not suggesting there was ever a point...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; How do you downvote someone's personal opinion?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; ...and gave me the opportunity to write yet another short novel!&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/162303/3&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/56/publicist?userid=25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/120321/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120321/is-orm-an-anti-pattern/120338#comment220944_120321&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/120338/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/126696/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/126696/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126716/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/07/how-we-managed-24-software-development-trainees/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://math.stackexchange.com/q/188858/24474&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/7112&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://prog21.dadgum.com/149.html&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/z0nng/20_controversial_programming_opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://www.caozhishi.com/2012/08/31/those-controversial-opinions-on-program/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/close-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126792/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10628" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3959" RevisionGUID="4bfda06f-5ab8-496a-ba91-48e14adc41f9" CreationDate="2012-09-01T06:01:04.423" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/241777675373518848" />
  <row Id="10629" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3600" RevisionGUID="327c97eb-1979-400a-813d-bcd07ec9d60f" CreationDate="2012-09-01T06:15:43.360" UserId="25936" Comment="added 98 characters in body" Text="Yes, that's true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers had a troubled start, fully documented in [this answer][1]. In the beginning the site was called &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; and it was a very relaxed place where questions that didn't belong on Stack Overflow found a home. Inane (but populist) questions were migrated here from Stack Overflow en masse, carrying [ridiculous amounts of upvotes][2] with them, and for a short while NPR was the one place in the Stack Exchange universe where you'd go for mindless fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it soon became evident that people flocked around the [bike shed][3] ones and ignored any serious questions or answers, and the site was quickly filling up with crap. Which led to a somewhat sudden and drastic scope change, the site was essentially rebooted to be what it is today. The redefined scope meant higher quality standards, which for Stack Exchange usually translates to less down votes and more up votes. Combined with the fact that down votes on questions [became free][4] about a year ago, people are down voting a lot more liberally than in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course you should also consider that older questions had obviously more time to gather up votes, they aren't all bad, newer questions will get there in time. But the main reason for the few whales that remain was the undisciplined culture of the early days, people would upvote just about anything. To give you an idea, one of that era's questions was [&quot;What's your most controversial programming opinion?&quot;][5], which had 391 upvotes and 414 answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As time goes by we become even more sharply focused, and we set our standards even higher. Useful and well research questions may not get a lot of up votes, but they do get a lot more visibility and quite more useful answers than a couple of years ago, as they are a lot easier to discover when you don't have to look for hours amongst an ocean of pointless questions like &quot;What's your most controversial programming opinion?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3415/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/ &quot;see SE blog post: The Trouble With Popularity&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/31253/the-bike-shed-problem-and-so&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3557/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10630" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3947" RevisionGUID="da5050bb-ba38-401f-a6e9-1a506c9a6b46" CreationDate="2012-09-01T09:04:14.447" UserId="25936" Comment="added 195 characters in body" Text="**The problem**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tons of extremely low quality questions from *unregistered* accounts. A few recent examples: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162691/question-on-pl-sql-evaluate-the-pl-sql-block-given-above-and-determine-the-dat&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162604/help-me-make-a-choice-between-comp-science-and-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162555/programming-in-r-help&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162544/jsp-datagrid-tab-library&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162463/learning-the-java-language&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162413/java-unitilsexception-executed-scripts-table-public-dbmaintain-scripts-does&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161709/how-active-the-new-element-in-jquery&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161592/running-nuint-in-visual-studio-express-edition&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161540/how-to-display-hyperlink-field-for-download-pdf-file-in-gridview-control&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of them are now deleted, apologies to those with less than 10K, but we can't keep crap like that around for long. If you'd like me to show you screenshots to get an idea of how painfully horrible these were, feel free to ping me in chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The pattern**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All these questions seem to me like Stack Overflow rejects, extremely low quality questions about implementation issues / programming tools. Stack Overflow requires users to register before they asked, and I _think_ that some of these questions appeared on Programmers after they were closed &amp; deleted on Stack Overflow and / or the askers' accounts were automatically question banned or suspended. It might just be that noobs are naturally more interested in implementation issues, and Stack Overflow has no involvement in this, but my spider sense is tingling. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a few confirmed cases of people posting off topic questions on Programmers to sidestep their question ban / suspension on Stack Overflow, but this isn't easy to confirm for unregistered accounts. Some smells:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- A handfull of cases where the unregistered accounts posting low quality Stack Overflow type questions shared IPs with quite a few other unregistered accounts that also did the same (it might be an accident, or it might be the same guy/gal taking advantage of the system),&#xD;&#xA;- A couple of cases where we confirmed the unregistered account was question banned on Stack Overflow, either by them admitting it in comments, or by asking someone with access to the database to confirm it for us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Moderation issues**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderating unregistered accounts is extremely inefficient: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Suspensions don't work, the only thing the suspendee has to do is clear their cookies and they can post again.&#xD;&#xA;- Automatic question bans are enforced at a deeper level, but they seem to also fail for unregistered accounts.&#xD;&#xA;- Deleting / destroying an account for posting very low quality questions is overkill, we typically only delete spam accounts or accounts that posted extremely offensive content. &#xD;&#xA;- Even for good but off topic questions, migrating to Stack Overflow is discouraged, the unregistered accounts will most likely lose ownership of the question if they don't register there. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestions**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. *Require users to register before asking, same as with Stack Overflow.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I personally don't like it, but it's the obvious solution. We could do a trial run for a couple of months and evaluate the results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. *Tweak the question ban algorithm to be a bit stricter for unregistered accounts.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is completely up to Stack Exchange, my thoughts would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Given the overlap with Stack Overflow, have the algorithm check question banned IPs on Stack Overflow, and not let the account post more than one question, if their first one was downvoted and closed as Off Topic or Not A Real Question.&#xD;&#xA;  - Be more aggresive with unregistered accounts in general. Couple of Off Topic questions, ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. ???&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Hard data**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't have any hard data available, I asked a community team member about how many of the questions from unregistered accounts end up closed and heavily downvoted and the number was surprisingly big. It was a casual conversation in Teacher's Lounge, I'm not sure if I can share the actual percentage, but it was large enough that it made me wonder if there's any real benefit from allowing questions from unregistered users. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anyone with access to the database cares to enlighten us with science, we would be very interested in finding out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What percentage of questions from unregistered accounts ends up closed and heavily downvoted, and has that percentage gone up or down over time?&#xD;&#xA;- Is there any correlation with Stack Overflow question bans / suspensions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10631" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3967" RevisionGUID="ba2f419e-7a47-4b95-bc4c-e18aa478f8b6" CreationDate="2012-09-01T18:04:10.187" UserId="61418" Text="This question will most likely close as **as-designed**!!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look at a snapshot of my current reputation ![history][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xjp55.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note the **removed** event, the question title does not have a hyperlink, because the question was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Few lines below note the **edited** event for the same question! It has the hyperlink which obviously does not work and takes to a 404 page!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This perhaps applies to all SE sites!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10632" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3967" RevisionGUID="ba2f419e-7a47-4b95-bc4c-e18aa478f8b6" CreationDate="2012-09-01T18:04:10.187" UserId="61418" Text="Hyperlinks for deleted questions are not being removed in Reputation list" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10633" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3967" RevisionGUID="ba2f419e-7a47-4b95-bc4c-e18aa478f8b6" CreationDate="2012-09-01T18:04:10.187" UserId="61418" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10634" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3967" RevisionGUID="64e0b680-3e9c-423e-9410-3611f0075c19" CreationDate="2012-09-01T23:52:04.683" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10635" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3968" RevisionGUID="d3cfac63-3f60-49f1-a635-be5bdc087b63" CreationDate="2012-09-02T00:10:13.970" UserId="25936" Text="They work for me ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several links around that will return a 404 for you, but work for others. I'm sure you have noticed by now that we have a [reputation based privilege system][1], you get access to a variety of tools &amp; toys as you earn reputation. And when you reach 10,000 you will be able to [see deleted questions][2], if you have a direct link to them and the links in your profile you point to would work just fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A 404 error does not necessarily mean that there's nothing there and there will never be, just that there's nothing there *right now*. Let's see how [rfc2616 describes it][3] (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### 10.4.5 404 Not Found&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. **No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.** The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address. **This status code is commonly used when the server does not wish to reveal exactly why the request has been refused, or when no other response is applicable.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Simply put 404 is the preferred error code when something is not there but may be available in the future, and in our case that means when you get some more reputation points. But why have the links at all in your profile? Well, three reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. It would be an overly complicated solution to remove them when you don't access them, and the benefit (if any) would be extremely small. Reputation is fluid, I was jumping over and under 10K for a couple of days it would be a mess to update every link I have access to every time I got or lost access to the 10K privileges. Especially the profile page is a very low priority aspect of the site, and is cached aggressively, showing the links only when you can follow them would require the cache to be refreshed every time you get the privilege or lose it. That'd be a lot of work for nothing... &#xD;&#xA; 1. Moderators and diamonded Stack Exchange employees can see your profile the same way you do (the only exception being the votes tab), so if the links updated as you gained or lost privileges, another snapshot of your profile would be required for all of us that can see it from a moderator's perspective. &#xD;&#xA; 1. Most of these links lead to deleted questions and answers, and in case you'd want to make a case against the deletion, having the link would be extremely helpful, even if you can't actually see the deleted posts. Others can follow it and get a better idea of why it was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's about it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-10.4.5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10636" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3968" RevisionGUID="5cf78978-fab3-4416-aad0-c5a3ba8533ac" CreationDate="2012-09-02T00:23:29.923" UserId="25936" Comment="added 493 characters in body" Text="They work for me ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several links around that will return a 404 for you, but work for others. I'm sure you have noticed by now that we have a [reputation based privilege system][1], you get access to a variety of tools &amp; toys as you earn reputation. And when you reach 10,000 you will be able to [see deleted questions][2], if you have a direct link to them and the links in your profile you point to would work just fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A 404 error does not necessarily mean that there's nothing there and there will never be, just that there's nothing there *right now*. Let's see how [rfc2616 describes it][3] (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### 10.4.5 404 Not Found&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. **No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.** The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address. **This status code is commonly used when the server does not wish to reveal exactly why the request has been refused, or when no other response is applicable.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Simply put 404 is the preferred error code when something is not there but may be available in the future, and in our case that means when you get some more reputation points. But why have the links at all in your profile? Well, three reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. It would be an overly complicated solution to remove them when you don't access them, and the benefit (if any) would be extremely small. Reputation is fluid, I was jumping over and under 10K for a couple of days&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; and it would be a mess to update every link every time I got or lost access to the 10K privileges. Especially the profile page is a very low priority aspect of the site, and is cached aggressively, showing the links only when you can follow them would require the cache to be refreshed every time you get the privilege or lose it. That'd be a lot of work for nothing... &#xD;&#xA; 1. Moderators and diamonded Stack Exchange employees can see your profile the same way you do (the only exception being the votes tab), so if the links updated as you gained or lost privileges, another snapshot of your profile would be required for all of us that can see it from a moderator's perspective. &#xD;&#xA; 1. Most of these links lead to deleted questions and answers, and in case you'd want to make a case against the deletion, having the link would be extremely helpful, even if you can't actually see the deleted posts. Others can follow it and get a better idea of why it was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's about it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; That's a theoretical example, as a moderator I have access to all toys, regardless of reputation. That said I would like to take this opportunity to thank the serial voter who took me over (and under when the script run) 10K a couple of times, that was a blast :| Serial voting is a bad idea in general, but it's exceptionally moronic  when you are serially voting one of the very few who have access to tools that detect abusive voting patterns and can find out who you are.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-10.4.5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10637" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3968" RevisionGUID="d1cfa98b-6b2f-4f30-b876-0cba48a61736" CreationDate="2012-09-02T00:48:40.943" UserId="25936" Comment="added 701 characters in body" Text="They work for me ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several links around that will return a 404 for you, but work for others. I'm sure you have noticed by now that we have a [reputation based privilege system][1], you get access to a variety of tools &amp; toys as you earn reputation. And when you reach 10,000 you will be able to [see deleted questions][2], if you have a direct link to them and the links in your profile you point to would work just fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A 404 error does not necessarily mean that there's nothing there and there will never be, just that there's nothing there *right now*. Let's see how [rfc2616 describes it][3] (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### 10.4.5 404 Not Found&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. **No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.** The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address. **This status code is commonly used when the server does not wish to reveal exactly why the request has been refused, or when no other response is applicable.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Simply put 404 is the preferred error code when something is not there but may be available in the future, and in our case that means when you get some more reputation points. But why have the links at all in your profile? Well, three reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. It would be an overly complicated solution to remove _all_ the links when you don't access them, and the benefit (if any) would be extremely small. Reputation is fluid, I was jumping over and under 10K for a couple of days&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; and it would be a mess to update every link every time I got or lost access to the 10K privileges. Especially the profile page is a very low priority aspect of the site, and is cached aggressively, showing the links only when you can follow them would require the cache to be refreshed every time you get the privilege or lose it. That'd be a lot of work for nothing... &#xD;&#xA; 1. Moderators and diamonded Stack Exchange employees can see your profile the same way you do (the only exception being the votes tab), so if the links updated as you gained or lost privileges, another snapshot of your profile would be required for all of us that can see it from a moderator's perspective. &#xD;&#xA; 1. Most of these links lead to deleted questions and answers, and in case you'd want to make a case against the deletion, having the link would be extremely helpful, even if you can't actually see the deleted posts. Others can follow it and get a better idea of why it was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, _some_ of the links are indeed removed, and it's a lot easier to do that on just the delete event than to scan back all actions the question generated and update them all. A small inconsistency, but a harmless one (imho) and I think the easiest solution to it would be to just not remove the links (but let's not poke the bear on this one). Worth noting that this is a rare case where the question was deleted only a day after it was asked (yes, it was that bad), typically we wait at least a month before deleting closed questions, and if that had happened you probably wouldn't even notice (the events would be far apart in your profile).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm marking this as [status-bydesign] as you predicted ;) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; That's a theoretical example, as a moderator I have access to all toys, regardless of reputation. That said I would like to take this opportunity to thank the serial voter who took me over (and under when the script run) 10K a couple of times, that was a blast :| Serial voting is a bad idea in general, but it's exceptionally moronic  when you are serially voting one of the very few who have access to tools that detect abusive voting patterns and can find out who you are.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-10.4.5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10638" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3969" RevisionGUID="46f5d220-928e-4643-8198-76af08fc4cdb" CreationDate="2012-09-02T19:13:09.997" UserId="6559" Text="I have been hitting quite a few 404's on P.SE lately, and [taking the lastest blog post][1], where Yannis Rizos posts a link to a deleted question in the 2nd paragraph, resulting in a 404 error for basically all(?) the audience of the blog, I was wondering how great the idea of perma deleting questions *that have been around a long time and indexed and linked to* (not spam or such) really is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not saying that these questions are a good fit to the site, but removing them completely, leaving dangling links all over the internet (am I exaggerating? :-) certainly isn't my idea of Making The Net a Better Place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that don't mind closing; I wouldn't mind a `trash.stackexchange.com`; but I my very humble opinion, deleting questions from SE sites (not just P.SE) that have been lying there for weeks and months ([391 upvotes FCS!][2]) is just dead stupid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feel free to correct me, close or delete this &quot;question&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/31104/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10639" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3969" RevisionGUID="46f5d220-928e-4643-8198-76af08fc4cdb" CreationDate="2012-09-02T19:13:09.997" UserId="6559" Text="Are you guys turning P.SE into a 404 black hole?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10640" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3969" RevisionGUID="46f5d220-928e-4643-8198-76af08fc4cdb" CreationDate="2012-09-02T19:13:09.997" UserId="6559" Text="|discussion|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10641" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3970" RevisionGUID="e42e546c-7024-480f-89e3-cbee90f0c925" CreationDate="2012-09-02T19:35:30.560" UserId="4" Text="For old questions (like the one linked to), there is a lock for &quot;historical significance&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: [FAQ].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, I can't speak as to why this question was deleted - there's no user name attached. But this is something that we should look into - undeleting this (and any other legacy questions) and appropriately locking them for historical reasons. I'd only limit this to questions from before the changes to site scope." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10645" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3972" RevisionGUID="22d00283-8d67-409c-8639-7caf3d393fe2" CreationDate="2012-09-03T01:26:54.043" UserId="1996" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163375/how-do-i-start-a-personal-programming-project&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At a glance, the **title** put the question in danger of being closed as 'Off-Topic'. But further than that, the grammar is poor, and it's unclear what the OP is asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please vote to close." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10646" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3972" RevisionGUID="22d00283-8d67-409c-8639-7caf3d393fe2" CreationDate="2012-09-03T01:26:54.043" UserId="1996" Text="Not a Real Question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10647" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3972" RevisionGUID="22d00283-8d67-409c-8639-7caf3d393fe2" CreationDate="2012-09-03T01:26:54.043" UserId="1996" Text="|discussion|specific-question|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10648" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3972" RevisionGUID="b4879326-5d92-4dd1-bdaa-8249ab047865" CreationDate="2012-09-03T01:35:22.910" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="10649" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3972" RevisionGUID="d2f76515-e379-43ef-9cff-04072003f60b" CreationDate="2012-09-03T01:47:10.740" UserId="1996" Comment="added 108 characters in body" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163375/how-do-i-start-a-personal-programming-project&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At a glance, the **title** put the question in danger of being closed as 'Off-Topic'. But further than that, the grammar is poor, and it's unclear what the OP is asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I flagged this question for immediate closure, but a moderator declined the flag because he thought it was of sufficient quality." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10650" PostHistoryTypeId="11" PostId="3972" RevisionGUID="22b5543f-25b9-40ae-a27b-b0b315ac52e7" CreationDate="2012-09-03T01:48:06.850" UserId="25936" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:1996,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Jim G.&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="10651" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3972" RevisionGUID="7c6ba131-ed84-4469-a4ff-09e377bb14fe" CreationDate="2012-09-03T01:52:27.437" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="Why was my flag in this question declined?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10652" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3972" RevisionGUID="7c6ba131-ed84-4469-a4ff-09e377bb14fe" CreationDate="2012-09-03T01:52:27.437" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|specific-question|flagging|vote-to-close|declined-flags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10653" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3969" RevisionGUID="a6dad9b5-ec39-4c62-b807-89ac23e661c7" CreationDate="2012-09-03T03:01:04.083" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/242457152239833088" />
  <row Id="10654" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3973" RevisionGUID="52333fbc-ce0d-4f08-85c1-2a4790142d33" CreationDate="2012-09-03T03:33:07.400" UserId="63" Text="I didn't handle this flag, but since I'm hanging around anyway...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I flagged this question for immediate closure&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually, you used this flag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![the &quot;very low quality&quot; flag description][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...That's the description for the &quot;very low quality&quot; flag. Clearly, it's intended for questions that are little more than *festering boils* - skip closing and editing, go straight to deletion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But further than that, the grammar is poor, and it's unclear what the OP is asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah, but the grammar is easy enough to fix, and by the time you flagged someone had already asked for clarification and gotten a response. Heck, he even went on to post a pretty solid answer, which doesn't exactly scream &quot;delete this disease before it kills us all!&quot; to me. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I went and edited it, cleaned up the grammar a bit, and added the clarifying comment to the question proper. It could probably use some additional editing, but for now I think it'll do. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/rXBgp.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10655" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3974" RevisionGUID="a960c06f-be1d-45fc-a33f-11c05d25f32d" CreationDate="2012-09-03T10:14:57.197" UserId="31260" Text="Suggest to merge [tag:maintainability] (35 questions, no tag wiki) into [tag:maintenance] (80 questions, tag wiki quoted below), and make them synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag wiki for _maintenance_:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The activities that occur after deployment of a software system. This includes making modifications to released systems, training, operating, and transitioning to support organizations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;If for some reasons mentioned tags are better kept separate, then it would be desirable to write respective tag wiki to help reader decide when to apply one or another tag.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10656" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3974" RevisionGUID="a960c06f-be1d-45fc-a33f-11c05d25f32d" CreationDate="2012-09-03T10:14:57.197" UserId="31260" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [maintainability] -&gt; [maintenance]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10657" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3974" RevisionGUID="a960c06f-be1d-45fc-a33f-11c05d25f32d" CreationDate="2012-09-03T10:14:57.197" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10658" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3975" RevisionGUID="e222234d-b8c5-4652-8dd2-6cab997358dd" CreationDate="2012-09-03T11:18:05.040" UserId="4" Text="Unfortunately, I don't have time right now (just passing through real quick), but I'd want to take a closer look at how these tags are used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As words, they are very different things. Maintenance is a phase in the product lifecycle that exists after a system has been deployed. Although systems in a maintenance phase go through some form of requirements engineering, architecture and design updates, implementation, and testing, the way those are handled can be (depending on the circumstances and the type of system being developed) different than a new product that has not been released. Maintainability is a quality aspect of the system under development and applies anywhere in the lifecycle, from requirements through the maintenance phase.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's possible to have questions about products in the maintenance phase that have nothing to do with maintainability, as well questions about maintainability for products that aren't in a maintenance phase yet." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10659" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3963" RevisionGUID="97c9f569-f622-4d1d-87ec-b1e759af8ec4" CreationDate="2012-09-03T14:44:36.460" UserId="25936" Comment="Well, I know I shouldn't do such minor edits, but I'm writing words here, doesn't this count for something?" Text="**The Summer of Nonsense**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I consider the Summer of Love a mostly failed campaign, especially when it comes to the smaller sites of the network (I don't know if it benefited Stack Overflow, and I don't really care). Most people fixate on the whole &quot;niceness&quot; theme and forget that actively trying to help an asker, even just a tiny bit and even if only by pointing flaws in their question, is incredibly nice. No one is paying us to close questions, or comment on them or anything, if the comment is generally polite and points to the right direction, it's helpful (and nice, dammit!). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't be walking on eggshells, afraid we might offend someone, just because we politely expressed an opinion on the topicality of a question. We disqualify types &amp; categories of questions not because we are elitist --------&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, but because we've seen time and time again that these questions are more likely to turn to junk than anything useful. By closing these questions we help askers avoid having to read populist answers full of misinformation, something that could potentially hurt them a lot more than the slight sting of having their question closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A newer member of the community probably doesn't know all this. They haven't seen hundreds of `foo vs bar` questions turn to painfully moronic holy wars, they haven't seen populist but utterly useless answers getting tons of votes just because they were dropped in a similarly minded chat room, etc. Your comment, and I'm guessing your close vote, was a correct reaction to the question, and although the OP didn't immediately realize it at the time, I'm sure if they stay around they'll soon realize why we tend to disqualify overly broad / non constructive questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One small thing I would have done differently would be to remove the third question in the question in question right the moment I first read it. Since you immediately identified the question as overly broad, removing the lesser of the three questions would have been a good thing, and it would have helped make it a tiny bit more specific. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since all but one of the answers ignored that part, [I went ahead and removed it][1]. It would have been absolutely fine if you had removed it when you first saw the question, be bold and edit! The OP can just rollback if they wish...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Views, favourites and popularity in general**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ben already mentioned that there are [troubles with popularity][2] but I'd like to make a few points a bit more specific to Programmers. The subjective nature of the site unfortunately makes it a lot more attractive to [bikeshed questions][3] than Stack Overflow. We really need to always keep in mind that popularity alone says absolutely nothing at all about a question's usefulness and topicality, and ideally it shouldn't even be part of the discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having earned [17 gold Publicists badges][4] on Programmers (and a few on other sites), I think I'm more than qualified to discuss how amazingly worthless a metric popularity is. I've manipulated it more times than I can remember, and yes sometimes I've benefited from it with some sweet but mostly pointless rep. The gamification aspects of Stack Exchange is what keeps us all hooked, and all of us who've been around for a while understand that quality &gt; quantity, but it's also understandable that a newer user seeing their question getting tons of views, votes and being favourited will think that it's a good question&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;. Why wouldn't they?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well... Let's see some examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is ORM an Anti-Pattern?][5] (+28, 13 favourites and 6,215 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Is it a good question? No, it isn't and I [said it][6] when I first read it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; &quot;Your question is very broad and ambiguous&quot;, as noted in the SO question. ORM employs a variety of techniques, some may be considered to be antipatterns. Take a look at this related discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I remember hating that question with a passion the moment I first read it, good thing I was a regular user back then and my close vote didn't kill it. I still don't like it, but that didn't stop me from [posting an answer][7], one that is currently voted at +51. Why? It's very simple really, I was extremely bored at the time and had nothing better to do ;) Is it a _good_ answer? I don't know what the rest of you think, but I don't particularly like it, it's not the kind of answer for example that I'd choose to show to colleagues. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Even if you consider it a good answer, it's not worth +51 and although it got a decent amount of votes when I first posted it, it exploded when I shared it on Reddit, which also gave me my second gold Publicist. It's a pure populist answer, and the only reason the question is popular it's is noobesque quality and, well, Reddit. Today I'd just point to the Wikipedia article I reference, close the question and forget all about it (well technically if the same question was asked today I'd close it as a duplicate, but you get my point).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [What's up with the outburst of new programming languages and frameworks that's out/coming out lately?][8] (+10, 1 favourite, 1312 views, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A lesser example, that is now (rightfully) closed, but worth examining because it was [closed and re-opened, and then closed again][9]. I voted to close minutes, perhaps seconds, after I first saw it, but again being a regular user at the time my vote was not binding. And yet, there it is, [my +39 answer][10]! Yes, once again I was bored!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  But this time there's something more there, the answer is utter nonsense. And I even say so, publicly (but not so visibly) and a bit more privately: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - The third footnote, expanded reads as: *Could be wrong, though. Who knows? (is my actual answer)*.&#xD;&#xA;  - At the end of the answer there used to be an invisible html comment (since purged automagically by the system?) that in no uncertain terms declared: This is nonsense! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This was mostly a trolling answer, some people picked up on it's light hearted nature, but there wasn't ever any serious reaction to my absolutely unscientific analysis. I have no idea why the question was re-opened, and I can't say anyone benefited from the answers&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;. I deleted the question a little after I posted this, as it quickly got 2 delete votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll stop using my answers as examples, in fear of a rain of downvotes, but in the spirit of completeness and just in case anyone is still reading this, here's a couple more examples of the problem with popularity, from our [community blog][11]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How we managed 24 software development trainees][12] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  An amazing post by a very skill full writer, providing unique insights of the training process, a must read for every software developer (imho). Currently it has been viewed 1,034 times and has 1 comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [20 controversial programming opinions][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A bit of a meh post re-iterating not so controversial opinions, that was rushed in as other more useful posts were being written, mostly to keep up with our schedule. Currently it has been viewed 91,845 times (and counting), has 77 comments, generated a couple of questions (on [Math][14] and [Code Golf][15]), at least [one retort][16], a [vibrant discussion][17] on Reddit and [a translation in Chinese][18]! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  *A meh post, I slapped together from a deleted question with the sole intention of keeping up with our schedule...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The question in question (about time ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a bad question. Certainly it's of the `foo vs bar` flavour, naturally attractive to opinionated and populist answers with little actual usefulness and perhaps even off topic under the &quot;which technology is better&quot; clause in our [FAQ][19]. But this category of questions is off topic by virtue of being almost always not constructive, so let's examine whether it fits the not constructive description: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question does solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion, and we don't like that around these parts of the Internet ;) It's a question build around an opinion, how can it not solicit even more opinion? Effective C++ was published 20 years ago (1992), still a wonderfully useful book, but is there any point any more&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; to discuss an obviously light hearted comment from it? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And is there any point in generally comparing languages and platforms at all? I think not, unless of course you have an actual specific problem to solve, which is something we very clearly point out in our [FAQ][20]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A rule we so often forget, but really applies for the question in question, that currently has 7 answers, and all but one have quite a few comments. Is that wrong? No, not necessarily, but it does strongly hint that this isn't a question we'll easily find an answer to. And we do care about finding answers to questions, this is what essentially separates this site from a typical programming forum. We don't disqualify certain types and categories because we don't like them, or because we can't answer them, but because we are trying to build something different than a discussion forum, a high quality Q&amp;A site where questions get sufficiently and sometimes even definitively answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end we have build a certain set of tools and more importantly a community philosophy and culture that simply fails with overly broad and / or discussion oriented questions. Sometimes the reason is just plain trolling, sometimes it's opinionated answers that although not trolling are extremely hard to judge the quality of&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;, sometimes it just gets to a point where there are so many answers and comments that the whole thread is impossible to navigate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again this isn't a bad question, and it's one I personally like, which is why I edited it and spend some time to write all this. It certainly did _not_ turn terrible, and some of the answers I think are useful. But I do agree that the question doesn't really fit the scope and philosophy of the site, and I voted to close it. I don't think it will benefit from further answers and it already had four close votes when I started writing this. One of them expired while I was writing the answer (!) but this is still a community closure, I _probably_ wouldn't have mod closed it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Finally a word to the OP (and I'll stop, I promise ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Exchange we have two peer review systems, one for quality and one for topicality, and both are based on voting. Closing a question is not necessarily a comment on the question's overall quality and it's reversible, even if a moderator is involved in the closure. Furthermore closure is a temporary state, a closed question might be re-opened if improved, or simply if five members who can [vote to re-open][21] think it shouldn't have been closed in the first place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, most closed questions do not get re-opened, and I can't promise yours will. However even if it doesn't the effort you put to it wasn't in waste:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You got 7 answers, and although some I don't find particularly useful, they were all thoughtful and added something (even if a tiny bit) to the discussion. &#xD;&#xA; - It generated this Meta discussion&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; that will hopefully help the community better understand the nature of overly broad questions, why we close them and perhaps even help us find a way to better cope with them in the future and not have to close them at all.&#xD;&#xA; - It's not a question we'd typically delete, I can't promise that it won't get delete votes from the community but I don't see any reason why it would. &#xD;&#xA; - And you got some rep from it ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would have been a shame if you had self-deleted it, a fellow user pointing out some flaws in it wouldn't justify such an overreaction. At the end of the day what you suggested happened naturally, the question did sit for a couple of days before getting closed, Oded just expressed his opinion (both with his comment and his close vote), but you'll have to keep in mind that it (usually) takes five to tango ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly hope you won't get disheartened by the closure and decide to stick around, you've already done your bit to help the community grow. And me closing the question doesn't really say much if the community doesn't agree with me. I have been wrong in the past (once or twice ;), and I may be wrong now. Who knows? ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The end.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Not that there was any such accusation in this case, this is a more general rant. This whole Summer of Love thing ended up being mostly a big troll party... [sigh] &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Not saying that the question in question isn't good, again a more general comment.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Although I must say that [Paul Nathan's answer][22] is highly amusing&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; And I'm not suggesting there was ever a point...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; How do you downvote someone's personal opinion?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; ...and gave me the opportunity to write yet another short novel!&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/162303/3&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/56/publicist?userid=25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/120321/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120321/is-orm-an-anti-pattern/120338#comment220944_120321&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/120338/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/126696/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/126696/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126716/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/07/how-we-managed-24-software-development-trainees/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://math.stackexchange.com/q/188858/24474&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/7112&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://prog21.dadgum.com/149.html&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/z0nng/20_controversial_programming_opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://www.caozhishi.com/2012/08/31/those-controversial-opinions-on-program/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/close-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126792/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10660" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3976" RevisionGUID="12efb182-5180-45f7-a342-63e627846f29" CreationDate="2012-09-03T19:57:47.467" UserId="5039" Text="I agree with you. 100%. [This link][1] should not go to a 404 error.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Replacing the link with a 404 is stupid. It is godawful stupid. It's, &quot;I'm going to fire the person who did this,&quot; stupid. Intuitive behavior would be to respond with **301 redirect**. *But it doesn't do that.* It responds with a 404.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All 400 level errors imply that the **user** made an error. But in this case, the user did **not** make an error. The user navigated to a URL that has been valid for years, and it is completely reasonable to expect that the link should continue to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Be careful to make the distinction: I said NOT say that the behavior of the link should remain unchanged. I said that the link should still WORK, and a 301 redirect to the blog will cause the desired effect while still allowing the link to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stop telling users to go f*** themselves. Change it to a 301 redirect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/31104/whats-your-most-controversial-programming-opinion" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10661" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3977" RevisionGUID="a786b7e7-3067-47fe-b8d9-8307d82ebc29" CreationDate="2012-09-04T05:54:32.320" UserId="62049" Text="I thought I was asking a straight question for a straight answer, but I guess I wasn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm just curious to why my question was closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163566/what-makes-objective-c-such-a-popular-language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;if this question is allowed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141329/what-makes-c-so-popular-in-the-age-of-oop&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only difference I see between the two is the latter is entitled specifically to OOP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this isn't the suitable place to ask such question, where else can I post it within Stack Exchange?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: I just saw Yannis's comment on my post to why it was closed. I do think the question itself have merits (to prospective objective-C developers, for example), but I guess it's not really worded well and does lack technical details." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10662" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3977" RevisionGUID="a786b7e7-3067-47fe-b8d9-8307d82ebc29" CreationDate="2012-09-04T05:54:32.320" UserId="62049" Text="Why is this question closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10663" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3977" RevisionGUID="a786b7e7-3067-47fe-b8d9-8307d82ebc29" CreationDate="2012-09-04T05:54:32.320" UserId="62049" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10664" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3978" RevisionGUID="b321ea09-23a3-4b49-bf8a-73978bd7e97c" CreationDate="2012-09-04T06:13:40.747" UserId="25936" Text="From the [FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That part of the FAQ is common for all Stack Exchange sites, unfortunately your question is too open ended to fit the Q&amp;A philosophy and format. We can only guess when it comes to popularity alone, and that simply doesn't work for the site. It might be a great question to ask in [The Whiteboard][2], our chat room. I know most of the times it looks abandoned, but usually not constructive questions are excellent conversation starters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the C question, personally I'm on the fence, it does have somewhat of a technical core, and can be discussed on technical terms (and indeed it has, for the most part), but it's also very broad and has all the signs of a not constructive question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Language comparison elements (and that rarely ends well),&#xD;&#xA; 1. Couple of pointless answers,&#xD;&#xA; 1. Couple of extremely pointless answers (since deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it has survived without a single close vote or flag, and I see little point in mod closing it now that it's run its circle. If it starts attracting pointless answers and / or close votes it might be a whole different story, but for now I'm letting it sleep. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly I'd like to point out that it makes a lot more sense to concentrate on your own question's merits when contesting a closure than pointing us to other similar questions. It might just be the case that the similar questions escaped our attention, and the only think you'll achieve is getting them closed as well. The community moderates itself vigorously, but some questions simply find their way in through the cracks. [Two wrong posts don't make a right][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3540/two-wrong-posts-dont-make-a-right" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10665" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3977" RevisionGUID="06f100a4-0764-42e7-a97a-160dc8c34d8d" CreationDate="2012-09-04T06:34:40.960" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10666" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3978" RevisionGUID="d9544377-5fa2-4629-9b75-b16e5304d678" CreationDate="2012-09-04T12:27:52.190" UserId="101" Comment="fixed spelling" Text="From the [FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That part of the FAQ is common for all Stack Exchange sites, unfortunately your question is too open ended to fit the Q&amp;A philosophy and format. We can only guess when it comes to popularity alone, and that simply doesn't work for the site. It might be a great question to ask in [The Whiteboard][2], our chat room. I know most of the times it looks abandoned, but usually not constructive questions are excellent conversation starters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the C question, personally I'm on the fence, it does have somewhat of a technical core, and can be discussed on technical terms (and indeed it has, for the most part), but it's also very broad and has all the signs of a not constructive question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Language comparison elements (and that rarely ends well),&#xD;&#xA; 1. Couple of pointless answers,&#xD;&#xA; 1. Couple of extremely pointless answers (since deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it has survived without a single close vote or flag, and I see little point in mod closing it now that it's run its circle. If it starts attracting pointless answers and / or close votes it might be a whole different story, but for now I'm letting it sleep. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly I'd like to point out that it makes a lot more sense to concentrate on your own question's merits when contesting a closure than pointing us to other similar questions. It might just be the case that the similar questions escaped our attention, and the only thing you'll achieve is getting them closed as well. The community moderates itself vigorously, but some questions simply find their way in through the cracks. [Two wrong posts don't make a right][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3540/two-wrong-posts-dont-make-a-right" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10667" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3979" RevisionGUID="e175000c-440f-4ec1-8e9a-cd729f9cea94" CreationDate="2012-09-04T18:05:05.023" UserId="63331" Text="I wanted to make the following a comment but I exceeded the max character limit.  And I am passionate about it, so I am posting it as an answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I applaud the desire to improve SE's quality.  But I think SE (and especially P.SE) should try to be discerningly tolerant of some &quot;chatty open ended questions&quot; when they concern the merits (and problems) of competing technologies (i.e. Technology A vs Technology B).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the antique (but closed) &quot;ch-op-en-qu&quot; SO posts have been crucial in helping me make informed decisions about the correct technology to use for my projects (or my career).  There is simply nothing like them out there: brilliant people discussing (and yes at times debating) the merits of competing technologies.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It really needs a place to happen, and SE is the place because that's where the People Who Know are all hanging out now.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10668" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3979" RevisionGUID="175bc1cd-5fff-467b-b876-828e3bc448e4" CreationDate="2012-09-04T18:11:06.667" UserId="63331" Comment="added 57 characters in body" Text="I wanted to make the following a comment but I exceeded the max character limit.  And I am passionate about it, so I am posting it as an answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I applaud the desire to improve SE's quality.  But I think SE (and especially P.SE) should try to be discerningly tolerant of some &quot;chatty open ended questions&quot; when they concern the merits (and problems) of the available (and cosntantly changing) technologies.  This, even, if they involve debate and subjective opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the antique (but closed) &quot;ch-op-en-qu&quot; SO posts have been crucial in helping me make informed decisions about the correct technology to use for my projects (or my career).  There is simply nothing like them out there: brilliant people discussing (and yes at times debating) the merits of the available technologies.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It really needs a place to happen, and SE is the place because that's where the People Who Know are all hanging out now.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10669" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3979" RevisionGUID="b3ae7093-13f8-483c-82f1-a566ca905894" CreationDate="2012-09-04T18:17:04.707" UserId="63331" Comment="added 57 characters in body" Text="I wanted to make the following a comment but I exceeded the max character limit.  And I am passionate about it, so I am posting it as an answer (and once I switched from &quot;comment&quot; to &quot;answer&quot; I went absolutely bananas):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I applaud the desire to improve SE's quality.  But I think SE (and especially P.SE) should try to be discerningly tolerant of some &quot;chatty open ended questions&quot; when they concern the merits (and problems) of the available (and constantly changing) technologies.  This, even, if they involve debate and subjective opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the antique (but closed) &quot;ch-op-en-qu&quot; SO posts have been crucial in helping me make informed decisions about the correct technology to use for my projects (and my career).  There is simply nothing else like these posts out there to read; brilliant people discussing (and yes at times debating) the merits of the available technologies.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We need this information in this &quot;chatty open ended&quot; format.  It really needs a place to happen, and SE is the place because that's where the People Who Know are all hanging out now.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps moderators could control that the questions focus on &quot;fact mining&quot;, not technology bashing.  And that there are no duplicates.  And for goodness sake no &quot;What's the difference between Java and Javascript&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10671" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3981" RevisionGUID="f7c03847-1887-46f5-9784-107986078136" CreationDate="2012-09-04T19:24:05.657" UserId="34014" Text="I'd really like to see a consolidation of certain questions (probably within a tag) (Let's even call them &quot;General Questions&quot;.  Could they have their own area?  It just feels like, to me, that the same topic gets repeatedly covered, so it's a FAQ.  IMHO it's often because the answers are by experts who assume domain expertise to understand their answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of these questions *would* involve discussions.  But they would be discussions with further clarifications, details, and more sub-questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Functional programming is a good example.  I see so many questions about &quot;why functional if good&quot;, or answers that are &quot;functional is good&quot;.  But I don't always see the &quot;why it's good or better&quot;, or how to take that to the next level." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10672" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3981" RevisionGUID="f7c03847-1887-46f5-9784-107986078136" CreationDate="2012-09-04T19:24:05.657" UserId="34014" Text="Area for more general / complicated questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10673" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3981" RevisionGUID="f7c03847-1887-46f5-9784-107986078136" CreationDate="2012-09-04T19:24:05.657" UserId="34014" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10674" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3947" RevisionGUID="4fa42781-3a30-4212-aaed-8c19bc8fca57" CreationDate="2012-09-04T21:08:51.540" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 329 characters in body" Text="**The problem**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tons of extremely low quality questions from *unregistered* accounts. A few recent examples: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162691/question-on-pl-sql-evaluate-the-pl-sql-block-given-above-and-determine-the-dat&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162604/help-me-make-a-choice-between-comp-science-and-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162555/programming-in-r-help&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162544/jsp-datagrid-tab-library&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162463/learning-the-java-language&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162413/java-unitilsexception-executed-scripts-table-public-dbmaintain-scripts-does&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161709/how-active-the-new-element-in-jquery&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161592/running-nuint-in-visual-studio-express-edition&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161540/how-to-display-hyperlink-field-for-download-pdf-file-in-gridview-control&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of them are now deleted, apologies to those with less than 10K, but we can't keep crap like that around for long. If you'd like me to show you screenshots to get an idea of how painfully horrible these were, feel free to ping me in chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The pattern**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All these questions seem to me like Stack Overflow rejects, extremely low quality questions about implementation issues / programming tools. Stack Overflow requires users to register before they asked, and I _think_ that some of these questions appeared on Programmers after they were closed &amp; deleted on Stack Overflow and / or the askers' accounts were automatically question banned or suspended. It might just be that noobs are naturally more interested in implementation issues, and Stack Overflow has no involvement in this, but my spider sense is tingling. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a few confirmed cases of people posting off topic questions on Programmers to sidestep their question ban / suspension on Stack Overflow, but this isn't easy to confirm for unregistered accounts. Some smells:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- A handfull of cases where the unregistered accounts posting low quality Stack Overflow type questions shared IPs with quite a few other unregistered accounts that also did the same (it might be an accident, or it might be the same guy/gal taking advantage of the system),&#xD;&#xA;- A couple of cases where we confirmed the unregistered account was question banned on Stack Overflow, either by them admitting it in comments, or by asking someone with access to the database to confirm it for us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Moderation issues**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderating unregistered accounts is extremely inefficient: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Suspensions don't work, the only thing the suspendee has to do is clear their cookies and they can post again.&#xD;&#xA;- Automatic question bans are enforced at a deeper level, but they seem to also fail for unregistered accounts.&#xD;&#xA;- Deleting / destroying an account for posting very low quality questions is overkill, we typically only delete spam accounts or accounts that posted extremely offensive content. &#xD;&#xA;- Even for good but off topic questions, migrating to Stack Overflow is discouraged, the unregistered accounts will most likely lose ownership of the question if they don't register there. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestions**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. *Require users to register before asking, same as with Stack Overflow.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I personally don't like it, but it's the obvious solution. We could do a trial run for a couple of months and evaluate the results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. *Tweak the question ban algorithm to be a bit stricter for unregistered accounts.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is completely up to Stack Exchange, my thoughts would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Given the overlap with Stack Overflow, have the algorithm check question banned IPs on Stack Overflow, and not let the account post more than one question, if their first one was downvoted and closed as Off Topic or Not A Real Question.&#xD;&#xA;  - Be more aggresive with unregistered accounts in general. Couple of Off Topic questions, ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. ???&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Hard data**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closures:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 35% for unregistered users, 17% for registered (all time),&#xD;&#xA;- 72% for unregistered users, and 40% for registered (last 6 months, retrieved Aug 10),&#xD;&#xA;- 70% for unregistered users, and 38% for registered (last 3 months, retrieved Aug 10).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anyone with access to the database cares to enlighten us with science, we would be very interested in finding out if there's any correlation with Stack Overflow question bans / suspensions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10675" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3947" RevisionGUID="a7ecbe36-b130-4f68-92e4-7cc0dea50d2e" CreationDate="2012-09-04T21:34:30.157" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 17 characters in body" Text="**The problem**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tons of extremely low quality questions from *unregistered* accounts. A few recent examples: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162691/question-on-pl-sql-evaluate-the-pl-sql-block-given-above-and-determine-the-dat&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162604/help-me-make-a-choice-between-comp-science-and-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162555/programming-in-r-help&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162544/jsp-datagrid-tab-library&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162463/learning-the-java-language&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162413/java-unitilsexception-executed-scripts-table-public-dbmaintain-scripts-does&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161709/how-active-the-new-element-in-jquery&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161592/running-nuint-in-visual-studio-express-edition&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161540/how-to-display-hyperlink-field-for-download-pdf-file-in-gridview-control&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of them are now deleted, apologies to those with less than 10K, but we can't keep crap like that around for long. If you'd like me to show you screenshots to get an idea of how painfully horrible these were, feel free to ping me in chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The pattern**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All these questions seem to me like Stack Overflow rejects, extremely low quality questions about implementation issues / programming tools. Stack Overflow requires users to register before they asked, and I _think_ that some of these questions appeared on Programmers after they were closed &amp; deleted on Stack Overflow and / or the askers' accounts were automatically question banned or suspended. It might just be that noobs are naturally more interested in implementation issues, and Stack Overflow has no involvement in this, but my spider sense is tingling. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a few confirmed cases of people posting off topic questions on Programmers to sidestep their question ban / suspension on Stack Overflow, but this isn't easy to confirm for unregistered accounts. Some smells:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- A handfull of cases where the unregistered accounts posting low quality Stack Overflow type questions shared IPs with quite a few other unregistered accounts that also did the same (it might be an accident, or it might be the same guy/gal taking advantage of the system),&#xD;&#xA;- A couple of cases where we confirmed the unregistered account was question banned on Stack Overflow, either by them admitting it in comments, or by asking someone with access to the database to confirm it for us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Moderation issues**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderating unregistered accounts is extremely inefficient: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Suspensions don't work, the only thing the suspendee has to do is clear their cookies and they can post again.&#xD;&#xA;- Automatic question bans are enforced at a deeper level, but they seem to also fail for unregistered accounts.&#xD;&#xA;- Deleting / destroying an account for posting very low quality questions is overkill, we typically only delete spam accounts or accounts that posted extremely offensive content. &#xD;&#xA;- Even for good but off topic questions, migrating to Stack Overflow is discouraged, the unregistered accounts will most likely lose ownership of the question if they don't register there. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestions**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. *Require users to register before asking, same as with Stack Overflow.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I personally don't like it, but it's the obvious solution. We could do a trial run for a couple of months and evaluate the results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. *Tweak the question ban algorithm to be a bit stricter for unregistered accounts.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is completely up to Stack Exchange, my thoughts would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Given the overlap with Stack Overflow, have the algorithm check question banned IPs on Stack Overflow, and not let the account post more than one question, if their first one was downvoted and closed as Off Topic or Not A Real Question.&#xD;&#xA;  - Be more aggresive with unregistered accounts in general. Couple of Off Topic questions, ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. ???&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Hard data**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closures:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 35% for unregistered users, 17% for registered (all time),&#xD;&#xA;- 72% for unregistered users, and 40% for registered (last 6 months, retrieved Aug 10),&#xD;&#xA;- 70% for unregistered users, and 38% for registered (last 3 months, retrieved Aug 10).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for people banned on SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 79 questions asked this month, 39 were closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It seems that science doesn't point at Stack Overflow as the (main) cause of our troubles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10676" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3982" RevisionGUID="04a6a3f6-c47a-4422-8517-bbd6e51f7508" CreationDate="2012-09-04T21:34:42.560" UserId="62330" Text="As a corollary to the *Interview* questions, there is also the issue of the *Homework* question, which again is not specifically covered by the FAQs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I find some of the Interview questions, and even some of the Homework question threads quite interesting (and maybe even have learned from them) - and if (when?) I have something useful to add, I will do so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But banning Interview (or Homework) questions out of hand would be a wrong move, IMHO" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10677" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3947" RevisionGUID="b07ac110-d5f2-474a-ab4f-6974f9a1964c" CreationDate="2012-09-05T06:42:42.477" UserId="31260" Comment="clarification copied into question from comments" Text="**The problem**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tons of extremely low quality questions from *unregistered* accounts. A few recent examples: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162691/question-on-pl-sql-evaluate-the-pl-sql-block-given-above-and-determine-the-dat&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162604/help-me-make-a-choice-between-comp-science-and-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162555/programming-in-r-help&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162544/jsp-datagrid-tab-library&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162463/learning-the-java-language&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162413/java-unitilsexception-executed-scripts-table-public-dbmaintain-scripts-does&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161709/how-active-the-new-element-in-jquery&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161592/running-nuint-in-visual-studio-express-edition&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161540/how-to-display-hyperlink-field-for-download-pdf-file-in-gridview-control&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of them are now deleted, apologies to those with less than 10K, but we can't keep crap like that around for long. If you'd like me to show you screenshots to get an idea of how painfully horrible these were, feel free to ping me in chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The pattern**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All these questions seem to me like Stack Overflow rejects, extremely low quality questions about implementation issues / programming tools. Stack Overflow requires users to register before they asked, and I _think_ that some of these questions appeared on Programmers after they were closed &amp; deleted on Stack Overflow and / or the askers' accounts were automatically question banned or suspended. It might just be that noobs are naturally more interested in implementation issues, and Stack Overflow has no involvement in this, but my spider sense is tingling. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a few confirmed cases of people posting off topic questions on Programmers to sidestep their question ban / suspension on Stack Overflow, but this isn't easy to confirm for unregistered accounts. Some smells:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- A handfull of cases where the unregistered accounts posting low quality Stack Overflow type questions shared IPs with quite a few other unregistered accounts that also did the same (it might be an accident, or it might be the same guy/gal taking advantage of the system),&#xD;&#xA;- A couple of cases where we confirmed the unregistered account was question banned on Stack Overflow, either by them admitting it in comments, or by asking someone with access to the database to confirm it for us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Moderation issues**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderating unregistered accounts is extremely inefficient: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Suspensions don't work, the only thing the suspendee has to do is clear their cookies and they can post again.&#xD;&#xA;- Automatic question bans are enforced at a deeper level, but they seem to also fail for unregistered accounts.&#xD;&#xA;- Deleting / destroying an account for posting very low quality questions is overkill, we typically only delete spam accounts or accounts that posted extremely offensive content. &#xD;&#xA;- Even for good but off topic questions, migrating to Stack Overflow is discouraged, the unregistered accounts will most likely lose ownership of the question if they don't register there. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestions**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. *Require users to register before asking, same as with Stack Overflow.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I personally don't like it, but it's the obvious solution. We could do a trial run for a couple of months and evaluate the results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. *Tweak the question ban algorithm to be a bit stricter for unregistered accounts.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is completely up to Stack Exchange, my thoughts would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Given the overlap with Stack Overflow, have the algorithm check question banned IPs on Stack Overflow, and not let the account post more than one question, if their first one was downvoted and closed as Off Topic or Not A Real Question.&#xD;&#xA;  - Be more aggresive with unregistered accounts in general. Couple of Off Topic questions, ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. ???&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Hard data**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closure rates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 35% for unregistered users, 17% for registered (all time),&#xD;&#xA;- 72% for unregistered users, and 40% for registered (last 6 months, retrieved Aug 10),&#xD;&#xA;- 70% for unregistered users, and 38% for registered (last 3 months, retrieved Aug 10).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for people banned on SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 79 questions asked this month, 39 were closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It seems that science doesn't point at Stack Overflow as the (main) cause of our troubles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10678" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3947" RevisionGUID="64a335d2-3c5f-49ee-9893-efa91c345a48" CreationDate="2012-09-05T06:57:24.213" UserId="31260" Comment="clarification copied into question from comments" Text="**The problem**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tons of extremely low quality questions from *unregistered* accounts. A few recent examples: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162691/question-on-pl-sql-evaluate-the-pl-sql-block-given-above-and-determine-the-dat&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162604/help-me-make-a-choice-between-comp-science-and-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162555/programming-in-r-help&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162544/jsp-datagrid-tab-library&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162463/learning-the-java-language&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162413/java-unitilsexception-executed-scripts-table-public-dbmaintain-scripts-does&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161709/how-active-the-new-element-in-jquery&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161592/running-nuint-in-visual-studio-express-edition&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161540/how-to-display-hyperlink-field-for-download-pdf-file-in-gridview-control&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of them are now deleted, apologies to those with less than 10K, but we can't keep crap like that around for long. If you'd like me to show you screenshots to get an idea of how painfully horrible these were, feel free to ping me in chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The pattern**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All these questions seem to me like Stack Overflow rejects, extremely low quality questions about implementation issues / programming tools. Stack Overflow requires users to register before they asked, and I _think_ that some of these questions appeared on Programmers after they were closed &amp; deleted on Stack Overflow and / or the askers' accounts were automatically question banned or suspended. It might just be that noobs are naturally more interested in implementation issues, and Stack Overflow has no involvement in this, but my spider sense is tingling. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a few confirmed cases of people posting off topic questions on Programmers to sidestep their question ban / suspension on Stack Overflow, but this isn't easy to confirm for unregistered accounts. Some smells:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- A handfull of cases where the unregistered accounts posting low quality Stack Overflow type questions shared IPs with quite a few other unregistered accounts that also did the same (it might be an accident, or it might be the same guy/gal taking advantage of the system),&#xD;&#xA;- A couple of cases where we confirmed the unregistered account was question banned on Stack Overflow, either by them admitting it in comments, or by asking someone with access to the database to confirm it for us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Moderation issues**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderating unregistered accounts is extremely inefficient: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Suspensions don't work, the only thing the suspendee has to do is clear their cookies and they can post again.&#xD;&#xA;- Automatic question bans are enforced at a deeper level, but they seem to also fail for unregistered accounts.&#xD;&#xA;- Deleting / destroying an account for posting very low quality questions is overkill, we typically only delete spam accounts or accounts that posted extremely offensive content. &#xD;&#xA;- Even for good but off topic questions, migrating to Stack Overflow is discouraged, the unregistered accounts will most likely lose ownership of the question if they don't register there. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestions**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. *Require users to register before asking, same as with Stack Overflow.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I personally don't like it, but it's the obvious solution. We could do a trial run for a couple of months and evaluate the results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. *Tweak the question ban algorithm to be a bit stricter for unregistered accounts.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is completely up to Stack Exchange, my thoughts would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Given the overlap with Stack Overflow, have the algorithm check question banned IPs on Stack Overflow, and not let the account post more than one question, if their first one was downvoted and closed as Off Topic or Not A Real Question.&#xD;&#xA;  - Be more aggressive with unregistered accounts in general. Couple of Off Topic questions, ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. ???&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Hard data**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closure (closure and/or deletion) rates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 35% for unregistered users, 17% for registered (all time),&#xD;&#xA;- 72% for unregistered users, and 40% for registered (last 6 months, retrieved Aug 10),&#xD;&#xA;- 70% for unregistered users, and 38% for registered (last 3 months, retrieved Aug 10).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for people banned on SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 79 questions asked this month, 39 were closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It seems that science doesn't point at Stack Overflow as the (main) cause of our troubles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10679" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3983" RevisionGUID="5c5bf5b5-7f33-49ce-befd-33c529ed0524" CreationDate="2012-09-05T07:12:48.193" UserId="6617" Text="Due to the very nature of P.SE, I strongly advocate for implementing #1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems rather unlikely to me that a software developer has a quick question that fits P.SE, but is unwilling to register here. Stack Overflow is a much more likely place for one-off questions (because any developer can run in to the  `help, how to fix Error -733 in YAPEF 2.7?` situation, but it takes a certain attitude to discuss the architectural issues suitable for P.SE), and even they do not allow unregistered users to post questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10681" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3969" RevisionGUID="0a5a5dc1-8292-4a23-a3c5-c2f803c928d4" CreationDate="2012-09-05T11:38:39.107" UserId="1130" Comment="rearranged question to focus more on deleted questions and clarify that link provided was for an example only" Text="I have been hitting quite a few 404's on P.SE lately. I was wondering how great the idea of perma deleting questions *that have been around a long time and indexed and linked to* (not spam or such) really is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, [the lastest blog post][1] by Yannis Rizos contains a link to a deleted question ([391 upvotes FCS!][2]) in the 2nd paragraph, resulting in a 404 error for basically all(?) the audience of the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not saying that these questions are a good fit to the site, but removing them completely, leaving dangling links all over the internet (am I exaggerating? :-) certainly isn't my idea of Making The Internet a Better Place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that don't mind closing; I wouldn't even mind a `trash.stackexchange.com`; but in my very humble opinion, deleting valuable content from SE sites (not just P.SE) that has been lying there for weeks and months is just dead stupid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/31104/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10682" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3984" RevisionGUID="75233f26-766c-4f8f-88d1-9622770b9268" CreationDate="2012-09-05T17:58:16.500" UserId="25936" Text="#The general policy on deletions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Why are some questions or answers removed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are extremely off topic, or of very low quality, may be removed at the discretion of the community and moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Over time, closed questions that are not useful as signpoints to other questions may also be removed, as well as questions which have no significant activity over a very long period after being asked. For additional guidance, see How to Ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - commentary on the question or other answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asking another, different question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - “thanks!” or “me too!” responses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - exact duplicates of other answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - barely more than a link to an external site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - not even a partial answer to the actual question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you wish to improve an existing answer, click edit. For additional guidance, see How to Answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the policy, I'm sure you are aware of it, I'm only including it for completeness. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Questions with historical significance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a [historical lock](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for) that has been introduced (fairly recently) as a counter measure to link rot: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What is the purpose of a Historical Lock?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A historical lock preserves older content that was very popular when it was originally posted, but is now off-topic or otherwise out of scope for the site it is posted on. Historically locking a post ends the debate over whether a question should be kept on the site or deleted, and is often the final state of a question that has been deleted and undeleted more than once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **How are questions affected by historical locking?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In addition to the post notice being prominently displayed, posts which are historically locked are &quot;frozen in time;&quot; they cannot be voted on, answered, edited or commented. Historically-locked questions are omitted from normal question lists (those on the home page, /questions, and the various per-tag lists), but can still be found by searching for words in the post or title (via either site-search or Google, etc). The visual appearance of the entire post is altered by removal of the voting arrows from the question and all answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that historical locked questions on meta sites are not hidden in this manner, though their answers are still frozen in the same fashion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions can be historically locked when:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is contentious; i.e. it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When is it not appropriate to historically-lock a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should not be historically locked if they:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Are being actively maintained, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Have little or no redeeming value.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A good rule of thumb: If the question does not minimally meet Jeff Atwood's 3rd rule in the &quot;[We Hate Fun Here](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/)&quot; blog post, it's probably not a good candidate for historical locking. The third rule is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Does this question teach me anything that could make me better at my job? Can I learn something from it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I request a historical lock on a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Flag the question for moderator attention, with the &quot;custom description&quot; option. In the flag description, explain why you think the post should be historically locked. A moderator will evaluate the question using the criteria outlined above, and will either lock the question, or decline your flag with an explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Alternatively, if you want to try and gain more community support for the question, or contest the moderator decision, you can post a question here on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you are currently under 10K, your only option to request a historical lock is to post a question about it on Meta. I would advice you to use a far more appropriate tone that in this question, and: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Clearly explain why you think the question has redeeming value,&#xD;&#xA;- Politely request from the community to review it and decide whether it should be historically locked or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not _every_ deleted question qualifies for the historical lock, please do _not_ waste everyone's time by bringing up questions on Meta that clearly don't qualify. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Clarification:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The historical lock is only meant for _deleted_ questions (or questions that are about to be deleted), locking closed questions prevents them from being edited and voted on. Furthermore the community cannot reverse a lock, while it can (and often does) reverse a closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Changing the policy &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears you disagree with it. Fair enough. Change it. Stop complaining about it, and change it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I'd support any **constructive** attempt to solve the problem, however I must point out that there have been tons of discussions on Stack Overflow about deletions, and although the &quot;link rot&quot; problem is true for popular Stack Overflow questions it's almost completely irrelevant for lower traffic sites like Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand that clicking on a link, only to find a 404 page stinks, but should also understand that keeping crap around stinks more. And although there might be some gems amongst our deleted questions, most of them are plain crap. This is _not_ Stack Overflow, if you are interested in changing Stack Overflow's or the network's policy, please post your question on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meta Programmers is a place were we discuss Programmers specific issues, and from a Programmers perspective **the deleted popular questions that were linked all over the place were _not_ ours to begin with**. Unfortunately tons and tons of crap were migrated here from Stack Overflow in the early days of the site. Most of these questions were closed (at some point), which send them back to Stack Overflow. What was deleted here was their (locked) rejected migration stubs. What was linked all over the place was their Stack Overflow URL, and not (so much) their Programmers one. If you want to make a case for them, please do it on Stack Overflow, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally speaking, closed but popular questions are _not_ being deleted on Programmers, at least not systematically. I've deleted more posts than all my fellow moderators _combined_, if popular questions were being deleted, trust me, I'd know it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Are we making the internet better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, let's what our most voted deleted questions are: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. What's your favorite “programmer ignorance” pet peeve? (+410),&#xD;&#xA;1. What's your most controversial programming opinion? (+391),&#xD;&#xA;1. What real life bad habits has programming given you? (+368),&#xD;&#xA;1. As a programmer what single discovery has given you the greatest boost in productivity? (+315),&#xD;&#xA;1. How to hide Thinking at Work so that the Non-Programmers don't suspect Slacking? (+257)&#xD;&#xA;1. What are the best RSS feeds for programmers/developers? (238)&#xD;&#xA;1. Best Java book you have read so far (+211)&#xD;&#xA;1. How did you get your first programming job? (+140) &#xD;&#xA;1. Does the D programming language have a future? (+138)&#xD;&#xA;1. What's wrong with cplusplus.com? (+128)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;Best Java book you have read so far&quot; one is the one (from the list) with the most views, around 33K. And zero answers. Yeap, zero. It's a question that got all of its answers on Stack Overflow, and 99% of it's activity, including views, there. Gone. Again, if you want to make a case for it, go to Meta Stack Overflow please, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly _don't_ know if we are making the internet better. However having (partially) reviewed some of the above questions, I don't see any indication that we are making the internet worse by deleting them. _If_ they were originally asked on Programmers and were part of our community's history, we would have a whole different discussion, but right now all I can say about them and their eventual fate is: **meh**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#The blog post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was the worst possible example you could bring forth: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The question was deleted long time ago,&#xD;&#xA;1. I could only find five links to the Programmers version of it,&#xD;&#xA;1. The blog post _clearly indicated_ that it would lead to a 404 for most people,&#xD;&#xA;1. The URL was `nofollow`, so there wasn't an issue with indexing,&#xD;&#xA;1. The only reason the URL was included was for our 10K users to be able to review it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, the completely inappropriate tone you chose for your question made me re-think the whole effort to salvege **old and long forgotten** deleted questions by converting them to blog posts. Although I do not have any expectations for appreciation for my efforts to give back to the community, I am not a moron and will _not_ freely volunteer my time to promote the community through an activity that has absolutely nothing to do with my diamond status when this is what I get for it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At some point you got to say enough is enough. I've removed the url from the blog post, so users who would deliberatily click on a link that says &quot;hey, this is deleted&quot; won't have a bad experience. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#The Trash Stack Exchange solution (and its many variants)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been proposed countless times, and every time it has been denied by Stack Exchange. Personally I find it a good enough solution, but Stack Exchange doesn't seem to care enough for hosting content that has been deemed unsuitable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Stargazer712's proposal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stargazer712 made what I must admit is an [interesting suggestion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3976/25936) (carefully hidden under tons of borderline insulting crap). However it's based on a misunderstanding of the scale of the effort to salvage questions by converting them to blog posts. We are certainly not talking about converting _every_ deleted question to a blog post, I have found 5 so far that I'd like to salvage, plus another one from Stack Overflow and _no one_ else has shown any interest in this. So, for all intents and purposes when we are talking about the blog as a way to salvage questions, we are talking about a total of six questions. That's it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that 2 days after you posted this you still haven't brought forth any other evidence of systematic deletion of popular content with at least some redeeming value on Programmers, I'm sorry but I'll have to dismiss this as a non issue. If you do update your question, please either ping me in chat or post a comment here so I can review your updates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apologies for the tone in my earlier answer, it wasn't (really) directed at you personally.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10684" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3984" RevisionGUID="355174a6-9bf8-4c16-b1ad-34c8ad89b580" CreationDate="2012-09-05T18:03:17.290" UserId="25936" Comment="added 19 characters in body" Text="&#xD;&#xA;##The general policy on deletions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Why are some questions or answers removed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are extremely off topic, or of very low quality, may be removed at the discretion of the community and moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Over time, closed questions that are not useful as signpoints to other questions may also be removed, as well as questions which have no significant activity over a very long period after being asked. For additional guidance, see How to Ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - commentary on the question or other answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asking another, different question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - “thanks!” or “me too!” responses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - exact duplicates of other answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - barely more than a link to an external site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - not even a partial answer to the actual question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you wish to improve an existing answer, click edit. For additional guidance, see How to Answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the policy, I'm sure you are aware of it, I'm only including it for completeness. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Questions with historical significance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a [historical lock](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for) that has been introduced (fairly recently) as a counter measure to link rot: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What is the purpose of a Historical Lock?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A historical lock preserves older content that was very popular when it was originally posted, but is now off-topic or otherwise out of scope for the site it is posted on. Historically locking a post ends the debate over whether a question should be kept on the site or deleted, and is often the final state of a question that has been deleted and undeleted more than once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **How are questions affected by historical locking?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In addition to the post notice being prominently displayed, posts which are historically locked are &quot;frozen in time;&quot; they cannot be voted on, answered, edited or commented. Historically-locked questions are omitted from normal question lists (those on the home page, /questions, and the various per-tag lists), but can still be found by searching for words in the post or title (via either site-search or Google, etc). The visual appearance of the entire post is altered by removal of the voting arrows from the question and all answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that historical locked questions on meta sites are not hidden in this manner, though their answers are still frozen in the same fashion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions can be historically locked when:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is contentious; i.e. it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When is it not appropriate to historically-lock a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should not be historically locked if they:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Are being actively maintained, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Have little or no redeeming value.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A good rule of thumb: If the question does not minimally meet Jeff Atwood's 3rd rule in the &quot;[We Hate Fun Here](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/)&quot; blog post, it's probably not a good candidate for historical locking. The third rule is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Does this question teach me anything that could make me better at my job? Can I learn something from it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I request a historical lock on a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Flag the question for moderator attention, with the &quot;custom description&quot; option. In the flag description, explain why you think the post should be historically locked. A moderator will evaluate the question using the criteria outlined above, and will either lock the question, or decline your flag with an explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Alternatively, if you want to try and gain more community support for the question, or contest the moderator decision, you can post a question here on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you are currently under 10K, your only option to request a historical lock is to post a question about it on Meta. I would advice you to use a far more appropriate tone that in this question, and: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Clearly explain why you think the question has redeeming value,&#xD;&#xA;- Politely request from the community to review it and decide whether it should be historically locked or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not _every_ deleted question qualifies for the historical lock, please do _not_ waste everyone's time by bringing up questions on Meta that clearly don't qualify. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Clarification:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The historical lock is only meant for _deleted_ questions (or questions that are about to be deleted), locking closed questions prevents them from being edited and voted on. Furthermore the community cannot reverse a lock, while it can (and often does) reverse a closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Changing the policy &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears you disagree with it. Fair enough. Change it. Stop complaining about it, and change it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I'd support any **constructive** attempt to solve the problem, however I must point out that there have been tons of discussions on Stack Overflow about deletions, and although the &quot;link rot&quot; problem is true for popular Stack Overflow questions it's almost completely irrelevant for lower traffic sites like Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand that clicking on a link, only to find a 404 page stinks, but should also understand that keeping crap around stinks more. And although there might be some gems amongst our deleted questions, most of them are plain crap. This is _not_ Stack Overflow, if you are interested in changing Stack Overflow's or the network's policy, please post your question on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meta Programmers is a place were we discuss Programmers specific issues, and from a Programmers perspective **the deleted popular questions that were linked all over the place were _not_ ours to begin with**. Unfortunately tons and tons of crap were migrated here from Stack Overflow in the early days of the site. Most of these questions were closed (at some point), which send them back to Stack Overflow. What was deleted here was their (locked) rejected migration stubs. What was linked all over the place was their Stack Overflow URL, and not (so much) their Programmers one. If you want to make a case for them, please do it on Stack Overflow, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally speaking, closed but popular questions are _not_ being deleted on Programmers, at least not systematically. I've deleted more posts than all my fellow moderators _combined_, if popular questions were being deleted, trust me, I'd know it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Are we making the internet better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, let's what our most voted deleted questions are: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. What's your favorite “programmer ignorance” pet peeve? (+410),&#xD;&#xA;1. What's your most controversial programming opinion? (+391),&#xD;&#xA;1. What real life bad habits has programming given you? (+368),&#xD;&#xA;1. As a programmer what single discovery has given you the greatest boost in productivity? (+315),&#xD;&#xA;1. How to hide Thinking at Work so that the Non-Programmers don't suspect Slacking? (+257)&#xD;&#xA;1. What are the best RSS feeds for programmers/developers? (238)&#xD;&#xA;1. Best Java book you have read so far (+211)&#xD;&#xA;1. How did you get your first programming job? (+140) &#xD;&#xA;1. Does the D programming language have a future? (+138)&#xD;&#xA;1. What's wrong with cplusplus.com? (+128)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;Best Java book you have read so far&quot; one is the one (from the list) with the most views, around 33K. And zero answers. Yeap, zero. It's a question that got all of its answers on Stack Overflow, and 99% of it's activity, including views, there. Gone. Again, if you want to make a case for it, go to Meta Stack Overflow please, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly _don't_ know if we are making the internet better. However having (partially) reviewed some of the above questions, I don't see any indication that we are making the internet worse by deleting them. _If_ they were originally asked on Programmers and were part of our community's history, we would have a whole different discussion, but right now all I can say about them and their eventual fate is: **meh**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#The blog post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was the worst possible example you could bring forth: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The question was deleted long time ago,&#xD;&#xA;1. I could only find five links to the Programmers version of it,&#xD;&#xA;1. The blog post _clearly indicated_ that it would lead to a 404 for most people,&#xD;&#xA;1. The URL was `nofollow`, so there wasn't an issue with indexing,&#xD;&#xA;1. The only reason the URL was included was for our 10K users to be able to review it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, the completely inappropriate tone you chose for your question made me re-think the whole effort to salvege **old and long forgotten** deleted questions by converting them to blog posts. Although I do not have any expectations for appreciation for my efforts to give back to the community, I am not a moron and will _not_ freely volunteer my time to promote the community through an activity that has absolutely nothing to do with my diamond status when this is what I get for it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At some point you got to say enough is enough. I've removed the url from the blog post, so users who would deliberatily click on a link that says &quot;hey, this is deleted&quot; won't have a bad experience. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Trash Stack Exchange solution (and its many variants)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been proposed countless times, and every time it has been denied by Stack Exchange. Personally I find it a good enough solution, but Stack Exchange doesn't seem to care enough for hosting content that has been deemed unsuitable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Stargazer712's proposal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stargazer712 made what I must admit is an [interesting suggestion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3976/25936) (carefully hidden under tons of borderline insulting crap). However it's based on a misunderstanding of the scale of the effort to salvage questions by converting them to blog posts. We are certainly not talking about converting _every_ deleted question to a blog post, I have found 5 so far that I'd like to salvage, plus another one from Stack Overflow and _no one_ else has shown any interest in this. So, for all intents and purposes when we are talking about the blog as a way to salvage questions, we are talking about a total of six questions. That's it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that 2 days after you posted this you still haven't brought forth any other evidence of systematic deletion of popular content with at least some redeeming value on Programmers, I'm sorry but I'll have to dismiss this as a non issue. If you do update your question, please either ping me in chat or post a comment here so I can review your updates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apologies for the tone in my earlier answer, it wasn't (really) directed at you personally.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10685" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3984" RevisionGUID="47a454a2-bf7b-4046-b636-713839d44bc4" CreationDate="2012-09-05T18:08:24.930" UserId="25936" Comment="added 19 characters in body" Text="##The general policy on deletions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Why are some questions or answers removed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are extremely off topic, or of very low quality, may be removed at the discretion of the community and moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Over time, closed questions that are not useful as signpoints to other questions may also be removed, as well as questions which have no significant activity over a very long period after being asked. For additional guidance, see How to Ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - commentary on the question or other answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asking another, different question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - “thanks!” or “me too!” responses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - exact duplicates of other answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - barely more than a link to an external site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - not even a partial answer to the actual question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you wish to improve an existing answer, click edit. For additional guidance, see How to Answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the policy, I'm sure you are aware of it, I'm only including it for completeness. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Questions with historical significance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a [historical lock](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for) that has been introduced (fairly recently) as a counter measure to link rot: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What is the purpose of a Historical Lock?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A historical lock preserves older content that was very popular when it was originally posted, but is now off-topic or otherwise out of scope for the site it is posted on. Historically locking a post ends the debate over whether a question should be kept on the site or deleted, and is often the final state of a question that has been deleted and undeleted more than once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **How are questions affected by historical locking?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In addition to the post notice being prominently displayed, posts which are historically locked are &quot;frozen in time;&quot; they cannot be voted on, answered, edited or commented. Historically-locked questions are omitted from normal question lists (those on the home page, /questions, and the various per-tag lists), but can still be found by searching for words in the post or title (via either site-search or Google, etc). The visual appearance of the entire post is altered by removal of the voting arrows from the question and all answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that historical locked questions on meta sites are not hidden in this manner, though their answers are still frozen in the same fashion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions can be historically locked when:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is contentious; i.e. it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When is it not appropriate to historically-lock a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should not be historically locked if they:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Are being actively maintained, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Have little or no redeeming value.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A good rule of thumb: If the question does not minimally meet Jeff Atwood's 3rd rule in the &quot;[We Hate Fun Here](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/)&quot; blog post, it's probably not a good candidate for historical locking. The third rule is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Does this question teach me anything that could make me better at my job? Can I learn something from it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I request a historical lock on a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Flag the question for moderator attention, with the &quot;custom description&quot; option. In the flag description, explain why you think the post should be historically locked. A moderator will evaluate the question using the criteria outlined above, and will either lock the question, or decline your flag with an explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Alternatively, if you want to try and gain more community support for the question, or contest the moderator decision, you can post a question here on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you are currently under 10K, your only option to request a historical lock is to post a question about it on Meta. I would advice you to use a far more appropriate tone that in this question, and: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Clearly explain why you think the question has redeeming value,&#xD;&#xA;- Politely request from the community to review it and decide whether it should be historically locked or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not _every_ deleted question qualifies for the historical lock, please do _not_ waste everyone's time by bringing up questions on Meta that clearly don't qualify. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Clarification:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The historical lock is only meant for _deleted_ questions (or questions that are about to be deleted), locking closed questions prevents them from being edited and voted on. Furthermore the community cannot reverse a lock, while it can (and often does) reverse a closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Changing the policy &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears you disagree with it. Fair enough. Change it. Stop complaining about it, and change it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I'd support any **constructive** attempt to solve the problem, however I must point out that there have been tons of discussions on Stack Overflow about deletions, and although the &quot;link rot&quot; problem is true for popular Stack Overflow questions it's almost completely irrelevant for lower traffic sites like Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand that clicking on a link, only to find a 404 page stinks, but should also understand that keeping crap around stinks more. And although there might be some gems amongst our deleted questions, most of them are plain crap. This is _not_ Stack Overflow, if you are interested in changing Stack Overflow's or the network's policy, please post your question on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meta Programmers is a place were we discuss Programmers specific issues, and from a Programmers perspective **the deleted popular questions that were linked all over the place were _not_ ours to begin with**. Unfortunately tons and tons of crap were migrated here from Stack Overflow in the early days of the site. Most of these questions were closed (at some point), which send them back to Stack Overflow. What was deleted here was their (locked) rejected migration stubs. What was linked all over the place was their Stack Overflow URL, and not (so much) their Programmers one. If you want to make a case for them, please do it on Stack Overflow, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally speaking, closed but popular questions are _not_ being deleted on Programmers, at least not systematically. I've deleted more posts than all my fellow moderators _combined_, if popular questions were being deleted, trust me, I'd know it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Are we making the internet better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, let's what our most voted deleted questions are: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. What's your favorite “programmer ignorance” pet peeve? (+410),&#xD;&#xA;1. What's your most controversial programming opinion? (+391),&#xD;&#xA;1. What real life bad habits has programming given you? (+368),&#xD;&#xA;1. As a programmer what single discovery has given you the greatest boost in productivity? (+315),&#xD;&#xA;1. How to hide Thinking at Work so that the Non-Programmers don't suspect Slacking? (+257)&#xD;&#xA;1. What are the best RSS feeds for programmers/developers? (238)&#xD;&#xA;1. Best Java book you have read so far (+211)&#xD;&#xA;1. How did you get your first programming job? (+140) &#xD;&#xA;1. Does the D programming language have a future? (+138)&#xD;&#xA;1. What's wrong with cplusplus.com? (+128)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;Best Java book you have read so far&quot; one is the one (from the list) with the most views, around 33K. And zero answers. Yeap, zero. It's a question that got all of its answers on Stack Overflow, and 99% of it's activity, including views, there. Gone. Again, if you want to make a case for it, go to Meta Stack Overflow please, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly _don't_ know if we are making the internet better. However having (partially) reviewed some of the above questions, I don't see any indication that we are making the internet worse by deleting them. _If_ they were originally asked on Programmers and were part of our community's history, we would have a whole different discussion, but right now all I can say about them and their eventual fate is: **meh**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#The blog post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was the worst possible example you could bring forth: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The question was deleted long time ago,&#xD;&#xA;1. I could only find five links to the Programmers version of it,&#xD;&#xA;1. The blog post _clearly indicated_ that it would lead to a 404 for most people,&#xD;&#xA;1. The URL was `nofollow`, so there wasn't an issue with indexing,&#xD;&#xA;1. The only reason the URL was included was for our 10K users to be able to review it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, the completely inappropriate tone you chose for your question made me re-think the whole effort to salvege **old and long forgotten** deleted questions by converting them to blog posts. Although I do not have any expectations for appreciation for my efforts to give back to the community, I am not a moron and will _not_ freely volunteer my time to promote the community through an activity that has absolutely nothing to do with my diamond status when this is what I get for it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At some point you got to say enough is enough. I've removed the url from the blog post, so users who would deliberatily click on a link that says &quot;hey, this is deleted&quot; won't have a bad experience. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Trash Stack Exchange solution (and its many variants)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been proposed countless times, and every time it has been denied by Stack Exchange. Personally I find it a good enough solution, but Stack Exchange doesn't seem to care enough for hosting content that has been deemed unsuitable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Stargazer712's proposal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stargazer712 made what I must admit is an [interesting suggestion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3976/25936) (carefully hidden under tons of borderline insulting crap). However it's based on a misunderstanding of the scale of the effort to salvage questions by converting them to blog posts. We are certainly not talking about converting _every_ deleted question to a blog post, I have found 5 so far that I'd like to salvage, plus another one from Stack Overflow and _no one_ else has shown any interest in this. So, for all intents and purposes when we are talking about the blog as a way to salvage questions, we are talking about a total of six questions. That's it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that 2 days after you posted this you still haven't brought forth any other evidence of systematic deletion of popular content with at least some redeeming value on Programmers, I'm sorry but I'll have to dismiss this as a non issue. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, we had numerous organized clean up efforts in the past that included deletions. I'm honestly hoping those are _not_ the deletions you have in mind, as all the organized clean up efforts were discussed thoroughly on Meta before they begun, and only begun when it was obvious that the community supported them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you do update your question, please either ping me in chat or post a comment here so I can review your updates. Apologies for the tone in my earlier answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10686" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3985" RevisionGUID="29b297b0-3843-4723-a676-64eb845bda1b" CreationDate="2012-09-05T18:15:40.423" UserId="3965" Text="While using the new review tool for poor quality answers, I keep coming across a pattern that leaves me thinking there must be a better way to handle it.  Take the following question, for example.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53848/stuff-you-learned-in-school-that-you-have-never-used-again&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was closed as not constructive, rightly so.  However, then a bunch of its answers also get flagged for the tool, primarily because they express a short, list item opinion as an answer to a question that encourages short, list item opinions.  I see this pattern over and over again of closed questions that encouraged poor answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There has to be a better way to handle these kinds of answers.  Is &quot;bad answer bait&quot; a valid reason to delete a question rather than deal with each answer individually?  Is there another preferred way to handle this situation?  Should that method be spelled out in the review tool?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10687" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3985" RevisionGUID="29b297b0-3843-4723-a676-64eb845bda1b" CreationDate="2012-09-05T18:15:40.423" UserId="3965" Text="Poor answers to closed questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10688" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3985" RevisionGUID="29b297b0-3843-4723-a676-64eb845bda1b" CreationDate="2012-09-05T18:15:40.423" UserId="3965" Text="|discussion|answer-quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10689" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3986" RevisionGUID="7dc23adb-cec4-43b5-9a89-7d7e1bcff39f" CreationDate="2012-09-05T18:33:59.420" UserId="4" Text="I've noticed the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of me wonders if it's a problem with the tool. The way I see it, if a question is closed, then its answers are equally suspect. I don't think the review tool should display answers to closed questions for review. If a question is edited sufficiently to warrant reopening and I was going to mod-reopen it in response to a flag, I'd go through the answers and either mod notice/comment on (for users who are recently active) or delete (for users who are inactive) any poor/low-quality answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as deleting questions, I think it's something we should do. Even though there are a few automated tools, they only catch the worst of the worst closed questions. I think someone built a query in Data Explorer to find questions that have been closed for longer than 6 months. Any question on this list that doesn't add value should be deleted or locked as appropriate. 6 months has been plenty of time for someone to try to make a heroic edit - if it hasn't happened yet, it probably won't." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10690" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3987" RevisionGUID="a8066950-ff29-49a5-bc73-f3ba19d83036" CreationDate="2012-09-05T19:39:05.110" UserId="25476" Text="The goal of closing a question is to suspend answer activity until such point that the question can either be improved through an edit or eventually deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if the question were to be closed, then it is still appropriate in my opinion for others to flag answers that require moderator attention.  If it becomes reopened then those bad answers will still exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions however are that special kind of question where if you really think about what is being asked, it is a good question, however the nature of the subject, whether it be contraversial or not, just seems to bring out the off topic flame and holy wars that the OP was hoping to avoid.  It is my hope that we as a community make an effort to save these questions from bad answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other questions seem good, however will breed bad answers like a cockroach infestation.  You can keep trying to squash the bad answers but they will multiply faster than you can deal with them and before you know it, the question is on the front page of Reddit and has 50k views.  It is best to deal with the question in this case to prevent the bad answers from continuing to spawn." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10691" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3988" RevisionGUID="8951dad9-a3ca-4d8c-a30e-6cd69196560e" CreationDate="2012-09-05T21:18:59.037" UserId="41381" Text="I wish the low quality post review tool offered that ability to have close/delete question options for low quality answers, because many times I find the question is useless garbage and removing the whole thing will kill two birds with one stone." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10692" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3985" RevisionGUID="064668d4-117b-432d-8233-f1fc71e8d927" CreationDate="2012-09-06T00:01:06.307" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/243499025490407424" />
  <row Id="10693" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3987" RevisionGUID="2ab2a10d-0422-438a-837f-4779870d95e8" CreationDate="2012-09-06T08:25:13.730" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo correction" Text="The goal of closing a question is to suspend answer activity until such point that the question can either be improved through an edit or eventually deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if the question were to be closed, then it is still appropriate in my opinion for others to flag answers that require moderator attention.  If it becomes reopened then those bad answers will still exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions however are that special kind of question where if you really think about what is being asked, it is a good question, however the nature of the subject, whether it be controversial or not, just seems to bring out the off topic flame and holy wars that the OP was hoping to avoid.  It is my hope that we as a community make an effort to save these questions from bad answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other questions seem good, however will breed bad answers like a cockroach infestation.  You can keep trying to squash the bad answers but they will multiply faster than you can deal with them and before you know it, the question is on the front page of Reddit and has 50k views.  It is best to deal with the question in this case to prevent the bad answers from continuing to spawn." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10694" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3951" RevisionGUID="3555cf57-01db-4774-b99d-6d44345d278d" CreationDate="2012-09-06T08:54:44.077" UserId="31260" Comment="update based on 'hard data&quot; provided in rev 5-8 of the question" Text="##Closure  rate 70% for unregistered users&#xD;&#xA;is an awful lot of trouble. In comparison, stats for registered users make one feel that simple act of registration has a magic effect of cutting half of it (to 38%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...We could do a **trial run** for a couple of months and evaluate the results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that requiring registration for questions can be cancelled if _trial run_ results turn out negative&lt;sup&gt; 1&lt;/sup&gt; above looks like a low risk test.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading, such a trial would fit the spirit of guidance provided in **[Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/ &quot;reference article at Stack Exchange blog&quot;)**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...we’re determined to keep question quality high, **even at the cost of refusing a little sand**. It’s true that you can’t have Q&amp;A without _questions_, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&amp;A site is to flood it with low-quality questions. I think [Mark Trapp](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/91808/about-new-downvote-policy-on-meta/91813#91813) summed it up best in [this meta answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/91808/about-new-downvote-policy-on-meta/91813#91813):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; To put it another way, when I go to a Stack Exchange home page, I see a **list of questions**. If most of those are terrible questions with little to no indication that I’d be wasting my time by reading them, the value proposition of visiting and participating is diminished: I have better things to do.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Compare that to _answers_ on a specific question: I’ve made a conscious choice to look into what I think is an interesting question. I already made the decision that the question is worth my time. If I find the answers to be useless, I have a few different options, as an interested party, to register my displeasure, including writing my own answer. Being able to write your own answer is key: if your answer is good enough, it’ll rise above the junk answers and everyone will be better off for it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; There is no such action for question lists. I can’t say “these questions suck, show me this question I just thought up instead”: that’d be silly. So, it’s imperative the question list have a high signal-to-noise ratio, and removing the penalty for those users who do take the time to read a question and later find it to be useless so they can down-vote is conducive to that. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Fundamentally, answers can be filtered in ways that questions cannot. While there is a tension between having “enough” questions and a bunch of amazing, highly skilled answerers twiddling their thumbs waiting around for something to do, in the long run we’d much rather err on the side of having _interesting_ and _on-topic_ questions for these folks to sink their teeth into.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&amp;A system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**. If this means aggressively downvoting or closing unworthy and uninteresting questions, so be it. Without a community of people willing to _answer_ questions, it really doesn’t matter if there are questions at all, does it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;_if trial run results turn out negative_ - (not incidentally,) above guidance also provides a criteria on how to judge trial run results: **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. As an **answerer** like one of mentioned above (5+ K rep on answers), I am not particularly happy about current questions quality, which I think is clearly indicated by 5+ K downvotes I cast. One thing I find particularly frustrating is that sometimes, after downvoting bad questions, I find myself out of votes that I would use to upvote good ones - this happens frequently enough to make me feel that better prevention of low quality questions is needed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10695" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3989" RevisionGUID="7ddd4895-4369-4954-b3a6-9f3b22963d7b" CreationDate="2012-09-06T13:30:23.160" UserId="31260" Text="[maintainability tag wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/maintainability/info) has been edited to help reader differentiate this tag from [tag:maintenance].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Excerpt was set as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; system quality aspect characterizing the ease of software maintenance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag wiki were set as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Maintainability is a system quality aspect characterizing the ease of software maintenance.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Related Wikipedia references...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Related tags: [tag:maintenance]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10696" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="3989" RevisionGUID="48a99c58-d017-438a-82a7-f55be833d39b" CreationDate="2012-09-06T13:30:23.160" UserId="31260" />
  <row Id="10697" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3974" RevisionGUID="612685da-ea74-4709-8d4c-353b1741949f" CreationDate="2012-09-06T13:31:03.220" UserId="31260" Comment="alternative solution font" Text="Suggest to merge [tag:maintainability] (35 questions, no tag wiki) into [tag:maintenance] (80 questions, tag wiki quoted below), and make them synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag wiki for _maintenance_:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The activities that occur after deployment of a software system. This includes making modifications to released systems, training, operating, and transitioning to support organizations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If for some reasons mentioned tags are better kept separate, then it would be desirable to write respective tag wiki to help reader decide when to apply one or another tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10698" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3981" RevisionGUID="39a655b5-eb3e-4eeb-941b-546bf784ce06" CreationDate="2012-09-06T13:53:04.490" UserId="34014" Comment="Realized that people would still react to only the 1st question" Text="There seems to be some topics that come up repeatedly.  Can there be a discussion on if these can be better served?  Or is the point of allowing them to come up often a way to drive more traffic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It just feels like, to me, that some topics gets repeatedly covered, so they could use (something like) a FAQ.  IMHO the topics keep coming up because the answers are by experts who assume domain expertise to understand their answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of these questions *would* involve discussions.  But they would be discussions with further clarifications, details, and more sub-questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Functional programming is a good example.  I see so many questions about &quot;why functional if good&quot;, or answers that are &quot;functional is good&quot;.  But I don't always see the &quot;why it's good or better&quot;, or how to take that to the next level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples: Functional vs Procedural, Agile, GPL (and getting around it), etc." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10699" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3990" RevisionGUID="a5a0461e-0a6e-42eb-94c4-78d3313e7dff" CreationDate="2012-09-06T20:06:36.347" UserId="1204" Text="When someone asks a question like &quot;Why is functional programming better?&quot; what they are really asking is &quot;Should I bother to learn it?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You don't get to sit down at the poker table without knowing a little something about poker, and the experts already at the table are unlikely to teach you the basics so that they can answer your general question about why some of the cards are red and some of them are black, nor are they inclined to answer your question about whether chess is a better game or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the way you make your question *interesting to the experts* is to know a little something about the subject matter already, so that you can discuss it with the experts intelligently and specifically." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10700" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="3991" RevisionGUID="e98f7fca-d920-432e-898c-a48bcd814fbd" CreationDate="2012-09-07T10:37:24.767" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164057/best-place-to-upload-xml-for-referring-in-forum" Text="" />
  <row Id="10701" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3991" RevisionGUID="54622c9d-da04-4734-85c8-bc421fa8556b" CreationDate="2012-09-07T10:26:48.707" UserId="58676" Text="Many a times we need to refer some huge files while asking a question in this forum. If I have a question regarding HTML, CSS or jQuery I can use jsFiddle to upload the content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the case of XML file (for example WSDL) what is the best place for uploading and referring?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are the most popular site for this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10702" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3991" RevisionGUID="54622c9d-da04-4734-85c8-bc421fa8556b" CreationDate="2012-09-07T10:26:48.707" UserId="58676" Text="Best place to upload xml (for referring in forum)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10703" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3991" RevisionGUID="54622c9d-da04-4734-85c8-bc421fa8556b" CreationDate="2012-09-07T10:26:48.707" UserId="58676" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10704" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3992" RevisionGUID="c8a5c79c-d743-41c7-a72d-8a9635b1b42e" CreationDate="2012-09-07T10:38:31.257" UserId="47" Text="The answer is that you shouldn't be referring to huge files when asking questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All the information should be in the question body and you should have the minimal amount of data/code/whatever that demonstrates the problem." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10705" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3993" RevisionGUID="e49014cd-3083-4921-861e-2880e2d0125b" CreationDate="2012-09-07T10:41:33.203" UserId="58676" Text="I have a HTML related question.  In stack overflow, is it a good practice to refer code shared in jsFiddle? Or should I post the code in the question itself?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10706" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3993" RevisionGUID="e49014cd-3083-4921-861e-2880e2d0125b" CreationDate="2012-09-07T10:41:33.203" UserId="58676" Text="Is it encouraged to refer jsFiddle?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10707" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3993" RevisionGUID="e49014cd-3083-4921-861e-2880e2d0125b" CreationDate="2012-09-07T10:41:33.203" UserId="58676" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10708" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3994" RevisionGUID="7a2c4362-a803-4fba-b620-f756debfab9d" CreationDate="2012-09-07T10:44:07.050" UserId="47" Text="In the first instance why are you asking on Meta **Programmers** rather than Meta **Stack Overflow**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, to answer your question - you should post the minimal code that reproduces the problem in the body of the question. Don't make people go to an external resource for the code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I wouldn't follow the link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's nothing wrong with linking to the same code as a jsFiddle if it helps demonstrate the problem, but the question should stand alone." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10709" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3993" RevisionGUID="62674892-64cc-41bc-b889-8068f50ce347" CreationDate="2012-09-07T10:48:07.263" UserId="58676" Comment="added 14 characters in body" Text="I have a HTML related question.  In stack overflow / programmers, is it a good practice to refer code shared in jsFiddle? Or should I post the code in the question itself?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10710" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3991" RevisionGUID="c1c7c75a-b22c-4933-9486-eacf748f169d" CreationDate="2012-09-07T10:48:33.627" UserId="58676" Comment="added 102 characters in body" Text="Many a times we need to refer some huge files while asking a question in this forum. If I have a question regarding HTML, CSS or jQuery I can use jsFiddle to upload the content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the case of XML file (for example WSDL) what is the best place for uploading and referring?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are the most popular site for this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Refer: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3993/is-it-encouraged-to-refer-jsfiddle" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10711" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3995" RevisionGUID="e2b6d99d-7860-4d70-8b64-eef5cecc5a0f" CreationDate="2012-09-07T11:08:08.713" UserId="17153" Text="So I'm currently coding this signal processing with CUDA and I run over a very strange issue, which clearly is a bug in either the driver or the hardware. I tracked down the issue called over my colleague to assert me, that I'm not on drugs or hallucinating. He confirmed it and then I set out to find a workaround (which turned out to be easy, but, well, weird).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This whole thing made me wonder if there either was already, or there should be a site on the SE network for discussion of code that should work but gets broken by external dependencies, so that other people can either confirm the problem, or point it out. I don't think that the codereview.stackexchange.com is not the right place for this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In case you wonder what my CUDA issue is. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is **broken** for `2^n - 1 &lt; a &lt; 2^n +1` for any n&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    float a = ...; // also happens with int&#xD;&#xA;    float t = threadIdx.x;&#xD;&#xA;    float tau = t / (float)a;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and this **works**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    // may be any number that won't make 'a' multiply&#xD;&#xA;    // to a number close to a power of 2&#xD;&#xA;    #define WEIRDAROUND 1.2345&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    float a = ...; // also for int&#xD;&#xA;    float t = threadIdx.x * WEIRDAROUND;&#xD;&#xA;    float tau = t / ((float)a * WEIRDAROUND);&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10712" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="3995" RevisionGUID="e2b6d99d-7860-4d70-8b64-eef5cecc5a0f" CreationDate="2012-09-07T11:08:08.713" UserId="17153" Text="StackExchange site for weird bug &amp; workaround discussions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10713" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="3995" RevisionGUID="e2b6d99d-7860-4d70-8b64-eef5cecc5a0f" CreationDate="2012-09-07T11:08:08.713" UserId="17153" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10714" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3991" RevisionGUID="1a6306a4-b4e9-41d4-9596-0f6b0b9d78f8" CreationDate="2012-09-07T11:16:03.177" UserId="58676" Comment="added 240 characters in body" Text="Many a times we need to refer some huge files while asking a question in this forum. If I have a question regarding HTML, CSS or jQuery I can use jsFiddle to upload the content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the case of XML file (for example WSDL) what is the best place for uploading and referring?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are the most popular site for this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3993/is-it-encouraged-to-refer-jsfiddle&#xD;&#xA;2. http://www.awwwards.com/10-html-css-online-code-editors-for-web-developers.html&#xD;&#xA;3. Dabblet, Thimble, by Mozilla, jsFiddle, jsBin, Cloud9, CodeMirror, eXo Cloud IDE, CodeRun, Compilr, Codeanywhere, Kodingen, Google Developers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10715" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3996" RevisionGUID="d9e73300-85b5-4804-8247-b1afa853f306" CreationDate="2012-09-07T11:28:55.410" UserId="25476" Text="You are right that codereview.se is not appropriate for this kind of question.  From their FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code from your project in the following areas…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would hardly call a bizarre workaround that you don't understand as working code and would be considered offtopic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are genuinely concerned about solving the issue specifically then it would make sense for StackOverflow.  If however you have a question about driver workarounds in general or how they can affect your design then it would be appropriate for Programmers.  Asking Programmers for help with this specific problem would be offtopic on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the end however, if you can see yourself having a lengthy discussion over a workaround in code then, it might not be a good fit for any site.  This is a Q&amp;A site and doesn't lend itself well to lengthy discussions and a lot of back and forth.  If this is the case for your specific question then it may be too overly broad or rhetorical to be answered well in this format.  In which case I would recommend you ask around in the chat rooms and see if anybody wants to discuss with you in there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10716" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3991" RevisionGUID="f48739c5-06f8-49f8-b592-87702aa31e34" CreationDate="2012-09-07T12:09:54.360" UserId="31260" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="Many a times we need to refer some huge files while asking a question in this site. If I have a question regarding HTML, CSS or jQuery I can use jsFiddle to upload the content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the case of XML file (for example WSDL) what is the best place for uploading and referring?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are the most popular site for this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3993/is-it-encouraged-to-refer-jsfiddle&#xD;&#xA;2. http://www.awwwards.com/10-html-css-online-code-editors-for-web-developers.html&#xD;&#xA;3. Dabblet, Thimble, by Mozilla, jsFiddle, jsBin, Cloud9, CodeMirror, eXo Cloud IDE, CodeRun, Compilr, Codeanywhere, Kodingen, Google Developers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10717" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3991" RevisionGUID="f48739c5-06f8-49f8-b592-87702aa31e34" CreationDate="2012-09-07T12:09:54.360" UserId="31260" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="Best place to upload xml (for referring in this site)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10718" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3996" RevisionGUID="e758f58f-4a8e-4831-8a5c-28bf902e29d9" CreationDate="2012-09-07T12:11:48.063" UserId="25936" Comment="added 59 characters in body" Text="You are right that codereview.se is not appropriate for this kind of question.  From [their FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code from your project in the following areas…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would hardly call a bizarre workaround that you don't understand as working code and would be considered off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are genuinely concerned about solving the issue specifically then it would make sense for Stack Overflow. If however you have a question about driver workarounds in general or how they can affect your design then it would be appropriate for Programmers.  Asking Programmers for help with this specific problem would be off topic on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the end however, if you can see yourself having a lengthy discussion over a workaround in code then, it might not be a good fit for any site.  This is a Q&amp;A site and doesn't lend itself well to lengthy discussions and a lot of back and forth.  If this is the case for your specific question then it may be too overly broad or rhetorical to be answered well in this format.  In which case I would recommend you ask around in the chat rooms and see if anybody wants to discuss with you in there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10719" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3995" RevisionGUID="e6a889af-4f97-4576-b687-fa849f54989e" CreationDate="2012-09-07T13:11:21.773" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10720" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3997" RevisionGUID="b3e9e415-4cf4-49de-a001-c020587f0e3a" CreationDate="2012-09-07T13:11:34.643" UserId="25936" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10721" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3998" RevisionGUID="e67bfadf-6556-41f4-b7f7-69964cbb02fb" CreationDate="2012-09-07T13:11:34.643" UserId="25936" Text="Don't know where to ask your question on the Stack Exchange Network? Let's find out where it could land. Do give an example." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10722" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3991" RevisionGUID="5920fb8b-19cb-46a0-8fd6-b81b8a89a6fe" CreationDate="2012-09-07T13:11:47.637" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10723" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3993" RevisionGUID="a5f7e7fb-73ca-4db8-ba13-4b2ec55fe0b2" CreationDate="2012-09-07T13:11:53.813" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10724" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3981" RevisionGUID="58b4a458-3d56-4a21-a9c2-f38fd7ef0923" CreationDate="2012-09-07T13:12:10.850" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10725" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="3999" RevisionGUID="56fcf6b5-bc72-4d21-b6a2-710cf2055787" CreationDate="2012-09-07T14:52:39.413" UserId="41381" Text="Programmers is a conceptual site where there should be no need to refer to any large file for a question. If a question about WSDL files requires reference to a specific WSDL file its not conceptual any more, its an implementation issue which is off topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10726" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3999" RevisionGUID="1fec0e4e-b9a8-44c2-a8c9-244534645f46" CreationDate="2012-09-07T19:21:32.793" UserId="31260" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="Programmers is a conceptual site where there should be no need to refer to any large file for a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question about WSDL files requires reference to a specific WSDL file it's not conceptual any more, it's an implementation issue which is off topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10727" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4000" RevisionGUID="1b340c9f-b580-4d71-aa03-dbd36cb17361" CreationDate="2012-09-07T20:26:39.627" UserId="1996" Text="Circles would detract from the stackexchange experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First and foremost, it would alter voting patterns and the reputation system, and not in a good way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider [this complaint from a Hacker News user][1] about an HN anti-pattern:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I feel like there was a fast slide to content-free echo chamberism a while ago... Certain HN rockstars would receive hundreds of upvotes for the most minor of comments...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMO, Stackexchange Circles would fuel a similar trend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4488826" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10728" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4001" RevisionGUID="288bea65-8b83-49cc-a999-7762b9da5b0d" CreationDate="2012-09-08T04:03:58.773" UserId="63" Text="In the past 60 days, 76% of all questions from unregistered users have been either down-voted below 0, closed, deleted, or some combination of the three. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's a total of 182 questions, compared to 877 similarly bad questions from *registered* users. It's a relatively small number, but as a percentage of the total it's high enough that implementing #1 holds little risk - at worst, you'll lose maybe a question a day from someone too lazy to register. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I've turn on the registration requirement in order to ask questions here. Let's check back in a month or so and see if it's made any difference..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10729" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3951" RevisionGUID="eee0b05e-56c9-4909-a6a9-be25448675fc" CreationDate="2012-09-08T10:47:34.463" UserId="31260" Comment="update -  Registration requirement is turned on" Text="##Closure  rate 70% for unregistered users&#xD;&#xA;is an awful lot of trouble. In comparison, stats for registered users make one feel that simple act of registration has a magic effect of cutting half of it (to 38%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...We could do a **trial run** for a couple of months and evaluate the results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that requiring registration for questions can be cancelled if _trial run_ results turn out negative&lt;sup&gt; 1&lt;/sup&gt; above looks like a low risk test.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading, such a trial would fit the spirit of guidance provided in **[Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/ &quot;reference article at Stack Exchange blog&quot;)**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...we’re determined to keep question quality high, **even at the cost of refusing a little sand**. It’s true that you can’t have Q&amp;A without _questions_, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&amp;A site is to flood it with low-quality questions. I think [Mark Trapp](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/91808/about-new-downvote-policy-on-meta/91813#91813) summed it up best in [this meta answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/91808/about-new-downvote-policy-on-meta/91813#91813):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; To put it another way, when I go to a Stack Exchange home page, I see a **list of questions**. If most of those are terrible questions with little to no indication that I’d be wasting my time by reading them, the value proposition of visiting and participating is diminished: I have better things to do.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Compare that to _answers_ on a specific question: I’ve made a conscious choice to look into what I think is an interesting question. I already made the decision that the question is worth my time. If I find the answers to be useless, I have a few different options, as an interested party, to register my displeasure, including writing my own answer. Being able to write your own answer is key: if your answer is good enough, it’ll rise above the junk answers and everyone will be better off for it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; There is no such action for question lists. I can’t say “these questions suck, show me this question I just thought up instead”: that’d be silly. So, it’s imperative the question list have a high signal-to-noise ratio, and removing the penalty for those users who do take the time to read a question and later find it to be useless so they can down-vote is conducive to that. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Fundamentally, answers can be filtered in ways that questions cannot. While there is a tension between having “enough” questions and a bunch of amazing, highly skilled answerers twiddling their thumbs waiting around for something to do, in the long run we’d much rather err on the side of having _interesting_ and _on-topic_ questions for these folks to sink their teeth into.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&amp;A system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**. If this means aggressively downvoting or closing unworthy and uninteresting questions, so be it. Without a community of people willing to _answer_ questions, it really doesn’t matter if there are questions at all, does it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;_if trial run results turn out negative_ - (not incidentally,) above guidance also provides a criteria on how to judge trial run results: **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. As an **answerer** like one of mentioned above (5+ K rep on answers), I am not particularly happy about current questions quality, which I think is clearly indicated by 5+ K downvotes I cast. One thing I find particularly frustrating is that sometimes, after downvoting bad questions, I find myself out of votes that I would use to upvote good ones - this happens frequently enough to make me feel that better prevention of low quality questions is needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Registration requirement is turned on:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/LJAQh.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!--&#xD;&#xA;  tested by attempt to ask a question when not logged in&#xD;&#xA;  for comparison, made similar attempt at Workplace which did not require log in to ask&#xD;&#xA;--&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LJAQh.png &quot;'You must log in to ask a question'&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10730" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3951" RevisionGUID="09e6aae2-27a9-40c4-aa85-c647565d46e1" CreationDate="2012-09-08T10:56:32.857" UserId="31260" Comment="added 7 characters in body" Text="##Closure  rate 70% for unregistered users&#xD;&#xA;is an awful lot of trouble. In comparison, stats for registered users make one feel that simple act of registration has a magic effect of cutting half of it (to 38%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...We could do a **trial run** for a couple of months and evaluate the results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that requiring registration for questions can be cancelled if _trial run_ results turn out negative&lt;sup&gt; 1&lt;/sup&gt; above looks like a low risk test.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading, such a trial would fit the spirit of guidance provided in **[Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/ &quot;reference article at Stack Exchange blog&quot;)**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...we’re determined to keep question quality high, **even at the cost of refusing a little sand**. It’s true that you can’t have Q&amp;A without _questions_, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&amp;A site is to flood it with low-quality questions. I think [Mark Trapp](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/91808/about-new-downvote-policy-on-meta/91813#91813) summed it up best in [this meta answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/91808/about-new-downvote-policy-on-meta/91813#91813):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; To put it another way, when I go to a Stack Exchange home page, I see a **list of questions**. If most of those are terrible questions with little to no indication that I’d be wasting my time by reading them, the value proposition of visiting and participating is diminished: I have better things to do.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Compare that to _answers_ on a specific question: I’ve made a conscious choice to look into what I think is an interesting question. I already made the decision that the question is worth my time. If I find the answers to be useless, I have a few different options, as an interested party, to register my displeasure, including writing my own answer. Being able to write your own answer is key: if your answer is good enough, it’ll rise above the junk answers and everyone will be better off for it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; There is no such action for question lists. I can’t say “these questions suck, show me this question I just thought up instead”: that’d be silly. So, it’s imperative the question list have a high signal-to-noise ratio, and removing the penalty for those users who do take the time to read a question and later find it to be useless so they can down-vote is conducive to that. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Fundamentally, answers can be filtered in ways that questions cannot. While there is a tension between having “enough” questions and a bunch of amazing, highly skilled answerers twiddling their thumbs waiting around for something to do, in the long run we’d much rather err on the side of having _interesting_ and _on-topic_ questions for these folks to sink their teeth into.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&amp;A system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**. If this means aggressively downvoting or closing unworthy and uninteresting questions, so be it. Without a community of people willing to _answer_ questions, it really doesn’t matter if there are questions at all, does it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;_if trial run results turn out negative_ - (not incidentally,) above guidance also provides a criteria on how to judge trial run results: **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. As an **answerer** like one of mentioned above (5+ K rep on answers), I am not particularly happy about current questions quality, which I think is clearly indicated by 5+ K downvotes I cast. One thing I find particularly frustrating is that sometimes, after downvoting bad questions, I find myself out of votes that I would use to upvote good ones - this happens frequently enough to make me feel that better prevention of low quality questions is needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Registration requirement is turned on:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/LJAQh.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!--&#xD;&#xA;  tested by attempt to ask a question when not logged in&#xD;&#xA;  for comparison, made similar attempt at Workplace which did not require log in to ask&#xD;&#xA;--&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LJAQh.png &quot;'You must log in to ask a question'&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10731" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4000" RevisionGUID="b3af1681-3c36-452a-8fd0-58e9e0324405" CreationDate="2012-09-08T11:28:05.443" UserId="31260" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="Circles would detract from the Stack Exchange experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First and foremost, it would alter voting patterns and the reputation system, and not in a good way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider [this complaint from a Hacker News user][1] about an HN anti-pattern:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I feel like there was a fast slide to content-free echo chamberism a while ago... Certain HN rockstars would receive hundreds of upvotes for the most minor of comments...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMO, Stackexchange Circles would fuel a similar trend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4488826" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10732" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3947" RevisionGUID="3a4b5682-24a2-4947-ae58-7531ba260de7" CreationDate="2012-09-08T12:58:06.723" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|status-completed|closed-questions|unregistered-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10733" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3996" RevisionGUID="0a73dbf5-a289-47ce-b1a9-ef2c0075793a" CreationDate="2012-09-08T16:09:36.217" UserId="25936" Comment="sorry, OCD kicked in" Text="You are right that Code Review Stack Exchange is not appropriate for this kind of question.  From [their FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code from your project in the following areas…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Best practices and design pattern usage&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Security issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Correctness in unanticipated cases&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; then you are in the right place!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would hardly call a bizarre workaround that you don't understand as working code and would be considered off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are genuinely concerned about solving the issue specifically then it would make sense for Stack Overflow. If however you have a question about driver workarounds in general or how they can affect your design then it would be appropriate for Programmers.  Asking Programmers for help with this specific problem would be off topic on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the end however, if you can see yourself having a lengthy discussion over a workaround in code then, it might not be a good fit for any site. This is a Q&amp;A site and doesn't lend itself well to lengthy discussions and a lot of back and forth. If this is the case for your specific question then it may be too overly broad or rhetorical to be answered well in this format.  In which case I would recommend you ask around in the chat rooms and see if anybody wants to discuss with you in there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10734" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4002" RevisionGUID="6b957587-4c9b-4948-835b-66643bafae55" CreationDate="2012-09-08T20:10:04.560" UserId="4767" Text="[Book (or resource) on Java bytecode][1] was recently asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I voted to close immediately, without really reading (or understanding) much of of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should questions that request resources get automatic close votes from members such as myself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/164204/4767" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10735" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4002" RevisionGUID="6b957587-4c9b-4948-835b-66643bafae55" CreationDate="2012-09-08T20:10:04.560" UserId="4767" Text="Resource questions - automatic close?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10736" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4002" RevisionGUID="6b957587-4c9b-4948-835b-66643bafae55" CreationDate="2012-09-08T20:10:04.560" UserId="4767" Text="|discussion|questions|vote-to-close|etiquette|resource-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10737" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4003" RevisionGUID="60d66ad1-e1af-4aa8-9333-36b17fc1543d" CreationDate="2012-09-08T21:07:06.190" UserId="1996" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43409/dealing-with-engineers-that-frequently-leave-their-jobs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's true. This question does not meet the core criteria for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it generated some fantastic answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we please lock this question so that others may learn from it too?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10738" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4003" RevisionGUID="60d66ad1-e1af-4aa8-9333-36b17fc1543d" CreationDate="2012-09-08T21:07:06.190" UserId="1996" Text="Can we please lock this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10739" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4003" RevisionGUID="60d66ad1-e1af-4aa8-9333-36b17fc1543d" CreationDate="2012-09-08T21:07:06.190" UserId="1996" Text="|discussion|specific-question|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10740" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4004" RevisionGUID="890d7f2d-135f-4a10-bd4d-9febf198ce1b" CreationDate="2012-09-08T21:54:39.757" UserId="25936" Text="The question doesn't really qualify for the [historical lock][1] (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions can be historically locked when:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **The post is contentious; i.e. it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question remains closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - There is a risk of it being deleted at some later point. We rarely delete highly upvoted questions without very good reason, however I can't promise that three 10K+ users or a fellow moderator won't vote to delete it.&#xD;&#xA; - It and its answers are still editable and can be voted on (including re-open votes for the question)&#xD;&#xA; - It appears in site searches.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question gets a historical lock:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It will be frozen as is, no more edits or (any kind of) votes.&#xD;&#xA; - It won't appear in site searches, and will only be accessible via its url. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The historical lock is more intended for questions that are already deleted or, for whatever reason, are very close to being deleted. For example if we where doing an organized cleanup, similar to [meta-tag:stci] and we were targeting [tag:project-management] questions, then yes, it would make sense to lock it. But right now the question isn't really on a path to deletion, or if you prefer that path is extremely long, it already survived [meta-tag:stci] (check [revision 5][2]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't mind locking it, the whole process is just a click of a button really, but given that one of its answers was edited earlier today, and the question has a pending re-open vote, it seems that its current state is preferable. Is there a very specific reason we should froze it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/43409/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10741" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="4002" RevisionGUID="955c585d-af87-4a92-9c1e-0e63d391f98d" CreationDate="2012-09-09T12:01:09.627" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/244767396307537920" />
  <row Id="10742" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4005" RevisionGUID="f320730e-ba48-4007-bd61-79c1230ad374" CreationDate="2012-09-09T14:33:06.397" UserId="1130" Text="No, they should not get automatic close votes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per the meta FAQ question [Are book recommendations on-topic?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would say that like &quot;what language should I learn&quot; questions,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions that effectively ask for a list of books on X should be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, like programming language questions, if you have specialised&#xD;&#xA;&gt; requirements (you want to go into LINQ, or networking, or.. in great&#xD;&#xA;&gt; depth) then perhaps those should be allowed. They should inspire&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers that explain why a book is good for this topic and shouldn't&#xD;&#xA;&gt; just produce a list of everyone's favourite.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; So - in short - if your question will produce a list of everyone's&#xD;&#xA;&gt; favourite book - don't post, but if it will elicit the title of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; book on a topic then go for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So use your brain when downvoting and voting to close. Don't just see the word &quot;book&quot; and take some automatic action. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If SE wanted some kind of automatic system, they'd implement one. But they don't. They want community members to actually evaluate the contents of a question and use their brain to decide if a question is suitable for their site or not, and downvoting or voting to close based on that. Automatic downvotes/closure votes will do more harm than good in the long run if valid questions start getting downvoted and closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2003/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10743" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="4006" RevisionGUID="c38e1453-0ab4-4b2d-9dde-a291cd0fd4be" CreationDate="2012-09-09T18:41:50.573" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164243/can-we-ask-idea-of-software" Text="" />
  <row Id="10744" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="4007" RevisionGUID="87dbad45-87f9-40c6-b91b-c4c153ca5cc1" CreationDate="2012-09-09T18:41:50.573" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164243/can-we-ask-idea-of-software/164247#164247" Text="" />
  <row Id="10745" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4007" RevisionGUID="788939fa-bec7-4dae-8950-50b8858b9b85" CreationDate="2012-09-09T12:44:11.340" UserId="34148" Text="You need to know what is expected of the system and what are the project resources before you begin. You should check if the company has a business analyst or system analyst who is usually tasked with front end analysis of requirements. If you end up being the one to do that,  get a person (or more) from the customer's side assigned to your project. This person should be able to answer questions about the project goals, objectives, business rules, processes, flow of steps in a process etc. You then need to establish basic requirements using the common requirements gathering techniques. Whether you end up usng WPF or another technology is not the matter at this stage. You should not begin work on something you don't understand about. You should ask the right people who are assigned by management to answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10746" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4006" RevisionGUID="22f8a382-9db8-46f9-9127-df7df48fb62b" CreationDate="2012-09-09T12:01:12.577" UserId="62236" Text="I am new to Programmers Stack Exchange. I have read the faq. I have a basic question here that can I ask about the idea of developing software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just for sake of example, I have started a job in software house and my CEO hands me a project. And I have no idea or flow chart in my mind through which I would develop that application. For example client needs an E-diary. I have idea of `WPF` but lacking flow of app.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question is can I ask about the app that &quot;what would be the idea to develop the application&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10747" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4006" RevisionGUID="22f8a382-9db8-46f9-9127-df7df48fb62b" CreationDate="2012-09-09T12:01:12.577" UserId="62236" Text="Can we ask idea of software?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10748" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4006" RevisionGUID="22f8a382-9db8-46f9-9127-df7df48fb62b" CreationDate="2012-09-09T12:01:12.577" UserId="62236" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10749" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="4008" RevisionGUID="fbc9846f-8842-4be8-97f9-766c18223c96" CreationDate="2012-09-09T18:41:50.573" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164243/can-we-ask-idea-of-software/164248#164248" Text="" />
  <row Id="10750" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4008" RevisionGUID="8cfaa19d-8644-4d8f-97aa-9f4378a9825c" CreationDate="2012-09-09T12:47:12.923" UserId="31828" Text="Begin by gathering requirements. Entire books have been written on the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Agile development][1], [test driven][2], Minimum Viable Product are some of the tricks of the trade. There are many more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are standing on the rocky precipice of the trade of software development. It's a long way down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good luck!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10751" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="4009" RevisionGUID="ed47a96d-be15-421f-90b4-10e9c3ab52c2" CreationDate="2012-09-10T14:10:26.590" UserId="-1" Comment="from https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/146535/programmers-stack-exchange-question-downvoting-what-to-do" Text="" />
  <row Id="10752" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4009" RevisionGUID="57a51b73-83bc-48fe-96b7-8d978c9d057c" CreationDate="2012-09-10T13:56:19.360" UserId="35276" UserDisplayName="Jimmy Hoffa" Text="I've taken a shine to the Programmers Stack Exchange lately, but one thing I've noticed is it seems to have what I think anybody looking at the questions list would classify as excessive down voting of questions (not answers, the answers seem to get fairly normative treatment from what I've seen)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My questions are I guess: Can anybody say why? Can anybody propose a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel like there are a lot of questions which are programming related and have distinct answers which are voted down because they may not be very high level, or sometimes confusion among the poster leads people to downvote instead of commenting/editing to guide the question to make more sense. Again I ask, does anyone have ideas about what can be done to help solve this? Feel free to comment if your assessment of programmers is that the level of downvoting is completely applicable based on the questions being asked, perhaps I am giving the questioners too much credit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would very much like to hear from the moderators there on their opinions as well as any frequent participants." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10753" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4009" RevisionGUID="57a51b73-83bc-48fe-96b7-8d978c9d057c" CreationDate="2012-09-10T13:56:19.360" UserId="35276" UserDisplayName="Jimmy Hoffa" Text="Programmers Stack Exchange question downvoting, what to do?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10754" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4009" RevisionGUID="57a51b73-83bc-48fe-96b7-8d978c9d057c" CreationDate="2012-09-10T13:56:19.360" UserId="35276" UserDisplayName="Jimmy Hoffa" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10755" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4009" RevisionGUID="7d2873bb-867d-49e2-ad08-1cb463a841a9" CreationDate="2012-09-10T14:29:53.807" UserId="35276" Comment="added 875 characters in body" Text="I've taken a shine to the Programmers Stack Exchange lately, but one thing I've noticed is it seems to have what I think anybody looking at the questions list would classify as excessive down voting of questions (not answers, the answers seem to get fairly normative treatment from what I've seen)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My questions are I guess: Can anybody say why? Can anybody propose a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel like there are a lot of questions which are programming related and have distinct answers which are voted down because they may not be very high level, or sometimes confusion among the poster leads people to downvote instead of commenting/editing to guide the question to make more sense. Again I ask, does anyone have ideas about what can be done to help solve this? Feel free to comment if your assessment of programmers is that the level of downvoting is completely applicable based on the questions being asked, perhaps I am giving the questioners too much credit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would very much like to hear from the moderators there on their opinions as well as any frequent participants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:&#xD;&#xA;Just a few quick ones to give examples of the things I'm seeing:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164353/when-we-say-a-method-is-overloaded-overridden I grant the english seems broken, but it is a language agnostic question about a software concept. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164342/which-design-pattern-to-use-when-using-orm Again it has specifics but those are for the background, the question itself is about design patterns in relation to ORM tools which is a generalized design question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's just off hand right now, perhaps the downvotes are correct though. Again I am asking what we might do to get less downvoting, perhaps that means increasing question quality, to which I submit this request for ideas to that ends? Is there perhaps a way to put the FAQ more directly in front of people before they ask on there?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10756" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4009" RevisionGUID="f72b40f3-ed63-4e73-99da-25bd6a78938b" CreationDate="2012-09-10T14:43:07.867" UserId="31260" Comment="added 2 characters in body; edited tags" Text="I've taken a shine to the Programmers Stack Exchange lately, but one thing I've noticed is it seems to have what I think anybody looking at the questions list would classify as excessive down voting of questions (not answers, the answers seem to get fairly normative treatment from what I've seen)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My questions are I guess: Can anybody say why? Can anybody propose a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel like there are a lot of questions which are programming related and have distinct answers which are voted down because they may not be very high level, or sometimes confusion among the poster leads people to downvote instead of commenting/editing to guide the question to make more sense. Again I ask, does anyone have ideas about what can be done to help solve this? Feel free to comment if your assessment of programmers is that the level of downvoting is completely applicable based on the questions being asked, perhaps I am giving the questioners too much credit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would very much like to hear from the moderators there on their opinions as well as any frequent participants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:  &#xD;&#xA;Just a few quick ones to give examples of the things I'm seeing:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164353/when-we-say-a-method-is-overloaded-overridden I grant the english seems broken, but it is a language agnostic question about a software concept. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164342/which-design-pattern-to-use-when-using-orm Again it has specifics but those are for the background, the question itself is about design patterns in relation to ORM tools which is a generalized design question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's just off hand right now, perhaps the downvotes are correct though. Again I am asking what we might do to get less downvoting, perhaps that means increasing question quality, to which I submit this request for ideas to that ends? Is there perhaps a way to put the FAQ more directly in front of people before they ask on there?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10757" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4009" RevisionGUID="f72b40f3-ed63-4e73-99da-25bd6a78938b" CreationDate="2012-09-10T14:43:07.867" UserId="31260" Comment="added 2 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10758" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4010" RevisionGUID="9b2de7df-999b-41cd-aa1b-683bb0015286" CreationDate="2012-09-10T15:12:30.433" UserId="1458" Text="[Programmers has one of the highest average score on questions of all sites.](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/78555/average-post-score-on-all-sites) Out of 34 launched sites (I'm excluding metas), only Skeptics, RPG, SF&amp;F and CSTheory have a higher average. If you count the [average number of votes](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/78561/average-number-of-votes-on-all-sites) (this query conflates questions and answers), Programmers comes 4th after Skeptics, CSTheory and SF&amp;F. If you only count downvotes, Programmers comes 3rd after Skeptics and CSTheory. Programmers's downvote/upvote ratio (again, conflating questions and answers) is 0.059, rank 22 out of 34.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So Programmers votes a lot, both up and down. It isn't . The downvoting you're observing is perfectly normal, in statistical terms. There is definitely no “excessive downvoting”.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10759" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4011" RevisionGUID="13d5c9f3-bda9-4b9c-b49c-5ecf9fa29b14" CreationDate="2012-09-10T16:39:13.007" UserId="1130" Text="I think I can identify some of the reasons why&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The site scope has changed dramatically from what it originally was supposed to be](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130). A lot of users (particularly on SO) will refer people here to ask their questions, not realizing that the question would no longer be on-topic for the site. This leads to a lot of questions getting asked that the community views as off-topic, or &quot;bad&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* There seems to be a lot of confusion over what is on/off topic on here by new users, and older users have gotten tired of explaining the same thing repeatedly. This leads to them just downvoting and moving on instead of repeating the same explanation they just gave on another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Some close votes give an automatic downvote, and we get many close votes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Question downvotes don't cost anything, so people are quite willing to vote questions down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Downvoting seems to be encouraged on meta and in chat&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I watch meta and chat a lot, and I see a lot of users promoting downvoting, or [bragging about their downvote record](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3136/are-we-going-down-hill#comment8011_3139). Downvotes are often recommended when someone asks about what can be done about low quality questions, although I've also seen it recommended as [a way to push questions off the front page too](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3779/1130).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Some active users just see a few key words or phrases, (such as &quot;Books&quot; or &quot;What's the best...&quot;) and automatically downvote and vote to close without actually reading the question. For example, see [this meta question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/4002/1130).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can be done about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some users don't actually view the number of downvotes as a problem. [Others do][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think its a problem, but I'm honestly not sure what one person alone can do about it. Most solutions I can think of would require either a community effort, or for SE to step in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few things I can think of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* To fix the number of downvotes we see, we really need to fix the quality of questions that get asked. The easy solution is to make new users understand the site scope better. The not-so-easy part is figuring out how. If you have any ideas, feel free to post them here: [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3551/1130)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I know I've suggested this many times and SE has denied it, but one thing I think would help would be to [rename the site to match it's scope, or change the scope to match the site name](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* When promoting downvotes on meta, make sure to include instructions to leave a comment about why you're downvoting. Sure users don't have to follow it, but the guideline will be there for users that are only trying to &quot;do the right thing&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Promote the SE app which lets you [automatically insert generic comments](http://stackapps.com/questions/2116/autoreviewcomments-pro-forma-comments-for-se). If you find yourself downvoting a lot and being tired of leaving the same comments, I'd suggest checking out this SE app which lets you quickly and easily add generic comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* This only applies to a few users (you know who you are), but stop bragging about the # of downvotes you have. You shouldn't be proud of the fact you have contributed more negative votes than positive ones to your site. You guys are high rep users of the site, and people will look up to you and try to follow your example. Downvoting can be good, but I feel your attitude about it takes it to an unhealthy level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Probably not a good solution, but SE could make question downvoting cost -1 again. I'm pretty sure SE removed the -1 downvote cost in the first place because they didn't want people to be hesitant in downvoting questions over 1 reputation, so I don't think this will happen and probably wouldn't be a good solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2727/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10760" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4011" RevisionGUID="d29ff538-7a56-444b-a652-8d37c2829c37" CreationDate="2012-09-10T16:44:18.557" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo correction" Text="I think I can identify some of the reasons why&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The site scope has changed dramatically from what it originally was supposed to be](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130). A lot of users (particularly on SO) will refer people here to ask their questions, not realizing that the question would no longer be on-topic for the site. This leads to a lot of questions getting asked that the community views as off-topic, or &quot;bad&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* There seems to be a lot of confusion over what is on/off topic on here by new users, and older users have gotten tired of explaining the same thing repeatedly. This leads to them just downvoting and moving on instead of repeating the same explanation they just gave on another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Some close votes give an automatic downvote, and we get many close votes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Question downvotes don't cost anything, so people are quite willing to vote questions down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Downvoting seems to be encouraged on meta and in chat&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I watch meta and chat a lot, and I see a lot of users promoting downvoting, or [bragging about their downvote record](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3136/are-we-going-down-hill#comment8011_3139). Downvotes are often recommended when someone asks about what can be done about low quality questions, although I've also seen it recommended as [a way to push questions off the front page too](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3779/1130).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Some active users just see a few key words or phrases, (such as &quot;Books&quot; or &quot;What's the best...&quot;) and automatically downvote and vote to close without actually reading the question. For example, see [this meta question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/4002/1130).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can be done about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some users don't actually view the number of downvotes as a problem. [Others do][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think it's a problem, but I'm honestly not sure what one person alone can do about it. Most solutions I can think of would require either a community effort, or for SE to step in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few things I can think of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* To fix the number of downvotes we see, we really need to fix the quality of questions that get asked. The easy solution is to make new users understand the site scope better. The not-so-easy part is figuring out how. If you have any ideas, feel free to post them here: [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3551/1130)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I know I've suggested this many times and SE has denied it, but one thing I think would help would be to [rename the site to match it's scope, or change the scope to match the site name](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* When promoting downvotes on meta, make sure to include instructions to leave a comment about why you're downvoting. Sure users don't have to follow it, but the guideline will be there for users that are only trying to &quot;do the right thing&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Promote the SE app which lets you [automatically insert generic comments](http://stackapps.com/questions/2116/autoreviewcomments-pro-forma-comments-for-se). If you find yourself downvoting a lot and being tired of leaving the same comments, I'd suggest checking out this SE app which lets you quickly and easily add generic comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* This only applies to a few users (you know who you are), but stop bragging about the # of downvotes you have. You shouldn't be proud of the fact you have contributed more negative votes than positive ones to your site. You guys are high rep users of the site, and people will look up to you and try to follow your example. Downvoting can be good, but I feel your attitude about it takes it to an unhealthy level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Probably not a good solution, but SE could make question downvoting cost -1 again. I'm pretty sure SE removed the -1 downvote cost in the first place because they didn't want people to be hesitant in downvoting questions over 1 reputation, so I don't think this will happen and probably wouldn't be a good solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2727/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10761" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4010" RevisionGUID="953f3966-43e3-48e9-918d-711b42aabfca" CreationDate="2012-09-10T17:10:49.727" UserId="1458" Comment="revised statistics to take vote dates into account; analyze the two example questions" Text="# Part 1: statistics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Skipping over the lies and damn lines)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Programmers has one of the highest all-time average score on questions of all sites.](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/78555/average-post-score-on-all-sites) Out of 34 launched sites (I'm excluding metas), only Skeptics, RPG, SF&amp;F and CSTheory have a higher average. If you count the [all-time average number of votes](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/78561/average-number-of-votes-on-all-sites) (this query conflates questions and answers), Programmers comes 4th after Skeptics, CSTheory and SF&amp;F. If you only count downvotes, Programmers comes 3rd after Skeptics and CSTheory. Programmers's all-time downvote/upvote ratio (again, conflating questions and answers) is 5.6%, rank 22 out of 34.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [recent trend](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/79468/average-number-of-recent-votes-on-all-sites) is different, however. If you only [count votes cast in 2012](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/79468/average-number-of-recent-votes-on-all-sites?OldestVoteDate=2012-01-01), then Programmers's voting amount is average, and it has the second-highest proportion of downvotes at 12.7%. Looking at [monthly trends](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/79471/vote-repartition-by-month), the proportion of downvotes has been steadily increasing during the lifetime of the site. (Note that entries before 2010-09-01 are solely made of votes on questions migrated from SO, cast on SO before the migration.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's normal to see more recent downvotes, because the total number of downvotes includes those on highly-downvoted posts that eventually get deleted. For example, [Wordpress](http://data.stackexchange.com/wordpress/query/79471/vote-repartition-by-month) (the site with the highest proportion of downvotes in 2012) has a recorded proportion of downvotes of over 30% in the last two months for which there are statistics, against 6% to 10% in previous months — I think deletion of old crap accounts for the disappearance of many downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I retract my initial analysis that Programmers isn't an outlier: while it is not an extreme case, there has been a rather large proportion of downvotes recently. The increase is more marked than on other sites with a large proportion of downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure how to interpret these statistics. SEDE data includes only the posts that weren't deleted as of 2012-06-27. Does this mean that, as of the last SEDE data dump, Programmers had been lax in deleting old crap (where crap is defined by having had downvotes)? Or have there really been more downvotes and fewer upvotes? It would be interesting to see similar statistics taking deleted posts into account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the large proportion of recent downvotes is not just an artifact of deletion dates, the next question is the interpretation. You force an interpretation in your question by speaking of “excessive downvoting”. Is there really excessive downvoting? Or is the downvoting a reflection on the quality of incoming questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first step of finding a solution is finding what the problem is. Too many downvotes? Not enough upvotes? Too many bad posts requiring downvoting? Not enough deletion (and perhaps not enough closure) of downvoted questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Part 2: anecdotes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You cite two questions. Let me have a look at them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164342/which-design-pattern-to-use-when-using-orm — score as I write: +1/-2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Web and database applications are far from my expertise, but I have a hard time believing that this question is interesting and useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    The scenario is: “I am writing a small ASP.NET Web Forms application. (…) I want to use PetaPoco micro-ORM.” Uh, ok, so what will this application be doing? Is this something that has to be rock-solid by the time it's deployed, or something that's going to be continually evolving?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    The question is: “Do I still need several class library projects to separate the concerns?” That's a very broad design question. With such an unclear scenario, it's hard to give a generic answer to such a broad question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Furthermore, the question does not have any redeeming value of being important. If the initial decision on the breakdown in wrong, for a “small” project, refactoring isn't going to cost much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164353/whats-the-difference-between-overloading-a-method-and-overriding-it — score as I write: +3/-0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    It would help your complaint against downvotes if all the examples were actually downvoted. Presumably there was a downvote on the initial question, which was written in barely-comprehensible English.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Downvoting a post where the poster has made no effort at making himself understood is perfectly legitimate (“is unclear” in the downvote tooltip). We aren't just talking about grammatical mistakes here, there's a marked lack of effort. There's one single sentence here, followed by a few related words. It's not clear what is asked; I'm not convinced that the edit respects the original meaning of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Setting aside the presentation, the other thing that makes this question a candidate for downvoting is that it “does not show an research effort”. Here's how a good question might look like: “I read about overloading and overriding in this book/this blog post/…. I understand that this example [code] demonstrates overloading and this example [code] demonstrates overriding. But I don't understand why this example [code] is overloading. The author claims without explanation, but I think it is overriding because [explanation]. Why is that last example overloading?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my provisional conclusion is that there is no problem with good questions being downvoted. There are mediocre questions that are downvoted, which is as it should be. If you think that's the case, give examples of *good* questions that have downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10762" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4012" RevisionGUID="5a1dcd02-be3a-4c96-9cc8-6bfe5fe57759" CreationDate="2012-09-10T18:55:13.483" UserId="51770" Text="The downvote arrow tooltip says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Latest questions with negative score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Where can I get practice questions?][1] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No research effort, tick! Unclear, tick! Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Apple Developer Enterprise Program?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't know what this one is about. Skip!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Relocation to USA or Germany][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone please delete this. Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Is “Application Programming Interface” a bad name?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At first I thought the OP was quoting a reputable source, then I realized he's quoting himself, so there's no actual research effort. There might be, but I'm not going to read his blog to find out. Would have downvoted if this one was at 0 or -1, skipping it now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Agile Unified Process][5] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No research effort, tick! Pointless question, tick! Downvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Which design pattern to use when using ORM?][6] (one of your examples)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Extremely broad, unanswerable, uninteresting. Useful to anyone but the OP? No! Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Learn WinRT or Unity 3d?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What the hell is this I don't even... Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Good practices for large scale development/delivery of software][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meh. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Learning iPhone Development][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Which are the basic steps for learning Iphone development?` Ah, Google must be broken for this guy! Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [CSS/JS frameworks for Android Holo UI][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Android Holo UI _might_ be a specific enough parameters for this one to not be yet another &quot;pick for me, please&quot; question. Meh. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Applying for MS CS with an un-related Bachelor's Degree][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meh. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [How to select li range and move them inside div][12] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flagged for deletion. OP posted an off topic question here by mistake, a moderator explained why it's off topic and had to be closed, OP seems to have understood why his question is off topic. No point in keeping this around anymore. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Can jQuery be used server side?][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Profoundly confused question, OP doesn't seem to have even visited jQuery's website once. No research effort, tick! Unclear, tick! Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Video Lectures for the book “Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective”][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't even... Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Fitting it together, database, reporting, applications in C#][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too long to read. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Finding work as a college student][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too long to read. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't agree with you there's a problem. I'm very new around here, but I can tell you that one of the things that lured me in was [the &quot;promise&quot; that this site is about &quot;professional programmers&quot;][17]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for **professional programmers** who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've even written about this, [on a different but related Meta discussion][18]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers is not supposed to be a beginners site, and a lot of closed questions come from beginners. I don't think there is anything we can do here it is only natural that the site will have more closed questions than others. I like the advanced aspect of the site, and the work that is being done in the disciplined aspect of it, questions like this one should be the norm not the exception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a newer user, representing no one but myself, this is what I have to say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I _rarely_ upvote a negatively scored question. Not because I go with the flow, but because usually I find the negative score justified.&#xD;&#xA; - I like it that Programmers is trying to be a bit more disciplined than other sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am _not_ a professional programmer, bit young for that, but I have learned a lot since the first day I've joined the site. One of the more important lessons: A professional environment is tough, and it takes skills to survive in it. The scrutiny poorly researched questions face has made me a far better researcher, to the point that I now find 99% of the answers I'm looking for on Stack Overflow or Programmers just by searching.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps you want more of a &quot;let's all hold hands and pat ourselves in the back&quot; kind of site. I don't see anything wrong with that, but it wouldn't be *a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll close with [Gilles' conclusion][19], with which I agree 100%:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So my provisional conclusion is that there is no problem with good questions being downvoted. There are mediocre questions that are downvoted, which is as it should be. If you think that's the case, give examples of good questions that have downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164376/where-can-i-get-practice-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164370/apple-developer-enterprise-program&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164368/relocation-to-usa-or-germany&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/164365/51770&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164355/agile-unified-process&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164342/which-design-pattern-to-use-when-using-orm&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164326/learn-winrt-or-unity-3d&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164324/good-practices-for-large-scale-development-delivery-of-software&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164315/learning-iphone-development&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164311/css-js-frameworks-for-android-holo-ui&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164310/applying-for-ms-cs-with-an-un-related-bachelors-degree&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164298/how-to-select-li-range-and-move-them-inside-div&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164292/can-jquery-be-used-server-side&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164288/video-lectures-for-the-book-computer-systems-a-programmers-perspective&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164285/fitting-it-together-database-reporting-applications-in-c&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164274/finding-work-as-a-college-student&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3561/51770&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/4010/51770" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10763" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="4013" RevisionGUID="d74c1b09-2cbe-4a32-bab7-f20a572f95b3" CreationDate="2012-09-10T21:04:11.893" UserId="-1" Comment="from https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/146581/where-did-pierre-303-go-he-was-an-all-star" Text="" />
  <row Id="10764" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4013" RevisionGUID="a9fce1aa-3bc0-414d-b54e-61c522918258" CreationDate="2012-09-10T21:02:33.750" UserId="1996" Text="@Rachel just pointed it out this morning. [Pierre 303's account is gone!][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What happened to him? Was he at odds with the way stackexchange was being run?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He was an all-star! The departure of a user of his caliber is a significant loss for this community!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anyone explain?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/6092021#6092021" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10765" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4013" RevisionGUID="a9fce1aa-3bc0-414d-b54e-61c522918258" CreationDate="2012-09-10T21:02:33.750" UserId="1996" Text="Where did Pierre 303 go? He was an all-star!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10766" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4013" RevisionGUID="a9fce1aa-3bc0-414d-b54e-61c522918258" CreationDate="2012-09-10T21:02:33.750" UserId="1996" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10767" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4014" RevisionGUID="4cea75c9-42c2-449f-80d7-0f9e2c176e6c" CreationDate="2012-09-10T21:07:50.387" UserId="226" Text="Pierre contacted us and asked us to remove his Stack Exchange accounts. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;His reasons are his own, and unfortunately we weren't able to convince him to reconsider.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;His questions and answers here on Programmers were (and are - they're still around) valuable, and while I'm personally sad to see Pierre leave, I'm happy that he was around and shared his expertise with us for as long as he did." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10768" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4013" RevisionGUID="cf92d44c-3e6f-4eb9-a3e2-2354bf12486c" CreationDate="2012-09-10T21:33:07.460" UserId="31260" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="@Rachel just pointed it out this morning. [Pierre 303's account is gone!][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What happened to him? Was he at odds with the way Stack Exchange was being run?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He was an all-star! The departure of a user of his caliber is a significant loss for this community!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anyone explain?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/6092021#6092021" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10769" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4013" RevisionGUID="88c88985-7fae-4ce9-9347-e060a9e5906a" CreationDate="2012-09-10T22:07:27.873" UserId="31260" Comment="added 173 characters in body" Text="@Rachel just pointed it out this morning. [Pierre 303's account is gone!][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What happened to him? Was he at odds with the way Stack Exchange was being run?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He was an all-star! The departure of a user of his caliber is a significant loss for this community!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anyone explain?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Usogf.png][2]][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/6092021#6092021&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Usogf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3914/31260 &quot;who's Pierre?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10770" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4013" RevisionGUID="1ed581db-ea48-4069-b431-ac0708fdfece" CreationDate="2012-09-11T00:14:33.950" UserId="1996" Comment="added 91 characters in body" Text="@Rachel just pointed it out this morning. [Pierre 303's account is gone!][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What happened to him? Was he at odds with the way Stack Exchange was being run?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He was an all-star! The departure of a user of his caliber is a significant loss for this community!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anyone explain?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** If Pierre chooses to come back in a year, can we simply undelete his account?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Usogf.png][2]][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/6092021#6092021&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Usogf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3914/31260 &quot;who's Pierre?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10771" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4015" RevisionGUID="3cdede11-4ddf-494a-99eb-ac9e575d22b7" CreationDate="2012-09-11T09:17:48.570" UserId="62330" Text="I've not found this asked, so apologies if I've missed it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it appropriate to link to web copies of commercial documents, where the publishing of that document is breaching copyright or licensing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By way of example, in [this thread][1] PeterK has linked to [a university copy of ISO12207][2] (the document includes the statement `Single user licence only, copying and networking prohibited`)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I appreciate that the WWW is a bit wild-west at times, but surely we should be upholding copyright and/or licence restrictions in our Q&amp;A?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164359/how-come-verification-does-not-include-actual-testing&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.math.unipd.it/~tullio/IS-1/2009/Approfondimenti/ISO_12207-2008.pdf" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10772" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4015" RevisionGUID="3cdede11-4ddf-494a-99eb-ac9e575d22b7" CreationDate="2012-09-11T09:17:48.570" UserId="62330" Text="Is it appropriate to link to &quot;unofficial&quot; web copies of commercial documents" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10773" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4015" RevisionGUID="3cdede11-4ddf-494a-99eb-ac9e575d22b7" CreationDate="2012-09-11T09:17:48.570" UserId="62330" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10774" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4016" RevisionGUID="6a7bd6ab-1971-4af8-abff-0c4334d9c6e6" CreationDate="2012-09-11T09:20:48.477" UserId="47" Text="No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We should respect the copyright of the original documents. This includes not copying and linking to the official sources rather than something &quot;unofficial&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If nothing else the official link is likely to be more stable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The documentation should also be **summarised** in the answer so that if the link does go dark we still have a useful answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10775" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4015" RevisionGUID="5dfa3f2b-8fae-4386-8c33-020ff424a5be" CreationDate="2012-09-11T09:50:23.263" UserId="31260" Comment="edited body" Text="I've not found this asked, so apologies if I've missed it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it appropriate to link to web copies of commercial documents, where the publishing of that document is breaching copyright or licensing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By way of example, in [this thread][1] PeterK has linked to [a university copy of ISO12207][2] (the document includes the statement `Single user license only, copying and networking prohibited`)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I appreciate that the WWW is a bit wild-west at times, but surely we should be upholding copyright and/or license restrictions in our Q&amp;A?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164359/how-come-verification-does-not-include-actual-testing&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.math.unipd.it/~tullio/IS-1/2009/Approfondimenti/ISO_12207-2008.pdf" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10776" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4015" RevisionGUID="8ba8f0e3-c250-4109-94ea-753493565053" CreationDate="2012-09-11T10:12:15.610" UserId="2234" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|copyright|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10777" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4017" RevisionGUID="80658f38-a5be-47ab-b80b-077feff5fee2" CreationDate="2012-09-11T12:38:49.010" UserId="41381" Text="Programmers gets a lot of crap, down-votes and close votes are are how crap is dealt with. We try to avoid letting crap stay too long here, not all sites are like this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those of you that think down votes are too prevalent go out there and up vote the good stuff, quit trying to defend the indefensible. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10778" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4015" RevisionGUID="8db361d4-e219-45f7-b484-8a0aa1a6b2ef" CreationDate="2012-09-11T13:07:49.850" UserId="62330" Comment="Update" Text="I've not found this asked, so apologies if I've missed it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it appropriate to link to web copies of commercial documents, where the publishing of that document is breaching copyright or licensing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By way of example, in [this thread][1] PeterK has linked to [a university copy of ISO12207][2] (the document includes the statement `Single user license only, copying and networking prohibited`)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I appreciate that the WWW is a bit wild-west at times, but surely we should be upholding copyright and/or license restrictions in our Q&amp;A?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Updated: naughty link in referenced post now deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164359/how-come-verification-does-not-include-actual-testing&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.math.unipd.it/~tullio/IS-1/2009/Approfondimenti/ISO_12207-2008.pdf" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10779" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4018" RevisionGUID="a272fa0c-66d7-4afe-809e-694cdea41ae7" CreationDate="2012-09-11T14:12:15.687" UserId="1130" Text="I've been talking with him through email, and when I asked him why he left P.SE he said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;I left for the exact same reason you wrote on your P.SE profile.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(He also said it was OK to share his thoughts in an answer here)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for [my profile][1], well it's not very flattering because I wrote it one day while I was frustrated towards P.SE. My feelings haven't changed, but normally I would have kept them to myself&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If someone makes a Q&amp;A site for Programmers to ask questions and get&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers from other Programmers about any issue related to their career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; choice or self-identity as a programmer, let me know. I'd love to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participate in such a site again, and will help you promote it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; As for this site, I'm done with it unless something changes. I feel&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its changed too far from the original programming resource it once&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was, and the current moderation style is not for me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I dislike that so much valuable information gets deleted for the sake&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of &quot;maintaining a clean site&quot;, dislike the way many users are treated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (particularly new ones), and dislike the way the overall culture of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this site has been changing from a community of programmers out to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; teach and learn from each other, to an insular group of programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elitists (of course this isn't all of you, or probably even most of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you. Its just a large percentage of the more active/vocal users who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; take part in running the site).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anyways, I'm not interested in helping to support this site anymore,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; although I will be happy to take part in any initiatives to changes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope the powers-that-be will take this into account when deciding future policies for a site, as Pierre is not the first one of our top users to quit the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can confirm that `DeveloperArt` left for the same reason (been talking to him via email too), and I'm fairly sure AmmoQ did as well (He is now listed as [User281337][2], with a profile of &quot;Status: angry.&quot;). I've also seen many other high-rep names quietly disappear over time, and perhaps some day I'll do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6617/user281377" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10780" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4018" RevisionGUID="2505faf8-cace-4785-8adb-af2ffa1e2f79" CreationDate="2012-09-11T14:18:14.907" UserId="1130" Comment="added 134 characters in body" Text="I've been talking with him through email, and when I asked him why he left P.SE he said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;I left for the exact same reason you wrote on your P.SE profile.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(He also said it was OK to share his thoughts in an answer here, and that he's not going to bother posting an answer here because he's gone for good, but he's pretty sure everyone knows why he left)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for [my profile][1], well it's not very flattering because I wrote it one day while I was frustrated towards P.SE. My feelings haven't changed, but normally I would have kept them to myself&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If someone makes a Q&amp;A site for Programmers to ask questions and get&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers from other Programmers about any issue related to their career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; choice or self-identity as a programmer, let me know. I'd love to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participate in such a site again, and will help you promote it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; As for this site, I'm done with it unless something changes. I feel&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its changed too far from the original programming resource it once&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was, and the current moderation style is not for me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I dislike that so much valuable information gets deleted for the sake&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of &quot;maintaining a clean site&quot;, dislike the way many users are treated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (particularly new ones), and dislike the way the overall culture of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this site has been changing from a community of programmers out to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; teach and learn from each other, to an insular group of programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elitists (of course this isn't all of you, or probably even most of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you. Its just a large percentage of the more active/vocal users who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; take part in running the site).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anyways, I'm not interested in helping to support this site anymore,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; although I will be happy to take part in any initiatives to changes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope the powers-that-be will take this into account when deciding future policies for a site, as Pierre is not the first one of our top users to quit the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can confirm that `DeveloperArt` left for the same reason (been talking to him via email too), and I'm fairly sure AmmoQ did as well (He is now listed as [User281337][2], with a profile of &quot;Status: angry.&quot;). I've also seen many other high-rep names quietly disappear over time, and perhaps some day I'll do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6617/user281377" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10781" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4018" RevisionGUID="2787cca1-2b5a-4369-bf3c-e8a88c350db0" CreationDate="2012-09-11T14:23:37.957" UserId="1130" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="I've been talking with him through email, and when I asked him why he left P.SE he said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;I left for the exact same reason you wrote on your P.SE profile.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(He also said it was OK to share his thoughts in an answer here, and that he's not going to bother posting an answer here because he's gone for good, but he's pretty sure everyone knows why he left)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for [my profile][1], well it's not very flattering because I wrote it one day while I was frustrated towards P.SE. My feelings haven't changed, but normally I would have kept them to myself&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If someone makes a Q&amp;A site for Programmers to ask questions and get&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers from other Programmers about any issue related to their career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; choice or self-identity as a programmer, let me know. I'd love to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participate in such a site again, and will help you promote it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; As for this site, I'm done with it unless something changes. I feel&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its changed too far from the original programming resource it once&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was, and the current moderation style is not for me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I dislike that so much valuable information gets deleted for the sake&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of &quot;maintaining a clean site&quot;, dislike the way many users are treated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (particularly new ones), and dislike the way the overall culture of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this site has been changing from a community of programmers out to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; teach and learn from each other, to an insular group of programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elitists (of course this isn't all of you, or probably even most of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you. Its just a large percentage of the more active/vocal users who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; take part in running the site).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anyways, I'm not interested in helping to support this site anymore,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; although I will be happy to take part in any initiatives to changes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope the powers-that-be will take this into account when deciding future policies for a site, as Pierre is not the first one of our top users to quit the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can confirm that `DeveloperArt` left for the same reason (been talking to him via email too), and I think AmmoQ might have as well (He is now listed as [User281337][2], with a profile of &quot;Status: angry.&quot;). I've also seen many other high-rep names quietly disappear over time, and perhaps some day I'll do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6617/user281377" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10782" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4018" RevisionGUID="f9dc41cf-9fbd-4498-b05d-7c774d178d98" CreationDate="2012-09-11T14:31:58.963" UserId="1130" Comment="deleted 117 characters in body" Text="I've been talking with him through email, and when I asked him why he left P.SE he said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;I left for the exact same reason you wrote on your P.SE profile.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(He also said it was OK to share his thoughts in an answer here, and that he's not going to bother posting an answer here because he's gone for good, but he's pretty sure everyone knows why he left)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for [my profile][1], well it's not very flattering because I wrote it one day while I was frustrated towards P.SE. My feelings haven't changed, but normally I would have kept them to myself&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If someone makes a Q&amp;A site for Programmers to ask questions and get&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers from other Programmers about any issue related to their career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; choice or self-identity as a programmer, let me know. I'd love to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participate in such a site again, and will help you promote it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; As for this site, I'm done with it unless something changes. I feel&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its changed too far from the original programming resource it once&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was, and the current moderation style is not for me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I dislike that so much valuable information gets deleted for the sake&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of &quot;maintaining a clean site&quot;, dislike the way many users are treated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (particularly new ones), and dislike the way the overall culture of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this site has been changing from a community of programmers out to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; teach and learn from each other, to an insular group of programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elitists (of course this isn't all of you, or probably even most of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you. Its just a large percentage of the more active/vocal users who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; take part in running the site).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anyways, I'm not interested in helping to support this site anymore,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; although I will be happy to take part in any initiatives to changes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope the powers-that-be will take this into account when deciding future policies for a site, as Pierre is not the first one of our top users to quit the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can confirm that `DeveloperArt` left for the same reason (been talking to him via email too), and I've seen many other high-rep names quietly disappear over time. Perhaps some day I'll do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6617/user281377" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10783" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4018" RevisionGUID="6662a786-f6c2-4725-9f9d-d6fcd5b1db3a" CreationDate="2012-09-11T15:34:28.993" UserId="1130" Comment="added 85 characters in body" Text="I've been talking with him through email, and when I asked him why he left P.SE he said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;I left for the exact same reason you wrote on your P.SE profile.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(He also said it was OK to share his thoughts in an answer here, and that he's not going to bother posting an answer here because he's gone for good, but he's pretty sure everyone knows why he left)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for [my profile][1], well it's not very flattering because I wrote it one day while I was frustrated towards P.SE. My feelings haven't changed, but normally I would have kept them to myself&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If someone makes a Q&amp;A site for Programmers to ask questions and get&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers from other Programmers about any issue related to their career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; choice or self-identity as a programmer, let me know. I'd love to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participate in such a site again, and will help you promote it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; As for this site, I'm done with it unless something changes. I feel&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its changed too far from the original programming resource it once&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was, and the current moderation style is not for me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I dislike that so much valuable information gets deleted for the sake&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of &quot;maintaining a clean site&quot;, dislike the way many users are treated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (particularly new ones), and dislike the way the overall culture of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this site has been changing from a community of programmers out to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; teach and learn from each other, to an insular group of programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elitists (of course this isn't all of you, or probably even most of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you. Its just a large percentage of the more active/vocal users who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; take part in running the site).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anyways, I'm not interested in helping to support this site anymore,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; although I will be happy to take part in any initiatives to changes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope the powers-that-be will take this into account when deciding future policies for a site, as Pierre is not the first one of our top users to quit the site. I can confirm that `DeveloperArt` left for the same reason (been talking to him via email too), and I've seen many other high-rep names quietly disappear over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your 2nd question, yes [it's possible to recover a deleted account][2] although according to MSO it requires &quot;Jeff-Level&quot; access&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/22568/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10784" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="4015" RevisionGUID="3599cfb8-aa42-4a0b-9010-6dc124e0648b" CreationDate="2012-09-11T18:01:18.083" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/245582804598013952" />
  <row Id="10785" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4019" RevisionGUID="a4d9c3d6-fc9f-4652-ae59-54d1f3061c9e" CreationDate="2012-09-11T18:06:40.610" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="On Scifi.SE, they have a close reason &quot;General Reference&quot; that states &quot;This question is too basic; it can be definitively and permanently answered by a single link to a standard internet reference source designed specifically to find that type of information.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this would be tremendously useful and a much better explanation for closing many of the &quot;panic questions&quot; and &quot;help vampires&quot; that pop up. Would it be possible for us to get such a thing? I can't count the number of times I've seen questions like this appear on Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10786" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4019" RevisionGUID="a4d9c3d6-fc9f-4652-ae59-54d1f3061c9e" CreationDate="2012-09-11T18:06:40.610" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Why don't we have a &quot;General Refence&quot; close reason? Can we get it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10787" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4019" RevisionGUID="a4d9c3d6-fc9f-4652-ae59-54d1f3061c9e" CreationDate="2012-09-11T18:06:40.610" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10788" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4019" RevisionGUID="3239f30f-8518-484f-90eb-0a20076cb95d" CreationDate="2012-09-11T18:08:41.600" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10789" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4020" RevisionGUID="f6525571-7f76-455f-93f2-f12655ea8f9c" CreationDate="2012-09-11T18:57:36.330" UserId="4" Text="Personally, I think this would make a good addition to the list of close reasons. This was [status-declined on Meta Stack Overflow in 2011][1], but I think that it could be something that is revisited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I tend to close them as off-topic, citing the part in the FAQ that says Programmers is a site for &quot;professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers&quot; with the reasoning that if a question is something that I'd expect a professional in the given field to know and fully understand, it falls outside of the scope. Other times, I have used &quot;not constructive&quot;, citing that you don't need specific expertise to answer the question (eg - a simple Google search yields the answer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can see how Stack Overflow might not need this, but any professional-oriented Stack Exchange can have questions that are just too basic and should clearly differentiate this as a reason for bad questions. I can see this being useful not only here on Programmers, but perhaps Computer Science, Theoretical Computer Science, Cross-Validated, Cognitive Sciences, Server Fault, IT Security, Project Management, Signal Processing, Academia, and so on - the sites that focus on people with a certain level of existing knowledge, skills, and experience in a given domain (especially a domain that requires an amount of education and skill development, either formally or informally).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime, I wonder if there's something more specific in the FAQ (or something more specific that can be added to the FAQ) that can be referenced for these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86043/introduce-a-general-reference-close-reason" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10790" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4020" RevisionGUID="674c768c-bb28-4e00-ab89-0bc088d094c4" CreationDate="2012-09-11T19:04:54.770" UserId="4" Comment="added 296 characters in body" Text="Personally, I think this would make a good addition to the list of close reasons. This was [status-declined on Meta Stack Overflow in 2011][1], but I think that it could be something that is revisited. The current policy might work fine on Stack Overflow, but setting the bar at a minimum amount of prerequisite knowledge (Theoretical Computer Science) and effort (all Stack Exchange sites) is something that has worked well and clearly specifying this as a close message would help reinforce it..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I tend to close them as off-topic, citing the part in the FAQ that says Programmers is a site for &quot;professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers&quot; with the reasoning that if a question is something that I'd expect a professional in the given field to know and fully understand, it falls outside of the scope. Other times, I have used &quot;not constructive&quot;, citing that you don't need specific expertise to answer the question (eg - a simple Google search yields the answer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can see how Stack Overflow might not need this, but any professional-oriented Stack Exchange can have questions that are just too basic and should clearly differentiate this as a reason for bad questions. I can see this being useful not only here on Programmers, but perhaps Computer Science, Theoretical Computer Science, Cross-Validated, Cognitive Sciences, Server Fault, IT Security, Project Management, Signal Processing, Academia, and so on - the sites that focus on people with a certain level of existing knowledge, skills, and experience in a given domain (especially a domain that requires an amount of education and skill development, either formally or informally).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime, I wonder if there's something more specific in the FAQ (or something more specific that can be added to the FAQ) that can be referenced for these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86043/introduce-a-general-reference-close-reason" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10791" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4021" RevisionGUID="48abc308-817d-4761-9edc-8d6f5e8deecf" CreationDate="2012-09-11T19:39:55.910" UserId="32353" Text="The same reason stack exchange sites have rejected this as a close reason generally - there are a limited number of basic questions, we answer them once, and from then on it's a duplicate.  If it isn't an *exact* duplicate then it at least helps people who don't know enough to ask the question correctly find something that points them on the right path." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10792" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4019" RevisionGUID="58a23f63-bc54-472e-8446-86f311ef10ae" CreationDate="2012-09-11T20:52:09.050" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Would the &amp;ldquo;General Reference&amp;rdquo; close reason be useful here on Programmers?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1994/would-the-general-reference-close-reason-be-useful-here-on-programmers)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;On Scifi.SE, they have a close reason &quot;General Reference&quot; that states &quot;This question is too basic; it can be definitively and permanently answered by a single link to a standard internet reference source designed specifically to find that type of information.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this would be tremendously useful and a much better explanation for closing many of the &quot;panic questions&quot; and &quot;help vampires&quot; that pop up. Would it be possible for us to get such a thing? I can't count the number of times I've seen questions like this appear on Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10793" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="4019" RevisionGUID="ff0a16a6-e2d0-482e-bb7d-6ee2e88f3a85" CreationDate="2012-09-11T20:52:09.050" UserId="25936" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[1994],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="10794" PostHistoryTypeId="37" PostId="4019" RevisionGUID="0e622d5f-adda-43b6-b0f8-019b9bd5067b" CreationDate="2012-09-11T21:47:51.657" UserId="25936" Comment="to http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1994/would-the-general-reference-close-reason-be-useful-here-on-programmers" Text="[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]" />
  <row Id="10795" PostHistoryTypeId="38" PostId="4020" RevisionGUID="0e622d5f-adda-43b6-b0f8-019b9bd5067b" CreationDate="2012-09-11T21:47:51.657" UserId="25936" Comment="from http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4019/why-dont-we-have-a-general-refence-close-reason-can-we-get-it" Text="[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]" />
  <row Id="10796" PostHistoryTypeId="38" PostId="4021" RevisionGUID="0e622d5f-adda-43b6-b0f8-019b9bd5067b" CreationDate="2012-09-11T21:47:51.657" UserId="25936" Comment="from http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4019/why-dont-we-have-a-general-refence-close-reason-can-we-get-it" Text="[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]" />
  <row Id="10797" PostHistoryTypeId="38" PostId="1994" RevisionGUID="0e622d5f-adda-43b6-b0f8-019b9bd5067b" CreationDate="2012-09-11T21:47:51.657" UserId="25936" Comment="from http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4019/why-dont-we-have-a-general-refence-close-reason-can-we-get-it" Text="[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]" />
  <row Id="10798" PostHistoryTypeId="14" PostId="4019" RevisionGUID="07b861f3-dfde-44b6-9c3a-5d499f70f696" CreationDate="2012-09-11T21:47:51.657" UserId="25936" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="10799" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4021" RevisionGUID="ab462bf4-16f9-4241-a1c7-1edc3638ec5a" CreationDate="2012-09-11T22:56:46.940" UserId="32353" Comment="Question merged as duplicate - editing to fit new question format" Text="The General Reference close reason should not be added to programmers, for the same reason stack exchange sites have rejected this as a close reason generally - there are a limited number of basic questions, we answer them once, and from then on it's a duplicate.  If it isn't an *exact* duplicate then it at least helps people who don't know enough to ask the question correctly find something that points them on the right path." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10800" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4021" RevisionGUID="d567d919-a531-4de2-bb6c-7c0dbd40f179" CreationDate="2012-09-11T23:09:00.783" UserId="32353" Comment="Question merged as duplicate - editing to fit new question format" Text="The General Reference close reason should not be added to programmers, for the same reason stack exchange sites have rejected this as a close reason generally - there are a limited number of basic questions, we answer them once, and from then on it's a duplicate.  If it isn't an *exact* duplicate then it at least helps people who don't know enough to ask the question correctly find something that points them on the right path.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oddly, my answer, above, got merged into this question because the question I originally answered was a duplicate.  The question this now answers refers specifically to a general reference question I answered, and I and the OP both got an absurdly disproportionate number of up-votes.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do think that the biggest drawback of allowing general reference questions is that they are obviously easy to answer, and often have a large number of views because beginners outnumber experts (and experts may want to see what all the fuss is about).  This can lead to an &quot;unfair&quot; amount of reputation gain for the answerer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is potentially detrimental to the site because it might lead to misleading reputation scores, and accurate reputation scores (to the extent they are accurate) are a useful feature in letting people asses the validity of an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One partial remedy might be to have a &quot;general-reference&quot; tag for such questions.  This does at least let people see (not easily) if someone has 20k rep, 19,800 from &quot;general-reference&quot; and judge accordingly.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;general-reference&quot; would be a kind of meta-tag, but the Math site has a &quot;soft question&quot; tag that probably serves a similar purpose, and it doesn't seem to be a problem (unless I just caused one).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just a thought, and a way to completely muddle the meaning of any voting on this answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10801" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4022" RevisionGUID="2df32b31-0050-4070-9465-df84b64f9869" CreationDate="2012-09-11T23:27:16.877" UserId="31828" Text="There are many users that could be categorized as &quot;chronic down voters&quot;. They can be easily spotted by reviewing activity records with an up/down ratio that is far less than one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They usually don't leave feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is, these people's down votes effectively sink new answers (indirectly promoting their own). An new answer that goes negative is done for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you agree or disagree? Can anything be done about it?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10802" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4022" RevisionGUID="2df32b31-0050-4070-9465-df84b64f9869" CreationDate="2012-09-11T23:27:16.877" UserId="31828" Text="Are chronic down voters good for the system?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10803" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4022" RevisionGUID="2df32b31-0050-4070-9465-df84b64f9869" CreationDate="2012-09-11T23:27:16.877" UserId="31828" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10804" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4021" RevisionGUID="787fafa0-8984-4269-86a3-6585d2b3b159" CreationDate="2012-09-12T06:01:07.770" UserId="31260" Comment="edited body" Text="The General Reference close reason should not be added to programmers, for the same reason Stack Exchange sites have rejected this as a close reason generally - there are a limited number of basic questions, we answer them once, and from then on it's a duplicate.  If it isn't an *exact* duplicate then it at least helps people who don't know enough to ask the question correctly find something that points them on the right path.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oddly, my answer, above, got merged into this question because the question I originally answered was a duplicate.  The question this now answers refers specifically to a general reference question I answered, and I and the OP both got an absurdly disproportionate number of up-votes.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do think that the biggest drawback of allowing general reference questions is that they are obviously easy to answer, and often have a large number of views because beginners outnumber experts (and experts may want to see what all the fuss is about).  This can lead to an &quot;unfair&quot; amount of reputation gain for the answerer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is potentially detrimental to the site because it might lead to misleading reputation scores, and accurate reputation scores (to the extent they are accurate) are a useful feature in letting people asses the validity of an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One partial remedy might be to have a &quot;general-reference&quot; tag for such questions.  This does at least let people see (not easily) if someone has 20k rep, 19,800 from &quot;general-reference&quot; and judge accordingly.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;general-reference&quot; would be a kind of meta-tag, but the Math site has a &quot;soft question&quot; tag that probably serves a similar purpose, and it doesn't seem to be a problem (unless I just caused one).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just a thought, and a way to completely muddle the meaning of any voting on this answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10805" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4023" RevisionGUID="eecfce3e-8db8-40d0-a766-b6f5fe54c47f" CreationDate="2012-09-12T14:30:04.777" UserId="31090" Text="Tactical downvoting is underhanded, but I must say I  haven't actually seen that happen in any of the Q&amp;A I've been involved in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other, serious and well-meaning forms of downvoting are very useful and should not be discouraged in my opinion, for one simple reason: *wrong* information is **worse** than *no information at all*.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Multiple downvotes tell the answerer (or question-asker) that multiple people think the information is wrong, and this is very valuable.  We can't reasonably force the experts to post detailed treatises on why it's wrong every time - especially when they see the same &quot;wrong&quot;-ness over and over again - hence the easy downvote is a valuable, quick, low-impact (for all involved, don't fret a few points of rep!) feedback tool." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10806" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4024" RevisionGUID="18397d0c-98cb-42ed-85e0-1532ae82a25b" CreationDate="2012-09-12T17:54:33.013" UserId="3965" Text="People get *plenty* of feedback on downvote reasons, just not usually from the voter.  People frequently leave comments without downvoting, and if someone later downvotes for the same reason I've seen them actually apologize that it wasn't them.  Same goes if the downvote came before the comment:  &quot;I'm not the one who downvoted you, but&amp;hellip;&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Heck, authors often preemptively put downvote reasons into their own posts: &quot;This will probably be closed as not constructive, but&amp;hellip;&quot;  Then they're shocked when someone downvotes them without providing a reason.  I downvoted an answer just yesterday with two disclaimers that he knew absolutely nothing about the topic (he was right).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If they're still mystified about downvotes without a reason, they ask in a comment and get answers 9 times out of 10.  If they don't get an answer from their comment, they can ask in meta, where I've yet to see such a question go unanswered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as tactical downvoting, I think the -1 does a pretty good job 99.9% of the time, and when it doesn't, it's usually corrected quickly with sympathy upvotes.  You need to judge from the end result, not from a temporary sub-optimal state." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10807" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3935" RevisionGUID="25312e50-a0e7-41e8-8b27-657240abc47a" CreationDate="2012-09-13T03:01:17.617" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/246081087011426305" />
  <row Id="10808" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3976" RevisionGUID="50a9cb77-c5d5-4f83-9d39-adf3a8fb4a17" CreationDate="2012-09-13T03:57:51.437" UserId="5039" Comment="added 7063 characters in body" Text="I agree with you. 100%. [This link][1] should not go to a 404 error.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Replacing the link with a 404 is stupid. It is godawful stupid. It's, &quot;I'm going to fire the person who did this,&quot; stupid. Intuitive behavior would be to respond with **301 redirect**. *But it doesn't do that.* It responds with a 404.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All 400 level errors imply that the **user** made an error. But in this case, the user did **not** make an error. The user navigated to a URL that has been valid for years, and it is completely reasonable to expect that the link should continue to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Be careful to make the distinction: I said NOT say that the behavior of the link should remain unchanged. I said that the link should still WORK, and a 301 redirect to the blog will cause the desired effect while still allowing the link to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stop telling users to go f*** themselves. Change it to a 301 redirect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently what is obvious to *most people* (+18/-5 at the time of my writing this) is not good enough, so here it goes with the long winded explanation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Principle #1 - The User Comes First&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it amazing that I have to say this, but I guess if everyone knew this, the software world would be a different place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The attitude that I (and those I work with) have about programming revolves around the user. We're not writing code for ourselves. We're writing code for the user. The North Star of programming is that our code should be for the betterment of the world (or in this case, the internet).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is here that we agree--we're trying to make the internet a better place. The point that you have consistently ignored is for **who** are we trying to make the internet a better place for. We're not doing it for ourselves. We're doing it for those who use the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You spent a lot of time typing that response, but what is amazing is how little you mentioned the user and how often you mentioned yourself. In fact, it takes little effort to find regions where you talk almost exclusively about yourself, only taking a break to talk **negatively** about the user:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Although I do not have any expectations for appreciation for my&#xD;&#xA;&gt; efforts to give back to the community, I am not a moron and will not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; freely volunteer my time to promote the community through an activity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that has absolutely nothing to do with my diamond status when this is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what I get for it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; At some point you got to say enough is enough. I've removed the url&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from the blog post, so users who would deliberatily click on a link&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that says &quot;hey, this is deleted&quot; won't have a bad experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, &quot;Me Me Me Me Me. If the user clicks on a dead link, its their fault.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That doesn't cut it. The user comes first. Always. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your actions were not made with the user in mind. Quite the opposite in fact. Your actions were (and are) irresponsible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Principle #2 - Error Messages Are Inherently Rude&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software developers are terrible at this. We just throw up an error and expect the user to deal with it. The problem with error messages is that they rarely do enough to remedy the problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Imagine if I walked into your office and said, &quot;Your code has a bug in it.&quot; You'd likely ask, &quot;Where did you find the bug? What did it do? Can you recreate it on my machine?&quot; These are normal questions to ask. Now imagine that I simply repeated myself and said, &quot;Your code has a bug in it.&quot; Imagine that no matter what, I constantly repeated that. You'd become incredibly annoyed with me and would consider me to be arrogant, because I am not telling you all of the information I know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is the problem with error messages. They rarely (if ever) do anything to remedy the problem they report. It is very common that error code will know an extensive amount about the problem, and many times, will have the ability to fix it (or at least get around it). But programmers can be lazy, and that is the result. They take the easy way at the expense of the user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its not always obvious what is meant when someone says, &quot;The code could have fixed (or gotten around) the problem,&quot; so here's an example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets say I'm writing Microsoft Word, I'm opening a word document, and I encounter an error. Here's an example of a error message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ERROR: Could not open document.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a terrible error message. It tells the user absolutely nothing (except, perhaps, that the programmer needs to be fired). Here's a slightly better example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ERROR: Could not open document. The file is locked for editing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is better, but is still terrible. Rather than saying, &quot;I'm a sucky piece of software,&quot; this error message says, &quot;I'm a sucky piece of software, and here's why.&quot; Continuing to improve:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ERROR: Could not open document. The file is locked for editing by user 'riwalk'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're slowly getting better. Now the error says, &quot;I'm a sucky piece of software, but if you go bug the user 'riwalk', things might get better.&quot; Lets keep improving:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ERROR: Could not open document. The file is locked for editing by user 'riwalk'. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;                 Would you like to open a readonly copy? (Y/N)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, for the first time, we've offered a solution. Someone else already has the file open, so obviously its a popular file. Maybe I just want to read it? Maybe opening a readonly solution and doing a &quot;Save As&quot; is an acceptable solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now the question is, why should I even have to ask the user? Will the user ever say, &quot;No&quot;? Why don't I just open the file in readonly mode and tell the user what I did to fix things? Now, instead of an error message, we simply display an inline message between the document and the toolbar that says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    NOTICE: This document is currently locked for editing by user 'riwalk' and has been&#xD;&#xA;                               opened in readonly mode.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a user friendly message. It acknowledges that while there are technical limitations that stop the user from completing the request, we can still get around it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now what does this have to do with P.SE? You're actions caused an error message that lies somewhere between the first and second one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The 404 error page basically says, &quot;Well I know what you were *trying* to do, but I'm a sucky piece of software, so I'm just going to show you an error message instead.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Are you making the web a better place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who knows? Everyone is trying. Not everyone succeeds. Let the masses judge our efforts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bigger question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Are you making the web a WORSE place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one has an answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***YES!!!***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the goal of software developers is to help the user with meaningful error messages, then I can confidently say that *you are making the web a worse place*. You're creating 404 messages despite the fact that the intent of the user was **obvious**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't say that no one notices. This thread exists because people noticed. You're making the web a worse place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what should be done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, almost nothing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, stop worrying so much about the past. So there are old questions out there that we don't consider to be important today. Fine. Just put a message on them and stop worrying about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Paradoxically, you're spending so much time worrying about making the web a better place, that you are **confidently** making it a worse place. When you're in a hole, stop digging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what *can* you do? Focus on what is being created now. Quickly recognize and close questions that don't meet our current standards. Rather than investing large amounts of time doing crap like this, why don't you invest your time in the [Stack Overflow competition][2] that is trying to prevent questions like the ones we're discussing now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to keep obsessing over these questions, fine. Do whatever the hell you want. Just do me a favor--stop making things worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/31104/whats-your-most-controversial-programming-opinion&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-machine-learning-contest/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10809" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="3957" RevisionGUID="973b8b66-a58c-46e4-8c0c-43e0ef3f8262" CreationDate="2012-09-13T06:01:17.763" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/246126385033269248" />
  <row Id="10810" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4025" RevisionGUID="1e007964-46db-4bea-9109-59a77d635ee2" CreationDate="2012-09-13T10:04:47.727" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10811" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4026" RevisionGUID="f768beea-9dd1-49b1-9014-a384b1bb4732" CreationDate="2012-09-13T10:04:47.727" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10812" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4025" RevisionGUID="975c1328-8e8d-4585-af76-10fce7a98f00" CreationDate="2012-09-13T10:05:51.543" UserId="62330" Comment="added 164 characters in body" Text="The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices with regards to establishing copyright and/or staying the right side of copyright laws." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10813" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="4025" RevisionGUID="975c1328-8e8d-4585-af76-10fce7a98f00" CreationDate="2012-09-13T10:05:51.543" Comment="Proposed by 62330 approved by 4767 edit id of 3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10814" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4026" RevisionGUID="020a54e9-d674-46da-9af2-ccaba4905903" CreationDate="2012-09-13T10:05:55.083" UserId="62330" Comment="added 27 characters in body" Text="Copyright - don't breach it" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10815" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="4026" RevisionGUID="020a54e9-d674-46da-9af2-ccaba4905903" CreationDate="2012-09-13T10:05:55.083" Comment="Proposed by 62330 approved by 4767 edit id of 4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10816" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3415" RevisionGUID="e896f9e4-1370-4e8d-94ae-fe8e893e27b3" CreationDate="2012-09-13T16:02:23.797" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 58 characters in body" Text="The timeline of this was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* June 3, 2010 — [NPR proposal][1] created in Area51&#xD;&#xA;* September 1, 2010 — NPR enters private beta as &quot;Programmers&quot; (will continue to call it NPR for the sake of distinguishing it from the current site)&#xD;&#xA;* September 7, 2010 — NPR enters public beta&#xD;&#xA;* September 13, 2010 — MSO starts to grapple with how bad NPR is [when trying to dupe Software Engineering proposals to it](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* September 15, 2010 — We on Meta Programmers.SE [start to deal with that perception](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* September 17, 2010 — SE [makes a blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/) announcing the decision to start merging programming-related proposals to improve NPR&#xD;&#xA;* September 18, 2010 — We begin to [redefine the scope of the site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* September 23, 2010 — MSO and SE [do the same](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site), with [different results][2]&#xD;&#xA;* September 29, 2010 — &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&quot; is published, new scope and guidelines [begin to be enforced](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice), and the free-for-all NPR proposal dies. It's replaced with Programmers, the site for expert programmers who are interested in subjective questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;* December 16, 2010 — Programmers launches, and the position statement is tweaked from &quot;subjective questions&quot; to &quot;conceptual questions&quot; to [make it easier to explain why it exists compared to Stack Overflow](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/).&#xD;&#xA;* December 17, 2010–Present — Clean-up of the colossal mess left over from beta, including [incorrect UI strings and FAQ wordings](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio/3415#comment9139_3414), [crappy questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning), [awful tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups), [misconceptions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl), and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Within 29 days the site went from programmers hanging out and discussing their lifestyle to programmers discussing software development issues, now over 18 months ago, which is why I'm always surprised people still cling to that old proposal. I would've thought they'd all move on by now: the writing was on the wall almost immediately after the site left private beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/65439/149432" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10817" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4027" RevisionGUID="1c615ad5-6456-4bb0-8ba6-bd4073b99a6b" CreationDate="2012-09-13T20:43:05.903" UserId="6591" Text="If one has over 10k rep, the deleted questions are visible. My contention is that someone has become far too delete-happy, and that if this site had the same criteria for locking &amp; deletion that it has now, I'd never have gotten 10k rep. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10818" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4027" RevisionGUID="be171814-87d4-47e3-ac03-f28914dcd9bf" CreationDate="2012-09-13T20:49:07.927" UserId="6591" Comment="added 587 characters in body" Text="&gt; *Insofar the blog post has been viewed over 120,000 times and has been referenced in at least 20 different places that I know off, including Reddit and other blogs, there are even a couple of Chinese translations out there. No one complained about the dead link, and no one linked to the deleted question.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only people with &gt; 10k rep on programmers can see the question. How many of those 120k &quot;outsiders&quot; have 10k+ rep in our happy little garden? There is a lot of link rot in the blogosphere and most of them probably would think that the link changed, not that some delete-happy person here deleted the post on &quot;our&quot; end. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My contention is that people have become far too delete-happy, and that if this site originally had the same criteria for locking &amp; deletion that it has now, I'd never have gotten 10k rep. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10819" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4028" RevisionGUID="347d0afe-b420-4e9f-a47d-32c61a1b18bd" CreationDate="2012-09-14T13:30:27.720" UserId="62330" Text="As a relative Newbie to the sites, I welcome the opportunity to answer other people's questions, where I can be helpful, and to ask questions when I need help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feedback is an important part of the process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An anonymous &quot;Vote Down&quot; is an indication that I've posted something less than ideal, but a comment would help understand why." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10820" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4028" RevisionGUID="5d8b3378-4c86-4a77-bddc-3ac406d140a7" CreationDate="2012-09-14T13:35:36.777" UserId="62330" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="As a relative Newbie to these sites, I welcome the opportunity to answer other people's questions, where I can be helpful, and to ask questions when I need help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feedback is an important part of the process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An anonymous &quot;Vote Down&quot; is an indication that I've posted something less than ideal, but a comment would help understand why, to help me make it better (or not to repeat the mistake next time)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10821" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3976" RevisionGUID="b8826f90-a077-4790-a141-65d91e39cd73" CreationDate="2012-09-14T13:46:51.970" UserId="5039" Comment="added 36 characters in body" Text="I agree with you. 100%. [This link][1] should not go to a 404 error.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Replacing the link with a 404 is stupid. It is godawful stupid. It's, &quot;I'm going to fire the person who did this,&quot; stupid. Intuitive behavior would be to respond with **301 redirect**. *But it doesn't do that.* It responds with a 404.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All 400 level errors imply that the **user** made an error. But in this case, the user did **not** make an error. The user navigated to a URL that has been valid for years, and it is completely reasonable to expect that the link should continue to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Be careful to make the distinction: I said NOT say that the behavior of the link should remain unchanged. I said that the link should still WORK, and a 301 redirect to the blog will cause the desired effect while still allowing the link to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stop telling users to go f*** themselves. Change it to a 301 redirect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently what is obvious to *most people* (+18/-5 at the time of my writing this) is not good enough, so here it goes with the long winded explanation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Principle #1 - The User Comes First&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it amazing that I have to say this, but I guess if everyone knew this, the software world would be a different place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The attitude that I (and those I work with) have about programming revolves around the user. We're not writing code for ourselves. We're writing code for the user. The North Star of programming is that our code should be for the betterment of the world (or in this case, the internet).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is here that we agree--we're trying to make the internet a better place. The point that you have consistently ignored is for **who** are we trying to make the internet a better place for. We're not doing it for ourselves. We're doing it for those who use the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You spent a lot of time typing that response, but what is amazing is how little you mentioned the user and how often you mentioned yourself. In fact, it takes little effort to find regions where you talk almost exclusively about yourself, only taking a break to talk **negatively** about the user:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Although I do not have any expectations for appreciation for my&#xD;&#xA;&gt; efforts to give back to the community, I am not a moron and will not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; freely volunteer my time to promote the community through an activity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that has absolutely nothing to do with my diamond status when this is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what I get for it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; At some point you got to say enough is enough. I've removed the url&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from the blog post, so users who would deliberatily click on a link&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that says &quot;hey, this is deleted&quot; won't have a bad experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, &quot;Me Me Me Me Me. If the user clicks on a dead link, its their fault.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That doesn't cut it. The user comes first. Always. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your actions were not made with the user in mind. Quite the opposite in fact. Your actions were (and are) irresponsible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Principle #2 - Error Messages Are Inherently Rude&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software developers are terrible at this. We just throw up an error and expect the user to deal with it. The problem with error messages is that they rarely do enough to remedy the problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Imagine if I walked into your office and said, &quot;Your code has a bug in it.&quot; You'd likely ask, &quot;Where did you find the bug? What did it do? Can you recreate it on my machine?&quot; These are normal questions to ask. Now imagine that I simply repeated myself and said, &quot;Your code has a bug in it.&quot; Imagine that no matter what, I constantly repeated that. You'd become incredibly annoyed with me and would consider me to be arrogant, because I am not telling you all of the information I know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is the problem with error messages. They rarely (if ever) do anything to remedy the problem they report. It is very common that error code will know an extensive amount about the problem, and many times, will have the ability to fix it (or at least get around it). But programmers can be lazy, and that is the result. They take the easy way at the expense of the user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its not always obvious what is meant when someone says, &quot;The code could have fixed (or gotten around) the problem,&quot; so here's an example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets say I'm writing Microsoft Word, I'm opening a word document, and I encounter an error. Here's an example of a error message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ERROR: Could not open document.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a terrible error message. It tells the user absolutely nothing (except, perhaps, that the programmer needs to be fired). Here's a slightly better example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ERROR: Could not open document. The file is locked for editing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is better, but is still terrible. Rather than saying, &quot;I'm a sucky piece of software,&quot; this error message says, &quot;I'm a sucky piece of software, and here's why.&quot; Continuing to improve:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ERROR: Could not open document. The file is locked for editing by user 'riwalk'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're slowly getting better. Now the error says, &quot;I'm a sucky piece of software, but if you go bug the user 'riwalk', things might get better.&quot; Lets keep improving:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ERROR: Could not open document. The file is locked for editing by user 'riwalk'. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;                 Would you like to open a readonly copy? (Y/N)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, for the first time, we've offered a solution. Someone else already has the file open, so obviously its a popular file. Maybe I just want to read it? Maybe opening a readonly solution and doing a &quot;Save As&quot; is an acceptable solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now the question is, why should I even have to ask the user? Will the user ever say, &quot;No&quot;? Why don't I just open the file in readonly mode and tell the user what I did to fix things? Now, instead of an error message, we simply display an inline message between the document and the toolbar that says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    NOTICE: This document is currently locked for editing by user 'riwalk' and has been&#xD;&#xA;                               opened in readonly mode.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a user friendly message. It acknowledges that while there are technical limitations that stop the user from completing the request, we can still get around it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now what does this have to do with P.SE? You're actions caused an error message that lies somewhere between the first and second one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The 404 error page basically says, &quot;Well I know what you were *trying* to do, but I'm a sucky piece of software, so I'm just going to show you an error message instead.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Are you making the web a better place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who knows? Everyone is trying. Not everyone succeeds. Let the masses judge our efforts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bigger question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Are you making the web a WORSE place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one has an answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***YES!!!***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the goal of software developers is to help the user with meaningful error messages, then I can confidently say that *you are making the web a worse place*. You're creating 404 messages despite the fact that the intent of the user was **obvious**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't say that no one notices. This thread exists because people noticed. You're making the web a worse place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what should be done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, almost nothing. Change it back to what it was.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to stop worrying so much about the past. So there are old questions out there that we don't consider to be important today. Fine. Just put a message on them and stop worrying about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Paradoxically, you're spending so much time worrying about making the web a better place, that you are **confidently** making it a worse place. When you're in a hole, stop digging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what *can* you do? Focus on what is being created now. Quickly recognize and close questions that don't meet our current standards. Rather than investing large amounts of time doing crap like this, why don't you invest your time in the [Stack Overflow competition][2] that is trying to prevent questions like the ones we're discussing now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to keep obsessing over these questions, fine. Do whatever the hell you want. Just do me a favor--stop making things worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/31104/whats-your-most-controversial-programming-opinion&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-machine-learning-contest/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10822" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3976" RevisionGUID="a22816db-c5b4-41ca-86da-1dec68399e1a" CreationDate="2012-09-14T15:25:09.617" UserId="5039" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="I agree with you. 100%. [This link][1] should not go to a 404 error.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Replacing the link with a 404 is stupid. It is godawful stupid. It's, &quot;I'm going to fire the person who did this,&quot; stupid. Intuitive behavior would be to respond with **301 redirect**. *But it doesn't do that.* It responds with a 404.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All 400 level errors imply that the **user** made an error. But in this case, the user did **not** make an error. The user navigated to a URL that has been valid for years, and it is completely reasonable to expect that the link should continue to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Be careful to make the distinction: I said NOT say that the behavior of the link should remain unchanged. I said that the link should still WORK, and a 301 redirect to the blog will cause the desired effect while still allowing the link to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stop telling users to go f*** themselves. Change it to a 301 redirect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently what is obvious to *most people* (+18/-5 at the time of my writing this) is not good enough, so here it goes with the long winded explanation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Principle #1 - The User Comes First&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it amazing that I have to say this, but I guess if everyone knew this, the software world would be a different place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The attitude that I (and those I work with) have about programming revolves around the user. We're not writing code for ourselves. We're writing code for the user. The North Star of programming is that our code should be for the betterment of the world (or in this case, the internet).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is here that we agree--we're trying to make the internet a better place. The point that you have consistently ignored is for **who** are we trying to make the internet a better place for. We're not doing it for ourselves. We're doing it for those who use the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You spent a lot of time typing that response, but what is amazing is how little you mentioned the user and how often you mentioned yourself. In fact, it takes little effort to find regions where you talk almost exclusively about yourself, only taking a break to talk **negatively** about the user:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Although I do not have any expectations for appreciation for my&#xD;&#xA;&gt; efforts to give back to the community, I am not a moron and will not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; freely volunteer my time to promote the community through an activity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that has absolutely nothing to do with my diamond status when this is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what I get for it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; At some point you got to say enough is enough. I've removed the url&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from the blog post, so users who would deliberatily click on a link&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that says &quot;hey, this is deleted&quot; won't have a bad experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, &quot;Me Me Me Me Me. If the user clicks on a dead link, its their fault.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That doesn't cut it. The user comes first. Always. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your actions were not made with the user in mind. Quite the opposite in fact. Your actions were (and are) irresponsible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Principle #2 - Error Messages Are Inherently Rude&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software developers are terrible at this. We just throw up an error and expect the user to deal with it. The problem with error messages is that they rarely do enough to remedy the problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Imagine if I walked into your office and said, &quot;Your code has a bug in it.&quot; You'd likely ask, &quot;Where did you find the bug? What did it do? Can you recreate it on my machine?&quot; These are normal questions to ask. Now imagine that I simply repeated myself and said, &quot;Your code has a bug in it.&quot; Imagine that no matter what, I constantly repeated that. You'd become incredibly annoyed with me and would consider me to be arrogant, because I am not telling you all of the information I know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is the problem with error messages. They rarely (if ever) do anything to remedy the problem they report. It is very common that error code will know an extensive amount about the problem, and many times, will have the ability to fix it (or at least get around it). But programmers can be lazy, and that is the result. They take the easy way at the expense of the user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its not always obvious what is meant when someone says, &quot;The code could have fixed (or gotten around) the problem,&quot; so here's an example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets say I'm writing Microsoft Word, I'm opening a word document, and I encounter an error. Here's an example of a error message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ERROR: Could not open document.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a terrible error message. It tells the user absolutely nothing (except, perhaps, that the programmer needs to be fired). Here's a slightly better example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ERROR: Could not open document. The file is locked for editing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is better, but is still terrible. Rather than saying, &quot;I'm a sucky piece of software,&quot; this error message says, &quot;I'm a sucky piece of software, and here's why.&quot; Continuing to improve:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ERROR: Could not open document. The file is locked for editing by user 'riwalk'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're slowly getting better. Now the error says, &quot;I'm a sucky piece of software, but if you go bug the user 'riwalk', things might get better.&quot; Lets keep improving:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ERROR: Could not open document. The file is locked for editing by user 'riwalk'. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;                 Would you like to open a readonly copy? (Y/N)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, for the first time, we've offered a solution. Someone else already has the file open, so obviously its a popular file. Maybe I just want to read it? Maybe opening a readonly solution and doing a &quot;Save As&quot; is an acceptable solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now the question is, why should I even have to ask the user? Will the user ever say, &quot;No&quot;? Why don't I just open the file in readonly mode and tell the user what I did to fix things? Now, instead of an error message, we simply display an inline message between the document and the toolbar that says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    NOTICE: This document is currently locked for editing by user 'riwalk' and has been&#xD;&#xA;                               opened in readonly mode.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a user friendly message. It acknowledges that while there are technical limitations that stop the user from completing the request, we can still get around it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now what does this have to do with P.SE? You're actions caused an error message that lies somewhere between the first and second one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The 404 error page basically says, &quot;Well I know what you were *trying* to do, but I'm a sucky piece of software, so I'm just going to show you an error message instead.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Are you making the web a better place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who knows? Everyone is trying. Not everyone succeeds. Let the masses judge our efforts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bigger question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Are you making the web a WORSE place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one has an answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***YES!!!***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the goal of software developers is to help the user with meaningful error messages, then I can confidently say that *you are making the web a worse place*. You're creating 404 messages despite the fact that the intent of the user was **obvious**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't say that no one notices. This thread exists because people noticed. You're making the web a worse place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what should be done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, almost nothing. Change it back to what it was.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to stop worrying so much about the past. So there are old questions out there that we wouldn't consider appropriate today. Fine. Just put a message on them and stop worrying about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Paradoxically, you're spending so much time worrying about making the web a better place, that you are **confidently** making it a worse place. When you're in a hole, stop digging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what *can* you do? Focus on what is being created now. Quickly recognize and close questions that don't meet our current standards. Rather than investing large amounts of time doing crap like this, why don't you invest your time in the [Stack Overflow competition][2] that is trying to prevent questions like the ones we're discussing now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to keep obsessing over these questions, fine. Do whatever the hell you want. Just do me a favor--stop making things worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/31104/whats-your-most-controversial-programming-opinion&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-machine-learning-contest/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10823" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="4029" RevisionGUID="02a8e397-262b-4692-b78f-796a5f470d58" CreationDate="2012-09-17T09:18:57.727" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165121/why-are-there-so-many-minus-pont-on-questions-in-this-forum" Text="" />
  <row Id="10824" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4029" RevisionGUID="a0e92ea7-a10b-48e2-89f7-e6a935e0905d" CreationDate="2012-09-17T09:17:11.760" UserId="64222" Text="First, I think I will get minus too here or blocked  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;idk why I want know this so why when I am looking at question list so many minus point on question here so they are asking about programming not other, so this programmers forum or not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and what defferent with stackoverflow ? so many question about programmer there but just little question got minus and i know that must got minus because asking about cyber cryme or other bad but here so many good question got minus why ? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;thanks for replay,good or not" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10825" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4029" RevisionGUID="a0e92ea7-a10b-48e2-89f7-e6a935e0905d" CreationDate="2012-09-17T09:17:11.760" UserId="64222" Text="Why are there so many minus pont on questions in this forum?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10826" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4029" RevisionGUID="a0e92ea7-a10b-48e2-89f7-e6a935e0905d" CreationDate="2012-09-17T09:17:11.760" UserId="64222" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10827" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4029" RevisionGUID="6910111b-9771-4c06-a7d9-d6f32b13c763" CreationDate="2012-09-17T09:20:41.563" UserId="47" Comment="spelling etc." Text="First, I think I will get minus too here or blocked  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;idk why I want know this so why when I am looking at question list so many minus point on question here so they are asking about programming not other, so this programmers forum or not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the difference with Stack Overflow? So many question about programmer there but just little question got minus and I know that must got minus because asking about cyber crime or other bad but here so many good question got minus why?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10828" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4030" RevisionGUID="49268db5-1562-4023-8e9a-88f352cbcfb8" CreationDate="2012-09-17T09:22:03.537" UserId="4767" Text="Programmers, as well as Stack Overflow have their own areas of concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are details in the different FAQ sections of each site - questions get downvotes in these sites for many different reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Question may be off topic (as detailed in the FAQ)&#xD;&#xA; - It may be a _bad_ question (that is, very unclear)&#xD;&#xA; - A question could be starting an argument (again, against the FAQ)&#xD;&#xA; - It may be impossible to answer (again, against the FAQ)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People vote to say that the find problems with the question - downvoting is our mechanism to identify questions that do not belong.&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10829" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4029" RevisionGUID="a30e5844-aea8-4101-9669-151eda83a2bc" CreationDate="2012-09-17T10:43:19.137" UserId="31260" Comment="added 9 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="First, I think I will get minus too here or blocked  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know why I want know this so why when I am looking at question list so many minus point on question here so they are asking about programming not other, so this programmers forum or not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the difference with Stack Overflow? So many question about programmer there but just little question got minus and I know that must got minus because asking about cyber crime or other bad but here so many good question got minus why?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10830" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="4029" RevisionGUID="a30e5844-aea8-4101-9669-151eda83a2bc" CreationDate="2012-09-17T10:43:19.137" UserId="31260" Comment="added 9 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Why are there so many minus points on questions in this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10831" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4029" RevisionGUID="a30e5844-aea8-4101-9669-151eda83a2bc" CreationDate="2012-09-17T10:43:19.137" UserId="31260" Comment="added 9 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|questions|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10832" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4031" RevisionGUID="35a340d4-258d-4619-80ec-7e59b2fd7d56" CreationDate="2012-09-17T11:36:29.657" UserId="47365" Text="I've also noticed that and here is a theory which isn't rosy, but maybe there is some truth:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In an area which has little testable results and which is technical/geeky, there is a lot of polarization. People religiously feel they are right and discredit other opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While there are just as many ill-posed questions in other forums, they don't seem to be downvoted so much as on stackprogrammers. Questions which are perfectly fine (or are even favourited and upvoted a lot later) are downvoted, because some people read the headline only and feel the urge to proof others wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've seen a similar effect in science. Where results are not conclusive, &quot;experts&quot; start fighting for their own theory and write nasty emails to each other. This can happen because none if them can be proven wrong, but stricly no-one is right either. Really clever experts are absolutely convinced of completely opposing ideas given the same data set. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On stackoverflow you write code, which fails if you get it wrong. On stackprogrammers it's opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To sum up:&#xD;&#xA;Untestability + Geek = Discreditation spiral" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10833" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="4013" RevisionGUID="bf3de748-bcfb-4efd-acba-b546120da1e2" CreationDate="2012-09-17T15:01:25.277" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/247711863268335616" />
  <row Id="10834" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4030" RevisionGUID="7d054b58-56f8-4a42-92ce-5a54378fff0c" CreationDate="2012-09-17T20:22:51.477" UserId="12917" Comment="added 49 characters in body" Text="Programmers, as well as Stack Overflow have their own areas of concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are details in the different FAQ sections of each site - questions get downvotes in these sites for many different reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Question may be off topic (as detailed in the [FAQ](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/faq))&#xD;&#xA; - It may be a _bad_ question (that is, very unclear)&#xD;&#xA; - A question could be starting an argument (again, against the FAQ)&#xD;&#xA; - It may be impossible to answer (again, against the FAQ)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People vote to say that the find problems with the question - downvoting is our mechanism to identify questions that do not belong.&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10835" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4030" RevisionGUID="debdbcdc-7706-470c-a039-9c82bf5b47a0" CreationDate="2012-09-18T02:48:16.760" UserId="1996" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="Programmers, as well as Stack Overflow have their own areas of concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are details in the different FAQ sections of each site - questions get downvotes in these sites for many different reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Question may be off topic (as detailed in the [FAQ](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/faq))&#xD;&#xA; - It may be a _bad_ question (that is, very unclear)&#xD;&#xA; - A question could be starting an argument (again, against the FAQ)&#xD;&#xA; - It may be impossible to answer (again, against the FAQ)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People vote to say that they find problems with the question - downvoting is our mechanism to identify questions that do not belong.&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10838" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4033" RevisionGUID="9d88a2b7-f5ca-48da-a347-d01eca73c693" CreationDate="2012-09-19T07:29:16.060" UserId="31090" Text="The long and short of it is that most attempts at positive interaction with this site are ruthlessly battered down by downvotes and close votes, usually followed by overly quick deleting of questions, some of which actually have quite a bit of activity all in the name of &quot;quality&quot; (what's the point of quality on a site that doesn't actually garner any new content anymore).  This site is, in my impression, in real danger of dying because it doesn't seem to fill any niche that isn't already covered by another site, or against the Rules.  I deliberately write that word with a capital letter, because it has become a Holy Book of sorts which like most other Holy Books is full of inconsistencies and there's always some rule that can be interpreted in a way that you've violated it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even the people who started the whole Stackexchange business have lost sight of why this whole thing got off the ground in the first place: gamification.  Fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take the fun out of it and people will either just leave, or do the only thing they can still do within the straitjacket of the site.  Something that fits the personality of Programmers, which is interpret the Rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's usually negative. That's not fun. That's driving people away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So please, lets use our creative Programmer noggins, and creatively interpret the rules in a positive way.  Edit questions and answers to try to salvage them.  Vote to reopen.  Vote up.  Create activity on questions with close votes if you don't agree with the close votes.  Lets bend this negative trend.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10839" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="4033" RevisionGUID="4cc437de-aa5b-4766-a4fd-d76a3a18f785" CreationDate="2012-09-19T07:53:52.797" UserId="31090" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31090,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;MadKeithV&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="10840" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="4033" RevisionGUID="3ba6df57-25e9-42f9-8cac-624a7b420d52" CreationDate="2012-09-19T09:25:29.550" UserId="31090" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31090,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;MadKeithV&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="10841" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4034" RevisionGUID="1ddd996d-b24d-44b5-a7b5-e5f5f5a24f1e" CreationDate="2012-09-19T09:53:46.620" UserDisplayName="user1249" Text="I believe he left as a logical consequence of his disagreement with what P.SE is today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prompted by this discussion I have decided to delete my P.SE account too.  I disagree strongly with the way that this site has been turned away from its original form which is what attracted me to it in the first place." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10842" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4033" RevisionGUID="63c56a13-9bf7-4d77-8533-21a34a77bade" CreationDate="2012-09-20T09:31:33.573" UserId="31090" Comment="Sort of an update, as things seem to be changing a bit already, and some of my original wording was still a bit harsh." Text="Recently it has felt like most attempts at positive interaction with this site were ruthlessly battered down by downvotes and close votes.  Closed questions were quickly deleted, sometimes even when there was quite a bit of activity (an indication of a potentially salvageable question in my opinion).  This is done in the name of &quot;quality&quot;, which is a worthy goal, but there's a danger of ending up with a &quot;high-quality&quot;site that doesn't actually garner any new content anymore, which isn't what StackExchange is about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is, in my impression, in real danger of fizzling out because it doesn't seem to fill any niche that isn't already covered by another site, or against the Rules.  I deliberately write that word with a capital letter, because it has become a Holy Book of sorts which like most other Holy Books is full of inconsistencies and there's always some rule that can be interpreted in a way that you've violated it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even the people who started Stackexchange seem to have lost sight of why this whole site got off the ground in the first place: it's based around gamification.  The implication of that is that Fun drives the site (again, in my opinion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take the fun out of it and people will either just leave, or do the only thing they can still do within the apparent limitations of the programmers.se site FAQ.  Something that fits the personality of Programmers, which is to interpret the Rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So far that seems to have been usually negative. That's not fun. That's driving people away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So please, lets use our creative Programmer noggins, and creatively interpret the rules in a *positive* way.  Edit questions and answers to try to salvage them.  Vote to reopen.  Vote up.  Create activity on questions with close votes if you don't agree with the close votes.  Lets bend this negative trend.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10847" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4036" RevisionGUID="e78bbb3c-fc78-45f6-823d-840d46a86458" CreationDate="2012-09-20T19:57:44.863" UserId="35414" Text="[tag:masters] seems to refer to getting a Master's degree in college, Master is in Master/Slave architecture or Masters as in people who have mastered a craft.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not really sure if any of these are relevant here aside from the architecture pattern but they really shouldn't have the same tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10848" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4036" RevisionGUID="e78bbb3c-fc78-45f6-823d-840d46a86458" CreationDate="2012-09-20T19:57:44.863" UserId="35414" Text="Ambiguous/useless tag &quot;masters&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10849" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4036" RevisionGUID="e78bbb3c-fc78-45f6-823d-840d46a86458" CreationDate="2012-09-20T19:57:44.863" UserId="35414" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10850" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4036" RevisionGUID="85505fe0-9ca3-467a-b77f-ba917c41ae77" CreationDate="2012-09-20T20:29:00.813" UserId="35414" Comment="added 43 characters in body" Text="[tag:masters] seems to refer to getting a Master's degree in college, Master is in Master/Slave architecture or Masters as in people who have mastered a craft. I'll note there's also a [tag:degree] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not really sure if any of these are relevant here aside from the architecture pattern but they really shouldn't have the same tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10851" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4037" RevisionGUID="f07cb9a7-c5ae-486b-b688-5edb6326fa54" CreationDate="2012-09-20T21:01:57.417" UserId="61659" Text="I generally sign in at least once a day, sometimes late in the evening or night.&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes it shows I missed a day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps this question would more appropriately ask, where does the day start?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is Stack Exchange on EST?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or perhaps it just doesn't know my local time zone?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any ideas?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10852" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4037" RevisionGUID="f07cb9a7-c5ae-486b-b688-5edb6326fa54" CreationDate="2012-09-20T21:01:57.417" UserId="61659" Text="When does the day start?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10853" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4037" RevisionGUID="f07cb9a7-c5ae-486b-b688-5edb6326fa54" CreationDate="2012-09-20T21:01:57.417" UserId="61659" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10854" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4038" RevisionGUID="f30b71a2-abe6-4a82-8167-daf81e237270" CreationDate="2012-09-20T21:22:02.543" UserId="47" Text="The Stack Exchange day starts at midnight UTC.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means that it starts at 7:00 pm EST (assuming you're not on daylight savings)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10855" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="4036" RevisionGUID="36b0ed38-5e1d-4e5f-961c-e9b96d6e5e20" CreationDate="2012-09-21T00:01:25.337" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/248934923686277120" />
  <row Id="10856" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4034" RevisionGUID="1ddb5d23-0636-4ee0-9069-8e52f838843b" CreationDate="2012-09-21T10:39:17.597" UserDisplayName="user1249" Comment="added 40 characters in body" Text="I believe he left as a logical consequence of his disagreement with what P.SE is today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prompted by this discussion I have decided to (EDIT: ask Those-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed to) delete my P.SE account too.  I disagree strongly with the way that this site has been turned away from its original form which is what attracted me to it in the first place." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10857" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4037" RevisionGUID="4a02d5da-47a8-4a34-b15b-dafb749bdf6d" CreationDate="2012-09-21T14:12:50.407" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10858" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4039" RevisionGUID="3a19f0a9-5561-4a44-8bd0-067a3b45b9ea" CreationDate="2012-09-22T00:41:43.113" UserId="25936" Text="Let's start with the feature request. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![mod link on review answers][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![mod link on review questions][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When reviewing answers we have two mod links, when reviewing questions we only have the one. Having the mod link under the post feels a bit more natural, as that's where it normally is. Extremely insignificant feature request, I know, but coupled with the bug it's a bit more serious. Let's see what happens when you click the sidebar mod link:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![mod link bug][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, that's not right ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, when doing anything from the mod menu (the one that works), you're redirected to the post's page instead of the post's review page. Not sure if this is a bug or a feature request, but it would be nice if we were redirected back where we came from, to continue reviewing. And it would be _extra_ nice if mod actions counted as review actions, mods love [badges][4] too!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Psij.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/4XYaQ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/J1IaD.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/147912/new-community-review-badges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10859" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4039" RevisionGUID="3a19f0a9-5561-4a44-8bd0-067a3b45b9ea" CreationDate="2012-09-22T00:41:43.113" UserId="25936" Text="Mod dialog in review doesn't show up properly (and a bonus feature request)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10860" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4039" RevisionGUID="3a19f0a9-5561-4a44-8bd0-067a3b45b9ea" CreationDate="2012-09-22T00:41:43.113" UserId="25936" Text="|feature-request|bug|design|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10861" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4040" RevisionGUID="2a4881f4-70c6-4d09-80b5-2446fb21be0a" CreationDate="2012-09-23T00:53:20.017" UserId="51770" Text="I've just discovered [review][1] and got [two Custodian badges][2] for it, sweet! But I never got a notification for them, as I did for every other badge, and only discovered them when I noticed my bronze badge count incrementing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this by design?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/120/custodian?userid=51770" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10862" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4040" RevisionGUID="2a4881f4-70c6-4d09-80b5-2446fb21be0a" CreationDate="2012-09-23T00:53:20.017" UserId="51770" Text="No notification for custodian badge" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10863" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4040" RevisionGUID="2a4881f4-70c6-4d09-80b5-2446fb21be0a" CreationDate="2012-09-23T00:53:20.017" UserId="51770" Text="|bug|badges|notifications|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10864" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4040" RevisionGUID="a354ee39-35b4-4645-bd61-fbd3c460fcea" CreationDate="2012-09-23T02:17:28.997" UserId="51770" Comment="added 81 characters in body" Text="I've just discovered [review][1] and got [two Custodian badges][2] for it, sweet! But I never got a notification for them, as I did for every other badge, and only discovered them when I noticed my bronze badge count incrementing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this by design?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/120/custodian?userid=51770&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tJxNC.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10865" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4040" RevisionGUID="321a188c-44f1-4815-9a18-6c18323a769f" CreationDate="2012-09-23T02:35:28.633" UserId="51770" Comment="added 328 characters in body" Text="I've just discovered [review][1] and got [two Custodian badges][2] for it, sweet! But I never got a notification for them, as I did for every other badge, and only discovered them when I noticed my bronze badge count incrementing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was also [reported yesterday on Meta StackOverflow][4], and it seems a bit random as [some people did get notifications][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/120/custodian?userid=51770&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tJxNC.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/147918/didnt-get-notifications-for-custodian-badge&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/147922/small-typo-in-the-notification-for-new-community-review-badges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10866" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4041" RevisionGUID="d51e5e7d-7cb1-4af8-9567-89f20816c982" CreationDate="2012-09-23T02:45:34.363" UserId="51770" Text="Please merge [tag:degrees] (4 questions) into [tag:degree] (20 questions)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10867" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4041" RevisionGUID="d51e5e7d-7cb1-4af8-9567-89f20816c982" CreationDate="2012-09-23T02:45:34.363" UserId="51770" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [degrees] -&gt; [degree]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10868" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4041" RevisionGUID="d51e5e7d-7cb1-4af8-9567-89f20816c982" CreationDate="2012-09-23T02:45:34.363" UserId="51770" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10869" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4041" RevisionGUID="8e3a521a-d0ac-48b8-b919-ea04413160e0" CreationDate="2012-09-23T03:14:01.823" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10870" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4042" RevisionGUID="6624cb1d-75f2-45e0-8b7b-27779eff05c7" CreationDate="2012-09-23T03:14:36.727" UserId="25936" Text="Done, thanks for bringing the tags to our attention." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10871" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4043" RevisionGUID="77978d89-c3e9-4461-bbc6-ab044c18fcce" CreationDate="2012-09-23T03:46:51.233" UserId="25936" Text="Not really an answer, just confirmation that custodian badges generate notifications:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Smells like a bug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B1pmf.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10872" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4044" RevisionGUID="ebb25cc3-faaf-4849-bd0a-769dda8618ca" CreationDate="2012-09-23T08:20:38.447" UserId="29020" Text="In my activity summary on programmers I have an entry&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    - 5 User was removed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does this mean? Which user was removed and how is my user account related to this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10873" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4044" RevisionGUID="ebb25cc3-faaf-4849-bd0a-769dda8618ca" CreationDate="2012-09-23T08:20:38.447" UserId="29020" Text="What does &quot;User was removed&quot; mean?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10874" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4044" RevisionGUID="ebb25cc3-faaf-4849-bd0a-769dda8618ca" CreationDate="2012-09-23T08:20:38.447" UserId="29020" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10875" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4045" RevisionGUID="9b56eaf0-0764-4f0f-9c6c-82f44da7cafd" CreationDate="2012-09-23T08:56:33.190" UserId="25936" Text="A user who had voted on one of your posts had their account deleted, either by choice or because they violated the [Terms of Service][1]. When that happens, the user's votes go away as well. -5 means that you had earned +5 points from them, probably via a question upvote, and unfortunately that reputation no longer exists. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for which account was removed, that's not something we should share in public, sorry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackexchange.com/legal" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10876" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4044" RevisionGUID="37fb75ba-db3a-4edd-adfa-f5eb591c1d6b" CreationDate="2012-09-23T09:05:39.423" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|user-accounts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10877" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3974" RevisionGUID="8fa0a673-d1dc-422e-ae7e-a696d0e10116" CreationDate="2012-09-23T09:07:44.960" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-declined|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10878" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4043" RevisionGUID="4fa4516b-b69b-4c05-b36b-1e59d40dfd2d" CreationDate="2012-09-23T13:31:10.677" UserId="25936" Comment="added 171 characters in body" Text="Not really an answer, just confirmation that custodian badges generate notifications:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Smells like a bug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I just got [custodian on Code Review][2], there was no notification.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B1pmf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/badges/86/custodian?userid=4673" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10879" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4046" RevisionGUID="2c39f85e-62cf-412d-8ed8-d8b01e558eae" CreationDate="2012-09-24T09:38:27.550" UserId="58676" Text="I can get names of all badges using following query in http://data.stackexchange.com/. &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    SELECT DISTINCT Name FROM Badges&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I need to apply a filter on the query to list only the gold badges. How can I write the query?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10880" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4046" RevisionGUID="2c39f85e-62cf-412d-8ed8-d8b01e558eae" CreationDate="2012-09-24T09:38:27.550" UserId="58676" Text="Querying Badges Table in data.stackexchange" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10881" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4046" RevisionGUID="2c39f85e-62cf-412d-8ed8-d8b01e558eae" CreationDate="2012-09-24T09:38:27.550" UserId="58676" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10882" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4047" RevisionGUID="fe5e100d-186e-4dcc-9ec2-1e638f19df54" CreationDate="2012-09-24T09:45:24.547" UserId="25936" Text="I went looking for this after [you asked on Meta Stack Overflow][1], and from looking at the [Database schema documentation for the public data dump and Data Explorer][2] there doesn't seem to be an easy way to query for badges per class. The badges table schema is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Badges&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Id&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UserId, e.g.: &quot;420&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Name, e.g.: &quot;Teacher&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Date, e.g.: &quot;2008-09-15T08:55:03.923&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you are only interested in gold badges, and [there aren't that many of them][3], the simple solution would be to hardcode their IDs in your query.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/148117/badge-that-is-achieved-by-most-number-of-people&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/2677/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=general&amp;filter=gold" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10883" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4046" RevisionGUID="ddf5ff8c-8d3a-435f-9109-cd773bed71ef" CreationDate="2012-09-24T09:51:02.017" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|badges|data-explorer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10884" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4048" RevisionGUID="5e6bb33e-8a08-4fa6-876d-61839d59a362" CreationDate="2012-09-24T11:40:54.463" UserId="25936" Text="The SE chat bot posts new [Stack Exchange blog][1] posts in [The Whiteboard][2], can it also do the same for our [Community Blog][3]? &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Please? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/6222420#6222420&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10885" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4048" RevisionGUID="5e6bb33e-8a08-4fa6-876d-61839d59a362" CreationDate="2012-09-24T11:40:54.463" UserId="25936" Text="Can the SE chat bot post our blog posts in the Whiteboard?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10886" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4048" RevisionGUID="5e6bb33e-8a08-4fa6-876d-61839d59a362" CreationDate="2012-09-24T11:40:54.463" UserId="25936" Text="|feature-request|blog|chat|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10887" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4049" RevisionGUID="2660f186-0650-42e2-ac64-1d3a87efc397" CreationDate="2012-09-24T12:22:49.300" UserId="48" Text="Since you're a moderator (which automatically gives you room owner powers), you can do that yourself: Add the blog's feed URL http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/feed/ into the &quot;Add a new feed&quot; box on http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard?tab=feeds, choose whether you want the posts as actual messages or in the ticker (I assume you want a message feed), and click &quot;add this feed&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Within a few minutes, the five most recent posts should then be posted into the room, and subsequent posts as they appear." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10888" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4048" RevisionGUID="09bee29f-dba8-44bd-b3df-d922f75eaaf6" CreationDate="2012-09-24T12:22:59.767" UserId="48" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|blog|chat|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10889" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4048" RevisionGUID="91d1e298-b274-4854-8bd2-52f3484c1e59" CreationDate="2012-09-24T13:10:35.307" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|blog|chat|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10890" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4050" RevisionGUID="629fd3a1-ef49-4e3e-aaaa-de9b384d4cf3" CreationDate="2012-09-24T15:02:56.450" UserId="62330" Text="As a further issue relating to this badge, its inclusion in the Badge Count depends on which list (and which site) you are reviewing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also is sometimes counted once (irrespective of the number you hold) or multiply... or not at all!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10891" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4051" RevisionGUID="9d0b0111-0bac-422d-965c-7bb638842a13" CreationDate="2012-09-24T17:00:18.193" UserId="177" Text="I intended to edit my own answer to a question to append some extra info I forgot to mention but accidentally edited someone else's.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The warning that my edit would require a peer review should have been a good sign that I was doing something wrong but I didn't until it was too late.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I want to withdraw my edit (perhaps *fail* the peer review on purpose) since it doesn't even fit well with the rest of the answer. How can I do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the answer I accidentally edited:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/165825/177&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, the &quot;peer review&quot; warning no longer appears and the answer doesn't even include my edit. Does this mean I successfully rolled back my unintended edit? Or is it simply invisible now?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10892" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4051" RevisionGUID="9d0b0111-0bac-422d-965c-7bb638842a13" CreationDate="2012-09-24T17:00:18.193" UserId="177" Text="Undo unintended edit (not yet peer reviewed)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10893" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4051" RevisionGUID="9d0b0111-0bac-422d-965c-7bb638842a13" CreationDate="2012-09-24T17:00:18.193" UserId="177" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10894" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4052" RevisionGUID="1d16b451-d00f-4490-9c10-d1072715da08" CreationDate="2012-09-24T18:10:06.797" UserId="25936" Text="Your edit [was rejected][1] by DXM, the original author of the answer, that's why your edit is no longer visible in the answer. He left you a comment there explaining the rejection:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The OP is asking about programming languages. These are APIs to other technologies, so I don't feel they are exactly relevant to my answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To see the history of your suggested edits, and whether they have been approved or rejected, go to the [activity tab][2] in your profile, and sort by [suggestions][3]. I know you realized your own mistake here, but I thought it was worth pointing out where you can find out the eventual fate of your suggested edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Until you get to 2,000 reputation, all your edits will need to be peer reviewed, so mistakes like this one will probably be caught, however do try to be a bit more careful in the future. Unfortunately there isn't a way to withdraw an edit, but _if_ the edit had been accepted all you needed to do would be to roll it back, so that's a good enough workaround. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review-beta/suggested-edits/10429&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/177/luiscubal?tab=activity&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/177/luiscubal?tab=activity" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10895" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4053" RevisionGUID="0ae9dffa-af8c-4a58-a713-e4f4502a55da" CreationDate="2012-09-24T20:40:32.703" UserId="7748" Text="You can't &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want a distinct list of the gold badges its available here : http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=general&amp;filter=gold " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10896" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4054" RevisionGUID="e16a687d-c5e5-45ad-86ea-dec9524a47c2" CreationDate="2012-09-25T00:00:46.370" UserId="185" Text="The Programmers CSS was just updated, so this bug is fixed now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding the bonus feature request: We're aware that the mod-menu-from-review flow is sub-optimal, and it's on our TODO. We just haven't prioritized it to the top yet, since it affects a small minority of users (albeit important ones).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10897" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4039" RevisionGUID="bf5f00c2-128d-44b4-aba2-1d3f0dddae17" CreationDate="2012-09-25T00:00:56.700" UserId="185" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|bug|status-completed|design|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10898" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4051" RevisionGUID="6e8e84d8-6b1c-4d3d-8f0f-d4d0cc4c39d3" CreationDate="2012-09-25T16:46:24.207" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|editing|suggested-edits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10901" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4055" RevisionGUID="90ffdd55-a2dc-4f88-9d93-9e30d4a34d73" CreationDate="2012-09-25T19:43:06.580" UserId="7748" Text="If you are using chrome and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) your resolution is 1366x768&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2)Your window is maximized&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) A link is the last word of the last line of the message&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, if you attempt to click on the the link is covered by the little &quot;flag\star&quot; hover window, thereby making the link **unclickabul**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please Fix.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/obayg.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10902" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4055" RevisionGUID="90ffdd55-a2dc-4f88-9d93-9e30d4a34d73" CreationDate="2012-09-25T19:43:06.580" UserId="7748" Text="Very Annoying Chat Defect" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10903" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4055" RevisionGUID="90ffdd55-a2dc-4f88-9d93-9e30d4a34d73" CreationDate="2012-09-25T19:43:06.580" UserId="7748" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10904" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4055" RevisionGUID="43a55a04-1ec0-45a1-a7aa-a5d236e661d0" CreationDate="2012-09-25T19:45:10.180" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1 characters in body; edited tags" Text="If you are using Chrome and:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. your resolution is 1366x768&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Your window is maximized&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. A link is the last word of the last line of the message&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, if you attempt to click on the the link is covered by the little &quot;flag\star&quot; hover window, thereby making the link **unclickable**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please Fix.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/obayg.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10905" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4055" RevisionGUID="43a55a04-1ec0-45a1-a7aa-a5d236e661d0" CreationDate="2012-09-25T19:45:10.180" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|bug|chat|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10906" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4056" RevisionGUID="f0045531-695d-4701-af29-76e534677242" CreationDate="2012-09-25T21:14:11.347" UserId="40625" Text="Reading through the [relevant piece of FAQ][1], constructive subjective questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;- tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;- have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;- invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;- insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;- are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think (if correctly worded) **questions on naming conventions should be *on* topic** here. They are very relevant to programmers, there are often very practical considerations and experiences that form the basis for answers, and it's easy to leave out opinions using votes, comments, downvotes, and moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note / disclosure: I personally asked [this question on CSS naming conventions][2], and the [accepted answer][3] was (in my opinion) of the *good subjective* kind: substantial, based on experience, explaining the &quot;why&quot;, backed up by references, and with a constructive, fair and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note 2: I do understand why naming conventions might be considered &quot;not constructive&quot;, as it's indeed hard (if not: impossible) to have one correct answer. But then again, looking at the [top questions by votes][4], there are several great questions that (sh/w)ould be closed by that same standard (e.g. [1][5], [2][6], [3][7], [4][8], [5][9], etc.) - which is probably why we now have the &quot;Good Subjective / Bad Subjective&quot; distinction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#what-about-subjective-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141988/practical-considerations-for-html-css-naming-conventions-syntax&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/142703/40625&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92862/im-a-manager-how-can-i-improve-work-relationships-and-communication-with-progr&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90059/new-team-lead-how-to-deal-with-a-resentful-former-peer&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61655/how-do-you-know-youre-writing-good-code" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10907" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4057" RevisionGUID="d85b2391-2ad4-4721-af8b-fce7e19400c1" CreationDate="2012-09-26T14:42:01.837" UserId="483" Text="I asked [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155639/which-algorithms-data-structures-should-i-recognize-and-know-by-name) question a while back. Today I was awarded the 1000 views badge. I looked at the question and noticed a delete vote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that a question like this isn't really suited for stack exchange. However, since this seems to be a fairly popular question, should it be kept and not deleted. Or does popularity not really matter for closed questions(that aren't duplicates)? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10908" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4057" RevisionGUID="d85b2391-2ad4-4721-af8b-fce7e19400c1" CreationDate="2012-09-26T14:42:01.837" UserId="483" Text="When should a question be closed, but not deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10909" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4057" RevisionGUID="d85b2391-2ad4-4721-af8b-fce7e19400c1" CreationDate="2012-09-26T14:42:01.837" UserId="483" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10910" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4058" RevisionGUID="ce32ad9a-4ae0-4857-89fd-153196b40edf" CreationDate="2012-09-26T14:46:13.760" UserId="47" Text="Closed questions should be kept on the site when:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. They are a duplicate of another on topic question. As there are many ways of asking the same question it's good that we have the different examples on the site.&#xD;&#xA;2. ....&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well that's it really.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All other closed questions are candidates for deletion. This could be either automatically if they are down-voted and/or have no answers or manually for questions with a positive score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where possible questions should be edited to bring them into line with the site's scope and then flagged for reopening, but where the question is not salvageable deletion is the only option.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just because something's popular doesn't make it on topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10912" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4059" RevisionGUID="abdd0919-c9b1-49b2-ace4-bd34cd91cffc" CreationDate="2012-09-26T15:17:57.127" UserId="38148" Text="It seems like questions that would fall under this tag are very likely to be migrated to The Workplace. Almost every question in the past two months under this tag have been closed and roughly half of them marked as off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So should this tag be eliminated ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10913" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4059" RevisionGUID="abdd0919-c9b1-49b2-ace4-bd34cd91cffc" CreationDate="2012-09-26T15:17:57.127" UserId="38148" Text="Should the [work-environment] tag be removed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10914" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4059" RevisionGUID="abdd0919-c9b1-49b2-ace4-bd34cd91cffc" CreationDate="2012-09-26T15:17:57.127" UserId="38148" Text="|discussion|tags|removal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10915" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4059" RevisionGUID="46201f4f-6cf8-43c6-ac34-ddfc0ac22ed1" CreationDate="2012-09-26T15:20:22.777" UserId="47" Comment="added tag link for ease of searching" Text="It seems like questions that would fall under the [tag:work-environment] tag are very likely to be migrated to The Workplace. Almost every question in the past two months under this tag have been closed and roughly half of them marked as off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So should this tag be eliminated ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10916" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4060" RevisionGUID="514e9fac-d59f-4b29-850f-a88578d87f80" CreationDate="2012-09-26T17:09:56.353" UserId="32353" Text="In [this post][1] Scott Atwood argues in favor of keeping a post that is off-topic not only un-deleted, but open.  He says:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; In my mind, there are three broad guidelines that determine whether a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; question is appropriate for Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     Does this question match the criteria provided in the Stack Overflow FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     Is this question accepted by the community, as reflected in upvotes, favorites, views, and answers?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     Does this question teach me anything that could make me better at my job? Can I learn something from it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then later says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As Meat Loaf once said, two out of three ain’t bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that's a reasonable policy to keep in mind both when closing and when deleting questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some people can believe in a die-hard policy that closing is a temporary state and questions must either improve and be opened or be deleted.  I think that policy is arbitrary (closing isn't a temporary state due to a law of physics, it's temporary if we make it so, and the question is whether we *should* make it so), and that it makes more sense to say that questions that are out of scope, but popular and useful, but maybe not quite popular and useful enough to be open, should not be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One inevitable consequence of this is a degree of subjectivity, and therefore a certain degree of perceived (perhaps actual) unfairness.  But a little subjectivity can be a good thing, and I think it's preferable to the alternative of removing useful and popular content from the internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10917" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4060" RevisionGUID="3f4a3104-06ea-409d-b254-e71e586a844d" CreationDate="2012-09-26T18:11:20.620" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 11 characters in body" Text="In [this post][1] Jeff Atwood argues in favor of keeping a post that is off-topic not only un-deleted, but open.  He says:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In my mind, there are three broad guidelines that determine whether a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is appropriate for Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Does this question match the criteria provided in the Stack Overflow FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Is this question accepted by the community, as reflected in upvotes, favorites, views, and answers?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Does this question teach me anything that could make me better at my job? Can I learn something from it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then later says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As Meat Loaf once said, two out of three ain’t bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that's a reasonable policy to keep in mind both when closing and when deleting questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some people can believe in a die-hard policy that closing is a temporary state and questions must either improve and be opened or be deleted.  I think that policy is arbitrary (closing isn't a temporary state due to a law of physics, it's temporary if we make it so, and the question is whether we *should* make it so), and that it makes more sense to say that questions that are out of scope, but popular and useful, but maybe not quite popular and useful enough to be open, should not be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One inevitable consequence of this is a degree of subjectivity, and therefore a certain degree of perceived (perhaps actual) unfairness.  But a little subjectivity can be a good thing, and I think it's preferable to the alternative of removing useful and popular content from the internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10918" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4061" RevisionGUID="64104a8b-1918-41b7-98d6-7b3cd6a901e2" CreationDate="2012-09-27T15:45:15.977" UserId="24676" Text="No. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there are valid questions about work environment which are specific enough to programmers that they fit better here than on The Workplace." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10919" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4040" RevisionGUID="a0e87895-be18-4108-8ae2-f591f3a9b26a" CreationDate="2012-09-27T17:19:37.747" UserId="32" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|badges|notifications|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10920" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4062" RevisionGUID="c5f5b75a-9e49-4dc6-a609-c59515ab873c" CreationDate="2012-09-27T17:21:46.623" UserId="32" Text="Most of the bronze badges don't notify users who are considered &quot;veterans&quot; of the network, which is (loosely) defined as having accounts on multiple non-meta sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rationale is that getting a notification everytime you join a new site and, say, downvote gets a tad annoying after a while.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Custodian, being one of the &quot;you did one thing&quot;-bronze badges is one of those who's notifications are suppressed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10921" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3984" RevisionGUID="9dcac9b8-7b1a-4e4b-996d-01af24769c58" CreationDate="2012-09-27T19:26:17.233" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body" Text="##The general policy on deletions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Why are some questions or answers removed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are extremely off topic, or of very low quality, may be removed at the discretion of the community and moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Over time, closed questions that are not useful as signpoints to other questions may also be removed, as well as questions which have no significant activity over a very long period after being asked. For additional guidance, see How to Ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - commentary on the question or other answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asking another, different question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - “thanks!” or “me too!” responses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - exact duplicates of other answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - barely more than a link to an external site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - not even a partial answer to the actual question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you wish to improve an existing answer, click edit. For additional guidance, see How to Answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the policy, I'm sure you are aware of it, I'm only including it for completeness. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Questions with historical significance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a [historical lock](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for) that has been introduced (fairly recently) as a counter measure to link rot: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What is the purpose of a Historical Lock?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A historical lock preserves older content that was very popular when it was originally posted, but is now off-topic or otherwise out of scope for the site it is posted on. Historically locking a post ends the debate over whether a question should be kept on the site or deleted, and is often the final state of a question that has been deleted and undeleted more than once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **How are questions affected by historical locking?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In addition to the post notice being prominently displayed, posts which are historically locked are &quot;frozen in time;&quot; they cannot be voted on, answered, edited or commented. Historically-locked questions are omitted from normal question lists (those on the home page, /questions, and the various per-tag lists), but can still be found by searching for words in the post or title (via either site-search or Google, etc). The visual appearance of the entire post is altered by removal of the voting arrows from the question and all answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that historical locked questions on meta sites are not hidden in this manner, though their answers are still frozen in the same fashion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions can be historically locked when:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is contentious; i.e. it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When is it not appropriate to historically-lock a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should not be historically locked if they:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Are being actively maintained, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Have little or no redeeming value.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A good rule of thumb: If the question does not minimally meet Jeff Atwood's 3rd rule in the &quot;[We Hate Fun Here](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/)&quot; blog post, it's probably not a good candidate for historical locking. The third rule is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Does this question teach me anything that could make me better at my job? Can I learn something from it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I request a historical lock on a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Flag the question for moderator attention, with the &quot;custom description&quot; option. In the flag description, explain why you think the post should be historically locked. A moderator will evaluate the question using the criteria outlined above, and will either lock the question, or decline your flag with an explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Alternatively, if you want to try and gain more community support for the question, or contest the moderator decision, you can post a question here on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you are currently under 10K, your only option to request a historical lock is to post a question about it on Meta. I would advice you to use a far more appropriate tone that in this question, and: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Clearly explain why you think the question has redeeming value,&#xD;&#xA;- Politely request from the community to review it and decide whether it should be historically locked or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not _every_ deleted question qualifies for the historical lock, please do _not_ waste everyone's time by bringing up questions on Meta that clearly don't qualify. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Clarification:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The historical lock is only meant for _deleted_ questions (or questions that are about to be deleted), locking closed questions prevents them from being edited and voted on. Furthermore the community cannot reverse a lock, while it can (and often does) reverse a closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Changing the policy &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears you disagree with it. Fair enough. Change it. Stop complaining about it, and change it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I'd support any **constructive** attempt to solve the problem, however I must point out that there have been tons of discussions on Stack Overflow about deletions, and although the &quot;link rot&quot; problem is true for popular Stack Overflow questions it's almost completely irrelevant for lower traffic sites like Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand that clicking on a link, only to find a 404 page stinks, but should also understand that keeping crap around stinks more. And although there might be some gems amongst our deleted questions, most of them are plain crap. This is _not_ Stack Overflow, if you are interested in changing Stack Overflow's or the network's policy, please post your question on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meta Programmers is a place were we discuss Programmers specific issues, and from a Programmers perspective **the deleted popular questions that were linked all over the place were _not_ ours to begin with**. Unfortunately tons and tons of crap were migrated here from Stack Overflow in the early days of the site. Most of these questions were closed (at some point), which send them back to Stack Overflow. What was deleted here was their (locked) rejected migration stubs. What was linked all over the place was their Stack Overflow URL, and not (so much) their Programmers one. If you want to make a case for them, please do it on Stack Overflow, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally speaking, closed but popular questions are _not_ being deleted on Programmers, at least not systematically. I've deleted more posts than all my fellow moderators _combined_, if popular questions were being deleted, trust me, I'd know it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Are we making the internet better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, let's what our most voted deleted questions are: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. What's your favorite “programmer ignorance” pet peeve? (+410),&#xD;&#xA;1. What's your most controversial programming opinion? (+391),&#xD;&#xA;1. What real life bad habits has programming given you? (+368),&#xD;&#xA;1. As a programmer what single discovery has given you the greatest boost in productivity? (+315),&#xD;&#xA;1. How to hide Thinking at Work so that the Non-Programmers don't suspect Slacking? (+257)&#xD;&#xA;1. What are the best RSS feeds for programmers/developers? (238)&#xD;&#xA;1. Best Java book you have read so far (+211)&#xD;&#xA;1. How did you get your first programming job? (+140) &#xD;&#xA;1. Does the D programming language have a future? (+138)&#xD;&#xA;1. What's wrong with cplusplus.com? (+128)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;Best Java book you have read so far&quot; one is the one (from the list) with the most views, around 33K. And zero answers. Yeap, zero. It's a question that got all of its answers on Stack Overflow, and 99% of it's activity, including views, there. Gone. Again, if you want to make a case for it, go to Meta Stack Overflow please, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly _don't_ know if we are making the internet better. However having (partially) reviewed some of the above questions, I don't see any indication that we are making the internet worse by deleting them. _If_ they were originally asked on Programmers and were part of our community's history, we would have a whole different discussion, but right now all I can say about them and their eventual fate is: **meh**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#The blog post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was the worst possible example you could bring forth: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The question was deleted long time ago,&#xD;&#xA;1. I could only find five links to the Programmers version of it,&#xD;&#xA;1. The blog post _clearly indicated_ that it would lead to a 404 for most people,&#xD;&#xA;1. The URL was `nofollow`, so there wasn't an issue with indexing,&#xD;&#xA;1. The only reason the URL was included was for our 10K users to be able to review it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, the completely inappropriate tone you chose for your question made me re-think the whole effort to salvege **old and long forgotten** deleted questions by converting them to blog posts. Although I do not have any expectations for appreciation for my efforts to give back to the community, I am not a moron and will _not_ freely volunteer my time to promote the community through an activity that has absolutely nothing to do with my diamond status when this is what I get for it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At some point you got to say enough is enough. I've removed the url from the blog post, so users who would deliberatily click on a link that says &quot;hey, this is deleted&quot; won't have a bad experience. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Trash Stack Exchange solution (and its many variants)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been proposed countless times, and every time it has been denied by Stack Exchange. Personally I find it a good enough solution, but Stack Exchange doesn't seem to care enough for hosting content that has been deemed unsuitable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Stargazer712's proposal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stargazer712 made what I must admit is an [interesting suggestion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3976/25936) (carefully hidden under tons of borderline insulting crap). However it's based on a misunderstanding of the scale of the effort to salvage questions by converting them to blog posts. We are certainly not talking about converting _every_ deleted question to a blog post, I have found 5 so far that I'd like to salvage, plus another one from Stack Overflow and _no one_ else has shown any interest in this. So, for all intents and purposes when we are talking about the blog as a way to salvage questions, we are talking about a total of six questions. That's it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that 2 days after you posted this you still haven't brought forth any other evidence of systematic deletion of popular content with at least some redeeming value on Programmers, I'm sorry but I'll have to dismiss this as a non issue. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, we had numerous organized clean up efforts in the past that included deletions. I'm honestly hoping those are _not_ the deletions you have in mind, as all the organized clean up efforts were discussed thoroughly on Meta before they began, and only began when it was obvious that the community supported them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you do update your question, please either ping me in chat or post a comment here so I can review your updates. Apologies for the tone in my earlier answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10922" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4063" RevisionGUID="fd9948ef-df45-487a-8dcd-adf617798fe3" CreationDate="2012-09-27T21:55:38.360" UserId="18121" Text="What if we returned a 404 error message, but the custom error page showed the original content of the page (at least until the page isn't getting hit from search engines any more)? This solves the problem with the user interaction, because I've run into 404's for programming issues on SO myself, and it's always just a little irritating when I'm in a rush.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Showing the original content helps the user, even if the original content had a big &quot;closed as dupe&quot; message, linking to another question. Proceeding with the 404 helps search engines avoid sending people to that link, and will help clear the way for more relevant content to be linked to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the page no longer appears in search engines (a few weeks after deleted?, not sure time to propagate), stop displaying the original content, and go to a standard dead link page, which will force other sites with outdated links to update. Other sites should have had ample time to see that their external link was returning a 404 and update it at that point." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10923" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4064" RevisionGUID="2e43c5be-cc0f-44e7-bda3-a252a4751f90" CreationDate="2012-09-28T08:03:48.443" UserId="25936" Text="This is how the [stats for the low quality posts queue][1] looks like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Same thing happens in the history tab, for example check out the [first posts history][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just in case this is browser specific, I'm on Chrome 22.0.1229.79 m (latest stable), on Win7.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review-beta/low-quality-posts/stats&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/J791P.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review-beta/first-posts/history" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10924" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4064" RevisionGUID="2e43c5be-cc0f-44e7-bda3-a252a4751f90" CreationDate="2012-09-28T08:03:48.443" UserId="25936" Text="Footer line isn't where it's supposed to be in review stats and history" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10925" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4064" RevisionGUID="2e43c5be-cc0f-44e7-bda3-a252a4751f90" CreationDate="2012-09-28T08:03:48.443" UserId="25936" Text="|bug|design|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10926" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4065" RevisionGUID="584d6f4a-9232-4e35-998c-57bec08d04fc" CreationDate="2012-09-28T10:46:11.253" UserId="25936" Text="Ben, you are imagining things. What [masters] tag? ;P" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10927" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4065" RevisionGUID="12f033a6-08d3-43ae-bb71-abb9b699c5b2" CreationDate="2012-09-28T10:59:04.933" UserId="25936" Comment="added 76 characters in body" Text="Ben, you are imagining things. What [masters] tag? ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep an eye out for it, if it comes back it might be worth blacklisting." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10928" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4066" RevisionGUID="7066da81-816c-424b-891b-23d055f94e30" CreationDate="2012-09-28T19:41:27.270" UserId="1685" Text="The fix will be in the next production build." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10929" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4064" RevisionGUID="76c92427-d2af-45c5-a704-3379359c91e2" CreationDate="2012-09-28T19:41:52.090" UserId="1685" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10930" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4067" RevisionGUID="f27a5f7b-e961-472f-b0ce-f8b38f594894" CreationDate="2012-09-29T05:57:44.820" UserId="483" Text="I recently came across the tag [`[great-programmer]`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/great-programmer). What does this even mean? Is this a garbage tag that should just be removed? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10931" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4067" RevisionGUID="f27a5f7b-e961-472f-b0ce-f8b38f594894" CreationDate="2012-09-29T05:57:44.820" UserId="483" Text="What is the `great-programmer` tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10932" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4067" RevisionGUID="f27a5f7b-e961-472f-b0ce-f8b38f594894" CreationDate="2012-09-29T05:57:44.820" UserId="483" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10933" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4067" RevisionGUID="5bf783aa-1ac7-4e3f-815b-7d30bed1b08d" CreationDate="2012-09-29T08:08:59.353" UserId="31260" Comment="deleted 72 characters in body" Text="I recently came across the tag [tag:great-programmer]. What does this even mean? Is this a garbage tag that should just be removed? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10934" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4068" RevisionGUID="293bb596-0bb1-4a79-8bd7-81adb5ca4efc" CreationDate="2012-09-29T19:54:48.307" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="It's a terrible tag and it should die an ignoble death.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had it on [the chopping block][1] before, but it slipped through the cracks while we were dealing with even worse tags that were far more prolific.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kill it. Kill it with fire.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1940/8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10935" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4069" RevisionGUID="4ef3a1c6-ec3a-4b3a-a293-f4016aa5a8cf" CreationDate="2012-09-29T20:19:47.683" UserId="12611" Text="This tag needs to go. The general idea behind a tag is that it should be able to exist as the *only* tag on a question and still make sense. Therefore, with that logic, if the only tag I could conceivably add to a Programmers SE question is the [tag:work-environment] tag, then the question is most likely off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that said, I think Philip does make a good point that just because a question has a workplace element to it doesn't mean it's off topic here. Remember, we should be jealous of our communities!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10936" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="4067" RevisionGUID="e02f78a0-4454-4b3e-b94e-f3a7db68e133" CreationDate="2012-09-30T00:01:26.573" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/252196418868109313" />
  <row Id="10937" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="4059" RevisionGUID="fccb6715-c289-4738-a858-d112b89bd469" CreationDate="2012-09-30T03:01:26.780" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/252241718571855872" />
  <row Id="10938" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4070" RevisionGUID="ed79e3c5-4120-4f78-b598-e6f99cebe6bf" CreationDate="2012-10-01T11:58:23.433" UserId="32008" Text="I posted an answer to a question I view interesting, and that I often asks myself, namely http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/166893/should-i-add-parameters-to-instance-methods-that-use-those-instance-fields-as-pa.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to know... Is it advisable, ethical, and/or seen as a positive indicator to add a bounty to a question I posted an answer to ? I feel like there could be a better answer from +30K rep users such as Peter Torok for example..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10939" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4070" RevisionGUID="ed79e3c5-4120-4f78-b598-e6f99cebe6bf" CreationDate="2012-10-01T11:58:23.433" UserId="32008" Text="Is it possible and/or ethically correct to add a bounty to a question I answer to?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10940" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4070" RevisionGUID="ed79e3c5-4120-4f78-b598-e6f99cebe6bf" CreationDate="2012-10-01T11:58:23.433" UserId="32008" Text="|discussion|bounty|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10941" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4071" RevisionGUID="13a9c752-3409-429a-b634-1711d751c577" CreationDate="2012-10-01T12:03:25.950" UserId="47" Text="It's certainly possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The ethics should be irrelevant as there's no way that the bounty can be assigned to your answer. You can't assign it manually and there's no way it will be auto-assigned as your answer pre-dates the start of the bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10942" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4072" RevisionGUID="e61dc483-cd63-419b-b8d7-df3bf41c85ce" CreationDate="2012-10-01T12:18:53.463" UserId="41381" Text="Some may see it as an attempt by you to promote your answer and get more votes, its not against the rules though, and if you make the bounty a larger one people would likely not complain about it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10943" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4059" RevisionGUID="4eee05ac-00b5-4b74-bb7b-010c90098c50" CreationDate="2012-10-01T17:52:56.937" UserId="4" Comment="added 800 characters in body" Text="It seems like questions that would fall under the [tag:work-environment] tag are very likely to be migrated to The Workplace. Almost every question in the past two months under this tag have been closed and roughly half of them marked as off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So should this tag be eliminated ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Moderator's Note**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For anyone working on the tag clean-up, please watch out for a few things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's a question that should be closed, don't retag - flag or vote. If it's closed and can't be saved, flag for deletion. If it's a good question, try to make as many edits at the same time as possible (consider the title, body, any other tag changes, and answers).&#xD;&#xA;Just don't flood the homepage with a bunch of minor edits to questions. It just buries new questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you aren't sure if you can save a question, feel free to discuss it somewhere - in this question or in chat work. If an edit is going to be made, make it a good one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just generally reduce the number of edits to a single question as well as the number of questions you edit at a given moment in time. Thanks!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10944" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4067" RevisionGUID="414ec31b-0481-48ad-beb0-a0867ae9f2e1" CreationDate="2012-10-01T18:09:19.523" UserId="1204" Comment="added 839 characters in body" Text="I recently came across the tag [tag:great-programmer]. What does this even mean? Is this a garbage tag that should just be removed? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Moderator's Note**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For anyone working on the tag clean-up, please watch out for a few things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's a question that should be closed, don't retag - flag or vote. If it's closed and can't be saved, flag for deletion. If it's a good question, try to make as many edits at the same time as possible (consider the title, body, any other tag changes, and answers).&#xD;&#xA;Just don't flood the homepage with a bunch of minor edits to questions. It just buries new questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you aren't sure if you can save a question, feel free to discuss it somewhere - in this question or in chat. If an edit is going to be made, make it a good one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just generally reduce the number of edits to a single question as well as the number of questions you edit at a given moment in time. Thanks!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10945" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4067" RevisionGUID="2b5a481a-d9ef-404f-8954-7f5c34fefaf2" CreationDate="2012-10-01T19:25:11.523" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="You're not a moderator here." Text="I recently came across the tag [tag:great-programmer]. What does this even mean? Is this a garbage tag that should just be removed? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Note from [Robert Harvey](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1204/robert-harvey)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For anyone working on the tag clean-up, please watch out for a few things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's a question that should be closed, don't retag - flag or vote. If it's closed and can't be saved, flag for deletion. If it's a good question, try to make as many edits at the same time as possible (consider the title, body, any other tag changes, and answers).&#xD;&#xA;Just don't flood the homepage with a bunch of minor edits to questions. It just buries new questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you aren't sure if you can save a question, feel free to discuss it somewhere - in this question or in chat. If an edit is going to be made, make it a good one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just generally reduce the number of edits to a single question as well as the number of questions you edit at a given moment in time. Thanks!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10949" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4067" RevisionGUID="96c8ce1d-648e-44df-800b-686b188895ba" CreationDate="2012-10-01T20:20:37.207" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 103 characters in body" Text="I recently came across the tag [tag:great-programmer]. What does this even mean? Is this a garbage tag that should just be removed? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;For anyone working on the tag clean-up, please watch out for a few things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's a question that should be closed, don't retag - flag or vote. If it's closed and can't be saved, flag for deletion. If it's a good question, try to make as many edits at the same time as possible (consider the title, body, any other tag changes, and answers).&#xD;&#xA;Just don't flood the homepage with a bunch of minor edits to questions. It just buries new questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you aren't sure if you can save a question, feel free to discuss it somewhere - in this question or in chat. If an edit is going to be made, make it a good one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just generally reduce the number of edits to a single question as well as the number of questions you edit at a given moment in time. Thanks!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10950" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4074" RevisionGUID="6144bf54-8d65-4426-abfc-e57e0adaffc7" CreationDate="2012-10-01T22:25:57.537" UserId="25936" Text="It's amazing how when investigating crap tags like [great-programmers], you always discover other equally (or more) crappy tags. This time I found [passion] and [career-advice]. Oh, well, all three were cleaned up, and will be removed from the system automatically.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately some [great-programmers] questions from the good old days were unsalvageable _and_ without any lasting value, so they went the way of the dodo. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10952" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4075" RevisionGUID="e9160f22-23e3-4c30-9857-b4b5539dbde8" CreationDate="2012-10-02T12:13:30.660" UserId="37945" Text="OK, so I added this question last year: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112270/is-it-unusual-for-a-small-company-15-developers-not-to-use-managed-source-vers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question got a fair bit of interest and a number of people made it a favourite question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've just added an update to say that X has happened since the question was asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this acceptable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just suddenly thought perhaps the Q&amp;A format of the site would prohibit this (I'd be happy to remove the update if so..).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10953" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4075" RevisionGUID="e9160f22-23e3-4c30-9857-b4b5539dbde8" CreationDate="2012-10-02T12:13:30.660" UserId="37945" Text="Is it acceptable to update questions with success/failure stories?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10954" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4075" RevisionGUID="e9160f22-23e3-4c30-9857-b4b5539dbde8" CreationDate="2012-10-02T12:13:30.660" UserId="37945" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10955" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4076" RevisionGUID="7b920f71-a437-4d5f-abc9-5891c36f1f73" CreationDate="2012-10-02T12:24:25.303" UserId="41381" Text="If the personal anecdote providers meaningful experiences relevant to the question I'm ok with it. If its just you writing a blog post using this site as your platform it needs to go. sharing relevant and useful experiences is a good thing, sharing random tangentially related interesting but useless stories just contributes to the crap and noise we try to remove. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10956" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4077" RevisionGUID="f26e86c6-3f14-4313-b12d-804a250ce2ea" CreationDate="2012-10-02T12:27:59.743" UserId="4" Text="I'd say that it isn't a good idea, but I don't think it's prohibited anywhere. Your question should be just that - a question. It should contain any relevant information that someone might need to either answer the question or determine if their current situation is similar enough to be able to use the answers to the question. Anything else is noise that makes it harder to read and follow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider other alternatives - writing a blog post (this site even has a blog - you could submit it through their process and link to your question and link from the question to the blog post) and linking to the question in the blog post or answering your own question (but be sure to actually answer the question and not just write an anecdote)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10957" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4078" RevisionGUID="9530b12a-fea0-43db-b826-320ccefe9d9a" CreationDate="2012-10-02T12:41:30.180" UserId="25476" Text="I think that it is important to get feedback on how the answers applied and if they helped out.  It is good to know if the answers are not just voted up and accepted, but that they made a difference for the questor in the real world.  This information may be localized and perhaps useless to most people however.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are just chatting then it best belongs in chat or in a comment on the question somwhere.  It is a fine line I think." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10958" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4079" RevisionGUID="0e3eddf8-7292-4f1f-8ae3-0c2437e32c66" CreationDate="2012-10-02T13:30:20.057" UserId="25936" Text="Another option would be to add your update as an answer, as it's somewhat of a solution to the problem you had a year ago. Right now your update wouldn't really stand as an answer, but if you feel like expanding it a bit with details of the process the company followed, and adding a couple of references (perhaps to the other answers that helped you the most), I think it could work. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cleaned up some of the obsolete / too chatty comments in the question, so if you decide to post your update as a comment it should be a bit more visible. If you go ahead and post it as a comment let me know, I'd like to upvote it and make it even more visible. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10959" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4075" RevisionGUID="dd6ec460-d04e-457a-b14c-a5d3d966f6cf" CreationDate="2012-10-02T13:31:35.220" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10960" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4079" RevisionGUID="6dabd3d9-8876-4f37-82a8-0e3873fd4211" CreationDate="2012-10-02T14:00:26.353" UserId="25936" Comment="added 30 characters in body" Text="Another option would be to add your update as an answer, as it's somewhat of a solution to the problem you had a year ago. Right now your update wouldn't really stand as an answer, but if you feel like expanding it a bit with details of the process the company followed, and adding a couple of references (perhaps to the other answers that helped you the most), I think it could work. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cleaned up some of the obsolete / too chatty comments in the question, so if you decide to post your update as a comment it should be a bit more visible. &lt;del&gt;If you go ahead and post it as a comment let me know, I'd like to upvote it and make it even more visible.&lt;/del&gt; Comment upvoted ;) " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10961" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4080" RevisionGUID="dc425d5d-85ce-48be-b17b-55e5cfb55b27" CreationDate="2012-10-03T06:06:24.477" UserId="62330" Text="There is, however, inconsistency... on my List of Accounts it is currently showing all of them as visited **Today** (06:05utc) which I know not to be true, although I have visited them within the last 24 hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may (still be) be Today in another time zone...?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10962" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="4075" RevisionGUID="906bcb5e-212f-42c3-b549-018937951808" CreationDate="2012-10-03T12:01:27.600" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/253464782273912834" />
  <row Id="10963" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4081" RevisionGUID="943d646e-53f8-4638-a982-3997f9df10c1" CreationDate="2012-10-03T13:14:27.290" UserId="44200" Text="On the Programmers SE site, the menu (with links to Questions, Tags, ect) has a line drawn and text changed to red (or gray in meta) when hovering over that menu item. However, the user must hover over the text in the menu item to actually be able to click on the link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ergo, if the user hovers over the non-text part (such as the drawn line), there is no active link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a bug in the way the css is designed for that SE? On all other SE sites, if the menu item changes (when hovering), I know I can click to go to that page; I don't have to hover over the actual text." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10964" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4081" RevisionGUID="943d646e-53f8-4638-a982-3997f9df10c1" CreationDate="2012-10-03T13:14:27.290" UserId="44200" Text="Programmers SE Menu - Whitespace Doesn't Link" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10965" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4081" RevisionGUID="943d646e-53f8-4638-a982-3997f9df10c1" CreationDate="2012-10-03T13:14:27.290" UserId="44200" Text="|bug|design|user-interface|hyperlinks|css|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10966" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4081" RevisionGUID="e2f3af83-1d9d-4eb0-b847-8f156e5f045f" CreationDate="2012-10-03T21:57:29.033" UserId="32" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10967" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4082" RevisionGUID="263d932f-44d0-4aaf-a23d-770f8416586b" CreationDate="2012-10-03T21:58:59.283" UserId="32" Text="This will be fixed in the next deploy, in so far as is possible across all browsers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically, you'll be able to click on the underlines directly underneath the words (and in the whitespace between them)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10968" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3879" RevisionGUID="b5749f5b-14de-4e96-ba86-2abfa88d6944" CreationDate="2012-10-03T23:58:12.327" UserId="42031" Comment="finished!" Text="I have gone through and re-tagged the closed questions and put more appropriate tags where possible. I have also re-tagged a few of the questions that didn't really need improvement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will work on looking at the other questions in the list and editing/tagging/flagging where appropriate, and try not to spam the home page (or the review queue as my rep here is too low to edit).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**: We're down to 35 now, still slowly working on it. Having troubles deciding whether some should be open or not, I'll seek clarification in chat. I've found a few where they are linked to questions that have been closed as duplicates of the question in context - so I just removed the tags on those ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit edit**: All burned now.. I see 0 questions under the work tag. Yay" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10969" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3969" RevisionGUID="83c798ce-6e8a-4fd2-b581-43a724c1f12c" CreationDate="2012-10-05T01:12:08.203" UserId="25936" Comment="added 194 characters in body" Text="I have been hitting quite a few 404's on P.SE lately. I was wondering how great the idea of perma deleting questions *that have been around a long time and indexed and linked to* (not spam or such) really is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, [the lastest blog post][1] by Yannis Rizos contains a link to a deleted question ([391 upvotes FCS!][2]) in the 2nd paragraph, resulting in a 404 error for basically all(?) the audience of the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not saying that these questions are a good fit to the site, but removing them completely, leaving dangling links all over the internet (am I exaggerating? :-) certainly isn't my idea of Making The Internet a Better Place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that don't mind closing; I wouldn't even mind a `trash.stackexchange.com`; but in my very humble opinion, deleting valuable content from SE sites (not just P.SE) that has been lying there for weeks and months is just dead stupid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Follow up question on Meta Stack Overflow: [Are you guys turning SE into a 404 black hole?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/148620/are-you-guys-turning-se-into-a-404-black-hole)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/31104/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10970" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4083" RevisionGUID="5ad8b803-3467-42b4-813f-5a1394d61899" CreationDate="2012-10-05T08:06:29.937" UserId="63331" Text="Are Certification questions welcome in Programmers?  I don't mean specific technical questions like how to solve problems in simulation exams, or what a particular technical term means.  I am talking about questions about the certifications and the associated &quot;roadmaps&quot; themselves?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, if such questions are allowed, an example of a question I would like to ask if anyone knows if there is a basic C# exam from Microsoft equivalent to the SCJP?  And if not, does anyone know why not?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10971" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4083" RevisionGUID="5ad8b803-3467-42b4-813f-5a1394d61899" CreationDate="2012-10-05T08:06:29.937" UserId="63331" Text="Are Certification Questions Welcome in Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10972" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4083" RevisionGUID="5ad8b803-3467-42b4-813f-5a1394d61899" CreationDate="2012-10-05T08:06:29.937" UserId="63331" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10973" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4084" RevisionGUID="46dbda8f-ed74-4485-8d6d-72aa0f410461" CreationDate="2012-10-05T10:31:56.743" UserId="4" Text="My initial thought on this is no. It seems like that would be best answered by a search engine (in your example, searching for things like &quot;microsoft c# certification&quot; or &quot;c# scjp equivalent&quot;) or other questions about roadmaps would be too subjective and localized (the answers depend on you and your career development goals and wouldn't be helpful to everyone, even if they were in the same situation)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10974" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4085" RevisionGUID="40015465-dde9-4a94-9b44-ae346a444aea" CreationDate="2012-10-05T13:04:24.463" UserDisplayName="user39685" Text="I recently flagged some posts as 'very low quality' because I thought they were examples of &quot;bad subjective&quot; and didn't answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They were declined, and the reason was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm confused by this response, since I didn't think there were technical inaccuracies or that they were altogether wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anyone should more light on this?  Just trying to understand the feedback better." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10975" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4085" RevisionGUID="40015465-dde9-4a94-9b44-ae346a444aea" CreationDate="2012-10-05T13:04:24.463" UserDisplayName="user39685" Text="Confused by flag feedback" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10976" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4085" RevisionGUID="40015465-dde9-4a94-9b44-ae346a444aea" CreationDate="2012-10-05T13:04:24.463" UserDisplayName="user39685" Text="|discussion|flagging|declined-flags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10977" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4086" RevisionGUID="7118e684-93e6-40b4-8eb7-5792fdf608d4" CreationDate="2012-10-05T13:19:27.440" UserId="4" Text="To be clear, the questions were on various answers to [this question][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I declined the flags because it was an inappropriate use of the flags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers can not be &quot;bad subjective&quot; - that criteria only applies to questions. The definition of a low quality answer is something that doesn't provide a reason or explanation, only consists of a link, it's commenting on the question or another answer, and so on. The flagged answers were well written and explained themselves, and I disagreed that they didn't answer the question - they did provide real world examples of the use of dynamic typing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only other reason to delete an answer is if it's abusive in some way, such as advertising with no disclosure, unrelated spamming, or is offensive or abusive toward members of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, the problem was not the answers, but the question. The question received 5 close votes for not constructive. It also received a large number of answers, which is something that could indicate a non-constructive question or a question that is too broad, since it could indicate that there's no right answer if people aren't norming on a few best ideas for the condition.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/167305/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10978" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4087" RevisionGUID="456ede87-6b0a-4773-a530-a36d0dadaf38" CreationDate="2012-10-05T14:36:30.187" UserId="7935" Text="According to the [FAQ][faq], non-constructive questions are those that &quot;will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.&quot; What happens when a good question is asked which is useful to others, can be answered based on &quot;facts, references, or specific expertise,&quot; but still has lots of potential for debate, arguments, and extended discussion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good example of this is [What can I do with dynamic typing that I can not do with static typing][question]. In the original question, the OP is confused about why dynamic typing is such a great thing and asks for &quot;a real world example where dynamic typing allows me to do something I can't do with static typing.&quot; I admit it is a sensitive question that will probably attract debate and long-winded discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, keep in mind that **static vs. dynamic typing is not what the question is about**, though some people will invariably get off-topic and start arguing about it. The question is about what extra practical functionality dynamic typing can offer. The question itself is legitimate, useful, and can be answered in a constructive, factual manner if we don't get off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or have I interpreted the FAQ incorrectly?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[question]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/167305/7935&#xD;&#xA;[faq]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#close" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10979" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4087" RevisionGUID="456ede87-6b0a-4773-a530-a36d0dadaf38" CreationDate="2012-10-05T14:36:30.187" UserId="7935" Text="Questions that are constructive but still tend to attract debate" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10980" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4087" RevisionGUID="456ede87-6b0a-4773-a530-a36d0dadaf38" CreationDate="2012-10-05T14:36:30.187" UserId="7935" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10981" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4088" RevisionGUID="498d6a72-7eaf-46c4-8cac-a0282855b117" CreationDate="2012-10-05T15:13:06.193" UserId="4" Text="The [FAQ says it all][1]. It's also discussed in [a blog post][2]. Constructive subjective questions meet most, if not all, of the criteria for good subjective questions. If there is extended discussion, then there are many equally valid answers or the question might be pushing other questions off the site where they won't get answered as quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. To&#xD;&#xA;&gt; prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.” we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking here. If your motivation is “I would like others to explain&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ______ to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Extended discussions are more suitable for a forum or a chat room, not a question and answer site. You can make your own chat rooms on Stack Exchange sites for particular discussions, and most site (including Programmers) has a general catch-all chat room. These chat rooms are archived and can be linked to as references in answers to appropriate questions, from your blog, or on your choice of social network (which might also be an appropriate place for an extended discussion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10982" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4087" RevisionGUID="fdc18df4-5ce9-4052-9fce-e98eeae66f6c" CreationDate="2012-10-05T16:57:40.950" UserId="7935" Comment="added 248 characters in body" Text="According to the [FAQ][faq], non-constructive questions are those that &quot;will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.&quot; What happens when a good question is asked which is useful to others, can be answered based on &quot;facts, references, or specific expertise,&quot; but still has lots of potential for debate, arguments, and extended discussion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good example of this is [What can I do with dynamic typing that I can not do with static typing][question]. In the original question, the OP is confused about why dynamic typing is such a great thing and asks for &quot;a real world example where dynamic typing allows me to do something I can't do with static typing.&quot; I admit it is a sensitive question that will probably attract debate and long-winded discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, keep in mind that **static vs. dynamic typing is not what the question is about**, though some people will invariably get off-topic and start arguing about it. The question is about what extra practical functionality dynamic typing can offer. The question itself is legitimate, useful, and can be answered in a constructive, factual manner if we don't get off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or have I interpreted the FAQ incorrectly?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A great example is the currently highest-voted answer by Robery Harvey: long discussion in the comments, but off-topic. The next highest answer by ridiculous_fish (better answer in my opinion) has zero comments, is not off-topic, explains &quot;why,&quot; and is very constructive. I don't see why such a question should be closed if it produces nice constructive answers like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[question]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/167305/7935&#xD;&#xA;[faq]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#close" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10983" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4089" RevisionGUID="e2a205c3-41d9-41fa-9f22-bc3d5d5a9db5" CreationDate="2012-10-05T17:14:33.357" UserId="25936" Text="It's a very interesting question, and I'm a bit disappointed we couldn't find a way to keep it constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Minutes after the question was posted, one of our most senior members (by reputation) detected its not constructive nature and flagged it, asking for the &quot;insufficient explanation&quot; post notice (that's still visible on the question). I saw the flag seconds later, while examining the question and debating whether I should close it or not. I decided to add the post notice, hoping answerers would take it into consideration and not just answer for the sake of answering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Few hours later I checked back, read the five or six answers that were posted at the time, and again hovered over the close button. There were a couple of answers that completely missed the point of the question, and the whole thread was starting to feel like a typical not constructive one. Again, I didn't close it, as the two technically inaccurate answers were getting downvotes _and_ polite comments explaining what was wrong with them, and I was hoping the answerers would get the point. And they did, and removed their answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I checked back a third time, there were no flags, only one close vote, three good answers and a great one. At the time it seemed that we had salvaged the question, and decided to share it around, as I typically do with all questions I find extremely interesting. And it exploded, 14.4K views, 20 answers (+3 deleted ones). Unfortunately the later answers are quite poor (imho) and repetitive, I have no idea why people kept answering a question that was already sufficiently answered (again, imho), but they did. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps I should have closed the question right when I first saw it (minutes after it was posted), or when the flag asking for the post notice appeared (it was a good hint that someone else thought the question was attractive to poor answers). My spider sense was tingling every time I checked back, but until the last time (when the question was already closed), there seemed to be good reasons to let it open for at least a while more, and since there were no flags and I only spotted a single close vote, I happily reverted to user mode for this one instead of dropping the mod hammer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But right now, the question has more poor answers than good ones, and lots of off topic(ish) discussion in comments. We didn't really manage to pull this one off, and I probably should have protected answerers from wasting their time by closing the question early on. We can theorize for hours on how the question could work, but in practice it didn't and it did generate debate, arguments, polling, and extended discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There might be ways to accommodate and protect such questions, but we haven't found them yet. Yes, the question is extremely interesting, and perhaps on a different day it might have attracted a whole different crowd and a very limited set of amazing answers, but right now it's a typical not constructive thread, with tons of off topic / not constructive elements in answers and in comments. Shame it turned into a crapfest, but it did, and unfortunately I can't think of anything we could do to salvage it now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10984" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4090" RevisionGUID="6255d9ef-5439-44cc-b49f-a379d02a30a0" CreationDate="2012-10-05T18:34:04.977" UserId="3965" Text="Depending on the reader's frame of mind, that question either looks like someone genuinely wanting to know the advantages of dynamic typing, or like a static typing fanboi disguising a rant about dynamic typing in the form of a question.  The reason it looks bad is he framed it as a comparison, made his first paragraph a complaint, and worded the question in the second paragraph almost as a dare for someone to prove him wrong.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think he was intentionally soliciting debate on static vs. dynamic typing, asking purely for discussion, ranting, or wanting a list of opinions.  It can be very difficult to word such a question in a way that meets the inscrutable standards of this site.  Technically minded people often have difficulty noticing subtle distinctions like tone in their writing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The post is locked, so I can't edit, but below is my attempt on what he really meant to ask.  Maybe if a moderator agrees, it can be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What functionality does dynamic typing allow?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've been using python for a few days now and I think I understand the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; difference between dynamic and static typing. What I don't understand&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is under what circumstances it would be preferred. It is flexible and readable, but at the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; expense of more runtime checks and additional required unit testing.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Aside from non-functional criteria like flexibility and readability,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what reasons are there to choose dynamic typing?  What can I do with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dynamic typing that isn't possible otherwise?  What specific code example can you think of that illustrates a concrete advantage of dynamic typing?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10985" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4091" RevisionGUID="9578f500-c3a1-4c1d-b1f2-09af6dc69eef" CreationDate="2012-10-05T21:28:00.083" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="I noticed that there's 14 instances of a [stackoverflow][1] tag. This tag is easy to confuse the site with the actual issue. How do we rectify this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stackoverflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10986" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4091" RevisionGUID="9578f500-c3a1-4c1d-b1f2-09af6dc69eef" CreationDate="2012-10-05T21:28:00.083" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="What is the purpose of the &quot;Stack-Overflow&quot; tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10987" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4091" RevisionGUID="9578f500-c3a1-4c1d-b1f2-09af6dc69eef" CreationDate="2012-10-05T21:28:00.083" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10988" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="4091" RevisionGUID="0e428a24-e473-47d1-ac78-e4d57a556b34" CreationDate="2012-10-05T21:33:13.163" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited title" Text="Stackoverflow tag confusion" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10989" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4092" RevisionGUID="a2806590-8a94-4122-8206-160a632f2825" CreationDate="2012-10-05T21:34:39.583" UserId="47" Text="Given that a question about Stack Overflow (the site) would likely be off topic and hence closed and then deleted I don't think we need to distinguish.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having a specific [tag:stack-overflow-the-site] tag might appear to legitimise such questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10990" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4093" RevisionGUID="2dbe9a91-959a-41fa-b8eb-50b3ddc56368" CreationDate="2012-10-06T06:39:19.173" UserId="468" Text="I have a question &quot;[How long can a programmer concentrate in a day][1]&quot; that was being closed for being off-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In that question, I asked about the existence ( or lack of) of scientific study on then programmer's productivity. This is a clear, single-minded question with clear cut answers. But it is closed as not constructive. I think that the closure is not doing justice to the nature of the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it should be reopened.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167396/how-long-can-a-programmer-concentrate-in-a-day" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10991" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4093" RevisionGUID="2dbe9a91-959a-41fa-b8eb-50b3ddc56368" CreationDate="2012-10-06T06:39:19.173" UserId="468" Text="Should literature about productivity question be closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10992" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4093" RevisionGUID="2dbe9a91-959a-41fa-b8eb-50b3ddc56368" CreationDate="2012-10-06T06:39:19.173" UserId="468" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10993" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4093" RevisionGUID="64f56004-c25f-4349-857d-848ac46120f9" CreationDate="2012-10-06T06:41:04.913" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10994" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4093" RevisionGUID="59d79cf3-d9b4-4459-812f-58de083f38f6" CreationDate="2012-10-06T06:43:06.410" UserId="468" Comment="added 195 characters in body" Text="I have a question &quot;[How long can a programmer concentrate in a day][1]&quot; that was being closed for being off-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In that question, I asked about the existence ( or lack of) of scientific study on then programmer's productivity. This is a clear, single-minded question with clear cut answers. But it is closed as not constructive. I think that the closure is not doing justice to the nature of the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it should be reopened.  Moderators, please! Time to exercise your power and open the question to allow answers pouring in! I am sure a great many developers, Product Managers would be interested to learn these studies. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167396/how-long-can-a-programmer-concentrate-in-a-day" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10995" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4094" RevisionGUID="5b8d659e-0c68-40b6-ac01-800c0aa98cc7" CreationDate="2012-10-06T07:03:30.813" UserId="25936" Text="Your question is a request for external resources on a very broad and vague subject. That by definition is Not Constructive: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- There's no actual practical problem to be solved, and that's a requirement for all questions as per our [FAQ][1]. &#xD;&#xA;- The question is naturally attractive to equally valid answers, you give us absolutely no parameters to help us judge whether an answer referencing one study would be a better or worse answer than another one referencing a different study.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The vagueness of the topic alone could even justify closing it as Not A Real Question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore there's no evident prior research or effort in your question. That _usually_ would be a reason to downvote the question, not close it, but I'm mentioning it because some times prior research helps better define the question itself, and it might have helped it escape closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see how the question could be improved without changing its core, all three answers are opinion heavy (again, a strong hint of a not constructive question), and all of them comment, implicitly or explicitly, on the vagueness of the topic and how productivity can't be easily quantified. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There _are_ studies out there, for example this empirical study on [Programming Language Fragmentation and Developer Productivity][2], but if you research the subject yourself you'll notice that the studies are sharply focused on specific aspects of productivity, and probably wouldn't be good answers to your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sorry, won't be casting my re-open vote on this one. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://sequoia.cs.byu.edu/lab/files/pubs/Krein2011a.pdf" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10996" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4095" RevisionGUID="f27e69b2-2060-4b43-aff7-c1723b27c0cf" CreationDate="2012-10-08T10:56:05.910" UserId="22069" Text="I'm seeing this on Chromium 22 (Windows &amp; Linux) &amp; Firefox 15 (Windows):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The footer line is a bit in the way. Tried the usual clearing of caches/hard refresh but that doesn't seem to help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Related: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4064/footer-line-isnt-where-its-supposed-to-be-in-review-stats-and-history - but that's not on the same page.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vw9Et.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10997" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4095" RevisionGUID="f27e69b2-2060-4b43-aff7-c1723b27c0cf" CreationDate="2012-10-08T10:56:05.910" UserId="22069" Text="Footer line floats up too high in the main review page" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10998" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4095" RevisionGUID="f27e69b2-2060-4b43-aff7-c1723b27c0cf" CreationDate="2012-10-08T10:56:05.910" UserId="22069" Text="|bug|design|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10999" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4096" RevisionGUID="d9b604ea-5736-41ee-984a-972d0b87dd6b" CreationDate="2012-10-08T13:18:19.350" UserId="41381" Text="While I'm not a close voter on this question, I would have been if I had looked at it before it was closed. Everything Yannis said is true, but the way the question is asked it looks like a poster child for [LMGTFY][1] type questions, which are bad and need to be killed with fire. In the future if you want to ask a question about finding data for X, please include why copy/pasting your question into Google or any other search engine doesn't help you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://lmgtfy.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11000" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="4097" RevisionGUID="61beb638-a450-4684-b750-fb39440cf96e" CreationDate="2012-10-08T18:54:28.040" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168011/why-are-so-many-questions-closed" Text="" />
  <row Id="11001" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4097" RevisionGUID="f494e0d4-4afe-477a-bcb8-0f960ba2ae8a" CreationDate="2012-10-08T18:52:02.463" UserId="66745" Text="I just joined this stackexchange, and I'm sure this question will get closed like so many others as being subjective or &quot;not constructive&quot;. I did a quick count on the first few pages, and it looks like at least 10% of questions are closed. One page I saw had 22 out of 50 questions closed. What does closing so many questions solve? Apparently it does not reduce the number of &quot;bad questions&quot;. Instead it just prevents people who would otherwise be interested in answering from doing so. Why can't the people who dislike all these questions just.. not answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11002" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4097" RevisionGUID="f494e0d4-4afe-477a-bcb8-0f960ba2ae8a" CreationDate="2012-10-08T18:52:02.463" UserId="66745" Text="Why are so many questions closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11003" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4097" RevisionGUID="f494e0d4-4afe-477a-bcb8-0f960ba2ae8a" CreationDate="2012-10-08T18:52:02.463" UserId="66745" Text="|discussion|meta|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11004" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4098" RevisionGUID="60e46ad6-3988-499a-828b-e01f05234428" CreationDate="2012-10-08T18:57:02.867" UserId="27079" Text="First, a question likely isn't bad.  Some common causes are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Off topic&#xD;&#xA; 2. Duplicate&#xD;&#xA; 3. Discussion based answer (&quot;not a real question&quot;) - which may be an excellent question but not a fit for a Q&amp;A site.  Forum sites would welcome these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ignoring the questions would dilute the stackexchange site by letting questions that the site doesn't want stand." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11005" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4099" RevisionGUID="2ea9bea6-29c3-4e30-8ba8-abbf387d9931" CreationDate="2012-10-08T19:13:27.977" UserId="12917" Text="Good reasons to close:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Off Topic&#xD;&#xA;This means there is probably a better place to ask the question.  &#xD;&#xA;If it is answered here then people looking in the correct place will not find the answer, thus the question and answer do not provide benefit to future users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Duplicate:&#xD;&#xA;This means the question has been asked and answered.  &#xD;&#xA;There is no point in repeating the same question and answer so linking the question to a previous question that answered the question is the best solution. Thus we do not get a proliferation of the same question/answer there is only one authoritative answer that we agree upon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Other&#xD;&#xA;Other types of closure are basically based on they do not improve the overall knowledge base. They are way too specific to be re-used or do not have an exact answer that can be re-used (ie they are just opinions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Notes:&#xD;&#xA;Each stackexchange site has an extensive FAQ page (linked from the header of each page) designed to education users on what questions are relevant to the site. eg [Programmers FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq). If you want to see all the stack exchange sites http://stackexchange.com/sites#" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11006" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4097" RevisionGUID="b75be41c-b854-48f2-a6b0-d0d0144288ac" CreationDate="2012-10-08T19:14:24.160" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Why are so many questions closed?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I just joined this stackexchange, and I'm sure this question will get closed like so many others as being subjective or &quot;not constructive&quot;. I did a quick count on the first few pages, and it looks like at least 10% of questions are closed. One page I saw had 22 out of 50 questions closed. What does closing so many questions solve? Apparently it does not reduce the number of &quot;bad questions&quot;. Instead it just prevents people who would otherwise be interested in answering from doing so. Why can't the people who dislike all these questions just.. not answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11007" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="4097" RevisionGUID="9d22f8be-b46a-4f66-a4fb-865d6f93f0c9" CreationDate="2012-10-08T19:14:24.160" UserId="25476" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[2570],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25476,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;maple_shaft&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="11009" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4100" RevisionGUID="12128829-732b-458c-84f8-62459cb0c034" CreationDate="2012-10-09T15:08:47.440" UserId="4" Text="Right now, we're operating on some community discussions from several years ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Are book recommendations on-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic) (July 2011)&#xD;&#xA;- [What's up with all the book recommendation flags?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2665/whats-up-with-all-the-book-recommendation-flags) (December 2011)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea was that there are some book or resource recommendations that are suitable for this site. If there are specialized requirements or a small number of right answers, then the book question can stay. A key idea was the &quot;canonical resource&quot; - the single, widely accepted, best resource on the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, just this morning, we had two book questions ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168144/books-for-exam-487-developing-windows-azure-and-web-services) and [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168145/books-for-exam-486-asp-net-4-5-mvc)) that were closed with 4 community votes, followed by my vote. These questions also received down votes. At first glance, they seemed like they would fall under the criteria that we have been operating under - a very specialized requirement that I assumed would be covered by a small number of books or web resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I ask the community to consider the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How are we doing right now in handling these types of questions? Are the current policies sufficient or are there more concrete policies that would be best implemented?&#xD;&#xA;- Without expertise in the subject matter, how do people (especially moderators who might have to act on a flag) know if there is a singular &quot;canonical&quot; book on the question?&#xD;&#xA;- What happens to topic areas covered by a small number of resources now (such as the latest language or library) down the road, when it is more popular and prevalent? Might resource requests, perhaps, be too localized since the available (and perhaps even what is considered canonical) change over the course of time?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11010" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4100" RevisionGUID="12128829-732b-458c-84f8-62459cb0c034" CreationDate="2012-10-09T15:08:47.440" UserId="4" Text="Is our current process of handling resource request questions sufficient?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11011" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4100" RevisionGUID="12128829-732b-458c-84f8-62459cb0c034" CreationDate="2012-10-09T15:08:47.440" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|featured|resource-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11012" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4101" RevisionGUID="02fa8a80-6689-4dc7-b83d-4f0a458fd0a0" CreationDate="2012-10-09T15:19:27.323" UserId="4" Text="Personally, I'm not a fan of our current policies. It started with editing a whole bunch of questions to include the text &quot;canonical&quot;. But even so, it doesn't meet the guideline of asking &quot;practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&quot; as is mentioned in the FAQ. It seems like if you want a book on something, you are either just curious about it (in which case, why not search book reviews and find the highest rated books on the subject) or need to learn something to solve a problem (in which case you should ask about the problem and get not only advice and experiences, but also links to resources which address your specific problem - the best book on the subject might do a poor job of explaining your individual problem while another book might do it better).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From a moderator's perspective, if I don't know the subject matter and what resources exist, it's harder for me to moderate under the current guidelines. I might not know if a canonical resource exists or if the question is going to turn into a list. My response to these is wait and see what the community does - if the question gets close votes, down votes, or multiple flags, then it's probably not a good question. I see this being a broken windows situation - by leaving a bad question open, it's a broken window. It would be better to close early and fix so it doesn't linger as a bad example as it gets lost in the shuffle of other questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My thought is to just go to what the FAQ clearly says (it's even highlighted) - questions must be about problems, not resources. It doesn't matter if you want the canonical resource or not. Tell us about your problem and we'll give you everything we know of that might help you - experience, blogs, books, academic papers, Wikipedia articles, other questions on SE sites, whatever we know of." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11013" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4102" RevisionGUID="7b3c419b-a24e-4d89-9884-8be25d3eda25" CreationDate="2012-10-09T15:40:57.167" UserId="1130" Text="No its not sufficient because not enough users are aware of it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Users teach other users that questions for resource requests are considered &quot;not constructive&quot; by SE standards by closing said questions and leaving comments. Then these users go out and do the same to others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question comes up which *does* meet those standards, such as the ones you pointed out, users just vote to close anyways because they think all resource requests are off-topic. They probably never even read the meta posts about resource requests, and the FAQ doesn't contain anything specific about them, but they've seen these types of questions closed before so assume this one should be closed too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to allow specific resource requests, add something to the FAQ that specifically outlines in what cases resource requests are allowed. Perhaps revisit maple_shaft's suggestion to [Add the definition of a “shopping list/request” to the FAQ](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3547/1130).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not, deny all resource requests and make that clear in the meta questions that the answers to those questions are no longer valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But don't hide the rules behind when a resource request is or isn't allowed in a meta post, and expect users to know it exists and to have read it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(PS. Personally I like resource requests and would prefer the keeping the rule and adding something to the FAQ to make it clear which resource requests are or aren't allowed. I find them some of the most valuable content around, and frequently my &quot;practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&quot; is that I need a resource to accomplish a specific task, and know they exist, but don't know how to find them or how to evaluate them.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11014" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4103" RevisionGUID="782811b2-6141-48d8-a589-d0b50e966517" CreationDate="2012-10-09T18:23:46.417" UserId="32353" Text="We could actually apply the same standards to resource request questions as other questions and it would be fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is effectively &quot;what's your favorite book on X&quot; it's a polling question and it's off topic.  A naive &quot;how can I learn about X&quot; question usually fits this, though I don't think it would be out of line to edit it into a canonical book question, if that wouldn't make it an exact duplicate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is about a canonical book then it's not polling and it's on topic, though there may not be an answer because there may not be such a book.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is specific enough to have an answer because it narrows it down to something specific enough about topic X that there are only a few books that match the question, or there is one canonical book that matches the question, than it's on topic.  It might be too localized, but if there is a big enough audience to bother publishing a book about it, then it probably isn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't know enough about topic X and what books are available about it to be able to tell if it meets the criteria, then you still treat it like any other kind of question.  You don't vote to close because you don't know enough about it to know if it should be closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11015" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4103" RevisionGUID="faaff02b-a10e-4c76-aa2c-2f45c45b9072" CreationDate="2012-10-09T18:49:55.243" UserId="32353" Comment="deleted 184 characters in body" Text="Actually, having a policy that you shouldn't ask for a reference, but ask for a solution *might* be a good policy.  But I think we would have to do a few other things if we handle it that way:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We shouldn't close questions as NARQ if they can be answered by a reference.  Because even though the *full* answer is a book, the answer on programmers would not be a book, but a reference to a book with an explanation of how the book can solve the problem.  We shouldn't both forbid people to ask questions that require a book to answer and also not allow them to ask for a reference to a book that has the answer, when such a book exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since any question would be answerable by either a reference or directly, we should then feel free to edit questions to remove an explicit reference request, and instead say something like &quot;Can anyone answer or provide a reference for...&quot;.  Assuming that such an edit would result in a valid question, which isn't always true.  (&quot;Can anyone answer or provide a reference for deciding what language I should learn?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11016" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4103" RevisionGUID="03cf65d5-a307-4ae2-a04a-760b10ea61c7" CreationDate="2012-10-09T18:54:56.637" UserId="32353" Comment="deleted 184 characters in body" Text="Actually, having a policy that you shouldn't ask for a reference, but ask for a solution *might* be a good policy.  But I think we would have to do a few other things if we handle it that way:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We shouldn't close questions as NARQ if they can be answered by a reference.  Because even though the *full* answer is a book, the answer on programmers would not be a book, but a reference to a book with an explanation of how the book can solve the problem.  We shouldn't both forbid people to ask questions that require a book to answer and also not allow them to ask for a reference to a book that has the answer, when such a book exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since any question would be answerable by either a reference or directly, we should then feel free to edit questions to remove an explicit reference request, and instead say something like &quot;Can anyone answer or provide a reference for...&quot;.  Assuming that such an edit would result in a valid question, which isn't always true.  (&quot;Can anyone answer or provide a reference for deciding what language I should learn?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, answers would still have to be more than just a link.  This would actually be a bit easier if the problem the question is solving is clearer, since it could explain briefly why the book would solve the problem, or why that particular book is best.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11017" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4103" RevisionGUID="575d8b9e-a04f-40c7-b08c-e6294b9082ef" CreationDate="2012-10-09T20:52:19.933" UserId="32353" Comment="added 319 characters in body" Text="Actually, having a policy that you shouldn't ask for a reference, but ask for a solution *might* be a good policy.  But I think we would have to do a few other things if we handle it that way:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We shouldn't close questions as NARQ if they can be answered by a reference.  Because even though the *full* answer is a book, the answer on programmers would not be a book, but a reference to a book with an explanation of how the book can solve the problem.  We shouldn't both forbid people to ask questions that require a book to answer and also not allow them to ask for a reference to a book that has the answer, when such a book exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since any question would be answerable by either a reference or directly, we should then feel free to edit questions to remove an explicit reference request, and instead say something like &quot;Can anyone answer or provide a reference for...&quot;.  Assuming that such an edit would result in a valid question, which isn't always true.  (&quot;Can anyone answer or provide a reference for deciding what language I should learn?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, answers would still have to be more than just a link.  This would actually be a bit easier if the problem the question is solving is clearer, since it could explain briefly why the book would solve the problem, or why that particular book is best.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One advantage of doing all of this is that it would not require moderators to determine if a reference is canonical when it gets flagged, which is too hard for a small group of moderators to do for all possible questions.  Instead the burden would be on those who answer the question to provide a reasonable answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11018" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="4100" RevisionGUID="c378bb07-aa49-474d-9fd5-bb9b372659bb" CreationDate="2012-10-09T21:01:31.460" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/255775020578660355" />
  <row Id="11019" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4104" RevisionGUID="71dddfa3-1c27-4fa4-9155-792e006650a7" CreationDate="2012-10-09T21:59:36.930" UserId="1204" Text="While I begrudgingly accept the idea that resource requests are on-topic if they are specific enough, people should really be asking &quot;how&quot; questions, not &quot;what&quot; questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Let’s say you wanted — as I did — to buy a point-and-shoot camera that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; takes good low light photos. So we’re going to ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; photo.stackexchange.com, naturally!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Here’s one way to ask:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     Q: What’s the best low light point-and-shoot camera?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     A: Canon S90 and Lumix LX3.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Here’s another way to ask:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     Q: How do I tell which point-and-shoot cameras take good low light photos?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     A: I strongly recommend looking for something with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         a fast lens (2.0 at least)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         reasonable ISO handling (at least 400, but preferably 800)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         the biggest sensor available&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     The sum of these factors are really critical for low light situations.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The former question provides the path of least resistance: a laundry&#xD;&#xA;&gt; list of products I can buy without thinking about it too much. But&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that answer will only be valid for a year at best. The latter question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; may take some thinking, but its answer will be valid forever … or at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; least until camera technology somehow shifts beyond lenses and sensors&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as we know them today. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Thus, when it comes to shopping questions,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; don’t ask us what you should buy — ask us what you need to learn to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tell what you should buy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11020" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4089" RevisionGUID="e220324d-628c-4946-94e8-1b946ed5e1d4" CreationDate="2012-10-09T22:42:34.547" UserId="25936" Comment="added 72 characters in body" Text="It's a very interesting question, and I'm a bit disappointed we couldn't find a way to keep it constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Minutes after the question was posted, one of our most senior members (by reputation) detected its [not constructive nature][1] and flagged it, asking for the &quot;insufficient explanation&quot; post notice (that's still visible on the question). I saw the flag seconds later, while examining the question and debating whether I should close it or not. I decided to add the post notice, hoping answerers would take it into consideration and not just answer for the sake of answering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Few hours later I checked back, read the five or six answers that were posted at the time, and again hovered over the close button. There were a couple of answers that completely missed the point of the question, and the whole thread was starting to feel like a typical not constructive one. Again, I didn't close it, as the two technically inaccurate answers were getting downvotes _and_ polite comments explaining what was wrong with them, and I was hoping the answerers would get the point. And they did, and removed their answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I checked back a third time, there were no flags, only one close vote, three good answers and a great one. At the time it seemed that we had salvaged the question, and decided to share it around, as I typically do with all questions I find extremely interesting. And it exploded, 14.4K views, 20 answers (+3 deleted ones). Unfortunately the later answers are quite poor (imho) and repetitive, I have no idea why people kept answering a question that was already sufficiently answered (again, imho), but they did. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps I should have closed the question right when I first saw it (minutes after it was posted), or when the flag asking for the post notice appeared (it was a good hint that someone else thought the question was attractive to poor answers). My spider sense was tingling every time I checked back, but until the last time (when the question was already closed), there seemed to be good reasons to let it open for at least a while more, and since there were no flags and I only spotted a single close vote, I happily reverted to user mode for this one instead of dropping the mod hammer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But right now, the question has more poor answers than good ones, and lots of off topic(ish) discussion in comments. We didn't really manage to pull this one off, and I probably should have protected answerers from wasting their time by closing the question early on. We can theorize for hours on how the question could work, but in practice it didn't and it did generate debate, arguments, polling, and extended discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There might be ways to accommodate and protect such questions, but we haven't found them yet. Yes, the question is extremely interesting, and perhaps on a different day it might have attracted a whole different crowd and a very limited set of amazing answers, but right now it's a typical not constructive thread, with tons of off topic / not constructive elements in answers and in comments. Shame it turned into a crapfest, but it did, and unfortunately I can't think of anything we could do to salvage it now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/4088/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11021" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4105" RevisionGUID="443111cf-6b26-4ab3-a76c-f3d2f9db6f7e" CreationDate="2012-10-10T13:25:09.310" UserId="41381" Text="No I don't think our resource request policies are insufficient. The questions that were closed were bad questions, using them as impetus for revising our resource request policy doesn't make sense to me. We don't question policies when we close &quot;how would i develop a facebook app?&quot; or &quot;how do i turn my awesome web app idea into an app?&quot; we close them as bad questions and move on. Though it definitely wouldn't hurt to make them more visible and link them along with the shopping list post in the FAQ if they aren't already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;AS for how mods should handle questions they don't know anything about, I don't think book questions would be substantially different in that regard than any other question. Knowing whether a canonical book exists isn't required, if you know one exists write an answer otherwise the question exists to find that potential book, none may exist and the question may get no answers, but that doesn't require action from moderators. The only judgement a moderator would need to make is if the question is asking too broad a question, and if they are unsure between mod chat and meta you should be able to find someone with more insight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The too localized issue seems a bit nit picky everything in programming changes over time. Should windows 8 questions be closed because two years from now windows 9 will be the big thing? Answers can be added/edited to keep information up to date, if that fails another option may be asking a new question and closing the old as a dupe. I don't think massive popularity swings are common enough for this to cause enough issue to truly be a problem that can't be handled on a case by case basis when it happens." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11022" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4099" RevisionGUID="952c497e-dc84-46b5-b8e5-bb83340dcbbb" CreationDate="2012-10-10T13:45:34.977" UserId="31260" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="Good reasons to close:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Off Topic&#xD;&#xA;This means there is probably a better place to ask the question.  &#xD;&#xA;If it is answered here then people looking in the correct place will not find the answer, thus the question and answer do not provide benefit to future users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Duplicate:&#xD;&#xA;This means the question has been asked and answered.  &#xD;&#xA;There is no point in repeating the same question and answer so linking the question to a previous question that answered the question is the best solution. Thus we do not get a proliferation of the same question/answer there is only one authoritative answer that we agree upon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Other&#xD;&#xA;Other types of closure are basically based on they do not improve the overall knowledge base. They are way too specific to be re-used or do not have an exact answer that can be re-used (ie they are just opinions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Notes:&#xD;&#xA;Each Stack Exchange site has an extensive FAQ page (linked from the header of each page) designed to education users on what questions are relevant to the site. eg [Programmers FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq). If you want to see all the Stack Exchange sites http://stackexchange.com/sites#" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11023" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4081" RevisionGUID="4dae732a-2c13-4265-8f8a-d832f769554e" CreationDate="2012-10-10T17:36:02.677" UserId="44200" Comment="not fully fixed" Text="On the Programmers SE site, the menu (with links to Questions, Tags, ect) has a line drawn and text changed to red (or gray in meta) when hovering over that menu item. However, the user must hover over the text in the menu item to actually be able to click on the link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ergo, if the user hovers over the non-text part (such as the drawn line), there is no active link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a bug in the way the css is designed for that SE? On all other SE sites, if the menu item changes (when hovering), I know I can click to go to that page; I don't have to hover over the actual text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**: The designers have partially fixed this, but not fully. The whitespace and line directly below the text is clickable, but if you move your mouse to the left or right of the text, the hover effect is active but no link is clickable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11024" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4102" RevisionGUID="92f57c63-a305-4c89-8508-680823dd6610" CreationDate="2012-10-10T18:20:10.587" UserId="1130" Comment="added 375 characters in body" Text="No our current policy on how we handle resource requests is not sufficient because not enough users are aware of it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From my experience with the SE sites, users learn first by the actions of other users, 2nd by the faq, and 3rd by Meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The policy may exist on meta that resource requests are valid if they are looking for a very specific resource, but its not mentioned in the FAQ, and I see resource requests getting closed almost daily on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question comes up which *does* meet those standards, such as the ones you pointed out, its likely to get closed anyways because there are many users who are not aware of the fact there is a meta post outlining specific cases where resource requests are allowed. From their point of view, they see almost all resource requests getting closed, and the FAQ doesn't appear to have anything specific about exceptions. It's only users that have been pointed to the meta post before, or ones that have bothered to take the time to look for a question about resource requests on meta that will actually be aware of the policy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to allow specific resource requests, add something to the FAQ that specifically outlines in what cases resource requests are allowed. Perhaps revisit maple_shaft's suggestion to [Add the definition of a “shopping list/request” to the FAQ](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3547/1130).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not, deny all resource requests and make that clear in the meta questions that the answers to those questions are no longer valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But don't hide the rules behind when a resource request is or isn't allowed in a meta post, and expect users to follow it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(PS. Personally I like resource requests and would prefer the keeping the rule and adding something to the FAQ to make it clear which resource requests are or aren't allowed. I find them some of the most valuable content around, and frequently my &quot;practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&quot; is that I need a resource to accomplish a specific task, and know they exist, but don't know how to find them or how to evaluate them.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11025" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4106" RevisionGUID="2610a89e-51f5-4771-9641-0d121fc13626" CreationDate="2012-10-11T07:20:40.577" UserId="31260" Text="Let's get rid of [tag:licence] tag. Currently, there are 15 questions there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag name is misspelled, and the right tag for these questions is already there - [tag:license], synonym of [tag:licensing]. Suggest to retag existing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also suggest to somehow prohibit re-creation of &quot;licence&quot; tag (if memory serves this is called blacklisting)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11026" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4106" RevisionGUID="2610a89e-51f5-4771-9641-0d121fc13626" CreationDate="2012-10-11T07:20:40.577" UserId="31260" Text="get rid of tag &quot;licence&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11027" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4106" RevisionGUID="2610a89e-51f5-4771-9641-0d121fc13626" CreationDate="2012-10-11T07:20:40.577" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tags|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11028" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4106" RevisionGUID="8480d956-adf3-49d7-ab5d-f6e64fde4d62" CreationDate="2012-10-11T07:31:57.347" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tags|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11029" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4107" RevisionGUID="9da10c88-6743-4153-a610-8dc642d15bd6" CreationDate="2012-10-11T07:32:36.347" UserId="25936" Text="Merged [tag:licence] to [tag:licensing], since it was the master tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11030" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4106" RevisionGUID="68bec79d-3e08-4c3a-b8b8-b3b162b9e2b3" CreationDate="2012-10-11T09:39:01.293" UserId="31260" Comment="misspelling /off (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/licence)" Text="Let's get rid of [tag:licence] tag. Currently, there are 15 questions there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag &lt;s&gt;name is misspelled, and the right tag for these questions is already there&lt;/s&gt; means [the same](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/licence &quot;according to dictionary&quot;) as another tag - [tag:license], which in turn is already set as synonym of tag [tag:licensing]. Suggest to merge." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11031" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4108" RevisionGUID="2993de05-7c8c-4eec-a11a-c06a29cc520f" CreationDate="2012-10-11T11:54:52.333" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="Believe me, I'd be the first in line to shut down recommendation questions if there was a real problem, or if there was a good reason to, but I'm not seeing either here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How are we doing right now in handling these types of questions? Are the current policies sufficient or are there more concrete policies that would be best implemented?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's hard to tell how we're handling these types of questions without a significant amount of data demonstrating a problem. You've cited two questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168144/books-for-exam-487-developing-windows-azure-and-web-services&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168145/books-for-exam-486-asp-net-4-5-mvc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They were both asked by the same person in rapid succession relatively about the same topic and both are absolutely terrible. If these two questions are demonstrative of an alleged problem with book recommendation questions, then I don't see it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest issue with their closing is that they were closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; instead of what they are: not real questions. The &quot;not constructive&quot; close reason seems to be used more and more as the &quot;I don't care why it's closed, just close it&quot; reason, which dilutes its meaning and causes ambiguity about why questions don't belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with these questions aren't that they are asking for a book, it's that they don't describe anything about the problem the user is having, or rather *why* the user is asking the question, to afford a useful response. They're like asking, &quot;tell me what book will teach me everything and anything about Java.&quot; Where to begin? Questions *must* narrow the scope down to a *specific* problem, otherwise, they don't belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because the two cited questions are incomplete in this respect, they're not real questions. They'd be &quot;not constructive&quot; if they had asked something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What's your favorite way to study for Exam 486?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Exam 487 really sucks, how am I supposed to study for this stupid exam?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;How does Exam 486 make you feel (as a programmer)?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What are some tips and tricks for overcoming my inability to take Exam 487 seriously?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;My co-worker/buddy/priest/cat says *X* book is the best for Exam 486. Help me prove him/her/it wrong.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Without expertise in the subject matter, how do people (especially moderators who might have to act on a flag) know if there is a singular &quot;canonical&quot; book on the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not the guideline for books, and it's not up to anyone (much less moderators) to determine ahead of time (or during the act of moderation) whether there is a single canonical book for a subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, mimicking the guidelines in &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][1]&quot;, and as I described in &quot;[What's up with all the book recommendation flags?][2]&quot;, the important things are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **the topic asked about is *capable* of providing a canonical book on the subject.** The application of this criteria requires common sense. Java doesn't count. PHP doesn't count. NLP for Big Data probably does. F# or any other boutique language probably does. If someone's really in doubt whether something counts, do an [Amazon.com search][3] for the subject. If there's over 10,000 hits, it doesn't count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **the questions sufficiently describes a situation or problem space that invites converging on a small number of correct answers.** &quot;What are some good books on F#?&quot; sucks. &quot;Coming from a purely C# background, I'm trying to add F# to my repertoire. What is the definitive [read: canonical] book for getting up to speed with idiomatic F#?&quot; doesn't, or at least sucks a lot less. If in doubt, wait. If the question attracts dozens of answers, that's a problem. If it settles on 3–5, awesome. If there's a dozen but only a couple of really stand-out answers, cull the herd and protect the question if necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither of these guidelines require domain-specific knowledge of the question; just an understanding of how to ask a good question, which is something anyone moderating (diamond or otherwise) should have a good handle on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What happens to topic areas covered by a small number of resources now (such as the latest language or library) down the road, when it is more popular and prevalent? Might resource requests, perhaps, be too localized since the available (and perhaps even what is considered canonical) change over the course of time?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Irrelevant: [Stack Exchange is designed to handle changing answers][4], even rapidly changing answers, through frictionless editing. Answers for pretty much any subject or problem change over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Problems arise trying to keep questions up to date when there are dozens of posts to maintain, which is why [there are guidelines and technical features][5] that kick in once a question starts getting over 15-30 answers. Per the guidelines for book recommendation questions, this is a non-issue for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So unless there's some other reason, not mentioned, to shut them down now, I don't see anything that's cause for a policy change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2666/8&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://amazon.com&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/87415/149432&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2321/8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11032" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="4087" RevisionGUID="0f3129a5-0513-4517-9258-8a2e5df4219f" CreationDate="2012-10-11T12:01:32.150" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/256363903527837696" />
  <row Id="11033" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4109" RevisionGUID="ea0de870-f270-4a68-9c68-7c9fd877fc1c" CreationDate="2012-10-11T16:46:09.720" UserId="58568" Text="For a class, I am using CDT to write c code in Eclipse and am uploading the code to a Unix machine, where the teacher reviews the code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am looking for a plug-in that will highlight lines of code/comments that are longer than a certain number of characters so that the text does not auto-wrap in a ssh client.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a suitable question to ask on p.se?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11034" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4109" RevisionGUID="ea0de870-f270-4a68-9c68-7c9fd877fc1c" CreationDate="2012-10-11T16:46:09.720" UserId="58568" Text="Is this pseudo-shopping question acceptable here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11035" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4109" RevisionGUID="ea0de870-f270-4a68-9c68-7c9fd877fc1c" CreationDate="2012-10-11T16:46:09.720" UserId="58568" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11036" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4110" RevisionGUID="34973e28-285f-4876-afb1-727bf11c67a9" CreationDate="2012-10-11T16:53:19.373" UserId="4" Text="Without even discussing if it's a constructive question, it's off-topic here. Questions about programming tools belong on [Stack Overflow][1]. I'm not going to try to guess how the SO community will react to this, but it seems to be specific enough. Assuming searching your favorite search engine and/or the Eclipse Marketplace reveals nothing useful, it might be OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11037" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4111" RevisionGUID="7902aefd-2607-4250-8efb-a90bd54fe925" CreationDate="2012-10-12T03:21:20.813" UserId="1996" Text="Simple Request:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can we please merge the 'definition' tag into 'terminology'?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11038" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4111" RevisionGUID="7902aefd-2607-4250-8efb-a90bd54fe925" CreationDate="2012-10-12T03:21:20.813" UserId="1996" Text="Tags: Can we please merge the 'definition' tag into 'terminology'?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11039" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4111" RevisionGUID="7902aefd-2607-4250-8efb-a90bd54fe925" CreationDate="2012-10-12T03:21:20.813" UserId="1996" Text="|feature-request|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11040" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4111" RevisionGUID="2a547401-0d85-4dd3-bbb8-bd8713895d3d" CreationDate="2012-10-12T03:26:14.150" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 13 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Can we please merge the [tag:definition] tag into [tag:terminology]?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11041" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="4111" RevisionGUID="2a547401-0d85-4dd3-bbb8-bd8713895d3d" CreationDate="2012-10-12T03:26:14.150" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 13 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Can we please merge [definition] tag into [terminology]?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11042" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4111" RevisionGUID="2a547401-0d85-4dd3-bbb8-bd8713895d3d" CreationDate="2012-10-12T03:26:14.150" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 13 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|support|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11043" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4112" RevisionGUID="411b33c7-934f-4269-bccf-bdbba61687c1" CreationDate="2012-10-12T06:04:01.923" UserId="9266" Text="I am talking about a question I asked recently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168450/what-is-best-way-to-create-a-cross-fade-effect&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderator [Yannis][1] is repeatedly claiming it to off topic question. I want to know what exactly is off topic. Pointing out the entry in FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * **algorithm** and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * **development methodologies**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the question I asked is asking for a better development methodology on creating cross fade effects. Out of the options I mentioned I was hoping for answers other techniques that can create same effect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was not about any problem I encountered while developing them. If a programmer has previously built such system themselves, it could be easily answered. Like in a [comment][2] throsten has mention using canvas element. That is probable alternative for creating that effect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/25936/yannis-rizos&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168450/what-is-best-way-to-create-a-cross-fade-effect#comment-323829" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11044" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4112" RevisionGUID="411b33c7-934f-4269-bccf-bdbba61687c1" CreationDate="2012-10-12T06:04:01.923" UserId="9266" Text="How is a question asking about development methodologies off topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11045" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4112" RevisionGUID="411b33c7-934f-4269-bccf-bdbba61687c1" CreationDate="2012-10-12T06:04:01.923" UserId="9266" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11046" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4112" RevisionGUID="7c3f6369-60a9-41da-b017-dfa515c93fd0" CreationDate="2012-10-12T06:13:02.930" UserId="9266" Comment="added 930 characters in body" Text="I am talking about a question I asked recently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168450/what-is-best-way-to-create-a-cross-fade-effect&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderator [Yannis][1] is repeatedly claiming it to off topic question. I want to know what exactly is off topic. Pointing out the entry in FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * **algorithm** and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * **development methodologies**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the question I asked is asking for a better development methodology on creating cross fade effects. Out of the options I mentioned I was hoping for answers other techniques that can create same effect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also quoting another FAQ entry&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”   &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”    * it is a rant disguised as a question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closest among those points is `there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”` where I think most of members will point out. But if question like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48698/i-dont-program-in-my-spare-time-does-that-make-me-a-bad-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is on-topic so is mine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was not about any problem I encountered while developing them. If a programmer has previously built such system themselves, it could be easily answered. Like in a [comment][2] throsten has mention using canvas element. That is probable alternative for creating that effect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/25936/yannis-rizos&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168450/what-is-best-way-to-create-a-cross-fade-effect#comment-323829" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11047" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4112" RevisionGUID="481267f1-4b50-400a-bdcd-8c70126b7591" CreationDate="2012-10-12T06:19:35.170" UserId="9266" Comment="added 106 characters in body" Text="I am talking about a question I asked recently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168450/what-is-best-way-to-create-a-cross-fade-effect&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderator [Yannis][1] is repeatedly claiming it to off topic question. I want to know what exactly is off topic. Pointing out the entry in FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * **algorithm** and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * **development methodologies**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the question I asked is asking for a better development methodology on creating cross fade effects. Out of the options I mentioned I was hoping for answers other techniques that can create same effect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also quoting another FAQ entry&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”   &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”    * it is a rant disguised as a question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closest among those points is `there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”` where I think most of members will point out. But if question like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48698/i-dont-program-in-my-spare-time-does-that-make-me-a-bad-developer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154155/should-you-keep-a-copy-of-all-the-code-you-write&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is on-topic so is mine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was not about any problem I encountered while developing them. If a programmer has previously built such system themselves, it could be easily answered. Like in a [comment][2] throsten has mention using canvas element. That is probable alternative for creating that effect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/25936/yannis-rizos&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168450/what-is-best-way-to-create-a-cross-fade-effect#comment-323829" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11048" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4113" RevisionGUID="7a18ebbd-1743-49ef-97e8-1f8ce33264a3" CreationDate="2012-10-12T06:25:16.217" UserId="42031" Text="The &quot;development methodologies&quot; mentioned in the FAQ specifically refers to the [Software Development Methodologies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_methodology) used in the industry, which is not what this question was about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As @YannisRizos stated in a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;What's the actual practical problem you are trying to solve? If you are looking for &quot;the best&quot; algorithm/technique, that doesn't exist, that's not how programming works, programming is all about tradeoffs. Decide what you're building first, then tell us exactly why the solutions you found don't work for what you are building, and then we might have a good question on our hands..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As it stands, the question doesn't have a &quot;real answer&quot; that can be attributed to it. It is hard to answer the question in its current form as we're not sure what problem you're actually trying to solve - all the information we have is that you don't want to use the two techniques you have already outlined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11049" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4114" RevisionGUID="343f4645-8733-430a-be66-8415f1688a9e" CreationDate="2012-10-12T06:28:51.030" UserId="9266" Text="I think since [tag:definition] does not have a **wiki summary** &lt;sup&gt;[\[here\]][1]&lt;/sup&gt; it is very easy tp get confused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Better solution IMO would be to properly define the [tag:definition] tag itself first and then let users ask question on that basis. If the tag is explained as &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Define *xxxxxx*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then possibly [tag:terminology] and [tag:definition] could be merged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/definition/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11050" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4115" RevisionGUID="90a8b5fc-0564-4dd1-8954-48358ad44c91" CreationDate="2012-10-12T06:32:38.093" UserId="25936" Text="You appear to think that your question is about algorithms and/or development methodologies. Let's take care of the obvious first, a [development methodology][1] is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A software development methodology or system development methodology in software engineering is a framework that is used to structure, plan, and control the process of developing an information system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about development methodologies are expected to be about topics like, for example, prototyping, incremental development, agile methodologies, etc. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the algorithms part, although there isn't a formal and strict definition of what an algorithm is, [this one][2] is good enough:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm (originating from al-Khwārizmī, the famous Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī) is a step-by-step procedure for calculations. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question is a technical question, nothing conceptual about it and as such it's off topic on Programmers. I would have migrated it to Stack Overflow, however other than being off topic for us it's [terribly not constructive][3] (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **every answer is equally valid**: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers**: - “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **there is no actual problem to be solved**: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question**: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question fails all points but the rant one. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly please _don't_ try to argue for your question by pointing to other questions, the best that can come of it is that the other questions will be closed as well (if they are indeed similar to your own). Instead focus on arguing for your question **on its own merits**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_methodology&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11051" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4114" RevisionGUID="c4206732-8244-4113-ae01-cecde8ee61aa" CreationDate="2012-10-12T06:37:05.733" UserId="31260" Comment="edited body" Text="I think since [tag:definition] does not have a **wiki summary** &lt;sup&gt;[\[here\]][1]&lt;/sup&gt; it is very easy to get confused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Better solution IMO would be to properly define the [tag:definition] tag itself first and then let users ask question on that basis. If the tag is explained as &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Define *xxxxxx*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then possibly [tag:terminology] and [tag:definition] could be merged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/definition/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11052" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4115" RevisionGUID="6f9a7d76-d266-4b5c-a6b9-c44ba4858460" CreationDate="2012-10-12T06:40:20.690" UserId="25936" Comment="added 117 characters in body" Text="You appear to think that your question is about algorithms and/or development methodologies. Let's take care of the obvious first, a [development methodology][1] is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A software development methodology or system development methodology in software engineering is a framework that is used to structure, plan, and control the process of developing an information system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about development methodologies are expected to be about topics like, for example, prototyping, incremental development, agile methodologies, etc. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the algorithms part, although there isn't a formal and strict definition of what an algorithm is, [this one][2] is good enough:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm (originating from al-Khwārizmī, the famous Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī) is a step-by-step procedure for calculations. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that you say you'd love to see an answer as an algorithm, doesn't make it a question _about_ algorithms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question is a technical question, nothing conceptual about it and as such it's off topic on Programmers. I would have migrated it to Stack Overflow, however other than being off topic for us it's [terribly not constructive][3] (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **every answer is equally valid**: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers**: - “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **there is no actual problem to be solved**: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question**: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question fails all points but the rant one. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly please _don't_ try to argue for your question by pointing to other questions, the best that can come of it is that the other questions will be closed as well (if they are indeed similar to your own). Instead focus on arguing for your question **on its own merits**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_methodology&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11053" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4116" RevisionGUID="3008fc88-c532-4f9d-a4ad-439c1ceb8dd5" CreationDate="2012-10-12T09:35:47.300" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="I don't know why people are giving you grief over whether or not your question is about development methodologies, or whether a perfect solution exists, as if either are reasons alone to close your question. While it's true there is a technical definition to &quot;development methodology&quot;, using it in a colloquial sense to mean &quot;a high-level method to handle a programming problem&quot; is still on-topic. To me, it's pretty clear that's what your question is looking for: for high-level design advice [which is exactly what Programmers is for][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, your question is lacking one crucial thing, which [thorsten müller tried to draw out][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why exactly do you want to disregard those solutions? They work reasonably well for most needs. Most other solutions would need to directly access the pixel data (after putting the image in a canvas element), which would be slow and a lot of work to implement. (That at least if it needs to be done within a web site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or, to put it another way, your question doesn't address [what you've tried][3]. If you expand your question to explain why the solutions you've found so far are not sufficient, and—even better—go into what you've tried yourself (and where you came up short), your question would be perfectly fine and I'd vote to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168450/what-is-the-proper-way-to-create-a-cross-fade-effect#comment323829_168450&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11054" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4116" RevisionGUID="d0674477-1443-47fd-8773-4e7e0506925b" CreationDate="2012-10-12T09:44:15.870" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 223 characters in body" Text="I don't know why people are giving you grief over whether or not your question is about development methodologies, or whether a perfect solution exists, as if either are reasons alone to close your question. While it's true there is a technical definition to &quot;development methodology&quot;, using it in a colloquial sense to mean &quot;a high-level method to handle a programming problem&quot; is still on-topic and [exactly what Programmers is for][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, it's pretty clear that's what your question is looking for—high-level design advice—and it's definitely a practical problem someone would actually face. So in that sense, [What kind of questions should I *not* ask here?][2] section of the FAQ doesn't apply.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, your question is lacking one crucial thing, which [thorsten müller tried to draw out][3]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why exactly do you want to disregard those solutions? They work reasonably well for most needs. Most other solutions would need to directly access the pixel data (after putting the image in a canvas element), which would be slow and a lot of work to implement. (That at least if it needs to be done within a web site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or, to put it another way, your question doesn't address [what you've tried][4]. If you expand your question to explain why the solutions you've found so far are not sufficient, and—even better—go into what you've tried yourself (and where you came up short), your question would be perfectly fine and I'd vote to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168450/what-is-the-proper-way-to-create-a-cross-fade-effect#comment323829_168450&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11055" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4115" RevisionGUID="ac63528f-d6f1-40a6-bb54-287ae4f14e51" CreationDate="2012-10-12T10:38:19.370" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1310 characters in body" Text="You appear to think that your question is about algorithms and/or development methodologies. Let's take care of the obvious first, a [development methodology][1] is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A software development methodology or system development methodology in software engineering is a framework that is used to structure, plan, and control the process of developing an information system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about development methodologies are expected to be about topics like, for example, prototyping, incremental development, agile methodologies, etc. Although as [Mark notes][2] there's a colloquial sense to development methodology, since Programmers is a site for professional developments, let's go with with the formal definition instead. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the algorithms part, although there isn't a formal and strict definition of what an algorithm is, [this one][3] is good enough:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm (originating from al-Khwārizmī, the famous Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī) is a step-by-step procedure for calculations. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that you say you'd love to see an answer as an algorithm, doesn't make it a question _about_ algorithms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original version of the question was also [not constructive][4]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: - “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking for &quot;the best&quot;, without clearly defining what that means for you leads to equally valid answers (and when that happens, the more popular answer wins, but popular doesn't necessarily mean useful - for example: Bieber). You were providing two valid answers in your question and expected more answers, without clearly telling us why the two methods you've already found didn't work. And, as you've mentioned in the comments, this was more of a curiosity question than a question about an actual &amp; practical problem. All of the above, made it extremely open ended. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in the current version of the question you are telling us why the two solutions don't work for you, and you've further defined the problem. You are not simply looking for the incredibly vague &quot;best&quot; and by giving us detailed explanations of why the two methods don't work for you, you've stopped people from proposing other methods that have the same problems, making the question quite less open ended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am still _not_ convinced that your question qualifies as a high level design problem, however since you fixed the more important problems, who cares what I think? Can't promise it won't get closed again, but even if not convinced I'm willing to err in the side of re-opening this one, just for the effort alone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly please _don't_ try to argue for your question by pointing to other questions, the best that can come of it is that the other questions will be closed as well (if they are indeed similar to your own). Instead focus on arguing for your question **on its own merits**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_methodology&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/4116/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11056" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4117" RevisionGUID="3d316719-a58c-4417-aba5-2aee7702e9fd" CreationDate="2012-10-12T12:00:33.350" UserId="51770" Text="The question: [Problem using python QPID and gevent together][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't really seem to fit the description of not a real question, and I think the only problem with it is the last two sentences: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does anybody else have experience of getting gevent and QPID to work together? or Has anybody else seen the same issues?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But other than that the question seems to be very specific and well defined. Am I missing something here? Could a simple edit have saved the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;BTW:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- It's not my question, I just find it _very_ interesting.&#xD;&#xA;- I'm not really familiar with the concepts involved in the question (which is probably why I find it so interesting), there could be a lot I'm missing here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168576/problem-using-python-qpid-and-gevent-together" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11057" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4117" RevisionGUID="3d316719-a58c-4417-aba5-2aee7702e9fd" CreationDate="2012-10-12T12:00:33.350" UserId="51770" Text="What's wrong with this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11058" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4117" RevisionGUID="3d316719-a58c-4417-aba5-2aee7702e9fd" CreationDate="2012-10-12T12:00:33.350" UserId="51770" Text="|discussion|specific-question|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11059" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4117" RevisionGUID="2762b7d5-7a7e-4ed5-ae8e-fe21111c8178" CreationDate="2012-10-12T12:06:57.520" UserId="51770" Comment="added 61 characters in body" Text="The question: [Problem using python QPID and gevent together][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't really seem to fit the description of not a real question, and I think the only problem with it is the last two sentences: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does anybody else have experience of getting gevent and QPID to work together? or Has anybody else seen the same issues?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But other than that the question seems to be very specific and well defined. Am I missing something here? Could a simple edit have saved the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;BTW:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- It's not my question, I just find it _very_ interesting. Browsed over 50 questions today, this one was the highlight.&#xD;&#xA;- I'm not really familiar with the concepts involved in the question (which is probably why I find it so interesting), there could be a lot I'm missing here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168576/problem-using-python-qpid-and-gevent-together" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11060" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4118" RevisionGUID="42a5a0a4-bf56-421f-af97-3bea2be8e78a" CreationDate="2012-10-12T12:12:15.437" UserId="25476" Text="I gave it a second look and tried editing out the polling aspect of the question.  I also tried focusing the question a bit more to other specific things that could be the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I still am not happy about the fact that the OP openly admits that he did not even do the most basic of troubleshooting yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have not done the work yet to produce a minimal example to demonstrate the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That leaves the answer at a pretty blank starting point for trying to address potential issues.  This is also one of these questions that could very easily turn into something more appropriate for StackOverflow, especially if he does start posting C++ code examples and the answers start including chunks of code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please evaluate my edit and if you feel it is good enough to be reopened then please vote for it to be reopened.  Or if you have any additional suggestions to improve the question then please feel free. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11061" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4119" RevisionGUID="f81a239c-ab74-47e9-8486-51d788e46000" CreationDate="2012-10-12T12:14:22.907" UserId="4" Text="From my perspective, there's not enough information. One of the pieces of [asking a good question][1] is to do your homework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this specific case, that means digging into the problem more: check the versions (acknowledged in the question, apparently not done) and produce a minimal sample that demonstrates the problem (acknowledges and not done yet). At this point in time, the person asking is just fishing for suggestions rather than getting to a roadblock, presenting all the specific information, and waiting for a specific answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this appears to be a programming problem. As soon as it gets into the implementation details, it's more suitable for Stack Overflow. So assuming that the asker has checked for version mismatches and posts some minimal code, it becomes clearly off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11062" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4120" RevisionGUID="abf4a2f4-0eee-48e5-b263-b4c5d9661c5d" CreationDate="2012-10-12T12:52:05.903" UserId="51770" Text="#Welcome! :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;This &quot;question&quot; remained &quot;unanswered&quot; for far too long!&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11063" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4120" RevisionGUID="f87fafe3-bbcc-4234-b284-e286dc1ba334" CreationDate="2012-10-12T13:02:52.690" UserId="51770" Comment="added 212 characters in body" Text="###Welcome!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wasn't a user back when the elections where held, but our [first ever discussion][1] today was certainly pleasant and informative, what I'd expect from a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;This &quot;question&quot; remained &quot;unanswered&quot; for far too long!&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/4117/51770" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11064" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4121" RevisionGUID="a99a3f30-1b41-4c57-a935-b398828baddf" CreationDate="2012-10-12T13:55:15.817" UserId="25936" Text="[Ryathal mentioned][1] the ill fated What Stack Overflow is Not&lt;sup&gt; [[MSO 10K+ link][2]]&lt;/sup&gt; post, and I agree that the top voted answer applies here, so I've decided to adapt it (well, just replaced Stack Overflow with Programmers, really).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers is not a research assistant**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Programmers community is very forthcoming with their help, [provided you have done a few things to help yourself][3]. Have you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Put some effort into researching the problem,&#xD;&#xA;- Attempted to write some code yourself&#xD;&#xA;- Attempted to debug your code when it has failed, and&#xD;&#xA;- Some basic, fundamental knowledge of your tools?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Programmers community will not write a complete solution for you, develop a complete walk through of a problem, or do your background research for you, unless your question is specific and focused on a reasonably small scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4117/whats-wrong-with-this-question#comment11671_4119&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/128548/what-stack-overflow-is-not&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11065" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4121" RevisionGUID="8cbb8fc5-81bc-4a9f-9ec0-1fc312b4ca40" CreationDate="2012-10-13T04:50:35.300" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 46 characters in body" Text="[Ryathal mentioned][1] the ill fated What Stack Overflow is Not&lt;sup&gt; [[MSO 10K+ link][2]]&lt;/sup&gt; post, and I agree that the top voted answer applies there, so I've decided to adapt it (well, just replaced Stack Overflow with Programmers, really).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Programmers community is very forthcoming with their help, [provided you have done a few things to help yourself][3]. Have you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Put some effort into researching the problem,&#xD;&#xA;- Attempted to write some code yourself&#xD;&#xA;- Attempted to debug your code when it has failed, and&#xD;&#xA;- Some basic, fundamental knowledge of your tools?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Programmers community will not write a complete solution for you, develop a complete walk through of a problem, or do your background research for you, unless your question is specific and focused on a reasonably small scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4117/whats-wrong-with-this-question#comment11671_4119&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/128548/what-stack-overflow-is-not&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11066" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3259" RevisionGUID="c1c2ded9-224d-43c6-9f8f-12078990ef0f" CreationDate="2012-10-13T10:29:46.940" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:1204,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Robert Harvey&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="11067" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4122" RevisionGUID="816d9545-8e99-4164-b772-00d780830fde" CreationDate="2012-10-13T18:11:35.333" UserId="27998" Text="There are many abstract concepts programmers encounter and remember before needing a reference manual or Google, and few other disciplines require this same level of abstract thought.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't help be feel that there must be something different to the way programmers remember concepts since these concepts aren't as easily tied to the real world.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a better way to ask this question in that context and so that it doesn't violate the Programmers StackExchange rules?:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Are there any memorization techniques that exist for programmers?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if so, what action should I take. Do I simply post a new question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168729/are-there-any-memorization-techniques-that-exist-for-programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11068" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="4122" RevisionGUID="816d9545-8e99-4164-b772-00d780830fde" CreationDate="2012-10-13T18:11:35.333" UserId="27998" Text="Is there a better ask this question so that it doesn't violate the Programmers StackExchange rules?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11069" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="4122" RevisionGUID="816d9545-8e99-4164-b772-00d780830fde" CreationDate="2012-10-13T18:11:35.333" UserId="27998" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11070" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4122" RevisionGUID="4edacfc1-f1b2-42b9-b2ed-073cd9e6c66f" CreationDate="2012-10-13T18:13:36.460" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11071" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="4122" RevisionGUID="065360f3-86f8-4209-aa70-ca82badf101f" CreationDate="2012-10-13T18:18:53.583" UserId="27998" Comment="edited title" Text="Is there a better way to ask this question so that it doesn't violate the Programmers StackExchange rules?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11072" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="4123" RevisionGUID="50011901-ff55-488a-a063-9a9f590cd18e" CreationDate="2012-10-13T18:22:37.617" UserId="4" Text="The question as it's phrased isn't good for any Stack Exchange site. You're asking for a list of techniques about learning or memorizing concepts, and there's [an entire blog post on why such questions aren't good for the Stack Exchange format][1]. You'd have to reformulate your question to make it viable anywhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, since memorization and learning aren't exclusive to software developers, I can't see how any question would be on-topic here on Programmers. Perhaps you could check out some other sites:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The [Personal Productivity Stack Exchange][2] has questions about [learning][3] and [memory][4], so some of the questions might be useful to you.&#xD;&#xA;- The [CogSci Stack Exchange][5] has tags about [problem solving][6], [learning][7], and [memory][8] (including specialized [short-term][9] and [long-term][10]). However, they have more rigorous standards for their questions - take a look at some of their top questions and the FAQ to understand the kind of questions they accept.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/learning&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/memory&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/problem-solving&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/learning&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/memory&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/long-term-memory&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/long-term-memory" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12067" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5122" RevisionGUID="b6c779a4-1e37-4cb8-91eb-30fc61ccb950" CreationDate="2012-10-14T21:36:29.867" UserId="62323" Text="Laws affect the way we work and how we build software.  Much of our software has a global impact, but different jurisdictions have different laws and these laws change significantly every few years.  Programmers are generally not involved in the shaping of those laws or the defining cases where those laws are tested in court.  Meanwhile, industry giants and patent trolls are building arsenals of patents and copyrights and increasingly suing each other over them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question was asked today, [Do software copyrights apply to Source Code or Binary Code?][1] that someone responded to (before it was closed) in a way that taught me something new.  I had been so focused on the copyright protection for source code and patents for business processes that I had never considered whether the binary object-code had different legal protection (it can actually be copyrighted in the US without the source code, with some provisions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every time I talk about the GPL v2 with a dozen people, one boldly asserts something completely untrue about it.  I confess that I find the v3 language almost impenetrable.  I attended a talk at the South East Linux Fest this year where the speaker gave an excellent history of v3 before stating that it was impossible to predict how the details were going to be interpreted by courts in different jurisdictions!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel strongly that someone needs to raise our collective consciousness of these issues in a positive way.  If we aren't aware of the laws governing what we do, how can we influence them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FSF brings up important issues, but they are strongly and sometimes subtly biased toward making more people write more GPL code more often.  I have heard lawyers complain that they are too-often voted down for posting sound legal advice on groklaw or slashdot.  This site (&quot;Progrmmers&quot;) could fulfill part of this need, but as it stands, legal questions, even interesting ones, are quickly closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, legal advice is not the same as legal discussion.  I completely understand why Programmers would want to avoid and even ban the former, but do not see any reason to suppress the latter, so long as it has to do with software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/169812/do-software-copyrights-apply-to-source-code-or-binary-code" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12068" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5123" RevisionGUID="1d632548-b23c-4b9e-b85d-58f4fdc430cd" CreationDate="2012-10-15T04:08:39.167" UserId="18473" Text="I am looking for someone who is interested in answering specific questions, someone I can connect with while I learn Ruby basics.  I am learning on my own and I come across questions I cannot find or do not have the exact answer I need to move on.  Can I create myself a little community of willing people here that I can ask private questions?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12069" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5123" RevisionGUID="1d632548-b23c-4b9e-b85d-58f4fdc430cd" CreationDate="2012-10-15T04:08:39.167" UserId="18473" Text="ruby basics mentor" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12070" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5123" RevisionGUID="1d632548-b23c-4b9e-b85d-58f4fdc430cd" CreationDate="2012-10-15T04:08:39.167" UserId="18473" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12071" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5124" RevisionGUID="891bd892-42cb-419e-861b-f10bdcffc525" CreationDate="2012-10-15T09:11:46.120" UserId="25936" Text="Programmers, Stack Overflow and [Stack Exchange][1] in general are question and answer sites, mentoring is not really part of neither the philosophy nor the format of the sites. You mention that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am learning on my own and I come across questions I cannot find or do not have the exact answer I need to move on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, that's great! Go ahead and ask those questions, on Programmers if they are conceptual (design, architecture, etc) or on Stack Overflow if they are technical (implementation issues, programming tools). Your [single question][2] on Programmers received a fair amount of upvotes, some good answers and earned you enough reputation to use our chat (but unfortunately not the Stack Overflow chat).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know why you'd want to ask private questions but I should point out that even our chat rooms are public, the only form of private communication on Stack Exchange is between moderators, or between a moderator and a regular user, when issues of private nature arise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would insider that route. I do feel like my questions are so simple and I do not have answers for people unless we talk knitting. I will give that a try however. Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who cares if your questions are simple? If you present them clearly, and show us that you've at least tried a bit to solve your problem before asking, your questions are more than welcome. If you don't feel confident enough to ask questions, you should read and follow the advice given on:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Matt Gemmell's excellent article [What have you tried?][3], and&#xD;&#xA;- Jon Skeet's [Writing the perfect question][4] blog post, the canonical guide on asking questions on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/52123/where-is-the-best-place-to-teach-myself-a-language-and-which-one&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#traffic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12072" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5123" RevisionGUID="2d9ebe94-5dda-4199-a256-f3ddbcd933ae" CreationDate="2012-10-15T22:14:46.820" UserId="31260" Comment="deleted 16 characters in body" Text="I am looking for someone who is interested in answering specific questions, someone I can connect with while I learn Ruby basics.  I am learning on my own and I come across questions I cannot find or do not have the exact answer I need to move on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can I create myself a little community of willing people here that I can ask private questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12077" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5126" RevisionGUID="b36b7af7-713e-49bd-90b6-7daa17750794" CreationDate="2012-10-16T09:21:25.667" UserId="41586" Text="I have checked and rechecked my Q&amp;A postings. Can the moderators explain me please? Thanks" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12078" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5126" RevisionGUID="b36b7af7-713e-49bd-90b6-7daa17750794" CreationDate="2012-10-16T09:21:25.667" UserId="41586" Text="Why am i barred posting questions from my account despite there is nothing wrong with my Q&amp;A?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12079" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5126" RevisionGUID="b36b7af7-713e-49bd-90b6-7daa17750794" CreationDate="2012-10-16T09:21:25.667" UserId="41586" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12080" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5126" RevisionGUID="6071889b-af0d-417d-9709-4b09f6e7eba1" CreationDate="2012-10-16T09:22:51.050" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12081" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5127" RevisionGUID="e7e60eb8-b6d8-4edb-9677-2d58e3da2a14" CreationDate="2012-10-16T09:30:29.167" UserId="25936" Text="You have asked 8 questions in total, 4 of them deleted. Here's a breakdown:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [How to use a switch statement with enum efficiently?][1] (+5, open)&#xD;&#xA;- [How faster an IIf is as compared to if and in when to use it?][2] (+1, open)&#xD;&#xA;- [What are the pros and cons of multiple inheritance?][3] (+1, closed),&#xD;&#xA;- [How to climb up the hierarchy from a programmer (codesmith) to a full-fledged Software Engineer?][4] (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;- A good book on managing software projects in MS Project and Visio (-2, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- Why Java does not support mutidimentional arrays, unlike C or Fortran? (-7, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- How to teach computer programming to a 9 year old kid? (-3, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- Which programming language to go for in order to learn Object Oriented Programming? (-3, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Out of a total of 8 questions, only 2 are open. That's... not good. Please follow the instructions given in the [link on the question ban message][5] and keep in mind that the ban is automatic, there is nothing anyone can do to reverse it, it's completely up to you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126886/how-to-use-a-switch-statement-with-enum-efficiently&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122213/how-faster-an-iif-is-as-compared-to-if-and-in-when-to-use-it&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122480/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-multiple-inheritance&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127545/how-to-climb-up-the-hierarchy-from-a-programmer-codesmith-to-a-full-fledged-so&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12082" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5128" RevisionGUID="d3d30f38-153c-4a37-aaaa-7071a2d58fd1" CreationDate="2012-10-16T09:33:01.753" UserId="4" Text="This [question on Meta Stack Overflow][1] explains just about everything about question and answer bans. It seems pretty straight forward to me: an account is banned from asking questions on a site when they routinely ask low-quality questions as determined by a number of factors (including deleted questions, closed questions, and down votes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have asked 8 questions. Of those 8 questions, 2 of those questions are closed and not deleted, 4 are closed and deleted, and 5 have a net negative score. Cumulatively, your questions (including the deleted ones) have been rated -11. That's a poor track record of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you need to do is try to improve your existing questions. We have several resources that outline what we're looking for in terms of questions and answers, such as our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and [How to Ask guide](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask). If, after reading those pages and any comments on your questions, you don't understand why your question was closed or how to improve it, ask about it here on Meta or in our [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), although I'd recommend Meta as a first choice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12083" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5126" RevisionGUID="2889a9d1-24ec-4f05-be2f-023d4a8d74d7" CreationDate="2012-10-16T10:02:15.587" UserId="31260" Comment="edited title" Text="Why am I barred posting questions from my account despite there is nothing wrong with my Q&amp;A?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12088" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5130" RevisionGUID="fed67e31-8c39-429e-b191-5cd2cb16552c" CreationDate="2012-10-16T13:15:27.653" UserId="39294" Text="I am referring to this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/170059/good-literature-for-object-oriented-programming-in-c &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I have seen question like http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124109/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-design-patterns&#xD;&#xA;And &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88743/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-parallel-programming-with-focus-on-c &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - are clearly ok. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question is, is literature/book requests by itself wrong? or is three something specifically wrong about my question? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the comment also mentioned that : &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking too much.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not really asking anyone to write a book right here -but I do want to find references which are credible which I can suggest to relatively new poeple. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be honest most book shelves really take you to C++ books which are not what i am asking. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any possibility to improve the question and get it open?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12089" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5130" RevisionGUID="fed67e31-8c39-429e-b191-5cd2cb16552c" CreationDate="2012-10-16T13:15:27.653" UserId="39294" Text="Is literature requests inherently off-topic or not-constructive" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12090" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5130" RevisionGUID="fed67e31-8c39-429e-b191-5cd2cb16552c" CreationDate="2012-10-16T13:15:27.653" UserId="39294" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12091" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5131" RevisionGUID="aa9f9100-4367-4acc-b1ec-b763eafa7c94" CreationDate="2012-10-16T13:34:21.000" UserId="4" Text="Given some of the top voted answers in [the last discussion about resource requests][1] and the close votes and flags from other members of the community against your question, it appears that people wants to see a bigger emphasis on questions about problems rather than resource requests (even a request for the &quot;canonical reference&quot;). Questions should be about solving a problem, and links to resources should be part of good answers, along with experiences of other users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, prior to closing (as I mentioned in my comment), I did a Google search for &quot;object-oriented C&quot; (without quotation marks) and received numerous results. A precursor to asking a question should be to search for an answer, using your favorite search engine and on any relevant Stack Exchange sites. A question should address why these resources aren't sufficient for solving your problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [the FAQ][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below are two excerpts from the answers that are tied for top answer in the question I linked to above. As of now, both have 8 up votes and 0 down votes from members of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Mark Trapp's top answer][3] in the linked question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The problem with these questions aren't that they are asking for a book, it's that they don't describe anything about the problem the user is having, or rather why the user is asking the question, to afford a useful response. They're like asking, &quot;tell me what book will teach me everything and anything about Java.&quot; Where to begin? Questions must narrow the scope down to a specific problem, otherwise, they don't belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Robert Harvey's top answer][4] in the linked question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; While I begrudgingly accept the idea that resource requests are on-topic if they are specific enough, people should really be asking &quot;how&quot; questions, not &quot;what&quot; questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/4108/4&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/4104/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12092" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5131" RevisionGUID="5565a542-16d4-42e5-b3b5-5c887071ba75" CreationDate="2012-10-16T13:54:34.267" UserId="31260" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="Given some of the top voted answers in [the last discussion about resource requests][1] and the close votes and flags from other members of the community against your question, it appears that people want to see a bigger emphasis on questions about problems rather than resource requests (even a request for the &quot;canonical reference&quot;). Questions should be about solving a problem, and links to resources should be part of good answers, along with experiences of other users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, prior to closing (as I mentioned in my comment), I did a Google search for &quot;object-oriented C&quot; (without quotation marks) and received numerous results. A precursor to asking a question should be to search for an answer, using your favorite search engine and on any relevant Stack Exchange sites. A question should address why these resources aren't sufficient for solving your problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [the FAQ][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below are two excerpts from the answers that are tied for top answer in the question I linked to above. As of now, both have 8 up votes and 0 down votes from members of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Mark Trapp's top answer][3] in the linked question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The problem with these questions aren't that they are asking for a book, it's that they don't describe anything about the problem the user is having, or rather why the user is asking the question, to afford a useful response. They're like asking, &quot;tell me what book will teach me everything and anything about Java.&quot; Where to begin? Questions must narrow the scope down to a specific problem, otherwise, they don't belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Robert Harvey's top answer][4] in the linked question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; While I begrudgingly accept the idea that resource requests are on-topic if they are specific enough, people should really be asking &quot;how&quot; questions, not &quot;what&quot; questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/4108/4&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/4104/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12093" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5130" RevisionGUID="4341182f-6c75-417c-8ad2-27e26fb74d6f" CreationDate="2012-10-16T14:05:15.703" UserId="35414" Comment="edited title" Text="Are literature requests inherently off-topic or not-constructive" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12094" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5132" RevisionGUID="27700f7c-7110-45a3-85ef-ccda292fd905" CreationDate="2012-10-16T16:53:41.920" UserId="35276" Text="Let me know if my question is too close of a duplicate with http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow but I really don't think it is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am asking about a very particular section of the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - **algorithm and data structure concepts**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stackoverflow has directly in there FAQ also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - a specific programming problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - **a software algorithm**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand the question about the difference says Stackoverflow often has code where Programmers often does not. However in the scope of algorithm's, data structures, and design patterns, which are all on-topic in Stackoverflow with associated tags and all, there's frequently no code involved in SO for these particular topics because they address more generalized problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also the aforementioned question about differences says programmers often can have code in the questions, so whether code is there or not seems to be a false indicator of differentiating an answer from SO vs programmers as both sites are on-topic with code or without.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(why is tl;dr always at the end?) so to sum up my question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone delineate the distinction between when an algorithm/data structures/design patterns question belongs on SO vs when it belongs on Programmers? Should a note be made in the FAQ detailing this delineation? If no distinction can be made, should one of the sites have it removed or suggest people go to the other for that matter?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12095" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5132" RevisionGUID="27700f7c-7110-45a3-85ef-ccda292fd905" CreationDate="2012-10-16T16:53:41.920" UserId="35276" Text="When do these questions belong on programmers instead of stackoverflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12096" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5132" RevisionGUID="27700f7c-7110-45a3-85ef-ccda292fd905" CreationDate="2012-10-16T16:53:41.920" UserId="35276" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12097" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5133" RevisionGUID="825220dc-5a1c-4efa-b783-f505464b33e0" CreationDate="2012-10-16T17:19:26.990" UserId="25936" Text="Programmers and Stack Overflow overlap in expertise, it's not uncommon for questions to fit both sites. It's not always clear if a question is more conceptual (Programmers) than technical (Stack Overflow) and there are questions that sit right on the fence. When questions overlap significantly we tend to let them stay at the site they were originally asked, it's a simple enough solution. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think we need to change the FAQ of either site, and since you're asking this in the interest of keeping Programmers as clean as possible I'd like to encourage you to examine whether a question is a good question before examining whether it fits our FAQ. Only after you decide it's a good question you should start wondering whether it's more suitable for us or Stack Overflow (or any other site). If you can't decide, chances are that it's one of those that fit either sites, in which case it's in our interest to keep it here, Stack Overflow gets 5.8K questions per day, we get 35. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12098" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5133" RevisionGUID="d9b841c4-56c0-46ac-b39f-65d5a10a64dc" CreationDate="2012-10-16T17:29:04.390" UserId="25936" Comment="added 453 characters in body" Text="Programmers and Stack Overflow overlap in expertise, it's not uncommon for questions to fit both sites. It's not always clear if a question is more conceptual (Programmers) than technical (Stack Overflow) and there are questions that sit right on the fence. When questions overlap significantly we tend to let them stay at the site they were originally asked, it's a simple enough solution. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think we need to change the FAQ of either site, and since you're asking this in the interest of keeping Programmers as clean as possible I'd like to encourage you to examine whether a question is a good question before examining whether it fits our FAQ. Only after you decide it's a good question you should start wondering whether it's more suitable for us or Stack Overflow (or any other site). If you can't decide, chances are that it's one of those that fit either site, in which case it's in our interest to keep it here, Stack Overflow gets 5.8K questions per day, we get 35. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it's not just Stack Overflow, here's a brief list of Stack Exchange sites we overlap with: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Database Administrators][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [Game Development][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [IT Security][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [Project Management][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [Computer Science][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://security.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12099" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="5134" RevisionGUID="e2c86dec-407e-48b0-b8a6-7fa13616bc6a" CreationDate="2012-10-16T19:43:25.523" UserId="-1" Comment="from https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/151584/apeal-of-closure-of-a-question" Text="" />
  <row Id="12100" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5134" RevisionGUID="07de66ac-f710-4064-b04e-ca25305f8b17" CreationDate="2012-10-16T19:39:34.463" UserId="62035" UserDisplayName="Hossein" Text="Would you have a look at this [question][1] And see if it was rightfully closed?  &#xD;&#xA;I believe I followed all rules this time and I also got answers in the comments,While I should have received those as answers not comments and this is due to the question being closed.  &#xD;&#xA;If the question indeed needed to be closed,Then please tell me what is wrong with it so that it doesn't get committed again.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/169997/when-can-we-expect-the-next-version-of-cc12#comment326196_169997" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12101" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5134" RevisionGUID="07de66ac-f710-4064-b04e-ca25305f8b17" CreationDate="2012-10-16T19:39:34.463" UserId="62035" UserDisplayName="Hossein" Text="Apeal of Closure of a question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12102" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5134" RevisionGUID="07de66ac-f710-4064-b04e-ca25305f8b17" CreationDate="2012-10-16T19:39:34.463" UserId="62035" UserDisplayName="Hossein" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12103" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5135" RevisionGUID="47a334e0-bafe-42f4-b9a6-a9470cdd9231" CreationDate="2012-10-16T19:43:53.747" UserId="4767" Text="The question was rightfully closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is composed of several different questions that are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Vague&#xD;&#xA; - Not answerable&#xD;&#xA; - Speculative&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are all not good attributes for a question on the Stack Exchange site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular they are of the `Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site` as the [FAQ][1] discusses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12104" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5134" RevisionGUID="8295a85f-9b6a-4f7c-ae49-442c25149a44" CreationDate="2012-10-16T19:48:47.947" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 6 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Would you have a look at this [question][1] and see if it was rightfully closed?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe I followed all rules this time and I also got answers in the comments. While I should have received those as answers not comments, this is due to the question being closed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question indeed needed to be closed, then please tell me what is wrong with it so that it doesn't happen again.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/169997/when-can-we-expect-the-next-version-of-cc12#comment326196_169997" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12105" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5134" RevisionGUID="8295a85f-9b6a-4f7c-ae49-442c25149a44" CreationDate="2012-10-16T19:48:47.947" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 6 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Appeal of the closure of a question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12106" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5134" RevisionGUID="8295a85f-9b6a-4f7c-ae49-442c25149a44" CreationDate="2012-10-16T19:48:47.947" UserId="226" Comment="deleted 6 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12107" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5134" RevisionGUID="029a709d-a226-4dc0-985f-13d31f9a1547" CreationDate="2012-10-16T19:50:45.707" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12109" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5134" RevisionGUID="fafaf183-0f5f-40c9-954f-cb08499553ff" CreationDate="2012-10-17T09:03:59.917" UserId="31260" Comment="fake edit to allow me change vote" Text="Would you have a look at this [question][1] and see if it was rightfully closed?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe I followed all rules this time and I also got answers in the comments. While I should have received those as answers not comments, this is due to the question being closed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question indeed needed to be closed, then please tell me what is wrong with it so that it doesn't happen again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/169997/when-can-we-expect-the-next-version-of-cc12#comment326196_169997" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12110" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="5134" RevisionGUID="73c49679-99ec-4fd2-b1e6-96f312066606" CreationDate="2012-10-17T09:04:10.087" UserId="31260" Comment="Rollback to [029a709d-a226-4dc0-985f-13d31f9a1547]" Text="Would you have a look at this [question][1] and see if it was rightfully closed?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe I followed all rules this time and I also got answers in the comments. While I should have received those as answers not comments, this is due to the question being closed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question indeed needed to be closed, then please tell me what is wrong with it so that it doesn't happen again.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/169997/when-can-we-expect-the-next-version-of-cc12#comment326196_169997" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12111" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5136" RevisionGUID="2a6b09fb-8d89-4a13-807a-972cd8e761f8" CreationDate="2012-10-17T13:03:56.707" UserId="12436" Text="I've been fairly active in the new review queue this week and have found a particular breed of low quality posts that I'm not sure of how to handle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, this answer in http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1262/most-useful-features-of-vim-that-arent-standard-in-a-ide/37598#37598&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, to me, this is &quot;wrong&quot;, most IDEs I've used allow splitting the screen, but just because I disagree with projecktzero's opinion on the matter, I don't think this is grounds for it to be flagged for deletion, similarly, I don't think it &quot;Looks good&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the best action to take on posts of this type?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12112" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5136" RevisionGUID="2a6b09fb-8d89-4a13-807a-972cd8e761f8" CreationDate="2012-10-17T13:03:56.707" UserId="12436" Text="Should flagged low quality posts that are &quot;wrong&quot; be recommended for deletion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12113" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5136" RevisionGUID="2a6b09fb-8d89-4a13-807a-972cd8e761f8" CreationDate="2012-10-17T13:03:56.707" UserId="12436" Text="|discussion|support|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12114" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5137" RevisionGUID="91305965-f3ef-4366-b53c-dce2ffb63e01" CreationDate="2012-10-17T13:08:22.063" UserId="35414" Text="&quot;I love that feature&quot; is not an answer. Despite the problematic nature of the question itself, answers should *explain* themselves. Right or wrong &quot;I like this&quot; is never and should never be an answer without (significantly) more detail.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, wrongness doesn't really imply that an answer should be deleted *if it is an answer*. Were that the case, downvote and explain the problem in a comment (or upvote another comment doing that). But if it's wrong and one line...probably no harm done." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12115" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5137" RevisionGUID="19619d8f-ac77-4000-a86b-617e87777237" CreationDate="2012-10-17T13:13:39.450" UserId="35414" Comment="added 647 characters in body" Text="&quot;I love that feature&quot; is not an answer. Despite the problematic nature of the question itself, answers should *explain* themselves. Right or wrong &quot;I like this&quot; is never and should never be an answer without (significantly) more detail.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, wrongness doesn't really imply that an answer should be deleted *if it is an answer*. Were that the case, downvote and explain the problem in a comment (or upvote another comment doing that). But if it's wrong and one line...probably no harm done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, more generally when deciding to click &quot;delete/recommend deletion&quot; you should think &quot;is there any value in keeping this post&quot;? Sometimes a wrong answer is useful because downvotes + comments show *why* you shouldn't do something you might have otherwise done. Wrong answers can be a learning experience too. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But sometimes there's nothing to learn, sometimes answers are just bad. If the community decides an extremely wrong answer should be deleted, that's probably not a problem. But it's not something mods do; only the community can police the *correctness* of answers (vs policing the fact that answers are actually *answers*)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12116" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5138" RevisionGUID="a0f66f12-42ae-49a9-905a-e3b513171ecb" CreationDate="2012-10-17T13:19:26.807" UserId="4" Text="I tried to find a reference or advice on Meta Stack Overflow, but couldn't. If one turns up, let me know and I'll edit it in. Also, if any other Meta sites are having this discussion, edit those in so we can cross link to how other communities are dealing with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a Meta Stack Overflow question about [how to write a good answer][1]. The concepts of right and wrong have no bearing on what makes a good answer. This means, to me, that answers have a measure of &quot;goodness&quot; as well as measure of &quot;rightness&quot;, which are two distinct things. When you are using the low quality review tool, you should be judging an answer based on it's goodness, not on it's rightness.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you have enough expertise in the subject matter to judge rightness, you should use that. Open the question and down vote wrong answers. Leave comments or ask clarifying questions. If the question is bad, consider voting on the question or even flagging it if it needs more immediate attention or might be too old to have the eyes of the community on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, keep in mind that wrong answers are not suitable for moderator attention. It's a reason to decline flags on answers, in fact. If moderators shouldn't intervene with wrong answers that have been flagged, I would suspect they aren't good candidates for deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/7656/how-do-i-write-a-good-answer-to-a-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12117" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4095" RevisionGUID="aae0608f-b01e-48c3-a75a-47d32293c345" CreationDate="2012-10-17T19:08:29.817" UserId="35414" Comment="added 160 characters in body" Text="I'm seeing this on Chromium 22 (Windows &amp; Linux) &amp; Firefox 15 (Windows):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The footer line is a bit in the way. Tried the usual clearing of caches/hard refresh but that doesn't seem to help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Related: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4064/footer-line-isnt-where-its-supposed-to-be-in-review-stats-and-history - but that's not on the same page.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also broke in Chrome 22, but only on the review page, not the stats:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vw9Et.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZXKDT.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12118" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5139" RevisionGUID="06ac8445-a187-42b0-b316-3537e0a62fd6" CreationDate="2012-10-18T15:11:21.953" UserDisplayName="user25791" Text="It seems like nlp should be changed to natural-language-processing and that nlp should be used as a synonym of it instead because it is less apparent what nlp is." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12119" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5139" RevisionGUID="06ac8445-a187-42b0-b316-3537e0a62fd6" CreationDate="2012-10-18T15:11:21.953" UserDisplayName="user25791" Text="Shouldn't the nlp tag be replaced with natural-language-processing?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12120" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5139" RevisionGUID="06ac8445-a187-42b0-b316-3537e0a62fd6" CreationDate="2012-10-18T15:11:21.953" UserDisplayName="user25791" Text="|feature-request|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12121" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5139" RevisionGUID="0e05a3d9-6b48-4cc3-adab-640dccb57518" CreationDate="2012-10-18T15:13:25.133" UserId="25936" Comment="added 24 characters in body; edited tags" Text="It seems like [tag:nlp] should be changed to [tag:natural-language-processing] and that [tag:nlp] should be used as a synonym of it instead because it is less apparent what [tag:nlp] is." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12122" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5139" RevisionGUID="0e05a3d9-6b48-4cc3-adab-640dccb57518" CreationDate="2012-10-18T15:13:25.133" UserId="25936" Comment="added 24 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|support|tags|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12123" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5140" RevisionGUID="0e274f81-e2a1-4d68-9141-f5b5e452316e" CreationDate="2012-10-18T17:40:05.787" UserDisplayName="user25791" Text="How about [tag:natural-lang-processing]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reasons being that it's much clearer than [tag:nlp], it's under 25 characters, and a user would (at least at present) see only this tag pop up after hitting `natu`." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12124" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5141" RevisionGUID="b330b244-ee33-40e4-b9d7-c592a9ab24f8" CreationDate="2012-10-18T19:01:04.067" UserId="5512" Text="I noted that over at [security.stackexchange.com](http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/22824/why-not-rsa-encrypt-the-entire-document) they actually include the underlines on the links and that makes them much easier to pick out of a document.  We really do need to fix the links on programmers.SE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12125" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3813" RevisionGUID="b72fa055-4968-46bf-a86c-0cc8d5830f98" CreationDate="2012-10-19T01:22:25.970" UserId="25476" Comment="Added body of deleted question so that those with under 10k rep can see" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56847/outsourcing-a-private-project-can-it-be-done&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one probably could have been improved and focused with a good edit to reword the question from:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Can it be done?  I don't know, can it be done to study the effects of Bengal Tiger mating practices in zero-G environments?  Certainly it could be with enough time, effort and money so *Can it be done?* is the wrong question to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - What is the best way to outsource development and manage potential quality issues?  This is a much better question and is probably what you really wanted to know anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regardless, it wasn't closed for quality, it was closed because this question has been asked before and there were a number of excellent answers that you could have benefited from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42685/sql-plan-guide-comparison-syncing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can anyone suggest a good way to sync plan guides for a database across multiple environments? (dev/prod etc). It seems that vs2010 database project schema comparison does not cater for this...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't speak for Mark, but I feel that he probably closed this because it is a very specific question about a very specific situation with a very specific software.  He felt it was too specific to be of any real benefit to future visitors.  For more information see the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as deletion, this may have been in an effort to clean up the culmination of closed questions that have no hope of improvement." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12126" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4095" RevisionGUID="82f33d5a-6143-4d41-a80b-06e3d87bce43" CreationDate="2012-10-19T08:09:16.477" UserId="22069" Comment="added 586 characters in body" Text="I'm seeing this on Chromium 22 (Windows &amp; Linux) &amp; Firefox 15 (Windows):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The footer line is a bit in the way. Tried the usual clearing of caches/hard refresh but that doesn't seem to help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Related: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4064/footer-line-isnt-where-its-supposed-to-be-in-review-stats-and-history - but that's not on the same page.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also broke in Chrome 22, but only on the review page, not the stats:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additional info &amp;ndash; this link:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/&#xD;&#xA;               this thing here looks important ^&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which is what &quot;review&quot; in the header links to, leads me to a page with the footer misplaced as in the screenshots above. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**But**, this one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which is what the &quot;Review&quot; in the in-page header (to the left of the stats and buttons in the review pages themselves) links to, leads me to a page with the footer _where it's supposed to be_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hoping this could help debugging the issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vw9Et.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZXKDT.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12127" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5142" RevisionGUID="208782d5-a322-4301-a6e2-4cb0e6afd61d" CreationDate="2012-10-19T22:08:39.870" UserId="58225" Text="I registered on this site because I want to learn from the experienced programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;So I look many interesting questions and answer. Then I ask [my first question][1], some days later this was closed as a duplicate. Also I make [an acceptable answer][2]. After that I did nothing but look at some Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now my account is banned. When I try to ask a question, I get this message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account. See&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://goo.gl/C1Kwu to learn more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It is fine?&#xD;&#xA; - How can I do to ask new questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/155183/58225&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/155194/58225" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12128" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5142" RevisionGUID="208782d5-a322-4301-a6e2-4cb0e6afd61d" CreationDate="2012-10-19T22:08:39.870" UserId="58225" Text="I can't post due to one closed question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12129" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5142" RevisionGUID="208782d5-a322-4301-a6e2-4cb0e6afd61d" CreationDate="2012-10-19T22:08:39.870" UserId="58225" Text="|support|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12130" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5143" RevisionGUID="700376a7-2e3b-47f7-abdf-fde61aa93daa" CreationDate="2012-10-19T22:12:06.503" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; Then I ask my first question, some days later this was closed as a duplicate. Also I make an acceptable answer. After that I did nothing but look at some Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you linked to might be the first one you asked, but it's not the only one. The question ban is automatic, there is nothing anyone can do to help you reverse it, it's completely up to you. Read the instructions in the link carefully (twice) and follow them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/p41EZ.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12131" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5144" RevisionGUID="223a36eb-0c15-4146-bcea-0d5357b87e8e" CreationDate="2012-10-19T22:13:13.183" UserId="47" Text="You have three other questions that were down-voted, closed and deleted. These are also taken into account for the question block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you follow the instructions on the page linked to you can re-earn the right to post questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main thing you need to do is to try to improve the quality of the question you just asked and also provide more high quality answers.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12132" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5143" RevisionGUID="51992ffe-1a93-4624-afd2-ece9ece570db" CreationDate="2012-10-19T22:17:14.937" UserId="25936" Comment="added 271 characters in body" Text="&gt; Then I ask my first question, some days later this was closed as a duplicate. Also I make an acceptable answer. After that I did nothing but look at some Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you linked to might be the first one you asked, but it's not the only one. The question ban is automatic, there is nothing anyone can do to help you reverse it, it's completely up to you. Read the instructions in the [link][2] carefully (twice) and follow them to the letter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should also read and follow the advice given on:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Matt Gemmell's excellent article [What have you tried?][3], and&#xD;&#xA;- Jon Skeet's [Writing the perfect question][4] blog post, the canonical guide on asking questions on Stack Overflow (the principles apply on Programmers as well).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While your willingness to learn is admirable, you'll have to keep in mind that we are all freely volunteering our time here and expecting you to do some minimal research and to show us that you at least tried to solve your problem prior to asking is not unreasonable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/p41EZ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers/86998#86998&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12133" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5142" RevisionGUID="6b5ffc1f-3104-4b28-96ee-63b10d876dfe" CreationDate="2012-10-19T22:19:51.223" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|closed-questions|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12134" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5142" RevisionGUID="72beca96-50e4-4af1-a2f7-78e3276d5b64" CreationDate="2012-10-19T22:31:06.480" UserId="58225" Comment="improved expression" Text="I registered on this site because I want to learn from the experienced programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;So I look many interesting questions and answer. Then I ask [my first question][1], some days later this was closed as a duplicate. Also I make [an acceptable answer][2]. After that I didn't very much but look at some Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now my account is banned. When I try to ask a question, I get this message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account. See&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://goo.gl/C1Kwu to learn more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It is fine?&#xD;&#xA; - How can I do to ask new questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/155183/58225&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/155194/58225" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12135" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5142" RevisionGUID="eacdb88f-c12d-4b6f-b605-377d734ce79f" CreationDate="2012-10-19T22:38:01.763" UserId="58225" Comment="added information" Text="I registered on this site because I want to learn from the experienced programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;So I look many interesting questions and answer. Then I ask [my first question][1], some days later this was closed as a duplicate. Also I make [an acceptable answer][2]. After that I didn't very much but look at some Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now my account is banned. When I try to ask a question, I get this message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account. See&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://goo.gl/C1Kwu to learn more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It is fine?&#xD;&#xA; - How can I do to ask new questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;What I can tell in my favor is that my incorrect questions was written a long time ago and now I have learned from [my Ubuntu account][3]. I also make good things like create the pascal tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/155183/58225&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/155194/58225&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://askubuntu.com/users/62483/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12136" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5145" RevisionGUID="231602b7-5188-46d2-aaf6-32f06d59651c" CreationDate="2012-10-20T19:19:15.800" UserId="27782" Text="I've had my account closed due to too many lousy questions and I'm trying to learn from my mistakes, however, I can't even post at all at this point. Is there anything I can do to be allowed to ask questions again?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12137" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5145" RevisionGUID="231602b7-5188-46d2-aaf6-32f06d59651c" CreationDate="2012-10-20T19:19:15.800" UserId="27782" Text="How be given back access to asking questions again?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12138" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5145" RevisionGUID="231602b7-5188-46d2-aaf6-32f06d59651c" CreationDate="2012-10-20T19:19:15.800" UserId="27782" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12139" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5146" RevisionGUID="026090dd-0f52-4324-862a-4f629b9df926" CreationDate="2012-10-20T19:21:01.693" UserId="47" Text="You can do three things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Post good answers to questions.&#xD;&#xA;2. Suggest edits to other people's posts and have those edits accepted.&#xD;&#xA;3. Edit your questions to make them better. Get the down-votes cancelled and questions reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12140" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5145" RevisionGUID="9a9b4f85-a759-49b5-94be-73a282db1a82" CreationDate="2012-10-20T19:28:55.677" UserId="27782" Comment="incorrect grammar in title" Text="How can I be given back access to asking questions again?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12141" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5145" RevisionGUID="e2e006b9-73ae-4047-bb8c-4844f1ef2428" CreationDate="2012-10-20T19:44:07.110" UserId="27782" Comment="added 11 characters in body; edited title" Text="I've had my account closed due to one bad question and a lack of input into others questions in the community (did I'm mention that I'm a NEWBIE with not much to give back yet). Is there anything I can do to be allowed to ask questions again?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12142" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5145" RevisionGUID="e2e006b9-73ae-4047-bb8c-4844f1ef2428" CreationDate="2012-10-20T19:44:07.110" UserId="27782" Comment="added 11 characters in body; edited title" Text="How to regain the privilege to ask questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12143" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5147" RevisionGUID="fb29ab11-9f40-4bde-8313-891c46b9f430" CreationDate="2012-10-20T20:00:16.403" UserId="27782" Text="I was denied the right to ask questions and I believe it was an unjust decision. Out of the questions I've asked I believe only one is truly subjective and about the complaint of my lack of participation in the community, well I'm a newbie. I lack the skills to really contribute much at this point and give any credible input.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a side note, just as one gives more to their young child than they receive, so should the community expect less from new programmers before they are able to fully mature and give back to the community. This has really given me a negative impression of stackexchange and I believe that the site should really consider being more lenient with new programmers. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12144" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5147" RevisionGUID="fb29ab11-9f40-4bde-8313-891c46b9f430" CreationDate="2012-10-20T20:00:16.403" UserId="27782" Text="Appeal to regain the privilege to ask questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12145" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5147" RevisionGUID="fb29ab11-9f40-4bde-8313-891c46b9f430" CreationDate="2012-10-20T20:00:16.403" UserId="27782" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12146" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5148" RevisionGUID="f72ee3ae-e076-4fb5-9ac9-106e56b19941" CreationDate="2012-10-20T20:02:55.700" UserId="47" Text="It's an automatic process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's nothing we (as moderators) can do." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12147" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5149" RevisionGUID="6889b72c-c5be-48f8-8e12-895943af8e6a" CreationDate="2012-10-20T20:13:33.227" UserId="12611" Text="Just because you're new to programming doesn't make you an idiot. It just means you're, well... new to programming. I'm not sure why people show up on Stack Exchange and think that just because they're new to programming that somehow reading information in the FAQ or following the rules is somehow beyond them. Programming and reading a FAQ are not related skill sets... at all, and there are plenty of people new to programming who show up and ask really great, researched questions. We hold everyone to the same standard as far as the rules go, and it doesn't matter what you're skill level is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at your most recent closed question, it's off topic, and I'm not sure how to advise you to fix it since, well, it's off topic here. I'm personally better at fixing questions closed for other reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are people in this community who may be able to help you, but you'd have to post a question *asking* the community to help you fix your posts, rather than posting an indignant response asking people to roll out the red carpet for you, just because you feel like you're above the rules of our community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People here *will* help you, if you ask, and are nice, and remain constructive, and show that you are willing to learn the norms of the community. But it involves *you* wanting to try to do what's expected, not Stack Exchange lowering the bar. Good luck! :)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12148" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5150" RevisionGUID="92e97dcc-9b43-4475-95bc-bfef45c13361" CreationDate="2012-10-20T20:16:19.057" UserId="4" Text="To elaborate on what ChrisF said, the post block is an automatic activity based on your history. This feature exists on all sites in the Stack Exchange network and is [well-discussed on Meta Stack Overflow][1]. That post is a far better description than I can put into a post here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The system can't distinguish between an expert and a beginner. However, regardless of your skill and knowledge level, everyone is held to the same standard when it comes to the quality of their questions and answers. The relevant things to read are our [FAQ][2], [guide on how to ask good questions][3], and the blog posts on [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][4] and [Real Questions Have Answers][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would recommend first reading those resources. Then, go through your closed or down voted questions. Not every question is salvageable easily - questions with answers are harder to save than questions that aren't answered yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you need help, you can always ask very specific questions about what you can do to improve your questions. But keep in mind that not every question can be saved. Also look for any questions that you can answer - even good answers that provide new information to old questions are valuable and might help return your account to good standing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12149" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5147" RevisionGUID="39c5b80c-7918-45ba-8434-8ae86eefcef8" CreationDate="2012-10-20T21:20:57.183" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12150" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5145" RevisionGUID="99107f5a-7ab9-4667-a84d-ee6dba2ddf5c" CreationDate="2012-10-20T21:21:29.273" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12151" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5151" RevisionGUID="47990279-3a53-4d04-a87e-b298e086215b" CreationDate="2012-10-22T02:49:55.877" UserId="1973" Text="I'm sorry, been trying to play by the rules as of late (or just avoid programmers.se) but I got notified that I had a [notable question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12766/is-code-complete-still-code-complete) and when I went to look at it, I found that it was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, maybe it was an open ended poll, I recognized that it had pollish features so I removed them and it was reopened.  And subsequently reclosed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, why mod would unilaterally reclose something that was validly worked through the system with no funny business (to my knowledge) is beyond me.  I was informed in chat that this is still a poll, but fortunately, one mod is not the end all arbiter of reality. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, can we get a hard and fast community supported definition of poll when it comes to programmers.SE that I could be referred to, or refer others to, when a question is seemingly randomly closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12152" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5151" RevisionGUID="47990279-3a53-4d04-a87e-b298e086215b" CreationDate="2012-10-22T02:49:55.877" UserId="1973" Text="What is the current definition of a poll?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12153" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5151" RevisionGUID="47990279-3a53-4d04-a87e-b298e086215b" CreationDate="2012-10-22T02:49:55.877" UserId="1973" Text="|discussion|polling|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12154" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5152" RevisionGUID="1ec6223f-deb0-4196-b378-f42318dae4b7" CreationDate="2012-10-22T06:52:10.160" UserId="25936" Text="The [first version][1] of the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was just wondering for the sake of wonderment, what kinds of things need to be added to Code Complete 3e, and for the sake of reductionism, what kinds of things would be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [current version][2] of the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it even possible to call Code Complete, Code Complete if it doesn't have language features that even Delphi has like anonymous methods and generics? What key sections are missing from the book and what should be deprecated?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hm? Still the same question, and still you're polling for people's opinions. Programmers is not a discussion forum. The &quot;hard and fast&quot; rule is scribed in the [FAQ][3]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions should I not ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/12766/1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/12766/3&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12155" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5145" RevisionGUID="82c57465-fd6c-4924-91f7-1f5d57cc47cd" CreationDate="2012-10-22T08:32:36.397" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Appeal to regain the privilege to ask questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5147/appeal-to-regain-the-privilege-to-ask-questions)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I've had my account closed due to one bad question and a lack of input into others questions in the community (did I'm mention that I'm a NEWBIE with not much to give back yet). Is there anything I can do to be allowed to ask questions again?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12156" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5145" RevisionGUID="3f76a1c6-9e93-4d06-b986-42b4b340f7c0" CreationDate="2012-10-22T08:32:36.397" UserId="25936" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[5147],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:1996,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Jim G.&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:101,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Walter&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="12157" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5153" RevisionGUID="99c1d4db-4a3e-4bb9-8e08-821514b02442" CreationDate="2012-10-22T11:26:42.483" UserId="25476" Text="It is still a poll because your question is specifically calling for random opinions on a loose subject.  This is the very definition of Not Constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These kinds of &quot;discussion&quot; questions are still good reads and a lot can be learned from them, but they are honestly best left for Reddit.  We are trying to build something a little more concrete and special here than a forum where everybody gets a chance to shout their opinions on every debate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12158" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5154" RevisionGUID="a8d8f051-d0db-4174-85da-b958aae9fa49" CreationDate="2012-10-22T11:58:21.380" UserId="4" Text="Both [Yannis Rizos][1] and [maple_shaft][2] give good answers as to why your question is not constructive. However, I want to address two other things you mention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Now, why mod would unilaterally reclose something that was validly worked through the system with no funny business (to my knowledge) is beyond me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators are exception handlers. A moderator really exists for two purposes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first is to help correct mistakes. Sometimes, the community gets things wrong. They might reopen a question that was closed with good reason. Or they might not be voting to close a question that clearly doesn't fit. That's not to say that moderators are perfect, because we aren't. But when the community is doing something that in the grand scheme of things is actually detrimental to the community, we deal with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second is to respond quickly to the worst of the worst. To stop people from defacing valuable information and prevent future damage. To remove content that is only vulgar or offensive and detracts from the community. To inform people when they are violating the norms of the community and how to correct their actions to become valuable, contributing members.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was informed in chat that this is still a poll, but fortunately, one mod is not the end all arbiter of reality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;True, we make mistakes. However, there are constructive ways to discuss a moderator's actions that you think might be invalid and there are unconstructive ways to discuss these actions. Saying &quot;yo mods reopen please&quot; in chat isn't really a good way to address a problem. This meta post, asking why the question was closed is. Alternatively, pinging the mods in chat and asking why a question was closed is a good way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Very rarely (at least on this site, based on what I can see) does a moderator take an action without either a flag on the post or after other community members have taken action (for example, as a third or fourth close vote). That means that many of the posts closed by only a moderator have been seen by at least two people - the person who reported the post and the moderator who took action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5152/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5153/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12159" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5132" RevisionGUID="d34525bb-9f3c-446a-bfd0-a13d1b7484e6" CreationDate="2012-10-23T06:01:44.940" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/260622013490671616" />
  <row Id="12160" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5155" RevisionGUID="b7abfd2d-07ba-4ec3-9fee-0afa4d0186dc" CreationDate="2012-10-23T10:50:36.140" UserId="31560" Text="I just forget his name -- but he is the LEADING reputation holder on Programmers.SE, and has asked such popular questions as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[I'm a Subversion geek, why should I consider or not consider Mercurial or Git or any other DVCS?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35074/im-a-subversion-geek-why-should-i-consider-or-not-consider-mercurial-or-git-or)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why, then he is shown as &quot;user2567&quot;? And can someone help me recollect his name?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12161" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5155" RevisionGUID="b7abfd2d-07ba-4ec3-9fee-0afa4d0186dc" CreationDate="2012-10-23T10:50:36.140" UserId="31560" Text="what's up with &quot;user2567&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12162" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5155" RevisionGUID="b7abfd2d-07ba-4ec3-9fee-0afa4d0186dc" CreationDate="2012-10-23T10:50:36.140" UserId="31560" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12163" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5155" RevisionGUID="3d34aebe-cf35-46d1-90b5-fcd7058f6563" CreationDate="2012-10-23T10:58:19.313" UserId="31560" Comment="added 14 characters in body" Text="I just forget his name -- but he is (used to be?) the LEADING reputation holder on Programmers.SE, and has asked such popular questions as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[I'm a Subversion geek, why should I consider or not consider Mercurial or Git or any other DVCS?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35074/im-a-subversion-geek-why-should-i-consider-or-not-consider-mercurial-or-git-or)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why, then he is shown as &quot;user2567&quot;? And can someone help me recollect his name?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12164" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5156" RevisionGUID="4379eb0e-3865-4d20-a8c9-610aa60dff46" CreationDate="2012-10-23T10:58:46.750" UserId="47" Text="The account has been deleted. Only the developers would be able to tell you what the person's name was - not that they are likely to though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As content is provided under the [cc sa 3.0 license](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) when an account is deleted the posts the user made remain, but they are anonymised.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In very rare circumstances posts can be disassociated from an account, which will produce the same kind of post." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12165" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5156" RevisionGUID="c8bb5017-f7c8-447e-88c3-ea201196c078" CreationDate="2012-10-23T12:19:39.097" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="The account has been deleted. Only the developers would be able to tell you what the person's name was - not that they are likely to though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As content is provided under the [cc sa 3.0 license](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) when an account is deleted the posts the user made remain, but they are anonymised.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In very rare circumstances posts can be disassociated from an account, which will produce the same kind of post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As there is no account, there is no profile page so there's no way to access all of their posts *(thanks to Walter for reminding me of that)*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12166" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5155" RevisionGUID="9c0f9b88-c590-473d-a965-77c8048b1d00" CreationDate="2012-10-24T03:01:45.670" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/260939104072654848" />
  <row Id="12167" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5157" RevisionGUID="6fb39c48-5f0c-447e-be56-e784d36a7ba3" CreationDate="2012-10-24T17:47:19.840" UserId="69889" Text="I am currently taking a first year programming course, and I am curious as to whether it would be considered appropriate to ask questions related to general concepts and home work questions which I have attempted but require guidance with. Obviously my first resource is my programming teacher; however, he is frequently not available, and very difficult to understand due to a significant language barrier. I am asking meta if questions of this nature would be appropriate to avoid down votes and closed threads; thank you for your comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12168" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5157" RevisionGUID="6fb39c48-5f0c-447e-be56-e784d36a7ba3" CreationDate="2012-10-24T17:47:19.840" UserId="69889" Text="Appropriate questions on Java programming questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12169" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5157" RevisionGUID="6fb39c48-5f0c-447e-be56-e784d36a7ba3" CreationDate="2012-10-24T17:47:19.840" UserId="69889" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12170" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5158" RevisionGUID="6f9b67f6-518b-4586-b87a-65c2c06d69bf" CreationDate="2012-10-24T18:04:09.873" UserId="4" Text="Assuming that your question falls within the guidelines in [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) for what is considered on-topic and that your question makes it clear what you have already tried or already considered, I don't see why a question would not be allowed simply because it's a homework issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also relevant is [a discussion about homework questions on Programmers][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2894/how-can-programmers-se-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12171" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5159" RevisionGUID="3dcf9fc1-a134-4f03-b3e4-a268b9dab64c" CreationDate="2012-10-24T18:45:50.097" UserId="25476" Text="Thomas Owens answer is great, but I also would like to add that is important that you do not ask things that are quite obviously common knowledge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does this mean?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I can very clearly see the answer as the first or second result of a Google search then it is too simple of a question.  If this answer itself confuses you, then ask specifically what it is about this answer that you find confusing.  At the very least if it has been asked before then we can direct you to the duplicate question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12178" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5157" RevisionGUID="1574124a-003e-45e2-8f01-0fd6060ba528" CreationDate="2012-10-26T00:01:46.300" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/261618586542555138" />
  <row Id="12179" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5161" RevisionGUID="ed61c87f-efd6-45c0-bc48-70418bd0d10b" CreationDate="2012-10-26T09:25:30.453" UserId="12436" Text="This is massively controversial so feel free to close, delete or edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recently read: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4013/where-did-pierre-303-go-he-was-an-all-star&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that there are issues/difficulties that I'm ignorant of, and everyone wants programmers to be the best it can be, and a community to be proud of, but have there been signs that it is a community that isn't compatible with the StackExchange engine?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12180" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5161" RevisionGUID="ed61c87f-efd6-45c0-bc48-70418bd0d10b" CreationDate="2012-10-26T09:25:30.453" UserId="12436" Text="Does high-profile user attrition prove that a subjective SE won't work?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12181" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5161" RevisionGUID="ed61c87f-efd6-45c0-bc48-70418bd0d10b" CreationDate="2012-10-26T09:25:30.453" UserId="12436" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12182" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5161" RevisionGUID="555df1c2-a48b-4b93-9691-a7718de711d2" CreationDate="2012-10-26T09:43:08.327" UserId="12436" Comment="edited title and content to be a bit less crude" Text="Is high-profile user attrition a sign that a subjective SE won't work?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12183" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5161" RevisionGUID="555df1c2-a48b-4b93-9691-a7718de711d2" CreationDate="2012-10-26T09:43:08.327" UserId="12436" Comment="edited title and content to be a bit less crude" Text="This is massively controversial so feel free to close, delete or edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recently read: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4013/where-did-pierre-303-go-he-was-an-all-star&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that there are issues/difficulties that I'm ignorant of, and everyone wants programmers to be the best it can be, and a community to be proud of and a lot of people work hard to make it good, but have there been signs that it is a community that isn't compatible with the StackExchange engine?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12184" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5162" RevisionGUID="cd7d22b8-86ed-49aa-816b-30dc30f83e07" CreationDate="2012-10-26T09:45:44.287" UserId="47" Text="Users leave Stack Exchange sites for all sorts of reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Users leave Stack Exchange sites all the time. They usually just abandon their accounts, but I suspect that more are requesting that their accounts are deleted. This is purely anecdotal and an impression on my part - the team would be the only people who could answer this definitively (but I suspect they wouldn't want to).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should not read too much (or indeed anything) into the fact that a high reputation user has asked for their account to be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;New users are signing up all the time. I think this is a sign of a healthy community." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12185" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5163" RevisionGUID="81cd72c3-9caa-45ce-a891-2af32b88c2e2" CreationDate="2012-10-26T12:07:51.280" UserId="1130" Text="I think Programmers is different from other subjective SE sites because we started out as &quot;[Not-Programming-Related][1]&quot;, a place for programmers to get answers from each other about non-programming subjects. This was a rather broad scope, so SE decided to change it to &quot;Conceptual Questions about Software Development&quot;, and many in the community did not agree with this change. You can view the full history [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also probably closely related is [this graph](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/83266#graph), where you can see where the change in site direction started getting enforced by moderators. Most users weren't aware that the site scope had changed so much until questions started getting closed, which caused a lot of tension in the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But anyways, what I'm saying is you shouldn't use Programmers to judge other subjective SE sites because of its history. This site would probably be fine if it wasn't that it started out as something else, and I think other subjective SE sites would do fine as well providing they figure out their rules from the beginning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/I7Vqn.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12186" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5163" RevisionGUID="2c64d415-33cb-415c-b92e-f6883d65a73f" CreationDate="2012-10-26T12:31:40.610" UserId="1130" Comment="added 330 characters in body" Text="Don't use Programmers to judge other subjective SE sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The history of Programmers is what caused many of the high-profile users to leave, and I think SE learned a lesson from it and is very unlikely to repeat the same process for other SE sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We started out as &quot;[Not-Programming-Related][1]&quot;, a place for programmers to get answers from each other about non-programming subjects that were popular, but not welcome on Stack Overflow. But &quot;not programming related&quot; was a rather broad scope, so SE decided to change it to &quot;Conceptual Questions about Software Development&quot;, and many in the community did not agree with this change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also probably closely related is [this graph](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/83266#graph), where you can see where the change in site direction started getting enforced by moderators. Most users weren't aware that the site scope had changed so much until questions started getting closed, which caused a lot of tension in the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can view the full history [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But anyways, what I'm saying is you shouldn't use Programmers to judge other subjective SE sites because of its history. This site would probably be fine if it wasn't that it started out as something else, and I think other subjective SE sites would do fine as well providing they have a fairly clear definition of their site up-front and don't change direction after the site has launched.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/I7Vqn.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12187" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="5164" RevisionGUID="ceeb24e5-a686-4990-82e4-187772c04cfc" CreationDate="2012-10-26T17:15:16.107" UserId="-1" Comment="from https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/152688/how-can-i-edit-a-question-that-solicits-debate-arguments-etc-when-thats-the" Text="" />
  <row Id="12188" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="5165" RevisionGUID="05e2cf5b-9709-469a-a46d-4ad9528798a7" CreationDate="2012-10-26T17:15:16.107" UserId="-1" Comment="from https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/152688/how-can-i-edit-a-question-that-solicits-debate-arguments-etc-when-thats-the/152689#152689" Text="" />
  <row Id="12189" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="5166" RevisionGUID="e2186cb1-5e12-4c76-b725-d044ae4e2809" CreationDate="2012-10-26T17:15:16.107" UserId="-1" Comment="from https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/152688/how-can-i-edit-a-question-that-solicits-debate-arguments-etc-when-thats-the/152690#152690" Text="" />
  <row Id="12190" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5165" RevisionGUID="75cc8b22-9a80-4b56-9889-76ceaf19fa88" CreationDate="2012-10-26T16:46:32.813" UserId="1577" Text="The problem isn't that your question solicits debate (although it might). In this case, I can't tell *what the heck you're asking!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can edit your question and request it be re-opened through a flag; but unless you clean up your question I can see it being deleted very soon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question (as it was originally structured) was not constructive (see: DLL Hell); but as it stands now, I'd still close it as 'Not a real Question'." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12191" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5166" RevisionGUID="5141d3a4-7a88-48e6-bf0d-d9a2f375f287" CreationDate="2012-10-26T17:05:13.737" UserId="44" Text="&gt; Will deleting this post take away further consideration of whether my account can be considered unbanning?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deleting a question would have quite the opposite effect, as question ban considers also deleted questions, whenever they are deleted from you, or other users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you can do is putting the question in shape, fixing it basing on what [George Stocker][1] said in his answer here.  &#xD;&#xA;The alternative is getting up-voted for answering questions asked by other users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/16587/george-stocker" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12192" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5164" RevisionGUID="82ae14b5-042d-4e8b-b626-0851f8dde3ea" CreationDate="2012-10-26T16:44:23.533" UserId="63214" UserDisplayName="Chris Okyen" Text="MY SE account was banned and I want to improve question to possibly get unbanned. Among these links which casued the ban was [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/170928/needs-management-tool-for-java-files). The question, by nature, is debatable, and thus was closed. Since it was closed within 30 days of the ban, it was put into consideration. Will deleting this post take away further consideration of whether my account can be considered unbanning?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12193" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5164" RevisionGUID="82ae14b5-042d-4e8b-b626-0851f8dde3ea" CreationDate="2012-10-26T16:44:23.533" UserId="63214" UserDisplayName="Chris Okyen" Text="How can I edit a question that solicits debate, arguments, etc. when that's the nature of the question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12194" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5164" RevisionGUID="82ae14b5-042d-4e8b-b626-0851f8dde3ea" CreationDate="2012-10-26T16:44:23.533" UserId="63214" UserDisplayName="Chris Okyen" Text="|discussion|stackexchange|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12195" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5167" RevisionGUID="64d2d1a0-e4ae-487c-bc2f-8e450b7b12e4" CreationDate="2012-10-26T17:52:55.923" UserId="25936" Text="These are your questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The two in red are deleted, and are also taken into account in the question ban. As you can see _some_ of your questions were more than welcome, and some were heavily downvoted, closed and deleted (and lead to the ban). It's clear to me that you are more than capable of writing a good question, and I have no idea how someone who asked [this][2] then went and asked [this][3]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, what you need to do now is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Read our [FAQ][4] thoroughly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A couple of your questions simply don't belong on Programmers. If you want any clarifications on what topics we welcome, you can ask here on Meta or in [chat][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Stop trying to be cute&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  While all of us appreciate humour, it doesn't really have a place in your questions or your answers. Questions especially should be as clear and to the point as possible, you are asking the Programmers crowd for free help, answerers should be able to understand what your core question is without much effort. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A couple of resources that will help you ask better questions in the future (and perhaps improve your existing ones): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Matt Gemmell's excellent article [What have you tried?][6], and&#xD;&#xA;  - Jon Skeet's [Writing the perfect question][7] blog post, the canonical guide on asking questions on Stack Overflow (the principles apply on Programmers as well).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Contribute some great answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Don't rush into answering just to reverse the ban. Find questions that you feel are not sufficiently answered, and give them your best shot. Don't repeat earlier answers, only answer if you have something new to add, back up your answers with solid references and make them as clear as possible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although the exact question ban algorithm is kept secret, from a very high level view you seem to be very near the ban threshold, it shouldn't take a lot of effort to reverse it. Our [chat room][8] may feel deserted at times, but if you have _anything_ to ask, just ask, someone will respond sooner or later.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EldJf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167982/web-crawler-for-learning-topics-on-wikipedia&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/170928/1&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/170928/1&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12196" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5161" RevisionGUID="e92d3533-b471-424e-a0b2-79f8e08fc8de" CreationDate="2012-10-26T17:59:22.267" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 74 characters in body" Text="I recently read: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4013/where-did-pierre-303-go-he-was-an-all-star&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that there are issues/difficulties that I'm ignorant of, and everyone wants programmers to be the best it can be, and a community to be proud of and a lot of people work hard to make it good, but have there been signs that it is a community that isn't compatible with the StackExchange engine?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12197" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5168" RevisionGUID="79a6c881-67be-440e-9f9c-38eaab943d4f" CreationDate="2012-10-27T06:54:41.513" UserId="59263" Text="I'm currently designing a (vector drawing) software. What choices do I have to get the list of most popular features such a software should have, in particular, features that if absent, would totally prevent users from using it ? How can this be asked in least ambiguous way ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12198" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5168" RevisionGUID="79a6c881-67be-440e-9f9c-38eaab943d4f" CreationDate="2012-10-27T06:54:41.513" UserId="59263" Text="Can Programmers be used to list features of a certain kind of program?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12199" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5168" RevisionGUID="79a6c881-67be-440e-9f9c-38eaab943d4f" CreationDate="2012-10-27T06:54:41.513" UserId="59263" Text="|discussion|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12200" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5169" RevisionGUID="f91a7229-03ce-4a4e-bbbb-598985f91dc4" CreationDate="2012-10-27T12:15:01.833" UserId="4" Text="I don't see how you can ask such a question and have it be both on-topic and constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you propose it, it's a list. By definition, list questions are not constructive questions. However, even if you managed to remove the list component, it would still be off-topic. I don't see how it would fall into any of the topics that are listed in the FAQ as being on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have more widely-applicable questions about requirements, architecture, or design, those are on-topic. Some good starting places might be the tags for [tag:requirements] or [tag:requirements-management], [tag:architecture], or [tag:design]. However, we can't give you those things or do your project for you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12201" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4100" RevisionGUID="7d78ca23-ec2c-4cee-a131-57cdc17f61e0" CreationDate="2012-10-27T19:41:06.827" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|resource-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12202" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5170" RevisionGUID="86254951-a72d-4aa6-93c0-63fd57539c65" CreationDate="2012-10-29T13:28:38.497" UserId="38148" Text="I just flagged this question about [the difference between a port and a socket][1] as off-topic. My flag was declined. Can someone explain to me how is this question related to programmers? To me, it's more related to network stuff which don't really belong here in my opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/171734/38148" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12203" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5170" RevisionGUID="86254951-a72d-4aa6-93c0-63fd57539c65" CreationDate="2012-10-29T13:28:38.497" UserId="38148" Text="How is a question about ports and sockets on topic at Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12204" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5170" RevisionGUID="86254951-a72d-4aa6-93c0-63fd57539c65" CreationDate="2012-10-29T13:28:38.497" UserId="38148" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|flagging|declined-flags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12205" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5171" RevisionGUID="50b43782-53a6-479f-aa9b-b5d0c41ff25e" CreationDate="2012-10-29T13:39:32.883" UserId="25476" Text="A socket is inherently an interface that an OS provides to applications to communicate via an address, so I feel this question is relevant to a programmer.  I don't see sockets as being a major concern for system administrators or network engineers but they certainly matter to software developers writing a network interface." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12206" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5172" RevisionGUID="54c6c444-6ab8-496f-a82f-62b34c2c89ca" CreationDate="2012-10-29T19:58:25.690" UserId="1554" Text="I'm fairly certain that I commented on [this][1] question. I am certain that I flagged it (and my flag was marked as helpful)... but when I check the question, it looks like my comment has been removed (unless of course, I backed out of the comment and just flagged... I was a wee bit sleepy at the time)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How would I know if my comment was removed, or would I? If not, then could I get mod input on what happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171747/diminishing-returns-on-additional-developers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12207" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5172" RevisionGUID="54c6c444-6ab8-496f-a82f-62b34c2c89ca" CreationDate="2012-10-29T19:58:25.690" UserId="1554" Text="Are we notified if comments are deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12208" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5172" RevisionGUID="54c6c444-6ab8-496f-a82f-62b34c2c89ca" CreationDate="2012-10-29T19:58:25.690" UserId="1554" Text="|support|moderation|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12209" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5173" RevisionGUID="8b52f0d7-4a64-4485-ad1f-32ec4ca9577f" CreationDate="2012-10-29T20:01:59.203" UserId="4" Text="As far as I know, there's no notification. However, if I get a notice of a large number of comments posted on a question or a flag against a comment, I'll also remove other associated/replying comments that don't add value so that the ones left make sense. There's no real penalty, as long as you aren't abusive of comments, where abusive means frequent use of comments to have extended discussions or contain rude or offensive remarks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12210" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5174" RevisionGUID="d071418c-3aaa-4ec2-a759-834fa626a537" CreationDate="2012-10-29T20:47:33.007" UserId="25936" Text="Your comment was deleted after being flagged as offensive. Two things might have happened here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The comment received 6 offensive flags by regular users and was deleted automatically,&#xD;&#xA; 1. The comment received n &lt; 6 offensive flags, and a fellow moderator validated them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately what is logged is the username of the last regular user who flagged the comment (which could also be the only flag, if a moderator validated it). Comments are considered third class citizens, and comment flags are equally unimportant, for example moderators generally don't see who flagged comments, the only exception being that the last flagger is logged as the user who deleted the comment (which is more of a bug, really).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12211" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5174" RevisionGUID="545a5b20-1c4e-4a17-bbbb-f76f018533a1" CreationDate="2012-10-30T16:17:10.360" UserId="25936" Comment="added 149 characters in body" Text="Your comment was deleted after being flagged as offensive. Two things might have happened here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The comment received 6 offensive flags by regular users and was deleted automatically,&#xD;&#xA; 1. The comment received n &lt; 6 offensive flags, and a fellow moderator validated them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately what is logged is the username of the last regular user who flagged the comment (which could also be the only flag, if a moderator validated it). Comments are considered third class citizens, and comment flags are equally unimportant, for example moderators generally don't see who flagged comments, the only exception being that the last flagger is logged as the user who deleted the comment (which is more of a bug, really).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comment was: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does the world really need another bullshit catchphrase for a phenomena, which you've linked to, that already has a name?	&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12212" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5172" RevisionGUID="76877b27-4353-498a-aa47-4a76de3574db" CreationDate="2012-10-30T16:20:17.940" UserId="1554" Comment="added 413 characters in body; edited tags" Text="*Update:* Changing this to be a feature request. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Request: Notifications of removed comments with included rationale.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reasoning: Personally, pandering to people's sensibilities is silly from my perspective, but being a community driven site, we are at the will of the masses. Knowing what kinds of comments/etc. the masses approves of directly fosters continued community involvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;Original&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm fairly certain that I commented on [this][1] question. I am certain that I flagged it (and my flag was marked as helpful)... but when I check the question, it looks like my comment has been removed (unless of course, I backed out of the comment and just flagged... I was a wee bit sleepy at the time)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How would I know if my comment was removed, or would I? If not, then could I get mod input on what happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171747/diminishing-returns-on-additional-developers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12213" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5172" RevisionGUID="76877b27-4353-498a-aa47-4a76de3574db" CreationDate="2012-10-30T16:20:17.940" UserId="1554" Comment="added 413 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|feature-request|moderation|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12214" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5175" RevisionGUID="e910dd63-8923-4ff6-bae0-8a0e92ea6364" CreationDate="2012-10-31T02:08:51.163" UserId="12611" Text="**We don't need notifications of comments:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are really enough questions as it is whenever a post is closed or deleted. Questions and answers are at the core of Q&amp;A, and the community is happy to address any concerns about posts that are closed or removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, comments are regularly removed for a variety of reasons, and the bottom line is that it just doesn't matter why they were removed. They aren't that important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sending users notifications whenever a comment is removed would only serve to create needless noise on Meta, and this noise would get in the way of the valid, important questions about questions and answers. Everytime someone asked &quot;Why was my comment about X removed&quot;, it just takes focus away from the more important issues. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In summary, I don't see the community, moderators, or Stack Exchange employees pushing for such a feature that would take away the focus of the questions and answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12215" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5176" RevisionGUID="5e1fe0c4-27c0-4b45-ac19-6cc28ba45a31" CreationDate="2012-10-31T15:06:15.440" UserId="35276" Text="[This][1] was just closed and I don't understand why. It says off-topic, but it is specifically about programmers and not a poll nor does it meet any of the &quot;do not ask about&quot;s in the FAQ, in fact in the do-ask-about's of the FAQ I would place this under &quot;business concerns&quot; from the description of the article.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Call me crazy, but I'm rather certain if I posted a question asking:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Can anyone direct me to this blog I read that detailed online security, it was about how passwords are shared around every site and had a comic about a gordian knot and some xkcd about a battery and a horse&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would get the answer with link pretty quickly, and it would serve as a reference for future programmers who couldn't remember where they saw that blog. It's specific so not a poll as book requests are, it's constructive because it will direct people in the future to a valuable article on an important topic to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what's wrong with the linked question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173045/article-on-disruptives-vs-something-else" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12216" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5176" RevisionGUID="5e1fe0c4-27c0-4b45-ac19-6cc28ba45a31" CreationDate="2012-10-31T15:06:15.440" UserId="35276" Text="Are requests for a specific reference material off-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12217" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5176" RevisionGUID="5e1fe0c4-27c0-4b45-ac19-6cc28ba45a31" CreationDate="2012-10-31T15:06:15.440" UserId="35276" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12218" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5177" RevisionGUID="e9e7ee62-e008-4a91-9f7e-387dabb9bc90" CreationDate="2012-10-31T15:10:24.300" UserId="47" Text="It could have been closed as not constructive or even too localised, but it already had two close votes so I followed what the others had voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it may be a question that *interests* programmers is not a question *about* programming or software development. It's a request to find a blog. It comes under the same rule about product/book/library/etc. requests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, a question **about** the subject of the blog *may* be on topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12219" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5178" RevisionGUID="17785f20-693e-4b1c-8199-dc66cf81f615" CreationDate="2012-10-31T16:08:47.240" UserId="25936" Text="Locating an article is _not_ a software development problem, regardless of what the article is about. Questions that are nothing more than a request to an external resource are off topic, not only on Programmers but on Stack Exchange in general, this isn't a link sharing service.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finding an article or a blog post is _not_ a conceptual software development question. We make a small exception for [canonical books][2], but that's the only exception, not the rule. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What kind of questions should I not ask here?][3]&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient&#xD;&#xA;- [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [Real Questions Have Answers][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why is asking for references/sources to study specific topics considered not constructive?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/153220/why-is-asking-for-references-sources-to-study-specific-topics-considered-not-con" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12220" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5178" RevisionGUID="ed066fc0-8c92-418b-ae36-f1f5bfa69051" CreationDate="2012-10-31T16:35:36.607" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 54 characters in body" Text="Locating an article is _not_ a software development problem, regardless of what the article is about. Questions that are nothing more than a request to an external resource are off topic, not only on Programmers but on Stack Exchange in general, this isn't a link sharing service.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finding an article or a blog post is _not_ a conceptual software development question. We make a small exception for [canonical books][2], but that's the only exception, not the rule. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient&#xD;&#xA;- [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [Real Questions Have Answers][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why is asking for references/sources to study specific topics considered not constructive?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/153220/why-is-asking-for-references-sources-to-study-specific-topics-considered-not-con" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12221" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5178" RevisionGUID="c091ecc3-cd10-4972-96e3-b3a98e9033a6" CreationDate="2012-10-31T16:44:19.570" UserId="25936" Comment="added 55 characters in body" Text="Locating an article is _not_ a software development problem, regardless of what the article is about. Questions that are nothing more than a request to an external resource are off topic, not only on Programmers but on Stack Exchange in general, this isn't a link sharing service.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finding an article or a blog post is _not_ a conceptual software development question. We make a small exception for [canonical books][2], but that's the only exception, not the rule. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Let’s Play The Guessing Game][4]&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient&#xD;&#xA;- [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [Real Questions Have Answers][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why is asking for references/sources to study specific topics considered not constructive?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/153220/why-is-asking-for-references-sources-to-study-specific-topics-considered-not-con" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12222" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3500" RevisionGUID="3c4c2a4f-1c54-4b6f-8d38-ae48896473e0" CreationDate="2012-10-31T17:38:27.237" UserId="1130" Comment="Upon re-reading this, I realize the next two suggestions really didn't convey the differences I was trying to get it, so rephrased it. I still think this is a good idea." Text="I think the Programmers tag line is misleading when mixed with our site name, and that it implies on first glance that the site is about &quot;Programmers [interested in conceptual questions about software development]&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the tag line is a summary of the site for the SE site description, search description, and the welcome message for users not logged, can we remove the words &quot;professional programmers interested in&quot; to make it more clear what the site is actually for?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thomas pointed out that the tag line should describe who the site is for, so perhaps we could just reverse the order of the objects so the topic is the first thing people read, and the audience is second? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; conceptual questions about software development, intended for professional programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; conceptual questions about software development. It is intended for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; use by professional programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/135/316&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/360/316" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12223" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5179" RevisionGUID="b3b44118-2b73-4fcd-b0d6-21bae3f4b84d" CreationDate="2012-10-31T17:46:58.957" UserId="12436" Text="I imagine not, but would it be appropriate for the site to be rebranded for a month or a notice put out to promote the international Men's Health Charity movement [Movember][1]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.movember.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12224" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5179" RevisionGUID="b3b44118-2b73-4fcd-b0d6-21bae3f4b84d" CreationDate="2012-10-31T17:46:58.957" UserId="12436" Text="Would promoting a charity (Mogrammers) appropriate on the site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12225" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5179" RevisionGUID="b3b44118-2b73-4fcd-b0d6-21bae3f4b84d" CreationDate="2012-10-31T17:46:58.957" UserId="12436" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12226" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5180" RevisionGUID="083978e2-6b0d-4539-af77-f9d1a5b808bb" CreationDate="2012-10-31T17:55:01.270" UserId="51669" Text="Using Firefox on Windows 8, I've had a hard time reading certain sentences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;clean looks exactly like dean. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Screenshot if you cannot see it:**  &#xD;&#xA;![cleandean][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And generally a lot of letters are too close:   &#xD;&#xA;Like ct in exactly in my screenshot, and ce.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B8NHL.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12227" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5180" RevisionGUID="083978e2-6b0d-4539-af77-f9d1a5b808bb" CreationDate="2012-10-31T17:55:01.270" UserId="51669" Text="clean reads like dean, letter spacing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12228" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5180" RevisionGUID="083978e2-6b0d-4539-af77-f9d1a5b808bb" CreationDate="2012-10-31T17:55:01.270" UserId="51669" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12229" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5180" RevisionGUID="9b95edf6-5698-4e31-83a0-664464b52ebe" CreationDate="2012-10-31T17:55:53.973" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12230" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5181" RevisionGUID="d1e65c56-1aa1-4767-8a4a-c069066c3f21" CreationDate="2012-10-31T18:24:37.457" UserId="12436" Text="[![Donate to a fellow Mogrammer!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/usRHy.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://mobro.co/tommothias" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12231" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5181" RevisionGUID="eb4ad47f-0775-4fc6-b1c0-04a7017a4a94" CreationDate="2012-10-31T18:24:37.457" UserId="12436" />
  <row Id="12232" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5180" RevisionGUID="dd9893e0-9c3d-4a06-9781-aa52d5b2fc30" CreationDate="2012-10-31T18:25:40.183" UserId="51669" Comment="added 25 characters in body" Text="Using Firefox on Windows 8, I've had a hard time reading certain sentences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;clean looks exactly like dean. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Screenshot if you cannot see it:**  &#xD;&#xA;![cleandean][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And generally a lot of letters are too close (close, not dose, hehe).  &#xD;&#xA;Like ct in 'exactly' in my screenshot, and ce.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B8NHL.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12233" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5182" RevisionGUID="5384d1e2-dc15-4552-b43c-40ee03c7d11f" CreationDate="2012-10-31T18:27:14.177" UserId="12436" Text="Based on @freiheit's suggestion, I've added a [community ad][1] you can vote for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the moment, the link is to my donation page, leave a comment if you think a different URL would be more aposite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5181/12436" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12234" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5180" RevisionGUID="87b20b55-68eb-441f-b0b3-8cab8fa55343" CreationDate="2012-10-31T18:31:48.503" UserId="51669" Comment="added browser version" Text="Using Firefox 16.0.2 on Windows 8, I've had a hard time reading certain sentences. Browser is normal zoom.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;clean looks exactly like dean. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Screenshot if you cannot see it:**  &#xD;&#xA;![cleandean][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And generally a lot of letters are too close (close, not dose, hehe).  &#xD;&#xA;Like ct in 'exactly' in my screenshot, and ce.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B8NHL.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12235" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5183" RevisionGUID="6d3f682f-62f4-49c4-ab72-0613e10521d0" CreationDate="2012-10-31T18:44:42.230" UserId="3477" Text="You could try to do it as a [community promotion ad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2635/community-promotion-ads-2012). The guidelines for a community ad on programmers are fairly open, you just have to convince enough people that it's a good idea." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12236" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5161" RevisionGUID="1311127d-8e87-4268-9d71-4d650bec1a18" CreationDate="2012-11-01T06:56:15.773" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/263897231151755264" />
  <row Id="12237" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5184" RevisionGUID="fb971f6e-39e3-44f4-8928-1b6cc6fba677" CreationDate="2012-11-01T07:45:51.677" UserId="62330" Text="I fully support the Mo-vember cause, so have some sympathy with the suggestion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, charity support is a very personal matter, and I would be against any in-your-face adoption of any charity by this site (or any other SE site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my answer to your question is a resounding No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I like the Community Ad idea" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12238" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5185" RevisionGUID="5eb32123-4a82-43ca-9ae4-f3372c40100b" CreationDate="2012-11-01T10:19:07.623" UserId="53905" Text="There is a number of questions on Programmers that relate to [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [As per IEEE 12207, who has to perform SW integration testing?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do I flag-off such topics to be migrated there?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: This questions is similar to another [question][3] about migrations between stackexchange questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173165/as-per-ieee-12207-who-has-to-perform-sw-integration-testing&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2826/flagging-off-topic-should-allow-you-to-migrate-to-codereview" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12239" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5185" RevisionGUID="5eb32123-4a82-43ca-9ae4-f3372c40100b" CreationDate="2012-11-01T10:19:07.623" UserId="53905" Text="How to flag off-topic to migrate to SQA" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12240" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5185" RevisionGUID="5eb32123-4a82-43ca-9ae4-f3372c40100b" CreationDate="2012-11-01T10:19:07.623" UserId="53905" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12241" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5186" RevisionGUID="45aefc3d-da0c-43e7-9b7c-2339bbc04ae9" CreationDate="2012-11-01T10:22:53.770" UserId="47" Text="Please note that there is now an official policy against migrating questions older than 60 days to another site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/151890/disable-migration-for-questions-older-than-60-days&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is off topic for us then it should be closed. However, note that QA questions aren't completely off topic for us, so there's no need to do anything with these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question has no answers (or no upvoted answers) then I would be willing to consider migration, but it would have to be with the agreement of the moderators on QA Stack Exchange." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12242" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5185" RevisionGUID="096f35a3-eb9b-4422-b720-236f9e46ca42" CreationDate="2012-11-01T10:24:21.600" UserId="53905" Comment="added 450 characters in body" Text="There is a number of questions on Programmers that relate to [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [As per IEEE 12207, who has to perform SW integration testing?][2]&#xD;&#xA; * [How to apply verification and validation on the following example][3]&#xD;&#xA; * [Where should I draw the line between unit tests and integration tests? Should they be separate?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do I flag-off such topics to be migrated there?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: This questions is similar to another [question][5] about migrations between stackexchange questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173165/as-per-ieee-12207-who-has-to-perform-sw-integration-testing&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/172850/how-to-apply-verification-and-validation-on-the-following-example&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171705/where-should-i-draw-the-line-between-unit-tests-and-integration-tests-should-th&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2826/flagging-off-topic-should-allow-you-to-migrate-to-codereview" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12243" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5181" RevisionGUID="aedeacf9-02ac-40d8-be5f-e029eb2f2a9e" CreationDate="2012-11-01T10:50:25.410" UserId="12436" Comment="edited body" Text="[![Donate to a fellow Mogrammer!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6EMgo.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://mobro.co/tommothias" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12244" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5187" RevisionGUID="c80b17d4-026b-4ad2-8fa7-e4f4c630d827" CreationDate="2012-11-01T11:38:53.057" UserId="54034" Text="See the screenshot below. I don't know whether this is because I only have 249 rep, but it's there, all right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/M0CfX.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note: I am currently behind a firewall that blocks Imgur so I can't guarantee the screenshot looks OK for a viewer. All I know is that it has been added to the page successfully. I'll fix it if needed when I can.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12245" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5187" RevisionGUID="c80b17d4-026b-4ad2-8fa7-e4f4c630d827" CreationDate="2012-11-01T11:38:53.057" UserId="54034" Text="Line in UI goes under review tasks" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12246" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5187" RevisionGUID="c80b17d4-026b-4ad2-8fa7-e4f4c630d827" CreationDate="2012-11-01T11:38:53.057" UserId="54034" Text="|bug|user-interface|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12247" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5187" RevisionGUID="36a2190d-a9fd-48b0-ae46-edbc7229142f" CreationDate="2012-11-01T11:39:34.427" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|design|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12248" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5187" RevisionGUID="53f1681b-7aaf-46fd-9ba3-93e865b9ed01" CreationDate="2012-11-01T11:41:27.497" UserId="54034" Comment="added 176 characters in body" Text="See the screenshot below. I don't know whether this is because I only have 249 rep, but it's there, all right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/M0CfX.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note: I am currently behind a firewall that blocks Imgur so I can't guarantee the screenshot looks OK for a viewer. All I know is that it has been added to the page successfully. I'll fix it if needed when I can.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Just realized this is a dupe of http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4095/footer-line-floats-up-too-high-in-the-main-review-page. Can someone close it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12249" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5188" RevisionGUID="c3389a57-3e23-4478-b8d5-a17dc74786c2" CreationDate="2012-11-01T11:43:56.383" UserId="47" Text="Use this tag when asking about the design or user interface of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The designers check questions with this tag so by using it you will ensure that they see your bug report in a timely manner." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12250" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5189" RevisionGUID="43cea317-5713-4c82-a416-1691b4de15e1" CreationDate="2012-11-01T11:43:56.383" UserId="47" Text="For questions about the design of the site. Using this tag will ensure that the designers will see any bugs or feature requests." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12251" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5187" RevisionGUID="2b070555-4c2f-4a7a-8fcb-f1657d5fb59c" CreationDate="2012-11-01T13:20:55.703" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Footer line floats up too high in the main review page](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4095/footer-line-floats-up-too-high-in-the-main-review-page)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;See the screenshot below. I don't know whether this is because I only have 249 rep, but it's there, all right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/M0CfX.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note: I am currently behind a firewall that blocks Imgur so I can't guarantee the screenshot looks OK for a viewer. All I know is that it has been added to the page successfully. I'll fix it if needed when I can.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Just realized this is a dupe of http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4095/footer-line-floats-up-too-high-in-the-main-review-page. Can someone close it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12252" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5187" RevisionGUID="c6c782ac-a896-4a4b-b136-c7718a73334f" CreationDate="2012-11-01T13:20:55.703" UserId="-1" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[4095],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:54034,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ObsessiveSSO?&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:41381,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Ryathal&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:101,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Walter&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="12253" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5190" RevisionGUID="061bdb9a-155d-45ed-a910-7e7072881bc5" CreationDate="2012-11-01T15:36:14.800" UserId="62330" Text="As someone who'se been involved on that thread, I'd like to make a couple of comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Firstly, I wasn't even aware of SQA.SE - I'll have to have a look see!&#xD;&#xA; - I believe there is a general policy of not migrating questions to sites still in *Beta*&#xD;&#xA; - Whilst the questions may be **MORE** on-topic at SQA.SE they are still on-topic at P.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ISO/IEC (IEEE) 12207 is a software development lifecycle standard, not just a software quality assurance standard - and because of the overlap between sites, the questions are relevant and on-topic at P.SE as well as SQA.SE (and probably SO.SE)... so migration is not appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, off to nosey around SQA.SE" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12254" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5190" RevisionGUID="eb7472e7-109b-4243-9743-7ac143dee0f0" CreationDate="2012-11-01T16:01:39.520" UserId="62330" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="As someone who'se been involved on those threads, I'd like to make a couple of comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Firstly, I wasn't even aware of SQA.SE - I'll have to have a look see!&#xD;&#xA; - I believe there is a general policy of not migrating questions to sites still in *Beta*&#xD;&#xA; - Whilst the questions may be **MORE** on-topic at SQA.SE they are still on-topic at P.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ISO/IEC (IEEE) 12207 is a software development lifecycle standard, not just a software quality assurance standard - and because of the overlap between sites, the questions are relevant and on-topic at P.SE as well as SQA.SE (and probably SO.SE)... so migration is not appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, off to nosey around SQA.SE" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12255" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5181" RevisionGUID="0d6be19c-1ef1-4f15-870c-1f7f3042170f" CreationDate="2012-11-01T16:09:34.310" UserId="12436" Comment="edited body" Text="[![Donate to a fellow Mogrammer!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/VM7YR.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://mobro.co/tommothias" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12256" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5185" RevisionGUID="8521b070-37ac-40b3-8bf5-d9dd75813817" CreationDate="2012-11-01T16:30:49.827" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12257" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5191" RevisionGUID="b8dd0105-8900-4b4f-8bf5-2702bd08efaf" CreationDate="2012-11-01T18:05:50.163" UserId="2021" Text="At the moment you can't specify a dupe on stackoverflow from programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can flag as `belongs on SO` and add a link to the dupe as a comment but should it be possible to post dupe links between closely related sites ie programmers, superuser and SO ?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12258" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5191" RevisionGUID="b8dd0105-8900-4b4f-8bf5-2702bd08efaf" CreationDate="2012-11-01T18:05:50.163" UserId="2021" Text="Belongs on stackoverflow AND is a dupe on stackoverflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12259" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5191" RevisionGUID="b8dd0105-8900-4b4f-8bf5-2702bd08efaf" CreationDate="2012-11-01T18:05:50.163" UserId="2021" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12260" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5192" RevisionGUID="bddace39-4d57-48ee-a65c-2f69c6d5e436" CreationDate="2012-11-01T18:52:58.910" UserDisplayName="user8" Text="No, it shouldn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each community knows its site best: which questions should be closed, which should be open, etc. They should be the ones to decide if a new question is a duplicate of an existing question, not people on a different site who have no inherent interest in the other site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or to put it another way, let's say I have 10k rep  here on Programmers, allowing me to vote to close, but only 1k rep on Stack Overflow. Allowing dupe closing during migration would allow me to close questions on Stack Overflow even though I'm 1,000 rep short of the privilege.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think a question is a duplicate of something asked on Stack Overflow, there are three options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you can vote to close on Stack Overflow, vote to migrate, and keep an eye on it so you can vote to close when it gets there&#xD;&#xA;* If you can't vote to close on Stack Overflow, vote to migrate and let SO users deal with it when it gets there&#xD;&#xA;* Leave a comment pointing to the duplicate question on Stack Overflow and vote to close as off-topic in place here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm partial to the last option: knowingly closing a question twice—once on each site—is just pointless bureaucracy." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12261" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5191" RevisionGUID="7e2e69b8-536a-4b97-8271-d779ce38047f" CreationDate="2012-11-01T19:13:17.077" UserId="25936" Comment="added 57 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="At the moment you can't specify a duplicate on Stack Overflow from Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can vote to close or flag as &quot;belongs on Stack Overflow&quot; and add a link to the dupe as a comment, but should it be possible to post duplicate links between closely related sites, i.e. Programmers, Super User and Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12262" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5191" RevisionGUID="7e2e69b8-536a-4b97-8271-d779ce38047f" CreationDate="2012-11-01T19:13:17.077" UserId="25936" Comment="added 57 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Belongs on Stack Overflow and is a duplicate on Stack Overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12263" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5191" RevisionGUID="7e2e69b8-536a-4b97-8271-d779ce38047f" CreationDate="2012-11-01T19:13:17.077" UserId="25936" Comment="added 57 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|feature-request|migration|cross-posting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12264" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5193" RevisionGUID="3e41c729-ddb3-42e4-8d96-c1e19f1f22c1" CreationDate="2012-11-01T19:22:47.633" UserId="25936" Text="As Thomas [already mentioned][1], this wouldn't really work as a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However it might work as a blog post, and if you feel you can write an interesting article about your project, explaining your design process and the features you are already planning to build, we'd love to host it in our [Community Blog][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will get feedback from the Programmers community through comments in your article, and of course it would be perfectly ok if you specifically asked for feedback on what features people would consider essential for your project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If that's something you feel is worth pursuing, you should ping `@WorldEngineer` or `@Dynamic` in our [Blog chat room][3] for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5169/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/2359/programmers-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12265" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5192" RevisionGUID="0eeaf374-9a09-461b-bcfd-fb2ddeb38811" CreationDate="2012-11-01T21:07:04.600" UserDisplayName="user8" Comment="added 1457 characters in body" Text="So there are two ways to do this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Close as a duplicate here, but instead of being restricted to the current site's questions when choosing a duplicate target, allow Stack Overflow questions to be chosen as well.&#xD;&#xA;* Close as &quot;off-topic, belongs on Stack Overflow&quot; here, but also allow people to optionally specify a dupe target while voting to close. End result is a migration, followed by immediate closure as a duplicate of whatever question was chosen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on [your comments][1], you're looking for the former, but I'll mention both:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Allow cross-site duplicate targets when voting to close as duplicate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There might be something I'm not thinking of, but I don't have any ideological or philosophical objections to this. It seems like something that might cause a lot of strain on the backend, but I'm not a developer so that's their problem to solve or say it can't be done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has come up a few times on Meta Stack Overflow, with no outcome:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The ability to link cross site duplicates][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Close as cross post][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Allow users to migrate a question and close it as a duplicate after migration&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm against this. Each community knows its site best: which questions should be closed, which should be open, etc. They should be the ones to decide if a new question is a duplicate of an existing question, not people on a different site who have no inherent interest in the other site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or to put it another way, let's say I have 10k rep  here on Programmers, allowing me to vote to close, but only 1k rep on Stack Overflow. Allowing dupe closing during migration would allow me to close questions on Stack Overflow even though I'm 1,000 rep short of the privilege.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think a question is a duplicate of something asked on Stack Overflow, there are three options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you can vote to close on Stack Overflow, vote to migrate, and keep an eye on it so you can vote to close when it gets there&#xD;&#xA;* If you can't vote to close on Stack Overflow, vote to migrate and let SO users deal with it when it gets there&#xD;&#xA;* Leave a comment pointing to the duplicate question on Stack Overflow and vote to close as off-topic in place here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm partial to the last option: knowingly closing a question twice—once on each site—is just pointless bureaucracy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5191/belongs-on-stack-overflow-and-is-a-duplicate-on-stack-overflow/5192#comment12904_5192&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/16703/the-ability-to-link-cross-site-duplicates&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/94322/close-as-cross-post" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12266" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5157" RevisionGUID="f8d00138-ee59-4a7e-9d59-6fa0d67f1668" CreationDate="2012-11-02T00:21:36.653" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12267" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5179" RevisionGUID="5f90c806-7f16-4280-b4da-1881f5f0a3d1" CreationDate="2012-11-02T00:24:00.803" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|promotion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12268" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5181" RevisionGUID="9141c1bc-c907-49ca-a89e-3c5142cf3273" CreationDate="2012-11-02T09:31:41.693" UserId="12436" Comment="updated to general donation site. For great justice" Text="[![Donate to a fellow Mogrammer!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/VM7YR.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.movember.com/donate/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12269" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5181" RevisionGUID="7cc10d7b-c74d-4dcc-92e1-510c754c5224" CreationDate="2012-11-02T11:46:17.183" UserId="12436" Comment="deleted 7 characters in body" Text="[![Donate to a fellow Mogrammer!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/VM7YR.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.movember.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12270" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5194" RevisionGUID="d5469376-3627-460a-a58f-81623de0a679" CreationDate="2012-11-02T12:21:53.400" UserId="7748" Text="[The FAQ][1] States the Following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am proposing we drop the word &quot;professional&quot; from that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Professional is defined][2] as : &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participating for gain or livelihood in an activity or field of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; endeavor often engaged in by amateurs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We clearly are not enforcing this standard in any way, so i am proposing we drop the word. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/professional" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12271" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5194" RevisionGUID="d5469376-3627-460a-a58f-81623de0a679" CreationDate="2012-11-02T12:21:53.400" UserId="7748" Text="Should we change the Description of this Site in the FAQ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12272" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5194" RevisionGUID="d5469376-3627-460a-a58f-81623de0a679" CreationDate="2012-11-02T12:21:53.400" UserId="7748" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12273" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5195" RevisionGUID="d8f197cb-44fb-4201-b3fd-9efff5d4cae5" CreationDate="2012-11-02T12:24:36.260" UserId="25936" Text="How about we start enforcing our standards instead? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've dropped a [question in chat][1] that you clearly feel isn't up to our standards, yet you didn't vote to close it, flag it, or down vote it. Why do you expect other people to enforce our standards if you don't? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/6737979#6737979" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12274" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5194" RevisionGUID="d119d7c8-7751-47e6-a25e-aaaf9f75edc3" CreationDate="2012-11-02T12:30:26.833" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq-contents|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12275" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5196" RevisionGUID="a53de5bf-2189-400c-93df-7bd4f98142ac" CreationDate="2012-11-02T12:53:30.930" UserId="31260" Text="I for one am interested in answers that may help my work in **professional** environment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hey if you code just for fun, you are free to forget all this boring stuff from [Joel Test](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html) - version control, issue tracking, code reviews etc. Oh and testing isn't that important as you may read from some elitist professionals here - trust me, none of bat scripts I wrote for my needs has been passed through any formal QA but all three of them work just fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current FAQ wording allows me to downvote garbage like above and even come to meta and complain, requesting it to be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think proposed change would open up doors for it, that's why I am against." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12276" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5196" RevisionGUID="fca15161-568d-4960-97ea-7aa906443a9a" CreationDate="2012-11-02T13:23:51.930" UserId="31260" Comment="added 17 characters in body" Text="I for one am interested in answers that may help my work in **professional** environment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hey if you code just for fun, you are free to forget all this boring stuff from [Joel Test](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html) - version control, issue tracking, code reviews etc. Oh and testing isn't that important as you may read from some elitist professionals here - trust me, none of bat scripts I wrote for my needs has been passed through any formal QA but all three of them work just fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current FAQ wording allows me to downvote garbage like above and even come to meta and complain, requesting it to be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think dropping the word &quot;professional&quot; would open up doors for it, that's why I am against." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12277" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5197" RevisionGUID="4b30d19d-530f-43d5-b8d4-3888d59d78de" CreationDate="2012-11-02T15:11:54.980" UserId="71662" Text="How much reputation (If this is the qualifier) do you need to have to make comments on questions to ask possible clarification questions, etc?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of my answers got deleted understandably because it wasn't really an answer, but a comment.  But there was no way to make a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tagged it as bug as it surprised me that I would be unable to comment." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12278" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5197" RevisionGUID="4b30d19d-530f-43d5-b8d4-3888d59d78de" CreationDate="2012-11-02T15:11:54.980" UserId="71662" Text="No 'comment' button for new users shows" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12279" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5197" RevisionGUID="4b30d19d-530f-43d5-b8d4-3888d59d78de" CreationDate="2012-11-02T15:11:54.980" UserId="71662" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12280" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5198" RevisionGUID="5462c2c8-2042-41c0-90f1-9f2818f0502b" CreationDate="2012-11-02T15:13:50.330" UserId="47" Text="You need [50 points](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment) to be able to comment on any question or answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can comment on your own posts or answers to your own questions with [1 point](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/create-posts)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12281" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5199" RevisionGUID="649ebe2d-e782-4f00-8b55-fdb96f8ad706" CreationDate="2012-11-02T15:14:45.883" UserId="4" Text="You need [50 reputation to comment everywhere][1]. You can comment on your own questions or answers or on other people's answers to your questions regardless of your reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12282" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5197" RevisionGUID="850db15c-dcb0-48f2-88ef-f909d32e4fe2" CreationDate="2012-11-02T15:15:57.550" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|comments|privileges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12283" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5197" RevisionGUID="6c782ea0-3180-4de5-984c-210bb527f124" CreationDate="2012-11-02T16:42:18.210" UserId="71662" Comment="Bug tag corrected, as it is a feature of reputation" Text="How much reputation (If this is the qualifier) do you need to have to make comments on questions to ask possible clarification questions, etc?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of my answers got deleted understandably because it wasn't really an answer, but a comment.  But there was no way to make a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;strike&gt;I tagged it as bug as it surprised me that I would be unable to comment.&lt;/strike&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12284" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5200" RevisionGUID="45841b49-3e69-439e-bd00-b68fc07a22a7" CreationDate="2012-11-02T18:27:44.070" UserId="62330" Text="Perhaps a duplicate of http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2146/blacklist-career-advice (status deferred)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQs state (*inter alia*):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help,&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - career advice, salary or compensation1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, we still get questions, and we maintain tags `career-development`, `job-market`, `job-searching`, `career` etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, we can keep flagging them, but can these tags be consigned to the blackhole?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12285" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5200" RevisionGUID="45841b49-3e69-439e-bd00-b68fc07a22a7" CreationDate="2012-11-02T18:27:44.070" UserId="62330" Text="Career Advice type questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12286" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5200" RevisionGUID="45841b49-3e69-439e-bd00-b68fc07a22a7" CreationDate="2012-11-02T18:27:44.070" UserId="62330" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12287" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5200" RevisionGUID="d3b159cb-4a15-4873-a5e8-5a9393c013de" CreationDate="2012-11-02T18:34:33.460" UserId="4" Comment="added 16 characters in body; edited tags" Text="Perhaps a duplicate of http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2146/blacklist-career-advice (status deferred)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQs state (*inter alia*):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help,&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - career advice, salary or compensation1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, we still get questions, and we maintain tags [tag:career-development], [tag:job-market], [tag:job-searching], [tag:career] etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, we can keep flagging them, but can these tags be consigned to the blackhole?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12288" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5200" RevisionGUID="d3b159cb-4a15-4873-a5e8-5a9393c013de" CreationDate="2012-11-02T18:34:33.460" UserId="4" Comment="added 16 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12289" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5201" RevisionGUID="d24ffda5-c256-47ab-aff1-5bd011505906" CreationDate="2012-11-02T20:08:02.407" UserId="32353" Text="How about renaming to [career-(deprecated)] and [jobs-(deprecated)] as dummy tags? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12290" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5196" RevisionGUID="2ee392f3-2c1c-48a8-87ea-bf6affa0bf58" CreationDate="2012-11-02T22:38:05.303" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3920/31260" Text="I for one am interested in answers that may help my work in **professional** environment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hey if you code just for fun, you are free to forget all this boring stuff from [Joel Test](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html) - version control, issue tracking, code reviews etc. Oh and testing isn't that important as you may read from some elitist professionals here - trust me, none of bat scripts I wrote for my needs has been passed through any formal QA but all three of them work just fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current FAQ wording allows me to downvote garbage like above and even come to meta and complain, [requesting it to be deleted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3920/31260 &quot;BTDTGTTS&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think dropping the word &quot;professional&quot; would open up doors for it, that's why I am against." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12291" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="14" RevisionGUID="06311896-3ff7-44bb-ba66-75008a33790b" CreationDate="2012-11-03T07:01:42.153" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="12292" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5195" RevisionGUID="90cc8c4a-6799-4789-be0a-99d2bf81861a" CreationDate="2012-11-03T07:43:54.053" UserId="25936" Comment="added 352 characters in body" Text="How about we start enforcing our standards instead? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've dropped a [question in chat][1] that you clearly feel isn't up to our standards, yet you didn't vote to close it, flag it, or down vote it. Why do you expect other people to enforce our standards if you don't? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While the [dictionary definition of &quot;professional&quot;][2] is simple enough, it's still open to interpretation and we can't really force our individual standards on anyone. As a community though, we can enforce our community standards, and every individual vote (up/down/close/re-open) counts towards a sense of consensus. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/6737979#6737979&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/professional" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12293" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5200" RevisionGUID="8ff19dd7-bf64-42e0-9cb3-a908ec92e01f" CreationDate="2012-11-03T15:56:37.093" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/264758030623727616" />
  <row Id="12294" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5202" RevisionGUID="a2b198eb-5fb3-4145-bfb5-8a3bf38050ff" CreationDate="2012-11-05T09:45:57.070" UserId="62330" Text="Maybe this should be a comment, rather than an answer, but...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've just hit this problem with [this question][1] which I flagged, with a comment about it being an [exact duplicate of a question on StackOverflow][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My flag was *declined* (fair enough) with the response:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We can't do anything about a cross site duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;OK, if true, but seems a bit unfortunate!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173588/multiple-files-in-powershell&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5549516/run-a-powershell-script-from-another-one" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12295" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5203" RevisionGUID="1cdbfd06-c6d3-4c93-ae6f-4da4e82885bf" CreationDate="2012-11-05T12:36:54.103" UserId="62330" Text="Following on, and related to (but not duplicate of) [this question about migrating questions to SQA][1]: the scope of this site, [as defined by the FAQs][2] include, *inter alia*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - developer testing&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that we now have a standalone [Software Quality Assurance and Testing site][3] should we devolve those questions, and (as such) make them *Off Topic* here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I appreciate that there is always going to be **SOME** overlap between the various SE sites, but it does not make logical sense to have a site dedicated to a subject, whilst other sites lay claim to it too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose moving these two items to the *and it is not about..* section, with the prompt *(ask on [SQA][3] instead)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5185/how-to-flag-off-topic-to-migrate-to-sqa/5190#5190&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12296" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5203" RevisionGUID="1cdbfd06-c6d3-4c93-ae6f-4da4e82885bf" CreationDate="2012-11-05T12:36:54.103" UserId="62330" Text="Scope - Software Quality Assurance and Testing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12297" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5203" RevisionGUID="1cdbfd06-c6d3-4c93-ae6f-4da4e82885bf" CreationDate="2012-11-05T12:36:54.103" UserId="62330" Text="|discussion|migration|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12298" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5204" RevisionGUID="2bc30ffe-a207-4b2a-870d-d49a837acd65" CreationDate="2012-11-05T12:54:27.060" UserId="25936" Text="SQA Stack Exchange is a beta site, which means that there's no guarantee it will stay around, and until the site graduates this is a non issue. We do mention one beta site in our FAQ, The Workplace, but for questions that are extremely off topic on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If SQA graduates, we'll have to examine whether we want software testing questions on Programmers or not, and more importantly if our software testing questions are being expertly answered here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In an earlier Meta discussion, [How to flag off-topic to migrate to SQA][1], corsiKa chimed in: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As a moderator of SQA, obviously I have an interest in seeing it grow. But my first priority is to getting problems people face solved. Migrating for the sake of migration or to bolster SQA would both, in my opinion, be bad. I agree with Chris's perspective of &quot;If there's no quality answers coming in, migrate it.&quot; I would take it further and say that experienced users who know that questions of that nature have been migrated, then migrate those too. The sooner a question is in a spot where it gets properly answered, the better. But if it's already in that spot, it doesn't need to move.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I must say I fully agree. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd love to see SQA graduate to a full site, but they'll have to make it on their own, I'm not convinced that mentioning them in our FAQ would be a good thing for either site, at least not right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5185/how-to-flag-off-topic-to-migrate-to-sqa" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12299" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5205" RevisionGUID="a7586db5-be1c-4bd0-9420-4fb1d6aa5eee" CreationDate="2012-11-05T13:21:28.790" UserId="25476" Text="I feel that the [tag:tutorial] and the [tag:tutorials] tags should be blacklisted.  They are for the most part called out in the FAQ as off topic, and even when they are non general knowledge and cannot be easily answered with a Google search then they have to be monitored very closely for poor answers that contribute nothing but a link to that persons favorite site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of confusion that we are potentially giving users over the appropriateness of tutorial requests:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173605/what-is-the-correct-ui-interface-to-learn-for-creating-windows-phone-8-apps#comment331805_173605&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173532/excellent-c-tutorials&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/170525/where-can-i-learn-objective-c-well&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165219/what-are-the-benefits-and-drawback-of-documentation-vs-tutorials-vs-video-tutori&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159852/scala-courses-like-codeschool-or-codecademy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148902/ruby-on-rails-book-with-exercises&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129444/interactive-tutorial-for-learning-python&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126027/intro-to-windows-development-for-a-linux-programmer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124617/best-tutorial-for-c-asp-net&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119892/are-there-any-good-books-or-tutorials-on-learning-visual-studio&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could continue to post examples but I think my point is clear.  Nearly all of these questions posted with this tag have been closed, and the ones that aren't were probably just missed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12300" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5205" RevisionGUID="a7586db5-be1c-4bd0-9420-4fb1d6aa5eee" CreationDate="2012-11-05T13:21:28.790" UserId="25476" Text="Blacklist the [tutorial] and [tutorials] tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12301" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5205" RevisionGUID="a7586db5-be1c-4bd0-9420-4fb1d6aa5eee" CreationDate="2012-11-05T13:21:28.790" UserId="25476" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12302" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5205" RevisionGUID="5ab8d7d7-db8e-4f01-bc8f-751224ceb388" CreationDate="2012-11-05T13:40:34.347" UserId="25476" Comment="added 62 characters in body; edited title" Text="I feel that the [tag:tutorial] and the [tag:tutorials] tags should be blacklisted.  They are for the most part called out in the FAQ as off topic, and even when they are non general knowledge and cannot be easily answered with a Google search then they have to be monitored very closely for poor answers that contribute nothing but a link to that persons favorite site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of confusion that we are potentially giving users over the appropriateness of tutorial requests:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173605/what-is-the-correct-ui-interface-to-learn-for-creating-windows-phone-8-apps#comment331805_173605&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173532/excellent-c-tutorials&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/170525/where-can-i-learn-objective-c-well&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165219/what-are-the-benefits-and-drawback-of-documentation-vs-tutorials-vs-video-tutori&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159852/scala-courses-like-codeschool-or-codecademy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148902/ruby-on-rails-book-with-exercises&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129444/interactive-tutorial-for-learning-python&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126027/intro-to-windows-development-for-a-linux-programmer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124617/best-tutorial-for-c-asp-net&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119892/are-there-any-good-books-or-tutorials-on-learning-visual-studio&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could continue to post examples but I think my point is clear.  Nearly all of these questions posted with this tag have been closed, and the ones that aren't were probably just missed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** Currently no more Closed questions have the tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12303" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5205" RevisionGUID="5ab8d7d7-db8e-4f01-bc8f-751224ceb388" CreationDate="2012-11-05T13:40:34.347" UserId="25476" Comment="added 62 characters in body; edited title" Text="Burninate then Blacklist the [tutorial] and [tutorials] tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12304" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5204" RevisionGUID="f6d4c85b-b3b7-44a8-97bb-fde4d59045a5" CreationDate="2012-11-05T14:08:58.633" UserId="25936" Comment="added 130 characters in body" Text="SQA Stack Exchange is a beta site, which means that there's no guarantee it will stay around, and until the site graduates this is a non issue. We do mention one beta site in our FAQ, The Workplace, but for questions that are extremely off topic on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If SQA graduates, we'll have to examine whether we want software testing questions on Programmers or not, and more importantly if our software testing questions are being expertly answered here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In an earlier Meta discussion, [How to flag off-topic to migrate to SQA][1], corsiKa [chimed in][2]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As a moderator of SQA, obviously I have an interest in seeing it grow. But my first priority is to getting problems people face solved. Migrating for the sake of migration or to bolster SQA would both, in my opinion, be bad. I agree with Chris's perspective of &quot;If there's no quality answers coming in, migrate it.&quot; I would take it further and say that experienced users who know that questions of that nature have been migrated, then migrate those too. The sooner a question is in a spot where it gets properly answered, the better. But if it's already in that spot, it doesn't need to move.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I must say I fully agree. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd love to see SQA graduate to a full site, but they'll have to make it on their own, I'm not convinced that mentioning them in our FAQ would be a good thing for either site, at least not right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5185/how-to-flag-off-topic-to-migrate-to-sqa&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5185/how-to-flag-off-topic-to-migrate-to-sqa#comment12896_5186" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12305" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5206" RevisionGUID="ddf0af30-038b-483a-99a9-1573d78c6ecb" CreationDate="2012-11-05T18:24:12.443" UserId="2980" Text="Given that at least some kinds of testing questions are legitimately of interest to programmers, I think a blanket policy of migrating test questions to SQA would rob the Programmers site of valuable content.  That said, it may make sense to migrate to SQA if there are no productive responses on Programmers.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12306" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5207" RevisionGUID="718366b3-d3d7-4c44-b1b7-99bcf5b34d48" CreationDate="2012-11-05T18:42:38.273" UserId="1130" Text="One of the blog writers [asked in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/6762558#6762558) if it would be OK to add affiliate links to his blog posts. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means he would be providing a link to a product in his post (in this case, a book since he'd be doing a book review), and if you click on the link and buy the product then he gets a small percentage of the sale from the site you bought the item from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does the community feel about our blog writers earning a bit of money when writing articles for our blogs in this fashion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be noted that all articles get reviewed by a few different users before posting, and we would make it a requirement that the articles are truthful about the book (or whatever product is being reviewed). We also probably wouldn't publish too many of these kind of articles, as we don't want the blog to become just a series of sales pitches out to sell products.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12307" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5207" RevisionGUID="718366b3-d3d7-4c44-b1b7-99bcf5b34d48" CreationDate="2012-11-05T18:42:38.273" UserId="1130" Text="How does the community feel about letting our blog writers earn a bit of money by using affiliate links?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12308" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5207" RevisionGUID="718366b3-d3d7-4c44-b1b7-99bcf5b34d48" CreationDate="2012-11-05T18:42:38.273" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12309" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5208" RevisionGUID="30e6a61e-2e6c-4535-8145-89608638026a" CreationDate="2012-11-05T19:19:40.713" UserId="1973" Text="Do other sites do this? Does StackExchange Inc allow it? I'd imagine they'd want amazon links to auto convert to their own affiliate accounts.  I write for the Christianity.SE blog and do it for the fun/heck of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not saying I'm opposed to making money by blogging, but here, you've got no way of knowing if bloggers are popular or right - sometimes I'd just like to vote on blog posts but you can't do that either. The bloggers are just kind of foisted upon us  - with a large built in click-through market.  It certainly doesn't seem fair to let certain users tap in to a cash cow just because they can ramble a little bit in a coherent manner.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, the purpose of the blog, is to drive up the value of the site it's the blog for, shore up its usefulness, etc...  I've got a bit of an advantage in my own blogging experience, having most of the good stuff in the public domain.  Personally, I think a link on a modern programming book should be to the book's website, not a place to buy it. People can figure it out on their own and should buy it from the vendor of their choice, not just something robust, monolithic (mono-breasted) and omnipresent. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the realy question is how many programming books written in the last 15 years don't have websites and why aren't those websites the most rational place to link to? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12310" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5207" RevisionGUID="10f18e8b-d4a2-4095-b2ab-f4c58c4fd9d7" CreationDate="2012-11-05T19:22:34.270" UserId="25936" Comment="cut the crap, if this is a question you are interested in, then the backstory is irrelevant, especially since Morons said he wasn't interested in asking this on Meta" Text="How does the community feel about our blog writers earning a bit of money when writing articles for our blogs in this fashion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be noted that all articles get reviewed by a few different users before posting, and we would make it a requirement that the articles are truthful about the book (or whatever product is being reviewed). We also probably wouldn't publish too many of these kind of articles, as we don't want the blog to become just a series of sales pitches out to sell products.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12311" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="5207" RevisionGUID="22205c3a-df2a-4056-8c70-1e67015c5778" CreationDate="2012-11-05T19:22:53.117" UserId="1130" Comment="Rollback to [718366b3-d3d7-4c44-b1b7-99bcf5b34d48]" Text="One of the blog writers [asked in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/6762558#6762558) if it would be OK to add affiliate links to his blog posts. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means he would be providing a link to a product in his post (in this case, a book since he'd be doing a book review), and if you click on the link and buy the product then he gets a small percentage of the sale from the site you bought the item from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does the community feel about our blog writers earning a bit of money when writing articles for our blogs in this fashion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be noted that all articles get reviewed by a few different users before posting, and we would make it a requirement that the articles are truthful about the book (or whatever product is being reviewed). We also probably wouldn't publish too many of these kind of articles, as we don't want the blog to become just a series of sales pitches out to sell products.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12312" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="5207" RevisionGUID="deb2e9ba-2fff-457c-99be-81dd08bb7148" CreationDate="2012-11-05T19:23:46.593" UserId="25936" Comment="Rollback to [10f18e8b-d4a2-4095-b2ab-f4c58c4fd9d7]" Text="How does the community feel about our blog writers earning a bit of money when writing articles for our blogs in this fashion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be noted that all articles get reviewed by a few different users before posting, and we would make it a requirement that the articles are truthful about the book (or whatever product is being reviewed). We also probably wouldn't publish too many of these kind of articles, as we don't want the blog to become just a series of sales pitches out to sell products.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12313" PostHistoryTypeId="14" PostId="5207" RevisionGUID="46d45079-b9e9-490c-bb6d-52f2817edbe4" CreationDate="2012-11-05T19:24:02.193" UserId="25936" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="12314" PostHistoryTypeId="33" PostId="5207" RevisionGUID="12a4c508-c1d0-44bf-972f-b951f7a188d2" CreationDate="2012-11-05T19:24:02.193" UserId="25936" Comment="2" />
  <row Id="12315" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5207" RevisionGUID="21ea6a4b-8769-4545-b5f1-b00c085cab55" CreationDate="2012-11-05T19:32:17.367" UserId="63" Comment="Include introduction with background information" Text="Since straight-up book recommendation Q&amp;A is discouraged, book reviews seems like a perfect fit for [the blog][1]. And what self-respecting blogger would blog about a book without a link to an online shop where it could be purchased? However, this raises the thorny question of affiliate links. On the Q&amp;A site, links to Amazon are automatically converted into links that reference Stack Exchange's affiliate ID, but the blogs have no such restriction - in theory, an author could use his own affiliate ID.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does the community feel about our blog writers earning a bit of money when writing articles for our blogs in this fashion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be noted that all articles get reviewed by a few different users before posting, and we would make it a requirement that the articles are truthful about the book (or whatever product is being reviewed). We also probably wouldn't publish too many of these kind of articles, as we don't want the blog to become just a series of sales pitches out to sell products.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12316" PostHistoryTypeId="15" PostId="5207" RevisionGUID="cec1cebf-6947-4cda-bccc-a7623b2443da" CreationDate="2012-11-05T19:32:25.373" UserId="25936" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="12317" PostHistoryTypeId="34" PostId="5207" RevisionGUID="c654733b-802d-48bf-904f-d1a2716f96f1" CreationDate="2012-11-05T19:32:25.373" UserId="25936" Comment="2" />
  <row Id="12318" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5209" RevisionGUID="0f0ccea4-4850-40f9-b015-16df39369c28" CreationDate="2012-11-05T19:36:20.087" UserId="3" Text="Adding affiliate links or any type of commercial or promotional activity to blog posts would **not** be appropriate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These blogs are not the personal property of those who write the articles. These blog posts are supposed to be a resource for the community. Once folks start wondering *&quot;what kind of money you could earn if&amp;hellip;&quot;* the motivations start to get muddled. Obviously, we cannot provide *equal time* for everyone who has a product to review or a book to mention. So even if we could assure all the stipulations you cited above, there is just too much potential for stepping over some arbitrary line. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Folks here are willing to contribute *their* time and their knowledge into creating these resources. Whether they do it for fun, or to share their knowledge, or just to show off a bit, I wouldn't want to be put in the position of saying their activities have become too self serving. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's best to have a clear and unambiguous line up front. No affiliate links in blog posts." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12319" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5205" RevisionGUID="5969ab05-f203-472e-8ff3-68c2eff6e487" CreationDate="2012-11-06T09:57:47.710" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/265754853287006209" />
  <row Id="12320" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5191" RevisionGUID="7120ad8c-6f6a-4129-9bd1-27f683e9aa1a" CreationDate="2012-11-06T12:57:29.983" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/265800079586238465" />
  <row Id="12321" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5210" RevisionGUID="f2257d14-f661-446f-a5f8-15294d2313bb" CreationDate="2012-11-06T17:16:48.637" UserId="50440" Text="This [question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/174733/is-wrapping-a-third-party-code-the-only-solution-to-unit-test-its-consumers) was closed for being an exact duplicate, but I modified it extensively so that it now discusses  a particular condition to wrapping third party code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In its previous condition the question was too generic and may have been indeed a duplicate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12322" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5210" RevisionGUID="f2257d14-f661-446f-a5f8-15294d2313bb" CreationDate="2012-11-06T17:16:48.637" UserId="50440" Text="Can this question be reopened?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12323" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5210" RevisionGUID="f2257d14-f661-446f-a5f8-15294d2313bb" CreationDate="2012-11-06T17:16:48.637" UserId="50440" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12324" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5210" RevisionGUID="babcbf05-9511-48ec-a859-9b3a3a198c34" CreationDate="2012-11-06T18:45:23.080" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags; edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|closed-questions|specific-question|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12325" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5210" RevisionGUID="762ed9e3-3c27-4cab-89f6-e1c9cd88ec60" CreationDate="2012-11-06T18:46:38.663" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="12326" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5211" RevisionGUID="01064896-b110-45ca-b6bb-507b7cea0a04" CreationDate="2012-11-06T20:44:27.147" UserId="1554" Text="There appears to be [a particular user][1] who is reposting questions from online quiz/testing sites and (what I would call) trolling for solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taken singularly the questions aren't terrible ([they're certainly not high quality, as Yannis has seen][2]) but altogether, the behaviour seems a abusive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then again, maybe it's just me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/66910/7aces&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/174848/number-game-algorithm" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12327" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5211" RevisionGUID="01064896-b110-45ca-b6bb-507b7cea0a04" CreationDate="2012-11-06T20:44:27.147" UserId="1554" Text="What about users trying to game the population?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12328" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5211" RevisionGUID="01064896-b110-45ca-b6bb-507b7cea0a04" CreationDate="2012-11-06T20:44:27.147" UserId="1554" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12329" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5212" RevisionGUID="e6148463-76a5-46d7-9eef-c9e94dc88932" CreationDate="2012-11-06T20:51:10.977" UserId="47" Text="The one you link to has attributation to the original post and isn't a cut and paste copy so doesn't fall foul of the plagiarism rules we have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As long as he keeps improving there's not a lot we can do." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12330" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5211" RevisionGUID="36c6d75f-2fb5-4b0f-b2a8-344501bcf945" CreationDate="2012-11-06T23:59:32.830" UserId="1204" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="There appears to be [a particular user][1] who is reposting questions from online quiz/testing sites and (what I would call) trolling for solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taken singularly the questions aren't terrible ([they're certainly not high quality, as Yannis has seen][2]) but altogether, the behaviour seems a bit abusive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then again, maybe it's just me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/66910/7aces&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/174848/number-game-algorithm" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12331" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5213" RevisionGUID="f1c34882-29d5-4be8-9f6a-b9689cb44986" CreationDate="2012-11-07T00:10:07.767" UserId="48418" Text="It is tempting for students to ask their homework questions here, and it is equally tempting for people that know the answer to chip in with their answers.  What are the ethics of this practice?  (I have looked through the old discussion on meta and didn't find this issue talked about.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once a question and answer have been posted here, they will remain for eternity, and we will be robbing other future students from the benefit of learning by thinking for themselves, and we make it harder for lecturers/professors in coming up with homework questions whose answers don't exist on the web.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here, for instance, is a [recent question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173559/using-foldr-to-append-two-lists-together-haskell), where the questioner guessed the answer to a homework question but asked for an explanation of how it worked.  Now, the homework question, its answer, and an explanation of the answer exist on the web.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Has the ethics of this issue been thought about?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12332" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5213" RevisionGUID="f1c34882-29d5-4be8-9f6a-b9689cb44986" CreationDate="2012-11-07T00:10:07.767" UserId="48418" Text="The ethics of answering homework questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12333" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5213" RevisionGUID="f1c34882-29d5-4be8-9f6a-b9689cb44986" CreationDate="2012-11-07T00:10:07.767" UserId="48418" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12334" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5214" RevisionGUID="9e7dfe80-b488-4d6d-9783-7da01476453e" CreationDate="2012-11-07T00:40:23.267" UserId="12611" Text="The key point about a site for professionals, from my perspective, is not that each and every question will be about an advanced topic that only those with years of experience can answer; instead, on a site for experts, we should merely expect people to *be* professionals when they ask their questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question about a relatively trivial concept for experienced programmers is okay as long as the asker attempts to solve the problem, shows research effort, explains where he or she is stuck, and provides the community with a starting point that isn't day 1 minute 1 of Intro to Programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be a professional on a Stack Exchange Q&amp;A site, one only need to ask questions that are serious. In this case, as Rachel says, he's asking about questions he's stuck on, and he's attempting to learn on his own. This is the clear markings of a professional who will one day become an expert. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12335" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5215" RevisionGUID="a1961b28-45a0-4ea0-aa97-4bf3af8d2475" CreationDate="2012-11-07T03:38:45.960" UserId="25476" Text="This may or may not have been asked on our meta site before but it was certainly a well discussed issue at Meta StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I know, this discussion here applies equally as well to homework questions about design, algorithms, and software development in general.  I personally agree with the highest voted answer there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we have established that if a student falls in the acceptable guidelines for asking a homework question that it is okay, now we ask ourselves if this policy towards homework questions is ethical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion it is ethical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If people are simply providing the answer with no context then perhaps the student might copy the answer and get a good grade now, but how does this prepare the student for future assignments and exams?  This doesn't help the student in the long term because they haven't learned anything and we will not always be there to hold there hand.  Eventually they must stand on their own two feet or they will be unsuccessful in life and in their career.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If an answer is good and provides context however then we as a community have a real opportunity to tutor the student and teach them the concepts that will help them do well in school, life and their careers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Grades are a temporary thing, knowledge once gained is kept forever." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12336" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5213" RevisionGUID="b4855e15-1a31-407c-b40b-4f2da6248663" CreationDate="2012-11-07T07:04:23.140" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12337" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5216" RevisionGUID="fecfeb34-3ca4-41eb-977c-933efe596574" CreationDate="2012-11-07T13:23:37.323" UserId="41381" Text="There is no ethical question to discuss, we aren't responsible for keeping students honest or ensuring coursework isn't solved in full detail in a readily available web site. We are here to ask and answer questions that fit the FAQ, if acceptable questions are asked that happen to be homework or real work or a hobby it doesn't matter they are all treated equally, and should be." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12338" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5217" RevisionGUID="2f049b74-08ac-472d-9cab-4a550b49669c" CreationDate="2012-11-07T16:19:44.757" UserId="25936" Text="While I understand that in the post Wikipedia era it's generally more difficult for professors to come up with homework questions whose answers don't exist on the web, that's a problem for the professors, not us. Adapt or die applies. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My teaching experience is extremely limited, and at a level a tad lower than University, however from that limited experience my conclusions are that cheaters will cheat, and there isn't much you can do about it. I was perhaps extremely lucky in that the majority of my students were interested enough in the subject matter to _not_ cheat, even though I actively _encouraged_ them to use Wikipedia and Stack Overflow (Programmers didn't exist at the time) and I'm very proud that some of them are today colleagues. A couple of the cheaters also made it, but most of them are flipping burgers somewhere. Oh, well, c'est la vie.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers already has very strict policies regarding the quality of questions, perhaps stricter than most other Stack Exchange sites, and there's absolutely no point at all in coming up with a specific policy regarding homework questions or what appears as homework questions. Any question that's within the scope of the site, as defined in our FAQ, and shows sufficient prior research is welcome to the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, and only for completeness sake, while &quot;professionals&quot; is in the description of the site, it does not disqualify amateurs, enthusiasts and students from using the site, provided they conduct themselves in a professional manner. Our goal is to build a high quality canonical resource to help current and _future_ professionals, we don't check credentials at the door, and we never will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2894/how-can-programmers-se-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5157/appropriate-questions-on-java-programming-questions&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag &amp; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3202/blacklist-homework&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Stack Overflow: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [How to ask and answer homework questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions) - FAQ&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we now discourage the use of and burninate the homework tag?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/123758/can-we-now-discourage-the-use-of-and-burninate-the-homework-tag)&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we cut back on the “Is This Homework?” berating?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/130558/can-we-cut-back-on-the-is-this-homework-berating)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12339" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5217" RevisionGUID="7c7bb28c-b1f7-4cb2-b350-1c4ca3ab2003" CreationDate="2012-11-07T16:25:07.537" UserId="25936" Comment="added 17 characters in body" Text="While I understand that in the post Wikipedia era it's generally more difficult for professors to come up with homework questions whose answers don't exist on the web, that's a problem for the professors, not us. Adapt or die applies. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My teaching experience is extremely limited, and at a level a tad lower than University, however from that limited experience my conclusions are that cheaters will cheat, and there isn't much you can do about it. I was perhaps extremely lucky in that the majority of my students were interested enough in the subject matter to _not_ cheat, even though I actively _encouraged_ them to use Wikipedia and Stack Overflow (Programmers didn't exist at the time) and I'm very proud that some of them are today colleagues. A couple of the cheaters also made it, but most of them are flipping burgers somewhere. Oh, well, c'est la vie.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers already has very strict policies regarding the quality of questions, perhaps stricter than most other Stack Exchange sites, and there's absolutely no point at all in coming up with a specific policy regarding homework questions or what appears as homework questions. Any question that's within the scope of the site, as defined in our FAQ, and shows sufficient prior research is welcome to the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, and only for completeness sake, while &quot;professionals&quot; is in the description of the site, it does not disqualify amateurs, enthusiasts and students from using the site, provided they conduct themselves in a professional manner. Our goal is to build a high quality canonical resource that will hopefully help current and _future_ professionals, we don't check credentials at the door, and we never will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2894/how-can-programmers-se-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5157/appropriate-questions-on-java-programming-questions&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag &amp; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3202/blacklist-homework&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Stack Overflow: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [How to ask and answer homework questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions) - FAQ&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we now discourage the use of and burninate the homework tag?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/123758/can-we-now-discourage-the-use-of-and-burninate-the-homework-tag)&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we cut back on the “Is This Homework?” berating?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/130558/can-we-cut-back-on-the-is-this-homework-berating)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12340" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5217" RevisionGUID="a69e603f-c5cb-4fcd-8956-02bded913b3e" CreationDate="2012-11-08T20:44:36.790" UserId="25936" Comment="added 2167 characters in body" Text="While I understand that in the post Wikipedia era it's generally more difficult for professors to come up with homework questions whose answers don't exist on the web, that's a problem for the professors, not us. Adapt or die applies. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My teaching experience is extremely limited, and at a level a tad lower than University, however from that limited experience my conclusions are that cheaters will cheat, and there isn't much you can do about it. I was perhaps extremely lucky in that the majority of my students were interested enough in the subject matter to _not_ cheat, even though I actively _encouraged_ them to use Wikipedia and Stack Overflow (Programmers didn't exist at the time) and I'm very proud that some of them are today colleagues. A couple of the cheaters also made it, but most of them are flipping burgers somewhere. Oh, well, c'est la vie.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, I only taught for three years, let's see what [someone a tiny bit more experienced has to say][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My opinion is that there is nothing wrong at all with posting homework questions here, particularly interesting ones, and I find much of the negative reaction to homework-question posters to be somewhat strange, alien to my way of learning mathematics in a give-and-take exchange of mathematical ideas. Surely posting questions here and studying the answers is not much different than studying hard in the library, talking mathematics with one's colleagues at math tea or talking to one's professor, which are all excellent ways to learn mathematics. In particular, I expect that students who post questions here might learn just as much if not more from the resulting answers as from their professors---we have a number of talented mathematicians, who are very good at explaining things---and that math.SE provides a valuable service to students having unapproachable professors, having professors who do not explain well, or who have few colleagues able to help them. Furthermore, the math.SE community strongly benefits from the questions and the insightful answers that might be posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So my opinion is that there is no homework issue to speak of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In particular, I hereby give all of my own students complete permission to post any and all their homework problems here, and indeed I encourage them to post their questions here and to study the answers well and thereby to learn some mathematics. I will be testing them on their understanding at the exam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would also encourage all mathematics professors to adopt a policy of encouraging collaboration on homework among their students, as talking about mathematics with one's colleagues is assuredly one of the best ways to learn mathematics. Indeed, I recommend that all professors should actively encourage their students to form study groups in order to work on their homework problems together. Learning as a group, they will go very far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers already has very strict policies regarding the quality of questions, perhaps stricter than most other Stack Exchange sites, and there's absolutely no point at all in coming up with a specific policy regarding homework questions or what appears as homework questions. Any question that's within the scope of the site, as defined in our FAQ, and shows sufficient prior research is welcome to the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, and only for completeness sake, while &quot;professionals&quot; is in the description of the site, it does not disqualify amateurs, enthusiasts and students from using the site, provided they conduct themselves in a professional manner. Our goal is to build a high quality canonical resource that will hopefully help current and _future_ professionals, we don't check credentials at the door, and we never will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2894/how-can-programmers-se-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5157/appropriate-questions-on-java-programming-questions&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag &amp; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3202/blacklist-homework&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Stack Overflow: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [How to ask and answer homework questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions) - FAQ&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we now discourage the use of and burninate the homework tag?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/123758/can-we-now-discourage-the-use-of-and-burninate-the-homework-tag)&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we cut back on the “Is This Homework?” berating?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/130558/can-we-cut-back-on-the-is-this-homework-berating)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/1652/what-do-we-do-with-users-who-post-numerous-unlabeled-homework-questions/1661#1661" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12341" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5218" RevisionGUID="4c94a519-7b41-4cb2-a32d-7ec9a3ac4d79" CreationDate="2012-11-09T07:54:11.657" UserId="38200" Text="There is a question, [How to promote code reuse and documentation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/175066/38200), which I think is well worded, but new and only got a few average answers so far. It was also suggested that it's a duplicate of [How Visual Studio could help to avoid duplicating code?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/173312/38200), but the later is low voted and the wording is more specific and not really similar. But that question has a very good generic answer that would be perfectly applicable to the first question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should it be closed as duplicate? They don't look like ones. Or should they be merged? Or is there some other way to make the answer visible on this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12342" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5218" RevisionGUID="4c94a519-7b41-4cb2-a32d-7ec9a3ac4d79" CreationDate="2012-11-09T07:54:11.657" UserId="38200" Text="What to do when similar but worse worded question has great answer for this one" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12343" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5218" RevisionGUID="4c94a519-7b41-4cb2-a32d-7ec9a3ac4d79" CreationDate="2012-11-09T07:54:11.657" UserId="38200" Text="|discussion|merge-questions|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12344" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5219" RevisionGUID="06527d4d-7979-4be7-a632-46dddec386d6" CreationDate="2012-11-09T12:02:19.937" UserId="6605" Text="[It was suggested to me][1] to copy-paste my answer to [another question][2] which I marked as duplicate, but which looks larger than the [original question][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was totally against this technique: duplicating an answer feels like a cheap way to gain more reputation with no effort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But after thinking about it, I'm not sure if I'm right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Should copy-paste technique be prohibited for answers, or is it a valid and ethical thing to do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If I post the same answer to several questions, is it a good idea to cross-link them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Any thoughts or suggestions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/175066/how-to-promote-code-reuse-and-documentation#comment334229_175066&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/175066/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/173312/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12345" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5219" RevisionGUID="06527d4d-7979-4be7-a632-46dddec386d6" CreationDate="2012-11-09T12:02:19.937" UserId="6605" Text="Is it appropriate to copy-paste an answer when it matches both questions, but those questions are not an exact duplicate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12346" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5219" RevisionGUID="06527d4d-7979-4be7-a632-46dddec386d6" CreationDate="2012-11-09T12:02:19.937" UserId="6605" Text="|discussion|answers|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12347" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5220" RevisionGUID="c1d87cc1-ef59-4f5b-b002-6be77724a83d" CreationDate="2012-11-09T12:07:23.823" UserId="47" Text="If you can post the same answer to several questions then those questions are likely to be duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you've not already marked the question as a duplicate then do so (either by voting, flagging or commenting).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this has already been done and the question is closed then the next step is to consider merging the questions. The barrier for this is higher than just closing as a duplicate as the answers to the closed question **have** to be applicable to the master question. If you think the questions pass this test then flag the closed one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one big reason why you shouldn't repost your answer on the master. If the questions do get merged we now have a duplicate answer on the master.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you really want to have your answer on the master, but don't think merging is appropriate then delete the original answer. That way if the merge does happen as some point in the future, there's less clean up to do." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12348" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5221" RevisionGUID="05a23073-5d32-4706-b68e-ecb0c54a1757" CreationDate="2012-11-09T12:53:04.330" UserId="66340" Text="I would like to know why my question has been closed nearly instantaneously?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/175268/what-is-a-good-product-planning-tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I read the FAQ prior to asking, and it does not seem to contradict any of the following guidelines to me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; *   inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA; *   tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA; *   have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA; *   invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA; *   insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA; *   are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, those are the exact types of answers I want for my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it would seem to me to fall under the category of &quot;practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&quot;.  Is it not possible that someone else might need a product planning tool under similar circumstances?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that there is a desire to keep this site constructive, but if people can't ask real-world questions, then what is the point?  I use other StackExchange sites regularly without nearly the amount of trouble avoiding getting my questions closed.  I can't help but feel that the atmosphere of legalism on Programmers is hindering what could be an even more **useful** site.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody owes me anything, and I'm grateful for anyone who is willing to help me.  However, this is not a particularly welcoming environment, and I don't think I'm the only one who thinks so.  If this sort of question is not acceptable here, then perhaps someone is interested in pointing to me to a website where people will answer questions like mine." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12349" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5221" RevisionGUID="05a23073-5d32-4706-b68e-ecb0c54a1757" CreationDate="2012-11-09T12:53:04.330" UserId="66340" Text="Why has my question been closed? How can Programmers be less unwelcoming and draconian?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12350" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5221" RevisionGUID="05a23073-5d32-4706-b68e-ecb0c54a1757" CreationDate="2012-11-09T12:53:04.330" UserId="66340" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12351" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5222" RevisionGUID="bc7fd41b-e258-4480-b138-f8803080d4b1" CreationDate="2012-11-09T12:57:14.807" UserId="47" Text="What constitutes a &quot;good&quot; planning tool (or indeed any thing) is highly subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What works for me and what I think is important may well not work for you be completely irrelevant for your needs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close reason states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is a bad environment for these things. It's deliberately like this so that it can concentrate on getting great answers to great questions. It does mean that some perfectly good questions can't be asked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12352" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5223" RevisionGUID="565961ec-5543-496a-8ae1-80049f32cc0f" CreationDate="2012-11-09T13:16:32.820" UserId="1130" Text="If I'm sure the questions are not duplicates then I have no problem with copy/paste answers, however I try to always link to the source answer at the top of the question so the user can read it and possibly other answers there that might relate to them too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usually what ends up happening is I prefix my answer with a summary of the solution, add a link to the 2nd answer to say where I got the answer from, then copy/paste the 2nd answer in block quotes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everyone once in a while when the answer is similar, but not exact, I'll just copy/paste the answer straight and modify it to fit the 2nd question, however I usually still leave a link to the original answer for further reading if the other answers there may apply too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However like [Chris said][1], be sure it's not a duplicate first. If it is a duplicate, you don't want to copy/paste answers because its likely the questions will become merged, and you'll have two answers saying basically the same thing. So vote to close as a duplicate instead if the questions are the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5220/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12353" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5224" RevisionGUID="ae66b9d8-ce1a-4ca7-8443-9f81615702c3" CreationDate="2012-11-09T13:17:00.880" UserId="41381" Text="Copy/Pasting an answer is a sign of duplicate questions or a poor answer that could be improved to address the differences in the questions if they truly are not duplicates." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12354" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5225" RevisionGUID="92f3c35d-43cc-40f7-be73-0db7982d84f1" CreationDate="2012-11-09T13:28:06.357" UserId="41381" Text="To quote the FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; implementation issues or **programming tools**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;what language/**technology** you should learn next, **including which technology is better** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking &gt;subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **every answer is equally valid**: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel the bolded parts accurate describe your question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12355" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5226" RevisionGUID="df178471-d780-4e22-898c-02c253226f11" CreationDate="2012-11-09T13:31:50.380" UserId="31260" Text="**[&quot;any suggestions for a good tool/service&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/175268/2 &quot;wording as of revision 2&quot;)** makes question a perfect match for type questions that are strongly discouraged per [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, question looks salvageable using a healthy dose of [Atwood's transform](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/124930/165773 &quot;what's this?&quot;). I would consider editing it into something like _&quot;How do I tell if a product planning tool would suit my needs... etc_ then [flagging to reopen](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1753/31260 &quot;related discussion&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that question has been closed while it had no answers greatly simplifies editing it. Otherwise one would have to take additional care to make sure that changes don't invalidate existing answers - which in some cases can [effectively lock the question from any substantial editing at all](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;an example discussed here&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12356" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5226" RevisionGUID="540aad2e-1954-4b18-88c0-cbae75fca539" CreationDate="2012-11-09T13:55:08.423" UserId="31260" Comment="added 65 characters in body" Text="**[&quot;any suggestions for a good tool/service&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/175268/2 &quot;wording as of revision 2&quot;)** makes question a perfect match for type questions that are strongly discouraged per [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, question looks salvageable using a healthy dose of [Atwood's transform](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/124930/165773 &quot;what's this?&quot;). I would consider editing it into something like _&quot;How do I tell if a product planning tool would suit my needs... etc_ then [flagging to reopen](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1753/31260 &quot;related discussion&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that question has been closed while it had no answers greatly simplifies editing it. Otherwise one would have to take additional care to make sure that changes don't invalidate existing answers - which in some cases can [effectively lock the question from any substantial editing at all](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;an example discussed here: 'Change the question, and you invalidate all of the answers...'&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12357" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5221" RevisionGUID="3b06dc12-b35a-4a19-a56e-0c9e77eed335" CreationDate="2012-11-09T15:14:32.937" UserId="1130" Comment="Modified title to remove unrelated question, and added original title of question to question link " Text="I would like to know why my question has been closed nearly instantaneously?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is a good product planning tool?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/175268/what-is-a-good-product-planning-tool)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I read the FAQ prior to asking, and it does not seem to contradict any of the following guidelines to me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; *   inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA; *   tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA; *   have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA; *   invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA; *   insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA; *   are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, those are the exact types of answers I want for my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it would seem to me to fall under the category of &quot;practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&quot;.  Is it not possible that someone else might need a product planning tool under similar circumstances?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that there is a desire to keep this site constructive, but if people can't ask real-world questions, then what is the point?  I use other StackExchange sites regularly without nearly the amount of trouble avoiding getting my questions closed.  I can't help but feel that the atmosphere of legalism on Programmers is hindering what could be an even more **useful** site.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody owes me anything, and I'm grateful for anyone who is willing to help me.  However, this is not a particularly welcoming environment, and I don't think I'm the only one who thinks so.  If this sort of question is not acceptable here, then perhaps someone is interested in pointing to me to a website where people will answer questions like mine." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12358" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5221" RevisionGUID="3b06dc12-b35a-4a19-a56e-0c9e77eed335" CreationDate="2012-11-09T15:14:32.937" UserId="1130" Comment="Modified title to remove unrelated question, and added original title of question to question link " Text="Why has my question been closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12359" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5221" RevisionGUID="3b06dc12-b35a-4a19-a56e-0c9e77eed335" CreationDate="2012-11-09T15:14:32.937" UserId="1130" Comment="Modified title to remove unrelated question, and added original title of question to question link " Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12360" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5227" RevisionGUID="70151dbe-e586-4772-ae03-bcff986b7fad" CreationDate="2012-11-09T16:07:21.150" UserId="16776" Text="I second @gnat answer (+1). You'll need to proper adjust it and rephrase somehow in order to avoid pooling answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to avoid talking about the **tool** and focus on your **problem**, instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides, I'd say that maybe you could have some other opinions when asking @ [PMSE][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12361" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5225" RevisionGUID="bd62a36a-514f-4b6f-95d7-d8a3788eaf72" CreationDate="2012-11-09T16:37:14.150" UserId="41381" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="To quote the FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; implementation issues or **programming tools**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;what language/**technology** you should learn next, **including which technology is better** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking &gt;subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **every answer is equally valid**: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel the bolded parts accurately describe your question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12362" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5228" RevisionGUID="efa234db-7e77-444a-ae91-a14cf490ad41" CreationDate="2012-11-09T18:34:49.213" UserId="66340" Text="I really appreciate the feedback I've gotten here.  But I've got to say as someone who's from outside of the community, I think you guys are being a bit overzealous.  I understand that it was a battle to rid Programmers of the frivolity of its beginnings, but after reading all of your responses, I still think many folks are serving the guidelines, rather than letting the guidelines serve the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the record, I [asked my same question on Quora][1] and received a very simple, accurate answer (and a me-too answer, which probably would have been a harmless comment on SE).  The world didn't explode into a cascade of unspecific answers, debate, polls and favorites.  In fact, I've been using the recommended tool for a couple hours now and have achieved most of what I'm looking for.  So I'm not just bellyaching, I'm trying to point out that I think there are reasonable questions that are being closed out of a somewhat unreasonable fear of a proliferation of chatty useless answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow has been a game changer for me as a programmer, and I really love the SE model.  The Quora model weirds me out.  I'm simply saying that I think the SE platform as it is being implemented here is leaving things on the table of usefulness in the hopes of achieving a certain purity of question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This SE doesn't belong to me and I can't dictate how to run it.  Presumably everyone on Meta here has seen far more examples of chaotic questions than me and have a better understanding of the risks of a question like mine.  But I want to provide one voice in favor of a little more leeway in letting people ask questions in a way that feels natural to them, rather than trying to contort them to an ideal that may not fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.quora.com/Software-Engineering/What-is-a-good-product-planning-tool" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12363" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5229" RevisionGUID="f7485bc2-63cb-4a73-92e4-c19a363df1f7" CreationDate="2012-11-10T23:39:41.303" UserId="54164" Text="As far as I can tell, we've got two tags for Node.js: [tag:node.js] and [tag:nodejs].  Can we merge them to reduce confusion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12364" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5229" RevisionGUID="f7485bc2-63cb-4a73-92e4-c19a363df1f7" CreationDate="2012-11-10T23:39:41.303" UserId="54164" Text="Merge node tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12365" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5229" RevisionGUID="f7485bc2-63cb-4a73-92e4-c19a363df1f7" CreationDate="2012-11-10T23:39:41.303" UserId="54164" Text="|support|tags|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12366" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5229" RevisionGUID="e896e0dc-0b75-4e3a-a481-83a292b411f8" CreationDate="2012-11-10T23:41:47.073" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tags|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12367" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5230" RevisionGUID="83ccd45c-a56d-4aad-95e6-384b72e0a68e" CreationDate="2012-11-10T23:43:06.510" UserId="47" Text="There were only 5 [tag:nodejs] questions and they all actually referred to [tag:node.js] so I went ahead and create the synonym and merged the tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If any one tries to use [tag:nodejs] now it will automatically get converted to [tag:node.js]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12368" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5231" RevisionGUID="785f74e9-aac3-4179-a866-3fc094338de1" CreationDate="2012-11-11T18:58:06.057" UserId="44" Text="Looking the [review page][1], I notice the list of the review queue is covered by the image I normally see at the bottom of other pages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  ![screenshot][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to happen just on that page, while on the front page that image appears in the footer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  ![screenshot][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I inspected the page using Safari 6 Web Inspector, but I didn't see any reference to that image, if not in the .header `&lt;div&gt;`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/524Ne.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/wL2C0.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12369" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5231" RevisionGUID="785f74e9-aac3-4179-a866-3fc094338de1" CreationDate="2012-11-11T18:58:06.057" UserId="44" Text="Image covers the review page" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12370" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5231" RevisionGUID="785f74e9-aac3-4179-a866-3fc094338de1" CreationDate="2012-11-11T18:58:06.057" UserId="44" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12371" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5232" RevisionGUID="e23c787e-0b5a-4517-a093-b0b38a96fa5d" CreationDate="2012-11-11T19:06:45.600" UserId="44" Text="Copying, and pasting an answer should generally be avoided.  &#xD;&#xA;If the questions are not duplicates, there is surely something that makes those questions different, and the answer should be written to suit each question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12372" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1730" RevisionGUID="b2fb7d1e-dae8-4af8-8302-5aa5b27b9405" CreationDate="2012-11-12T12:30:06.660" UserId="44" Comment="added 51 characters in body" Text="The used phrases have been changed, and now that block appears as in the following screenshot, taken from _English Language &amp; Usage_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![screenshot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Are_, and _were_ are not used anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tEfXL.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12373" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5231" RevisionGUID="1743cbf8-88a4-4953-b5c8-8848002bfd38" CreationDate="2012-11-12T17:51:18.917" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Footer line floats up too high in the main review page](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4095/footer-line-floats-up-too-high-in-the-main-review-page)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Looking the [review page][1], I notice the list of the review queue is covered by the image I normally see at the bottom of other pages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  ![screenshot][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to happen just on that page, while on the front page that image appears in the footer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  ![screenshot][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I inspected the page using Safari 6 Web Inspector, but I didn't see any reference to that image, if not in the .header `&lt;div&gt;`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/524Ne.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/wL2C0.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12374" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5231" RevisionGUID="5a2d867e-3f82-407a-874b-c4c3888e462e" CreationDate="2012-11-12T17:51:18.917" UserId="185" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[4095],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:8,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mark Trapp&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:185,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Emmett&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="12375" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5233" RevisionGUID="fb18a38d-330c-4d5d-b4a3-3eff0d7a90a6" CreationDate="2012-11-12T19:29:39.723" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Most side panel advertisements/promotions that I recall have a non-white background.  However, https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ihs34.png (Programmer blog promotion) has a white background.  When compared against the background on Programmers.SE (#f7f7f7), this shows a subtle but noticeable difference (a part of the screen looks oddly cleaner than the rest).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggestions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Make it transparent&#xD;&#xA;* Make it the same color&#xD;&#xA;* Use a substantially different color (example: the Parents.SE promotion)&#xD;&#xA;* Use a border around the image to set it off (example https://i.stack.imgur.com/yYx5g.png )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not related to the color, but if someone is going to change it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The left hand side of the image image appears to be filled wrong (a bracket like thing?)&#xD;&#xA;* The bottom right of the 'table' has two lines of pixels that are anomalous from the banner&#xD;&#xA;* The font is lighter than 1px in places (might be rectified with bolding it)&#xD;&#xA;* The bottom red 'steam' is cropped sharply while the top one has a 'blunt' endpoint." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12376" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5233" RevisionGUID="fb18a38d-330c-4d5d-b4a3-3eff0d7a90a6" CreationDate="2012-11-12T19:29:39.723" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Programmers blog promo image issues" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12377" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5233" RevisionGUID="fb18a38d-330c-4d5d-b4a3-3eff0d7a90a6" CreationDate="2012-11-12T19:29:39.723" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|bug|site-promotion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12378" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5234" RevisionGUID="3a2ff4ff-3af0-4e61-9147-21aadf89cb8d" CreationDate="2012-11-12T21:02:44.133" UserId="44705" Text="I flagged [this question][1] for migration to Stack Overflow, and it has been successfully migrated. However, the status of the corresponding flag in my profile is &quot;declined&quot;. Is this a bug?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12977280/which-int-type-does-var-default-to" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12379" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5234" RevisionGUID="3a2ff4ff-3af0-4e61-9147-21aadf89cb8d" CreationDate="2012-11-12T21:02:44.133" UserId="44705" Text="Why is the flag &quot;declined&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12380" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5234" RevisionGUID="3a2ff4ff-3af0-4e61-9147-21aadf89cb8d" CreationDate="2012-11-12T21:02:44.133" UserId="44705" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12381" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5234" RevisionGUID="d070d093-504c-474c-99fa-c4f14656f10d" CreationDate="2012-11-12T21:16:40.697" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|flagging|declined-flags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12382" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5235" RevisionGUID="65567d0e-1638-4dc4-92fc-df1274fbbfb7" CreationDate="2012-11-12T21:49:24.267" UserId="185" Text="This is fixed now. Programmers (along with [Cooking][1] and [Ask Ubuntu][2]) tends to require more one-off, site-specific CSS fixes than other sites. The bug was: without the trailing forward slash in the url, we weren't applying the `review-page` class to `&lt;body&gt;` element, so certain styles weren't being applied.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://askubuntu.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12383" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4095" RevisionGUID="5d790984-164a-47f1-a47e-f1221f738334" CreationDate="2012-11-12T21:49:28.480" UserId="185" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12384" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5236" RevisionGUID="9a3bf7f9-f687-4ee3-9bf1-d2386c06e1bf" CreationDate="2012-11-12T23:15:31.127" UserId="25476" Text="I must have declined the flag in error because I can't for the life of me think of why I would have done this any other way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I apologize for the mistake and hope it didn't inconvenience you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12385" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1609" RevisionGUID="637453fb-4379-4f58-8997-f4c7b8d179a6" CreationDate="2012-11-13T01:13:20.530" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12386" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5237" RevisionGUID="cc5f200e-9dae-43dd-bfe5-cd2a91f638ba" CreationDate="2012-11-13T22:56:41.993" UserId="35276" Text="All the scribbly-doodles and the cartoonish font on P.SE seems to me like a reason people might assume from the start that this site is for more chatty non-professional questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be worthwhile to try and get the site redesigned? Do you think this would cut down on low-quality questions, attract more *professional* questions or generally benefit the community now?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Historically I understand the layout was done for the site when it's main goal was different than that which it is now, and I think there is now a discrepancy between this sites purpose and appearance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would this however be detrimental? Is there precedence of any other SE sites that are up and going full-steam getting a makeover, which we could identify results of the endeavor from, both pro and con?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12387" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5237" RevisionGUID="cc5f200e-9dae-43dd-bfe5-cd2a91f638ba" CreationDate="2012-11-13T22:56:41.993" UserId="35276" Text="Would you like to see programmers get a less playful/cartoonish design to attract professional questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12388" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5237" RevisionGUID="cc5f200e-9dae-43dd-bfe5-cd2a91f638ba" CreationDate="2012-11-13T22:56:41.993" UserId="35276" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12389" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5237" RevisionGUID="cb43dfc0-cff7-4c72-9e2a-c861948d40ea" CreationDate="2012-11-13T22:58:02.977" UserId="25936" Comment="added 8 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="All the scribbly-doodles and the cartoonish font on Programmers seems to me like a reason people might assume from the start that this site is for more chatty non-professional questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be worthwhile to try and get the site redesigned? Do you think this would cut down on low-quality questions, attract more *professional* questions or generally benefit the community now?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Historically I understand the layout was done for the site when it's main goal was different than that which it is now, and I think there is now a discrepancy between this sites purpose and appearance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would this however be detrimental? Is there precedence of any other SE sites that are up and going full-steam getting a makeover, which we could identify results of the endeavour from, both pro and con?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12390" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5237" RevisionGUID="cb43dfc0-cff7-4c72-9e2a-c861948d40ea" CreationDate="2012-11-13T22:58:02.977" UserId="25936" Comment="added 8 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Would you like to see Programmers get a less playful/cartoonish design to attract professional questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12391" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5237" RevisionGUID="cb43dfc0-cff7-4c72-9e2a-c861948d40ea" CreationDate="2012-11-13T22:58:02.977" UserId="25936" Comment="added 8 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|feature-request|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12392" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5237" RevisionGUID="8b157e1f-ce24-4c81-9a60-6c99c9dc8dd1" CreationDate="2012-11-13T23:03:04.510" UserId="25936" Comment="added 8 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="All the scribbly-doodles and the cartoonish font on Programmers seems to me like a reason people might assume from the start that this site is for more chatty non-professional questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be worthwhile to try and get the site redesigned? Do you think this would cut down on low-quality questions, attract more *professional* questions or generally benefit the community now?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Historically I understand the layout was done for the site when it's main goal was different than that which it is now, and I think there is now a discrepancy between the site's purpose and appearance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would this however be detrimental? Is there precedence of any other SE sites that are up and going full-steam getting a makeover, which we could identify results of the endeavour from, both pro and con?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12395" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5239" RevisionGUID="a0a5b777-7035-4920-b089-b92f6fc09678" CreationDate="2012-11-14T01:19:20.167" UserId="25936" Text="I get the whole whiteboard concept, and I like it, in theory. In practice, however, I think most of us know that although using a whiteboard is a quite common practice, it's also supposed to be ephemeral and sloppy. And at the end of the day, that's simply _not_ what the branding of the site should be about. I'm all for being agile, and I'm quite informal when it comes to designing software, but sloppy I am not (or at least I hope I'm not).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In a nutshell, Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues. Hence the (awesome) whiteboard inspired design!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's cool, but I think the current design is taking the concept a bit too far. It's all over the place, starting with the extremely casual font (more on this later), the hand drawn lines, the over-styled header. Our design is far from clean and simple, in contrast with almost every other Stack Exchange site that targets professional audiences. Compare it, for example, with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Cross Validated](http://stats.stackexchange.com/) &#xD;&#xA;- [Database Administrators](http://dba.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [IT Security](http://security.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [User Experience](http://ux.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [GIS](http://gis.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Physics](http://physics.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even sites that mostly target enthusiasts, like [Bicycles](http://bicycles.stackexchange.com/), have cleaner and less playful designs. I have absolutely no idea if the current design attracts the wrong kind of questions, but I completely agree with you that it fails to communicate what the site's about _now_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The need to differentiate Programmers from Stack Overflow was real, and basing the design around the whiteboard concept was a very smart way to make the distinction clear, but I really don't think that &quot;not Stack Overflow&quot; should be such a large part of the site's identity any more. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The font&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Special mention to the font: I _never_ understood why [Hugh Laurie's handwritting](http://callsignkatejones.deviantart.com/art/House-Whiteboard-font-64929545) was relevant to the site. I can appreciate the nerd value in using it, but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **IT'S AN ALL CAPS FONT**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Programmers is the _only_ Stack Exchange site that shouts things like &quot;QUESTIONS&quot;, &quot;COMMUNITY BULLETIN&quot;, &quot;FAVOURITE TAGS&quot;. Why are we shouting? Do we really need to emphasize labels that no other professional oriented Stack Exchange site seems to be emphasizing? Is there any value to using an ALL CAPS font, other than being annoyingly distracting? The only other site that uses ALL CAPS seems to be [Gaming](http://gaming.stackexchange.com/), which kinda proves my point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **It's handwritting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Argh. [Cohhunity bulletin](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3529/whats-this-cohhunity-bulletin), nuff said.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Nerd value is _not_ what the site or the community is about**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  We're professional software developers. We love fun as much as everyone else, but can we please stop fuelling the stereotype? It's just a TV show, a damn good one, but still just a TV show. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Can the design be changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm using a stripped down version of NullUserException's [Theme Switcher userscript](http://stackapps.com/questions/2808/stackexchange-theme-switcher) to browse the site with the Beta theme, and although it's a very simple theme, I quite prefer it from the actual theme: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you try to browse the site with a different theme for a day or two, I think the flaws of our current design will become more than obvious. That said, I don't think we can hope for a major redesign of the site, understandbly it wouldn't be a priority for Stack Exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I really don't like the current design, I can certainly live with it and there are certainly a lot of things that would be far more helpful in better communicating the site's scope and guidelines (stop upvoting crap, for example). At the same time, nothing in the site's current design says &quot;professional&quot;, and I'd really love it if it would. If we can't get a brand new design, I think we could at least explore ways for the design to be toned down a bit, remove some of the elements that make it too playful. Some ideas:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Getting rid of the font,&#xD;&#xA;- Toning down (or completely removing) the horizontal header and footer lines,&#xD;&#xA;- A less curvy and over-styled header and footer,&#xD;&#xA;- Moving on from the whole whiteboard-y / handwritten style for at least some design elements (vote arrows, for example).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And while we're at it, how about we also [fix the damn links](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1487/it-is-possible-to-change-the-colors-of-hypertext-links)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/mgiXY.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12396" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5237" RevisionGUID="34549e64-af37-4415-b43c-da7490f17932" CreationDate="2012-11-14T01:24:46.597" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|feature-request|featured|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12397" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5239" RevisionGUID="027e3391-7404-420d-a0af-4db7099acfc5" CreationDate="2012-11-14T01:31:15.167" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 59 characters in body" Text="I get the whole whiteboard concept, and I like it, in theory. In practice, however, I think most of us know that although using a whiteboard is a quite common practice, it's also supposed to be ephemeral and sloppy. And at the end of the day, that's simply _not_ what the branding of the site should be about. I'm all for being agile, and I'm quite informal when it comes to designing software, but sloppy I am not (or at least I hope I'm not).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In a nutshell, Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues. Hence the (awesome) whiteboard inspired design!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's cool, but I think the design took the concept a bit too far. It's all over the place, starting with the extremely casual font (more on this later), the hand drawn lines, the over styled header and footer. Our design is far from clean and simple, in contrast with almost every other Stack Exchange site that targets professional audiences. Compare it, for example, with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Cross Validated](http://stats.stackexchange.com/) &#xD;&#xA;- [Database Administrators](http://dba.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [IT Security](http://security.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [User Experience](http://ux.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [GIS](http://gis.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Physics](http://physics.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even sites that mostly target enthusiasts, like [Bicycles](http://bicycles.stackexchange.com/), have cleaner and less playful designs. I have absolutely no idea if the current design attracts the wrong kind of questions, but I completely agree with you that it fails to communicate what the site's about _now_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The need to differentiate Programmers from Stack Overflow was real, and basing the design around the whiteboard concept was a very smart way to make the distinction clear, but I really don't think that &quot;not Stack Overflow&quot; should be such a large part of the site's identity any more. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The font&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Special mention to the font: I _never_ understood why [Hugh Laurie's handwritting](http://callsignkatejones.deviantart.com/art/House-Whiteboard-font-64929545) was relevant to the site. I can appreciate the nerd value in using it, but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **IT'S AN ALL CAPS FONT**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Why are we shouting things like &quot;QUESTIONS&quot;, &quot;COMMUNITY BULLETIN&quot;, &quot;FAVOURITE TAGS&quot;? Do we really need to emphasize labels that no other professional oriented Stack Exchange site seems to be emphasizing? Is there any value to using an ALL CAPS font, other than being annoyingly distracting? The only other site that uses ALL CAPS seems to be [Gaming](http://gaming.stackexchange.com/), which kinda proves my point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **It's handwritting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Argh. [Cohhunity bulletin](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3529/whats-this-cohhunity-bulletin), nuff said.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Nerd value is _not_ what the site or the community is about**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  We're professional software developers. We love fun as much as everyone else, but can we please stop fuelling the stereotype? It's just a TV show, a damn good one, but still just a TV show. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Can the design be changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm using a stripped down version of NullUserException's [Theme Switcher userscript](http://stackapps.com/questions/2808/stackexchange-theme-switcher) to browse the site with the Beta theme, and although it's a very simple theme, I quite prefer it from the actual theme: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you try to browse the site with a different theme for a day or two, I think the flaws of our current design will become more than obvious. That said, I don't think we can hope for a major redesign of the site, understandbly it wouldn't be a priority for Stack Exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I really don't like the current design, I can certainly live with it and there are certainly a lot of things that would be far more helpful in better communicating the site's scope and guidelines (stop upvoting crap, for example). At the same time, nothing in the site's current design says &quot;professional&quot;, and I'd really love it if it would. If we can't get a brand new design, I think we could at least explore ways for the design to be toned down a bit, remove some of the elements that make it too playful. Some ideas:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Getting rid of the font,&#xD;&#xA;- Toning down (or completely removing) the horizontal header and footer lines,&#xD;&#xA;- A less curvy and over-styled header and footer,&#xD;&#xA;- Moving on from the whole whiteboard-y / handwritten style for at least some design elements (vote arrows, for example).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And while we're at it, how about we also [fix the damn links](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1487/it-is-possible-to-change-the-colors-of-hypertext-links)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/mgiXY.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12398" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5240" RevisionGUID="4917b9f5-f5c7-40e2-9f56-20c0a3dba7bc" CreationDate="2012-11-14T01:47:42.400" UserId="4" Text="[In 2011, the Gaming Stack Exchange hosted an event called Hat Dash][1], where users earned &quot;hats&quot; for their gravatars by completing certain tasks (analogous to badges). Certain actions would trigger the user receiving a hat, which their gravatar could then &quot;wear&quot;. For example, editing a post would yield an editor-themed hat (fedora with pen) to the editor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This year, Stack Exchange is expanding the promotion to any site that wants to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the run down:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The event will run from 19 December 2012 to 4 January 2013.&#xD;&#xA;- Users will be able to see their entire hat collection on http://winterba.sh. That site will also have a landing page, explaining the rules and other details of the event.&#xD;&#xA;- Individual users who don’t want to participate, don’t want to see hats, and/or are generally anti-hat will have an &quot;I hate hats&quot; option available..&#xD;&#xA;- The only visual change to the site itself will be the presence of the hats and the &quot;I hate hats&quot; button in the footer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We need to let Stack Exchange know by 28 November 2012, so vote away on if you want hats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.gaming.stackexchange.com/2011/12/holiday-2011-hat-dash-the-hattening/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12399" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5240" RevisionGUID="4917b9f5-f5c7-40e2-9f56-20c0a3dba7bc" CreationDate="2012-11-14T01:47:42.400" UserId="4" Text="Do we want hats?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12400" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5240" RevisionGUID="4917b9f5-f5c7-40e2-9f56-20c0a3dba7bc" CreationDate="2012-11-14T01:47:42.400" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|featured|hats|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12401" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5241" RevisionGUID="0117747d-b56c-470d-97d0-766d200c4829" CreationDate="2012-11-14T01:47:42.400" UserId="4" Text="Yes, we want hats. We like hats and we like to wear hats." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12403" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5240" RevisionGUID="4a297aae-5475-4067-912a-61ac7ffc3e00" CreationDate="2012-11-14T02:01:56.897" UserId="25936" Comment="added 86 characters in body" Text="[In 2011, the Gaming Stack Exchange hosted an event called Hat Dash][1], where users earned &quot;hats&quot; for their gravatars by completing certain tasks (analogous to badges):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Certain actions would trigger the user receiving a hat, which their gravatar could then &quot;wear&quot;. For example, editing a post would yield an editor-themed hat (fedora with pen) to the editor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This year, Stack Exchange is expanding the promotion to any site that wants to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the run down:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The event will run from 19 December 2012 to 4 January 2013.&#xD;&#xA;- Users will be able to see their entire hat collection on http://winterba.sh. That site will also have a landing page, explaining the rules and other details of the event.&#xD;&#xA;- Individual users who don’t want to participate, don’t want to see hats, and/or are generally anti-hat will have an &quot;I hate hats&quot; option available..&#xD;&#xA;- The only visual change to the site itself will be the presence of the hats and the &quot;I hate hats&quot; button in the footer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We need to let Stack Exchange know by 28 November 2012, so vote away on if you want hats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.gaming.stackexchange.com/2011/12/holiday-2011-hat-dash-the-hattening/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/1PVjj.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12404" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5240" RevisionGUID="25088cb3-d3ee-4084-8852-dd4a899ed06c" CreationDate="2012-11-14T04:00:29.480" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/268564166363734018" />
  <row Id="12406" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2592" RevisionGUID="ebb46097-72ce-4194-9b9f-320666510aab" CreationDate="2012-11-14T05:33:39.430" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 431 characters in body" Text="I've asked the crowd over at [User Experience Stack Exchange][1] about our link colours, and they seem to agree that our colour scheme is pretty poor. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it's not just you, and I think the issue is worth revisiting.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/14194/colour-of-links-on-programmers-stack-exchange&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/posts/14194/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12407" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5237" RevisionGUID="0bc53929-06e8-4e12-af8d-6cd9a37b0e5c" CreationDate="2012-11-14T07:00:29.860" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/268609468869255168" />
  <row Id="12408" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="5239" RevisionGUID="aa5b7288-84f1-45f6-aeb3-73c957758d65" CreationDate="2012-11-14T09:25:22.027" UserId="25936" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="12409" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5243" RevisionGUID="bd5e712a-2591-4c8d-af56-b729029b4f3d" CreationDate="2012-11-14T09:34:32.587" UserDisplayName="user4051" Text="Sounds like something that could be A/B tested. We're programmers, after all, we could do this properly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12410" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5239" RevisionGUID="66d25d30-badb-4192-9e2a-9e89a6637fe0" CreationDate="2012-11-14T09:56:04.963" UserId="25936" Comment="added 2415 characters in body" Text="There are a lot of things I don't like about the site's design, to the point that I'm using a stripped down version of NullUserException's [Theme Switcher userscript](http://stackapps.com/questions/2808/stackexchange-theme-switcher) to browse the site with the Beta theme:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although it's a very basic theme, I find it quite more enjoyable than the actual theme. But, who cares what I find enjoyable or not, this discussion is about identifying flaws in the design that are a bit more important than personal preference. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, the whiteboard concept. As you probably already know, the core concept of our design is inspired from this paragraph of [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In a nutshell, Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues. Hence the (awesome) whiteboard inspired design!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a great concept, and I'd be lying if I pretended I have a better idea. That said and while a whiteboard is an easily identifiable element of the software design process, it's also supposed to be ephemeral and sloppy. And basing the entire design on handrawn elements comes out more as sloppy than casual and/or conceptual. I don't know if the playful nature of the design was intentional or not, and I might be completely wrong but I feel that the original, more relaxed scope of the site was taken into consideration, even though the design was finalized after the scope changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [first round of design ideas](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed) was a lot cleaner and simpler than the [second round](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/655/site-design-round-2) and I'm guessing that feedback from the community played an important role in what appears to be a very drastic change in direction. The community back then was more accustomed to the old scope, and if you read through both discussions you'll find out that differentiating the site from Stack Overflow was considered quite important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it was, but I don't think it is anymore. Programmers being defined by what it's not, rather what it is has been a constant PITA for the community, and I really don't see why it should be such a big part of our identity _now_. We've gone a long way, we've certainly proved that we can stand on our own, and I'd really love it if the site's design and overal branding reflected that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not suggesting completely dropping the whiteboard concept, just that we're overusing it. Almost every design element has a hand-drawn look and feel, using [Hugh Laurie's handwritting](http://callsignkatejones.deviantart.com/art/House-Whiteboard-font-64929545) as our main font is completely nonsensical (more on this later), and nothing in the site says &quot;professional&quot;. Our design is far from clean and simple, in contrast with almost every other Stack Exchange site that targets professional audiences. Compare it, for example, with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Cross Validated](http://stats.stackexchange.com/) &#xD;&#xA;- [Database Administrators](http://dba.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [IT Security](http://security.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [User Experience](http://ux.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [GIS](http://gis.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Physics](http://physics.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even sites that mostly target enthusiasts, like [Bicycles](http://bicycles.stackexchange.com/), have cleaner and less playful designs. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The Font (mini rant)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I _never_ understood why Hugh Laurie's handwritting was relevant to a site about conceptual questions on software development. I can certainly appreciate the nerd value, but: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **It's just a TV show.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A great TV show, but just a TV show and one that has absolutely nothing to do with programming. We love fun as much as everyone else, but this is supposed to be a place [where we hate fun](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **It's handwritting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not really the optimal choice for several of our labels, for example: [cohhunity bulletin](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3529/whats-this-cohhunity-bulletin). Any handwritting font has similar problems, and that's simply because handwritting fonts aren't really supposed to be clear and readable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **IT'S AN ALL CAPS FONT**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Why are we shouting things like &quot;QUESTIONS&quot;, &quot;COMMUNITY BULLETIN&quot;, &quot;FAVOURITE TAGS&quot;? Do we really need to emphasize labels that no other professional oriented Stack Exchange site seems to be emphasizing? Is there any value to using an ALL CAPS font, other than being annoyingly distracting? The only other site that uses ALL CAPS seems to be [Arqade](http://gaming.stackexchange.com/), which kinda proves my point, Arqade is awesome, but professional is not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All we're gaining with the font is nerd value, and I'm afraid going for nerd value on a site that's striving to be _the_ resource for a higher level of questions isn't really a good idea, it's a quirky in joke that's fuelling a bad stereotype. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Can the design be changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A complete re-design is _probably_ out of the question. Jin, Stack Exchange's designer, already has a huge backlog, even if we only consider the custom themes of the Beta sites that are graduating. However I always felt that Programmers didn't really have the benefit of the normal process, with the drastic change in scope, and I'm hoping we could at least persuade Stack Exchange to at least consider taking another look at our theme, and perhaps we could just tone done some of the more playful elements. A few ideas:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Getting rid of the font,&#xD;&#xA;- Toning down (or completely removing) the horizontal header and footer lines,&#xD;&#xA;- A less curvy and over-styled header and footer,&#xD;&#xA;- Moving on from the whole whiteboard-y / handwritten style for at least some design elements (vote arrows, for example).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And while we're at it, we could also [fix the damn links](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1487/it-is-possible-to-change-the-colors-of-hypertext-links) ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to make it abudantly clear that changing anything in the design, even a complete re-design, would probably do _nothing_ at all to prevent low quality questions coming in. If that's our reason for changing the design, there are quite a few other things that we should improve first that would be far more beneficial in communicating what the site's about and what our general expectations are (stop downvoting crap, for example). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do feel though that a less casual, less playful design would help better communicating the site's purpose to our target audience. I had to explain the handwritting font a couple of times, and the response was less than enthusiastic, for more or less the reasons I explained in the mini-rant. My main reason for advocating for a cleaner, simpler, and all around more professional design is that it would help me advertise the site on professional communities, without having to explain quirky in-jokes or the no longer relevant need to differentiate ourselves from Stack Overflow.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/mgiXY.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12411" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="5239" RevisionGUID="dda54b43-1467-449c-957a-5a2187153fdf" CreationDate="2012-11-14T09:56:09.517" UserId="25936" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="12412" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5239" RevisionGUID="0c19902a-d89c-4c41-a0cd-952dd2002905" CreationDate="2012-11-14T10:04:12.417" UserId="25936" Comment="added 2415 characters in body" Text="There are a lot of things I don't like about the site's design, to the point that I'm using a stripped down version of NullUserException's [Theme Switcher userscript](http://stackapps.com/questions/2808/stackexchange-theme-switcher) to browse the site with the Beta theme:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although it's a very basic theme, I find it quite more enjoyable than the actual theme. But, who cares what I find enjoyable or not, this discussion is about identifying flaws in the design that are a bit more important than personal preference. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, the whiteboard concept. As you probably already know, the core concept of our design is inspired from this paragraph of [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In a nutshell, Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues. Hence the (awesome) whiteboard inspired design!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a great concept, and I'd be lying if I pretended I have a better idea. That said and while a whiteboard is an easily identifiable element of the software design process, it's also supposed to be ephemeral and sloppy. And basing the entire design on handrawn elements comes out more as sloppy than casual and/or conceptual. I don't know if the playful nature of the design was intentional or not, and I might be completely wrong but I feel that the original, more relaxed scope of the site was taken into consideration, even though the design was finalized after the scope changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [first round of design ideas](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed) was a lot cleaner and simpler than the [second round](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/655/site-design-round-2) and I'm guessing that feedback from the community played an important role in what appears to be a very drastic change in direction. The community back then was more accustomed to the old scope, and if you read through both discussions you'll find out that differentiating the site from Stack Overflow was considered quite important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it was, but I don't think it is any more. Programmers being defined by what it's not, rather than what it is has been a constant PITA for the community, and I really don't see why it should be such a big part of our identity _now_. We've gone a long way, we've certainly proved that we can stand on our own, and I'd really love it if the site's design and overall branding reflected that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not suggesting completely dropping the whiteboard concept (at least not until I come up with a better idea; expect a long wait), just that we're overusing it. Almost every design element has a hand-drawn look and feel, using [Hugh Laurie's handwritting](http://callsignkatejones.deviantart.com/art/House-Whiteboard-font-64929545) as our main font is completely nonsensical (more on this later), and nothing in the site says &quot;professional&quot;. Our design is far from clean and simple, in contrast with almost every other Stack Exchange site that targets professional audiences. Compare it, for example, with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Cross Validated](http://stats.stackexchange.com/) &#xD;&#xA;- [Database Administrators](http://dba.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [IT Security](http://security.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [User Experience](http://ux.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [GIS](http://gis.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Physics](http://physics.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even sites that mostly target enthusiasts, like [Bicycles](http://bicycles.stackexchange.com/), have cleaner and less playful designs. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Font (mini rant)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I _never_ understood why Hugh Laurie's handwritting was relevant to a site about conceptual questions on software development. I can certainly appreciate the nerd value, but: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **It's just a TV show.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A great TV show, but just a TV show and one that has absolutely nothing to do with programming. We love fun as much as everyone else, but this is supposed to be a place [where we hate fun](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **It's handwritting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not really the optimal choice for several of our labels, for example: [cohhunity bulletin](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3529/whats-this-cohhunity-bulletin). Any handwritting font has similar problems, and that's simply because handwritting fonts aren't really supposed to be clear and readable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **IT'S AN ALL CAPS FONT**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Why are we shouting things like &quot;QUESTIONS&quot;, &quot;COMMUNITY BULLETIN&quot;, &quot;FAVOURITE TAGS&quot;? Do we really need to emphasize labels that no other professional oriented Stack Exchange site seems to be emphasizing? Is there any value to using an ALL CAPS font, other than being annoyingly distracting? The only other site that uses ALL CAPS seems to be [Arqade](http://gaming.stackexchange.com/), which kinda proves my point, Arqade is awesome, but professional is not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All we're gaining with the font is nerd value, and I'm afraid going for nerd value on a site that's striving to be _the_ resource for conceptual software development questions isn't really a good idea, it's a quirky in joke that's fuelling a bad stereotype. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Can the design be changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A complete re-design is _probably_ out of the question. Jin, Stack Exchange's designer, already has a huge backlog, even if we only consider the custom themes of the Beta sites that are graduating. However I always felt that Programmers didn't really have the benefit of the normal process, with the drastic change in scope, and I'm hoping we could at least persuade Stack Exchange to at least consider taking another look at our theme, and perhaps we could just tone done some of the more playful elements. A few ideas:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Getting rid of the font,&#xD;&#xA;- Toning down (or completely removing) the horizontal header and footer lines,&#xD;&#xA;- A less curvy and over-styled header and footer,&#xD;&#xA;- Moving on from the whole whiteboard-y / handwritten style for at least some design elements (vote arrows, for example).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And while we're at it, we could also [fix the damn links](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1487/it-is-possible-to-change-the-colors-of-hypertext-links) ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to make it abudantly clear that changing anything in the design, even a complete re-design, would probably do _nothing_ at all to prevent low quality questions coming in. If that's our reason for changing the design, there are quite a few other things that we should improve first that would be far more beneficial in communicating what the site's about and what our general expectations are (stop downvoting crap, for example). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do feel though that a less casual, less playful design would help better communicating the site's purpose to our target audience. I had to explain the handwritting font a couple of times, and the response was less than enthusiastic, for more or less the reasons I explained in the mini-rant. My main reason for advocating for a cleaner, simpler, and all around more professional design is that it would help me advertise the site on professional communities, without having to explain quirky in-jokes or the no longer relevant need to differentiate ourselves from Stack Overflow.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/mgiXY.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12413" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5239" RevisionGUID="b805f0e7-0670-4f16-abf6-f9860151ebc1" CreationDate="2012-11-14T11:07:49.423" UserId="25936" Comment="stop downvoting crap? what the hell is wrong with me... " Text="There are a lot of things I don't like about the site's design, to the point that I'm using a stripped down version of NullUserException's [Theme Switcher userscript](http://stackapps.com/questions/2808/stackexchange-theme-switcher) to browse the site with the Beta theme:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although it's a very basic theme, I find it quite more enjoyable than the actual theme. But, who cares what I find enjoyable or not, this discussion is about identifying flaws in the design that are a bit more important than personal preference. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, the whiteboard concept. As you probably already know, the core concept of our design is inspired from this paragraph of [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In a nutshell, Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues. Hence the (awesome) whiteboard inspired design!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a great concept, and I'd be lying if I pretended I have a better idea. That said and while a whiteboard is an easily identifiable element of the software design process, it's also supposed to be ephemeral and sloppy. And basing the entire design on handrawn elements comes out more as sloppy than casual and/or conceptual. I don't know if the playful nature of the design was intentional or not, and I might be completely wrong but I feel that the original, more relaxed scope of the site was taken into consideration, even though the design was finalized after the scope changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [first round of design ideas](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed) was a lot cleaner and simpler than the [second round](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/655/site-design-round-2) and I'm guessing that feedback from the community played an important role in what appears to be a very drastic change in direction. The community back then was more accustomed to the old scope, and if you read through both discussions you'll find out that differentiating the site from Stack Overflow was considered quite important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it was, but I don't think it is any more. Programmers being defined by what it's not, rather than what it is has been a constant PITA for the community, and I really don't see why it should be such a big part of our identity _now_. We've gone a long way, we've certainly proved that we can stand on our own, and I'd really love it if the site's design and overall branding reflected that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not suggesting completely dropping the whiteboard concept (at least not until I come up with a better idea; expect a long wait), just that we're overusing it. Almost every design element has a hand-drawn look and feel, using [Hugh Laurie's handwritting](http://callsignkatejones.deviantart.com/art/House-Whiteboard-font-64929545) as our main font is completely nonsensical (more on this later), and nothing in the site says &quot;professional&quot;. Our design is far from clean and simple, in contrast with almost every other Stack Exchange site that targets professional audiences. Compare it, for example, with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Cross Validated](http://stats.stackexchange.com/) &#xD;&#xA;- [Database Administrators](http://dba.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [IT Security](http://security.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [User Experience](http://ux.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [GIS](http://gis.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Physics](http://physics.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even sites that mostly target enthusiasts, like [Bicycles](http://bicycles.stackexchange.com/), have cleaner and less playful designs. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Font (mini rant)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I _never_ understood why Hugh Laurie's handwritting was relevant to a site about conceptual questions on software development. I can certainly appreciate the nerd value, but: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **It's just a TV show.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A great TV show, but just a TV show and one that has absolutely nothing to do with programming. We love fun as much as everyone else, but this is supposed to be a place [where we hate fun](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **It's handwritting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not really the optimal choice for several of our labels, for example: [cohhunity bulletin](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3529/whats-this-cohhunity-bulletin). Any handwritting font has similar problems, and that's simply because handwritting fonts aren't really supposed to be clear and readable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **IT'S AN ALL CAPS FONT**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Why are we shouting things like &quot;QUESTIONS&quot;, &quot;COMMUNITY BULLETIN&quot;, &quot;FAVOURITE TAGS&quot;? Do we really need to emphasize labels that no other professional oriented Stack Exchange site seems to be emphasizing? Is there any value to using an ALL CAPS font, other than being annoyingly distracting? The only other site that uses ALL CAPS seems to be [Arqade](http://gaming.stackexchange.com/), which kinda proves my point, Arqade is awesome, but professional is not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All we're gaining with the font is nerd value, and I'm afraid going for nerd value on a site that's striving to be _the_ resource for conceptual software development questions isn't really a good idea, it's a quirky in joke that's fuelling a bad stereotype. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Can the design be changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A complete re-design is _probably_ out of the question. Jin, Stack Exchange's designer, already has a huge backlog, even if we only consider the custom themes of the Beta sites that are graduating. However I always felt that Programmers didn't really have the benefit of the normal process, with the drastic change in scope, and I'm hoping we could at least persuade Stack Exchange to at least consider taking another look at our theme, and perhaps we could just tone done some of the more playful elements. A few ideas:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Getting rid of the font,&#xD;&#xA;- Toning down (or completely removing) the horizontal header and footer lines,&#xD;&#xA;- A less curvy and over-styled header and footer,&#xD;&#xA;- Moving on from the whole whiteboard-y / handwritten style for at least some design elements (vote arrows, for example).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And while we're at it, we could also [fix the damn links](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1487/it-is-possible-to-change-the-colors-of-hypertext-links) ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to make it abudantly clear that changing anything in the design, even a complete re-design, would probably do _nothing_ at all to prevent low quality questions coming in. If that's our reason for changing the design, there are quite a few other things that we should improve first that would be far more beneficial in communicating what the site's about and what our general expectations are (stop upvoting crap, for example). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do feel though that a less casual, less playful design would help better communicating the site's purpose to our target audience. I had to explain the handwritting font a couple of times, and the response was less than enthusiastic, for more or less the reasons I explained in the mini-rant. My main reason for advocating for a cleaner, simpler, and all around more professional design is that it would help me advertise the site on professional communities, without having to explain quirky in-jokes or the no longer relevant need to differentiate ourselves from Stack Overflow.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/mgiXY.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12414" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5244" RevisionGUID="468d8305-1e50-49dc-a3c7-f3771af95ffc" CreationDate="2012-11-14T14:29:06.210" UserId="71537" Text="Honestly, I like the theme. I find the hand-drawn, hand-written, squiggly-line vibe to be indicative of what this site is about--whiteboarding questions. You could migrate it to something more techy-looking, but that would only further blur the line in most peoples' minds between Programmers Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously, I can't say what I would think if someone were to pitch out a brand new design. I may very well like it better, but I do not at all think the current theme to be inappropriate to the site content." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12415" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5212" RevisionGUID="c94ef97b-fdf8-4f6a-919b-9fa3b4d61dfa" CreationDate="2012-11-14T16:12:58.097" UserId="47" Comment="spelling" Text="The one you link to has attribution to the original post and isn't a cut and paste copy so doesn't fall foul of the plagiarism rules we have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As long as he keeps improving there's not a lot we can do." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12416" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5245" RevisionGUID="f5cfd867-b2b1-42e8-a4bd-a611198a11ff" CreationDate="2012-11-14T18:29:17.300" UserDisplayName="user26452" Text="Risking the downvote here, as this is a random answer.....but considering what Programmers is all about, why not use elements of a puzzle? (The 2D cardboard ones, I mean.) I understand the whiteboard theme, but I agree that it doesn't work well. Puzzles share a lot of the same metaphor and are more easily understood by non-programmers (and people who weren't in on the original in-joke; I never knew the Hugh Laurie thing when I first came here - I just thought that the design was really slack).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As programmers, we solve puzzles every day. Perhaps that can be a central part of a new site design." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12417" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5233" RevisionGUID="fdd18c04-5981-4120-8449-0120e3e9e903" CreationDate="2012-11-14T20:09:19.343" UserId="949" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|design|site-promotion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12418" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5246" RevisionGUID="cb079cb4-3820-4e56-9ce0-fd50167dbaff" CreationDate="2012-11-15T00:32:47.810" UserId="72591" Text="I am curious, why not combine this forum into stack overflow.&#xD;&#xA;Add a meta-tag so its clear about discussion and its an open topic for general questions not directly code problem related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The benefit, keeping things more central, more people would view it, so more responsiveness.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It might be a bit strange to combine them for some but i got the feeling that stack overflow almost becomes pathetic if the questions are not like&#xD;&#xA;help needed for function f(x) a + b = ...&#xD;&#xA;or help needed for error ccc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know some hardcore programmers rather not tend to handle open problems, and like to see the world as a closed problem (stack overflow is like that), but in reality its often a mix and there is some chatting around a lot of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Amazingly as soon as i posted i got a -1 reward.. it makes me laugh because I had not done enough research.. even here the systems are becoming to automated, and people rate things as they are in their own minds view.. the point is i did a future request, to improve this site.. or rather the group of sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12419" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5246" RevisionGUID="cb079cb4-3820-4e56-9ce0-fd50167dbaff" CreationDate="2012-11-15T00:32:47.810" UserId="72591" Text="how about combining programmers and stack overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12420" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5246" RevisionGUID="cb079cb4-3820-4e56-9ce0-fd50167dbaff" CreationDate="2012-11-15T00:32:47.810" UserId="72591" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12421" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5247" RevisionGUID="b4ce345d-c924-44db-8e82-08cf95b49a26" CreationDate="2012-11-15T00:49:24.867" UserId="42031" Text="Programmers.SE and StackOverflow have two completely different site scopes - which is why Programmers exists. There are a number of meta discussions on both here and meta.SO which discuss the difference between SO and P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Introducing Programmers.StackExchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In a nutshell, **Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor** working through code issues. **Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard** working through higher level conceptual programming issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have **actual source code in the questions or answers**. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/82988/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/68384/whats-the-difference-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In regards to [your question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13370531/looking-for-a-short-explanation-of-fuzzy-logic) that was downvoted on SO, the comments on there advise you that Programmers is probably a better place to ask the question - which I agree with and [notice you have done](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/175753/looking-for-a-short-explanation-of-fuzzy-logic) and received some answers on your question.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12422" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5248" RevisionGUID="c05953fa-4652-42b1-a3c7-90a953ab338d" CreationDate="2012-11-15T01:39:43.560" UserId="25936" Text="**No.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keeping things more central is actually antithetical to Stack Exchange's philosophy of creating laser sharp focused Q&amp;A sites. Furthermore if &quot;discussion&quot; and &quot;open topic for general questions&quot; is your description of what Programmers is about, you should really read our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) a bit more carefully. While we welcome _some_ subjective questions, Programmers is definitely _not_ a free for all discussion forum.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, more responsiveness is _not_ necessarily a good thing. We strive to be a canonical resource, answers should be as detailed and complete as possible, being quick is an added bonus but not a goal in itself. From the perspective of the asker, quick answers might be more useful, but Programmers and every other Stack Exchange site (including Stack Overflow) aren't only about the asker. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thirdly, folding Programmers into Stack Overflow right now would be a disaster for everyone involved. Stack Overflow, similarly to Programmers, has created and maintains a community culture that is different, and in many respects conflicting to ours. While the target audience of both sites might more or less be the same, the focus and scope is distinctly different, thus is community culture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, Stack Overflow is gigantic, and that's one of the many reasons, perhaps the main one, I never really participated in the site. To put it very simply, if it takes me more than 5 minutes to find interesting content on a site, that site is not for me. Reducing the conceptual aspects of the [SDLC][1] to a set of Stack Overflow tags would be extremely counter-productive, it would take a certain level of masochism to put yourself in the position of searching for interesting methodology questions (for example) in the vast ocean of crap Stack Overflow is slowly becoming. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you posted this as a feature request and there are tons of earlier discussions both on our Meta and Meta Stack Overflow that explain how the sites are different and what's the purpose of Programmers, I'm afraid I'll have to decline it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Should Programmers.SE exist?][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [Choosing between Stack Overflow and Programmers Stack Exchange][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [Is Stack Exchange becoming too fragmented for programmers?][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why was the Programmers site on Stack Exchange created?][7]&#xD;&#xA;- [When do these questions belong on programmers instead of stackoverflow?][8]&#xD;&#xA;- [Once all the disciplining is done and P.SE is purely professional, will it be merged with stackoverflow?][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/153082/should-programmers-se-exist&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/82988/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/105428/is-stack-exchange-becoming-too-fragmented-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1704/once-all-the-disciplining-is-done-and-p-se-is-purely-professional-will-it-be-me" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12423" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5246" RevisionGUID="8eb5cdfa-fb5d-478e-96d6-ecec4bacddeb" CreationDate="2012-11-15T01:40:15.977" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12424" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5248" RevisionGUID="5df9340b-5ba7-4993-ac7e-416926aac980" CreationDate="2012-11-15T02:35:21.257" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="**No.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keeping things more central is actually antithetical to Stack Exchange's philosophy of creating laser sharp focused Q&amp;A sites. Additionally if &quot;discussion&quot; and &quot;open topic for general questions&quot; is your description of what Programmers is about, you should really read our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) a bit more carefully. While we welcome _some_ subjective questions, Programmers is definitely _not_ a free for all discussion forum.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, more responsiveness is _not_ necessarily a good thing. We strive to be a canonical resource, answers should be as detailed and complete as possible, being quick is an added bonus but not a goal in itself. From the perspective of the asker, quick answers might be more useful, but Programmers and every other Stack Exchange site (including Stack Overflow) aren't only about the asker. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thirdly, folding Programmers into Stack Overflow right now would be a disaster for everyone involved. Stack Overflow, similarly to Programmers, has created and maintains a community culture that is different, and in many respects conflicting to ours. While the target audience of both sites might more or less be the same, the focus and scope is distinctly different, thus is community culture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, Stack Overflow is gigantic, and that's one of the many reasons, perhaps the main one, I never really participated in the site. To put it very simply, if it takes me more than 5 minutes to find interesting content on a site, that site is not for me. Reducing the conceptual aspects of the [SDLC][1] to a set of Stack Overflow tags would be extremely counter-productive, it would take a certain level of masochism to put yourself in the position of searching for interesting methodology questions (for example) in the vast ocean of crap Stack Overflow is slowly becoming. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you posted this as a feature request and there are tons of earlier discussions both on our Meta and Meta Stack Overflow that explain how the sites are different and what's the purpose of Programmers, I'm afraid I'll have to decline it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Should Programmers.SE exist?][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [Choosing between Stack Overflow and Programmers Stack Exchange][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [Is Stack Exchange becoming too fragmented for programmers?][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why was the Programmers site on Stack Exchange created?][7]&#xD;&#xA;- [When do these questions belong on programmers instead of stackoverflow?][8]&#xD;&#xA;- [Once all the disciplining is done and P.SE is purely professional, will it be merged with stackoverflow?][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/153082/should-programmers-se-exist&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/82988/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/105428/is-stack-exchange-becoming-too-fragmented-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1704/once-all-the-disciplining-is-done-and-p-se-is-purely-professional-will-it-be-me" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12425" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5249" RevisionGUID="c1b938ef-09ad-4caa-a76f-cbfa652ffd1d" CreationDate="2012-11-15T04:05:01.007" UserId="226" Text="There has been a precedent of a site receiving a redesign, but it had to do with branding rather than any dissatisfaction with the existing design. In fact, the [new design](http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/4821/introducing-arqade) on Arqade is *mostly* the same as it was on &quot;Gaming&quot; back in the day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Far as redesigning Programmers goes... I'm sorry, but it's at best extremely unlikely. There are certainly issues here and there that could be fixed up, but **a complete redesign isn't going to happen**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[We have one designer](http://stackexchange.com/about/team) (see if you can spot him!) and no shortage of design projects and things that require his attention. Just going purely by priorities, even if we agreed to redesign Programmers, it simply wouldn't happen in the foreseeable future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do our best to come up with a design that represents the community and reflects the scope of the site, but it's impossible to please everyone, so once the design is set... for better or for worse, it is what it is. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've made this argument before and I'll make it again: **other professional questions and expert answers are what attracts more professional questions**, not the font style or the site logo. Granted, a site rendered in, say, Comic Sans wouldn't exactly inspire confidence, but we're not talking a garish Geocities-like eyesore here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My advice is to identify specific issues with the design (like, say, ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME). I can't promise that all, or even most, of those will be fixed, but we'll do our best as we get the time. In the meantime, focus on the questions and the answers. That's where the true strength and purpose of the site is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Fun fact: we're hiring a [product designer](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/24481/product-designer-stack-exchange). If you know someone who would fit the bill, please send 'em our way.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12426" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5237" RevisionGUID="b5ace613-36d1-41bb-b480-3fb3cb836576" CreationDate="2012-11-15T04:06:03.203" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|feature-request|status-declined|featured|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12427" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5237" RevisionGUID="e25c8ae8-3d9f-417c-a669-5aa218c2cd50" CreationDate="2012-11-15T04:15:05.433" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|feature-request|status-declined|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12428" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5249" RevisionGUID="46a25a53-4555-4e72-a3d6-f9841a7914d8" CreationDate="2012-11-15T04:17:31.873" UserId="226" Comment="added 50 characters in body" Text="There has been a precedent of a site receiving a redesign, but it had to do with branding rather than any dissatisfaction with the existing design. In fact, the [new design](http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/4821/introducing-arqade) on Arqade is *mostly* the same as it was on &quot;Gaming&quot; back in the day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Far as redesigning Programmers goes... I'm sorry, but it's at best extremely unlikely. There are certainly issues here and there that could be fixed up, but **a complete redesign isn't going to happen**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[We have one designer](http://stackexchange.com/about/team) (see if you can spot him!) and no shortage of design projects and things that require his attention. Just going purely by priorities, even if we agreed to redesign Programmers, it simply wouldn't happen in the foreseeable future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do our best to come up with a design that represents the community and reflects the scope of the site, but it's impossible to please everyone, so once the design is set... for better or for worse, it is what it is. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've made this argument before and I'll make it again: **other professional questions and expert answers are what attracts more professional questions**, not the font style or the site logo. Granted, a site rendered in, say, Comic Sans wouldn't exactly inspire confidence, but we're not talking a garish Geocities-like eyesore here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My advice is to identify specific issues with the design (like, say, ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME) and make feature requests/bug reports about those. I can't promise that all, or even most, of those will be fixed, but we'll do our best as we get the time. In the meantime, focus on the questions and the answers. That's where the true strength and purpose of the site is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Fun fact: we're hiring a [product designer](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/24481/product-designer-stack-exchange). If you know someone who would fit the bill, please send 'em our way.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12429" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5249" RevisionGUID="e99b129c-469e-4509-9f85-c83d11a09d20" CreationDate="2012-11-15T04:27:37.223" UserId="226" Comment="added 18 characters in body" Text="There has been a precedent of a site receiving a redesign, but it had to do with branding rather than any dissatisfaction with the existing design. In fact, the [new design](http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/4821/introducing-arqade) on Arqade is *mostly* the same as it was on &quot;Gaming&quot; back in the day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Far as redesigning Programmers goes... I'm sorry, but it's at best extremely unlikely. There are certainly issues here and there that could be fixed up, but **a complete redesign isn't going to happen**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[We have one designer](http://stackexchange.com/about/team) (see if you can spot him!) and no shortage of design projects and things that require his attention. Just going purely by priorities, even if we agreed to redesign Programmers, it simply wouldn't happen in the foreseeable future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do our best to come up with a design that represents the community and reflects the scope of the site, but it's impossible to please everyone, so once the design is set... for better or for worse, it is what it is. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've made this argument before and I'll make it again: **other professional questions and expert answers are what attracts more professional questions**, not the font style or the site logo. Granted, a site rendered in, say, Comic Sans wouldn't exactly inspire confidence, but we're not talking a garish Geocities-like eyesore here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My advice is to identify specific issues with the design (like, say, ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME) and make feature requests/bug reports about those. I can't promise that all, or even most, of those will be fixed, but we'll do our best as we get the time. In the meantime, focus on the questions and the answers. That's where the true strength and purpose of the site is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Fun fact: we're hiring a [product designer](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/24481/product-designer-stack-exchange). If you know someone who would fit the bill, please send 'em our way before Jin rebels.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12430" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1216" RevisionGUID="94ea904c-cf04-43fb-a37c-3054d7d2ca7d" CreationDate="2012-11-15T06:13:49.050" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12431" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2006" RevisionGUID="4ec027bf-0565-4865-b7aa-acfbbf46f837" CreationDate="2012-11-15T06:14:22.683" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12432" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2118" RevisionGUID="ec5aba30-a771-45e2-a1cc-41e9256394fa" CreationDate="2012-11-15T06:16:15.657" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12433" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2118" RevisionGUID="3f2b313f-9ccd-4498-8efe-173cd619caf1" CreationDate="2012-11-15T06:16:20.527" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="12436" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1168" RevisionGUID="29282181-b001-4901-bf28-ed879aaa91c2" CreationDate="2012-11-15T09:01:00.523" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12437" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="1168" RevisionGUID="c9f35ee0-2c26-4e58-83cf-48bfb166a512" CreationDate="2012-11-15T09:01:05.843" UserId="47" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="12438" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="591" RevisionGUID="0cfc8264-d8f0-460d-bbe7-662ebbd1d8e7" CreationDate="2012-11-15T09:34:26.100" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|bounty|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12454" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5240" RevisionGUID="e5884672-127b-47e6-80f4-f474ccaa42d8" CreationDate="2012-11-16T14:24:41.260" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|hats|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12455" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5240" RevisionGUID="e5884672-127b-47e6-80f4-f474ccaa42d8" CreationDate="2012-11-16T14:24:41.260" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="[In 2011, the Gaming Stack Exchange hosted an event called Hat Dash][1], where users earned &quot;hats&quot; for their gravatars by completing certain tasks (analogous to badges):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Certain actions would trigger the user receiving a hat, which their gravatar could then &quot;wear&quot;. For example, editing a post would yield an editor-themed hat (fedora with pen) to the editor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This year, Stack Exchange is expanding the promotion to any site that wants to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the run down:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The event will run from 19 December 2012 to 4 January 2013.&#xD;&#xA;- Users will be able to see their entire hat collection on http://winterba.sh. That site will also have a landing page, explaining the rules and other details of the event.&#xD;&#xA;- Individual users who don’t want to participate, don’t want to see hats, and/or are generally anti-hat will have an &quot;I hate hats&quot; option available..&#xD;&#xA;- The only visual change to the site itself will be the presence of the hats and the &quot;I hate hats&quot; button in the footer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We need to let Stack Exchange know by 28 November 2012, so vote away on if you want hats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**We have told Stack Exchange that we want hats. We will be getting hats to wear.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.gaming.stackexchange.com/2011/12/holiday-2011-hat-dash-the-hattening/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/1PVjj.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12456" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5257" RevisionGUID="aebf8d68-6d7d-4a90-9af7-40448d073bd3" CreationDate="2012-11-16T17:22:41.350" UserId="26034" Text="Wow, we link to [&quot;Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice&quot; by Patrick McKenzie][1] in our FAQ? Sure he's got some brutally true snippets in there, but overall it's a bad article. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Engineering is a cost center&quot; is laughable but might be true from a management's perspective. Fun fact: Peter Drucker, that &quot;business oracle&quot; who made these terms? He later appended his idea: “The only profit center is a customer whose cheque hasn’t bounced. But it can be a useful to understand why bad managers will try to undercut you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then he has gems like: &quot;companies with broken HR policies where lack of a buzzword means you won’t be selected. You don’t want to work for them&quot;. So... You shouldn't work somewhere with broken HR, but broken management is ok? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While he DOES have some useful advice, the sort that gets repeated a lot around here: &quot;Many asked how to know what programming language or stack to study.  It doesn’t matter.&quot; That's something we would be repeating constantly to the stream of students asking us what classes to take. His time estimations might be a bit off, but it's good solid advice about not fretting over the language.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But he really flubs other: &quot;You will have other coworkers who — affably and ethically — will suggest things which go against your interests, from 'I should get credit for that project you just did'.  How could that possibly be seen as ethical? And I think that's one of my bigger complaints about this article. Questionable ethics. Oh look, the guy has moved into management and he's a boss that employs programmers. Go figure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, it's like he's trying to be brutally honest, like someone that's gone past enemy lines and is reporting back all the dirty laundry of management. But it just comes off as cynical and pessimistic. He presumes a very antagonistic relationship between managers and workers. The article, while helpful in some aspects, should not be promoted on SE.Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12457" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5257" RevisionGUID="aebf8d68-6d7d-4a90-9af7-40448d073bd3" CreationDate="2012-11-16T17:22:41.350" UserId="26034" Text="Get rid of the &quot;don't call yourself a programmer&quot; link in our FAQ" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12458" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5257" RevisionGUID="aebf8d68-6d7d-4a90-9af7-40448d073bd3" CreationDate="2012-11-16T17:22:41.350" UserId="26034" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12459" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5257" RevisionGUID="e7747b2f-614a-4bb0-83b0-f48fcdfd1990" CreationDate="2012-11-16T17:32:15.807" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq-contents|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12460" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5258" RevisionGUID="8ebbfea2-ae64-4e5c-986b-77c51569c2f2" CreationDate="2012-11-16T18:01:53.610" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="(I realize this may be a bit late)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a meta post about changing the background to something more professional.  There are meta posts about the word 'professional' in faqs and site charters.  The underlying theme with all of the posts and others (denied (for technical reasons) or otherwise) is a desire for more professional related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When taking the above into consideration, the answer to &quot;do we want to wear hats&quot; should a simple &quot;no.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In trying to present a more professional appearance, we should avoid changes that lead to a less professional one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12461" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5259" RevisionGUID="26582764-7f65-4d20-a755-352ef88db717" CreationDate="2012-11-16T18:32:09.110" UserId="25476" Text="I would be okay with this being removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I personally feel that there is a huge amount of wisdom in this article, but there are a number of highly opinionated and possibly wrongheaded assumptions that many people may not only disagree with, but also find highly offensive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically I am calling out his observations and assumptions about software development in Academia (or any other non-business entity for that matter).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your major and minor don’t matter.  Most decisionmakers in industry couldn’t tell the difference between a major in Computer Science and a major in Mathematics if they tried.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This sends the wrong message and is anti-Academia.  It also assumes that the only software development jobs that matter are in the business world.  What about Non-Profits?  What about Government?  What about Academia?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your professors might understand how the academic job market works (short story: it is ridiculously inefficient in engineering and fubared beyond mortal comprehension in English) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again this might be offensive to someone in Academia.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you really like the atmosphere at universities, that is cool.  Put a backpack on and you can walk into any building at any university in the United States any time you want.  Backpacks are a lot cheaper than working in academia.   You can lead the life of the mind in industry, too — and enjoy less politics and better pay.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When it comes to Academia he clearly does not know what he is talking about.  It is wrought with politics as well, it is just a very different game than what you would play in the corporate world.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On this basis alone linking to this article may give the wrong impression to certain sets of software developers that are more than welcome." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12462" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5260" RevisionGUID="29d8c7ab-f1e3-43e9-8cc6-fb2de71aa5a6" CreationDate="2012-11-16T20:50:20.057" UserId="897" Text="I agree.  It's not something that belongs in the site faq.  The *'dont call yourself a programmer*' article is an opinion piece, and shouldnt be presented as if its the site's uniformly accepted authority on the topic.  There's already a link to The Workplace - which should be the go-to 'authority' on the topic.  I think that's sufficient." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12465" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5257" RevisionGUID="659e1347-87f8-43d6-a3cc-9ec11844d6df" CreationDate="2012-11-16T22:26:58.570" UserId="26034" Comment="Forgot the endquote (That sort of thing drive me crazy." Text="Wow, we link to [&quot;Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice&quot; by Patrick McKenzie][1] in our FAQ? Sure he's got some brutally true snippets in there, but overall it's a bad article. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Engineering is a cost center&quot; is laughable but might be true from a management's perspective. Fun fact: Peter Drucker, that &quot;business oracle&quot; who made these terms? He later appended his idea: “The only profit center is a customer whose cheque hasn’t bounced.&quot; But it can be a useful to understand why bad managers will try to undercut you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then he has gems like: &quot;companies with broken HR policies where lack of a buzzword means you won’t be selected. You don’t want to work for them&quot;. So... You shouldn't work somewhere with broken HR, but broken management is ok? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He DOES have some useful advice, the sort that gets repeated a lot around here: &quot;Many asked how to know what programming language or stack to study.  It doesn’t matter.&quot; That's something we would be repeating constantly to the stream of students asking us what classes to take. His time estimations might be a bit off, but it's good solid advice about not fretting over the language.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But he really flubs other: &quot;You will have other coworkers who — affably and ethically — will suggest things which go against your interests, from 'I should get credit for that project you just did'.  How could that possibly be seen as ethical? And I think that's one of my bigger complaints about this article. Questionable ethics. Oh look, the guy has moved into management and he's a boss that employs programmers. Go figure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, it's like he's trying to be brutally honest, like someone that's gone past enemy lines and is reporting back all the dirty laundry of management. But it just comes off as cynical and pessimistic. He presumes a very antagonistic relationship between managers and workers. The article, while helpful in some aspects, should not be promoted on SE.Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12466" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5261" RevisionGUID="17be490c-0f09-4046-b509-b0b82a5223ab" CreationDate="2012-11-16T22:41:02.650" UserId="72769" Text="As suggested in the contact us page, I am posting this question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posed a question originally on Stack Overflow. I thought the question was appropriate for posting there, but it was ruled to be to be more appropriate for the Programmer area. So I posted the very same question in the Programmer area. Here is the direct [link][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was caused with no helpful information on what was wrong with the question or how I can improve it so that it is appropriate. Please help me to understand how it is not appropriate, how I can improve it, or what other resources I might look at.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176028/real-time-multi-user-gaming-platform" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12467" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5261" RevisionGUID="17be490c-0f09-4046-b509-b0b82a5223ab" CreationDate="2012-11-16T22:41:02.650" UserId="72769" Text="I don't understand the issue with this question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12468" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5261" RevisionGUID="17be490c-0f09-4046-b509-b0b82a5223ab" CreationDate="2012-11-16T22:41:02.650" UserId="72769" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12469" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5262" RevisionGUID="1d615755-27d4-467c-a937-aebb43e89c00" CreationDate="2012-11-16T22:52:32.530" UserId="25476" Text="The question was closed by 5 members of the community rather than a moderator.  I can't speak for them but I will speculate as to why.  Perhaps one of them may chime in with their thoughts as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What sort of platforms are available to develop this sort of game?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This part of your question isn't very constructive.  You offer a lot of good information about your specific case however what will happen is that people will just start posting their favorite game development platform.  This won't help anybody determine what you should do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is far too broad.  We tend to look for focused and answerable questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think I need to establish the architecture first before proceeding with this project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This should be a given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My suggestion to you is to try and focus on an aspect of the architecture that you are having trouble with specifically, and post a design specific question regarding this, or perhaps edit your post to focus it on a single area.  When you have done this, flag it for moderator attention and they can consider it to be reopened at that point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, in the future, please do not cross post the same question across StackExchange sites.  If you posted the question in the wrong place, then flag it for moderator attention and they will take care of migrating it for you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12470" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5257" RevisionGUID="97f9ad63-78e9-45f1-a49f-06706718abfb" CreationDate="2012-11-17T00:03:03.113" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|faq-contents|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12476" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5257" RevisionGUID="49e1d564-7d07-42f8-9647-6b28c958fe07" CreationDate="2012-11-17T04:01:34.350" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/269651651948851200" />
  <row Id="12477" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5246" RevisionGUID="77221aa5-0775-408e-bf43-ec84d87732ae" CreationDate="2012-11-17T12:31:57.950" UserId="72591" Comment="added 233 characters in body" Text="I am curious, why not combine this forum into stack overflow.&#xD;&#xA;Add a meta-tag so its clear about discussion and its an open topic for general questions not directly code problem related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The benefit, keeping things more central, more people would view it, so more responsiveness.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It might be a bit strange to combine them for some but i got the feeling that stack overflow almost becomes pathetic if the questions are not like&#xD;&#xA;help needed for function f(x) a + b = ...&#xD;&#xA;or help needed for error ccc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know some hardcore programmers rather not tend to handle open problems, and like to see the world as a closed problem (stack overflow is like that), but in reality its often a mix and there is some chatting around a lot of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Amazingly as soon as i posted i got a -1 reward.. it makes me laugh because I had not done enough research.. even here the systems are becoming to automated, and people rate things as they are in their own minds view.. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point is i did a future request, to improve this site.. or rather the group umbrella of sites under stack exchange. To becomme a bit more like the Arduino forums, or Redit C# an active friendly userbase open to anyone who like to discuss.&#xD;&#xA;But allready this is a denied future request (without realy voting or so)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12478" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5264" RevisionGUID="d371f1b5-cdb8-4789-af4e-06c5193c7d36" CreationDate="2012-11-17T23:15:25.593" UserId="7748" Text="The context of the link is &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *For answers to common programming career advice questions, please see &quot;Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice&quot; by Patrick&#xD;&#xA;&gt; McKenzie.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I Say refer the reader to http://workplace.stackexchange.com/ instead." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12479" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5261" RevisionGUID="98c3c0ab-753e-413c-83e3-2d2a3c443e15" CreationDate="2012-11-18T01:01:59.040" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/269968859644190720" />
  <row Id="12480" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5265" RevisionGUID="a6008eb6-3f09-4990-8bcb-bf05adb658b5" CreationDate="2012-11-18T10:41:19.303" UserId="39058" Text="Well, it's all in the title.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I reached 10K on StackOverflow and I'd really like to refresh my profile, adding some personal info.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've done some search, without luck so far..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12481" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5265" RevisionGUID="a6008eb6-3f09-4990-8bcb-bf05adb658b5" CreationDate="2012-11-18T10:41:19.303" UserId="39058" Text="can I change my user name, retaining reputation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12482" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5265" RevisionGUID="a6008eb6-3f09-4990-8bcb-bf05adb658b5" CreationDate="2012-11-18T10:41:19.303" UserId="39058" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12483" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5266" RevisionGUID="440a099f-5dd4-4e82-a7d6-00f5a7b06f34" CreationDate="2012-11-18T10:48:39.917" UserId="47" Text="You are identified to a particular Stack Exchange site by your **user id** on that site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can change your user name without fear of losing your reputation. The only restriction is that you can't change it again for 30 days - so choose wisely." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12484" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5266" RevisionGUID="717a8e5c-2f03-4391-a3e3-63df3077a4ec" CreationDate="2012-11-18T10:58:54.247" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="You are identified to a particular Stack Exchange site by your **user id** on that site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can change your user name without fear of losing your reputation. The only restriction is that you can't change it again for 30 days - so choose wisely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Go to your profile page - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/39058/chac (for example) and click on the &quot;edit&quot; button. This is on a per site basis so unless you use the &quot;copy to other sites&quot; button at the bottom of the page. Be warned - if you have any different information on other sites (profile, e-mail) this will overwrite it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12485" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5267" RevisionGUID="57b1ec86-9e79-4a50-b053-2ca22dd93e76" CreationDate="2012-11-18T23:00:28.580" UserId="72867" Text="I vote that it should be removed. IMHO the article is sensationalistic content marketing to attract visitors. The summary in the outro states ... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;At the end of the day, your life happiness will not be dominated by your career ... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This supports the assertion that the topic was geared as an opinionated 'self-help guide for developers ... ' &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't see how this article would add any direct value to programmers.stackexchange.com " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12486" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5265" RevisionGUID="51446867-4155-4677-b45c-4132da22ff81" CreationDate="2012-11-19T02:55:09.487" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|user-profile|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12487" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5268" RevisionGUID="8e789fde-cd4c-4a98-bd57-da5b0f55c4e8" CreationDate="2012-11-19T04:18:08.460" UserId="72995" Text="I definitely agree. In my opinion the sites doodley theme makes it hard to read and really take seriously. I'm not saying the site has to have a clinical html-theme, but a little more subtlety would not be a bad change. I think stackoverflow's theme looks really nice, and it would definitely be a good model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the graphic designer: I think the doodley theme is really well done, just not necessarily the write place." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12488" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5268" RevisionGUID="20405d1f-a4cf-4cc7-8cc8-17688ab559fc" CreationDate="2012-11-19T06:02:14.910" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body" Text="I definitely agree. In my opinion the sites doodley theme makes it hard to read and really take seriously. I'm not saying the site has to have a clinical html-theme, but a little more subtlety would not be a bad change. I think stackoverflow's theme looks really nice, and it would definitely be a good model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the graphic designer: I think the doodley theme is really well done, just not necessarily the right place." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12489" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5269" RevisionGUID="dca19bab-9064-42a3-80d8-3506594b0c4b" CreationDate="2012-11-19T08:14:38.663" UserId="6617" Text="The article is at least very subjective. It might perfectly match the author's own experiences, but I don't think it is generally true. Promoting this article probably gives it more universal validity than it deserves." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12490" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5257" RevisionGUID="4b4dacf5-55de-4eed-abd9-e932008b84f5" CreationDate="2012-11-19T09:45:07.940" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|faq-contents|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12491" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5246" RevisionGUID="94bb11f5-7d98-49a7-ac74-4e552545afb7" CreationDate="2012-11-19T15:21:01.667" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling, formatting" Text="I am curious, why not combine this site into Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add a meta-tag so it's clear about discussion and it's an open topic for general questions not directly code problem related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The benefit, keeping things more central, more people would view it, so more responsiveness.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It might be a bit strange to combine them for some but i got the feeling that Stack Overflow almost becomes pathetic if the questions are not like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; help needed for function f(x) a + b = ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; help needed for error ccc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know some hardcore programmers rather not tend to handle open problems, and like to see the world as a closed problem (Stack Overflow is like that), but in reality it's often a mix and there is some chatting around a lot of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Amazingly as soon as I posted I got a -1 reward.. it makes me laugh because I had not done enough research.. even here the systems are becoming to automated, and people rate things as they are in their own minds view.. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point is I did a feature request, to improve this site.. or rather the group umbrella of sites under Stack Exchange. To become a bit more like the Arduino forums, or Reddit C# an active friendly userbase open to anyone who like to discuss.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But already this is a denied feature request (without really voting or so)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12492" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5246" RevisionGUID="94bb11f5-7d98-49a7-ac74-4e552545afb7" CreationDate="2012-11-19T15:21:01.667" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling, formatting" Text="how about combining Programmers and Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12493" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5270" RevisionGUID="7e2d27e4-5f9a-47bd-afd8-8a505b849f94" CreationDate="2012-11-20T07:01:24.150" UserId="62330" Text="Over on Area 51, there is a proposal for a [Software Engineering Research][1] site scoped as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for researchers to discuss research-level questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in the area of software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reading of the scope for Programmers.SE is that any such questions would be on-site here, so is this proposal constructive, or just un-necessary fragmentation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/47539/software-engineering-research" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12494" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5270" RevisionGUID="7e2d27e4-5f9a-47bd-afd8-8a505b849f94" CreationDate="2012-11-20T07:01:24.150" UserId="62330" Text="A51 Proposal: Software Engineering Research" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12495" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5270" RevisionGUID="7e2d27e4-5f9a-47bd-afd8-8a505b849f94" CreationDate="2012-11-20T07:01:24.150" UserId="62330" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12496" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5270" RevisionGUID="6a70472b-53bf-4f37-a348-384b84be3636" CreationDate="2012-11-20T07:11:24.813" UserId="62330" Comment="added 109 characters in body" Text="Over on Area 51, there is a proposal for a [Software Engineering Research][1] site scoped as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for researchers to discuss research-level questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in the area of software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reading of the scope for Programmers.SE is that any such questions would be on-site here, so is this proposal constructive, or just un-necessary fragmentation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps an A51 proposal should require debate on any relevant existing site before secession is declared?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/47539/software-engineering-research" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12498" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5271" RevisionGUID="036e9964-4208-4ec7-ae10-7889bb18f460" CreationDate="2012-11-20T13:31:25.513" UserId="41381" Text="I think its likely we are already at critical mass for the amount of programming related sites that could realistically exist on a single network. Also Research level software engineering seems a little weird as a concept since engineering implies application not research." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12499" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5271" RevisionGUID="5ec01da7-d932-4a67-8f92-e39c0cb781ed" CreationDate="2012-11-20T14:43:27.600" UserId="31260" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="I think it's likely we are already at critical mass for the amount of programming related sites that could realistically exist on a single network. Also Research level software engineering seems a little weird as a concept since engineering implies application not research." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12500" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5272" RevisionGUID="56d39166-29c6-4fca-be75-af5e5b8be510" CreationDate="2012-11-21T12:26:39.720" UserId="6605" Text="From what I notice, a number of requests notified on Meta are abandoned without being fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- For example [my request related to the color of the links][1] and posted a year ago is still ignored, while is has been shown (see [link][2] in the answer by Yannis Rizos to the linked request) that the actual choice of colors is poor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- In the same way, [the bug notification about the bottom of the links not being clickable][3] is still pending, one year after, with no reply whatsoever, while it is clearly a bug, and a very disturbing one, given that there is a visual response (red color) while the cursor is on a non-clickable area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Around a year ago (finding a link is a bit tricky), there was a request to add other relevant SE sites to the list shown when the question is being closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There is still only Stack Overflow, and no sign of willingness to add some relevant sites like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    - UX.SE or&#xD;&#xA;    - DBA.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  or a plethora of beta-state sites like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    - [Workplace.SE][4] (extremely relevant),&#xD;&#xA;    - [QA and testing][5] (would fit well for a bunch of questions posted the last week),&#xD;&#xA;    - [Personal Productivity][6] (the questions which fit better are quite frequent on Programmers.SE),&#xD;&#xA;    - [Project Management][7] (also a good place for many questions actually posted on Programmers.SE),&#xD;&#xA;    - etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What explains such passiveness? Is it because Joel Spolsky and his team lost interest in Programmers.SE, like he repeatedly explains in his podcasts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who is (or is there somebody) in charge of implementing new features and fixing bugs on Programmers.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a better place than Meta to ask for new features and to report bugs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1487/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/q/14194/6729&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/801/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12501" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5272" RevisionGUID="56d39166-29c6-4fca-be75-af5e5b8be510" CreationDate="2012-11-21T12:26:39.720" UserId="6605" Text="Why many features and bug reports are pending for years without being implemented/fixed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12502" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5272" RevisionGUID="56d39166-29c6-4fca-be75-af5e5b8be510" CreationDate="2012-11-21T12:26:39.720" UserId="6605" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12503" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5273" RevisionGUID="1bf948cb-b733-472e-ad37-6148338489fb" CreationDate="2012-11-21T12:39:00.160" UserId="47" Text="Regarding the list of migration targets - only graduated sites are added to the list. While a site is still in beta (even if beta lasts years rather than months) there is the risk that the site would be closed down which is one reason why they're not allowed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12504" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5274" RevisionGUID="0b7005ef-90ee-47d4-a2c9-78a2103dc7d3" CreationDate="2012-11-21T12:46:49.340" UserId="47255" Text="Every meta has this problem. Dev time seems to be concentrated towards features like the new review queue. There is a priority, they probably stick to it. There are lots of metas, and site-specific feature request probably have less priority. Even on the mother meta (MSO) --which would probably have more priority-- a lot of bugs/featurreqs have passed unattended--there are just _too many_ of them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;About migration paths--they generally cause more problems than they solve, with rejected migrations/etc (you're an active member of Programmers.SE, you've been on the recieving end of bad migrations from SO). Also, there may be an issue with TW/SQA/PM being beta sites. Not sure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What explains such passiveness? Is it because Joel Spolsky and his team lost interest in Programmers.SE, like he repeatedly explains in his podcasts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not &quot;they've lost interest&quot;, it is &quot;there are things with a higher priority that need to be done&quot;. Also, &quot;Programmers.SE is one of many many SE sites, and thus must share dev time with them.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Who is (or is there somebody) in charge of implementing new features and fixing bugs on Programmers.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's no SE staff &quot;assigned&quot; to you (AFAICT). The devs _do_ look through meta-bug reports on small sites, but remember--there are lots of sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a better place than Meta to ask for new features and to report bugs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You _can_ ambush a dev in chat. Doubt they'd like that. Or ask a moderator to post it in the Collection Room (though it may go unnoticed there as well). Though the best place is Meta. For non-site-specific bugs, go to Meta.SO (you'll get more attention there)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12507" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5274" RevisionGUID="7e709a1b-4225-4502-94ce-a62da3280526" CreationDate="2012-11-21T13:06:49.533" UserId="47255" Comment="added 9 characters in body" Text="Every meta has this problem. Dev time seems to be concentrated towards features like the new review queue. There is a priority, they probably stick to it. There are lots of metas, and site-specific feature request probably have less priority. Even on the mother meta (MSO) --which would probably have more priority-- a lot of bugs/featurreqs have passed unattended--there are just _too many_ of them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;About migration paths--they generally cause more problems than they solve, with rejected migrations/etc (you're an active member of Programmers.SE, you've been on the recieving end of bad migrations from SO). Also, there may be an issue with TW/SQA/PM being beta sites. Not sure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What explains such passiveness? Is it because Joel Spolsky and his team lost interest in Programmers.SE, like he repeatedly explains in his podcasts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not &quot;they've lost interest&quot;, it is &quot;there are things with a higher priority that need to be done&quot;. Also, &quot;Programmers.SE is one of many many SE sites, and thus must share dev time with them.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Who is (or is there somebody) in charge of implementing new features and fixing bugs on Programmers.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's no SE staff &quot;assigned&quot; to you (AFAICT). The devs _do_ look through meta-bug reports on small sites, but remember--there are lots of sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a better place than Meta to ask for new features and to report bugs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You _can_ ambush a dev in chat. Doubt they'd like that. Or ask a moderator to  forward it to the relevant SE staff member (preferably for more important things). Though the best place is Meta. For non-site-specific bugs, go to Meta.SO (you'll get more attention there)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="12574" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="355" RevisionGUID="9905f2a8-2f68-4e98-afbf-69cdb90c3f2c" CreationDate="2012-11-21T13:52:12.407" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12575" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2127" RevisionGUID="175a11b0-cb73-4bd3-9068-bb406406c649" CreationDate="2012-11-21T13:52:25.840" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|user-accounts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12576" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2344" RevisionGUID="f5916faf-0cf8-4fe9-9eaf-d6770081f4d1" CreationDate="2012-11-21T13:53:40.733" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|design|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12577" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2344" RevisionGUID="c1557822-3d97-4641-8612-e281ad305dfc" CreationDate="2012-11-21T13:53:44.133" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="12578" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1057" RevisionGUID="395b1110-0a75-468c-bc7c-d7b2b2f38790" CreationDate="2012-11-21T13:54:50.463" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|guidelines|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12579" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2540" RevisionGUID="3e02111b-c865-4328-b82a-9eeb7e1973ab" CreationDate="2012-11-21T13:56:44.780" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderators|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12580" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2681" RevisionGUID="d8b79efc-2f23-4d31-80c3-2296c70fc113" CreationDate="2012-11-21T13:57:26.790" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|feature-request|status-bydesign|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12581" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5275" RevisionGUID="2c7f93e6-094a-40ab-b447-407dd997f8b8" CreationDate="2012-11-21T14:20:03.410" UserId="63" Text="There are countless design &quot;bugs&quot; that may or may not get fixed in any reasonable amount of time because *they don't actually matter very much*. Everyone has their pet peeves, but when and how those actually amount to problems worth fixing is subjective. Easy to fix when related changes are being made, but not a high priority otherwise. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may change *somewhat* as we continue to expand the dev and design teams.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't find a recent suggestion to change migration targets either, but [if you look at the stats](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats) there's no real point - [as ChrisF notes][1], we don't add beta sites to these lists, and with only 3 questions migrated in the last 90 days, SU isn't exactly *crying out* to be more easily migrated to. Choice for the heck of it just wastes time and increases the chance of mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5272/why-many-features-and-bug-reports-are-pending-for-years-without-being-implemente/5273#5273" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12582" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5276" RevisionGUID="0e56ed6d-93a6-4c68-b154-bc826037e203" CreationDate="2012-11-21T14:20:10.727" UserId="41785" Text="Manishearth's answer is (basically) the short version. Our core development team is ~7 people strong, and our design team is *literally* a single person. There's *lots* of projects, network-wide, that vie equally for their attention. Eight people handle *all* user feature requests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The longer answer is a bit more complicated. Since I'm talking to people involved in the SDLC, I'm a little astonished that you're not all a bit more sympathetic. After all, the network is 90+ sites, and we serve double-digit millions of users, and getting the project *right* from step one takes time and person-power we don't really have right now. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bugs and errors you point out, while important, aren't going to get top priority because there are other problems that affect the *entire* network that may require immediate attention (e.g. a site blackout) or are concentrating developer resources right now (e.g. the `/review` queue, or our localization efforts). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What explains such passiveness? Is it because Joel Spolsky and his team lost interest in Programmers.SE, like he repeatedly explains in his podcasts?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, let me clear about something: there is more to the Stack Exchange team than Joel or the dev team. For one, there's the team I'm on: your (hopefully beloved) [Community Managers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99338/who-are-the-community-managers-and-what-do-they-do). And, in fact, we even [hired on one of your moderators](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2875/41785) based on her work here. So, no, the *company* doesn't hate Programmers. Denying your community's complicated history would be foolish and short-sighted, and a great number of really *excellent* lessons were learned over the course of the last two years. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;passiveness&quot; you're referring to is entirely perceived; it's a symptom of the real issue, which is that our development team is overextended. Their time is an extremely precious, scarce resource. Not to put too fine a point on it: they're only human. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Who is (or is there somebody) in charge of implementing new features and fixing bugs on Programmers.SE?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Design bugs are usually handled by our always-wonderful, one-man design team of [Jin Yang](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1685/jin). Jin is literally *one single person* handling *all site design issues* across the network. Jin *also* does the design for our marketing initiatives, some of our advertising, helps us make fliers and small promo items, [puts together top user swag](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1669/41785) and a whole host of things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is there a better place than Meta to ask for new features and to report bugs?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No. Meta is exactly the correct place for you to be reporting these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look, I'm sympathetic. I really, really am. I've been [working on making features happen](http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/867/we-should-implement-magic-the-gathering-pop-ups-on-hover#comment1635_867) on some of our other sites for months now. The toughest is knowing that [doing a fun, exciting event](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5240/do-we-want-hats) would basically &quot;cost&quot; us a feature for a site. All decisions regarding dev allocations are made with great are and after a *lot* of deliberation. We don't just assign development time to things willy-nilly because ***we cannot do so***. It's *literally* a thing we can't do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're dissatisfied with our ability to meet our users' needs (and it does sound like you are) then you're in luck. Right now, [**we're hiring for a bunch of positions**](http://stackexchange.com/about/hiring), including developers. If you know someone who could/should be working for us, who loves our sites (yes, even Programmers!) and is a talented developer who is looking for a new challenge, ***tell them to apply!***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, for the mean time, I can only advise you sit tight and be patient. It's all on The List&lt;sup&gt;TM&lt;/sup&gt; and I'm confident we'll get to it. It just might take some time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12583" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5277" RevisionGUID="7a6a60e1-4406-4c0a-8eea-a2ea5f6b2107" CreationDate="2012-11-21T14:30:15.813" UserId="25936" Text="I went over all our open bugs and feature requests and retagged/closed a lot of them. The Meta front page looks like a battlefield, but I figured it would be better to do it in one big sweep to get a better idea of what we are talking about. So, right now we have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [8 open bugs][1], and&#xD;&#xA;- [25 open feature requests][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not _that_ bad. Yes, there are some Meta questions that needed feedback from Stack Exchange and appear to be long forgotten, but we can easily fix that, just ping one of us (mods) in chat and we'll ask a SE employee to have a look. With 90+ sites (and 90+ Metas), it's understandable that they can't keep track of _everything_. Furthermore we haven't really been doing a very good job keeping our Meta clean, there were (and still are) a lot of questions that are mistagged, or no longer relevant. We should clean up Meta at some point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back in June we created a mod+SE only chat room, the collection room, and gathered tons of feature requests and bug reports from all per site Metas, in an effort to get feedback from SE. The room was frozen in August, and we're still waiting for feedback on most, if not all, requests. I've nagged Grace Note a couple of times about this, privately and publicly, and although progress has been very slow, I'm confident SE isn't ignoring per site Metas. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for migrations, our [migration stats][3] don't really justify more migration targets:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][4]](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFFqv.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bbug%5D%20-%5Bstatus-declined%5D%20-%5Bstatus-completed%5D%20-%5Bstatus-bydesign%5D%20-%5Bstatus-deferred%5D%20-%5Bstatus-norepro%5D%20-%5Bstatus-planned%5D%20closed:0&amp;submit=search&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=relevance&amp;q=%5Bfeature-request%5D%20-%5Bstatus-declined%5D%20-%5Bstatus-completed%5D%20-%5Bstatus-bydesign%5D%20-%5Bstatus-deferred%5D%20-%5Bstatus-norepro%5D%20closed:0&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFFqv.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12584" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5277" RevisionGUID="0c01d288-8f71-4da7-a902-30dcde3a1024" CreationDate="2012-11-21T14:49:00.170" UserId="25936" Comment="added 90 characters in body" Text="I went over all our open bugs and feature requests and retagged/closed a lot of them. The Meta front page looks like a battlefield because of this, but I figured it would be better to do it in one big sweep to get a better idea of what we are talking about. So, right now we have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [8 open bugs][1], and&#xD;&#xA;- [25 open feature requests][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not _that_ bad. Yes, there are some Meta questions that needed feedback from Stack Exchange and appear to be long forgotten, but we can easily fix that, just ping one of us (mods) in chat and we'll ask a SE employee to have a look. With 90+ sites (and 90+ Metas), it's understandable that they can't keep track of _everything_. Furthermore we haven't really been doing a very good job keeping our Meta clean, there were (and still are) a lot of questions that are mistagged, or no longer relevant. We should clean up Meta at some point, that would make our feature requests and bug reports far more noticeable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back in June we created a mod+SE only chat room, the collection room, and gathered tons of feature requests and bug reports from all per site Metas, in an effort to get feedback from SE. The room was frozen in August, and we're still waiting for feedback on most, if not all, requests. I've nagged Grace Note a couple of times about this, privately and publicly, and although progress has been very slow, I'm confident SE isn't ignoring per site Metas. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for migrations, our [migration stats][3] don't really justify more migration targets:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][4]](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFFqv.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bbug%5D%20-%5Bstatus-declined%5D%20-%5Bstatus-completed%5D%20-%5Bstatus-bydesign%5D%20-%5Bstatus-deferred%5D%20-%5Bstatus-norepro%5D%20-%5Bstatus-planned%5D%20closed:0&amp;submit=search&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=relevance&amp;q=%5Bfeature-request%5D%20-%5Bstatus-declined%5D%20-%5Bstatus-completed%5D%20-%5Bstatus-bydesign%5D%20-%5Bstatus-deferred%5D%20-%5Bstatus-norepro%5D%20closed:0&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFFqv.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12585" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5276" RevisionGUID="f6640325-eba7-48a3-b0c5-7739c6a265d5" CreationDate="2012-11-21T14:53:42.960" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="Manishearth's answer is (basically) the short version. Our core development team is ~7 people strong, and our design team is *literally* a single person. There's *lots* of projects, network-wide, that vie equally for their attention. Eight people handle *all* user feature requests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The longer answer is a bit more complicated. Since I'm talking to people involved in the SDLC, I'm a little astonished that you're not all a bit more sympathetic. After all, the network is 90+ sites, and we serve double-digit millions of users, and getting the project *right* from step one takes time and person-power we don't really have right now. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bugs and errors you point out, while important, aren't going to get top priority because there are other problems that affect the *entire* network that may require immediate attention (e.g. a site blackout) or are concentrating developer resources right now (e.g. the `/review` queue, or our localization efforts). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What explains such passiveness? Is it because Joel Spolsky and his team lost interest in Programmers.SE, like he repeatedly explains in his podcasts?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, let me clear about something: there is more to the Stack Exchange team than Joel or the dev team. For one, there's the team I'm on: your (hopefully beloved) [Community Managers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99338/who-are-the-community-managers-and-what-do-they-do). And, in fact, we even [hired on one of your moderators](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2875/41785) based on her work here. So, no, the *company* doesn't hate Programmers. Denying your community's complicated history would be foolish and short-sighted, and a great number of really *excellent* lessons were learned over the course of the last two years. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;passiveness&quot; you're referring to is entirely perceived; it's a symptom of the real issue, which is that our development team is overextended. Their time is an extremely precious, scarce resource. Not to put too fine a point on it: they're only human. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Who is (or is there somebody) in charge of implementing new features and fixing bugs on Programmers.SE?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Design bugs are usually handled by our always-wonderful, one-man design team of [Jin Yang](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1685/jin). Jin is literally *one single person* handling *all site design issues* across the network. Jin *also* does the design for our marketing initiatives, some of our advertising, helps us make fliers and small promo items, [puts together top user swag](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1669/41785) and a whole host of things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is there a better place than Meta to ask for new features and to report bugs?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No. Meta is exactly the correct place for you to be reporting these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look, I'm sympathetic. I really, really am. I've been [working on making features happen](http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/867/we-should-implement-magic-the-gathering-pop-ups-on-hover#comment1635_867) on some of our other sites for months now. The toughest is knowing that [doing a fun, exciting event](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5240/do-we-want-hats) would basically &quot;cost&quot; us a feature for a site. All decisions regarding dev allocations are made with great care and after a *lot* of deliberation. We don't just assign development time to things willy-nilly because ***we cannot do so***. It's *literally* a thing we can't do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're dissatisfied with our ability to meet our users' needs (and it does sound like you are) then you're in luck. Right now, [**we're hiring for a bunch of positions**](http://stackexchange.com/about/hiring), including developers. If you know someone who could/should be working for us, who loves our sites (yes, even Programmers!) and is a talented developer who is looking for a new challenge, ***tell them to apply!***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, for the mean time, I can only advise you sit tight and be patient. It's all on The List&lt;sup&gt;TM&lt;/sup&gt; and I'm confident we'll get to it. It just might take some time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12586" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5130" RevisionGUID="86ceb48e-dc27-4f65-ac2f-9cb4b632620b" CreationDate="2012-11-21T15:00:40.757" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12587" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1487" RevisionGUID="5b2c46b8-582c-46ef-9120-df30471004ee" CreationDate="2012-11-21T15:19:03.093" UserId="63" Comment="added screenshot " Text="While on SO, the hyperlinks are light blue and easy to distinguish from simple text, the hyperlinks on Programmers.SE appears visually as much darker, especially for visited links (due to their color).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Comparing text colors][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only do I have some pain to make the difference between visited links and text on my home PC, but with some screens in some working conditions, **it is completely impossible to find a visited link in a text**, and very hard to find non visited links.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to make those colors, especially the one used for visited links, lighter?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/R92EB.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12588" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5261" RevisionGUID="67067711-5c35-4b30-90f9-a278dcad68e3" CreationDate="2012-11-21T15:41:14.323" UserId="72769" Comment="Correct sp." Text="As suggested in the contact us page, I am posting this question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posed a question originally on Stack Overflow. I thought the question was appropriate for posting there, but it was ruled to be to be more appropriate for the Programmer area. So I posted the very same question in the Programmer area. Here is the direct [link][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was closed with no helpful information on what was wrong with the question or how I can improve it so that it is appropriate. Please help me to understand how it is not appropriate, how I can improve it, or what other resources I might look at.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176028/real-time-multi-user-gaming-platform" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12589" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2540" RevisionGUID="4ba3bb23-07ab-4888-bf92-f6a0902fd014" CreationDate="2012-11-21T16:45:41.417" UserId="1996" Comment="added 341 characters in body" Text="Building off of @Mark Trapp's answer [here][1], should P.SE moderators have to defend their seat?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, should we keep a limited number of moderators and force them to run for re-election periodically?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think it makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's why:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Imagine that we have eight people who are perfectly capable of performing their duties as P.SE moderator.&#xD;&#xA;- And we agree that we only need four moderators.&#xD;&#xA;- Why should we let four people serve as P.SE moderators indefinitely?&#xD;&#xA;- It seems like we should &lt;strike&gt;rotate and&lt;/strike&gt; infuse some fresh blood into the P.SE group of moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I'm less concerned about rotating.&#xD;&#xA; - Per @Mark Trapp's [answer][2], I'm more concerned about appointing the absolute **best** moderators to the position. [Thanks @Mark Trapp for the suggestion. ;)]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 2:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It's funny how things change in a year.&#xD;&#xA; - As I've said on numerous occasions, I think that the current crop of Programmers.SE mods is doing a fantastic job, and on a specific basis, I don't see any need for them to &quot;defend their seat&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - OTOH, this might be a decent idea for the Stackexchange network as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2536/when-are-the-next-moderator-elections-for-p-se/2537#2537&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2540/should-p-se-moderators-have-to-defend-their-seat/2541#2541" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12590" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2540" RevisionGUID="b44713f2-6189-4aa0-a1dc-c07bd072948d" CreationDate="2012-11-21T17:27:54.000" UserId="1996" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="Building off of @Mark Trapp's answer [here][1], should P.SE moderators have to defend their seat?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, should we keep a limited number of moderators and force them to run for re-election periodically?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think it makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's why:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Imagine that we have eight people who are perfectly capable of performing their duties as P.SE moderator.&#xD;&#xA;- And we agree that we only need four moderators.&#xD;&#xA;- Why should we let four people serve as P.SE moderators indefinitely?&#xD;&#xA;- It seems like we should &lt;strike&gt;rotate and&lt;/strike&gt; infuse some fresh blood into the P.SE group of moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I'm less concerned about rotating.&#xD;&#xA; - Per @Mark Trapp's [answer][2], I'm more concerned about appointing the absolute **best** moderators to the position. [Thanks @Mark Trapp for the suggestion. ;)]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 2:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It's funny how things change in a year.&#xD;&#xA; - As I've said on numerous occasions, I think that the current crop of Programmers.SE mods are doing a fantastic job, and on a specific basis, I don't see any need for them to &quot;defend their seat&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - OTOH, this might be a decent idea for the Stackexchange network as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2536/when-are-the-next-moderator-elections-for-p-se/2537#2537&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2540/should-p-se-moderators-have-to-defend-their-seat/2541#2541" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12591" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5278" RevisionGUID="2616aa0d-fe02-4461-b135-2ea7c3aee8ce" CreationDate="2012-11-22T11:29:43.997" UserId="73342" Text="I found no site in SE for micro-controller programming. The proposed site for [Embeded systems][1] is closed down due to lack of &quot;good response&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This being a programmers' site, it is the next logical place to ask. However I found too few questions on micro-controllers. So the question :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Are questions regarding micro-controller appropriate for this site?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/15961/embedded-system-design-and-development" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12592" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5278" RevisionGUID="2616aa0d-fe02-4461-b135-2ea7c3aee8ce" CreationDate="2012-11-22T11:29:43.997" UserId="73342" Text="Are questions regarding micro-controller appropriate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12593" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5278" RevisionGUID="2616aa0d-fe02-4461-b135-2ea7c3aee8ce" CreationDate="2012-11-22T11:29:43.997" UserId="73342" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12594" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5279" RevisionGUID="c645308d-f558-412e-911b-008cf96eb42c" CreationDate="2012-11-22T11:35:40.817" UserId="25936" Text="I think questions about micro-controllers would be more appropriate for [Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange][1] than Programmers, they have over [800 micro-controller questions][2], while we only have 1, [yours][3]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should read [their FAQ][4] thoroughly and browse the site for a while, and if you feel it's a better place for your question, I could migrate your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/microcontroller&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176798/how-to-use-keyword-sbit-in-microcontroller-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12595" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5279" RevisionGUID="d7db9d26-1722-449c-b952-4e0d10693544" CreationDate="2012-11-22T11:54:45.580" UserId="25936" Comment="added 117 characters in body" Text="I think questions about micro-controllers would be more appropriate for [Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange][1] than Programmers, they have over [800 micro-controller questions][2], while we only have 1, [yours][3]. Programmers is more focused on conceptual questions, technical questions about programming belong on Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should read [their FAQ][4] thoroughly and browse the site for a while, and if you feel it's a better place for your question, I could migrate your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/microcontroller&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176798/how-to-use-keyword-sbit-in-microcontroller-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12596" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5279" RevisionGUID="d5412a7a-6f11-438f-8aca-efa054853b1b" CreationDate="2012-11-22T12:02:37.317" UserId="25936" Comment="added 37 characters in body" Text="I think questions about micro-controllers would be more appropriate for [Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange][1] than Programmers, they have over [800 micro-controller questions][2], while we only have 1, [yours][3]. Also Programmers is more focused on conceptual questions, technical questions about programming (implementation issues, coding tools, etc) belong on Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should read [their FAQ][4] thoroughly and browse the site for a while, and if you feel it's a better place for your question, I could migrate it there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/microcontroller&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176798/how-to-use-keyword-sbit-in-microcontroller-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12597" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5280" RevisionGUID="7e37ffac-fb25-442f-afae-3c86b33078c0" CreationDate="2012-11-22T12:31:41.247" UserId="66808" Text="You seem to have provided a business spec and are asking for a technical spec, this is far too broad for SE. Programmers is for when you have a specific issue to do with the general architecture of your system or methodologies, ie if you wanted to know whether AWS or a dedicated server suited your use case more. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12598" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5132" RevisionGUID="f2351830-8107-4062-8fd1-4e6f50de2b90" CreationDate="2012-11-22T14:16:24.370" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12599" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5132" RevisionGUID="aeca9559-5b6e-4aa2-9871-b3a5d3b39dd5" CreationDate="2012-11-22T16:08:51.827" UserId="31260" Comment="added 3 characters in body; edited title" Text="Let me know if my question is too close of a duplicate with http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow but I really don't think it is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am asking about a very particular section of the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - **algorithm and data structure concepts**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow has directly in there FAQ also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - a specific programming problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - **a software algorithm**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand the question about the difference says Stack Overflow often has code where Programmers often does not. However in the scope of algorithm's, data structures, and design patterns, which are all on-topic in Stack Overflow with associated tags and all, there's frequently no code involved in SO for these particular topics because they address more generalized problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also the aforementioned question about differences says programmers often can have code in the questions, so whether code is there or not seems to be a false indicator of differentiating an answer from SO vs programmers as both sites are on-topic with code or without.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(why is tl;dr always at the end?) so to sum up my question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone delineate the distinction between when an algorithm/data structures/design patterns question belongs on SO vs when it belongs on Programmers? Should a note be made in the FAQ detailing this delineation? If no distinction can be made, should one of the sites have it removed or suggest people go to the other for that matter?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12600" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5132" RevisionGUID="aeca9559-5b6e-4aa2-9871-b3a5d3b39dd5" CreationDate="2012-11-22T16:08:51.827" UserId="31260" Comment="added 3 characters in body; edited title" Text="When do these questions belong on Programmers instead of Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12601" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5272" RevisionGUID="bccd91e3-6d52-4249-8226-28b3478b5c8e" CreationDate="2012-11-23T07:02:06.177" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/271871226807459840" />
  <row Id="12602" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5281" RevisionGUID="804f6ae5-c464-493d-8921-1d017dc279d2" CreationDate="2012-11-24T11:16:57.527" UserId="28329" Text="A while ago I flagged [this question][1] to be moved to the [Workplace beta][2], because it seems like a very good fit there, and it continues to get a lot of views. The flag was rejected because the question is too old. I don't think this is a good reason in this case, because, like I said, the question continuos to get a lot of views, and thus could be a great support for an upcoming StackExchange site. I realize that Programmers once had the problem of [old questions being migrated from Stackoverflow][3], but again, I think Workplace could benefit from this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, I could just ask the question again there, but wouldn't it also be good for Programmers to have the question moved away, so as not to confuse new users about the topic of this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess in the end this is a request to rethink the decision and maybe still move the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85339/how-to-describe-your-skill-levels-in-the-cv&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/820/is-programmers-se-suddenly-going-to-be-flooded-with-old-unwanted-two-year-old" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12603" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5281" RevisionGUID="804f6ae5-c464-493d-8921-1d017dc279d2" CreationDate="2012-11-24T11:16:57.527" UserId="28329" Text="Why is this question too old to be moved?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12604" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5281" RevisionGUID="804f6ae5-c464-493d-8921-1d017dc279d2" CreationDate="2012-11-24T11:16:57.527" UserId="28329" Text="|discussion|declined-flags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12605" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5282" RevisionGUID="689e95a0-38fb-484c-85f1-0305309bdc16" CreationDate="2012-11-24T11:17:54.983" UserId="25936" Text="[Migration for questions older than 60 days is disabled][1] (even for mods). It's not that we don't want to move it, we can't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel it's a good question for the Workplace, you should re-ask it there (but please search for existing duplicates first).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/151890/disable-migration-for-questions-older-than-60-days" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12606" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5281" RevisionGUID="ad8893cf-c5d5-4eaf-b52e-91822d9dbe82" CreationDate="2012-11-24T20:10:14.893" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|migration|declined-flags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12607" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5283" RevisionGUID="66c8c876-2481-486a-bf94-2edc940ac93f" CreationDate="2012-11-26T22:35:44.823" UserId="72594" Text="My question about [maintaining poorly written code base][1] got closed as being duplicate of [another question][2]. Those two questions are definitely not a duplicate as I'm looking for an answer to very specific situation (it is even highlighted) and not asking in general &quot;what to do?&quot; as other question does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if it would be duplicate I personally don't see a problem as long as there are users who would like to discuss it, as there always may be some new approach or an new idea about the same problem. It shouldn't be so easy to close a question with many answers at least number of user votes required to close given question should be higher than number of users who in any way participated in given question (created, commented or answered)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177058/how-do-i-maintain-a-really-poorly-written-code-base&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12608" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5283" RevisionGUID="66c8c876-2481-486a-bf94-2edc940ac93f" CreationDate="2012-11-26T22:35:44.823" UserId="72594" Text="Why this question got closed as a duplicate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12609" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5283" RevisionGUID="66c8c876-2481-486a-bf94-2edc940ac93f" CreationDate="2012-11-26T22:35:44.823" UserId="72594" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12610" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5284" RevisionGUID="41e31fab-f4f4-4baa-94e2-8bccb7bbc34e" CreationDate="2012-11-27T00:39:17.327" UserId="4" Text="Your question was closed by 5 users. In order for it to have been closed as a duplicate, the majority of the users must have agreed that it was. That's simply how voting on Stack Exchange sites work - 5 users with at least 3000 reputation on the site (or a single community-elected moderator) can close a question. On the other hand, 5 users (or a single moderator) can reverse that decision and vote to reopen the question if it happened wrongly. That's the way it works on every site on the network, and I highly doubt that will change - it seems to be working quite well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for your specific case, let's take it one step at a time:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, why do you not think it's a duplicate? One of our [guidelines for asking questions][1] is to search first. You don't reference any other question on our site about working with legacy code, and there are plenty. How do these existing questions not help you in your situation? You should address in your question that you've done your research and why things that you are finding are either confusing or inadequate for your situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Something to be careful of, though, is that if you are too specific, your question might be closed as too localized. If your question is so specific to your unique instance that the answers won't help other people, then the question is too specific. The purpose of this site (and every Stack Exchange site) is to capture knowledge that is useful to a given population (in our case, people developing software, often in a professional environment). Be sure to keep that in mind when reading through existing questions or other resources and when framing your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next, what is the smallest set of information that we need to address your concerns? Your question is rather lengthy, and I think some of your concerns get lost in the details. You mention specific technologies - are these really relevant? You mention specific platforms - are the specific platforms relevant or just the fact there are multiple platforms? There's really a lot to digest here, and a lot of it is extra information. Having extra information means more to wade through and people might miss the differences that separate your question from others if it's buried. Right now, it seems like it's a very common &quot;how do I deal with poorly designed and built legacy systems&quot; question, which is what it is closed as a duplicate of. Why is it not that question, but something different? It seems like there's a very particular aspect of this project you are concerned with, but it gets lost in the noise of everything else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, there are some comments. The details requested by the comments should be edited into the post. It's OK to respond in a comment as well, either with the information or to let the commenter know your post was updated. However, comments are second-class citizens. Make sure your question reflects all of the information that other people who want to share their knowledge need. It might also help to reformulate the question - the question you mention in the comments is very different than how the post reads.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the fact that your post has answers, it probably won't be reopened, even with an edit. We tend to not reopen posts that have been answered if the edits would invalidate existing answers. However, I'd encourage you to search the site and possibly reask. Maybe focus less on the details of the project and the technologies (except where necessary) and on the explicit question you ask in the comments - the feasibility of maintaining two databases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12611" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5285" RevisionGUID="67dbbe7c-0482-495e-b857-873edbce2460" CreationDate="2012-11-27T09:33:22.270" UserId="73646" Text="I recently posted a question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177190/supporting-and-testing-multiple-versions-of-a-software-library-in-a-maven-projec in which I included some XML code samples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tagged the samples as XML code:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- language: xml --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        &lt;foo&gt;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This hasn't worked and it looks like the Java highlighting is in effect. Is this an error on my part or a bug?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12612" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5285" RevisionGUID="67dbbe7c-0482-495e-b857-873edbce2460" CreationDate="2012-11-27T09:33:22.270" UserId="73646" Text="XML syntax highlighting not working despite explicit tagging" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12613" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5285" RevisionGUID="67dbbe7c-0482-495e-b857-873edbce2460" CreationDate="2012-11-27T09:33:22.270" UserId="73646" Text="|bug|syntax-highlighting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12614" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5285" RevisionGUID="e1d045e3-69bf-47f4-80d8-b9741237605c" CreationDate="2012-11-27T09:38:46.560" UserId="73646" Comment="added 292 characters in body" Text="I recently posted a question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177190/supporting-and-testing-multiple-versions-of-a-software-library-in-a-maven-projec in which I included some XML code samples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tagged the samples as XML code:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- language: xml --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        &lt;foo&gt;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This hasn't worked and it looks like the Java highlighting is in effect. Is this an error on my part or a bug?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to the [editing help](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/editing-help#syntax-highlighting), &quot;xml&quot; is a [supported language](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/63800/interface-options-for-specifying-language-prettify/81970#81970). It certainly works fine on StackOverflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12615" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5286" RevisionGUID="fc22a20c-19bd-4639-bf0f-ee5710c59921" CreationDate="2012-11-27T09:41:26.053" UserId="73634" Text="How the question &quot;[How to tell whether your programmers are under-performing][1]&quot; amasses 17 votes and counting.... but is now closed. The close reason is &quot;off topic&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you can see, this question provides a lot of value to the community, and programmers, managers and everyone alike really love this kind of question/answers that won't usually be found in blog posts, books and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the name of community interest, can the Programmers moderators be so kind as to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Reopen the question&#xD;&#xA; 2. And if you can't do this, move the question to an appropriate site, namely, [WorkPlace SE][2]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177167/how-to-tell-whether-your-programmers-are-under-performing&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12616" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5286" RevisionGUID="fc22a20c-19bd-4639-bf0f-ee5710c59921" CreationDate="2012-11-27T09:41:26.053" UserId="73634" Text="On &quot;How to tell whether your programmers are under-performing&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12617" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5286" RevisionGUID="fc22a20c-19bd-4639-bf0f-ee5710c59921" CreationDate="2012-11-27T09:41:26.053" UserId="73634" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12618" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5287" RevisionGUID="ca497a1c-ffb2-4505-8a2e-4b6e70324f35" CreationDate="2012-11-27T09:52:32.967" UserId="73646" Text="I would suggest that only option 2 is appropriate. It is very common on StackExchange sites for questions to be interesting to the users (and hence attract many up-votes) yet be inappropriate for the site in question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is very common on StackOverflow, for example, where many questions that are subjective and debate-provoking gain a lot of up-votes but are later closed or migrated to this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I were you, I'd flag the question and suggest it is migrated." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12619" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5287" RevisionGUID="c40ede1b-7778-4da5-b8c9-f05811b6539d" CreationDate="2012-11-27T10:00:54.943" UserId="73646" Comment="added 53 characters in body" Text="I would suggest that only option 2 is appropriate. It is very common on StackExchange sites for questions to be interesting to the users (and hence attract many up-votes) yet be inappropriate for the site in question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is very common on StackOverflow, for example, where many questions that are subjective and debate-provoking gain a lot of up-votes but are later closed or migrated to this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I were you, I'd flag the question (*flag &gt; it needs ♦ moderator attention &gt; other...*) and suggest it is migrated." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12620" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5288" RevisionGUID="7d65744d-a7e1-4d66-b359-1e80d9ad6354" CreationDate="2012-11-27T10:08:14.183" UserId="25936" Text="`&lt;!-- language: lang-xml --&gt;` is the correct syntax. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12621" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5285" RevisionGUID="0cd9d5b6-1ecf-4a90-9939-3931063a5930" CreationDate="2012-11-27T14:23:56.527" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|syntax-highlighting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12622" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5289" RevisionGUID="c2bc2246-48a9-4423-80e6-638b4bc95904" CreationDate="2012-11-27T17:35:31.657" UserId="54480" Text="Apparently, there are two duplicate(?) tags: [tag:c++11] and [tag:c++0x]. The only difference between the two is that [tag:c++0x] was the WIP name before [tag:c++11] was finalized (at the last few meetings)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12623" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5289" RevisionGUID="c2bc2246-48a9-4423-80e6-638b4bc95904" CreationDate="2012-11-27T17:35:31.657" UserId="54480" Text="C++ duplicate tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12624" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5289" RevisionGUID="c2bc2246-48a9-4423-80e6-638b4bc95904" CreationDate="2012-11-27T17:35:31.657" UserId="54480" Text="|discussion|feature-request|exact-duplicates|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12625" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5290" RevisionGUID="589d424f-d7ad-4a45-9eb7-c4e3f52cdd43" CreationDate="2012-11-27T17:52:55.407" UserId="54480" Text="I've noticed that there are various tags for C++, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c++]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c++03]&#xD;&#xA;* [c++0x &amp; c++11][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are tags for &quot;c--&quot;. Can we add some?&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;Links on C--:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Wikipedia][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Official Website][3] ([Archive][4])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5289/c-duplicate-tags&#xD;&#xA; [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C--&#xD;&#xA; [3]: http://www.cminusminus.org/&#xD;&#xA; [4]: http://web.archive.org/web/20080822062234/http://www.cminusminus.org/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12626" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5290" RevisionGUID="589d424f-d7ad-4a45-9eb7-c4e3f52cdd43" CreationDate="2012-11-27T17:52:55.407" UserId="54480" Text="Why no C-- tags?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12627" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5290" RevisionGUID="589d424f-d7ad-4a45-9eb7-c4e3f52cdd43" CreationDate="2012-11-27T17:52:55.407" UserId="54480" Text="|feature-request|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12628" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5289" RevisionGUID="0857aa57-3502-4b58-87f1-68c872abb658" CreationDate="2012-11-27T17:53:21.303" UserId="54480" Comment="Retag" Text="|discussion|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12629" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5291" RevisionGUID="2b914ac4-94b4-4907-a6dd-7b12cb6fb03b" CreationDate="2012-11-27T17:54:19.433" UserId="47" Text="Tags don't exist without a question (or several) for them to be attached to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is a question about &quot;c--&quot; then feel free to add the tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12630" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5290" RevisionGUID="2fde1500-4109-486d-bd1d-c28d18c24728" CreationDate="2012-11-27T18:00:23.813" UserId="54480" Comment="added 2 characters in body; added 48 characters in body" Text="I've noticed that there are various tags for C++, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c++]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c++03]&#xD;&#xA;* [c++0x &amp; c++11][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are tags for &quot;c--&quot;. Can we add some? I don't have enough reputation to create tags. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;Links on C--:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Wikipedia][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Official Website][3] ([Archive][4])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5289/c-duplicate-tags&#xD;&#xA; [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C--&#xD;&#xA; [3]: http://www.cminusminus.org/&#xD;&#xA; [4]: http://web.archive.org/web/20080822062234/http://www.cminusminus.org/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12631" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5292" RevisionGUID="6a85c307-d7ce-4d62-b72f-d6bec6010dd5" CreationDate="2012-11-27T18:30:53.240" UserId="175" Text="Can we make the following tags a synonym: TFS -&gt; Team Foundation Server" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12632" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5292" RevisionGUID="6a85c307-d7ce-4d62-b72f-d6bec6010dd5" CreationDate="2012-11-27T18:30:53.240" UserId="175" Text="Tag: Synonym TFS with Team Foundation Server" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12633" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5292" RevisionGUID="6a85c307-d7ce-4d62-b72f-d6bec6010dd5" CreationDate="2012-11-27T18:30:53.240" UserId="175" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12634" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5293" RevisionGUID="a47b3f53-399e-4e54-baca-688997d6e9dd" CreationDate="2012-11-27T20:05:10.780" UserId="41381" Text="[tag:Team-Foundation-Server] should be the base tag and [tag:TFS] should be mapped to it to be in line with other synonyms." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12635" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5292" RevisionGUID="fa436288-c1ca-4c58-8735-fa28eb6c3115" CreationDate="2012-11-27T20:06:15.087" UserId="41381" Comment="added 12 characters in body" Text="Can we make the following tags a synonym: [tag:TFS] -&gt; [tag:Team-Foundation-Server]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12636" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5294" RevisionGUID="e8b248a0-c440-4660-91cc-83158fbc91b4" CreationDate="2012-11-27T21:16:11.177" UserId="6617" Text="Apparently, C-- is not a language meant to be written by programmers directly, but rather an intermediary language that high-level-language compilers generate. Therefore, I doubt that anyone who is not working on compilers would ever have to ask a question about C--; that makes C-- a very narrow topic, possibly too narrow for this site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12637" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5289" RevisionGUID="26493e31-c222-45bc-8358-fc32aaba2ddf" CreationDate="2012-11-27T22:20:52.450" UserId="54480" Comment="Edit; added 217 characters in body" Text="Apparently, there are two duplicate(?) tags: [tag:c++11] and [tag:c++0x]. The only difference between the two is that [tag:c++0x] was the WIP name before [tag:c++11] was finalized (at the last few meetings).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For someone thinking this will be of more relevance on [Stack Overflow][1], the tag &quot;c++0x&quot; is already set as a duplicate of &quot;c++11&quot;. That is all I'm asking here. For a tag synonym.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; [1]: Apparently, there are two duplicate(?) tags: [tag:c++11] and [tag:c++0x]. The only difference between the two is that [tag:c++0x] was the WIP name before [tag:c++11] was finalized (at the last few meetings)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12638" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5289" RevisionGUID="26493e31-c222-45bc-8358-fc32aaba2ddf" CreationDate="2012-11-27T22:20:52.450" UserId="54480" Comment="Edit; added 217 characters in body" Text="C++ tag synonyms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12639" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5289" RevisionGUID="26493e31-c222-45bc-8358-fc32aaba2ddf" CreationDate="2012-11-27T22:20:52.450" UserId="54480" Comment="Edit; added 217 characters in body" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12640" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5289" RevisionGUID="554d158a-5c64-4ef1-8a9b-2c411a388635" CreationDate="2012-11-28T01:27:54.453" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12641" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5292" RevisionGUID="ba402c4a-bc63-4370-b9c7-c43a6edc9c00" CreationDate="2012-11-28T13:18:41.323" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12642" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5290" RevisionGUID="502bba6d-2741-4e6b-a2ec-f515801ed6a3" CreationDate="2012-11-28T15:08:10.553" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12643" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5292" RevisionGUID="4a1a4554-5925-416b-988d-67b81d015280" CreationDate="2012-11-28T15:08:45.983" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags; edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tags|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12644" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5295" RevisionGUID="9294d6a4-4119-4172-bbfd-c391a3ffe658" CreationDate="2012-11-28T23:22:50.817" UserId="935" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177448/about-to-graduate-from-good-school-without-any-progamming-skills&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question apparently received 5 close votes without a single comment explaining why it deserves to be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a very good question, and it's gotten some very good answers, and most important, it's from a new user who genuinely wants to learn and improve himself, which is the entire point of this site.  The last thing we want to do is scare people like that off by giving the impression that they and their questions are not welcome here.  Can we get this reopened please?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12645" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5295" RevisionGUID="9294d6a4-4119-4172-bbfd-c391a3ffe658" CreationDate="2012-11-28T23:22:50.817" UserId="935" Text="Why was this question closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12646" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5295" RevisionGUID="9294d6a4-4119-4172-bbfd-c391a3ffe658" CreationDate="2012-11-28T23:22:50.817" UserId="935" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12647" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5295" RevisionGUID="f071edab-35ae-433f-a4ab-f79075510851" CreationDate="2012-11-28T23:25:02.940" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12648" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5296" RevisionGUID="9af241d8-63a9-42ff-b173-6a1e5abe480b" CreationDate="2012-11-29T00:06:55.430" UserId="4" Text="It's off-topic, per the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explaining to people how to learn software development doesn't fall into any of the categories that are listed as on-topic. The things that are enumerated as on-topic are all about performing the work of software development, not learning how to perform the work of software development. Although I believe that a good software developer should be able to teach how he does his work to others, it falls out of the scope of what's listed as on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ also specifically mentions that questions about &quot;what language/technology you should learn next&quot; and &quot;what project you should do next&quot; and &quot;career advice&quot; do not belong here on Programmers. Explaining how to learn to program (or how to learn any aspect of software development) falls into all of these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the number of answers (9 in 20 hours - indications of lack of norming on an answer) and the fact that different people learn differently and there's no right or wrong ways to learn something, I'd also call this question not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My own personal opinion is that someone who is in the situation of the person asking the question (graduating from a &quot;good school&quot; with a &quot;high GPA&quot;) should know how to learn and study a topic (which would include reading questions here on Programmers and Stack Overflow) and ask specific, answerable questions that meet the guidelines of the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12649" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5297" RevisionGUID="00a2ca6e-b542-4d33-a857-5e39cd91e7d2" CreationDate="2012-11-29T10:12:18.073" UserId="9007" Text="In feb 2011 there was a broad wiki message&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;most-useful-free-net-libraries http://stackoverflow.com/questions/662956/most-useful-free-net-libraries &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;with many useful wiki entries ordered by category.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;why was this removed from Stack Overflow &quot;for reasons of moderation?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to put bring that page back again?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12650" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5297" RevisionGUID="00a2ca6e-b542-4d33-a857-5e39cd91e7d2" CreationDate="2012-11-29T10:12:18.073" UserId="9007" Text="Why was StackOverflow's most-useful-free-net-libraries was removed from Stack Overflow for reasons of moderation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12651" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5297" RevisionGUID="00a2ca6e-b542-4d33-a857-5e39cd91e7d2" CreationDate="2012-11-29T10:12:18.073" UserId="9007" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12652" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5298" RevisionGUID="5d1f26cc-3016-487b-aeab-5cadf3710e10" CreationDate="2012-11-29T10:18:37.463" UserId="47" Text="I don't know. Why don't you ask on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12653" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5298" RevisionGUID="44d0af58-b5aa-485a-8a13-28af03508057" CreationDate="2012-11-29T10:58:38.460" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="I don't know. Why don't you ask on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) as the question is on Stack Overflow **not** Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said there are a couple of questions referencing deleted content:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/61221/deleted-meta-questions-archive&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73455/popular-deleted-so-su-programmers-questions-list&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That may help you.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12654" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5297" RevisionGUID="995c5bb2-5b3d-49f3-ba94-a21cebb7c905" CreationDate="2012-11-29T15:52:19.740" UserId="25936" Comment="2" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:101,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Walter&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="12657" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5299" RevisionGUID="0065d866-fbfa-445e-a699-54a1943d465f" CreationDate="2012-11-30T16:00:39.940" UserId="8946" Text="[My question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177579/empirical-evidence-regarding-testability) was closed. Robert Harvey says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Questions asking for links to external resources are more or less off-topic throughout the Stack Exchange network. That's what search engines are for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Reference request&quot; is the third most popular tag on cstheory.SE&#xD;&#xA;* It's is one of the 20 most popular tags on math.SE with over 2,000 questions&#xD;&#xA;* 114 questions for &quot;reference&quot; on stats.SE&#xD;&#xA;* Indeed, with the exception of SO itself all of the *.SE I regularly visit have a popular &quot;reference request&quot; tag&#xD;&#xA;* Even on this site itself, 23 questions have been asked with the &quot;reference&quot; tag, only two of which were closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are questions for which answers not backed by empirical data are fine. But if I want to see a peer-reviewed study instead of someone's personal experience, why is that off topic for this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note there are related questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5130/are-literature-requests-inherently-off-topic-or-not-constructive&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It strikes me that those deal with broad things like &quot;give me a book about C&quot; whereas I'm asking for support of a very specific hypothesis (the relationship between testability and stability)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12658" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5299" RevisionGUID="0065d866-fbfa-445e-a699-54a1943d465f" CreationDate="2012-11-30T16:00:39.940" UserId="8946" Text="Why are &quot;reference request&quot; questions off topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12659" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5299" RevisionGUID="0065d866-fbfa-445e-a699-54a1943d465f" CreationDate="2012-11-30T16:00:39.940" UserId="8946" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12660" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5299" RevisionGUID="1ab23b87-58f2-4f18-8a0e-d485d9c74419" CreationDate="2012-11-30T16:33:43.467" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12661" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5300" RevisionGUID="8f3bd4bf-961e-4bde-9f96-397d9bad11a1" CreationDate="2012-11-30T17:45:23.347" UserId="4" Text="The first thing to consider is that within the (usually) broad guidelines, the communities of Stack Exchange sites have some ability to define what is acceptable for their community. On a couple of occasions, the community of Programmers has decided that simply asking for resources is not a suitable question for the site. Just because other sites allow for reference requests or resource requests does that mean every site has to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two driving factors against allowing resource requests:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [FAQ][1] states that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close reason for Not Constructive states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that simply ask for resources are not about solving a problem nor do they allow for answers to be supported by facts or expertise that requires human thought to produce. Searching through libraries or databases for documents is something best done by a search engine, not for a question on a Stack Exchange site. Questions should require some kind of human thought, experiences, or expertise in addition to being able to be backed up by a specific situation or reputable resource.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12662" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5300" RevisionGUID="d4a11bd9-faf0-4c35-ac24-904e3c056464" CreationDate="2012-11-30T17:51:18.590" UserId="4" Comment="added 625 characters in body" Text="The first thing to consider is that within the (usually) broad guidelines, the communities of Stack Exchange sites have some ability to define what is acceptable for their community. On a couple of occasions, the community of Programmers has decided that simply asking for resources is not a suitable question for the site. Just because other sites allow for reference requests or resource requests does that mean every site has to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two driving factors against allowing resource requests:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [FAQ][1] states that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close reason for Not Constructive states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that simply ask for resources are not about solving a problem nor do they allow for answers to be supported by facts or expertise that requires human thought to produce. Searching through libraries or databases for documents is something best done by a search engine, not for a question on a Stack Exchange site. Questions should require some kind of human thought, experiences, or expertise in addition to being able to be backed up by a specific situation or reputable resource.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For your specific question, it seems fairly self-evident that it's true. Especially considering that you say that it's an assertion made in several papers. If no citation is provided, that generally means it's considered to be [common knowledge][2]. Of course testable code is going to be more stable - testability is often related to the ability of developers to understand the code as well as be able to write tests. Even if no tests are written, code that is easy to understand can be read and problems seen and fixed quickly, making the system more stable. I highly doubt you'll find this studied because it is evident to anyone with any experience in software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12663" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5281" RevisionGUID="db9a53d0-bf4d-423d-85a1-14b5b8782b9c" CreationDate="2012-11-30T22:02:08.820" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/274634444504190978" />
  <row Id="12664" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5301" RevisionGUID="a04a79c1-7a61-4616-b60d-f2063db1d138" CreationDate="2012-12-05T07:07:55.987" UserId="58544" Text="I asked the following questions in Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1- [Determining an application's dependencies][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2- [Drag and drop feature for a website][2] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I did not get any down-votes, still I am banned from posting more questions in Programmers. Are these questions the enough reason for this ban?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155960/determining-an-applications-dependencies/155965#155965&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156115/drag-and-drop-fearture-for-a-website/156117#156117" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12665" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5301" RevisionGUID="a04a79c1-7a61-4616-b60d-f2063db1d138" CreationDate="2012-12-05T07:07:55.987" UserId="58544" Text="Banned from posting in Programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12666" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5301" RevisionGUID="a04a79c1-7a61-4616-b60d-f2063db1d138" CreationDate="2012-12-05T07:07:55.987" UserId="58544" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12667" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5301" RevisionGUID="ac41920d-ae79-45a7-8165-5bc33a46de0e" CreationDate="2012-12-05T07:11:00.310" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12668" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5302" RevisionGUID="9e5f9346-9d71-4bb4-a94f-021ef782a9fe" CreationDate="2012-12-05T07:17:45.467" UserId="25936" Text="The ban is automatic, there's little (if anything) we can do to help, you should (carefully) read and follow the advice given in [What can I do when getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that deleted questions _do_ factor in the post ban, and you have three of them (10K+ links): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Finding no. of search results in google using programming](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162412/finding-no-of-search-results-in-google-using-programming) (-2)&#xD;&#xA;- [Key concerns when developing online forums](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155995/key-concerns-when-developing-online-forums) (-2)&#xD;&#xA;- [Programming knowledge and Architecture knowledge for great products](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155993/programming-knowledge-and-architecture-knowledge-for-great-products) (self-deleted a minute after it was posted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first one is the one that _probably_ triggered the ban, as it's your most recent question. I can't see any way of improving any of the three, unfortunately, and undeleting them might get you more downvotes.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12669" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5301" RevisionGUID="f3118e8e-0cd9-4596-95d2-853a0402878b" CreationDate="2012-12-05T07:20:08.013" UserId="25936" Comment="Your links were to answers in your questions, not to the questions themselves" Text="I asked the following questions in Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1- [Determining an application's dependencies][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2- [Drag and drop feature for a website][2] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I did not get any down-votes, still I am banned from posting more questions in Programmers. Are these questions the enough reason for this ban?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155960/determining-an-applications-dependencies&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156115/drag-and-drop-fearture-for-a-website" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12670" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5302" RevisionGUID="afd5f31e-6a49-463a-bd9a-7cab338edf26" CreationDate="2012-12-05T07:41:01.570" UserId="25936" Comment="added 346 characters in body" Text="The ban is automatic, there's little (if anything) we can do to help, you should (carefully) read and follow the advice given in [What can I do when getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that deleted questions _do_ factor in the post ban, and you have three of them (10K+ links): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Finding no. of search results in google using programming](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162412/finding-no-of-search-results-in-google-using-programming) (-2)&#xD;&#xA;- [Key concerns when developing online forums](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155995/key-concerns-when-developing-online-forums) (-2)&#xD;&#xA;- [Programming knowledge and Architecture knowledge for great products](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155993/programming-knowledge-and-architecture-knowledge-for-great-products) (self-deleted a minute after it was posted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first one is the one that _probably_ triggered the ban, as it's your most recent question. I can't see any way of improving any of the three, unfortunately, and undeleting them might get you more downvotes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should concentrate on giving _great_ answers to other's questions, although the exact algorithm of the question ban is kept secret, great answers will certainly help. But please don't just rush to post answers, only answer questions that are well within your expertise and you can provide very thorough and well researched answers to. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12671" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5302" RevisionGUID="ce2957bd-d24c-4abf-bf28-1226fc5c96cc" CreationDate="2012-12-05T11:00:44.130" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body" Text="The ban is automatic, there's little (if anything) we can do to help, you should (carefully) read and follow the advice given in [What can I do when getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that deleted questions _do_ factor in the post ban, and you have three of them (10K+ links): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Finding no. of search results in google using programming](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162412/finding-no-of-search-results-in-google-using-programming) (-2)&#xD;&#xA;- [Key concerns when developing online forums](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155995/key-concerns-when-developing-online-forums) (-2)&#xD;&#xA;- [Programming knowledge and Architecture knowledge for great products](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155993/programming-knowledge-and-architecture-knowledge-for-great-products) (self-deleted a minute after it was posted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first one is the one that _probably_ triggered the ban, as it's your most recent question. I can't see any way of improving any of the three, unfortunately, and undeleting them might get you more downvotes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should concentrate on giving _great_ answers to others' questions, although the exact algorithm of the question ban is kept secret, great answers will certainly help. But please don't just rush to post answers, only answer questions that are well within your expertise and you can provide very thorough and well researched answers to. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12672" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5302" RevisionGUID="f4f27c0a-b0f3-41f1-a53b-167bd67c3c74" CreationDate="2012-12-05T11:43:07.077" UserId="31260" Comment="10K += http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;what's this&quot;" Text="The ban is automatic, there's little (if anything) we can do to help, you should (carefully) read and follow the advice given in [What can I do when getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that deleted questions _do_ factor in the post ban, and you have three of them ([10K+](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;what's this&quot;) links): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Finding no. of search results in google using programming](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162412/finding-no-of-search-results-in-google-using-programming) (-2)&#xD;&#xA;- [Key concerns when developing online forums](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155995/key-concerns-when-developing-online-forums) (-2)&#xD;&#xA;- [Programming knowledge and Architecture knowledge for great products](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155993/programming-knowledge-and-architecture-knowledge-for-great-products) (self-deleted a minute after it was posted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first one is the one that _probably_ triggered the ban, as it's your most recent question. I can't see any way of improving any of the three, unfortunately, and undeleting them might get you more downvotes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should concentrate on giving _great_ answers to others' questions, although the exact algorithm of the question ban is kept secret, great answers will certainly help. But please don't just rush to post answers, only answer questions that are well within your expertise and you can provide very thorough and well researched answers to. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12673" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5303" RevisionGUID="49ed3793-180c-4bbf-bc84-622c271bc5b3" CreationDate="2012-12-05T17:49:36.267" UserId="35276" Text="Just curious, this question turned into a community wiki mighty fast and doesn't have the up votes or activity I typically see with community wikis&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178411/was-c-usability-tested-before-it-was-released" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12674" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5303" RevisionGUID="49ed3793-180c-4bbf-bc84-622c271bc5b3" CreationDate="2012-12-05T17:49:36.267" UserId="35276" Text="How did this turn into a community wiki?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12675" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5303" RevisionGUID="49ed3793-180c-4bbf-bc84-622c271bc5b3" CreationDate="2012-12-05T17:49:36.267" UserId="35276" Text="|discussion|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12676" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5304" RevisionGUID="e833fd94-7a51-4302-84a4-5bb4735fb6f2" CreationDate="2012-12-05T17:55:52.500" UserId="4" Text="The person who asked the question (and also provided both answers so far) individually made their answers into community wiki. It wasn't an automatic conversion - the question is not CW and any new answers won't be CW either." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12677" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5305" RevisionGUID="ba922aaa-edbf-458c-8df3-d726ba1f81ec" CreationDate="2012-12-05T18:13:04.117" UserId="57262" Text="Posted this question a few days ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178307/has-any-programming-language-been-usability-tested&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Despite getting some **really interesting answers** it was closed based on the scope being too large.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I deciceded to take good chunk of the previous answers, narrow the scope and ask again:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178411/was-c-usability-tested-before-it-was-released&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please help me ask better questions, and let me know what I'm doing wrong here.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12678" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5305" RevisionGUID="ba922aaa-edbf-458c-8df3-d726ba1f81ec" CreationDate="2012-12-05T18:13:04.117" UserId="57262" Text="How to ask this question, so it is not downvoted or closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12679" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5305" RevisionGUID="ba922aaa-edbf-458c-8df3-d726ba1f81ec" CreationDate="2012-12-05T18:13:04.117" UserId="57262" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12680" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5306" RevisionGUID="b7460a30-7c09-4f6c-8aa1-e895b15d7d57" CreationDate="2012-12-05T18:36:28.827" UserId="4" Text="I'm not sure why your [first question][1] was closed. Your answer is even an example of a good answer - it cites a language that is an example of one that has undergone usability testing and what they found by doing the studies. Other good answers might have identified other languages that had undergone usability testing, if any existed, and would point to what was learned (or what couldn't be learned) in that process, or resources about conducting usability testing on a new language.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point, you probably should have came to Meta to find out why your question was closed instead of posting a new question. Rather than taking shots in the dark at improving your question (and risking a second closure and down votes - two things that go into the triggering of the automatic question ban), finding out exactly what was wrong and trying to fix the question is preferred.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for your [second question][2], it has a few of its own problems. The question itself answers part of the questions asked. It's evident from the quotation in the body of the question that C# was indeed usability tested, which is the title question. The parts of the language that were tested and the results of those tests (or, at least some of them) were also identified in that quotation. It's not really clear what else you're looking for. Also, although self-answering is allowed, posting multiple answers to one question isn't recommended - answers should address the entire question and be relatively complete (for example, not listing one feature or test per answer, like it appeared you started to do).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you aren't sure if a question is good, you can also ask about how to best ask it here on Meta or [in our chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178307/has-any-programming-language-been-usability-tested&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178411/was-c-usability-tested-before-it-was-released" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12681" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5305" RevisionGUID="f3e65289-e173-451a-8d96-101e9d86d955" CreationDate="2012-12-05T18:51:41.543" UserId="57262" Comment="spelling" Text="Posted this question a few days ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178307/has-any-programming-language-been-usability-tested&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Despite getting some **really interesting answers** it was closed based on the scope being too large.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I decided to take good chunk of the previous answers, narrow the scope and ask again:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178411/was-c-usability-tested-before-it-was-released&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please help me ask better questions, and let me know what I'm doing wrong here.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12682" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5305" RevisionGUID="0bc52821-5511-4f28-ac8e-a05102d85296" CreationDate="2012-12-05T19:18:46.333" UserId="57262" Comment="update" Text="Posted this question a few days ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178307/has-any-programming-language-been-usability-tested&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Despite getting some **really interesting answers** it was closed based on the scope being too large.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I decided to take good chunk of the previous answers, narrow the scope and ask again:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178411/was-c-usability-tested-before-it-was-released&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please help me ask better questions, and let me know what I'm doing wrong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question was edited and re-opened. I've deleted the second question as it was overlapping too much.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12683" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5305" RevisionGUID="077579ed-b7a6-451a-8723-4fe6d3e483a5" CreationDate="2012-12-06T04:27:39.603" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12684" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5307" RevisionGUID="20ba5980-0ee4-449a-9c96-e82dd26d7528" CreationDate="2012-12-06T13:28:20.343" UserId="68797" Text="My question [here][1] was almost immediately closed. I can see why. However I feel like there is still a well-formed question lurking in here somewhere, and it seems like if I could get to it this would be useful for both myself and others as which tool you use here is a potentially consequential issue in software engineering workflow and methodology. Can I get some advice on how I could I have made this a productive question? Or is my question ultimately always going to be a forum-discussion type of topic that won't work here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178517/lesser-known-github-features-that-im-missing-out-on-with-bitbucket" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12685" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5307" RevisionGUID="20ba5980-0ee4-449a-9c96-e82dd26d7528" CreationDate="2012-12-06T13:28:20.343" UserId="68797" Text="Advice on making this closed question productive?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12686" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5307" RevisionGUID="20ba5980-0ee4-449a-9c96-e82dd26d7528" CreationDate="2012-12-06T13:28:20.343" UserId="68797" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12687" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5307" RevisionGUID="ab7e40ac-e045-4ac4-bfac-91ac50c3e8a6" CreationDate="2012-12-06T13:44:42.980" UserId="68797" Comment="added note" Text="My question [here][1] was almost immediately closed. I can see why. However I feel like there is still a well-formed question lurking in here somewhere, and it seems like if I could get to it this would be useful for both myself and others as which tool you use here is a potentially consequential issue in software engineering workflow and methodology. Can I get some advice on how I could I have made this a productive question? Or is my question ultimately always going to be a forum-discussion type of topic that won't work here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: Looking at the comments on the question, I wonder I couched the question too much about me and &quot;I&quot;, which naturally made it overly subjective. What if I'd said &quot;It's well-known that the key differences of Bitbucket are a different pricing model favorable to small teams and support for Mercurial; what are the the most important lower-level features that differentiate Github and Bitbucket from a software development workflow and efficiency point of view?&quot; or something like that? Would that bring it into the realm of productive questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178517/lesser-known-github-features-that-im-missing-out-on-with-bitbucket" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12688" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5307" RevisionGUID="e16dee6c-cbc4-4e27-ba08-c760355a0a32" CreationDate="2012-12-06T14:13:17.073" UserId="68797" Comment="made title more specific" Text="Advice on making this closed question on Github vs. Bitbucket productive?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12689" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5308" RevisionGUID="b371d80f-f5ba-4e1d-b7e5-548a80b8300a" CreationDate="2012-12-06T15:23:45.753" UserId="25936" Text="It's a _very_ interesting question, but it lacks what essentially separates Programmers (and Stack Exchange in general) from traditional discussion forums: *An actual problem looking for a solution.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This, unfortunately, is not something we can overlook, it's a policy [engraved in all Stack Exchange FAQs](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) and (at least for the techonology / science sites of the network) is what keeps us all hooked, we are problem solvers by nature. You are asking us for a direct comparison of two services, without giving us any parameters that will help us decide what a good answer might be, and that's bad:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Voting, our way of measuring quality, fails.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Every feature that Github has and Bitbucket doesn't is a valid answer to your question, but you've given us no way to tell which feature (or limited set of features) would be the one you actually need, and the one that will make you switch to Github. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  People will end up upvoting their _favourite_ feature, and that _not_ always the more helpful feature. Questions like yours tend to turn to popularity questions more often than not, and [popularity isn't what the site's about](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **There's a huge potential that _most_ answers, even great ones, will be a waste of time.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  As a moderator, I've had my fair share of... not so pleasent experiences on Stack Exchange. However my _most_ unpleasent moments thus far is when I've spent about half an hour of my (limited free) time to write a thorough answer only to find out that the asker was looking for something else entirely. Don't get me wrong, the couple of times this happened, I got a ton of upvotes, but I couldn't care less about what essentially is an integer on a database somewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  In the case of your question this translates to an answerer writing an extensive answer about &quot;hidden but awesome feature foo&quot;, only for you to come back and say something along the lines of &quot;hm, nice, but bitbucket has equally awesome feature bar that better fits my workflow&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **It _must_ end somewhere**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Lacking well defined parameters means that your question also lack limits. And although we are not looking for the One True Answer To All The Things&amp;#0153; as Stack Overflow does, we do prefer questions with a finite and somewhat limited set of answers. There's nothing in your question, as currently phrased, to stop answers appearing ad nauseum. Every time Github releases a new feature, it's a valid answer to your question&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two blog posts that describe in some detail our general approach to subjective questions, [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) and its followup, [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/). The last sentence of the latter stands out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; real questions have *answers*, not *items* or *ideas* or *opinions*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for your question to become a real one, we need you to present us with a (somewhat) specific software development problem. It could be anything really, a workflow you are using but feels crude due to some Bitbucket limitation, a workflow you would like to use but can't because it's not supported, anything. But it has to be a problem, something we can feel a tiny bit proud about when (if?) we help solve. It can be trivial, or overly complex, it doesn't matter, just don't ask us to go to Github's documentation and just copy paste features from it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, I'm seeing there are material-if-not-overwhelming differences, e.g. Github's appealing and useful branches page versus Bitbucket's overly simple branch drop-down list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is on the right track, but not there yet, we just need a bit more of it. But this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This makes me wonder: what else am I missing out on? What are the lesser known Github features that folks like me using Bitbucket to save money are missing out on?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;should go away completely. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm afraid that's all I got at this point, hope it helps. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; A hypothetical example.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Certainly Bitbucket may already have the feature, but chances are they've implemented it in a slightly different way, and that, unfortunately, is all a fanboy/girl needs to write an extensive thesis on Github's superiority.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12690" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5309" RevisionGUID="ea379640-ba97-4042-a261-ec908dd30179" CreationDate="2012-12-06T15:29:06.277" UserId="39190" Text="I am having trouble getting to grips with Programmers despite having had good success on SO. My questions here keep getting closed. By my reading of the FAQ, my questions are good and on topic but I'm starting to realise that there are also some unwritten rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, from the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ..&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why is this question, about software licensing, closed as off topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178510/my-new-anti-patent-bsd-based-license-necessary-and-effective&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a well scoped question that is answerable. OK, it might not be easy to answer but I've asked plenty on SO that just sit unanswered because no-one knows the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question to meta: does the FAQ represent the full reality of this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12691" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5309" RevisionGUID="ea379640-ba97-4042-a261-ec908dd30179" CreationDate="2012-12-06T15:29:06.277" UserId="39190" Text="Does FAQ represent reality of this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12692" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5309" RevisionGUID="ea379640-ba97-4042-a261-ec908dd30179" CreationDate="2012-12-06T15:29:06.277" UserId="39190" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12693" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5308" RevisionGUID="09c91011-2c71-4370-bb62-4b6e07a2f517" CreationDate="2012-12-06T15:42:08.490" UserId="25936" Comment="added 77 characters in body" Text="It's a _very_ interesting question, but it lacks what essentially separates Programmers (and Stack Exchange in general) from traditional discussion forums: *An actual problem looking for a solution.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This, unfortunately, is not something we can overlook, it's a policy [engraved in all Stack Exchange FAQs](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) and (at least for the techonology / science sites of the network) is what keeps us all hooked, we are problem solvers by nature. You are asking us for a direct comparison of two services, without giving us any parameters that will help us decide what a good answer might be, and that's bad:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Voting, our way of measuring quality, fails.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Every feature that Github has and Bitbucket doesn't is a valid answer to your question, but you've given us no way to tell which feature (or limited set of features) would be the one you actually need, and the one that will make you switch to Github. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  People will end up upvoting their _favourite_ feature, and that _not_ always the more helpful feature. Questions like yours tend to turn to popularity questions more often than not, and [popularity isn't what the site's about](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **There's a huge potential that _most_ answers, even great ones, will be a waste of time.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  As a moderator, I've had my fair share of... not so pleasent experiences on Stack Exchange. However my _most_ unpleasent moments thus far is when I've spent about half an hour of my (limited free) time to write a thorough answer only to find out that the asker was looking for something else entirely. Don't get me wrong, the couple of times this happened, I got a ton of upvotes, but I couldn't care less about what essentially is an integer on a database somewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  In the case of your question this translates to an answerer writing an extensive answer about &quot;hidden but awesome feature foo&quot;, only for you to come back and say something along the lines of &quot;hm, nice, but bitbucket has equally awesome feature bar that better fits my workflow&quot; or &quot;hm, it's awesome, but it's not really something I'll ever use&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **It _must_ end somewhere**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Lacking well defined parameters means that your question also lack limits. And although we are not looking for the One True Answer To All The Things&amp;#0153; as Stack Overflow does, we do prefer questions with a finite and somewhat limited set of answers. There's nothing in your question, as currently phrased, to stop answers appearing ad nauseum. Every time Github releases a new feature, it's a valid answer to your question&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two blog posts that describe in some detail our general approach to subjective questions, [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) and its followup, [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/). The last sentence of the latter stands out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; real questions have *answers*, not *items* or *ideas* or *opinions*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for your question to become a real one, we need you to present us with a (somewhat) specific software development problem. It could be anything really, a workflow you are using but feels crude due to some Bitbucket limitation, a workflow you would like to use but can't because it's not supported, anything. But it has to be a problem, something we can feel a tiny bit proud about when (if?) we help solve. It can be trivial, or overly complex, it doesn't matter, just don't ask us to go to Github's documentation and just copy paste features from it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, I'm seeing there are material-if-not-overwhelming differences, e.g. Github's appealing and useful branches page versus Bitbucket's overly simple branch drop-down list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is on the right track, but not there yet, we just need a bit more of it. But this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This makes me wonder: what else am I missing out on? What are the lesser known Github features that folks like me using Bitbucket to save money are missing out on?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;should go away completely. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm afraid that's all I got at this point, hope it helps. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Hypothetical examples, of course.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Certainly Bitbucket may already have the feature, but chances are they've implemented it in a slightly different way, and that, unfortunately, is all a fanboy/girl needs to write an extensive thesis on Github's superiority.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12694" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5310" RevisionGUID="1449124c-313f-4445-9baa-08a9b3eca1bb" CreationDate="2012-12-06T15:44:47.150" UserId="4" Text="I think that there are some problems with the FAQ, some things that are ambiguous, some examples being a need for more precise definitions for &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; and &quot;software engineering&quot; in the list of on-topic. However, this is just nitpicking over a few phrases. Generally, the FAQ makes it very clear what's on-topic, at least for an initial pass of a question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The target audience of this site is a professional in the field of software development - programmer, tester, project manager, software team leader, architect, process improvement specialist, and so on. In order to be on-topic, questions are expected to draw on some combination of the education and experiences that these types of people would typically have. The rest of the on-topic definition provides examples of things that are on-topic or off-topic, and if there is a suitable site for another topic, what that site is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question does fall into one of the buckets that is considered on-topic here, specifically software licensing. However, what you're asking for is beyond the experiences of professionals in software development. It's well within scope for people in this profession to need to understand the various software licenses and how they impact the use of a project under that license. It's also well within scope to understand how to choose a software license that meets particular needs, of one exists. However, the creation of a new software license (especially one that is valid and would hold up) is generally beyond the scope of the experiences and education of software professionals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best rule of thumb would be to ask what type of experience or education you would need to answer a question. If you need the specific education and experience of a software developer, it passes that check and it might be on-topic (assuming it's a constructive question that doesn't fall into the &quot;do not ask&quot; category)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12695" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5309" RevisionGUID="90d79475-ac68-453d-9fb3-d7b371e3c06a" CreationDate="2012-12-06T16:34:07.040" UserId="35414" Comment="edited title" Text="Does the FAQ represent reality of this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12696" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5311" RevisionGUID="7c9fb82e-66cc-4216-8912-5dc284746584" CreationDate="2012-12-06T18:14:37.290" UserId="35276" Text="Yes, the FAQ absolutely represents the reality of the site.&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It however does not represent the *whole* reality of the site.&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ gives broad statements about black and white obvious things, but the reality of the site has a *lot* of grey(*gray? I can never remember..*) area between those black and white statements which are not well detailed in the FAQ. The only way to learn how those gray areas play out is through participation in the site. Your question landed in the enormous grey(*I'll just switch back and forth so I'm sometimes right*) area and the community has decided to draw the border just on the other side of your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My suggestion is to do your best to divine the spirit of the FAQ from what it says and then before posting questions to avoid running into a question ban, try and find any similar (not necessarily same) questions to see if they've been closed or why etc." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12697" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5307" RevisionGUID="d478dd1f-7323-4b45-9218-faf2ec1c7fbf" CreationDate="2012-12-06T19:02:15.197" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/276763498728542208" />
  <row Id="12698" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5311" RevisionGUID="35c2c044-f611-45cf-9e77-5a5e99fd0606" CreationDate="2012-12-06T21:55:10.453" UserId="25476" Comment="Removed the header text, it reads like yelling :)" Text="Yes, the FAQ absolutely represents the reality of the site.  It however does not represent the *whole* reality of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ gives broad statements about black and white obvious things, but the reality of the site has a *lot* of grey(*gray? I can never remember..*) area between those black and white statements which are not well detailed in the FAQ. The only way to learn how those gray areas play out is through participation in the site. Your question landed in the enormous grey(*I'll just switch back and forth so I'm sometimes right*) area and the community has decided to draw the border just on the other side of your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My suggestion is to do your best to divine the spirit of the FAQ from what it says and then before posting questions to avoid running into a question ban, try and find any similar (not necessarily same) questions to see if they've been closed or why etc." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12699" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="5312" RevisionGUID="3a2f01b8-1330-46dc-8744-4e95f04c49a6" CreationDate="2012-12-07T02:39:09.883" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178589/can-questions-be-reopened-after-theyve-been-closed-by-some-self-appointed-gesta" Text="" />
  <row Id="12700" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5312" RevisionGUID="dc1b5b1c-6be9-47d3-afc5-22530b72ec6d" CreationDate="2012-12-07T02:17:47.173" UserId="74531" Text="This is obviously begging to be shut down right away and have all my privileges revoked or whatever but why do some people feel they have the right to shut down legitimate discussion? Who decides what is a &quot;real&quot; question or topic of interest? If you don't think it's valid, just click somewhere else but it is really getting to me on this site and StackOverflow how many really useful questions are shut down because people are asking opinions not textbook facts. Questions like &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25812/whats-wrong-with-erlang&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; are genuinely useful. Don't shut them down. You are making this site less useful for everyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do people get their kicks by just wandering around the site closing questions? It seems many of the same names appear on the &quot;closed down&quot; box. Just go to a different page, don't ruin everyone else's education the way they choose it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12701" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5312" RevisionGUID="dc1b5b1c-6be9-47d3-afc5-22530b72ec6d" CreationDate="2012-12-07T02:17:47.173" UserId="74531" Text="Can Questions be Reopened After They've Been Closed by Some Self Appointed Gestapo Moderators?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12702" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5312" RevisionGUID="dc1b5b1c-6be9-47d3-afc5-22530b72ec6d" CreationDate="2012-12-07T02:17:47.173" UserId="74531" Text="|discussion|websites|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12703" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5313" RevisionGUID="b101376b-83ed-4582-a74e-1c3c8fc286c6" CreationDate="2012-12-07T02:48:00.053" UserId="1204" Text="Let get the most important point out of the way first, and it is this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##You can still benefit from the information on the closed post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's right; the question, and all eight answers that were posted to it, are still there, information waiting to be consumed by anyone who wants to read it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that that's out of the way...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Stack Exchange is not a discussion forum&#xD;&#xA;While we sometimes entertain questions that provoke discussion for awhile, the primary purpose of the Stack Exchange format is not to promote discussion; it is to get high-quality answers to your questions, and to *provide a high-quality repository for others having similar questions.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To make this possible, we have to sacrifice certain things that other forum environments have.  Take a close look at those forum environments.  On reflection, have you ever found *any* of them really useful to you at all?  Can you count on the fingers of one hand the times when posting to a forum really gave you a timely, meaningful answer to your problem?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently, I googled *&quot;Ford Taurus 2005 won't start when hot.&quot;*  Do you know how many matches there are?  About four hundred thousand.  Do you know how many of those matches actually impart useful information?  Exactly zero.  Well, zero in the first two dozen matches anyway.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why is this?  Because those matches go to forums, where dozens of people have posted the same question over and over again, and hundreds of people have posted countless useless answers to that question, including &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;I have the same problem, any idea?&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;Mine starts but I have this other&#xD;&#xA;   problem.&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;Mine always starts, I don't know&#xD;&#xA;   what your problem is.&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;Mine only starts at Disneyland.&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - [&quot;I like turtles.&quot;][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is a known solution to a known problem.  The question and answer format is carefully crafted to encourage the posting of high-quality material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The forum environment is exactly the opposite.  It is a vast wasteland of suck, promising everything, delivering nothing.  It is the Sahara desert, where you walk towards an oasis because you are dying of thirst, but it is just a mirage, and there's no water there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMNry4PE93Y  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12704" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5314" RevisionGUID="316450bf-fb05-476a-8066-c5d5a9820382" CreationDate="2012-12-07T02:51:12.040" UserId="51654" Text="&gt; Can Questions be Reopened After They've Been Closed by Some Self Appointed Gestapo Moderators?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Certainly. At 3000 reputation, people can vote to reopen a question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, 3000 is also the level that Gestapo Moderators can vote to close the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Who decides what is a &quot;real&quot; question or topic of interest?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions like this one are genuinely useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Enh. Questions like that one cannot be answered; just debated. This being the internet, debates devolve into flame wars quickly. So while I don't necessarily agree with that level of closure on the Erlang sort of question, I understand it. And I don't disagree strongly enough to vote to re-open." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12705" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5315" RevisionGUID="0a1e631d-7b17-4fe3-ad54-eef3fccf71f1" CreationDate="2012-12-07T02:53:10.517" UserId="25476" Text="Yes questions can be reopened and are reopened all the time.  The act of closing a question is not a permanent thing, it is simply temporarily halting any further answers until the question can be improved to meet the guidelines of the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We generally discourage questions that promote or encourage an unusually large amount of discussion or that can have wildly different opinions on the matter.  Asking what *What feature of Erlang makes it hard to use?* is simply going to attract a lot of noise and isn't going to leave anybody walking away with a definitive answer in their mind.  We strive to promote quality over discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not to say that discussions and community are not important here.  We encourage users to engage in the [Chat Rooms](http://chat.stackexchange.com/) to work out issues and to just unload or have fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you posted would be great on Reddit, but not so much here.  There is nothing wrong with Reddit's format, it is just not what we are about." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12706" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5316" RevisionGUID="461f1a6e-c086-4ee0-9591-bb7da21a284b" CreationDate="2012-12-07T02:53:30.953" UserId="24028" Text="First answer to this is easy - More often than not the moderators are not doing the closing, the community is. It requires 5 votes to get the question closed, so at least 5 people think the question has a problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next comes from what this site is not - as indicated by @meager, it is a QA site, not an open ended discussion forum. The specific question you referred to, although valid and interesting, fails a number tests required to be valid for this site. It is likely to lead to discussion, the answer could be written into a book, and is promoting answers based on opinion rather than fact. In additional to this, the question itself shows a complete lack of research into the topic - 5 minutes on Google will give about 95% of the answer requested.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I admit to using the &quot;Close&quot; vote freely - after all, my vote cannot close a question on it's own. If I am the only one then the question remains open.  I do not do this for &quot;kicks&quot;, I do this to help maintain the quality of the questions, and therefore the qaulity of the site. If you want to know what happens without this level of active filtering, have a look at sites like &quot;ask.com&quot; to a question like &quot;How to fix my car&quot; - is that what you really want from this site? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12707" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5317" RevisionGUID="86688691-0ee2-4060-ae22-716729f4a027" CreationDate="2012-12-07T02:56:35.997" UserId="4" Text="Discussions should be closed as they fit the definition of not constructive. Not only is it mentioned [explicitly in the FAQ][1], but there's [an entire blog post on the Stack Exchange blog about it][2]. If you want to have a discussion with other users, we do have a [chat room][3] - all Stack Exchange sites tend to have at least one for the site. However, you need 20 reputation points to use an existing chat room and 100 reputation points to create your own chat rooms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that closing questions, especially before they have answers, is a very good thing. It allows the author, and other users with the edit permissions, to make it a good, high quality question that meets all of the guidelines. If a question is too broad or too vague, closing it prevents bad or even incorrect answers and users can still comment, prompting for more information or guiding the user asking the question into providing everything that is needed in order to help solve the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think that there's a question that was closed and shouldn't have been, ask about it on Meta. If you think you can fix the question, suggest edits. If you see a bad question, vote to close it or flag it so it can be handled before a bad question gets bad answers and work with the user to improve the question so it is helpful to everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also like to point out that [rudeness is not tolerated on Stack Exchange sites][4] and may lead to the suspension of your account. Calling the community elected moderators of a site &quot;Gestapo Moderators&quot; is good way to get off on the wrong foot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#etiquette" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12708" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5313" RevisionGUID="e26b37d7-ed3b-48e1-834f-f5bb1a18eb6d" CreationDate="2012-12-07T03:03:15.167" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="Let's get the most important point out of the way first, and it is this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##You can still benefit from the information on the closed post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's right; the question, and all eight answers that were posted to it, are still there, information waiting to be consumed by anyone who wants to read it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that that's out of the way...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Stack Exchange is not a discussion forum&#xD;&#xA;While we sometimes entertain questions that provoke discussion for awhile, the primary purpose of the Stack Exchange format is not to promote discussion; it is to get high-quality answers to your questions, and to *provide a high-quality repository for others having similar questions.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To make this possible, we have to sacrifice certain things that other forum environments have.  Take a close look at those forum environments.  On reflection, have you ever found *any* of them really useful to you at all?  Can you count on the fingers of one hand the times when posting to a forum really gave you a timely, meaningful answer to your problem?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently, I googled *&quot;Ford Taurus 2005 won't start when hot.&quot;*  Do you know how many matches there are?  About four hundred thousand.  Do you know how many of those matches actually impart useful information?  Exactly zero.  Well, zero in the first two dozen matches anyway.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why is this?  Because those matches go to forums, where dozens of people have posted the same question over and over again, and hundreds of people have posted countless useless answers to that question, including &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;I have the same problem, any idea?&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;Mine starts but I have this other&#xD;&#xA;   problem.&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;Mine always starts, I don't know&#xD;&#xA;   what your problem is.&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;Mine only starts at Disneyland.&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - [&quot;I like turtles.&quot;][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is a known solution to a known problem.  The question and answer format is carefully crafted to encourage the posting of high-quality material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The forum environment is exactly the opposite.  It is a vast wasteland of suck, promising everything, delivering nothing.  It is the Sahara desert, where you walk towards an oasis because you are dying of thirst, but it is just a mirage, and there's no water there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMNry4PE93Y  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12709" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5312" RevisionGUID="347223c3-8a16-46ee-8ca4-604eb6df172f" CreationDate="2012-12-07T04:20:45.237" UserId="25936" Comment="edited title" Text="Can Questions be Reopened After They've Been Closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12710" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5312" RevisionGUID="7f03f917-d786-43bb-9ec3-2493e6404d35" CreationDate="2012-12-07T08:22:12.167" UserId="31260" Comment="deleted 6 characters in body" Text="This is obviously begging to be shut down right away and have all my privileges revoked or whatever but why do some people feel they have the right to shut down legitimate discussion? Who decides what is a &quot;real&quot; question or topic of interest? If you don't think it's valid, just click somewhere else but it is really getting to me on this site and Stack Overflow how many really useful questions are shut down because people are asking opinions not textbook facts. Questions like **[this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25812/whats-wrong-with-erlang)** are genuinely useful. Don't shut them down. You are making this site less useful for everyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do people get their kicks by just wandering around the site closing questions? It seems many of the same names appear on the &quot;closed down&quot; box. Just go to a different page, don't ruin everyone else's education the way they choose it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12711" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5312" RevisionGUID="fb3c623e-60eb-4174-a80e-267e7787e20e" CreationDate="2012-12-07T09:38:20.220" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|questions|voting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12712" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5318" RevisionGUID="263c219c-bb7a-4758-963a-50d946063def" CreationDate="2012-12-07T13:52:26.000" UserId="23606" Text="I really do not understand how a practical and very real question regarding use of one of the commonest text editors used by programmers be off topic on a programmers Q&amp;A forum?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Battling Emacs Pinky?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178621/battling-emacs-pinky" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12713" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5318" RevisionGUID="263c219c-bb7a-4758-963a-50d946063def" CreationDate="2012-12-07T13:52:26.000" UserId="23606" Text="Sorry for Posting Yet Another Why Was this Question Closed Post?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12714" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5318" RevisionGUID="263c219c-bb7a-4758-963a-50d946063def" CreationDate="2012-12-07T13:52:26.000" UserId="23606" Text="|discussion|support|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12715" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5319" RevisionGUID="552e4c6a-45a7-4281-830f-61851f80a4bd" CreationDate="2012-12-07T15:12:17.080" UserId="1130" Text="I'll probably get downvoted for this, but **No I don't think our FAQ represents the full reality of the site**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some of my reasons why I think that: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It defines on-topic based on the subject matter of the question only, while I feel our on-topic definition should also specify the type of answer required since the topic (conceptual software development) is so broad, and parts of it are off-topic for the site based on the type of answer they need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Existing proposal: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3318/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* There is no clarification about how Programmers differs from StackOverflow in the FAQ. This is one of the most frequently asked questions about Programmers, and I think having something in there would help reduce the number of code help questions we get that should be asked on SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Existing proposal: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1838/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Because of the number of broad recommendation requests we get, I would like to see something specifically stating that broad recommendation questions are off-topic, and a link to a meta post explaining why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Existing proposal: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3547/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I find the first FAQ line very misleading when combined with the current site name and design. It is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA; &gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA; &gt; about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I think it's too easy to mistakenly think this line is saying the site is &quot;for professional programmers [who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development]&quot;, instead of a site &quot;for getting expert answers to conceptual questions about software development by professional programmers&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Existing proposal: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3500/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know our FAQ covers a lot, and you might find some parts of the puzzle hidden in the wall of text somewhere, however I think it's missing some key pieces clarifying what types of questions are allowed here, and it could definitely use an update to make it shorter and easier to read/understand.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12717" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5320" RevisionGUID="57831734-3893-4922-8c6f-20384b5d4050" CreationDate="2012-12-09T01:26:35.883" UserId="12611" Text="Stack Exchange sites solve a problem that other platforms don't. They're not discussion forums; instead, they're highly targeted, laser-focused questions and answers sites. Programmers SE is about solving whiteboard problems in software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As gnat says, the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) defines the list of topics that [Programmers SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) supports as well as topics that are explicitly off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question about how to use keyboards on different computers is not unique to the programming profession. Anyone who owns both a Mac and a PC may very well face this problem; thus, it's not a good fit for a site about whiteboard problems in software development. It doesn't make it a bad question; it just means it's not a good fit for *this* SE site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There may be a site for your question, but it's not here. Please see the [List of Stack Exchange sites](http://stackexchange.com/sites) and the various FAQs to see if any would welcome questions about keyboards. I'd suggest starting with [Super User's FAQ](http://superuser.com/faq) first. Hope this helps!&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12718" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5321" RevisionGUID="e743edaa-2840-47f9-99da-92d56bd4a021" CreationDate="2012-12-09T18:18:45.757" UserId="43651" Text="Since I spend most of my time on Stack Overflow and MSO, I'm already know my question is off topic on SO.  Since I don't spend nearly as much time on this site, I wanted to ask about whether a question was on-topic or not before actually asking it.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am researching/designing a personal project that is going to involve a Windows Service (which I have zero experience with), and I am looking for feedback as to whether my design approach (which is not much more than block diagram at this point) is the best solution, or if there is a better way to approach it? It is definitely subjective, but I think it still would have a correct answer, and I'm pretty sure it meets the [Good Subjective][1] criteria&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is on-topic, but potentially a borderline question, are there any suggestions on what I should include to ensure it stays on topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12719" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5321" RevisionGUID="e743edaa-2840-47f9-99da-92d56bd4a021" CreationDate="2012-12-09T18:18:45.757" UserId="43651" Text="Questions about design approach and technologies" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12720" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5321" RevisionGUID="e743edaa-2840-47f9-99da-92d56bd4a021" CreationDate="2012-12-09T18:18:45.757" UserId="43651" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12721" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5322" RevisionGUID="419de92f-71e9-41bf-83fd-eff568b53443" CreationDate="2012-12-09T18:20:39.703" UserId="47" Text="Asking for a critique of your design should be OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As should asking for help with specific aspects of the design you are stuck with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same rules on asking specific, answerable questions apply here as they do on Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12722" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5309" RevisionGUID="def26007-decf-412f-bb32-a4e6f7932b7b" CreationDate="2012-12-09T22:02:15.460" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/277895963207675905" />
  <row Id="12723" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5321" RevisionGUID="bbd1e19b-1435-4825-a68b-869ce146f74f" CreationDate="2012-12-10T10:02:15.317" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/278077156591026176" />
  <row Id="12724" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5323" RevisionGUID="7d694260-5acc-42b5-92c2-cddd7256ac38" CreationDate="2012-12-10T14:54:16.097" UserId="33171" Text="As it is December 2012, we are now going to reset our Community Promotion Ads for the new year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What are Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA; - cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA; - anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we reset the ads every year?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be **220 x 250 pixels**&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently **6**) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ads/display/5323" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12725" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5323" RevisionGUID="7d694260-5acc-42b5-92c2-cddd7256ac38" CreationDate="2012-12-10T14:54:16.097" UserId="33171" Text="Community Promotion Ads - 2013" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12726" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5323" RevisionGUID="7d694260-5acc-42b5-92c2-cddd7256ac38" CreationDate="2012-12-10T14:54:16.097" UserId="33171" Text="|discussion|community-ads|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12727" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5323" RevisionGUID="7d694260-5acc-42b5-92c2-cddd7256ac38" CreationDate="2012-12-10T14:54:16.097" UserId="33171" />
  <row Id="12728" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2635" RevisionGUID="93f40478-2573-4598-93a2-bf88e1f1b065" CreationDate="2012-12-10T14:54:38.153" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Community Promotion Ads - 2013](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5323/community-promotion-ads-2013)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;### What in the Wide, Wide World of Sports is Going On Here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;TL;DR -- put images and links in the answers. If they get voted up enough, they will appear on the main site as community promotion ads.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### But whyyyyyyy?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA;- cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA;- anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. And to click on it for great justice!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unlike the Open Source ads on Meta Stack Overflow, there is no requirement for the Programmers Community Ads to be a coding project of your own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be **220 x 250 pixels**&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ads/display/2635" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12729" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2635" RevisionGUID="fa5b8271-1599-4212-b9a1-f7ef97e997f8" CreationDate="2012-12-10T14:54:38.153" UserId="33171" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[5323],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:33171,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Grace Note&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="12730" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5324" RevisionGUID="bf93bc98-4216-4742-b4e8-c55e9f2a119a" CreationDate="2012-12-10T14:56:24.473" UserId="33171" Text="[![Follow us on Twitter!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://twitter.com/#!/stackprogrammer&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/yYx5g.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12731" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5324" RevisionGUID="ba61d8d4-4214-4eb4-8f67-abe8ab5a133a" CreationDate="2012-12-10T14:56:24.473" UserId="33171" />
  <row Id="12732" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5325" RevisionGUID="522e864f-8fb3-4449-a624-6af82c8990c8" CreationDate="2012-12-10T19:08:10.913" UserId="19033" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178787) has some controversy over whether it belongs on P.SE, so I posted a comment yesterday pointing out that the FAQ says &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; are on-topic. Someone upvoted that comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today, the comment is gone. In fact, there is at least one other comment I distinctly remember that is also no longer there. These comments could not have reasonably been considered offensive. Where did they go?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12733" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5325" RevisionGUID="522e864f-8fb3-4449-a624-6af82c8990c8" CreationDate="2012-12-10T19:08:10.913" UserId="19033" Text="Where did my comment go?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12734" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5325" RevisionGUID="522e864f-8fb3-4449-a624-6af82c8990c8" CreationDate="2012-12-10T19:08:10.913" UserId="19033" Text="|discussion|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12735" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5326" RevisionGUID="4e8bacb2-2adf-4970-a435-5aef09d203ab" CreationDate="2012-12-10T19:12:12.980" UserId="4" Text="I cleaned up comments that were wrong or chatty on that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although freelancing and business concerns are indeed on-topic, there's also a section in the FAQ that says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Programmers Audience][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The concept of NDAs apply equally to other professions, making your comment incorrect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments on Stack Exchange sites are second-class citizens. Unless you are rude or offensive, having a comment deleted is nothing to worry about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, if there's a concern about a question, the best place to take it isn't the comments, but to Meta or [our chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12736" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5325" RevisionGUID="0cc98f33-9296-4a80-98f1-f684cb948e1f" CreationDate="2012-12-10T19:14:17.907" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderation|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12737" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5327" RevisionGUID="72c492f0-79ad-4b6f-b66f-b30510f9b8cc" CreationDate="2012-12-10T19:27:39.097" UserId="19033" Text="There is some controversy about [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178787). There have been multiple questions about non-disclosure agreements. A quick look at [the tag](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/non-disclosure-agreement) shows that many of them are open, even though just as many of them are not specific to software development, a requirement [recently clarified and enforced](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3412).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there can be little doubt that non-disclosure agreements are extremely relevant to programmers, and there is currently no other place to ask such questions on StackExchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should P.SE allow, in general, questions about NDA that apply to programmers, even non-exclusively? If not, what should P.SE do to make it clear to people reading grandfathered-in questions about NDAs that the same question, asked today, would be considered off-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12738" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5327" RevisionGUID="72c492f0-79ad-4b6f-b66f-b30510f9b8cc" CreationDate="2012-12-10T19:27:39.097" UserId="19033" Text="Are general NDA questions on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12739" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5327" RevisionGUID="72c492f0-79ad-4b6f-b66f-b30510f9b8cc" CreationDate="2012-12-10T19:27:39.097" UserId="19033" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12740" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5328" RevisionGUID="70f9dca0-ca47-4893-92a5-0d0286a0338c" CreationDate="2012-12-10T19:40:16.287" UserId="4" Text="No, questions that are not unique to software development or require the perspective of a professional in the software development community do not belong on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per our FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Programmers Audience][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that do not apply unique to professional software developers nor require knowledge or skills that are unique to those working in the software development profession are off-topic here. Non-disclosure agreements do not require the knowledge, experience, or expertise of professionals working in software development and are therefore off-topic for our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Older questions that are still open do not mean that it is OK to ask similar questions. If they are old enough, have enough interest, and have valuable answers, it might be OK to historically lock them. This lock prevents all editing or voting and indicates that the question is no longer a good example of an on-topic question, but contains information useful to our community. Other questions should be closed to properly reflect the scope of our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of the reason why old questions may not have been closed is that the community never voted to close them and no one flagged them for moderator review. The review queues are a recent addition to help solve some of these problems and make questions with close votes more visible to users who can handle them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that some questions may not have a home on the Stack Exchange network at this point in time. A lack of a better place does not mean the question can be asked anywhere and remain open. A Stack Exchange site is supposed to draw on a community of experts, in our case, experts about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12741" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5328" RevisionGUID="0ef86b28-178a-4a86-884f-b640c231db0a" CreationDate="2012-12-10T20:26:57.517" UserId="4" Comment="added 402 characters in body" Text="No, questions that are not unique to software development or require the perspective of a professional in the software development community do not belong on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per our FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Programmers Audience][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that do not apply unique to professional software developers nor require knowledge or skills that are unique to those working in the software development profession are off-topic here. Non-disclosure agreements do not require the knowledge, experience, or expertise of professionals working in software development and are therefore off-topic for our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At one point, this question was flagged for possible migration to The Workplace. We pinged their moderators, who [brought it up for discussion in their site chat][2]. The Workplace tends to not accept questions that are legal-oriented, and the moderators did not accept the migration request. Therefore, it remained here and closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Older questions that are still open do not mean that it is OK to ask similar questions. If they are old enough, have enough interest, and have valuable answers, it might be OK to historically lock them. This lock prevents all editing or voting and indicates that the question is no longer a good example of an on-topic question, but contains information useful to our community. Other questions should be closed to properly reflect the scope of our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of the reason why old questions may not have been closed is that the community never voted to close them and no one flagged them for moderator review. The review queues are a recent addition to help solve some of these problems and make questions with close votes more visible to users who can handle them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that some questions may not have a home on the Stack Exchange network at this point in time. A lack of a better place does not mean the question can be asked anywhere and remain open. A Stack Exchange site is supposed to draw on a community of experts, in our case, experts about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/3060?m=7194154" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12742" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5324" RevisionGUID="615567f2-25a7-4ed0-a998-8e97ac4e84ce" CreationDate="2012-12-10T20:34:45.757" UserId="2406" Comment="Twitter no longer uses those hashbangs: they just redirect" Text="[![Follow us on Twitter!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://twitter.com/stackprogrammer&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/yYx5g.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12743" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5329" RevisionGUID="498467d2-68cc-4515-8498-d3bb17555be9" CreationDate="2012-12-10T23:50:59.793" UserId="19033" Text="I'm happy that the community decided to reopen a question I asked on P.SE that had previously been closed, but I notice now that there are starting to be close votes again. Will there be a pitched battle? How long can this go back and forth?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12744" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5329" RevisionGUID="498467d2-68cc-4515-8498-d3bb17555be9" CreationDate="2012-12-10T23:50:59.793" UserId="19033" Text="How many times can a question be closed and reopened?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12745" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5329" RevisionGUID="498467d2-68cc-4515-8498-d3bb17555be9" CreationDate="2012-12-10T23:50:59.793" UserId="19033" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12746" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5330" RevisionGUID="24a7028f-e724-4316-8d9a-012528947d53" CreationDate="2012-12-10T23:54:56.377" UserId="47" Text="It can go on for as long as there are people with over 3,000 reputation who haven't used their votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On any given question you are allowed to vote once to close and once to reopen. After that you can't vote any more. So any particular user can't vote to close (or reopen) your question twice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Diamond moderators can vote any number of times.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps you should be looking at the question to see why it's attracting close votes and edit it so that it's a better fit for the site. That way, once reopened, it stays open and a valuable resource on the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12752" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5332" RevisionGUID="f76d248b-732e-41fd-9b9e-ea972fa282a1" CreationDate="2012-12-11T15:28:51.510" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Just for giggles, here's a quick summary of the number of users with more than 3,000 reputation.  I used the [leagues](http://stackexchange.com/leagues/52/year/programmers) as my source for these numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Total Rep* 	Users  &#xD;&#xA;25,000+ 	13  &#xD;&#xA;10,000+ 	73  &#xD;&#xA;5,000+  	184  &#xD;&#xA;3,000+  	315  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know how to / don't have access to &quot;active&quot; user counts to refine those numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [question's revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/178787/revisions), a total of 10 users have voted to close and 5 have voted to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the &quot;battle&quot; could wage for quite a while." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12753" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5323" RevisionGUID="17b0ad17-03e3-4750-8222-ea5c8c5db91d" CreationDate="2012-12-11T22:02:15.893" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/278620739589005312" />
  <row Id="12754" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5333" RevisionGUID="6840abae-7646-4705-935f-aa07f495e483" CreationDate="2012-12-12T00:42:00.283" UserId="4" Text="I've locked the question in question. It was closed once by 5 community users, reopened by 5 community users, and closed a second time by 5 community users - all of this without any moderator intervention. It's being discussed [in this Meta question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5327/are-general-nda-questions-on-topic), and so far no one has provided an answer to suggest that such questions are on topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12755" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5334" RevisionGUID="f4b25c65-99ad-406e-aed2-7c152b944112" CreationDate="2012-12-12T01:57:54.230" UserId="19256" Text="I'm becoming frustrated at questions being closed due to being &quot;off-topic&quot; where they are clearly on topic. Two recent questions have been closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Please recommend a patterns book for iOS development][1]: I got two decent answers and wanted more on the topic. As stated in my question body there are many books that teach the language, and how to write interfaces, but very little on actual patterns and practices for solving common design scenarios. So why is this off topic? Some may say that one books is better than another, however I don't really care. I'm looking for professional advice so I can go out and apply patterns within the books that I find best to me.&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the convention for the star location in reference variables?][2]: Two decent answers with good reasons either way, if I didn't ask this question I would be less informed and still not know what is the best. Again, this I can choose to do what I like, as long as I stay consistent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if these are subjective, where do we ask these types of questions? If we get valuable answers what's the harm? I don't ask these types of questions on [stackoverflow][3] and ask on [p.se][4] instead as the FAQ clearly states that subjective questions are allowed within reason. I believe that both of these questions meet the &quot;within reason&quot; criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178989/please-recommend-a-patterns-book-for-ios-development&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176260/what-is-the-convention-for-the-star-location-in-reference-variables&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12756" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5334" RevisionGUID="f4b25c65-99ad-406e-aed2-7c152b944112" CreationDate="2012-12-12T01:57:54.230" UserId="19256" Text="I am finding that questions which are in context are being close due to &quot;off-topic&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12757" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5334" RevisionGUID="f4b25c65-99ad-406e-aed2-7c152b944112" CreationDate="2012-12-12T01:57:54.230" UserId="19256" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12758" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5335" RevisionGUID="7825941c-a22f-4efb-a952-996e3587af9b" CreationDate="2012-12-12T02:26:16.553" UserId="4" Text="Just for the record, of the two questions you linked to, one was closed by 5 community members and the second was closed by a moderator in response to a user's flag on the post. Both were closed for the reason of &quot;not constructive&quot;, which is defined not only in the [FAQ's first three questions][1], but also two blog posts on the Stack Exchange blog - [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][2] and [Real Questions Have Answers][3] - which are also linked to in the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [first question, about iOS development][4], is a reference request. Generally, reference requests do not make good questions for Stack Exchange sites. As [previously discussed on Meta][5], the community is in favor of questions that are about solving a particular problem. The Stack Exchange format isn't good for generating lists of resources, but it's meant as a platform that requires humans to synthesize knowledge and experience combined with links to reputable resources to support that knowledge or experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although that question probably isn't salvageable, there are good questions in there about techniques for separation of concerns or the creation of a service model for domain objects using the Objective-C language on the iOS platform. Instead of asking for books about those subjects, the recommended approach would be to search through existing questions, then ask specific questions about your problem. Instead of getting a list of books, you'll get people's expertise and knowledge, along with links to various books, articles, blogs, documents, and so on that are appropriate for the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [second question, about reference variables][6], will likely begin a debate or extended discussion. One of the criteria for a good question on any Stack Exchange site is that it helps you solve some problem. Although there are some objective problems related to style and choosing a style, this particular question is just polling for opinions on which selection is better. Once you start getting into the realm of personal preferences and opinions, the question is no longer a good fit for the question and answer format of a Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178989/please-recommend-a-patterns-book-for-ios-development&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176260/what-is-the-convention-for-the-star-location-in-reference-variables" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12759" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5334" RevisionGUID="fc9430b6-112b-4df2-908e-3a7b03b7a63e" CreationDate="2012-12-12T13:06:18.933" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12760" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5336" RevisionGUID="6cbc35ef-519b-4b24-a09a-02ad270b5ba6" CreationDate="2012-12-12T14:47:05.720" UserId="1130" Text="Yes, I think your question should be on-topic here because it falls under &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot;, which is on-topic per our FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key factor that I think makes it suitable for this site is that it is **specifically seeking an answer from a professional programmer**. If you were seeking legal advice I would say it's off-topic, but you appear to be seeking an answer from a programmer, not an answer from a lawyer, which I think makes it a valid &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [graphic][1] Thomas references from our FAQ was created to [help define what makes an on-topic career question][2], and was not meant to be applied to all questions. I'm not sure when that got changed in the FAQ, however your question definitely does not apply to &quot;all careers&quot; or even &quot;most careers&quot;. In fact, I doubt it applies to &quot;all programmers&quot; either, however I would say it applies to more than &quot;Just You&quot;, so you're safe from being &quot;too-localized&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The one thing I would possibly do to your question is edit it to make it seek a specific answer instead of asking for opinions. Your question is currently summarized by your final line of &quot;Is my request reasonable, or am I just introducing unnecessary complexity?&quot;, and I'd rather see this ask for an answer requiring the specific expertise of programmers instead of just seeking opinions from programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way of doing that would be rephrase your summary question as your opinion first, and then ask for how you can convey your request for a share in the project in a way that wouldn't ruin your relationship with them. I think client-relations are very much a part of software development, and are OK here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I not sure if my request is reasonable or not, but don't want to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; introduce unnecessary complexity into our project. How can I politely&#xD;&#xA;&gt; convey the fact that I don't want to sign a NDA with them unless&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they're willing to start compensating me for my work in some way?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, you might want to explain exactly what &quot;pro bono&quot; means, as I didn't know its exact definition until I looked it up. I think knowing you were doing the work for free because it's for the &quot;public good&quot; prior to an investor coming on board makes a big difference. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2145/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12761" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5336" RevisionGUID="15ca8e99-c2af-4f7b-9e8f-3ddad06e4846" CreationDate="2012-12-12T19:07:36.970" UserId="1130" Comment="want to be clear that it is the question topic combined with the type of answer needed that make this on-topic, not just one or the other" Text="Yes, I think your question should be on-topic here because it falls under &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot;, which is on-topic per our FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key factor that I think makes this &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; question suitable for the site is that it is specifically seeking an answer from a professional programmer. If it were seeking legal advice I would say it's off-topic, but it appears to be seeking an answer from a programmer, not an answer from a lawyer, which I think makes it a valid &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [graphic][1] Thomas references from our FAQ was created to [help define what makes an on-topic career question][2], and was not meant to be applied to all questions. I'm not sure when that got changed in the FAQ, however your question definitely does not apply to &quot;all careers&quot; or even &quot;most careers&quot;. In fact, I doubt it applies to &quot;all programmers&quot; either, however I would say it applies to more than &quot;Just You&quot;, so you're safe from being &quot;too-localized&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2145/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12762" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5337" RevisionGUID="ee036f09-0420-4981-b845-a8b98d574651" CreationDate="2012-12-13T01:38:03.450" UserId="4099" Text="I just noticed that an old answer of mine has had a LOT of recent upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See for yourself: [What made object oriented programming successful?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/16196/4099)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I happen to think it's a good answer - and I'm not objecting to the additional rep - but 26 upvotes in just one day **smells**. I'm just not active enough to hit the 200 rep limit on any given day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, could someone with sufficient rep (a moderator?) have a look to see what's going on? Love it to be legit, but (currently) inclined to believe it is not." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12763" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5337" RevisionGUID="ee036f09-0420-4981-b845-a8b98d574651" CreationDate="2012-12-13T01:38:03.450" UserId="4099" Text="Is this voting pattern legit?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12764" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5337" RevisionGUID="ee036f09-0420-4981-b845-a8b98d574651" CreationDate="2012-12-13T01:38:03.450" UserId="4099" Text="|support|voting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12765" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5338" RevisionGUID="7e8d1a0a-fd5a-452a-9732-46c81af4d763" CreationDate="2012-12-13T01:45:00.480" UserId="25476" Text="I think you are seeing the normal ebb and flow of Programmers.  Typically when a question is searched for on Google, Programmers ends up somewhere on the first page if the question has been asked before here.  This person will sometimes bump the question with an answer, comment, vote, or an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/179163/25476&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following answer was given about 11 hours ago from now so it looks like this user bumped it.  When this happens it makes its way to the home page for a while, which shows all recent activity on the site.  This will sometimes give it considerably more attention and then you see additional answers, comments, then finally 4 hours ago a 5th close vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in other words it looks perfectly normal to me :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12766" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5339" RevisionGUID="d6a4a3fc-031a-42cf-a149-1178d8513233" CreationDate="2012-12-13T01:45:42.980" UserId="25936" Text="It might be an old answer, but the whole thread was bumped to the front page thrice today, as three new answers were posted. This new round of attention also lead to the question getting closed, the new answers are... not exactly what we're looking for and I suspect protecting the question from receiving further sub par answers did go through the close voters' minds.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12767" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5339" RevisionGUID="10921ed6-9211-4513-865e-2fefcdfa3797" CreationDate="2012-12-13T01:53:14.407" UserId="25936" Comment="added 449 characters in body" Text="It might be an old answer, but the whole thread was bumped to the front page thrice today, as three new answers were posted. This new round of attention also lead to the question getting closed, the new answers are... not exactly what we're looking for (especially when there's already a thorough answer) and I suspect protecting the question from receiving further sub par answers did go through the close voters' minds.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see anything suspicious there, but we (mods) don't really have access to more information than you do. If the votes were on several different posts of yours, we might had a case of someone going through your profile and serially upvoting you, but that's not what happened here, 26 (well, 27 _now_) different people upvoted your answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a genuinely good answer, and as far as I can see everything seems legit, enjoy the rep!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12768" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5327" RevisionGUID="ef817851-3b98-4fca-900c-758406584b65" CreationDate="2012-12-13T07:02:18.183" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/279119033641598976" />
  <row Id="12774" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5341" RevisionGUID="fda9a26b-3f58-4620-9e5f-f7b3d62ddf75" CreationDate="2012-12-13T20:09:07.253" UserId="4767" Text="This [user][1] has been suggesting some very unhelpful wiki and tag excerpt edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the time the suggested content is either not very helpful (for [tag:clean-code] he suggested something to the line of &quot;The book by Robert Martin&quot; for both the excerpt and wiki entry).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the fuller entries are fully taken off Wikipedia or such with 0 attribution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been rejecting these, but the user doesn't seem to be getting the hint.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/16620/soner-gonul?tab=activity&amp;sort=suggestions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12775" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5341" RevisionGUID="fda9a26b-3f58-4620-9e5f-f7b3d62ddf75" CreationDate="2012-12-13T20:09:07.253" UserId="4767" Text="Serial bad wiki suggested edits - what to do?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12776" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5341" RevisionGUID="fda9a26b-3f58-4620-9e5f-f7b3d62ddf75" CreationDate="2012-12-13T20:09:07.253" UserId="4767" Text="|discussion|community-wiki|tag-wikis|suggested-edits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12777" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5342" RevisionGUID="60686e99-8302-4c75-8bd1-30ecc3b10ac7" CreationDate="2012-12-13T20:46:34.987" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Here are the ones I reviewed.  &#xD;&#xA;Can we at least get the reputation points taken away?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Memory edits:**  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17525  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17526&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Direct lift from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_memory  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Assembly edits:**  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17523  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17524  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Problem Solving edits:**  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17521  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17522  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_solving#Computer_Science_and_Algorithmics  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Node.js edits:**  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17519  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17520  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Node.js  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**TFS edits:**  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17517  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17518&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Foundation_Server" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12778" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5343" RevisionGUID="46ae0e7e-559c-460b-b478-1e28a94d8a6c" CreationDate="2012-12-13T23:10:23.790" UserId="25936" Text="I must admit I did the same when I was a new user, until Mark pinged me in chat and explained that I wasn't really helping, and I intend to do the same with Soner Gönül. That said, I think the _main_ problem here is the approvers, relating to my own experience, I had no idea I was doing it wrong, as my suggestions kept getting approved. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In any case, keep rejecting suggestions that plagiarise content without attribution or are otherwise unhelpful, if a user's edit suggestions keep getting rejected, eventually they'll be automatically blocked from editing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12779" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5341" RevisionGUID="b3d68f79-8d38-40b9-baf2-4fcabbb48fcf" CreationDate="2012-12-14T04:02:18.927" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/279436126161346560" />
  <row Id="12780" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5344" RevisionGUID="565ddf22-8256-4204-94b2-0ea4b47a9b34" CreationDate="2012-12-14T16:05:43.063" UserId="38148" Text="I find myself going to the review section quite often, but most of the time, there is nothing to review. It would be cool if there was some kind of indication that there are elements to review instead of going to the page to find out that there is nothing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Something like bold fonts for the review link, or a number between parenthesis. Or anything else really, just an indicator." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12781" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5344" RevisionGUID="565ddf22-8256-4204-94b2-0ea4b47a9b34" CreationDate="2012-12-14T16:05:43.063" UserId="38148" Text="Indicate when there is something to review" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12782" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5344" RevisionGUID="565ddf22-8256-4204-94b2-0ea4b47a9b34" CreationDate="2012-12-14T16:05:43.063" UserId="38148" Text="|feature-request|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12783" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5345" RevisionGUID="39d3d2ee-44ba-415b-92b6-298418a117f5" CreationDate="2012-12-14T16:20:48.617" UserId="34599" Text="I for one would have welcomed the question if you had included some of the features you have on github that are missing on bitbucket.  The generalization that certain features are missing is not going to prompt me to go do a comparison, but if you have a feature you could use and why you could/would want it, someone that knows X better than Y for any X or Y could point you toward that alternative feature.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general I don't like closed questions because they choke off discussion, but in this case, there wasn't enough meat in the question to provoke discussion as much as to get people arguing over which is better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd actually love to see a list of the features you think you are missing on one platform that are available on the other.  Might even show me a feature I didn't know existed, and in that case, the question would be valuable for pointing that feature out to me." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12784" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5346" RevisionGUID="b19080ba-0704-419e-b208-e0baad9d58f8" CreationDate="2012-12-14T16:22:54.140" UserId="485" Text="You can use a greasemonkey script to do this (they work in Firefox and Chrome). It adds an indicator before the link list that shows the total number of review items in all queues:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](http://so.mrozekma.com/review-count.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[source code](http://userscripts.org/scripts/review/154162), [direct install link](http://userscripts.org/scripts/source/154162.user.js)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12785" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5180" RevisionGUID="c18db291-0cec-43d0-bf89-8113112b12dc" CreationDate="2012-12-15T00:41:39.983" UserId="51669" Comment="added 51 characters in body" Text="Using Firefox 16.0.2 on Windows 8, I've had a hard time reading certain sentences. Browser is normal zoom.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;clean looks exactly like dean. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Screenshot if you cannot see it:**  &#xD;&#xA;![cleandean][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And generally a lot of letters are too close (close, not dose, hehe).  &#xD;&#xA;Like ct in 'exactly' in my screenshot, and ce.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: This happens in Chrome as well. But not IE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B8NHL.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12786" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5347" RevisionGUID="7d6f5eea-4d6b-430f-80fd-0ea5f937c808" CreationDate="2012-12-15T08:52:59.920" UserId="25936" Text="[![Programmers Community Blog][2]][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/a4Owh.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12787" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5347" RevisionGUID="aaee967e-b9f0-42ce-9e55-68302c6788a5" CreationDate="2012-12-15T08:52:59.920" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="12788" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5348" RevisionGUID="d38f2d78-96b7-4d14-9265-e93cf2fbc6d2" CreationDate="2012-12-15T08:57:16.340" UserId="25936" Text="This is what I came up with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've already posted it in the [2013 Community Ads question][2], if you like it you should upvote the answer there, and the ad will start appearing automagically.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Iq29h.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5347/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12789" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5348" RevisionGUID="7a533ee1-f0e6-48b7-a5fb-c6b3a7de3dd4" CreationDate="2012-12-15T09:18:33.267" UserId="25936" Comment="added 113 characters in body" Text="This is what I came up with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've already posted it in the [2013 Community Ads question][2], if you like it you should upvote the answer there, and the ad will start appearing automagically. And if you don't like it... well you should have seen the first draft (I even managed to misspell programmers!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Iq29h.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5347/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12794" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5351" RevisionGUID="4465d35a-1092-42d9-b845-dfe5caa86d79" CreationDate="2012-12-15T16:34:32.527" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="We have a [version][1] tag. Is this is a useful tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/version" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12795" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5351" RevisionGUID="4465d35a-1092-42d9-b845-dfe5caa86d79" CreationDate="2012-12-15T16:34:32.527" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Why do we have a version tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12796" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5351" RevisionGUID="4465d35a-1092-42d9-b845-dfe5caa86d79" CreationDate="2012-12-15T16:34:32.527" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12797" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5352" RevisionGUID="a08b0059-63a4-4ee3-8fd7-76ae54589058" CreationDate="2012-12-15T21:41:09.657" UserId="47472" Text="If this is a serial problem, then I think there's also another reason: the community hasn't done a very good job of filling in the tag wikis on large numbers of tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then someone new to the site, without a solid knowledge of plagiarism rules notices the deficit, and attempts to correct it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more permanent solution might be to organize an effort on the part of well-informed users to responsibly improve tag wikis." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12800" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5344" RevisionGUID="059ac11f-70cf-4765-9aaf-b036eb15f32c" CreationDate="2012-12-16T01:02:19.530" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/280115605997232130" />
  <row Id="12801" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5301" RevisionGUID="46fb69dd-5328-49d2-896b-44a04d418ca3" CreationDate="2012-12-16T02:34:19.220" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Appeal to regain the privilege to ask questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5147/appeal-to-regain-the-privilege-to-ask-questions)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I asked the following questions in Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1- [Determining an application's dependencies][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2- [Drag and drop feature for a website][2] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I did not get any down-votes, still I am banned from posting more questions in Programmers. Are these questions the enough reason for this ban?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155960/determining-an-applications-dependencies&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156115/drag-and-drop-fearture-for-a-website" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12802" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5301" RevisionGUID="df288ca9-cbb9-4ab6-9cc2-073bfbac26df" CreationDate="2012-12-16T02:34:19.220" UserId="-1" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[5147],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:101,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Walter&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:7007,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Glenn Nelson&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:1996,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Jim G.&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:34364,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Dynamic&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="12803" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5353" RevisionGUID="3815529d-d938-435b-a140-a0a2c938f44f" CreationDate="2012-12-16T04:17:29.533" UserId="25936" Text="[![MarkdownPad is a full-featured Markdown editor for Windows.][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Sivxk.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://markdownpad.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12804" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5353" RevisionGUID="935dab8c-0e8a-4126-b64a-f7b986263cde" CreationDate="2012-12-16T04:17:29.533" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="12808" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5355" RevisionGUID="924131d1-d565-4c78-84aa-f68657599506" CreationDate="2012-12-17T13:00:10.003" UserId="4" Text="Looking through the questions, it appears this tag is used to indicate choosing/using/managing particular versions of software libraries or tools, version control practices, or configuration/release management practices. There's really nothing that I would synonymize version with outright and I'm not sure I'd black list it, but for the questions with that tag right now, it seems like the tag either adds no value or doesn't adequately describe the subject matter of the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12809" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5351" RevisionGUID="13d398e2-418f-4a20-9236-827d089b4ab8" CreationDate="2012-12-17T15:02:45.133" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12810" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5351" RevisionGUID="e78a4c69-cd68-4367-b355-0fcd9e1d7be7" CreationDate="2012-12-17T19:54:18.817" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12811" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5351" RevisionGUID="a28fcea3-e5d0-4326-907b-2ceab90ba36a" CreationDate="2012-12-18T13:02:23.997" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/281021594334294017" />
  <row Id="12812" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5356" RevisionGUID="e4f7428b-50aa-49ab-b32f-0002f21bcae9" CreationDate="2012-12-18T16:37:33.400" UserId="41381" Text="Can we kill the [tag:General-Purpose] tag? Its use is pretty general (pun intended) and seems to be a collection of older questions ranging from bad to acceptable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12813" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5356" RevisionGUID="e4f7428b-50aa-49ab-b32f-0002f21bcae9" CreationDate="2012-12-18T16:37:33.400" UserId="41381" Text="kill the General-Purpose tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12814" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5356" RevisionGUID="e4f7428b-50aa-49ab-b32f-0002f21bcae9" CreationDate="2012-12-18T16:37:33.400" UserId="41381" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12815" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5357" RevisionGUID="4e709977-1433-4f72-81f0-1a417cdc11c4" CreationDate="2012-12-18T17:58:05.840" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Seems reasonable to me.  Of the 12 that are currently tagged, only one didn't have other tags that boxed the question better.  For the one that only has one tag, it's a pretty bad question that should be re-tagged to something else.  I would have re-tagged it, but I am afraid to edit and then bump the question to the front page without a moderator first closing it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For any moderators dropping in on this thread, here's the errant question.  I have also flagged the question for moderator review.&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/12343/53019&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12823" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5356" RevisionGUID="f53ff3db-4a09-456a-ba24-a611b4d13d96" CreationDate="2012-12-19T07:02:26.263" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/281293394511286273" />
  <row Id="12825" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5360" RevisionGUID="26686f19-6fdc-4daf-8262-cdf3bf642437" CreationDate="2012-12-19T11:23:28.577" UserId="34364" Text="After surfing/voting/closing on Programmers this morning, I realized that I had earned a few hats! When I went to check where they were at so that I could show them off, I found that some of the hats that I met the criteria for still aren't there after &gt;20 minutes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm guessing hats are going to take longer than badges to get and be seen, but why such a long wait? When will I get my precious hats?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12826" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5360" RevisionGUID="26686f19-6fdc-4daf-8262-cdf3bf642437" CreationDate="2012-12-19T11:23:28.577" UserId="34364" Text="Why such a long delay on the delivery of my hats?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12827" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5360" RevisionGUID="26686f19-6fdc-4daf-8262-cdf3bf642437" CreationDate="2012-12-19T11:23:28.577" UserId="34364" Text="|support|hats|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12828" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5361" RevisionGUID="9d03b08d-2f32-4f5b-9293-a124db2c8afe" CreationDate="2012-12-19T12:53:23.840" UserId="47" Text="The [tag:static] tag could do with some attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like it's been used for several purposes and could mean things like [tag:static-typing], [tag:static-data] etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So can you check out the questions with the tag and retag and edit and vote to close where appropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12829" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5361" RevisionGUID="9d03b08d-2f32-4f5b-9293-a124db2c8afe" CreationDate="2012-12-19T12:53:23.840" UserId="47" Text="Tag Clean up: The [static] tag could do with some attention" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12830" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5361" RevisionGUID="9d03b08d-2f32-4f5b-9293-a124db2c8afe" CreationDate="2012-12-19T12:53:23.840" UserId="47" Text="|discussion|tags|clean-up|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12831" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5362" RevisionGUID="6505ca4c-b309-413b-8aef-056851071382" CreationDate="2012-12-19T13:25:44.063" UserId="31260" Text="What is the difference between [tag:class] (25 questions) and [tag:classes] (19 questions) tags?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither of above have tag wiki, a handful of questions I randomly picked appear to use these as freely interchangeable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12832" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5362" RevisionGUID="6505ca4c-b309-413b-8aef-056851071382" CreationDate="2012-12-19T13:25:44.063" UserId="31260" Text="What is the difference between [class] and [classes] tags?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12833" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5362" RevisionGUID="6505ca4c-b309-413b-8aef-056851071382" CreationDate="2012-12-19T13:25:44.063" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12836" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5363" RevisionGUID="b1e73dc8-ec88-4c4b-b170-0756aaf0536f" CreationDate="2012-12-19T15:39:49.763" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Good question, and I agree with ChrisF's comment about creating the synonym.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;FWIW, I just tried to create the synonym, but I don't have a tag score of 5 on either one.  &lt;/sigh&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12837" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5362" RevisionGUID="e81ac666-308a-4fff-a793-ed02b05cffd0" CreationDate="2012-12-19T15:45:00.247" UserId="31260" Comment="Per feedback received so far, please merge mentioned tags, and make them synonyms." Text="What is the difference between [tag:class] (25 questions) and [tag:classes] (19 questions) tags?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither of above have tag wiki, a handful of questions I randomly picked appear to use these as freely interchangeable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per feedback received so far, please merge mentioned tags, and make them synonyms." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12838" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5362" RevisionGUID="e81ac666-308a-4fff-a793-ed02b05cffd0" CreationDate="2012-12-19T15:45:00.247" UserId="31260" Comment="Per feedback received so far, please merge mentioned tags, and make them synonyms." Text="What is the difference between [class] and [classes] tags? - synonym request" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12839" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5362" RevisionGUID="e81ac666-308a-4fff-a793-ed02b05cffd0" CreationDate="2012-12-19T15:45:00.247" UserId="31260" Comment="Per feedback received so far, please merge mentioned tags, and make them synonyms." Text="|support|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12840" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5364" RevisionGUID="36bec2c8-2f3e-4edd-bea6-6caab15b7ca2" CreationDate="2012-12-19T18:47:54.447" UserId="32353" Text="Should [this question about how to learn enough programming to communicate with programmers without learning to program][1] have stayed on programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me this question is about programming, specifically.  Yes, the question could be asked about another field, but it would be another question, with totally different answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this moment, the most recent question (with net positive votes) on Programmers is [this one, about the advantages of proper unit tests over functional tests misnamed as unit tests][2].  We could change it to &quot;What do I do about a colleague who does the wrong work and misnames it as the right work?&quot; and move it to Workplace, but it wouldn't get an answer to the question that was actually asked, because the question is about programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question isn't NC, because it's open on Workplace.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The argument to migrate would have to be on the grounds that it's off-topic, but it's a question about learning certain aspects of programming (or was, before it got radically edited to be on topic for Workplace).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I first saw it on Workplace, and immediately thought &quot;I should flag this to move to Programmers&quot; before I noticed it was migrated from Programmers!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/7155/how-can-i-learn-to-communicate-better-with-colleagues-from-another-profession&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180026/what-are-tangible-advantages-to-proper-unit-tests-over-functional-test-called-un" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12841" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5364" RevisionGUID="36bec2c8-2f3e-4edd-bea6-6caab15b7ca2" CreationDate="2012-12-19T18:47:54.447" UserId="32353" Text="Should this question have stayed on programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12842" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5364" RevisionGUID="36bec2c8-2f3e-4edd-bea6-6caab15b7ca2" CreationDate="2012-12-19T18:47:54.447" UserId="32353" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12843" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5365" RevisionGUID="81199146-ca06-4dea-af94-5db4769de997" CreationDate="2012-12-19T19:08:01.617" UserId="25936" Text="The question started out as a [request for books][1] from a non programmer. This is the version that was voted to close as off topic - we don't have a migration path to The Workplace. And it is off topic, by virtue of being &quot;not a real question&quot;/&quot;not constructive&quot;, as most vague and open ended requests for resources are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of The Workplace moderators spotted the question as it was about to be closed, and flagged it, telling us that a more general &quot;how can I improve my knowledge/skills to better communicate with my colleague&quot; question would be on topic on their site, and _if_ the question was to be closed here, they would have it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/revisions/7155/1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/posts/7155/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12844" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5366" RevisionGUID="021df9c7-1b76-449c-b9c9-346f4374c4c9" CreationDate="2012-12-19T19:09:02.577" UserId="1130" Text="I saw that question and had the exact same thought - that it was off-topic for the Workplace since it was about a specific industry, and that it should be on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However when I saw it was migrated *from* Programmers, I [asked about it in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/7338520#7338520), and it appears a Workplace mod flagged the question with the following note:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Just a proactive note...if this is not made constructive/OT on ProgSE,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and were a more general &quot;how can I improve my knowledge/skills to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; better communicate with my colleague (who just happens to be a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer, in this instance)&quot; question, it would be OT and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; constructive on Workplace&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the intention was if it got closed on Programmers as not-constructive or off-topic, it could be modified to be a more generic question that applied to the workplace in general and would be welcome on the Workplace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But instead what happened is the question got closed and migrated to the Workplace, unmodified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've made some changes to the question to make it on-topic for the site,  however they also invalidated some of the answers as it changed the core question being asked from being about programmers and programmer books specifically, to being about a much more general workplace issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm fine with the question as-is on the workplace, but if you guys want it back that's fine too (although you'll probably want to undo the edits we did so it goes back to being specific to programmers)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12845" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5367" RevisionGUID="fb1df535-9855-4e3c-b847-31901df447e8" CreationDate="2012-12-19T19:18:00.650" UserId="4" Text="Honestly, I wanted to close the question as Not Constructive. It's [original form][1] was substantially different than what [it currently is][2] on The Workplace. It was specifically a request for books/resources on communicating with professional software developers in the general sense. It was very easily off-topic (doesn't appear to fall into one of the categories mentioned in the FAQ), not constructive (list/extended discussion), and not a real question (overly broad as it covered the breath of software development), depending on how you wanted to slice it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It had 4 close votes when it was flagged by a Workplace mod for migration. I believe all four close votes were for Not Constructive or Not a Real Question. The options were to leave it here, where it would be closed by a single vote from anyone or migrate it to a site that said they could deal with it. Since it's much easier to migrate a question before it gets closed (otherwise, I would need to reopen it and then close it as off-topic, selecting a target site) and it was already accepted by The Workplace, I migrated it over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there wasn't a requested migration on it, I would have closed as NC or NARQ and we might have been able to work with it to narrow the scope of the question and make it something other than a resource request question or polling for advice question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180017/what-books-should-i-read-to-be-be-able-to-communicate-with-programmers?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/7155/how-can-i-learn-to-communicate-better-with-colleagues-from-another-profession" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12846" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5366" RevisionGUID="29c9b448-733f-4a24-b730-dc66783dcb85" CreationDate="2012-12-19T20:03:19.810" UserId="1130" Comment="realized I didn't actually answer the question being asked, so added that in" Text="I saw that question and had the exact same thought - that it was off-topic for the Workplace since it was about a specific industry, and that it should be on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However when I saw it was migrated *from* Programmers, I [asked about it in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/7338520#7338520), and it appears a Workplace mod flagged the question with the following note:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Just a proactive note...if this is not made constructive/OT on ProgSE,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and were a more general &quot;how can I improve my knowledge/skills to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; better communicate with my colleague (who just happens to be a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer, in this instance)&quot; question, it would be OT and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; constructive on Workplace&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the intention was if it got closed on Programmers as not-constructive or off-topic, it could be modified to be a more generic question that applied to the workplace in general and would be welcome on the Workplace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But instead what happened is the question got closed and migrated to the Workplace, unmodified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've made some changes to the question to make it on-topic for the site,  however they also invalidated some of the answers as it changed the core question being asked from being about programmers and programmer books specifically, to being about a much more general workplace issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm fine with the question as-is on the workplace, but if you guys want it back that's fine too (although you'll probably want to undo the edits we did so it goes back to being a question specific to programmers, and edit it in such a way that resolves the original reason it was closed in the first place)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To answer the actual question you asked though, no I don't think it should have stayed on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its initial form was asking for a list of books or resources that would help the OP communicate with programmers without actually having to learn programming, which is not-constructive by SE's standards, and the current version of the question is asking how to learn to effectively communicate with programmers without actually learning programming, which I think would be off-topic for Programmers since that is not the professional expertise of Programmers users, and I don't think it falls in the site's scope of conceptual software development." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12847" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5368" RevisionGUID="9376628a-3afb-4a91-b14b-4c1c48d3d2b0" CreationDate="2012-12-19T20:05:48.567" UserId="34364" Text="They definitely should be synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of synonyms if they could be merged and these could." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12848" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5364" RevisionGUID="5f9cb273-88a6-4586-b881-b4f189f3cfbc" CreationDate="2012-12-19T21:29:52.920" UserId="32353" Comment="added 464 characters in body" Text="Should [this question about how to learn enough programming to communicate with programmers without learning to program][1] have stayed on programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me this question is about programming, specifically.  Yes, the question could be asked about another field, but it would be another question, with totally different answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this moment, the most recent question (with net positive votes) on Programmers is [this one, about the advantages of proper unit tests over functional tests misnamed as unit tests][2].  We could change it to &quot;What do I do about a colleague who does the wrong work and misnames it as the right work?&quot; and move it to Workplace, but it wouldn't get an answer to the question that was actually asked, because the question is about programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question isn't NC, because it's open on Workplace.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The argument to migrate would have to be on the grounds that it's off-topic, but it's a question about learning certain aspects of programming (or was, before it got radically edited to be on topic for Workplace).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I first saw it on Workplace, and immediately thought &quot;I should flag this to move to Programmers&quot; before I noticed it was migrated from Programmers!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit - Yes, it was originally a request for books.  It should have been changed to a general request.  But otherwise my point still stands.  So far no one has given me any answer that I feel even begins to explain why the question isn't about programming.  Oh, wait- Rachel did, but she asserted that communicating with programmers is outside the scope of conceptual software development.  I have no idea why one would assert that, but she did address the issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/7155/how-can-i-learn-to-communicate-better-with-colleagues-from-another-profession&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180026/what-are-tangible-advantages-to-proper-unit-tests-over-functional-test-called-un" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12849" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5365" RevisionGUID="441e12d4-9166-41c7-aac7-ef42eb3cab04" CreationDate="2012-12-19T22:42:24.233" UserId="25936" Comment="added 11 characters in body" Text="The question started out as a [request for books][1] from a non programmer. This is the version that people were voting to close and not migrate, we don't have a migration path to The Workplace. And it is off topic, by virtue of being &quot;not a real question&quot;/&quot;not constructive&quot;, as most vague and open ended requests for resources are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of The Workplace moderators spotted the question as it was about to be closed, and flagged it, telling us that a more general &quot;how can I improve my knowledge/skills to better communicate with my colleague&quot; question would be on topic on their site, and _if_ the question was to be closed here, they would have it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/revisions/7155/1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/posts/7155/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12850" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5369" RevisionGUID="d201be99-e76f-4876-ab03-ae4a1ec7b984" CreationDate="2012-12-19T23:04:31.763" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="I have this question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/180020/53019 open on P.SE currently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My original focus is captured in the title, specifically I was worried about naming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Several of the answers and comments have suggested not using an enum, which takes the question in an unexpected direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that whether or not an enum should be used would be a separate question from my original question, but I recognize that my semi-arbitrary decision to use an enum is complicating the community's ability to provide solid answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will attempt to clarify my original question and show why I think an enum is required, but I'm concerned that I'll be derailing the original question by doing that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what's the best way to handle a situation where the original question is somewhat dependent upon a technology choice that could also be subjected to a question of its own?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12851" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5369" RevisionGUID="d201be99-e76f-4876-ab03-ae4a1ec7b984" CreationDate="2012-12-19T23:04:31.763" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="how to structure compound questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12852" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5369" RevisionGUID="d201be99-e76f-4876-ab03-ae4a1ec7b984" CreationDate="2012-12-19T23:04:31.763" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12853" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5370" RevisionGUID="fc4b41aa-270b-45ba-965f-6d4108b5a716" CreationDate="2012-12-20T01:01:09.363" UserId="1343" Text="The problem is that many people ask questions about how to deal with problems caused by a prior incorrect decision. The correct solution is to revisit the previous wrong decision, not solving whatever question they find themselves dealing with now. Effectively, they've asked for help in treating the symptoms, but it'd be better to treat the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In your particular case, it does seem strange that chemical compounds are named objects in the code rather then objects the system acts upon. Maybe you've got a good reason for doing it that way. So far the comments in your question about it are too vague for me to judge. At first glance it looks like your naming problem is just a symptom of the problem that chemical compounds are named objects in your code at all. But I can't discount the possibility that you've got good reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I think you can't tell people not to ask questions about prior technical decisions. Prior technical decisions are often wrong, and often need to be questioned. Its always possible that your current technical question is only coming up because of a poorly made decision earlier on. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I see it, I don't think you've got a problem in that question. You've got a couple of answers that go after the enum issue, but most of the response has been more on the topic of what you asked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12854" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5371" RevisionGUID="4725761e-0711-4f92-9aa3-32147f6e6100" CreationDate="2012-12-20T15:10:50.947" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="I think there may be a problem with the time on the StackExchange servers. I checked my profile today and noticed that I had received the &quot;And I Feel Fine&quot; hat, which states that it is for having posted or voted on December 21st, yet it is the 20th of December. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that I am on the east, and StackExchange is also based on the east coast, one would reasonably expect that the server's time would be set to the east coast's time zone.![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is the server time set to something like Australia's timezone, or perhaps a bug in the code that determines what hats a user has earned?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/5OZd1.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/cuZf8.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12855" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5371" RevisionGUID="4725761e-0711-4f92-9aa3-32147f6e6100" CreationDate="2012-12-20T15:10:50.947" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="Incorrect Time Calculation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12856" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5371" RevisionGUID="4725761e-0711-4f92-9aa3-32147f6e6100" CreationDate="2012-12-20T15:10:50.947" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="|bug|winterbash|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12857" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5372" RevisionGUID="4432dee6-c428-4ad8-8863-916a6680f347" CreationDate="2012-12-20T15:12:35.970" UserId="4" Text="There is a +/- 12 hour leeway on the hats. Stack Exchange time is based on UTC. This is expected behavior." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12858" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5372" RevisionGUID="3c394868-dbbe-4fcd-b3d1-82ebf42a6560" CreationDate="2012-12-20T15:55:24.347" UserId="4" Comment="added 220 characters in body" Text="There is a +/- 12 hour leeway on the hats. Stack Exchange time is based on UTC. This is expected behavior. [Here is a comment by Nick Craver about it][1], as part of a larger Meta Stack Overflow discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/159577/off-by-twelve-error-and-i-feel-fine-hat#comment462135_159579" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12859" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5371" RevisionGUID="1808e3e6-deb8-4068-ba0a-5ae2d92f6699" CreationDate="2012-12-20T15:56:44.660" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|winterbash|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12860" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5362" RevisionGUID="f0c50744-a9f4-433a-81c1-45d5f069397a" CreationDate="2012-12-20T22:57:44.790" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12861" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5373" RevisionGUID="f60025ec-4b00-4fc7-83aa-5aefe2cb8f00" CreationDate="2012-12-21T02:35:12.220" UserId="25936" Text="There's a small delay (anywhere from 30m to 2h) for hats, similar to how badges sometimes take a while to appear, the server side scripts that award them run periodically. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Patience young grasshopper!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12862" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5360" RevisionGUID="5f1a7487-1912-4d48-9ef9-f01990a27e19" CreationDate="2012-12-21T02:35:25.120" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-bydesign|hats|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12863" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5361" RevisionGUID="c7c9822d-f5d1-451c-9232-321c951b395a" CreationDate="2012-12-21T04:02:31.470" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/281972893708062721" />
  <row Id="12864" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5374" RevisionGUID="d5971001-eac9-4dbd-b139-590159847cba" CreationDate="2012-12-21T06:31:59.300" UserId="56500" Text="This is just a suggestion might be few others will agree with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There should be some Conclusion or Summary type of section for closed or accepted answers because some hot questions some time become a type of debate or discussion and as we have different people with different opinions so there should be some conclusion or short summary type of thing which will describe the direction of the question and then users don't have to read all the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12865" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5374" RevisionGUID="d5971001-eac9-4dbd-b139-590159847cba" CreationDate="2012-12-21T06:31:59.300" UserId="56500" Text="Summary or Conclusion for accepted/closed questons" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12866" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5374" RevisionGUID="d5971001-eac9-4dbd-b139-590159847cba" CreationDate="2012-12-21T06:31:59.300" UserId="56500" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12867" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5375" RevisionGUID="356e2d6a-9c26-4a0f-a6d6-d2e6f0593299" CreationDate="2012-12-21T07:30:35.523" UserId="31260" Text="As of now, [tag:static] is empty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the (40+) questions that were there few days ago have been retagged to either of more specific tags such as [tag:static-analysis], [tag:static-methods], [tag:static-access], [tag:static-keyword], [tag:static-linking]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12868" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5361" RevisionGUID="0fa92378-6584-4849-963b-a2116dd7c345" CreationDate="2012-12-21T09:43:12.933" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|clean-up|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12869" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5376" RevisionGUID="1f5070b2-f19f-4f67-89b5-ae12631b3a83" CreationDate="2012-12-21T09:51:13.410" UserId="47" Text="There are existing mechanisms for this - The accepted answer. This states that this is the most helpful answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The OP accepts an answer as is. This indicates that that someone pretty much got *the* solution right.&#xD;&#xA;2. There is an answer that's *almost* right, so the OP edits that with the one or two points that others raised and accepts that answer.&#xD;&#xA;3. The OP posts *their own* answer drawing in all the relevant information from other answers and comments and accepts that. They should acknowledge the other answers and comments of course.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In all of these cases the question is marked as &quot;solved&quot; by dint of it having an accepted answer. People are still free to post new answers as the OP will be notified in their inbox, but they won't necessarily get the views from other people looking for questions to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you come across a question that doesn't have an accepted answer but has several answers that offer part solutions you could post your own &quot;complete&quot; answer. You could even mark the answer as &quot;Community Wiki&quot; if you wanted to." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12870" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5377" RevisionGUID="d942dd12-a7b3-4957-a90d-a2f236f9a26d" CreationDate="2012-12-21T10:23:22.700" UserId="31260" Text="In September 2012 [registration requirement to ask questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/4001/31260 &quot;as announced here&quot;) has been introduced:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In the past 60 days, 76% of all questions from unregistered users have been either down-voted below 0, closed, deleted, or some combination of the three. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;That's a total of 182 questions, compared to 877 similarly bad questions from *registered* users. It's a relatively small number, but as a percentage of the total it's high enough that implementing #1 holds little risk - at worst, you'll lose maybe a question a day from someone too lazy to register. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;So, I've turn on the registration requirement in order to ask questions here. Let's **check back in a month or so** and see if it made any difference...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that **more than 3 months** passed, is it time to somehow see if it made a difference?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12871" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5377" RevisionGUID="d942dd12-a7b3-4957-a90d-a2f236f9a26d" CreationDate="2012-12-21T10:23:22.700" UserId="31260" Text="Requiring registration to ask questions - did it made a difference?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12872" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5377" RevisionGUID="d942dd12-a7b3-4957-a90d-a2f236f9a26d" CreationDate="2012-12-21T10:23:22.700" UserId="31260" Text="|support|closed-questions|asking-questions|unregistered-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12873" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5375" RevisionGUID="1c5f40fe-2260-4e88-85ba-5e1b2152ef47" CreationDate="2012-12-21T11:13:03.513" UserId="31260" Comment="It is expected that the [tag will disappear in 24 hours](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/18021 &quot;statement source&quot;)." Text="As of now, [tag:static] is empty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the (40+) questions that were there few days ago have been retagged to either of more specific tags such as [tag:static-analysis], [tag:static-methods], [tag:static-access], [tag:static-keyword], [tag:static-linking].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is expected that the [tag will disappear in 24 hours](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/18021 &quot;statement source&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12874" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5377" RevisionGUID="51808f91-f331-4c7a-add5-4506e5cd055b" CreationDate="2012-12-21T11:59:24.017" UserId="31260" Comment="handling of [question bans](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-ban/info &quot;what's this&quot;)" Text="In September 2012 [registration requirement to ask questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/4001/31260 &quot;as announced here&quot;) has been introduced:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In the past 60 days, 76% of all questions from unregistered users have been either down-voted below 0, closed, deleted, or some combination of the three. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;That's a total of 182 questions, compared to 877 similarly bad questions from *registered* users. It's a relatively small number, but as a percentage of the total it's high enough that implementing #1 holds little risk - at worst, you'll lose maybe a question a day from someone too lazy to register. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;So, I've turn on the registration requirement in order to ask questions here. Let's **check back in a month or so** and see if it made any difference...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that **more than 3 months** passed, is it time to somehow see if it made a difference?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Given that registration presumably simplifies handling of [question bans](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-ban/info &quot;what's this&quot;) I think it would be particularly interesting to estimate if there was a difference in amount (rate) of such bans.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;It would be also interesting to study the difference in &quot;ban failure rate&quot;, which could be estimated as percentage of users caught at attempts to overcome it: those who created fake accounts that were later discovered and merged into original banned account.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12875" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5369" RevisionGUID="8f302f47-d0e5-499d-97db-c58744f66841" CreationDate="2012-12-21T13:02:31.837" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/282108788209770496" />
  <row Id="12876" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5376" RevisionGUID="83974fcf-1d11-44f5-b4ac-4340873afb60" CreationDate="2012-12-21T14:14:51.220" UserId="47" Comment="better" Text="There are existing mechanisms for this - The accepted answer. This states that this is the most helpful answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The OP accepts an answer as is. This indicates that that someone pretty much got *the* solution that was most helpful.&#xD;&#xA;2. There is an answer that's *almost* the most helpful, so the OP edits that with the one or two points that others raised and accepts that answer.&#xD;&#xA;3. The OP posts *their own* answer drawing in all the relevant information from other answers and comments and accepts that. They should acknowledge the other answers and comments of course.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In all of these cases the question is marked as &quot;solved&quot; by dint of it having an accepted answer. People are still free to post new answers as the OP will be notified in their inbox, but they won't necessarily get the views from other people looking for questions to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you come across a question that doesn't have an accepted answer but has several answers that offer part solutions you could post your own &quot;complete&quot; answer. You could even mark the answer as &quot;Community Wiki&quot; if you wanted to." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12877" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5378" RevisionGUID="03665f70-dfeb-4c53-9abb-d057d836c0c7" CreationDate="2012-12-21T14:38:38.877" UserId="34364" Text="I really don't see this working.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's think about what has to go in something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Site designers and Stack Exchange management would have to agree that we need something like this. If there is not any community support for the implementation of this, there is no way you would get this considered, or even looked at. Plus, something like this would need general acceptance from about 95% of Stack Exchange site. You can't just make a major change like this on one site.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Let's say this does get general community acceptance (which I doubt it would because nothing is really _wrong_ here). Site designer(s) (I'm fairly positive Jin is the only one) would have to come up with the layout, and the developers would have to test an implement it. Now, this is just the general development process that we all know, but having only one site designer doesn't help your cause.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Finally, SE usually tries out the feature on a few sites at first before totally launching it. Do you honestly think that people are going to write summaries on **every accepted answer and closed question**? We're all volunteering our time and knowledge to the site (unless you're an employee). I would be really hasty about asking and answering questions if I knew I was going to have to write a summary. Plus, moderators are volunteering their time also. They don't get paid, and from what I'm aware of, I doubt they'd want to do this work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not trying to say that anybody is lazy. I'm not trying to say that we don't want to make this community a better place. What I _am_ saying though is that nothing is broken, and if it's not broke, don't fix it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more info on what you can do with the current system in place, see [ChrisF's answer][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5376/34364" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12878" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5379" RevisionGUID="6278e505-ee7c-4988-88c7-30731298c959" CreationDate="2012-12-21T16:15:31.370" UserId="63" Text="I'm on vacation, so I won't dig into this right now - maybe someone else will, else I can revisit it when I get back. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But here's a little bit of info: in the 60 days prior to registration being enacted, Programmers got 877 bad* questions from registered users, and 182 from unregistered users, making up 48.05% of those asked by registered and 76.15% of those asked by unregistered users respectively.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the *past* 60 days, Programmers got 1314 bad questions from registered users, making up 54.32% of the total asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interpret that as you will...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*closed, deleted, or down-voted below 0." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12879" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5380" RevisionGUID="1b45827c-6d9c-4992-850a-87db0c044b1d" CreationDate="2012-12-21T16:46:37.397" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Doc Brown made a very good comment in the main question that I wanted to capture:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the real problem here for some folks here is &quot;why do chemical names have to be in the code at all&quot;? Having those names only as some form of data would avoid cluttering your code with very long names, and you could choose the names just like the user of your system prefers, independently from what a developer might think about them. That would delegate the naming responsibility to the user and avoid your problem completely." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12880" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5369" RevisionGUID="17d5b2a3-f9b1-43b2-8a78-bd8d31c4e297" CreationDate="2012-12-21T19:22:54.410" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="added 110 characters in body" Text="I have this question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/180020/53019 open on P.SE currently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My original focus is captured in the title, specifically I was worried about naming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Several of the answers and comments have suggested not using an enum, which takes the question in an unexpected direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that whether or not an enum should be used would be a separate question from my original question, but I recognize that my semi-arbitrary decision to use an enum is complicating the community's ability to provide solid answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will attempt to clarify my original question and show why I think an enum is required, but I'm concerned that I'll be derailing the original question by doing that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what's the best way to handle a situation where the original question is somewhat dependent upon a technology choice that could also be subjected to a question of its own?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update** - here's [the new question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/180335/53019) over on [main]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12881" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5377" RevisionGUID="81d4e8d6-5d96-4649-ac18-59e9526889ae" CreationDate="2012-12-22T08:41:06.900" UserId="31260" Comment="differences in the amount / rate of &quot;good&quot; questions (defined as say, open with non-negative score)" Text="In September 2012 [registration requirement to ask questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/4001/31260 &quot;as announced here&quot;) has been introduced:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In the past 60 days, 76% of all questions from unregistered users have been either down-voted below 0, closed, deleted, or some combination of the three. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;That's a total of 182 questions, compared to 877 similarly bad questions from *registered* users. It's a relatively small number, but as a percentage of the total it's high enough that implementing #1 holds little risk - at worst, you'll lose maybe a question a day from someone too lazy to register. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;So, I've turn on the registration requirement in order to ask questions here. Let's **check back in a month or so** and see if it made any difference...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that **more than 3 months** passed, is it time to somehow see if it made a difference?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I recall correctly, back then one of major concerns against this was that it may somehow inhibit asking good questions. With this in mind I think it would make sense to find out about the differences in the amount / rate of &quot;good&quot; questions (defined as say, open with non-negative score).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Given that registration presumably simplifies handling of [question bans](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-ban/info &quot;what's this&quot;) I think it would be particularly interesting to estimate if there was a difference in amount (rate) of such bans.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;It would be also interesting to study the difference in &quot;ban failure rate&quot;, which could be estimated as percentage of users caught at attempts to overcome it: those who created fake accounts that were later discovered and merged into original banned account.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12882" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5381" RevisionGUID="94fa1f73-8d8a-4e65-bc5f-a53ae1f2e4af" CreationDate="2012-12-22T15:54:32.867" UserId="1130" Text="If I've done my math right based on [Shog's answer][1], no it hasn't made a difference. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**60 days prior to registration:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Registered Users:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;877 bad questions&#xD;&#xA;948 good questions&#xD;&#xA;1825 total questions&#xD;&#xA;48.5% bad questions&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Unregistered Users:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;182 bad questions&#xD;&#xA;57 good questions&#xD;&#xA;239 total questions&#xD;&#xA;76.15% bad questions&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Total:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;1059 bad questions&#xD;&#xA;1005 good questions&#xD;&#xA;2064 total questions&#xD;&#xA;51.3% bad questions&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**60 days prior to now:**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;1314 bad questions&#xD;&#xA;1104 good questions&#xD;&#xA;2419 total questions&#xD;&#xA;54.32% bad questions&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anything, it looks like our percentage of closed, deleted, or downvoted below 0 question rate has gone slightly *up* since we started requiring registration. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason for it going up may be unrelated to requiring registration though, as 2 sets of data isn't really enough to draw any solid conclusions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5379/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12883" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5382" RevisionGUID="c1f6c443-0d3b-4465-a714-a13b3e3c7b53" CreationDate="2012-12-22T20:42:17.250" UserId="31260" Text="Please merge tag [tag:os] (12 questions) into [tag:operating-systems] (65), and make them synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both tags do not have wiki, only excerpts. For the reference, current excerpts are quoted below&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* os&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;An operating system (OS) is a collection of software that manages computer hardware resources and provides common services for computer programs.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* operating-systems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;An operating system (OS) is a basic software whose rule is to intermediate software requisitions for resources and the hardware available, manage input/output, memory allocation/deallocation, file systems, among other basic tasks a device should do.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12884" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5382" RevisionGUID="c1f6c443-0d3b-4465-a714-a13b3e3c7b53" CreationDate="2012-12-22T20:42:17.250" UserId="31260" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [os] → [operating-systems]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12885" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5382" RevisionGUID="c1f6c443-0d3b-4465-a714-a13b3e3c7b53" CreationDate="2012-12-22T20:42:17.250" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12886" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5382" RevisionGUID="7a11fede-4fda-4bcc-8b9a-0838e4d02bd4" CreationDate="2012-12-23T13:20:06.697" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12887" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5383" RevisionGUID="2cb83add-ed9e-4c7b-be6a-9aff2db7fada" CreationDate="2012-12-23T13:50:25.480" UserId="7748" Text="[![Crazy On Tap][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/56Vk4.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://crazyontap.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12888" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5383" RevisionGUID="8099eaa8-f102-425a-9a82-06cc65b28c47" CreationDate="2012-12-23T13:50:25.480" UserId="7748" />
  <row Id="12889" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5384" RevisionGUID="99aaa062-ce27-4ada-90e0-f6a77720c6ee" CreationDate="2012-12-23T14:10:58.177" UserId="13181" Text="There used to be a link in the user profile that showed what percentile your reputation is. Clicking it took you to the leaderboards for the site. It appears that information has gone away." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12890" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5384" RevisionGUID="99aaa062-ce27-4ada-90e0-f6a77720c6ee" CreationDate="2012-12-23T14:10:58.177" UserId="13181" Text="How do you find the User Leaderboards" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12891" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5384" RevisionGUID="99aaa062-ce27-4ada-90e0-f6a77720c6ee" CreationDate="2012-12-23T14:10:58.177" UserId="13181" Text="|support|reputation|profile-page|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12892" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5385" RevisionGUID="6ce9d102-e1d4-4bae-be3b-198cf20f56ba" CreationDate="2012-12-23T17:17:04.383" UserId="7748" Text="click on the &quot;Users&quot; link on the Menu Bar of every page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Leader Board][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/D2228.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12893" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5386" RevisionGUID="17c78755-6226-4349-9abc-1703c7bc0426" CreationDate="2012-12-24T09:21:55.063" UserId="31260" Text="Tags were made synonyms:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Opi8.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Opi8.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/operating-systems/synonyms &quot;The following tags will be remapped to operating-systems : os&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12894" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5386" RevisionGUID="5cc336b5-bd77-4c44-b295-89ded2143aac" CreationDate="2012-12-24T09:21:55.063" UserId="31260" />
  <row Id="12895" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5387" RevisionGUID="f85932d3-6bab-4194-a576-6891418feb03" CreationDate="2012-12-26T16:46:49.493" UserId="34364" Text="I came across the [tag:back-end] and [tag:front-end] tags today. Honestly, I really don't see any good use for them on our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First of all, [tag:back-end] is only used in three questions, one of which is closed. Plus, I don't see any real consequence in getting rid of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Same argument for the [tag:front-end] except for the fact that it is used in 26 questions (7 closed). Again, the tag does not really matter in most of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you say? Get rid of them? Keep them? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12896" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5387" RevisionGUID="f85932d3-6bab-4194-a576-6891418feb03" CreationDate="2012-12-26T16:46:49.493" UserId="34364" Text="Usefulness of [back-end] and [front-end] tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12897" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5387" RevisionGUID="f85932d3-6bab-4194-a576-6891418feb03" CreationDate="2012-12-26T16:46:49.493" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12898" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5388" RevisionGUID="c14fdd9f-eb14-402b-b42f-279a6087f49b" CreationDate="2012-12-26T17:31:41.737" UserId="34364" Text="Are we going to have another Community Moderator Election for 2013? It seems like we have one around this time every year. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12899" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5388" RevisionGUID="c14fdd9f-eb14-402b-b42f-279a6087f49b" CreationDate="2012-12-26T17:31:41.737" UserId="34364" Text="Is there going to be another election this year?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12900" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5388" RevisionGUID="c14fdd9f-eb14-402b-b42f-279a6087f49b" CreationDate="2012-12-26T17:31:41.737" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|moderators|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12901" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5388" RevisionGUID="9c087b83-11a1-41e1-8337-9434e297bd6f" CreationDate="2012-12-26T17:58:35.463" UserId="34364" Comment="added 54 characters in body" Text="Are we going to have another Community Moderator Election for 2013? It seems like we have one around this time every year. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does the community/mods think we need another mod?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12902" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5388" RevisionGUID="25fa0f2f-5530-4f90-984d-12ac9d340101" CreationDate="2012-12-26T18:05:55.540" UserId="34364" Comment="added 258 characters in body" Text="Are we going to have another Community Moderator Election for 2013? It seems like we have one around this time every year. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does the community/mods think we need another mod? I, personally, think that (most) mods are doing an outstanding job at what they have to do, but all of our mods should be doing so for the benefit of the site. I'm not at all trying to get on anybody's bad side here, so please don't take this the wrong way." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12903" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5388" RevisionGUID="002b56a9-5b26-4c7d-8ae6-61154815b844" CreationDate="2012-12-26T18:19:06.350" UserId="34364" Comment="deleted 97 characters in body" Text="Are we going to have another Community Moderator Election for 2013? It seems like we have one around this time every year. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does the community/mods think we need another mod? I, personally, think that (most) mods are doing an outstanding job at what they have to do, but all of our mods should be doing so for the benefit of the site. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12904" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5389" RevisionGUID="0114222a-a4d8-4891-a2ba-3b1296872bd3" CreationDate="2012-12-26T19:25:15.603" UserId="2654" Text="I see three questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Is there going to be a moderator election?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Dunno. Hasn't come up in our chat or hit my radar.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Do we need another moderator?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My opinion? No. I think the site is suitably managed by our current staff of Yannis, Thomas, ChrisF, maple_shaft, and myself. Maybe I'm way out of the loop though and don't see problems that *you* see. Make some observations and either email the staff or open a new question outlining what you think can be improved and how.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Should inactive moderators step down?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Probably best to ask the inactive moderators directly, either via email or through a question on meta more specifically about their inactivity." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12905" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5390" RevisionGUID="b7a0070e-39a9-4bb0-a866-02b203a2733b" CreationDate="2012-12-26T19:45:57.687" UserId="8187" Text="Agreed. Those tags seem to be too meta-ish. I've taken the back-end tag off those respective questions, as they didn't add anything." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12906" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5388" RevisionGUID="ba623032-50ea-43f9-9335-a1b14dc5765c" CreationDate="2012-12-26T19:59:36.297" UserId="34364" Comment="edited title" Text="Does the community think we should have another Moderator Election this year?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12907" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5391" RevisionGUID="fb95e88b-d833-46f2-9e6e-7e92d8cc4e1d" CreationDate="2012-12-26T20:57:10.937" UserId="226" Text="Good timing! We actually just reviewed Programmers to see if we were going to spin off another election.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we agree that the current moderators are doing a great job, after looking at the growth of the site and how the workload is split across the current team, we scheduled an election for one more moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nomination starts February 18, so polish your nominations and ready your questions for the candidates, ladies and gents." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12908" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5391" RevisionGUID="2df6f629-17cd-4496-98c9-3d0861abb331" CreationDate="2012-12-26T21:05:27.897" UserId="226" Comment="added 14 characters in body" Text="Good timing! We actually just reviewed Programmers to see if we were going to spin off another election.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we agree that the current moderators are doing a great job, after looking at the growth of the site and how the workload is split across the current team, we scheduled an election for one more moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nomination period starts on February 18, so polish your nominations and ready your questions for the candidates, ladies and gents." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12911" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5392" RevisionGUID="71cdaa13-9bc4-4549-97a5-77ba073fe379" CreationDate="2012-12-27T22:11:45.630" UserId="4526" Text="Why was http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180796/video-courses-on-powershell closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12912" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5392" RevisionGUID="71cdaa13-9bc4-4549-97a5-77ba073fe379" CreationDate="2012-12-27T22:11:45.630" UserId="4526" Text="Why question on video course closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12913" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5392" RevisionGUID="71cdaa13-9bc4-4549-97a5-77ba073fe379" CreationDate="2012-12-27T22:11:45.630" UserId="4526" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12914" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5393" RevisionGUID="19551c39-c2a7-4e39-bb6d-222b3034e8b6" CreationDate="2012-12-27T23:33:19.990" UserId="4" Text="It was closed because 5 users thought that it didn't belong on this site and they voted to close it. Although the majority of the five users decided that it was off topic, &quot;not constructive&quot; would probably have been a better reason. The question exhibits several characteristics that make it unsuitable for the Stack Exchange format - it is a list question, there's no criteria on which to rate answers other than personal opinion, and it focuses on requesting resources rather than sharing a combination of knowledge and experiences." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12915" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5393" RevisionGUID="1b61ce19-d343-461b-947a-2733ae3855d8" CreationDate="2012-12-28T08:31:48.913" UserId="31260" Comment="list question += http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;" Text="It was closed because 5 users thought that it didn't belong on this site and they voted to close it. Although the majority of the five users decided that it was off topic, &quot;not constructive&quot; would probably have been a better reason. The question exhibits several characteristics that make it unsuitable for the Stack Exchange format - it is a [list question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), there's no criteria on which to rate answers other than personal opinion, and it focuses on requesting resources rather than sharing a combination of knowledge and experiences." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12919" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5395" RevisionGUID="18d15d8f-8093-44ad-b057-45bcde4118c9" CreationDate="2012-12-28T22:09:46.353" UserId="66617" Text="Well I dont know whether to ask this in programmers meta is good or not, but please please unblock me, mods mailed me to reply, I replied to mods' reply on my blockage [here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/message/319#319), but yet didnt get reply back from him. I got blocked on 9 Oct 2012 and its very hard time since then, please unblock me, I assure everyone that I will be more careful while asking questions next time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12920" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5395" RevisionGUID="18d15d8f-8093-44ad-b057-45bcde4118c9" CreationDate="2012-12-28T22:09:46.353" UserId="66617" Text="Please unblock me" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12921" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5395" RevisionGUID="18d15d8f-8093-44ad-b057-45bcde4118c9" CreationDate="2012-12-28T22:09:46.353" UserId="66617" Text="|support|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12922" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5396" RevisionGUID="9cfbbf8a-17a5-47bf-b4d7-68f1d61c2474" CreationDate="2012-12-28T22:14:29.523" UserId="47" Text="Your account was never suspended by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are getting the message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;then this is an automatic process which we cannot affect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please read [this Meta Stack Overflow question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers) and it's answers to guide you on what you can do to get the ban lifted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12925" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5397" RevisionGUID="738d9070-ba5a-4dc2-bc56-6163e8fd57b1" CreationDate="2012-12-29T06:54:00.660" UserId="59374" Text="I asked a question on Programmers, and received 7 upvotes, but got the following comments, if you could spare a look:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![List of comments][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then the question got closed for being `not a real question`. But then a user commented on my question, and said this after it being closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Yet another highly rated question with a thoughtful, highly-rated answer gets closed for &quot;not being a real question&quot;. Three cheers for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think there really may be a problem here. Could we somehow make the closing system more strict, or make the reopening system more lenient?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not doing this because this is my question, but more because I think this could benefit everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Question Here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/dHk7K.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180824/what-is-the-criteria-for-a-language-to-be-considered-a-programming-language#comment346638_180824" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12926" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5397" RevisionGUID="738d9070-ba5a-4dc2-bc56-6163e8fd57b1" CreationDate="2012-12-29T06:54:00.660" UserId="59374" Text="Questions are being closed too readily?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12927" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5397" RevisionGUID="738d9070-ba5a-4dc2-bc56-6163e8fd57b1" CreationDate="2012-12-29T06:54:00.660" UserId="59374" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12928" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5398" RevisionGUID="cf2dee98-9309-4082-aecb-0eed0404439a" CreationDate="2012-12-29T08:13:05.970" UserId="70298" Text="This answer is in two parts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. address the specific question that was closed&#xD;&#xA;2. proposal to SE moderators&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Analysis &amp; suggested remedies** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, let's go by the reasons given for closing, and consider each argument in turn. Is the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* ambiguous? Probably not, it's quite on the spot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* vague? Well the subject is quite clear (what are the criteria ...?), but then the text muddles it all up. Suggested remedy: rephrase the text. In particular, don't *state as a fact* what you think about HTML or C++, rather make it clear that there are (probably subjective) opinions on each one. Then close off by restating the subject line question.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* incomplete? No, looks pretty complete to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* overly broad? Well, one could argue that, but then again, it is also kind of specific and narrow as it asks for (a list of) criteria that help to categorize languages. Suggested remedy: rephrase to ask for criteria for &quot;computer languages&quot; rather than just &quot;languages&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* rhetorical? No, it's real, and many people will likely benefit from a good answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* cannot be reasonably answered? Obviously that's not true, considering the answers given. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Proposal**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the current practice of closing questions is perceived as &quot;not constructive&quot; and leaves people confused, and probably makes them angry. As a result it drives away people instead of motivating them to rephrase their questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two proposals:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. SE moderators could be more construtive in giving a *particular* reason and suggest a remedy. E.g. by *rephrasing* the reason slightly and highlighting the specific criteria(s) that triggered the closing:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;   &gt; It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. ***As moderators, we/I    consider this question to be*** &#xD;&#xA;   &gt; ambiguous, **vague**, incomplete, **overly broad**, or rhetorical and cannot&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; be reasonably answered in its current form. ***Please rephrase the question.*** For help clarifying this&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The action of closing a question should be votable and somehow feed back on reputation. More specifically, if a moderator's closing is down voted on &quot;too many&quot; questions, obviously, that should impact his or her reputation. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12929" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5399" RevisionGUID="8a3f8a43-e8f0-43b0-8481-9741c33c7795" CreationDate="2012-12-29T08:59:28.180" UserId="25936" Text="As ChrisF [already mentioned][1] you were never suspended by a moderator. We send you a message on Oct 9 expressing concerns about your questions, but that was just a friendly warning. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The automatic question block, that we have absolutely no control over, kicked in at the same time. While the mod message did _not_ trigger the question block, since the two events coincided I can understand why you thought the block was initiated by the moderators, and on behalf of the community I'd like to apologize for the confusion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've repeatedly asked Stack Exchange to let moderators know when the question block has kicked in, to avoid situations like these, but they've denied all my requests. I honestly feel like an idiot when I send a mod message explaining to the user what they can do to ask better questions in the future, only to find out that they can't ask questions because of the block, I would send a very different message if I knew the block was already in place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question block is something only you can reverse. You should concentrate on giving great answers, and follow all the advice given in the Meta Stack Overflow question ChrisF linked to. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5396/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12930" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5400" RevisionGUID="7e164e7d-2e6b-470d-b573-845d9ed4d244" CreationDate="2012-12-29T09:25:47.177" UserId="62330" Text="With reference to [the FAQ's Don't Ask][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe the question can be edited to make it more focussed, but as it stands (IMHO) it fails this test.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12931" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5397" RevisionGUID="c0576cc0-3b76-4d8b-afc4-db7573374798" CreationDate="2012-12-29T10:38:54.527" UserId="31260" Comment="added 102 characters in body; edited tags" Text="I asked a question on Programmers, and received 7 upvotes, but got the following comments, if you could spare a look:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![List of comments][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then the question got closed for being `not a real question`. But then a user commented on my question, and said this after it being closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Yet another highly rated question with a thoughtful, highly-rated answer gets closed for &quot;not being a real question&quot;. Three cheers for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think there really may be a problem here. Could we somehow make the closing system more strict, or make the reopening system more lenient?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not doing this because this is my question, but more because I think this could benefit everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Question Here][2], original (first) revision [here][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/dHk7K.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180824/what-is-the-criteria-for-a-language-to-be-considered-a-programming-language#comment346638_180824&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/180824/1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12932" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5397" RevisionGUID="c0576cc0-3b76-4d8b-afc4-db7573374798" CreationDate="2012-12-29T10:38:54.527" UserId="31260" Comment="added 102 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|feature-request|closed-questions|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12933" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5401" RevisionGUID="e98ab4f9-660c-4d94-a37e-41e3a75765ed" CreationDate="2012-12-29T11:02:03.750" UserId="31260" Text="When I sense a good question buried within a vague wording (and your [felt like that](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/180824/1) to me), I for one try to get it closed as soon as possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is, vague wording is a road to closure anyway but while open, it can attract irrelevant answers which will make it difficult ([as explained here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144787/165773)) to further edit the question into the shape allowing to repel &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; garbage answers and reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you can see, fast closure here serves the primary need to make reopening easier and protect the poorly worded good question from getting bad answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _repel_ garbage answers - one sure can not 100% protect a question from getting garbage answers. But one can at least try to phrase the question so that one can come to Meta, say _&quot;Here's the question, here's the answer, I don't feel like the answer is OK&quot;_ and have a good chance of garbage being downvoted by active community members who happen to read this complaint." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12935" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5398" RevisionGUID="04ae4d43-7bd8-4589-baba-b3ebd81e7ffe" CreationDate="2012-12-29T11:22:46.930" UserId="70298" Comment="made clear who to proposal was for" Text="This answer is in two parts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. address the specific question that was closed&#xD;&#xA;2. proposal to SE members (who can vote for closing, i.e. anyone with reputation above 3000)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Analysis &amp; suggested remedies** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, let's go by the reasons given for closing, and consider each argument in turn. Is the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* ambiguous? Probably not, it's quite on the spot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* vague? Well the subject is quite clear (what are the criteria ...?), but then the text muddles it all up. Suggested remedy: rephrase the text. In particular, don't *state as a fact* what you think about HTML or C++, rather make it clear that there are (probably subjective) opinions on each one. Then close off by restating the subject line question.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* incomplete? No, looks pretty complete to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* overly broad? Well, one could argue that, but then again, it is also kind of specific and narrow as it asks for (a list of) criteria that help to categorize languages. Suggested remedy: rephrase to ask for criteria for &quot;computer languages&quot; rather than just &quot;languages&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* rhetorical? No, it's real, and many people will likely benefit from a good answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* cannot be reasonably answered? Obviously that's not true, considering the answers given. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Proposal**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the current practice of closing questions is perceived as &quot;not constructive&quot; and leaves people confused, and probably makes them angry. As a result it drives away people instead of motivating them to rephrase their questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two proposals:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. SE moderators could be more construtive in giving a *particular* reason and suggest a remedy. E.g. by *rephrasing* the reason slightly and highlighting the specific criteria(s) that triggered the closing:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;   &gt; It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. ***As moderators, we/I    consider this question to be*** &#xD;&#xA;   &gt; ambiguous, **vague**, incomplete, **overly broad**, or rhetorical and cannot&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; be reasonably answered in its current form. ***Please rephrase the question.*** For help clarifying this&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The action of closing a question should be votable and somehow feed back on reputation. More specifically, if a moderator's closing is down voted on &quot;too many&quot; questions, obviously, that should impact his or her reputation. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12936" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5402" RevisionGUID="56e9b8ed-e88e-4826-a224-17434d4e308a" CreationDate="2012-12-29T11:42:50.593" UserId="854" Text="This:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40296/what-is-the-best-java-programming-book-out-there-for-starters&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Was closed as a duplicate. The question it was allegedly a duplicate of has been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Needless to say, this is a tad useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we have a process for this? Should we not delete questions which are the targets of closed-as-duplicate-of links? Should we unclose questions which have dangling closed-as-duplicate-of links? Should we delete them too?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12937" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5402" RevisionGUID="56e9b8ed-e88e-4826-a224-17434d4e308a" CreationDate="2012-12-29T11:42:50.593" UserId="854" Text="Question closed as a duplicate of a question that has since been deleted" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12938" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5402" RevisionGUID="56e9b8ed-e88e-4826-a224-17434d4e308a" CreationDate="2012-12-29T11:42:50.593" UserId="854" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12939" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5403" RevisionGUID="4f89a823-e5cd-43dc-af32-be5667a117fd" CreationDate="2012-12-29T11:51:52.803" UserId="47" Text="Indeed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case I'm going to reclose it as not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We tried to accommodate book recommendations but it really didn't work - it's just another form of [shopping recommendation](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) after all and these have been found not to work with the Stack Exchange question and answer format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In future the best approach to cases where the &quot;original&quot; of a duplicate is now deleted is to flag the question. If you can find another duplicate (they often exist) include the link to that, but we'll take a look and see what's best to do in each case." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12940" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5399" RevisionGUID="98a4d509-0852-4603-9b2c-ce89dabc7ab4" CreationDate="2012-12-29T11:58:45.013" UserId="25936" Comment="added 38 characters in body" Text="As ChrisF [already mentioned][1] you were never suspended by a moderator. We send you a message on Oct 9 expressing concerns about your questions, but that was just a friendly warning. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The automatic question block, that we have absolutely no control over, kicked in at the same time. While the mod message did _not_ trigger the question block, since the two events coincided I can understand why you thought the block was initiated by the moderators, and on behalf of the community I'd like to apologize for the confusion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've repeatedly asked Stack Exchange to let moderators know when the question block has kicked in, to avoid situations like these, but they've denied all my requests. I honestly feel like an idiot when I send a mod message explaining to the user what they can do to ask better questions in the future, only to find out that they can't ask questions because of the block. I would send a very different message if I knew the block was already in place (or I wouldn't send a message at all). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question block is something only you can reverse. You should concentrate on giving great answers, and follow all the advice given in the Meta Stack Overflow question ChrisF linked to. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5396/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12941" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5404" RevisionGUID="2f4386cc-b3d9-4a9d-b62c-9df5a9c9b2fc" CreationDate="2012-12-29T14:10:51.000" UserId="66617" Text="Well how about having functionality by which people can submit links to answers/comments (on other pages of SE) to any questions and SE to populate those answers/comments inline (like when we copy paste links to questions in SE chat rooms). Those links can be upvoted/marked as an answer. This would be better approach to just commenting &quot;Possible duplicate of ...&quot; and we up voting that comment, (and finally closing that question too early) as we would be directing people to exact answer that we want to suggest. Of course that will need creation of permalink to every comment/answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But again that may need generation of more amount of content at SE's backend and may discourage people from doing initial googling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this will make answers visible on the more appropriately asked question.&#xD;&#xA;Also no merging of questions will be required." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12942" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5395" RevisionGUID="d6dfbf95-9feb-46e2-966e-bbbb4cbb0dfa" CreationDate="2012-12-29T14:39:49.677" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|moderators|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12943" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5405" RevisionGUID="92bf8571-b2fa-42f4-bfcd-c065b778fe59" CreationDate="2012-12-29T19:39:04.777" UserId="50029" Text="I have noticed that many questions tagged as [tag:learning] are closed. I counted in the first 100 questions only 34 were not closed. I think it gives the false impression that questions like &quot;Where can I learn...?&quot; or &quot;How do I start with...?&quot; are welcomed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Do you think it should be removed?&#xD;&#xA;* Maybe suggesting another tag that is more clear about the usage. (I could not think of one)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12944" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5405" RevisionGUID="92bf8571-b2fa-42f4-bfcd-c065b778fe59" CreationDate="2012-12-29T19:39:04.777" UserId="50029" Text="What is tag-blacklisting?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12945" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5405" RevisionGUID="92bf8571-b2fa-42f4-bfcd-c065b778fe59" CreationDate="2012-12-29T19:39:04.777" UserId="50029" Text="|discussion|feature-request|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12946" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5405" RevisionGUID="fd966760-3d2d-4e7e-8b33-b6dedb45c4cc" CreationDate="2012-12-30T04:46:35.650" UserId="34364" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="What to do with the [learning] tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12947" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5405" RevisionGUID="fd966760-3d2d-4e7e-8b33-b6dedb45c4cc" CreationDate="2012-12-30T04:46:35.650" UserId="34364" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12948" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5406" RevisionGUID="b248a850-8ee6-405f-b045-3ba911b14147" CreationDate="2012-12-30T13:08:51.740" UserId="7748" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180986/best-approach-for-a-combo-selling-site-with-mysql-and-php&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is straight up design question!&#xD;&#xA;Granted it could have been writing better, I didn't fully understand what he was asking at first. **But Off Topic**???" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12949" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5406" RevisionGUID="b248a850-8ee6-405f-b045-3ba911b14147" CreationDate="2012-12-30T13:08:51.740" UserId="7748" Text="Why was this question closed? Has this place gone insane?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12950" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5406" RevisionGUID="b248a850-8ee6-405f-b045-3ba911b14147" CreationDate="2012-12-30T13:08:51.740" UserId="7748" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12951" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5406" RevisionGUID="75f86a7c-9211-4543-ac1f-8da9d8c72847" CreationDate="2012-12-30T13:20:46.937" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12952" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5407" RevisionGUID="c948c325-45ba-415d-87a5-a7a69709f91c" CreationDate="2012-12-30T15:13:11.843" UserId="34364" Text="I was one of the close-voters so I'll just explain why that's so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically, after reading the question for the first time, it sounded like 70% business question and 30% database design question. Now that is probably because the question was poorly worded and difficult to understand. Personally, I did not edit it because I wasn't sure what he was trying to ask. All I knew was that it sounded off-topic in it's current form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly, after your edit, it is much more clear what the OP is asking, and I have cast my reopen vote. Thanks for the clarification Morons!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12953" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5387" RevisionGUID="42de0adc-472b-437b-8771-288dd2ee44cd" CreationDate="2012-12-30T15:15:43.770" UserId="34364" Comment="added 140 characters in body" Text="I came across the [tag:back-end] and [tag:front-end] tags today. Honestly, I really don't see any good use for them on our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First of all, [tag:back-end] is only used in three questions, one of which is closed. Plus, I don't see any real consequence in getting rid of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Same argument for the [tag:front-end] except for the fact that it is used in 26 questions (7 closed). Again, the tag does not really matter in most of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you say? Get rid of them? Keep them? &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;**Update:** So [tag:back-end] no longer has any questions. What shall we do with [tag:front-end]? Is it useful? On-topic? Constrictive?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12954" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5395" RevisionGUID="077edc99-3757-48d0-92bf-ff0c43528fd0" CreationDate="2012-12-30T15:34:16.297" UserId="-1" Comment="insert duplicate link" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Why am I getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account”?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3041/why-am-i-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this-account)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Well I dont know whether to ask this in programmers meta is good or not, but please please unblock me, mods mailed me to reply, I replied to mods' reply on my blockage [here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/message/319#319), but yet didnt get reply back from him. I got blocked on 9 Oct 2012 and its very hard time since then, please unblock me, I assure everyone that I will be more careful while asking questions next time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12955" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5395" RevisionGUID="ab2f6cdd-4abc-4387-a447-6d62d08f254d" CreationDate="2012-12-30T15:34:16.297" UserId="47" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[3041],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:101,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Walter&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:1996,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Jim G.&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="12956" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5408" RevisionGUID="6ca4bbde-6f3a-4f63-86e9-20a0a76028bb" CreationDate="2012-12-31T14:58:23.747" UserId="70298" Text="I think the current practice of closing questions is perceived as &quot;not constructive&quot; and leaves people confused, and probably makes them angry. As a result it drives away people instead of motivating them to rephrase their questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recent example: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181071/how-to-increase-popularity-of-node-js-modules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP was somewhat ranty, but I edited it to be a real question and it still got closed. See the second comment to the question - we have positively frustrated the user and drove him away. What a waste. I am sure there are similar cases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How could we improve the *tone* of closing questions to *motivate* users to improve their questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12957" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5408" RevisionGUID="6ca4bbde-6f3a-4f63-86e9-20a0a76028bb" CreationDate="2012-12-31T14:58:23.747" UserId="70298" Text="Is the standard comment for NARQ frustrating users?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12958" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5408" RevisionGUID="6ca4bbde-6f3a-4f63-86e9-20a0a76028bb" CreationDate="2012-12-31T14:58:23.747" UserId="70298" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12959" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5409" RevisionGUID="0de9b8d8-ee18-454c-92ee-d6afb53b021d" CreationDate="2012-12-31T14:58:23.747" UserId="70298" Text="SE moderators could be more construtive in giving a *particular* reason and suggest a remedy. E.g. by *rephrasing* the reason slightly and highlighting the specific criteria(s) that triggered the closing:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;   &gt; It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. ***As moderators, we/I    consider this question to be*** &#xD;&#xA;   &gt; ambiguous, **vague**, incomplete, **overly broad**, or rhetorical and cannot&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; be reasonably answered in its current form. ***Please rephrase the question.*** For help clarifying this&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12960" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5410" RevisionGUID="76f752dd-a4d1-463e-a6fb-42e225ea87c4" CreationDate="2012-12-31T15:01:03.267" UserId="47" Text="You didn't make enough of an edit to stop me from casting a close vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you think there is a real question in there make a more substantial edit and flag the post for moderator attention and we'll review the closure." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12961" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2276" RevisionGUID="08be3435-d09b-4d11-8e0a-45b19b749027" CreationDate="2012-12-31T18:31:05.833" UserId="1996" Comment="added 205 characters in body" Text="#Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mark Trapp closed [this question on the licensure of software engineers][1] on Programmers for the reason of not being constructive. More recently, [another question about replacing XML with JSON was closed for the same reasons][2]. In the comments of both, he called it a &quot;hypothetical question&quot; and cited the FAQ. I believe that the ultimate problem lies in the definition of hypothetical and practical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The text of the notice for non-constructive questions states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we can agree that open-ended discussion questions, &quot;getting to know you&quot; questions, and questions asking for predicting the future aren't practical, answerable, or of educational value and are more suited to other forums. And there are plenty of questions like this, such as trying to figure out, [the next big language][3], what [features C# will add in the next version][4], or [what terminology you use to refer to the { character][5]. We, as developers, don't know what the next big language is going to be, or what features the next version will have until the creator(s) tell us, and it really doesn't matter that I call { the open-stache and you call it the open brace. Questions like these should be closed, and I think we can all agree on that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I think we need to come to terms, as a community, with what is practical, answerable, and of some educational value. We also need to discuss the balance between the three of them. I think that all questions have to be answerable, but how does an individual (or even a subset) decide what is practical or of educational value to the community at large.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Practicality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For practicality, how do we define what is practical, and who has to consider it practical for it to be practical?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, I just pulled this decent question on [MS SQL XML best practices][6] from the home page. This is practical to people who are working with MSSQL and XML, but it's not practical to me in my job (I'm currently doing Java development with some MySQL database work here and there) nor in my professional interests (I'm interested in the softer topics of software engineering). Should I vote to close it because it's not practical to me? No, because it's practical to a reasonable subset of software developers out there (meaning it's not localized to a particular geographic area, period in time, or individual).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just take a look at my profile to see what I'm referring to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My professional interests include software project management, software engineering process models and methodologies, software measurements and metrics, empirical software engineering, leadership, and professionalism in software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are entire academic disciplines and research areas devoted to these, and the four are specific to software engineering. Questions and answers on these topics are practical, to me. But also, practicality is different depending on context. For example, empirical software engineering isn't necessarily practiced across industry, but it has led to insights into techniques and tools used to develop software better. For something to be practical, does it have to be practical to someone in an office doing work that eventually leads to delivered software, or can it be practical and useful to a researcher or academic who is looking to make the professional lives of those people delivering software easier or better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Answerability&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the minimum level of certainty and/or reliability for a question to be considered answerable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we can all agree that questions must be answerable in some way. There are clearly unanswerable questions (especially those asking to predict the future, or career planning advice that's incredibly localized to a person's current state), but there are also questions that we can draw on experiences and outside knowledge to answer. Going back to this licensure question, I think we can consider Steve McConnell (among others) an expert and cite his work, and we can look at other professions that require licensure and look at what happened there to draw conclusions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;The issue is that there is no answer: we don't have time machines and we don't have crystal balls. Any &quot;answer&quot; provided is a guess: an educated guess perhaps, but still a guess. There's no criteria by which to gauge the answers in a meaningful manner: who had the best theory? Who wrote the most? Who cares? - Mark Trapp&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't entirely agree with that. If I have a question, chances are, I don't know everything that's been written or how answerable the question is. I might have read a book or a blog post or talked to a co-worker about something. I think that the ability to present an expert's theory (which, if you can substantiate it, might be your own theory) in response to a question is perfectly acceptable, as long as you provide a summary or short quotation and a citation so that the original source can be found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you need a time machine or crystal ball to answer the question, that means that the question should be closed. However, if you can provide well-educated guesses based on experiences, knowledge, and reputable sources, that's perfectly acceptable, in my opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][7]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In fact, most academic fields don’t have objective answers. Topics like economics, engineering, the arts, literature, and social sciences don’t exactly have correct and incorrect answers. There is a growing list of proposals about increasingly subjective topics, and we believe many of them are going to make great Stack Exchange sites!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Educational Value&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do we measure how educational a question (and its answers) is?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure about other people, but I had to learn about software engineering professionalism and ethics as part of my undergraduate curriculum. In fact, we had a discussion about licensure and/or certification and their value. I think specific, pointed questions about industry trends are good questions to learn from, especially for people who have 30+ years left to spend in it. The opportunity to stay current on topics I learned about 4-5 years ago is valuable to me, and clearly adds educational value. At least 5 people (4 + the author) appeared to learn something from my answer to the licensure question, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How do we define what is practical, and who has to consider it practical for it to be practical? For something to be practical, does it have to be practical to someone in an office doing work that eventually leads to or otherwise supports delivered software? Or can it be practical and useful to a researcher or academic who is looking to make the professional lives of those people delivering software easier or better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If on-topic (as per the list of topics in the FAQ) questions that are answerable with either facts, reputable sources, or personal experiences, yet are not about a specific problem that someone is having right now aren't allowed here, where should they go? There are many good questions in this realm that are suitable for a Stack Exchange community (suitable meaning they aren't discussions or debates). Should another Stack Exchange be made, further dividing the software development community? Or can we improve guidance as to making it easier to define what is or isn't a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What is the minimum level of certainty and/or reliability for a question to be considered answerable? How do we measure this? How is a diamond moderator or 5 users who aren't knowledgable in a given topic able to assertain the answerability of a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How do we measure how educational a question (and its answers) is?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Can we apply the [Back-It-Up policy as defined in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][8] to allow more good (non-debate, non-discussion) questions that have answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** @Thomas Owens made several great points in this post. Now that @Mark Trapp is gone, we might want to reevaluate some of his unilateral closures. If I see any, I'll bring them up on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108789/what-impact-would-licensing-software-engineers-have-on-the-profession&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108740/can-we-replace-xml-with-json-entirely&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296/what-will-be-the-next-big-language&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6275/what-do-you-think-will-be-added-in-c-5&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11077/what-do-you-call-this-character&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108834/ms-sql-xml-best-practices&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12962" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5411" RevisionGUID="e267ad91-866a-47ed-ac6f-b8851ec7fa32" CreationDate="2012-12-31T19:00:41.220" UserId="1130" Text="One solution would be to start posting friendly comments explaining the closure when you vote to close, or when you see a question closed as &quot;not-constructive&quot; with no comment left for the OP to explain why it was closed and what they can do to get their question reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was actually reading [this answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/130231/158605) earlier today and thought it might be related. To quote parts of it (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &quot;Not constructive&quot; is already *extremely broad* in what it covers, to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the point where it's almost too easy to apply it in cases where [the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closer should really just be editing to clarify instead][2]. It's also&#xD;&#xA;&gt; one of the hardest reasons to explain to the author of the post being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed - the description is pretty good, and links to the FAQ which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elaborates... But at first glance, it's *already* too close to &quot;we&#xD;&#xA;&gt; don't like your question, kthanksbye&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Finally, the core problem with your two examples is that there's **no&#xD;&#xA;&gt; clear explanation of the specific problems in the comments**; there is a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; decent meta discussion, but the confusion could have been mitigated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more easily if the close-voters had simply been more clear as to what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they found troublesome about these questions. Because of the breadth&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of scope (see above), Not Constructive tends to require more of this&#xD;&#xA;&gt; than, say, &quot;Not a real question&quot; or &quot;Exact Duplicate&quot;. The alternative&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solution would be to break it up into multiple close reasons... But&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we've seen this cause problems in the past; **encouraging closers to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; explain their rationale tends to produce more thoughtful closing**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'd encourage users who vote to close as not-constructive to leave a friendly and helpful comment explaining what makes the question not-constructive, and explain what needs to be done to get it reopened (if such a comment doesn't already exist of course). You don't need to be the close-voter to leave helpful comments like that either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally when I first started with the SE sites, I got upset with some question closures as well. Having an actual person (instead of an extremely broad auto-generated closure message) point out the flaws of the questions to me, and explain what needed to be done to get the question reopened is probably part of the reason why I'm still participating in SE sites today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/129423/on-the-boundaries-of-not-constructive-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12967" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="8799b230-590b-4d1c-accc-e83f0c58b1d6" CreationDate="2013-01-01T21:35:08.797" UserId="31260" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me. These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year (it would be hard to do for questions over 2K views since these appear about 10x more frequently).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12968" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="8799b230-590b-4d1c-accc-e83f0c58b1d6" CreationDate="2013-01-01T21:35:08.797" UserId="31260" Text="Answers quality in hot questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12969" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="8799b230-590b-4d1c-accc-e83f0c58b1d6" CreationDate="2013-01-01T21:35:08.797" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|answer-quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12970" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="64498ce3-7830-4b69-bda4-2e9aebc9b782" CreationDate="2013-01-01T21:58:35.783" UserId="31260" Comment="added 26 characters in body" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me. These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year (it would be hard to do for questions over 2K views since these appear about 10x more frequently).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12971" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="7fe3cabc-4045-4a38-a79b-cb229729eb36" CreationDate="2013-01-01T22:03:55.573" UserId="31260" Comment="added 26 characters in body" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me. These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12972" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="e69933cf-182d-472f-9553-80139c937e9a" CreationDate="2013-01-01T22:27:32.903" UserId="31260" Comment="http://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12973" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="e7415cbe-ebd1-455f-ba2c-537f203f8c25" CreationDate="2013-01-02T08:57:37.960" UserId="31260" Comment="&quot;protected&quot; explained" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12974" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5414" RevisionGUID="bd4e478b-116a-49b8-af38-ce82819ea661" CreationDate="2013-01-02T13:42:36.053" UserId="1130" Text="Most of the &quot;hot&quot; questions with a large number of views have been advertised on social sites outside of SE (reddit, hackernews, etc), so the majority of the views come from Non-Programmers.SE or Non-StackExchange users. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these users don't know about SE rules or guidelines for answers, and think they can add something to the &quot;discussion&quot; by posting their own thoughts on the matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I looked at a few of your example questions, and a lot of low-quality answers are by low-rep users who had accounts created at roughly the time they posted their answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best you can do in these cases is to downvote the low-quality ones and upvote the high quality ones so the best answers float to the top, and leave a friendly comment explaining why you downvoted so the user knows what's wrong with their answer, and doesn't make the same mistake again." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12975" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5415" RevisionGUID="a2d44444-538f-4132-8e5d-245368743dc2" CreationDate="2013-01-02T14:13:38.717" UserId="40625" Text="The question &quot;[How to effectively do manual debugging?][1]&quot; has been closed. Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close reasons stated are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;it's ambiguous&quot;, but it seems clear to me what's being asked (the answers seem to indicate the same)&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;it's vague, overly broad&quot;, but it's about a pretty concrete, real-world scenario&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;it's incomplete&quot;, if so: what's missing?&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;it's rhetorical&quot; that's probably not it (right?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition it seems to me that it fulfills most, if not all of the [requirements from the FAQ about &quot;good subjective&quot;][2]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;- tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;- have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;- invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;- insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;- are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's probably a good explanation that I'm missing. Then the final point of interest, the close reason includes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So let me know: what things can I do to clarify the question and get it reopened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50552/how-to-effectively-do-manual-debugging&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#what-about-subjective-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12976" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5415" RevisionGUID="a2d44444-538f-4132-8e5d-245368743dc2" CreationDate="2013-01-02T14:13:38.717" UserId="40625" Text="Why is the question about &quot;Manual Debugging&quot; closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12977" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5415" RevisionGUID="a2d44444-538f-4132-8e5d-245368743dc2" CreationDate="2013-01-02T14:13:38.717" UserId="40625" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12978" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5416" RevisionGUID="51378137-395c-459d-8dac-c7da6f1b9f64" CreationDate="2013-01-02T14:20:45.027" UserId="47" Text="I would have chosen &quot;Not Constructive&quot; as it's asking for a list of debugging techniques.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;List questions aren't a good fit for the Stack Exchange Q &amp; A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's entirely possible that 2 people selected this reason, but the displayed reason is always the one chosen by the majority.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can edit it so that it's not calling for a list and your edit doesn't invalidated the existing answers we can consider reopening - though I'm not making any guarantees." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12979" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5417" RevisionGUID="4bd0ba71-4acc-494b-9147-5b3ce1be013a" CreationDate="2013-01-02T14:23:28.657" UserId="4" Text="It seems like it's polling for what people think is the best, with minimal demonstration of prior research (which is an example of a &quot;not constructive&quot; question, not a &quot;not a real question&quot; question). There are 9 answers to the question. Only a couple do a good job of providing a good overview of a number of techniques. A number of others focus on the same thing (logging) with various commentary about it. Several are also low-quality answers that should either be expanded upon to explain why it's useful and how to employ it or should be comments on the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that there are answers, I don't see anything that can be done to improve the question without invalidating answers. If answers are invalidated, they also need to be cleaned up in order to make the question viable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on this subject would have done prior research to find methods of debugging without a debugger (a few Google searches should turn up some ideas), and then ask a specific question about a given situation (mention the language, the project, and the tools that are available) and how to use a particular method or methods to solve the specific problem." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12980" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5416" RevisionGUID="e34383a2-e3b0-46e2-8d18-b4d3ff5e4525" CreationDate="2013-01-02T17:57:28.177" UserId="31260" Comment="List questions += http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info" Text="I would have chosen &quot;Not Constructive&quot; as it's asking for a list of debugging techniques.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[List questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info) aren't a good fit for the Stack Exchange Q &amp; A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's entirely possible that 2 people selected this reason, but the displayed reason is always the one chosen by the majority.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can edit it so that it's not calling for a list and your edit doesn't invalidated the existing answers we can consider reopening - though I'm not making any guarantees." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12981" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5415" RevisionGUID="8636538f-9baa-4e9c-9190-a1d1d7dae59d" CreationDate="2013-01-02T19:40:19.793" UserId="40625" Comment="Added missing piece of info" Text="The question &quot;[How to effectively do manual debugging?][1]&quot; has been closed. Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close reasons stated are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;it's ambiguous&quot;, but it seems clear to me what's being asked (the answers seem to indicate the same)&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;it's vague, overly broad&quot;, but it's about a pretty concrete, real-world scenario&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;it's incomplete&quot;, if so: what's missing?&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;it's rhetorical&quot; that's probably not it (right?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition it seems to me that it fulfills most, if not all of the [requirements from the FAQ about &quot;good subjective&quot;][2]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;- tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;- have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;- invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;- insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;- are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's probably a good explanation that I'm missing. Then the final point of interest, the close reason includes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So let me know: what things can I do to clarify the question and get it reopened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:** After reading the answers and comment I figured I should('ve) add(ed) the reason *why* I like to see this question open, improved, and with great answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When trying to help others improve their SO question, new users often end up asking &quot;But what can I *do* to improve my question?&quot;. I was hoping that there could be an SE-network-place that has answers to that question, or at least the sub-question on manual debugging strategies, so I could link to it in comments. I thought this particular existing question could be the right place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. The &quot;not constructive&quot; a.k.a. no polling questions policy does make more sense to me than &quot;not a real question&quot;, and I wouldn't know if the question could be salvaged to become &quot;constructive&quot; again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50552/how-to-effectively-do-manual-debugging&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#what-about-subjective-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12982" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5418" RevisionGUID="337337ea-0065-4f41-8b9b-b0719736c1eb" CreationDate="2013-01-02T23:56:48.997" UserId="28877" Text="A little while ago I posed the following question - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181296/potential-for-a-micro-document-indexer. Badly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was immediately leaped upon and labeled as soliciting &quot;market research&quot;. This was probably because I included the word &quot;potential&quot; in the title of the question (always a red flag) and because at the tail end of the question I mused on whether anybody thought it would be worth pursuing if it came out that no such technology existed. Combined with the title, I'm guessing that somebody assumed I meant &quot;as a commercial enterprise&quot; and not as an open source solution. When I saw the comment that was made I immediately edited the question to remove the offending remarks, trying to salvage the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No luck.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was closed within an hour and featured absolutely no discussion beyond the following comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Please don't do your market research here. The question is off-topic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; here. You may have better luck asking it at onstartups, though you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should read their FAQ first.&quot; - [Oded][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;His closing vote was quickly followed by four additional close votes. Maybe I'm way off the mark here but this really seems to me like a close-vote dogpile.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was closed as off-topic but I fail to see how it didn't fall under *at least one* of these guidelines of the P.SE FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;- quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;- software architecture&#xD;&#xA;- software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on my understanding of the P.SE FAQ, it also qualifies as a constructive subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At worst, the question *might* belong on StackOverflow but even then SO is for strictly for objective questions that have verifiable, factual responses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My conclusions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I should have phrased the title differently. My bad. This is an easy edit, honestly.&#xD;&#xA;2. I should have realized that somebody might mistake my intentions when I asked if it might be a viable project if an existing solution wasn't available. Again, my bad, and was fixed immediately.&#xD;&#xA;3. The question was closed before anybody took the time to really read the post.&#xD;&#xA;4. The question should not have been closed but rather, could and should have been edited to make it more palatable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4767/oded" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12983" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5418" RevisionGUID="337337ea-0065-4f41-8b9b-b0719736c1eb" CreationDate="2013-01-02T23:56:48.997" UserId="28877" Text="Closing of the document indexing question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12984" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5418" RevisionGUID="337337ea-0065-4f41-8b9b-b0719736c1eb" CreationDate="2013-01-02T23:56:48.997" UserId="28877" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12985" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5419" RevisionGUID="4eabf35d-b7ee-4222-ad31-72cd86b2b9c2" CreationDate="2013-01-03T00:07:30.437" UserId="4" Text="I read the post and I don't understand what problem you are having difficulty solving. I see a few questions in the post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; does something exist like this for full-text indexing/searching?&#xD;&#xA; - &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Has anyone ever had a similar gripe before... or am I nuts and should just keep using SQL for these situations?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both of those aren't appropriate for Programmers. The first is polling for technology solutions that will likely generate a shopping list of things. The second question seems better suited for a discussion forum.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think off-topic is the correct close reason, but I agree with the closure. I think that &quot;not constructive&quot; or &quot;not a real question&quot; probably would have been better. However, there aren't any answers to the post. That makes it a potential candidate for reopening, if it's edited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would recommend editing it so that it doesn't read like you're looking for a list of technologies, are trying to rant, or trying to start a discussion. Describe the specific problem that you are currently facing and what solutions you have found and why they don't seem appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as people closing instead of editing, no one is under an obligation to edit a post." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12986" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5419" RevisionGUID="e0464be2-a3d5-4965-903d-6ff66a67cd03" CreationDate="2013-01-03T00:13:01.773" UserId="41785" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="I read the post and I don't understand what problem you are having difficulty solving. I see a few questions in the post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - does something exist like this for full-text indexing/searching?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Has anyone ever had a similar gripe before... or am I nuts and should just keep using SQL for these situations?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both of those aren't appropriate for Programmers. The first is polling for technology solutions that will likely generate a shopping list of things. The second question seems better suited for a discussion forum.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think off-topic is the correct close reason, but I agree with the closure. I think that &quot;not constructive&quot; or &quot;not a real question&quot; probably would have been better. However, there aren't any answers to the post. That makes it a potential candidate for reopening, if it's edited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would recommend editing it so that it doesn't read like you're looking for a list of technologies, are trying to rant, or trying to start a discussion. Describe the specific problem that you are currently facing and what solutions you have found and why they don't seem appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as people closing instead of editing, no one is under an obligation to edit a post." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12987" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5387" RevisionGUID="347152fb-6c5b-46a5-b196-b84640aa50c1" CreationDate="2013-01-03T01:02:52.650" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/286638726484992003" />
  <row Id="12988" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5420" RevisionGUID="d5d06e8a-b09f-4cba-80dd-c20fae294367" CreationDate="2013-01-03T10:22:14.183" UserId="8820" Text="From yesterday I was seeing there are many down votes are being given to the questions, without explanation. Today I found this question &#xD;&#xA;[can-code-completion-be-consideration-of-choosing-a-programming-language][1]&#xD;&#xA;which I think is a good fit, but again given down vote and no-one in the comments has mentioned about down vote. &#xD;&#xA;Also one of the answer for some other question has unexplained down vote. [unnecessary down vote][2].&#xD;&#xA;I could have given up votes but I do not want to give up vote just to avoid down votes. Isn't there any way to avoid this &lt;strong&gt;anonymous down voting?&lt;/strong&gt;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181332/can-code-completion-be-consideration-of-choosing-a-programming-language&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/181331/8820" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12989" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5420" RevisionGUID="d5d06e8a-b09f-4cba-80dd-c20fae294367" CreationDate="2013-01-03T10:22:14.183" UserId="8820" Text="Many down votes without explanation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12990" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5420" RevisionGUID="d5d06e8a-b09f-4cba-80dd-c20fae294367" CreationDate="2013-01-03T10:22:14.183" UserId="8820" Text="|support|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12991" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5421" RevisionGUID="9ac7b451-2c0e-47d4-aa8e-4e3d0ab4ad06" CreationDate="2013-01-03T13:24:45.330" UserId="41381" Text="Down voting is anonymous by design and will always remain so. Down-voters are free to down-vote anything they want for any reasons. The most common reasons being poor quality or an incorrect answer/assumption. In both cases you point out there are big quality issues. The first questions is incoherent and borderline not a real question. The answer you link to is a poor quality answer, it doesn't really answer the question (which is also bad) and would qualify as a link only answer if it had a link." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12992" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5422" RevisionGUID="e57f5b14-05d5-42b4-807e-a1ef6ea22dec" CreationDate="2013-01-03T18:34:20.920" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="Whenever I open the close question dialog on my laptop's 13&quot; display, the upper portion of the popup winds up on top of the &quot;Questions Tags Users...&quot; navigation bar, but due to an issue with the assigned `z-index` of the popup versus that of the navigation bar, the navigation bar trumps the dialog and bleeds through.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Example of Error][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears that by setting the `z-index` on the `#close-question-popup` to a minimum value of 80, the dialog will then be the prominent element. Alternatively you could take the `z-index` of 80 off of the `#hmenus` element, although I don't know of the repercussions this may have on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For reference, my I am running Google Chrome 23.0.1271.101 on a 13&quot; MacBook Pro with OSX 10.7.5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OIP3x.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12993" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5422" RevisionGUID="e57f5b14-05d5-42b4-807e-a1ef6ea22dec" CreationDate="2013-01-03T18:34:20.920" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="Close Dialog Display Bug" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12994" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5422" RevisionGUID="e57f5b14-05d5-42b4-807e-a1ef6ea22dec" CreationDate="2013-01-03T18:34:20.920" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12995" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5423" RevisionGUID="5c1514e2-ab88-4fd7-a7dd-902cb7e21bd3" CreationDate="2013-01-03T19:38:08.463" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="They're both reasonably common terms in web development shops, so I think there is some value to them.  [tag:front-end] tends to be more 'important' to distinguish than [tag:back-end], but that's a pretty subjective statement upon my part.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have found the terms very handy when generalizing skillsets and giving others perspective on my work.  In the past, I have coded more on the back-end and have not done as much UI (front-end) work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point, [tag:back-end] has been cleared, but I would vote to leave [tag:front-end] in place." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12996" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5422" RevisionGUID="cb89f3e6-aa8b-4554-9b47-5b0b55dd6683" CreationDate="2013-01-03T20:23:54.890" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12997" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5424" RevisionGUID="2ee32641-c8d3-45e3-815e-b1bce7a67b13" CreationDate="2013-01-04T15:06:50.733" UserId="1685" Text="A fix is now on dev, will be in the next production build." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12998" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5422" RevisionGUID="11add32a-128e-4624-b425-d6a04da200af" CreationDate="2013-01-04T15:07:09.143" UserId="1685" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12999" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5425" RevisionGUID="6c6dd071-1efa-4b5f-90db-8be3a5c4825b" CreationDate="2013-01-04T18:02:19.543" UserId="29020" Text="I would like to ask why [this question][1] was down-voted and closed. This came completely unexpected since it is a very specific and precise question regarding Haskell and how to force evaluation of an expression. There are tons of similar questions on programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/160580/how-to-force-evaluation-in-haskell" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13000" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5425" RevisionGUID="6c6dd071-1efa-4b5f-90db-8be3a5c4825b" CreationDate="2013-01-04T18:02:19.543" UserId="29020" Text="Why was this question downvoted and closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13001" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5425" RevisionGUID="6c6dd071-1efa-4b5f-90db-8be3a5c4825b" CreationDate="2013-01-04T18:02:19.543" UserId="29020" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13002" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5426" RevisionGUID="17215e6e-fc79-4205-8e2b-fe9d53aad8a6" CreationDate="2013-01-04T18:08:13.777" UserId="4" Text="The down vote came from the close reason. Some close reasons, including off-topic, automatically apply a down vote to the question. The reason for closure is clearly stated in [the FAQ][1]: questions about &quot;implementation issues or programming tools&quot; belong on Stack Overflow. A good rule of thumb is that if you are sitting at your computer, in front of your development tools, the question probably belongs on Stack Overflow. If you're at a whiteboard or in a conference room, Programmers is probably a better bet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was not eligible for migration to Stack Overflow because of its age. In the past few months, a restriction was placed on migration. After 30 or 60 days (I can't find the post about it now), questions can no longer be migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there are indeed &quot;tons of similar questions&quot; on Programmers, please point them out. Implementation details are, and always have been (as far as I can remember), off-topic here. If any exist, they should be closed or migrated to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13003" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5425" RevisionGUID="6f6a52bf-9b7e-431f-992b-40c00c179162" CreationDate="2013-01-04T18:29:09.380" UserId="29020" Comment="added 784 characters in body" Text="I would like to ask why [this question][1] was down-voted and closed. This came completely unexpected since it is a very specific and precise question regarding Haskell and how to force evaluation of an expression. There are tons of similar questions on programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I understand, a few question have been cleaned up (and possibly moved to stack overflow) in the last few days and this question was too old to be moved. I admit I was a bit confused about which questions belong on stack overflow and which belong on programmers because I have seen quite a number of more technical questions on programmers (e.g., if I am not mistaken, [this][2], and [this][3]) that IMO are a bit on the borderline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I have seen that some of these questions have been moved to stack overflow so it is a bit clearer now. Still, I would find it better if it was possible to move also old questions: the question had already an accepted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/160580/how-to-force-evaluation-in-haskell&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181384/how-does-django-turn-field-name-strings-to-field-name-variables&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181224/constants-in-c" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13004" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5426" RevisionGUID="dfdb1ae6-fe0d-4c8b-985c-e17d5a8bc25d" CreationDate="2013-01-04T18:40:44.513" UserId="31260" Comment="60 days += [this feature request at MSO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/151890/165773 &quot;'Disable migration for questions older than 60 days'&quot;)" Text="The down vote came from the close reason. Some close reasons, including off-topic, automatically apply a down vote to the question. The reason for closure is clearly stated in [the FAQ][1]: questions about &quot;implementation issues or programming tools&quot; belong on Stack Overflow. A good rule of thumb is that if you are sitting at your computer, in front of your development tools, the question probably belongs on Stack Overflow. If you're at a whiteboard or in a conference room, Programmers is probably a better bet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was not eligible for migration to Stack Overflow because of its age. In the past few months, a restriction was placed on migration. After 60 days (refer to [this feature request at MSO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/151890/165773 &quot;'Disable migration for questions older than 60 days'&quot;) for details), questions can no longer be migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there are indeed &quot;tons of similar questions&quot; on Programmers, please point them out. Implementation details are, and always have been (as far as I can remember), off-topic here. If any exist, they should be closed or migrated to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13005" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5425" RevisionGUID="eef78bdd-cc49-43d2-b75a-73db7577fda6" CreationDate="2013-01-04T19:06:02.190" UserId="29020" Comment="added 120 characters in body" Text="I would like to ask why [this question][1] was down-voted and closed. This came completely unexpected since it is a very specific and precise question regarding Haskell and how to force evaluation of an expression. There are tons of similar questions on programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 1**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I understand, a few question have been cleaned up (and possibly moved to stack overflow) in the last few days and this question was too old to be moved. I admit I was a bit confused about which questions belong on stack overflow and which belong on programmers because I have seen quite a number of more technical questions on programmers (e.g., if I am not mistaken, [this][2], and [this][3]) that IMO are a bit on the borderline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I have seen that some of these questions have been moved to stack overflow so it is a bit clearer now. Still, I would find it better if it was possible to move also old questions: the question had already an accepted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have posted a [**copy**][4] of the question and answer on stack overflow, as discussed with the moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/160580/how-to-force-evaluation-in-haskell&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181384/how-does-django-turn-field-name-strings-to-field-name-variables&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181224/constants-in-c&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14163072/how-to-force-evaluation-in-haskell/14163112#14163112" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13006" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5425" RevisionGUID="5342f381-0c8e-4d24-a9c0-71ec53ada56f" CreationDate="2013-01-06T15:23:19.033" UserId="29020" Comment="added 282 characters in body" Text="I would like to ask why [this question][1] was down-voted and closed. This came completely unexpected since it is a very specific and precise question regarding Haskell and how to force evaluation of an expression. There are tons of similar questions on programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 1**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I understand, a few question have been cleaned up (and possibly moved to stack overflow) in the last few days and this question was too old to be moved. I admit I was a bit confused about which questions belong on stack overflow and which belong on programmers because I have seen quite a number of more technical questions on programmers (e.g., if I am not mistaken, [this][2], and [this][3]) that IMO are a bit on the borderline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I have seen that some of these questions have been moved to stack overflow so it is a bit clearer now. Still, I would find it better if it was possible to move also old questions: the question had already an accepted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have posted a [**copy**][4] of the question and answer on stack overflow, as discussed with the moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 3**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would now like to delete this question because (1) it is off-topic and (2) for some reason it got a downvote and I would not like it to get more. But it is not possible to delete the question because it has already an answer. What can I do? Thank you in advance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/160580/how-to-force-evaluation-in-haskell&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181384/how-does-django-turn-field-name-strings-to-field-name-variables&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181224/constants-in-c&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14163072/how-to-force-evaluation-in-haskell/14163112#14163112" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13007" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5427" RevisionGUID="af121555-f340-44bf-ad56-46f6f4acab94" CreationDate="2013-01-06T15:26:22.983" UserId="101" Text="A [question][1] was asked today that was a rant followed by a request for career advice on what the OP should do next. @Oded handled commenting to the OP that such questions were off-topic according to the [FAQ][2] and the OP justified the question &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; since I can use the tag career development and career-transition.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After a quick scan of both tags I found that the majority of both contain closed questions and another fair amount that can be retagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there value in having these two tags if the FAQ clearly states that the site is not about career advice, salary or compensation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/181706/101&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13008" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5427" RevisionGUID="af121555-f340-44bf-ad56-46f6f4acab94" CreationDate="2013-01-06T15:26:22.983" UserId="101" Text="Usefulness of [career-development] and [career-transition] tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13009" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5427" RevisionGUID="af121555-f340-44bf-ad56-46f6f4acab94" CreationDate="2013-01-06T15:26:22.983" UserId="101" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13010" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5427" RevisionGUID="991a30e3-4f75-4684-9027-821fedfe3d6e" CreationDate="2013-01-06T15:28:52.827" UserId="34364" Comment="added 67 characters in body" Text="A [question][1] was asked today that was a rant followed by a request for career advice on what the OP should do next. @Oded handled commenting to the OP that such questions were off-topic according to the [FAQ][2] and the OP justified the question &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; since I can use the tag [tag:career-development] and [tag:career-transition].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After a quick scan of both tags ([tag:career-development] and [tag:career-transition]) I found that the majority of both contain closed questions and another fair amount that can be retagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there value in having these two tags if the FAQ clearly states that the site is not about career advice, salary or compensation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/181706/101&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13011" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5428" RevisionGUID="59d73e9c-cfbe-4d7c-ae4d-865c88ee461d" CreationDate="2013-01-06T17:01:34.333" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="&lt;h3&gt;Warning:&lt;/h3&gt; Shameless self-promotion alert&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Little ole me won the [leaderboard](http://winterba.sh/leaderboard/programmers.stackexchange.com) for hats on P.SE! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Woo-hoo!!!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And now we have the link to see how everyone else did.  Summary stats indicate that `1,489 users from this site have earned a total of 2,857 hats!`  Pretty cool for a little bit a fun." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13012" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5429" RevisionGUID="02caaf37-d0c1-4485-b968-4ec98e8da721" CreationDate="2013-01-06T19:16:20.497" UserId="1996" Text="I'd like to report a bug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The 'View More' link underneath 'Reputation' is missing from the mobile view." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13013" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5429" RevisionGUID="02caaf37-d0c1-4485-b968-4ec98e8da721" CreationDate="2013-01-06T19:16:20.497" UserId="1996" Text="Bug: The 'View More' link underneath 'Reputation' is missing from the mobile view" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13014" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5429" RevisionGUID="02caaf37-d0c1-4485-b968-4ec98e8da721" CreationDate="2013-01-06T19:16:20.497" UserId="1996" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13015" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5425" RevisionGUID="6d9fadbd-30a0-46f6-bcf6-610310831bee" CreationDate="2013-01-06T20:25:11.810" UserId="20011" Comment="Changed first link title from 'this question' to the title of the linked question." Text="I would like to ask why [How to force evaluation in Haskell?][1] was down-voted and closed. This came completely unexpected since it is a very specific and precise question regarding Haskell and how to force evaluation of an expression. There are tons of similar questions on programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 1**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I understand, a few question have been cleaned up (and possibly moved to stack overflow) in the last few days and this question was too old to be moved. I admit I was a bit confused about which questions belong on stack overflow and which belong on programmers because I have seen quite a number of more technical questions on programmers (e.g., if I am not mistaken, [this][2], and [this][3]) that IMO are a bit on the borderline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I have seen that some of these questions have been moved to stack overflow so it is a bit clearer now. Still, I would find it better if it was possible to move also old questions: the question had already an accepted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have posted a [**copy**][4] of the question and answer on stack overflow, as discussed with the moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 3**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would now like to delete this question because (1) it is off-topic and (2) for some reason it got a downvote and I would not like it to get more. But it is not possible to delete the question because it has already an answer. What can I do? Thank you in advance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/160580/how-to-force-evaluation-in-haskell&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181384/how-does-django-turn-field-name-strings-to-field-name-variables&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181224/constants-in-c&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14163072/how-to-force-evaluation-in-haskell/14163112#14163112" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13016" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5429" RevisionGUID="70cd712b-5c5c-4dd0-9b1e-57c3fec0a415" CreationDate="2013-01-06T21:46:45.257" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13017" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="a348df85-7ba1-4275-a6e6-6fc912339d4f" CreationDate="2013-01-06T23:42:13.687" UserId="31260" Comment="added estimates for answers scored 10 or above" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13019" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5240" RevisionGUID="28ef5e81-dd46-47eb-9a22-b0259460fca3" CreationDate="2013-01-07T01:53:45.477" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="13020" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5428" RevisionGUID="65f06ca4-28ad-492d-8888-0976aaff4dd9" CreationDate="2013-01-07T03:56:06.863" UserId="25936" Comment="pics or it didn't happen" Text="**Warning**: Shameless self-promotion alert&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Little ole me won the [leaderboard](http://winterba.sh/leaderboard/programmers.stackexchange.com) for hats on P.SE! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Woo-hoo!!!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And now we have the link to see how everyone else did.  Summary stats indicate that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1,489 users from this site have earned a total of 2,857 hats!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Pretty cool for a little bit a fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/am6L9.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13021" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5430" RevisionGUID="19300e25-e952-4c65-9717-83f50bb4de24" CreationDate="2013-01-07T13:23:52.713" UserId="4" Text="Aarthi is [looking for feedback regarding the Winter Bash 2012][1] over on Meta Stack Overflow. If you have any comments, complaints, suggestions, or anything else, I'd recommend posting it over there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/161188/what-do-you-think-of-winter-bash" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13022" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5430" RevisionGUID="19300e25-e952-4c65-9717-83f50bb4de24" CreationDate="2013-01-07T13:23:52.713" UserId="4" Text="What did you think of Winter Bash?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13023" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5430" RevisionGUID="19300e25-e952-4c65-9717-83f50bb4de24" CreationDate="2013-01-07T13:23:52.713" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|featured|winterbash|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13024" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5430" RevisionGUID="7b5d8dbd-f2e9-4ffa-b65c-32c27c67400f" CreationDate="2013-01-07T16:03:06.857" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/288314829935099905" />
  <row Id="13025" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5431" RevisionGUID="74642d7e-0968-424b-947e-b7e8c1728110" CreationDate="2013-01-07T16:11:04.863" UserId="37122" Text="front-end and bakck-end mean different things in different contexts. Some examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - With a compiler a front-end parses a languge, the back-end generates code for a specific machine&#xD;&#xA; - In a web system the front-end might refer to HTML and JavaScript code, back-end refers to PHP/JSP/ASP/... code running on the server&#xD;&#xA; - In a web system the front-end might refer to a server speaking HTTP and being accessible to the user, the back-end refers to system accessed by the front-end (databases, gearman, services being used, ....)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Especially the last two examples show how subjective this is. I'd remove them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13026" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5431" RevisionGUID="8610ce46-af14-4203-a363-24435907f599" CreationDate="2013-01-07T17:12:18.143" UserId="31260" Comment="edited body" Text="front-end and back-end mean different things in different contexts. Some examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - With a compiler a front-end parses a language, the back-end generates code for a specific machine&#xD;&#xA; - In a web system the front-end might refer to HTML and JavaScript code, back-end refers to PHP/JSP/ASP/... code running on the server&#xD;&#xA; - In a web system the front-end might refer to a server speaking HTTP and being accessible to the user, the back-end refers to system accessed by the front-end (databases, gearman, services being used, ....)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Especially the last two examples show how subjective this is. I'd remove them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13027" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5427" RevisionGUID="83e3b5e6-031d-4425-9053-d09ebd329458" CreationDate="2013-01-07T20:10:33.317" UserId="101" Comment="bumping" Text="A [question][1] was asked today that was a rant followed by a request for career advice on what the OP should do next. @Oded handled commenting to the OP that such questions were off-topic according to the [FAQ][2] and the OP justified the question &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; since I can use the tag [tag:career-development] and [tag:career-transition].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After a quick scan of both tags ([tag:career-development] and [tag:career-transition]) I found that the majority of both contain closed questions and another fair amount that can be retagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there value in having these two tags if the FAQ clearly states that the site is not about career advice, salary or compensation???&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/181706/101&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13028" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5432" RevisionGUID="b62a1a5b-89fa-4d74-91b9-6d85364150e9" CreationDate="2013-01-07T21:31:42.347" UserId="1204" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/181792/1204&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I recently created a site in SharePoint and I need to setup a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; maintenance/support agreement for the site. In addition to the site,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; there are some custom modules that were developed that we monitor.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What considerations should I be making when determining how much to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; charge for supporting the SharePoint site and any custom applications&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developed for the site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13029" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5432" RevisionGUID="b62a1a5b-89fa-4d74-91b9-6d85364150e9" CreationDate="2013-01-07T21:31:42.347" UserId="1204" Text="Do we accept &quot;What price should I charge&quot; questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13030" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5432" RevisionGUID="b62a1a5b-89fa-4d74-91b9-6d85364150e9" CreationDate="2013-01-07T21:31:42.347" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13031" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5433" RevisionGUID="cfe54dac-d36c-4d0f-8d34-630d5372d07a" CreationDate="2013-01-07T21:34:15.367" UserId="1204" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181802/how-to-release-to-the-app-store-as-an-individual&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've written an iOS app, and I'd like to release it on to the App&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Store. I'm an individual so it's not being released via a company or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; anything, just me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it typical to just release a free app under your own name? If so,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what would be appropriate copyright information to submit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13032" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5433" RevisionGUID="cfe54dac-d36c-4d0f-8d34-630d5372d07a" CreationDate="2013-01-07T21:34:15.367" UserId="1204" Text="Do we accept questions about the intricacies of Apple's distribution process?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13033" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5433" RevisionGUID="cfe54dac-d36c-4d0f-8d34-630d5372d07a" CreationDate="2013-01-07T21:34:15.367" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13034" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5434" RevisionGUID="e1404e35-0766-456d-a0b8-2c1f5069ce02" CreationDate="2013-01-07T21:41:34.830" UserId="4" Text="This isn't about the intricacies of Apple's distribution process. The person asking has a choice between submitting the application under his own name or going through a process of creating some kind of company entity and submitting the application, with the idea that the current application will only be free. I would suspect the answer would apply equally to any application distribution mechanism, with the exception of if Apple treats individuals or business entities differently. That's a freelance/business concern, which is on-topic per our FAQ. I would suspect a complete answer would present the viable options and the reasons why, under these constraints, one would be better than the others." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13035" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5435" RevisionGUID="d8baf64a-903c-4f99-a764-eacafad7f9ac" CreationDate="2013-01-07T21:45:43.377" UserId="4" Text="Yes. [Cost estimation][1] is a very important part of software engineering. Although this question specifically refers to SharePoint, I would suspect that a good answer would include useful information for anyone who is creating and selling software under a maintenance contract as well. I'm not too versed in cost estimation, but perhaps more information is needed to adequately answer the question and comments should be used to elicit this. However, I believe that addressing how to determine costs of a development and maintenance project are covered in the field of cost estimation, and this is covered in our FAQ by both software engineering and freelance and business concerns. This might be too broad in its present form, but it's not off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimation_in_software_engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13036" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5436" RevisionGUID="5bcb2c39-7840-4f65-b421-5ed0a9fa4891" CreationDate="2013-01-07T22:36:18.283" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Too localized&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is too localized and applicable only to the author and is a poor fit for P.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good question, but broad scope&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is open enough that it does not need the specifics of that application.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, the answer would be roughly equivalent to [Camels and Rubber Duckies](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html).  As this has already been answered - I believe the OP should be pointed to the article and the question closed.  Attempting to have people rewrite C&amp;RD in a shorter form will leave something out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bad question, too broad scope&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is vague and asking for a class on economics and marketing - and a poor fit for P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't believe that &quot;how much I should charge&quot; is a good fit for P.SE.  It becomes either a question that cannot be answered, or one that requires a significant amount of text for the answer to be done correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just a quick look on amazon...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Just-Roll-Dice-usefully/dp/1906434387/&#xD;&#xA;* http://www.amazon.com/Software-Product-Management-Pricing-Organizations/&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13037" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5433" RevisionGUID="166098da-0050-40f2-ae6b-59fa38f1a335" CreationDate="2013-01-08T00:50:12.070" UserId="1204" Comment="edited title" Text="Is this question about the intricacies of Apple's distribution process on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13038" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5437" RevisionGUID="b7fc5e97-0969-4dd7-9088-877dae989c03" CreationDate="2013-01-08T18:42:54.413" UserId="53905" Text="I often update and save my question to see how it renders, instead of checking it in instant preview. I prefer that way. Also, I often spot single problems in my post and want to correct them immediately. This often result in more than 10 updates which turns my question into community wiki. Then I get up-votes but they do not result in higher reputation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the motivation for that? I'm working on my question to make this place more useful to others but I'm not rewarded for my effort (besides having people answering my clearer question)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13039" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5437" RevisionGUID="b7fc5e97-0969-4dd7-9088-877dae989c03" CreationDate="2013-01-08T18:42:54.413" UserId="53905" Text="Why question becomes commmunity wiki after &gt;10 updates?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13040" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5437" RevisionGUID="b7fc5e97-0969-4dd7-9088-877dae989c03" CreationDate="2013-01-08T18:42:54.413" UserId="53905" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13041" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5438" RevisionGUID="366b0d6a-5704-401c-9a74-ed28f05aaf16" CreationDate="2013-01-08T19:57:51.393" UserId="41381" Text="There exists a grace period for 5 minutes after the first submit that rolls all edits in that time into the original post so they don't count so you can make those quick minor edits. Otherwise start taking advantage of the instant preview it works great and it seems pretty crazy that you prefer more clicks to format your answer. Also please note that posting a partially complete answer and rapidly editing more and more info is somewhat discouraged behavior as it creates the [fastest gun in the west][1] problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason the threshold exists is to prevent people from continually editing their answers in order to bump them for more rep, 10 was decided as a fair number to allow people to benefit from providing meaningful updates and prevent bad people from benefiting too much. Moderators also have the ability to remove CW status, but this is rarely done and generally requires an exceptional answer that a user has obviously put forth a lot of effort to maintain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/9731/203115" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13042" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5438" RevisionGUID="d61a5300-16e9-4012-ad5e-9a1be7c05e0b" CreationDate="2013-01-08T20:13:31.277" UserId="41381" Comment="added 293 characters in body" Text="There exists a grace period for 5 minutes after the first submit that rolls all edits in that time into the original post so they don't count so you can make those quick minor edits. Otherwise start taking advantage of the instant preview it works great and it seems pretty crazy that you prefer more clicks to format your answer. Also please note that posting a partially complete answer and rapidly editing more and more info is somewhat discouraged behavior as it creates the [fastest gun in the west][1] problem. As for a Question it's in your best interest to post as good of a question as possible the first time, because once its posted people will start voting on it and you could wind up have a bunch of down-votes or close votes that could have been avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason the threshold exists is to prevent people from continually editing their answers/questions which bumps them to the top of the page for more rep from upvotes, 10 was decided as a fair number to allow people to benefit from providing meaningful updates and prevent bad people from benefiting too much. Moderators also have the ability to remove CW status, but this is rarely done and generally requires an exceptional answer that a user has obviously put forth a lot of effort to maintain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/9731/203115" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13043" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5438" RevisionGUID="581be39c-05fc-4763-be66-1902f1c82df7" CreationDate="2013-01-08T21:22:20.873" UserId="31260" Comment="bumps += http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info &quot;what's this&quot;" Text="There exists a grace period for 5 minutes after the first submit that rolls all edits in that time into the original post so they don't count so you can make those quick minor edits. Otherwise start taking advantage of the instant preview it works great and it seems pretty crazy that you prefer more clicks to format your answer. Also please note that posting a partially complete answer and rapidly editing more and more info is somewhat discouraged behavior as it creates the [fastest gun in the west][1] problem. As for a Question it's in your best interest to post as good of a question as possible the first time, because once its posted people will start voting on it and you could wind up have a bunch of down-votes or close votes that could have been avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason the threshold exists is to prevent people from continually editing their answers/questions which [bumps](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info &quot;what's this&quot;) them to the top of the page for more rep from upvotes, 10 was decided as a fair number to allow people to benefit from providing meaningful updates and prevent bad people from benefiting too much. Moderators also have the ability to remove CW status, but this is rarely done and generally requires an exceptional answer that a user has obviously put forth a lot of effort to maintain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/9731/203115" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13044" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5437" RevisionGUID="599d735f-8f5b-4b37-94e6-6a520af69c1e" CreationDate="2013-01-08T21:23:06.443" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|editing|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13045" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5432" RevisionGUID="2e8bd23d-2a46-4a56-a772-83e3bc34cf1a" CreationDate="2013-01-08T22:03:08.927" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/288767823382204416" />
  <row Id="13047" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5439" RevisionGUID="d4493b42-bcfe-4bdf-8277-bd7f4d103e3c" CreationDate="2013-01-09T01:38:56.153" UserId="34364" Text="That was probably the most fun thing the network ever did!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13048" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5438" RevisionGUID="f2284059-5fff-4d0b-8390-f5fa60e98e39" CreationDate="2013-01-09T11:24:38.240" UserId="31260" Comment="exceptional answer += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3527/31260 &quot;example request for an exceptional answer" Text="There exists a grace period for 5 minutes after the first submit that rolls all edits in that time into the original post so they don't count so you can make those quick minor edits. Otherwise start taking advantage of the instant preview it works great and it seems pretty crazy that you prefer more clicks to format your answer. Also please note that posting a partially complete answer and rapidly editing more and more info is somewhat discouraged behavior as it creates the [fastest gun in the west][1] problem. As for a Question it's in your best interest to post as good of a question as possible the first time, because once its posted people will start voting on it and you could wind up have a bunch of down-votes or close votes that could have been avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason the threshold exists is to prevent people from continually editing their answers/questions which [bumps](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info &quot;what's this&quot;) them to the top of the page for more rep from upvotes, 10 was decided as a fair number to allow people to benefit from providing meaningful updates and prevent bad people from benefiting too much. Moderators also have the ability to remove CW status, but this is rarely done and generally requires an [exceptional answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3527/31260 &quot;example request for an exceptional answer&quot;) that a user has obviously put forth a lot of effort to maintain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/9731/203115" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13049" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5433" RevisionGUID="5c55fb63-79b7-484d-bd24-f288b1a4bdbf" CreationDate="2013-01-09T16:03:09.607" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/289039617372606464" />
  <row Id="13050" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5440" RevisionGUID="307d257a-8b2e-464e-9b2f-6d4a5c4e28cc" CreationDate="2013-01-10T06:08:21.080" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13051" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5441" RevisionGUID="d959cb5f-849a-46db-9300-3ce92455b700" CreationDate="2013-01-10T06:08:21.080" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13052" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5384" RevisionGUID="1987d6ce-4257-408b-b5b7-2a70226fd232" CreationDate="2013-01-10T06:09:28.800" UserId="31260" Comment="changed tag to more frequently used synonym" Text="|support|reputation|user-profile|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13053" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5442" RevisionGUID="92dbd5de-e339-441e-9aea-fffe8785f62a" CreationDate="2013-01-10T06:13:12.413" UserId="31260" Text="My [profile summary page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=summary) currently says 3668 upvotes while votes-&gt;upvotes sub tab ([dev team only link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=votes&amp;sort=upvote)) counts less than that - 3544.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`3668-3554=124` - as far as I understand this difference could be [due to deleted posts](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144757/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;), does that mean more than 100 posts I **upvoted** during last one and half year are **deleted**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;For the record, I also tried to check if this could somehow relate to deleted users but it appears to be not the case. My favorite [&quot;good one-liner example&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3477/31260 &quot;advertised here:)&quot;) that was posted by now-deleted user shows my upvote just the way it was cast in April 2012.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13054" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5442" RevisionGUID="92dbd5de-e339-441e-9aea-fffe8785f62a" CreationDate="2013-01-10T06:13:12.413" UserId="31260" Text="Could it be that 124 posts I upvoted are all deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13055" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5442" RevisionGUID="92dbd5de-e339-441e-9aea-fffe8785f62a" CreationDate="2013-01-10T06:13:12.413" UserId="31260" Text="|support|user-profile|up-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13056" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5440" RevisionGUID="0e3dbaf4-1142-47a8-8cc1-f17316f6803a" CreationDate="2013-01-10T06:20:14.040" UserId="31260" Comment="added 707 characters in body" Text="The user profile page is a collection of data about a particular user, accessed at a URL of `&lt;site&gt;/users/&lt;userid&gt;`. You can access this page by clicking on anyone's username, such as your own in the top bar or the flair box shown next to questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The profile page contains a biographical block that includes your reputation, league standing, account age, last date seen profile stats, and About Me. Privately to the owner of the profile, it will also display hidden details such as helpful flag and visited day statistics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tabs on the profile page provide the various utilities described in the ['profile-page' tag wiki at MSO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/profile-page/info)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13057" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="5440" RevisionGUID="0e3dbaf4-1142-47a8-8cc1-f17316f6803a" CreationDate="2013-01-10T06:20:14.040" Comment="Proposed by 31260 approved by 25936 edit id of 5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13058" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5441" RevisionGUID="db943cb0-288e-4352-ad9f-786692a4d72b" CreationDate="2013-01-10T06:20:18.253" UserId="31260" Comment="added 129 characters in body" Text="The user profile page, which contains a list of all the questions, answers, and an audit trail of the user's activity on the site" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13059" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="5441" RevisionGUID="db943cb0-288e-4352-ad9f-786692a4d72b" CreationDate="2013-01-10T06:20:18.253" Comment="Proposed by 31260 approved by 25936 edit id of 6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13060" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5442" RevisionGUID="1f845acf-933d-4bd0-aed4-5fbd54cce213" CreationDate="2013-01-10T08:20:41.193" UserId="31260" Comment="3668-3554=114" Text="My [profile summary page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=summary) currently says 3668 upvotes while votes-&gt;upvotes sub tab ([dev team only link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=votes&amp;sort=upvote)) counts less than that - 3544.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`3668-3554=114` - as far as I understand this difference could be [due to deleted posts](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144757/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;), does that mean more than 100 posts I **upvoted** during last one and half year are **deleted**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;For the record, I also tried to check if this could somehow relate to deleted users but it appears to be not the case. My favorite [&quot;good one-liner example&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3477/31260 &quot;advertised here:)&quot;) that was posted by now-deleted user shows my upvote just the way it was cast in April 2012.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13061" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5442" RevisionGUID="1f845acf-933d-4bd0-aed4-5fbd54cce213" CreationDate="2013-01-10T08:20:41.193" UserId="31260" Comment="3668-3554=114" Text="Could it be that 114 posts I upvoted are all deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13062" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="320bca53-736c-41f6-8f85-d27973cfec04" CreationDate="2013-01-10T11:16:01.923" UserId="31260" Comment="1) &quot;Hot garbage waves&quot; in the answers 2) poisonous effect mis-answers have on questions 3) edits invalidated by quick garbage answers" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot;** in the answers appear to happen once or twice a week on average, frequent enough to feel the connection between these and respective questions making their way into [SE collider list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My particular concern is the poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making **interesting and well presented problems** look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;&quot;Oh look: ['my guess is fairly prosaic. Git is brilliant...'](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177890/31260 &quot;example&quot;) - it can't be a real question with upvoted answer like that&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to [repel garbage answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3835/31260 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;), I can easily name a handful of active regulars who [can and do](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;filter=all &quot;our editors gang is pretty strong&quot;) just that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that [invalidates my edit](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;). And answer that exploits another ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions: per my observations &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; have been smart enough to pick questions that have reasonably good wording as-is.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13063" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5442" RevisionGUID="4fc15ad7-c8f1-4bb2-9bb6-649a7e26275f" CreationDate="2013-01-10T12:17:39.130" UserId="31260" Comment="clarified per discussion in comments" Text="My [profile summary page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=summary) currently says 3668 upvotes while votes-&gt;upvotes sub tab ([dev team only link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=votes&amp;sort=upvote)) counts less than that - 3544.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`3668-3554=114` - as far as I understand this difference could be [due to deleted posts](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144757/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;), does that mean more than 100 posts I **upvoted** during last one and half year are **all** deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my past observations deletion indeed decreases the count, I only don't know if there's anything else besides that could also cause the miss (eg like it was with expiration in [this bug report posted at MSO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/162044/profile-page-shows-6-reopen-votes-total-while-i-have-at-least-25-successful-ones)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;For the record, I also tried to check if this could somehow relate to deleted users but it appears to be not the case. My favorite [&quot;good one-liner example&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3477/31260 &quot;advertised here:)&quot;) that was posted by now-deleted user shows my upvote just the way it was cast in April 2012.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13064" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="e6a5efd9-560b-4cdc-ab44-2bad2135ea23" CreationDate="2013-01-10T12:50:19.027" UserId="31260" Comment="can't be a real question += http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;not-a-real-question - what's this?&quot;" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot;** in the answers appear to happen once or twice a week on average, frequent enough to feel the connection between these and respective questions making their way into [SE collider list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My particular concern is the poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making **interesting and well presented problems** look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;&quot;Oh look: ['my guess is fairly prosaic. Git is brilliant...'](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177890/31260 &quot;example&quot;) - with upvoted answer like that it [can't be a real question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;not-a-real-question - what's this?&quot;)&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to [repel garbage answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3835/31260 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;), I can easily name a handful of active regulars who [can and do](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;filter=all &quot;our editors gang is pretty strong&quot;) just that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that [invalidates my edit](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;). And answer that exploits another minor ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions: per my observations &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; have been smart enough to pick questions that have reasonably good wording as-is.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13065" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5437" RevisionGUID="e1964ce2-e57b-4ace-a0d3-eec4716e64c4" CreationDate="2013-01-10T13:03:10.317" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/289356709703585792" />
  <row Id="13066" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="6eac148b-664c-4f16-baed-dee116b5b0f6" CreationDate="2013-01-10T14:25:41.560" UserId="31260" Comment="The way things work now helps to attract new contributors but I would appreciate if achieving this honorable, important goal  would somehow be less damaging for good, highly visible questions." Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot;** in the answers appear to happen once or twice a week on average, frequent enough to feel the connection between these and respective questions making their way into [SE collider list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My particular concern is the poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making **interesting and well presented problems** look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;&quot;Oh look: ['my guess is fairly prosaic. Git is brilliant...'](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177890/31260 &quot;example&quot;) - with upvoted answer like that it [can't be a real question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;not-a-real-question - what's this?&quot;)&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to [repel garbage answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3835/31260 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;), I can easily name a handful of active regulars who [can and do](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;filter=all &quot;our editors gang is pretty strong&quot;) just that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that [invalidates my edit](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;). And answer that exploits another minor ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions: per my observations &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; have been smart enough to pick questions that have reasonably good wording as-is.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way things work now helps to attract new contributors but I would appreciate if achieving this honorable, important goal &lt;sup&gt;**[1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/when-is-an-account-abandoned/ &quot;'reduce the friction of... answering to little more than entering an anonymous comment on a blog'&quot;), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/helping-the-experts-get-answers/ &quot;'attract notable experts to your site'&quot;), [3](http://stackexchange.com/about &quot;'free and open to everyone... answer questions without even bothering to register'&quot;)**&lt;/sup&gt; would somehow be less damaging for good, highly visible questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13067" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5443" RevisionGUID="b4dfe542-5bca-49b7-ba2a-db63d4c90ab1" CreationDate="2013-01-10T16:08:07.393" UserId="1204" Text="More generally, does Programmers accept questions of a customer service nature having to do with Apple's app submission process?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/q/8922619/102937&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you think Apple will reject my application if it is using this code ?    &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    + (BOOL)isJailbroken &#xD;&#xA;    {&#xD;&#xA;        BOOL jailbroken = NO;&#xD;&#xA;        NSString *cydiaPath = @&quot;/Applications/Cydia.app&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;        NSString *aptPath = @&quot;/private/var/lib/apt/&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;        if ([[NSFileManager defaultManager] fileExistsAtPath:cydiaPath]) {&#xD;&#xA;            jailbroken = YES;&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;        if ([[NSFileManager defaultManager] fileExistsAtPath:aptPath]) {&#xD;&#xA;            jailbroken = YES;&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;        return jailbroken;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13068" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5443" RevisionGUID="b4dfe542-5bca-49b7-ba2a-db63d4c90ab1" CreationDate="2013-01-10T16:08:07.393" UserId="1204" Text="Does Programmers accept &quot;Will apple accept or reject my app?&quot; questions? Why or why not?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13069" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5443" RevisionGUID="b4dfe542-5bca-49b7-ba2a-db63d4c90ab1" CreationDate="2013-01-10T16:08:07.393" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13070" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5444" RevisionGUID="72c08f6e-b414-4631-abe8-4a4aef0af75d" CreationDate="2013-01-10T16:10:57.280" UserId="47" Text="No we shouldn't accept questions like this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the general case we don't know what Apple's (or Microsoft's for that matter) acceptance criteria are. We would only be guessing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the specific case we could make a good guess that they would reject it - but it would still be a guess." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13071" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5445" RevisionGUID="3a791729-641d-4241-a31c-386a4814d652" CreationDate="2013-01-10T16:13:02.533" UserId="63" Text="You have up-voted 124 deleted posts. Such votes do show up in your totals, [and also count toward various badges](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/117846/votes-cast-should-include-votes-on-deleted-contributions/123048#123048); they have the additional advantage of *not* counting toward the daily voting limit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They *don't* show up on your profile's votes tab, because that would mean showing you links to deleted posts - that would equate to giving you broken links on your profile which would be *bad*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For comparison, you've *down-voted* 4,587 deleted posts. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13072" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="18bcb32e-5325-4b29-824f-db081c134b1a" CreationDate="2013-01-10T17:39:57.097" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot;** in the answers appear to happen once or twice a week on average, frequent enough to feel the connection between these and respective questions making their way into [SE collider list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My particular concern is the poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making **interesting and well presented problems** look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;&quot;Oh look: ['my guess is fairly prosaic. Git is brilliant...'](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177890/31260 &quot;example&quot;) - with upvoted answer like that it [can't be a real question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;not-a-real-question - what's this?&quot;)&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to [repel garbage answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3835/31260 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;), I can easily name a handful of active regulars who [can and do](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;filter=all &quot;our editors gang is pretty strong&quot;) just that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that [invalidates my edit](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;). And answer that exploits another minor ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions: per my observations &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; have been smart enough to pick questions that have reasonably good wording as-is.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way things work now helps to attract new contributors but I would appreciate if achieving this honorable, important goal &lt;sup&gt;**[1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/when-is-an-account-abandoned/ &quot;'reduce the friction of... answering to little more than entering an anonymous comment on a blog'&quot;), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/helping-the-experts-get-answers/ &quot;'attract notable experts to your site'&quot;), [3](http://stackexchange.com/about &quot;'free and open to everyone... answer questions without even bothering to register'&quot;)**&lt;/sup&gt; would somehow be less damaging for good, highly visible questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through few [sampled](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/181999/31260 &quot;random sampling, stuff like that&quot;) questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13073" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5442" RevisionGUID="6b267dc3-e89f-4be1-9a3c-4d96b370262d" CreationDate="2013-01-10T17:43:08.367" UserId="31260" Comment="edited body; edited title" Text="My [profile summary page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=summary) currently says 3668 upvotes while votes-&gt;upvotes sub tab ([dev team only link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=votes&amp;sort=upvote)) counts less than that - 3544.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`3668-3554=124` - as far as I understand this difference could be [due to deleted posts](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144757/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;), does that mean more than 100 posts I **upvoted** during last one and half year are **all** deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my past observations deletion indeed decreases the count, I only don't know if there's anything else besides that could also cause the miss (eg like it was with expiration in [this bug report posted at MSO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/162044/profile-page-shows-6-reopen-votes-total-while-i-have-at-least-25-successful-ones)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;For the record, I also tried to check if this could somehow relate to deleted users but it appears to be not the case. My favorite [&quot;good one-liner example&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3477/31260 &quot;advertised here:)&quot;) that was posted by now-deleted user shows my upvote just the way it was cast in April 2012.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13074" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5442" RevisionGUID="6b267dc3-e89f-4be1-9a3c-4d96b370262d" CreationDate="2013-01-10T17:43:08.367" UserId="31260" Comment="edited body; edited title" Text="Could it be that 124 posts I upvoted are all deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13075" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="5442" RevisionGUID="90781344-3824-43ac-97d0-7d8914b46490" CreationDate="2013-01-10T18:02:27.550" UserId="31260" Comment="Rollback to [4fc15ad7-c8f1-4bb2-9bb6-649a7e26275f]" Text="My [profile summary page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=summary) currently says 3668 upvotes while votes-&gt;upvotes sub tab ([dev team only link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=votes&amp;sort=upvote)) counts less than that - 3544.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`3668-3554=114` - as far as I understand this difference could be [due to deleted posts](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144757/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;), does that mean more than 100 posts I **upvoted** during last one and half year are **all** deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my past observations deletion indeed decreases the count, I only don't know if there's anything else besides that could also cause the miss (eg like it was with expiration in [this bug report posted at MSO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/162044/profile-page-shows-6-reopen-votes-total-while-i-have-at-least-25-successful-ones)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;For the record, I also tried to check if this could somehow relate to deleted users but it appears to be not the case. My favorite [&quot;good one-liner example&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3477/31260 &quot;advertised here:)&quot;) that was posted by now-deleted user shows my upvote just the way it was cast in April 2012.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13076" PostHistoryTypeId="7" PostId="5442" RevisionGUID="90781344-3824-43ac-97d0-7d8914b46490" CreationDate="2013-01-10T18:02:27.550" UserId="31260" Comment="Rollback to [4fc15ad7-c8f1-4bb2-9bb6-649a7e26275f]" Text="Could it be that 114 posts I upvoted are all deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13077" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5446" RevisionGUID="4f936118-e671-4848-9782-a636be8e603a" CreationDate="2013-01-10T20:14:21.847" UserId="30998" Text="I agree with @Rachel in her comment to the question. Career development and career advice *are* different things. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice question seek help in a *particular*, *narrowly-scoped* situation. An answer to such question is not going to help many people. I clearly see that this website is *not* a place for such questions, unlike Workplace.SE is and probably will be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, [career-development] questions seek general answers on how programmers careers might evolve, what stages of it one might encounter, what experience-based general advices people might have to those who just got out of the college.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should more clearly define what [career-development] tag means and make it clear to the community so that unwanted questions do not take place in the future." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13078" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5446" RevisionGUID="3130f495-69b7-4ee6-ab7e-54b68a4c815f" CreationDate="2013-01-10T20:21:00.537" UserId="30998" Comment="added 71 characters in body" Text="I agree with @Rachel in her comment to the question. Career development and career advice *are* different things. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice question seek help in a *particular*, *narrowly-scoped* situation. An answer to such question is not going to help many people. I clearly see that this website is *not* a place for such questions, unlike Workplace.SE is and probably will be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, [career-development] questions seek general answers on how programmers careers might evolve, what stages of it one might encounter, when to learn theory and when to apply it with different technologies, what experience-based general advices people might have to those who just got out of the college.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should more clearly define what [career-development] tag means and make it clear to the community so that unwanted questions do not take place in the future." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13079" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="2ef2eb5a-c240-4d71-ae84-9d86986086fe" CreationDate="2013-01-11T01:03:12.283" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/289537911731396608" />
  <row Id="13080" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5442" RevisionGUID="d4a99039-8e4b-486a-a0eb-c08f32528f0d" CreationDate="2013-01-11T12:39:48.547" UserId="31260" Comment="found and fixed a typo in my digits that caused my math be different from one given in the answer" Text="My [profile summary page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=summary) currently says 3668 upvotes while votes-&gt;upvotes sub tab ([dev team only link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=votes&amp;sort=upvote)) counts less than that - 3544.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`3668-3544=124` - as far as I understand this difference could be [due to deleted posts](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144757/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;), does that mean more than 100 posts I **upvoted** during last one and half year are **all** deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my past observations deletion indeed decreases the count, I only don't know if there's anything else besides that could also cause the miss (eg like it was with expiration in [this bug report posted at MSO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/162044/profile-page-shows-6-reopen-votes-total-while-i-have-at-least-25-successful-ones)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;For the record, I also tried to check if this could somehow relate to deleted users but it appears to be not the case. My favorite [&quot;good one-liner example&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3477/31260 &quot;advertised here:)&quot;) that was posted by now-deleted user shows my upvote just the way it was cast in April 2012.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13081" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5442" RevisionGUID="d4a99039-8e4b-486a-a0eb-c08f32528f0d" CreationDate="2013-01-11T12:39:48.547" UserId="31260" Comment="found and fixed a typo in my digits that caused my math be different from one given in the answer" Text="Could it be that 124 posts I upvoted are all deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13082" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="d06995f0-8ad5-4705-a9ff-7967bc46a4cb" CreationDate="2013-01-11T18:50:54.233" UserId="31260" Comment="http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html &quot;'protect your own users from scale ...human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon...'&quot;" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot;** in the answers appear to happen once or twice a week on average, frequent enough to feel the connection between these and respective questions making their way into [SE collider list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My particular concern is the poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making **interesting and well presented problems** look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;&quot;Oh look: ['my guess is fairly prosaic. Git is brilliant...'](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177890/31260 &quot;example&quot;) - with upvoted answer like that it [can't be a real question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;not-a-real-question - what's this?&quot;)&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to [repel garbage answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3835/31260 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;), I can easily name a handful of active regulars who [can and do](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;filter=all &quot;our editors gang is pretty strong&quot;) just that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that [invalidates my edit](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;). And answer that exploits another minor ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions: per my observations &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; have been smart enough to pick questions that have reasonably good wording as-is.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how things work now helps to attract new contributors but I would appreciate if achieving this important goal &lt;sup&gt;**[1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/when-is-an-account-abandoned/ &quot;'reduce the friction of... answering to little more than entering an anonymous comment on a blog'&quot;), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/helping-the-experts-get-answers/ &quot;'attract notable experts to your site'&quot;), [3](http://stackexchange.com/about &quot;'free and open to everyone... answer questions without even bothering to register'&quot;)**&lt;/sup&gt; would somehow be less damaging **&lt;sup&gt;[4](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html &quot;'protect your own users from scale ...human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon...'&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;** for good, highly visible questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through few [sampled](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/181999/31260 &quot;random sampling, stuff like that&quot;) questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13084" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="72b57b82-a098-419b-a0e0-feeea17954f8" CreationDate="2013-01-11T18:56:48.560" UserId="31260" Comment="http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html &quot;'protect your own users from scale ...human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon...'&quot;" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot;** in the answers appear to happen once or twice a week on average, frequent enough to feel the connection between these and respective questions making their way into [SE collider list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My particular concern is the poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making **interesting and well presented problems** look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;&quot;Oh look: ['my guess is fairly prosaic. Git is brilliant...'](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177890/31260 &quot;example&quot;) - with upvoted answer like that it [can't be a real question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;not-a-real-question - what's this?&quot;)&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to [repel garbage answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3835/31260 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;), I can easily name a handful of active regulars who [can and do](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;filter=all &quot;our editors gang is pretty strong&quot;) just that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that [invalidates my edit](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;). And answer that exploits another minor ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions: per my observations &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; have been smart enough to pick questions that have reasonably good wording as-is.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how things work now helps to attract new contributors but I would appreciate if achieving this important goal &lt;sup&gt;**[1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/when-is-an-account-abandoned/ &quot;'reduce the friction of... answering to little more than entering an anonymous comment on a blog'&quot;), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/helping-the-experts-get-answers/ &quot;'attract notable experts to your site'&quot;), [3](http://stackexchange.com/about &quot;'free and open to everyone... answer questions without even bothering to register'&quot;)**&lt;/sup&gt; would somehow be less damaging for good, highly visible questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **protect your own users from scale ...human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon...** ([A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy ](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html &quot;quote source&quot;))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through few [sampled](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/181999/31260 &quot;random sampling, stuff like that&quot;) questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13085" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5447" RevisionGUID="d59e8d4a-e8e8-4d7e-afb7-3aa66f36f759" CreationDate="2013-01-11T21:04:55.390" UserId="3417" Text="on-topic/off-topic should only apply if someone asks a question like &quot;how long should I boil rice for?&quot; why go through the trouble of discussing if it's on-topic when the community could actually help the guy find an answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13087" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5448" RevisionGUID="fb83aac6-9ddb-47bc-8c30-e5c02c49b3d5" CreationDate="2013-01-12T08:38:17.413" UserId="31260" Text="&gt;  the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above issue looks real, as indicated by [54.32% &quot;bad&quot; questions asked](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5379/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this is likely related to issues with answers quality in hot questions ([discussed here in more details](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;Answers quality in hot questions&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot; in the answers  &#xD;&#xA;...poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making interesting and well presented problems look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/)  &#xD;&#xA;...regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An &quot;outsider&quot; reading low quality answers in hot questions, could naturally think,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hey here I can _chit-chat about how git is fantastic_ and get my portion of cheap upvotes, c00l&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a steady source of misguided contributors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Above makes me doubt that widespread misunderstanding of site purpose is caused by either of [name-FAQ mis-match](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name), or misleading [site name](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3718/31260) / [tag line](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3500/31260), or [scope change](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/31260).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13088" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5448" RevisionGUID="f470da72-bd3e-446d-864a-d874a26747cd" CreationDate="2013-01-12T10:30:48.093" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="&gt;  the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above issue looks real, as indicated by [54.32% &quot;bad&quot; questions asked](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5379/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this is likely related to issues with answers quality in hot questions ([discussed here in more details](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;Answers quality in hot questions&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Hot garbage waves&quot; in the answers once or twice a week&#xD;&#xA;* poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making interesting and well presented problems look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/)  &#xD;&#xA;* regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An &quot;outsider&quot; reading low quality answers in hot questions, could naturally think,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hey here I can _chit-chat about how git is fantastic_ and get my portion of cheap upvotes, c00l&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a steady source of misguided contributors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Above makes me doubt that widespread misunderstanding of site purpose is caused by either of [name-FAQ mis-match](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name), or misleading [site name](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3718/31260) / [tag line](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3500/31260), or [scope change](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/31260).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13089" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5448" RevisionGUID="5d36524a-fd78-45f2-ab14-c5cdd82015f1" CreationDate="2013-01-12T10:56:12.387" UserId="31260" Comment="added 348 characters in body" Text="&gt;  the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above issue looks real, as indicated by [54.32% &quot;bad&quot; questions asked](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5379/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this is likely related to issues with answers quality in hot questions ([discussed here in more details](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;Answers quality in hot questions&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Hot garbage waves&quot; in the answers once or twice a week&#xD;&#xA;* poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making interesting and well presented problems look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/)  &#xD;&#xA;* regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An &quot;outsider&quot; reading low quality answers in hot questions, could naturally think,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hey here I can _chit-chat about how git is fantastic_ and get my portion of cheap upvotes, c00l&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a steady source of misguided contributors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Above makes me doubt that widespread misunderstanding of site purpose is caused by either of [name-FAQ mis-match](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name), or misleading [site name](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3718/31260) / [tag line](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3500/31260), or [scope change](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/31260).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13090" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5448" RevisionGUID="33a0e383-1ef7-4466-8c2d-3faa0a0af777" CreationDate="2013-01-12T12:23:51.237" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="&gt;  the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above issue looks real, as indicated by [54.32% &quot;bad&quot; questions asked](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5379/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this is likely related to issues with answers quality in hot questions ([discussed here in more details](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;Answers quality in hot questions&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Hot garbage waves&quot; in the answers once or twice a week&#xD;&#xA;* poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making interesting and well presented problems look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/)  &#xD;&#xA;* regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An &quot;outsider&quot; reading low quality answers in hot questions, could naturally think,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hey here I can _chit-chat about how git is fantastic_ and get my portion of cheap upvotes, c00l&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a **steady source of misguided contributors**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Above makes me doubt that widespread misunderstanding of site purpose is really caused by either of [name-FAQ mis-match](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name), or misleading [site name](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3718/31260) / [tag line](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3500/31260), or [scope change](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/31260).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13091" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5448" RevisionGUID="c5093f01-bc1f-4801-a16b-f1a3d88880e3" CreationDate="2013-01-12T12:36:43.693" UserId="31260" Comment="broken windows: &quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;" Text="&gt;  the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above issue looks real, as indicated by [54.32% &quot;bad&quot; questions asked](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5379/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this is likely related to issues with answers quality in hot questions ([discussed here in more details](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;Answers quality in hot questions&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Hot garbage waves&quot; in the answers once or twice a week&#xD;&#xA;* poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making interesting and well presented problems look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/)  &#xD;&#xA;* regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An &quot;outsider&quot; reading low quality answers in hot questions, could naturally think,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hey here I can _chit-chat about how git is fantastic_ and get my portion of cheap upvotes, c00l&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a **steady source of misguided contributors**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Above makes me doubt that widespread misunderstanding of site purpose is really caused by either of [name-FAQ mis-match](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name), or misleading [site name](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3718/31260) / [tag line](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3500/31260), or [scope change](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/31260). There are much larger [broken windows](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info) than that: &quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13092" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5449" RevisionGUID="00247cf8-6f41-4bb2-9500-2d23e37c9225" CreationDate="2013-01-12T12:43:57.070" UserId="31260" Text="Please merge tag [tag:legacy-code] (2 questions) into [tag:legacy] (46), and make them synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag _legacy-code_ does not have wiki nor excerpt. Tag _legacy_ wiki excerpt is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about legacy languages, code, or applications." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13093" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5449" RevisionGUID="00247cf8-6f41-4bb2-9500-2d23e37c9225" CreationDate="2013-01-12T12:43:57.070" UserId="31260" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [legacy-code] → [legacy]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13094" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5449" RevisionGUID="00247cf8-6f41-4bb2-9500-2d23e37c9225" CreationDate="2013-01-12T12:43:57.070" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13095" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5450" RevisionGUID="10bdccf7-24cf-4d68-a44d-58eb38e100e5" CreationDate="2013-01-12T13:49:31.963" UserId="25476" Text="I am not sure that I agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Legacy can have a different meaning when being used to describe the old application during an application rewrite project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What columns are we supposed to display on the Inventory Summary panel again?  What does the legacy application have?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Legacy code I feel is just describing or talking about old code in an application.  Granted the example questions you have posted are tagged legacy but actually about legacy code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I suggest instead is to create [tag:legacy-application] instead." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13096" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5377" RevisionGUID="78e2ca63-ea95-420d-a1dc-f01cad3d8585" CreationDate="2013-01-12T22:22:00.120" UserId="31260" Comment="get upper bound of detected attempts to abuse question ban" Text="In September 2012 [registration requirement to ask questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/4001/31260 &quot;as announced here&quot;) has been introduced:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In the past 60 days, 76% of all questions from unregistered users have been either down-voted below 0, closed, deleted, or some combination of the three. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;That's a total of 182 questions, compared to 877 similarly bad questions from *registered* users. It's a relatively small number, but as a percentage of the total it's high enough that implementing #1 holds little risk - at worst, you'll lose maybe a question a day from someone too lazy to register. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;So, I've turn on the registration requirement in order to ask questions here. Let's **check back in a month or so** and see if it made any difference...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that **more than 3 months** passed, is it time to somehow see if it made a difference?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I recall correctly, back then one of major concerns against this was that it may somehow inhibit asking good questions. With this in mind I think it would make sense to find out about the differences in the amount / rate of &quot;good&quot; questions (defined as say, open with non-negative score).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Given that registration presumably simplifies handling of [question bans](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-ban/info &quot;what's this&quot;) I think it would be particularly interesting to estimate if there was a difference in amount (rate) of such bans.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;It would be also interesting to study the difference in &quot;ban failure rate&quot;, which could be estimated as percentage of users caught at attempts to overcome it: those who created fake accounts that were later discovered and merged into original banned account.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It looks quite simple how to get upper bound of detected attempts to abuse question ban. First, let's count how many accounts were added in last 4 months, as of Jan 12 these are roughly between [62044](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/62044) and [78338](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/78338), `78338-62044=16294`. Now if we find how many of these accounts are gone, as indicated by respective user profile being `404 Not Found`, this will give us how many accounts were either self-deleted, or gone through legitimate merges, or... **and this is exactly what I'd want to estimate**... or were merged as a result of detected abuse of question ban. It is of course impossible to manually scan 16K+ profile pages, wonder if this could be done somehow automagically?&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13097" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5451" RevisionGUID="b74faf0d-b506-4a53-90a5-5b0a6f2f74ff" CreationDate="2013-01-13T01:01:22.197" UserId="3605" Text="Possible bug in &quot;unanswered&quot; filter: As shown in the screen capture below, the url says &quot;unanswered&quot;, but the page content disagrees. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think this is a browser problem, as I replicated this problem on a different machine (actually vmware linux). And the bug is persistent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/WsGNU.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13098" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5451" RevisionGUID="b74faf0d-b506-4a53-90a5-5b0a6f2f74ff" CreationDate="2013-01-13T01:01:22.197" UserId="3605" Text="Possible bug in &quot;unanswered&quot; filter" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13099" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5451" RevisionGUID="b74faf0d-b506-4a53-90a5-5b0a6f2f74ff" CreationDate="2013-01-13T01:01:22.197" UserId="3605" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13100" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5451" RevisionGUID="66ea8bf3-95d2-4b17-9370-a86900b89313" CreationDate="2013-01-13T01:28:19.710" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13101" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5452" RevisionGUID="d1176684-644f-4be2-8c72-bb25cd3f7cc3" CreationDate="2013-01-13T01:29:01.303" UserId="12611" Text="This is not a bug; however, the language used is a bit confusing, IMHO. A post is considered &quot;unanswered&quot; when it doesn't have any upvoted answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, as soon as one of the answers is up voted, the post will no longer appear in the unanswered filter." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13102" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5453" RevisionGUID="0b65b880-36fc-4277-be83-4e5349551809" CreationDate="2013-01-13T01:29:11.550" UserId="25936" Text="The Stack Exchange definition of unanswered questions is questions with _no upvoted answers_. Check the link's tooltip ;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13103" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5448" RevisionGUID="36dea1f4-40fd-46cd-a376-950d10ee1883" CreationDate="2013-01-13T06:54:26.143" UserId="31260" Comment="solution clarified" Text="&gt;  the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above issue looks real, as indicated by [54.32% &quot;bad&quot; questions asked](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5379/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this is likely related to issues with answers quality in hot questions ([discussed here in more details](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;Answers quality in hot questions&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Hot garbage waves&quot; in the answers once or twice a week&#xD;&#xA;* poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making interesting and well presented problems look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/)  &#xD;&#xA;* regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An &quot;outsider&quot; reading low quality answers in hot questions, could naturally think,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hey here I can _chit-chat about how git is fantastic_ and get my portion of cheap upvotes, c00l&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a **steady source of misguided contributors**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Above makes me doubt that widespread misunderstanding of site purpose is really caused by either of [name-FAQ mis-match](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name), or misleading [site name](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3718/31260) / [tag line](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3500/31260), or [scope change](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/31260). There are much larger [broken windows](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info) than that: &quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If above reasoning is correct, then ensuring good quality of the answers in hot questions will help users reading these better understand the site and eventually lead to less of a bad posts from misguided users." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13104" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5379" RevisionGUID="96ada3f5-5ea5-455e-a408-2d0d6fd3dadf" CreationDate="2013-01-15T01:10:46.907" UserId="63" Comment="Finally had some time to dig into this a bit more" Text="After digging into this a bit further, I can't find any conclusive evidence that this has really helped much. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the 60 days prior to registration being enacted, Programmers got 877 bad* questions from registered users, and 182 from unregistered users, making up 48.05% of those asked by registered and 76.15% of those asked by unregistered users respectively.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the *past* 60 days, Programmers got 1221 bad questions from registered users, making up 55.53% of the total asked. There are some holidays in there though, so that doesn't really tell the whole story. Here's a picture:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![questions by source and quality over time][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I *didn't* see (but hoped for) was a significant drop in the number of questions asked. So far as I can tell, the folks asking crappy questions with unregistered accounts just registered their accounts and kept on a-goin' - the number dropped slightly *right* after the change went in, but then went right back up again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It probably improved the effectiveness of the quality ban slightly, but you're not gonna see this reflected in account deletions, and I'm not gonna talk to much about that anyway. But, here's a picture for gnat:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![User creation and deletion][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best reason for doing this is probably just the slight bit of extra resistance it provides, and the somewhat fewer headaches involved in having registered accounts (both for the asker, and the folks interacting with him). I wouldn't turn it off again, but I wouldn't encourage sites with less traffic to enable it either. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, we're working on changes to the registration system that should help to *encourage* folks to register their accounts without *requiring* it - this should ease the transition elsewhere. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*closed, deleted, or down-voted below 0.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Arxzl.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/cVcBn.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13105" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5454" RevisionGUID="e078d38b-db2d-4bc8-a580-a61eb6b37444" CreationDate="2013-01-15T04:40:11.287" UserId="7921" Text="So, today I wrote a question that follows the general pattern for book questions on Programmers (*Is there a canonical book on [x]?*) about a topic that's definitely related to programming (data integration).  [This is the question][1].  It was closed.  I'd like to understand why, when there are many other questions that follow similar formats that are open and highly rated.  Any thoughts? Is it the topic?  If so, where should I have posted this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/183574/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-data-integration" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13106" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5454" RevisionGUID="e078d38b-db2d-4bc8-a580-a61eb6b37444" CreationDate="2013-01-15T04:40:11.287" UserId="7921" Text="Why did a question about programming books get closed on Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13107" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5454" RevisionGUID="e078d38b-db2d-4bc8-a580-a61eb6b37444" CreationDate="2013-01-15T04:40:11.287" UserId="7921" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13108" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5455" RevisionGUID="fb9eb3db-5ba6-4536-bacb-c665648e1195" CreationDate="2013-01-15T08:33:37.177" UserId="4" Text="In a [more recent discussion of resource request questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient), the majority of support was behind favoring &quot;why&quot; or &quot;how&quot; questions rather than just requesting resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you're looking for a book on data integration topics, you clearly have questions or concerns about data integration (specifically using Hadoop and ETL). If you're having architectural or design questions of a conceptual nature, you should ask those specific questions here. A good set of answers should not only address your concerns, but give links to outside resources of all types (books, blogs, articles) as well as the personal experiences of others who may have solved similar problems in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, once you have a solid design, [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/) is a good place for realizing that design into an implementation. Depending on the nature of the question, [Database Administrators Stack Exchange](http://dba.stackexchange.com/) might also be appropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13109" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="4100" RevisionGUID="739f0886-7555-45cb-9863-893217b7334f" CreationDate="2013-01-15T08:52:58.363" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|resource-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13110" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5454" RevisionGUID="e625ac98-fdcb-4927-8ffa-5a0621f5ecff" CreationDate="2013-01-15T08:53:36.430" UserId="31260" Comment="added 2 characters in body; edited tags" Text="So, today I wrote a question that follows the general pattern for book questions on Programmers (*Is there a canonical book on [x]?*) about a topic that's definitely related to programming (data integration).  [This is the question][1].  It was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to understand why, when there are many other questions that follow similar formats that are open and highly rated.  Any thoughts? Is it the topic?  If so, where should I have posted this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/183574/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-data-integration" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13111" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5454" RevisionGUID="e625ac98-fdcb-4927-8ffa-5a0621f5ecff" CreationDate="2013-01-15T08:53:36.430" UserId="31260" Comment="added 2 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|resource-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13112" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="d450eb96-f7ba-4657-bdd6-cddcd9563708" CreationDate="2013-01-16T08:26:03.230" UserId="31260" Comment="1) likely contribute to posting many &quot;bad&quot; questions. 2) trigger CW which turns upvotes given to good answers into zero rep" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot;** in the answers appear to happen once or twice a week on average, frequent enough to feel the connection between these and respective questions making their way into [SE collider list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My particular concern is the poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making **interesting and well presented problems** look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;&quot;Oh look: ['my guess is fairly prosaic. Git is brilliant...'](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177890/31260 &quot;example&quot;) - with upvoted answer like that it [can't be a real question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;not-a-real-question - what's this?&quot;)&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to [repel garbage answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3835/31260 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;), I can easily name a handful of active regulars who [can and do](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;filter=all &quot;our editors gang is pretty strong&quot;) just that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that [invalidates my edit](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;). And answer that exploits another minor ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions: per my observations &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; have been smart enough to pick questions that have reasonably good wording as-is.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how things work now helps to attract new contributors but I would appreciate if achieving this important goal &lt;sup&gt;**[1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/when-is-an-account-abandoned/ &quot;'reduce the friction of... answering to little more than entering an anonymous comment on a blog'&quot;), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/helping-the-experts-get-answers/ &quot;'attract notable experts to your site'&quot;), [3](http://stackexchange.com/about &quot;'free and open to everyone... answer questions without even bothering to register'&quot;)**&lt;/sup&gt; would somehow be less damaging for good, highly visible questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **protect your own users from scale ...human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon...** ([A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy ](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html &quot;quote source&quot;))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some additional observations based on discussions that followed posting this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Low quality answers in hot questions likely contribute to the fact that currently, it is [hard for users to understand site standards](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;), which results in posting many &quot;bad&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a steady source of misguided contributors... There are... [broken windows](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info)... **&quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;**.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Low quality answers also threat to [penalize contributors](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13713_5448 &quot;see 'clear that 10k barrier...' and further discussion&quot;) who post good ones because when piled on in hot questions, garbage answers trigger [CW](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info &quot;automatic community wiki when there are more than 15 answers&quot;) which consequently turns all the upvotes given to good answers into zero reputation for their authors.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [more than 1700 answers scored 25+ turned community wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;q=wiki%3ayes%20is%3aanswer%20score%3a25)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of precision, note that number `1700` above is only indicative since search does not exclude answers turned CW for other reasons. Also note some of the answers could be high-voted &quot;unfairly&quot;: per analysis 10+ voted answers in sampled questions (below), this could happen, although rather infrequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through few [sampled](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/181999/31260 &quot;random sampling, stuff like that&quot;) questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13113" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5456" RevisionGUID="5a8db89e-81c9-4087-bc7c-4e2907451176" CreationDate="2013-01-16T13:22:49.447" UserId="25476" Text="It seems as if there is enough debate about this that I wanted to start a discussion about if EULA's are currently considered on topic, and if they are *should* they be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/183796/can-an-eula-restrict-what-you-can-use-an-application-for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I made the following argument:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about software licenses are on topic and agreements on licenses fall in that category in my opinion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another user made the counter argument:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but software isn't the only area where EULAs are used, which puts the question into the FAQ's &quot;All People&quot; circle. – Blrfl&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is a strong argument.  Other comments like this one make me question if this can even be answered from a non legal perspective since a EULA is a legal contract.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; probably worth pointing out that there are often things EULAs can not restrict e.g. statutory rights – jk.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is, if software licensing is on topic, does that make agreements about software licensing on topic?  And if that is the case, is the EULA a widely enough used agreement outside of the realm of software development that it can be considered to apply to *Everyone*?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13114" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5456" RevisionGUID="5a8db89e-81c9-4087-bc7c-4e2907451176" CreationDate="2013-01-16T13:22:49.447" UserId="25476" Text="Discussion on if questions about EULA's are on topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13115" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5456" RevisionGUID="5a8db89e-81c9-4087-bc7c-4e2907451176" CreationDate="2013-01-16T13:22:49.447" UserId="25476" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13116" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5456" RevisionGUID="43abd17e-514f-4a6b-8cd0-a397b09eb75f" CreationDate="2013-01-16T13:27:00.503" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13117" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5457" RevisionGUID="ff264b13-0b10-48ad-b622-8ff35c8dc2e6" CreationDate="2013-01-16T13:31:16.927" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="Open source licenses make up the _context_ of the majority of software licensing questions, and there are people here who are thoroughly familiar with most of them. If you have questions about any OSI approved license, and even other non-approved licenses that have seen any kind of significant distribution, someone here can probably help based on prior knowledge and experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;End user license agreements don't always fall into that category. Would it be acceptable to ask a community of software design and engineering professionals to evaluate a legal agreement that they _probably_ have no knowledge of or prior experience with? I tend to think no, with the exception of EULAs shown by extremely popular tools that many in our community are likely to use. But even then, did .. well .. we read it before continuing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's really the distinction. When you speak of software licenses, you're speaking of something that a broader ranger of people have at least _seen_. EULAs can come out of the ether.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13118" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5458" RevisionGUID="6b634f12-1b58-4b26-b8b3-f2d0868ffae7" CreationDate="2013-01-16T14:59:42.267" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="I think that questions about EULA's should generally be on-topic as they fall within the category of a software license.  So they should not get a knee-jerk auto-close reaction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_That_ particular question is off-topic though since it is primarily asking about the hypothetical legal constraints of what an EULA can restrict.  And the question was correctly closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the on-topic questions we've seen are concrete and answerable within the expertise of the community.  That question is a hypothetical and is outside the (reasonably expected)* expertise of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&lt;sub&gt;I realize that we do have some attorneys and former attorneys in our community.  However, our focus is on programming not law.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13119" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5456" RevisionGUID="6cd1a278-a083-4e50-b8e9-91e0d3b73544" CreationDate="2013-01-16T16:03:18.710" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/291576371770167296" />
  <row Id="13120" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5459" RevisionGUID="cbf9ffda-680c-4ab3-8b14-cdc5daf5499a" CreationDate="2013-01-16T19:42:43.697" UserId="41381" Text="Questions about EULAs should be off topic as the correct body to pose them to are the issuers of whatever/product service that EULA is in reference to. There could be a small set of questions that would be acceptable but I would consider those exceptional cases ie creating a EULA for something you developed that is not best asked to a lawyer and not too localized or too broad." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13121" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="b6f6f371-cfe4-416d-af45-290e888cdf59" CreationDate="2013-01-16T20:52:18.167" UserId="31260" Comment="background += data related to recently added observations on community wiki status." Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot;** in the answers appear to happen once or twice a week on average, frequent enough to feel the connection between these and respective questions making their way into [SE collider list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My particular concern is the poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making **interesting and well presented problems** look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;&quot;Oh look: ['my guess is fairly prosaic. Git is brilliant...'](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177890/31260 &quot;example&quot;) - with upvoted answer like that it [can't be a real question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;not-a-real-question - what's this?&quot;)&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to [repel garbage answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3835/31260 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;), I can easily name a handful of active regulars who [can and do](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;filter=all &quot;our editors gang is pretty strong&quot;) just that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that [invalidates my edit](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;). And answer that exploits another minor ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions: per my observations &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; have been smart enough to pick questions that have reasonably good wording as-is.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how things work now helps to attract new contributors but I would appreciate if achieving this important goal &lt;sup&gt;**[1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/when-is-an-account-abandoned/ &quot;'reduce the friction of... answering to little more than entering an anonymous comment on a blog'&quot;), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/helping-the-experts-get-answers/ &quot;'attract notable experts to your site'&quot;), [3](http://stackexchange.com/about &quot;'free and open to everyone... answer questions without even bothering to register'&quot;)**&lt;/sup&gt; would somehow be less damaging for good, highly visible questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **protect your own users from scale ...human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon...** ([A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy ](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html &quot;quote source&quot;))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some additional observations based on discussions that followed posting this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Low quality answers in hot questions likely contribute to the fact that currently, it is [hard for users to understand site standards](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;), which results in posting many &quot;bad&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a steady source of misguided contributors... There are... [broken windows](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info)... **&quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;**.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Low quality answers also threat to [penalize contributors](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13713_5448 &quot;see 'clear that 10k barrier...' and further discussion&quot;) who post good ones because when piled on in hot questions, garbage answers trigger [CW](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info &quot;automatic community wiki when there are more than 15 answers&quot;) which consequently turns all the upvotes given to good answers into zero reputation for their authors.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [more than 1700 answers scored 25+ turned community wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;q=wiki%3ayes%20is%3aanswer%20score%3a25)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of precision, note that number `1700` above is only indicative since search does not exclude answers turned CW for other reasons. Also note some of the answers could be high-voted &quot;unfairly&quot;: per analysis 10+ voted answers in sampled questions (below), this could happen, although rather infrequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through few [sampled](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/181999/31260 &quot;random sampling, stuff like that&quot;) questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some data related to [recently added](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/5413/revisions &quot;see changes in rev 13&quot;) observations on community wiki status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 2K+ views - about **25%** are CW, [307](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [1247](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 10K+ views - about **60%** are CW, [62](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [101](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting [self](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13717_5448 &quot;from here&quot;), wow. Just... wow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13122" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5460" RevisionGUID="76df4bcd-93f3-4749-a55e-39e7f77f6b12" CreationDate="2013-01-17T15:28:15.323" UserId="46560" Text="When viewing a question or answer that has gathered a lot of attention, viewing the comments on the answer become a pain. The comments are ranked based on the up-votes they receive and the ordering totally changes the context. See a response [here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in/159638#159638). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many comments that are targeted to specific users and cause a small but important dialogue. It gets increasingly difficult to follow the dialogues as the question/response receives more attention and hence comments (yes I know, the comments should not include long dialogues, but still following up on them helps).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible/foreseeable to have a `reply-to` link as we do in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13123" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5460" RevisionGUID="76df4bcd-93f3-4749-a55e-39e7f77f6b12" CreationDate="2013-01-17T15:28:15.323" UserId="46560" Text="How can the comment navigation be improved?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13124" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5460" RevisionGUID="76df4bcd-93f3-4749-a55e-39e7f77f6b12" CreationDate="2013-01-17T15:28:15.323" UserId="46560" Text="|discussion|feature-request|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13125" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5461" RevisionGUID="bf85c75f-59ba-4221-9771-dc8695643946" CreationDate="2013-01-17T15:39:30.787" UserId="4" Text="The problems that you mention come from a misuse of comments. Comments meant to point out issues with or suggestions for the post that they are attached to. They should be used if the question needs additional information or to ask about what has already been tried or to elaborate on points that someone answering would need to know about to provide a better, more relevant answer. Comments on an answer are likewise meant to ask for clarification of points or to point out errors or concerns with an answer. They are not meant for extended discussion. This [Meta Stack Overflow answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/139812/572) provides a good overview.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a post has a number of irrelevant or obsolete comments, flag them for deletion so that they don't cause the problems you're seeing. Once issues with the post have been resolved, the comments are probably no longer necessary and can be cleaned up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, if you need to have an extended discussion that maintains an order, feel free to start a chat room and link to it in the comments. At 100 reputation, a user can create a custom chat room. This room may go dormant or get locked, but the content is preserved much like the content on the main site. A comment linking to the chat room can be left for people to follow and refer to the extended discussion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13126" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5462" RevisionGUID="3da11f8c-fff7-4182-babf-8d3a5b2fecaa" CreationDate="2013-01-17T15:40:01.967" UserId="47" Text="The ordering of comments is always oldest to newest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there are a &quot;lot&quot; (for some value of &quot;lot&quot; I'm not sure of) of comments then comments with low or no votes are hidden, but the order remains the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Thomas points out - if there are a lot of comments then that's a bad sign. You should be having that conversation in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21) and, if necessary, updating the post as a result of that conversation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13127" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5463" RevisionGUID="c27138db-d152-40e1-b7bf-79e0e173c9a2" CreationDate="2013-01-18T14:34:24.980" UserId="78808" Text="[This question on networking at conferences][1] was not closed, but [this one I just posted][2] was closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, what is a better forum for that [closed question][2]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, I'm assuming that the first one should have been closed too, but it wasn't because it is a bit older and this site is more deletionist now than it was.  Do we really want to be this strict? There's a lot of good info in the answers to the first one--info I wouldn't have found anywhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm assuming there's already been debates here on how strict we should be.  Can someone point out those discussions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77102/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/184017/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences-beyond-the-first-conversation/184060" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13128" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5463" RevisionGUID="c27138db-d152-40e1-b7bf-79e0e173c9a2" CreationDate="2013-01-18T14:34:24.980" UserId="78808" Text="Are we too strict? Where should off-topic questions go?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13129" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5463" RevisionGUID="c27138db-d152-40e1-b7bf-79e0e173c9a2" CreationDate="2013-01-18T14:34:24.980" UserId="78808" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13130" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5464" RevisionGUID="9f052c7b-e280-4a3b-89e8-fdf852ef1ab7" CreationDate="2013-01-18T14:41:39.973" UserId="78808" Text="Yes, we are closing too many questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm all for closing questions that are clearly off-topic, but think the attitude on all StackExchange sites is way too strict. The guidelines are a bit too strict.  Don't get me wrong--I don't want StackExchange sites to become Reddit--but I think we are more in danger of becoming Wikipedia in that the community is hostile to most questions except those created by the 1% who really grok the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13131" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5465" RevisionGUID="156c54da-0865-4fae-bbe9-701e62a18d40" CreationDate="2013-01-18T14:59:13.890" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="I had to think a bit when I was reviewing your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the one hand, the question is specific to programmers and is somewhat related to development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, it's not a constructive question.  I can see a good answer being provided, but I'm not positive that answer would have the applicability or lasting value that we're seeking.  Discussions about networking are kind of in the realm of &quot;career advice&quot; which are explicitly off-topic per the [faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I didn't vote to close your question but I can see why others in the community did.  FWIW, I have voted to close the older question as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's worth pointing out that voting to close is not the same as recommending the deletion of a question.  A closed question will remain, and others will be able to see it.  A deleted question can only be seen by moderators and those with 10k+ reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And you didn't get heavily down-voted on the question, so it's not like you asked a patently bad question.  You were sitting at a +5/-3 split when I wrote this answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13132" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5466" RevisionGUID="28a0b6f7-73cc-494e-9cce-b0b0cd305e20" CreationDate="2013-01-18T21:53:28.310" UserId="3965" Text="Sometimes popular questions don't get closed, even if they are technically off topic.  Sometimes the fate of a question depends on who gets to it first.  That's a drawback of a community-moderated site.  The newer question could have been closed as a duplicate of the first, but both of them clearly failed the test of the following venn diagram that's been the policy of this site as long as I've been here, at least:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![venn diagram][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, [workplace stackexchange](http://workplace.stackexchange.com) has come into being since the first question was posted.  People tended to be more forgiving of off topic career questions before there was somewhere else to go.  Again, that's the nature of a community-moderated site.  Just because we haven't gone back and done a purge doesn't mean those questions are de facto on topic.  If you notice, old questions like that are quickly closed when brought to our attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/eRC2h.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13134" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5467" RevisionGUID="fad04511-dd33-47f2-af8b-e21bacd41f79" CreationDate="2013-01-19T02:25:12.057" UserId="185" Text="Sorry for the late response; this issue was [fixed][1] on Sep 25, 2012. Thanks for the report.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/141435/new-beta-review-displays-locked-posts/143562#comment425684_143562" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13135" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3916" RevisionGUID="a7930d1e-8995-484a-92ab-e2711c7bf171" CreationDate="2013-01-19T02:25:19.747" UserId="185" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13136" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5468" RevisionGUID="95b10e2c-1c4b-4969-b261-dc887f49914f" CreationDate="2013-01-19T13:31:48.517" UserId="44898" Text="With all the discussions about how to handle &quot;which language should I learn&quot; or &quot;which book now&quot; questions, and the consensus being to close these questions, I wonder if there's room for a new SE website specifically for those questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean, there are so many questions like that, I think there's a real need to get those questions answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So is it worthwhile to propose a new SE site on Area51 for those explicit questions? Would such a site have a chance? Or are those questions fundamentally unsuitable for the SE format?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13137" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5468" RevisionGUID="95b10e2c-1c4b-4969-b261-dc887f49914f" CreationDate="2013-01-19T13:31:48.517" UserId="44898" Text="Is there a market for &quot;which language to learn, which book to read&quot; questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13138" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5468" RevisionGUID="95b10e2c-1c4b-4969-b261-dc887f49914f" CreationDate="2013-01-19T13:31:48.517" UserId="44898" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13139" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5469" RevisionGUID="25ccca3a-c685-474d-9548-e0bf1b26027d" CreationDate="2013-01-19T13:34:33.923" UserId="47" Text="Personally I don't think it would work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is simply too much discussion around these topics and ultimately you'll just end up with a big list of answers each extolling the virtues of a language or a book but not really addressing the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have found that these questions don't work with the Stack Exchange question and answer format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you disagree feel free to propose a site on Area 51.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I should also point out that this question is off topic for Meta Programmers, but I'll leave it open for a while (at least).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13140" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5470" RevisionGUID="003a9c7e-c57f-4ad2-9d61-c44de6388ce6" CreationDate="2013-01-19T21:36:03.583" UserId="25936" Text="I've just deleted your question - for technical reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You cross posted the question on The Workplace, and the community there seemed to welcome it. When I noticed, I migrated the Programmers version to the Workplace, and promptly voted to close it as a duplicate of the version you posted yourself. The question was closed a couple of hours after the migration, and then merged with its duplicate. That was the plan, a single version of the question with all its answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But a few minutes ago I noticed that the Programmers version of the question - that was supposed to be just a migration stub pointing to the merged version on The Workplace - was actually appearing in full, with no mention of the migration and closed as off topic. What had happened was that a Workplace moderator deleted the merge stub on their site, which for some reason also rejected the migration and brought the question back to Programmers. That's... not normal, the deletion of the stub shouldn't had rejected the migration, and I've already contacted Stack Exchange about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To avoid any further confusion, I've deleted the Programmers version of the question. For reference, the relevant links are: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Workplace version][1], the proper version of the question, with all the answers&#xD;&#xA;- [Workplace merge stub][2], deleted (2K+ link)&#xD;&#xA;- [Programmers version][3], deleted (10K+ link)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I fully realize the [irony of deleting the question][4], it was necessary to maintain some sanity, a single version of the question with all its answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please _do not_ cross post**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flag the question for mod attention and ask for it to be migrated, cross posts are messy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9010/how-does-one-network-at-conferences-beyond-the-first-conversation&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9016/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences-beyond-the-first-conversation&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/184017/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences-beyond-the-first-conversation&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5463/are-we-too-strict-where-should-off-topic-questions-go#comment13743_5463" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13141" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5463" RevisionGUID="d1edaacf-024c-4b9e-baf5-3c623a643aa9" CreationDate="2013-01-19T21:36:40.883" UserId="25936" Comment="changed the link  to point to the Workplace version, see my answer for more details." Text="[This question on networking at conferences][1] was not closed, but [this one I just posted][2] was closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, what is a better forum for that [closed question][2]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, I'm assuming that the first one should have been closed too, but it wasn't because it is a bit older and this site is more deletionist now than it was.  Do we really want to be this strict? There's a lot of good info in the answers to the first one--info I wouldn't have found anywhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm assuming there's already been debates here on how strict we should be.  Can someone point out those discussions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77102/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9010/how-does-one-network-at-conferences-beyond-the-first-conversation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13142" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5463" RevisionGUID="d1edaacf-024c-4b9e-baf5-3c623a643aa9" CreationDate="2013-01-19T21:36:40.883" UserId="25936" Comment="changed the link  to point to the Workplace version, see my answer for more details." Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13143" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3164" RevisionGUID="605ab9e2-8202-42f5-9f8d-7f140ccea7f1" CreationDate="2013-01-20T01:13:01.097" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13144" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5471" RevisionGUID="5469dc3a-4ca0-460c-be91-c6fd33ca0edb" CreationDate="2013-01-21T04:24:28.277" UserId="9824" Text="I'm a mod on Academia, and someone recently posted the following question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What's the difference between fault, error and defect?](http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/7358/73)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would this be on-topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13145" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5471" RevisionGUID="5469dc3a-4ca0-460c-be91-c6fd33ca0edb" CreationDate="2013-01-21T04:24:28.277" UserId="9824" Text="Question migration—error terminology" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13146" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5471" RevisionGUID="5469dc3a-4ca0-460c-be91-c6fd33ca0edb" CreationDate="2013-01-21T04:24:28.277" UserId="9824" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13147" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5472" RevisionGUID="3ee00563-5eba-4d2a-a738-b953553c22f1" CreationDate="2013-01-21T05:22:13.447" UserId="44" Text="As [Deco][1] [said][2], there is a similar question, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37029/difference-between-defect-and-bugtesting/ where one of the answers gives the definitions of _error_, _faults_, and _failures_ given by the IEEE Standards. As the questions on Academia doesn't have any answer, migrating it on Programmers would have just the effect of closing it, without even the possibility of merging them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/42031/deco&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5471/question-migrationerror-terminology#comment13773_5471" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13148" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5473" RevisionGUID="7e7c38f7-698b-45ca-9ef9-5eaa37447743" CreationDate="2013-01-21T11:23:22.587" UserId="22493" Text="[![robotics stack exchange][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/QpWDJ.gif&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://robotics.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13149" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5473" RevisionGUID="461bd847-55cc-4cf9-92f9-4f21debef328" CreationDate="2013-01-21T11:23:22.587" UserId="22493" />
  <row Id="13150" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5474" RevisionGUID="a22b9c91-9c96-4f94-b9bd-b37dfff4ca39" CreationDate="2013-01-21T11:24:36.030" UserId="22493" Text="[![robotics stack exchange][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/O6uoa.gif&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://robotics.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13151" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5474" RevisionGUID="d0d07df8-27df-4767-b227-18e8b704c168" CreationDate="2013-01-21T11:24:36.030" UserId="22493" />
  <row Id="13152" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5463" RevisionGUID="b7420361-87dc-4dc9-ada2-1121d13f5e49" CreationDate="2013-01-21T16:03:21.587" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/293388324104720384" />
  <row Id="13153" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5475" RevisionGUID="e9541358-db3d-44fa-bd4a-45016099f0e6" CreationDate="2013-01-21T17:37:04.423" UserId="44" Text="The problem with those questions is that they are subjective, and the answers should be kept updated for every new language/book, without to be probably useful for future readers.  &#xD;&#xA;Asking the next language to learn is clearly subjective because that depends from the user; in some cases, the next language could be go, in other cases, it could be Objective-C.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are very few examples of questions about books that are kept open, and that is because those questions are aggressively maintained from the community around it, which keeps the question updated. One example is [The Definitive C++ Book Guide and List][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally speaking, rather than asking about the next language to learn is better to ask a different question. For example, the user who is deciding about the next language to use could ask in chat; when s/he is evaluating a language to use, and tries to write code with that language, s/he can ask a question about code that doesn't work as expected, or about how to write the code (possibly showing what tried so far). Those are possibly better questions that could help future readers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-book-guide-and-list" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13154" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5476" RevisionGUID="200482cb-146c-4d12-8282-084ec32f821d" CreationDate="2013-01-22T17:11:35.020" UserId="62323" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178075/how-to-avoid-jumping-to-a-solution-when-under-pressure&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was closed as &quot;too localized.&quot;  What does that mean?  This question has been up-voted 9 times and is closely related to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84829/steps-to-solve-or-approach-towards-a-solution?rq=1 which was migrated from StackOverflow because it was more appropriate on Programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102381/is-thinking-out-loud-during-an-interview-really-the-best-strategy?rq=1 which has 30 up-votes; 3x the qualification for a &quot;Nice Question&quot; badge.&#xD;&#xA;* It is a more general version of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72526/writing-code-vs-figuring-out-the-answer-to-a-problem?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What did those three questions do right that my question did wrong?  When my question was closed, I tried to correct it so that it would be reopened.  I think I even had 4 reopen votes at one point.  It felt unfair to me to have my question closed, especially because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I am not aware of a more appropriate place to ask such a question&#xD;&#xA;* I don't understand why it was closed&#xD;&#xA;* Why couldn't it be reopened when I corrected it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most programmers have to answer questions in interviews at some point.  Wikipedia has a small page about Havoc Pennington, and his latest blog post is along similar lines, &quot;[Don't Screw up Your Next Presentation][1].&quot;  The Google hand-out for interview preparation stresses, &quot;Don't miss a hint if your interviewer is trying to assist you!&quot; (which I interpret as meaning that you have to be flexible about your solution and not get hung up on your first idea).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually [Not Invented Here (NIH)][2] is a common hang-up among creative technologists.  I worked one place where one person's bad idea determined our development direction for the next 5 years.  It's not just me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is ultimately about how one aspect of human nature applies to programming.  Granted, I fail those CAPCHA Touring tests from time to time, but I am actually human, as are most of the programmers I know.  We all have to adapt our humanity to the task of programming at some time or another.  Why isn't that relevant to to this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.ometer.com/2012/10/04/dont-screw-up-your-next-presentation/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13155" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5476" RevisionGUID="200482cb-146c-4d12-8282-084ec32f821d" CreationDate="2013-01-22T17:11:35.020" UserId="62323" Text="Why was my question closed: about getting attached to your first answer to an interview question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13156" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5476" RevisionGUID="200482cb-146c-4d12-8282-084ec32f821d" CreationDate="2013-01-22T17:11:35.020" UserId="62323" Text="|discussion|support|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13157" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5477" RevisionGUID="a458d8a4-10d1-431a-bd4b-400909d71482" CreationDate="2013-01-22T17:35:59.857" UserId="1204" Text="The wrong close reason was chosen for your question; that happens sometimes.  The correct close reason is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **not constructive**   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key phrase in your question being this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a checklist or are there techniques to recognize when you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; understand the problem well enough to start coding?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is a request for a List of Things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In any case, your question is impossible to answer definitively, given:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When is it most productive to think and design more vs. code some&#xD;&#xA;&gt; experiments and figure out the over-all design later?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which is classic &quot;Not Constructive:&quot; it invites opinions and extended discussion, which doesn't really fit into the Q&amp;A model." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13158" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5477" RevisionGUID="b4a716a2-f197-4e7d-9055-3df4bfa7ee1b" CreationDate="2013-01-22T17:43:09.730" UserId="1204" Comment="added 198 characters in body" Text="The wrong close reason was chosen for your question; that happens sometimes.  The correct close reason is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **not constructive**   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key phrase in your question being this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a checklist or are there techniques to recognize when you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; understand the problem well enough to start coding?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is a request for a List of Things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In any case, your question is impossible to answer definitively, given:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When is it most productive to think and design more vs. code some&#xD;&#xA;&gt; experiments and figure out the over-all design later?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which is classic &quot;Not Constructive:&quot; it invites opinions and extended discussion, which doesn't really fit into the Q&amp;A model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am not aware of a more appropriate place to ask such a question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's no guarantee that any given question will be on-topic somewhere on the SE network.  Some questions don't have a home." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13159" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5477" RevisionGUID="87ab1d1d-c8d1-4a32-b47d-ab50d55ab3c0" CreationDate="2013-01-22T17:47:42.290" UserId="31260" Comment="request for a List of Things == http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;respective tag wiki at MSO&quot;" Text="The wrong close reason was chosen for your question; that happens sometimes.  The correct close reason is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **not constructive**   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key phrase in your question being this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a checklist or are there techniques to recognize when you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; understand the problem well enough to start coding?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is a [request for a List of Things](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;respective tag wiki at MSO&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In any case, your question is impossible to answer definitively, given:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When is it most productive to think and design more vs. code some&#xD;&#xA;&gt; experiments and figure out the over-all design later?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which is classic &quot;Not Constructive:&quot; it invites opinions and extended discussion, which doesn't really fit into the Q&amp;A model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am not aware of a more appropriate place to ask such a question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's no guarantee that any given question will be on-topic somewhere on the SE network.  Some questions don't have a home." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13160" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5478" RevisionGUID="7e06c250-285c-4262-8a37-b5e376241383" CreationDate="2013-01-22T18:26:33.400" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There is a market in terms of &quot;If someone was to create a website where this was the goal and allowed, it would likely find people willing to visit it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before you go off designing such a website (the Stack Exchange format doesn't well for such a type of question - by design I believe, and a good choice), I believe the naive implementation it is doomed to failure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) by Clay Shirky.  Though a decade old, it has important truths about social software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this article:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Scale alone kills conversations, because conversations require dense&#xD;&#xA;&gt; two-way conversations. In conversational contexts, Metcalfe's law is a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; drag. The fact that the amount of two-way connections you have to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; support goes up with the square of the users means that the density of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; conversation falls off very fast as the system scales even a little&#xD;&#xA;&gt; bit. You have to have some way to let users hang onto the less is more&#xD;&#xA;&gt; pattern, in order to keep associated with one another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange works reasonably because it makes conversations difficult.  You have questions and answers which is not a two way conversation - it is a question and an answer and its done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the code detects a conversation happening in comments, it suggests people take the comments to a room (where conversations of a small group work).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From earlier in the article:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The downside of going for size and scale above all else is that the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dense, interconnected pattern that drives group conversation and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; collaboration isn't supportable at any large scale. Less is different&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -- small groups of people can engage in kinds of interaction that large groups can't. And so we blew past that interesting scale of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; small groups. Larger than a dozen, smaller than a few hundred, where&#xD;&#xA;&gt; people can actually have these conversational forms that can't be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; supported when you're talking about tens of thousands or millions of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; users, at least in a single group.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question of &quot;what language should I learn&quot; or &quot;what should I do next&quot; or &quot;what book should I read&quot; requires a conversation to understand the context of what is being asked.  The answer to &quot;what language should I learn&quot; is not &quot;C&quot; in every case.  The correct answer requires that the asker and the answerer exchange a dozen messages each way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The conversation that would need to happen is one that would be unmanageable (and thus, the reason why SE tries to prevent conversations in the Q&amp;A part).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For an example of what this would become, head over to a forum that allows &quot;shopping&quot; type questions (deviant art photography forum springs to mind, though it may have changed since I was there last - Reddit may also be a place that allows this and consider what asking such a question there will result in) and look at the size number of pages of discussion for a &quot;simple&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, you may want to read [Web Discussions: Flat by Design](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/12/web-discussions-flat-by-design.html) which does go into some of the difficulty with online conversations.  Additionally, the M.SO post [Is Stack Overflow a forum](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/92107/is-stack-overflow-a-forum) goes into the nature of what it is." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13161" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5478" RevisionGUID="64af8d08-5385-4d74-abfa-31d71a3118f3" CreationDate="2013-01-22T18:53:51.587" UserId="31260" Comment="wordsmithing" Text="There is a market in terms of &quot;If someone was to create a website where this was the goal and allowed, it would likely find people willing to visit it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before you go off designing such a website (the Stack Exchange format doesn't go well for such a type of question - by design I believe, and a good choice), I believe the naive implementation it is doomed to failure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) by Clay Shirky.  Though a decade old, it has important truths about social software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this article:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Scale alone kills conversations, because conversations require dense&#xD;&#xA;&gt; two-way conversations. In conversational contexts, Metcalfe's law is a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; drag. The fact that the amount of two-way connections you have to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; support goes up with the square of the users means that the density of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; conversation falls off very fast as the system scales even a little&#xD;&#xA;&gt; bit. You have to have some way to let users hang onto the less is more&#xD;&#xA;&gt; pattern, in order to keep associated with one another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange works reasonably because it makes conversations difficult.  You have questions and answers which is not a two way conversation - it is a question and an answer and it's done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the code detects a conversation happening in comments, it suggests people take the comments to a chat room (where conversations of a small group work).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From earlier in the article:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The downside of going for size and scale above all else is that the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dense, interconnected pattern that drives group conversation and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; collaboration isn't supportable at any large scale. Less is different&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -- small groups of people can engage in kinds of interaction that large groups can't. And so we blew past that interesting scale of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; small groups. Larger than a dozen, smaller than a few hundred, where&#xD;&#xA;&gt; people can actually have these conversational forms that can't be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; supported when you're talking about tens of thousands or millions of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; users, at least in a single group.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question of &quot;what language should I learn&quot; or &quot;what should I do next&quot; or &quot;what book should I read&quot; requires a conversation to understand the context of what is being asked.  The answer to &quot;what language should I learn&quot; is not &quot;C&quot; in every case.  The correct answer requires that the asker and the answerer exchange a dozen messages each way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The conversation that would need to happen is one that would be unmanageable (and thus, the reason why SE tries to prevent conversations in the Q&amp;A part).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For an example of what this would become, head over to a forum that allows &quot;shopping&quot; type questions (deviant art photography forum springs to mind, though it may have changed since I was there last - Reddit may also be a place that allows this and consider what asking such a question there will result in) and look at the size and number of pages of discussion for a &quot;simple&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, you may want to read [Web Discussions: Flat by Design](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/12/web-discussions-flat-by-design.html) which does go into some of the difficulty with online conversations.  Additionally, the M.SO post [Is Stack Overflow a forum](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/92107/is-stack-overflow-a-forum) goes into the nature of what it is:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; For example, on a forum you might ask how to run a game in windowed mode. You will get several responses, some of which will be nothing but &quot;oh, I love that game!&quot; or &quot;I haven't played that in a while, wow.&quot; You'll be lucky if you get a relevant response. By contrast, on Stack Exchange you'd get [practical responses](http://gaming.stackexchange.com/q/21955/1925) that are 100% relevant to your question. &lt;sup&gt;[1](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/92110/165773 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;...  &#xD;&#xA; Stack Exchange neither supports nor encourages a &quot;forum-style&quot; of open, free-for-all discussion (many-to-many conversations). This is by design... Stack Exchange is built on the premise that **forums don't scale**. All those open conversations mean that those forums only tend to get noisier and noisier. What inevitably happens is... you stop learning. &lt;sup&gt;[2](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/92115/165773 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13162" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5479" RevisionGUID="c2b1a0ad-0257-470c-936a-9574043f18d1" CreationDate="2013-01-24T00:02:13.453" UserId="37138" Text="I was stupid an [answered][1] a question with just a link.  I then went back and edited my answer to actually something useful, only to find that no one will ever see it again because a moderator deleted it (Sad Panda).  Is there a way to get it undeleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/184624/37138" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13163" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5479" RevisionGUID="c2b1a0ad-0257-470c-936a-9574043f18d1" CreationDate="2013-01-24T00:02:13.453" UserId="37138" Text="Can an answer be undeleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13164" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5479" RevisionGUID="c2b1a0ad-0257-470c-936a-9574043f18d1" CreationDate="2013-01-24T00:02:13.453" UserId="37138" Text="|support|deleted-answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13165" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5480" RevisionGUID="6793a965-d0db-4576-aa80-345a9e476480" CreationDate="2013-01-24T00:59:02.173" UserId="8068" Text="Deleted answers are visible to users with a reputation over 10,000. It can be undeleted if necessary (ask an admin). But usually if it was deleted, there was generally a reason for it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13166" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5481" RevisionGUID="02b5f641-a8c6-4848-a2af-4d6bfaca9312" CreationDate="2013-01-24T01:28:24.187" UserId="1130" Text="If your post has been edited to fix the reason it was deleted, then you can flag it for a moderator to undelete with the &quot;flag&quot; link below the post. Just select the &quot;Other&quot; option, and state the reason for your flag (that it was edited to no longer be a link-only answer, and that you want it undeleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Users with over 10k reputation can see deleted posts and vote to undelete them, however we can only vote to delete posts that were deleted by the community. Posts deleted by a moderator need to be undeleted by a moderator." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13167" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5479" RevisionGUID="2eca206d-70f6-46e7-aa98-2e473ac21b17" CreationDate="2013-01-24T01:38:32.637" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|deleted-answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13168" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5430" RevisionGUID="c24415e4-a198-4086-8b90-1290f6f0e823" CreationDate="2013-01-24T15:32:23.677" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|winterbash|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13169" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="6593a44a-0d00-4c0a-9be3-125a8b49c8fa" CreationDate="2013-01-25T07:32:02.183" UserId="31260" Text="Could we please make a trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Modification details are described in [this MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164712/165773) as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As far as I can tell, substantial part of `Qanswers` in current formula is fake.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;  `(log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascores)`&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;About 1/3 of the answers [studied here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever&quot;) (83 of total 254) have score less than 1/100 of top voted post in respective question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Given that questions checked were ones with tens thousands views, **insultingly low score** indicates that assuming these answers to be popular wouldn't even be in the ballpark. Still, the formula pumps these into `Qanswers` value, as if it is something everyone would be happy to read (hint: it isn't).&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Consider tuning the formula to make it deviate less from voting results. **Ignore answers with non-positive score. Or better yet, ignore answers scored less than some reasonable fraction (eg 1/10) of the top one.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that current formula appears to give an unjustified value to crappy answers, I would like to perform test run to find out if suggested change would make an impact to issues outlined in Prog meta here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I expect modified formula to be competitive to current one at &quot;moderately hot&quot; questions, following the [reasoning outlined here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773):&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;For questions that are not too hot (likely 2-3 clicks away from top of the list) it's natural to see things working exactly as intended. Answers and comments quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;) brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and cool...&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13170" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="6593a44a-0d00-4c0a-9be3-125a8b49c8fa" CreationDate="2013-01-25T07:32:02.183" UserId="31260" Text="trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13171" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="6593a44a-0d00-4c0a-9be3-125a8b49c8fa" CreationDate="2013-01-25T07:32:02.183" UserId="31260" Text="|support|answer-quality|hot-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13172" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="8bedb570-9616-4765-a7b9-4b03b393292f" CreationDate="2013-01-25T07:37:06.080" UserId="31260" Comment="edited title" Text="Trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13173" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="0a2b25b1-5cf3-4544-b792-099b127a29e4" CreationDate="2013-01-25T08:15:30.977" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|answer-quality|hot-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13174" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5483" RevisionGUID="330f7b63-78cf-4dee-a906-fb9302d9c2eb" CreationDate="2013-01-25T08:19:13.247" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13175" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5484" RevisionGUID="32e15f49-28c1-4705-807c-9d49ee1956cd" CreationDate="2013-01-25T08:19:13.247" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13176" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5483" RevisionGUID="4217580d-cb7f-4715-8b5d-d501630245e4" CreationDate="2013-01-25T08:43:32.043" UserId="31260" Comment="added 744 characters in body" Text="See [hot-questions tag wiki at MSO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The hotness are questions across either the site or [the entire Stack Exchange network](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;with real-time chilli flavour&quot;) (where they are seen on the drop down at top left). &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;They're on your tongue, they're the frontispiece, the vanguard, the spicy that you want to lick. The questions raging through the community and burning up the charts like a new album of some artist that enjoys a large and rabid fanbase.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;###Related&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [What formula determines questions for the hot touch?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/11602/what-formula-should-be-used-to-determine-hot-questions &quot;a formula of spicy&quot;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13177" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="5483" RevisionGUID="4217580d-cb7f-4715-8b5d-d501630245e4" CreationDate="2013-01-25T08:43:32.043" Comment="Proposed by 31260 approved by 47 edit id of 7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13178" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5484" RevisionGUID="97d86eb5-60f5-4ca9-91ca-294c0e99e8aa" CreationDate="2013-01-25T08:43:35.067" UserId="31260" Comment="added 151 characters in body" Text="Questions promoted for their popularity across either the site or the entire Stack Exchange network (where they are seen on the drop down at top left)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13179" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="5484" RevisionGUID="97d86eb5-60f5-4ca9-91ca-294c0e99e8aa" CreationDate="2013-01-25T08:43:35.067" Comment="Proposed by 31260 approved by 47 edit id of 8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13180" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5485" RevisionGUID="443378a3-9acd-4916-88f6-6d653dc498e8" CreationDate="2013-01-25T17:18:39.713" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="As a suggestion to your proposed change in the algorithm:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`((Qanswers * Qscore)/5)`  this section should ignore counting any answers that have a total negative value.  (ie. -1 or less)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, `sum(Ascores)` should still accrue the negative votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The net effect is that poor quality answers (aka negatively scored or with many down votes) will drag down the total hotness value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have a data set to run the proposed change against.  Actually, I'm a bit of a n00b in that regard and don't even know *where* to get said data from..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13181" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="fb82fd4f-5e36-43fa-a918-5ddd6948ea42" CreationDate="2013-01-25T19:01:38.433" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|answer-quality|hot-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13182" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="91577aca-7483-4477-8af8-43e4449be5d4" CreationDate="2013-01-26T07:03:39.240" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/295064440032858112" />
  <row Id="13183" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5486" RevisionGUID="2e293682-3406-46e6-9dc1-44b32b747d71" CreationDate="2013-01-26T16:27:32.043" UserId="79511" Text="My [question][1] was closed.  Can someone please explain to me why this is?  None of the people who voted to close it left a comment.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The inbuilt message says it was closed because &quot;We expect answers to be supported by facts, **references, or specific expertise**&quot; and in my question I ask specifically for &quot;**expert knowledge, including references** to the original W3C (or other committee) specification documents or meeting minutes.&quot;  So essentially, the inbuilt message tells me nothing.    &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why was the question closed in the first place?  And how can the question be improved for re-opening?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/184890/why-is-there-such-a-thing-as-an-id-if-you-can-just-have-classes-with-only-one-el" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13184" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5486" RevisionGUID="2e293682-3406-46e6-9dc1-44b32b747d71" CreationDate="2013-01-26T16:27:32.043" UserId="79511" Text="Why is my question closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13185" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5486" RevisionGUID="2e293682-3406-46e6-9dc1-44b32b747d71" CreationDate="2013-01-26T16:27:32.043" UserId="79511" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13186" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5486" RevisionGUID="e811e611-b8d1-4f4b-b80b-c5f3a6e476ab" CreationDate="2013-01-26T16:35:46.643" UserId="79511" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13187" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5487" RevisionGUID="a3df5483-9e56-4278-8115-91f738f4e9d1" CreationDate="2013-01-26T18:42:09.183" UserId="75766" Text="Disclaimer: I do have an answer in the example question and I am not looking for up votes. I am genuinely concerned as to whether this kind of answer is poor form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Occasionally I will run across a question on this site where I feel that the best answer to the question is to change the reasons it is being asked. An example of a question like this is [here][1]. My opinion of the correct answer to the question is to modify the design that caused the question in the first place. The FAQ clearly states that a provided answer should actually answer the question being asked; I am not sure if slightly modifying the question to fits this criteria. Can anyone provide me with some guidance on this? Should I keep my opinions to myself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/184862/how-to-name-a-variable-when-the-word-is-both-a-noun-and-a-verb/184946#184946" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13188" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5487" RevisionGUID="a3df5483-9e56-4278-8115-91f738f4e9d1" CreationDate="2013-01-26T18:42:09.183" UserId="75766" Text="Answering a question by rethinking the cause" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13189" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5487" RevisionGUID="a3df5483-9e56-4278-8115-91f738f4e9d1" CreationDate="2013-01-26T18:42:09.183" UserId="75766" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13190" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="29c96c7b-d121-40a9-a95c-c18524345685" CreationDate="2013-01-26T22:16:33.697" UserId="31260" Comment="clarification copied into question from comments // http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13829_5482" Text="Could we please make a trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Modification details are described in [this MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164712/165773) as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As far as I can tell, substantial part of `Qanswers` in current formula is fake.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;  `(log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascores)`&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;About 1/3 of the answers [studied here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever&quot;) (83 of total 254) have score less than 1/100 of top voted post in respective question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Given that questions checked were ones with tens thousands views, **insultingly low score** indicates that assuming these answers to be popular wouldn't even be in the ballpark. Still, the formula pumps these into `Qanswers` value, as if it is something everyone would be happy to read (hint: it isn't).&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Consider tuning the formula to make it deviate less from voting results. **Ignore answers with non-positive score. Or better yet, ignore answers scored less than some reasonable fraction (eg 1/10) of the top one.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that current formula appears to give an unjustified value to crappy answers (`Qscore/5`, no matter how much is answer downvoted), I would like to perform test run to find out if suggested change would make an impact to issues outlined in Prog meta here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I expect modified formula to be competitive to current one at &quot;moderately hot&quot; questions, following the [reasoning outlined here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773):&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;For questions that are not too hot (likely 2-3 clicks away from top of the list) it's natural to see things working exactly as intended. Answers and comments quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;) brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and cool...&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13191" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="d825edd7-356f-47c5-bc9f-60a22c03a8e8" CreationDate="2013-01-26T22:46:37.903" UserId="31260" Comment="clarification copied into question from comments" Text="Could we please make a trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Modification details are described in [this MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164712/165773) as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As far as I can tell, substantial part of `Qanswers` in current formula is fake.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;  `(log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascores)`&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;About 1/3 of the answers [studied here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever&quot;) (83 of total 254) have score less than 1/100 of top voted post in respective question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Given that questions checked were ones with tens thousands views, **insultingly low score** indicates that assuming these answers to be popular wouldn't even be in the ballpark. Still, the formula pumps these into `Qanswers` value, as if it is something everyone would be happy to read (hint: it isn't).&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Consider tuning the formula to make it deviate less from voting results. **Ignore answers with non-positive score. Or better yet, ignore answers scored less than some reasonable fraction (eg 1/10) of the top one.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that current formula appears to give an unjustified value to crappy answers in highly upvoted questions (`Qscore/5`, no matter how much is answer downvoted), I would like to perform test run to find out if suggested change would make an impact to issues outlined in Prog meta here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I expect modified formula to be competitive to current one at &quot;moderately hot&quot; questions, following the [reasoning outlined here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773):&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;For questions that are not too hot (likely 2-3 clicks away from top of the list) it's natural to see things working exactly as intended. Answers and comments quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;) brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and cool...&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13192" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5488" RevisionGUID="f4734a66-50ef-41f7-b526-4b60a5948acf" CreationDate="2013-01-26T23:21:57.620" UserId="9589" Text="&#xD;&#xA;You guys have closed a lot of questions lately:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ym	Questions&#xD;&#xA;    Jan-13	374&#xD;&#xA;    Dez-12	312&#xD;&#xA;    Nov-12	296&#xD;&#xA;    Okt-12	309&#xD;&#xA;    Sep-12	220&#xD;&#xA;    Aug-12	169&#xD;&#xA;    Jul-12	102&#xD;&#xA;    Jun-12	114&#xD;&#xA;    Mai-12	121&#xD;&#xA;    Apr-12	131&#xD;&#xA;    Mrz-12	268&#xD;&#xA;    Feb-12	206&#xD;&#xA;    Jan-12	256&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    SELECT year(Posts.ClosedDate) as y, month(Posts.ClosedDate) as m,  cast (year(Posts.ClosedDate) as  varchar(10)) + '/' + cast(month(Posts.ClosedDate) as varchar(19)) as ym,  count(CONCAT ('http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/', Posts.Id)) as Questions&#xD;&#xA;    FROM PostHistory&#xD;&#xA;    JOIN Posts ON Posts.Id = PostHistory.PostId&#xD;&#xA;    WHERE Posts.ClosedDate &gt;= '2012-01-01' &#xD;&#xA;    --AND Posts.ClosedDate &lt; '2012-12-01'&#xD;&#xA;    AND PostHistoryTypeId = 10&#xD;&#xA;    AND PostHistory.Comment != 1&#xD;&#xA;    group by year(Posts.ClosedDate), month(Posts.ClosedDate)&#xD;&#xA;    ORDER BY 1 desc, 2 desc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is another reason why I think you guys are indeed too strict. When you look at the results of the [recent stackoverflow survey][1], you'll see that 20% of respondents are working in 1-person teams (Question 9). 36% regularly interact with customers (Q10). This is a significant fraction. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most people consider themselves as &quot;full-stack web developers&quot; (Q8), which -in my opinion- means they have to switch context often and take over many roles -put on the frontend/backend dev hat, but probably also the DBA hat, the security guy hat. Each of these roles often happen after some interactions of working programmers with their environments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This simply means that these people must interact a lot with non-IT colleagues to get the job done. Many issues derive from these interactions. They simply won't be restricted to questions specific to programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you still try to achieve that goal (only permit questions specific to professional software developers), so be it. Then I'd expect you to close, say, 30% of all questions. That's just an estimate off the top of my head.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this mindset would certainly scare away a lot of developers who post their good allegedly &quot;off-topic&quot; questions here. So if one's first question is closed, the chance is quite high to have the second question also closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And remember that saying &quot;go away&quot; to these turned-down &quot;SE citizens&quot; also contradicts stackexchange inc's business model, which is, to make money via careers.stackoverflow.com ... by helping out professional programmers to find a better job. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=vU4rF_2bPVQaftSo1s69bGGbvMPXp7ktcfSHiDFP_2bM5qw_3d&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13193" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5488" RevisionGUID="02c08169-ccbd-4e4a-a44e-0c7b399a097f" CreationDate="2013-01-26T23:32:43.353" UserId="9589" Comment="col title changed" Text="You guys have closed a lot of questions lately:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ym	Questions-closed&#xD;&#xA;    Jan-13	374&#xD;&#xA;    Dez-12	312&#xD;&#xA;    Nov-12	296&#xD;&#xA;    Okt-12	309&#xD;&#xA;    Sep-12	220&#xD;&#xA;    Aug-12	169&#xD;&#xA;    Jul-12	102&#xD;&#xA;    Jun-12	114&#xD;&#xA;    Mai-12	121&#xD;&#xA;    Apr-12	131&#xD;&#xA;    Mrz-12	268&#xD;&#xA;    Feb-12	206&#xD;&#xA;    Jan-12	256&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    SELECT year(Posts.ClosedDate) as y, month(Posts.ClosedDate) as m,  cast (year(Posts.ClosedDate) as  varchar(10)) + '/' + cast(month(Posts.ClosedDate) as varchar(19)) as ym,  count(CONCAT ('http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/', Posts.Id)) as Questions&#xD;&#xA;    FROM PostHistory&#xD;&#xA;    JOIN Posts ON Posts.Id = PostHistory.PostId&#xD;&#xA;    WHERE Posts.ClosedDate &gt;= '2012-01-01' &#xD;&#xA;    --AND Posts.ClosedDate &lt; '2012-12-01'&#xD;&#xA;    AND PostHistoryTypeId = 10&#xD;&#xA;    AND PostHistory.Comment != 1&#xD;&#xA;    group by year(Posts.ClosedDate), month(Posts.ClosedDate)&#xD;&#xA;    ORDER BY 1 desc, 2 desc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is another reason why I think you guys are indeed too strict. When you look at the results of the [recent stackoverflow survey][1], you'll see that 20% of respondents are working in 1-person teams (Question 8,9). 36% regularly interact with customers (Q10). This is a significant fraction. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most people consider themselves as &quot;full-stack web developers&quot; (Q7), which -in my opinion- means they have to switch context often and take over many roles -put on the frontend/backend dev hat, but probably also the DBA hat, the security guy hat. Each of these roles often happen after some interactions of working programmers with their environments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This simply means that these people must interact a lot with non-IT colleagues to get the job done. Many issues derive from these interactions. They simply won't be restricted to questions specific to programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you still try to achieve that goal (only permit questions specific to professional software developers), so be it. Then I'd expect you to close, say, 30% of all questions. That's just an estimate off the top of my head.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this mindset would certainly scare away a lot of developers who post their good allegedly &quot;off-topic&quot; questions here. So if one's first question is closed, the chance is quite high to have the second question also closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And remember that saying &quot;go away&quot; to these turned-down &quot;SE citizens&quot; also contradicts stackexchange inc's business model, which is, to make money via careers.stackoverflow.com ... by helping out professional programmers to find a better job. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=vU4rF_2bPVQaftSo1s69bGGbvMPXp7ktcfSHiDFP_2bM5qw_3d&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13198" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5490" RevisionGUID="737c0ec3-8fd3-469d-8f10-52df67f70e13" CreationDate="2013-01-27T06:47:42.800" UserId="31260" Text="Issues like this are addressed in MSO faq post **[What is the XY problem?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/66378/165773)** (by the way there's also quite an interesting list of linked questions there).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...asking about your attempted solution rather than your actual problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As long as your answer explains why there is an underlying problem implicitly present in question asked and provides a solution to it, it should be OK." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13199" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5491" RevisionGUID="96e63b29-5cb2-48e3-9a82-5d1d3d1c9339" CreationDate="2013-01-27T07:07:35.837" UserId="52362" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/184912/is-node-js-a-suitable-server-platform-for-financial-applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please tell me why this isn't a good question for the site?  As it turns out there are some serious issues with node/JS and floating point calculations, making it totally unfit for monetary transactions, according to the maintainers.  Hopefully anyone else who wants to know the answer finds where to get help, since we've decided not to." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13200" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5491" RevisionGUID="96e63b29-5cb2-48e3-9a82-5d1d3d1c9339" CreationDate="2013-01-27T07:07:35.837" UserId="52362" Text="Closed question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13201" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5491" RevisionGUID="96e63b29-5cb2-48e3-9a82-5d1d3d1c9339" CreationDate="2013-01-27T07:07:35.837" UserId="52362" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13202" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5491" RevisionGUID="f82e3a57-4182-4322-aa24-779541f8fa80" CreationDate="2013-01-27T07:08:30.833" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13203" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5491" RevisionGUID="7ad6200c-e7e4-4048-86e3-7b6961622573" CreationDate="2013-01-27T07:36:18.137" UserId="52362" Comment="added 178 characters in body" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/184912/is-node-js-a-suitable-server-platform-for-financial-applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please tell me why this isn't a good question for the site?  As it turns out there are some serious issues with node/JS and floating point calculations, making it totally unfit for monetary transactions, according to the maintainers.  Hopefully anyone else who wants to know the answer finds where to get help, since we've decided not to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;UPDATE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the mods actually suggested that I make it more specific, and so I have, and I'm also going to post an answer in a moment that I got from a node maintainer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13205" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5493" RevisionGUID="9736c8f4-9ace-4c34-96e8-3ca9f5a0564e" CreationDate="2013-01-27T11:49:29.747" UserId="47" Text="People do get close votes wrong. Closing is not the end of a question. If there are deficiencies or ambiguities in the question they can be addressed and the question reopened if warranted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have done the right thing by bringing this up in Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also bring it up in [chat](http://chat.programmers.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case I have reopened the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13206" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5494" RevisionGUID="88db7dcd-c909-4cc6-802d-80506e2b3d0d" CreationDate="2013-01-27T13:21:22.410" UserId="25476" Text="I think sometimes when you post something that potentially points out a real factual flaw in a popular language or framework then some get a bit worried about it all devolving into a flame war and then it becomes a NC mess.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is a fair question and a good one at that.  In these cases it is best to improve the question and moderate the answers and comments to make sure that people are actually trying to answer the question without merely attacking the argument." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13211" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5496" RevisionGUID="05cb90d7-9802-4379-ae47-b2251c17056f" CreationDate="2013-01-28T10:01:50.627" UserId="31260" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/180588/31260&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above answer has been made CW per automatic rule ([quote source](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/11741/165773 &quot;MSO answer to 'What are “Community Wiki” posts?'&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The post has been edited ten (10) times by the original owner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Automatically applying generic rule in this particular case looks unfair.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;In case of doubt, check the answer contents and revisions history to decide whether you agree with above.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* answer: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/180588/31260&#xD;&#xA;* revisions: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/180588/revisions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer looks exceptionally good and revisions (all made by author) look like substantially adding a value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to clear CW status to recognize an extraordinary contribution of the author?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13212" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5496" RevisionGUID="05cb90d7-9802-4379-ae47-b2251c17056f" CreationDate="2013-01-28T10:01:50.627" UserId="31260" Text="remove CW status for this answer? (OO-principles for Javascript by Daniel)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13213" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5496" RevisionGUID="05cb90d7-9802-4379-ae47-b2251c17056f" CreationDate="2013-01-28T10:01:50.627" UserId="31260" Text="|support|community-wiki|specific-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13214" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5497" RevisionGUID="a9354cbf-9b88-4a0d-aeab-a499c1cd387d" CreationDate="2013-01-28T10:10:59.513" UserId="25936" Text="This might be a good example of an unfair CW, every edit added something valuable to the answer and there doesn't seem to be a series of minor edits that would point to rep whoring. Furthermore all edits are by the answer's author, I don't see any reason to encourage collaboration, which is what CW is supposed to be about). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to wait a couple of days to see if anyone objects, I might have missed something. If there are no objections, I'll remove the CW status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13215" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5497" RevisionGUID="88280bb0-4d19-43a3-b346-60ea51aabc26" CreationDate="2013-01-28T10:16:39.743" UserId="25936" Comment="added 128 characters in body" Text="This might be a good example of an unfair CW, every edit added something valuable to the answer and there doesn't seem to be a series of minor edits that would point to rep whoring. Furthermore all edits are by the answer's author, I don't see any reason to encourage collaboration, which is what CW is supposed to be about). Also it's worth pointing out that the author continued adding valuable information to the answer even after it was turned to CW.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to wait a couple of days to see if anyone objects, I might have missed something. If there are no objections, I'll remove the CW status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13216" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5497" RevisionGUID="0cced7f8-f87a-4553-833b-2d805ff2977d" CreationDate="2013-01-28T12:58:33.563" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body" Text="This might be a good example of an unfair CW, every edit added something valuable to the answer and there doesn't seem to be a series of minor edits that would point to rep whoring. Furthermore all edits are by the answer's author, I don't see any reason to encourage collaboration, which is what CW is supposed to be about. Also, it's worth pointing out that the author continued adding valuable information to the answer even after it was turned to CW.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to wait a day or two to see if anyone objects, I might have missed something. If there are no objections, I'll remove the CW status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13217" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="ae5b50e6-6c34-4a4d-b08d-274877b5783e" CreationDate="2013-01-28T13:12:01.603" UserId="31260" Comment="issues += * [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)" Text="Could we please make a trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Modification details are described in [this MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164712/165773) as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As far as I can tell, substantial part of `Qanswers` in current formula is fake.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;  `(log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascores)`&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;About 1/3 of the answers [studied here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever&quot;) (83 of total 254) have score less than 1/100 of top voted post in respective question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Given that questions checked were ones with tens thousands views, **insultingly low score** indicates that assuming these answers to be popular wouldn't even be in the ballpark. Still, the formula pumps these into `Qanswers` value, as if it is something everyone would be happy to read (hint: it isn't).&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Consider tuning the formula to make it deviate less from voting results. **Ignore answers with non-positive score. Or better yet, ignore answers scored less than some reasonable fraction (eg 1/10) of the top one.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that current formula appears to give an unjustified value to crappy answers in highly upvoted questions (`Qscore/5`, no matter how much is answer downvoted), I would like to perform test run to find out if suggested change would make an impact to issues outlined in Programmers meta posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260&#xD;&#xA;* [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I expect modified formula to be competitive to current one at &quot;moderately hot&quot; questions, following the [reasoning outlined here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773):&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;For questions that are not too hot (likely 2-3 clicks away from top of the list) it's natural to see things working exactly as intended. Answers and comments quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;) brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and cool...&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13219" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="498" RevisionGUID="2deb8da5-0daa-4e0c-91bd-d63fc83848b0" CreationDate="2013-01-28T16:12:25.200" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13221" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5448" RevisionGUID="da799a78-f70a-4e47-a59d-d457dcd9950d" CreationDate="2013-01-29T08:01:32.653" UserId="31260" Comment="recent feature request intended to address above issues is Trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions" Text="&gt;  the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above issue looks real, as indicated by [54.32% &quot;bad&quot; questions asked](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5379/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this is likely related to issues with answers quality in hot questions ([discussed here in more details](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;Answers quality in hot questions&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Hot garbage waves&quot; in the answers once or twice a week&#xD;&#xA;* poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making interesting and well presented problems look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/)  &#xD;&#xA;* regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An &quot;outsider&quot; reading low quality answers in hot questions, could naturally think,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hey here I can _chit-chat about how git is fantastic_ and get my portion of cheap upvotes, c00l&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a **steady source of misguided contributors**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Above makes me doubt that widespread misunderstanding of site purpose is really caused by either of [name-FAQ mis-match](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name), or misleading [site name](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3718/31260) / [tag line](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3500/31260), or [scope change](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/31260). There are much larger [broken windows](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info) than that: &quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If above reasoning is correct, then ensuring good quality of the answers in hot questions will help users reading these better understand the site and eventually lead to less of a bad posts from misguided users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update: recent feature request intended to address above issues is http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5482/31260&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Connection between mentioned request and the way how users can be confused about what Programmers are about is probably best explained in a [comment made by Ben Brocka](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13830_5482 &quot;here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Often hot questions have lots of bad or meh answers that are bad enough to drag down quality of the content and general discourse (encouraging similarly bad new answers)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13222" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="105" RevisionGUID="b1025e0e-4e34-4aba-bea4-ba06896aa135" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:52:21.173" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="13223" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="495" RevisionGUID="b146f9af-6cad-4be9-ae78-278bfd226087" CreationDate="2013-01-29T10:55:45.800" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|removal|accept-rate|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13224" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5496" RevisionGUID="24afda18-bd22-43e3-90e7-2578879a36f6" CreationDate="2013-01-29T20:23:40.200" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|community-wiki|specific-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13225" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="c4e6a7a9-1256-486e-b461-389f964ab1bf" CreationDate="2013-01-30T06:48:29.637" UserId="31260" Comment="quote updated to reflect an important update in original" Text="Could we please make a trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Modification details are described in [this MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164712/165773) as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As far as I can tell, substantial part of `Qanswers` in current formula is fake.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;  `(log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascores)`&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;About 1/3 of the answers [studied here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever&quot;) (83 of total 254) have score less than 1/100 of top voted post in respective question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Given that questions checked were ones with tens thousands views, **insultingly low score** indicates that assuming these answers to be popular wouldn't even be in the ballpark. Still, the formula pumps these into `Qanswers` value, as if it is something everyone would be happy to read (hint: it isn't).&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Consider tuning the formula to make it deviate less from voting results. **Ignore answers with non-positive score. Or [better yet](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13857_5485 &quot;preference for cut off at (TopAnswerScore/10-1) explained in comments here&quot;), ignore answers scored less than some reasonable fraction (eg 1/10) of the top one.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that current formula appears to give an unjustified value to crappy answers in highly upvoted questions (`Qscore/5`, no matter how much is answer downvoted), I would like to perform test run to find out if suggested change would make an impact to issues outlined in Programmers meta posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260&#xD;&#xA;* [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I expect modified formula to be competitive to current one at &quot;moderately hot&quot; questions, following the [reasoning outlined here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773):&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;For questions that are not too hot (likely 2-3 clicks away from top of the list) it's natural to see things working exactly as intended. Answers and comments quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;) brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and cool...&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13226" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5498" RevisionGUID="b699daa6-d268-477f-8fe3-ef75c09c31b4" CreationDate="2013-01-30T21:25:16.893" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="As some of you may have noticed, the Programmers Blog hasn't had a new post in a month. Part of this is due to issues with my school causing distractions. While I am well and capable of managing the blog, I can't populate articles all by my lonesome. Morons and others have done a terrific job in the past writing useful and interesting articles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I'd like to hear even more voices. So, if you want to write for the blog and don't have access to the Trello board and the Wordpress instance, let me know by posting below and I'll set you up. You can write on just about anything you care to within the site's scope. Some things that are off topic or not-constructive make perfect blog topics." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13227" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5498" RevisionGUID="b699daa6-d268-477f-8fe3-ef75c09c31b4" CreationDate="2013-01-30T21:25:16.893" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Programmers Blog: Call Round Three...Write!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13228" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5498" RevisionGUID="b699daa6-d268-477f-8fe3-ef75c09c31b4" CreationDate="2013-01-30T21:25:16.893" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13229" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5498" RevisionGUID="d53d2201-3ab4-4e36-b73c-b97591720caf" CreationDate="2013-01-30T21:38:51.217" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13230" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5499" RevisionGUID="c0311ba5-88dc-42b5-9049-5b88ad3c4a8d" CreationDate="2013-01-30T21:53:42.917" UserId="44081" Text="I'd be interested in writing a blog entry about what we skills we need to develop as professional programmers. The technical side is just 50%. The article would be based on this answer - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/185236/44081 that Yannis suggested could make a good article." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13231" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5500" RevisionGUID="e07dcc6e-cf6e-43ac-9417-a2a5c6ad4839" CreationDate="2013-01-31T06:24:11.277" UserId="17922" Text="Can someone help explain why my question was closed?&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/185130/what-is-the-best-example-of-a-large-legacy-codebases-that-has-been-significantly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the comments said that my question was a list question, so I have rephrased it in a way to no longer be a list question.  I feel that the question is on-topic for the site and have read the FAQ, but I don't know how to proceed from here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anyone help me rephrase it so that it would be acceptable?&#xD;&#xA;Also, can anyone tell me if i is ever likely to be accepted on this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13232" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5500" RevisionGUID="e07dcc6e-cf6e-43ac-9417-a2a5c6ad4839" CreationDate="2013-01-31T06:24:11.277" UserId="17922" Text="Can someone help explain why my question was closed, and help me rephrase it so that it would be acceptable?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13233" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5500" RevisionGUID="e07dcc6e-cf6e-43ac-9417-a2a5c6ad4839" CreationDate="2013-01-31T06:24:11.277" UserId="17922" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13234" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5498" RevisionGUID="48212ed4-473c-4a5b-959c-d2bfe233d50c" CreationDate="2013-01-31T07:08:51.260" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/296877688398938112" />
  <row Id="13235" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5501" RevisionGUID="49fd8f8e-078e-4546-8eaa-5e3896930330" CreationDate="2013-01-31T08:49:02.793" UserId="47" Text="Well, starting with the title:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the best example...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This immediately sets off alarm bells and indeed if you type the title into the Ask Question box you get the following warning:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that &quot;best&quot; is a highly subjective term and these sort of questions lead to people just promoting their favourite book, program, TV show (or what ever the topic of the question/site) is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are you actually trying to find out here? Do you want to know what techniques for dealing with large legacy codebases were successful and which weren't? If so ask *that* question - though even then the question might get closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13236" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5498" RevisionGUID="eee35eec-d437-475e-b60e-399e074ca813" CreationDate="2013-01-31T11:03:40.027" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="added 177 characters in body" Text="As some of you may have noticed, the Programmers Blog hasn't had a new post in a month. Part of this is due to issues with my school causing distractions. While I am well and capable of managing the blog, I can't populate articles all by my lonesome. Morons and others have done a terrific job in the past writing useful and interesting articles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I'd like to hear even more voices. So, if you want to write for the blog and don't have access to the Trello board and the Wordpress instance, let me know by posting below and I'll set you up. You'll also need to send an email to programmer.se.blog (at) gmail.com with subject line : Blog Access. Also register on Trello and list your handle and I'll add there too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; You can write on just about anything you care to within the site's scope. Some things that are off topic or not-constructive make perfect blog topics." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13237" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5502" RevisionGUID="d8cfa8ae-7870-4f7a-a89c-32d4213e05c5" CreationDate="2013-01-31T11:45:39.230" UserId="285" Text="To be clear, this really isn't status-completed. I just answered a question on SO with 4 close votes. I guesss people thought it was vague and unanswerable, but I happened to know of a single resource that was designed exactly for what was being asked. I went to /review and then to history and found the question there, but I can't vote to Leave Open from that view, and nor can I Edit, which would bounce it from the queue. With 47 THOUSAND questions in the SO Close queue, I'm not going to find it the regular way. I have in fact done that on smaller sites like Travel and it worked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I edited the question to improve it a little. I'll go back later today and if it's closed, I'll vote to reopen. Ping pong." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13238" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5502" RevisionGUID="f88e0418-e984-4711-a0b2-c64f7a14a46e" CreationDate="2013-01-31T12:45:06.363" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo correction" Text="To be clear, this really isn't status-completed. I just answered a question on SO with 4 close votes. I guess people thought it was vague and unanswerable, but I happened to know of a single resource that was designed exactly for what was being asked. I went to /review and then to history and found the question there, but I can't vote to Leave Open from that view, and nor can I Edit, which would bounce it from the queue. With 47 THOUSAND questions in the SO Close queue, I'm not going to find it the regular way. I have in fact done that on smaller sites like Travel and it worked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I edited the question to improve it a little. I'll go back later today and if it's closed, I'll vote to reopen. Ping pong." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13239" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5503" RevisionGUID="0639b426-693a-4303-aa02-4beda0534150" CreationDate="2013-01-31T13:46:07.650" UserId="1130" Text="Your first revision ([Examples of large legacy codebases that have been improved][1]) was asking for a list of examples, which is considered &quot;not-constructive&quot; by StackExchange because the end result is a big list of items, each of which are equally valid and with no one-right-answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your second revision ([What is the best example of a large legacy codebases that have has been significantly improved][2]) is better, however everyone's definition of &quot;best&quot; is different, so in order for a question asking for &quot;the best X&quot; to stay open, you have to clearly define what you consider &quot;best&quot; to be. Most efficient, best performing, etc. Otherwise the same thing happens: the end result is a list of answers that could all be equally valid, with no way for users to objectively vote which answer is better than the rest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've made an update to your question to try and get it reopened, by focusing on the actual problem you appear to be facing (figuring out proven ways to update a large legacy application to meet today's quality standards, without rewriting it), however it still needs 4 other reopen votes by the community to get reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's currently at 4 reopen votes, so I don't think it will have a problem getting the 5th vote and getting reopened now :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/185130/1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/185130/2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13240" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="498" RevisionGUID="954ec2ce-f037-449a-a7c4-24a9d800b16b" CreationDate="2013-01-31T15:20:36.613" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13241" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5504" RevisionGUID="2f665682-57fb-4524-97e2-8a07717ca740" CreationDate="2013-01-31T15:29:05.910" UserId="25936" Text="A feature similar to this one has been implement, you can counter-act close votes by voting to &quot;leave open&quot; in the [close vote review queue][1]. It's not exactly what you've asked for, and it's only accessible through the review queue, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more details, read [this answer][2] on MSO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/134673/162704" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13242" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5498" RevisionGUID="e95688b5-cf08-4d80-8a99-31b754ecd9ca" CreationDate="2013-02-01T01:12:16.387" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="added 152 characters in body" Text="As some of you may have noticed, the Programmers Blog hasn't had a new post in a month. Part of this is due to issues with my school causing distractions. While I am well and capable of managing the blog, I can't populate articles all by my lonesome. Morons and others have done a terrific job in the past writing useful and interesting articles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I'd like to hear even more voices. So, if you want to write for the blog and don't have access to the Trello board and the Wordpress instance, let me know by posting below and I'll set you up. You'll also need to send an email to programmer.se.blog (at) gmail.com with subject line : Blog Access. Also register on Trello and list your handle and I'll add there too. General Information and what nots can be found [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; You can write on just about anything you care to within the site's scope. Some things that are off topic or not-constructive make perfect blog topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13243" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5505" RevisionGUID="850fa18f-cadf-4ced-a3e5-38cdff498fd3" CreationDate="2013-02-02T20:42:17.563" UserId="50950" Text="I received an announcer badge for a question. Supposedly, the badge is for sharing a question such that it attracts visitors from 25 unique IP addresses. Problem is, I've never shared a question, and have never laid eyes on that question to my best recollection.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is that about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13244" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5505" RevisionGUID="850fa18f-cadf-4ced-a3e5-38cdff498fd3" CreationDate="2013-02-02T20:42:17.563" UserId="50950" Text="Buggy &quot;Announcer&quot; badge?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13245" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5505" RevisionGUID="850fa18f-cadf-4ced-a3e5-38cdff498fd3" CreationDate="2013-02-02T20:42:17.563" UserId="50950" Text="|bug|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13246" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5506" RevisionGUID="d6b74fed-deeb-4889-8cc1-d152a30da695" CreationDate="2013-02-02T21:37:27.090" UserId="63" Text="Heh... You got *lucky*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See, [Sam *The Brand* Brand][1] has been doing this syndication deal with the respected tech-news site ArsTechnica. Today, they republished some of the top answers from [Is there an excuse for short variable names?](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names/)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[...Including yours...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names/176611#176611)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...Wherein you link to that &quot;problem domain&quot; question using the referral format:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The code simply assumes the [problem domain](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/125926/50950) familiarity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, *normally* using the referral shortlink in an answer doesn't do much for you; we don't count links from *within* Stack Exchange when figuring up these badges. But of course, if someone copies the text of your answer (hopefully [in a CC-Wiki-compliant fashion][2]) to another domain and it generates a bunch of inbound links, well...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Free badge! Yay! – [Yannis Rizos](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5505/buggy-announcer-badge#comment13887_5505)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/39006/samthebrand&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/attribution-required/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13253" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5508" RevisionGUID="b60658d3-76c4-4b21-b7ae-e67f46a9f376" CreationDate="2013-02-04T17:50:02.790" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="This question on main was recently opened &amp; closed.  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/185784/is-it-reasonable-to-expect-all-the-items-on-the-programmers-bill-of-rights&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This meta question is to allow a discussion on whether the question is  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* if off-topic, any hope of salvaging it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13254" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5508" RevisionGUID="b60658d3-76c4-4b21-b7ae-e67f46a9f376" CreationDate="2013-02-04T17:50:02.790" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Programmer's Rights Q: On topic, off-topic, salvageable?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13255" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5508" RevisionGUID="b60658d3-76c4-4b21-b7ae-e67f46a9f376" CreationDate="2013-02-04T17:50:02.790" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13256" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5508" RevisionGUID="64dc82ee-90ee-42ac-ab1a-03a8bb0912bb" CreationDate="2013-02-04T17:50:54.387" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13257" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5509" RevisionGUID="0ae43da7-fefc-4635-8b05-386c9dd0f7d2" CreationDate="2013-02-04T19:09:03.993" UserId="41381" Text="The question is not constructive to begin with, as there is no real answer other than everyone listing their own experience with X company which makes a long list of not very useful answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At best I would label this question borderline on topic, because if you really stretch business concerns it fits, but there is nothing there about software development in the question at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the best way to keep the question alive would be to get it in a shape acceptable for the workplace and migrate it there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13258" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5510" RevisionGUID="fc87d776-9e89-4dc4-88bb-b283bd0bbbdb" CreationDate="2013-02-04T19:09:58.050" UserId="3965" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/185589/3965 was deemed on topic by Yannis, but subsequently closed.  My own answer was not really programmer specific, but that was partially because as a programmer I understand the degree of overlap between front end and back end programmers, and I'm not sure a non-programmer could take that into account with their answer.  At any rate, it's a decent question that deserves to be open on one site or the other.  Can we settle once and for all where it belongs?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13259" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5510" RevisionGUID="fc87d776-9e89-4dc4-88bb-b283bd0bbbdb" CreationDate="2013-02-04T19:09:58.050" UserId="3965" Text="Migration needed to Workplace?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13260" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5510" RevisionGUID="fc87d776-9e89-4dc4-88bb-b283bd0bbbdb" CreationDate="2013-02-04T19:09:58.050" UserId="3965" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13261" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5511" RevisionGUID="45b07d90-13c1-4318-942a-d6130871f3fd" CreationDate="2013-02-04T19:33:36.597" UserId="1130" Text="It should be noted that the original question was [cross-posted](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/9381) on the Workplace. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They've edited their version to fit their site scope, and I edited the one here to try and fit Programmer's scope. The end result is two very different but related questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE**: [Is it reasonable to expect all the items on the &quot;Programmers Bill of Rights&quot;?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Workplace.SE**: [How to encourage an employer to adopt the &quot;Programmer's Bill of Rights&quot;?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think the Programmers version is OK now, and have voted to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per the [meta-faq post about career-questions][3]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Can I ask career advice questions?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; No, **unless your question is specifically about software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and requires the unique insights of a programmer**. Most career advice&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions [run the risk of being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; try to make yours a [good subjective&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the question is about a programmer-specific work environment, providing items from a Programmer-specific &quot;Bill of Rights&quot;, I think that this is an OK question for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/185784/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/9381&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1165/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13262" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5512" RevisionGUID="a8eb2bd5-d01e-43e2-a81f-172772e61be7" CreationDate="2013-02-04T19:42:12.293" UserId="25476" Text="I am not sure that this is a situation that can be settled authoritatively or not.  It is clearly a contreversial subject as it has been closed, reopened, and then closed again by the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even after Yannis expressed his opinion on the question and cleared the previous close votes, it still received 5 more votes to close it.  As of right now there are 2 more reopen votes on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What this means is that there is no community consensus on this this question and the moderator already stepped in and took the action that he felt was necessary.  Typically when we reopen something we felt was closed in error, we do not do so a second time unless it was edited substantially.  This falls in the hands of the community now to figure out if these types of questions should be accepted or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion Yannis was correct here.  This qualifies as a Programmer Specific Business Concern as defined by the FAQ." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13263" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5511" RevisionGUID="9068dafd-a898-41ca-981f-914263c4e69e" CreationDate="2013-02-04T19:43:23.297" UserId="1130" Comment="Wanted to be clear that I am speaking solely about on/off topic here, since that is what the question is about. Constructive or not is another debate (and personally I think the question is fine)" Text="It should be noted that the original question was [cross-posted](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/9381) on the Workplace. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They've edited their version to fit their site scope, and I edited the one here to try and fit Programmer's scope. The end result is two very different but related questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE**: [Is it reasonable to expect all the items on the &quot;Programmers Bill of Rights&quot;?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Workplace.SE**: [How to encourage an employer to adopt the &quot;Programmer's Bill of Rights&quot;?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think the Programmers version is OK now, and have voted to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per the [meta-faq post about career-questions][3]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Can I ask career advice questions?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; No, **unless your question is specifically about software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and requires the unique insights of a programmer**. Most career advice&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions [run the risk of being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; try to make yours a [good subjective&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the question is about a programmer-specific work environment, providing items from a Programmer-specific &quot;Bill of Rights&quot;, I think that it is on-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/185784/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/9381&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1165/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13264" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5508" RevisionGUID="799fbc97-255d-44cc-a517-46f929481af9" CreationDate="2013-02-04T19:51:40.497" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="added 170 characters in body" Text="This question on main was recently opened &amp; closed.  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/185784/is-it-reasonable-to-expect-all-the-items-on-the-programmers-bill-of-rights&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This meta question is to allow a discussion on whether the question is  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* if off-topic, any hope of salvaging it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be a little more clear, my intent was for the meta discussion to evolve around the latest version of the question, whatever that may end up morphing into. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13265" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5513" RevisionGUID="88c10aaf-a655-4fc1-a3f5-c48ef686e7b1" CreationDate="2013-02-04T19:56:25.250" UserId="25936" Text="The [current revision][1] of the question is definitely a lot better than the [original one][2], but I'm afraid the question is still not one that can be answered factually. The core question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm sure not all workplaces do (mine doesn't), but I would like to know if each of these items can reasonably be expected for most programming jobs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The assumption that there's any kind of uniformity in programming jobs is horribly flawed, answers will differ wildly per industry and per country, and even per team. It's an interesting question, but as currently phrased, it's one that can only be discussed and not answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/185784/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/185784/1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13266" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5514" RevisionGUID="6a9b523e-8aa1-48ff-a196-cd9aa8ed5e3b" CreationDate="2013-02-04T20:03:48.497" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Unfortunately, the original poster seems to be gone (anon'ed).  As such, one will not be able to further clarify and rework the question to the intent the original poster had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As it stands, it wavers between 'how not to get pigeon holed' career advice for programmers with implications of front and back end development, a general 'how not to get pigeon holed' workplace question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Failing having the original poster come back and rework it, I believe the best course would be for someone to overhaul the question to one that is certainly not off topic for P.SE, reopen it here and not try to move it to workplace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it isn't possible to rework it for P.SE, then rework it for workplace so that it doesn't depend on programming knowledge and then see about migrating it over.  At that point, if it still fails a migration, it probably should remain closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13267" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5511" RevisionGUID="a8edbdb8-bf60-4695-a0ce-88fc46185b78" CreationDate="2013-02-04T20:29:16.760" UserId="1130" Comment="Rearranged answer so actual answer to question is at the top" Text="Per the [meta-faq post about career-questions][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Can I ask career advice questions?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; No, **unless your question is specifically about software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and requires the unique insights of a programmer**. Most career advice&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions [run the risk of being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; try to make yours a [good subjective&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the question is about a programmer-specific work environment, providing items from a Programmer-specific &quot;Bill of Rights&quot;, I think that it is on-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a side note, I know [another answer][2] suggested that the question get cleaned up and migrated to the Workplace, however the original question was [cross-posted](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/9381) on the Workplace. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They've edited their version to fit their site scope, and I edited the one here to try and fit Programmer's scope. The end result is two very different but related questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE**: [Is it reasonable to expect all the items on the &quot;Programmers Bill of Rights&quot;?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Workplace.SE**: [How to encourage an employer to adopt the &quot;Programmer's Bill of Rights&quot;?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think the Programmers version is OK now, and have voted to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1165/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5509/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/185784/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/9381" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13268" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5510" RevisionGUID="4e5c2897-f33e-4266-bf7a-2f0378a0fe30" CreationDate="2013-02-04T22:09:06.313" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/298553794990596096" />
  <row Id="13269" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="46093175-78e2-4cf0-a1af-eef771968d32" CreationDate="2013-02-05T21:13:50.000" UserId="31260" Comment="Recent hot question about automated testing..." Text="Could we please make a trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Modification details are described in [this MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164712/165773) as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As far as I can tell, substantial part of `Qanswers` in current formula is fake.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;  `(log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascores)`&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;About 1/3 of the answers [studied here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever&quot;) (83 of total 254) have score less than 1/100 of top voted post in respective question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Given that questions checked were ones with tens thousands views, **insultingly low score** indicates that assuming these answers to be popular wouldn't even be in the ballpark. Still, the formula pumps these into `Qanswers` value, as if it is something everyone would be happy to read (hint: it isn't).&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Consider tuning the formula to make it deviate less from voting results. **Ignore answers with non-positive score. Or [better yet](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13857_5485 &quot;preference for cut off at (TopAnswerScore/10-1) explained in comments here&quot;), ignore answers scored less than some reasonable fraction (eg 1/10) of the top one.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that current formula appears to give an unjustified value to crappy answers in highly upvoted questions (`Qscore/5`, no matter how much is answer downvoted), I would like to perform test run to find out if suggested change would make an impact to issues outlined in Programmers meta posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260&#xD;&#xA;* [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I expect modified formula to be competitive to current one at &quot;moderately hot&quot; questions, following the [reasoning outlined here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773):&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;For questions that are not too hot (likely 2-3 clicks away from top of the list) it's natural to see things working exactly as intended. Answers and comments quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;) brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and cool...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recent hot question about [automated testing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/185819/31620) gives an example of why I would want to try a modified formula. In 17 hours, question collected 17 answers, merely 5-7 of which provide useful original content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overheat of fake hotness impacted question like a [Black Saturday fire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a01_17890753.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the fire settled, what is left for future visitors of the question looks like a wasteland of low quality garbage (note that due to high views, it will score high in web searches).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a04_17906927.jpg][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the light of above, [community wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info) status stamped on the question looks especially despicable. It kind of suggests that **after damage has done**, community members are invited to go over the crap brought in by braindead formula, carefully analyze it and try to tame the pain by downvotes. As if they don't have anything better to do!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vKQvI.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B1hjy.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13270" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5515" RevisionGUID="d463c258-8114-4861-ab68-944b8206eeba" CreationDate="2013-02-06T08:41:42.997" UserId="73652" Text="I would like to point out that according to the faq this site deals with &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are problems that tend to be reduced to some kind of math problem and many times are best expressed with the help of mathematical notation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I looked at the solution proposed of using images linked from http://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;but for anything non-trivial this really would be a big PITA.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance, I wrote [this solution for a problem from Skiena's Algorithm Design Manual][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/186081/73652" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13271" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5516" RevisionGUID="bc4e855c-56b2-4139-aff2-7ce4157e1400" CreationDate="2013-02-06T10:39:19.883" UserId="79362" Text="Write 10,000 pages user manual for using SE sites, consisting of random collection of different posts, all filled with specious reasoning trying to squeeze objective meaning out of language designating inherently ambiguous and incomplete ideas, subject to numerous interpretations, many of them as good as next set of interpretations, and pretend that selected interpretation gets Q&amp;A closer to some platonic ideal of objectivity. Blame the users when they don't meet that ideal you can't attain but still desire." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13272" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5516" RevisionGUID="49be47a9-8b55-447a-ba88-4240a2ff0073" CreationDate="2013-02-06T10:49:07.967" UserId="79362" Comment="added 115 characters in body" Text="Write 10,000 pages user manual for using SE sites, consisting of random collection of different posts, all filled with specious reasoning trying to squeeze objective meaning out of language designating inherently ambiguous and incomplete ideas, subject to numerous interpretations, many of them as good as next set of interpretations, and pretend that selected interpretation gets Q&amp;A closer to some platonic ideal of objectivity. Blame the users when they don't meet that ideal you can't attain but still desire.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can detect what is bad stuff (e.g. spam, or awfully phrased question), but can't define what is good stuff. Close to nobody will bother reading your FAQs, manuals, and policies. Fortunately, for complex reasons." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13273" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5517" RevisionGUID="1097929b-1f12-4969-862b-4bc835ccae32" CreationDate="2013-02-07T02:53:25.330" UserId="80743" Text="So... Where should people ask questions like &quot;Recommend an editor that doesn't wrap lines.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I always had the impression that SO was for questions *about* programming — &quot;What is the pythonic way to use exceptions?&quot;, and that P/SE was for questions about the *process* of programming — &quot;How can I learn to write better code?&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I came here yesterday to answer some questions, and someone had asked about a text editor that didn't wrap lines. I thought &quot;I know the answer to that! Use Vim, and the command &quot;:set nowrap&quot;. However, by the time I got to the question it had been closed with no explanation, and I was left feeling confused and disillusioned with the whole site. The person wasn't asking for a general editor recommendation. They were asking for an editor with a very specific feature. It seemed like a decent question to me, but obviously not acceptable on SO, and apparently not acceptable here either. (Although reading your FAQ, it appears that you think it should be acceptable on SO, so why was it closed rather than migrated?)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13274" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5518" RevisionGUID="6e699fbe-86f6-44f5-aa97-8a1d4ac21471" CreationDate="2013-02-07T03:05:16.680" UserId="80743" Text="You are closing questions that should be migrated. Closing should be a last resort, not a hair-trigger reflex." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13275" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5519" RevisionGUID="6512efae-87b7-4ee4-8a4e-c7b5feb67115" CreationDate="2013-02-07T14:28:05.773" UserId="4" Text="I'm mainly looking at [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/186243/cloc-not-counting-actionscript-files-correctly) and the list of things that are on-topic in our FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, our FAQ also states in the list of things that are off-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; implementation issues or programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of the things that are on topic are supported by tools. There are tools to capture and manage requirements. There are tools for software design and architecture used to create or verify models. There are tools, such as the one in the linked to question, to support gathering measurements and metrics from software projects. There are tools to support developer testing and quality assurance in the form of CI servers. Part of software engineering is configuration management, often supported by version control systems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that there are tools that support areas of professional software development that are on topic per our FAQ, does that mean that there are indeed some tool questions which belong here as opposed to Stack Overflow? If so, what can we do to make it more clear what type of tool questions belong here versus on Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13276" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5519" RevisionGUID="6512efae-87b7-4ee4-8a4e-c7b5feb67115" CreationDate="2013-02-07T14:28:05.773" UserId="4" Text="Are there a subset of tool questions that are appropriate for Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13277" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5519" RevisionGUID="6512efae-87b7-4ee4-8a4e-c7b5feb67115" CreationDate="2013-02-07T14:28:05.773" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13282" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5521" RevisionGUID="909ac315-6b7a-44d7-9260-2dd1904d9b42" CreationDate="2013-02-07T15:43:50.020" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I see Programmers.SE role in tool questions of organizing redmine, approaches to integrate perforce with bugzilla, workflow for a git user in an svn shop... Assuming that these question realms are properly asked so as not to be subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I didn't think the CLOC question was on topic for SO either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reasoning is that this is a support issue with the tool.  There is a documented limitation and the tool itself is not behaving properly according to the follow up comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have difficulty finding it at the moment, though I seem to recall a meta post from somewhere that was asking if using the SE network as a replacement for the company's own forums on support questions.  I believe the SE response was mixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, this question is essentially equivalent to &quot;My eclipse keeps running out of memory&quot; and &quot;Why does game XYZ lag with graphics card ABC?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am of the opinion that Stack Exchange is not a bug tracking system for the world, nor is it the support forums for the world.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifiably, for the question on CLOC support: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cloc/support and http://sourceforge.net/p/cloc/bugs/ -- this is where the question should be addressed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13283" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5522" RevisionGUID="a6c33d08-1c7f-4d39-b80c-fe207bf95cef" CreationDate="2013-02-07T16:35:33.183" UserId="3965" Text="I understand requiring a delay when offering a bounty because a question hasn't received enough attention, but why require a 24-hour delay on exemplary answer bounties?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13284" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5522" RevisionGUID="a6c33d08-1c7f-4d39-b80c-fe207bf95cef" CreationDate="2013-02-07T16:35:33.183" UserId="3965" Text="Why can't you award exemplary answer bounties right away?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13285" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5522" RevisionGUID="a6c33d08-1c7f-4d39-b80c-fe207bf95cef" CreationDate="2013-02-07T16:35:33.183" UserId="3965" Text="|feature-request|bounty-awards|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13286" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5523" RevisionGUID="1d9792d2-ca1f-4bcb-b90d-9adc00819a0d" CreationDate="2013-02-07T19:14:39.790" UserId="28877" Text="It probably seems like I dropped off the face of the earth there, but I had a *small* change in employment. There was a bit of perfect storm which effectively nixed my being able to contribute to.... anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Got married.&#xD;&#xA;2. Wife got pregnant almost immediately afterward.&#xD;&#xA;3. Moved across the country to California to take a job with Apple.&#xD;&#xA;4. Apple has something of a &quot;frown-upon&quot; policy to public speaking unless you're cleared by PR.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thankfully though, I was told that I can do public speaking (in this case, blogging) so long as I don't actually talk about anything specific with the company. I have time to contribute, so I'm back and I can start writing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13287" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5523" RevisionGUID="9e618bf7-ac83-4654-b2bf-d5096b1d20d2" CreationDate="2013-02-07T19:42:07.187" UserId="28877" Comment="added 115 characters in body" Text="It probably seems like I dropped off the face of the earth there, but I had a *small* change in employment. There was a bit of perfect storm which effectively nixed my being able to contribute to.... anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Got married.&#xD;&#xA;2. Wife got pregnant almost immediately afterward.&#xD;&#xA;3. Moved across the country to California to take a job with Apple.&#xD;&#xA;4. Apple has something of a &quot;just don't&quot; policy to public speaking unless you're cleared by PR.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thankfully though, I was told that I can do public speaking (in this case, blogging) so long as I don't actually talk about anything* specific with the company. I have time to contribute, so I'm back and I can start writing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Anything meaning anything and everything to do with the company from here on out until the end of time.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13288" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5524" RevisionGUID="989fdf00-6a0b-4c0b-a298-515d1f1f165f" CreationDate="2013-02-07T19:59:45.383" UserId="1204" Text="The latest example is here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/186293/why-are-actual-parameters-called-arguments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that the OP is not asking for the difference between &quot;parameters&quot; and &quot;arguments,&quot; or even what the word means, but merely how the word came to be used in the software development context.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find these questions troubling for several reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  They don't focus on a specific problem area in programming, but merely satisfy a particular curiosity.&#xD;&#xA;2.  They are often trivially answerable with a little bit of Internet searching.&#xD;&#xA;3.  They tend to attract opinions and debate over semantic issues.&#xD;&#xA;4.  They are extremely localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is less clear with questions [like this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19416/is-argument-or-parameter-considered-more-appropriate-for-a-function-method-argum?rq=1), which asks for the actual definition of the words.  Such a question might be useful in clarifying communication among programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or this one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/184010/where-does-the-the-term-feature-creep-come-from&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which clearly serves no practical programming need, yet seems very popular with the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13289" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5524" RevisionGUID="989fdf00-6a0b-4c0b-a298-515d1f1f165f" CreationDate="2013-02-07T19:59:45.383" UserId="1204" Text="Are word origin questions on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13290" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5524" RevisionGUID="989fdf00-6a0b-4c0b-a298-515d1f1f165f" CreationDate="2013-02-07T19:59:45.383" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13291" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5525" RevisionGUID="cc3ee69e-7a68-4e42-9092-5e8afaeddb75" CreationDate="2013-02-07T20:33:05.983" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="I would vote &quot;No, they're not on-topic&quot; or really, they're just not that beneficial to P.SE as a Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For both of the examples you cite, I found myself wondering &quot;who really cares?&quot;  Yes, there is a degree of value in understanding the origin of terms, but as Shakespeare said &quot;A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13292" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5526" RevisionGUID="1d130dd8-2bd6-4ae7-adb1-0b0fbbc4ac03" CreationDate="2013-02-07T20:49:16.357" UserId="3965" Text="My personal feeling is that *why* questions are often helpful, but *who* questions usually fall under idle curiosity.  Knowing the deeper meaning of the word can help people keep the differences straight, which can be important in a profession as precise as ours.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, consider that guy yesterday who thought &quot;stack&quot; meant all the memory allocated to a process.  If you've never had it explained to you, that's a naive but not completely off base generalization to make, but not knowing that subtle difference completely destroyed his question.  A question like &quot;Why do we call it a stack, anyway?&quot; could be very useful in cementing the difference in someone's head, whereas &quot;Who first called it a stack?&quot; isn't very useful at all unless you're a contestant on Jeopardy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several other sets of terms with distinctions that can be very subtle for beginners:  declaration/definition, class/instance, argument/parameter, stack/heap, microprocessor/microcontroller, etc.  If learning that &quot;argument&quot; derives from &quot;token&quot; helps people differentiate it from a parameter, I say it's worthwhile." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13293" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5527" RevisionGUID="7a2bd560-5201-48af-a514-3348784a6592" CreationDate="2013-02-07T20:57:46.857" UserId="63" Text="I'm not sure whether this falls under &quot;idle curiosity&quot; or not, but I have a devil of a time keeping the distinction between arguments and parameters straight - knowing the history behind them - the &quot;why&quot; - might well help. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or it might just be one more bit of trivia to be confused and forgotten. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But frankly, this does seem like the sort of [&quot;conceptual&quot; question][1] that the site is intended to serve. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/165952/what-should-be-the-range-of-acceptable-why-questions-on-stack-overflow#comment485094_165952" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13294" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5528" RevisionGUID="89e9257d-1dfd-42eb-ad3b-490ddd437115" CreationDate="2013-02-07T21:05:39.813" UserId="12828" Text="I've added my vote to close, despite doing quite well out of the answer. I don't think it's entirely in sync with Programmers's philosophy. Although I'm not entirely sure what that is any more, but that's another discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would not be the first time that a question like that got moved to [English Language and Usage][1]. In fact all my karma points there come from questions migrated from Programmers, IIRC.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://english.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13295" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5529" RevisionGUID="cbf3b50f-dd20-4a12-80bc-608bbf7faeba" CreationDate="2013-02-07T21:17:48.477" UserId="1130" Text="We've had this discussion in the past, which was sparked by a question [Why are statements in many programming languages terminated by semicolons?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/139482/1130)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per the top-voted and accepted answer on [that meta discussion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3325/1130), &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question came up in chat yesterday, and a point was made that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programming History is often overlooked on P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; To [quote Mark Trapp][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Save for the accepted answer, I thought the semicolons question was&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; pretty good. Programming history has always been an overlooked aspect&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; of Programmers's scope.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; So although the question is probably not relevant to a programmer job&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in today's world, it does provide some insight into the history of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programming languages, which can possibly be used for future&#xD;&#xA;&gt; decisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have not seen any other discussions on meta since then about changing our policy on history questions, so I would say yes, this question is on-topic and should be left open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3908862#3908862" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13296" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5529" RevisionGUID="216bb2b8-f027-4e73-8b9f-242736e1f706" CreationDate="2013-02-07T21:29:05.627" UserId="1130" Comment="added 350 characters in body" Text="[Karl](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5526/1130) and [Shog](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5527/1130) have both provided good answers about why questions like this can be worthwhile, but I'd also like to point out that [we've had this discussion][1] in the past about history questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was sparked by the question [Why are statements in many programming languages terminated by semicolons?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/139482/1130), and per the top-voted and accepted answer on [that meta discussion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3325/1130), &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question came up in chat yesterday, and a point was made that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programming History is often overlooked on P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; To [quote Mark Trapp][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Save for the accepted answer, I thought the semicolons question was&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; pretty good. Programming history has always been an overlooked aspect&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; of Programmers's scope.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; So although the question is probably not relevant to a programmer job&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in today's world, it does provide some insight into the history of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programming languages, which can possibly be used for future&#xD;&#xA;&gt; decisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have not seen any other discussions on meta since then about changing our policy on history questions, so I would say yes, this question is on-topic and should be left open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3325/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3908862#3908862" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13297" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5530" RevisionGUID="4f22ae55-9ee9-4076-b2a3-800b3e52cb24" CreationDate="2013-02-07T21:39:47.803" UserId="41381" Text="Tool questions are entirely off topic, unless the tool is not directly related to the question at hand or the question is about a class of tools and the questions is otherwise acceptable. For example a question like &quot;why is version control considered mandatory for software development?&quot; is fine." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13298" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5531" RevisionGUID="3d71492b-8440-4375-8dd2-41aff3e7eb11" CreationDate="2013-02-07T22:43:42.577" UserId="60569" Text="I consider word-origin questions to be on-topic if the word uniquely applies to programmers in general." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13299" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5532" RevisionGUID="d7b705fe-a84a-47a7-85a8-19b729823f43" CreationDate="2013-02-08T00:20:22.890" UserId="80892" Text="I have just signed up to this site in order to ask a specific programming question I thought would be unsuitable to ask on Stackoverlflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was quickly closed down, here is a link to my question [My closed question][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why can't this site also be about the more philosophical aspects of programming also? I understand now that my question breaks the simple Q&amp;A system, as it is quite subjective, but philosophical questions always are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where can these types of programming questions be asked?? Not here, not on Stackoverflow (understandably) and not really on a philosophy Q&amp;A site (because a good understanding of programming is needed to really give a good constructive answer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I went on a philosophy QA site I'm sure my question would not be closed, but it would also not be answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/186315/are-programming-languages-becoming-more-like-natural-languages#comment358540_186315" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13300" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5532" RevisionGUID="d7b705fe-a84a-47a7-85a8-19b729823f43" CreationDate="2013-02-08T00:20:22.890" UserId="80892" Text="I clearly got the wrong idea about what this site is about." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13301" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5532" RevisionGUID="d7b705fe-a84a-47a7-85a8-19b729823f43" CreationDate="2013-02-08T00:20:22.890" UserId="80892" Text="|feature-request|closed-questions|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13302" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5533" RevisionGUID="17a3d79c-ea51-48c2-8755-749d3be31216" CreationDate="2013-02-08T00:22:14.820" UserId="1204" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/186315&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once in a blue moon, a question comes along that, in spite of its Not Constructive nature, is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Interesting and thought-provoking,&#xD;&#xA;2.  Well-written,&#xD;&#xA;3.  Meets the Six Constructive Guidelines,&#xD;&#xA;4.  Is on topic for the site, and&#xD;&#xA;5.  Can actually be answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one of those questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Close reasons exist to give us an excuse to close all of those crappy, poorly-written, underspecified, lazy and, ultimately, uninteresting questions.  You know what those are, what they look like.  This is not one of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please reopen." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13303" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5533" RevisionGUID="17a3d79c-ea51-48c2-8755-749d3be31216" CreationDate="2013-02-08T00:22:14.820" UserId="1204" Text="Request to reopen: Are programming languages becoming more like natural languages?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13304" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5533" RevisionGUID="17a3d79c-ea51-48c2-8755-749d3be31216" CreationDate="2013-02-08T00:22:14.820" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13305" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5534" RevisionGUID="abe47400-ea95-419b-88fa-ee492187b5e1" CreationDate="2013-02-08T00:34:02.167" UserId="25476" Text="Questions such as you describe are typically closed as Not Constructive as they are either based in opinions, or will solicit debate and extended discussions.  StackExchange has a different mission in mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the biggest confusion that most new users have at first, we are foremost a Question and Answer site, not a discussion forum.  Questions should be about a real problem that somebody is facing and should have an explicit question that is answerable with facts or expertise.  The goal is to have a knowledge base of questions and answers that can benefit everybody.  Furthermore we take quality of questions and answers very seriously to reduce noise and distractions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is what sets us apart from your discussion forum or from Reddit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you would like to engage in a philosophical debate about software development in general then I invite you to join the chat room in the Whiteboard room.  Discussions and debates belong in chat." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13306" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5535" RevisionGUID="35d35f83-736e-45f7-8231-e9c52a32482e" CreationDate="2013-02-08T00:37:48.377" UserId="1458" Text="You've got it completely wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is by no means “not constructive”. The fact that the guidelines are meant should be a hint. It's a well-written question about an interesting subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That this question was closed as NC [doesn't surprise me](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/165882/appeal-a-not-constructive-question/165911#165911). There are more things on heaven and earth than dreamt of in most programmers' philosophy, but your average SO/Prog.SE close voter barely dreams, let alone imagine that there's a whole world out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The study of languages is a science. The question is perhaps not well-suited for the site: it's on-topic (I guess) in that it's about programming languages, but the target audience would be computer scientists, who understand what a programming language is and how natural languages are modeled.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Speaking as a moderator on [Computer Science](http://cs.stackexchange.com/), I'll recommend migrating the question there. Both programming language theory and natural language modeling are on-topic there, and we don't dismiss “it's not part of my daily job as a programmer” as non-constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(However, I'm afraid user881920 is going to be disappointed. While the question is thought-provoking, the answer is an unexciting no.)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13307" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5535" RevisionGUID="1c1dd3ce-0df5-47cb-b8e0-81347f38217f" CreationDate="2013-02-08T00:38:36.690" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="You've got it completely wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is by no means “not constructive”. The fact that the guidelines are met should be a hint. It's a well-written question about an interesting subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That this question was closed as NC [doesn't surprise me](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/165882/appeal-a-not-constructive-question/165911#165911). There are more things on heaven and earth than dreamt of in most programmers' philosophy, but your average SO/Prog.SE close voter barely dreams, let alone imagine that there's a whole world out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The study of languages is a science. The question is perhaps not well-suited for the site: it's on-topic (I guess) in that it's about programming languages, but the target audience would be computer scientists, who understand what a programming language is and how natural languages are modeled.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Speaking as a moderator on [Computer Science](http://cs.stackexchange.com/), I'll recommend migrating the question there. Both programming language theory and natural language modeling are on-topic there, and we don't dismiss “it's not part of my daily job as a programmer” as non-constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(However, I'm afraid user881920 is going to be disappointed. While the question is thought-provoking, the answer is an unexciting no.)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13308" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5524" RevisionGUID="c0ffd2ff-93c0-46f1-bb5e-a57cbac7d215" CreationDate="2013-02-08T01:09:08.033" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/299686264909729792" />
  <row Id="13309" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5536" RevisionGUID="4a56a183-740a-4568-8410-b77e2552ebb1" CreationDate="2013-02-08T13:58:50.817" UserId="1480" Text="I first wanted to post this question on Stackoverflow, then thought Programmers is more appropriate, now hesitating.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is the question below on-topic here, or better on Stackoverflow, or elsewhere?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wrote a sync tool to synchronize folders/files from Alfresco to Windows.  &#xD;&#xA;PROBLEM:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* In Alfresco, /files/can/have/very/very/very/long/filepaths/like/this.txt&#xD;&#xA;* In Windows. a path can not be more than 255 characters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to telling the user there is a problem, what is the best practice in such a case?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Shorten the file's name?&#xD;&#xA; 2. Skip the file?&#xD;&#xA; 3. Create a sort of &quot;folder's carriage return&quot;, a special folder from which the path can continue?&#xD;&#xA; 4. Something else?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13310" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5536" RevisionGUID="4a56a183-740a-4568-8410-b77e2552ebb1" CreationDate="2013-02-08T13:58:50.817" UserId="1480" Text="Off-topic? Best practice to sync long paths to filesystems where path length is limited?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13311" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5536" RevisionGUID="4a56a183-740a-4568-8410-b77e2552ebb1" CreationDate="2013-02-08T13:58:50.817" UserId="1480" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13312" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5537" RevisionGUID="1f435269-174a-498b-80a7-595777b082c9" CreationDate="2013-02-08T14:07:34.833" UserId="25476" Text="In my opinion this is an on topic question as long as you begin with needing help designing the appropriate behavior for the system." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13313" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5517" RevisionGUID="423e106d-6376-4787-9d99-1007f883e4b1" CreationDate="2013-02-08T15:41:28.153" UserId="80743" Comment="Expanded answer with stuff from the comments." Text="So... Where should people ask questions like &quot;Recommend an editor that doesn't wrap lines.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I always had the impression that SO was for questions *about* programming — &quot;What is the pythonic way to use exceptions?&quot;, and that P/SE was for questions about the *process* of programming — &quot;How can I learn to write better code?&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I came here yesterday to answer some questions, and someone had asked about a text editor that didn't wrap lines. I thought &quot;I know the answer to that! Use Vim, and the command &quot;:set nowrap&quot;. However, by the time I got to the question it had been closed with no explanation, and I was left feeling confused and disillusioned with the whole site. The person wasn't asking for a general editor recommendation. They were asking for an editor with a very specific feature. It seemed like a decent question to me, but obviously not acceptable on SO, and apparently not acceptable here either. (Although reading your FAQ, it appears that you think it should be acceptable on SO, so why was it closed rather than migrated?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think part of the problem is the fact that nobody knows where to ask subjective questions. They see a title like '\\*Programmers*\', and think &quot;Programmers between two comment tags? That must be a place to comment about programming! I'll ask my subjective question there, instead of on SO where it will be closed.&quot; I think that your subject area (as specified in your FAQ) is much narrower than what is suggested by your title. Perhaps if you change the title from &quot;\\*Programmers*\&quot; to &quot;Programming Concepts&quot;, you would get better questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would also help if people explained why they downvoted answers or questions. A single comment would suffice. (Downvoting without commenting is a bit counterproductive; either the person will keep making the same mistake because they don't know any better, or they will give up on the site completely.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13314" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5538" RevisionGUID="2a25bca6-fb69-44a0-a129-d35f61b6a415" CreationDate="2013-02-08T18:44:42.840" UserId="23466" Text="I haven't posted a question here so far, I am wondering if this question would be on-topic for the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am part of the team we own many services the idea came as to build a list of services we own so user can find the necessary information they are looking for with respect to a service (viz name, package name, source code location, continuous integration site etc). The idea is to have all the services registered probably on a database and when user looks for the service they look for it should display information registered with. For instance if the person looks for service `xyz` it should display the package name, project name, project source code repo and the site information associated with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All our projects are in java so i thought of using a derby backend (since the db requirement is not so heavy) and use a html/jsp front end facilitating the search. seeing this a very simple requirement where we initially enter all our services into the database first and service provides lookup based on our entries, is there a more efficient way of building the requirement in java than one i have provided?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I look forward to your answers and thanks for reading" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13315" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5538" RevisionGUID="2a25bca6-fb69-44a0-a129-d35f61b6a415" CreationDate="2013-02-08T18:44:42.840" UserId="23466" Text="Is this question on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13316" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5538" RevisionGUID="2a25bca6-fb69-44a0-a129-d35f61b6a415" CreationDate="2013-02-08T18:44:42.840" UserId="23466" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13317" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5533" RevisionGUID="341182c7-8c5f-4d61-86f7-655b6f808cff" CreationDate="2013-02-08T19:09:13.233" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/299958078370091008" />
  <row Id="13318" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5539" RevisionGUID="675c2dc4-b273-49cc-b3e9-e0ad5373ddce" CreationDate="2013-02-08T20:10:05.703" UserId="41381" Text="Your question is hovering in that Not A Real Question/Too Localized. We can't tell you how to build your site, there are way too many different options available and we have no idea what your resources or skill set is, and even if we did then answers would be so specific that no one else would be likely benefit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have questions about how to organize your code and separate your logic then feel free to ask here. If you have specific questions about getting X to work or why Y is giving you an error then you could try asking on Stack Overflow. Your current question isn't really acceptable though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13319" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5538" RevisionGUID="9608d782-8c4d-471f-9814-3d156be2aa36" CreationDate="2013-02-08T20:15:12.507" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="grammar" Text="I haven't posted a question here so far, I am wondering if this question would be on-topic for the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am part of a team that owns many services. We had an idea to build a list of the services that we own.  That way a user can find the necessary information they are looking for with respect to a service (viz name, package name, source code location, continuous integration site etc). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea is to have all the services registered - probably on a database. When the user looks for a service then they should see the service and the registered information. For instance, if the person looks for service `xyz` it should display the package name, project name, project source code repository, and the site information associated with `xyz`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of our projects are in java, So I thought of using a derby backend as well as using a html/jsp front end to facilitate the search.  Our db requirements are not too heavy. Seeing that this a very simple requirement where we initially enter all of our services into the database first and the service provides a look-up based on our entries, is there a more efficient way of building the registry in java than one I have provided?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I look forward to your answers and thanks for reading" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13320" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5540" RevisionGUID="94f7b399-8def-4be2-b1e3-8d992120f8ed" CreationDate="2013-02-09T06:51:43.243" UserId="32828" Text="I can second the recommendation from Gilles. Provided you show some work, [a vague and speculative question](http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/4618/2161) can find a home on cs.SE. Or perhaps slip through the cracks more easily. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13321" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5541" RevisionGUID="c4577450-b71e-4a4e-ab8d-f87a2a973ce6" CreationDate="2013-02-09T07:09:42.717" UserId="16411" Text="&#xD;&#xA;[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/3oQMC.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.zeromq.org/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13322" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5541" RevisionGUID="08e4e5f5-b5b4-4dfa-b659-cf122c04f9ea" CreationDate="2013-02-09T07:09:42.717" UserId="16411" />
  <row Id="13323" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="d20e14ea-f35c-4218-9314-299e03c3e231" CreationDate="2013-02-11T09:12:33.030" UserId="31260" Text="Deleted due to copy-paste typo. This answer has been posted here by mistake; it should have been posted in other question: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5543/31260" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13324" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="2b3d2461-c24f-4178-8322-1876b59a4400" CreationDate="2013-02-11T09:13:06.913" UserId="31260" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="13325" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5543" RevisionGUID="314b7c68-6e67-40f6-a036-9427df2ce534" CreationDate="2013-02-11T09:14:24.183" UserId="31260" Text="Most likely reason for the issues with answers quality is a [particular bug](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164712/165773 &quot;described here&quot;) in a hotness formula (&quot;fake popularity&quot;). This bug causes some of the questions with many answers to be placed unreasonably close to the top of the [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Issues caused by this are explained in details in a post about particularly troublesome ([&quot;sticky&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;)) kind of questions affected by the bug in formula:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One problem with hot questions seems to be that there is no way for &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; to differentiate **genuine** popularity from **fake** one, that is from popularity introduced by the algorithm itself... the algorithm simply is incapable to detect cases when popularity is [its own byproduct](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback &quot;due to positive feedback loop&quot;)...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;For questions that are not too hot... quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), collider brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and fair...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;But when question gets closer to the top of collider, things change... it attracts a lot of visitors whose desire to answer is not balanced by local community norms. At this point &quot;intended life-cycle of a hot question&quot; breaks.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Hotness algorithm assumes the question gets bumped mostly by good answers and that infrequent deviations are corrected by local community through voting and comments. Thing is though, this does not work on top of the collider...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It further explains why community moderation (&quot;quality control&quot; through voting, comments and editing by site regulars) tends to break on questions impacted by unnatural hotness score:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...There are just too many new visitors to keep things under local community control, and there are just too many new voters and commenters to get things going as designed... So comes next and next and next round of garbage answers, bumping the question, bringing mindless upvotes, over and over and over again.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Hotness algorithm calculates this as genuine popularity, keeps it accordingly high at collider, bringing more visitors that are breaking things further and so on and so on. Note it's not limited to newcomers only, everyone is invited to the party. Community regulars can clearly see that usual quality norms are broken... and that they are free to follow the New Order just like anyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;###That's how fake popularity makes shit stick to the ceiling and helps to keep it there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Post quoted above also explains why there are so much community wiki (triggered by too-many-answers) among questions affected by hotness formula bug:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; _Regular_ open questions (&quot;appropriate&quot; ones) tend to have much less than 30 answers indeed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;But when we look at &quot;sticky&quot; questions, things seem to be different. These questions aren't &quot;inappropriate&quot;, otherwise these would be closed long time ago. Still, 10 examples of sticky questions have more than 270 answers total, about 27 average per question...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...**2/3 answers in sticky questions are just a garbage** that somehow leaked in (probably because &quot;fake hotness&quot; gave question an unnaturally high exposure in collider).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Here is a feature request to find out how this can be addressed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5482/31260" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13326" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5544" RevisionGUID="21527799-cc4e-4383-95aa-77072c706dc7" CreationDate="2013-02-11T18:04:21.250" UserId="81205" Text="[![writeLaTeX.com - Free online collaborative LaTeX editor with Integrated Rapid Preview][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/3BTVq.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://www.writelatex.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13327" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5544" RevisionGUID="d137a98a-512f-44ba-af13-8e86cd985b00" CreationDate="2013-02-11T18:04:21.250" UserId="81205" />
  <row Id="13328" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5545" RevisionGUID="c9949dfa-a6c1-4703-9c1e-84f7f2dc4494" CreationDate="2013-02-11T20:13:32.503" UserDisplayName="user25791" Text="I would like to delete only my P.SE account only, but I can't find the directions anywhere." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13329" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5545" RevisionGUID="c9949dfa-a6c1-4703-9c1e-84f7f2dc4494" CreationDate="2013-02-11T20:13:32.503" UserDisplayName="user25791" Text="please tell me how to delete my P.SE account" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13330" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5545" RevisionGUID="c9949dfa-a6c1-4703-9c1e-84f7f2dc4494" CreationDate="2013-02-11T20:13:32.503" UserDisplayName="user25791" Text="|support|user-accounts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13331" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5546" RevisionGUID="f94ebeba-b091-4e32-bd06-452de13771ad" CreationDate="2013-02-11T20:19:18.677" UserId="4" Text="[This page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/user-deletion) explains how to request an account deletion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13332" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5545" RevisionGUID="e9d09898-3b97-47c9-8cf1-05a3035372da" CreationDate="2013-02-11T21:01:20.780" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|user-accounts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13333" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5545" RevisionGUID="fb47de7b-9913-49a1-8d93-3b8e3eea0d41" CreationDate="2013-02-12T02:07:52.677" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:1996,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Jim G.&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="13334" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5547" RevisionGUID="13bce274-221f-4ea8-beac-41984baa33ef" CreationDate="2013-02-13T05:44:07.100" UserId="74535" Text="[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/NNqlH.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://writers.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13335" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5547" RevisionGUID="c44bcce3-5493-4cb9-b0b6-792c9b0d7b8e" CreationDate="2013-02-13T05:44:07.100" UserId="74535" />
  <row Id="13336" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5548" RevisionGUID="c28bcc48-e3fd-49b8-b7ed-3198c96565e4" CreationDate="2013-02-13T07:02:11.667" UserId="52512" Text="I am having trouble seeing where on my status page to click to see what privileges I have earned. I have stumbled onto it before, but I forget how I did it. Where should I go to see this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I did some poking around, and searched the questions, but came up empty. Surely this is a duplicate, but even the related questions the system shows as I write this are no help." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13337" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5548" RevisionGUID="c28bcc48-e3fd-49b8-b7ed-3198c96565e4" CreationDate="2013-02-13T07:02:11.667" UserId="52512" Text="How can I view what privileges I have?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13338" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5548" RevisionGUID="c28bcc48-e3fd-49b8-b7ed-3198c96565e4" CreationDate="2013-02-13T07:02:11.667" UserId="52512" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13339" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5549" RevisionGUID="a41ed2d1-da86-4959-acfb-5618536d7219" CreationDate="2013-02-13T07:06:08.293" UserId="25936" Text="There's a link to the [privileges page][2] in the drop down menu that appears when you hover over your username (on the main site):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kYfGM.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13340" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5548" RevisionGUID="22b88012-99f3-4645-9f51-a383623d7b1e" CreationDate="2013-02-13T07:09:01.583" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|privileges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13341" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5550" RevisionGUID="fc2a27f7-edd7-4302-af07-c6e09f9ca7e3" CreationDate="2013-02-13T07:18:17.040" UserId="52512" Text="Perhaps [Quora][1] would be a better forum for open-ended questions than Stack Exchange. It's full of smart people who love to share their ideas and discuss things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://www.quora.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13342" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5532" RevisionGUID="315b2b23-51a3-4163-b59a-68f96bc19556" CreationDate="2013-02-14T02:40:50.083" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13343" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5551" RevisionGUID="443dc664-0c46-4649-98c8-17f7e27f29d6" CreationDate="2013-02-14T03:02:25.550" UserId="73996" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/184039/what-would-be-a-good-entry-level-programming-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of my first 3 question is relevant.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought programmer stack exchange is to ask something meta to programmers. Actually I would rather ask what kind of job would you give your intern? However, the word you, says that it's subjective. Well, I thought programmers stack exchange is to ask about subjective part of programming?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13344" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5551" RevisionGUID="443dc664-0c46-4649-98c8-17f7e27f29d6" CreationDate="2013-02-14T03:02:25.550" UserId="73996" Text="Why is this question not relevant?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13345" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5551" RevisionGUID="443dc664-0c46-4649-98c8-17f7e27f29d6" CreationDate="2013-02-14T03:02:25.550" UserId="73996" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13346" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5552" RevisionGUID="682ea13e-b530-4106-9bfb-4388346aa9b4" CreationDate="2013-02-14T03:17:27.380" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Programmers is a site in the Stack Exchange format for asking questions that potentially have single, correct answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One example of a question (just looking through some recent ones) of this nature is [Why Was Python Written with the GIL?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/186889/why-was-python-written-with-the-gil).  There is an answer to this question - it has to do with optimizations on single threaded programs, and avoiding some other pitfalls of multithreaded natures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hiring people with exact skill is difficult.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; So our strategy has been hiring people based on talent and make sure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they are as young as possible. Then we train them.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We can't give them big project straight away. If we do that, we often&#xD;&#xA;&gt; end up reprogramming from scratch due to design issues.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think we should give them debugging jobs or small project jobs.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What other tasks usually such people do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(emphasis mine)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is asking for a range of answers - all of them potentially equally correct.  There is no single correct answer, or even the possibility of one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The stack exchange format is not set up for discussions or polling of ideas.  It just doesn't work well for those cases.  Trying to make it work for those compromises the thing it does work really well for - questions that have single correct answers.  People come to the stack exchange network to find answers - not to discuss problems or see what everyone else has to say on a given topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13347" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5552" RevisionGUID="7cac1656-fac0-4fae-95aa-e9c22ca40744" CreationDate="2013-02-14T06:48:47.407" UserId="31260" Comment="1) minor spelling correction; 2) range of answers += http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;more details about 'list questions' at MSO tag wiki&quot;" Text="Programmers is a site in the Stack Exchange format for asking questions that potentially have single, correct answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One example of a question (just looking through some recent ones) of this nature is [Why Was Python Written with the GIL?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/186889/why-was-python-written-with-the-gil)  There is an answer to this question - it has to do with optimizations on single threaded programs, and avoiding some other pitfalls of multithreaded natures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hiring people with exact skill is difficult.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; So our strategy has been hiring people based on talent and make sure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they are as young as possible. Then we train them.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We can't give them big project straight away. If we do that, we often&#xD;&#xA;&gt; end up reprogramming from scratch due to design issues.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think we should give them debugging jobs or small project jobs.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What other tasks usually such people do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(emphasis mine)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is asking for a [range of answers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;more details about 'list questions' at MSO tag wiki&quot;) - all of them potentially equally correct.  There is no single correct answer, or even the possibility of one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange format is not set up for discussions or polling of ideas.  It just doesn't work well for those cases.  Trying to make it work for those compromises the thing it does work really well for - questions that have single correct answer.  People come to the Stack Exchange network to find answers - not to discuss problems or see what everyone else has to say on a given topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13348" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5551" RevisionGUID="95bc75a8-edba-4fef-b23a-ec88fbb3cef7" CreationDate="2013-02-14T06:50:23.953" UserId="31260" Comment="added 2 characters in body; edited tags" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/184039/what-would-be-a-good-entry-level-programming-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of my first 3 questions is relevant.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought Programmers Stack Exchange is to ask something meta to programmers. Actually I would rather ask what kind of job would you give your intern? However, the word you, says that it's subjective. Well, I thought Programmers Stack Exchange is to ask about subjective part of programming?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13349" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5551" RevisionGUID="95bc75a8-edba-4fef-b23a-ec88fbb3cef7" CreationDate="2013-02-14T06:50:23.953" UserId="31260" Comment="added 2 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13350" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5543" RevisionGUID="7c74ec16-750e-45b7-aa94-5e020447f1cf" CreationDate="2013-02-14T16:10:35.620" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="Most likely reason for the issues with answers quality is a [particular bug](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164712/165773 &quot;described here&quot;) in a hotness formula (&quot;fake popularity&quot;). This bug causes some of the questions with many answers to be placed unreasonably close to the top of the [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Issues caused by this are explained in details in a post about particularly troublesome ([&quot;sticky&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;)) kind of questions affected by the bug in formula:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One problem with hot questions seems to be that there is no way for &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; to differentiate **genuine** popularity from **fake** one, that is from popularity introduced by the algorithm itself... the algorithm simply is incapable to detect cases when popularity is [its own byproduct](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback &quot;due to positive feedback loop&quot;)...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;For questions that are not too hot... quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), collider brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and fair...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;But when question gets closer to the top of collider, things change... it attracts a lot of visitors whose desire to answer is not balanced by local community norms. At this point &quot;intended life-cycle of a hot question&quot; breaks.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Hotness algorithm assumes the question gets bumped mostly by good answers and that infrequent deviations are corrected by local community through voting and comments. Thing is though, this does not work on top of the collider...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Post further explains why community moderation (&quot;quality control&quot; through voting, comments and editing by site regulars) tends to break on questions impacted by unnatural hotness score:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...There are just too many new visitors to keep things under local community control, and there are just too many new voters and commenters to get things going as designed... So comes next and next and next round of garbage answers, bumping the question, bringing mindless upvotes, over and over and over again.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Hotness algorithm calculates this as genuine popularity, keeps it accordingly high at collider, bringing more visitors that are breaking things further and so on and so on. Note it's not limited to newcomers only, everyone is invited to the party. Community regulars can clearly see that usual quality norms are broken... and that they are free to follow the New Order just like anyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;**That's how fake popularity makes shit stick to the ceiling and helps to keep it there.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It also explains why there are so much community wiki (triggered by too-many-answers) among questions affected by hotness formula bug:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; _Regular_ open questions (&quot;appropriate&quot; ones) tend to have much less than 30 answers indeed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;But when we look at &quot;sticky&quot; questions, things seem to be different. These questions aren't &quot;inappropriate&quot;, otherwise these would be closed long time ago. Still, 10 examples of sticky questions have more than 270 answers total, about 27 average per question...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...at least **2/3 answers in sticky questions are just a garbage** that somehow leaked in (probably because &quot;fake hotness&quot; gave question an unnaturally high exposure in collider).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Here is a feature request to find out how this can be addressed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5482/31260" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13351" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5553" RevisionGUID="0d35db8e-98c3-48fa-9bd3-9dacf29fa3d5" CreationDate="2013-02-15T11:18:22.447" UserId="47323" Text="Last week I asked [a question on future-proof programming](http://stackoverflow.com/q/14756472/974555) on Stack Overflow. It was closed as off-topic there. I flagged it for migration, but although the flag was deemed helpful, the non-migration [appears to imply rejection](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/167700/172266).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is my question, closed on Stack Overflow, a good fit on Programmers? Was a migration rejected? Why (not)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13352" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5553" RevisionGUID="0d35db8e-98c3-48fa-9bd3-9dacf29fa3d5" CreationDate="2013-02-15T11:18:22.447" UserId="47323" Text="Would this question on future-proof programming fit on Programmers SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13353" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5553" RevisionGUID="0d35db8e-98c3-48fa-9bd3-9dacf29fa3d5" CreationDate="2013-02-15T11:18:22.447" UserId="47323" Text="|support|migration|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13354" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5554" RevisionGUID="e9e73789-72c3-4fb9-ab2b-15a9b6d81df9" CreationDate="2013-02-15T11:29:48.550" UserId="47" Text="Regarding the migration issue. Migration from Stack Overflow to Programmers has to be by moderator action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the moderator who saw your flag had *any* doubt over whether the question would be a good fit for Programmers they were right to not migrate it. Your flag would still be marked as helpful as the question isn't suitable for Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The simplest thing to do is repost your question - but please, please make sure you are asking a constructive question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13355" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5555" RevisionGUID="cf053aa0-d4ac-4343-9f7f-d2534ffd6521" CreationDate="2013-02-15T14:37:38.623" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Yes, your question would be on-topic for P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It's asking about the broader aspects of design&#xD;&#xA;2. You've clearly done some homework in identifying where problems have come up&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could make your question stronger by indicating some of the things you've attempted but are either unsure of or haven't worked well for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have flagged the question requesting a migration to P.SE, but I'm a nobody, so feel free to flag again and point them to this meta discussion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13356" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5556" RevisionGUID="bba2f85f-f3d5-4c3b-994f-84e538f5059a" CreationDate="2013-02-15T16:05:21.043" UserDisplayName="user39685" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187205/how-to-write-a-program-in-java-that-prints-square-of-integers-without-using-vari), which was just closed, seems appropriate to me.  My reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - the asker is trying to learn about functional programming&#xD;&#xA; - when reading an article about FP, the asker wasn't able to understand an example due to a key missing concept&#xD;&#xA; - the intent of the question is to understand the concepts behind implementing an algorithm in FP -- not just getting some code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, I think it's an on-topic, valuable question (unless a duplicate exists, although I didn't find one), and I've upvoted it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it an appropriate question?  If not, can it be improved to meet Programmers' standards (and how)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13357" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5556" RevisionGUID="bba2f85f-f3d5-4c3b-994f-84e538f5059a" CreationDate="2013-02-15T16:05:21.043" UserDisplayName="user39685" Text="Is this question inappropriate for Programmers? Can we reopen it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13358" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5556" RevisionGUID="bba2f85f-f3d5-4c3b-994f-84e538f5059a" CreationDate="2013-02-15T16:05:21.043" UserDisplayName="user39685" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13359" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5556" RevisionGUID="f3e2d5fb-e0f4-412c-99ef-e237743be425" CreationDate="2013-02-15T16:18:43.830" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|closed-questions|close-reasons|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13360" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5557" RevisionGUID="552b5f89-f289-4677-9725-57e4d9891dd6" CreationDate="2013-02-15T16:19:36.467" UserId="25936" Text="The original phrasing was a bit not constructive. That said, I fully agree that the core question is about understanding the concepts involved, which is [what Programmers is all about][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting **expert answers on conceptual questions about software development**. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edited it a bit and re-opened. The article the question is quoting is misleading (and... stupid), but that's not the asker's fault. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13361" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5557" RevisionGUID="350789fd-a2b2-49fc-bf30-987b4189a219" CreationDate="2013-02-15T17:05:11.527" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 31 characters in body" Text="The original phrasing was a bit not constructive. That said, I fully agree that the core question is about understanding the concepts involved, which is [what Programmers is all about][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting **expert answers on conceptual questions about software development**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edited it a bit and re-opened. The article the question is quoting is misleading (and... stupid), but that's not the asker's fault. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13362" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5558" RevisionGUID="883ecde0-f7c1-4f28-b401-a38180b1f83f" CreationDate="2013-02-15T19:00:50.770" UserId="25476" Text="I believe that we should not use flags or close votes to enforce content that is legitimately on topic, yet has potential ethical or moral issues involved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187231/create-a-unterminable-process-in-windows&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am going to be perfectly honest here, I don't believe him that he is not trying to create a piece of malware or do something malicious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand though, I am intrigued and fascinated about the ingenuity of Evil Software Developers.  The more we understand how Evil Software Development works then the better equipped we are to combat such negative activity.  The community as a whole is richer for having such content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you believe, do you consider questions where the OP is coming from an unethical or immoral place are justified in being closed as Not Constructive, or do you believe we have no right to judge others content by their morality?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13363" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5558" RevisionGUID="883ecde0-f7c1-4f28-b401-a38180b1f83f" CreationDate="2013-02-15T19:00:50.770" UserId="25476" Text="Flags and close votes based on ethical or moral issues" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13364" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5558" RevisionGUID="883ecde0-f7c1-4f28-b401-a38180b1f83f" CreationDate="2013-02-15T19:00:50.770" UserId="25476" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13365" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5559" RevisionGUID="5e156e27-9432-4fdd-931c-2fa1a31a7a88" CreationDate="2013-02-15T19:15:45.887" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Morality aside, I believe that this question is off topic for P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The digging into the specifics of an implementation that are not theoretical/conceptual (How to write the squares of numbers without variables in Java to demonstrate functional programming concepts) would best be on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The specifics of the investigation on the security aspects (all of circumventing, identifying programs that have circumvented, and circumventing the circumvention) of a particular operating system seems more appropriate for Security.SE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13366" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5559" RevisionGUID="b0bc3102-727f-49b6-8ca1-f38297a7a137" CreationDate="2013-02-15T19:26:15.277" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 464 characters in body" Text="Morality aside, I believe that this question is off topic for P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The digging into the specifics of an implementation that are not theoretical/conceptual (How to write the squares of numbers without variables in Java to demonstrate functional programming concepts) would best be on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The specifics of the investigation on the security aspects (all of circumventing, identifying programs that have circumvented, and circumventing the circumvention) of a particular operating system seems more appropriate for Security.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With respect to the actual code itself, this starts getting into a realm of legality that likely should be answered by, well I don't see anyone on the SE team that appears to have a legal backing on the title.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ask &quot;what happens when SE is hosting code for exploiting holes in XYZ&quot; where XYZ is any of Java, Windows Security, etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone posted the code to the java applet security hole in CodeReview.SE asking how to improve it... what then?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13367" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5560" RevisionGUID="d17756ea-489d-4b44-a759-30c41d4c803f" CreationDate="2013-02-15T20:09:27.660" UserId="1130" Text="I would not judge content based on it's potential moral or ethical uses&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The more we know about security loopholes, the more secure we can build our applications. Consider for example, the exact same question asked, but with the purpose of preventing such security loopholes in the first place. Then the moral/ethical argument would be useless, and you'll still get the exact same answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, the OP is very correct with [his comment][1] that *&quot;when you learn cyber hacking and various exploits, it is not necessary you wants to be a black hat hacker&quot;*. In fact, the US government plans to dramatically increase the size of their cyber security department, and plan on hiring many more &quot;hackers&quot; in the future. (I'll see if I can find the news story about that for reference - I think it was an increase of around 10x)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also as a side note related to that specific question, I recently wrote up [an answer][2] to a MSO question about effective ways to guide new users so they have a higher chance of becoming a contributing member of the SE communities, and one of the points there was to &quot;Assume the best about the user, and not the worst&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you posted as an example is the exact sort of case I was referring to. By assuming the worst about the person (that they are only asking to create malware), you are presenting the OP with a very unfriendly welcome to the site, and it is unlikely they will stick around. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In contrast, if you assume the best (that they are merely a curious student like they say they are), they are much more likely to listen to what you say, and may potentially become a contributing member to the community in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187231/create-a-unterminable-process-in-windows#comment360653_187231&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/167474/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13368" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5560" RevisionGUID="cbd01bb5-11e0-48c0-986d-d85f1e77f7a9" CreationDate="2013-02-15T20:17:47.933" UserId="1130" Comment="added 6 characters in body" Text="I would not judge content based on it's potential moral or ethical uses&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The more we know about security loopholes, the more secure we can build our applications. Consider for example, the exact same question asked, but with the purpose of preventing such security loopholes in the first place. Then the moral/ethical argument would no longer be there, and you'll still get the exact same answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, the OP is very correct with [his comment][1] that *&quot;when you learn cyber hacking and various exploits, it is not necessary you wants to be a black hat hacker&quot;*. In fact, the US government plans to [dramatically increase the size of their cyber security department][2], and plan on hiring many more &quot;hackers&quot; in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also as a side note related to that specific question, I recently wrote up [an answer][3] to a MSO question about effective ways to guide new users so they have a higher chance of becoming a contributing member of the SE communities, and one of the points there was to &quot;Assume the best about the user, and not the worst&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you posted as an example is the exact sort of case I was referring to. By assuming the worst about the person (that they are only asking to create malware), you are presenting the OP with a very unfriendly welcome to the site, and it is unlikely they will stick around. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In contrast, if you assume the best (that they are merely a curious student like they say they are), they are much more likely to listen to what you say, and may potentially become a contributing member to the community in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187231/create-a-unterminable-process-in-windows#comment360653_187231&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/us/pentagon-to-beef-up-cybersecurity-force-to-counter-attacks.html&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/167474/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13369" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5558" RevisionGUID="9953930b-6e07-4f81-8716-8ab54c766bc3" CreationDate="2013-02-15T20:32:05.857" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13370" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5561" RevisionGUID="ccb75b9e-1d49-4956-bbab-86791bd1b807" CreationDate="2013-02-16T02:42:18.603" UserId="36039" Text="Mainly so I can add 'closed' as an ignored topic in my prefs and hide them from the page. It's very frustrating to see tons of closed questions all over the place." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13371" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5561" RevisionGUID="ccb75b9e-1d49-4956-bbab-86791bd1b807" CreationDate="2013-02-16T02:42:18.603" UserId="36039" Text="Can closed questions be automatically tagged as 'closed'?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13372" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5561" RevisionGUID="ccb75b9e-1d49-4956-bbab-86791bd1b807" CreationDate="2013-02-16T02:42:18.603" UserId="36039" Text="|feature-request|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13374" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5562" RevisionGUID="6d6774ea-1b5c-43de-9add-0552c93fd5f3" CreationDate="2013-02-16T14:24:41.313" UserId="31260" Text="I for one voted to close as [NARQ](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;what's this&quot;) because of the text I read in [rev 1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/187231/1):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to create a application in VB6 which blah-blah. Is it possible to create one and how to create one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You see, I didn't care (and still don't) if the _blah blah_ part is OT or whatever else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stuff like that reads gimmecodez / do my research and means NARQ, &quot;cannot be reasonably answered in its current form&quot;, we're not a code / research factory here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13375" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5563" RevisionGUID="ffbc744d-d80c-4297-a056-a1e3b1d8b1be" CreationDate="2013-02-16T19:09:50.597" UserDisplayName="user43855" Text="Can someone explain why my question was not constructive?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187264/how-do-i-take-my-web-dev-learning-to-the-next-level&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only answer given (likely before it was closed) clearly suggests that the question is constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see the question as controversial or frankly that different from similar questions that ask for recommendations on books, learning material, tools, etc." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13376" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5563" RevisionGUID="ffbc744d-d80c-4297-a056-a1e3b1d8b1be" CreationDate="2013-02-16T19:09:50.597" UserDisplayName="user43855" Text="Closed as not constructive?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13377" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5563" RevisionGUID="ffbc744d-d80c-4297-a056-a1e3b1d8b1be" CreationDate="2013-02-16T19:09:50.597" UserDisplayName="user43855" Text="|discussion|support|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13378" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5564" RevisionGUID="d9895434-241d-4097-a494-00d235dfb946" CreationDate="2013-02-16T19:28:04.807" UserId="25476" Text="There are a number of reasons why your question was closed.  I will use quote various resources from the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) to help elaborate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  I'd like to push code around and just have my way with connecting to services and using SOA when building web apps... but where do I start?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where is an answerer supposed to start?  From the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't know where to begin, then three or four paragraphs from somebody on the web isn't going to explain everything you are asking to understand.  It takes years to master web technologies in just a single framework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best you will get are answers giving emotional support telling you that they are going through the same thing and that they remember how hard it was.  That may make you feel good, but does it really help you?  Does it really help anybody else that finds this question on their feed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone recommend the right book, or series of books.. the right tutorials, screencasts, or path of learning -- in particular, something that doesn't require a deep dive into theory, but has a practical hands-on aspect to it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So this is where it is not constructive.  You will get lists of peoples favorite books, then arguments will break about authors and then which technology is best.  It becomes noisome and is difficult for a reader to feel like they got a solid answer.  These kinds of questions don't have real answers.  They just involve recommendations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it is not about .... what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bottom line is that we are different than your typical discussion forum.  We are a Q&amp;A site with a high standard of quality content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can tell your frustrated by delving into a new world of established technologies and practices, but believe me it takes time.  If there is something you don't understand that you wish to know more about then find a book on it, read, and if certain concepts or design patterns don't make sense to you then post back with a more specific question that could have a solid answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13379" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5565" RevisionGUID="a3e57bda-7bd8-4505-b05f-1bcdd60eb3a2" CreationDate="2013-02-16T23:03:55.050" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There are two approaches to potentially answering a question about how to progress in a given field.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is the shot gun approach.  Asking for a number of resources and getting a list of a few dozen books and blogs and bits of random advice back.  Unfortunately, this is not a high quality approach - things get out dated, for someone coming to read more about it they are left with a truckload of material but no answer.  Providing answers is what the Stack Exchange network is about - and some questions that are unanswerable are not appropriate to be answered on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second approach is to actually find out what *you* know and what to know and have access to.  This can potentially provide *you* with a high quality answer, but it is not useful to anyone who has differing situations (but the same question) as you do - this leads to duplicate questions of everyone trying to find out their own path and asking their own advice.  Furthermore, to find out about you it requires an series of questions and answers in the comments to clarify and identify the proper answer for you.  This again fits poorly with the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A format.  Such questions are occasionally asked in chat where those with the knowledge can interact with the individual to provide the proper guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To attempt to keep SE from exploding with everyone asking individualized advice (rather than more general problems that can be useful to all programmers), questions such as these are considered off topic and not constructive " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13380" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5563" RevisionGUID="618fc44e-ddb8-4447-800f-d91049be8bd7" CreationDate="2013-02-17T04:52:30.587" UserDisplayName="user43855" Comment="added 229 characters in body" Text="Can someone explain why my question was not constructive?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187264/how-do-i-take-my-web-dev-learning-to-the-next-level&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only answer given (likely before it was closed) clearly suggests that the question is constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see the question as controversial or frankly that different from similar questions that ask for recommendations on books, learning material, tools, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;UPDATE: Just a point to take note of... this question is getting down voted. What's wrong with this question? Why is there no mechanism to correct this issue -- if you're all so concerned with &quot;quality&quot; on this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13385" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5567" RevisionGUID="9d36b83e-713d-4a10-8e68-aff9e40cf58b" CreationDate="2013-02-17T11:00:35.750" UserId="73996" Text="does that mean&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I can ask what's the color of the sky but I cannot ask what are the colors of rainbows? The color of rainbows have very definite answer, namely a vector (or array) whose members are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, purple.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there are indeed many colors in a rainbow. Is this okay?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now may be there are different opinions. Some may count violet and purple the same color. However, that is not that vague.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I asked is I got tons of downvotes for questions like what are the good traits to select programmer for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While there are indeed several different traits (capability to communicate, IQ, and programming skills are different traits) we sort of know that there is one definite answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer would be a set of traits and a function that map each element of the set to &quot;importance&quot; of the trait.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe people have different opinion on the amount of weight for those traits, but there is indeed a one definite answer of what capable programmer is. I got tons of good answers that give me insight to that one set of traits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question itself is heavily downvoted however. I wonder why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer is definitely definite. We know that those who can't program will never be a good programmer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13386" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5567" RevisionGUID="9d36b83e-713d-4a10-8e68-aff9e40cf58b" CreationDate="2013-02-17T11:00:35.750" UserId="73996" Text="I need clarification of not asking for list of answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13387" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5567" RevisionGUID="9d36b83e-713d-4a10-8e68-aff9e40cf58b" CreationDate="2013-02-17T11:00:35.750" UserId="73996" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13389" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5568" RevisionGUID="30ff9c11-2550-429e-afd1-265eed7ba0db" CreationDate="2013-02-17T11:13:31.020" UserId="47" Text="Your analogy is wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for the colours of the rainbow is **not** a list question as there is a definite answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A list question is one that asks for an *open ended* list of answers. For example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * What's a good book for learning C# (or Python, or Perl, or Objective-C,..)?&#xD;&#xA;* What's a good web site to learn about ...?&#xD;&#xA;* How do you learn a new programming language?&#xD;&#xA;* What to look for in a framework?&#xD;&#xA;* What makes a good programmer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For each of these questions (and the countless others like them) all you will get is a list of people's favourite book, language, framework etc. You will be no better off than when you asked your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This type of question shows that you haven't done any research or thought about your problem at all. Stack Exchange works best when you have a real, definite problem and require a concrete solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To take your question: &quot;What makes a good programmer?&quot;. Everyone has their own opinion on this and the &quot;answer&quot; will be an open ended list of traits and people's opinions on why these are important. The list will probably even be contradictory." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13390" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5569" RevisionGUID="82d98e64-8e49-4c56-9765-87cce26bf4d0" CreationDate="2013-02-18T10:06:54.673" UserId="75375" Text="I have seen questions in Programmers asking for advice on &quot;resume&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;I followed most of the stuff and wrote my resume (PHP). I wanna seek advice to find the possible negatives in my resume and also if any, i am keen on taking advice to become a better programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can I ask this kind of question in Programmers.? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13391" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5569" RevisionGUID="82d98e64-8e49-4c56-9765-87cce26bf4d0" CreationDate="2013-02-18T10:06:54.673" UserId="75375" Text="Does my &quot;question&quot; fit in Programmers Q/A" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13392" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5569" RevisionGUID="82d98e64-8e49-4c56-9765-87cce26bf4d0" CreationDate="2013-02-18T10:06:54.673" UserId="75375" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13393" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5569" RevisionGUID="a879ee3c-cf2e-4827-9e1e-e2b39a6db93f" CreationDate="2013-02-18T13:00:28.177" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling, formatting" Text="I have seen questions in Programmers asking for advice on &quot;resume&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I followed most of the stuff and wrote my resume (PHP). I want to seek advice to find the possible negatives in my resume and also if any, I am keen on taking advice to become a better programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can I ask this kind of question in Programmers? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13394" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5569" RevisionGUID="a879ee3c-cf2e-4827-9e1e-e2b39a6db93f" CreationDate="2013-02-18T13:00:28.177" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling, formatting" Text="|discussion|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13395" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5570" RevisionGUID="213314f7-b370-4f28-b12f-d4e6ab8e62a3" CreationDate="2013-02-18T18:02:16.947" UserId="18179" Text="I stumbled upon this question today: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187403/import-module-vs-from-module-import-function&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was closed as not constructive, but honestly I believed it's a very good fit for the site.  As you can see from the top answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The question admits answers backed by facts&#xD;&#xA; 2. There are available references supporting those facts&#xD;&#xA; 3. Even though there could be religious/off-topic/not constructive arguments made, the fact is that this question had at least one objective, fact-based answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be happy to see this question reopened, even though it was already answered, because I think it's indeed a good fit for programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly, it pains me to see so many closed questions on the front page sometimes.  Now I agree most of them shouldn't be on here, but it must be discouraging for new users as well as confusing.  It's hard to tell what's a good question on programmers.SE, much more so than on SO, so I think good questions like this one should stay open." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13396" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5570" RevisionGUID="213314f7-b370-4f28-b12f-d4e6ab8e62a3" CreationDate="2013-02-18T18:02:16.947" UserId="18179" Text="Request to reopen: 'import module' vs. 'from module import function'" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13397" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5570" RevisionGUID="213314f7-b370-4f28-b12f-d4e6ab8e62a3" CreationDate="2013-02-18T18:02:16.947" UserId="18179" Text="|discussion|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13398" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5570" RevisionGUID="17dfd068-8961-49c6-9016-3f55af530fde" CreationDate="2013-02-18T18:14:40.110" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13399" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5571" RevisionGUID="d4249b58-efe1-4bb7-9b3e-dfbdc6a9ef68" CreationDate="2013-02-18T18:20:43.137" UserId="25936" Text="The question attracted a sub par answer, and I'm guessing that was the main reason for the close votes. Crappy one-liners are almost always a very strong hint that the question is not constructive, but in this case I think it was just coincidental.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've removed the non answer and re-opened it, hopefully the two existing good answers will detract further crappy one-liners.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13400" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5571" RevisionGUID="6b301dda-c78b-48cd-8255-7e11a80e3aff" CreationDate="2013-02-18T18:40:34.830" UserId="25936" Comment="added 52 characters in body" Text="The question attracted a sub par answer, and I'm guessing that was the main reason for the close votes (the &quot;foo&quot; vs &quot;bar&quot; title doesn't look good either). Crappy one-liners are almost always a very strong hint that the question is not constructive, but in this case I think it was just coincidental.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've removed the non answer and re-opened it, hopefully the two existing good answers will detract further crappy one-liners.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13401" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5572" RevisionGUID="8b58132d-2ed8-4a61-8633-af89c289c494" CreationDate="2013-02-18T19:48:59.327" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There has been some minor stir about a user who apparently rage-quit P.SE.  This isn't exactly common, but it isn't exactly uncommon either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I admit to this being a less than idea question itself - I am asking several things at once and I don't believe that there is a single answer to this.  However, chat while archived is ephemeral in the minds of its denizens.  Blog post on this isn't the answer, and P.SE certainly isn't the right place.  A Meta post seems to be the only reasonable equivalent to the watering hole that has some permanence in the minds of people (at least more than chat).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Related [How to prevent “Why is my question being closed?” and User Frustration?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/492/how-to-prevent-why-is-my-question-being-closed-and-user-frustration) - though this is only one part of it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe there are a number of contributing factors to this - the question is what can we do not only as P.SE but also SO and to an extent, the stack exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This began with a post on Stack Overflow - [How do I take my web dev learning to the next level?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14906948/how-do-i-take-my-web-dev-learning-to-the-next-level).  There were comments in this that I recall (I might be wrong, if there is issue, I believe a mod can clarify the specifics of this) that were in essence:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Career advice should be asked on P.SE -- someone (**1**)&#xD;&#xA;- Ok, but why don't you just answer this? -- OP (**2**)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point the question was closed, and the original poster reasked the question on P.SE.  Someone got in an answer before it was closed here. (**3**)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The poster then asked on meta [Closed as not constructive?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5563/closed-as-not-constructive).  While he got answers to it, they were not the ones he was looking for and (IMHO) was a bit argumentative in the comments to the answers provided - I was less inclined to help him after he responded with what amounts to [&quot;that's what you think.&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5563/closed-as-not-constructive#comment14015_5565)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question meta was downvoted (**4**) which lead to an edit, [asking why it was downvoted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/5563/revisions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Following this, there appears to have a range-quit from P.SE (his account is still active on SO).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. What can we do to help clarify the proper migration criteria to the SO community at large so they don't refer off topic questions to P.SE.&#xD;&#xA; 2. I'm not sure what can be done to help this, but it was a point of raising frustration for the OP.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Again, sometimes people get answers in before the close.  This lead to the increased frustration as expressed in the meta question: &quot;The only answer given (likely before it was closed) clearly suggests that the question is constructive.&quot; .The desire to help is there, even when we know its off topic for the site.  Myself, I admit to answering a question and close voting it. &#xD;&#xA; 4. [Meta downvotes are different](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/faq#vote-differences).  However, without going through the various meta faq's, one likely isn't aware of this on their first trip to meta (especially if they haven't lurked).  While those familiar with the site are aware of this, it is another point of raising frustration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On any of these points, what can we do to help people from becoming more frustrated?  Or was this just an unfortunate crash of personality and site philosophy that couldn't be averted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13402" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5572" RevisionGUID="8b58132d-2ed8-4a61-8633-af89c289c494" CreationDate="2013-02-18T19:48:59.327" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Reducing user frustration" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13403" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5572" RevisionGUID="8b58132d-2ed8-4a61-8633-af89c289c494" CreationDate="2013-02-18T19:48:59.327" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13404" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5572" RevisionGUID="d697b3b9-6e88-4a4c-9b63-40352b78c662" CreationDate="2013-02-18T19:50:34.293" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="There has been some minor stir about a user who apparently rage-quit P.SE.  This isn't exactly common, but it isn't exactly uncommon either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I admit to this being a less than idea question itself - I am asking several things at once and I don't believe that there is a single answer to this.  However, chat while archived is ephemeral in the minds of its denizens.  Blog post on this isn't the answer, and P.SE certainly isn't the right place.  A Meta post seems to be the only reasonable equivalent to the watering hole that has some permanence in the minds of people (at least more than chat).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Related [How to prevent “Why is my question being closed?” and User Frustration?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/492/how-to-prevent-why-is-my-question-being-closed-and-user-frustration) - though this is only one part of it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe there are a number of contributing factors to this - the question is what can we do not only as P.SE but also SO and to an extent, the stack exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This began with a post on Stack Overflow - [How do I take my web dev learning to the next level?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14906948/how-do-i-take-my-web-dev-learning-to-the-next-level).  There were comments in this that I recall (I might be wrong, if there is issue, I believe a mod can clarify the specifics of this) that were in essence:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Career advice should be asked on P.SE -- someone (**1**)&#xD;&#xA;- Ok, but why don't you just answer this? -- OP (**2**)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point the question was closed, and the original poster reasked the question on P.SE.  Someone got in an answer before it was closed here. (**3**)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The poster then asked on meta [Closed as not constructive?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5563/closed-as-not-constructive).  While he got answers to it, they were not the ones he was looking for and (IMHO) was a bit argumentative in the comments to the answers provided - I was less inclined to help him after he responded with what amounts to [&quot;that's what you think.&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5563/closed-as-not-constructive#comment14015_5565)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question meta was downvoted (**4**) which lead to an edit, [asking why it was downvoted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/5563/revisions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Following this, there appears to have a rage-quit from P.SE (his account is still active on SO).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. What can we do to help clarify the proper migration criteria to the SO community at large so they don't refer off topic questions to P.SE.&#xD;&#xA; 2. I'm not sure what can be done to help this, but it was a point of raising frustration for the OP.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Again, sometimes people get answers in before the close.  This lead to the increased frustration as expressed in the meta question: &quot;The only answer given (likely before it was closed) clearly suggests that the question is constructive.&quot; .The desire to help is there, even when we know its off topic for the site.  Myself, I admit to answering a question and close voting it. &#xD;&#xA; 4. [Meta downvotes are different](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/faq#vote-differences).  However, without going through the various meta faq's, one likely isn't aware of this on their first trip to meta (especially if they haven't lurked).  While those familiar with the site are aware of this, it is another point of raising frustration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On any of these points, what can we do to help people from becoming more frustrated?  Or was this just an unfortunate crash of personality and site philosophy that couldn't be averted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13405" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5573" RevisionGUID="38b9b733-bf13-4ca1-8ece-4218128864ff" CreationDate="2013-02-18T20:20:13.220" UserId="-1" Text="The 2013 Community Moderator Election is now underway!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community moderator elections have three phases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Nomination phase&#xD;&#xA;2. Primary phase&#xD;&#xA;3. Election phase&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please visit the official election page at&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;for more detail, and to participate!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged [meta-tag:election]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13406" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5573" RevisionGUID="38b9b733-bf13-4ca1-8ece-4218128864ff" CreationDate="2013-02-18T20:20:13.220" UserId="-1" Text="2013 Community Moderator Election" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13407" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5573" RevisionGUID="38b9b733-bf13-4ca1-8ece-4218128864ff" CreationDate="2013-02-18T20:20:13.220" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|moderators|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13408" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5573" RevisionGUID="11f1ff61-c371-4269-9d09-f503e4428435" CreationDate="2013-02-18T22:39:04.683" UserId="25936" Comment="added 155 characters in body" Text="The 2013 Community Moderator Election is now underway!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community moderator elections have three phases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Nomination phase&#xD;&#xA;2. Primary phase&#xD;&#xA;3. Election phase&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please visit the official election page at&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;for more detail, and to participate!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on Meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged [meta-tag:election].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also have an [election chat room][1], for open discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/7568/programmers-2013-moderator-elections" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13409" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5567" RevisionGUID="17332ce7-08c8-4e6a-84c5-5b35aae2cae1" CreationDate="2013-02-19T06:08:38.050" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13410" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5574" RevisionGUID="52317042-1b4f-4779-87da-e31cf7c91e99" CreationDate="2013-02-19T08:39:27.667" UserId="72130" Text="I have a project which needs to be 'split' into two (for 2 different types of end user (a seeder and consumer)). I won't go into details, but, would this type of question (knowing what options are available in this situation) be on topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13411" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5574" RevisionGUID="52317042-1b4f-4779-87da-e31cf7c91e99" CreationDate="2013-02-19T08:39:27.667" UserId="72130" Text="Can I ask questions about how to structure a project" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13412" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5574" RevisionGUID="52317042-1b4f-4779-87da-e31cf7c91e99" CreationDate="2013-02-19T08:39:27.667" UserId="72130" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13413" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5574" RevisionGUID="101653c7-a092-4f56-9f88-d751536b9953" CreationDate="2013-02-19T09:16:05.867" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13414" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5575" RevisionGUID="627528fd-2354-4421-b84e-093e9c3484d3" CreationDate="2013-02-19T10:11:43.440" UserId="47" Text="As stated this could degenerate into a non constructive list of people's favourite structure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you are clear and specific over the details of the problem you need to solve then it should be OK - as it's a design question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13415" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5576" RevisionGUID="2e0fe108-a145-4c84-9b52-5728c3ccd05f" CreationDate="2013-02-19T13:53:06.867" UserDisplayName="user37735" Text="I recently asked a question about very development-specific market research: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187476/how-to-do-market-research-for-plugins-to-proprietary-platforms. After several hours a few moderators glommed on and downvoted it with no comments and closed it as off topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is this off topic? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is clearly about &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot;. Answers to some highly-voted questions such as this one: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83129/from-freelance-to-software-company basically say &quot;you should do market research&quot; as the accepted answer...but asking a how to do a clearly defined type of software market research is off topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13416" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5576" RevisionGUID="2e0fe108-a145-4c84-9b52-5728c3ccd05f" CreationDate="2013-02-19T13:53:06.867" UserDisplayName="user37735" Text="How is market is a market research question off topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13417" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5576" RevisionGUID="2e0fe108-a145-4c84-9b52-5728c3ccd05f" CreationDate="2013-02-19T13:53:06.867" UserDisplayName="user37735" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13418" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5576" RevisionGUID="38fc753a-2c08-4361-b4a5-f74b6021bb64" CreationDate="2013-02-19T13:53:33.627" UserId="25936" Comment="fixed title" Text="How is a market research question off topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13419" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5577" RevisionGUID="d7a2d9d8-56a2-4c03-a0d9-2058648dc89f" CreationDate="2013-02-19T14:03:13.183" UserId="41381" Text=" 1. We already removed programmers as a default migration path from SO because they don't know what is on topic, we can't do much more apart from being active in SO and calling anyone one suggesting programmers inappropriately. This is a problem for all sites related to SO not just us, they have a ton of users that only know the name of a site thinking they are helping when they aren't.&#xD;&#xA; 2. there is no discussion point.&#xD;&#xA; 3. getting answers doesn't mean that the question is acceptable. The way rep and badges work there is incentive to answer bad questions even when you know they are bad. Stack exchange is a complicated place, there are many &quot;rules&quot; that are vaguely defined or hidden in meta posts. The only way to help users here is to get them to actually read before posting which is an age old problem.&#xD;&#xA; 4. Meta is a different place, it has its own FAQ explaining those differences. People don't read the FAQ's though and just get angry because they don't understand. There isn't anything we can do other than try to get them to read the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Problem we have is there are a large group of user that walk past the No Shirt No Service sign and then complain when they get no service without wearing a shirt. We can't solve this problem for them, we either lower our standards or have a group of angry users because they can't read." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13420" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5578" RevisionGUID="87745d78-d5f0-4064-9f3f-8a862788214b" CreationDate="2013-02-19T14:10:54.340" UserId="25476" Text="First I will point out that the moderators of the site did not choose to close your question, it was closed by 5 fellow high reputation community members.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without speaking for them, my take on the reason for this closure is that the fundamental problem that you faced as a software developer here is that you don't have the transparency of data to decide which project you should do next.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) under the list of questions that are explicitly off topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about ... what project you should do next,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question to me reads that even if a case were to be made that it is not a general market research question and that it falls under legitimate business concerns facing software developers, that it is still offtopic because the core reason for question is that you want to figure out what project you should work on next.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope this makes sense and that I captured the communities thoughts on this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13421" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5579" RevisionGUID="e01cfccc-c2b4-4468-8c24-a775235a5295" CreationDate="2013-02-19T14:15:45.843" UserId="4" Text="I disagree with [maple_shaft's assessment][1] that it's about what project to work on next. To me, you are clearly asking about how to determine what to work on next as a commercial venture, rather than asking people to tell you what to work on next. However, I see other problems with your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although the FAQ does say that freelancing and business concerns are on-topic, they should be unique to software development, as is true for all questions. Market research, as far as I can tell, is not unique to software development and there is not much that makes it special or different when applied to software projects. Market research is market research, whether it's a software product or a hardware product or any other kind of product.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you disagree, perhaps it would be best if you did some of your own research on market research and asked questions about making it fit a software project. We expect prior research to be done before asking questions. Have you researched market research and techniques for implementing it? What did you find? What confused you? How does this specifically relate to software projects? That last question is the most important - for things that cross domains, we expect the focus to be unique to software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5578/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13422" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5578" RevisionGUID="40e01e84-e46f-4a62-8007-b8a43e378398" CreationDate="2013-02-19T14:15:59.877" UserId="25476" Comment="added 640 characters in body" Text="First I will point out that the moderators of the site did not choose to close your question, it was closed by 5 fellow high reputation community members.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without speaking for them, my take on the reason for this closure is that the fundamental problem that you faced as a software developer here is that you don't have the transparency of data to decide which project you should do next.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) under the list of questions that are explicitly off topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about ... what project you should do next,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question to me reads that even if a case were to be made that it is not a general market research question and that it falls under legitimate business concerns facing software developers, that it is still offtopic because the core reason for question is that you want to figure out what project you should work on next.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as Market Research is considered, if it falls in the general domain then it is off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How can I choose a good pair of noise cancelling earphones for programming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The above question pertains the software developers certainly, however it could pertain equally well to web designers, drafters, authors, etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question applies as much to entrepreneurs or software sales people as it does to software developers, probably more so in the case of sales and marketing people.  Market research questions would only be ontopic if the case can be proved that it is almost exclusively the domain of software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope this makes sense and that I captured the communities thoughts on this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13423" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5576" RevisionGUID="13aaa89e-13cd-4695-83b7-819edc792221" CreationDate="2013-02-19T14:33:29.903" UserDisplayName="user37735" Comment="added 17 characters in body" Text="I recently asked a question about very development-specific market research: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187476/how-to-do-market-research-for-plugins-to-proprietary-platforms. After several hours a few &lt;del&gt;moderators&lt;/del&gt; users glommed on and downvoted it with no comments and closed it as off topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is this off topic? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is clearly about &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot;. Answers to some highly-voted questions such as this one: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83129/from-freelance-to-software-company basically say &quot;you should do market research&quot; as the accepted answer...but asking a how to do a clearly defined type of software market research is off topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13424" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5580" RevisionGUID="b31aa74e-74e3-4542-8ac4-8decaf80f262" CreationDate="2013-02-19T20:02:48.157" UserId="483" Text="So I recently posted an answer to [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34334/cheap-programmable-portable-device). At the time I posted it, it had a 50 rep bounty on it. I knew it was a &quot;shopping&quot; question, but decided to post anyway. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, it's been closed by a diamond mod. No sign of the bounty having been awarded or existing. What happened to the bounty? Is this the one and only case where the bounty rep goes back to the user who posted it? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13425" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5580" RevisionGUID="b31aa74e-74e3-4542-8ac4-8decaf80f262" CreationDate="2013-02-19T20:02:48.157" UserId="483" Text="What happens to a bounty when a question is closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13426" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5580" RevisionGUID="b31aa74e-74e3-4542-8ac4-8decaf80f262" CreationDate="2013-02-19T20:02:48.157" UserId="483" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|bounty|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13427" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5581" RevisionGUID="e6d4a943-1ce5-43b0-b01b-6a42357a162f" CreationDate="2013-02-19T20:12:31.037" UserId="25936" Text="The bounty was refunded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're right, the question isn't really a good fit for the site, and it should have been closed long ago (ideally it shouldn't have been migrated from SO at all). But, it managed to slip through the cracks and the bounty and the subsequent answers brought it to our attention. The bounty had to be refunded, as questions with active bounties can't be voted to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The closure also locked the question, as it became a rejected migration. Since the original version of the question on SO is deleted, I unlocked it. You and the other answerers may have lost the chance to win a bounty, but there's no reason your answers shouldn't get voted on." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13428" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="5582" RevisionGUID="3144536a-cadb-4c92-b4b0-d6c66b51c577" CreationDate="2013-02-19T22:24:22.467" UserId="-1" Comment="from https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/168251/programmers-se-how-to-better-fit-the-on-topic-format" />
  <row Id="13429" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="5583" RevisionGUID="edb0ca70-df83-4275-9bc2-1050722a68d0" CreationDate="2013-02-19T22:24:22.467" UserId="-1" Comment="from https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/168251/programmers-se-how-to-better-fit-the-on-topic-format/168253#168253" />
  <row Id="13430" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5583" RevisionGUID="93faab59-f52a-47e5-b3df-fa3a81b3de6c" CreationDate="2013-02-19T22:17:50.893" UserId="47" Text="The issue with the FAQ is that there is limited space to get over what we want the site to be about. We tried having a mega FAQ but that didn't work, so we pared it down. As a result some information got lost.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; point should really read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; freelancing and business concerns specific to software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had hoped that the &quot;specific to software development&quot; would be understood and not have to spelt out everywhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your second question doesn't really fit under this category as it could apply to any job. As such it *might* be a better fit for [The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for your first question, it is a little vague as it stands. As such it doesn't really fit the Stack Exchange model that well. If you had something a little more concrete to ask about then it would be a better fit. You seem to be at the stage where you need to discuss the design with someone (or a group of people) and discussion is not what Stack Exchange does. If you can find some people in the chat rooms you could try asking them for their input. It might give you enough of a handle to proceed and ask a more specific question (or two)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13431" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5582" RevisionGUID="d86cd901-223f-48c7-aaf8-4a9a27d80d41" CreationDate="2013-02-19T21:57:31.927" UserId="39312" Text="I'm not asking as a result of bitterness, I'd just really like to know what I am doing wrong per the spec.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have only two questions on programmers SE, both of which got closed.  By contrast, I am an avid user of StackOverflow proper and have never had any issues with questions being closed as off topic.  I'm specifically referring to these two posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171518/conventions-for-search-result-scoring&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically I have asked regarding scoring metrics for searching.  Admittedly the wording is somewhat vague, but the intention was to elicit responses from an algorithmic perspective.  This is specifically mentioned in the FAQ as being on topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[from the FAQ]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet again, my second question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187590/is-it-tactful-to-get-in-touch-with-an-previous-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would consider at least to fit under the umbrella in the FAQ spec as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though I suppose I could see where subjectively it could be considered a question of relating back to the previous developer.  That said, I did try to keep the wording as objective as possible to understand what the general consensus was on what was proper.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it worthy to note that both these questions received a couple upvotes, which would indicate to me that at least some users were interested in potential responses and felt they were constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I must admit I feel uncertain about what kind of things are appropriate for Programmers SE and how the format of these questions could be improved (if at all).  I admit that even while trying to be impartial I find this kind of moderation counter-productive if other people were interested in potential responses.  Have I misunderstood the model?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13432" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5582" RevisionGUID="d86cd901-223f-48c7-aaf8-4a9a27d80d41" CreationDate="2013-02-19T21:57:31.927" UserId="39312" Text="Programmers SE: How to better fit the &quot;on-topic&quot; format" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13433" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5582" RevisionGUID="d86cd901-223f-48c7-aaf8-4a9a27d80d41" CreationDate="2013-02-19T21:57:31.927" UserId="39312" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13434" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5582" RevisionGUID="9d52cc2c-220e-4bae-9a80-3a6a31293613" CreationDate="2013-02-19T22:29:44.407" UserId="25936" Comment="edited title" Text="How to better fit the &quot;on-topic&quot; format" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13435" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5551" RevisionGUID="af757bd8-6f52-4dfb-b7ee-deb6e7e43660" CreationDate="2013-02-19T22:59:23.167" UserId="-1" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[3551],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:101,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Walter&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:7007,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Glenn Nelson&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:28988,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;World Engineer&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="13436" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5584" RevisionGUID="11e9ebd8-411c-4008-8f55-f699525a60ff" CreationDate="2013-02-20T03:33:22.593" UserId="3965" Text="Certain close votes are publicly available, such as in the &quot;closed by&quot; box on the question itself, and in the [history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close/history) tab of the new review tool.  However, I have been unable to find a way to view that information in aggregate for a specific person, like the votes tab people can see on their own profile.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there an easy way to view that information in aggregate, perhaps with a data query, even if it's only the votes that are already publicly viewable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I ask is that I repeatedly see the same few names pop up making decisions to close that I disagree with.  While I respect the difference of opinion, and have successfully worked within the edit and reopen system when I feel strongly about a question, I would be uncomfortable giving those people the power to close questions with one vote, should they choose to run for moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In summary, I intend to base my vote for moderator largely on his or her voting record.  I hope to encourage others to do the same, and would like an easier way to retrieve that information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there isn't an easy way to get it, maybe some candidates would like to voluntarily post a couple months' worth of their close votes here, perhaps with some commentary to put the votes in context?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13437" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5584" RevisionGUID="11e9ebd8-411c-4008-8f55-f699525a60ff" CreationDate="2013-02-20T03:33:22.593" UserId="3965" Text="Viewing a candidate's closing record" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13438" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5584" RevisionGUID="11e9ebd8-411c-4008-8f55-f699525a60ff" CreationDate="2013-02-20T03:33:22.593" UserId="3965" Text="|discussion|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13439" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5585" RevisionGUID="cede1116-65b5-4166-8e45-53897f3b92b0" CreationDate="2013-02-20T04:52:05.860" UserId="63" Text="Close *votes* are not public, at least not until they've actually resulted in a post being closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, [reviews][1] *are* public - and if a candidate participates in reviewing questions, the results can give you a much broader picture of how he'll likely behave as a moderator. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fortunately, both of the candidates to nominate themselves so far are active reviewers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Dynamic's review history][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [World Engineer's review history][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, the posts being reviewed aren't necessarily those that the candidates have any specific interest in; rather, they've been identified by someone else on the site (or by the system itself) as potentially problematic, and presented to the reviewer for a decision. This is pretty close to what moderators find themselves doing much of the time, and thus a very good way to gauge their aptitude for the job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/34364/dynamic?tab=activity&amp;sort=reviews&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/28988/world-engineer?tab=activity&amp;sort=reviews" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13440" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5586" RevisionGUID="051fe3ec-6cfe-4538-ba7a-4a9cd4ad4b61" CreationDate="2013-02-20T08:45:06.513" UserId="23035" Text="[![Debian -- The Universal Operating System][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vawPK.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.debian.org/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13441" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5586" RevisionGUID="54cf3a31-bc3d-4283-9d15-a315ffabc2e7" CreationDate="2013-02-20T08:45:06.513" UserId="23035" />
  <row Id="13442" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5587" RevisionGUID="9b52c84f-adb5-4ce9-a808-82afabe45880" CreationDate="2013-02-20T10:59:54.617" UserId="12436" Text="This question is strong on Security.SE, if we have it open in programmers *in exactly the same form*, it's cross posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a germ of potential for this being a constructive question for programmers, but not in its current form; it is asking for specifically technical information and is cross post." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13443" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5587" RevisionGUID="e986b6b5-a109-46d3-a780-455cf66b0eea" CreationDate="2013-02-20T11:05:41.643" UserId="12436" Comment="added 142 characters in body" Text="This question is strong on Security.SE, if we have it open in programmers *in exactly the same form*, it's cross posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a germ of potential for this being a constructive question for programmers, but not in its current form; it is asking for specifically technical information and is cross post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like you've said ethical/moral questions are constructive and interesting, but if such a question isn't a good question, it'll get closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13444" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5588" RevisionGUID="521d858e-fe87-4135-9200-916631116588" CreationDate="2013-02-20T12:55:20.033" UserId="1130" Text="Although a user's Close/Reopen votes aren't displayed in Data.SE, the Post History record is public, and you can parse the line saying who closed the post to get a list of a user's closed posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can use [this Data.SE query][1] that [Tim Stone shared][2] to view posts that a user has successfully closed. It should be noted that this does not include votes on deleted posts, nor does it include close votes that have expired.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also played around with that query a bit and found you can fairly easily get a list of the [Top Close Voters][3] and [Top Reopen Voters][4], although those queries take a bit longer to run and I would not recommend running them on a larger site like SO. Both these queries are currently set to only show votes since 2012, but you can change the date at the top if you want to look at a larger date range.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/98815/close-votes-by-user&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/160981/show-successful-close-reopen-votes-in-sede-regardless-of-if-theyve-expired-or-n#comment467269_160981&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90851/top-close-voters&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90852/top-reopen-voters" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13445" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5588" RevisionGUID="98d7775a-6ff6-4106-ba98-952683887330" CreationDate="2013-02-20T13:02:56.533" UserId="1130" Comment="added 555 characters in body" Text="Although a user's Close/Reopen votes aren't displayed in Data.SE, the Post History record is public, and you can parse the line saying who closed the post to get a list of a user's closed posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can use [this Data.SE query][1] that [Tim Stone shared][2] to look at posts that a user has successfully closed. It should be noted that this does not include votes on deleted posts, nor does it include close votes that have expired or did not result in the question getting closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also played around with that query a bit and found you can fairly easily get a list of the [Top Close Voters][3] and [Top Reopen Voters][4], although those queries take a bit longer to run and I would not recommend running them on a larger site like SO. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both these queries are currently set to only show votes since 2012, but you can change the date at the top if you want to look at a larger date range. Also, the same restrictions apply as the first query: it only includes non-deleted posts, and only contains close/reopen votes that resulted in the question successfully getting closed or reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a related note, since it's fairly trivial to view a user's successful close/reopen vote history, I have a MSO proposal to [show successful Close/Reopen votes in Data.SE][5] that would make queries like this easier to run and more efficient.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/98815/close-votes-by-user&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/160981/show-successful-close-reopen-votes-in-sede-regardless-of-if-theyve-expired-or-n#comment467269_160981&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90851/top-close-voters&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90852/top-reopen-voters&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/160981/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13446" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5589" RevisionGUID="a6f83b20-f3bf-4114-9008-edb00036e018" CreationDate="2013-02-20T15:52:37.230" UserDisplayName="user4051" Text="There's a discussion in the comments on [this question about empirical support for commenting code](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187722/are-there-any-empirical-studies-about-the-effects-of-commenting-source-code-on-s) to the effect that &quot;resource request&quot; questions are off-topic. It refers to [Why did a question about programming books get closed on Programmers.SE?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5454/why-did-a-question-about-programming-books-get-closed-on-programmers-se) here on meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've asked on programmers before for [empirical evidence in favour of paradigm selection](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162789/empirical-evidence-for-choice-of-programming-paradigm-to-address-a-problem), a question which didn't attract the same response about requesting resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a difference between asking for a book/books and for research literature? Should some of these questions be considered on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13447" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5589" RevisionGUID="a6f83b20-f3bf-4114-9008-edb00036e018" CreationDate="2013-02-20T15:52:37.230" UserDisplayName="user4051" Text="Is a question about research material on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13448" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5589" RevisionGUID="a6f83b20-f3bf-4114-9008-edb00036e018" CreationDate="2013-02-20T15:52:37.230" UserDisplayName="user4051" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13449" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5590" RevisionGUID="ef4fbf7d-8839-4214-aa94-f12af1c3e656" CreationDate="2013-02-20T16:58:20.450" UserDisplayName="user4051" Text="My answer, to be treated as a straw man if required:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There _is_ a difference between &quot;is there a canonical book on [x]?&quot;, the subject of the question closed in the linked meta discussion, and &quot;are there empirical studies on [x]?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers to questions of the first form are likely to be laundry lists, or single-entry &quot;I like [y]&quot; responses. These are unhelpful; &quot;I like [y]&quot; is not a valuable answer, and &quot;I like [y] because…&quot; solicits _polling and extended debate_ which is not valued here. Furthermore, these questions imply the existence of a _real question_ (&quot;how do I do this using [x]&quot; or similar) that is not being asked and answered here, reducing the value of this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers to questions of the second form give readers information from which to form their own conclusions. If an answer discusses a study, for example &quot;there is [z] published in 1995, which I consider irrelevant because…&quot;, readers can choose to read [z] and decide for themselves; particularly, they can read [z] in context with the sources presented by other answers. The first-form request for &quot;a canonical book&quot; suggests that the intention is not to read _every_ book, but to be told the _one_ that needs reading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are still problems with questions of the second form; the risk of extended debate is not mitigated. See the [comments on this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187722/are-there-any-empirical-studies-about-the-effects-of-commenting-source-code-on-s) as a demonstration that even _whether empirical results have value at all_ is a contentious issue. There's also the difficulty of _choosing an accepted answer_; if multiple answers provide multiple, distinct sources then none of them is &quot;the&quot; answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13450" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5591" RevisionGUID="748a3df5-321c-426e-b850-e6a8fa7097d9" CreationDate="2013-02-21T10:52:01.920" UserId="12436" Text="[![Donate to fellow Mogrammers!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/VM7YR.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.movember.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13451" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5591" RevisionGUID="6ea07390-4d87-4e9f-8f02-2b51e3821d5f" CreationDate="2013-02-21T10:52:01.920" UserId="12436" />
  <row Id="13452" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5592" RevisionGUID="32cbe2b9-7f9e-4f7e-afa6-0c5252cd543d" CreationDate="2013-02-21T15:08:15.723" UserId="32821" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187771/how-do-saas-companies-provide-data-liberation-services&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a question that is pertinent to everyone developing SaaS applications today. There is no one right answer, but there are many right answers for different situations. I feel it's a valuable question to explore and the answers could help many SaaS providers as well as their customers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13453" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5592" RevisionGUID="32cbe2b9-7f9e-4f7e-afa6-0c5252cd543d" CreationDate="2013-02-21T15:08:15.723" UserId="32821" Text="Should &quot;How do SaaS companies provide data liberation services&quot; been closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13454" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5592" RevisionGUID="32cbe2b9-7f9e-4f7e-afa6-0c5252cd543d" CreationDate="2013-02-21T15:08:15.723" UserId="32821" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13455" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5592" RevisionGUID="d5a85f5c-57ab-4601-a891-e902504e742c" CreationDate="2013-02-21T15:08:42.603" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13456" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5593" RevisionGUID="e8d9993f-724e-4c1f-a23f-d74a6d24d5c8" CreationDate="2013-02-21T15:20:35.450" UserId="4" Text="Yes, it should have been closed because, as you say &quot;there is no one right answer, but there are many right answers for different situations&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange format is not suitable for polling, extended discussion, or debate. If you need to implement a data liberation service, you should describe your situation and try to find the right answer for that particular solution. When others come along, if they are in a similar situation, your question can serve as a reference. If their situation is different, they can present their situation and explain the differences and why the solutions presented in the previous question(s) are not appropriate or usable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13457" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5593" RevisionGUID="0716ebf6-a98d-4266-b986-771c799fda25" CreationDate="2013-02-21T15:32:48.427" UserId="4" Comment="added 73 characters in body" Text="Yes, it should have been closed because, as you say &quot;there is no one right answer, but there are many right answers for different situations&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange format is not suitable for polling, extended discussion, or debate. If you need to implement a data liberation service and are having trouble with one of the areas that is considered on-topic, you should describe your situation and try to find the right answer for that particular solution. When others come along, if they are in a similar situation, your question can serve as a reference. If their situation is different, they can present their situation and explain the differences and why the solutions presented in the previous question(s) are not appropriate or usable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13458" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5594" RevisionGUID="b95d00fe-eba7-409a-9500-6926fd65ad3b" CreationDate="2013-02-21T17:48:40.087" UserId="1130" Text="I think the core of the problem is that your final question was&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How have you solved your own customers' &quot;data liberation&quot; problems?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This lands under &quot;polling&quot;, and was likely the cause for it being closed as Not Constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you'd like to try and get it reopened, I'd suggest editing it to focus on asking specifically about *your*  problem and how *you* can solve it, instead of asking how other people have solved the same problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to that, the question itself is extremely broad and looks like you are actually asking two questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How to provide clients with an up-to-date copy of their data in case your servers are ever not available&#xD;&#xA;* And how to provide clients with a way to query their data on your servers without getting you involved&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd create a separate question for each, and phrase both in the form of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Here is what I'm looking to do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Here are the details about my situation (database sizes, number of clients, your current solution which is making clients unhappy, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. How can I accomplish this goal?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you already are considering options (which it sounds like you are), you could change #3 to something like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Here are the options I am considering, and the pros and cons I can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; think of for each one. Which of these would be better for my&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific situation? Or is there another option that is better than&#xD;&#xA;&gt; these ones that I don't know of?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you already have one question, I'd consider editing it down to focus on just one of your two Use Cases (probably the one that is best addressed by the existing Answers posted), and if the answers don't address the other Use Case, then post a second question focused on that specific problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overall though, I thought your question was written pretty well, and would upvote you just for the effort you put into writing such a detailed question, even if it doesn't quite meet the Stack Exchange guidelines of how questions on their sites should be." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13459" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5595" RevisionGUID="0e95f482-2234-4bc9-bb73-344810656434" CreationDate="2013-02-21T20:15:20.160" UserId="33171" Text="In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session with the candidates.  This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.  I will be working with candidates to determine a time for the event.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;**Candidates:**  please be on the lookout for an email from me! ♪&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the details so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I would like to schedule this towards the beginning of the primary phase.  This means that I am looking at the 25th-27th of February. As soon as I coordinate with the existing moderators and candidates to find a best fit based on availability, I will edit this post with details on the &quot;when&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;* The Town Hall Chat will be a one-hour event using our [chat platform](http://chat.stackexchange.com/?tab=site&amp;sort=active&amp;host=programmers.stackexchange.com).  I will update this post with a direct link to the chat room once the event is scheduled.&#xD;&#xA;* The format will be an open discussion.  Users are encouraged to pose questions to the candidates regarding their thoughts on moderation.&#xD;&#xA;* Priority for scheduling is generally towards the greatest number of candidate openings as well as the earliest. Candidates who cannot show up during the live event will still be able to answer all questions posted, they will just do so at their earliest convenience.&#xD;&#xA;* If you can't make it but have questions you wish to pose to the candidates, please leave them here as a response, and I will ask it on your behalf.&#xD;&#xA;* After the chat session, a digest of the event will be permanently linked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13460" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5595" RevisionGUID="0e95f482-2234-4bc9-bb73-344810656434" CreationDate="2013-02-21T20:15:20.160" UserId="33171" Text="2013 Moderator Election Town Hall Chat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13461" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5595" RevisionGUID="0e95f482-2234-4bc9-bb73-344810656434" CreationDate="2013-02-21T20:15:20.160" UserId="33171" Text="|discussion|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13462" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5592" RevisionGUID="646da86b-8529-48c2-a7b7-5f1d84d3249c" CreationDate="2013-02-22T08:46:41.060" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited title" Text="Should &quot;How do SaaS companies provide data liberation services&quot; have been closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13463" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5596" RevisionGUID="854b631c-f5c1-4d9c-a788-88599ba23732" CreationDate="2013-02-22T15:03:50.910" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="Straight from the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What constitutes too basic a question for this site? Having seen a question on the basics of [&quot;How does if/else work internally in all programming languages?&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187159/how-does-if-else-work-internally-in-all-programming-languages), I have to ask where does one draw the line on a question such as this? Knowing conditional branching is more or less fundamental knowledge one must have to write programs. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should questions about the fundamentals of programming be considered on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13464" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5596" RevisionGUID="854b631c-f5c1-4d9c-a788-88599ba23732" CreationDate="2013-02-22T15:03:50.910" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="How Basic is Too Basic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13465" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5596" RevisionGUID="854b631c-f5c1-4d9c-a788-88599ba23732" CreationDate="2013-02-22T15:03:50.910" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13466" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5597" RevisionGUID="e66fc13a-abc6-45f3-97b0-6bae254ff4ba" CreationDate="2013-02-22T17:40:28.003" UserId="37485" Text="&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted an answer to [When would using a scripting language within a larger program be useful?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand down votes from programmers who feel insulted. But why on earth would you delete a questions that links to relevant papers, etc.?&#xD;&#xA;Is this question the common definition of 'Questions that are extremely off topic, or of very low quality'? If yes, I just won't post anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is my answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason for using a scripting language is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. **productivity:** For rapid prototyping, writing throwaway code, web programming you are much more productive in a scripting language. Many businesses programs are throwaway code. Think of twitter.com: at the beginning, they used ruby to get started quickly and later when, scalability and long term maintenance was needed, they switched to scala. Read this IEEE article: http://www.tcl.tk/doc/scripting.html&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. **easy to learn** Scripting languages are easier to learn than general purpose languages. So if you have amateur programmers (think that some graphic designs also do a bit of web programming, javascript was designed to also appeal to programmers who are not professional programmers. people who change config files, 3D artists) you want an easy to learn programming language. See the LUA wikipedia page: 'Because many potential users of the language were not professional programmers...'&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if the above two points are important for a part of a program, you would use a scripting for that part within a whole program which is mainly programmed in C# or so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically, scripting languages are based on 'untyped lambda terms' (think LISP in 1958). Thats just the big picture, not an accurate statement. (Lua Wikipedia page 'We did not consider LISP or Scheme because of their unfriendly syntax.'). The upside is that untyped lambda terms are as powerfull as typed lambda terms, but you don't have to think or care about types. The downside is much more things can go wrong, which is a debugging, maintenance, security nightmare.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Possible contraindications:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - big projects with big teams&#xD;&#xA; - long maintenance needed&#xD;&#xA; - systems that need to be depended on (medical equipment)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The argument about 'doesn't need to be recompiled' isn't accurate. Think of haskell, which is not a scripting language. There is an interpreter available that is called 'ghci', which I can use to execute haskell programms without compiling any code. This is applied in the 'snap' web framework (link), where webpage code is interpreted and can be changed without recompiling. Any language that can be executed via an interpreter can be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187963/when-would-using-a-scripting-language-within-a-larger-program-be-useful/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13467" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5597" RevisionGUID="e66fc13a-abc6-45f3-97b0-6bae254ff4ba" CreationDate="2013-02-22T17:40:28.003" UserId="37485" Text="I don't agree that this answer should be deleted, what should I do?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13468" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5597" RevisionGUID="e66fc13a-abc6-45f3-97b0-6bae254ff4ba" CreationDate="2013-02-22T17:40:28.003" UserId="37485" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13469" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5598" RevisionGUID="1a15e396-a58b-4f14-9e05-aa6f41eb89d3" CreationDate="2013-02-22T19:01:12.357" UserId="4" Text="I deleted the answer because it was not only attracting down votes, but flags reporting it as not an answer. I agreed with those flags because very little, if any, of the content of the answer was addressing the question that was asked. You talk a lot about characteristics of a scripting language without ever, in my opinion and the opinion of other users, making it clear what your answer to the question was." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13470" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5598" RevisionGUID="a39700e6-b2c0-412c-aca5-0e50cda7e712" CreationDate="2013-02-22T19:57:08.840" UserId="4" Comment="added 321 characters in body" Text="I deleted the answer because it was not only attracting down votes, but flags reporting it as not an answer. I agreed with those flags because very little, if any, of the content of the answer was addressing the question that was asked. You talk a lot about characteristics of a scripting language without ever, in my opinion and the opinion of other users, making it clear what your answer to the question was.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I should also add that deletion doesn't have to be final. I believe the comments do a pretty good job pointing out why it's not a good answer. If you address the issues by editing the post, flag it for moderator review - we'll undelete posts that are made good. You'll have to work to overcome the down votes, though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13471" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5599" RevisionGUID="b85c0633-8491-425c-b39c-ea19cf88a31e" CreationDate="2013-02-22T21:05:18.670" UserId="34364" Text="Use this as an example, a mistake I made in the early days of my joining the site: [How Does A Compiler Work?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is a very basic, broad question. Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - There are literally entire books written on the subject.&#xD;&#xA; - You usually have to go to college to get fairly good at making a compiler.&#xD;&#xA; - If you Googled that, you would actually get pretty decent results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more specific, more constructive question would have been &quot;What is the difference between lexing and parsing?&quot; or &quot;What is a parsing tree?&quot;. At the same time, these questions are easily Google-able too, and probably would get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fundamental programming questions should probably get closed, because it is probably either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Easily Google-able.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Requires an entire book to be explained.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can find a question that doesn't apply to either of those, it's probably pretty decent. Unless, of course, it's highly opinionated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118586/how-does-a-compiler-work" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13472" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5600" RevisionGUID="0b7749f8-5125-445f-bbca-480f6ffcae6f" CreationDate="2013-02-22T22:29:55.363" UserId="27161" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/184404/nodejs-as-an-avenue-towards-learning-javascript&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a question that only someone who knows both JavaScript and Node fairly in-depth could answer properly. I would call that &quot;specific expertise&quot; and am confused by the closure of this question. Favorite books is one thing. I don't see a problem with somebody asking whether a given path to take in learning a new technology might be less productive than another within the context of that specific technology based on people's experience." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13473" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5600" RevisionGUID="0b7749f8-5125-445f-bbca-480f6ffcae6f" CreationDate="2013-02-22T22:29:55.363" UserId="27161" Text="&quot;NodeJS as an avenue towards learning JavaScript&quot; closure" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13474" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5600" RevisionGUID="0b7749f8-5125-445f-bbca-480f6ffcae6f" CreationDate="2013-02-22T22:29:55.363" UserId="27161" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13475" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5601" RevisionGUID="5886c63a-893b-48f9-a8eb-a12da38232f4" CreationDate="2013-02-22T23:00:13.113" UserId="9302" Text="I didn't vote to close, but I imagine the thought was there can be no definitive answer to the question. Some will say &quot;Yes, it's a great idea to learn JavaScript through Node,&quot; and some will say &quot;No, that's stupid.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I occasionally enjoy the insights that arise from such questions, but the community seems less enthusiastic, especially the busy bodies who work hard to make P.SE what it is." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13476" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5585" RevisionGUID="d8016c25-becb-4d8e-9295-e222260c8301" CreationDate="2013-02-23T01:39:40.577" UserId="63" Comment="deleted 60 characters in body" Text="Close *votes* are not public, at least not until they've actually resulted in a post being closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, [reviews][1] *are* public - and if a candidate participates in reviewing questions, the results can give you a much broader picture of how he'll likely behave as a moderator. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, the posts being reviewed aren't necessarily those that the candidates have any specific interest in; rather, they've been identified by someone else on the site (or by the system itself) as potentially problematic, and presented to the reviewer for a decision. **This is pretty close to what moderators find themselves doing much of the time, and thus a very good way to gauge their aptitude for the job.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each candidate's review history will be linked to from their nomination following the next build. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/34364/dynamic?tab=activity&amp;sort=reviews&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/28988/world-engineer?tab=activity&amp;sort=reviews" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13477" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5602" RevisionGUID="1c53e743-10b1-4b5f-9c88-0ba97fa0bf99" CreationDate="2013-02-23T13:03:20.817" UserId="6605" Text="After spending a large amount of time [answering a question][1], I notice that the author deleted the question after obtaining the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it an expected behavior? I believed that we can remove a question only when there were no answers, especially to prevent people to remove their question once they receive an answer. Am I wrong?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/188149/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13478" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5602" RevisionGUID="1c53e743-10b1-4b5f-9c88-0ba97fa0bf99" CreationDate="2013-02-23T13:03:20.817" UserId="6605" Text="What to do when the question is deleted by the owner while it was answered?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13479" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5602" RevisionGUID="1c53e743-10b1-4b5f-9c88-0ba97fa0bf99" CreationDate="2013-02-23T13:03:20.817" UserId="6605" Text="|discussion|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13480" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5603" RevisionGUID="cc118ff5-40ad-48c8-82a2-9033faa4e71b" CreationDate="2013-02-23T19:57:05.090" UserId="1327" Text="[tag:i18n] should be merged into [tag:internationalization] and made a synonym.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They even have the same wiki but are still different tags. Merging them would be a good idea." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13481" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5603" RevisionGUID="cc118ff5-40ad-48c8-82a2-9033faa4e71b" CreationDate="2013-02-23T19:57:05.090" UserId="1327" Text="Merge/synonym request: i18n / internationalization" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13482" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5603" RevisionGUID="cc118ff5-40ad-48c8-82a2-9033faa4e71b" CreationDate="2013-02-23T19:57:05.090" UserId="1327" Text="|feature-request|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13483" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5584" RevisionGUID="26304a99-328c-4ced-a3df-f30c8271ea9a" CreationDate="2013-02-24T16:25:51.560" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/305715173690339329" />
  <row Id="13484" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5604" RevisionGUID="f8450faa-bdaf-4e03-99fb-8c70b9887bfa" CreationDate="2013-02-24T19:58:27.143" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Good suggestion - i18n _is_ the abbreviation for internationalization.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For additional reference on the term: http://www.i18nguy.com/origini18n.html and the obligatory [wikipedia reference](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13485" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5603" RevisionGUID="a3bdd66c-bc36-41ed-9efa-03b9cac6ebf5" CreationDate="2013-02-24T20:04:11.807" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13486" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5605" RevisionGUID="06d64352-02b6-41ea-8128-93b560016998" CreationDate="2013-02-24T20:36:55.617" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="In the FAQ, I see Freelancing and Business Concerns as being on topic but I routinely see these types of questions closed. While I understand the office politics and localized situations are off-topic, what are the precise dimensions of on vs off-topic in regards to these questions? I personally feel the boundary is a little hazy, particularly compared with the vast majority of on vs off-topic with regard to other subjects on the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13487" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5605" RevisionGUID="06d64352-02b6-41ea-8128-93b560016998" CreationDate="2013-02-24T20:36:55.617" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="We've got to talk about Freelancing and Business Concerns" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13488" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5605" RevisionGUID="06d64352-02b6-41ea-8128-93b560016998" CreationDate="2013-02-24T20:36:55.617" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13489" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5606" RevisionGUID="0a64a28a-82ed-4c57-a9f8-796ec2850fe5" CreationDate="2013-02-24T21:04:29.110" UserId="4" Text="I totally agree that there's a problem with &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot;. I think the community needs to come to some kind of agreement or understanding on exactly what it means. However, I can give you the perspective that I currently take when moderating. If anyone has any better suggestions or problems, please feel free to point them out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two parts of the FAQ that I use to help guide what I do if a question is flagged or ends up in the review queues:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![proper scope for question](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both clearly indicate that all questions must relate back to software development and apply to programmers (or software development professionals, more generally).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also like to point out that a lot of &quot;business concerns&quot; may be covered under other topics listed as being on topic, specifically &quot;development methodologies&quot; and &quot;software engineering&quot;. These include project management (of software-intensive projects, otherwise [Project Management][1] may be more appropriate), cost and schedule estimation, project planning, measurements and metrics, product quality, risk management...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My biggest concern with &quot;business and freelancing concerns&quot;, beyond the vagueness, is how well this particular community can answer the questions. A core purpose of a Stack Exchange site is to put questions in a place where they can get answered. All of our users have some combination of experience and education in building software. That doesn't mean that they have any experience or education in business topics, although I wouldn't be surprised if a not-insignificant number do. I'm not sure if that number is enough to provide a base of people who can provide expert answers to these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13490" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5607" RevisionGUID="821af311-b606-491e-a38b-01e53c99a6b0" CreationDate="2013-02-24T22:25:39.597" UserId="37972" Text="I've seen several questions that I dont think meet the standards met in the FAQ. [This question][1] seems particularly low quality to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question seems like the OP hasn't actually built anything, and is asking what he should do next and he hasn't got far enough to actually encounter a real problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question contains the preposition that the only alternatives are raw sockets or HTTP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do others feel that this question is low quality?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could this be re-phrased to make it higher quality?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188217/writing-a-tcp-protocol-or-use-http-for-file-transfer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13491" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5607" RevisionGUID="821af311-b606-491e-a38b-01e53c99a6b0" CreationDate="2013-02-24T22:25:39.597" UserId="37972" Text="Why is this question not low quality?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13492" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5607" RevisionGUID="821af311-b606-491e-a38b-01e53c99a6b0" CreationDate="2013-02-24T22:25:39.597" UserId="37972" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13493" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5607" RevisionGUID="63282c26-73a4-4611-aa9f-ee191b4a0299" CreationDate="2013-02-24T22:34:19.770" UserId="37972" Comment="added 24 characters in body" Text="I've seen several questions that I dont think meet the standards met in the FAQ. [This question][1] seems particularly low quality to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question seems like the OP hasn't actually built anything, and is asking what he should do next and he hasn't got far enough to actually encounter a real problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question contains the preposition that the only alternatives are raw sockets or HTTP. It is not &quot;conceptual&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do others feel that this question is low quality?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could this be re-phrased to make it higher quality?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188217/writing-a-tcp-protocol-or-use-http-for-file-transfer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13494" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5608" RevisionGUID="e47f52cb-e19c-4c03-aa6f-301ef6ecb6e0" CreationDate="2013-02-24T22:39:26.330" UserId="4" Text="This question is perfectly reasonable for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not a question about what project to work on next. The person asking clearly has an idea of what they want to create. That point in the FAQ is made to address questions like [this one][1] or [this one][2], where people are actively seeking a project or want people to generate ideas. These types of questions are not appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as not having built anything, that's true of many questions. Questions about more up-front activities (requirements, architecture, design) along with the softer side of software development (process, project management) are very clearly on-topic here and mentioned in our FAQ as things to ask about. Choosing an appropriate communication protocol for your application that meets your requirements is clearly an architectural or design problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that it only presents two alternatives is not an issue at all. One answer presents alternatives. In fact, two of them are good answers and the third is acceptable, but probably needs more detail to be a &quot;good answer&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that most users are able to read beyond the words written and answer the actual problem of choosing a communication protocol that meets the requirements described.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35447/earning-extra-cash-as-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8990/interesting-projects-for-a-hackathon" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13495" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5607" RevisionGUID="486fb60b-a96e-451e-a6eb-6c4776c905db" CreationDate="2013-02-24T22:45:27.497" UserId="37972" Comment="added 67 characters in body" Text="I've seen several questions that I dont think meet the standards met in the FAQ. [This question][1] seems particularly low quality to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question seems like the OP hasn't actually built anything, and is asking what he should do next and he hasn't got far enough to actually encounter a real problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question contains the preposition that the only alternatives are raw sockets or HTTP. It is not &quot;conceptual&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do others feel that this question is low quality?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could this be re-phrased to make it higher quality?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question of this quality would have been closed on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188217/writing-a-tcp-protocol-or-use-http-for-file-transfer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13496" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5607" RevisionGUID="320ef70d-0f8e-4235-a83e-e45ba0169756" CreationDate="2013-02-24T22:54:01.803" UserId="37972" Comment="added 279 characters in body" Text="I've seen several questions that I dont think meet the standards met in the FAQ. [This question][1] seems particularly low quality to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question seems like the OP hasn't actually built anything, and is asking what he should do next and he hasn't got far enough to actually encounter a real problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question contains the preposition that the only alternatives are raw sockets or HTTP. It is not &quot;conceptual&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The requirements describe the main concern of &quot;responsiveness&quot; yet offer no evidence as to why these two particular protocols should have this concern. What does responsiveness even mean? Latency? Throughput? Or an ability to start downloading things before they're uploaded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP states that the files are under 3MB and wants to know if the VPS will have enough memory for N connections. How can anyone answer that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do others feel that this question is low quality?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could this be re-phrased to make it higher quality?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question of this quality would have been closed on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188217/writing-a-tcp-protocol-or-use-http-for-file-transfer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13497" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5607" RevisionGUID="80e786b9-7926-4efa-ad2d-562a674e83f7" CreationDate="2013-02-24T23:04:20.870" UserId="37972" Comment="added 98 characters in body" Text="I've seen several questions that I dont think meet the standards met in the FAQ. [This question][1] seems particularly low quality to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question seems like the OP hasn't actually built anything, and is asking what he should do next and he hasn't got far enough to actually encounter a real problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question contains the preposition that the only alternatives are raw sockets or HTTP. It is not &quot;conceptual&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The requirements describe the main concern of &quot;responsiveness&quot; yet offer no evidence as to why these two particular protocols should have this concern. What does responsiveness even mean? Latency? Throughput? Or an ability to start downloading things before they're uploaded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP states that the files are under 3MB and wants to know if the VPS will have enough memory for N connections. How can anyone answer that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do others feel that this question is low quality?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could this be re-phrased to make it higher quality?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question of this quality would have been closed on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188217/writing-a-tcp-protocol-or-use-http-for-file-transfer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13498" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5609" RevisionGUID="e228930e-a491-47d8-9336-c635cf08e4e2" CreationDate="2013-02-25T02:01:27.137" UserId="25936" Text="The &quot;very low quality&quot; flag is intended for questions that have _severe formatting or content problems_, that can't be solved by editing and/or commenting. If you can parse the question and understand what it says, it's _not_ a &quot;very low quality&quot; one. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you are flagging, you are essentially asking a moderator to take a closer look, and our job is _not_ to judge the technical accuracy of posts. That's the community's job, and that's what up and down votes are for. If you feel the question is off topic, then the appropriate flag is &quot;off topic&quot;, not &quot;very low quality&quot;. If, on the other hand, you feel the question is on topic, but doesn't show effort or is not useful, then _down vote_ it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, regarding the question's topicality, there are some flawed assumptions in the question. That's ok, if the asker wasn't confused they _wouldn't be asking in the first place_. We can help correct those assumptions either via comments (which you did), or through good answers (which appeared). In any case, I agree with Thomas, I don't see any need for a moderator to intervene.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13499" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5610" RevisionGUID="78d49f3d-574a-48ce-beaf-23de558056a0" CreationDate="2013-02-25T02:18:31.117" UserId="25936" Text="That's not a behaviour we'd want to encourage, and that's exactly why askers can't delete their own questions if there's at least one upvoted answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the question was deleted almost immediately after you posted your answer (thus you never had a chance to get an upvote) and there were two undelete votes already, I went ahead and undeleted it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13500" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5605" RevisionGUID="a710ad75-4555-4bac-b31b-3a1e086ce6ee" CreationDate="2013-02-25T02:20:16.720" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13501" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5597" RevisionGUID="3ecfe609-410a-4c02-9aab-d01556d7b902" CreationDate="2013-02-25T02:23:33.543" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|deleted-answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13502" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5607" RevisionGUID="aa631d8a-96d1-456c-981a-be55b9283d36" CreationDate="2013-02-25T02:23:58.240" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|flagging|declined-flags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13503" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5600" RevisionGUID="73f5ba36-b0dc-45b5-abbe-8d5e35ed9722" CreationDate="2013-02-25T02:24:43.920" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13504" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5589" RevisionGUID="8c9bdab5-c5d1-4150-bd5e-b508c5ef56ba" CreationDate="2013-02-25T02:24:57.027" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13505" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5572" RevisionGUID="0458c9ee-3ae8-4870-9d10-310dfe7d53b3" CreationDate="2013-02-25T02:25:27.837" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|new-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13506" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5607" RevisionGUID="deec0935-a182-46f0-8f69-afda364f6844" CreationDate="2013-02-25T05:45:47.033" UserId="20011" Comment="preposition -&gt; presupposition" Text="I've seen several questions that I dont think meet the standards met in the FAQ. [This question][1] seems particularly low quality to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question seems like the OP hasn't actually built anything, and is asking what he should do next and he hasn't got far enough to actually encounter a real problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question contains the presupposition that the only alternatives are raw sockets or HTTP. It is not &quot;conceptual&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The requirements describe the main concern of &quot;responsiveness&quot; yet offer no evidence as to why these two particular protocols should have this concern. What does responsiveness even mean? Latency? Throughput? Or an ability to start downloading things before they're uploaded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP states that the files are under 3MB and wants to know if the VPS will have enough memory for N connections. How can anyone answer that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do others feel that this question is low quality?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could this be re-phrased to make it higher quality?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question of this quality would have been closed on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188217/writing-a-tcp-protocol-or-use-http-for-file-transfer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13507" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5611" RevisionGUID="53a1918e-ce48-4f35-bbba-9bcfc373c347" CreationDate="2013-02-25T06:09:29.143" UserId="20011" Text="None of the guidelines that you cited seem relevant to the linked question. The question doesn't ask for project ideas or suggestions, but rather for guidance in designing a specific project. The question is specific enough to be answerable, and not so basic as to require an excessively long answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You seem to object to the fact that the OP hasn't yet implemented anything, but the question isn't about implementation -- it's about design. The fact that the question considers only HTTP and a custom protocol is reflective of the OP's understanding of the options; there's no reason that you couldn't propose a different protocol in your answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A question of this quality would have been closed on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the linked question were closed on SO, it'd probably be because it's off topic there, and there's a good chance it'd be migrated to Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13508" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5612" RevisionGUID="e1f26ac3-7ef7-4b76-9a22-ef0c3980ad1d" CreationDate="2013-02-25T14:29:20.023" UserId="4027" Text="One problem with freelance and business concerns is that these tend to be closely associated with local questions in terms of company structure and legislation. There are borderline &quot;how to manage this type of project&quot; questions, but in very many cases the answer to a more business-related question that applies under UK law might be no help to someone working under Indian, US or Australian law. Even when it isn't superficially related to a legal question, very often the legislative structure informs the way that businesses operate in many different ways." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13509" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5613" RevisionGUID="64811bef-88fb-43b8-a3cc-253c738d5211" CreationDate="2013-02-25T15:52:56.347" UserId="1130" Text="I think the determining factor is if you need a Programmer's expertise for the answer or not, and if the question could be best answered by a Programmer instead of a different profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the answer is something you would expect to be part of a Programmer's knowledge base, and they would be the first person you would approach to get a definitive answer on such a question, then it's on-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if it's something that would be best answered by someone other than a programmer, such as a Project Manager, Financial Adviser, Marketing Specialist, Lawyer, etc then it would be considered off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13510" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5614" RevisionGUID="afe958cc-ce45-417d-a27b-0fdf2dca8b0c" CreationDate="2013-02-25T16:25:38.130" UserId="34614" Text=" &gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188292/should-i-try-to-persuade-my-manager-that-code-tidying-should-take-priority-over&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not agree that this question should have been closed. If it was truly a duplicate, than the answers would have been the same. As it is, the answers are not the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Should I&quot; is not the same as &quot;How can I&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were several good reasons to keep the question open in comments, however those comments were deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes I absolutely despair for this site when good content is mercilessly deleted like this :(" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13511" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5614" RevisionGUID="afe958cc-ce45-417d-a27b-0fdf2dca8b0c" CreationDate="2013-02-25T16:25:38.130" UserId="34614" Text="Closed question dispute" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13512" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5614" RevisionGUID="afe958cc-ce45-417d-a27b-0fdf2dca8b0c" CreationDate="2013-02-25T16:25:38.130" UserId="34614" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13513" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5614" RevisionGUID="cd84ec4e-c4a5-447d-93ff-6a1c6b336d9b" CreationDate="2013-02-25T16:36:57.233" UserId="34614" Comment="added 161 characters in body" Text=" &gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188292/should-i-try-to-persuade-my-manager-that-code-tidying-should-take-priority-over&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not agree that this question should have been closed. If it was truly a duplicate, than the answers would have been the same. As it is, the answers are not the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Should I&quot; is not the same as &quot;How can I&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were several good reasons to keep the question open in comments, however those comments were deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes I absolutely despair for this site when good content is mercilessly closed like this. Eric Lippert took the time to write an absolute gem of wisdom, it's such a huge shame that it'll go almost entirely unnoticed now due to over zealous moderation :(" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13514" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5615" RevisionGUID="d4a67631-baea-470d-8101-44225ad8fd90" CreationDate="2013-02-25T16:37:40.647" UserId="47" Text="The problem is the &quot;if so how&quot; statement in the actual question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the OP had left it focussed on whether they should have the discussion or not then it wouldn't have been seen as a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the answers seems to be focussing on the &quot;should&quot; aspect so if the OP is happy to edit that bit out we can reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, given that it was originally closed as &quot;not a real question&quot; it may well get reclosed again anyway. I would imagine that the reason it was closed originally was because &quot;should&quot; questions are really discussion questions where there are lots of equally valid answers. However, we can and should be flexible about these **if** they bring out good answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13515" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5616" RevisionGUID="3d982c04-8a8a-4946-bc3f-d681dd0aef20" CreationDate="2013-02-25T16:39:02.550" UserId="25476" Text="To answer your first question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I deleted the comments because they didn't add anything of value to the question itself.  They were mostly a meta discussion that belonged here anyway.  There is currently no feature that allows for moderators to migrate comments to a meta discussion or chat room.  I figured that the same arguments about Not a Real Question and Duplicate would reoccur here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To answer your other question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should I keep trying to persuade him, and, if so, **how**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer the *Should* is rather uninteresting and could be based on any number of opinions.  Popular opinion and demonstrated by the nine answers that all seem to say, **NO** it is not a good idea to push deadlines to take care of technical debt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore not every answer is focused on Should... many answers like this one are specifically answering **How** which has been answered to death on the duplicate with 14 answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/188298/25476&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond maybe a One Word answer, NO or YES, should wasn't that important in my opinion.  The real thing the OP wanted to know was how to frame the argument to his boss to address technical debt.  Should questions generally don't do well here because there is often wildly different opinions and perspectives for it be answerable in a clear way." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13516" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5614" RevisionGUID="d6ccc879-7552-46d8-8a42-5c11ea426d28" CreationDate="2013-02-25T17:49:04.760" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13517" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5617" RevisionGUID="7881f9b5-e178-4b22-8b4a-9db8dd9ca081" CreationDate="2013-02-25T19:10:06.357" UserId="60569" Text="I think that the question was a constructive subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I consider the following quote to be valuable insight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You're in the business of delivering value to stakeholders, not in the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; code prettification business.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange is about getting good answers. If a question has both good and bad answers, the fault of the bad answers is probably with the answerers, not the question. To put it another way, bad questions are bad precisely because they fail to produce good answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suggest editing the question to clearly emphasize the &quot;should&quot; and distinguish it from the &quot;How can I convince my manager to deal with technical debt&quot; question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13518" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5618" RevisionGUID="428258b4-a285-4488-afb0-d1c5c67a5f94" CreationDate="2013-02-25T19:45:26.130" UserId="50402" Text="With more Stack Exchange sites being created I typically skim over the Top Questions list for each to quickly see if there is anything interesting to get into.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've noticed frequently on Programmers that the Top Questions list has a large number of poor questions.  Today I specifically counted, 43 questions, 10 were closed, 2 marked as duplicates. 7 had a negative score (some were closed, some were not).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a shortage of questions? Or could there possibly be a better way to create the Top Questions list (maybe excluding closed or down voted questions)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13519" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5618" RevisionGUID="428258b4-a285-4488-afb0-d1c5c67a5f94" CreationDate="2013-02-25T19:45:26.130" UserId="50402" Text="Better Selection for Top Questions List" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13520" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5618" RevisionGUID="428258b4-a285-4488-afb0-d1c5c67a5f94" CreationDate="2013-02-25T19:45:26.130" UserId="50402" Text="|feature-request|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13521" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5618" RevisionGUID="eb5d9d59-ad97-48c0-8c1f-5ec8f8fe57fe" CreationDate="2013-02-25T20:08:08.453" UserId="50402" Comment="Expanding scope of question based on comments." Text="With more Stack Exchange sites being created I typically skim over the Top Questions list for each to quickly see if there is anything interesting to get into.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've noticed frequently on Programmers that the Top Questions list has a large number of poor questions.  Today I specifically counted, 43 questions, 10 were closed, 2 marked as duplicates. 7 had a negative score (some were closed, some were not).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a shortage of questions? Or could there possibly be a better way to create the Top Questions list (maybe excluding closed or down voted questions)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks to Rachel's comments I'm realizing that the list may not be what I expect it to be. But then should it maybe not be titled &quot;Top Questions&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13522" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5618" RevisionGUID="eb5d9d59-ad97-48c0-8c1f-5ec8f8fe57fe" CreationDate="2013-02-25T20:08:08.453" UserId="50402" Comment="Expanding scope of question based on comments." Text="Better Selection / Title for Top Questions List" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13523" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5619" RevisionGUID="880d3b9f-8e87-49ee-82a6-489f2ce2a377" CreationDate="2013-02-25T20:19:05.353" UserId="3965" Text="We have a ballot with three candidates and three ranked choices.  What I'm wondering is if there is any difference between voting someone as third choice and not selecting a third choice at all.  Are there any situations under which a different result could occur, like perhaps in a tie breaker?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13524" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5619" RevisionGUID="880d3b9f-8e87-49ee-82a6-489f2ce2a377" CreationDate="2013-02-25T20:19:05.353" UserId="3965" Text="Is a third choice vote identical to no vote at all?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13525" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5619" RevisionGUID="880d3b9f-8e87-49ee-82a6-489f2ce2a377" CreationDate="2013-02-25T20:19:05.353" UserId="3965" Text="|discussion|election|voting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13526" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5620" RevisionGUID="5d8dbbca-81b4-40d7-b687-31364d58d1ff" CreationDate="2013-02-25T21:39:20.870" UserId="47" Text="You can use as many or as few of your votes as you like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if there are three positions available it makes sense to use all three votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this election there's only one position available so you could just use one vote for the candidate you want to get the job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there were more positions available then your 2nd and 3rd votes would come into play once the candidate with the most first votes has been elected or if your 1st choice was eliminated." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13527" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5621" RevisionGUID="ac33524a-9ab5-461f-b7cb-dc4337cfbdc4" CreationDate="2013-02-25T22:04:33.307" UserId="3965" Text="Per [Aaron's suggestion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5617/3965) the question has been edited to provide more emphasis on the differences that weren't covered in the duplicate.  Please join me in voting to reopen if you agree with the changes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13528" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5572" RevisionGUID="4bfdef12-4a31-4f67-a87c-1e134be42d1f" CreationDate="2013-02-26T01:26:46.403" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/306213684215169024" />
  <row Id="13529" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5622" RevisionGUID="8578b467-889a-461c-b2ef-8d53de0f11fd" CreationDate="2013-02-26T12:31:42.567" UserId="31260" Text="Note at [2013 Moderator Election page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election/3) states:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In the election phase, **10 candidates** advance to final community voting...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are **three** candidates, not **10**, as indicated by another note at this very page. Could this be fixed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z4ZeN.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z4ZeN.png &quot;3 != 10&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13530" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5622" RevisionGUID="8578b467-889a-461c-b2ef-8d53de0f11fd" CreationDate="2013-02-26T12:31:42.567" UserId="31260" Text="&quot;In the election phase, 10 candidates advance...&quot; really 10?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13531" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5622" RevisionGUID="8578b467-889a-461c-b2ef-8d53de0f11fd" CreationDate="2013-02-26T12:31:42.567" UserId="31260" Text="|bug|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13532" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5595" RevisionGUID="10b4c83d-3eed-4601-8e37-254b44966975" CreationDate="2013-02-26T12:32:18.347" UserId="33171" Comment="For those in the EST timezone, a bit in front, and behind it, that would be today." Text="In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session with the candidates.  This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.  I will be working with candidates to determine a time for the event.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***The Town Hall Chat will take place Wednesday the 27th at 02:00:00Z UTC / Tuesday the 26th at 9:00 PM EST.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[view in other timezones](http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=2&amp;day=27&amp;year=2013&amp;hour=2&amp;min=0&amp;sec=0&amp;p1=0)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[register here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/251/programmers-town-hall-chat?tab=schedule)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[join the room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/251/programmers-town-hall-chat)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the details so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I would like to schedule this towards the beginning of the primary phase.  This means that I am looking at the 25th-27th of February. As soon as I coordinate with the existing moderators and candidates to find a best fit based on availability, I will edit this post with details on the &quot;when&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;* The Town Hall Chat will be a one-hour event using our [chat platform](http://chat.stackexchange.com/?tab=site&amp;sort=active&amp;host=programmers.stackexchange.com).  I will update this post with a direct link to the chat room once the event is scheduled.&#xD;&#xA;* The format will be an open discussion.  Users are encouraged to pose questions to the candidates regarding their thoughts on moderation.&#xD;&#xA;* Priority for scheduling is generally towards the greatest number of candidate openings as well as the earliest. Candidates who cannot show up during the live event will still be able to answer all questions posted, they will just do so at their earliest convenience.&#xD;&#xA;* If you can't make it but have questions you wish to pose to the candidates, please leave them here as a response, and I will ask it on your behalf.&#xD;&#xA;* After the chat session, a digest of the event will be permanently linked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13533" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5620" RevisionGUID="78763e07-6980-4ab1-a083-2ca5cdaa68f6" CreationDate="2013-02-26T13:01:29.293" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="You can use as many or as few of your votes as you like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if there are three positions available or many more candidates than positions it makes sense to use all three votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this election there's only one position available and only three candidates so you could just use one vote for the candidate you want to get the job as it's quite likely (though not certain) that there'll be a definitive result after the first round of voting. If you think that the won't be a result from the first round then it makes sense to use your other votes to indicate where you'd like your vote to go if your candidate is eliminated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there were more positions available or more candidates then your 2nd and 3rd votes would come into play once the candidate with the most first votes has been elected or if your 1st choice was eliminated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you only like one (or two) candidates then only use one (or two) votes. Please don't vote for someone - even as a second or third choice - if you don't think they'll make a good moderator." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13534" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5623" RevisionGUID="dd41d2ad-c04c-4213-abb0-6658184314e5" CreationDate="2013-02-26T13:33:11.870" UserId="1508" Text="I've added an &quot;up to&quot; when there are more slots than candidates - will be there in the next build" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13535" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5622" RevisionGUID="4c97a918-0bad-4da8-aee8-3dd8a15c5d92" CreationDate="2013-02-26T13:33:23.883" UserId="1508" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13536" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5624" RevisionGUID="37d97f1f-d6e9-4696-b79a-ce2f87382b7c" CreationDate="2013-02-26T15:10:38.997" UserId="82572" Text="I do share opinions about [software development][1] on a [regular][2] basis using my own blog. Are you looking only for original/exclusive content, or is cross post (in one direction or another) something that would be possible ? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not talking about recyclying, more about posting the same (new) content both here and on my personal/company blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.8thcolor.com/2013/02/about-being-a-team-leader/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.8thcolor.com/2012/09/modularization-in-rails-a-case-study/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13537" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5625" RevisionGUID="115f8ac9-e66a-4c79-baa4-2337b8e47c60" CreationDate="2013-02-26T15:44:48.100" UserId="34339" Text="[This question][1] has two [accepted][2] [answers][3]. How is that possible?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/122955/34339&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/122962/34339&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/122963/34339&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/VLmTo.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13538" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5625" RevisionGUID="115f8ac9-e66a-4c79-baa4-2337b8e47c60" CreationDate="2013-02-26T15:44:48.100" UserId="34339" Text="Two accepted answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13539" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5625" RevisionGUID="115f8ac9-e66a-4c79-baa4-2337b8e47c60" CreationDate="2013-02-26T15:44:48.100" UserId="34339" Text="|bug|accepted-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13540" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5626" RevisionGUID="33d92987-f6b2-4523-b839-0c1c9d96c58b" CreationDate="2013-02-26T16:12:44.270" UserId="39312" Text="I want to chime in on this with a response as a recent migrant from SO proper who ran into this exact issue.  I'll reference my meta discussion, I think it had a lot of good responses and definitely helped me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5582/how-to-better-fit-the-on-topic-format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At least after opening a topic on meta to try and clarify what I was doing wrong, I gained some constructive insight in how to word things to better fit PSE and hopefully prevent early closing on my questions.  I think a lot of the problem stems in the perception that SO proper is the &quot;technical&quot; site, where posting code or confronting compiler errors is to be expected, whereas PSE is perceived as the &quot;catch-all&quot; alternative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I think is hard to translate into moderation here is that it's easy for first time users to get this impression *even if they read the FAQ*.  This is because ultimately we must admit that the application of the &quot;on-topic&quot; section of our FAQ is going to be assessed subjectively the first time the user posts.  Unless they read a 10-30 previous questions that have been closed, they aren't going to establish a base-use case for how the moderation regarding staying on-topic is applied (the Really-Existing Moderation, to borrow the psychoanalytic term)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no denying that having your first question abruptly closed is a huge buzzkill in terms of entering a new community.  I think it is to be avoided as much as possible... new users should be encouraged to reword their cases into a something less subjective.  That isn't always possible in the sometimes small frame of time they get hit with the moderator nerfbat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I would propose as a potentially constructive practice would be giving some exception to questions that have been upvoted by other users.  There's no reason a question that has received 3-4 upvotes early that is &quot;arguably&quot; a fit for the meta should be closed within the first 30 minutes before any potential responses or ideas on potential revisions could be given.  Because of the way posts are flagged, there's a pretty quick &quot;pile on&quot; effect once a question is flagged for close.  That does make it feel, qualitatively, that moderation is a bit aggressive here on PSE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just my two cents.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13541" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5626" RevisionGUID="f14c9bf5-3a00-4f17-b1e5-5aac3644c916" CreationDate="2013-02-26T16:19:02.317" UserId="39312" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="I want to chime in on this with a response as a recent migrant from SO proper who ran into this exact issue.  I'll reference my meta discussion, I think it had a lot of good responses and definitely helped me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5582/how-to-better-fit-the-on-topic-format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At least after opening a topic on meta to try and clarify what I was doing wrong, I gained some constructive insight in how to word things to better fit PSE and hopefully prevent early closing on my questions.  I think a lot of the problem stems in the perception that SO proper is the &quot;technical&quot; site, where posting code or confronting compiler errors is to be expected, whereas PSE is perceived as the &quot;catch-all&quot; alternative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I think is hard to translate into moderation here is that it's easy for first time users to get this impression *even if they read the FAQ*.  This is because ultimately we must admit that the application of the &quot;on-topic&quot; section of our FAQ is going to be assessed subjectively the first time the user posts.  Unless they read 10-30 previous questions that have been closed, they aren't going to establish a base-use case for how the moderation regarding staying on-topic is applied (the Really-Existing Moderation, to borrow the psychoanalytic term)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no denying that having your first question abruptly closed is a huge buzzkill in terms of entering a new community.  I think it is to be avoided as much as possible... new users should be encouraged to reword their cases into a something less subjective.  There are going to be hopeless questions, of course, but the ones that show a little promise could be worked into the format, especially if they skirt that &quot;specific to programmers&quot; line.  That isn't always possible in the sometimes small frame of time they get hit with the moderator nerfbat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I would propose as a potentially constructive practice would be giving some exception to questions that have been upvoted by other users.  There's no reason a question that has received 3-4 upvotes early that is &quot;arguably&quot; a fit for the meta should be closed within the first 30 minutes before any potential responses or ideas on potential revisions could be given.  Because of the way posts are flagged, there's a pretty quick &quot;pile on&quot; effect once a question is flagged for close.  That does make it feel, qualitatively, that moderation is a bit aggressive here on PSE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just my two cents.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13542" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5627" RevisionGUID="a97162ce-7d5f-47c9-aa72-9107255c20fb" CreationDate="2013-02-26T17:46:45.350" UserId="63" Text="There are a few bits of denormalized data that determine whether a given answer is &quot;accepted&quot;: the question knows of *an* accepted answer, each answer knows if it is accepted, and there are the actual &quot;accept&quot; votes as well. Occasionally, these can get out of sync with one another. That happened here (it shouldn't happen anymore, but this is an old question with a lot of history behind it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now there are *no* accepted answers on that question, which seems appropriate given there's no owner either. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13543" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5625" RevisionGUID="63e94c7c-31b9-4a99-b55d-77535031b4ef" CreationDate="2013-02-26T17:47:17.957" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|accepted-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13544" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5628" RevisionGUID="99ac5ec1-0dbd-4407-95c2-7a4b54c65e3a" CreationDate="2013-02-26T19:45:36.927" UserId="4" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188455/why-do-programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-braces-and-not-square-ones&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This post has generated very rapid close/reopen votes along with an extended discussion in the comments. I have cleaned up the comments, but brought some relevant points here, attributing them to the author. Please use this Meta question to discuss the merits and appropriateness of this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have cleaned up the extended discussion as well as the low-quality answers to the post. Please resume discussion here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only person who can answer this is Dennis Ritchie and he's dead. A&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reasonable guess is that [] were already taken for arrays. – [Dirk&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Holsopple][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @SomeKittens: Sorry, but the fact that you are curious about it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doesn't make the question on topic here. As you can see from the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers nobody knows and it's just a discussion of options, what we&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mostly avoid on this site. – [thorsten müller][2]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @thorstenmüller MichaelT makes good observations though, and that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; looks almost like an answer. I'm not experienced enough on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.se to judge what is on topic but it looks like an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interesting question to me. – [dystroy][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Voting to close. See [Are programming-related history/trivia questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; acceptable on P.SE?][4] That, along with the fact that this doesn't&#xD;&#xA;&gt; seem to be related to a real problem, makes this off topic and not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; constructive. – [Caleb][5]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @SomeKittens It's still difficult to see how this is an actual&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem. If you find reaching for the shift key tiring, there's no&#xD;&#xA;&gt; shortage of software on any major platform to help you remap your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; keyboard. Indeed, one has to wonder why you're looking to change what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you type to suit your (archaic) keyboard rather than changing your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; keyboard to suit what you type. But I don't think that's a terribly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; constructive question either -- just do whatever suits you. –&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Caleb][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/60900/dirk-holsopple&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/13866/thorsten-muller&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/52680/dystroy&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2021/are-programming-related-history-trivia-questions-acceptable-on-p-se/2029#2029&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/20011/caleb&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/20011/caleb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13545" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5628" RevisionGUID="99ac5ec1-0dbd-4407-95c2-7a4b54c65e3a" CreationDate="2013-02-26T19:45:36.927" UserId="4" Text="Content Dispute for &quot;Why do programming languages, especially C, use curly braces and not square ones?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13546" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5628" RevisionGUID="99ac5ec1-0dbd-4407-95c2-7a4b54c65e3a" CreationDate="2013-02-26T19:45:36.927" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13547" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5629" RevisionGUID="41866ad0-7f81-4f9b-8efc-9d7d35c1994a" CreationDate="2013-02-26T22:02:18.403" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="&gt; Voting to close. See [Are programming-related history/trivia questions acceptable on P.SE?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2021/are-programming-related-history-trivia-questions-acceptable-on-p-se/2029#2029) That, along with the fact that this doesn't seem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to be related to a real problem, makes this off topic and not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; constructive. – Caleb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The history of history questions has had a confused history in Programmers.SE.  Closing because this is a history question based on one particular meta post may not capture the full scope of the history tag's history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the earlier meta posts about history (September '10): [How can historical questions be on topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/363/how-can-historical-questions-be-on-topic) - with very few votes at the time (top voted answer has two as of this writing), there was no great consensus.  There were two yes and two no.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[One of the yes answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/364/40980) reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Yes. In general I don't see any reason why questions on programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; history should not be acceptable here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; (That said, if the answer is simple enough to be found on a wikipedia&#xD;&#xA;&gt; page, I would possibly question it's merit from that perspective, but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that would have to be judged on a case by case basis)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From July '11 [Are programming-related history/trivia questions acceptable on P.SE?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2021/are-programming-related-history-trivia-questions-acceptable-on-p-se/2029)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [accepted answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2022) by user8 reads&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Any question that's trivia, by definition, would be any that ask about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unimportant (i.e. trivial) facts and matters. Those would be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; prohibited and should be closed as not constructive:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; That said, a question stops being trivia the moment an actual,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solvable problem is defined: that is, if one tells us why you want to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; know X or how knowing X solves Y problem, the question is a whole lot&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question includes a follow up comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think it can be justifiable in some cases; for example in the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; foo/bar example, indicating that you keep seeing foo and bar in code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you're looking at and wish to understand more about it is not that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; fundamentally different than indicating you keep seeing some&#xD;&#xA;&gt; particular coding technique in code you're looking at and wish to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; understand more about it. – Jeff Atwood♦ Jul 30 '11 at 6:43&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In March of 2012, a question of a specific history question was raised in meta - [Is the question about statements being terminated by semicolons appropriate for Programmers?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3325/is-the-question-about-statements-being-terminated-by-semicolons-appropriate-for)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is lots of text and comments which should be read to get the full scope of the post.  It does have some useful quotes in referencing a [chat from user2334 (aka user8)](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3908862#3908862).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Save for the accepted answer, I thought the semicolons question was&#xD;&#xA;&gt; pretty good. Programming history has always been an overlooked aspect&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of Programmers's scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More recently, in May of 2012, there was a [contest](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/programmers-se-contest-the-complete-outline) that included a week dedicated to history questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tangentially, word origin questions have had some meta posts.  Most recently (Feb '13), [Are word origin questions on-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5524/are-word-origin-questions-on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examining my own votes on the various questions and opinions, I've been inconsistent in my opinions of history and origin questions.  However, if I was to try to find a common thread to this it can be seen in a [recent chat message](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8273988#8273988):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The biggest problem that I perceive with it is a lack of research / utility. That is a difficult thing to fix.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @SomeKittens &quot;Why&quot; questions are especially challenging for historical things - that unless one is able to find documentation to state it one way or another, it is mostly speculation. Speculation can have a multitude of answers, all of which equally correct in speculation. That is difficult to fit into the SE Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are likely to become speculation or don't demonstrate sufficient research (despite the interesting topic) I frown upon, while ones that show that they can be answered substantially should be open.  I'd be fast to close *and* fast to reopen to let someone try to answer it substantially.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing *because* it is a history question I don't see as a justifiable reason." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13548" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5629" RevisionGUID="4a8ee22f-9008-4910-80fc-617ee1388ec1" CreationDate="2013-02-26T22:50:23.987" UserId="31260" Comment="1) history -&gt; [tag:history] 2) user8 += ([site moderator](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3242/31260) back then)" Text="&gt; Voting to close. See [Are programming-related history/trivia questions acceptable on P.SE?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2021/are-programming-related-history-trivia-questions-acceptable-on-p-se/2029#2029) That, along with the fact that this doesn't seem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to be related to a real problem, makes this off topic and not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; constructive. – Caleb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The history of [tag:history] questions has had a confused history in Programmers.SE.  Closing because this is a history question based on one particular meta post may not capture the full scope of the history tag's history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the earlier meta posts about history (September '10): [How can historical questions be on topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/363/how-can-historical-questions-be-on-topic) - with very few votes at the time (top voted answer has two as of this writing), there was no great consensus.  There were two yes and two no.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[One of the yes answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/364/40980) reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Yes. In general I don't see any reason why questions on programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; history should not be acceptable here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; (That said, if the answer is simple enough to be found on a wikipedia&#xD;&#xA;&gt; page, I would possibly question it's merit from that perspective, but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that would have to be judged on a case by case basis)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From July '11 [Are programming-related history/trivia questions acceptable on P.SE?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2021/are-programming-related-history-trivia-questions-acceptable-on-p-se/2029)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [accepted answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2022) by `user8` ([site moderator](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3242/31260) back then) reads&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Any question that's trivia, by definition, would be any that ask about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unimportant (i.e. trivial) facts and matters. Those would be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; prohibited and should be closed as not constructive:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; That said, a question stops being trivia the moment an actual,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solvable problem is defined: that is, if one tells us why you want to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; know X or how knowing X solves Y problem, the question is a whole lot&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question includes a follow up comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think it can be justifiable in some cases; for example in the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; foo/bar example, indicating that you keep seeing foo and bar in code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you're looking at and wish to understand more about it is not that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; fundamentally different than indicating you keep seeing some&#xD;&#xA;&gt; particular coding technique in code you're looking at and wish to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; understand more about it. – Jeff Atwood♦ Jul 30 '11 at 6:43&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In March of 2012, a question of a specific history question was raised in meta - [Is the question about statements being terminated by semicolons appropriate for Programmers?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3325/is-the-question-about-statements-being-terminated-by-semicolons-appropriate-for)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is lots of text and comments which should be read to get the full scope of the post.  It does have some useful quotes in referencing a [chat from user2334 (aka user8)](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3908862#3908862).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Save for the accepted answer, I thought the semicolons question was&#xD;&#xA;&gt; pretty good. Programming history has always been an overlooked aspect&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of Programmers's scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More recently, in May of 2012, there was a [contest](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/programmers-se-contest-the-complete-outline) that included a week dedicated to history questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tangentially, word origin questions have had some meta posts.  Most recently (Feb '13), [Are word origin questions on-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5524/are-word-origin-questions-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examining my own votes on the various questions and opinions, I've been inconsistent in my opinions of history and origin questions.  However, if I was to try to find a common thread to this it can be seen in a [recent chat message](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8273988#8273988):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The biggest problem that I perceive with it is a lack of research / utility. That is a difficult thing to fix.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @SomeKittens &quot;Why&quot; questions are especially challenging for historical things - that unless one is able to find documentation to state it one way or another, it is mostly speculation. Speculation can have a multitude of answers, all of which equally correct in speculation. That is difficult to fit into the SE Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are likely to become speculation or don't demonstrate sufficient research (despite the interesting topic) I frown upon, while ones that show that they can be answered substantially should be open.  I'd be fast to close *and* fast to reopen to let someone try to answer it substantially.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing *because* it is a history question I don't see as a justifiable reason." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13549" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5630" RevisionGUID="7718ad7f-8210-4d3b-b7e7-0e6e1f90606f" CreationDate="2013-02-27T01:27:49.037" UserId="1458" Text="I see that one candidate hardly ever downvotes, one candidate wants to close less, and one candidates cumulates the two. If you're so set against cleanup tasks which are part of a moderator's job, what makes you think you'll be good moderators?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13550" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5631" RevisionGUID="83ba7ff6-62bd-4737-b623-db0e05d435b9" CreationDate="2013-02-27T01:42:29.120" UserId="1458" Text="I'm a programmer but hardly visit Prog.SE because it has too many low-quality highly-voted questions and answers. What do you propose to do to improve the overall quality of the site?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13551" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5630" RevisionGUID="1eea8b57-39a5-4eaa-b910-027347c400c2" CreationDate="2013-02-27T01:49:17.863" UserId="1458" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="I see that one candidate hardly ever downvotes, one candidate wants to close less, and one candidates cumulates the two. If you're so set against cleanup tasks which are part of a moderator's job, what makes you think you'll be a good moderator?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13552" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5573" RevisionGUID="a358cc80-6f66-4057-8f17-631239a20b52" CreationDate="2013-02-27T04:27:47.433" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/306621627519623168" />
  <row Id="13553" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="e35f8f47-ae6c-4cad-b1f8-9915fae426fd" CreationDate="2013-02-27T08:26:04.797" UserId="31260" Comment="research += review of deleted answers // have got sufficient privilege later than the initial research has been posted" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot;** in the answers appear to happen once or twice a week on average, frequent enough to feel the connection between these and respective questions making their way into [SE collider list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My particular concern is the poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making **interesting and well presented problems** look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;&quot;Oh look: ['my guess is fairly prosaic. Git is brilliant...'](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177890/31260 &quot;example&quot;) - with upvoted answer like that it [can't be a real question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;not-a-real-question - what's this?&quot;)&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to [repel garbage answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3835/31260 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;), I can easily name a handful of active regulars who [can and do](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;filter=all &quot;our editors gang is pretty strong&quot;) just that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that [invalidates my edit](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;). And answer that exploits another minor ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions: per my observations &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; have been smart enough to pick questions that have reasonably good wording as-is.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how things work now helps to attract new contributors but I would appreciate if achieving this important goal &lt;sup&gt;**[1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/when-is-an-account-abandoned/ &quot;'reduce the friction of... answering to little more than entering an anonymous comment on a blog'&quot;), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/helping-the-experts-get-answers/ &quot;'attract notable experts to your site'&quot;), [3](http://stackexchange.com/about &quot;'free and open to everyone... answer questions without even bothering to register'&quot;)**&lt;/sup&gt; would somehow be less damaging for good, highly visible questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **protect your own users from scale ...human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon...** ([A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy ](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html &quot;quote source&quot;))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some additional observations based on discussions that followed posting this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Low quality answers in hot questions likely contribute to the fact that currently, it is [hard for users to understand site standards](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;), which results in posting many &quot;bad&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a steady source of misguided contributors... There are... [broken windows](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info)... **&quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;**.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Low quality answers also threat to [penalize contributors](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13713_5448 &quot;see 'clear that 10k barrier...' and further discussion&quot;) who post good ones because when piled on in hot questions, garbage answers trigger [CW](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info &quot;automatic community wiki when there are more than 15 answers&quot;) which consequently turns all the upvotes given to good answers into zero reputation for their authors.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [more than 1700 answers scored 25+ turned community wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;q=wiki%3ayes%20is%3aanswer%20score%3a25)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of precision, note that number `1700` above is only indicative since search does not exclude answers turned CW for other reasons. Also note some of the answers could be high-voted &quot;unfairly&quot;: per analysis 10+ voted answers in sampled questions (below), this could happen, although rather infrequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through few [sampled](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/181999/31260 &quot;random sampling, stuff like that&quot;) questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, note that besides 199 answers reviewed above, there are also 19 answers deleted in 16 questions listed above. These answers are visible only to moderators and to users with [sufficient privileges](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;Access to Moderator tools -&gt; 'View deleted posts'&quot;). Of these 19, 9 are deleted by moderators, the rest has been deleted by owners. Of 10 answers deleted by owners, I would downvote 7-8.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some data related to [recently added](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/5413/revisions &quot;see changes in rev 13&quot;) observations on community wiki status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 2K+ views - about **25%** are CW, [307](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [1247](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 10K+ views - about **60%** are CW, [62](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [101](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting [self](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13717_5448 &quot;from here&quot;), wow. Just... wow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13554" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5632" RevisionGUID="392d72f5-b93f-4900-bbb6-9eb01a44ece1" CreationDate="2013-02-27T08:43:12.007" UserId="25936" Text="In the [&quot;don't ask&quot; section][1] of our FAQ it says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question would be of interest to …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **Professional and enthusiast programmers**, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, that's not right, if your question would be of interest to professional programmers, you are most likely in the right place. That part of the FAQ is not editable by mods, so we'll need a Stack Exchange employee's help to change it. Also, I can't think of a better phrasing, just that the current one sucks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13555" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5632" RevisionGUID="392d72f5-b93f-4900-bbb6-9eb01a44ece1" CreationDate="2013-02-27T08:43:12.007" UserId="25936" Text="If your question would be of interest to professional programmers, you should ask it on Programmers, not on Stack Overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13556" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5632" RevisionGUID="392d72f5-b93f-4900-bbb6-9eb01a44ece1" CreationDate="2013-02-27T08:43:12.007" UserId="25936" Text="|discussion|faq-contents|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13557" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5633" RevisionGUID="a69253ae-946a-4c52-8bfd-97588af0e375" CreationDate="2013-02-27T09:35:20.373" UserId="25936" Text="History questions are on topic on Programmers, but have proven to be particularly troublesome:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- It's not uncommon for history questions to get closed (and re-opened, and closed, ...)&#xD;&#xA;- It's not uncommon for history questions to not show any (or very little) prior research.&#xD;&#xA;- It's not uncommon for history questions to generate highly speculative answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had a [history week](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/programmers-se-contest-the-complete-outline/3631#3631) in last year's contest. As an example of how troublesome history questions are, even the [winning question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/149457/25936) didn't escape an early closure&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. Furthermore, almost every answerer in my [request for feedback](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3653/what-did-you-think-of-the-contest) for the contest identified the tag as particularly troublesome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the same time though, the history tag has given us some exceptional questions. A few random examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What software programming languages were used by the Soviet Union's space program?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145669/what-software-programming-languages-were-used-by-the-soviet-unions-space-progra)&#xD;&#xA;- [What were the “core” API packages of Java 1.0?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147205/what-were-the-core-api-packages-of-java-1-0)&#xD;&#xA;- [Where does the term “Red/Black Tree” come from?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/116614/where-does-the-term-red-black-tree-come-from)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that the majority of programming history questions are either exceptional or crap, with very few being somewhere in the middle of the quality spectrum. This makes the whole category a very interesting beast, and one that needs special treatment. My questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Do history questions offer value to the site?&#xD;&#xA;- How do history questions pass the &quot;practical problem&quot; test?&#xD;&#xA;- What should our general guidelines for them be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related past discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Are programming-related history/trivia questions acceptable on P.SE?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2021/are-programming-related-history-trivia-questions-acceptable-on-p-se)&#xD;&#xA;- [Is curiosity allowed on programmers.stackexchange.com?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2526/is-curiosity-allowed-on-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;- [How can historical questions be on topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/363/how-can-historical-questions-be-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;- [Are word origin questions on-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5524/are-word-origin-questions-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;- [Content Dispute for “Why do programming languages, especially C, use curly braces and not square ones?”](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5628/25936)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Don't get me wrong, early closures are good, especially when they lead to the question getting improved and re-opened.&lt;br /&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13558" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5633" RevisionGUID="a69253ae-946a-4c52-8bfd-97588af0e375" CreationDate="2013-02-27T09:35:20.373" UserId="25936" Text="Is programming history on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13559" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5633" RevisionGUID="a69253ae-946a-4c52-8bfd-97588af0e375" CreationDate="2013-02-27T09:35:20.373" UserId="25936" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13560" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5634" RevisionGUID="0a1f1db5-cba1-48ac-ae1a-a3ca14c339e1" CreationDate="2013-02-27T09:35:20.373" UserId="25936" Text="##Do history questions offer value to the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, absolutely. A quick look at our [highest voted history questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bhistory%5D+closed%3A0) reveals quite a few exceptional questions and answers. The history tag is not one of our most active tags, but it does have a significant amount of questions (153 currently) and _only 2_ of them are downvoted. That's... impressive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I'm fully aware of the several valid concerns about history questions, and share most of them, I can't imagine Programmers _without_ history questions. They are a bit special, but the exceptional ones are proof enough that the topic belongs on the site, and with vigorous moderation we can deal with the low end ones.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##How do history questions pass the &quot;practical problem&quot; test?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) dictates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the prime directive for all Stack Exchange sites, and Programmers is no exception. However it's a directive that was written with Stack Overflow in mind and _some times_ it proves to be more confusing than helpful on every other Stack Exchange site. On a related discussion on MSO, [I commented](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/164436/is-there-a-rule-of-thumb-for-objective-questions-asked-out-of-curiosity#comment480234_164692): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  I don't care at all if the problem is actual or practical (by whatever definition of practical), what I care about is the asker being serious about it, at least serious enough to have done some minimal research before s/he resorts to a community of volunteers. Intellectual curiosity is as great motivator as any, idle curiosity is a different beast entirely, one that, if entertained, will ultimately suck the life out of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The prime directive's goal is to stop people from asking questions out of idle curiosity. Intellectual curiosity on the other hand _can_ be an excellent motivator for questions, especially on sites that are focused on conceptual questions like Programmers. I think the fact that the majority of our history questions are either exceptional or crap it's because the first were asked out of intellectual curiosity and the latter out of idle curiosity.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And what divides the two is prior effort. If the asker has spend some time researching their question and reached a point reached a point where they can't get to the answer by themselves, guess what, they are facing an _actual_ problem. A problem that, judging from the impressive answer rate of our history questions, we can certainly help solve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we go by a strict interpretation of the prime directive, then history questions are off topic. That, however, would also mean that 9/10 Stack Exchange sites should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##What should our general guidelines be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our guidelines should be exactly the same as with every other question. But since history questions have proven to be troublesome, let me re-iterate: &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;- **Askers _must_ do their homework**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If the answer to a history question can be found on a freely available reference site (read: Wikipedia) _or_ the language's / system's / project's freely available documentation, then the question is **off topic** and will be closed as such.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Questions _must_ be answerable**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   From our [about page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Programmers is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat.  &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;   Our [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is ideal for open ended discussions on programming history. History questions on the main site, as all questions on the main site, should be focused, specific and as clear as they can be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Programming history questions should be about _programming_ history**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The focus areas of the site are software development and software engineering, not _everything_ that's related to computing is acceptable on the site and history questions are no exception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **No trivia**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Trivia _by definition_ doesn't belong on Programmers. Our [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is ideal for discussions around programming history trivia." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13561" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5633" RevisionGUID="a69253ae-946a-4c52-8bfd-97588af0e375" CreationDate="2013-02-27T09:35:20.373" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="13562" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2021" RevisionGUID="dc43d093-0012-4ae1-9c32-d5c547fbe148" CreationDate="2013-02-27T09:36:18.097" UserId="25936" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[5633],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="13563" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2526" RevisionGUID="5970118b-d3fe-4bd7-a8f5-b37495bc2082" CreationDate="2013-02-27T09:36:27.423" UserId="25936" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[5633],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="13564" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="363" RevisionGUID="8c6d3a35-c454-4225-8c37-ad5247f090eb" CreationDate="2013-02-27T09:36:40.280" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13565" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="363" RevisionGUID="c4f8272d-9685-4666-87e8-3a7df77f4f9e" CreationDate="2013-02-27T09:36:45.817" UserId="25936" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[5633],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="13566" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5634" RevisionGUID="88a1aa7d-3f2c-4d98-9eec-d18477292733" CreationDate="2013-02-27T09:51:26.583" UserId="25936" Comment="added 455 characters in body" Text="##Do history questions offer value to the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, absolutely. A quick look at our [highest voted history questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bhistory%5D+closed%3A0) reveals quite a few exceptional questions and answers. The history tag is not one of our most active tags, but it does have a significant amount of questions (153 currently) and _only 2_ of them are downvoted. That's... impressive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I'm fully aware of the several valid concerns about history questions, and share most of them, I can't imagine Programmers _without_ history questions. They are a bit special, but the exceptional ones are proof enough that the topic belongs on the site, and with vigorous moderation we can deal with the low end ones.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##How do history questions pass the &quot;practical problem&quot; test?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) dictates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the prime directive for all Stack Exchange sites, and Programmers is no exception. However it's a directive that was written with Stack Overflow in mind and _some times_ it proves to be more confusing than helpful on every other Stack Exchange site. If we go by a strict interpretation of the prime directive, then history questions are off topic. That, however, would also mean that 9/10 Stack Exchange sites should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a related discussion on MSO, [I commented](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/164436/is-there-a-rule-of-thumb-for-objective-questions-asked-out-of-curiosity#comment480234_164692): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  I don't care at all if the problem is actual or practical (by whatever definition of practical), what I care about is the asker being serious about it, at least serious enough to have done some minimal research before s/he resorts to a community of volunteers. Intellectual curiosity is as great motivator as any, idle curiosity is a different beast entirely, one that, if entertained, will ultimately suck the life out of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The prime directive's goal is to stop people from asking questions out of idle curiosity. Intellectual curiosity on the other hand _can_ be an excellent motivator for questions, especially on sites that are focused on conceptual questions like Programmers. I think the fact that the majority of our history questions are either exceptional or crap it's because the first were asked out of intellectual curiosity and the latter out of idle curiosity.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And what divides the two is prior effort. If the asker has spend some time researching their question and reached a point reached a point where they can't get to the answer by themselves, guess what, they are facing an _actual_ problem. A problem that, judging from the impressive answer rate of our history questions, we can certainly help solve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##What should our general guidelines be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Intellectual curiosity is _not_ an excuse for poor questions, our guidelines should be exactly the same as with every other question. Since history questions have proven to be troublesome, let me re-iterate: &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;- **Askers _must_ do their homework**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If the answer to a history question can be found on a freely available reference site (read: Wikipedia) _or_ the language's / system's / project's freely available documentation, then the question is **off topic** and will be closed as such.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is perhaps the most important guideline for history questions. We are not here to copy paste the relevant Wikipedia article for you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Askers _must_ share their research**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Except for the very few of us that have mind reading powers, we can't guess what you already know. Please share your research with us, to avoid having people wasting their time answering with what you already know. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Questions _must_ be answerable**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   From our [about page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Programmers is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat.  &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;   Our [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is ideal for open ended discussions on programming history. History questions on the main site, as all questions on the main site, should be focused, specific and as clear as they can be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Programming history questions should be about _programming_ history**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The focus areas of the site are software development and software engineering, not _everything_ that's related to computing is acceptable on the site and history questions are no exception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **No trivia**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Trivia _by definition_ doesn't belong on Programmers. Our [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is ideal for discussions around programming history trivia." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13567" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5633" RevisionGUID="0e1d124a-1072-4c78-a683-9d35f0a6292c" CreationDate="2013-02-27T09:53:05.350" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body" Text="History questions are on topic on Programmers, but have proven to be particularly troublesome:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- It's not uncommon for history questions to get closed (and re-opened, and closed, ...)&#xD;&#xA;- It's not uncommon for history questions to not show any (or very little) prior research.&#xD;&#xA;- It's not uncommon for history questions to generate highly speculative answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had a [history week](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/programmers-se-contest-the-complete-outline/3631#3631) in last year's contest. As an example of how troublesome history questions are, even the [winning question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/149457/25936) didn't escape an early closure&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. Furthermore, almost every answerer in my [request for feedback](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3653/what-did-you-think-of-the-contest) for the contest identified the tag as particularly troublesome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the same time though, the history tag has given us some exceptional questions. A few random examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What software programming languages were used by the Soviet Union's space program?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145669/what-software-programming-languages-were-used-by-the-soviet-unions-space-progra)&#xD;&#xA;- [What were the “core” API packages of Java 1.0?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147205/what-were-the-core-api-packages-of-java-1-0)&#xD;&#xA;- [Where does the term “Red/Black Tree” come from?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/116614/where-does-the-term-red-black-tree-come-from)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that the majority of programming history questions are either exceptional or crap, with very few being somewhere in the middle of the quality spectrum. This makes the whole category a very interesting beast, and one that needs special treatment. My questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Do history questions offer value to the site?&#xD;&#xA;- How do history questions pass the &quot;practical problem&quot; test?&#xD;&#xA;- What should our general guidelines for them be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related past discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Are programming-related history/trivia questions acceptable on P.SE?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2021/are-programming-related-history-trivia-questions-acceptable-on-p-se)&#xD;&#xA;- [Is curiosity allowed on programmers.stackexchange.com?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2526/is-curiosity-allowed-on-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;- [How can historical questions be on topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/363/how-can-historical-questions-be-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;- [Are word origin questions on-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5524/are-word-origin-questions-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;- [Content Dispute for “Why do programming languages, especially C, use curly braces and not square ones?”](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5628/25936)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Don't get me wrong, early closures are good, especially when they lead to the question getting improved and re-opened.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13568" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5558" RevisionGUID="5c958e6e-4733-45f8-8c6a-3d7fc281f5a7" CreationDate="2013-02-27T10:27:47.890" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/306712225937231872" />
  <row Id="13569" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5634" RevisionGUID="7d65f14a-41f9-4cf3-94b9-69609690985e" CreationDate="2013-02-27T10:48:09.193" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo correction" Text="##Do history questions offer value to the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, absolutely. A quick look at our [highest voted history questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bhistory%5D+closed%3A0) reveals quite a few exceptional questions and answers. The history tag is not one of our most active tags, but it does have a significant amount of questions (153 currently) and _only 2_ of them are downvoted. That's... impressive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I'm fully aware of the several valid concerns about history questions, and share most of them, I can't imagine Programmers _without_ history questions. They are a bit special, but the exceptional ones are proof enough that the topic belongs on the site, and with vigorous moderation we can deal with the low end ones.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##How do history questions pass the &quot;practical problem&quot; test?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) dictates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the prime directive for all Stack Exchange sites, and Programmers is no exception. However it's a directive that was written with Stack Overflow in mind and _some times_ it proves to be more confusing than helpful on every other Stack Exchange site. If we go by a strict interpretation of the prime directive, then history questions are off topic. That, however, would also mean that 9/10 Stack Exchange sites should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a related discussion on MSO, [I commented](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/164436/is-there-a-rule-of-thumb-for-objective-questions-asked-out-of-curiosity#comment480234_164692): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  I don't care at all if the problem is actual or practical (by whatever definition of practical), what I care about is the asker being serious about it, at least serious enough to have done some minimal research before s/he resorts to a community of volunteers. Intellectual curiosity is as great motivator as any, idle curiosity is a different beast entirely, one that, if entertained, will ultimately suck the life out of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The prime directive's goal is to stop people from asking questions out of idle curiosity. Intellectual curiosity on the other hand _can_ be an excellent motivator for questions, especially on sites that are focused on conceptual questions like Programmers. I think the fact that the majority of our history questions are either exceptional or crap it's because the first were asked out of intellectual curiosity and the latter out of idle curiosity.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And what divides the two is prior effort. If the asker has spend some time researching their question and reached a point where they can't get to the answer by themselves, guess what, they are facing an _actual_ problem. A problem that, judging from the impressive answer rate of our history questions, we can certainly help solve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##What should our general guidelines be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Intellectual curiosity is _not_ an excuse for poor questions, our guidelines should be exactly the same as with every other question. Since history questions have proven to be troublesome, let me re-iterate: &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;- **Askers _must_ do their homework**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If the answer to a history question can be found on a freely available reference site (read: Wikipedia) _or_ the language's / system's / project's freely available documentation, then the question is **off topic** and will be closed as such.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is perhaps the most important guideline for history questions. We are not here to copy paste the relevant Wikipedia article for you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Askers _must_ share their research**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Except for the very few of us that have mind reading powers, we can't guess what you already know. Please share your research with us, to avoid having people wasting their time answering with what you already know. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Questions _must_ be answerable**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   From our [about page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Programmers is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat.  &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;   Our [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is ideal for open ended discussions on programming history. History questions on the main site, as all questions on the main site, should be focused, specific and as clear as they can be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Programming history questions should be about _programming_ history**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The focus areas of the site are software development and software engineering, not _everything_ that's related to computing is acceptable on the site and history questions are no exception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **No trivia**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Trivia _by definition_ doesn't belong on Programmers. Our [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is ideal for discussions around programming history trivia." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13570" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5635" RevisionGUID="935ed4c6-f867-4c38-ad3c-1bfa9584a8f3" CreationDate="2013-02-27T11:51:45.233" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="For the time being, I would just drop those two sentences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) As it stands, it's potentially redirecting questions that _should_ be on P.SE over to SO.  (Say it with me: d'oh! Bart!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Unlike [SO's don't ask FAQ](http://stackoverflow.com/faq#dontask) we're not suggesting any other site.  And perhaps we should, but that's another matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) Our `don't ask` section would read just fine without those two lines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4) That's not the place to draw out a differentiation between P.SE and SO, which is what would be required to properly redirect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5) I have a quibble about the professional vs. enthusiast aspects, but this question isn't the place to hash that out either.  I'd say we're open to all programmers, not just professionals but I may be using too narrow a definition of professional in this case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;TL;DR&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would say to drop those two lines that you quoted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13571" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5595" RevisionGUID="2312b55e-13bb-4126-b7eb-d756a4883e93" CreationDate="2013-02-27T13:28:40.247" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/306757744126459904" />
  <row Id="13572" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5636" RevisionGUID="d1132248-dac2-4c42-ac25-37350ee281ca" CreationDate="2013-02-27T14:17:54.370" UserDisplayName="user29079" Text="It is a bad question because there is not necessarily any rationale behind the '{'. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When there is one, how likely is it that it is of great interest for the programming community? (One such answer could be &quot;it was inherited from B that inherited it from BPCL, a language which has barely ever been used in the real world&quot; etc etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And when there is no rationale, the only answer possible is a speculation. And there is likely no practical use of such knowledge either. If you know why `{` was used for blocks in C, how will that make you a better programmer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can take any aspect of the language and ask pointless questions in the same manner. Why is `#` used for the preprocessor? Why is `!` used for logical NOT? Why is `^` used for XOR? And there you go, an endless flood of meaningless questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this falls under the &quot;too broad&quot; category, because most answers are likely going to be of a philosophical nature. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13573" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5614" RevisionGUID="fc0aefb6-ef47-465a-80b4-d8074a405511" CreationDate="2013-02-27T16:28:40.107" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/306803043121393664" />
  <row Id="13574" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5637" RevisionGUID="709fc774-4d75-4c10-abcf-cfa9d07469c2" CreationDate="2013-02-27T16:50:33.050" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="This answer is a bit of a straw-man in order to apply what's being proposed and evaluate that against past precedent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Our Example:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188455/why-do-programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-braces-and-not-square-ones&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;was recently asked and is currently closed &amp; locked.  The lock, I presume, is pending the outcome of this Meta discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5628/content-dispute-for-why-do-programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-brace&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Analysis against criteria:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Askers must do their homework&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Somewhat failed as I don't consider a single look-up within Wikipedia as research.  But I certainly reference Wikipedia as convenient, so I'll grant the consideration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Askers must share their research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Passed inasmuch as we're given the Wikipedia reference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions must be answerable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is both a pass and fail.  The answers to that question provide some compelling evidence and / or conjecture.  On the other hand, my initial take on this question was &quot;how would anyone know that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programming history questions should be about programming history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definite pass.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No trivia&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Arguable pass.  If there had been a more clear-cut problem to be solved then this answer would be a cleaner pass.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Past Precedent:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159593/why-was-the-percent-sign-chosen-as-the-format-specifier-for-the-printf-famil  &#xD;&#xA;This one has a bit more research to it, but doesn't necessarily have a problem to be solved.  Overall, I would consider this fairly similar to the braces question.  It fails the trivia test by not having a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/117943/why-is-in-identifier-names-for-so-many-languages  &#xD;&#xA;No research; no problem to be solved; pretty much a curiosity question only.  I'd argue this is a weaker question than the braces question.  This one is still open even though it qualifies as trivia without having a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124570/why-pointer-symbol-and-multiplication-sign-are-same-in-c-c  &#xD;&#xA;No research but does have a problem to be solved.  Interestingly, the answers are actually more valuable than the original question scope because they extend into the more general problem of parsing issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118268/do-any-languages-use-for-the-inequality-operator  &#xD;&#xA;Equivalent research (Wikipedia) but no problem to be solved; mostly an intellectual curiosity question.  Without a problem to solve, this is likely trivia.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some commonalities:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those four questions share minimal to no research as well as being equally difficult to assess on the `answerable` category.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three of the four qualify as trivia, but are currently open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My thoughts / conclusions:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The assessment of the recent braces questions would indicate it should remain closed, but past question precedent contradicts the results of the assessment and that the braces question should be opened back up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The assessment also doesn't take into account the great answers that the braces question has attracted.  I acknowledge though that it's impossible to make an a priori determination like that though.  The answers, though, place the question within the ranks of the more interesting historical questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since this is in meta -  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote up if you agree with my application of the assessments from above and that we need to keep working out the details of the assessment questions to improve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote down if you think I woefully missed something in the application. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13575" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5637" RevisionGUID="b4091ec2-a01e-47ed-9288-a9a15cbdee46" CreationDate="2013-02-27T16:50:33.050" UserDisplayName="user53019" />
  <row Id="13576" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5637" RevisionGUID="a505ead6-216c-4529-8ce8-7e9694800b50" CreationDate="2013-02-27T16:58:20.213" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="link to explain a priori" Text="This answer is a bit of a straw-man in order to apply what's being proposed and evaluate that against past precedent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Our Example:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188455/why-do-programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-braces-and-not-square-ones&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;was recently asked and is currently closed &amp; locked.  The lock, I presume, is pending the outcome of this Meta discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5628/content-dispute-for-why-do-programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-brace&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Analysis against criteria:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Askers must do their homework&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Somewhat failed as I don't consider a single look-up within Wikipedia as research.  But I certainly reference Wikipedia as convenient, so I'll grant the consideration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Askers must share their research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Passed inasmuch as we're given the Wikipedia reference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions must be answerable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is both a pass and fail.  The answers to that question provide some compelling evidence and / or conjecture.  On the other hand, my initial take on this question was &quot;how would anyone know that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programming history questions should be about programming history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definite pass.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No trivia&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Arguable pass.  If there had been a more clear-cut problem to be solved then this answer would be a cleaner pass.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Past Precedent:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159593/why-was-the-percent-sign-chosen-as-the-format-specifier-for-the-printf-famil  &#xD;&#xA;This one has a bit more research to it, but doesn't necessarily have a problem to be solved.  Overall, I would consider this fairly similar to the braces question.  It fails the trivia test by not having a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/117943/why-is-in-identifier-names-for-so-many-languages  &#xD;&#xA;No research; no problem to be solved; pretty much a curiosity question only.  I'd argue this is a weaker question than the braces question.  This one is still open even though it qualifies as trivia without having a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124570/why-pointer-symbol-and-multiplication-sign-are-same-in-c-c  &#xD;&#xA;No research but does have a problem to be solved.  Interestingly, the answers are actually more valuable than the original question scope because they extend into the more general problem of parsing issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118268/do-any-languages-use-for-the-inequality-operator  &#xD;&#xA;Equivalent research (Wikipedia) but no problem to be solved; mostly an intellectual curiosity question.  Without a problem to solve, this is likely trivia.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some commonalities:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those four questions share minimal to no research as well as being equally difficult to assess on the `answerable` category.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three of the four qualify as trivia, but are currently open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My thoughts / conclusions:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The assessment of the recent braces questions would indicate it should remain closed, but past question precedent contradicts the results of the assessment and that the braces question should be opened back up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The assessment also doesn't take into account the great answers that the braces question has attracted.  I acknowledge though that it's impossible to make an [a priori](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori_) determination like that though.  The answers, though, place the question within the ranks of the more interesting historical questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since this is in meta -  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote up if you agree with my application of the assessments from above and that we need to keep working out the details of the assessment questions to improve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote down if you think I woefully missed something in the application. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13577" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5638" RevisionGUID="38814758-e29c-4211-ba64-27d3a53acb8e" CreationDate="2013-02-27T17:00:24.690" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="My [answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5637/53019) to Yannis' question on [historical questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5633/53019) led me to the conclusion that the braces question should be opened back up.  I didn't start out intending to create a response for this question, but that's what happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short version - the braces question has several similar characteristics as other historical questions that have provided some great answers.  Those other questions are open, so logic would dictate we open the braces question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I'm still not comfortable with two aspects of this conclusion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It doesn't make a distinction about other special characters.  [Lundin's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5636/53019) in this question raises some very good points regarding the slippery slope this can present.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The determination about &quot;is this a good question&quot; is relying upon an [a posteriori](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori) determination which I'm not comfortable with for a number of reasons.  I cling to the belief that a question should be determinable as &quot;good for SE&quot; by the question alone and not rely upon the answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13578" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5639" RevisionGUID="7511ea79-100c-4d86-b216-aa05b5fe8d74" CreationDate="2013-02-27T17:54:45.490" UserId="3965" Text="There is a whole group of people I call &quot;ego voters&quot; who have a basic philosophy that if they can't personally think of a good answer, it *must* be a bad question, that askers magically &quot;should know&quot; beforehand if there's any particular significance to a programming tradition or not, and that if there doesn't happen to be any particular significance, that information isn't worth knowing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even seemingly inane information can potentially improve a design.  I'm reminded of [How the width of a horse's butt determined the size of the space shuttle](http://www.opednews.com/articles/How-the-width-of-a-horse-s-by-Rob-Kall-080709-431.html).  This story is popular among engineers primarily because it humorously illustrates how some design constraints evolve out of seeming nonsense.  However, to the guy who designs the next generation shuttle, not knowing the story could significantly impact their design for the worse.  They might manufacture their parts on site, or ship by air or sea, and be artificially limiting the width of their design without being aware of the reasons why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see that artificially limited thinking all the time among software developers.  A certain design principle was important in C, then gets passed from mentor to mentor until someone is doing it in a language where it doesn't matter.  He has no idea why, but still defends the principle as gospel.  They're letting a proverbial horse's butt dictate their software design for no good reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what does that have to do with curly braces?  Well, there might be some huge significance to them, based on lambda calculus or something.  Or there might be no significance at all, besides there only being three kinds of braces on the keyboard and the other two were already taken.  Either way, the asker cannot reasonably know before he poses the question, and even if there is no significance, you never know when you might be breaking an obsolete paradigm for the person who designs the next great programming language.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In summary, don't let the horse butts win :-)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13579" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5640" RevisionGUID="69e37f6e-7525-4880-9af8-a5b2c21510c9" CreationDate="2013-02-27T18:31:19.203" UserId="3965" Text="I think a requirement of a history tag should be added.  The blessing and curse of Programmers SE is that most all the topics are interesting to most all the users.  History questions are the huge exception.  As evidenced by the close/reopen wars, about half the users find history questions interesting and useful, and half find them inane and impractical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ironically, on StackOverflow this sort of situation is less of a problem because the ratio of uninteresting to interesting is so high that people are accustomed to using tags to filter out questions that are on topic for the site but personally uninteresting to them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think history questions are a good place to start emphasizing the tag system.  The proper response if you personally don't like history questions is not to go around closing them, but to add the history tag to your ignored list, and to ensure such questions are tagged properly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13580" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5640" RevisionGUID="6bae3914-23ae-4add-a23c-c657366eb2bb" CreationDate="2013-02-27T18:31:19.203" UserId="3965" />
  <row Id="13581" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5580" RevisionGUID="cdf7253d-b088-499f-9a7d-2bb5f56aad2a" CreationDate="2013-02-27T19:28:48.087" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/306848372671791104" />
  <row Id="13582" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5641" RevisionGUID="2aa1a533-4c4d-483a-9ec5-e2ff3ddae887" CreationDate="2013-02-27T19:54:41.753" UserId="897" Text="I generally dislike &quot;Why did/nt X do Y&quot; type questions, and vote to close them with a certain level of aggression.  They are asking about motivation, which can be very difficult to 'prove'.  While its certainly possible there is some cite, somewhere, that says Ritchie chose curly braces because they looked like the bookends on his office shelf, or because they use 20% less moonbeam energy than square brackets... the reality is most of the answers to questions like this end up being speculation.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13583" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5556" RevisionGUID="9056d45e-e33b-43e8-a0d3-7060932ecf1b" CreationDate="2013-02-27T22:28:47.070" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/306893668692926464" />
  <row Id="13584" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5642" RevisionGUID="d301ae36-7cdb-47c7-a1a8-143574438805" CreationDate="2013-02-27T23:10:07.973" UserId="935" Text="Can someone have a look at [this question][1]?  Some newbie who apparently doesn't understand the idea of abstraction came along and asked a question that, admittedly, is a bit ranty.  Several people, including myself, tried to come up with useful answers that would help the asker learn and understand... but several other people closed it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But then something crazy happened.  I went to cast a reopen vote, and there's no reopen link.  The Edit link is grayed out, and hovering over it says that the question is locked.  But there's no &quot;Locked&quot; message anywhere on the question, nor any evidence that a moderator ever looked at it.  (The question was closed by five ordinary users.)  Something appears to be very broken here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone please fix this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188657/why-do-data-types-in-computers-exist-if-its-really-all-just-bits" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13585" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5642" RevisionGUID="d301ae36-7cdb-47c7-a1a8-143574438805" CreationDate="2013-02-27T23:10:07.973" UserId="935" Text="Something very strange going on in a closed question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13586" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5642" RevisionGUID="d301ae36-7cdb-47c7-a1a8-143574438805" CreationDate="2013-02-27T23:10:07.973" UserId="935" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13587" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5643" RevisionGUID="c1578915-89b4-4c9c-97a1-50e693ab0597" CreationDate="2013-02-27T23:11:37.657" UserId="47" Text="The question was migrated from Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the migration is rejected by the question getting closed as Off Topic or Not a Real Question it's deemed to be a bad migration and the question locked down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can unlock it if you think it's salvageable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13588" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5643" RevisionGUID="6feea7e4-7595-424a-8a6a-313e6e2259d2" CreationDate="2013-02-27T23:17:50.297" UserId="47" Comment="added 206 characters in body" Text="The question was migrated from Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the migration is rejected by the question getting closed as Off Topic or Not a Real Question it's deemed to be a bad migration and the question locked down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can unlock it if you think it's salvageable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once unlocked you'll be able to cast reopen votes as well as editing it. Once you've finished improving it flag it for moderator attention and we'll look at getting it reopened sooner rather than later." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13589" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5642" RevisionGUID="ebab0917-e081-4097-8a4b-2213ba139c8e" CreationDate="2013-02-27T23:28:59.750" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Adding second tag before Yannis sees..." Text="|bug|closed-questions|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13590" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5644" RevisionGUID="d3de8fda-e4b6-4b15-911c-f1dc17fc13b7" CreationDate="2013-02-27T23:54:11.473" UserId="63" Text="This is sort of an edge-case. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a migration is [rejected](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/35744/allow-diamond-moderators-to-reverse-question-migrations), its answers are deleted on the target site, it is locked, and the reverse happens on the origin site - so right now on SO, [that question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15123889/why-do-data-types-in-computers-exist-if-its-really-all-just-bits) is just marked closed; it could be re-opened, deleted, edited, etc. - unless you check the history, there's no evidence it was ever migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Normally, folks don't *do stuff* to migrated questions after the migration has been rejected. It gets weird. That question now exists in both places. (I will clean this up)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That being said, we probably could do a better job of communicating the state of the question. My preference would be to explicitly state that the question was migrated in *and then rejected*; but we could also just [tack on the normal Locked notice](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/130116/show-lock-banners-on-rejected-migrations); vote for that if you like the idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13591" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5645" RevisionGUID="d73a827d-f420-45bc-82b2-9968b0d64a0e" CreationDate="2013-02-28T00:03:27.380" UserId="82723" Text=" &#xD;&#xA;    * How can historical questions be on topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They can never be (in the how-to-solve-a-problem meaning) and they are very unlikely to be of practical use. There is only the decision to allow them at all. Therefore, if they are allowed, the criteria of practical use and being on-topic must be summarily abandoned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * Do history questions offer value to the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the deciding factor for or against allowing them. The alternative is bits and pieces on Wikipedia as the fancy strikes self-proclaimed programming historians that hang there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * It's not uncommon for history questions to get closed (and re-opened, and closed, ...)&#xD;&#xA;    * It's not uncommon for history questions to not show any (or very little) prior research.&#xD;&#xA;    * It's not uncommon for history questions to generate highly speculative answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All three are of course entirely irrelevant arguments for allowing or disallowing &quot;questions of type x&quot;. And not because all three traits are present in all the other types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * Askers must do their homework&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Insofar as such is attainable, this is the same as for other types of questions. Likely, however, a history question is necessary because there is a real scarcity of programming history to be googled out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * Askers must share their research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes. Same as for other question types.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * Questions must be answerable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They likely will be, although perhaps not in a few weeks for the more obscure ones. Fuzzy wording should be treated the same as for other question types, of course; close, ask for a properly phrased question, possibly reopen. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * Programming history questions should be about programming history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not, close it as not a real programming history question and done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * No trivia&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This conflicts with the self-answering Q&amp;A-spirit present in other SO sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My opinion is that a site gathering programming history from programmers while they are still living would be fascinating and appreciated by many. There are so many paths programmers have taken that if SO didn't provide this resource the history would not be recorded; relying on programmers to host a site to tell tall technical tales about their niche is extremely likely to result in no history recorded at all. The argument for SO to provide the resource is (for me) the excellent functionality." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13592" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5645" RevisionGUID="94deffd4-ab8e-4a39-bf50-491773475bb1" CreationDate="2013-02-28T00:03:27.380" UserId="82723" />
  <row Id="13593" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5645" RevisionGUID="d78364e6-5c20-48f7-b0dd-59a3cb247270" CreationDate="2013-02-28T00:09:54.287" UserId="82723" Comment="added 86 characters in body" Text=" &#xD;&#xA;    * How can historical questions be on topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They can never be (in the how-to-solve-a-problem meaning) and they are very unlikely to be of practical use. There is only the decision to allow them at all. Therefore, if they are allowed, the criteria of practical use and being on-topic must be summarily abandoned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * Do history questions offer value to the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the deciding factor for or against allowing them. The alternative is bits and pieces on Wikipedia as the fancy strikes self-proclaimed programming historians that hang there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * It's not uncommon for history questions to get closed (and re-opened, and closed, ...)&#xD;&#xA;    * It's not uncommon for history questions to not show any (or very little) prior research.&#xD;&#xA;    * It's not uncommon for history questions to generate highly speculative answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All three are of course entirely irrelevant arguments for allowing or disallowing &quot;questions of type x&quot;. And not because all three traits are present in all the other types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * Askers must do their homework&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Insofar as such is attainable, this is the same as for other types of questions. Likely, however, a history question is necessary because there is a real scarcity of programming history to be googled out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * Askers must share their research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes. Same as for other question types.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * Questions must be answerable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They likely will be, although perhaps not in a few weeks for the more obscure ones. Fuzzy wording should be treated the same as for other question types, of course; close, ask for a properly phrased question, possibly reopen. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * Programming history questions should be about programming history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not, close it as not a real programming history question and done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * No trivia&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This conflicts with the self-answering Q&amp;A-spirit present in other SO sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My opinion is that a site gathering programming history from programmers while they are still living would be fascinating and appreciated by many. There are so many paths programmers have taken that if SO didn't provide this resource the history would not be recorded; relying on programmers to host a site to tell tall technical tales about their niche is extremely likely to result in no history recorded at all. The argument for SO to provide the resource is (for me) the excellent functionality and likeliness of involvement and attracting the right people with insightful answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13594" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5646" RevisionGUID="37edeb74-f3b6-4193-83eb-7c01ee712bd5" CreationDate="2013-02-28T01:27:04.263" UserId="63" Text="By default, that list is everything that's been recently active (you can change this via the tabs on the right). &quot;Top&quot; in this case is a synonym for &quot;recent&quot; - it's the top of the stack, so to speak. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to see the top-as-in-best questions for the site, check out the [Greatest Hits](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/greatest-hits) " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13595" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5645" RevisionGUID="bd8e3e5b-98a2-4052-b241-a56978691fcf" CreationDate="2013-02-28T01:34:58.403" UserId="82723" Comment="added 356 characters in body" Text=" &#xD;&#xA;    * How can historical questions be on topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They can never be (in the how-to-solve-a-problem meaning) and they are very unlikely to be of practical use. There is only the decision to allow them at all. Therefore, if they are allowed, the criteria of practical use and being on-topic must be summarily abandoned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * Do history questions offer value to the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the deciding factor for or against allowing them. The alternative is bits and pieces on Wikipedia as the fancy strikes self-proclaimed programming historians that hang there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * It's not uncommon for history questions to get closed (and re-opened, and closed, ...)&#xD;&#xA;    * It's not uncommon for history questions to not show any (or very little) prior research.&#xD;&#xA;    * It's not uncommon for history questions to generate highly speculative answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All three are of course entirely irrelevant arguments for allowing or disallowing &quot;questions of type x&quot;. And not because all three traits are present in all the other types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * Askers must do their homework&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Insofar as such is attainable, this is the same as for other types of questions. Likely, however, a history question is necessary because there is a real scarcity of programming history to be googled out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * Askers must share their research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes. Same as for other question types.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * Questions must be answerable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They likely will be, although perhaps not in a few weeks for the more obscure ones. Fuzzy wording should be treated the same as for other question types, of course; close, ask for a properly phrased question, possibly reopen. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * Programming history questions should be about programming history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not, close it as not a real programming history question and done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * No trivia&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider the question &quot;What are the origins of DOS in PCs?&quot;. It would not be a complete answer to stop at the company Microsoft bought it from, or to not mention IBM. In the case that the asker answers his own similar question himself, this conflicts with the Q&amp;A-spirit present in other SO sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My opinion is that a site gathering programming history from programmers while they are still living would be fascinating and appreciated by many. There are so many paths programmers have taken that if SO didn't provide this resource the history would not be recorded; relying on programmers to host a site to tell tall technical tales about their niche is extremely likely to result in no history recorded at all. The argument for SO to provide the resource is (for me) the excellent functionality and likeliness of involvement and attracting the right people with insightful answers, since some already hang here, having moved from a historical programming niche to a current and to-be-historical programming niche. ;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13596" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5647" RevisionGUID="c4305991-3dbd-4a8e-8369-c841b23f8fc8" CreationDate="2013-02-28T04:51:00.017" UserId="3965" Text="We've had a few questions like http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/188657/3965 lately where the question is ranty, but not anything some editing couldn't fix, but in the comments the *user* who asked the question is arguing and soliciting debate and discussion.  Pretty much the textbook definition of &quot;not constructive&quot; except it's the user that's the problem more than the question itself.  Sometimes the lengths they go to in defending a specious argument makes me wonder if the asker has some sort of mental illness.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the worst of these cases end up getting purged from the system.  At least I couldn't find more examples when I looked just now.  In nearly all cases the question quickly gets closed.  I've even voted to close after answering some of them myself.  However, it sort of seems a shame we can't lock out the original asker but keep the question after some editing.  Is there some sort of standard way these situations are supposed to be handled?  Normally I'd encourage editing and reopening, but if it's the user being intentionally argumentative it seems a quick delete would be a better course of action." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13597" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5647" RevisionGUID="c4305991-3dbd-4a8e-8369-c841b23f8fc8" CreationDate="2013-02-28T04:51:00.017" UserId="3965" Text="Argumentative users with borderline questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13598" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5647" RevisionGUID="c4305991-3dbd-4a8e-8369-c841b23f8fc8" CreationDate="2013-02-28T04:51:00.017" UserId="3965" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13599" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5648" RevisionGUID="fb026452-37fd-49af-b82a-7989bbded6e5" CreationDate="2013-02-28T06:41:09.060" UserDisplayName="user82709" Text="recently, my question (link below) was closed as &quot;off topic&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;I don't really agree with that, and feel misunderstood. Reading the FAQ didn't make it clear either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone clarify? =/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188639/looking-for-books-on-the-c-and-posix-standards&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks,&#xD;&#xA;Andy" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13600" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5648" RevisionGUID="fb026452-37fd-49af-b82a-7989bbded6e5" CreationDate="2013-02-28T06:41:09.060" UserDisplayName="user82709" Text="Why was my question closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13601" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5648" RevisionGUID="fb026452-37fd-49af-b82a-7989bbded6e5" CreationDate="2013-02-28T06:41:09.060" UserDisplayName="user82709" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13602" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5649" RevisionGUID="92480171-961b-4075-979f-903bef014950" CreationDate="2013-02-28T07:48:09.530" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="This was somewhat exceptional, as a few weird things were at play. I'd like to answer your question twice, first speaking to this specific incident, and then in a more general sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was originally [asked on Stack Overflow][1] (now deleted), [then rejected as folks were working on it][2] and then finally unlocked (but closed) which is its current state. As Yannis indicated, there's also some private administrative history which we really can't go into - but suffice it to say that suspending the user as was done was the fastest way to stop the disruption while the other factors at play were resolved. It was a perfect miniature storm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now - a more general answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, yes, we should definitely separate content from contributor when determining what adds to or detracts from the value of the site. A good question asked by a rather disagreeable user is still a good contribution, especially if it has attracted useful and well written answers. Sure, sometimes users get upset that their question wasn't as well received or understood as they hoped it would be, but seldom do you see these frustrations manifest themselves so vehemently. We also should assume that questions are asked in good faith unless it becomes blatantly obvious that they were not. So yes, in general, always try to salvage good and helpful content, unless doing so costs more than it's worth - at which point a moderator may need to be involved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This brings us back to the case at point. When actions seem a little strange, you can generally rest assured that the moderators are taking past history into consideration, even if that history is not immediately evident. This usually means handling things a little differently than usual, on a case by case basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the situation were any less complicated, the question would simply have been edited into shape, received the answers that it did and settled into an uneventful existence. This was really an exceptional case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15123889/why-do-data-types-in-computers-exist-if-its-really-all-just-bits&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5642/something-very-strange-going-on-in-a-closed-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13603" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5649" RevisionGUID="b4ef7bde-45a1-4768-9e2e-1a3cf4a006f3" CreationDate="2013-02-28T07:56:53.977" UserDisplayName="user131" Comment="added 18 characters in body" Text="This was somewhat exceptional, as a few weird things were at play. I'd like to answer your question twice, first speaking to this specific incident, and then in a more general sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was originally [asked on Stack Overflow][1] (now deleted) and migrated here, [then rejected as folks were working on it][2] and then finally unlocked (but closed) which is its current state. As Yannis indicated, there's also some private administrative history which we really can't go into - but suffice it to say that suspending the user as was done was the fastest way to stop the disruption while the other factors at play were resolved. It was a perfect miniature storm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now - a more general answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, yes, we should definitely separate content from contributor when determining what adds to or detracts from the value of the site. A good question asked by a rather disagreeable user is still a good contribution, especially if it has attracted useful and well written answers. Sure, sometimes users get upset that their question wasn't as well received or understood as they hoped it would be, but seldom do you see these frustrations manifest themselves so intensely or vehemently. We also should assume that questions are asked in good faith unless it becomes blatantly obvious that they were not. So yes, in general, always try to salvage good and helpful content, unless doing so costs more than it's worth - at which point a moderator may need to be involved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This brings us back to the case at point. When actions seem a little strange, you can generally rest assured that the moderators are taking past history into consideration, even if that history is not immediately evident. This usually means handling things a little differently than usual, on a case by case basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the situation were any less complicated, the question would simply have been edited into shape, received the answers that it did and settled into an uneventful existence. This was really an exceptional case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15123889/why-do-data-types-in-computers-exist-if-its-really-all-just-bits&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5642/something-very-strange-going-on-in-a-closed-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13608" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5651" RevisionGUID="194fef44-1cb4-4b69-a511-68dd8bbb5622" CreationDate="2013-02-28T14:11:16.620" UserId="1130" Text="I think users misunderstood your question and thought you were asking for a book list about the subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask for broad recommendations like that are typically considered Not Constructive for Stack Exchange because it results in a huge list of books on the subject, voted/sorted according to popularity, and that rapidly gets outdated over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've made an edit to your question to try and clarify that you are looking for the standard documentation for C and POSIX standards so you can reference them in your master thesis, and you are not looking for a huge list of books or other resources to learn from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've voted to reopen the question, however it still needs 4 more reopen votes from other community members (or 1 moderator vote). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13611" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5648" RevisionGUID="d8a77504-95d5-41eb-8f03-e5fa4b79aaf9" CreationDate="2013-03-01T02:57:23.393" UserDisplayName="user7007" Comment="deleted 18 characters in body" Text="recently, my question, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188639/looking-for-books-on-the-c-and-posix-standards, was closed as &quot;off topic&quot;. I don't really agree with that, and feel misunderstood. Reading the FAQ didn't make it clear either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone clarify?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13612" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5605" RevisionGUID="e5aeaf7d-45ff-4a4a-8b43-04f90d756a44" CreationDate="2013-03-01T04:29:41.677" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/307346883825770497" />
  <row Id="13613" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="5648" RevisionGUID="a843ed7f-65bd-4ee3-801a-773fc047b1ae" CreationDate="2013-03-01T13:47:07.113" UserId="1130" Comment="Rollback to [fb026452-37fd-49af-b82a-7989bbded6e5]" Text="recently, my question (link below) was closed as &quot;off topic&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;I don't really agree with that, and feel misunderstood. Reading the FAQ didn't make it clear either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone clarify? =/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188639/looking-for-books-on-the-c-and-posix-standards&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks,&#xD;&#xA;Andy" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13614" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5648" RevisionGUID="d97e65a8-cb7e-4178-9573-cb5df96feda6" CreationDate="2013-03-01T13:48:46.363" UserId="1130" Comment="Wanted to keep original question title posted in question as it explains the closure better. I thought a rollback would put it back, but that doesn't appear to be the case." Text="Recently, my question [Looking for books on the C and POSIX standards](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188639/looking-for-books-on-the-c-and-posix-standards) was closed as &quot;off topic&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;I don't really agree with that, and feel misunderstood. Reading the FAQ didn't make it clear either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone clarify? =/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks,&#xD;&#xA;Andy" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13615" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5652" RevisionGUID="3c0b893b-7300-4f90-8348-791771454ab4" CreationDate="2013-03-01T15:46:18.297" UserId="1813" Text="Here is the question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61394/do-you-see-an-use-for-spreadsheet-programming/188854#188854&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short summary: spreadsheets should be translated into standalone apps, is there any example, is it a good idea, what's your opinion, experience?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, it's not a question like &quot;what's the name of string replace function in PHP?&quot; (this is a daily question from STKOV and *never* gets closed), instead, it's an excellent idea, which is &quot;not in the air&quot; like big data or whatsoever, but if we discuss this, the world should go further. I think.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand if it gets closed on STKOV, but this is the *Programmers* site, where dudes can come out with new ideas, ask others wheter they tried or not or will it blend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Point out pls that I'm wrong, **but**, with the same movement, send me the appropiate SXCHG site, where programmers can discuss about theoretical issues, plans, architectures. I'm looking for something just like code reviews, but only with ideas, concepts." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13616" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5652" RevisionGUID="3c0b893b-7300-4f90-8348-791771454ab4" CreationDate="2013-03-01T15:46:18.297" UserId="1813" Text="Yet Another Question Closed Don't Know Why - please tell me, don't let me in the darkness" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13617" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5652" RevisionGUID="3c0b893b-7300-4f90-8348-791771454ab4" CreationDate="2013-03-01T15:46:18.297" UserId="1813" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13618" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5653" RevisionGUID="581a7b3f-1752-4403-bf42-f0a565d95bf2" CreationDate="2013-03-01T16:04:53.497" UserId="4" Text="Stack Exchange sites are for answering specific questions that can be backed up with some combination of facts and experiences, not discussing ideas. Asking people for their opinions or thoughts on a subject or carrying out an extended discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you linked to is very clearly a poll. It's not about solving a problem or understanding a topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am interested in knowing whether you have experienced using the technique and what for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That right there makes the question a bad fit everywhere on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every site does have a chat room. People with 100 reputation on a site can create chat rooms for discussion of a particular topic. Anyone with 20 reputation can participate in any of the public chat rooms. Discussion should either happen in these chat rooms or in a more suitable format, such as a discussion forum." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13619" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5652" RevisionGUID="ce605bc5-b3cb-4e28-a1a4-58e0ce014c42" CreationDate="2013-03-01T16:09:04.593" UserId="25936" Comment="added 31 characters in body" Text="Here is the question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61394/do-you-see-an-use-for-spreadsheet-programming/188854#188854&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short summary: spreadsheets should be translated into standalone apps, is there any example, is it a good idea, what's your opinion, experience?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, it's not a question like &quot;what's the name of string replace function in PHP?&quot; (this is a daily question from Stack Overflow and *never* gets closed), instead, it's an excellent idea, which is &quot;not in the air&quot; like big data or whatsoever, but if we discuss this, the world should go further. I think.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand if it gets closed on Stack Overflow, but this is the *Programmers* site, where dudes can come out with new ideas, ask others wheter they tried or not or will it blend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Point out please that I'm wrong, **but**, with the same movement, send me to the appropriate Stack Exchange site, where programmers can discuss about theoretical issues, plans, architectures. I'm looking for something just like code reviews, but only with ideas, concepts." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13620" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5652" RevisionGUID="5b1e6faf-d601-48db-93f1-26205ec0b575" CreationDate="2013-03-01T17:14:45.463" UserId="1996" Comment="edited title" Text="Yet Another Question Closed Don't Know Why - please tell me, don't keep me in the darkness" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13621" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5654" RevisionGUID="56b6d7be-ce4b-4d96-9e8d-25f8ddc526df" CreationDate="2013-03-01T17:34:46.713" UserId="1204" Text="I'm going to try and keep this short, because a lot of it has already been discussed.  If you are interested in the history, you can find it here on Programmers Meta, but here's a very brief recap:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Programmers started out life as &quot;Not Programming Related.&quot;  It was supposed to be a haven for all of those &quot;soft&quot; questions that Stack Overflow didn't want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Stack Exchange decided to change the scope of the site, when it became apparent that the &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; concept was not working.  But they waited a little too long.&#xD;&#xA;3.  We lost a high-rep user, largely because &quot;people factors&quot; are no longer considered on-topic.  We lost a good mod, who was probably tired of fighting the good fight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  We've argued over the site scope ever since.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is a site *for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is Programmers' site scope, taken directly from the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it.  Now tell me, how does a question like *&quot;Where can I find a printed copy of the C++ specification&quot;* fit within this framework?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I get the impression that the user community is asking themselves, &quot;How can we make Programmers more friendly and more inclusive?&quot;  If that is the case, *you're asking the wrong question.*  The question you should be asking is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;###How can I make this site more friendly to *experts?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am a moderator on Stack Overflow.  What I have noticed is that people sometimes ask their conceptual programming questions on Stack Overflow instead of Programmers; when I ask why, they usually say &quot;there are more people here to answer my question.&quot;  What they really mean is, &quot;the experts are here.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are you here?  Is it to talk about one of the bullet points above?  Or is it to help people find books?  Is it to help people design, architect and test their programs, or is it to talk about [why end users are so unreasonable](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188886)? Do you really think the experts care why [c languages use curly braces?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188455)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a balance between helping people get answers to their questions, and keeping the site an interesting place.  There's nothing wrong with helping someone out, but too many questions that are only interesting to one person, or only interesting to non-experts, will drive away the experts. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without experts, *there is no site.*&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13622" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5654" RevisionGUID="56b6d7be-ce4b-4d96-9e8d-25f8ddc526df" CreationDate="2013-03-01T17:34:46.713" UserId="1204" Text="Why are you still confused about what Programmers is for?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13623" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5654" RevisionGUID="56b6d7be-ce4b-4d96-9e8d-25f8ddc526df" CreationDate="2013-03-01T17:34:46.713" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13624" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5654" RevisionGUID="4dd5bc2b-9a18-4f4f-aa26-0a4b6b3135e7" CreationDate="2013-03-01T17:45:49.393" UserId="1204" Comment="added 50 characters in body" Text="I'm going to try and keep this short, because a lot of it has already been discussed.  If you are interested in the history, you can find it here on Programmers Meta, but here's a very brief recap:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Programmers started out life as &quot;Not Programming Related.&quot;  It was supposed to be a haven for all of those &quot;soft&quot; questions that Stack Overflow didn't want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Stack Exchange decided to change the scope of the site, when it became apparent that the &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; concept was not working.  But they waited a little too long.&#xD;&#xA;3.  We lost a high-rep user, largely because &quot;people factors&quot; are no longer considered on-topic.  We lost a good mod, who was probably tired of fighting the good fight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  We've argued over the site scope ever since.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is a site *for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is Programmers' site scope, taken directly from the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it.  Now tell me, how does a question like [Where can I find a printed copy of the C++ specification](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/188639/1204) fit within this framework?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I get the impression that the user community is asking themselves, &quot;How can we make Programmers more friendly and more inclusive?&quot;  If that is the case, *you're asking the wrong question.*  The question you should be asking is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;###How can I make this site more friendly to *experts?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am a moderator on Stack Overflow.  What I have noticed is that people sometimes ask their conceptual programming questions on Stack Overflow instead of Programmers; when I ask why, they usually say &quot;there are more people here to answer my question.&quot;  What they really mean is, &quot;the experts are here.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are *you* here?  Is it to talk about one of the bullet points above?  Or is it to help people find books?  Is it to help people design, architect and test their programs, or is it to talk about [why end users are so unreasonable](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188886)? Do you really think the experts care why [c languages use curly braces?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188455)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a balance between helping people get answers to their questions, and keeping the site an interesting place.  There's nothing wrong with helping someone out, but too many questions that are only interesting to one person, or only interesting to non-experts, will drive away the experts. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without experts, *there is no site.*&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13625" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5654" RevisionGUID="9b470dc1-f72e-49db-a200-4bff8e91cd84" CreationDate="2013-03-01T17:59:49.713" UserId="1204" Comment="added 12 characters in body" Text="I'm going to try and keep this short, because a lot of it has already been discussed.  If you are interested in the history, you can find it here on Programmers Meta, but here's a very brief recap:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Programmers started out life as &quot;Not Programming Related.&quot;  It was supposed to be a haven for all of those &quot;soft&quot; questions that Stack Overflow didn't want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Stack Exchange decided to change the scope of the site, when it became apparent that the &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; concept was not working.  But they waited a little too long.&#xD;&#xA;3.  We lost a high-rep user, largely because &quot;people factors&quot; are no longer considered on-topic.  We lost a good mod, who was probably tired of fighting the good fight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  We've argued over the site scope ever since.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is a site *for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is Programmers' site scope, taken directly from the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it.  Now tell me, how does a question like [Where can I find a printed copy of the C++ specification](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/188639/1204) fit within this framework?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I get the impression that the user community is asking themselves, &quot;How can we make Programmers more friendly and more inclusive?&quot;  If that is the case, *you're asking the wrong question.*  The question you should be asking is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;###How can I make this site more friendly to *experts?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am a moderator on Stack Overflow.  What I have noticed is that people sometimes ask their conceptual programming questions on Stack Overflow instead of Programmers; when I ask why, they usually say &quot;there are more people here to answer my question.&quot;  What they really mean is, &quot;the experts are here.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are *you* here?  Is it to talk about one of the bullet points above?  Or is it to help people find books?  Is it to help people design, architect and test their programs, or is it to talk about [why end users are so unreasonable](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188886)? Do you really think the experts care why [c languages use curly braces?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188455)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a balance between helping people get answers to their questions, and keeping the site an interesting place for experts.  There's nothing wrong with helping someone out, but too many questions that are only interesting to one person, or only interesting to non-experts, will drive away the experts. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without experts, *there is no site.*&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13626" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5655" RevisionGUID="b53530c7-d14b-4024-9251-7dfd9ceb4d7b" CreationDate="2013-03-01T18:11:47.413" UserId="25476" Text="Not really sure how to answer this, because I am not sure if you are looking to really discuss a solvable meta issue or if you just want to give a stern finger shaking lecture to certain users ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with mostly everything, except the following points:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it to help people design, architect and test their programs, or is it to talk about why end users are so unreasonable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can't it be both if the latter happens to be real question behind a real solvable problem with facts and experiences?  Relating with users can have real problems that expert software developers have a lot of interest in answering, the problems with these types of questions is that they end up being a rant, or &quot;BLA BLA BLA, my PM is *such a jerk!!  Am I rite guys?!&quot;  They also tend to attract a lot of non answers, poor quality, opinionated drivel, and pointless anecdotes.  It starts to turn into a Reddit discussion very quick and that is a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do you really think the experts care why c languages use curly braces?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah I am sort of curious, and I do think experts would like to know or provide a factual answer if they can back it up with facts and sources.  The problem here is that it is not a real problem that the OP faces.  Even so, such a question can only really have one answer and that answer isn't going to be very interesting.  After it has been answered correctly with a reference, there will be 327 additional guess and speculation answers like, *&quot;Probably because a curly brace resembles a muffin, and developers like muffins because they good with coffee, so curly braces make them happier when they code.&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There's a balance between helping people get answers to their questions, and keeping the site an interesting place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Prepare your downvotes ladies and gentlemen...*&#xD;&#xA;My controversial opinion on this is that *most* developers aren't interested in asking conceptual questions about software development nor are they interested in answering them either.  It is easier after all to scroll through a forum discussion, read the most vocal and loud members, and mistake their passion for righteousness and truth.  Vocal, passionate and contreversial invoke heavy discussion and well discussion is conflict, and passion is emotion and **conflict and emotion are sexy.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out questions and high quality intellectual answers about software development aren't very sexy to most people.  Reddit Programming is sexy though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the choice is clear, we go back to what we once were as the dumping ground for StackOverflow Not Code Questions and become like Reddit, or we lose a lot of interest from people who aren't interested in our boring knowledgebase." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13627" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5654" RevisionGUID="22de1b1b-57d3-4b1a-a8e2-67038aee0915" CreationDate="2013-03-01T18:37:57.890" UserId="25476" Comment="edited title" Text="Are you still confused about what Programmers is for?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13628" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5656" RevisionGUID="e1b6f6bf-ced6-47df-9413-36dbef52b873" CreationDate="2013-03-01T19:38:44.467" UserId="82928" Text="The following is a &quot;digest&quot; version of the [2013 Moderator Election Town Hall Chat](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5595/2013-moderator-election-town-hall-chat). The format, [as described on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests), is one *answer* to this question *for every question* asked in the Town Hall, containing all the candidate's answers to that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**To view the digest chronologically, please sort the answers by &quot;oldest&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have questions or comments about this, **please do not answer this question** as the answers are designed to be used for the questions from the Town hall itself. Instead, please ask on [the parent question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests) or in [the Town Hall Discussion Room](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/352/town-hall-discussion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see any corrections which need to be made to this digest, or if you were a candidate who was unable to attend the town hall and would like your answers included, please @GraceNote or @TimStone [in the chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/251/programmers-town-hall-chat) and let us know!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13629" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5656" RevisionGUID="e1b6f6bf-ced6-47df-9413-36dbef52b873" CreationDate="2013-03-01T19:38:44.467" UserId="82928" Text="2013 Moderator Election - Town Hall Chat Digest" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13630" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5656" RevisionGUID="e1b6f6bf-ced6-47df-9413-36dbef52b873" CreationDate="2013-03-01T19:38:44.467" UserId="82928" Text="|discussion|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13631" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5657" RevisionGUID="28e5da00-42ab-453a-9b12-217605c16940" CreationDate="2013-03-01T19:38:44.467" UserId="82928" Text="## *![Grace Note](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/e1b643b1cabd740a5f4580f365b21407?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Grace Note](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/757/grace-note) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284320#8284320):* **In your opinion, what do moderators do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284372#8284372):**  Moderators serve as the caregivers and cultivators of the community. They carefully cultivate an environment where good questions can flourish whilst weeding out bad questions and other noise. They encourage new users. They listen and respond thoughtfully, respectfully, and constructively to complaints. They act as a kind of face to the community, always trying to bring out the very best within themselves and those around them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Dynamic](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Dynamic](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/dynamic) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8300376#8300376):**  In my opinion, a moderator is just a user with more &quot;power&quot;. There's a false sense that moderators have more say than the average users or are leaders of the site, but that isn't necessarily true. They almost act as guidance counselor of a school:  making sure everything is in it's place, listening to users and helping them along the way, and always trying to improve the site and it's users." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13632" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5658" RevisionGUID="e0a772b9-eb95-430d-9c25-e124c752bfdf" CreationDate="2013-03-01T19:41:27.677" UserId="82928" Text="## *![Tim Stone](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/3981cd271c302f5cba628c6b6d2b32ee?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Tim Stone](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12325/tim-stone) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284380#8284380):* **Do you feel like a representative percentage of the community participates in your site's meta? Based on that, how strongly do you think feedback presented on meta should factor into your decision making as a moderator?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284441#8284441):**  I do feel that meta is perhaps less lively than it should be. I think meta feedback should still be given due consideration. I do think more people should be encouraged to participate in meta, to have their voices heard. I want Meta to be where the site is built, not just a reservoir for dealing with complaints, though it should still serve that purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Dynamic](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Dynamic](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/dynamic) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8300453#8300453):**  No I think meta participation is lacking quite a bit. Compared to other sites around the network we're pretty average. I tend to see only very active, prominent users on the site regularly participate on Meta, but it the average user has a problem, they do tend to stop by Meta and ask or search. Basically, meta is going to be a major factor in my decision making because most of the users that care are going there, but it will *not* be my only influence." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13633" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5659" RevisionGUID="34419dd0-120b-4589-aeda-a1fbaeb920ec" CreationDate="2013-03-01T19:43:51.433" UserId="82928" Text="## *![Gilles](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a717291747c76567bb0f086e15ae6e43?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Gilles](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/240/gilles) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284418#8284418):* **I see that one candidate hardly ever downvotes, one candidate wants to close less, and one candidate cumulates the two. If you're so set against cleanup tasks which are part of a moderator's job, what makes you think you'll be a good moderator?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284489#8284489):**  I may not downvote but I do leave comments on posts as to why they might be seen or are a poor fit for the site. I have little problem closing questions in keeping with closing as a &quot;room for improvement&quot; option rather than &quot;Path of Death&quot;. I understand that it may make me seem &quot;soft&quot; or &quot;out of touch&quot; but I don't downvote because I feel that it serves as a &quot;we hate you&quot; sign toward new users. Leaving a comment has often resulted in a more reasoned reaction than &quot;ZOMG why you downvote!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Dynamic](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Dynamic](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/dynamic) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8300549#8300549):**  I'm not against clean-up tasks at all. But there's a big difference between cleaning and over cleaning. For example, border-line questions seem to get closed before they're even taken into deep consideration. What I have been trying to do as a user is clean it up *before* it gets closed. Basically, I'd like to keep a sense of balance  in my moderation. I'm definitely going to be doing a lot of clean-up, but I'm going lax off a bit on the close button." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13634" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5660" RevisionGUID="2f12c102-86db-4933-94b0-6b94a8d77423" CreationDate="2013-03-01T19:46:04.160" UserId="82928" Text="## *![Tim Stone](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/3981cd271c302f5cba628c6b6d2b32ee?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Tim Stone](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/12325/tim-stone) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284493#8284493):* **Is there anything about the way the site is currently run that you would like to change? If so, what would you try to change if you were to become a moderator, and why?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284550#8284550):**  I'd like to see more explanation with downvotes. I realize that can't be forced but I do think it should be encouraged. I think the site is ambiguously scoped in some regard. I have a solid idea as to what the site is about but I can't say that new users do. I'd try to stop SO's you should ask that on Programmers tendency.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Dynamic](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Dynamic](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/dynamic) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8300608#8300608):**  I'd like to get a great deal of meta participation. In my mind, the site only grows dramatically if the Meta grows dramatically. Now I don't mean I want more people coming in to rant on why there question got closed. I mean I want more people coming in dropping ideas on how to improve, voting on things they see fit, helping tag clean-ups, etc.." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13635" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5661" RevisionGUID="ba07c54b-3817-4a84-abf5-ae1d334de3eb" CreationDate="2013-03-01T19:48:18.990" UserId="82928" Text="## *![PearsonArtPhoto](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/fdc52692a8ac266cd1c897f75a0f75f8?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [PearsonArtPhoto](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/3087/pearsonartphoto) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284505#8284505):* **What would you do in the event of a conflict between a relatively new member and a higher reputation member?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284574#8284574):**  It's going to depend on the evidence. As a moderator I have to look at the facts and consider what is best for the community, regardless of the individuals involved. A new member may be confused about scope, a veteran may be sore about seeing yet another *insert bad question here*. I have to read all sides and decide as fairly as I can in the general interest, not specific ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Dynamic](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Dynamic](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/dynamic) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8300634#8300634):**  Go with the one who I believe is right! I'm not going to help the high-rep user just because he's a high-rep user because both users should have equal say in how the site is run." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13636" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5662" RevisionGUID="e007fcd1-09af-467b-becf-7ec1fc670c3d" CreationDate="2013-03-01T19:50:26.537" UserId="82928" Text="## *![Gilles](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a717291747c76567bb0f086e15ae6e43?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Gilles](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/240/gilles)  [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284513#8284513):* **I'm a programmer but hardly visit Prog.SE because it has too many low-quality highly-voted questions and answers. What do you propose to do to improve the overall quality of the site?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284610#8284610):**  I've put some thought into this. It's a tricky thing to avoid a swarm on a question. The main thing to look for, in my view, are controversial but not immediately off topic questions that are likely to get a spike in views from people unfamiliar with site scope or just &quot;me to!&quot; answers. It's a tricky problem and one that may not be solved without some machine learning or other technical tweaks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Dynamic](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Dynamic](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/dynamic) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8300708#8300708):**  Personally, I think it has to be a matter of &quot;monkey see, monkey do&quot;. If I'm a new user on the site and I see bad, open questions, I'm going to think that this kind of question is allowed. If the question is obviously poor and not constructive, I'm going to jump on that thing fast and get it closed and then I might try fixing it, just to make sure it's obvious what we want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Dynamic](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Dynamic](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/dynamic) [continued](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8300721#8300721):** On the other hand, if a new user isn't paying attention to the questions around him, I really don't see what we could do." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13637" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5663" RevisionGUID="b64a5736-5644-4f79-adb5-629d0b41455a" CreationDate="2013-03-01T19:52:36.753" UserId="82928" Text="## *![PearsonArtPhoto](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/fdc52692a8ac266cd1c897f75a0f75f8?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [PearsonArtPhoto](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/3087/pearsonartphoto) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284532#8284532):* **If you had one minute to explain this site to someone, what would you say that it is?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284668#8284668):**  Programmers is site where you can ask questions about abstract programming related topics like what algorithm to use for this case or that. Is this class structure good and if not why not? It's a part of a much larger network full of all kinds of interesting sites on a multitude of topics. All without most of the noise of the rest of the net.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Dynamic](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Dynamic](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/dynamic) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8300772#8300772):**  Prog.SE is a site regarding the conceptual side of programming, not the implementation. Questions about algorithms, data structures, design patterns, and other non-implementation programming questions are generally accepted, but keep the implementation questions for Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13638" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5664" RevisionGUID="952a52bb-8c0b-44e6-8aaa-f94af1b9bd3b" CreationDate="2013-03-01T19:54:56.517" UserId="82928" Text="## *![Jimmy Hoffa](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/dd4c08b8a0735e8dffdbee8bd2ebf666?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Jimmy Hoffa](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/22076/jimmy-hoffa) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284592#8284592):* **In the event of disagreement with another moderator, would you commit to their practices regardless of your perspective; disregard their practices; or something else, if so what? Please be specific.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284711#8284711):**  I'm going to listen to what they have to say first. If it makes sense, I'll take that approach. If it doesn't, I won't. The formost question is always &quot;what is best for the community?&quot;. I'd take my ego out of the equation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Dynamic](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Dynamic](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/dynamic) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8300800#8300800):**  In the beginning, I would most likely listen to them. Once I gain experience with the position, I may defy them a bit, but only if I have community support or possibly another moderators support." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13639" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5665" RevisionGUID="c6e483c5-5b5c-4972-9ed1-632528113aea" CreationDate="2013-03-01T19:57:41.270" UserId="82928" Text="## *![Grace Note](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/e1b643b1cabd740a5f4580f365b21407?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Grace Note](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/757/grace-note) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284618#8284618):* **What do you consider the most important job of a moderator?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284751#8284751):**  The most important job of a moderator is to serve the community. That doesn't mean being a pushover or a sycophant. It means carefully balancing the interests of everyone with the site. It means keeping things clean, it means listening carefully to concerns and complaints. It means offering a helping hand to newbies. It means pushing for a better site, no matter what.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Dynamic](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Dynamic](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/dynamic) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8300823#8300823):**  Helping users. Moderators are generally experienced, well liked users on the site (or they wouldn't be elected). I always took the advice of moderators when it comes to working on the site, and I will definitely do the same." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13640" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5666" RevisionGUID="735434c1-70a3-411e-87bc-9633293b7527" CreationDate="2013-03-01T20:00:08.003" UserId="82928" Text="## *![PearsonArtPhoto](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/fdc52692a8ac266cd1c897f75a0f75f8?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [PearsonArtPhoto](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/3087/pearsonartphoto) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284660#8284660):* **What have you personally done already to help moderate this site?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284802#8284802):**  I've explained numerous times in comments to new users why their question is off-topic or otherwise has been given downvotes or comments they may not understand. I routinely go through the review queue and look at close votes and other such issues raised by the community. I participate in Meta, asking about things like whether a tag is good or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Dynamic](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Dynamic](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/dynamic) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8300863#8300863):**  Hmmm... well I regularly edit, close, reopen, and leave helpful comments on posts. I helped out with the STCI a while back. I ask and answer in Meta, and generally try to help users however I can. And I vote!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13641" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5667" RevisionGUID="da8d35a7-97a3-4ce3-9252-8c7a2d028bed" CreationDate="2013-03-01T20:02:15.817" UserId="82928" Text="## *![Grace Note](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/e1b643b1cabd740a5f4580f365b21407?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Grace Note](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/757/grace-note) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284757#8284757):* **Of the other candidates, who is the one user you think would be most qualified for the position of moderator, and why?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284826#8284826):**  Dynamic. He cares very deeply about this community and I think firmly understands what the site is about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Dynamic](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Dynamic](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/dynamic) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8300870#8300870):**  World Engineer. I think his vision of what the site should be like is only going to help it grow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13642" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5668" RevisionGUID="8cc08c17-87b0-430e-9f27-09390503ed9b" CreationDate="2013-03-01T20:04:22.710" UserId="82928" Text="## *![PearsonArtPhoto](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/fdc52692a8ac266cd1c897f75a0f75f8?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [PearsonArtPhoto](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/3087/pearsonartphoto) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284777#8284777):* **Two of you have expressed an interest in seeing fewer questions closed. Can you point to an example of a question you believe should not have been closed, and provide an explanation for why you think it should be re-opened?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284856#8284856):** [Why do programming languages, especially C, use curly braces and not square ones?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188455/why-do-programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-braces-and-not-square-ones)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [continued](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284905#8284905):**  I think History questions that have answers that are more than just anecdotes or idle trivia are valuable. I think closing can serve as a useful flag that a question can be improved. Reopen votes exist for a reason." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13643" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5669" RevisionGUID="aef1ce23-0284-4600-b595-23f81a26995f" CreationDate="2013-03-01T20:06:28.587" UserId="82928" Text="## *![Jimmy Hoffa](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/dd4c08b8a0735e8dffdbee8bd2ebf666?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Jimmy Hoffa](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/22076/jimmy-hoffa) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284832#8284832):* **Without being specific, do you presently disagree with any of the current moderators' practices?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284962#8284962):**  Some of the mods are less active perhaps than they could be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - **![Yannis Rizos](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a610732cb6ac525c26ff5bcfa9433f41?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Yannis Rizos](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/15752/yannis-rizos) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8285038#8285038):**  Why is that a problem?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [responded](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8285181#8285181):**  I had to pick something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![Jimmy Hoffa](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/dd4c08b8a0735e8dffdbee8bd2ebf666?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Jimmy Hoffa](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/22076/jimmy-hoffa) [noted](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8285188#8285188):**  I asked not to be specific, you could have said &quot;No&quot; :P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    **![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [responded](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8285207#8285207):**  In that case, no." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13644" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5670" RevisionGUID="36343dd6-61dd-4b33-96dc-70f4e9f08980" CreationDate="2013-03-01T20:08:33.467" UserId="82928" Text="## *![Grace Note](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/e1b643b1cabd740a5f4580f365b21407?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Grace Note](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/757/grace-note) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284836#8284836):* **How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8285026#8285026):**  I'd look at what exactly what causing these arguments and deal with it accordingly. I'd try to understand their point of view and empathize with their concerns whilst pushing for a more diplomatic approach on their part.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Dynamic](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Dynamic](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/dynamic) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8300910#8300910):**  At first I'd talk to him, whether that be leaving a comment or talking in chat. If it continues after a few tries I think you have to take some kind of disciplinary action." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13645" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5671" RevisionGUID="975b7d83-0d61-4250-a39a-88aa2fe17cb1" CreationDate="2013-03-01T20:10:37.643" UserId="82928" Text="## *![PearsonArtPhoto](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/fdc52692a8ac266cd1c897f75a0f75f8?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [PearsonArtPhoto](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/3087/pearsonartphoto) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284858#8284858):* **What specifically do you think that the current moderators are doing well, and what do you think could be improved?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8285069#8285069):**  I think the moderators as a whole are keeping the site pretty well moderated. I think more community projects might be in order as far spearheading and the like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Dynamic](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Dynamic](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/dynamic) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8300942#8300942):**  The current moderators are definitely trying to let regular users moderate first, and only step in when they think they're needed. They also have been very helpful in the guidance of users. If I could improve one thing, it would be tolerating ideas for change." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13646" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5672" RevisionGUID="9ca8fa00-e6ac-4bc4-a1d9-335057e3b9a4" CreationDate="2013-03-01T20:12:43.163" UserId="82928" Text="## *![Grace Note](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/e1b643b1cabd740a5f4580f365b21407?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Grace Note](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/757/grace-note) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8285044#8285044):* **Is there anything in becoming a moderator that makes you uneasy or nervous?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8285143#8285143):**  I will for better or worse, be in some sense, a face of the site. Everything I do will reflect on the site, good and bad. That's a great deal of responsibility. I think I'm ready but there's always that tiny doubt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Dynamic](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Dynamic](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/dynamic) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8300966#8300966):**  You're under a spotlight when there's a diamond next to your name. If you make a mistake, everyone knows about it. But at the same time, everyone sees the good you do too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13647" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5673" RevisionGUID="7c8db7f4-782e-4294-91f9-30609c2f128a" CreationDate="2013-03-01T20:14:49.213" UserId="82928" Text="## *![Grace Note](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/e1b643b1cabd740a5f4580f365b21407?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Grace Note](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/757/grace-note) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8285078#8285078):* **Opening Curly Brace - goes at the end of the last relevant line, or deserves its own line?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8285154#8285154):**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    foo(){&#xD;&#xA;         &quot;I mostly write Python.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Dynamic](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Dynamic](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/dynamic) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8300970#8300970):**  Own line :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13648" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5674" RevisionGUID="870f1ef6-3f79-470b-b909-6f15e93ffb8b" CreationDate="2013-03-01T20:16:54.513" UserId="82928" Text="## *![Grace Note](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/e1b643b1cabd740a5f4580f365b21407?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Grace Note](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/757/grace-note) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8285213#8285213):* **Final thoughts from the candidates**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8285266#8285266):**  I've grown to love this community over the 20 months I've been here. This place feels like home to me and I want to do whatever I can to ensure that it remains a great community. Does it have problems? Yes. But I believe those can be worked through and I want to help the community work through them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![Dynamic](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b70de1b4afff0f68afc837e7a8529006?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [Dynamic](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/21969/dynamic) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8301002#8301002):**  This site is amazing! It has a great community and has some very talented programmers. If I'm elected, I want to make major strides in the development of the site for the better." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13649" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5675" RevisionGUID="dccd7086-c7a2-4703-a78e-126d77a19a2d" CreationDate="2013-03-01T20:25:30.450" UserId="20756" Text="I understand that the OP wasn't looking for a book recommendation, but the question was and still remained&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Where can I get printed versions of these documents? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I voted (twice) to close for a couple of reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * **Wrong Audience.**  The question is about the publishing habits of specific standards bodies.  The venue to get a good answer would be the standards bodies themselves.  I put this in the same category as &quot;Why did Apple reject my iPhone application?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * **Overbroad Scope.**  The major standards bodies develop standards that cover more things than just programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=ISO%20C%20language%20standard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13650" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5595" RevisionGUID="a6b9ed4e-dc19-48b7-a907-a630340e52fc" CreationDate="2013-03-01T20:33:35.117" UserId="33171" Comment="Digest!" Text="In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session with the candidates.  This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.  I will be working with candidates to determine a time for the event.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***The Town Hall Chat took place Wednesday the 27th at 02:00:00Z UTC. A digest can be found [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5656/2013-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-digest).***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the details so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I would like to schedule this towards the beginning of the primary phase.  This means that I am looking at the 25th-27th of February. As soon as I coordinate with the existing moderators and candidates to find a best fit based on availability, I will edit this post with details on the &quot;when&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;* The Town Hall Chat will be a one-hour event using our [chat platform](http://chat.stackexchange.com/?tab=site&amp;sort=active&amp;host=programmers.stackexchange.com).  I will update this post with a direct link to the chat room once the event is scheduled.&#xD;&#xA;* The format will be an open discussion.  Users are encouraged to pose questions to the candidates regarding their thoughts on moderation.&#xD;&#xA;* Priority for scheduling is generally towards the greatest number of candidate openings as well as the earliest. Candidates who cannot show up during the live event will still be able to answer all questions posted, they will just do so at their earliest convenience.&#xD;&#xA;* If you can't make it but have questions you wish to pose to the candidates, please leave them here as a response, and I will ask it on your behalf.&#xD;&#xA;* After the chat session, a digest of the event will be permanently linked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13651" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5676" RevisionGUID="e13d4236-ec43-4963-b42d-95cf8e7bc64f" CreationDate="2013-03-01T20:33:49.383" UserId="3965" Text="As I've mentioned before, the blessing and curse of Programmers SE is that most all the allowed topics are interesting to most all the users.  The curse part is that anytime there's a topic which not everyone is interested in, that topic gets pushed out, if not officially, then de facto by voting to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow is teeming with questions about Microsoft languages and frameworks.  For the moment at least, I have zero interest in those questions, almost zero direct knowledge about them, and find them a complete waste of my browser space.  However, I recognize that those questions are valuable and interesting to a lot of other people, and happily go on using StackOverflow because those tags are in my ignored list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, that doesn't happen on Programmers.  More and more, Programmers feels like StackOverflow would feel if only C++ questions were allowed.  Any topic without a broad consensus is deemed off topic for everyone.  I think this site would be better off if we broadened the scope considerably and encouraged people to use the tag system to filter out topics that are personally uninteresting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider the big four controversial topics:  books, career, history, and getting started on a new technology.  These are all things that one time or another almost all of us have gone down the hall to ask the advice of a more experienced programmer.  I've been programming professionally for 15 years, and as an amateur 10 years before that.  No one would consider me not to be an &quot;expert&quot; programmer, but if I took a .Net job tomorrow, the first thing I would do is ask an expert programmer which of the gazillion books out there on the topic are actually worth reading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why there's so much confusion about this site's scope is that there are so many questions like that, that you would want to ask your colleague down the hall, but are inexplicably off topic here.  So what if you might get 10 different answers from 10 different people?  Those are *expert* opinions, and you've narrowed your options down considerably.  The best answers get voted to the top, and countervailing evidence is expressed in the comments.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest thing holding back this site is the expectation that the only on topic questions are those that have a single clear and definitive answer.  On the contrary, the best conceptual questions have more than one good answer.  We have tools and a process to filter out bad answers.  We shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a **lot** of questions that are deemed &quot;unanswerable&quot; or &quot;not constructive&quot; in the comments, then closed shortly after one or more excellent, constructive answers are posted.  To me, that shows a fundamental misunderstanding about the kinds of questions both askers and answerers want to be on topic on our site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13652" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5677" RevisionGUID="a6cc327c-3b77-41b8-80db-ac8394043a47" CreationDate="2013-03-01T21:36:27.817" UserId="1204" Text="No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the reasons why, see http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13653" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5678" RevisionGUID="6d3df167-a8e8-46d1-84e4-986efaca7bb1" CreationDate="2013-03-01T21:54:15.337" UserId="3965" Text="You can use a [closed:0 search](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=closed%3a0%20is%3aquestion) to filter them out.  Unfortunately, this doesn't look as nice since they added answers to search results." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13654" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5679" RevisionGUID="ec9f11de-0e10-4d36-af6c-42f590ed8c4e" CreationDate="2013-03-01T22:16:16.153" UserId="31260" Text="As far as I can tell, good history question is one that evolves into a retrospective case study.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Practical purpose of case studies is explained eg in [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_method):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...an intensive analysis of an individual unit (e.g., a person, group, or event) stressing developmental factors in relation to context... Case studies may be descriptive or explanatory. The latter type is used to **explore causation in order to find underlying principles.** They may be prospective... or retrospective (in which **criteria are established for selecting cases from historical records for inclusion in the study**).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...&quot;Case studies are analyses of persons, events, decisions, periods, projects, policies, institutions, or other systems that are studied holistically by one or more methods. The case that is the subject of the inquiry will be **an instance of a class of phenomena that provides an analytical frame** — an object — within which the study is conducted and which the case illuminates and explicates.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Another suggestion is that case study should be defined as a research strategy, an **empirical inquiry that investigates a phenomenon within its real-life context**. Case study research can mean single and multiple case studies, can include quantitative evidence, relies on multiple sources of evidence, and benefits from the prior development of theoretical propositions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Case studies balance the need to understand something big (something that would be too broad / NARQ in Stack Exchange terms) with a limitation of being sufficiently specific to allow for reasonably scoped _productive learning_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Say, one shouldn't ask at Programmers _what do I need to know about mission critical projects_ - that would be too broad for our format. Instead, one asks [What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/159637/31260) - that's still tough but at least something we can handle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar to Stack Overflow, Programmers questions (including history ones) serve the purpose of picking and applying programming technologies. The difference is, due to _conceptual_ nature of Programmers questions, the purpose could be not as immediate / direct as at Stack Overflow...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you ask about mission critical software a week before interview, you're probably few months too late: few months ago, you should ask yourself whether you are interested, and what would you want to understand about doing software development in this context.&#xD;&#xA;* And you don't necessary need to understand the context of mission critical software development just because you are involved. In fact, it can be opposite:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hey you suggest us _Fagan inspections_, why? I mean I perfectly understand how these are justified in _mission critical_ projects, but how does this apply to our non-critical application, compared to lightweight reviews?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summing up, I believe that history questions can serve a practical purpose, sufficiently compliant with Programmers topics (if done right).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, above assumes these pass through community moderation, business as usual. Questions that do not fit get closed per standard [close reasons](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/close-reasons/info), answers that don't fit get downvoted / flagged / deleted per usual [community quality control](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/75717/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; [...] real questions have *answers*, __not *items* or *ideas* or *opinions*__.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...&quot;Real questions&quot; don't necessarily have *practical* answers, but they do have __*authoritative* ones__." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13655" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5679" RevisionGUID="5ef2d121-59b6-4544-a2c7-9dbb12f416f5" CreationDate="2013-03-01T22:16:16.153" UserId="31260" />
  <row Id="13656" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5680" RevisionGUID="18ab8fb9-a7f7-4ceb-b7b9-96cab1dcb61c" CreationDate="2013-03-01T22:30:52.937" UserId="1458" Text="Yes, I am confused. If I have a conceptual question on software development, why wouldn't I ask it on Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question generally covers …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * a specific programming problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * a software algorithm&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software tools commonly used by programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * practical, answerable problems that are unique to the programming profession&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see a requirement for questions to be non-conceptual here. (What's a non-conceptual question anyway?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a professional programmer, I don't see Programmers.SE as a valuable resource for “conceptual questions on software development”. I mostly come here (not often) to answer questions that are really about computer science, where I notice that the “resident” community isn't providing good answers¹. I can't see a niche for Programmers.SE that's distinct from SO and CS.SE along these lines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where I do see a niche for Programmers.SE is for the social aspects of programming. Among the bullet points in the FAQ, this covers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * development methodologies&#xD;&#xA; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA; * software engineering (to some extent)&#xD;&#xA; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How this has anything to do with algorithms, design patterns, testing, QA and architecture puzzles me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why C uses curly braces? A social question about programming, valid but boring. Should be on-topic but scored close to 0. [Ah, well](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188455/why-do-programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-braces-and-not-square-ones). 0 out of 2 *is* bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;¹ &lt;sub&gt; Which is why I not only don't frequent Prog.SE (comparatively with my general SE presence on topics that do interest me…), but I actively don't recommend trusting answers there, much less than most other SE sites. &lt;/sub&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13657" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5681" RevisionGUID="b63b312e-f06d-4dc3-83e0-7b0fd88e5f05" CreationDate="2013-03-01T22:30:58.867" UserId="3963" Text="I noted a couple of minutes ago (before seeing this question on meta, believe it or not) that of the 50 questions that showed up in the &quot;newest&quot; tab, 18 of them had negative votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, **36% of the most recent 50 questions** were deemed by one or more people to be a bad question or not to fit the site's scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, that says that **the site is not doing a good job of explaining its scope**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I open the site as a user with an account, I don't see anything that gives me any indication of what the site is about.  When I open it and I'm not logged in, I see this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for **professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This strikes me as an extraordinarily vague scope.  I think the site needs to be far more in-your-face about what kinds of questions are welcome here and what kinds are not.  It seems obvious that people are not hunting for the FAQ in order to learn this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13658" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5602" RevisionGUID="1eb0c59e-1224-40d3-b006-e18b66e4727e" CreationDate="2013-03-02T04:30:38.917" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/307709510296952832" />
  <row Id="13659" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5654" RevisionGUID="9f5460f0-07dc-43ff-9bdc-8c5318360014" CreationDate="2013-03-02T08:26:09.703" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13660" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5656" RevisionGUID="ed04a1fc-cf37-40a1-a033-ad866c0a7819" CreationDate="2013-03-02T08:26:34.477" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13661" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5498" RevisionGUID="7ae4f484-567d-4779-bc48-350afc7d3fb0" CreationDate="2013-03-02T08:26:45.693" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13667" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5683" RevisionGUID="b3941603-c14b-4e66-9499-cbf7778a48d6" CreationDate="2013-03-02T14:13:03.593" UserId="82981" Text="Yes I am puzzled. Not by the scope which is pretty clear now, albeit arguable. What is really puzzling is **the name**!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I gather that it might have been relevant at the beginning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now it's misleading and completely off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13673" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5686" RevisionGUID="55f25e27-78aa-4b54-8c3f-35342149d5eb" CreationDate="2013-03-03T02:59:30.417" UserId="82990" Text="With more negative votes than positive on the front page and more closed questions than open, I think its pretty clear that this place is either a complete mess, or a haven for people who get a huge thrill from down voting  and closing questions.  I think my experience today of answering two questions that were subsequently closed and then having my own closed should hopefully be indicative of something. Whatever the opposite of a community is, that's what you have here. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13676" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5647" RevisionGUID="f0dee0a4-1450-4469-8988-e10da6f7d254" CreationDate="2013-03-03T04:30:56.160" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/308071969604116480" />
  <row Id="13678" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5656" RevisionGUID="e58b9611-e719-455e-bf56-e0f4d0ee4622" CreationDate="2013-03-03T13:31:00.767" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/308207884792102913" />
  <row Id="13679" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5688" RevisionGUID="a75729fd-701a-4d66-9b2d-c6bea3d4eca6" CreationDate="2013-03-03T15:16:59.923" UserId="7748" Text="**Nobody know what this site if for, what is on topic or what is off..**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the front page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are these on topic? (Based on what was listed above)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188954/no-programmer-will-build-my-semi-adult-website-why&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189073/how-to-deal-with-too-much-pragmatism-in-the-project&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189025/where-can-i-find-an-example-of-a-relatively-accurate-eigenface-face-recognition&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are these Off?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;freelancing and business concerns Question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189022/software-agreement-for-farming-out-development-work &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;developer testing : http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188975/best-way-to-test-applications-on-different-machine-configurations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The fact of the matter is the that on/off topics are not enforced as they are described in the FAQ** and it seems that the FAQ changes eve time i look at it. Nit to mention that classifying questions based on the FAQ is very subjective. This the cause of confusion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why not add a rule that every question must be tagged as one of the topics listed in the FAQ?** I don't think it will solve anything but it will provide a tremendous amount of insight into why people are so confused." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13680" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5688" RevisionGUID="6c4f2c52-7057-48cd-8b58-5c6ef50fce49" CreationDate="2013-03-03T15:35:51.077" UserId="7748" Comment="added 186 characters in body" Text="**Nobody knows what this site if for, what is on topic or what is off..**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the front page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are these on topic? (Based on what was listed above)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188954/no-programmer-will-build-my-semi-adult-website-why&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189073/how-to-deal-with-too-much-pragmatism-in-the-project&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189025/where-can-i-find-an-example-of-a-relatively-accurate-eigenface-face-recognition&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are these Off?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;freelancing and business concerns Question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189022/software-agreement-for-farming-out-development-work &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;developer testing : http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188975/best-way-to-test-applications-on-different-machine-configurations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The fact of the matter is the that on/off topics are not enforced as they are described in the FAQ** and it seems that the FAQ changes eve time i look at it. Nit to mention that classifying questions based on the FAQ is very subjective. This the cause of confusion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why not add a rule that every question must be tagged as one of the topics listed in the FAQ?** I don't think it will solve anything but it will provide a tremendous amount of insight into why people are so confused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Also an underwritten rule: topics that are fix better elsewhere are off topic and migrated. SE continues to insist that there is no room for site overlap, which is complete Hogwash." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13681" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5689" RevisionGUID="2090b030-949f-4b8d-8561-c3bc94c5c1c4" CreationDate="2013-03-03T15:37:36.490" UserId="10131" Text="This is my question which is closed:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189078/fantom-programming-language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before telling me that the answers would be subjective have a look at your questions and answers and see how many of them are subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't understand how a question about maturity and perception of a new programming language can not be constructive?!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is not obviously about technical detail, it's about the overall view about the language." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13682" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5689" RevisionGUID="2090b030-949f-4b8d-8561-c3bc94c5c1c4" CreationDate="2013-03-03T15:37:36.490" UserId="10131" Text="Why my question about Fantom is closed as not constructive?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13683" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5689" RevisionGUID="2090b030-949f-4b8d-8561-c3bc94c5c1c4" CreationDate="2013-03-03T15:37:36.490" UserId="10131" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13684" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5690" RevisionGUID="c66cad85-1fcd-481f-b8d7-9cca85cb94c3" CreationDate="2013-03-03T15:44:41.663" UserId="4" Text="You ask three different questions in your post. Of these three questions, only one may be suitable for our Q&amp;A format, but it is significantly lacking in details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does it worth to learn Fantom?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No one here can objectively answer this. As mentioned in [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq), questions about what languages to learn are off-topic. We can't tell you if learning something will be useful or valuable to you or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it mature to be used in real projects?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is potentially good, if you define &quot;mature&quot;. The definition of &quot;mature enough&quot; for use in a project depends on what you're looking for. Mature enough for a one-off personal application is different than mature enough for automotive applications is different than mature enough for high-volume financial trading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What Java developers think about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a poll. Polls are specifically mentioned as &quot;not constructive&quot; - all answers are correct and there's no way to judge correctness. This is explicitly mentioned in the FAQ and in the reason for closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that closure early is a good thing. It allows for the question to be improved before low quality answers are given. This is not a permanent state for a question - if edits can be made to make the question suitable, it can be reopened (either by a moderator if flagged for review or by 5 members of the community). Once a question has answers (especially bad answers or answers that are invalidated by edits), it's harder to get the question reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13685" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5689" RevisionGUID="db11ab62-c591-4d64-bf55-0dffec0696f8" CreationDate="2013-03-03T15:56:35.413" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13686" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5688" RevisionGUID="595684d2-1467-4ee8-8f7f-69ede8632e49" CreationDate="2013-03-03T18:22:33.347" UserId="7748" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="**Nobody knows what this site if for, what is on topic or what is off..**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the front page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are these on topic? (Based on what was listed above)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188954/no-programmer-will-build-my-semi-adult-website-why&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189073/how-to-deal-with-too-much-pragmatism-in-the-project&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189025/where-can-i-find-an-example-of-a-relatively-accurate-eigenface-face-recognition&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are these Off?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;freelancing and business concerns Question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189022/software-agreement-for-farming-out-development-work &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;developer testing : http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188975/best-way-to-test-applications-on-different-machine-configurations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The fact of the matter is the that on/off topics are not enforced as they are described in the FAQ** and it seems that the FAQ changes every time I look at it. Not to mention that classifying questions based on the FAQ is very subjective. This the cause of confusion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why not add a rule that every question must be tagged as one of the topics listed in the FAQ?** I don't think it will solve anything but it will provide a tremendous amount of insight into why people are so confused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Also an underwritten rule: topics that are fix better elsewhere are off topic and migrated. SE continues to insist that there is no room for site overlap, which is complete Hogwash." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13687" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5633" RevisionGUID="e9c62969-acdb-4755-9d10-ea723d819411" CreationDate="2013-03-03T19:31:00.817" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/308298482328948736" />
  <row Id="13688" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5688" RevisionGUID="70592a7b-b7a1-472f-9771-7b249361c278" CreationDate="2013-03-03T19:33:34.407" UserId="7748" Comment="added 101 characters in body" Text="**Nobody knows what this site if for, what is on topic or what is off..**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the front page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are these on topic? (Based on what was listed above)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188954/no-programmer-will-build-my-semi-adult-website-why&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189073/how-to-deal-with-too-much-pragmatism-in-the-project&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189025/where-can-i-find-an-example-of-a-relatively-accurate-eigenface-face-recognition&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189096/knowledge-transfer-and-software-development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are these Off?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;freelancing and business concerns Question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189022/software-agreement-for-farming-out-development-work &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;developer testing : http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188975/best-way-to-test-applications-on-different-machine-configurations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The fact of the matter is the that on/off topics are not enforced as they are described in the FAQ** and it seems that the FAQ changes every time I look at it. Not to mention that classifying questions based on the FAQ is very subjective. This the cause of confusion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why not add a rule that every question must be tagged as one of the topics listed in the FAQ?** I don't think it will solve anything but it will provide a tremendous amount of insight into why people are so confused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Also an underwritten rule: topics that are fix better elsewhere are off topic and migrated. SE continues to insist that there is no room for site overlap, which is complete Hogwash." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13695" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5688" RevisionGUID="b360bd4c-caf9-4351-b2df-f2227313ede1" CreationDate="2013-03-03T23:39:10.710" UserId="7748" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body" Text="**Nobody knows what this site if for, what is on topic or what is off..**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the front page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are these on topic? (Based on what was listed above)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188954/no-programmer-will-build-my-semi-adult-website-why&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189073/how-to-deal-with-too-much-pragmatism-in-the-project&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189025/where-can-i-find-an-example-of-a-relatively-accurate-eigenface-face-recognition&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189096/knowledge-transfer-and-software-development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are these Off?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;freelancing and business concerns Question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189022/software-agreement-for-farming-out-development-work &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;developer testing : http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188975/best-way-to-test-applications-on-different-machine-configurations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The fact of the matter is the that on/off topics are not enforced as they are described in the FAQ** and it seems that the FAQ changes every time I look at it. Not to mention that classifying questions based on the FAQ is very subjective. This the cause of confusion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why not add a rule that every question must be tagged as one of the topics listed in the FAQ?** I don't think it will solve anything but it will provide a tremendous amount of insight into why people are so confused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Also an underwritten rule: topics that fit better elsewhere are off topic and migrated. SE continues to insist that there is no room for site overlap, which is complete Hogwash." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13696" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5589" RevisionGUID="aece6557-7e27-4b07-bcda-e259606778a7" CreationDate="2013-03-04T01:31:00.927" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/308389079060451328" />
  <row Id="13697" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5692" RevisionGUID="d5fac9b6-87ab-4f84-8c89-5194f18f5ee3" CreationDate="2013-03-04T02:45:23.810" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="It's not widely used but it's hugely ambiguous as to what it's exact meaning is and in all cases the questions were either off-topic or better covered by existing tags that were already applied. I've nuked the nine examples but shall we keep them from coming back?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13698" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5692" RevisionGUID="d5fac9b6-87ab-4f84-8c89-5194f18f5ee3" CreationDate="2013-03-04T02:45:23.810" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Do we need to ban the [free] tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13699" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5692" RevisionGUID="d5fac9b6-87ab-4f84-8c89-5194f18f5ee3" CreationDate="2013-03-04T02:45:23.810" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="|discussion|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13700" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5692" RevisionGUID="0d3b6be2-5147-4bfa-b668-cabae8676b46" CreationDate="2013-03-04T05:38:23.207" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="Gaaahhhh" Text="It's not widely used but it's hugely ambiguous as to what its exact meaning is and in all cases the questions were either off-topic or better covered by existing tags that were already applied. I've nuked the nine examples but shall we keep them from coming back?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13702" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5654" RevisionGUID="aa0a9399-b0fe-40f3-9ed0-b515e54c66c7" CreationDate="2013-03-04T10:31:00.857" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/308524974577184768" />
  <row Id="13703" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5582" RevisionGUID="fdb60d4c-d850-4474-ab74-ab4514b45f5d" CreationDate="2013-03-04T13:31:01.130" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/308570274457083909" />
  <row Id="13704" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5693" RevisionGUID="c479eafd-a542-4dff-899d-e7c40d76a250" CreationDate="2013-03-04T14:26:49.133" UserId="31090" Text="I posted [this answer][1] to a similar discussion about half a year ago.  Since then, my participation on Programmers has dropped to practically zero.  I tried, but the density of questions interesting enough to be worth participating in here has dropped below the threshold of making it a worthwhile site for me to visit.  Hand-holding, positive-attitude remarks, question editing, it didn't really seem to make much difference, and the gamification system doesn't reinforce that behavior either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words: from my point of view one reason that the experts aren't here anymore might be because there's pretty much nothing interesting left to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4013/where-did-pierre-303-go-he-was-an-all-star/4033#4033" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13707" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5694" RevisionGUID="99aead26-0ccb-4367-8efa-063b4305a9c0" CreationDate="2013-03-04T15:04:37.270" UserId="25936" Text="Couple of days ago I started noticing deleted questions appearing in search results. At first I thought it was mod vision (moderators can search for deleted posts) but today when I happened to search in incognito mode:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [circled question][2]&lt;sup&gt;10K+ link&lt;/sup&gt; was deleted on February 9 and it really shouldn't be in the search results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/sSpTE.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181462/how-to-connect-ios-application-to-a-telephone-system-through-gprs-and-getting-ph" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13708" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5694" RevisionGUID="99aead26-0ccb-4367-8efa-063b4305a9c0" CreationDate="2013-03-04T15:04:37.270" UserId="25936" Text="Search brings up deleted questions in results" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13709" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5694" RevisionGUID="99aead26-0ccb-4367-8efa-063b4305a9c0" CreationDate="2013-03-04T15:04:37.270" UserId="25936" Text="|bug|deleted-questions|search|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13710" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5694" RevisionGUID="7711b870-aac0-4d76-b430-13e9c42ce099" CreationDate="2013-03-04T15:11:23.270" UserId="25936" Comment="added 22 characters in body" Text="Couple of days ago I started noticing deleted questions appearing in search results. At first I thought it was mod vision (moderators can search for deleted posts) but today when I happened to search in &lt;strike&gt;porn&lt;/strike&gt; incognito mode:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [circled question][2]&lt;sup&gt;10K+ link&lt;/sup&gt; was deleted on February 9 and it really shouldn't be in the search results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/sSpTE.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181462/how-to-connect-ios-application-to-a-telephone-system-through-gprs-and-getting-ph" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13713" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5696" RevisionGUID="89bdf91b-2127-432a-9a4b-b27fb7d33b27" CreationDate="2013-03-04T19:30:12.333" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Are you still confused about what Programmers is for?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kind-of.  But I think the challenge there is that the field itself is exceptionally broad and that it can sometimes be difficult to discern good questions from bad ones.  Not everything is black and white, and divining shades of grey can be challenging with English-as-a-second-language speakers or geek-typical lack of sufficient context.  But those two aspects are accepted consequences of participating in an international community of geeks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be pointed out that the site's scope is pretty dang broad as well.  There are a number of exception cases (see licensing; freelancing; workplace if nuanced to programming; homework; etc...) that make it difficult for even the experienced members of the site to identify on-topic and constructive or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While a community's culture will shift over time, I don't see a clear mechanism for conveying that culture to others.  The FAQ certainly isn't communicating it, and Meta doesn't reflect _current_ aspects very well at the time of a question being evaluated.  It's a bit useless to say since I don't have a suggestion, but we obviously need something better than what we (don't) have now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; That's it. Now tell me, how does a question like Where can I find a printed copy of the C++ specification fit within this framework?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly the OP could have done more research.  Wikipedia mentions their basis in the Standards in the first few paragraphs.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That having been said, the SO question that answered the P.SE version of that question led me to some interesting discoveries about Schildt and his annotated review of the Standard.  That review of Schildt echoed some concerns I had with other works of his.  Collateral &quot;damage&quot; of that question led me down an interesting research path.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I get the impression that the user community is asking themselves, &quot;How can we make Programmers more friendly and more inclusive?&quot; If that is the case, you're asking the wrong question. The question you should be asking is: **How can I make this site more friendly to experts?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, maybe.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's okay to be friendly.  And it's okay for experts to be friendly to experts-in-training.  That's partly what makes an apprenticeship model work.  And Programming is a profession that fits and benefits from the apprenticeship model.  I think that being friendly is part of what we need to do in order to attract more people that are knowledgeable to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it's okay to be inclusive.  One of the reasons why I take exception to the &quot;professional&quot; tag line is that it unintentionally excludes people who aren't paid to program.  Honestly, what I think we're looking for as a community are people who are passionate about programming and enjoy helping others grow in their understanding passion for programming.  There are some great amateur (not-paid) programmers out there along with many horrible paid (&quot;professional&quot;) programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that's a nuance upon professional | amateur that not many people delve into.  Most use professional as &quot;someone who is really good at something.&quot;  And we certainly want those folk in our community.  But I recognize we all started out not knowing jack about programming, and that people ought to have a place to learn.  I'm not suggesting we start allowing homework questions, as that fails the (my) productivity test.  But I am saying expert-in-training type questions are appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So yes, we ought to be more friendly and more inclusive but that's so we can bring in more, knowledgeable programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There's a balance between helping people get answers to their questions, and keeping the site an interesting place for experts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Absolutely; there has to be a degree of feedback and reward that encourages the experts to continue contributing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contributions to and returns from the site need to be productive as well, otherwise the site will denigrate into useless chatter which will drive off many of the experts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that leads me to ask, what is this site really intended to be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * By experts  &#xD;&#xA;* For experts  &#xD;&#xA;* or Experts only&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Experts only doesn't seem to be the right approach.  The volume of questions simply wouldn't be sufficient to attract repeat visits.  And there has to be a decent amount of volume (ie. quality questions _and_ answers) to provide motivation to return.  I also wonder if there is a sufficient pool of &quot;true experts&quot; that such a site could be populated with _and_ that are interested in participating.  This is so exclusive that it's futile.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* For Experts suffers similar challenges as Experts Only in that the volume of interesting questions and answers won't be self-sustaining.  This is more inclusive, but doesn't create repeated draw.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* By Experts seems to be the most reasonable approach.  It allows for Q&amp;A and provides for solid answers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why am I here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, it's to give back to the community.  I have had some modest success as a programmer, and I'm happy to share my knowledge with others.  I grow by teaching others what I have learned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, the site allows me to learn from peers (seasoned veterans) who have explored other pathways that I have not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The C braces vs. brackets question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's important not to let ourselves be shackled by past precedent.  Yes, we all have our favorite story to prove that point, so I'll skip mine.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This wasn't a great question by any means, but it led me to look at similar questions where I saw a discussion on the `printf()` function's use of the `%` sign and how C# determined that wasn't really necessary.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As that's my second example of using discovery spawned by a marginal question, let me be a bit more clear.  _My_ personal research from a marginal question doesn't transfer to an increase in value to the question.  However, I am willing to tolerate some degree of marginal questions because of this, and because of the marginal question coming back with an outstanding answer.  On a related note, the community needs a polite response for the marginal questions that are closed because they didn't make the cut.  It's a subjective delineation, but I'm okay with that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Gilles brought up the  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; CS versus Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;del&gt;argument&lt;/del&gt; discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is equally fair and unfair to compare the two sites as two branches of computer science.  One is theoretical, one is applied.  They're apples and oranges.  They're both fruit and taste sweet, but you'll never hear someone say &quot;As American as orange pie.&quot;  I don't care which one you want to label as &quot;apple.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some people need theory, others need a good enough solution.  While we all work on binary systems, we live in an analog world where more than one pathway is &quot;right.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why do I bring this up?  Because CSTheory.SE is small enough that it can better tolerate questions that are in violation of their own FAQ.  Peruse the [soft question tag](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/soft-question) for examples.  Programmers is 6x the size of CSTheory (~70k users and 24k Qs vs. ~11k users and 4.2k Qs).  Programmers can't operate the same way CSTheory can because that model doesn't scale.  Those scale issues define the limit(s) of the comparisons that can be made.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could infer that I was going to make an argument that we need to be more tolerant in the questions that are allowed.  And I appear to contradict that conclusion by discussing CSTheory.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I'll posit is that we can we accommodate both viewpoints, but we need to operate a little bit differently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How so?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. We need better ability to handle marginal questions.  Perhaps this means faster locking and / or protecting of the questions so a meta discussion can be opened up.  Maybe that means more users are able to perform these tasks, or we need to train ourselves to flag for the lock and start the meta Q.  This aspect also needs to be built into the review Q because it's too easy to click-to-close without an attempt at clarifying the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. We need to enhance our redirect block within the FAQ.  We also need to request other sites to update their redirects.  For example [CSTheory's Where-can-I-ask?](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/faq#my-question-is-not-a-research-level-question-in-tcs-where-can-i-ask-it) is really good except that it doesn't mention P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Likewise, I think we need to update our redirect on off-topic close votes.  Workplace should be considered, and CSTheory should be added although I'll admit we don't see many come our way that I think would fit well there.  I think the changes proposed in the MSO question on off-topic closes would be very helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. Finally, I think we need some Canonical Q&amp;As (owned by Community Wiki) for some of the recurring questions that are continually being closed.  Just because they're off-topic or not constructive for the individual doesn't mean that the community can't create answers for those questions in general.  No, we don't want to answer them over, and over, and over.  But we could still answer them once.  I _think_ that the community can support the increased amount of governance that maintaining sets of canonicals would require, but maintenance is a very valid concern and counter-point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some example canonical questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Books for languages - No, we're not Amazon, and no, our focus isn't reviews per se.  But we are a community of programmers, and we ought to have a more concentrated knowledge of those languages and can therefore better evaluate a review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What language next - One question, a slew of answers highlighting the pros &amp; cons of the languages.  It would allow us to redirect all of those inquiries to the collective knowledge on languages.  I believe that we can provide enough information that the askers can identify what should be next for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Projects / Skills enhancement - similar thoughts as _what language next_&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13714" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5632" RevisionGUID="375370eb-bf40-4823-87ab-afac3c9e8911" CreationDate="2013-03-04T19:31:00.927" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/308660870408466432" />
  <row Id="13715" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5656" RevisionGUID="3b6950df-a5a9-4997-89f7-205e507ebc16" CreationDate="2013-03-04T21:09:00.760" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13716" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5498" RevisionGUID="ee939750-4ece-4bbd-9730-abf809e45873" CreationDate="2013-03-04T21:10:22.460" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13717" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5697" RevisionGUID="db229faf-ae0f-44f9-9cde-93fd80a1dbf7" CreationDate="2013-03-04T22:42:31.797" UserId="20108" Text="I was just browsing topics and came to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151857/why-most-use-cygwin-and-not-uwin which reads to me like a product plug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not complaining in the least about this, but I figured the rate of question closing on this board makes me think really hard before posting, and I would *never* think to say something like &quot;what is the reason more people don't use X?  It seems good!&quot;... :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hope I'm not stepping on any toes.. I assume there's a little more leeway in Meta..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13718" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5697" RevisionGUID="db229faf-ae0f-44f9-9cde-93fd80a1dbf7" CreationDate="2013-03-04T22:42:31.797" UserId="20108" Text="To people sometimes collaborate with multiple accounts to achieve product plugs?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13719" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5697" RevisionGUID="db229faf-ae0f-44f9-9cde-93fd80a1dbf7" CreationDate="2013-03-04T22:42:31.797" UserId="20108" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13720" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5697" RevisionGUID="637677fa-37cc-4c31-a568-ecdee566025a" CreationDate="2013-03-04T22:48:52.340" UserId="35414" Comment="edited title" Text="Do people sometimes collaborate with multiple accounts to achieve product plugs?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13721" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5697" RevisionGUID="637677fa-37cc-4c31-a568-ecdee566025a" CreationDate="2013-03-04T22:48:52.340" UserId="35414" Comment="edited title" Text="|discussion|spam|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13722" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5698" RevisionGUID="b4ee6d29-7d56-45c1-a8c8-27bc3bc89e1f" CreationDate="2013-03-04T22:49:44.720" UserId="47" Text="I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To answer the most obvious question - having multiple accounts that interact by answering each other's questions or cross voting is not allowed and, when discovered, will result in suspension.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, looking at the question you link to I can't see any evidence of collusion. The accounts of the people asking and answering the question have nothing in common. While it does appear at first glance to be a not constructive question, it's only attracted a couple of answers and both of those are fairly sound (at first reading).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think there's something wrong with a question or answer that a comment or down-vote can't correct then the correct behaviour is to flag it for moderator attention. Include as much detail as possible so we don't have to guess your intentions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13723" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5532" RevisionGUID="6af32acf-e66e-4b21-9aff-3d9babc3b852" CreationDate="2013-03-05T04:31:05.500" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/308796784912785408" />
  <row Id="13724" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5699" RevisionGUID="ec31ea0b-b9e0-439c-a6b3-00b1ba58c26a" CreationDate="2013-03-05T04:47:06.187" UserId="73603" Text="I've dropped in a few times over the last few days to see if I want to become active on Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing I see is that I'm technically excluded. I was a professional programmer from 1970 to 2002, but then I went back to school to get a doctorate and I'm now retired. My programming now is strictly amateur. If you want expert programmers, why not say &quot;expert&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bigger problem is that some of the questions I found most interesting were closed. Yes, I'm very confused about what this forum is for." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13725" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5628" RevisionGUID="cce90136-5105-42d8-bdc8-e810d801b3cc" CreationDate="2013-03-05T07:31:05.700" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/308842084016734208" />
  <row Id="13726" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5561" RevisionGUID="6b785f12-7669-48ed-b34e-4d94181445c9" CreationDate="2013-03-05T13:31:14.153" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/308932714256531456" />
  <row Id="13727" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5694" RevisionGUID="197a485b-dadd-42e2-a9ae-5f66b4faedf7" CreationDate="2013-03-05T19:00:05.690" UserId="949" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|deleted-questions|search|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13728" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5700" RevisionGUID="310754c8-da37-45c0-9cc4-a40f54090cfd" CreationDate="2013-03-05T19:02:52.707" UserId="949" Text="A bad shard was in play here with 12,230 bad documents...well not necessarily bad, but some aged and didn't update afterwards due to an ID mismatch on the mapping.  The offending shard  and replica has been nuked from existence and the content re-indexed.  Searches should no longer contain deleted content." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13729" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5573" RevisionGUID="75207165-0144-471f-b4fd-8a38d6072649" CreationDate="2013-03-05T20:01:24.427" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|election|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13730" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5701" RevisionGUID="05c93a1e-14e6-4959-8572-8de290dba982" CreationDate="2013-03-05T20:02:43.990" UserId="63" Text="Programmers' [third moderator election][1] has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the new moderator is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![World Engineer][2]][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He'll be joining [the existing crew][6] shortly — please thank him for volunteering, and share your assistance and advice as he learns the ropes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For details on how the voting played out, you can download the election results [here][7], or [view a summary report online][8].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also wish to announce that veteran moderator [Josh K][4] is stepping down after two years. Moderating a site as *spirited* as Programmers can be a thankless job at times, so please join me now in thanking him for his service, and wishing him all the best on the next leg of his pilgrimage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election/3&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/flair/28988.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/28988&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2654&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election/3&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://www.opavote.org/results/958001/0&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13731" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5701" RevisionGUID="05c93a1e-14e6-4959-8572-8de290dba982" CreationDate="2013-03-05T20:02:43.990" UserId="63" Text="2013 Community Moderator Election Results" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13732" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5701" RevisionGUID="05c93a1e-14e6-4959-8572-8de290dba982" CreationDate="2013-03-05T20:02:43.990" UserId="63" Text="|discussion|featured|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13733" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5696" RevisionGUID="bc248c49-2821-448a-86bd-053d31a2324a" CreationDate="2013-03-05T21:37:49.633" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="Clarified answer based upon diff in T.CS and CS" Text="&gt;Are you still confused about what Programmers is for?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kind-of.  But I think the challenge there is that the field itself is exceptionally broad and that it can sometimes be difficult to discern good questions from bad ones.  Not everything is black and white, and divining shades of grey can be challenging with English-as-a-second-language speakers or geek-typical lack of sufficient context.  But those two aspects are accepted consequences of participating in an international community of geeks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be pointed out that the site's scope is pretty dang broad as well.  There are a number of exception cases (see licensing; freelancing; workplace if nuanced to programming; homework; etc...) that make it difficult for even the experienced members of the site to identify on-topic and constructive or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While a community's culture will shift over time, I don't see a clear mechanism for conveying that culture to others.  The FAQ certainly isn't communicating it, and Meta doesn't reflect _current_ aspects very well at the time of a question being evaluated.  It's a bit useless to say since I don't have a suggestion, but we obviously need something better than what we (don't) have now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; That's it. Now tell me, how does a question like Where can I find a printed copy of the C++ specification fit within this framework?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly the OP could have done more research.  Wikipedia mentions their basis in the Standards in the first few paragraphs.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That having been said, the SO question that answered the P.SE version of that question led me to some interesting discoveries about Schildt and his annotated review of the Standard.  That review of Schildt echoed some concerns I had with other works of his.  Collateral &quot;damage&quot; of that question led me down an interesting research path.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I get the impression that the user community is asking themselves, &quot;How can we make Programmers more friendly and more inclusive?&quot; If that is the case, you're asking the wrong question. The question you should be asking is: **How can I make this site more friendly to experts?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, maybe.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's okay to be friendly.  And it's okay for experts to be friendly to experts-in-training.  That's partly what makes an apprenticeship model work.  And Programming is a profession that fits and benefits from the apprenticeship model.  I think that being friendly is part of what we need to do in order to attract more people that are knowledgeable to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it's okay to be inclusive.  One of the reasons why I take exception to the &quot;professional&quot; tag line is that it unintentionally excludes people who aren't paid to program.  Honestly, what I think we're looking for as a community are people who are passionate about programming and enjoy helping others grow in their understanding passion for programming.  There are some great amateur (not-paid) programmers out there along with many horrible paid (&quot;professional&quot;) programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that's a nuance upon professional | amateur that not many people delve into.  Most use professional as &quot;someone who is really good at something.&quot;  And we certainly want those folk in our community.  But I recognize we all started out not knowing jack about programming, and that people ought to have a place to learn.  I'm not suggesting we start allowing homework questions, as that fails the (my) productivity test.  But I am saying expert-in-training type questions are appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So yes, we ought to be more friendly and more inclusive but that's so we can bring in more, knowledgeable programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There's a balance between helping people get answers to their questions, and keeping the site an interesting place for experts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Absolutely; there has to be a degree of feedback and reward that encourages the experts to continue contributing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contributions to and returns from the site need to be productive as well, otherwise the site will denigrate into useless chatter which will drive off many of the experts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that leads me to ask, what is this site really intended to be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * By experts  &#xD;&#xA;* For experts  &#xD;&#xA;* or Experts only&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Experts only doesn't seem to be the right approach.  The volume of questions simply wouldn't be sufficient to attract repeat visits.  And there has to be a decent amount of volume (ie. quality questions _and_ answers) to provide motivation to return.  I also wonder if there is a sufficient pool of &quot;true experts&quot; that such a site could be populated with _and_ that are interested in participating.  This is so exclusive that it's futile.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* For Experts suffers similar challenges as Experts Only in that the volume of interesting questions and answers won't be self-sustaining.  This is more inclusive, but doesn't create repeated draw.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* By Experts seems to be the most reasonable approach.  It allows for Q&amp;A and provides for solid answers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why am I here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, it's to give back to the community.  I have had some modest success as a programmer, and I'm happy to share my knowledge with others.  I grow by teaching others what I have learned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, the site allows me to learn from peers (seasoned veterans) who have explored other pathways that I have not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The C braces vs. brackets question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's important not to let ourselves be shackled by past precedent.  Yes, we all have our favorite story to prove that point, so I'll skip mine.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This wasn't a great question by any means, but it led me to look at similar questions where I saw a discussion on the `printf()` function's use of the `%` sign and how C# determined that wasn't really necessary.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As that's my second example of using discovery spawned by a marginal question, let me be a bit more clear.  _My_ personal research from a marginal question doesn't transfer to an increase in value to the question.  However, I am willing to tolerate some degree of marginal questions because of this, and because of the marginal question coming back with an outstanding answer.  On a related note, the community needs a polite response for the marginal questions that are closed because they didn't make the cut.  It's a subjective delineation, but I'm okay with that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I'll posit is that we can we accommodate both viewpoints, but we need to operate a little bit differently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How so?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. We need better ability to handle marginal questions.  Perhaps this means faster locking and / or protecting of the questions so a meta discussion can be opened up.  Maybe that means more users are able to perform these tasks, or we need to train ourselves to flag for the lock and start the meta Q.  This aspect also needs to be built into the review Q because it's too easy to click-to-close without an attempt at clarifying the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. We need to enhance our redirect block within the FAQ.  We also need to request other sites to update their redirects.  For example [CSTheory's Where-can-I-ask?](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/faq#my-question-is-not-a-research-level-question-in-tcs-where-can-i-ask-it) is really good except that it doesn't mention P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Likewise, I think we need to update our redirect on off-topic close votes.  Workplace should be considered, and [CSTheory](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/) should be added although I'll admit we don't see many come our way that I think would fit well there.  [Computer Science](http://cs.stackexchange.com/) is another potential candidate, although I'm unclear on the site scope difference between P.SE and CS.SE.  I think the changes proposed in the MSO question on off-topic closes would be very helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. Finally, I think we need some Canonical Q&amp;As (owned by Community Wiki) for some of the recurring questions that are continually being closed.  Just because they're off-topic or not constructive for the individual doesn't mean that the community can't create answers for those questions in general.  No, we don't want to answer them over, and over, and over.  But we could still answer them once.  I _think_ that the community can support the increased amount of governance that maintaining sets of canonicals would require, but maintenance is a very valid concern and counter-point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some example canonical questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Books for languages - No, we're not Amazon, and no, our focus isn't reviews per se.  But we are a community of programmers, and we ought to have a more concentrated knowledge of those languages and can therefore better evaluate a review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What language next - One question, a slew of answers highlighting the pros &amp; cons of the languages.  It would allow us to redirect all of those inquiries to the collective knowledge on languages.  I believe that we can provide enough information that the askers can identify what should be next for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Projects / Skills enhancement - similar thoughts as _what language next_&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13734" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5619" RevisionGUID="16b25f74-bf1b-49ee-ba74-1b27d2f99741" CreationDate="2013-03-05T22:31:07.907" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/309068586843000832" />
  <row Id="13735" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5702" RevisionGUID="a814efd3-e5ab-4205-b615-27a81a01fe3e" CreationDate="2013-03-05T23:10:12.237" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="I'd like to thank everyone here for making this a community worth defending. I am honored to serve. Come At Me, Prog!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13736" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5699" RevisionGUID="9fd14ee4-283e-420c-a5f8-ef2223d281c9" CreationDate="2013-03-06T07:27:19.917" UserId="73603" Comment="added 626 characters in body" Text="I've dropped in a few times over the last few days to see if I want to become active on Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing I see is that I'm technically excluded. I was a professional programmer from 1970 to 2002, but then I went back to school to get a doctorate and I'm now retired. My programming now is strictly amateur. If you want expert programmers, why not say &quot;expert&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bigger problem is that some of the questions I found most interesting were closed. Yes, I'm very confused about what this forum is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;=================================================&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the comments, at least one reason for the limitations on topics, and question closings, seems to be an objection to questions that are expected to have multiple correct answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On StackOverflow, many questions that are not in the prohibited categories, and that are considered acceptable, with no downvotes and no votes to close, actually have multiple correct answers. I rarely see a programming problem for which I can't think of at least two solutions, often more. So far, StackOverflow seems to be surviving despite the multiple correct answer questions.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13737" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5703" RevisionGUID="b71925ac-abf6-4231-a0ef-3915579a74aa" CreationDate="2013-03-06T07:28:22.553" UserId="22999" Text="No, I'm not confused.  I'm maybe a little disappointed to realize that it's not a site I can contribute answers to (not being an expert) and also that I don't have any high quality questions to ask that the experts here would find interesting." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13738" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5701" RevisionGUID="5b9f5c3f-b6f8-4187-a65b-7cbe1deadcf6" CreationDate="2013-03-06T07:31:08.007" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/309204482540048384" />
  <row Id="13739" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5704" RevisionGUID="123af54b-1ec3-4bbe-afbf-1b4292f45f79" CreationDate="2013-03-06T08:28:23.250" UserId="82764" Text="I think there is considerable overlap between Stack Overflow and programmers, and I scratch my head looking at what I consider to be really good questions consistently being down voted and closed. There are many a time (and I'm new) where I am in the middle of typing an answer and I get the notification the question has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that Programmers should be a place for developers to ask question about occupational issues specific to, or stereotyped to developers. This includes questions such as burnout (seen various closed topics - look at [burnout] tag), questions about chairs and ergonomics. What I'm getting at is yes, there is Work Place now, but many questions are specific to programmers and not just office workers and I feel those sorts of questions should be welcome here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is an inherent amount of confusion, which you can see by people coming to the site, asking their first question and being down voted like mad and will likely never return. It's savage. The vast majority of questions that appear when browsing have a large number of down votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13740" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5705" RevisionGUID="a318ca97-93a9-437c-b240-f7443cc2fd5b" CreationDate="2013-03-06T10:21:41.723" UserId="31260" Text="I would like to address one point I noticed in quite a few prior answers here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * conceptual question on software development, why wouldn't I ask it on **Stack Overflow**... &lt;sup&gt;[1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5680/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * On **StackOverflow**, many questions that are not in the prohibited categories... &lt;sup&gt;[2](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5699/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * I think there is considerable overlap between **Stack Overflow** and programmers... &lt;sup&gt;[3](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5704/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *  those questions are valuable and interesting..., and happily go on using **StackOverflow**... &lt;sup&gt;[4](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5676/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah you guys brag so much about how easier is to _pass through_ at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you probably don't consider is that [huge backlog in close votes queue](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/151833/165773 &quot;about 50K questions to close&quot;) makes (_currently_ makes) close voting at SO somewhat... _random_, compared to systematic effort you see at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **I hate to be the one to tell you, but don't expect this to last forever...**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yxu4K.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it will be very interesting to see what happens in about [21 months from now](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/163837/165773 &quot;'we should have it cleared in just under 21 months'&quot;), when mentioned backlog is expected to be cleared.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;One can probably get a feeling on how it would feel like by observing current effort to [Close all the typo questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/167342/close-all-the-typo-questions &quot;refer to MSO for more details on that&quot;). Watching their &quot;live backlog&quot; makes a strong impression: dozens of questions getting closed and deleted daily with ease, and don't forget that only a small percentage of [about 10 thousands SO close-voters](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/167915/165773 &quot;estimate here&quot;) participate!&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When close votes backlog is finally cleared, expect close votes processing to get to the pace at which other SO reviews are dealt with (think about something like **10x faster than at Programmers**).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What would you guys say when it will become only a matter of few minutes between first close vote / flag and question closure at Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If (when) that happens to your favorite &quot;conceptual&quot; questions at SO (as [it happens already](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/170394/165773 &quot;recent example&quot;), just not that frequently), please don't forget to get back here and tell us again if it's that easy to pass at SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yxu4K.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/review/close/stats &quot;'can't you see I'm working on it...'&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13741" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5603" RevisionGUID="89a09cec-3428-422a-89fc-8536cad137bb" CreationDate="2013-03-06T10:31:29.057" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/309249870269665280" />
  <row Id="13742" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5705" RevisionGUID="6000b82d-1c23-47f1-9121-6cdfb06dd9af" CreationDate="2013-03-06T10:42:12.807" UserId="31260" Comment="deleted 9 characters in body" Text="I would like to address one point I noticed in quite a few prior answers here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * conceptual question on software development, why wouldn't I ask it on **Stack Overflow**... &lt;sup&gt;[1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5680/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * On **StackOverflow**, many questions that are not in the prohibited categories... &lt;sup&gt;[2](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5699/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * there is considerable overlap between **Stack Overflow** and programmers... &lt;sup&gt;[3](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5704/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * those questions are valuable and interesting..., and happily go on using **StackOverflow**... &lt;sup&gt;[4](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5676/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah you guys brag so much about how easier is to _pass through_ at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you probably don't consider is that [huge backlog in close votes queue](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/151833/165773 &quot;about 50K questions to close&quot;) makes (_currently_ makes) close voting at SO somewhat... _random_, compared to systematic effort you see at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **I hate to be the one to tell you, but don't expect this to last forever...**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yxu4K.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it will be very interesting to see what happens in about [21 months from now](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/163837/165773 &quot;'we should have it cleared in just under 21 months'&quot;), when mentioned backlog is expected to be cleared.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;One can probably get a feeling on how it would feel like by observing current effort to [Close all the typo questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/167342/close-all-the-typo-questions &quot;refer to MSO for more details on that&quot;). Watching their &quot;live backlog&quot; makes a strong impression: dozens of questions getting closed and deleted daily with ease, and don't forget that only a small percentage of [about 10 thousands SO close-voters](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/167915/165773 &quot;estimate here&quot;) participate!&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When close votes backlog is finally cleared, expect close votes processing to get to the pace at which other SO reviews are dealt with (think about something like **10x faster than at Programmers**).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What would you guys say when it will become only a matter of few minutes between first close vote / flag and question closure at Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If (when) that happens to your favorite &quot;conceptual&quot; questions at SO (as [it happens already](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/170394/165773 &quot;recent example&quot;), just not that frequently), please don't forget to get back here and tell us again if it's that easy to pass at SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yxu4K.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/review/close/stats &quot;'can't you see I'm working on it...'&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13743" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5705" RevisionGUID="81e522e8-41d5-4fdc-9f68-ddf93a075766" CreationDate="2013-03-06T11:02:12.460" UserId="31260" Comment="happens already += http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/157216/165773" Text="I would like to address one point I noticed in quite a few prior answers here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * conceptual question on software development, why wouldn't I ask it on **Stack Overflow**... &lt;sup&gt;[1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5680/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * On **StackOverflow**, many questions that are not in the prohibited categories... &lt;sup&gt;[2](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5699/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * there is considerable overlap between **Stack Overflow** and programmers... &lt;sup&gt;[3](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5704/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * those questions are valuable and interesting..., and happily go on using **StackOverflow**... &lt;sup&gt;[4](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5676/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah you guys brag so much about how easier it is to _pass through_ at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you probably don't consider is that [huge backlog in close votes queue](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/151833/165773 &quot;about 50K questions to close&quot;) makes (_currently_ makes) close voting at SO somewhat... _random_, compared to systematic effort you see at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **I hate to be the one to tell you, but don't expect this to last forever...**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yxu4K.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it will be very interesting to see what happens in about [21 months from now](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/163837/165773 &quot;'we should have it cleared in just under 21 months'&quot;), when mentioned backlog is expected to be cleared.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;One can probably get an idea of how it would feel like by observing current effort to [Close all the typo questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/167342/close-all-the-typo-questions &quot;refer to MSO for more details on that&quot;). Watching their &quot;live backlog&quot; makes a strong impression: dozens of questions getting closed and deleted daily with ease, and don't forget that only a small percentage of [about 10 thousands SO close-voters](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/167915/165773 &quot;estimate here&quot;) participate!&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When close votes backlog is finally cleared, expect close votes processing to get to the pace at which other SO reviews are dealt with (think about something like **10x faster than at Programmers**).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What would you guys say when it will become only a matter of few minutes between first close vote / flag and question closure at Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If (when) that happens to your favorite &quot;conceptual&quot; questions at SO (as it happens already &lt;sup&gt;[1](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/170394/165773 &quot;recent example&quot;), [2](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/157216/165773 &quot;another example&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt; - just not that frequently), please don't forget to get back here and tell us again if it's that easy to pass at SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yxu4K.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/review/close/stats &quot;'can't you see I'm working on it...'&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13744" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5706" RevisionGUID="c7ecd530-c7cd-47b5-807d-ecce8e53507e" CreationDate="2013-03-06T12:51:57.660" UserId="27161" Text="&gt; Programmers is a site for professional programmers who are interested&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is this combined with a small army of mods many of whom I've never actually seen actively participating in any manner other than closing things who don't seem to understand that conceptual questions are inherently subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They also don't seem to understand that closing questions based on qualities of the answers rather than the quality of the questions is completely absurd. We have a system for dealing with lousy answers. Lots of ugly answers is like code smell. It always indicates you should check for a problem, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee that there actually is one in the code in question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13745" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5704" RevisionGUID="f4cfea8d-68a6-4d0b-9313-9e504c091184" CreationDate="2013-03-06T14:49:07.770" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Link to tag" Text="I think there is considerable overlap between Stack Overflow and programmers, and I scratch my head looking at what I consider to be really good questions consistently being down voted and closed. There are many a time (and I'm new) where I am in the middle of typing an answer and I get the notification the question has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that Programmers should be a place for developers to ask question about occupational issues specific to, or stereotyped to developers. This includes questions such as burnout (seen various closed topics - look at [tag:burnout] tag), questions about chairs and ergonomics. What I'm getting at is yes, there is Work Place now, but many questions are specific to programmers and not just office workers and I feel those sorts of questions should be welcome here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is an inherent amount of confusion, which you can see by people coming to the site, asking their first question and being down voted like mad and will likely never return. It's savage. The vast majority of questions that appear when browsing have a large number of down votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13746" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5706" RevisionGUID="c49827ff-97c7-421d-9c2e-13cef106590c" CreationDate="2013-03-06T17:41:11.253" UserId="27161" Comment="coming off as a dick" Text="&gt; Programmers is a site for professional programmers who are interested&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is this combined with a small army of mods many of whom I've never actually seen actively participating in any manner other than closing things who don't seem to understand that conceptual questions are inherently subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They also don't seem to understand that closing questions based on qualities of the answers rather than the quality of the questions is completely absurd. We have a system for dealing with lousy answers. Lots of ugly answers is like code smell. It always indicates you should check for a problem, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee that there actually is one in the code in question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Alright I did paint some overly broad strokes here and I can see how that would be obnoxious. Let me to try to get a better lock on points of frustration&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me like too many questions get closed for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Answer quality - If a reasonable-seeming question's been open for days and all the answers seem to involve some sort of front in a dev holy war, I get it. Better to close that one down as inherently explosive than sweat the details and add that to a list of topics known to incite rage. But if it's been a few hours, give somebody some time to be the voice of reason. But regardless the closure should be justified on the basis of the question somehow causing the problem even if it's just something like a historically explosive topic that no good shall come of trying to be mature adults about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Being even vaguely similar to another topic - I see this a lot in JavaScript stuff, which is prone to change every two weeks and in UI work at least, deals with a lot of variation on specifics in a given problem domain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Not having one perfect ideal answer - There never is one for best practice-type questions. I regularly necro answered questions because I felt some consideration or perspective was left out. I don't care if I never get the official answer. I don't even think I'm necessarily more right than the guy who got official accepted answer. I just think there's a perspective that should be added that wouldn't necessarily make sense in an edit. Am I doing Stack a disservice in this regard? I personally want to see multiple perspectives on more general/subjective topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Any hint of assessment of any framework/tool/language - General comparison questions I get. It's not a review site. But when somebody asks, &quot;which of these tools would you recommend for my specific situation,&quot; I think that's appropriate and on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And to be fair I realize I'm not always the best behaved Programmers SE citizen. I do tend to provoke chat. I do occasionally answer questions I'm pretty sure ought to get closed. But the reason I'm here is because of the kinds of folks who show up here. I want to know what they think of my ideas earned through professional experience and I want to hear what theirs are too. That process stops the second questions get closed for reasons that strike me as trying overly hard to cram a square rod business strategy into a field of knowledge that's more of a circular hole." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13747" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5707" RevisionGUID="145fca63-4c63-4f56-b557-0681f3e57088" CreationDate="2013-03-06T19:27:48.733" UserId="35301" Text="I am still confused about what topics are allowed here. I read the questions here but would never ask a question. The number of closed questions, particularly ones with what seems to be an interesting answer, leads one to believe that you have to have some special &quot;sauce&quot; in order to know how to phrase your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some users do not read help manuals or FAQ so the context of the site title is what people base their decision on as to whether their question is in &quot;scope&quot;. If the site title says /* Programmers */ then most people will assume anything about coding is allowed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13748" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5707" RevisionGUID="aa5c91ba-c910-4374-9a11-c24b76ea4987" CreationDate="2013-03-06T20:25:05.177" UserId="35301" Comment="added 439 characters in body" Text="I am still confused about what topics are allowed here. I read the questions here but would never ask a question. The number of closed questions, particularly ones with what seems to be an interesting answer, leads one to believe that you have to have some special &quot;sauce&quot; in order to know how to phrase your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some users do not read help manuals or FAQ so the context of the site title is what people base their decision on as to whether their question is in &quot;scope&quot;. If the site title says /* Programmers */ then most people will assume anything about coding is allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: An example of a closed question I found interesting is http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189393/my-company-wants-to-get-into-mobile-development-and-use-multi-platform-framew .  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My interest is based on my work for an organization that will be forced into mobile development sooner or later but with limited resources.  Interesting to me, as a question I might ask in the future, but apparently not in Scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13749" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5707" RevisionGUID="59d74f17-acd9-4f4a-aba8-4b8f2e635caf" CreationDate="2013-03-06T23:20:26.337" UserId="35301" Comment="added 585 characters in body" Text="I am still confused about what topics are allowed here. I read the questions here but would never ask a question. The number of closed questions, particularly ones with what seems to be an interesting answer, leads one to believe that you have to have some special &quot;sauce&quot; in order to know how to phrase your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some users do not read help manuals or FAQ so the context of the site title is what people base their decision on as to whether their question is in &quot;scope&quot;. If the site title says /* Programmers */ then most people will assume anything about coding is allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: An example of a closed question I found interesting is http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189393/my-company-wants-to-get-into-mobile-development-and-use-multi-platform-framew .  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My interest is based on my work for an organization that will be forced into mobile development sooner or later but with limited resources.  I.nteresting to me, as a question I might ask in the future, but apparently not in Scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: @MichaelT Thanks for that refreshing link about group and social behaviour. Still, the question was asked by a programmer about software. if that question is not a good fit here then is it a good fit anywhere on Stack Exchange?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If what you can ask here is circumscribed by a set of rules that is not inherently obvious from the site title then, perhaps, using the Stack Exchange technology is not a good fit. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cue the eerie music, as Jeff steps in to suggest [a discourse][1]....&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/02/civilized-discourse-construction-kit.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13750" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="5708" RevisionGUID="bc2cec45-839f-4078-883b-7b9aa4d784ec" CreationDate="2013-03-07T12:31:35.443" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189614/is-this-the-right-forum-for-web-deveelopment-design" />
  <row Id="13751" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5708" RevisionGUID="a0e9d14b-b38e-4d9a-a652-ba39c824a76a" CreationDate="2013-03-07T12:23:21.653" UserId="83522" Text="I have just asked a question on web dev at ProWebMasters StackExchange re IE css issues&#xD;&#xA;see:[enter link description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure which is the right forum for web dev &amp; web design?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also if anyone can help with my xbrowser IE css issue I would be very grateful. &#xD;&#xA;Many thanks&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/44618/internet-explorer-css-issues-on-site" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13752" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5708" RevisionGUID="a0e9d14b-b38e-4d9a-a652-ba39c824a76a" CreationDate="2013-03-07T12:23:21.653" UserId="83522" Text="Is this the right forum for web deveelopment &amp; design?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13753" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5708" RevisionGUID="a0e9d14b-b38e-4d9a-a652-ba39c824a76a" CreationDate="2013-03-07T12:23:21.653" UserId="83522" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13754" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5708" RevisionGUID="a2436fba-eb9d-4961-8bd5-ec404dc50337" CreationDate="2013-03-07T12:33:46.717" UserDisplayName="user7007" Comment="deleted 22 characters in body" Text="I have just asked a question on web dev at ProWebMasters StackExchange regarding  [Internet Explorer CSS issues][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure which is the right forum for web dev &amp; web design?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also if anyone can help with my xbrowser IE css issue I would be very grateful. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/44618/internet-explorer-css-issues-on-site" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13755" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5708" RevisionGUID="51a080ee-06ab-4690-830b-17aa6a4350fb" CreationDate="2013-03-07T12:40:38.220" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13756" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5708" RevisionGUID="ac3628ed-f942-4160-92f1-e392e254e95d" CreationDate="2013-03-07T13:52:40.707" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="Is this the right forum for web development &amp; design?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13757" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5709" RevisionGUID="e2a3d37e-d278-4d04-a39e-6edf416881af" CreationDate="2013-03-07T14:58:11.077" UserId="62049" Text="Relevant Link: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189582/how-is-an-ide-compiled&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought I was asking a fair question that's fit for programmers.stackexchange. Apparently, many experts do not think so. What's more unfortunate is that I cannot delete the question now even though it's terrible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not here to argue, I'm genuinely curious as to why the question is considered bad. All I'm interested in hearing is the procedures used to build a modern IDE, and I simply gave an example of VS and Eclipse to illustrate my point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently, people think the example is way too farfetched so I tried to remove the example given regarding VS and Eclipse. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some specific questions I want to ask:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is the question itself bad? For example, is it something blatantly obvious that you can't figure out why anyone would ask such question?&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is the question simply not fit for Programmers.SE?&#xD;&#xA; 3. Is the question itself fine but very poorly written? I'm not sure how I can improve the question from as is. I'd really love to hear suggestions for this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13758" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5709" RevisionGUID="e2a3d37e-d278-4d04-a39e-6edf416881af" CreationDate="2013-03-07T14:58:11.077" UserId="62049" Text="IDE Compilation question - I'm not sure why this is downvoted so much" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13759" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5709" RevisionGUID="e2a3d37e-d278-4d04-a39e-6edf416881af" CreationDate="2013-03-07T14:58:11.077" UserId="62049" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13760" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5710" RevisionGUID="071d3da5-829d-4fa2-877c-bd5375708ffe" CreationDate="2013-03-07T15:04:55.663" UserId="47" Text="This is my personal opinion but I think the question is not a good question (I haven't voted on it either way).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Your first version showed a confusion between an IDE and a compiler which is probably the version that attracted most of the down-votes. An IDE is just like any other program and is often completely independent of the compiler.&#xD;&#xA;* Your second version clears up this confusion, but it's a very basic question and a little bit of research would turn up articles on how IDEs are built.&#xD;&#xA;* The *implied* question (How are compilers compiled?) is also relatively easy to answer with a bit of research and may even have already been asked on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you'd done the research and were asking about an aspect of this process you didn't understand then your question may well have done better." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13761" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5711" RevisionGUID="f87c5433-8fb5-4633-bb12-7f7f21b99248" CreationDate="2013-03-07T15:21:12.460" UserId="13181" Text="I just saw an answer from a new user (1 reputation point joined today) with [3 downvotes][1]&#xD;&#xA;I'd be surprised if that guy ever decided to return to the site because of the welcome he received. Only one person who downvoted decided to leave a reason for his vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it might make sense to give new users (by length on site or after a certain amount of questions asked/answered) a protected status. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that I'm thinking about it...what point does a negative vote have? If the idea of the system is to bubble quality answers and questions to the top, shouldn't an upvote be enough? A bad answer will remain at zero, good answers will get more points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/189626/13181" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13762" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5711" RevisionGUID="f87c5433-8fb5-4633-bb12-7f7f21b99248" CreationDate="2013-03-07T15:21:12.460" UserId="13181" Text="Should new users be protected from down votes?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13763" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5711" RevisionGUID="f87c5433-8fb5-4633-bb12-7f7f21b99248" CreationDate="2013-03-07T15:21:12.460" UserId="13181" Text="|feature-request|new-users|community|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13764" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5712" RevisionGUID="0fdcdafa-bc62-4e01-a9b0-c6229df63511" CreationDate="2013-03-07T15:29:34.040" UserId="47" Text="Downvotes have clear an specific meanings and you can see them from the tooltips.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For questions it's:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For answers it's:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer is not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the answer is wrong then it should be down-voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The mistake a lot of people make is confusing a vote on the **post** with a vote on the **person**. I understand this can be hard to do, but people need to keep this in mind. Perhaps this should be made clearer in the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) or [About](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about) page, but I'm not sure it will help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;New users should not be immune to down-votes otherwise we have no way to indicate that this is a bad answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13765" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5709" RevisionGUID="b22de84e-15f5-48f3-ada0-e341dba63bd2" CreationDate="2013-03-07T15:39:10.407" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Two tags for Yannis." Text="|discussion|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13766" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5713" RevisionGUID="2349bb61-80db-4250-8581-7a24965cf8a4" CreationDate="2013-03-07T16:09:15.833" UserId="31090" Text="Allowing downvotes on answers is necessary, and so is to allow downvotes to bring an answer below zero, for the following reasons that I see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A plain downvote:  An ostensibly correct but factually wrong answer can get upvoted (for example, misunderstanding an unclear question that gets clarified after the initial upvotes on an answer).  A down-vote can help to balance the rest of the answers more quickly, and can help stem a flood of &quot;me too&quot; upvotes of people that may have missed the changed context.  Etiquette should demand that the downvoter also upvotes at least one correct answer, provides a correct answer, or provides a comment why the given answer is wrong, but just the downvote is already useful information.&#xD;&#xA; - A downvote below zero: an expert with information about the topic will not necessarily stay &quot;live&quot; with a question and its answers during the activity period on that question and its answers.  At the time that they see the questions and answers they may all be at or near zero, but some of them may be right and some wrong.  The expert needs some way to indicate an answer is &quot;wrong&quot; even if no-one has upvoted it yet so that their opinion carries in later activity.  If you peg at zero and later on when the expert is no longer watching, a wrong answer may start getting voted up for the same reasons as above.  A &quot;wrongness&quot; buffer (negative answer score) can prevent that answer from getting that momentum." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13767" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5714" RevisionGUID="e0520a30-19d8-4899-b267-72b831134ee3" CreationDate="2013-03-07T18:06:03.140" UserId="8187" Text="There is a stackexchange site for web development: [Pro Webmasters](http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/). This is intended for issues around building and managing websites as well as related tasks. For questions that are more code-oriented, a better place to look and ask would be [StackOverflow](http://stackoverflow.com/)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13768" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5715" RevisionGUID="62d01729-9283-4d8e-837e-c05c1a526712" CreationDate="2013-03-07T21:23:27.987" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Based upon your question at ProWebmasters, I'd say SO is your best bet for that question.  Your question kind of boils down &quot;this control (code) is borked; how do I fix it?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the snippet that led me to the &quot;my code is broken&quot; conclusion, which is what makes it a candidate for SO.  Searching for &quot;css slider&quot; on SO returned several thousand results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The main errors I have presently is the slider on the template pages is displaying too far to the left and on the blog page the header is not displaying properly in IE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For future questions, Programmers _does_ handle some web design questions, but they are intentionally more conceptual broad brush stroke design type questions.  For example you could look at [tag:css]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13769" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5716" RevisionGUID="a33de82f-6569-4331-8711-15f682cde1e6" CreationDate="2013-03-07T21:38:12.833" UserId="3965" Text="To borrow a phrase from a book title:  everything is obvious, once you know the answer.  A lot of the down votes are from people who can't imagine not knowing the answer or being able to easily figure it out.  They vote you down because they assume you're just being lazy.  There's probably not much you can do about that group of voters.  Others are more tolerant and assume you wouldn't ask unless the answer truly eluded you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other problem is the question was worded in such a way as to allow a lot of reading between the lines.  This problem was exacerbated by the first problem.  In other words, people were thinking the simplest answer to how an IDE is compiled was too obvious, so you must have *really* been asking about the general bootstrap problem of how the first version of a compiler is created.  Then you specifically said that's not what you were asking, without clarifying what you *intended* to ask.  As Charles Babbage said, that left people &quot;not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if you want to salvage the question, you need to be specific about the source of your confusion.  What exactly do you think makes compiling an IDE different from compiling any other software?  Do you understand the bootstrap problem and are just curious about if IDE developers have special hooks for working on their own IDE?  Are you confused as to how a stable version and an in-development version could coexist on the same system?  Have you done some basic research, like looking at how an [open source IDE](http://www.vogella.com/articles/EclipseCodeAccess/article.html) does it?  After doing that research, what specifically is still unclear?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13770" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5712" RevisionGUID="16dbb4a1-a57f-43a2-a307-1c51edbe3d07" CreationDate="2013-03-08T08:43:22.327" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="Downvotes have clear an specific meanings and you can see them from the tooltips.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For questions it's:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For answers it's:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer is not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the answer is wrong then it should be down-voted. However, that doesn't mean you can't add a comment either before down-voting to give the user time to improve the post or afterwards. If you do it afterwards you should, as a matter of courtesy, go back and check if the post has indeed been improved so you can remove the down-vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The mistake a lot of people make is confusing a vote on the **post** with a vote on the **person**. I understand this can be hard to do, but people need to keep this in mind. Perhaps this should be made clearer in the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) or [About](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about) page, but I'm not sure it will help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;New users should not be immune to down-votes otherwise we have no way to indicate that this is a bad answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13771" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5717" RevisionGUID="3405e19e-b426-4946-bb06-53b0e9a4b901" CreationDate="2013-03-08T16:03:20.683" UserId="855" Text="I've hammered thousands of nails, but no one ever refered to me as a carpenter. Becoming a professional programmer has been a circuitous route littered with coffee stains, lots of books, bad code, and help from a lot of programmers. Maybe Im not there yet? It's been a long time since I've worked anywhere that had other developers. The SE sites have been very helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SO provided quick and incrementally better answers to particular a problem. Very helpful. I started to answer a few questions. It was a great way to see if I knew what I was doing. Getting both positive and negative feedback helped me to learn a lot more, but there was something missing. Many interesting questions that gave insight into how programmers think were closed. There was a need to focus and the moderators did their jobs well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then programmers came along. What a relief. Programming jokes, cartoons, t-shirts, and books were on topic (OK, I hate book questions) as well as, how to do your job better. That requires a lot more than just writing code. It was a chance to lighten-up and enjoy being a programmer. I learned a lot about programmers and encouraged technical job recruiters and managers to go to this site and learn something about this culture, so they could manage and interact with them better. If my boss told me to go out right now and find a good programmer, I could do it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know all my points came in the good old days when you could get credit for answering inappropriate and off-topic questions. Having a sense of humor was appreciated, after all, we're creative types. With so many complaints about the quality of questions, I don't feel the top 20 users on this site set a very good example (Myself included.). The volume certainly isn't there. I don't now if I've ever Googled anything programming related and had a hit on this site like I get on SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I get what this site is for and what the moderators are trying to do (I hope so, I've spent enought time here.), but that doesn't mean I like it. Maybe the new Discourse site is another option. Then we can change the name of this site to [closed]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13772" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5718" RevisionGUID="f43e3df5-4b3e-478e-acbe-a0e144071e81" CreationDate="2013-03-08T19:32:26.743" UserId="17429" Text="I say, &quot;If it ain't broke, don't fix it.&quot; It seems that we've all finally agreed what P.SE is about. There's consensus. You can feel the community come together. It seems like a bad idea to encourage people who aren't will to read the FAQ, relevant meta posts, and relevant StachExchange blog posts before posting. They shouldn't have special rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a slippery slope problem. If you change the rules for low-rep users, you'll eventually have to change the site scope. I'd hate to see that happen now that the site has stablized. Our mod policies are finally working. Let's not mess that up." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13773" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5719" RevisionGUID="e7210b25-69c5-4bca-b51e-41e990b71bbc" CreationDate="2013-03-09T05:18:40.940" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Short version: Too bad.  Read it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Long version:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this recent spurt of activity on meta, a number of opinions have come out. A number of these describe some rather radical changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(please pardon me if I ascribe rather extreme positions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On everything should be open&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**There are instances where people seem to be opposed to closing any question for any reason.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Many of these people who are 3k and above have few if any close vote&#xD;&#xA;   reviews&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This suggests that either everything should be open or that they are comfortable with what is closed.  This is sometimes refuted by numerous &quot;reopen&quot; votes without any &quot;leave closed&quot; reviews.  From this, I can only conclude that there is the perception that everything should be open and there should be no moderation closing things - everything can be salvaged, somehow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On down votes&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;**There are suggestions that there shouldn't be downvotes for users with less than a certain reputation.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Somehow this suggestion has 10 positive votes at the time of this&#xD;&#xA;   writing (and 11 downvotes)&#xD;&#xA; - This is done in the name of &quot;welcoming users&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - People seem to take down votes personally&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Down votes are a necessary feedback to users and part of the design of the system.  There is a threshold where questions don't show up on the front page if they are below a certain level (people complain about seeing too many closed questions on the front page that they don't want to see?  Down vote them.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [mentioned](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for#comment14418_5706),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We have a system for dealing with lousy answers This is where your argument fails. Yes, it's absolutely true that we have a system for dealing with lousy answers, but that's irrelevant if no one is actually using that system. Next time you see a closed question you think should be re-opened, moderate the answers first. Use your downvotes on crap answers that attempt to answer the question and your flags on answers that don't attempt to answer the question. Questions can easily get re-opened if people actually did something about it instead of just talking about it. &lt;/rant&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvotes are part of reopening good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On closure reasons&#xD;&#xA;------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**There is a consistent misunderstanding about closure reasons**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- I understand this is something that Stack Exchange is going to address&#xD;&#xA;- Many people complain about something being closed as off topic when it was closed as non-constructive or not a real question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not everything is closed for off topic.  Many of the questions of &quot;I don't understand why this was closed&quot; within [are you still confused...](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for) had to deal with not the scope, but rather with the structure of the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One such examples was [How can I learn algorithms and data structures of any type?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189143/how-can-i-learn-algorithms-and-data-structures-of-any-type)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am a novice computer science and engineering student. I am learning Java but i want to learn from the basics so I want to learn algorithms.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Where to start that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was not closed for scope reasons but rather that it is not a real question.  It was overly broad.  Attempts were made in the comments to try to figure out what is actually being asked - if there is some way to narrow it down.  It took nearly an hour between being asked and closed and the original questioner was gone not to be seen again within 3 minutes of the question being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another question of confusion was [My Company Wants To Get Into Mobile Development — And Use Multi-Platform Frameworks](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189393/my-company-wants-to-get-into-mobile-development-and-use-multi-platform-framew) that has with in:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What do you guys think about this? No one at my company has any experience with any of the mobile development frameworks. We're starting basically from scratch. I know a bit about iOS, a few people know a bit about android but it amounts to little.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Would love some input from some experts :D&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is polling - asking for lots of ideas.  Not an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is lots of history&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is lots of history to what Progammers.SE *was*.  Get over it.  The site has not been that way for a long time.  Go through the [top users in the past year](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=reputation&amp;filter=year) - The vast majority where not here in September of 2010.  These are the people that are here now.  Trying to tell us about how wonderful it was back then and how bad it is now - we don't think its that bad now, and what you try to tell us that we are missing, we don't think we really want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You want to tell me about how wonderful the site was back then?  Sure.  I have fond memories of BBS's and that his of a 1200 baud modem connecting.  Some of those old BBS's became telnet sites when slip and isdn became more common and web sites with forums and live chat later on.  Its not the same place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't the same place of July 2010.  It isn't likely to become so again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lots of ideas, not answers&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my mind, what people come to Stack Exchange for is an answer.  They come to Programmers.StackExchange for a reason too - they want an answer.  They don't want to [reddit programming](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/) or [ask slashdot](http://ask.slashdot.org) when they have a question about programming.  We offer something special here that people come *here* to find.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange doesn't have polls.  It doesn't have endless threads of comments.  It wasn't designed to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange and Social Media&#xD;&#xA;-------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've said this before, I'll say it again.  Read [A group is its own worst enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) by Clay Shirky.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't just because I think its an essential thing to read when trying to understand a group of people... but because this was part of the considerations when creating Stack Exchange and how it is built - and thus, how we can work within it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back in [Podcast #23](https://stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/default.asp?W25450) &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Atwood**: Maybe. But the cool thing about this is this is not just me, because that would be boring. It is actually me and Clay Shirky. You know, Clay Shirky is one of my heroes.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Spolsky**: Oh...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Atwood**: Yeah I know, it's awesome. So we get to talk about like building communities online and I get to talk about StackOverflow, you know, and all the lessons we've learned and, get to present with Clay. Obviously he's an expert so. That's one of the people that I have emailed actually, because I thought that would be good, because he is from New-York city as well. So we could A) show him the site and B) talk about the thing we are going to do together in March, because he needs to see the site to have some context. I mean I did meet him and talk to him about this earlier a few months ago, I think I mentioned it on the podcasts. But that was before we had sort of even going to beta, so there's really not a lot to show him. But I would love to show him in person. So we'll see if I'll hear back from him, I do not know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.StackExchange.com runs in the Stack Exchange framework.  It was designed with Clay's writings in mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*A Group...* goes into many points of online communities.  The one I've tried to bring to a forefront (there are far too many essential things in the article - for me to try to explain them all would have much more than the text I've already written, and I suspect by this time you are a bit weary.)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale. Scale alone kills conversations, because conversations require dense two-way conversations. In conversational contexts, Metcalfe's law is a drag. The fact that the amount of two-way connections you have to support goes up with the square of the users means that the density of conversation falls off very fast as the system scales even a little bit. You have to have some way to let users hang onto the less is more pattern, in order to keep associated with one another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't have a question that can be answered by 100 different answers.  Jeff considered the issue of scale when he designed Stack Exchange to make it difficult to have conversations in comments (and has apparently been thinking of things in for [discourse](http://www.discourse.org) - which apparently had been nagging him for [a long time](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/11/discussions-flat-or-threaded.html)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you want?&#xD;&#xA;---------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those of you discountent with Programmers.SE, when considering that this is the way that the software works and that great changes to the fundamental ideals of the sites won't happen - what is it that you actually see Programmers.SE being that it isn't today?  How does the site work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do we clean up broken windows and trash in the park?  What do you do about that guy who keeps asking how to interview for Google and Microsoft and Blizard and Oracle again and again?  What does the FAQ say?  How does voting work?  Is voting there at all?  Do we try to make it so that every single person feels like this is a nice warm fuzzy place? Is there a place for [As a programmer, what are the most routine and what are the most creative development tasks?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189574/what-are-the-most-routine-and-what-are-the-most-creative-development-tasks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does what you perceive as the ideal site differ from reddit? Ask Slashdot? Generic php forum?  Can this be implemented in Stack Exchange?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13774" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5719" RevisionGUID="e7210b25-69c5-4bca-b51e-41e990b71bbc" CreationDate="2013-03-09T05:18:40.940" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Ok, I'm confused about what people think Programmers *should be*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13775" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5719" RevisionGUID="e7210b25-69c5-4bca-b51e-41e990b71bbc" CreationDate="2013-03-09T05:18:40.940" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|rant|community|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13776" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5654" RevisionGUID="5d2caa42-7cff-4441-bf43-8d1a3e42d625" CreationDate="2013-03-09T06:02:45.787" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13777" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5719" RevisionGUID="cc299764-9cce-41ea-afb0-7b093278e281" CreationDate="2013-03-09T10:57:48.113" UserId="47" Comment="spelling" Text="Short version: Too bad.  Read it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Long version:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this recent spurt of activity on meta, a number of opinions have come out. A number of these describe some rather radical changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(please pardon me if I ascribe rather extreme positions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On everything should be open&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**There are instances where people seem to be opposed to closing any question for any reason.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Many of these people who are 3k and above have few if any close vote&#xD;&#xA;   reviews&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This suggests that either everything should be open or that they are comfortable with what is closed.  This is sometimes refuted by numerous &quot;reopen&quot; votes without any &quot;leave closed&quot; reviews.  From this, I can only conclude that there is the perception that everything should be open and there should be no moderation closing things - everything can be salvaged, somehow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On down votes&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;**There are suggestions that there shouldn't be downvotes for users with less than a certain reputation.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Somehow this suggestion has 10 positive votes at the time of this&#xD;&#xA;   writing (and 11 downvotes)&#xD;&#xA; - This is done in the name of &quot;welcoming users&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - People seem to take down votes personally&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Down votes are a necessary feedback to users and part of the design of the system.  There is a threshold where questions don't show up on the front page if they are below a certain level (people complain about seeing too many closed questions on the front page that they don't want to see?  Down vote them.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [mentioned](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for#comment14418_5706),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We have a system for dealing with lousy answers This is where your argument fails. Yes, it's absolutely true that we have a system for dealing with lousy answers, but that's irrelevant if no one is actually using that system. Next time you see a closed question you think should be re-opened, moderate the answers first. Use your downvotes on crap answers that attempt to answer the question and your flags on answers that don't attempt to answer the question. Questions can easily get re-opened if people actually did something about it instead of just talking about it. &lt;/rant&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvotes are part of reopening good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On closure reasons&#xD;&#xA;------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**There is a consistent misunderstanding about closure reasons**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- I understand this is something that Stack Exchange is going to address&#xD;&#xA;- Many people complain about something being closed as off topic when it was closed as non-constructive or not a real question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not everything is closed for off topic.  Many of the questions of &quot;I don't understand why this was closed&quot; within [are you still confused...](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for) had to deal with not the scope, but rather with the structure of the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One such examples was [How can I learn algorithms and data structures of any type?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189143/how-can-i-learn-algorithms-and-data-structures-of-any-type)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am a novice computer science and engineering student. I am learning Java but i want to learn from the basics so I want to learn algorithms.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Where to start that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was not closed for scope reasons but rather that it is not a real question.  It was overly broad.  Attempts were made in the comments to try to figure out what is actually being asked - if there is some way to narrow it down.  It took nearly an hour between being asked and closed and the original questioner was gone not to be seen again within 3 minutes of the question being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another question of confusion was [My Company Wants To Get Into Mobile Development — And Use Multi-Platform Frameworks](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189393/my-company-wants-to-get-into-mobile-development-and-use-multi-platform-framew) that has with in:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What do you guys think about this? No one at my company has any experience with any of the mobile development frameworks. We're starting basically from scratch. I know a bit about iOS, a few people know a bit about android but it amounts to little.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Would love some input from some experts :D&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is polling - asking for lots of ideas.  Not an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is lots of history&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is lots of history to what Progammers.SE *was*.  Get over it.  The site has not been that way for a long time.  Go through the [top users in the past year](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=reputation&amp;filter=year) - The vast majority where not here in September of 2010.  These are the people that are here now.  Trying to tell us about how wonderful it was back then and how bad it is now - we don't think its that bad now, and what you try to tell us that we are missing, we don't think we really want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You want to tell me about how wonderful the site was back then?  Sure.  I have fond memories of BBS's and that his of a 1200 baud modem connecting.  Some of those old BBS's became telnet sites when slip and isdn became more common and web sites with forums and live chat later on.  Its not the same place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't the same place of July 2010.  It isn't likely to become so again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lots of ideas, not answers&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my mind, what people come to Stack Exchange for is an answer.  They come to Programmers.StackExchange for a reason too - they want an answer.  They don't want to [reddit programming](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/) or [ask slashdot](http://ask.slashdot.org) when they have a question about programming.  We offer something special here that people come *here* to find.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange doesn't have polls.  It doesn't have endless threads of comments.  It wasn't designed to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange and Social Media&#xD;&#xA;-------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've said this before, I'll say it again.  Read [A group is its own worst enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) by Clay Shirky.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't just because I think its an essential thing to read when trying to understand a group of people... but because this was part of the considerations when creating Stack Exchange and how it is built - and thus, how we can work within it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back in [Podcast #23](https://stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/default.asp?W25450) &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Atwood**: Maybe. But the cool thing about this is this is not just me, because that would be boring. It is actually me and Clay Shirky. You know, Clay Shirky is one of my heroes.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Spolsky**: Oh...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Atwood**: Yeah I know, it's awesome. So we get to talk about like building communities online and I get to talk about StackOverflow, you know, and all the lessons we've learned and, get to present with Clay. Obviously he's an expert so. That's one of the people that I have emailed actually, because I thought that would be good, because he is from New-York city as well. So we could A) show him the site and B) talk about the thing we are going to do together in March, because he needs to see the site to have some context. I mean I did meet him and talk to him about this earlier a few months ago, I think I mentioned it on the podcasts. But that was before we had sort of even going to beta, so there's really not a lot to show him. But I would love to show him in person. So we'll see if I'll hear back from him, I do not know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.StackExchange.com runs in the Stack Exchange framework.  It was designed with Clay's writings in mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*A Group...* goes into many points of online communities.  The one I've tried to bring to a forefront (there are far too many essential things in the article - for me to try to explain them all would have much more than the text I've already written, and I suspect by this time you are a bit weary.)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale. Scale alone kills conversations, because conversations require dense two-way conversations. In conversational contexts, Metcalfe's law is a drag. The fact that the amount of two-way connections you have to support goes up with the square of the users means that the density of conversation falls off very fast as the system scales even a little bit. You have to have some way to let users hang onto the less is more pattern, in order to keep associated with one another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't have a question that can be answered by 100 different answers.  Jeff considered the issue of scale when he designed Stack Exchange to make it difficult to have conversations in comments (and has apparently been thinking of things in for [discourse](http://www.discourse.org) - which apparently had been nagging him for [a long time](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/11/discussions-flat-or-threaded.html)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you want?&#xD;&#xA;---------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those of you discontent with Programmers.SE, when considering that this is the way that the software works and that great changes to the fundamental ideals of the sites won't happen - what is it that you actually see Programmers.SE being that it isn't today?  How does the site work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do we clean up broken windows and trash in the park?  What do you do about that guy who keeps asking how to interview for Google and Microsoft and Blizzard and Oracle again and again?  What does the FAQ say?  How does voting work?  Is voting there at all?  Do we try to make it so that every single person feels like this is a nice warm fuzzy place? Is there a place for [As a programmer, what are the most routine and what are the most creative development tasks?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189574/what-are-the-most-routine-and-what-are-the-most-creative-development-tasks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does what you perceive as the ideal site differ from reddit? Ask Slashdot? Generic php forum?  Can this be implemented in Stack Exchange?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13778" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5720" RevisionGUID="3d213dcd-3715-47f0-a02e-46ed64e522a3" CreationDate="2013-03-09T18:52:00.693" UserId="1204" Text="### On everything should be open  &#xD;&#xA;I don't think anyone believes this.  Even the most liberal of the inclusionists has a limit on the amount of water-cooler nonsense they can tolerate.  For some, that water mark is really high, but it's still there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On giving new users a break from downvotes  &#xD;&#xA;The simple fact is, you have to treat everyone equally.  It's not fair to veteran users, or even almost new users, to be treated any differently than the new users.  Discipline without teeth is not discipline at all; if there are no consequences for bad posts, then the bad posts will continue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On closure reasons&#xD;&#xA;These are in the process of [being overhauled](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/169814) by SE.  The new close reasons will be kinder, gentler, more educational, and probably won't use the word &quot;closed.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On unanswerable questions and the strictness of closure&#xD;&#xA;I've been giving this a lot of thought since I asked my last question here on Meta.  I've even began experimenting with a new style of answering questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Can I answer this question in a meaningful way that is interesting and relevant to others?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's why: Being strict has not improved the quality of questions being asked here.  If anything, the *overall* quality of questions has gone down over time.  The diligence we've exerted to keep the bikeshedders off the website has not improved the quality of questions other people ask.  Absent interesting questions to answer, there's no reason to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I come here because it is *fun and educational to rub shoulders with other people who have interesting ideas about programming.*  We can't have that if people are constantly being turned away without a commensurate increase in participation by those who know how to ask great questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13779" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5719" RevisionGUID="2c6c6f5a-7394-4570-aeb0-5b35cb49cc68" CreationDate="2013-03-09T18:55:28.487" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 54 characters in body" Text="With this recent spurt of activity on meta, a number of opinions have come out. A number of these describe some rather radical changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(please pardon me if I ascribe rather extreme positions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On everything should be open&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**There are instances where people seem to be opposed to closing any question for any reason.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Many of these people who are 3k and above have few if any close vote&#xD;&#xA;   reviews&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This suggests that either everything should be open or that they are comfortable with what is closed.  This is sometimes refuted by numerous &quot;reopen&quot; votes without any &quot;leave closed&quot; reviews.  From this, I can only conclude that there is the perception that everything should be open and there should be no moderation closing things - everything can be salvaged, somehow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On down votes&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;**There are suggestions that there shouldn't be downvotes for users with less than a certain reputation.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Somehow this suggestion has 10 positive votes at the time of this&#xD;&#xA;   writing (and 11 downvotes)&#xD;&#xA; - This is done in the name of &quot;welcoming users&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - People seem to take down votes personally&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Down votes are a necessary feedback to users and part of the design of the system.  There is a threshold where questions don't show up on the front page if they are below a certain level (people complain about seeing too many closed questions on the front page that they don't want to see?  Down vote them.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [mentioned](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for#comment14418_5706),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We have a system for dealing with lousy answers This is where your argument fails. Yes, it's absolutely true that we have a system for dealing with lousy answers, but that's irrelevant if no one is actually using that system. Next time you see a closed question you think should be re-opened, moderate the answers first. Use your downvotes on crap answers that attempt to answer the question and your flags on answers that don't attempt to answer the question. Questions can easily get re-opened if people actually did something about it instead of just talking about it. &lt;/rant&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvotes are part of reopening good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On closure reasons&#xD;&#xA;------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**There is a consistent misunderstanding about closure reasons**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- I understand this is something that Stack Exchange is going to address&#xD;&#xA;- Many people complain about something being closed as off topic when it was closed as non-constructive or not a real question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not everything is closed for off topic.  Many of the questions of &quot;I don't understand why this was closed&quot; within [are you still confused...](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for) had to deal with not the scope, but rather with the structure of the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One such examples was [How can I learn algorithms and data structures of any type?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189143/how-can-i-learn-algorithms-and-data-structures-of-any-type)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am a novice computer science and engineering student. I am learning Java but i want to learn from the basics so I want to learn algorithms.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Where to start that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was not closed for scope reasons but rather that it is not a real question.  It was overly broad.  Attempts were made in the comments to try to figure out what is actually being asked - if there is some way to narrow it down.  It took nearly an hour between being asked and closed and the original questioner was gone not to be seen again within 3 minutes of the question being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another question of confusion was [My Company Wants To Get Into Mobile Development — And Use Multi-Platform Frameworks](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189393/my-company-wants-to-get-into-mobile-development-and-use-multi-platform-framew) that has with in:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What do you guys think about this? No one at my company has any experience with any of the mobile development frameworks. We're starting basically from scratch. I know a bit about iOS, a few people know a bit about android but it amounts to little.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Would love some input from some experts :D&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is polling - asking for lots of ideas.  Not an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is lots of history&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is lots of history to what Progammers.SE *was*.  Get over it.  The site has not been that way for a long time.  Go through the [top users in the past year](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=reputation&amp;filter=year) - The vast majority where not here in September of 2010.  These are the people that are here now.  Trying to tell us about how wonderful it was back then and how bad it is now - we don't think its that bad now, and what you try to tell us that we are missing, we don't think we really want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You want to tell me about how wonderful the site was back then?  Sure.  I have fond memories of BBS's and that his of a 1200 baud modem connecting.  Some of those old BBS's became telnet sites when slip and isdn became more common and web sites with forums and live chat later on.  Its not the same place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't the same place of July 2010.  It isn't likely to become so again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lots of ideas, not answers&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my mind, what people come to Stack Exchange for is an answer.  They come to Programmers.StackExchange for a reason too - they want an answer.  They don't want to [reddit programming](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/) or [ask slashdot](http://ask.slashdot.org) when they have a question about programming.  We offer something special here that people come *here* to find.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange doesn't have polls.  It doesn't have endless threads of comments.  It wasn't designed to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange and Social Media&#xD;&#xA;-------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've said this before, I'll say it again.  Read [A group is its own worst enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) by Clay Shirky.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't just because I think its an essential thing to read when trying to understand a group of people... but because this was part of the considerations when creating Stack Exchange and how it is built - and thus, how we can work within it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back in [Podcast #23](https://stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/default.asp?W25450) &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Atwood**: Maybe. But the cool thing about this is this is not just me, because that would be boring. It is actually me and Clay Shirky. You know, Clay Shirky is one of my heroes.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Spolsky**: Oh...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Atwood**: Yeah I know, it's awesome. So we get to talk about like building communities online and I get to talk about StackOverflow, you know, and all the lessons we've learned and, get to present with Clay. Obviously he's an expert so. That's one of the people that I have emailed actually, because I thought that would be good, because he is from New-York city as well. So we could A) show him the site and B) talk about the thing we are going to do together in March, because he needs to see the site to have some context. I mean I did meet him and talk to him about this earlier a few months ago, I think I mentioned it on the podcasts. But that was before we had sort of even going to beta, so there's really not a lot to show him. But I would love to show him in person. So we'll see if I'll hear back from him, I do not know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.StackExchange.com runs in the Stack Exchange framework.  It was designed with Clay's writings in mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*A Group...* goes into many points of online communities.  The one I've tried to bring to a forefront (there are far too many essential things in the article - for me to try to explain them all would have much more than the text I've already written, and I suspect by this time you are a bit weary.)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale. Scale alone kills conversations, because conversations require dense two-way conversations. In conversational contexts, Metcalfe's law is a drag. The fact that the amount of two-way connections you have to support goes up with the square of the users means that the density of conversation falls off very fast as the system scales even a little bit. You have to have some way to let users hang onto the less is more pattern, in order to keep associated with one another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't have a question that can be answered by 100 different answers.  Jeff considered the issue of scale when he designed Stack Exchange to make it difficult to have conversations in comments (and has apparently been thinking of things in for [discourse](http://www.discourse.org) - which apparently had been nagging him for [a long time](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/11/discussions-flat-or-threaded.html)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you want?&#xD;&#xA;---------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those of you discontent with Programmers.SE, when considering that this is the way that the software works and that great changes to the fundamental ideals of the sites won't happen - what is it that you actually see Programmers.SE being that it isn't today?  How does the site work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do we clean up broken windows and trash in the park?  What do you do about that guy who keeps asking how to interview for Google and Microsoft and Blizzard and Oracle again and again?  What does the FAQ say?  How does voting work?  Is voting there at all?  Do we try to make it so that every single person feels like this is a nice warm fuzzy place? Is there a place for [As a programmer, what are the most routine and what are the most creative development tasks?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189574/what-are-the-most-routine-and-what-are-the-most-creative-development-tasks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does what you perceive as the ideal site differ from reddit? Ask Slashdot? Generic php forum?  Can this be implemented in Stack Exchange?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13780" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5720" RevisionGUID="e6c07031-3630-4a7c-8eba-b23d11d2b8c9" CreationDate="2013-03-09T18:57:11.183" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="### On everything should be open  &#xD;&#xA;I don't think anyone believes this.  Even the most liberal of the inclusionists has a limit on the amount of water-cooler nonsense they can tolerate.  For some, that water mark is really high, but it's still there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On giving new users a break from downvotes  &#xD;&#xA;The simple fact is, you have to treat everyone equally.  It's not fair to veteran users, or even almost new users, to be treated any differently than the new users.  Discipline without teeth is not discipline at all; if there are no consequences for bad posts, then the bad posts will continue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On closure reasons&#xD;&#xA;These are in the process of [being overhauled](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/169814) by SE.  The new close reasons will be kinder, gentler, more educational, and probably won't use the word &quot;closed.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On unanswerable questions and the strictness of closure&#xD;&#xA;I've been giving this a lot of thought since I asked my last question here on Meta.  I've begun experimenting with the way I use close votes and answer questions, using this guiding principle:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Can I answer this question in a meaningful way that is interesting and relevant to others?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's why: Being strict has not improved the quality of questions being asked here.  If anything, the *overall* quality of questions has gone down over time.  The diligence we've exerted to keep the bikeshedders off the website has not improved the quality of questions other people ask.  Absent interesting questions to answer, there's no reason to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I come here because it is *fun and educational to rub shoulders with other people who have interesting ideas about programming.*  We can't have that if people are constantly being turned away without a commensurate increase in participation by those who know how to ask great questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13781" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5720" RevisionGUID="e8d01e23-c26a-4a76-b4eb-43cb692b98fc" CreationDate="2013-03-09T19:03:51.030" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 27 characters in body" Text="### On everything should be open  &#xD;&#xA;I don't think anyone believes this.  Even the most liberal of the inclusionists has a limit on the amount of water-cooler nonsense they can tolerate.  For some, that water mark is really high, but it's still there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On giving new users a break from downvotes  &#xD;&#xA;The simple fact is, you have to treat everyone equally.  It's not fair to veteran users to be treated any differently than the new users.  Discipline without teeth is not discipline at all; if there are no consequences for bad posts, then the bad posts will continue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On closure reasons&#xD;&#xA;These are in the process of [being overhauled](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/169814) by SE.  The new close reasons will be kinder, gentler, more educational, and probably won't use the word &quot;closed.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On unanswerable questions and the strictness of closure&#xD;&#xA;I've been giving this a lot of thought since I asked my last question here on Meta.  I've begun experimenting with the way I use close votes and answer questions, using this guiding principle:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Can I answer this question in a meaningful way that is interesting and relevant to others?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's why: Being strict has not improved the quality of questions being asked here.  If anything, the *overall* quality of questions has gone down over time.  The diligence we've exerted to keep questions tightly focused has not improved the quality of questions other people ask, and neither has constantly arguing over the site scope.  Absent interesting questions to answer, there's no reason to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I come here because it is *fun and educational to rub shoulders with other people who have interesting ideas about programming.*  We can't have that if people are constantly being turned away without a commensurate increase in participation by those who know how to ask great questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13782" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5573" RevisionGUID="164fc93b-2a3c-4159-b158-e52b66ea22ab" CreationDate="2013-03-09T22:01:23.020" UserId="1204" Comment="added 18 characters in body" Text="The 2013 Community Moderator Election is now &lt;s&gt;underway!&lt;/s&gt; completed!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community moderator elections have three phases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Nomination phase&#xD;&#xA;2. Primary phase&#xD;&#xA;3. Election phase&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please visit the official election page at&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;for more detail, and to participate!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on Meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged [meta-tag:election].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also have an [election chat room][1], for open discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/7568/programmers-2013-moderator-elections" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13784" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5722" RevisionGUID="d52efd71-0a7a-407f-bbc9-68550f2a6ea8" CreationDate="2013-03-10T00:19:53.247" UserId="22999" Text="&quot;Down&quot; and &quot;closed&quot; could reasonably be perceived as negative words.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It may be that the goal is to encourage people to ask better questions and/or to improve their questions so that they can be re-opened.  But I think new users could be understandably discouraged by being **downvoted** and having their questions **closed** right off the bat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we care if someone's feelings are hurt?  I don't know.  It's pretty standard internet protocol to slap down the newbies.  Then they either learn or move on.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seriously though, the problem may be one of terminology. I don't know if there's a better way to say &quot;Your crappy question is not welcome here&quot; but there may be a better way to say &quot;Your question has potential, please work on it and/or here are some ways to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13785" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5712" RevisionGUID="e32b45e8-5ace-4d98-bce0-551cc5c63441" CreationDate="2013-03-10T07:31:44.113" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo fixed" Text="Downvotes have clear and specific meanings and you can see them from the tooltips.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For questions it's:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For answers it's:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer is not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the answer is wrong then it should be down-voted. However, that doesn't mean you can't add a comment either before down-voting to give the user time to improve the post or afterwards. If you do it afterwards you should, as a matter of courtesy, go back and check if the post has indeed been improved so you can remove the down-vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The mistake a lot of people make is confusing a vote on the **post** with a vote on the **person**. I understand this can be hard to do, but people need to keep this in mind. Perhaps this should be made clearer in the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) or [About](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about) page, but I'm not sure it will help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;New users should not be immune to down-votes otherwise we have no way to indicate that this is a bad answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13786" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5723" RevisionGUID="9e1a220e-dbfb-496c-ba03-79585501a02d" CreationDate="2013-03-10T14:23:17.087" UserId="935" Text="I'm trying to find a particular comment thread on an old post of mine.  Unfortunately, the search box in the top-right only searches through answers, not comments, and Googling doesn't help because most comments end up hidden behind the &quot;show comments&quot; link.  Is there any way to search for it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13787" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5723" RevisionGUID="9e1a220e-dbfb-496c-ba03-79585501a02d" CreationDate="2013-03-10T14:23:17.087" UserId="935" Text="Is there any way to search through comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13788" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5723" RevisionGUID="9e1a220e-dbfb-496c-ba03-79585501a02d" CreationDate="2013-03-10T14:23:17.087" UserId="935" Text="|support|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13789" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5724" RevisionGUID="631420cb-0782-4587-961e-d7168938b71b" CreationDate="2013-03-10T15:09:14.403" UserId="4" Text="The only thing that I can think of is to use [the Stack Exchange Data Explorer][1]. Comments are second-class citizens and aren't searchable, not well-index by Google, and extended discussions can be cleaned up with no warning (moderators are alerted to any post with large numbers of comments and can remove any comments that are noisy).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13790" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5725" RevisionGUID="a1784fe9-8459-4560-8c2c-cd48a33342c7" CreationDate="2013-03-10T17:27:59.387" UserId="3965" Text="You can use [this query](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102409/search-comments).  If you're logged in it should autofill the UserId parameter.  The text parameter uses SQL syntax.  For example, if you want to search for &quot;SQL&quot; anywhere in your comment, enter &quot;%SQL%&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13792" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5726" RevisionGUID="dcc2946c-2a90-48a8-872d-a2d1f7506eb0" CreationDate="2013-03-11T10:00:35.577" UserId="8029" Text="Well, I can only speak for myself, but lately the programmers.se has turned into a site I don't really even want to visit anymore. Maybe the cause is great and such, but I honestly can't find anything interesting for me here anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't been visiting/contributing much for the past year, and I think I'll stop doing it completely from now on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, the good thing in good-ol-times was that every single topic was covered here, and you could see different views, no matter if the topic was good or not, specific or broad. And search engines did a great job of finding interesting information on these sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the new, narrowed scope, I don't really learn that much from visiting the site anymore. Sorry..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13793" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="fb55ba16-e9c7-49b1-a957-701642281381" CreationDate="2013-03-11T14:56:01.537" UserId="1130" Comment="Decided to bump this proposal based on some recent meta discussions" Text="**There are two proposals here:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original proposal was to change the FAQ and site scope to more accurately reflect the site's name. It was created because of the votes and responses received on [this question][1], however since posting this I've learned of the [history behind the site scope change][2], and am not sure if this is something SE would allow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second alternative proposal is for adding a section to the FAQ to help clarify what makes a good question for Programmers.SE. It was added based on an [answer below][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you post an answer supporting either proposal, be sure to specify which one.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;**First proposal: Change site scope and on-topic definition in the FAQ**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we change the way we define what is on/off topic of the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity, so questions on our site are best defined as on-topic by the type of answer they need, not by the subject of their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, many freelancing or business concerns are off-topic here even though they're listed as on-topic in the FAQ, and some career-development questions are actually on-topic despite being in the off-topic list. The deciding factor is the type of answer the question requires. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see this causing a lot of confusion about what is actually considered on/off topic for our site, so I think it would be better to define what is on topic by the type of answer needed, instead of the subject of the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what about changing the list of on/off topic items to something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h2&gt;[What kind of questions can I ask here?][4]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE is a site for programmers to ask questions and get&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers from other programmers about non-code issues that are related&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to their career choice, or self-identity, as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We welcome questions about conceptual topics in software development,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; such as software architecture and design concepts, algorithms and data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structure design, the software development lifecycle, testing and QA,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and freelancing &amp; business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; yourself][5]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR&#xD;&#xA;&gt; department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in one job too long][6].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][7]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][8]. Don't ask questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What  language/technology should I learn next?][9] or [Is A better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; than B?][10] because we do not want questions that lead to chatty,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; open-ended discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][11] for open-ended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][12]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does that make me a bad developer?][13]. We want a site that we can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][14]** &lt;br /&gt;    &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer?][15] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end&#xD;&#xA;&gt; result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a single answer][16] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Not be a coding problem][17]** &lt;br /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;[Programmers][18] was created to be a site about non-code issues programmers face, while its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; sister site, [Stack Overflow][19], is for coding questions. To put it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; another way, [Programmers][20] is for when you're in front of a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; whiteboard working through higher-level conceptual programming issues,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; while [Stack Overflow][21] is for when you're in front of a compiler&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or editor working through code issues. &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][22]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us&#xD;&#xA;&gt; maintain our site. &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each of those bullet points should be a link that points to a [meta-faq][23] post containing more details on the subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop some of the confusion I see about our site scope, and reduce the number of upset users who asked a question which was in the &quot;on-topic&quot; list of the FAQ, but the question still got closed as off-topic. The scope of this site is really defined by the type of answers required, not the subject of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was a site created for programmers to get answers from other programmers about issues related to their career choice (or self identity) as a programmer. The scope was changed due to the deteriorating quality of questions being asked, however I think it has changed far beyond the original proposal, and the site has [gone downhill][24] since then. I believe we can still be the site this was meant to be, while maintaining SE quality guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE works best with communities, and I think a community called Programmers should be one about Programmers, not be only about one part of what Programmers do&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Second proposal: Add a new section to the FAQ to try and clarify what makes a good question**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[jcmeloni's answer below][25] made the suggestion to make this a new section in the [Programmers.SE FAQ][26] instead of replacing the existing section.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section would be like the [UX.SE's FAQ][27] section titled **What makes a good question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this proposal as well, so instead of changing the existing bullet-point list defining what is an on-topic question, what about simply adding a new section titled &quot;What makes a good question&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h2&gt;[What makes a good question?][28]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should elicit definitive answers or solutions rather than&#xD;&#xA;&gt; prolonged discussions. Remember, [this a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion&#xD;&#xA;&gt; board][29]. To participate in open-ended discussions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programming-related topics, please visit our [chat][30] instead.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; yourself][31]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR&#xD;&#xA;&gt; department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in one job too long][32].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][33]** &lt;br /&gt;    &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer?][34] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end&#xD;&#xA;&gt; result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a single answer][35] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][36]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does that make me a bad developer?][37]. We want a site that we can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][38]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][39]. Don't ask questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What  language/technology should I learn next?][40] or [Is A better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; than B?][41] because we do not want questions that lead to chatty,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][42] for open-ended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Not be a coding problem][43]** &lt;br /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;[Programmers][44] was created to be a site about non-code issues programmers face, while its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; sister site, [Stack Overflow][45], is for coding questions. To put it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; another way, [Programmers][46] is for when you're in front of a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; whiteboard working through higher-level conceptual programming issues,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; while [Stack Overflow][47] is for when you're in front of a compiler&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or editor working through code issues. &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][48]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us&#xD;&#xA;&gt; maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3319/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/171/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1646/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3136/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3319/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [32]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [33]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [34]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [35]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [36]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [37]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [38]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [39]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [40]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [41]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [42]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [43]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/171/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [44]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [45]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [46]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [47]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [48]: http://a.b" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13818" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5736" RevisionGUID="4609bcde-3ca1-41d9-ada7-495f3d5cc33c" CreationDate="2013-03-12T00:36:55.307" UserId="73215" Text="As an example, look at http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190096/can-commented-out-code-be-valuable-documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why has it been locked, what does &quot;This post has been locked while disputes about its content are being resolved.&quot; mean, and what can we do about it? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;For more info visit meta&quot; link attached to the notice just points to the meta site itself and not a particular question or answer, the comments don't say anything, and a search on meta has not been fruitful." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13819" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5736" RevisionGUID="4609bcde-3ca1-41d9-ada7-495f3d5cc33c" CreationDate="2013-03-12T00:36:55.307" UserId="73215" Text="What does &quot;This post has been locked while disputes about its content are being resolved.&quot; mean?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13820" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5736" RevisionGUID="4609bcde-3ca1-41d9-ada7-495f3d5cc33c" CreationDate="2013-03-12T00:36:55.307" UserId="73215" Text="|support|locking|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13821" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5737" RevisionGUID="38b3ded3-25cb-4441-b5a8-74fbd9b6a62d" CreationDate="2013-03-12T01:28:52.307" UserId="25476" Text="Typically a moderator will lock a post for one of a few reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    A question or answer where repeated voting or editing is happening in a way which attempts to game, hack, or otherwise abuse the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    A question that gets opened and closed repeatedly many times without achieving community consensus on whether it should stay open or closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    A question that, for whatever reason, continues to attract flame posts, spam, or other inappropriate answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    A question that is repeatedly vandalized by its asker; for example, to drastically alter the meaning of the question that invalidates existing answers, or to obliterate/obscure the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/22228/what-is-a-locked-post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I locked the post temporarily because it was closed as a duplicate by community consensus, then started to receive flags disputing that it was in fact **not** a duplicate of the following question....&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45378/is-commented-out-code-really-always-bad&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I felt as if I agreed with this, however it had over 10 answers already and at the other over 13.  I couldn't really see too much else of value being added in addition to what others have already answered well and completely.  I was hoping that with a temporary lock that it wouldn't attract anymore answers and if anybody was concerned or highly disagreed with my reopen of the question then they would bring the subject up on Meta for us to discuss.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am glad that you brought it up because this question can be the perfect vehicle for such a discussion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13822" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5738" RevisionGUID="d974d28a-7664-4f48-b78f-d606ddf43c75" CreationDate="2013-03-12T03:51:30.800" UserId="3965" Text="Per [Yannis' suggestion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5727/what-if-any-changes-to-this-sites-scope-would-you-like-to-see#comment14539_5727), I decided to go through the [list of closed questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=closed%3a1), pick out some specific examples, and make a detailed case for why those questions should be welcomed on the site.  The first thing I discovered is that I agree with most of the close decisions.  We close a lot of questions, yes, but most of those really do need closing.  The other thing I found when going through the list one by one is that most of the questions that stand out to me as being unnecessarily closed follow a &quot;getting started&quot; theme.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Example Questions ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To generate a list of questions for discussion, I searched for [closed:1 start](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=closed%3a1%20start) and clicked on the &quot;newest&quot; tab (although that generates some false positives).  I'd like to go through the first several questions as examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/190127/3965 This question is a little chatty, but the gist of the problem is he has heard that self-taught php programmers can pick up bad habits from some resources, and is seeking expert advice to avoid that happening.  Open for 1.5 hours, 1 upvoted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/190095/3965 This question was seeking a general approach to finding third-party libraries and frameworks, a skill that's very important to professional programmers.  This question was possibly too broad, but I think a skilled answerer could have pulled it off had it been left open longer.  It feels like a &quot;teach a man to fish&quot; type of question. Open 3.5 hours, 1 downvoted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/189927/3965 This one could use some editing for English issues, but a question about how much java background is needed to learn a language based on the jvm, does not seem to be an unreasonable question to pose to programming experts.  Open 3.5 hours, 1 answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/189824/3965 Web development has changed a lot since 1996.  It is not unreasonable to seek the advice of someone with more up to date skills.  Also this is a different question from someone who has never programmed before, so the duplicate doesn't really apply.  Open almost a day, 1 upvoted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/189650/3965 This question is a good illustration that even expert programmers are newbies in some domains.  Possibly could have been worded better, like &quot;what characteristics should I use to evaluate a GUI framework,&quot; but mostly a good question to pose to experts in a programming domain.  Open 3.5 hours, 3 answers, 2 upvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Common Opposing Arguments ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some common arguments in opposition to these sorts of questions.  Some from http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1749/3965 and some I've seen in various comments on closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The questions don't show enough research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a chicken and egg problem.  How are you supposed to research something if you don't know where to start with your research?  If you are a beginner to a topic, how are you supposed to evaluate which resources are the best?  Getting started is a natural topic to ask a group of experienced professionals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; They will produce inevitable duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So?  We have a process for closing duplicates that works quite well, and there's little to no evidence to show getting started resource questions are any more likely to generate duplicates than other sorts of questions.  And how is closing a question as a duplicate any more work than closing it as off topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; People will just list their favorites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a process for closing bad answers, and besides that, the favorites of experts is precisely the information we're trying to get at here.  If people don't explain *why* it's their favorite, their answer will get deleted like for any other topic.  If I want a list of 6,000 php books, I can search Amazon.  Narrowing it down to the 5 or 10 favorites of experts is a lot of value to add, for which our site is well-suited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; These kinds of questions will garner too many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not a unique problem to getting started/resource questions, which is why we have a process in place to prevent that.  If you actually look at the questions that have been closed, they are no more likely than other types of questions to garner a large number of answers, even ones that were open for several weeks.  Even if there are multiple answers, the best few will get voted to the top.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The answers will become outdated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, how is this different from any other type of question?  We work in a rapidly changing field.  When an outdated answer is found, people comment on it and it's either corrected or deleted at that time.  Also, getting started topics change much less rapidly than cutting edge topics.  The basics stay relevant for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only way to do it right is to create one heavily-moderated &quot;canonical&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While this approach might be most appropriate on StackOverflow, where questions are expected to be highly specific and objective, &quot;good subjective&quot; questions are our bread and butter here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's too broad if you can imagine an entire book answering your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's all well and good unless your problem is needing help to find the most appropriate book for a subject.  These people aren't asking to have a book copied and pasted into your answer, just to get pointed in the right direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm not interested in answering newbie questions.  This site is supposed to be for professionals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even expert programmers are newbies in some domains.  If you personally don't want to see these types of questions, you can put them in your filtered tags list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Summary ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are by and large good questions garnering good answers.  They are the kind of questions you'd go down the hall to ask an experienced programmer, which are the kind of questions people naturally assume are on topic here.  Welcoming these questions would go a long way toward improving our image with new users, and making it a better reference for experienced programmers learning new domains." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13823" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5738" RevisionGUID="d974d28a-7664-4f48-b78f-d606ddf43c75" CreationDate="2013-03-12T03:51:30.800" UserId="3965" Text="Let's make getting started/resource questions on topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13824" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5738" RevisionGUID="d974d28a-7664-4f48-b78f-d606ddf43c75" CreationDate="2013-03-12T03:51:30.800" UserId="3965" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13827" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5739" RevisionGUID="d8ff52ab-714e-4ddf-b48e-e11d439e8b3e" CreationDate="2013-03-12T12:43:51.350" UserId="34327" Text="I don't know if this really qualifies as a bug, since the repoduction steps are a bit silly, but here it is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- log on programmers (with chrome 25 in my case)&#xD;&#xA;- reduce the browser window to get an horizontal scroll bar&#xD;&#xA;- scroll on the right&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--&gt; you get a different background on the right part&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZyHbc.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13828" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5739" RevisionGUID="d8ff52ab-714e-4ddf-b48e-e11d439e8b3e" CreationDate="2013-03-12T12:43:51.350" UserId="34327" Text="bug with horizontal scrolling" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13829" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5739" RevisionGUID="d8ff52ab-714e-4ddf-b48e-e11d439e8b3e" CreationDate="2013-03-12T12:43:51.350" UserId="34327" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13830" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5740" RevisionGUID="13e0c133-3a15-4e29-9f07-dde20833c5e4" CreationDate="2013-03-12T12:50:57.923" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; We have a process for closing bad answers, and besides that, the favorites of experts is precisely the information we're trying to get at here. If people don't explain why it's their favorite, their answer will get deleted like for any other topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is where you lost me. Yes, we do have a process, but the process is irrelevant if people don't follow it. For an answer to be deleted by the community, the answer must first be downvoted. Even 20K+ users can't vote to delete an answer if it's zero or positively scored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the community generally _upvotes_ link only answers and one liners that don't explain anything, instead of moderating them. And by moderating I don't mean only deleting, the first step should be to post a comment asking the answerer to expand their answer. Or, if you don't have the time or the energy to craft a comment, downvote. Or, if downvoting makes you feel sad, at least don't upvote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I run a (quick and dirty) [query][1] on Data Explorer, to get a better idea of how comment-length answers (500 characters or less) fare on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 8K+ zero or positively scored,&#xD;&#xA;- 209 negatively voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sure some of those 8K answers are great and don't really need to be expanded. But most of them aren't and can only be removed by five people, the moderators. Personally, I have absolutely no interest in spending all my free time cleaning up crap, and I don't see why I shouldn't go with the easiest solution: Close the question. And eventually delete it, which would also take care of the sub par answers with a click of a button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Especially for the category of questions you're talking about, link only answers and one liners are unacceptable. If we start fostering learning questions, their answers should be full and detailed, and the community _must_ be vigilant with sub par answers. I don't mind an one line answer on a question by a seasoned professional, but if the asker is a newer developer, he or she deserves an answer that's a bit more than a dismissive one liner or the first result in a Google search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have processes and we have an arsenal of tools. It would be a very good time we started using them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/edit/102644" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13831" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5739" RevisionGUID="c173f7ba-b5c2-4696-b577-f482463cf796" CreationDate="2013-03-12T12:53:00.123" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13832" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5741" RevisionGUID="c66b85ee-4902-49db-832f-3c554ca5810d" CreationDate="2013-03-12T17:20:30.467" UserId="81811" Text="I answered a legal question, with the usual disclaimer about not being a lawyer. My answer was not only down-voted for this, but, when I tried to discuss why it was down-voted, my comments were deleted, then my answer was deleted too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know we want to keep things on topic, but this was a perfectly valid answer to the question in my opinion, and the moderator was clearly being rude to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should users refrain from providing opinions on legal questions, even where they are confident the answer is correct and helpful? I'm now afraid to do so in fear of zealous moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would link to the question, but it's been deleted. Is there no way to link to a closed question internally?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13833" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5741" RevisionGUID="c66b85ee-4902-49db-832f-3c554ca5810d" CreationDate="2013-03-12T17:20:30.467" UserId="81811" Text="Is it against policy here to answer questions of a legal nature unless you're a lawyer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13834" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5741" RevisionGUID="c66b85ee-4902-49db-832f-3c554ca5810d" CreationDate="2013-03-12T17:20:30.467" UserId="81811" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13835" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5741" RevisionGUID="8f873dd0-fa0f-4820-bb55-57fd673e8d05" CreationDate="2013-03-12T17:26:56.433" UserId="31260" Comment="link for 10Kers, quotes of question and answer text" Text="I answered a legal question, with the usual disclaimer about not being a lawyer. My answer was not only down-voted for this, but, when I tried to discuss why it was down-voted, my comments were deleted, then my answer was deleted too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know we want to keep things on topic, but this was a perfectly valid answer to the question in my opinion, and the moderator was clearly being rude to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should users refrain from providing opinions on legal questions, even where they are confident the answer is correct and helpful? I'm now afraid to do so in fear of zealous moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Question has been deleted, [10K users](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools) can view it at the URL:  &#xD;&#xA;  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190299/is-scraping-images-from-tumblr-legal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question text:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I were to take the images from a Tumblr page, would that be considered legal?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer text:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think, and I'm not a lawyer, that it is illegal in many countries.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;There's obviously copyright law, so you need a license to copy each image before you scrape them. There's also some restrictions on accessing a computer you don't own, then using it in ways that the owner doesn't want you to. If my understanding is correct, then every website's terms of service are legally binding, as a contract you enter into automatically, but voluntarily, by accessing their property, their servers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Again, I'm not a lawyer, and this is not something I really understand at all, but that's my take on it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13836" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5741" RevisionGUID="8f873dd0-fa0f-4820-bb55-57fd673e8d05" CreationDate="2013-03-12T17:26:56.433" UserId="31260" Comment="link for 10Kers, quotes of question and answer text" Text="|discussion|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13837" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5742" RevisionGUID="449862dc-8668-4439-a793-28feb42cfe5d" CreationDate="2013-03-12T17:35:08.637" UserId="4" Text="The question that you are asking about is [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190299/is-scraping-images-from-tumblr-legal/190301), which is visible to users with enough reputation. You need 10k reputation (or be the asker) to see deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off, questions that require the expertise of a lawyer are off-topic here and will be closed and/or deleted. As a community of experts in software development, we can't answer most legal questions. Our FAQ makes an exception for software licenses since it's often expected that, as professionals, we'll be able to know if we can use a certain tool or library in our projects based on the license terms of the tool/library and our project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, your answer says, quoting:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think, and I'm not a lawyer...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Again, I'm not a lawyer, and this is not something I really understand at all, but that's my take on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it's not surprising to me that you were down voted for this answer. Stack Exchange sites are designed to provide people with expert answers to their questions, not opinions or facts. By starting your answer with &quot;I think&quot; and ending it with &quot;this is not something I really understand&quot;, your answer doesn't meet the criteria of an &quot;expert answer&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, you shouldn't blame moderators for being rude to you. Members of the community vote on questions and answers. Anyone with 15 reputation can vote up and anyone with 125 rep can vote down. Moderators are here to keep the site clean and handle exceptional cases quickly. This particular question was on the receiving end of community disapproval (through close votes and down votes) as well as flags for immediate moderator attention. Because there is no way to salvage the question for the community, deletion was best for everyone involved." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13838" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5743" RevisionGUID="f495578c-4730-42d1-bd9a-ff9aced1bfee" CreationDate="2013-03-12T17:35:19.800" UserId="25936" Text="Yes, you should refrain from providing opinions on any question, not just questions that touch on legal matters. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is a Q&amp;A site, we expect answers to fully and directly answer the question, not just provide general opinions. Furthermore, preferably answers should be backed up by solid references, especially when they touch on topics that are outside our field of expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see how a moderator was rude to you, as no moderator commented on your answer. If anyone was rude, that was you, commentary like &quot;piss off&quot; is unacceptable. I get that downvotes can be frustrating, but people were talking the extra step and were trying to explain their downvotes, even though they are not obliged to do so. Your responses were unwarranted and I'd strongly advise you to keep a cooler head next time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13839" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5744" RevisionGUID="262bf394-285d-4bb5-9f0b-a32f46c67d81" CreationDate="2013-03-12T17:40:44.790" UserId="25476" Text="I will try to answer your questions to the best of my ability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and the moderator was clearly being rude to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see where any of the moderators responded to you in anyway. The community users appeared to have downvoted your answer and commented on this, but they are not the moderators in that sense of the word.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We take rudeness very seriously around here so if you suspect you are being treated unfairly then please Flag for moderator attention and we will look into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I know we want to keep things on topic, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you read the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) you will see that while license questions from a software developers perspective are on topic, general legal questions are not. The question itself is off topic and was removed promptly.  This isn't your fault BTW.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Again, I'm not a lawyer, and this is not something I really understand at all, but that's my take on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So again referring to the FAQ, the first few sentences state that we are a Q&amp;A site of *experts* for conceptual questions on software development.  The voting and deletion system on answers to questions is designed such to promote expert answers to the top of the page and demote lower quality answers below, giving the reader the experience that is commonly missing from your typical discussion forum where the quickest and loudest answers get read first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above you clearly stated that you know very little of the legality, and while you have some valuable insight, your answer really can't and doesn't answer anything, despite the fact that the question was off topic to begin with.  This is probably why you were downvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your input would have been better received in the form of a comment on the question, where some dialogue and discussion can take place." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13840" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5745" RevisionGUID="f3a6338c-d84e-4a5c-bfa4-b8bca3416f8b" CreationDate="2013-03-12T22:10:55.973" UserId="13181" Text="I find it curious when questions with 20+ upvotes and several highly voted answers ([such as this][1]) get closed. The community has deemed the question as being valid. It has attracted good answers (again as deemed by the community) so why is it closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just think that the community is a bit more amorphous than what some are trying to force it to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For many of the questions that get asked, there isn't going to be a canonically correct answer for all time (which is the goal for StackOverflow), and I'm okay with that because we're still learning about our craft. Depending on when you consider the start of programming, it's a 50 year old profession. We still have people involved in the profession who were doing it from the start and we still have a long way to go before we can say that we truly know how to do this properly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't like the &quot;do my homework for me&quot; questions that basically are nothing more than a retype of the assignment. But if someone is legitimately trying to engage with the community and get advice from his peers, well we have too few people who call themselves programmers who won't even be bothered to go that far. So yeah I'm going to bend over backwards to invite them into the conversation. The more people we get clued in, the more we grow as a profession. I view programmers.se as a portal of stewardship primarily and a repository of knowledge secondarily. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63890/well-designed-high-quality-open-source-software" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13841" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5719" RevisionGUID="a339453f-4eff-4ed2-a996-9c08d67451d0" CreationDate="2013-03-12T22:37:32.440" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/311606913651572736" />
  <row Id="13842" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5746" RevisionGUID="b1aee459-2079-4c52-94d5-008778b62713" CreationDate="2013-03-13T06:00:23.090" UserId="19936" Text="[faq][1] says &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;it is **not** *about*&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; career advice, salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see lots of career questions asked on programmers.stackexchange, some closed, many not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/116040/transitioning-into-a-programming-career-from-system-administration&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49018/cs-concentrations-and-career-paths&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86042/switching-domains-in-ones-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54423/switching-to-a-career-in-machine-learning&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2483/why-are-all-of-the-good-career-related-threads-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'm a bit confused on their interpretation of &quot;career advice&quot;. When is a question about one's career qualify as career advice, and when does it not. For these [career] questions,  what does your decision-to-close tree look like?&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13843" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5746" RevisionGUID="b1aee459-2079-4c52-94d5-008778b62713" CreationDate="2013-03-13T06:00:23.090" UserId="19936" Text="are career questions are acceptable or not?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13844" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5746" RevisionGUID="b1aee459-2079-4c52-94d5-008778b62713" CreationDate="2013-03-13T06:00:23.090" UserId="19936" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13845" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5746" RevisionGUID="fd729f4b-d382-431e-a3a0-8b1f33a2f6f4" CreationDate="2013-03-13T08:00:05.637" UserId="31260" Comment="minor spelling correction" Text="Are career questions acceptable or not?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13846" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5746" RevisionGUID="fd729f4b-d382-431e-a3a0-8b1f33a2f6f4" CreationDate="2013-03-13T08:00:05.637" UserId="31260" Comment="minor spelling correction" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|career|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13847" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5747" RevisionGUID="c1bf8efa-c49c-4aca-8957-20c9a410609a" CreationDate="2013-03-13T11:17:34.063" UserId="25476" Text="This is where the diagram on the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/) comes into play.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally the accepted definition of what is acceptable here, whether it be career advice or not, is within the blue area of the diagram below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am having trouble convincing senior members of the team to go into crunch mode, how can I deal with senior members that are not willing to work 60+ hour work weeks to get the software project done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the surface you can clearly tell that this was written by a software developer or somebody that leads them.  Really though this could apply to any type of project work, therefore if falls in the All Careers circle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the best keyboard for programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one is even broader and applies to All People.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This one job is offerring me $50k per year but is in Indiana where the cost of living is cheaper and the job is more stable. Meanwhile I got another offer for $80k at a startup in Palo Alto but I will learn more cutting edge technologies.  Decide my life for me!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one is Too Localized and is unlikely to help future visitors in any way.  It applies to Just You.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regardless Career advice is unilaterally off topic as of this moment. It wasn't always so on this site so it is unrealistic to expect that every off topic question is going to be moderated.  We do miss a number of questions from time to time so don't let a lack of moderator action confuse you on this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as a decision close tree, the home page gets populated with questions that have recent activity.  Often when an older off topic question gets some activity then it gets bumped where either a moderator sees it and decides to deal with it, or a concerned community member flags it for moderator attention or just votes to close it.  There is also a Review feature that higher reputation community members can use to evaluate potentially problematic content and either take action or flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators tend to only deal with the flags that come up but we don't necessarily need a flag to take action right away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xrYwN.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13848" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5748" RevisionGUID="97bb4779-c556-41dd-a2ff-45f87039ce99" CreationDate="2013-03-13T18:57:09.513" UserId="32353" Text="Can we (and should we) flag an answer as having nothing to do with programming?  For some borderline questions I feel the question is marginally on-topic, but is such some otherwise reasonable answers to the question have nothing to do with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If *all* reasonable answers have nothing to do with programming then I would vote to close the question (or flag), but I'm not talking about those questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One problem with flagging is that the answer is often reasonable in addressing the problem, just not from a programming perspective." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13849" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5748" RevisionGUID="97bb4779-c556-41dd-a2ff-45f87039ce99" CreationDate="2013-03-13T18:57:09.513" UserId="32353" Text="Can (and should) answers be flagged for having nothing to do with programming?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13850" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5748" RevisionGUID="97bb4779-c556-41dd-a2ff-45f87039ce99" CreationDate="2013-03-13T18:57:09.513" UserId="32353" Text="|discussion|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13852" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5749" RevisionGUID="f503bd61-c162-4efa-ae8c-0ed1ce05b73f" CreationDate="2013-03-13T20:04:41.827" UserId="25936" Text="In a comment in one of our [Meta discussions][1] Aarthi [announced][2] a set of changes to the closing procedure:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is currently in spec-stage so I don't have lots of details available, but suffice it to say: how we handle closures/question rehab is going to be revisited in the next year, and the methodology of communicating this to the end user is expected to receive a complete makeover. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What changes have already been announced and how can I be part of the discussion for future changes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5572/reducing-user-frustration&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5572/reducing-user-frustration#comment14036_5572" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13853" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5749" RevisionGUID="f503bd61-c162-4efa-ae8c-0ed1ce05b73f" CreationDate="2013-03-13T20:04:41.827" UserId="25936" Text="Revisiting our close procedure and close reasons" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13854" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5749" RevisionGUID="f503bd61-c162-4efa-ae8c-0ed1ce05b73f" CreationDate="2013-03-13T20:04:41.827" UserId="25936" Text="|support|featured|close-reasons|closing-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13855" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5750" RevisionGUID="03506fe9-8558-4b80-bd7c-af353a5b9e62" CreationDate="2013-03-13T20:04:41.827" UserId="25936" Text="Good question ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first step was the brand new [about page][2], and the next one was the [changes in how duplicates work][3]. Right now Stack Exchange is looking for feedback on revamping the close reasons, on the main Meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will be updating this answer as more changes and requests for feedback are announced:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [We're rolling out a new “Quick Start” guide to help new users learn the basics][1] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)][2] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Help us make “Off-Topic” close reasons clearer to the OP][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Help us make “Not Constructive” and “Not a Real Question” closures more effective][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/163254/were-rolling-out-a-new-quick-start-guide-to-help-new-users-learn-the-basics&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/169814/help-us-make-off-topic-close-reasons-clearer-to-the-op&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/171732/help-us-make-not-constructive-and-not-a-real-question-closures-more-effectiv" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13856" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5750" RevisionGUID="c866d687-c3bb-4af9-9372-53caef08016a" CreationDate="2013-03-13T20:10:36.680" UserId="25936" Comment="added 284 characters in body" Text="Good question ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first step was the brand new [about page][1] ((see our [about page][2])), and the next one was the [changes in how duplicates work][3]. Right now Stack Exchange is looking for feedback on revamping the close reasons, on the main Meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will be updating this answer as more changes and requests for feedback are announced:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [We're rolling out a new “Quick Start” guide to help new users learn the basics][4] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)][5] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Help us make “Off-Topic” close reasons clearer to the OP][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Help us make “Not Constructive” and “Not a Real Question” closures more effective][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/169814/help-us-make-off-topic-close-reasons-clearer-to-the-op&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/163254/were-rolling-out-a-new-quick-start-guide-to-help-new-users-learn-the-basics&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/169814/help-us-make-off-topic-close-reasons-clearer-to-the-op&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/171732/help-us-make-not-constructive-and-not-a-real-question-closures-more-effectiv" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13857" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5749" RevisionGUID="ed3a0233-9fff-49e7-ab2b-8a583acd2cc5" CreationDate="2013-03-13T20:25:48.180" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="13858" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5750" RevisionGUID="83fc6cdb-3711-4086-8467-ca484c295edf" CreationDate="2013-03-13T20:33:06.560" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="Good question ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first step was the brand new [about page][1] (see our [about page][2]), and the next one was the [changes in how duplicates work][3]. Right now Stack Exchange is looking for feedback on revamping the close reasons, on the main Meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will be updating this answer as more changes and requests for feedback are announced:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [We're rolling out a new “Quick Start” guide to help new users learn the basics][4] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)][5] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Help us make “Off-Topic” close reasons clearer to the OP][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Help us make “Not Constructive” and “Not a Real Question” closures more effective][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/169814/help-us-make-off-topic-close-reasons-clearer-to-the-op&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/163254/were-rolling-out-a-new-quick-start-guide-to-help-new-users-learn-the-basics&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/169814/help-us-make-off-topic-close-reasons-clearer-to-the-op&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/171732/help-us-make-not-constructive-and-not-a-real-question-closures-more-effectiv" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13859" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5751" RevisionGUID="89d9360d-f3ac-4ed3-96b1-ff95567d3265" CreationDate="2013-03-13T21:24:50.907" UserId="1204" Text="Topicality doesn't apply to answers, inasmuch as the answers answer the question.  It only applies to questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same principle applies to duplication; only questions can be duplicated.  &quot;Blue&quot; is the same answer to the questions &quot;What color is your car,&quot; and &quot;How do I feel today?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13860" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5750" RevisionGUID="206354d0-9078-4624-8f6e-22b758a47ea3" CreationDate="2013-03-13T21:28:47.247" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="13861" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5748" RevisionGUID="7b77ebe1-94f8-40bd-8be3-eb535fdf5d8c" CreationDate="2013-03-13T21:33:47.313" UserId="32353" Comment="added 892 characters in body" Text="Can we (and should we) flag an answer as having nothing to do with programming?  For some borderline questions I feel the question is marginally on-topic, but is such some otherwise reasonable answers to the question have nothing to do with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If *all* reasonable answers have nothing to do with programming then I would vote to close the question (or flag), but I'm not talking about those questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One problem with flagging is that the answer is often reasonable in addressing the problem, just not from a programming perspective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It isn't very uncommon on programmers to have questions about, say, how to best to do pair programming when office politics are making it tough in some way. And maybe some answers could have to do with how to go about pair programming, and some could have to do with dealing with office politics. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure everyone here would agree on whether such a question was on-topic.  Let's say for the sake of argument that a good answer that did not include anything about office politics, only pair programming, was possible.  (Though such an answer would have to briefly explain why that particular pair programming practice didn't raise the political objections the OP had to deal with).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would an answer dealing entirely with office politics and how to deal with them be O.K.?  It certainly might gather the most votes and be the accepted answer.  What should be done in such a case?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13862" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5752" RevisionGUID="547c9ff2-832d-48a3-885f-572ee12d8850" CreationDate="2013-03-13T21:39:20.807" UserId="32353" Text="I think that part of the reason questions like the hypothetical pair programming and politics questions get closed is that they attract answers not related to programming.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I don't think that is (always) the fault of the question, nor that all such questions should be off topic.  I think it is the fault of the answers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think all questions should be assumed to be implicitly requesting programming (broadly defined, but still...) related answers (and ideally that should be made explicit through editing so it's clear to people who don't know that rule), and any answers not related to programming should be considered &quot;Not an answer&quot;, and flagged/deleted.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13863" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5753" RevisionGUID="12bfc139-da91-49a0-929e-67a876c072b3" CreationDate="2013-03-14T02:57:19.010" UserId="25936" Text="We all love charts, right? Here's a nice one comparing this election's participation with the two previous elections:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and here's another comparing this election's participation with all other 2013 elections:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and if you prefer numbers from pretty pictures, [I got you covered](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Asxpisj1_dzYdE5tZjdZVVh5R2hDTl9hbmdITEFoUHc&amp;usp=sharing). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just don't ask me to interpret any of this, mmmkay?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0hyV9.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/o5ejJ.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13864" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5754" RevisionGUID="f5d30eac-a5b1-498f-92de-e6879df4cbb5" CreationDate="2013-03-14T11:15:47.167" UserId="56691" Text="Does `Programmers` have a site map?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've discovered the `Privileges` page recently, which (as far as I know) doesn't have a link like `Profile` or `answers` or `flair`. I wonder what other pages are there?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13865" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5754" RevisionGUID="f5d30eac-a5b1-498f-92de-e6879df4cbb5" CreationDate="2013-03-14T11:15:47.167" UserId="56691" Text="Programmers site map" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13866" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5754" RevisionGUID="f5d30eac-a5b1-498f-92de-e6879df4cbb5" CreationDate="2013-03-14T11:15:47.167" UserId="56691" Text="|feature-request|site-attributes|hyperlinks|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13867" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5754" RevisionGUID="872dff43-bcb5-418f-af36-cc7b99254469" CreationDate="2013-03-14T11:17:30.183" UserId="25936" Comment="Do not use backticks for anything that isn't code." Text="Does Programmers have a site map?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've discovered the privileges page recently, which (as far as I know) doesn't have a link like profile or answers or flair. I wonder what other pages are there?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13868" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5755" RevisionGUID="89ce2346-abae-49b3-ae52-53cec0ee65a3" CreationDate="2013-03-14T17:00:07.153" UserId="35276" Text="I see when I reopen a Q now, it shows (votes/5), and when I ad my vote it tries to increment to (votes+1/5) this is new, and has a bug because it doesn't replace the original but just appends to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Bug in reopening][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/06MKY.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;div class=&quot;post-menu&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/q/190516/35276&quot; title=&quot;short permalink to this question&quot; class=&quot;short-link&quot; id=&quot;link-post-190516&quot;&gt;share&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;lsep&quot;&gt;|&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/posts/190516/edit&quot; class=&quot;edit-post&quot; title=&quot;revise and improve this post&quot;&gt;edit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;lsep&quot;&gt;|&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a id=&quot;close-question-190516&quot; title=&quot;3 more votes are needed to reopen this question&quot; class=&quot;load-tooltip-on-hover&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;                reopen&#xD;&#xA;                    (2/5)&#xD;&#xA;             (3/5)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;lsep&quot;&gt;|&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a id=&quot;flag-post-190516&quot; href=&quot;#&quot; title=&quot;flag this post for serious problems or moderator attention&quot;&gt;flag&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13869" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5755" RevisionGUID="89ce2346-abae-49b3-ae52-53cec0ee65a3" CreationDate="2013-03-14T17:00:07.153" UserId="35276" Text="Bug in new reopen Q display - Chrome" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13870" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5755" RevisionGUID="89ce2346-abae-49b3-ae52-53cec0ee65a3" CreationDate="2013-03-14T17:00:07.153" UserId="35276" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13871" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5755" RevisionGUID="30cb6aac-a815-4893-bdec-d6aaaf4c4ee4" CreationDate="2013-03-14T17:00:58.203" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13872" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5755" RevisionGUID="5d91e359-8f5b-4bf7-bc99-9551a0df17f7" CreationDate="2013-03-14T17:01:54.863" UserId="35276" Comment="added 43 characters in body" Text="Browser: Chrome Version 25.0.1364.152 m&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see when I reopen a Q now, it shows (votes/5), and when I add my vote it tries to increment to (votes+1/5) this is new, and has a bug because it doesn't replace the original but just appends to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Bug in reopening][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/06MKY.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;div class=&quot;post-menu&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/q/190516/35276&quot; title=&quot;short permalink to this question&quot; class=&quot;short-link&quot; id=&quot;link-post-190516&quot;&gt;share&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;lsep&quot;&gt;|&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/posts/190516/edit&quot; class=&quot;edit-post&quot; title=&quot;revise and improve this post&quot;&gt;edit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;lsep&quot;&gt;|&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a id=&quot;close-question-190516&quot; title=&quot;3 more votes are needed to reopen this question&quot; class=&quot;load-tooltip-on-hover&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;                reopen&#xD;&#xA;                    (2/5)&#xD;&#xA;             (3/5)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span class=&quot;lsep&quot;&gt;|&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a id=&quot;flag-post-190516&quot; href=&quot;#&quot; title=&quot;flag this post for serious problems or moderator attention&quot;&gt;flag&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13873" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5756" RevisionGUID="62bfe63b-31e1-403d-85d5-c3d338a2d0d8" CreationDate="2013-03-14T17:34:07.197" UserId="31260" Text="This bug has been reported, confirmed, and status-completed few hours ago at Workplace meta:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Accepted answer from SE team member (Mark Gravell) says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thanks; this will be fixed in the next deploy. It looks like we changed the display from `(3)` to `(3/5)`, but the javascript / regex at the client wasn't updated accordingly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Meta WP reference: [Total amount of close votes displayed twice](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/1731/total-amount-of-close-votes-displayed-twice)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Double Vote][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/9CWyC.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13874" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5757" RevisionGUID="eae6a438-9f00-46b9-94e6-9d8db5798e94" CreationDate="2013-03-14T20:03:06.107" UserId="39802" Text="Where do I ask a &quot;how is it built?&quot; question about an application.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assume I find a webpage or an app, and would like to learn more around what languages and frameworks that are used. I think I would find the answers a good entry point for understanding technologies and for inspiration, trying to learn to build something that is new to me. But at the same time, this type of question is not necessarily answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is Programmers.SE, or are any other SE site, suited for these kinds of questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13875" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5757" RevisionGUID="eae6a438-9f00-46b9-94e6-9d8db5798e94" CreationDate="2013-03-14T20:03:06.107" UserId="39802" Text="&quot;How is it built?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13876" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5757" RevisionGUID="eae6a438-9f00-46b9-94e6-9d8db5798e94" CreationDate="2013-03-14T20:03:06.107" UserId="39802" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13877" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5758" RevisionGUID="208b2b82-483d-4976-b5db-6360b1a8637e" CreationDate="2013-03-14T20:13:53.217" UserId="35276" Text="This really wouldn't work on any SE site, however for discussion topics like this you are more than welcome to join [Chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) and bring up any topic you like, there's fairly consistent activity in there throughout the day with experts from the industry." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13878" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5759" RevisionGUID="8d76cbdb-1410-4edd-867a-9436a8740bf5" CreationDate="2013-03-15T05:03:28.543" UserId="54384" Text="Earlier I've posted [this question (link)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190628/dissertation-of-a-case-where-using-mysql-resulted-in-a-serious-scalability-probl?noredirect=1#comment368342_190628) on Programmers Stack. It was downvoted and closed. I asked for explanations. Some were probably invalid, such as &quot;not being business related&quot; - which I've never heard as being a problem. Others accused me of simply untrue things, such as &quot;you don't wanting an actual answer, but people to agree with you&quot;, without any proofs, which was very offensive. I've replied to all of them on the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked on the chat and someone pointed I should post here, so: why was my question closed? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I edited it - which I think was not necessary because I believe it was already perfectly fine - but it's certainly improved now and less hate-bait as one could argue. Can it be reopened now?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13879" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5759" RevisionGUID="8d76cbdb-1410-4edd-867a-9436a8740bf5" CreationDate="2013-03-15T05:03:28.543" UserId="54384" Text="I've made a question asking why OTServ - a huge MMORPG open-source community - has a problem with item cloning. Why it was closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13880" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5759" RevisionGUID="8d76cbdb-1410-4edd-867a-9436a8740bf5" CreationDate="2013-03-15T05:03:28.543" UserId="54384" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13881" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5759" RevisionGUID="0bbd3dd9-70e2-4786-8e3e-91c90882dd31" CreationDate="2013-03-15T05:10:21.287" UserId="54384" Comment="deleted 348 characters in body" Text="Earlier I've posted [this question (link)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190628/dissertation-of-a-case-where-using-mysql-resulted-in-a-serious-scalability-probl?noredirect=1#comment368342_190628) on Programmers Stack. Why was it closed and what can I do for it to be reopenned? Note: I've already made some edits taking in account some of the argumentation provided by the closers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13882" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5759" RevisionGUID="35bf5140-d828-484e-9933-561096c57e4d" CreationDate="2013-03-15T05:12:39.667" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 34 characters in body; edited tags" Text="Earlier I've posted [this question (link)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190628/dissertation-of-a-case-where-using-mysql-resulted-in-a-serious-scalability-probl) on Programmers Stack. Why was it closed and what can I do for it to be reopenned? Note: I've already made some edits taking in account some of the argumentation provided by the closers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13883" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5759" RevisionGUID="35bf5140-d828-484e-9933-561096c57e4d" CreationDate="2013-03-15T05:12:39.667" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 34 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13884" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5759" RevisionGUID="ac08a6f3-77cf-485f-9e88-8470e4632d6c" CreationDate="2013-03-15T05:21:43.877" UserId="54384" Comment="deleted 8 characters in body" Text="Earlier I've posted [this question (link)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190628/dissertation-of-a-case-where-using-mysql-resulted-in-a-serious-scalability-probl) on Programmers Stack. Why was it closed and what can I do for it to be reopenned? Note: I've already made some edits taking in account the argumentation provided by the closers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13885" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5760" RevisionGUID="d90fee0e-07b9-4cc2-a753-b55bb8701ed2" CreationDate="2013-03-15T06:17:43.523" UserId="25936" Text="The original version of your question was very broad, and read more like a thesis than an actual question. It seemed like you've already made your mind on almost everything you were asking about, and if that's the case, why ask? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To make matters worse, your question is of the &quot;foo vs bar&quot; variety, and strictly speaking those are [off topic][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language/technology you should learn next, **including which technology is better**,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Broad comparisons don't really work, we all have our favourites. If you don't give us enough parameters to make a sane comparison, the question is in danger of turning into yet another flame war. And yours almost did, the back and forth in the comments was getting out of hand. No one is to blame here, we all got caught up in the conversation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your edit was a step in the right direction, you removed your conclusions from the question, and it certainly reads more like a question now than a thesis. But you really need to do another update, and give us a few more details on the actual design. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With almost each one of your clarifying comments you revealed design idiosyncrasies, the project seems to have a very unique design. Every detail about it will help the community give you an actual answer, and not just opinions and speculation. You said in a comment that if you give us more details, the question would become &quot;too localized&quot;. That's certainly a risk, but &quot;too localized&quot; is far better than &quot;too broad/possibly flame-ish&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I'd like to see in your question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- A very brief and very high level overview of OTServs design. Why, for example, is a crash so devastating, why isn't there any redundancy? &#xD;&#xA;- A high level overview of the database schema, not just the table names. You mentioned in a comment that items don't have unique IDs, add that to the question. &#xD;&#xA;- A brief outline of usage and traffic. Solutions for 500 concurrent users will be quite different from solutions for 5*10^6 concurrent users. Be precise and avoid words like &quot;huge&quot;. A one million rows table is &quot;huge&quot; only if you haven't worked with billion rows tables.&#xD;&#xA;- A somewhat detailed outline of what you need to save and when.&#xD;&#xA;- Tell us what's beyond your control, what you can't possibly change. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, it's a good question, but you've approached it from the wrong angle. Tell us what the problem is, and we'll do our best to help you solve it. But if you've already decided on a solution, then post it on your blog, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13886" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5761" RevisionGUID="3abf8bd1-d5b8-48e8-9390-12ff980c4600" CreationDate="2013-03-15T14:34:02.893" UserId="14102" Text="My [question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190668/iphone-device-version-statistics/190673?noredirect=1#190673) was downvoted and closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments suggested it was downvoted because it was a question about data unrelated to programming. The question it was duped as is a very similar question, why is that one on-topic and mine off?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, the question it was closed as a dupe of does ask about device stats, but no answers mention them. It has an accepted answer too, so I'm unlikely to get much help there or have much success reviving it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where should I ask this question if not here, or how can I fix it up so that it's acceptable?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13887" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5761" RevisionGUID="3abf8bd1-d5b8-48e8-9390-12ff980c4600" CreationDate="2013-03-15T14:34:02.893" UserId="14102" Text="Why was my question downvoted and closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13888" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5761" RevisionGUID="3abf8bd1-d5b8-48e8-9390-12ff980c4600" CreationDate="2013-03-15T14:34:02.893" UserId="14102" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13889" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5762" RevisionGUID="5dc9b963-6c3a-4196-86eb-e11e626f6cde" CreationDate="2013-03-15T14:36:41.653" UserId="20065" Text="This answer :  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/13976/20065  &#xD;&#xA;points to this question :  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/13282/freelance-programming-sites/13565#13565&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since I can not see deleted question, what should happen to this answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I do want to see the deleted question. Is there anything I can do?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13890" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5762" RevisionGUID="5dc9b963-6c3a-4196-86eb-e11e626f6cde" CreationDate="2013-03-15T14:36:41.653" UserId="20065" Text="Answer with a link to deleted question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13891" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5762" RevisionGUID="5dc9b963-6c3a-4196-86eb-e11e626f6cde" CreationDate="2013-03-15T14:36:41.653" UserId="20065" Text="|support|deleted-questions|deleted-answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13892" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5763" RevisionGUID="5426d4bb-b385-42e5-8857-419d2533e762" CreationDate="2013-03-15T15:17:36.940" UserId="1130" Text="The deleted question is actually closed as a duplicate to [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51591/sites-for-getting-freelancer-jobs), which contains a more complete list of sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best solution in this case would be to probably edit the existing answer to point to this non-deleted post instead of the deleted post, although in other cases where there isn't a good non-deleted duplicate, we'd probably want to edit the answer to remove the dead link (or remove the answer itself it the only content it contained was the dead link).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the rare event that the deleted post contains valuable information that is linked to from many places, it may qualify to be undeleted and a [historical lock][1] placed on it. That type of action usually depends on the content, how many views/votes the post has, and how many links go to it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/126587/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13893" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5763" RevisionGUID="b2c0acf8-eb7e-43ff-b941-977d5c66f441" CreationDate="2013-03-15T15:23:01.223" UserId="1130" Comment="added 102 characters in body" Text="The deleted question is actually closed as a duplicate to [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51591/sites-for-getting-freelancer-jobs), which contains a more complete list of sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best solution in this case would be to probably edit the existing answer to point to this non-deleted post instead of the deleted post, although in other cases where there isn't a good non-deleted duplicate, we'd probably want to edit the answer to remove the dead link (or remove the answer itself it the only content it contained was the dead link).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the rare event that the deleted post contains valuable information that is linked to from many places, it may qualify to be undeleted and a [historical lock][1] placed on it. That type of action usually depends on the content, how many views/votes the post has, and how many links go to it, and the deleted post you mention probably would not qualify because of it's low number of views (770).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/126587/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13894" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5764" RevisionGUID="2fd56da2-f4e2-4154-86be-9979470efc31" CreationDate="2013-03-15T15:24:51.787" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="This is why we discourage link-only answers. Once a link dies, the answer pretty much becomes worthless. In this case the answer still has some worth since the answer is only pointing to additional resources, that in this case couldn't be easily summarized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question of what should happen to this answer is a bit of a moot point since the question was just closed. However taken as an example, if a question doesn't stand up on it's own without the link, you should let the answerer know that link-only answers are generally not acceptable and flag it for moderator attention." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13895" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5763" RevisionGUID="b301dee5-663e-479c-8c32-18fd1f9d8831" CreationDate="2013-03-15T15:57:33.850" UserId="1130" Comment="added 560 characters in body" Text="The deleted question is actually closed as a duplicate to [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51591/sites-for-getting-freelancer-jobs), which contains a more complete list of freelance sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best solution in this case would be to probably edit the existing answer to point to this non-deleted post instead of the deleted post, although in other cases where there isn't a good non-deleted duplicate, we'd probably want to edit the answer to remove the dead link (or remove the answer itself it the only content it contained was the dead link).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the rare event that the deleted post contains valuable information that is linked to from many places, it may qualify to be undeleted and a [historical lock][1] placed on it. That type of action usually depends on the content, how many views/votes the post has, and how many links go to it, and the deleted post you mention probably would not qualify because of it's low number of views (770).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also to answer your question about what you can do to see a deleted post when you don't have 10K+ reputation, you can try to find the post on [the Wayback Machine][2] or [StackPrinter][3], or you could try asking in [chat][4] or perhaps even here on [Meta][5] to see if a user with 10K+ rep or a moderator would be nice enough to get you a copy of the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/126587/158605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://archive.org/web/web.php&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.stackprinter.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13896" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5757" RevisionGUID="6b8c20c6-ed1c-409c-91c7-6ad6f9d4ad7e" CreationDate="2013-03-15T19:21:54.280" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Adding pseudo-required non-required tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|stackexchange|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13897" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5765" RevisionGUID="edfc1bd4-fbd2-4fcc-b159-8945b7f31816" CreationDate="2013-03-16T02:23:46.387" UserId="81811" Text="I asked [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190745/i-need-some-help-with-defining-a-shell-syntax) and have started building negative rep for it. I'm actually finding it very difficult to just ask for help here without upsetting someone. What am I doing wrong?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm happy to edit the question and to migrate it, or whatever else needs doing to bring it up to scratch. I just don't know what more I can do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks for your time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13898" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5765" RevisionGUID="edfc1bd4-fbd2-4fcc-b159-8945b7f31816" CreationDate="2013-03-16T02:23:46.387" UserId="81811" Text="How can I improve this question so I can get some help with my problem" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13899" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5765" RevisionGUID="edfc1bd4-fbd2-4fcc-b159-8945b7f31816" CreationDate="2013-03-16T02:23:46.387" UserId="81811" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13900" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5765" RevisionGUID="19cdaf30-8d74-4453-afc4-d064cf82cc27" CreationDate="2013-03-16T02:36:54.437" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13901" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5757" RevisionGUID="589dc0d9-086c-4eab-b187-e676af95177d" CreationDate="2013-03-16T10:41:08.487" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/312876177591250945" />
  <row Id="13903" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5766" RevisionGUID="9e8555fa-62e1-4488-8aa6-57b0b26f7398" CreationDate="2013-03-16T16:39:30.637" UserId="27881" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1/comments-are-a-code-smell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq), I would expect it to fall under the &quot;good&quot; topic of Software Engineering, and from [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/), it seems to meet almost all the criteria for &quot;Good Subjective&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Not only to the answers posted all agree, they also all explain _why_.&#xD;&#xA;* Most answers are medium-length, not short.&#xD;&#xA;* Most of the upvoted ones are impartial (that second one, not so much).&#xD;&#xA;* On the other hand, that second one falls under this criteria - it shares an experience to explain _why_.&#xD;&#xA;* There are references in some of the less-upvoted answers.&#xD;&#xA;* This one in particular seems to have hit a nerve - it's most definitely not &quot;mindless social fun&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_And_ there's the massive amount of upvotes both the question and answers have, so it was definitely a question users liked.  (I'm still using it as a reference _because_ of the high-quality answers and examples!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So... Shouldn't this be an open question on this site?  It seems like _exactly_ the type of thing [we should be encouraging](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for).  (Perhaps, just edit the question's &quot;What do you think?&quot; and change it to &quot;Is he right?&quot;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13904" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5766" RevisionGUID="9e8555fa-62e1-4488-8aa6-57b0b26f7398" CreationDate="2013-03-16T16:39:30.637" UserId="27881" Text="Why is this question closed (_and_ locked)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13905" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5766" RevisionGUID="9e8555fa-62e1-4488-8aa6-57b0b26f7398" CreationDate="2013-03-16T16:39:30.637" UserId="27881" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13906" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5767" RevisionGUID="269bea2b-a336-40a9-8da2-e7d71f277c90" CreationDate="2013-03-16T21:13:40.523" UserId="1204" Text="You forgot to mention the 20 or so answers that are not very good answers; they fail &quot;Good Subjective, Bad Subjective&quot; tests 1,2,4 and 5 for the most part.  Thats' a pretty good indication that the question itself is &quot;not constructive.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing and locking means that the question is already adequately answered, we're not accepting any more answers, and the post is protected from deletion.  I'd say that post is a perfect candidate.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13907" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5768" RevisionGUID="988b434f-5afb-4871-b559-99c4f5746684" CreationDate="2013-03-17T01:29:23.443" UserId="1204" Text="Your question has several problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Any answer is highly likely to be outdated five minutes from now.  This is why questions get like this often closed as &quot;Too Localized.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  The question cannot be answered definitively.  There may be several sources of information out there, or there may be none at all.  If they exist, chances are you would have already found them using Google.  This is why questions like this often get closed as &quot;Not Constructive.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  You didn't tell us why you need the information, which makes the question further unanswerable because there could possibly be a broad range of statistics to draw from, none of which apply to you.  Telling us what problem you were trying to solve might have evoked a novel solution from someone.  This is why questions like this often get closed as &quot;Not a Real Question.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  Your question already has coverage here.  This is why questions like this often get closed as duplicates." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13908" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5769" RevisionGUID="90bfe162-1503-45e3-b63b-44920f04a579" CreationDate="2013-03-17T15:41:09.907" UserId="7748" Text="**Is this for real? W.T.F.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Now its telling me &quot;This post does not meet our quality standards&quot;.**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ORHEz.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ujAqA.jpg&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just insulting." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13909" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5769" RevisionGUID="90bfe162-1503-45e3-b63b-44920f04a579" CreationDate="2013-03-17T15:41:09.907" UserId="7748" Text="Does Rep Count for anything anymore?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13910" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5769" RevisionGUID="90bfe162-1503-45e3-b63b-44920f04a579" CreationDate="2013-03-17T15:41:09.907" UserId="7748" Text="|discussion|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13911" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5769" RevisionGUID="1c62e3b7-8a3a-42d1-bf81-b5ba09920567" CreationDate="2013-03-17T15:52:03.603" UserId="7748" Comment="added 93 characters in body" Text="**Is this for real? W.T.F.** &#xD;&#xA;I'd like to point out that vandalism was attributed to a real User, totally unacceptable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Now its telling me &quot;This post does not meet our quality standards&quot;.**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ORHEz.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ujAqA.jpg&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just insulting." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13912" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5770" RevisionGUID="f39b5150-06bc-4598-b264-3de53ab16db8" CreationDate="2013-03-17T16:08:54.243" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="The issue has been discussed on [Meta Stack Overflow][1]. Clearly something is still going on. I'll look into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/170683/stop-using-real-accounts-in-suggested-edit-audits/171562#171562" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13913" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5771" RevisionGUID="b8240b1b-a614-4ecf-9aef-d7478cfe67a4" CreationDate="2013-03-17T16:57:36.300" UserId="63" Text="Not entirely sure what you're asking here, but... The various quality checks do take rep into account - beyond a certain point, it's assumed you know what you're doing in certain areas (code formatting, for instance).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The basic writing-style checks apply to everyone though. Complete sentences, punctuation, and enough text to reasonably explain a problem are universally important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[As World Engineer notes][1], suggested edit audits are temporarily attributed to a random recent editor - they don't actually appear in his activity though, nor does approval or rejection have any effect on him. Once you've completed the audit, the [Community user][2] will be displayed instead. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5769/does-rep-count-for-anything-anymore/5770#5770&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/-1/community" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13919" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5769" RevisionGUID="44d26be6-c9a9-4a5a-a79b-9451baf9bf8a" CreationDate="2013-03-19T05:55:27.963" UserId="102" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13920" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5773" RevisionGUID="d6ce9403-1d1b-4c67-b105-26dc7c5de21a" CreationDate="2013-03-19T19:23:28.043" UserId="13181" Text="There are a few &quot;how do I learn from existing open source architectures&quot; scattered around here. The answers usually point to [Architecture of Open Source Applications][1] which is a great resource!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.aosabook.org/en/index.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13921" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5774" RevisionGUID="108f1179-883d-43b1-aa89-79f3f2d16506" CreationDate="2013-03-19T19:58:42.630" UserId="35276" Text="No questions are coming up. Error, error, basically. Meta works fine, so uh, great...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--QUALITY_STANDARDS_SUPPLEMENT&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ASD8ASD9TERWTGBTWETH2345TRGGHRHWER" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13922" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5774" RevisionGUID="108f1179-883d-43b1-aa89-79f3f2d16506" CreationDate="2013-03-19T19:58:42.630" UserId="35276" Text="Somebody broke Programmers.StackExchange" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13923" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5774" RevisionGUID="108f1179-883d-43b1-aa89-79f3f2d16506" CreationDate="2013-03-19T19:58:42.630" UserId="35276" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13924" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5774" RevisionGUID="6d8eed7c-c4db-4cef-ab9c-b1f3fc320b6e" CreationDate="2013-03-19T20:01:46.260" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13925" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5774" RevisionGUID="1cc6fa91-0a40-482d-891c-9203da9fa0a2" CreationDate="2013-03-19T20:06:30.517" UserId="25936" Comment="I should suspend you for not figuring out how to bypass the size limit..." Text="No questions are coming up. Error, error, basically. Meta works fine, so uh, great...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!--QUALITY_STANDARDS_SUPPLEMENT&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ASD8ASD9TERWTGBTWETH2345TRGGHRHWER--&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13926" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="5774" RevisionGUID="75df0452-0d55-41ea-a988-4d3738f9f11a" CreationDate="2013-03-19T20:08:25.557" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:28988,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;World Engineer&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="13927" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="5774" RevisionGUID="f6c54024-7d63-4148-810d-77085a156708" CreationDate="2013-03-19T20:08:39.517" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:28988,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;World Engineer&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="13928" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5774" RevisionGUID="85c9880f-f096-4504-9c51-8cbb825ca47e" CreationDate="2013-03-19T20:08:57.427" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13929" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5774" RevisionGUID="0dfdc56d-5703-40e2-ade4-bd4754d842ce" CreationDate="2013-03-19T20:09:29.063" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="13930" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5775" RevisionGUID="cd5da1ff-bee6-439f-a370-0bf801750525" CreationDate="2013-03-19T22:34:02.233" UserId="82764" Text="I normally won't care but as this site has a strong community feel I wanted to bring it to the attention of people. Overnight (I'm in Australia) I had 11 of my answers downvoted. It is uncommon for my answers to be downvoted, but whatever, I strongly suspect that I have been targeted by one person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have my suspicions who this person is but I obviously can't be certain. I suspect it was in response to a comment that I made on one of his answers that was baseless and incorrect. I was entirely civil about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do I have someone review what's happened to me and can any recourse be taken? Can the downvotes be cancelled? I know it sounds petty but I am trying to cultivate a reputation here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13931" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5775" RevisionGUID="cd5da1ff-bee6-439f-a370-0bf801750525" CreationDate="2013-03-19T22:34:02.233" UserId="82764" Text="Someone has downvoted a heap of my answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13932" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5775" RevisionGUID="cd5da1ff-bee6-439f-a370-0bf801750525" CreationDate="2013-03-19T22:34:02.233" UserId="82764" Text="|support|voting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13933" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5776" RevisionGUID="c726ebd4-2200-436c-8e99-4a40d3861690" CreationDate="2013-03-19T22:44:22.937" UserId="25936" Text="There's an automated process that runs daily and checks and reverses serial votes (either up or down). It will most probably reverse the downvotes the next time it runs, 9 downvotes in a very short time is certainly an abnormal pattern. In the highly unlikely case that the votes haven't been reversed in 24h, give me a shout in chat so I can ask a SE employee to take a closer look and manually invalidate the votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13934" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5776" RevisionGUID="0b9620d2-83b5-41d5-a431-626a555cb24f" CreationDate="2013-03-19T22:45:02.583" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="added 160 characters in body" Text="There's an automated process that runs daily and checks and reverses serial votes (either up or down). It will most probably reverse the downvotes the next time it runs, 9 downvotes in a very short time is certainly an abnormal pattern. In the highly unlikely case that the votes haven't been reversed in 24h, give me a shout in chat so I can ask a SE employee to take a closer look and manually invalidate the votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More info can be found in this [M.SO post][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/28756/what-can-i-do-if-im-the-victim-of-serial-downvoting" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13935" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5776" RevisionGUID="ee7881c3-5d42-43a3-a010-9ff6ef990c3e" CreationDate="2013-03-19T22:48:14.510" UserId="25936" Comment="added 244 characters in body" Text="There's an automated process that runs daily and checks and reverses serial votes (either up or down). It will most probably reverse the downvotes the next time it runs, 9 downvotes in a very short time is certainly an abnormal pattern. In the highly unlikely case that the votes haven't been reversed in 24h, give me a shout in chat so I can ask a SE employee to take a closer look and manually invalidate the votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming the votes are indeed abusive (confirmed either by the script or by a SE employee), the next step is to contact and/or suspend the culprit, our tolerance for juvenile behaviours like this is extremely low. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More info on the serial voting script can be found in this [M.SO post][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/28756/what-can-i-do-if-im-the-victim-of-serial-downvoting" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13936" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5777" RevisionGUID="384d7c19-bf2f-4a23-b078-7dc599de89fd" CreationDate="2013-03-21T08:06:25.267" UserId="31260" Text="Recently I reviewed some posts using SEDE query called [&quot;Marginal short answers with links&quot;](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8599945#8599945 &quot;described here&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;For the record, I have been using query parameters [as suggested here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8600254#8600254 &quot;0,5,250&quot;), with the only difference that min value was set `-2` instead of `0`, for I wanted to additionally review posts indicating some sort of &quot;community disapproval&quot;.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While reviewing posts listed in query results I downvoted some of these ([&quot;pulled a Gnat&quot;](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8605062#8605062) as they say:). Soon after that, I noticed that many of the posts I DVed popped in Low Quality review queue: &#xD;&#xA;[1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24599 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24600 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[3](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24601 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24602 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[5](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24603 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[6](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24604 &quot;example&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that mentioned posts were laying dormant for quite a long time (year or more), it looks like my votes triggered their inclusion into queue. Is that observation correct? If yes, I also would want to understand whether such a _dependency of downvotes_ is intended by queue design?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13937" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5777" RevisionGUID="384d7c19-bf2f-4a23-b078-7dc599de89fd" CreationDate="2013-03-21T08:06:25.267" UserId="31260" Text="Downvoting &quot;marginal&quot; posts triggers their inclusion into Low Quality queue?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13938" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5777" RevisionGUID="384d7c19-bf2f-4a23-b078-7dc599de89fd" CreationDate="2013-03-21T08:06:25.267" UserId="31260" Text="|support|down-votes|answer-quality|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13939" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5746" RevisionGUID="447bc61f-1753-422e-bdcb-d7f897b6dcfe" CreationDate="2013-03-22T10:50:02.177" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/315052743763058689" />
  <row Id="13940" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5778" RevisionGUID="d37cd506-4544-4c2b-9add-e45a19022818" CreationDate="2013-03-22T19:13:00.000" UserId="60569" Text="The common problem I see with all of the topics in the OP is that they are too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- PHP/PHP best practices &#xD;&#xA;- 3rd party libraries &#xD;&#xA;- Java/Groovy &#xD;&#xA;- Database-driven web applications&#xD;&#xA;- GUI frameworks&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone has a **specific** situation where they are stuck, that question can be answered. I don't think that very broad &quot;getting-started&quot; questions can be answered effectively in SE's format." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13941" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5777" RevisionGUID="709c8fd9-aaca-47ba-ae40-0794799ff654" CreationDate="2013-03-23T07:24:28.850" UserId="31260" Comment="repeated experiment like above and, voila, 8 more posts were added to the queue" Text="Recently I reviewed some posts using SEDE query called [&quot;Marginal short answers with links&quot;](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8599945#8599945 &quot;described here&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;For the record, I have been using query parameters [as suggested here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8600254#8600254 &quot;0,5,250&quot;), with the only difference that min value was set `-2` instead of `0`, for I wanted to additionally review posts indicating some sort of &quot;community disapproval&quot;.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While reviewing posts listed in query results I downvoted some of these ([&quot;pulled a Gnat&quot;](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8605062#8605062) as they say:). Soon after that, I noticed that many of the posts I DVed popped in Low Quality review queue: &#xD;&#xA;[1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24599 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24600 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[3](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24601 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24602 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[5](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24603 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[6](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24604 &quot;example&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that mentioned posts were laying dormant for quite a long time (year or more), it looks like my votes triggered their inclusion into queue. Is that observation correct? If yes, I also would want to understand whether such a _dependency of downvotes_ is intended by queue design?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two days later I repeated experiment like above and, voila, 8 more posts were added to the queue:&#xD;&#xA;[7](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24768 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[8](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24769 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[9](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24770 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[10](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24771 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[11](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24772 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[12](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24773 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24774 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[14](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24776 &quot;example&quot;). It looks like quite a reliable pattern of _cause-effect_.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13942" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5777" RevisionGUID="690601d3-c511-4855-bcaf-949984e1da8b" CreationDate="2013-03-23T07:34:36.653" UserId="31260" Comment="queue was populated with posts that got zero score because of my downvote" Text="Recently I reviewed some posts using SEDE query called [&quot;Marginal short answers with links&quot;](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8599945#8599945 &quot;described here&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;For the record, I have been using query parameters [as suggested here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8600254#8600254 &quot;0,5,250&quot;), with the only difference that min value was set `-2` instead of `0`, for I wanted to additionally review posts indicating some sort of &quot;community disapproval&quot;.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While reviewing posts listed in query results I downvoted some of these ([&quot;pulled a Gnat&quot;](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8605062#8605062) as they say:). Soon after that, I noticed that many of the posts I DVed popped in Low Quality review queue: &#xD;&#xA;[1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24599 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24600 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[3](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24601 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24602 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[5](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24603 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[6](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24604 &quot;example&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that mentioned posts were laying dormant for quite a long time (year or more), it looks like my votes triggered their inclusion into queue. Is that observation correct? If yes, I also would want to understand whether such a _dependency of downvotes_ is intended by queue design?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two days later I repeated experiment like above and, voila, 8 more posts were added to the queue:&#xD;&#xA;[7](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24768 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[8](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24769 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[9](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24770 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[10](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24771 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[11](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24772 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[12](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24773 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24774 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[14](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24776 &quot;example&quot;). What I noticed this time is that queue was populated with posts that got zero score because of my downvote. It looks like quite a reliable pattern of _cause-effect_.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13943" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5777" RevisionGUID="690601d3-c511-4855-bcaf-949984e1da8b" CreationDate="2013-03-23T07:34:36.653" UserId="31260" Comment="queue was populated with posts that got zero score because of my downvote" Text="Downvoting &quot;marginal&quot; posts can trigger their inclusion into Low Quality queue?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13944" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5779" RevisionGUID="2d44959d-46a0-4709-9c56-6e81bd7f21bb" CreationDate="2013-03-23T21:12:32.977" UserId="1996" Text="Consider [this question][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be a perfect candidate for the Software QA Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So can we please add http://sqa.stackexchange.com as a migration target?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/191706/negative-test-cases-confusion" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13945" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5779" RevisionGUID="2d44959d-46a0-4709-9c56-6e81bd7f21bb" CreationDate="2013-03-23T21:12:32.977" UserId="1996" Text="Can we please add http://sqa.stackexchange.com as a migration target?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13946" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5779" RevisionGUID="2d44959d-46a0-4709-9c56-6e81bd7f21bb" CreationDate="2013-03-23T21:12:32.977" UserId="1996" Text="|feature-request|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13947" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5779" RevisionGUID="0164d51b-6790-419a-86c5-72e988318a4f" CreationDate="2013-03-23T21:29:01.017" UserId="1996" Comment="added 37 characters in body" Text="Consider [this question][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be a perfect candidate for the Software QA Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So can we please add http://sqa.stackexchange.com as a migration target?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139712/is-performance-testing-applicable-to-a-qa-or-business-user-testing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13948" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5780" RevisionGUID="747ba4b5-b9c0-4426-b267-8459f3ac5a0a" CreationDate="2013-03-24T12:41:38.980" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="I'm Tim Post, a community manager for Stack Exchange. I'd like to take a few moments to answer this, and explain a bit about migration paths.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Migration paths between sites are something that we're very cautious to establish, we put them in place only when we're certain that the conduit will:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Help ease confusion for users that ask a question on a site that overlaps with another, ensuring a great question is sent where it will receive the best answers without much additional effort on the part of the question author,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Be largely beneficial to the target site,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Not become a party to unresolved topic disputes on the originating site, or between the originating and target sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You'll notice, Programmers is no longer a migration target from Stack Overflow, neither is Server Fault. However, LaTEX and Sharepoint *are*. Questions about the latter are agreed by all concerned to be more on topic for their respective sites, that's why folks put so much effort into getting those sites created.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that being said, we don't establish migration paths to a site that is still in its beta period. We don't want to send content from one site to another unless we're certain that the target site is a permanent fixture. There are exceptions to this; moderators _can_ migrate relatively new questions to sites not in the current migration path, but this ability should be used sparingly. A question should be much better than average quality, and all hope of it being on topic for the current site should be exhausted prior to going around the established routes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When SQA comes out of beta, this is something that we can revisit. However, for now, it's simply not possible to add a migration path between Programmers and SQA. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13949" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5779" RevisionGUID="7e07ff26-7f27-4471-b14c-35e5a3c97ad6" CreationDate="2013-03-24T12:42:15.890" UserDisplayName="user131" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13950" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5780" RevisionGUID="9a155413-733d-4f03-b2f2-5f32b2c84313" CreationDate="2013-03-24T12:47:15.583" UserDisplayName="user131" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="I'm Tim Post, a community manager for Stack Exchange. I'd like to take a few moments to answer this, and explain a bit about migration paths.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Migration paths between sites are something that we're very cautious to establish, we put them in place only when we're certain that the conduit will:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Help ease confusion for users that ask a question on a site that overlaps with another, ensuring a great question is sent where it will receive the best answers without much additional effort on the part of the question author,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Be largely beneficial to the target site,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Not become a party to unresolved topic disputes on the originating site, or between the originating and target site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You'll notice, Programmers is no longer a migration target from Stack Overflow, neither is Server Fault. However, LaTEX and Sharepoint *are*. Questions about the latter are agreed by all concerned to be more on topic for their respective sites, that's why folks put so much effort into getting those sites created.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that being said, we don't establish migration paths to a site that is still in its beta period. We don't want to send content from one site to another unless we're certain that the target site is a permanent fixture. There are exceptions to this; moderators _can_ migrate relatively new questions to sites not in the current migration path, but this ability should be used sparingly. A question should be of much better than average quality, and all hope of it being on topic for the current site should be exhausted prior to going around the established routes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When SQA comes out of beta, this is something that we can revisit. However, for now, it's simply not possible to add a migration path between Programmers and SQA. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13951" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5781" RevisionGUID="c6f8a1e4-6935-4ecf-a89e-5cb8b080f529" CreationDate="2013-03-24T23:02:18.587" UserId="65963" Text="IMO: You're getting grief because it sounds like you're asking someone else to do your thinking/work for you. Googling, reading, tinkering for yourself is probably the only way to find what you want - which is, basically, an understanding of interesting shells and the way they vary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow and the rest, are about much more focussed questions than this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13952" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5782" RevisionGUID="d6b7cf1b-1a3c-483e-9c29-4095eabdf6d8" CreationDate="2013-03-25T06:47:41.617" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13953" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5783" RevisionGUID="a3d4105e-37c6-4db7-95f8-a502643c62f6" CreationDate="2013-03-25T06:47:41.617" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13954" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2665" RevisionGUID="757b077a-2e67-444d-9593-70cbce73329a" CreationDate="2013-03-25T06:48:41.903" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|flagging|recommendations|resource-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13955" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2003" RevisionGUID="37acb5e1-5b9e-4930-952c-014f8a0ecde8" CreationDate="2013-03-25T06:48:57.513" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|on-topic-definition|resource-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13956" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1624" RevisionGUID="903587d4-77a3-4918-b6e1-82ad1cda500f" CreationDate="2013-03-25T06:49:22.467" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|on-topic-definition|resource-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13957" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5299" RevisionGUID="1b0a6f40-dbbc-4fb2-9f8d-95464bdaa512" CreationDate="2013-03-25T06:49:46.690" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|questions|resource-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13958" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4104" RevisionGUID="eaf6c035-6a2f-4e6d-8b1a-03dc02c2f147" CreationDate="2013-03-25T06:52:07.590" UserId="31260" Comment="page title instead of bare URL" Text="While I begrudgingly accept the idea that resource requests are on-topic if they are specific enough, people should really be asking &quot;how&quot; questions, not &quot;what&quot; questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Let’s say you wanted — as I did — to buy a point-and-shoot camera that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; takes good low light photos. So we’re going to ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; photo.stackexchange.com, naturally!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Here’s one way to ask:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     Q: What’s the best low light point-and-shoot camera?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     A: Canon S90 and Lumix LX3.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Here’s another way to ask:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     Q: How do I tell which point-and-shoot cameras take good low light photos?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     A: I strongly recommend looking for something with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         a fast lens (2.0 at least)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         reasonable ISO handling (at least 400, but preferably 800)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         the biggest sensor available&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     The sum of these factors are really critical for low light situations.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The former question provides the path of least resistance: a laundry&#xD;&#xA;&gt; list of products I can buy without thinking about it too much. But&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that answer will only be valid for a year at best. The latter question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; may take some thinking, but its answer will be valid forever … or at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; least until camera technology somehow shifts beyond lenses and sensors&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as we know them today. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Thus, when it comes to shopping questions,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; don’t ask us what you should buy — ask us what you need to learn to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tell what you should buy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Q&amp;amp;A is Hard, Let&amp;#8217;s Go Shopping! &amp;laquo;  Blog &amp;#8211; Stack Exchange](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13959" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5738" RevisionGUID="ae96333d-7c80-47f2-baa7-5d2bc071171a" CreationDate="2013-03-25T07:15:43.223" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|resource-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13960" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5777" RevisionGUID="78998136-6221-4477-a56a-8dd83f4dec00" CreationDate="2013-03-25T07:36:32.650" UserId="31260" Comment="added 515 characters in body" Text="Recently I reviewed some posts using SEDE query called [&quot;Marginal short answers with links&quot;](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8599945#8599945 &quot;described here&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;For the record, I have been using query parameters [as suggested here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8600254#8600254 &quot;0,5,250&quot;), with the only difference that min value was set `-2` instead of `0`, for I wanted to additionally review posts indicating some sort of &quot;community disapproval&quot;.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While reviewing posts listed in query results I downvoted some of these ([&quot;pulled a Gnat&quot;](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8605062#8605062) as they say:). Soon after that, I noticed that many of the posts I DVed popped in Low Quality review queue: &#xD;&#xA;[1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24599 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24600 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[3](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24601 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24602 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[5](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24603 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[6](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24604 &quot;example&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that mentioned posts were laying dormant for quite a long time (year or more), it looks like my votes triggered their inclusion into queue. Is that observation correct? If yes, I also would want to understand whether such a _dependency of downvotes_ is intended by queue design?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two days later I repeated experiment like above and, voila, 8 more posts were added to the queue:&#xD;&#xA;[7](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24768 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[8](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24769 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[9](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24770 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[10](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24771 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[11](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24772 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[12](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24773 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24774 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[14](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24776 &quot;example&quot;). Next day experiment brought yet another 5 posts into the queue:&#xD;&#xA;[15](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24875 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[16](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24876 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[17](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24877 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[18](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24878 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[19](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24879 &quot;example&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I noticed in repeated experiments is that queue was populated with posts that got zero score because of my downvote. It looks like quite a reliable pattern of _cause-effect_.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13961" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="431" RevisionGUID="11beaaf5-7a23-4187-946e-60a055f1fb1d" CreationDate="2013-03-25T14:05:40.333" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13962" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5654" RevisionGUID="aefcda84-2a18-4435-bb60-53c37ea5aded" CreationDate="2013-03-25T14:06:21.760" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13963" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5719" RevisionGUID="b8908fc0-9298-49ae-8870-75b49ceb8f79" CreationDate="2013-03-25T14:06:36.180" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|site-definition|community|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13964" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5784" RevisionGUID="c59206c1-da41-4953-82b6-4c26da8c0957" CreationDate="2013-03-25T15:57:28.940" UserId="35276" Text="I've been flagging a lot lately, and it's harmless for me to reflag the same question twice because the second time it just says I already flagged it, but all the same I find it bothersome that there's no way for me to tell if I already flagged a Q or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would be a nice feature for a Q to have a little red flag or something to indicate to me that I already flagged it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13965" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5784" RevisionGUID="c59206c1-da41-4953-82b6-4c26da8c0957" CreationDate="2013-03-25T15:57:28.940" UserId="35276" Text="Feature request: Indicator to tell me I already flagged a question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13966" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5784" RevisionGUID="c59206c1-da41-4953-82b6-4c26da8c0957" CreationDate="2013-03-25T15:57:28.940" UserId="35276" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13967" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5782" RevisionGUID="c1a83511-7266-4ab6-876d-8b7c0831edd1" CreationDate="2013-03-25T16:03:10.790" UserId="31260" Comment="added 1302 characters in body" Text="About questions asking for resources - books, links, tutorials, articles, tools, libraries etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For guidance, refer to the following meta discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[FAQ -&gt; What about subjective questions?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#what-about-subjective-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”...&#xD;&#xA;* insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;. Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) and [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) blog posts for more details and examples...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Let’s say you wanted — as I did — to buy a point-and-shoot camera that takes good low light photos.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...when it comes to shopping questions, don’t ask us what you should buy — ask us what you need to learn to tell what you should buy." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13968" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="5782" RevisionGUID="c1a83511-7266-4ab6-876d-8b7c0831edd1" CreationDate="2013-03-25T16:03:10.790" Comment="Proposed by 31260 approved by 101, 47 edit id of 9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13969" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5783" RevisionGUID="01bae19c-9250-428e-9375-6b26d219fa4f" CreationDate="2013-03-25T16:03:14.337" UserId="31260" Comment="added 88 characters in body" Text="questions asking for resources - books, links, tutorials, articles, tools, libraries etc" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13970" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="5783" RevisionGUID="01bae19c-9250-428e-9375-6b26d219fa4f" CreationDate="2013-03-25T16:03:14.337" Comment="Proposed by 31260 approved by 101, 47 edit id of 10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13971" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5784" RevisionGUID="cf26e0b9-3cea-4833-ba15-e761106fac28" CreationDate="2013-03-25T16:12:53.077" UserId="25936" Comment="don't put tags in titles" Text="Indicator to tell me I already flagged a question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13972" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5784" RevisionGUID="cf26e0b9-3cea-4833-ba15-e761106fac28" CreationDate="2013-03-25T16:12:53.077" UserId="25936" Comment="don't put tags in titles" Text="|feature-request|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13973" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5765" RevisionGUID="ee3da048-7b28-46ba-8af4-2c55e84940a3" CreationDate="2013-03-25T16:50:22.103" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/316230587822256128" />
  <row Id="13974" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5785" RevisionGUID="8c7b2be2-0b56-41da-ae40-41b8e610b855" CreationDate="2013-03-25T19:04:01.413" UserId="35276" Text="I just saw http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5779/can-we-please-add-http-sqa-stackexchange-com-as-a-migration-target and in reading Tim Post's answer, I understand why SQA, or DBA would both make for poor migration paths away from programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, his thoughts only made my belief that Project Management should be a migration path from Programmers. We get quite a few PM based questions here, and while in the case of SQA or DBA there's good arguments that we have the expertise to give quality answers from a valuable perspective (that of a programmer). Questions that might be migrated in those directions could plausibly be riff-raff programmers just didn't want, which would be bad for those sites. On both of these points though Project Management is completely different.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often times PM type questions don't get much input as many of us may know the topic, but not at the detailed level to cite evidence in any fashion other than personal experience, which isn't the best way to answer a question. Also I can't imagine programmers trying to only migrate the low quality PM questions, as even good PM questions we're unlikely to have particularly good answers for. I do get that we give the programmers perspective on these questions, but more often than not the PM questions I've seen here aren't looking for that necessarily." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13975" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5785" RevisionGUID="8c7b2be2-0b56-41da-ae40-41b8e610b855" CreationDate="2013-03-25T19:04:01.413" UserId="35276" Text="Can we please add Project Management as a migration path from Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13976" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5785" RevisionGUID="8c7b2be2-0b56-41da-ae40-41b8e610b855" CreationDate="2013-03-25T19:04:01.413" UserId="35276" Text="|feature-request|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13977" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5786" RevisionGUID="5e2a93f1-0bab-4dd1-a94b-0086e75d5d23" CreationDate="2013-03-25T19:24:22.770" UserId="4" Text="As mentioned in Tim Post's answer, beta sites are never targets for migration. So this is (going to be) declined until after PM comes out of Beta. Given [a recent discussion on the PM Meta site](http://meta.pm.stackexchange.com/questions/587/any-update-on-graduation), that's still a ways out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I do not think that this site should have a migration path to PM.SE, even after PM is out of beta. As someone who has formal education and work experience managing software teams, projects, and processes, I can tell you that running software-intensive projects is inherently different than running other project types, such as hardware-oriented or construction projects. I'm not going to get into the specifics now (I suppose I could, if you really wanted me to, but just taking a look at the wealth of resources specifically devoted to executing software projects by McConnell, Kan, Humphrey, Boehm, Turner, and Weigers should be sufficient). I don't see that many questions here that aren't about running software-intensive projects. Even if the material is not unique to software projects (and to know that, one would have to understand managing software projects, but non-software and multi-disciplinary projects as well), the answers here will likely take on a software-slant.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you were thinking about removing software project management questions - which would remove questions about agile, RUP, CMMI, TSP, PSP, the rest of the development methodologies and process models, scheduling, budgeting, estimation, engineering economy applied to software (1/5 of the topics that comprise the definition of software engineering) - I know that I probably wouldn't visit this site as much since my whole area of expertise would no longer be on-topic here. Sure, requirements engineering, architecture, and design would remain on-topic (and I'm interested in and have to work in those areas), but my primary interests and professional background would be elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps a better question might be how to attract software team leaders, project managers, and people with experience in these areas to this site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13978" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5785" RevisionGUID="0db7ccf7-5448-4c81-9037-5cb0d98e38bb" CreationDate="2013-03-25T19:48:15.733" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13979" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5750" RevisionGUID="872b3570-3a86-4abc-8508-10cca7a6d803" CreationDate="2013-03-25T23:10:20.283" UserId="25936" Comment="added 172 characters in body" Text="Good question ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first step was the brand new [about page][1] (see our [about page][2]), and the next one was the [changes in how duplicates work][3]. Right now Stack Exchange is looking for feedback on revamping the close reasons, on the main Meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will be updating this answer as more changes and requests for feedback are announced:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [We're rolling out a new “Quick Start” guide to help new users learn the basics][4] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)][5] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Help us make “Off-Topic” close reasons clearer to the OP][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Help us make “Not Constructive” and “Not a Real Question” closures more effective][7]&#xD;&#xA;- [Every “close” has its thorn: help us improve closing verbiage](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/173497/every-close-has-its-thorn-help-us-improve-closing-verbiage)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/169814/help-us-make-off-topic-close-reasons-clearer-to-the-op&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/163254/were-rolling-out-a-new-quick-start-guide-to-help-new-users-learn-the-basics&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/169814/help-us-make-off-topic-close-reasons-clearer-to-the-op&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/171732/help-us-make-not-constructive-and-not-a-real-question-closures-more-effectiv" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13982" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5784" RevisionGUID="b9eb6047-90e3-4d93-a2d0-b94c07cce404" CreationDate="2013-03-27T07:51:07.773" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/316819659271831556" />
  <row Id="13983" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5788" RevisionGUID="71d5193a-1cda-4d51-b97a-c557abcc62c8" CreationDate="2013-03-27T11:58:39.310" UserId="25476" Text="I like the meta tag [tag:resource-questions] as the [wiki info](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/resource-questions/info) for it can be a useful educational resource for new users.  I notice that user gnat has been using this in his comments where people post their first question asking for a list of tutorials or books.  Eg:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/192102/i-want-to-learn-scheme-which-interpreter-compiler-and-books-can-be-recommended#comment371576_192102&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [resource requests are not quite welcome at Programmers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/resource-questions/info). As far as I understand, one would rather present an **underlying problem** instead - a problem that was intended to be solved with particular resource requested &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is great and I don't think anybody would disagree with this, but perhaps it is a good idea that we create this tag on the main site so that when we identify blatant resource requests we can tag the question.  I think it will help speed up the cumbersome and time consuming process of cleanups as we will have a big list of things we can speedibly delete all at once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are your thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13984" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5788" RevisionGUID="71d5193a-1cda-4d51-b97a-c557abcc62c8" CreationDate="2013-03-27T11:58:39.310" UserId="25476" Text="Is [tag:resource-questions] a good idea for the main site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13985" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5788" RevisionGUID="71d5193a-1cda-4d51-b97a-c557abcc62c8" CreationDate="2013-03-27T11:58:39.310" UserId="25476" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13986" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5788" RevisionGUID="502ec03f-e56f-4ce8-932a-bf1795f9d5b9" CreationDate="2013-03-27T12:15:58.403" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="Beating Yannis to the punch" Text="|discussion|resource-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13987" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5789" RevisionGUID="ba274fb2-cb2c-4201-869d-b9c94472e0d0" CreationDate="2013-03-27T12:55:44.320" UserId="31260" Text="As pointed in the [comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5788/is-tagresource-questions-a-good-idea-for-the-main-site#comment14683_5788 &quot;here&quot;), this is not quite a good idea because having such a tag could have an opposite effect: users may think it's OK to use it, even if you write in its wiki and excerpt that it's forbidden - &quot;if there's a tag, why can't I ask about it?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you refer to my comment - for the sake of precision, this was only second time (I wish it would also be the last but unfortunately it wouldn't) when I refered asker to tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior to that, my similar comments were pointing to particular meta discussion (the one that is currently set in the tag wiki as the guidance point). It was when my comment has been (quite legitimately imNSho) [challenged]((http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190911/code-network-metrics-with-ui-events#comment370863_190911)) by asker who pointed to another meta discussion to back up somewhat different approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, I suggested [tag wiki](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/186) and [excerpt](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/187) and switched to using these in comments." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13988" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5789" RevisionGUID="f172674c-cec3-4a8c-ba1a-eac583a48a75" CreationDate="2013-03-27T13:06:26.110" UserId="31260" Comment="tag wiki like that are to be established any time when there is a confusion among meta readers caused by differing &quot;canonical&quot; / &quot;authoritative&quot; posts and comments" Text="As pointed in the [comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5788/is-tagresource-questions-a-good-idea-for-the-main-site#comment14683_5788 &quot;here&quot;), this is not quite a good idea because having such a tag could have an opposite effect: users may think it's OK to use it, even if you write in its wiki and excerpt that it's forbidden - &quot;if there's a tag, why can't I ask about it?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you refer to my comment - for the sake of precision, this was only second time (I wish it would also be the last but unfortunately it wouldn't) when I refered asker to tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior to that, my similar comments were pointing to particular meta discussion (the one that is currently set in the tag wiki as the guidance point). It was when my comment has been (quite legitimately imNSho) [challenged]((http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190911/code-network-metrics-with-ui-events#comment370863_190911)) by asker who pointed to another meta discussion to back up somewhat different approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, I suggested [tag wiki](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/186) and [excerpt](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/187) and switched to using these in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a more general note, I believe tag wiki like that are to be established any time when there is a confusion among meta readers caused by differing &quot;canonical&quot; / &quot;authoritative&quot; posts and comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's not a new idea, explained eg in [flagger's guide to link-only answers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/154922/165773) at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;In some meta posts or comments you may see moderators suggesting / requiring particular kind flag to be used (or to avoid) for link-only answers. Convenient _[litmus test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litmus_test_%28politics%29)_ in cases like that is to ask author whether this is their personal opinion or a statement that can be quoted in [tag wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/tag-wiki/info &quot;what's this&quot;) (wiki for respective flag or for [link-only  answers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/link-only-answers/info)). **Tag wiki are quite authoritative reference; anything else, read: _use at your own risk_.**&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a more recent example you can refer to MSO [profanity tag wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/172893/revisions &quot;tag wiki history&quot;) that have been established because of similar [confusion](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/172734/copying-profanities-and-obscene-words-on-meta/172747#comment513141_172747 &quot;discussed here&quot;) caused by having differing &quot;authoritative&quot; posts on the subject." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13989" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5789" RevisionGUID="8c50be36-5547-4b4d-a044-dacef6f0bcce" CreationDate="2013-03-27T13:29:50.420" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo correction" Text="As pointed in the [comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5788/is-tagresource-questions-a-good-idea-for-the-main-site#comment14683_5788 &quot;here&quot;), this is not quite a good idea because having such a tag could have an opposite effect: users may think it's OK to use it, even if you write in its wiki and excerpt that it's forbidden - &quot;if there's a tag, why can't I ask about it?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you refer to my comment - for the sake of precision, this was only second time (I wish it would also be the last but unfortunately it wouldn't) when I referred asker to tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior to that, my similar comments were pointing to particular meta discussion (the one that is currently set in the tag wiki as the guidance point). It was when my comment has been (quite legitimately imNSho) [challenged]((http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190911/code-network-metrics-with-ui-events#comment370863_190911)) by asker who pointed to another meta discussion to back up somewhat different approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, I suggested [tag wiki](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/186) and [excerpt](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/187) and switched to using these in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a more general note, I believe tag wiki like that are to be established any time when there is a confusion among meta readers caused by differing &quot;canonical&quot; / &quot;authoritative&quot; posts and comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's not a new idea, explained eg in [flagger's guide to link-only answers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/154922/165773) at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;In some meta posts or comments you may see moderators suggesting / requiring particular kind flag to be used (or to avoid) for link-only answers. Convenient _[litmus test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litmus_test_%28politics%29)_ in cases like that is to ask author whether this is their personal opinion or a statement that can be quoted in [tag wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/tag-wiki/info &quot;what's this&quot;) (wiki for respective flag or for [link-only  answers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/link-only-answers/info)). **Tag wiki are quite authoritative reference; anything else, read: _use at your own risk_.**&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a more recent example you can refer to MSO [profanity tag wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/172893/revisions &quot;tag wiki history&quot;) that have been established because of similar [confusion](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/172734/copying-profanities-and-obscene-words-on-meta/172747#comment513141_172747 &quot;discussed here&quot;) caused by having differing &quot;authoritative&quot; posts on the subject." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13990" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5749" RevisionGUID="6b9324dd-d6b4-49c0-bc35-beb37034347c" CreationDate="2013-03-27T13:40:57.220" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|close-reasons|closing-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13991" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5789" RevisionGUID="8435dc57-af81-41f5-9a0c-1d762a97fa55" CreationDate="2013-03-27T13:45:06.840" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting corrected" Text="As pointed in the [comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5788/is-tagresource-questions-a-good-idea-for-the-main-site#comment14683_5788 &quot;here&quot;), this is not quite a good idea because having such a tag could have an opposite effect: users may think it's OK to use it, even if you write in its wiki and excerpt that it's forbidden - &quot;if there's a tag, why can't I ask about it?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you refer to my comment - for the sake of precision, this was only second time (I wish it would also be the last but unfortunately it wouldn't) when I referred asker to tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior to that, my similar comments were pointing to particular meta discussion (the one that is currently set in the tag wiki as the guidance point). It was when my comment has been (quite legitimately imNSho) [challenged](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190911/code-network-metrics-with-ui-events#comment370863_190911) by asker who pointed to another meta discussion to back up somewhat different approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, I suggested [tag wiki](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/186) and [excerpt](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/187) and switched to using these in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a more general note, I believe tag wiki like that are to be established any time when there is a confusion among meta readers caused by differing &quot;canonical&quot; / &quot;authoritative&quot; posts and comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's not a new idea, explained eg in [flagger's guide to link-only answers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/154922/165773) at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;In some meta posts or comments you may see moderators suggesting / requiring particular kind flag to be used (or to avoid) for link-only answers. Convenient _[litmus test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litmus_test_%28politics%29)_ in cases like that is to ask author whether this is their personal opinion or a statement that can be quoted in [tag wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/tag-wiki/info &quot;what's this&quot;) (wiki for respective flag or for [link-only  answers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/link-only-answers/info)). **Tag wiki are quite authoritative reference; anything else, read: _use at your own risk_.**&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a more recent example you can refer to MSO [profanity tag wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/172893/revisions &quot;tag wiki history&quot;) that have been established because of similar [confusion](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/172734/copying-profanities-and-obscene-words-on-meta/172747#comment513141_172747 &quot;discussed here&quot;) caused by having differing &quot;authoritative&quot; posts on the subject." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13992" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5790" RevisionGUID="9e6461b4-e81f-49b8-9fe7-0e6949b8c7ba" CreationDate="2013-03-27T14:11:51.583" UserId="5810" Text="I'd be quite interested in getting involved in the programmers blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I write essays fairly frequently, but post them fairly infrequently on my [personal site][1] about a relatively broad range of topics (from performance development to code examples and coding techniques). I'd be happy to brush off some of the non-posted works (or brush up some of the posted ones to be more appropriate) if the sorts of topics I write about (development practices, methodologies, and tooling) are considered appropriate enough, and interesting enough, for the programmers blog!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.ed-j.co.uk/Blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13993" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5791" RevisionGUID="b1de2262-078c-49d4-b135-4899e5aa7bbb" CreationDate="2013-03-27T14:23:14.737" UserId="35276" Text="Why tag the question? It should be voted to close (or flagged), closed, and then deleted. Some closed questions are automatically purged and there's a SEDE query (I think it's attached to SO, but you can select the site) that finds old closed questions that don't meet the criteria for automatic deletion. I don't like meta tags and I don't see the purpose for this one. Also, having the tag seems like it may confuse users into thinking that resource questions are allowed - &quot;if there's a tag, why can't I ask about it?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13994" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5792" RevisionGUID="61c7ab35-3dbc-43dd-83fc-daa5757b5966" CreationDate="2013-03-27T14:31:24.910" UserId="35276" Text="I prefer immutability but it really doesn't matter. There's no reason to have both tags though, so pick one and stuff the other one inside it. (If you can black-list the alternative might be good afterwards)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13995" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5792" RevisionGUID="61c7ab35-3dbc-43dd-83fc-daa5757b5966" CreationDate="2013-03-27T14:31:24.910" UserId="35276" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [Immutable] -&gt; [Immutability]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13996" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5792" RevisionGUID="61c7ab35-3dbc-43dd-83fc-daa5757b5966" CreationDate="2013-03-27T14:31:24.910" UserId="35276" Text="|feature-request|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13997" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5792" RevisionGUID="36b6f054-a662-41c3-962d-508cfb720dc9" CreationDate="2013-03-27T14:43:00.120" UserId="35276" Comment="added 48 characters in body" Text="I prefer immutability but it really doesn't matter. There's no reason to have both tags though, so pick one and stuff the other one inside it. (If you can black-list the alternative might be good afterwards)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Navigate! [tag:Immutable] [tag:Immutability]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14997" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="5793" RevisionGUID="11c17fb4-b64e-4192-9956-e77bf71f91b1" CreationDate="2013-03-27T17:05:40.523" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/193148/rule-for-posting-programmers-vs-stackoverflow" />
  <row Id="14998" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5793" RevisionGUID="3af6f4b0-24e6-4d1d-90ec-ad976d6c7638" CreationDate="2013-03-27T16:59:20.157" UserId="39260" Text="this is general question regarding guideline of where to post non-technical questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had non-technical question at&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15653199/free-compiler-ide-for-writing-windows-app-in-c-for-students and it was marked as off-topic and asked to move to programmers.stackexchange.com.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I did http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/193138/free-compiler-ide-for-writing-windows-app-in-c-for-students?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and then it got marked as off-topic and migrated back to stackoverflow.&#xD;&#xA;Knowing clear guideline will prevent me asking question in a wrong venue next time.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14999" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5793" RevisionGUID="3af6f4b0-24e6-4d1d-90ec-ad976d6c7638" CreationDate="2013-03-27T16:59:20.157" UserId="39260" Text="rule for posting programmers vs stackoverflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15000" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5793" RevisionGUID="3af6f4b0-24e6-4d1d-90ec-ad976d6c7638" CreationDate="2013-03-27T16:59:20.157" UserId="39260" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15001" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5794" RevisionGUID="5cb99c5f-e3f6-448c-9563-d90f6caf58a4" CreationDate="2013-03-27T18:03:07.407" UserId="20335" Text="You are at the whims of the community when it comes to borderline questions. Since many of the high rep users hang around only one community (or at least on moderate one community) they tend to get blinders as to these odd cases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically in this case you are asking about a tool (not Stackoverflow), however it isn't programmers since it isn't a general programming question. If you asked about design patterns you could do programmers but tools would not be programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The important bit here is that it *is* Stackoverflow because it is a programming tool." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15002" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5792" RevisionGUID="45846717-d865-4e27-9531-12b9600ccc3a" CreationDate="2013-03-27T19:04:19.863" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15003" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5795" RevisionGUID="6888b361-53a9-4d50-9f35-f91e02bc13dc" CreationDate="2013-03-27T19:06:54.923" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There are a couple points here that involve the different community perceptions of the other sites and processes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, there is the repost rather than migrate. When one has a question that isn't appropriate for one site, but is (in theory) appropriate for another site, it should be migrated rather than reposted.  Because of questions of quality alluded to by Guvante's comment Programmers.SE isn't a migration target for StackOverflow as part of the close process.  However, any question can be migrated to any site by moderators.  Rather than reposting a question, one should instead flag it for moderator attention and ask for it to be migrated.  They may say yes, they may say no.  If they say no, work with people in chat to either get it answered (it may be a question that is best suited for chat rather than a Q&amp;A site), or help you recraft the question so that it can get migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reposting a question rather than migrating it often leads to headaches and frustrations, especially when the question would be closed for a reason other than topicality.  If a question is not constructive, or overly broad, or too localized on one site, it is likely the case that this is true of the question on another stack exchange site.  This is where it is especially helpful to work with people in chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow has the perception (or P.SE has the perception that SO has the perception...) that anything that doesn't have code attached to it is a question that should be on Programmers.SE.  This is not always the case.  As mentioned, these are questions that sometimes fall into other close reasons (too broad, too localized, or not constructive) and thus shouldn't be on P.SE.  Other times they are questions that are appropriate for sites *other* than P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE has the perception that SO is the correct migration target for things that have errors in code (if it doesn't have errors, the perception is it belongs on CodeReview).  There is also the perception that tool related problems belong on SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The 'tool related' is where your question falls into the migration juggling.  There was no code, it seemed open ended and thus someone at SO thought that it would be best at P.SE.  However, P.SE notes that SO has the part of the [SO FAQ](http://stackoverflow.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software tools commonly used by programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As such, a question about the tools belongs on StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At least, that is the perception of *this* P.SE user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If in doubt, flag for migration and chat rather than repost." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15004" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5796" RevisionGUID="eeabbf00-7086-43cb-bcac-affaa412221b" CreationDate="2013-03-27T19:30:41.240" UserId="3965" Text="Here's how it breaks down:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Asking about a tool is on topic on StackOverflow and off topic on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA; - A lot of people on StackOverflow don't know programmer tool questions are on topic.  I've answered a lot of git questions over there that people try to close.&#xD;&#xA; - Asking for a *recommendation* is off topic both places.  If you already have a free IDE and are having problems setting it up, StackOverflow is your place.  If you are still looking for one, that's a recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA; - Asking in chat is welcome either place.&#xD;&#xA; - I wish people wouldn't be allowed to vote to migrate unless they have enough rep to vote to close on the other site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15005" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="5797" RevisionGUID="b92e17e6-f934-4b69-b5d0-b17a1cdab2c6" CreationDate="2013-03-27T23:02:54.703" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/193200/why-is-stackexchange-self-defeating" />
  <row Id="15006" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5797" RevisionGUID="be96f026-ed2b-43b1-9766-cd58ca98b551" CreationDate="2013-03-27T23:02:30.520" UserId="85653" Text="I asked a legitimate, specific, relevent, answerable question here:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/193142/do-integrated-systems-increase-development-time-and-cause-inflexibility&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course I knew when i wrote it that it would be closed as not relevent because..............well.............. thats how its done around here.  For giggles I thoght I'd find some other questions that were more meaningful and relevent and that fit the &quot;Q&amp;A format&quot;.  After a long, grueling thirty second search (in the &quot;hot questions&quot; box, of all places) I found these:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/10645/how-to-keep-up-a-busy-apperance-at-work&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/58185/what-would-be-the-effects-if-jupiter-was-to-blown-up&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/58208/how-long-can-you-survive-1-million-degrees&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Really?? These are questions that meet the Q&amp;A format??  Is that what StackExchange was built for?? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Admins:  Delete this question so no one sees it.  Dont just close it, others might bring you to the carpet as well.  Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15007" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5797" RevisionGUID="be96f026-ed2b-43b1-9766-cd58ca98b551" CreationDate="2013-03-27T23:02:30.520" UserId="85653" Text="Why is stackexchange self-defeating?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15008" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5797" RevisionGUID="be96f026-ed2b-43b1-9766-cd58ca98b551" CreationDate="2013-03-27T23:02:30.520" UserId="85653" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15009" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5798" RevisionGUID="7d91fff8-f061-4396-a702-ef8d5ed6e0be" CreationDate="2013-03-27T23:28:57.837" UserId="25476" Text="I greatly disagreed with the closure of this question and decided to reopen it.  It is certainly constructive because there is really only a few viewpoints to address.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the future though try to be less dramatic about a question closure.  If you post a question in meta or flag content for moderator attention if you feel something wrong is happening then you will have a better time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15010" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5799" RevisionGUID="ecd8518f-5a19-4159-9d52-d34bbe8cff85" CreationDate="2013-03-27T23:32:13.973" UserId="6586" Text="I think the physics questions can be answered with a bit of math, which seems perfectly in line with the charter of that demographic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Likewise, the workplace question seems to fit the charter of that group as well -- it's an actual problem someone is facing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for your question about integrated systems... At the time I am writing this answer, that question is open, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Though, the question is rather hard to answer, so maybe that is why it might have been closed earlier. Or maybe it's because the question is too localized to your specific company? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Different stackexchange sites have slightly different ideas of what's acceptable. Further, each site attracts different types of people which may have higher or lower tolerances for sticking strictly to the rules.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15011" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5800" RevisionGUID="74959b2b-62f2-45a6-8193-2b41c96ccd7e" CreationDate="2013-03-27T23:58:15.373" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; I asked a legitimate, specific, relevent, answerable question here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's legitimate and relevant, no argument there, and perhaps even interesting (at least to those of us with backgrounds in similar systems). But I really wouldn't call it specific or answerable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are essentially giving us two answers to chose from, and they are certainly specific enough, but... What we need you to be specific about is the actual problem you are trying to solve and not the ongoing debates in your company. You don't even mention what the disparate systems are about (in general terms at least).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A vague question will only bring you [vague answers][1], and you have already [noted yourself][2] that the answer isn't really applicable to the specific situation you are facing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sounds impossible. Maybe when the world stood still it might be possible to wrap it all in code. In real: That won't succeed. You will have some parts more nice than others. Do you mean that large integrated enterprise systems such as Oracle, Siebel, Epicor, Peoplesoft, and thousands of others are &quot;impossible&quot; and dont actually, really exist?? Is that what you are saying???? Have you ever even written code for a large ERP system?? Do you know how they are designed and built??? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have written code for a large(ish) ERP system, and what I've realized is that ERP is a catch all term that roughly translates to &quot;über complicated behemoth that's does what the client(s) want it to do, in a way that suits the client(s) and is different from every other über complicated behemoth that's does what the client(s) want it to do, in a way that suits the client(s) and is different from ...&quot;. It is important for us to (better) understand your current systems before giving you answers, because Stack Exchange sites are about giving solutions to practical problems, not about generally debating various positions. If a debate is what you are looking for, that's fine, but you are at the wrong place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a first step you should edit your question and give us a high level overview of the various systems and how they currently work together. I'd also remove the opening paragraph completely, buzzphrases like &quot;very complex business processes&quot; and &quot;very dynamic environment&quot; are completely meaningless. Give us technical details, not marketing-speak, replace some of the overly general fluff with concrete technical parameters and you'll get _much_ better answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, closure is a temporary state and it's only meant to signal to you and to readers that the question is (somehow) problematic. And yours is, but it's not unsalvageable, it just needs a few clarifications on the technical side and we are good to go. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/193177/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/193142/do-integrated-systems-increase-development-time-and-cause-inflexibility#comment-372813" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15012" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5797" RevisionGUID="6dd45727-198c-4eb1-a0a3-d725f9f326aa" CreationDate="2013-03-28T00:06:59.500" UserId="25936" Comment="De-rantification. Feel free to rollback my edit if you disagree with it, but I hope you don't. I understand your frustration, but ranting about it doesn't really help. " Text="I asked a legitimate, specific, relevant, answerable question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/193142/do-integrated-systems-increase-development-time-and-cause-inflexibility&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;. In the &quot;hot questions&quot; box I found a few questions on other Stack Exchange sites that I don't think are more suitable for the Q&amp;A format than mine was: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/10645/how-to-keep-up-a-busy-apperance-at-work&#xD;&#xA;- http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/58185/what-would-be-the-effects-if-jupiter-was-to-blown-up&#xD;&#xA;- http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/58208/how-long-can-you-survive-1-million-degrees&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could you explain to me why it was closed and what I should do to get it re-opened?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15013" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5797" RevisionGUID="6dd45727-198c-4eb1-a0a3-d725f9f326aa" CreationDate="2013-03-28T00:06:59.500" UserId="25936" Comment="De-rantification. Feel free to rollback my edit if you disagree with it, but I hope you don't. I understand your frustration, but ranting about it doesn't really help. " Text="Why was my question on integrated systems closed, and what can I do to get it re-opened?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15014" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5797" RevisionGUID="6dd45727-198c-4eb1-a0a3-d725f9f326aa" CreationDate="2013-03-28T00:06:59.500" UserId="25936" Comment="De-rantification. Feel free to rollback my edit if you disagree with it, but I hope you don't. I understand your frustration, but ranting about it doesn't really help. " Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15015" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5800" RevisionGUID="173df9d0-4d66-4d95-b988-1440554e2d5a" CreationDate="2013-03-28T00:09:58.420" UserId="25936" Comment="added 56 characters in body" Text="&gt; I asked a legitimate, specific, relevent, answerable question here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's legitimate and relevant, no argument there, and perhaps even interesting (at least to those of us with backgrounds in similar systems). But I really wouldn't call it specific or answerable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are essentially giving us two answers to chose from, and they are certainly specific enough, but... What we need you to be specific about is the actual problem you are trying to solve and not the ongoing debates in your company. You don't even mention what the disparate systems are about (in general terms at least).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A vague question will only bring you [vague answers][1], and you have already [noted yourself][2] that the answer isn't really applicable to the specific situation you are facing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sounds impossible. Maybe when the world stood still it might be possible to wrap it all in code. In real: That won't succeed. You will have some parts more nice than others. Do you mean that large integrated enterprise systems such as Oracle, Siebel, Epicor, Peoplesoft, and thousands of others are &quot;impossible&quot; and dont actually, really exist?? Is that what you are saying???? Have you ever even written code for a large ERP system?? Do you know how they are designed and built??? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have written code for a large(ish) ERP system, and what I've realized is that ERP is a catch all term that roughly translates to &quot;über complicated behemoth that's does what the client(s) want it to do, in a way that suits the client(s) and is different from every other über complicated behemoth that's does what the client(s) want it to do, in a way that suits the client(s) and is different from ...&quot;. It is important for us to (better) understand your current systems before giving you answers, because Stack Exchange sites are about giving solutions to practical problems, not about generally debating various positions. If a debate is what you are looking for, that's fine, but you are at the wrong place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a first step you should edit your question and give us a high level overview of the various systems and how they currently work together. I'd also remove the opening paragraph completely, buzzphrases like &quot;very complex business processes&quot; and &quot;very dynamic environment&quot; are completely meaningless. Give us technical details, not marketing-speak, replace some of the overly general fluff with concrete technical parameters and you'll get _much_ better answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, closure is a temporary state and it's only meant to signal to you and to readers that the question is (somehow) problematic. And yours is, but it's not unsalvageable (or irrelevant, or illegitimate, or even uninteresting), it just needs a few clarifications on the technical side and we are good to go. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/193177/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/193142/do-integrated-systems-increase-development-time-and-cause-inflexibility#comment-372813" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15016" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5801" RevisionGUID="ccfd6360-7a3c-449c-bc59-631d062a1b78" CreationDate="2013-03-28T18:21:17.057" UserId="49209" Text="For the past couple years, I've been slowly building a document I call &quot;Software Engineering Wisdom&quot;.  It's a collection of important things I've learned in my 9 years so far as a software engineer, some of which I really wished someone had told me early in my career.  It mostly focuses on the non-technical, sociological side of the craft which is often under-valued and under-developed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've used some of this information in a presentation to CS students at my local university, but other than that, I have no solid plans on what to do with this repository of knowledge and lessons learned.  I think this blog would be a perfect way to get this information out there so others can benefit from it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15017" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5801" RevisionGUID="ded1cbef-511a-42ca-b8f1-b047b4402955" CreationDate="2013-03-28T18:37:44.627" UserId="49209" Comment="added 87 characters in body" Text="For the past couple years, I've been slowly building a document I call &quot;Software Engineering Wisdom&quot;.  It's a collection of important things I've learned in my 9 years so far as a software engineer, some of which I really wished someone had told me early in my career.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It mostly focuses on the non-technical, sociological side of the software engineering which is often under-valued and under-developed.  I've discovered that I’m much more interested in these aspects of the craft than the technological aspects because I've noticed that most software project failures are due to sociological issues, not technical issues - a point which is written about in high detail in the book &quot;Peopleware&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've used some of this information in a presentation to CS students at my local university, but other than that, I have no solid plans on what to do with this repository of knowledge and lessons learned.  I think this blog would be a perfect way to get this information out there so others can benefit from it.  I could either write in depth about one piece of wisdom or just touch on many pieces." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15018" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5797" RevisionGUID="8e14135d-713f-41c9-9cc4-6413d57178ff" CreationDate="2013-03-29T19:54:04.417" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/317726369884807168" />
  <row Id="15019" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5793" RevisionGUID="bf6308fc-12fa-4cf1-8aee-ae9f84286287" CreationDate="2013-03-29T22:54:04.420" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/317771668820983808" />
  <row Id="15020" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5701" RevisionGUID="9db47613-84a0-4ec1-a5d3-2d31a6b4693b" CreationDate="2013-03-30T00:28:55.427" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|election|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15021" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5802" RevisionGUID="3f191da4-76a7-4a36-b1d2-2707ab02e767" CreationDate="2013-03-30T00:36:20.543" UserId="25936" Text="Done. &lt;!-- 123456789123456789 --&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15022" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5803" RevisionGUID="f03e3cf0-7e2c-4f15-a041-6e5074669344" CreationDate="2013-03-30T20:19:33.887" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="The idea has been floated that we should make the Programmers Trello board publicly viewable. I want to put this up to a community vote. A decision should be reached within 1 week." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15023" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5803" RevisionGUID="f03e3cf0-7e2c-4f15-a041-6e5074669344" CreationDate="2013-03-30T20:19:33.887" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Should the Programmers Blog Trello Board be made public?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15024" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5803" RevisionGUID="f03e3cf0-7e2c-4f15-a041-6e5074669344" CreationDate="2013-03-30T20:19:33.887" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="|discussion|featured|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15025" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5804" RevisionGUID="f0a34b3c-eabf-4b5c-a843-abf5394d8665" CreationDate="2013-03-30T20:21:25.847" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Yes, the board should be made to be publicly viewable. This would allow for more transparency in the creation of the blog as well as giving other sites a template on how to run their Trello boards for their blogs. It would foster a more open atmosphere on the site and give potential authors possible ideas for what to do as far as blogging topics without having to go to the hassle of creating a profile and having the admins link it into the board." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15026" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5805" RevisionGUID="2db9d20e-f882-4a27-b38f-d52930f31618" CreationDate="2013-03-30T20:23:49.153" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="No, the board should not be made publicly viewable. It would make it harder for people to post ideas that are potentially embarrassing or poorly thought out with any degree of confidence. It would potentially rob people of the will to write for the blog if they feel that their idea could not be developed in private before release." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15027" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5805" RevisionGUID="52ca2d01-338e-4a36-a53c-8156cb7b40b2" CreationDate="2013-03-30T20:23:49.153" UserDisplayName="user28988" />
  <row Id="15028" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5804" RevisionGUID="f0a34b3c-eabf-4b5c-a843-abf5394d8665" CreationDate="2013-03-30T20:21:25.847" UserDisplayName="user28988" />
  <row Id="15029" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5803" RevisionGUID="f03e3cf0-7e2c-4f15-a041-6e5074669344" CreationDate="2013-03-30T20:19:33.887" UserDisplayName="user28988" />
  <row Id="15030" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5803" RevisionGUID="50151acd-c86d-4d26-96b0-ee3f4da990c2" CreationDate="2013-03-31T01:54:07.240" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/318179366867718144" />
  <row Id="15031" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5806" RevisionGUID="27ceb4e2-7903-4c2a-8584-be30266f11ac" CreationDate="2013-04-01T18:14:44.813" UserId="31260" Text="Some old closed questions have many answers that probably were considered OK back then but are not quite up to current quality standards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are readers supposed to vote, edit, comment, flag answers in these questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's better to leave these alone, then I would like to also understand how readers are supposed to know that they stumbled upon &quot;untouchable&quot; posts (questions I am asking about don't have [historical lock](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples of the questions having many problematic answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26425/open-source-wanted-list&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/language-agnostic-programming-books&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30058/what-haskell-blogs-do-you-follow&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7966/what-traits-do-the-best-managers-youve-worked-for-have-in-common&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3684/what-are-some-good-programming-cheat-sheets&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/13396/what-tools-do-you-use-to-manage-requests-from-users&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3023/how-do-you-keep-up-to-date-with-the-c-programming-language-and-community&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97303/programmers-experiences-book&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12416/top-research-institutes-in-the-world&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135/as-a-software-engineer-who-should-i-be-following-on-twitter&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12833/recommended-book-about-algorithms-data-structures-and-complexity&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1108/are-there-any-magazines-still-worth-reading&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21118/what-is-the-general-tech-news-website-every-programmer-should-read&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In all the examples listed above I found at least 3 (usually more) answers that look like severely lacking explanation and context, total about 90 such answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15032" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5806" RevisionGUID="27ceb4e2-7903-4c2a-8584-be30266f11ac" CreationDate="2013-04-01T18:14:44.813" UserId="31260" Text="Are readers supposed to vote, edit, comment, flag answers on old one-liner honeypots?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15033" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5806" RevisionGUID="27ceb4e2-7903-4c2a-8584-be30266f11ac" CreationDate="2013-04-01T18:14:44.813" UserId="31260" Text="|support|answer-quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15034" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5807" RevisionGUID="1b9a438a-c425-4537-8697-b27ff25b8c8a" CreationDate="2013-04-01T18:25:40.230" UserId="47" Text="If you can't find any evidence that the poster is still active on the site (recent posts/votes etc.) then there would seem to be little point in commenting as they are unlikely to see the comment and act on it. Similarly with down-votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in both cases you aren't just telling the poster that this is bad answer but future visitors as well, so a comment and/or down-vote might well be the most appropriate action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that the question is closed you should be concentrating your efforts on that rather than the answers. Ask yourself &quot;is the question salvageable?&quot;. If you think it is and you have the time, edit it to make it a real, on topic question that deserves to be reopened. However, if there are no good answers on the question it might be better to flag it for deletion and ask the better question afresh yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry if this comes over as prevaricating, but it really does depend on the individual questions. My **personal** view would be to vote/flag the questions for deletion in most cases and only edit and reopen in exceptional circumstances.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15035" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5808" RevisionGUID="54a8d924-9dcc-4899-bab9-098c8f4cd6b3" CreationDate="2013-04-02T19:53:08.367" UserId="3965" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/193696/what-is-the-difference-between-a-stock-hardware-and-a-micro-coded-machine started out ranty, and people got carried away in the comments, but the underlying question is a good one.  It's interesting, it's relevant, and deserves an answer.  Could someone please clean up the comments and give it another shot?  I have an unambiguous and clear answer ready to go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand rants make people not want to help.  That's what the edit button is for, not the close button." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15036" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5808" RevisionGUID="54a8d924-9dcc-4899-bab9-098c8f4cd6b3" CreationDate="2013-04-02T19:53:08.367" UserId="3965" Text="The stock hardware question is a good one" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15037" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5808" RevisionGUID="54a8d924-9dcc-4899-bab9-098c8f4cd6b3" CreationDate="2013-04-02T19:53:08.367" UserId="3965" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15038" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5809" RevisionGUID="b5465564-7673-4c9d-8ad7-9f8969015f92" CreationDate="2013-04-02T20:09:32.533" UserId="47" Text="OK. With three reopen votes I've added mine to reopen the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's see how it fares in it's current incarnation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15039" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5810" RevisionGUID="a4bdd150-6036-4d1e-b77e-c254c6037532" CreationDate="2013-04-02T20:12:19.760" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="What is the problem the question is asking about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have no issue with gaining general knowledge of programming history (and if it is a history question, please remember to tag it as such - the answer for 1984 is different than the answer three decades later).  It should be answered in that context if it is a history question. &quot;Vaxes, MC68000’s, or any truly ‘stock’ hardware.&quot; as opposed to that of a [lisp machine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machine).  Likely the best answer to the current incarnation is explaining how the lisp machine was made and how that differs from everything else.  I don't know if anyone is going to try to make a hardware lisp machine today (or ever again).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is another question that is hiding behind this one - for example asking about the critique of LISP and if it is still a valid critique in today's computing world is one that is likely more relevant and much more interesting to the people reading and answering it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15040" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5808" RevisionGUID="abccade0-d065-4953-88bc-dc099b782cbe" CreationDate="2013-04-03T05:27:23.847" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15041" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5811" RevisionGUID="7b60abe2-b5d4-46b7-9356-85bb26f1b420" CreationDate="2013-04-03T21:39:08.797" UserId="70135" Text="I was just reading answers of question&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21082/what-is-the-most-obscure-sorting-algorithm-you-know and clicked a link to slowsort and then back. And got the &quot;question deleted&quot; page. There were some great looking answers there, which I couldn't read.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does anyone know how annoying that is?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15042" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5811" RevisionGUID="7b60abe2-b5d4-46b7-9356-85bb26f1b420" CreationDate="2013-04-03T21:39:08.797" UserId="70135" Text="How annoying it is, when a question gets deleted while you are reading answers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15043" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5811" RevisionGUID="7b60abe2-b5d4-46b7-9356-85bb26f1b420" CreationDate="2013-04-03T21:39:08.797" UserId="70135" Text="|discussion|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15044" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5812" RevisionGUID="d08564ae-d691-4b1e-906a-c42f2e6d925b" CreationDate="2013-04-03T21:46:23.137" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="The Question should be deleted, it is a bad question and we should all feel bad." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15045" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5812" RevisionGUID="fe84b0d7-ec23-4af7-b431-eb916667e3aa" CreationDate="2013-04-03T21:46:23.137" UserDisplayName="user28988" />
  <row Id="15046" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5813" RevisionGUID="80561d9c-e3d6-4841-a3f4-46145ecc43bf" CreationDate="2013-04-03T21:47:25.267" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="The Question should stay locked. It is, in-fact, actually historically significant despite being a not so good question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15047" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5813" RevisionGUID="472c5d6b-7344-459e-8601-2d38e9df4b4c" CreationDate="2013-04-03T21:47:25.267" UserDisplayName="user28988" />
  <row Id="15048" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5811" RevisionGUID="a24aade4-5477-4691-8926-30f47334343f" CreationDate="2013-04-04T08:02:16.943" UserId="70135" Comment="Edited question to match new content" Text="Editing this question to reflect that it is now a poll, and the question in question was undeleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion this question should be preserved even though it is bad, because it has nice answers worthy of preserving. To pick one example, I personally found idea of *sleep sort* to be rather enlightening in the thinking-outside-of-the-box kind of way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Original title and content of this question below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How annoying it is, when a question gets deleted while you are reading answers?&#xD;&#xA;-&#xD;&#xA;I was just reading answers of question&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21082/what-is-the-most-obscure-sorting-algorithm-you-know and clicked a link to slowsort and then back. And got the &quot;question deleted&quot; page. There were some great looking answers there, which I couldn't read.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does anyone know how annoying that is?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15049" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5811" RevisionGUID="a24aade4-5477-4691-8926-30f47334343f" CreationDate="2013-04-04T08:02:16.943" UserId="70135" Comment="Edited question to match new content" Text="Delete or preserve this question and answers about obscure sorting algorithms?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15050" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5811" RevisionGUID="a24aade4-5477-4691-8926-30f47334343f" CreationDate="2013-04-04T08:02:16.943" UserId="70135" Comment="Edited question to match new content" Text="|discussion|deleted-questions|polling|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15051" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5813" RevisionGUID="527de000-e65b-4e00-942d-5ea59152b28a" CreationDate="2013-04-04T10:58:33.473" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="Put a little more substance behind the straw-man answer.  World Engineer, please roll-back if you disagree with my edits." Text="The Question should stay locked. It is historically significant despite being a polling question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Despite a few smart-aleck answers, there are some good answers in there.  Most of the suggested algorithms are &quot;non-traditional&quot; which can be useful for learning from when a project has unique requirements.  It's not mentioned in the answer, but [BCrypt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcrypt) is an example algorithm that's been intentionally designed to run slower in order to hinder brute force attack.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15052" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5811" RevisionGUID="13379c73-78d7-404c-9905-f886a11dc039" CreationDate="2013-04-04T14:08:11.210" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 478 characters in body" Text="In my opinion [this question][1] should be preserved even though it is bad, because it has nice answers worthy of preserving. To pick one example, I personally found idea of *sleep sort* to be rather enlightening in the thinking-outside-of-the-box kind of way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21082/what-is-the-most-obscure-sorting-algorithm-you-know" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15054" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5815" RevisionGUID="ddeb4ab2-f022-46db-a99e-e22e24ae62fc" CreationDate="2013-04-04T15:05:28.930" UserId="35276" Text="It would appear as though The Whiteboard has been swallowed whole like an egg roll by this cat:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/2gNSm.jpg&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Help?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15055" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5815" RevisionGUID="ddeb4ab2-f022-46db-a99e-e22e24ae62fc" CreationDate="2013-04-04T15:05:28.930" UserId="35276" Text="Some cat ate The Whiteboard; Chat has broke" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15056" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5815" RevisionGUID="ddeb4ab2-f022-46db-a99e-e22e24ae62fc" CreationDate="2013-04-04T15:05:28.930" UserId="35276" Text="|bug|chat|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15060" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5817" RevisionGUID="dc192e98-a1be-4572-a2c5-cb9b966ebba5" CreationDate="2013-04-04T15:12:05.937" UserId="48" Text="Should be back to working now; see http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/175161/chat-se-is-down on Meta Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15061" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5815" RevisionGUID="0c46ebb9-89c1-48b3-9c02-ff98604f9b16" CreationDate="2013-04-04T15:12:16.280" UserId="48" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|chat|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15062" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5818" RevisionGUID="9fa8c35f-8c26-4ae3-8477-f1ccb5fdef68" CreationDate="2013-04-04T16:13:08.670" UserId="226" Text="This has been [discussed before](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3556/are-app-store-questions-on-topic-on-programmers), but the [App Stores proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30702/app-stores) is inching closer to fulfilling the commitment requirements and I'd like to raise the topic again just to see if anything has changed in the past year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I saw the App Stores proposal, my first instinct was to say that the topic should be pretty well served by Stack Overflow and Programmers for all of the questions that would be a good fit for Stack Exchange in the first place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers has a lightly used [tag:appstore] tag and the questions that do exist there seem like exactly the kind of questions that'd fit the newly proposed site. The [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) also explicitly includes &quot;freelance and business concerns&quot; as a topic, which to me sounds like it would cover the less technical or implementation-related aspects of working with any app store.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm also on board with [this post](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/a/3003/26022) on Area 51:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If [...] the proposal is &quot;about bridging the gap between the development and business aspects of the App development process that don't fit on other StackExchange websites.&quot;, I'd roll it into a larger proposal. &quot;The business of development&quot;. We have a site that's essentially &quot;The business of being a programmer&quot; (Programmers), and I think that would have both a broader reach and a larger base of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That was written a good year and a half ago and Programmers has evolved quite a bit since then. I think at this point it may well be, at least in part, a &quot;business of development&quot; type of site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you all think? Would you welcome questions about dealing with app stores here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15063" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5818" RevisionGUID="9fa8c35f-8c26-4ae3-8477-f1ccb5fdef68" CreationDate="2013-04-04T16:13:08.670" UserId="226" Text="Are questions about app stores on-topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15064" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5818" RevisionGUID="9fa8c35f-8c26-4ae3-8477-f1ccb5fdef68" CreationDate="2013-04-04T16:13:08.670" UserId="226" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15065" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5819" RevisionGUID="2916e7c8-e787-4b3e-baae-277996815052" CreationDate="2013-04-04T16:28:37.407" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="My comment from a recent question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions of online store policies for clarification are best addressed by contacting the support for the online store. At best, we can guess, present our own interpretation, or share anecdotes - none of which are good answers in a Q&amp;A format. The only authoritative answer can come from the store itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key point in my comment is about the authoritative answer.  For this I point to an answer from [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has an (admittedly drastically shorted) summary of:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Real questions&quot; don't necessarily have practical answers, but they do have authoritative ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For every question about app stores that I have seen (not all that exist, but all that I have seen), no one here is able to provide an authoritative answer. They are asking for interpretations of sometimes fuzzy policies written by someone else (that are then interpreted again by that agency).  Any answer that we (people who don't work for the app store and are not reviewers of apps for that store) can be wrong even if it is &quot;right&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A year ago there was a question [Are App Store questions on topic on programmers?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3556/).  All the same points are still valid today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15066" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5820" RevisionGUID="faf16623-1fc9-4c50-ab06-6d4b554f517f" CreationDate="2013-04-04T19:22:39.077" UserId="1204" Text="Questions about the App Store inevitably lean towards &quot;Will my app be accepted?&quot;  Only Apple knows that.  Consequently any attempt to answer such a question inevitably leads to idly speculative answers like &quot;I tried that once in my app, and it got accepted,&quot; relegating such questions to the moral equivalent of polls and highly-localized speculative opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only real reason that people direct these questions to anyone else but Apple is a consequence of the same effect that is felt at any large company like Apple or Facebook: their customer support sucks. Even if it didn't, there is a vast mountain of questions that are asked by people that are not really qualified to ask them, questions which Apple probably feels they shouldn't have to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And neither should we.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm philosophically opposed to any range of questions that acts as a proxy for some company's customer support, if for no other reason than the company should be handling the problem themselves. Taking the pressure off by providing an alternative outlet only removes the incentive for companies like Apple to clean up their own messes, and involves outsiders who are not qualified to answer the questions properly anyway." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15067" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5821" RevisionGUID="0d55fa37-87b5-4b7e-a7ec-a7c8e85f5e40" CreationDate="2013-04-04T19:38:51.843" UserId="3965" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/193893/3965 was originally worded in a polling, discussion-inducing way (&quot;Have you ever&quot;, &quot;work of yours&quot;, &quot;Is it a world of selfishness&quot;), but is not fundamentally a polling, discussion-inducing question.  I edited to fix the language, and I hope people will join me in voting to reopen." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15068" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5821" RevisionGUID="0d55fa37-87b5-4b7e-a7ec-a7c8e85f5e40" CreationDate="2013-04-04T19:38:51.843" UserId="3965" Text="Please reopen &quot;Does open sourcing your work help you?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15069" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5821" RevisionGUID="0d55fa37-87b5-4b7e-a7ec-a7c8e85f5e40" CreationDate="2013-04-04T19:38:51.843" UserId="3965" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15070" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5822" RevisionGUID="986ed725-7374-400a-9f58-5fc289c377d0" CreationDate="2013-04-04T21:26:12.853" UserId="12828" Text="I am struggling to figure out why [“Too object-oriented”][1] was closed as a duplicate of [How can I convince management to deal with technical debt?][2]. I see that there's a relationship between the two, but there's a vast difference between&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How do I convince management we need to rewrite some code?&#xD;&#xA;- How do I convince my peers to allow me not to make the situation worse?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I missing something?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/193929/too-object-oriented#193929&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43948/how-can-i-convince-management-to-deal-with-technical-debt" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15071" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5822" RevisionGUID="986ed725-7374-400a-9f58-5fc289c377d0" CreationDate="2013-04-04T21:26:12.853" UserId="12828" Text="What's the connection?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15072" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5822" RevisionGUID="986ed725-7374-400a-9f58-5fc289c377d0" CreationDate="2013-04-04T21:26:12.853" UserId="12828" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15073" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5823" RevisionGUID="0d8053b9-7459-4d01-aa24-dfbe0d5e546a" CreationDate="2013-04-04T21:33:03.320" UserId="47" Text="I was reacting to flags on the post indicating it was a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were already two duplicate votes and a comment indicating that at least three people thought that the problem was fundamentally the same. I reviewed the flags and agreed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People do make mistakes, so if you disagree the correct things to do are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Edit the question to emphasise the differences (just saying they're different is not enough).&#xD;&#xA;2. Cast a reopen vote.&#xD;&#xA;3. Raise the issue in chat to see if anyone else agrees.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These actions will put the question on the reopen review queue which will bring it to the attention of more people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, flag the question for moderator attention and bring it up on meta as a last resort." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15074" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5808" RevisionGUID="a8c72053-3fb5-4aff-a16c-5cb93b03a179" CreationDate="2013-04-05T04:54:13.820" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/320036631803478016" />
  <row Id="15075" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5806" RevisionGUID="7b9b916e-6d75-4eb9-8618-c349088572af" CreationDate="2013-04-05T05:45:04.010" UserId="31260" Comment="answers that fail an &quot;imaginary opposite&quot; challenge" Text="Some old closed questions have many answers that probably were considered OK back then but are not quite up to current quality standards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are readers supposed to vote, edit, comment, flag answers in these questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's better to leave these alone, then I would like to also understand how readers are supposed to know that they stumbled upon &quot;untouchable&quot; posts (questions I am asking about don't have [historical lock](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples of the questions having many problematic answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26425/open-source-wanted-list&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/language-agnostic-programming-books&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30058/what-haskell-blogs-do-you-follow&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7966/what-traits-do-the-best-managers-youve-worked-for-have-in-common&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3684/what-are-some-good-programming-cheat-sheets&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/13396/what-tools-do-you-use-to-manage-requests-from-users&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3023/how-do-you-keep-up-to-date-with-the-c-programming-language-and-community&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97303/programmers-experiences-book&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12416/top-research-institutes-in-the-world&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135/as-a-software-engineer-who-should-i-be-following-on-twitter&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12833/recommended-book-about-algorithms-data-structures-and-complexity&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1108/are-there-any-magazines-still-worth-reading&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21118/what-is-the-general-tech-news-website-every-programmer-should-read&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In all the examples listed above I found at least 3 (usually more) answers that look like severely lacking explanation and context, total about 90 such answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. For the sake of completeness I'll explain in more details what kind posts are considered problematic here. In the context of my question, these are answers that fail an _&quot;imaginary opposite&quot; challenge_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's see how _challenge_ works, using some example answers from questions listed here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        1. &quot;Clean Code - Robert Martin&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        2. &quot;Ezyang is pretty good&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        3. &quot;Redmine&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        4. &quot;Ward Cunningham&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If someone posts an opposite claim** like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        1'. &quot;Clean Code - Robert Martin is a book to avoid&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        2'. &quot;Ezyang is pretty bad&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        3'. &quot;Redmine is a bad tool&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        4'. &quot;Ward Cunningham tweets are useless&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;, how would this answer help reader to pick of these differing opinions? You see, without an explanation the answer becomes useless in case if someone else posts a differing / opposing opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15076" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5821" RevisionGUID="c8e5fcb9-cadd-4b95-bfdb-dfb409c17464" CreationDate="2013-04-05T09:37:02.167" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15077" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5821" RevisionGUID="32a879ca-e869-4150-ba25-2f798803a0ca" CreationDate="2013-04-05T09:39:26.087" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="15078" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5824" RevisionGUID="c83eb9eb-1b8d-4d43-8a70-6e5c105d3714" CreationDate="2013-04-05T14:55:35.800" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="I have edited the differences into the question and nominated for re-opening.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt; minor rant &gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**@pdr** - While the original intent of the question was clear to you, the fact that the question was closed as duplicate indicates that the difference was not sufficiently distinct for the community.  Editing in that case is a courtesy to the community that says &quot;hey, you missed the nuance in this question, let me help point it out to you.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Props for calling out the closure in Meta though.  I wouldn't have seen it otherwise, and I think it's a good question now that we've clarified the difference.  I'm dealing with a similar issue at a smaller scale.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**@ThuneGrill** - as the sender / asker of a question, it's your obligation to make sure the receivers (the P.SE community) understood your question.  Burying two or three questions within a single paragraph that's a little ranty (yes, I note the irony) doesn't help the signal-to-noise ratio of your question.  If you need help with editing your question, you're more than welcome to ask on Chat in The Whiteboard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also try to keep in mind that we're trying to build high quality Q&amp;A within this site. I understand that it's easy to get defensive instead of treating things as constructive feedback.  What I think you're calling bureaucracy is actually what makes this site stand out from forums where you _can't_ get a solid answer to a question. Apologies in advance if I have misunderstood your comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please keep in mind that you can always flag your question for moderator re-opening after you have edited the question to address the concerns brought up from close voting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You do have a solid question, and thank you for asking it here in P.SE.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt; /rant &gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15079" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5824" RevisionGUID="0e1e2edc-0313-4f52-8745-f3b6602fc231" CreationDate="2013-04-05T15:24:30.243" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="added 37 characters in body" Text="I have edited the differences into the question and nominated for re-opening.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt; minor rant ~= read for the constructive aspects &gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**@pdr** - While the original intent of the question was clear to you, the fact that the question was closed as duplicate indicates that the difference was not sufficiently distinct for the community.  Editing in that case is a courtesy to the community that says &quot;hey, you missed the nuance in this question, let me help point it out to you.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Props for calling out the closure in Meta though.  I wouldn't have seen it otherwise, and I think it's a good question now that we've clarified the difference.  I'm dealing with a similar issue at a smaller scale.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**@ThuneGrill** - as the sender / asker of a question, it's your obligation to make sure the receivers (the P.SE community) understood your question.  Burying two or three questions within a single paragraph that's a little ranty (yes, I note the irony) doesn't help the signal-to-noise ratio of your question.  If you need help with editing your question, you're more than welcome to ask on Chat in The Whiteboard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also try to keep in mind that we're trying to build high quality Q&amp;A within this site. I understand that it's easy to get defensive instead of treating things as constructive feedback.  What I think you're calling bureaucracy is actually what makes this site stand out from forums where you _can't_ get a solid answer to a question. Apologies in advance if I have misunderstood your comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please keep in mind that you can always flag your question for moderator re-opening after you have edited the question to address the concerns brought up from close voting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You do have a solid question, and thank you for asking it here in P.SE.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt; /rant &gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15080" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5825" RevisionGUID="a540a0c8-08e3-4fc6-a0e0-2cc56fe0f55d" CreationDate="2013-04-05T19:40:03.360" UserId="60569" Text="I think that even after the edits, the question lacks enough focus to be a good fit for the stack exchange format. There seem to be lots of questions rolled into one. Questions such as&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. How do I convince someone to change their mind?&#xD;&#xA;2. What do I do when I'm in a shop that writes messy code?&#xD;&#xA;3. What do I do when I'm in a shop that doesn't conform to my architectural style?&#xD;&#xA;4. How do I explain the benefits of the Single Responsibility Principle to someone who is suspicious of or hostile to object oriented programming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As written, the question seems geared towards #1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15081" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5822" RevisionGUID="c4b0aea9-f79a-4c2a-8766-cf45b429144c" CreationDate="2013-04-05T19:54:35.863" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/320263216661942272" />
  <row Id="15082" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5826" RevisionGUID="75c03ce9-2edf-4057-a159-07150d1a3a61" CreationDate="2013-04-05T21:32:50.443" UserId="3965" Text="That argument was made before it got closed.  People closed anyway because the &quot;when&quot; argument wasn't convincing.  The writing of new code is future work.  The fixing of technical debt is future work.  Both questions are about asking the powers that be for permission to write code differently tomorrow than it would have been written yesterday.  The important distinction isn't *when* the differences get created, it's *how* they want it to be different.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understood the core problem to be, &quot;I cannot articulate clear and distinct advantages of OOP over their style, because I have no earthly idea why someone would want to program like that.&quot;  Thunegrill obviously already knows quite a bit about OOP.  That's why my answer took Stephen Covey's approach of &quot;Seek first to understand, then to be understood.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The core problem of the other question is, &quot;I cannot articulate clear and distinct advantages of refactored code over working but difficult to read code, because the people I'm trying to convince don't have coding experience.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Either way, we're comparing two different ways to implement the same requirements.  The difference is one question is procedural vs. OOP, and the other question is repeatedly patched vs. refactored.  It probably wouldn't have been closed as a duplicate if that distinction had been made earlier." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15083" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5803" RevisionGUID="576b69a7-2e29-47cc-9c95-28f451fb22c8" CreationDate="2013-04-05T22:02:11.673" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|featured|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15084" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5803" RevisionGUID="576b69a7-2e29-47cc-9c95-28f451fb22c8" CreationDate="2013-04-05T22:02:11.673" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="The idea has been floated that we should make the [Programmers Trello board][1] publicly viewable. I want to put this up to a community vote. A decision should be reached within 1 week.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://trello.com/board/programmers-stack-exchange-blog/4f298fb47abe1fe662ae2b72" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15085" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5803" RevisionGUID="74b0436a-33f7-4f86-ac04-34237a00ec58" CreationDate="2013-04-05T22:06:56.150" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15086" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5827" RevisionGUID="4f1b83a9-54c0-4aed-a351-e9b4f66722e7" CreationDate="2013-04-05T22:39:55.200" UserId="3965" Text="I think this is one of those topics that gets judged by the theoretical questions it might tend to draw, rather than real questions it actually does draw.  The tag has a 16% close rate compared to our 50 most recent questions with a 36% close rate (not including migrations).  Granted, there are probably some deleted app store questions I couldn't count, but if we judged every topic by the number of closed questions it attracts, we would have to shut down the site!  We should judge topics by their good questions, not the bad ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the defining question of if an app store question is topical is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone who doesn't work at Apple, Google, Microsoft, or RIM answer this question without guessing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't been following the proposal, but I imagine the new site will need to have a similar rule.  Judging by the existing pool of our app store questions, there are quite a few that fit this criteria, and they are garnering decent answers.  Bad app store questions are getting closed and the good ones aren't.  As MichaelT pointed out in his answer, the bad questions are appropriately being directed to the authoritative source.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That doesn't mean we shouldn't send app store questions their way once the site is up and running, but in my opinion that's more to help them build critical mass rather than the questions being a nuisance here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15088" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5498" RevisionGUID="bc4acb60-bf15-48e1-9eb1-88f4298ea2ef" CreationDate="2013-04-06T00:00:16.690" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15089" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5806" RevisionGUID="294d016a-814b-4662-ae2d-6a5442463083" CreationDate="2013-04-06T06:56:11.627" UserId="31260" Comment="examples adjusted for recent deletions" Text="Some old closed questions have many answers that probably were considered OK back then but are not quite up to current quality standards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are readers supposed to vote, edit, comment, flag answers in these questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's better to leave these alone, then I would like to also understand how readers are supposed to know that they stumbled upon &quot;untouchable&quot; posts (questions I am asking about don't have [historical lock](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples of the questions having many problematic answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Open-source wanted list](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26425/open-source-wanted-list)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20120411074124/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26425/open-source-wanted-list)&#xD;&#xA;* [Language agnostic programming books](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/language-agnostic-programming-books)&#xD;&#xA;* [What haskell blogs do you follow?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30058/what-haskell-blogs-do-you-follow)&#xD;&#xA;* [What traits do the best managers you've worked for have in common?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7966/what-traits-do-the-best-managers-youve-worked-for-have-in-common)&#xD;&#xA;* [What are some good programming cheat sheets?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3684/what-are-some-good-programming-cheat-sheets)&#xD;&#xA;* [What tools do you use to manage requests from users?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/13396/what-tools-do-you-use-to-manage-requests-from-users)&#xD;&#xA;* [How do you keep up to date with the C# programming language and community?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3023/how-do-you-keep-up-to-date-with-the-c-programming-language-and-community)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Programmer's experiences book](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97303/programmers-experiences-book)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20110913190105/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97303/programmers-experiences-book)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Top research institutes in the world?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12416/top-research-institutes-in-the-world)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20110815235122/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12416/top-research-institutes-in-the-world)&#xD;&#xA;* [As a software engineer, who should I be following on Twitter?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135/as-a-software-engineer-who-should-i-be-following-on-twitter)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Recommended book about algorithms, data structures and complexity?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12833/recommended-book-about-algorithms-data-structures-and-complexity)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20101118060951/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12833/recommended-book-about-algorithms-data-structures-and-complexity)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Are there any magazines still worth reading?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1108/are-there-any-magazines-still-worth-reading)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20110817004231/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1108/are-there-any-magazines-still-worth-reading)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the general tech news website every programmer should read?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21118/what-is-the-general-tech-news-website-every-programmer-should-read)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In all the examples listed above I found at least 3 (usually more) answers that look like severely lacking explanation and context, total about 90 such answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. For the sake of completeness I'll explain in more details what kind posts are considered problematic here. In the context of my question, these are answers that fail an _&quot;imaginary opposite&quot; challenge_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's see how _challenge_ works, using some example answers from questions listed here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        1. &quot;Clean Code - Robert Martin&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        2. &quot;Ezyang is pretty good&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        3. &quot;Redmine&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        4. &quot;Ward Cunningham&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If someone posts an opposite claim** like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        1'. &quot;Clean Code - Robert Martin is a book to avoid&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        2'. &quot;Ezyang is pretty bad&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        3'. &quot;Redmine is a bad tool&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        4'. &quot;Ward Cunningham tweets are useless&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;, how would this answer help reader to pick of these differing opinions? You see, without an explanation the answer becomes useless in case if someone else posts a differing / opposing opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15090" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5811" RevisionGUID="16104ac1-7f2c-472f-95d3-2ed8bce2811e" CreationDate="2013-04-06T07:54:36.103" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/320444411630739457" />
  <row Id="15091" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5806" RevisionGUID="c229e84a-9bdd-4f54-beb5-514855848561" CreationDate="2013-04-06T09:39:29.547" UserId="31260" Comment="http://web.archive.org/web/20101203140823/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3023/how-do-you-keep-up-to-date-with-the-c-programming-language-and-community" Text="Some old closed questions have many answers that probably were considered OK back then but are not quite up to current quality standards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are readers supposed to vote, edit, comment, flag answers in these questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's better to leave these alone, then I would like to also understand how readers are supposed to know that they stumbled upon &quot;untouchable&quot; posts (questions I am asking about don't have [historical lock](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples of the questions having many problematic answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Open-source wanted list](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26425/open-source-wanted-list)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20120411074124/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26425/open-source-wanted-list)&#xD;&#xA;* [Language agnostic programming books](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/language-agnostic-programming-books)&#xD;&#xA;* [What haskell blogs do you follow?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30058/what-haskell-blogs-do-you-follow)&#xD;&#xA;* [What traits do the best managers you've worked for have in common?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7966/what-traits-do-the-best-managers-youve-worked-for-have-in-common)&#xD;&#xA;* [What are some good programming cheat sheets?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3684/what-are-some-good-programming-cheat-sheets)&#xD;&#xA;* [What tools do you use to manage requests from users?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/13396/what-tools-do-you-use-to-manage-requests-from-users)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [How do you keep up to date with the C# programming language and community?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3023/how-do-you-keep-up-to-date-with-the-c-programming-language-and-community)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20101203140823/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3023/how-do-you-keep-up-to-date-with-the-c-programming-language-and-community)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Programmer's experiences book](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97303/programmers-experiences-book)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20110913190105/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97303/programmers-experiences-book)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Top research institutes in the world?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12416/top-research-institutes-in-the-world)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20110815235122/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12416/top-research-institutes-in-the-world)&#xD;&#xA;* [As a software engineer, who should I be following on Twitter?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135/as-a-software-engineer-who-should-i-be-following-on-twitter)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Recommended book about algorithms, data structures and complexity?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12833/recommended-book-about-algorithms-data-structures-and-complexity)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20101118060951/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12833/recommended-book-about-algorithms-data-structures-and-complexity)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Are there any magazines still worth reading?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1108/are-there-any-magazines-still-worth-reading)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20110817004231/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1108/are-there-any-magazines-still-worth-reading)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the general tech news website every programmer should read?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21118/what-is-the-general-tech-news-website-every-programmer-should-read)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In all the examples listed above I found at least 3 (usually more) answers that look like severely lacking explanation and context, total about 90 such answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. For the sake of completeness I'll explain in more details what kind posts are considered problematic here. In the context of my question, these are answers that fail an _&quot;imaginary opposite&quot; challenge_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's see how _challenge_ works, using some example answers from questions listed here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        1. &quot;Clean Code - Robert Martin&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        2. &quot;Ezyang is pretty good&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        3. &quot;Redmine&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        4. &quot;Ward Cunningham&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If someone posts an opposite claim** like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        1'. &quot;Clean Code - Robert Martin is a book to avoid&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        2'. &quot;Ezyang is pretty bad&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        3'. &quot;Redmine is a bad tool&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        4'. &quot;Ward Cunningham tweets are useless&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;, how would this answer help reader to pick of these differing opinions? You see, without an explanation the answer becomes useless in case if someone else posts a differing / opposing opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15092" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5818" RevisionGUID="b39f134c-b91b-4254-a034-ad7d1461c39e" CreationDate="2013-04-08T22:54:42.413" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/321395706512429056" />
  <row Id="15093" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5828" RevisionGUID="19660f0c-b3e0-44a9-bea6-02dfcfa9d134" CreationDate="2013-04-09T12:18:29.020" UserId="12436" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/194414/what-psychological-factors-account-for-readability was asked after a releated question was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;gnat posted a comment that detailed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**[resource requests are not quite welcome at Programmers][1]**. As far as I understand, one would rather present an **underlying problem** instead - a problem that was intended to be solved with particular resource requested&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've had a look at the faq for what's on-topic, but this doesn't seem to match any of the criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is receiving upvotes, so wondered whether it's been edited to a state where it's on-topic?  &#xD;&#xA;I've given it a few comments, but not answered it to avoid encouraging it if it is off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/resource-questions/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15094" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5828" RevisionGUID="19660f0c-b3e0-44a9-bea6-02dfcfa9d134" CreationDate="2013-04-09T12:18:29.020" UserId="12436" Text="Is this resource request question on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15095" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5828" RevisionGUID="19660f0c-b3e0-44a9-bea6-02dfcfa9d134" CreationDate="2013-04-09T12:18:29.020" UserId="12436" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15096" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5828" RevisionGUID="456a6a87-e8ba-49f9-b1f2-09f7236f75d7" CreationDate="2013-04-09T12:38:52.433" UserId="25936" Comment="added 128 characters in body" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/194414/what-psychological-factors-account-for-readability was asked after a [related question][1] was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;gnat posted a comment that detailed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**[resource requests are not quite welcome at Programmers][2]**. As far as I understand, one would rather present an **underlying problem** instead - a problem that was intended to be solved with particular resource requested&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've had a look at the faq for what's on-topic, but this doesn't seem to match any of the criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is receiving upvotes, so wondered whether it's been edited to a state where it's on-topic?  &#xD;&#xA;I've given it a few comments, but not answered it to avoid encouraging it if it is off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/194348/where-can-i-find-scientific-papers-about-code-readability&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/resource-questions/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15097" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5829" RevisionGUID="87dfed04-18c5-4ec5-8663-84b389f2e5f5" CreationDate="2013-04-09T12:55:09.390" UserId="4" Text="I'd say that it is on-topic and isn't a reference request. In this particular case, a good answer should cite reputable studies over experiences. However, I would suspect that it would be a synthesis of academic research and their findings rather than a collection of links.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Code readability falls under &quot;software engineering&quot;, which is on-topic here, and determining methods for determining how readable code is seems to be a valid research topic. The question is if we have people who can adequately answer the question, especially from a psychological background. I can answer it from a software metrics perspective - there is some academic research that has tried to find things similar to the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level or Gunning-Fog Index for software. There's also work to examine the layout of code (indentation, line-length, etc.) and determine automated methods of computing a readability metric that corresponds to human surveys of the same code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I'm concerned about the desire for &quot;psychological factors&quot;. We aren't psychologists here. I'm comfortable talking about the research in software quality and metrics, but not the psychological underpinnings of why these are what they are. That may be better suited to CogSci." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15098" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5828" RevisionGUID="7c2930df-30d9-48ee-86fe-c024c194128a" CreationDate="2013-04-09T12:56:38.383" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15099" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5829" RevisionGUID="e8fb7346-a0fa-422f-826d-017cdc9fac51" CreationDate="2013-04-09T13:07:10.093" UserId="4" Comment="added 7 characters in body" Text="I'd say that it is mostly on-topic and isn't a reference request. In this particular case, a good answer should cite reputable studies over experiences. However, I would suspect that it would be a synthesis of academic research and their findings rather than a collection of links.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Code readability falls under &quot;software engineering&quot;, which is on-topic here, and determining methods for determining how readable code is seems to be a valid research topic. The question is if we have people who can adequately answer the question, especially from a psychological background. I can answer it from a software metrics perspective - there is some academic research that has tried to find things similar to the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level or Gunning-Fog Index for software. There's also work to examine the layout of code (indentation, line-length, etc.) and determine automated methods of computing a readability metric that corresponds to human surveys of the same code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I'm concerned about the desire for &quot;psychological factors&quot;. We aren't psychologists here. I'm comfortable talking about the research in software quality and metrics, but not the psychological underpinnings of why these are what they are. That may be better suited to CogSci." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15100" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5829" RevisionGUID="0483e548-c5ac-4ef5-84fc-6ce6f25aa75b" CreationDate="2013-04-09T13:18:09.023" UserId="4" Comment="added 623 characters in body" Text="Following a discussion with the mods at CogSci, we've migrated the question. They feel that it's appropriate for them. Given that the asker is pretty clear about wanting the psychological underpinnings of code readability, I agree with that assessment. Although psychology and other cognitive sciences and social sciences touch software development, we can't provide expert answers here in those areas. If the question was approached from a software engineering, software quality, or software metrics perspective (the kinds of things that would be published by the IEEE, ACM, or BCS), it would have stayed here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd say that it is mostly on-topic and isn't a reference request. In this particular case, a good answer should cite reputable studies over experiences. However, I would suspect that it would be a synthesis of academic research and their findings rather than a collection of links.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Code readability falls under &quot;software engineering&quot;, which is on-topic here, and determining methods for determining how readable code is seems to be a valid research topic. The question is if we have people who can adequately answer the question, especially from a psychological background. I can answer it from a software metrics perspective - there is some academic research that has tried to find things similar to the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level or Gunning-Fog Index for software. There's also work to examine the layout of code (indentation, line-length, etc.) and determine automated methods of computing a readability metric that corresponds to human surveys of the same code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I'm concerned about the desire for &quot;psychological factors&quot;. We aren't psychologists here. I'm comfortable talking about the research in software quality and metrics, but not the psychological underpinnings of why these are what they are. That may be better suited to CogSci." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15101" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5830" RevisionGUID="b480441f-d58e-4a3e-8809-ddfd2dc57265" CreationDate="2013-04-09T15:23:04.147" UserId="32008" Text="I would like to know if it is appropriate here to request for supporting the creation of a Q/A currently at the definition phase at Area 51 ? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not going to name it in the question, (or that would be disguised advertising :-)), however the subject of that Q/A has a matching tag at Programmers. It is somewhat linked to programming... but not quite, as it also crosses psychology for example.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is it appropriate here, or should I use the chat maybe ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15102" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5830" RevisionGUID="b480441f-d58e-4a3e-8809-ddfd2dc57265" CreationDate="2013-04-09T15:23:04.147" UserId="32008" Text="May I use the Programmer's Meta to advertise/request support for another StackExchange Q/A?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15103" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5830" RevisionGUID="b480441f-d58e-4a3e-8809-ddfd2dc57265" CreationDate="2013-04-09T15:23:04.147" UserId="32008" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15104" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5831" RevisionGUID="9d10dbdf-70c7-4fc9-80cd-200f15b6dc18" CreationDate="2013-04-09T15:27:18.600" UserId="47" Text="Posting on the main site or even meta to publicise a site still in definition is not on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Posting in chat is OK.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15107" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5831" RevisionGUID="f3ea7890-ef82-483e-91a5-faea4b95ee04" CreationDate="2013-04-09T16:47:19.783" UserId="1130" Comment="typo" Text="Posting on the main site or even meta to publicise a site still in definition is not ok.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Posting in chat is OK.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15108" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5833" RevisionGUID="a1593419-2d20-431c-9f99-89b519d3125e" CreationDate="2013-04-09T18:40:19.227" UserId="3965" Text="Chris gave the right answer for this particular circumstance, but I just wanted to point out that promotion of an Area 51 site on an existing site's meta is not unprecedented, and can be acceptable under certain specific conditions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, [Workplace SE](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/) was [promoted here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2439/the-workplace-is-now-in-the-commitment-phase) without objection.  The difference was, trying to attract support for the new site wasn't the primary purpose for mentioning it here.  There was a separate *germane* reason, which was the fact that we were dealing with a lot of off topic workplace-related questions at the time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So by all means, feel free to bring up the proposed site in suitable contexts.  It's the &quot;hey, come vote!&quot; posts that are disallowed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15109" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5834" RevisionGUID="c4416e33-da2d-45e5-9cd3-55cb7af6b78a" CreationDate="2013-04-10T14:08:11.320" UserId="56691" Text="When a new question is asked, a message appears at the top of the questions feed, saying &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`x new questions`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I click it, the newly asked questions are visible. After refreshing the page, these new questions aren't there any more. They re-appear some time later after another refresh. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this would be relevant, I'm using Chrome Version 26.0.1410.43 m." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15110" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5834" RevisionGUID="c4416e33-da2d-45e5-9cd3-55cb7af6b78a" CreationDate="2013-04-10T14:08:11.320" UserId="56691" Text="Newest question(s) not visible" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15111" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5834" RevisionGUID="c4416e33-da2d-45e5-9cd3-55cb7af6b78a" CreationDate="2013-04-10T14:08:11.320" UserId="56691" Text="|bug|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15112" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5830" RevisionGUID="c5d1ec7e-f71c-4176-9ede-5978c77e3d9b" CreationDate="2013-04-10T14:27:06.287" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|promotion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15113" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5818" RevisionGUID="d7a819bf-0575-4a93-bf6b-14fbc673aac1" CreationDate="2013-04-11T21:32:37.903" UserId="226" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:226,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Anna Lear&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="15114" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5835" RevisionGUID="27df953e-91f6-4d8b-b7cc-457f9b2d75fb" CreationDate="2013-04-13T10:29:47.463" UserId="29020" Text="As far as I understand, bashing a particular programming language, framework, operating system, or technology is off topic on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By &quot;bashing&quot; (I am not an English native speaker, so I hope this is the appropriate term), I mean ironic comments such as &quot;Oh, you meant X?&quot; where X is the name of a programming language (with 6 upvotes, and I consider upvoting such comments to be bashing as well). The content of such comments sounds to me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    we all know that X sucks, hahaha (followed by n upvotes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it pretty irritating and, because of this, I have considered leaving this site more than once already (of course, there are also lots of constructive questions and answers on this site, which is a good reason for me to be a member).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summarizing, by bashing I mean picking on some (real or perceived) shortcomings of some technology X, e.g. for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - lacking some modern feature&#xD;&#xA; - having an awkward syntax&#xD;&#xA; - being old-fashioned (more than 10 years old)&#xD;&#xA; - being inferior in some unspecified way&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I personally have technologies I like a lot, some that I find OK, and some that I dislike with a passion (for many reasons, sometimes not only technical), but I try to keep these feelings out of the discussion in questions, answers, and comments because I think it is not **professional** to start childish &quot;My favourite language is better than yours&quot; flame wars. Other developers may prefer to use other technologies and they probably have good reasons for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have also tried to identify any objective shortcomings in technologies that are more often the target of bashing on this site, and the only idea I could come up with was that these technologies are not inherently worse than others that get less bashing, rather they are simply less popular among the members of the site. So, bashing what we do not know and we do not consider **cool** is IMHO childish and very little professional.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, everyone who is enthusiastic about some technology X will propose X to others, and maybe they will point out certain problems in other technologies that X tries to solve. But I think a professional programmer should try to express their opinion in a controlled way and, if any criticism is expressed, it should be written in a balanced way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bottomline (my questions):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Do other members of the programmers share this view? Do you think that some bad jokes and unmotivated, vague criticism is part of the game, or do they just lower the level of the discussion and therefore the quality of the site?&#xD;&#xA; 2. If bashing is out of place on this site, is there any measure that can be taken to discourage it? E.g. the moderators could flag certain comments as spam and this could have consequences for the spammer account." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15115" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5835" RevisionGUID="27df953e-91f6-4d8b-b7cc-457f9b2d75fb" CreationDate="2013-04-13T10:29:47.463" UserId="29020" Text="Bashing a programming languages, a framework or other technology" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15116" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5835" RevisionGUID="27df953e-91f6-4d8b-b7cc-457f9b2d75fb" CreationDate="2013-04-13T10:29:47.463" UserId="29020" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15117" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5835" RevisionGUID="6d265dfe-8058-4b9d-91cd-7d8a6bbe1dbc" CreationDate="2013-04-13T10:35:15.903" UserId="29020" Comment="Added an extra example." Text="As far as I understand, bashing a particular programming language, framework, operating system, or technology is off topic on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By &quot;bashing&quot; (I am not an English native speaker, so I hope this is the appropriate term), I mean ironic comments such as &quot;Oh, you meant X?&quot; where X is the name of a programming language (with 6 upvotes, and I consider upvoting such comments to be bashing as well). The content of such comments sounds to me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    we all know that X sucks, hahaha (followed by n upvotes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it pretty irritating and, because of this, I have considered leaving this site more than once already (of course, there are also lots of constructive questions and answers on this site, which is a good reason for me to be a member).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summarizing, by bashing I mean picking on some (real or perceived) shortcomings of some technology X, e.g. for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - lacking some modern feature&#xD;&#xA; - having an awkward syntax&#xD;&#xA; - being old-fashioned (more than 10 years old)&#xD;&#xA; - being too academic and not useful for real applications&#xD;&#xA; - being inferior in some unspecified way&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I personally have technologies I like a lot, some that I find OK, and some that I dislike with a passion (for many reasons, sometimes not only technical), but I try to keep these feelings out of the discussion in questions, answers, and comments because I think it is not **professional** to start childish &quot;My favourite language is better than yours&quot; flame wars. Other developers may prefer to use other technologies and they probably have good reasons for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have also tried to identify any objective shortcomings in technologies that are more often the target of bashing on this site, and the only idea I could come up with was that these technologies are not inherently worse than others that get less bashing, rather they are simply less popular among the members of the site. So, bashing what we do not know and we do not consider **cool** is IMHO childish and very little professional.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, everyone who is enthusiastic about some technology X will propose X to others, and maybe they will point out certain problems in other technologies that X tries to solve. But I think a professional programmer should try to express their opinion in a controlled way and, if any criticism is expressed, it should be written in a balanced way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bottomline (my questions):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Do other members of programmers share this view? Do you think that some bad jokes and unmotivated, vague criticism is part of the game, or do they just lower the level of the discussion and therefore the quality of the site?&#xD;&#xA; 2. If bashing is out of place on this site, is there any measure that can be taken to discourage it? E.g. the moderators could flag certain comments as spam and this could have consequences for the spammer account." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15118" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5835" RevisionGUID="2835d9b5-7299-4915-b869-72413ba58628" CreationDate="2013-04-13T15:31:58.527" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15119" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5836" RevisionGUID="740a480b-3444-4ee8-9eaa-d287fa206a1c" CreationDate="2013-04-13T16:15:16.167" UserId="13866" Text="Bashing specific languages, tools or technologies is absolutely off topic here and we have closed many questions and quite some answers for doing so (or even trying to start a civilized discussion on advatages vs. disadvantages). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually I can't really follow your view on this, since Programmers and the other StackExchange sites have far less problems with this than any other forum, Q&amp;A site or similar community I have seen so far and this is one reason why I like to stay here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments are slightly (very slightly) different I think, we normally don't close those that often (as far as I am aware as a non admin). You will always have a few comments that are a bit more aggressive. See them as an option to keep a human touch to the whole thing. Still, if they become too extreme they should be closed, though we really don't need any additional punishment. At least not some automatism, I think the admins can handle it if a user becomes annoying. We still have the chat room where we can discuss such details and give point oiut such users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But for the really bad type of users commenting isn't enough anyway. Those will soon enough try to ask flamewar questions and they disappear when they get those questions closed within minutes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15120" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5837" RevisionGUID="3b73b261-7c50-4e87-9e6e-d9455989feab" CreationDate="2013-04-13T17:24:30.920" UserId="25936" Text="I'm surprised that although you appear to be genuinely annoyed by this you haven't been flagging the comments. We (the moderators) can't read _every_ comment on the site, and unless the community notify us through flags, we'll probably be the last to know that something bad is happening.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments are, by their nature, ephemeral. They aren't supposed to stay around for ever, once they've served their purpose they should go away. If a comment is little more than a joke (or worse) you should feel free to flag it. Your comment flag options are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **rude or offensive**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Please only use when a user is being rude towards another user. Language bashing that doesn't include very strong language doesn't count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **not constructive / off-topic**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This would be the preferable comment flag for comments that serve no other purpose but to bash a language / technology / platform / product.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **obsolete**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This would be the preferable comment flag for comments that aren't useful anymore. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **too chatty**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is a softer version of the &quot;not constructive / off-topic&quot;. It would also be a good choice for comments that serve no other purpose but to bash a language / technology / platform / product.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **other...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Moderators have the ability to edit comments, and this flag would be the one to use when editing is what you want to ask us to do. However keep in mind that comment edits do not generate a (publicly visible) revision history, and asking us to edit comments puts us in a very uncomfortable position. We would most certainly remove (for example) a four letter word from an otherwise helpful comment, or fix a broken link, but if it's anything more than that, we'll probably opt to delete the comment. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Another reason to use this flag would be when a whole comment thread has taken an unconstructive turn, and you want us to purge it. If you find yourself reading a comment thread and thinking that all comments have outlive their purpose, feel free to cast a single custom flag notifying us of the situation, instead of flagging each comment individually. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moving on to the core issue, yes I agree there is a problem with language bashing, however it's a minor one and, from what I've seen, it's mostly limited to certain tags. We both happen to hang around the [tag:programming-languages] tag, where general commentary on a language's design is to be expected, so we've probably seen a lot more language / technology / platform bashing comments than people who are focused on non language tags. The only equivalent behaviour I've noticed in non language tags, is &quot;git/svn/hg bashing&quot; on our version control related tags. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, some light hearted comments here and there are really not a big deal. Yes, we do strive to be as professional as we can be, but we are only human and some light fun is certainly part of the game. This doesn't mean that we aren't going to remove comments that aren't bringing anything _actually_ useful to the discussion (even the best jokes get old eventually), but more that if there isn't a persistent pattern of trollish comment from a specific user there won't really be any consequences (other than removing the comments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, on the other hand, we do notice a persistent pattern, we'll deal with it as we typically do with behaviours that lower the overall quality of the site. Which, in extremely broad terms, means a (private) warning first, and a suspension if the behaviour persists after the warning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15121" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5837" RevisionGUID="b36da0ff-5f1c-4655-ba39-18ad577236ef" CreationDate="2013-04-13T17:32:51.053" UserId="25936" Comment="added 302 characters in body" Text="I'm surprised that although you appear to be genuinely annoyed by this you haven't been flagging the comments. We (the moderators) can't read _every_ comment on the site, and unless the community notify us through flags, we'll probably be the last to know that something bad is happening.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments are, by their nature, ephemeral. They aren't supposed to stay around for ever, once they've served their purpose they should go away. If a comment is little more than a joke (or worse) you should feel free to flag it. Your comment flag options are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **rude or offensive**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Please only use when a user is being rude towards another user. Language bashing that doesn't include very strong language doesn't count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **not constructive / off-topic**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This would be the preferable comment flag for comments that serve no other purpose but to bash a language / technology / platform / product.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **obsolete**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This would be the preferable comment flag for comments that aren't useful anymore. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **too chatty**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is a softer version of the &quot;not constructive / off-topic&quot;. It would also be a good choice for comments that serve no other purpose but to bash a language / technology / platform / product.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **other...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Moderators have the ability to edit comments, and this flag would be the one to use when editing is what you want to ask us to do. However keep in mind that comment edits do not generate a (publicly visible) revision history, and asking us to edit comments puts us in a very uncomfortable position. We would most certainly remove (for example) a four letter word from an otherwise helpful comment, or fix a broken link, but if it's anything more than that, we'll probably opt to delete the comment. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Another reason to use this flag would be when a whole comment thread has taken an unconstructive turn, and you want us to purge it. If you find yourself reading a comment thread and thinking that all comments have outlive their purpose, feel free to cast a single custom flag notifying us of the situation, instead of flagging each comment individually. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moving on to the core issue, yes I agree there is a problem with language bashing, however it's a minor one and, from what I've seen, it's mostly limited to certain tags. We both happen to hang around the [tag:programming-languages] tag, where general commentary on a language's design is to be expected, so we've probably seen a lot more language / technology / platform bashing comments than people who are focused on non language tags. The only equivalent behaviour I've noticed in non language tags, is &quot;git/svn/hg bashing&quot; on our version control related tags. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, some light hearted comments here and there are really not a big deal. Yes, we do strive to be as professional as we can be, but we are only human and some light fun is certainly part of the game. This doesn't mean that we aren't going to remove comments that aren't bringing anything _actually_ useful to the discussion (even the best jokes get old eventually), but more that if there isn't a persistent pattern of trollish comment from a specific user there won't really be any consequences (other than removing the comments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, on the other hand, we do notice a persistent pattern, we'll deal with it as we typically do with behaviours that lower the overall quality of the site. Which, in extremely broad terms, means a (private) warning first, and a suspension if the behaviour persists after the warning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. Our lovely chat room, [The Whiteboard][1], is the _perfect_ place for idle commentary and fun discussions, including language / technology / platform / product bashing. If you absolutely must rant, do it in chat please, not in comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15122" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5837" RevisionGUID="c8e7975d-08db-44a2-ab83-d80a5cc4bcd8" CreationDate="2013-04-13T17:37:52.440" UserId="25936" Comment="added 302 characters in body" Text="I'm surprised that although you appear to be genuinely annoyed by this you haven't been flagging the comments. We (the moderators) can't read _every_ comment on the site, and unless the community notify us through flags, we'll probably be the last to know that something bad is happening.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments are, by their nature, ephemeral. They aren't supposed to stay around for ever, once they've served their purpose they should go away. If a comment is little more than a joke (or worse) you should feel free to flag it. Your comment flag options are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **rude or offensive**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Please only use when a user is being rude towards another user. Language bashing that doesn't include very strong language doesn't count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **not constructive / off-topic**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This would be the preferable comment flag for comments that serve no other purpose but to bash a language / technology / platform / product.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **obsolete**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This would be the preferable comment flag for comments that aren't useful anymore. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **too chatty**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is a softer version of the &quot;not constructive / off-topic&quot;. It would also be a good choice for comments that serve no other purpose but to bash a language / technology / platform / product.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **other...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Moderators have the ability to edit comments, and this flag would be the one to use when editing is what you want to ask us to do. However keep in mind that comment edits do not generate a (publicly visible) revision history, and asking us to edit comments puts us in a very uncomfortable position. We would most certainly remove (for example) a four letter word from an otherwise helpful comment, or fix a broken link, but if it's anything more than that, we'll probably opt to delete the comment. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Another reason to use this flag would be when a whole comment thread has taken an unconstructive turn, and you want us to purge it. If you find yourself reading a comment thread and thinking that all comments have outlive their purpose, feel free to cast a single custom flag notifying us of the situation, instead of flagging each comment individually. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moving on to the core issue, yes I agree there is a problem with language bashing, however it's a minor one and, from what I've seen, it's mostly limited to certain tags. We both happen to hang around the [tag:programming-languages] tag, where general commentary on a language's design is to be expected, so we've probably seen a lot more language / technology / platform bashing comments than people who are focused on non language tags. The only equivalent behaviour I've noticed in non language tags, is &quot;git/svn/hg bashing&quot; on our version control related tags. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, some light hearted comments here and there are really not a big deal. Yes, we do strive to be as professional as we can be, but we are only human and some light fun is certainly part of the game. This doesn't mean that we aren't going to remove comments that aren't bringing anything _actually_ useful to the discussion (even the best jokes get old eventually), but more that if there isn't a persistent pattern of trollish comment from a specific user there won't really be any consequences (other than removing the comments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, on the other hand, we do notice a persistent pattern, we'll deal with it as we typically do with behaviours that lower the overall quality of the site. Which, in extremely broad terms, means a (private) warning first, and a suspension if the behaviour persists after the warning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. Our lovely chat room, [The Whiteboard][1], is the _perfect_ place for idle commentary and fun discussions, including language / technology / platform / product bashing (the [recent starred messages](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard/?tab=stars) are revealing ;). If you absolutely must rant, do it in chat please, not in comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15123" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5835" RevisionGUID="3b38d2a6-979d-458a-96de-e6084e90ba7b" CreationDate="2013-04-14T01:54:54.283" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/323252994047111168" />
  <row Id="15124" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5838" RevisionGUID="1cf6934e-06a8-45af-a322-f483885a7900" CreationDate="2013-04-14T17:31:29.460" UserId="855" Text="Preventing the &quot;What language should I use?&quot; questions has probably done more to curtail this than anything else, but monitoring and group feedback also benefit it. There are some questions where the OP is trying to use a particular language for a task it was unintended or not as suitable as others. It may not be the ideal answer, but it is professional to comment that this may not be the best tool to use. It's up to others to determine if this is a constructive professional opinion, a personal preference or bashing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it is just as easy to promote a language in a childish and unprofessional way. It's not limited to bashing. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15125" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5839" RevisionGUID="9050a0c5-4e89-406a-a76c-de6f3064f750" CreationDate="2013-04-15T13:46:50.620" UserId="43030" Text="I just learned that [this question][1] is a duplicate of some other qeustion (the link to which is supplied now in the first question). Reading through both questions I cannot see how one could defer the answer to the new one from an answer for the other one. The new one is a completely different question and asks which programming language to use for this kind of task. This may or may not be approriate for this site, but it is for sure not a duplicate of the other one (which focusses on what an expert system is supposed to do). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that this kind of inaccurracy in this kind of decision is helpful for this site, nor does it create trust in the decision of those users who marked it as duplicate.  &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/194969/what-programming-language-is-best-suited-for-an-expert-system-that-also-requires" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15126" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5839" RevisionGUID="9050a0c5-4e89-406a-a76c-de6f3064f750" CreationDate="2013-04-15T13:46:50.620" UserId="43030" Text="What does it take for a question to be a duplicate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15127" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5839" RevisionGUID="9050a0c5-4e89-406a-a76c-de6f3064f750" CreationDate="2013-04-15T13:46:50.620" UserId="43030" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15128" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5835" RevisionGUID="73ccaf9e-9c86-4723-a1a2-19ebf10dfe9f" CreationDate="2013-04-15T14:40:52.523" UserId="7422" Comment="fix spelling" Text="As far as I understand, bashing a particular programming language, framework, operating system, or technology is off topic on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By &quot;bashing&quot; (I am not an English native speaker, so I hope this is the appropriate term), I mean ironic comments such as &quot;Oh, you meant X?&quot; where X is the name of a programming language (with 6 upvotes, and I consider upvoting such comments to be bashing as well). The content of such comments sounds to me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    we all know that X sucks, hahaha (followed by n upvotes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it pretty irritating and, because of this, I have considered leaving this site more than once already (of course, there are also lots of constructive questions and answers on this site, which is a good reason for me to be a member).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summarizing, by bashing I mean picking on some (real or perceived) shortcomings of some technology X, e.g. for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - lacking some modern feature&#xD;&#xA; - having an awkward syntax&#xD;&#xA; - being old-fashioned (more than 10 years old)&#xD;&#xA; - being too academic and not useful for real applications&#xD;&#xA; - being inferior in some unspecified way&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I personally have technologies I like a lot, some that I find OK, and some that I dislike with a passion (for many reasons, sometimes not only technical), but I try to keep these feelings out of the discussion in questions, answers, and comments because I think it is not **professional** to start childish &quot;My favourite language is better than yours&quot; flame wars. Other developers may prefer to use other technologies and they probably have good reasons for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have also tried to identify any objective shortcomings in technologies that are more often the target of bashing on this site, and the only idea I could come up with was that these technologies are not inherently worse than others that get less bashing, rather they are simply less popular among the members of the site. So, bashing what we do not know and we do not consider **cool** is IMHO childish and very little professional.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, everyone who is enthusiastic about some technology X will propose X to others, and maybe they will point out certain problems in other technologies that X tries to solve. But I think a professional programmer should try to express their opinion in a controlled way and, if any criticism is expressed, it should be written in a balanced way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bottom line (my questions):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Do other members of programmers share this view? Do you think that some bad jokes and unmotivated, vague criticism is part of the game, or do they just lower the level of the discussion and therefore the quality of the site?&#xD;&#xA; 2. If bashing is out of place on this site, is there any measure that can be taken to discourage it? E.g. the moderators could flag certain comments as spam and this could have consequences for the spammer account." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15129" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5835" RevisionGUID="73ccaf9e-9c86-4723-a1a2-19ebf10dfe9f" CreationDate="2013-04-15T14:40:52.523" UserId="7422" Comment="fix spelling" Text="Bashing a programming language, a framework or other technology" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15130" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5840" RevisionGUID="323e87fa-29c7-46f3-9956-785239cc22e8" CreationDate="2013-04-15T15:09:16.840" UserId="31260" Text="My vote has been based on what is stated in the questions and in MSO guidance. Let's see,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Closed question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what programming language I can use both that will facilitate the creation of the Expert System and the implementation of the UI?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Target&quot; question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the general process to define the behavior of an expert system, from the initial assessment of the conditions to the actual code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given above, I voted in accordance with **[this guidance at MSO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/166707/165773)**:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to tell the user ...something like, “*Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.*” Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15131" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5840" RevisionGUID="2578201f-4b9b-4d02-9d06-fda1af664ae7" CreationDate="2013-04-15T15:28:06.817" UserId="31260" Comment="corrected per http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/194969/1" Text="My vote has been based on what is stated in the questions and in MSO guidance. Let's see,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Closed question ([revision that I voted on](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/194969/1)):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would like to know from the programmers what programming language is to be preferred?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;Target&quot; question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41798/programming-an-expert-system):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the general process to define the behavior of an expert system, from the initial assessment of the conditions to the actual code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given above, I voted in accordance with **[this guidance at MSO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/166707/165773)**:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to tell the user ...something like, “*Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.*” Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15132" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5839" RevisionGUID="377f08ac-6357-478e-acc7-e6233c716720" CreationDate="2013-04-15T16:47:06.537" UserId="43030" Comment="fixed typos" Text="I just learned that [this question][1] is a duplicate of some other question (the link to which is supplied now in the first question). Reading through both questions I cannot see how one could defer the answer to the new one from an answer for the other one. The new one is a completely different question and asks which programming language to use for this kind of task. This may or may not be approriate for this site, but it is for sure not a duplicate of the other one (which focuses on what an expert system is supposed to do). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that this kind of inaccurracy in this kind of decision is helpful for this site, nor does it create trust in the decision of those users who marked it as duplicate.  &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/194969/what-programming-language-is-best-suited-for-an-expert-system-that-also-requires" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15133" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5841" RevisionGUID="7da631dd-592e-42cb-a0c3-6fce1af35f5c" CreationDate="2013-04-15T22:41:10.177" UserId="3965" Text="That particular question fit multiple close reasons at once, but people can't select multiple reasons.  I personally think it wasn't adequately similar to the dup, but duplicate is the most helpful close reason, because it points you to a question where you might get at least part of your question answered.  If I have a choice between closing as a duplicate and another reason, I always choose the duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think the question should be an exception to the no &quot;what programming language&quot; question rule, because most languages that make good expert systems, like LISP or Prolog, have lousy GUI support.  It's precisely the kind of question a community of expert programmers is well-suited to answer.  @glenatron's comment about dual languages would have made a great answer with a little bit of exposition.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15137" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5843" RevisionGUID="046a237f-a5d7-4e23-82b2-4d7c0a188a6f" CreationDate="2013-04-17T09:03:24.473" UserId="31260" Text="Some recent posts make me feel like these could be automatically rejected by [quality filter](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/quality-filter/info &quot;what's this&quot;), thus saving community efforts for better quality questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To develope My Own linux Distro for Linux Beginners.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195209/31260)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To Know How To prepare An understanding Doc To Track what I am Doing On daily Basis So that I can Be update To my Work.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195203/31260)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I am A New Joinee In a major MNC And Currently I am Working In Vitria Team I dont Know Much about Vitria From Career Persepective.Plz Guide&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195204/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above are full literal quotes of the posts, I did not change anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently it has been announced that quality filter is tightened at Trilogy sites (for your convenience, announcement is quoted below).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I understand, SE team is [open to consider similar change for Programmers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/174097/is-it-time-to-tighten-up-the-question-quality-filter/176875?noredirect=1#comment531396_176875 &quot;quote source&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the sad truth is that on Programmers, even questions with a maximum quality score fare worse on average than the ones passing the threshold I just put in place on SO. We can try tweaking the threshold there too, but it's probably worth a separate discussion on meta.programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we please somehow adjust quality filter at Programmers to prevent posting low quality stuff like quoted above?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the reference, announcement of [filter adjustment at Trilogy sites](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/176875/165773 &quot;here&quot;) is quoted below:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've bumped up the threshold below which questions will be blocked. The majority of *recently-asked* questions that fall below the new threshold do not fare well on Stack Overflow (i.e. they are closed, deleted, and/or down-voted). &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The down-side is that short questions will be harder to post (this is more than just a length check, but short + poor spelling / caps / punctuation / formatting will damn a post more readily). At this point, I think that's a fair trade-off on Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I've also increased the threshold on Super User and Server Fault; although the volume is lower there, they field even fewer reasonable questions in this range. A quick check of other high-traffic sites does not appear to justify raising this anywhere else at this time.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;FWIW: Stack Overflow already rejects something like twelve hundred questions a day based on this check - that'd amount to about 13% of questions if a lot of them weren't just the same folks retrying more or less the same text over and over." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15138" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5843" RevisionGUID="046a237f-a5d7-4e23-82b2-4d7c0a188a6f" CreationDate="2013-04-17T09:03:24.473" UserId="31260" Text="Is it time to tighten up the quality filter at Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15139" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5843" RevisionGUID="046a237f-a5d7-4e23-82b2-4d7c0a188a6f" CreationDate="2013-04-17T09:03:24.473" UserId="31260" Text="|support|answer-quality|quality|quality-filter|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15140" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5844" RevisionGUID="d4176851-902e-45e1-a7e8-2f3e0b839737" CreationDate="2013-04-17T13:54:29.370" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Yes, it's worth the effort to tighten whatever quality mechanisms are in place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Period.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, we'll probably filter out some otherwise decent questions that way.  That's a price I'm willing to pay to filter out crap questions like &quot;how do I build my own beginner's linux distro?&quot;  Questions like that make me want to open another meta question to identify the strongest but just-this-side-of-OK-for-Stack-Exchange word to describe it with.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15141" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5845" RevisionGUID="dcf43f38-6e7d-4353-9b7a-2440b155889c" CreationDate="2013-04-17T14:25:23.730" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Short version: Does P.SE have similar new user limitations as SO does?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Buried in the MSO FAQ is this answer about [new user restrictions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/89241/194162).  And it states that new users are only allowed 6 questions in a 24 hour period at a maximum rate of one question every 20 minutes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I have noticed many new users ask 3 questions and then stop.  Is there a different limiter in place for P.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15142" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5845" RevisionGUID="dcf43f38-6e7d-4353-9b7a-2440b155889c" CreationDate="2013-04-17T14:25:23.730" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="What are P.SE's new user limitations?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15143" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5845" RevisionGUID="dcf43f38-6e7d-4353-9b7a-2440b155889c" CreationDate="2013-04-17T14:25:23.730" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|support|new-users|quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15144" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5846" RevisionGUID="a37b7d29-e2c1-4741-ab0f-befad4cec968" CreationDate="2013-04-17T14:33:03.550" UserId="47" Text="As far I know the new user restrictions are the same network wide." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15145" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5847" RevisionGUID="253d009c-a235-4774-906d-8fdba511f0f3" CreationDate="2013-04-17T15:08:26.387" UserId="13181" Text="Okay, I'm very confused now. A [question of mine from 2 years ago][1] with multiple upvoted answers and upvoted to ten was just closed as not constructive. I'm assuming that someone stumbled across it and voted to close putting it in the review queue. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anything maybe it should be locked, but there were good answers to the questions and it proposed something for people to think about. It relates directly to programming so I'm just curious, what's not constructive about the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43838/do-you-own-your-tools" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15146" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5847" RevisionGUID="253d009c-a235-4774-906d-8fdba511f0f3" CreationDate="2013-04-17T15:08:26.387" UserId="13181" Text="Why close a 2 year old question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15147" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5847" RevisionGUID="253d009c-a235-4774-906d-8fdba511f0f3" CreationDate="2013-04-17T15:08:26.387" UserId="13181" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15148" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5848" RevisionGUID="1cbc11a2-4f39-44a8-9f2e-4cb7e5a67902" CreationDate="2013-04-17T15:11:07.070" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="In many cases where one sees the &quot;3 answers and stop&quot; there is the additional bit of these three questions become significantly downvoted.  The mystical question ban calculation then kicks in before the new user limiter and banns them from asking questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is more obvious on sites where there is a lower flow of questions, active voters, and a higher variability of quality.  Several poor questions in succession are quite likely to gain attention and get all of them downvoted before one can ask 6 questions in the time period.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On sites with a larger traffic flow, it is possible for poor questions to sit around at 0 for awhile until the 6 question limit kicks in." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15149" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5849" RevisionGUID="6a46cffd-94eb-4353-a16b-499cb9f55f62" CreationDate="2013-04-17T15:17:44.163" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I went on a search for &quot;what do you think&quot; last night after seeing a few &quot;what do you think&quot; questions get asked, or answered and closed - this was one (of many) that I found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many times new users attempt to use old open questions as examples for why their question should be remain open.  Closing old questions that don't fit the current quality standards helps limit this avenue of misunderstanding about the site scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often new users will find an &quot;what do you think&quot; question and answer it.  These questions, because of their age, votes, and views will cause it to immediately jump to the top of the hot questions, which attracts more answers of questionable merit.  These new answers to &quot;what do you think&quot; are often quite poor and garner downvotes resulting in a poor new user experience answering questions on P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Locking is not available to most people, and is actually a stronger action than closing as it also prevents comments and votes (and new answers as closing does).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing does not mean deletion.  As I understand it, having answers (and upvoted answers) will prevent such automated cleanups (of negative voted, unanswered questions)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15150" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5849" RevisionGUID="9da7a07c-b125-44c4-8905-3e943c1bd6c3" CreationDate="2013-04-17T15:43:45.607" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 3119 characters in body" Text="I went on a search for &quot;what do you think&quot; last night after seeing a few &quot;what do you think&quot; questions get asked, or answered and closed - this was one (of many) that I found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many times new users attempt to use old open questions as examples for why their question should be remain open.  Closing old questions that don't fit the current quality standards helps limit this avenue of misunderstanding about the site scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often new users will find an &quot;what do you think&quot; question and answer it.  These questions, because of their age, votes, and views will cause it to immediately jump to the top of the hot questions, which attracts more answers of questionable merit.  These new answers to &quot;what do you think&quot; are often quite poor and garner downvotes resulting in a poor new user experience answering questions on P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Locking is not available to most people, and is actually a stronger action than closing as it also prevents comments and votes (and new answers as closing does).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing does not mean deletion.  As I understand it, having answers (and upvoted answers) will prevent such automated cleanups (of negative voted, unanswered questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There seems to be some misgivings about the questions...  My close vote spree included:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What do Java developers think of Scala?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25509/what-do-java-developers-think-of-scala)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think of the F# language?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3066/what-do-you-think-of-the-f-language)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think of the Joel Test?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2776/what-do-you-think-about-the-joel-test)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think of this book “JavaScript Programmer's Reference”](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73967/what-do-you-think-of-this-book-javascript-programmers-reference)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think about the fork of Redmine : ChiliProject](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64477/what-do-you-think-about-the-fork-of-redmine-chiliproject)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think would be a perfect testing tool for waterfall model?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45345/what-do-you-think-would-be-a-perfect-testing-tool-for-waterfall-model)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think about design by contract?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1158/what-do-you-think-about-design-by-contract)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think of this generator syntax?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41277/what-do-you-think-of-this-generator-syntax)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you use string reversal for?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24691/what-do-you-use-string-reversal-for)&#xD;&#xA;- [what do you do to keep learning?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45803/what-do-you-do-to-keep-learning)&#xD;&#xA;- [What skills do you think a performance engineer should have?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59292/what-skills-do-you-think-a-performance-engineer-should-have)&#xD;&#xA;- [Licenses that prevent usage in weapons](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66983/licenses-that-prevent-usage-in-weapons)&#xD;&#xA;- [Will enterprise software development kill my dreams?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/94256/will-enterprise-software-development-kill-my-dreams)&#xD;&#xA;- [Should I include C private tutoring experience on my CV ( resume )?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57953/should-i-include-c-private-tutoring-experience-on-my-cv-resume)&#xD;&#xA;- [Do you own your tools?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43838/do-you-own-your-tools)&#xD;&#xA;- [Legality/Ethics of crawling a site to basically copy its database?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98111/legality-ethics-of-crawling-a-site-to-basically-copy-its-database)&#xD;&#xA;- [What to do with bad source code?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29671/what-to-do-with-bad-source-code)&#xD;&#xA;- [Punishing users for insecure passwords](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92199/punishing-users-for-insecure-passwords)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If people feel that my votes on any of these in error, please help me understand where they were the mistake was made. My skill set at rewriting old questions is not the greatest, and I would welcome any help in reformulating these questions into ones that can be reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15151" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5849" RevisionGUID="4808852f-975f-488e-a089-5fb49e115344" CreationDate="2013-04-17T15:49:47.627" UserId="31260" Comment="use old open questions as examples for why their question should be remain open += http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info &quot;respective tag wiki at MSO&quot;" Text="I went on a search for &quot;what do you think&quot; last night after seeing a few &quot;what do you think&quot; questions get asked, or answered and closed - this was one (of many) that I found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many times new users attempt to [use old open questions as examples for why their question should be remain open](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info &quot;respective tag wiki at MSO&quot;).  Closing old questions that don't fit the current quality standards helps limit this avenue of misunderstanding about the site scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often new users will find an &quot;what do you think&quot; question and answer it.  These questions, because of their age, votes, and views will cause it to immediately jump to the top of the hot questions, which attracts more answers of questionable merit.  These new answers to &quot;what do you think&quot; are often quite poor and garner downvotes resulting in a poor new user experience answering questions on P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Locking is not available to most people, and is actually a stronger action than closing as it also prevents comments and votes (and new answers as closing does).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing does not mean deletion.  As I understand it, having answers (and upvoted answers) will prevent such automated cleanups (of negative voted, unanswered questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There seems to be some misgivings about the questions...  My close vote spree included:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What do Java developers think of Scala?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25509/what-do-java-developers-think-of-scala)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think of the F# language?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3066/what-do-you-think-of-the-f-language)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think of the Joel Test?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2776/what-do-you-think-about-the-joel-test)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think of this book “JavaScript Programmer's Reference”](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73967/what-do-you-think-of-this-book-javascript-programmers-reference)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think about the fork of Redmine : ChiliProject](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64477/what-do-you-think-about-the-fork-of-redmine-chiliproject)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think would be a perfect testing tool for waterfall model?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45345/what-do-you-think-would-be-a-perfect-testing-tool-for-waterfall-model)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think about design by contract?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1158/what-do-you-think-about-design-by-contract)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think of this generator syntax?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41277/what-do-you-think-of-this-generator-syntax)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you use string reversal for?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24691/what-do-you-use-string-reversal-for)&#xD;&#xA;- [what do you do to keep learning?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45803/what-do-you-do-to-keep-learning)&#xD;&#xA;- [What skills do you think a performance engineer should have?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59292/what-skills-do-you-think-a-performance-engineer-should-have)&#xD;&#xA;- [Licenses that prevent usage in weapons](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66983/licenses-that-prevent-usage-in-weapons)&#xD;&#xA;- [Will enterprise software development kill my dreams?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/94256/will-enterprise-software-development-kill-my-dreams)&#xD;&#xA;- [Should I include C private tutoring experience on my CV ( resume )?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57953/should-i-include-c-private-tutoring-experience-on-my-cv-resume)&#xD;&#xA;- [Do you own your tools?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43838/do-you-own-your-tools)&#xD;&#xA;- [Legality/Ethics of crawling a site to basically copy its database?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98111/legality-ethics-of-crawling-a-site-to-basically-copy-its-database)&#xD;&#xA;- [What to do with bad source code?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29671/what-to-do-with-bad-source-code)&#xD;&#xA;- [Punishing users for insecure passwords](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92199/punishing-users-for-insecure-passwords)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If people feel that my votes on any of these in error, please help me understand where they were the mistake was made. My skill set at rewriting old questions is not the greatest, and I would welcome any help in reformulating these questions into ones that can be reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15152" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5850" RevisionGUID="9fe7649b-b6ab-4650-b80e-0e23997ce2ba" CreationDate="2013-04-17T15:58:15.790" UserId="4027" Text="I have noticed a lot of questions being flagged as duplicates lately when I didn't feel that they were duplicates of the question that the people closing them said they were duplicates of. In some cases they didn't seem close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that the definition of &quot;duplicate&quot; should be very close to an exact duplicate of the question, in intent if not in wording. If the question is otherwise ambiguous or of low quality we shouldn't be closing it as a duplicate, we should be trying to clarify it or closing it for an appropriate reason. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reading the [guidance from MSO][1] that @gnat mentioned, I see this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  the answers to the original question must solve the dupe’s problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case I could see no answers to the question that came close to solving the duplicate's problem and clearly neither could the person asking it. There was some good information that was pertinent to their decision making, but nothing there which was an answer to *this question*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15153" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5851" RevisionGUID="92cd5515-998e-4030-be73-24695a4c03c6" CreationDate="2013-04-17T16:57:45.043" UserId="3965" Text="There are a number of cosmetic attributes of questions that make them more likely to be closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Using the word &quot;you&quot; in your phrasing.  *Have you ever, what do you think, do you follow this practice,* etc.  This makes it sound like a polling question, even when it's not.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Only putting your question in the title, not restating it in the body of your post.  This makes it feel like a rant/blog post, even when it's not.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Including a prologue with your reasons for asking, worries about topicality, etc.  This makes it feel like you are trying to make a case for a weak question, even if the question stands on its own merits.&#xD;&#xA; 4. Including your &quot;résumé&quot;: related background experience, etc.  This makes it feel like the question has a narrow application, or that you're just looking for validation of an opinion you've already decided, even if you aren't.&#xD;&#xA; 5. Including a thank you or salutation at the end.  This makes the question feel chatty, even when it's not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question violates unspoken rules 1 and 4.  People will probably reopen if you edit it to change or remove the sentences containing &quot;I&quot; or &quot;you.&quot;  More like, &quot;Is owning your own programming tools beneficial?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as whether old, upvoted questions should be targets for closing, I mostly agree with MichaelT's reasoning.  Old questions get resurrected all the time.  However, I wish people would write a meta post before doing bulk closures of old questions, especially since the original author isn't always still around to fix the question. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15154" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5852" RevisionGUID="c4769360-553d-44d9-805a-0fc3fe696cbb" CreationDate="2013-04-17T17:04:21.610" UserId="4" Text="I just looked at the question and I fully agree with the closure, mostly for the reasons outlined in [MichealT's answer][1]. I don't see how it's anything other than a poll for people's opinions: &quot;Do you [own your own tools]?&quot;, &quot;What do you think good people?&quot; I don't see how either of those questions will lead to anything other than an extended discussion or opinions. There's no visible problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should the question be locked? First, this question won't be automatically deleted. It has been up voted and has up voted answers. The automatic deletion script will not kick in. In order for this post to be deleted at this point, it requires moderator intervention or enough users voting to delete. As far as locking, the only valid reason for locking would be &quot;historical lock&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: [FAQ].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a good question for this site, but I don't see how it has historical significance. It has 623 views (a handful of which were probably generated by this Meta post) in 2 years. It only has a score of 9, and the top answer only has a score of 18. Looking through the answers, I'm not seeing anything amazing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this time, my recommendation would be to keep this question closed. If anyone is interested, I would suggest pulling out anything relevant and considering writing a post for the blog. It may be a candidate for deletion down the road, since I'm not seeing any significant value added by keeping the question around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5849/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15155" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5853" RevisionGUID="938be524-b55b-454c-b7d7-807a74600816" CreationDate="2013-04-17T17:10:22.033" UserId="32353" Text="We should if there is evidence it would help.  I'd like some clarification of what Shog9 said, but it sounded to me like the algorithm they have isn't very predictive for this site.  As soon as gnat finishes tuning his beysian filter and submits the patch to SO we should do it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Just kidding about the filter.  As far as I know)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15156" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5843" RevisionGUID="4c3bef27-e18a-496a-a42b-11fe3477a26d" CreationDate="2013-04-17T19:10:17.830" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="Some recent posts make me feel like these could be automatically rejected by [quality filter](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/quality-filter/info &quot;what's this&quot;), thus saving community efforts for better quality questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To develope My Own linux Distro for Linux Beginners.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195209/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To Know How To prepare An understanding Doc To Track what I am Doing On daily Basis So that I can Be update To my Work.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195203/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I am A New Joinee In a major MNC And Currently I am Working In Vitria Team I dont Know Much about Vitria From Career Persepective.Plz Guide&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195204/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Above are full literal quotes of the posts, I did not change anything.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently it has been announced that quality filter is tightened at Trilogy sites (for your convenience, announcement is quoted below).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* As far as I understand, SE team is [open to consider similar change for Programmers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/174097/is-it-time-to-tighten-up-the-question-quality-filter/176875?noredirect=1#comment531396_176875 &quot;quote source&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the sad truth is that on Programmers, even questions with a maximum quality score fare worse on average than the ones passing the threshold I just put in place on SO. We can try tweaking the threshold there too, but it's probably worth a separate discussion on meta.programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we please somehow adjust quality filter at Programmers to prevent posting low quality stuff like in above examples?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the reference, announcement of [filter adjustment at Trilogy sites](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/176875/165773 &quot;here&quot;) is as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've bumped up the threshold below which questions will be blocked. The majority of *recently-asked* questions that fall below the new threshold do not fare well on Stack Overflow (i.e. they are closed, deleted, and/or down-voted). &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The down-side is that short questions will be harder to post (this is more than just a length check, but short + poor spelling / caps / punctuation / formatting will damn a post more readily). At this point, I think that's a fair trade-off on Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I've also increased the threshold on Super User and Server Fault; although the volume is lower there, they field even fewer reasonable questions in this range. A quick check of other high-traffic sites does not appear to justify raising this anywhere else at this time.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;FWIW: Stack Overflow already rejects something like twelve hundred questions a day based on this check - that'd amount to about 13% of questions if a lot of them weren't just the same folks retrying more or less the same text over and over." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15157" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5854" RevisionGUID="d63f42e0-a5f4-484e-8368-a6f0a65d69e3" CreationDate="2013-04-17T19:38:33.527" UserId="1204" Text="The quality filters are not a panacea.  All they do is look for textual patterns that are *highly predictive of question failure.*  In that sense, they are completely statistical in nature; only those things that accurately red-flag questions that are likely to fail are included in the filter.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The resulting effect is that some things which you might expect to be caught by the filter (such as not capitalizing i for example) are not, because they are not sufficiently predictive of question failure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What remains is the actual meaning of the question, and since we have yet to figure out how to get computers to divine meaning, we still need human beings to moderate such questions.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15158" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5854" RevisionGUID="e98da9ee-5992-4a32-aa50-eeb4d727dbfc" CreationDate="2013-04-17T19:44:33.000" UserId="1204" Comment="added 228 characters in body" Text="&#xD;&#xA;Since all three questions you cited as examples were posted by the same person, and were all heavily downvoted and deleted, it's likely that this user is question-banned, and the problem has already solved itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The quality filters are not a panacea.  All they do is look for textual patterns that are *highly predictive of question failure.*  In that sense, they are completely statistical in nature; only those things that accurately red-flag questions that are likely to fail are included in the filter.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The resulting effect is that some things which you might expect to be caught by the filter (such as not capitalizing i for example) are not, because they are not sufficiently predictive of question failure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What remains is the actual meaning of the question, and since we have yet to figure out how to get computers to divine meaning, we still need human beings to moderate such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15159" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5853" RevisionGUID="5642d354-b232-49cf-bb7d-50b907c30d1a" CreationDate="2013-04-17T21:28:51.680" UserId="1204" Comment="added 30 characters in body" Text="We should tighten up the quality filter if there is evidence it would help.  I'd like some clarification of what Shog9 said, but it sounded to me like the algorithm they have isn't very predictive for this site.  As soon as gnat finishes tuning his beysian filter and submits the patch to SO we should do it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Just kidding about the filter.  As far as I know)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15160" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5853" RevisionGUID="6cb9157f-30fc-4946-ba58-82e00527e2e4" CreationDate="2013-04-17T21:40:19.740" UserId="31260" Comment="bayesian filter" Text="We should tighten up the quality filter if there is evidence it would help.  I'd like some clarification of what Shog9 said, but it sounded to me like the algorithm they have isn't very predictive for this site.  As soon as gnat finishes tuning his [bayesian filter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_spam_filtering) and submits the patch to SO we should do it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Just kidding about the filter.  As far as I know)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15161" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5847" RevisionGUID="65ede7f9-99f4-4160-bc72-f6669b2313f5" CreationDate="2013-04-17T21:46:15.450" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15162" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5848" RevisionGUID="69eaf6c8-a45a-4a09-8ec9-103b6ee1b8b0" CreationDate="2013-04-17T22:12:30.190" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="In many cases where one sees the &quot;3 answers and stop&quot; there is the additional bit of these three questions become significantly downvoted.  The mystical question ban calculation then kicks in before the new user limiter and bans them from asking questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is more obvious on sites where there is a lower flow of questions, active voters, and a higher variability of quality.  Several poor questions in succession are quite likely to gain attention and get all of them downvoted before one can ask 6 questions in the time period.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On sites with a larger traffic flow, it is possible for poor questions to sit around at 0 for awhile until the 6 question limit kicks in." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15163" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5855" RevisionGUID="9b5a3029-bfac-486e-9e34-c6f022af4b60" CreationDate="2013-04-18T16:01:08.153" UserId="35276" Text="Looks good to me now, I made some edits and sussed out what I'm fairly certain the author really wanted to ask, if it looks good please reopen otherwise any tips? I think it should be good now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/195359/from-tiff-to-jpeg-2000-can-i-use-jpeg-2000-now-at-2013" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15164" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5855" RevisionGUID="9b5a3029-bfac-486e-9e34-c6f022af4b60" CreationDate="2013-04-18T16:01:08.153" UserId="35276" Text="Is this question ready for reopen?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15165" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5855" RevisionGUID="9b5a3029-bfac-486e-9e34-c6f022af4b60" CreationDate="2013-04-18T16:01:08.153" UserId="35276" Text="|discussion|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15166" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5856" RevisionGUID="251362a0-0b2d-437b-aa82-97da401948f5" CreationDate="2013-04-18T16:09:14.233" UserId="47" Text="Done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even though it &quot;only&quot; had a couple of reopen votes, With the edits I think it deserves another chance." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15167" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5857" RevisionGUID="20301157-136e-47c6-a026-a03a571a6d46" CreationDate="2013-04-18T16:36:39.627" UserId="63" Text="After analyzing the data, I'm not convinced raising the sensitivity of the current filters will do much good on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The &quot;quality&quot; checks were designed for sites like Stack Overflow which attract a lot of short, very poorly written questions. Of the examples you gave, only 1 would currently be blocked on Stack Overflow - and that's *with* the recently-raised quality-score threshold. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- You obviously get *some* questions that the algorithm would consider low-quality (and some are already being blocked) but very, very few. More on that in a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The *majority* of questions asked here fare poorly. By which I mean, they're either closed, deleted, or down-voted. Even questions that max out the automated quality score fare poorly over 50% of the time. Coupled with the relatively low volume of low q-score questions, I doubt you'd even notice if I raised the threshold here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, here's the data - see what you think: [all questions asked on Programmers in the last year with a quality score less than 100](http://jsbin.com/amunib/1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are 1238 of them - about 9% of all questions asked on the site in that time. For reference, the threshold on Stack Overflow right now is 75, which is about as high as I could put it without a terrible false-positive rate. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15168" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5844" RevisionGUID="d6145e8f-9eff-477f-af27-89e68e12efb8" CreationDate="2013-04-18T16:49:05.753" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="added 160 characters in body" Text="&lt;del&gt;Yes, it's worth the effort to tighten whatever quality mechanisms are in place.&lt;/del&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;del&gt;Period.&lt;/del&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;del&gt;Yes, we'll probably filter out some otherwise decent questions that way.  That's a price I'm willing to pay to filter out crap questions like &quot;how do I build my own beginner's linux distro?&quot;  Questions like that make me want to open another meta question to identify the strongest but just-this-side-of-OK-for-Stack-Exchange word to describe it with.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/del&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Removing&quot; my answer as [the research](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5857/53019) doesn't indicate it would provide any benefit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15169" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5843" RevisionGUID="d90d0776-d231-417e-be7b-f2eaab91541a" CreationDate="2013-04-18T18:28:57.100" UserId="31260" Comment="provided score for example questions" Text="Some recent posts make me feel like these could be automatically rejected by [quality filter](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/quality-filter/info &quot;what's this&quot;), thus saving community efforts for better quality questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To develope My Own linux Distro for Linux Beginners.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195209/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To Know How To prepare An understanding Doc To Track what I am Doing On daily Basis So that I can Be update To my Work.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195203/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I am A New Joinee In a major MNC And Currently I am Working In Vitria Team I dont Know Much about Vitria From Career Persepective.Plz Guide&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195204/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Above are full literal quotes of the posts, I did not change anything.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently it has been announced that quality filter is tightened at Trilogy sites (for your convenience, announcement is quoted below).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* As far as I understand, SE team is [open to consider similar change for Programmers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/174097/is-it-time-to-tighten-up-the-question-quality-filter/176875?noredirect=1#comment531396_176875 &quot;quote source&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the sad truth is that on Programmers, even questions with a maximum quality score fare worse on average than the ones passing the threshold I just put in place on SO. We can try tweaking the threshold there too, but it's probably worth a separate discussion on meta.programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we please somehow adjust quality filter at Programmers to prevent posting low quality stuff like in above examples?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the reference, announcement of [filter adjustment at Trilogy sites](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/176875/165773 &quot;here&quot;) is as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've bumped up the threshold below which questions will be blocked. The majority of *recently-asked* questions that fall below the new threshold do not fare well on Stack Overflow (i.e. they are closed, deleted, and/or down-voted). &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The down-side is that short questions will be harder to post (this is more than just a length check, but short + poor spelling / caps / punctuation / formatting will damn a post more readily). At this point, I think that's a fair trade-off on Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I've also increased the threshold on Super User and Server Fault; although the volume is lower there, they field even fewer reasonable questions in this range. A quick check of other high-traffic sites does not appear to justify raising this anywhere else at this time.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;FWIW: Stack Overflow already rejects something like twelve hundred questions a day based on this check - that'd amount to about 13% of questions if a lot of them weren't just the same folks retrying more or less the same text over and over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update** for the reference, at the &quot;quality score&quot; list provided in [this answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5857/31260 &quot;thanks Shog!&quot;), first of above examples scores 70, second - 83 and third isn't there (probably meaning it's above 100)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15170" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5857" RevisionGUID="bd646367-76b1-4de6-85e3-84057b5d4b7e" CreationDate="2013-04-18T19:20:56.557" UserId="63" Comment="added 223 characters in body" Text="After analyzing the data, I'm not convinced raising the sensitivity of the current filters will do much good on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The &quot;quality&quot; checks were designed for sites like Stack Overflow which attract a lot of short, very poorly written questions. Of the examples you gave, only 1 would currently be blocked on Stack Overflow - and that's *with* the recently-raised quality-score threshold. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- You obviously get *some* questions that the algorithm would consider low-quality (and some are already being blocked) but very, very few. More on that in a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The *majority* of questions asked here fare poorly. By which I mean, they're either closed, deleted, or down-voted. Even questions that max out the automated quality score fare poorly over 50% of the time. Coupled with the relatively low volume of low q-score questions, I doubt you'd even notice if I raised the threshold here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, here's the data - see what you think: [all questions asked on Programmers in the last year with a quality score less than 100](http://jsbin.com/amunib/1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are 1238 of them - about 9% of all questions asked on the site in that time. For reference, the threshold on Stack Overflow right now is 75, which is about as high as I could put it without a terrible false-positive rate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is now raised to 73 on Programmers. MichaelT makes a good point: while this won't do much in terms of absolute numbers, it may help with the perception a bit by blocking some of the more egregious questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15171" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5843" RevisionGUID="9e49f2c5-ce63-4822-8c7c-85abef06854f" CreationDate="2013-04-18T21:25:13.163" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5843/is-it-time-to-tighten-up-the-quality-filter-at-programmers?noredirect=1#comment15879_5843" Text="Some recent posts make me feel like these could be automatically rejected by [quality filter](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/quality-filter/info &quot;what's this&quot;), thus saving community efforts for better quality questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To develope My Own linux Distro for Linux Beginners.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195209/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To Know How To prepare An understanding Doc To Track what I am Doing On daily Basis So that I can Be update To my Work.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195203/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I am A New Joinee In a major MNC And Currently I am Working In Vitria Team I dont Know Much about Vitria From Career Persepective.Plz Guide&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195204/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Above are full literal quotes of the posts, I did not change anything.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently it has been announced that quality filter is tightened at Trilogy sites (for your convenience, announcement is quoted below).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* As far as I understand, SE team is [open to consider similar change for Programmers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/174097/is-it-time-to-tighten-up-the-question-quality-filter/176875?noredirect=1#comment531396_176875 &quot;quote source&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the sad truth is that on Programmers, even questions with a maximum quality score fare worse on average than the ones passing the threshold I just put in place on SO. We can try tweaking the threshold there too, but it's probably worth a separate discussion on meta.programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we please somehow adjust quality filter at Programmers to prevent posting low quality stuff like in above examples?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the reference, announcement of [filter adjustment at Trilogy sites](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/176875/165773 &quot;here&quot;) is as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've bumped up the threshold below which questions will be blocked. The majority of *recently-asked* questions that fall below the new threshold do not fare well on Stack Overflow (i.e. they are closed, deleted, and/or down-voted). &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The down-side is that short questions will be harder to post (this is more than just a length check, but short + poor spelling / caps / punctuation / formatting will damn a post more readily). At this point, I think that's a fair trade-off on Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I've also increased the threshold on Super User and Server Fault; although the volume is lower there, they field even fewer reasonable questions in this range. A quick check of other high-traffic sites does not appear to justify raising this anywhere else at this time.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;FWIW: Stack Overflow already rejects something like twelve hundred questions a day based on this check - that'd amount to about 13% of questions if a lot of them weren't just the same folks retrying more or less the same text over and over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update** for the reference, at the &quot;quality score&quot; list provided in [this answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5857/31260 &quot;thanks Shog!&quot;): first of above examples scores 70, second - 83, third - 81." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15172" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5843" RevisionGUID="91a53697-8c3f-4e8d-b4f1-2bc929cde2c7" CreationDate="2013-04-18T21:38:02.970" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|answer-quality|quality|quality-filter|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15173" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5806" RevisionGUID="c9e009b5-b8de-44be-b18f-e3f96ef515d4" CreationDate="2013-04-18T23:28:29.923" UserId="31260" Comment="another one bites the dust" Text="Some old closed questions have many answers that probably were considered OK back then but are not quite up to current quality standards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are readers supposed to vote, edit, comment, flag answers in these questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's better to leave these alone, then I would like to also understand how readers are supposed to know that they stumbled upon &quot;untouchable&quot; posts (questions I am asking about don't have [historical lock](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples of the questions having many problematic answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Open-source wanted list](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26425/open-source-wanted-list)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20120411074124/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26425/open-source-wanted-list)&#xD;&#xA;* [Language agnostic programming books](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/language-agnostic-programming-books)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [What haskell blogs do you follow?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30058/what-haskell-blogs-do-you-follow)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20130331133445/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30058/what-haskell-blogs-do-you-follow)&#xD;&#xA;* [What traits do the best managers you've worked for have in common?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7966/what-traits-do-the-best-managers-youve-worked-for-have-in-common)&#xD;&#xA;* [What are some good programming cheat sheets?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3684/what-are-some-good-programming-cheat-sheets)&#xD;&#xA;* [What tools do you use to manage requests from users?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/13396/what-tools-do-you-use-to-manage-requests-from-users)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [How do you keep up to date with the C# programming language and community?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3023/how-do-you-keep-up-to-date-with-the-c-programming-language-and-community)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20101203140823/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3023/how-do-you-keep-up-to-date-with-the-c-programming-language-and-community)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Programmer's experiences book](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97303/programmers-experiences-book)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20110913190105/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97303/programmers-experiences-book)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Top research institutes in the world?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12416/top-research-institutes-in-the-world)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20110815235122/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12416/top-research-institutes-in-the-world)&#xD;&#xA;* [As a software engineer, who should I be following on Twitter?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135/as-a-software-engineer-who-should-i-be-following-on-twitter)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Recommended book about algorithms, data structures and complexity?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12833/recommended-book-about-algorithms-data-structures-and-complexity)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20101118060951/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12833/recommended-book-about-algorithms-data-structures-and-complexity)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Are there any magazines still worth reading?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1108/are-there-any-magazines-still-worth-reading)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20110817004231/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1108/are-there-any-magazines-still-worth-reading)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the general tech news website every programmer should read?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21118/what-is-the-general-tech-news-website-every-programmer-should-read)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In all the examples listed above I found at least 3 (usually more) answers that look like severely lacking explanation and context, total about 90 such answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. For the sake of completeness I'll explain in more details what kind posts are considered problematic here. In the context of my question, these are answers that fail an _&quot;imaginary opposite&quot; challenge_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's see how _challenge_ works, using some example answers from questions listed here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        1. &quot;Clean Code - Robert Martin&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        2. &quot;Ezyang is pretty good&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        3. &quot;Redmine&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        4. &quot;Ward Cunningham&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If someone posts an opposite claim** like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        1'. &quot;Clean Code - Robert Martin is a book to avoid&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        2'. &quot;Ezyang is pretty bad&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        3'. &quot;Redmine is a bad tool&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        4'. &quot;Ward Cunningham tweets are useless&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;, how would this answer help reader to pick of these differing opinions? You see, without an explanation the answer becomes useless in case if someone else posts a differing / opposing opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15174" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5858" RevisionGUID="799eb08a-16bf-4af1-b0e9-ad08b45eed05" CreationDate="2013-04-19T12:26:55.137" UserId="54268" Text="XKCD quoting seems to be quite popular on the computer-related SEes. I am trying to find I strip. *There is a room of programmers, the deadline is in the morning, and a bird is dead in it's cage, due to lack of oxygen. Which is it?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not sure where to put this question. There has to eb SE for it, doesn't it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15175" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5858" RevisionGUID="799eb08a-16bf-4af1-b0e9-ad08b45eed05" CreationDate="2013-04-19T12:26:55.137" UserId="54268" Text="What was that xkcd strip, that show &quot;Programemrs don't need air&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15176" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5858" RevisionGUID="799eb08a-16bf-4af1-b0e9-ad08b45eed05" CreationDate="2013-04-19T12:26:55.137" UserId="54268" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15177" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5859" RevisionGUID="768b89a5-a849-4a69-a4bb-c42dc2ede75f" CreationDate="2013-04-19T12:30:42.720" UserId="47" Text="There's nowhere on the Stack Exchange network where this would be On Topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15178" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5860" RevisionGUID="d2c346be-b7d0-4d40-81e5-75504e9bd00f" CreationDate="2013-04-19T13:08:05.607" UserId="26979" Text="An *extremely* minor complaint/observation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rev notice is partially obscured by the theme. I checked and no other SE sites seem to use images in that part of the footer so the &quot;problem&quot; is isolated to Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Rev Notice][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/UI5bl.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15179" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5860" RevisionGUID="d2c346be-b7d0-4d40-81e5-75504e9bd00f" CreationDate="2013-04-19T13:08:05.607" UserId="26979" Text="Programmers.SE Theme partially covers rev/copyright notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15180" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5860" RevisionGUID="d2c346be-b7d0-4d40-81e5-75504e9bd00f" CreationDate="2013-04-19T13:08:05.607" UserId="26979" Text="|bug|css|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15181" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5858" RevisionGUID="489dce08-df0d-4ddd-bf8b-6aaaefa4c4b3" CreationDate="2013-04-19T13:10:50.280" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="XKCD quoting seems to be quite popular on the computer-related SEes. I am trying to find I strip. *There is a room of programmers, the deadline is in the morning, and a bird is dead in it's cage, due to lack of oxygen. Which is it?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not sure where to put this question. There has to be SE for it, doesn't it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15182" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5858" RevisionGUID="489dce08-df0d-4ddd-bf8b-6aaaefa4c4b3" CreationDate="2013-04-19T13:10:50.280" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="What was that xkcd strip, that show &quot;Programmers don't need air&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15183" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5858" RevisionGUID="489dce08-df0d-4ddd-bf8b-6aaaefa4c4b3" CreationDate="2013-04-19T13:10:50.280" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="|discussion|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15184" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5861" RevisionGUID="1b61b1aa-957a-4e27-b5c3-3667100f177e" CreationDate="2013-04-19T16:07:54.973" UserId="47634" Text="A lot of times, development requires discussion. As programmers we know that there is not clear right or wrong answer, but a myriad of solutions, each with their own benefits and draw back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example: &#xD;&#xA;Which is Better To Use and Why: Mysql, PostgreSQL or MS SQL?&#xD;&#xA;What are the advtanges of Redis over Memcache?&#xD;&#xA;etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On top of that, their are interesting changes to be discussed such as this one here: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101241/did-jquery-kill-the-javascript-discussions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of these times topics are shut down as being not constructive. So my question is if the question has merit and hasn't been asked before, can there be a place for these &quot;not constructive&quot; questions to live?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15185" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5861" RevisionGUID="1b61b1aa-957a-4e27-b5c3-3667100f177e" CreationDate="2013-04-19T16:07:54.973" UserId="47634" Text="Can their be an area for interesting discussion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15186" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5861" RevisionGUID="1b61b1aa-957a-4e27-b5c3-3667100f177e" CreationDate="2013-04-19T16:07:54.973" UserId="47634" Text="|discussion|feature-request|recommendations|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15187" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5862" RevisionGUID="080e805b-2632-45ee-8537-73edfcd8b5e4" CreationDate="2013-04-19T16:14:00.833" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Discussions don't have answers - they have opinions and dense communication.  This doesn't fit the StackExchange Q&amp;A model well - where you have questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Chat ([The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) or your own created room if you have a specific topic and can get enough activity in there) can be a wonderful place for non-constructive discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can also be a place to hone a question so that it can be better presented on the main site or work to reopen a question that has been closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15188" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5860" RevisionGUID="58e80cff-8014-4592-9d2d-0208fb4c8fd3" CreationDate="2013-04-19T17:56:36.097" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|design|css|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15189" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5861" RevisionGUID="85c7ac23-01bb-40d1-8100-9fd16ae1d3f2" CreationDate="2013-04-19T19:04:06.257" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling, formatting" Text="A lot of times, development requires discussion. As programmers we know that there is not clear right or wrong answer, but a myriad of solutions, each with their own benefits and draw back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example:  &#xD;&#xA;Which is Better To Use and Why: Mysql, PostgreSQL or MS SQL?  &#xD;&#xA;What are the advantages of Redis over Memcache?  &#xD;&#xA;etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On top of that, their are interesting changes to be discussed such as this one here: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101241/did-jquery-kill-the-javascript-discussions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of these times topics are shut down as being not constructive. So my question is if the question has merit and hasn't been asked before, can there be a place for these &quot;not constructive&quot; questions to live?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15190" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5861" RevisionGUID="85c7ac23-01bb-40d1-8100-9fd16ae1d3f2" CreationDate="2013-04-19T19:04:06.257" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling, formatting" Text="Can there be an area for interesting discussion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15191" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5863" RevisionGUID="7ec316ae-1d4e-453c-b632-fe493c7cf829" CreationDate="2013-04-19T22:15:22.540" UserId="2722" Text="Has anyone set up such a forum using [Discourse][1]?  I'm sure there's be lots of takers from SO / Programmers.SE etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.discourse.org/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15192" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5839" RevisionGUID="2653f8fe-8e0d-440d-9121-f71ef2c51bfe" CreationDate="2013-04-20T08:00:00.000" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/325519201714458625" />
  <row Id="15193" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5864" RevisionGUID="211623b9-ffa3-4189-b640-2c23e13ac2d6" CreationDate="2013-04-21T02:05:36.173" UserId="26621" Text="I entirely agree it is unprofessional and childish: Answer the question according to how it was asked. If you can't, just remain silent. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, many questions that are 'bound' to a particular technology or language are because that language/technology is a requirement of the system/job/contract - cannot be changed. I myself work on a system that uses Sybase, which causes many problems that could be avoided if SqlServer was used. But Sybase is the house system - I have no power to change that. So sometimes I must ask Sybase questions. What good will it do me for someone to bash Sybase (you used the term correctly) and tell me to use SqlServer instead?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At most, maybe a comment: 'You know your problem is because you're using technology X - perhaps consider technology Y if possible, so you won't have to deal with it'" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15194" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5864" RevisionGUID="2650aa14-63a6-4322-bb9d-a985a523f85c" CreationDate="2013-04-21T02:13:46.973" UserId="26621" Comment="added 481 characters in body" Text="I entirely agree it is unprofessional and childish: Answer the question according to how it was asked. If you can't, just remain silent. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, many questions that are 'bound' to a particular technology or language are because that language/technology is a requirement of the system/job/contract - cannot be changed. Or because a programmer is trained and has a career using a particular language/technology. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I myself work on a system that uses Sybase, which causes many problems that could be avoided if SqlServer was used. But Sybase is the house system - I have no power to change that. So sometimes I must ask Sybase questions. What good will it do me for someone to bash Sybase (you used the term correctly) and tell me to use SqlServer instead?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I work in Delphi, C# and C++ - that's how I've made my living for 20 years - those are the languages I know and have training and experience in. If someone tells me 'Those strongly typed, compiled languages are the cause of your problems - they stink. You need to work with Python or Ruby and all your problems will disappear' - what good does that do me at this point? **None.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At most, maybe a comment: 'You know your problem is because you're using technology X - perhaps consider technology Y if possible, so you won't have to deal with it'" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15195" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5830" RevisionGUID="20ac73a0-156a-419e-8f73-05c2deb3b72b" CreationDate="2013-04-21T08:00:46.067" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/325881781771440129" />
  <row Id="15196" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5865" RevisionGUID="f5630724-4ff4-469a-9e44-6f8363cb96c1" CreationDate="2013-04-23T04:59:02.983" UserId="16247" Text="I wonder why [this question about the possibility of zero bugs](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/195571/is-it-possible-to-reach-absolute-zero-bug-state-for-large-scale-software) was closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it's very much on topic for the field of software engineering, and it's not an opinionated/flamebait sort of question, I can only think of one close reason: that it will solicit debate and extended discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But this question is the stuff software engineering is made of, right? An answer _is_ possible, and you can quote software engineering books and papers. Right? You can mention practical matters such as the cost of finding bugs, diminishing ROI, etc, or theoretical aspects such as the feasibility of formal proof in the general case, and all of that with proper references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't seem so open-ended it must be closed.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15197" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5865" RevisionGUID="f5630724-4ff4-469a-9e44-6f8363cb96c1" CreationDate="2013-04-23T04:59:02.983" UserId="16247" Text="Why was the question about zero-bug large scale software closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15198" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5865" RevisionGUID="f5630724-4ff4-469a-9e44-6f8363cb96c1" CreationDate="2013-04-23T04:59:02.983" UserId="16247" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15199" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5865" RevisionGUID="c315b50b-9875-4e38-a49e-71efdd3e0d59" CreationDate="2013-04-23T05:30:33.320" UserId="16247" Comment="added 190 characters in body" Text="I wonder why [this question about the possibility of zero bugs](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/195571/is-it-possible-to-reach-absolute-zero-bug-state-for-large-scale-software) was closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it's very much on topic for the field of software engineering, and it's not an opinionated/flamebait sort of question, I can only think of one close reason: that it will solicit debate and extended discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But this question is the stuff software engineering is made of, right? An answer _is_ possible, and you can quote software engineering books and papers. Right? You can mention practical matters such as the cost of finding bugs, diminishing ROI, etc, or theoretical aspects such as the feasibility of formal proof in the general case, and all of that with proper references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't seem so open-ended it must be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**edit**: as Yannis points out, I misread the close reason, which is actually &quot;not a real question&quot;. I still think it is on-topic and can be salvaged into a more focused question.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15200" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5866" RevisionGUID="5451963b-757a-485e-9f63-edc839d671f2" CreationDate="2013-04-23T09:08:39.043" UserId="47" Text="If you think a closed question can be salvaged then please go ahead and make (or suggest) the edits necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have to suggest the edits then two people will review them and if they approve the question will be edited. If your edits get approved there's hopefully a good chance that the two approvers will vote to reopen as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the question has been edited it will be place on the /review/reopen queue where others can decide whether your changes are enough to bring it within the scope of the site and an actual, answerable question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Highlighting the question in [chat] or here is a good way to bring attention to the changes as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15201" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5867" RevisionGUID="2ae95a73-a182-4344-a736-c1104a9f0e29" CreationDate="2013-04-25T00:01:47.010" UserId="12893" Text="The specific questions I'd like to ask is how to prepare for PHP jobs since a) PHP is not fully OO AFAIK and b) There're no frameworks in the regular sense of other programming languages concept of frameworks. Now do you think that this spec question is something I can ask or should I avoid it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15202" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5867" RevisionGUID="2ae95a73-a182-4344-a736-c1104a9f0e29" CreationDate="2013-04-25T00:01:47.010" UserId="12893" Text="Can questions about PHP work environments be on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15203" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5867" RevisionGUID="2ae95a73-a182-4344-a736-c1104a9f0e29" CreationDate="2013-04-25T00:01:47.010" UserId="12893" Text="|support|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15204" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5868" RevisionGUID="1ded6e05-32ae-47b3-a2c2-da7d7403b6e7" CreationDate="2013-04-25T11:31:52.637" UserId="78230" Text="Even my answer is more helpful, other users upvote an answer which is given by a user who has the maximum reputation and owner of the question accepts this answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, a downvoted answer is downvoted again by the users; and I am sure about they don't read the answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Isn't it prejudice? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15205" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5868" RevisionGUID="1ded6e05-32ae-47b3-a2c2-da7d7403b6e7" CreationDate="2013-04-25T11:31:52.637" UserId="78230" Text="Why always answers of users who have the maximum reputation in a question accepted and voted up?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15206" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5868" RevisionGUID="1ded6e05-32ae-47b3-a2c2-da7d7403b6e7" CreationDate="2013-04-25T11:31:52.637" UserId="78230" Text="|discussion|questions|answers|down-votes|up-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15207" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5869" RevisionGUID="956dfbc5-e4f2-441e-8a4c-1d0f213617bc" CreationDate="2013-04-25T14:32:35.480" UserId="53263" Text="So I would like to jump in the programmers.SE community, but for the life of me I can't actually figure out the community standards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had this question closed: What languages do Node.js developers primarily come from?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I literally do not see how it fits NARQ. It's a precise question with a literal factual answer. I do not know the literal factual answer or how to research it. That's why I posted the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only problem I see is that I gave the background on why I wanted to know the answer to this question, but the question is a legitimate question in its own right. One person answered the &quot;background&quot; question and was quite helpful to me. This is pretty typical practice on SO for instance - you try to research a question, ask a derived question, and someone is all the more helpful by giving you a different approach entirely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I'm asking for 1) an explanation of why this was closed and 2) some information on how I can learn what belongs and does not belong on programmers.SE, that would help me avoid asking non-real questions like this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15208" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5869" RevisionGUID="956dfbc5-e4f2-441e-8a4c-1d0f213617bc" CreationDate="2013-04-25T14:32:35.480" UserId="53263" Text="What criterion of NARQ does this question meet?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15209" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5869" RevisionGUID="956dfbc5-e4f2-441e-8a4c-1d0f213617bc" CreationDate="2013-04-25T14:32:35.480" UserId="53263" Text="|discussion|support|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15210" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5869" RevisionGUID="7c739175-9cbe-4eb1-a75e-f1cb4037e80c" CreationDate="2013-04-25T14:34:08.633" UserId="25936" Comment="linked to the question" Text="So I would like to jump in the programmers.SE community, but for the life of me I can't actually figure out the community standards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had this question closed: [What languages do Node.js developers primarily come from?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I literally do not see how it fits NARQ. It's a precise question with a literal factual answer. I do not know the literal factual answer or how to research it. That's why I posted the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only problem I see is that I gave the background on why I wanted to know the answer to this question, but the question is a legitimate question in its own right. One person answered the &quot;background&quot; question and was quite helpful to me. This is pretty typical practice on SO for instance - you try to research a question, ask a derived question, and someone is all the more helpful by giving you a different approach entirely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I'm asking for 1) an explanation of why this was closed and 2) some information on how I can learn what belongs and does not belong on programmers.SE, that would help me avoid asking non-real questions like this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/195991/what-languages-do-node-js-developers-primarily-come-from" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15211" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5870" RevisionGUID="7c004f3b-ed86-4727-881a-8cb9391a93aa" CreationDate="2013-04-25T14:46:14.130" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There are a couple of factors to consider.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(While I use &quot;I&quot; in the following examples, *I* do not always do this)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, in any community there are sub groups within it.  When I see a question that has been modified by certain users, I look to see what that person said in the question (assuming they answered it rather than editing the question).  If the question has a dozen answers in it, I look to see that person's contribution and vote on that question, leaving other questions unvoted.  This will have the effect of boosting a single user's answer score while leaving others the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, people with high reputations have likely learned how to write for the site.  Each target media has a different style of writing that fits it best.  One writes for Stack Exchange different than Wikipedia, which is different than Everything2, which is different than a blog post, which is different than a news paper article, which is different than a glossy magazine article, etc... Certain styles of writing will be more effective in attracting people to read it, and vote on it.  It is a learned skill.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I am sometimes amazed at the more opinionated nearly content free answers that I have that have received more votes than the boring content rich answers that languish - but that's because they are better *written* (and more interesting) as something to read.  That doesn't mean write content free things (unless its a grammar).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, as Jimmy mentioned in the comment, there is the 'mob mentality' of following the general trend of the votes.  If something is upvoted, people tend to upvote it.  If something is downvoted, people tend to down vote it (though that is less so because of the associated cost for a downvote).  Not everyone spends the time reading all the answers, especially when there are lots of them it becomes more intimidating to read past the second or third one.  Thus, the top one gets an upvote, the second one may get one if it is interesting and useful and then it starts petering out.  Having a 'boring' higher voted question may be even more impacting on questions that are scored lower than it as its boring to read." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15212" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5870" RevisionGUID="ffcf8333-b64d-4862-a5e1-2fa1716cc706" CreationDate="2013-04-25T15:33:44.497" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 536 characters in body" Text="There are a couple of factors to consider.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(While I use &quot;I&quot; in the following examples, *I* do not always do this)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, in any community there are sub groups within it.  When I see a question that has been modified by certain users, I look to see what that person said in the question (assuming they answered it rather than editing the question).  If the question has a dozen answers in it, I look to see that person's contribution and vote on that question, leaving other questions unvoted.  This will have the effect of boosting a single user's answer score while leaving others the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, people with high reputations have likely learned how to write for the site.  Each target media has a different style of writing that fits it best.  One writes for Stack Exchange different than Wikipedia, which is different than Everything2, which is different than a blog post, which is different than a news paper article, which is different than a glossy magazine article, etc... Certain styles of writing will be more effective in attracting people to read it, and vote on it.  It is a learned skill.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I am sometimes amazed at the more opinionated nearly content free answers that I have that have received more votes than the boring content rich answers that languish - but that's because they are better *written* (and more interesting) as something to read.  That doesn't mean write content free things (unless its a grammar).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, as Jimmy mentioned in the comment, there is the 'mob mentality' of following the general trend of the votes.  If something is upvoted, people tend to upvote it.  If something is downvoted, people tend to down vote it (though that is less so because of the associated cost for a downvote).  Not everyone spends the time reading all the answers, especially when there are lots of them it becomes more intimidating to read past the second or third one.  Thus, the top one gets an upvote, the second one may get one if it is interesting and useful and then it starts petering out.  Having a 'boring' higher voted question may be even more impacting on questions that are scored lower than it as its boring to read.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, there is a subtle difference between two answers that is the key to one being the 'right' answer.  That one answer picks up a specific point that another does not include.  This may not always be the something the person who answers it picks up on (the '-ers' being an indication of procedural code being asked about, or one of my own where I pointed out the dry being used as a justification for clever code - I was expecting that question to sit at the bottom with a few votes and it got accepted and now has the most)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15213" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5871" RevisionGUID="6468df2b-208b-4dac-b0b7-b9194b01f3a1" CreationDate="2013-04-25T16:17:58.307" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Disclosure: I'm the 3rd of the 5 community votes that voted to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's a precise question &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, this is true.  But the value of your question to the community was not particularly evident to me - nor apparently to the other 4 voters.  Arguably, `too localized` may have been a better close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with a literal factual answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Possibly, but there's a presupposition that the answer exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reading your question, my initial reaction was &quot;So what?&quot;  I didn't see how having an answer, much less a definitive answer, would really make a difference to the decision point you were at.  If I read your question correctly, you're trying to decide on which logging levels to expose.  _And_ you're basing your decision on the background and therefore presumed preference of your target users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What really drug down your question is that it's a research resource request.  You're looking for some demographic type of study that says __% of Node.js users have a Java background and __% have a Ruby background and so on.  Research resource requests generally don't fare very well on P.SE.  While it's possible to craft an answerable question in that genre, it's pretty rare for the data to exist.  Again, NARQ may not have been the _best_ close code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question meets some of the criteria of a good question, but ultimately I didn't feel it would generate lasting, meaningful value to the P.SE community.  And that's why I voted to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You asked how the question could have been made better.  As you might surmise, I'm not sure it's salvageable, but these aspects would help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Explain what research you've already done and where you're stuck.  There's no mention of this in your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Explain why this matters; explain the scope of the issue.  Yes, you stated: `I think it makes most sense to follow the convention of the language that a most typical Node developer is comfortable in.`  But c'mon, really now?  The nomenclature behind logging levels really doesn't make a difference.  How well you document what each logging level does _will_ make quite a bit of a difference.  Pick them, move on, and if the user community really, really hates the levels you offered then change in response to that feedback." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15214" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5872" RevisionGUID="4ee00ab5-5f32-4743-b243-3ce875e06d2e" CreationDate="2013-04-25T18:24:59.150" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I was the fourth vote of five.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reasoning can basically be summed up with &quot;the question that is being asked does not present a problem that can be answered&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no problem stated as the question.  There might be a problem behind the question (on conventions of log levels), but the question itself doesn't have a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it doesn't have a problem, it can't be 'solved'.  And is not a real question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I often have this problem with technically literate business people asking me for a technical solution to their problem (I want a field in this spot on the page that to enter this value).  I can do it, but it is often the &quot;right answer to the wrong question.&quot;  I am hired to solve problems - and the problem was that the business person wanted XYZ and gave me the solution to the problem to implement, rather than the problem to solve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It takes some asking and thinking of what the problem actually is to be able to give the right answer to the right question.  When asking a question, consider that when the question asks for validation of a solution, it is a less than ideal question - there isn't a problem to solve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was also debating the 'too localized'.  The answer for &quot;What languages do Node.js developers primarily come from?&quot; today is probably quite different than it will be next year, or the year after that.  As such, the data for the answer, if it could be found, would not be useful at a later point in time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Requests for data are inherently difficult to answer with this consideration.  If someone was asking &quot;what different versions of Android are in the wild?&quot; the two possibilities are &quot;the stats as of now&quot; - which won't be useful in a few months, or a link to a page that has the updated stats - which is a link only answer (and places us as a proxy for google)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15215" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5873" RevisionGUID="8574fd35-4a04-4bc4-83cc-5055a7024dc0" CreationDate="2013-04-25T20:58:13.173" UserId="1204" Text="I am the second of the close voters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&quot;What languages do Node.js developers primarily come from&quot;* is a polling question, so I could have closed as Not Constructive.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I closed as &quot;Not a Real Question&quot; instead, because the actual question was &quot;What should my logging levels be&quot; and the OP was trying to back into that question by ascertaining what languages Node.js developers were familiar with, which really didn't make much sense to me, given that Node.JS uses Javascript." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15216" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5873" RevisionGUID="94a0dbe1-b8f6-484e-8bf0-f857a52486df" CreationDate="2013-04-25T21:05:30.343" UserId="1204" Comment="added 98 characters in body" Text="I am the second of the close voters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&quot;What languages do Node.js developers primarily come from&quot;* is a polling question, so I could have closed as Not Constructive.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I closed as &quot;Not a Real Question&quot; instead, because the actual question was &quot;What should my logging levels be&quot; and the OP was trying to back into that question by ascertaining what languages Node.js developers were familiar with, which really didn't make much sense to me, given that Node.JS uses Javascript.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to the criteria for closing as Not a Real Question, the question is solidly *rhetorical;* there's no real problem to be solved here.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15217" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5874" RevisionGUID="19caddf2-c350-4d53-8927-d7d68c6036e9" CreationDate="2013-04-26T09:47:00.993" UserId="28718" Text="I originally posted a question on Programmers because at the time it was quite general with no code.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/195959/java-blocking-on-multiple-queues&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After doing some work on the problem I have a fair amount of actual code which I added to the question.  Now it looks more like a question about a specific problem I'm having, ie it's now more suited to Stack Overflow than Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've voted to migrate the question to SO, but I can't migrate it until others vote to migrate it as well.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you agree and think it's better for Stack Overflow in its current form can you please vote to migrate it?  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15218" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5874" RevisionGUID="19caddf2-c350-4d53-8927-d7d68c6036e9" CreationDate="2013-04-26T09:47:00.993" UserId="28718" Text="Move question to Stack Overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15219" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5874" RevisionGUID="19caddf2-c350-4d53-8927-d7d68c6036e9" CreationDate="2013-04-26T09:47:00.993" UserId="28718" Text="|support|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15220" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5875" RevisionGUID="7ce3984b-49e5-4c66-9cb5-145e9d9b0ca6" CreationDate="2013-04-26T10:47:49.877" UserId="25476" Text="While there is nothing wrong with it, you don't need to post a meta question requesting the community migrate your question if you feel it is in the wrong place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have the ability to Flag for a moderator's attention and give your request directly to us where we can make a determination on what the most appropriate action is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I went ahead and migrated it for you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15221" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5876" RevisionGUID="aca28446-492a-409f-b7d9-fae6a3b52091" CreationDate="2013-04-26T14:16:32.640" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Thorsten Müller was presented with an [odd review question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/28155).  Odd, because the question was deleted on April 13, but he was asked today to review the first-post-answer in the deleted question.  Interestingly, MadKeithV was able to complete the review despite not seeing the question it pertained to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This is the deleted question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/63378/53019) and this is a link to the [answer to review](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/194562/53019).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a link to [The Whiteboard chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/9158495#9158495) where Thorsten called out the oddity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So is something borked in the review queues?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15222" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5876" RevisionGUID="aca28446-492a-409f-b7d9-fae6a3b52091" CreationDate="2013-04-26T14:16:32.640" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Is something wrong with the review queues?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15223" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5876" RevisionGUID="aca28446-492a-409f-b7d9-fae6a3b52091" CreationDate="2013-04-26T14:16:32.640" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|support|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15224" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5877" RevisionGUID="77118ed9-ce5c-4f8b-a97a-425453eb38dd" CreationDate="2013-04-26T14:18:19.503" UserId="47" Text="It was a review audit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Review audit passed 1 hour ago:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every so often you will be presented with a fake audit just to make sure you are paying attention. This was one of those times.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything is working as expected.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15225" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5876" RevisionGUID="510b84ce-83fb-4c08-a69c-49cb0110e6db" CreationDate="2013-04-26T14:18:55.537" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15226" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5858" RevisionGUID="1f82b1fe-18d2-406c-8751-beabc14ee58b" CreationDate="2013-04-26T22:28:56.773" UserId="47" Comment="2" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:3965,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Karl Bielefeldt&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:31090,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;MadKeithV&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:5099,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Bart van Ingen Schenau&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="15229" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5877" RevisionGUID="a10fd5e2-ab76-476f-bfa8-e84035ac773a" CreationDate="2013-04-28T08:16:54.860" UserId="31260" Comment="review audit += http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/review-audits/info &quot;what's this&quot;" Text="It was a [review audit](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/review-audits/info &quot;what's this&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Review audit passed 1 hour ago:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every so often you will be presented with a fake audit just to make sure you are paying attention. This was one of those times.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything is working as expected.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15230" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5860" RevisionGUID="abe0524b-152c-4555-abfd-b744bc81d6a0" CreationDate="2013-04-28T13:09:59.423" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|css|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15231" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5860" RevisionGUID="43390050-a19b-423e-96de-177b0398985a" CreationDate="2013-04-28T13:10:20.347" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="15235" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5879" RevisionGUID="21ca3ddd-176f-47cb-907f-d7e72a7939e9" CreationDate="2013-04-30T11:57:30.207" UserId="4526" Text="This question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/196578/disable-spell-check-when-sending-code-in-outlook&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;was migrated by a **very-low-rep** user to SU.  Is that supposed to be possible?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This same user then &quot;answered&quot; the question on SU with an answer that illustrates the very reason I wanted the question on Programmers not SU... the answer shows a lack of basic understanding of the unique issues of a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(He advises me to add to a spell-check dictionary every possible variable and method name I will ever use in the future)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I chose Programmers because I thought that was the best community to understand my problem and have faced it before.  Migrating the question was overly zealous and counter-productive.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15236" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5879" RevisionGUID="21ca3ddd-176f-47cb-907f-d7e72a7939e9" CreationDate="2013-04-30T11:57:30.207" UserId="4526" Text="Why was my question migrated to SU?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15237" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5879" RevisionGUID="21ca3ddd-176f-47cb-907f-d7e72a7939e9" CreationDate="2013-04-30T11:57:30.207" UserId="4526" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15238" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5880" RevisionGUID="3808fa97-0395-4335-9c4d-f931447d1793" CreationDate="2013-04-30T12:03:56.617" UserId="4" Text="The migration was performed by a community moderator and the migration was correct. The question is off-topic per our FAQ - it is not a question about software development that falls within the scope of our site. If that answer is insufficient, you should edit your question on Super User (where questions about programs such as Outlook are on-topic) to add more details." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15239" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5881" RevisionGUID="1b93d984-edf3-4346-a5a3-0f0adcd332cf" CreationDate="2013-04-30T12:03:59.217" UserId="25936" Text="Your question was migrated from Programmers by a Programmers moderator. Their reputation on the target site is irrelevant (to the migration process).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the migration itself, your question is off topic on Programmers. Disabling the &quot;red spell check squigglies&quot; on Outlook isn't really what I'd call a &quot;conceptual question on software development&quot;. If you are looking for a programmatic solution, then your question would be more suitable for Stack Overflow than Programmers. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15240" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5881" RevisionGUID="d03d327d-eb0f-4b0c-98c8-49470a66d1ac" CreationDate="2013-04-30T12:10:18.647" UserId="25936" Comment="added 98 characters in body" Text="Your question was migrated from Programmers by a Programmers moderator. Their reputation on the target site is irrelevant (to the migration process).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the migration itself, your question is off topic on Programmers. Disabling the &quot;red spell check squigglies&quot; on Outlook isn't really what I'd call a &quot;conceptual question on software development&quot;. If you are looking for a programmatic solution, then your question would be more suitable for Stack Overflow than Programmers. If you decide to post it on Stack Overflow, please take care to mention what you've already tried." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15241" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5882" RevisionGUID="a947e32c-17c3-4a71-86c4-31751b70f6bb" CreationDate="2013-05-01T09:55:53.613" UserDisplayName="user79803" Text="I have seen people downvoting any questions without reading the question properly, just the title and hit the downvote without caring to read the content/question. Once I asked the question, I got downvote in 3 seconds, common in 3 seconds, I cannot even finish reading the first line, the person cared to downvote without any explanation (comments in most case) and hit **close this topic**. Isn't this bullying ? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its good to help the SE network and work as inspector / moderator, whatever, but does that give a license to be bully ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15242" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5882" RevisionGUID="a947e32c-17c3-4a71-86c4-31751b70f6bb" CreationDate="2013-05-01T09:55:53.613" UserDisplayName="user79803" Text="How to get rid of Bullies in Stack Exchange" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15243" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5882" RevisionGUID="a947e32c-17c3-4a71-86c4-31751b70f6bb" CreationDate="2013-05-01T09:55:53.613" UserDisplayName="user79803" Text="|discussion|stackexchange|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15244" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5882" RevisionGUID="fcce30f3-dae1-4baf-b17e-7f37b968f5db" CreationDate="2013-05-01T10:57:44.717" UserId="25476" Comment="added 144 characters in body" Text="I have seen people downvoting any questions without reading the question properly, just the title and hit the downvote without caring to read the content/question. Once I asked the question, I got downvote in 3 seconds, common in 3 seconds, I cannot even finish reading the first line, the person cared to downvote without any explanation (comments in most case) and hit **close this topic**. Isn't this bullying ? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its good to help the SE network and work as inspector / moderator, whatever, but does that give a license to be bully ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the question where I feel I am being bullied: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/196646/traits-of-good-php-web-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15245" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5883" RevisionGUID="7298c7a1-5131-4210-8536-92707ca10434" CreationDate="2013-05-01T11:17:56.350" UserId="25476" Text="&gt; Yeah it sounds like overreaction but there are always some genuine questions which may not have genuine answer but may have collection of answers to satisfy the questioner. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question is legitimate and appropriate for a discussion forum, Reddit or Slashdot but we actively discourage such open ended broad questions here.  We are looking to build a site around peer reviewed, specific questions, within the scope of the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and have clear concise peer reviewed answers that actually address the problem with facts or experiences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question is good, but it will invite a lot of really bad answers and a lot of conflicting answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think PHP Framework X is the BEST!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think PHP Framework Y is the BEST!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then how does that help you?  You might think the one with the highest votes is the correct answer but in fact the one with the highest votes is the most popular framework.  That doesn't really help anybody make the best framework choice for their specific situation and that is what we mean when we say a question becomes a poll.  We are a Q&amp;A site, not SurveyMonkey.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't mean to call them bully, but some people cannot help themselves to surf around and hit the close button as fast as they could. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can't speak for what is in other peoples hearts and minds.  You can't claim to know what they are thinking.  There are bullies on every site as in every aspect of life, and just for the sake of argument lets say that 1 out of 5 people on this site happens to be a bully (I am guessing on the high side).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It still takes 5 people to close the question so if one bully closed it for the lulz, then you can only assume the other 4 had a very good reason to.  Don't worry about the bully or the quick close vote, why did 4 other people decide to close and downvote?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am positive about SE and people here who are here to help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of us are here to help and we want to welcome new users. The challenge for us is explaining to new users like yourself **HOW** we are different and **WHY** we are different than any other site out there.  When new users get frustrated or angry then I feel like we have failed in explaining.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't take downvotes and close votes as a personal attack or insult.  It is the way that we rank content and nothing more.  It only becomes an issue if it is a repetitive habit.  Furthermore we do take bullying seriously.  There are algorithms in place to identify, reverse and punish those that target users with downvotes and close votes.  Downvotes and close votes should be directed at content and not people." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15246" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="5882" RevisionGUID="efec8195-41df-4339-84f5-3bf207804777" CreationDate="2013-05-01T15:27:54.167" UserDisplayName="user79803" Comment="Rollback to [a947e32c-17c3-4a71-86c4-31751b70f6bb]" Text="I have seen people downvoting any questions without reading the question properly, just the title and hit the downvote without caring to read the content/question. Once I asked the question, I got downvote in 3 seconds, common in 3 seconds, I cannot even finish reading the first line, the person cared to downvote without any explanation (comments in most case) and hit **close this topic**. Isn't this bullying ? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its good to help the SE network and work as inspector / moderator, whatever, but does that give a license to be bully ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15247" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5884" RevisionGUID="99dcf627-2251-4a2d-9a3b-29f7bafb4da5" CreationDate="2013-05-01T18:12:25.877" UserId="32008" Text="Not sure if I'm clear so I'll explain :-) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the person asking a question accepts a given answer, why is this answer not upvoted at the same time ? I find it &quot;strange&quot; to have question with accepted answers with 0 points, with no upvote/downvote at all. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This does not happen very much at Programmers I think, but I've seen it a lot on the main Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, has this been though of before ? Is it by design ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15248" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5884" RevisionGUID="99dcf627-2251-4a2d-9a3b-29f7bafb4da5" CreationDate="2013-05-01T18:12:25.877" UserId="32008" Text="Why is it that, when accepting an answer, it does not automatically receive an upvote?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15249" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5884" RevisionGUID="99dcf627-2251-4a2d-9a3b-29f7bafb4da5" CreationDate="2013-05-01T18:12:25.877" UserId="32008" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15250" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5885" RevisionGUID="1077b79f-e0bb-41cc-9b9b-5043e3193dd7" CreationDate="2013-05-01T18:16:12.310" UserId="47" Text="It's by design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Accepting an answer is independent of voting up (or down).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't forget that an answer might not be useful but it still might be the answer solves the problem for the OP. The answer might be &quot;you can't do that&quot; (for example) which isn't really that useful (even if it is true) but if it's really the case then the OP might accept it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, don't forget a new user can't up-vote until they get 15 reputation, whereas they can *always* accept an answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15252" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5886" RevisionGUID="0ca4f280-86da-4d75-b292-e1382290434a" CreationDate="2013-05-02T14:54:38.417" UserId="24701" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/196777/documentation-examples-etc-of-implementing-googles-website-translator&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The one comment I got was a link that was so generic, it might as well have been to www.google.com. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15253" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5886" RevisionGUID="0ca4f280-86da-4d75-b292-e1382290434a" CreationDate="2013-05-02T14:54:38.417" UserId="24701" Text="Can anyone tell me why this question was closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15254" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5886" RevisionGUID="0ca4f280-86da-4d75-b292-e1382290434a" CreationDate="2013-05-02T14:54:38.417" UserId="24701" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15255" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5887" RevisionGUID="b3257318-8189-4eae-93f4-bee96f56c5f1" CreationDate="2013-05-02T14:57:09.620" UserId="47" Text="&gt; The one comment I got was a link that was so generic, it might as well have been to www.google.com.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This pretty much explains it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is asking for a list of resources. List questions are not a good fit for the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A model as they produce a list(!) of answers which are equally valid and all voting will produce is the most popular.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will leave you no better off than you were before you asked the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15256" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5887" RevisionGUID="31901833-5aa2-434b-a4b1-17656f2b79d1" CreationDate="2013-05-02T15:07:19.427" UserId="47" Comment="updated" Text="&gt; The one comment I got was a link that was so generic, it might as well have been to www.google.com.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This pretty much explains it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People (myself included) interpreted the question as asking for a list of resources. List questions are not a good fit for the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A model as they produce a list(!) of answers which are equally valid and all voting will produce is the most popular.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will leave you no better off than you were before you asked the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you need to do is reword the question so that it's clearer that you are asking for something specific you expect to find in one place only." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15257" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5888" RevisionGUID="93850891-d909-4cda-91b5-2976d2ad2f91" CreationDate="2013-05-02T15:20:52.703" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="From the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I can't seem to find any documentation or examples of Google's Website Translator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned, this is a resource request.  Resource requests ask to make P.SE into a proxy for a search engine.  The Q&amp;A format is a less than ideal way to do this.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, resource requests tend to be temporal, APIs change, google migrates one application into another, etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does anyone have any experience (good or bad) with using the Website Translator?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a polling question.  There isn't any correct answer to such a question - every answer to a poll is a correct answer.  As such, the Q&amp;A format which expects to have a single correct answer to a question does not work well with polling questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can I set a particular sub-domain to automatically display in French? Can I specify that the site should be automatically translated to the user's default language?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question isn't a good topical fit for Programmers.SE.  Are two other other stack exchanges within the network - Webapps.SE (it's [faq](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/faq)) and Webmasters.SE (its [faq](http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/faq)) which may be a better topical fit.  It would be a good idea to check in the corresponding chats to see which one (if either) is the best choice (don't post on both).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do realize that the issue of resource request may have be similarly problematic on the other sites.  Polling questions are very likely to be problematic across the entire SE network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of note, just asking the question in the chat is likely always welcomed (no matter what other issues that it has)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15258" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5889" RevisionGUID="e912e9e9-68f4-4a8a-a6d8-f4ce7e876af4" CreationDate="2013-05-02T21:11:29.770" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15259" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5890" RevisionGUID="e0219bae-71d8-416a-b287-648b4c0b2e87" CreationDate="2013-05-02T21:11:29.770" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15260" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5891" RevisionGUID="103614c3-dc31-41f6-b206-65195713ec72" CreationDate="2013-05-02T21:17:59.810" UserId="31260" Text="What is the difference between [meta-tag:exact-duplicates] (16 questions) and [meta-tag:duplicate-questions] (4 questions) tags?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, neither of above have tag wiki; per my reading of handful of questions I randomly picked these look like having the same meaning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please consider merging mentioned tags, and making them synonyms." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15261" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5891" RevisionGUID="103614c3-dc31-41f6-b206-65195713ec72" CreationDate="2013-05-02T21:17:59.810" UserId="31260" Text="What is the difference between [exact-duplicates] and [duplicate-questions] tags? - synonym request" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15262" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5891" RevisionGUID="103614c3-dc31-41f6-b206-65195713ec72" CreationDate="2013-05-02T21:17:59.810" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15263" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5889" RevisionGUID="03b3be1a-bc07-4e9f-b8a3-7aed1c68c75c" CreationDate="2013-05-02T21:22:35.270" UserId="31260" Comment="added 1725 characters in body" Text="For questions about the process of identifying and closing questions that are duplicates of another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related articles at Stack Exchange blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...**duplication is not necessarily bad**. Quite the contrary — some duplication is _desirable_. There’s often benefit to having multiple subtle variants of a question around, as people tend to ask and search using completely different words, and the better our coverage, the better odds people can find the answer they’re looking for...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;...use your good judgment and please continue to close and merge duplicates as you see fit. However, bear in mind that cultivating and supporting a moderate amount of natural duplication actively _helps_ the community...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Handling Duplicate Questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/handling-duplicate-questions/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...there are three classes of duplicate questions, from most clear to least clear.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. Cut-and-paste duplicate questions. These questions are the very definition of exact duplicates; they are typically from users who willfully take the very same question and post it again... No grey area here. &#xD;&#xA;2. Accidental duplicates. These questions aren’t copy and paste, but they cover the exact same ground as an earlier Stack Overflow question. The overlap is not ambiguous...&#xD;&#xA;3. Borderline duplicates. These questions are ambiguous; they’re in the same ballpark as a previous question, but have subtle differences that may make them legitimately standalone questions. These are subject to interpretation..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15264" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="5889" RevisionGUID="03b3be1a-bc07-4e9f-b8a3-7aed1c68c75c" CreationDate="2013-05-02T21:22:35.270" Comment="Proposed by 31260 approved by 47 edit id of 11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15265" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5890" RevisionGUID="f03b7444-fd26-444b-a7ab-96c10092b623" CreationDate="2013-05-02T21:22:39.350" UserId="31260" Comment="added 109 characters in body" Text="For questions about the process of identifying and closing questions that are duplicates of another question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15266" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="5890" RevisionGUID="f03b7444-fd26-444b-a7ab-96c10092b623" CreationDate="2013-05-02T21:22:39.350" Comment="Proposed by 31260 approved by 47 edit id of 12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15267" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5892" RevisionGUID="16a905f0-1eef-4932-a50a-924dd1c533a0" CreationDate="2013-05-02T21:22:56.273" UserId="25936" Text="Yes, those two look like they should be merged. I propose we make [meta-tag:duplicate-questions] the master tag, it might have less questions but it's a better tag than [meta-tag:exact-duplicates]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15268" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5891" RevisionGUID="3a543446-bf19-4aa7-8037-1cd3f6ab4be6" CreationDate="2013-05-02T21:55:45.787" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15269" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5893" RevisionGUID="d7c2b409-bdc9-4c55-900c-4746d426b62b" CreationDate="2013-05-02T22:14:45.107" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15270" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5894" RevisionGUID="108ae326-f754-47bb-a1d2-d32e2bd62902" CreationDate="2013-05-02T22:14:45.107" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15271" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5883" RevisionGUID="d0bed751-3296-4670-b4f7-991a90163cef" CreationDate="2013-05-02T22:16:51.287" UserId="31260" Comment="Your question += http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/196646/traits-of-good-php-web-developer &quot;Traits of good PHP web developer&quot;" Text="&gt; Yeah it sounds like overreaction but there are always some genuine questions which may not have genuine answer but may have collection of answers to satisfy the questioner. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Your question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/196646/traits-of-good-php-web-developer &quot;Traits of good PHP web developer&quot;) is legitimate and appropriate for a discussion forum, Reddit or Slashdot but we actively discourage such open ended broad questions here.  We are looking to build a site around peer reviewed, specific questions, within the scope of the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and have clear concise peer reviewed answers that actually address the problem with facts or experiences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question is good, but it will invite a lot of really bad answers and a lot of conflicting answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think PHP Framework X is the BEST!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think PHP Framework Y is the BEST!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then how does that help you?  You might think the one with the highest votes is the correct answer but in fact the one with the highest votes is the most popular framework.  That doesn't really help anybody make the best framework choice for their specific situation and that is what we mean when we say a question becomes a poll.  We are a Q&amp;A site, not SurveyMonkey.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't mean to call them bully, but some people cannot help themselves to surf around and hit the close button as fast as they could. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can't speak for what is in other peoples hearts and minds.  You can't claim to know what they are thinking.  There are bullies on every site as in every aspect of life, and just for the sake of argument lets say that 1 out of 5 people on this site happens to be a bully (I am guessing on the high side).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It still takes 5 people to close the question so if one bully closed it for the lulz, then you can only assume the other 4 had a very good reason to.  Don't worry about the bully or the quick close vote, why did 4 other people decide to close and downvote?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am positive about SE and people here who are here to help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of us are here to help and we want to welcome new users. The challenge for us is explaining to new users like yourself **HOW** we are different and **WHY** we are different than any other site out there.  When new users get frustrated or angry then I feel like we have failed in explaining.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't take downvotes and close votes as a personal attack or insult.  It is the way that we rank content and nothing more.  It only becomes an issue if it is a repetitive habit.  Furthermore we do take bullying seriously.  There are algorithms in place to identify, reverse and punish those that target users with downvotes and close votes.  Downvotes and close votes should be directed at content and not people." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15273" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5896" RevisionGUID="ac93115f-73b0-45de-8cba-8fa45a6afc98" CreationDate="2013-05-03T12:32:48.693" UserId="16247" Text="I find it hilarious that [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195351/16247) was closed as a duplicate of a question [which is in turn a duplicate](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/4320/16247) of a question [closed as off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/9/16247)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I realize questions may be closed at any time, not only when the first question in the chain was closed as duplicate, but _this is not the case in my example_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When finding dupes, shouldn't we make an effort to either&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Choose one that is not closed itself, or if not possible&#xD;&#xA;- Go to the root cause and use it as the close reason? (In this case: off-topicness).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also think, in this particular case, the question at the leaf -- vague question about productivity in the workplace and rightfully closed as off-topic -- is different to the original question, which was specifically about earmuffs. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Duplicate of&quot; should be a transitive property (if A is a dupe of B, and B is a dupe of C, then A must be a dupe of C), otherwise we are using it wrong!&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15274" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5896" RevisionGUID="ac93115f-73b0-45de-8cba-8fa45a6afc98" CreationDate="2013-05-03T12:32:48.693" UserId="16247" Text="Multiple indirection in closed duplicates and transitivity of duplicates" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15275" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5896" RevisionGUID="ac93115f-73b0-45de-8cba-8fa45a6afc98" CreationDate="2013-05-03T12:32:48.693" UserId="16247" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15276" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5897" RevisionGUID="149c6068-76aa-4306-9d83-83a4742f666a" CreationDate="2013-05-03T12:56:32.933" UserId="25476" Text="I agree with you that it is silly to have a string of duplicates ultimately leading to something offtopic.  That doesn't do the user any services by looking at it and thinking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Well these kinds of questions are okay here, but this one just so happens to have been asked before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that things like this do sometimes happen as a function over time.  Sometimes a question can be duplicate to another, only for the original to be later closed as Off Topic.  It is not just the moderators closing things, higher reputation users have the ability to close vote as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/195351/using-industrial-earmuffs-while-programming-to-filter-out-talking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I reopened and closed as Off Topic as I felt it was slightly different but still does not exclusively apply to the realm of software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other duplicate I merged into the original offtopic question as they were essentially exactly the same." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15277" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5894" RevisionGUID="73e311f4-d6df-437a-875c-ca113e29e58c" CreationDate="2013-05-03T13:45:18.747" UserId="31260" Comment="added reference to guidance at http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux" Text="For questions about the process of identifying and closing questions that are duplicates of another question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15278" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="5894" RevisionGUID="73e311f4-d6df-437a-875c-ca113e29e58c" CreationDate="2013-05-03T13:45:18.747" Comment="Proposed by 31260 approved by 101, 53019 edit id of 14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15279" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5893" RevisionGUID="bd74537b-298f-4e07-9b2c-fc88ee24504d" CreationDate="2013-05-03T13:45:30.917" UserId="31260" Comment="added reference to guidance at http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux" Text="For questions about the process of identifying and closing questions that are duplicates of another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See [comprehensive guidance at MSO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/166707/165773 &quot;Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to tell the user ...something like, “*Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.*” Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related articles at Stack Exchange blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...**duplication is not necessarily bad**. Quite the contrary — some duplication is _desirable_. There’s often benefit to having multiple subtle variants of a question around, as people tend to ask and search using completely different words, and the better our coverage, the better odds people can find the answer they’re looking for...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...use your good judgment and please continue to close and merge duplicates as you see fit. However, bear in mind that cultivating and supporting a moderate amount of natural duplication actively _helps_ the community...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Handling Duplicate Questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/handling-duplicate-questions/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...there are three classes of duplicate questions, from most clear to least clear.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. Cut-and-paste duplicate questions. These questions are the very definition of exact duplicates; they are typically from users who willfully take the very same question and post it again... No grey area here.&#xD;&#xA;2. Accidental duplicates. These questions aren’t copy and paste, but they cover the exact same ground as an earlier Stack Overflow question. The overlap is not ambiguous...&#xD;&#xA;3. Borderline duplicates. These questions are ambiguous; they’re in the same ballpark as a previous question, but have subtle differences that may make them legitimately standalone questions. These are subject to interpretation..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15280" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="5893" RevisionGUID="bd74537b-298f-4e07-9b2c-fc88ee24504d" CreationDate="2013-05-03T13:45:30.917" Comment="Proposed by 31260 approved by 101, 53019 edit id of 13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15281" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5896" RevisionGUID="9c6fb275-a9e7-4a09-8c6f-25c92dc35301" CreationDate="2013-05-03T15:50:12.513" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15282" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5898" RevisionGUID="930c91a6-6ed2-4171-b5b3-d09b015b2af9" CreationDate="2013-05-04T06:41:52.353" UserId="31260" Text="&gt; &quot;Duplicate of&quot; should be a transitive property (if A is a dupe of B, and B is a dupe of C, then A must be a dupe of C)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assumption of transitivity looks wrong; per my reading of the definition in [duplicate-question tag wiki](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/duplicate-questions/info), it is not required:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to tell the user ...something like, _“Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.”_ Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question `A` having an answer in `B` does not automatically guarantee that it also has an answer in `C`, even though question `B` may have its answer in `C`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a simplified example, imagine &quot;chain of duplicates&quot; like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A:` How do I see result of multiplying 2 by 2?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B:` How do I multiply?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke `multiply` method of `arith` package. In order to view result, you invoke method of `display` package.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C:` How do I do arithmetic operations?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke appropriate method of `arith` package, like `multiply`, `divide` etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's easy to imagine readers being satisfied by closures `A -&gt; B` and `B -&gt; C` since answers given solve the problems asked about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, closure `A-&gt; C` would be problematic: first question asks about how to display results, while answer in the second question says nothing about this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a more realistic example, refer to the non-transitive chain of duplicates at Meta Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A':` [Spiteful downvoting? Two fast DVs to my unrelated posts](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/178703/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B':` [What can I do if I'm the victim of serial downvoting?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/28756/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C':` [What is serial voting and how does it affect me?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/126829/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`A'` is closed as a duplicate of `B'`, which is in turn closed as a duplicate of `C'`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a closer look at [revisions history](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/178703/revisions &quot;here&quot;) and [comments](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/178703/spiteful-downvoting-two-fast-dvs-to-my-unrelated-posts#comment539909_178703 &quot;'changed the duplicate to one more relevant to the question asked...'&quot;), you will notice that initial closure has been changed from `A' -&gt; C'` to _narrower_ one, `A' -&gt; B'` because readers disagreed that _widest_ dupe target has answers relevant to the question asked in `A'`." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15283" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5898" RevisionGUID="97171e42-6833-430f-b294-cd75a5b50c0a" CreationDate="2013-05-04T09:11:18.620" UserId="31260" Comment="wordsmithing" Text="&gt; &quot;Duplicate of&quot; should be a transitive property (if A is a dupe of B, and B is a dupe of C, then A must be a dupe of C)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assumption of transitivity looks wrong; per my reading of the definition in [duplicate-question tag wiki](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/duplicate-questions/info), it is not required:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to tell the user ...something like, _“Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.”_ Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question `A` having an answer in `B` does not automatically guarantee that it also has an answer in `C`, even though question `B` may have its answer in `C`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a simplified example, imagine &quot;chain of duplicates&quot; like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A:` How do I see result of multiplying 2 by 2?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B:` How do I multiply?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke `multiply` method of `arith` package. In order to view result, you invoke method of `display` package.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C:` How do I do arithmetic operations?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke appropriate method of `arith` package, like `multiply`, `divide` etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's easy to imagine readers being satisfied by closures `A -&gt; B` and `B -&gt; C` since answers given solve the problems asked about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, closure `A-&gt; C` would be problematic: first question asks about how to display results, while answer in the second question says nothing about this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note how question in `B` does not ask about displaying results, making dupe closure look reasonable. Also note how answer in `B` provides guidance _beyond_ its scope, along with addressing the question asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a more realistic example, refer to the non-transitive chain of duplicates at Meta Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A':` [Spiteful downvoting? Two fast DVs to my unrelated posts](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/178703/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B':` [What can I do if I'm the victim of serial downvoting?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/28756/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C':` [What is serial voting and how does it affect me?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/126829/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`A'` is closed as a duplicate of `B'`, which is in turn closed as a duplicate of `C'`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a closer look at [revisions history](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/178703/revisions &quot;here&quot;) and [comments](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/178703/spiteful-downvoting-two-fast-dvs-to-my-unrelated-posts#comment539909_178703 &quot;'changed the duplicate to one more relevant to the question asked...'&quot;), you will notice that initial closure has been changed from `A' -&gt; C'` to _narrower_ one, `A' -&gt; B'` because readers disagreed that _widest_ dupe target has answers relevant to the question asked in `A'`." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15284" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5898" RevisionGUID="586771a6-22f6-4c71-82d5-31112a7a47c0" CreationDate="2013-05-04T14:22:50.617" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo fixed" Text="&gt; &quot;Duplicate of&quot; should be a transitive property (if A is a dupe of B, and B is a dupe of C, then A must be a dupe of C)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assumption of transitivity looks wrong; per my reading of the definition in [duplicate-questions tag wiki](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/duplicate-questions/info), it is not required:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to tell the user ...something like, _“Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.”_ Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question `A` having an answer in `B` does not automatically guarantee that it also has an answer in `C`, even though question `B` may have its answer in `C`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a simplified example, imagine &quot;chain of duplicates&quot; like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A:` How do I see result of multiplying 2 by 2?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B:` How do I multiply?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke `multiply` method of `arith` package. In order to view result, you invoke method of `display` package.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C:` How do I do arithmetic operations?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke appropriate method of `arith` package, like `multiply`, `divide` etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's easy to imagine readers being satisfied by closures `A -&gt; B` and `B -&gt; C` since answers given solve the problems asked about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, closure `A-&gt; C` would be problematic: first question asks about how to display results, while answer in the second question says nothing about this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note how question in `B` does not ask about displaying results, making dupe closure look reasonable. Also note how answer in `B` provides guidance _beyond_ its scope, along with addressing the question asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a more realistic example, refer to the non-transitive chain of duplicates at Meta Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A':` [Spiteful downvoting? Two fast DVs to my unrelated posts](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/178703/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B':` [What can I do if I'm the victim of serial downvoting?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/28756/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C':` [What is serial voting and how does it affect me?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/126829/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`A'` is closed as a duplicate of `B'`, which is in turn closed as a duplicate of `C'`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a closer look at [revisions history](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/178703/revisions &quot;here&quot;) and [comments](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/178703/spiteful-downvoting-two-fast-dvs-to-my-unrelated-posts#comment539909_178703 &quot;'changed the duplicate to one more relevant to the question asked...'&quot;), you will notice that initial closure has been changed from `A' -&gt; C'` to _narrower_ one, `A' -&gt; B'` because readers disagreed that _widest_ dupe target has answers relevant to the question asked in `A'`." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15285" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5898" RevisionGUID="000e0c92-103a-401e-8fe9-0ec62ac5e717" CreationDate="2013-05-04T22:45:26.577" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="&gt; &quot;Duplicate of&quot; should be a transitive property (if A is a dupe of B, and B is a dupe of C, then A must be a dupe of C)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assumption of transitivity looks wrong; per my reading of the definition in [duplicate-questions tag wiki](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/duplicate-questions/info), it is not required:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to tell the user ...something like, _“Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.”_ Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question `A` having an answer in `B` does not automatically guarantee that it also has an answer in `C`, even though question `B` may have its answer in `C`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a simplified example, imagine &quot;chain of duplicates&quot; like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A:` How do I see result of multiplying 2 by 2?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B:` How do I multiply?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke `multiply` method of `arith` package. In order to view result, you invoke method of `display` package.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C:` How do I do arithmetic operations?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke appropriate method of `arith` package, like `multiply`, `divide` etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's easy to imagine readers being satisfied by closures `A -&gt; B` and `B -&gt; C` since answers given solve the problems asked about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, closure `A -&gt; C` would be problematic: first question asks about how to display results, while answer in the second question says nothing about this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note how question in `B` does not ask about displaying results, making dupe closure look reasonable. Also note how answer in `B` provides guidance _beyond_ its scope, along with addressing the question asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a more realistic example, refer to the non-transitive chain of duplicates at Meta Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A':` [Spiteful downvoting? Two fast DVs to my unrelated posts](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/178703/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B':` [What can I do if I'm the victim of serial downvoting?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/28756/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C':` [What is serial voting and how does it affect me?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/126829/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`A'` is closed as a duplicate of `B'`, which is in turn closed as a duplicate of `C'`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a closer look at [revisions history](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/178703/revisions &quot;here&quot;) and [comments](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/178703/spiteful-downvoting-two-fast-dvs-to-my-unrelated-posts#comment539909_178703 &quot;'changed the duplicate to one more relevant to the question asked...'&quot;), you will notice that initial closure has been changed from `A' -&gt; C'` to _narrower_ one, `A' -&gt; B'` because readers disagreed that _widest_ dupe target has answers relevant to the question asked in `A'`." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15286" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5899" RevisionGUID="926efc58-7187-45ca-a7ba-47761e8f2d0a" CreationDate="2013-05-06T11:51:20.217" UserId="48527" Text="I'm having a hard time reading the questions and answers because of the paper(?) background image.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be possible to change this to a solid color to make it easier on *my* eyes?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15287" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5899" RevisionGUID="926efc58-7187-45ca-a7ba-47761e8f2d0a" CreationDate="2013-05-06T11:51:20.217" UserId="48527" Text="Background Image Makes Site Hard To Read" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15288" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5899" RevisionGUID="926efc58-7187-45ca-a7ba-47761e8f2d0a" CreationDate="2013-05-06T11:51:20.217" UserId="48527" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15289" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5899" RevisionGUID="0e77f493-3bd8-4278-8808-e6461e5ccbd2" CreationDate="2013-05-06T11:56:50.620" UserId="48527" Comment="added 107 characters in body" Text="I'm having a hard time reading the questions and answers because of the paper(?) background image.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be possible to change this to a solid color to make it easier on *my* eyes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;E.g. http://math.stackexchange.com has a background image as well but uses a white background for text." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15290" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5900" RevisionGUID="920ec054-29b4-4d80-b8a3-8c3ebef255be" CreationDate="2013-05-06T14:43:59.947" UserId="35276" Text="I know we don't want too many migration paths, and we definitely don't want ones that are likely to leech away our *good* questions, but I think of all the technology related websites, the scope of Code Review actually has likely the least overlap with us of any others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No part of our site scope is reviewing written completed *code*, architecture sure but not *code*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no part of code reviews site is *doing anything else at all*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't get questions for this migration often, but I just saw one and it's going to be migrated to SO (even though it's totally working code) likely just because we have a migration path to SO but not CR.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, just a thought." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15291" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5900" RevisionGUID="920ec054-29b4-4d80-b8a3-8c3ebef255be" CreationDate="2013-05-06T14:43:59.947" UserId="35276" Text="Migration path to Code Review please?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15292" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5900" RevisionGUID="920ec054-29b4-4d80-b8a3-8c3ebef255be" CreationDate="2013-05-06T14:43:59.947" UserId="35276" Text="|feature-request|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15293" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5900" RevisionGUID="27bece7a-285d-4840-8340-ecf8d9dbba67" CreationDate="2013-05-06T14:51:39.577" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-deferred|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15294" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5901" RevisionGUID="baab655a-a6ff-48d7-a466-44531673d754" CreationDate="2013-05-06T14:51:41.280" UserId="4" Text="As discussed [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5785/can-we-please-add-project-management-as-a-migration-path-from-programmers/5786#5786), there are never migration paths to Beta sites. This seems like a reasonable idea, assuming that Code Review gets out of Beta, and we should revisit this then. In the mean time, if there's an exceptional post that you feel belongs on Code Review, flag it for moderator attention - we can still migrate to Code Review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15295" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5902" RevisionGUID="1c01a3ed-0292-49b9-ba06-5bb1e05a4891" CreationDate="2013-05-06T19:24:35.990" UserId="35276" Text="If you create a bookmark in chrome (not sure if other browsers allow arbitrary javascript execution from a bookmark) with this content, it'll kill the background when you click it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    javascript:(function(){$('body').css('background-image','url()');$('.container').css('background-image','url()');})();" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15296" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5902" RevisionGUID="91821466-8ca0-429e-b283-d85485cb4e17" CreationDate="2013-05-06T19:36:48.823" UserId="35276" Comment="added 354 characters in body" Text="If you create a bookmark in chrome (not sure if other browsers allow arbitrary javascript execution from a bookmark) with this content, it'll kill the background when you click it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    javascript:(function(){$('body').css('background-image','url()');$('.container').css('background-image','url()');})();&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or better yet.. If you like SO's look you can use this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    $('link[href=&quot;http://cdn.sstatic.net/programmersmeta/all.css?v=f078930b28c8&quot;]').attr('href','http://cdn.sstatic.net/stackoverflow/all.css?v=0f0c93534e2b');&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and it will change the entire theme of P.SE to SO's, or you can try any other by swapping the v=blablabla query string variable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15297" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5903" RevisionGUID="a3e396c9-07de-4f91-b421-92e5fc0a9ca0" CreationDate="2013-05-08T00:38:34.970" UserId="13815" Text="My [post][1] to [this question][2] was deleted.  Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was about a team that uses color-coded source code to keep track of what needs to be done, but now they have a color-blind team member, and want to know what to do.  For anyone who can't read it, my answer was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Well, you could do what the rest of the world does and use an [issue tracker][3], along with comments in the code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a serious answer - there is no need to use a convoluted color-based system to solve a problem that has already been solved.  Apparently a lot of people agreed with me, since it was the third most-upvoted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet, it was recently deleted.  Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/86963/13815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86850&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue_tracking_systems" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15298" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5903" RevisionGUID="a3e396c9-07de-4f91-b421-92e5fc0a9ca0" CreationDate="2013-05-08T00:38:34.970" UserId="13815" Text="Why was my post deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15299" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5903" RevisionGUID="a3e396c9-07de-4f91-b421-92e5fc0a9ca0" CreationDate="2013-05-08T00:38:34.970" UserId="13815" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15300" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5904" RevisionGUID="c0215816-25ae-406d-88f4-55cf70c6eea6" CreationDate="2013-05-08T03:44:40.517" UserId="25936" Text="maple_shaft [added a post notice][1] at the same time he deleted your answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer: please explain why you're recommending it as a solution. Answers that don't explain anything will be deleted. See Good Subjective, Bad Subjective for more information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My guess is that your answer was the reason for the post notice, as it reads more like a comment. What's missing for it to stand as an answer is a line or two explaining how using an issue tracker would solve the specific problem presented in the question. &quot;Use an issue tracker&quot; is good advice, but useless to someone who has no idea what an issue tracker is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you expand your answer, please flag it for moderation attention so we can undelete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/86850/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15301" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="5905" RevisionGUID="373dae47-f89f-45de-8e63-7e8f2db6424f" CreationDate="2013-05-08T10:37:24.917" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/197389/where-can-i-ask-for-programming-book-recommendations" />
  <row Id="15302" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5905" RevisionGUID="bebbab2a-4f05-491e-bda6-07e1b987155a" CreationDate="2013-05-08T10:24:53.830" UserId="3713" Text="As a *programmer*, I usually learn new skills by reading books. It seems like stackoverflow consider book recommendations questions as [not constructive][1]. Where can I look for book recommendations, mainly programming related books?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3258839/best-git-book-for-a-noob" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15303" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5905" RevisionGUID="bebbab2a-4f05-491e-bda6-07e1b987155a" CreationDate="2013-05-08T10:24:53.830" UserId="3713" Text="Where can I ask for programming book recommendations?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15304" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5905" RevisionGUID="bebbab2a-4f05-491e-bda6-07e1b987155a" CreationDate="2013-05-08T10:24:53.830" UserId="3713" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15305" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5906" RevisionGUID="0b1859e0-1d5f-4625-b975-7ec57b8f88ae" CreationDate="2013-05-08T12:32:23.010" UserId="71391" Text="When I want to know if a book is good for me, I go on amazon.com and search for the book. Then, I read the review at the bottom. I often get all the informations I need about the book. Also, some review point me to other book that may suit my needs better. I start from this point and often end up having 10 to 15 tabs opens in Chrome with a lot of book to choose from." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15306" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5907" RevisionGUID="903e86bb-d23e-45ca-bebd-e696d6fc11bc" CreationDate="2013-05-08T18:55:31.917" UserId="34364" Text="A few ways:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. **Look at your local or an online bookseller.** Check out a Barnes &amp; Noble or just your local library. If not, Amazon and Google are great tools for finding recommendation in reviews and such.&#xD;&#xA; 2. **Ask or look on forums.** Most forums about programming already have tons of threads containing book recommendations.&#xD;&#xA; 3. **IRC!** IRC is still alive and well. A lot of gurus hang out on their favorite languages respective IRC channels, and (if you know how to ask) they're almost always willing to help." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15307" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5908" RevisionGUID="dce29f76-3ddd-46dd-928d-c42e73b1e51b" CreationDate="2013-05-09T19:24:23.900" UserId="855" Text="I can't recall the podcast edition where Joel Spolsky made a comment about question evaluation/voting. One point he made was to evaluate questions on how they are asked and not just whether you agree with the premise or whether or not it belongs on the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Having a good title.&#xD;&#xA; - providing enough information and using appropriate tags&#xD;&#xA; - Formating your code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Getting to the point instead of wasting people's time with 17 paragraphs ranting about your boss before asking a about a framework is the sign of a bad question. Constructive comments for downvotes is a good thing and I agree should be used more often.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just be thankful you didn't get treated like [this post][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/197568/i-dont-know-what-to-code" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15308" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5909" RevisionGUID="e41be661-2dd3-4c90-973b-d2d0271cc4a0" CreationDate="2013-05-09T19:28:55.923" UserId="5099" Text="When going through the review queue, I occasionally encounter questions that have close votes citing different reasons. But when I look at an already closed question, I always see just a single reason being cited for closing the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This lead me to the question, if the reasons for closing a question are not unanimous, how is the close reason that gets displayed with a closed question determined? Is it a majority-vote, or the reason of the last person voting to close, or something else?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15309" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5909" RevisionGUID="e41be661-2dd3-4c90-973b-d2d0271cc4a0" CreationDate="2013-05-09T19:28:55.923" UserId="5099" Text="Multiple close reasons" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15310" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5909" RevisionGUID="e41be661-2dd3-4c90-973b-d2d0271cc4a0" CreationDate="2013-05-09T19:28:55.923" UserId="5099" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15311" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5910" RevisionGUID="af9e2cbb-404f-4255-8314-9a74843db169" CreationDate="2013-05-09T19:32:23.550" UserId="4" Text="If 5 users vote, I believe it's majority vote gets the reason. However, if a moderator closes, it's always the moderator's reason." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15312" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5911" RevisionGUID="621f4bec-b081-42b1-a5f5-dd9ce67b62cd" CreationDate="2013-05-10T17:55:44.870" UserId="32353" Text="Should http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/197650/how-should-i-behave-as-a-developer-in-a-project-thats-headed-for-failure be open or closed?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the one hand, project failure is more common in software development than most professions, and it's not unreasonable to think there might be answers to this question that are specific to software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, at the time of this writing there are 6 answers and IMHO none of them are particularly specific to software development.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My thought on reading the question was that it should stay open.  But I would say every answer belongs on Workplace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not uncommon on this site - the question *could* be answered in a way specific to programming, but it doesn't have to be.  Should questions be required to have some magic phrase like &quot;I am asking for factors unique to software development&quot;, and therefore this one should be closed for not having such a phrase?  If it did have such a phrase, it would make it reasonable to delete answers that aren't specific to programming.  But how would people know to include it?  Does that, in practice, force people to edit it in to all such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, my real question, despite the title, is &quot;What should are criteria be for deciding whether to close questions that have answers that *could* be specific to programming, but strongly invite answers that are not?&quot;  Whether that specific question should be closed would be a corollary.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15313" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5911" RevisionGUID="621f4bec-b081-42b1-a5f5-dd9ce67b62cd" CreationDate="2013-05-10T17:55:44.870" UserId="32353" Text="Should this question be open or closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15314" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5911" RevisionGUID="621f4bec-b081-42b1-a5f5-dd9ce67b62cd" CreationDate="2013-05-10T17:55:44.870" UserId="32353" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15315" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5912" RevisionGUID="08f0f372-71bc-4349-934f-a75d61e5b7a1" CreationDate="2013-05-10T20:50:37.393" UserId="32353" Text="My suggestion (which is different than most sites handle this, I believe), is that we should:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Implicitly assume all questions, by virtue of being posted here, always *are* asking for programming specific answers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Ideally edit questions that need it, to add an explicit request for programming specific answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Delete answers that are not reasonably specific to programming, even if they were posted to a question that didn't have any wording restricting it to being programming related.  But be somewhat generous in interpreting this (i.e. - if an answer says &quot;The problem is your hardware is too slow&quot; it's probably O.K., if it's &quot;quit immediately, then throw yourself a party&quot; then probably not).  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15316" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5913" RevisionGUID="80cc5ed2-b76f-420b-b301-7beee7959748" CreationDate="2013-05-11T16:49:13.873" UserId="35693" Text="Can questions be closed for a reason that is valid TODAY but did not exist at the time the question was asked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an example.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5847/why-close-a-2-year-old-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions are now &quot;routinely&quot; closed for &quot;polling.&quot; Depending on the site, people came to a &quot;consensus&quot; about this some time in the past two years. But the question was asked two years ago. And suppose this was before this consensus was formed? Are there ways of &quot;grandfathering&quot; such questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15317" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5913" RevisionGUID="80cc5ed2-b76f-420b-b301-7beee7959748" CreationDate="2013-05-11T16:49:13.873" UserId="35693" Text="Are there &quot;ex post facto&quot; closes?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15318" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5913" RevisionGUID="80cc5ed2-b76f-420b-b301-7beee7959748" CreationDate="2013-05-11T16:49:13.873" UserId="35693" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15319" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="5913" RevisionGUID="ed3575e3-f45f-458d-9922-67eedc2ad1cb" CreationDate="2013-05-11T17:07:24.683" UserId="35693" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:35693,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Tom Au&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="15320" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="5913" RevisionGUID="5da51c29-a28c-41df-badb-4a2e03bbd4f5" CreationDate="2013-05-11T17:09:47.600" UserId="35693" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:35693,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Tom Au&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="15321" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5896" RevisionGUID="720792c4-fc38-4022-a59e-d5b28ea417c9" CreationDate="2013-05-12T17:06:57.427" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/333629380238667776" />
  <row Id="15322" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5914" RevisionGUID="efc34361-5f13-4caf-ba86-55a54b5b7d10" CreationDate="2013-05-14T02:27:04.090" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Short answer, &quot;yes&quot;.  There are ex-post-facto closes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Longer answer....&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There has been an uptick in close activity over the past ... 6 months or so.  My interpretation of this is that the community is coming together to more clearly define what is on-topic and constructive for the site versus what is not.  In many ways, this is continued evolution of the site; especially in light of the scope change enacted effectively eons ago.  _That_ conversation has been hashed to death many times already and I'll leave it as an exercise to you to dig through meta for the relevant questions &amp; answers.  The general point is to clean up the lesser quality stuff that provides bad precedent for new, bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Poll questions and resource questions (aka book requests) fare very poorly now, which is a good thing, IMO.  A while back, many of those had been closed as off-topic but the current trend is to close them as not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Others in that vein are being closed as duplicates.  And as Bart van Ingen Schenau noted, an older question may be closed as a duplicate of a newer question.  It introduces an anachronism, but the newer question may represent a better &quot;answer&quot; for that particular theme.  Or it simply could have been the question that the close voters found first.  Don't read too far into that aspect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;RE: historical locks - if a question is particularly noteworthy **and** well up-voted, then it may be a candidate for a historical lock.  This helps keep it from deletion as it potentially has useful information for future visitors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;RE: grandfathering old questions - not a chance, honestly.  The problem is that &quot;newer user&quot; will site &quot;really old question that's now blatantly off-topic&quot; as the basis for asking _their_ blatantly off-topic question.  The community tries to explain &quot;it's not like that anymore.&quot;  Feelings are hurt; pedantic rage-quits occur; most folk involved still standing are left feeling vaguely annoyed.  Closing off those old questions cuts down on the likelihood of the above annoyance.  With some 25k+ questions on the site now, there's really no other way besides closure to indicate the change in the site direction.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15323" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5915" RevisionGUID="5040c598-1175-4af2-86bd-419f185e786b" CreationDate="2013-05-14T12:56:15.710" UserId="35897" Text="I asked: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/198052/what-is-the-modern-alternative-to-newsgroups and 2 minutes after it was closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;. No comments, no answers, just closed. What is wrong with this site? I am a full time developer with more than 10+ experience, 3K+ reputation in SO... This question is REAL, it related to programming (but it is not a specific programming question), and after searching a lot in the 'net I have found no answer for it. So I guessed the intelligent group of programmers that is on this site could help me answer the question. So what the hell is going on here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15324" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5915" RevisionGUID="5040c598-1175-4af2-86bd-419f185e786b" CreationDate="2013-05-14T12:56:15.710" UserId="35897" Text="Are moderators trigger happy?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15325" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5915" RevisionGUID="5040c598-1175-4af2-86bd-419f185e786b" CreationDate="2013-05-14T12:56:15.710" UserId="35897" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15326" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5916" RevisionGUID="a67ed319-4ff4-4933-85b1-a4eef5b0bd37" CreationDate="2013-05-14T12:59:36.783" UserId="47" Text="Your question is not constructive as the answers will be a list of people's favourite alternative to newsgroups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will be no better off that you are now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange works by making sure that the noise is kept to a minimum and quickly closing questions helps in that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You might be better off asking that question in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15327" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5915" RevisionGUID="9d0866d4-bfdb-4c46-9663-82369e789bed" CreationDate="2013-05-14T13:21:44.743" UserId="35897" Comment="edited title" Text="Why was my question closed so fast?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15328" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5916" RevisionGUID="ad8b1b4e-a01b-4552-a7a0-f012edf39dc9" CreationDate="2013-05-14T13:38:36.930" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="slight clarification / resolve typo" Text="Your question is not constructive as the answers will be a list of people's favourite alternative to newsgroups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will be no better off with an answer than you are now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange works by making sure that the noise is kept to a minimum and quickly closing questions helps in that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You might be better off asking that question in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15329" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5917" RevisionGUID="2d17cfd0-7fd0-4665-8725-fac6b31fbfb6" CreationDate="2013-05-14T13:38:41.317" UserId="60569" Text="I see two issues with your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Your question is off-topic because newsgroups and their successors are not unique to the programming profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Your question is too broad; there are too many possible answers to be a good fit for the StackExchange format. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15330" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5918" RevisionGUID="a40a6e6f-947d-4fef-8a75-c7349555953c" CreationDate="2013-05-14T14:12:54.730" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I was close voter #5&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off, let me address the tone of the meta question. Getting upset and angry at us, lacing the question with unnecessary vitrol sets the tone of the question and may make it more difficult to get sympathetic help. While I do realize that having a question closed or downvoted can be a bit of an ego hit, please do remember that we are people too and are attempting to keep the site on target and focused. With P.SE, that has been a long and constant battle with much history to it.  I would suggest reading [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) for some insight into the dynamics of the communities of social software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two problems with this question that I saw, the &quot;not constructive&quot; being the bigger one... the other one being off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was off topic because the question did not pertain to programming.  Usenet had a plethora of news groups - most of which were not about programming at all.  While you mentioned comp.lang.c, replacing it with alt.games.rougelike.nethack would be the same question.  If the question was only about programming, it could have stayed here... if it was about nethack, we could have migrated it to gaming.SE.  As it is about everything, its off topic on Programmers.SE (and likely other places too)..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Question applies to:][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other part of the question was not constructive.  This is a guideline that spans all stack exchanges (even if something was on topic for gaming or cooking that got mistakenly posted here - the &quot;not constructive&quot; would still apply).  This is quite different than closing the question as not a real question (as you say, it is real - though it isn't constructive).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A constructive question should have one answer that authoritatively answers the problem/question. A poll for resources &quot;I am looking for a book on C&quot;, while vaguely on topic doesn't have a single answer.  The usenet community has split exists in bits on google groups, mailing lists, stack exchange, reddit, twitter, blogs, perlmonks, private/restricted usenet feeds, and a plethora of other social media sites and resources that cater to a particular bit of the conglomeration that was known as usenet.  Since all these answers are correct (and I am sure that people can think of others that are equally correct), the question itself cannot have an answer and is not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The social norms of one site may differ from another.  The reputation of someone on one site isn't transitive to another site.  If anything, having a reputation of a seasoned SE user on another site would mean that we expect more of you when writing a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On close votes - as you do have 3k rep on SO, you might consider browsing the close vote review queue there.  It has about ~52500 questions that are in the queue.  After spending some time with such questions, I would hope that you would have a more sympathetic bend to those who close without comment - trusting that the explanation of the close reason itself was enough to communicate the reasoning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PbmDK.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15331" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5918" RevisionGUID="1731a827-942e-41e7-bfa2-3e4d75973e31" CreationDate="2013-05-14T15:34:05.383" UserId="31260" Comment="close vote review queue += http://stackoverflow.com/review/close" Text="I was close voter #5&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off, let me address the tone of the meta question. Getting upset and angry at us, lacing the question with unnecessary vitriol sets the tone of the question and may make it more difficult to get sympathetic help. While I do realize that having a question closed or downvoted can be a bit of an ego hit, please do remember that we are people too and are attempting to keep the site on target and focused. With P.SE, that has been a long and constant battle with much history to it.  I would suggest reading [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) for some insight into the dynamics of the communities of social software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two problems with this question that I saw, the &quot;not constructive&quot; being the bigger one... the other one being off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was off topic because the question did not pertain to programming.  Usenet had a plethora of news groups - most of which were not about programming at all.  While you mentioned comp.lang.c, replacing it with alt.games.rougelike.nethack would be the same question.  If the question was only about programming, it could have stayed here... if it was about nethack, we could have migrated it to gaming.SE.  As it is about everything, its off topic on Programmers.SE (and likely other places too)..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Question applies to:][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other part of the question was not constructive.  This is a guideline that spans all stack exchanges (even if something was on topic for gaming or cooking that got mistakenly posted here - the &quot;not constructive&quot; would still apply).  This is quite different than closing the question as not a real question (as you say, it is real - though it isn't constructive).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A constructive question should have one answer that authoritatively answers the problem/question. A poll for resources &quot;I am looking for a book on C&quot;, while vaguely on topic doesn't have a single answer.  The usenet community has split exists in bits on google groups, mailing lists, stack exchange, reddit, twitter, blogs, perlmonks, private/restricted usenet feeds, and a plethora of other social media sites and resources that cater to a particular bit of the conglomeration that was known as usenet.  Since all these answers are correct (and I am sure that people can think of others that are equally correct), the question itself cannot have an answer and is not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The social norms of one site may differ from another.  The reputation of someone on one site isn't transitive to another site.  If anything, having a reputation of a seasoned SE user on another site would mean that we expect more of you when writing a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On close votes - as you do have 3k rep on SO, you might consider browsing the [close vote review queue](http://stackoverflow.com/review/close) there.  It has about ~52500 questions that are in the queue.  After spending some time with such questions, I would hope that you would have a more sympathetic bend to those who close without comment - trusting that the explanation of the close reason itself was enough to communicate the reasoning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PbmDK.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15332" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5919" RevisionGUID="d5d326d4-fbfa-4dce-84cc-43a93fe057ec" CreationDate="2013-05-14T17:32:37.630" UserId="60569" Text="I think that the question should be closed because there are too many possible answers for the question to be a good fit for the StackExchange Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are probably dozens of things that a program could do or not do when they are on a &quot;doomed&quot; project. There will also be disagreement about whether some of those things should or should not be done. Additionally, there will be disagreement about which things are most important. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The above dynamics lead to too much noise and not enough signal." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15333" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5920" RevisionGUID="5cdb0a9b-a501-4949-94bf-44e78e8dc44c" CreationDate="2013-05-14T19:46:23.337" UserId="86679" Text="I liked this question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/198057/real-world-application-benchmark-for-concurrent-key-value-stores/198058? asking how to make a bench marking app OR give infor on already usable code to test map impls.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;sure it needed a code reference but why close it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15334" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5920" RevisionGUID="5cdb0a9b-a501-4949-94bf-44e78e8dc44c" CreationDate="2013-05-14T19:46:23.337" UserId="86679" Text="Q on benchmark app for concurrent key value stores" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15335" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5920" RevisionGUID="5cdb0a9b-a501-4949-94bf-44e78e8dc44c" CreationDate="2013-05-14T19:46:23.337" UserId="86679" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15336" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5921" RevisionGUID="5dfe6976-1735-4952-af67-22f2255a3414" CreationDate="2013-05-15T05:09:11.577" UserId="25936" Text="First, let me explain the closure. Questions that essentially ask for a list of external resources (apps, books, whatever) are the archetypal &quot;not constructive&quot; ones, and some could also be closed as &quot;not a real question&quot; (the overly broad ones). Usually this type of question ends up being a list of everyone's favourite resource, and that's not _really_ helpful to anyone. We are looking for solutions to problems, not for (just) what people like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also suspect that your (deleted) answer helped pushed the question towards getting closed. It reads more like a comment than an answer, some good information in there, but not really a solution to the problem. When a question generates comment-like discussion-y answers, it's an extra hint that it should be closed. In the future, if you don't feel you can directly and fully answer the question, please use comments instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(all) That said, I've re-opened the question. I feel the topic (benchmarking concurrent key-value stores) is specific enough for the question to _not_ degenerate into a list of everyone's favourite application. I may be completely wrong about this, but having had (more or less) the same need a year ago, I feel confident in saying that this is not a question that can be answered with a simple Google search. In all likelihood the application the asker looks for doesn't exist (yet), when I searched for it the only solution was to build your own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, if I'm wrong and the question takes a &quot;not constructive&quot; turn, we'll just close it again. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15337" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5920" RevisionGUID="4e3c7d7d-217c-49c3-a7e0-0f26cbed0ad9" CreationDate="2013-05-15T05:09:18.843" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15338" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5922" RevisionGUID="78ec69f8-71f1-41d1-b838-b2afdf046f0c" CreationDate="2013-05-15T08:01:51.507" UserId="56691" Text="Yesterday I saw my reputation increase, and then decrease again in a few seconds. I guess someone upvoted, and then changed their mind. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After than in my reputation page a record appeared for that day:&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm curious if this done purposely. Is this done deribately or does this record appear because somewhere in the StackExchange db a reputation change was marked for this day and wasn't reverted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/hze6L.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15339" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5922" RevisionGUID="78ec69f8-71f1-41d1-b838-b2afdf046f0c" CreationDate="2013-05-15T08:01:51.507" UserId="56691" Text="&quot;There were no net reputation changes on this day&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15340" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5922" RevisionGUID="78ec69f8-71f1-41d1-b838-b2afdf046f0c" CreationDate="2013-05-15T08:01:51.507" UserId="56691" Text="|discussion|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15341" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5923" RevisionGUID="1f75cfe6-68db-4337-8a09-c21f02d00524" CreationDate="2013-05-15T08:05:44.887" UserId="47" Text="I don't know, not having access to the source code, but I suspect that changes within the 5 minute window during which votes can be changed wouldn't be recorded. So in your case the up-vote followed immediately by the removal of that vote are effectively not recorded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the vote had &quot;hardened&quot; and then you edited the post which would allow the vote to be changed, then that change would be recorded. You'd still have a net gain of 0 but you'd see two lines one for the initial upvote and a second for its removal." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15342" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5924" RevisionGUID="e4d3c463-650f-4ad9-ac67-47a6770dbe5e" CreationDate="2013-05-15T08:19:59.957" UserId="40813" Text="Saw this comment in user page of [Rachel][1],  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm done with this site unless something changes. I feel its changed&#xD;&#xA;&gt; too far from the original programming resource it once was, and the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; current moderation style is not for me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I dislike that so much valuable information gets deleted for the sake&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of &quot;maintaining a clean site&quot;, dislike the way many users are treated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (particularly new ones), and dislike the way the overall culture of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this site has been changing from a community of programmers out to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; teach and learn from each other, to an insular group of programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elitists (of course this isn't all of you, or probably even most of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you. Its just a large percentage of the more active/vocal users who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; take part in running the site).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anyways, I'm not interested in helping to support this site anymore,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; although I will be happy to take part in any initiatives to changes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; things.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also, if someone makes a Q&amp;A site for Programmers to ask questions and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; get answers from other Programmers about any issue related to their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; career choice or self-identity as a programmer, let me know. I'd love&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to participate in such a site again, and will help you promote it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thought this needs some attention of active users of the site.  :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Delete this question if it is inappropriate...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15343" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5924" RevisionGUID="e4d3c463-650f-4ad9-ac67-47a6770dbe5e" CreationDate="2013-05-15T08:19:59.957" UserId="40813" Text="Disappointed User" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15344" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5924" RevisionGUID="e4d3c463-650f-4ad9-ac67-47a6770dbe5e" CreationDate="2013-05-15T08:19:59.957" UserId="40813" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15345" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5921" RevisionGUID="8080d17a-9ccf-4d0c-b69e-5810daf4cd7e" CreationDate="2013-05-15T09:54:56.517" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="First, let me explain the closure. Questions that essentially ask for a list of external resources (apps, books, whatever) are the archetypal &quot;not constructive&quot; ones, and some could also be closed as &quot;not a real question&quot; (the overly broad ones). Usually this type of question ends up being a list of everyone's favourite resource, and that's not _really_ helpful to anyone. We are looking for solutions to problems, not for (just) what people like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also suspect that your (deleted) answer helped push the question towards getting closed. It reads more like a comment than an answer, some good information in there, but not really a solution to the problem. When a question generates comment-like discussion-y answers, it's an extra hint that it should be closed. In the future, if you don't feel you can directly and fully answer the question, please use comments instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(all) That said, I've re-opened the question. I feel the topic (benchmarking concurrent key-value stores) is specific enough for the question to _not_ degenerate into a list of everyone's favourite application. I may be completely wrong about this, but having had (more or less) the same need a year ago, I feel confident in saying that this is not a question that can be answered with a simple Google search. In all likelihood the application the asker looks for doesn't exist (yet), when I searched for it the only solution was to build your own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, if I'm wrong and the question takes a &quot;not constructive&quot; turn, we'll just close it again. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15346" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5920" RevisionGUID="92b4a98e-6462-4426-a9e8-b667fdab4da1" CreationDate="2013-05-15T09:57:20.633" UserId="25936" Comment="Please use full words" Text="I liked [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/198057/25936), asking how to make a benchmarking app or give information on already usable code to test map implementations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure it needed a code reference but why close it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15347" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5920" RevisionGUID="92b4a98e-6462-4426-a9e8-b667fdab4da1" CreationDate="2013-05-15T09:57:20.633" UserId="25936" Comment="Please use full words" Text="Why was the question on benchmarking apps for concurrent key value stores closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15348" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5924" RevisionGUID="9140c3fb-8356-48a3-af09-6430507f03ec" CreationDate="2013-05-15T12:08:52.833" UserDisplayName="user7007" Comment="deleted 50 characters in body" Text="Saw this comment in user page of [Rachel][1],  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm done with this site unless something changes. I feel its changed&#xD;&#xA;&gt; too far from the original programming resource it once was, and the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; current moderation style is not for me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I dislike that so much valuable information gets deleted for the sake&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of &quot;maintaining a clean site&quot;, dislike the way many users are treated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (particularly new ones), and dislike the way the overall culture of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this site has been changing from a community of programmers out to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; teach and learn from each other, to an insular group of programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elitists (of course this isn't all of you, or probably even most of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you. Its just a large percentage of the more active/vocal users who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; take part in running the site).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anyways, I'm not interested in helping to support this site anymore,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; although I will be happy to take part in any initiatives to changes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; things.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also, if someone makes a Q&amp;A site for Programmers to ask questions and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; get answers from other Programmers about any issue related to their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; career choice or self-identity as a programmer, let me know. I'd love&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to participate in such a site again, and will help you promote it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thought this needs some attention of active users of the site.  :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15349" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5925" RevisionGUID="a2afe436-06ec-4649-b58d-e3ff238d64eb" CreationDate="2013-05-15T12:13:59.523" UserId="1130" Text="Thank you for the concern however that's a fairly old comment that I added a year ago or so when I realized the site had changed dramatically from it's original scope and purpose ([site history here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130)), and stopped participating in the main site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The change caused a number of users to leave the site or delete their accounts, however I didn't want to delete my account since I still use some of the content I posted here, and value being able to see some of the other great deleted content on this site. I also thought that having over 10k rep would be a benefit if things started to change, as I could view deleted content, edit, and vote to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I also didn't want to be seen as endorsing the changes SE made to the site (I was on the top page of users at the time), so I just added my opinion to my profile page instead to make it clear I didn't agree with the change in the site's direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I guess what I'm trying to say is that's an old comment regarding some old changes done to the site, and the mods are quite aware of my opinion (and other user's opinions) on the changes that were made, however Stack Exchange decided to proceed with those changes anyways as they thought the benefits it provided outweighed the negatives." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15350" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5926" RevisionGUID="1093bc81-be4d-4235-b89f-6fab37b4dd75" CreationDate="2013-05-15T14:55:02.730" UserId="11732" Text="Sequence of events:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I review votes to close.&#xD;&#xA;* I see a question. It looks fine. Why it is here?&#xD;&#xA;* I press &quot;Close&quot; to see if there's a proposed 'exact duplicate' in other close votes.&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;We were checking if you're paying attention!&quot;. Well, OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question: is there an easy way to see other votes to close, with their reasons?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, I could open the question in another tab and see the close votes there, but probably there's a simpler way?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15351" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5926" RevisionGUID="1093bc81-be4d-4235-b89f-6fab37b4dd75" CreationDate="2013-05-15T14:55:02.730" UserId="11732" Text="Review mode, attention check: how do I see other votes to close?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15352" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5926" RevisionGUID="1093bc81-be4d-4235-b89f-6fab37b4dd75" CreationDate="2013-05-15T14:55:02.730" UserId="11732" Text="|support|close-reasons|duplicate-questions|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15353" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5926" RevisionGUID="02bc7a0e-cb2a-43cc-ac38-ec2842f045b5" CreationDate="2013-05-15T15:11:17.720" UserId="11732" Comment="edited body" Text="Sequence of events:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I review votes to close.&#xD;&#xA;* I see a question. It looks fine. Why is it here?&#xD;&#xA;* I press &quot;Close&quot; to see if there's a proposed 'exact duplicate' in other close votes.&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;We were checking if you're paying attention!&quot;. Well, OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question: is there an easy way to see other votes to close, with their reasons?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, I could open the question in another tab and see the close votes there, but probably there's a simpler way?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15354" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5927" RevisionGUID="2c64cfdf-9278-4ad9-bd45-e5e5da3908d7" CreationDate="2013-05-15T15:14:54.283" UserId="25936" Text="When you are reviewing close votes, the close reasons others have chosen is shown in the review menu:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/lwc03.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15355" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5927" RevisionGUID="1e527289-ef32-4365-9cd3-67027b8d48d1" CreationDate="2013-05-15T15:54:16.973" UserId="25936" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="When you are reviewing close votes, the close reasons others have chosen are shown in the review menu:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/lwc03.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15356" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5928" RevisionGUID="4c89c3ea-bc92-4e96-b203-ba14bccc527d" CreationDate="2013-05-16T03:28:55.447" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Given the &quot;We were checking if you're paying attention!&quot; part of the flow you described, this was an audit rather than an actual &quot;this question needs to be closed&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given your timeing and the review queue [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close/29657) was the audit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are issues with audits that are occasionally brought up on MSO such as one that seems to be similar to your issue:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Close vote review audit flawed - fails without casting vote](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/179651/close-vote-review-audit-flawed-fails-without-casting-vote)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15357" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5928" RevisionGUID="b1fc4012-4518-461a-bf50-80e4af54906b" CreationDate="2013-05-16T06:57:11.063" UserId="31260" Comment="audit](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/review-audits/info &quot;what's this&quot;" Text="Given the &quot;We were checking if you're paying attention!&quot; part of the flow you described, this was an audit rather than an actual &quot;this question needs to be closed&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given your timing and the review queue [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close/29657) was the [audit](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/review-audits/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are issues with audits that are occasionally brought up on MSO such as one that seems to be similar to your issue:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Close vote review audit flawed - fails without casting vote](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/179651/close-vote-review-audit-flawed-fails-without-casting-vote)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15358" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5929" RevisionGUID="4f125ae7-837c-432a-90a9-ec7b01b140ff" CreationDate="2013-05-16T18:59:31.647" UserId="15077" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/181550/is-this-javascript-property-defaulting-pattern-horrible is the question at, um, question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not upset or offended by the closure; no ego involved here, and I got the feedback I needed before the question was closed anyway, but in the interests of being a good citizen I'd like to understand why folks considered this to be off-topic.  Given the [FAQ][1], this seems to be clearly in the realm of a design pattern question and thus on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose it could be considered to be an implementation question (and thus more suited for Overflow) but when I asked it I was really asking about the pattern (as the question title indicates) not a specific implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15359" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5929" RevisionGUID="4f125ae7-837c-432a-90a9-ec7b01b140ff" CreationDate="2013-05-16T18:59:31.647" UserId="15077" Text="help me understand why this question was closed as off-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15360" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5929" RevisionGUID="4f125ae7-837c-432a-90a9-ec7b01b140ff" CreationDate="2013-05-16T18:59:31.647" UserId="15077" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15361" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="47f5b504-42d0-4bc6-a191-78bbaaa10f78" CreationDate="2013-05-16T21:01:29.680" UserId="31260" Comment="Summing up, I would downvote about 101-118 of 218 answers I reviewed per above research." Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot;** in the answers appear to happen once or twice a week on average, frequent enough to feel the connection between these and respective questions making their way into [SE collider list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My particular concern is the poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making **interesting and well presented problems** look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;&quot;Oh look: ['my guess is fairly prosaic. Git is brilliant...'](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177890/31260 &quot;example&quot;) - with upvoted answer like that it [can't be a real question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;not-a-real-question - what's this?&quot;)&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to [repel garbage answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3835/31260 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;), I can easily name a handful of active regulars who [can and do](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;filter=all &quot;our editors gang is pretty strong&quot;) just that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that [invalidates my edit](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;). And answer that exploits another minor ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions: per my observations &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; have been smart enough to pick questions that have reasonably good wording as-is.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how things work now helps to attract new contributors but I would appreciate if achieving this important goal &lt;sup&gt;**[1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/when-is-an-account-abandoned/ &quot;'reduce the friction of... answering to little more than entering an anonymous comment on a blog'&quot;), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/helping-the-experts-get-answers/ &quot;'attract notable experts to your site'&quot;), [3](http://stackexchange.com/about &quot;'free and open to everyone... answer questions without even bothering to register'&quot;)**&lt;/sup&gt; would somehow be less damaging for good, highly visible questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **protect your own users from scale ...human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon...** ([A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy ](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html &quot;quote source&quot;))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some additional observations based on discussions that followed posting this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Low quality answers in hot questions likely contribute to the fact that currently, it is [hard for users to understand site standards](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;), which results in posting many &quot;bad&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a steady source of misguided contributors... There are... [broken windows](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info)... **&quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;**.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Low quality answers also threat to [penalize contributors](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13713_5448 &quot;see 'clear that 10k barrier...' and further discussion&quot;) who post good ones because when piled on in hot questions, garbage answers trigger [CW](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info &quot;automatic community wiki when there are more than 15 answers&quot;) which consequently turns all the upvotes given to good answers into zero reputation for their authors.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [more than 1700 answers scored 25+ turned community wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;q=wiki%3ayes%20is%3aanswer%20score%3a25)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of precision, note that number `1700` above is only indicative since search does not exclude answers turned CW for other reasons. Also note some of the answers could be high-voted &quot;unfairly&quot;: per analysis 10+ voted answers in sampled questions (below), this could happen, although rather infrequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through few [sampled](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/181999/31260 &quot;random sampling, stuff like that&quot;) questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, note that besides 199 answers reviewed above, there are also 19 answers deleted in 16 questions listed above. These answers are visible only to moderators and to users with [sufficient privileges](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;Access to Moderator tools -&gt; 'View deleted posts'&quot;). Of these 19, 9 are deleted by moderators, the rest has been deleted by owners. Of 10 answers deleted by owners, I would downvote 7-8.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summing up, I would downvote about **101-118 of 218** answers I reviewed per above research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some data related to [recently added](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/5413/revisions &quot;see changes in rev 13&quot;) observations on community wiki status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 2K+ views - about **25%** are CW, [307](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [1247](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 10K+ views - about **60%** are CW, [62](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [101](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting [self](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13717_5448 &quot;from here&quot;), wow. Just... wow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15362" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5930" RevisionGUID="0d0ba2c7-c824-4dd8-a8ad-e23089554ce3" CreationDate="2013-05-17T09:19:13.193" UserId="25476" Text="I can't even speculate why this was closed by the community, and usually I try to defend their position when they close a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I reopened your question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15363" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="d2b65fc8-ecde-49d1-a58b-65b2c7bba690" CreationDate="2013-05-17T11:24:19.980" UserId="31260" Comment="Complementary information to this request is provided in comments below, marked with &quot;for the record...&quot;" Text="Could we please make a trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Modification details are described in [this MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164712/165773) as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As far as I can tell, substantial part of `Qanswers` in current formula is fake.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;  `(log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascores)`&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;About 1/3 of the answers [studied here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever&quot;) (83 of total 254) have score less than 1/100 of top voted post in respective question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Given that questions checked were ones with tens thousands views, **insultingly low score** indicates that assuming these answers to be popular wouldn't even be in the ballpark. Still, the formula pumps these into `Qanswers` value, as if it is something everyone would be happy to read (hint: it isn't).&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Consider tuning the formula to make it deviate less from voting results. **Ignore answers with non-positive score. Or [better yet](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13857_5485 &quot;preference for cut off at (TopAnswerScore/10-1) explained in comments here&quot;), ignore answers scored less than some reasonable fraction (eg 1/10) of the top one.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that current formula appears to give an unjustified value to crappy answers in highly upvoted questions (`Qscore/5`, no matter how much is answer downvoted), I would like to perform test run to find out if suggested change would make an impact to issues outlined in Programmers meta posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260&#xD;&#xA;* [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Complementary information to this request is provided in [comments below](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment16044_5482 &quot;starting from here&quot;), marked with &quot;for the record...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I expect modified formula to be competitive to current one at &quot;moderately hot&quot; questions, following the [reasoning outlined here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773):&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;For questions that are not too hot (likely 2-3 clicks away from top of the list) it's natural to see things working exactly as intended. Answers and comments quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;) brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and cool...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recent hot question about [automated testing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/185819/31620) gives an example of why I would want to try a modified formula. In 17 hours, question collected 17 answers, merely 5-7 of which provide useful original content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overheat of fake hotness impacted question like a [Black Saturday fire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a01_17890753.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the fire settled, what is left for future visitors of the question looks like a wasteland of low quality garbage (note that due to high views, it will score high in web searches).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a04_17906927.jpg][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the light of above, [community wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info) status stamped on the question looks especially despicable. It kind of suggests that **after damage has done**, community members are invited to go over the crap brought in by braindead formula, carefully analyze it and try to tame the pain by downvotes. As if they don't have anything better to do!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vKQvI.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B1hjy.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15364" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5931" RevisionGUID="2831d103-9904-41a5-9bba-51f942bc196d" CreationDate="2013-05-17T12:06:03.423" UserId="29020" Text="I have reviewed a question and I wanted to vote to close the question because to me it seems like a polling question on a very subjective topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To my surprise, the system told me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    STOP! Look and Listen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This was an audit, designed to see if you were paying attention. You didn't pass. There are no major problems with this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had actually read the question quite accurately and I normally click on skip if I have no clear opinion on a review. I still believe the question should be closed because it can encourage polling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course I can vote to close again (I am considering whether to do it) but I wanted to ask how the results of such audits are used by the system / by the moderators." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15365" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5931" RevisionGUID="2831d103-9904-41a5-9bba-51f942bc196d" CreationDate="2013-05-17T12:06:03.423" UserId="29020" Text="Where to ask for advice regarding a review audit?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15366" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5931" RevisionGUID="2831d103-9904-41a5-9bba-51f942bc196d" CreationDate="2013-05-17T12:06:03.423" UserId="29020" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15367" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5932" RevisionGUID="3745e511-d0ab-435b-9068-b2eefd64fe89" CreationDate="2013-05-17T12:18:40.817" UserId="41381" Text="I could see how an argument could be made that your question was more implementationy(?) than theoretical and therefore would possibly fit better on SO or code review maybe. I wouldn't vote that way, but I could understand that line of reasoning." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15368" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5933" RevisionGUID="0178ec20-9416-4724-b85e-91a76b0e0648" CreationDate="2013-05-17T12:27:34.927" UserId="41381" Text="taken for the review audit FAQ on [MSO][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt;What happens if I fail?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;For most, [nothing][2]. You'll be given some guidance on why the post was inappropriate and what you could have done instead, and then allowed to continue reviewing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Repeated failures, especially in short succession can lead to your review privileges being suspended for a week or longer, depending on the frequency of the failures. Stack Exchange is continuing to analyze the data to determine the best action to take in these cases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Review audits aren't perfect though and its somewhat common that a poor question is chosen, but that shouldn't matter for users actually interested in reviewing questions, the audits are designed to help prevent robo-reviewing if you take your time and review normally its unlikely you will fail enough audits in a short enough period to matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/157121/what-are-review-tests-audits-and-how-do-they-work&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156938/stop-look-and-listen-audit-tricked-me/156942#comment452398_156942" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15369" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5934" RevisionGUID="82fca734-5b7d-4376-bb7d-dec8d974ac58" CreationDate="2013-05-17T12:27:55.080" UserId="25936" Text="Nothing will happen if you fail an audit (or two). If you repeatedly fail audits, you might find yourself (automatically) suspended from reviewing for a week. If, after your suspension you continue failing audits, you might find yourself suspended for a bit longer. Moderators also have the ability to suspend a user from reviewing, in case the automatic measures miss something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, this was a very sneaky audit. The question is borderline, I can see why you voted to close it (although it might be salvageable with an edit or two). The audits system picks questions and answers from the last 30 days, and as any automated system, it can only rely on the available data. At the time you reviewed the question, it had 7 upvotes, 0 downvotes, 0 close votes, 0 flags and 4 upvoted answers. Naturally, the system assumed it was a very good question for the site, and expected you to think the same. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interesting reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What are review tests (audits) and how do they work?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/157121/what-are-review-tests-audits-and-how-do-they-work)&#xD;&#xA;- [How many failed audits to be put on quarantine?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/167962/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [Why am I getting the message “You've failed too many recent review audits”?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/158675/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [Are 'reasonably bad' reviewers in any way being detected or 'punished'?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/179929/are-reasonably-bad-reviewers-in-any-way-being-detected-or-punished)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15370" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5934" RevisionGUID="41cdd858-4445-41c9-a49b-3615165e3587" CreationDate="2013-05-17T12:34:15.160" UserId="25936" Comment="added 75 characters in body" Text="Nothing will happen if you fail an audit (or two). If you repeatedly fail audits, you might find yourself (automatically) suspended from reviewing for a week. If, after your suspension you continue failing audits, you might find yourself suspended for a bit longer. Moderators also have the ability to suspend a user from reviewing, in case the automatic measures miss something. We also have the ability to lift a review suspension, if it's unjustified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, this was a very sneaky audit. The question is borderline, I can see why you voted to close it (although it might be salvageable with an edit or two). The audits system picks questions and answers from the last 30 days, and as any automated system, it can only rely on the available data. At the time you reviewed the question, it had 7 upvotes, 0 downvotes, 0 close votes, 0 flags and 4 upvoted answers. Naturally, the system assumed it was a very good question for the site, and expected you to think the same. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interesting reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What are review tests (audits) and how do they work?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/157121/what-are-review-tests-audits-and-how-do-they-work)&#xD;&#xA;- [How many failed audits to be put on quarantine?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/167962/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [Why am I getting the message “You've failed too many recent review audits”?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/158675/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [The robo-approvers are killing my will to review edits][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [Are 'reasonably bad' reviewers in any way being detected or 'punished'?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/179929/are-reasonably-bad-reviewers-in-any-way-being-detected-or-punished)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/155561/162704" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15371" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5931" RevisionGUID="9d9a1e86-4a12-4baa-a44c-3e1d6a0ded8b" CreationDate="2013-05-17T12:36:33.420" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|review|review-audits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15372" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5929" RevisionGUID="3f894de8-0ad8-4619-99dd-7b4e41908d71" CreationDate="2013-05-18T02:07:07.753" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/335577257559093248" />
  <row Id="15373" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5935" RevisionGUID="d8117e54-d36b-4b6d-849f-ce0dbe60e489" CreationDate="2013-05-18T02:44:07.677" UserId="89134" Text="The problem is that you are not asking &quot;Is this pattern a good idea?&quot; your question (in essence) is &quot;dose this pattern indicate that I have done something wrong [at a deeper level]&quot;. Furthermore, you ask your question fully in light of your own code, and your project. While this isn't a bad thing, it would be more relevant on SO or CR.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same question could be asked in a more generalized way, that would be both on topic, as well as generally more useful to anyone else who may have the same question in the future. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15374" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5924" RevisionGUID="8afaabc7-e415-4694-a322-98dc01fa8da1" CreationDate="2013-05-18T12:42:45.227" UserId="25936" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:7007,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Glenn Nelson&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:11732,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;9000&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:1996,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Jim G.&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="15375" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5929" RevisionGUID="dc191a21-7002-4777-8b2d-282439df45f4" CreationDate="2013-05-19T09:41:31.287" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15376" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5936" RevisionGUID="f3525ed4-fd0a-4130-aeb2-b224e38b589f" CreationDate="2013-05-19T12:57:47.917" UserId="855" Text="I think it is safe to assume all questions on this site should be answered in the context of programming. If the OP indicates it is not, suggest another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although programmers may face the same project/workplace issues as other professions, I don't believe they are exactly the same. Programmers have to deal with a lot of stereotypes and othere perceptions of our field. Where else will the most introverted junior level employee make a matter of fact statement in a technical area and a room full of executives will look at him or her as a bragadocious know-it-all? What do you expect from the &quot;computer guy&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have to go out of our way to be more tactful and sometimes this is due to the fact we may not be good at it. Here is part of the accepted answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Communicate your concerns in the most concise and non-confrontational&#xD;&#xA;&gt; way possible up the management ladder. Summarize the risks, but do not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; try to impose your conclusion on them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Would anyone from the sales department have to go this far our of their way to not disturb the management? I've been at companies driven by the sales staff and you better be the loudest person in the room to get your point across. If you didn't defend your answers/suggestions, you'd get crushed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site isn't always going to provide concrete questions and answers by anyone's definition and certainly not software developers. Pardon the stereotype. Just assume it's in the context of programming because I have no intention of making that statement for every question and answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15377" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5937" RevisionGUID="820a08fd-9c48-4b02-a8e9-4e05980a12b1" CreationDate="2013-05-19T20:41:24.520" UserId="90313" Text="I would like to know if it's possible to bring back to life a post of mine (a question) which I deleted?&#xD;&#xA;If so - would the reputation I gained from it be restored?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15378" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5937" RevisionGUID="820a08fd-9c48-4b02-a8e9-4e05980a12b1" CreationDate="2013-05-19T20:41:24.520" UserId="90313" Text="Is it possible to &quot;revive&quot; deleted post?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15379" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5937" RevisionGUID="820a08fd-9c48-4b02-a8e9-4e05980a12b1" CreationDate="2013-05-19T20:41:24.520" UserId="90313" Text="|support|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15380" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5938" RevisionGUID="92c6e692-55bc-442a-909d-e28a48b90dd6" CreationDate="2013-05-19T21:11:00.503" UserId="25936" Text="Post deletion is soft, deleted questions and answers can be restored. Users with more than 10K reputation can vote to undelete any post, except posts deleted by moderators. Moderators can delete and undelete any post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you've deleted one of your answers, you can easily restore it. When it comes to questions the situation is a bit trickier. You can't see your deleted questions in your profile (that's an abillity reserved for moderators), you can only see them if you have a direct link to them. Also, you can't delete your own question when it has an upvoted answer and you can't delete your own answer if it has been accepted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When it comes to reputation, when a post is deleted all reputation changes are as if they never happened. _Except_ if the post was deleted more than two months after it was posted _and_ it had a score of at least 3. If that's the case, you keep all earned reputation. When a post is undeleted, all associated reputation changes are restored. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15381" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5938" RevisionGUID="f8a6e84f-c0f6-43e2-946f-f7066b98d3e6" CreationDate="2013-05-19T21:30:03.233" UserId="25936" Comment="added 120 characters in body" Text="Post deletion is soft, deleted questions and answers can be restored. Users with more than 10K reputation can vote to undelete questions and users with more than 20K reputation can also vote to undelete negatively scored answers. _Except_ when those posts were deleted by a moderator, in which case they can only be undeleted by a moderator. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you've deleted one of your answers, you can easily restore it. When it comes to questions the situation is a bit trickier. You can't see your deleted questions in your profile (that's an abillity reserved for moderators), you can only see them if you have a direct link to them. Also, you can't delete your own question when it has an upvoted answer and you can't delete your own answer if it has been accepted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When it comes to reputation, when a post is deleted all reputation changes are as if they never happened. _Except_ if the post was deleted more than two months after it was posted _and_ it had a score of at least 3. If that's the case, you keep all earned reputation. When a post is undeleted, all associated reputation changes are restored. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15382" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5938" RevisionGUID="425f968a-24dc-40d0-9663-45ff6973cc96" CreationDate="2013-05-20T19:01:22.710" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 18 characters in body" Text="Post deletion is soft, deleted questions and answers can be restored. Users with more than 10K reputation can vote to undelete questions and users with more than 20K reputation can also vote to undelete answers. _Except_ when those posts were deleted by a moderator, in which case they can only be undeleted by a moderator. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you've deleted one of your answers, you can easily restore it. When it comes to questions the situation is a bit trickier. You can't see your deleted questions in your profile (that's an abillity reserved for moderators), you can only see them if you have a direct link to them. Also, you can't delete your own question when it has an upvoted answer and you can't delete your own answer if it has been accepted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When it comes to reputation, when a post is deleted all reputation changes are as if they never happened. _Except_ if the post was deleted more than two months after it was posted _and_ it had a score of at least 3. If that's the case, you keep all earned reputation. When a post is undeleted, all associated reputation changes are restored. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15383" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5939" RevisionGUID="69772c64-a04d-42a7-8fff-fc5167d5845a" CreationDate="2013-05-21T12:49:04.033" UserId="35693" Text="Potential answerers want to know 1) that any answer they give will likely benefit you, and 2) any answer they give will likely benefit others. That said, there are some things you can do to make the question more &quot;real&quot; to them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first is to give some background, why is this question being asked., and what is the real problem. Answerers have gotten &quot;burned&quot; too many times by questions that appeared to be about code, but were really about database management or other issues. Not that this is the case with you, just saying.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other thing to do is to provide an example of code from another &quot;language that Nodejdevelopers came from.&quot; Few answerers want to answer a question like this from beginning to end, but most are will to help you to get past a point where you &quot;got stuck.&quot; So start your question just before where you got stuck. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Not real&quot; means that there is a &quot;reasonable doubt&quot;  about this in the minds of five answerers. The burden of proof here is on the asker." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15384" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5938" RevisionGUID="126a5594-c245-4610-9f17-d9aae76941f2" CreationDate="2013-05-22T17:33:18.677" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="Post deletion is &quot;soft;&quot; deleted questions and answers can be restored. Users with more than 10K reputation can vote to undelete questions and users with more than 20K reputation can also vote to undelete answers. _Except_ when those posts were deleted by a moderator, in which case they can only be undeleted by a moderator. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you've deleted one of your answers, you can easily restore it. When it comes to questions the situation is a bit trickier. You can't see your deleted questions in your profile (that's an abillity reserved for moderators), you can only see them if you have a direct link to them. Also, you can't delete your own question when it has an upvoted answer and you can't delete your own answer if it has been accepted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When it comes to reputation, when a post is deleted all reputation changes are as if they never happened. _Except_ if the post was deleted more than two months after it was posted _and_ it had a score of at least 3. If that's the case, you keep all earned reputation. When a post is undeleted, all associated reputation changes are restored. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15385" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5940" RevisionGUID="53eac87f-6f48-4dab-89f5-f017ac6ba6eb" CreationDate="2013-05-23T13:19:24.940" UserId="32008" Text="I've just been reading this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/141818/32008. And after refreshing, I saw it was closed for being a duplicate to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/220/32008. I don't discuss the fact that those are duplicates, they clearly are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I feel [this answer][1] from user @DXM to the closed question is way more insightful, well written and thoughtful than most other answers to the other question. I was thinking it's a shame this answer gets destroyed/hidden because the question is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is moving answers something that can be done, or has it been already discussed maybe ? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/141821/32008" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15386" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5940" RevisionGUID="53eac87f-6f48-4dab-89f5-f017ac6ba6eb" CreationDate="2013-05-23T13:19:24.940" UserId="32008" Text="Is it possible for moderators to move answers from one question to another?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15387" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5940" RevisionGUID="53eac87f-6f48-4dab-89f5-f017ac6ba6eb" CreationDate="2013-05-23T13:19:24.940" UserId="32008" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15388" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5941" RevisionGUID="83d04aba-866f-426e-bd12-073126f8be62" CreationDate="2013-05-23T13:22:28.253" UserId="47" Text="The questions can be merged which will transfer all the answers from the duplicate to the the original.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15389" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5940" RevisionGUID="375fa356-9353-4b52-9e53-01004742b8cb" CreationDate="2013-05-23T15:09:10.353" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|answers|moderators|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15390" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="2b721d2a-bdc0-4e12-a565-65f10db20971" CreationDate="2013-05-23T15:51:59.627" UserId="31260" Comment="Success and failure criteria per http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/180524/please-stop-sending-me-emails-when-my-bounty-is-going-to-expire-soon/180527#comment547934_180527" Text="Could we please make a trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Modification details are described in [this MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164712/165773) as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As far as I can tell, substantial part of `Qanswers` in current formula is fake.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;  `(log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascores)`&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;About 1/3 of the answers [studied here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever&quot;) (83 of total 254) have score less than 1/100 of top voted post in respective question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Given that questions checked were ones with tens thousands views, **insultingly low score** indicates that assuming these answers to be popular wouldn't even be in the ballpark. Still, the formula pumps these into `Qanswers` value, as if it is something everyone would be happy to read (hint: it isn't).&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Consider tuning the formula to make it deviate less from voting results. **Ignore answers with non-positive score. Or [better yet](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13857_5485 &quot;preference for cut off at (TopAnswerScore/10-1) explained in comments here&quot;), ignore answers scored less than some reasonable fraction (eg 1/10) of the top one.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that current formula appears to give an unjustified value to crappy answers in highly upvoted questions (`Qscore/5`, no matter how much is answer downvoted), I would like to perform test run to find out if suggested change would make an impact to issues outlined in Programmers meta posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Note: results of the trial run to be analyzed using study analogous to one performed in _Answers quality in hot questions_. Current evaluation shows about **101-118 low quality of 218** answers sampled.  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Upon completion of trial run, similar evaluation is to be done in order to estimate whether there was a substantial impact, positive or negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Complementary information to this request is provided in [comments below](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment16044_5482 &quot;starting from here&quot;), marked with &quot;for the record...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I expect modified formula to be competitive to current one at &quot;moderately hot&quot; questions, following the [reasoning outlined here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773):&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;For questions that are not too hot (likely 2-3 clicks away from top of the list) it's natural to see things working exactly as intended. Answers and comments quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;) brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and cool...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recent hot question about [automated testing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/185819/31620) gives an example of why I would want to try a modified formula. In 17 hours, question collected 17 answers, merely 5-7 of which provide useful original content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overheat of fake hotness impacted question like a [Black Saturday fire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a01_17890753.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the fire settled, what is left for future visitors of the question looks like a wasteland of low quality garbage (note that due to high views, it will score high in web searches).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a04_17906927.jpg][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the light of above, [community wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info) status stamped on the question looks especially despicable. It kind of suggests that **after damage has done**, community members are invited to go over the crap brought in by braindead formula, carefully analyze it and try to tame the pain by downvotes. As if they don't have anything better to do!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vKQvI.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B1hjy.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15391" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5942" RevisionGUID="7da9875c-921f-4eb6-b28e-4e6d4e5055b8" CreationDate="2013-05-23T16:05:57.113" UserId="72040" Text="Aren't these tags more or less the same? Should they be a synonym, or are they different?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15392" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5942" RevisionGUID="7da9875c-921f-4eb6-b28e-4e6d4e5055b8" CreationDate="2013-05-23T16:05:57.113" UserId="72040" Text="Tag &quot;Third party libraries&quot; and &quot;3rd party library&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15393" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5942" RevisionGUID="7da9875c-921f-4eb6-b28e-4e6d4e5055b8" CreationDate="2013-05-23T16:05:57.113" UserId="72040" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15394" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5899" RevisionGUID="d5e76589-1d34-4426-b3f5-f7c74ef3eef7" CreationDate="2013-05-23T16:11:35.450" UserId="47" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:7007,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Glenn Nelson&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="15395" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5929" RevisionGUID="1a228ac1-01e4-48d7-9495-00812528d643" CreationDate="2013-05-23T16:11:41.907" UserId="47" Comment="7" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:1996,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Jim G.&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="15396" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5942" RevisionGUID="e4183010-dfe0-4b83-8bbc-06ff4d04665c" CreationDate="2013-05-23T18:03:24.393" UserId="31260" Comment="added 57 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Aren't these tags more or less the same: [tag:third-party-libraries] and [tag:3rd-party-library]? Should they be a synonym, or are they different?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15397" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5942" RevisionGUID="e4183010-dfe0-4b83-8bbc-06ff4d04665c" CreationDate="2013-05-23T18:03:24.393" UserId="31260" Comment="added 57 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Tag &quot;third-party-libraries&quot; and &quot;3rd-party-library&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15398" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5942" RevisionGUID="e4183010-dfe0-4b83-8bbc-06ff4d04665c" CreationDate="2013-05-23T18:03:24.393" UserId="31260" Comment="added 57 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15399" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5943" RevisionGUID="b9f29065-f682-4471-881a-1faa6c400594" CreationDate="2013-05-23T18:13:45.233" UserId="5099" Text="If I would have to choose between them, I would not be able to tell the difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, yes, I think they should be synonyms. As [tag:third-party-libraries] has the most questions (28), I think that is the best option for the master tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15400" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5934" RevisionGUID="2984e08b-e3a3-4c08-971a-b687746af82b" CreationDate="2013-05-24T16:06:25.723" UserId="25936" Comment="added 108 characters in body" Text="Nothing will happen if you fail an audit (or two). If you repeatedly fail audits, you might find yourself (automatically) suspended from reviewing for a week. If, after your suspension you continue failing audits, you might find yourself suspended for a bit longer. Moderators also have the ability to suspend a user from reviewing, in case the automatic measures miss something. We also have the ability to lift a review suspension, if it's unjustified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, this was a very sneaky audit. The question is borderline, I can see why you voted to close it (although it might be salvageable with an edit or two). The audits system picks questions and answers from the last 30 days, and as any automated system, it can only rely on the available data. At the time you reviewed the question, it had 7 upvotes, 0 downvotes, 0 close votes, 0 flags and 4 upvoted answers. Naturally, the system assumed it was a very good question for the site, and expected you to think the same. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interesting reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What are review tests (audits) and how do they work?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/157121/what-are-review-tests-audits-and-how-do-they-work)&#xD;&#xA;- [Clearly wrong close review audit - what action to take?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/180417/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [How many failed audits to be put on quarantine?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/167962/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [Why am I getting the message “You've failed too many recent review audits”?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/158675/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [The robo-approvers are killing my will to review edits][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [Are 'reasonably bad' reviewers in any way being detected or 'punished'?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/179929/are-reasonably-bad-reviewers-in-any-way-being-detected-or-punished)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/155561/162704" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15401" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5942" RevisionGUID="562679b2-6f9f-4eec-9ade-cfc92e0fa6e2" CreationDate="2013-05-24T16:13:29.847" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15402" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5944" RevisionGUID="2df0a7d4-6d0e-4ac3-b1c9-fef20bd224e9" CreationDate="2013-05-24T16:36:35.717" UserId="22069" Text="The footer line is misbehaving again and overlapping the edit preview when editing a post from the &quot;First Posts&quot; review queue (possibly others?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is from Chrome 28 on Linux:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This from Firefox 17 (first question). Both on Linux.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bottom of the page looks a bit naked when that happens.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/c3BEG.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/TI0gC.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15403" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5944" RevisionGUID="2df0a7d4-6d0e-4ac3-b1c9-fef20bd224e9" CreationDate="2013-05-24T16:36:35.717" UserId="22069" Text="Footer lines inconveniently positionned when editing from the first posts review queue" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15404" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5944" RevisionGUID="2df0a7d4-6d0e-4ac3-b1c9-fef20bd224e9" CreationDate="2013-05-24T16:36:35.717" UserId="22069" Text="|bug|design|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15405" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5944" RevisionGUID="21729a66-2d0c-48ea-90c5-331525dcff8f" CreationDate="2013-05-24T17:37:28.463" UserId="22069" Comment="added 109 characters in body" Text="The footer line is misbehaving again and overlapping the edit preview when editing a post from the &quot;First Posts&quot; review queue (possibly others?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is from Chrome 28 on Linux:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This from Firefox 17 (first question). Both on Linux.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Windows Vista/IE 10:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bottom of the page looks a bit naked when that happens.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/c3BEG.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/TI0gC.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/C6JlC.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15406" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5944" RevisionGUID="4d40cdb2-0306-4b14-a6c0-301716ef9106" CreationDate="2013-05-24T18:03:43.517" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="Footer lines inconveniently positioned when editing from the first posts review queue" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15407" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5945" RevisionGUID="ada728d4-c6f5-4610-b32a-74ca420f55c5" CreationDate="2013-05-28T04:21:43.033" UserId="23355" Text="This question was closed along with downvotes: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/199257/what-level-of-queries-should-i-expect-from-an-interviewer-regarding-my-official&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These aren't: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49845/what-should-a-c-developer-expect-on-an-interview-at-a-rails-company?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105494/what-should-i-expect-from-a-technical-evaluation-for-c?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70251/what-should-i-expect-as-a-c-software-engineer-in-a-company-that-develops-pytho?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is my question different from them, and what should be done to improve it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15408" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5945" RevisionGUID="ada728d4-c6f5-4610-b32a-74ca420f55c5" CreationDate="2013-05-28T04:21:43.033" UserId="23355" Text="Are &quot;What to expect&quot; type of questions on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15409" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5945" RevisionGUID="ada728d4-c6f5-4610-b32a-74ca420f55c5" CreationDate="2013-05-28T04:21:43.033" UserId="23355" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15410" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5946" RevisionGUID="e89a4d6d-9521-4171-a4f3-e4e25af57298" CreationDate="2013-05-28T06:52:10.627" UserId="20065" Text="Today I noticed [tag:sdlc] tag, which has no information written.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone know what exactly is it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[List of questions with this tag][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/sdlc" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15411" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5946" RevisionGUID="e89a4d6d-9521-4171-a4f3-e4e25af57298" CreationDate="2013-05-28T06:52:10.627" UserId="20065" Text="What is SDLC tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15412" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5946" RevisionGUID="e89a4d6d-9521-4171-a4f3-e4e25af57298" CreationDate="2013-05-28T06:52:10.627" UserId="20065" Text="|support|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15413" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5947" RevisionGUID="6eec0f38-eea5-4fc5-9f9f-4d8e397b9774" CreationDate="2013-05-28T07:28:52.660" UserId="25936" Text="The acronym stands for [Systems (or Software) Development Life Cycle][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15414" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5945" RevisionGUID="71c1156e-fdc8-4c76-9544-270168be8662" CreationDate="2013-05-28T07:36:36.693" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|scope|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15415" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5945" RevisionGUID="e79dc714-b80a-442d-91c8-a094e6a7caf1" CreationDate="2013-05-28T07:46:19.287" UserId="23355" Comment="edited title" Text="This question was closed along with downvotes: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/199257/what-level-of-queries-should-i-expect-from-an-interviewer-regarding-my-official&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These aren't: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49845/what-should-a-c-developer-expect-on-an-interview-at-a-rails-company?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105494/what-should-i-expect-from-a-technical-evaluation-for-c?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70251/what-should-i-expect-as-a-c-software-engineer-in-a-company-that-develops-pytho?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How is my question different from them, and what should be done to improve it?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15416" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5945" RevisionGUID="e79dc714-b80a-442d-91c8-a094e6a7caf1" CreationDate="2013-05-28T07:46:19.287" UserId="23355" Comment="edited title" Text="How to make &quot;What to expect&quot; question constructive?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15417" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5948" RevisionGUID="aefa633f-f9ee-4ac2-9979-89b1fe0844b2" CreationDate="2013-05-28T09:19:22.987" UserId="26120" Text="After seeing t he uptoate to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17442/is-clang-llvm-ready-for-prime-time, I'm wondering how to rate the other answers. A lot has happened between the moment when the question was posted, and the update.&#xD;&#xA;Most answers seem dated now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was wondering how to deal with a situation like this. Should we update votes? (if any were cast)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, the question itself seems to be very 'temporally localized'." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15418" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5948" RevisionGUID="aefa633f-f9ee-4ac2-9979-89b1fe0844b2" CreationDate="2013-05-28T09:19:22.987" UserId="26120" Text="How to handle updates to old questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15419" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5948" RevisionGUID="aefa633f-f9ee-4ac2-9979-89b1fe0844b2" CreationDate="2013-05-28T09:19:22.987" UserId="26120" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15420" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5948" RevisionGUID="5c53ed8f-ff3b-4e75-bfde-cec2883c070d" CreationDate="2013-05-28T09:25:47.213" UserId="26120" Comment="added 151 characters in body" Text="After seeing t he uptoate to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17442/is-clang-llvm-ready-for-prime-time, I'm wondering how to rate the other answers. A lot has happened between the moment when the question was posted, and the update.&#xD;&#xA;Most answers seem dated now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was wondering how to deal with a situation like this. Should we update votes? (if any were cast)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, the question itself seems to be very 'temporally localized'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think the update to the lead answer was a bad thing in itself, it's just such a stark contrast to a) the question and b) the other answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15421" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5948" RevisionGUID="3537509a-0335-43b7-a4e4-810f53da928e" CreationDate="2013-05-28T09:52:19.697" UserId="26120" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="After seeing the update to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17442/is-clang-llvm-ready-for-prime-time, I'm wondering how to rate the other answers. A lot has happened between the moment when the question was posted, and the update.&#xD;&#xA;Most answers seem dated now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was wondering how to deal with a situation like this. Should we update votes? (if any were cast)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, the question itself seems to be very 'temporally localized'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think the update to the lead answer was a bad thing in itself, it's just such a stark contrast to a) the question and b) the other answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15422" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5945" RevisionGUID="4ad0845e-96e9-4d39-8ce5-3cc95f3a5c1f" CreationDate="2013-05-28T12:03:47.257" UserId="23355" Comment="added 1004 characters in body" Text="This question was closed along with downvotes: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/199257/what-level-of-queries-should-i-expect-from-an-interviewer-regarding-my-official&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It contained the following text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Background:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have been working with a software company for some 5 years now. I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; haven't handled a &quot;project&quot; by myself yet. This is a robotics company&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and I am not a robotics person. So, the kind of work that I have&#xD;&#xA;&gt; handled so far are &quot;small&quot; C++ programming related stuffs in the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; projects.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tiny examples:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Someone has already made classes and written socket programming for this software X with UDP. My job was to add the TCP code using Qt API.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. I had to add a &quot;callback&quot; functionality (using C++ templates) somewhere in the project for some reason.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Another somewhat bigger example: I had to set up a functionality of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; message exchanging between two components (according to protocol&#xD;&#xA;&gt; given) in C++.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Both these example tasks are related to the &quot;proprietary&quot; software of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this company.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions (in which depth) should I expect the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interviewer to ask regarding these example tasks?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These aren't: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49845/what-should-a-c-developer-expect-on-an-interview-at-a-rails-company?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105494/what-should-i-expect-from-a-technical-evaluation-for-c?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70251/what-should-i-expect-as-a-c-software-engineer-in-a-company-that-develops-pytho?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How is my question different from them, and what should be done to improve it?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15423" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5949" RevisionGUID="70814881-c58c-49a3-9db6-779b33f611fd" CreationDate="2013-05-28T12:29:39.783" UserId="41381" Text="I voted to close as not a real question, you give a big back story and then ask a very open ended and vague question that has very different answers depending on what you are actually interviewing for. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other questions are all old ones that haven't had any real maintenance to them and may need to also be closed, sites change over time and different questions become acceptable or unacceptable and the old questions rarely get any views to really justify cleaning all of them up." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15424" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5945" RevisionGUID="e02ca2dc-b2eb-4e4e-a956-1fcfda754d7d" CreationDate="2013-05-28T12:37:41.890" UserId="31260" Comment="quote formatting as in original" Text="This question was closed along with downvotes: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/199257/what-level-of-queries-should-i-expect-from-an-interviewer-regarding-my-official&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It contained the following text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Background:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I have been working with a software company for some 5 years now. I haven't handled a &quot;project&quot; by myself yet. This is a robotics company and I am not a robotics person. So, the kind of work that I have handled so far are *&quot;small&quot;* C++ programming related stuffs in the projects. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Tiny examples:   &#xD;&#xA;1. Someone has already made classes and written socket programming for this software X with UDP. My job was to add the TCP code using Qt API.  &#xD;&#xA;2. I had to add a &quot;callback&quot; functionality (using C++ templates) somewhere in the project for some reason.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Another somewhat bigger example:   &#xD;&#xA;I had to set up a functionality of message exchanging between two components (according to protocol given) in C++.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Both these example tasks are related to the &quot;proprietary&quot; software of this company.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;***What kind of questions (in which depth) should I expect the interviewer to ask regarding these example tasks?***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions aren't closed: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49845/what-should-a-c-developer-expect-on-an-interview-at-a-rails-company?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105494/what-should-i-expect-from-a-technical-evaluation-for-c?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70251/what-should-i-expect-as-a-c-software-engineer-in-a-company-that-develops-pytho?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How is my question different from them, and what should be done to improve it?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15425" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5945" RevisionGUID="e02ca2dc-b2eb-4e4e-a956-1fcfda754d7d" CreationDate="2013-05-28T12:37:41.890" UserId="31260" Comment="quote formatting as in original" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15426" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5950" RevisionGUID="6b0c2cc6-710f-4c6b-8952-5de130bc064f" CreationDate="2013-05-28T13:01:20.973" UserId="5099" Text="With the rate at which software development changes, I don't think it is feasible to keep the answers updated to the latest trends/changes or even to revise the votes on all of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it is best to view all questions and answers in view of the time-frame in which they were written, but it might be a consideration in the closure of a question, if it has been taken over by the current status quo (like in the referenced Clang/LLVM question).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15427" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5951" RevisionGUID="ef11010d-008b-4480-af72-3862cf074259" CreationDate="2013-05-29T17:22:12.720" UserId="31260" Text="&#xD;&#xA;[Question asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/25963/31260) is stated as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is there any hard data (studies, comparisons, not-just-gut-feel analysis)** on `&lt;particular subject&gt;`?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of the answers given are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I honestly feel there is no downside... ([link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/199818/31260))&#xD;&#xA;* In summary, if you're going to pursue `&lt;particular subject&gt;` make sure you... ([link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/40144/31260))&#xD;&#xA;* we started getting a lot of inquires from our customers... ([link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/26000/31260))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading, above answers go on a subject very different from what have been asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that OK?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15428" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5951" RevisionGUID="ef11010d-008b-4480-af72-3862cf074259" CreationDate="2013-05-29T17:22:12.720" UserId="31260" Text="What to do with answers to this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15429" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5951" RevisionGUID="ef11010d-008b-4480-af72-3862cf074259" CreationDate="2013-05-29T17:22:12.720" UserId="31260" Text="|support|specific-question|answer-quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15430" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5952" RevisionGUID="bb360d78-d36a-4915-8aae-5530c0d0e8f0" CreationDate="2013-05-29T18:57:55.060" UserId="1204" Text="Downvote the ones you don't like. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can't flag them as &quot;Not an Answer&quot; because they really are answers, just not very good ones. They're not spam and they're not offensive, so you can't flag them as that.  To flag them with a custom explanation, you'd have to be compelling enough to convince a mod that the answers *are actively harming the site,* and I don't think that's the case here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So downvoting is the appropriate action here. I downvoted the first two you linked, but not the third.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15431" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5952" RevisionGUID="20c66f97-1d20-492f-b7be-263052734544" CreationDate="2013-05-29T19:19:29.353" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body" Text="Downvote the ones you don't like. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can't flag them as &quot;Not an Answer&quot; because they really are answers, just not very good ones. They're not spam and they're not offensive, so you can't flag them as that.  To flag them with a custom explanation, you'd have to be compelling enough to convince a mod that the answers *are actively harming the site,* and I don't think that's the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So downvoting is the appropriate action here. I downvoted the first two you linked, but not the third.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15432" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5951" RevisionGUID="1a195d7d-1fd1-46d0-9f9e-a816d8449466" CreationDate="2013-05-29T19:39:46.160" UserId="31260" Comment="added forgotten link http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/151227/31260" Text="[Question asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/25963/31260) is stated as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is there any hard data (studies, comparisons, not-just-gut-feel analysis)** on `&lt;particular subject&gt;`?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of the answers given are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I honestly feel there is no downside... ([link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/199818/31260))&#xD;&#xA;* In summary, if you're going to pursue `&lt;particular subject&gt;` make sure you... ([link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/151227/31260))&#xD;&#xA;* We successfully use telecommuting in our team... ([link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/40144/31260))&#xD;&#xA;* we started getting a lot of inquires from our customers... ([link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/26000/31260))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading, above answers go on a subject very different from what have been asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that OK?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15433" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5951" RevisionGUID="27222207-422d-4c0a-b224-c7d92ae0fcdf" CreationDate="2013-05-29T20:02:09.720" UserId="31260" Comment="clarified per http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5951/what-to-do-with-answers-to-this-question#comment16112_5952" Text="[Question asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/25963/31260) is stated as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is there any hard data (studies, comparisons, not-just-gut-feel analysis)** on `&lt;particular subject&gt;`?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of the answers given are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I honestly feel there is no downside... ([link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/199818/31260))&#xD;&#xA;* In summary, if you're going to pursue `&lt;particular subject&gt;` make sure you... ([link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/151227/31260))&#xD;&#xA;* We successfully use telecommuting in our team... ([link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/40144/31260))&#xD;&#xA;* we started getting a lot of inquires from our customers... ([link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/26000/31260))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading, listed answers totally ignore question part quoted above (&quot;hard data...&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that OK?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15434" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5953" RevisionGUID="920d5cf2-abc3-4c81-b154-996973c99404" CreationDate="2013-05-29T20:17:24.223" UserId="60569" Text="[This question][1] is posed in terms of ASP.NET, but (in my opinion) is really about collecting payment. (See [xy problem][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are questions about collecting payment for freelance work on topic? The FAQ lists &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; as on-topic, but I would think questions about writing a contract that includes payment collection would be better directed to a lawyer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/199785/clever-way-to-license-obfuscate-web-applications-until-the-client-has-paid-for-i&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/66378/192138" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15435" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5953" RevisionGUID="920d5cf2-abc3-4c81-b154-996973c99404" CreationDate="2013-05-29T20:17:24.223" UserId="60569" Text="Are questions about collecting payment from a client for freelance work on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15436" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5953" RevisionGUID="920d5cf2-abc3-4c81-b154-996973c99404" CreationDate="2013-05-29T20:17:24.223" UserId="60569" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15437" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5954" RevisionGUID="008eb993-a001-4e28-8709-5a3306ab367c" CreationDate="2013-05-29T20:19:41.877" UserId="1204" Text="No.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's a general business concern that doesn't pertain to software development specifically." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15438" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5955" RevisionGUID="53431c90-3130-4886-996a-742012035489" CreationDate="2013-05-29T20:57:22.407" UserId="60569" Text="I liked that question when I first read it (because generally I like it when people look for evidence instead of opinions), but the more I think about it, the question seems too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question should have narrowed the scope. &quot;Advantageous and disadvantages&quot; is a broad fishing expedition. Asking about affects on productivity, employee satisfaction, or retention rate would be more helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It might also have helped if the request for hard data was more strongly worded, such as &quot;I'm looking for hard data collected from scientific studies of multiple companies, not anecdotes or opinions&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As the question is, I don't feel comfortable categorically downvoting anecdotal answers. Generally StackExchange encourages sharing personal experience." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15439" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5956" RevisionGUID="fe88593d-3461-4c09-8348-0031300cdf52" CreationDate="2013-05-30T05:51:38.280" UserId="8486" Text="I am curious because [one of my question ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/197650/how-should-i-behave-as-a-developer-in-a-project-thats-headed-for-failure) suddenly got 100 more upvotes and 40k views apparently overnight. Is it possible to know where the sudden traffic came from, just for curiosity? Probably it is linked by an external article or shared by a popular person/media?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15440" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5956" RevisionGUID="fe88593d-3461-4c09-8348-0031300cdf52" CreationDate="2013-05-30T05:51:38.280" UserId="8486" Text="Is it possible to know where traffic to a question is coming from?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15441" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5956" RevisionGUID="fe88593d-3461-4c09-8348-0031300cdf52" CreationDate="2013-05-30T05:51:38.280" UserId="8486" Text="|discussion|specific-question|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15442" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5957" RevisionGUID="3337800d-d07c-47d5-9526-6a3ce967c68e" CreationDate="2013-05-30T06:07:18.497" UserId="25936" Text="Unfortunately, there's no easy way. You might be interested in supporting these related feature requests on MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Is there any analytics information that moderators can access for individual questions?][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we add moderator features to see keyword analytics and annotated traffic graphs for specific questions?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, if you do a [simple search for the question's title][3], you'll find out it's been shared on several sites. The more likely culprit for the question's sudden popularity seems to be this recent [Hacker News thread][4]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/77138/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/165593/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22How%20should%20I%20behave%20as%20a%20developer%20in%20a%20project%20that%27s%20headed%20for%20failure%22&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5785759" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15443" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5956" RevisionGUID="d172eb67-f991-4120-8de4-fd653c47612e" CreationDate="2013-05-30T06:16:34.180" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|specific-question|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15444" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5956" RevisionGUID="d172eb67-f991-4120-8de4-fd653c47612e" CreationDate="2013-05-30T06:16:34.180" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="I am curious because [one of my questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/197650/how-should-i-behave-as-a-developer-in-a-project-thats-headed-for-failure) suddenly got 100 more upvotes and 40k views apparently overnight. Is it possible to know where the sudden traffic came from, just for curiosity? Probably it is linked by an external article or shared by a popular person/media?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15445" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5958" RevisionGUID="2d20ed92-18a6-4178-936a-3716a20dfe11" CreationDate="2013-05-30T08:44:53.233" UserId="31260" Text="For your particular case, it turned out rather simple. The way to find out when you're curious is as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Enter title of the question into search engine  &#xD;&#xA;   &quot;How should I behave as a developer in a project that's headed for failure?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;2. Study results. In this case, 6th link from top shown to me by Google looked _promising_  &#xD;&#xA;   &quot;[Hacker News - How should I behave as a developer in a... | Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/hnbot/posts/514473758607910)&quot;&#xD;&#xA;3. Following the link brought me to a page that mentioned:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3,203 like this  &#xD;&#xA;20 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above seem to match the sudden spike of the interest you describe.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the reference, HN page also pointed to discussion at their site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How should I behave as a developer in a project that's headed for failure? (stackexchange.com)](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5785759)  &#xD;&#xA;HN discussion currently says &quot;228 points | 155 comments&quot; - looks like the interest is high indeed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15446" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5958" RevisionGUID="1d3418fd-f6a9-4034-8bbe-534ec55a19a5" CreationDate="2013-05-30T09:13:08.497" UserId="31260" Comment="spikes like 40k views overnight tend to leave noticeable traces in search engines" Text="For your particular case, it turned out rather simple, because spikes like _40k views overnight_ tend to leave noticeable traces in search engines. The way to find out when you're curious is as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Enter title of the question into search engine  &#xD;&#xA;   &quot;How should I behave as a developer in a project that's headed for failure?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;2. Study results. In this case, 6th link from top shown to me by Google looked _promising_  &#xD;&#xA;   &quot;[Hacker News - How should I behave as a developer in a... | Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/hnbot/posts/514473758607910)&quot;&#xD;&#xA;3. Following the link brought me to a page that mentioned:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3,203 like this  &#xD;&#xA;20 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above seem to match the sudden spike of the interest you describe.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the reference, HN page also pointed to discussion at their site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How should I behave as a developer in a project that's headed for failure? (stackexchange.com)](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5785759)  &#xD;&#xA;HN discussion currently says &quot;228 points | 155 comments&quot; - looks like the interest is high indeed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15447" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5959" RevisionGUID="1f73273e-86e2-459f-bb60-652da6f343fa" CreationDate="2013-05-30T19:00:26.303" UserId="41381" Text="Statements like the one you highlighted are like adding &quot;as a programmer&quot; to a question. Its a weasel way to make a bad question attempt to be a borderline or good question. Everyone is going to pretend that part isn't there in most every case just like what happened. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question isn't a good question here, its a do research for me question which is a good type of question on other sites like skeptics where the goal is providing well researched answers, this site is more about combining experience and knowledge into relevant insights to a question rather than regurgitating bits of others work. I's also say its off topic here working at home isn't unique to programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15448" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5960" RevisionGUID="cfc65b96-db28-4eaf-a7dd-1a3242672fdc" CreationDate="2013-05-31T00:20:19.543" UserId="185" Text="Nothing a little `clear: both;` couldn't fix. Thanks for the report." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15449" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5944" RevisionGUID="ee3a83e5-8cc6-415c-bd92-18f2bef3dae3" CreationDate="2013-05-31T00:20:27.027" UserId="185" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15450" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5961" RevisionGUID="22a83c94-a1ea-47f0-8365-d113fce7679b" CreationDate="2013-06-06T20:33:42.923" UserId="34364" Text="The [first Programmers.SE contest][1] pretty well last year, considering how short a time span we put it together. It seemed that those who participated in the contest generally liked it and wanted to do it again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to go into much detail here, I'm simply going to ask the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Do we want to do another Programmers.SE contest?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/programmers-se-contest-the-complete-outline" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15451" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5961" RevisionGUID="22a83c94-a1ea-47f0-8365-d113fce7679b" CreationDate="2013-06-06T20:33:42.923" UserId="34364" Text="Second Programmers Contest?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15452" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5961" RevisionGUID="22a83c94-a1ea-47f0-8365-d113fce7679b" CreationDate="2013-06-06T20:33:42.923" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|contest|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15453" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5962" RevisionGUID="7c3a58ec-38e5-42c4-afee-78ae2f97df36" CreationDate="2013-06-07T01:55:26.023" UserId="93190" Text="Can someone tell me what's wrong with this question? How can i improve it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm in the field of EEE but I'm not specializing in software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; engineering. Yesterday, i had an impromptu idea to develop a software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to integrate smartphone with a laptop. However, without any software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development background, i'm quite clueless on how to start or where&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can I learn it?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can i discuss the idea freely and initiate an open source project?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (But how to initiate that if I can't be the technical lead of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; project?)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Could someone please point me to some self-learning sources / platform&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for project discussion? :) Thank you!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has been voted down and stated as &quot;possible duplicate&quot; of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6625/how-to-recruit-programmers-for-an-open-source-project-and-kick-start-it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I can't find my answers there. What I want to know is &#xD;&#xA;1. How to initiate a project if I can't be the technical lead?&#xD;&#xA;2. What is the suitable platform for project discussion? (is it on Programmers.stackexchange?) &#xD;&#xA;3. What should I learn / equip myself with in order to start the project? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, what is the reason for downvote? Often, many people downvote without a reason. (how can I improve without knowing what's wrong?) Perhaps, it should be made a rule to state the reason when they choose to downvote. :( it's really hurtful. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15454" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5962" RevisionGUID="7c3a58ec-38e5-42c4-afee-78ae2f97df36" CreationDate="2013-06-07T01:55:26.023" UserId="93190" Text="How can i improve this question and get answers i want?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15455" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5962" RevisionGUID="7c3a58ec-38e5-42c4-afee-78ae2f97df36" CreationDate="2013-06-07T01:55:26.023" UserId="93190" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15456" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5963" RevisionGUID="3d9c69c8-ba41-4f60-8ea7-ab9f7e93b953" CreationDate="2013-06-07T09:24:28.010" UserId="25476" Text="&gt; What is the suitable platform for project discussion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that this is part of the problem with the question in that very discussion oriented questions increase noise on the site, and make it harder to build content.  Questions should be answerable, but a discussion is a series of questions, and then discovery leading to more questions.  It doesn't do well in the Q&amp;A format we have on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cite the [Help document](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/helpcenter/dont-ask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you need a discussion then I advise checking out our [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), it is intended for such things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to initiate a project if I can't be the technical lead?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I actually think this is a great question by itself and you should ask it.  The problem is that I don't see where you are actually asking this or it just isn't clear you are asking this.  If this is something you really want to know then it is getting drowned out by unrelated problems you are bringing up in your Question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What should I learn / equip myself with in order to start the project?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is considered an Off Topic question on Programmers.  I cite the [Help document](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/helpcenter/on-topic) on Off Topic questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [you should not ask ...] what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that overall if you ask a new question focused around point number 2, then you can get some good answers, but your other problems should go to chat and see if anybody wants to discuss them with you first." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15457" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5964" RevisionGUID="8b9c104a-eaf7-46a0-84f1-47920cfc3265" CreationDate="2013-06-07T17:27:34.383" UserId="60569" Text="Most of the licensing questions I see take one of two forms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Does [license] allow me to [do something]?&#xD;&#xA;2. I want my software to have [certain restrictions]. What should my license be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that while programmers can answer questions about software licenses that are common knowledge, **we cannot provide expertise** about the finer points or gray areas of software licenses." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15458" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5962" RevisionGUID="aba67180-7564-4fdf-bb0b-f8e80676e313" CreationDate="2013-06-07T17:41:03.663" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="Can someone tell me what's wrong with this question? How can I improve it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm in the field of EEE but I'm not specializing in software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; engineering. Yesterday, i had an impromptu idea to develop a software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to integrate smartphone with a laptop. However, without any software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development background, I'm quite clueless on how to start or where&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can I learn it?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can i discuss the idea freely and initiate an open source project?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (But how to initiate that if I can't be the technical lead of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; project?)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Could someone please point me to some self-learning sources / platform&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for project discussion? :) Thank you!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has been voted down and stated as &quot;possible duplicate&quot; of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6625/how-to-recruit-programmers-for-an-open-source-project-and-kick-start-it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I can't find my answers there. What I want to know is &#xD;&#xA;1. How to initiate a project if I can't be the technical lead?&#xD;&#xA;2. What is the suitable platform for project discussion? (is it on Programmers.stackexchange?) &#xD;&#xA;3. What should I learn / equip myself with in order to start the project? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, what is the reason for downvote? Often, many people downvote without a reason. (how can I improve without knowing what's wrong?) Perhaps, it should be made a rule to state the reason when they choose to downvote. :( it's really hurtful. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15459" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5962" RevisionGUID="aba67180-7564-4fdf-bb0b-f8e80676e313" CreationDate="2013-06-07T17:41:03.663" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="How can I improve this question and get answers I want?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15460" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5962" RevisionGUID="aba67180-7564-4fdf-bb0b-f8e80676e313" CreationDate="2013-06-07T17:41:03.663" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|duplicate-questions|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15461" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5965" RevisionGUID="7fead2ac-342f-424f-9621-d8bf1f1f5652" CreationDate="2013-06-07T21:57:18.830" UserId="20673" Text="I was just getting my daily dose of programmers SE and noticed another closed &quot;not constructive&quot; question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/200812/is-writing-software-easier-than-reading-and-understanding-it-from-scratch&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've read through it and the answers and couldn't agree with the decision to close. OP is clearly someone new but between himself and a friend, he arrived at the same conclusion that several great authors (Uncle Bob being one among them) have also pointed out in their books.  It took me almost decade of professional programming before I discovered and read those books. And I can't see those books about writing better software and improving your own skills and our profession as being a bad topic for programmers SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've worked with professionals with more experience and higher salaries compared to me who seems have never stopped even once to ponder this very same question. I would reward OP for taking the time and thought he put in, instead of turning him away, as that question is very relevant to our profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I fully appreciate the work moderators are doing to keep this site going and overall, I am very grateful for the effort you guys are putting in, but it does feel that sometimes we over-aggressively close questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15462" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5965" RevisionGUID="7fead2ac-342f-424f-9621-d8bf1f1f5652" CreationDate="2013-06-07T21:57:18.830" UserId="20673" Text="Curious why &quot;Is writing software easier than reading [it]...&quot; was closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15463" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5965" RevisionGUID="7fead2ac-342f-424f-9621-d8bf1f1f5652" CreationDate="2013-06-07T21:57:18.830" UserId="20673" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15464" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5966" RevisionGUID="55a7df8d-7689-43ba-9bdd-982ec96adbab" CreationDate="2013-06-07T23:44:38.023" UserId="25476" Text="It is an interesting discussion and I must admit I found the answers very enlightening, but in reading the question, their are only two possible answers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1) Writing software is easier than understanding existing software because ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2) Learning software is easier than writing software because ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The ellipsis can really be any rationale but ultimately nothing more than the enlightened opinion or rational argument of a single person.  It would be a great discussion for Slashdot or Reddit but it is not a constructive question as specified in the [Help](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) section about what kinds of questions not to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP provided the answer that he already accepts, that this is because writing something line by line conforms with the natural psychology of how humans build understanding on complex problems.  Providing your take or best guess in a question is a very good thing, but ultimately he/she is polling for more possible explanations or arguments, rather than looking for the right answer to a specific problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There really isn't a specific problem here, it is more of a philosophical dilemma and I don't believe there is a &quot;right&quot; or &quot;wrong&quot; answer either way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, I agree with the community closure of this and as a moderator I don't believe it should be reopened in its current state.  Users with privileges to cast a reopen vote can cast and disagree with my assessment and if so then I will respect that and not personally close it again." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15465" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5967" RevisionGUID="0f4e454d-7a58-4050-ac4e-9db2e0712430" CreationDate="2013-06-08T10:53:49.130" UserId="3631" Text="(warning: I own the top-voted answer on that question - don't think it matters, but just in case.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, it's the sites' users responsibility to downvote answers that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - do not answer the question directly,&#xD;&#xA; - do not provide any added value (so as to push them away and reduce noise, and encourage their deletion by their owner),&#xD;&#xA; - are of poor quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though if possible we should try to edit answers that **could** be valuable so they can be rescued and made more releant, and it's best to notify their author first that they're doing it wrong, because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - they might not know better (yet),&#xD;&#xA; - they might be typing addendums to their answers (I usually sketch mine out gradually, starting with a very basic answer and then fleshing them out as I go in the next 10mins).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what I usually do is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - directly downvote utter crap (let's call a cat a cat),&#xD;&#xA; - downvote interesting but incorrect answer, leaving a comment to their author that I will gladly cancel or even invert my -1 if they address some issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, when it comes to mods, I think they should feel happy to be proactive and to delete any answer that is a lost cause and just noise, without much warning. There are some questions that have been around a while, and some minor answers on them just often add unnecessasry noise. If there's not *one* bit of useful information in these, I'd suggest to delete them. If there's *some* useful information in these, either leave them to stand on their own or merge them into the accepted answer, if possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I'm not saying that as a strong problem. I often see old questions getting marked as &quot;protected&quot; if they had good answers and someone jumps in a long time after (say, a 2010 question with already highly-voted answer and where new information is not likely to be added over time as the context may not matter).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just my 2 cents." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15466" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5968" RevisionGUID="4977c1ba-ccf2-43bb-aaf2-c44ce206d1c3" CreationDate="2013-06-09T05:58:02.617" UserId="43635" Text="why is the question I had considered offtopic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/200896/good-place-to-upload-files&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I choose to be fair and show all reasons why I dislike the current options - would've it been ontopic if I simply lied and only told I was dissatisfied with googlecode? That's hiding from information and should actually be worse than someone who is fair and open in his mindset I think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore: isn't it completely stupid that people up/downvote about how someone THINKS instead of up/downvote for the quality of the question? Considering the massive userbase of stackexchange I do not think downvoting should be done when someone hates something you love." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15467" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5968" RevisionGUID="4977c1ba-ccf2-43bb-aaf2-c44ce206d1c3" CreationDate="2013-06-09T05:58:02.617" UserId="43635" Text="questions about source control are offtopic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15468" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5968" RevisionGUID="4977c1ba-ccf2-43bb-aaf2-c44ce206d1c3" CreationDate="2013-06-09T05:58:02.617" UserId="43635" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15469" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5968" RevisionGUID="8a40d74a-b915-4f66-9e2d-3b6cf0836f53" CreationDate="2013-06-09T06:14:54.933" UserId="43635" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15470" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5969" RevisionGUID="d2c2144a-75c8-4043-b86d-60f285144753" CreationDate="2013-06-09T11:55:53.320" UserId="5099" Text="I didn't vote on the question, but it reeds too much like a rant against Google to me. That is probably the reason for closing it as &quot;Off Topic&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, removing the ranting bits is not sufficient to get the question into shape, because the remaining core will likely solicit debate or be seen as a resource request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15471" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5961" RevisionGUID="b9c3a581-f5d1-465f-8524-e3703d0211ab" CreationDate="2013-06-09T13:06:29.763" UserId="34364" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="The [first Programmers.SE contest][1] went pretty well last year, considering how short a time span we put it together. It seemed that those who participated in the contest generally liked it and wanted to do it again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to go into much detail here, I'm simply going to ask the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Do we want to do another Programmers.SE contest?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/programmers-se-contest-the-complete-outline" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15472" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5961" RevisionGUID="35cdadd4-883e-492f-9146-5a20dd49b517" CreationDate="2013-06-09T14:56:00.950" UserId="34364" Comment="added 257 characters in body" Text="The [first Programmers.SE contest][1] went pretty well last year, considering how short a time span we put it together. It seemed that those who participated in the contest generally liked it and wanted to do it again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to go into much detail here, I'm simply going to ask the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Do we want to do another Programmers.SE contest?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Note: If there are a positive number of votes on this post on Monday UTC/GMT (8:00 PM EST) then I will make plans to see how we can progress with this. Anybody interested in contributing can comment here or ping me in the The Whiteboard.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/programmers-se-contest-the-complete-outline" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15473" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5970" RevisionGUID="057f1212-7c4e-405a-90c8-dcf1f705f73a" CreationDate="2013-06-09T17:28:08.180" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I was the final closer on this one.  There are several aspects to this question that makes it... difficult to fit into the Q&amp;A format for P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Legal questions about international law need to be answered by people trained in international law - lawyers.  Not programmers.  You likely need to first talk to a lawyer in your jurisdiction to actually determine what the options are and if there are any sites that do meet the requirements you have.&#xD;&#xA;2. The question is strongly influenced by current events.  The question of &quot;NSA snooping&quot; may not be applicable next year (it may, but it may not). This makes it localized to a time (and place - your countries laws may be influencing it, see #1 above).&#xD;&#xA;3. It has a rant in the question that continues into the comments.  This is encouraging debate - something the QA format is not well suited for.&#xD;&#xA;4. Resource request - assuming that there are sites that fit your requirements, there are multiple such sites.  This leads the question to be not constructive because there are multiple equally right answers that are not the same." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15474" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5971" RevisionGUID="2944d006-bd15-48fd-90c7-6e89d941d7a4" CreationDate="2013-06-09T18:53:10.427" UserId="34364" Text="I had a vote in that one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking back on it, the question is better suited being closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;. Also, as far as I know, source control questions are better suited on another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Either way, the question should have been closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15475" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5968" RevisionGUID="d10e952c-72d9-464c-894e-8c7ba904e798" CreationDate="2013-06-09T18:56:54.410" UserId="34364" Comment="added 10 characters in body; edited title" Text="Why is [this question][1] considered off topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I choose to be fair and show all reasons why I dislike the current options - would've it been ontopic if I simply lied and only told I was dissatisfied with googlecode? That's hiding from information and should actually be worse than someone who is fair and open in his mindset I think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore: isn't it completely stupid that people up/downvote about how someone THINKS instead of up/downvote for the quality of the question? Considering the massive userbase of stackexchange I do not think downvoting should be done when someone hates something you love.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/200896/good-place-to-upload-files" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15476" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5968" RevisionGUID="d10e952c-72d9-464c-894e-8c7ba904e798" CreationDate="2013-06-09T18:56:54.410" UserId="34364" Comment="added 10 characters in body; edited title" Text="Are questions about source control off topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15477" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5967" RevisionGUID="eb0e2511-d6c1-4c32-8a07-14d2f005b0a4" CreationDate="2013-06-09T20:28:13.880" UserId="3631" Comment="added 1652 characters in body" Text="(warning: I own the top-voted answer on that question - don't think it matters, but just in case.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, it's the sites' users responsibility to downvote answers that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - do not answer the question directly,&#xD;&#xA; - do not provide any added value (so as to push them away and reduce noise, and encourage their deletion by their owner),&#xD;&#xA; - are of poor quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though if possible we should try to edit answers that **could** be valuable so they can be rescued and made more releant, and it's best to notify their author first that they're doing it wrong, because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - they might not know better (yet),&#xD;&#xA; - they might be typing addendums to their answers (I usually sketch mine out gradually, starting with a very basic answer and then fleshing them out as I go in the next 10mins).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what I usually do is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - directly downvote utter crap (let's call a cat a cat),&#xD;&#xA; - downvote interesting but incorrect answer, leaving a comment to their author that I will gladly cancel or even invert my -1 if they address some issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, when it comes to mods, I think they should feel happy to be proactive and to delete any answer that is a lost cause and just noise, without much warning. There are some questions that have been around a while, and some minor answers on them just often add unnecessasry noise. If there's not *one* bit of useful information in these, I'd suggest to delete them. If there's *some* useful information in these, either leave them to stand on their own or merge them into the accepted answer, if possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I'm not saying that as a strong problem. I often see old questions getting marked as &quot;protected&quot; if they had good answers and someone jumps in a long time after (say, a 2010 question with already highly-voted answer and where new information is not likely to be added over time as the context may not matter).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just my 2 cents.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick update on what I was saying above about adding a quick -1 to useless answers to favor their removal by their author, or to request an improvement that would warrant removing the -1 and switching it to a +1...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I couldn't remember on which questions I had used this technique, but I just did on this [SO question][1], with good effect (you can see that if you had high privileges or mod rights): a good answer was posted, and a few seconds later a nearly identical one without added value. By upvoting the good one and downvoting the bad one, it created a shift between a +1-rater answer and a -1-rater answer. As you can imagine, the +1 quickly became +4 (even though the other one also got upvoted back to 0). I explained my logic to the one I downvoted, and he kindly removed his answer. This, to me, seems the best approach. However, this is only easy to do right at the time where questions are posted and first answers appear, and the window of opportunity is very, very small.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Afterwards, it is a bit harsh to request deletion if there's a loss of points involved or an emotional attachment to an answer (which sometimes makes me wonder if voting shouldn't be disallowed - or maybe allowed, but with hidden results - for the 10 minutes following the posting, so that early answers can be fleshed out and improved and that it's not a game of &quot;I was first, so the timeshift is in my favor&quot; but of &quot;my answer is actually better, even though I posted it shortly after&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17013757/initializing-multidimensial-array-with-unknown-size-array-elements-gives-error#17013777" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15478" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5967" RevisionGUID="3f7ef01f-89dd-46dd-8f4a-73e8d05709ed" CreationDate="2013-06-09T22:08:41.873" UserId="3631" Comment="added 316 characters in body" Text="(warning: I own the top-voted answer on that question - don't think it matters, but just in case.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, it's the sites' users responsibility to downvote answers that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - do not answer the question directly,&#xD;&#xA; - do not provide any added value (so as to push them away and reduce noise, and encourage their deletion by their owner),&#xD;&#xA; - are of poor quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though if possible we should try to edit answers that **could** be valuable so they can be rescued and made more releant, and it's best to notify their author first that they're doing it wrong, because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - they might not know better (yet),&#xD;&#xA; - they might be typing addendums to their answers (I usually sketch mine out gradually, starting with a very basic answer and then fleshing them out as I go in the next 10mins).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what I usually do is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - directly downvote utter crap (let's call a cat a cat),&#xD;&#xA; - downvote interesting but incorrect answer, leaving a comment to their author that I will gladly cancel or even invert my -1 if they address some issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, when it comes to mods, I think they should feel happy to be proactive and to delete any answer that is a lost cause and just noise, without much warning. There are some questions that have been around a while, and some minor answers on them just often add unnecessasry noise. If there's not *one* bit of useful information in these, I'd suggest to delete them. If there's *some* useful information in these, either leave them to stand on their own or merge them into the accepted answer, if possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I'm not saying that as a strong problem. I often see old questions getting marked as &quot;protected&quot; if they had good answers and someone jumps in a long time after (say, a 2010 question with already highly-voted answer and where new information is not likely to be added over time as the context may not matter).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just my 2 cents.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick update on what I was saying above about adding a quick -1 to useless answers to favor their removal by their author, or to request an improvement that would warrant removing the -1 and switching it to a +1...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I couldn't remember on which questions I had used this technique, but I just did on this [SO question][1], with good effect (you can see that if you had high privileges or mod rights): a good answer was posted, and a few seconds later a nearly identical one without added value. By upvoting the good one and downvoting the bad one, it created a shift between a +1-rater answer and a -1-rater answer. As you can imagine, the +1 quickly became +4 (even though the other one also got upvoted back to 0). I explained my logic to the one I downvoted, and he kindly removed his answer. This, to me, seems the best approach. However, this is only easy to do right at the time where questions are posted and first answers appear, and the window of opportunity is very, very small.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Afterwards, it is a bit harsh to request deletion if there's a loss of points involved or an emotional attachment to an answer (which sometimes makes me wonder if voting shouldn't be disallowed - or maybe allowed, but with hidden results - for the 10 minutes following the posting, so that early answers can be fleshed out and improved and that it's not a game of &quot;I was first, so the timeshift is in my favor&quot; but of &quot;my answer is actually better, even though I posted it shortly after&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Update 2:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though apparently, the above approach on that question I listed may have pissed off the person whose answer I downvoted (but that looks to me like it's what downvotes are for and would seem an egoistic reaction) AND may have pissed off others who feel like I was an ass for being so. Not sure, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17013757/initializing-multidimensial-array-with-unknown-size-array-elements-gives-error#17013777" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15479" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5961" RevisionGUID="72e893a6-3905-42a6-a687-1cd20d191765" CreationDate="2013-06-10T01:41:37.973" UserId="34364" Comment="added 120 characters in body" Text="The [first Programmers.SE contest][1] went pretty well last year, considering how short a time span we put it together. It seemed that those who participated in the contest generally liked it and wanted to do it again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to go into much detail here, I'm simply going to ask the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Do we want to do another Programmers.SE contest?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Note: If there are a positive number of votes on this post on Monday UTC/GMT (8:00 PM EST) then I will make plans to see how we can progress with this. Anybody interested in contributing can comment here or ping me in the The Whiteboard.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[Please, tell us what you think in the contest chat room.][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/programmers-se-contest-the-complete-outline&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2654" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15480" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5961" RevisionGUID="5334c2f3-ac8f-4da2-a573-d59ea404f69f" CreationDate="2013-06-10T20:07:44.823" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/344184126091431937" />
  <row Id="15481" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5972" RevisionGUID="1ec03454-e0b9-4202-805f-90ceea1e06ef" CreationDate="2013-06-11T15:40:08.493" UserId="86679" Text="I learned a lot reading '[What was your most difficult bug hunt][1]' I'm sure it will help me and others (who I plan to narrate some of the stories to) will benefit too. can we please re open it and keep it so others may add a few more ? I know it can be used as an excuse for more discussion style, but this one is a real gem and helpful in more than a general way. There are specific learning points there:&#xD;&#xA;1. bug might be due to a particular area in a other wise common area on screen (top scorer, I wont mention the particular term used there as I do not like it)&#xD;&#xA;2. the most simplest things like int and short can cause issues&#xD;&#xA;3. know your API/ flush&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am sure others can add more. Let us not lose the chance of others adding more great answers, the next bug just might not be found as yet or is being made as you read this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2699/what-was-your-most-difficult-bug-hunt-and-how-did-you-find-it-and-kill-it" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15482" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5972" RevisionGUID="1ec03454-e0b9-4202-805f-90ceea1e06ef" CreationDate="2013-06-11T15:40:08.493" UserId="86679" Text="Why 'What was your most difficult bug hunt' is an edge question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15483" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5972" RevisionGUID="1ec03454-e0b9-4202-805f-90ceea1e06ef" CreationDate="2013-06-11T15:40:08.493" UserId="86679" Text="|support|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15484" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5973" RevisionGUID="302674cd-8f90-4177-8f2b-a9de9657be1d" CreationDate="2013-06-11T16:02:46.360" UserId="4" Text="Although interesting, this type of question is not a good fit for the Stack Exchange format. There are [quality guidelines for questions][1] that define what types of questions are good, and this doesn't fit those criteria. Specifically, questions like this, where every answer is equally correct and the question is open-ended, are not a good fit for this format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider starting a discussion in [our chat room, The Whiteboard][2] or creating a new chat room for this purpose if you want to have this discussion inside the Stack Exchange network. Otherwise, perhaps a more discussion-oriented service would be more appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15485" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5974" RevisionGUID="b8baf6fb-0353-402e-8670-776a57a7ae07" CreationDate="2013-06-11T21:51:25.030" UserId="34364" Text="To put simply, it was **Not Constructive**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As stated in the [Help Center][1], questions that are subjective in which each answer is equally valid is usually not a good fit for the site. Stack Exchange frowns upon subjective questions; it's just not a good fit for this style of Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15486" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5975" RevisionGUID="684fd6dc-4f16-450a-b273-131d43fc8848" CreationDate="2013-06-12T15:58:57.557" UserId="86679" Text="http://programmers.blogoverflow.com the captcha's are difficult to do. Good idea if you want less comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On many of them cannot understand both the words. And what takes the cake is that the form is not re-entrant!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15487" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5975" RevisionGUID="684fd6dc-4f16-450a-b273-131d43fc8848" CreationDate="2013-06-12T15:58:57.557" UserId="86679" Text="better captcha on programmers blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15488" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5975" RevisionGUID="684fd6dc-4f16-450a-b273-131d43fc8848" CreationDate="2013-06-12T15:58:57.557" UserId="86679" Text="|discussion|feature-request|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15489" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5750" RevisionGUID="84679eaf-5e68-47c7-aaeb-a35c0d1b82ad" CreationDate="2013-06-12T18:55:15.683" UserId="25936" Comment="added 188 characters in body" Text="All the changes are now live, you can find more details on [MSO][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first step was the brand new [about page][1] (see our [about page][2]), and the next one was the [changes in how duplicates work][3]. Right now Stack Exchange is looking for feedback on revamping the close reasons, on the main Meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will be updating this answer as more changes and requests for feedback are announced:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [We're rolling out a new “Quick Start” guide to help new users learn the basics][4] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)][5] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Help us make “Off-Topic” close reasons clearer to the OP][6] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Help us make “Not Constructive” and “Not a Real Question” closures more effective][7] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Every “close” has its thorn: help us improve closing verbiage](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/173497/every-close-has-its-thorn-help-us-improve-closing-verbiage) &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/169814/help-us-make-off-topic-close-reasons-clearer-to-the-op&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/163254/were-rolling-out-a-new-quick-start-guide-to-help-new-users-learn-the-basics&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/169814/help-us-make-off-topic-close-reasons-clearer-to-the-op&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/171732/help-us-make-not-constructive-and-not-a-real-question-closures-more-effectiv&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/184154/closing-the-loop-the-closing-overhaul-is-live" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15491" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5975" RevisionGUID="5ec4c247-d4c1-416f-9f0a-0d58f56ac549" CreationDate="2013-06-13T14:39:57.520" UserId="34364" Comment="Major rewrite of question" Text="I think that the Captchas on the [Programmers Blog][1] are a bit too difficult to do. This may be a good thing if you are trying to prevent spammy comments, but I cannot understand the words on many of them. Plus, the form does not allow re-entrance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we fix this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15492" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5975" RevisionGUID="5ec4c247-d4c1-416f-9f0a-0d58f56ac549" CreationDate="2013-06-13T14:39:57.520" UserId="34364" Comment="Major rewrite of question" Text="Better Captcha on Programmers blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15493" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5972" RevisionGUID="20aa33cc-280c-4a92-b989-da14e1e278c0" CreationDate="2013-06-13T14:41:11.857" UserId="34364" Comment="added 15 characters in body" Text="I learned a lot reading '[What was your most difficult bug hunt][1]' I'm sure it will help me and others (who I plan to narrate some of the stories to) will benefit too. can we please re open it and keep it so others may add a few more ? I know it can be used as an excuse for more discussion style, but this one is a real gem and helpful in more than a general way. There are specific learning points there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. bug might be due to a particular area in a other wise common area on&#xD;&#xA;    screen (top scorer, I wont mention the particular term used there as&#xD;&#xA;    I do not like it)&#xD;&#xA; 2. the most simplest things like int and short can cause issues&#xD;&#xA; 3. know your API/ flush&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am sure others can add more. Let us not lose the chance of others adding more great answers, the next bug just might not be found as yet or is being made as you read this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2699/what-was-your-most-difficult-bug-hunt-and-how-did-you-find-it-and-kill-it" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15494" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5975" RevisionGUID="708b5d8d-189b-4d4a-8a32-a88614b75fab" CreationDate="2013-06-13T17:46:46.307" UserId="86679" Comment="corrected edit, sarcasm was removed. Added a few more notes" Text="I think that the Captchas on the [Programmers Blog][1] are a bit too difficult to do. This may be a good thing if you are trying to prevent comments (sarcasm, did not think I needed to say it but question was edited to mean the opposite), cannot understand the words on many of them. Plus, the form is not re-entrant (meaning if you get the captcha wrong you lose what you wrote unless you go back in browser - and in the future someone does not add the header to not cache or whatever browsers want to not keep the previous page(s).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we fix this? A good captcha would be some of the new ones I have seen that ask you a question and you need to choose one of four, or even a home grown one with varying font style and sizes, plus random noise (lines, dots ...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15497" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5977" RevisionGUID="5ab7f944-98b5-4e59-b733-4069d4bbf15f" CreationDate="2013-06-16T19:32:49.670" UserId="3631" Text="I just rejected 2 suggested edit to the &quot;pythonic&quot; tag. Not that the edits where that bad, but it just strucked me that this tag seems useless. It's usually used on questions in conjunction with the &quot;python&quot; tag, so that seems highly redundant, and would encourage the spread of similar tags where any fancy terms describing the the virtue adheres to the principles of culture X.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd see mavenic pop-up for maven, or other abuses show up, when using the main tag relating to the technology would be sufficient.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Do you think we should get rid of the &quot;pythonic&quot; tag (and other similar tags)?** " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15498" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5977" RevisionGUID="5ab7f944-98b5-4e59-b733-4069d4bbf15f" CreationDate="2013-06-16T19:32:49.670" UserId="3631" Text="Should we remove the &quot;pythonic&quot; tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15499" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5977" RevisionGUID="5ab7f944-98b5-4e59-b733-4069d4bbf15f" CreationDate="2013-06-16T19:32:49.670" UserId="3631" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15500" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5978" RevisionGUID="41cc53e9-ed62-4514-a439-bdb558002f0f" CreationDate="2013-06-16T19:32:49.670" UserId="3631" Text="As mentioned in the question above, I find this tag (and others similarly describing adherence to the principles or philosophy of a tech group) to be highly redundant with the tag describing the tech itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, there's an obvious difference in the semantics of the tags (&quot;pythonic&quot; for &quot;python&quot;, &quot;mavenic&quot; for &quot;maven&quot;, etc...), as one can write completely &quot;alien&quot; code for a programming language, or force a tool to be used for things it wasn't meant to do. So I can understand that they are meant to imply that the question focuses on a particular issue (using the tool the &quot;right way&quot;, or at least the &quot;intended way&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But still, I think this tag should die, as should any other tag that is a clear redundancy or very close relative of another tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was really itching to go through all these questions and remove this tag in favor of just &quot;python&quot;, but I wanted approval first.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15501" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5977" RevisionGUID="57c91a0d-3f5d-4358-b647-4150241e3d9c" CreationDate="2013-06-16T19:35:17.057" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15502" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5977" RevisionGUID="57c91a0d-3f5d-4358-b647-4150241e3d9c" CreationDate="2013-06-16T19:35:17.057" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="I just rejected 2 suggested edit to the [tag:pythonic] tag. Not that the edits were that bad, but it just struck me that this tag seems useless. It's usually used on questions in conjunction with the &quot;python&quot; tag, so that seems highly redundant, and would encourage the spread of similar tags where any fancy terms describing the the virtue adheres to the principles of culture X.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd see mavenic pop-up for maven, or other abuses show up, when using the main tag relating to the technology would be sufficient.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Do you think we should get rid of the &quot;pythonic&quot; tag (and other similar tags)?** " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15503" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5977" RevisionGUID="07c14520-e872-461e-9a15-81fb7379ba4d" CreationDate="2013-06-16T19:42:21.743" UserId="3631" Comment="added 313 characters in body" Text="I just rejected 2 suggested edit to the [tag:pythonic] tag. Not that the edits were that bad, but it just struck me that this tag seems useless. It's usually used on questions in conjunction with the &quot;python&quot; tag, so that seems highly redundant, and would encourage the spread of similar tags where any fancy terms describing the the virtue adheres to the principles of culture X.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd see mavenic pop-up for maven, or other abuses show up, when using the main tag relating to the technology would be sufficient.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Do you think we should get rid of the &quot;pythonic&quot; tag (and other similar tags)?** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Another alternative suggested by YannisRizos:** We could make &quot;pythonic&quot; a synonym of &quot;python&quot;. I just suggested that synonym on the [&quot;python&quot; tag's synonyms page][1]. You can vote there directly for adoption or rejection of the synonym.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/python/synonyms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15504" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5977" RevisionGUID="e9934230-a644-4416-9fe8-c4d6d5f6ff25" CreationDate="2013-06-17T18:11:10.207" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15505" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5979" RevisionGUID="8408df96-3c97-4c40-bdae-d0232e0a6e0a" CreationDate="2013-06-17T20:06:10.413" UserId="25936" Text="From our [&quot;what's reputation&quot; help page][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we get a good old ampersand please? The ligature has been around for almost 2000 years (early instances can be seen in Pompeian graffiti), I'm kinda used to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/whats-reputation&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/fj1QI.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15506" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5979" RevisionGUID="8408df96-3c97-4c40-bdae-d0232e0a6e0a" CreationDate="2013-06-17T20:06:10.413" UserId="25936" Text="That's not really an ampersand, is it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15507" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5979" RevisionGUID="8408df96-3c97-4c40-bdae-d0232e0a6e0a" CreationDate="2013-06-17T20:06:10.413" UserId="25936" Text="|bug|design|help-center|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15508" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5980" RevisionGUID="2c837e3c-b91a-4d5b-b725-bdf3e7ca74dc" CreationDate="2013-06-17T20:15:00.543" UserId="20065" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/201814/can-i-perform-a-code-review-although-i-am-very-inexperienced&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see people closing this as too localized. Can someone explain why? To me it looks on topic and ok." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15509" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5980" RevisionGUID="2c837e3c-b91a-4d5b-b725-bdf3e7ca74dc" CreationDate="2013-06-17T20:15:00.543" UserId="20065" Text="Why close this as too localized?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15510" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5980" RevisionGUID="2c837e3c-b91a-4d5b-b725-bdf3e7ca74dc" CreationDate="2013-06-17T20:15:00.543" UserId="20065" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15511" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5981" RevisionGUID="9c2eab9f-bd94-46f0-aab9-c23df01d6642" CreationDate="2013-06-17T21:58:29.743" UserId="1204" Text="Because the question applies only to this particular person, given his specific circumstances and experience level.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15512" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5982" RevisionGUID="cf554a94-92de-4759-a42a-bc1dc90b6fd7" CreationDate="2013-06-17T22:27:16.850" UserId="1204" Text="That is apparently how [Gregory House writes it.](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/93372/what-font-is-used-on-the-programmers-stack-exchange-site)  (It's not Lupus!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An examination of the symbols on the top row of the keyboard yields:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where a couple of symbols (namely the @ and the *) are conspicuously missing.  Apparently Hugh Laurie never wrote them on the whiteboard during the entire series.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;UL is an abbreviation for a number of medical terms, including Undifferentiated Lymphoma.  It is entirely possible that the maker of the font confused that abbreviation with the ampersand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, it requires a font editor (and an intern with a black marker and a steady hand) to fix it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/4MBVO.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15513" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5983" RevisionGUID="927e7856-f0ad-4ab0-a8ce-59abfab29823" CreationDate="2013-06-18T23:31:08.807" UserDisplayName="user69037" Text="Hi I wrote a question [asking the community where it gets its ideas from, to prompt some discussion on self-improvement in the generic sense.][1] While I don't want to get into an argument on whether it should have been closed, I'm curious to know where it should go instead?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that its not directly related to a programming problem, its not really in the scope of StackOverflow; its not about programming in the workplace, so that rules out The Workplace; nor is it really about computer science or maths.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if its not appropriate for Programmers, where would one ask fellow programmers how they go about improving their skills and identifying appropriate problems to explore new programming paradigms as an important part of self-improvement?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/201855/where-do-people-draw-inspiration-for-personal-coding-projects" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15514" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5983" RevisionGUID="927e7856-f0ad-4ab0-a8ce-59abfab29823" CreationDate="2013-06-18T23:31:08.807" UserDisplayName="user69037" Text="Where should this question go?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15515" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5983" RevisionGUID="927e7856-f0ad-4ab0-a8ce-59abfab29823" CreationDate="2013-06-18T23:31:08.807" UserDisplayName="user69037" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15516" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5984" RevisionGUID="1fd5c186-4644-48fc-b786-0a24b12d04c2" CreationDate="2013-06-18T23:41:14.583" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="The issue is that it's a polling question. The problem with polling questions is that they don't converge toward a single answer or set of answers. You could keep adding answers indefinitely and they'd still be just as valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While this in and of itself is not a bad thing, it's not what the Stack Exchange was built to do. Reddit, Quora, or Hacker News are more suitable platforms for this sort of question but have a correspondingly higher level of &quot;noise&quot; than we do." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15517" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5977" RevisionGUID="1f22c58d-b7df-43e0-bd4c-bcf6bbe715c5" CreationDate="2013-06-19T05:08:12.397" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/347219238857093121" />
  <row Id="15518" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5985" RevisionGUID="bfee377d-f58f-4a3a-b756-f18b348fd4d6" CreationDate="2013-06-19T11:09:54.873" UserId="66930" Text="I have a question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167508/what-are-the-real-world-practical-problems-where-only-the-best-exact-solution  &#xD;&#xA;As few people pointed out the bolded question can be misleading. I wrote the Update trying to clarify what I mean by statement `(but not the good-enough solution)`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are still no answers to the question itself. Is it because my formulation is not clear? Or is the problem of a kind that does not have any answers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15519" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5985" RevisionGUID="bfee377d-f58f-4a3a-b756-f18b348fd4d6" CreationDate="2013-06-19T11:09:54.873" UserId="66930" Text="Do I not get answers because I misstate the question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15520" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5985" RevisionGUID="bfee377d-f58f-4a3a-b756-f18b348fd4d6" CreationDate="2013-06-19T11:09:54.873" UserId="66930" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15521" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5986" RevisionGUID="cab1817e-a424-4fa0-9ec2-4213c59f2228" CreationDate="2013-06-19T14:20:44.820" UserId="35276" Text="You get no answers because it's a [shopping list](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) question, it has many answers all equally correct and no one can give a complete answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions of this nature do not fit well with the Q&amp;A format, and as such I think people likely aren't bothering to answer knowing they could come up with many answers without ever giving you the *entire* answer, and thus never giving you *the* correct answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think about it like this: &quot;What are the real-world grocery stores&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Safeway&quot; is incomplete and thus incorrect, as is any other answer or selection of answers, the correct answer is unknowably long and therefore no answer is worth giving.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only *possible* way to make shopping list questions remotely answerable (and this is highly contested so not usually worth trying anyway) is to make them a question of &quot;Does _ exist&quot; rather than &quot;What are all the _s&quot;. When you ask &quot;Does _ exist&quot; someone can give you a single provable example that it does, and that answer is correct. It's highly contested and usually not suggested though because multiple anecdotes can all be equally correct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it bluntly, shopping list questions simply do not work well with the Q&amp;A format of SE, and provide a minimum of quality content usable to the rest of the world. SE does not exist to provide participants answers, it exists to construct a vast body of knowledge for the larger internet community; you can imagine SE's goal like wikipedias, and in the same way SE is not for the participants any more than wikipedia is for the editors." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15522" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5986" RevisionGUID="03009969-e0c0-4b91-a79d-2bc3bc02b5c7" CreationDate="2013-06-19T14:26:17.967" UserId="35276" Comment="added 114 characters in body" Text="You get no answers because it's a [shopping list](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) question, it has many answers all equally correct and no one can give a complete answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions of this nature do not fit well with the Q&amp;A format, and as such I think people likely aren't bothering to answer knowing they could come up with many answers without ever giving you the *entire* answer, and thus never giving you *the* correct answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think about it like this: &quot;What are the real-world grocery stores&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Safeway&quot; is incomplete and thus incorrect, as is any other answer or selection of answers, the correct answer is unknowably long and therefore no answer is worth giving.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only *possible* way to make shopping list questions remotely answerable (and this is highly contested so not usually worth trying anyway) is to make them a question of &quot;Does _ exist&quot; rather than &quot;What are all the _s&quot;. When you ask &quot;Does _ exist&quot; someone can give you a single provable example that it does, and that answer is correct. It's highly contested and usually not suggested though because multiple anecdotes can all be equally correct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it bluntly, shopping list questions simply do not work well with the Q&amp;A format of SE, and provide a minimum of quality content usable to the rest of the world. SE does not exist to provide participants answers, it exists to construct a vast body of knowledge for the larger internet community; you can imagine SE's goal like wikipedias, and in the same way SE is not for the participants any more than wikipedia is for the editors. SE's gamification is simply a trick played on those of us who can't help but answer questions, the cake is a lie." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15523" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5986" RevisionGUID="cf64c62a-1886-487f-8879-6b54ad941568" CreationDate="2013-06-19T14:42:53.320" UserId="35276" Comment="added 408 characters in body" Text="You get no answers because it's a [shopping list](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) question, it has many answers all equally correct and no one can give a complete answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions of this nature do not fit well with the Q&amp;A format, and as such I think people likely aren't bothering to answer knowing they could come up with many answers without ever giving you the *entire* answer, and thus never giving you *the* correct answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think about it like this: &quot;What are the real-world grocery stores&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Safeway&quot; is incomplete and thus incorrect, as is any other answer or selection of answers, the correct answer is unknowably long and therefore no answer is worth giving.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only *possible* way to make shopping list questions remotely answerable (and this is highly contested so not usually worth trying anyway) is to make them a question of &quot;Does _ exist&quot; rather than &quot;What are all the _s&quot;. When you ask &quot;Does _ exist&quot; someone can give you a single provable example that it does, and that answer is correct. It's highly contested and usually not suggested though because multiple anecdotes can all be equally correct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it bluntly, shopping list questions simply do not work well with the Q&amp;A format of SE, and provide a minimum of quality content usable to the rest of the world. SE does not exist to provide participants answers, it exists to construct a vast body of knowledge for the larger internet community; you can imagine SE's goal like wikipedias, and in the same way SE is not for the participants any more than wikipedia is for the editors. SE's gamification is simply a trick played on those of us who can't help but answer questions, the cake is a lie.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in the future when asking a question, imagine if it could be answered in such a way as to provide valuable, comprehensive, high-quality content for the internet at large. Try to structure your questions with this goal and you will get nothing but the best answers while [making the internet a better place](http://lifehacker.com/5950386/im-jeff-atwood-founder-of-stack-exchange-and-this-is-how-i-work)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15524" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5961" RevisionGUID="37e9706f-44a2-4b5a-ba15-1b7c0c964129" CreationDate="2013-06-19T20:03:31.873" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|contest|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15525" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5987" RevisionGUID="fb01c54a-6bb9-4273-bb67-1d44dcd43414" CreationDate="2013-06-21T14:02:58.303" UserId="64132" Text="I'd like a way to favorite a particular answer [such as this one][1].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not a Hadooper and 6 months from now I'm not going to remember that I favored the question because it had a good general purpose answer regarding certifications.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If favoring an answer isn't possible, would it be possible to attach a short note to my favorite so I can remember why I liked it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126833/64132" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15526" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5987" RevisionGUID="fb01c54a-6bb9-4273-bb67-1d44dcd43414" CreationDate="2013-06-21T14:02:58.303" UserId="64132" Text="favorite an answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15527" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5987" RevisionGUID="fb01c54a-6bb9-4273-bb67-1d44dcd43414" CreationDate="2013-06-21T14:02:58.303" UserId="64132" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15528" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5988" RevisionGUID="d240112a-3617-415b-a9b7-771876f638aa" CreationDate="2013-06-21T16:37:42.380" UserId="25476" Text="You can favorite a question, but there is no such ability on an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can share an answer on your social media page however and you can also promote an answer on your Twitter feed.  Still, it would be just a link." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15529" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5989" RevisionGUID="2e8978ba-aa31-410a-a810-0d2cdbd534eb" CreationDate="2013-06-21T18:36:06.457" UserId="67046" Text="The question [what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development][1] was removed (google web cache version [here][3]) with the following reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question was removed from Programmers Stack Exchange for reasons of moderation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was the top of with 2194+ points and had a nice and big comprehensive response with 1923+ points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even after reading the [help area on removed questions][4] I still do not have a clue why this question was removed. &quot;Being removed because of moderation&quot; sounds too vague&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From my point of view, the top answer had a ton of good information and it is bad losing it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone explain me why the question was removed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?biw=1920&amp;bih=959&amp;sclient=psy-ab&amp;q=cache:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development&amp;oq=cache:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development&amp;gs_l=hp.3..0l4.8289.10624.0.10883.7.7.0.0.0.0.223.902.0j4j1.5.0...0.2...1c.1j2.17.psy-ab._aHGNRQQqS8&amp;pbx=1&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/deleted-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15530" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5989" RevisionGUID="2e8978ba-aa31-410a-a810-0d2cdbd534eb" CreationDate="2013-06-21T18:36:06.457" UserId="67046" Text="Why the top question was removed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15531" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5989" RevisionGUID="2e8978ba-aa31-410a-a810-0d2cdbd534eb" CreationDate="2013-06-21T18:36:06.457" UserId="67046" Text="|discussion|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15532" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5990" RevisionGUID="a17a4305-85ea-4bdb-8fb6-809d62a1ab9c" CreationDate="2013-06-21T19:20:40.100" UserId="63" Text="There was a bug in [the scheduled job that cleans up migration stubs][1]: it also automatically deleted questions that had been migrated and then *rejected*. Obviously, that was not the intent and has been fixed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the other problem here is that a very popular question was rejected years after being migrated and after many edits and improvements had been made. The appropriate action here would've been to lock it. Unfortunately, a big part of the value that a question like this brings to the site comes from the ability of the community to edit it, updating and improving the answers as the years roll by. In other words, the question has value *as a wiki*. But there's no type of lock that reflects this need to foster editing while preventing pile-on answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...Well, *now* there is: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![wiki answer lock][2]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This particular question was well-suited for testing this strategy: there were only a few answers, and the top answer had *massively* more activity (and popularity) than the rest. So I've cleaned up the migration rejection, restored the top answer, and locked it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We'll see how this works in practice, but at very least it should never be accidentally deleted again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/78048/enable-automatic-deletion-of-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/XT45O.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15533" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5991" RevisionGUID="609a5bcd-575a-40e2-94be-8ba9c6d49bd8" CreationDate="2013-06-21T19:40:01.523" UserId="47" Text="We have a new lock type that can be added to question that are not strictly on topic or constructive but have, because they have been edited and expanded, become a valuable resource.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question that it's been applied to is this one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This lock is best applied to a question that has a single CW answer that covers all the points. At the moment that doesn't apply to this question, so if people could take one of the answers and edit it into the accepted answer then flag that, now redundant, answer for moderator deletion it will make the task of cleaning it up that much easier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there are any other questions you think this lock would apply too, flag those as well. It doesn't matter if the question is closed or not - we can sort that out. Starting the ball rolling by editing the best answer would be useful too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15534" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5991" RevisionGUID="609a5bcd-575a-40e2-94be-8ba9c6d49bd8" CreationDate="2013-06-21T19:40:01.523" UserId="47" Text="New lock type for truly collaborative questions and answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15535" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5991" RevisionGUID="609a5bcd-575a-40e2-94be-8ba9c6d49bd8" CreationDate="2013-06-21T19:40:01.523" UserId="47" Text="|discussion|specific-question|clean-up|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15536" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5991" RevisionGUID="13f7a367-85d0-4d5e-86dc-6832674f8d31" CreationDate="2013-06-21T20:19:38.780" UserId="47" Comment="typo" Text="We have a new lock type that can be added to questions that are not strictly on topic or constructive but have, because they have been edited and expanded, become a valuable resource.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question that it's been applied to is this one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This lock is best applied to a question that has a single CW answer that covers all the points. At the moment that doesn't apply to this question, so if people could take one of the answers and edit it into the accepted answer then flag that, now redundant, answer for moderator deletion it will make the task of cleaning it up that much easier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there are any other questions you think this lock would apply too, flag those as well. It doesn't matter if the question is closed or not - we can sort that out. Starting the ball rolling by editing the best answer would be useful too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15537" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5991" RevisionGUID="6a1035b2-d694-44a5-93ed-f2cccc401563" CreationDate="2013-06-22T08:08:12.537" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/348351702484791296" />
  <row Id="15538" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5989" RevisionGUID="9634d71e-d099-445c-982c-e6fb3e271180" CreationDate="2013-06-22T23:08:12.843" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/348578195878064128" />
  <row Id="15539" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5992" RevisionGUID="84da109e-d4d2-409f-9441-4596c3a93755" CreationDate="2013-06-24T02:46:43.463" UserId="25936" Text="There are some fairly major changes coming soon to how posts are closed, you may want to read up on the details:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Closing changes: [on hold], unclear, too broad, opinion-based, off-topic reasons, bye-bye to Too Localized](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/184154/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [Responding to your “too localized” concerns](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/185102/162704)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We will need to come up with our own list of custom off topic reasons for Programmers. These reasons will be available to close voters after they have picked the generic &quot;off topic&quot; one. Here's a screenshot of Meta Stack Overflow's close dialog, where the new system is already available:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8locR.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;other&quot; option will allow a custom message, when none of the three custom reasons applies:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFP1n.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an &quot;off topic&quot; reason you'd like to nominate, please post it as an answer. Some general guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- One reason per answer, so they can be voted separately.&#xD;&#xA;- Examples to existing closed questions that would fit your custom reason would be immensely helpful.&#xD;&#xA;- If there's already an answer with a reason similar to what you have in mind, but with a slightly different phrasing, please consider commenting on the existing answer and refining the phrasing instead of posting a new answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15540" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5992" RevisionGUID="84da109e-d4d2-409f-9441-4596c3a93755" CreationDate="2013-06-24T02:46:43.463" UserId="25936" Text="What should our predefined off-topic reasons be?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15541" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5992" RevisionGUID="84da109e-d4d2-409f-9441-4596c3a93755" CreationDate="2013-06-24T02:46:43.463" UserId="25936" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15542" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5749" RevisionGUID="1e999253-9edd-404f-8837-fba7c441b7d5" CreationDate="2013-06-24T02:47:59.830" UserId="25936" Comment="1" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[5992],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis Rizos&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="15543" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5992" RevisionGUID="d7a02666-8356-43bb-84cd-d7f7579376a6" CreationDate="2013-06-24T03:34:28.020" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15544" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="5992" RevisionGUID="a1f50056-0c4a-42a6-989c-a3a362813ba3" CreationDate="2013-06-24T11:08:14.420" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/349121784534167552" />
  <row Id="15545" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5993" RevisionGUID="27110be1-eb22-4b10-932c-21e2617571b4" CreationDate="2013-06-24T11:28:39.383" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="**Candidate:** &#xD;&#xA;Career advice&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15546" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5994" RevisionGUID="67e910ef-ad1d-41f1-aacd-d5d5cd834b94" CreationDate="2013-06-24T11:30:11.953" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="**Candidate:** &quot;what language / technology next?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15547" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5992" RevisionGUID="588b6c10-85be-4bb5-8ceb-ae659e3c1cd3" CreationDate="2013-06-24T11:31:50.290" UserId="25936" Comment="added 140 characters in body" Text="There are some fairly major changes coming soon to how posts are closed, you may want to read up on the details:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Closing changes: [on hold], unclear, too broad, opinion-based, off-topic reasons, bye-bye to Too Localized](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/184154/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [Responding to your “too localized” concerns](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/185102/162704)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We will need to come up with our own list of custom off topic reasons for Programmers. These reasons will be available to close voters after they have picked the generic &quot;off topic&quot; one. Here's a screenshot of Meta Stack Overflow's close dialog, where the new system is already available:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8locR.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;other&quot; option will allow a custom message, when none of the three custom reasons applies:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFP1n.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an &quot;off topic&quot; reason you'd like to nominate, please post it as an answer. Some general guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- One reason per answer, so they can be voted separately.&#xD;&#xA;- A brief comment explaining why the general category is off topic is mandatory. See the examples in the first screenshot for inspiration. If we have a _good_ Meta discussion explaining in detail why the category doesn't work, please link to it in your comment.&#xD;&#xA;- Examples to existing closed questions that would fit your custom reason would be immensely helpful.&#xD;&#xA;- If there's already an answer with a reason similar to what you have in mind, but with a slightly different phrasing, please consider commenting on the existing answer and refining the phrasing instead of posting a new answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15548" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5994" RevisionGUID="58f89cac-8a50-45ad-b6cc-c124785dad8a" CreationDate="2013-06-24T12:53:22.050" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="added 118 characters in body" Text="Answers to &quot;what [language | technology] should I [learn | read | do] next?&quot; only reflect subjective opinion.  Those opinions are unlikely to remain meaningful or relevant over time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15549" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5993" RevisionGUID="bfaa8b6c-42cf-4094-bba7-aae4a97ca24f" CreationDate="2013-06-24T12:54:51.920" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="added 176 characters in body" Text="Career and education advice aren't meaningful to the broader programming community. Each person contemplating this question has their own circumstances to consider which affects the relevance of any answer.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15552" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5997" RevisionGUID="9d3ab594-2db6-4db3-9aad-8b1d8d7d97cb" CreationDate="2013-06-24T15:15:28.980" UserId="35276" Text="This is an attempt to begin a discussion, however this is not a discussion forum. This site is for providing authoritative answers to specific questions. Feel free to join The Whiteboard chatroom if you wish to participate in discussion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15553" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5998" RevisionGUID="04cb5334-66ed-4749-8715-8a641e78c1b4" CreationDate="2013-06-24T15:22:18.507" UserId="35276" Text="This site is for questions and answers regarding programming specific concepts and activities. Questions that aren't specific to programming or won't be relevant or useful to professional programmers are off topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15554" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5997" RevisionGUID="1ed3cf35-e8fb-4fd1-a5ad-b83b892487ae" CreationDate="2013-06-24T15:24:37.500" UserId="35276" />
  <row Id="15555" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5998" RevisionGUID="04cb5334-66ed-4749-8715-8a641e78c1b4" CreationDate="2013-06-24T15:22:18.507" UserId="35276" />
  <row Id="15558" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="5999" RevisionGUID="01e5e445-d742-49ef-9942-dc78ce115b92" CreationDate="2013-06-24T16:52:47.583" UserId="4" Text="Back in February, there was [a discussion about the &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; bullet point in the list of things that are on-topic][1]. All four answers identified that this was somewhat problematic, however there really wasn't an overwhelming popular opinion on what to do. So, in light of that, I'm going to rephrase the question differently:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anyone provide examples of freelancing and business concerns questions that require the expertise of a professional working in the field of software development, that do not require expertise in business, law, finance, marketing, or another non-software-related domain, and meet the other criteria for a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5605/weve-got-to-talk-about-freelancing-and-business-concerns" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15559" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="5999" RevisionGUID="01e5e445-d742-49ef-9942-dc78ce115b92" CreationDate="2013-06-24T16:52:47.583" UserId="4" Text="What are examples of &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; that are unique to software development, but do not require expertise in business or law?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15560" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="5999" RevisionGUID="01e5e445-d742-49ef-9942-dc78ce115b92" CreationDate="2013-06-24T16:52:47.583" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15561" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6000" RevisionGUID="6564ce60-74ac-4ccd-a62b-9016462683b1" CreationDate="2013-06-24T16:52:47.583" UserId="4" Text="No. All freelancing and business questions are either not unique to the software development profession, require a combination of knowledge and experience outside of software development (such as business, law, finance, accounting, project management), or are localized to particular geopolitical areas. However, there may be business aspects that are on-topic due to being covered in other areas that are on topic due to other areas (such as software project estimation or risk management)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15562" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6000" RevisionGUID="7e4e90f3-cd8a-4463-8b7a-0164746062b4" CreationDate="2013-06-24T17:03:44.003" UserId="4" Comment="added 212 characters in body" Text="No. All freelancing and business questions are either not unique to the software development profession, require a combination of knowledge and experience outside of software development (such as business, law, finance, accounting, project management), or are localized to particular geopolitical areas. However, there may be business aspects that are on-topic due to being covered in other areas that are on topic due to other areas (such as software project estimation or risk management).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If &quot;business and freelancing&quot; becomes off-topic, suggest [OnStartups][1] and [Freelancing][2] as possible alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://answers.onstartups.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://freelancing.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15563" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6000" RevisionGUID="fdcac5a8-2fa6-4e06-87ac-700107e6eadd" CreationDate="2013-06-24T17:32:53.293" UserId="1204" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="No. All freelancing and business questions are either not unique to the software development profession, require a combination of knowledge and experience outside of software development (such as business, law, finance, accounting, project management), or are localized to particular geopolitical areas. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there may be business aspects that are on-topic due to being covered in other areas that are on topic due to other areas (such as software project estimation or risk management).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If &quot;business and freelancing&quot; becomes off-topic, suggest [OnStartups][1] and [Freelancing][2] as possible alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://answers.onstartups.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://freelancing.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15564" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6001" RevisionGUID="40930aed-576b-4f64-9167-9a28d59b72d6" CreationDate="2013-06-24T18:09:46.633" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="So let's start with the biggest hitter in [tag:freelancing]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110487/my-customer-wants-me-to-record-a-video-of-how-i-develop-his-software-product&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would argue this is primarily about issues that come up within freelance programming that aren't likely to be seen in other programming models.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96331/how-should-i-charge-for-programming-things-which-take-two-minutes-to-fix&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one gets into the aspects of ethics, billing, and valuing experience.  Arguably on the edge due to the potential for picking up less-than-satisfactory answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85479/how-to-improve-relationships-between-consultants-and-staff-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is another that could still work as a question without the freelancing tag, but the freelancing aspect adds a nuance to the relationships and their interplay.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162904/what-should-i-ask-a-prospective-client-during-initial-meeting&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Arguably not constructive, but certainly informative from a freelancing point of view.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33526/who-should-pay-for-fixes-bugs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quite solid for freelancing.  While it deals with contract managements, it's particular nuance relates to programming and that's why I'd argue it belongs here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are quite a few more in the ~25 vote category of [tag:freelancing] that I think are on-topic because of the freelancing tag and have specific programming nuances that ought to keep them on our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**TL;DR**  &#xD;&#xA;Yes, it can be a problematic tag but there are some valuable questions that we get by having it as part of our scope." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15565" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6002" RevisionGUID="85745ba2-e678-4a18-835a-f12265c86610" CreationDate="2013-06-24T18:19:39.367" UserId="32353" Text="Let me provide a low quality link only answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/200935/freelancing-and-gpl&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/199771/should-cross-browser-testing-be-explicitly-mentioned-in-the-scope-of-a-project&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162587/version-control-and-project-management-for-freelancing-jobs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/160200/best-way-to-approach-a-partner-business-to-understand-the-need-for-b2b-web-servi&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/153328/when-working-with-contractors-interns-how-protective-should-one-be-of-your-codeb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135666/what-is-a-software-maintenance-retainer-contract&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126823/is-hiring-a-junior-developer-as-a-technical-trainer-a-good-idea&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124428/how-to-explain-to-a-layperson-the-variance-in-programmer-rates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119131/security-issues-with-freelancing-work-on-an-existing-website&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/104584/what-are-the-reasons-that-make-php-more-popular-for-freelancing-world&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101822/is-there-an-analogue-to-fizzbuzz-for-choosing-clients&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96888/is-it-reasonable-to-not-provide-technical-documentation-and-unit-tests-to-client" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15566" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5994" RevisionGUID="4763a0b0-995d-47ee-8f7e-39bd315201de" CreationDate="2013-06-25T12:54:55.030" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="added 10 characters in body" Text="Answers to &quot;what [language | technology | project] should I [learn | read | do] next?&quot; only reflect subjective opinion.  Those opinions are unlikely to remain meaningful or relevant over time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15567" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6003" RevisionGUID="87fb9019-2bf9-4185-bf4c-e995ce4fb309" CreationDate="2013-06-25T13:01:24.213" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="This question falls into the broader category of [gorilla vs. shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/).  While there may be some entertaining aspects to the question, it does not provide lasting, meaningful value as an educational resource." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15569" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6005" RevisionGUID="7c5256a1-364f-4de4-8d81-f9401385720b" CreationDate="2013-06-25T15:30:11.470" UserId="60569" Text="The &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; bullet should be removed from the faq.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is perfectly fine for a question to mention that work is freelance if it helps provide context to a conceptual question about software development. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15570" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6006" RevisionGUID="9b69f8db-e246-49f5-8afa-d9de560d1d84" CreationDate="2013-06-25T17:52:20.780" UserId="60569" Text="Questions that are not unique to the programming profession are off-topic for Programmers. This question either applies to any profession (try Workplace) or requires expertise in another profession (such as law/business/marketing) for an expert answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15571" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6007" RevisionGUID="ba76d16a-a156-414e-a214-045cbe3f3db0" CreationDate="2013-06-26T03:50:51.820" UserId="36525" Text="Does a canonical &quot;how should I avoid passing around null&quot; question exist on programmers.SE? I tried searching but couldn't find any good candidates." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15572" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6007" RevisionGUID="ba76d16a-a156-414e-a214-045cbe3f3db0" CreationDate="2013-06-26T03:50:51.820" UserId="36525" Text="&quot;How to avoid null&quot; question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15573" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6007" RevisionGUID="ba76d16a-a156-414e-a214-045cbe3f3db0" CreationDate="2013-06-26T03:50:51.820" UserId="36525" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15574" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6008" RevisionGUID="1bb31d17-d6fe-4bd6-9c6f-969a32a924ad" CreationDate="2013-06-26T06:41:19.357" UserId="67140" Text="I'm trying to **replicate** (this was supposed to be **bold**) the problem here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Browser: Firefox 17.0.6 ESR.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **bold** (**doesn't work**)&#xD;&#xA;* normal&#xD;&#xA;* _italic_ (works)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15575" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6008" RevisionGUID="1bb31d17-d6fe-4bd6-9c6f-969a32a924ad" CreationDate="2013-06-26T06:41:19.357" UserId="67140" Text="Site style: bold text is not distinguishable from normal text" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15576" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6008" RevisionGUID="1bb31d17-d6fe-4bd6-9c6f-969a32a924ad" CreationDate="2013-06-26T06:41:19.357" UserId="67140" Text="|bug|css|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15577" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6008" RevisionGUID="c7dee381-c976-40c1-befc-f168134f0bc8" CreationDate="2013-06-26T06:48:13.907" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15578" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6008" RevisionGUID="44194e82-c4bf-4c74-95bf-704b318bde83" CreationDate="2013-06-26T06:49:08.223" UserId="67140" Comment="Added screenshot" Text="I'm trying to **replicate** (this was supposed to be **bold**) the problem here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Browser: Firefox 17.0.6 ESR.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **bold** (**doesn't work**)&#xD;&#xA;* normal&#xD;&#xA;* _italic_ (works)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/3Z4Xh.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15579" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6007" RevisionGUID="f4fa25c9-41d2-495c-af46-b23c234580fd" CreationDate="2013-06-26T07:00:55.853" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15580" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6009" RevisionGUID="066d2e20-8110-4972-8c08-2067b39e484a" CreationDate="2013-06-26T07:02:27.610" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="You've asked it and it has upvotes and has no close votes. I think you're safe. Keep up the good work. If there is a duplicate, the worst that could happen is that your question is closed as a duplicate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15581" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6008" RevisionGUID="ef3b7ea1-9a2c-462f-ac12-ca025396215e" CreationDate="2013-06-26T07:04:11.960" UserId="67140" Comment="added 110 characters in body" Text="I'm trying to **replicate** (this was supposed to be **bold**) the problem here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Browser: Firefox 17.0.6 ESR.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **bold** (**doesn't work**)&#xD;&#xA;* normal&#xD;&#xA;* _italic_ (works)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's how **bold** shows up on Unix SE:&#xD;&#xA;![Unix Screenshot][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/3Z4Xh.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/b40BQ.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15582" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6010" RevisionGUID="91ea6a42-9ebd-440c-81cb-a00c4cb138e8" CreationDate="2013-06-26T09:33:19.067" UserId="61711" Text="Related question - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5931/where-to-ask-for-advice-regarding-a-review-audit &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just ran into a review Audit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question for which the first post occured was: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44/are-certifications-worth-it &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I checked the question, but could not find the answer on the page. In the review box, it wasn't possible to either down/up vote, nor flag or comment the post, since the quesiton is marked as wiki.  The only actions available were: share(on the answer), Nothing needs to be done(review), Skip(review). Since the answer wasn't visible on the question page and I couldn't find the user, I clicked &quot;Nothing needs to be done&quot;, assuming that it had already been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In retrospect, &quot;Skip&quot; probably would have been the better choice, but is this really a good review audit scenario? First-posts on wiki questions aren't even possible, are they?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/DMOuH.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15583" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6010" RevisionGUID="91ea6a42-9ebd-440c-81cb-a00c4cb138e8" CreationDate="2013-06-26T09:33:19.067" UserId="61711" Text="Review Audit quality?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15584" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6010" RevisionGUID="91ea6a42-9ebd-440c-81cb-a00c4cb138e8" CreationDate="2013-06-26T09:33:19.067" UserId="61711" Text="|bug|review-audits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15585" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6011" RevisionGUID="91513867-9886-4e3e-a6c7-2cab36debbdb" CreationDate="2013-06-26T09:55:43.337" UserId="25936" Text="This is indeed a bug, the answer shouldn't have appeared in the review queue (neither as an audit, nor as a regular review). The reason is that [the question][1] is [locked][2], therefore it and its answers cannot be voted on or edited. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is an [old bug][3] that resurfaced, I will let SE know about it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44/are-certifications-worth-it&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/22228/what-is-a-locked-post&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/141435/new-beta-review-displays-locked-posts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15586" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6008" RevisionGUID="0cc38283-2cc8-4e22-9b8a-1e30ba701ec1" CreationDate="2013-06-26T15:23:23.773" UserId="67140" Comment="added 100 characters in body" Text="I'm trying to **replicate** (this was supposed to be **bold**) the problem here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Browser: Firefox 17.0.6 ESR.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **bold** (**doesn't work**)&#xD;&#xA;* normal&#xD;&#xA;* _italic_ (works)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's how **bold** shows up on Unix SE:&#xD;&#xA;![Unix Screenshot][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update: turns out it is a Firefox 17 issue, and isn't replicated on other browsers. Can be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/3Z4Xh.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/b40BQ.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15587" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6012" RevisionGUID="d0521c2e-e965-4d26-9373-f30dada488bd" CreationDate="2013-06-26T16:00:38.090" UserId="2406" Text="There are times I’d like to mark an answer as a favourite, but in cases like this, I’ve found that the simplest solution is to repost the answer on my own blog (following all [the requirements](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/attribution-required/), of course)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15588" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6013" RevisionGUID="b7049685-e003-440d-a724-a365fdbef502" CreationDate="2013-06-26T16:39:36.633" UserId="855" Text="What about areas of management that are better off with a certain amount of software developement knowledge? For instance one of the questions GlenH7 posted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[•How to improve relationships between consultants and staff programmers][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could find a project manager, life coach or self-help guru to answer this question, but they tend to screw this up because of their lack of understanding about the people who develop software. The approached used on the sales and marketing team is probably going to fail. Given enough time and possibly learning how to write a little code, I guess they could figure it out. You're more than likely to find people who have experience with this and give a much better answer because they are programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85479/how-to-improve-relationships-between-consultants-and-staff-programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15589" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6008" RevisionGUID="8ad42c63-bf67-460d-8344-5d5cde5e04bc" CreationDate="2013-06-26T22:25:14.853" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-declined|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15590" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6014" RevisionGUID="44eae353-8f31-4e10-a4b6-75b5b93ed7ec" CreationDate="2013-06-26T23:01:51.447" UserId="35276" Text="This question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/202875/which-technologies-will-most-affect-financial-services-over-the-next-decade&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;just made me remember another good reason we constantly close stuff, folks asking for a technical crystal ball.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is asking for pure speculation, of which no one can be provably correct, incorrect, or informative in any way at the present moment. This site has a focus on gathering authoritative content, unfortunately for this question no such content is currently possible." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15591" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6015" RevisionGUID="1eef31bf-cb85-4df6-9691-2496df5e8ac6" CreationDate="2013-06-27T11:13:03.950" UserId="5099" Text="Today, I noticed [a question that was placed \[on hold\]][1] (as the new pre-cursor to being closed), with as reason&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; put on hold as off-topic by Oded♦ 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    &quot;Questions about specific programming problems encountered while writing code are off-topic, but can be asked on Stack Overflow.&quot; – Oded&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question or leave a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previously, such questions would be migrated to their target site (SO in this case) immediately after sufficient votes were cast.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But with the new close system in place, it seems that migrations also go through some probation period. Is that intentional, and how long is that period?&#xD;&#xA; A five day probation period, like for closing a question, before a question gets migrated to another site seems like an awfully long period, during which it is likely that the OP will re-ask the question on the other site, leading to needless duplications.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/202907/can-somebody-tell-me-the-error-with-this-php-code" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15592" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6015" RevisionGUID="1eef31bf-cb85-4df6-9691-2496df5e8ac6" CreationDate="2013-06-27T11:13:03.950" UserId="5099" Text="How long will migration candidates be held [on hold] until migration takes place" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15593" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6015" RevisionGUID="1eef31bf-cb85-4df6-9691-2496df5e8ac6" CreationDate="2013-06-27T11:13:03.950" UserId="5099" Text="|bug|close-reasons|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15594" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6016" RevisionGUID="0e501883-cc6c-4102-a451-216bc3df8e0f" CreationDate="2013-06-27T11:18:31.790" UserId="47" Text="Questions that are actually migrated will be migrated immediately and will have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;[migrated]&quot; in their title&#xD;&#xA;* A link to the migrated question at the bottom of the question&#xD;&#xA;* take you to the question on the new site automatically if you don't have &quot;?noredirect=1&quot; in the url.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you have here is a question that would have previously been closed as simply &quot;off topic&quot;. The custom reason for programming questions was used which inserted what you see here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What this means is that the question as well as being off topic for Programmers wasn't actually a good question for Stack Overflow either and would more than likely get closed there too - not something we really want. The OP should post an improved version of the question on Stack Overflow to get an answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15595" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6017" RevisionGUID="fb738002-30ab-4141-a7e4-28706e8b96a9" CreationDate="2013-06-27T11:29:39.223" UserDisplayName="user82793" Text="The following edit has been rejected as too minor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/32981&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you read the sentence it's obvious that the edit needs to be made, if you read the entire post it's obvious that only one edit needs to be made to it.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15596" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6017" RevisionGUID="fb738002-30ab-4141-a7e4-28706e8b96a9" CreationDate="2013-06-27T11:29:39.223" UserDisplayName="user82793" Text="Why reject as too minor?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15597" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6017" RevisionGUID="fb738002-30ab-4141-a7e4-28706e8b96a9" CreationDate="2013-06-27T11:29:39.223" UserDisplayName="user82793" Text="|discussion|suggested-edits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15598" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6018" RevisionGUID="6e80f6c7-0b7b-481b-942e-635e919eb81b" CreationDate="2013-06-27T12:14:30.650" UserId="5099" Text="The dialog for closing questions as being off topic lists the following reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about **specific programming problems encountered while writing code** are off-topic, but can be asked on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;- Questions about **the use of general computer hardware or software** are off-topic, but can be asked on Super User.&#xD;&#xA;- Questions seeking **career advice or help with office politics** are off-topic here unless they're specific to the programming profession. If people in other professions face similar problems, ask about it on The Workplace Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;- This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network&#xD;&#xA;- Other (add a comment explaining what is wrong) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Confusingly enough, if you want to migrate a question to StackOverflow, you **must not** choose the first option. Instead, you must select the 4th option (&quot;This question belongs on another site in the StackExchange network&quot;), because that will show you the candidates for migrating a question to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find that, especially the first option is phrased misleadingly for both readers and close-voters. There is an automatic migration path between Programmers and SO that is used regularly, but that option does not trigger a migration, nor does it indicate why migration is not possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I request to make it clear (at least in the 'Closing -&gt; Off Topic' dialog and until the Programmes community has decided on their own off-topic reasons) that the first three listed options *do not* trigger a migration." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15599" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6018" RevisionGUID="6e80f6c7-0b7b-481b-942e-635e919eb81b" CreationDate="2013-06-27T12:14:30.650" UserId="5099" Text="Confusing Closing -&gt; Off Topic dialog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15600" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6018" RevisionGUID="6e80f6c7-0b7b-481b-942e-635e919eb81b" CreationDate="2013-06-27T12:14:30.650" UserId="5099" Text="|support|bug|close-reasons|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15601" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6019" RevisionGUID="08f7ef2b-b8e8-4214-bb4d-82c6185fe41f" CreationDate="2013-06-27T12:41:09.667" UserId="41381" Text="The too minor reason exists because all edits by low rep users have to be reviewed by another user, therefore we try to maximize the benefit of their effort by encouraging only substantial edits. In this case your edit made the question grammatically correct, but the meaning was still clear in the incorrect version, so little was gained. Somewhat more informally the question you edited is a bit older and hasn't had any activity in a while, editing old settled questions with minor typos hurts newer questions by pushing them off the page faster, so a general rule of thumb is to only edit older questions when the edit would be a marked improvement rather than a minor grammatical or spelling error. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15602" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6020" RevisionGUID="19149a4c-a0c9-4cce-b514-93ae2ac9d8fd" CreationDate="2013-06-27T15:51:00.640" UserId="35276" Text="Well made point. I suggest those 3 off-topic reasons get a *different* set of default-temporary reasons than the ones we have right now. I was presuming those were there to cause migrations but you're right, they don't request migration, they just close the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's way confusing. Surely Judge Drizos can put his foot down coming up with 3 random but somewhat useful temporary off-topic choices." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15603" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6014" RevisionGUID="ed1d9fac-8548-41ed-9ef4-053ad8fc6a6c" CreationDate="2013-06-27T18:02:46.980" UserId="35276" />
  <row Id="15605" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5994" RevisionGUID="d73d3e25-abcc-4d5e-a6ca-7e02b1d716b0" CreationDate="2013-06-27T18:07:28.013" UserId="35276" Comment="Chose from the fill-in-the-blank. Also added a controversial last sentence, remove if you disagree with that wording." Text="Answers to &quot;what should I do next?&quot; only reflect subjective opinion.  Those opinions are unlikely to remain meaningful or relevant over time. They also lack value to a larger audience." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15607" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6003" RevisionGUID="8da472c7-d5c4-46d5-bf39-235abe520767" CreationDate="2013-06-27T18:43:21.427" UserId="35276" Comment="added 279 characters in body" Text="Pitting two large choices against each other doesn't fit the Q&amp;A format well. This question is begging for debate as opposed to information, and the answers will not stand up over time as the choices change. Both options are likely good and bad, try to reformulate this question to as for a solution to your problem and you may get more beneficial responses. For further details why questions like this generate poor quality content read [this blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/) by StackExchange's co-founder." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15608" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5994" RevisionGUID="1983ca19-ae3b-4923-aa50-8ad0d0a11fd9" CreationDate="2013-06-27T20:05:59.570" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="added 169 characters in body" Text="Questions asking what language, or technology, or project should be learned next can only attract subjective opinions for answers.  There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have meaningful and lasting value.  The best answer the community can give is to pick something that looks interesting and go have fun." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15609" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5993" RevisionGUID="79b2ae32-841e-4131-b152-da3534a212db" CreationDate="2013-06-27T20:13:26.690" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="added 201 characters in body" Text="Questions asking for advice about careers or education are difficult because the stakes can seem high and the decisions seem permanent.  In most cases though, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a particular circumstance.  These types of questions are off-topic because they don't generate meaningful and lasting value for the entire community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15611" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5994" RevisionGUID="ca409b51-0f52-47b7-a6db-e4aa50cc341c" CreationDate="2013-06-27T20:45:22.123" UserId="35276" Comment="removing extra or...grammar police heh" Text="Questions asking what language, technology, or project one should take up next can only attract subjective opinions for answers.  There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have meaningful and lasting value.  The best answer the community can give is to pick something that looks interesting and go have fun." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15612" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6021" RevisionGUID="8465c6b4-20d8-497e-80fd-a1dc02750bd0" CreationDate="2013-06-28T13:30:40.613" UserDisplayName="user88873" Text="I have a question in which I want to request feedback about my software. Am I allowed to ask this type of question here or it will be considered off-topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15613" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6021" RevisionGUID="8465c6b4-20d8-497e-80fd-a1dc02750bd0" CreationDate="2013-06-28T13:30:40.613" UserDisplayName="user88873" Text="Are feedback type questions are allowed here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15614" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6021" RevisionGUID="8465c6b4-20d8-497e-80fd-a1dc02750bd0" CreationDate="2013-06-28T13:30:40.613" UserDisplayName="user88873" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15615" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6022" RevisionGUID="a3555bcd-3c7b-4880-aea8-325b9622d068" CreationDate="2013-06-28T13:33:48.337" UserId="47" Text="This would be off topic, and may well be flagged as spam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a **specific** question about the design of a **particular** feature in your software then you could ask a question about that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a **specific** question about one aspect of the User Experience your software delivers then you could try asking on our sister site on [User Experience](http://ux.stackexchange.com)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15616" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6023" RevisionGUID="9d4445bf-5123-4a1d-a5f5-0cb6bac13ffb" CreationDate="2013-06-28T13:37:25.890" UserId="4" Text="Asking for generic feedback is considered both &quot;too broad&quot; and &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot;, making it not suitable for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you have specific questions about your architecture, design, use of data structures or algorithms, testing, or any of [the other topics that are allowed][1], you can ask those, but you need to be specific about a problem and not soliciting general feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you need assistance with reviewing working code, check out [Code Review][2]. For specific usability questions, check out [User Experience][3]. If you're having problems with implementation or tools, check out [Stack Overflow][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15617" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6024" RevisionGUID="8844fa57-5371-4dd1-a285-a2c00df2a3c0" CreationDate="2013-06-28T14:52:33.997" UserId="35276" Text="So long as the issue is about design and not actual code, and it's presented as a solution with cons, you may ask the question &quot;How could I correct this design to resolve issue(s) X, Y, Z?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions can be on the fence but structured properly we've had some high quality questions of the nature in the past. Have a look at these as similar but well-asked design questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/202559/how-to-refactor-to-cleaner-version-of-maintaing-states-of-the-widget&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/202725/recommened-design-pattern-to-handle-multiple-compression-algorithms-for-a-class&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/201152/oop-design-possible-wrong-approach-makes-it-impossible-to-implement-it-in-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice these all had to narrow their design questions down to a given issue (whether perceived or real doesn't matter) and asked how to make their design solve for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So you can get feedback on your designs for sure, you just have to structure your question correctly to give people a problem constraint which they are to change your design to solve." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15618" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6025" RevisionGUID="28b931c4-c9ca-4dc7-9789-1ea1b05b3f90" CreationDate="2013-06-28T19:28:35.323" UserId="1204" Text="I think you should adopt one of Stack Overflow's custom reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is (sort of) covered under Too Broad, so I understand if you don't want to use up one of your three slots for this, but it's proven to be very useful on Stack Overflow to call that out specifically.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15619" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6025" RevisionGUID="d499ae2a-a45d-494c-b77a-92d7df1a26d3" CreationDate="2013-06-28T19:37:52.780" UserId="1204" Comment="added 12 characters in body" Text="I think you should consider adopting one of Stack Overflow's custom reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is (sort of) covered under Too Broad, so I understand if you don't want to use up one of your three slots for this, but it's proven to be very useful on Stack Overflow to call that out specifically.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15620" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6026" RevisionGUID="77b58614-3862-47cd-9d2e-3ebb5e6edc5f" CreationDate="2013-06-29T18:53:53.307" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="From [programming practices starting](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/203181/programming-practices-starting) (a stereotypical &quot;what do I start with&quot; college question):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Community**: Since this question keeps coming up in one form or another (&quot;what should I do next?&quot;), and it's technically off-topic for the site, I suggest we curate this one as a canonical question. – Robert Harvey&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I see it, there are a few possibilities here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. We make a canonical question, and instead of off topic duping them, we close them.&#xD;&#xA;2. We keep closing them as off topic with an appropriate message.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, the questions will be closed either way.  The problem that I see with the canonical curated question is exactly as mentioned in one of the suggestions for off topic reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for advice about careers or education are difficult because the stakes can seem high and the decisions seem permanent. In most cases though, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a particular circumstance. These types of questions are off-topic because they don't generate meaningful and lasting value for the entire community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we make the question answers completely general enough to be a canonical answer, they become just something that is longer than that close message.  If we make the question answers not general, the (valid and an entirely 'nother set of meta questions) critique that &quot;yes, but my problem is different because I'm not looking into web design or mobil, but rather desktop apps vs embedded systems and that is completely different.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am holding off on casting a close vote on this question because its the weekend (less attention to that (and this) question) and I am curious if anyone can make a good, general answer to this question that might be one that is better than the custom close vote reason.  As of yet, I haven't seen any.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do remember that there are many forms of the &quot;what should I do next?&quot; - this one deals only with education.  There is what project, what language, what book, what job, etc... I personally don't relish having every major variation of &quot;what should I [do|learn|read] next (given the current situation of [in school|out of school|new programmer|unhappy with job|switching career paths from [testing|support|non-technical]])&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15621" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6026" RevisionGUID="77b58614-3862-47cd-9d2e-3ebb5e6edc5f" CreationDate="2013-06-29T18:53:53.307" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Canonical &quot;what next&quot; curated question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15622" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6026" RevisionGUID="77b58614-3862-47cd-9d2e-3ebb5e6edc5f" CreationDate="2013-06-29T18:53:53.307" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15623" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6027" RevisionGUID="255b1511-2060-478c-a768-2fbc77f9963a" CreationDate="2013-07-01T16:07:52.483" UserId="35276" Text="I'm strongly against this. I think the concept of 'canonical question' altogether won't work, it'll send the message that the topic is relevant and appropriate to ask questions regarding to the many new visitors who won't know better, further as you pointed out the answers wouldn't work for most, therefore many would think &quot;This is on topic, but this Q doesn't answer *my* case, so I should ask about my particular case&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I vote no canonical Q for such things, and really no canonical Q for anything, such a Q would simply be far too broad to be useful content to begin with." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15628" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6029" RevisionGUID="7da822d9-7a1e-4fe9-9fef-57addf442ce3" CreationDate="2013-07-03T07:41:17.897" UserId="92918" Text="I am confused as to whether questions about IDEs be asked here or not? Questions such as which IDEs have this feature?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked such questions on stackoverflow before being told to ask on superuser or other websites. I [read this][1], [asked this question on its meta][2] but it seems the [questions about IDE][3] are still being put on hold (3 votes for closing at the time of posting this question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So before posting questions on this website I decided to ask on its meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Should I ask questions about IDEs here or not? &#xD;&#xA; - If not then which websites do they belong to?&#xD;&#xA; - What course of action is best in this case?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/113087/software-tools-in-faq-is-too-hazy&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/181041/confusion-regarding-the-faq-and-a-question&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17439620/an-ide-with-drag-and-drop-feature-for-python-2-7-tkinter" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15629" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6029" RevisionGUID="7da822d9-7a1e-4fe9-9fef-57addf442ce3" CreationDate="2013-07-03T07:41:17.897" UserId="92918" Text="Can questions about IDEs be asked here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15630" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6029" RevisionGUID="7da822d9-7a1e-4fe9-9fef-57addf442ce3" CreationDate="2013-07-03T07:41:17.897" UserId="92918" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15631" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6030" RevisionGUID="f32af010-d998-4a88-93dd-6e0bd5d33998" CreationDate="2013-07-03T07:51:30.900" UserId="81028" Text="Recently I reviewed some first posts. One post's formatting was pretty bad, so I choose &quot;Edit&quot;, to improve it. On Stackoverflow I do not have to add a summary, because I've got enought reputation. However I forgot to fill in the summary in here, so the editing page informed me with a shaking dialog to fill it in. Right after the dialog showed up, the editing box duplicated: there was one with my changes and one with the original content. Strangely enought, also the button &quot;Editing...&quot; duplicated. It's hard to describe, but I've created a screenshot:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Wired edit dialog duplicate][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was unable to reproduce this bug, because there were no reviews left.  &#xD;&#xA;Maybe you are able to reproduce it!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/XVHKu.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15632" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6030" RevisionGUID="f32af010-d998-4a88-93dd-6e0bd5d33998" CreationDate="2013-07-03T07:51:30.900" UserId="81028" Text="Edit form duplicates when editing a reviewed post" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15633" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6030" RevisionGUID="f32af010-d998-4a88-93dd-6e0bd5d33998" CreationDate="2013-07-03T07:51:30.900" UserId="81028" Text="|bug|editing|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15634" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6029" RevisionGUID="8aa28a9d-e9cf-4a99-be7f-9b360ed0eaad" CreationDate="2013-07-03T08:01:31.860" UserId="92918" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15635" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6029" RevisionGUID="584bce53-62b6-40f0-baf9-d72c7d7b7121" CreationDate="2013-07-03T10:15:21.900" UserId="92918" Comment="added 594 characters in body" Text="I am confused whether questions about IDEs can be asked on [programmers main website][1] or not? Questions such as which IDEs have this feature? An example would be [this question on Stackoverflow][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked such questions on stackoverflow before being told to ask on superuser or other websites. I [read this][3], [asked this question on its meta][4] but it seems the [questions about IDE][5] are still being put on hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So before posting questions on programmers I decided to ask it on its meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Should I ask questions about IDEs here or not? &#xD;&#xA; - If not then which websites do they belong to?&#xD;&#xA; - Is there a question about the where I can ask questions not fitting on this website. Like [the one on Stackoverflow][6].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have looked at the [about page][7]. It says to ask such questions on stackoverflow. But on stackoverflow I have been told otherwise. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17439620/an-ide-with-drag-and-drop-feature-for-python-2-7-tkinter&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/113087/software-tools-in-faq-is-too-hazy&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/181041/confusion-regarding-the-faq-and-a-question&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17439620/an-ide-with-drag-and-drop-feature-for-python-2-7-tkinter&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/8401/where-can-i-ask-questions-that-dont-fit-or-are-off-topic-for-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15636" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6029" RevisionGUID="584bce53-62b6-40f0-baf9-d72c7d7b7121" CreationDate="2013-07-03T10:15:21.900" UserId="92918" Comment="added 594 characters in body" Text="Can questions about IDEs be asked here - If not then where(don't suggest stackoverflow)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15637" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6031" RevisionGUID="4315406c-6a4a-4752-aef4-c4580c41838b" CreationDate="2013-07-03T13:15:06.837" UserId="34327" Text="from http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software tools commonly used by programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stackoverflow is the place to ask about IDEs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: can you point where you have been told that this was off-topic on SO?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15638" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6031" RevisionGUID="a18f1dff-a480-45ba-bf77-af35c72ebf34" CreationDate="2013-07-03T13:22:24.783" UserId="34327" Comment="added 315 characters in body" Text="from http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software tools commonly used by programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stackoverflow is the place to ask about IDEs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: can you point where you have been told that this was off-topic on SO?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;about [this](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17439620/an-ide-with-drag-and-drop-feature-for-python-2-7-tkinter) question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It wasn't closed because it was about IDEs. It was closed because you asked for a software recommendation. These are off-topic because they are very difficult to answer in a good way." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15639" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6031" RevisionGUID="a03e4430-bfa8-4913-be1c-8b1256fdaa43" CreationDate="2013-07-03T15:08:39.120" UserId="34327" Comment="added 469 characters in body" Text="from http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software tools commonly used by programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stackoverflow is the place to ask about IDEs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: can you point where you have been told that this was off-topic on SO?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;about [this](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17439620/an-ide-with-drag-and-drop-feature-for-python-2-7-tkinter) question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It wasn't closed because it was about IDEs. It was closed because you asked for a software recommendation. These are off-topic because they are very difficult to answer in a good way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT (2):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think you will find a good place on stackexchange for this type of question. Having a clear focus is a big advantage to keep the place professionnal, and attract skilled people on specific topics. That means (sadly) that some questions cannot be asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some question like yours were not closed, and are sometimes highly upvoted. this is part due to historical reasons, and part to the fact that people enforcing the rules are not perfect :-)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15640" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6032" RevisionGUID="73457386-6cbe-47c6-9214-4337cdace2ef" CreationDate="2013-07-03T20:06:57.180" UserId="60569" Text="I suggest that the existing close reason &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career advice or help with office politics are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off-topic here unless they're specific to the programming profession.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If people in other professions face similar problems, ask about it on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Workplace Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should be changed to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career advice or help with office politics are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off-topic here. For a question about office politics, ask about it on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Workplace Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Points being&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. My understanding is that career advice and office politics are off-topic here, regardless of whether the career or politics are specific to software development or the programming profession. &#xD;&#xA;2. Career advice is off-topic on The Workplace." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15642" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6033" RevisionGUID="5bb45dab-e1f0-4d62-928c-bca3cec4f527" CreationDate="2013-07-04T07:35:21.810" UserId="27803" Text="In SO, the usage (or what I though the usage is since the great cleanup campaign last year) concerning the linking external resources is that it is a bad pratice since linking to an external resource  like a blog post or a pastebin as an answer may later lead to a 404 and makes the question/answer less readable if not at all in the first sight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus it is better for answers to add a little extract of the external resource or to post the full source code (of course if it is not several pages longs) in extenso.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the consensus concerning images? An edit suggestion I made to replace an imageshack external link by the same image inlined [was just rejected][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/33416" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15643" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6033" RevisionGUID="5bb45dab-e1f0-4d62-928c-bca3cec4f527" CreationDate="2013-07-04T07:35:21.810" UserId="27803" Text="Is it good practice to replace external links by inline resources?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15644" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6033" RevisionGUID="5bb45dab-e1f0-4d62-928c-bca3cec4f527" CreationDate="2013-07-04T07:35:21.810" UserId="27803" Text="|discussion|suggested-edits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15645" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6033" RevisionGUID="6de5c1fd-8449-47f4-87fe-45ff4d6178e1" CreationDate="2013-07-04T13:59:33.170" UserId="27803" Comment="fixed typo + little reformulation" Text="In SO, the usage (or what I though the usage is since the great cleanup campaign last year) concerning the linking of external resources is that it is a bad pratice, as linking to an external resource like a blog post or a pastebin as an answer may later lead to a 404 and makes the question/answer less readable (if not unreadable at all) in the first sight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus it is better for answers to add a little extract of the external resource or to post the source code in extenso if it is not several pages longs, or a reduced Short, Self Contained, Correct (Compilable), Example.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the consensus concerning images? An edit suggestion I made to replace an imageshack external link by the same image inlined [was just rejected][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/33416" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15649" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6017" RevisionGUID="d02bf9d9-dc67-4843-8b94-3d6c2b7d6f6a" CreationDate="2013-07-05T17:09:02.157" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/353198847528411136" />
  <row Id="15650" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6035" RevisionGUID="0c47e7cb-6f4e-438a-98a7-bf845815d597" CreationDate="2013-07-05T21:34:39.570" UserId="25936" Text="You were unlucky, the author of the answer was editing the post at the same time, and your edits conflicted. When that happens, the suggested edit &quot;loses&quot; and appears as rejected by [Community ♦](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/-1/community).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, your edit, albeit helpful, was a bit minor. Suggested edits are generally expected to substantially improve a post, and adding the image inline wasn't really necessary in the specific answer. It wasn't a bad edit, and I would have probably accepted it if I had seen it, but I would like to encourage you to focus on editing posts that are in need of more substantial edits. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15651" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6036" RevisionGUID="da7688e6-e352-42c7-b965-cf812e60e7e1" CreationDate="2013-07-06T16:36:55.930" UserId="76071" Text="For me, being no native speaker, the sentence was difficult to understand before the edit. Allowing users to fix grammar mistakes is a win, in my opinion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15652" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5994" RevisionGUID="c29043e3-78ca-44ea-9c62-2819f47e21e7" CreationDate="2013-07-06T18:13:22.733" UserId="25936" Comment="Minor edits (had to make it shorter to add mention to chat - damn char limit). This is the version that's currently awaiting approval " Text="Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help on [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15655" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6025" RevisionGUID="587a4d38-12b9-4b56-999e-61570858ea58" CreationDate="2013-07-06T18:24:13.547" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body" Text="I think you should consider adopting one of Stack Overflow's custom reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is (sort of) covered under Too Broad, so I understand if you don't want to use up one of your three slots for this, but it's proven to be very useful on Stack Overflow to call that out specifically.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15656" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5993" RevisionGUID="511bf169-3b7d-4be1-a5ec-2241159489fc" CreationDate="2013-07-08T02:32:57.740" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="'cause Yannis said so.  I mean, really, do we need any more reason beyond that?  :-)" Text="Career and education advice aren't meaningful to the broader programming community.  In most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.  These types of questions are off-topic because they don't generate lasting value for the entire community.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15658" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5993" RevisionGUID="c96f98b0-47e1-4a4e-bf56-535ee26b26d2" CreationDate="2013-07-08T02:56:03.917" UserId="25936" Comment="moved stuff around to match the pattern of the other close reasons. Tried to be as faithful to the original phrasing as possible." Text="Questions seeking **career or education advice** are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15659" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5992" RevisionGUID="5a9b270d-dd06-471f-8cae-18f0373b8852" CreationDate="2013-07-08T03:05:28.430" UserId="25936" Comment="added 394 characters in body; edited tags" Text="There are some fairly major changes coming soon to how posts are closed, you may want to read up on the details:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Closing changes: [on hold], unclear, too broad, opinion-based, off-topic reasons, bye-bye to Too Localized](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/184154/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [Responding to your “too localized” concerns](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/185102/162704)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We will need to come up with our own list of custom off topic reasons for Programmers. These reasons will be available to close voters after they have picked the generic &quot;off topic&quot; one. Here's a screenshot of Meta Stack Overflow's close dialog, where the new system is already available:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8locR.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;other&quot; option will allow a custom message, when none of the three custom reasons applies:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFP1n.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an &quot;off topic&quot; reason you'd like to nominate, please post it as an answer. Some general guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- One reason per answer, so they can be voted separately.&#xD;&#xA;- A brief comment explaining why the general category is off topic is mandatory. See the examples in the first screenshot for inspiration. If we have a _good_ Meta discussion explaining in detail why the category doesn't work, please link to it in your comment.&#xD;&#xA;- Examples to existing closed questions that would fit your custom reason would be immensely helpful.&#xD;&#xA;- If there's already an answer with a reason similar to what you have in mind, but with a slightly different phrasing, please consider commenting on the existing answer and refining the phrasing instead of posting a new answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The winners: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [&quot;what language, technology, or project one should take up next&quot;][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [&quot;career or education advice&quot;][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [&quot;recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource&quot;][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5994/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5993/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6025/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15660" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5992" RevisionGUID="5a9b270d-dd06-471f-8cae-18f0373b8852" CreationDate="2013-07-08T03:05:28.430" UserId="25936" Comment="added 394 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15661" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6037" RevisionGUID="986eca36-433f-4134-9b95-6c42e34a1d30" CreationDate="2013-07-08T03:12:29.133" UserId="25936" Text="We've just updated our custom off topic close reasons, picking the top three from the [relevant Meta discussion][1]. None of them mentions another SE site, so they shouldn't be confused with migration votes anymore. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a perfect solution to the problem, we may need to add a mention to another site in the future, but I think it's good enough for now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5992/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15662" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6038" RevisionGUID="55dd52d5-91bb-4d76-9e64-08507fa64bf0" CreationDate="2013-07-08T13:24:20.093" UserId="866" Text="Allow that I have been here pretty much from the start&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let us take:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/203975/development-test-interview&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as &quot;too broad&quot;. *Really* ? I might allow that a bit more detail of the nature of the test would help but it seems to me that its just about as specific as it can reasonably be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's a better place to ask, I'd be pleased to know - but it seems that there are progressively fewer and fewer questions that can be reasonably asked here? And if not here then where (I'm not talking about questions that obviously belong on stackoverflow, rather the ones that fairly obviously don't)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot; ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, I've gone read the rest of the stuff and yes clearly the example is a marginal question (in so far as it _might_ be off-topic - but it wasn't closed as off-topic...)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15663" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6038" RevisionGUID="55dd52d5-91bb-4d76-9e64-08507fa64bf0" CreationDate="2013-07-08T13:24:20.093" UserId="866" Text="Why don't we just set up a robot to automagically add 5 close votes to every question over the course of, say, 5 hours?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15664" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6038" RevisionGUID="55dd52d5-91bb-4d76-9e64-08507fa64bf0" CreationDate="2013-07-08T13:24:20.093" UserId="866" Text="|discussion|rant|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15665" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6039" RevisionGUID="96ed9359-7269-4b67-b518-196a94ea534a" CreationDate="2013-07-08T13:30:52.580" UserId="47" Text="There are things that you as a relatively high reputation user can do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Edit the question to improve it. You saw an answerable question in there and posted an answer - help the rest of the community see what you saw by teasing out the actual question and making it clear.&#xD;&#xA;2. Add a comment explaining why it should be left open.&#xD;&#xA;3. If the question is closed vote to reopen - preferably after an edit to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;4. Engage with the community in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/) to see if you can find out why people are voting the way they do and explain your point of view.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your final point - the close reason displayed is the one that the majority have chosen. There could be two or more close reasons in all, but we never see the others." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15667" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6041" RevisionGUID="cfd4ebe6-45f5-4016-b134-7cd77b59e258" CreationDate="2013-07-09T07:09:25.960" UserId="92918" Text="I recently found cs.stackexchange and have been confused with the difference between programmers and cs. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The about page of cs][1] isn't very detailed and only mentions `specific issues with computer science` alongwith `real problems` which, to my knowledge, is in every stackexchange site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Isn't that already covered by this website? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/about" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15668" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6041" RevisionGUID="cfd4ebe6-45f5-4016-b134-7cd77b59e258" CreationDate="2013-07-09T07:09:25.960" UserId="92918" Text="Difference between programmers and cs.stackexchange" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15669" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6041" RevisionGUID="cfd4ebe6-45f5-4016-b134-7cd77b59e258" CreationDate="2013-07-09T07:09:25.960" UserId="92918" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15670" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6042" RevisionGUID="990edd0c-17a2-46b4-aeda-b15454cc22e0" CreationDate="2013-07-09T09:59:36.503" UserId="4" Text="The difference between the two sites is the difference between [computer science][1] and [software engineering][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is focused on the practical aspects of building software - requirements, architecture, design, testing, deployment, configuration management, software quality, process and project management. Things of unique interest to software engineers are also on topic - software licenses, business aspects unique to software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Computer Science is more theoretical and mathematical in nature - programming language concepts, languages and grammars, complexity theory, computability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is, however, some overlap. For example, there may be a set of data structure or algorithm questions that can be asked to either community. However, the answers you get would vary. Here on Programmers, I would expect answers to be more concerned with a different set of trade-offs than on Computer Science - ease of implementation, maintenance, testability, the existence of well-used implementation versus time and/or space complexity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15671" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6041" RevisionGUID="c7a33a06-6c15-432a-8e52-0265bdce871c" CreationDate="2013-07-09T10:45:17.547" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15684" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6038" RevisionGUID="5319d56e-8c45-4f52-a96e-78d2a3df640b" CreationDate="2013-07-11T17:10:27.363" UserId="1204" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15685" PostHistoryTypeId="9" PostId="6038" RevisionGUID="70214386-3caf-4813-8f62-3f47a97dd144" CreationDate="2013-07-11T17:11:05.130" UserId="1204" Comment="Rollback to [55dd52d5-91bb-4d76-9e64-08507fa64bf0]" Text="|discussion|rant|" />
  <row Id="15686" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6046" RevisionGUID="bc41c953-75da-454a-82da-37378c6582a3" CreationDate="2013-07-11T23:26:44.833" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Questions like this [one][1] have me wondering if introducing kids to programming isn't a good candidate for doing a &quot;one post to rule them all&quot; that gathers all of the good ideas we've accumulated on the subject and curates them in one place rather than it coming up again and again and different recommendations being made?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/204504/how-to-interest-my-8-yo-child-about-programming#question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15687" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6046" RevisionGUID="bc41c953-75da-454a-82da-37378c6582a3" CreationDate="2013-07-11T23:26:44.833" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Should &quot;Programming with Kids&quot; have a canonical post?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15688" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6046" RevisionGUID="bc41c953-75da-454a-82da-37378c6582a3" CreationDate="2013-07-11T23:26:44.833" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15693" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6033" RevisionGUID="25670916-39dd-4143-ac5a-f2f0513e5486" CreationDate="2013-07-12T05:09:08.900" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/355554396953776128" />
  <row Id="15694" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1081" RevisionGUID="8e5c4a95-38d1-4d02-8905-bb6a95750f97" CreationDate="2013-07-12T09:51:53.947" UserId="4767" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15695" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6047" RevisionGUID="ba92bac3-c4c7-44b7-8403-17d8c63a9b42" CreationDate="2013-07-12T15:20:15.330" UserId="19033" Text="[This answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/203686/revisions) has become a CW, presumably because it was edited several times. It cites Martin Fowler, but the quotation is paraphrased, so I edited it, posting the original quote and a link to the document from which came the quote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original answerer removed my change. If it were still &quot;his&quot; answer, I would be OK with it, but if it's really going to be CW, doesn't that mean it's owned *by the community*, or am I misunderstanding the semantics of CW?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15696" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6047" RevisionGUID="ba92bac3-c4c7-44b7-8403-17d8c63a9b42" CreationDate="2013-07-12T15:20:15.330" UserId="19033" Text="Correctness vs &quot;ownership&quot; on community wiki" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15697" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6047" RevisionGUID="ba92bac3-c4c7-44b7-8403-17d8c63a9b42" CreationDate="2013-07-12T15:20:15.330" UserId="19033" Text="|discussion|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15698" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6048" RevisionGUID="26721b5a-69ed-4141-9893-4a6d2424a99f" CreationDate="2013-07-12T20:28:31.083" UserId="855" Text="I get your frustration and feel we display closed questions like heads on the end of spears to discourage entry, but it's not easy to identify or have any consensus on appropriate questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same 5 people are doing all the closing. You can't rely on the entire history of the site because the rules, interpretations, and people change. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can't deny that there are too many questions that completely disregard the suggestions for acceptable questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I don't think the question example you're using offers any benefit to professional programmers. A test you can use any language and is going to involve programming just about anything they can come up with is hard to prepare for as you indicated in your answer. Are there programmers spending countless hours cramming for these types of tests or wasting money on some self-help book that claims it will teach you how to be a programmer in one day?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this question is acceptable just because it's about programming, why not invite the thousand of other questions anyone could ask about how to get better at anything programming related? I wish more people (myself included) would ask how to get better at writing questions and stop making me close them. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/204587/which-certification-to-go-for&#xD;&#xA;How about getting certified in reading the FAQ's? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15699" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6049" RevisionGUID="8ae09707-6dbe-4ea4-be7c-5481d9e991d5" CreationDate="2013-07-12T22:03:09.267" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="One of the hardest things to realize about Stack Exchange is that we are *contributors* to a site, but we are not the revenue stream for the business model.  That lines from the *next* person to visit the site.  Much of the site is designed around this - optimizing the search engine and being the place to go to find **the** answer to the question (not a forum that has a dozen answers, if you want that, there are many sites that cater to that approach).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a question to be useful to this business model, it must be something someone wants to come to and see.  A question that is only helpful to one person - the one who asked it - adds negligible value to Stack Exchange as a whole.  Compare to a question that people do want to come to and see.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As users with a reasonable amount of reputation it is our responsibility to keep the site on topic, and useful to this end.  If someone is asking polling question, or a question that doesn't do a good job of explaining itself it needs to be addressed.  In many cases, this means closing questions.  For some reason, P.SE tends to get a lot of the people looking for help on their career, education, or with very poorly defined questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't believe that it is fewer questions that are allowed to be asked, but rather that you see more and more of the borderline and on the poor side of borderline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will note that I personally have a philosophy of close fast, fix, reopen to try to avoid getting answers to questions that don't work correctly (the polling questions are most notorious for this).  I do dismay at the difficulty that people seem to have reading the on topic portion of the help center and those who have the question closed as &quot;too broad&quot; or &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; on Stackoverflow and then reask it here without fixing the underlying problem of too broad or opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Aside from closing questions, we have the ability to edit them.  Transforming a question that isn't a good fit into one that is a good fit (*even if it is not the one originally asked, but **should** have been asked*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the editing part, consider [Java continuous integration with extras](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/204632/revisions) and [Considerations on which Java version to run in Production](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/183982/revisions) which are two examples of questions that I reworked into ones that fit the site.  I am sure other people have other examples - I just don't know them off the top of my head.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is a question that you believe should be open, please, come into the chat room and people there would be happy to work with you to figure out how a question can be worded so that it can fit properly within the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many times, though, this will involve working with the original asker of the question which can be difficult (there is a surprisingly large number of users who ask a question and never revisit the site logged in again - even if it is a good question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd much rather have a open good question on the site than a closed question, but I'd rather see a closed question than a multitude of poor quality open ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Going back to chat again, it really is a good place for the 'fun' things that people seem to nostalgize about and asking/answering those really fuzzy questions that seem to keep showing up about careers and education." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15700" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6046" RevisionGUID="f1efd055-35a2-44c9-a897-67de5d0db246" CreationDate="2013-07-13T08:09:10.453" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/355962089745031168" />
  <row Id="15701" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5180" RevisionGUID="820933f2-1617-42f4-9fbe-bd1f361ee394" CreationDate="2013-07-14T16:14:06.593" UserId="51669" Comment="added 101 characters in body; edited title" Text="Using Firefox &lt;del&gt;16.0.2&lt;/del&gt; 22  on Windows 8, I've had a hard time reading certain sentences. Browser is normal zoom.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;clean looks like dean.  &#xD;&#xA;click looks like dick.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Screenshot if you cannot see it:**  &#xD;&#xA;![cleandean][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And generally a lot of letters are too close (close, not dose, hehe).  &#xD;&#xA;Like ct in 'exactly' in my screenshot, and ce.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: This happens in Chrome as well. But not IE.&#xD;&#xA;Edit2: Added click example, as I've seen this some times lately..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B8NHL.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15702" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5180" RevisionGUID="820933f2-1617-42f4-9fbe-bd1f361ee394" CreationDate="2013-07-14T16:14:06.593" UserId="51669" Comment="added 101 characters in body; edited title" Text="click reads like dick, letter spacing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15703" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6050" RevisionGUID="6e67d9ca-1a3e-4e48-b93e-554f0d5f9de6" CreationDate="2013-07-14T19:53:06.827" UserId="14363" Text="I've just received the Announcer and Booster badges for a [question][1] (not mine! I haven't even answered it, and it's over a year old)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing is, I never share questions. I don't have a high traffic blog, twitter or anything like that which could deliver 25, never mind 300 unique IP address clicks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a bug? Any way to find out?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60545/how-to-tell-client-i-no-longer-want-to-work-on-his-project" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15704" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6050" RevisionGUID="6e67d9ca-1a3e-4e48-b93e-554f0d5f9de6" CreationDate="2013-07-14T19:53:06.827" UserId="14363" Text="Strange badge award" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15705" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6050" RevisionGUID="6e67d9ca-1a3e-4e48-b93e-554f0d5f9de6" CreationDate="2013-07-14T19:53:06.827" UserId="14363" Text="|bug|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15706" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6051" RevisionGUID="cd3a9706-7993-46b4-8f6f-a56a5786981f" CreationDate="2013-07-14T22:16:59.433" UserId="47" Text="It's not a bug but a &quot;feature&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way the links are tracked are via the &quot;share&quot; links which are of the form:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6050/47`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;where the first number is the question id and the second is the user id. The link above is for this question and has my user id. If it was your share link it would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6050/14363`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Someone else has shared a question but introduced a typo to the link which just happens to match your user id.&#xD;&#xA;2. Someone has constructed a link of this form and used your user id - probably by accident.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are no moderator tools available to tell us where incoming links are from. I assume that the community team would have access to this information, but I don't know whether they'd share that information." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15707" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6047" RevisionGUID="22ab7049-eced-4a5a-af51-c56310c73f77" CreationDate="2013-07-14T22:30:30.857" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15708" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6052" RevisionGUID="399c9760-7482-494b-bd32-d889581e1442" CreationDate="2013-07-15T09:06:50.890" UserId="51669" Text="I had the same thing happen to me. This is because of [arstechnica.com][1].&#xD;&#xA;When they do a piece on some recent Stack Exchange discussions, they include some links. Those links will use the id of the featured user as the &quot;share-id&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Your answer** has been featured in [What to do with a popular project that you no longer want to maintain?][2] If you check the links, the link to your answer ends in /14363, which is your id. And the same for the link at the end of the section. So when visitors click those links, they count as your share.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://arstechnica.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/what-to-do-with-a-popular-project-that-you-no-longer-want-to-maintain/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15709" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6051" RevisionGUID="f496ffa0-77da-4100-bc67-e0f54de189c4" CreationDate="2013-07-15T09:18:05.650" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="It's not a bug but a &quot;feature&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way the links are tracked are via the &quot;share&quot; links which are of the form:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6050/47`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;where the first number is the question id and the second is the user id. The link above is for this question and has my user id. If it was your share link it would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6050/14363`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Someone else has shared a question but introduced a typo to the link which just happens to match your user id.&#xD;&#xA;2. Someone has constructed a link of this form and used your user id - possibly by accident, but in the case of Ars Technica it appears to be deliberate policy to &quot;reward&quot; a specific user (see [Matsemann's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6052/47))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are no moderator tools available to tell us where incoming links are from. I assume that the community team would have access to this information, but I don't know whether they'd share that information." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15710" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6050" RevisionGUID="f86ccf5e-cc2f-4ee3-a332-eacd3d81349b" CreationDate="2013-07-15T12:28:20.227" UserId="23622" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15711" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6041" RevisionGUID="ac082aad-b3b3-4454-953a-17e4c0282e55" CreationDate="2013-07-16T02:10:48.790" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/356959068528709632" />
  <row Id="15712" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6053" RevisionGUID="f851e925-7fef-4838-ab7c-cc3ec92e453d" CreationDate="2013-07-17T03:02:15.460" UserId="27161" Text="Kids are people too. IMO, it's like asking whether it's okay to just have one massive canonical question about adults who know nothing about programming. Well, which adults? It gets a lot more specific from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Teaching smart kids about programming? That's easy. Give 'em a little power and let the little terrors cut loose from there. All done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What about the kid who's smart but has decided they are dumb? What about the kid who seems smart but doesn't know English? What about the kid who seems smart but can't seem to focus? What about the girl who is really smart but wants to hide it? What about the kid who has the work ethic to build 9 pyramids tomorrow and is smart or perhaps dumb but doesn't have one ounce of the craft of programming built into their natural instincts regarding how to actually do it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15713" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6054" RevisionGUID="8acc0164-da7f-4561-853a-fbee176a03ab" CreationDate="2013-07-18T16:32:23.627" UserId="8939" Text="I think that lately there has been so much energy spent on deciding what should or should not be allowed on stack exchange, that its value as a place to get answers has been diminished.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just look at the number of upvotes on the topic in question.  216 upvotes, and 63 favorites as a I write this.  Clearly the members and users of the site feel that the topic is valuable. Shouldn't that count for something?  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15714" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6055" RevisionGUID="a2384c6e-2792-4981-8ba0-310f09078304" CreationDate="2013-07-18T22:13:01.897" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="Often times I will notice the same user repeatedly submitting, at least what I consider to be, bad edits such as radically changing the question or just performing some minor edit like fixing a typo or two. Is there some way to try to inform a particular user about the guidelines for making edits to try to mitigate the bad serial editing? If not, would a featured like this be beneficial?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15715" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6055" RevisionGUID="a2384c6e-2792-4981-8ba0-310f09078304" CreationDate="2013-07-18T22:13:01.897" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="How to Stop Bad Edits From a User" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15716" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6055" RevisionGUID="a2384c6e-2792-4981-8ba0-310f09078304" CreationDate="2013-07-18T22:13:01.897" UserDisplayName="user7007" Text="|discussion|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15717" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6056" RevisionGUID="cc73a889-7835-4062-96e1-b8955071528b" CreationDate="2013-07-18T23:44:39.523" UserId="63" Text="Yes, this feature does exist. It involves leaving a comment under one of the abused posts that describes the problem and addresses the user responsible using his name prefixed by the @-symbol. Example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @GlennNelson: please don't edit pictures of your dog into every post you read. She's a very nice dog I'm sure, but this is not how we indicate that we've read posts here on Stack Exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If that doesn't work, you can flag for a moderator's attention - they'll review the situation and take appropriate action. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [The Great Edit Wars](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/03/the-great-edit-wars/)&#xD;&#xA;- [In Defense of Editing](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/in-defense-of-editing/)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15718" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6056" RevisionGUID="d6df675f-3f09-4e98-b4f2-f35ecf6c5580" CreationDate="2013-07-19T16:19:58.303" UserId="35276" Comment="I read this" Text="Yes, this feature does exist. It involves leaving a comment under one of the abused posts that describes the problem and addresses the user responsible using his name prefixed by the @-symbol. Example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @GlennNelson: please don't edit pictures of your dog into every post you read. She's a very nice dog I'm sure, but this is not how we indicate that we've read posts here on Stack Exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If that doesn't work, you can flag for a moderator's attention - they'll review the situation and take appropriate action. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [The Great Edit Wars](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/03/the-great-edit-wars/)&#xD;&#xA;- [In Defense of Editing](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/in-defense-of-editing/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Oo8MJ.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15719" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="6056" RevisionGUID="790695cb-2c88-4449-9d1c-d461d6107e99" CreationDate="2013-07-19T18:40:36.653" UserId="47" Comment="Rollback to [cc73a889-7835-4062-96e1-b8955071528b]" Text="Yes, this feature does exist. It involves leaving a comment under one of the abused posts that describes the problem and addresses the user responsible using his name prefixed by the @-symbol. Example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @GlennNelson: please don't edit pictures of your dog into every post you read. She's a very nice dog I'm sure, but this is not how we indicate that we've read posts here on Stack Exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If that doesn't work, you can flag for a moderator's attention - they'll review the situation and take appropriate action. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [The Great Edit Wars](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/03/the-great-edit-wars/)&#xD;&#xA;- [In Defense of Editing](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/in-defense-of-editing/)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15720" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5961" RevisionGUID="f574d3c1-3756-48cd-ac94-7e6849a15a8d" CreationDate="2013-07-20T00:01:03.710" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|contest|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15721" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6047" RevisionGUID="1bf19432-e73e-488b-8a7a-e6484d780a31" CreationDate="2013-07-20T05:29:48.803" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/358458700140265472" />
  <row Id="15732" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6059" RevisionGUID="29166c8c-73d3-451a-8e12-a6c8c26eee75" CreationDate="2013-07-21T20:10:57.293" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3049/what-decent-web-frameworks-exists-for-functional-programming#question is a potentially good topic to have a curated list. Yea or Nay?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15733" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6059" RevisionGUID="29166c8c-73d3-451a-8e12-a6c8c26eee75" CreationDate="2013-07-21T20:10:57.293" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Should &quot;What decent web frameworks exists for functional programming&quot; be a wiki answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15734" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6059" RevisionGUID="29166c8c-73d3-451a-8e12-a6c8c26eee75" CreationDate="2013-07-21T20:10:57.293" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="|discussion|curated-answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15735" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5991" RevisionGUID="5b8d0558-5d7d-4741-9f03-cda08b16e30b" CreationDate="2013-07-21T20:26:53.087" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|clean-up|curated-answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15736" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6059" RevisionGUID="6486bab8-9365-4bdb-bfab-862510ae2b89" CreationDate="2013-07-21T20:26:55.823" UserId="25936" Comment="added 225 characters in body; edited tags" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3049/what-decent-web-frameworks-exists-for-functional-programming#question is a potentially good topic to have a curated list &lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;. Yea or Nay?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; See: [New lock type for truly collaborative questions and answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5991/new-lock-type-for-truly-collaborative-questions-and-answers)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15737" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6059" RevisionGUID="6486bab8-9365-4bdb-bfab-862510ae2b89" CreationDate="2013-07-21T20:26:55.823" UserId="25936" Comment="added 225 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|curated-answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15738" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6060" RevisionGUID="1d18c344-5765-488b-a4d6-a1428c287b8b" CreationDate="2013-07-21T21:01:18.703" UserId="4" Text="I'm thinking no.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unlike [the prime example for collaborative answers][1], this would tend to focus on particular products. Products tend to change a lot more frequently than topics. Products reach end-of-life and new products are created more often than paradigm shifts, meaning it will take more effort to curate. I'm concerned that there wouldn't be enough curation, especially over a long period of time. if the answer falls out of date, its usefulness would drop.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Something else to consider is that library recommendations are off-topic. I'm not sure how a curated list of web frameworks differ from a question asking about what library to use. It's a blurry enough line with the &quot;things to know for web development&quot; question, since questions about what to learn next are off-topic. Perhaps there's enough of a distinction between what tools exist and what tool should I use, but it is worth thinking about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15739" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6061" RevisionGUID="e09122f3-f816-4331-9be1-f9d1fe85b377" CreationDate="2013-07-21T21:34:55.217" UserId="4" Text="There doesn't seem to be any guidance for what would make a good or bad collaborative question. So far, I'm having an easier time defining what such a question is not:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Frequently changing. The answer should be fairly consistent over time. It may take time to get there, but if the type of question requires frequent additions/subtractions over the life of the question, it's likely not a good fit.&#xD;&#xA;- Off-topic. Currently, things that are off-topic include what to learn next (although proper phrasing, such as [the web development question][1], can push it to the good side of this line), recommendations for tools or libraries, recommendations for off-site resources, and education or career advice are all off-topic and probably wouldn't make good collaborative answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15740" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6062" RevisionGUID="287bd2f9-ce7b-48dd-b814-2aa722c8ce54" CreationDate="2013-07-22T09:17:42.103" UserId="1480" Text="Would the question below be acceptable on Programmers?  &#xD;&#xA;If not, how could it be salvaged?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am a programmer, and want to test my client software for Kerberos compatibility.  &#xD;&#xA;I need a Kerberos server to perform the tests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even though I am not a system administrator, I tried to set up a Kerberos server, but it looks that it is a job for specialists and will take days. In the end I probably won't be able to trust it to be really properly installed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [TurnkeyLinux Domain Controller][2] distribution is nearly a perfect solution, and conveniently comes as a VM, but unfortunately it does only domain controller, not the Kerberos part.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a similar tool that can be used as a Kerberos server too?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15741" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6062" RevisionGUID="287bd2f9-ce7b-48dd-b814-2aa722c8ce54" CreationDate="2013-07-22T09:17:42.103" UserId="1480" Text="Off-topic? Asking whether a Kerberos programming tool exists" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15742" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6062" RevisionGUID="287bd2f9-ce7b-48dd-b814-2aa722c8ce54" CreationDate="2013-07-22T09:17:42.103" UserId="1480" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15743" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6063" RevisionGUID="48390d49-2637-4450-a444-57a56b082fd1" CreationDate="2013-07-22T12:17:49.953" UserId="4" Text="It doesn't seem like a good fit for any site on the network since it's a &quot;shopping list&quot; or recommendation-style question that tends to generate a large number of answers based on personal opinions rather than facts." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15744" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6064" RevisionGUID="f7dd7e60-d250-47e6-bf45-dad057aa9afa" CreationDate="2013-07-22T16:01:02.873" UserId="175" Text="There are a number of followers to both the tag Parsing, and Parser but they seem similar in meaning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather than retag the questions (and loose the &quot;following status&quot; of one of the tags) is there a clean way to merge the tags without losing the &quot;follower status&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The impact of losing the followers isn't that big (6 users) but I think it's beneficial to know how to merge when the time comes to merge two larger tag populations." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15745" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6064" RevisionGUID="f7dd7e60-d250-47e6-bf45-dad057aa9afa" CreationDate="2013-07-22T16:01:02.873" UserId="175" Text="Should tag &quot;Parsing&quot; and &quot;Parser&quot; be merged? How can this be done w/o losing the followers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15746" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6064" RevisionGUID="f7dd7e60-d250-47e6-bf45-dad057aa9afa" CreationDate="2013-07-22T16:01:02.873" UserId="175" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15747" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6065" RevisionGUID="8ac358a9-5a24-46e5-acb1-50eb198c2117" CreationDate="2013-07-22T16:10:33.013" UserId="1204" Text="The original poster has the same standing to edit as everyone else having sufficient rep to edit.  In fact, suggested edits have pretty much invalidated the notion of community-owned posts (since anyone can suggest an edit)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15748" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6066" RevisionGUID="5e2f506c-1b71-44a2-bae9-a00d1e57a260" CreationDate="2013-07-22T16:11:11.573" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="At 2500 rep, one can work to create tag synonymous (see http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/suggest-tag-synonyms ).  While I am not familiar with all the behind the scenes working, I believe it would merge the two tags so that nothing is lost.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, while similar, I'm not sure they are the same or should be synonymed (thats a new word I just made up).  A &lt;i&gt;pars&lt;b&gt;er&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; is a **thing** - a specific implementation.  While &lt;i&gt;parse&lt;b&gt;ing&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; is a **concept** or a process that the parser does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One would use the parser tag, while talking about how to use yacc or biosn or antlr to build a parser for the construction of an app.  On the other hand, one would use parsing if trying to attack how to parse a csv file or other data formats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thats just my take on it though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15749" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6066" RevisionGUID="f7cc6341-3c02-4c29-b0d7-78560b219f27" CreationDate="2013-07-22T16:19:26.337" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 263 characters in body" Text="At 2500 rep, one can work to create tag synonymous (see http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/suggest-tag-synonyms ).  While I am not familiar with all the behind the scenes working, I believe it would merge the two tags so that nothing is lost.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, while similar, I'm not sure they are the same or should be synonymed (thats a new word I just made up).  A &lt;i&gt;pars&lt;b&gt;er&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; is a **thing** - a specific implementation.  While &lt;i&gt;parse&lt;b&gt;ing&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; is a **concept** or a process that the parser does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One would use the parser tag, while talking about how to use yacc or biosn or antlr to build a parser for the construction of an app.  On the other hand, one would use parsing if trying to attack how to parse a csv file or other data formats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thats just my take on it though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To create a synomym for a tag, navigate to the tag ( [tag:parser] ) and click on the [synonym](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/parser/synonyms) link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may also find http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms to be of interest." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15750" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6066" RevisionGUID="32640c18-f746-4195-a19f-df0b4bb49e53" CreationDate="2013-07-22T16:58:16.340" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Fix typo, add other tag and stuff" Text="At 2500 rep, one can work to create tag synonymous (see http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/suggest-tag-synonyms ).  While I am not familiar with all the behind the scenes working, I believe it would merge the two tags so that nothing is lost.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, while similar, I'm not sure they are the same or should be synonymed (thats a new word I just made up).  A &lt;i&gt;pars&lt;b&gt;er&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; is a **thing** - a specific implementation.  While &lt;i&gt;pars&lt;b&gt;ing&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; is a **concept** or a process that the parser does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One would use the parser tag, while talking about how to use yacc or biosn or antlr to build a parser for the construction of an app.  On the other hand, one would use parsing if trying to attack how to parse a csv file or other data formats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do compare the questions that show up in [tag:parser] and [tag:parsing] to see if the separation of ideas exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thats just my take on it though. I could very well be wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To create a synomym for a tag, navigate to the tag ( [tag:parser] or [tag:parsing] ) and click on the appropriate [synonym](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/parser/synonyms) link (that one is for parser).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may also find http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms to be of interest." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15751" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6067" RevisionGUID="43c2c416-1b88-4a01-aba8-a36b8d5b231b" CreationDate="2013-07-23T14:03:46.857" UserId="91765" Text="*&lt;sup&gt;*This might best be answered by someone who fits this description.&lt;/sup&gt;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usually when I am impressed by a certain user's answer, I will look at their profile to see what kinds of questions they are asking and to my surprise many times even high-ranked users have never asked any questions. How can this be? Certainly, they didn't get so far without asking questions. Are they relying on other sources to answer their questions? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other thoughts I had: Do questions no longer affect their reputation after they reach a certain rep? or Could it strictly be because a question upvote only gives you 5 points whereas an answer upvote gives you 10. Hopefully reputation wouldn't be the ulterior motive." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15752" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6067" RevisionGUID="43c2c416-1b88-4a01-aba8-a36b8d5b231b" CreationDate="2013-07-23T14:03:46.857" UserId="91765" Text="Why are there so many high-ranked users that have never asked a question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15753" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6067" RevisionGUID="43c2c416-1b88-4a01-aba8-a36b8d5b231b" CreationDate="2013-07-23T14:03:46.857" UserId="91765" Text="|discussion|reputation|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15754" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6068" RevisionGUID="954a13d6-9c6b-48c5-9a5a-6505cc2911bf" CreationDate="2013-07-23T14:08:25.483" UserId="47" Text="Speaking personally I'm at the stage in my career/life where I don't have many questions left to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I do have is many years of experience in encountering the problems that other people ask about so I can offer my solutions, knowledge and experience to hopefully help them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15755" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6069" RevisionGUID="a6516fcb-148d-4969-b558-5616dcf914ee" CreationDate="2013-07-23T14:42:52.080" UserId="9302" Text="I'm not a particularly high-ranked user (Programmers: 4892, SO: 16,584), but I don't ask many questions. That doesn't mean I don't have questions about the software I build. I have questions every single day. It just means my questions don't work well on StackExchange. My questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Require too much context - It isn't feasible to share all of the business details and technical constraints required to ask a sensible question.&#xD;&#xA;2. Don't have concrete answers - Many interesting technical decisions are compromises between imperfect solutions with their own costs and benefits.&#xD;&#xA;3. Involve opinions - I learn the most by working through strong positions. Sometimes it's the person who completely disagrees with me that illuminates what I really believe. If a question has a definite correct answer, it's not that interesting to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the spirit of the game, I tried to ask questions in my first months on SO. I'm not embarrassed by them, but I also don't think they add much value. I haven't asked a question since." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15756" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6070" RevisionGUID="a3280521-9906-460b-93f1-d0b58830d357" CreationDate="2013-07-23T14:49:08.593" UserId="35276" Text="Most people who get a high rank in this fashion do so partially because they understand how to work with SE sites in general to get information, and in their understanding is one little key factoid:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before asking on SE, you should do some of your own leg work to show you've tried to solve it yourself, as questions that show no effort on the part of the asker really don't work well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately for many of the higher ranked and for SE in general, these people tend to be sharp with software and their initial leg work to show effort results in them solving their problem or finding the answer they were looking for. This has happened to me a hand full of times and likely is a common occurrence for experienced engineers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15757" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6071" RevisionGUID="2955b7e7-6480-4610-a7b5-255b69be9aa4" CreationDate="2013-07-23T15:03:32.363" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="For me, Stack Exchange is the last resort for questions (I have a few floating on Stack Overflow) - after I have researched everything I can on the subject.  Many times I find the answer to the question before I get to Stack Exchange - not always, but many times.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that finding and [making mistakes](http://thecodelesscode.com/case/100) is an essential part of learning and so I try to make as many as I can before I get to Stack Exchange.  Going to Stack Exchange first circumvents all the possible mistakes/learning experiences that I could have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I do find myself with a P.SE question, many times it requires context or is about opinions.  These questions aren't always appropriate for P.SE, however, being active in chat, the questions are asked there.  Sure, I don't get any rep (I get stars instead!) but that doesn't matter too much in the end.  The questions in chat would have gotten closed as posted questions - too localized, or off topic (a polling question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that reputation often comes from *popular* questions and their answers.  For these, it is about learning how to write well (an often neglected skill for programmers) and knowing how and where to research (independent of the knowledge) knowing where to look rather than knowing the answer right off the top of one's head.  Having the question and answer show up on the social networks (my highest rep answer found its way to reddit and got a significant amount of rep that I'm still rather embarrassed about) can substantially boost rep.  Lastly, as questions age they still produce rep - something that is a year old still pays dividends on reputation, and over time this leads to being a high rep user." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15758" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6071" RevisionGUID="cae32434-a39e-4f68-9a80-c429b3ebdaba" CreationDate="2013-07-23T15:19:12.493" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 344 characters in body" Text="For me, Stack Exchange is the last resort for questions (I have a few floating on Stack Overflow) - after I have researched everything I can on the subject.  Many times I find the answer to the question before I get to Stack Exchange - not always, but many times.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that finding and [making mistakes](http://thecodelesscode.com/case/100) is an essential part of learning and so I try to make as many as I can before I get to Stack Exchange.  Going to Stack Exchange first circumvents all the possible mistakes/learning experiences that I could have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I do find myself with a P.SE question, many times it requires context or is about opinions.  These questions aren't always appropriate for P.SE, however, being active in chat, the questions are asked there.  Sure, I don't get any rep (I get stars instead!) but that doesn't matter too much in the end.  The questions in chat would have gotten closed as posted questions - too localized, or off topic (a polling question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that reputation often comes from *popular* questions and their answers.  For these, it is about learning how to write well (an often neglected skill for programmers) and knowing how and where to research (independent of the knowledge) knowing where to look rather than knowing the answer right off the top of one's head.  Having the question and answer show up on the social networks (my highest rep answer found its way to reddit and got a significant amount of rep that I'm still rather embarrassed about) can substantially boost rep.  Lastly, as questions age they still produce rep - something that is a year old still pays dividends on reputation, and over time this leads to being a high rep user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, you may also find [Why always answers of users who have the maximum reputation in a question accepted and voted up?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5868/why-always-answers-of-users-who-have-the-maximum-reputation-in-a-question-accept) to shed some additional light on the question from another perspective." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15759" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6072" RevisionGUID="8734c75b-5624-4419-bc2e-cb6e7e718258" CreationDate="2013-07-23T17:57:49.380" UserId="11104" Text="A question I asked yesterday was put on hold because I asked if a library or framework exists that can solve my problem.  Here is the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/205730/looking-to-create-a-custom-graphical-editor-for-a-data-model-using-html5-and-sv&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I am not asking for your *favorite* or the *best* library. I am asking if one exists at all.  The former would be opinionated and the latter is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How could I rephrase my question so that it would not be closed and would be answered appropriately? I would accept the first answer that pointed me to a library that does what I need it to." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15760" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6072" RevisionGUID="8734c75b-5624-4419-bc2e-cb6e7e718258" CreationDate="2013-07-23T17:57:49.380" UserId="11104" Text="Question put on hold because asking for tool recommendation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15761" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6072" RevisionGUID="8734c75b-5624-4419-bc2e-cb6e7e718258" CreationDate="2013-07-23T17:57:49.380" UserId="11104" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15762" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6073" RevisionGUID="7aa7d61a-562b-49b5-beb4-fe81eab0fac1" CreationDate="2013-07-23T18:00:29.713" UserId="4" Text="Neither format is acceptable on any Stack Exchange site. Asking for a favorite or best library invites opinions. Asking for libraries in general is what's called a [&quot;shopping list&quot; question][1] and invites a large number of short answers without much explanation. It's simply this the Q&amp;A format doesn't match up well with this kind of question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15763" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6072" RevisionGUID="584e10aa-c67a-4309-8850-a0a4ce717f19" CreationDate="2013-07-23T18:36:48.767" UserId="11104" Comment="more explanation" Text="A question I asked yesterday was put on hold because I asked if a library or framework exists that can solve my problem.  Here is the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/205730/looking-to-create-a-custom-graphical-editor-for-a-data-model-using-html5-and-sv&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I am not asking for your *favorite* or the *best* library. I am asking if one exists at all.  The former would be opinionated and the latter is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How could I rephrase my question so that it would not be closed and would be answered appropriately? I would accept the first answer that pointed me to a library that does what I need it to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:**&#xD;&#xA;I also think an appropriate answer would be something like: &quot;This kind of thing doesn't exist AFAIK, but you could try X approach, which gets you 50% of the way.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I don't see a fundamental difference between this kind of question and a question like: &quot;Does an algorithm exist to do Y?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15764" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6073" RevisionGUID="818e96db-7083-4d6d-bd22-a0849638ec9e" CreationDate="2013-07-23T19:27:47.027" UserId="35276" Comment="I put words in your mouth!" Text="Neither format is acceptable on any Stack Exchange site. Asking for a favorite or best library invites opinions. Asking for libraries in general is what's called a [&quot;shopping list&quot; question][1] and invites a large number of short answers without much explanation. It's simply this the Q&amp;A format doesn't match up well with this kind of question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However the discussion format of such questions does make it fit perfectly well in chat, [The Whiteboard][2] is programmers general purpose chat room, feel free to ask in there in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15765" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6074" RevisionGUID="7f76ed6e-2264-416b-8048-774ef131303c" CreationDate="2013-07-23T21:22:48.873" UserId="96319" Text="Wikipedia definition:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Eating your own dog food, also called dogfooding, is a slang term used to reference a scenario in which a company (usually, a computer software company) uses its own product to demonstrate the quality and capabilities of the product. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are unique process, design, and testing challenges involved when a company &quot;eats its own dog food&quot; while developing a software product. I think a `dogfooding` tag would be useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/205834/when-is-it-appropriate-to-start-using-the-next-revision-of-a-tool-when-dogfoodin&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15766" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6074" RevisionGUID="7f76ed6e-2264-416b-8048-774ef131303c" CreationDate="2013-07-23T21:22:48.873" UserId="96319" Text="Should there be a 'dogfooding' tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15767" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6074" RevisionGUID="7f76ed6e-2264-416b-8048-774ef131303c" CreationDate="2013-07-23T21:22:48.873" UserId="96319" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15768" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6075" RevisionGUID="0f7a2f74-8b20-44bd-9eac-3eb3369308d0" CreationDate="2013-07-24T00:49:50.777" UserId="25476" Text="I like the term and decided to create the dogfooding tag and add it to your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a user you earn the privilege of creating new tags when you ask a question after receiving 300 reputation.  I see you haven't quite reached that point yet but I am sure you will get there some day. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/create-tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15769" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6076" RevisionGUID="179846a3-a611-4a9f-ae64-88409d2bf7e5" CreationDate="2013-07-24T05:37:58.220" UserId="92517" Text="I think it has to do with the nature of http://programmers.stackexchange.com. The questions on this particular site tend to be more conceptual by nature. Programming *concepts* are something you tend to learn earlier on in your career. That's not to say that you don't learn more concepts as your career goes on, but you generally have a good foundation and can pick up on new conceptual issues fairly easily.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Contrast this to StackOverflow. StackOverflow focuses on particular technologies. There are new technologies (languages, runtimes, libraries, etc.) all the time, and brand new problems will arise with all of them, even if they're really just rehashes of the same kinds of problems that come up with similar, though somewhat different, tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A high reputation user can easily run into a problem they have trouble solving with a new technology, but a high reputation user is bound to have a certain level of experience. This means that they're familiar with most of the concepts and are unlikely to have many questions appropriate for http://programmers.stackexchange.com." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15770" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6077" RevisionGUID="40c8da74-f7e5-4527-a60b-6c8a943dee04" CreationDate="2013-07-24T09:20:19.110" UserId="213" Text="I think one of the reasons is that people who answer questions a lot are willing to put much more effort into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you look at me, I read blogs, I read books, I watch presentations of conferences. If a question is interesting, I am willing to search through the documentation to find a type or method that fits or to look at the source code of the library in question (possibly using decompiler) or to look at the generated code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that people who ask questions can't or don't want to put that effort in. They don't know which blogs to read. They don't know how to decompile code or how to read it. They don't have the time to learn all that, or they don't want to. They just want to solve their single problem, they are not interested in what lies beneath." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15771" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="6077" RevisionGUID="04e27ac9-3b01-4fb4-8a02-6f8b581fd2c7" CreationDate="2013-07-24T09:20:41.067" UserId="213" Comment="via Vote" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:213,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;svick&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="15772" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="6077" RevisionGUID="8816393f-1fcc-4e18-b582-978a155da5be" CreationDate="2013-07-24T09:20:48.927" UserId="213" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:213,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;svick&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="15773" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6078" RevisionGUID="6ceb7a9a-3546-42e9-b763-3af3a2e2cb9f" CreationDate="2013-07-24T10:16:57.837" UserId="26979" Text="Just saying, but I'm sure a lot of people have multiple accounts - one for asking questions and one for posting *especially good* answers. They can then use their 'answering' account on their resumé/CV, keeping any newbie questions they may have asked concealed. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15774" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6067" RevisionGUID="08131610-9c26-4372-bf14-3892a35ac792" CreationDate="2013-07-24T17:37:36.240" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/360091406276108291" />
  <row Id="15775" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6079" RevisionGUID="c3545383-fd70-4ee0-b524-dfca61547cfd" CreationDate="2013-07-24T18:41:25.230" UserId="46822" Text="I have a question about a business problem that I could not find its appropriate algorithm that can resolve it. Is my question on or off topic ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15776" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6079" RevisionGUID="c3545383-fd70-4ee0-b524-dfca61547cfd" CreationDate="2013-07-24T18:41:25.230" UserId="46822" Text="Algorithms topic question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15777" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6079" RevisionGUID="c3545383-fd70-4ee0-b524-dfca61547cfd" CreationDate="2013-07-24T18:41:25.230" UserId="46822" Text="|bug|questions|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15778" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6079" RevisionGUID="17def797-9530-40ad-b8af-aa858e5d2175" CreationDate="2013-07-24T18:52:26.000" UserId="46822" Comment="added 170 characters in body" Text="I have a question about a business problem that I could not find its appropriate algorithm that can resolve it. Is my question on or off topic ? [the question is here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/11159/need-the-algorithm-that-resolves-my-problem?noredirect=1#comment17995_11159" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15779" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6080" RevisionGUID="654f8025-8a9f-4a21-ae25-4c8102218e02" CreationDate="2013-07-24T19:27:35.340" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Yes, that question would be on-topic.  Your question would be stronger if you demonstrate some of the approaches you have tried and the problems you have encountered with them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15780" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6081" RevisionGUID="728a6ad3-a902-4e78-9cbc-34d4eee45f5b" CreationDate="2013-07-24T19:50:11.407" UserId="34069" Text="I know a few high-ranked users who have asked little to no questions.  I think there is a certain element of confidence and bravado whereby they don't feel that they have many questions left or much to ask.  This may be true.  My experience over 30 years tells me that is unlikely to be true.  That's why I feel it's important to keep finding and asking questions.  Especially in technology that's still changing rapidly from year to year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That why I've answered 763 questions... and also asked 271 question on Stack Overflow and answered 99 questions... while asking 11 questions on Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15781" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6079" RevisionGUID="307c2505-ae02-422c-9df5-513d82aafc3e" CreationDate="2013-07-25T12:40:56.387" UserId="23622" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15782" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6074" RevisionGUID="7c28f252-11ac-46e8-aafd-d11e345b427c" CreationDate="2013-07-25T17:38:51.640" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/360454111168184320" />
  <row Id="15783" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6076" RevisionGUID="93c0f6a4-b49f-43b3-ba73-57c3fdf6004e" CreationDate="2013-07-25T20:53:30.927" UserId="92517" Comment="deleted 14 characters in body" Text="I think it has to do with the nature of http://programmers.stackexchange.com. The questions on this particular site tend to be more conceptual by nature. Programming *concepts* are something you tend to learn earlier on in your career. That's not to say that you don't learn more concepts as your career goes on, but you generally have a good foundation and can pick up on new conceptual issues fairly easily.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Contrast this to StackOverflow. StackOverflow focuses on particular technologies. There are new technologies (languages, runtimes, libraries, etc.) all the time, and brand new problems will arise with all of them, even if they're really just rehashes of the same kinds of problems that come up with similar, though somewhat different, tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A high reputation user can easily have trouble solving a problem with a new technology, but a high reputation user is bound to have a certain level of experience. This means that they're familiar with most of the concepts and are unlikely to have many questions appropriate for http://programmers.stackexchange.com." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15784" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6082" RevisionGUID="ac081065-fb88-4859-844e-0ccc348202b5" CreationDate="2013-07-26T15:20:41.920" UserId="29076" Text="I thoroughly dislike the term since it is meaningless to me. I noticed the use of this term the other week in an email from Telerik and had to look it up. It still doesn't make sense. Perhaps it's a cultural thing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15785" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6082" RevisionGUID="69f8edf6-d602-4e5e-8e5e-f7e33086fb6a" CreationDate="2013-07-26T15:43:13.513" UserId="29076" Comment="added 121 characters in body" Text="I thoroughly dislike the term since it is meaningless to me. Describing a product as dog-food is not a compliment. I noticed the use of this term the other week in an email from Telerik and had to look it up since it completely threw me. It still doesn't make sense, and just strikes me as trendy jargon. Perhaps it's a cultural thing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15786" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6083" RevisionGUID="c8fb8185-8a71-45e4-92bb-d000e03c8351" CreationDate="2013-07-26T16:52:31.417" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206180/what-is-the-difference-between-stackoverflow-and-programmers" />
  <row Id="15787" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6083" RevisionGUID="377d5253-10c0-4db5-aee6-bfe06e90b1bc" CreationDate="2013-07-26T16:47:32.947" UserId="97827" Text="I can see that StackOverflow and Programmers are both about programming. Isn't this redundant? Is there a difference?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15788" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6083" RevisionGUID="377d5253-10c0-4db5-aee6-bfe06e90b1bc" CreationDate="2013-07-26T16:47:32.947" UserId="97827" Text="What is the difference between &quot;StackOverflow&quot; and &quot;/*Programmers*/&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15789" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6083" RevisionGUID="377d5253-10c0-4db5-aee6-bfe06e90b1bc" CreationDate="2013-07-26T16:47:32.947" UserId="97827" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15790" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6083" RevisionGUID="9aa3f7c0-86b0-48b4-95d1-dc195c6a80c7" CreationDate="2013-07-26T16:53:12.217" UserId="4" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[171],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="15791" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6084" RevisionGUID="876891f0-7348-457b-9c6c-a2bff5e5dd41" CreationDate="2013-07-26T17:46:14.420" UserId="13181" Text="In a perfect world, a high score here correlates with expertise/experience. I think that correlation is confirmed with your observation (not proven just strengthened). I've asked one question here and it was closed because I was explicitly asking for opinions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15796" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6086" RevisionGUID="0e7322f6-3d1f-4c00-8e38-c77cff18b861" CreationDate="2013-07-29T12:12:55.597" UserId="72267" Text="I think that one topic is missing here: Many experienced users are *searching* for answers before asking one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I, for myself, have found useful answers on the different stack excange sites. So before I only think about asking a question I try to find an answer and have not to ask my question because my question was already asked by other people so I can use the answers given there without creating a duplicate of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think experienced users simple use all aailable sources of iformations before asking a question and then already have an answer to their problem..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15797" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6086" RevisionGUID="b1e99262-f3ac-41ed-bb9b-059e9ce893f1" CreationDate="2013-07-29T14:17:50.133" UserId="72267" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="I think that one topic is missing here: Many experienced users are *searching* for answers before asking one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I, for myself, have found useful answers on the different stack exchange sites. So before I only think about asking a question I try to find an answer and have not to ask my question because my question was already asked by other people so I can use the answers given there without creating a duplicate of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think experienced users simple use all aailable sources of informations before asking a question and then already have an answer to their problem..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15806" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6088" RevisionGUID="f35be720-0592-4ef4-b8f8-cb26b57e0955" CreationDate="2013-07-29T17:47:10.283" UserId="866" Text="I find this an odd question, rep is - or at least was - accumulated substantially by providing answers that are deemed by the assembled participants to have merit. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't quite see how my *asking* questions provides an insight into the quality of answers based on knowledge accumulated over decades - I came here substantially in an attempt to give back by taking what I think I've learnt and applying it to the questions asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh... and to learn from the questions - I find good questions make you think and, at least once upon a time, good questions on programmers helped challenge one's assumptions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course I also accumulated rep from being early into the game (-: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15807" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6086" RevisionGUID="a1e24962-4a9c-4dba-a6c6-c7dbb897833d" CreationDate="2013-07-30T08:28:06.807" UserId="72267" Comment="Fixed spelling" Text="I think that one topic is missing here: Many experienced users are *searching* for answers before asking one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I, for myself, have found useful answers on the different stack exchange sites. So before I only think about asking a question I try to find an answer and have not to ask my question because my question was already asked by other people so I can use the answers given there without creating a duplicate of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think experienced users simple use all available sources of informations before asking a question and then already have an answer to their problem..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15808" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6089" RevisionGUID="a592cab8-6bd5-4d2a-9b27-8f3864637f98" CreationDate="2013-07-30T09:27:52.837" UserId="92918" Text="I am writing a Python script for downloading a website for offline viewing and changing the links in the downloaded webpages for proper links between the downloaded webpages. I don't know the technical term for this so I asked [this question][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - There was some debate in the comments about whether it is on-topic or not before the comments were purged. &#xD;&#xA; - One moderator [wasn't sure whether to close the question][2] while another moderator closed the question. &#xD;&#xA; - There seems to be some consensus on [this meta question][3] that &quot;name that thing&quot; questions should be allowed. Mine isn't about naming a thing but for finding out the proper technical term for a process that I am trying to do. If &quot;name that thing&quot; is allowed then asking &quot;technical term for this thing&quot; should also be allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was also told that my question isn't programming related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to know if the answers to my questions are correct i.e. the process that I am trying to do is `web-crawling` or `archiving` then how is it not programming related? As far as I know search engines do `web-crawling` for their work. Then if the argument is that what I am doing isn't programming related then are search engines not programming related?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does the community define `programming-related`? Are technical terms excluded?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is my question off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS:&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I have placed a link to the Whiteboard because of chat messages by Yannis Rozis are present in there. I don't know how to link to particular messages from chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206415/whats-the-technical-term-for-downloading-a-website-for-offline-viewing&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15809" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6089" RevisionGUID="a592cab8-6bd5-4d2a-9b27-8f3864637f98" CreationDate="2013-07-30T09:27:52.837" UserId="92918" Text="Is asking &quot;what is the technical term for this&quot; on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15810" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6089" RevisionGUID="a592cab8-6bd5-4d2a-9b27-8f3864637f98" CreationDate="2013-07-30T09:27:52.837" UserId="92918" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15811" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6089" RevisionGUID="8ea77352-ff9d-4edf-9d65-17848ab9ec05" CreationDate="2013-07-30T09:35:24.960" UserId="25936" Comment="changed link to the exact message in the transcript; edited tags" Text="I am writing a Python script for downloading a website for offline viewing and changing the links in the downloaded webpages for proper links between the downloaded webpages. I don't know the technical term for this so I asked [this question][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - There was some debate in the comments about whether it is on-topic or not before the comments were purged. &#xD;&#xA; - One moderator [wasn't sure whether to close the question][2] while another moderator closed the question. &#xD;&#xA; - There seems to be some consensus on [this meta question][3] that &quot;name that thing&quot; questions should be allowed. Mine isn't about naming a thing but for finding out the proper technical term for a process that I am trying to do. If &quot;name that thing&quot; is allowed then asking &quot;technical term for this thing&quot; should also be allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was also told that my question isn't programming related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to know if the answers to my questions are correct i.e. the process that I am trying to do is `web-crawling` or `archiving` then how is it not programming related? As far as I know search engines do `web-crawling` for their work. Then if the argument is that what I am doing isn't programming related then are search engines not programming related?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does the community define `programming-related`? Are technical terms excluded?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is my question off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206415/whats-the-technical-term-for-downloading-a-website-for-offline-viewing&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10545107#10545107&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15812" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6089" RevisionGUID="8ea77352-ff9d-4edf-9d65-17848ab9ec05" CreationDate="2013-07-30T09:35:24.960" UserId="25936" Comment="changed link to the exact message in the transcript; edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15814" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6090" RevisionGUID="d75418a5-cd38-4331-837d-1a0da4f8013b" CreationDate="2013-07-30T13:52:21.470" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="These are catch-22 type questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As the OP, you don't know what you don't know.  So how would you know if there was a term for XYZ or not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, this theme of questioning can quickly denigrate into worthless drivel.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The challenge is **_if_** there is a term, it's answerable, constructive, and generally on-topic.  But if it doesn't exist, then you're effectively trying to prove a negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A better way to approach your question would have been to present what you're doing and what term(s) you think apply.  Then asking for verification on usage of the term.  That's answerable, constructive, and shouldn't devolve into endless discussion.  It also gives someone the ability to answer with &quot;No, what you're doing is `Foo` not 'Bar`&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Presenting the question like that demonstrates you've done at least some research and you're not just relying on the community to google things for you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15815" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6090" RevisionGUID="a03216e4-59e6-4ed9-8ba3-76612fb84b0a" CreationDate="2013-07-30T14:31:52.163" UserId="35276" Comment="edited body" Text="These are catch-22 type questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As the OP, you don't know what you don't know.  So how would you know if there was a term for XYZ or not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, this theme of questioning can quickly denigrate into worthless drivel.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The challenge is **_if_** there is a term, it's answerable, constructive, and generally on-topic.  But if it doesn't exist, then you're effectively trying to prove a negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A better way to approach your question would have been to present what you're doing and what term(s) you think apply.  Then asking for verification on usage of the term.  That's answerable, constructive, and shouldn't devolve into endless discussion.  It also gives someone the ability to answer with &quot;No, what you're doing is `Foo` not `Bar`&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Presenting the question like that demonstrates you've done at least some research and you're not just relying on the community to google things for you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15816" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6090" RevisionGUID="80b3a565-3407-4491-8d08-2f73d5e0ea71" CreationDate="2013-07-30T14:51:05.093" UserId="31260" Comment="prove a negative += http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence#.22You_can.27t_prove_a_negative.22" Text="These are catch-22 type questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As the OP, you don't know what you don't know.  So how would you know if there was a term for XYZ or not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, this theme of questioning can quickly denigrate into worthless drivel.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The challenge is **_if_** there is a term, it's answerable, constructive, and generally on-topic.  But if it doesn't exist, then you're effectively trying to [prove a negative](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence#.22You_can.27t_prove_a_negative.22).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A better way to approach your question would have been to present what you're doing and what term(s) you think apply.  Then asking for verification on usage of the term.  That's answerable, constructive, and shouldn't devolve into endless discussion.  It also gives someone the ability to answer with &quot;No, what you're doing is `Foo` not `Bar`&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Presenting the question like that demonstrates you've done at least some research and you're not just relying on the community to google things for you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15817" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6091" RevisionGUID="423241d5-ef58-4a9a-8a5a-b2b7597b666f" CreationDate="2013-07-30T16:31:19.967" UserId="1204" Text="These kinds of questions essentially boil down to &quot;what terms should I Google for?&quot;  They are an indirect proxy for resource requests, which are specifically off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The experts are here to provide insight on conceptual programming topics, not to point you to where you can find that insight elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15818" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6092" RevisionGUID="3dd76d84-4800-40b2-8da4-1fee132bdef5" CreationDate="2013-08-01T02:29:45.340" UserId="96508" Text="[![Cryptography Stack Exchange][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/rEGd0.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15819" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6092" RevisionGUID="9dcf4a00-0c48-40de-bf74-fac891a2acf4" CreationDate="2013-08-01T02:29:45.340" UserId="96508" />
  <row Id="15821" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6064" RevisionGUID="6addaf99-17fc-42af-9170-834c0bbc8623" CreationDate="2013-08-01T17:47:41.767" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/362993048558370816" />
  <row Id="15822" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6093" RevisionGUID="456c2833-e258-44f3-8634-756d7e2a79bd" CreationDate="2013-08-01T18:58:21.550" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="We're no where near the point of StackOverflow with (at the time of this writing) 65.9k questions in the close queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've noticed an uptick in the queue of people flagging questions.  In a batch of 20, I often see a question that is not an audit that has no votes on it - this is from a flag.  Thats good.  Increased participation is a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When it comes to the close review queue, I often see the same people doing reviews.  At times, there has been a perception that only certain people close questions.  Looking at the close votes of questions I have occasionally seen people who never show up in the recent reviews list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can we engage people to be more active in the review queues?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't force people to use it, and it wouldn't be the right answer even if we could.  Is there a nice way to say &quot;Hey, look, there's something here&quot; that they were unaware of before?  Or is it just that they know of it, and don't want to participate in that part of the site? Inquiring minds want to know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another point to consider, is that being familiar with the review page itself (even if not doing review queues) is the place where the 10k tools are located.  Delete votes, site wide close and reopen votes and even the feedback from the anon and low rep reviews (see what other people are coming to the site for, what they are finding helpful or not and be able to change things (vote on answers or edit questions so that they do become more helpful)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Considering delete votes, it takes a question to be closed for 2 days before a delete vote can be cast.  This is often enough to have it fall off of the front page and so people may not be aware of this additional tool available - they'd never see the 'delete' link on the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15823" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6093" RevisionGUID="456c2833-e258-44f3-8634-756d7e2a79bd" CreationDate="2013-08-01T18:58:21.550" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="How to get more people doing reviews?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15824" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6093" RevisionGUID="456c2833-e258-44f3-8634-756d7e2a79bd" CreationDate="2013-08-01T18:58:21.550" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15825" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6093" RevisionGUID="d569e2c8-e081-4220-ada2-37c9c63079cb" CreationDate="2013-08-01T19:54:51.103" UserId="31260" Comment="minor spelling correction" Text="We're nowhere near the point of Stack Overflow with (at the time of this writing) 65.9k questions in the close queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've noticed an uptick in the queue of people flagging questions.  In a batch of 20, I often see a question that is not an audit that has no votes on it - this is from a flag.  That's good.  Increased participation is a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When it comes to the close review queue, I often see the same people doing reviews.  At times, there has been a perception that only certain people close questions.  Looking at the close votes of questions I have occasionally seen people who never show up in the recent reviews list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can we engage people to be more active in the review queues?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't force people to use it, and it wouldn't be the right answer even if we could.  Is there a nice way to say &quot;Hey, look, there's something here&quot; that they were unaware of before?  Or is it just that they know of it, and don't want to participate in that part of the site? Inquiring minds want to know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another point to consider, is that being familiar with the review page itself (even if not doing review queues) is the place where the 10k tools are located.  Delete votes, site wide close and reopen votes and even the feedback from the anon and low rep reviews (see what other people are coming to the site for, what they are finding helpful or not and be able to change things (vote on answers or edit questions so that they do become more helpful)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Considering delete votes, it takes a question to be closed for 2 days before a delete vote can be cast.  This is often enough to have it fall off of the front page and so people may not be aware of this additional tool available - they'd never see the 'delete' link on the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15830" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6095" RevisionGUID="8b76625b-a941-4daa-b845-bc03d547d0f0" CreationDate="2013-08-02T10:45:34.150" UserId="31260" Text="This might be a self-balancing process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When there are little-to-none items in the queue, there is a little interest among most of the users eligible for reviewing. And this is unlikely to change; if one checks the queue occasionally and there's always only 0, 1, 2 items in there, there is little motivation not just to work there but even to frequently check it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When queue is small, one can expect only small, _dedicated_ group of users doing reviews regularly. From this perspective, perception of most closures done by that small group is unavoidable I'm afraid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, when queue grows in size, it begins attracting attention from more reviewers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One day, typical infrequent visitor decides to take a look at [review page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review) - _just to check there's 0 as usual_, finds 10 (20, 30...) items in the queue and, well, reviews these. Next day, same guy will quite likely get there again, now knowing there might be a queue waiting for them, finds that it's so indeed, reviews and... voila, _infrequent visitor has turned into regular reviewer_ (possibly until queue drops back small).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note above dynamics might in turn change if queue would grow to daunting size, but that would be a [different story](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/151833/165773 &quot;'Huge close votes review queue on Stack Overflow' (btw I discovered a truly amazing explanation for why it keeps that way, but it's too large to fit into tooltip)&quot;).&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15831" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6095" RevisionGUID="c1015865-70c3-4f64-b3b3-30a42b6908e8" CreationDate="2013-08-02T11:24:38.160" UserId="31260" Comment="Balancing described above is mostly based on my own experience of working with SO Late Answers queue..." Text="This might be a self-balancing process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When there are little-to-none items in the queue, there is a little interest among most of the users eligible for reviewing. And this is unlikely to change; if one checks the queue occasionally and there's always only 0, 1, 2 items in there, there is little motivation not just to work there but even to frequently check it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When queue is small, one can expect only small, _dedicated_ group of users doing reviews regularly. From this perspective, perception of most closures done by that small group is unavoidable I'm afraid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, when queue grows in size, it begins attracting attention from more reviewers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One day, typical infrequent visitor decides to take a look at [review page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review) - _just to check there's 0 as usual_, finds 10 (20, 30...) items in the queue and, well, reviews these. Next day, same guy will quite likely get there again, now knowing there might be a queue waiting for them, finds that it's so indeed, reviews and... voila, _infrequent visitor has turned into regular reviewer_ (possibly until queue drops back small).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note above dynamics might in turn change if queue would grow to daunting size, but that would be a [different story](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/151833/165773 &quot;'Huge close votes review queue on Stack Overflow' (btw I discovered a truly amazing explanation for why it keeps that way, but it's too large to fit into tooltip)&quot;).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Balancing described above is mostly based on my own experience of working with [SO Late Answers queue](http://stackoverflow.com/review/late-answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In December 2012, there were few thousands items in this queue and I was visiting it daily, submitting 50 flags a day (review limit was 40 if memory serves, but I flagged some posts out of the queue, using Skip option to avoid bumping into the limit).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In January 2013, this queue drained to zero and my usage of it has dropped, too. Nowadays, I take a look at it once in a week or maybe even once in a month." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15832" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6095" RevisionGUID="940b0213-1fc9-4b70-8c39-084227157d48" CreationDate="2013-08-02T12:23:17.307" UserId="31260" Comment="more on how balancing works for me" Text="This might be a self-balancing process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When there are little-to-none items in the queue, there is a little interest among most of the users eligible for reviewing. And this is unlikely to change; if one checks the queue occasionally and there's always only 0, 1, 2 items in there, there is little motivation not just to work there but even to frequently check it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When queue is small, one can expect only small, _dedicated_ group of users doing reviews regularly. From this perspective, perception of most closures done by that small group is unavoidable I'm afraid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, when queue grows in size, it begins attracting attention from more reviewers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One day, typical infrequent visitor decides to take a look at [review page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review) - _just to check there's 0 as usual_, finds 10 (20, 30...) items in the queue and, well, reviews these. Next day, same guy will quite likely get there again, now knowing there might be a queue waiting for them, finds that it's so indeed, reviews and... voila, _infrequent visitor has turned into regular reviewer_ (possibly until queue drops back small).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note above dynamics might in turn change if queue would grow to daunting size, but that would be a [different story](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/151833/165773 &quot;'Huge close votes review queue on Stack Overflow' (btw I discovered a truly amazing explanation for why it keeps that way, but it's too large to fit into tooltip)&quot;).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Balancing described above is mostly based on my own experience of working with [SO Late Answers queue](http://stackoverflow.com/review/late-answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In December 2012, there were few thousands items in this queue and I was visiting it daily, submitting 50 flags a day (review limit was 40 if memory serves, but I flagged some posts out of the queue, using Skip option to avoid bumping into the limit).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In January 2013, this queue drained to zero and my usage of it has dropped, too. Nowadays, I take a look at it once in a week or maybe even once in a month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it ever gets back to larger size, I will be happy to get back to working on it again (after all, I still have some 300+ reviews to do to get Reviewer badge there:). I think that's about how it is supposed to be balanced." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15833" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6096" RevisionGUID="90791a2d-cceb-47b8-b793-3bde1cd6d229" CreationDate="2013-08-02T12:26:59.490" UserId="51367" Text="Easy: it's harder on stackoverflow to get 3k rep and there are more &quot;closeable&quot; questions,  less people who can close and more questions to close leads to a queue." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15834" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6095" RevisionGUID="2dfaba2e-a8d8-4ed5-acd4-9bc4409ee457" CreationDate="2013-08-02T15:39:07.417" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="This might be a self-balancing process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When there are little-to-none items in the queue, there is a little interest among most of the users eligible for reviewing. And this is unlikely to change; if one checks the queue occasionally and there's always only 0, 1, 2 items in there, there is little motivation not just to work there but even to frequently check it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When queue is small, one can expect only small, _dedicated_ group of users doing reviews regularly. From this perspective, **perception of most closures done by that small group** is unavoidable I'm afraid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, when queue grows in size, it begins attracting attention from more reviewers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One day, typical infrequent visitor decides to take a look at [review page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review) - _just to check there's 0 as usual_, finds 10 (20, 30...) items in the queue and, well, reviews these. Next day, same guy will quite likely get there again, now knowing there might be a queue waiting for them, finds that it's so indeed, reviews and... voila, _infrequent visitor has turned into regular reviewer_ (possibly until queue drops back small).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note above dynamics might in turn change if queue would grow to daunting size, but that would be a [different story](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/151833/165773 &quot;'Huge close votes review queue on Stack Overflow' (btw I discovered a truly amazing explanation for why it keeps that way, but it's too large to fit into tooltip)&quot;).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Balancing described above is mostly based on my own experience of working with [SO Late Answers queue](http://stackoverflow.com/review/late-answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In December 2012, there were few thousands items in this queue and I was visiting it daily, submitting 50 flags a day (review limit was 40 if memory serves, but I flagged some posts out of the queue, using Skip option to avoid bumping into the limit).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In January 2013, this queue drained to zero and my usage of it has dropped, too. Nowadays, I take a look at it once in a week or maybe even once in a month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it ever gets back to larger size, I will be happy to get back to working on it again (after all, I still have some 300+ reviews to do to get Reviewer badge there:). I think that's about how it is supposed to be balanced." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15835" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6095" RevisionGUID="53cfce6f-faf5-4418-beee-db464ad0d34b" CreationDate="2013-08-02T16:05:12.677" UserId="31260" Comment="badge name corrected" Text="This might be a self-balancing process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When there are little-to-none items in the queue, there is a little interest among most of the users eligible for reviewing. And this is unlikely to change; if one checks the queue occasionally and there's always only 0, 1, 2 items in there, there is little motivation not just to work there but even to frequently check it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When queue is small, one can expect only small, _dedicated_ group of users doing reviews regularly. From this perspective, **perception of most closures done by that small group** is unavoidable I'm afraid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, when queue grows in size, it begins attracting attention from more reviewers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One day, typical infrequent visitor decides to take a look at [review page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review) - _just to check there's 0 as usual_, finds 10 (20, 30...) items in the queue and, well, reviews these. Next day, same guy will quite likely get there again, now knowing there might be a queue waiting for them, finds that it's so indeed, reviews and... voila, _infrequent visitor has turned into regular reviewer_ (possibly until queue drops back small).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note above dynamics might in turn change if queue would grow to daunting size, but that would be a [different story](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/151833/165773 &quot;'Huge close votes review queue on Stack Overflow' (btw I discovered a truly amazing explanation for why it keeps that way, but it's too large to fit into tooltip)&quot;).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Balancing described above is mostly based on my own experience of working with [SO Late Answers queue](http://stackoverflow.com/review/late-answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In December 2012, there were few thousands items in this queue and I was visiting it daily, submitting 50 flags a day (review limit was 40 if memory serves, but I flagged some posts out of the queue, using Skip option to avoid bumping into the limit).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In January 2013, this queue drained to zero and my usage of it has dropped, too. Nowadays, I take a look at it once in a week or maybe even once in a month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it ever gets back to larger size, I will be happy to get back to working on it again (after all, I still have some 300+ reviews to do to get Steward badge there:). I think that's about how it is supposed to be balanced." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15837" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6062" RevisionGUID="e49c7bd3-78a7-4ae4-890d-fa1ae2189c37" CreationDate="2013-08-05T02:36:19.580" UserId="1480" Comment="fixed link" Text="Would the question below be acceptable on Programmers?  &#xD;&#xA;If not, how could it be salvaged?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am a programmer, and want to test my client software for Kerberos compatibility.  &#xD;&#xA;I need a Kerberos server to perform the tests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even though I am not a system administrator, I tried to set up a Kerberos server, but it looks that it is a job for specialists and will take days. In the end I probably won't be able to trust it to be really properly installed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [TurnkeyLinux Domain Controller][1] distribution is nearly a perfect solution, and conveniently comes as a VM, but unfortunately it does only domain controller, not the Kerberos part.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a similar tool that can be used as a Kerberos server too?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.turnkeylinux.org/domain-controller" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15838" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6098" RevisionGUID="edbf5e09-9f99-4c2f-9d3a-1c172f48c454" CreationDate="2013-08-05T15:52:39.590" UserId="35276" Text="Our new off-topic close reasons have come in so handy and been so well used I think they do a good job of giving clear guidance to many on what they can expect they should avoid. Granted they're a subset, but they were chosen due to being such an extremely common subset.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that, I think we should add a piece to the help center under the &quot;Asking&quot; heading that lists out all of those fixed off-topic close reasons we have custom for our site, and a detail in the page listing them specifying these are not all the reasons your question may get closed, but these are some of the most common ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, I am asking for a link under the &quot;Asking&quot; heading, to a new page which lists the off-topic close reasons with or without any added explanation for each one that may be useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could also go on the &quot;What types of questions should I avoid asking&quot; page we already have possible. Or have it on another page named something more clear like &quot;What are the most common reasons questions are closed?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just think the actual text of those close reasons should be publicized somewhere as they were chosen by the community and have so far been found very effective in meeting much of our close reason needs, and as such may be helpful guidance for others to avoid closure ahead of time rather than finding that text only after having their question closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15839" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6098" RevisionGUID="edbf5e09-9f99-4c2f-9d3a-1c172f48c454" CreationDate="2013-08-05T15:52:39.590" UserId="35276" Text="&quot;What reasons do questions get closed for here?&quot; should be in the help center under the &quot;Asking&quot; heading" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15840" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6098" RevisionGUID="edbf5e09-9f99-4c2f-9d3a-1c172f48c454" CreationDate="2013-08-05T15:52:39.590" UserId="35276" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15841" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6098" RevisionGUID="a3c831df-441a-4dd3-ad7a-67962ca4fe61" CreationDate="2013-08-05T18:17:37.880" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|close-reasons|help-center|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15842" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6099" RevisionGUID="808eff95-1a9e-45f6-a19d-692aea1900d6" CreationDate="2013-08-05T18:48:00.287" UserId="35276" Text="Great idea! Except for most of what you said!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## This should go on the &quot;What types of questions should I avoid asking?&quot; page, I don't want a new page added to the help center ##" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15843" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6100" RevisionGUID="96582db4-1d03-4b09-a08a-592b896ff316" CreationDate="2013-08-05T18:49:40.467" UserId="35276" Text="Great idea! Except for most of what you said!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## This should be a new page and not on the &quot;What types of questions should I avoid asking?&quot; page, I don't want to clutter up that page, or think this content shouldn't have that page's title ##" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15844" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6101" RevisionGUID="de1d65a5-1443-4c02-b665-c56d75f5c91d" CreationDate="2013-08-05T18:52:20.647" UserId="35276" Text="Great idea! Except for most of what you said!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## This should go nowhere! Where should this go? Nowhere. ##" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15845" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6101" RevisionGUID="0eb5a7f4-37e3-488d-9eeb-ca9ee3727514" CreationDate="2013-08-05T19:23:59.707" UserId="35276" Comment="added 148 characters in body" Text="Great idea! Except for most of what you said!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## This should go nowhere! Where should this go? [Nowhere](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6098/what-reasons-do-questions-get-closed-for-here-should-be-in-the-help-center-un/6101#6101). ##" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15846" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6102" RevisionGUID="9ed68ff2-9109-4828-8d1f-ca278206b1fc" CreationDate="2013-08-05T22:07:00.637" UserDisplayName="user61488" Text="It would make 1000% more sense given the type of discussions people want to see here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15847" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6102" RevisionGUID="9ed68ff2-9109-4828-8d1f-ca278206b1fc" CreationDate="2013-08-05T22:07:00.637" UserDisplayName="user61488" Text="Change site name from 'Progammers' to 'Programming'" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15848" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6102" RevisionGUID="9ed68ff2-9109-4828-8d1f-ca278206b1fc" CreationDate="2013-08-05T22:07:00.637" UserDisplayName="user61488" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15849" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6102" RevisionGUID="79236e28-49cf-46e9-acbb-eb23069b30bc" CreationDate="2013-08-05T22:09:46.243" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[3718],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:28988,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;World Engineer&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="15850" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6102" RevisionGUID="62a07e38-b6e7-4370-8202-97c9d7c41685" CreationDate="2013-08-05T22:09:59.057" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15851" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="3d57e6b1-cfc2-4acf-a34c-9a0205b27ab2" CreationDate="2013-08-06T07:17:29.720" UserId="31260" Comment="update: [In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/192046/165773)" Text="Could we please make a trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Modification details are described in [this MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164712/165773) as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As far as I can tell, substantial part of `Qanswers` in current formula is fake.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;  `(log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascores)`&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;About 1/3 of the answers [studied here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever&quot;) (83 of total 254) have score less than 1/100 of top voted post in respective question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Given that questions checked were ones with tens thousands views, **insultingly low score** indicates that assuming these answers to be popular wouldn't even be in the ballpark. Still, the formula pumps these into `Qanswers` value, as if it is something everyone would be happy to read (hint: it isn't).&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Consider tuning the formula to make it deviate less from voting results. **Ignore answers with non-positive score. Or [better yet](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13857_5485 &quot;preference for cut off at (TopAnswerScore/10-1) explained in comments here&quot;), ignore answers scored less than some reasonable fraction (eg 1/10) of the top one.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that current formula appears to give an unjustified value to crappy answers in highly upvoted questions (`Qscore/5`, no matter how much is answer downvoted), I would like to perform test run to find out if suggested change would make an impact to issues outlined in Programmers meta posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Note: results of the trial run to be analyzed using study analogous to one performed in _Answers quality in hot questions_. Current evaluation shows about **101-118 low quality of 218** answers sampled.  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Upon completion of trial run, similar evaluation is to be done in order to estimate whether there was a substantial impact, positive or negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Complementary information to this request is provided in [comments below](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment16044_5482 &quot;starting from here&quot;), marked with &quot;for the record...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I expect modified formula to be competitive to current one at &quot;moderately hot&quot; questions, following the [reasoning outlined here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773):&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;For questions that are not too hot (likely 2-3 clicks away from top of the list) it's natural to see things working exactly as intended. Answers and comments quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;) brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and cool...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recent hot question about [automated testing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/185819/31620) gives an example of why I would want to try a modified formula. In 17 hours, question collected 17 answers, merely 5-7 of which provide useful original content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overheat of fake hotness impacted question like a [Black Saturday fire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a01_17890753.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the fire settled, what is left for future visitors of the question looks like a wasteland of low quality garbage (note that due to high views, it will score high in web searches).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a04_17906927.jpg][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the light of above, [community wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info) status stamped on the question looks especially despicable. It kind of suggests that **after damage has done**, community members are invited to go over the crap brought in by braindead formula, carefully analyze it and try to tame the pain by downvotes. As if they don't have anything better to do!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Update&#xD;&#xA;Related feature request has been posted at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/192046/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please stop counting proven low score answers in hotness formula. Please roll the dice fairly, let user voting and time decay contribute to hotness score as intended. Please promote to collider audience less brain-damaging content to learn from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vKQvI.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B1hjy.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15852" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6102" RevisionGUID="5d36ff33-77c1-4c99-88dd-160290a54354" CreationDate="2013-08-06T12:44:09.207" UserId="31260" Comment="Progammers is a typo, we are Pro-gamers here! :)" Text="Change site name from 'Programmers' to 'Programming'" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15853" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6098" RevisionGUID="dc83ba00-1cd8-400a-bb2d-e30e1290c28b" CreationDate="2013-08-06T20:53:29.320" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/364851745064632321" />
  <row Id="15854" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6103" RevisionGUID="d3a4ce76-1612-4d31-94be-8918739fca91" CreationDate="2013-08-07T10:59:14.323" UserId="94978" Text="I thought out a software architecture for a larger application I'll be working on. Before actually starting to code, I'd like feedback on the architecture. Since this is about the needs of *only my project*, I think it won't fit this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where can I ask this kind of feedback questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15855" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6103" RevisionGUID="d3a4ce76-1612-4d31-94be-8918739fca91" CreationDate="2013-08-07T10:59:14.323" UserId="94978" Text="Where can I ask for feedback on my concept?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15856" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6103" RevisionGUID="d3a4ce76-1612-4d31-94be-8918739fca91" CreationDate="2013-08-07T10:59:14.323" UserId="94978" Text="|support|on-topic-definition|asking-questions|stackexchange|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15857" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6104" RevisionGUID="bab62f93-e4df-43d9-b423-a210c3c6d867" CreationDate="2013-08-07T11:11:30.963" UserId="94978" Text="I just wanted to share my thoughts about this in addition to the good answers already posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People should learn a language when they need to use that special language. So it depends on the project they want to develop or their field of specialization. Therefore better ask people with that question what they want to develop and encourage them to not flinch from the best choice if it implies a lot of effort and fundamental understanding to learn.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When we know the field, it is best to advice the most popular solution. For example C++ for games and PHP for the web. Let me explain why. Those people are beginners in a field, otherwise they wouldn't have asked the question. To get started in a new field, it is important to know the branch standard. After that, they got a sense for the language and its restrictions and may decide to learn an alternative, say Python for web servers. But it doesn't make sense to start with this alternative, since they cannot judge about the advantages and disadvantages of Python over, in this case, PHP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nice side effect is, that people can start working in a branch with their native programming language, because it is very likely the this language is used in business projects." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15858" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6105" RevisionGUID="2aec1157-c55e-4129-9318-9ffbb2ab3a3e" CreationDate="2013-08-07T14:38:14.593" UserId="25936" Text="If what you have in mind is a kind of architecture / design review question, then technically, those questions would be a bit &quot;too localized&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. However, we do have a [sister site dedicated to code reviews][1], and it's doing just fine. I don't see why we couldn't at least try to find a way to make architecture / design reviews work on Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd say... go for it, and let's see what happens. I can't promise you the community will respond favorably to your question, but if you don't mind experimenting (and risking a couple of downvotes and/or a closure), you should just ask it. If it works, great, if it doesn't, hey at least you tried. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously, as with any other question, you should do your best to be as clear and concise as possible, and give us every essential detail. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; SE lingo for overly specific questions that don't apply to a wider audience.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15859" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6106" RevisionGUID="a30502cf-8330-4b8b-8987-816469a01497" CreationDate="2013-08-07T17:41:12.217" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I really don't like migrating crap to SO.  This is really the only place where its an issue because of the migration path (no, taking away the migration path would mean more suggestions to repost - there are enough of those for the workplace).  The past 90 days, we did 206 migrations To SO and 23 of them were rejected.  A number of them were embarrassingly bad.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When something is off topic here, on topic there, isn't up to the standards there and would get closed - the close reason being:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for code must demonstrate a **minimal understanding of the problem being solved**. Include attempted solutions, why they didn't work, and the expected results. See also: [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to see a new close reason along the lines of:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers.Stack Exchange. It would best be answered on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet the minimum requirements for a question on Stack Overflow.  Please read the [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist) to fix up your question for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this close reason, we might be able to avoid some poor migrations, giving close voters another sanctioned reason (people tend to avoid the custom reason for &quot;this is off topic here, but not up to the standards there.&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, the reasons not to are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. We shouldn't be guessing as to someone else's close reasons after a migration&#xD;&#xA;2. A rejected migration about two week isn't that big of a deal&#xD;&#xA;3. This would be used for about two closes every week which isn't enough to persuade the powers that be to give us another close reason (and if we had one, there are likely better close reasons than this)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15860" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6106" RevisionGUID="a30502cf-8330-4b8b-8987-816469a01497" CreationDate="2013-08-07T17:41:12.217" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="close reason (and associated expand the close reason count) request" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15861" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6106" RevisionGUID="a30502cf-8330-4b8b-8987-816469a01497" CreationDate="2013-08-07T17:41:12.217" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|feature-request|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15862" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6106" RevisionGUID="7f56faa6-de63-4a7c-b969-521511ee436e" CreationDate="2013-08-07T18:30:41.760" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="I really don't like migrating crap to SO.  This is really the only place where its an issue because of the migration path (no, taking away the migration path would mean more suggestions to repost - there are enough of those for the workplace).  The past 90 days, we did 206 migrations To SO and 23 of them were rejected.  A number of them were embarrassingly bad.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When something is off topic here, on topic there, isn't up to the standards there and would get closed - the close reason being:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for code must demonstrate a **minimal understanding of the problem being solved**. Include attempted solutions, why they didn't work, and the expected results. See also: [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to see a new close reason along the lines of:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers.Stack Exchange. It would best be answered on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet the minimum requirements for a question on Stack Overflow.  Please read the [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist) to fix up your question for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this close reason, we might be able to avoid some poor migrations, giving close voters another sanctioned reason (people tend to avoid the custom reason for &quot;this is off topic here, but not up to the standards there.&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, the reasons not to are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. We shouldn't be guessing as to someone else's close reasons after a migration&#xD;&#xA;2. A rejected migration about two a week isn't that big of a deal&#xD;&#xA;3. This would be used for about two closes every week which isn't enough to persuade the powers that be to give us another close reason (and if we had one, there are likely better close reasons than this)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15863" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6106" RevisionGUID="2afa7baf-671e-4533-9e5f-a54adb85a781" CreationDate="2013-08-07T20:54:37.853" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/365214420290371586" />
  <row Id="15864" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6107" RevisionGUID="8a951173-a343-4c22-90c7-2a68b07cc1d8" CreationDate="2013-08-08T01:21:31.670" UserId="63" Text="I think having a &quot;Stack Overflow question&quot; off-topic reason is a good idea. Here are the off-topic reasons that exist now *or have existed*, along with the number of votes or flags that chose them since site-specific off-topic reasons were introduced:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **776**  &#xD;&#xA;   [CURRENTLY ACTIVE] Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.                             &#xD;&#xA;                                                                                                                                          &#xD;&#xA;- **578**  &#xD;&#xA;   This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **454**  &#xD;&#xA;   Other (add a comment explaining what is wrong)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **397**  &#xD;&#xA;   [CURRENTLY ACTIVE] Questions seeking **career or education advice** are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.                                               &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **165**  &#xD;&#xA;   Questions about **specific programming problems encountered while writing code** are off-topic, but can be asked on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/about).   &#xD;&#xA;                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            &#xD;&#xA;- **152**  &#xD;&#xA;  [CURRENTLY ACTIVE] Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **63**  &#xD;&#xA;   Questions seeking **career advice or help with office politics** are off-topic here unless they're specific to the programming profession. If people in other professions face similar problems, ask about it on [The Workplace Stack Exchange](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/about).                                                                                                                 &#xD;&#xA;            &#xD;&#xA;- **25**  &#xD;&#xA;   Questions about **the use of general computer hardware or software** are off-topic, but can be asked on [Super User](http://superuser.com/about).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;Something that should jump out at you right away is the relative usage of the &quot;specific programming problems&quot; reason compared to &quot;what language should I take up next&quot; - even though the latter has now been active for about twice as long (4 weeks) as the former. Here's a crowded graph to curse at:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![OT reason usage by week][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note how the number of &quot;belongs on other site&quot; votes jumped as soon as &quot;programming&quot; was disabled?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I strongly recommend replacing &quot;what language should I learn&quot; with some variation on &quot;you should ask this on SO, after you learn how to ask questions on SO&quot;.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/XgX8q.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15868" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6106" RevisionGUID="dcd5000d-af37-4d5a-a541-603c8f3d2b7d" CreationDate="2013-08-09T15:13:51.307" UserId="35276" Comment="added 12 characters in body" Text="I really don't like migrating crappy questions to SO.  This is really the only place where its an issue because of the migration path (no, taking away the migration path would mean more suggestions to repost - there are enough of those for the workplace).  The past 90 days, we did 206 migrations To SO and 23 of them were rejected.  A number of them were embarrassingly bad.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When something is off topic here, on topic there, isn't up to the standards there and would get closed - the close reason being:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for code must demonstrate a **minimal understanding of the problem being solved**. Include attempted solutions, why they didn't work, and the expected results. See also: [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to see a new close reason along the lines of:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers.Stack Exchange. It would best be answered on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet the minimum requirements for a question on Stack Overflow.  Please read the [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist) to fix up your question for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this close reason, we might be able to avoid some poor migrations, giving close voters another sanctioned reason (people tend to avoid the custom reason for &quot;this is off topic here, but not up to the standards there.&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, the reasons not to are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. We shouldn't be guessing as to someone else's close reasons after a migration&#xD;&#xA;2. A rejected migration about two a week isn't that big of a deal&#xD;&#xA;3. This would be used for about two closes every week which isn't enough to persuade the powers that be to give us another close reason (and if we had one, there are likely better close reasons than this)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15869" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6108" RevisionGUID="384ede45-fea9-41e9-8264-ac04acb73142" CreationDate="2013-08-09T16:54:17.773" UserId="60569" Text="One option for freeing up a custom close reason slot would be to combine &quot;career or education advice&quot; with &quot;what language...&quot;. Possible wording is below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking **career or education advice (including what language,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology, or project one should take up next)** are off topic on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are too many individual factors behind the question to create&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Whiteboard, our chat room." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15875" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6110" RevisionGUID="fc4a90b6-2c75-47d1-acc1-3c07aa851643" CreationDate="2013-08-11T00:04:03.017" UserId="80237" Text="Does this really make any sense? The OP *is* asking a new question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; marked as duplicate by ... Feb 11 at 16:52&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15876" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6110" RevisionGUID="fc4a90b6-2c75-47d1-acc1-3c07aa851643" CreationDate="2013-08-11T00:04:03.017" UserId="80237" Text="Duplicate verbiage is self-contradictory" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15877" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6110" RevisionGUID="fc4a90b6-2c75-47d1-acc1-3c07aa851643" CreationDate="2013-08-11T00:04:03.017" UserId="80237" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15878" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6111" RevisionGUID="432b2201-850d-46b8-99ff-f5de208b558c" CreationDate="2013-08-11T02:01:03.617" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Given the timing, you are likely referring to [What to do with a not well organized application? [duplicate]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101391/what-to-do-with-a-not-well-organized-application)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question being asked by the OP is summarized as &quot;I've just inherited a huge load of code that is of questionable quality and I don't know what to do with it.  Its fragile and 'like walking in a field with land mines!' What should I do?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question, is essentially the same as the question [I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code — what now?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now) which asks &quot;What would you include in your list of the most effective strategies to help straighten out the spaghetti (and prevent it in the future)?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These two questions ask the same thing.  Thus, &quot;This question has been asked before and already has an answer&quot; is correct - it has been asked before (in a slightly different form) and has already been answered." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15879" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6112" RevisionGUID="7026d390-25f1-4b38-aaca-51b82633c443" CreationDate="2013-08-12T03:17:18.237" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I saw a delete vote on a rather highly voted question [Is it OK to split long functions and methods into smaller ones even though they won't be called by anything else?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/195989/is-it-ok-to-split-long-functions-and-methods-into-smaller-ones-even-though-they).  And yes, I do have the top answer there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This delete vote confuses me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of the reason the question recently regained my attention is that I got an announcer badge from it (and I don't announce things).  It turns out that it is linked from an external resource - [ars technica - Ask Stack: Is it OK to split into small functions, even if they’re called once?](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/ask-stack-is-it-ok-to-split-into-small-functions-even-if-theyre-called-once/).  I believe it would be a bad thing for such questions to get deleted as they are used as examples of Programmers.SE.  (The list of ars technica posts that have an author of 'stack-exchange' can be seen at http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/ )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Building on this, questions that are used by major news sources bring eyeballs to the site which is a key part of the SE business strategy.  Like the questions or not, deleting these questions would be counter productive to the people that keep the lights on at the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, it has been fairly long and established policy that questions that are dupes to other questions shouldn't be deleted.  The associated MSO discussion - [Do not delete duplicates!](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/32311/do-not-delete-duplicates)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I am missing something in the best practices for 10k tools, I would appreciate being informed what it is that I'm missing so I too can cast a delete vote on the question with a clear conscious and understanding of how .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, on the other hand, someone else is missing some part of understanding of what to delete and not to delete, until the question is deleted (and given its high vote question and answers takes quite a few more votes), I would have difficulty knowing who to articulate my comments to (to the best of my knowledge, delete votes are private until they are acted upon), and thus am broadcasting them here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Tangential question*: If Stack Exchange wishes to keep these featured questions from news and blog around (and make note of them?) - should there be a 'major news source/blog' lock to prevent closed questions that have been featured in a way that SE wants to maintain from being accidentally deleted (either by an errant migration and close or misinformed mod or an over zealous 10ker?) " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15880" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6112" RevisionGUID="7026d390-25f1-4b38-aaca-51b82633c443" CreationDate="2013-08-12T03:17:18.237" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Curious delete vote" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15881" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6112" RevisionGUID="7026d390-25f1-4b38-aaca-51b82633c443" CreationDate="2013-08-12T03:17:18.237" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|deleted-questions|guidelines|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15882" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6113" RevisionGUID="bcdda4cd-dae0-4d12-8a6d-b5652b95bf7c" CreationDate="2013-08-12T17:37:52.260" UserId="1204" Text="That's a lot of questions, and they are all valid, but they avoid a basic principle of voting, which is this: *Community members can use their votes however they wish, so long as they are not being abusive.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I believe it would be a bad thing for such questions to get deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the community may not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It has been fairly long and established policy that questions that are dupes to other questions shouldn't be deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... Unless they are.  The community may not deem the post worthy of preservation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should there be a 'major news source/blog' lock to prevent closed questions that have been featured in a way that SE wants to maintain from being accidentally deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ask for a &quot;historical lock.&quot;  But be prepared to defend your request with reasoning and evidence; historical locks are used very sparingly, and only under very specific circumstances.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/126587/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15883" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6114" RevisionGUID="5080c754-bd61-4d83-b49a-4460fefdd289" CreationDate="2013-08-12T18:35:32.020" UserId="51295" Text="When a &lt;3K user flags a question as off topic, it is required to specify how the question is off-topic. My choice path goes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. flag&#xD;&#xA;2. it doesn't belong here, or it is a duplicate...&#xD;&#xA;3. off-topic because...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then I am presented with four specific reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* what project/language to learn next&#xD;&#xA;* tool recommendation&#xD;&#xA;* career advice&#xD;&#xA;* belongs on other site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, a question is off-topic in a way not anticipated by these four categories. For 3K-rep users, I understand that the close-voting interface allows for a free-form off-topic reason, but the off-topic flag screen for &lt;3K does not. (Note that I am **not** suggesting one should be added; I include this information only for completeness.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How should I flag questions that I consider to be off-topic but don't fit the four categories?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I could flag for moderator attention, but that seems suboptimal, since those flags are only visible to diamond mods.&#xD;&#xA;* I could flag it off-topic and choose a off-topic reason that doesn't apply. Do people reviewing the flag even see (or care) about the off-topic reason? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15884" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6114" RevisionGUID="5080c754-bd61-4d83-b49a-4460fefdd289" CreationDate="2013-08-12T18:35:32.020" UserId="51295" Text="How to flag off-topic questions that don't fit any off-topic categories?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15885" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6114" RevisionGUID="5080c754-bd61-4d83-b49a-4460fefdd289" CreationDate="2013-08-12T18:35:32.020" UserId="51295" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15887" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6116" RevisionGUID="e54bc6dc-1676-4d8f-9eed-c3b0fe95f365" CreationDate="2013-08-12T19:02:15.143" UserId="35276" Text="I tended to use doesn't belong here-&gt;off topic-&gt;other with an explanation in the free form box when I didn't have 3k.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would think if it doesn't fit anything else, at least the reason you enter in &quot;other&quot; is likely visible to moderators if no one else. Besides, technically that's what &quot;other&quot; is for, specifically when the listed choices don't fit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15888" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6117" RevisionGUID="10aae4ca-af13-4437-af60-c1be0a253b76" CreationDate="2013-08-12T19:21:32.133" UserId="63" Text="First off, do a little sanity-check: are you *sure* the question is off-topic? If it's about cats, then that's an easy check; otherwise, review [the faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next, do another sanity-check: is it spam? Is it someone trolling for attention? There are specific flags for &quot;spam&quot; and &quot;it is not welcome in our community&quot; that are a heck of a lot more effective than closing for stuff that needs to be removed ASAP - don't waste your time and everyone else's time trying to find the best close reason for &quot;Cheap Gucci Handbags&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, see if any of the close reasons are reasonably close. Not *just* the OT reasons, but also things like &quot;Too Broad&quot; and &quot;Primarily opinion-based&quot;. If OT is the best fit, then read the predefined reasons carefully: the OT reasons listed in the dialog represent the most common off-topic questions, so there's a pretty good chance that one of them *will* fit, but... Keep in mind that there are *also* a lot of perfectly good questions that touch on the same topics; *how the question is asked* can matter almost as much as *what it asks about.* Consider if an edit might be able to transform the question into something more acceptable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, either pick one of the predefined off-topic reasons, or - if none of them fits - back up and select &quot;other&quot; on the main flagging dialog. If you do the latter, keep in mind that you're asking a moderator to review the post: is it something that *really* needs a moderator's attention? If you don't feel strongly about it, *don't flag*. If you do, great! Explain *why*. Don't just type &quot;off-topic&quot;; provide enough information to help the moderator understand what problems you envision the post causing. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15889" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6117" RevisionGUID="d85e9f25-1611-4907-a8ff-333348a29afe" CreationDate="2013-08-12T19:27:20.473" UserId="63" Comment="added 683 characters in body" Text="First off, do a little sanity-check: are you *sure* the question is off-topic? If it's about cats, then that's an easy check; otherwise, review [the faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next, do another sanity-check: is it spam? Is it someone trolling for attention? There are specific flags for &quot;spam&quot; and &quot;it is not welcome in our community&quot; that are a heck of a lot more effective than closing for stuff that needs to be removed ASAP - don't waste your time and everyone else's time trying to find the best close reason for &quot;Cheap Gucci Handbags&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, see if any of the close reasons are reasonably close. Not *just* the OT reasons, but also things like &quot;Too Broad&quot; and &quot;Primarily opinion-based&quot;. If OT is the best fit, then read the predefined reasons carefully: the OT reasons listed in the dialog represent the most common off-topic questions, so there's a pretty good chance that one of them *will* fit, but... Keep in mind that there are *also* a lot of perfectly good questions that touch on the same topics; *how the question is asked* can matter almost as much as *what it asks about.* Consider if an edit might be able to transform the question into something more acceptable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, either pick one of the predefined off-topic reasons, or - if none of them fits - back up and select &quot;other&quot; on the main flagging dialog. If you do the latter, keep in mind that you're asking a moderator to review the post: is it something that *really* needs a moderator's attention? If you don't feel strongly about it, *don't flag*. If you do, great! Explain *why*. Don't just type &quot;off-topic&quot;; provide enough information to help the moderator understand what problems you envision the post causing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh - and to answer your last question: right now, no one&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; sees the off-topic reasons you choose when flagging. That may change in the future, but for now they exist primarily for *your* benefit, to provide examples of the sorts of things that you should consider flagging when you come across them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;They are recorded, I'm looking at them in aggregate and will probably expose that information to moderators at some point, but the design is in keeping with the whole [&quot;training wheels for future close-voters&quot;][1] aspect, not &quot;feedback for askers&quot; since - no offense - a lot of flaggers have really weird ideas about what is on or off-topic.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/improved-flagging/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15891" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6118" RevisionGUID="f0d26a1e-2b12-46ea-a08a-027d5b44bfd9" CreationDate="2013-08-13T16:03:47.633" UserId="94768" Text="I'm often faced with architectural questions wherein I have one or two general solutions in mind. Would it be off-topic for P.SE to post something like, *What might the ER's for X look like to ensure extensibility [or maintainability, or simplicity, etc.]?* along with one or two answers representing the options I've come up with so far?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And is there a better way to phrase that sort of question in a more concretely answerable way?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15892" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6118" RevisionGUID="f0d26a1e-2b12-46ea-a08a-027d5b44bfd9" CreationDate="2013-08-13T16:03:47.633" UserId="94768" Text="Are self-answered &quot;best option&quot; questions allowed here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15893" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6118" RevisionGUID="f0d26a1e-2b12-46ea-a08a-027d5b44bfd9" CreationDate="2013-08-13T16:03:47.633" UserId="94768" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15894" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6119" RevisionGUID="37e9de7d-e59f-4bf0-b5bd-cf9eb40a2ead" CreationDate="2013-08-13T17:54:18.993" UserId="39089" Text="Hovering the mouse pointer over a link having a title attribute should display the title, but currently this works only when you are looking at an editing preview of the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is something wrong with the translation from link markdown to HTML. The optional title field is normally translated to an HTML title attribute. The title attribute is missing when *viewing* a post, but is present when *editing* a post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is [an example] [id] reference-style link.&#xD;&#xA;    [id]: http://example.com/  &quot;Optional Title Here&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is translated to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com/&quot; title=&quot;Optional Title Here&quot;&gt;an example&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    reference-style link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;in the editor preview, but to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com/&quot;&gt;an example&lt;/a&gt; reference-style link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;after editing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: I cannot reproduce this problem on another site ([english.se]), which is why I am reporting it here and not on [meta.se].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: A post which illustrates the problem in the wild is: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/186318/39089" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15895" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6119" RevisionGUID="37e9de7d-e59f-4bf0-b5bd-cf9eb40a2ead" CreationDate="2013-08-13T17:54:18.993" UserId="39089" Text="Link &quot;title&quot; attribute lost in HTML except when editing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15896" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6119" RevisionGUID="37e9de7d-e59f-4bf0-b5bd-cf9eb40a2ead" CreationDate="2013-08-13T17:54:18.993" UserId="39089" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15897" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6120" RevisionGUID="0c500583-916b-4ec1-87ab-75aa05d0103c" CreationDate="2013-08-13T18:23:02.010" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="It appears you have smart quotes in there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Original:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[test][1]  (this one does not work... or shouldn't, but might)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    [1]: http://etymonline.com/index.php?search=argue &quot;b. 2013 “EtymOnline.com” search=argue&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Changing the reference to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[test][2] (this one does work using the below style)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    [1]: http://etymonline.com/index.php?search=argue &quot;b. 2013 &quot;EtymOnline.com&quot; search=argue&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note - this appears to not be reproducible when the post is open in an editor (I hope I've got this right, because both tests work for me at the moment...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(After testing a bit more, this doesn't appear to point out the problem completely... it may be site specific.  However, modifying the smart quotes in the linked question may fix it.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://etymonline.com/index.php?search=argue &quot;b. 2013 “EtymOnline.com” search=argue&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://etymonline.com/index.php?search=argue &quot;b. 2013 &quot;EtymOnline.com&quot; search=argue&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15898" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6119" RevisionGUID="22720780-3a9f-4200-b29c-7a981d8940f5" CreationDate="2013-08-13T18:51:34.097" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|hyperlinks|html|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15899" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6121" RevisionGUID="9b9ccda0-11c1-4bc6-910d-14a2e7dad367" CreationDate="2013-08-13T22:17:40.480" UserId="53136" Text="My question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/208143/using-notepad-for-php-coding got closed as being off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I'm not trying to ask for any tool recommendations or libraries - it is a specific question on how to configure a particular tool for use when programming a certain language.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm aware that maybe its off-topic due to a different reason and this one just happened to be the closest fit, would appreciate knowing the actual problem if so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are questions on tools that support particular features, is it that I can't ask about a specific tool like Npp but could ask for, say 'Are there good freeware editors support auto completion, syntax highlighting and other features for PHP dev?'" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15900" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6121" RevisionGUID="9b9ccda0-11c1-4bc6-910d-14a2e7dad367" CreationDate="2013-08-13T22:17:40.480" UserId="53136" Text="Is how to setup a dev environment using a specific tool, out of scope?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15901" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6121" RevisionGUID="9b9ccda0-11c1-4bc6-910d-14a2e7dad367" CreationDate="2013-08-13T22:17:40.480" UserId="53136" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15902" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6121" RevisionGUID="04ab9144-cfe3-435d-ae7f-7522b0574c7c" CreationDate="2013-08-13T22:24:26.543" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15903" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6122" RevisionGUID="08638652-9183-4985-936a-cb1ee3cbefb7" CreationDate="2013-08-14T00:31:20.920" UserId="4" Text="The [Help Center's page on what is on topic][1] specifically mentions that questions about tools should be asked on [Stack Overflow][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15904" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6123" RevisionGUID="c0057ae4-5840-4506-9add-9f3c4f3c06a4" CreationDate="2013-08-14T11:05:20.833" UserId="25476" Text="The question was flagged again for reopening and on evaluation of the question in its current state and the meta discussion, I don't feel a sufficient argument was provided for why this was considered too broad.  The question itself is quite answerable in my opinion and a few of the answers are good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that some of the answers provided were poor or don't really answer the question so I protected it from further answers by new users." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15905" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6112" RevisionGUID="8836b1fe-0799-454e-94d8-589177a4538c" CreationDate="2013-08-15T15:04:06.947" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/368025313252745216" />
  <row Id="15906" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6124" RevisionGUID="99eeef33-507d-4845-8924-282299fcc090" CreationDate="2013-08-16T12:23:19.200" UserId="6605" Text="I think there is a misunderstanding, from the community, between closing a question and deleting it. FAQ doesn't help neither.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Closing should be applied to any question which is wrong from FAQ's point of view.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closing is an indication that the question has a problem: an indication for both the original author and the subsequent visitors, would they be willing to answer or comment, or simply ask a similar question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Deleting, on the other hand, should be an extreme measure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Deleting is not an indication; it's a way to make the question disappear for anybody except members with high reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There is nothing wrong in deleting a question which is &quot;totally wrong&quot;: this includes spam or offensive speech, questions written by illiterate people who make no effort whatsoever, questions obviously off-topic (for example a question about horse breeds on Programmers.SE) or obviously duplicate (for example a question which copy-pastes another one), etc. But that's all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It's the degree of wrongness which should determine whether the question can be deleted or simply closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I follow the following guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Vote to delete if the question is totally wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Vote to delete if the question is wrong **and** has no interest whatsoever for **anybody** except the original poster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Don't delete if the question may have an interest for someone except the original poster. Note that a question can serve as example of what is *not* welcome on Programmers.SE by its closed status. Delete the question, and the example will disappear, making it easier for future visitors to ask the same question again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Don't delete if the question has *many* votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Don't delete a question which sucks but has a great or highly upvoted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously, I'm completely against the delete vote of the http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/195989/is-it-ok-to-split-long-functions-and-methods-into-smaller-ones-even-though-they question. It has 97 votes (98 if I count mine). It has an answer which received 156 upvotes. Yes, it should be closed, because it's a duplicate. But deleting it will not make Programmers.SE a better place." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15907" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6125" RevisionGUID="1e9f38c9-eeea-4679-aaa2-0dd306e2997b" CreationDate="2013-08-16T14:24:29.990" UserId="42132" Text="[tag:recommendations]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Almost all the questions on this tag are to be closed for being off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't it be banned?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another question talks about this: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/421/is-a-recommendations-tag-really-necessary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the question is 3 years old and nothing has been done since then. I'm just seeing a rise of this kind of questions lately, all of them being quickly closed. Shouldn't we warn the user that this is probably going to happen if he writes a banned tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sub&gt;PS: yes, the tag on this question is ironic. So meta!&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15908" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6125" RevisionGUID="1e9f38c9-eeea-4679-aaa2-0dd306e2997b" CreationDate="2013-08-16T14:24:29.990" UserId="42132" Text="Should we ban the recommendations tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15909" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6125" RevisionGUID="1e9f38c9-eeea-4679-aaa2-0dd306e2997b" CreationDate="2013-08-16T14:24:29.990" UserId="42132" Text="|discussion|recommendations|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15910" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6124" RevisionGUID="edbea2d3-3baf-4687-89de-79cabb8e9b76" CreationDate="2013-08-16T14:57:11.500" UserId="6605" Comment="added 837 characters in body" Text="I think there is a misunderstanding, from the community, between closing a question and deleting it. FAQ doesn't help neither.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Closing should be applied to any question which is wrong from FAQ's point of view.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closing is an indication that the question has a problem: an indication for both the original author and the subsequent visitors, would they be willing to answer or comment, or simply ask a similar question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Deleting, on the other hand, should be an extreme measure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Deleting is not an indication; it's a way to make the question disappear for anybody except members with high reputation. It also throws away the votes, which is extremely impolite for the users who took time to answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There is nothing wrong in deleting a question which is &quot;totally wrong&quot;: this includes spam or offensive speech, questions written by illiterate people who make no effort whatsoever, questions obviously off-topic (for example a question about horse breeds on Programmers.SE) or obviously duplicate (for example a question which copy-pastes another one), etc. But that's all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It's the degree of wrongness which should determine whether the question can be deleted or simply closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I follow the following guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Vote to delete if the question is totally wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Vote to delete if the question is wrong **and** has no interest whatsoever for **anybody** except the original poster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Don't delete if the question may have an interest for someone except the original poster. Note that a question can serve as example of what is *not* welcome on Programmers.SE by its closed status. Delete the question, and the example will disappear, making it easier for future visitors to ask the same question again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Don't delete if the question has *many* votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Don't delete a question which sucks but has a great or highly upvoted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously, I'm completely against the delete vote of the http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/195989/is-it-ok-to-split-long-functions-and-methods-into-smaller-ones-even-though-they question. It has 97 votes (98 if I count mine). It has an answer which received 156 upvotes. Yes, it should be closed, because it's a duplicate. But deleting it will not make Programmers.SE a better place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a side note:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - There was a question on Programmers.SE which I had answered. The question was marked as a duplicate, but the answer was more detailed than answers of other questions. For months, I kept linking the answer in other answers on Stack Exchange and in different discussions outside SE, until one day when the question was deleted by a moderator. The harm of such deletion was important, while it had no benefit whatsoever.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - There are plenty of questions on Stack Overflow I can't access because I don't have enough reputation, while those answers have a large amount of links to them. It's baffling to not being able to read them and feels wrong: a feeling compared to when you open Experts Exchange." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15911" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6126" RevisionGUID="93cb27fa-ac3a-4fb4-99ee-260c6d64feb4" CreationDate="2013-08-16T15:01:51.143" UserId="91765" Text="Is there as way to notify a moderator after you edit an off-topic question to make it on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15912" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6126" RevisionGUID="93cb27fa-ac3a-4fb4-99ee-260c6d64feb4" CreationDate="2013-08-16T15:01:51.143" UserId="91765" Text="How to notify a moderator that an off-topic question was edited?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15913" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6126" RevisionGUID="93cb27fa-ac3a-4fb4-99ee-260c6d64feb4" CreationDate="2013-08-16T15:01:51.143" UserId="91765" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15914" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6126" RevisionGUID="9b8a674e-6e75-4697-9644-f75ec3cc15fa" CreationDate="2013-08-16T15:15:20.133" UserId="91765" Comment="added 193 characters in body" Text="Is there as way to notify a moderator after you edit an off-topic question to make it on-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I edited [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/208498/91765)'s title to make it on-topic, but I'm not sure if I need to do something more for a moderator to review my edit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15915" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6127" RevisionGUID="dfda0c7e-61a8-4c2f-bc9c-05070e65d05a" CreationDate="2013-08-16T15:40:27.790" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="When a closed question is edited, it is automatically entered into the 'reopen review queue'.  No flagging is necessary.  As of this writing, there are currently 3 reopen votes cast on the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15916" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6128" RevisionGUID="37bf67db-66a2-4604-92c2-a82bfcc1b7ac" CreationDate="2013-08-17T10:43:19.077" UserId="5099" Text="While self-answers are allowed, you should not base your design decisions on the popularity of the options you presented in your self-answers. The voting system is not meant for that and the reasons why people up or down vote are too variable to be an indication of which option is really the best.&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps the highest voted answer just used more of the popular buzz-words.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, as @Rachel noted in her comment, such a question has a very high risk to become too broad or to have insufficient information on what you have considered already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, I would advise to present your options in the question itself and ask for an explanation why option A should be preferred over option B or vice versa.&#xD;&#xA;If there is an option C that has clear advantages over your current choices, then it will be presented in the answers, with reasoning why it should be preferred. And you will get presented with arguments why you should choose A or B, which you can weigh yourself. That you can't do just with votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15917" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6129" RevisionGUID="cfdd2e48-f663-4441-94ec-f103ef8954bf" CreationDate="2013-08-17T10:51:58.130" UserId="5099" Text="Given the tag description&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tag for asking for recommendations on resources (such as books), programming languages and more related to programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;most of what the tag describes is explicitly declared as being off-topic for P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;Based on that, I agree that the tag should be removed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15918" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6125" RevisionGUID="77ccc78f-9c56-46c3-a286-af5af2149adb" CreationDate="2013-08-18T03:06:37.300" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/368931913701933056" />
  <row Id="15919" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6126" RevisionGUID="acd09257-08ef-41db-8fce-36a0b477578e" CreationDate="2013-08-18T04:58:17.430" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15920" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6130" RevisionGUID="e1bec878-31ca-44ee-a3c5-d5c68b89971c" CreationDate="2013-08-18T05:08:37.803" UserId="25936" Text="In order of preference: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Do nothing** &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;  Your edit should start the re-open process automatically, as [MichaelT explained][1]. Also, every significant edit bumps the question to the top of the site's front page, so a new round of attention from people casually browsing the site is almost guaranteed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Chat**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  All five moderators and quite a few other regulars are active in [the Whiteboard][2], the site's main chat room. Even if there's no one around at the time, you can just drop a link to the question and eventually someone will ping you back with their thoughts on your edit. Or, if they happen to agree with the edit and there isn't much to discuss, they'll just vote to re-open it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. **Meta discussion**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If the question fails to get enough re-open votes through the re-open queue and you hadn't had any luck in chat, feel free to start a Meta discussion asking how the question in question can be further improved and re-opened. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you shouldn't do is flag for moderation attention. The site currently has 366 users who can vote to re-open (3000+ reputation), and most of them are fairly active; there's little need to call one of the five diamonds. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6127/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15922" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6131" RevisionGUID="26b97c80-549f-4fdf-a3ea-7714e1a57b18" CreationDate="2013-08-20T18:51:37.567" UserId="50866" Text="Where can I ask a question regarding my ideas for blog posts (of course technical, programming blog).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a postX - what should be changed, improved, etc... ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there something like http://codereview.stackexchange.com/ but for technical/programming articles?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15923" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6131" RevisionGUID="26b97c80-549f-4fdf-a3ea-7714e1a57b18" CreationDate="2013-08-20T18:51:37.567" UserId="50866" Text="Where can I ask question about blogging concept?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15924" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6131" RevisionGUID="26b97c80-549f-4fdf-a3ea-7714e1a57b18" CreationDate="2013-08-20T18:51:37.567" UserId="50866" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15925" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6132" RevisionGUID="c12539dc-1265-446a-9ae2-7d96c71991a0" CreationDate="2013-08-20T23:42:43.747" UserId="175" Text="The following post has been deleted and I still want to refer to the information ([it is in my favorites][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How long will I be able to see this post until it is permanently purged?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9466/what-are-the-must-have-tools-for-amazon-cloud-development" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15926" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6132" RevisionGUID="c12539dc-1265-446a-9ae2-7d96c71991a0" CreationDate="2013-08-20T23:42:43.747" UserId="175" Text="How long do I have access to deleted posts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15927" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6132" RevisionGUID="c12539dc-1265-446a-9ae2-7d96c71991a0" CreationDate="2013-08-20T23:42:43.747" UserId="175" Text="|support|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15928" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6133" RevisionGUID="7b97e041-c476-48c8-86d0-e57fddd1b0ed" CreationDate="2013-08-20T23:56:26.313" UserId="1204" Text="In the entire history of Stack Exchange, I've only ever seen two posts that have been permanently purged.  One was the &quot;boat programming&quot; one.  The other was a very contentious &quot;how do compilers work&quot; question.  Both questions were asked on Stack Overflow; neither should have been purged IMHO.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;AFAIK it is SE's policy to keep deleted records forever (my two examples notwithstanding).  But there's not a lot of information in the post you referenced; it would be easy enough to copy it somewhere, just in case.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15929" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6134" RevisionGUID="6df5f8e1-96fa-4131-b8a3-21c25856dc16" CreationDate="2013-08-21T01:50:06.967" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="We have a tag called [tag:general]. Why do we have this tag? Shall we burn this tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15930" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6134" RevisionGUID="6df5f8e1-96fa-4131-b8a3-21c25856dc16" CreationDate="2013-08-21T01:50:06.967" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="The &quot;general&quot; question tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15931" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6134" RevisionGUID="6df5f8e1-96fa-4131-b8a3-21c25856dc16" CreationDate="2013-08-21T01:50:06.967" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15932" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6135" RevisionGUID="338dc058-8744-47b5-91da-ed5698058ff4" CreationDate="2013-08-21T02:28:24.200" UserId="1204" Text="[Yes.  With the fire of a thousand suns.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/general)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15933" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6134" RevisionGUID="dacb6aaf-a9ad-4606-981c-b0a0fdf3a8b1" CreationDate="2013-08-21T02:36:26.283" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15934" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6136" RevisionGUID="cdf0ebd8-05fa-4844-b224-9554fc03d11f" CreationDate="2013-08-21T12:44:36.570" UserId="25936" Text="For writing critiques and questions on technical writing, the closer fit within the Stack Exchange universe is [Writers Stack Exchange][1]. From the [site's help center][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What topics can I ask about here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on these topics are welcome here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A writing critique, [properly scoped and framed][3] (If you find those guidelines unclear, or need a quick summary, [this chart][4] will help)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I should warn you that I'm not intimately familiar with the site and I may be completely wrong when I'm saying that your questions would be welcomed there. You should read the rest of the article and the scope guidelines thoroughly, and decide on your own if the site is what you are looking for. Additionally, it wouldn't hurt if you stopped by the [site's main chat room][5] and ask its regulars for further guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, on the other hand, what you are looking for is feedback and general discussion for your _programming_ blog post ideas, then the more appropriate place would be our own chat room, [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://writers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://writers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.writers.stackexchange.com/questions/166/what-are-the-guidelines-for-asking-for-a-critique-of-my-work&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.writers.stackexchange.com/questions/488/clarification-of-critique-guidelines/489#489&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/168/the-overlook-hotel" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15935" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6127" RevisionGUID="cfd33d55-0a4d-4be7-ae8a-1c9a21d32735" CreationDate="2013-08-21T20:46:13.030" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Incorporate Gille's correction." Text="When a closed question is edited by the asker (as opposed to someone else just fixing it up), it is automatically entered into the 'reopen review queue'.  No flagging is necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is edited by someone else, it will need to be either flagged (a mod will review the flag), a reopen vote cast by yourself (for those who have 3k rep), or a reopen vote cast by someone else (consider going into chat to ask if anyone can start the ball rolling).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The details of these mechanics are in the MSO answer to [Can we have the ability to flag for reopening?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/186722/can-we-have-the-ability-to-flag-for-reopening/186728#186728)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  **Adding items to the queue in response to 3rd-party edits.** Currently, this is done when [the author edits][1], but not if [someone else does the same][2]. It would be possible to change that - although there are [some pitfalls][3] we'd have to avoid. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/157584/should-questions-be-added-to-the-reopen-queue-as-soon-as-theyre-edited-by-the-o&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/157584/should-questions-be-added-to-the-reopen-queue-as-soon-as-theyre-edited-by-the-o&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/183233/give-2k-users-a-dont-put-this-in-the-reopen-queue-checkbox?lq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15936" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5543" RevisionGUID="4760232b-9c48-4340-8f1f-a2c50e192a78" CreationDate="2013-08-23T16:03:49.920" UserId="31260" Comment=" 	update: [In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/192046/165773)" Text="Most likely reason for the issues with answers quality is a [particular bug](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164712/165773 &quot;described here&quot;) in a hotness formula (&quot;fake popularity&quot;). This bug causes some of the questions with many answers to be placed unreasonably close to the top of the [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Issues caused by this are explained in details in a post about particularly troublesome ([&quot;sticky&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;)) kind of questions affected by the bug in formula:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One problem with hot questions seems to be that there is no way for &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; to differentiate **genuine** popularity from **fake** one, that is from popularity introduced by the algorithm itself... the algorithm simply is incapable to detect cases when popularity is [its own byproduct](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback &quot;due to positive feedback loop&quot;)...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;For questions that are not too hot... quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), collider brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and fair...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;But when question gets closer to the top of collider, things change... it attracts a lot of visitors whose desire to answer is not balanced by local community norms. At this point &quot;intended life-cycle of a hot question&quot; breaks.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Hotness algorithm assumes the question gets bumped mostly by good answers and that infrequent deviations are corrected by local community through voting and comments. Thing is though, this does not work on top of the collider...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Post further explains why community moderation (&quot;quality control&quot; through voting, comments and editing by site regulars) tends to break on questions impacted by unnatural hotness score:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...There are just too many new visitors to keep things under local community control, and there are just too many new voters and commenters to get things going as designed... So comes next and next and next round of garbage answers, bumping the question, bringing mindless upvotes, over and over and over again.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Hotness algorithm calculates this as genuine popularity, keeps it accordingly high at collider, bringing more visitors that are breaking things further and so on and so on. Note it's not limited to newcomers only, everyone is invited to the party. Community regulars can clearly see that usual quality norms are broken... and that they are free to follow the New Order just like anyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;**That's how fake popularity makes shit stick to the ceiling and helps to keep it there.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It also explains why there are so much community wiki (triggered by too-many-answers) among questions affected by hotness formula bug:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; _Regular_ open questions (&quot;appropriate&quot; ones) tend to have much less than 30 answers indeed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;But when we look at &quot;sticky&quot; questions, things seem to be different. These questions aren't &quot;inappropriate&quot;, otherwise these would be closed long time ago. Still, 10 examples of sticky questions have more than 270 answers total, about 27 average per question...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...at least **2/3 answers in sticky questions are just a garbage** that somehow leaked in (probably because &quot;fake hotness&quot; gave question an unnaturally high exposure in collider).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Here are feature requests to address this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5482/31260&#xD;&#xA;* [In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/192046/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please stop counting proven low score answers in hotness formula. Please roll the dice fairly, let user voting and time decay contribute to hotness score as intended. Please promote to collider audience less brain-damaging content to learn from." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15937" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6137" RevisionGUID="531c5acb-f3c6-4645-acbd-6382fa74050a" CreationDate="2013-08-23T19:18:53.930" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Question from main:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/209295/53019&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**This meta question is to hash out the meta commentary going on about the Q.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Synopsis: the question pitches two extreme points of view about programming against each other and asks for evidence to back up the more recent and perhaps more radical of the two points of view.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Current) Top answer comes from one of our highest ranked community members and points out the fallacy(ies) behind the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other two answers are okay and meh.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the question is on-topic; constructive; and answerable by expertise not just by opinion. So that's why I cast the 5th re-open vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers to this meta question should either be in support of keeping the subject question open or why it should be closed (again).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15938" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6137" RevisionGUID="531c5acb-f3c6-4645-acbd-6382fa74050a" CreationDate="2013-08-23T19:18:53.930" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Meta for Mastering a programming language" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15939" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6137" RevisionGUID="531c5acb-f3c6-4645-acbd-6382fa74050a" CreationDate="2013-08-23T19:18:53.930" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15940" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6138" RevisionGUID="3cc05242-7328-4b32-8555-8deb23eb9cee" CreationDate="2013-08-23T19:32:41.740" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I was the one who cast the first close vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I read the question it had the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * A request for resources&#xD;&#xA; * A suggestion of looking for discussion on the points (not explicit, but thats how I read it)&#xD;&#xA; * Looking to reconcile two opinions (with scientific resources)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of these are points for closure.  The last is the one I went with, reconciling two opinions is itself an opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, it is the case that the original premises of the question are flawed, and that can be pointed out, but the question, as it is asked, cannot be answered in a productive way in the SE format.  The answers are in essence &quot;you are asking the wrong question.&quot; and then go off to answer what the person answering the question thinks is the actual question or pointing out the flaw in the question.  Every person answering the question, following this model, has an equally valid possible reinterpretation of the question to answer in their own way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other questions that aren't asked may be better (where do I misunderstand these two points?), but that would take a significant rewrite of the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15941" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6139" RevisionGUID="19924e4c-404b-44df-a96a-e3163265c2ab" CreationDate="2013-08-23T19:51:53.883" UserId="35276" Text="I cast a close vote because it wasn't completely clear how to answer the question properly or meaningfully. I would say Robert Harvey's answer is good, but doesn't address the spirit of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't vote for a reopen without an edit to make it more asking for an explanation of those posts because the whole question is based on an inaccurate understanding of those posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I pondered doing that edit, but again I feel it changes the spirit of the question, didn't know if I should interfere. Perhaps it would have been the right thing to do to avoid the closing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15944" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6140" RevisionGUID="f0b4639f-2daa-4063-b1c6-7e695a0f2c57" CreationDate="2013-08-24T01:16:14.333" UserId="31260" Text="&quot;These articles are in opposition.&quot; + &quot;prove Jeff Atwood&quot; suggest that OP already knows the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Atwood trashed Norvig. If you know the answer, why ask? That means, _unclear that you're asking_, which was my close vote (&quot;opinion-based&quot; [shown to readers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/209295/revisions) is pure fake [indiscriminately attributed to me](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10922461#10922461) due to... shall we say, not too smart user interface).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a &quot;clean room&quot; case, I would shrug, edit this unfortunate phrase into something like &quot;These articles appear at odds with each other, how can I find a way out?&quot; and walk away knowing that _unclear_ doesn't apply anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, at the moment question has been [&quot;locked&quot; from such an edit](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;how's that?&quot;) by already submitted [FGITW](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/fastest-gun/info &quot;what's this&quot;) answer: &quot;You're missing the point...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides above, there are a few issues _induced_ by the phrase &quot;Is there a [friggin'](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2905/31260 &quot;Sprinkling &quot;Science&quot; on top of something does not automatically render it correct&quot;) scientific evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► Is-there part of the phrase shifts it into Yes/No territory with [all its known issues](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/183177/165773 &quot;discussed eg here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is not just a 'get an answer for me' place, it's &quot;Produce quality content that is useful for people who follow&quot;. In the case of your question, the second part is lacking...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;When asking a yes/no question there are one of two possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. You really want a yes/no answer. If this is the case, and you don't need anything else to answer your question then it means the answers will be inherently low quality. An answer that only says &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; (in addition to not meeting the minimum length) would be of very low quality. SO answers expect more.&#xD;&#xA;2. You don't actually want a yes/no answer, in which case your real question is not actually a yes/no question, and you're hoping that people will determine what your real question is. For example, someone might ask, &quot;Can I do [...]?&quot; when what they really meant to ask was, &quot;How can I do [...]?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Almost all yes/no questions I've seen fall into case 2; they should be edited into a question that isn't really asking for just a yes/no, it should be asking to explain something. (Even if it has a yes/no in there somewhere.) Note that just adding &quot;Explain&quot; at the end isn't really a good way to go about this; you should refactor the question on a more fundamental level...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► The part &quot;evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach&quot; sucks, well, because it blatantly misses the opposite: &quot;evidence to prove the Peter Norvig approach&quot;. This is yet another indication of question quality issues (happily ignored by reopeners).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the very least, I would rephrase to symmetric wording &quot;evidence to prove one of these approaches above another&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► Issues with &quot;scientific&quot; part are addressed in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I for one like the way these are presented in [this comment](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question#comment7317_2903 &quot;just discovered it's written by one of my favorite MSO authors&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Slapping a request for scientific literature onto the question... doesn't really make this question any better. It still is enormously vague and unanswerable, there is no objective scientific measure..., it remains a question that should be nuked on sight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above does not fully apply to this particular case because there is an answerable question obscured by scientificevidence garbage there, but it rather makes a point that it would be better to wipe out that scevidence crap outta there at all (if such an edit wouldn't invalidate existing answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last but not the least, even with all imaginary editing cleanup, the question would still remain average.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, resolving false contradictions can be fun, I sometimes enjoy [doing this it myself](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/193864/advice-on-rehabilitating-an-unpopular-meta-question-or-not#comment608984_193864 &quot;example&quot;) but it's often way too simple. And this case looks simple to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mysticial [would probably say](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/1262201#1262201), it's not _really advanced question_. Meh." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15945" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6140" RevisionGUID="813704e1-5520-4cf2-86ce-fa3a49ff6b7b" CreationDate="2013-08-24T07:22:51.447" UserId="31260" Comment="typos corrected" Text="&quot;These articles are in opposition.&quot; + &quot;prove Jeff Atwood&quot; suggest that OP already knows the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Atwood trashed Norvig. If you know the answer, why ask? That means, _unclear what you're asking_, which was my close vote (&quot;opinion-based&quot; [shown to readers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/209295/revisions) is pure fake [indiscriminately attributed to me](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10922461#10922461) due to... shall we say, not too smart user interface).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a &quot;clean room&quot; case, I would shrug, edit this unfortunate phrase into something like &quot;These articles appear at odds with each other, how can I find a way out?&quot; and walk away knowing that _unclear_ doesn't apply anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, at the moment question has been [&quot;locked&quot; from such an edit](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;how's that?&quot;) by already submitted [FGITW](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/fastest-gun/info &quot;what's this&quot;) answer: &quot;You're missing the point...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides above, there are a few issues _induced_ by the phrase &quot;Is there a [friggin'](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2905/31260 &quot;Sprinkling &quot;Science&quot; on top of something does not automatically render it correct&quot;) scientific evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► Is-there part of the phrase shifts it into Yes/No territory with [all its known issues](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/183177/165773 &quot;discussed eg here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is not just a 'get an answer for me' place, it's &quot;Produce quality content that is useful for people who follow&quot;. In the case of your question, the second part is lacking...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;When asking a yes/no question there are one of two possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. You really want a yes/no answer. If this is the case, and you don't need anything else to answer your question then it means the answers will be inherently low quality. An answer that only says &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; (in addition to not meeting the minimum length) would be of very low quality. SO answers expect more.&#xD;&#xA;2. You don't actually want a yes/no answer, in which case your real question is not actually a yes/no question, and you're hoping that people will determine what your real question is. For example, someone might ask, &quot;Can I do [...]?&quot; when what they really meant to ask was, &quot;How can I do [...]?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Almost all yes/no questions I've seen fall into case 2; they should be edited into a question that isn't really asking for just a yes/no, it should be asking to explain something. (Even if it has a yes/no in there somewhere.) Note that just adding &quot;Explain&quot; at the end isn't really a good way to go about this; you should refactor the question on a more fundamental level...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► The part &quot;evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach&quot; sucks, well, because it blatantly misses the opposite: &quot;evidence to prove the Peter Norvig approach&quot;. This is yet another indication of question quality issues (happily ignored by reopeners).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the very least, I would rephrase to symmetric wording &quot;evidence to prove one of these approaches above another&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► Issues with &quot;scientific&quot; part are addressed in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I for one like the way these are presented in [this comment](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question#comment7317_2903 &quot;just discovered it's written by one of my favorite MSO authors&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Slapping a request for scientific literature onto the question... doesn't really make this question any better. It still is enormously vague and unanswerable, there is no objective scientific measure..., it remains a question that should be nuked on sight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above does not fully apply to this particular case because there is an answerable question obscured by scientificevidence garbage there, but it rather makes a point that it would be better to wipe out that scevidence crap outta there at all (if such an edit wouldn't invalidate existing answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last but not the least, even with all imaginary editing cleanup, the question would still remain average.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, resolving false contradictions can be fun, I sometimes enjoy [doing this myself](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/193864/advice-on-rehabilitating-an-unpopular-meta-question-or-not#comment608984_193864 &quot;example&quot;) but it's often way too simple. And this case looks simple to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mysticial [would probably say](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/1262201#1262201), it's not _really advanced question_. Meh." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15946" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6140" RevisionGUID="e41f50c9-63f7-4c77-bc4b-b61c7d5e25ba" CreationDate="2013-08-24T08:15:15.880" UserId="31260" Comment="regarding question closure notice, I would rather prefer it to be shown rephrased to something that doesn't put words in my mouth" Text="&quot;These articles are in opposition.&quot; + &quot;prove Jeff Atwood&quot; suggest that OP already knows the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Atwood trashed Norvig. If you know the answer, why ask? That means, _unclear what you're asking_, which was my close vote (&quot;opinion-based&quot; [shown to readers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/209295/revisions) is pure fake [indiscriminately attributed to me](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10922461#10922461) due to... shall we say, not too smart user interface - a bit more on that below...).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a &quot;clean room&quot; case, I would shrug, edit this unfortunate phrase into something like &quot;These articles appear at odds with each other, how can I find a way out?&quot; and walk away knowing that _unclear_ doesn't apply anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, at the moment question has been [&quot;locked&quot; from such an edit](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;how's that?&quot;) by already submitted [FGITW](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/fastest-gun/info &quot;what's this&quot;) answer: &quot;You're missing the point...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides above, there are a few issues _induced_ by the phrase &quot;Is there a [friggin'](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2905/31260 &quot;Sprinkling &quot;Science&quot; on top of something does not automatically render it correct&quot;) scientific evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► Is-there part of the phrase shifts it into Yes/No territory with [all its known issues](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/183177/165773 &quot;discussed eg here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is not just a 'get an answer for me' place, it's &quot;Produce quality content that is useful for people who follow&quot;. In the case of your question, the second part is lacking...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;When asking a yes/no question there are one of two possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. You really want a yes/no answer. If this is the case, and you don't need anything else to answer your question then it means the answers will be inherently low quality. An answer that only says &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; (in addition to not meeting the minimum length) would be of very low quality. SO answers expect more.&#xD;&#xA;2. You don't actually want a yes/no answer, in which case your real question is not actually a yes/no question, and you're hoping that people will determine what your real question is. For example, someone might ask, &quot;Can I do [...]?&quot; when what they really meant to ask was, &quot;How can I do [...]?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Almost all yes/no questions I've seen fall into case 2; they should be edited into a question that isn't really asking for just a yes/no, it should be asking to explain something. (Even if it has a yes/no in there somewhere.) Note that just adding &quot;Explain&quot; at the end isn't really a good way to go about this; you should refactor the question on a more fundamental level...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► The part &quot;evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach&quot; sucks, well, because it blatantly misses the opposite: &quot;evidence to prove the Peter Norvig approach&quot;. This is yet another indication of question quality issues (happily ignored by reopeners).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the very least, I would rephrase to symmetric wording &quot;evidence to prove one of these approaches above another&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► Issues with &quot;scientific&quot; part are addressed in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I for one like the way these are presented in [this comment](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question#comment7317_2903 &quot;just discovered it's written by one of my favorite MSO authors&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Slapping a request for scientific literature onto the question... doesn't really make this question any better. It still is enormously vague and unanswerable, there is no objective scientific measure..., it remains a question that should be nuked on sight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above does not fully apply to this particular case because there is an answerable question obscured by scientificevidence garbage there, but it rather makes a point that it would be better to wipe out that scevidence crap outta there at all (if such an edit wouldn't invalidate existing answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last but not the least, even with all imaginary editing cleanup, the question would still remain average.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, resolving false contradictions can be fun, I sometimes enjoy [doing this myself](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/193864/advice-on-rehabilitating-an-unpopular-meta-question-or-not#comment608984_193864 &quot;example&quot;) but it's often way too simple. And this case looks simple to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mysticial [would probably say](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/1262201#1262201), it's not _really advanced question_. Meh.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Side note, regarding question closure notice, I would rather prefer it to be shown rephrased to something that doesn't put words in my mouth, like&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Post Closed by _MichaelT, Eric King, Yusubov, Jimmy Hoffa, gnat_ with &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot; reason given by &amp;lt;whoever _really_ picked that reason, no _gnat_ here please&amp;gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above is inspired by the approach I sometimes see implemented in off-topic closures [like eg this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/209339/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; put on hold as off-topic by _psr, MichaelT, FrustratedWithFormsDesigner, Eric King, MainMa_&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Questions about what language, technology, or project one should take up next are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in The Whiteboard, our chat room.&quot; – _psr, MichaelT, Eric King, MainMa_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In above example, _FrustratedWithFormsDesigner_ is lucky that notice doesn't stuff into his mouth words he didn't wrote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;If memory serves, there is even feature request for something like that at MSO, but SE team doesn't give a shit.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15947" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6141" RevisionGUID="8bfadb78-419a-409c-9837-8af0a0f3fcd0" CreationDate="2013-08-24T19:12:13.150" UserId="46515" Text="I'm going to attend a dojo interview by this week. But google doesn't help me to  find the list of dojo interview questions. I just wanted to know whether this site is a best place to ask interview questions, If not which stackexchange site is really intended for these kind of interview questions? &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15948" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6141" RevisionGUID="8bfadb78-419a-409c-9837-8af0a0f3fcd0" CreationDate="2013-08-24T19:12:13.150" UserId="46515" Text="Where can I ask about dojo interview questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15949" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6141" RevisionGUID="8bfadb78-419a-409c-9837-8af0a0f3fcd0" CreationDate="2013-08-24T19:12:13.150" UserId="46515" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15950" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6141" RevisionGUID="b43eebe3-5392-4b3e-b69c-35cc613e9ea3" CreationDate="2013-08-24T19:13:58.877" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|on-topic-definition|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15951" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6142" RevisionGUID="8d996edb-9455-46b6-b1e0-9849b2742182" CreationDate="2013-08-24T19:16:55.730" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Asking for a list of dojo or any other kind of interview questions would be off-topic or closed as &quot;too broad&quot; as list questions don't really work well with the Stack Exchange format. That said, [the Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/) is a good place to ask more focused questions about interviewing and their [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler) is a good place to ask more open-ended questions about interviewing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15952" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6140" RevisionGUID="b14162f4-8cba-4f9e-8610-e5188c88f7e7" CreationDate="2013-08-25T09:10:52.007" UserId="31260" Comment="extracted close reason attribution issue into http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/194593/165773" Text="&quot;These articles are in opposition.&quot; + &quot;prove Jeff Atwood&quot; suggest that OP already knows the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Atwood trashed Norvig. If you know the answer, why ask? That means, _unclear what you're asking_, which was my close vote (&quot;opinion-based&quot; [shown to readers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/209295/revisions) is pure fake [indiscriminately attributed to me](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10922461#10922461) due to... shall we say, not too smart user interface - a bit more on that below...).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a &quot;clean room&quot; case, I would shrug, edit this unfortunate phrase into something like &quot;These articles appear at odds with each other, how can I find a way out?&quot; and walk away knowing that _unclear_ doesn't apply anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, at the moment question has been [&quot;locked&quot; from such an edit](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;how's that?&quot;) by already submitted [FGITW](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/fastest-gun/info &quot;what's this&quot;) answer: &quot;You're missing the point...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides above, there are a few issues _induced_ by the phrase &quot;Is there a [friggin'](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2905/31260 &quot;Sprinkling &quot;Science&quot; on top of something does not automatically render it correct&quot;) scientific evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► Is-there part of the phrase shifts it into Yes/No territory with [all its known issues](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/183177/165773 &quot;discussed eg here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is not just a 'get an answer for me' place, it's &quot;Produce quality content that is useful for people who follow&quot;. In the case of your question, the second part is lacking...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;When asking a yes/no question there are one of two possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. You really want a yes/no answer. If this is the case, and you don't need anything else to answer your question then it means the answers will be inherently low quality. An answer that only says &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; (in addition to not meeting the minimum length) would be of very low quality. SO answers expect more.&#xD;&#xA;2. You don't actually want a yes/no answer, in which case your real question is not actually a yes/no question, and you're hoping that people will determine what your real question is. For example, someone might ask, &quot;Can I do [...]?&quot; when what they really meant to ask was, &quot;How can I do [...]?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Almost all yes/no questions I've seen fall into case 2; they should be edited into a question that isn't really asking for just a yes/no, it should be asking to explain something. (Even if it has a yes/no in there somewhere.) Note that just adding &quot;Explain&quot; at the end isn't really a good way to go about this; you should refactor the question on a more fundamental level...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► The part &quot;evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach&quot; sucks, well, because it blatantly misses the opposite: &quot;evidence to prove the Peter Norvig approach&quot;. This is yet another indication of question quality issues (happily ignored by reopeners).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the very least, I would rephrase to symmetric wording &quot;evidence to prove one of these approaches above another&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► Issues with &quot;scientific&quot; part are addressed in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I for one like the way these are presented in [this comment](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question#comment7317_2903 &quot;just discovered it's written by one of my favorite MSO authors&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Slapping a request for scientific literature onto the question... doesn't really make this question any better. It still is enormously vague and unanswerable, there is no objective scientific measure..., it remains a question that should be nuked on sight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above does not fully apply to this particular case because there is an answerable question obscured by scientificevidence garbage there, but it rather makes a point that it would be better to wipe out that scevidence crap outta there at all (if such an edit wouldn't invalidate existing answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last but not the least, even with all imaginary editing cleanup, the question would still remain average.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, resolving false contradictions can be fun, I sometimes enjoy [doing this myself](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/193864/advice-on-rehabilitating-an-unpopular-meta-question-or-not#comment608984_193864 &quot;example&quot;) but it's often way too simple. And this case looks simple to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mysticial [would probably say](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/1262201#1262201), it's not _really advanced question_. Meh.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note, regarding question closure notice, I would rather prefer it to be shown rephrased to something that doesn't put words in my mouth. There is a bunch of [feature requests](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/194593/165773 &quot;listed eg here&quot;) for something like that at MSO, but SE team doesn't give a shit.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15960" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6144" RevisionGUID="8c0611a7-b1f5-4133-b635-ccdbc4427e08" CreationDate="2013-08-26T20:35:08.600" UserId="855" Text="Most people are just better at giving advice and solving other people's problems than being able to do any type of introspection to identify their own problems. Programmers with a high reputation may work at places with a lot of resources: training, mentors, larger teams etc. I work alone, so I have to rely on SO more now than I use to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For those who don't ask any questions at all, I don't know what to tell you. Even if they knew the answer, it would be a great benefit to the community to ask and possibly answer themselves.  Maybe they feel others would think doing that is conceited?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15965" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6126" RevisionGUID="7960900b-2533-4784-a649-7a8ad9884442" CreationDate="2013-08-28T12:15:16.853" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/372693866778222592" />
  <row Id="15966" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6146" RevisionGUID="324a8ac3-53ff-4c26-9dc6-5ad4bc72dc47" CreationDate="2013-08-29T16:33:18.937" UserId="35693" Text="Short answer: Low-ranked users ask, and high-ranked users answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;High ranked users, almost by definition, are people who are knowledgeable about the topic. As such, they have many answers and few questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most (not all) of the questioners have limited knowledge of the topic, and have low ranks because of this. They ask questions to fill gaps in their knowledge. A few of them get a high reputation by asking many, and reasonably good questions, but that's rare.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm something of an exception to the rule insofar as I both ask and answer on most sites where I have high rep. I do find the SE rules for asking questions intimidating, and as a &quot;knowledgeable&quot; person, find it easier to answer than to ask. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's the people that don't &quot;know better&quot; that ask (and dare to) the majority of questions on the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15967" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6147" RevisionGUID="0b844dfa-467a-4d2e-8d07-993ccb206651" CreationDate="2013-08-31T12:57:27.490" UserId="99859" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/209867/do-programmers-need-quiet-do-they-get-it-re-subjective-stack-is-better-than&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In response to my question being placed on hold I would like to add:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question exhibits many of the relevant qualities of a good subjective question , including: A, B, D, E&#xD;&#xA;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Some subjective questions are allowed, but “subjective” does not mean “anything goes”. All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. What does that mean? Constructive subjective questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[a.] inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”&#xD;&#xA;[b.] tend to have long, not short, answers&#xD;&#xA;[c.] have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone&#xD;&#xA;[d.] invite sharing experiences over opinions&#xD;&#xA;[e.] insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references&#xD;&#xA;[f.] are more than just mindless social fun&#xD;&#xA;For more detail, read about our guidelines for great subjective questions and blog post about how real questions have answers.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;( http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the spirit of  this maxim: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;even a subjective Stack Overflow is better than the alternatives&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;( http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/ )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like the question reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Respondants, please review before posting:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Programmers site is constantly subjected to unreasonably subjective questions.  In this same scenario, when the forum topic tends towards this entropy, the clear minds of the Moms group came up with some simple , VERY simple guidelines for answering such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;The folks at Moms4mom owned up to the subjective issue and came up with a set of principles to create useful subjective discussions on parenting: the Back It Up! Principle. Back It Up! means that your answers must be based on either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Something that happened to you personally&#xD;&#xA;Something you can back up with a reference&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please try to follow this guideline before shooting off rapid fire replies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And remember the goal is to move forward with this maxim:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;even a subjective Stack Overflow is better than the alternatives&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;it is why we are all here!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15968" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6147" RevisionGUID="0b844dfa-467a-4d2e-8d07-993ccb206651" CreationDate="2013-08-31T12:57:27.490" UserId="99859" Text="Good subjective question on hold" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15969" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6147" RevisionGUID="0b844dfa-467a-4d2e-8d07-993ccb206651" CreationDate="2013-08-31T12:57:27.490" UserId="99859" Text="|discussion|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15970" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6148" RevisionGUID="3bb431ef-1d3b-4bd1-914a-9ef3b6e28b23" CreationDate="2013-08-31T14:42:49.297" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The question I cast the first close vote on was [revision 1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/209867/1) which reads:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do programmers need quiet? If they do why do so many places not have quiet and still seem to get something done?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do programmers get quiet? If no, WHY not.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; PLEASE, references and substantive answers based on notable sources please!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even with references, this can be the domain of opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider the following hypothetical answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer #1:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No programmers do not need quiet.  We run an agile shop and have found that it is necessary that programmers are able to interact with each other at all times.  Pair programing does not work if the pair isn't talking, and the open plan requires that there is a constant level of communication and talk.  Some programmers even prefer to have music going on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer #2:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The environment of programmers needs to be that of a library.  We expect the workplace to be quiet.  The only way to get the noise level to 'ok' as suggested in peopleware is to have silence as different programmers expect different levels of noise.  Those that want noise can use headphones.  Furthermore, we've abolished telephones in the work area so programmers aren't distracted by other phones ringing or people talking on them.  If you need to talk to someone on the phone, you go to a sound proof phone cube off in the corner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are countless more possible answers - each right and each fits within the constraint of the first question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question is asking about the multitude of reasons that people don't get quiet.  Why not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Programmers aren't valued where I work, we're on the second floor of a loading dock.&#xD;&#xA;* Programmers are mixed in with support people to encourage interaction, the phones are always going off&#xD;&#xA;* We have too many juniors for each senior and there are always 'tutoring' sessions going in in cubes.&#xD;&#xA;* When doing agile spikes I get distracted by other noises of people working&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, countless why answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers are opinions even if you ask them not to be." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15971" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6148" RevisionGUID="3f4a3a5b-6c4c-4e88-9477-875bee6c2140" CreationDate="2013-08-31T22:45:19.620" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Added some references" Text="The question I cast the first close vote on was [revision 1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/209867/1) which reads:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do programmers need quiet? If they do why do so many places not have quiet and still seem to get something done?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do programmers get quiet? If no, WHY not.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; PLEASE, references and substantive answers based on notable sources please!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even with references, this can be the domain of opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider the following hypothetical answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer #1:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No programmers do not need quiet.  We run an agile shop and have found that it is necessary that programmers are able to interact with each other at all times as described by many Agile consultants ([1](http://fugelsoitconsulting.com/2013/03/the-agile-workspace/) [2](http://blog.giffordconsulting.com/2006/10/agile-workspaces-microsofts-patterns.html) [3](http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-ideal-agile-workspace)) and can be seen in [this blog post](http://cmegroupideaexchange.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/building-an-agile-work-environment-part-deux/) demonstrating a typical agile work environment.  Pair programing does not work if the pair isn't talking, and the open plan requires that there is a constant level of communication and talk.  Some programmers even prefer to have music going on and we have a community driven local 'radio' station of streaming mp3s over the intercom system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer #2:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The environment of programmers needs to be that of a library.  We expect the workplace to be quiet.  The only way to get the noise level to 'ok' as suggested in peopleware is to have silence as different programmers expect different levels of noise (see Peopleware Chapter 8 - Effects of Workplace Table 8-1).  Those that want noise can use headphones.  Furthermore, we've abolished telephones in the work area so programmers aren't distracted by other phones ringing or people talking on them (see Peopleware Chapter 11 - The Telephone).  If you need to talk to someone on the phone, you go to a sound proof phone cube off in the corner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are countless more possible answers - each right and each fits within the constraint of the first question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question is asking about the multitude of reasons that people don't get quiet.  Why not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Programmers aren't valued where I work, we're on the second floor of a loading dock.&#xD;&#xA;* Programmers are mixed in with support people to encourage interaction, the phones are always going off&#xD;&#xA;* We have too many juniors for each senior and there are always 'tutoring' sessions going in in cubes.&#xD;&#xA;* When doing agile spikes I get distracted by other noises of people working&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, countless why answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers are opinions even if you ask them not to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few other factors to consider in this is that asking for refrences is not something that is on topic for P.SE.  I would suggest reading [Are requests for a specific reference material off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5176/are-requests-for-a-specific-reference-material-off-topic), [Why are “reference request” questions off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5299/why-are-reference-request-questions-off-topic), and [“Scientific Evidence” versions of each question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15972" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6148" RevisionGUID="1fe58b74-3b00-4b55-8d67-94b02b32053f" CreationDate="2013-08-31T23:10:25.127" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 621 characters in body" Text="The question I cast the first close vote on was [revision 1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/209867/1) which reads:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do programmers need quiet? If they do why do so many places not have quiet and still seem to get something done?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do programmers get quiet? If no, WHY not.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; PLEASE, references and substantive answers based on notable sources please!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even with references, this can be the domain of opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider the following hypothetical answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer #1:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No programmers do not need quiet.  We run an agile shop and have found that it is necessary that programmers are able to interact with each other at all times as described by many Agile consultants ([1](http://fugelsoitconsulting.com/2013/03/the-agile-workspace/) [2](http://blog.giffordconsulting.com/2006/10/agile-workspaces-microsofts-patterns.html) [3](http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-ideal-agile-workspace)) and can be seen in [this blog post](http://cmegroupideaexchange.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/building-an-agile-work-environment-part-deux/) demonstrating a typical agile work environment.  Pair programing does not work if the pair isn't talking, and the open plan requires that there is a constant level of communication and talk.  Some programmers even prefer to have music going on and we have a community driven local 'radio' station of streaming mp3s over the intercom system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer #2:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The environment of programmers needs to be that of a library.  We expect the workplace to be quiet.  The only way to get the noise level to 'ok' as suggested in peopleware is to have silence as different programmers expect different levels of noise (see Peopleware Chapter 8 - Effects of Workplace Table 8-1).  Those that want noise can use headphones.  Furthermore, we've abolished telephones in the work area so programmers aren't distracted by other phones ringing or people talking on them (see Peopleware Chapter 11 - The Telephone).  If you need to talk to someone on the phone, you go to a sound proof phone cube off in the corner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are countless more possible answers - each right and each fits within the constraint of the first question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question is asking about the multitude of reasons that people don't get quiet.  Why not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Programmers aren't valued where I work, we're on the second floor of a loading dock.&#xD;&#xA;* Programmers are mixed in with support people to encourage interaction, the phones are always going off&#xD;&#xA;* We have too many juniors for each senior and there are always 'tutoring' sessions going in in cubes.&#xD;&#xA;* When doing agile spikes I get distracted by other noises of people working&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, countless why answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers are opinions even if you ask them not to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few other factors to consider in this is that asking for refrences is not something that is on topic for P.SE.  I would suggest reading [Are requests for a specific reference material off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5176/are-requests-for-a-specific-reference-material-off-topic), [Why are “reference request” questions off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5299/why-are-reference-request-questions-off-topic), and [“Scientific Evidence” versions of each question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *really* want the studies aspect, it could get closed as a dup of [Studies on how noise affects productivity of programmers [closed]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132952/studies-on-how-noise-affects-productivity-of-programmers) and [Is there any scholarly research on the detrimental effects of a noisy workplace on productivity? [closed]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56220/is-there-any-scholarly-research-on-the-detrimental-effects-of-a-noisy-workplace).  If I need to point out again, the top answer in each of those two questions is essentially &quot;Read Peopleware&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15973" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6149" RevisionGUID="456fedc3-b1c2-436b-a981-64ca46c38757" CreationDate="2013-09-01T03:15:22.140" UserId="99859" Text="My question was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was looking for knowledgable, educated opinion backed up references, studies and facts.  I'm still not clear how that is a bad subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I will draw one conclusion from this process, one that others might take note of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it appears that nobody can **answer the question** then the question will be deemed subjective and removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whether the question is subjective or not." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15974" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6148" RevisionGUID="5fe7acfb-aa42-4750-b592-9cdb09a91627" CreationDate="2013-09-01T14:05:23.760" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 425 characters in body" Text="The question I cast the first close vote on was [revision 1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/209867/1) which reads:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do programmers need quiet? If they do why do so many places not have quiet and still seem to get something done?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do programmers get quiet? If no, WHY not.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; PLEASE, references and substantive answers based on notable sources please!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even with references, this can be the domain of opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider the following hypothetical answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer #1:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No programmers do not need quiet.  We run an agile shop and have found that it is necessary that programmers are able to interact with each other at all times as described by many Agile consultants ([1](http://fugelsoitconsulting.com/2013/03/the-agile-workspace/) [2](http://blog.giffordconsulting.com/2006/10/agile-workspaces-microsofts-patterns.html) [3](http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-ideal-agile-workspace)) and can be seen in [this blog post](http://cmegroupideaexchange.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/building-an-agile-work-environment-part-deux/) demonstrating a typical agile work environment.  Pair programing does not work if the pair isn't talking, and the open plan requires that there is a constant level of communication and talk.  Some programmers even prefer to have music going on and we have a community driven local 'radio' station of streaming mp3s over the intercom system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer #2:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The environment of programmers needs to be that of a library.  We expect the workplace to be quiet.  The only way to get the noise level to 'ok' as suggested in peopleware is to have silence as different programmers expect different levels of noise (see Peopleware Chapter 8 - Effects of Workplace Table 8-1).  Those that want noise can use headphones.  Furthermore, we've abolished telephones in the work area so programmers aren't distracted by other phones ringing or people talking on them (see Peopleware Chapter 11 - The Telephone).  If you need to talk to someone on the phone, you go to a sound proof phone cube off in the corner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are countless more possible answers - each right and each fits within the constraint of the first question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question is asking about the multitude of reasons that people don't get quiet.  Why not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Programmers aren't valued where I work, we're on the second floor of a loading dock.&#xD;&#xA;* Programmers are mixed in with support people to encourage interaction, the phones are always going off&#xD;&#xA;* We have too many juniors for each senior and there are always 'tutoring' sessions going in in cubes.&#xD;&#xA;* When doing agile spikes I get distracted by other noises of people working&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, countless why answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers are opinions even if you ask them not to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few other factors to consider in this is that asking for refrences is not something that is on topic for P.SE.  I would suggest reading [Are requests for a specific reference material off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5176/are-requests-for-a-specific-reference-material-off-topic), [Why are “reference request” questions off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5299/why-are-reference-request-questions-off-topic), and [“Scientific Evidence” versions of each question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *really* want the studies aspect, it could get closed as a dup of [Studies on how noise affects productivity of programmers [closed]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132952/studies-on-how-noise-affects-productivity-of-programmers) and [Is there any scholarly research on the detrimental effects of a noisy workplace on productivity? [closed]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56220/is-there-any-scholarly-research-on-the-detrimental-effects-of-a-noisy-workplace).  If I need to point out again, the top answer in each of those two questions is essentially &quot;Read Peopleware&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also a question on skeptics.SE - [What study showed that using headphones to drown out office noise is detrimental?](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7517/what-study-showed-that-using-headphones-to-drown-out-office-noise-is-detrimental) which has one answer that starts out:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The study was described in Tom DeMarco's excellent book &quot;Peopleware.&quot; I think it was said to be done at Cornell University." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15975" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5991" RevisionGUID="59380e33-d9e2-4392-b744-174998fd736c" CreationDate="2013-09-02T14:03:28.270" UserId="31260" Comment="new lock type += http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/182572/165773 &quot;announced here&quot;" Text="We have a [new lock type](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/182572/165773 &quot;announced here&quot;) that can be added to questions that are not strictly on topic or constructive but have, because they have been edited and expanded, become a valuable resource.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question that it's been applied to is this one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This lock is best applied to a question that has a single CW answer that covers all the points. At the moment that doesn't apply to this question, so if people could take one of the answers and edit it into the accepted answer then flag that, now redundant, answer for moderator deletion it will make the task of cleaning it up that much easier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there are any other questions you think this lock would apply too, flag those as well. It doesn't matter if the question is closed or not - we can sort that out. Starting the ball rolling by editing the best answer would be useful too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15976" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6150" RevisionGUID="75a9a9ad-7b24-4a4b-b598-5de1d57c25c9" CreationDate="2013-09-02T16:47:39.123" UserId="855" Text="You could have asked, &quot;How do you determine the optimum work environment for programmers?&quot; When there is contradictory or limited research, professional opinions are the next best thing and I don't consider that as purely subjective. Having research is great, but will those finding generalize to other programmers, but more importantly, how does it help me/my team?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does this only apply to programming? In many ways, it doesn't. What about those that use agile methods? How many other jobs are given a set of tasks, that they're suppose to complete in a short period of time (one to three weeks) with as little distraction as possible (because their Scrum Master doesn't let anyone give them something more/else to do) on a continuous basis? Their time is more structured and everyone should know when they are available and when they are not. Most other professions that require creativity either interupt people on an ad hoc basis or they're something like a writer who is usually left along for long periods of time. Some programming teams have formalized this process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, if anyone takes the attitude that programming is a &quot;team sport&quot; so we need lots of open and continuous verbal communication, the research on independent programmers doesn't generalize. The ones who prefer to take their best person and put her on a tough problem would benefit from a private office.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The ideal solution would be able to provide the environment for your programmer(s) that works best for them. There are those who will claim they can't stand too much quiet just like the student who studies better with the TV on, but if given the chance to work without distraction, may actually improve their productivity, but this assumes increasing productivity is more important than the TV show, music, or chatting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some programmers work for comapanies in non-software industries and are forced to deal with those norms. Companies with hierarchical organizational structures are not going to give the programmers the corner office. Sales people who are on the phone a lot may not need quiet around them, but can be a huge distractor to everyone else. Maybe the best thing here is to take the lesser of two evils and put the programmer with somewhat noisy people (and hinder their productivity) instead of making everyone suffer the loud and continuous phone conversations." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15977" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6151" RevisionGUID="59678cb6-e56e-4c2e-b8ee-824b0bfc5536" CreationDate="2013-09-03T17:59:09.300" UserId="35693" Text="As written, the question doesn't seem relevant to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A better wording might be, &quot;Do studies show that programmers program better when it is quiet than when it is not? Have managements acted accordingly?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, you are putting &quot;quiet&quot; in the category of &quot;best practices,&quot; an objective goal, as opposed to a subjective &quot;need&quot; by programmers. And by asking for &quot;studies,&quot; you are soliciting expert opinion (good subjective), not ordinary opinion (bad subjective)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15978" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6152" RevisionGUID="edb373ad-1564-436e-8cd3-4e4319134c0d" CreationDate="2013-09-05T00:40:03.400" UserId="29664" Text="I tried to ask a question on Stackoverflow and I really pissed someone off there. So I re-asked here on programmers, but pissed off some another people because I tried to delete my duplicate question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today when I login and find my question closed (again).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/210381/do-analytics-services-build-their-own-database-or-using-existing-ones&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So may I ask, is my question really opinion based? (Compared to other questions here on programmers.stackexchange.com)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or am I just pissed of someone so they are really want my question on hold so no one could answer it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15979" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6152" RevisionGUID="edb373ad-1564-436e-8cd3-4e4319134c0d" CreationDate="2013-09-05T00:40:03.400" UserId="29664" Text="Is my question really that bad or I just pissed off someone?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15980" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6152" RevisionGUID="edb373ad-1564-436e-8cd3-4e4319134c0d" CreationDate="2013-09-05T00:40:03.400" UserId="29664" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15981" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6153" RevisionGUID="3e261e29-b4ef-4198-83d8-9b44d377dc9e" CreationDate="2013-09-05T01:42:57.043" UserId="25476" Text="I looked into your question closure and do not see any evidence that the users you mentioned are treating you unfairly on Programmers.  I am not a moderator on StackOverflow and do not have high enough reputation there to see certain information so I can't speak for their behaviour on that site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We take rudeness and personal attacks very seriously and do not tolerate them from any user so we will always look into allegations like this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reviewing the question closure I am in agreement with the community.  You provided many details about your design and your goals which is great, however it seems to be a very complex design and the question isn't clear.  Your question boils down to a request for design review which isn't the kind of question we look for on StackExchange.  It is a question that really deserves a good long discussion with back and forth commentary.  The Q&amp;A format of StackExchange doesn't lend itself to this well so we generally put these on hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suggest looking into our Chat feature on StackExchange and see if anybody would like to help review your design, or if you have a specific problem or query about your design proposal then try editing your question to narrow the focus so we can look into reopening the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15982" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6154" RevisionGUID="161e08f2-bb10-4c1a-9e20-46fb0c95b468" CreationDate="2013-09-05T07:38:06.913" UserId="38200" Text="Some stack exchange sites (cs, math, physics etc.) have MathJAX support. Now on programmers.se and stack overflow there is less need for mathematical formulae, but they appear, most often when discussing complexities or algorithms that involve some calculation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I usually help myself with some HTML markup (like &quot;O(&lt;i&gt;n&lt;/i&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;)&quot; (`O(&lt;i&gt;n&lt;/i&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;)`), but MathJAX would make it easier. Plus the HTML does not work in comment; all one can resort to there is unicode math (&quot;O(n²)&quot;, `O(n²)`) which requires copy&amp;paste from something that can type it, because browser can't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hm, though we'd need definition for `$\O$`, because otherwise it is `$\mathrm{O}(n^2)$`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same applies to Stack Overflow. Algorithms are regularly discussed on both Programmers.SE and Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15983" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6154" RevisionGUID="161e08f2-bb10-4c1a-9e20-46fb0c95b468" CreationDate="2013-09-05T07:38:06.913" UserId="38200" Text="Allow using MathJAX?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15984" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6154" RevisionGUID="161e08f2-bb10-4c1a-9e20-46fb0c95b468" CreationDate="2013-09-05T07:38:06.913" UserId="38200" Text="|discussion|feature-request|formatting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15985" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6118" RevisionGUID="e9ff5e04-ec2b-4125-8143-bf2c7f5b92f8" CreationDate="2013-09-05T12:15:40.867" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/375593070945128448" />
  <row Id="15986" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6155" RevisionGUID="73a71718-1dcf-46f8-be85-e4042fe6ae7e" CreationDate="2013-09-05T20:22:44.693" UserId="1043" Text="On Stack Overflow, the [tag:asp] tag was made a synonym of [tag:asp-classic] since that is generally what is meant. Looking over the 8 that are tagged here as [tag:asp] shows a similar pattern of usage. (though I should add that most weeks we still end up with a dozen or so that meant asp.net...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was done as most of the time [tag:asp] was being used by people who were unaware that there were two different technologies that that tag was referring to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest making a similar change here and removing all the [tag:asp] and changing to [tag:asp-classic] or [tag:asp.net] as appropriate. And maybe borrowing the text from the tag wiki for [tag:asp-classic] and [tag:asp.net].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd fix it, but I'm a little short on the rep requirement..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15987" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6155" RevisionGUID="73a71718-1dcf-46f8-be85-e4042fe6ae7e" CreationDate="2013-09-05T20:22:44.693" UserId="1043" Text="Remove the [asp] tag or link the [asp] tag to either [asp-classic] or [asp.net]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15988" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6155" RevisionGUID="73a71718-1dcf-46f8-be85-e4042fe6ae7e" CreationDate="2013-09-05T20:22:44.693" UserId="1043" Text="|discussion|tag-synonyms|retag-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15989" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6134" RevisionGUID="f83d18cd-6fff-4492-b591-c2c5937eb7c7" CreationDate="2013-09-06T09:15:41.853" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/375910163418718208" />
  <row Id="15990" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6156" RevisionGUID="203e9556-38c1-47de-9268-395ec0f951e7" CreationDate="2013-09-06T17:59:05.137" UserId="4942" Text="Is there a better way to ask this question, &quot;[Validating need for documentation][1]&quot; - since this seems like a question that has an answer, but then again, I might be wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've attempted to state the question clearly, give examples, provide context, and answer comments - but I get the feeling the question could be improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any suggestions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/210664/validating-need-for-documentation?noredirect=1#comment415051_210664" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15991" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6156" RevisionGUID="203e9556-38c1-47de-9268-395ec0f951e7" CreationDate="2013-09-06T17:59:05.137" UserId="4942" Text="Are there ways this question might be improved so that it gets a good answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15992" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6156" RevisionGUID="203e9556-38c1-47de-9268-395ec0f951e7" CreationDate="2013-09-06T17:59:05.137" UserId="4942" Text="|discussion|specific-question|improvement|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15993" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6155" RevisionGUID="af7aad48-e262-4bd2-820f-23279cca940e" CreationDate="2013-09-06T21:27:01.107" UserId="1043" Comment="added 440 characters in body" Text="On Stack Overflow, the [tag:asp] tag was made a synonym of [tag:asp-classic] since that is generally what is meant. Looking over the 8 that &lt;s&gt;are&lt;/s&gt; were tagged here as [tag:asp] shows a similar pattern of usage. (though I should add that most weeks we still end up with a dozen or so that meant asp.net...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was done as most of the time [tag:asp] was being used by people who were unaware that there were two different technologies that that tag was referring to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's some of the related discussion from the main Meta.SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Classic Re-Tag Discussion on some good ole ASP (Classic)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/26870/25163)&#xD;&#xA;* [Let's Ban the [ASP] Tag on StackOverflow!](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/84175/25163)&#xD;&#xA;* [Where'd the [asp] tag go, and why did it come back?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/119037/25163)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest making a similar change here and removing all the [tag:asp] and changing to [tag:asp-classic] or [tag:asp.net] as appropriate. And maybe borrowing the text from the tag wiki for [tag:asp-classic] and [tag:asp.net].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd fix it, but I'm a little short on the rep requirement... I did some suggested edits/flags for the 6 that were there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15994" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6157" RevisionGUID="f71341ba-1b1f-43b9-a7bb-a3aa222db56f" CreationDate="2013-09-07T17:35:21.190" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="So, the cleanup has been done.  There are no questions tagged as asp.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Let's Ban the [ASP] Tag on StackOverflow!](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/112317/213963) the next step would appear to be making it a tag synonym.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From Stack Overflow a screen shot of http://stackoverflow.com/tags/synonyms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is probably what we should have too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way to do this would be to go to the [tag:asp-classic] tag and navigate to synonyms - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/asp-classic/synonyms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The requirements for suggesting and voting on this are:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Users with more than 2500 reputation and a total answer score of 5 or more on the tag, can suggest tag synonyms. Users with a total answer score (total upvotes minus total downvotes) of 5 or more on the tag, can vote for tag synonyms. Suggestions will be automatically approved when they reach a score of 4, and automatically deleted when they reach a score of -2.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since I've got nothing in the asp tag for answers or questions, I can't vote on this one (or suggest it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And asp-classic its not that highly asked of a question area - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/asp-classic/topusers so there aren't many who do have the necessary rep to cast votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its probably up to a mod to do this, if it is modable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/eZuvN.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15995" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6158" RevisionGUID="4c718f92-a7eb-42b8-afdf-8879d9546464" CreationDate="2013-09-09T21:01:39.137" UserId="35276" Text="The [tag:greenfield] tag has a wiki excerpt right now that's a direct copy and paste from Wikipedia. I would correct it with a citation but even then, it's just a single sentence and feels kind of low quality in that way. I can't queue an edit to simple delete the entire excerpt so I'm asking someone with privileges either do that or at least fix it somehow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15996" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6158" RevisionGUID="4c718f92-a7eb-42b8-afdf-8879d9546464" CreationDate="2013-09-09T21:01:39.137" UserId="35276" Text="greenfield tag plagiarism" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15997" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6158" RevisionGUID="4c718f92-a7eb-42b8-afdf-8879d9546464" CreationDate="2013-09-09T21:01:39.137" UserId="35276" Text="|feature-request|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15998" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6159" RevisionGUID="7eb2c36c-c735-4c9a-8229-c2163f5c5c1a" CreationDate="2013-09-09T21:03:35.597" UserId="47" Text="I've rolled it back to being empty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag excerpts can't contain any markdown so adding a citation isn't really sensible." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15999" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6158" RevisionGUID="eb3bbc7f-d8ae-47be-ae57-ea3df2627c92" CreationDate="2013-09-09T21:03:45.927" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16000" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6160" RevisionGUID="4f59d608-876c-43bb-9e90-f1548ccad2ae" CreationDate="2013-09-09T21:06:35.703" UserId="3965" Text="I just noticed that http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50819/is-there-a-measure-of-code-rot/50821#50821, which was created in February 2011 was closed two weeks ago as a duplicate of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135993/how-can-i-quantify-the-amount-of-technical-debt-that-exists-in-a-project, which is a year younger.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Putting aside for a moment my annoyance at people seemingly randomly closing old inactive questions like that, what earthly purpose does it serve to close an older question as a duplicate of a newer one?  If anything, it should be the other way around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61558/turn-away-a-bug-if-no-reproducible-test-case-exists, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45230/do-programmers-at-non-software-companies-need-the-same-things-as-at-software-com, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61655/how-do-you-know-youre-writing-good-code, and http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12439/code-smell-inheritance-abuse?lq=1 are other examples.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16001" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6160" RevisionGUID="4f59d608-876c-43bb-9e90-f1548ccad2ae" CreationDate="2013-09-09T21:06:35.703" UserId="3965" Text="Closing a two year old question as a duplicate of a one year old question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16002" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6160" RevisionGUID="4f59d608-876c-43bb-9e90-f1548ccad2ae" CreationDate="2013-09-09T21:06:35.703" UserId="3965" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16003" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6161" RevisionGUID="245fb8f7-775c-4924-821a-ae040efaadbb" CreationDate="2013-09-09T21:08:56.997" UserId="47" Text="While in general the newer question should be closed as a duplicate of the older, there are occasions when the new question is &quot;better&quot; (in some way):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It expresses the problem more succinctly.&#xD;&#xA;* There's a better answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In these cases it's perfectly acceptable for the older question to be closed as a duplicate of the newer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16004" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6162" RevisionGUID="1889b732-6668-4186-8848-7a4820b981bd" CreationDate="2013-09-09T21:57:48.347" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="(wrote this as an answer, it got a little too long for a comment)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the examples given, compare the following stats:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 1 ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50819/is-there-a-measure-of-code-rot](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50819/is-there-a-measure-of-code-rot)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * Viewed 860 times&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 17 / 5 favorites&#xD;&#xA;    * 5 answers (accepted answer rep 7)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135993/how-can-i-quantify-the-amount-of-technical-debt-that-exists-in-a-project](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135993/how-can-i-quantify-the-amount-of-technical-debt-that-exists-in-a-project)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 1 year ago&#xD;&#xA;    * Viewed 1868 times&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 31 / 14 favorites&#xD;&#xA;    * 10 answers (accepted answer rep 24)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 2 ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61558/turn-away-a-bug-if-no-reproducible-test-case-exists](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61558/turn-away-a-bug-if-no-reproducible-test-case-exists)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 1073 views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 10 / 2 favorites&#xD;&#xA;    * 11 answers / Accepted answer 17 rep&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102819/how-do-i-isolate-difficult-to-reproduce-bugs](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102819/how-do-i-isolate-difficult-to-reproduce-bugs)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 494 views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 12 / 6 favorites&#xD;&#xA;    * 4 answers / Accepted answer 24 rep&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This looks to be the right relationship.  While the views is lower, the rep is higher.  The answer appears to be more authoritative and less opinionated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 3 ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45230/do-programmers-at-non-software-companies-need-the-same-things-as-at-software-com](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45230/do-programmers-at-non-software-companies-need-the-same-things-as-at-software-com)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 352 views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 5 / no favs&#xD;&#xA;    * 4 answers, no accepted answer, top answer 11 rep&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96729/whats-the-difference-between-working-at-a-software-company-and-a-company-whose](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96729/whats-the-difference-between-working-at-a-software-company-and-a-company-whose)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 2210 views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 22 / 6 favs&#xD;&#xA;    * 10 answers, accepted answer 32 rep&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 4 ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61655/how-do-you-know-youre-writing-good-code](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61655/how-do-you-know-youre-writing-good-code)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 13k views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 191 / 95 favs&#xD;&#xA;    * 31 answers, accepted answer 240 rep&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141005/how-would-you-know-if-youve-written-readable-and-easily-maintainable-code](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141005/how-would-you-know-if-youve-written-readable-and-easily-maintainable-code)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 1 year ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 5964 views&#xD;&#xA;    * 76 rep / 26 favs&#xD;&#xA;    * 21 answers, accepted answer 116 rep&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one you might be able to argue a reversal on... though I do have a slight preference for the answers in the 'master' over the 'dup'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 5 ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12439/code-smell-inheritance-abuse](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12439/code-smell-inheritance-abuse)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 2673 views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 34 / 10 favorites&#xD;&#xA;    * 10 answers, no accepted, top answer rep 31&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65179/where-does-this-concept-of-favor-composition-over-inheritance-come-from](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65179/where-does-this-concept-of-favor-composition-over-inheritance-come-from)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 12k views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 57 / 33 favorites&#xD;&#xA;    * 16 answers, accepted answer rep 65&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging by these metrics, the dup relationship seems to be reasonable as those are the ones that people have voted up and find when looking for that problem more often.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there any specific ones were there is some reason why the relationship should be reversed from what they currently are?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16005" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6162" RevisionGUID="2973843f-e417-49be-b703-ff4d3b8eb78d" CreationDate="2013-09-09T22:05:21.170" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 575 characters in body" Text="(wrote this as an answer, it got a little too long for a comment)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the examples given, compare the following stats:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 1 ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50819/is-there-a-measure-of-code-rot](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50819/is-there-a-measure-of-code-rot)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * Viewed 860 times&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 17 / 5 favorites&#xD;&#xA;    * 5 answers (accepted answer rep 7)&#xD;&#xA;    * Active 15 days ago (duped August 26)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135993/how-can-i-quantify-the-amount-of-technical-debt-that-exists-in-a-project](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135993/how-can-i-quantify-the-amount-of-technical-debt-that-exists-in-a-project)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 1 year ago&#xD;&#xA;    * Viewed 1868 times&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 31 / 14 favorites&#xD;&#xA;    * 10 answers (accepted answer rep 24)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 2 ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61558/turn-away-a-bug-if-no-reproducible-test-case-exists](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61558/turn-away-a-bug-if-no-reproducible-test-case-exists)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 1073 views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 10 / 2 favorites&#xD;&#xA;    * 11 answers / Accepted answer 17 rep&#xD;&#xA;    * Active 3 months ago (closed June 14th)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102819/how-do-i-isolate-difficult-to-reproduce-bugs](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102819/how-do-i-isolate-difficult-to-reproduce-bugs)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 494 views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 12 / 6 favorites&#xD;&#xA;    * 4 answers / Accepted answer 24 rep&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This looks to be the right relationship.  While the views is lower, the rep is higher.  The answer appears to be more authoritative and less opinionated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 3 ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45230/do-programmers-at-non-software-companies-need-the-same-things-as-at-software-com](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45230/do-programmers-at-non-software-companies-need-the-same-things-as-at-software-com)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 352 views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 5 / no favs&#xD;&#xA;    * 4 answers, no accepted answer, top answer 11 rep&#xD;&#xA;    * Active 2 years ago (Closed April 13th)&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96729/whats-the-difference-between-working-at-a-software-company-and-a-company-whose](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96729/whats-the-difference-between-working-at-a-software-company-and-a-company-whose)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 2210 views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 22 / 6 favs&#xD;&#xA;    * 10 answers, accepted answer 32 rep&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 4 ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61655/how-do-you-know-youre-writing-good-code](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61655/how-do-you-know-youre-writing-good-code)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 13k views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 191 / 95 favs&#xD;&#xA;    * 31 answers, accepted answer 240 rep&#xD;&#xA;    * Active 1 year ago (closed March 27th)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141005/how-would-you-know-if-youve-written-readable-and-easily-maintainable-code](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141005/how-would-you-know-if-youve-written-readable-and-easily-maintainable-code)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 1 year ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 5964 views&#xD;&#xA;    * 76 rep / 26 favs&#xD;&#xA;    * 21 answers, accepted answer 116 rep&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one you might be able to argue a reversal on... though I do have a slight preference for the answers in the 'master' over the 'dup'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 5 ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12439/code-smell-inheritance-abuse](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12439/code-smell-inheritance-abuse)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 2673 views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 34 / 10 favorites&#xD;&#xA;    * 10 answers, no accepted, top answer rep 31&#xD;&#xA;    * Active 8 months ago (Closed June 29th)&#xD;&#xA;* [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65179/where-does-this-concept-of-favor-composition-over-inheritance-come-from](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65179/where-does-this-concept-of-favor-composition-over-inheritance-come-from)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 12k views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 57 / 33 favorites&#xD;&#xA;    * 16 answers, accepted answer rep 65&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging by these metrics, the dup relationship seems to be reasonable as those are the ones that people have voted up and find when looking for that problem more often.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there any specific ones were there is some reason why the relationship should be reversed from what they currently are?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would also contend the &quot;people seemingly randomly closing old inactive questions&quot; -- they are not all inactive (some activated just before their closure).  Furthermore, inactive questions (especialy popular ones) often attract attention of new, well meaning new users who want to add their $0.02 in this forum.  Yes, I know its not a forum." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16006" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6163" RevisionGUID="065af585-f308-4287-bff6-2dc766eaccd6" CreationDate="2013-09-10T02:26:59.143" UserId="100397" Text="It was the first paragraph that caught my attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought this was okay, could have been a little more specific about what documentation was being asked for, but it sounded good:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I once was on a project where a non-tech manager had the team spending&#xD;&#xA;&gt; half of every hour documenting what they just did so that someone with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; zero understanding of the tech would be able to understand the tech&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it was this this caught my attention. It appeared that you had made up your mind what you wanted to hear as an answer. To me it would have been much better to hear why you felt the time-wasting documentation was distracting you from your work or let everyone come to their own conclusions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Personally, I thought this was a huge waste, but there was no way to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; validate this was or was not waste." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16007" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6155" RevisionGUID="2d5179ab-3728-40f7-839d-d29ebf349bdc" CreationDate="2013-09-10T03:15:48.447" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/377269146750582785" />
  <row Id="16008" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6163" RevisionGUID="efc0bc67-ea16-4f02-b348-32ead2d90331" CreationDate="2013-09-10T03:43:36.877" UserId="100397" Comment="edited body" Text="It was the first paragraph that caught my attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought this was okay, could have been a little more specific about what documentation was being asked for, but it sounded good:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I once was on a project where a non-tech manager had the team spending&#xD;&#xA;&gt; half of every hour documenting what they just did so that someone with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; zero understanding of the tech would be able to understand the tech&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it was this that caught my attention. It appeared that you had made up your mind what you wanted to hear as an answer. To me it would have been much better to hear why you felt the time-wasting documentation was distracting you from your work or let everyone come to their own conclusions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Personally, I thought this was a huge waste, but there was no way to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; validate this was or was not waste." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16009" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6164" RevisionGUID="662e0d5a-7853-4ab3-b59a-f9e619cd7777" CreationDate="2013-09-11T13:07:21.797" UserId="81106" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/193415/best-practices-for-sharing-tiny-snippets-of-code-across-projects was closed 6 months after being posted. It was marked as a duplicate to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/175066/how-to-promote-code-reuse-and-documentation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm a heavy user of many stack exchange sites and I feel that this question should not be closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The questions are different, and require different answers. The only similarity is they ask about code reuse - a very broad topic. My question is quite specific.&#xD;&#xA; - The old question hasn't got the same quality of answers, upvotes, attention, discussion.&#xD;&#xA; - The old question hasn't got a single accepted or highly upvoted answer.&#xD;&#xA; - **More importantly:** There are still possible answers and suggestions that could be posted as answers to my question that still have not been posted. I won't write them here but since asking the question I've come across of a number of other answers/solutions that would be valuable to anyone reading the question.&#xD;&#xA; - Before being fully closed, I edited in and commented my case for not being closed. This was ignored.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't usually bother to write about this in meta but the question I asked is something I have and will always come back to as an important problem to look at. Closing the question without much thought throttles the discussion and prohibits further contributions by either myself or other users." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16010" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6164" RevisionGUID="662e0d5a-7853-4ab3-b59a-f9e619cd7777" CreationDate="2013-09-11T13:07:21.797" UserId="81106" Text="My question was closed as a duplicate of a vaguely related question without good answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16011" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6164" RevisionGUID="662e0d5a-7853-4ab3-b59a-f9e619cd7777" CreationDate="2013-09-11T13:07:21.797" UserId="81106" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16012" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6165" RevisionGUID="702d0248-d926-4534-896f-8585cd7e6b92" CreationDate="2013-09-11T16:01:50.853" UserId="99859" Text="This is the kind of thing I was looking for.  Does anyone have **expert** commentary or **directly related (by the same researcher perhaps)** newer or more recent studies or references?  And if so, can You offer your **expert opinion, interpretation, and analysis** on that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Gloria] Mark ... ... had been so constantly distracted that she would have accomplished only a fraction of what she set out to do. &quot;Madness,&quot; she thought.  ... [Mark] studies how high-tech devices affect our behavior, so she was able to do more than complain: she set out to measure precisely how nuts we've all become. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/magazine/16guru.html?_r=0&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16013" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6155" RevisionGUID="b89534f2-803b-4661-a50c-507059cd7007" CreationDate="2013-09-11T16:31:48.983" UserId="1043" Comment="We've moved past the &quot;discussion&quot; phase into more of a support request." Text="|support|tag-synonyms|retag-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16014" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="191197d4-55fd-4c82-8ae0-248aa5de41b5" CreationDate="2013-09-11T17:49:05.317" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="It is September once again (today is the [7316](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+days+since+September+1%2C+1993)&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; day of [September](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)), and once again students are asking their homework problems on Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We start seeing questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A car dealer has 10 salespersons. Each salesperson keeps track of the number of cars sold each month and reports it to the management at the end of the month. The management keeps the data in a file and assigns a number, 1 to 10, to each salesperson....&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Write the code to store the number of cars sold by each salesperson in the array cars, output the total numbers of cars sold at the end each month, and output the salesperson number selling the maximum number of cars. (Assume that data is in the file cars.dat, and that this file has been opened using the ifstream variable inFile.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to understand is that Stack Overflow, and especially Programmers.SE are not code writing services.  You don't just throw some a question in there with something of the form &quot;give me the codez&quot; into the text area and hope that someone will &lt;s&gt;answer the question&lt;/s&gt; do your homework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several things to consider as to why this is bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The typical class builds upon previous experiences. The compiler class has machine language and data structures as prerequisites because if you don't understand those, you will be hopelessly lost in the class and not even able to understand the lectures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets assume you do understand the code (the person answering the question did a good job explaining it)... the curriculum is designed to take you from `A` to `Z` with 24 steps between.  As industry programmers we often take short cuts and don't need say, steps `ijkl` to do something.  Learning from us, you'll never get these steps. *However* you may find in your next assignment or class that understanding `jk` is assumed and critical to the understanding of some other concepts.  Just because we don't need `ijkl` to do it doesn't mean it isn't understood.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is an anecdote of the machine programming class I took years ago which used [SPIM](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html) - a MIPS simulator.  One of the students when stuck with a program discovered a little used [DECStation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECstation) off on the side of the lab that had gcc on it.  Instead of writing the assignment (factorial) by hand with the concepts we had access to (we were supposed to write a recursive function to learn about the stack and frame pointer), he wrote it in C, compiled it with gcc -S and got out a some MIPS assembly source that he then handed in.  However, the compiler, recognizing an optimization converted the entire code from recursive subroutine into a for loop and used other things we wouldn't hear mentioned until a few weeks later.  He got a '0' on that homework and had trouble with the next one (that assumed you already understood the frame pointer and stack pointer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It cheats *you* of the education you are paying to get.  Copy and paste takes **no** skill. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It cheats *us* of good interview candidates.  It is often lamented the quality of college graduates by technical interviewers.  You may be enthusiastic, but unless you can write code and explain concepts better than the other guy, we're going to hire the other guy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your first resource to look at should be your instructor.  They are there for you and want to have you follow a specific path to get to the end point of understanding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, you've exhausted the resources.  You've tried asking your instructor. You've searched google.  You've gone over your lecture notes and even knocked on the TA's door during office hours.  And you've come here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The urgency of your question is not something we are concerned with.  Good questions and answers are timeless - not something that needs to be done by 5pm today. **Don't expect an answer in any given time frame**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As just mentioned, good questions are timeless.  Answering your homework problem is likely not timeless and not a good question.  **Describe the problem you are having, what your understanding of the problem is and where you are confused**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize also that the answer we give may be **completely wrong** for the path that your instructor is trying to get you to follow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We want you to do your homework to the best of your ability. Getting points off on an assignment and learning something from that produces a better interview candidate than one who can copy and paste code that got As in school but can't solve a simple problem they've never seen before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question on Programmers.SE is just a copy paste of homework problem, expect it to be downvoted, closed, and deleted - potentially in quite short order." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16015" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="191197d4-55fd-4c82-8ae0-248aa5de41b5" CreationDate="2013-09-11T17:49:05.317" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Open letter to students with homework problems" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16016" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="191197d4-55fd-4c82-8ae0-248aa5de41b5" CreationDate="2013-09-11T17:49:05.317" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16017" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="a8ed9477-234a-492f-821b-7204842cc592" CreationDate="2013-09-11T17:58:27.257" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16018" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="b7434987-2c1e-4839-9468-d1e7f92c9cf8" CreationDate="2013-09-12T09:15:59.330" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/378084564553314305" />
  <row Id="16019" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6167" RevisionGUID="dada42c1-02aa-435a-8ad3-ba25e519adc2" CreationDate="2013-09-12T19:48:21.583" UserId="9302" Text="An Open Response&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Does this belong on P.SE meta?&#xD;&#xA;- If so, should we expect and accept similar posts from other users?&#xD;&#xA;- Chances are, the students who paste homework don't read P.SE meta.&#xD;&#xA;- Your evidence in anecdotal. I could offer a story of how my education was saved by scooping the answer to a stubborn problem from the interwebs, which gave me time to focus on more important parts of a difficult class.&#xD;&#xA;- You assume that everyone shares your values. Things that are meaningful and valuable to you aren't necessarily meaningful and valuable to others.&#xD;&#xA;- Besides, pasted homework questions are adequately defined as out-of-bounds in the FAQ and many other meta posts.&#xD;&#xA;- The [basic question][1] you cite in a comment as a good homework question already received several downvotes, a close vote, and a warning from [gnat][2]. Even if a student wants to ask a good question, it's not easy. I've seen basic questions closed because they were too basic. More involved questions are often closed because the student (or any other learner) may not have enough experience to articulate their root problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that the &quot;car dealer has 10 salespersons...&quot; is bad. It's too localized. Simple. I just don't see how your question/open letter helps prevent it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/211137/why-can-static-methods-only-use-static-data&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16020" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6168" RevisionGUID="dc6f9df1-302f-4a03-8065-ff27b17f9612" CreationDate="2013-09-13T08:45:22.507" UserDisplayName="user96226" Text="I have looked through [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) in the help-centre. If I were to define a category for my question I would go with [freelancing and business concerns](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). On the other hand I have concerns that my question is not a good fit for programmers because I [couldn't find](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=how+long+should+take+me) any similar questions. I have tried different variations of searching but haven't even come close to anything related to my question (or maybe overlooked it). I realize that my question is primarily opinion-based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As a business analyst(not officially but a programmer too) I was asked&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to analyse and rebuild an Excel spreadsheet that came to a company&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from another one ages ago. The spreadsheet is used as both back and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; front end as it stands. They would like me to break them apart and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; design a front end for it and create a template (back end) that could&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be automated based on content in some other files. The whole point is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to reduce the possibility of human error in populating data.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Currently, there is no one at that company who would be able to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; explain all the parts of the spreadsheet. After local research it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; turns out that the file is populated by different departments. It&#xD;&#xA;&gt; turns out some people say: oh, we do not need this or that part cause&#xD;&#xA;&gt; nobody uses it while others say do not touch this or that it's needed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It is a mess...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I wouldn't know which parts of the spreadsheet are needed and which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ones are not needed. I am afraid it would take me *ages* to work that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out. I would have to go through all the people who use the spreadsheet&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to figure out *who does what*. I have the time to do that but I am&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unsure if it wouldn't be easier to start the file from scratch.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; They held a meeting for the review of the file (which I did not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; attend, no invitation was sent out to me) and literally nothing has&#xD;&#xA;&gt; been decided but the fact that the spreadsheet needs to be rebuilt. I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; know this sounds extreme to some of you but I guess it's how that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; company works... They sit in a meeting for hours talking about some&#xD;&#xA;&gt; changes, *bollocking,* although every one leaves with no conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and no further instructions. Also, it's one of the &quot;we hate any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; changes&quot; places...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's a hell of a job to actually achieve what they want. So, in terms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of making it easier for myself what do you think should I do:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - try to convenience them to start from scratch?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - get on with the current design and try to achieve what they want?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have you got any experience with similar cases? What should I do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it completely off for Programmers or should I ask it somewhere else (maybe another stack exchange site)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there anything I can improve or modify to make it fit for Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16021" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6168" RevisionGUID="dc6f9df1-302f-4a03-8065-ff27b17f9612" CreationDate="2013-09-13T08:45:22.507" UserDisplayName="user96226" Text="Would my question be on topic for Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16022" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6168" RevisionGUID="dc6f9df1-302f-4a03-8065-ff27b17f9612" CreationDate="2013-09-13T08:45:22.507" UserDisplayName="user96226" Text="|support|on-topic-definition|bad-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16023" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6168" RevisionGUID="d42c2d47-316b-452b-8326-d0e317e69115" CreationDate="2013-09-13T09:11:26.193" UserDisplayName="user96226" Comment="added 9 characters in body" Text="I have looked through [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) in the help-centre. If I were to define a category for my question I would go with [freelancing and business concerns](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). On the other hand I have concerns that my question is not a good fit for programmers because I [couldn't find](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=how+long+should+take+me) any similar questions. I have tried different variations of searching but haven't even come close to anything related to my question (or maybe overlooked it). I realize that my question is primarily opinion-based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As a business analyst(not officially but a programmer too) I was asked&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to analyse and rebuild an Excel spreadsheet that came to a company&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from another one ages ago. The spreadsheet is used as both back and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; front end as it stands. They would like me to break them apart and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; design a front end for it and create a template (back end) that could&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be automated based on content in some other files. The whole point is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to reduce the possibility of human error in populating data.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Currently, there is no one at that company who would be able to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; explain all the parts of the spreadsheet. After local research it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; turns out that the file is populated by different departments. It&#xD;&#xA;&gt; turns out some people say: oh, we do not need this or that part cause&#xD;&#xA;&gt; nobody uses it while others say do not touch this or that it's needed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It is a mess...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I wouldn't know which parts of the spreadsheet are needed and which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ones are not needed. I am afraid it would take me *ages* to work that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out. I would have to go through all the people who use the spreadsheet&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to figure out *who does what*. I have the time to do that but I am&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unsure if it wouldn't be easier to start the file from scratch.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; They held a meeting for the review of the file (which I did not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; attend, no invitation was sent out to me) and literally nothing has&#xD;&#xA;&gt; been decided but the fact that the spreadsheet needs to be rebuilt. I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; know this sounds extreme to some of you but I guess it's how that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; company works... They sit in a meeting for hours talking about some&#xD;&#xA;&gt; changes, *bollocking,* although every one leaves with no conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and no further instructions. Also, it's one of the &quot;we hate any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; changes&quot; places...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's a hell of a job to actually achieve what they want. So, in terms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of making it easier for myself what do you think should I do:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - try to convenience them to start from scratch?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - get on with the current design and try to achieve what they want?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have you got any experience with similar cases? What should I do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it completely off for Programmers or should I ask it somewhere else (maybe another stack exchange site)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there anything I can improve or modify to make it fit for Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16024" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6169" RevisionGUID="11246230-9045-4e82-9ab8-b35a3a9763b7" CreationDate="2013-09-13T17:04:48.077" UserId="60569" Text="Should the [thinking][1] tag be removed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems vague, is used in only 13 question, and has only 1 follower. I'm thinking it should be pruned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/thinking" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16025" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6169" RevisionGUID="11246230-9045-4e82-9ab8-b35a3a9763b7" CreationDate="2013-09-13T17:04:48.077" UserId="60569" Text="Should the thinking tag be removed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16026" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6169" RevisionGUID="11246230-9045-4e82-9ab8-b35a3a9763b7" CreationDate="2013-09-13T17:04:48.077" UserId="60569" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16027" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6169" RevisionGUID="95911a69-497c-4dbb-a1b8-47d53654f02f" CreationDate="2013-09-13T19:04:11.660" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Adjust tag link to tag: link." Text="Should the [tag:thinking] tag be removed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems vague, is used in only 13 question, and has only 1 follower. I'm thinking it should be pruned.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16028" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6169" RevisionGUID="04a5776a-bb03-483f-9599-dc1985bfe8bc" CreationDate="2013-09-13T19:06:37.750" UserId="35276" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|tags|thinking|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16029" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6170" RevisionGUID="4895c2c1-228a-42c1-bd7a-cded602f975c" CreationDate="2013-09-13T20:04:08.107" UserId="855" Text="Homework and projects can count for a large part of a grade, but there should be some sort of exam (maybe that is proctored) that has enough complexity to it and a time limit that makes SO not practical. A large code quality discrepancy between the tests and other tasks should be a red flag for cheating.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All questions should indicate some effort by the OP and not just ask for all the coding to be done for them whether it's homework or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the &quot;copy and pasters&quot; can't get a job, they'll just have to spend more time actually learning to program and/or pay for additional training. Good programmers are hard to find, but if you can't spot a bad one, get someone else to do your hiring.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Imagine a company (not a software company but someone developing an internal app) that hires one beginner programmer, but puts the app on Github as an open source project or several posts on SO to get free coding. This wouldn't be good for the profession either. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16030" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="12f2855d-ea15-467a-94e4-b60957af7644" CreationDate="2013-09-13T20:28:57.657" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Expand on topics for how to ask a good student question and warnings of how our answers may not be the right one." Text="It is September once again (today is the [7316](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+days+since+September+1%2C+1993)&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; day of [September](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)), and once again students are asking their homework problems on Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We start seeing questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A car dealer has 10 salespersons. Each salesperson keeps track of the number of cars sold each month and reports it to the management at the end of the month. The management keeps the data in a file and assigns a number, 1 to 10, to each salesperson....&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Write the code to store the number of cars sold by each salesperson in the array cars, output the total numbers of cars sold at the end each month, and output the salesperson number selling the maximum number of cars. (Assume that data is in the file cars.dat, and that this file has been opened using the ifstream variable inFile.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to understand is that Stack Overflow, and especially Programmers.SE are not code writing services.  You don't just throw some a question in there with something of the form &quot;give me the codez&quot; into the text area and hope that someone will &lt;s&gt;answer the question&lt;/s&gt; do your homework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several things to consider as to why this is bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The typical class builds upon previous experiences. The compiler class has machine language and data structures as prerequisites because if you don't understand those, you will be hopelessly lost in the class and not even able to understand the lectures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets assume you do understand the code (the person answering the question did a good job explaining it)... the curriculum is designed to take you from `A` to `Z` with 24 steps between.  As industry programmers we often take short cuts and don't need say, steps `ijkl` to do something.  Learning from us, you'll never get these steps. *However* you may find in your next assignment or class that understanding `jk` is assumed and critical to the understanding of some other concepts.  Just because we don't need `ijkl` to do it doesn't mean it isn't understood.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is an anecdote of the machine programming class I took years ago which used [SPIM](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html) - a MIPS simulator.  One of the students when stuck with a program discovered a little used [DECStation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECstation) off on the side of the lab that had gcc on it.  Instead of writing the assignment (factorial) by hand with the concepts we had access to (we were supposed to write a recursive function to learn about the stack and frame pointer), he wrote it in C, compiled it with gcc -S and got out a some MIPS assembly source that he then handed in.  However, the compiler, recognizing an optimization converted the entire code from recursive subroutine into a for loop and used other things we wouldn't hear mentioned until a few weeks later.  He got a '0' on that homework and had trouble with the next one (that assumed you already understood the frame pointer and stack pointer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It cheats *you* of the education you are paying to get.  Copy and paste takes **no** skill. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It cheats *us* of good interview candidates.  It is often lamented the quality of college graduates by technical interviewers.  You may be enthusiastic, but unless you can write code and explain concepts better than the other guy, we're going to hire the other guy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your first resource to look at should be your instructor.  They are there for you and want to have you follow a specific path to get to the end point of understanding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, you've exhausted the resources.  You've tried asking your instructor. You've searched google.  You've gone over your lecture notes and even knocked on the TA's door during office hours.  And you've come here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The urgency of your question is not something we are concerned with.  Good questions and answers are timeless - not something that needs to be done by 5pm today or 8am on Monday (you may find the rate of answers to drop substantially on the weekends and evenings of various timezones). **Don't expect an answer in any given time frame**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As just mentioned, good questions are timeless.  Answering your homework problem is likely not timeless and not a good question.  **Describe the problem you are having, what your understanding of the problem is and where you are confused**. For a question from a student, the best questions are often the ones that are asking how to take a single step in understanding rather than trying to leap all the way to the solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize also that the answer we give may be **completely wrong** for the path that your instructor is trying to get you to follow.  Having previously fought through the problem ourselves, we know understand when one can jump directly from `il` and when one needs to go through each step of `ijkl` in a process. Our answers may skip over steps that aren't needed *for this particular problem*, but may be critical for understanding the next assignment or some problem years down the road where skipping `jk` is the wrong answer. In many cases, it is important to follow the curriculum as best as you are able.  Going above and beyond is good where one gains a deeper understanding of a problem domain, but one *must* have the foundation upon which to build.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We want you to do your homework to the best of your ability. Getting points off on an assignment and learning something from that produces a better interview candidate than one who can copy and paste code that got As in school but can't solve a simple problem they've never seen before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question on Programmers.SE is just a copy paste of homework problem, expect it to be downvoted, closed, and deleted - potentially in quite short order." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16031" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6171" RevisionGUID="b13fd2a2-6e36-4fe0-8599-04b045126afb" CreationDate="2013-09-13T22:16:14.563" UserId="31260" Text="I think that strong point of your _question draft_ is description of the situation: it looks clear, detailed and easy to understand. This lays a solid ground for a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you're done with it though, there is a sharp drop in question quality, and the rest essentially spoils the fun:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So, in terms of making it easier for myself what do you think should I do: - try to convenience them to start from scratch? - get on with the current design and try to achieve what they want?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Have you got any experience with similar cases? What should I do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, the only valuable elements in above quote are &quot;try to convince them to start from scratch&quot; and &quot;get on with the current design&quot;. Anything besides that can be stuffed into any imaginary question and would add no value to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think of it, &quot;in terms of making it easier for myself&quot; - no one would be interested in making it harder to themselves. Or, &quot;what do you think&quot; - any asker is sure interested in this. Stuff like that is basic, it is implied in any question at Programmers, stating it explicitly is just noise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the perspective of those who would answer your question it is useless - drop it, wipe it out, get rid of it - and this cleanup will help you find out what is missing in your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, how would it look if you filter out the noise? Something like,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Options I can think of are either _try to convince them to start from scratch_ or _get on with the current design_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above is fairly poor but at least: 1) you can see that it's poor yourself (which opens a door to thinking how to improve) and 2) as small as it is, it's 100% _substantial_ - there's nothing to throw away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, how it can be improved? Improvements I suggested in [comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6168/would-my-question-be-on-topic-for-programmers#comment16661_6168) quickly posted after you asked here may sound like wisdom obtained through some magic glass, but it really isn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, key aspects of SE posts are **substance, presentation and effort** and I simply evaluate everything I read / write through these. Let's see how it will work at your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way you explained the situation tells that your _presentation_ is all-right (and I think you know it yourself).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Substance_ is there, too - what is left after we removed the noise, is substance, and it _is_ there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The feel that it's still poor indicates that it's _effort_ that is missing and if you take a closer look at cleaned up part, you'll see that effort you are expected to put into considering mentioned options just isn't there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What kind effort is expected? well whenever you deal with options, most basic effort to put is to list and evaluate pros and cons of these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Note, since we are at Stack Exchange, this is not something you could expect answerers to do for you: asking for _list_ part won't fly because [list questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info) aren't welcome, and as for _evaluation_ part, without knowing lots of your concrete details and context, doing this would be, as they say in one of [close reasons](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/close-reasons/info), &quot;too broad&quot;.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding this to your question would cover _effort_ part, the only thing left after that would be to, well, just state the very question, explain what would you want to learn / understand. What would it be - no one can tell you beforehand, since this should be based on your analysis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no magic glass nor magic aspects that would predict what would be outcome of your research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you're done with it though, there will be one _magic thing_ you could do prior to posting. Simply put your text into &quot;Ask question&quot; box and study [similar questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/similar-questions) that get loaded to the right. This trick often works better than plain search and it can give you an insight on how to further improve your question or even, if you are lucky, reveal that there is already an answered question like yours.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16032" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6169" RevisionGUID="56638323-fc89-4b6f-bb15-d760d0a49faf" CreationDate="2013-09-14T01:24:29.783" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16033" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6172" RevisionGUID="86e49c7e-fe69-4c74-9980-12c0dc461307" CreationDate="2013-09-14T13:42:19.667" UserId="4" Text="Right now, we are limited to three custom &quot;off-topic&quot; close reasons. I wrote a fourth this morning to address a number of recent closures, but it's not possible to even turn it on without turning off one of the other four.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This new reason reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions must **demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved or concept being asked about**. When asking a question, please demonstrate (as appropriate) that you have researched the issue, elaborate on your current understanding of the situation, and identify the specific things that are confusing or problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This follows from a number of recent closed questions (including some that have been flagged for moderator attention). Some people have used some custom close reasons, but I've noticed that some have been rather cold and terse (not necessarily rude or offensive, but not welcoming or helpful to potential new users or visitors who read them after finding questions via search engines).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I'm not suggesting that the above close reason is final - if you have improvements, please suggest them.** However, I believe that it would be beneficial to have a &quot;minimal understanding&quot; type close reason. Stack Overflow actually has two - one for describing the specific problem and how to reproduce it and one for minimal understanding. I don't think two are necessary on Programmers, but if someone wants to refine this reason, please do so. However, it can't be a default reason unless the number is expanded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With additional reasons, I'd also like to consider [implementing this custom close reason](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6106/close-reason-and-associated-expand-the-close-reason-count-request), but perhaps not make it specific to Stack Overflow. Instead, I'd phrase it more like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers. There may be [an appropriate Stack Exchange site](http://stackexchange.com/sites#name) where this subject is on topic, but the question may not be a good fit as currently written. If there is an appropriate community, please consult their Help to understand what they expect from questions and reform it as appropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16034" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6172" RevisionGUID="86e49c7e-fe69-4c74-9980-12c0dc461307" CreationDate="2013-09-14T13:42:19.667" UserId="4" Text="Can the number of custom close reasons on Programmers be expanded?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16035" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6172" RevisionGUID="86e49c7e-fe69-4c74-9980-12c0dc461307" CreationDate="2013-09-14T13:42:19.667" UserId="4" Text="|support|feature-request|close-reasons|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16036" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6172" RevisionGUID="3c72f07b-f502-48e7-b4a7-6cf3074ec0af" CreationDate="2013-09-14T13:49:01.120" UserId="4" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="Right now, we are limited to three custom &quot;off-topic&quot; close reasons. I wrote a fourth this morning to address a number of recent closures, but it's not possible to even turn it on without turning off one of the other three.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This new reason reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions must **demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved or concept being asked about**. When asking a question, please demonstrate (as appropriate) that you have researched the issue, elaborate on your current understanding of the situation, and identify the specific things that are confusing or problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This follows from a number of recent closed questions (including some that have been flagged for moderator attention). Some people have used some custom close reasons, but I've noticed that some have been rather cold and terse (not necessarily rude or offensive, but not welcoming or helpful to potential new users or visitors who read them after finding questions via search engines).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I'm not suggesting that the above close reason is final - if you have improvements, please suggest them.** However, I believe that it would be beneficial to have a &quot;minimal understanding&quot; type close reason. Stack Overflow actually has two - one for describing the specific problem and how to reproduce it and one for minimal understanding. I don't think two are necessary on Programmers, but if someone wants to refine this reason, please do so. However, it can't be a default reason unless the number is expanded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With additional reasons, I'd also like to consider [implementing this custom close reason](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6106/close-reason-and-associated-expand-the-close-reason-count-request), but perhaps not make it specific to Stack Overflow. Instead, I'd phrase it more like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers. There may be [an appropriate Stack Exchange site](http://stackexchange.com/sites#name) where this subject is on topic, but the question may not be a good fit as currently written. If there is an appropriate community, please consult their Help to understand what they expect from questions and reform it as appropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16037" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6169" RevisionGUID="05468081-d5c3-4fa2-9971-be143fbc134a" CreationDate="2013-09-14T21:44:03.107" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16038" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6169" RevisionGUID="2cbe7008-ebae-4e7b-b6ec-f2d88a6facc0" CreationDate="2013-09-15T00:16:04.153" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/379035853148135424" />
  <row Id="16039" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6173" RevisionGUID="dc12481b-9362-43c8-a11b-0f26746022a3" CreationDate="2013-09-15T01:15:56.450" UserId="96319" Text="It's very easy for a user with a high enough reputation to flag as &quot;on hold&quot;. All it takes is 5 users to make it official.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've had several of my (stackexchange) questions get put on hold then closed with only one and often zero of the flaggers indicating why they did so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should flagging require a comment be made?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16040" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6173" RevisionGUID="dc12481b-9362-43c8-a11b-0f26746022a3" CreationDate="2013-09-15T01:15:56.450" UserId="96319" Text="Should close votes require a comment be made?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16041" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6173" RevisionGUID="dc12481b-9362-43c8-a11b-0f26746022a3" CreationDate="2013-09-15T01:15:56.450" UserId="96319" Text="|feature-request|flagging|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16042" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6173" RevisionGUID="f9e7605c-5f9f-494c-befc-10e939c8bdfb" CreationDate="2013-09-15T10:43:52.260" UserId="31260" Comment="added 1 characters in body; edited tags" Text="It's very easy for a user with a high enough reputation to flag as &quot;on hold&quot;. All it takes is 5 users to make it official.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've had several of my (Stack Exchange) questions get put on hold then closed with only one and often zero of the flaggers indicating why they did so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should flagging require a comment be made?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16043" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6173" RevisionGUID="f9e7605c-5f9f-494c-befc-10e939c8bdfb" CreationDate="2013-09-15T10:43:52.260" UserId="31260" Comment="added 1 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|feature-request|flagging|comments|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16044" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6174" RevisionGUID="913f240a-63df-4b90-a1d6-9652e5077e2e" CreationDate="2013-09-15T16:40:12.503" UserId="54935" Text="It has been couple of months where my account where suspended due to one of my &quot;controversial&quot; comments. All I said was its not 80s anymore and the readability and documentation of your code is more important than the size of your code. Right or wrong I did deleted it and still waiting to get out of suspension. How many more months I need to wait for this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16045" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6174" RevisionGUID="913f240a-63df-4b90-a1d6-9652e5077e2e" CreationDate="2013-09-15T16:40:12.503" UserId="54935" Text="Still Under Suspension :-(" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16046" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6174" RevisionGUID="913f240a-63df-4b90-a1d6-9652e5077e2e" CreationDate="2013-09-15T16:40:12.503" UserId="54935" Text="|discussion|suspensions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16047" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6175" RevisionGUID="c5e851f0-fca2-41d5-890b-152fe673c84c" CreationDate="2013-09-15T16:46:20.273" UserId="25936" Text="Your account is not and has never been suspended by a moderator. If you were suspended, your reputation would have been locked at 1 and you couldn't have posted this Meta question (or do anything else but read the site). No idea why you think we would suspend you - or anyone else - for a single comment. We (mods) typically only intervene when there's a repeating pattern of abuse, and when we do, we typically send a warning first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, your account has been automatically blocked from asking questions by the system. There's no time limit on automatic blocks, if you don't follow the advice given in the [linked article][1] in the block message, your account will remain blocked. This is completely up to you, there's nothing any one of us can do to help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16048" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6175" RevisionGUID="0990b37f-27a1-4b81-b348-8b6cb32d03ed" CreationDate="2013-09-15T16:53:36.270" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body" Text="Your account is not and has never been suspended by a moderator. If you were suspended, your reputation would have been locked at 1 and you couldn't have posted this Meta question (or do anything else but read the site). No idea why you think we (mods) would suspend you - or anyone else - for a single comment. We typically only intervene when there's a repeating pattern of abuse, and when we do, we typically send a warning first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, your account has been automatically blocked from asking questions by the system. There's no time limit on automatic blocks, if you don't follow the advice given in the [linked article][1] in the block message, your account will remain blocked. This is completely up to you, there's nothing any one of us can do to help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16049" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6176" RevisionGUID="f62a8b6e-68bb-4f44-9a00-71d0a31ea0c6" CreationDate="2013-09-16T02:25:18.647" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="If a question does not fit one of the pre-defined close reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* unclear&#xD;&#xA;* too broad&#xD;&#xA;* opinion based&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or off topic reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* what language next&#xD;&#xA;* recommend a tool, library or off site resource&#xD;&#xA;* career or education advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;the 'other' option requires a comment be made.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first set of three are network wide (though different communities allow different degrees of flex within them).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The off topic reasons are a distillation of the 'and its **not about**...' section in the [help on topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) section.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever reason something is closed as (be it a network wide close reason, or a pre-defined off topic) there is a explanation of the reason as part of the on hold message.  One could consider this as a &quot;I left this comment&quot; once it is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![standard close reason][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider the redundancy of writing &quot;This is unclear&quot; as a comment and also voting to close as an unclear question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When someone uses the 'other' close reason, that information is changed into a comment written by the first person to close with that custom reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![custom close reason][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Being aware of the network wide close reasons and the site specific off topic reasons should help one avoid asking questions that would otherwise get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/nEq8A.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/du1Rv.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16050" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6177" RevisionGUID="c8c4210d-f10b-42a8-aa1d-9d586a1f359f" CreationDate="2013-09-16T14:16:19.640" UserId="31260" Text="Please merge tag [tag:dry] (27 questions) into [tag:dry-principle] (5), and make them synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Preference for master tag is because I consider _dry-principle_ a more descriptive name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag _dry_ wiki excerpt is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; DRY is short for &quot;Don’t Repeat Yourself&quot;. This paradigm advocates to avoid code and data redundancy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag _dry-principle_ wiki excerpt is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY). Also known as Duplication Is Evil (DIE). The objective of DRY is to write code that is non-repetitive." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16051" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6177" RevisionGUID="c8c4210d-f10b-42a8-aa1d-9d586a1f359f" CreationDate="2013-09-16T14:16:19.640" UserId="31260" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [dry] → [dry-principle]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16052" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6177" RevisionGUID="c8c4210d-f10b-42a8-aa1d-9d586a1f359f" CreationDate="2013-09-16T14:16:19.640" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16053" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6178" RevisionGUID="1a5dff03-a867-4b8d-9084-0cb0cee3bc5a" CreationDate="2013-09-16T22:00:10.843" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Specifcally to a recently closed question for yours, I voted to close it as unclear when the question was at [revision 1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/210947/1).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In Python, should subpackages have 'test' packages or 'test' packages have subpackages?&#xD;&#xA;Which is the preferred test package structure for packages containing subpackages:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tests in Subpackages?&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (example)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subpackages in Tests?&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (example)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To which you commented:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @MichaelT mattnz BЈовић: you all voted to close this question, but didn't provide a comment as to why. Please let me know what improvements I could make to help you answer the question. – Jace Browning yesterday&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close message to the question is the comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell exactly what you're asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I don't feel that an additional comment is needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only answer to the question at this time starts out with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am probably misunderstanding the question. Nevertheless, here is a go. Please, guide me to the precise question of interest by the means of comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close reason still stands.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the problem that you are having that can be solved (potentially) with a single answer? If you are able to clarify it, please note that asking for a range of opinions from people as to which ones they prefer is a poor fit for the Q&amp;A format." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16054" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6155" RevisionGUID="7d670199-3dcd-4c92-aea0-fa5be7ba7d25" CreationDate="2013-09-17T20:23:26.287" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|retag-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16055" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6164" RevisionGUID="2f450fd9-d55e-4e20-8d23-27b2e84b0b7b" CreationDate="2013-09-18T03:16:12.253" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/380168349868900352" />
  <row Id="16056" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6179" RevisionGUID="9a1d5b0a-722f-438f-8054-62bd7485b10b" CreationDate="2013-09-18T11:08:01.653" UserId="31260" Text="Done - according to [dry tag synonyms page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/dry/synonyms),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The following tags will be remapped to [tag:dry]  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [tag:dry-principle]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/whFQB.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/whFQB.png &quot;synonyms page screen shot&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16057" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6179" RevisionGUID="8e6ff0f4-7218-4622-908f-c8df0e6ca991" CreationDate="2013-09-18T11:08:01.653" UserId="31260" />
  <row Id="16058" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6180" RevisionGUID="1fc9b8ab-b83c-4df6-b452-c64042e139d3" CreationDate="2013-09-18T11:30:12.150" UserId="31260" Text="Per my reading of [this answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/150253/165773 &quot;here&quot;) written by SE developer, downvotes increase chances of the post getting into Low Quality queue:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; approach to low-quality auto-flagging, by looking for similarities in posts **downvoted** or flagged as low quality...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is worth noting that per mentioned answer, upvotes tend to have an opposite effect:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; referenced post got 2 upvotes..., so it **wouldn't even make it into** the low quality queue&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those interested to know how Low Quality queue is expected to work, can refer to [respective guidelines](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/180029/165773 &quot;here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Guidelines for reviewing Low Quality Posts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Questions appear in the low quality post queue both by algorithm and [by flags from users](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/190639/167534).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;### Basic workflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA; 1. Check if the post can be improved. If it can, by all means **Edit** it. A typical example are code-only answers, which can benefit from additional explanation about how that code works.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA; 2. If you think the post is unsalvageable and should be deleted, **Recommend Deletion** (see common reasons below).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA; 3. If the post looks good, choose **Looks Good**. If you are unsure, **Skip** it..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16059" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6181" RevisionGUID="62639391-afb4-4ac0-aec2-f81ee1ff9277" CreationDate="2013-09-18T12:34:39.370" UserId="16247" Text="I agree with this open letter. I guess it's more directed at the people potentially answering this kind of thoughtless questions, because the people asking them -- more often than not [Help Vampires](http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/) -- will never read meta, or the FAQ, or try to understand the issues involved. So I guess it could be rephrased to say: &quot;potential answerers, don't encourage these questions with answers, but downvote and close them instead&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Wasn't the purpose of StackExchange, as stated by Jeff Atwood, to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the internet? This kind of questions reduce the ratio, plain and simple.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't encourage Help Vampires. Educate them, if you can, but know it's an uphill battle." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16060" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6182" RevisionGUID="d1ff5bee-6f77-4c3c-8289-61fbf2071d65" CreationDate="2013-09-18T12:52:51.587" UserId="3631" Text="_Definitely not a priority, but I dream of a day when SE sites will have that._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a common trend, especially with newcomers but also present with slightly more seasoned asked, to add useless noise in their questions that would be more appropriate on a traditional forum/board or in e-mail conversations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My particular grief is with the 4 worst offenders:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **greetings**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   These creep in in the form of `&quot;hello&quot;`, `&quot;good bye&quot;`, `&quot;dear P.SE&quot;`, etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **signatures**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Either simple names at the end of posts (e.g. `&quot;John Doe&quot;`), or the more advanced but fortunately rare variants (e.g. `&quot;John Doe, law student turned programmer, co-founder of crap site&quot;`).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **thanks and apologies**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   `&quot;Sorry for my English&quot;`, `&quot;Thanks in advance&quot;`, ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **circling**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   `&quot;I wanted to ask...&quot;`, `&quot;my friend X&quot;`, `&quot;I know this guy...&quot;`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't mind posters being polite (&quot;could you provide me with X&quot; is fine, though I'd rather the question be direct), and we understand that not everybody writes perfect English, and it's nice to see beforehand that the OP as some perception of the service answerers are providing and is thankful in advance (but we shouldn't care that much, and thanks in comments are appreciated, and votes are here for that).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The **circling** is probably what's the most annoying, as it's usually the noisiest and is right in the middle of the post, whereas the other 3 offenders are slightly annoying and are usually around the top and bottom edges and can be mentally clipped. But jumping through hoops to get to a question is a pain when that doesn't add any value to the question is a pain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just a crazy thought and I don't suppose that will get lots of pull, as you can't expect the sites to fix the users, but I'd welcome any attempts to fight this trend.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16061" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6182" RevisionGUID="d1ff5bee-6f77-4c3c-8289-61fbf2071d65" CreationDate="2013-09-18T12:52:51.587" UserId="3631" Text="Automatic removal suggestion for noise in questions: signatures, thanks, apologies and indirect forms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16062" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6182" RevisionGUID="d1ff5bee-6f77-4c3c-8289-61fbf2071d65" CreationDate="2013-09-18T12:52:51.587" UserId="3631" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16063" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6183" RevisionGUID="569bccb3-a86d-40e1-ad8c-3befb6383a1b" CreationDate="2013-09-18T12:53:51.670" UserId="3631" Text="_A possible approach:_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Detection&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it would be practically impossible to identify all these, some should be relatively easy to identify, including known keywords around the edges (`&quot;hello&quot;` etc near the top, `&quot;bye&quot;`, `&quot;thanks&quot;`, poster's username or full name near the bottom) or some likely to be unnecessary (I'm not sure I've seen many paragraph starting with &quot;apologies&quot; or &quot;sorry&quot; being actually useful, except for the OP's conscience).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, detecting hoops/circles is harde, but I assume some common idiots could be detected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Visual Feedback&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In terms of visual aid, I think a simple &quot;popup&quot; dialog showing up like the one advertisting possible duplicates could be enough, reminding users that &quot;thanks&quot; and &quot;signatures&quot; aren't necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And maybe an additional information box recommending direct questions as good style, though that would be hard to cram in, or maybe as part of the initial &quot;greyed&quot; text of the text area?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16064" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6182" RevisionGUID="3e00b8f2-3680-4b92-9b86-bb26b3eaf8a7" CreationDate="2013-09-18T18:51:51.817" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|questions|quality-filter|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16065" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6184" RevisionGUID="f3360fa9-5918-40cd-ade3-d75ad7fe8910" CreationDate="2013-09-19T15:55:26.327" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16066" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6185" RevisionGUID="de34d3f3-f840-4301-99e4-0b6ffe9dec7f" CreationDate="2013-09-19T15:55:26.327" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16067" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6184" RevisionGUID="6317e6ad-0ed5-4aff-b2a0-263c7ab4d8ad" CreationDate="2013-09-20T04:55:29.067" UserId="2983" Comment="added 356 characters in body" Text="Users are often unclear on the reasoning behind a question getting closed. Often, these meta questions can be resolved by referring to the [help guide for closed questions][1]. They may also lead to a fruitful discussion of what is and is not relevant content for the Programmers site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16068" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="6184" RevisionGUID="6317e6ad-0ed5-4aff-b2a0-263c7ab4d8ad" CreationDate="2013-09-20T04:55:29.067" Comment="Proposed by 2983 approved by 40980, 53019 edit id of 15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16069" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6185" RevisionGUID="81ab21b6-0c29-4b1b-bcbe-316d21280cfc" CreationDate="2013-09-20T04:55:32.597" UserId="2983" Comment="added 75 characters in body" Text="Meta questions about why particular questions on the main site were closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16070" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="6185" RevisionGUID="81ab21b6-0c29-4b1b-bcbe-316d21280cfc" CreationDate="2013-09-20T04:55:32.597" Comment="Proposed by 2983 approved by 40980, 53019 edit id of 16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16071" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6186" RevisionGUID="55076718-d8a3-4237-b13f-19838bc9cab2" CreationDate="2013-09-22T12:46:09.647" UserId="62793" Text="I came across a non-commercial software which is closed source and packages a GPL licensed library. So I had to ask a question in that regards. So should it me SO or Programmers? And can I mention the name of the software in the question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16072" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6186" RevisionGUID="55076718-d8a3-4237-b13f-19838bc9cab2" CreationDate="2013-09-22T12:46:09.647" UserId="62793" Text="Question regarding license violation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16073" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6186" RevisionGUID="55076718-d8a3-4237-b13f-19838bc9cab2" CreationDate="2013-09-22T12:46:09.647" UserId="62793" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16074" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6186" RevisionGUID="2c255a3f-f1ec-4bdb-9971-1cee15cdb33a" CreationDate="2013-09-22T18:59:53.370" UserId="62793" Comment="elaboration" Text="I came across a non-commercial software which is closed source and packages a GPL licensed library. So I had to ask a question in that regards. So should it me SO or Programmers? Can I question the legality of the situation in hand by describing the exact situation with reference to the actual case?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if I am not going to use legal means to get the code, should I inform the GPL side of the situation(who I most probably think is unaware of it)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16075" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6172" RevisionGUID="feade713-db13-4f74-95c0-8cb8e9b44088" CreationDate="2013-09-23T20:32:02.997" UserId="4" Comment="added 1747 characters in body" Text="Right now, we are limited to three custom &quot;off-topic&quot; close reasons. I wrote a fourth this morning to address a number of recent closures, but it's not possible to even turn it on without turning off one of the other three.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This new reason reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions must **demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved or concept being asked about**. When asking a question, please demonstrate (as appropriate) that you have researched the issue, elaborate on your current understanding of the situation, and identify the specific things that are confusing or problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This follows from a number of recent closed questions (including some that have been flagged for moderator attention). Some people have used some custom close reasons, but I've noticed that some have been rather cold and terse (not necessarily rude or offensive, but not welcoming or helpful to potential new users or visitors who read them after finding questions via search engines).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I'm not suggesting that the above close reason is final - if you have improvements, please suggest them.** However, I believe that it would be beneficial to have a &quot;minimal understanding&quot; type close reason. Stack Overflow actually has two - one for describing the specific problem and how to reproduce it and one for minimal understanding. I don't think two are necessary on Programmers, but if someone wants to refine this reason, please do so. However, it can't be a default reason unless the number is expanded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples of questions where such a close reason may be used are (as asked for by the community team):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/210850/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-stand-up-and-its-duration-in-agile-methodologies - The top answer quotes Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, who have written (freely available as well as in books) about Scrum. For me, Google searches also turn up answers. It could possibly be a good question if it was more unique to the situation and the transformation from the plan-driven to the agile. It's clear, but easily answerable with simple searches.&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/211176/in-need-of-a-more-technical-answer-for-an-interview-question-about-how-the-inter - I'm not sure if Programmers is the best place for this, but I understand the question being asked. If you've been asked the question, you can use that as an opportunity to research the topic and then ask specific questions about what was read and not understood. Either that, or what you read solves the question and you don't need to ask it anymore (or you can ask it and self answer).&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/211475/implement-a-new-class-named-newstring - Probably a &quot;gimme the codez&quot; question, but if design or algorithm understanding was an issue or the concepts behind C strings, pointers, null termination, copy constructors were not understood, specific questions are on-topic on Programmers. This question doesn't make it clear what the problem is and is not suitable for migration. When I closed it, it was a toss up between off-topic and unclear. I would have prefered &quot;demonstrate what you are having problems with&quot; as guidance to the asker and/or future users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With additional reasons, I'd also like to consider [implementing this custom close reason](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6106/close-reason-and-associated-expand-the-close-reason-count-request), but perhaps not make it specific to Stack Overflow. Instead, I'd phrase it more like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers. There may be [an appropriate Stack Exchange site](http://stackexchange.com/sites#name) where this subject is on topic, but the question may not be a good fit as currently written. If there is an appropriate community, please consult their Help to understand what they expect from questions and reform it as appropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16076" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6172" RevisionGUID="7cdceb1c-e7cf-434d-bbd3-f8cd43976c0a" CreationDate="2013-09-23T20:37:33.703" UserId="4" Comment="added 1747 characters in body" Text="Right now, we are limited to three custom &quot;off-topic&quot; close reasons. I wrote a fourth this morning to address a number of recent closures, but it's not possible to even turn it on without turning off one of the other three.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This new reason reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions must **demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved or concept being asked about**. When asking a question, please demonstrate (as appropriate) that you have researched the issue, elaborate on your current understanding of the situation, and identify the specific things that are confusing or problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This follows from a number of recent closed questions (including some that have been flagged for moderator attention). Some people have used some custom close reasons, but I've noticed that some have been rather cold and terse (not necessarily rude or offensive, but not welcoming or helpful to potential new users or visitors who read them after finding questions via search engines).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I'm not suggesting that the above close reason is final - if you have improvements, please suggest them.** However, I believe that it would be beneficial to have a &quot;minimal understanding&quot; type close reason. Stack Overflow actually has two - one for describing the specific problem and how to reproduce it and one for minimal understanding. I don't think two are necessary on Programmers, but if someone wants to refine this reason, please do so. However, it can't be a default reason unless the number is expanded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples of questions where such a close reason may be used are (as asked for by the community team):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/210850/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-stand-up-and-its-duration-in-agile-methodologies - The top answer quotes Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, who have written (freely available as well as in books) about Scrum. For me, Google searches also turn up answers. It could possibly be a good question if it was more unique to the situation and the transformation from the plan-driven to the agile. It's clear, but easily answerable with simple searches.&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/211176/in-need-of-a-more-technical-answer-for-an-interview-question-about-how-the-inter - I'm not sure if Programmers is the best place for this, but I understand the question being asked. If you've been asked the question, you can use that as an opportunity to research the topic and then ask specific questions about what was read and not understood. Either that, or what you read solves the question and you don't need to ask it anymore (or you can ask it and self answer).&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/211535/technical-requirements-document - Very much on-topic and the user claims to have done research. It's not unclear as to what he wants (he wants to know what to put into a section), but needs more specifics.&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/211475/implement-a-new-class-named-newstring - Probably a &quot;gimme the codez&quot; question, but if design or algorithm understanding was an issue or the concepts behind C strings, pointers, null termination, copy constructors were not understood, specific questions are on-topic on Programmers. This question doesn't make it clear what the problem is and is not suitable for migration. When I closed it, it was a toss up between off-topic and unclear. I would have prefered &quot;demonstrate what you are having problems with&quot; as guidance to the asker and/or future users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of these may be addressed by unclear if the default unclear text was better, such as being closer to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please demonstrate that you have researched the issue, elaborate on your current understanding of the situation, and identify the specific things that are confusing or problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In most cases, the current definition of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell exactly what you're asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;doesn't work. It's clear what they want, but it's that no one can answer it because an answer would likely be unhelpful. It's the difference between &quot;I don't know what you want&quot; and &quot;I understand where you're coming from, but I don't have enough information to give you a useful answer&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With additional reasons, I'd also like to consider [implementing this custom close reason](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6106/close-reason-and-associated-expand-the-close-reason-count-request), but perhaps not make it specific to Stack Overflow. Instead, I'd phrase it more like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers. There may be [an appropriate Stack Exchange site](http://stackexchange.com/sites#name) where this subject is on topic, but the question may not be a good fit as currently written. If there is an appropriate community, please consult their Help to understand what they expect from questions and reform it as appropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16077" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6187" RevisionGUID="d11660c6-8970-491e-9e11-c27ae9c90579" CreationDate="2013-09-23T21:40:16.143" UserId="63" Text="*Can* it be? Sure; should it be though? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest danger in adding more options is causing analysis paralysis in close voters. Without *any* custom OT reasons defined, there are already 9 different options for closing a question here (including &quot;other&quot; and the two migration options). The first custom option replaces the default, putting the current set of options at 11, divided unevenly into three separate lists. The Off Topic sub-list already holds 5 separate options - as many as the top-level list of close reasons - that's a lot of choices, and for them to be effectively used they should be clearly differentiated from one another and obvious as to their purpose - adding more options increases the likelihood of stress on the part of the close-voter, and thus the need for clarity. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What happens if the reasons aren't sufficiently clear and distinct? Well, it's possible that some folks will just give up and not vote. It's also likely that folks familiar with the system will skip trying to pick a single &quot;best&quot; reason and just go with whatever fits. This then leads to another problem: folks learning by example, where the example includes questions closed with an inapplicable (at least superficially) close reason. It's not hard to find examples of this among the old close reasons: both Not a Real Question and Too Localized started out very narrow in scope, but by the end were used for all sorts of questions where they were only tangentially applicable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The examples&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So let's look at the problems identified in your examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Easily Google-able](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/210850/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-stand-up-and-its-duration-in-agile-methodologies). This is almost never a good reason to shut down a question, but even if it is *in this case* you'd be setting a bad precedent by ensconcing such a reason in the system. Today it's a rhetorical question from someone looking for backup in a political situation; tomorrow it's a good question that's simply been answered on a different website first. Is this a site that can provide answers that are better than the greater internet, or just a site that answers questions no one else wants to bother with? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  **Existing close reasons that fit:** Primarily Opinion-based, Too Broad.   &#xD;&#xA;  **Suggestions for correction:** state one specific problem or question, drop squishy bits (&quot;Am I wrong to feel this way?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [No details on what research has been done](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/211176/in-need-of-a-more-technical-answer-for-an-interview-question-about-how-the-inter). &quot;Show your work&quot; is almost always a good suggestion, but... In this case the question would *still* be too broad - and almost certainly off-topic as well! Of course, there's also the chance that the interview question isn't the *real* question here at all, but rather the meta-question of &quot;how much detail should I try to provide for questions like this?&quot; That question at least makes sense, and *might* even be on-topic here. But it's unclear whether that's actually what he wanted, and the answers go both ways. Maybe he just wanted folks to commiserate a bit after making it through a tough interview? Closing it with &quot;insufficient research&quot; ignores all of these critical flaws. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  **Existing close reasons that fit:** Unclear, Too Broad, Off Topic (belongs on Super User) and possibly even Primarily Opinion Based. &#xD;&#xA;  **Suggestions for correction:** Remember that this is a site for high-level software development questions, and then state the *specific* problem you're trying to solve. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. [Needs more specific details](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/211535/technical-requirements-document). As with #2, &quot;show your work&quot; wouldn't be amiss here, but ignores the primary problem with the question: it isn't at all clear what's being asked. Realistically, no canned close reason can be as effective here as a simple comment asking, &quot;what context did you find this term in?&quot; - and it's possible that no answer can be as effective as just asking the person who wrote the template, regardless of how much research effort is shown. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  **Existing close reasons that fit:** Unclear, OT-&gt;Other (&quot;give us some context&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;  **Suggestions for correction:** Please provide context!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. [Not sure where the problem lies](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/211535/technical-requirements-document). Turns out, this exact question was asked by the author on Stack Overflow, where it was closed with Stack Overflow's &quot;no-effort homework&quot; OT reason (upon which your suggestion is based) minutes before he posted it here. Showing his work isn't gonna fly here, since the actual question being asked (gimme teh codez) is off-topic. Realistically, any effort spent trying to categorize or rehabilitate questions like this is a waste of time; at best, you may end up answering a question no-one asked, while at worst you end up letting trash questions set a bad precedent for others. If you *were* going to create a custom OT reason for this, [&quot;crap SO doesn't want&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6106/close-reason-and-associated-expand-the-close-reason-count-request/6107#6107) would be it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  **Existing close reasons that fit:** OT-&gt;Other (&quot;would belong on SO, if it were better&quot;), Unclear&#xD;&#xA;  **Suggestions for correction:** Fix your question on SO; if they don't want it, neither do we.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##More examples&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best way to determine if a new OT reason is needed is probably to just look at what folks are entering when they select &quot;Other&quot;. I wish I had a better way of grouping these, but until I figure something out here's a list of every custom off-topic reason selected at least twice since this feature became available: http://jsbin.com/ajipiKI/1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...Use whatever methodology you see as appropriate to analyze these. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16081" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6189" RevisionGUID="c6ac8157-dcf6-43c5-aee9-30c8d42e31b2" CreationDate="2013-09-24T16:21:15.637" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The concern of 'overuse' is 'overblown' - the concern should be about the misapplication of existing reasons when something else would better address it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In trying for the best experience possible for someone who is going to have a closed question, there should be some consideration paid to a well written close vote reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The message they get is appropriate and worded correctly for their situation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is asking a legal question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about an implementation issue.&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;These reasons, while correct do not do a good job at explaining the 'why'.  Why is a legal question off topic? why are implementation issues off topic?  Compare with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As phrased, this is a legal question (what are the penalties for not compiling with a license) and is off topic. This is the domain of lawyers (not programmers) who are experts in this realm of questioning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the message is short, we generally don't like spending minutes drafting a lengthy response.  Its off topic 'nuff said (from the close vote view).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By having appropriate, well written reasons we provide a better experience to the person asking the question when its closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The official ones are useful in that we know they are nicely done and thought out.  Expanding this list helps collect meaningful stats on the questions (doing a search for 'legal' on http://jsbin.com/ajipiKI/1 suggests that we should have a cv reason crafted to that area too).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Failing having this, a known canonical set of cv reasons for easy cut and paste is likely the next best option.  Note however that the portion active on meta and close voters is a subset of close voters in general.  Unless the items appear in the official list, or someone who knows of it uses it quickly it is quite possible for the cv to get closed with just 'too broad' or something generic (misapplication is bad).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further note that the official list has some weight behind it as the official stance by the community rather than one random cv'er's suggestion to a reason. This helps when other people look at the reasons things were closed and see it called out rather than the generic 'off topic' and have to find out why it is so." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16082" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6190" RevisionGUID="4ddcc1cf-d472-4110-9e6d-409b0b50491f" CreationDate="2013-09-25T16:03:27.263" UserDisplayName="user103181" Text="This post: &lt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments &gt; was locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe I set out a very dispassionate and objective counter-argument to the points raised in the comments there. I appreciate the comments, but am puzzled by them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As referenced there, this post on [&quot;Good Subjective v. Bad Subjective&quot;](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) seems to cite many properties that are to be used when assessing the usefulness of a subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The commenters appeared to use a straw-man argument about posts that are plainly just literature requests. I agree such posts are not constructive, but my question *is not at all just a literature request* for the reasons that I cited in the comments to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I even made attempts to carefully word my questions so as to remove any ambiguity about the reference request sub-portion of the question. These edits were repeatedly deleted and rollbacks were made to the commenters preferred editions of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any way that I may enforce my last set of edits, and to have *that version* be the &quot;locked version&quot;? This process seems unfair to me, given that I tried to provide *very concrete examples* of the ways in which I was adhering to the needed properties for a good subjective question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16083" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6190" RevisionGUID="4ddcc1cf-d472-4110-9e6d-409b0b50491f" CreationDate="2013-09-25T16:03:27.263" UserDisplayName="user103181" Text="What recourse is there for a post that is locked for reasons that one does not understand or agree with?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16084" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6190" RevisionGUID="4ddcc1cf-d472-4110-9e6d-409b0b50491f" CreationDate="2013-09-25T16:03:27.263" UserDisplayName="user103181" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16085" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6190" RevisionGUID="16d7c3d7-0835-4e68-ae7e-f48fe42f9197" CreationDate="2013-09-25T16:10:34.703" UserDisplayName="user103181" Comment="added 662 characters in body" Text="This post: &lt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments &gt; was locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe I set out a very dispassionate and objective counter-argument to the points raised in the comments there. I appreciate the comments, but am puzzled by them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As referenced there, this post on [&quot;Good Subjective v. Bad Subjective&quot;](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) seems to cite many properties that are to be used when assessing the usefulness of a subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The commenters appeared to use a straw-man argument about posts that are plainly just literature requests. I agree such posts are not constructive, but my question *is not at all just a literature request* for the reasons that I cited in the comments to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I even made attempts to carefully word my questions so as to remove any ambiguity about the reference request sub-portion of the question. These edits were repeatedly deleted and rollbacks were made to the commenters preferred editions of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any way that I may enforce my last set of edits, and to have *that version* be the &quot;locked version&quot;? This process seems unfair to me, given that I tried to provide *very concrete examples* of the ways in which I was adhering to the needed properties for a good subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the process *may not actually be unfair* and I'm willing to give the commenters the benefit of the doubt. If this is the case, may I please have a more clearly articulated defense of the commenters chosen edits, specifically *not relying on the following two mis-applied ideas:* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. The straw-man argument about posts that are *purely* literature requests.&#xD;&#xA;  3. The notion that &quot;all questions implicitly contain reference requests&quot;. The Good v. Bad subjective post says that good subjective posts *insist* on references (that's the precise language used). This strongly insinuates an active position of the question's author to *insist* on reference requests." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16086" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6191" RevisionGUID="33756d5b-e7ba-4c3d-94c9-9ee1919ba100" CreationDate="2013-09-25T16:26:16.913" UserId="4" Text="The recourse for having a post locked is to post on Meta. Now that it's here, all of the mods are notified. The lock is temporary (unfortunately, the options are rather limited, though) and can be lifted early once a resolution is achieved. Continually rolling back valid edits to your post is not constructive, and a lock is the only mechanism available to deal with it, so that an appropriate Meta discussion can happen to reach consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll let other mods and community members weigh in with their thoughts as well, but here are my problems with your edits, even after being warned against them by a long-time and high reputation member of the community and myself, a community moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (the criterion set out in the &quot;Good Subjective vs. Bad Subjective&quot; discussion)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is meta, not relevant to your question. This applies to all questions asked and answers posted on the Stack Exchange network. In essence, it's noise in your question that detracts from what you are trying to ask. It should be edited out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can you provide widely-cited sources to bolster any thoughts on (1) or (2) above, to foster a more thorough discussion of proposed ideas (please do not merely post answers that are purely references to outside sources).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange sites are not suitable for discussions. If you want a discussion, it's best to use a forum, or perhaps a chat room. On Stack Exchange, most sites have their own chat room - the [Programmers chat room is The Whiteboard][1]. You can also make your own once you have sufficient reputation on any site in the network (which you do). Mentioning having a discussion in a question (even if it's not your intent or supported by the rest of the body of the question) tends to attract unwarranted down and close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, answers that are purely links to, citations of, or references to outside resources are already forbidden under our [How to Answer guidelines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer), so there's no need to include the additional &quot;noise&quot; in a post telling people not to do it - it's meta and should be edited out. If questions start attracting bad answers, it can be protected against low reputation users. Down votes and deletion votes can be used to remove any answers that do not meet our expectations and quality guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Are there any definitive or widely cited sources of best practices literature when it comes to these kinds of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Inherently, it is expected that answers leverage a combination of personal experiences and various external references. Asking for sources is not only meta, but makes your question read like a reference request (which are not allowed on Programmers, per [1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5176) [2](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5299) [3](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5130) and the other Meta discussions and blog posts they link to. Asking explicitly for resources, even if it's not the full intent of your question, does tend to attract unwarranted down votes and close votes and is inherently part of any question asked on any Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16087" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6190" RevisionGUID="b4375fb3-5d66-428a-bdac-f7be6a170e3c" CreationDate="2013-09-25T16:29:39.310" UserDisplayName="user103181" Comment="added 1128 characters in body" Text="This post: &lt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments &gt; was locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe I set out a very dispassionate and objective counter-argument to the points raised in the comments there. I appreciate the comments, but am puzzled by them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As referenced there, this post on [&quot;Good Subjective v. Bad Subjective&quot;](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) seems to cite many properties that are to be used when assessing the usefulness of a subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The commenters appeared to use a straw-man argument about posts that are plainly just literature requests. I agree such posts are not constructive, but my question *is not at all just a literature request* for the reasons that I cited in the comments to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I even made attempts to carefully word my questions so as to remove any ambiguity about the reference request sub-portion of the question. These edits were repeatedly deleted and rollbacks were made to the commenters preferred editions of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any way that I may enforce my last set of edits, and to have *that version* be the &quot;locked version&quot;? This process seems unfair to me, given that I tried to provide *very concrete examples* of the ways in which I was adhering to the needed properties for a good subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the process *may not actually be unfair* and I'm willing to give the commenters the benefit of the doubt. If this is the case, may I please have a more clearly articulated defense of the commenters chosen edits, specifically *not relying on the following two mis-applied ideas:* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. The straw-man argument about posts that are *purely* literature requests.&#xD;&#xA;  3. The notion that &quot;all questions implicitly contain reference requests&quot;. The Good v. Bad subjective post says that good subjective posts *insist* on references (that's the precise language used). This strongly insinuates an active position of the question's author to *insist* on reference requests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Follow-up Question**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am also concerned that moderators are able to use the locking feature to privilege their preferred version of edits. For example, in this case, I made some edits and the moderator *first rolled the back* and *then* applied the lock. This seems like an unfair use of power. Why the presumption that the moderator's opinion about the edits is the one that deserves locked status, as opposed to whatever the most recent version is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it another way, if there is anything close to a 50/50 chance that my argument is sound and my edits are fine, it seems like an unfair asymmetry in the discussion to allow the moderator to make changes *then* lock, as opposed to *lock first.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's some ambiguity between the proper order of operations here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(1) Lock question as-is, (2) discuss the issues that are causing trouble, (3) include additional community members and moderators to ensure nothing is done out of idiosyncratic opinions alone and (4) make rollbacks if needed and unlock the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's very different from:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(1) Rollback to changes that I prefer, (2) discuss or not" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16088" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6192" RevisionGUID="4ade0bcf-560f-4ac6-b209-99b1c6846230" CreationDate="2013-09-25T16:36:26.757" UserId="25476" Text="I reviewed the question, the comments, the edits...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The post was locked because of repeated attempts to change the question in a way that the community was in disagreement with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides that I am largely in agreement with ThomasOwens.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Note that my post specifically implements the tactics referred to in that post to achieve usefulness as a subjective post. It isn't shopping for a source if you insist that an experience or widely-known principle be backed up by references. This is why it says &quot;Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You keep insisting that this is not a shopping request yet keep attempting to add the request for external resources?  This is by its very nature a shopping request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that I have nothing more to add than what was already said.  It seems already talked to death.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16089" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6190" RevisionGUID="7c5d1aad-38d9-4134-bbc9-03b61236e037" CreationDate="2013-09-25T16:49:31.397" UserDisplayName="user103181" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="This post: &lt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments &gt; was locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe I set out a very dispassionate and objective counter-argument to the points raised in the comments there. I appreciate the comments, but am puzzled by them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As referenced there, this post on [&quot;Good Subjective v. Bad Subjective&quot;](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) seems to cite many properties that are to be used when assessing the usefulness of a subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The commenters appeared to use a straw-man argument about posts that are plainly just literature requests. I agree such posts are not constructive, but my question *is not at all just a literature request* for the reasons that I cited in the comments to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I even made attempts to carefully word my questions so as to remove any ambiguity about the reference request sub-portion of the question. These edits were repeatedly deleted and rollbacks were made to the commenters preferred editions of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any way that I may enforce my last set of edits, and to have *that version* be the &quot;locked version&quot;? This process seems unfair to me, given that I tried to provide *very concrete examples* of the ways in which I was adhering to the needed properties for a good subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the process *may not actually be unfair* and I'm willing to give the commenters the benefit of the doubt. If this is the case, may I please have a more clearly articulated defense of the commenters chosen edits, specifically *not relying on the following two mis-applied ideas:* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. The straw-man argument about posts that are *purely* literature requests.&#xD;&#xA;  3. The notion that &quot;all questions implicitly contain reference requests&quot;. The Good v. Bad subjective post says that good subjective posts *insist* on references (that's the precise language used). This strongly insinuates an active position of the question's author to *insist* on reference requests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Follow-up Question**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am also concerned that moderators are able to use the locking feature to privilege their preferred version of edits. For example, in this case, I made some edits and the moderator *first rolled them back* and *then* applied the lock. This seems like an unfair use of power. Why the presumption that the moderator's opinion about the edits is the one that deserves locked status, as opposed to whatever the most recent version is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it another way, if there is anything close to a 50/50 chance that my argument is sound and my edits are fine, it seems like an unfair asymmetry in the discussion to allow the moderator to make changes *then* lock, as opposed to *lock first.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's some ambiguity between the proper order of operations here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(1) Lock question as-is, (2) discuss the issues that are causing trouble, (3) include additional community members and moderators to ensure nothing is done out of idiosyncratic opinions alone and (4) make rollbacks if needed and unlock the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's very different from:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(1) Rollback to changes that I prefer, (2) discuss or not" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16090" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6190" RevisionGUID="315550ac-92e5-4b73-a2f5-4adb3750d6ed" CreationDate="2013-09-25T16:51:23.847" UserId="4767" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body" Text="This post: &lt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments &gt; was locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe I set out a very dispassionate and objective counter-argument to the points raised in the comments there. I appreciate the comments, but am puzzled by them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As referenced there, this post on [&quot;Good Subjective v. Bad Subjective&quot;](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) seems to cite many properties that are to be used when assessing the usefulness of a subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The commenters appeared to use a straw-man argument about posts that are plainly just literature requests. I agree such posts are not constructive, but my question *is not at all just a literature request* for the reasons that I cited in the comments to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I even made attempts to carefully word my questions so as to remove any ambiguity about the reference request sub-portion of the question. These edits were repeatedly deleted and rollbacks were made to the commenters preferred editions of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any way that I may enforce my last set of edits, and to have *that version* be the &quot;locked version&quot;? This process seems unfair to me, given that I tried to provide *very concrete examples* of the ways in which I was adhering to the needed properties for a good subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the process *may not actually be unfair* and I'm willing to give the commenters the benefit of the doubt. If this is the case, may I please have a more clearly articulated defense of the commenters chosen edits, specifically *not relying on the following two mis-applied ideas:* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. The straw-man argument about posts that are *purely* literature requests.&#xD;&#xA;  3. The notion that &quot;all questions implicitly contain reference requests&quot;. The Good v. Bad subjective post says that good subjective posts *insist* on references (that's the precise language used). This strongly insinuates an active position of the question's author to *insist* on reference requests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Follow-up Question**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am also concerned that moderators are able to use the locking feature to privilege their preferred version of edits. For example, in this case, I made some edits and the moderator *first rolled them back* and *then* applied the lock. This seems like an unfair use of power. Why the presumption that the moderator's opinion about the edits is the one that deserves locked status, as opposed to whatever the most recent version is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it another way, if there is anything close to a 50/50 chance that my argument is sound and my edits are fine, it seems like an unfair asymmetry in the discussion to allow the moderator to make changes *then* lock, as opposed to *lock first.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's some ambiguity between the proper order of operations here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Lock question as-is&#xD;&#xA;2. discuss the issues that are causing trouble&#xD;&#xA;3. include additional community members and moderators to ensure nothing is done out of idiosyncratic opinions alone and &#xD;&#xA;4. make rollbacks if needed and unlock the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's very different from:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Rollback to changes that I prefer&#xD;&#xA;2. discuss or not" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16091" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6190" RevisionGUID="dabcc285-8234-4d36-8e6d-9132c91a86da" CreationDate="2013-09-25T17:03:25.150" UserDisplayName="user103181" Comment="added 658 characters in body" Text="This post: &lt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments &gt; was locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe I set out a very dispassionate and objective counter-argument to the points raised in the comments there. I appreciate the comments, but am puzzled by them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As referenced there, this post on [&quot;Good Subjective v. Bad Subjective&quot;](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) seems to cite many properties that are to be used when assessing the usefulness of a subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The commenters appeared to use a straw-man argument about posts that are plainly just literature requests. I agree such posts are not constructive, but my question *is not at all just a literature request* for the reasons that I cited in the comments to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I even made attempts to carefully word my questions so as to remove any ambiguity about the reference request sub-portion of the question. These edits were repeatedly deleted and rollbacks were made to the commenters preferred editions of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any way that I may enforce my last set of edits, and to have *that version* be the &quot;locked version&quot;? This process seems unfair to me, given that I tried to provide *very concrete examples* of the ways in which I was adhering to the needed properties for a good subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the process *may not actually be unfair* and I'm willing to give the commenters the benefit of the doubt. If this is the case, may I please have a more clearly articulated defense of the commenters chosen edits, specifically *not relying on the following two mis-applied ideas:* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. The straw-man argument about posts that are *purely* literature requests.&#xD;&#xA;  3. The notion that &quot;all questions implicitly contain reference requests&quot;. The Good v. Bad subjective post says that good subjective posts *insist* on references (that's the precise language used). This strongly insinuates an active position of the question's author to *insist* on reference requests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Follow-up Question**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am also concerned that moderators are able to use the locking feature to privilege their preferred version of edits. For example, in this case, I made some edits and the moderator *first rolled them back* and *then* applied the lock. This seems like an unfair use of power. Why the presumption that the moderator's opinion about the edits is the one that deserves locked status, as opposed to whatever the most recent version is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it another way, if there is anything close to a 50/50 chance that my argument is sound and my edits are fine, it seems like an unfair asymmetry in the discussion to allow the moderator to make changes *then* lock, as opposed to *lock first.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Critically* this is not an argument that this action was *unfair to me*, but rather that it is *unfair to the community.* I totally love the idea that posts do not belong to me. I'm all for that. But in a case like this, the community is primed by the moderator's choices, rather than something less partial such as whatever edits happened to occur last. New viewers will form an initial opinion about the post as it is right now, and if they have prior beliefs that you need a lot of inertia to justify changes, this implicitly favors the moderator's choices, which runs counter to what the community wants via the locking mechanism in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's some ambiguity between the proper order of operations here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Lock question as-is&#xD;&#xA;2. discuss the issues that are causing trouble&#xD;&#xA;3. include additional community members and moderators to ensure nothing is done out of idiosyncratic opinions alone and &#xD;&#xA;4. make rollbacks if needed and unlock the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's very different from:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Rollback to changes that I prefer&#xD;&#xA;2. discuss or not" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16092" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6193" RevisionGUID="47d5c759-9c17-4f4a-acfc-8472b2aa381c" CreationDate="2013-09-25T18:05:37.193" UserId="1996" Text="I'll put my cards on the table.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I didn't vote to close your question, but if it was open when I noticed it, I would've voted to close it as 'Unclear What You're Asking' because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I'm not sure which problem you're trying solve.&#xD;&#xA;2. It's difficult to imagine a tool that could do what you're asking for.&#xD;&#xA; 1. And if you're looking for a tool, then we should close it as Off-Topic because resource requests are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But then I read this Meta question, and it seems like you tried to make some edits to rescue the question. That is, before the question got locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I reconsidered my position.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But then I saw [this comment][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Looking at the edit history of your post, it appears that you engaged in a series of repeated rollbacks, including the roll-back of an edit that a moderator made in an attempt to save your question by making it on-topic for the site. Your post getting locked is the risk you take when you engage in rollback wars, and when the mod locks your post, they get to decide which revision gets locked. – Robert Harvey 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And now I'm more convinced than ever that this question should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Also, in the future, I think you should try to be a little less verbose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like you, I graduated from an American school system that asked me to fill up blue books with essay after essay. But in the real world, less is more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please try to focus your questions on the core of your problem. Please don't take the scenic route.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hope this helps!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6190/what-recourse-is-there-for-a-post-that-is-locked-for-reasons-that-one-does-not-u/6193#comment16728_6190" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16093" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6193" RevisionGUID="09d9be36-9881-47b5-86d4-9540b70ed92f" CreationDate="2013-09-25T18:27:13.047" UserId="1996" Comment="added 585 characters in body" Text="I'll put my cards on the table.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I didn't vote to close your question, but if it was open when I noticed it, I would've voted to close it as 'Unclear What You're Asking' because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I'm not sure which problem you're trying solve.&#xD;&#xA;2. It's difficult to imagine a tool that could do what you're asking for.&#xD;&#xA; 1. And if you're looking for a tool, then we should close it as Off-Topic because resource requests are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But then I read this Meta question, and it seems like you tried to make some edits to rescue the question. That is, before the question got locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I reconsidered my position.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But then I saw [this comment][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Looking at the edit history of your post, it appears that you engaged in a series of repeated rollbacks, including the roll-back of an edit that a moderator made in an attempt to save your question by making it on-topic for the site. Your post getting locked is the risk you take when you engage in rollback wars, and when the mod locks your post, they get to decide which revision gets locked. – Robert Harvey 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And now I'm more convinced than ever that this question should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Also, in the future, I think you should try to be a little less verbose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like you, I graduated from an American school system that asked me to fill up blue books with essay after essay. But in the real world, less is more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please try to focus your questions on the core of your problem. Please don't take the scenic route.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hope this helps!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per [@EMS' latest comment][2], I must give him this: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. He has a genuine problem (although it needs to be reworded).&#xD;&#xA;2. [@EMS][3] is exactly the type of user that we need to retain on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;  1. He puts effort into his posts.&#xD;&#xA;  2. And he's genuinely curious about the rules because he'd like to follow them so that he can get answers to his questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@EMS: I regret that I cannot unilaterally unlock your question and rehabilitate it, but I hope that others (particularly moderators) will be able to give you the advice that you need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hope this helps!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6190/what-recourse-is-there-for-a-post-that-is-locked-for-reasons-that-one-does-not-u/6193#comment16728_6190&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6190/what-recourse-is-there-for-a-post-that-is-locked-for-reasons-that-one-does-not-u/6193#comment16748_6193&#xD;&#xA;[3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/103181/ems" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16094" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6194" RevisionGUID="58333f3f-2f83-4daf-a1e8-3d2f8c3afadc" CreationDate="2013-09-25T18:42:18.530" UserId="5099" Text="After looking at the question, the edit history and the discussions about both so far, I want to add a few notes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The lock on the question is **not** because the question itself is bad or wrong or unsuitable. The question got locked because there is a disagreement on how to formulate certain parts of the question and is only meant to avoid polluting the history of the question while those disagreements are sorted out here.&#xD;&#xA;The locking of a question is certainly not a precursor to closing or deleting it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In its first revision, the question was basically fine, but it contained some phrases that, by experience, tend to trigger close votes, even if those close votes are in reality inappropriate. I believe that that was the for the first edit and everything after that is down to a disagreement on the validity of the edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The 'trigger phrase' in this case was the explicit request for literature references. It is my experience that questions with such an explicit request don't do well here (regardless of what any blog post might say about asking for references). Many people regard it as a veiled request for outside resources (*regardless of the rest of the question and the intentions of the asker*) and will vote to close based on that.&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, even if the question is right up in my alley, I skip it if it explicitly asks for literature references, because I usually don't have the time to hunt down the appropriate references for my answer, provided that I have them in a format that you can easily reference in the first place. I would be very surprised if I am the only one that has such a policy." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16095" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6195" RevisionGUID="59f59d24-d25c-43fa-941c-9a6b9bf96eb3" CreationDate="2013-09-25T21:48:31.143" UserId="31260" Text="I would like to address one of the [comments](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments#comment419290_212517) you made, likely intending to support the question with an authoritative reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that my post specifically implements the tactics referred to in that post to achieve usefulness as a subjective post. It isn't shopping for a source if you insist that an experience or widely-known principle be backed up by references. This is why it says &quot;Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your understanding of [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) article looks wrong to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reading of the statement _&quot;questions insist that opinion be backed up&quot;_ is that it's a strong prohibition against filling questions with a [**poison** like &quot;what's your opinion?&quot;, &quot;what do you think?&quot;, &quot;what do you prefer?&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/184574/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;)... and yeah, &quot;which resource do you recommend&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question should _never_ have words like &quot;what's your opinion&quot; simply because this makes a wide open door for crappy answers where authors just post their opinion without even attempting to back it up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good question, in addition, is worded in a way that actually _[repels](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5401/31260 &quot;more on that here&quot;)_ garbage answers - allowing readers, guys like you and me, to flag low quality posts for mod attention and request deletion on the ground that these don't answer the question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Note that what's-your-opinion in the question immediately makes such flagging and demanding deletion impossible because, well, such answers _match the questions asked_. Same reasoning applies to resource requests - it is officially legal to post a crappy &quot;I recommend this URL&quot; and pretend that this is just answers to what have been asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I would like to expand on what is fundamentally wrong in your position.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You (and some [other askers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6147/31260)) re-post excerpts from the article, plainly translating these into requirements to answers and pretend that this makes your question compliant. **Don't do that.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above &quot;translation&quot; is purely yours, you have no grounds to state that this can be inferred from the article you refer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing to remember is, this article states requirements for _questions_, not for the _answers_. Re-read it again and pay attention to the sub-title (quoted below, keeping font close to original):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Article is about guidelines for _questions_, plain and simple as in the title quoted above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever requirements for _answers_ you stuff into your questions, you have no ground to link these to the article. These are all yours, and, frankly, from the perspective of those who read your question, these are pure noise, as these add nothing [substantial](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6171/31260 &quot;related discussion here&quot;) to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't pollute the question with requirements to answers - for readers, these are useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, _after reading_ particular answer, you feel like something is not OK there, check whether it fits [answering guidelines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer &quot;here&quot;) and if you believe that it doesn't, feel free to raise your concerns." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16096" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6195" RevisionGUID="470bdd7c-8c7b-4df8-9bcb-544512c9971c" CreationDate="2013-09-25T22:07:32.093" UserId="31260" Comment="minor wordsmithing" Text="I would like to address one of the [comments](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments#comment419290_212517) you made, likely intending to support the question with an authoritative reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that my post specifically implements the tactics referred to in that post to achieve usefulness as a subjective post. It isn't shopping for a source if you insist that an experience or widely-known principle be backed up by references. This is why it says &quot;Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your understanding of [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) article looks wrong to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reading of the statement _&quot;questions insist that opinion be backed up&quot;_ is that it's a strong prohibition against filling questions with a [**poison** like &quot;what's your opinion?&quot;, &quot;what do you think?&quot;, &quot;what do you prefer?&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/184574/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;)... and yeah, &quot;which resource do you recommend&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question should _never_ have words like &quot;what's your opinion&quot; simply because this makes a wide open door for crappy answers where authors just post their opinion without even attempting to back it up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good question, in addition, is worded in a way that actually _[repels](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5401/31260 &quot;more on that here&quot;)_ garbage answers - allowing readers, guys like you and me, to flag low quality posts for mod attention and request deletion on the ground that these don't answer the question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Note that what's-your-opinion in the question immediately makes such flagging and demanding deletion impossible because, well, such answers _match the questions asked_. Same reasoning applies to resource requests - it is officially legal to post a crappy &quot;I recommend this URL&quot; and pretend that this just answers to what have been asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I would like to expand on what looks fundamentally wrong in your position.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You (and some [other askers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6147/31260)) re-post excerpts from the article, plainly translating these into requirements to answers and pretend that this makes your question compliant. **Don't do that.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above &quot;translation&quot; is purely yours, you have no grounds to state that this can be inferred from the article you refer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing to remember is, this article states requirements for _questions_, not for the _answers_. Re-read it again and pay attention to the sub-title (quoted below, keeping font close to original):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Article is about guidelines for _questions_, plain and simple as in the title quoted above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever requirements for _answers_ you stuff into your questions, you have no ground to link these to the article. These are all yours, and, frankly, from the perspective of those who read your question, these are pure noise, as these add nothing [substantial](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6171/31260 &quot;related discussion here&quot;) to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't pollute the question with requirements to answers - for readers, these are useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, _after reading_ particular answer, you feel like something is not OK there, check whether it fits [answering guidelines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer &quot;here&quot;) and if you believe that it doesn't, feel free to raise your concerns." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16097" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6195" RevisionGUID="e2ed60a1-f7ff-4755-a770-ad670a11cbd6" CreationDate="2013-09-26T06:48:57.560" UserId="31260" Comment="crappy -&gt; [low quality](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/8259/165773 &quot;more on link-only answers here&quot;)" Text="I would like to address one of the [comments](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments#comment419290_212517) you made, likely intending to support the question with an authoritative reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that my post specifically implements the tactics referred to in that post to achieve usefulness as a subjective post. It isn't shopping for a source if you insist that an experience or widely-known principle be backed up by references. This is why it says &quot;Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your understanding of [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) article looks wrong to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reading of the statement _&quot;questions insist that opinion be backed up&quot;_ is that it's a strong prohibition against filling questions with a [**poison** like &quot;what's your opinion?&quot;, &quot;what do you think?&quot;, &quot;what do you prefer?&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/184574/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;)... and yeah, &quot;which resource do you recommend&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question should _never_ have words like &quot;what's your opinion&quot; simply because this makes a wide open door for crappy answers where authors just post their opinion without even attempting to back it up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good question, in addition, is worded in a way that actually _[repels](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5401/31260 &quot;more on that here&quot;)_ garbage answers - allowing readers, guys like you and me, to flag low quality posts for mod attention and request deletion on the ground that these don't answer the question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Note that what's-your-opinion in the question immediately makes such flagging and demanding deletion impossible because, well, such answers _match the questions asked_. Same reasoning applies to resource requests - it is officially legal to post a [low quality](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/8259/165773 &quot;more on link-only answers here&quot;) &quot;I recommend this URL&quot; and pretend that this just answers to what have been asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I would like to expand on what looks fundamentally wrong in your position.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You (and some [other askers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6147/31260)) re-post excerpts from the article, plainly translating these into requirements to answers and pretend that this makes your question compliant. **Don't do that.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above &quot;translation&quot; is purely yours, you have no grounds to state that this can be inferred from the article you refer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing to remember is, this article states requirements for _questions_, not for the _answers_. Re-read it again and pay attention to the sub-title (quoted below, keeping font close to original):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Article is about guidelines for _questions_, plain and simple as in the title quoted above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever requirements for _answers_ you stuff into your questions, you have no ground to link these to the article. These are all yours, and, frankly, from the perspective of those who read your question, these are pure noise, as these add nothing [substantial](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6171/31260 &quot;related discussion here&quot;) to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't pollute the question with requirements to answers - for readers, these are useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, _after reading_ particular answer, you feel like something is not OK there, check whether it fits [answering guidelines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer &quot;here&quot;) and if you believe that it doesn't, feel free to raise your concerns." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16098" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6196" RevisionGUID="1343923f-fe4c-4c32-a2c8-d92feafb3ad2" CreationDate="2013-09-26T15:14:29.837" UserDisplayName="user103181" Text="I opened [this Meta question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6190/what-recourse-is-there-for-a-post-that-is-locked-for-reasons-that-one-does-not-u) in response to [a P.SE question that was locked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that I laid out a dispassionate and objective argument that the whole rollback/edit history/locking issue was not handled properly by the moderator involved. My argument consisted of referencing a blog post, [&quot;Good Subjective v. Bad Subjective Questions&quot;](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) specifically because this post is linked directly from [the P.SE &quot;on-topic&quot; page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and was the only direct reference there that seemed relevant to my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I am happy to admit that my line of thinking and my argument might be incorrect. I don't *believe* they are incorrect, but they still could be. But regardless of the arguments' rightness or wrongness, I think it is indisputable that they are dispassionate references to P.SE's endorsed community standards and my interpretation thereof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, my interpretation and everything else could be wrong, but I was trying to make a serious argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To my surprise, the user @GlenH7 feels that I am being &quot;impetuous&quot; and &quot;petulant&quot;, evidenced in his comment on the post (as of 11 am EST today).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your impetuous and petulant meta question and comments are ... disappointing. I had written up a fairly length answer which I realized was just bashing you. The short version is this: you're wrong regarding your question on main and the basis behind your meta question is tenuous at best. 3 of the 5 mods have weighed in and called your crap out. Several high rep users, included the site's highest rep user, have called your crap out. Stop defending an untenable argument and try to learn from what the community is offering you. – GlenH7 12 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*And this comment received 2 upvotes*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could try to make an itemized list of why this comment is *categorically inappropriate* (for example, the entirely non-sequitur mention of this 'answer' @GlenH7 wrote up that was &quot;just bashing me.&quot; In addition to being mean, that's entirely irrelevant. Who cares about an answer you *were going to but ultimately did not* write. What possible use is it to mention to me that you *were going to write a post bashing me* but then did not?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But at this point I feel like it's no use. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does the community at large have advice for me on how to cope with this? I really, very seriously, feel pretty depressed by the entire thread of comments and answers at the meta question link. There are serious argumentative fallacies present in virtually all of the answers; ones that I've taken great pains to address.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if the end result of that thread was just that everyone still thought I was wrong, then so be it. But that's not the result of the thread. The result is that people want to write answer that are &quot;just bashing me&quot;, not publish them, and then tell me that that's what they were going to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*And then two other people upvoted them for that!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is a user supposed to cope with a community like that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16099" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6196" RevisionGUID="1343923f-fe4c-4c32-a2c8-d92feafb3ad2" CreationDate="2013-09-26T15:14:29.837" UserDisplayName="user103181" Text="Coping with Community Decision to Upvote Rude Comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16100" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6196" RevisionGUID="1343923f-fe4c-4c32-a2c8-d92feafb3ad2" CreationDate="2013-09-26T15:14:29.837" UserDisplayName="user103181" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16101" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6196" RevisionGUID="d781c196-e97a-4fe4-924b-dcd644dc1833" CreationDate="2013-09-26T15:19:54.403" UserDisplayName="user103181" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="I opened [this Meta question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6190/what-recourse-is-there-for-a-post-that-is-locked-for-reasons-that-one-does-not-u) in response to [a P.SE question that was locked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that I laid out a dispassionate and objective argument that the whole rollback/edit history/locking issue was not handled properly by the moderator involved. My argument consisted of referencing a blog post, [&quot;Good Subjective v. Bad Subjective Questions&quot;](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) specifically because this post is linked directly from [the P.SE &quot;on-topic&quot; page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and was the only direct reference there that seemed relevant to my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I am happy to admit that my line of thinking and my argument might be incorrect. I don't *believe* they are incorrect, but they still could be. But regardless of the arguments' rightness or wrongness, I think it is indisputable that they are dispassionate references to P.SE's endorsed community standards and my interpretation thereof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, my interpretation and everything else could be wrong, but I was trying to make a serious argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To my surprise, the user @GlenH7 feels that I am being &quot;impetuous&quot; and &quot;petulant&quot;, evidenced in his comment on the post (as of 11 am EST today).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your impetuous and petulant meta question and comments are ... disappointing. I had written up a fairly length answer which I realized was just bashing you. The short version is this: you're wrong regarding your question on main and the basis behind your meta question is tenuous at best. 3 of the 5 mods have weighed in and called your crap out. Several high rep users, included the site's highest rep user, have called your crap out. Stop defending an untenable argument and try to learn from what the community is offering you. – GlenH7 12 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*And this comment received 2 upvotes*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could try to make an itemized list of why this comment is *categorically inappropriate* (for example, the entirely non-sequitur mention of this 'answer' @GlenH7 wrote up that was &quot;just bashing me.&quot; In addition to being mean, that's entirely irrelevant. Who cares about an answer you *were going to but ultimately did not* write. What possible use is it to mention to me that you *were going to write a post bashing me* but then did not?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But at this point I feel like it's no use. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does the community at large have advice for me on how to cope with this? I really, very seriously, feel pretty depressed by the entire thread of comments and answers at the meta question link. There are serious argumentative fallacies present in virtually all of the answers; ones that I've taken great pains to address.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if the end result of that thread was just that everyone still thought I was wrong, then so be it. But that's not the result of the thread. The result is that people want to write answers that are &quot;just bashing me&quot;, not publish them, and then tell me that that's what they were going to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*And then two other people upvoted them for that!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is a user supposed to cope with a community like that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16102" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6197" RevisionGUID="f6a2cbe2-0a76-40b3-9c3e-8b5f8aa44345" CreationDate="2013-09-26T15:31:23.407" UserId="1996" Text="Solution: Flag the rude comments, then move on." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16103" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6198" RevisionGUID="d40fef6e-31c8-41f0-aba7-eaa7f4e499d7" CreationDate="2013-09-26T16:48:19.163" UserId="1204" Text="Your depression largely stems from the fact that you've arrived at Stack Exchange with some invalid assumptions, premises and preconceived judgments, which you probably obtained by participating in other online forums.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange doesn't seek to be a &quot;me too&quot; forum.  In fact, the goals are quite the opposite.  Where forums will allow you to post almost anything, Stack Exchange prefers to be more discerning, allowing only those posts that add value to the community.  Where forums allow you to entirely control the content of your posts, Stack Exchange prefers a more collaborative approach, allowing trusted users to cull, curate and improve content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is the anti-forum, in other words.  Everything you learned in those forum environments is essentially wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason this is causing you depression is that you came here expecting the medium (the Stack Exchange software and its participants) to bend to your will and your own purposes.  It simply doesn't work that way here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way out of the depression is to get to know the SE platform on its own terms, understand how it works, and then decide if it is personally worthwhile for you to participate on that basis." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16104" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6199" RevisionGUID="e0079c73-dcec-4d0f-b022-370710191401" CreationDate="2013-09-27T00:51:21.677" UserId="25476" Text="Rudeness and offensive comments are absolutely not tolerated and should be flagged for moderator attention.  We take this kind of thing very seriously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that being said I think the &quot;welcome&quot; you have received here may have been because of your tenacity in being heard, your strong convictions about what you feel is right and wrong, and your passionate emotive language.  These are not necessarily bad properties of a person and we certainly welcome debate, but I do think you may have been misunderstood.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your passionate emotive language combined with your tenacity for debate are probably being mistaken for passive-aggressive. Perhaps people believe your ego was bruised and that you had a deep controlled anger about what happened with your question (by controlled I mean masking your true emotions with colorful and descriptive language).  Perhaps people felt that you weren't being very direct or straightforward with what was really bothering you, that you were angry about your question being modified in a way and for reasons you do not understand.  The anger driving the tenacity that produced 10's of comments and multiple meta discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not saying you are that kind of person, but I tell you that there are those that fit that description and still find the opportunity to stir trouble on Programmers from time to time, for what reason I do not know.  I don't believe you are a troll, but perhaps some people mistook your demeanor for the similarities in other users that cause trouble here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My advice to you is to ask questions on meta where you are confused about what is going on and where the Help documentation is not clear, and take a concerted effort to *really* listen to what your peers are trying to tell you.  Look at situations from a clear mind and try to consider the others perspective on what is going on.  Then evaluate the true impact of the other users actions on content that you had contributed and ask yourself if it is really that big of a deal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope to see you become an active contributing member of the community some day." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16105" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6200" RevisionGUID="f0b20ef2-3d58-449e-9e10-490736cf2b3c" CreationDate="2013-09-27T21:45:47.287" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I've noticed the SE community evangelist making some copy editing edits to correct the formatting of the markdown or the proper wording of a phrase.  Likely to help improve our (P.SE's) image for showing us off the the world.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, the community evangelist does not have a diamond and isn't a 2k+ user to be able to do free edits and so the suggested edits go through the review queue.  Most of the time these have been approved because they're right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other times, they're rejected as 'too minor' (putting an 'a' in the title of a question, or minor rewording (IIRC, there was a suggested edit on one of my answers that was rejected that resulted in an awkward phrasing being copied out to ars technica)).  This is unfortunate, because they really should go through.  The motivation of this user is quite different than your normal sub 500 rep user (I think 500 is where you get cut off for rep from question edits) - he's not after rep.  Thus, the minor edits are completely appropriate for what is being done and shouldn't be rejected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is there something that we or SE can do to make it more obvious that these edits should go through because he isn't the normal ~200 rep user picking through old questions for rep, he's **our** evangelist?  A +1800 association bonus from SEEmployeesOnly.SE? A diamond? Awareness of other review queue reviewers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- &#xD;&#xA;(The reason I haven't said his name is because there is a *high* correlation between his edits and the significantly increased viewership of the question in the future - which could attract people who are after cheap rep)&#xD;&#xA;--&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16106" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6200" RevisionGUID="f0b20ef2-3d58-449e-9e10-490736cf2b3c" CreationDate="2013-09-27T21:45:47.287" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Can we give the community evangelist something more noteable to make suggested edits go more smootly?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16107" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6200" RevisionGUID="f0b20ef2-3d58-449e-9e10-490736cf2b3c" CreationDate="2013-09-27T21:45:47.287" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|feature-request|suggested-edits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16108" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6200" RevisionGUID="f443cd1f-bf39-4804-a5d3-e4a16f0a88a0" CreationDate="2013-09-27T21:49:38.297" UserId="25936" Comment="added 90 characters in body; edited tags" Text="I've noticed the SE community evangelist [SamtheBrand][1] making some copy editing edits to correct the formatting of the markdown or the proper wording of a phrase.  Likely to help improve our (P.SE's) image for showing us off the the world.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, the community evangelist does not have a diamond and isn't a 2k+ user to be able to do free edits and so the suggested edits go through the review queue.  Most of the time these have been approved because they're right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other times, they're rejected as 'too minor' (putting an 'a' in the title of a question, or minor rewording (IIRC, there was a suggested edit on one of my answers that was rejected that resulted in an awkward phrasing being copied out to ars technica)).  This is unfortunate, because they really should go through.  The motivation of this user is quite different than your normal sub 500 rep user (I think 500 is where you get cut off for rep from question edits) - he's not after rep.  Thus, the minor edits are completely appropriate for what is being done and shouldn't be rejected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is there something that we or SE can do to make it more obvious that these edits should go through because he isn't the normal ~200 rep user picking through old questions for rep, he's **our** evangelist?  A +1800 association bonus from SEEmployeesOnly.SE? A diamond? Awareness of other review queue reviewers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- &#xD;&#xA;(The reason I haven't said his name is because there is a *high* correlation between his edits and the significantly increased viewership of the question in the future - which could attract people who are after cheap rep)&#xD;&#xA;--&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/39006/samthebrand" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16109" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6200" RevisionGUID="f443cd1f-bf39-4804-a5d3-e4a16f0a88a0" CreationDate="2013-09-27T21:49:38.297" UserId="25936" Comment="added 90 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|suggested-edits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16110" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6201" RevisionGUID="06101eea-e49f-4a58-9a63-1dd60c619983" CreationDate="2013-09-27T22:02:33.450" UserId="226" Text="Generally speaking and with no offense to Sam... my initial reaction is that no, we shouldn't do anything special here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most employees don't require special privileges across the network. Heck, many of us aren't really using the sites and/or aren't always in tune with how individual communities work. Those of us who do have network-wide diamonds take great care to avoid abusing them or overstepping any bounds.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, while these edits are *likely* good, the fact that they're made by an employee doesn't necessarily mean that they *should* go through any more than any other suggested edit by any other user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I'll see if others on the team (including Sam :)) disagree. We'll discuss it next week." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16111" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6202" RevisionGUID="06f9091b-5fc3-4365-baf2-cc2b16a7916c" CreationDate="2013-09-27T22:37:41.920" UserId="1458" Text="Meh.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The blame here is primarily on the reviewers, and I don't see a compelling reason for Stack Exchange employees to be privileged if Stack Exchange doesn't see fit to give them a diamond. What if I copy edited a post in preparation for sharing it in my company newsletter?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggested edits are not too minor if they improve the post**. An edit is *too minor* only if what it improves is incommensurate with what the post needs. There are two subcases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * if the suggested edit doesn't really improve anything and the original version was just as good as the proposed revision;&#xD;&#xA; * if the suggested edit makes some improvements, but these are dwarfed by the improvements that the post really needs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Making a title grammatical is not *too minor* if the post is otherwise not in need of an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, the guidance on suggested edit review comments kind of sucks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That being said, it would help if Sam indicated that the question is of particular importance (due to being destined for 15 minutes of fame) and in need of being perfect.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16112" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6201" RevisionGUID="6cfd0ad8-0a3c-48b4-8146-00d76d25030f" CreationDate="2013-09-27T23:51:23.360" UserId="226" Comment="added 42 characters in body" Text="Generally speaking and with no offense to Sam... my initial reaction is that no, we shouldn't do anything special here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most employees don't require special privileges across the network. Heck, many of us aren't really using the sites and/or aren't always in tune with how individual communities work. Those of us who do have network-wide diamonds take great care to avoid abusing them or overstepping any bounds when it comes to site-specific privileges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, while these edits are *likely* good, the fact that they're made by an employee doesn't necessarily mean that they *should* go through any more than any other suggested edit by any other user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I'll see if others on the team (including Sam :)) disagree. We'll discuss it next week." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16114" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6203" RevisionGUID="9170a904-4ca2-459e-9106-1ec90ad63747" CreationDate="2013-09-29T14:15:20.787" UserId="1996" Text="I just failed on a review audit honeypot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone tell me why this isn't a resource request and why it shouldn't be closed (until it's revised)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212057/what-is-an-example-of-a-continuation-not-implemented-as-a-procedure" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16115" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6203" RevisionGUID="9170a904-4ca2-459e-9106-1ec90ad63747" CreationDate="2013-09-29T14:15:20.787" UserId="1996" Text="Review Audit Honeypot - Seems like a resource request" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16116" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6203" RevisionGUID="9170a904-4ca2-459e-9106-1ec90ad63747" CreationDate="2013-09-29T14:15:20.787" UserId="1996" Text="|bug|review-audits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16117" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6203" RevisionGUID="0c05b35e-04b7-410f-a5d5-1976061b36f5" CreationDate="2013-09-29T16:10:42.803" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|review-audits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16118" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6196" RevisionGUID="8c754ffe-177a-417e-8d06-691ce53abe97" CreationDate="2013-09-29T16:11:10.087" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|comments|etiquette|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16119" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6190" RevisionGUID="1a5e3efd-d63c-4647-8211-7ccbdc8f3851" CreationDate="2013-09-29T16:11:43.073" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderation|editing|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16120" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6204" RevisionGUID="da2962ba-97b0-4ff8-8e13-9e023551eb69" CreationDate="2013-09-29T23:07:56.480" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I'm going to go out on a limb here and make this answer more about minor edits than about Sam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless the edit is wrong, approve it.  Reviews should be 'stateless'.  You look at the original, you look at the suggested and if the suggested is better, approve it.  Thats it.  Every improvement is an improvement on the site. There really isn't any such thing as 'too minor'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if a user is apparently abusing the edits (making lots of them on multiple *questions* and thus causing a disturbance), flag it.  Moderators are better equipped to look into the patterns of behavior (this is what you should do if you suspect strange behavior, or odd voting patterns, or otherwise questionable behavior).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I emphasized questions above. Making 5 edits to 4 answers and the question *in the same question* isn't any more disruptive on the front page than making one edit to one question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16121" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6200" RevisionGUID="9ca22dbc-48f6-4464-9321-d8fdd088136e" CreationDate="2013-09-30T02:06:04.443" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Fix typos." Text="Can we give the community evangelist something more notable to make suggested edits go more smoothy?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16122" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6200" RevisionGUID="0c9899f6-61ea-4933-95cf-93ae4a153d1a" CreationDate="2013-09-30T09:16:51.973" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/384607766595530752" />
  <row Id="16123" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6205" RevisionGUID="6509aac0-0c8f-4ad5-a74e-2e9115dfb74b" CreationDate="2013-09-30T15:37:38.710" UserId="8451" Text="I have another issue with the question, whether or not the edits were helpful.  I can't see any of the comments made to the question itself due to it being locked.  I'm not sure what the reputation requirement is for being able to see the comments, but why is there one at all to look at them?  I can see not allowing new comments when the question is locked, but why don't we allow everyone to look at the comments already made?  It makes it difficult to follow some of the discussion around the question when I can't see the comments." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16124" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6206" RevisionGUID="22356086-6ea3-46a3-ab63-e5a5596e72dc" CreationDate="2013-09-30T19:19:35.767" UserId="39006" Text="Good to be noticed!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Indeed, I make these minor (occasionally significant) edits once a week in preparation for the week's [Ask Stack column at Ars Technica][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you know, it's easy to get hung up on a minor speling or, punctuation error. And it's important to me that the awesome questions and answers here aren't overshadowed by a trivial slip of the keyboard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But yes. I understand that my minor edits may seem like rep mining to those who don't know me, and my behavior could conceivably train users to be bad actors. Don't act like me!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or maybe do... I personally agree with Gilles &amp; MichaelT that even the shortest &quot;correct&quot; edit is a perfectly acceptable edit. Whether minor edits should bump a question to the front page, well, that's [a good question for Meta][2], though it's worth noting that even minor edits can be malicious edits, and thus it *might* make sense for all edits to get front page exposure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks for reaching out. And even more thanks for creating content that demonstrates the best of what our network, communities, and individuals have to offer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feel free to ping me any time in chat if you think I'm making an edit in error, being unreasonably heavy-handed, or if you just want to say hi. Going forward I'll try to be more articulate in my edit descriptions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Slowly, I will grind my way towards 2,000 rep. Until then, I hope you approve me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/26483/166581" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16125" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6207" RevisionGUID="fecbc735-2777-4d31-b4da-478c42ee204d" CreationDate="2013-09-30T21:05:22.767" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212981/where-would-the-right-place-to-discuss-devloping-good-progamming-work-habits" />
  <row Id="16126" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6207" RevisionGUID="6ef63e43-9b5f-4695-a0e0-c216d33907fd" CreationDate="2013-09-30T20:23:12.973" UserId="103647" Text="I know (and respect) that stack exchange would prefer questions that can be answered not discussed ... but i am looking for a good place to discuss and learn about programming work habits ... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been in the business for about three years but have always worked alone, so I have never seen what other programmers actually do (as in how they actually spend their time) I would love to be able to DISCUSS more about this to improve my productivity, as well as to allay some of my own insecurities ... so any suggestions for a forum where GOOD (or even GREAT) programmers might be able to guide me ... I would greatly appreciate it!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this is the right forum then perhaps we can begin the discussion here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16127" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6207" RevisionGUID="6ef63e43-9b5f-4695-a0e0-c216d33907fd" CreationDate="2013-09-30T20:23:12.973" UserId="103647" Text="Where would the right place to DISCUSS devloping good progamming work habits?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16128" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6207" RevisionGUID="6ef63e43-9b5f-4695-a0e0-c216d33907fd" CreationDate="2013-09-30T20:23:12.973" UserId="103647" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16129" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6208" RevisionGUID="341c4bd1-3763-4476-a60f-71334b9b322a" CreationDate="2013-09-30T21:28:12.993" UserId="4" Text="Although activity varies, just about every site in the Stack Exchange network has at least one chat room associated with it, and some have several. You can check out [Stack Exchange Chat][1] for the rooms - the [official Programmers chat room is The Whiteboard][2]. Stack Overflow has [its own set of rooms][3]. Once you get sufficient reputation on the Stack Exchange network, you can even create your own chat room and invite users to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alternatively, I've tended to find some interesting discussions on Reddit, but your mileage may vary. They have a lot of different communities, but perhaps [/r/programming][4], [/r/coding][5], [/r/CompSci][6], [/r/softwaredevelopment][7], [/r/AskComputerScience][8], or [/r/csCareerQuestions][9] may be relevant. Check out some of the links they are sharing and discussion threads that exist, and be sure to check out the sidebar for the community rules and maybe some links to other communities that may interest you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://www.reddit.com/r/coding&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://www.reddit.com/r/compsci&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://www.reddit.com/r/softwaredevelopment/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskComputerScience&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16130" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6209" RevisionGUID="bae61ed3-6de4-4192-9693-2fe9457cef96" CreationDate="2013-09-30T21:28:15.137" UserId="26365" Text="http://www.reddit.com/r/programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;disqus.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16131" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6208" RevisionGUID="d7604655-4e75-4d55-9e3a-3af297e0d97c" CreationDate="2013-09-30T21:34:18.800" UserId="4" Comment="added 38 characters in body" Text="Although activity varies, just about every site in the Stack Exchange network has at least one chat room associated with it, and some have several. You can check out [Stack Exchange Chat][1] for the rooms - the [official Programmers chat room is The Whiteboard][2]. Stack Overflow has [its own set of rooms][3]. Once you get sufficient reputation on the Stack Exchange network, you can even create your own chat room and invite users to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alternatively, I've tended to find some interesting discussions on [Reddit][4], but your mileage may vary. They have a lot of different communities, but perhaps [/r/programming][5], [/r/coding][6], [/r/CompSci][7], [/r/softwaredevelopment][8], [/r/AskComputerScience][9], or [/r/csCareerQuestions][10] may be relevant. Check out some of the links they are sharing and discussion threads that exist, and be sure to check out the sidebar for the community rules and maybe some links to other communities that may interest you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.reddit.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://www.reddit.com/r/coding&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://www.reddit.com/r/compsci&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://www.reddit.com/r/softwaredevelopment/&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskComputerScience&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16132" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6207" RevisionGUID="95e02a41-459d-48ea-8844-9ee7804ce9e4" CreationDate="2013-09-30T21:37:57.547" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling, formatting, meta and personal stuff cleanup" Text="I know (and respect) that Stack Exchange would prefer questions that can be answered not discussed but I am looking for a good place to discuss and learn about programming work habits. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been in the business for about three years but have always worked alone, so I have never seen what other programmers actually do (as in how they actually spend their time) I would love to be able to DISCUSS more about this to improve my productivity, as well as to allay some of my own insecurities ... so any suggestions for a forum where GOOD (or even GREAT) programmers might be able to guide me ... I would greatly appreciate it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16133" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6207" RevisionGUID="95e02a41-459d-48ea-8844-9ee7804ce9e4" CreationDate="2013-09-30T21:37:57.547" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling, formatting, meta and personal stuff cleanup" Text="Where would the right place to discuss developing good progamming work habits?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16134" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6210" RevisionGUID="ed651302-d456-45e8-86e1-efceb2ff43a9" CreationDate="2013-09-30T23:53:35.393" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="The title is what saves the question, IMO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is an example of a continuation not implemented as a procedure?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The title steers the question towards &quot;hey, I don't get this thing. Can someone explain it better?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I see and agree with your confusion.  This is the current last paragraph:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Are there any examples of languages where a continuation is expressed in a more abstract way than a function? I know Scheme allows you to grab the current continuation in a first-class manner (call/cc), but even so, it seems that the one argument procedure passed to call/cc is simply given the current continuation in the form of another one argument procedure to which the call/cc'd function can apply its result.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first sentence there is a polling based question, which would be grounds for closing the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I changed it to this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To help my understanding, can an example be provided in a functional language where the continuation is expressed in a more abstract way than a function?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This avoids the poll, but still maintains the OPs request for a &quot;real&quot; example to explain the question.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16135" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6207" RevisionGUID="fb5f4642-a260-4522-99e2-dcd8e3a8f71e" CreationDate="2013-10-01T18:49:26.333" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected // http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=10659166#10659166" Text="Where would the right place to discuss developing good programming work habits?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16136" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6207" RevisionGUID="b7abd527-cce5-4ae8-b503-afb7728bd66a" CreationDate="2013-10-01T19:35:13.787" UserId="103647" Comment="added 30 characters in body" Text="I know (and respect) that Stack Exchange would prefer questions that can be answered not discussed but I am looking for a good place to discuss and learn about programming work habits. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been in the business for about three years but have always worked alone(meaning in my home ... alone), so I have never seen what other programmers actually do (as in how they actually spend their time) I would love to be able to DISCUSS more about this to improve my productivity, as well as to allay some of my own insecurities ... so any suggestions for a forum where GOOD (or even GREAT) programmers might be able to guide me ... I would greatly appreciate it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16137" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6193" RevisionGUID="5b229936-11fa-402a-83cf-f925b367b73a" CreationDate="2013-10-01T19:48:59.197" UserId="1996" Comment="added 53 characters in body" Text="I'll put my cards on the table.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I didn't vote to close your question, but if it was open when I noticed it, I would've voted to close it as 'Unclear What You're Asking' because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I'm not sure which problem you're trying solve.&#xD;&#xA;2. It's difficult to imagine a tool that could do what you're asking for.&#xD;&#xA; 1. And if you're looking for a tool, then we should close it as Off-Topic because resource requests are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But then I read this Meta question, and it seems like you tried to make some edits to rescue the question. That is, before the question got locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I reconsidered my position.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But then I saw [this comment][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Looking at the edit history of your post, it appears that you engaged in a series of repeated rollbacks, including the roll-back of an edit that a moderator made in an attempt to save your question by making it on-topic for the site. Your post getting locked is the risk you take when you engage in rollback wars, and when the mod locks your post, they get to decide which revision gets locked. – Robert Harvey 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And now I'm more convinced than ever that this question should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Also, in the future, I think you should try to be a little less verbose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like you, I graduated from an American school system that asked me to fill up blue books with essay after essay. But in the real world, [less is more][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please try to focus your questions on the core of your problem. Please don't take the scenic route.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hope this helps!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per [@EMS' latest comment][3], I must give him this: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. He has a genuine problem (although it needs to be reworded).&#xD;&#xA;2. [@EMS][4] is exactly the type of user that we need to retain on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;  1. He puts effort into his posts.&#xD;&#xA;  2. And he's genuinely curious about the rules because he'd like to follow them so that he can get answers to his questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@EMS: I regret that I cannot unilaterally unlock your question and rehabilitate it, but I hope that others (particularly moderators) will be able to give you the advice that you need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hope this helps!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6190/what-recourse-is-there-for-a-post-that-is-locked-for-reasons-that-one-does-not-u/6193#comment16728_6190&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://getnashty.com/write-less&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6190/what-recourse-is-there-for-a-post-that-is-locked-for-reasons-that-one-does-not-u/6193#comment16748_6193&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/103181/ems" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16138" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6195" RevisionGUID="5d94b290-a6a8-427e-8f44-fc9e398c96a1" CreationDate="2013-10-02T12:33:28.840" UserId="31260" Comment="I would expect moderators to err on the safer side, performing pre-dispute cleanup of the content" Text="You seem to believe that question locked for content dispute at meta should remain at main site as originally posted (&quot;Lock question as-is&quot;). This approach doesn't make sense to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the purpose of meta discussion, it is insignificant what particular revision is hanging on the main site because [full revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/212517/revisions &quot;example for your post&quot;) and [original version](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/212517/1 &quot;example for your post&quot;) are always available to study content and edits in as much details as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With above in mind, I would expect moderator locking the post to take whatever edits deemed appropriate in order to make it look OK for regular, inexperienced readers of the site - for those who just read what is posted and don't pay attention to obscure, strictly internal notices about _meta_, _content dispute_ etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this perspective, I would expect moderators to err on the safer side, performing pre-dispute cleanup of the content. Given that _final_ version of the content is to be determined by community discussion at meta anyway, I see no point to fixate about what is there on the main site during the dispute (it helps that locked post can not be voted, thus question score can't be influenced until it's unlocked back).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is worth noting that expecting mentioned cleanup to be performed by asker would be a really bad idea, as they are naturally biased.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In your particular case, part cleaned up at main site prior to dispute is: *&quot;Are there any definitive or widely cited sources of best practices literature&quot;*. To me, cleaning it up looks reasonable safety wise, as this part of the question makes a perfect match to one of the [close reasons](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6025/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Oh and please don't tell me that it's safe to keep because this part is hidden deep inside your &quot;main&quot; question. It's there and readers will find it. I remember myself being new at Programmers, carefully studying questions, stumbling upon resource-request parts and posting [low quality answers](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nyfwh.png &quot;example&quot;) _&quot;look here's the resource you asked about &lt;link&gt;&quot;_.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to also address one of the [comments](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments#comment419290_212517) you made, likely intending to support the question with an authoritative reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that my post specifically implements the tactics referred to in that post to achieve usefulness as a subjective post. It isn't shopping for a source if you insist that an experience or widely-known principle be backed up by references. This is why it says &quot;Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your interpretation of [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) article looks wrong to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reading of the statement _&quot;questions insist that opinion be backed up&quot;_ is that it's a strong prohibition against filling questions with a [**poison** like &quot;what's your opinion?&quot;, &quot;what do you think?&quot;, &quot;what do you prefer?&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/184574/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;)... and yeah, &quot;which resource do you recommend&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question should _never_ have words like &quot;what's your opinion&quot; simply because this makes a wide open door for crappy answers where authors just post their opinion without even attempting to back it up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good question, in addition, is worded in a way that actually _[repels](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5401/31260 &quot;more on that here&quot;)_ garbage answers - allowing readers, guys like you and me, to flag low quality posts for mod attention and request deletion on the ground that these don't answer the question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Note that what's-your-opinion in the question immediately makes such flagging and demanding deletion impossible because, well, such answers _match the questions asked_. Same reasoning applies to resource requests - it is officially legal to post a [low quality](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/8259/165773 &quot;more on link-only answers here&quot;) &quot;I recommend this URL&quot; and pretend that this just answers to what have been asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I would like to expand on what looks fundamentally wrong in your position.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You (and some [other askers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6147/31260)) re-post excerpts from the article, plainly translating these into requirements to answers and pretend that this makes your question compliant. **Don't do that.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above &quot;translation&quot; is purely yours, you have no grounds to state that this can be inferred from the article you refer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing to remember is, this article states requirements for _questions_, not for the _answers_. Re-read it again and pay attention to the sub-title (quoted below, keeping font close to original):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Article is about guidelines for _questions_, plain and simple as in the title quoted above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever requirements for _answers_ you stuff into your questions, you have no ground to link these to the article. These are all yours, and, frankly, from the perspective of those who read your question, these are pure noise, as these add nothing [substantial](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6171/31260 &quot;related discussion here&quot;) to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't pollute the question with requirements to answers - for readers, these are useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, _after reading_ particular answer, you feel like something is not OK there, check whether it fits [answering guidelines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer &quot;here&quot;) and if you believe that it doesn't, feel free to raise your concerns." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16139" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6211" RevisionGUID="f047901c-0f92-4d1f-8124-3b5306a978ba" CreationDate="2013-10-02T12:38:12.780" UserId="17261" Text="The two most-upvoted answers on this question are identical: [Should curly braces appear on their own line?][1] It seems like a bug... surely the exact same answer would not have been upvoted so much *twice*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/should-curly-braces-appear-on-their-own-line" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16140" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6211" RevisionGUID="f047901c-0f92-4d1f-8124-3b5306a978ba" CreationDate="2013-10-02T12:38:12.780" UserId="17261" Text="Top answers duplicated on community wiki question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16141" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6211" RevisionGUID="f047901c-0f92-4d1f-8124-3b5306a978ba" CreationDate="2013-10-02T12:38:12.780" UserId="17261" Text="|bug|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16142" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6212" RevisionGUID="702ca294-1156-430e-91eb-373cd79bac78" CreationDate="2013-10-02T12:46:56.350" UserId="23622" Text="You should look better, they are not the same and they are an attempt at humor. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly pointless here because [we hate fun](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16143" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6213" RevisionGUID="850816c0-3988-45a4-97cf-5a158aefcabb" CreationDate="2013-10-02T12:47:07.207" UserId="47" Text="If you read the answers they are not identical:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I find the **first** method more readable, especially if you have nested blocks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The **second** method reminds me of basic, it's like you're trying to **not** forget that the braces are there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I find the **second** method more readable, especially if you have nested blocks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The **first** method reminds me of basic, it's like you're trying to forget that the braces are there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Emphasis mine." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16144" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6211" RevisionGUID="142d27a6-f90c-46b2-bd02-59b2f31664f1" CreationDate="2013-10-02T12:47:19.633" UserId="23622" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16145" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6214" RevisionGUID="129a723d-c2bc-46d7-b244-38d022447950" CreationDate="2013-10-03T08:56:55.803" UserId="98749" Text="Should questions relating to the scrum methodology be in pm or programmers stack exchange?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can see arguments for both, but want to be sure to put my questions in the most useful place." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16146" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6214" RevisionGUID="129a723d-c2bc-46d7-b244-38d022447950" CreationDate="2013-10-03T08:56:55.803" UserId="98749" Text="Should Scrum methodology questions be in pm or programmers stack exchange?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16147" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6214" RevisionGUID="129a723d-c2bc-46d7-b244-38d022447950" CreationDate="2013-10-03T08:56:55.803" UserId="98749" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16148" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6215" RevisionGUID="d79669aa-4d4a-4b20-8f02-02caa588dd1c" CreationDate="2013-10-03T09:25:55.203" UserId="25476" Text="Whichever you prefer.  It is on topic at both places.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The decision you make though is if you want an answer from a developer perspective or a project manager perspective." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16149" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6216" RevisionGUID="e521fb42-e863-4ad1-ae30-f1e885cf1532" CreationDate="2013-10-03T09:47:22.367" UserId="4" Text="Questions about Scrum, or any other development methodology or process, are [very much on-topic here][1]. Generally, if your question is about a software-intensive project, it's on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can browse through some related tags to see what kinds of questions have been asked here about things like [project management][2], [development processes][3] and [life cycle models][4] (specifically [Scrum][5], [CMMI][6], [Rational Unified Process][7]) or [the agile methods][8] in general, [project planning][9], [estimation][10] ([cost][11] and [time][12]) and [scheduling][13] and [software schedules][14], and [measurement][15] and [metrics][16].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of these tags are also in use on Project Management - [development processes][17] ([Scrum][18], [CMMI][19], [Rational Unified Process][20]) and [the agile methods][21], [project planning][22], [scheduling][23], and [measurement][24] and [metrics][25].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd recommend browsing those some of the questions on both sites and seeing how the questions are asked and the type of answers that are generated, since the community tends to be different (with some overlap).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You shouldn't cross-post questions between sites without tailoring them for the audience. If you do post a question and find you aren't getting answers or are getting answers that might not be what you're looking for, you can try to rephrase the question on the other site or flagging it and asking for moderator migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I'd like to see more software management, process, and professional practice questions here on Programmers since that's my area of expertise. But you should be asking on the site that you think will best give you the answers you need to solve your problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bproject-management%5D+closed%3Ano+is%3Aquestion&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bdevelopment-process%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Blife-cycle%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bscrum%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bcmmi%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Brational-unified-process%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bagile%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bproject-planning%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bestimation%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bcost-estimation%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Btime-estimation%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bscheduling%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsoftware-schedules%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bmeasurement%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bmetrics%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/development-process&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/scrum&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/cmmi&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/rup&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/agile&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/planning&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/scheduling&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/measurement&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/metrics" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16151" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6217" RevisionGUID="4f7a6859-c9f2-4d28-ac29-fa2686d94ba4" CreationDate="2013-10-03T23:31:09.673" UserId="66930" Text="The question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167508/are-there-any-real-world-practical-problems-where-only-the-best-exact-solution is closed with reason &quot;it's unclear what you're asking&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;And the advice says to `add additional details to highlight exactly what you need`.  &#xD;&#xA;That's ridiculous. I've been adding as much details to the question as I could to present my point in the most clear way I could.  &#xD;&#xA;I am not realizing what additional details are asked for or how this question might not be clear (besides some people might feel tl;dr) and will appreciate if anybody helps me with that.  &#xD;&#xA;Even if it is worst question here on the stackexchange network please help to improve it because it's subject deserves to be existing and open for answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16152" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6217" RevisionGUID="4f7a6859-c9f2-4d28-ac29-fa2686d94ba4" CreationDate="2013-10-03T23:31:09.673" UserId="66930" Text="Is it really unclear what is being asked?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16153" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6217" RevisionGUID="4f7a6859-c9f2-4d28-ac29-fa2686d94ba4" CreationDate="2013-10-03T23:31:09.673" UserId="66930" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16154" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6218" RevisionGUID="b5a86ba3-3d98-43b0-8c9d-30acb4ce8c1c" CreationDate="2013-10-04T02:17:03.880" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The reading of the title of the question reads as a poll asking for examples.  If this is what is desired, then it is off topic because polling itself implies that there are multiple correct answers that may be at odds with each other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While P.SE does stretch it a bit, from [help - don't ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for &quot;Are there any real-world practical problems where only the best (exact) solution algorithm or program will do (but not the good-enough solution)?&quot; - it is unclear what the actual problem that is faced is.  This is where the unclear closure likely comes from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, the last paragraph of the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think that we live in a world where it is required from programming solutions to practical purposes to be good enough. In rare cases really very very good but still not the best ones. Isn't it? If it's not can you provide an example of such solved or unsolved problem of practical interest?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This sounds like a call for a discussion.  Discussions don't work well in the Q&amp;A format.  We welcome such in chat, but as questions they just don't work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key for this to be reopened would be to address these issues in the question - don't poll for examples, make it clear what the problem that needs to be solved is, and don't try to have a discussion about the topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16155" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6219" RevisionGUID="029b2d4e-e9fa-4151-91a1-01ba493303dd" CreationDate="2013-10-04T02:36:38.933" UserId="25476" Text="My question to you is why do you not accept the highest voted answer when at least in my professional opinion is correct and helpful?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However I need you to help me realize how I misstate good-enough and best concepts in my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is exactly what the answerer did.  I am not sure what you don't understand. He explained that the entire premise about the &quot;exact&quot; solution is wrongheaded.  He explained to you even the authors intent.  If this was truly what the question was asking for then it would be a great question.  You explain though what you are really looking for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Because from the lines you highlighted the only difference I see is that I'm asking about the problem that has to be solved programmatically. But that's the reason the question is on this site and not somewhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no *The Problem* only a seemingly endless array of possible problems which doesn't really lead to any one correct answer.  This doesn't fit the Q&amp;A model well and generally doesn't lead to constructive content on the site.  It would warrant an interesting discussion but this is not the place or forum for that kind of debate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I disagree it is unclear what you are asking, but I do agree it should be closed on the grounds that what you are looking for is polling for programming examples demonstrating the problem statement from the book." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16156" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6217" RevisionGUID="91ffefdb-7262-496f-a86f-ca3981bcbf6b" CreationDate="2013-10-04T03:23:59.377" UserId="66930" Comment="added 229 characters in body" Text="The question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167508/are-there-any-real-world-practical-problems-where-only-the-best-exact-solution is closed with reason &quot;it's unclear what you're asking&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;And the advice says to `add additional details to highlight exactly what you need`.  &#xD;&#xA;That's ridiculous. I've been adding as much details to the question as I could to present my point in the most clear way I could.  &#xD;&#xA;I am not realizing what additional details are asked for or how this question might not be clear (besides some people might feel tl;dr) and will appreciate if anybody helps me with that.  &#xD;&#xA;Even if it is worst question here on the stackexchange network please help to improve it because it's subject deserves to be existing and open for answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update** Practically, the help I need is following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Does the question explain the idea of a problem of a special kind?&#xD;&#xA; 2. What can be done to reduce the question so only the idea of a such problem is shining clear?&#xD;&#xA; 3. Does the question belong to http://cs.stackexchange.com/?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16157" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6217" RevisionGUID="bc2a6d1a-a5df-4829-8eb5-c27b99b4dc2b" CreationDate="2013-10-04T03:47:49.307" UserId="66930" Comment="added 9 characters in body" Text="The question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167508/are-there-any-real-world-practical-problems-where-only-the-best-exact-solution is closed with reason &quot;it's unclear what you're asking&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;And the advice says to `add additional details to highlight exactly what you need`.  &#xD;&#xA;That's ridiculous. I've been adding as much details to the question as I could to present my point in the most clear way I could.  &#xD;&#xA;I am not realizing what additional details are asked for or how this question might not be clear (besides some people might feel tl;dr) and will appreciate if anybody helps me with that.  &#xD;&#xA;Even if it is worst question here on the stackexchange network please help to improve it because it's subject deserves to be existing and open for answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update** Practically, the help I need is following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Does the question explain the idea of a problem of a special kind?&#xD;&#xA; 2. What can be done to reduce the question so only the idea of a such problem is shining clear?&#xD;&#xA; 3. Does the question probably belong to http://cs.stackexchange.com/?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16158" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6220" RevisionGUID="d382237e-d0da-40eb-803b-828bb348bbbc" CreationDate="2013-10-04T10:20:39.917" UserId="1458" Text="I'm a [Computer Science Stack Exchange](http://cs.stackexchange.com/) moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is at the interface between programming and computer science. It straddles the border between Prog.SE and CS.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think this question is suitable for Stack Exchange. It's broad, and fundamentally, it invites a list of examples rather than answers. Each answer would be an example of a “real-world problem in which only the best solution will do”. Stack Exchange is not good at such collections of examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't read every word of your question. It's possible that there is some question related to your understanding of Cormen's question buried in there, but if so, you need to do the work of extracting it.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16159" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6207" RevisionGUID="18cad79b-411c-4229-8530-a5b96a7866ac" CreationDate="2013-10-04T21:17:03.313" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/386238559700910080" />
  <row Id="16160" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6221" RevisionGUID="51aa6b53-28a4-426e-a05f-55d3d6f8b021" CreationDate="2013-10-04T21:41:17.003" UserId="93445" Text="TL;DR: I encourage you to seek out other developers in your community. Listen, ask questions, and share.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My favorite place is at a enthusiasts or users group that focuses on technologies that you are working with. These groups are a great place to learn new things from people of all skill levels. I attend a couple groups on a regular basis. One focuses on ruby, which is the language I use most often, and the other focuses on software as a craft.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find that the discussions in both groups touch on good, bad, and better ways to do... well everything. I also get a lot out of grabbing a bite or a drink with the attendees that are able to do so after the meeting is over. The topic of conversation is almost always about software in some aspect, and I walk away from each encounter with more knowledge and wisdom than I had before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also see if there are any Code &amp; Coffee meetings going on in your area. (http://codeandcoffee.info/) I haven't attended any, but I've heard good things from those who have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16161" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="4d282812-7b20-4a3c-9ca7-0153ac85b8ec" CreationDate="2013-10-06T14:47:20.427" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16162" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6195" RevisionGUID="43d745f4-ccf5-4a46-be03-5626ee757dd6" CreationDate="2013-10-07T15:58:10.003" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting corrected" Text="You seem to believe that question locked for content dispute at meta should remain at main site as originally posted (&quot;Lock question as-is&quot;). This approach doesn't make sense to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the purpose of meta discussion, it is insignificant what particular revision is hanging on the main site because [full revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/212517/revisions &quot;example for your post&quot;) and [original version](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/212517/1 &quot;example for your post&quot;) are always available to study content and edits in as much details as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With above in mind, I would expect moderator locking the post to take whatever edits deemed appropriate in order to make it look OK for regular, inexperienced readers of the site - for those who just read what is posted and don't pay attention to obscure, strictly internal notices about _meta_, _content dispute_ etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this perspective, I would expect moderators to err on the safer side, performing pre-dispute cleanup of the content. Given that _final_ version of the content is to be determined by community discussion at meta anyway, I see no point to fixate about what is there on the main site during the dispute (it helps that locked post can not be voted, thus question score can't be influenced until it's unlocked back).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is worth noting that expecting mentioned cleanup to be performed by asker would be a really bad idea, as they are naturally biased.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In your particular case, part cleaned up at main site prior to dispute is: *&quot;Are there any definitive or widely cited sources of best practices literature&quot;*. To me, cleaning it up looks reasonable safety wise, as this part of the question makes a perfect match to one of the [close reasons](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6025/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Oh and please don't tell me that it's safe to keep because this part is hidden deep inside your &quot;main&quot; question. It's there and readers will find it. I remember myself being new at Programmers, carefully studying questions, stumbling upon resource-request parts and posting [low quality answers](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nyfwh.png &quot;example&quot;) _&quot;look here's the resource you asked about: &amp;lt;link&amp;gt;&quot;_.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to also address one of the [comments](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments#comment419290_212517) you made, likely intending to support the question with an authoritative reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that my post specifically implements the tactics referred to in that post to achieve usefulness as a subjective post. It isn't shopping for a source if you insist that an experience or widely-known principle be backed up by references. This is why it says &quot;Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your interpretation of [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) article looks wrong to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reading of the statement _&quot;questions insist that opinion be backed up&quot;_ is that it's a strong prohibition against filling questions with a [**poison** like &quot;what's your opinion?&quot;, &quot;what do you think?&quot;, &quot;what do you prefer?&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/184574/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;)... and yeah, &quot;which resource do you recommend&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question should _never_ have words like &quot;what's your opinion&quot; simply because this makes a wide open door for crappy answers where authors just post their opinion without even attempting to back it up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good question, in addition, is worded in a way that actually _[repels](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5401/31260 &quot;more on that here&quot;)_ garbage answers - allowing readers, guys like you and me, to flag low quality posts for mod attention and request deletion on the ground that these don't answer the question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Note that what's-your-opinion in the question immediately makes such flagging and demanding deletion impossible because, well, such answers _match the questions asked_. Same reasoning applies to resource requests - it is officially legal to post a [low quality](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/8259/165773 &quot;more on link-only answers here&quot;) &quot;I recommend this URL&quot; and pretend that this just answers to what have been asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I would like to expand on what looks fundamentally wrong in your position.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You (and some [other askers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6147/31260)) re-post excerpts from the article, plainly translating these into requirements to answers and pretend that this makes your question compliant. **Don't do that.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above &quot;translation&quot; is purely yours, you have no grounds to state that this can be inferred from the article you refer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing to remember is, this article states requirements for _questions_, not for the _answers_. Re-read it again and pay attention to the sub-title (quoted below, keeping font close to original):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Article is about guidelines for _questions_, plain and simple as in the title quoted above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever requirements for _answers_ you stuff into your questions, you have no ground to link these to the article. These are all yours, and, frankly, from the perspective of those who read your question, these are pure noise, as these add nothing [substantial](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6171/31260 &quot;related discussion here&quot;) to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't pollute the question with requirements to answers - for readers, these are useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, _after reading_ particular answer, you feel like something is not OK there, check whether it fits [answering guidelines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer &quot;here&quot;) and if you believe that it doesn't, feel free to raise your concerns." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16164" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6223" RevisionGUID="4e10569a-4520-4015-8c51-f97cf22d724c" CreationDate="2013-10-09T04:09:33.407" UserId="9425" Text="[Quora](http://quora.com) is a good place to ask questions without fear of them being closed-for-offtopic (Stack Exchange), or downvoted for no reason (Reddit). It'll simply be re-tagged if need be. I'd try something like, _What are the best work habits for programmers?_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People use real names and so the content quality is high. There's lot of good discussion in the answer comments. I did a simple search and found a [question with interesting answers and conversation](https://www.quora.com/Computer-Programming/What-are-some-real-life-good-habits-that-programming-gives-people).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sidenote: Quora competes with Stack Exchange. Each is guided by a very different philosophy." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16165" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6217" RevisionGUID="b40ec2ce-445d-447d-98d0-71b5dbf2bce0" CreationDate="2013-10-12T12:18:42.987" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/389002185083998208" />
  <row Id="16167" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6224" RevisionGUID="156a8e3c-c41c-40a1-aaaf-74cbf81b7a25" CreationDate="2013-10-15T01:08:50.477" UserId="104787" Text="I asked a question about joining a startup as a grad, specifically about the scenario where there wouldn't be any more senior programmers working above the grads: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/214306/as-a-soon-to-be-grad-will-my-skills-and-or-career-suffer-if-i-join-a-startup-wh&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was closed as off-topic (career advice), but I think the question of whether grads should join startups where there might not be technical leadership is one that could apply to lots of people, and the information in the accepted answer are definitely general enough to be helpful to future readers. Thus the closure of the question seems to go against the 'rule of thumb' from this officially cited answer: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it help if I edited the question remove most of the information that is specific to my situation, making it even more generally applicable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two final things: I flagged the question for mod attention and was told to come here. Also I'm not new to Stack Exchange, I'm an established user on Stack Overflow, but I wanted to ask this programmers question with a throwaway, seeing as I'm expressing concern about a potential future employer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16168" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6224" RevisionGUID="156a8e3c-c41c-40a1-aaaf-74cbf81b7a25" CreationDate="2013-10-15T01:08:50.477" UserId="104787" Text="Are career questions OK if both the question and answers contain generally applicable information?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16169" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6224" RevisionGUID="156a8e3c-c41c-40a1-aaaf-74cbf81b7a25" CreationDate="2013-10-15T01:08:50.477" UserId="104787" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|career|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16170" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6225" RevisionGUID="0302677d-6d48-48f4-acc4-e9033bc93f4e" CreationDate="2013-10-15T08:12:45.423" UserId="5099" Text="I think the closure of this question is correct. Not that the question itself is bad, but I think it would have a better home over at [The Workplace][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16171" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6226" RevisionGUID="551af19c-5913-46fa-964d-f7884f009145" CreationDate="2013-10-15T14:33:41.850" UserId="9302" Text="To improve your question's chance of survival, I'd remove the word &quot;career&quot; everywhere it occurs and focus on skills. I'd also remove the career-development tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When reviewing answers, keep in mind that no one really knows. I'm sure there are plenty of examples of heavy-duty programmers who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps without more senior coworkers. (The Google founders, early Facebook devs, etc...?) After all, our industry is obsessed with youth and it's companies like these that serve as the archetypes. On the other hand, a more skilled and enthusiast coworker isn't going to make you dumber. (Both Google and Facebook didn't waste any time hiring the big-brain PhDs and hackers once they gained some traction.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To improve this meta question's chance of survival, I'd make it specifically about the validity of your question, not all career questions and answers. If you keep it general, I imagine it might be closed as a duplicate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16172" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6227" RevisionGUID="780c6517-e61e-4ea8-8d06-e9e0410ae424" CreationDate="2013-10-15T14:37:45.583" UserId="22888" Text="I think the closure of this question is correct. Not that the question itself is bad, but I think it does not pass the test: &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rephrasing your question to a non-programmer one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;As a soon-to-be-grad, will my skills and/or career suffer if I join a startup where I'll be the (equal) senior-most developer/administrator/engineer/accountant/lawyer?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I work with HR and I guess the answer to this (generic) question should be the same as the answer to your question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16173" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5870" RevisionGUID="da9487a9-c1c9-4cca-b3bb-9c5c97c666af" CreationDate="2013-10-17T14:19:22.873" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add link to techcruch and research paper" Text="There are a couple of factors to consider.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(While I use &quot;I&quot; in the following examples, *I* do not always do this)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, in any community there are sub groups within it.  When I see a question that has been modified by certain users, I look to see what that person said in the question (assuming they answered it rather than editing the question).  If the question has a dozen answers in it, I look to see that person's contribution and vote on that question, leaving other questions unvoted.  This will have the effect of boosting a single user's answer score while leaving others the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, people with high reputations have likely learned how to write for the site.  Each target media has a different style of writing that fits it best.  One writes for Stack Exchange different than Wikipedia, which is different than Everything2, which is different than a blog post, which is different than a news paper article, which is different than a glossy magazine article, etc... Certain styles of writing will be more effective in attracting people to read it, and vote on it.  It is a learned skill.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I am sometimes amazed at the more opinionated nearly content free answers that I have that have received more votes than the boring content rich answers that languish - but that's because they are better *written* (and more interesting) as something to read.  That doesn't mean write content free things (unless its a grammar).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, as Jimmy mentioned in the comment, there is the 'mob mentality' of following the general trend of the votes.  If something is upvoted, people tend to upvote it.  If something is downvoted, people tend to down vote it (though that is less so because of the associated cost for a downvote).  Not everyone spends the time reading all the answers, especially when there are lots of them it becomes more intimidating to read past the second or third one.  Thus, the top one gets an upvote, the second one may get one if it is interesting and useful and then it starts petering out.  Having a 'boring' higher voted question may be even more impacting on questions that are scored lower than it as its boring to read.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;(Related to this - a techcrunch article [The Science Of Reddit: Why Some Ideas Dominate The Net](http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/11/reddit-science-herd/) which looks into how initial votes on a question or answer may influence the following votes - the actual paper and abstract can be seen at [Social Influence Bias: A Randomized Experiment](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6146/647.abstract))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, there is a subtle difference between two answers that is the key to one being the 'right' answer.  That one answer picks up a specific point that another does not include.  This may not always be the something the person who answers it picks up on (the '-ers' being an indication of procedural code being asked about, or one of my own where I pointed out the dry being used as a justification for clever code - I was expecting that question to sit at the bottom with a few votes and it got accepted and now has the most)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16174" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6228" RevisionGUID="4309b9fc-31ce-4d2e-a7a9-f41ed6c81511" CreationDate="2013-10-18T19:20:28.393" UserId="60569" Text="No, career questions are off topic precisely because they do not generalize well.&#xD;&#xA;=======&#xD;&#xA;Giving a good career recommendation requires lots of personal information (career goals, skills, education, work eligibility, location, income requirements, experience, etc.). Even if we gave the perfect recommendation for you, that may not be helpful to others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we tried to give a general answer, the recommendation may not be useful to you because it doesn't consider your unique situation. Also, more general career questions tend to attract answers based almost entirely on opinions rather than facts, references, and specific expertise. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16175" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6229" RevisionGUID="e10b6370-6deb-4474-a758-e9a58cf8645b" CreationDate="2013-10-21T08:26:57.493" UserId="31260" Text="Is it possible to get results of a particular SEDE query executed against an older data snapshot? I am interested in these in order to perform sort of retrospective study.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Query I would like to run is [Marginal short answers with links](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102718/marginal-short-answers-with-links?AnswerScoreMax=100&amp;AnswerScoreMin=-100&amp;AnswerLength=200 &quot;with certain parameters - posts score between -100 and 100 and answer length up to 200&quot;). I would like to see results of this query executed against data snapshot taken in the beginning of March / end of February, when the query was introduced.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my recollection, back then query has been showing about one or two (maybe three) thousands posts. Today, it shows less than 60 posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to learn what happened to thousands posts that are not there anymore, how many was there back then, how many of these were deleted, edited, historically locked." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16176" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6229" RevisionGUID="e10b6370-6deb-4474-a758-e9a58cf8645b" CreationDate="2013-10-21T08:26:57.493" UserId="31260" Text="Is there a way to run a SEDE query against an older Programmers data snapshot?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16177" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6229" RevisionGUID="e10b6370-6deb-4474-a758-e9a58cf8645b" CreationDate="2013-10-21T08:26:57.493" UserId="31260" Text="|support|answer-quality|data-explorer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16178" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6230" RevisionGUID="ead11ce6-70a2-48fb-aac8-789338afabdb" CreationDate="2013-10-24T13:38:47.603" UserId="105900" Text="I flagged a post for closure (not as a duplicate). When I went again to the flagging dialog it correctly displayed that `you have already raised this type of flag` but this text was also displayed under the `it is a duplicate` option, which is misleading because I didn't flag it as a dupe. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll not term this behavior as incorrect (but misleading) because I understand that even after flagging for closure (as OT or Dupe), I can still flag the same post as spam, vlq, etc. However, I believe that the text should be displayed under the appropriate option.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/4u77V.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16179" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6230" RevisionGUID="ead11ce6-70a2-48fb-aac8-789338afabdb" CreationDate="2013-10-24T13:38:47.603" UserId="105900" Text="Flagging dialog has slightly misleading text" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16180" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6230" RevisionGUID="ead11ce6-70a2-48fb-aac8-789338afabdb" CreationDate="2013-10-24T13:38:47.603" UserId="105900" Text="|discussion|design|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16187" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6230" RevisionGUID="3dd8f999-ac7f-4c3e-82a0-a80202b20386" CreationDate="2013-10-25T13:01:14.800" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-bydesign|design|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16188" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6233" RevisionGUID="685fbbef-e380-4812-965a-f20572124ed3" CreationDate="2013-10-25T18:31:56.293" UserId="25612" Text="Compared to Stack Overflow, the number of questions which are down-voted, put on hold, or closed is astounding. I think it's a sign that the criteria (and possibly usefulness) of this site is poorly defined.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I originally came to this site thinking it's good place to engage in design discussions and ask general questions about platforms, libraries, and development.  What I found is that many of the participants approach questions and answers with a vindictive attitude (as manifested by routinely down voting decent answers and reasonable questions.)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After avoiding this site for about year, I thought I should come back and ask a design question. Frankly, I'm very put off by the apparent negative attitude of the community here.  I was even more chagrined to find one of my questions migrated here from Stack Overflow (where it was answered in a totally appropriate and useful way) and then closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe I'm just not enough of a &quot;developer&quot; for this site.  (Feel free to close this question as not constructive, as I'm sure you will.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16189" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6233" RevisionGUID="685fbbef-e380-4812-965a-f20572124ed3" CreationDate="2013-10-25T18:31:56.293" UserId="25612" Text="Why are there so many closed, on hold, and down voted questions here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16190" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6233" RevisionGUID="685fbbef-e380-4812-965a-f20572124ed3" CreationDate="2013-10-25T18:31:56.293" UserId="25612" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16191" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6233" RevisionGUID="50c5922e-cc5e-4d4b-b8dc-7c20a1874144" CreationDate="2013-10-25T18:49:42.943" UserId="25612" Comment="removed inflammatory part" Text="Compared to Stack Overflow, the number of questions which are down-voted, put on hold, or closed is astounding. I think it's a sign that the criteria (and possibly usefulness) of this site is poorly defined.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I originally came to this site thinking it's good place to engage in design discussions and ask general questions about platforms, libraries, and development.  What I found is that many of the participants approach questions and answers with a vindictive attitude (as manifested by routinely down voting decent answers and reasonable questions.)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After avoiding this site for about year, I thought I should come back and ask a design question. Frankly, I'm very put off by the apparent negative attitude of the community here.  I was even more chagrined to find one of my questions migrated here from Stack Overflow (where it was answered in a totally appropriate and useful way) and then closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16192" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6234" RevisionGUID="48717590-e416-42c0-9f84-8be100c211cd" CreationDate="2013-10-25T18:52:15.363" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="It is often challenging to have people ask appropriate questions.  The front page sometimes shows this.  There are a fairly active group of people voting and P.SE doesn't have as much traffic as SO - thus there is more attention on each question and answer that gets posted - both up votes and down votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the important aspects of votes is that questions that have a negative score and 0 or negative score answers (and no accepted answer) gets automatically deleted by a process after a period of time.  Thus, to try to keep these questions out of the accumulating pool of questions (that are having an improving quality), down votes are necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the current 15 newest questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215576/creating-reproducible-builds-to-verify-free-software is asking for a tool&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215572/how-to-think-like-a-computer-scientist-java-edition-exercise-7-2 is asking for someone to do their homework&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215565/software-engineering-project-idea-feedback is asking for a design review&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215563/program-put-on-computer is asking for something that we don't know what is being asked&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215562/agile-books-for-sales-people is asking for a shopping list&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215558/windows-azure-hpc-scheduler-architecture is at least 6 nested questions (too broad)&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215546/previous-and-next-buttons-within-javascript-function is something that should be on SO, but would get closed asked as it is.&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215541/how-to-fix-fatal-error-jvmti-h-no-such-file-or-directory-compilation-terminated is another implementation question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Design questions are certainly welcome - look at the ones that are up voted to see many examples of such questions (one such recent question - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215482/what-are-the-safety-benefits-of-a-type-system - incidentally migrated from SO) .  But, we're getting a fair number of questions from people who are asking questions that just aren't appropriate or were cross posted from StackOverflow, or trying to get around a Stack Overflow ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, it is a constant battle to try to maintain the direction and scope of the site (what is currently an upward trajectory for quality and activity). Closing and down voting the questions that don't fit is part of this ongoing maintenance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't know it will fit or how it will be received, try asking us in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16194" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6235" RevisionGUID="dd082cb4-467d-4377-9e67-03a4b94253bf" CreationDate="2013-10-28T13:38:45.567" UserId="51367" Text="Another thing to consider is that there are asked a lot more questions on stackoverflow. And the crew in stackoverflow is mostly organised in smaller groups around interest areas, you have your mini-communities, which govern certain &quot;tags&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10 most recent questions on stackoverflow have less then 100 views combined, the most recent question at the moment on programmers.stackexchange has more then that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16195" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6235" RevisionGUID="d2255de2-2960-4efe-aceb-de9c40c4d4ec" CreationDate="2013-10-28T14:30:08.020" UserId="31260" Comment="minor spelling correction" Text="Another thing to consider is that there are asked a lot more questions on Stack Overflow. And the crew in Stack Overflow is mostly organised in smaller groups around interest areas, you have your mini-communities, which govern certain &quot;tags&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10 most recent questions on Stack Overflow have less than 100 views combined, the most recent question at the moment on programmers.stackexchange has more than that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16196" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6234" RevisionGUID="a56ecb8c-af92-41b5-a6e4-8e4bb05f6db8" CreationDate="2013-10-28T15:06:27.670" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Narrow down reason why its was closed" Text="It is often challenging to have people ask appropriate questions.  The front page sometimes shows this.  There are a fairly active group of people voting and P.SE doesn't have as much traffic as SO - thus there is more attention on each question and answer that gets posted - both up votes and down votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the important aspects of votes is that questions that have a negative score and 0 or negative score answers (and no accepted answer) gets automatically deleted by a process after a period of time.  Thus, to try to keep these questions out of the accumulating pool of questions (that are having an improving quality), down votes are necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the current 15 newest questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215576/creating-reproducible-builds-to-verify-free-software is asking for a tool&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215572/how-to-think-like-a-computer-scientist-java-edition-exercise-7-2 is asking for someone to do their homework&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215565/software-engineering-project-idea-feedback is asking for a general critique of a design&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215563/program-put-on-computer is asking for something that we don't know what is being asked&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215562/agile-books-for-sales-people is asking for a shopping list&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215558/windows-azure-hpc-scheduler-architecture is at least 6 nested questions (too broad)&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215546/previous-and-next-buttons-within-javascript-function is something that should be on SO, but would get closed asked as it is.&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215541/how-to-fix-fatal-error-jvmti-h-no-such-file-or-directory-compilation-terminated is another implementation question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Design questions are certainly welcome - look at the ones that are up voted to see many examples of such questions (one such recent question - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215482/what-are-the-safety-benefits-of-a-type-system - incidentally migrated from SO) .  But, we're getting a fair number of questions from people who are asking questions that just aren't appropriate or were cross posted from StackOverflow, or trying to get around a Stack Overflow ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, it is a constant battle to try to maintain the direction and scope of the site (what is currently an upward trajectory for quality and activity). Closing and down voting the questions that don't fit is part of this ongoing maintenance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't know it will fit or how it will be received, try asking us in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16197" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6236" RevisionGUID="721a303d-6973-4652-a981-1d0a45673610" CreationDate="2013-10-29T09:50:40.650" UserId="10563" Text="this [question][1] has a suggestion to migrate to ux.stackexchange. This seems quite reasonable, and ideed its not uncommon to se UX questions here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that programmers and UX are full sites would it make sense to have ux.stackexchange as a migration target?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;there is also a ux tag with only 9 questions and a search for ux shows another couple of hundred questions (some of which are already migrated to ux)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/215833/10563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16198" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6236" RevisionGUID="721a303d-6973-4652-a981-1d0a45673610" CreationDate="2013-10-29T09:50:40.650" UserId="10563" Text="Should ux.stackexchange be a migration target" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16199" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6236" RevisionGUID="721a303d-6973-4652-a981-1d0a45673610" CreationDate="2013-10-29T09:50:40.650" UserId="10563" Text="|feature-request|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16200" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6236" RevisionGUID="8ec93d9a-c04c-4822-8e9f-cba03ae13654" CreationDate="2013-10-29T09:56:46.493" UserId="10563" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="this [question][1] has a suggestion to migrate to ux.stackexchange. This seems quite reasonable, and ideed its not uncommon to se UX questions here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that programmers and UX are full sites would it make sense to have ux.stackexchange as a migration target?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;there is also a ux tag with only 9 questions and a search for ux shows another couple of hundred questions (one of which is already migrated to ux)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/215833/10563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16201" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6237" RevisionGUID="86a7b6c2-70fb-4d63-8719-05f2dbed5610" CreationDate="2013-10-29T09:58:28.973" UserId="47" Text="The [evidence](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/admin/posts/migrated/stats) doesn't back this up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the last 90 days there has only been 1 migration to UX.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at graduated sites only, there have been:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* 8 to Super User.&#xD;&#xA;* 7 to DBA (14% rejected)&#xD;&#xA;* 4 to IT Security&#xD;&#xA;* 3 to Ubuntu&#xD;&#xA;* 3 to Game Development (1 rejected)&#xD;&#xA;* 2 to Stats (1 rejected)&#xD;&#xA;* 2 to Web Applications (1 rejected)&#xD;&#xA;* 2 to Webmasters&#xD;&#xA;* 1 to Unix&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this evidence we should be adding Super User, DBA and possibly IT Security before UX." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16202" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6238" RevisionGUID="21aaf605-9601-471e-ab05-4d9ad3f776f4" CreationDate="2013-10-29T09:59:36.583" UserDisplayName="user106332" Text="![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/2fJCk.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do those &quot;folds&quot; mean?  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16203" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6238" RevisionGUID="21aaf605-9601-471e-ab05-4d9ad3f776f4" CreationDate="2013-10-29T09:59:36.583" UserDisplayName="user106332" Text="What does it mean for the question vote counts to look &quot;folded&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16204" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6238" RevisionGUID="21aaf605-9601-471e-ab05-4d9ad3f776f4" CreationDate="2013-10-29T09:59:36.583" UserDisplayName="user106332" Text="|support|design|meta|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16205" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6237" RevisionGUID="3fd3a0f3-923e-40bd-963b-3a24d9f1cc22" CreationDate="2013-10-29T10:05:20.520" UserId="47" Comment="added screen shot" Text="The [evidence](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/admin/posts/migrated/stats) (moderator link only atm) doesn't back this up:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the last 90 days there has only been 1 migration to UX.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at graduated sites only, there have been:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* 8 to Super User.&#xD;&#xA;* 7 to DBA (14% rejected)&#xD;&#xA;* 4 to IT Security&#xD;&#xA;* 3 to Ubuntu&#xD;&#xA;* 3 to Game Development (1 rejected)&#xD;&#xA;* 2 to Stats (1 rejected)&#xD;&#xA;* 2 to Web Applications (1 rejected)&#xD;&#xA;* 2 to Webmasters&#xD;&#xA;* 1 to Unix&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this evidence we should be adding Super User, DBA and possibly IT Security before UX.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/AiUj3.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16206" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6239" RevisionGUID="bfdb638a-36eb-48e2-bcab-9711e2858db5" CreationDate="2013-10-29T10:07:35.087" UserId="4" Text="It's not a fold. It's a diagonal green stripe indicating that the question has an accepted answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16207" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6237" RevisionGUID="6653f599-69cd-4634-8b8f-fdb262321249" CreationDate="2013-10-29T11:46:15.223" UserId="25936" Comment="there's a 10K+ stats page (and it's the same as the mod-only one)" Text="The [evidence](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats) (10Κ+ link) doesn't back this up:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the last 90 days there has only been 1 migration to UX.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at graduated sites only, there have been:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* 8 to Super User.&#xD;&#xA;* 7 to DBA (14% rejected)&#xD;&#xA;* 4 to IT Security&#xD;&#xA;* 3 to Ubuntu&#xD;&#xA;* 3 to Game Development (1 rejected)&#xD;&#xA;* 2 to Stats (1 rejected)&#xD;&#xA;* 2 to Web Applications (1 rejected)&#xD;&#xA;* 2 to Webmasters&#xD;&#xA;* 1 to Unix&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this evidence we should be adding Super User, DBA and possibly IT Security before UX.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/AiUj3.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16208" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6238" RevisionGUID="79da9b83-9728-406c-8382-aa4adcd9e93e" CreationDate="2013-10-29T22:45:04.543" UserId="47" Comment="crop image" Text="![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do those &quot;folds&quot; mean?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/49Whz.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16209" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6233" RevisionGUID="d6f29eac-325e-4a69-964f-7c8156fa2c6f" CreationDate="2013-10-30T06:44:53.230" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/395441155779096576" />
  <row Id="16210" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6240" RevisionGUID="e46efca1-d468-4d74-a191-fd6c86e34969" CreationDate="2013-10-30T08:16:52.177" UserId="31260" Text="Site scope and question quality expectations seem to be set, stabilized and well understood by majority of _regulars_ long time ago, as discussed eg here: [Are you still confused about what Programmers is for?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my observations, most troublesome questions are either asked by newcomers or are old ones [bump](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info)ed by answers from newcomers which makes me feel that somehow, site &quot;image&quot; for those newcomers is blurred.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on several months of observations on questions that are exposed / promoted to SE network users via [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info) I firmly believe that to large extent, misguiding newcomers about Programmers is caused by **[the way how questions are selected for exposure at collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773 &quot;issue details and change request officially submitted here: 'Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign'&quot;)**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how I see collider damage to Programmers is described in more details in this answer: [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I think this is likely related to issues with answers quality in hot questions ([discussed here in more details](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;Answers quality in hot questions&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Hot garbage waves&quot; in the answers once or twice a week&#xD;&#xA;* poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making interesting and well presented problems look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/)  &#xD;&#xA;* regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;An &quot;outsider&quot; reading low quality answers in hot questions, could naturally think,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;hey here I can _chit-chat about how git is fantastic_ and get my portion of cheap upvotes, c00l&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a **steady source of misguided contributors**.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...the way how users can be confused about what Programmers are about is probably best explained in a [comment made by Ben Brocka](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13830_5482 &quot;here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;Often hot questions have lots of bad or meh answers that are bad enough to drag down quality of the content and general discourse (encouraging similarly bad new answers)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Side note. For the sake of completeness, I don't think that collider damage is contained within Programmers (and [Workplace](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/1967/168 &quot;another site suffering from brain-damaging hotness formula: 'victims of the Stack Exchange(TM MultiCollider SuperDropdown(TM)'&quot;) for that matter).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As discussed eg [here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10706837#10706837), it looks like damage is spread over whole SE network, even though indirectly:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...really, say guys at SO are protected from _direct_ impact. Meaning when they see _meh_, they can flag _no-code_ and get crap deleted. But thing is, it's SO users who look at collider and who visit &quot;sticky&quot; questions and who pick the crappy attitude and they get back to SO and get posting _meh_ answers there  &#xD;&#xA;and, well, there are hundreds and thousands of them. And _meh_ attitude gets spread over multiple questions and SO mods only can delete minor part of crap that has been influenced through collider&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;they start thinking it's the norm. That's what low quality answers in hot questions teach readers. That's what &quot;educated&quot; readers spread further, to their answers to other questions. That lowers overall quality of answers in multiple other questions, that is the site-wide damage  &#xD;&#xA;This makes it look like good questions are those having many meh answers, the effect that is amplified by these questions being highly visible to collider audience - hundreds and thousands of SE users. Misguided users spread acquired attitude further into other questions and answers, posting stuff that follows what they saw at the &quot;cool&quot; (&quot;hot&quot;) questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;**nobody is really protected, collider spreads it across all the SE network**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16211" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6241" RevisionGUID="e04b5708-ac42-45ce-b977-781468d4c51e" CreationDate="2013-10-31T18:16:57.470" UserId="2983" Text="The home page of P.SE is often littered with inappropriate questions that have been appropriately closed. This is an important part of any .SE site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it can be intimidating or off-putting for potential participants who encounter it as their first experience. It may make them hesitant to ask questions, and it may not provide enough context to guide them toward asking better questions (or asking their question in a more suitable way).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to maintain the scope of the site while avoiding the negative impact on newer users?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16212" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6241" RevisionGUID="e04b5708-ac42-45ce-b977-781468d4c51e" CreationDate="2013-10-31T18:16:57.470" UserId="2983" Text="How can we avoid turning off potential participants who see the wall of Closed questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16213" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6241" RevisionGUID="e04b5708-ac42-45ce-b977-781468d4c51e" CreationDate="2013-10-31T18:16:57.470" UserId="2983" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|new-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16214" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6242" RevisionGUID="fdfc87ac-b97d-4bf3-ae11-d827162d7ca5" CreationDate="2013-10-31T18:38:52.560" UserId="7748" Text="&lt;h1&gt;We can stop closing so many questions, and relax our standards.&lt;/h1&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16215" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6243" RevisionGUID="f603c390-53c1-4b1c-b17a-9723dbdeecc6" CreationDate="2013-10-31T21:57:43.437" UserId="1204" Text="Where is this &quot;wall of closed questions&quot; that you speak of?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the &quot;Top Questions&quot; tab (which is what everyone sees when they first open the site), of the 40 or so questions that are there, roughly 5 (or about 12 percent) are closed.   I wouldn't exactly call that an epidemic of closed questions.  At the moment, there are *no* closed questions on the Unanswered tab.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The percentage of closed questions doesn't seem to be significantly higher than that of other Stack Exchange sites.  Perhaps the bikeshedders have gone elsewhere (that is a good thing).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16216" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2389" RevisionGUID="cb21b7d6-e07c-4fca-9630-cbc9ad5a4690" CreationDate="2013-11-01T13:27:28.180" UserId="1539" Comment="spelling fixed" Text="For starters this is not a repeat of the &quot;Why are so many questions closed&quot; and other similar posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer to these earlier questions was that the site was not moderated initially and there was a large one off cleanup effort. That answer no longer applies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion this forum still closes far too many seemingly sensible questions. The moderators seem to be actively looking for excuses to close questions, for, minor breaches which only they seem to detect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I want an answer to a purely technical question I would post it on StackOverflow or ServerFault. This site is meant to be (at least it is advertised as!) more general site about programming as a profession and the practice of programming. And as such questions about career choices, contract vs. permanent, how to interview, choosing one development platform or language over another would seem to be in scope, yet, these questions are regularly closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the set of all allowable questions on *StackExchange* if we take the set of allowable posts on *Programmers* then subtract  the set of allowable posts from *StackOverflow* and *ServerFault*  this seems to leave a vanishingly small set of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fully expecting this question to be closed before anyone can comment!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16217" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6243" RevisionGUID="9e2de476-5d62-4250-b135-24bc2c623bd8" CreationDate="2013-11-01T15:47:23.977" UserId="1204" Comment="added 169 characters in body" Text="Where is this &quot;wall of closed questions&quot; that you speak of?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the &quot;Top Questions&quot; tab (which is what everyone sees when they first open the site), of the 40 or so questions that are there, roughly 5 (or about 12 percent) are closed.   I wouldn't exactly call that an epidemic of closed questions.  At the moment, there are *no* closed questions on the Unanswered tab.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The percentage of closed questions doesn't seem to be significantly higher than that of other Stack Exchange sites.  Perhaps the bikeshedders have gone elsewhere (that is a good thing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just checked again this morning.  There are seven closed questions on the front page, slightly higher than before, but still not what I would consider a wall.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16218" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6244" RevisionGUID="1e01fe74-da42-46f4-9e42-854d2edb76a3" CreationDate="2013-11-01T15:50:35.403" UserId="50749" Text="Several years ago I interviewed with MCS and one of the interviewers asked me how I would design Amazon.com. Is that type of question appropriate on programmers.stackexchange.com?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16219" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6244" RevisionGUID="1e01fe74-da42-46f4-9e42-854d2edb76a3" CreationDate="2013-11-01T15:50:35.403" UserId="50749" Text="Is &quot;how would you architect (existing Web site/application)&quot; an appropriate question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16220" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6244" RevisionGUID="1e01fe74-da42-46f4-9e42-854d2edb76a3" CreationDate="2013-11-01T15:50:35.403" UserId="50749" Text="|discussion|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16221" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6245" RevisionGUID="14f71575-73af-4315-b183-b2fef1207960" CreationDate="2013-11-01T15:52:35.660" UserId="1204" Text="It's too broad.  Questions asked on SE sites should be specific enough to be answerable with a single, relatively short answer (a few paragraphs or less).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I daresay it's too broad as an interview question as well. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16222" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6245" RevisionGUID="4dd8776a-c9ad-413d-82b8-21c2ae4d5872" CreationDate="2013-11-01T15:59:47.270" UserId="1204" Comment="added 72 characters in body" Text="It's too broad.  Questions asked on SE sites should be specific enough to be answerable with a single, relatively short answer (a few paragraphs or less).  It's also a poll question, inviting answers with different approaches.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I daresay it's too broad as an interview question as well. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16223" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6246" RevisionGUID="606222cb-496a-4f44-adc5-079e01603531" CreationDate="2013-11-01T16:09:37.540" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="From http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215501/how-to-improve-design-ability/215507#215507&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When a question that is very broad is asked, it is an attempt to see how well you are able to work through the question. Asking &quot;How do you implement a game of Monopoly&quot; wants you to think through the problem. How do you represent the board, the cards, the placement of the tokens, the rules for the special squares, the houses and hotels and property values...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The interviewer wants to see you work through the problem and talk about the data types being used and the like. When you hit an area where you are unfamiliar with, how you work through that part of the problem is another key point of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The thing here is that questions asked in interviews are often poor P.SE questions because they have different goals.  The interviewer isn't interested in the right answer as such, but rather how the interviewee thinks and works through the problem.  On the other hand, on a Q&amp;A site, we are interested in the solution rather than the process of coming to the answer (its sometimes useful, but not the focus of the site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interview questions *by their nature* are often too broad for the Q&amp;A site format." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16224" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6245" RevisionGUID="7e2f2631-50bc-43b1-8e05-012ee70b3a9c" CreationDate="2013-11-01T16:17:04.430" UserId="1204" Comment="added 9 characters in body" Text="It's too broad.  Questions asked on SE sites should be specific enough to be answerable with a single, relatively short answer (a few paragraphs or less).  It's also a poll question, inviting multiple answers with different approaches.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I daresay it's too broad as an interview question as well. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16225" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6247" RevisionGUID="75f1c87c-2a27-4c0d-8f86-838e8440c28f" CreationDate="2013-11-01T16:35:43.357" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Many of the potentially salvageable but &lt;del&gt;closed&lt;/del&gt; &quot;on hold&quot; questions will have a comment or three from reviewers indicating why the question was put on hold.  And that's beyond the boilerplate banners that SE applies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's natural for newish Askers to ask broad questions or difficult to answer questions.  The comments that are left help them scope their question down to something that fits within the site scope and capability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I will note that not every question on hold receives comments from reviewers.  Blatantly off-topic stuff just gets closed and frequently downvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To address your question - I think you're forming the wrong impression.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having some degree of closed questions shows to new visitors that the community cares about the site and that it would be prudent to research a little bit before just throwing a question out there.  It shows that the site actively maintains itself and is looking for high quality Q&amp;A, not just noise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We actually _want_ site participants to hesitate before asking their first question(s).  The site has a rich repository of _already answered_ questions with a wealth of information.  The implied suggestion is to poke around and see what you can find first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how can we (_you_!) help avoid turning away potential participants?  It's pretty simple:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Actively participate in the review queues.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Vote appropriately for both questions and answers.  Start looking at down votes as an investment in site quality.  A down vote tells the noise makers to cut it out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Leave constructive comments to questions and answers to help explain what the post needs in order to be more constructive and have a higher quality.  A constructive comment tells them what is wrong and also suggests how it could be fixed or improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16226" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6248" RevisionGUID="2188d829-8b79-47cb-ac6b-b6ff76f6c087" CreationDate="2013-11-01T16:48:51.000" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="I'm not opposed to having UX as a formal migration target, but I would like to raise a few points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* My impression from the close review queue is that we don't have all that many questions that would merit a migration consideration.  MichaelT's link from the 10k tools backs that up to a degree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I would want to make sure we (Programmers) really understood what was on-topic and constructive for UX before making them a formal migration target.  Personally, I don't participate on UX so I don't know their norms.  My concern is that I don't want UX to become the dumping ground for UX type questions from Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16227" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6248" RevisionGUID="3ab0bade-be59-4de0-8aa9-6c66eebf7fb0" CreationDate="2013-11-01T21:07:01.623" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="Clearly I need to work on my proofreading...." Text="I'm not opposed to having UX as a formal migration target, but I would like to raise a few points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* My impression from the close review queue is that we don't have all that many questions that would merit a migration consideration.  ChrisF's link from the 10k tools backs that up to a degree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I would want to make sure we (Programmers) really understood what was on-topic and constructive for UX before making them a formal migration target.  Personally, I don't participate on UX so I don't know their norms.  My concern is that I don't want UX to become the dumping ground for UX type questions from Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16233" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6250" RevisionGUID="95fe8634-e000-474b-b36d-0e16f6a2a53f" CreationDate="2013-11-01T23:38:23.820" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I don't think so.  Mostly because I would use it... and that 2&lt;sup&gt;nd&lt;/sup&gt; point that GlenH7 makes is key.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm just looking through my flags (yea, the declined ones) and would really like to get the stance from UX.SE mods about a few things that I've flagged to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/216252/when-is-it-appropriate-to-use-colour-in-a-command-line-application&#xD;&#xA; * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215133/recommended-display-background-brightness-ratio-and-ui-color-schemes&#xD;&#xA; * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/215655/main-activity-design-too-busy (ok, didn't flag that one)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     &gt; When I took my iPhone programming class we were taught about navigation views and tabbed views. Lately I've been noticing a lot of apps using this alternative style though, for example, the Facebook app.&#xD;&#xA;     &gt;&#xD;&#xA;     &gt; The style is that it has a navigation bar at the top, but in the top-left is an &quot;options&quot; button of some sort. When that's clicked a menu slides out from the left side of the screen to control navigation. I'm not sure what view that is, or if each of these apps are creating a custom view or what. Just looking to get pointed in the right direction here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/209866/does-an-ugly-computer-messy-interface-affect-productivity (10k link)&#xD;&#xA;     &gt; I'm using a standard Toshiba laptop that's pretty beat up and the poor screen-size/ratio gives off the vibe that all the open programs and windows are cluttered and gives me immense anxiety, which ultimately affects how much I accomplish in a day.&#xD;&#xA; * [How to replace the “beep” in software running of modern computer](http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/42928/how-to-replace-the-beep-in-software-running-of-modern-computer) (migrated)&#xD;&#xA; * [Design Suggestions On A Program](http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/42423/design-suggestions-on-a-program) (migrated)&#xD;&#xA; * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/203442/url-naming-convention-for-with-repetitive-letter&#xD;&#xA; * [Any advice on how to solve the problem of bouncing rate for a professional network [closed]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/202060/any-advice-on-how-to-solve-the-problem-of-bouncing-rate-for-a-professional-netwo) (10k link - rejected migration?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;       &gt; I have a tech professional network that connects between talent and those who are looking for talent. The problem I had for the last three years is that most users seem to fly right from the front page. The front page is similar to Linkedin. My question is: it it better to feature all the content right in the front page or leave it as it. The main features of the website are showcased projects &amp; published articles. Right now I am out of ideas on how to establish the network and I already have spend lot of time and money on it. I am starting to think I need to make the front page look like behance featuring projects, articles, answers, jobs, etc.. Please give me your advice as user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [What is the name of the view style that the Facebook iPhone app uses? [closed]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/200217/what-is-the-name-of-the-view-style-that-the-facebook-iphone-app-uses) (10k link - not migrated)&#xD;&#xA; * [Synonym for 'GUI' for non-technical people?](http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/38857/synonym-for-gui-for-non-technical-people) (migrated)&#xD;&#xA; * [Positioning in cross browsers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190932/positioning-in-cross-browsers) (10k link)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I'm designing and developing a website for a school project which looks fine on my MacBook Pro in Chrome and Firefox. However, when I try to view it on IE 9 and Firefox on my work's PC, the positioning is completely off. The font size in IE 9 is also really off.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm rather glad that there's at least one mod there that says &quot;no&quot; to a lot of these suggestions.  I'd be a bit worried about the quality of the content we'd be migrating if these all *did* go through." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16234" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6241" RevisionGUID="63052623-1d22-486d-8131-c31838283089" CreationDate="2013-11-02T03:48:58.903" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/396484051856785408" />
  <row Id="16235" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6251" RevisionGUID="c81c59e9-0a74-419a-9467-f432d889e419" CreationDate="2013-11-02T05:00:43.160" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="We only have so many canned, built in, close reasons.  There are so many other reasons to close something at times - giving a better message than trying to shoehorn the reason to close something into too broad or primarily opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Custom close messages have the significant advantage when it comes to trying to get a *good* answer in that they also leave a comment that (ideally) would help the person asking (or attempting to fix) the question understand what needs to be done *before* the question is closed and make it suitable (or delete it if its really off topic and would ultimately garner down votes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short and abrupt close messages may be off-putting to some and don't help as much when it comes to getting people to write good questions.  The tricks to writing good messages is a combination of having them at the ready and knowing the quick little 'magic links' that can be used to link to the right spot.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Close reasons use the comment markdown, which gives a bunch of additional magic links.  MSO details them in [balpha's answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/94000/213963), thought the short version most applicable to close reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [meta] =&gt; a link to meta.programmers.stackexchange&#xD;&#xA;* [help] =&gt; a link to the help section&#xD;&#xA;    * [help/on-topic] is a link to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* [ask] =&gt; link to the &quot;How to Ask&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* [chat] =&gt; link to the chat page&#xD;&#xA;* [edit] =&gt; link to edit the page itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using these quick links will make it easier to fit more into a canned (or not) message without actually using more text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, its a better experience for all involved to *not* migrate questions that will get closed in some way *other* than a duplicate on the target site.  A fine line should be considered when suggesting to *repost* a question on another site without having it closed/deleted on the first one.  Be sure that the question is on topic at the target site.  If in doubt, don't suggest reposting but instead flag for a moderator to migrate the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have also found the following links to be helpful to reference when writing close messages (not everyone knows where they are).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `[Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist)` =&gt; [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist) - a compressive list of things to check before posting a question to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;* `[Let’s Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game)` =&gt; [Let’s Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game) - a Jeff Atwood blog post from Feb 2012 about the awkward nature of trying to name something&#xD;&#xA;* `[Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)` =&gt; [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) - a Jeff Atwood blog post from November 2010 about questions asking for a shopping list.&#xD;&#xA;* `[What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/)` =&gt; [What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/) - the question ban MSO reference.  Likely not that useful in a close reason (you'd need to be a mod on SO to check if a user is question banned prior to a migration - however, when a migration fails because of a question ban on the target site, this is a useful link to have so its included here).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've often found myself going to a meta question to pull up a pre-written close message and then copying and pasting that into the question.  Just go in, edit the question to grab the source and copy and paste it into the close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully, this will help people looking for the right wording for closing a question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16236" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6251" RevisionGUID="c81c59e9-0a74-419a-9467-f432d889e419" CreationDate="2013-11-02T05:00:43.160" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="How can I write a good custom close message?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16237" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6251" RevisionGUID="c81c59e9-0a74-419a-9467-f432d889e419" CreationDate="2013-11-02T05:00:43.160" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16238" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6252" RevisionGUID="6f829a84-ff1d-4cdf-b4f4-3121795587ca" CreationDate="2013-11-02T05:00:43.160" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="## Would be migrated to SO, but likely closed there ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers.Stack Exchange. It would best be answered on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet the minimum requirements for a question on Stack Overflow.  Please read the [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist) and [edit] your question to make it suitable for migration.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16239" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6253" RevisionGUID="94337a85-ce71-42b7-990d-da856fe5bf2c" CreationDate="2013-11-02T19:55:49.213" UserId="20673" Text="This question is prompted by some of the discussion in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q  Specifically, what MichaelT wrote to JensG and the comment Telastyn left on the bottom.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's consider: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120019/whats-the-benefit-of-object-oriented-programming-over-procedural-programming/120038#120038&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that a good question? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I first read it, its score was well into the negative (-4 or lower, don't remember). It was immediately pointed out how it was a duplicate and I'm sure it had 1 or 2 close votes, although those are now gone. Interestingly enough, data explorer query for that question shows that its score never dipped below -1, which I'm guessing is due to some of the original downvoters changing their minds and removing their downvote, unfortunately the schema doesn't track deleted up/down votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So as maintainers of P.SE content and upholders of FAQ (Is that the ultimate decision source?), what is our stance on such questions?  If you are bad, you are bad and we shall close you?  Or do the answers on the page have some leverage?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not questioning the up/down vote system. I think that's great. Bad stuff gets low score, good stuff gets high score. But if this question was closed as fast as some of the others I've seen, as JensG would put it, it would just get &quot;voted to an early death&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other part, I'm not quite sure about (maybe this should be a separate post, and if so I can separate it), we close what's considered low-quality questions so they don't pollute the... question-space(?) but they are all still there.  Hence what some refer to as &quot;a wall&quot;, although some others have never seen one.  So the closure doesn't actually remove the pollution, it just prevents a not so good question from potentially receiving a really good answer that could benefit the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I apologize in advance to the moderators if this is a noob question that has already been discussed and settled. I've been a member for a while now, but my involvement has mostly been drive-by posts here and there. I do appreciate the time and effort you guys are putting into keeping up this site. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16240" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6253" RevisionGUID="94337a85-ce71-42b7-990d-da856fe5bf2c" CreationDate="2013-11-02T19:55:49.213" UserId="20673" Text="Is quality of a question determined solely by the question itself or the content it generates?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16241" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6253" RevisionGUID="94337a85-ce71-42b7-990d-da856fe5bf2c" CreationDate="2013-11-02T19:55:49.213" UserId="20673" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16242" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6254" RevisionGUID="c7a2c2da-86b7-4455-b0f3-b8cfac4ff3e8" CreationDate="2013-11-03T04:12:28.670" UserId="51654" Text="As much as I poo-poo the quick closes around here, I think this question falls squarely in the &quot;likely to start a flame war&quot;/&quot;has no objective answer&quot; realm - and based on the guidelines of the site, in its current state it should not be a question we support. ...and I largely agree with those guidelines, for most of the reasons commonly given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All that said, this question could be &quot;fixed&quot; pretty easily by doing something like &quot;what are the commonly accepted/argued benefits of OOP?&quot;. I mean, it's one thing for you to say &quot;here is why OO is good&quot; and another to say &quot;X, Y, Z OO advocates say that...&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further, I think that &quot;big&quot; questions like this (and a lot of our highest voted questions like [What should every programmer know about web development?][1]) _should_ be kept around because they're important and useful to our consumers. Arguments about what programming language is best isn't important or useful to programmers. Knowing the difference between object oriented and procedural programming (and functional, and...) is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So personally, I would err towards the side that thinks content influences the quality of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16243" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6255" RevisionGUID="d8ef8208-9e68-4b01-832a-a9b9c6faa445" CreationDate="2013-11-03T15:06:23.763" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Recently, Nick did some tests on Stack Overflow to see what impact MathJax would have on Stack Overflow.  This was likely done in part to put to rest the 'heavy dependency' argument.  The full post can be read at [There's seriously no reason why LaTeX markup via MathJax shouldn't be enabled on SO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/204003/213963)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a Stack Overflow page load (even when its doing 'nothing'):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Stack Overflow (no MathJax)][1]: **1.380s**&#xD;&#xA; - [Stack Overflow (with MathJax)][2]: **1.675s**&#xD;&#xA; - [Math.StackExchange][3] (with MathJax including content using it): **2.341s**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, for sites that have those pesky `$` that show up in code, it can be a breaking change for existing questions changing the rendering for:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...] which then stores into a $_SESSION - the problem is most of the settings will be set by javascript, and as javascript is a client side script you can't access PHP $_SESSION variables as its server based. [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Unexpected MathJax rendering][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, there are [reports](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/204034/213963) that adding MathJax significantly impacts the time it takes for a preview to show up while writing an answer because mathjacks needs to be called to rerender the preview *on every keystroke*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(numbers, links and images from the associated answers in the [MSO question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/204003/213963))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131102_08_QQQ/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131103_DV_CS/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131102_BT_QR2/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MqzCa.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16244" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6252" RevisionGUID="2bd17759-d50c-419b-9842-77c5ab58afee" CreationDate="2013-11-03T15:08:50.797" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Incorporate changes suggested by Thomas Owens." Text="## Would be migrated to SO, but likely closed there ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers. It would best be asked on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet their minimum requirements. Please read the [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/) and [edit] your question to make it suitable for migration.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16245" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6253" RevisionGUID="81f5b4c5-f88d-47ae-a724-7a3ddd65e455" CreationDate="2013-11-03T18:50:21.500" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/397073277799399424" />
  <row Id="16246" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6256" RevisionGUID="949f57d0-aa00-424b-abfe-58245c90d3b4" CreationDate="2013-11-03T20:33:29.787" UserId="12611" Text="There's a post that was closed as off-topic, which it is. It's a rant, one that definitely doesn't fit within the scope of our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The author of the post mentions he's contemplating suicide. Is there anything that we should do in these situations? Amy makes a great point that it would be a shame if that did indeed happen, but we also shouldn't keep the post open just because someone is having a bad day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems odd though that a site about conceptual questions in the field of Software Engineering has to deal with such a question, but it's something that's worth discussion to get everyone on the same page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should we do if someone is threatening suicide? Is it our responsibility to intervene? Should the post be locked so folks don't do more harm than good by posting inflammatory comments (not that that's happened)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/216389/i-am-not-satisfied-with-my-career-and-accomplished-nothing-in-my-life-what-shou" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16247" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6256" RevisionGUID="949f57d0-aa00-424b-abfe-58245c90d3b4" CreationDate="2013-11-03T20:33:29.787" UserId="12611" Text="Do we have any responsibility to take any action if someone says they're thinking about suicide in their post?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16248" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6256" RevisionGUID="949f57d0-aa00-424b-abfe-58245c90d3b4" CreationDate="2013-11-03T20:33:29.787" UserId="12611" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16250" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6258" RevisionGUID="112fd537-0029-4446-a816-8ce493b98650" CreationDate="2013-11-03T22:25:08.080" UserId="63" Text="I hate to sound callous about this, but... This isn't a support group; y'all probably aren't trained to deal with the outpouring of grief and despair of someone you've never met and may have absolutely nothing in common with. I'm certainly not. Indeed, there's a decent chance that leaving a post like this around could end up just making things *worse*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, I strongly recommend the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close the post as Off Topic, with a comment like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I'm sorry, but we're not really equipped to help you here. Your best option is probably to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline if you can from where you are.  The people there are on call around the clock to talk to people struggling with the same kind of issues you are.  Despite the &quot;National&quot; in their name, they're happy to talk to people outside of the US. **+1-800-273-8255**. If calling that number doesn't work because of your location, they can also chat with you live right now.   Just go to this site, and you can talk with someone online from 10PM-6AM UTC: **http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/GetHelp/LifelineChat.aspx**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Flag for a moderator who can lock or delete the question to prevent discussion from continuing in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. For *any* credible threat of bodily harm - whether targeted at the author themselves or someone else - use the **contact us** option at the bottom of any page on the site to let us know about this. If need-be, we'll follow up to make sure the situation is handled appropriately. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16251" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6251" RevisionGUID="5ca5ad41-80ea-4a31-926b-98b0922ad3f1" CreationDate="2013-11-03T23:24:11.840" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Shortened MSO link to question checklist." Text="We only have so many canned, built in, close reasons.  There are so many other reasons to close something at times - giving a better message than trying to shoehorn the reason to close something into too broad or primarily opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Custom close messages have the significant advantage when it comes to trying to get a *good* answer in that they also leave a comment that (ideally) would help the person asking (or attempting to fix) the question understand what needs to be done *before* the question is closed and make it suitable (or delete it if its really off topic and would ultimately garner down votes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short and abrupt close messages may be off-putting to some and don't help as much when it comes to getting people to write good questions.  The tricks to writing good messages is a combination of having them at the ready and knowing the quick little 'magic links' that can be used to link to the right spot.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Close reasons use the comment markdown, which gives a bunch of additional magic links.  MSO details them in [balpha's answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/94000/213963), thought the short version most applicable to close reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [meta] =&gt; a link to meta.programmers.stackexchange&#xD;&#xA;* [help] =&gt; a link to the help section&#xD;&#xA;    * [help/on-topic] is a link to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* [ask] =&gt; link to the &quot;How to Ask&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* [chat] =&gt; link to the chat page&#xD;&#xA;* [edit] =&gt; link to edit the page itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using these quick links will make it easier to fit more into a canned (or not) message without actually using more text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, its a better experience for all involved to *not* migrate questions that will get closed in some way *other* than a duplicate on the target site.  A fine line should be considered when suggesting to *repost* a question on another site without having it closed/deleted on the first one.  Be sure that the question is on topic at the target site.  If in doubt, don't suggest reposting but instead flag for a moderator to migrate the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have also found the following links to be helpful to reference when writing close messages (not everyone knows where they are).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `[Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/)` =&gt; [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist) - a compressive list of things to check before posting a question to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;* `[Let’s Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game)` =&gt; [Let’s Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game) - a Jeff Atwood blog post from Feb 2012 about the awkward nature of trying to name something&#xD;&#xA;* `[Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)` =&gt; [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) - a Jeff Atwood blog post from November 2010 about questions asking for a shopping list.&#xD;&#xA;* `[What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/)` =&gt; [What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/) - the question ban MSO reference.  Likely not that useful in a close reason (you'd need to be a mod on SO to check if a user is question banned prior to a migration - however, when a migration fails because of a question ban on the target site, this is a useful link to have so its included here).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've often found myself going to a meta question to pull up a pre-written close message and then copying and pasting that into the question.  Just go in, edit the question to grab the source and copy and paste it into the close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully, this will help people looking for the right wording for closing a question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16252" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6255" RevisionGUID="dfdb6284-c6bd-41c3-89e8-ccf18d5b9960" CreationDate="2013-11-04T03:25:12.533" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="Recently, Nick did some tests on Stack Overflow to see what impact MathJax would have on Stack Overflow.  This was likely done in part to put to rest the 'heavy dependency' argument.  The full post can be read at [There's seriously no reason why LaTeX markup via MathJax shouldn't be enabled on SO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/204003/213963)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a Stack Overflow page load (even when its doing 'nothing'):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Stack Overflow (no MathJax)][1]: **1.380s**&#xD;&#xA; - [Stack Overflow (with MathJax)][2]: **1.675s**&#xD;&#xA; - [Math.StackExchange][3] (with MathJax including content using it): **2.341s**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, for sites that have those pesky `$` that show up in code, it can be a breaking change for existing questions changing the rendering for:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...] which then stores into a $_SESSION - the problem is most of the settings will be set by javascript, and as javascript is a client side script you can't access PHP $_SESSION variables as its server based. [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Unexpected MathJax rendering][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, there are [reports](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/204034/213963) that adding MathJax significantly impacts the time it takes for a preview to show up while writing an answer because MathJax needs to be called to rerender the preview *on every keystroke*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(numbers, links and images from the associated answers in the [MSO question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/204003/213963))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131102_08_QQQ/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131103_DV_CS/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131102_BT_QR2/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MqzCa.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16253" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6259" RevisionGUID="b53db7f0-1c18-48e3-b879-1f706d44cffd" CreationDate="2013-11-04T14:33:48.830" UserId="7748" Text="Saw a link to Reddit..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/how-are-robots-beating-my-captchas/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It kind of bugged me a bit, that this can be done without even notifying the original author.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What bugs me is that here on SE I can modify my answer at anytime, but once its on arstechnica.com I loose control of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong I really could care less if &quot;my&quot; content is re-posted everywhere because I maintain anonymity. So no harm *can* be done to my professional reputation. But many others do not...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that once something is published on SE, it's basically community owned, but this seems to transfer the ownership away from the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the question is &quot;What is our policy on republishing “our“ content to another site?&quot; Who has the authority to authorize this? Can I For example create a Blog &quot;Moron's Favorite Questions&quot;? I know i am allowed to if they are &quot;my&quot; answers, but can if they are someone else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can I group a bunch of question on a similar topic and publish a Book and sell it for provide as a free e-book? (arstechnica.com clearly has ads on its site as well as on the specific page reprinting SE data.)&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;**Where is the line drawn?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16254" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6259" RevisionGUID="b53db7f0-1c18-48e3-b879-1f706d44cffd" CreationDate="2013-11-04T14:33:48.830" UserId="7748" Text="What is our policy on republishing “our“ content to another site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16255" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6259" RevisionGUID="b53db7f0-1c18-48e3-b879-1f706d44cffd" CreationDate="2013-11-04T14:33:48.830" UserId="7748" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16256" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6259" RevisionGUID="e63e8ad4-11d4-477e-a768-93e0b9ead99d" CreationDate="2013-11-04T14:42:09.753" UserId="7748" Comment="added 67 characters in body" Text="Saw a link to Reddit..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/how-are-robots-beating-my-captchas/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This lead me to : http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It kind of bugged me a bit, that this can be done without even notifying the original author.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What bugs me is that here on SE I can modify my answer at anytime, but once its on arstechnica.com I loose control of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong I really could care less if &quot;my&quot; content is re-posted everywhere because I maintain anonymity. So no harm *can* be done to my professional reputation. But many others do not...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that once something is published on SE, it's basically community owned, but this seems to transfer the ownership away from the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the question is &quot;What is our policy on republishing “our“ content to another site?&quot; Who has the authority to authorize this? Can I For example create a Blog &quot;Moron's Favorite Questions&quot;? I know i am allowed to if they are &quot;my&quot; answers, but can if they are someone else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can I group a bunch of question on a similar topic and publish a Book and sell it for provide as a free e-book? (arstechnica.com clearly has ads on its site as well as on the specific page reprinting SE data.)&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;**Where is the line drawn?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16257" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6260" RevisionGUID="81fea410-230c-4fa0-8e17-11dec71f29f2" CreationDate="2013-11-04T14:42:26.057" UserId="4" Text="All content on Stack Exchange is licensed under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported][1]. Anyone can share or remix the content (including for commercial use), as long as you provide proper attribution and share under the same or similar license. [Proper attribution is defined][2] as visually indicating the source site, providing a hyperlink to the original question, identifying the author name for every question and answer used, and hyperlinking from the author's name to the author's profile. I would say that for non-hypertext documents, providing the full URL is the same as hyperlinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, yes, you can create a list of your favorite questions (including answers posted by you and others) or publish a book (even commercially, as long as it's available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license) or publish to a website (with or without advertising) as long as you follow the rules of attribution. Ars Technica does follow those rules, so it's fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/attribution-required/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16261" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5541" RevisionGUID="bab05886-7a85-4627-ac80-e54c32ed9a62" CreationDate="2013-11-04T17:45:37.987" UserId="4428" Comment="unless &quot;tagline to show on mouseover&quot; is some meta-joke I don't get, fill something in" Text="[![ØMQ \zeromq\ Distributed Computing made Simple][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/3oQMC.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.zeromq.org/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16262" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6258" RevisionGUID="8ced763f-bf93-41ac-ad29-35e6cb2bc57d" CreationDate="2013-11-04T20:34:04.420" UserId="60388" Comment="added a couple of lines to boost initial empathy slightly and try and push them a tad harder to try the prevention line at the end." Text="I hate to sound callous about this, but... This isn't a support group; y'all probably aren't trained to deal with the outpouring of grief and despair of someone you've never met and may have absolutely nothing in common with. I'm certainly not. Indeed, there's a decent chance that leaving a post like this around could end up just making things *worse*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, I strongly recommend the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close the post as Off Topic, with a comment like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; It sounds like you're going through a really hard time. I'd really like to do something to help, but unfortunately, we're not really equipped to help you here. Your best option is probably to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline if you can from where you are.  The people there are on call around the clock to talk to people struggling with the same kind of issues you are.  Despite the &quot;National&quot; in their name, they're happy to talk to people outside of the US. **+1-800-273-8255**. If calling that number doesn't work because of your location, they can also chat with you live right now.   Just go to this site, and you can talk with someone online from 10PM-6AM UTC: **http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/GetHelp/LifelineChat.aspx** It might not help, but if it does you no good, you're no worse off.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Flag for a moderator who can lock or delete the question to prevent discussion from continuing in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. For *any* credible threat of bodily harm - whether targeted at the author themselves or someone else - use the **contact us** option at the bottom of any page on the site to let us know about this. If need-be, we'll follow up to make sure the situation is handled appropriately. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16263" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6258" RevisionGUID="8a720ec0-1bd7-4210-9373-f9041aa5e255" CreationDate="2013-11-04T20:47:38.390" UserId="60388" Comment="Brought revisions under 600 chars." Text="I hate to sound callous about this, but... This isn't a support group; y'all probably aren't trained to deal with the outpouring of grief and despair of someone you've never met and may have absolutely nothing in common with. I'm certainly not. Indeed, there's a decent chance that leaving a post like this around could end up just making things *worse*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, I strongly recommend the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close the post as Off Topic, with a comment like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; It sounds like you're going through a really hard time. I'd really like to help you, but unfortunately, we're not well-equipped to here. Your best option is probably to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. People are on call there to talk to people struggling with the same kind of issues you are, regardless of location. US. **+1-800-273-8255**. If calling's not good, they can chat with you live online. Just go to this site, and you can talk with someone online from 10PM-6AM UTC: **http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/GetHelp/LifelineChat.aspx** It might not help, but what's the harm?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Flag for a moderator who can lock or delete the question to prevent discussion from continuing in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. For *any* credible threat of bodily harm - whether targeted at the author themselves or someone else - use the **contact us** option at the bottom of any page on the site to let us know about this. If need-be, we'll follow up to make sure the situation is handled appropriately. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16264" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6258" RevisionGUID="db031f68-f83f-49ed-8b27-9a0f8a19b1bc" CreationDate="2013-11-04T21:42:37.957" UserId="63" Comment="Minor phrasing fix TWO CHARACTERS LEFT" Text="I hate to sound callous about this, but... This isn't a support group; y'all probably aren't trained to deal with the outpouring of grief and despair of someone you've never met and may have absolutely nothing in common with. I'm certainly not. Indeed, there's a decent chance that leaving a post like this around could end up just making things *worse*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, I strongly recommend the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close the post as Off Topic, with a comment like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; It sounds like you're going through a really hard time. I'd really like to help you, but unfortunately, we're not well-equipped to do so here. Your best option is probably to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. People are on call there to talk to people struggling with the same kind of issues you are, regardless of location. US: +1-800-273-8255. If calling's not good, they can chat with you live online. Just go to this site, and you can talk with someone online from 10PM-6AM UTC: http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/GetHelp/LifelineChat.aspx It might not help, but what's the harm?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Flag for a moderator who can lock or delete the question to prevent discussion from continuing in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. For *any* credible threat of bodily harm - whether targeted at the author themselves or someone else - use the **contact us** option at the bottom of any page on the site to let us know about this. If need-be, we'll follow up to make sure the situation is handled appropriately. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16265" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6256" RevisionGUID="77e6120e-f79a-4210-80fd-e3799fb628da" CreationDate="2013-11-05T09:53:38.240" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/397662983725514752" />
  <row Id="16266" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6262" RevisionGUID="41e58098-83fb-4e43-ab13-b6a472de19fd" CreationDate="2013-11-05T12:58:52.293" UserId="106937" Text="Trying to find posts/articles (or even the right SE forum!)  where people have evaluated the prevalent and double-edged &quot;programming by just googling for it&quot; practice in terms of its detriment to practicing to be a better programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Knee-jerk answers might as well be entirely opinion-based so resisted the urge to post it as a **non-meta** question ... so rather, wanted to see if any respected pundit/s did any evaluation/study of this trend or if a prior post (didn't have much luck finding it) contained **somewhat** objective analysis?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16267" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6262" RevisionGUID="41e58098-83fb-4e43-ab13-b6a472de19fd" CreationDate="2013-11-05T12:58:52.293" UserId="106937" Text="Any posts/articles evaluating the prevalent and double-edged &quot;Google for it first, think later!&quot; practice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16268" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6262" RevisionGUID="41e58098-83fb-4e43-ab13-b6a472de19fd" CreationDate="2013-11-05T12:58:52.293" UserId="106937" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16269" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6263" RevisionGUID="a3846d9d-6d61-43a7-a728-56ea85155a48" CreationDate="2013-11-05T15:41:40.237" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="From our own (and I'm not digging too deeply):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63504/would-a-cut-and-paste-coder-ever-get-past-a-job-interview&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88745/does-over-reliance-on-tools-imply-that-you-are-lazy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Outside of that... we're a poor substitute for google.  And please remember, we're not a forum." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16270" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6264" RevisionGUID="26b155f0-3a51-43da-bcb6-2db1291fef86" CreationDate="2013-11-06T08:41:18.337" UserId="106965" Text="I really love the theme used for this exchange. Is there any resource that could be reused or some reference (fonts, graphics, css, ...)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16271" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6264" RevisionGUID="26b155f0-3a51-43da-bcb6-2db1291fef86" CreationDate="2013-11-06T08:41:18.337" UserId="106965" Text="where can I find the resources for programmers exchange's theme?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16272" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6264" RevisionGUID="26b155f0-3a51-43da-bcb6-2db1291fef86" CreationDate="2013-11-06T08:41:18.337" UserId="106965" Text="|discussion|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16273" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6265" RevisionGUID="5b75fa30-027c-4092-bca0-4d573c606f6c" CreationDate="2013-11-06T09:43:04.680" UserId="25936" Text="The main font of the site is [Whiteboard Regular][1], and as far as I know you can use it freely in your projects. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything else is copyrighted by Stack Exchange. You'll have to contact them directly ([&quot;contact us&quot;][2] link in the footer) to discuss what you can and cannot use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.fonts2u.com/whiteboard.font&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/contact" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16274" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6266" RevisionGUID="cee2bce4-9bab-47df-83e4-80b699aad801" CreationDate="2013-11-06T21:27:01.317" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="[tag:regular-expressions] and [tag:regex].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are the same thing, just one is shorter to type.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regular-expressions should be the 'master' tag while regex is the synonym." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16275" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6266" RevisionGUID="cee2bce4-9bab-47df-83e4-80b699aad801" CreationDate="2013-11-06T21:27:01.317" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [regex] -&gt; [regular-expressions]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16276" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6266" RevisionGUID="cee2bce4-9bab-47df-83e4-80b699aad801" CreationDate="2013-11-06T21:27:01.317" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16277" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6266" RevisionGUID="11bd9a6a-adaf-4d64-bdd1-b7e2b9e2df62" CreationDate="2013-11-06T21:32:10.877" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16278" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6267" RevisionGUID="cc3b9b3b-ae92-40b5-ae27-160e90c7a56b" CreationDate="2013-11-06T21:32:35.237" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Ask and sometimes ye shall receive. In this case, ye has been received. Carry on." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16279" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6268" RevisionGUID="15554de9-fafe-45c4-9708-025d16583727" CreationDate="2013-11-07T00:35:19.683" UserId="107086" Text="I recently just posted this: [Post][1] and it was flag as `primarily opinion-based`. The question is about methodologies. How is the question `primarily opinion-based`?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/216744/what-are-all-the-different-ways-to-split-a-string" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16280" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6268" RevisionGUID="15554de9-fafe-45c4-9708-025d16583727" CreationDate="2013-11-07T00:35:19.683" UserId="107086" Text="Question about string splitting placed on hold?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16281" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6268" RevisionGUID="15554de9-fafe-45c4-9708-025d16583727" CreationDate="2013-11-07T00:35:19.683" UserId="107086" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16282" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6269" RevisionGUID="acff232f-5d41-4116-ae11-3b1a756554ef" CreationDate="2013-11-07T00:52:06.883" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="It's a polling question about what kinds of methodologies are out there. These kinds of [open ended questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) don't work well with the Stack Exchange format since every answer will be equally valid." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16283" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6270" RevisionGUID="dd01a1c1-847c-4de1-85ef-fed11b88a186" CreationDate="2013-11-07T15:25:53.777" UserId="64132" Text="Poll questions are closed as off topic for good reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should &quot;this is a poll question&quot; be one of the predefined close reasons?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Possible side question - is there a limit to the number of predefined close reasons and/or a reason why we don't have more?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16284" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6270" RevisionGUID="dd01a1c1-847c-4de1-85ef-fed11b88a186" CreationDate="2013-11-07T15:25:53.777" UserId="64132" Text="Should we have a &quot;This is a polling question&quot; close reason?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16285" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6270" RevisionGUID="dd01a1c1-847c-4de1-85ef-fed11b88a186" CreationDate="2013-11-07T15:25:53.777" UserId="64132" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16286" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6271" RevisionGUID="49dd6371-3133-4834-9649-ae3304d65f95" CreationDate="2013-11-07T15:29:40.067" UserId="47" Text="To answer your side question - yes there is a limit to the number of custom close reasons. By default it's 3 so under the current scheme one of the other existing ones will have to be dropped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we can justify it we can get this number increased. So you'd have to show that there were just as many poll questions being closed as each of the other reasons." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16288" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6268" RevisionGUID="4841ec4e-6d36-4bc4-9c2b-0c6c92841157" CreationDate="2013-11-07T17:09:50.707" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Question since deleted, adding text of question to provide context." Text="I recently just posted this: [Post][1] and it was flag as `primarily opinion-based`. The question is about methodologies. How is the question `primarily opinion-based`?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I know there are many different kinds to ways to split a string, e.g.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you can use regex, `get_line` and strings internal functions, such as,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; `find`, `find_first_of` and `find_last_of`. You could even loop&#xD;&#xA;&gt; through a string character by character if you wanted to. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are some of the other ways you could split a string?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/216744/what-are-all-the-different-ways-to-split-a-string" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16289" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6273" RevisionGUID="d384de34-374e-479b-b184-2d3a82819ac7" CreationDate="2013-11-08T04:09:24.893" UserId="58364" Text="For example, I want to ask a question about an up to date trade offs comparison on all of the known database implementations (or as many as I can get my greedy hands on) and I'm trying to find a home for my question on Stack Exchange. I know that this question is not correct for stackoverflow and so this was my next stop. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But beyond that specific example, would this be the right place to come with questions that have to do with finding material that is focused on helping improve a programmer? If it is, does that only mean reading material or would things as broad as cookbooks be allowed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16290" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6273" RevisionGUID="d384de34-374e-479b-b184-2d3a82819ac7" CreationDate="2013-11-08T04:09:24.893" UserId="58364" Text="Is programmers.stackexchange the right place to ask for reading material?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16291" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6273" RevisionGUID="d384de34-374e-479b-b184-2d3a82819ac7" CreationDate="2013-11-08T04:09:24.893" UserId="58364" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16292" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6274" RevisionGUID="4461b736-c16e-40b0-a00b-62f359c34de3" CreationDate="2013-11-08T04:20:56.270" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="The best place to ask for book recommendations is [Programmers Chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) as far as general programming stuff goes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specific the Database question, you might try [Database Administrators](http://dba.stackexchange.com)' chat room or reading over the general site to see what's there. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;General recommendation questions are off-topic on all sites network wide." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16297" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6276" RevisionGUID="34d2679f-af59-41ac-8363-1769f6b56bbe" CreationDate="2013-11-08T11:55:59.673" UserId="31260" Text="## What is the name of this thing ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;What is the name of this thing&quot; questions are off-topic. These are poor questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. **See Also** [Let's Play the Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Slightly adapted from [this MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/203884/165773)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16298" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6276" RevisionGUID="fa25107f-de37-425f-88d6-17cd14826bd2" CreationDate="2013-11-08T11:55:59.673" UserId="31260" />
  <row Id="16299" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6230" RevisionGUID="7fec8d5b-1eec-4196-a1aa-5a73b2bff388" CreationDate="2013-11-10T04:01:08.290" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/399386214035640320" />
  <row Id="16300" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6277" RevisionGUID="d5c7514b-43bb-451d-a171-08337de9cf37" CreationDate="2013-11-10T10:11:49.553" UserId="106458" Text="I think the stack exchange is fantastic. But I have a limited amount of time for searching for answers to my questions, and 'the what should I ask' critera makes it even more awkward for me to ask questions. The 'similar questions' bar on the right is great, but what would be even better would be to build more of these Q&amp;As into community wikis, and to develop the layout of the community wiki to make it as intuitive as possible. Naturally, questions breed more questions, and it isn't always intuitive to just ask one question at a time. Sometimes you have to ask a whole series of questions to get to the answer you want. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feedback and opinions would be great!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16301" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6277" RevisionGUID="d5c7514b-43bb-451d-a171-08337de9cf37" CreationDate="2013-11-10T10:11:49.553" UserId="106458" Text="Bringing topics together in the stack exchange" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16302" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6277" RevisionGUID="d5c7514b-43bb-451d-a171-08337de9cf37" CreationDate="2013-11-10T10:11:49.553" UserId="106458" Text="|feature-request|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16303" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6278" RevisionGUID="3d1a55bc-3fa5-48a0-9777-35ceec76b22f" CreationDate="2013-11-10T15:50:55.120" UserId="64132" Text="First and foremost, [Stack Exchange is not a forum][1].  There's a really good blog post on this that I can't find right now.  The tl;dr version is that forums have a terrible signal to noise ratio.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange exists [to build a library of high-quality questions and answers][2].  Oddly enough, solving any one user's problem isn't as high a priority as one might expect.  The priority is to collect general / reusable questions and answers that benefit hundreds or thousands of people who have the same issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most (all?) SE sites have [chat][3].  I haven't used it much, but if you need to have a conversation, that's the place to do it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Wiki [isn't always the right answer][4].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/92107/218240&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/333/64132" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16304" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6273" RevisionGUID="942f4e80-5756-4423-8988-105de4833ff2" CreationDate="2013-11-10T20:34:55.783" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16305" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6279" RevisionGUID="8b447b96-409a-4f3a-b073-a9f02654cb1b" CreationDate="2013-11-11T16:57:37.797" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="The Scala tag wiki on Stack Overflow is rather, well, interesting in this regard - [have a look at it][1]. Someone actually wove together almost an _entire_ language tutorial from one question successively to another, then another. That's great for a whole language tag, but it doesn't _really_ allow for the smaller segments of 'chains' that you're talking about. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm of the opinion that the tag wiki system doesn't _nearly_ come close to doing everything that it could for us, and this is a _really_ good example of something it could be doing provided that a way to make all of the information easy to discover is devised.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our usual question format isn't ideal for what you describe, we'd need some sort of special status to give these sort of stubs, which _could_ conceivably be nominated by someone creating them through the tag wiki system. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I'm not saying that we're going to do this, or do it any time soon, it's just another classic example of how they could be doing more for us - and I wanted to get that down. The idea you have has value _so long as_ it doesn't actively encourage folks to try and crowd source entire projects - but I think we can keep that from happening easy enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not putting a status on this yet - as really sitting down with the tag wiki system is on my list to do before the end of this year, and this is one more piece of the puzzle that I'd like to find a fit for in a broader / better scheme of things when it comes to them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/tags/scala/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16306" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6280" RevisionGUID="55b1b1c9-e3fd-40fa-8f9c-07b958acffca" CreationDate="2013-11-12T12:42:52.830" UserId="56296" Text="I want to ask a question about an abstract factory that I have implemented but am in doubt of the best design choice. My question is about should I have a design that requires addition of new make methods to the factory interface when extension is called upon, or should I use a generic approach that eliminates changes to the factory interface but requires an (ugly but runtime verified) down cast.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, should I ask this question on Programmers.SE or on CodeReview.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16307" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6280" RevisionGUID="55b1b1c9-e3fd-40fa-8f9c-07b958acffca" CreationDate="2013-11-12T12:42:52.830" UserId="56296" Text="Design choice of existing code; Programmers.SE or CodeReview.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16308" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6280" RevisionGUID="55b1b1c9-e3fd-40fa-8f9c-07b958acffca" CreationDate="2013-11-12T12:42:52.830" UserId="56296" Text="|discussion|off-topic|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16309" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6280" RevisionGUID="3617b5f2-f0b6-44c9-b36e-e81b36c4d096" CreationDate="2013-11-12T13:09:31.333" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16310" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6281" RevisionGUID="f299c8eb-863a-4f47-92c5-38de5f8f500b" CreationDate="2013-11-12T13:16:52.000" UserId="25936" Text="Your question sounds more like a Code Review question than a Programmers one, but you could try posting it in both sites. However you should take care to  target each site's audience:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Code Review only accepts questions that include _working code_, reviewing code isn't exactly a pleasant experience if the damn thing doesn't compile. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If your code is relatively small and its working, you should go ahead and post there. If it isn't working, then perhaps you should start by posting a question on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;- On Programmers, code isn't necessary. If you think a small piece of code would help clarify your question, then by all means include it, but ideally the question should stand without the code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  What we are more interested in hearing is what your specific problem is, and what design choices you've already considered. If you've already dismissed an approach or two, please tell us why. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16311" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6282" RevisionGUID="df18c254-db82-487c-8692-d9a6945bcd15" CreationDate="2013-11-12T15:20:43.710" UserId="62519" Text="if you post the Code on Code Review (following the guidelines for CodeReview questions) we will be more than happy to help you optimize for performance, or readability, or other things like that.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Program design sounds more like a question for Programmers than it does for code review.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Code Review likes to hammer out syntax and ways to make your design work.  if it's a bad design then the code will probably look like a blob.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;deciding what the design should be and what design is going to work best sounds like Programmers to me, but if you have working code that you want reviewed, Code Review might (small chance) point you toward a new design choice, just depends on the code and functionality you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;if you do post on CR and/or Programmers please comment on my answer with the links.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Here is the link to on-topic questions on Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and this does say &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Best practices and design pattern usage&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;AND &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;However, if your question is not about a particular piece of code and instead is a generally applicable question about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Best practices in general (that is, it's okay to ask &quot;Does this code follow common best practices?&quot;, but not &quot;What is the best practice regarding X?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16312" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6277" RevisionGUID="87dc55ca-b1db-49c1-884e-e87a7929e71b" CreationDate="2013-11-12T16:01:33.990" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/400292291182858240" />
  <row Id="16313" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6283" RevisionGUID="8a80a96c-639d-48a7-90d8-4a9f15f95528" CreationDate="2013-11-12T16:52:35.210" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Related:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3799/the-coding-for-charity-q-any-hope-of-ever-being-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/157022/coding-for-good-or-charity&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47558/how-can-programming-ability-be-used-to-help-people-in-poverty&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How should we deal with questions that are attached to a specific time or event?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The one that is currently in the spotlight is http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218178/are-there-any-practical-ways-people-with-computer-skills-can-contribute-help-to which was originally asked as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Are there any practical ways people with computer skills can contribute help to the relief effort of typhoon Haiyan. Really simple question, is there any answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm putting this on Meta in an attempt to head off the associated comments in the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16314" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6283" RevisionGUID="8a80a96c-639d-48a7-90d8-4a9f15f95528" CreationDate="2013-11-12T16:52:35.210" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Current events - Questions and answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16315" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6283" RevisionGUID="8a80a96c-639d-48a7-90d8-4a9f15f95528" CreationDate="2013-11-12T16:52:35.210" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16316" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6284" RevisionGUID="1ffa986c-c03b-4c78-9f2b-737d203284e8" CreationDate="2013-11-12T16:52:35.210" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There are two core problems with this type of question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Temporal ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is tied (closely or loosely) to a specific event.  These questions have difficulty developing long term value for the site.  In this case we are talking about Typhoon Haiyan, however the response for another natural disaster (earthquake somewhere, storm in another nation - compare Sandy vs Haiyan, tsunami at Fukushima) will have different answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of it being related to a specific time also means that different agencies are available or applicable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## List question ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of the question leads to a list of options.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One can go through and add the latest group that is doing something.  The poverty question mentioned above has 39 undeleted answers (and another 3 deleted ones) that each list a way.  You get answers such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Has no you yet posted a link to hackers for charity? They have a list of volunteer positions that need to be filled, many of which can be done over the web.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange as a whole doesn't do a good job of handling list questions.  Listing charities or projects is no exception.  People haven't shown an interest in curating existing historical list questions, I have little faith in their willingness to curate and maintain *new* ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Stack exchange and content ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of Stack Exchange, as a whole, is to produce long term quality content that people see and trust in search results. With this in mind, it is difficult to use it to mobilize a response to a specific event.  The question becomes outdated, the answers become outdated (I've voted to delete questions asking about what sessions to attend at a conference in 2010, or how to register for MacWorld 2011).  Stack exchange just isn't designed to be able to handle that type of question and answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## What can be done? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone wants to help with an event, form a chat room and get people to crowdsource a blog post for the Programmers.SE blog ( http://programmers.blogoverflow.com ).  But the Q&amp;A side of Stack Exchange is a poor way to get poor answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have your heart set upon having the question in the Q&amp;A side, talk with the moderators about making a good, long lasting question with a good answer and the necessary steps to use a collaborative lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, please remember that a question being collaborative does not absolve people of taking on the responsibility of making sure it retains good content." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16317" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6285" RevisionGUID="cd9dbdf9-ea0f-42ae-bd9c-1cec3d15d49a" CreationDate="2013-11-12T19:26:59.517" UserId="2620" Text="Post to Code Review, and if you don't get enough response after some time and bounty then post to Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is suited to Code Review but that site has much lower traffic than Programmers, which can mean you won't get a useful response." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16318" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6284" RevisionGUID="b275ce58-c54e-4d0e-a8b0-16a571dae410" CreationDate="2013-11-13T05:05:55.207" UserId="31260" Comment="list questions += http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info" Text="There are two core problems with this type of question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Temporal ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is tied (closely or loosely) to a specific event.  These questions have difficulty developing long term value for the site.  In this case we are talking about Typhoon Haiyan, however the response for another natural disaster (earthquake somewhere, storm in another nation - compare Sandy vs Haiyan, tsunami at Fukushima) will have different answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of it being related to a specific time also means that different agencies are available or applicable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## List question ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of the question leads to a list of options.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One can go through and add the latest group that is doing something.  The poverty question mentioned above has 39 undeleted answers (and another 3 deleted ones) that each list a way.  You get answers such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Has no you yet posted a link to hackers for charity? They have a list of volunteer positions that need to be filled, many of which can be done over the web.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange as a whole doesn't do a good job of handling [list questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info).  Listing charities or projects is no exception.  People haven't shown an interest in curating existing historical list questions, I have little faith in their willingness to curate and maintain *new* ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Stack exchange and content ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of Stack Exchange, as a whole, is to produce long term quality content that people see and trust in search results. With this in mind, it is difficult to use it to mobilize a response to a specific event.  The question becomes outdated, the answers become outdated (I've voted to delete questions asking about what sessions to attend at a conference in 2010, or how to register for MacWorld 2011).  Stack exchange just isn't designed to be able to handle that type of question and answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## What can be done? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone wants to help with an event, form a chat room and get people to crowdsource a blog post for the Programmers.SE blog ( http://programmers.blogoverflow.com ).  But the Q&amp;A side of Stack Exchange is a poor way to get poor answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have your heart set upon having the question in the Q&amp;A side, talk with the moderators about making a good, long lasting question with a good answer and the necessary steps to use a collaborative lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, please remember that a question being collaborative does not absolve people of taking on the responsibility of making sure it retains good content." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16320" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6286" RevisionGUID="a335f0ed-858c-4989-8ee8-97f1020a9b92" CreationDate="2013-11-15T15:22:46.410" UserId="19993" Text="[This question][1] is marked as a dupe of a deleted question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please unmark it as dupe, or resurrect the deleted question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29531/what-are-some-good-programming-exercises-projects-to-help-me-learn-new-languages?rq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16321" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6286" RevisionGUID="a335f0ed-858c-4989-8ee8-97f1020a9b92" CreationDate="2013-11-15T15:22:46.410" UserId="19993" Text="Dupe of deleted question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16322" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6286" RevisionGUID="a335f0ed-858c-4989-8ee8-97f1020a9b92" CreationDate="2013-11-15T15:22:46.410" UserId="19993" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16323" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6287" RevisionGUID="dbd96a7b-3c83-49f5-beeb-e5f22cf3b3c0" CreationDate="2013-11-15T15:42:59.897" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="That's a great example for where a moderator flag is appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will help explain what happened.  &#xD;&#xA;The question you linked was closed a while back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the question it was closed against as duplicate was deleted more recently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If nothing else, you can say that you have found evidence to prove it's always Jeff's fault when things go wrong.  :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OLjaY.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/yvXaX.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pNYkC.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16324" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6286" RevisionGUID="5d7e7fd1-8613-4260-ba44-bc3cfbe8b940" CreationDate="2013-11-15T16:05:23.803" UserId="13045" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16325" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6286" RevisionGUID="99936fb2-bd3e-4481-8f57-524de59b1d41" CreationDate="2013-11-15T16:17:43.823" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|duplicate-questions|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16326" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6283" RevisionGUID="315e0b31-a717-499e-b3bc-b1e63d513edd" CreationDate="2013-11-17T04:01:40.523" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/401923064134656000" />
  <row Id="16327" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6280" RevisionGUID="99c95813-5735-4009-b8ab-e11976853b7d" CreationDate="2013-11-17T13:01:42.697" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/402058969080156160" />
  <row Id="16328" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6288" RevisionGUID="57ce98ca-356c-439c-bf1d-0420157206ac" CreationDate="2013-11-17T14:58:57.187" UserId="98803" Text="My question [Which concepts are pertinent to plan a “end-user documentation” strategy?][1] has been closed, and I do not completely understand why.  The reason invoked is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been done so far to solve it.&quot; – Eric King, GlenH7, World Engineer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not think that this apply to my question, and _argumented_ my position in the comments of the question.  These arguments were not answered and the question has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can I get any chance to reword my question in an appropriate manner if moderators do not provide details about their decision when asked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213291/which-concepts-are-pertinent-to-plan-a-end-user-documentation-strategy&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16329" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6288" RevisionGUID="57ce98ca-356c-439c-bf1d-0420157206ac" CreationDate="2013-11-17T14:58:57.187" UserId="98803" Text="How can I reword my question in a useful manner without a clear reason why my question has benn closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16330" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6288" RevisionGUID="57ce98ca-356c-439c-bf1d-0420157206ac" CreationDate="2013-11-17T14:58:57.187" UserId="98803" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16331" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6288" RevisionGUID="27dd5d40-c19e-471e-9aba-b66cb65e2ca4" CreationDate="2013-11-17T15:04:00.847" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16332" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6288" RevisionGUID="27dd5d40-c19e-471e-9aba-b66cb65e2ca4" CreationDate="2013-11-17T15:04:00.847" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="My question [Which concepts are pertinent to plan a “end-user documentation” strategy?][1] has been closed, and I do not completely understand why.The reason invoked is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been done so far to solve it.&quot; – Eric King, GlenH7, World Engineer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not think that this apply to my question, and _argued_ my position in the comments of the question.  These arguments were not answered and the question has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can I get any chance to reword my question in an appropriate manner if moderators do not provide details about their decision when asked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213291/which-concepts-are-pertinent-to-plan-a-end-user-documentation-strategy&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16333" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6288" RevisionGUID="27dd5d40-c19e-471e-9aba-b66cb65e2ca4" CreationDate="2013-11-17T15:04:00.847" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="How can I reword my question in a useful manner without a clear reason why my question has been closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16334" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6229" RevisionGUID="66f4cdd0-6456-4cc1-95f7-753843f0d05c" CreationDate="2013-11-18T08:43:20.493" UserId="31260" Comment="A close enough data dump seems to be one uploaded on March 18, 2013 here: http://www.clearbits.net/torrents/2121-mar-2013" Text="Is it possible to get results of a particular SEDE query executed against an older data snapshot? I am interested in these in order to perform sort of retrospective study.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Query I would like to run is [Marginal short answers with links](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102718/marginal-short-answers-with-links?AnswerScoreMax=100&amp;AnswerScoreMin=-100&amp;AnswerLength=200 &quot;with certain parameters - posts score between -100 and 100 and answer length up to 200&quot;). I would like to see results of this query executed against data snapshot taken in the beginning of March / end of February, when the query was introduced. A close enough [data dump](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/207811/165773 &quot;SE data dumps explained in more details here&quot;) seems to be one uploaded on March 18, 2013 here: http://www.clearbits.net/torrents/2121-mar-2013&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my recollection, back then query has been showing about one or two (maybe three) thousands posts. Today, it shows less than 60 posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to learn what happened to thousands posts that are not there anymore, how many was there back then, how many of these were deleted, edited, historically locked." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16335" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6289" RevisionGUID="5465b96b-58f6-4f1e-a1b3-bb2469bffe0a" CreationDate="2013-11-19T06:35:27.203" UserId="226" Text="There's no way to do this via SEDE, so comparing data dumps is pretty much your only half-way sane option." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16336" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6290" RevisionGUID="46944e10-b864-4be0-a135-a5d1b9af799e" CreationDate="2013-11-19T16:30:43.120" UserId="80010" Text="i understand in stackoverflow, questions are closed as &quot;off topic&quot; &quot;not constructive&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;that is why we come here!! /* programmers */ should be alot more liberal as to the type of questions allowed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;example: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125796/comparison-of-ides-for-c-and-c-development-on-linux-kdevelop-eclipse-netbea?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;this is a perfect question for programmers. this place is to heavily moded. chill" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16337" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6290" RevisionGUID="46944e10-b864-4be0-a135-a5d1b9af799e" CreationDate="2013-11-19T16:30:43.120" UserId="80010" Text="Can we just have a place for programmers to ask questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16338" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6290" RevisionGUID="46944e10-b864-4be0-a135-a5d1b9af799e" CreationDate="2013-11-19T16:30:43.120" UserId="80010" Text="|discussion|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16339" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6290" RevisionGUID="0d45d013-bc0e-494f-aa03-732406e8da20" CreationDate="2013-11-19T16:40:12.527" UserId="80010" Comment="added 204 characters in body" Text="i understand in stackoverflow, questions are closed as &quot;off topic&quot; &quot;not constructive&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;that is why we come here!! /* programmers */ should be alot more liberal as to the type of questions allowed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;example: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125796/comparison-of-ides-for-c-and-c-development-on-linux-kdevelop-eclipse-netbea?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;this is a perfect question for programmers. this place is to heavily moded. chill&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*******************&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2794/dangers-of-too-eager-moderation?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;even my meta question gets down-voted... no wonder this place is not too popular. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16340" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6291" RevisionGUID="57274036-8735-4284-9512-186518205c25" CreationDate="2013-11-19T16:49:50.723" UserId="47" Text="This was tried in the initial days of Programmers and it failed spectacularly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site came very close to be being shut down, but we managed, through the herculean efforts of everybody - moderators, community managers and committed users, to turn it around and have a site that is, on the whole, useful." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16341" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6291" RevisionGUID="a5af43c0-203b-45eb-9240-3909eade91f2" CreationDate="2013-11-19T17:02:41.000" UserId="31260" Comment="This was tried in the initial days of Programmers and it failed spectacularly. += http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/200144/165773 &quot;as explained in more details here&quot;" Text="[This was tried in the initial days of Programmers and it failed spectacularly.](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/200144/165773 &quot;as explained in more details here&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site came very close to be being shut down, but we managed, through the herculean efforts of everybody - moderators, community managers and committed users, to turn it around and have a site that is, on the whole, useful." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16342" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6292" RevisionGUID="424f0ffd-5208-4426-b56e-4f7466f13bea" CreationDate="2013-11-19T19:34:04.673" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218921/classification-of-questions" />
  <row Id="16343" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6292" RevisionGUID="e1b35b3d-f6d6-4482-9329-d1baf2d16cbc" CreationDate="2013-11-19T19:24:08.617" UserId="109165" Text="I was wondering if a program can be made that can classify the questions used on this site in order to place them on the proper stack exchange site. For eg. if someone places a question in the Computer Science section but it actually belongs in the Mathematics or Programming section then it must be move there automatically.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would involve : &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Natural language processing &#xD;&#xA;2. Pattern recognition&#xD;&#xA;3. String compares with &quot;already asked&quot; questions&#xD;&#xA;4. A mapping between concepts and their industry classification.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks&#xD;&#xA;Cheers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16344" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6292" RevisionGUID="e1b35b3d-f6d6-4482-9329-d1baf2d16cbc" CreationDate="2013-11-19T19:24:08.617" UserId="109165" Text="Classification of questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16345" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6292" RevisionGUID="e1b35b3d-f6d6-4482-9329-d1baf2d16cbc" CreationDate="2013-11-19T19:24:08.617" UserId="109165" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16346" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6293" RevisionGUID="3874a95b-7c34-45a4-9441-c144e2a19a1c" CreationDate="2013-11-19T19:53:05.197" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Between CS.SE, P.SE, and SO the scope of each overlaps and depends significantly on what type of answer the person asking wants get.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off as a starter, read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/190106/dealing-with-find-out-whos-going-to-buy-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;    * http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/13420/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206073/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants-accounting-for-possible-absence&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll also point to a recent example - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218222/searching-integer-sequences - this question would be perfectly suitable on *either* (or both?) P.SE and CS.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging by the words in the question, it is a very non-trivial problem.  A question that asks about an algorithm could show up on any of the sites and be appropriate.  A slight tweak to the question ('i am having a doubt about the c i wrote') and it would rapidly get pushed to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, realize that the scope of a site, while it has inertia to it also does have some variability over time.  The scope of a site may get more strict (to the point where TCS is) or it may loosen up over time (do you accept homework problems?) This is very evident when looking at the history of questions on P.SE to see what was acceptable a year or two ago and what it is now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, judging by the migration stats and the failure - most times, it is asked on the right site *or* isn't appropriate anywhere.  For example, 2 posts from CS where migrated to P.SE in the last and one of them was rejected.  7 posts were migrated from P.SE to CS.SE and one of them was rejected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If humans can get get it right, do you think a program could?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *really* want to take a crack at it - go grab the Stack Exchange data dump http://data.stackexchange.com/help and see if you can identify questions that would get migrated (or closed).  The 'or closed' bit was the topic of a [machine learning contest](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-machine-learning-contest/) - though I don't think it was accurate enough to merit inclusion... or something.  http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/161538/are-there-any-robot-moderators-on-so" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16347" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6292" RevisionGUID="22700295-4609-4a51-ab33-1ba0e300b19f" CreationDate="2013-11-19T19:53:24.777" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add migration tag" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16348" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6293" RevisionGUID="d0e6d82c-81d8-4f7e-b45c-a23922cca592" CreationDate="2013-11-19T19:59:45.863" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 83 characters in body" Text="Between CS.SE, P.SE, and SO the scope of each overlaps and depends significantly on what type of answer the person asking wants get.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off as a starter, read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/190106/dealing-with-find-out-whos-going-to-buy-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;    * http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/13420/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206073/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants-accounting-for-possible-absence&#xD;&#xA;    * http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/12151/who-brings-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll also point to a recent example - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218222/searching-integer-sequences - this question would be perfectly suitable on *either* (or both?) P.SE and CS.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging by the words in the question, it is a very non-trivial problem.  A question that asks about an algorithm could show up on any of the sites and be appropriate.  A slight tweak to the question ('i am having a doubt about the c i wrote') and it would rapidly get pushed to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, realize that the scope of a site, while it has inertia to it also does have some variability over time.  The scope of a site may get more strict (to the point where TCS is) or it may loosen up over time (do you accept homework problems?) This is very evident when looking at the history of questions on P.SE to see what was acceptable a year or two ago and what it is now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, judging by the migration stats and the failure - most times, it is asked on the right site *or* isn't appropriate anywhere.  For example, 2 posts from CS where migrated to P.SE in the last and one of them was rejected.  7 posts were migrated from P.SE to CS.SE and one of them was rejected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If humans can get get it right, do you think a program could?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *really* want to take a crack at it - go grab the Stack Exchange data dump http://data.stackexchange.com/help and see if you can identify questions that would get migrated (or closed).  The 'or closed' bit was the topic of a [machine learning contest](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-machine-learning-contest/) - though I don't think it was accurate enough to merit inclusion... or something.  http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/161538/are-there-any-robot-moderators-on-so" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16349" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6293" RevisionGUID="c2dbcf5d-4434-4301-9cd6-7d2d644d0f01" CreationDate="2013-11-19T20:44:26.457" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="you really meant the negative &quot;can't&quot; and not &quot;can&quot;" Text="Between CS.SE, P.SE, and SO the scope of each overlaps and depends significantly on what type of answer the person asking wants get.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off as a starter, read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/190106/dealing-with-find-out-whos-going-to-buy-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;    * http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/13420/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206073/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants-accounting-for-possible-absence&#xD;&#xA;    * http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/12151/who-brings-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll also point to a recent example - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218222/searching-integer-sequences - this question would be perfectly suitable on *either* (or both?) P.SE and CS.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging by the words in the question, it is a very non-trivial problem.  A question that asks about an algorithm could show up on any of the sites and be appropriate.  A slight tweak to the question ('i am having a doubt about the c i wrote') and it would rapidly get pushed to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, realize that the scope of a site, while it has inertia to it also does have some variability over time.  The scope of a site may get more strict (to the point where TCS is) or it may loosen up over time (do you accept homework problems?) This is very evident when looking at the history of questions on P.SE to see what was acceptable a year or two ago and what it is now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, judging by the migration stats and the failure - most times, it is asked on the right site *or* isn't appropriate anywhere.  For example, 2 posts from CS where migrated to P.SE in the last and one of them was rejected.  7 posts were migrated from P.SE to CS.SE and one of them was rejected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If humans can't get get it right, do you think a program could?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *really* want to take a crack at it - go grab the Stack Exchange data dump http://data.stackexchange.com/help and see if you can identify questions that would get migrated (or closed).  The 'or closed' bit was the topic of a [machine learning contest](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-machine-learning-contest/) - though I don't think it was accurate enough to merit inclusion... or something.  http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/161538/are-there-any-robot-moderators-on-so" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16350" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6276" RevisionGUID="c1d0af7f-17ea-4f1d-8946-4c9f71e0214c" CreationDate="2013-11-20T22:01:19.217" UserId="31260" Comment="I prefer it without bold See-Also" Text="## What is the name of this thing ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;What is the name of this thing&quot; questions are off-topic. These are poor questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. See Also [Let's Play the Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Slightly adapted from [this MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/203884/165773)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16351" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6251" RevisionGUID="94fafb11-b34e-4ad5-b848-fa3052850e0d" CreationDate="2013-11-20T22:02:48.177" UserId="31260" Comment="[about] =&gt; link to about page, programmers.stackexchange.com/about" Text="We only have so many canned, built in, close reasons.  There are so many other reasons to close something at times - giving a better message than trying to shoehorn the reason to close something into too broad or primarily opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Custom close messages have the significant advantage when it comes to trying to get a *good* answer in that they also leave a comment that (ideally) would help the person asking (or attempting to fix) the question understand what needs to be done *before* the question is closed and make it suitable (or delete it if its really off topic and would ultimately garner down votes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short and abrupt close messages may be off-putting to some and don't help as much when it comes to getting people to write good questions.  The tricks to writing good messages is a combination of having them at the ready and knowing the quick little 'magic links' that can be used to link to the right spot.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Close reasons use the comment markdown, which gives a bunch of additional magic links.  MSO details them in [balpha's answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/94000/213963), thought the short version most applicable to close reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [meta] =&gt; a link to meta.programmers.stackexchange&#xD;&#xA;* [help] =&gt; a link to the help section&#xD;&#xA;    * [help/on-topic] is a link to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* [ask] =&gt; link to the &quot;How to Ask&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* [chat] =&gt; link to the chat page&#xD;&#xA;* [about] =&gt; link to about page, programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;* [edit] =&gt; link to edit the page itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using these quick links will make it easier to fit more into a canned (or not) message without actually using more text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, its a better experience for all involved to *not* migrate questions that will get closed in some way *other* than a duplicate on the target site.  A fine line should be considered when suggesting to *repost* a question on another site without having it closed/deleted on the first one.  Be sure that the question is on topic at the target site.  If in doubt, don't suggest reposting but instead flag for a moderator to migrate the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have also found the following links to be helpful to reference when writing close messages (not everyone knows where they are).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `[Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/)` =&gt; [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist) - a compressive list of things to check before posting a question to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;* `[Let’s Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game)` =&gt; [Let’s Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game) - a Jeff Atwood blog post from Feb 2012 about the awkward nature of trying to name something&#xD;&#xA;* `[Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)` =&gt; [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) - a Jeff Atwood blog post from November 2010 about questions asking for a shopping list.&#xD;&#xA;* `[What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/)` =&gt; [What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/) - the question ban MSO reference.  Likely not that useful in a close reason (you'd need to be a mod on SO to check if a user is question banned prior to a migration - however, when a migration fails because of a question ban on the target site, this is a useful link to have so its included here).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've often found myself going to a meta question to pull up a pre-written close message and then copying and pasting that into the question.  Just go in, edit the question to grab the source and copy and paste it into the close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully, this will help people looking for the right wording for closing a question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16352" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6251" RevisionGUID="2d9c36bf-e034-486f-a138-876ff1c2beb3" CreationDate="2013-11-20T22:04:26.157" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Tweak formatting" Text="We only have so many canned, built in, close reasons.  There are so many other reasons to close something at times - giving a better message than trying to shoehorn the reason to close something into too broad or primarily opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Custom close messages have the significant advantage when it comes to trying to get a *good* answer in that they also leave a comment that (ideally) would help the person asking (or attempting to fix) the question understand what needs to be done *before* the question is closed and make it suitable (or delete it if its really off topic and would ultimately garner down votes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short and abrupt close messages may be off-putting to some and don't help as much when it comes to getting people to write good questions.  The tricks to writing good messages is a combination of having them at the ready and knowing the quick little 'magic links' that can be used to link to the right spot.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Close reasons use the comment markdown, which gives a bunch of additional magic links.  MSO details them in [balpha's answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/94000/213963), thought the short version most applicable to close reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [meta] =&gt; a link to meta.programmers.stackexchange&#xD;&#xA;* [help] =&gt; a link to the help section&#xD;&#xA;    * [help/on-topic] is a link to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* [ask] =&gt; link to the &quot;How to Ask&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* [chat] =&gt; link to the chat page&#xD;&#xA;* [about] =&gt; link to about page http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;* [edit] =&gt; link to edit the page itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using these quick links will make it easier to fit more into a canned (or not) message without actually using more text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, its a better experience for all involved to *not* migrate questions that will get closed in some way *other* than a duplicate on the target site.  A fine line should be considered when suggesting to *repost* a question on another site without having it closed/deleted on the first one.  Be sure that the question is on topic at the target site.  If in doubt, don't suggest reposting but instead flag for a moderator to migrate the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have also found the following links to be helpful to reference when writing close messages (not everyone knows where they are).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `[Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/)` =&gt; [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist) - a compressive list of things to check before posting a question to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;* `[Let’s Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game)` =&gt; [Let’s Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game) - a Jeff Atwood blog post from Feb 2012 about the awkward nature of trying to name something&#xD;&#xA;* `[Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)` =&gt; [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) - a Jeff Atwood blog post from November 2010 about questions asking for a shopping list.&#xD;&#xA;* `[What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/)` =&gt; [What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/) - the question ban MSO reference.  Likely not that useful in a close reason (you'd need to be a mod on SO to check if a user is question banned prior to a migration - however, when a migration fails because of a question ban on the target site, this is a useful link to have so its included here).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've often found myself going to a meta question to pull up a pre-written close message and then copying and pasting that into the question.  Just go in, edit the question to grab the source and copy and paste it into the close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully, this will help people looking for the right wording for closing a question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16353" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6294" RevisionGUID="ed013d5e-b607-41f5-a28b-82b95bda0ee0" CreationDate="2013-11-20T22:05:17.330" UserId="60569" Text="Your question strikes me as too broad for the stack exchange format. As I understand the question, you are essentially asking for best practices for writing user documentation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a very specific problem you are trying to solve? If you are looking for a broad overview on the topic, I suggest searching Amazon or your local library for books on &quot;technical writing&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16354" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6251" RevisionGUID="6352d7c0-d779-4cbc-8245-7d84fc6fce98" CreationDate="2013-11-20T22:06:54.660" UserId="31260" Comment="[help/dont-ask] is a link to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;" Text="We only have so many canned, built in, close reasons.  There are so many other reasons to close something at times - giving a better message than trying to shoehorn the reason to close something into too broad or primarily opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Custom close messages have the significant advantage when it comes to trying to get a *good* answer in that they also leave a comment that (ideally) would help the person asking (or attempting to fix) the question understand what needs to be done *before* the question is closed and make it suitable (or delete it if its really off topic and would ultimately garner down votes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short and abrupt close messages may be off-putting to some and don't help as much when it comes to getting people to write good questions.  The tricks to writing good messages is a combination of having them at the ready and knowing the quick little 'magic links' that can be used to link to the right spot.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Close reasons use the comment markdown, which gives a bunch of additional magic links.  MSO details them in [balpha's answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/94000/213963), thought the short version most applicable to close reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [meta] =&gt; a link to meta.programmers.stackexchange&#xD;&#xA;* [help] =&gt; a link to the help section&#xD;&#xA;    * [help/on-topic] is a link to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;&#xD;&#xA;    * [help/dont-ask] is a link to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* [ask] =&gt; link to the &quot;How to Ask&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* [chat] =&gt; link to the chat page&#xD;&#xA;* [about] =&gt; link to about page http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;* [edit] =&gt; link to edit the page itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using these quick links will make it easier to fit more into a canned (or not) message without actually using more text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, its a better experience for all involved to *not* migrate questions that will get closed in some way *other* than a duplicate on the target site.  A fine line should be considered when suggesting to *repost* a question on another site without having it closed/deleted on the first one.  Be sure that the question is on topic at the target site.  If in doubt, don't suggest reposting but instead flag for a moderator to migrate the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have also found the following links to be helpful to reference when writing close messages (not everyone knows where they are).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `[Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/)` =&gt; [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist) - a compressive list of things to check before posting a question to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;* `[Let’s Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game)` =&gt; [Let’s Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game) - a Jeff Atwood blog post from Feb 2012 about the awkward nature of trying to name something&#xD;&#xA;* `[Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)` =&gt; [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) - a Jeff Atwood blog post from November 2010 about questions asking for a shopping list.&#xD;&#xA;* `[What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/)` =&gt; [What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/) - the question ban MSO reference.  Likely not that useful in a close reason (you'd need to be a mod on SO to check if a user is question banned prior to a migration - however, when a migration fails because of a question ban on the target site, this is a useful link to have so its included here).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've often found myself going to a meta question to pull up a pre-written close message and then copying and pasting that into the question.  Just go in, edit the question to grab the source and copy and paste it into the close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully, this will help people looking for the right wording for closing a question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16355" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6293" RevisionGUID="3973c575-b7f6-4089-8543-1051dd2474cb" CreationDate="2013-11-21T15:18:36.463" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Link to MSO q&amp;a where it shows this may be a 'bad' idea." Text="Between CS.SE, P.SE, and SO the scope of each overlaps and depends significantly on what type of answer the person asking wants get.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off as a starter, read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/190106/dealing-with-find-out-whos-going-to-buy-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;    * http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/13420/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206073/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants-accounting-for-possible-absence&#xD;&#xA;    * http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/12151/who-brings-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll also point to a recent example - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218222/searching-integer-sequences - this question would be perfectly suitable on *either* (or both?) P.SE and CS.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging by the words in the question, it is a very non-trivial problem.  A question that asks about an algorithm could show up on any of the sites and be appropriate.  A slight tweak to the question ('i am having a doubt about the c i wrote') and it would rapidly get pushed to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, realize that the scope of a site, while it has inertia to it also does have some variability over time.  The scope of a site may get more strict (to the point where TCS is) or it may loosen up over time (do you accept homework problems?) This is very evident when looking at the history of questions on P.SE to see what was acceptable a year or two ago and what it is now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, judging by the migration stats and the failure - most times, it is asked on the right site *or* isn't appropriate anywhere.  For example, 2 posts from CS where migrated to P.SE in the last and one of them was rejected.  7 posts were migrated from P.SE to CS.SE and one of them was rejected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If humans can't get get it right, do you think a program could?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *really* want to take a crack at it - go grab the Stack Exchange data dump http://data.stackexchange.com/help and see if you can identify questions that would get migrated (or closed).  The 'or closed' bit was the topic of a [machine learning contest](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-machine-learning-contest/) - though I don't think it was accurate enough to merit inclusion... or something.  http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/161538/are-there-any-robot-moderators-on-so&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/68689/automatic-central-question-sorting/68709#68709 on MSO which asked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've noticed the Stack Exchange has grown immensely since its inception as Stack Overflow. As a result, I find asking questions in the right place here unnecessarily challenging. I'm wondering if you have thought about implementing a feature on the Stack Exchange central site where people ask the question there and either the scripts or staff/community members would sort the question to the right place.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Not sure if this would be too challenging or costly to implement. Just a thought to save your time while making users' lives easier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jeff said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you're not willing to invest the small amount of time it takes to figure out where to ask your question -- the odds of your question being a good one are .. small." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16356" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6293" RevisionGUID="e68cd8e9-c49a-4496-95d1-81f06e633bc1" CreationDate="2013-11-21T15:23:38.577" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Link to MSO q&amp;a where it shows this may be a 'bad' idea." Text="Between CS.SE, P.SE, and SO the scope of each overlaps and depends significantly on what type of answer the person asking wants get.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off as a starter, read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/190106/dealing-with-find-out-whos-going-to-buy-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;    * http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/13420/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206073/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants-accounting-for-possible-absence&#xD;&#xA;    * http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/12151/who-brings-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll also point to a recent example - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218222/searching-integer-sequences - this question would be perfectly suitable on *either* (or both?) P.SE and CS.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging by the words in the question, it is a very non-trivial problem.  A question that asks about an algorithm could show up on any of the sites and be appropriate.  A slight tweak to the question ('i am having a doubt about the c i wrote') and it would rapidly get pushed to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, realize that the scope of a site, while it has inertia to it also does have some variability over time.  The scope of a site may get more strict (to the point where TCS is) or it may loosen up over time (do you accept homework problems?) This is very evident when looking at the history of questions on P.SE to see what was acceptable a year or two ago and what it is now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, judging by the migration stats and the failure - most times, it is asked on the right site *or* isn't appropriate anywhere.  For example, 2 posts from CS where migrated to P.SE in the last and one of them was rejected.  7 posts were migrated from P.SE to CS.SE and one of them was rejected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If humans can't get get it right, do you think a program could?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *really* want to take a crack at it - go grab the Stack Exchange data dump http://data.stackexchange.com/help and see if you can identify questions that would get migrated (or closed).  The 'or closed' bit was the topic of a [machine learning contest](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-machine-learning-contest/) - though I don't think it was accurate enough to merit inclusion... or something.  http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/161538/are-there-any-robot-moderators-on-so&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/68689/automatic-central-question-sorting on MSO which asked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've noticed the Stack Exchange has grown immensely since its inception as Stack Overflow. As a result, I find asking questions in the right place here unnecessarily challenging. I'm wondering if you have thought about implementing a feature on the Stack Exchange central site where people ask the question there and either the scripts or staff/community members would sort the question to the right place.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Not sure if this would be too challenging or costly to implement. Just a thought to save your time while making users' lives easier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jeff said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you're not willing to invest the small amount of time it takes to figure out where to ask your question -- the odds of your question being a good one are .. small." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16357" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6295" RevisionGUID="9cbf80f5-a662-4d93-92b6-dc7fdb0b1b3a" CreationDate="2013-11-21T19:52:30.237" UserId="1204" Text="You can ask an actual question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you posted reads more like a blog entry or essay (you even include a conclusion paragraph).  It's a wall of text that requires extensive analysis just to determine what your subject matter is.  That doesn't really scale well on a question and answer site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, get to the point, quickly and succinctly.  We don't necessarily need to know what your entire research background on your question is, we just need you to tell us what your question is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Pro tip:** Good questions can be answered definitively with a single, well-worded answer constrained to a small number of relatively short paragraphs." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16358" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6296" RevisionGUID="0f9b74e9-7972-4641-a3c6-fea78fa1b8cc" CreationDate="2013-11-21T21:25:57.137" UserId="13833" Text="I was told to make a post here to understand why is my question wrong after it was placed on hold: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/218986/13833&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Context&#xD;&#xA;--&#xD;&#xA;The question asks, essentially, how is it called when you create constants that refer to large namespaces in an attempt to simplify the writing. Basically, something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Sprite = Super::Large:Namespace::Graphics::Sprite&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Closing reason&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;The reason, it seems, is that my question is a [guessing game][1] (at least that's the most upvoted reason).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;My reasoning&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to the [the linked blog post regarding guessing games][2], such questions involve vague, broad descriptions. However, I don't think that my question is vague at all. I am describing, very accurately, every step involved in the practice (which is to create constantes referring to large namespaces). I know perfectly well every aspect of the practice, but I don't know how is it called, which is what I'm asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/207597/13833. The asker accurately describes an (anti)pattern, and wants to know how is it called:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't have a practical problem to solve here; it's just bugging me&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that there seems to be a common design element that I can't put a name&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171430/vocabulary-should-i-call-this-apply-or-map. The asker has a construct design, but is not sure whether it is a map or an apply method.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Would you call this specific construct a [...] or would it better be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/109400/what-it-is-a-data-structure-of-a-certain-type-called. He's creating a data structure and doesn't know how is it called.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is this called?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155330/how-do-you-call-the-process-of-taking-a-part-of-a-function-and-making-an-individ. The asker describes a process and wants to know its technical term.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I know there was a technical term for this. I'm just can't remember&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what it was.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195426/13833. The asker is describing some sort of &quot;ability to find relevant code&quot;, but he doesn't know how it is called, so he made the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's obviously part of maintainability, but is there a name for this&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific, desirable, property?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How are all those open, upvoted questions different from mine? Why was mine closed exactly?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They all accurately describe something, and they all want to know how is it called. I'm fairly certain that I am doing the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, my question [happened to be answered][3]. The answer was **Type Aliasing**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/219004/13833" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16359" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6296" RevisionGUID="0f9b74e9-7972-4641-a3c6-fea78fa1b8cc" CreationDate="2013-11-21T21:25:57.137" UserId="13833" Text="Why is this question wrong? (asking for the name of a specific practice)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16360" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6296" RevisionGUID="0f9b74e9-7972-4641-a3c6-fea78fa1b8cc" CreationDate="2013-11-21T21:25:57.137" UserId="13833" Text="|discussion|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16361" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6297" RevisionGUID="bf16dfc9-3a1d-4321-ac41-c0ed77cad789" CreationDate="2013-11-21T22:39:05.230" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I didn't have any votes on this question, so this is more just me going &quot;hmm...&quot; with some various thoughts on the matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An important thing to realize is that questions have been asked in the past and are currently open is not an indication that something that is asked in the same or similar format will also be covered as &quot;older stuff is open too&quot;.  There is a lot of old questions that are not good examples of questions to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would also strongly suggest steering away from the &quot;but it was answered&quot; as an indication to question.  From a previous issue ( http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5563/closed-as-not-constructive/ ) the argument was made:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only answer given (likely before it was closed) clearly suggests that the question is constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason to close such a question is that it has the likelihood of blowing up to everyone adding their own two cents to the question.  I would suggest looking at your example of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171430/vocabulary-should-i-call-this-apply-or-map which has answers such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You could call it an n-dimensional pointwise Cartesian product of functions. However, that doesn't make for a short name, and might require explanation...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd call it fire_callbacks, call_callbacks, apply_callbacks, or something like that.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've usually had such a method as part of a signal or observable object.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To my mind, the word &quot;map&quot; implies some kind of association (e.g. a 'dictionary'), although there doesn't appear to be any association or pairing of data happening in your algorithm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everyone has their own opinion about how things are called, even if there is a real name for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is strongly related to the post http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic which has a variety of opinions on the topic.  A more recent meta post seeking a more updated clarification can be read at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6089/is-asking-what-is-the-technical-term-for-this-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this more recent question there are two opinions, one of which can be recapped as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; These kinds of questions essentially boil down to &quot;what terms should I Google for?&quot; They are an indirect proxy for resource requests, which are specifically off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key issue with the &quot;find the name&quot; is that we really don't want (and this is a community consensus thing more than a formal policy) to become [ELU single-word-requests](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/single-word-requests).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions of the 'name that thing' are without end - they are localized to *your* usage and situation and tend not to be something that generates long term useful content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A poor metric (I know) of that &quot;long term useful content&quot; might be in part driven from views.  If you look at your example questions, no matter how old they are they all have about 300-400 views. This suggests that they got them at the initial date of creation and then no one looked at them again.  I know that thats a *very* poor qualification because some of the more esoteric questions have even fewer views (I mean... who wants to read about haskell monads?) but are likely good long term material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thats all about my thoughts on the subject and bringing together some other posts to consider when looking into why it was closed.  The &quot;Name that thing&quot; is a touchy area because of the possibility that it brings in lots of people saying &quot;I call it `this` in my shop&quot; and others saying &quot;I call it `that` where I work.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16362" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6297" RevisionGUID="eb020bbb-fcb9-4e36-917c-a99c49ff5923" CreationDate="2013-11-22T16:28:12.773" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 957 characters in body" Text="I didn't have any votes on this question, so this is more just me going &quot;hmm...&quot; with some various thoughts on the matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An important thing to realize is that questions have been asked in the past and are currently open is not an indication that something that is asked in the same or similar format will also be covered as &quot;older stuff is open too&quot;.  There is a lot of old questions that are not good examples of questions to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would also strongly suggest steering away from the &quot;but it was answered&quot; as an indication to question.  From a previous issue ( http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5563/closed-as-not-constructive/ ) the argument was made:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only answer given (likely before it was closed) clearly suggests that the question is constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason to close such a question is that it has the likelihood of blowing up to everyone adding their own two cents to the question.  I would suggest looking at your example of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171430/vocabulary-should-i-call-this-apply-or-map which has answers such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You could call it an n-dimensional pointwise Cartesian product of functions. However, that doesn't make for a short name, and might require explanation...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd call it fire_callbacks, call_callbacks, apply_callbacks, or something like that.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've usually had such a method as part of a signal or observable object.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To my mind, the word &quot;map&quot; implies some kind of association (e.g. a 'dictionary'), although there doesn't appear to be any association or pairing of data happening in your algorithm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everyone has their own opinion about how things are called, even if there is a real name for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is strongly related to the post http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic which has a variety of opinions on the topic.  A more recent meta post seeking a more updated clarification can be read at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6089/is-asking-what-is-the-technical-term-for-this-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this more recent question there are two opinions, one of which can be recapped as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; These kinds of questions essentially boil down to &quot;what terms should I Google for?&quot; They are an indirect proxy for resource requests, which are specifically off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key issue with the &quot;find the name&quot; is that we really don't want (and this is a community consensus thing more than a formal policy) to become [ELU single-word-requests](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/single-word-requests).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions of the 'name that thing' are without end - they are localized to *your* usage and situation and tend not to be something that generates long term useful content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A poor metric (I know) of that &quot;long term useful content&quot; might be in part driven from views.  If you look at your example questions, no matter how old they are they all have about 300-400 views. This suggests that they got them at the initial date of creation and then no one looked at them again.  I know that thats a *very* poor qualification because some of the more esoteric questions have even fewer views (I mean... who wants to read about haskell monads?) but are likely good long term material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thats all about my thoughts on the subject and bringing together some other posts to consider when looking into why it was closed.  The &quot;Name that thing&quot; is a touchy area because of the possibility that it brings in lots of people saying &quot;I call it `this` in my shop&quot; and others saying &quot;I call it `that` where I work.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to the &quot;called something else in each language...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question asks, essentially, how is it called when you create constants that refer to large namespaces in an attempt to simplify the writing. Basically, something like:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; `Sprite = Super::Large:Namespace::Graphics::Sprite`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, in perl, this is a [typeglob](http://perldoc.perl.org/perldata.html#Typeglobs-and-Filehandles) alias (what are types?) (not to be confused with [glob](http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/glob.html)s)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- language: perl --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    #!/usr/bin/perl&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    package Foo::Bar::Qux::Bletch;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    $var = 42;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    package main;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    print $Foo::Bar::Qux::Bletch::var, &quot;\n&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    *A = *Foo::Bar::Qux::Bletch::var;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    print $A,&quot;\n&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or at least... thats what I call it.  Though some people may call it [symbol table aliasing](http://perldoc.perl.org/perlmod.html#Symbol-Tables) which wouldn't really be wrong either." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16363" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6297" RevisionGUID="ac23f45c-4728-4754-ab3a-21acb9aa17da" CreationDate="2013-11-22T16:41:11.823" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 104 characters in body" Text="I didn't have any votes on this question, so this is more just me going &quot;hmm...&quot; with some various thoughts on the matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An important thing to realize is that questions have been asked in the past and are currently open is not an indication that something that is asked in the same or similar format will also be covered as &quot;older stuff is open too&quot;.  There is a lot of old questions that are not good examples of questions to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would also strongly suggest steering away from the &quot;but it was answered&quot; as an indication to question.  From a previous issue ( http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5563/closed-as-not-constructive/ ) the argument was made:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only answer given (likely before it was closed) clearly suggests that the question is constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason to close such a question is that it has the likelihood of blowing up to everyone adding their own two cents to the question.  I would suggest looking at your example of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171430/vocabulary-should-i-call-this-apply-or-map which has answers such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You could call it an n-dimensional pointwise Cartesian product of functions. However, that doesn't make for a short name, and might require explanation...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd call it fire_callbacks, call_callbacks, apply_callbacks, or something like that.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've usually had such a method as part of a signal or observable object.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To my mind, the word &quot;map&quot; implies some kind of association (e.g. a 'dictionary'), although there doesn't appear to be any association or pairing of data happening in your algorithm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everyone has their own opinion about how things are called, even if there is a real name for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is strongly related to the post http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic which has a variety of opinions on the topic.  A more recent meta post seeking a more updated clarification can be read at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6089/is-asking-what-is-the-technical-term-for-this-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this more recent question there are two opinions, one of which can be recapped as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; These kinds of questions essentially boil down to &quot;what terms should I Google for?&quot; They are an indirect proxy for resource requests, which are specifically off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key issue with the &quot;find the name&quot; is that we really don't want (and this is a community consensus thing more than a formal policy) to become [ELU single-word-requests](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/single-word-requests).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions of the 'name that thing' are without end - they are localized to *your* usage and situation and tend not to be something that generates long term useful content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A poor metric (I know) of that &quot;long term useful content&quot; might be in part driven from views.  If you look at your example questions, no matter how old they are they all have about 300-400 views. This suggests that they got them at the initial date of creation and then no one looked at them again.  I know that thats a *very* poor qualification because some of the more esoteric questions have even fewer views (I mean... who wants to read about haskell monads?) but are likely good long term material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thats all about my thoughts on the subject and bringing together some other posts to consider when looking into why it was closed.  The &quot;Name that thing&quot; is a touchy area because of the possibility that it brings in lots of people saying &quot;I call it `this` in my shop&quot; and others saying &quot;I call it `that` where I work.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to the &quot;called something else in each language...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question asks, essentially, how is it called when you create constants that refer to large namespaces in an attempt to simplify the writing. Basically, something like:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; `Sprite = Super::Large:Namespace::Graphics::Sprite`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, in perl, this is a [typeglob](http://perldoc.perl.org/perldata.html#Typeglobs-and-Filehandles) alias (what are types?) (not to be confused with [glob](http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/glob.html)s)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- language: perl --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    #!/usr/bin/perl&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    package Foo::Bar::Qux::Bletch;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    $var = 42;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    package main;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    print $Foo::Bar::Qux::Bletch::var, &quot;\n&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    *A = *Foo::Bar::Qux::Bletch::var;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    print $A,&quot;\n&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or at least... thats what I call it.  Though some people may call it [symbol table aliasing](http://perldoc.perl.org/perlmod.html#Symbol-Tables) which wouldn't really be wrong either.  And apparently some call it [glob aliasing](http://stackoverflow.com/a/14071422/289086) too.  Oh well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16364" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6298" RevisionGUID="bce9f19a-f0a3-4106-8b98-33fc90ac2537" CreationDate="2013-11-22T21:20:43.523" UserId="3965" Text="I voted to reopen.  Personally, I don't think this particular question qualifies as a &quot;guessing game&quot; question.  From the [blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. **Guessing game questions aren't practical.**  The answer helps you concisely communicate the intent of your module to other programmers, and helps research possibly better ways of doing type aliasing.  Those are both highly practical concerns.  You're not just asking out of curiosity.&#xD;&#xA; 2. **Guessing game questions don’t help others.**  While admittedly the gist of the question would be difficult to search, someone browsing the site can certainly learn something, and someone searching for &quot;type aliasing&quot; will get a good example of it.  Besides, the same people also whine that this site shouldn't allow questions that are too easy to google.  I guess they want some inscrutable precise medium level of googleability.&#xD;&#xA; 3. **Guessing game questions are unfair.**  The mere fact of the question being difficult to search means you aren't intentionally off-loading work on answerers.  Also, it's usually pretty easy to verify the consensus answer.  Even when it goes by multiple names, that's useful information.  If it happens to not have an &quot;official name,&quot; that's also useful information.&#xD;&#xA; 4. **Guessing game questions aren’t educational.**  Knowing the term opens up a whole world of educational opportunities.  It allows you to do further research on best practices, and later when you move to a new language, it allows you to learn how to do the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other common objection I see to this type of question is that it will encourage similar questions.  Well, duh.  That could be said of any topic.  We don't close architecture questions because that might make people ask too many architecture questions.  And it's not like you can make a series of questions out of this one by changing a couple words.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand some people don't personally like this kind of question.  That's why we let you hide certain tags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16365" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6296" RevisionGUID="38a48b49-0a8d-4e25-a247-60d554c2bee7" CreationDate="2013-11-22T22:02:10.987" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/404006922007117825" />
  <row Id="16366" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6299" RevisionGUID="a9e9f39d-bd83-48c9-96d5-0d75d7026732" CreationDate="2013-11-23T21:42:55.027" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="When looking at the 10k tools, I saw a little '1' next to the flags and thought I'd go poke at it to see what it was.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was a very short answer, not more than a poorly formed sentence.  But it vaguely tried to answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Elsequestion - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5607/why-is-this-question-not-low-quality/5609#5609&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The &quot;very low quality&quot; flag is intended for questions that have severe formatting or content problems, that can't be solved by editing and/or commenting. If you can parse the question and understand what it says, it's not a &quot;very low quality&quot; one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is, how should I respond to the automatic flag?   As I see it, there are four options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Dispute it (its not low quality).  By the above standards, thats probably true.  However, when its a mid to low 70's on that quality meter... I really can't say in good conscious &quot;yea, thats an ok answer&quot;... because its not.&#xD;&#xA;2. Agree with the flag (that it is low quality).  Add another flag to it.  However, I like a consistent message on flagging, and that seems to run counter to what is established.  People are confused enough with what flags get handled how.  &#xD;&#xA;3. Custom mod flag &quot;Bleh&quot;.  I prefer &quot;meh&quot;, but &quot;Bleh&quot; seems to get results.&#xD;&#xA;4. Just ignore it and when it shows up in the Low Quality Review Queue, recommend deletion there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I went with #4.  I am just wondering if one of the first three is a better way of handing the automatic low quality flags from the system in a consistent way with how they are handled from flagging from a question (since the mods don't know (I presume) which way a flag came from)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16367" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6299" RevisionGUID="a9e9f39d-bd83-48c9-96d5-0d75d7026732" CreationDate="2013-11-23T21:42:55.027" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="10k tools, automatic low quality flags and flagging" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16368" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6299" RevisionGUID="a9e9f39d-bd83-48c9-96d5-0d75d7026732" CreationDate="2013-11-23T21:42:55.027" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16369" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6300" RevisionGUID="7cae6528-d9ca-4fca-a93f-5840d816ffb1" CreationDate="2013-11-23T23:51:37.637" UserId="72188" Text="I'm not a moderator and don't have 10K rep, but I'm going to go ahead and answer anyway.  If I'm completely wrong about this, I'll at least learn something by being corrected.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both the answer you linked and the description you quoted seem pretty clear to me.  An answer is &quot;very low quality&quot; when it is unsalvageable or incomprehensible.  It is not just broken, it is so badly broken that it *can't* be fixed.  Perhaps it would be better if the flag were called &quot;unfixable&quot;.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An answer like &quot;asdfasdfasdf;lkjasdf;lkjasd;lfjk&quot; or &quot;hlep squink hlorf&quot; or &quot;blup blup blup blup blup&quot; or &quot;thises the with fRom iit do.  YEs.!&quot; or &quot;Unicorns are pretty!! :)&quot; is very low quality.  The answer you're referring to is not, because you could read it and say that &quot;it vaguely tried to answer the question&quot;.  I don't think that saying something is not very low quality (in the sense of the flag) is a compliment or another way of saying &quot;yea, thats an ok answer&quot;.  It's a very low bar.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't understand your #3 at all, but it that part of your question isn't &quot;very low quality&quot;.  If I asked you for a clarification of what you meant, I'm pretty sure you could explain in such a way that it would make some kind of sense.  It's unclear (at least to me), but it's fixable.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your #2 and #4 are not consistent with the definition of what the flag means.  I don't like that at all.  If we aren't consistent with what we mean by the flag, the flag will become vague and meaningless.  We have a definition, and the definition is clear.  If the definition is wrong or useless, we should change the definition to something better.  If not, we should use it as we have defined it.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think your #1, possibly with a downvote and an explanatory comment, is the right answer.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16370" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6301" RevisionGUID="89f72ee3-038e-4df3-bef1-8aa4fdd6f3b4" CreationDate="2013-11-25T10:15:52.967" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="That particular flag is _notoriously_ ambiguous, the reason it's still called 'very low quality' is that we've yet to come up with a phrase that better defines what it's trying to tell you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Put simply, that flag means 'toxic waste' - can't be salvaged without a _heroic_ edit, it's gibberish, indecipherable sledge, or something similar. If you would hesitate to just delete the post, then there's a good chance that flag isn't accurate. Posts marked with this flag and subsequently deleted are used in review audits to make sure folks are paying attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, because it _is_ rather ambiguous, folks pick this flag instead of better, more descriptive flags such as 'not an answer' or 'other -&gt; explain' - because so much seems to fall into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The work flow for this is pretty simple:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Can it be edited? Do you mind doing so? Edit it.&#xD;&#xA; - Is it seemingly from out in left field? Someone saying 'I don't like this' (common) - dispute it.&#xD;&#xA; - Unsure? Just skip it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that the system will raise flags based on the calculated _quality score_, which we determine when something is posted. This is generally tripped due to the length of the post (way long, very short), ratio of code to text, things about the title, etc. This is a different flag than &quot;very low quality&quot; - it's just the system saying 'this barely scraped by, someone needs to look at it' - but the same workflow generally applies." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16371" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6302" RevisionGUID="95668563-ddc2-46de-b6a2-8cbea7e3fc05" CreationDate="2013-11-25T17:18:07.860" UserId="109567" Text="I was reading here at meta and came across http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2524/closing-questions which is closed as a duplicate. Ok, What question is it a duplicate of?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a more general case shouldn't the duplicate warning always have a link to the other question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16372" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6302" RevisionGUID="95668563-ddc2-46de-b6a2-8cbea7e3fc05" CreationDate="2013-11-25T17:18:07.860" UserId="109567" Text="duplicate of what?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16373" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6302" RevisionGUID="95668563-ddc2-46de-b6a2-8cbea7e3fc05" CreationDate="2013-11-25T17:18:07.860" UserId="109567" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16374" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6303" RevisionGUID="9001103a-b6e1-44c1-a11d-d60e55b9e2ef" CreationDate="2013-11-25T17:21:25.000" UserId="47" Text="The question that it is a duplicate of has been deleted and you don't have enough reputation to view deleted posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In cases like this flag the closed question for moderator attention and explain the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have enough reputation you could also vote to reopen." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16375" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6304" RevisionGUID="10555861-3fbc-44e3-b219-01127cd166a7" CreationDate="2013-11-25T19:58:31.950" UserId="107086" Text="My question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it good practice to add version numbers to functions/class? That is when you update a core function/class you update an internal version number for that function/class. I recently thought about doing this internally to some of my core functions and classes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a SE site for a question like this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16376" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6304" RevisionGUID="10555861-3fbc-44e3-b219-01127cd166a7" CreationDate="2013-11-25T19:58:31.950" UserId="107086" Text="Best place for this question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16377" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6304" RevisionGUID="10555861-3fbc-44e3-b219-01127cd166a7" CreationDate="2013-11-25T19:58:31.950" UserId="107086" Text="|discussion|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16378" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6305" RevisionGUID="6db80e78-b556-4810-beed-cc29346b61e7" CreationDate="2013-11-25T20:00:12.420" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Make sure it hasn't been asked here before but it's a software design topic so feel free to ask it here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16379" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6299" RevisionGUID="0571f78f-eef7-4aac-b2cb-e8faed5486df" CreationDate="2013-11-25T20:56:19.477" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Include picture of 10k flag interface." Text="When looking at the 10k tools, I saw a little '1' next to the flags and thought I'd go poke at it to see what it was.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was a very short answer, not more than a poorly formed sentence.  But it vaguely tried to answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Elsequestion - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5607/why-is-this-question-not-low-quality/5609#5609&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The &quot;very low quality&quot; flag is intended for questions that have severe formatting or content problems, that can't be solved by editing and/or commenting. If you can parse the question and understand what it says, it's not a &quot;very low quality&quot; one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is, how should I respond to the automatic flag?   As I see it, there are four options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Dispute it (its not low quality).  By the above standards, thats probably true.  However, when its a mid to low 70's on that quality meter... I really can't say in good conscious &quot;yea, thats an ok answer&quot;... because its not.&#xD;&#xA;2. Agree with the flag (that it is low quality).  Add another flag to it.  However, I like a consistent message on flagging, and that seems to run counter to what is established.  People are confused enough with what flags get handled how.  &#xD;&#xA;3. Custom mod flag &quot;Bleh&quot;.  I prefer &quot;meh&quot;, but &quot;Bleh&quot; seems to get results.&#xD;&#xA;4. Just ignore it and when it shows up in the Low Quality Review Queue, recommend deletion there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I went with #4.  I am just wondering if one of the first three is a better way of handing the automatic low quality flags from the system in a consistent way with how they are handled from flagging from a question (since the mods don't know (I presume) which way a flag came from).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To given some context, the answer as a 10k sees it looks like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![flag in the 10k queue][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The auto flag is the slightly greyed out one.  *That* is the one I'm wondering how to flag or deal with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pz0m6.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16380" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6306" RevisionGUID="7a6673ad-5f06-41b9-b1d0-a62c058d6adc" CreationDate="2013-11-27T19:53:44.747" UserId="109567" Text="I had just finished typing a great answer, and It wouldn't let me post?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16381" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6306" RevisionGUID="7a6673ad-5f06-41b9-b1d0-a62c058d6adc" CreationDate="2013-11-27T19:53:44.747" UserId="109567" Text="What happened to the question &quot;is the mvc software architecture used only in web development&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16382" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6306" RevisionGUID="7a6673ad-5f06-41b9-b1d0-a62c058d6adc" CreationDate="2013-11-27T19:53:44.747" UserId="109567" Text="|support|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16383" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6307" RevisionGUID="3e536e37-f971-4464-9a9c-01bc28d419d7" CreationDate="2013-11-27T20:05:46.293" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="_10k+ only link:_  [This is the question you're asking about](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/219691/is-the-mvc-software-architecture-used-only-in-web-development)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the time of deletion, it had a suggested duplicate question in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The owner of the question chose to delete it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16384" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6308" RevisionGUID="0757e9a2-0cf5-445f-bfa3-200e2683957c" CreationDate="2013-11-27T20:05:54.293" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="(10k link - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/219691/is-the-mvc-software-architecture-used-only-in-web-development )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was deleted by the author of the question - likely when they realized it wasn't going to garner a positive response in its current form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![screen shot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/q9D7q.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16385" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6309" RevisionGUID="bb44f816-d421-439d-ae68-13cea51fbde8" CreationDate="2013-11-28T14:08:12.283" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Question in review:  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/219700/53019&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Thunderforge][2] asked in [chat][1] &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I recently had my question put on hold and I'd like to know how I can improve it so that it can be reopened.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It seems to me that the comments have indeed been attracting opinions, but the answers themselves have been polished up to be decent, supported by studies or experience.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd like to know what more needs to be done in order to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As it's a holiday weekend in the United States, I have moved his question here to meta in order to help provide some answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what can be done to improve the question and make it more constructive?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/12385464#12385464&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/81973/thunderforge" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16386" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6309" RevisionGUID="bb44f816-d421-439d-ae68-13cea51fbde8" CreationDate="2013-11-28T14:08:12.283" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="How to improve the document / refactoring question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16387" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6309" RevisionGUID="bb44f816-d421-439d-ae68-13cea51fbde8" CreationDate="2013-11-28T14:08:12.283" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|improvement|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16388" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6310" RevisionGUID="e9342516-9cc5-436b-a622-7df4286b686c" CreationDate="2013-11-28T23:47:21.323" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="With a question that asks something that can be answered with one of: &quot;yes&quot;, &quot;no&quot;, or &quot;well, where I work...&quot; has at the core of it a lack of a problem that can be solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As it reads now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  I am just wanting to know whether or not this lack of documentation and resistance to refactoring is a fact of life within the programming world that I'll have to deal with if I continue working in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;it is a poll of experiences, the summary of it really is the answer 'yes' (some may argue that its 'no'... but then that is the sure sign of a question that is asking for opinions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a *problem* can be extracted from this question - something to think about and answer... something where the answer isn't a matter of recitation of experience but rather builds upon experience... then you may have a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first step to this is to identify &quot;what is the problem that *can* be solved?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16389" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6311" RevisionGUID="0016bd2a-c4b5-4b44-b820-e4e0e8ed20f8" CreationDate="2013-11-30T01:26:01.953" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="You've got a question about `git`.  Its not uncommon, lots of people have questions about git.  But where should the question be asked?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16390" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6311" RevisionGUID="0016bd2a-c4b5-4b44-b820-e4e0e8ed20f8" CreationDate="2013-11-30T01:26:01.953" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Where does my git question go?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16391" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6311" RevisionGUID="0016bd2a-c4b5-4b44-b820-e4e0e8ed20f8" CreationDate="2013-11-30T01:26:01.953" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16392" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6312" RevisionGUID="196a06a5-0ed9-4556-97d1-373f989db766" CreationDate="2013-11-30T01:26:01.953" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Question is about `git` the tool&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are asking how specific invocations of git such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How do I edit an incorrect commit message in Git?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/179123/how-do-i-edit-an-incorrect-commit-message-in-git)&#xD;&#xA;* [How to undo the last Git commit?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/927358/how-to-undo-the-last-git-commit)&#xD;&#xA;* [How do I delete a Git branch both locally and remote?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2003505/how-do-i-delete-a-git-branch-both-locally-and-remote)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are questions for **Stack Overflow**.  The key point here is you are asking for something to type into the *command line* to do something.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question is about `git` the workflow&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are trying to figure out how to use git to do something, understanding the conceptual foundations of git, or how to identify and overcome a problem that you have with the workflow... Questions such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69308/git-for-personal-one-man-projects-overkill&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/205411/why-does-git-use-hashes-instead-of-revision-numbers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212192/what-are-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-cryptographically-signing-commits-a&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96915/using-git-in-enterprise-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are questions for **Programmers.SE**.  The key point here is the use of the tool in a bigger picture.  It is not one task that the question asks about but the entire workflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question is about `github` the site&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are also questions that are tangentially about git, but are really about github, the website.  Questions such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Strikethrough with GitHub Markdown](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/14986/strikethrough-with-github-markdown)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can I delete my public GitHub repository?](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/9787/can-i-delete-my-public-github-repository)&#xD;&#xA;* [Reference tag from comment](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/52578/reference-tag-from-comment)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are questions for **Webapps.SE**.  The key point here is if you are trying to figure out how to get something to work with *github*.  This is about *specifically* github and not about setting up your own git server (thats most likely a Stack Overflow question in the [git-daemon tag](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/git-daemon)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have questions about any of the above, feel free to drop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com) and ask the question about which Stack Exchange site a question best belongs on." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16394" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6312" RevisionGUID="952ce4e3-d0bb-44e6-92db-2f81d2aed709" CreationDate="2013-11-30T10:22:12.257" UserId="31260" Comment="site += link to respective [help/on-topic]" Text="Question is about `git` the tool&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are asking how specific invocations of git such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How do I edit an incorrect commit message in Git?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/179123/how-do-i-edit-an-incorrect-commit-message-in-git)&#xD;&#xA;* [How to undo the last Git commit?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/927358/how-to-undo-the-last-git-commit)&#xD;&#xA;* [How do I delete a Git branch both locally and remote?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2003505/how-do-i-delete-a-git-branch-both-locally-and-remote)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are questions for **[Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic)**.  The key point here is you are asking for something to type into the *command line* to do something.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question is about `git` the workflow&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are trying to figure out how to use git to do something, understanding the conceptual foundations of git, or how to identify and overcome a problem that you have with the workflow... Questions such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69308/git-for-personal-one-man-projects-overkill&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/205411/why-does-git-use-hashes-instead-of-revision-numbers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212192/what-are-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-cryptographically-signing-commits-a&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96915/using-git-in-enterprise-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are questions for **[Programmers.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)**.  The key point here is the use of the tool in a bigger picture.  It is not one task that the question asks about but the entire workflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question is about `github` the site&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are also questions that are tangentially about git, but are really about github, the website.  Questions such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Strikethrough with GitHub Markdown](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/14986/strikethrough-with-github-markdown)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can I delete my public GitHub repository?](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/9787/can-i-delete-my-public-github-repository)&#xD;&#xA;* [Reference tag from comment](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/52578/reference-tag-from-comment)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are questions for **[Webapps.SE](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)**.  The key point here is if you are trying to figure out how to get something to work with *github*.  This is about *specifically* github and not about setting up your own git server (thats most likely a Stack Overflow question in the [git-daemon tag](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/git-daemon)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have questions about any of the above, feel free to drop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com) and ask the question about which Stack Exchange site a question best belongs on." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16395" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6313" RevisionGUID="ad590856-e17b-47c0-8699-8a1d5119f930" CreationDate="2013-12-03T01:54:01.797" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Using broad brush strokes, here's your question currently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. &quot;I just started working on a large, legacy application.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;2. &quot;There appears to be a lot of technical debt within the codebase.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;3. &quot;I can't find any documentation within the code.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;4. &quot;Is this normal and should I get over it?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm being a bit glib with my paraphrasing, but that pretty much nails it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Items 2 and 3 are answerable, and may actually already have duplicates on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And Robert Harvey has a pretty decent post providing some measure of evidence about technical debt and how often folk pay it down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The 4th part, which is the one I think you care the most about, is a poor fit for stackexchange because it's purely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And there's really no way to salvage that 4th part of the question and make it constructive.  It's a conclusion to draw based upon evidence that is presented to you.  To play things out, pick the answer of &quot;yes, that's typical from my experience, get over it.&quot;  Now compare that against &quot;no, that's not typical based upon _MY_ experience.  Quit and get a new job!&quot;  Both answers are equally valid and the conclusion isn't something you'll find backed by evidence.  The conclusion is purely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bootnotes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I'm not sure there's anything that can be done to salvage the question for the portion you care about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Props for asking and getting clarification behind why it was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Have a look at this [Whiteboard transcript](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/12446135#12446135).  MichaelT reflects upon some of his experiences, and mine reflect what he's seen.  Spoiler alert: yes, get over it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16396" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6311" RevisionGUID="aea71894-1269-48d3-8728-85b72263d1a6" CreationDate="2013-12-03T07:21:08.507" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/407771467917852672" />
  <row Id="16397" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6302" RevisionGUID="9ac8f948-46cd-411c-8983-b687eb67e0e7" CreationDate="2013-12-04T17:28:06.190" UserDisplayName="user131" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|feature-request|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16402" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6315" RevisionGUID="6e30844d-6478-4fa4-9f32-26d48df5022f" CreationDate="2013-12-06T11:54:15.717" UserId="33171" Text="It's the time of the year again, namely it is December 2013, and so we shall now refresh our Community Promotion Ads for the new year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What are Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA; - cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA; - anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we reset the ads every year?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be **220 x 250 pixels**&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently **6**) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ads/display/6315" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16403" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6315" RevisionGUID="6e30844d-6478-4fa4-9f32-26d48df5022f" CreationDate="2013-12-06T11:54:15.717" UserId="33171" Text="Community Promotion Ads - 2014" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16404" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6315" RevisionGUID="6e30844d-6478-4fa4-9f32-26d48df5022f" CreationDate="2013-12-06T11:54:15.717" UserId="33171" Text="|discussion|community-ads|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="16407" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6316" RevisionGUID="9c91d656-11fa-4809-8e64-be44fe4e639a" CreationDate="2013-12-06T11:54:15.717" UserId="33171" />
  <row Id="16408" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5323" RevisionGUID="1bb87547-f450-439f-ac95-f4d0ff25aaca" CreationDate="2013-12-06T11:55:02.970" UserId="33171" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6315],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:33171,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Grace Note&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="16409" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6317" RevisionGUID="898057ed-6d5d-443b-a525-421855f9699f" CreationDate="2013-12-08T11:57:58.357" UserId="22493" Text="[![robotics stack exchange][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/QpWDJ.gif&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://robotics.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16410" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6317" RevisionGUID="7ae434fe-4308-4db7-bbdc-dd6a1fd6b96f" CreationDate="2013-12-08T11:57:58.357" UserId="22493" />
  <row Id="16411" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6318" RevisionGUID="625c702b-6689-4586-882a-f1a5db97a2d9" CreationDate="2013-12-08T12:11:02.563" UserId="22493" Text="[![robotics stack exchange][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/O6uoa.gif&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://robotics.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16412" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6318" RevisionGUID="6f87d33e-ab9e-44d0-a35c-6c2c873c82a9" CreationDate="2013-12-08T12:11:02.563" UserId="22493" />
  <row Id="16413" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6319" RevisionGUID="e1a842cb-a399-4199-973f-67c7a63656ee" CreationDate="2013-12-08T19:59:27.793" UserId="63662" Text="I'm a C programming beginner. is this the right place to ask questions for help of this site is just for experienced programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16414" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6319" RevisionGUID="e1a842cb-a399-4199-973f-67c7a63656ee" CreationDate="2013-12-08T19:59:27.793" UserId="63662" Text="Can I ask a question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16415" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6319" RevisionGUID="e1a842cb-a399-4199-973f-67c7a63656ee" CreationDate="2013-12-08T19:59:27.793" UserId="63662" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16416" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6320" RevisionGUID="8c27598f-2bb0-4c4a-b00a-264c74906101" CreationDate="2013-12-08T20:35:02.460" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="There is an official list of things that are [on-topic][1] for the site. Implementation questions should go on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16417" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6321" RevisionGUID="ff219ee0-b4e3-40ad-b95a-c15118ae5a61" CreationDate="2013-12-08T21:38:18.317" UserId="47" Text="Your level of experience doesn't matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What all Stack Exchange sites are about is getting **expert** answers to your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, you do have to find the right site for your question. Check the `\help\on-topic` page for each site to see if your question fits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our is [here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow's is [here](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16418" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6321" RevisionGUID="1c0d64d8-4118-4045-985d-eca12de9ebd3" CreationDate="2013-12-08T22:08:07.770" UserId="47" Comment="typo" Text="Your level of experience doesn't matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What all Stack Exchange sites are about is getting **expert** answers to your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, you do have to find the right site for your question. Check the `\help\on-topic` page for each site to see if your question fits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ours is [here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflows is [here](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16419" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6322" RevisionGUID="1f2d000f-a361-4ee3-b07f-cf03de221710" CreationDate="2013-12-08T23:37:29.870" UserId="34364" Text="[![Programmers Community Blog][2]][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/a4Owh.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16420" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6322" RevisionGUID="50db20fa-28d7-447a-897e-a0afe9d340b2" CreationDate="2013-12-08T23:37:29.870" UserId="34364" />
  <row Id="16425" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6324" RevisionGUID="cdd76391-e67a-4f3a-abac-f2e280877f5c" CreationDate="2013-12-09T17:12:56.187" UserId="32347" Text="In [this answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5910/32347), Thomas Owans says &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If 5 users vote, I believe it's majority vote gets the reason. However, if a moderator closes, it's always the moderator's reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I cast the last close vote on [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/220694/need-advice-about-a-specialized-ecommerce-system?noredirect=1) and did not observe that behavior - The vote was 2-2 between &quot;asking us to recommend&quot; and &quot;too narrow&quot;, and I voted for &quot;too narrow&quot;.  However, the &quot;asking us to recommend&quot; is the reason that showed up in the close box.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No moderators were involved in the vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, two part question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Why was the wrong reason displayed?&#xD;&#xA;2. Why not show both?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16426" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6324" RevisionGUID="cdd76391-e67a-4f3a-abac-f2e280877f5c" CreationDate="2013-12-09T17:12:56.187" UserId="32347" Text="Wrong displayed reason from multiple close reasons" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16427" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6324" RevisionGUID="cdd76391-e67a-4f3a-abac-f2e280877f5c" CreationDate="2013-12-09T17:12:56.187" UserId="32347" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16428" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6325" RevisionGUID="bfc0ba34-b707-4016-ac58-e39ec7e39292" CreationDate="2013-12-09T17:29:10.177" UserId="949" Text="&gt; 1. Why was the wrong reason displayed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not the wrong reason, it was 1 of the 2 tied-for-top reasons and we picked one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. Why not show both?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mainly because this is an exceedingly rare edge case, and it drastically complicates the data structure to store things that way.  We store exactly 1 close reason active at a time, this allows us to do a very efficient load of the data needed to display close information.  Also, it would be even more confusion to closes that need not exist for such a rare occurrence." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16429" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6324" RevisionGUID="d179ba8f-4c01-4940-8011-87f1a752f137" CreationDate="2013-12-09T17:29:21.257" UserId="949" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16434" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6324" RevisionGUID="f78f3d8f-dfa3-40ce-bfe5-993858c699cf" CreationDate="2013-12-09T20:40:45.387" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited body" Text="In [this answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5910/32347), Thomas Owens says &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If 5 users vote, I believe it's majority vote gets the reason. However, if a moderator closes, it's always the moderator's reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I cast the last close vote on [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/220694/need-advice-about-a-specialized-ecommerce-system?noredirect=1) and did not observe that behavior - The vote was 2-2 between &quot;asking us to recommend&quot; and &quot;too narrow&quot;, and I voted for &quot;too narrow&quot;.  However, the &quot;asking us to recommend&quot; is the reason that showed up in the close box.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No moderators were involved in the vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, two part question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Why was the wrong reason displayed?&#xD;&#xA;2. Why not show both?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16435" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6327" RevisionGUID="806b0cc5-fcc3-48b4-8079-9707a467bf78" CreationDate="2013-12-10T16:53:27.577" UserId="108641" Text="I asked a batch of related questions in http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/220890/when-did-current-source-control-management-emerge and I am wondering what is the best preactice to do so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one asks several related questions in a single SE-question, it might be hard to choose appropriately a correct answer or to attribute a bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one asks a lot of small questions, sharing some common background, it looks like flooding or spamming and may irritate readers, because of the repeating shared background.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the best practice here?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16436" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6327" RevisionGUID="806b0cc5-fcc3-48b4-8079-9707a467bf78" CreationDate="2013-12-10T16:53:27.577" UserId="108641" Text="How to ask a batch of related questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16437" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6327" RevisionGUID="806b0cc5-fcc3-48b4-8079-9707a467bf78" CreationDate="2013-12-10T16:53:27.577" UserId="108641" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16440" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6329" RevisionGUID="54094f21-4e8c-42fe-b925-1912495948c6" CreationDate="2013-12-10T20:23:18.283" UserDisplayName="user111291" Text="[![ShareLaTeX][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vrkV5.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://www.sharelatex.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="16443" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6330" RevisionGUID="2253d26d-813d-40a4-82dd-8b7cbd4ef0ef" CreationDate="2013-12-10T20:28:50.120" UserDisplayName="user111291" />
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  <row Id="16445" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6331" RevisionGUID="08dd5ba5-bf1c-4515-9d41-f7db75e377c5" CreationDate="2013-12-10T20:31:53.540" UserDisplayName="user111291" />
  <row Id="16446" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6332" RevisionGUID="c6d4d9df-3683-43c5-880a-56eff62e43a2" CreationDate="2013-12-10T20:49:19.243" UserDisplayName="user111291" Text="[![writeLaTeX.com - Free online collaborative LaTeX editor with Integrated Rapid Preview][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/3BTVq.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://www.writelatex.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16447" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6332" RevisionGUID="37e86266-e664-407c-81d6-dd06488d5508" CreationDate="2013-12-10T20:49:19.243" UserDisplayName="user111291" />
  <row Id="16449" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6327" RevisionGUID="9cf6cd95-c9e6-40fb-aef3-4dc76d9d0bf4" CreationDate="2013-12-12T04:32:12.967" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/410990445750411264" />
  <row Id="16450" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6333" RevisionGUID="69557b5b-9148-4ef7-98c8-c7e345ff0fa3" CreationDate="2013-12-12T14:05:29.820" UserId="21030" Text="On the one hand you should try to group the related questions. On the other hand you should try to avoid creating a single beast question with many subquestions that should better be separate questions. Let's take a look at the example that you refer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - When SCM was used for the first time in an organisation developing software?&#xD;&#xA; - When was released the first free-software SCM?&#xD;&#xA; - When was released the first SCM shipped by a software company?&#xD;&#xA; - When was given the first talk about SCM in a developer's meeting of international importance?    &#xD;&#xA; - Which alternative schemes to the one unstable and one or more stable branches scheme are used today, by a significantly large community (e.g. a large company).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems that the first three (perhaps four) questions can be grouped into one, but the last question is clearly unrelated." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16451" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6334" RevisionGUID="0af41e3a-8dd8-4344-9724-e5d6ab1e4430" CreationDate="2013-12-12T16:11:47.127" UserId="26120" Text="I've been continuously improving my answer on http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/221152/freelance-charging-based-on-tasks-completed&#xD;&#xA;Now after my 11th revision, without any other contributers adding to my answer, my answer has been converted to a community wiki answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why is this done if there's only 1 editor to the answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16452" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6334" RevisionGUID="0af41e3a-8dd8-4344-9724-e5d6ab1e4430" CreationDate="2013-12-12T16:11:47.127" UserId="26120" Text="Conversion to community wiki after multiple edits by a single user?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16453" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6334" RevisionGUID="0af41e3a-8dd8-4344-9724-e5d6ab1e4430" CreationDate="2013-12-12T16:11:47.127" UserId="26120" Text="|support|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16454" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6335" RevisionGUID="4201f304-32e8-4b34-9062-3db4f6141e5a" CreationDate="2013-12-12T16:21:34.057" UserId="47" Text="This is by design:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##How does a post become a Community Wiki post?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are several ways a question or answer can enter community wiki mode, and most of &gt;these ways will occur automatically based on the rules of the system.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Posts enter community wiki mode when one of the following happens:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The body of the post has been edited&lt;sup&gt;&amp;dagger;&lt;/sup&gt; by at least five (**5**) &gt;different users.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The post has been edited&lt;sup&gt;&amp;dagger;&lt;/sup&gt; ten (**10**) times by the original owner.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The **answer**'s author checks the *community wiki* checkbox when composing the answer. Note that this checkbox isn't available to new&#xD;&#xA;&gt; users. The checkbox also is not available if the question is already a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Community Wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Since [October 2010](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/67582/152859), there is no *community wiki* checkbox when asking a question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The **answer** is edited by its original author, who when doing so opts to check the *community wiki*.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * An answer posted to a Community Wiki question will also be Community Wiki. Note that when a question is made CW after answers have already&#xD;&#xA;&gt; been posted, all existing answers are automatically converted to CW&#xD;&#xA;&gt; too. Older questions did not do this, so it is possible to have a CW&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question with non-CW answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The question generates more than **30** answers (**15** on Super User and Programmers, **60** on Code Golf). In this case, the question and all answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; will enter community mode, as will any future answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * A moderator has reason to believe that the **question** serves better in community wiki mode - if you believe your question [should&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; converted](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to a Community Wiki, you may [flag it for moderator&#xD;&#xA;&gt; attention](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/392/should-the-community-wiki-police-be-shut-down/7183#7183).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; *&lt;sup&gt;&amp;dagger;&lt;/sup&gt; As far as what constitutes an &quot;edit&quot; for community wiki, only edits to the actual body of the post will count&#xD;&#xA;&gt; towards automatic community wiki. Edits to the title and tags, as well&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as rollbacks, do not contribute to automatic wikification.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ([source][2])*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;i&gt;* note that the rules outlined above are based on observations; the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; actual behavior of SO is subject to change without notice, and may&#xD;&#xA;&gt; well have done so since this was last updated...&lt;/i&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Source http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16455" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6334" RevisionGUID="5eb14c2c-785d-44d7-9d9a-9099ac45d25a" CreationDate="2013-12-12T16:22:55.333" UserId="26120" Comment="added 81 characters in body" Text="I've been continuously improving my answer on http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/221152/freelance-charging-based-on-tasks-completed&#xD;&#xA;Now after my 11th revision, without any other contributers adding to my answer, my answer has been converted to a community wiki answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why is this done if there's only 1 editor to the answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think its unfair to not receive credit for the work I put into that answer. (if I get any)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16456" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6334" RevisionGUID="c7102692-bc88-4c5f-8fb4-00a1770a2047" CreationDate="2013-12-12T16:30:24.620" UserId="26120" Comment="added 26 characters in body" Text="I've been continuously improving my answer on http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/221152/freelance-charging-based-on-tasks-completed&#xD;&#xA;Now after my 11th revision, without any other contributers adding to my answer, my answer has been converted to a community wiki answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why is this done if there's only 1 editor to the answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think its unfair to not receive credit for the work I put into that answer. (if it get any votes in the first place)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16457" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6335" RevisionGUID="c1bc272d-7268-4eab-ba25-de21bcb37db6" CreationDate="2013-12-12T16:32:04.873" UserId="47" Comment="more ifo" Text="This is by design:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##How does a post become a Community Wiki post?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are several ways a question or answer can enter community wiki mode, and most of &gt;these ways will occur automatically based on the rules of the system.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Posts enter community wiki mode when one of the following happens:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The body of the post has been edited&lt;sup&gt;&amp;dagger;&lt;/sup&gt; by at least five (**5**) &gt;different users.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The post has been edited&lt;sup&gt;&amp;dagger;&lt;/sup&gt; ten (**10**) times by the original owner.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The **answer**'s author checks the *community wiki* checkbox when composing the answer. Note that this checkbox isn't available to new&#xD;&#xA;&gt; users. The checkbox also is not available if the question is already a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Community Wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Since [October 2010](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/67582/152859), there is no *community wiki* checkbox when asking a question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The **answer** is edited by its original author, who when doing so opts to check the *community wiki*.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * An answer posted to a Community Wiki question will also be Community Wiki. Note that when a question is made CW after answers have already&#xD;&#xA;&gt; been posted, all existing answers are automatically converted to CW&#xD;&#xA;&gt; too. Older questions did not do this, so it is possible to have a CW&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question with non-CW answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The question generates more than **30** answers (**15** on Super User and Programmers, **60** on Code Golf). In this case, the question and all answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; will enter community mode, as will any future answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * A moderator has reason to believe that the **question** serves better in community wiki mode - if you believe your question [should&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; converted](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to a Community Wiki, you may [flag it for moderator&#xD;&#xA;&gt; attention](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/392/should-the-community-wiki-police-be-shut-down/7183#7183).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; *&lt;sup&gt;&amp;dagger;&lt;/sup&gt; As far as what constitutes an &quot;edit&quot; for community wiki, only edits to the actual body of the post will count&#xD;&#xA;&gt; towards automatic community wiki. Edits to the title and tags, as well&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as rollbacks, do not contribute to automatic wikification.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ([source][2])*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;i&gt;* note that the rules outlined above are based on observations; the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; actual behavior of SO is subject to change without notice, and may&#xD;&#xA;&gt; well have done so since this was last updated...&lt;/i&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Source http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to *why* it's there - here's my take:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see it as a way to encourage you to make a few, substantial edits to the post to improve it and then leave it alone rather than continually tweaking the post with a few characters at a time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also there to discourage you making trivial edits just to bump the question back onto the homepage in order to try to get more votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think your edits are useful and you're only editing to improve the post without thought for the reputation you might earn from repeated exposure of the question then flag the post for moderator attention using the &quot;other&quot; option and we'll consider the request to &quot;unwiki&quot; the post." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16458" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6336" RevisionGUID="f2eb1d58-4ffc-4d85-845d-61923db50db6" CreationDate="2013-12-13T19:35:28.390" UserId="89124" Text="[![BXR.SU &amp;mdash; Super User's BSD Cross Reference &amp;mdash; BSD Source Code Search Engine over FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and DragonFly BSD kernel and userland source trees, based on OpenGrok, powered by nginx and regular expressions][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/mY9Sz.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://BXR.SU/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16459" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6336" RevisionGUID="edfcb494-9d72-49a5-a7d6-cfa246e38db5" CreationDate="2013-12-13T19:35:28.390" UserId="89124" />
  <row Id="16461" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6337" RevisionGUID="4bc983b4-e743-4437-9fa9-8412f925e773" CreationDate="2013-12-14T05:17:53.977" UserId="89124" Text="[![{OpenGrok &amp;mdash; System startup; initialise the world, create process 0, mount root filesystem and fork to create init and pagedaemon. kern/init_main.c::mi_startup()][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/U42MJ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://bxr.su/FreeBSD/sys/kern/init_main.c#mi_startup" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16462" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6337" RevisionGUID="cf271b3b-dfe6-47e9-bbbd-314e243e2d6b" CreationDate="2013-12-14T05:17:53.977" UserId="89124" />
  <row Id="16463" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6302" RevisionGUID="feb1968b-db8e-4d1b-8a2a-00c6af234337" CreationDate="2013-12-14T10:33:05.620" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/411806040267948032" />
  <row Id="16464" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6315" RevisionGUID="b14fbbcf-ab6b-4041-984b-bcb7a5bfa9dc" CreationDate="2013-12-14T22:32:58.843" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/411987205956333568" />
  <row Id="16465" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6299" RevisionGUID="3e80f308-0c88-454f-a910-c5d9a2d7c08f" CreationDate="2013-12-15T04:32:59.103" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/412077803686068224" />
  <row Id="16466" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6338" RevisionGUID="86ad8f83-f413-4ff3-bc9c-48e68bd17ed3" CreationDate="2013-12-16T08:43:28.747" UserId="108641" Text="I recenlty asked http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/221304/what-is-the-name-of-the-functional-argument-in-fold which is now marked off-topic because it might be opinion based. I do not understand what makes this opinion based. This question looks similar to me: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/214218/is-there-a-name-for-web-applications-that-do-most-of-the-navigation-on-the-clien  It does not appear to be held as opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which differences make the first question “opinion based” and the second not?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16467" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6338" RevisionGUID="86ad8f83-f413-4ff3-bc9c-48e68bd17ed3" CreationDate="2013-12-16T08:43:28.747" UserId="108641" Text="Why is this terminlogy question considered as “opinion—based”?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16468" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6338" RevisionGUID="86ad8f83-f413-4ff3-bc9c-48e68bd17ed3" CreationDate="2013-12-16T08:43:28.747" UserId="108641" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16469" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6339" RevisionGUID="2135fb0a-80bb-40c3-b098-83870e29022e" CreationDate="2013-12-16T09:29:26.457" UserId="60357" Text="Terminology questions are not generally off topic, as evidenced by a tag [tag:terminology] of its own. To find out whether a question is a good fit for the stackexchange model, we have to ask ourselves whether this question has a single, objective answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With your question, this is not the case (but it isn't your fault). The `fold` has been known by many names: fold, reduce. inject, aggregate, …. An answer could provide a name for the functional argument, but this name might not be known in other traditions that don't call it `fold`. Therefore, an answer (that doesn't provide an answer for each of the different naming traditions) cannot be universally correct, and two answers that provide the correct answer for one of these traditions each would be equally correct, so there wouldn't be a clear candidate to accept. In short, this question *is* opinion-based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also the small issue that (even within one such naming tradition) no universal name of the functional argument exists (which itself is a pretty clear name). When mathematically describing or implementing a `reduce` function, I would simply call the argument `f`, which is not satisfactory here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The *other* question was answerable. It knew that a term had to exist. The asker tried to research this, and listed examples and possible terms, along with explanations why those terms do not sufficiently describe his concept. It showed that prior research on the asker's part had taken place (unlike your question where it was only clarified in the comments that this isn't quoted from an exam you are taking)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16470" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6340" RevisionGUID="e1d9cd42-3797-4a28-a6a5-d4eafa3fb4f3" CreationDate="2013-12-16T15:53:13.747" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="## Temporal question ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is meant to address questions such as &quot;what sessions should I go to at ApacheCon 2011&quot; or &quot;It's almost 2014. What does a modern Perl/Python dev stack look like?&quot;  Such questions rapidly lose their value to the site as time passes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question seeks information that is firmly rooted in the *now*.  Questions that seek the *current* information rarely produce good long term material for the site that can will be useful after the event or sufficient time has passed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16471" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6341" RevisionGUID="f1ee56ad-b666-441d-9a1c-e93714be03cd" CreationDate="2013-12-17T07:39:32.553" UserId="3965" Text="For what it's worth, I voted to reopen.  I don't think questions should be evaluated on the asker knowing if there's a single canonical answer a priori.  If most standard libraries you're aware of call it either `f` or `op`, say so.  If the answer is, &quot;there isn't any convention so choose whatever you want,&quot; then let that be the answer.  Don't close the question.  The possibility was even left open by saying &quot;if any.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose the convention being different in different libraries made people say it is a matter of opinion, but the difference is, the asker wasn't *asking* for an opinion.  He had no way of knowing there wasn't some official term for it in lambda calculus.  Asking for an opinion is off topic.  Asking for a fact and finding out the *answer* is a matter of opinion is not off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I see questions all the time where someone answers &quot;there is no such thing&quot; and someone else comes right behind them with the correct answer.  No one has an exhaustive knowledge of all things computer science, so just because you personally don't know the term doesn't necessarily mean the term doesn't exist. Unless you happen to be someone like Don Syme or Martin Odersky, in which case whatever name you make up off the top of your head immediately becomes official.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16472" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6342" RevisionGUID="f003c964-d989-471b-b7d3-d667566ad0b4" CreationDate="2013-12-17T09:21:41.307" UserId="-1" Comment="from https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/212019/no-questions-asked-but-banned-from-programmers" />
  <row Id="16473" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6343" RevisionGUID="27323a4a-7896-4524-96e3-20402e51c663" CreationDate="2013-12-17T09:11:12.230" UserId="25936" Text="You have asked three questions on Programmers, all of them deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Looking for an RSS Video Feed][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [Job Application Assesments - Advice][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [Q: Applying for a patent or copyright][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first two were downvoted and closed, and the third one you deleted yourself a couple of minutes after you posted it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think there's room for improvement in any of your questions, all three are quite off topic. Thus, your better option to get out of the ban would be to post a few _good_ answers, and improve others' posts through editing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/185234/looking-for-an-rss-video-feed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/210876/job-application-assesments-advice&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212612/q-applying-for-a-patent-or-copyright" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16474" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6342" RevisionGUID="ff57d9a0-68f8-464a-b09d-703d3596e4d6" CreationDate="2013-12-17T06:54:01.513" UserId="79915" Text="There are other users who have been banned from Stack Exchange sites. My problem is different.&#xD;&#xA;I just logged into Programmers, and I haven't asked or commented anything before within Programmers. When I tried clicking Ask Question I got the following response:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account. See the Help Center to learn more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can ask questions in Stack Overflow as well as here. Now what would be the reason? If that is a mistake any way to revert it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16475" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6342" RevisionGUID="ff57d9a0-68f8-464a-b09d-703d3596e4d6" CreationDate="2013-12-17T06:54:01.513" UserId="79915" Text="No questions asked but banned from Programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16476" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6342" RevisionGUID="ff57d9a0-68f8-464a-b09d-703d3596e4d6" CreationDate="2013-12-17T06:54:01.513" UserId="79915" Text="|support|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16477" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6343" RevisionGUID="548b1ff8-39ea-456e-b523-0b1958a9fb55" CreationDate="2013-12-17T09:21:41.307" UserId="-1" Comment="from https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/212019/no-questions-asked-but-banned-from-programmers/212044#212044" />
  <row Id="16478" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6344" RevisionGUID="55f46ee2-aa15-4834-b98c-cef6f283a193" CreationDate="2013-12-17T23:47:23.090" UserId="1204" Text="Unfortunately, it's hard to tell ahead of time whether a &quot;what is the name of that thing&quot; question is going to be definitively answerable.  Without a specific term that clearly applies, any answer is indeed going to be opinion-based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since I keep losing this golden bit of text, I'm just going to put it here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;name that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; thing&quot; question. &quot;Name that thing&quot; questions are bad questions for the same&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions. See&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16482" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6346" RevisionGUID="eea6e2a2-9797-449e-92b6-db69cd6e087a" CreationDate="2013-12-18T06:10:14.600" UserId="109622" Text="As far as I can see,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*If one asks a lot of small questions, sharing some common background, it looks like flooding or spamming and may irritate readers, because of the repeating shared background.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. This does not happen, as in.. all sub-set of questions asked by a single person, on a single thread, does not cause background flooding over head, because for any 1 ..n question on a topic, it's good to have short background info.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Also, people who comment/answer, always refer to hyperlinks/previous discussions if the questioner had overlooked them/haven't been able find a related topic/discussion happened already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I don't really see a need. As always there can be ways to improve. But, what would be a good initiative is what I'm not sure of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16483" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6338" RevisionGUID="02a47ba3-4de7-445d-b0d7-cbd8c7c63376" CreationDate="2013-12-18T07:38:06.507" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/413211555439079424" />
  <row Id="16487" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6338" RevisionGUID="641572cb-21b9-4c88-8998-979b64714709" CreationDate="2013-12-18T12:23:15.967" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="I recently asked http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/221304/what-is-the-name-of-the-functional-argument-in-fold which is now marked off-topic because it might be opinion based. I do not understand what makes this opinion based. This question looks similar to me: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/214218/is-there-a-name-for-web-applications-that-do-most-of-the-navigation-on-the-clien  It does not appear to be held as opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which differences make the first question “opinion based” and the second not?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16488" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6338" RevisionGUID="641572cb-21b9-4c88-8998-979b64714709" CreationDate="2013-12-18T12:23:15.967" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="Why is this terminology question considered as “opinion—based”?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16489" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6338" RevisionGUID="641572cb-21b9-4c88-8998-979b64714709" CreationDate="2013-12-18T12:23:15.967" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16490" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6347" RevisionGUID="7809b7c5-2168-4312-8e2c-82c4fbc6b0cf" CreationDate="2013-12-18T15:19:31.270" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The popup for the 'leave a comment' is showing up behind the links at the top of the page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Sorry, didn't do a full set of &quot;this browser only?&quot; and &quot;hard refresh retry&quot; tests - this is using Safari)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/QQ5gE.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16491" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6347" RevisionGUID="7809b7c5-2168-4312-8e2c-82c4fbc6b0cf" CreationDate="2013-12-18T15:19:31.270" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Pop up for Low Quality comment options behind links" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16492" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6347" RevisionGUID="7809b7c5-2168-4312-8e2c-82c4fbc6b0cf" CreationDate="2013-12-18T15:19:31.270" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|bug|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16494" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6348" RevisionGUID="a289561d-c55f-48c3-8709-553141782b9c" CreationDate="2013-12-20T01:51:50.267" UserId="100113" Text="I have been on programmers.SE for about four months now, and I love it. Currently, I can't ask any questions, however; due to some bad questions that I asked. They have been since deleted and removed from the deleted recent questions page. I am wondering if a Mod can disassociate them from my account? This was done on StackOverflow for me. I would love to have the chance to prove myself again. Thanks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16495" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6348" RevisionGUID="a289561d-c55f-48c3-8709-553141782b9c" CreationDate="2013-12-20T01:51:50.267" UserId="100113" Text="Can a Mod disassociate my old questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16496" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6348" RevisionGUID="a289561d-c55f-48c3-8709-553141782b9c" CreationDate="2013-12-20T01:51:50.267" UserId="100113" Text="|discussion|support|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16497" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6349" RevisionGUID="b9e20657-abea-49aa-a5fc-99322fa561e9" CreationDate="2013-12-20T02:02:08.033" UserId="27881" Text="It should be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;fold, map, filter, and their ilk are known as [higher-order functions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher-order_function):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In mathematics and computer science, a higher-order function (also functional form, functional or functor) is a function that does at least one of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      * takes one or more functions as an input&#xD;&#xA;&gt;      * outputs a function&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; All other functions are first-order functions. In mathematics higher-order functions are also known as operators or functionals. The derivative in calculus is a common example, since it maps a function to another function.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The functional argument to these is known as a [procedural parameter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_parameter):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In computing, a procedural parameter is a parameter of a procedure that is itself a procedure.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This concept is an extremely powerful and versatile programming tool, because it allows programmers to modify certain steps of a library procedure in arbitrarily complicated ways, without having to understand or modify the code of that procedure." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16498" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6350" RevisionGUID="ca34bf5b-f253-45f8-b410-afd4c301c545" CreationDate="2013-12-20T08:57:47.160" UserId="47" Text="This is only something the community team can do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've passed your request along, but it's up to them whether they do this or not." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16499" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6348" RevisionGUID="919c1101-29e0-46da-9b4e-800becad5e3c" CreationDate="2013-12-20T08:57:53.037" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16501" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6351" RevisionGUID="f310fb98-6549-4b87-9ae0-6507eb6ebc9f" CreationDate="2013-12-20T15:00:17.670" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="You asked a _purely_ programming question way back when which was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - No longer visible _for_ you to edit&#xD;&#xA; - Unsalvageable - there's no way you could have improved that post to make it on-topic and had it restored, even if you could have found it easily to edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you've obviously got a grasp of _why_ we have the automatic blocks and what we hope they will accomplish, I removed that lead weight from around your ankle and you can ask questions again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take care, though - I wouldn't say you're on the verge of being blocked again, but you need some good questions under your belt to get completely out of the woods." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16502" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6348" RevisionGUID="08f8fa3c-a11b-47bf-bde1-429db86f1616" CreationDate="2013-12-20T15:00:28.140" UserDisplayName="user131" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16503" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6352" RevisionGUID="a0393c48-abd9-466a-921a-d86a46907807" CreationDate="2013-12-21T06:57:46.837" UserId="89124" Text="[![mdoc.su &amp;mdash; short manual page URLs, a deterministic URL shortener for BSD manual pages, written in nginx.conf][0]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [0]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/YNako.png&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://mdoc.su/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16504" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6352" RevisionGUID="992ec9f0-808e-4de5-ad04-4b79563b8e01" CreationDate="2013-12-21T06:57:46.837" UserId="89124" />
  <row Id="16505" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6353" RevisionGUID="71fe66a8-393f-4546-9358-a641ea2ddad2" CreationDate="2013-12-21T19:52:52.047" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="This question is partly inspired by [this question][1].  The difference is that this question doesn't care about &quot;how&quot; to create a good custom close reason.  This question is to identify the good, already-in-use custom close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of the reason to collect these custom close reasons is captured in [this question][2].  That question beseeches our kindly SE overlords for additional off-topic custom close reasons. Regrettably, the more than [reasonable response][3] boiled down to &quot;demonstrate which ones are being commonly used.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But we end up with a chicken-and-egg problem because using variants with similar phrasing makes it difficult to search for them and generate usage metrics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And [this question][4] demonstrates that others in the community see a need for additional custom close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So this question has a two-fold purpose:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Identify and assemble the in-use custom close reasons&#xD;&#xA;2. Provide a repository so others can re-use these close reasons and provide consistency in close reason messages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6251/how-can-i-write-a-good-custom-close-message&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6172/can-the-number-of-custom-close-reasons-on-programmers-be-expanded&#xD;&#xA;[3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6187/53019&#xD;&#xA;[4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6270/53019" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16506" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6353" RevisionGUID="71fe66a8-393f-4546-9358-a641ea2ddad2" CreationDate="2013-12-21T19:52:52.047" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Collection of frequently used custom close reasons" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16507" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6353" RevisionGUID="71fe66a8-393f-4546-9358-a641ea2ddad2" CreationDate="2013-12-21T19:52:52.047" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16508" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6354" RevisionGUID="8ea21600-c71f-4af4-8e0f-9bce77c813a8" CreationDate="2013-12-21T19:52:52.047" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="&#xD;&#xA;**Polling**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a poll based question. Multiple answers could address this question equally well, which makes it a poor fit the for StackExchange Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Guessing Game**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;name that thing&quot; question. &quot;Name that thing&quot; are bad questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Minimal understanding** &lt;sub&gt;(aka WT? are you asking?)&lt;/sub&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to Jim G.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it doesn't demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should be on SO but doesn't meet their requirements**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to MichaelT)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers. It would best be asked on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet their minimum requirements. Please read the [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/) and [edit] your question to make it suitable for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should have been on SO, but too old to migrate**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat &amp; MichaelT)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is [about] programming tools - it might belong to Stack Overflow, but is too old to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should be on SO and already is** (aka cross-posted)&#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to ChrisF)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about an implementation issue but it has already been asked via cross-post on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16509" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6354" RevisionGUID="9efa1598-bcd3-47f0-a5be-5fd400974a13" CreationDate="2013-12-21T20:04:12.013" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="edited body" Text="**Polling**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a poll based question. Multiple answers could address this question equally well, which makes it a poor fit the for StackExchange Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Guessing Game**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;name that thing&quot; question. &quot;Name that thing&quot; are bad questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Minimal understanding** &lt;sub&gt;(aka WT? are you asking?)&lt;/sub&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to Jim G.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it doesn't demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should be on SO but doesn't meet their requirements**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to MichaelT)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers. It would best be asked on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet their minimum requirements. Please read the [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/) and [edit] your question to make it suitable for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should have been on SO, but too old to migrate**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat &amp; MichaelT)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is [about] programming tools - it might belong to Stack Overflow, but is too old to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should be on SO and already is** (aka cross-posted)  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to ChrisF)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about an implementation issue but it has already been asked via cross-post on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16510" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6354" RevisionGUID="012b4834-765e-4e0d-b449-4b2dbdd23233" CreationDate="2013-12-21T20:09:21.150" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="edited body" Text="**Polling**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a poll based question. Multiple answers could address this question equally well, which makes it a poor fit the for StackExchange Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Guessing Game**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;name that thing&quot; question. &quot;Name that thing&quot; are bad questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Minimal understanding** &lt;sub&gt;(aka WT? are you asking?)&lt;/sub&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to Jim G.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it doesn't demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should be on SO but doesn't meet their requirements**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to MichaelT)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers. It would best be asked on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet their minimum requirements. Please read the [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/) and [edit] your question to make it suitable for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should have been on SO, but too old to migrate**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat &amp; MichaelT)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is [about] programming tools - it might belong to Stack Overflow, but is too old to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should be on SO and already is** (aka cross-posted)  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to ChrisF)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about an implementation issue but it has already been asked via cross-post on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Legal question**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about legal matters outside of the community's experience and is best answered by an attorney with expertise in your jurisdiction.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16511" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6355" RevisionGUID="470efa6a-da04-45d8-b687-34454005e48b" CreationDate="2013-12-21T21:05:34.167" UserId="15162" Text="[Is this a correct implementation of an Immutable class in Java?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/220430/15162) was migrated from Code Review to Programmers.  I think I understand why it was migrated from CodeReview (the author's concern is on making sure the code works, rather than on making working code better).  However, I am confused as to why it would be considered conceptual enough to be on Programmers rather than Stackoverflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16512" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6355" RevisionGUID="470efa6a-da04-45d8-b687-34454005e48b" CreationDate="2013-12-21T21:05:34.167" UserId="15162" Text="Why does this question belong on programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16513" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6355" RevisionGUID="470efa6a-da04-45d8-b687-34454005e48b" CreationDate="2013-12-21T21:05:34.167" UserId="15162" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16514" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6354" RevisionGUID="320500d5-e44c-4202-ab05-cc6827ad38d2" CreationDate="2013-12-21T21:48:27.057" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="added 18 characters in body" Text="**Polling**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a poll based question. Multiple answers could address this question equally well, which makes it a poor fit the for StackExchange Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Guessing Game**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat and Robert Harvey)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;name that thing&quot; question. &quot;Name that thing&quot; are bad questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Minimal understanding** &lt;sub&gt;(aka WT? are you asking?)&lt;/sub&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to Jim G.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it doesn't demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should be on SO but doesn't meet their requirements**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to MichaelT)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers. It would best be asked on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet their minimum requirements. Please read the [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/) and [edit] your question to make it suitable for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should have been on SO, but too old to migrate**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat &amp; MichaelT)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is [about] programming tools - it might belong to Stack Overflow, but is too old to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should be on SO and already is** (aka cross-posted)  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to ChrisF)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about an implementation issue but it has already been asked via cross-post on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Legal question**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about legal matters outside of the community's experience and is best answered by an attorney with expertise in your jurisdiction.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16515" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6356" RevisionGUID="a266fa3d-c4fd-4d93-ab44-9330790f8f86" CreationDate="2013-12-22T04:09:58.460" UserId="89124" Text="[![BXR.SU &amp;mdash; Super User's BSD Cross Reference &amp;mdash; BSD Source Code Search Engine, over FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and DragonFly BSD source trees, based on OpenGrok, powered by nginx, it is uber fast and has very short URLs.][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/C3Vxs.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://BXR.SU/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16516" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6356" RevisionGUID="4358ca4b-318d-4140-bf14-390996d28c25" CreationDate="2013-12-22T04:09:58.460" UserId="89124" />
  <row Id="16517" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6354" RevisionGUID="ea096226-ca29-4c55-81d2-4f17859ac2b0" CreationDate="2013-12-22T17:05:41.523" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="added 271 characters in body" Text="**Polling**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a poll based question. Multiple answers could address this question equally well, which makes it a poor fit the for StackExchange Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Guessing Game**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat and Robert Harvey)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;name that thing&quot; question. &quot;Name that thing&quot; are bad questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Minimal understanding** &lt;sub&gt;(aka WT? are you asking?)&lt;/sub&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to Jim G.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it doesn't demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should be on SO but doesn't meet their requirements**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to MichaelT)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers. It would best be asked on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet their minimum requirements. Please read the [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/) and [edit] your question to make it suitable for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should have been on SO, but too old to migrate**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat &amp; MichaelT)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is [about] programming tools - it might belong to Stack Overflow, but is too old to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should be on SO and already is** (aka cross-posted)  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to ChrisF)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about an implementation issue but it has already been asked via cross-post on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Legal question**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about legal matters outside of the community's experience and is best answered by an attorney with expertise in your jurisdiction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Blatantly off-topic**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because the main problem does not involve any of the topics outlined in the [help/on-topic]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`[help/on-topic]` links to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16518" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6357" RevisionGUID="47bda35e-5033-42f5-bc72-fb7e9015e8a6" CreationDate="2013-12-22T20:27:05.727" UserId="25936" Text="There are traces of an object oriented design question in there, which makes it on topic for Programmers. That, however, doesn't necessarily mean it isn't also on topic for Stack Overflow. The two sites overlap, and it's not uncommon for a question to be suitable for both. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It could even be argued that the question is better suited for Stack Overflow than Programmers, but since it's not completely off topic for us and was answered (correctly) here I see no reason to migrate it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16519" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6327" RevisionGUID="9c7bb24e-e34c-4d5c-a4b1-e93b00ee1859" CreationDate="2013-12-22T20:31:35.360" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16520" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6356" RevisionGUID="59a15920-efb3-4cdf-8921-e2d98a430459" CreationDate="2013-12-22T22:40:43.937" UserId="89124" Comment="fix a typo -- make the link work" Text="[![BXR.SU &amp;mdash; Super User's BSD Cross Reference &amp;mdash; BSD Source Code Search Engine, over FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and DragonFly BSD source trees, based on OpenGrok, powered by nginx, it is uber fast and has very short URLs.][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/C3Vxs.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://BXR.SU/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16521" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6356" RevisionGUID="d5d29429-56a0-4a7a-8aa5-97542fb0a01e" CreationDate="2013-12-23T01:14:18.267" UserId="89124" Comment="use black Verdana 12pt instead of red Monaco 11pt for the text; change colour/background/position of the SU's BXR subtitle" Text="[![BXR.SU &amp;mdash; Super User's BSD Cross Reference &amp;mdash; BSD Source Code Search Engine, over FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and DragonFly BSD source trees, based on OpenGrok, powered by nginx, it is uber fast and has very short URLs.][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kKRXS.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://BXR.SU/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16522" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6358" RevisionGUID="de0faaed-da9f-4816-9b06-fea952c039d8" CreationDate="2013-12-23T11:56:50.233" UserId="108641" Text="Our Q&amp;A site attracts a lot of questions asking for a reference or a tool, which, as we all know, are off-topic.  (Okay, the title of my question is provocative!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think I have seen other sites on SX which answer theses questions in the form of community wiki polls.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Would it not be useful for us to partially support some well-chosen off-topic question by adressing them in a specific format, thus advertising the special nature (i.e. off-topic) of the question?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could reduce the housekeeping and provide useful information to visitors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And while there is no best book to learn C++, it is not uncommon some books aer universally recognised as bad, and that some groups of persons agree that a particuliar hand of book are canonical references like in _if you want to do a PhD in CS in domain X, Y then you cannot avoid reading A or B._&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16523" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6358" RevisionGUID="de0faaed-da9f-4816-9b06-fea952c039d8" CreationDate="2013-12-23T11:56:50.233" UserId="108641" Text="What is the best book to learn C++?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16524" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6358" RevisionGUID="de0faaed-da9f-4816-9b06-fea952c039d8" CreationDate="2013-12-23T11:56:50.233" UserId="108641" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16525" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6359" RevisionGUID="e8305609-7b88-4690-8b14-76b485b41677" CreationDate="2013-12-23T12:41:00.073" UserId="4" Text="Community Wiki questions don't exist to avoid the standards for good questions, meaning that making a poll a community wiki question doesn't mean that it won't or shouldn't be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's been something that I've personally been meaning to do more of, but tag wikis are designed to capture this kind of information. If you want one of the best examples of a tag wiki that I've ever seen, check out the [scala tag on Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/scala/info)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16526" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6360" RevisionGUID="25e2e157-fa4c-4d54-8dff-46e859a1a188" CreationDate="2013-12-24T15:56:42.653" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Occasionally a question that is asked at an interview comes up - &quot;how would you design Amazon Web Services&quot; or &quot;how would you write Google&quot; or some such question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions find their way to Programmers.StackExchange in hopes of getting an answer for the next time they are asked on an interview.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often, these questions are closed - why is it that they are considered poor questions on Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16527" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6360" RevisionGUID="25e2e157-fa4c-4d54-8dff-46e859a1a188" CreationDate="2013-12-24T15:56:42.653" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Why do interview questions make poor Programmers.SE questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16528" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6360" RevisionGUID="25e2e157-fa4c-4d54-8dff-46e859a1a188" CreationDate="2013-12-24T15:56:42.653" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16529" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6361" RevisionGUID="ac5382e4-95d2-4af1-9dcb-678a4ef871e3" CreationDate="2013-12-24T15:56:42.653" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There are several aspects to this question that make it a poor question to ask on Programmers.SE, and some that also make it counter productive to have planned out for an interview.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too broad&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first aspect is that the question is too broad for Programmers.SE.  The &quot;How do you build Amazon&quot; being asked here is akin to going to [Home Improvement.SE](http://diy.stackexchange.com) and asking &quot;How do you build a house?&quot;  There is no way the totality of that question can be answered in a meaningful way in this text box - the topic is *far* too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To an extent, it is exactly that broadness that the interviewing is asking.  This question isn't one like &quot;how many ways can you use `static` in Java&quot; - which has an answer.  The interviewer is coming to you like a business person would with some question that you need to drill down into to ask - and clarify the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, as a question on a Q&amp;A site, with you asking the question you don't know all the questions and the scope of the question the interviewer has in mind.  One interviewer may want you to drill down into the shopping cart side of amazon, another may want to want to drill into the virtualization of AWS, another may want things about product recommendation or customer purchase prediction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Amusingly stated in a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your &quot;friend&quot; should have closed the interviewer's question as &quot;too broad.&quot; In other news, &quot;design a big distributed system&quot; is not a requirements specification. –  Robert Harvey&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No clearly defined problem&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Q&amp;A format that Stack Exchange uses works best when there is a clearly defined problem.  With the Amazon question, asking &quot;how do I build and collect data for [A/B testing](https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/ab-testing/reference/ab-math.html)&quot; could be a reasonable question - it is one problem that can be asked and answered, and not to be overlooked *found* when someone else is searching for the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The asked, answered and found steps are key parts to how Stack Exchange works - remember that the question isn't just for you, its also for the next person asking the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interviewing by rote&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next, its counter productive.  Lets say you get asked a question on how to implement Monopoly and you had no idea didn't get the job and went home to study Monopoly implementations.  A week later, another interview, and you are asked how to implement Monopoly again and you rattle off the implementation that you've memorized (just like the how many ways can you use `static` in Java question asked just before). It is clear that rattling off Monopoly from [rote](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rote_learning) doesn't mean you understand it, so the interviewer asks how you would implement Risk...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key to this example with why its counter productive to try to have a pre-constructed answer for this question is that the interviewer is trying to find your boundaries.  By going with a pre-thought out answer that boundry hasn't been determined.  It's the **process** of thinking through these questions as part of the interview that the interviewer wants to see - and will ask you question and question again until that process is clear about *how* you think of design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so, while there may be an answer that can fit in the space (you talk about the circular array for the board, the stacks for the cards, the rules engine for implementing how the different cards behave, the rules for the game, etc...) that *might* fit here, by having a thought out answer you're going to be asked them again and again until you are asked one you don't know - you've only wasted your time and that of the interviewers up until that point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;I will point out that studying [BSD Games/monop](https://github.com/vattam/BSDGames/tree/master/monop) which is written in classic C will likely have difficulty when the interviewer says &quot;lets try that again in C#&quot; or &quot;lets change that design to [anti-monopoly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Monopoly)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6244/is-how-would-you-architect-existing-web-site-application-an-appropriate-ques" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16530" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6361" RevisionGUID="dd30bd49-12bc-4548-ad6f-01bc7d0ce70f" CreationDate="2013-12-24T16:35:44.103" UserId="31260" Comment="minor spelling correction" Text="There are several aspects to this question that make it a poor question to ask on Programmers.SE, and some that also make it counter productive to have planned out for an interview.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too broad&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first aspect is that the question is too broad for Programmers.SE.  The &quot;How do you build Amazon&quot; being asked here is akin to going to [Home Improvement.SE](http://diy.stackexchange.com) and asking &quot;How do you build a house?&quot;  There is no way the totality of that question can be answered in a meaningful way in this text box - the topic is *far* too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To an extent, it is exactly that broadness that the interviewing is asking.  This question isn't one like &quot;how many ways can you use `static` in Java&quot; - which has an answer.  The interviewer is coming to you like a business person would with some question that you need to drill down into to ask - and clarify the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, as a question on a Q&amp;A site, with you asking the question you don't know all the questions and the scope of the question the interviewer has in mind.  One interviewer may want you to drill down into the shopping cart side of Amazon, another may want to want to drill into the virtualization of AWS, another may want things about product recommendation or customer purchase prediction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Amusingly stated in a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your &quot;friend&quot; should have closed the interviewer's question as &quot;too broad.&quot; In other news, &quot;design a big distributed system&quot; is not a requirements specification. –  Robert Harvey&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No clearly defined problem&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Q&amp;A format that Stack Exchange uses works best when there is a clearly defined problem.  With the Amazon question, asking &quot;how do I build and collect data for [A/B testing](https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/ab-testing/reference/ab-math.html)&quot; could be a reasonable question - it is one problem that can be asked and answered, and not to be overlooked *found* when someone else is searching for the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The asked, answered and found steps are key parts to how Stack Exchange works - remember that the question isn't just for you, its also for the next person asking the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interviewing by rote&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next, it's counter productive.  Lets say you get asked a question on how to implement Monopoly and you had no idea didn't get the job and went home to study Monopoly implementations.  A week later, another interview, and you are asked how to implement Monopoly again and you rattle off the implementation that you've memorized (just like the how many ways can you use `static` in Java question asked just before). It is clear that rattling off Monopoly from [rote](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rote_learning) doesn't mean you understand it, so the interviewer asks how you would implement Risk...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key to this example with why its counter productive to try to have a pre-constructed answer for this question is that the interviewer is trying to find your boundaries.  By going with a pre-thought out answer that boundary hasn't been determined.  It's the **process** of thinking through these questions as part of the interview that the interviewer wants to see - and will ask you question and question again until that process is clear about *how* you think of design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so, while there may be an answer that can fit in the space (you talk about the circular array for the board, the stacks for the cards, the rules engine for implementing how the different cards behave, the rules for the game, etc...) that *might* fit here, by having a thought out answer you're going to be asked them again and again until you are asked one you don't know - you've only wasted your time and that of the interviewers up until that point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;I will point out that studying [BSD Games/monop](https://github.com/vattam/BSDGames/tree/master/monop) which is written in classic C will likely have difficulty when the interviewer says &quot;let's try that again in C#&quot; or &quot;let's change that design to [anti-monopoly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Monopoly)&quot;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6244/is-how-would-you-architect-existing-web-site-application-an-appropriate-ques" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16531" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6361" RevisionGUID="badebbd5-cb80-4679-a035-79fd7a22dcd9" CreationDate="2013-12-24T18:01:01.030" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="+chat" Text="There are several aspects to this question that make it a poor question to ask on Programmers.SE, and some that also make it counter productive to have planned out for an interview.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too broad&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first aspect is that the question is too broad for Programmers.SE.  The &quot;How do you build Amazon&quot; being asked here is akin to going to [Home Improvement.SE](http://diy.stackexchange.com) and asking &quot;How do you build a house?&quot;  There is no way the totality of that question can be answered in a meaningful way in this text box - the topic is *far* too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To an extent, it is exactly that broadness that the interviewing is asking.  This question isn't one like &quot;how many ways can you use `static` in Java&quot; - which has an answer.  The interviewer is coming to you like a business person would with some question that you need to drill down into to ask - and clarify the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, as a question on a Q&amp;A site, with you asking the question you don't know all the questions and the scope of the question the interviewer has in mind.  One interviewer may want you to drill down into the shopping cart side of Amazon, another may want to want to drill into the virtualization of AWS, another may want things about product recommendation or customer purchase prediction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Amusingly stated in a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your &quot;friend&quot; should have closed the interviewer's question as &quot;too broad.&quot; In other news, &quot;design a big distributed system&quot; is not a requirements specification. –  Robert Harvey&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No clearly defined problem&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Q&amp;A format that Stack Exchange uses works best when there is a clearly defined problem.  With the Amazon question, asking &quot;how do I build and collect data for [A/B testing](https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/ab-testing/reference/ab-math.html)&quot; could be a reasonable question - it is one problem that can be asked and answered, and not to be overlooked *found* when someone else is searching for the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The asked, answered and found steps are key parts to how Stack Exchange works - remember that the question isn't just for you, its also for the next person asking the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interviewing by rote&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next, it's counter productive.  Lets say you get asked a question on how to implement Monopoly and you had no idea didn't get the job and went home to study Monopoly implementations.  A week later, another interview, and you are asked how to implement Monopoly again and you rattle off the implementation that you've memorized (just like the how many ways can you use `static` in Java question asked just before). It is clear that rattling off Monopoly from [rote](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rote_learning) doesn't mean you understand it, so the interviewer asks how you would implement Risk...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key to this example with why its counter productive to try to have a pre-constructed answer for this question is that the interviewer is trying to find your boundaries.  By going with a pre-thought out answer that boundary hasn't been determined.  It's the **process** of thinking through these questions as part of the interview that the interviewer wants to see - and will ask you question and question again until that process is clear about *how* you think of design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so, while there may be an answer that can fit in the space (you talk about the circular array for the board, the stacks for the cards, the rules engine for implementing how the different cards behave, the rules for the game, etc...) that *might* fit here, by having a thought out answer you're going to be asked them again and again until you are asked one you don't know - you've only wasted your time and that of the interviewers up until that point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;I will point out that studying [BSD Games/monop](https://github.com/vattam/BSDGames/tree/master/monop) which is written in classic C will likely have difficulty when the interviewer says &quot;let's try that again in C#&quot; or &quot;let's change that design to [anti-monopoly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Monopoly)&quot;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where to ask&#xD;&#xA;------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the best places to ask such broad questions is Programmers Chat.  The wide range of the question and understanding that it's an interview question can be better addressed in an interactive way rather than a question and answer format.  The dialog between the person asking the question and the person answering it is an important part of the process of this type of question and understanding the design aspects of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6244/is-how-would-you-architect-existing-web-site-application-an-appropriate-ques" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16532" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6362" RevisionGUID="72d4ade6-a314-44db-8f5a-19a45b001252" CreationDate="2013-12-25T15:05:46.063" UserId="50440" Text="I modified the original [Building a distributed system on Amazon Web Services][1] after the comments mentioned about [Why do interview questions make poor Programmers.SE questions?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question now is more focused about whether building an application on AWS makes it by default distributed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you please re-open it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/222222/building-a-distributed-system-on-amazon-web-services&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16533" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6362" RevisionGUID="72d4ade6-a314-44db-8f5a-19a45b001252" CreationDate="2013-12-25T15:05:46.063" UserId="50440" Text="Can you please review the modifications for this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16534" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6362" RevisionGUID="72d4ade6-a314-44db-8f5a-19a45b001252" CreationDate="2013-12-25T15:05:46.063" UserId="50440" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16535" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6362" RevisionGUID="18de1161-a5c6-4e5f-bf20-9165deeb7d15" CreationDate="2013-12-25T19:53:52.907" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|closed-questions|specific-question|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16536" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6360" RevisionGUID="7dbdbf76-9199-418c-bf19-c94df160589d" CreationDate="2013-12-25T22:38:30.047" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/415974862235398144" />
  <row Id="16549" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6366" RevisionGUID="c4a84fa4-912f-45f9-942b-e1276f706b6c" CreationDate="2013-12-27T03:39:34.703" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Often the question shows up of something along the lines of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm trying to learn language XYZ. Where should I start?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm trying to do ${very large project}. Where should I start?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are these questions considered poor questions for Programmers.SE and how should I go about asking a good one when just starting out?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16550" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6366" RevisionGUID="c4a84fa4-912f-45f9-942b-e1276f706b6c" CreationDate="2013-12-27T03:39:34.703" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Where to start?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16551" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6366" RevisionGUID="c4a84fa4-912f-45f9-942b-e1276f706b6c" CreationDate="2013-12-27T03:39:34.703" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16552" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6367" RevisionGUID="c7fd1c8d-af68-4366-be96-cd8a34ac2105" CreationDate="2013-12-27T03:39:34.703" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The &quot;where do I start?&quot; question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unclear&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets head over to [Seasoned Advice](http://cooking.stackexchange.com) (Cooking Stack Exchange) and think about a hypothetical question to ask there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to learn how to bake a cake?  Where should I start?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A person attempting to answer this question doesn't know what your skill level is.  Do you know how to read a recipe? Can you operate an oven without supervision? Are you trying to make a simple [pound cake](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_cake) or are you attempting to make a multi layer red velvet cheesecake with frosting from scratch that should match something from [pinterest](http://www.pinterest.com/bakerstreet/cheesecake-recipes/)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without this knowledge of where the OP is at, the person attempting to answer is either going to engage in a hopelessly long series of comments *trying* to find out the level, or is going to take a shot in the dark and probably not answer the question satisfactorily for the person asking it, or the next person viewing the page from a google search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too Broad&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back to programming as the idiom and away from cakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next part of the problem is that there are numerous approaches to learning a language or projects one can do.  There are an unprecedented number of different things one can do to start.  Dozens of programming challenges out on the web that can be good starting points for programming (search for them) and hundreds of open source projects that are out there that are at an appropriate level for someone learning (no, don't tackle trying to do something *huge*, but find a nice little utility that could do with some additional functionality).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Such questions have people leaving short answers that are little more to a link.  Stack Exchange works very poorly as a link aggregator - if you are looking for that type of answer, look to link aggregators instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No Clear Problem&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have a problem - you don't know where to start with a design.  But that isn't a clear problem.  Are you stuck at the modeling of the data objects? At the structure of the classes and their responsibilities? trying to figure out how to use Spring or Rails or ${overly large library}?  Is the [ORM](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-relational_mapping) just not connecting to the right neurons in the brain?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of these are part of the &quot;I don't know where to start&quot; set of problems.  Obviously you have gotten to some point in the design.  You want a program that can do X, Y, and Z.  You've fired up the IDE and you've... this is where you need to describe what you have done, what you have thought of and where you are stuck.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to try *something* before you have a good question.  The design from an enterprise coder could steer you into strange n-tier designs, while others are going to suggest strange metaprogramming idioms or [sneak a monad into your design](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/206543/40980).  These aren't *wrong* answers, but they may not be right for where you are at in your learning and figuring out the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider also, that the best way to figure out how to design something is to learn how to design something.  For personal projects learning about how to do something, the paths down the wrong way, while discouraging, are some of the best learning experiences to be used in the *next* project.  Be wary of the programming architect who has never designed a bad system, for when they do they won't know what to do at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try Chat&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have 20 rep (four up votes on questions, two up votes on answers, one up vote and an accept on an answer, ten accepted edits or some combination of the previous), you can [chat](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/chat) in the chat rooms.  Programmer.SE's chatroom is called [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and we're quite open to answering the questions that don't work well on the Q&amp;A part of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The advantage of chat for these type of questions is that we *can* engage in the dense back and forth that would otherwise be in comments to determine your skill level and also work through different problems.  Remember though that chat is *not* a tutorial service despite how helpful people may be." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16553" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6366" RevisionGUID="65c92985-08bf-4a0b-8a1d-efda9ee64c63" CreationDate="2013-12-27T10:19:44.330" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16554" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6367" RevisionGUID="bd98a786-146f-453f-8542-7e0b97504db3" CreationDate="2013-12-27T15:12:03.050" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="I forgot to finish my first thought." Text="The &quot;where do I start?&quot; question has several issues with it that make it a poor question to ask.  It is unclear what the level of the person asking the question is, has too many possible answers, and ultimately doesn't have a clear problem defined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unclear&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets head over to [Seasoned Advice](http://cooking.stackexchange.com) (Cooking Stack Exchange) and think about a hypothetical question to ask there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to learn how to bake a cake?  Where should I start?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A person attempting to answer this question doesn't know what your skill level is.  Do you know how to read a recipe? Can you operate an oven without supervision? Are you trying to make a simple [pound cake](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_cake) or are you attempting to make a multi layer red velvet cheesecake with frosting from scratch that should match something from [pinterest](http://www.pinterest.com/bakerstreet/cheesecake-recipes/)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without this knowledge of where the OP is at, the person attempting to answer is either going to engage in a hopelessly long series of comments *trying* to find out the level, or is going to take a shot in the dark and probably not answer the question satisfactorily for the person asking it, or the next person viewing the page from a google search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too Broad&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back to programming as the idiom and away from cakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next part of the problem is that there are numerous approaches to learning a language or projects one can do.  There are an unprecedented number of different things one can do to start.  Dozens of programming challenges out on the web that can be good starting points for programming (search for them) and hundreds of open source projects that are out there that are at an appropriate level for someone learning (no, don't tackle trying to do something *huge*, but find a nice little utility that could do with some additional functionality).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Such questions have people leaving short answers that are little more to a link.  Stack Exchange works very poorly as a link aggregator - if you are looking for that type of answer, look to link aggregators instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No Clear Problem&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have a problem - you don't know where to start with a design.  But that isn't a clear problem.  Are you stuck at the modeling of the data objects? At the structure of the classes and their responsibilities? trying to figure out how to use Spring or Rails or ${overly large library}?  Is the [ORM](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-relational_mapping) just not connecting to the right neurons in the brain?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of these are part of the &quot;I don't know where to start&quot; set of problems.  Obviously you have gotten to some point in the design.  You want a program that can do X, Y, and Z.  You've fired up the IDE and you've... this is where you need to describe what you have done, what you have thought of and where you are stuck.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to try *something* before you have a good question.  The design from an enterprise coder could steer you into strange n-tier designs, while others are going to suggest strange metaprogramming idioms or [sneak a monad into your design](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/206543/40980).  These aren't *wrong* answers, but they may not be right for where you are at in your learning and figuring out the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider also, that the best way to figure out how to design something is to learn how to design something.  For personal projects learning about how to do something, the paths down the wrong way, while discouraging, are some of the best learning experiences to be used in the *next* project.  Be wary of the programming architect who has never designed a bad system, for when they do they won't know what to do at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try Chat&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have 20 rep (four up votes on questions, two up votes on answers, one up vote and an accept on an answer, ten accepted edits or some combination of the previous), you can [chat](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/chat) in the chat rooms.  Programmer.SE's chatroom is called [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and we're quite open to answering the questions that don't work well on the Q&amp;A part of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The advantage of chat for these type of questions is that we *can* engage in the dense back and forth that would otherwise be in comments to determine your skill level and also work through different problems.  Remember though that chat is *not* a tutorial service despite how helpful people may be." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16555" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6360" RevisionGUID="67a54549-9cd5-48a8-aa9a-f4b1082c9e0e" CreationDate="2013-12-27T15:41:53.163" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|questions|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16556" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6283" RevisionGUID="9a685c89-d828-4100-8a5e-f0467bd2537b" CreationDate="2013-12-27T15:42:06.273" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16557" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6366" RevisionGUID="bc53117e-f3b0-451a-998a-d9e9b539d9a8" CreationDate="2013-12-28T13:38:38.880" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/416926165237268480" />
  <row Id="16558" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="5d4e82dd-9889-4b16-b2dd-afb25ecaea54" CreationDate="2013-12-28T16:26:14.543" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16559" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6327" RevisionGUID="051a16d7-a38c-460a-9530-4a5bf1d36043" CreationDate="2013-12-28T16:27:41.613" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16560" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6338" RevisionGUID="7800433b-7320-428e-b691-1d9ed8a18bc2" CreationDate="2013-12-30T12:04:12.903" UserId="108641" Comment="edited title" Text="Why is this terminology question considered as “opinion based”?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16561" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6353" RevisionGUID="0658a30f-b83b-4ad8-ad38-357ef3ffb5d5" CreationDate="2013-12-30T22:38:57.003" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/417786913471598592" />
  <row Id="16562" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6368" RevisionGUID="47149d4f-0b05-4b75-80a5-dcd0d0357850" CreationDate="2013-12-31T11:22:01.720" UserId="103863" Text="1. Are pure citational answers considered a *Good Answer* ™ vis-á-vis general StackOverflow policies? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Should the citation be labelled in some way to credit the source of the borrowed wisdom, and if so, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - what would be the recommended ways to do this?&#xD;&#xA; - what would be absolutely unacceptable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From my point of view, in some cases a citation is the best answer possible, but of course the original author (or source) should be given adequate credits. I'd like to know other people's opinion on this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This answer][1] may serve as an example of what I think of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/222717/optimal-if-else-tree-algorithm-to-minimize-duplicate-code/222720#222720" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16563" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6368" RevisionGUID="47149d4f-0b05-4b75-80a5-dcd0d0357850" CreationDate="2013-12-31T11:22:01.720" UserId="103863" Text="What's the policy for pure citational answers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16564" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6368" RevisionGUID="47149d4f-0b05-4b75-80a5-dcd0d0357850" CreationDate="2013-12-31T11:22:01.720" UserId="103863" Text="|discussion|answers|answer-quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16565" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6369" RevisionGUID="4d91463c-1034-4482-a81a-5ae464c5c301" CreationDate="2013-12-31T12:57:36.687" UserId="5099" Text="If the citation provides an actual answer to the question, then why not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whenever you use a citation, you should use the normal rules for them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Make it clear to the reader that you are citing some other source&#xD;&#xA;- Provide a reference (or link in case of a resource on the web) where you got the citation from, so the readers can look at the quote in context.&#xD;&#xA;- And above all, don't claim that the words of another are your own." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16566" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6370" RevisionGUID="6ab4313a-9e60-41ff-924f-9afda99f41e2" CreationDate="2013-12-31T12:57:45.683" UserId="60357" Text="I don't think that pure citational answers are a good idea, because of legal reasons (but IANAL):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All user contributions on Stack Exchange sites are licensed under CC-BY-SA (see the footer of this page). An user can only grant a license to content he created himself. I don't think that simply copying and pasting a few paragraphs of text and applying some formatting creates new content. This reasoning ins moot in two cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The cited content was licensed under a compatible license, or&#xD;&#xA; * The citation is small enough that it can be considered to be “fair use”. Note that “fair use” is an US legal term and does not necessarily exist at other locations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, any user who was considering to post a pure citational answer can easily build his own answer from that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Explain how the quote is relevant to the question and possibly give examples.&#xD;&#xA; * Only quote the essential point and refer to the whole content, e.g. via a link or book title. This has to be balanced so that the answer isn't reduced to an equally bad link-only answer: Links can break, so the answer should still be able to be useful on its own without the linked content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Citations should generally be marked as such, e.g. with “quotes” or a blockquote environment (in Markdown: start each line with a `&gt;`). The source should always be mentioned to make the quote verifiable and to allow a reader to explore the context of the quote. It is also a matter of honesty to mark the work of others as such.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [answer which you linked to](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/222720/60357) as an example seems a bit borderline, but is actually OK. In case the answer gets edited, I am referring to the *first* revision (i.e. original answer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The content in the citation plus the large image is copied verbatim from Wikipedia.&#xD;&#xA; * Wikipedia content is also licensed under CC-BY-SA, so the license is compatible with this site.&#xD;&#xA; * The cited text is attributed in the form of the link to the Wikipedia page where it was taken from. It would have been better to unambiguously show *which* link the content was taken from.&#xD;&#xA; * The citation is framed by a few sentences of explanation that show how it is relevant to the question. The answer would still “work” without the citation, so the answerer has created his own content here.&#xD;&#xA; * Only relevant parts of the source were quoted, and all images were mirrored. Therefore this answer will stay useful even when the links break.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we want to be really exact we could criticize that it isn't immediately obvious that the large image is part of the quote, and lacks correct attribution. This attribution could have been given implicitly by including the image in the blockquote or by linking to the image's page on Wikipedia. It is also possible that future revisions of the Wikipedia page remove the cited content. Therefore it would have been more correct (in terms of attribution) to link to the specific revision of the Wikipedia page." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16567" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6347" RevisionGUID="e60da166-8197-4657-b179-d44cda7e8a4b" CreationDate="2013-12-31T22:11:27.260" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Various versions" Text="The popup for the 'leave a comment' is showing up behind the links at the top of the page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of the following screen shots are from a mac.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Original report in Safari:&#xD;&#xA;![Original in safari][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fresh install of Firefox:&#xD;&#xA;![Firefox 26][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current (31.0.1650.63) version of Chrome:&#xD;&#xA;![Chrome][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current version of Safari:&#xD;&#xA;![Safari][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/QQ5gE.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/HALdj.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/phvO9.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/wmw6e.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16568" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6347" RevisionGUID="724ff8dd-af9c-4a0d-86b0-709a7eab18c1" CreationDate="2013-12-31T22:57:32.747" UserId="4767" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|design|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16569" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6347" RevisionGUID="c6e52adb-5b47-4d0c-b71d-7a144ef0c29f" CreationDate="2014-01-01T02:27:24.870" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 259 characters in body" Text="The popup for the 'leave a comment' is showing up behind the links at the top of the page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of the following screen shots are from a mac.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Original report in Safari:&#xD;&#xA;![Original in safari][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fresh install of Firefox:&#xD;&#xA;![Firefox 26][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current (31.0.1650.63) version of Chrome:&#xD;&#xA;![Chrome][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current version of Safari:&#xD;&#xA;![Safari][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been able to reproduce the safari issue on another mac.  However, the larger monitor (larger window, the delete dialog is further down on the page) means that I need to grab and pull the review pane window up so that the links at the top of the window.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/QQ5gE.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/HALdj.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/phvO9.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/wmw6e.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16570" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6371" RevisionGUID="a6f92fcc-070b-4bc5-9a5e-0ff8abf5831f" CreationDate="2014-01-01T17:25:26.117" UserId="9113" Text="Every day we still get lots of questions on PSE which are immediately put on hold because of one of the standard closing reasons (asking for career or education advice, asking for an off-site resource and so on...) The posters (which are almost always site newbies, making their first or second post) seem not to be aware of the part of the FAQ stating which questions are not welcome here. I suspect lots of them just don't know the FAQ (well some of them may have read the FAQ and ignored it either, but I assume that's only a small portion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how can we improve that situation and encourage people to read the FAQ first? For example, may it be feasible that whenever one makes a first posting here, he will get a polite  information screen, showing him a link to the FAQ and asking him that (since he is making his first post) he should please double check wether his question fulfills those requirements? Or do you expect that such a site modification would be useless, because lots of people would still ignore the site rules, even when getting a pop-up screen telling them the rules right in from of them?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16571" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6371" RevisionGUID="a6f92fcc-070b-4bc5-9a5e-0ff8abf5831f" CreationDate="2014-01-01T17:25:26.117" UserId="9113" Text="How can we encourage people to read the FAQ before asking their first question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16572" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6371" RevisionGUID="a6f92fcc-070b-4bc5-9a5e-0ff8abf5831f" CreationDate="2014-01-01T17:25:26.117" UserId="9113" Text="|feature-request|new-users|closing-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16573" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6371" RevisionGUID="ea42f32a-e037-4839-9ad2-5a5f76f1ece9" CreationDate="2014-01-02T07:38:58.430" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/418647591463972864" />
  <row Id="16574" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6372" RevisionGUID="5030ed17-5646-41a8-b791-e13c844f118d" CreationDate="2014-01-02T16:50:51.370" UserId="1458" Text="[![Question closing feed][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/yym5e.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://twitter.com/stackprogrammer&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16575" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6372" RevisionGUID="3644ef85-4e9f-4bc3-84f0-8013de108e72" CreationDate="2014-01-02T16:50:51.370" UserId="1458" />
  <row Id="16580" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6374" RevisionGUID="0e356746-0337-4a7a-bf15-38bcee0e08d5" CreationDate="2014-01-03T20:37:38.170" UserId="1114" Text="A good interview question does not have an answer that the candidate knows; the candidate is expected to be able to discuss different options, with some options being thrown in by the interviewer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions is asked to find out how (or if) the candidate thinks, **not to get an answer** to the asked question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On SE sites questions are asked **to get answers** to the question.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16581" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6375" RevisionGUID="e80f4df6-0e1c-4f4f-9eed-f8d7f127948e" CreationDate="2014-01-06T02:32:09.873" UserId="111239" Text="I would suggest that when registering, a brief information can be shown (Quoted from Help Center):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in&#xD;&#xA;    getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. &#xD;&#xA;    If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;    design patterns&#xD;&#xA;    developer testing&#xD;&#xA;    development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;    freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;    quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;    software architecture&#xD;&#xA;    software engineering&#xD;&#xA;    software licensing&#xD;&#xA;    and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check out The Workplace instead),&#xD;&#xA;    implementation issues or programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead),&#xD;&#xA;    what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better,&#xD;&#xA;    what project you should do next,&#xD;&#xA;    what book you should read next,&#xD;&#xA;    career advice, salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;    personal lifestyle, including relationships, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;    ...then you're in the right place to ask your question!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16582" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6376" RevisionGUID="266f42d2-3854-44a3-89ae-0734d20571e4" CreationDate="2014-01-06T03:20:45.500" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/223213/more-why-so-many-negative-votes-here" />
  <row Id="16583" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6376" RevisionGUID="bed8d59a-f727-4c9a-9e37-dc9b4edf64f5" CreationDate="2014-01-06T03:19:07.680" UserId="113759" Text="I'm active in other StackExchanges and just signed up for this one, and I'm amazed at how many questions here have negative ratings.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why don't some of you lighten up?  People would not be asking questions if they weren't confused and didn't have a question they were trying to understand.  Gosh some of the new kids on the block are probably just really confused and so it's a little hard for them to ask good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the administrators here need to make it more costly to down-vote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And frankly, I don't care if you down vote me for this, as I'm not really sure I want to further participate in such a negative environment.  Oh yes, and in case you are curious, since I'm new here with no reputations, my qualifications:  I've been programming since 1975, in dozens of languages over that time, and across a huge variety of computers.  The project I'm currently building has 28,000 lines of original code." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16584" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6376" RevisionGUID="bed8d59a-f727-4c9a-9e37-dc9b4edf64f5" CreationDate="2014-01-06T03:19:07.680" UserId="113759" Text="more Why so many negative votes here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16585" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6376" RevisionGUID="bed8d59a-f727-4c9a-9e37-dc9b4edf64f5" CreationDate="2014-01-06T03:19:07.680" UserId="113759" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16586" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6377" RevisionGUID="4929815d-8c85-46ed-bb1f-dea457372f9b" CreationDate="2014-01-06T03:28:01.817" UserId="1852" Text="A big part of the problem is that Programmers gets a large number of off-topic posts by people who have not read the FAQ, but think that any computer-related question which does not belong on SO should come here. I tend not to downvote these questions anymore, but that is since I can now vote to close, which is even cheaper." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16587" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6376" RevisionGUID="1c5ea99c-d52c-4aa4-b6ce-b153e5c2fec5" CreationDate="2014-01-06T12:23:41.677" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="I'm active in other Stack Exchange sites and just signed up for this one, and I'm amazed at how many questions here have negative ratings.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why don't some of you lighten up?  People would not be asking questions if they weren't confused and didn't have a question they were trying to understand.  Gosh some of the new kids on the block are probably just really confused and so it's a little hard for them to ask good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the administrators here need to make it more costly to down-vote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And frankly, I don't care if you down vote me for this, as I'm not really sure I want to further participate in such a negative environment.  Oh yes, and in case you are curious, since I'm new here with no reputations, my qualifications:  I've been programming since 1975, in dozens of languages over that time, and across a huge variety of computers.  The project I'm currently building has 28,000 lines of original code." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16588" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6376" RevisionGUID="1c5ea99c-d52c-4aa4-b6ce-b153e5c2fec5" CreationDate="2014-01-06T12:23:41.677" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="Why so many negative votes here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16589" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6376" RevisionGUID="1c5ea99c-d52c-4aa4-b6ce-b153e5c2fec5" CreationDate="2014-01-06T12:23:41.677" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="|discussion|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16590" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6378" RevisionGUID="aa7ed3d2-1bf1-4d5b-b545-b6bbd8ea05a6" CreationDate="2014-01-06T18:14:13.033" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Programmers.SE has had a bit of history to it.  Much of it you can read about in the Meta here and on Meta.StackOverflow too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The short version (glossing over much) is that it started out with a very permissive &quot;what is allowed&quot;.  There were difficulties with this and a new direction was charted to something that is likely more in line with what exists now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of that readjustment of vision has been a more active moderation (*not* necessarily moderation by moderators, but rather the community that has formed since).  Part of this moderation is close votes, but part of it is also down votes - both are necessary as close votes don't always signal to the OP that the question is need in revision or fixing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For some reason, there are many people who ask questions that aren't good questions for the Q&amp;A format.  Polls, recommendations, fix my code because I'm question banned at StackOverflow, etc...  Without down votes, there is no way to signal to the person that they need to fix their questions.  Whats more, down votes contribute to the algorithm that feeds the automatic question ban and stops people from asking questions that doesn't generate good content for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest reading [Yannis's answer in How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?&#xD;&#xA;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/200144/213963) which goes a bit of the history with the stats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another bit to read is [Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its not negativity, it is a firm commitment to keeping the quality of the site - the questions and answers you read and others come here to read - high.  It is through this commitment that the site continues to grow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16591" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6379" RevisionGUID="01c27aef-5c77-4054-b3b7-0196c26b2150" CreationDate="2014-01-06T23:10:23.143" UserId="3965" Text="Allow me to illustrate with an allegory.  At its inception, this site was a crime-ridden city.  There was a lot of bad questions, and people didn't stick around very long to invest their time in improving it.  So a posse was formed.  The gangsters and crime lords were kicked out, quality was restored, and the site started growing.  People still tried to post low quality questions and answers, but they were quickly dealt with, and soon people stopped trying so much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The posse wanted to see their success continue, and having fewer crime lords to occupy their attention, they started focusing on the speeders and jaywalkers.  They continued to cite the site's growth as evidence that the community doesn't welcome speeders and jaywalkers, but neglected the unseen even higher growth opportunity of the excited newcomers who left after getting a ticket for going 45 1/2 in a 45 mph zone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then the mayor makes it even easier for the posse by creating the review queues, so instead of the entire posse having to go out on patrol and read and evaluate each question, only one or two dedicated members can flag the questions and the rest can just visit the review queue.  Some posse members even go back to review old surveillance camera footage, and issue tickets for speeding that happened two years or more ago, and the review queue makes it easy to get the four extra votes needed, but does nothing to notify people who thought it was a good question.  The mayor sets up incentives to complete as many reviews as possible, without regard to how helpful the reviewers are to the new members.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Admittedly, the posse members also provide a lot of helpful answers, but it's a very thin line to get on their bad side.  They might start to answer what they thought was a good question, find out it's a homework question, then immediately shut it down.  Likewise, good questions are killed for using magic wording that makes it sound like a poll, or a resource request, or career advice, even when the question isn't really asking those things, and could be easily reworded without changing the gist of the question.  Long time citizens learn to avoid those words, but newcomers don't know any better.  The posse looks for reasons to close questions, rather than reasons to keep them open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few concerned citizens try to help by casting reopen votes, or editing questions, but their tools are much more limited.  They can't keep questions from being closed in the first place, but can only try to reopen them after the fact, when the damage has already been done.  They create a few [SEDE queries](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/136453/recently-closed-questions-i-answered) to help, offer bounties, and occasionally respond to a meta post, but it's hard work to oppose such a dedicated posse, so their efforts go largely unnoticed by newcomers to the city.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the posse, their success is unassailable proof of their policies.  &quot;Sure, half our drivers get speeding tickets every day, but look how law-abiding all the other drivers are now!  We wouldn't have to be so harsh if people weren't continually trying to break the law!  They don't understand how things work around here!  If we stop cracking down on jaywalkers, the drug dealers will take over again!  Sure, we've lost some prominent citizens, but that's their problem, not ours.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Despite all that, a lot of good still happens around here.  Only time will tell if we can manage to make the site more newbie-friendly or not." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16592" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6380" RevisionGUID="2381890d-f00f-49dd-a0cf-633c3c2ac00b" CreationDate="2014-01-07T00:26:29.283" UserId="11292" Text="How about a prominent link titled FAQ or About on the landing page?  I couldn't find either a few minutes ago, when trying to work out whether my question was OT or not.  I wound up here instead :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16593" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6376" RevisionGUID="3f57a428-6ccb-410e-a81f-7a1459c082fe" CreationDate="2014-01-07T05:18:32.797" UserId="113759" Comment="a suggestion" Text="I'm active in other Stack Exchange sites and just signed up for this one, and I'm amazed at how many questions here have negative ratings.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why don't some of you lighten up?  People would not be asking questions if they weren't confused and didn't have a question they were trying to understand.  Gosh some of the new kids on the block are probably just really confused and so it's a little hard for them to ask good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the administrators here need to make it more costly to down-vote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And frankly, I don't care if you down vote me for this, as I'm not really sure I want to further participate in such a negative environment.  Oh yes, and in case you are curious, since I'm new here with no reputations, my qualifications:  I've been programming since 1975, in dozens of languages over that time, and across a huge variety of computers.  The project I'm currently building has 28,000 lines of original code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[EDIT: It might be good to limit the downvote to zero.  Zero is down far enough to make the point I think.  Don't need drive people away by drumming them out with negatives.]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16594" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6381" RevisionGUID="0c6a81e4-c026-4677-9100-2975e6b7ff31" CreationDate="2014-01-07T16:48:54.207" UserId="20673" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/223192/will-i-get-acceptable-performance-for-learning-c-python-if-i-use-a-vm-as-my-lear&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've always considered &quot;opinion-based&quot; questions as those which would generate 17 answers with every guy sharing his own experience and wanting to add &quot;me too&quot; to the list but no one answer is better than the other.  Obviously such a question would not be a good format for Q&amp;A and good chance I'd be behind the closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the same time I do not believe question above falls in that category. OP asked that question and got ZERO opinions in the first 6 hours. In more than 24 hours he got one answer from me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do I believe it is a good question? I do not. Because any real programmer (and most newcomers) should know that it doesn't take a lot to run python compiler or even one for C when you are just learning. One could probably hook up a keyboard to a phone and learn C on 5&quot; screen. Information he is looking for is completely apparent to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was closed as &quot;opinion-based&quot; after I provided an answer which IMO wasn't based on opinion at all.  Or does the community require me to post the actual perf graphs? So not only is close reason doesn't match the question, it doesn't even match the flood of all those answers the OP got as a response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And what was the reason for closure? This question looked like it was well onto its way to the archive. There was no flood and no &quot;me toos&quot;.  If it was left open, it would probably have same answer count it has today. So to a new guy, who comes across this site, it probably just feels like a kick in the behind on his way out. And then we ask, how to attract more people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I voted to reopen it not because it is a good question (although if it was bad, you'd think it would be voted down not up), but because it annoys people, especially new ones when they get shut down like this. And what's worse than no reason given for closure, is bad reason given for closure. And if it was left open, I do not see what possible harm this specific question could have done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16595" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6381" RevisionGUID="0c6a81e4-c026-4677-9100-2975e6b7ff31" CreationDate="2014-01-07T16:48:54.207" UserId="20673" Text="Was this question closed for the right reason?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16596" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6381" RevisionGUID="0c6a81e4-c026-4677-9100-2975e6b7ff31" CreationDate="2014-01-07T16:48:54.207" UserId="20673" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16597" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6382" RevisionGUID="21c0fed4-f1f8-42fe-9324-a9fa6fac7482" CreationDate="2014-01-07T18:21:17.860" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Primarily opinion based was probably not the best reason for closure.  I noticed that too when looking at the question in the reopen queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Despite not having the best close reason, it is still off-topic for the site because it's essentially looking for a hardware recommendation.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond the hardware recommendation, &quot;acceptable&quot; can be a murky term especially since the OP doesn't say what the VM's specs will be.  But I will also grant that any reasonably provisioned VM will do fine on that server since it has plenty of resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in summary, it's not a great question, but primarily opinion based is not the best close reason either." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16598" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6383" RevisionGUID="6380d769-19b7-4154-be10-17bba8c6be12" CreationDate="2014-01-07T19:38:58.687" UserId="9113" Text="From the original question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We can define &quot;acceptable&quot; as whatever you yourself would be willing to work in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To my understanding, this means the same as&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We can define &quot;acceptable&quot; as whatever your opinion is about what should be considered as acceptable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So IMHO the close reason fits perfectly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16599" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6383" RevisionGUID="c838c51f-00ff-4d9a-8a39-9ea8cb30aca1" CreationDate="2014-01-07T19:46:52.877" UserId="9113" Comment="added 165 characters in body" Text="From the original question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We can define &quot;acceptable&quot; as whatever you yourself would be willing to work in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To my understanding, this means the same as&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We can define &quot;acceptable&quot; as whatever your opinion is about what should be considered as acceptable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So IMHO the close reason fits perfectly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, the question is about a very specific hardware configuration, which means its unlikely that answers will be of high value to anyone else than the OP. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16600" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6383" RevisionGUID="94939958-9946-4bda-bdf2-112f3de06fc7" CreationDate="2014-01-07T21:38:51.717" UserId="9113" Comment="added 18 characters in body" Text="From the original question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We can define &quot;acceptable&quot; as whatever you yourself would be willing to work in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To my understanding, this means the same as&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We can define &quot;acceptable&quot; as whatever your opinion is about what should be considered as acceptable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So IMHO the close reason fits perfectly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: DMX changed the original text to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; will using a VM have any negative impact on what I'm trying to use this machine for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;but IMHO this does not change the situation that its 100% subjective what the OP means by &quot;acceptable&quot; in the question title, or when he considers the VM &quot;to have a negative impact&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, the question is about the usefulness of a very specific hardware configuration, which means its unlikely that answers will be of high value to anyone else than the OP. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16601" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6383" RevisionGUID="5742218f-de3b-4518-838d-448dcd9ba789" CreationDate="2014-01-07T21:50:08.277" UserId="9113" Comment="added 35 characters in body" Text="From the original question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We can define &quot;acceptable&quot; as whatever you yourself would be willing to work in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To my understanding, this means the same as&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We can define &quot;acceptable&quot; as whatever your opinion is about what should be considered as acceptable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So IMHO the close reason fits perfectly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: DMX changed the original text to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; will using a VM have any negative impact on what I'm trying to use this machine for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;but IMHO this does not change the situation that its 100% subjective what the OP means by &quot;acceptable&quot; in the question title. And everybody can have a different opinion on what is meant by &quot;to have a negative impact&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, the question is about the usefulness of a very specific hardware configuration, which means its unlikely that answers will be of high value to anyone else than the OP. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16602" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6381" RevisionGUID="3bb16ba9-881a-4d2b-8733-ddda7626054c" CreationDate="2014-01-07T23:25:23.020" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/420697701240803328" />
  <row Id="16603" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6384" RevisionGUID="69eceb0b-3224-43f1-aec0-31fc1a6af8aa" CreationDate="2014-01-08T15:27:28.773" UserId="102478" Text="[![Teckids e.V. – Erkunden, Entdecken, Erfinden – Discover, Explore, Forge][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/wwF00.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://www.teckids.org/ad.cgi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16604" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6384" RevisionGUID="2ce0faf0-1324-4558-83ad-a970755023d5" CreationDate="2014-01-08T15:27:28.773" UserId="102478" />
  <row Id="16605" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6371" RevisionGUID="8b43dc15-5027-4794-8d0f-f74bc260877f" CreationDate="2014-01-08T18:05:10.157" UserId="9113" Comment="added example link for showing my point" Text="Every day we still get lots of questions on PSE which are immediately put on hold because of one of the standard closing reasons (asking for career or education advice, asking for an off-site resource and so on...) The posters (which are almost always site newbies, making their first or second post) seem not to be aware of the part of the FAQ stating which questions are not welcome here. I suspect lots of them just don't know the FAQ (well some of them may have read the FAQ and ignored it either, but I assume that's only a small portion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how can we improve that situation and encourage people to read the FAQ first? For example, may it be feasible that whenever one makes a first posting here, he will get a polite  information screen, showing him a link to the FAQ and asking him that (since he is making his first post) he should please double check wether his question fulfills those requirements? Or do you expect that such a site modification would be useless, because lots of people would still ignore the site rules, even when getting a pop-up screen telling them the rules right in from of them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: I guess the link to the &quot;about&quot; page for new users mentioned here in the comments seems not provide the relevant information to new users quickly or clearly enough. For example, have a look at [this post two days ago][1] - the first comment from the OP under the accepted answer was &quot;Where is this FAQ?&quot;. Looks like a &quot;TL;DR&quot; effect to me. Any ideas how to improve that situation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16606" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6385" RevisionGUID="6a7582d0-d1a6-4a94-b83f-b29680254b42" CreationDate="2014-01-09T15:11:43.620" UserId="113756" Text="I think there are two different questions for new people:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How does a SE site work in general?&#xD;&#xA;* What is the exact scope of PSE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [about][1] page tends to answer the first question while the [on-topic][2] page very nicely answers the second question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it would be more obvious to find the on-topic page, more people would read it and the number of off-topic questions should decrease considerably.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16607" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6386" RevisionGUID="b709cd91-24a8-4e71-bbe7-5b698f5026dc" CreationDate="2014-01-10T13:17:21.910" UserId="89722" Text="&gt; **As a newbie I can suggest something. I have not read the FAQ before&#xD;&#xA;&gt; posting my first question. It is like reading all the terms and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; conditions before installing any software. I think 95% of the newbies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; coming here will not read the FAQ before posting their first question.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **When I asked my first question I got negative votes and my question was kept on hold just because I didn't know the rules.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **I have read the short note on the right side while posting new question. Most of the people will get their eye on it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **The note on the right side while adding a new post is as follows:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is your question about software development? We prefer questions that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can be answered, not just discussed. Provide details. Share your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **I suggest adding some more details on the same page where user can see the basic rules. &#xD;&#xA;Or before a newbie is directed to the *'ask question page'* . Let them go through a pop-up like:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **What topics can I ask about here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Your question will be deleted if it is related to:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     general workplace issues, &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     question helpfully for you alone.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     what project you should do next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     what book you should read next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     career advice, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;and a link [Things you have to know before posting a question.][1]&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we can make them read this points before posting a question. We can limit the number of off-topic questions. A **pop-up** would be helpful. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16608" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3252" RevisionGUID="f4c5fd28-dbf4-4185-ba53-80c62396ce40" CreationDate="2014-01-10T15:45:25.840" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|twitter|hot-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16609" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6387" RevisionGUID="a8979a96-b4cb-4ca4-9a00-aec50a8e8820" CreationDate="2014-01-10T23:39:11.713" UserId="74130" Text="If I feel like a certain user is harassing me, editing my answers, downvoting my answers, closing my questions, making offensive and condescending comments, or anything like that; what can I do? I have read the relevant FAQs:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Who are the site moderators, and what is their role here?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why and how are some questions deleted?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What if I disagree with the closure of a question? How can I reopen it?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/site-moderators &quot;Who are the site moderators, and what is their role here?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/deleted-questions &quot;Why and how are some questions deleted?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/reopen-questions &quot;What if I disagree with the closure of a question? How can I reopen it?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what I am asking about is a specific person who seems to be &quot;following me around&quot; the site. Is there something I can do to report that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16610" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6387" RevisionGUID="a8979a96-b4cb-4ca4-9a00-aec50a8e8820" CreationDate="2014-01-10T23:39:11.713" UserId="74130" Text="Is there any recourse for a user who is being harassed by another user?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16611" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6387" RevisionGUID="a8979a96-b4cb-4ca4-9a00-aec50a8e8820" CreationDate="2014-01-10T23:39:11.713" UserId="74130" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16612" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6387" RevisionGUID="66ed6212-1122-494d-ab6d-a2d8f326d87e" CreationDate="2014-01-10T23:47:16.073" UserId="74130" Comment="added 180 characters in body" Text="If I feel like a certain user is harassing me, editing my answers, downvoting my answers, closing my questions, making offensive and condescending comments, or anything like that; what can I do? I have read the relevant FAQs:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Who are the site moderators, and what is their role here?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why and how are some questions deleted?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What if I disagree with the closure of a question? How can I reopen it?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/site-moderators &quot;Who are the site moderators, and what is their role here?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/deleted-questions &quot;Why and how are some questions deleted?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/reopen-questions &quot;What if I disagree with the closure of a question? How can I reopen it?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what I am asking about is a specific person who seems to be &quot;following me around&quot; the site. I only have one answer and one (closed) question on this site, and both of them have positive reputation and upvotes, apart from this single user who is consistently harassing me. Is there something I can do to report that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16613" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6387" RevisionGUID="71ef17fb-be2b-4dc7-a00e-291dad0d5f6b" CreationDate="2014-01-10T23:49:25.333" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags; edited tags" Text="|support|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16614" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6388" RevisionGUID="bead285b-1a7d-4c2f-b40e-9d5d070e64ba" CreationDate="2014-01-10T23:52:06.190" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Claims of harassment are beyond the scope of moderator authority. If you feel that you are being harassed, please contact the [Community Team][1] either through the link I have provided or the &quot;Contact Us&quot; link at the bottom of every page. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/contact" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16616" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6387" RevisionGUID="bc511c65-72c6-4c1d-aecd-a81a4f9ecb2c" CreationDate="2014-01-11T00:59:13.593" UserId="74130" Comment="clarified" Text="If I feel like a certain user is harassing me, editing my answers, downvoting my answers, closing my questions, making offensive and condescending comments, or anything like that; what can I do? I have read the relevant FAQs:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Who are the site moderators, and what is their role here?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why and how are some questions deleted?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What if I disagree with the closure of a question? How can I reopen it?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/site-moderators &quot;Who are the site moderators, and what is their role here?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/deleted-questions &quot;Why and how are some questions deleted?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/reopen-questions &quot;What if I disagree with the closure of a question? How can I reopen it?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what I am asking about is a specific person who seems to be &quot;following me around&quot; the site. I only have one answer and one (closed) question on Programmers.SE, and both of them have positive reputation and upvotes, apart from this single user who is consistently harassing me. Is there something I can do to report that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16621" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6366" RevisionGUID="95aeff38-9000-40bb-8dfb-7f9c15f0e624" CreationDate="2014-01-12T19:06:54.673" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|close-reasons|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16622" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="025c1898-d6c9-4db9-9ace-dc3c1206c1c3" CreationDate="2014-01-12T19:07:12.273" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|featured|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16623" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6391" RevisionGUID="73505ead-3605-46a0-a2c5-c67dcef5674e" CreationDate="2014-01-13T01:38:29.143" UserId="3965" Text="Since he treats everyone that way, and doesn't single out individuals, that somehow makes it no longer harassment, and makes it &quot;conscientiously improving the quality of the site.&quot;  Unfortunately, there is no real policy in place to deal with over-zealousness, despite its affect on the site's image with new users.  You are not the first person to describe the end effect of this particular user's voting and editing patterns as feeling &quot;harassed.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you *can* do is dispute individual edits or closings, either with a meta post, or by raising a flag.  For example, I think you have a pretty strong case that http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/221710/3965 is an example of a &quot;[good subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&quot; question, and I voted to reopen accordingly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16624" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="c41b098a-86e7-4792-b13e-0c384520ce88" CreationDate="2014-01-13T17:03:02.093" UserId="31260" />
  <row Id="16625" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="c41b098a-86e7-4792-b13e-0c384520ce88" CreationDate="2014-01-13T17:03:02.093" UserId="31260" Comment="Using deleted answer as a temporary buffer to stealth-draft new feature requst (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request." Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using deleted answer as a temporary buffer to stealth-draft new feature requst (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions selected for “network hot” list, adjust score to discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points. Suggest to discard answers having score less than `(TopAnswerScore/10-1)`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Display to users list of questions reordered based on the hotness score value adjusted as described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Motivation and details for score adjustment are available in a (declined) feature request: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat&#xD;&#xA;&gt; indiscriminate inclusion of low score answers in questions having lots of views and votes also goes against another underlying assumption in formula &quot;specification&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; one assumes... there will be a lot more voting on the answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...contribution of under-scored posts into &quot;question hotness&quot; (which in turn blocks intended time decay) forces questions with multiple low quality answers stick for a long time at the top of the sidebar, making wrong impression on what kind posts are welcome at Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;This makes it look like good questions are those having many meh answers, the effect that is amplified by these questions being highly visible to sidebar audience - hundreds and thousands of SE users. Misguided users spread acquired attitude further into other questions and answers, posting stuff that follows what they saw at the &quot;cool&quot; (&quot;hot&quot;) questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This request is intended to address [particular decline reason](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) that raised concerns about performance implications of applying mentioned adjustment to large amounts of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This query is very much based on &quot;what data is easily queryable?&quot;. We already have a denormalized column for AnswerCount, so using it in the formula is easy. Forcing the query to actually consider each answer and count it or not based on a formula is not possible in a query that has to cover so many posts. Adding a denormalized field just for this seems like overkill. It'd be much easier to attack this using the columns already in the DB.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that suggested approach doesn't address cases when there are multiple highly upvoted answers (such as some Apple.SE examples in [sticky list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)). Whether &quot;sticky popularity&quot; of these is a problem that needs addressing and if yes, how to address it is out of scope of this request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_For below, I did not yet made up my mind, whether to put it into &quot;basement&quot; of the feature request, or &quot;extract&quot; it into a separate self-answer to avoid blurring of above, or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already addressed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists other points:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16633" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="1a669adf-53bf-4a74-8711-fe2a365881e0" CreationDate="2014-01-13T20:49:08.597" UserId="31260" Comment="stealth-draft revised" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions selected for “network hot” list, adjust score to discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points. Suggest to discard answers having score less than `(TopAnswerScore/10-1)`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Display to users list of questions reordered based on the hotness score value adjusted as described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Motivation and details for score adjustment are available in a (declined) feature request: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat&#xD;&#xA;&gt; indiscriminate inclusion of low score answers in questions having lots of views and votes also goes against another underlying assumption in formula &quot;specification&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; one assumes... there will be a lot more voting on the answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...contribution of under-scored posts into &quot;question hotness&quot; (which in turn blocks intended time decay) forces questions with multiple low quality answers stick for a long time at the top of the sidebar, making wrong impression on what kind posts are welcome at Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;This makes it look like good questions are those having many meh answers, the effect that is amplified by these questions being highly visible to sidebar audience - hundreds and thousands of SE users. Misguided users spread acquired attitude further into other questions and answers, posting stuff that follows what they saw at the &quot;cool&quot; (&quot;hot&quot;) questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This request is intended to address [particular decline reason](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) that raised concerns about performance implications of applying mentioned adjustment to large amounts of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This query is very much based on &quot;what data is easily queryable?&quot;. We already have a denormalized column for AnswerCount, so using it in the formula is easy. Forcing the query to actually consider each answer and count it or not based on a formula is not possible in a query that has to cover so many posts. Adding a denormalized field just for this seems like overkill. It'd be much easier to attack this using the columns already in the DB.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that suggested approach doesn't address cases when there are multiple highly upvoted answers (such as some Apple.SE examples in [sticky list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)). Whether &quot;sticky popularity&quot; of these is a problem that needs addressing and if yes, how to address it is out of scope of this request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already addressed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists other points:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16637" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="b7fa1805-5824-40cc-9a1a-4a51f80fbe03" CreationDate="2014-01-13T21:16:40.530" UserId="31260" Comment="http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/13166671#13166671" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions selected for “network hot” list, adjust score to discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points. Suggest to discard answers having score less than `(TopAnswerScore/10-1)`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Display to users list of questions reordered based on the hotness score value adjusted as described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Motivation and details for score adjustment are available in a (declined) feature request: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat&#xD;&#xA;&gt; indiscriminate inclusion of low score answers in questions having lots of views and votes also goes against another underlying assumption in formula &quot;specification&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; one assumes... there will be a lot more voting on the answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...contribution of under-scored posts into &quot;question hotness&quot; (which in turn blocks intended time decay) forces questions with multiple low quality answers stick for a long time at the top of the sidebar, making wrong impression on what kind posts are welcome at Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;This makes it look like good questions are those having many meh answers, the effect that is amplified by these questions being highly visible to sidebar audience - hundreds and thousands of SE users. Misguided users spread acquired attitude further into other questions and answers, posting stuff that follows what they saw at the &quot;cool&quot; (&quot;hot&quot;) questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This request is intended to address [particular decline reason](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) that raised concerns about performance implications of applying mentioned adjustment to large amounts of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This query is very much based on &quot;what data is easily queryable?&quot;. We already have a denormalized column for AnswerCount, so using it in the formula is easy. Forcing the query to actually consider each answer and count it or not based on a formula is not possible in a query that has to cover so many posts. Adding a denormalized field just for this seems like overkill. It'd be much easier to attack this using the columns already in the DB.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above approach is only a modification to the calculation and **not any change to the db structure and it is limited only to 100 questions**, to guarantee that there's no performance impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that suggested approach doesn't address cases when there are multiple highly upvoted answers (such as some Apple.SE examples in [sticky list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)). Whether &quot;sticky popularity&quot; of these is a problem that needs addressing and if yes, how to address it is out of scope of this request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already addressed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists other points:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16639" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="e5017b8c-fab2-4059-b0ed-a5350fd38ef0" CreationDate="2014-01-13T21:24:09.340" UserId="31260" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="16641" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="f88eb1fd-d1da-4957-9f15-0b52c7df0f5e" CreationDate="2014-01-13T22:02:16.053" UserId="31260" Comment="quote cleanup" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions selected for “network hot” list, adjust score to discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points. Suggest to discard answers having score less than `(TopAnswerScore/10-1)`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Display to users list of questions reordered based on the hotness score value adjusted as described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Motivation and details for score adjustment are available in a (declined) feature request: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that hotness formula &quot;specification&quot; assumes exclusion of the answers that are not considered &quot;good data points&quot;. An example of this is a justification for discarding accepted answers...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;indiscriminate inclusion of low score answers in questions having lots of views and votes also goes against another underlying assumption in formula &quot;specification&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; one assumes... there will be a lot more voting on the answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...contribution of under-scored posts into &quot;question hotness&quot; (which in turn blocks intended time decay) forces questions with multiple low quality answers stick for a long time at the top of the sidebar, making wrong impression on what kind posts are welcome at Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;This makes it look like good questions are those having many _meh_ answers, the effect that is amplified by these questions being highly visible to sidebar audience - hundreds and thousands of SE users. Misguided users spread acquired attitude further into other questions and answers, posting stuff that follows what they saw at the &quot;cool&quot; (&quot;hot&quot;) questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This request is intended to address [particular decline reason](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) that raised concerns about performance implications of applying mentioned adjustment to large amounts of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This query is very much based on &quot;what data is easily queryable?&quot;. We already have a denormalized column for AnswerCount, so using it in the formula is easy. Forcing the query to actually consider each answer and count it or not based on a formula is not possible in a query that has to cover so many posts. Adding a denormalized field just for this seems like overkill. It'd be much easier to attack this using the columns already in the DB.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above approach is only a modification to the calculation and **not any change to the db structure and it is limited only to 100 questions**, to guarantee that there's no performance impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that suggested approach doesn't address cases when there are multiple highly upvoted answers (such as some Apple.SE examples in [sticky list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)). Whether &quot;sticky popularity&quot; of these is a problem that needs addressing and if yes, how to address it, is out of scope of this request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already addressed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists other points:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16642" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6256" RevisionGUID="e9d58361-4d30-42bb-b64c-691620b31d8d" CreationDate="2014-01-13T23:39:57.100" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16643" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="05c7aea4-5eb8-4dcb-9c1b-f2d2b7988b47" CreationDate="2014-01-14T03:27:16.893" UserId="31260" Comment="minor wordsmithing" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions selected for “network hot” list, adjust score to discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points. Suggest to discard answers having score less than `(TopAnswerScore/10-1)`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Display to users list of questions reordered based on the hotness score value adjusted as described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Motivation and details for score adjustment are available in a (declined) feature request: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that hotness formula &quot;specification&quot; assumes exclusion of the answers that are not considered &quot;good data points&quot;. An example of this is a justification for discarding accepted answers...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;indiscriminate inclusion of low score answers in questions having lots of views and votes also goes against another underlying assumption in formula &quot;specification&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; one assumes... there will be a lot more voting on the answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...contribution of under-scored posts into &quot;question hotness&quot; (which in turn blocks intended time decay) forces questions with multiple low quality answers stick for a long time at the top of the sidebar, making wrong impression on what kind posts are welcome at Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;This makes it look like good questions are those having many _meh_ answers, the effect that is amplified by these questions being highly visible to sidebar audience - hundreds and thousands of SE users. Misguided users spread acquired attitude further into other questions and answers, posting stuff that follows what they saw at the &quot;cool&quot; (&quot;hot&quot;) questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This request is intended to address [particular decline reason](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) that raised concerns about performance implications of applying mentioned adjustment to large amounts of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This query is very much based on &quot;what data is easily queryable?&quot;. We already have a denormalized column for AnswerCount, so using it in the formula is easy. Forcing the query to actually consider each answer and count it or not based on a formula is not possible in a query that has to cover so many posts. Adding a denormalized field just for this seems like overkill. It'd be much easier to attack this using the columns already in the DB.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to stress that above approach is only a modification to the calculation and **not any change to the db structure and it is limited only to 100 questions**, to guarantee that there's no performance impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that suggested feature doesn't address cases when there are multiple highly upvoted answers (such as some Apple.SE examples in [sticky list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)). Whether &quot;sticky popularity&quot; of these is a problem that needs addressing and if yes, how to address it, is out of scope of this request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already addressed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists other points:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16644" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="c493b532-6880-4560-9acf-f51687541760" CreationDate="2014-01-14T07:31:15.423" UserId="31260" Comment="point (A) from comments" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions selected for “network hot” list, adjust score to discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points. Suggest to discard answers having score less than `(TopAnswerScore/10-1)`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Display to users list of questions reordered based on the hotness score value adjusted as described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is to ensure that ordering of &quot;mature&quot; questions in the list follows answers with solid score, rather than random bits of garbage picked by popular posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Motivation and details for score adjustment are available in a (declined) feature request: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that hotness formula &quot;specification&quot; assumes exclusion of the answers that are not considered &quot;good data points&quot;. An example of this is a justification for discarding accepted answers...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;indiscriminate inclusion of low score answers in questions having lots of views and votes also goes against another underlying assumption in formula &quot;specification&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; one assumes... there will be a lot more voting on the answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...contribution of under-scored posts into &quot;question hotness&quot; (which in turn blocks intended time decay) forces questions with multiple low quality answers stick for a long time at the top of the sidebar, making wrong impression on what kind posts are welcome at Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;This makes it look like good questions are those having many _meh_ answers, the effect that is amplified by these questions being highly visible to sidebar audience - hundreds and thousands of SE users. Misguided users spread acquired attitude further into other questions and answers, posting stuff that follows what they saw at the &quot;cool&quot; (&quot;hot&quot;) questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This request is intended to address [particular decline reason](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) that raised concerns about performance implications of applying mentioned adjustment to large amounts of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This query is very much based on &quot;what data is easily queryable?&quot;. We already have a denormalized column for AnswerCount, so using it in the formula is easy. Forcing the query to actually consider each answer and count it or not based on a formula is not possible in a query that has to cover so many posts. Adding a denormalized field just for this seems like overkill. It'd be much easier to attack this using the columns already in the DB.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to stress that above approach is only a modification to the calculation and **not any change to the db structure and it is limited only to 100 questions**, to guarantee that there's no performance impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that suggested feature doesn't address cases when there are multiple highly upvoted answers (such as some Apple.SE examples in [sticky list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)). Whether &quot;sticky popularity&quot; of these is a problem that needs addressing and if yes, how to address it, is out of scope of this request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists other points. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16645" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="1bc5ab73-f0f5-4be4-8ae7-ac064f98180c" CreationDate="2014-01-14T07:40:34.013" UserId="31260" Comment="point (C) from comments" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions selected for “network hot” list, adjust score to discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points. Suggest to discard answers having score less than `(TopAnswerScore/10-1)`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Display to users list of questions reordered based on the hotness score value adjusted as described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is to ensure that ordering of &quot;mature&quot; questions in the list follows answers with solid score, rather than random bits of garbage picked by popular posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Motivation and details for score adjustment are available in a (declined) feature request: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that hotness formula &quot;specification&quot; assumes exclusion of the answers that are not considered &quot;good data points&quot;. An example of this is a justification for discarding accepted answers...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;indiscriminate inclusion of low score answers in questions having lots of views and votes also goes against another underlying assumption in formula &quot;specification&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; one assumes... there will be a lot more voting on the answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...contribution of under-scored posts into &quot;question hotness&quot; (which in turn blocks intended time decay) forces questions with multiple low quality answers stick for a long time at the top of the sidebar, making wrong impression on what kind posts are welcome at Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;This makes it look like good questions are those having many _meh_ answers, the effect that is amplified by these questions being highly visible to sidebar audience - hundreds and thousands of SE users. Misguided users spread acquired attitude further into other questions and answers, posting stuff that follows what they saw at the &quot;cool&quot; (&quot;hot&quot;) questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This request is intended to address [particular decline reason](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) that raised concerns about performance implications of applying mentioned adjustment to large amounts of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This query is very much based on &quot;what data is easily queryable?&quot;. We already have a denormalized column for AnswerCount, so using it in the formula is easy. Forcing the query to actually consider each answer and count it or not based on a formula is not possible in a query that has to cover so many posts. Adding a denormalized field just for this seems like overkill. It'd be much easier to attack this using the columns already in the DB.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to stress that above approach is only a modification to the calculation and **not any change to the db structure and it is limited only to 100 questions**, to guarantee that there's no performance impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that suggested feature doesn't address cases when there are multiple highly upvoted answers (such as some Apple.SE examples in [sticky list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)). Whether &quot;sticky popularity&quot; of these is a problem that needs addressing and if yes, how to address it, is out of scope of this request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be also desirable if score adjustment somehow accounted for close votes, especially when there is a lot of these, like 3-4. For why I think so, refer to reasoning used to justify introducing [similar feature for twitter bot](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/139857/twitter-bots-share-posts-with-closevotes-on-them &quot;'Posts with close votes aren't supposed to be tweeted. --&gt; Shouldn't questions be given enough time to be vetted by the community before they're shouted to the... universe?'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists other points. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16646" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="4a02b613-e154-483f-9750-1e6d6d48c345" CreationDate="2014-01-14T07:47:16.070" UserId="31260" Comment="wordsmithing for point (A) in comments" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions selected for “network hot” list, adjust score to discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points. Suggest to discard answers having score less than `(TopAnswerScore/10-1)`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Display to users list of questions reordered based on the hotness score value adjusted as described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is to **ensure that ordering of &quot;mature&quot; questions in the list is driven by answers with solid score**, rather than random bits of garbage picked by popular posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Motivation and details for score adjustment are available in a (declined) feature request: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that hotness formula &quot;specification&quot; assumes exclusion of the answers that are not considered &quot;good data points&quot;. An example of this is a justification for discarding accepted answers...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;indiscriminate inclusion of low score answers in questions having lots of views and votes also goes against another underlying assumption in formula &quot;specification&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; one assumes... there will be a lot more voting on the answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...contribution of under-scored posts into &quot;question hotness&quot; (which in turn blocks intended time decay) forces questions with multiple low quality answers stick for a long time at the top of the sidebar, making wrong impression on what kind posts are welcome at Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;This makes it look like good questions are those having many _meh_ answers, the effect that is amplified by these questions being highly visible to sidebar audience - hundreds and thousands of SE users. Misguided users spread acquired attitude further into other questions and answers, posting stuff that follows what they saw at the &quot;cool&quot; (&quot;hot&quot;) questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This request is intended to address [particular decline reason](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) that raised concerns about performance implications of applying mentioned adjustment to large amounts of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This query is very much based on &quot;what data is easily queryable?&quot;. We already have a denormalized column for AnswerCount, so using it in the formula is easy. Forcing the query to actually consider each answer and count it or not based on a formula is not possible in a query that has to cover so many posts. Adding a denormalized field just for this seems like overkill. It'd be much easier to attack this using the columns already in the DB.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to stress that above approach is only a modification to the calculation and **not any change to the db structure and it is limited only to 100 questions**, to guarantee that there's no performance impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that suggested feature doesn't address cases when there are multiple highly upvoted answers (such as some Apple.SE examples in [sticky list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)). Whether &quot;sticky popularity&quot; of these is a problem that needs addressing and if yes, how to address it, is out of scope of this request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be also desirable if score adjustment somehow accounted for close votes, especially when there is a lot of these, like 3-4. For why I think so, refer to reasoning used to justify introducing [similar feature for twitter bot](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/139857/twitter-bots-share-posts-with-closevotes-on-them &quot;'Posts with close votes aren't supposed to be tweeted. --&gt; Shouldn't questions be given enough time to be vetted by the community before they're shouted to the... universe?'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists other points. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16647" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6395" RevisionGUID="28fbd8a1-e0ef-46d0-ab77-ce30aee273fc" CreationDate="2014-01-14T08:17:03.507" UserId="114467" Text="Yes, but I recommend adding more tags,and perhaps levels. You could do something like: best beginner question in so and so." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16648" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="18a17a14-4a32-4ebb-ba75-764c652a9f47" CreationDate="2014-01-14T08:24:20.230" UserId="31260" Comment="wordsmithing for point (B) in comments" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions selected for “network hot” list, adjust score to discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points. Suggest to discard answers having score less than `(TopAnswerScore/10-1)`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Display to users list of questions reordered based on the hotness score value adjusted as described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is to **ensure that ordering of &quot;mature&quot; questions in the list is driven by answers with solid score**, rather than random bits of garbage picked by popular posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Motivation and details for score adjustment are available in a (declined) feature request: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that hotness formula &quot;specification&quot; assumes exclusion of the answers that are not considered &quot;good data points&quot;. An example of this is a justification for discarding accepted answers...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;indiscriminate inclusion of low score answers in questions having lots of views and votes also goes against another underlying assumption in formula &quot;specification&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; one assumes... there will be a lot more voting on the answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...contribution of under-scored posts into &quot;question hotness&quot; (which in turn blocks intended time decay) forces questions with multiple low quality answers stick for a long time at the top of the sidebar, making wrong impression on what kind posts are welcome at Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;This makes it look like good questions are those having many _meh_ answers, the effect that is amplified by these questions being highly visible to sidebar audience - hundreds and thousands of SE users. Misguided users spread acquired attitude further into other questions and answers, posting stuff that follows what they saw at the &quot;cool&quot; (&quot;hot&quot;) questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This request is intended to address [particular decline reason](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) that raised important technical concerns about performance implications of applying mentioned adjustment to large amounts of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;This query is very much based on **&quot;what data is easily queryable?&quot;** We already have a denormalized column for AnswerCount, so using it in the formula is easy. Forcing the query to actually consider each answer and count it or not based on a formula is not possible in a query that has to cover so many posts. Adding a denormalized field just for this seems like overkill. **It'd be much easier to attack this using the columns already in the DB.**&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to stress that proposed approach is only a modification to the calculation and **not any change to the db structure and it is limited only to 100 questions**, to guarantee that there's no performance impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that suggested feature doesn't address cases when there are multiple highly upvoted answers (such as some Apple.SE examples in [sticky list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)). Whether &quot;sticky popularity&quot; of these is a problem that needs addressing and if yes, how to address it, is out of scope of this request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be also desirable if score adjustment somehow accounted for close votes, especially when there is a lot of these, like 3-4. For why I think so, refer to reasoning used to justify introducing [similar feature for twitter bot](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/139857/twitter-bots-share-posts-with-closevotes-on-them &quot;'Posts with close votes aren't supposed to be tweeted. --&gt; Shouldn't questions be given enough time to be vetted by the community before they're shouted to the... universe?'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists other points. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16649" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6396" RevisionGUID="689e298b-08a7-4192-91d9-b8900ee2e588" CreationDate="2014-01-14T08:28:41.787" UserId="114467" Text="If you in meta, there's no clear button to take you back to the main website, same thing when you in the website and you want to go to meta.&#xD;&#xA;Meta theme is also so similar to the main website that I sometimes get confused between them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16650" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6396" RevisionGUID="689e298b-08a7-4192-91d9-b8900ee2e588" CreationDate="2014-01-14T08:28:41.787" UserId="114467" Text="I'm I the only one finding it confusing to move back and forth between meta and main website?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16651" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6396" RevisionGUID="689e298b-08a7-4192-91d9-b8900ee2e588" CreationDate="2014-01-14T08:28:41.787" UserId="114467" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16652" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="5309476e-489a-4043-a9d5-a7d6e5a7ad12" CreationDate="2014-01-14T08:38:28.810" UserId="76096" Comment="aggressive edit to try to focus the question and be readable to people not versed in the long history of the specific formulas behind this list" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Executive Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions are selected for the &quot;Hot Network Questions&quot; list displayed in the sidebar of each site. These questions are designed to showcase other sites in the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those questions should act as ambassadors from that site to the Stack Exchange Network, but due to the way the questions are calculated, bad data points result in poor examples staying on the list for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[A previous request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat) to fix this problem was marked as [meta-tag:status-declined] due to technical issues, so this question is requesting to change the order of the list without increasing the resources required to implement it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange Network Hot Questions are viewed by hundreds of thousands of eyes. The people whose first introduction of an SE site are influenced by the hot questions they see attributed to that site. If the questions that are selected are good ambassadors for that site, the influx of new users is positive. If bad data points get selected, new users will follow the example of the hot question which can overwhelm budding community moderation, having a negative impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Bad Data Points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that can cause problems with the current hot questions list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Negative Scored Answers are Scored Positively&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close Votes are Not Taken Into Account&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current formula increases 'hotness' as the number of answers increases, even if those answers have a negative score. Bad answers are not an indication of a good question, and should not be used to determine the hotness of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that have close votes are treated as if there are no close votes. Smaller communities with questions asked at times when users with privileges are not around may have questions that would normally be closed getting upvotes before the community can moderate and improve the question. Close votes should be counted against questions in that list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Technical Limitations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The previous [meta-tag:feature-request] was declined because the proposed formula would increase the resources required to make the query, and that was preventing its implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We propose that the same parameters be used to select the 100 hottest questions, but the ranking of those 100 questions should be re-ordered with the following conditions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answers with a score lower than `(TopAnswerScore / 10) - 1` should be discarded from the hotness calculation&#xD;&#xA; - Close votes on the question should reduce the total hotness of the question by 20% (so a closed question would have a 0 hotness score)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will prevent questions from [sticking to the top of the hot list too long](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever) by accumulating bad answers, and allow a couple quick close votes to prevent a bad example question from being broadcast across the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists other points. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16653" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6396" RevisionGUID="6f445c02-29df-4b6a-a6ae-9c2a57ff282f" CreationDate="2014-01-14T09:01:01.490" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16654" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6397" RevisionGUID="80b8b7a5-fbe1-401f-9903-a895564d856d" CreationDate="2014-01-14T09:05:43.757" UserId="25936" Text="There used to be a link to Meta in the navigation bar, but it was removed recently. Now, you'll have to expand the StackExchange dropdown to move between Meta and main: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not immediately obvious where the links are, but once you find them I think. it's pretty easy to switch between the sites. Note that the link to site you are currently on (in my case Meta) is bolded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign][2] (on MSO)&#xD;&#xA;- [A New Top Bar for Stack Exchange][3] (on blog.SO)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZlJ5S.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/198613/feedback-request-new-top-bar-and-multicollider-redesign&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/12/a-new-top-bar-for-stack-exchange/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16655" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6396" RevisionGUID="b07ef01f-9ec1-48cf-a6f4-69f09e7f1607" CreationDate="2014-01-14T09:10:06.807" UserId="114467" Comment="edited title" Text="Am I the only one finding it confusing to move back and forth between meta and main website?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16656" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="f2f9fc9f-ffbb-469d-a84e-de58d2e364d9" CreationDate="2014-01-14T10:08:43.353" UserId="31260" Comment="Regarding &quot;lemming&quot; meh answers, worth mentioning that at SO these seem to be less of a problem but since vast majority of posts in hot list come from smaller sites, this doesn't help" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Executive Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions are selected for the &quot;Hot Network Questions&quot; list displayed in the sidebar of each site. These questions are designed to showcase other sites in the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those questions should act as ambassadors from that site to the Stack Exchange Network, but due to the way the questions are calculated, bad data points result in poor examples staying on the list for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[A previous request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat) to fix this problem was marked as [meta-tag:status-declined] due to technical issues, so this question is requesting to change the order of the list without increasing the resources required to implement it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange Network Hot Questions are viewed by hundreds of thousands of eyes. The people whose first introduction of an SE site are influenced by the hot questions they see attributed to that site. If the questions that are selected are good ambassadors for that site, the influx of new users is positive. If bad data points get selected, new users will follow the example of the hot question which can overwhelm budding community moderation, having a negative impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Bad Data Points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that can cause problems with the current hot questions list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Negative Scored Answers are Scored Positively&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close Votes are Not Taken Into Account&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current formula increases 'hotness' as the number of answers increases, even if those answers have a negative score. Bad answers are not an indication of a good question, and should not be used to determine the hotness of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that have close votes are treated as if there are no close votes. Smaller communities with questions asked at times when users with privileges are not around may have questions that would normally be closed getting upvotes before the community can moderate and improve the question. Close votes should be counted against questions in that list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Technical Limitations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The previous [meta-tag:feature-request] was declined because the proposed formula would increase the resources required to make the query, and that was preventing its implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We propose that the same parameters be used to select the 100 hottest questions, but the ranking of those 100 questions should be re-ordered with the following conditions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answers with a score lower than `(TopAnswerScore / 10) - 1` should be discarded from the hotness calculation&#xD;&#xA; - Close votes on the question should reduce the total hotness of the question by 20% (so a closed question would have a 0 hotness score)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will prevent questions from [sticking to the top of the hot list too long](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever) by accumulating bad answers, and allow a couple quick close votes to prevent a bad example question from being broadcast across the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists other points. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Regarding  &quot;lemming&quot; _meh_ answers, worth mentioning that at SO these seem to be [less of a problem](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/13160475#13160475 &quot;for the reasons explained eg here&quot;) but since _vast majority of posts in hot list come from smaller sites_, this doesn't help.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16657" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="f882a28f-bf80-4a61-8313-b35a54c8f1a1" CreationDate="2014-01-14T10:47:25.017" UserId="31260" Comment="http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/13177570#13177570" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Executive Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions are selected for the &quot;Hot Network Questions&quot; list displayed in the sidebar of each site. These questions are designed to showcase other sites in the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those questions should act as ambassadors from that site to the Stack Exchange Network, but due to the way the questions are calculated, bad data points result in poor examples staying on the list for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[A previous request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat) to fix this problem was marked as [meta-tag:status-declined] due to technical issues, so this question is requesting to change the order of the list without increasing the resources required to implement it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange Network Hot Questions are viewed by hundreds of thousands of eyes. The people whose first introduction of an SE site are influenced by the hot questions they see attributed to that site. If the questions that are selected are good ambassadors for that site, the influx of new users is positive. If bad data points get selected, new users will follow the example of the hot question which can overwhelm budding community moderation, having a negative impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Bad Data Points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that can cause problems with the current hot questions list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Ordering of &quot;mature&quot; questions in the list is driven by random bits of garbage picked by popular posts instead of answers with solid score.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close votes are not taken into account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current formula increases 'hotness' as the number of answers increases, even if voting evidence (score) indicates that those answers are of low interest. Bad answers are not an indication of a good question, and should not be used to determine the hotness of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that have close votes are treated as if there are no close votes. Smaller communities with questions asked at times when users with privileges are not around may have questions that would normally be closed getting upvotes before the community can moderate and improve the question. Close votes should be counted against questions in that list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Technical Limitations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The previous [meta-tag:feature-request] was declined because the proposed formula would increase the resources required to make the query, and that was preventing its implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We propose that the same parameters be used to select the 100 hottest questions, but the ranking of those 100 questions should be re-ordered with the following conditions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answers with a score lower than `(TopAnswerScore / 10) - 1` should be discarded from the hotness calculation&#xD;&#xA; - Close votes on the question should reduce the total hotness of the question by 20% (so a closed question would have a 0 hotness score)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will prevent questions from [sticking to the top of the hot list too long](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever) by accumulating bad answers, and allow a couple quick close votes to prevent a bad example question from being broadcast across the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists other points. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Regarding  &quot;lemming&quot; _meh_ answers, worth mentioning that at SO these seem to be [less of a problem](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/13160475#13160475 &quot;for the reasons explained eg here&quot;) but since _vast majority of posts in hot list come from smaller sites_, this doesn't help.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16658" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="78197c7f-cd6a-4d5c-8ff2-b14d26dbf60c" CreationDate="2014-01-14T11:04:48.333" UserId="31260" Comment="same parameters += as before + (http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/61343/165773 &quot;as specified here&quot;)" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Executive Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions are selected for the &quot;Hot Network Questions&quot; list displayed in the sidebar of each site. These questions are designed to showcase other sites in the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those questions should act as ambassadors from that site to the Stack Exchange Network, but due to the way the questions are calculated, bad data points result in poor examples staying on the list for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[A previous request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat) to fix this problem was marked as [meta-tag:status-declined] due to [technical issues](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773 &quot;details here&quot;), so this question is requesting to change the order of the list without increasing the resources required to implement it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange Network Hot Questions are viewed by hundreds of thousands of eyes. The people whose first introduction of an SE site are influenced by the hot questions they see attributed to that site. If the questions that are selected are good ambassadors for that site, the influx of new users is positive. If bad data points get selected, new users will follow the example of the hot question which can overwhelm budding community moderation, having a negative impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Bad Data Points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that can cause problems with the current hot questions list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Ordering of &quot;mature&quot; questions in the list is driven by random bits of garbage picked by popular posts instead of answers with solid score.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close votes are not taken into account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current formula increases 'hotness' as the number of answers increases, even if voting evidence (score) indicates that those answers are of low interest. Bad answers are not an indication of a good question, and should not be used to determine the hotness of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that have close votes are treated as if there are no close votes. Smaller communities with questions asked at times when users with privileges are not around may have questions that would normally be closed getting upvotes before the community can moderate and improve the question. Close votes should be counted against questions in that list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Technical Limitations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The previous [meta-tag:feature-request] was declined because the proposed formula would increase the resources required to make the query, and that was preventing its implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We propose that the [same parameters as before](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/61343/165773 &quot;as specified here&quot;) be used to select the 100 hottest questions, but the ranking of those 100 questions should be re-ordered with the following conditions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answers with a score lower than `(TopAnswerScore / 10) - 1` should be discarded from the hotness calculation&#xD;&#xA; - Close votes on the question should reduce the total hotness of the question by 20% (so a closed question would have a 0 hotness score)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will prevent questions from [sticking to the top of the hot list too long](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever) by accumulating bad answers, and allow a couple quick close votes to prevent a bad example question from being broadcast across the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists some other points as well. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Regarding  &quot;lemming&quot; _meh_ answers, worth mentioning that at SO these seem to be [less of a problem](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/13160475#13160475 &quot;for the reasons explained eg here&quot;) but since _vast majority of posts in hot list come from smaller sites_, this doesn't help.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16659" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="198f59d5-44df-4438-b7d4-9a1665ef12e9" CreationDate="2014-01-14T11:18:55.357" UserId="31260" Comment="Note how this contrasts to [close votes impact in twitter bot](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/139857/twitter-bots-share-posts-with-closevotes-on-them &quot;'Posts with close votes aren't supposed to be tweeted. --&gt; Shouldn't questions be given enough time to be vetted by the community..." Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Executive Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions are selected for the &quot;Hot Network Questions&quot; list displayed in the sidebar of each site. These questions are designed to showcase other sites in the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those questions should act as ambassadors from that site to the Stack Exchange Network, but due to the way the questions are calculated, bad data points result in poor examples staying on the list for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[A previous request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat) to fix this problem was marked as [meta-tag:status-declined] due to [technical issues](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773 &quot;details here&quot;), so this question is requesting to change the order of the list without increasing the resources required to implement it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange Network Hot Questions are viewed by hundreds of thousands of eyes. The people whose first introduction of an SE site are influenced by the hot questions they see attributed to that site. If the questions that are selected are good ambassadors for that site, the influx of new users is positive. If bad data points get selected, new users will follow the example of the hot question which can overwhelm budding community moderation, having a negative impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Bad Data Points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that can cause problems with the current hot questions list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Ordering of &quot;mature&quot; questions in the list is driven by random bits of garbage picked by popular posts instead of answers with solid score.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close votes are not taken into account. Note how this contrasts to [close votes impact in twitter bot](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/139857/twitter-bots-share-posts-with-closevotes-on-them &quot;'Posts with close votes aren't supposed to be tweeted. --&gt; Shouldn't questions be given enough time to be vetted by the community before they're shouted to the... universe?'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current formula increases 'hotness' as the number of answers increases, even if voting evidence (score) indicates that those answers are of low interest. Bad answers are not an indication of a good question, and should not be used to determine the hotness of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that have close votes are treated as if there are no close votes. Smaller communities with questions asked at times when users with privileges are not around may have questions that would normally be closed getting upvotes before the community can moderate and improve the question. Close votes should be counted against questions in that list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Technical Limitations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The previous [meta-tag:feature-request] was declined because the proposed formula would increase the resources required to make the query, and that was preventing its implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We propose that the [same parameters as before](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/61343/165773 &quot;as specified here&quot;) be used to select the 100 hottest questions, but the ranking of those 100 questions should be re-ordered with the following conditions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answers with a score lower than `(TopAnswerScore / 10) - 1` should be discarded from the hotness calculation&#xD;&#xA; - Close votes on the question should reduce the total hotness of the question by 20% (so a closed question would have a 0 hotness score)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will prevent questions from [sticking to the top of the hot list too long](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever) by accumulating bad answers, and allow a couple quick close votes to prevent a bad example question from being broadcast across the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists some other points as well. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Regarding  &quot;lemming&quot; _meh_ answers, worth mentioning that at SO these seem to be [less of a problem](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/13160475#13160475 &quot;for the reasons explained eg here&quot;) but since _vast majority of posts in hot list come from smaller sites_, this doesn't help.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16660" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="9928a1ed-2d90-4b94-ba89-8839ea49ad6d" CreationDate="2014-01-14T11:26:38.580" UserId="31260" Comment="trial recovery of point introduced per http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/13166671#13166671" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Executive Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions are selected for the &quot;Hot Network Questions&quot; list displayed in the sidebar of each site. These questions are designed to showcase other sites in the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those questions should act as ambassadors from that site to the Stack Exchange Network, but due to the way the questions are calculated, bad data points result in poor examples staying on the list for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[A previous request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat) to fix this problem was marked as [meta-tag:status-declined] due to [technical issues](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773 &quot;details here&quot;), so this question is requesting to change the order of the list without increasing the resources required to implement it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange Network Hot Questions are viewed by hundreds of thousands of eyes. The people whose first introduction of an SE site are influenced by the hot questions they see attributed to that site. If the questions that are selected are good ambassadors for that site, the influx of new users is positive. If bad data points get selected, new users will follow the example of the hot question which can overwhelm budding community moderation, having a negative impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Bad Data Points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that can cause problems with the current hot questions list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Ordering of &quot;mature&quot; questions in the list is driven by random bits of garbage picked by popular posts instead of answers with solid score.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close votes are not taken into account. Note how this contrasts to [close votes impact in twitter bot](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/139857/twitter-bots-share-posts-with-closevotes-on-them &quot;'Posts with close votes aren't supposed to be tweeted. --&gt; Shouldn't questions be given enough time to be vetted by the community before they're shouted to the... universe?'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current formula increases 'hotness' as the number of answers increases, even if voting evidence (score) indicates that those answers are of low interest. Bad answers are not an indication of a good question, and should not be used to determine the hotness of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that have close votes are treated as if there are no close votes. Smaller communities with questions asked at times when users with privileges are not around may have questions that would normally be closed getting upvotes before the community can moderate and improve the question. Close votes should be counted against questions in that list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Technical Limitations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The previous [meta-tag:feature-request] was declined because the proposed formula would increase the resources required to make the query, and that was preventing its implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We propose that the [same parameters as before](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/61343/165773 &quot;as specified here&quot;) be used to select the 100 hottest questions, but the ranking of those 100 questions should be re-ordered with the following conditions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answers with a score lower than `(TopAnswerScore / 10) - 1` should be discarded from the hotness calculation&#xD;&#xA; - Close votes on the question should reduce the total hotness of the question by 20% (so a closed question would have a 0 hotness score)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will prevent questions from [sticking to the top of the hot list too long](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever) by accumulating bad answers, and allow a couple quick close votes to prevent a bad example question from being broadcast across the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth stressing that proposed approach is only a modification to the calculation and **not any change to the database structure** and that **it is limited only to 100 questions**, to guarantee that performance impact is under control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists some other points as well. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Regarding  &quot;lemming&quot; _meh_ answers, worth mentioning that at SO these seem to be [less of a problem](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/13160475#13160475 &quot;for the reasons explained eg here&quot;) but since _vast majority of posts in hot list come from smaller sites_, this doesn't help.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16661" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="76ba4132-e8ee-4cd3-b856-6f906553e532" CreationDate="2014-01-14T11:49:41.053" UserId="31260" Comment="wordsmithing" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Executive Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions are selected for the &quot;Hot Network Questions&quot; list displayed in the sidebar of each site. These questions are designed to showcase other sites in the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those questions should act as ambassadors from that site to the Stack Exchange Network, but due to the way the questions are calculated, bad data points result in poor examples staying on the list for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[A previous request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat) to fix this problem was marked as [meta-tag:status-declined] due to [technical issues](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773 &quot;details here&quot;), so this question is requesting to change the order of the list without increasing the resources required to implement it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange Network Hot Questions are viewed by hundreds of thousands of eyes. The people whose first introduction of an SE site are influenced by the hot questions they see attributed to that site. If the questions that are selected are good ambassadors for that site, the influx of new users is positive. If bad data points get selected, new users will follow the example of the hot question which can overwhelm budding community moderation, having a negative impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Bad Data Points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that can cause problems with the current hot questions list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Ordering of &quot;mature&quot; questions in the list is driven by random bits of garbage picked by popular posts instead of answers with solid score.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close votes are not taken into account. Note how this contrasts to [close votes impact in twitter bot](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/139857/twitter-bots-share-posts-with-closevotes-on-them &quot;'Posts with close votes aren't supposed to be tweeted. --&gt; Shouldn't questions be given enough time to be vetted by the community before they're shouted to the... universe?'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current formula increases 'hotness' as the number of answers increases, even if voting evidence (score) indicates that those answers are of low interest. Bad answers are not an indication of a good question, and should not be used to determine the hotness of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that have close votes are treated as if there are no close votes. Smaller communities with questions asked at times when users with privileges are not around may have questions that would normally be closed getting upvotes before the community can moderate and improve the question. Close votes should be counted against questions in that list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Technical Limitations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The previous [meta-tag:feature-request] was declined because the proposed formula would increase the resources required to make the query, and that was preventing its implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Approach proposed here addresses above concerns by providing only a modification to the calculation and **not any change to the database structure** and it is **limited only to fixed amount of questions**, to guarantee that performance impact is under control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We propose that the [same parameters as before](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/61343/165773 &quot;as specified here&quot;) be used to select the 100 hottest questions, but the ranking of those 100 questions should be re-ordered with the following conditions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answers with a score lower than `(TopAnswerScore / 10) - 1` should be discarded from the hotness calculation&#xD;&#xA; - Close votes on the question should reduce the total hotness of the question by 20% (so a closed question would have a 0 hotness score)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will prevent questions from [sticking to the top of the hot list too long](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever) by accumulating bad answers, and allow a couple quick close votes to prevent a bad example question from being broadcast across the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists some other points as well. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Regarding  &quot;lemming&quot; _meh_ answers, worth mentioning that at SO these seem to be [less of a problem](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/13160475#13160475 &quot;for the reasons explained eg here&quot;) but since _vast majority of posts in hot list come from smaller sites_, this doesn't help.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16662" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="4f89d66a-0e40-45eb-b74c-6273ce470a68" CreationDate="2014-01-14T11:58:31.367" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting to please readers who think like Kate... // http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/214473/165773" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Executive Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions are selected for the &quot;Hot Network Questions&quot; list displayed in the sidebar of each site. These questions are designed to showcase other sites in the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those questions should act as ambassadors from that site to the Stack Exchange Network, but due to the way the questions are calculated, bad data points result in poor examples staying on the list for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[A previous request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat) to fix this problem was marked as [meta-tag:status-declined] due to [technical issues](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773 &quot;details here&quot;), so this question is requesting to change the order of the list without increasing the resources required to implement it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange Network Hot Questions are viewed by hundreds of thousands of eyes. The people whose first introduction of an SE site are influenced by the hot questions they see attributed to that site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the questions that are selected are good ambassadors for that site, the influx of new users is positive. If bad data points get selected, new users will follow the example of the hot question which can overwhelm budding community moderation, having a negative impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Bad Data Points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that can cause problems with the current hot questions list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Ordering of &quot;mature&quot; questions in the list is driven by random bits of garbage picked by popular posts instead of answers with solid score.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close votes are not taken into account. Note how this contrasts to [close votes impact in twitter bot](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/139857/twitter-bots-share-posts-with-closevotes-on-them &quot;'Posts with close votes aren't supposed to be tweeted. --&gt; Shouldn't questions be given enough time to be vetted by the community before they're shouted to the... universe?'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current formula increases 'hotness' as the number of answers increases, even if voting evidence (score) indicates that those answers are of low interest. Bad answers are not an indication of a good question, and should not be used to determine the hotness of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that have close votes are treated as if there are no close votes. Smaller communities with questions asked at times when users with privileges are not around may have questions that would normally be closed getting upvotes before the community can moderate and improve the question. Close votes should be counted against questions in that list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Technical Limitations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The previous [meta-tag:feature-request] was declined because the proposed formula would increase the resources required to make the query, and that was preventing its implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Approach proposed here addresses above concerns by providing only a modification to the calculation and **not any change to the database structure** and it is **limited only to fixed amount of questions**, to guarantee that performance impact is under control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We propose that the [same parameters as before](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/61343/165773 &quot;as specified here&quot;) be used to select the 100 hottest questions, but the ranking of those 100 questions should be re-ordered with the following conditions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answers with a score lower than `(TopAnswerScore / 10) - 1` should be discarded from the hotness calculation&#xD;&#xA; - Close votes on the question should reduce the total hotness of the question by 20% (so a closed question would have a 0 hotness score)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will prevent questions from [sticking to the top of the hot list too long](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever) by accumulating bad answers, and allow a couple quick close votes to prevent a bad example question from being broadcast across the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists some other points as well. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Regarding  &quot;lemming&quot; _meh_ answers, worth mentioning that at SO these seem to be [less of a problem](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/13160475#13160475 &quot;for the reasons explained eg here&quot;) but since _vast majority of posts in hot list come from smaller sites_, this doesn't help.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16663" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="df4f48f9-2a2f-4da5-8c96-fd9f581c79a2" CreationDate="2014-01-14T14:31:38.933" UserId="31260" Comment="&quot;basement&quot; / self-answer draft += suggested feature doesn't address cases when there are multiple highly upvoted answers..." Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Executive Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions are selected for the &quot;Hot Network Questions&quot; list displayed in the sidebar of each site. These questions are designed to showcase other sites in the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those questions should act as ambassadors from that site to the Stack Exchange Network, but due to the way the questions are calculated, bad data points result in poor examples staying on the list for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[A previous request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat) to fix this problem was marked as [meta-tag:status-declined] due to [technical issues](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773 &quot;details here&quot;), so this question is requesting to change the order of the list without increasing the resources required to implement it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange Network Hot Questions are viewed by hundreds of thousands of eyes. The people whose first introduction of an SE site are influenced by the hot questions they see attributed to that site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the questions that are selected are good ambassadors for that site, the influx of new users is positive. If bad data points get selected, new users will follow the example of the hot question which can overwhelm budding community moderation, having a negative impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Bad Data Points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that can cause problems with the current hot questions list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Ordering of &quot;mature&quot; questions in the list is driven by random bits of garbage picked by popular posts instead of answers with solid score.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close votes are not taken into account. Note how this contrasts to [close votes impact in twitter bot](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/139857/twitter-bots-share-posts-with-closevotes-on-them &quot;'Posts with close votes aren't supposed to be tweeted. --&gt; Shouldn't questions be given enough time to be vetted by the community before they're shouted to the... universe?'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current formula increases 'hotness' as the number of answers increases, even if voting evidence (score) indicates that those answers are of low interest. Bad answers are not an indication of a good question, and should not be used to determine the hotness of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that have close votes are treated as if there are no close votes. Smaller communities with questions asked at times when users with privileges are not around may have questions that would normally be closed getting upvotes before the community can moderate and improve the question. Close votes should be counted against questions in that list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Technical Limitations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The previous [meta-tag:feature-request] was declined because the proposed formula would increase the resources required to make the query, and that was preventing its implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Approach proposed here addresses above concerns by providing only a modification to the calculation and **not any change to the database structure** and it is **limited only to fixed amount of questions**, to guarantee that performance impact is under control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We propose that the [same parameters as before](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/61343/165773 &quot;as specified here&quot;) be used to select the 100 hottest questions, but the ranking of those 100 questions should be re-ordered with the following conditions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answers with a score lower than `(TopAnswerScore / 10) - 1` should be discarded from the hotness calculation&#xD;&#xA; - Close votes on the question should reduce the total hotness of the question by 20% (so a closed question would have a 0 hotness score)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will prevent questions from [sticking to the top of the hot list too long](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever) by accumulating bad answers, and allow a couple quick close votes to prevent a bad example question from being broadcast across the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists some other points as well. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Regarding  &quot;lemming&quot; _meh_ answers, worth mentioning that at SO these seem to be [less of a problem](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/13160475#13160475 &quot;for the reasons explained eg here&quot;) but since _vast majority of posts in hot list come from smaller sites_, this doesn't help.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also worth noting that suggested feature doesn't address cases when there are multiple highly upvoted answers (such as some Apple.SE examples in [sticky list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)). Whether &quot;sticky popularity&quot; of these is a problem that needs addressing and if yes, how to address it, is out of scope of this request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16664" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6398" RevisionGUID="e9bab7df-a5f6-4145-abec-882bd862bd47" CreationDate="2014-01-14T16:28:29.027" UserId="16658" Text="I have earned the yearling badge twice, just a few days apart, in this year, on programmers: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/16658/fejesjoco?tab=badges&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also got them here on this meta site, where I have never contributed anything before this: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/16658/fejesjoco?tab=badges&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like a bug to me, I haven't seen this behavior on other SE sites yet." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16665" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6398" RevisionGUID="e9bab7df-a5f6-4145-abec-882bd862bd47" CreationDate="2014-01-14T16:28:29.027" UserId="16658" Text="One badge awarded twice, also on meta site" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16666" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6398" RevisionGUID="e9bab7df-a5f6-4145-abec-882bd862bd47" CreationDate="2014-01-14T16:28:29.027" UserId="16658" Text="|bug|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16667" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6398" RevisionGUID="739d675a-b8f2-4199-9a65-75572c54fe1b" CreationDate="2014-01-14T16:38:59.890" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="added support tag" Text="|support|bug|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16668" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6399" RevisionGUID="09910847-6204-4031-8a63-f61d4ca58a60" CreationDate="2014-01-14T16:43:53.750" UserId="47" Text="This is by design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rules for the Yearling badge are quite simple, it divides your reputation by the number of years you have been a member and if the answer is &gt; 200 you get a Yearling badge per year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if in your first year you earn less than 200, but in the second you earn more (as you have done), you'll get two badges in quick succession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As there is no separate meta rep you get the Yearling here if you get the Yearling on the main site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16669" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="c1d647f6-3634-4cd7-9177-5e2b8c0b7e9d" CreationDate="2014-01-14T19:07:29.470" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Executive Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions are selected for the &quot;Hot Network Questions&quot; list displayed in the sidebar of each site. These questions are designed to showcase other sites in the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those questions should act as ambassadors from that site to the Stack Exchange Network, but due to the way the questions are calculated, bad data points result in poor examples staying on the list for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[A previous request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat) to fix this problem was marked as [meta-tag:status-declined] due to [technical issues](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773 &quot;details here&quot;), so this question is requesting to change the order of the list without increasing the resources required to implement it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange Network Hot Questions are viewed by hundreds of thousands of eyes. The people whose first introduction of an SE site are influenced by the hot questions they see attributed to that site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the questions that are selected are good ambassadors for that site, the influx of new users is positive. If bad data points get selected, new users will follow the example of the hot question which can overwhelm budding community moderation, having a negative impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Bad Data Points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that can cause problems with the current hot questions list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Ordering of &quot;mature&quot; questions in the list is driven by random bits of garbage picked by popular posts instead of answers with solid score.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close votes are not taken into account. Note how this contrasts to [close votes impact in twitter bot](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/139857/twitter-bots-share-posts-with-closevotes-on-them &quot;'Posts with close votes aren't supposed to be tweeted. --&gt; Shouldn't questions be given enough time to be vetted by the community before they're shouted to the... universe?'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current formula increases 'hotness' as the number of answers increases, even if voting evidence (score) indicates that those answers are of low interest. Bad answers are not an indication of a good question, and should not be used to determine the hotness of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that have close votes are treated as if there are no close votes. Smaller communities with questions asked at times when users with privileges are not around may have questions that would normally be closed getting upvotes before the community can moderate and improve the question. Close votes should be counted against questions in that list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Technical Limitations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The previous [meta-tag:feature-request] was declined because the proposed formula would increase the resources required to make the query, and that was preventing its implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Approach proposed here addresses above concerns by providing only a modification to the calculation and **not any change to the database structure** and it is **limited only to fixed amount of questions**, to guarantee that performance impact is under control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We propose that the [same parameters as before](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/61343/165773 &quot;as specified here&quot;) be used to select the 100 hottest questions, but the ranking of those 100 questions should be re-ordered with the following conditions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answers with a score lower than `(TopAnswerScore / 10) - 1` should be discarded from the hotness calculation&#xD;&#xA; - Close votes on the question should reduce the total hotness of the question by 20% (so a closed question would have a 0 hotness score)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will prevent questions from [sticking to the top of the hot list too long](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever) by accumulating bad answers, and allow a couple quick close votes to prevent a bad example question from being broadcast across the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists some other points as well. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Regarding  &quot;lemming&quot; _meh_ answers, worth mentioning that at SO these seem to be [less of a problem](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/13160475#13160475 &quot;for the reasons explained eg here&quot;) but since _vast majority of posts in hot list come from smaller sites_, this doesn't help.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also worth noting that suggested feature doesn't address cases when there are multiple highly upvoted answers (such as some Apple.SE examples in [sticky list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)). Whether &quot;sticky popularity&quot; of these is a problem that needs addressing and if yes, how to address it, is out of scope of this request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16670" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="6ccad57e-ee63-4d67-9026-45a135f742f4" CreationDate="2014-01-14T19:15:09.970" UserId="31260" Comment="We += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/5542/revisions &quot;gnat, jmac, GlenH7, MichaelT - directly involved in drafting this request&quot;" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Executive Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions are selected for the &quot;Hot Network Questions&quot; list displayed in the sidebar of each site. These questions are designed to showcase other sites in the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those questions should act as ambassadors from that site to the Stack Exchange Network, but due to the way the questions are calculated, bad data points result in poor examples staying on the list for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[A previous request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat) to fix this problem was marked as [meta-tag:status-declined] due to [technical issues](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773 &quot;details here&quot;), so this question is requesting to change the order of the list without increasing the resources required to implement it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange Network Hot Questions are viewed by hundreds of thousands of eyes. The people whose first introduction of an SE site are influenced by the hot questions they see attributed to that site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the questions that are selected are good ambassadors for that site, the influx of new users is positive. If bad data points get selected, new users will follow the example of the hot question which can overwhelm budding community moderation, having a negative impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Bad Data Points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that can cause problems with the current hot questions list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Ordering of &quot;mature&quot; questions in the list is driven by random bits of garbage picked by popular posts instead of answers with solid score.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close votes are not taken into account. Note how this contrasts to [close votes impact in twitter bot](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/139857/twitter-bots-share-posts-with-closevotes-on-them &quot;'Posts with close votes aren't supposed to be tweeted. --&gt; Shouldn't questions be given enough time to be vetted by the community before they're shouted to the... universe?'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current formula increases 'hotness' as the number of answers increases, even if voting evidence (score) indicates that those answers are of low interest. Bad answers are not an indication of a good question, and should not be used to determine the hotness of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that have close votes are treated as if there are no close votes. Smaller communities with questions asked at times when users with privileges are not around may have questions that would normally be closed getting upvotes before the community can moderate and improve the question. Close votes should be counted against questions in that list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Technical Limitations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The previous [meta-tag:feature-request] was declined because the proposed formula would increase the resources required to make the query, and that was preventing its implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Approach proposed here addresses above concerns by providing only a modification to the calculation and **not any change to the database structure** and it is **limited only to fixed amount of questions**, to guarantee that performance impact is under control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[We](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/5542/revisions &quot;gnat, jmac, GlenH7, MichaelT - directly involved in drafting this request&quot;) propose that the [same parameters as before](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/61343/165773 &quot;as specified here&quot;) be used to select the 100 hottest questions, but the ranking of those 100 questions should be re-ordered with the following conditions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answers with a score lower than `(TopAnswerScore / 10) - 1` should be discarded from the hotness calculation&#xD;&#xA; - Close votes on the question should reduce the total hotness of the question by 20% (so a closed question would have a 0 hotness score)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will prevent questions from [sticking to the top of the hot list too long](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever) by accumulating bad answers, and allow a couple quick close votes to prevent a bad example question from being broadcast across the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists some other points as well. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Regarding  &quot;lemming&quot; _meh_ answers, worth mentioning that at SO these seem to be [less of a problem](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/13160475#13160475 &quot;for the reasons explained eg here&quot;) but since _vast majority of posts in hot list come from smaller sites_, this doesn't help.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also worth noting that suggested feature doesn't address cases when there are multiple highly upvoted answers (such as some Apple.SE examples in [sticky list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)). Whether &quot;sticky popularity&quot; of these is a problem that needs addressing and if yes, how to address it, is out of scope of this request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16671" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="62b72224-cc02-456e-911c-8839e609aa74" CreationDate="2014-01-14T21:02:41.100" UserId="31260" Comment="wordsmithing" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Executive Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions are selected for the &quot;Hot Network Questions&quot; list displayed in the sidebar of each site. These questions are designed to showcase other sites in the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those questions should act as ambassadors from that site to the Stack Exchange Network, but due to the way the questions are calculated, bad data points result in poor examples staying on the list for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[A previous request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat) to fix this problem was marked as [meta-tag:status-declined] due to [technical issues](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773 &quot;details here&quot;), so this question is requesting to change the order of the list without increasing the resources required to implement it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange Network Hot Questions are viewed by hundreds of thousands of eyes. The people whose first introduction of an SE site are influenced by the hot questions they see attributed to that site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the questions that are selected are good ambassadors for that site, the influx of new users is positive. If bad data points get selected, new users will follow the example of the hot question which can overwhelm budding community moderation, having a negative impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Bad Data Points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that can cause problems with the current hot questions list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Ordering of &quot;mature&quot; questions in the list is driven by random bits of garbage picked by popular posts instead of answers with solid score.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close votes are not taken into account. Note how this contrasts to [close votes impact in twitter bot](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/139857/twitter-bots-share-posts-with-closevotes-on-them &quot;'Posts with close votes aren't supposed to be tweeted. --&gt; Shouldn't questions be given enough time to be vetted by the community before they're shouted to the... universe?'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current formula increases 'hotness' as the number of answers increases, even if voting evidence (score) indicates that those answers are of low interest. Bad answers are not an indication of a good question, and should not be used to determine the hotness of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that have close votes are treated as if there are no close votes. Smaller communities with questions asked at times when users with privileges are not around may have questions that would normally be closed getting upvotes before the community can moderate and improve the question. Close votes should be counted against questions in that list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Technical Limitations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The previous [meta-tag:feature-request] was declined because the proposed formula would increase the resources required to make the query, and that was preventing its implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Approach proposed here addresses above concerns by providing only a modification to the calculation and **not any change to the database structure** and it is **limited only to fixed amount of questions**, to guarantee that performance impact is under control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[We](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/5542/revisions &quot;gnat, jmac, GlenH7, MichaelT - directly involved in drafting this request&quot;) propose that the [same parameters as before](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/61343/165773 &quot;as specified here&quot;) be used to select the 100 hottest questions, but the ranking of those 100 questions should be re-ordered with the following conditions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answers with a score lower than `(TopAnswerScore / 10) - 1` should be discarded from the hotness calculation&#xD;&#xA; - Close votes on the question should reduce the total hotness of the question by 20% (so a closed question would have a 0 hotness score)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will prevent questions from [sticking to the top of the hot list too long](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever) by accumulating bad answers, and allow a couple quick close votes to prevent a bad example question from being broadcast across the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists some other points as well. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Regarding  &quot;lemming&quot; _meh_ answers, worth mentioning that at SO these seem to be [less of a problem](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/13160475#13160475 &quot;for the reasons explained eg here&quot;) but since _vast majority of posts in hot list come from smaller sites_, this doesn't help.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally - to dot all `i`s and cross all `t`s - it is also worth noting that suggested feature doesn't address cases when there are multiple highly upvoted answers (such as some Apple.SE examples in [sticky list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)). Whether &quot;sticky popularity&quot; of these is a problem that needs addressing and if yes, then how to address it, is out of scope of this request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16672" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="29959ba1-8917-4c4a-9927-bdf3de5f1365" CreationDate="2014-01-14T21:10:19.053" UserId="31260" Comment="de-personalized // plan to explicitly refer contributors in comments when it's posted at MSO" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Executive Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions are selected for the &quot;Hot Network Questions&quot; list displayed in the sidebar of each site. These questions are designed to showcase other sites in the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those questions should act as ambassadors from that site to the Stack Exchange Network, but due to the way the questions are calculated, bad data points result in poor examples staying on the list for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[A previous request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat) to fix this problem was marked as [meta-tag:status-declined] due to [technical issues](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773 &quot;explained in decline message&quot;), so this question is requesting to change the order of the list without increasing the resources required to implement it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange Network Hot Questions are viewed by hundreds of thousands of eyes. The people whose first introduction of an SE site are influenced by the hot questions they see attributed to that site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the questions that are selected are good ambassadors for that site, the influx of new users is positive. If bad data points get selected, new users will follow the example of the hot question which can overwhelm budding community moderation, having a negative impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Bad Data Points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that can cause problems with the current hot questions list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Ordering of &quot;mature&quot; questions in the list is driven by random bits of garbage picked by popular posts instead of answers with solid score.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close votes are not taken into account. Note how this contrasts to [close votes impact in twitter bot](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/139857/twitter-bots-share-posts-with-closevotes-on-them &quot;'Posts with close votes aren't supposed to be tweeted. --&gt; Shouldn't questions be given enough time to be vetted by the community before they're shouted to the... universe?'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current formula increases 'hotness' as the number of answers increases, even if voting evidence (score) indicates that those answers are of low interest. Bad answers are not an indication of a good question, and should not be used to determine the hotness of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that have close votes are treated as if there are no close votes. Smaller communities with questions asked at times when users with privileges are not around may have questions that would normally be closed getting upvotes before the community can moderate and improve the question. Close votes should be counted against questions in that list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Technical Limitations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The previous [meta-tag:feature-request] was declined because the proposed formula would increase the resources required to make the query, and that was preventing its implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Approach proposed here addresses above concerns by providing only a modification to the calculation and **not any change to the database structure** and it is **limited only to fixed amount of questions**, to guarantee that performance impact is under control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Propose that the [same parameters as before](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/61343/165773 &quot;as specified here&quot;) be used to select the 100 hottest questions, but the ranking of those 100 questions should be re-ordered with the following conditions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answers with a score lower than `(TopAnswerScore / 10) - 1` should be discarded from the hotness calculation&#xD;&#xA; - Close votes on the question should reduce the total hotness of the question by 20% (so a closed question would have a 0 hotness score)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will prevent questions from [sticking to the top of the hot list too long](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever) by accumulating bad answers, and allow a couple quick close votes to prevent a bad example question from being broadcast across the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists some other points as well. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Regarding  &quot;lemming&quot; _meh_ answers, worth mentioning that at SO these seem to be [less of a problem](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/13160475#13160475 &quot;for the reasons explained eg here&quot;) but since _vast majority of posts in hot list come from smaller sites_, this doesn't help.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally - to dot all `i`s and cross all `t`s - it is also worth noting that suggested feature doesn't address cases when there are multiple highly upvoted answers (such as some Apple.SE examples in [sticky list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)). Whether &quot;sticky popularity&quot; of these is a problem that needs addressing and if yes, then how to address it, is out of scope of this request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16673" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="3252" RevisionGUID="5ed1059c-a6b1-432e-8fc8-3d4af4b43867" CreationDate="2014-01-14T22:51:29.030" UserId="20673" Comment="edited title" Text="Should we be concerned that @StackProgrammer tweets refer to closed/deleted questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16674" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6400" RevisionGUID="4fb31cf4-e8a7-44c2-b90b-6ed4646b21e7" CreationDate="2014-01-14T23:43:44.227" UserId="29029" Text="Do you think `chess` tag is helpful?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I introduced it: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/chess&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[World Engineer][1] removed it from: &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34952/which-paradigm-to-use-for-writing-chess-engine as extraneous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My position is that chess programming is a distinct and well researched field of its own, and since people seem to take interest in the theory behind it, the tag would play a helpful role. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also worth noting that the quality of chess-related questions and answers is typically good (in compare to average).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm asking about your opinion on the matter, both in the narrow and broad aspect:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* was the tag redundant for this particular question - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34952/which-paradigm-to-use-for-writing-chess-engine &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* is it unnecessary in general?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/28988/world-engineer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16675" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6400" RevisionGUID="4fb31cf4-e8a7-44c2-b90b-6ed4646b21e7" CreationDate="2014-01-14T23:43:44.227" UserId="29029" Text="Do we need a [chess] tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16676" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6400" RevisionGUID="4fb31cf4-e8a7-44c2-b90b-6ed4646b21e7" CreationDate="2014-01-14T23:43:44.227" UserId="29029" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16677" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="3494762e-6f2a-4e5b-9e68-a8ae74100fd4" CreationDate="2014-01-14T23:54:58.033" UserId="76096" Comment="slight wordsmithing (the previous sentence was grammatically incorrect I think)" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Executive Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions are selected for the &quot;Hot Network Questions&quot; list displayed in the sidebar of each site. These questions are designed to showcase other sites in the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those questions should act as ambassadors from that site to the Stack Exchange Network, but due to the way the questions are calculated, bad data points result in poor examples staying on the list for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[A previous request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat) to fix this problem was marked as [meta-tag:status-declined] due to [technical issues](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773 &quot;explained in decline message&quot;), so this question is requesting to change the order of the list without increasing the resources required to implement it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange Network Hot Questions are viewed by hundreds of thousands of eyes. Many people's introduction to an SE site is influenced by the hot questions they see attributed to that site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the questions that are selected are good ambassadors for that site, the influx of new users is positive. If bad data points get selected, new users will follow the example of the hot question which can overwhelm budding community moderation, having a negative impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Bad Data Points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that can cause problems with the current hot questions list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Ordering of &quot;mature&quot; questions in the list is driven by random bits of garbage picked by popular posts instead of answers with solid score.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close votes are not taken into account. Note how this contrasts to [close votes impact in twitter bot](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/139857/twitter-bots-share-posts-with-closevotes-on-them &quot;'Posts with close votes aren't supposed to be tweeted. --&gt; Shouldn't questions be given enough time to be vetted by the community before they're shouted to the... universe?'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current formula increases 'hotness' as the number of answers increases, even if voting evidence (score) indicates that those answers are of low interest. Bad answers are not an indication of a good question, and should not be used to determine the hotness of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that have close votes are treated as if there are no close votes. Smaller communities with questions asked at times when users with privileges are not around may have questions that would normally be closed getting upvotes before the community can moderate and improve the question. Close votes should be counted against questions in that list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Technical Limitations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The previous [meta-tag:feature-request] was declined because the proposed formula would increase the resources required to make the query, and that was preventing its implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Approach proposed here addresses above concerns by providing only a modification to the calculation and **not any change to the database structure** and it is **limited only to fixed amount of questions**, to guarantee that performance impact is under control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Propose that the [same parameters as before](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/61343/165773 &quot;as specified here&quot;) be used to select the 100 hottest questions, but the ranking of those 100 questions should be re-ordered with the following conditions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answers with a score lower than `(TopAnswerScore / 10) - 1` should be discarded from the hotness calculation&#xD;&#xA; - Close votes on the question should reduce the total hotness of the question by 20% (so a closed question would have a 0 hotness score)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will prevent questions from [sticking to the top of the hot list too long](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever) by accumulating bad answers, and allow a couple quick close votes to prevent a bad example question from being broadcast across the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists some other points as well. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues without making assumptions on concrete formula implementation: answers quality, how long questions recide in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Regarding  &quot;lemming&quot; _meh_ answers, worth mentioning that at SO these seem to be [less of a problem](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/13160475#13160475 &quot;for the reasons explained eg here&quot;) but since _vast majority of posts in hot list come from smaller sites_, this doesn't help.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally - to dot all `i`s and cross all `t`s - it is also worth noting that suggested feature doesn't address cases when there are multiple highly upvoted answers (such as some Apple.SE examples in [sticky list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)). Whether &quot;sticky popularity&quot; of these is a problem that needs addressing and if yes, then how to address it, is out of scope of this request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16678" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6401" RevisionGUID="16c880f9-6c08-43db-871d-2be4b91048a8" CreationDate="2014-01-15T00:54:59.947" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="I removed it as being [overly specific][1] and unlikely to come up in searches of the site. I try not to flood the front page with edits which is why I did not remove it entirely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Chess analysis as a programming thing is more algorithm theory than software engineering and thus unlikely to come up much as a tag. It's certainly a valid domain and very interesting as a field of research but we have both Game Dev and CS Stack Exchanges where it would find a wider audience. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Game Dev has 6 questions with the tag, only 4 have a positive scores. CS has questions on Chess algorithms and such but lacks the tag. It's a &quot;[Do Not Use][2]&quot; tag on Stack Overflow. I'm inclined to agree with their perspective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/18878/how-do-i-correctly-tag-my-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/tags/chess/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16679" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="8fa0e26b-d0cb-4aa4-bcca-22360cc850a0" CreationDate="2014-01-15T05:44:29.337" UserId="31260" Comment="wordsmithing in the &quot;basement&quot;" Text="&lt;sub&gt;_Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft title_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Executive Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [100](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;as listed here&quot;) questions are selected for the &quot;Hot Network Questions&quot; list displayed in the sidebar of each site. These questions are designed to showcase other sites in the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those questions should act as ambassadors from that site to the Stack Exchange Network, but due to the way the questions are calculated, bad data points result in poor examples staying on the list for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[A previous request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/192046/in-network-hot-questions-formula-discard-answers-when-voting-evidence-indicat) to fix this problem was marked as [meta-tag:status-declined] due to [technical issues](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773 &quot;explained in decline message&quot;), so this question is requesting to change the order of the list without increasing the resources required to implement it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange Network Hot Questions are viewed by hundreds of thousands of eyes. Many people's introduction to an SE site is influenced by the hot questions they see attributed to that site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the questions that are selected are good ambassadors for that site, the influx of new users is positive. If bad data points get selected, new users will follow the example of the hot question which can overwhelm budding community moderation, having a negative impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Bad Data Points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that can cause problems with the current hot questions list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Ordering of &quot;mature&quot; questions in the list is driven by random bits of garbage picked by popular posts instead of answers with solid score.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close votes are not taken into account. Note how this contrasts to [close votes impact in twitter bot](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/139857/twitter-bots-share-posts-with-closevotes-on-them &quot;'Posts with close votes aren't supposed to be tweeted. --&gt; Shouldn't questions be given enough time to be vetted by the community before they're shouted to the... universe?'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current formula increases 'hotness' as the number of answers increases, even if voting evidence (score) indicates that those answers are of low interest. Bad answers are not an indication of a good question, and should not be used to determine the hotness of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that have close votes are treated as if there are no close votes. Smaller communities with questions asked at times when users with privileges are not around may have questions that would normally be closed getting upvotes before the community can moderate and improve the question. Close votes should be counted against questions in that list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Technical Limitations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The previous [meta-tag:feature-request] was declined because the proposed formula would increase the resources required to make the query, and that was preventing its implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Approach proposed here addresses above concerns by providing only a modification to the calculation and **not any change to the database structure** and it is **limited only to fixed amount of questions**, to guarantee that performance impact is under control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Propose that the [same parameters as before](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/61343/165773 &quot;as specified here&quot;) be used to select the 100 hottest questions, but the ranking of those 100 questions should be re-ordered with the following conditions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answers with a score lower than `(TopAnswerScore / 10) - 1` should be discarded from the hotness calculation&#xD;&#xA; - Close votes on the question should reduce the total hotness of the question by 20% (so a closed question would have a 0 hotness score)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will prevent questions from [sticking to the top of the hot list too long](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever) by accumulating bad answers, and allow a couple quick close votes to prevent a bad example question from being broadcast across the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _end of draft text_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_Below won't go into the request text because [preview](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/5542/2) indicated that it blurs too much._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;_I did not yet made up my mind whether to put this part into a separate self-answer or maybe even to skip it completely, assuming that it has been already discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)._&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, decline justification lists some other points as well. These points were discussed in comments under [decline message](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773) and for your convenience, a brief summary is provided below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * in this case, not knowing the implementation details makes it almost impossible for you guys to solve this one.  &#xD;&#xA;...a lot of the research here is based on a false premise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request is based primarily on studies performed prior to ones addressed above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)&#xD;&#xA;* [Answers quality in hot questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned studies, in turn, involve analysis of observed issues based on implementation agnostic, [black-box](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-box_testing) kind of research: answers quality, how long questions reside in hot list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Specifically, we already cap the number of answers that contribute to the score at 10. This means that any answer after 10 does not contribute to the hotness score.&#xD;&#xA;* In fact, views don't contribute either. They turned out to be inefficient to query, so somebody at some point just removed them from the calculation.&#xD;&#xA;See above, removal of views has proven to be inefficient in addressing a problem. Really, when just stuffing the question with _meh_ answers bumps it hotness as much as allowed currently&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither change to cap at 10 nor ignoring views didn't help, as evidenced by persisting problems. And, really, how could it help when 5-8 additional _meh_ answers having ridiculously low score could artificially double / triple hotness score of a question having 1-2 answers that are proven to be popular by high score.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Regarding  &quot;lemming&quot; _meh_ answers, worth mentioning that at SO these seem to be [less of a problem](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/13160475#13160475 &quot;for the reasons explained eg here&quot;) but since _vast majority of posts in hot list come from smaller sites_, this doesn't help.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest opening a more open-ended feature-request that demonstrates the problem you perceive (&quot;Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&quot;, or similar) and then we can start playing with the formula.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item spelled as suggested above has been submitted to [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/202962/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Submitted here in order to ensure that involved feature requests (listed below) are included in the list of feedback items.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;##Hot questions stay at the top of the supercollider for too long&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Above wording is as has been recommended by David Fullerton♦ [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally - to dot all `i`s and cross all `t`s - it is also worth noting that suggested feature doesn't address cases when there are multiple highly upvoted answers (such as some Apple.SE examples in [sticky list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99077/dont-let-questions-stick-to-the-top-of-the-hot-questions-list-forever)). Whether &quot;sticky popularity&quot; of these is a problem that needs addressing and if yes, then how to address it, is out of scope of this request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16680" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6398" RevisionGUID="5aef1ec4-88ee-486c-851d-057b0ad0bfdd" CreationDate="2014-01-15T09:25:24.287" UserId="13045" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16686" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6400" RevisionGUID="79a5fc12-927b-4961-8e31-972f2b03f36a" CreationDate="2014-01-15T15:06:15.360" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Code tag to tag tag." Text="Do you think [tag:chess] tag is helpful?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I introduced it: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/chess&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[World Engineer][1] removed it from: &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34952/which-paradigm-to-use-for-writing-chess-engine as extraneous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My position is that chess programming is a distinct and well researched field of its own, and since people seem to take interest in the theory behind it, the tag would play a helpful role. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also worth noting that the quality of chess-related questions and answers is typically good (in compare to average).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm asking about your opinion on the matter, both in the narrow and broad aspect:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* was the tag redundant for this particular question - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34952/which-paradigm-to-use-for-writing-chess-engine &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* is it unnecessary in general?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/28988/world-engineer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16687" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="56e6a186-adc0-4ac0-ab16-8a0e4c771a0c" CreationDate="2014-01-15T17:03:15.530" UserId="31260" Comment="This request has been warp driven to MSO..." Text="This request has been [warp driven](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_drive_%28Star_Trek%29 &quot;what's this&quot;) to the following requests at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [In “network hot” questions formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/192046/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* [Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/216260/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note - this very answer has been used as a &quot;buffer&quot; to draft the latter request: [details in revisions history](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/5542/revisions).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16688" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6403" RevisionGUID="288cc13c-b119-48e4-ac03-488b9247035e" CreationDate="2014-01-15T17:06:31.110" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Programmers's [tag:chess] currently comes up with 5 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* 1 is closed&#xD;&#xA;* All are positively voted&#xD;&#xA;* All are relatively low views (&lt; 500)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Searching programmers for [chess questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=chess+is%3Aquestion) comes back with 36 results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Somewhat surprisingly) All are either neutral or positively voted&#xD;&#xA;* Very few are closed&#xD;&#xA;* A significant number of them are directly related to chess, and not just mentioning the word chess.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For that particular question, I think tagging it with [tag:chess] was the right thing to do.  And the search results indicate there are several other questions that could / should have their tags updated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More broadly, I think [tag:chess] is a useful tag for the site and we ought to keep it.  There's a fair amount of material that could get aggregated into that tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I would propose we have a reverse tag-cleanup where we go through the above search and make sure the questions are tagged appropriately." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16689" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6404" RevisionGUID="80e6e426-da0b-4d67-84ba-0021439571cc" CreationDate="2014-01-15T17:25:09.733" UserId="31260" Text="## Unclear what help you need ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell what problem you are trying to solve or what aspect of your approach needs to be corrected or explained. See the [ask] page for help clarifying this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note `[ask]` above is so called [magic link](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/magic-links), meaning that in comments it auto-expands into [How to Ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Slightly adapted from [this MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/215806/165773)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16690" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6404" RevisionGUID="b08fa40a-462d-4a7b-aa2b-3dbf1144030a" CreationDate="2014-01-15T17:25:09.733" UserId="31260" />
  <row Id="16691" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6405" RevisionGUID="9892e18d-baa6-460d-944b-6155312b0d0d" CreationDate="2014-01-15T19:03:25.723" UserId="35276" Text="## Troll question ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is meant to address questions such as &quot;What kind of transistor should I program in?&quot; or &quot;It's almost 2014. Why are we still using computers?&quot;  Such questions rapidly irritate the site as time passes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be looking for information, but that information is not looking for this question. In the future try searching your C: drive, or check the stacks at your local library." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16692" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6406" RevisionGUID="a70ff432-73d0-4ba8-9c0f-9fac1f7be66f" CreationDate="2014-01-16T03:16:17.227" UserId="32000" Text="I'm a repeat offender of asking &quot;Name that thing&quot; questions. The most recent one is here &gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/224327/is-there-a-name-for-this-pattern-object.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where can I ask this kind of question if not here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS - I strongly feel that well formed questions of this format, with clear criteria should be permitted here. The reason is that it can be very helpful for people like myself and future googlers who may be unwittingly starting to work on an area that others have already worked on, but without sharing the right terminology it is harder to connect. It is good for programmers if they know the names of objects as they appear in the &quot;literature&quot; so to speak." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16693" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6406" RevisionGUID="a70ff432-73d0-4ba8-9c0f-9fac1f7be66f" CreationDate="2014-01-16T03:16:17.227" UserId="32000" Text="&quot;Name that thing&quot; questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16694" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6406" RevisionGUID="a70ff432-73d0-4ba8-9c0f-9fac1f7be66f" CreationDate="2014-01-16T03:16:17.227" UserId="32000" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16695" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6404" RevisionGUID="c2739d82-c28b-4afd-9622-b0ee226297c4" CreationDate="2014-01-16T05:53:14.737" UserId="31260" Comment="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/224352/trim-or-split-video-through-android-programming#comment446640_224352" Text="## Unclear what help you need ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Unclear what help you need.** Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell what problem you are trying to solve or what aspect of your approach needs to be corrected or explained. See the [ask] page for help clarifying this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note `[ask]` above is so called [magic link](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/magic-links), meaning that in comments it auto-expands into [How to Ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Slightly adapted from [this MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/215806/165773)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16696" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6407" RevisionGUID="f3c64ded-7d73-43a8-b65c-630c1a79aa0a" CreationDate="2014-01-16T06:56:30.720" UserId="1204" Text="Did you read the custom close reason?  It describes in detail why we think these kinds of questions are unsuitable, and provides a link to a Stack Exchange blog entry that applies *to the entire network.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;name that thing&quot; question. &quot;Name that thing&quot; are bad questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close reason highlights an important goal of the Stack Exchange network: questions should be useful for everyone that has an interest in the subject matter, not just to the person asking them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16697" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6408" RevisionGUID="ffbecf00-6881-407b-b367-ecdfaf254b1e" CreationDate="2014-01-17T14:48:22.870" UserId="41069" Text="I've just deleted [my question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/224456/separation-of-concerns-in-a-complex-reporting-application) that had been put on hold as 'too broad.'  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that it shouldn't have been put on hold.  While the comments I received helped me solve my problem, I recognize that the question would have added little of value to the site as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, several commenters appeared to believe the question encompassed several valid questions that I should have broken out and asked individually.  If only I could have picked them out.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there is a way to ask an acceptable question when you know that the crux of the problem is that you can't see the trees for the forest?  &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16698" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6408" RevisionGUID="ffbecf00-6881-407b-b367-ecdfaf254b1e" CreationDate="2014-01-17T14:48:22.870" UserId="41069" Text="When you can't see the trees for the forest - how can you ask a question that's not 'too broad'" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16699" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6408" RevisionGUID="ffbecf00-6881-407b-b367-ecdfaf254b1e" CreationDate="2014-01-17T14:48:22.870" UserId="41069" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16702" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6409" RevisionGUID="e88d74f3-75ab-4f8d-a8ff-33b0250b15ac" CreationDate="2014-01-19T05:30:26.840" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/224677/open-ended-questions-not-suited-to-this-site" />
  <row Id="16703" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6409" RevisionGUID="f9c62d33-3e48-4ed4-a4b6-a0f4ddd06889" CreationDate="2014-01-19T03:56:51.703" UserId="88091" Text="I understand that programming questions asked here are supposed to be constrained and answerable and should not result in a more open-ended discussion.  However, I do have sometimes have programming questions that are more conceptual and opinionated.  What's a good, well-moderated site that would allow these kinds of discussions?  I'm wondering if there's something as well executed as the Stack Exchange network but for highly subjective questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16704" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6409" RevisionGUID="f9c62d33-3e48-4ed4-a4b6-a0f4ddd06889" CreationDate="2014-01-19T03:56:51.703" UserId="88091" Text="Open ended questions not suited to this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16705" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6409" RevisionGUID="f9c62d33-3e48-4ed4-a4b6-a0f4ddd06889" CreationDate="2014-01-19T03:56:51.703" UserId="88091" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16706" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6410" RevisionGUID="cd105a17-3f88-457f-b535-d5cf2e905e71" CreationDate="2014-01-20T00:47:54.193" UserId="115363" Text="It looks like many programming career questions are posted on this StackExchange site and promptly frozen. Is there an appropriate place for them within the StackExchange network yet?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16707" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6410" RevisionGUID="cd105a17-3f88-457f-b535-d5cf2e905e71" CreationDate="2014-01-20T00:47:54.193" UserId="115363" Text="Is there a StackExchange site that would be appropriate for CS career questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16708" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6410" RevisionGUID="cd105a17-3f88-457f-b535-d5cf2e905e71" CreationDate="2014-01-20T00:47:54.193" UserId="115363" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16709" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6411" RevisionGUID="dc2f279e-df98-46b2-9a5d-19d79b958a46" CreationDate="2014-01-20T01:14:41.560" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Career advice is difficult because it is so individualized and time sensitive. We recommend that you ask such questions in our [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard). The Workplace.SE caters to some career related issues but has similar strictures on individualized questions. The doubled edge sword of Stack Exchange is to create an easily Googleable reference for getting expert answers to questions immediately. Career advice tends to fall outside that category as it tends to again, be highly individualized and time-sensitive. We tried allowing that sort of question type at the beginning of Programmers. It didn't go [well][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Chat exists specifically for working through the thornier questions without direct, converging answers. The [Whiteboard][2]'s activity stats will help you find the best time and day of the week to ask your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16724" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6409" RevisionGUID="8a6377d9-7a7c-4b55-9e4a-867f4eb579f2" CreationDate="2014-01-21T16:11:15.057" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/425661878636146688" />
  <row Id="16725" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6396" RevisionGUID="86e7fe1d-6955-4ed5-902c-978636c31c9b" CreationDate="2014-01-22T22:11:17.587" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/426114874570440705" />
  <row Id="16726" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6414" RevisionGUID="328dd369-a6c2-4039-bf39-7b30152e3da4" CreationDate="2014-01-24T01:58:33.400" UserId="106104" Text="Just a newbie here and I also read a lot about the difference between &quot;Programmers&quot; and &quot;StackOverFlow&quot;. Yes, for a new-comer it's really careful and easy to be confused. So what I continue wanna know is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Since &quot;Programmers&quot; are welcomed for concepts, ideas of a certain problem. Or your nice suggestsions to a new programming language's features……ect. So **if I have a problem about programming (not sure which language or just use pesudo one), Just wanna know the algorithm or something idea about that, can I ask questions here?**(e.g: I don't know what COM is, and I have a lot of questions about COM and its usage instead of a certain programming language, so that's very abstract……)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) If I'm working as a software architect, and to a certain problem, can I ask here about my ideas about software design, or something related to OOP's design in general to have a disscussions with all of you?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many thanks! As a newbie, please don't give nagative scores on me;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16727" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6414" RevisionGUID="328dd369-a6c2-4039-bf39-7b30152e3da4" CreationDate="2014-01-24T01:58:33.400" UserId="106104" Text="About good quality and kind of questions in &quot;Programmers&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16728" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6414" RevisionGUID="328dd369-a6c2-4039-bf39-7b30152e3da4" CreationDate="2014-01-24T01:58:33.400" UserId="106104" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16729" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6414" RevisionGUID="810c15d3-b8db-48af-ade9-b6c27799e635" CreationDate="2014-01-24T02:25:41.283" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="deleted 73 characters in body; edited tags" Text="Just a newbie here and I also read a lot about the difference between &quot;Programmers&quot; and &quot;StackOverFlow&quot;. Yes, for a new-comer it's really careful and easy to be confused. So what I continue wanna know is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Since &quot;Programmers&quot; are welcomed for concepts, ideas of a certain problem. Or your nice suggestions to a new programming language's features……ect. So **if I have a problem about programming (not sure which language or just use pseudo one), Just wanna know the algorithm or something idea about that, can I ask questions here?**(e.g: I don't know what COM is, and I have a lot of questions about COM and its usage instead of a certain programming language, so that's very abstract……)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) If I'm working as a software architect, and to a certain problem, can I ask here about my ideas about software design, or something related to OOP's design in general to have a discussions with all of you?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16730" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6414" RevisionGUID="810c15d3-b8db-48af-ade9-b6c27799e635" CreationDate="2014-01-24T02:25:41.283" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="deleted 73 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16731" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6415" RevisionGUID="19025273-1bba-4930-b92f-acb982a3bdda" CreationDate="2014-01-24T02:34:22.950" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Asking about Algorithms is fine. Asking about how to use COM as it's a Windows API, should be directed to Stack Overflow. General architectural and software design questions should be fairly focused and conceptual in nature. They should also be equally applicable across most programming languages. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example: [Is the use of “utf8=✓” preferable to “utf8=true”?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is good because it's a tricky design problem: &quot;Why do I see this odd thing pop up in software designs repeatedly?&quot; It turns out to be an IE8 encoding hack.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good questions here may involve a fair amount of initial effort on your part, we expect you to have tried something before asking here. They also should converge to a small set of answers or a single answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lengthy discussion-based questions should be asked in the [Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16736" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6417" RevisionGUID="7161e0d3-6c37-43d4-b078-4e85fe56bf01" CreationDate="2014-01-24T04:02:17.673" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Occasionally there are questions asked that seek to explain some soundbite of thing someone said or wrote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions take a few sentences from a larger piece and ask what it means, or disprove it, or take two of them and ask which is right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration --[Dijkstra](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD04xx/EWD498.html)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; I started out as a BASIC programmer. Some people would say that I'm permanently damaged. Some people are undoubtedly right... But I'm not going to apologize for that. All language designers have their occasional idiosyncracies. I'm just better at it than most. -[Wall](http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2007/12/06/soto-11.html)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does this mean that Perl is broken by design?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why don't questions about blog posts, xkcd cartoons, and old letters make good questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16737" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6417" RevisionGUID="7161e0d3-6c37-43d4-b078-4e85fe56bf01" CreationDate="2014-01-24T04:02:17.673" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Discuss this ${blog}" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16738" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6417" RevisionGUID="7161e0d3-6c37-43d4-b078-4e85fe56bf01" CreationDate="2014-01-24T04:02:17.673" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16739" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6418" RevisionGUID="edb37944-6b65-4e31-92e4-5bb67660ad09" CreationDate="2014-01-24T04:02:17.673" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Blog posts, [(esoteric) web comics](http://xkcd.com), keynote talks, and even letters (and papers) from old [computer scientists](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/) - trying to cite them and ask about particular parts fail at being good questions for several factors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first is that many of these are driven ultimately by views.  The more views they get, the better (for them).  Everyone who writes for the media (be it a paper in the ACM or a blog post tucked away in a bliki) says things with some degree of exaggeration and hyperbole to get people to think about what is written, to generate readership and to get people to discuss the material (hopefully on their own blog or letters to the editor).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point is, the **discuss** part.  Larry Wall wanted people to be discussing what he said at the State Of The Onion talk.  Dijkstra *wanted* people to be discussing and thinking about the education system for teaching programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussions don't work here&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange works on a different model.  Its not people talking *about* what is said here that brings the eyeballs.  Its the quality of the material.  To provide good material, the system was designed with the intent to make discussions difficult.  This runs completely contrary to how blogs work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One can certainly debate if Dijkstra was wrong, or if Larry broke perl in version 1.0, or if `goto` can be used properly.  These are good questions to ask... but not here.  They are debates.  In the Help Center - [What types of questions should I avoid asking](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) it says thus:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explanation of Opinions are Primarily Opinion themselves&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Inherently, explaining and opinion is an opinion itself.  It is one thing to explain why `goto` cannot fit into the Java Virtual Machine model.  It is quite another to try to explain why it is considered harmful.  The first is something that has an answer that is right or wrong, the second is expanding upon an opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An explanation of what someone else thought is *my* interpretation of those thoughts from what I am familiar with.  I think that Dijkstra was writing because of a deep set loathing of code that lacked structure and any artistic merit or craftsmanship.  Someone else may believe that Dijkstra was writing that about Fortran because he was concerned that it would cause people to be forever constrained to programs no wider than 80 columns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who knows? Which answer is right?  It can only be opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The source material is too broad&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the Dijkstra quote at the top, lets look at the Fortran bit instead (searching for 'basic' returns too many hits that aren't about the language):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FORTRAN —&quot;the infantile disorder&quot;—, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[EWD498](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD04xx/EWD498.html) is ~650 words.  There are 51 EWD writings that mention [FORTRAN](http://ewd.cs.utexas.edu.master.com/texis/master/search/mysite.html?q=Fortran).  Consider that this may amount to a [0th](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD831.html) approximation of 30,000 lines to get the complete scope of what Dijkstra thought about the failings of FORTRAN.  To try to explain the full scope of the material would imply reading about 100 pages of a typical novel.  Trying to condense that material into a text box is the definition of too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unclear about the problem&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the help center [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) again,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking to explain a quote, or comic, or blog post isn't something that is practical, answerable, or an actual problem.  It is an open ended discussion based on something that was *meant* to spark discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussion is fine, it just doesn't work well on the Q&amp;A part of Stack Exchange (try [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard))." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16740" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6419" RevisionGUID="318c5f66-e1b3-4dd9-b3e6-94b31b3150e5" CreationDate="2014-01-24T18:53:54.883" UserId="32353" Text="A good rule of thumb for these types of questions is &quot;would the question be acceptable if it were about the quote itself, and not about what the creator of the quote meant?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, &quot;Does BASIC mentally mutilate programmers beyond hope of regeneration?&quot; would, clearly, not be an acceptable question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Is Perl broken by design?&quot; is also pretty clearly opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But something like &quot;So and so claimed that FORTRAN doesn't support recursion.  Does FORTRAN support recursion?&quot;  wouldn't be too opinion based (it might possibly show a lack of research effort, however.  At least give the guy's name, rather than &quot;so and so&quot;.  &quot;This question is off topic because it is about something you made up on the spot.&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16741" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6417" RevisionGUID="c15d3abe-83cd-4213-8e35-39623ebe5497" CreationDate="2014-01-24T19:11:32.487" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/426794414162599936" />
  <row Id="16742" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6420" RevisionGUID="247c22da-ee75-413e-8278-0ae4e2a323db" CreationDate="2014-01-26T08:29:23.967" UserId="43452" Text="The objective answer to your question (which I, quite subjectively, don't like), based on what usually happens, is &quot;No&quot;. People in programers.stackexchange.com will downvote and close open ended questions. Also, the requisite of that questions can be answered means in practice that the answer is not  known perhaps to the one asking the question, but it is known to a significant proportion of people in the programmers.stackexchange.com, so it &quot;can&quot; be answered. A good and objective question with no known answer and particularly with multiple answers will be downvoted and/or closed; again, this is an objective account, I don't suppose that is *expected* to work that way. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16743" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5505" RevisionGUID="3cc5f97d-6b44-47c2-8413-a75883aa36a0" CreationDate="2014-01-27T11:29:12.387" UserId="23622" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16744" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6421" RevisionGUID="5868d49d-a49b-4c57-b405-0e2b053d0d78" CreationDate="2014-01-28T14:58:11.880" UserId="116439" Text="I am confused as in shall i paste this as comment or as an answer.&#xD;&#xA;I take my chances by choosing the first guilt of marking my opinion as an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SO and this community has gained a reputation that many of users do dream of following the Trend. We see Jon Skeet and many many other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I completely agree that asking for solutions against homework is not good. But if the user tried something, did researched on the topic and is stuck with the same. That makes the Question valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking Good question and getting recognition is different topic. The point here is start to this community. I am so much obliged that this community has extended help to all those who seek the help!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Students face different situations as we do in work culture. I just hope we can make a difference by enlightenment to technology areas. I sincerely hope Only Start is the difficult part, once you get started the next steps follows easily.&#xD;&#xA;   " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16749" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6421" RevisionGUID="b888482e-3344-4c0e-aa45-1d8a5403e581" CreationDate="2014-01-28T17:00:25.980" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling and personal stuff cleanup" Text="SO and this community has gained a reputation that many of users do dream of following the trend. We see Jon Skeet and many many other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I completely agree that asking for solutions against homework is not good. But if the user tried something, did researched on the topic and is stuck with it, that makes the question valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking good question and getting recognition is different topic. The point here is start to this community. I am so much obliged that this community has extended help to all those who seek the help!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Students face different situations as we do in work culture. I just hope we can make a difference by enlightenment to technology areas. I sincerely hope only start is the difficult part, once you get started the next steps follows easily.&#xD;&#xA;   " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16750" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6423" RevisionGUID="34e5c8b8-05ad-4dae-93af-300706754758" CreationDate="2014-01-28T21:08:36.867" UserId="116076" Text="I agree that cheating is the worst thing a student can do; Not because it is dirty or manipulative, but because it causes significant harm to the student and the student along.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, even some the most intelligent people in the worlds history (Einstein and Edison for example) have/had problems understanding even simple problems if they were not described in a language that they related to. To the point that many are/were considered &quot;dumb&quot; or &quot;delayed&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's the same system that leaves countless thousands of young people struggling to divide crates of apples and bananas in math class just to excel in calculating fuel:air ratios for fuel injection systems in shop class. Present the problem in a way that engages the student and they quickly understand things that they often felt was beyond them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I'm getting at is the greater question of *why* the student feels they need help with a problem. Assuming that they should only need help applying the concepts within the solution assumes that they should be able to fully understand the problem, which history has proven is a dangerous generalization during somebodies education.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not saying that the basic point of your letter is wrong or unneeded, however your letter does seem a bit presumptuous and possibly negative towards people who need help." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16751" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6424" RevisionGUID="17480bfe-0377-47b8-ae49-ca7afe37afbb" CreationDate="2014-01-28T21:34:16.057" UserId="34364" Text="Currently, both [tag:design] (1395 questions) and [tag:software-design] (79 questions) are tags on the site. Although there may be an extremely minuscule use case for the latter, the questions tagged with it all fall under the former. Merge? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16752" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6424" RevisionGUID="17480bfe-0377-47b8-ae49-ca7afe37afbb" CreationDate="2014-01-28T21:34:16.057" UserId="34364" Text="Design and software-design tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16753" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6424" RevisionGUID="17480bfe-0377-47b8-ae49-ca7afe37afbb" CreationDate="2014-01-28T21:34:16.057" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16754" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="442" RevisionGUID="cff71842-313f-4b50-a799-dd751ce0fdfa" CreationDate="2014-01-28T22:58:40.050" UserId="87093" Comment="added 117 characters in body" Text="Not until the site leaves beta, and then we'll have to provide evidence of open questions that should be migrated and closed questions that should have been migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end - if anyone comes across a question that fits the bill, edit it into this answer so we don't have to do it all at once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Pyton + GTK.Menu - show the menu at a certain position [closed]&#xD;&#xA;][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [jQuery $.Post quirk [closed]][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [mod_security + apache + geoip block != 404][3]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12566/how-to-name-a-single-purpose-class-and-method-closed&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12426/what-methods-can-be-employed-for-using-composition-over-inheritance-closed&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12271/how-i-do-versioning-for-an-web-application-closed&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/225848/transform-class-text-to-my-domain-name-without-http-and-www&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Server Fault&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [In NameBench results, what is TO and other questions? [closed]&#xD;&#xA;][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Super User&#xD;&#xA;* [How is Linux not prone to viruses or that kind? [closed]&#xD;&#xA;][5]&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12839/what-monitors-have-larger-than-hd-resolution-size-is-less-important-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12584/how-would-you-make-a-qwerty-keyboard-more-programming-friendly-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12565/best-out-of-box-linux-distro-for-general-programming-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12375/what-mouse-model-or-brand-do-you-like-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11895/recommendation-electronic-reader-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11577/running-javascript-on-the-command-line-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12010/pyton-gtk-menu-show-the-menu-at-a-certain-position-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11451/jquery-post-quirk&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12942/mod-security-apache-geoip-block-404&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11723/in-namebench-results-what-is-to-and-other-questions-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9141/how-is-linux-not-prone-to-viruses-or-that-kind" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16755" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6424" RevisionGUID="e10591d7-fe61-4742-8778-1ace42c24c75" CreationDate="2014-01-29T03:32:23.437" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16756" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6425" RevisionGUID="64514df5-c14e-4324-9e8d-a3f8167d98be" CreationDate="2014-01-29T03:33:09.143" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Given that the tag wiki for &quot;design&quot; explicitly states &quot;software design&quot;...consider it done." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16757" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6426" RevisionGUID="707841a7-95df-4054-a5d7-dbc91f5008d7" CreationDate="2014-01-29T18:27:03.213" UserId="78820" Text="The *Career-Transition* tag seems intrinsically tied to a type of question relating to Career Advice that is deemed off-topic and inappropriate for the site.  Looking at the list of questions that use this tag, the vast majority are closed and/or voted down for this reason.  It seems difficult to comprehend questions that could generally use this tag without being off-topic.  Should this tag be considered for removal, considered a red-flag in general, or be re-purposed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16758" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6426" RevisionGUID="707841a7-95df-4054-a5d7-dbc91f5008d7" CreationDate="2014-01-29T18:27:03.213" UserId="78820" Text="Career-Transiton Tag inappropriate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16759" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6426" RevisionGUID="707841a7-95df-4054-a5d7-dbc91f5008d7" CreationDate="2014-01-29T18:27:03.213" UserId="78820" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16760" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6426" RevisionGUID="a9c12eab-56c6-455d-bc86-3f8a870256d4" CreationDate="2014-01-29T18:33:14.240" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Change tag to a tag." Text="The [tag:career-transition] tag seems intrinsically tied to a type of question relating to Career Advice that is deemed off-topic and inappropriate for the site.  Looking at the list of questions that use this tag, the vast majority are closed and/or voted down for this reason.  It seems difficult to comprehend questions that could generally use this tag without being off-topic.  Should this tag be considered for removal, considered a red-flag in general, or be re-purposed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16761" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6426" RevisionGUID="07604276-7355-42cf-bc05-3188ec1012c0" CreationDate="2014-01-29T21:44:24.777" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="The [tag:career-transition] tag seems intrinsically tied to a type of question relating to Career Advice that is deemed off-topic and inappropriate for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the list of questions that use this tag, the vast majority are closed and/or voted down for this reason.  It seems difficult to comprehend questions that could generally use this tag without being off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should this tag be considered for removal, considered a red-flag in general, or be re-purposed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16762" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6426" RevisionGUID="07604276-7355-42cf-bc05-3188ec1012c0" CreationDate="2014-01-29T21:44:24.777" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="Career-Transition Tag inappropriate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16764" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6427" RevisionGUID="ee2c3afd-9b74-4978-9b15-1c9632d471be" CreationDate="2014-01-30T17:49:32.993" UserId="35276" Text="## Unresearched question ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is meant to address questions such as &quot;How do I write a file searching program in .PHP?&quot; or &quot;I need to create a database, how do I do that?&quot;  Such questions are not answerable because the answer would require too much background, the questioner needs to post the context of what he does know and has tried to narrow the scope of what an answer needs to cover.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be lacking many details necessary to narrow it's scope so that an answer could fit. Sharing your research helps everyone, tell us what you found (on this site or elsewhere) and why it didn't meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, and above all, it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16765" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6428" RevisionGUID="8b56478f-caca-464c-aeb8-1cdcf7b831e5" CreationDate="2014-01-30T23:07:21.447" UserId="103863" Text="I've found a bunch of FAQ links here on meta.p.SE, all pointing to [programmers.stackexchange.com/faq][1] etc, for example [this one over here][2], to name just one. Maybe it is just my browser, but I am always redirected to the about page once I try to follow that link. Well, that's a nice page too, there's no question about it, but it's not a FAQ. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So where the FAQ are the FAQs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2684/difference-between-programmers-and-stackoverflow?rq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16766" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6428" RevisionGUID="8b56478f-caca-464c-aeb8-1cdcf7b831e5" CreationDate="2014-01-30T23:07:21.447" UserId="103863" Text="What the .... no, where (are) the FAQs?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16767" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6428" RevisionGUID="8b56478f-caca-464c-aeb8-1cdcf7b831e5" CreationDate="2014-01-30T23:07:21.447" UserId="103863" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16768" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6429" RevisionGUID="39bb93b2-85fd-4f9c-95e0-c80d631751d2" CreationDate="2014-01-30T23:21:49.187" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="The FAQs got turned into the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help) some time ago. The equivalent pages for the most part are [on topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [don't ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16769" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6428" RevisionGUID="38b4bd4a-6485-467c-84e8-7540960737a6" CreationDate="2014-01-30T23:22:13.657" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|faq-contents|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16770" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6430" RevisionGUID="5f196a31-2b1a-4c1b-84e3-b063358fb6ba" CreationDate="2014-01-31T03:04:48.887" UserId="91041" Text="I saw this question on &quot;reopen votes&quot; as an audit question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/223006/communication-between-nested-directives&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is a month old, despite not eliciting a single answer or comment.  IMO, it's too broad and oddly worded to be a useful question.  Which seemed like a good reason to close it, although I'm not sure if the question was ever closed at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which leads me to wonder about the mechanism by which the audit questions are selected, both in general an for this question in particular?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Are review questions chosen manually by site admins, as stellar examples?&#xD;&#xA; * Are they selected from questions that passed a given review-able action, and then passed with a certain percentage of consensus among the review questions?&#xD;&#xA; * Or is each review queue different, with &quot;re-open&quot; selecting questions that were never closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16771" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6430" RevisionGUID="5f196a31-2b1a-4c1b-84e3-b063358fb6ba" CreationDate="2014-01-31T03:04:48.887" UserId="91041" Text="What drives the &quot;reopen&quot; audit queue?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16772" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6430" RevisionGUID="5f196a31-2b1a-4c1b-84e3-b063358fb6ba" CreationDate="2014-01-31T03:04:48.887" UserId="91041" Text="|discussion|review-audits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16773" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6426" RevisionGUID="1f714a9e-6028-467b-8071-1a5bb93b8aa1" CreationDate="2014-01-31T04:32:58.260" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/429110029598601216" />
  <row Id="16781" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6432" RevisionGUID="53fee1b5-18c4-4819-9a58-7b7e22fe0fd9" CreationDate="2014-01-31T17:07:47.797" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The questions are picked automatically from questions in the past time period (I think its 1 month and at least some minimum number of days) that have 5 or more upvotes (but less than 15), no downvotes, no close votes, some minimum number of views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, this does cause problems with soft questions that have a number of upvotes on them that are borderline.  This is a known 'issue', but realize that audits are there to serve two purposes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Catch roboreviewers who say *everything* is a certain way&#xD;&#xA;* Help people reconsider what they chose and why to help guide reviews to match the community consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I understand it, the second bullet point is a distant second to the first one and so the borderline cases really aren't as big of an issue as people who fail the review audit consider them to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From MSO: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How do we select audits for Reopen review?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/168381/213963)&#xD;&#xA;* [Failed a Reopen Question audit — sure looks like “Not a real question” to me](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/168372/213963)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16783" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6433" RevisionGUID="1572405b-257a-47d8-b307-9f040e418305" CreationDate="2014-02-01T00:04:10.660" UserId="3965" Text="Well, as far as I'm aware, some career questions are still supposed to be on topic, according to [this meta answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/590/3965).  I don't know when or how voters decided *all* career questions are off topic, but I don't think it was by consensus." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16784" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6434" RevisionGUID="c2ca25df-656b-4384-87bf-532a330b47d5" CreationDate="2014-02-02T09:45:48.943" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/226422/can-we-ask-for-academic-advice-knowledge-assessment-on-here-or-will-it-get-close" />
  <row Id="16785" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6434" RevisionGUID="b5636d75-a976-4ab6-a0ec-436fff314e30" CreationDate="2014-02-02T09:45:26.170" UserId="117264" Text="I am a computer science student and i'm interested to ask for advice on what to learn in my free time,things that all programmers/computer science graduates should know. I am intending to write a thorough question,so i don't want to put an effort into it and then see it closed. &#xD;&#xA;If i can't ask such a question here,where can i ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16786" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6434" RevisionGUID="b5636d75-a976-4ab6-a0ec-436fff314e30" CreationDate="2014-02-02T09:45:26.170" UserId="117264" Text="Can we ask for academic advice,knowledge assessment on here or will it get closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16787" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6434" RevisionGUID="b5636d75-a976-4ab6-a0ec-436fff314e30" CreationDate="2014-02-02T09:45:26.170" UserId="117264" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16788" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6435" RevisionGUID="c03c0908-cddc-4228-a299-a65177c9c86f" CreationDate="2014-02-02T18:14:57.037" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Maybe we should copy some of the content of [tag:career-development] tag wiki into [tag:career-transition].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they invite the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please note that most career advice questions run the risk of being closed for being too broad or impractical: try to make yours a [good subjective question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please also make sure your question has the proper scope. If your question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really something that uniquely applies to software development and isn't on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a difference between questions about a career and questions about *your* career.  **Many** career questions today would be closed as &quot;too localized&quot; of old, career or otherwise.  The close reason helps make it clear what the issue with most career questions is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This goes back to the classic P.SE question diagram:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question needs background information about the person asking it to create an answer, it likely falls into the &quot;Just you&quot; section.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Glance through the questions in [tag:career-transition] and glance at the background and question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm arun from india, 2010 passed MCA graduate. Before 2 years worked in C and C++ developer (Not Embedded Developer) for 6 months. Due to my health conditions, i shifted to my hometown so i left c and c++ job. .... **Can i switch my career from Oracle to C and C++ ? Is it okay ? If it is, what should i do ?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- FOO --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am having 2 years and 7 month experience in Java and Big data technologies.I started my career with nosql &amp; XML technologies i.e Xquery as front end and Marklogic as backend.But I was so interested in Java and learn it during those 1 and half years and learn struts framework itself and make small application itself.After 1 and half years I moved to the project in Java in my company.I did work for 11 months until the final release and I did well on the project. ...... **I do not want to go for production support? what should I do now?They are trying to convince me with soft as well as hard words.Is it right for my career?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- FOO --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm 18 and currently taking a 2 year game development program at a college, where I will graduate with a bachelor of applied sciences, and I'm focusing in programming. .... **What are your guys thoughts on this? Is the bachelor of applied science that bad? Should I go for a CS degree at some point? Is the game industry shit? Are other fields shit?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I *will* point out that not all the closed questions are closed as off topic.  Some are closed as too broad/not constructive &quot;What should I read for switching from A to B&quot;, primarily opinion based, or requests for information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And this goes to the heart of why most career questions are off topic.  They are asking about the individual wanting advice for their particular situation (this includes time).  Consider a question from a person asking if they should career transition from Java to C or C++ for writing Palm or Java Micro Edition for Blackberry... today the answer would get a very different &quot;correct&quot; one than 3 or 4 years ago (though arguably, the writing was on the wall then too).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key to Stack Exchange is to provide good content that other people find useful.  Its not just helping the person asking the question (thats the seed of the material), but helping all the *rest* of the people that have the same question and find it through Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its not *inappropriate* though it should come with a warning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All that said, within chat there is currently (I won't speak for years down the road) active group that would be happy to help a person work through career questions.  These questions require a dense conversation of back and forth necessary to get the proper information from the person asking and can be extremely sensitive to current conditions (what the market is)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16796" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6437" RevisionGUID="f7c2eb98-4787-4532-8348-c10860dccb89" CreationDate="2014-02-03T16:32:59.427" UserId="87971" Text="[I asked a question last night][1] which I believe was worthwhile and could have received some interesting responses, but sadly it was swiftly stamped on by the community. I'm doing my best to figure out how I can word it so that it gets the chance to capture any positive input from members of the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the comments and the reason for closure I am certain that the majority of the blame lies in the way I worded the question (I am doing all I can to remedy that)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I originally used the term &quot;project&quot; which was slightly misleading&#xD;&#xA; - I included the option of answering with links &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can *basically* understand the reason for the question being closed but I could also really use some help and I don't believe I am the only person who would benefit from a quality answer. I'm doing all the training myself, the *how*, *why* and *where*, but I'm stuck on an the *what*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this site really is unsuitable for such technical questions then maybe someone could at least suggest where I can ask this question (I don't think chat has a wide enough audience).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the question in it's current form:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Training material for a teenager**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've started teaching my son to write code. I've decided on the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; languages and do not need to start any discussions on that - the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general route through the languages will be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - node.js &amp; javascript&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - twitter bootstrap&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - Python&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - C# (at this point all development will become test driven)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What I am looking for are ideas for training material from personal&#xD;&#xA;&gt; experience -  probably fictional solutions with clearly defined&#xD;&#xA;&gt; modules that eventually meld into a complete solution.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can't google an answer to this question and this site would seem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to be the best place in the world to ask for help from people who may&#xD;&#xA;&gt; know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/226469/training-material-for-a-teenager" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16797" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6437" RevisionGUID="f7c2eb98-4787-4532-8348-c10860dccb89" CreationDate="2014-02-03T16:32:59.427" UserId="87971" Text="How could this question be worded to avoid being stamped on?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16798" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6437" RevisionGUID="f7c2eb98-4787-4532-8348-c10860dccb89" CreationDate="2014-02-03T16:32:59.427" UserId="87971" Text="|support|closed-questions|specific-question|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16799" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6438" RevisionGUID="f437cba7-e566-4faf-8735-cb4528867df5" CreationDate="2014-02-03T17:53:20.127" UserId="1204" Text="Avoid:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Questions asking for a list of things&#xD;&#xA;2.  Requests for anecdotes and personal experiences&#xD;&#xA;3.  Polls&#xD;&#xA;3.  Requests for links to external resources&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of these things make a question too broad and overly opinionated, and will likely draw close votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16800" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6439" RevisionGUID="6d87f276-0d28-420f-af0c-92751b5c813a" CreationDate="2014-02-05T16:16:03.623" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="(this got a bit big to put into a comment... so...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the first key differences to realize between SO and... well... the rest of the Stack Exchange network of sites is that SO is many times larger than the other sites.  Stack Overflow creates 8k questions/day - or one P.SE every 4 days.  With such volume most questions on Stack Overflow never get much attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus [from this comment](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6437/how-could-this-question-be-worded-to-avoid-being-stamped-on#comment17418_6438)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @RobertHarvey I've been here twice. Got 4 up votes for an answer and 4 down votes for a question. When I do something silly or wrong on stackoverflow I can understand the odd anonymous drive by down vote or deafening silence but 4 down votes and gone in 60 seconds for my question - I just don't agree with the philosophy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On P.SE you can vote on almost every single question every single day without using up all your votes. P.SE has vote/view ratio compared to the rest of the network and sites its size (see [Why are votes per post on the decrease (what can we do to improve this)?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/216297/213963) - full image at https://i.stack.imgur.com/SRLlM.png ). Having a post get +4 or -4 is not uncommon.  P.SE is more generous with both upvotes *and* downvotes than Stack Overflow because we have more per question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.SE gets quite a few career / education questions.  Unfortunately, outside of a few broad ones that keep popping up (&quot;should I get a certificate?&quot;) every single one is different.  The person is asking about *their* background information, *their* situation, *their* plans for the future.  A stereotypical question goes like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have a CS degree and spent a few years in tech support, now I got a job working with php.  I know some C, but I haven't used it in a few years.  What do I need to study to get a job doing embedded programming? or maybe operating system design?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that this is an &quot;I&quot; question.  If any parameter changes (no degree, worked in finance, knows some java and uses it currently, looking for a job in biotech) the question becomes useless to them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, the difficulty with career questions in general.  From http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590 :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Beyond that, the general rule of thumb should be whether the question can help others in a similar situation. If the circumstances surrounding the question are too specific to the question asker such that there is no way to generalize and answer the question, they should be closed as too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too localized doesn't exist anymore, but we do have the 'close as career / education advice' which is designed to address this particular and common occurrence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key problem with these questions is that they require a dense, two way conversation to get all of the particulars to that out.  The Q&amp;A part of the site is poorly designed (intentionally so) for such conversations - it is optimized for &quot;Here is a question, here is an answer&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please realize that chat is one of the resources that we have available to ask such questions.  This supports the dense conversations that are available and provides a way for people to give opinions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16801" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6440" RevisionGUID="d841d844-0f1b-4fb5-a1dc-338414d9f7e7" CreationDate="2014-02-06T18:39:46.817" UserId="58364" Text="[I have a question that was put on hold a little while ago.](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/227738/how-do-i-get-a-project-owner-to-participate-in-acceptance-testing?noredirect=1#comment452842_227738) Not the end of the world, it was a question about agile development and that's not strictly a programmer topic. But [when I looked at the on topic page I noticed that development methodologies was listed as the fourth item as on topic.](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) Then I went over to wikipedia just to check to make sure that [development methodologies would include Agile development.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_methodology)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point, I'm unsure why the question was closed. To my mind it seems to fit the on topic portion of this stackexchange. So what about my question is off-topic? How could I phrase it differently to be on-topic? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16802" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6440" RevisionGUID="d841d844-0f1b-4fb5-a1dc-338414d9f7e7" CreationDate="2014-02-06T18:39:46.817" UserId="58364" Text="What is this sites definitions of development methodologies?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16803" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6440" RevisionGUID="d841d844-0f1b-4fb5-a1dc-338414d9f7e7" CreationDate="2014-02-06T18:39:46.817" UserId="58364" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16804" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6441" RevisionGUID="4b674e8f-66b2-49ea-86da-424279ce9cd2" CreationDate="2014-02-06T19:51:22.720" UserId="47" Text="I think your question is definitely on topic so I've reopened it. Sometimes we (the community) get things wrong, so bringing it up here is the right thing to do. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Watch me get down voted on this one though. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16805" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6418" RevisionGUID="a5d68682-1f1e-4dcc-a7eb-bc7a47b46249" CreationDate="2014-02-07T03:57:58.643" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Format underscore" Text="Blog posts, [(esoteric) web comics](http://xkcd.com), keynote talks, and even letters (and papers) from old [computer scientists](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/) - trying to cite them and ask about particular parts fail at being good questions for several factors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first is that many of these are driven ultimately by views.  The more views they get, the better (for them).  Everyone who writes for the media (be it a paper in the ACM or a blog post tucked away in a bliki) says things with some degree of exaggeration and hyperbole to get people to think about what is written, to generate readership and to get people to discuss the material (hopefully on their own blog or letters to the editor).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point is, the **discuss** part.  Larry Wall wanted people to be discussing what he said at the State Of The Onion talk.  Dijkstra *wanted* people to be discussing and thinking about the education system for teaching programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussions don't work here&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange works on a different model.  Its not people talking *about* what is said here that brings the eyeballs.  Its the quality of the material.  To provide good material, the system was designed with the intent to make discussions difficult.  This runs completely contrary to how blogs work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One can certainly debate if Dijkstra was wrong, or if Larry broke perl in version 1.0, or if `goto` can be used properly.  These are good questions to ask... but not here.  They are debates.  In the Help Center - [What types of questions should I avoid asking](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) it says thus:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explanation of Opinions are Primarily Opinion themselves&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Inherently, explaining and opinion is an opinion itself.  It is one thing to explain why `goto` cannot fit into the Java Virtual Machine model.  It is quite another to try to explain why it is considered harmful.  The first is something that has an answer that is right or wrong, the second is expanding upon an opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An explanation of what someone else thought is *my* interpretation of those thoughts from what I am familiar with.  I think that Dijkstra was writing because of a deep set loathing of code that lacked structure and any artistic merit or craftsmanship.  Someone else may believe that Dijkstra was writing that about Fortran because he was concerned that it would cause people to be forever constrained to programs no wider than 80 columns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who knows? Which answer is right?  It can only be opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The source material is too broad&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the Dijkstra quote at the top, lets look at the Fortran bit instead (searching for 'basic' returns too many hits that aren't about the language):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FORTRAN —&quot;the infantile disorder&quot;—, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[EWD498](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD04xx/EWD498.html) is ~650 words.  There are 51 EWD writings that mention [FORTRAN](http://ewd.cs.utexas.edu.master.com/texis/master/search/mysite.html?q=Fortran).  Consider that this may amount to a [0th](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD831.html) approximation of 30,000 lines to get the complete scope of what Dijkstra thought about the failings of FORTRAN.  To try to explain the full scope of the material would imply reading about 100 pages of a typical novel.  Trying to condense that material into a text box is the definition of too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unclear about the problem&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the help center [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) again,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking to explain a quote, or comic, or blog post isn't something that is practical, answerable, or an actual problem.  It is an open ended discussion based on something that was *meant* to spark discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussion is fine, it just doesn't work well on the Q&amp;A part of Stack Exchange (try [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard))." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16807" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6442" RevisionGUID="c60206cb-6daf-472f-9fcc-d4a0502f1e62" CreationDate="2014-02-07T16:34:39.983" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Whenever I look at certification questions on the front page or in tags, they seem to be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why is this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16808" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6442" RevisionGUID="c60206cb-6daf-472f-9fcc-d4a0502f1e62" CreationDate="2014-02-07T16:34:39.983" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Why do certification questions keep getting closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16809" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6442" RevisionGUID="c60206cb-6daf-472f-9fcc-d4a0502f1e62" CreationDate="2014-02-07T16:34:39.983" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16810" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6443" RevisionGUID="b30ce2eb-9bc5-4c8f-aa0c-e16f9151c1b0" CreationDate="2014-02-07T16:34:39.983" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Questions about certifications have a number of issues facing them.  It *is* possible to ask a good question about certifications, but there are quite a few questions that don't generate good content for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Timeliness&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One certification question I recall seeing was one about what certification for Java 1.5 replaced one that was out there for Java 1.4.  As of this writing Java 1.7 is the target and 1.8 is just around the corner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the churn of technology, the companies offering the certificates, the prerequisites to the certificates, and the certificates themselves are constantly being changed.  Something that is valid today may be completely gone with the next release of the software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This leads to a nearly endless stream of &quot;what certificate replaces ${previous certificate}?&quot; questions with constantly changing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Spam&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the companies that do certificates do so for the money (not all, just most).      Likewise, there are countless companies that offer training and materials for the certificates.  When someone asks http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108875/how-do-you-study-for-mcpd it attracts spam from people advertising their own materials - be it a website with advertisements peppering the page or &quot;buy this book for ${lots}&quot; (for those with 10k rep, you can see exactly that in the linked question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Value&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Outside from a *few* big name certifications the general consensus of the community is they're worthless (see http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44/are-certifications-worth-it ).  To this extent, one could argue that by not helping you get a certification, you are being helped... in some sort of twisted logic.  The essence is still there though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career / Education Advice&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the questions are also of the &quot;what do I need to learn or study for ${cert}&quot; or &quot;what certification will help me get my next job?&quot;.  These questions are exactly the type of question that the career and education advice close reason means to cover.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this is that besides the &quot;certificates are not helpful&quot; belief, the one that may help you is very particular to your own situation that doesn't translate well to other people. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Googable results&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is left tends to be things of the nature that are trivially googleable.  A recent question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/227937/is-it-necessary-to-pass-the-mta-certification-to-get-mcsd when searching [google](https://www.google.com/#q=MTA%20a%20required%20prerequisite%20for%20MCSA%20or%20MCSD) gives the top result the material that is in the answer - from Microsoft.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![google results][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many questions are similar to this, asking about current requirements for a certification or information about it.  The information provided through google that links to the current information on the certificate site will be more up to date than a question on Programmers.SE.  Unless someone familiar with the question stumbles across it (they likely won't be searching for it) and provides a new answer to the question with the up to date information, these questions rapidly become wrong and useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pfUbA.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16811" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6442" RevisionGUID="9a5f4384-5ce4-4b04-ad40-f988ae5f8d23" CreationDate="2014-02-07T16:39:31.247" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16812" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6443" RevisionGUID="cdb6cece-fc27-4e2e-931d-b74d65eae0fb" CreationDate="2014-02-07T16:56:42.393" UserId="31260" Comment="1) quote background and tooltip for screen shot, 2) churn of technology backed up" Text="Questions about certifications have a number of issues facing them.  It *is* possible to ask a good question about certifications, but there are quite a few questions that don't generate good content for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Timeliness&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One certification question I recall seeing was one about what certification for Java 1.5 replaced one that was out there for Java 1.4.  As of this writing Java 1.7 is the target and 1.8 is just around the corner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the [wild, weird, fast changing variety of tools and technologies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_engineering_topics &quot;see eg Outline of software engineering at Wikipedia&quot;), the companies offering the certificates, the prerequisites to the certificates, and the certificates themselves are constantly being changed.  Something that is valid today may be completely gone with the next release of the software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This leads to a nearly endless stream of &quot;what certificate replaces ${previous certificate}?&quot; questions with constantly changing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Spam&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the companies that do certificates do so for the money (not all, just most).      Likewise, there are countless companies that offer training and materials for the certificates.  When someone asks http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108875/how-do-you-study-for-mcpd it attracts spam from people advertising their own materials - be it a website with advertisements peppering the page or &quot;buy this book for ${lots}&quot; (for those with 10k rep, you can see exactly that in the linked question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Value&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Outside from a *few* big name certifications the general consensus of the community is they're worthless (see http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44/are-certifications-worth-it ).  To this extent, one could argue that by not helping you get a certification, you are being helped... in some sort of twisted logic.  The essence is still there though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career / Education Advice&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the questions are also of the &quot;what do I need to learn or study for ${cert}&quot; or &quot;what certification will help me get my next job?&quot;.  These questions are exactly the type of question that the career and education advice close reason means to cover.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this is that besides the &quot;certificates are not helpful&quot; belief, the one that may help you is very particular to your own situation that doesn't translate well to other people. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Googable results&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is left tends to be things of the nature that are trivially googleable.  A recent question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/227937/is-it-necessary-to-pass-the-mta-certification-to-get-mcsd when searching [google](https://www.google.com/#q=MTA%20a%20required%20prerequisite%20for%20MCSA%20or%20MCSD) gives the top result the material that is in the answer - from Microsoft.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![google results][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many questions are similar to this, asking about current requirements for a certification or information about it.  The information provided through Google that links to the current information on the certificate site will be more up to date than a question on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless someone familiar with the question stumbles across it (they likely won't be searching for it) and provides a new answer to the question with the up to date information, these questions rapidly become wrong and useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pfUbA.png &quot;google results&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16813" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6443" RevisionGUID="a048c838-940e-4a73-9f22-bd480fbeb84d" CreationDate="2014-02-07T17:10:54.063" UserId="31260" Comment="http://i.stack.imgur.com/XlouH.png &quot;screen shot for those having less than 10k rep&quot;" Text="Questions about certifications have a number of issues facing them.  It *is* possible to ask a good question about certifications, but there are quite a few questions that don't generate good content for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Timeliness&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One certification question I recall seeing was one about what certification for Java 1.5 replaced one that was out there for Java 1.4.  As of this writing Java 1.7 is the target and 1.8 is just around the corner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the [wild, weird, fast changing variety of tools and technologies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_engineering_topics &quot;see eg Outline of software engineering at Wikipedia&quot;), the companies offering the certificates, the prerequisites to the certificates, and the certificates themselves are constantly being changed.  Something that is valid today may be completely gone with the next release of the software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This leads to a nearly endless stream of &quot;what certificate replaces ${previous certificate}?&quot; questions with constantly changing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Spam&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the companies that do certificates do so for the money (not all, just most).      Likewise, there are countless companies that offer training and materials for the certificates.  When someone asks http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108875/how-do-you-study-for-mcpd it attracts spam from people advertising their own materials - be it a website with advertisements peppering the page or &quot;buy this book for ${lots}&quot;. Tthose with [10k rep](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;allowing to view deleted posts&quot;), you can see exactly that in the linked question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/XlouH.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Value&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Outside from a *few* big name certifications the general consensus of the community is they're worthless (see http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44/are-certifications-worth-it ).  To this extent, one could argue that by not helping you get a certification, you are being helped... in some sort of twisted logic.  The essence is still there though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career / Education Advice&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the questions are also of the &quot;what do I need to learn or study for ${cert}&quot; or &quot;what certification will help me get my next job?&quot;.  These questions are exactly the type of question that the career and education advice close reason means to cover.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this is that besides the &quot;certificates are not helpful&quot; belief, the one that may help you is very particular to your own situation that doesn't translate well to other people. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Googable results&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is left tends to be things of the nature that are trivially googleable.  A recent question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/227937/is-it-necessary-to-pass-the-mta-certification-to-get-mcsd when searching [google](https://www.google.com/#q=MTA%20a%20required%20prerequisite%20for%20MCSA%20or%20MCSD) gives the top result the material that is in the answer - from Microsoft.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![google results][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many questions are similar to this, asking about current requirements for a certification or information about it.  The information provided through Google that links to the current information on the certificate site will be more up to date than a question on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless someone familiar with the question stumbles across it (they likely won't be searching for it) and provides a new answer to the question with the up to date information, these questions rapidly become wrong and useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/XlouH.png &quot;screen shot for those having less than 10k rep&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pfUbA.png &quot;google results&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16814" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6443" RevisionGUID="6a2fb65f-c15b-4e6c-a527-4d01762d24b0" CreationDate="2014-02-07T17:22:18.027" UserId="31260" Comment="google results screen shot kaizen" Text="Questions about certifications have a number of issues facing them.  It *is* possible to ask a good question about certifications, but there are quite a few questions that don't generate good content for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Timeliness&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One certification question I recall seeing was one about what certification for Java 1.5 replaced one that was out there for Java 1.4.  As of this writing Java 1.7 is the target and 1.8 is just around the corner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the [wild, weird, fast changing variety of tools and technologies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_engineering_topics &quot;see eg Outline of software engineering at Wikipedia&quot;), the companies offering the certificates, the prerequisites to the certificates, and the certificates themselves are constantly being changed.  Something that is valid today may be completely gone with the next release of the software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This leads to a nearly endless stream of &quot;what certificate replaces ${previous certificate}?&quot; questions with constantly changing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Spam&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the companies that do certificates do so for the money (not all, just most).      Likewise, there are countless companies that offer training and materials for the certificates.  When someone asks http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108875/how-do-you-study-for-mcpd it attracts spam from people advertising their own materials - be it a website with advertisements peppering the page or &quot;buy this book for ${lots}&quot;. Those with [10k rep](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;allowing to view deleted posts&quot;), you can see exactly that in the linked question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/XlouH.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Value&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Outside from a *few* big name certifications the general consensus of the community is they're worthless (see http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44/are-certifications-worth-it ).  To this extent, one could argue that by not helping you get a certification, you are being helped... in some sort of twisted logic.  The essence is still there though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career / Education Advice&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the questions are also of the &quot;what do I need to learn or study for ${cert}&quot; or &quot;what certification will help me get my next job?&quot;.  These questions are exactly the type of question that the career and education advice close reason means to cover.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this is that besides the &quot;certificates are not helpful&quot; belief, the one that may help you is very particular to your own situation that doesn't translate well to other people. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Googable results&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is left tends to be things of the nature that are trivially googleable.  A recent question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/227937/is-it-necessary-to-pass-the-mta-certification-to-get-mcsd when searching [google](https://www.google.com/#q=MTA%20a%20required%20prerequisite%20for%20MCSA%20or%20MCSD &quot;search phrase 'MTA a required prerequisite for MCSA or MCSD'&quot;) gives the top result the material that is in the answer - from Microsoft.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![google results][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many questions are similar to this, asking about current requirements for a certification or information about it.  The information provided through Google that links to the current information on the certificate site will be more up to date than a question on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless someone familiar with the question stumbles across it (they likely won't be searching for it) and provides a new answer to the question with the up to date information, these questions rapidly become wrong and useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/XlouH.png &quot;screen shot for those having less than 10k rep&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pQE7H.png &quot;google results&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16815" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6442" RevisionGUID="a97384f3-eaec-46eb-9bae-113435a82423" CreationDate="2014-02-07T19:33:14.533" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/431873305570975744" />
  <row Id="16818" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6443" RevisionGUID="f9d58414-6dc3-4f81-bc09-29d58f5303f8" CreationDate="2014-02-07T20:24:57.930" UserId="31260" Comment="funny typo corrected // goo-gaa :)" Text="Questions about certifications have a number of issues facing them.  It *is* possible to ask a good question about certifications, but there are quite a few questions that don't generate good content for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Timeliness&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One certification question I recall seeing was one about what certification for Java 1.5 replaced one that was out there for Java 1.4.  As of this writing Java 1.7 is the target and 1.8 is just around the corner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the [wild, weird, fast changing variety of tools and technologies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_engineering_topics &quot;see eg Outline of software engineering at Wikipedia&quot;), the companies offering the certificates, the prerequisites to the certificates, and the certificates themselves are constantly being changed.  Something that is valid today may be completely gone with the next release of the software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This leads to a nearly endless stream of &quot;what certificate replaces ${previous certificate}?&quot; questions with constantly changing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Spam&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the companies that do certificates do so for the money (not all, just most).      Likewise, there are countless companies that offer training and materials for the certificates.  When someone asks [How do you study for MCPD?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108875/how-do-you-study-for-mcpd) it attracts spam from people advertising their own materials - be it a website with advertisements peppering the page or &quot;buy this book for ${lots}&quot;. Those with [10k rep](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;allowing to view deleted posts&quot;), you can see exactly that in the linked question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/XlouH.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Value&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Outside from a *few* big name certifications the general consensus of the community is they're worthless (see [Are certifications worth it?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44/are-certifications-worth-it)).  To this extent, one could argue that by not helping you get a certification, you are being helped... in some sort of twisted logic.  The essence is still there though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career / Education Advice&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the questions are also of the &quot;what do I need to learn or study for ${cert}&quot; or &quot;what certification will help me get my next job?&quot;.  These questions are exactly the type of question that the career and education advice close reason means to cover.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this is that besides the &quot;certificates are not helpful&quot; belief, the one that may help you is very particular to your own situation that doesn't translate well to other people. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Googlable results&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is left tends to be things of the nature that are trivially googleable.  A recent question: [Is it necessary to pass the MTA certification to get MCSD?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/227937/is-it-necessary-to-pass-the-mta-certification-to-get-mcsd) when searching [google](https://www.google.com/#q=MTA%20a%20required%20prerequisite%20for%20MCSA%20or%20MCSD &quot;search phrase 'MTA a required prerequisite for MCSA or MCSD'&quot;) gives the top result the material that is in the answer - from Microsoft.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![google results][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many questions are similar to this, asking about current requirements for a certification or information about it.  The information provided through Google that links to the current information on the certificate site will be more up to date than a question on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless someone familiar with the question stumbles across it (they likely won't be searching for it) and provides a new answer to the question with the up to date information, these questions rapidly become wrong and useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/XlouH.png &quot;screen shot for those having less than 10k rep&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pQE7H.png &quot;google results&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16820" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6424" RevisionGUID="d413d396-e5c6-4e9e-bbe3-f889676fa5c6" CreationDate="2014-02-08T16:33:55.517" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/432190567091818496" />
  <row Id="16821" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6440" RevisionGUID="eec626cd-0119-40df-a33b-6eeaf4266580" CreationDate="2014-02-08T22:33:50.007" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/432281140498796544" />
  <row Id="16822" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6445" RevisionGUID="07db85d5-38a0-41f5-942b-2c5b6711361b" CreationDate="2014-02-10T12:57:45.940" UserId="-1" Comment="from https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/220265/how-to-get-a-link-on-the-deleted-answer" />
  <row Id="16823" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6445" RevisionGUID="6de48458-c58b-4f9d-9b13-e23e1d0af252" CreationDate="2014-02-10T12:56:58.733" UserId="44104" Text="If an answer is deleted on Programmers and the author wants to ask about the reason on MetaProgrammers, how can he do it? How can he reference something that doesn't exist? He can't edit it, either, it is unseen. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16824" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6445" RevisionGUID="6de48458-c58b-4f9d-9b13-e23e1d0af252" CreationDate="2014-02-10T12:56:58.733" UserId="44104" Text="How to get a link on the deleted answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16825" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6445" RevisionGUID="6de48458-c58b-4f9d-9b13-e23e1d0af252" CreationDate="2014-02-10T12:56:58.733" UserId="44104" Text="|support|deleted-answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16828" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6447" RevisionGUID="dfb168da-555a-4b3f-8077-ea0c558954f0" CreationDate="2014-02-10T13:04:05.240" UserId="47" Text="You can always see your deleted answers (regardless of your reputation) when viewing the question. So as long as you have (or can find) a link to the question you can then find the the link to the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, only moderators or 10K+ users will be able to see your answer, so it would be best to include the text of the answer in your Meta question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16829" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6448" RevisionGUID="f3bf8b21-e8d8-4f76-bf3f-44b73f8badd8" CreationDate="2014-02-10T13:14:26.823" UserId="25936" Text="You have 9 deleted answers on Programmers. 7 of those were deleted when the question was deleted, one you deleted yourself and the more recent one was deleted by three community members. I'm guessing that's the one you are looking for, here's the link to the question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212522/how-to-indicate-that-a-class-might-implement-an-interface.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As ChrisF already mentioned, you should be able to see your answer now that you have a link to the question. You can also edit and improve it - as is, it's more of a comment than an actual answer to the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16830" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6443" RevisionGUID="8da0b583-c4e9-4233-9d31-55a80ef506be" CreationDate="2014-02-11T06:59:24.387" UserId="31260" Comment="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/googlable" Text="Questions about certifications have a number of issues facing them.  It *is* possible to ask a good question about certifications, but there are quite a few questions that don't generate good content for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Timeliness&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One certification question I recall seeing was one about what certification for Java 1.5 replaced one that was out there for Java 1.4.  As of this writing Java 1.7 is the target and 1.8 is just around the corner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the [wild, weird, fast changing variety of tools and technologies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_engineering_topics &quot;see eg Outline of software engineering at Wikipedia&quot;), the companies offering the certificates, the prerequisites to the certificates, and the certificates themselves are constantly being changed.  Something that is valid today may be completely gone with the next release of the software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This leads to a nearly endless stream of &quot;what certificate replaces ${previous certificate}?&quot; questions with constantly changing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Spam&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the companies that do certificates do so for the money (not all, just most).      Likewise, there are countless companies that offer training and materials for the certificates.  When someone asks [How do you study for MCPD?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108875/how-do-you-study-for-mcpd) it attracts spam from people advertising their own materials - be it a website with advertisements peppering the page or &quot;buy this book for ${lots}&quot;. Those with [10k rep](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;allowing to view deleted posts&quot;), you can see exactly that in the linked question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/XlouH.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Value&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Outside from a *few* big name certifications the general consensus of the community is they're worthless (see [Are certifications worth it?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44/are-certifications-worth-it)).  To this extent, one could argue that by not helping you get a certification, you are being helped... in some sort of twisted logic.  The essence is still there though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career / Education Advice&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the questions are also of the &quot;what do I need to learn or study for ${cert}&quot; or &quot;what certification will help me get my next job?&quot;.  These questions are exactly the type of question that the career and education advice close reason means to cover.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this is that besides the &quot;certificates are not helpful&quot; belief, the one that may help you is very particular to your own situation that doesn't translate well to other people. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Googlable results&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is left tends to be things of the nature that are trivially googlable.  A recent question: [Is it necessary to pass the MTA certification to get MCSD?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/227937/is-it-necessary-to-pass-the-mta-certification-to-get-mcsd) when searching [google](https://www.google.com/#q=MTA%20a%20required%20prerequisite%20for%20MCSA%20or%20MCSD &quot;search phrase 'MTA a required prerequisite for MCSA or MCSD'&quot;) gives the top result the material that is in the answer - from Microsoft.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![google results][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many questions are similar to this, asking about current requirements for a certification or information about it.  The information provided through Google that links to the current information on the certificate site will be more up to date than a question on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless someone familiar with the question stumbles across it (they likely won't be searching for it) and provides a new answer to the question with the up to date information, these questions rapidly become wrong and useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/XlouH.png &quot;screen shot for those having less than 10k rep&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pQE7H.png &quot;google results&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16831" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6418" RevisionGUID="30150af4-db81-4701-81be-6cf00ec420f8" CreationDate="2014-02-12T19:46:34.320" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="words, not lines." Text="Blog posts, [(esoteric) web comics](http://xkcd.com), keynote talks, and even letters (and papers) from old [computer scientists](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/) - trying to cite them and ask about particular parts fail at being good questions for several factors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first is that many of these are driven ultimately by views.  The more views they get, the better (for them).  Everyone who writes for the media (be it a paper in the ACM or a blog post tucked away in a bliki) says things with some degree of exaggeration and hyperbole to get people to think about what is written, to generate readership and to get people to discuss the material (hopefully on their own blog or letters to the editor).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point is, the **discuss** part.  Larry Wall wanted people to be discussing what he said at the State Of The Onion talk.  Dijkstra *wanted* people to be discussing and thinking about the education system for teaching programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussions don't work here&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange works on a different model.  Its not people talking *about* what is said here that brings the eyeballs.  Its the quality of the material.  To provide good material, the system was designed with the intent to make discussions difficult.  This runs completely contrary to how blogs work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One can certainly debate if Dijkstra was wrong, or if Larry broke perl in version 1.0, or if `goto` can be used properly.  These are good questions to ask... but not here.  They are debates.  In the Help Center - [What types of questions should I avoid asking](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) it says thus:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explanation of Opinions are Primarily Opinion themselves&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Inherently, explaining and opinion is an opinion itself.  It is one thing to explain why `goto` cannot fit into the Java Virtual Machine model.  It is quite another to try to explain why it is considered harmful.  The first is something that has an answer that is right or wrong, the second is expanding upon an opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An explanation of what someone else thought is *my* interpretation of those thoughts from what I am familiar with.  I think that Dijkstra was writing because of a deep set loathing of code that lacked structure and any artistic merit or craftsmanship.  Someone else may believe that Dijkstra was writing that about Fortran because he was concerned that it would cause people to be forever constrained to programs no wider than 80 columns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who knows? Which answer is right?  It can only be opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The source material is too broad&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the Dijkstra quote at the top, lets look at the Fortran bit instead (searching for 'basic' returns too many hits that aren't about the language):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FORTRAN —&quot;the infantile disorder&quot;—, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[EWD498](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD04xx/EWD498.html) is ~650 words.  There are 51 EWD writings that mention [FORTRAN](http://ewd.cs.utexas.edu.master.com/texis/master/search/mysite.html?q=Fortran).  Consider that this may amount to a [0th](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD831.html) approximation of 30,000 words to get the complete scope of what Dijkstra thought about the failings of FORTRAN.  To try to explain the full scope of the material would imply reading about 100 pages of a typical novel.  Trying to condense that material into a text box is the definition of too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unclear about the problem&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the help center [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) again,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking to explain a quote, or comic, or blog post isn't something that is practical, answerable, or an actual problem.  It is an open ended discussion based on something that was *meant* to spark discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussion is fine, it just doesn't work well on the Q&amp;A part of Stack Exchange (try [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard))." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16833" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6449" RevisionGUID="234dd8e3-e38f-40fa-a159-8eeeadaeaf39" CreationDate="2014-02-13T16:32:21.120" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/228881/i-have-a-huge-problem" />
  <row Id="16834" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6449" RevisionGUID="91c354da-665e-431d-a96d-5b8403a9aa5c" CreationDate="2014-02-13T16:28:05.030" UserId="119218" Text="I have a huge problem! The problem is that I cannot post a question on this site which does not automatically get put on hold!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My problem began when I tried to ask which tool I should use to develop apps, i.e which is the most commonly used one...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have tried debugging this problem by editing the text, phrasing and question. So far all my debugging ended in syntax errors, and I cannot get my question to run properly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does anyone have a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks greatly!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16835" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6449" RevisionGUID="91c354da-665e-431d-a96d-5b8403a9aa5c" CreationDate="2014-02-13T16:28:05.030" UserId="119218" Text="I have a huge problem" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16836" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6449" RevisionGUID="91c354da-665e-431d-a96d-5b8403a9aa5c" CreationDate="2014-02-13T16:28:05.030" UserId="119218" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16837" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6449" RevisionGUID="7e12111d-d60e-4083-8088-152d349d14fd" CreationDate="2014-02-13T16:38:11.030" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|recommendations|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16839" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6451" RevisionGUID="d7c41ba7-2e65-4a56-977c-90f272cd8641" CreationDate="2014-02-13T16:44:09.207" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Recommendations are off topic on P.SE.  There is a long history to this on both P.SE and Stack Overflow.  For some of the P.SE history see [this search](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=recommendation).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a specific close reason for off topic for questions asking for some software recommendation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is what you need to look at.  We don't do recommendations.  There is, however, a (currently private beta) Stack Exchange site just for recommendations - http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/60887/software-recommendations - once this is in pubic beta you could ask such a question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, consider that questions of the use of a given tool is also off topic on P.SE, but on topic on Stack Overflow.  If you pick a tool you *may* be able to ask and get an answer for &quot;how to use that tool to do XYZ&quot; on Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16846" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6453" RevisionGUID="adcea74e-f690-44a4-9867-4eb390a30662" CreationDate="2014-02-14T06:28:57.063" UserId="113497" Text="I cannot find my question on [programmers.stackexchange](http://programmers.stackexchange.com). It was today deleted. But I cannot find any notification about that. It lasted about a week and suddenly disappeared. Negative reputation was not (one upvote, one star). It was closed as &quot;on hold&quot; in first day. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as I know the &quot;on hold&quot; not means deletion mark. &#xD;&#xA;How I can know who delete this my question forever?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I found this question. Here is link to it. [Why doesnt the Dart Team follow-their own style guide? Should I follow it?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/228388/why-doesnt-the-dart-team-follow-their-own-style-guide-should-i-follow-it)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cannot undestand what was wrong with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What rules have been violated? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why moderator removed completely innocuous question, which contained only the facts and nothing but the facts? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Naturally facts raise questions. Why questions about facts considered impaired? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe the moderator has the right to delete any questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16847" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6453" RevisionGUID="adcea74e-f690-44a4-9867-4eb390a30662" CreationDate="2014-02-14T06:28:57.063" UserId="113497" Text="Could not find information in help center about where to find my question that was today deleted" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16848" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6453" RevisionGUID="adcea74e-f690-44a4-9867-4eb390a30662" CreationDate="2014-02-14T06:28:57.063" UserId="113497" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16849" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6454" RevisionGUID="2729e5ce-f298-4683-a81b-aa3b3a7d0957" CreationDate="2014-02-14T06:53:20.883" UserId="9113" Text="If you phrase questions in a way they sound that some kind of &quot;mind reading&quot; is needed to answer them, expect them to be closed soon, because &quot;mind reading&quot; is nothing but guessing, that's too opinion-based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess you could have phrased your question differently - for example, ask about the meaning of some specific rules of the darts style guide, what advantages or disadvantages they have (and then you could give a remark about the fact the dart team does not follow that rule in lots of examples). But don't put the actions of the Dart team or the reasoing behind them in the focus of your question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16850" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6449" RevisionGUID="6b74e5a8-2e12-4fd3-a611-73280a254328" CreationDate="2014-02-14T06:58:14.053" UserId="9113" Comment="added 22 characters in body; edited title" Text="I have a &lt;strike&gt;huge&lt;/strike&gt; tiny problem! The problem is that I cannot post a question on this site which does not automatically get put on hold!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My problem began when I tried to ask which tool I should use to develop apps, i.e which is the most commonly used one...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have tried debugging this problem by editing the text, phrasing and question. So far all my debugging ended in syntax errors, and I cannot get my question to run properly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does anyone have a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks greatly!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16851" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6449" RevisionGUID="6b74e5a8-2e12-4fd3-a611-73280a254328" CreationDate="2014-02-14T06:58:14.053" UserId="9113" Comment="added 22 characters in body; edited title" Text="I have a tiny problem" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16858" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6456" RevisionGUID="57538758-933a-4360-820f-c3996be6314d" CreationDate="2014-02-14T23:44:05.797" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There is a balancing act that is being walked between the &quot;[everything is downvoted and closed](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q)&quot; and the &quot;you delete things too soon&quot;.  The stress between these two philosophies has also gotten a touch more stressed with an interpretation of an answer [elsemeta](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/219922/what-is-the-goal-of-hot-network-questions/220099#220099).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is quite possible that we've been overeager with deleting things quickly.  That said, it may have eventually have gotten [deleted on its own](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/173513/turbocharging-the-roomba-solutions-for-premature-deletion/177675#177675) without intervention (arguably though the faster delete tries to reduce the perception of lost rep if something was upvoted... a bit of thought does go into what to delete or not).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deletion of the question was not about breaking rules (or not) but rather an attempt at hastening the ultimate janitorial actions.  And sometimes we delete fast because we don't want to forget to delete it later (there isn't a &quot;delete queue&quot; like there is for close votes and once it falls from view it becomes more difficult for people to delete what (ultimately) (debatably) should be deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would ultimately be deleted somehow.  If its done a few days after the question was asked or a week, or a month... its (arguably) just a matter of time.  In its current state, it is unlikely to have been reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question itself is really unanswerable by anyone not part of the Dart Team.  It requires one to go and ask them and any of us are equally capable of doing that compared to what you can do (this 'ask them' [has been done before](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/210399/why-is-there-a-new-in-go/216582#216582) and *can* be done as a good question - you may consider flagging the question for reopening if you find the answer to then do a self answer of the question).  Note that the reception of how well the question and interesting the question to the community as a whole is as fickle as the community itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with the question is that it is asking other people to do work for you that you are just as capable as doing yourself.  This applies to questions where people ask them to (basically) search google or quote wikipedia for them too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also with the edit, you've edited in an answer [from the Dart team](https://groups.google.com/a/dartlang.org/forum/#!msg/misc/8Uchi3bW1YQ/LTKIrC4L564J) - though clarifications for the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do I understand correctly that..&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals but they use it.&#xD;&#xA;* This is not an indicator of quality, but just a bug. Becuase they written by a Dart team &#xD;&#xA;member but not by other person.&#xD;&#xA;* There is no &quot;why&quot; here because it is better to remain silent than to say unpleasant things.&#xD;&#xA;* Dart Team can forget to fix this if someone does not file a ticket.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;needs to be asked of the Dart team, not P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that this clarification didn't help the question.  In my reading of it, the third point combined with the main question reads like a rant about a style guide (or inconstant following of it).  To that, I've read a number of unpleasant comment threads in other questions that have a rant-like tone (again *my* reading of the question) that become wholesale delete the entire comments (and sometimes lock the question while the participants simmer down).  To this, quickly deleting the question quickly can help reduce the total amount of janitorial work that needs mod involvement (and thats where my vote came from)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16859" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="4841cd2b-63ae-487c-ab98-f67a8253df92" CreationDate="2014-02-15T00:02:57.520" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|faq|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16860" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6366" RevisionGUID="0d912a7f-62c6-4385-a30f-95d05e7d746f" CreationDate="2014-02-15T00:02:57.520" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16861" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6457" RevisionGUID="ac0a7147-6e1d-4de2-bf2e-c933392596b1" CreationDate="2014-02-15T01:41:29.113" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="As the person who cast the third delete vote, I thought I would add some additional perspective as to why I cast the vote when I did.  Please consider this as supplementary to [MichaelT's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6456/53019)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Normally, I won't vote-to-delete on a question as recently closed as yours was.  But the follow-up edit that you put in place after the question was closed is what made up my mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me address some of your meta questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I cannot undestand what was wrong with it.  &#xD;&#xA;What rules have been violated?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question is asking about the norms of a 3rd party package unrelated to the Programmers site.  That alone is enough to make it off-topic, and that's why it was closed as &quot;primarily opinion based.&quot;  Loosely translated, that means the Programmers community is not able to give you an evidence or experience backed answer that would meet the site guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please note that the one answer your question received was pure speculation and wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why moderator removed completely innocuous question, which contained only the facts and nothing but the facts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community (not a moderator) voted to delete your question.  ChrisF pointed that out in the comments, and I want to repeat that it was a community decision.  The three of us that voted to delete your question take the privilege to delete posts seriously, and we take responsibility for our decisions.  Part of that responsibility means explaining our decisions, which is why I'm writing this response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question was not innocuous and it did not contain `nothing but the facts`.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You did the right thing in contacting the Dart team to ask why there was an issue.  Had your question been on-topic, you could have taken their reply and used it as a self-answer to your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But you didn't, and the nature of your additional questions to their reply is what made up my mind to vote to delete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You added in this answer from Dart Team member Bob Nystrom:  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;There is no why here.&#xD;&#xA;It's a bug in the examples.&#xD;&#xA;They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals.&#xD;&#xA;Can you file a ticket so we don't forget to fix this please? Thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then you asked:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Do I understand correctly that..&#xD;&#xA;1. They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals but they use it.&#xD;&#xA;2. This is not an indicator of quality, but just a bug. Becuase they written by a&#xD;&#xA; Dart team member but not by other person.&#xD;&#xA;3. There is no &quot;why&quot; here because it is better to remain silent than to say &#xD;&#xA;unpleasant things.&#xD;&#xA;4. Dart Team can forget to fix this if someone does not file a ticket.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;_Editorial note, I have numbered your questions to make them easier to identify_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Items 1 and 2 aren't really questions and appear to be just bashing the Dart team. I'll admit it's hard to tell what you're really asking because of the communication barrier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item 3 is where I saw your question turning into a rant about the Dart team and why I feared a long comment thread that would need to be cleaned up.  In particular, `it is better to remain silent than to say unpleasant things` is inflammatory and you're almost asking to start a bashing session. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tone of 3 biased how I read 4, and I couldn't see anything positive coming from leaving the question in place.  The tone of those follow-up questions is not innocuous.  So I voted to delete in order to prevent a minor flame war from breaking out in the comments of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All that said, I'll grant that there were some communication issues and in this case, we deleted your question too early.  So I apologize for the quick deletion, but I don't see how your question could be salvaged to be made more constructive.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if it helps, this is my _opinion_ of what the Dart team was trying to say.   &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Yes, please note that we're still in the &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; justification for closing the question.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There is no why here.  &#xD;&#xA;It's a bug in the examples.  &#xD;&#xA;They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Translated: Your original assumption about their example was correct and you found a bug.  There isn't any other reason behind that issue - hence &quot;there is no why here.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can you file a ticket so we don't forget to fix this please? Thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Translated: I'm really busy right now and don't have the time or enough details to enter a proper bug report.  Please enter a bug report so the team doesn't forget about it existing and so it can be prioritized.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also keep in mind that on some projects, entering a valid bug report is seen as bragging rights.  It means the person found a legitimate issue within the product and helped start the process to get it fixed.  That sort of activity can be used by some projects to determine who they will let contribute to the project." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16864" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6458" RevisionGUID="13b200b1-df6c-4cd4-8aa0-4f40c36e3952" CreationDate="2014-02-18T21:35:47.043" UserId="1204" Text="The Help Center says this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [career advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/590/1204), salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... but it links to an answer that cites this question as being an acceptable career development question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8886/can-someone-find-a-job-as-a-programmer-without-an-education&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Tag Wiki says this in its body:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; invite the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please note that most career advice questions run the risk of being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed for being too broad or impractical: try to make yours a [good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; subjective&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please also make sure your question has the proper scope. If your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really&#xD;&#xA;&gt; something that uniquely applies to software development and isn't&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![proper scope for question](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; More information about career development questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it says this (not encouraging) in the Tag Wiki Excerpt:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 99% of questions with this tag are off-topic and will be closed. Study&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other questions under this tag closely that aren't closed before&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking your question, if you want any chance of it not being closed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closed questions add up to a possible question-ban disallowing you to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ask further questions. Questions about steps one can take to develop&#xD;&#xA;&gt; one's programming career that require the unique insights of other&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how does one identify an on-topic question for this tag?  Do they even exist?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16865" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6458" RevisionGUID="13b200b1-df6c-4cd4-8aa0-4f40c36e3952" CreationDate="2014-02-18T21:35:47.043" UserId="1204" Text="There seems to be some contradictory guidance with respect to asking career development questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16866" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6458" RevisionGUID="13b200b1-df6c-4cd4-8aa0-4f40c36e3952" CreationDate="2014-02-18T21:35:47.043" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16867" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6458" RevisionGUID="ff0a7da0-591a-43f5-9992-b797a1c14ff0" CreationDate="2014-02-18T21:44:36.657" UserId="1204" Comment="added 453 characters in body" Text="The Help Center says this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [career advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/590/1204), salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... but it links to an answer that cites this question as being an acceptable career development question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8886/can-someone-find-a-job-as-a-programmer-without-an-education&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Tag Wiki says this in its body:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; invite the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please note that most career advice questions run the risk of being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed for being too broad or impractical: try to make yours a [good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; subjective&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please also make sure your question has the proper scope. If your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really&#xD;&#xA;&gt; something that uniquely applies to software development and isn't&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![proper scope for question](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; More information about career development questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it says this (not encouraging) in the Tag Wiki Excerpt:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 99% of questions with this tag are off-topic and will be closed. Study&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other questions under this tag closely that aren't closed before&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking your question, if you want any chance of it not being closed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closed questions add up to a possible question-ban disallowing you to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ask further questions. Questions about steps one can take to develop&#xD;&#xA;&gt; one's programming career that require the unique insights of other&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, we have a custom close reason that seems to provide no room for exceptions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.** They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular&#xD;&#xA;&gt; circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how does one identify an on-topic question for this tag?  Do they even exist?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16868" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6458" RevisionGUID="d4675012-ca6e-45c1-ae5a-8e8b28e85922" CreationDate="2014-02-18T21:51:31.093" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="+links" Text="The Help Center says this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [career advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/590/1204), salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... but it links to an answer that cites this question as being an acceptable [tag:career-development] question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8886/can-someone-find-a-job-as-a-programmer-without-an-education&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [Tag Wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/career-development/info) says this in its body:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; invite the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please note that most career advice questions run the risk of being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed for being too broad or impractical: try to make yours a [good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; subjective&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please also make sure your question has the proper scope. If your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really&#xD;&#xA;&gt; something that uniquely applies to software development and isn't&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![proper scope for question](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; More information about career development questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it says this (not encouraging) in the Tag Wiki Excerpt:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 99% of questions with this tag are off-topic and will be closed. Study&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other questions under this tag closely that aren't closed before&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking your question, if you want any chance of it not being closed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closed questions add up to a possible question-ban disallowing you to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ask further questions. Questions about steps one can take to develop&#xD;&#xA;&gt; one's programming career that require the unique insights of other&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, we have a custom close reason that seems to provide no room for exceptions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.** They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular&#xD;&#xA;&gt; circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how does one identify an on-topic question for this tag?  Do they even exist?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16869" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6459" RevisionGUID="ed6e4ffb-2d9d-4717-b2ba-f425b708d04c" CreationDate="2014-02-18T22:37:32.903" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="They do [exist][1]. (I picked one of my own answers since it was easy to find)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice made loads of sense when we were &quot;Not Programming Related&quot;. It continued to make some vague kind of gibbering sense thereafter...right up until The Workplace became established to take care of the general cases. We still occasionally see a specialized case that's both &quot;programmery&quot; enough for us and at the same time general enough to be of future use to the community and those googling for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fundamentally that's why it's a problematic thing. What are the odds that someone will find one of our &quot;good&quot; career questions via a search engine (even our own) and not just ask yet another extremely localized, poorly articulated, and/or hugely broad career development question? Pretty highly tilted toward the &quot;lousy&quot; end of the spectrum from where I sit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that The Workplace is going to launch soon, they have the metal to stand on their own. That said, they are also not our toilet bowl. (For future reference, trying to use Software Recommendations as the next dumping ground for a rather similar kind of question asked in the same vague terms will be met with scrutiny).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the question is, how do we as experienced, professional programmers (for various modes of experienced and professional) deal with our future peers coming to us for advice on how to proceed? Chat is great but that 20 rep is both a gift and a curse. We can't hoist everyone who asks a career related question into chat, that'd make the lower bound for chat participation pointless. So here's what I propose:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Write out a comprehensive guide to becoming a professional programmer. Several of these [exist][2] already: (Thanks for finding it, @MichaelT IIRC) Joel on Software, Coding Horror, Scott Hanselman, innumerable books, podcasts, the list goes on. What I propose is a good heuristic for reading all this stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Bad career questions (of which the vast majority are) tend to boil down to &quot;Decide this for me&quot;. The economy is a big, howling tumblebeast of a thing and that's scary to people with no work experience and little of idea of a career trajectory and precious little reliably good advice from the academics they have access to. So they want a sure thing. Java or C# or C++ or whatever. Nothing has ever been a sure bet outside of intelligently honed skill and thoughtful, polite gall. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Obviously what I propose is a bunch of work but it's got to be better than continuing to keep relentlessly closing these questions with no other options.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Be much more precise about what we mean by &quot;Career advice&quot; and similar topics. And I mean be really precise. Where the hell is the line? We need to very precisely define it. I'd use first example I gave as a decent starting point. It's clearly applicable to all programmers generally and stands a decent chance of staying relevant (particularly as universities kill off CS departments)Here's [another][3] from the old, old days that's still alive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Make sure we know exactly what is on-topic on the Workplace and Freelancing before we even try to suggest migrating things there. Explain the difference between off-topic for *this* site and off-topic for the network at large. Most career questions fall into the latter but some are only in the former. We need to be clear as to exactly why these aren't good questions for this site or this network as appropriate. &quot;This won't appeal to future visitors of the site&quot; and &quot;This narrowly applies only to you&quot; need to enumerated somewhat I think. It's obvious to us but to many who are not familiar with how the network operates or what it's goals are (concise, accurate, timeless googleable content), the words we use seem very arbitrary and obtuse. There's a particular flavor of newbie argument that goes &quot;But someday it might be useful to someone!&quot; seems valid but isn't. It goes against the idea that we are a concise source of information with singular, authoritative monoliths enscribbled with the writings of the mad geniuses of the ages rather than the cleaved fieldstone of such monoliths, forcing much searching and anguish for no gain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 4. Edit the hell out of the Career Development tag to serve as the gateway to as much of this as we can might be a good option in corollary to item 1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think career advice does have a place here. It's a small place, but a place nonetheless. It just needs to be very, very clearly defined as to the what, hows and whys of the particular advice we are willing to give.&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99316/will-a-bachelor-of-science-in-something-other-than-computer-science-hurt-a-caree/99321#99321&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html#id2854043&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14914/whats-the-difference-between-entry-level-jr-sr-developers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16870" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6459" RevisionGUID="d92df429-141c-4366-8966-230e71986493" CreationDate="2014-02-19T00:57:55.680" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add a space. De-id link." Text="They do [exist][1]. (I picked one of my own answers since it was easy to find)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice made loads of sense when we were &quot;Not Programming Related&quot;. It continued to make some vague kind of gibbering sense thereafter...right up until The Workplace became established to take care of the general cases. We still occasionally see a specialized case that's both &quot;programmery&quot; enough for us and at the same time general enough to be of future use to the community and those googling for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fundamentally that's why it's a problematic thing. What are the odds that someone will find one of our &quot;good&quot; career questions via a search engine (even our own) and not just ask yet another extremely localized, poorly articulated, and/or hugely broad career development question? Pretty highly tilted toward the &quot;lousy&quot; end of the spectrum from where I sit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that The Workplace is going to launch soon, they have the metal to stand on their own. That said, they are also not our toilet bowl. (For future reference, trying to use Software Recommendations as the next dumping ground for a rather similar kind of question asked in the same vague terms will be met with scrutiny).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the question is, how do we as experienced, professional programmers (for various modes of experienced and professional) deal with our future peers coming to us for advice on how to proceed? Chat is great but that 20 rep is both a gift and a curse. We can't hoist everyone who asks a career related question into chat, that'd make the lower bound for chat participation pointless. So here's what I propose:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Write out a comprehensive guide to becoming a professional programmer. Several of these [exist][2] already: (Thanks for finding it, @MichaelT IIRC) Joel on Software, Coding Horror, Scott Hanselman, innumerable books, podcasts, the list goes on. What I propose is a good heuristic for reading all this stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Bad career questions (of which the vast majority are) tend to boil down to &quot;Decide this for me&quot;. The economy is a big, howling tumblebeast of a thing and that's scary to people with no work experience and little of idea of a career trajectory and precious little reliably good advice from the academics they have access to. So they want a sure thing. Java or C# or C++ or whatever. Nothing has ever been a sure bet outside of intelligently honed skill and thoughtful, polite gall. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Obviously what I propose is a bunch of work but it's got to be better than continuing to keep relentlessly closing these questions with no other options.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Be much more precise about what we mean by &quot;Career advice&quot; and similar topics. And I mean be really precise. Where the hell is the line? We need to very precisely define it. I'd use first example I gave as a decent starting point. It's clearly applicable to all programmers generally and stands a decent chance of staying relevant (particularly as universities kill off CS departments) Here's [another][3] from the old, old days that's still alive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Make sure we know exactly what is on-topic on the Workplace and Freelancing before we even try to suggest migrating things there. Explain the difference between off-topic for *this* site and off-topic for the network at large. Most career questions fall into the latter but some are only in the former. We need to be clear as to exactly why these aren't good questions for this site or this network as appropriate. &quot;This won't appeal to future visitors of the site&quot; and &quot;This narrowly applies only to you&quot; need to enumerated somewhat I think. It's obvious to us but to many who are not familiar with how the network operates or what it's goals are (concise, accurate, timeless googleable content), the words we use seem very arbitrary and obtuse. There's a particular flavor of newbie argument that goes &quot;But someday it might be useful to someone!&quot; seems valid but isn't. It goes against the idea that we are a concise source of information with singular, authoritative monoliths enscribbled with the writings of the mad geniuses of the ages rather than the cleaved fieldstone of such monoliths, forcing much searching and anguish for no gain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 4. Edit the hell out of the Career Development tag to serve as the gateway to as much of this as we can might be a good option in corollary to item 1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think career advice does have a place here. It's a small place, but a place nonetheless. It just needs to be very, very clearly defined as to the what, hows and whys of the particular advice we are willing to give.&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99316/will-a-bachelor-of-science-in-something-other-than-computer-science-hurt-a-caree/99321#99321&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14914/whats-the-difference-between-entry-level-jr-sr-developers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16871" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6460" RevisionGUID="b613a624-d89b-4f52-9b8f-5fdc2a686190" CreationDate="2014-02-19T04:16:23.623" UserId="8198" Text="&gt; [Following specification vs. following language standards](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/229310/following-specification-vs-following-language-standards)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way I see it, this question follows [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It inspires answers that explain &quot;why&quot;. Options are given, so I need reasons.&#xD;&#xA;2. Long answers are expected which provide example implementations and reasons for designing them that way (like why `XDocument` does not follow specification).&#xD;&#xA;3. It's not a holy war topic, so constructive tone is expected.&#xD;&#xA;4. It invites sharing experiences, because there're many standards implemented both by Microsoft and third-parties.&#xD;&#xA;5. As per above, facts and references are expected.&#xD;&#xA;6. And finally, it's a very important practical question about designing libraries.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way I see it, the question perfectly fits Programmers scope: **conceptual questions about software development**. It is about **software architecture** which is [declared as on-topic by FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, the question is: why was the question closed and how to fix it to get it reopened?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16872" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6460" RevisionGUID="b613a624-d89b-4f52-9b8f-5fdc2a686190" CreationDate="2014-02-19T04:16:23.623" UserId="8198" Text="Question closed, how to fix it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16873" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6460" RevisionGUID="b613a624-d89b-4f52-9b8f-5fdc2a686190" CreationDate="2014-02-19T04:16:23.623" UserId="8198" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16874" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6458" RevisionGUID="014d36d5-12aa-47a4-81bd-83e371ac6849" CreationDate="2014-02-19T04:40:13.813" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/435997226020913152" />
  <row Id="16877" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6462" RevisionGUID="112bb426-238e-4090-91c6-7446234c4a16" CreationDate="2014-02-19T07:39:01.397" UserId="17898" Text="To add to Michael's excellent answer, many such questions are little more than homework questions, asking for answers to sample questions.&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Typically something along the line of &quot;the book has a question XXXXXX, why does it say the answer is B&quot;. &lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Except the cases where such sample questions are wrong (and there are bad practice exams out there, I know), simply studying for the exam should teach why that's the answer, yet all too many seem to think that just cramming the answers to practice exams will get them a good score on the real one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16878" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6463" RevisionGUID="5208b705-465f-43a5-ad15-a11c9972ad15" CreationDate="2014-02-19T13:00:47.840" UserId="31260" Text="While general approach to the tag has been thoroughly addressed in [another answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6459/31260 &quot;here&quot;), I would like to focus on a question used as an &quot;acceptable&quot; example in Help Center. As far as I can see, in its current shape it does more harm than good, by misleading the readers into couple of wrong beliefs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Please answer for your region/city/country only&quot;** - this part of the question makes readers believe that poll / [list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info) questions are acceptable. The very presence of this part makes low quality answers look legitimate and acceptable:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Personally I wouldn't hire someone without a masters degree, unless they could document some relevant experience and had very good references. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* In some minor companies in my country (Brazil) you can get a job, but due to some laws you'll get difficulty to be promoted, because to work in some positions, the laws require some education degrees.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* I would hire that developer if he can show me the his abilities and prove that he is the one that my job needs through interview directly. Of course, it's difficult if his resume does not show any interested information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers quoted above are purely opinionated, brief &quot;polling entries&quot;, lacking an explanation and effort, making very wrong impressions on what kind posts are welcome at Programmers. Advertising posts like these through Help Center looks harmful and misleading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Can someone / Would someone even consider** part of the question shifts it into Yes/No territory with [all its known issues](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/183177/165773 &quot;discussed eg here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is not just a 'get an answer for me' place, it's &quot;Produce quality content that is useful for people who follow&quot;. In the case of your question, the second part is lacking...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;When asking a yes/no question there are one of two possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. You really want a yes/no answer. If this is the case, and you don't need anything else to answer your question then it means the answers will be inherently low quality. An answer that only says &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; (in addition to not meeting the minimum length) would be of very low quality. SO answers expect more.&#xD;&#xA;2. You don't actually want a yes/no answer, in which case your real question is not actually a yes/no question, and you're hoping that people will determine what your real question is. For example, someone might ask, &quot;Can I do [...]?&quot; when what they really meant to ask was, &quot;How can I do [...]?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Almost all yes/no questions I've seen fall into case 2; they should be edited into a question that isn't really asking for just a yes/no, it should be asking to explain something. (Even if it has a yes/no in there somewhere.) Note that just adding &quot;Explain&quot; at the end isn't really a good way to go about this; you should refactor the question on a more fundamental level..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16879" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6464" RevisionGUID="f65d86c0-6587-49a1-af12-f531d84a534b" CreationDate="2014-02-20T09:16:17.987" UserId="14363" Text="Would it be worth having the new [Software Recommendation Stack Exchange][1] site added as an option in the close option &quot;This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network&quot; dialogue?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am aware the site is still in beta of course, but maybe this could drive adoption and a full launch of that site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16880" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6464" RevisionGUID="f65d86c0-6587-49a1-af12-f531d84a534b" CreationDate="2014-02-20T09:16:17.987" UserId="14363" Text="Software recommendations stackexchange" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16881" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6464" RevisionGUID="f65d86c0-6587-49a1-af12-f531d84a534b" CreationDate="2014-02-20T09:16:17.987" UserId="14363" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16882" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6465" RevisionGUID="c844eeaf-e0ba-4d25-a0e7-cb15661d8ba8" CreationDate="2014-02-20T09:19:27.910" UserId="4" Text="It's standard policy to not have beta sites as migration targets. This is to all own the site to develop by itself during beta and define a solid community. If there are **exceptional** questions that are off-topic here and on-topic there, moderators can migrate to any site on the network, so you can flag it. I wouldn't expect too many migrations, though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16883" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6465" RevisionGUID="fe5ea73f-b274-4341-b374-95c34ea79f12" CreationDate="2014-02-20T10:18:02.983" UserId="47" Comment="typo" Text="It's standard policy to not have beta sites as migration targets. This is to allow the site to develop by itself during beta and define a solid community. If there are **exceptional** questions that are off-topic here and on-topic there, moderators can migrate to any site on the network, so you can flag it. I wouldn't expect too many migrations, though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16884" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="590" RevisionGUID="66eac435-b34e-4bb8-90ec-17587af21afe" CreationDate="2014-02-20T10:22:22.340" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6458/31260" Text="First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate directly to software development; general career advice questions with no relation to software development or where software development is a minor facet of the question are off-topic. A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as *off-topic*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(This aspect is discussed in [Dealing with “What are some good types of pickles for programmers?” type questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/288/8).)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, the general rule of thumb should be whether the question can help others in a similar situation. If the circumstances surrounding the question are too specific to the question asker such that there is no way to generalize and answer the question, they should be closed as *too localized*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Applying that rule should put a theoretical limit on the amount of ways the question &quot;My job is X, what should I do?&quot; can be asked. Questions that have similar set of circumstances to already-asked questions should be closed as *exact duplicates*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, if there isn't something pointed being asked in the question, and the asker is merely using Programmers.SE as a means to vent about whatever annoyed them at their job that day, it should be closed as *not constructive*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, and only if, a career-advice question passes those three tests, should it stay open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of career guidance questions that should be closed: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Mid level IT lead](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20289/mid-level-it-lead)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the best qualification route for me to get back into programming? (UK)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22350/what-is-the-best-qualification-route-for-me-to-get-back-into-programming-uk)&#xD;&#xA;* [On programmers, INTJ personality, human interactions, and large companies.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18227/on-programmers-intj-personality-human-interactions-and-large-companies-close) (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should also be noted that most, if not all, of the other Stack Exchanges have elected to consider their versions of &quot;help my exact situation&quot;-type questions (gaming recommendations, code reviews, proofreading, etc.) to be off-topic on the basis that a Q&amp;A system does not lend well to the necessary discussion to tease out all the details to fully answer the question. I don't see why Programmers.SE should be any different." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16885" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6464" RevisionGUID="b1dca003-a848-4356-a297-be5c219964aa" CreationDate="2014-02-20T12:15:48.743" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16886" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6464" RevisionGUID="d87a6d70-c884-43cc-92be-1fcf8d79375c" CreationDate="2014-02-20T12:25:21.797" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16887" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6466" RevisionGUID="b3605d18-c426-4a9b-ad1b-b2b681b62b76" CreationDate="2014-02-21T07:03:27.490" UserId="31260" Text="Workplace has been officially graduated: [new site design](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/2364/168) has no &quot;beta&quot; anymore, and [privileges](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/privileges) are set to the level of graduated sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes it possible to add this site to our migration path, does it make sense to do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To better understand this, I would like to learn stats / rates of successful and rejected migrations to Workplace. I also would like to compare these against successful and rejected migrations to our long established target site - Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For your convenience, below is a list of some prior meta discussions related to Workplace migrations:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3699/closing-questions-that-should-go-to-workplace&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3632/should-we-mention-the-workplace-in-our-faq&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3432/how-should-we-guide-questions-toward-the-workplace&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3204/should-a-list-be-assembled-for-migration-to-the-workplace-once-it-opens&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2439/the-workplace-is-now-in-the-commitment-phase" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16888" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6466" RevisionGUID="b3605d18-c426-4a9b-ad1b-b2b681b62b76" CreationDate="2014-02-21T07:03:27.490" UserId="31260" Text="Migration path to Workplace?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16889" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6466" RevisionGUID="b3605d18-c426-4a9b-ad1b-b2b681b62b76" CreationDate="2014-02-21T07:03:27.490" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|support|migration|workplace-se|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16890" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6467" RevisionGUID="216413df-15be-452c-ae9c-94d47ef57c6c" CreationDate="2014-02-21T07:09:15.347" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16891" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6468" RevisionGUID="61518522-ab00-4782-b4af-18cc6dfe56b3" CreationDate="2014-02-21T07:09:15.347" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16892" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3632" RevisionGUID="81706837-d9cc-4629-9f3a-f44de96fd725" CreationDate="2014-02-21T07:09:42.583" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|faq-contents|workplace-se|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16893" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3699" RevisionGUID="ed2dba78-82cc-43d3-94bf-72e36c5c5e27" CreationDate="2014-02-21T07:10:33.133" UserId="31260" Comment="added 5 characters in body; edited tags" Text="I know it's not really a choice in the off-topic while it's in Beta, but could we have a way to specify that we want it to go there (maybe one that is dependent on reputation, only people who have over 10000 rep can see beta sites or a comment block for where else it should go).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah right now we can put it comments, but not everyone knows to do that as not everyone even knows about the Beta and weeding through all the comments to see if anyone mentioned where they thought it would go when it is easier to specify in the close requests seems a waste of volunteer moderators time. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16894" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3699" RevisionGUID="ed2dba78-82cc-43d3-94bf-72e36c5c5e27" CreationDate="2014-02-21T07:10:33.133" UserId="31260" Comment="added 5 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|migration|workplace-se|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16895" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6466" RevisionGUID="662acfe6-75d1-4e13-9f83-67ca2a23801c" CreationDate="2014-02-21T09:57:56.863" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/202188/165773" Text="Workplace has been officially graduated: [new site design](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/2364/168) has no &quot;beta&quot; anymore, and [privileges](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/privileges) are set to the level of graduated sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes it possible to add this site to our migration path, does it make sense to do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To better understand this, I would like to learn stats / rates of [successful and rejected migrations](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/202188/165773 &quot;preferably accounting for known inconsistency of these at source and target sites&quot;) to Workplace. I also would like to compare these against successful and rejected migrations to our long established target site - Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For your convenience, below is a list of some prior meta discussions related to Workplace migrations:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3699/closing-questions-that-should-go-to-workplace&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3632/should-we-mention-the-workplace-in-our-faq&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3432/how-should-we-guide-questions-toward-the-workplace&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3204/should-a-list-be-assembled-for-migration-to-the-workplace-once-it-opens&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2439/the-workplace-is-now-in-the-commitment-phase" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16896" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5900" RevisionGUID="0119810a-ee12-408e-aca9-d66cb4d1e342" CreationDate="2014-02-21T10:43:58.007" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16897" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6467" RevisionGUID="41209f3b-f3c2-4abb-8493-ce146e8217eb" CreationDate="2014-02-21T11:13:49.440" UserId="31260" Comment="added 477 characters in body" Text="For questions pertaining to [Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/about), a site about the workplace and other career-related topics, and how it relates to Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Use of this tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should only use this on questions that actually pertain to Workplace Stack Exchange. If you are discussing an issue that only relates to Workplace and does not affect Programmers, you should be discussing it on [Meta Workplace](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16898" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="6467" RevisionGUID="41209f3b-f3c2-4abb-8493-ce146e8217eb" CreationDate="2014-02-21T11:13:49.440" Comment="Proposed by 31260 approved by 25936 edit id of 17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16899" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6468" RevisionGUID="fe760049-810a-4d25-a950-069190052541" CreationDate="2014-02-21T11:13:54.190" UserId="31260" Comment="added 133 characters in body" Text="For questions pertaining to Workplace, a site about the workplace and other career-related topics, and how it relates to Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16900" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="6468" RevisionGUID="fe760049-810a-4d25-a950-069190052541" CreationDate="2014-02-21T11:13:54.190" Comment="Proposed by 31260 approved by 25936 edit id of 18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16901" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6469" RevisionGUID="666af134-bdf5-4aec-89a8-6a932f0f7253" CreationDate="2014-02-21T15:46:59.210" UserId="115641" Text="I'm curious what happens when a question is marked favorite (by clicking on the star button, under the up/down-vote arrows)? The only thing I can see is that there's a number next to the star, showing how many people clicked on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do marking a question as favorite do anything else, such as provide notifications on changes, or give the asker some benefit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've searched the help and found nothing on this topic. Thank you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16902" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6469" RevisionGUID="666af134-bdf5-4aec-89a8-6a932f0f7253" CreationDate="2014-02-21T15:46:59.210" UserId="115641" Text="What does marking a question as favorite (clicking the star) do?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16903" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6469" RevisionGUID="666af134-bdf5-4aec-89a8-6a932f0f7253" CreationDate="2014-02-21T15:46:59.210" UserId="115641" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16904" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6470" RevisionGUID="4b7347ed-d69b-47de-9b9f-54c2ba8cf99a" CreationDate="2014-02-21T16:07:14.170" UserId="60357" Text="The most important side effect is that on your profile, you can see a list of favourited questions. This list can be seen by other users. Many people use this list as transient bookmarks for questions which they want to visit later (e.g. to see what answers have been posted in the meanwhile, or to make sure it has been put on hold).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Favouriting the question does not *notify* anybody, but it's a public vote like close votes or accepts, unlike up- or downvotes. It does not affect anyones reputation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16905" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6469" RevisionGUID="df3cbd40-603d-4873-849d-52774d1dc275" CreationDate="2014-02-21T20:20:54.183" UserId="115641" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="I'm curious what happens when a question is marked favorite (by clicking on the star button, under the up/down-vote arrows)? The only thing I can see is that there's a number next to the star, showing how many people clicked on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does marking a question as favorite do anything else, such as provide notifications on changes, or give the asker some benefit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've searched the help and found nothing on this topic. Thank you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16910" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6407" RevisionGUID="694a805e-1122-4054-82e7-4c3734deae16" CreationDate="2014-02-21T21:08:14.447" UserId="31260" Comment="custom close reason += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6276/31260 &quot;taken from here&quot;" Text="Did you read the [custom close reason](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6276/31260 &quot;taken from here&quot;)?  It describes in detail why we think these kinds of questions are unsuitable, and provides a link to a Stack Exchange blog entry that applies *to the entire network.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;name that thing&quot; question. &quot;Name that thing&quot; are bad questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close reason highlights an important goal of the Stack Exchange network: questions should be useful for everyone that has an interest in the subject matter, not just to the person asking them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16920" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6473" RevisionGUID="eb734142-7c13-4aa1-8bda-42f6244452ca" CreationDate="2014-02-22T10:32:47.057" UserId="94044" Text="In Programmers most of the questions are correctly related to design, patterns, metodologies and architectures. Now, my question is: when does a question classify as &quot;Opinion based&quot;? And even more important: when it doesn't? Of course, for instance when asking a question for help in a better undestanding of a particular pattern or a particular metodology, it's supposed that the answer will be strictly connected to an official reference. But in many other case, the question can look something like that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have this entity {...} I have these business rules {...}. Given this context, which creational pattern fits best for creating my entity?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question like this, could be closed as &quot;Opinion based&quot;, but I do not agree, I repeat exactly what I say as a comment in this [question][1]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as a matter of facts, when it comes to design and patterns you are not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dealing with an &quot;exact science&quot;. Many times you have to understand&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advantages and disadvantages of each decision you can make... at this&#xD;&#xA;&gt; point choosing the right one it's not a Math formula, it is just a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; matter of intelligence and experience&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That means that a well posed question that asks for advantages or disadvantages of a particular pattern, solution, methodology.. whatever, **given a particular context**, in my opinion is a question that has to stay open, even if it may seems &quot;Opinion based&quot; because understanding advantages and disadvantages of a particular decision helps the Original Poster to choose the better one... *in that particular context*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In conclusion, when does a question on Programmers cross over from a understanding advantages and drawbacks to a real opinion based - not constructive - question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion that happens when the original poster **give no context** around the question, for instance, in the 1st example I made, if the question were:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In order to instance my entity object, what is better: a Builder pattern or a factory method pattern?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Naturally a question like this one should be closed because there is no context that makes sense in any answer that will follow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/229296/adjustable-exception-handling-design-pattern-or-anti-pattern/229297#229297" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16921" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6473" RevisionGUID="eb734142-7c13-4aa1-8bda-42f6244452ca" CreationDate="2014-02-22T10:32:47.057" UserId="94044" Text="The real borderline for &quot;Opinion based&quot; in Programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16922" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6473" RevisionGUID="eb734142-7c13-4aa1-8bda-42f6244452ca" CreationDate="2014-02-22T10:32:47.057" UserId="94044" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16923" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6474" RevisionGUID="7d11f64e-b420-428c-9966-6c9c433ff0cb" CreationDate="2014-02-22T11:16:33.043" UserId="8198" Text="There's no way to fix the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers site is FUBAR. It's about closing useful questions, not about answering them. If half questions get closed, the site is doomed. Just look at the front page. No one understands what this site is about. Those few who managed to farm enough reputation, enjoy to abuse their power to close every question which is even remotely opinionated or broad. And of course nobody bothers to explain how to fix questions to their liking. Because it's boring and absolutely impossible. Mods don't bother to visit Meta either. Most upvoted questions on Programmers stay open out of pure luck, or after prolonged open-close battles, because most of them are opinionated or too broad or both. Most upvoted questions on Meta are &quot;What the heck Programmers is?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Run, run, and never return." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16924" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6475" RevisionGUID="946d5309-5065-4639-a0b8-a9ba7481bf29" CreationDate="2014-02-22T11:54:41.053" UserId="5099" Text="Having cast the first close vote on the question used as example, and having reverted my vote now, here is my reasoning why I believed the question to be primarily opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Originally, I thought the question was asking for opinions on the pattern that a caught exception gets passed to a secondary function for handling (and the exception would be rethrown if it could not be handled). To my knowledge, there is no general consensus on that use and both sides of the issue can be argued, so it every answer would only reflect the personal opinion of the author (and possibly the up-voters). I was expecting to see a few answers voicing different opinions and with similar votes. That was for me the reason to vote to close the question as primarily opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After seeing this meta question, I reread the example question and saw that I had misread the question. I noticed that the question has a narrower scope than I originally thought and is actually about the question if it is a good idea to use a global switch to determine if exceptions are propagated or turned into error codes. In this case, it can be authoritively argued why one choice is better than the other, so it is possible to get a single definitive answer to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Regarding the more general question when a question should be regarded as primarily opinion based, my evaluation is based on the following aspects:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Does the asker provide enough context to make a proper decision&#xD;&#xA;- Is there a single &quot;expert opinion&quot; on the issue, or do the experts have differing opinions (and if I don't know, I abstain from voting)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16925" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6475" RevisionGUID="8b2db06b-e9d2-4911-b461-dc3f0611a96d" CreationDate="2014-02-22T12:12:40.517" UserId="5099" Comment="added 72 characters in body" Text="Having cast the first close vote on the question used as example, and having reverted my vote now, here is my reasoning why I believed the question to be primarily opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Originally, I thought the question was asking for opinions on the pattern that a caught exception gets passed to a secondary function for handling (and the exception would be rethrown if it could not be handled). To my knowledge, there is no general consensus on that use and both sides of the issue can be argued, so it every answer would only reflect the personal opinion of the author (and possibly the up-voters). I was expecting to see a few answers voicing different opinions and with similar votes. That was for me the reason to vote to close the question as primarily opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After seeing this meta question, I reread the example question and saw that I had misread the question. I noticed that the question has a narrower scope than I originally thought and is actually about the question if it is a good idea to use a global switch to determine if exceptions are propagated or turned into error codes. In this case, it can be authoritively argued why one choice is better than the other, so it is possible to get a single definitive answer to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Regarding the more general question when a question should be regarded as primarily opinion based, my evaluation is based on the following aspects:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Does the asker provide enough context to make a proper decision&#xD;&#xA;- Is there a single &quot;expert opinion&quot; on the issue, or do the experts have differing opinions (and if I don't know, I abstain from voting)&#xD;&#xA;- Is the asker just asking for confirmation on a privately held opinion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16926" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6476" RevisionGUID="f6b23f05-2a46-4838-b409-2c33a51d74f6" CreationDate="2014-02-22T12:17:14.087" UserId="60357" Text="This is difficult. I see a few bounds on when a question is acceptable:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * A question should seek for *solutions, not opinions*. For example, consider a hypothetical question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I am considering solution A or solution B. Context is this and that. Which solution is better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Answer: Obviously the one with fluffy kittens.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    The question could be made more concrete by emphasizing that this is actually about solving a problem X (thus avoiding the X-Y-Problem):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I have problem X with context this and that. I thought of solution A, but that doesn't quite fit because foo and bar. Solution B might be another option, but I wouldn't know how this affects some part of the context. How can I solve X given this context?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Answer: Your solution B was almost there, you can make it work by using foo bar.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    That question also shows effort on the part of the asker not only to think up solutions, but also to evaluate them. Note that it doesn't ask “which is better” (opinion-based), but “how can I solve this” (experience/fact-based).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Questions should have *lasting value*. Context is important, but the question would ideally not consist of a code dump, followed by “which pattern should I use here”. This makes any answer only useful for the asker, not for other people having a similar problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    An asker should try to give enough context to make it answerable, but the question should still be sufficiently abstract to be applicable to other circumstances as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * *Polling has to be avoided*. We could rephrase the question from my first point to a poll:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I am considering solution A or B. Context is this and that. Why is solution B better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    1st answer: B is better because it has fluffy kittens.  &#xD;&#xA;    2nd answer: Actually, A is better and has the advantage of cute puppies.  &#xD;&#xA;    3rd answer: In my experience, B would be preferable because this and that.&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Well, this question is a step up because it's now asking *why, not what*.  Other polls might ask “what are the advantages of X” or “how can I explain Y”. Polls are problematic because they can generate equally valid yet contradictory answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    It is not a poll when *enquiring about an existing consensus*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; For the problem X, everyone seems to use the A solution. I recently thought about a solution B, which has the advantage of this and that. Could someone explain to me why A and not B is the general consensus?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Answers might include technical or cultural reasons, overlooked drawbacks of B, or the information that B is already being widely used in certain communities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the question of your example, the unfortunate question “*What do you guys think?*” is asked, which immediately makes it off-topic (following the no-polls rule). The question could be made very on-topic by rephrasing it to …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * … ask about the problem, not about the solution (i.e. ask for a solution, not for feedback). Or:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * … ask why this more flexible solution isn't being used instead of the more inflexible error-handling patterns (i.e. asking about existing consensus). This is how the question has been interpreted by commenters and answerers. This interpretation could be made explicit through an edit of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While closing the question was not incorrect, it was maybe a bit harsh, seeing that it could be easily be made on-topic by a slight reworking." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16927" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6473" RevisionGUID="720ebc61-808b-4eb5-b72e-d79b1a4d19df" CreationDate="2014-02-22T14:25:57.473" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|subjective|opinion-based|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16928" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6477" RevisionGUID="cde87329-1301-45c3-bea8-7eda3974b83f" CreationDate="2014-02-22T14:37:35.630" UserId="3965" Text="There are two answers to your question:  how the site theoretically works, and how it actually works in practice.  In theory, the border is that questions should have answers that are supportable by objective statements, and aren't purely a matter of taste.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In practice, the border is much more strict than that.  The first reason is that voters are often not aware there are concrete, objective reasons behind something that appears on the surface to solely be a matter of taste.  Take naming of variables, classes, and functions for example.  Several programming books have entire chapters full of well-researched, concrete, and objective reasons why certain names are better than others.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you happen to not have read those books, or otherwise spent time studying the problem in an objective way, it may appear to you that a naming question is purely a matter of opinion and style.  Unfortunately, rather than recognizing their ignorance in those particular matters, people tend to vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other reason that makes the border more strict is if the question contains certain magic words and phrases that make it appear as if the author is soliciting pure opinion.  Voters often fail to read between the lines and recognize that a certain turn of phrase is merely the most convenient way to put something.  The technical minds of many programmers make it difficult to recognize that other people are not always as precise in their language as they are.  Such magic phrases include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - What do you think?&#xD;&#xA; - Use of the words &quot;better&quot; or &quot;best.&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - In my opinion&amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA; - I think&amp;hellip;, but my colleague thinks&amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA; - How does your team do it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, you want your question to focus on &quot;why.&quot;  Even if &quot;why&quot; is what you mean, if you don't make it explicit with precise language, it is likely to be closed.  I wish it weren't that way, but that's the reality right now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16929" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6473" RevisionGUID="7d87f1d6-129f-4025-a5c8-63252e8ed3f7" CreationDate="2014-02-22T19:40:19.307" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/437310905723158528" />
  <row Id="16930" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6478" RevisionGUID="a8977eb1-1abd-464f-8673-764ae40577df" CreationDate="2014-02-23T11:43:33.093" UserDisplayName="user79803" Text="I visit PSE once in a full moon, and all I see is closed questions, most marked with down votes and close votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seriously, with this ratio of negative votes towards questions and unpleasant welcome to new users, I had to ask this question. Does the rules of PSE are only well known to its moderators or peoples with high reputations? or they are just bullying here and making life of new visitors miserable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How much does PSE wants people to come over and share their problem? If every question is treated like bullying the questioner then what's the use of having an open discussion platform?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16931" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6478" RevisionGUID="a8977eb1-1abd-464f-8673-764ae40577df" CreationDate="2014-02-23T11:43:33.093" UserDisplayName="user79803" Text="Why PSE is unpleasant place to ask question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16932" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6478" RevisionGUID="a8977eb1-1abd-464f-8673-764ae40577df" CreationDate="2014-02-23T11:43:33.093" UserDisplayName="user79803" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16933" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6479" RevisionGUID="ed6acd6c-65f9-4a35-ba45-698c6e797921" CreationDate="2014-02-23T12:48:01.687" UserId="60357" Text="Programmers can be an unpleasant place to ask questions when you don't understand what this site wants to be, and what questions are acceptable. It is *not* trying to be “*an open discussion platform*”. The mission is defined as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How the site works is outlined in the [Tour][tour] and further elaborated upon in the [Help Center][help] – especially the [On Topic][help/on-topic] page is important. It seems that a number of users come to this site with *substantially different expectations*, for example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * This is a place for programming-related discussions, like a forum. It would be nice to hear a few opinions.&#xD;&#xA; * If they don't like my question on Stack Overflow, they'll love it here.&#xD;&#xA; * I can hire a programmer here. Maybe they'll even do my work for me for free.&#xD;&#xA; * This site is about solving programming problems, like why my program doesn't compile.&#xD;&#xA; * I can get advice on how to become a (better) programmer.&#xD;&#xA; * These guys know what tool I could use, or what book I should read.&#xD;&#xA; * The ppl here c an comprahend evn teh worstly formated question here plus not good grammar plz send me solution thanks!!1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sorry, but no. So when a question is off topic or otherwise unsuitable for this site, I *will* put in a close vote. It is not intended to mean “*you are full of ignorant shit*”, instead it's an invitation to the asker to inform him-/herself on what's acceptable here, and to clean up the question so that it can be reopened. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For questions that “*do not show any research effort; are unclear or not useful*”, I will put in a downvote. If it does show effort, and is useful and interesting, I'll upvote. See also the tooltips when hovering over the up-/downvote arrow. Votes are a form of content moderation, and are also an incentive to users to post *good* questions. For example, I downvoted your question because it reads like a rant (it fails in the *useful* and *clarity* categories, and does not offer [*data*][data.se] to back up the claims).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tour]: https://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour&#xD;&#xA;[help]: https://programmers.stackexchange.com/help&#xD;&#xA;[help/on-topic]: https://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;[data.se]: https://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/queries" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16934" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6478" RevisionGUID="d96ffd07-f3ca-4625-9bd8-b84daa1f5453" CreationDate="2014-02-23T13:31:54.470" UserDisplayName="user79803" Comment="clarification of question" Text="I visit PSE once in a full moon, and all I see is closed questions, most marked with down votes and close votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seriously, with this ratio of negative votes towards questions and unpleasant welcome to new users, I had to ask this question. Does the rules of PSE are only well known to its moderators or peoples with high reputations? or they are just bullying here and making life of new visitors miserable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How much does PSE wants people to come over and share their problem? If every question is treated like bullying the questioner then what's the use of having an open question/answer platform?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16935" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6478" RevisionGUID="d852f015-0441-44c3-a8b4-24169b4f4fa6" CreationDate="2014-02-23T14:14:50.353" UserDisplayName="user79803" Comment="some edit to justify my point..." Text="I visit PSE once in a full moon, and all I see is closed questions, most marked with down votes and close votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seriously, with this ratio of negative votes towards questions and unpleasant welcome to new users, I had to ask this question. Does the rules of PSE are only well known to its moderators or peoples with high reputations? or they are just bullying here and making life of new visitors miserable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How much does PSE wants people to come over and share their problem? If every question is treated like bullying the questioner then what's the use of having an open question/answer platform?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reading few answers in meta I have decided not to return to PSE until next election.  The scope is confusing, Bully Dictators hold the power, new members are treated as &quot;*you piece of crap came here to ask? lemme give you some treat*&quot;. This place was bully-land few years ago, I found its same still. These answers gives more info about PSE as a whole:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5676/79803&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5681/79803&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5686/79803" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16938" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6480" RevisionGUID="f2ec0717-4fdf-4551-9d66-af220aaa1968" CreationDate="2014-02-23T16:17:04.083" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I'm going to pull up some recently closed questions and am curious what you feel is bullying or the appropriate approach to deal with the questions.  If you have issues about other specific questions and you feel like they are getting an unfair treatment, please consider posting questions on meta about those&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230025/database-career-path&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm really new to database careers and no idea what is their work look like. All I know is they maintain or design a database.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What I want to know is the career path of Database Administrator, what I mean is for example a programmer in the future may become a team leader and so on. What about in database what is the hierarchy of this job. And also I want to know what is the required knowledge and technology to attain a specific level of the job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Put on holds off topic - career and education advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230013/how-to-generate-data-matrix-from-a-seq-file-in-java&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Lots of stuff&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And so on… the rows indicates user and each 17 columns represents page hits to that page by that user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;So send me the code in java to perform this operation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(not closed currently, but on its way)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/229967/hello-im-a-13-year-old-app-developer-wannabe-for-windows-android-what-lang&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Recently, my friend got me interested in programming. I've always thought it was this ultra complicated concept, but after watching the code.org's &quot;What Schools Don't Teach&quot; I'm really wanting to work on something. I want to build Android and Windows apps and games. I would like to build a building/tower defense-esq game for both both platforms. My main questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;-What programming languages should I learn?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -What engine should I use for a 2D building/ RTS (much like Ubisoft's &quot;The Settlers Online&quot;)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as what language, technology, or project one should take up next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You appear to be referring most recently, however, to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230003/finding-out-skill-level&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am writing this question due to the fact that I came across a JUG(Java User Group) facebook page. There was a guy in need of a 'junior' java developer. They told me that a junior Java developer is someone who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there any kind of test someone can take (apart from the oracle exams etc...)? Also , are these information valid or partly true?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To which you commented:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; my friend you have come to very unhelpful and unpleasant place to post your questions. Programmers stack exchange should be related to ask questions related to programming and skills, but the bullies here are to close your question without a single doubt in their head. They are ruining PSE. You are better off in Java Forums where these bullies cannot close your questions. –  Jhilke Dai&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career and education advice is off topic.  It is specifically called out as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The off topic message for the question is intended to give the appropriate guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel this is incorrect and that career questions should be allowed, please make meta post that states this and provides a good argument for how they should be handled and lead to valuable content for the site.  Note that this has been addressed many times in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6458/there-seems-to-be-some-contradictory-guidance-with-respect-to-asking-career-deve&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6410/is-there-a-stackexchange-site-that-would-be-appropriate-for-cs-career-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2483/why-are-all-of-the-good-career-related-threads-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A core principle with Stack Exchange is the desire to attract experts that stay and answer questions.  Without experts the site will suffer the fate of [artificial intelligence.SE](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/no-artificial-intelligence-in-area-51/) or [Startups.SE](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/214315/what-happened-to-startups-se).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end it is necessary to down vote and close questions that are not appropriate for the site.  Sometimes this is from a lack of information to make it into a good question (there was a lengthy discussion about that in chat the other day - it was begrudgingly acknowledged that without down votes and closed question the question would not have been improved).  Other times it is necessary for such to get the person to read the appropriate parts of the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly (and a difficult one to get one's head around) it is *not* about helping the person asking the question but the *next* person asking the **same** question.  Questions asking about career paths (a two of my examples) are often *very* specific to that individual or that company (for the DBA, I've never seen a DBA at two different companies have the same set of responsibilities).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Third, discussions on the main site *don't* work.  It wasn't designed for that.  I really suggest reading [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) (which also points out some of the issues you seem to take issue with) which was mentioned in some of the early podcasts by Jeff as being influential in the design of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are other communities where discussion works (as well as they do).  I will point out that even [reddit/r/cscareerquestions](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions) has a hefty [FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index) that is expected to be required reading *before* asking such a question.  Polling and discussion is the *raison d'être* there.  That said, the level of hostility and snark that people have commented finding on reddit (or hacker news) far exceeds our own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And well, give-me-the-codes is welcomed at eLance and similar freelancing sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do better? Probably.  However, posting comments about dissatisfaction with P.SE and about 'bullies' is *not* the way to encourage this process." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16939" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6481" RevisionGUID="a3901c96-d16f-428e-9060-c684ffbf3459" CreationDate="2014-02-23T23:12:43.677" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230051/why-my-answer-was-mark-as-down-regarding-a-webform-question" />
  <row Id="16940" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6481" RevisionGUID="bc18f9b6-1364-4eee-8995-1772c8fe5fbb" CreationDate="2014-02-23T22:42:53.887" UserId="121007" Text="I just answered a question this morning, and it was marked as down, but honestly, I don't know how to improve it? Ps: English is not my first language, but i still want to join this community. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Plz help me, thanks!&#xD;&#xA;Question link:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230045/refreshing-website-design-and-architecture/230047#230047" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16941" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6481" RevisionGUID="bc18f9b6-1364-4eee-8995-1772c8fe5fbb" CreationDate="2014-02-23T22:42:53.887" UserId="121007" Text="why my answer was mark as down regarding a webform question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16942" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6481" RevisionGUID="bc18f9b6-1364-4eee-8995-1772c8fe5fbb" CreationDate="2014-02-23T22:42:53.887" UserId="121007" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16943" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6482" RevisionGUID="c10bc506-00d0-4a0a-b981-270f33496ac6" CreationDate="2014-02-23T23:20:11.410" UserId="47" Text="The down-vote has been now been removed - presumably the voter saw the edit and realised that the answer was OK after all. No one is able to see who voted for what so this is only a guess on my part. If there is the kernel of a good answer then it will be edited into shape by other users. Most of us will offer constructive criticism where appropriate so read the comments and take on board what people are trying to tell you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If English isn't your first language then it would be worth just reading the site for a while to get a feel for the sort of answers that are rewarded with votes. We like answers to be self contained and well reasoned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hesitate to suggest this, but something like Google Translate might be useful. Don't just post its output, but use that as the basis of your answer. Read it and understand what it produced so you can correct any mistakes it might have made." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16944" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="ed19490c-9b95-4609-830f-f56466316751" CreationDate="2014-02-23T23:38:38.643" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Downvoted&#xD;&#xA;* Duplicate&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * What language to take up next&#xD;&#xA;    * Recommend a tool, library, or other&#xD;&#xA;    * Career or education advice&#xD;&#xA;* Unclear&#xD;&#xA;* Too broad&#xD;&#xA;* Primarily opinion-based&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links also from particular points in the history of Programmers.SE and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a serial vote reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16945" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="ed19490c-9b95-4609-830f-f56466316751" CreationDate="2014-02-23T23:38:38.643" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Why was my question closed or down voted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16946" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="ed19490c-9b95-4609-830f-f56466316751" CreationDate="2014-02-23T23:38:38.643" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16947" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6484" RevisionGUID="2f663678-b512-42e2-9217-45c8c38e2580" CreationDate="2014-02-23T23:38:38.643" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="# Downvoted #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to look at is the mouseover for the down vote button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that this is a completely subjective grading and people may down vote because they were late to work or don't like unicorns.  However one's feeling of unicorns, this *is* information for you to look at and consider how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Make sure that the question is not just asking for something that can be easily searched with google.###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking other people to do your searching for you is considered poor form.  Everyone answering questions is doing so on a volunteer basis (even the SE employees that sometimes answer questions - they aren't paid to do so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also extends to things that you should have been able to find when searching on P.SE.  As you enter the information be sure to tag the question appropriately.  The combination of tags and title *may* help you find something right away that answers the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Explain your current understanding of the issue###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just saying &quot;Could someone explain ${concept} to me&quot; doesn't show what you *do* understand.  It lacks research.  Often the answer to this is spent repeating what is already available in Wikipedia.  If you had read this already and don't understand a part of it, explain that part and what you do understand.  Correcting a misconception is easier (and a better question) than trying to explain the entire topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Blatantly off topic###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the help center on [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) questions. Questions that are asking for a dissuasion, or polling or one of the reasons specified in the help center.  Especially note that questions *should* have been posted on Stack Overflow (implementation) or questions that should have been posted on Stack Overflow, but would be off topic there too (do this work for me)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Duplicate #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A duplicate in of itself isn't a bad thing.  Often it means that the people who have suggested it as such think that the answer to your question is in the question that it is duplicated to (note this wording is not completely settled and some may want the two questions to be the same too for it to be a duplicate - for the purposes of this answer, I am using the broadest thought behind a duplicate).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is closed as a duplicate be sure to read *all* of the answers and consider the implications behind the answers too - not just the first reading.  An example of this can be seen on Stack Overflow when debugging questions trying to track down a NullPointerException in Java are linked to a question that explains about NullPointerExceptions rather than trying to resolve that particular instance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that something is closed as a duplicate incorrectly, explain specifically how your question differs from the other question and the answers in the duplicate question do not apply to your situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###What language to take up next###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a constant stream of new projects out there.  Github [claims 4,500 new projects a day](https://github.com/blog/841-those-are-some-big-numbers) back in 2011.  On December 23, 2013, Github had [10 million repositories](https://github.com/blog/1724-10-million-repositories).  Quite frankly, there are far too many projects for anyone to suggest a good answer.  Whats more, the projects of yesteryear may well be inactive now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same problem exists for suggesting languages and technologies - they are constantly changing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A goal for Stack Exchange is to create a lasting repository of information.  Asking questions about which technology to chose runs counter to that.  In part because everyone's needs are different and also that everyone has their own favorites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56848/how-does-one-keep-up-with-all-the-new-tools-languages-framework (also look at the [linked questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/56848?lq=1))&#xD;&#xA;* [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for libraries and tools has attracted spam answers in the past where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These answers are very poor and because of that, the questions get preemptively closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often the questions are very broad too.  Asking for books to learn Java from is a polling question that has no right answer.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology (and are a few months behind the tech).  Links to sites rot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange itself is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best approach to asking such a question is to describe the problem you are having that can be solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Career or education advice###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a very consistently asked type of question.  At its core is the problem that the question is only applicable to the person asking the question.  No two people are looking at the same set of classes, or the same job.  Every question that is asked is either only for one person or the answers will always be hopelessly incomplete because of the lack of the nuanced information and context that the person asking the question is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some questions from the past that remain on Programmers.SE.  You need to search for them - they are likely closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some things to consider about asking career questions is that these are often **very important** questions.  While people can give help, the answer is one that *you* need to find and not from random strangers on the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are in academia, ask a career counselor at the school, or one of the instructors - they know you better than we do.  Similar resources can be found for people in the job market already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the biggest difficulties with Q&amp;A for career questions is that to get the nuances of your situation and getting to know you better requires a dense two way communication - lots of clarification back and forth.  To this end, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is a resource where (the current) denizens can have that conversation.  We still won't get to know you as well as people who know you know you, but on the whole we are familiar with the various parts of the software industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Reddit/r/cscareersquestions FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Unclear#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are looking for, in the [context of Programmers.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This close reason can also be a bit unclear as to what the issue is.  Please be sure to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Give enough context that someone reading the question can understand it&#xD;&#xA;* Explain what you are looking for&#xD;&#xA;* Check to make sure you are not using jargon that is particular to one specific branch of computing (and if you are, either change the jargon or link to a site that explains it)&#xD;&#xA;* Make sure you are on the proper site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last point is important too.  This close reason is often used as a proxy for &quot;we don't think that this question is a good question for Programmers.SE (it might be on Stack Overflow), but would get closed there too.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explain your design.  Explain what you have done.  Explain where you are having difficulty.  Explain what you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long for the Q&amp;A format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar to the recommend an XYZ close reason, some questions are polling for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the choice as to which answer is the one to accept is a &quot;which one I like best,&quot; the question may be one it is polling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Primarily opinion-based#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frequent culprits of those close reason include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* asking people to explain a given quote&#xD;&#xA;* asking people to chose/review between different designs&#xD;&#xA;* recommendations for something (e.g. directory structure)&#xD;&#xA;* company policies and best practices&#xD;&#xA;* the name of something&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinguishing factor is that there is no way to get an authoritative answer for the question - the answers are all based on opinion rather than the knowledge of the person answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that if the answers to the question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design A} for these reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- break --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design B} for these other reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both of these answers are valid then the question is likely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Other#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions can be closed with a custom reason.  These are found in the comments for the question.  To that extent it is difficult to enumerate all the possible reasons people may try to close a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read the explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6251/how-can-i-write-a-good-custom-close-message&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/why-do-certification-questions-keep-getting-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6283/current-events-questions-and-answers&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16948" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6485" RevisionGUID="df4f1c15-e560-41e5-a726-adf0bc988213" CreationDate="2014-02-23T23:40:42.323" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="# Duplicate #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A duplicate in of itself isn't a bad thing.  Often it means that the people who have suggested it as such think that the answer to your question is in the question that it is duplicated to (note this wording is not completely settled and some may want the two questions to be the same too for it to be a duplicate - for the purposes of this answer, I am using the broadest thought behind a duplicate).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is closed as a duplicate be sure to read *all* of the answers and consider the implications behind the answers too - not just the first reading.  An example of this can be seen on Stack Overflow when debugging questions trying to track down a NullPointerException in Java are linked to a question that explains about NullPointerExceptions rather than trying to resolve that particular instance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that something is closed as a duplicate incorrectly, explain specifically how your question differs from the other question and the answers in the duplicate question do not apply to your situation.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16949" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6486" RevisionGUID="9077b735-94d1-48e4-8547-74a69b5a6fab" CreationDate="2014-02-23T23:42:48.863" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###What language to take up next###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a constant stream of new projects out there.  Github [claims 4,500 new projects a day](https://github.com/blog/841-those-are-some-big-numbers) back in 2011.  On December 23, 2013, Github had [10 million repositories](https://github.com/blog/1724-10-million-repositories).  Quite frankly, there are far too many projects for anyone to suggest a good answer.  Whats more, the projects of yesteryear may well be inactive now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same problem exists for suggesting languages and technologies - they are constantly changing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A goal for Stack Exchange is to create a lasting repository of information.  Asking questions about which technology to chose runs counter to that.  In part because everyone's needs are different and also that everyone has their own favorites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56848/how-does-one-keep-up-with-all-the-new-tools-languages-framework (also look at the [linked questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/56848?lq=1))&#xD;&#xA;* [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16950" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="00078f2a-0b2e-475e-a21e-a6130f370f7e" CreationDate="2014-02-23T23:45:40.000" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for libraries and tools has attracted spam answers in the past where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These answers are very poor and because of that, the questions get preemptively closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often the questions are very broad too.  Asking for books to learn Java from is a polling question that has no right answer.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology (and are a few months behind the tech).  Links to sites rot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange itself is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best approach to asking such a question is to describe the problem you are having that can be solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16951" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6488" RevisionGUID="973f29e1-93be-4245-94cc-870416ccf583" CreationDate="2014-02-23T23:47:03.833" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Career or education advice###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a very consistently asked type of question.  At its core is the problem that the question is only applicable to the person asking the question.  No two people are looking at the same set of classes, or the same job.  Every question that is asked is either only for one person or the answers will always be hopelessly incomplete because of the lack of the nuanced information and context that the person asking the question is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some questions from the past that remain on Programmers.SE.  You need to search for them - they are likely closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some things to consider about asking career questions is that these are often **very important** questions.  While people can give help, the answer is one that *you* need to find and not from random strangers on the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are in academia, ask a career counselor at the school, or one of the instructors - they know you better than we do.  Similar resources can be found for people in the job market already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the biggest difficulties with Q&amp;A for career questions is that to get the nuances of your situation and getting to know you better requires a dense two way communication - lots of clarification back and forth.  To this end, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is a resource where (the current) denizens can have that conversation.  We still won't get to know you as well as people who know you know you, but on the whole we are familiar with the various parts of the software industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Reddit/r/cscareersquestions FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16952" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6489" RevisionGUID="be70d7d0-6a4a-40ee-a04f-e55c5500d07e" CreationDate="2014-02-23T23:49:07.013" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="#Unclear#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are looking for, in the [context of Programmers.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This close reason can also be a bit unclear as to what the issue is.  Please be sure to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Give enough context that someone reading the question can understand it&#xD;&#xA;* Explain what you are looking for&#xD;&#xA;* Check to make sure you are not using jargon that is particular to one specific branch of computing (and if you are, either change the jargon or link to a site that explains it)&#xD;&#xA;* Make sure you are on the proper site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last point is important too.  This close reason is often used as a proxy for &quot;we don't think that this question is a good question for Programmers.SE (it might be on Stack Overflow), but would get closed there too.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explain your design.  Explain what you have done.  Explain where you are having difficulty.  Explain what you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16953" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="0ece3917-2e9d-4788-aced-8cba6b642853" CreationDate="2014-02-23T23:50:52.143" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long for the Q&amp;A format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar to the recommend an XYZ close reason, some questions are polling for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the choice as to which answer is the one to accept is a &quot;which one I like best,&quot; the question may be one it is polling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16954" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6491" RevisionGUID="b77eaa08-6e6c-4973-b18e-8ac6a26dcef9" CreationDate="2014-02-23T23:52:18.853" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="#Primarily opinion-based#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frequent culprits of those close reason include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* asking people to explain a given quote&#xD;&#xA;* asking people to chose/review between different designs&#xD;&#xA;* recommendations for something (e.g. directory structure)&#xD;&#xA;* company policies and best practices&#xD;&#xA;* the name of something&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinguishing factor is that there is no way to get an authoritative answer for the question - the answers are all based on opinion rather than the knowledge of the person answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that if the answers to the question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design A} for these reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- break --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design B} for these other reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both of these answers are valid then the question is likely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16955" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6492" RevisionGUID="d1687ca2-110b-4814-86c9-2a0f545c9cc3" CreationDate="2014-02-23T23:53:35.263" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="#Other#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions can be closed with a custom reason.  These are found in the comments for the question.  To that extent it is difficult to enumerate all the possible reasons people may try to close a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read the explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6251/how-can-i-write-a-good-custom-close-message&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/why-do-certification-questions-keep-getting-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6283/current-events-questions-and-answers&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16956" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6484" RevisionGUID="75675e1c-a46c-4e8e-a8ec-384434e9adb3" CreationDate="2014-02-23T23:53:52.453" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Migrated answers to their own answers" Text="# Downvoted #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to look at is the mouseover for the down vote button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that this is a completely subjective grading and people may down vote because they were late to work or don't like unicorns.  However one's feeling of unicorns, this *is* information for you to look at and consider how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Make sure that the question is not just asking for something that can be easily searched with google.###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking other people to do your searching for you is considered poor form.  Everyone answering questions is doing so on a volunteer basis (even the SE employees that sometimes answer questions - they aren't paid to do so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also extends to things that you should have been able to find when searching on P.SE.  As you enter the information be sure to tag the question appropriately.  The combination of tags and title *may* help you find something right away that answers the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Explain your current understanding of the issue###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just saying &quot;Could someone explain ${concept} to me&quot; doesn't show what you *do* understand.  It lacks research.  Often the answer to this is spent repeating what is already available in Wikipedia.  If you had read this already and don't understand a part of it, explain that part and what you do understand.  Correcting a misconception is easier (and a better question) than trying to explain the entire topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Blatantly off topic###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the help center on [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) questions. Questions that are asking for a dissuasion, or polling or one of the reasons specified in the help center.  Especially note that questions *should* have been posted on Stack Overflow (implementation) or questions that should have been posted on Stack Overflow, but would be off topic there too (do this work for me)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16957" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="e8cf9640-d0ea-40b8-9c31-b721475bf90f" CreationDate="2014-02-23T23:54:15.657" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Links to each answer" Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What language to take up next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a tool, library, or other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links also from particular points in the history of Programmers.SE and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a serial vote reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16958" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6484" RevisionGUID="c0ceed24-840b-4ccb-812a-f628d6d15424" CreationDate="2014-02-24T06:50:31.747" UserId="31260" Comment="dissuasion -&gt; discussion" Text="# Downvoted #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to look at is the mouseover for the down vote button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that this is a completely subjective grading and people may down vote because they were late to work or don't like unicorns.  However one's feeling of unicorns, this *is* information for you to look at and consider how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Make sure that the question is not just asking for something that can be easily searched with google.###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking other people to do your searching for you is considered poor form.  Everyone answering questions is doing so on a volunteer basis (even the SE employees that sometimes answer questions - they aren't paid to do so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also extends to things that you should have been able to find when searching on P.SE.  As you enter the information be sure to tag the question appropriately.  The combination of tags and title *may* help you find something right away that answers the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Explain your current understanding of the issue###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just saying &quot;Could someone explain ${concept} to me&quot; doesn't show what you *do* understand.  It lacks research.  Often the answer to this is spent repeating what is already available in Wikipedia.  If you had read this already and don't understand a part of it, explain that part and what you do understand.  Correcting a misconception is easier (and a better question) than trying to explain the entire topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Blatantly off topic###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the help center on [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) questions. Questions that are asking for a discussion, or polling or one of the reasons specified in the help center.  Especially note that questions *should* have been posted on Stack Overflow (implementation) or questions that should have been posted on Stack Overflow, but would be off topic there too (do this work for me)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16959" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6491" RevisionGUID="7156c3f6-ea91-46ba-9bb7-d6b44690e7d6" CreationDate="2014-02-24T07:06:23.440" UserId="31260" Comment="(MSO) [Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/142354/165773)" Text="#Primarily opinion-based#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frequent culprits of those close reason include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* asking people to explain a given quote&#xD;&#xA;* asking people to chose/review between different designs&#xD;&#xA;* recommendations for something (e.g. directory structure)&#xD;&#xA;* company policies and best practices&#xD;&#xA;* the name of something&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinguishing factor is that there is no way to get an authoritative answer for the question - the answers are all based on opinion rather than the knowledge of the person answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that if the answers to the question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design A} for these reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- break --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design B} for these other reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both of these answers are valid then the question is likely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/142354/165773)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16960" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6486" RevisionGUID="44b25a83-95b5-4d7a-a584-a5856ccb68f1" CreationDate="2014-02-24T07:09:05.737" UserId="31260" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###What language to take up next###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a constant stream of new projects out there.  Github [claims 4,500 new projects a day](https://github.com/blog/841-those-are-some-big-numbers) back in 2011.  On December 23, 2013, Github had [10 million repositories](https://github.com/blog/1724-10-million-repositories).  Quite frankly, there are far too many projects for anyone to suggest a good answer.  What's more, the projects of yesteryear may well be inactive now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same problem exists for suggesting languages and technologies - they are constantly changing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A goal for Stack Exchange is to create a lasting repository of information.  Asking questions about which technology to chose runs counter to that.  In part because everyone's needs are different and also that everyone has their own favorites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56848/how-does-one-keep-up-with-all-the-new-tools-languages-framework (also look at the [linked questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/56848?lq=1))&#xD;&#xA;* [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16961" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6491" RevisionGUID="d25b843e-a1c5-473a-9388-2b348cc4d6b8" CreationDate="2014-02-24T07:13:26.617" UserId="31260" Comment="added 133 characters in body" Text="#Primarily opinion-based#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frequent culprits of those close reason include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* asking people to explain a given quote&#xD;&#xA;* asking people to chose/review between different designs&#xD;&#xA;* recommendations for something (e.g. directory structure)&#xD;&#xA;* company policies and best practices&#xD;&#xA;* the name of something&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinguishing factor is that there is no way to get an authoritative answer for the question - the answers are all based on opinion rather than the knowledge of the person answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that if the answers to the question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design A} for these reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- break --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design B} for these other reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both of these answers are valid then the question is likely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/200144/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/142354/165773)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16962" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6485" RevisionGUID="930302f7-84ab-43c5-a603-48e0227b6641" CreationDate="2014-02-24T07:17:36.903" UserId="31260" Comment="added 493 characters in body" Text="# Duplicate #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A duplicate in of itself isn't a bad thing.  Often it means that the people who have suggested it as such think that the answer to your question is in the question that it is duplicated to (note this wording is not completely settled and some may want the two questions to be the same too for it to be a duplicate - for the purposes of this answer, I am using the broadest thought behind a duplicate).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is closed as a duplicate be sure to read *all* of the answers and consider the implications behind the answers too - not just the first reading.  An example of this can be seen on Stack Overflow when debugging questions trying to track down a NullPointerException in Java are linked to a question that explains about NullPointerExceptions rather than trying to resolve that particular instance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that something is closed as a duplicate incorrectly, explain specifically how your question differs from the other question and the answers in the duplicate question do not apply to your situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO FAQ) [How should duplicate questions be handled?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/10841/how-should-duplicate-questions-be-handled)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Does the new guidance on duplicate questions suggest closing a question as duplicate, if the original answers the OP's question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/217401/does-the-new-guidance-on-duplicate-questions-suggest-closing-a-question-as-dupli)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Someone flagged my question as already answered, but it's not](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/194476/someone-flagged-my-question-as-already-answered-but-its-not)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16963" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6484" RevisionGUID="b5bcf847-08f0-49a8-b8cc-0f7c64f6cc90" CreationDate="2014-02-24T07:22:58.427" UserId="31260" Comment="added 218 characters in body" Text="# Downvoted #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to look at is the mouseover for the down vote button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that this is a completely subjective grading and people may down vote because they were late to work or don't like unicorns.  However one's feeling of unicorns, this *is* information for you to look at and consider how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Make sure that the question is not just asking for something that can be easily searched with google.###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking other people to do your searching for you is considered poor form.  Everyone answering questions is doing so on a volunteer basis (even the SE employees that sometimes answer questions - they aren't paid to do so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also extends to things that you should have been able to find when searching on P.SE.  As you enter the information be sure to tag the question appropriately.  The combination of tags and title *may* help you find something right away that answers the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Explain your current understanding of the issue###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just saying &quot;Could someone explain ${concept} to me&quot; doesn't show what you *do* understand.  It lacks research.  Often the answer to this is spent repeating what is already available in Wikipedia.  If you had read this already and don't understand a part of it, explain that part and what you do understand.  Correcting a misconception is easier (and a better question) than trying to explain the entire topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Blatantly off topic###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the help center on [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) questions. Questions that are asking for a discussion, or polling or one of the reasons specified in the help center.  Especially note that questions *should* have been posted on Stack Overflow (implementation) or questions that should have been posted on Stack Overflow, but would be off topic there too (do this work for me)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [How much research effort is expected of Stack Overflow users?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/182266/how-much-research-effort-is-expected-of-stack-overflow-users/182380#182380)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16964" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6484" RevisionGUID="eaf4d10b-b60a-40c4-b3b7-734386e07619" CreationDate="2014-02-24T07:31:52.650" UserId="31260" Comment="added 96 characters in body" Text="# Downvoted #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to look at is the mouseover for the down vote button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that this is a completely subjective grading and people may down vote because they were late to work or don't like unicorns.  However one's feeling of unicorns, this *is* information for you to look at and consider how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Make sure that the question is not just asking for something that can be easily searched with google.###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking other people to do your searching for you is considered poor form.  Everyone answering questions is doing so on a volunteer basis (even the SE employees that sometimes answer questions - they aren't paid to do so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also extends to things that you should have been able to find when searching on P.SE.  As you enter the information be sure to tag the question appropriately.  The combination of tags and title *may* help you find something right away that answers the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Explain your current understanding of the issue###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just saying &quot;Could someone explain ${concept} to me&quot; doesn't show what you *do* understand.  It lacks research.  Often the answer to this is spent repeating what is already available in Wikipedia.  If you had read this already and don't understand a part of it, explain that part and what you do understand.  Correcting a misconception is easier (and a better question) than trying to explain the entire topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Blatantly off topic###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the help center on [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) questions. Questions that are asking for a discussion, or polling or one of the reasons specified in the help center.  Especially note that questions *should* have been posted on Stack Overflow (implementation) or questions that should have been posted on Stack Overflow, but would be off topic there too (do this work for me)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Encouraging people to explain downvotes](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/2373/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [How much research effort is expected of Stack Overflow users?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/182266/how-much-research-effort-is-expected-of-stack-overflow-users/182380#182380)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16965" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6492" RevisionGUID="eb6ab46d-df21-4a59-958b-6d39af7d4fa8" CreationDate="2014-02-24T07:34:09.253" UserId="31260" Comment="added 143 characters in body" Text="#Other#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions can be closed with a custom reason.  These are found in the comments for the question.  To that extent it is difficult to enumerate all the possible reasons people may try to close a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read the explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6251/how-can-i-write-a-good-custom-close-message&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/why-do-certification-questions-keep-getting-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6283/current-events-questions-and-answers&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [cross-posting (posting the same question over multiple Stack Exchange sites)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/cross-posting/info)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16966" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="9132fcad-f6f8-4739-a02b-9b95edf1218f" CreationDate="2014-02-24T07:38:32.120" UserId="31260" Comment="added 78 characters in body" Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What language to take up next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a tool, library, or other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)  &#xD;&#xA;  certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links also from particular points in the history of Programmers.SE and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a serial vote reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16967" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6485" RevisionGUID="5a47549e-55ae-4fe4-96ef-2b36a4276c88" CreationDate="2014-02-24T10:25:57.717" UserId="31260" Comment="isn't a bad thing += http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/ &quot;see 'Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication'&quot;" Text="# Duplicate #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A duplicate in of itself [isn't a bad thing](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/ &quot;see 'Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication'&quot;).  Often it means that the people who have suggested it as such think that the answer to your question is in the question that it is duplicated to (note this wording is not completely settled and some may want the two questions to be the same too for it to be a duplicate - for the purposes of this answer, I am using the broadest thought behind a duplicate).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is closed as a duplicate be sure to read *all* of the answers and consider the implications behind the answers too - not just the first reading.  An example of this can be seen on Stack Overflow when debugging questions trying to track down a NullPointerException in Java are linked to a question that explains about NullPointerExceptions rather than trying to resolve that particular instance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that something is closed as a duplicate incorrectly, explain specifically how your question differs from the other question and the answers in the duplicate question do not apply to your situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO FAQ) [How should duplicate questions be handled?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/10841/how-should-duplicate-questions-be-handled)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Does the new guidance on duplicate questions suggest closing a question as duplicate, if the original answers the OP's question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/217401/does-the-new-guidance-on-duplicate-questions-suggest-closing-a-question-as-dupli)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Someone flagged my question as already answered, but it's not](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/194476/someone-flagged-my-question-as-already-answered-but-its-not)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16968" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="0274994f-93aa-4a4d-9493-292d44919ab6" CreationDate="2014-02-24T13:40:25.117" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/437945108391272448" />
  <row Id="16969" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6493" RevisionGUID="5cd055c8-d0fe-4a55-a0ca-d7096e0e8580" CreationDate="2014-02-24T14:50:28.673" UserId="114829" Text="I had just 100 of reputation and I gave 50 points for a bounty. I din't know I could experience a ban because of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I read the following message if I try to post a question.&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account. See the Help Center to learn more.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can I ask you to upvote any of my question? The system will lift the ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you help me?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16970" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6493" RevisionGUID="5cd055c8-d0fe-4a55-a0ca-d7096e0e8580" CreationDate="2014-02-24T14:50:28.673" UserId="114829" Text="I got banned from Programmer but for a mistake" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16971" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6493" RevisionGUID="5cd055c8-d0fe-4a55-a0ca-d7096e0e8580" CreationDate="2014-02-24T14:50:28.673" UserId="114829" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16972" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6494" RevisionGUID="3180e188-d913-4b74-9799-97fd8ce7e34e" CreationDate="2014-02-24T14:54:47.043" UserId="4" Text="You weren't banned. Your account has an automatic block for asking new questions due to your other questions being down voted, closed, and/or deleted. You should read [this post on Meta Stack Overflow][1] to learn more about the block and how to overcome it. At this time, you can still post answers, and posting high quality answers is one method to overcome the block. Another is to edit your posts that have been closed to improve them and get them reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16973" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6493" RevisionGUID="0ab8c4e2-7e56-484b-bc3b-4108154c7112" CreationDate="2014-02-24T14:56:47.577" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|closed-questions|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16974" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6488" RevisionGUID="326fcf9e-7017-494c-9183-d8f016f3075c" CreationDate="2014-02-24T15:06:37.247" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Change link format." Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Career or education advice###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a very consistently asked type of question.  At its core is the problem that the question is only applicable to the person asking the question.  No two people are looking at the same set of classes, or the same job.  Every question that is asked is either only for one person or the answers will always be hopelessly incomplete because of the lack of the nuanced information and context that the person asking the question is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some questions from the past that remain on Programmers.SE.  You need to search for them - they are likely closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some things to consider about asking career questions is that these are often **very important** questions.  While people can give help, the answer is one that *you* need to find and not from random strangers on the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are in academia, ask a career counselor at the school, or one of the instructors - they know you better than we do.  Similar resources can be found for people in the job market already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the biggest difficulties with Q&amp;A for career questions is that to get the nuances of your situation and getting to know you better requires a dense two way communication - lots of clarification back and forth.  To this end, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is a resource where (the current) denizens can have that conversation.  We still won't get to know you as well as people who know you know you, but on the whole we are familiar with the various parts of the software industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Reddit) [/r/cscareersquestions FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16975" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6486" RevisionGUID="912e3d0d-edc0-4970-8ed4-80a745626b6a" CreationDate="2014-02-24T17:23:44.920" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add source format" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###What language to take up next###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a constant stream of new projects out there.  Github [claims 4,500 new projects a day](https://github.com/blog/841-those-are-some-big-numbers) back in 2011.  On December 23, 2013, Github had [10 million repositories](https://github.com/blog/1724-10-million-repositories).  Quite frankly, there are far too many projects for anyone to suggest a good answer.  What's more, the projects of yesteryear may well be inactive now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same problem exists for suggesting languages and technologies - they are constantly changing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A goal for Stack Exchange is to create a lasting repository of information.  Asking questions about which technology to chose runs counter to that.  In part because everyone's needs are different and also that everyone has their own favorites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56848/how-does-one-keep-up-with-all-the-new-tools-languages-framework (also look at the [linked questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/56848?lq=1))&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16976" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="d585684c-bd6b-4eca-bc9c-20c449119dc6" CreationDate="2014-02-24T17:24:45.940" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add source to link" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for libraries and tools has attracted spam answers in the past where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These answers are very poor and because of that, the questions get preemptively closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often the questions are very broad too.  Asking for books to learn Java from is a polling question that has no right answer.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology (and are a few months behind the tech).  Links to sites rot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange itself is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best approach to asking such a question is to describe the problem you are having that can be solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16977" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="df3d9957-c9e7-4e9e-9918-f0afdcdccffa" CreationDate="2014-02-24T17:38:11.680" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="+section and links to software-rec" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for libraries and tools has attracted spam answers in the past where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These answers are very poor and because of that, the questions get preemptively closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often the questions are very broad too.  Asking for books to learn Java from is a polling question that has no right answer.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology (and are a few months behind the tech).  Links to sites rot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange itself is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best approach to asking such a question is to describe the problem you are having that can be solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###[Software Recommendation.SE](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com) for tools and libs###&#xD;&#xA;There exists a site that is in beta specifically for software recommendations (*not* books and other non-software things).  Asking for recommendations *is* on topic there.  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules on the proposal](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/13031/laying-some-ground-rules-for-software-recommendations), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail* (SoftwareRec.SE is not a site for generating big lists of tools).  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16978" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="7ed3b0c5-b656-4e5d-b6c4-b673bb4dcefa" CreationDate="2014-02-24T17:46:18.983" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Modify links to SoftwareRec to the &quot;What is required for a question&quot; meta post." Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for libraries and tools has attracted spam answers in the past where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These answers are very poor and because of that, the questions get preemptively closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often the questions are very broad too.  Asking for books to learn Java from is a polling question that has no right answer.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology (and are a few months behind the tech).  Links to sites rot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange itself is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best approach to asking such a question is to describe the problem you are having that can be solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###[Software Recommendation.SE](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information) for tools and libs###&#xD;&#xA;There exists a site that is in beta specifically for software recommendations (*not* books and other non-software things).  Asking for recommendations *is* on topic there.  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules on the proposal](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/13031/laying-some-ground-rules-for-software-recommendations) (and also [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”?](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information)), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail* (SoftwareRec.SE is not a site for generating big lists of tools).  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16979" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="b7cc9bbc-06df-4373-aee0-dd1a080b621e" CreationDate="2014-02-24T19:55:00.817" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Link ground rules to meta rather than area 51." Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for libraries and tools has attracted spam answers in the past where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These answers are very poor and because of that, the questions get preemptively closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often the questions are very broad too.  Asking for books to learn Java from is a polling question that has no right answer.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology (and are a few months behind the tech).  Links to sites rot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange itself is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best approach to asking such a question is to describe the problem you are having that can be solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###[Software Recommendation.SE](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information) for tools and libs###&#xD;&#xA;There exists a site that is in beta specifically for software recommendations (*not* books and other non-software things).  Asking for recommendations *is* on topic there.  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) (and also [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”?](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information)), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail* (SoftwareRec.SE is not a site for generating big lists of tools).  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16980" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6484" RevisionGUID="43972728-01a4-4c43-abbe-1669fd907cf0" CreationDate="2014-02-24T20:33:18.383" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Forgot punctuation." Text="# Downvoted #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to look at is the mouseover for the down vote button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that this is a completely subjective grading and people may down vote because they were late to work or don't like unicorns.  However one's feeling of unicorns, this *is* information for you to look at and consider how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Make sure that the question is not just asking for something that can be easily searched with google.###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking other people to do your searching for you is considered poor form.  Everyone answering questions is doing so on a volunteer basis (even the SE employees that sometimes answer questions - they aren't paid to do so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also extends to things that you should have been able to find when searching on P.SE.  As you enter the information be sure to tag the question appropriately.  The combination of tags and title *may* help you find something right away that answers the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Explain your current understanding of the issue###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just saying &quot;Could someone explain ${concept} to me&quot; doesn't show what you *do* understand.  It lacks research.  Often the answer to this is spent repeating what is already available in Wikipedia.  If you had read this already and don't understand a part of it, explain that part and what you do understand.  Correcting a misconception is easier (and a better question) than trying to explain the entire topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Blatantly off topic###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the help center on [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) questions. Questions that are asking for a discussion, or polling or one of the reasons specified in the help center.  Especially note that questions *should* have been posted on Stack Overflow (implementation) or questions that should have been posted on Stack Overflow, but would be off topic there too (do this work for me).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Encouraging people to explain downvotes](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/2373/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [How much research effort is expected of Stack Overflow users?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/182266/how-much-research-effort-is-expected-of-stack-overflow-users/182380#182380)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16981" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="87462fe6-abc7-4cc2-8f64-3774a947eec7" CreationDate="2014-02-24T22:35:47.910" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16985" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6496" RevisionGUID="eebdf2f5-05d2-4ded-a562-7b4f83a31a67" CreationDate="2014-02-25T15:51:28.167" UserId="26494" Text="I voted to close [this question][1], and then the OP asked for downvoters to give a comment.  Which made me wonder: what do new (low rep) users see when their question is downvoted?  I know that as someone with the right to vote, I could see what the votes are simply by starting the process of voting to close on my own question, but would that be necessary?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230207/what-are-some-good-resources-on-text-formatting-algorithms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16986" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6496" RevisionGUID="eebdf2f5-05d2-4ded-a562-7b4f83a31a67" CreationDate="2014-02-25T15:51:28.167" UserId="26494" Text="What do new users see when their question has close votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16987" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6496" RevisionGUID="eebdf2f5-05d2-4ded-a562-7b4f83a31a67" CreationDate="2014-02-25T15:51:28.167" UserId="26494" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16989" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6496" RevisionGUID="b3d3cf27-52d4-4854-b24a-b0e181fbc8dc" CreationDate="2014-02-25T16:46:10.537" UserId="26494" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="I voted to close [this question][1], and then the OP asked for downvoters to give a comment.  Which made me wonder: what do new (low rep) users see when their question is closed?  I know that as someone with the right to vote, I could see what the votes are simply by starting the process of voting to close on my own question, but would that be necessary?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230207/what-are-some-good-resources-on-text-formatting-algorithms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16990" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6496" RevisionGUID="235f87c7-6e76-45aa-9fbb-c92b80a47637" CreationDate="2014-02-25T16:50:29.790" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|new-users|privileges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16991" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="30e03c27-d75a-42c5-858b-7fe1e6d65f1a" CreationDate="2014-02-25T18:26:40.617" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|close-reasons|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16992" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6458" RevisionGUID="93900797-3d06-464f-a66e-2c8df5007b85" CreationDate="2014-02-25T18:28:01.123" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|faq-proposed|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16993" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6496" RevisionGUID="c3013dbf-78fe-492f-81cb-12c54f2961fa" CreationDate="2014-02-25T19:11:08.840" UserId="26494" Comment="reworded to make it more clear that I want to know what they see in a pending close vote" Text="I voted to close [this question][1], and then the OP asked for downvoters to give a comment.  Which made me wonder: what do new (low rep) users see when there is a close vote on their question (before it has been closed)?  I know that as someone with the right to vote, I could see what the votes are simply by starting the process of voting to close on my own question, but would that be necessary?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230207/what-are-some-good-resources-on-text-formatting-algorithms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16994" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="bf13fb11-d7ee-4292-95ec-9d874cf195bb" CreationDate="2014-02-26T08:18:10.097" UserId="31260" Comment="serial vote += http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/serial-voting/info &quot;what's this&quot;" Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What language to take up next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a tool, library, or other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)  &#xD;&#xA;  certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links also from particular points in the history of Programmers.SE and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a [serial vote](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/serial-voting/info &quot;what's this&quot;) reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16995" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6473" RevisionGUID="2e2214cd-6d6f-4483-a0f0-cbdc66bca860" CreationDate="2014-02-26T09:39:08.530" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|subjective|opinion-based|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16996" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="e9abd1e6-792a-4814-9a11-9e5c8800aa83" CreationDate="2014-02-26T09:39:40.233" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|close-reasons|faq-proposed|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16997" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6491" RevisionGUID="c4a42e51-66d5-45c9-9e74-64c21b931305" CreationDate="2014-02-26T09:40:29.537" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers" Text="#Primarily opinion-based#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frequent culprits of those close reason include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* asking people to explain a given quote&#xD;&#xA;* asking people to chose/review between different designs&#xD;&#xA;* recommendations for something (e.g. directory structure)&#xD;&#xA;* company policies and best practices&#xD;&#xA;* the name of something&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinguishing factor is that there is no way to get an authoritative answer for the question - the answers are all based on opinion rather than the knowledge of the person answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that if the answers to the question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design A} for these reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- break --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design B} for these other reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both of these answers are valid then the question is likely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/200144/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/142354/165773)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16998" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6489" RevisionGUID="cb501e98-574f-4a29-a2f1-4e4fc2843e05" CreationDate="2014-02-26T09:47:13.517" UserId="31260" Comment="(MSO) [What is a better name for Unclear What You're Asking?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/215806/165773)" Text="#Unclear#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are looking for, in the [context of Programmers.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This close reason can also be a bit unclear as to what the issue is.  Please be sure to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Give enough context that someone reading the question can understand it&#xD;&#xA;* Explain what you are looking for&#xD;&#xA;* Check to make sure you are not using jargon that is particular to one specific branch of computing (and if you are, either change the jargon or link to a site that explains it)&#xD;&#xA;* Make sure you are on the proper site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last point is important too.  This close reason is often used as a proxy for &quot;we don't think that this question is a good question for Programmers.SE (it might be on Stack Overflow), but would get closed there too.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explain your design.  Explain what you have done.  Explain where you are having difficulty.  Explain what you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear what help you need](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260) (see also [linked MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/215806/165773))" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16999" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6497" RevisionGUID="64d97ad9-49ed-4b01-ac90-e3f64e7ba13b" CreationDate="2014-02-27T10:59:47.460" UserId="5099" Text="Over the past months I see that questions regarding copyright on software are receiving close votes, with a custom close reason along the lines of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about copyright which is a legal matter. Legal questions are off topic here as software developers are not qualified to give legal advice. (http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230592/would-copyright-drop-if-i-re-do-it-from-scratch-in-different-language)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, the &quot;What can I ask about&quot; page (http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) explicitly lists &quot;software licensing&quot; as being on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To my knowledge, software licensing is the application of a copyright license to a software produce, so that leads me to the question why such questions are officially sanctioned on the one hand and they receive off-topic close votes on the other hand." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17000" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6497" RevisionGUID="64d97ad9-49ed-4b01-ac90-e3f64e7ba13b" CreationDate="2014-02-27T10:59:47.460" UserId="5099" Text="What is the difference between software licensing and copyright" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17001" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6497" RevisionGUID="64d97ad9-49ed-4b01-ac90-e3f64e7ba13b" CreationDate="2014-02-27T10:59:47.460" UserId="5099" Text="|discussion|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17002" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6498" RevisionGUID="f5daf31a-b640-4ec5-8c35-768c3dd8f9a5" CreationDate="2014-02-27T16:13:28.863" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="(I am not a lawyer.  Do not take any of the following as legal advice.  It is, however, my understanding as someone who is more than a little bit familiar with certain aspects of copyright law... but could still be completely wrong)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First thing to realize with the question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230592/would-copyright-drop-if-i-re-do-it-from-scratch-in-different-language (from my reading of it) is that it is ***neither* a licensing *nor* a copyright question** in many situations - it is a *contract* issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For all of the major companies that I worked at, there was a specific clause in the contract that if I wrote software that was directly applicable to my job, even in my off hours on my own equipment, that software would be owned by the company.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, at my previous employer I worked on a point of sales system.  If I wrote something that was point of sales use (a custom dsl for doing receipts, or rules engine for determining the price of something based on discounts and coupons and sales, etc...) that creation would have been owned by my employer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't seen similar provisions in my current employer's contract, so this isn't universal, but I'm more inclined to believe that my current employer is the exception rather than the rule.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that extent:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If on my off hour, I write with a language C, from scratch a program which have a similar goal, but target user base B, and is open source, is it unethical or breaking trade secret/non compete/other?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is likely an answer that can only be determined by &quot;read your contract&quot; and &quot;talk to a lawyer&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets assume that this isn't a contract issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As described, it could be a *copyright* issue instead.  In this case it is a question of is any of the works in the 'from scratch program' a derivative work of the program written while on the clock.  This can only be answered by a lawyer - its not a licensing issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question also asks about trade secret which is *completely* the domain of lawyers and I couldn't even *begin* to comment on that - what a company considers a trade secret or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also the 'non-compete' question in the question.  This is likewise a question that is something that varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction (enforceable in some, not others, and funky rules in yet others).  This is also completely in the domain of lawyers to determine what competes and what doesn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In total, the question appears to be nearly all legal questions *other than* licensing.  I don't see any license question in there.  The copyright part isn't necessarily correct, but that it is a legal question that programmers don't have the expert knowledge of is absolutely correct." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17003" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6499" RevisionGUID="89f274a3-d3f0-441b-966e-73e3b59335e9" CreationDate="2014-02-27T17:25:36.813" UserId="1204" Text="Copyright is what you have when you create something: the right to control how that creative work is used and distributed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A license is the agreement you make (and the conditions you specify) which allows others to use your creative work, and/or distribute your creative work to others." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17004" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6312" RevisionGUID="0ce4c4ab-8b9e-40c1-a7e2-5b8c001cd61e" CreationDate="2014-02-27T18:01:49.647" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add software-recommendations site" Text="Question is about `git` the tool&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are asking how specific invocations of git such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How do I edit an incorrect commit message in Git?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/179123/how-do-i-edit-an-incorrect-commit-message-in-git)&#xD;&#xA;* [How to undo the last Git commit?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/927358/how-to-undo-the-last-git-commit)&#xD;&#xA;* [How do I delete a Git branch both locally and remote?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2003505/how-do-i-delete-a-git-branch-both-locally-and-remote)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are questions for **[Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic)**.  The key point here is you are asking for something to type into the *command line* to do something.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question is about `git` the workflow&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are trying to figure out how to use git to do something, understanding the conceptual foundations of git, or how to identify and overcome a problem that you have with the workflow... Questions such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69308/git-for-personal-one-man-projects-overkill&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/205411/why-does-git-use-hashes-instead-of-revision-numbers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212192/what-are-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-cryptographically-signing-commits-a&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96915/using-git-in-enterprise-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are questions for **[Programmers.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)**.  The key point here is the use of the tool in a bigger picture.  It is not one task that the question asks about but the entire workflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question is about `github` the site&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are also questions that are tangentially about git, but are really about github, the website.  Questions such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Strikethrough with GitHub Markdown](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/14986/strikethrough-with-github-markdown)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can I delete my public GitHub repository?](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/9787/can-i-delete-my-public-github-repository)&#xD;&#xA;* [Reference tag from comment](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/52578/reference-tag-from-comment)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are questions for **[Webapps.SE](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)**.  The key point here is if you are trying to figure out how to get something to work with *github*.  This is about *specifically* github and not about setting up your own git server (thats most likely a Stack Overflow question in the [git-daemon tag](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/git-daemon)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question is looking for a git client&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are trying to find a git client that fits some set of features &lt;!-- no prototype questions yet --&gt; look at the [Software Recommendations.SE](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information) site.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of this writing, this site is still quite young.  There are very specific requirements to what you need for asking a good question on the site.  However, if you are trying to decide which tool to use and neither [GUI clients](http://git-scm.com/downloads/guis) from git nor your current IDE's git integration work, this would likely be the best choice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have questions about any of the above, feel free to drop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com) and ask the question about which Stack Exchange site a question best belongs on." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17005" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6497" RevisionGUID="8117b470-54e5-4006-8adb-0d1a099bd276" CreationDate="2014-02-27T18:59:57.467" UserId="5099" Comment="added 202 characters in body" Text="Over the past months I see that questions regarding copyright on software are receiving close votes, with a custom close reason along the lines of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about copyright which is a legal matter. Legal questions are off topic here as software developers are not qualified to give legal advice.&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt; Quote taken from [here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230592/would-copyright-drop-if-i-re-do-it-from-scratch-in-different-language), which is actually a bad example, as the question is really about a legal issue. It was just the most recent question where copyright was cited as close reason.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, the &quot;What can I ask about&quot; page (http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) explicitly lists &quot;software licensing&quot; as being on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To my knowledge, software licensing is the application of a copyright license to a software produce, so that leads me to the question why such questions are officially sanctioned on the one hand and they receive off-topic close votes on the other hand." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17006" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6488" RevisionGUID="4f92fcc8-e465-4097-ac4d-05fd2c396c4c" CreationDate="2014-02-27T19:38:17.180" UserId="31260" Comment="[Workplace.SE topics guidance](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Career or education advice###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a very consistently asked type of question.  At its core is the problem that the question is only applicable to the person asking the question.  No two people are looking at the same set of classes, or the same job.  Every question that is asked is either only for one person or the answers will always be hopelessly incomplete because of the lack of the nuanced information and context that the person asking the question is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some questions from the past that remain on Programmers.SE.  You need to search for them - they are likely closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some things to consider about asking career questions is that these are often **very important** questions.  While people can give help, the answer is one that *you* need to find and not from random strangers on the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are in academia, ask a career counselor at the school, or one of the instructors - they know you better than we do.  Similar resources can be found for people in the job market already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the biggest difficulties with Q&amp;A for career questions is that to get the nuances of your situation and getting to know you better requires a dense two way communication - lots of clarification back and forth.  To this end, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is a resource where (the current) denizens can have that conversation.  We still won't get to know you as well as people who know you know you, but on the whole we are familiar with the various parts of the software industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Reddit) [/r/cscareersquestions FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not&#xD;&#xA;* [Workplace.SE topics guidance](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)  &#xD;&#xA;  [Workplace.SE -&gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17007" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="effd29e4-4240-4b6c-b015-f62027302c3d" CreationDate="2014-02-28T06:42:24.867" UserId="31260" Comment="(MSO) [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/129632/165773)" Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What language to take up next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a tool, library, or other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * (MSO) [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)  &#xD;&#xA;  certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links also from particular points in the history of Programmers.SE and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a [serial vote](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/serial-voting/info &quot;what's this&quot;) reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17008" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6484" RevisionGUID="6381d948-81bd-49ba-8f8a-cb9b463739d1" CreationDate="2014-02-28T09:59:28.653" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="# Downvoted #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to look at is the mouseover for the down vote button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that this is a completely subjective grading and people may down vote because they were late to work or don't like unicorns.  However one's feeling of unicorns, this *is* information for you to look at and consider how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Make sure that the question is not just asking for something that can be easily searched with google.###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking other people to do your searching for you is considered poor form.  Everyone answering questions is doing so on a volunteer basis (even the SE employees that sometimes answer questions - they aren't paid to do so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also extends to things that you should have been able to find when searching on P.SE.  As you enter the information be sure to tag the question appropriately.  The combination of tags and title *may* help you find something right away that answers the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Explain your current understanding of the issue###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just saying &quot;Could someone explain ${concept} to me&quot; doesn't show what you *do* understand.  It lacks research.  Often the answer to this is spent repeating what is already available in Wikipedia.  If you had read this already and don't understand a part of it, explain that part and what you do understand.  Correcting a misconception is easier (and a better question) than trying to explain the entire topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Blatantly off topic###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the help center on [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) questions. Questions that are asking for a discussion, or polling or one of the reasons specified in the help center.  Especially note that questions *should* have been posted on Stack Overflow (implementation) or questions that should have been posted on Stack Overflow, but would be off topic there too (do this work for me).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [How much research effort is expected of Stack Overflow users?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/182266/how-much-research-effort-is-expected-of-stack-overflow-users/182380#182380)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Encouraging people to explain downvotes](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/2373/165773)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17009" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="795864fb-c7b4-4fcc-9fa9-85f2f7dcf96c" CreationDate="2014-02-28T18:00:39.087" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for" Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What language to take up next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a tool, library, or other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * (MSO) [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)  &#xD;&#xA;  certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links also from particular points in the history of Programmers.SE and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a [serial vote](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/serial-voting/info &quot;what's this&quot;) reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17010" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6500" RevisionGUID="f6785127-319c-45ff-b56c-265b80a0d019" CreationDate="2014-03-02T02:10:14.000" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="[![Bountied questions on Programmers.SE][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stack-exchange-dynamic-ads.herokuapp.com/bounty.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/?tab=featured&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17011" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6500" RevisionGUID="0250f8ed-1263-4f0e-8965-473a561a6a95" CreationDate="2014-03-02T02:10:14.000" UserDisplayName="user40980" />
  <row Id="17012" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6501" RevisionGUID="4ce1a595-d16b-47e6-96d2-4af08963f4a0" CreationDate="2014-03-02T12:16:59.107" UserId="121782" Text="Copyright is an attempt control distribution, but has a lot of problems because its origins are in enacting press restrictions, which means we have to pretend that programs are literature. Licensing is an attempt to control the actions of users in the context of use of a product, but suffers from some basic conflicts with constitutional systems which typically maintain sweeping prohibitions against unenforceable laws.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll digress a tad and run through why copyright is increasingly insufficient and how licensing appeared a way out early on. I feel this is relevant to a complete answer because it is the changing nature of the meaning and intent of these terms that is most important in determining what they mean at any point in time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Copyright&quot; pretends that programs are literature, not math. It enables a system of selective enforcement over the right to *copy* a product. Originally this meant printed materials such as pamphlets and especially books, and the idea was that print presses were heavy-duty enough operations that a rule over copying was enforceable (in the pre-press days of manual transcription &quot;copyright&quot; was an entirely arbitrary concept, typically compounded with a royal or religious intent for censure). Today the term most often refers to digitized content, skipping straight over the media layer of existence to which the concept was originally intended. From the 1960's to the early 1990's the term &quot;copyright&quot; was generally applied against source with the understanding that customers (who were typically huge organizations) were going to compile their products from source and would modify the code for their own benefit. In this context the number of originals was quite low and pinpointing the source of what was essentially a breach of customer faith was trivial. In the 1990's a new interpretation of the term suddenly meant that literary copyright should cover all forms of a program, even binary executable forms which are demonstrably *not* articles of literature. This new meaning was additionally burdened by the implicit (but entirely unsupported) idea that it was also illegal for a user to decompile, examine functional aspects of, or otherwise use a program in a manner its author did not intend. The fact that everything beyond the act of physical reproduction has no original reference in traditional copyright law, plus the fact that lawyers and judges were becoming aware that copying is a basic function of all computing systems, necessary for the execution of *any* program, placed user restriction arguments into the realm of proving intent (not so easy, depending on the composition of the opposing legal teams arguing) and firmly out of the realm of factual argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;License&quot; pretends that a maker of some manner of product can have any practically enforceable say over how a person *uses* a product he has bought. It seems entirely reasonable if product licenses were a natural concept that baseball bats and kitchen knives would come with an EULA attached that prohibited their use in murderous crimes -- but they don't. On the other hand, &quot;home&quot; and &quot;academic&quot; versions of some common operating system and office productivity products come with EULAs which prohibit uses that are not &quot;personal&quot; or &quot;academic&quot; in nature to augment the obvious holes in the legal argument for contractually restricting product use cases via implicit contract between the producer and the user (&quot;implicit&quot; in this case meaning &quot;a contract you did not unambiguously and knowingly agree to&quot; by doing something like signing a paper or clicking &quot;I agree&quot; somewhere).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The one you didn't mention is patents, which face similar problems, as program execution can be expressed clearly in terms of equivalent calculi or algebras -- and this conflicts with the basic rule that math is not patentable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software is written but not literature, its a product but composed of purely applied math. And it is complex/non-deterministic enough it can reasonably be referred to as art in many cases. Its simply something for which we do not yet have a clear legal concept of, and therefore the terms above which are used to try and protect such works will eternally have shifting definitions and implications. Its the constantly shifting nature of the meaning and intent of these terms in the context of software that I am hoping to express with the verbose explanation above." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17013" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6498" RevisionGUID="c4badf45-dc03-45df-8f03-7ba79eb02b53" CreationDate="2014-03-02T18:28:18.610" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 1041 characters in body" Text="(I am not a lawyer.  Do not take any of the following as legal advice.  It is, however, my understanding as someone who is more than a little bit familiar with certain aspects of copyright law... but could still be completely wrong)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First thing to realize with the question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230592/would-copyright-drop-if-i-re-do-it-from-scratch-in-different-language (from my reading of it) is that it is ***neither* a licensing *nor* a copyright question** in many situations - it is a *contract* issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For all of the major companies that I worked at, there was a specific clause in the contract that if I wrote software that was directly applicable to my job, even in my off hours on my own equipment, that software would be owned by the company.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, at my previous employer I worked on a point of sales system.  If I wrote something that was point of sales use (a custom dsl for doing receipts, or rules engine for determining the price of something based on discounts and coupons and sales, etc...) that creation would have been owned by my employer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't seen similar provisions in my current employer's contract, so this isn't universal, but I'm more inclined to believe that my current employer is the exception rather than the rule.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that extent:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If on my off hour, I write with a language C, from scratch a program which have a similar goal, but target user base B, and is open source, is it unethical or breaking trade secret/non compete/other?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is likely an answer that can only be determined by &quot;read your contract&quot; and &quot;talk to a lawyer&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets assume that this isn't a contract issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As described, it could be a *copyright* issue instead.  In this case it is a question of is any of the works in the 'from scratch program' a derivative work of the program written while on the clock.  This can only be answered by a lawyer - its not a licensing issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question also asks about trade secret which is *completely* the domain of lawyers and I couldn't even *begin* to comment on that - what a company considers a trade secret or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also the 'non-compete' question in the question.  This is likewise a question that is something that varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction (enforceable in some, not others, and funky rules in yet others).  This is also completely in the domain of lawyers to determine what competes and what doesn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In total, the question appears to be nearly all legal questions *other than* licensing.  I don't see any license question in there.  The copyright part isn't necessarily correct, but that it is a legal question that programmers don't have the expert knowledge of is absolutely correct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its a fine line between the two topics in some cases.  However, most of the closed questions that I've poked at that that have received closed votes are either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* questions about legality&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Is it legal to remove the license information from a GPL compatible license when using it in GPL software?  &#xD;&#xA;* questions about non-license issues (contracts)&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;I am working for XYZ who is using in house modified GPL software. Can I submit those changes back to the main fork? &#xD;&#xA;* &quot;find a license for me&quot;&#xD;&#xA;I am looking for an open source license that prevents military or commercial use.  This one is a resource request, despite it being about licensing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This set of questions makes up the majority of the closed questions relating to licensing.  Nearly all of the copyright questions fall into that first group.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The thing that would help the most is to identify a licensing question that was closed with a reason pertaining to copyright that is actually a licensing question that should be open based on the guidelines." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17014" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6502" RevisionGUID="df5c0fd2-41ca-4040-a185-e17bb2905925" CreationDate="2014-03-03T13:33:00.370" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="There is a gray area between Programmers &amp; Code Review regarding design reviews.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Code Review's on-topic page](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) explicitly calls out design reviews as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, if your question is not about a particular piece of code and instead is a generally applicable question about …  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Higher-level architecture and design of software systems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [our on-topic page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would appear that a design review is on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it fails the applicability to programmers in general test, as a design review is essentially too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why do I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/230998/53019&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Was recently asked, and in the body of the question it was stated: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; From what I've read, design review is on-topic for this site (and off-topic for the Code Review site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'm opening it up here in Meta so we can hash out whether or not design review questions are on-topic for the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17015" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6502" RevisionGUID="df5c0fd2-41ca-4040-a185-e17bb2905925" CreationDate="2014-03-03T13:33:00.370" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Design Review: on-topic or not?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17016" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6502" RevisionGUID="df5c0fd2-41ca-4040-a185-e17bb2905925" CreationDate="2014-03-03T13:33:00.370" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|design|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17017" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6503" RevisionGUID="96455478-9bcd-4e2a-82fd-2c2e7e0aa9d1" CreationDate="2014-03-03T13:37:00.027" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Below 250 rep, the user doesn't see anything related to close votes unless a higher rep user tells them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: [view close votes privileges](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/view-close-votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This privilege allows you to view and cast close and reopen votes on your own questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And as gnat pointed out, they will see the comment of a suggested duplicate after the first duplicate vote is cast." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17018" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6504" RevisionGUID="6705358a-24fd-46ca-8161-b4aa17c22b14" CreationDate="2014-03-03T13:38:43.543" UserId="4" Text="I think that, generally, design review type questions are on-topic. However, the problem is how broad they are. My concern for this type of question is that most of them may be more suited to a discussion environment. I do think that there are good design review questions, but they need to be clear and specific and not soliciting general feedback. Specifically, in the question you linked to, this section has me most concerned over it's viability:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm looking for a general review of my OO design, use of UML, and use&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of C++ features. I especially just want to know if I'm doing anything&#xD;&#xA;&gt; considerably wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Any sort of feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would expect a good design review question to focus on a particular aspect of the design (or the representation of the design, which would also be valid). I'm not sure this particular question does that well. But it's not off-topic, just too broad or unclear." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17019" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6505" RevisionGUID="f66a89c3-ef5c-42a1-82c9-7553d1c5a955" CreationDate="2014-03-03T14:43:09.750" UserId="31260" Text="I prefer to use &quot;and-clause&quot; borrowed and slightly rephrased from [Codereview.SE](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. Does my question contain design? (Please include the design in the question, not a link to it)&#xD;&#xA;2. Did I write that design?&#xD;&#xA;3 Is it actual design from a project rather than pseudo-design or example design?&#xD;&#xA;4. Do I want the design to be good design, (i.e. not design-golfing, obfuscation, or similar)&#xD;&#xA;5. To the best of my knowledge, does the design work?&#xD;&#xA;6. Do I want feedback about any or all facets of the design?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If you answered yes to all the above questions, your question is on-topic for design review at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading, _question in question_ passed above clause.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a more general note, blindly letting questions pass based on bare stamp &quot;design review&quot; wouldn't be a good idea, because there would be no way to verify research effort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, one could just thoughtlessly glue some buzzwords and see how it sticks: &quot;I am considering SOA+ORM+responsive Web UI, any thoughts?&quot; I for one would vote close braindumps like this as [**unclear what help you need**](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260 &quot;custom close reason&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17020" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6506" RevisionGUID="c847c92f-20bb-46d3-a798-11fc44dd19b3" CreationDate="2014-03-03T14:46:06.377" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Copyright is ownership of a creation.  Copyright gives you the ability to decide what others can do with your creation (if anything), including control over creating derivative works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A license is a set of permissions to use a creation, and is granted by the copyright owner.  A license can address creating derivative works, modifying the original creation, and distribution rights of the original creation or derivations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of my frequent openings to answers in this domain is `Copyright != License`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Copyright questions are problematic on the site.  Copyright law varies by country, and can sometimes vary even within individual jurisdictions of the country.  Copyright law can frequently be affected by employment law.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;California, USA is a notable example of having differing particulars than other states.  And how each country chooses to follow the Berne convention is another matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a domain (such as Copyright) is difficult for attorneys to figure out and can be highly specific to jurisdiction, then the question isn't a good fit for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;License questions are generally on-topic for the site.  Some of the more well known open-source licenses are fairly clear in how to apply them for mainstream usages.  And in some cases like the GPL, there's a well established FAQ covering a range of scenarios.  Others like BSD and MIT are pretty clear cut.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's easy to get into corner cases where consulting with an attorney is required.  So you'll still see some license related questions closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm certainly biased in this case, but I prefer the suggested phrasing in [this answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6354/53019) for closing legal questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about legal matters outside of the community's experience and is best answered by an attorney with expertise in your jurisdiction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it does a good job at explaining why some licensing &amp; copyright questions are allowed, but others are not.  We're not here to be a team of legal experts - we're programmers.  But there are some subjects that we've collectively encountered and can answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that some members of the community dislike _all_ legal related questions.  The fundamental premise is that we potentially create liability for the site by answering those questions and that things are so hopelessly muddled that only attorneys should address those types of questions.  Currently, that's the minority view but we shouldn't be outright dismissive of the concerns.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17021" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6497" RevisionGUID="99335057-52f8-4409-9b2a-b40cdfad61da" CreationDate="2014-03-03T16:41:28.427" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/440527387294711808" />
  <row Id="17022" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6507" RevisionGUID="5dbc85df-2206-480f-a8ef-013e8c53e607" CreationDate="2014-03-03T18:24:35.547" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="###Please provide 10k+ users more close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Putting questions on-hold in a timely fashion is critical in providing useful feedback to new users.  It's rare for salvageable questions to be put on-hold without a constructive comment having been left.  Quickly putting questions on-hold keeps the question from attracting answers that may be invalidated by the suggested edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Anecdotal evidence shows that we're seeing a number of low-quality questions coming from users with question bans on SO.  I have seen a number of comments where the OP indicates they can't ask questions anymore on SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We want to maintain site quality.  Programmers has one of the [highest answered rates](http://stackexchange.com/sites#technology-percentanswered) (98%) for the Technology sites.  But at an average of 43 questions per day, it's easy for us to fall behind. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's rare for our close review queue to be completely empty.  While we don't have the challenges of the SO close queue, I think that for smaller sites having a backlog in the close review queue is not a good thing.  A backlog indicates that new users aren't getting the feedback they need in a timely fashion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_**How many?**_  &#xD;&#xA;For the sake of consistency, I would suggest an additional 26 (total 50) so it matches what SO allows.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [help page on close privileges](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You may cast up to 24 close votes per day (50 on Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Option A:   &#xD;&#xA;Give all 10k users additional ### close votes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Option B:  &#xD;&#xA;Give 10k users ###/2 close votes  &#xD;&#xA;Give 20k users ###/2 close votes  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Option C:&#xD;&#xA;Tie votes into close queue activity (ie. +## at 250 reviews; +## at 1k reviews) along with a tie into reputation levels.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Why not open this for everyone?_  &#xD;&#xA;Once you've earned 10k on Programmers, you should have a good feel for the site dynamics and be active in self-moderation.  That's why we allow vote-to-delete at 10k+.  Adding more close votes recognizes the commitment that's been made and allows those users to continue shaping the site's culture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Won't this lead to more questions showing up as on-hold?_  &#xD;&#xA;Perhaps it will, but that only indicates we have been letting those new users down.  Questions are put on-hold because they don't meet the site's criteria for high quality Q&amp;A.  With established users frequently running out of close votes on a daily basis, new questions that should be put on-hold are slipping through the cracks.  Putting a poor question on-hold encourages the OP to revise the question; get the _real_ answer they needed; and provide meaningful Q&amp;A for the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17023" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6507" RevisionGUID="5dbc85df-2206-480f-a8ef-013e8c53e607" CreationDate="2014-03-03T18:24:35.547" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Provide 10k users more close votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17024" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6507" RevisionGUID="5dbc85df-2206-480f-a8ef-013e8c53e607" CreationDate="2014-03-03T18:24:35.547" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17025" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6507" RevisionGUID="b4b8cf10-03c0-4faa-afa1-e48272da0c84" CreationDate="2014-03-03T18:32:58.647" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17026" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6502" RevisionGUID="174bace9-c898-48e8-87b1-a14fde66a682" CreationDate="2014-03-04T07:41:48.260" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/440753962934075392" />
  <row Id="17027" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6508" RevisionGUID="429f3d77-d6ef-43a1-9e06-2084bdb23018" CreationDate="2014-03-04T07:51:28.960" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="I'm not totally opposed to looking into upping the limits here, but I want to run some data first. However, there's two things at play here that we need to deal with separately, while at the same time not forgetting that they're symptoms of a whole. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's go by each problem, on its own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Q-blocked users trying their luck here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a growing problem that illustrates just how imperfect the question block system really is. While it does the job well enough, people end up deleting and re-creating accounts, going to sites where their questions are at _best_ tangentially related to the topic, or hooking up with voting rings to get their blocked accounts unblocked for a short time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For now, this needs _flagging_, not just close votes. We need to make the system better and it's something on my list to do, it shouldn't be such a manual process to police in these cases. However, if you see someone that is very likely unable to ask questions on one site bringing the same poor quality here - flag it. Your mods can and will get me or other members of the community team involved in slowing these people down over the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More close votes would _help_, but I'd much rather fix the underlying flaws.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###An increase in poor quality questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Traffic is growing here. I was _just_ looking at stats to determine if the rise is coming from folks with more engineering related searches, or the old 'best book to learn books' kind of thing. It's a bit of a split, but _looks_ like it's landing firmly in topics we actually _want_, which is good. That means the right kinds of users are finding the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also means that we're getting more clueless folks tripping over us in search results. While this has been becoming increasingly evident to folks that use and review the site daily, it's .. _now_ .. being evidenced a bit more by stats and data. Programmers is far from the size of 'Bedford Falls', it's a city, and it's growing. We want to make sure you're equipped to deal with bigger city problems as they present, but I'd like to observe this for  just a little while longer before proposing the changes to the team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm marking this as deferred, for now, but it's not in any way forgotten - It'll take a day or two to refine some queries, at which point I'm going to start watching it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17028" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6507" RevisionGUID="f7d2079d-8c30-4ae0-b47d-5f55da05fedb" CreationDate="2014-03-04T07:51:40.547" UserDisplayName="user131" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-deferred|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17029" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6509" RevisionGUID="04320004-23c7-459c-8adf-5546d463e841" CreationDate="2014-03-04T08:01:04.447" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="I'd like (and have asked for) mods on both sites to chime in, but this isn't looking like a good idea _at this point_. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stats are pretty clear, 52% of all _moderator_ initiated migrations from PSE to The Workplace (as obtained on The Workplace) have been rejected. That's _moderator_ initiated, which often entails a bit of collaboration and sanity checking with the mods at TW. Or, basically, being as careful as one can be not to send over something likely to just be closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think opening up a migration path would fare much better, probably a bit worse. In _theory_ this sounds like a good idea because you do have overlap when it comes to the types of career oriented questions that PSE doesn't really _want_ - but that's icky.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For now, I'd rather that those questions just continue to be closed here as warranted, and leave it in the hands of the moderators on both sites to migrate the occasional gem that might have a better chance there. Even then, historically, we only get that right half of the time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm declining it for now, but I'm open to revisit later down the road." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17030" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6466" RevisionGUID="cfd55132-97ef-4686-9298-b882e72a80e7" CreationDate="2014-03-04T08:02:21.883" UserDisplayName="user131" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|status-declined|migration|workplace-se|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17031" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6510" RevisionGUID="9f0490ca-a385-4753-ad9f-f894c52c56f9" CreationDate="2014-03-04T08:14:08.050" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="This kind of bothered me [when I wanted to award a bounty here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/716736/smart-variadic-expansion-based-on-format-string). I've already got the answer in mind that I want to reward, I'm _not_ likely to give it to any other answer, and the bounty can't be refunded - so why wait?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll bring this up on a feature call in the near future, but we're a bit backlogged on those, so please be patient (Next week? probably not. This month? probably.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17032" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6511" RevisionGUID="ee8f48a0-9933-490d-b438-f653160fee9f" CreationDate="2014-03-04T08:58:46.527" UserId="47" Text="I'm with Tim on this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We haven't had a good record when it's come to migrations to The Workplace and opening it up to more people is only going to make it worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of the problem is that the questions that could be sent really aren't good questions full stop. This is actually a problem with most sites on the network. People see the **topic** and think &quot;that's off topic *here* but would be on topic *there*&quot;. What people should be looking at is the **quality** of the question when it comes to migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, the first question should be the &quot;is it on topic *here*?&quot;, but that where you should initially stop. If you've determined that it's off topic you should then ask &quot;is it of high enough quality to migrate to *there*?&quot; and only then vote/flag for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hmm - I've just had a thought. Perhaps there should be a way to migrate closed questions in one step rather than having to reopen and then migration. I'll think on this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17033" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6512" RevisionGUID="8947976b-4c7e-4d3c-bf04-d71b9ff277b1" CreationDate="2014-03-04T10:08:35.503" UserId="41947" Text="I have a lot of little projects, and while the source code is on git, the other files are in some folder somewhere. Can I ask here how to keep track of those files (prototypes, text files, some images…) ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17034" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6512" RevisionGUID="8947976b-4c7e-4d3c-bf04-d71b9ff277b1" CreationDate="2014-03-04T10:08:35.503" UserId="41947" Text="Are questions about organizing files on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17035" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6512" RevisionGUID="8947976b-4c7e-4d3c-bf04-d71b9ff277b1" CreationDate="2014-03-04T10:08:35.503" UserId="41947" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17036" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6513" RevisionGUID="2c335e4a-98ec-41c4-9062-1e4e37d38632" CreationDate="2014-03-04T12:23:02.007" UserId="25476" Text="If your question is about the best practice to track prototypes, configurations and non code related resources in source control then I believe this is an on topic question for the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please try however to be clear in your question about what exactly you are trying to do and provide at least one suggestion or idea that you have thought about or tried, or what you are currently doing now and why you don't think this is working well for you.  The more detail you provide the better chance it will be well received by the community." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17037" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6514" RevisionGUID="5720a63b-e61e-43b4-a2f4-9f52e3c445e7" CreationDate="2014-03-04T12:48:03.930" UserId="52929" Text="This is the best solution right now - http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is almost always very active and almost always within 24 hours (excluding weekends, somewhat). There are a few people who currently either drop questions in there which is great, but if there are frequent moderator questions about &quot;should this go to Workplace?&quot; they are only initiated there by Yannis. I don't know of any other programmer mod who has put a question there asking, &quot;should we migrate this?&quot; In fact, I'm not sure I could identify who the majority of P.SE mods are - if there is this loop currently I'm completely out of it. I know of a few who've asked me questions but if there are more than WorldConquerer and Yannis, I have no idea (at least as applies to &quot;should this be migrated to Workplace&quot; questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would say this is your best bet right now. I hangout in your chat a fair bit too and frequently give insight into the questions some of P.SE regulars (but generally not mods) ask me about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be shocked if the rejection rate of questions that either get put in the Workplace chat or  when I get pinged in the P.SE chat is very high at all and most of those would likely be duplicates. I will sometimes even edit questions which are &quot;good but requires work before migration.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's questions which bypass this process which get rejected." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17038" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6514" RevisionGUID="396d30e4-30e5-4651-a2d9-c7fe3d0f0b8f" CreationDate="2014-03-04T14:27:30.540" UserId="52929" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="This is the best solution right now - http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is almost always very active and almost always within 24 hours (excluding weekends, somewhat). There are a few people who currently either drop questions in there which is great, but if there are frequent moderator questions about &quot;should this go to Workplace?&quot; they are only initiated there by Yannis. I don't know of any other programmer mod who has put a question there asking, &quot;should we migrate this?&quot; In fact, I'm not sure I could identify who the majority of P.SE mods are - if there is this loop currently I'm completely out of it. I know of a few who've asked me questions but if there are more than WorldEngineer and Yannis, I have no idea (at least as applies to &quot;should this be migrated to Workplace&quot; questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would say this is your best bet right now. I hangout in your chat a fair bit too and frequently give insight into the questions some of P.SE regulars (but generally not mods) ask me about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be shocked if the rejection rate of questions that either get put in the Workplace chat or  when I get pinged in the P.SE chat is very high at all and most of those would likely be duplicates. I will sometimes even edit questions which are &quot;good but requires work before migration.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's questions which bypass this process which get rejected." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17039" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6515" RevisionGUID="17fba89a-6a53-45a6-9756-15b17d34ce76" CreationDate="2014-03-04T18:55:04.767" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Request for stats to take a glance at (yea, this might be another question, but its directly pertaining to this one and maybe getting a glimpse into the &quot;running some data first&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions closed per hour on the site&#xD;&#xA;    * Three or more community close votes&#xD;&#xA;    * Two or fewer community close votes (mods step in)&#xD;&#xA;* Number of outstanding review tasks&#xD;&#xA;* For the people who have cast more than 25 (5/work day) close votes over the course of the week&#xD;&#xA;    * Sum of remaining close votes available to this pool of people&#xD;&#xA;* For people who have cast more than 100 (20/work day) close votes over the course of the week&#xD;&#xA;    * Sum of remaining close votes available to this pool of people&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The graph should be for 24 hours for work days (a separate one for weekends wouldn't be bad, but thats not when things happen much or are too interesting for draining the close vote pool).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The information that I'm trying to glean from this is about how fast are people using up their close votes in various ways (trying to handle the queue) and when is it necessary for mods to start picking up the poor question closes that come in (because the close vote pool is drained). It would also give a hint as to how much increasing the close count for people would help, or if it would be more useful to have additional moderators who can rapidly cast close votes (though noting that this has the side effect of some decrying the 'categorical mod closings').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this end, it *might* be helpful and/or interesting for this information to be 'live' while a community manager capable of identifying bad questions (and closing them) on P.SE is able to look at the activity over the activity for a week to help with either guidance as to help *prevent* these questions from getting asked in the first place, or looking at ways to encourage people who are less active in community moderation to partake in it too.  (being able to look at a question and say, &quot;why isn't that getting closed? Oh, of the people that cast 20 votes/day, only 2 of them have any votes left&quot;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17040" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6516" RevisionGUID="820eac3e-d093-430e-9074-56d2ee8eaf2e" CreationDate="2014-03-05T16:12:24.517" UserId="31260" Text="I am pondering particular feature request, but before diving deep into polishing its presentation and details, I would like to understand whether the change it would require is [technically feasible at all](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773 &quot;because my prior request in this area has been fairly but rather brutally declined based on pure technical grounds&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder if it is technically possible to implement a different aging factor for Programmers questions depending on the amount of answers in these? About as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- hotness score of questions having 0 to 4 answers ages away exactly as of now&#xD;&#xA;- score of questions having 5 to 9 answers decays a bit faster than above&#xD;&#xA;- score of questions having 10 or more answers decays another bit faster than those with 5 to 9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;FWIW, I would like to stress that I am interested to learn whether this is possible to implement at Programmers, not network-wide. As far as I understand, the problem I am thinking about addressing doesn't make an issue eg at Stack Overflow ([priority -17 there](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/220325/165773 &quot;judging by the score of related question at recent moderator elections&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;In case if it matters, here's a rough sketch of the feature request mentioned above. Due to extended exposure to wide SE network, hot questions tend to attract certain amount of low quality answers. These answers would better be (and eventually are) removed, but due to [limitations in moderation power and inadequate flagging system](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/223403/165773 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;) removal takes quite a lot of time. This slowdown in removal coupled with the way how hotness formula inflates score depending on amount of answers causes hot questions stick in the list longer than it could be in case of timely removal. If the aging decay of questions is adjusted to account for that, this would unblock other [entertaining](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/220099/165773) / [interesting](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/222730/165773) questions of our site and allow them to enter hot list.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17041" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6516" RevisionGUID="820eac3e-d093-430e-9074-56d2ee8eaf2e" CreationDate="2014-03-05T16:12:24.517" UserId="31260" Text="Is it technically feasible to have 2-3 aging factors for hot questions at Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17042" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6516" RevisionGUID="820eac3e-d093-430e-9074-56d2ee8eaf2e" CreationDate="2014-03-05T16:12:24.517" UserId="31260" Text="|support|answer-quality|hot-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17043" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6517" RevisionGUID="dd6054f4-f0d4-423f-ab45-44a609b9a315" CreationDate="2014-03-05T16:43:03.620" UserId="13181" Text="I'm looking at [this question][1]. And not five minutes after it was posted there's an &quot;I'm voting to close&quot; Comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we allow questions a grace period because what someone might see as irrelevant might just be the seed for a GREAT answer. Plus if you look at the comments, we have yet another frustrated first timer who won't come back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we're becoming beholden to the law of the land rather than letting it be a guide. Let the community decide if a question is valid before voting to close is opened. I'd argue the option to close should only be available after two days and only then if a certain threshold of votes/answers with positive votes has not been met. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/231364/is-there-a-best-practice-for-populating-a-dropdown-in-asp-net-mvc" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17044" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6517" RevisionGUID="dd6054f4-f0d4-423f-ab45-44a609b9a315" CreationDate="2014-03-05T16:43:03.620" UserId="13181" Text="Should there be a time limit bore someone can vote to close" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17045" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6517" RevisionGUID="dd6054f4-f0d4-423f-ab45-44a609b9a315" CreationDate="2014-03-05T16:43:03.620" UserId="13181" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17047" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6519" RevisionGUID="71e3c222-3f18-4e22-b56a-27c882120118" CreationDate="2014-03-05T16:56:15.567" UserId="60357" Text="Nah, that's unnecessary. It already is a *community decision* when a question gets closed: five high-rep users (or a moderator) have to vote to close for a question to be put on hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If five people independently erred in their judgement and a good question was accidentally closed, one can always make an argument to that end in the comments, and vote to reopen (or flag to reopen)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17048" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6520" RevisionGUID="6d999bf9-558a-4cd5-a3d7-3db4a32302eb" CreationDate="2014-03-05T16:56:28.710" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="I might pick a different example instead of that particular question.  But in general, I don't think a &quot;waiting period&quot; is needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For that particular question, the OP didn't mention a number of significant factors such as overall size of data, current work load on the server, and typical client devices used in their environment.  Too many **_unaddressed_** variables is why I voted to close as Too Broad.  But I also left a comment in the hopes that they would narrow their question into something more answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouting that they disagree in a comment isn't constructive and didn't address the core issue - namely the question was too broad to be meaningfully answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Waiting further to cast a close vote on the question wouldn't have accomplished anything." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17050" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6517" RevisionGUID="c7c947fe-15be-4ba2-a543-d29a69bf2d20" CreationDate="2014-03-05T17:11:08.680" UserId="47" Comment="typo in title" Text="Should there be a time limit before someone can vote to close?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17051" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6517" RevisionGUID="71799c09-dfa8-411f-bcca-9e9cfbed02f3" CreationDate="2014-03-05T17:50:31.270" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="All meta questions MUST have 2+ tags" Text="Should there be a time limit before someone can vote to close?c" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17052" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6517" RevisionGUID="71799c09-dfa8-411f-bcca-9e9cfbed02f3" CreationDate="2014-03-05T17:50:31.270" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="All meta questions MUST have 2+ tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17053" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6517" RevisionGUID="d6c855d6-d525-47a7-8bf1-34d6a73e2330" CreationDate="2014-03-05T19:28:54.437" UserId="31260" Comment="edited title" Text="Should there be a time limit before someone can vote to close?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17054" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="b4f10bcd-360d-449f-a61b-6cd248159cd9" CreationDate="2014-03-05T23:56:01.467" UserId="1204" Comment="added 34 characters in body" Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted).  Why? And what can I do about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What language to take up next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a tool, library, or other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * (MSO) [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)  &#xD;&#xA;  certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links also from particular points in the history of Programmers.SE and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a [serial vote](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/serial-voting/info &quot;what's this&quot;) reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17055" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6521" RevisionGUID="d72ec9c2-a02c-49bb-adbc-5644f4ebb56d" CreationDate="2014-03-05T23:58:55.013" UserId="121188" Text="I'm not sure where to ask questions about theoretical stuff. I don't want to get down-voted for asking at the wrong place. Also what is the difference between programmers.stackexchange and stackoverflow? Are you supposed to use both for different types of questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17056" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6521" RevisionGUID="d72ec9c2-a02c-49bb-adbc-5644f4ebb56d" CreationDate="2014-03-05T23:58:55.013" UserId="121188" Text="Where should I ask theoretical computer questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17057" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6521" RevisionGUID="d72ec9c2-a02c-49bb-adbc-5644f4ebb56d" CreationDate="2014-03-05T23:58:55.013" UserId="121188" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17058" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6488" RevisionGUID="b97da60d-f3d5-4f20-93de-8be9c3a267b8" CreationDate="2014-03-06T05:47:56.207" UserId="31260" Comment="(MSO) [Where to ask for general advice for young programmers?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/216589/165773)" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Career or education advice###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a very consistently asked type of question.  At its core is the problem that the question is only applicable to the person asking the question.  No two people are looking at the same set of classes, or the same job.  Every question that is asked is either only for one person or the answers will always be hopelessly incomplete because of the lack of the nuanced information and context that the person asking the question is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some questions from the past that remain on Programmers.SE.  You need to search for them - they are likely closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some things to consider about asking career questions is that these are often **very important** questions.  While people can give help, the answer is one that *you* need to find and not from random strangers on the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are in academia, ask a career counselor at the school, or one of the instructors - they know you better than we do.  Similar resources can be found for people in the job market already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the biggest difficulties with Q&amp;A for career questions is that to get the nuances of your situation and getting to know you better requires a dense two way communication - lots of clarification back and forth.  To this end, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is a resource where (the current) denizens can have that conversation.  We still won't get to know you as well as people who know you know you, but on the whole we are familiar with the various parts of the software industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Reddit) [/r/cscareersquestions FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Where to ask for general advice for young programmers?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/216589/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* Workplace.SE -&gt; [topics guidance](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)  &#xD;&#xA;  Workplace.SE -&gt; [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17059" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="a3ff7ccc-a38b-4381-9b06-4d28910f8853" CreationDate="2014-03-06T06:21:43.253" UserId="31260" Comment="Your questions should be reasonably scoped..." Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long for the Q&amp;A format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar to the recommend an XYZ close reason, some questions are polling for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the choice as to which answer is the one to accept is a &quot;which one I like best,&quot; the question may be one it is polling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help Center &gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17060" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6522" RevisionGUID="548be763-752b-4e54-ae7a-69ca354a9187" CreationDate="2014-03-06T07:27:44.983" UserId="108641" Text="The question “Why is BigDecimal the best data type for currency?” has been marked as a duplicate of a question about numerical approximation of floating point data.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Persons who recognised this as a duplicate probably thought to accounting software or related questions.  There is however industry fields where software uses float to represent currencies, which happens to be a perfectly valid approach—of course, we do not talk of accounting software here!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the correct answer to this question is “BigDecimal is *not* the best data type for currency” and the question is not a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can we remove the “duplicate” annotation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17061" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6522" RevisionGUID="548be763-752b-4e54-ae7a-69ca354a9187" CreationDate="2014-03-06T07:27:44.983" UserId="108641" Text="False duplicate: “Why is BigDecimal the best data type for currency?”" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17062" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6522" RevisionGUID="548be763-752b-4e54-ae7a-69ca354a9187" CreationDate="2014-03-06T07:27:44.983" UserId="108641" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17063" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6522" RevisionGUID="5e5f9995-85f9-49ea-bc19-0260f655da0a" CreationDate="2014-03-06T07:51:32.600" UserId="31260" Comment="added 241 characters in body" Text="The question [Why is BigDecimal the best data type for currency?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/228584/why-is-bigdecimal-the-best-data-type-for-currency) has been marked as a duplicate of a [question about numerical approximation of floating point data](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/224859/when-do-rounding-problems-become-a-real-problem-is-the-least-significant-digit).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Persons who recognised this as a duplicate probably thought to accounting software or related questions.  There is however industry fields where software uses float to represent currencies, which happens to be a perfectly valid approach—of course, we do not talk of accounting software here!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the correct answer to this question is “BigDecimal is *not* the best data type for currency” and the question is not a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can we remove the “duplicate” annotation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17064" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6516" RevisionGUID="83213090-3fc4-43f0-b011-8ebf4ea3ac8e" CreationDate="2014-03-06T08:21:35.007" UserId="31260" Comment="added 66 characters in body" Text="I am pondering particular feature request, but before diving deep into polishing its presentation and details, I would like to understand whether the change it would require is [technically feasible at all](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/199006/165773 &quot;because my prior request in this area has been fairly but rather brutally declined based on pure technical grounds&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder if it is technically possible to implement a different aging factor for Programmers questions depending on the amount of answers in these? About as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- hotness score of questions having 0 to 4 answers ages away exactly as of now&#xD;&#xA;- score of questions having 5 to 9 answers decays a bit faster than above  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;say, calculated as if it started aging away earlier&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- score of questions having 10 or more answers decays another bit faster than those with 5 to 9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;FWIW, I would like to stress that I am interested to learn whether this is possible to implement at Programmers, not network-wide. As far as I understand, the problem I am thinking about addressing doesn't make an issue eg at Stack Overflow ([priority -17 there](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/220325/165773 &quot;judging by the score of related question at recent moderator elections&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;In case if it matters, here's a rough sketch of the feature request mentioned above. Due to extended exposure to wide SE network, hot questions tend to attract certain amount of low quality answers. These answers would better be (and eventually are) removed, but due to [limitations in moderation power and inadequate flagging system](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/223403/165773 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;) removal takes quite a lot of time. This slowdown in removal coupled with the way how hotness formula inflates score depending on amount of answers causes hot questions stick in the list longer than it could be in case of timely removal. If the aging decay of questions is adjusted to account for that, this would unblock other [entertaining](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/220099/165773) / [interesting](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/222730/165773) questions of our site and allow them to enter hot list.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17065" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6523" RevisionGUID="6964f361-9c52-4b8c-877b-0bd4baef259a" CreationDate="2014-03-06T15:59:53.437" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="As the one who started the duplicate on that close vote I wish to draw your attention to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why is BigDecimal the best type? I don't understand the relevance of arguments such as precise calculations or people with large net worth. I am pretty sure that there are no currencies that round to the 10th decimal place, and almost no one has 8-bytes worth of money (if it were to store it as a long).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; For taxes and other intermediary calculations, I can see how it is important to make sure you are using a proper type that doesn't round/truncate values prematurely, but that doesn't seem relevant to me either since an error of 0.0000000001 cents on the dollar does not seem that big to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It may be due to my lack of understanding of the importance of accuracy when it comes to financial statements, so perhaps someone can also clarify whether a millionth of a cent is significant as a final number.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the question it was duped to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I can't imagine that last digit being much of a problem in real life. For example, if I ask for a &quot;0.30000000000000004 meter metal rod&quot;, I'm not going to later complain that &quot;this rod is 0.00000000000000004 meters too long!&quot; (I can just cut the extra off, right? :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my reading, these are the same question worded differently.  The origin refers to currency, the dup target is one that deals with currency and the broader issue of floating point inaccuracy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers in the duped question *directly* answer the &quot;an error of 0.0000000001 cents on the dollar does not seem that big to me.&quot; portion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17067" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6484" RevisionGUID="37d5e9fb-00bf-4609-8d79-4e6ea340ad89" CreationDate="2014-03-09T00:01:25.677" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add quick link" Text="# Downvoted #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to look at is the mouseover for the down vote button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that this is a completely subjective grading and people may down vote because they were late to work or don't like unicorns.  However one's feeling of unicorns, this *is* information for you to look at and consider how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Make sure that the question is not just asking for something that can be easily searched with google.###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking other people to do your searching for you is considered poor form.  Everyone answering questions is doing so on a volunteer basis (even the SE employees that sometimes answer questions - they aren't paid to do so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also extends to things that you should have been able to find when searching on P.SE.  As you enter the information be sure to tag the question appropriately.  The combination of tags and title *may* help you find something right away that answers the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Explain your current understanding of the issue###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just saying &quot;Could someone explain ${concept} to me&quot; doesn't show what you *do* understand.  It lacks research.  Often the answer to this is spent repeating what is already available in Wikipedia.  If you had read this already and don't understand a part of it, explain that part and what you do understand.  Correcting a misconception is easier (and a better question) than trying to explain the entire topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Blatantly off topic###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the help center on [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) questions. Questions that are asking for a discussion, or polling or one of the reasons specified in the help center.  Especially note that questions *should* have been posted on Stack Overflow (implementation) or questions that should have been posted on Stack Overflow, but would be off topic there too (do this work for me).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [How much research effort is expected of Stack Overflow users?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/182266/how-much-research-effort-is-expected-of-stack-overflow-users/182380#182380)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Encouraging people to explain downvotes](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/2373/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;`[Why was my question down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17068" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="4eebeff1-5f12-4e6b-9c8d-043ab1dbeb6e" CreationDate="2014-03-09T00:02:39.073" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add quick link" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for libraries and tools has attracted spam answers in the past where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These answers are very poor and because of that, the questions get preemptively closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often the questions are very broad too.  Asking for books to learn Java from is a polling question that has no right answer.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology (and are a few months behind the tech).  Links to sites rot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange itself is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best approach to asking such a question is to describe the problem you are having that can be solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###[Software Recommendation.SE](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information) for tools and libs###&#xD;&#xA;There exists a site that is in beta specifically for software recommendations (*not* books and other non-software things).  Asking for recommendations *is* on topic there.  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) (and also [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”?](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information)), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail* (SoftwareRec.SE is not a site for generating big lists of tools).  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17069" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6485" RevisionGUID="fe510dfd-59cf-4ab2-9941-b2aa63a3894d" CreationDate="2014-03-09T00:03:25.717" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add quick link" Text="# Duplicate #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A duplicate in of itself [isn't a bad thing](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/ &quot;see 'Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication'&quot;).  Often it means that the people who have suggested it as such think that the answer to your question is in the question that it is duplicated to (note this wording is not completely settled and some may want the two questions to be the same too for it to be a duplicate - for the purposes of this answer, I am using the broadest thought behind a duplicate).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is closed as a duplicate be sure to read *all* of the answers and consider the implications behind the answers too - not just the first reading.  An example of this can be seen on Stack Overflow when debugging questions trying to track down a NullPointerException in Java are linked to a question that explains about NullPointerExceptions rather than trying to resolve that particular instance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that something is closed as a duplicate incorrectly, explain specifically how your question differs from the other question and the answers in the duplicate question do not apply to your situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO FAQ) [How should duplicate questions be handled?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/10841/how-should-duplicate-questions-be-handled)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Does the new guidance on duplicate questions suggest closing a question as duplicate, if the original answers the OP's question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/217401/does-the-new-guidance-on-duplicate-questions-suggest-closing-a-question-as-dupli)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Someone flagged my question as already answered, but it's not](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/194476/someone-flagged-my-question-as-already-answered-but-its-not)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as a duplicate?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6485/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17070" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6489" RevisionGUID="dc39f205-dd12-493d-b475-65ce4f3a9f70" CreationDate="2014-03-09T00:04:22.937" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add quick link" Text="#Unclear#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are looking for, in the [context of Programmers.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This close reason can also be a bit unclear as to what the issue is.  Please be sure to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Give enough context that someone reading the question can understand it&#xD;&#xA;* Explain what you are looking for&#xD;&#xA;* Check to make sure you are not using jargon that is particular to one specific branch of computing (and if you are, either change the jargon or link to a site that explains it)&#xD;&#xA;* Make sure you are on the proper site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last point is important too.  This close reason is often used as a proxy for &quot;we don't think that this question is a good question for Programmers.SE (it might be on Stack Overflow), but would get closed there too.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explain your design.  Explain what you have done.  Explain where you are having difficulty.  Explain what you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear what help you need](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260) (see also [linked MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/215806/165773))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as unclear?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6489/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17071" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="d87f6f28-cedd-4710-b1bd-d01274228835" CreationDate="2014-03-09T00:05:20.753" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 133 characters in body" Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long for the Q&amp;A format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar to the recommend an XYZ close reason, some questions are polling for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the choice as to which answer is the one to accept is a &quot;which one I like best,&quot; the question may be one it is polling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help Center &gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as too broad?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17072" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="4f2317e6-2faf-4be5-abc6-919b88e4cfc1" CreationDate="2014-03-09T00:24:47.407" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add quick link text." Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted).  Why? And what can I do about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What language to take up next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a tool, library, or other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * (MSO) [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)  &#xD;&#xA;  certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links also from particular points in the history of Programmers.SE and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a [serial vote](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/serial-voting/info &quot;what's this&quot;) reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For pasting into chat or comments there is a &quot;Quick link&quot; at the end of each answer.  The quick link for the question is `[Why was my question closed or down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/)` - pasting this into chat or a comment will link to the question.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17073" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6491" RevisionGUID="91a98be6-ff10-4ea2-a6ed-8d222c0949b3" CreationDate="2014-03-09T00:26:18.553" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add quick link" Text="#Primarily opinion-based#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frequent culprits of those close reason include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* asking people to explain a given quote&#xD;&#xA;* asking people to chose/review between different designs&#xD;&#xA;* recommendations for something (e.g. directory structure)&#xD;&#xA;* company policies and best practices&#xD;&#xA;* the name of something&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinguishing factor is that there is no way to get an authoritative answer for the question - the answers are all based on opinion rather than the knowledge of the person answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that if the answers to the question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design A} for these reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- break --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design B} for these other reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both of these answers are valid then the question is likely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/200144/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/142354/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as primarily opinion-based?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17074" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6492" RevisionGUID="39719601-2ae6-4207-9d81-d68f71585b07" CreationDate="2014-03-09T00:27:07.713" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add quick link" Text="#Other#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions can be closed with a custom reason.  These are found in the comments for the question.  To that extent it is difficult to enumerate all the possible reasons people may try to close a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read the explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6251/how-can-i-write-a-good-custom-close-message&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/why-do-certification-questions-keep-getting-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6283/current-events-questions-and-answers&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [cross-posting (posting the same question over multiple Stack Exchange sites)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/cross-posting/info)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed - other reasons](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6492/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17075" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6486" RevisionGUID="33f9bcaf-326e-4098-8274-48ef68cf3840" CreationDate="2014-03-09T00:28:09.110" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add quick link" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###What language to take up next###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a constant stream of new projects out there.  Github [claims 4,500 new projects a day](https://github.com/blog/841-those-are-some-big-numbers) back in 2011.  On December 23, 2013, Github had [10 million repositories](https://github.com/blog/1724-10-million-repositories).  Quite frankly, there are far too many projects for anyone to suggest a good answer.  What's more, the projects of yesteryear may well be inactive now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same problem exists for suggesting languages and technologies - they are constantly changing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A goal for Stack Exchange is to create a lasting repository of information.  Asking questions about which technology to chose runs counter to that.  In part because everyone's needs are different and also that everyone has their own favorites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56848/how-does-one-keep-up-with-all-the-new-tools-languages-framework (also look at the [linked questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/56848?lq=1))&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17076" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6488" RevisionGUID="e5b1b4f6-b24a-4dc9-bd76-83fe1f2ad747" CreationDate="2014-03-09T00:29:23.380" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 133 characters in body" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Career or education advice###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a very consistently asked type of question.  At its core is the problem that the question is only applicable to the person asking the question.  No two people are looking at the same set of classes, or the same job.  Every question that is asked is either only for one person or the answers will always be hopelessly incomplete because of the lack of the nuanced information and context that the person asking the question is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some questions from the past that remain on Programmers.SE.  You need to search for them - they are likely closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some things to consider about asking career questions is that these are often **very important** questions.  While people can give help, the answer is one that *you* need to find and not from random strangers on the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are in academia, ask a career counselor at the school, or one of the instructors - they know you better than we do.  Similar resources can be found for people in the job market already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the biggest difficulties with Q&amp;A for career questions is that to get the nuances of your situation and getting to know you better requires a dense two way communication - lots of clarification back and forth.  To this end, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is a resource where (the current) denizens can have that conversation.  We still won't get to know you as well as people who know you know you, but on the whole we are familiar with the various parts of the software industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Reddit) [/r/cscareersquestions FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Where to ask for general advice for young programmers?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/216589/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* Workplace.SE -&gt; [topics guidance](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)  &#xD;&#xA;  Workplace.SE -&gt; [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17077" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6524" RevisionGUID="c1c04c06-42ed-4323-8cf7-b82ae01717ac" CreationDate="2014-03-09T18:11:41.310" UserId="51061" Text="[![Git — fast version control][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pRl4X.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://git-scm.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17078" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6524" RevisionGUID="74b73128-ad84-43ad-97b1-e1ae84becfd6" CreationDate="2014-03-09T18:11:41.310" UserId="51061" />
  <row Id="17079" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6524" RevisionGUID="f4fe056d-e9de-43ee-b304-90533ad43456" CreationDate="2014-03-09T18:17:09.800" UserId="51061" Comment="edited body" Text="[![Git — fast version control][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pXWb5.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://git-scm.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17080" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6524" RevisionGUID="b07c7458-18fc-4b0b-a8ad-51468f19113e" CreationDate="2014-03-09T18:49:46.527" UserId="51061" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="[![Git — fast version control][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pXWb5.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://git-scm.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17081" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6525" RevisionGUID="bf03469e-ea53-4b50-9558-5b3af740d598" CreationDate="2014-03-09T18:50:53.750" UserId="51061" Text="[![Git — fast and easy branching][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qgaVV.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://git-scm.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17082" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6525" RevisionGUID="52338e53-7a96-43ad-b51e-fa39036813ba" CreationDate="2014-03-09T18:50:53.750" UserId="51061" />
  <row Id="17083" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6526" RevisionGUID="c264e841-227c-47eb-a513-3ca415cacfa6" CreationDate="2014-03-09T21:27:12.820" UserId="31260" Text="It is technically feasible, when adjustment involves data that is available at the moment when hotness score is calculated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the adjustment involves only `AnswerCount`, it's easy to implement, taking into account that [current formula](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/61343/165773 &quot;explained here&quot;) uses it anyway:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;    (MIN(AnswerCount, 10) * QScore) / 5 + AnswerScore&#xD;&#xA;    -------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;             MAX(QAgeInHours + 1, 6) ^ 1.4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an example, adjustment to lower part of the formula (age factor) can look like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    (AnswerCount &lt; 5 ? MAX(QAgeInHours + 1, 6)&#xD;&#xA;        : AnswerCount &lt; 10 ? (QAgeInHours + 3)&#xD;&#xA;        :  ? (QAgeInHours + 5)) ^ 1.4)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17084" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6526" RevisionGUID="421447e6-7008-4bce-99be-b9588e35c77e" CreationDate="2014-03-09T21:52:33.400" UserId="31260" Comment="deleted 1 characters in body" Text="It is technically feasible, when adjustment involves data that is available at the moment when hotness score is calculated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the adjustment involves only `AnswerCount`, it's easy to implement, taking into account that [current formula](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/61343/165773 &quot;explained here&quot;) uses it anyway:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;    (MIN(AnswerCount, 10) * QScore) / 5 + AnswerScore&#xD;&#xA;    -------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;             MAX(QAgeInHours + 1, 6) ^ 1.4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an example, adjustment to lower part of the formula (age factor) can look like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    (AnswerCount &lt; 5 ? MAX(QAgeInHours + 1, 6)&#xD;&#xA;        : AnswerCount &lt; 10 ? (QAgeInHours + 3)&#xD;&#xA;        :  ? (QAgeInHours + 5)) ^ 1.4&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17085" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6526" RevisionGUID="a1d53257-d529-40f1-804b-37e55a16368a" CreationDate="2014-03-10T07:02:08.677" UserId="31260" Comment="Feature request based on above submitted at MSO: Make hot questions with multiple answers age away faster on smaller / subjective-ish sites." Text="It is technically feasible, when adjustment involves data that is available at the moment when hotness score is calculated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the adjustment involves only `AnswerCount`, it's easy to implement, taking into account that [current formula](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/61343/165773 &quot;explained here&quot;) uses it anyway:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;    (MIN(AnswerCount, 10) * QScore) / 5 + AnswerScore&#xD;&#xA;    -------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;             MAX(QAgeInHours + 1, 6) ^ 1.4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an example, adjustment to lower part of the formula (age factor) can look like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    (AnswerCount &lt; 5 ? MAX(QAgeInHours + 1, 6)&#xD;&#xA;        : AnswerCount &lt; 10 ? (QAgeInHours + 3)&#xD;&#xA;        :  ? (QAgeInHours + 5)) ^ 1.4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request based on above submitted at MSO: [Make hot questions with multiple answers age away faster on smaller / subjective-ish sites](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/224750/165773).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17094" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6528" RevisionGUID="1c94e100-5aa1-422a-966f-429fe6681397" CreationDate="2014-03-10T16:25:53.353" UserId="91041" Text="I've noticed a trend on Programmers.SE, along with some other sites in the network, where a comment offering suggestions or critique to an answer often results in the answer's author spending a comment arguing the premise of the suggestion, rather than responding constructively or at least minimally.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The typical example would something as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Adam writes a question &quot;Do CPU's handle bytes or just bits?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Barry writes a answer with room for improvement, perhaps in the form of a sonnet.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Charles comments with a suggestion, such as &quot;maybe don't write as a sonnet.&quot;&#xD;&#xA; 4. Barry replies to Charles comment defending his choice, often with a &quot;you should read my sonnet&quot; line.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What **should** everyone do here?  Should C and B have a multi-part discussion in their comments?  Should B's &quot;read my sonnet&quot; line be flagged, by either A, C, or D (&quot;Dave&quot;, who was just reading.).  Should C delete his comment and try to re-state?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17095" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6528" RevisionGUID="1c94e100-5aa1-422a-966f-429fe6681397" CreationDate="2014-03-10T16:25:53.353" UserId="91041" Text="What do to when comments become discussion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17096" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6528" RevisionGUID="1c94e100-5aa1-422a-966f-429fe6681397" CreationDate="2014-03-10T16:25:53.353" UserId="91041" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17097" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6529" RevisionGUID="2138c5a4-5e71-4a05-b2f2-e1c931fe0782" CreationDate="2014-03-10T16:40:52.690" UserId="1204" Text="Aside from the relative merit of using sonnets to answer a question, the guiding principle is this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are for clarifying questions and answers, or asking for clarification.  Any other use makes them subject to removal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the comments are anything but that, cast a flag against them, and a moderator will remove them if they are onerous.  The key on any Stack Exchange site is to reduce the noise as much as possible.  This is already done by the system collapsing long strings of comments, but if the comment thread has become particularly noisy, a moderator can take care of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For some comment conversations, a &quot;would you like to move this conversation to chat&quot; link is offered.  Chat is more relaxed about these things; if you want to discuss the relative merits of answering Stack Exchange questions via sonnet, by all means avail yourself of the chat facility.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[How do Comments Work? (Meta FAQ)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/19756/193412)  &#xD;&#xA;[How to Use the Comment Privilege (from the Help Center)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/comment)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17098" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6528" RevisionGUID="e33121ed-2a12-44a3-bc90-e47c1d917fab" CreationDate="2014-03-10T19:01:28.920" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="Reminder: please use 2+ tags on meta posts." Text="|discussion|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17099" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6505" RevisionGUID="914103ca-43cd-4c62-a419-c695175228ef" CreationDate="2014-03-11T11:46:02.760" UserId="31260" Comment="#5 may be interpreted as too broad, that is, focusing on specific design concern(s) would be safer" Text="I prefer to use &quot;and-clause&quot; borrowed and slightly rephrased from [Codereview.SE](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. Does my question contain design? (Please include the design in the question, not a link to it)&#xD;&#xA;2. Did I write that design?&#xD;&#xA;3 Is it actual design from a project rather than pseudo-design or example design?&#xD;&#xA;4. Do I want the design to be good design, (i.e. not design-golfing, obfuscation, or similar)&#xD;&#xA;5. To the best of my knowledge, does the design work?&#xD;&#xA;6. Do I want feedback about any or all facets of the design?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If you answered yes to all the above questions, your question is on-topic for design review at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading, _question in question_ passed above clause.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a more general note, blindly letting questions pass based on bare stamp &quot;design review&quot; wouldn't be a good idea, because there would be no way to verify research effort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, one could just thoughtlessly glue some buzzwords and see how it sticks: &quot;I am considering SOA+ORM+responsive Web UI, any thoughts?&quot; I for one would vote close braindumps like this as [**unclear what help you need**](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260 &quot;custom close reason&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that, [as pointed in comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6502/design-review-on-topic-or-not/6505#comment17558_6505), #5 may be interpreted as [too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490), that is, focusing on specific design concern(s) would be safer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17100" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6530" RevisionGUID="d414533a-83c9-4c17-b9f3-5503053f1ab1" CreationDate="2014-03-12T10:50:20.173" UserId="121951" Text="I wanted to quote a single (not the first) bullet point in a bulleted list from another site. I used the block quote function to indent the text and place it in a grey box to denote it as separate from the main text. I copied and pasted the quote including the number at the beginning e.g. &quot;9. blah blah&quot;. However in an attempt to list bullet points in order the representation was show as &quot;1. blah blah&quot;. When I went to edit the text, the original was still there i.e. &quot;9&quot; but readers would see &quot;1.&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I just using the block-quote function incorrectly in this situation? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17101" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6530" RevisionGUID="d414533a-83c9-4c17-b9f3-5503053f1ab1" CreationDate="2014-03-12T10:50:20.173" UserId="121951" Text="Citing bullet points in block quotes forces the number to be 1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17102" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6530" RevisionGUID="d414533a-83c9-4c17-b9f3-5503053f1ab1" CreationDate="2014-03-12T10:50:20.173" UserId="121951" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17103" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6531" RevisionGUID="666a6d1b-48db-4a6a-9b1e-ea9a3b24fd5e" CreationDate="2014-03-12T11:03:45.540" UserId="25768" Text="&gt;5\. in a pinch you can escape the point `.` to preserve the numbering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17104" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6531" RevisionGUID="efb3fad3-dc1b-43a8-8092-169c67b37ddf" CreationDate="2014-03-12T11:06:36.910" UserId="25936" Comment="added the markdown source because on Meta the edit link (which would reveal the source) is disabled for users &lt; 2K rep" Text="&gt;5\. in a pinch you can escape the point `.` to preserve the numbering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Markdown source: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;5\. in a pinch you can escape the point `.` to preserve the numbering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17105" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6530" RevisionGUID="705fc66e-b0b7-4c37-8d4a-3ae807e0f0f4" CreationDate="2014-03-12T11:14:58.900" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|markdown|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17106" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6532" RevisionGUID="c317f92a-c475-45f2-b8f0-34ca0ac2d3a3" CreationDate="2014-03-12T16:59:16.267" UserId="31260" Text="Please merge tag [tag:srp] (26 questions) into [tag:single-responsibility] (27), and make them synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Preference for master tag is because I consider _single-responsibility_ a more descriptive name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag _srp_ wiki excerpt is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In object-oriented programming, the single responsibility principle (srp) states that every object should have a single responsibility, and that responsibility should be entirely encapsulated by the class. All its services should be narrowly aligned with that responsibility.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag _single-responsibility_ doesn't have wiki." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17107" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6532" RevisionGUID="c317f92a-c475-45f2-b8f0-34ca0ac2d3a3" CreationDate="2014-03-12T16:59:16.267" UserId="31260" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [srp] → [single-responsibility]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17108" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6532" RevisionGUID="c317f92a-c475-45f2-b8f0-34ca0ac2d3a3" CreationDate="2014-03-12T16:59:16.267" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17109" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6532" RevisionGUID="d506baf2-a178-4abf-a453-7ef22fd9ca25" CreationDate="2014-03-12T19:01:41.230" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17110" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6533" RevisionGUID="ecfb8ac7-014c-446f-8b73-f439c3db95ad" CreationDate="2014-03-12T19:02:10.607" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="This task has been accomplished." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17111" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6491" RevisionGUID="dc1e47d1-e73d-43e8-8eef-e415878b54d6" CreationDate="2014-03-13T12:11:00.730" UserId="31260" Comment="&quot;We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...&quot;" Text="#Primarily opinion-based#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frequent culprits of those close reason include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* asking people to explain a given quote&#xD;&#xA;* asking people to chose/review between different designs&#xD;&#xA;* recommendations for something (e.g. directory structure)&#xD;&#xA;* company policies and best practices&#xD;&#xA;* the name of something&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinguishing factor is that there is no way to get an authoritative answer for the question - the answers are all based on opinion rather than the knowledge of the person answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that if the answers to the question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design A} for these reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- break --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design B} for these other reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both of these answers are valid then the question is likely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/200144/165773)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **tl;dr** We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/142354/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as primarily opinion-based?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17112" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6534" RevisionGUID="6d32a542-d2de-47e4-92bc-caa373cffce4" CreationDate="2014-03-13T14:40:09.580" UserId="31260" Text="...if I was a homework cheater, I would applaud [an approach like that](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14258630#14258630 &quot;quote source, bold font is mine&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm for deletion if not improved in a reasonable timeframe.  &#xD;&#xA;But minutes after closure is, I think, too speedy.  &#xD;&#xA;**I tend to give a few hours, a day** tops, or recent activity on the site with no edits made...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##I would applaud it, enjoy it, exploit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More, I would brag about my successful recipe at &quot;forums&quot;, sharing it with cheaters like me and helping them find a way to a promised land:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Create a throwaway account at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;2. Dump your homework.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;it's quite likely that you'll find a kind soul or two around to help&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;3. Keep squeezing solution details in question comments until it's deleted.&#xD;&#xA;4. If you're lucky to get an answer before question gets closed, do the same in answer comments.&#xD;&#xA;5. If you feel like nobody's paying attention, edit your question: that will [bump](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info) it and increase chances to attract someone willing to help.&#xD;&#xA;6. You may probably notice that question is getting funny marks -1, -2, -3... don't worry about these, it's all imaginary.&#xD;&#xA;7. If you notice that you can't ask next question, don't worry. They call it [question ban](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th), all you need to circumvent it is to create new throwaway account and repeat above steps.&#xD;&#xA;8. [Only thing to keep in mind is](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3836/programmers-se-and-the-summer-of-love/3837#3837 &quot;paraphrased from here&quot;): **&quot;don't care how they react; go looking for the one guy that will actually do your homework for you (some people will)&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;To those interested in a broader context of above: **[what is the point to keep this homework dump visible?](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/what-is-the-point-to-keep-this-homework-dump-visible)**&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17113" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6534" RevisionGUID="6d32a542-d2de-47e4-92bc-caa373cffce4" CreationDate="2014-03-13T14:40:09.580" UserId="31260" Text="If I was a homework cheater," ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17114" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6534" RevisionGUID="6d32a542-d2de-47e4-92bc-caa373cffce4" CreationDate="2014-03-13T14:40:09.580" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|questions|moderation|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17115" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6534" RevisionGUID="d161ac81-9a01-4391-9aae-e8afeed35a96" CreationDate="2014-03-13T14:51:57.120" UserId="31260" Comment="added 80 characters in body" Text="...if I was a homework cheater, I would applaud [an approach like that](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14258630#14258630 &quot;quote source, bold font is mine&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm for deletion if not improved in a reasonable timeframe.  &#xD;&#xA;But minutes after closure is, I think, too speedy.  &#xD;&#xA;**I tend to give a few hours, a day** tops, or recent activity on the site with no edits made...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##I would applaud it, enjoy it, exploit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More, I would brag about my successful recipe at &quot;forums&quot;, sharing it with cheaters like me and helping them find a way to a promised land:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Create a throwaway account at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;2. Dump your homework.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;it's quite likely that you'll find a kind soul or two around to help&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;3. Keep squeezing solution details in question comments until it's deleted.&#xD;&#xA;4. If you're lucky to get an answer before question gets closed, do the same in answer comments.&#xD;&#xA;5. If you feel like nobody's paying attention, edit your question: that will [bump](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info) it and increase chances to attract someone willing to help.&#xD;&#xA;6. You may probably notice that question is getting funny marks -1, -2, -3... They call it [down-votes](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/down-votes/info) - don't worry about these, it's all imaginary.&#xD;&#xA;7. If you notice that you can't ask next question, don't worry. They call it [question ban](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th), all you need to circumvent it is to create new throwaway account and repeat above steps.&#xD;&#xA;8. [Only thing to keep in mind is](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3836/programmers-se-and-the-summer-of-love/3837#3837 &quot;paraphrased from here&quot;): **&quot;don't care how they react; go looking for the one guy that will actually do your homework for you (some people will)&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;To those interested in a broader context of above: **[what is the point to keep this homework dump visible?](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/what-is-the-point-to-keep-this-homework-dump-visible)**&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17116" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6534" RevisionGUID="ebcd27aa-a6ec-4142-b17a-ee490b372ade" CreationDate="2014-03-13T15:04:51.420" UserId="31260" Comment="added 108 characters in body" Text="...if I was a homework cheater, I would applaud [an approach like that](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14258630#14258630 &quot;quote source, bold font is mine&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm for deletion if not improved in a reasonable timeframe.  &#xD;&#xA;But minutes after closure is, I think, too speedy.  &#xD;&#xA;**I tend to give a few hours, a day** tops, or recent activity on the site with no edits made...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##I would applaud it, enjoy it, exploit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More, I would brag about my successful recipe at &quot;forums&quot;, sharing it with cheaters like me and helping them find a way to a promised land:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Create a throwaway account at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;2. Dump your homework.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;it's quite likely that you'll find a kind soul or two around to help&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;3. Keep squeezing solution details in question comments until it's deleted.&#xD;&#xA;4. If you're lucky to get an answer before question gets [closed](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/10582/what-is-a-closed-or-on-hold-question &quot;what does that mean&quot;), do the same in answer comments.&#xD;&#xA;5. If you feel like nobody's paying attention, edit your question: that will [bump](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info) it and increase chances to attract someone willing to help.&#xD;&#xA;6. You may probably notice that question is getting funny marks -1, -2, -3... They call it [down-votes](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/down-votes/info) - don't worry about these, it's all imaginary.&#xD;&#xA;7. If you notice that you can't ask next question, don't worry. They call it [question ban](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th), all you need to circumvent it is to create new throwaway account and repeat above steps.&#xD;&#xA;8. [Only thing to keep in mind is](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3836/programmers-se-and-the-summer-of-love/3837#3837 &quot;paraphrased from here&quot;): **&quot;don't care how they react; go looking for the one guy that will actually do your homework for you (some people will)&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;To those interested in a broader context of above: **[what is the point to keep this homework dump visible?](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/what-is-the-point-to-keep-this-homework-dump-visible)**&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17117" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6534" RevisionGUID="99f0a52c-33fb-4303-9845-3affc88f63d9" CreationDate="2014-03-13T15:37:53.707" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="Forgot to put a question in there after the rant.  :-D" Text="...if I was a homework cheater, I would applaud [an approach like that](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14258630#14258630 &quot;quote source, bold font is mine&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm for deletion if not improved in a reasonable timeframe.  &#xD;&#xA;But minutes after closure is, I think, too speedy.  &#xD;&#xA;**I tend to give a few hours, a day** tops, or recent activity on the site with no edits made...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##I would applaud it, enjoy it, exploit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More, I would brag about my successful recipe at &quot;forums&quot;, sharing it with cheaters like me and helping them find a way to a promised land:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Create a throwaway account at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;2. Dump your homework.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;it's quite likely that you'll find a kind soul or two around to help&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;3. Keep squeezing solution details in question comments until it's deleted.&#xD;&#xA;4. If you're lucky to get an answer before question gets [closed](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/10582/what-is-a-closed-or-on-hold-question &quot;what does that mean&quot;), do the same in answer comments.&#xD;&#xA;5. If you feel like nobody's paying attention, edit your question: that will [bump](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info) it and increase chances to attract someone willing to help.&#xD;&#xA;6. You may probably notice that question is getting funny marks -1, -2, -3... They call it [down-votes](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/down-votes/info) - don't worry about these, it's all imaginary.&#xD;&#xA;7. If you notice that you can't ask next question, don't worry. They call it [question ban](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th), all you need to circumvent it is to create new throwaway account and repeat above steps.&#xD;&#xA;8. [Only thing to keep in mind is](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3836/programmers-se-and-the-summer-of-love/3837#3837 &quot;paraphrased from here&quot;): **&quot;don't care how they react; go looking for the one guy that will actually do your homework for you (some people will)&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### As a community, what should we do about this approach?   &#xD;&#xA;Should we keep current &quot;policy&quot; as highlighted above, or should we consider speedier deletions?  Speedier deletions on down-voted questions may lead to the help-vampire hitting the question ban faster, but this can be worked around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're here to build a knowledgeable, rewarding community.  We're not here to feed the help-vampires or to reward answers on their questions as it merely encourages more of the bad behaviour.  How should we balance cleaning out the trash without appearing overly harsh to new community members that may be able to contribute once they learn the ropes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;To those interested in a broader context of above: **[what is the point to keep this homework dump visible?](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/what-is-the-point-to-keep-this-homework-dump-visible)**&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17118" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6535" RevisionGUID="44d15905-0d38-48e9-a451-6b0e837b829c" CreationDate="2014-03-13T16:35:56.797" UserId="91041" Text="If we really wanted to keep homework from being asked here, we would need to depress the supply of well-meaning fools who answer an off-topic question.  Make a specific closing reason for &quot;this is somebody's homework&quot;, and impose an imaginary point loss for answering a question posed so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sure there are other means, but the only way to target one kind of psudononyous question-asker is by going after the supply.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, a better answer would be to move the questions and answer to some persistent homework-friendly site, preferably one that stays around long enough for cheaters to possibly be caught.  Though I'm not sure that's technically feasible." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17119" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6536" RevisionGUID="36c1a5f8-da27-40f2-9161-3fd193f34791" CreationDate="2014-03-13T17:04:06.793" UserId="32353" Text="This isn't a complete answer, but I'd like to point out that the question could reasonably be edited to say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9 Hope your question gets deleted before your instructor finds it.  What you don't want is someone who &quot;answers&quot; with some useless guidance that doesn't contain the actual answer, so you still have to do the assignment plus your instructor may find it and be on alert.  Also, you don't want an answer that intentionally has something odd in it that would be hard to remove without understanding the problem.  If the question doesn't get deleted then your instructor may be able to uniquely match it to your submitted homework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17120" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6537" RevisionGUID="0fb4226c-e372-4ff3-adf1-3edc2bfae171" CreationDate="2014-03-13T20:52:48.920" UserId="25476" Text="I think it is a non issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the person was going to put that much trouble into an algorithm to work around StackExchange community enforced quality protections then surely they can figure out the simple algorithm to do their homework.  Homework answers are generally such that they don't require much intelligence expertise or experience to determine, they almost always require some work on the part of the poster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; TLDR; Too lazy to homework, too lazy to game the StackExchange system." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17121" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6538" RevisionGUID="df663e2f-a2a6-4e50-b9e0-0a6241553ce1" CreationDate="2014-03-13T22:38:20.867" UserId="34364" Text="Is there really anything we can do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You said it yourself: the mentality of these users is &quot;don't care how they react; go looking for the one guy that will actually do your homework for you (some people will)&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Somebody like that isn't going to obey any new rules. They aren't going to care about this discussion we're having right now. They aren't going to care that these things hurt the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that we should *try* to solve this problem, but besides doing what we're already trying to do (e.g. guiding comments, down/close vote explanations, [help pages][1], etc.), there aren't many options besides **stop giving them help if they aren't going to respect the rules**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm a huge advocate of making this the best community that it can be, but you can't create a utopia. If somebody has the &quot;rules are meant to be broken&quot; mentality, you can't force them out of it. &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17122" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6534" RevisionGUID="5bfa0ec2-6482-423c-b9a0-2f2bd56e97fc" CreationDate="2014-03-14T03:49:05.193" UserId="31260" Comment="wordsmithing" Text="...if I was a homework cheater, I would applaud [an approach like that](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14258630#14258630 &quot;quote source, bold font is mine&quot;)...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm for deletion if not improved in a reasonable timeframe.  &#xD;&#xA;But minutes after closure is, I think, too speedy.  &#xD;&#xA;**I tend to give a few hours, a day** tops, or recent activity on the site with no edits made...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...because, you see, few hours of just staying there would be **good enough already** for my purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##I would applaud it, enjoy it, exploit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More, I would brag about my successful recipe at &quot;forums&quot;, sharing it with cheaters like me and helping them find a way to a promised land:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Create a throwaway account at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;2. Dump your homework.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;it's quite likely that you'll find a kind soul or two around to help&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;3. Keep squeezing solution details in question comments until it's deleted.&#xD;&#xA;4. If you're lucky to get an answer before question gets [closed](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/10582/what-is-a-closed-or-on-hold-question &quot;what does that mean&quot;), do the same in answer comments.&#xD;&#xA;5. If you feel like nobody's paying attention, edit your question: that will [bump](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info) it and increase chances to attract someone willing to help.&#xD;&#xA;6. You may probably notice that question is getting funny marks -1, -2, -3... They call it [down-votes](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/down-votes/info) - don't worry about these, it's all imaginary.&#xD;&#xA;7. If you notice that you can't ask next question, don't worry. They call it [question ban](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th), all you need to circumvent it is to create new throwaway account and repeat above steps.&#xD;&#xA;8. [Only thing to keep in mind is](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3836/programmers-se-and-the-summer-of-love/3837#3837 &quot;paraphrased from here&quot;): **&quot;don't care how they react; go looking for the one guy that will actually do your homework for you (some people will)&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##As a community, what should we do about this approach?   &#xD;&#xA;Should we keep current &quot;policy&quot; as highlighted above, or should we consider speedier deletions?  Speedier deletions on down-voted questions may lead to the help-vampire hitting the question ban faster, but this can be worked around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're here to build a knowledgeable, rewarding community.  We're not here to feed the help-vampires or to reward answers on their questions as it merely encourages more of the bad behaviour.  How should we balance cleaning out the trash without appearing overly harsh to new community members that may be able to contribute once they learn the ropes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;To those interested in a broader context of above: **[what is the point to keep this homework dump visible?](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/what-is-the-point-to-keep-this-homework-dump-visible)**&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17123" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6539" RevisionGUID="9c093802-0f90-4b5c-a327-6b9b98ca5ae5" CreationDate="2014-03-14T22:28:28.063" UserId="34364" Text="[CSTheory.StackExchange][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From their [help center][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Theoretical Computer Science Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional researchers in theoretical computer science and related&#xD;&#xA;&gt; fields. We welcome research-level questions in theoretical computer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; science (TCS).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What do you mean by &quot;research-level question&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Although there is no black-and-white distinction between&#xD;&#xA;&gt; research-level questions and non-research-level questions, questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; are considered to be &quot;research-level&quot; roughly when they can be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussed between two professors or between two graduate students&#xD;&#xA;&gt; working on Ph.D.'s, but not usually between a professor and a typical&#xD;&#xA;&gt; undergraduate student. It does not include questions at the level of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; difficulty of typical undergraduate course/textbook homework/exercise.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What do you mean by &quot;theoretical computer science&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For an explanation of what TCS is, we refer you to the description of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (SIGACT):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; TCS covers a wide variety of topics including algorithms, data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structures, computational complexity, parallel and distributed&#xD;&#xA;&gt; computation, probabilistic computation, quantum computation, automata&#xD;&#xA;&gt; theory, information theory, cryptography, program semantics and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; verification, machine learning, computational biology, computational&#xD;&#xA;&gt; economics, computational geometry, and computational number theory and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; algebra.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Work in this field is often distinguished by its emphasis on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mathematical technique and rigor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17124" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6534" RevisionGUID="c29e419a-4247-48d8-a900-b844c788347f" CreationDate="2014-03-15T03:37:13.217" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|moderation|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17125" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6540" RevisionGUID="82d92d8b-3c36-4476-8e3d-7bf282064763" CreationDate="2014-03-15T20:14:04.780" UserId="97968" Text="Should aop and aspect-oriented tags be synonyms? Should they be merged? I think so. I would like to hear your opinion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am referring to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[aspect-oriented tag][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[aop tag][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/aspect-oriented&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/aop" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17126" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6540" RevisionGUID="82d92d8b-3c36-4476-8e3d-7bf282064763" CreationDate="2014-03-15T20:14:04.780" UserId="97968" Text="Should aop and aspect-oriented tags be synonyms? Should they be merged?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17127" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6540" RevisionGUID="82d92d8b-3c36-4476-8e3d-7bf282064763" CreationDate="2014-03-15T20:14:04.780" UserId="97968" Text="|discussion|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17128" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6540" RevisionGUID="504f62b2-3eae-412b-a049-045a6229e931" CreationDate="2014-03-15T20:35:42.683" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17129" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6541" RevisionGUID="d410573d-b6a2-46ac-8e3d-81224144c116" CreationDate="2014-03-15T20:36:10.800" UserId="4" Text="Merge complete. Aspect-oriented is now the preferred tag, since it provides more meaning by itself." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17130" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6542" RevisionGUID="3d0ff54e-b8da-4ff7-bac6-671c9cac1fba" CreationDate="2014-03-15T21:44:35.720" UserId="97968" Text="Should debug and debugging tags be synonyms? Should they be merged? I think so. I would like to hear your opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am referring to [debug tag][1] and [debugging tag][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/debug?sort=votes&amp;pageSize=15&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/debugging?sort=votes&amp;pageSize=15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17131" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6542" RevisionGUID="3d0ff54e-b8da-4ff7-bac6-671c9cac1fba" CreationDate="2014-03-15T21:44:35.720" UserId="97968" Text="Should debug and debugging tags be synonyms? Should they be merged?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17132" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6542" RevisionGUID="3d0ff54e-b8da-4ff7-bac6-671c9cac1fba" CreationDate="2014-03-15T21:44:35.720" UserId="97968" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17133" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6543" RevisionGUID="10001d62-9d25-464e-a909-f9bbb0e73248" CreationDate="2014-03-15T22:21:57.137" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Debugging is generally the more used term. &quot;To debug&quot; is the infinitive. That's a tad too Shatner even for me. Boldly merged, it is." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17138" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6542" RevisionGUID="33388f0c-47a5-452f-86b0-a65ce065c14a" CreationDate="2014-03-17T14:21:10.260" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17142" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6545" RevisionGUID="208bb4e8-b706-454e-a859-51b0aead56c9" CreationDate="2014-03-18T02:19:23.450" UserId="123674" Text="Yesterday I asked a question in programmer. But when I looked today at my today I saw a 'on hold' beside it inside []. Why is it so ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17143" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6545" RevisionGUID="208bb4e8-b706-454e-a859-51b0aead56c9" CreationDate="2014-03-18T02:19:23.450" UserId="123674" Text="Why there is a on hold with my question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17144" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6545" RevisionGUID="208bb4e8-b706-454e-a859-51b0aead56c9" CreationDate="2014-03-18T02:19:23.450" UserId="123674" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17145" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6546" RevisionGUID="a0146fdd-c6b2-4e65-bba9-ee11cbad899e" CreationDate="2014-03-18T03:31:45.970" UserId="4" Text="If you visit [the question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/232687/compare-swing-and-javafx), you can see that it was put on hold for being too broad, meaning that &quot;there are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format&quot; and links are given to the [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions) that explain what on hold and closed questions are and how to deal with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the comments also links to [this Stack Exchange blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/) which explains why pro/con or advantage/disadvantage questions aren't a good fit for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reading the help center and the blog post, if you're still confused, you'll need to edit more detail into this question. I'm just not sure what you're looking for, since a lot of information was provided on the question itself as to why, in its present form, it's not a good fit for Stack Exchange." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17146" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6547" RevisionGUID="d3865ef0-4d46-4354-af41-5f3e999bc99a" CreationDate="2014-03-19T07:32:53.697" UserId="20065" Text="What to do with a contest puzzle questions? Close, or leave them as they are?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example : http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230059/apple-eating-problem#" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17147" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6547" RevisionGUID="d3865ef0-4d46-4354-af41-5f3e999bc99a" CreationDate="2014-03-19T07:32:53.697" UserId="20065" Text="What to do with puzzle questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17148" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6547" RevisionGUID="d3865ef0-4d46-4354-af41-5f3e999bc99a" CreationDate="2014-03-19T07:32:53.697" UserId="20065" Text="|discussion|contest|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17149" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6548" RevisionGUID="32ea133a-71d8-46f5-a141-76e4e3ce245d" CreationDate="2014-03-19T19:01:50.333" UserId="88986" Text="Imagine a question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have to do &amp;lt;some task&amp;gt;. I am trying to do this task in &amp;lt;some situation&amp;gt;. I can think of two technically valid ways to do this task. Here they are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Way 1:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;      //snip&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Way 2:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;      //snip&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does there exist a clear cut advantage to Way 1 over Way 2 (or vice versa), or is the choice here just a matter of opinion? Am I just [bike-shedding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law_of_triviality)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would a question of this sort be [meta-tag:subjective]? The **issue** itself very easily could be, and, in fact, the question-asker is clearly not certain. But could there perhaps be an objective, on-topic question asking whether it is or not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;! Meta-thought: Is this question opinion based? ;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17150" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6548" RevisionGUID="32ea133a-71d8-46f5-a141-76e4e3ce245d" CreationDate="2014-03-19T19:01:50.333" UserId="88986" Text="Are meta-&quot;opinion based&quot; questions opinion based?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17151" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6548" RevisionGUID="32ea133a-71d8-46f5-a141-76e4e3ce245d" CreationDate="2014-03-19T19:01:50.333" UserId="88986" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|questions|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17154" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6550" RevisionGUID="e322422d-18ee-4eea-bad0-b33968e2d628" CreationDate="2014-03-19T23:48:09.340" UserId="50914" Text="Sure!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suppose there are actual differences between Way #1 and Way #2. These would be good answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;Way #1 exposes you to a race condition where...but the X in Way #2 avoids this problem.&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;Way #1 has better worst-case performance, even though Way #2 is, on average, faster&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alternately, if there's no difference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;No. Way #1 actually just calls something that wraps the method called in Way #2 [link to docs]&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;would be a great answer too, particularly if it's not something super obvious. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, asking people to choose which of the following is better:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    if(quantity==1)&#xD;&#xA;       printf(&quot;1 item received.\n&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;    else&#xD;&#xA;       printf(&quot;%d items received.\n&quot;, quantity);&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    printf('%d %s received\n.&quot;, quantity, quantity==1 ? &quot;item&quot; : &quot;items&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is indeed boring, but that's what downvotes are for. If you're feeling more generous, it's potentially a duplicate of a question about the ternary operator too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17155" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6551" RevisionGUID="4a522eb8-0841-46bb-9578-8428c101e05b" CreationDate="2014-03-20T14:02:45.317" UserId="123421" Text="What can be done about reversing the momentum of a questions shamed as &quot;opinion based&quot;? The moment a question had been shamed it seems that rewording it doesn't really bring attention back to it, it isn't worth it to expend effort on a question already marked *on hold* - trends are hard to revert, and I understand this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it also seems that the community is quick to punish questions why are not being asked according to the rule (eg &quot;opinion based&quot; questions&quot;) however isn't necessarily as quick restoring questions which have been edited to remove the offending elements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question I have in mind is this: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/232462/development-wagons - I did ask for an opinion initially, which was wrong of me, however I quickly reworded it to ask for a concrete definition. By that time the question was already on hold. What are my options sans asking a new question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally, it seems to me that it is better to give questions a new chance - it is well know that &quot;three strikes and you're out&quot; didn't prove to be a good idea after all, so maybe &quot;criminal&quot; questions could be given an opportunity to start a new life. So can we consider keeping the close vote count but removing the *on hold* status once a question has been edited by the author? An additional *close* vote could trigger a new re-evaluation, still taking the full close vote count into consideration. However if a question had been edited in an appropriate way, it is unlikely that such a vote will occur anew." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17156" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6551" RevisionGUID="4a522eb8-0841-46bb-9578-8428c101e05b" CreationDate="2014-03-20T14:02:45.317" UserId="123421" Text="Reworded questions not revisited" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17157" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6551" RevisionGUID="4a522eb8-0841-46bb-9578-8428c101e05b" CreationDate="2014-03-20T14:02:45.317" UserId="123421" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17158" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6552" RevisionGUID="97ac51a4-d50d-4351-b64e-611f580e9464" CreationDate="2014-03-20T14:12:38.510" UserId="25768" Text="if an [on hold] question is edited it gets put on the reopen queue for review by high rep users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;it appears that yous was [still found to be wanting][1] after the edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/56504" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17159" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6553" RevisionGUID="c10d93c2-616b-454f-aa41-e0446539da8c" CreationDate="2014-03-20T14:46:27.707" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Have a look at the edit I did on your question.  Here's some of the things I did.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Changed the title to a question instead of a noun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Clarified at the top what you were asking about (ie. what's train based development)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Copied in your comment to Robert Harvey about why the google failed you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. Clarified your summary question at the end.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And your question has already been re-opened before I was able to finish this write-up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think you're a bit misguided in what you think went wrong with the question and why it had been remaining on-hold.  [Ratchet Freak pointed out that your edits were reviewed,](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6552/53019) and 3 community members didn't feel that the edits made the question more answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The root problem is that your question remained poor, even after edits, and relied upon the reader to infer too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the future, you have a couple of options to find out how you can improve your questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Post a question here in Meta asking for help and provide a link to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Drop into chat on The Whiteboard and ask for guidance there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that not every &quot;good question&quot; is a good fit for the site.  But the community will let you know whether or not a question can be re-worked into something constructive." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17160" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6554" RevisionGUID="d44f6cde-2963-4920-902a-e6379d2034da" CreationDate="2014-03-20T16:48:20.593" UserId="20065" Text="As explained [here][1], such questions are off topic :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There is now a dedicated site for [programming puzzles and code golf](http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/87892/155223" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17161" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6555" RevisionGUID="2796f51a-ee7e-4c60-b07f-c4e38d874056" CreationDate="2014-03-20T18:52:09.950" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There are some very grey areas in the puzzle questions that make it difficult to say if something is on or off topic with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone is trying to pose a challenge to the community, that absolutely belongs on the [programming puzzles and code golf](http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/) stack exchange site.  That is one end of the spectrum.  Note that *math* puzzles are on topic on Math.SE: [puzzles tag](http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/puzzle) (logic and math puzzles fit there - islands of liars and truth tellers and the such).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other end of the spectrum is &quot;I'm trying to solve this puzzle, but am having approaching it with a brute force.  How can dynamic programming be applied to this?&quot;  Note that in this type of question the poster doesn't know the answer and its not so much a challenge for the community to come up with solutions but rather an issue of algorithms that happens to be applied to a puzzle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the middle there's the &quot;I have this working code for this puzzle, how can I improve its performance so that it can run within the timeframe or memory allotted&quot; which falls in the vicinity of [code review](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also the &quot;this code doesn't work&quot; which still belongs on Stack Overflow, no matter if it is a puzzle or not - it is an implementation / debugging issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it is not a cut and dried thing about where puzzles belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a good P.SE question about a puzzle, the following things make it a better question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Current approach tried&#xD;&#xA;* The algorithm being used&#xD;&#xA;* Design issues encountered with the current approach&#xD;&#xA;* Desired output&#xD;&#xA;* Current input" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17162" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6556" RevisionGUID="267e2a5b-45bd-4c83-aebe-d832da6ab24e" CreationDate="2014-03-20T21:42:49.020" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Because the single anecdote proves the rule, right?  &#xD;&#xA;I'm adding this answer to show how failing to close bad questions quickly impacts new visitors to the site and gives them a bad impression.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This gem of a question &quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/233104/53019&quot; triggered [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/233106/53019).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it occurred on an afternoon when many of the regular reviewers were out of close votes for the day as hinted at in [this chat comment](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14400704#14400704)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, there's nothing horrifically wrong about the question that's asked.  But it is off-topic and it's not a good fit for the site.  That type of question occurs often enough that we have a [meta post explaining why it was closed](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start/6367#6367).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that the person answering the bad question didn't realize they were walking into a trap. Their answer was down voted and they reacted negatively to comments that were left trying to clarify what happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![First part of comment chain][1]&#xD;&#xA;![Second part of comment chain][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the user is new to the site, having joined only 6 days ago.&#xD;&#xA;![user profile snippet][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it appears everything worked out well in this case since iCobot wasn't too rattled by the interaction, I think this occurs more often than we realize.  If so, then we are losing otherwise valuable contributors because of a bad interaction from seeing bad questions that weren't closed off quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully that puts a real example behind the site quality reasons justifying this request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/emK9E.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7Kxoa.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ns9ux.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17163" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6556" RevisionGUID="5a60ed65-207c-47cd-91d1-fa7d53890800" CreationDate="2014-03-20T21:55:28.983" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="added 292 characters in body" Text="Because the single anecdote proves the rule, right?  &#xD;&#xA;I'm adding this answer to show how failing to close bad questions quickly impacts new visitors to the site and gives them a bad impression.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This gem of a question &quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/233104/53019&quot; triggered [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/233106/53019).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it occurred on an afternoon when many of the regular reviewers were out of close votes for the day as hinted at in [this chat comment](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14400704#14400704)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, there's nothing horrifically wrong about the question that's asked.  But it is off-topic and it's not a good fit for the site.  That type of question occurs often enough that we have a [meta post explaining why it was closed](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start/6367#6367).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that the person answering the bad question didn't realize they were walking into a trap. Their answer was down voted and they reacted negatively to comments that were left trying to clarify what happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![First part of comment chain][1]&#xD;&#xA;![Second part of comment chain][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the user is new to the site, having joined only 6 days ago.&#xD;&#xA;![user profile snippet][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it appears everything worked out well in this case since iCobot wasn't too rattled by the interaction, I think this occurs more often than we realize.  If so, then we are losing otherwise valuable contributors because of a bad interaction from seeing bad questions that weren't closed off quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully that puts a real example behind the site quality reasons justifying this request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for additional perspective, here's a screenshot of the 10k tools from today looking at questions needing review / close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![first half of 10k tools][4]&#xD;&#xA;![second half of 10k tools][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/emK9E.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7Kxoa.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ns9ux.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MAbgF.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B2gdC.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17164" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6556" RevisionGUID="4bfdb72f-c9b0-4dac-b619-72938e10a0d8" CreationDate="2014-03-20T21:59:19.040" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="Because the single anecdote proves the rule, right?  &#xD;&#xA;I'm adding this answer to show how failing to close bad questions quickly impacts new visitors to the site and gives them a bad impression.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This gem of a question &quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/233104/53019&quot; triggered [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/233106/53019).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it occurred on an afternoon when many of the regular reviewers were out of close votes for the day as hinted at in [this chat comment](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14400704#14400704)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, there's nothing horrifically wrong about the question that's asked.  But it is off-topic and it's not a good fit for the site.  That type of question occurs often enough that we have a [meta post explaining why it was closed](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start/6367#6367).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that the person answering the bad question didn't realize they were walking into a trap. Their answer was down voted and they reacted negatively to comments that were left trying to clarify what happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![First part of comment chain][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Second part of comment chain][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the user is new to the site, having joined only 6 days ago.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![user profile snippet][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it appears everything worked out well in this case since iCobot wasn't too rattled by the interaction, I think this occurs more often than we realize.  If so, then we are losing otherwise valuable contributors because of a bad interaction from seeing bad questions that weren't closed off quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully that puts a real example behind the site quality reasons justifying this request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for additional perspective, here's a screenshot of the 10k tools from today looking at questions needing review / close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![first half of 10k tools][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![second half of 10k tools][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/emK9E.jpg &quot;First part of comment chain&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7Kxoa.jpg &quot;Second part of comment chain&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ns9ux.jpg &quot;user profile snippet&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MAbgF.jpg &quot;first half of 10k tools&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B2gdC.jpg &quot;second half of 10k tools&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17165" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6555" RevisionGUID="97ccdc90-581c-4501-8bce-1a44f6321c81" CreationDate="2014-03-21T00:52:08.020" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 157 characters in body" Text="There are some very grey areas in the puzzle questions that make it difficult to say if something is on or off topic with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone is trying to pose a challenge to the community, that absolutely belongs on the [programming puzzles and code golf](http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/) stack exchange site.  That is one end of the spectrum.  Note that *math* puzzles are on topic on Math.SE: [puzzles tag](http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/puzzle) (logic and math puzzles fit there - islands of liars and truth tellers and the such).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other end of the spectrum is &quot;I'm trying to solve this puzzle, but am having approaching it with a brute force.  How can dynamic programming be applied to this?&quot;  Note that in this type of question the poster doesn't know the answer and its not so much a challenge for the community to come up with solutions but rather an issue of algorithms that happens to be applied to a puzzle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the middle there's the &quot;I have this working code for this puzzle, how can I improve its performance so that it can run within the timeframe or memory allotted&quot; which falls in the vicinity of [code review](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also the &quot;this code doesn't work&quot; which still belongs on Stack Overflow, no matter if it is a puzzle or not - it is an implementation / debugging issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it is not a cut and dried thing about where puzzles belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a good P.SE question about a puzzle, the following things make it a better question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Current approach tried&#xD;&#xA;* The algorithm being used&#xD;&#xA;* Design issues encountered with the current approach&#xD;&#xA;* Desired output&#xD;&#xA;* Current input&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... that said, if you don't like the questions or don't think they're useful or helpful to the world at large... down votes are likely not inappropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17166" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6557" RevisionGUID="134b3f5b-5c0c-4a19-93c5-28748fdab852" CreationDate="2014-03-21T07:44:38.963" UserId="114930" Text="I believe I understand the distinction, as covered in this question: (http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is whether this really leads to a practical distinction, or whether they just blend, or whether the division is an unnecessary division of resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an example, I follow the language-lawyer, programming-language and language-design tags on SO, but they sound more like they belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The result is that I have about 2800 reputation points for doing almost exactly the same thing, but split between two sites. It would be nice if they were combined somehow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17167" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6557" RevisionGUID="134b3f5b-5c0c-4a19-93c5-28748fdab852" CreationDate="2014-03-21T07:44:38.963" UserId="114930" Text="Is the split between Stack Overflow and Programmers still worthwhile, or is it just divisive" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17168" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6557" RevisionGUID="134b3f5b-5c0c-4a19-93c5-28748fdab852" CreationDate="2014-03-21T07:44:38.963" UserId="114930" Text="|discussion|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17169" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6367" RevisionGUID="b77e3e41-81bf-4155-ae7a-6fa2df2d09d0" CreationDate="2014-03-21T08:39:22.157" UserId="31260" Comment="some combination of the previous += http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/164035/165773 &quot;see: 'How does a lurker gain reputation?'&quot;" Text="The &quot;where do I start?&quot; question has several issues with it that make it a poor question to ask.  It is unclear what the level of the person asking the question is, has too many possible answers, and ultimately doesn't have a clear problem defined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unclear&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets head over to [Seasoned Advice](http://cooking.stackexchange.com) (Cooking Stack Exchange) and think about a hypothetical question to ask there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to learn how to bake a cake?  Where should I start?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A person attempting to answer this question doesn't know what your skill level is.  Do you know how to read a recipe? Can you operate an oven without supervision? Are you trying to make a simple [pound cake](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_cake) or are you attempting to make a multi layer red velvet cheesecake with frosting from scratch that should match something from [pinterest](http://www.pinterest.com/bakerstreet/cheesecake-recipes/)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without this knowledge of where the OP is at, the person attempting to answer is either going to engage in a hopelessly long series of comments *trying* to find out the level, or is going to take a shot in the dark and probably not answer the question satisfactorily for the person asking it, or the next person viewing the page from a google search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too Broad&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back to programming as the idiom and away from cakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next part of the problem is that there are numerous approaches to learning a language or projects one can do.  There are an unprecedented number of different things one can do to start.  Dozens of programming challenges out on the web that can be good starting points for programming (search for them) and hundreds of open source projects that are out there that are at an appropriate level for someone learning (no, don't tackle trying to do something *huge*, but find a nice little utility that could do with some additional functionality).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Such questions have people leaving short answers that are little more to a link.  Stack Exchange works very poorly as a link aggregator - if you are looking for that type of answer, look to link aggregators instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No Clear Problem&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have a problem - you don't know where to start with a design.  But that isn't a clear problem.  Are you stuck at the modeling of the data objects? At the structure of the classes and their responsibilities? trying to figure out how to use Spring or Rails or ${overly large library}?  Is the [ORM](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-relational_mapping) just not connecting to the right neurons in the brain?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of these are part of the &quot;I don't know where to start&quot; set of problems.  Obviously you have gotten to some point in the design.  You want a program that can do X, Y, and Z.  You've fired up the IDE and you've... this is where you need to describe what you have done, what you have thought of and where you are stuck.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to try *something* before you have a good question.  The design from an enterprise coder could steer you into strange n-tier designs, while others are going to suggest strange metaprogramming idioms or [sneak a monad into your design](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/206543/40980).  These aren't *wrong* answers, but they may not be right for where you are at in your learning and figuring out the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider also, that the best way to figure out how to design something is to learn how to design something.  For personal projects learning about how to do something, the paths down the wrong way, while discouraging, are some of the best learning experiences to be used in the *next* project.  Be wary of the programming architect who has never designed a bad system, for when they do they won't know what to do at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try Chat&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have 20 rep (four up votes on questions, two up votes on answers, one up vote and an accept on an answer, ten accepted edits or [some combination of the previous](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/164035/165773 &quot;see: 'How does a lurker gain reputation?'&quot;)), you can [chat](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/chat) in the chat rooms.  Programmer.SE's chatroom is called [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and we're quite open to answering the questions that don't work well on the Q&amp;A part of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The advantage of chat for these type of questions is that we *can* engage in the dense back and forth that would otherwise be in comments to determine your skill level and also work through different problems.  Remember though that chat is *not* a tutorial service despite how helpful people may be." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17170" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6557" RevisionGUID="9cc4e0fd-111f-4c2c-9097-d9b212532292" CreationDate="2014-03-21T10:45:06.013" UserId="114930" Comment="minor" Text="I believe I understand the distinction, as covered in this question: (http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is whether this really leads to a practical distinction, or whether they just blend, or whether the division is an unnecessary division of resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an example, I follow the language-lawyer, programming-language and language-design tags on SO, but they sound more like they belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The result is that I have about 2800 reputation points for doing almost exactly the same thing, but split between two sites. It would be nice if they were combined somehow. For me at least the division is unhelpful." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17171" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6367" RevisionGUID="7db8ba08-6922-4ae4-ab2e-157d62b1575b" CreationDate="2014-03-21T14:11:18.490" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo correction" Text="The &quot;where do I start?&quot; question has several issues with it that make it a poor question to ask.  It is unclear what the level of the person asking the question is, has too many possible answers, and ultimately doesn't have a clear problem defined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unclear&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's head over to [Seasoned Advice](http://cooking.stackexchange.com) (Cooking Stack Exchange) and think about a hypothetical question to ask there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to learn how to bake a cake?  Where should I start?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A person attempting to answer this question doesn't know what your skill level is.  Do you know how to read a recipe? Can you operate an oven without supervision? Are you trying to make a simple [pound cake](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_cake) or are you attempting to make a multi layer red velvet cheesecake with frosting from scratch that should match something from [pinterest](http://www.pinterest.com/bakerstreet/cheesecake-recipes/)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without this knowledge of where the OP is at, the person attempting to answer is either going to engage in a hopelessly long series of comments *trying* to find out the level, or is going to take a shot in the dark and probably not answer the question satisfactorily for the person asking it, or the next person viewing the page from a google search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too Broad&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back to programming as the idiom and away from cakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next part of the problem is that there are numerous approaches to learning a language or projects one can do.  There are an unprecedented number of different things one can do to start.  Dozens of programming challenges out on the web that can be good starting points for programming (search for them) and hundreds of open source projects that are out there that are at an appropriate level for someone learning (no, don't tackle trying to do something *huge*, but find a nice little utility that could do with some additional functionality).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Such questions have people leaving short answers that are little more to a link.  Stack Exchange works very poorly as a link aggregator - if you are looking for that type of answer, look to link aggregators instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No Clear Problem&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have a problem - you don't know where to start with a design.  But that isn't a clear problem.  Are you stuck at the modeling of the data objects? At the structure of the classes and their responsibilities? trying to figure out how to use Spring or Rails or ${overly large library}?  Is the [ORM](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-relational_mapping) just not connecting to the right neurons in the brain?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of these are part of the &quot;I don't know where to start&quot; set of problems.  Obviously you have gotten to some point in the design.  You want a program that can do X, Y, and Z.  You've fired up the IDE and you've... this is where you need to describe what you have done, what you have thought of and where you are stuck.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to try *something* before you have a good question.  The design from an enterprise coder could steer you into strange n-tier designs, while others are going to suggest strange metaprogramming idioms or [sneak a monad into your design](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/206543/40980).  These aren't *wrong* answers, but they may not be right for where you are at in your learning and figuring out the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider also, that the best way to figure out how to design something is to learn how to design something.  For personal projects learning about how to do something, the paths down the wrong way, while discouraging, are some of the best learning experiences to be used in the *next* project.  Be wary of the programming architect who has never designed a bad system, for when they do they won't know what to do at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try Chat&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have 20 rep (four up votes on questions, two up votes on answers, one up vote and an accept on an answer, ten accepted edits or [some combination of the previous](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/164035/165773 &quot;see: 'How does a lurker gain reputation?'&quot;)), you can [chat](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/chat) in the chat rooms.  Programmer.SE's chatroom is called [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and we're quite open to answering the questions that don't work well on the Q&amp;A part of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The advantage of chat for these type of questions is that we *can* engage in the dense back and forth that would otherwise be in comments to determine your skill level and also work through different problems.  Remember though that chat is *not* a tutorial service despite how helpful people may be." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17172" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6367" RevisionGUID="e740d9a3-79a5-47bf-94be-1367d638468b" CreationDate="2014-03-21T15:31:38.773" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 8 characters in body" Text="The &quot;where do I start?&quot; question has several issues with it that make it a poor question to ask.  It is unclear what the level of knowledge of the asker is, has too many possible answers, and ultimately doesn't have a clear problem defined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unclear&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's head over to [Seasoned Advice](http://cooking.stackexchange.com) (Cooking Stack Exchange) and think about a hypothetical question to ask there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to learn how to bake a cake?  Where should I start?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A person attempting to answer this question doesn't know what your skill level is.  Do you know how to read a recipe? Can you operate an oven without supervision? Are you trying to make a simple [pound cake](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_cake) or are you attempting to make a multi layer red velvet cheesecake with frosting from scratch that should match something from [pinterest](http://www.pinterest.com/bakerstreet/cheesecake-recipes/)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without this knowledge of where the OP is at, the person attempting to answer is either going to engage in a hopelessly long series of comments *trying* to find out the level, or is going to take a shot in the dark and probably not answer the question satisfactorily for the person asking it, or the next person viewing the page from a google search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too Broad&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back to programming as the idiom and away from cakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next part of the problem is that there are numerous approaches to learning a language or projects one can do.  There are an unprecedented number of different things one can do to start.  Dozens of programming challenges out on the web that can be good starting points for programming (search for them) and hundreds of open source projects that are out there that are at an appropriate level for someone learning (no, don't tackle trying to do something *huge*, but find a nice little utility that could do with some additional functionality).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Such questions have people leaving short answers that are little more to a link.  Stack Exchange works very poorly as a link aggregator - if you are looking for that type of answer, look to link aggregators instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No Clear Problem&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have a problem - you don't know where to start with a design.  But that isn't a clear problem.  Are you stuck at the modeling of the data objects? At the structure of the classes and their responsibilities? trying to figure out how to use Spring or Rails or ${overly large library}?  Is the [ORM](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-relational_mapping) just not connecting to the right neurons in the brain?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of these are part of the &quot;I don't know where to start&quot; set of problems.  Obviously you have gotten to some point in the design.  You want a program that can do X, Y, and Z.  You've fired up the IDE and you've... this is where you need to describe what you have done, what you have thought of and where you are stuck.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to try *something* before you have a good question.  The design from an enterprise coder could steer you into strange n-tier designs, while others are going to suggest strange metaprogramming idioms or [sneak a monad into your design](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/206543/40980).  These aren't *wrong* answers, but they may not be right for where you are at in your learning and figuring out the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider also, that the best way to figure out how to design something is to learn how to design something.  For personal projects learning about how to do something, the paths down the wrong way, while discouraging, are some of the best learning experiences to be used in the *next* project.  Be wary of the programming architect who has never designed a bad system, for when they do they won't know what to do at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try Chat&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have 20 rep (four up votes on questions, two up votes on answers, one up vote and an accept on an answer, ten accepted edits or [some combination of the previous](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/164035/165773 &quot;see: 'How does a lurker gain reputation?'&quot;)), you can [chat](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/chat) in the chat rooms.  Programmer.SE's chatroom is called [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and we're quite open to answering the questions that don't work well on the Q&amp;A part of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The advantage of chat for these type of questions is that we *can* engage in the dense back and forth that would otherwise be in comments to determine your skill level and also work through different problems.  Remember though that chat is *not* a tutorial service despite how helpful people may be." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17174" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6548" RevisionGUID="d249aaa9-3a6e-412c-9e6c-c9b067ca0876" CreationDate="2014-03-21T16:58:45.370" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/447054718305841152" />
  <row Id="17175" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6556" RevisionGUID="a2f7c85a-1749-4d0a-b9a7-149a7ffb2d68" CreationDate="2014-03-21T17:16:56.473" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="Trying to get longest answer EVER!" Text="Because the single anecdote proves the rule, right?  &#xD;&#xA;I'm adding this answer to show how failing to close bad questions quickly impacts new visitors to the site and gives them a bad impression.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This gem of a question &quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/233104/53019&quot; triggered [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/233106/53019).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it occurred on an afternoon when many of the regular reviewers were out of close votes for the day as hinted at in [this chat comment](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14400704#14400704)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, there's nothing horrifically wrong about the question that's asked.  But it is off-topic and it's not a good fit for the site.  That type of question occurs often enough that we have a [meta post explaining why it was closed](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start/6367#6367).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that the person answering the bad question didn't realize they were walking into a trap. Their answer was down voted and they reacted negatively to comments that were left trying to clarify what happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![First part of comment chain][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Second part of comment chain][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the user is new to the site, having joined only 6 days ago.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![user profile snippet][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it appears everything worked out well in this case since iCobot wasn't too rattled by the interaction, I think this occurs more often than we realize.  If so, then we are losing otherwise valuable contributors because of a bad interaction from seeing bad questions that weren't closed off quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully that puts a real example behind the site quality reasons justifying this request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for additional perspective, here's a screenshot of the 10k tools from today looking at questions needing review / close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![first half of 10k tools][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![second half of 10k tools][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As further proof of the confusion caused by not getting questions closed quickly, the comment thread has continued into the next day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![comments, round two, part 1][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![comments, round two, part 2][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/emK9E.jpg &quot;First part of comment chain&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7Kxoa.jpg &quot;Second part of comment chain&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ns9ux.jpg &quot;user profile snippet&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MAbgF.jpg &quot;first half of 10k tools&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B2gdC.jpg &quot;second half of 10k tools&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tJ0PA.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/5CKMq.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17176" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6557" RevisionGUID="1457e42f-6de3-4f0f-b262-ff8276a0648f" CreationDate="2014-03-23T22:59:17.527" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/447870225045000192" />
  <row Id="17177" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6558" RevisionGUID="6a3f8a3d-5a17-4196-a774-d5f90c0a99d8" CreationDate="2014-03-23T23:29:51.970" UserId="34364" Text="For those of you that still don't know...&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE has an [official community blog][1]. The content there is pretty awesome, and [some][2] [posts][3] have gotten crazy amounts of traffic. It's really nice to see the community come together and write for the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is, the blog has really died down in terms of activity. We haven't had a new post since November. We haven't had a strict posting schedule (besides November, our last post was in July). A lot of the people that participated in the blog at its inception are no longer active. The decline of the community blog is due to a lot of different things. We want to fix them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Active Contributors&#xD;&#xA;-------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing a community blog needs is active contributors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From asking in [The Whiteboard][4], it seems that there is still active interest in the blog, but things need to change. There needs to be much more organization behind the scenes in order to have any success in running this project. To do this, we need two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. **Writing Process.** When we first started the blog, you really could do&#xD;&#xA;    anything. One person would write the post, edit the post, proofread&#xD;&#xA;    the post, etc.. There really was no organization as far as who did&#xD;&#xA;    what. In the new system (we'll call it Blog 2.0), one person will&#xD;&#xA;    not be doing everything. Everybody will still be able to write&#xD;&#xA;    posts, but it won't be a personal endeavor. There might be several&#xD;&#xA;    people contributing to writing one post. There will be designated&#xD;&#xA;    editors/proofreaders who will fix grammar and formatting and give&#xD;&#xA;    feedback. All posts will go through an outlined process and meet a&#xD;&#xA;    certain criteria (which will be specified based on community ideas)&#xD;&#xA;    in order to get published. We tried doing this with the blog before.&#xD;&#xA;    We had editors, including me, who would attempt to go through and&#xD;&#xA;    edit posts. Unfortunately, I was a terrible editor. Not only am I&#xD;&#xA;    not the best writer, but it is difficult to fix things that you know&#xD;&#xA;    little about. Blog 2.0 will implement a new writing process, in&#xD;&#xA;    order to streamline our approach to publishing.&#xD;&#xA; 2. **Activity.** Participating in the community blog should not be an extra&#xD;&#xA;    job. You shouldn't feel stressed out to finish a post or to get&#xD;&#xA;    something published on time. Life already has enough deadlines. That&#xD;&#xA;    said, we still need people to be consistently active with their&#xD;&#xA;    participation. If you're on board to finish a post by a certain&#xD;&#xA;    date, we need it done by that date. Basically, set your own&#xD;&#xA;    deadlines, but stick to them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, blog participation is supposed to be just as enjoyable as using the main site. It's another way to create content, without being restricted by the typical Q&amp;A format. If you're interested in contributing to the blog, just leave a comment or contact me on The Whiteboard. We need as many contributors as possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Content&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, on to the meat of the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The actual content getting published by the blog has been pretty good, but it is not reaching its full potential. The blog should consist of a few things things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Announcements.** The blog should be a place where we can voice what is going on with Programmers.SE. We've done posts like this before,&#xD;&#xA;   but the platform hasn't been used to its full potential.&#xD;&#xA; - **Posts About Programming.** That's what most of the posts have been so&#xD;&#xA;   far, and we still want more of these.&#xD;&#xA; - **Posts that were &quot;Not Constructive&quot;.** This is a gold mine. The [last&#xD;&#xA;   time][5] this was done, it became our most popular post. Basically, good&#xD;&#xA;   questions that didn't fit the Stack Exchange format, and turn them&#xD;&#xA;   into blog posts.&#xD;&#xA; - **Meta Posts.** There has been a bit of interest in this lately.&#xD;&#xA;   Basically, create explanations of frequently asked questions or&#xD;&#xA;   common close reasons and post them to the blog, in order to link to&#xD;&#xA;   them whenever the issue arises.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The possibilities are endless when it comes to content. Those were just ideas that have come up, but if you have more, feel free to tell us!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Wanna Contribute? Have Ideas?&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you'd like to contribute to the blog, or have any ideas regarding the blog, feel free to leave a comment, answer, or ping me in chat. The Programmers Community Blog is an awesome platform, so don't let it go to waste.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember that this entire post is just a conjunction of fluid ideas. They can be completely changed if the community has better ideas. ***We are happily welcoming any feedback, criticism, and ideas that you have or would like to develop.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/fix-price-vs-time-and-material-contracts/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17178" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6558" RevisionGUID="6a3f8a3d-5a17-4196-a774-d5f90c0a99d8" CreationDate="2014-03-23T23:29:51.970" UserId="34364" Text="Programmers Community Blog 2.0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17179" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6558" RevisionGUID="6a3f8a3d-5a17-4196-a774-d5f90c0a99d8" CreationDate="2014-03-23T23:29:51.970" UserId="34364" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17180" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6558" RevisionGUID="556d3ffb-27a8-4759-9a43-add58d9cda8d" CreationDate="2014-03-23T23:52:54.873" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17181" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6558" RevisionGUID="a02fee62-baab-439a-92fc-a8a75020bf0a" CreationDate="2014-03-24T04:59:18.387" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/447960826662887424" />
  <row Id="17182" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6559" RevisionGUID="c653b739-be6a-4ca8-aa5b-6a9f26390302" CreationDate="2014-03-25T02:33:01.133" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="You've probably seen it [somewhere](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/136609/repository-of-useful-pro-forma-comments)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sharing your research helps everyone. Tell us what you've tried and why &#xD;&#xA;it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time &#xD;&#xA;to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, &#xD;&#xA;and most of all it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer! &#xD;&#xA;Also see [how to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does this mean? Why do people keep asking for research? Knowing this, how can I ask a better question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17183" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6559" RevisionGUID="c653b739-be6a-4ca8-aa5b-6a9f26390302" CreationDate="2014-03-25T02:33:01.133" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Why is research important?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17184" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6559" RevisionGUID="c653b739-be6a-4ca8-aa5b-6a9f26390302" CreationDate="2014-03-25T02:33:01.133" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17185" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6560" RevisionGUID="7463bfd9-f6bd-456a-bae7-9afae4dac9ba" CreationDate="2014-03-25T02:33:01.133" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There are a number of reasons to try to fill out the body of a question with what you know.  While a closing a question for not enough research is not a good reason, the mouseover for a down vote reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By stating all that you know above the nature of the problem that you have, what you've read, and what you believe to be true you are helping yourself avoid a possible down vote and closure as unclear - buecase its not clear what help you actually need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Mistaken Premise ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes when asking a question, it is based on a mistaken premise.  People answering the question are not going to be aware of this premise unless it is stated in the question and are likely to answer it working with the correct assumptions on how things work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider a person trying to make a cake and put it in the microwave oven.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do you preheat a microwave oven?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just wrong, there's the mistaken assumption that a microwave oven is an oven and works like a toaster oven or some other type of oven - that they all work under the same principles and you need to preheat the oven to 350 degrees.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar misconceptions of how a computer works, or a given aspect of a language VM works is not uncommon.  Sometimes these take ferreting out in a comment in the question if we're lucky to fix the question to ask the right question.  Other times it doesn't come out until the answers and then the question tends to morph into a different question - this isn't a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By stating how you think things work from the start, in the question, it is then possible to work to have answers that correct that mistaken premise and show how that corrects the mental model for how the overall system works and answers the *real* question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Repeating what you know ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It can be difficult to judge the level of the person asking a question.  Its only text, we don't know if you are a senior programmer, or junior programmer or architect or student or CIO and thus don't know if we should target the answer at the senior programmer or CIO level. &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Ok, you didn't laugh at that ordering... sorry.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you were to ask &quot;I don't know why `i++` is allowed in Java when it already has `i+=1`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One answer is &quot;because it is specified in the [standards](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-15.html#jls-15.14.2) that way&quot; and that is a perfectly correct answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if the question was &quot;I was reading the [JLS section 15.4.2-3](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-15.html#jls-15.14.2) and wondered why this was added when `+=` is already present in the language&quot; this becomes a very different question that saying &quot;this is the specification&quot; won't answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By stating what you already know, you haven't had anyone spend time repeating back what you already know - wasting both your time and theirs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Answering far too above the level of the asker ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes the simple questions are *very* deep when you get into them.  I urge you to watch this [classic Feynman interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM) where Feynman points out the difficulty of answering the question - that if you don't understand the question you are asking you may not be able to understand the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You have to know what it is that you're permitted to understand and allow to be understood and known, and what it is you're not. You'll notice, in this example, that the more I ask why, the deeper a thing is, the more interesting it gets.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With many questions, especially the deceptively simple ones, the answer to it may be way over the head of the person who is asking it.  It would do a disservice to the person asking the question at a intro to programming, freshman college level when the answer to it is one that really is at the graduate level of theory or senior programmer level of design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why can't I match html with a regular expression&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer becomes one of the [Chomsky hierarchy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy) and the [pumping lemma](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumping_lemma_for_regular_languages) and and an understanding of what a [NDFA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondeterministic_finite_automaton) is... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While the question is likely to be too broad to answer at the level, it does allow someone to identify that from the start and work to narrow down the question to something that can be answered in a single Stack Exchange question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17186" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6561" RevisionGUID="aef0f49e-e02e-4d06-94e1-657126fe7074" CreationDate="2014-03-25T09:38:35.450" UserId="73508" Text="I'm talking about questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What tool should I use for x&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What language should I learn next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What is the future of technology x&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What will be the next big thing in technology x&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions when they pop up often have the same basic format. It seems to me that it would be better if a warning could be posted to the user to stop such questions having to be immediately closed or put on hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Gnat and others do a superb job keeping on top of these but I'm just wondering if the site could be a little smarter about it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17187" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6561" RevisionGUID="aef0f49e-e02e-4d06-94e1-657126fe7074" CreationDate="2014-03-25T09:38:35.450" UserId="73508" Text="Can we fuzzy match the speculative, open-ended questions at source to stop so many having to be closed or put on hold?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17188" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6561" RevisionGUID="aef0f49e-e02e-4d06-94e1-657126fe7074" CreationDate="2014-03-25T09:38:35.450" UserId="73508" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17189" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6561" RevisionGUID="68a227cc-32ba-4b7a-9aa5-2324e572c4ea" CreationDate="2014-03-25T11:19:19.177" UserId="73508" Comment="Added some clarifications" Text="I'm talking about questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What tool should I use for x&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What language should I learn next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What is the future of technology x&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What will be the next big thing in technology x&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions when they pop up often have the same basic format. It seems to me that it would be better if a warning could be posted at the time to discourage the user from submitting such questions. This would reduce the number of duff questions on the site and avoid them having to be immediately closed or put on hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Gnat and others do a superb job keeping on top of these but I'm just wondering if the site could be a little smarter about it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17190" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6561" RevisionGUID="68a227cc-32ba-4b7a-9aa5-2324e572c4ea" CreationDate="2014-03-25T11:19:19.177" UserId="73508" Comment="Added some clarifications" Text="Can we fuzzy match the speculative, open-ended questions at source to reduce the number of such questions having to be closed or put on hold?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17191" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6562" RevisionGUID="decc3dbb-7671-4d4e-8cfd-8219056bac5a" CreationDate="2014-03-25T12:12:29.987" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="There's some argument _for_ shipping those questions over here, and not just centered around the _file things neatly because everything has its place_ manner of thinking. Stack Overflow, today, doesn't really like those kinds of questions&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; and many would be happy to ship the impetus for folks to ask them over here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that's just it, Stack Overflow loses content, users lose rep (depending) and we're not exactly sending anything over to Programmers that offers anyone _here_ anything to do. It's a bit too jilting of an experience for all involved in comparison with a vague net gain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's also the folks that ask specifically on Stack Overflow because they feel that more capable eyes will see their question. That usually doesn't work out very well, but it's easy to see how folks would conclude that it would.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's always going to be overlap, and as Programmers has become a more focused site and community, it's gotten to the point where Programmers is the better site for certain topics that overlap, tags you mentioned being some of those topics. That's basically what has to happen for the majority of those questions to naturally end up here - just keep answering them here with the quality you've been producing - then people know this is the place to come.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There _are_ instances where we'd basically wholesale migrate by tag - when we purposefully split a site into two - most recently turning AVP (Audio &amp; Video Production) into Video Production, and then moving the Audio stuff over to Sound Design. That's not something we like to do unless it's clear that we positively must, and it's not like the tags on Stack Overflow create multiple disenfranchised communities that try to co-exist in the same space.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd say - give it a year, and you'll _probably_ see the 'brand' this site is building become more effective at leading folks with those kinds of questions here in the first place, at which point you'll see the tags diminish on SO. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;Well, sometimes they do, depends on how and when you ask them.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17192" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6563" RevisionGUID="773ea10c-fb03-4c40-9168-917799910272" CreationDate="2014-03-25T12:24:58.853" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="There is a warning that pops up when the system sees certain words or phrases in the title:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't block those, though, because it's just not advanced enough to be as certain as a few human beings. It's also hard to train on titles that _might_ actually contain somewhat misguided but definitely on-topic and interesting questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd agree that 'the future of' or 'should I learn' are _probably_ safe enough to show the warning on as well, but as you can see, people basically ignore the warning anyway if they're intent on asking something. Most won't _care_ what happens after asking as long as they get an answer. If we outright block it, it's just simple to write even more horrible titles and text that manages to evade the block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I'd _love_ is smarter just in time help that _helps people write better questions based on what they've got in the text box_ - but that's a pretty big want :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/oxCCv.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17193" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6561" RevisionGUID="e809cd1e-ff3a-490a-852c-1441bcda1e9d" CreationDate="2014-03-25T12:25:11.713" UserDisplayName="user131" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17194" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6564" RevisionGUID="5bb42933-a7c0-441a-b610-5dc670a34fcd" CreationDate="2014-03-25T13:04:52.607" UserId="22685" Text="I'm sure there's always going to be overlap - look at the issues around certain Programmers questions that could be on The Workplace. The answer is not to infer that, because some questions are in the grey area between sites, that then all questions must be in the same grey area, and merging sites is required.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do think the &quot;branding&quot; between the sites needs to be more defined - SO for questions about the implementation of technology, Programmers for questions about concepts. It might be easier to define SO better - or market it as such, rather than try to define the rather more vague Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That question [(difference between the two][1]) has a *really* good answer, that should make it clear - and I'd say the old tags you mention should be on here, if they weren't more than a little bit grey.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow?rq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17195" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6565" RevisionGUID="5c95e1d7-b025-410f-bfe7-06f3c86a16bd" CreationDate="2014-03-25T21:00:09.970" UserId="7748" Text="I want to get back Involved, writing again, but wont be till the July time frame." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17196" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6566" RevisionGUID="7f17fd09-4619-4c45-91af-315f9fdc2bc3" CreationDate="2014-03-26T09:28:23.147" UserId="93804" Text="My question here: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/233461/strategies-to-troubleshoot-an-error-that-only-happens-on-a-specific-device was closed due to being too broad. I don't quite understand why it's too broad, but that's fine, if it's a bad question, then it's a bad question. However... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm reasonably sure it's the type of problem that many programmers in the mobile device area will encounter, and I'm equally sure that others will have workaround strategies that may be useful, for me and others who read the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What can I do to get the question re-opened?** Should I post it on a different SE site? Re-word it somehow? I'd be grateful for suggestions, this is currently a real-world problem for me and probably others too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17197" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6566" RevisionGUID="7f17fd09-4619-4c45-91af-315f9fdc2bc3" CreationDate="2014-03-26T09:28:23.147" UserId="93804" Text="How to re-word or 'fix' my question so it can be answered" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17198" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6566" RevisionGUID="7f17fd09-4619-4c45-91af-315f9fdc2bc3" CreationDate="2014-03-26T09:28:23.147" UserId="93804" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17199" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6567" RevisionGUID="0c094dff-5511-45ab-ba20-14302ef2f8a8" CreationDate="2014-03-26T15:12:07.360" UserId="9302" Text="I am by no means an expert on Programmers.SE question expectations, but I think you might find more support if you share a specific example of the problem. Choose your most frustrating, model-specific error and describe it in detail (but not too much detail or it will be closed for being too localized). Share what you've done so far. Share what you know about the problem. Then, with a little luck, someone will help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An exceptional answer to your specific problem might be generalized to all model-specific debugging, but Programmers.SE is pretty intolerant of generalized questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17200" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6568" RevisionGUID="21fc0db1-8f2d-40bb-923e-dde875b9918d" CreationDate="2014-03-26T17:16:56.273" UserId="4" Text="I'm just going to reopen. I honestly don't understand this closure at all, and I'd like someone to convince me that it's actually too broad for Programmers (especially since there appear to be some answers already). Of course, if you had a specific problem or set of problems that you were experiencing, you may get more specific answers. However, planning strategies for testing in deployment environments doesn't have to be specific." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17201" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6566" RevisionGUID="bc0b42d2-dade-4511-92c8-de29abf5692d" CreationDate="2014-03-26T17:17:22.460" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17202" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="33c7a5da-9835-4a9a-a1e3-7dc201b3331c" CreationDate="2014-03-27T13:12:42.373" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|faq-proposed|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17210" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6571" RevisionGUID="5b2f6dfd-6db1-4bd0-9cc7-3a6e3ac2cabb" CreationDate="2014-03-28T00:19:51.960" UserId="124919" Text="What is the correct stackExchange site to ask about conceptual question about computer systems? Is programmers better or computer science one better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not really planning on asking anything related to actual coding or debugging at all though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17211" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6571" RevisionGUID="5b2f6dfd-6db1-4bd0-9cc7-3a6e3ac2cabb" CreationDate="2014-03-28T00:19:51.960" UserId="124919" Text="What is the correct stackExchange site to ask about conceptual question about computer systems?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17212" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6571" RevisionGUID="5b2f6dfd-6db1-4bd0-9cc7-3a6e3ac2cabb" CreationDate="2014-03-28T00:19:51.960" UserId="124919" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17214" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6571" RevisionGUID="52c292d9-d5d8-4b08-b627-aa4cd370e19c" CreationDate="2014-03-28T01:48:48.180" UserId="124919" Comment="added 232 characters in body" Text="What is the correct stackExchange site to ask about conceptual question about computer systems? Is programmers better or computer science one better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not really planning on asking anything related to actual coding or debugging at all though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was request to provide examples, so here are the types of questions I plan on asking:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/234004/how-does-fds-flat-datacenter-storage-make-optimizations-around-locality-unnece&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/23155/why-does-appending-permutations-of-servers-at-the-end-of-hash-table-avoid-bottle&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some hypothetical examples are as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another hypothetical example could be, I would like to discuss X detail of map reduce (and provide the link to the paper) or Y detail of two-phase commit, Z detail of Paxos (and provide a link of Lamport's paper) or P detail of Spanner, or W detail of EPaxos. etc&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17216" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6458" RevisionGUID="6e9ea57a-a85d-40d5-9ff3-1c15c8024a9d" CreationDate="2014-03-29T00:03:03.557" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17217" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6572" RevisionGUID="fe1fa8e8-e67d-47e0-872d-794a3e7c33ea" CreationDate="2014-03-30T18:07:25.483" UserId="73323" Text="The question below was marked as a duplicate. However, it is very clear based on the comments associated with the question I posted that my question is not the same as to what it is marked as.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What to do as a Dev when for years their team has lacked product innovation, not used project mgmt methodologies, and kept bad Software Dev practices?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*This question already has an answer here: How should I behave as a developer in a project that's headed for failure? 20 answers*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those answers in the other post do not address my question. Who is going to leave a company just because a project is failing? It does not make any sense, so whoever marked my question as duplicate is clearly not attention to detail.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I already left a note in the question but it is still marked as duplicate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Note: To those who have marked this question as duplicate: The answers on that post do not address my question, unlike the ones on this post that do address my question directly. Also, that question is just about 1 project failing. My question is about all projects, the product and a team that has been doing the same for years and that continuing to do so will eventually lead to failure of whole team and product. Also, if you look at the answers I've received, the answers are totally different to the ones posted on that other question. Therefore, this question is not a duplicate.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/198767/what-to-do-as-a-dev-when-for-years-their-team-has-lacked-product-innovation-not" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17218" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6572" RevisionGUID="fe1fa8e8-e67d-47e0-872d-794a3e7c33ea" CreationDate="2014-03-30T18:07:25.483" UserId="73323" Text="How to reopen question that was marked as duplicate but it is clearly not a duplicate" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17219" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6572" RevisionGUID="fe1fa8e8-e67d-47e0-872d-794a3e7c33ea" CreationDate="2014-03-30T18:07:25.483" UserId="73323" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|duplicate-questions|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17220" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6573" RevisionGUID="db360d28-353b-4b7b-9fa7-c11675de6852" CreationDate="2014-03-30T18:17:16.150" UserId="4" Text="I just took a look at both questions - I don't see any duplication. However, I'm not sure that your question should stay open - it's incredibly broad. There are [many books written on improving software processes and project management][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_n_0?rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Asoftware+process+improvement&amp;keywords=software+process+improvement&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1396203241&amp;rnid=2941120011" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17221" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6574" RevisionGUID="c399f149-518a-4a62-ad59-3e0b1d4ec619" CreationDate="2014-04-01T01:48:01.817" UserId="100175" Text="[![Programming Puzzles and Code Golf][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PbfqN.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17222" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6574" RevisionGUID="1ff582c1-f369-482f-8adb-40506154ae0b" CreationDate="2014-04-01T01:48:01.817" UserId="100175" />
  <row Id="17223" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6575" RevisionGUID="c5fae62c-d58f-442d-8018-658f74d1c7c0" CreationDate="2014-04-01T01:51:59.047" UserId="100175" Text="[![Programming Puzzles and Code Golf][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6LaKw.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17224" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6575" RevisionGUID="549c3658-a736-4dde-9472-c1655f94b077" CreationDate="2014-04-01T01:51:59.047" UserId="100175" />
  <row Id="17225" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6576" RevisionGUID="c7b36d73-1e80-4779-b02f-3e982be0b0fa" CreationDate="2014-04-01T06:24:53.437" UserId="9113" Text="Today I found this strange Unicoins advertisement at my side bar on PSE, which puzzled me a bit. Seems there is someone trying to lure people into paying real money for a couple of &quot;optical enhancements&quot; for this site. For me, it looks like a new form of spam. Is this officially approved by the stack exchange network? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17226" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6576" RevisionGUID="c7b36d73-1e80-4779-b02f-3e982be0b0fa" CreationDate="2014-04-01T06:24:53.437" UserId="9113" Text="What's the matter with this &quot;Unicoin&quot; advertisement?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17227" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6576" RevisionGUID="c7b36d73-1e80-4779-b02f-3e982be0b0fa" CreationDate="2014-04-01T06:24:53.437" UserId="9113" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17237" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2004" RevisionGUID="9934cec4-3032-43c9-b1da-3d083558d58c" CreationDate="2014-04-01T10:56:11.683" UserId="47" Comment="the situation has changed" Text="Book requests fall into the &quot;outside resources&quot; close reason and should be closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you are asking for a critique of a book or other resource then that *might* be on topic, but would probably fall into the &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; close reason unless you were *very* specific as to what you were looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;**Original answer:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would say that like &quot;what language should I learn&quot; questions, questions that effectively ask for a list of books on X should be closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, like programming language questions, if you have *specialised* requirements (you want to go into LINQ, or networking, or.. in great depth) then *perhaps* those should be allowed. They should inspire answers that explain why a book is good for this topic and shouldn't just produce a list of everyone's favourite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So - in short - if your question will produce a list of everyone's favourite book - don't post, but if it will elicit the title of *the* book on a topic then go for it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17240" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6580" RevisionGUID="fce8d3b5-92d2-4042-aa2d-20f07ec38dca" CreationDate="2014-04-01T21:13:37.937" UserId="32353" Text="&gt; Stack Exchange Inc. does not endorse or encourage behaviors that should not be endorsed or encouraged. Not legal tender except in localities with citizenship rights for unicorns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think they've done a good job of full disclosure and we should allow stack exchange to be a magic pasture *all* uni*s can play in." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17241" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6576" RevisionGUID="3e0b91a3-ba98-4065-9af7-20d904b33439" CreationDate="2014-04-02T07:59:33.767" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/451267681338269696" />
  <row Id="17245" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6484" RevisionGUID="b4bd7db8-91d5-4c37-aff4-5029b9d43b7f" CreationDate="2014-04-02T08:30:07.907" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important" Text="# Downvoted #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to look at is the mouseover for the down vote button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that this is a completely subjective grading and people may down vote because they were late to work or don't like unicorns.  However one's feeling of unicorns, this *is* information for you to look at and consider how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Make sure that the question is not just asking for something that can be easily searched with google.###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking other people to do your searching for you is considered poor form.  Everyone answering questions is doing so on a volunteer basis (even the SE employees that sometimes answer questions - they aren't paid to do so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also extends to things that you should have been able to find when searching on P.SE.  As you enter the information be sure to tag the question appropriately.  The combination of tags and title *may* help you find something right away that answers the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Explain your current understanding of the issue###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just saying &quot;Could someone explain ${concept} to me&quot; doesn't show what you *do* understand.  It lacks research.  Often the answer to this is spent repeating what is already available in Wikipedia.  If you had read this already and don't understand a part of it, explain that part and what you do understand.  Correcting a misconception is easier (and a better question) than trying to explain the entire topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Blatantly off topic###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the help center on [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) questions. Questions that are asking for a discussion, or polling or one of the reasons specified in the help center.  Especially note that questions *should* have been posted on Stack Overflow (implementation) or questions that should have been posted on Stack Overflow, but would be off topic there too (do this work for me).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [How much research effort is expected of Stack Overflow users?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/182266/how-much-research-effort-is-expected-of-stack-overflow-users/182380#182380)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Encouraging people to explain downvotes](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/2373/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;`[Why was my question down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17246" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6489" RevisionGUID="5cb01c27-badb-4349-91d8-e0bf49713e07" CreationDate="2014-04-02T08:30:37.117" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important" Text="#Unclear#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are looking for, in the [context of Programmers.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This close reason can also be a bit unclear as to what the issue is.  Please be sure to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Give enough context that someone reading the question can understand it&#xD;&#xA;* Explain what you are looking for&#xD;&#xA;* Check to make sure you are not using jargon that is particular to one specific branch of computing (and if you are, either change the jargon or link to a site that explains it)&#xD;&#xA;* Make sure you are on the proper site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last point is important too.  This close reason is often used as a proxy for &quot;we don't think that this question is a good question for Programmers.SE (it might be on Stack Overflow), but would get closed there too.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explain your design.  Explain what you have done.  Explain where you are having difficulty.  Explain what you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear what help you need](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260) (see also [linked MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/215806/165773))&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as unclear?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6489/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17247" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6404" RevisionGUID="8bdce9e0-d4eb-422d-9eea-882eaf3de2b0" CreationDate="2014-04-02T08:31:25.050" UserId="31260" Comment="Unclear what help you need += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important &quot;see: 'Why is research important?'&quot;" Text="## Unclear what help you need ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Unclear what help you need](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important &quot;see: 'Why is research important?'&quot;).** Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell what problem you are trying to solve or what aspect of your approach needs to be corrected or explained. See the [ask] page for help clarifying this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note `[ask]` above is so called [magic link](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/magic-links), meaning that in comments it auto-expands into [How to Ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Slightly adapted from [this MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/215806/165773)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17250" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6576" RevisionGUID="fd35ce64-97b9-4581-aed3-85fbde16b70b" CreationDate="2014-04-03T02:34:57.700" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17251" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6582" RevisionGUID="83b09656-65b0-4119-9557-e1c75264d55d" CreationDate="2014-04-03T15:06:44.317" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Difficulty with naming has a bit of a history with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are two hard problems in computer science: caching, naming, and off by one errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has been *repeatedly* revisited on meta and elsewhere&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (P.SE Aug 2012) http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3856/question-about-naming-conventions-not-constructive&#xD;&#xA;* (P.SE Oct 2011) http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* (P.SE Jan 2014) http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6406/name-that-thing-questions&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO Nov 2013) [What is the appropriate / preferred method for questions concerning programming nomenclature?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/203880/what-is-the-appropriate-preferred-method-for-questions-concerning-programming)&#xD;&#xA;* (Blog Feb 2012) [Lets Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yes, the guidance on these is confusing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, please answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Are the [tag:terminology] and [tag:naming] questions on topic?&#xD;&#xA;* If so, what should be expected of these questions to not be closed as custom, too broad, or primarily opinion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17252" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6582" RevisionGUID="83b09656-65b0-4119-9557-e1c75264d55d" CreationDate="2014-04-03T15:06:44.317" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="On the troubles of naming and termology" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17253" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6582" RevisionGUID="83b09656-65b0-4119-9557-e1c75264d55d" CreationDate="2014-04-03T15:06:44.317" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17254" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6583" RevisionGUID="1ffd5258-011f-4e43-9f91-7d4cfa6094a9" CreationDate="2014-04-03T15:06:44.317" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="These questions are **marginally** on topic.  However, these questions are often poor and without additional information they should be closed as too broad or primarily opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have exactly the same problem that English.SE does with their own single word requests - lots of them, low quality, uninteresting, attract poor answers from users, and they get complained about in chat, they attract less active users and repel more active users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Drawing from [English.SE tag: single-word-requests](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/single-word-requests) and [Against single word requests](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/1654/against-single-word-requests) there is a set of questions that are necessary to make these questions better:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Describe exactly the context that the name or terminology is used&#xD;&#xA;    * Programming language - the same concept can be used in multiple ways.  As I point out in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6296/why-is-this-question-wrong-asking-for-the-name-of-a-specific-practice/6297#6297 and ultimately http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218986/how-is-it-called-when-you-define-constants-that-simply-refer-to-a-large-namespac/219323#219323 there is sometimes no standard way to handle this across *all* programming languages.&#xD;&#xA;    * Code example - without a demonstration of what the code is to do, multiple terms can be used for the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;* Describe the criteria for acceptance&#xD;&#xA;    * Without some criteria for acceptance of the term, there is no way to say which one is better than another and the question is simply a poll for people to toss out suggestions for a name.&#xD;&#xA;* Which names/terms have you thought of and discarded as inappropriate?&#xD;&#xA;    * Just asking for a name doesn't let us know which direction you have thought and as described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important we need to know what you have already thought of and discarded.&#xD;&#xA;* Does the question show that you searched for a suitable word before asking the question?&#xD;&#xA;    * Without the information to show that you *have* tried, such questions reek of intellectual laziness.  The use of Google is not hard.  Sometimes these words are right there if you just enter the language of choice and the code construct you are working with.  Stack exchange is not and should never be a &quot;I don't know, I'll ask what its called on P.SE and see if anyone answers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the above pieces of information being provided in the question, it *might* be acceptable to keep the question open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also *strongly* want people to look at the English.SE tags: http://english.stackexchange.com/tags and note that Single-word-requests on that site make up an average of 30/week or about 1/5&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; of all of their questions on a day to day basis.  Do we, P.SE, want to have a similar bit of 1/5th of our questions be questions about what to name some 'pattern' or what a particular structure is called within some code?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17255" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6582" RevisionGUID="0f086d4e-f09e-4f99-b292-34ec3b89d5dc" CreationDate="2014-04-03T15:15:09.623" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited title" Text="On the troubles of naming and terminology" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17256" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6584" RevisionGUID="8587f128-45a9-4e01-a087-b176db61a4b2" CreationDate="2014-04-03T16:17:15.663" UserDisplayName="user39685" Text=" 1. yes, absolutely, these questions are on-topic, and here's why I think so:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - knowing the right word enables you to find a precise definition, and to search through the literature for more background information&#xD;&#xA; - knowing the right word enables effective communication.  If you don't know what a &quot;free variable&quot; is, I think it would be nearly impossible to have a good discussion about them&#xD;&#xA; - the answers are rarely opinion-based.  Most have been established in the literature and are well-defined.  &#xD;&#xA; - in the few cases where there are multiple possible names, the question provides an opportunity to cover the exact differences between what the names refer to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. criteria for good naming questions: [here's some good answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2380/39685).  I would add that good naming questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - focus on what already exists and has already been defined&#xD;&#xA;  - aren't trying to come up with new names&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. let's keep in mind that a bad question is a bad question, and a lazy asker is a lazy asker.  Ultimately, good users will (probably) generate good content, and abusize users will game, abuse, and damage the system, no matter how complicated or precise the rules are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, I have seen this comment appearing frequently under suspected naming questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;name that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; thing&quot; question. &quot;Name that thing&quot; are bad questions for the same&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions. See&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I would like to request that users stop posting this.**  Oftentimes, it is inappropriate for the OP under which it was posted, because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - you can google them (see #1 above)&#xD;&#xA; - they are practical (see #1 above)&#xD;&#xA; - they do help others.  Of course they don't help *everybody*, but no question does.  &#xD;&#xA; - it uses unwarranted pejorative language (&quot;guessing game&quot;)&#xD;&#xA; - the linked blog has little to do with the OP under which the comment is pasted&#xD;&#xA;   - the examples have *nothing* to do with precise terms such as &quot;alpha substitution&quot;&#xD;&#xA;   - the intent of the question is totally different than a so-called &quot;guessing game&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you believe that a question is low quality, then (IMHO) please say why you think so, downvote it, or vote to close it.  **But please, do not copy-paste such comments when they don't apply.**  I believe it's simple harassment, incites pointless debate, turns off people from using the site and is unhelpful.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17257" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6583" RevisionGUID="72e52090-f2cf-4e2b-8297-d92fc83b5cb3" CreationDate="2014-04-03T17:48:41.493" UserId="1204" Comment="added 16 characters in body" Text="These questions are **marginally** on topic.  However, these questions are often poor and without additional information they should be closed as too broad or primarily opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have exactly the same problem that English.SE does with their own single word requests - lots of them, low quality, uninteresting, attract poor answers from users, and they get complained about in chat, they attract less active users and repel more active users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Drawing from [English.SE tag: single-word-requests](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/single-word-requests) and [Against single word requests](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/1654/against-single-word-requests) there is a set of questions that are necessary to make these questions better:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Describe exactly the context that the name or terminology is used**&#xD;&#xA;    * Programming language - the same concept can be used in multiple ways.  As I point out in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6296/why-is-this-question-wrong-asking-for-the-name-of-a-specific-practice/6297#6297 and ultimately http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218986/how-is-it-called-when-you-define-constants-that-simply-refer-to-a-large-namespac/219323#219323 there is sometimes no standard way to handle this across *all* programming languages.&#xD;&#xA;    * Code example - without a demonstration of what the code is to do, multiple terms can be used for the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;* **Describe the criteria for acceptance**&#xD;&#xA;    * Without some criteria for acceptance of the term, there is no way to say which one is better than another and the question is simply a poll for people to toss out suggestions for a name.&#xD;&#xA;* **Which names/terms have you thought of and discarded as inappropriate?**&#xD;&#xA;    * Just asking for a name doesn't let us know which direction you have thought and as described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important we need to know what you have already thought of and discarded.&#xD;&#xA;* **Does the question show that you searched for a suitable word before asking the question?**&#xD;&#xA;    * Without the information to show that you *have* tried, such questions reek of intellectual laziness.  The use of Google is not hard.  Sometimes these words are right there if you just enter the language of choice and the code construct you are working with.  Stack exchange is not and should never be a &quot;I don't know, I'll ask what its called on P.SE and see if anyone answers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the above pieces of information being provided in the question, it *might* be acceptable to keep the question open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also *strongly* want people to look at the English.SE tags: http://english.stackexchange.com/tags and note that Single-word-requests on that site make up an average of 30/week or about 1/5&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; of all of their questions on a day to day basis.  Do we, P.SE, want to have a similar bit of 1/5th of our questions be questions about what to name some 'pattern' or what a particular structure is called within some code?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17258" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6583" RevisionGUID="fb15cfa6-0cea-41ab-ac05-8b0947d02796" CreationDate="2014-04-03T17:55:36.557" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="These questions are **marginally** on topic.  However, these questions are often poor and without additional information they should be closed as too broad or primarily opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have exactly the same problem that English.SE does with their own single word requests - lots of them, low quality, uninteresting, attract poor answers from users, and they get complained about in chat, they attract less active users and repel more active users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Drawing from [English.SE tag: single-word-requests](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/single-word-requests) and [Against single word requests](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/1654/against-single-word-requests) there is a set of questions that are necessary to make these questions better:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Describe exactly the context that the name or terminology is used**&#xD;&#xA;    * Programming language - the same concept can be used in multiple ways.  As I point out in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6296/why-is-this-question-wrong-asking-for-the-name-of-a-specific-practice/6297#6297 and ultimately http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218986/how-is-it-called-when-you-define-constants-that-simply-refer-to-a-large-namespac/219323#219323 there is sometimes no standard way to handle this across *all* programming languages.&#xD;&#xA;    * Code example - without a demonstration of what the code is to do, multiple terms can be used for the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;* **Describe the criteria for acceptance**&#xD;&#xA;    * Without some criteria for acceptance of the term, there is no way to say which one is better than another and the question is simply a poll for people to toss out suggestions for a name.&#xD;&#xA;* **Which names/terms have you thought of and discarded as inappropriate?**&#xD;&#xA;    * Just asking for a name doesn't let us know which direction you have thought and as described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important we need to know what you have already thought of and discarded.&#xD;&#xA;* **Does the question show that you searched for a suitable word before asking the question?**&#xD;&#xA;    * Without the information to show that you *have* tried, such questions reek of intellectual laziness.  The use of Google is not hard.  Sometimes these words are right there if you just enter the language of choice and the code construct you are working with.  Stack exchange is not and should never be a &quot;I don't know, I'll ask what its called on P.SE and see if anyone answers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the above pieces of information being provided in the question, it *might* be acceptable to keep the question open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also *strongly* want people to look at the English.SE tags: http://english.stackexchange.com/tags and note that Single-word-requests on that site make up an average of 30/week or about 1/5&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; of all of their questions on a day to day basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we, P.SE, want to have a similar bit of 1/5th of our questions be questions about what to name some 'pattern' or what a particular structure is called within some code?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17259" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6585" RevisionGUID="6e8e8021-0980-4cad-9fa1-fc07bda606c2" CreationDate="2014-04-03T17:56:36.250" UserId="89124" Text="[![BXR.SU &amp;mdash; Super User's BSD Cross Reference &amp;mdash; BSD Source Code Search Engine over FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and DragonFly BSD kernel and userland source trees, based on OpenGrok, powered by nginx and regular expressions.    BSD is Dying.  Seeking Kernel and Userland Developers to Hack and Improve BSD UNIX.  Qualifications: C (required), asm (a plus).  No prior open-source experience necessary.  Warning: it's not for the faint of heart!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B1RWc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://BXR.SU/search?q=todo+OR+fixme+OR+XXX" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17260" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6585" RevisionGUID="dedb297f-da3c-467b-8642-1e49ac820fcc" CreationDate="2014-04-03T17:56:36.250" UserId="89124" />
  <row Id="17261" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6559" RevisionGUID="460081f1-d418-4325-9aad-0aa37be0a42e" CreationDate="2014-04-03T23:05:58.623" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/451858174782742528" />
  <row Id="17262" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6551" RevisionGUID="b5ee2af1-97c5-4e53-aeba-ddd4da1bb82d" CreationDate="2014-04-04T05:06:20.833" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/451948864451670016" />
  <row Id="17263" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6572" RevisionGUID="ee79d8c7-4ca2-4a0c-985c-67a274deefd9" CreationDate="2014-04-04T17:25:31.843" UserId="73323" Comment="added 541 characters in body" Text="The question below was marked as a duplicate. However, it is very clear based on the comments associated with the question I posted that my question is not the same as to what it is marked as.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What to do as a Dev when for years their team has lacked product innovation, not used project mgmt methodologies, and kept bad Software Dev practices?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*This question already has an answer here: How should I behave as a developer in a project that's headed for failure? 20 answers*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those answers in the other post do not address my question. Who is going to leave a company just because a project is failing? It does not make any sense, so whoever marked my question as duplicate is clearly not attention to detail.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I already left a note in the question but it is still marked as duplicate**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Note: I have read[ \[How should I behave as a developer in a project that's headed for failure? 20 answers\]][2], but the answers do not address the points on this question. If you look at the answers I've received, the answers are totally different to the ones posted on that other question. For example, who is going to leave a company just because 1 project is failing? It does not make any sense, so whoever marked my question as duplicate is clearly not attention to detail. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To those who have marked this question as duplicate: The answers on that post do not address my question, unlike the ones on this post that do address my question directly. Please don't mark something as a duplicate if it isn't, because then people stop looking at it. Also, that question is just about 1 project failing. My question is about all projects, the product and a team that has been doing the same for years and that continuing to do so will eventually lead to failure of whole team and product.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/198767/what-to-do-as-a-dev-when-for-years-their-team-has-lacked-product-innovation-not&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/197650/how-should-i-behave-as-a-developer-in-a-project-thats-headed-for-failure" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17264" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6586" RevisionGUID="bfe2024c-c9e3-4eda-bd02-9c7fa8751282" CreationDate="2014-04-04T17:56:55.147" UserId="1204" Text="As has been previously pointed out, this issue has already been discussed at length, with a resulting consensus that there are two categories of &quot;naming things&quot; questions that might actually be on-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  What is the name of this well-known concept?&#xD;&#xA;2.  Questions about &quot;principles of naming things.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is, however, one remaining category of questions which I feel should always be off-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;What should I name this thing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is not a &quot;guessing game&quot; question; it is **primarily opinion-based.**  There are literally an *infinite* number of such questions; none of them are at all interesting to experts unless they can be answered from a principle-based perspective, couched in a way that could help others improve their naming skills." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17265" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6586" RevisionGUID="72beae66-35fb-49b2-9071-a2cb4fa48b45" CreationDate="2014-04-04T18:03:43.470" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 8 characters in body" Text="As has been previously pointed out, this issue has already been discussed at length, with a resulting consensus that there are two categories of &quot;naming things&quot; questions that might actually be on-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  What is the name of this well-known concept?&#xD;&#xA;2.  Questions about &quot;principles of naming things.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is, however, one remaining category of questions which I feel should always be off-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;What should I name this thing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is not a &quot;guessing game&quot; question; it is **primarily opinion-based.**  There are literally an *infinite* number of such questions; none of them are at all interesting to experts unless they can be answered from a principle-based perspective, in a way that could help others improve their naming skills." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17266" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6582" RevisionGUID="5792aead-8fc9-4fab-a434-baddf45aa8c4" CreationDate="2014-04-04T20:06:21.817" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/452175361934389248" />
  <row Id="17267" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6587" RevisionGUID="6bb16958-3d00-42e0-99f0-fff4affe8401" CreationDate="2014-04-05T01:38:35.587" UserId="78905" Text="I have noticed over the last few days that the number of flags remaining has been increasing. When I flag a question, it appears that I start at 13 now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what would cause my number of flags to go up?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17268" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6587" RevisionGUID="6bb16958-3d00-42e0-99f0-fff4affe8401" CreationDate="2014-04-05T01:38:35.587" UserId="78905" Text="Why would the number of flags go up?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17269" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6587" RevisionGUID="6bb16958-3d00-42e0-99f0-fff4affe8401" CreationDate="2014-04-05T01:38:35.587" UserId="78905" Text="|support|bug|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17270" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6588" RevisionGUID="fc13eb8d-288f-4f6d-9fa7-d82bc9b33e2b" CreationDate="2014-04-05T01:44:40.140" UserId="78905" Text="I guess I should have search all of the meta sites...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It turns out that there is a formula used to increase the flag quantity based on activity. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Recent changes to flagging and limits][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You start with 10 flags per day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Based on your reputation and flagging history, you can end up with as many as 100 per day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Currently, that means you get an extra flag per day for every 2000 reputation points or 10 net helpful flags (helpful-unhelpful).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/185888/on-the-recent-changes-to-flagging-and-limits" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17271" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6566" RevisionGUID="6bdb792b-8abb-4b20-acdf-f66605603fd4" CreationDate="2014-04-05T14:06:20.690" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/452447147867525121" />
  <row Id="17272" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6587" RevisionGUID="02831586-1f2b-4bd5-a7de-8656518f04ef" CreationDate="2014-04-05T19:09:35.663" UserId="78905" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17273" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6587" RevisionGUID="7fe694b4-0be9-49f0-8f0f-3f8f3dd72c2b" CreationDate="2014-04-05T23:46:27.813" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-bydesign|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17278" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6590" RevisionGUID="a8c8d949-6652-4e76-b45b-865358e621df" CreationDate="2014-04-08T16:20:22.920" UserId="1204" Text="I am a moderator on Stack Overflow. I got tired of getting into extended conversations with people who read the phrase &quot;practical, answerable problems that are unique to software development&quot; as tacit permission to ask their off-topic questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were also specific complaints that things like &quot;requests for library recommendations&quot; are not specifically called out in the Help Center as closeable offenses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I added the following section to the Help Center/On Topic article there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;b&gt;Some questions are still off-topic, even if they fit into one of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the categories listed above:&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 5. Questions that *lack sufficient information to diagnose the problem.* Describe your problem in more detail or include a [minimal&#xD;&#xA;&gt; example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) in the question itself.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 5. Questions about *a problem that can no longer be reproduced or that was caused a simple typographical error*. While similar questions may&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be on-topic here, these are often resolved in a manner unlikely to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; help future readers. This can often be avoided by identifying and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closely inspecting the [shortest program necessary to reproduce the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3.  Questions asking for code must *demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved.* Include attempted&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solutions, why they didn't work, and the expected results. See also:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Stack Overflow question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4.  Questions asking for homework help must include a summary of the work you've done so far to solve the problem, and a description of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; difficulty you are having solving it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 5. Questions asking us to *recommend or find a tool, library or favorite off-site resource* are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, [describe the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/139399/) and what has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1.  Questions about *general computing hardware and software* are off-topic for Stack Overflow unless they directly involve tools used&#xD;&#xA;&gt; primarily for programming. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4. Questions on *professional server, networking, or related infrastructure administration* are off-topic for Stack Overflow unless&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they directly involve programming or programming tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose that we do something similar for the Help Center/On-Topic article here on Programmers, but using the close reasons that we have here (not the ones on Stack Overflow).  This page is editable by moderators, so we don't need SE permission.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I floated the idea to one of our mods, and he said that we need some community consensus before we do this.  So that's what I'm asking for.  I hope to avoid conversations like [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/235272/1204), and maybe even have a few people simply refrain from posting such questions here and wasting everyone's time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17279" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6590" RevisionGUID="a8c8d949-6652-4e76-b45b-865358e621df" CreationDate="2014-04-08T16:20:22.920" UserId="1204" Text="Should the Close Reasons be added to the Help Center/On-Topic article?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17280" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6590" RevisionGUID="a8c8d949-6652-4e76-b45b-865358e621df" CreationDate="2014-04-08T16:20:22.920" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17281" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="0cc994f7-98b0-4250-a0cb-9614206ce24a" CreationDate="2014-04-08T16:29:09.267" UserId="4" Text="What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;---------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about...&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;design patterns&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;developer testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;development methodologies&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;freelancing and business concerns&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;quality assurance&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;software architecture&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;software engineering&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;software licensing&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and it is &lt;strong&gt;not about&lt;/strong&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;implementation issues or programming tools (ask on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;which technology is better&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what project you should do next,&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what book you should read next,&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&quot;&gt;career advice&lt;/a&gt;, salary or compensation,&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;personal lifestyle, including relationships, and non-programming activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot; alt=&quot;proper scope for question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What about subjective questions?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. &lt;strong&gt;Please keep it professional at all times&lt;/strong&gt;. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All subjective questions are expected to be &lt;em&gt;constructive&lt;/em&gt;. How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tend to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over opinions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;. Please see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot;&gt;Good Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; blog posts for more details and examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;/search&quot;&gt;look around&lt;/a&gt; to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to &lt;a href=&quot;/helpcenter/self-answer&quot;&gt;ask and answer your own question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;another Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;commit to&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&quot;&gt;propose&lt;/a&gt; a new site at &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Area51&lt;/a&gt;, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17282" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="b7c33b3a-7f4a-4959-ba98-648fff544d1d" CreationDate="2014-04-08T16:29:09.267" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="17283" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="55847c72-fd73-40e5-acc2-0201e81242ce" CreationDate="2014-04-08T16:37:55.613" UserId="1204" Comment="added 103 characters in body" Text="What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;---------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;design patterns&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;developer testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;development methodologies&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;freelancing and business concerns&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;quality assurance&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;software architecture&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;software engineering&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;software licensing&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;and it is not about...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;implementation issues or programming tools (ask on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;which technology is better&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what project you should do next,&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what book you should read next,&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;where to find a software library, tool or other resource&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a  product recommendation&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&quot;&gt;career advice&lt;/a&gt;, salary or compensation,&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;personal lifestyle, including relationships, and non-programming activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot; alt=&quot;proper scope for question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What about subjective questions?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. &lt;strong&gt;Please keep it professional at all times&lt;/strong&gt;. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All subjective questions are expected to be &lt;em&gt;constructive&lt;/em&gt;. How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tend to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over opinions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;. Please see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot;&gt;Good Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; blog posts for more details and examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;/search&quot;&gt;look around&lt;/a&gt; to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to &lt;a href=&quot;/helpcenter/self-answer&quot;&gt;ask and answer your own question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;another Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;commit to&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&quot;&gt;propose&lt;/a&gt; a new site at &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Area51&lt;/a&gt;, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17284" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="2bbc56f4-efd4-44b3-9f11-3c3167d88f69" CreationDate="2014-04-08T16:48:30.640" UserId="1204" Comment="added 453 characters in body" Text="This is the original Help Center page, with some minor changes.  It turns out that most of the Off-Topic subjects are already covered here, so I just added a couple of new ones to cover the missing cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA; - a product or service recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; patterns&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;developer testing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;freelancing and business concerns&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;quality assurance&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software architecture&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; engineering&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software licensing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h3&gt;and it is not about...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;implementation issues or programming tools (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what project you should do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what book you should read next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;where to find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a software library, tool or other resource&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a  product&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or service recommendation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&quot;&gt;career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice&lt;/a&gt;, salary or compensation,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;personal lifestyle,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including relationships, and non-programming activities&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot; alt=&quot;proper scope for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h2&gt;What about subjective questions?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. &lt;strong&gt;Please keep it professional at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; all times&lt;/strong&gt;. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not appropriate here, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;All subjective questions are expected to be &lt;em&gt;constructive&lt;/em&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;tend&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinions.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; references.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;. Please see the &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot;&gt;Good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; blog posts for more details and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;/search&quot;&gt;look around&lt;/a&gt; to see if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been asked before. It’s also OK to &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;/helpcenter/self-answer&quot;&gt;ask and answer your own&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange, it may be on topic for &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;another Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;commit to&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&quot;&gt;propose&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a new site at &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Area51&lt;/a&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically&#xD;&#xA;&gt; created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17285" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6590" RevisionGUID="f100b632-dc64-4853-970e-9fb46d01fae7" CreationDate="2014-04-09T08:12:00.973" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/453807529437696000" />
  <row Id="17286" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6559" RevisionGUID="8e3b802c-91b1-4dd3-bc0e-98f60021fec8" CreationDate="2014-04-09T10:55:52.393" UserId="31260" Comment="ask a better question += and avoid [downvotes](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6484/31260)" Text="You've probably seen it [somewhere](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/136609/repository-of-useful-pro-forma-comments)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sharing your research helps everyone. Tell us what you've tried and why &#xD;&#xA;it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time &#xD;&#xA;to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, &#xD;&#xA;and most of all it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer! &#xD;&#xA;Also see [how to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does this mean? Why do people keep asking for research? Knowing this, how can I ask a better question and avoid [downvotes](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6484/31260)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17287" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="b87c2759-58fc-420a-9d28-e0ee143e6d56" CreationDate="2014-04-09T16:40:39.630" UserId="9113" Comment="link to original help page added" Text="This is [the original Help Center][1] page, with some minor changes.  It turns out that most of the Off-Topic subjects are already covered here, so I just added a couple of new ones to cover the missing cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA; - a product or service recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; patterns&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;developer testing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;freelancing and business concerns&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;quality assurance&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software architecture&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; engineering&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software licensing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h3&gt;and it is not about...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;implementation issues or programming tools (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what project you should do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what book you should read next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;where to find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a software library, tool or other resource&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a  product&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or service recommendation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&quot;&gt;career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice&lt;/a&gt;, salary or compensation,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;personal lifestyle,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including relationships, and non-programming activities&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot; alt=&quot;proper scope for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h2&gt;What about subjective questions?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. &lt;strong&gt;Please keep it professional at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; all times&lt;/strong&gt;. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not appropriate here, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;All subjective questions are expected to be &lt;em&gt;constructive&lt;/em&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;tend&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinions.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; references.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;. Please see the &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot;&gt;Good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; blog posts for more details and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;/search&quot;&gt;look around&lt;/a&gt; to see if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been asked before. It’s also OK to &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;/helpcenter/self-answer&quot;&gt;ask and answer your own&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange, it may be on topic for &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;another Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;commit to&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&quot;&gt;propose&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a new site at &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Area51&lt;/a&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically&#xD;&#xA;&gt; created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17288" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="e1ed8a2e-cb91-4885-9053-60992e8995d1" CreationDate="2014-04-09T21:14:11.817" UserId="1204" Comment="added 41 characters in body" Text="This is [the original Help Center][1] page, with some minor changes.  It turns out that most of the Off-Topic subjects are already covered here, so I just added a couple of new ones to cover the missing cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA; - a product or service recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE:** Removed &quot;Freelancing and Business Concerns&quot; from the on-topic list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; patterns&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;developer testing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;quality assurance&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software architecture&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; engineering&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software licensing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h3&gt;and it is not about...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;implementation issues or programming tools (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what project you should do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what book you should read next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;where to find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a software library, tool or other resource&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a  product&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or service recommendation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&quot;&gt;career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice&lt;/a&gt;, salary or compensation,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;personal lifestyle,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including relationships, and non-programming activities&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot; alt=&quot;proper scope for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h2&gt;What about subjective questions?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. &lt;strong&gt;Please keep it professional at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; all times&lt;/strong&gt;. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not appropriate here, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;All subjective questions are expected to be &lt;em&gt;constructive&lt;/em&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;tend&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinions.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; references.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;. Please see the &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot;&gt;Good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; blog posts for more details and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;/search&quot;&gt;look around&lt;/a&gt; to see if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been asked before. It’s also OK to &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;/helpcenter/self-answer&quot;&gt;ask and answer your own&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange, it may be on topic for &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;another Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;commit to&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&quot;&gt;propose&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a new site at &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Area51&lt;/a&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically&#xD;&#xA;&gt; created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17289" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="09cbeceb-ccf5-414e-a533-10f367bc5892" CreationDate="2014-04-09T21:44:10.133" UserId="4" Comment="added 158 characters in body" Text="This is [the original Help Center][1] page, with some minor changes.  It turns out that most of the Off-Topic subjects are already covered here, so I just added a couple of new ones to cover the missing cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA; - a product or service recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE:** Removed &quot;Freelancing and Business Concerns&quot; from the on-topic list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE 2** Removed &quot;software engineering&quot; in favor of more specific topics, many of which were already included.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;software requirements&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software architecture and design&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies, processes, and methods&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software engineering management and economics&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;quality assurance and testing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software licensing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h3&gt;and it is not about...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;implementation issues or programming tools (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what project you should do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what book you should read next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;where to find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a software library, tool or other resource&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a  product&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or service recommendation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&quot;&gt;career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice&lt;/a&gt;, salary or compensation,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;personal lifestyle,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including relationships, and non-programming activities&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot; alt=&quot;proper scope for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h2&gt;What about subjective questions?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. &lt;strong&gt;Please keep it professional at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; all times&lt;/strong&gt;. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not appropriate here, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;All subjective questions are expected to be &lt;em&gt;constructive&lt;/em&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;tend&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinions.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; references.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;. Please see the &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot;&gt;Good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; blog posts for more details and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;/search&quot;&gt;look around&lt;/a&gt; to see if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been asked before. It’s also OK to &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;/helpcenter/self-answer&quot;&gt;ask and answer your own&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange, it may be on topic for &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;another Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;commit to&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&quot;&gt;propose&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a new site at &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Area51&lt;/a&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically&#xD;&#xA;&gt; created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17290" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="1c7424b1-f21e-4d5c-8f13-da5619cba33a" CreationDate="2014-04-09T21:50:33.423" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 14 characters in body" Text="This is [the original Help Center][1] page, with some minor changes.  It turns out that most of the Off-Topic subjects are already covered here, so I just added a couple of new ones to cover the missing cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA; - a product or service recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE:** Removed &quot;Freelancing and Business Concerns&quot; from the on-topic list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE 2** Removed &quot;software engineering&quot; in favor of more specific topics, many of which were already included.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;software requirements&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software architecture and design&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies, processes, and methods&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software engineering management&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;quality assurance and testing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software licensing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h3&gt;and it is not about...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;implementation issues or programming tools (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what project you should do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what book you should read next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;where to find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a software library, tool or other resource&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a  product&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or service recommendation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&quot;&gt;career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice&lt;/a&gt;, salary or compensation,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;personal lifestyle,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including relationships, and non-programming activities&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot; alt=&quot;proper scope for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h2&gt;What about subjective questions?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. &lt;strong&gt;Please keep it professional at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; all times&lt;/strong&gt;. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not appropriate here, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;All subjective questions are expected to be &lt;em&gt;constructive&lt;/em&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;tend&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinions.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; references.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;. Please see the &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot;&gt;Good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; blog posts for more details and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;/search&quot;&gt;look around&lt;/a&gt; to see if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been asked before. It’s also OK to &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;/helpcenter/self-answer&quot;&gt;ask and answer your own&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange, it may be on topic for &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;another Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;commit to&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&quot;&gt;propose&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a new site at &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Area51&lt;/a&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically&#xD;&#xA;&gt; created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17291" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="3af1bd5e-e839-433f-9a08-a415221ce621" CreationDate="2014-04-09T21:57:09.403" UserId="1204" Comment="added 152 characters in body" Text="This is [the original Help Center][1] page, with some minor changes.  It turns out that most of the Off-Topic subjects are already covered here, so I just added a couple of new ones to cover the missing cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA; - a product or service recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE:** Removed &quot;Freelancing and Business Concerns&quot; from the on-topic list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE 2** Removed &quot;software engineering&quot; in favor of more specific topics, many of which were already included.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;software requirements&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software architecture and design&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies, processes, and methods&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software engineering management&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;quality assurance and testing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software licensing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h3&gt;and it is not about...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;coding tools, such as compilers and IDE's (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what project you should do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what book you should read next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;where to find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a software library, tool or other resource&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a  product&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or service recommendation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&quot;&gt;career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice&lt;/a&gt;, salary or compensation,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;personal lifestyle,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including relationships, and non-programming activities&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot; alt=&quot;proper scope for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h2&gt;What about subjective questions?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. &lt;strong&gt;Please keep it professional at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; all times&lt;/strong&gt;. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not appropriate here, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;All subjective questions are expected to be &lt;em&gt;constructive&lt;/em&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;tend&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinions.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; references.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;. Please see the &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot;&gt;Good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; blog posts for more details and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;/search&quot;&gt;look around&lt;/a&gt; to see if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been asked before. It’s also OK to &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;/helpcenter/self-answer&quot;&gt;ask and answer your own&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange, it may be on topic for &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;another Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;commit to&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&quot;&gt;propose&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a new site at &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Area51&lt;/a&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically&#xD;&#xA;&gt; created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17292" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="f3c00de2-224f-4767-b9fc-fb9b7fdbd30a" CreationDate="2014-04-09T22:00:19.683" UserId="4" Comment="added 11 characters in body" Text="This is [the original Help Center][1] page, with some minor changes.  It turns out that most of the Off-Topic subjects are already covered here, so I just added a couple of new ones to cover the missing cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA; - a product or service recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE:** Removed &quot;Freelancing and Business Concerns&quot; from the on-topic list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE 2** Removed &quot;software engineering&quot; in favor of more specific topics, many of which were already included.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;software requirements&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software architecture and design&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies, processes, and methods&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software engineering management&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;quality assurance and testing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software licensing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h3&gt;and it is not about...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what project you should do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what book you should read next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;where to find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a software library, tool or other resource&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a  product&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or service recommendation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&quot;&gt;career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice&lt;/a&gt;, salary or compensation,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;personal lifestyle,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including relationships, and non-programming activities&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot; alt=&quot;proper scope for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h2&gt;What about subjective questions?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. &lt;strong&gt;Please keep it professional at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; all times&lt;/strong&gt;. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not appropriate here, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;All subjective questions are expected to be &lt;em&gt;constructive&lt;/em&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;tend&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinions.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; references.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;. Please see the &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot;&gt;Good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; blog posts for more details and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;/search&quot;&gt;look around&lt;/a&gt; to see if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been asked before. It’s also OK to &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;/helpcenter/self-answer&quot;&gt;ask and answer your own&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange, it may be on topic for &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;another Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;commit to&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&quot;&gt;propose&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a new site at &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Area51&lt;/a&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically&#xD;&#xA;&gt; created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17293" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="09108403-c80f-4053-9ef6-04f8b4edacc2" CreationDate="2014-04-09T22:04:08.320" UserId="1204" Comment="added 44 characters in body" Text="This is [the original Help Center][1] page, with some minor changes.  It turns out that most of the Off-Topic subjects are already covered here, so I just added a couple of new ones to cover the missing cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA; - a product or service recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Additional updates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Removed &quot;Freelancing and Business Concerns&quot; from the on-topic list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Removed &quot;software engineering&quot; in favor of more specific topics, many of which were already included.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Clarified &quot;Programming Tools.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;software requirements&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software architecture and design&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies, processes, and methods&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software engineering management&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;quality assurance and testing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software licensing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h3&gt;and it is not about...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what project you should do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what book you should read next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;where to find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a software library, tool or other resource&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a  product&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or service recommendation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&quot;&gt;career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice&lt;/a&gt;, salary or compensation,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;personal lifestyle,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including relationships, and non-programming activities&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot; alt=&quot;proper scope for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h2&gt;What about subjective questions?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. &lt;strong&gt;Please keep it professional at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; all times&lt;/strong&gt;. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not appropriate here, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;All subjective questions are expected to be &lt;em&gt;constructive&lt;/em&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;tend&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinions.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; references.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;. Please see the &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot;&gt;Good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; blog posts for more details and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;/search&quot;&gt;look around&lt;/a&gt; to see if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been asked before. It’s also OK to &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;/helpcenter/self-answer&quot;&gt;ask and answer your own&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange, it may be on topic for &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;another Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;commit to&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&quot;&gt;propose&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a new site at &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Area51&lt;/a&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically&#xD;&#xA;&gt; created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17294" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="8d416ca8-8afc-48ff-b55a-ec675303d3d1" CreationDate="2014-04-09T22:09:32.270" UserId="1204" Comment="added 44 characters in body" Text="This is [the original Help Center][1] page, with some minor changes.  It turns out that most of the Off-Topic subjects are already covered here, so I just added a couple of new ones to cover the missing cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA; - a product or service recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Additional updates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Removed &quot;Freelancing and Business Concerns&quot; from the on-topic list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Removed &quot;software engineering&quot; in favor of more specific topics, many of which were already included.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Clarified &quot;Programming Tools.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  Added &quot;Legal Assistance&quot; to &quot;not about.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;software requirements&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software architecture and design&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies, processes, and methods&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software engineering management&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;quality assurance and testing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software licensing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h3&gt;and it is not about...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what project you should do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what book you should read next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;where to find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a software library, tool or other resource&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a  product&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or service recommendation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&quot;&gt;career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice&lt;/a&gt;, salary or compensation,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;personal lifestyle,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including relationships, and non-programming activities&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;Legal assistance&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot; alt=&quot;proper scope for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h2&gt;What about subjective questions?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. &lt;strong&gt;Please keep it professional at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; all times&lt;/strong&gt;. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not appropriate here, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;All subjective questions are expected to be &lt;em&gt;constructive&lt;/em&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;tend&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinions.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; references.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;. Please see the &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot;&gt;Good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; blog posts for more details and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;/search&quot;&gt;look around&lt;/a&gt; to see if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been asked before. It’s also OK to &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;/helpcenter/self-answer&quot;&gt;ask and answer your own&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange, it may be on topic for &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;another Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;commit to&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&quot;&gt;propose&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a new site at &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Area51&lt;/a&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically&#xD;&#xA;&gt; created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17295" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6588" RevisionGUID="d33a472e-305e-4ffb-9922-e70619f67b93" CreationDate="2014-04-10T07:51:56.520" UserId="78905" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="I guess I should have searched all of the meta sites...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It turns out that there is a formula used to increase the flag quantity based on activity. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Recent changes to flagging and limits][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You start with 10 flags per day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Based on your reputation and flagging history, you can end up with as many as 100 per day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Currently, that means you get an extra flag per day for every 2000 reputation points or 10 net helpful flags (helpful-unhelpful).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/185888/on-the-recent-changes-to-flagging-and-limits" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17296" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="bb9e397f-578a-4d40-b920-82f324e74b9c" CreationDate="2014-04-10T09:32:20.473" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 10 characters in body" Text="This is [the original Help Center][1] page, with some minor changes.  It turns out that most of the Off-Topic subjects are already covered here, so I just added a couple of new ones to cover the missing cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA; - a product or service recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Additional updates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Removed &quot;Freelancing and Business Concerns&quot; from the on-topic list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Removed &quot;software engineering&quot; in favor of more specific topics, many of which were already included.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Clarified &quot;Programming Tools.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  Added &quot;Legal Assistance&quot; to &quot;not about.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;software requirements&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software architecture and design&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies and processes&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software engineering management&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;quality assurance and testing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software licensing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h3&gt;and it is not about...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what project you should do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what book you should read next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;where to find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a software library, tool or other resource&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a  product&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or service recommendation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&quot;&gt;career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice&lt;/a&gt;, salary or compensation,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;personal lifestyle,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including relationships, and non-programming activities&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;Legal assistance&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot; alt=&quot;proper scope for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h2&gt;What about subjective questions?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. &lt;strong&gt;Please keep it professional at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; all times&lt;/strong&gt;. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not appropriate here, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;All subjective questions are expected to be &lt;em&gt;constructive&lt;/em&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;tend&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinions.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; references.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;. Please see the &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot;&gt;Good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; blog posts for more details and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;/search&quot;&gt;look around&lt;/a&gt; to see if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been asked before. It’s also OK to &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;/helpcenter/self-answer&quot;&gt;ask and answer your own&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange, it may be on topic for &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;another Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;commit to&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&quot;&gt;propose&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a new site at &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Area51&lt;/a&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically&#xD;&#xA;&gt; created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17297" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="4ccde336-28dd-4749-bae3-eb1374025e4c" CreationDate="2014-04-10T11:44:56.013" UserId="4" Comment="added 174 characters in body" Text="This is [the original Help Center][1] page, with some minor changes.  It turns out that most of the Off-Topic subjects are already covered here, so I just added a couple of new ones to cover the missing cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA; - a product or service recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Additional updates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Removed &quot;Freelancing and Business Concerns&quot; from the on-topic list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Removed &quot;software engineering&quot; in favor of more specific topics, many of which were already included.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Clarified &quot;Programming Tools.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  Added &quot;Legal Assistance&quot; to &quot;not about.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. Changed &quot;resume help&quot; to &quot;job hunting&quot; at the request of The Workplace mods to prevent people with resume critique questions from thinking they are on-topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;software requirements&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software architecture and design&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies and processes&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software engineering management&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;quality assurance and testing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software licensing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h3&gt;and it is not about...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead),&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what project you should do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what book you should read next,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;where to find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a software library, tool or other resource&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a  product&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or service recommendation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&quot;&gt;career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice&lt;/a&gt;, salary or compensation,&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;personal lifestyle,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including relationships, and non-programming activities&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;Legal assistance&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot; alt=&quot;proper scope for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h2&gt;What about subjective questions?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. &lt;strong&gt;Please keep it professional at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; all times&lt;/strong&gt;. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not appropriate here, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;All subjective questions are expected to be &lt;em&gt;constructive&lt;/em&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;tend&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinions.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; references.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;. Please see the &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot;&gt;Good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; blog posts for more details and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;/search&quot;&gt;look around&lt;/a&gt; to see if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been asked before. It’s also OK to &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;/helpcenter/self-answer&quot;&gt;ask and answer your own&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange, it may be on topic for &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;another Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;commit to&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&quot;&gt;propose&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a new site at &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Area51&lt;/a&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically&#xD;&#xA;&gt; created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17298" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="45463252-e69a-4123-ae67-8c52805f36da" CreationDate="2014-04-10T15:24:58.487" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Expand on polling" Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long for the Q&amp;A format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar to the recommend an XYZ close reason, some questions are polling for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the choice as to which answer is the one to accept is a &quot;which one I like best,&quot; the question may be one it is polling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While some other Stack Exchanges allow it, Programmers.SE frowns upon 'big list' type questions that seem to want to compile a list of things.  Questions that fall into this category typically have the form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What are all the problems I will encounter with XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * What are the pros and cons of XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * How can XYZ be used?&#xD;&#xA; * Any ideas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue with questions like these is that they don't pose a problem that can be solved by an answer.  There is no definitive *right* answer that someone can go to, see the accepted answer and say &quot;yep, thats the answer&quot; but rather any given (or none) answer might be appropriate for the person reading the question.  As such, these questions are closed as 'too broad' as they fall under the 'has too many possible answers.'&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help Center &gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as too broad?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17299" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="73e90767-3c19-49cd-81e2-a878870cddd6" CreationDate="2014-04-10T15:52:59.640" UserId="31260" Comment="'big list' type questions += http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;see also: list-questions tag wiki at MSO&quot;" Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long for the Q&amp;A format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar to the recommend an XYZ close reason, some questions are polling for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the choice as to which answer is the one to accept is a &quot;which one I like best,&quot; the question may be one it is polling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While some other Stack Exchanges allow it, Programmers.SE frowns upon ['big list' type questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;see also: list-questions tag wiki at MSO&quot;) that seem to want to compile a list of things.  Questions that fall into this category typically have the form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What are all the problems I will encounter with XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * What are the pros and cons of XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * How can XYZ be used?&#xD;&#xA; * Any ideas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue with questions like these is that they don't pose a problem that can be solved by an answer.  There is no definitive *right* answer that someone can go to, see the accepted answer and say &quot;yep, thats the answer&quot; but rather any given (or none) answer might be appropriate for the person reading the question.  As such, these questions are closed as 'too broad' as they fall under the 'has too many possible answers.'&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help Center &gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as too broad?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17300" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6592" RevisionGUID="a9c86774-26ff-44b8-8cd7-0ea5facd3500" CreationDate="2014-04-11T07:27:26.583" UserId="31260" Text="Recent efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given long known &quot;tradition&quot; of attempts to circumvent such bans by posting at inappropriate sites I wonder how much impact could this have on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand this, I would like to find out how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically I am trying to figure whether it's something that can be dealt with in our regular ways, or it is worth looking for a dedicated approach to address (like, say, system triggering automated flag for mod attention when post from such a user gets close vote / flag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Let's burn down the close queue!](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/223497/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Block migration if user is suspended/question-blocked at destination](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/102293/block-migration-if-user-is-suspended-question-blocked-at-destination)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17301" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6592" RevisionGUID="a9c86774-26ff-44b8-8cd7-0ea5facd3500" CreationDate="2014-04-11T07:27:26.583" UserId="31260" Text="How many questions do we get from users recently banned at SO, how many of these are closed / deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17302" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6592" RevisionGUID="a9c86774-26ff-44b8-8cd7-0ea5facd3500" CreationDate="2014-04-11T07:27:26.583" UserId="31260" Text="|support|closed-questions|post-ban|user-accounts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17305" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6593" RevisionGUID="7b292ebb-6e6e-4430-9db7-bb78122f1961" CreationDate="2014-04-12T13:24:03.073" UserId="14529" Text="Is this question actually answerable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The specific site scope is conceptual questions in software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The general policy of Stack Overflow is to disallow any quesion that is primarily opinion-based. That commonly gets interpreted as disallowing [any question][1] that does not have a single, unambiguously correct answer. Sometimes that policy goes wrong and rejects the equivalent of '[what is 2 + 2][2]'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking on the front page, literally every question is either [subjective][3], [trivial][4] or a [matter of definition][5]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously, the set of conceptual question that have unambiguous, uncontroversial but nevertheless non-tautological answers is not going to be large. But is it actually empty, or merely very small?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I would be interested if anyone could find an example of a question that clearly both should and would not be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/235504/branch-per-feature-what-are-the-actual-benefits-and-risks/235557#235557&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/235590/which-automated-analysis-tools-can-find-the-heartbleed-bug/235594#235594&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/231867/which-classes-should-be-autowired-by-spring-when-to-use-dependency-injection&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/235659/is-there-a-difference-between-writing-passing-value-with-or-without-float-f-su&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/235643/whats-the-difference-between-model-for-test-and-model-for-development" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17306" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6594" RevisionGUID="aa5beabb-d9b2-4f96-a2cd-ac22c47bdc7a" CreationDate="2014-04-12T19:36:03.660" UserId="10445" Text="I noticed that [this question, &quot;Teaching kids to program - how to teach syntax?&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/160048/teaching-kids-to-program-how-to-teach-syntax) was closed a few days ago on the the grounds: &quot;Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on Programmers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I always thought that the traditional understanding of &quot;education advice&quot; were questions such as &quot;should I go to university and study computer science&quot;, i.e.. someone asking for advice on how or whether to proceed with his/her education. This is further reflected in the immediately following sentence in the close reason: &quot;They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my mind, the question is clearly not only important to the asker because it's not tied to his specific situation. eaching kids how to program is becoming ever more popular and having a good way to teach something does not only apply to kids. Shouldn't we, as programmers, all care how we teach our craft?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also looking at the the [official scope](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) of p.se, the question not qualify for any bullet point of the two &quot;about&quot; lists.&#xD;&#xA;The question also seems to fit pretty well into the &quot;constructive subjective questions&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at [tag:teaching], I can see that there are closed and open teaching questions, among the open being http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25052/in-plain-english-what-is-recursion and http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17898/whats-a-nice-explanation-for-pointers &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, this seems inconsistent and I'm wondering on how to handle such questions in the future." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17307" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6594" RevisionGUID="aa5beabb-d9b2-4f96-a2cd-ac22c47bdc7a" CreationDate="2014-04-12T19:36:03.660" UserId="10445" Text="Are now all questions about teaching programming to be considered off topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17308" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6594" RevisionGUID="aa5beabb-d9b2-4f96-a2cd-ac22c47bdc7a" CreationDate="2014-04-12T19:36:03.660" UserId="10445" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17309" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6595" RevisionGUID="e175759e-4a70-4e89-8da0-dfa9dc74d30d" CreationDate="2014-04-12T19:57:38.520" UserId="4" Text="I think the questions that you have identified fall into two categories - those about explaining things to people we might encounter while working (non-technical managers, customers, developers who have not been exposed to a concept before) and teaching to people who can be perceived as students. I think these are very different types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm entirely convinced that questions about teaching people who have no background in software development how to develop software is off-topic. The Help Center describes Programmers as &quot;a site **for professional programmers** who are interested in getting expert **answers on conceptual questions about software development**&quot; (emphasis mine). This is not a community of teachers - generally we don't have expertise in teaching, understanding how people learn, how to effectively deliver content, developing course content, and other things that a professional educator would know. I wouldn't be surprised if some of our users have experience in teaching, mentoring, or related topics, but it's not at the core of our community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as explaining technical content in plain English to people who have experience in the subject matter but not the particular content or to non-technical people are things that professionals have to do. I know that I've had to explain a bug and why it wasn't found in testing to customers before, and it's hard. I'm not ready to say that these are or should be on-topic, but it's easier to justify them as something that we, as a community, are likely to have experience in. I'm not going to say that they are on-topic - it's easily something that can be discussed. But given the current scope, it seems to be more likely to be on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, that's one of the most important criteria to know if a question is or is not on-topic. If it's not something that a typical professional working in software development has to deal with, it's likely to be off-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17314" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6597" RevisionGUID="2b898446-a4be-4c5a-a0f7-83a0855d217f" CreationDate="2014-04-13T11:52:16.160" UserId="31260" Text="Per my understanding, for a while there was a sort of informal agreement to protect questions that are going to be featured at Ars Technica. Recently [this approach has been challenged](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/protecting-ars &quot;in Whiteboard chat&quot;), so I would like to have a dedicated meta discussion to sort this out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does it make sense to protect such questions as soon as we learn about coming exposure at Ars Technica or it is better to stick with approach designed in 2010 for Stack Overflow and Super User - that is, protect when there is &quot;a lot of drive-by noise answers&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO - Feb '11) [For 15k+ users: Guidelines on Protecting Questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/78764/165773)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Jeff offered more information on [why post protection was implemented and what he expected it to be used for](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/new-protected-question-status/) in his blog.  This was when only moderators had this power, but the same reasoning applies to 15k users who can now protect posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (SE blog - Jun '10) [New Protected Question Status](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/new-protected-question-status/)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **if you see a question that is attracting a lot of drive-by noise answers, please flag it for moderator attention. We’ll turn on protection.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those interested in more details about questions we discuss can find links to them in [this feed](http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/feed/) or in [edits history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/39006/samthebrand?tab=activity) of [SE community evangelist](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6200/can-we-give-the-community-evangelist-something-more-notable-to-make-suggested-ed).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For your convenience, some details of involved questions are provided below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;In below list, _dates_ refer to when question was [bump](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info)ed by edits preparing it for wider exposure, or exposure date when there were no such edits. _Total_ answers include deleted ones. _Low score_ denote answers scored [less that 1/10 of top voted one](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/192046/165773 &quot;for the reasons similar to those discussed here&quot;). _Downvoted_ answers are those having 2 or more downvotes (assuming that single downvote may be random).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Jul 12 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/193859/how-should-you-deal-with-a-popular-project-that-you-no-longer-want-to-maintain)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 10 total, 1 deleted, 4 low score, 1 downvoted  &#xD;&#xA;4K views, no protection, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Jul 19 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/197650/how-should-i-behave-as-a-developer-in-a-project-thats-headed-for-failure)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 22 total, 17 low score, 1 downvoted, 2 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;60K views, May 10 '13 protection, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Jul 27 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/202383/should-we-design-programs-to-randomly-kill-themselves)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 16 total, 11 low score, no downvoted, no deleted  &#xD;&#xA;4K views, no protection, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Aug 2 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/186761/should-junior-programmers-be-involved-as-code-reviewers-in-the-projects-of-senio)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 11 total, 5 low score, 3 downvoted, no deleted  &#xD;&#xA;3K views, Feb 13 '13 protection, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Aug 9 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/195989/is-it-ok-to-split-long-functions-and-methods-into-smaller-ones-even-though-they)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 13 total, 10 low score, 3 downvoted, no deleted  &#xD;&#xA;21K views, dupe-closed May 3 '13, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Aug 16 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/200790/how-easy-is-it-to-hack-javascript-in-a-browser)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 6 total, 3 low score, 1 downvoted, 1 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;5K views, no protection, 2 answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Aug 23 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/202571/solid-principles-and-code-structure)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 10 total, 9 low score, 6 downvoted, 4 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;8K views, Jun 24 '13 protection, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Aug 30 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/197675/is-there-any-way-to-get-faster-at-solving-bugs-ive-just-had-a-warning-from-my)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 17 total, 6 low score, 1 downvoted, no deleted  &#xD;&#xA;19K views, May 16 '13 protection, 2 answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Sep 6 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/203469/if-my-team-has-low-skill-should-i-lower-the-skill-of-my-code)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 14 total, 10 low score, 3 downvoted, 1 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;7K views, Jul 3 '13 protection, 2 answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Sep 14 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/199090/is-it-a-bad-practice-to-modify-code-strictly-for-testing-purposes)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 11 total, 7 low score, no downvoted, no deleted  &#xD;&#xA;5K views, no protection, 2 answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Sep 20 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/198085/is-it-poor-programming-practice-to-pass-parameters-as-objects)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 20 total, 14 low score, 5 downvoted, 2 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;6K views, dupe-closed May 15 '13, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Sep 27 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206793/how-do-you-put-a-price-on-your-source-code)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 7 total, 4 low score, 1 downvoted, 2 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;3K views, no protection, 1 answer posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Oct 4 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/211913/writing-my-problem-solving-approach-on-paper)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 11 total, 8 low score, 2 downvoted, no deleted  &#xD;&#xA;2K views, Sep 19 '13 protection, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Oct 11 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/203684/is-fewer-lines-of-code-always-better)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 26 total, 22 low score, 7 downvoted, no deleted  &#xD;&#xA;6K views, closed Oct 14 '13, 1 answer posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Oct 18 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/207232/are-there-legitimate-reasons-for-returning-exception-objects-instead-of-throwing)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 9 total, 5 low score, 1 downvoted, 2 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;2K views, Aug 5 '13 protection, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Oct 25 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/204904/how-to-make-sprint-planning-fun)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 8 total, 3 low score, 1 downvoted, 1 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;3K views, Oct 28 '13 protection, 1 answer posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Nov 1 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189455/how-can-robots-beat-captchas)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 6 total, 1 low score, no downvoted, no deleted  &#xD;&#xA;9K views, no protection, 1 answer posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Nov 9 '13](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/12058/is-it-ethical-to-read-programming-books-on-the-clock) (migrated to Workplace - can't see deleted answers)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 9 or more total, 5 or more low score, 3 or more downvoted, 0 or more deleted  &#xD;&#xA;17K views, Nov 10 '13 protection, 2 or more answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Nov 15 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/207401/writing-tests-for-existing-code)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 7 total, 3 low score, 1 downvoted, no deleted  &#xD;&#xA;2K views, Aug 6 '13 protection, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Nov 22 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/210346/after-years-of-working-alone-other-developers-will-finally-see-my-buggy-code)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 7 total, 5 low score, no downvoted, no deleted  &#xD;&#xA;2K views, dupe-closed Sep 23 '13, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Nov 29 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119470/differences-between-programming-in-school-vs-programming-in-industry)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 15 total, 9 low score, 1 downvoted, 1 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;4K views, closed Nov 20 '13, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Dec 15 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/205606/strategy-for-keeping-secret-info-such-as-api-keys-out-of-source-control)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 10 total, 6 low score, 2 downvoted, no deleted  &#xD;&#xA;3K views, Dec 9 '13 protection, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Dec 13 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/210668/is-rotating-developers-on-a-project-a-good-or-bad-idea)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 7 total, 7 low score, 2 downvoted, no deleted  &#xD;&#xA;2K views, Dec 14 '13 protection, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Dec 20 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/203471/why-do-most-programming-languages-only-support-returning-a-single-value-from-a-f)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 16 total, 9 low score, 5 downvoted, 2 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;6K views, Dec 20 '13 protection, 5 answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Dec 27 '13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206182/how-does-a-non-technical-manager-add-value-to-team-of-self-motivated-software-de)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 7 total, 3 low score, 2 downvoted, 1 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;4K views, Dec 28 '13 protection, 1 answer posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Jan 3 '14](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206321/how-do-i-deal-with-a-difficult-programmmer-joining-an-open-source-project)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 8 total, no low score, no downvoted, no deleted  &#xD;&#xA;12K views, Jul 28 '13 protection, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Jan 11 '14](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/196022/how-to-reject-a-code-review-that-you-believe-is-unnecessary)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 11 total, 7 low score, 4 downvoted, 4 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;10K views, Jan 11 '14 protection, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Jan 17 '14](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/200545/over-thinking-development)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 11 total, 7 low score, 3 downvoted, 2 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;7K views, Jun 11 '13 protection, 1 answer posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Jan 25 '14](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206558/why-does-the-us-government-disallow-dynamic-languages-for-secure-projects)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 7 total, 2 low score, 3 downvoted, 1 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;7K views, Jan 25 '14 protection, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Jan 31 '14](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/198783/why-is-it-a-good-idea-for-lower-application-layers-not-to-be-aware-of-higher)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 14 total, 12 low score, 1 downvoted, 1 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;5K views, Jan 31 '14 protection, 1 answer posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Feb 7 '14](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/198652/what-to-do-when-you-are-faced-with-programming-task-that-you-have-never-done)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 6 total, 1 low score, no downvoted, 1 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;4K views, Feb 7'14 protection, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Feb 15 '14](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6395/how-do-you-dive-into-large-code-bases)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 31 total, 21 low score, no downvoted, no deleted  &#xD;&#xA;14K views, Feb 15 '14 protection, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Feb 23 '14](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/228093/good-idea-to-put-bug-numbers-in-a-comment-in-the-beginning-of-the-source-file)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 16 total, 11 low score, no downvoted, no deleted  &#xD;&#xA;5K views, closed Feb 24 '14, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Feb 28 '14](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/226440/is-it-okay-to-make-coding-style-changes-on-an-open-source-project-that-doesnt-f)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 12 total, 7 low score, no downvoted, 1 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;4K views, Feb 28 '14 protection, 2 answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Mar 7 '14](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/220296/how-necessary-is-it-to-follow-defensive-programming-practices-for-code-that-will)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 7 total, 3 low score, 1 downvoted, 1 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;3K views, Mar 7 '14 protection, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Mar 14 '14](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46434/how-can-software-be-protected-from-piracy)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 23 total, 14 low score, 5 downvoted, 6 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;13K views, Aug 12 '12 protection, 2 answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Mar 21 '14](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213898/is-it-reasonable-to-insist-on-reproducing-every-defect-before-diagnosing-and-fix)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 14 total, 8 low score, 1 downvoted, no deleted  &#xD;&#xA;2K views, Oct 10 '13 protection, 1 answer posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Mar 28 '14](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213708/overcoming-slow-problem-solving-due-to-increased-knowledge-of-what-might-go-wron)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 24 total, 19 low score, 4 downvoted, 1 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;14K views, Mar 28 '14 protection, 2 answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Apr 4 '14](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190096/can-commented-out-code-be-valuable-documentation)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 15 total, 10 low score, 5 downvoted, 2 deleted  &#xD;&#xA;7K views, Mar 11 '13 protection, no answers posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Apr 11 '14](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/226002/why-should-passwords-be-encrypted-if-they-are-being-stored-in-a-secure-database)  &#xD;&#xA;answers: 15 total, 11 low score, 4 downvoted, no deleted  &#xD;&#xA;12K views, Apr 12 '14 protection, 1 answer posted after exposure bump&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;PS looking at amounts of _low score_ answers in above list make me feel that questions picked for Ars Technica are typically already eligible for protection: &quot;a lot of drive-by noise answers&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17315" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6597" RevisionGUID="2b898446-a4be-4c5a-a0f7-83a0855d217f" CreationDate="2014-04-13T11:52:16.160" UserId="31260" Text="Questions featured at Ars Technica" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17316" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6597" RevisionGUID="2b898446-a4be-4c5a-a0f7-83a0855d217f" CreationDate="2014-04-13T11:52:16.160" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17317" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6597" RevisionGUID="49afd816-b4dc-40cc-827e-4ded959ac33f" CreationDate="2014-04-13T12:26:58.320" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="Per my understanding, for a while there was a sort of informal agreement to protect questions that are going to be featured at Ars Technica. Recently [this approach has been challenged](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/protecting-ars &quot;in Whiteboard chat&quot;), so I would like to have a dedicated meta discussion to sort this out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does it make sense to protect such questions as soon as we learn about coming exposure at Ars Technica or it is better to stick with approach designed in 2010 for Stack Overflow and Super User - that is, protect when there is &quot;a lot of drive-by noise answers&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO - Feb '11) [For 15k+ users: Guidelines on Protecting Questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/78764/165773)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Jeff offered more information on [why post protection was implemented and what he expected it to be used for](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/new-protected-question-status/) in his blog.  This was when only moderators had this power, but the same reasoning applies to 15k users who can now protect posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (SE blog - Jun '10) [New Protected Question Status](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/new-protected-question-status/)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **if you see a question that is attracting a lot of drive-by noise answers, please flag it for moderator attention. We’ll turn on protection.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those interested in more details about questions we discuss can find links to them in [this feed](http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/feed/) or in [edits history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/39006/samthebrand?tab=activity) of [SE community evangelist](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6200/can-we-give-the-community-evangelist-something-more-notable-to-make-suggested-ed). Some details of 40 questions featured so far are provided [in the 1st revision of this question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/6597/1 &quot;find these under 'For your convenience...'&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17318" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6598" RevisionGUID="6a412a46-1aad-4411-8678-e39c8cd6289e" CreationDate="2014-04-13T16:25:10.750" UserId="63" Text="[Your own list illustrates how pointless](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/6597/1) this sort of proactive activity is: in most cases, few or no new answers were posted *regardless* of whether the questions were protected. Indeed, the most-answered question of the lot was immediately protected. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not the raw *traffic* that creates the problem. It's traffic coupled with a question that begs for *participation*. Ars has its own forum attached to these, there's no pressing need for readers to come here to kibitz - unless the question itself is crying out for yet another answer...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes this is unavoidable. Questions that, *within the rules of the community* can only be answered in a narrow, controlled fashion may inadvertently imply a much broader scope to outsiders who don't know or don't care about the community norms. Protect is useful in these situations, where every *n* views will tend to generate *m* poor/spam/non- answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But these tend to be the exceptions, *particularly* on a site like this which doesn't really go in so much for discussions of tools or hardware or other spam-friendly topics. Protection here should be reserved for those cases where a good, answered question is attracting a large volume of noise / meta commentary *from new users*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to *pre-emptively* do something useful to forestall noise on questions, then **edit them.** Get rid of bits that implicitly invite any and all opinions, tighten up the scope, focus on making the question reflect its *best answers* rather than aiming for a big tent that welcomes all *participants.* Not only can this reduce confusion for outsiders, it can also benefit the folks already on the site who wouldn't be affected by Protection anyway." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17319" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6599" RevisionGUID="ba25caa9-f786-4ca7-9630-1b9f74802a25" CreationDate="2014-04-13T20:44:46.717" UserId="82918" Text="I would like to know, how the questionblocks come. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked on programmers exactly three questions. One I deleted myself, another one was deleted by community and the third got one upvote, two answers and one accepted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I am again blocked from asking questiions. How does it come?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17320" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6599" RevisionGUID="ba25caa9-f786-4ca7-9630-1b9f74802a25" CreationDate="2014-04-13T20:44:46.717" UserId="82918" Text="Why do I get questionblock after just two deleted questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17321" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6599" RevisionGUID="ba25caa9-f786-4ca7-9630-1b9f74802a25" CreationDate="2014-04-13T20:44:46.717" UserId="82918" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17322" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6598" RevisionGUID="5b4072d5-72fb-4f8e-8c44-a83eff0a5a9e" CreationDate="2014-04-13T20:50:53.680" UserId="63" Comment="added 2709 characters in body" Text="##Protection racket&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Your own list illustrates how pointless](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/6597/1) this sort of proactive activity is: in most cases, few or no new answers were posted *regardless* of whether the questions were protected. Indeed, the most-answered question of the lot was immediately protected. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not the raw *traffic* that creates the problem. It's traffic coupled with a question that begs for *participation*. Ars has its own forum attached to these, there's no pressing need for readers to come here to kibitz - unless the question itself is crying out for yet another answer...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes this is unavoidable. Questions that, *within the rules of the community* can only be answered in a narrow, controlled fashion may inadvertently imply a much broader scope to outsiders who don't know or don't care about the community norms. Protect is useful in these situations, where every *n* views will tend to generate *m* poor/spam/non- answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But these tend to be the exceptions, *particularly* on a site like this which doesn't really go in so much for discussions of tools or hardware or other spam-friendly topics. Protection here should be reserved for those cases where a good, answered question is attracting a large volume of noise / meta commentary *from new users*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to *pre-emptively* do something useful to forestall noise on questions, then **edit them.** Get rid of bits that implicitly invite any and all opinions, tighten up the scope, focus on making the question reflect its *best answers* rather than aiming for a big tent that welcomes all *participants.* Not only can this reduce confusion for outsiders, it can also benefit the folks already on the site who wouldn't be affected by Protection anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Effects of Ars&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm counting roughly 192 questions that've been linked to from ArsTechnica over the past 2 years that Sam's been doing this. Could be a few more or less; there's a lot of cross-linking, and I might have missed a few related questions - but this should be the *vast* majority of all questions that've been linked to. You can view a list [here](https://stackedit.io/viewer#!provider=gist&amp;gistId=4be501a1cd10129c71f8&amp;filename=progsears.md) if you're interested...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, some basic stats on how these questions have aged. Out of those 192, 31 are *currently* closed and 61 are *currently* protected. The average number of (non-deleted) answers is 12, the average # of deleted answers is 2. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now... How they fared after being shared. I'm going to look at this from two different angles: a simple look at the number of answers attracted that *would* have been blocked by Protected status (had it been applied) and a comparison of the answer distribution before and after.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Protect-worthy answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If *all* of the questions in that list had been protected prior to being shared, a total of 55 answers would have been blocked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of those 55 answers, 18 scored less than 0 and 16 are currently deleted. 23 currently score &gt; 0. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Needless to say, these were posted to the 131 questions that *weren't* Protected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Answer distribution&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the 2578 answers posted before these questions were shared, 2019 are currently scored &gt; 0 while 211 are scoring &lt; 0. 219 are deleted. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the 124 answers posted *after* these questions were shared, 60 are currently scored &gt; 0 while 33 are scoring &lt; 0. 23 are deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I noted in the first section, it's clear that Protection has relatively little effect on these. This jibes with my observations elsewhere on the network: trying to predict which questions will attract crap answers based purely on *traffic* is exceedingly error-prone; other heuristics are needed. [Which is why we implemented better heuristics](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/226619/auto-protect-questions-that-get-more-than-n-answers-from-new-users-in-a-24-hour/228805#228805), based on observing which questions actually benefited from Protected status. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The % of not-useless answers posted after sharing is considerably lower than the % posted before; this shouldn't be too surprising, given none of them were new or unanswered. The % of not-useless new-user answers posted is lower than the % from existing users, but the volume is considerably lower. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reserve Protected status for questions that are attracting noise or abuse from new users. Protect is not a prophylactic. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17323" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6600" RevisionGUID="0c53c73d-2236-4757-9e32-d73dc2fad8a4" CreationDate="2014-04-13T20:55:38.643" UserId="4" Text="You have asked 5 questions on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/235271/modify-memory-in-borland-6 asked on April 8, self-deleted on April 8&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/233158/should-i-use-http-search asked on March 21, open, net score of 1&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/232123/standard-way-for-webrequest asked on March 12, closed by 5 user votes, deleted, net score of -1&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189617/install-cloud9-on-windows-8-or-linux asked on March 7, 2013, closed by 5 user votes, deleted, net score of -4&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188926/migrate-wcf-to-node-js asked on March 1, 2013, closed with 5 votes, deleted by moderator, net score of -4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Across these questions, your net question score is -8, which isn't that good. The details of the automatic question block algorithm are not known outside of the Stack Exchange team - not even to moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should read [the page in the help center about question bans][1] as well as a [a Meta Stack Overflow post that describes the question block and how to get out of it][2]. The advice is to fix your old posts (if you can) and contribute good posts of the type that you can (you can still post answers to questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17324" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6601" RevisionGUID="af071686-ab02-479b-b8db-5ff8fd535727" CreationDate="2014-04-14T02:12:11.833" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There are two types of questions, the young ones and the old ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The young ones are still malleable.  We *can* edit them.  And before people say &quot;you can always edit something&quot; there is the thing that must be considered - it gets more and more difficult to edit a question to be a good one the more answers it gets.  When a question has half a dozen answers, its probably too late to edit it - the 20ks can only delete answers with a negative score and unless an answer is truly awful it rarely gets there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once a question gets half a dozen answers (especially if one is accepted) it becomes very difficult to edit it into a better question without causing some of the answers to become invalid.  The culture of the [frequent editors](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/12/strunk-white) appears to be &quot;don't invalidate an answer with an edit&quot;, and given that we can't clean up meh but up voted questions on an question that leaves us with fewer tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that half a dozen answers can happen *that first day* when we can't protect the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tool to address an older question is one of two: close and protection.  Closing is an option, though we (frequent closers) do get some grief for closing borderline 'primarily opinion' or 'too broad' questions that are popular.  The other tool is protection.  Consider also that sometimes, in the past there have already been attempts at closing a question.  Its not uncommon for me to hit a recently bumped historically hot question and see on there &quot;you voted to close on December 14th, 2013&quot;... and, well, I can't kick it into the review queue again.  Asking around chat sometimes finds the frequent close voters also may have expired votes on the question making it very difficult to use that tool to address the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Protection works poorly as a tool to quiet down a question as noted elsewhere.  That said, for experienced answers, protection may give them pause before writing a short, pithy answer.  If that is the case, the psychological aspect of protection still does serve a purpose to those experienced editors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond protection, the only remaining tool that we (non-mods) have at this point is the flag for a mod to close or lock it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you ask any of the mods, I'm fairly sure you'll find that I am a fairly frequent historical lock flagger.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A bit more on editing, specially with respect to Ars'ed questions.  Doing a significant transformation on the question would make it inconsistent with the Ars post.  For the appearance of Stack Exchange on Ars, I'd much rather have a protected question than a closed question and for that question (and answers) to match what is on Ars.  Bait and switch isn't a great thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things to think about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Can we expire expired close votes after some period of time?  I mean sure, we can flag for a mod to close it, but I'd rather have the community close it than an evil mod (less flack for the mods).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What tools / process is appropriate for turning some of those questions into community lock questions.  I suspect it would be something like 'Do a community lockable answer, flag for a mod to community lock &amp; delete everything else, edit the resulting question into something good'? Though some of those steps might require some reordering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Are there better tools that could be designed for 10k+ users to be able to better moderate questions and answers?  The big thing being after a little bit of time, the only tool that we have that makes any sense *is* protection.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Proactive protection isn't ideal.  Part of our considerations is that weekends we have light moderation (from moderators, 20ks with delete answer votes, and down voters to get an answer low enough to do a delete answer vote, and 10ks who will do a 'recommend delete' rather than 'edit' in the low quality review queue).  Would it be possible to get some community managers to help with some eyeballs on the Ars'ed questions who could help guide people to give better answers when there's something poor, or help with deleting in a timely manner to not have examples of other poor answers that encourage more?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17325" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6601" RevisionGUID="809aed5f-d467-46f8-bef9-b822dffce854" CreationDate="2014-04-14T06:44:06.557" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="There are two types of questions, the young ones and the old ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The young ones are still malleable.  We *can* edit them.  And before people say &quot;you can always edit something&quot; there is the thing that must be considered - it gets more and more difficult to edit a question to be a good one the more answers it gets.  When a question has half a dozen answers, its probably too late to edit it - the 20ks can only delete answers with a negative score and unless an answer is truly awful it rarely gets there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once a question gets half a dozen answers (especially if one is accepted) it becomes very difficult to edit it into a better question without causing some of the answers to become invalid.  The culture of the [frequent editors](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/12/strunk-white) appears to be &quot;don't invalidate an answer with an edit&quot;, and given that we can't clean up meh but up voted answers on an question that leaves us with fewer tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that half a dozen answers can happen *that first day* when we can't protect the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tool to address an older question is one of two: close and protection.  Closing is an option, though we (frequent closers) do get some grief for closing borderline 'primarily opinion' or 'too broad' questions that are popular.  The other tool is protection.  Consider also that sometimes, in the past there have already been attempts at closing a question.  Its not uncommon for me to hit a recently bumped historically hot question and see on there &quot;you voted to close on December 14th, 2013&quot;... and, well, I can't kick it into the review queue again.  Asking around chat sometimes finds the frequent close voters also may have expired votes on the question making it very difficult to use that tool to address the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Protection works poorly as a tool to quiet down a question as noted elsewhere.  That said, for experienced answers, protection may give them pause before writing a short, pithy answer.  If that is the case, the psychological aspect of protection still does serve a purpose to those experienced editors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond protection, the only remaining tool that we (non-mods) have at this point is the flag for a mod to close or lock it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you ask any of the mods, I'm fairly sure you'll find that I am a fairly frequent historical lock flagger.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A bit more on editing, specially with respect to Ars'ed questions.  Doing a significant transformation on the question would make it inconsistent with the Ars post.  For the appearance of Stack Exchange on Ars, I'd much rather have a protected question than a closed question and for that question (and answers) to match what is on Ars.  Bait and switch isn't a great thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things to think about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Can we expire expired close votes after some period of time?  I mean sure, we can flag for a mod to close it, but I'd rather have the community close it than an evil mod (less flack for the mods).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What tools / process is appropriate for turning some of those questions into community lock questions.  I suspect it would be something like 'Do a community lockable answer, flag for a mod to community lock &amp; delete everything else, edit the resulting question into something good'? Though some of those steps might require some reordering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Are there better tools that could be designed for 10k+ users to be able to better moderate questions and answers?  The big thing being after a little bit of time, the only tool that we have that makes any sense *is* protection.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Proactive protection isn't ideal.  Part of our considerations is that weekends we have light moderation (from moderators, 20ks with delete answer votes, and down voters to get an answer low enough to do a delete answer vote, and 10ks who will do a 'recommend delete' rather than 'edit' in the low quality review queue).  Would it be possible to get some community managers to help with some eyeballs on the Ars'ed questions who could help guide people to give better answers when there's something poor, or help with deleting in a timely manner to not have examples of other poor answers that encourage more?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17326" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="b28b404d-8863-456e-b254-19e652761f96" CreationDate="2014-04-14T13:49:43.247" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 486 characters in body" Text="This is [the original Help Center][1] page, with some minor changes.  It turns out that most of the Off-Topic subjects are already covered here, so I just added a couple of new ones to cover the missing cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA; - a product or service recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Additional updates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Removed &quot;Freelancing and Business Concerns&quot; from the on-topic list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Removed &quot;software engineering&quot; in favor of more specific topics, many of which were already included.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Clarified &quot;Programming Tools.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  Added &quot;Legal Assistance&quot; to &quot;not about.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. Changed &quot;resume help&quot; to &quot;job hunting&quot; at the request of The Workplace mods to prevent people with resume critique questions from thinking they are on-topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. Shortened the subjective questions portion, since it's better addressed on the dont-ask page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;software requirements&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software architecture and design&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies and processes&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software engineering management&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;quality assurance and testing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software licensing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h3&gt;and it is not about...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead)&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead)&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what project you should do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; next&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what book you should read next&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;where to find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a software library, tool or other resource&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a  product&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or service recommendation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&quot;&gt;career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice&lt;/a&gt;, salary, or compensation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;personal lifestyle,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including relationships, and non-programming activities&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;legal assistance&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot; alt=&quot;proper scope for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. &lt;strong&gt;Please keep it professional&lt;/strong&gt;. If this is a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question you'd be uncomfortable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see the Help Center page about &lt;a href=&quot;/help/dont-ask&quot;&gt;what not to ask&lt;/a&gt; as well as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot;&gt;Good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; blog posts for details and examples&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;/search&quot;&gt;look around&lt;/a&gt; to see if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been asked before. It’s also OK to &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;/helpcenter/self-answer&quot;&gt;ask and answer your own&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange, it may be on topic for &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;another Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;commit to&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&quot;&gt;propose&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a new site at &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Area51&lt;/a&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically&#xD;&#xA;&gt; created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17327" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6602" RevisionGUID="ad455e58-b2dd-4f2e-bf82-bcd993c72df9" CreationDate="2014-04-14T15:13:39.563" UserId="35693" Text="I am a member of History SE whose &quot;day job&quot; has suddenly forced me to look hard at programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have had (approved) edits on questions like [this][1] and [this][2]. The gist of these questions were &quot;Why is protocol X preferred to protocol Y?&quot; Such questions are usually closed (in their original form), because they are &quot;broad&quot; and therefore too &quot;opinion based,&quot; and subjective to be suitable for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have gone about editing one or two such questions by (re-)asking, what did people think **historically**, when they chose X over Y. This substantially narrows the question, because the choices, (and often the reasons), are a matter of historical record, rather user than opinion. All other things being equal, such a change makes a question more objective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does this constitute enough of a improvement for formerly closed questions to be re-opened? I, for one, would find even a discussion of historical rationales for choices helpful. More to the point, would it make sense for me (and others) to go around making these changes to improve the quality of the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47678/why-did-memory-managed-languages-like-java-javascript-and-c-retain-the-new &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[2]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/234926/why-did-so-many-people-create-new-compilers-for-old-languages" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17328" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6602" RevisionGUID="ad455e58-b2dd-4f2e-bf82-bcd993c72df9" CreationDate="2014-04-14T15:13:39.563" UserId="35693" Text="Can questions be improved by asking for the historical record?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17329" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6602" RevisionGUID="ad455e58-b2dd-4f2e-bf82-bcd993c72df9" CreationDate="2014-04-14T15:13:39.563" UserId="35693" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17330" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6602" RevisionGUID="ee4c7c09-d322-4bbe-93e4-b071a3dee987" CreationDate="2014-04-14T15:22:24.277" UserId="35693" Comment="added 1 characters in body" Text="I am a member of History SE whose &quot;day job&quot; has suddenly forced me to look hard at programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have had (approved) edits on questions like [this][1] and [this][2]. The gist of these questions were &quot;Why is protocol X preferred to protocol Y?&quot; Such questions are usually closed (in their original form), because they are &quot;broad&quot; and therefore too &quot;opinion based,&quot; and subjective to be suitable for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have gone about editing one or two such questions by (re-)asking, what did people think **historically**, when they chose X over Y. This substantially narrows the question, because the choices, (and often the reasons), are a matter of historical record, rather  than user opinion. All other things being equal, such a change makes a question more objective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does this constitute enough of a improvement for formerly closed questions to be re-opened? I, for one, would find even a discussion of historical rationales for choices helpful. More to the point, would it make sense for me (and others) to go around making these changes to improve the quality of the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47678/why-did-memory-managed-languages-like-java-javascript-and-c-retain-the-new &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[2]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/234926/why-did-so-many-people-create-new-compilers-for-old-languages" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17331" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6603" RevisionGUID="a645536f-6f75-4a94-b21f-4e18f7f3364c" CreationDate="2014-04-14T16:17:50.323" UserId="1204" Text="No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding the word &quot;historically&quot; to a question doesn't make the question any more meaningful or on-topic, any more than adding the phrase &quot;as a programmer&quot; makes it more relevant to programmers.  Asking what someone thought about something *in the past* rather than today doesn't make it any less opinion-based.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What matters is whether someone is able to *cite their sources.*  If a person can demonstrate that they had first-hand knowledge of the decision-making process, or can point to an Internet post from an authoritative source that describes the decision making process, *that* is what makes the post less opinion-based." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17332" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6604" RevisionGUID="0c887119-4c37-4bdf-b4aa-624e02173d10" CreationDate="2014-04-14T16:36:33.083" UserId="4" Text="Following [a Meta discussion][1] and some discussions in [our chat room][2] to iron out some finer points, we have completed an update to the [&quot;What topics can I ask about here?&quot; page of our Help Center][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is a summary of the changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Minor rewording of the tagline. It still emphasizes questions that require human expertise, but makes it clear that we are about more than just programmers. Questions about many aspects of the software development lifecycle from anyone working in it are welcome here.&#xD;&#xA; - Removed &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; from the list of things that are on-topic. The questions that were off-topic are still off-topic, but the ones that are on-topic are best captured in the &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; and &quot;software engineering management&quot; line items in what is on-topic.&#xD;&#xA; - Removed the &quot;software engineering&quot; line item from what is on-topic. It was replaced with more specific details of what software engineering topics are allowed here, which is most of them.&#xD;&#xA; - Clarified programming tools to specifically include coding tools such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs. We don't want to entirely preclude good tool questions that don't otherwise have a home at this time.&#xD;&#xA; - Added &quot;legal advice&quot; to the list of things that are not allowed. We are not lawyers.&#xD;&#xA; - Changed &quot;resume help&quot; to &quot;job hunting&quot; at the request of The Workplace. They do not do resume critiques and did not want our Help Center giving that impression.&#xD;&#xA; - Shortened the portion on subjective questions. This is better addressed by the [&quot;What types of questions should I avoid asking?&quot; page of the Help Center][4]. Maintained links to this page as well as the relevant blog posts, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally speaking, there isn't a change to site scope or audience. However, we have clarified some of the more ambiguous parts and more closely aligned the things our site is not about with some of the custom close reasons that exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anyone has any suggestions, we'd still be glad to take them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6590/should-the-close-reasons-be-added-to-the-help-center-on-topic-article&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17333" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6604" RevisionGUID="0c887119-4c37-4bdf-b4aa-624e02173d10" CreationDate="2014-04-14T16:36:33.083" UserId="4" Text="Updated /help/on-topic Page in Help Center" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17334" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6604" RevisionGUID="0c887119-4c37-4bdf-b4aa-624e02173d10" CreationDate="2014-04-14T16:36:33.083" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|featured|on-topic-definition|help-center|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17335" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6604" RevisionGUID="c896621f-93b7-40d9-8820-11935aea9819" CreationDate="2014-04-14T16:52:38.080" UserId="4" Comment="added 156 characters in body" Text="Following [a Meta discussion][1] and some discussions in [our chat room][2] to iron out some finer points, we have completed an update to the [&quot;What topics can I ask about here?&quot; page of our Help Center][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is a summary of the changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Minor rewording of the tagline. It still emphasizes questions that require human expertise, but makes it clear that we are about more than just programmers. Questions about many aspects of the software development lifecycle from anyone working in it are welcome here.&#xD;&#xA; - Removed &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; from the list of things that are on-topic. The questions that were off-topic are still off-topic, but the ones that are on-topic are best captured in the &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; and &quot;software engineering management&quot; line items in what is on-topic.&#xD;&#xA; - Removed the &quot;software engineering&quot; line item from what is on-topic. It was replaced with more specific details of what software engineering topics are allowed here, which is most of them.&#xD;&#xA; - Clarified programming tools to specifically include coding tools such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs. We don't want to entirely preclude good tool questions that don't otherwise have a home at this time.&#xD;&#xA; - Added &quot;legal advice&quot; to the list of things that are not allowed. We are not lawyers.&#xD;&#xA; - Changed &quot;resume help&quot; to &quot;job hunting&quot; at the request of The Workplace. They do not do resume critiques and did not want our Help Center giving that impression.&#xD;&#xA; - Shortened the portion on subjective questions. This is better addressed by the [&quot;What types of questions should I avoid asking?&quot; page of the Help Center][4]. Maintained links to this page as well as the relevant blog posts, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally speaking, there isn't a change to site scope or audience. However, we have clarified some of the more ambiguous parts and more closely aligned the things our site is not about with some of the custom close reasons that exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to this, these changes (as applicable) have been rolled into our [About page][5] as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anyone has any suggestions, we'd still be glad to take them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6590/should-the-close-reasons-be-added-to-the-help-center-on-topic-article&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17336" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6604" RevisionGUID="6281e411-0553-47fe-ba5c-e068f58d6b44" CreationDate="2014-04-14T17:23:55.313" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/455758360437346304" />
  <row Id="17337" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6603" RevisionGUID="7370d95f-b317-40fa-bcdc-096cf3367420" CreationDate="2014-04-14T18:28:04.343" UserId="31260" Comment="&quot;as a programmer&quot; += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2971/community-perception-of-programmers-se-the-stackoverflow-landfill/2973#comment7560_2973" Text="No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding the word &quot;historically&quot; to a question doesn't make the question any more meaningful or on-topic, any more than adding the phrase [&quot;as a programmer&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2971/community-perception-of-programmers-se-the-stackoverflow-landfill/2973#comment7560_2973) makes it more relevant to programmers.  Asking what someone thought about something *in the past* rather than today doesn't make it any less opinion-based.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What matters is whether someone is able to *cite their sources.*  If a person can demonstrate that they had first-hand knowledge of the decision-making process, or can point to an Internet post from an authoritative source that describes the decision making process, *that* is what makes the post less opinion-based." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17338" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6602" RevisionGUID="47e35ac9-f704-4bcb-a3cc-1886f07e7741" CreationDate="2014-04-14T19:24:42.523" UserId="35693" Comment="added 248 characters in body" Text="I am a member of History SE whose &quot;day job&quot; has suddenly forced me to look hard at programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have had (approved) edits on questions like [this][1] and [this][2]. The gist of these questions were &quot;Why is protocol X preferred to protocol Y?&quot; Such questions are usually closed (in their original form), because they are &quot;broad&quot; and therefore too &quot;opinion based,&quot; and subjective to be suitable for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have gone about editing one or two such questions by (re-)asking, what did people think **historically**, when they chose X over Y. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Going forward, I would ask what did the &quot;decision makers&quot; (as opposed to random people) think historically, when they chose X over Y. &quot;Choosing&quot; (as opposed to preferring), implies &quot;decision making,&quot; but maybe I didn't make that clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This substantially narrows the question, because the choices, (and often the reasons), are a matter of historical record, rather than user opinion. All other things being equal, such a change makes a question more objective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does this constitute enough of a improvement for formerly closed questions to be re-opened? I, for one, would find even a discussion of historical rationales for choices helpful. More to the point, would it make sense for me (and others) to go around making these changes to improve the quality of the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47678/why-did-memory-managed-languages-like-java-javascript-and-c-retain-the-new &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[2]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/234926/why-did-so-many-people-create-new-compilers-for-old-languages" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17339" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6602" RevisionGUID="2b8341ff-c348-464b-a5bc-d8686ceb19cb" CreationDate="2014-04-14T19:30:13.863" UserId="35693" Comment="added 248 characters in body" Text="I am a member of History SE whose &quot;day job&quot; has suddenly forced me to look hard at programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have had (approved) edits on questions like [this][1] and [this][2]. The gist of these questions were &quot;Why is protocol X preferred to protocol Y?&quot; Such questions are usually closed (in their original form), because they are &quot;broad&quot; and therefore too &quot;opinion based,&quot; and subjective to be suitable for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have gone about editing one or two such questions by (re-)asking, what did people think **historically**, when they chose X over Y. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**: Going forward, I would ask for &quot;records&quot; (corporate minutes, pitchbooks, essays in professional journals, etc.) about what did the &quot;decision makers&quot; (as opposed to random people) think historically, when they chose X over Y. &quot;Choosing&quot; (as opposed to preferring), implies &quot;decision making,&quot; but maybe I didn't make that clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This substantially narrows the question, because the choices, (and often the reasons), are a matter of historical record, rather than user opinion. All other things being equal, such a change makes a question more objective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does this constitute enough of a improvement for formerly closed questions to be re-opened? I, for one, would find even a discussion of historical rationales for choices helpful. More to the point, would it make sense for me (and others) to go around making these changes to improve the quality of the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47678/why-did-memory-managed-languages-like-java-javascript-and-c-retain-the-new &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[2]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/234926/why-did-so-many-people-create-new-compilers-for-old-languages" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17340" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6603" RevisionGUID="242ff0d3-0363-4ffa-9258-5bf57e099ed9" CreationDate="2014-04-14T19:37:37.763" UserId="1204" Comment="added 105 characters in body" Text="No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding the word &quot;historically&quot; to a question doesn't make the question any more meaningful or on-topic, any more than adding the phrase [&quot;as a programmer&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2971/community-perception-of-programmers-se-the-stackoverflow-landfill/2973#comment7560_2973) makes it more relevant to programmers.  Asking what someone thought about something *in the past* rather than today doesn't make it any less opinion-based.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What matters is whether someone is able to *cite their sources.*  If a person can demonstrate that they had first-hand knowledge of the decision-making process, or can point to an Internet post from an authoritative source that describes the decision making process, *that* is what makes the post less opinion-based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question that merely asks for proof or citations is off-topic, it being primarily a search request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17341" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6605" RevisionGUID="ccc8032b-77af-496a-a793-757bf0f58ae5" CreationDate="2014-04-15T09:07:43.530" UserId="5099" Text="I disagree with the close reason of the question used as an example, but not the fact that it is closed. I would have closed the question as being too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with &quot;How to teach X&quot; question is that there is no generally accepted answer, which makes it impossible to tell for the other users which answer is right or best.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an anecdote, my girlfriend is studying to become a teacher. On of her most frequent complaints is that the curriculum of her studies change every year, because someone has convinced the university administrators that their studies have shown that all the teaching techniques used over the past twenty years are rubbish and that all new teachers must learn their brand new shiny teaching technique.  &#xD;&#xA;So, even among professional teachers there is no consensus how to teach stuff." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17342" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6606" RevisionGUID="1c47073d-3cc3-4d9c-b6ab-8280e235ff1e" CreationDate="2014-04-15T12:28:29.833" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Yes, there was an informal “protection racket” in place to protect questions that were to be featured in Ars Technica.  The racket came to be after several of the regulars within The Whiteboard noticed the effects of being featured.  Those effects included lots of views and votes, but also frequently included low-quality forumesque answers that pushed the question into community wiki status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Protecting questions was a purely preventative measure.  Most questions that are featured already have a high number of answers (where `high` ~= 10) and it didn’t take much to convert to CW status.  There were two additional factors that encouraged pro-active protection.  First, it was difficult to predict when the views from the Ars publicity would start rolling in.  Second, many of the questions that have been selected are of marginal quality.  Not necessarily close-worthy but definitely ripe for bike shed, forumesque answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I have had time and advance warning of a question to be featured (ie. seeing the edit requests from Sam), I have gone through the question to flag questionable comments and vote on answers if I haven’t already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I’m going to echo [MichaelT’s answer here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6601/53019) for the sake of brevity.  I agree with his thoughts regarding protection being a poor tool.  But lacking better tools, you do what you can in order to help things along.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All that said, I don’t believe a protection racket is required anymore for questions that receive a lot of publicity.  The biggest issue was questions converting to Community Wiki status which unfairly punishes participants in a question.  Without the sword of Community Wiki dangling over a question, community moderation has the time it needs in order to clean up from any potential aftermath." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17343" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6594" RevisionGUID="5817a3f9-5605-4e12-b6fa-84c8069b55a5" CreationDate="2014-04-15T14:27:07.827" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/456076257172934657" />
  <row Id="17344" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6602" RevisionGUID="3a310195-b958-43fa-af8c-5123bf5692db" CreationDate="2014-04-15T17:27:07.157" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/456121553336684544" />
  <row Id="17345" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6607" RevisionGUID="a07ff3ab-0382-4b33-8df0-d4a7c618e1d8" CreationDate="2014-04-15T22:45:32.977" UserId="98484" Text="I want to ask a question about the resources available for a self-taught developer to level skills and conceptual understanding with a professional CS undergraduate curriculum.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a suitable question for this site? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17346" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6607" RevisionGUID="a07ff3ab-0382-4b33-8df0-d4a7c618e1d8" CreationDate="2014-04-15T22:45:32.977" UserId="98484" Text="Question about levelling skills as a software developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17347" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6607" RevisionGUID="a07ff3ab-0382-4b33-8df0-d4a7c618e1d8" CreationDate="2014-04-15T22:45:32.977" UserId="98484" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17348" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6608" RevisionGUID="0ec3d7e9-52e5-4461-9781-e5bb472da455" CreationDate="2014-04-15T22:50:22.100" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="This is a suitable question for our chatroom, [the Whiteboard][1]. It is most active during weekdays but someone is usually around every few hours on any given day. It's too personal and open ended for the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17349" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6607" RevisionGUID="86840eb0-f675-4c85-b10a-04e921e67811" CreationDate="2014-04-15T22:50:44.220" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17350" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6500" RevisionGUID="9734257c-7da3-4800-ae0e-349ee2b9af57" CreationDate="2014-04-16T14:09:57.333" UserId="377" Comment="added 28 characters in body" Text="[![Bountied questions on Programmers.SE][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stack-exchange-dynamic-ads.herokuapp.com/programmers.stackexchange.com/bounty.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/?tab=featured" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17352" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6609" RevisionGUID="7543a031-69a3-4cc9-8abe-cb7ee40f5f10" CreationDate="2014-04-16T22:49:44.180" UserId="47" Text="I've proposed the following new custom close reason for **here on Meta.Programmers**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The problem described here **can no longer be reproduced**. Changes to the system or to the circumstances affecting the asker have rendered it obsolete. If you encounter a similar problem, please post a new question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a direct copy of the one on Meta.StackOverflow (sorry Meta.StackExchange).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we think that it's a good idea then it can be activated by another moderator." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17353" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6609" RevisionGUID="7543a031-69a3-4cc9-8abe-cb7ee40f5f10" CreationDate="2014-04-16T22:49:44.180" UserId="47" Text="New custom close reason here on meta" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17354" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6609" RevisionGUID="7543a031-69a3-4cc9-8abe-cb7ee40f5f10" CreationDate="2014-04-16T22:49:44.180" UserId="47" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17355" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6251" RevisionGUID="b7af02d7-c3a7-4fe1-b1c2-d2a7c9b3e013" CreationDate="2014-04-17T02:07:23.297" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Update link from MSO to MSE for &quot;We are no longer...&quot; question." Text="We only have so many canned, built in, close reasons.  There are so many other reasons to close something at times - giving a better message than trying to shoehorn the reason to close something into too broad or primarily opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Custom close messages have the significant advantage when it comes to trying to get a *good* answer in that they also leave a comment that (ideally) would help the person asking (or attempting to fix) the question understand what needs to be done *before* the question is closed and make it suitable (or delete it if its really off topic and would ultimately garner down votes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short and abrupt close messages may be off-putting to some and don't help as much when it comes to getting people to write good questions.  The tricks to writing good messages is a combination of having them at the ready and knowing the quick little 'magic links' that can be used to link to the right spot.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Close reasons use the comment markdown, which gives a bunch of additional magic links.  MSO details them in [balpha's answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/94000/213963), thought the short version most applicable to close reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [meta] =&gt; a link to meta.programmers.stackexchange&#xD;&#xA;* [help] =&gt; a link to the help section&#xD;&#xA;    * [help/on-topic] is a link to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;&#xD;&#xA;    * [help/dont-ask] is a link to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* [ask] =&gt; link to the &quot;How to Ask&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* [chat] =&gt; link to the chat page&#xD;&#xA;* [about] =&gt; link to about page http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;* [edit] =&gt; link to edit the page itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using these quick links will make it easier to fit more into a canned (or not) message without actually using more text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, its a better experience for all involved to *not* migrate questions that will get closed in some way *other* than a duplicate on the target site.  A fine line should be considered when suggesting to *repost* a question on another site without having it closed/deleted on the first one.  Be sure that the question is on topic at the target site.  If in doubt, don't suggest reposting but instead flag for a moderator to migrate the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have also found the following links to be helpful to reference when writing close messages (not everyone knows where they are).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `[Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/)` =&gt; [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist) - a compressive list of things to check before posting a question to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;* `[Let’s Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game)` =&gt; [Let’s Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game) - a Jeff Atwood blog post from Feb 2012 about the awkward nature of trying to name something&#xD;&#xA;* `[Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)` =&gt; [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) - a Jeff Atwood blog post from November 2010 about questions asking for a shopping list.&#xD;&#xA;* `[What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/)` =&gt; [What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/) - the question ban MSE reference.  Likely not that useful in a close reason (you'd need to be a mod on SO to check if a user is question banned prior to a migration - however, when a migration fails because of a question ban on the target site, this is a useful link to have so its included here).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've often found myself going to a meta question to pull up a pre-written close message and then copying and pasting that into the question.  Just go in, edit the question to grab the source and copy and paste it into the close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully, this will help people looking for the right wording for closing a question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17356" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6609" RevisionGUID="057341d4-185d-4876-ba8f-269ec6f15959" CreationDate="2014-04-17T10:22:03.373" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17357" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6610" RevisionGUID="b121a5d8-2c14-41d4-a823-93cf07271d24" CreationDate="2014-04-17T12:55:43.010" UserId="3965" Text="Well, 17 people thought the question was topical enough to upvote, 9 felt it was topical enough to answer, and 22 felt it was topical enough to upvote an answer.  Then Gnat runs his searches 2 years later, unilaterally decides it's off topic, which puts it into the review queue, where it's easy to find 3 other people to agree with him.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meanwhile, those 17-22 people who thought the question was good have no idea it was closed.  This happens so frequently that I run an [SEDE query](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/136453/recently-closed-questions-i-answered) occasionally to catch these situations, and cast reopen votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So many of these closed questions go unscrutinized because they are not noticed, that eventually it becomes the status quo that these questions are off topic, even though no discussion to that effect actually took place, let alone a consensus being reached.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we have a system were one person can easily find 3 backers to decide something is off topic, over the objections of 17-22 others who receive no notification.  Does that make it truly off topic?  I don't think you can honestly claim such, but that's the system as it is set up." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17358" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6609" RevisionGUID="70ec14a2-faa2-41e3-8083-89c4d56dc190" CreationDate="2014-04-17T14:21:33.820" UserId="4" Comment="102" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="17359" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6610" RevisionGUID="5da3e284-e9d3-45ed-9641-63b7130d9660" CreationDate="2014-04-17T15:43:00.993" UserId="3965" Comment="fix typo" Text="Well, 17 people thought the question was topical enough to upvote, 9 felt it was topical enough to answer, and 22 felt it was topical enough to upvote an answer.  Then Gnat runs his searches 2 years later, unilaterally decides it's off topic, which puts it into the review queue, where it's easy to find 3 other people to agree with him.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meanwhile, those 17-22 people who thought the question was good have no idea it was closed.  This happens so frequently that I run an [SEDE query](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/136453/recently-closed-questions-i-answered) occasionally to catch these situations, and cast reopen votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So many of these closed questions go unscrutinized because they are not noticed, that eventually it becomes the status quo that these questions are off topic, even though no discussion to that effect actually took place, let alone a consensus being reached.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we have a system where one person can easily find 3 backers to decide something is off topic, over the objections of 17-22 others who receive no notification.  Does that make it truly off topic?  I don't think you can honestly claim such, but that's the system as it is set up." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17360" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6486" RevisionGUID="d1708465-0da3-459b-b51a-83786a6e638b" CreationDate="2014-04-17T16:41:25.257" UserId="1204" Comment="added 172 characters in body" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###What technology to take up next###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a constant stream of new projects out there.  Github [claims 4,500 new projects a day](https://github.com/blog/841-those-are-some-big-numbers) back in 2011.  On December 23, 2013, Github had [10 million repositories](https://github.com/blog/1724-10-million-repositories).  Quite frankly, there are far too many projects for anyone to suggest a good answer.  What's more, the projects of yesteryear may well be inactive now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same problem exists for suggesting languages and technologies - they are constantly changing.  Further, many questions of this type often just ask &quot;which one is best&quot; without specifying any requirements, making them essentially a popularity poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A goal for Stack Exchange is to create a lasting repository of information.  Asking questions about which technology to chose runs counter to that.  In part because everyone's needs are different and also that everyone has their own favorites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56848/how-does-one-keep-up-with-all-the-new-tools-languages-framework (also look at the [linked questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/56848?lq=1))&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17361" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6489" RevisionGUID="9b2a951c-e85d-4278-af02-e1de74dd43ab" CreationDate="2014-04-17T16:48:21.433" UserId="1204" Comment="added 20 characters in body" Text="#Unclear what you are asking#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are looking for, in the [context of Programmers.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This close reason can also be a bit unclear as to what the issue is.  Please be sure to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Give enough context that someone reading the question can understand it&#xD;&#xA;* Explain what you are looking for&#xD;&#xA;* Check to make sure you are not using jargon that is particular to one specific branch of computing (and if you are, either change the jargon or link to a site that explains it)&#xD;&#xA;* Make sure you are on the proper site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last point is important too.  This close reason is often used as a proxy for &quot;we don't think that this question is a good question for Programmers.SE (it might be on Stack Overflow), but would get closed there too.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explain your design.  Explain what you have done.  Explain where you are having difficulty.  Explain what you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear what help you need](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260) (see also [linked MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/215806/165773))&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as unclear?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6489/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17362" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6485" RevisionGUID="8458dc93-5680-4c36-a447-12a1f77028f3" CreationDate="2014-04-17T16:51:30.557" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 82 characters in body" Text="# Duplicate; question was already asked#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A duplicate question in and of itself [isn't a bad thing](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/ &quot;see 'Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication'&quot;).  Often it means that the people who have suggested it as such think that the answer to your question is already in the original question.  Questions are closed as duplicates because we want future readers to be able to go to one place to find the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is closed as a duplicate be sure to read *all* of the answers and consider the implications behind the answers too - not just the first reading.  An example of this can be seen on Stack Overflow when debugging questions trying to track down a NullPointerException in Java are linked to a question that explains about NullPointerExceptions rather than trying to resolve that particular instance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that something is closed as a duplicate incorrectly, explain specifically how your question differs from the other question and the answers in the duplicate question do not apply to your situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO FAQ) [How should duplicate questions be handled?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/10841/how-should-duplicate-questions-be-handled)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Does the new guidance on duplicate questions suggest closing a question as duplicate, if the original answers the OP's question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/217401/does-the-new-guidance-on-duplicate-questions-suggest-closing-a-question-as-dupli)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Someone flagged my question as already answered, but it's not](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/194476/someone-flagged-my-question-as-already-answered-but-its-not)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as a duplicate?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6485/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17363" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="17d400ec-910f-4830-9b4b-1418352d3fb8" CreationDate="2014-04-17T16:59:13.887" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 11 characters in body" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for libraries and tools has attracted spam answers in the past where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These answers are very poor and because of that, the questions get preemptively closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often the questions are very broad too.  Asking for books to learn Java from is a polling question that has no right answer.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology (and are a few months behind the tech).  Links to sites rot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange itself is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best approach to asking such a question is to describe the problem you are having that can be solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###[Software Recommendation.SE](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information) for tools and libs###&#xD;&#xA;There exists a site that is in beta specifically for software recommendations (*not* books and other non-software things).  Asking for recommendations *is* on topic there.  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) (and also [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”?](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information)), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail* (SoftwareRec.SE is not a site for generating big lists of tools).  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17364" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="85eb1229-0f1e-42ff-b3d4-6183eb1f43ed" CreationDate="2014-04-17T16:59:53.637" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 11 characters in body" Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long for the Q&amp;A format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar to the recommend an XYZ close reason, some questions are polling for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the choice as to which answer is the one to accept is a &quot;which one I like best,&quot; the question may be one it is polling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While some other Stack Exchanges allow it, Programmers.SE frowns upon ['big list' type questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;see also: list-questions tag wiki at MSO&quot;) that seem to want to compile a list of things.  Questions that fall into this category typically have the form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What are all the problems I will encounter with XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * What are the pros and cons of XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * How can XYZ be used?&#xD;&#xA; * Any ideas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue with questions like these is that they don't pose a problem that can be solved by an answer.  There is no definitive *right* answer that someone can go to, see the accepted answer and say &quot;yep, thats the answer&quot; but rather any given (or none) answer might be appropriate for the person reading the question.  As such, these questions are closed as 'too broad' as they fall under the 'has too many possible answers.'&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help Center &gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as too broad?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17365" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="2839c8d7-84db-40de-9928-45c897d05323" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:01:25.963" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Update MSO links to MSE" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for libraries and tools has attracted spam answers in the past where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These answers are very poor and because of that, the questions get preemptively closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often the questions are very broad too.  Asking for books to learn Java from is a polling question that has no right answer.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology (and are a few months behind the tech).  Links to sites rot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange itself is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best approach to asking such a question is to describe the problem you are having that can be solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###[Software Recommendation.SE](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information) for tools and libs###&#xD;&#xA;There exists a site that is in beta specifically for software recommendations (*not* books and other non-software things).  Asking for recommendations *is* on topic there.  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) (and also [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”?](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information)), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail* (SoftwareRec.SE is not a site for generating big lists of tools).  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17366" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="de9cdf15-f252-49b2-88ce-4d50ec05d873" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:02:31.087" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="MSO to MSE" Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long for the Q&amp;A format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar to the recommend an XYZ close reason, some questions are polling for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the choice as to which answer is the one to accept is a &quot;which one I like best,&quot; the question may be one it is polling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While some other Stack Exchanges allow it, Programmers.SE frowns upon ['big list' type questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;see also: list-questions tag wiki at MSO&quot;) that seem to want to compile a list of things.  Questions that fall into this category typically have the form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What are all the problems I will encounter with XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * What are the pros and cons of XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * How can XYZ be used?&#xD;&#xA; * Any ideas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue with questions like these is that they don't pose a problem that can be solved by an answer.  There is no definitive *right* answer that someone can go to, see the accepted answer and say &quot;yep, thats the answer&quot; but rather any given (or none) answer might be appropriate for the person reading the question.  As such, these questions are closed as 'too broad' as they fall under the 'has too many possible answers.'&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help Center &gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as too broad?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17367" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6488" RevisionGUID="8c82eec4-dd5b-4309-b808-acab1f683cb6" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:05:05.690" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 201 characters in body" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Career or education advice###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice questions are only applicable to the person asking the question.  No two people are looking at the same set of classes, or the same job.  Every question that is asked is either only for one person or the answers will always be hopelessly incomplete because of the lack of the nuanced information and context that the person asking the question is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career questions are often **very important** questions to the person asking them.  Although assistance can be provided, the answer is one that *you* need to find yourself, and not from random strangers on the Internet.  If you are in academia, ask a career counselor at the school, or one of the instructors - they know you better than we do.  Similar resources can be found for people in the job market already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the biggest difficulties with Q&amp;A for career questions is that to get the nuances of your situation and getting to know you better requires a dense two way communication - lots of clarification back and forth.  To this end, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is a resource where (the current) denizens can have that conversation.  We still won't get to know you as well as people who know you know you, but on the whole we are familiar with the various parts of the software industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Reddit) [/r/cscareersquestions FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Where to ask for general advice for young programmers?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/216589/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* Workplace.SE -&gt; [topics guidance](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)  &#xD;&#xA;  Workplace.SE -&gt; [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17368" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6485" RevisionGUID="04d26ecc-8857-4819-afed-ffb65b271950" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:08:20.670" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 13 characters in body" Text="# Duplicate; question was already asked#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A duplicate question in and of itself [isn't a bad thing](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/ &quot;see 'Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication'&quot;).  Often it means that the people who have suggested it as such think that the answer to your question is already in the original question.  Questions are closed as duplicates because we want future readers to be able to go to one place to find the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read *all* of the answers on the original question and consider the implications behind the answers too - not just the first reading.  An example of this can be seen on Stack Overflow when debugging questions trying to track down a NullPointerException in Java are linked to a question that explains about NullPointerExceptions rather than trying to resolve that particular instance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that something is closed as a duplicate incorrectly, explain specifically how your question differs from the other question and the answers in the duplicate question do not apply to your situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO FAQ) [How should duplicate questions be handled?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/10841/how-should-duplicate-questions-be-handled)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Does the new guidance on duplicate questions suggest closing a question as duplicate, if the original answers the OP's question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/217401/does-the-new-guidance-on-duplicate-questions-suggest-closing-a-question-as-dupli)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Someone flagged my question as already answered, but it's not](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/194476/someone-flagged-my-question-as-already-answered-but-its-not)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as a duplicate?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6485/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17369" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="aa4cba67-8e47-488c-85c2-7258f413a3a5" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:12:41.680" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 194 characters in body" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17370" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6485" RevisionGUID="53f3d37c-029a-44b8-9498-67b13364f302" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:16:38.500" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 18 characters in body" Text="# Duplicate questions#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A duplicate question in and of itself [isn't a bad thing](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/ &quot;see 'Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication'&quot;).  Often it means that the people who have suggested it as such think that the answer to your question is already in the original question.  Questions are closed as duplicates because we want future readers to be able to go to one place to find the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read *all* of the answers on the original question and consider the implications behind the answers too - not just the first reading.  An example of this can be seen on Stack Overflow when debugging questions trying to track down a NullPointerException in Java are linked to a question that explains about NullPointerExceptions rather than trying to resolve that particular instance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that something is closed as a duplicate incorrectly, explain specifically how your question differs from the other question and the answers in the duplicate question do not apply to your situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO FAQ) [How should duplicate questions be handled?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/10841/how-should-duplicate-questions-be-handled)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Does the new guidance on duplicate questions suggest closing a question as duplicate, if the original answers the OP's question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/217401/does-the-new-guidance-on-duplicate-questions-suggest-closing-a-question-as-dupli)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Someone flagged my question as already answered, but it's not](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/194476/someone-flagged-my-question-as-already-answered-but-its-not)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as a duplicate?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6485/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17371" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="39175b34-f497-4e51-bf03-1cfd6f592d91" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:17:56.377" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="MSO to MSE" Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted).  Why? And what can I do about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What language to take up next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a tool, library, or other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * (MSE) [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in/129632#129632)&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)  &#xD;&#xA;  certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links also from particular points in the history of Programmers.SE and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a [serial vote](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/serial-voting/info &quot;what's this&quot;) reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For pasting into chat or comments there is a &quot;Quick link&quot; at the end of each answer.  The quick link for the question is `[Why was my question closed or down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/)` - pasting this into chat or a comment will link to the question.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17372" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6488" RevisionGUID="1f95b783-0baa-47dd-bf8c-a1c2041dfda0" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:18:24.747" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="MSO to MSE" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Career or education advice###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice questions are only applicable to the person asking the question.  No two people are looking at the same set of classes, or the same job.  Every question that is asked is either only for one person or the answers will always be hopelessly incomplete because of the lack of the nuanced information and context that the person asking the question is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career questions are often **very important** questions to the person asking them.  Although assistance can be provided, the answer is one that *you* need to find yourself, and not from random strangers on the Internet.  If you are in academia, ask a career counselor at the school, or one of the instructors - they know you better than we do.  Similar resources can be found for people in the job market already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the biggest difficulties with Q&amp;A for career questions is that to get the nuances of your situation and getting to know you better requires a dense two way communication - lots of clarification back and forth.  To this end, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is a resource where (the current) denizens can have that conversation.  We still won't get to know you as well as people who know you know you, but on the whole we are familiar with the various parts of the software industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Reddit) [/r/cscareersquestions FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Where to ask for general advice for young programmers?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/216589/where-to-ask-for-general-advice-for-young-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* Workplace.SE -&gt; [topics guidance](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)  &#xD;&#xA;  Workplace.SE -&gt; [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17373" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6491" RevisionGUID="ba02c21d-1944-4b14-a4f5-f0b104845e77" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:19:36.320" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="MSO to MSE" Text="#Primarily opinion-based#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frequent culprits of those close reason include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* asking people to explain a given quote&#xD;&#xA;* asking people to chose/review between different designs&#xD;&#xA;* recommendations for something (e.g. directory structure)&#xD;&#xA;* company policies and best practices&#xD;&#xA;* the name of something&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinguishing factor is that there is no way to get an authoritative answer for the question - the answers are all based on opinion rather than the knowledge of the person answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that if the answers to the question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design A} for these reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- break --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design B} for these other reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both of these answers are valid then the question is likely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **tl;dr** We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/142353/why-is-asking-a-question-on-best-practice-a-bad-thing/142354#142354)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as primarily opinion-based?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17374" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6488" RevisionGUID="01479cb4-6c47-40a4-867d-d0c9c055dbcd" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:21:11.720" UserId="1204" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Career or education advice###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice questions are only applicable to the person asking the question.  No two people are looking at the same set of classes, or the same job.  Every question that is asked is either only for one person or the answers will always be hopelessly incomplete because of the lack of the nuanced information and context that the person asking the question is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career questions are often **very important** questions to the person asking them.  Although assistance can be provided, the answer is one that *you* need to find yourself, and not from random strangers on the Internet.  If you are in academia, ask a career counselor at the school, or one of the instructors - they know you better than we do.  Similar resources can be found for people in the job market already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the biggest difficulties with Q&amp;A for career questions is that to get the nuances of your situation and getting to know you better requires a dense two way communication - lots of clarification back and forth.  To this end, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is a resource where (the current) denizens can have that conversation.  We still won't get to know you as well as people who know you know you, but on the whole we are familiar with the various parts of the software industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Reddit) [/r/cscareersquestions FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Where to ask for general advice for young programmers?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/216589/where-to-ask-for-general-advice-for-young-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* Workplace.SE -&gt; [topics guidance](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)  &#xD;&#xA;  Workplace.SE -&gt; [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17375" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6491" RevisionGUID="e786addd-947c-4327-9b20-28dbf4072994" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:21:22.777" UserId="1204" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="#Primarily opinion-based#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frequent culprits of those close reason include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* asking people to explain a given quote&#xD;&#xA;* asking people to chose/review between different designs&#xD;&#xA;* recommendations for something (e.g. directory structure)&#xD;&#xA;* company policies and best practices&#xD;&#xA;* the name of something&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinguishing factor is that there is no way to get an authoritative answer for the question - the answers are all based on opinion rather than the knowledge of the person answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that if the answers to the question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design A} for these reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- break --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design B} for these other reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both of these answers are valid then the question is likely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **tl;dr** We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/142353/why-is-asking-a-question-on-best-practice-a-bad-thing/142354#142354)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as primarily opinion-based?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17376" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6485" RevisionGUID="68e22453-a9ec-4b9c-812d-8f1c139decc7" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:22:40.710" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="# Duplicate questions#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A duplicate question in and of itself [isn't a bad thing](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/ &quot;see 'Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication'&quot;).  Often it means that the people who have suggested it as such think that the answer to your question is already in the original question.  Questions are closed as duplicates because we want future readers to be able to go to one place to find the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read *all* of the answers on the original question and consider the implications behind the answers too - not just the first reading.  An example of this can be seen on Stack Overflow when debugging questions trying to track down a NullPointerException in Java are linked to a question that explains about NullPointerExceptions rather than trying to resolve that particular instance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that something is closed as a duplicate incorrectly, explain specifically how your question differs from the other question and the answers in the duplicate question do not apply to your situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO FAQ) [How should duplicate questions be handled?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/10841/how-should-duplicate-questions-be-handled)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Does the new guidance on duplicate questions suggest closing a question as duplicate, if the original answers the OP's question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/217401/does-the-new-guidance-on-duplicate-questions-suggest-closing-a-question-as-dupli)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Someone flagged my question as already answered, but it's not](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/194476/someone-flagged-my-question-as-already-answered-but-its-not)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as a duplicate?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6485/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17377" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="84f4d91e-92c1-43f7-b926-ffdf9a891483" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:22:53.247" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long for the Q&amp;A format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar to the recommend an XYZ close reason, some questions are polling for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the choice as to which answer is the one to accept is a &quot;which one I like best,&quot; the question may be one it is polling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While some other Stack Exchanges allow it, Programmers.SE frowns upon ['big list' type questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;see also: list-questions tag wiki at MSO&quot;) that seem to want to compile a list of things.  Questions that fall into this category typically have the form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What are all the problems I will encounter with XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * What are the pros and cons of XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * How can XYZ be used?&#xD;&#xA; * Any ideas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue with questions like these is that they don't pose a problem that can be solved by an answer.  There is no definitive *right* answer that someone can go to, see the accepted answer and say &quot;yep, thats the answer&quot; but rather any given (or none) answer might be appropriate for the person reading the question.  As such, these questions are closed as 'too broad' as they fall under the 'has too many possible answers.'&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help Center &gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as too broad?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17378" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6489" RevisionGUID="2493a6ba-3d78-4682-9a5c-e77635995fd7" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:23:05.040" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="#Unclear what you are asking#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are looking for, in the [context of Programmers.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This close reason can also be a bit unclear as to what the issue is.  Please be sure to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Give enough context that someone reading the question can understand it&#xD;&#xA;* Explain what you are looking for&#xD;&#xA;* Check to make sure you are not using jargon that is particular to one specific branch of computing (and if you are, either change the jargon or link to a site that explains it)&#xD;&#xA;* Make sure you are on the proper site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last point is important too.  This close reason is often used as a proxy for &quot;we don't think that this question is a good question for Programmers.SE (it might be on Stack Overflow), but would get closed there too.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explain your design.  Explain what you have done.  Explain where you are having difficulty.  Explain what you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear what help you need](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260) (see also [linked MSO post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/215806/165773))&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as unclear?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6489/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17379" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="029c84d1-645d-4786-b509-59c945cdc75c" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:23:18.363" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17380" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6484" RevisionGUID="8354cf30-e1bd-4e10-aff6-fed8867b6b2b" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:23:29.417" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="# Downvoted #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to look at is the mouseover for the down vote button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that this is a completely subjective grading and people may down vote because they were late to work or don't like unicorns.  However one's feeling of unicorns, this *is* information for you to look at and consider how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Make sure that the question is not just asking for something that can be easily searched with google.###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking other people to do your searching for you is considered poor form.  Everyone answering questions is doing so on a volunteer basis (even the SE employees that sometimes answer questions - they aren't paid to do so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also extends to things that you should have been able to find when searching on P.SE.  As you enter the information be sure to tag the question appropriately.  The combination of tags and title *may* help you find something right away that answers the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Explain your current understanding of the issue###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just saying &quot;Could someone explain ${concept} to me&quot; doesn't show what you *do* understand.  It lacks research.  Often the answer to this is spent repeating what is already available in Wikipedia.  If you had read this already and don't understand a part of it, explain that part and what you do understand.  Correcting a misconception is easier (and a better question) than trying to explain the entire topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Blatantly off topic###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the help center on [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) questions. Questions that are asking for a discussion, or polling or one of the reasons specified in the help center.  Especially note that questions *should* have been posted on Stack Overflow (implementation) or questions that should have been posted on Stack Overflow, but would be off topic there too (do this work for me).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [How much research effort is expected of Stack Overflow users?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/182266/how-much-research-effort-is-expected-of-stack-overflow-users/182380#182380)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Encouraging people to explain downvotes](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/2373/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;`[Why was my question down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17381" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6486" RevisionGUID="132b411c-72c9-456d-bc5a-33af46b501c6" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:23:40.987" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###What technology to take up next###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a constant stream of new projects out there.  Github [claims 4,500 new projects a day](https://github.com/blog/841-those-are-some-big-numbers) back in 2011.  On December 23, 2013, Github had [10 million repositories](https://github.com/blog/1724-10-million-repositories).  Quite frankly, there are far too many projects for anyone to suggest a good answer.  What's more, the projects of yesteryear may well be inactive now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same problem exists for suggesting languages and technologies - they are constantly changing.  Further, many questions of this type often just ask &quot;which one is best&quot; without specifying any requirements, making them essentially a popularity poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A goal for Stack Exchange is to create a lasting repository of information.  Asking questions about which technology to chose runs counter to that.  In part because everyone's needs are different and also that everyone has their own favorites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56848/how-does-one-keep-up-with-all-the-new-tools-languages-framework (also look at the [linked questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/56848?lq=1))&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17382" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6492" RevisionGUID="ece8d572-21b4-430e-a02c-24574d665c26" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:23:51.840" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="#Other#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions can be closed with a custom reason.  These are found in the comments for the question.  To that extent it is difficult to enumerate all the possible reasons people may try to close a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read the explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6251/how-can-i-write-a-good-custom-close-message&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/why-do-certification-questions-keep-getting-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6283/current-events-questions-and-answers&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [cross-posting (posting the same question over multiple Stack Exchange sites)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/cross-posting/info)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed - other reasons](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6492/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17383" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="feb47837-926e-4635-9e08-233b150f06b3" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:30:07.993" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long for the Q&amp;A format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are just polls for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the accepted answer is based on &quot;which answer I like best,&quot; rather than &quot;which answer solves my problem,&quot; the question is probably a poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While some other Stack Exchanges allow it, Programmers.SE frowns upon ['big list' type questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;see also: list-questions tag wiki at MSO&quot;) that seem to want to compile a list of things.  Questions that fall into this category typically have the form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What are all the problems I will encounter with XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * What are the pros and cons of XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * How can XYZ be used?&#xD;&#xA; * Any ideas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like these don't pose a problem that can be solved by an answer.  There is no definitive *right* answer that someone can go to, see the accepted answer and say &quot;yep, thats the answer.&quot;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help Center &gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as too broad?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17384" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6491" RevisionGUID="cfc9e1bb-fc47-4a28-ae00-e781f2e5b45e" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:39:29.500" UserId="1204" Comment="added 219 characters in body" Text="#Primarily opinion-based#&#xD;&#xA;Good questions ask for expertise, not opinions. Examples of questions that are primarily opinion-based:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What did this person mean when he said...&quot; (We're not mind-readers)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Which of these two designs is the better one?&quot; (what do you mean by &quot;better?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;How should I structure the folders in this project?&quot; (really?)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Is this the best practice?&quot; (what do you mean by &quot;best?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What is the name of this thing so I can go look it up?&quot; (Ask us your specific question about the thing)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinguishing factor is that there is no way to get an authoritative answer for the question - the answers are all based on opinion rather than the knowledge of the person answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that if the answers to the question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design A} for these reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- break --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design B} for these other reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both of these answers are valid then the question is likely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **tl;dr** We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/142353/why-is-asking-a-question-on-best-practice-a-bad-thing/142354#142354)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as primarily opinion-based?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17385" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6611" RevisionGUID="e46c0d52-b7d9-4829-b72b-2ff32aa874c8" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:51:16.193" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="My father taught me to program back in the days of old.  He was a college chemistry lab director before he retired and had never taken a computer science class, nor was computer programming ever in his job description or duties.  The point I want to make here is that he was never a computer professional, but he was an educator and able to teach me how to program.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.StackExchange is [defined as](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Teaching a child how to program is in no way part of the scope of a professional or student answering questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking about how to teach a child how about syntax (because the asker is a programmer) is no more on topic here than asking how to teach a child to balance a checkbook on The Workplace because the person asking is an accountant for some company.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As programmers, we are not at all necessarily skilled in pedagogy. There is a great deal of background necessary to be able to properly answer these questions that fall outside of the realm of programming (and even the explaining a topic at a conference - which would be too broad).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider the guidance given in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488 which addresses the point that no two people (children in this case) are the same - nor are their instructors.  Each question will either be excessively nuanced to that individual or be hopelessly broad trying to answer for everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point to [On &quot;engineering&quot; and teaching pointers.](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/on-engineering-and-teaching-pointers) from chat where over the course of an hour and several hundred messages we worked through the how to teach pointers in C to an instructor who also helped guide *us* with the particulars for his class.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we (professional programmers) do have experience that can be useful, the aspect of teaching it to non-programmers is not a good question for the main site, but often a good topic in chat where we can get at the particulars of what is being taught and the language and the level of the students.  Those particulars make it a less than ideal main site question because it would involve could involve one question for each language and level of student understanding (and the cartesian product of the two)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17386" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6611" RevisionGUID="e306c462-62f9-4aef-ad7e-cc4da37b44dd" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:51:16.193" UserDisplayName="user40980" />
  <row Id="17387" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6609" RevisionGUID="b5a64dea-61d7-43f5-919c-02d31591241c" CreationDate="2014-04-17T17:57:28.733" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|close-reasons|meta|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17388" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="94a6bcc0-ac91-4a2c-b9f1-9bb31a91ae19" CreationDate="2014-04-17T18:49:26.343" UserId="31260" Comment="update per rev 5 at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/6486/revisions" Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted).  Why? And what can I do about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What technology to take up next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a tool, library, or other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * (MSE) [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in/129632#129632)&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)  &#xD;&#xA;  certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links also from particular points in the history of Programmers.SE and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a [serial vote](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/serial-voting/info &quot;what's this&quot;) reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For pasting into chat or comments there is a &quot;Quick link&quot; at the end of each answer.  The quick link for the question is `[Why was my question closed or down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/)` - pasting this into chat or a comment will link to the question.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17389" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6612" RevisionGUID="d411ddd1-d11f-4b3d-ae1b-6e521a636ff7" CreationDate="2014-04-18T00:29:07.223" UserId="78905" Text="I just saw a question asked in what appears to me to be Italian. I can't answer it without running it through a translation program.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How should a question like this be handled? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should it be closed? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we require that questions be posted in English? I don't want to seem elitist with the spoken/written language. I do want to be able to answer the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17390" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6612" RevisionGUID="d411ddd1-d11f-4b3d-ae1b-6e521a636ff7" CreationDate="2014-04-18T00:29:07.223" UserId="78905" Text="The language of questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17391" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6612" RevisionGUID="d411ddd1-d11f-4b3d-ae1b-6e521a636ff7" CreationDate="2014-04-18T00:29:07.223" UserId="78905" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17392" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6613" RevisionGUID="00cff48e-ace8-4360-b05c-05c23f5972c2" CreationDate="2014-04-18T00:52:01.027" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="It should be closed.  This is an English site (btw, you can try to figure out what it is and get the language detection with http://translate.google.com using the 'detect language').  Answers in not-english are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Not useful for people who don't speak the language searching&#xD;&#xA;* If translated to english, may not be useful for the original poster&#xD;&#xA;  * Furthermore, the OP is may be unable to give additional information&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it may be something that someone can read, or send through google translate to get an essence of, it is ultimately something that the OP needs to put forth the effort into to write in the appropriate language.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking a question in Stack Overflow (or P.SE) is no more appropriate than asking in English on [Stack Overflow em Português](http://pt.stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a set of area 51 proposals for Stack Overflow in XYZ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/42810/stack-overflow-in-spanish&#xD;&#xA;* http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/34945/stack-overflow-in-turkish&#xD;&#xA;* http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/41168/stack-overflow-in-russian&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;MSE: [Non-English Q&amp;A translations](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171034/non-english-qa-translations)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;MSE: [Is English required on Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13676/is-english-required-on-stack-overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;MSE: [non-english-speakers tag](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/non-english-speakers)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SO Blog: [Non-English Question Policy](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/07/non-english-question-policy/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17393" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6613" RevisionGUID="828e7248-5bc6-426c-98f5-46a9b64763f4" CreationDate="2014-04-18T01:02:07.897" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 401 characters in body" Text="It should be closed.  This is an English site (btw, you can try to figure out what it is and get the language detection with http://translate.google.com using the 'detect language').  Answers in not-english are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Not useful for people who don't speak the language searching&#xD;&#xA;* If translated to english, may not be useful for the original poster&#xD;&#xA;  * Furthermore, the OP is may be unable to give additional information&#xD;&#xA;* We don't necessarily have the moderators who can handle issues that come up in non-english.&#xD;&#xA;* We don't have the people able to read an off topic (or too broad or unclear) non-english question and decide if it is on topic or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it may be something that someone can read, or send through google translate to get an essence of, it is ultimately something that the OP needs to put forth the effort into to write in the appropriate language.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can go a long way to fixing spelling and grammar of someone who doesn't write English well - but it is necessary for it to start out and be conducted in English.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking a question in Stack Overflow (or P.SE) is no more appropriate than asking in English on [Stack Overflow em Português](http://pt.stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a set of area 51 proposals for Stack Overflow in XYZ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/42810/stack-overflow-in-spanish&#xD;&#xA;* http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/34945/stack-overflow-in-turkish&#xD;&#xA;* http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/41168/stack-overflow-in-russian&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;MSE: [Non-English Q&amp;A translations](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171034/non-english-qa-translations)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;MSE: [Is English required on Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13676/is-english-required-on-stack-overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;MSE: [non-english-speakers tag](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/non-english-speakers)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SO Blog: [Non-English Question Policy](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/07/non-english-question-policy/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17394" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6612" RevisionGUID="fe110559-c341-4ee5-9060-e9a7b642f6e5" CreationDate="2014-04-18T16:16:50.740" UserId="1204" Comment="edited title" Text="How should questions not written in English be handled?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17395" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6491" RevisionGUID="70f7594c-21a1-40b5-8860-fa45d5d6ba37" CreationDate="2014-04-18T16:20:09.187" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body" Text="#Primarily opinion-based#&#xD;&#xA;Good questions ask for expertise, not opinions. Examples of questions that are primarily opinion-based:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What did this person mean when he said...&quot; (We're not mind-readers)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Which of these two designs is the better one?&quot; (what do you mean by &quot;better?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;How should I arrange the folders in my project?&quot; (really?)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Is this the best practice?&quot; (what do you mean by &quot;best?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What is the name of this thing so I can go look it up?&quot; (Ask us your specific question about the thing)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinguishing factor is that there is no way to get an authoritative answer for the question - the answers are all based on opinion rather than the knowledge of the person answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that if the answers to the question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design A} for these reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- break --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design B} for these other reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both of these answers are valid then the question is likely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **tl;dr** We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/142353/why-is-asking-a-question-on-best-practice-a-bad-thing/142354#142354)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as primarily opinion-based?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17396" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6604" RevisionGUID="aa2447e2-feba-4cbd-bd47-9b485fe13d30" CreationDate="2014-04-18T20:11:18.437" UserId="1204" Comment="edited body" Text="Following [a Meta discussion][1] and some discussions in [our chat room][2] to iron out some finer points, we have completed an update to the [&quot;What topics can I ask about here?&quot; page of our Help Center][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is a summary of the changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Minor rewording of the tagline. It still emphasizes questions that require human expertise, but makes it clear that we are about more than just programmers. Questions about many aspects of the software development lifecycle from anyone working in it are welcome here.&#xD;&#xA; - Removed &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; from the list of things that are on-topic. The questions that were off-topic are still off-topic, but the ones that are on-topic are best captured in the &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; and &quot;software engineering management&quot; line items in what is on-topic.&#xD;&#xA; - Removed the &quot;software engineering&quot; line item from what is on-topic. It was replaced with more specific details of what software engineering topics are allowed here, which is most of them.&#xD;&#xA; - Clarified programming tools to specifically exclude coding tools such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs. We don't want to entirely preclude good tool questions that don't otherwise have a home at this time.&#xD;&#xA; - Added &quot;legal advice&quot; to the list of things that are not allowed. We are not lawyers.&#xD;&#xA; - Changed &quot;resume help&quot; to &quot;job hunting&quot; at the request of The Workplace. They do not do resume critiques and did not want our Help Center giving that impression.&#xD;&#xA; - Shortened the portion on subjective questions. This is better addressed by the [&quot;What types of questions should I avoid asking?&quot; page of the Help Center][4]. Maintained links to this page as well as the relevant blog posts, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally speaking, there isn't a change to site scope or audience. However, we have clarified some of the more ambiguous parts and more closely aligned the things our site is not about with some of the custom close reasons that exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to this, these changes (as applicable) have been rolled into our [About page][5] as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anyone has any suggestions, we'd still be glad to take them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6590/should-the-close-reasons-be-added-to-the-help-center-on-topic-article&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17397" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6612" RevisionGUID="bc038992-81bd-42d6-b03e-06773dc2febd" CreationDate="2014-04-18T20:37:30.467" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17399" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6592" RevisionGUID="eae8de1a-25ec-4c73-b00c-e740e25d98a9" CreationDate="2014-04-21T13:19:30.117" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/250976/migrations-are-now-in-progress" Text="Recent efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given long known &quot;tradition&quot; of attempts to circumvent such bans by posting at inappropriate sites I wonder how much impact could this have on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand this, I would like to find out how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically I am trying to figure whether it's something that can be dealt with in our regular ways, or it is worth looking for a dedicated approach to address (like, say, system triggering automated flag for mod attention when post from such a user gets close vote / flag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Let's burn down the close queue!](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Block migration if user is suspended/question-blocked at destination](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/102293/block-migration-if-user-is-suspended-question-blocked-at-destination)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17400" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6610" RevisionGUID="22ca7f04-5813-4a3b-b2b8-10839140887f" CreationDate="2014-04-21T14:49:08.403" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="It takes 5 community votes to close; I updated the 3's to 4's. World provided a binding vote for the 4th &amp; 5th vote in this case. And gnat spells his user handle with a lower case 'g'." Text="Well, 17 people thought the question was topical enough to upvote, 9 felt it was topical enough to answer, and 22 felt it was topical enough to upvote an answer.  Then gnat runs his searches 2 years later, unilaterally decides it's off topic, which puts it into the review queue, where it's easy to find 4 other people to agree with him.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meanwhile, those 17-22 people who thought the question was good have no idea it was closed.  This happens so frequently that I run an [SEDE query](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/136453/recently-closed-questions-i-answered) occasionally to catch these situations, and cast reopen votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So many of these closed questions go unscrutinized because they are not noticed, that eventually it becomes the status quo that these questions are off topic, even though no discussion to that effect actually took place, let alone a consensus being reached.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we have a system where one person can easily find 4 backers to decide something is off topic, over the objections of 17-22 others who receive no notification.  Does that make it truly off topic?  I don't think you can honestly claim such, but that's the system as it is set up." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17401" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6488" RevisionGUID="13b33332-65ed-472f-a788-6d20d6b1b232" CreationDate="2014-04-21T17:05:44.523" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6594/are-now-all-questions-about-teaching-programming-to-be-considered-off-topic" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Career or education advice###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice questions are only applicable to the person asking the question.  No two people are looking at the same set of classes, or the same job.  Every question that is asked is either only for one person or the answers will always be hopelessly incomplete because of the lack of the nuanced information and context that the person asking the question is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career questions are often **very important** questions to the person asking them.  Although assistance can be provided, the answer is one that *you* need to find yourself, and not from random strangers on the Internet.  If you are in academia, ask a career counselor at the school, or one of the instructors - they know you better than we do.  Similar resources can be found for people in the job market already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the biggest difficulties with Q&amp;A for career questions is that to get the nuances of your situation and getting to know you better requires a dense two way communication - lots of clarification back and forth.  To this end, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is a resource where (the current) denizens can have that conversation.  We still won't get to know you as well as people who know you know you, but on the whole we are familiar with the various parts of the software industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Reddit) [/r/cscareersquestions FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6594/are-now-all-questions-about-teaching-programming-to-be-considered-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Where to ask for general advice for young programmers?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/216589/where-to-ask-for-general-advice-for-young-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* Workplace.SE -&gt; [topics guidance](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)  &#xD;&#xA;  Workplace.SE -&gt; [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17402" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6614" RevisionGUID="256cf64e-301b-4e63-9f37-5edc147c2cec" CreationDate="2014-04-22T02:12:29.430" UserId="97968" Text="Should [tag:junior-programmer] and [tag:junior] tags be merged?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think so. I would like to hear your opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17403" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6614" RevisionGUID="256cf64e-301b-4e63-9f37-5edc147c2cec" CreationDate="2014-04-22T02:12:29.430" UserId="97968" Text="Should junior-programmer and junior tags be merged?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17404" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6614" RevisionGUID="256cf64e-301b-4e63-9f37-5edc147c2cec" CreationDate="2014-04-22T02:12:29.430" UserId="97968" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17405" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6614" RevisionGUID="0c511907-6773-4d7d-ad48-eb0f3e1b60b7" CreationDate="2014-04-22T12:24:36.213" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17406" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6615" RevisionGUID="565f620d-e189-41c9-908c-05ed0dccb68a" CreationDate="2014-04-22T12:24:50.063" UserId="4" Text="This has been done, since it just made sense." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17407" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6616" RevisionGUID="c4433800-f216-42f7-ad6b-571e1cb1a44f" CreationDate="2014-04-22T13:11:50.453" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="With [Let's get rid of the 10K flag queue](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/226092/lets-get-rid-of-the-10k-flag-queue) (MSE), the ability for 10k users to see flags (particularly not an answer and very low quality) is gone.  This means that the little blue box for notifying a 10k user of a not an answer or low quality flag is gone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What this means is that the only way for 20k users to be notified of discovered bad answers is through the low quality review queue ( http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/stats ).  Note that a single 'looks good' or 'edit' can kick a question out of the low quality review queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask that people not use trivial edits on bad answers to remove it from the queue.  If an answer is in there and you fix an 'i' to an 'I' it is removed from the queue and drastically reduced in visibility - but it still isn't a better answer.  Such changes mean it is *more* likely to get deleted by a moderator rather than a 20k user and this complicates the workflow for a user to edit and undelete the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a 10k user one has the ability to see the history of *everyone's* activity in a queue and the action took.  20k users, please use this ability to double check edit and looks good reviews that have been booted from the queue to see if a delete vote is necessary on them anyways.  Also, please look at the [10k tools deletes page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=Delete&amp;daterange=last7days) to see if there are delete votes on existing answers that need to be handled.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators (and I dislike telling moderators how to do their job - but I've done so in the past&lt;!-- and will likely do so in the future, until you tell me how to do your job --&gt;), if booting from a queue removes *your* visibility into these flags... well, you've got everything from have a chat with the user to review bans in your utility belt.  With the 10k flag handling gone we (20k users) have less visibility into to handling the answer deletes and its likely you'll need to do more if nothing else changes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17408" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6616" RevisionGUID="c4433800-f216-42f7-ad6b-571e1cb1a44f" CreationDate="2014-04-22T13:11:50.453" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="10k flag handling gone and what you can do about it" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17409" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6616" RevisionGUID="c4433800-f216-42f7-ad6b-571e1cb1a44f" CreationDate="2014-04-22T13:11:50.453" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|review|deleted-answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17410" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6616" RevisionGUID="28c9120c-a830-458a-b5d3-ce3ee825e08d" CreationDate="2014-04-22T17:48:36.737" UserId="31260" Comment="ability to see the history of *everyone's* activity in a queue += http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/184309/165773 &quot;feature announcement at MSE&quot;" Text="With [Let's get rid of the 10K flag queue](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/226092/lets-get-rid-of-the-10k-flag-queue) (MSE), the ability for 10k users to see flags (particularly not an answer and very low quality) is gone.  This means that the little blue box for notifying a 10k user of a not an answer or low quality flag is gone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What this means is that the only way for 20k users to be notified of discovered bad answers is through the low quality review queue ( http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/stats ).  Note that a single 'looks good' or 'edit' can kick a question out of the low quality review queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask that people not use trivial edits on bad answers to remove it from the queue.  If an answer is in there and you fix an 'i' to an 'I' it is removed from the queue and drastically reduced in visibility - but it still isn't a better answer.  Such changes mean it is *more* likely to get deleted by a moderator rather than a 20k user and this complicates the workflow for a user to edit and undelete the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a 10k user one has the [ability to see the history of *everyone's* activity in a queue](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/184309/165773 &quot;feature announcement at MSE&quot;) and the action took.  20k users, please use this ability to double check edit and looks good reviews that have been booted from the queue to see if a delete vote is necessary on them anyways.  Also, please look at the [10k tools deletes page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=Delete&amp;daterange=last7days) to see if there are delete votes on existing answers that need to be handled.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators (and I dislike telling moderators how to do their job - but I've done so in the past&lt;!-- and will likely do so in the future, until you tell me how to do your job --&gt;), if booting from a queue removes *your* visibility into these flags... well, you've got everything from have a chat with the user to review bans in your utility belt.  With the 10k flag handling gone we (20k users) have less visibility into to handling the answer deletes and its likely you'll need to do more if nothing else changes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17411" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6616" RevisionGUID="fceb524e-1e91-4453-8fb0-64c5dea4a231" CreationDate="2014-04-22T18:36:32.790" UserId="31260" Comment="http://i.stack.imgur.com/T6rhA.png &quot;screen shot: LQ queue history as shown to 10k users&quot;" Text="With [Let's get rid of the 10K flag queue](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/226092/lets-get-rid-of-the-10k-flag-queue) (MSE), the ability for 10k users to see flags (particularly not an answer and very low quality) is gone.  This means that the little blue box for notifying a 10k user of a not an answer or low quality flag is gone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What this means is that the only way for 20k users to be notified of discovered bad answers is through the low quality review queue ( http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/stats ).  Note that a single 'looks good' or 'edit' can kick a question out of the low quality review queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask that people not use trivial edits on bad answers to remove it from the queue.  If an answer is in there and you fix an 'i' to an 'I' it is removed from the queue and drastically reduced in visibility - but it still isn't a better answer.  Such changes mean it is *more* likely to get deleted by a moderator rather than a 20k user and this complicates the workflow for a user to edit and undelete the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a 10k user one has the [ability to see the history of *everyone's* activity in a queue](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/184309/165773 &quot;feature announcement at MSE&quot;) and the action took:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;[![https://i.stack.imgur.com/T6rhA.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;20k users, please use this ability to double check edit and looks good reviews that have been booted from the queue to see if a delete vote is necessary on them anyways.  Also, please look at the [10k tools deletes page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=Delete&amp;daterange=last7days) to see if there are delete votes on existing answers that need to be handled.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators (and I dislike telling moderators how to do their job - but I've done so in the past&lt;!-- and will likely do so in the future, until you tell me how to do your job --&gt;), if booting from a queue removes *your* visibility into these flags... well, you've got everything from have a chat with the user to review bans in your utility belt.  With the 10k flag handling gone we (20k users) have less visibility into to handling the answer deletes and its likely you'll need to do more if nothing else changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/T6rhA.png &quot;screen shot: LQ queue history as shown to 10k users&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/history" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17412" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6491" RevisionGUID="00bd2094-d07a-40a2-9194-2515c2b3970a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T06:00:59.290" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology" Text="#Primarily opinion-based#&#xD;&#xA;Good questions ask for expertise, not opinions. Examples of questions that are primarily opinion-based:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What did this person mean when he said...&quot; (We're not mind-readers)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Which of these two designs is the better one?&quot; (what do you mean by &quot;better?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;How should I arrange the folders in my project?&quot; (really?)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Is this the best practice?&quot; (what do you mean by &quot;best?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What is the name of this thing so I can go look it up?&quot; (Ask us your specific question about the thing)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinguishing factor is that there is no way to get an authoritative answer for the question - the answers are all based on opinion rather than the knowledge of the person answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that if the answers to the question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design A} for these reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- break --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design B} for these other reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both of these answers are valid then the question is likely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **tl;dr** We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/142353/why-is-asking-a-question-on-best-practice-a-bad-thing/142354#142354)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as primarily opinion-based?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17413" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6617" RevisionGUID="1f926c8e-f01e-4468-b0af-51de268baf7f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T08:38:41.863" UserId="97968" Text="Should [tag:frameworks] and [tag:framework] tags be merged?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think so. What do you think?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17414" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6617" RevisionGUID="1f926c8e-f01e-4468-b0af-51de268baf7f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T08:38:41.863" UserId="97968" Text="Should frameworks and framework tags be merged?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17415" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6617" RevisionGUID="1f926c8e-f01e-4468-b0af-51de268baf7f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T08:38:41.863" UserId="97968" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17416" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8" RevisionGUID="3665196f-4348-473e-8704-57d14748793d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Update&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Community Wiki is &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/392/should-the-community-wiki-police-be-shut-down/7183#7183&quot;&gt;no longer an option&lt;/a&gt;, across the network, for regular users when creating or editing a question. If a question should be flagged community wiki, flag a moderator for attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer&quot;&gt;Why would anyone accept an answer?&lt;/a&gt;, what's the criteria for what should be a community wiki and what is a regular question? If most, if not all questions are subjective, is there a need to generate one mega-answer through collaboration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17418" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="79" RevisionGUID="29eb6109-6fbe-436b-b8bb-bd084d3b46de" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h1&gt;slackoverflow.com&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken / Available for purchase&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I proposed this on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/62734/renaming-the-not-programming-related-proposal/62849#62849&quot;&gt;meta.stackoverflow.com&lt;/a&gt; and Jeff suggested to add it here too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17419" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="96" RevisionGUID="02088fcf-aa08-4b0f-9078-61adb6704bf0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This is strongly related to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/58543/do-all-stack-exchange-sites-need-an-accept-answer-button&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; I asked on meta.stacko where it was a huge no-no that there should be no Accept button.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17421" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="137" RevisionGUID="98925cae-cf73-4bfc-b0f6-b9e1933014a0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h1&gt;progpub.com&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short version based on a suggestion in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/62734/renaming-the-not-programming-related-proposal/62849#62849&quot;&gt;Renaming the Not Programming Related Proposal&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17422" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="160" RevisionGUID="bf9d19b2-8e2b-4d5f-a823-5427028d7028" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This topic has been hashed over and over on Meta.StackOverflow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135&quot;&gt;Encouraging people to explain down-votes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22934/so-annoyed-with-no-comment-vindictive-downvoting&quot;&gt;So annoyed with no-comment, vindictive downvoting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63895/who-has-downvoted-me-and-why&quot;&gt;Who has downvoted me and why [closed]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/50738/if-you-dont-like-my-question-you-have-to-explain-why&quot;&gt;If you don't like my question you have to explain why. [closed]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/55324/downvoters-and-comments&quot;&gt;Downvoters and comments [closed]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a &lt;em&gt;Bad Idea&lt;/em&gt;. Downvoting is a personal thing for the voter, is necessary for a functioning voting system (that is, down-voters should not be subject to reprisal), and should not be taken so personally that you feel you are owed an explanation. Shrug downvotes, concentrate on providing the best answers you can, and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17423" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="161" RevisionGUID="3ff7a8d5-451f-414c-988e-3afa816c2561" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Jon Skeet says it all here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votes/2268#2268&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votes/2268#2268&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2009/05/20/reasons-for-voting-on-questions-and-answers.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2009/05/20/reasons-for-voting-on-questions-and-answers.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder why not use the same system in comments for voting?&#xA;That's if you like a question/answer up-vote it, if not, you either comment about what you see wrong or flag it if it's such an offshoot&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17424" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="190" RevisionGUID="391a8ab5-f277-488f-948e-44d6a50d1ad5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;It's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&quot;&gt;&quot;Community Wiki&quot;&lt;/a&gt; answer (one which doesn't have a permanent &quot;owner&quot;, can be edited by more users, and doesn't grant reputation to anyone) - this status is forced for answers to questions with more than 30 answers. On the other sites, this is done to try and reduce the motivation for posting duplicate answers on open-ended questions... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this site, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145/remove-cw-conversion-at-30-answers&quot;&gt;there's some discussion as to whether it's a useful behavior&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17426" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="213" RevisionGUID="20c92cdb-a20e-41ac-9be9-9f16aaa868cd" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;One of the topics that's come up several times on Meta.StackOverflow is the perception that Programmers.SE is a joke proposal, existing solely to help keep Stack Overflow free of all the &quot;crappy&quot; questions that it gets plagued with every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few of examples of this perception (&lt;strong&gt;note: see Edits 2 and 3 below for clarification&lt;/strong&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se&quot;&gt;Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You absolutely nailed my resentment of Programmers.SE; it was created as a tongue-in-cheek, NOT-Stack-Overflow site: the stuff we keep in the basement because it's not fit for keeping upstairs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Robert Cartaino&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The problem is that Programmers.SE was created as an amorphous blob where nothing is off topic (read: everything not Stack Overflow is on topic). The travesty is that Programmers.SE is, at least in perception, [your quote] &quot;an ocean of jokes and polls.&quot; That's where the problem lies. I would have created the site very differently: Subjective/soft programming topics okay; Industry/engineering issues okay; The business of software okay; Banal polls/jokes off-topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Robert Cartaino&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange&quot;&gt;Programmers on stackexchange&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So what you are saying is that Programmers.SE is the skin of evil left behind to free the race of titans from the bonds of destructiveness: &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ims5W5bJl9s&amp;amp;feature=related#t=11s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ims5W5bJl9s&amp;amp;feature=related#t=11s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64043#64043&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Robert Cartaino&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you browse questions on Meta for a bit, you'll quickly realize that there are a fair number of people who want to use SO for things that SO wasn't designed to be used for: discussions, polls, flame-wars, endless lists... And over time, this has created some amount of irritation on the site: some folks really, &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; want to, um, &lt;em&gt;participate&lt;/em&gt; in questions like, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What's the single best way to type code?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Do you hurt sometimes (as a programmer)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;How can I get a job drawing cartoons featuring the funniest programmer joke about my favorite hidden feature in the worst language ever (on a boat)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So rather than just stamping them out, like so many ducks putting out flaming elephants, some rose-tint-spectacled user got the idea of proposing a site &lt;em&gt;for all the questions that shouldn't be asked on SO&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Programmers.SE is that site. Soon, it'll have its own set of rules and standards, and the cycle will begin anew. But until then, it remains an anarchic paradise of freedom and love.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Shog9&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not going to challenge the premise behind the sentiment: in many ways, that &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; the purpose of the proposal, and Programmers.SE is flourishing despite it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm wondering if there's a way we can spin the content of this site more positively rather than being merely a wretched hive of scum and villainy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Edit&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the things that's popping up here is we should leave Programmers.SE alone because it's popular and as Nathan Taylor puts it, &quot;Haters gonna hate.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think the content or community Programmers.SE needs changing &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;. Rather, I think we just need to provide a clear way to show value to SOIS and others, because the current perception is that we don't, and this site is more or less a joke that's gotten out of hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how can we do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Edit 2&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like SOIS has decided to &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;publicly address&lt;/a&gt; the banality of Programmers.SE on its blog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There’s an even longer list of things that really belong on the new Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense, and could benefit from an infusion of more meaty subjects, like these proposals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've created a new question, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic&quot;&gt;What questions are on topic, and what are off topic?&lt;/a&gt;, to see if we can hash out the proposed merges and other off-topic questions that have come up so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Edit 3&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robert Cartaino clarified his position and the quotes above in the comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't actively despise the &lt;strong&gt;concept&lt;/strong&gt; of Programmers.SE at all. Read my quotes (above) &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; carefully. What I lament is the perception created; the &quot;anything goes&quot; ethos that simply aims to flout what makes Stack Overflow great. I wanted a site about the &quot;Programmers' Life: a site for discussion of the business, careers, issues, and memes concerning professional developers.&quot; Subjective talk and soft topics okay if it follows a &quot;back it up&quot; philosophy or hard-earned experience. What I got instead was &lt;em&gt;&quot;what is the coolest/stupidest/weirdest/funniest thing you saw/did/tasted today?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Software Q&amp;amp;A will live on SO, Programmers, and a few academic sites. That's it. Not dozens of ridiculously niche and redundant proposals. But the mere mention of merging proposals with Programmers horrifies most. &quot;I don't want my subject on that site.&quot; That's a &lt;strong&gt;huge problem.&lt;/strong&gt; Programmers.SE is the &quot;Park Place&quot; to Stack Overflow's &quot;Boardwalk&quot;; a tremendously valuable resource in a bad neighborhood. I'd prefer to paint over the graffiti and fix broken windows; to reestablish community pride so the police come out on occasion. But that's a far cry from &quot;hater&quot; or &quot;actively despise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Edit 4&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jeff Atwood has created two topics with the basic premise that Programmers.SE as it is now is too undisciplined, and SOIS will be taking steps to correct that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com&quot;&gt;Adding discipline to programmers.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site&quot;&gt;Should “Developer Testing” be folded into a more general “Programmers” site?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17427" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="223" RevisionGUID="8677192f-c5c1-4255-b0e3-280eaf670e3c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;It's &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5212/are-there-any-voting-limits-in-stackoverflow&quot;&gt;30 votes a day&lt;/a&gt;, and it really shouldn't be raised. Limits are in place to prevent abuse: SOIC has ostensibly thought a lot about what the limits should be and why they're necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further discussion: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/28314/why-are-there-voting-limits&quot;&gt;Why are there voting limits?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17428" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="239" RevisionGUID="a35b97cd-d5a6-4ffc-969a-227a364e5fb9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strike&gt;Software Engineering Questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Area 51 Proposal (&lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6922/software-engineering&quot;&gt;Link&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Proposed Q&amp;amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers. Software engineering deals with requirements engineering, software design and architecture, implementation, testing, maintenance, configuration management, process, tools, methodologies, quality, and ethics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example Questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I justify the use of throwaway prototyping to my manager?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What’s the best method for estimation? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I got a job in a company that practices Scrum. How can I prepare myself before the first workday? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What single book provides the best overview of key software engineering topics? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the single most important Software Engineering concept to learn for practical use?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related discussion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se&quot;&gt;Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/186/software-engineering-soon-to-be-beta-what-should-we-do-with-se-questions&quot;&gt;Software Engineering soon to be beta, what should we do with SE questions?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software Engineering has been re-proposed purposefully to avoid being merged, so it's no longer applicable.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17429" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="243" RevisionGUID="be0bb5ae-9d47-4c1e-bdad-4fb0ab735512" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h3&gt;Code Golf &amp;amp; Programming Puzzles Questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Area 51 Proposal (&lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4570/code-golf-programming-puzzles&quot;&gt;Link&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Proposed Q&amp;amp;A site for code golfers and for those who interested in code golfing (from beginners to experts), and programming puzzles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example Questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1407422/code-golf-seven-segments&quot;&gt;Code Golf: Seven Segments&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2800073/code-golf-code-39-bar-code&quot;&gt;Code Golf: Code 39 Bar Code&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1352587/code-golf-morse-code&quot;&gt;Code Golf: Morse code&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/394574/code-golf-new-year-edition-integer-to-roman-numeral&quot;&gt;Code Golf New Year Edition - Integer to Roman Numeral&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/237496/code-golf-factorials&quot;&gt;Code Golf: Factorials&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related Discussion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38/where-do-code-golf-code-challenge-questions-belong&quot;&gt;Where do Code Golf/Code Challenge questions belong?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64511/we-have-puzzle-code-golf-and-now-code-chess-tags-can-we-migrate-them-all-somew&quot;&gt;We have puzzle, code-golf, and now code-chess tags. Can we migrate them all somewhere else?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17430" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="259" RevisionGUID="8b413bd1-2906-4e0f-841d-bae6fedf9cf6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h2&gt;basement.stackoverflow.com&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Idea taken from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se&quot;&gt;Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You absolutely nailed my resentment of Programmers.SE; it was created as a tongue-in-cheek, NOT-Stack-Overflow site: &lt;b&gt;the stuff we keep in the basement&lt;/b&gt; because it's not fit for keeping upstairs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17431" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="264" RevisionGUID="10bf7ebf-7a25-4acb-afa3-e2dd343ea40c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Hmmm... I kinda liked that question. Seemed to fit the &quot;best/worst UI&quot; category. Didn't really understand the edit though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a question is actually &lt;em&gt;better suited&lt;/em&gt; for another site, then it should probably be closed here. But there's &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4708/what-to-do-with-cross-site-duplicates&quot;&gt;an argument to be made&lt;/a&gt; in favor of asking &lt;em&gt;similar&lt;/em&gt; questions to different audiences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17432" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="285" RevisionGUID="770dc4f6-41f5-43ef-a097-2b7e607b2f4a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;In connection to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, and the closing of &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&quot;&gt;Why are so many programmers arrogant?&lt;/a&gt;. The question was closed (unjustifiably, IMHO), then reopened by those of us who disagreed. The question has now been locked, preventing others from participating. I have a feeling this is going to happen to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/do-programmers-have-higher-tendency-to-be-atheists-than-non-programmers&quot;&gt;Do programmers have higher tendency to be atheists than non programmers?&lt;/a&gt; as well (&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; this has happened, as predicted&lt;/em&gt;), which has been closed and reopened as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO, even though both questions &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; potentially lead to flamewars, I think it is a credit to this community that there was not a single answer (apart from one joke answer that was subsequently deleted) that was potentially inflammatory. I fail to see why such questions should be locked, as long as the community wants it open. If the question turns into a close-reopen war, and is closed and reopened more than &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt; times (say thrice), then perhaps it might be worth locking. Even then, it should be done on a case-by-case basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as far as the &quot;Why are so many programmers&quot; arrogant question goes, it has only been closed and reopened once, and at least one of the high-rep users has said that he voted to close by accident. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone please tell me why this decision was taken? Both questions are perfectly valid  for programmers.se, and while such questions &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be closed, locked (and probably deleted) on SO, doing so here merely amounts to censorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; OK, the unilateral closing of the atheist question has really pissed me off. If this happens a few more times, I see myself leaving the community for good. People were being respectful and the community at large had no problem with the question. It was closed once, and reopened once and had no close votes the last time I looked. That means that only 5 people felt strongly enough about it to vote to close it, and the rest were happy to let it be. This makes the &quot;community-run&quot; aspect of the website look like simply lip-service. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT 2:&lt;/strong&gt; I should clarify that I have absolutely nothing against vote-based closing. I may or may not agree with the closers, but at least everyone (at least those who have enough rep) is on an equal footing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT 3:&lt;/strong&gt; Jeff has been talking about &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com&quot;&gt;removing the &quot;worst&quot; 15-20% of questions&lt;/a&gt;. If this happens, I'm going to ask for my account on p.se to be deleted in protest. That's what voting and flagging are for. Remember, a closed question can be deleted if enough high-rep users cast delete votes. If I'd known that this site wasn't going to be strictly community-run, I would have approached participation &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; differently. Why should I be active on meta, cast close/delete votes or view flagged posts if every so often, the community's verdict is going to be overridden unilaterally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17433" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="288" RevisionGUID="c892ae50-7801-49a1-b146-812ec766d7bc" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Questions like &quot;Can you recommend some good pottery for programmers?&quot; are an issue we need to figure out- to what extent are they allowed?  I see a few variants on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions that are clearly unrelated to programming in anyway, but have programming tacked on (eg, &quot;Can you recommend some good pottery for programmers?&quot; or &quot;What, as a programmer, is your favorite legume?&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions that are a middle ground: &quot;What are some good movies for programmer?&quot; is a good example- on one hand it'd be off-topic without &quot;for programmer,&quot; but on the other hand, programming-related movies affect programmer culture, and are something that is, to my mind, &#xA;worth discussing here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions that are somewhat clearly directly related to programming: &quot;What are some good keyboards for programmers&quot;- since keyboards are the tool of our trade, this is definitely worth discussing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been a few discussions of this issue so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An answer in &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic/238#238&quot;&gt;What questions are on-topic and what questions are off-topic&lt;/a&gt;&quot; starts to discuss this&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In revision 7 on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/74/revisions&quot;&gt;What should be in our FAQ&lt;/a&gt;, Mark Trapp rolls back a change I made to suggest that blatant &quot;types of pickles&quot; questions should be off-topic.  He asserts that they are on-topic, citing a meta.SO post.  This exchange is why I'm making this question- we should have an internal question deciding it one way or another to point people to in the future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An early discussion took place in the comments for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2982/recommended-fiction-for-programmers&quot;&gt;programming fiction&lt;/a&gt; question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark points out &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; answer on meta.SO&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been out for a few days, and I have't payed that much attention to external discussion of P.SE on meta.SO, so I may have missed us coming to a consensus on this issue, but it seems we haven't, and we need to.  What do you think- are 1, 2, and/or 3 on-topic or off-topic for this site, and how do we handle determining which side of the 'on-topic' line a question like this falls?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17434" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="307" RevisionGUID="ed413ccb-e67f-495d-9fba-af5e0102fc65" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The banner message for new/not-logged-in users reads&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Welcome to Q&amp;amp;A site for expert programmers interested...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There should be an article in there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Welcome to a Q&amp;amp;A site for...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, if we want to be fancier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Welcome to the super-mega-ultimate best-on-the-Interblags programmer Q&amp;amp;A site!!!!eleven!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference image (ignore the freehand text, I'm reusing an earlier screenshot (hey, I'm being &quot;green&quot;)) available &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65401/limit-the-size-of-banner-messages&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17435" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="308" RevisionGUID="639b4077-c4dd-487b-a362-21e2f0436199" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;We have a lot of code here. I think everyone agree that we need syntax highlighting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/72797/enable-syntax-highlighting-to-code-blocks-on-programmers-se&quot;&gt;Support this feature request on MSO&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17437" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="315" RevisionGUID="3b1deecd-9a59-4feb-8824-4573213c5d7d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is everyone OK with the tag being removed?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting TheLQ's comment on an answer at &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com/65440#65440&quot;&gt;Adding discipline to programmers.SE&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... If you look at it, all subjective questions are polls, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As most questions could be tagged with [poll] and nobody speaks up it really seems like a redundant tag. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a strong believe people would agree:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The poll tag is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a meta tag as it doesn't tell something about the content,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;redundant as it's an useless tag for the reasons described in this question and its comment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As of now, it's gone...&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those that disagree should start a serious meta question with a reason for such tags to exist.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;After waiting some days, a lot of people have agreed and nobody has disagreed...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17438" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="331" RevisionGUID="efbc8f27-ead1-4c9d-968c-3368b4f8acd1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There are two issues at play:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65803/tumbleweed-text-on-programmers-se-is-out-of-date&quot;&gt;The text for the Tumbleweed badge on Programmers.SE is out of date&lt;/a&gt;. It should read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Asked a question with no votes, no answers, no comments, and low views for a week&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;None of your questions meet the requirements for the badge, given the correct definition. If you're curious about the viewcount requirement, it's &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/32376/tumbleweed-how-many-views-is-low&quot;&gt;10-15&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17439" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="333" RevisionGUID="9ea5c44c-30c9-4bb4-9d3e-be0d246d19d2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h3&gt;Edit: Problem solved.  As Mark Trapp points out, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67039/what-can-we-do-to-make-community-wiki-better/67192#67192&quot;&gt;normal users can no longer mark CW&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki&quot;&gt;consensus&lt;/a&gt; seems to be that community wiki is useless here, and we've been pointing this out in various question comment threads.  The problem is that new user keep coming in with the old expectations of how CW should work, and marking their questions CW just because they're subjective.  I see a few options for dealing with this that I'll post in separate answers- of course, post your own if you can think of a better solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we get a clear consensus, the mods, in their capacity of liaisons, can take it to SOIS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17440" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="335" RevisionGUID="ec4151f3-b604-423c-8387-458589f0c64d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h2&gt;Allow Mods and/or 10k (2k for beta) users to De-CW a question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would solve our problem without losing the CW feature.  However, it's require a more active effort on the part of the mods and the top users.  Further, it's been discussed &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6821/ability-to-undo-the-community-wiki&quot;&gt;on meta.SO&lt;/a&gt; to, as far as I can tell, no effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17441" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="347" RevisionGUID="8ee76c1a-9e3b-4443-a6be-a7b90cc932c5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;You're kinda straddling the line between SO-appropriate and P.SE appropriate...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to ask for a code review&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1957/should-so-allow-give-me-some-feedback-questions&quot;&gt;There's nothing wrong with asking SO for feedback on some code&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;provided you've put some effort into it&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bad&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Is there anything wrong with this code?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;???&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;massive code dump&amp;gt;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;em&gt;Good&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Are there problems with passing a callback to a constructor to allow for lazy initialization?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Description of technique used in code&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Brief code snippet(s) illustrating only relevant techniques&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You've managed to get about half-way on this: you're asking for feedback on the practicality of a specific technique, but rather than describing the technique and your motivations for using it, you've just dumped the code with a few hints as to what it does. Your question starts out sounding like it might be P.SE-appropriate (&quot;what would you think upon seeing this signature?&quot;) but then delves into meatier implementation details (more of a SO thing). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, your title is unacceptably vague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Decide what you want the answers to look like.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're questioning the readability/maintainability of the code (whether the implementation, or the client code) then ask about &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; - P.SE is a reasonable location. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're concerned that the implementation itself fails in some way (error handling, efficiency, unforeseen pitfalls involving the callback referencing disposed data) then be clear about why and how you're using it, and ask on SO. Note that you'll probably get comments on readability/maintainability as well, 'cause SO users are helpful like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17442" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="370" RevisionGUID="580d176f-41d5-4094-9ca7-98e56de43283" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;See the close votes and comments on the question &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/815/when-will-ie6-be-irrelevant&quot;&gt;When will IE6 be irrelevant?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Off topic (2)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Not constructive (1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Not a real question (1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can you edit this question to meet &quot;Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Which guidelines of the big 6 do you think this question apply? Gradually we will close questions that doesn't fit on the 6 Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions. If you think your question doesn't meet enough points it would be a good thing the author of the question initiate the close process. Otherwise community or moderators can take the initiative if they they consider this question inappropriate to this site. Thank you. See more: blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective Maybe an edit turns it more suitable to guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are people now checking the 6-Q guidelines &lt;strong&gt;before checking whether the question is off-topic&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those people can't change their vote to off-topic, so this question stays open while it shouldn't...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can we prevent this behavior? Should we make the vote reasons more clear?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: It would be so useful to be able to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/431/any-way-to-send-a-personal-message-to-another-user&quot;&gt;contact&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57537/how-do-i-contact-other-users&quot;&gt;another&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/389/bigown&quot;&gt;user&lt;/a&gt; somehow, then this didn't have to be so public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17444" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="401" RevisionGUID="265a0f47-4140-41ec-9ba2-e7e4a8939d25" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The first thing you should always do if you are confused about what's happening on a Stack Exchange site is to check the FAQ. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;our FAQ&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt; Please keep it professional at all times. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;tend to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over opinions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; Please see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Good Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; blog post for more details and examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, you should check the tags colored red on the meta-discussion site. If you did, you would've found this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&quot;&gt;The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions are being closed in accordance with the guidelines for this site. If you're confused because this is vastly different from the Area 51 proposal which has a lot of fluff questions, this redefinition was discussed on Meta.StackOverflow.com:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se&quot;&gt;Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site&quot;&gt;Should “Developer Testing” be folded into a more general “Programmers” site?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com&quot;&gt;Adding discipline to programmers.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And discussed on this meta-discussion site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic&quot;&gt;What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep&quot;&gt;How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed&quot;&gt;valid questions being closed.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable&quot;&gt;What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/360/do-i-totally-not-understand-the-point-of-programmers-se&quot;&gt;Do I totally not understand the point of Programmers.SE?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/324/do-we-need-a-definition-of-subjective&quot;&gt;Do we need a definition of subjective?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/355/remove-the-options-to-close-questions-on-this-site&quot;&gt;Remove the options to close questions on this site.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/339/why-should-we-have-to-battle-to-keep-questions-open-closed&quot;&gt;Why should we have to battle to keep questions open? [closed]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/285/please-lets-not-lock-questions-unless-as-an-absolute-last-resort&quot;&gt;Please let's not lock questions unless as an absolute last resort&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;and so on...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry you missed all of the discussion we had about the definition of the site, but the decision has already been made to redefine the site as it currently is in the FAQ, and the time for discussion is over. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Programmers.SE no longer appeals to you or your question does not fit within the guidelines of this site, you might want to try to find a different site, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Yahoo! Answers&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://quora.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quora&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17445" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="406" RevisionGUID="229deae6-020a-41d2-8f3d-9dda794e7b7d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This discussion is going on at stackoverflow meta:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com&quot;&gt;adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was to ask a specific topic about one single other SE site here, it would be closed as off-topic (and rightly so). Why is this discussion that is specifically about this site happening on another meta?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you agree with having that discussion there instead of here? Can explain why you think this discussion should (or should not) be happening on this meta instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17447" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="440" RevisionGUID="fb3bb78f-c18e-433b-ba1f-8d89113ca081" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;SOIS has decided to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67039/what-can-we-do-to-make-community-wiki-better/67192#67192&quot;&gt;disable the community feature entirely for end-users&lt;/a&gt;. Now, if you want a question to be community wiki, you need to flag it for moderator attention. So, that's that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17448" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="456" RevisionGUID="0b1b6d85-a560-4d26-b7d0-67270b727ddf" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The current philosophy from the Team is that they &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68000/allow-beta-sites-to-migrate-questions-to-relevant-sites/68003#68003&quot;&gt;won't provide migration until the Beta is over&lt;/a&gt;, but it seems like that part of the site should be vetted in Beta also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17449" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="462" RevisionGUID="6ac54300-74cf-4bde-8493-6da244ce92cf" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Me and 2 others have reported this a while ago on Meta.SO. Its been reproduced on at least SuperUser and Gaming. Currently its &lt;code&gt;[status-planned]&lt;/code&gt;, but who knows when it will actually get fixed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Root question: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65390/you-must-have-at-least-5-reputation-on-parent-site-to-answer-a-question-for-c&quot;&gt;Misleading error message on SE metas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other reports&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66528/per-site-metas-say-i-need-more-than-5-reputation-to-answer-a-closed-question&quot;&gt;Per-site metas say I need more than 5 reputation to answer a closed question…&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64767/misleading-error-message-on-se-metas&quot;&gt;“You must have at least 5 reputation on [parent site] to answer a question” for closed questions (despite having the rep)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17450" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="484" RevisionGUID="ba9e228d-834a-4950-a19d-59236c13e3d6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5999/can-i-delete-my-account&quot;&gt;Meta.StackOverflow.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to delete your account:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit your profile to say &quot;please delete me&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; so we can confirm your ownership of the account.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Obtain your user page URL or numeric user ID&lt;/strong&gt;. This is linked from the top of every page of the site, when you are logged in.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Email the support address linked at the bottom of every web page&lt;/strong&gt; on the site. Where it says &quot;contact us&quot;, click that. In your email, you &lt;strong&gt;MUST&lt;/strong&gt; include your user page URL or user ID so we can find your account.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17451" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="502" RevisionGUID="a8834e0b-9f77-49e5-90ff-01ec755223dc" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;It's one of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/125/how-about-a-vote-not-to-close-option-to-counter-the-vote-to-close&quot;&gt;the highest requested ideas&lt;/a&gt; on Meta Stack Overflow, but has been declined by management.  It would be great if they implemented this since it really sucks to try and keep track of posts so that when they get re-opened, I can go back and cast my one close vote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17452" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="517" RevisionGUID="3d393413-5c05-44b3-ae96-ed4498ffa810" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h2&gt;Basics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;Read our FAQ.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can log in with your Google, Yahoo, etc. user by clicking the on icon of the service you have an account on the Login page.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unlike forums and mailing lists, this concentrates on highlighting the good answers, and downvoting the incorrect or bad answers.  &lt;strong&gt;It's not a replacement for discussion&lt;/strong&gt;, just a more efficient way to get answers. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&quot;&gt;about page&lt;/a&gt; has a picture which illustrates this best.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;After you get some reputation make sure you are voting good questions and answers up, and bad answers down!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A ton of value comes from finding a question and answer via a search engine. We want a good answer to be the top hit for &quot;How do I use the me menu?&quot;  Don't worry if the questions are scrolling by too quickly on the front page, this isn't about tracking discussions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow?  Joel's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/15.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;announcement for stackoverflow.com&lt;/a&gt; mentions the motivation behind this method of Q&amp;amp;A.  More information on Stack Exchange in general can be found in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/7931/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow community FAQ&lt;/a&gt; (much of it is general, some is specific to Stack Overflow).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Asking good questions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People will upvote your question based on its quality, so &lt;a href=&quot;http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;put some effort&lt;/a&gt; into it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use tags to classify your question. This makes questions easier to read on the front page.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's no bumping &amp;mdash; if your question is unanswered the community user will bump it on occasion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feel free to continue to work on your question; edit, edit, edit.  This will give it a natural bump, and people will be able to watch your progress in adding more detail. People tend to help/upvote people who are actively trying to investigate their problem.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As you add to your question, if you end up finding the answer, then answer your own question so that future generations can benefit from it!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If someone answers your question, accept it as the answer. This is an important &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/5234&quot;&gt;part of the process&lt;/a&gt; and rewards the people trying to help you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Giving good answers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't only link to random sources on the Internet. Any person can type their answer into Google and do that. If the information is good and under an open license, just put it in the answer (don't forget to link to and attribute the author).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Edit, edit, edit should be your mantra. &amp;mdash; If you've got a good answer and someone adds more detail, integrate it, and remember to always respect an individual's work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Comments are like &quot;meta&quot; for the answer. &lt;em&gt;Don't ping pong back and forth in comments with new data, when someone leaves a comment with more information or something, just add the information to your question directly.&lt;/em&gt; If people post updates to a comment ask them to add it to their question; that's where the power of Stack Exchange comes in: updates on people answering their question happens in the answers and the questions, so that when you are finished people don't have to track the conversation, just the final answer and solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Spread the word&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We need help getting the word out, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7/how-do-we-promote-our-site&quot;&gt;we have some ideas&lt;/a&gt; on how you can help, especially in places where users are already asking you for help.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17453" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="526" RevisionGUID="354fe735-4c5c-44c0-8cc0-7a673e2eba28" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;See this &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/43055/greasemonkey-script-for-displaying-threaded-comments&quot;&gt;Meta SO post&lt;/a&gt; for a Greasemonkey script to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17454" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="549" RevisionGUID="a62064b3-cc18-4616-b884-6885fe28ca13" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67039/what-can-we-do-to-make-community-wiki-better/67192#67192&quot;&gt;What can we do to make Community Wiki better?&lt;/a&gt; on Meta.SO. So you can request it for moderators, but I just convert to CW if the question requires CW status. If you want it, please explain why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17455" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="553" RevisionGUID="f0fdda7c-c97e-49f9-b9a0-0d364ff7793a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;If what you want is to use a single OpenID and have all your SE accounts associated &lt;em&gt;except&lt;/em&gt; for your Programmer's account, then sorry, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/52272/stop-repeatedly-auto-associating-accounts-on-login&quot;&gt;you can't do that&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're okay with disassociating all of your accounts, then go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/191?tab=accounts&quot;&gt;your Programmer's account page&lt;/a&gt;, where you should see a link/button/box at the very bottom that says &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/191?tab=accounts#clear-associations&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;Clear all associations&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Clicking that &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; do the trick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another approach is to create a new OpenID and use it just for Programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to answer the general question: anyone can go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/191?tab=accounts&quot;&gt;one of your account pages&lt;/a&gt; and see all your associated accounts at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17456" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="576" RevisionGUID="fc2b4592-81eb-4595-8b9d-e8e1a56cab5a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;If that's what the question and its answers essentially were, you'd be correct in saying it's on topic because it deals with a developer's tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's not what the question is, and the answers only mention in passing Mac OS X's development capability. Explaining what the command key does and where the Applications folder is doesn't make a professional programmer better at his job, but they do help someone new to a Mac in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, a question like &quot;What are the essential things I should know about Mac?&quot; is essentially asking, &quot;Can someone read my mind and link every question I might find useful on &lt;a href=&quot;http://apple.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;Apple.SE&lt;/a&gt;?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Stack Exchange system only works when people ask pointed questions that are directly related to the Stack Exchange they are on because they attract the knowledge and experience of experts on the topic. A person interested in learning more about specific things on a Mac should avail themselves of &lt;a href=&quot;http://apple.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;Apple.SE&lt;/a&gt; and ask questions there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the &quot;as a programmer&quot; qualifier to make any question on topic (among other cheese methods) has been discussed several times &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22as+a+programmer%22&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow blog&lt;/a&gt;, and on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suffice it to say, Programmers.SE does not suffer from a lack of good questions such that we need to be a general-purpose question and answer site like &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Yahoo! Answers&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://quora.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quora&lt;/a&gt;; where the only thing that you need to do is add the keyword &quot;programmer&quot; or the phrase &quot;as a programmer&quot; and ask an broad, easy-to-answer question to be on topic. There are literally dozens of specialized Stack Exchange sites that cover the topics more appropriately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17461" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="635" RevisionGUID="829343c5-a771-4748-911b-c5d0ef243331" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I probably missed it, but I had assumed that once you could propose synonyms you would be able to vote on them.  After I figured out how to propose one it seemed it was the only one in the system until I noticed there were more on the all tab and I eventually found this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64247/show-synonym-suggestions-awaiting-my-vote&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64247/show-synonym-suggestions-awaiting-my-vote&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can somewhat see the point of that decision, but it took a while to figure out what was going on and I still don't think I understand what the &quot;merge&quot; tag is for.  I am certain I can find that answer as well, but I would suggest either adding some of this to the FAQ or providing some more obvious instruction or description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly not a huge deal, but for someone that has only lurked before on stackexchange sites it is a bit confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17462" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="641" RevisionGUID="d81ea1d1-863b-46d2-8d7e-60e2353704f9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;We are next in line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jin is working on the design, but has decided on to do a redesign based on the feedback from &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed&quot;&gt;the first &amp;amp; second attempts&lt;/a&gt;. Once that's been agreed we'll probably go live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a question on Meta Stack Overflow about &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate&quot;&gt;identifying questions to migrate from SO&lt;/a&gt; that indicates the go live date is imminent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt; is &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; going live this week,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17463" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="645" RevisionGUID="05659753-5587-467d-ae8f-bbab14f5e29c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Often, I face myself asking a tricky question where someone interested in giving me a constructive answer would have to sit down and &lt;strong&gt;think&lt;/strong&gt;. They would also need to &lt;strong&gt;care&lt;/strong&gt; about my question and my problem and be &lt;strong&gt;open-minded&lt;/strong&gt; (which is the whole idea behind &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Programmers.SE&lt;/a&gt;). Instead, they often end up just trying to make a point - the point they may have had all their lives and they wouldn't reconsider - or make me bad or show off their (sometimes questionable) knowledge. In short: useless and not constructive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, this doesn't happen when the question itself is technical and can be answered very objectively (as on &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stackoverflow&lt;/a&gt;). But as soon as I'd like a subjective, critical but constructive answer, I get a bashing. And even more so, the bashers get voted up by other bashers such that the really constructive, interesting answers will move down in ranking among all the answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to circumvent that? E.g. in phrasing my question very carefully (how?) Any ideas welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: I've already asked the question here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71977/how-to-phrase-my-subjective-question-to-avoid-unconstructive-answers&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71977/how-to-phrase-my-subjective-question-to-avoid-unconstructive-answers&lt;/a&gt;, but &lt;strong&gt;meta.programmers&lt;/strong&gt; is the better place for it than &lt;strong&gt;meta.stackoverflow&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17464" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="650" RevisionGUID="c539bd25-426c-4431-90ba-8d4c930f79d5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;We're discussing this on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate/71734#71734&quot;&gt;MSO&lt;/a&gt;. It's important for our users to get in discussion there to avoid dumping their trash here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17466" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="699" RevisionGUID="d2a76cf8-59a6-4597-adca-99c5294b4f0c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The consensus, if you could call it that, on removing the accept rate was mostly achieved before &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&quot;&gt;Great Redisiplining&lt;/a&gt;. People can and should be accepting answers: the acceptance criteria on all Stack Exchange sites is &quot;this answer helped me, personally, the most.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Edit&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify, the re-disiplining of Programmers.SE set guidelines that discourage people from asking questions they don't actually need the answers to (i.e. so-called &quot;pointless water cooler nonsense&quot;). With that, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work&quot;&gt;standard criteria for accepting answers&lt;/a&gt; applies to all questions on Programmers.SE like it does on the rest of the Stack Exchange network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17467" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="701" RevisionGUID="2eceb102-5e38-4bf8-880b-e58a0fc2d4ff" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;see&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67054/can-we-grandfather-in-rep-abilities-as-sites-leave-beta&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67054/can-we-grandfather-in-rep-abilities-as-sites-leave-beta&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR version -- reputation levels need to be the same across the network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17468" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="739" RevisionGUID="6317fc1d-5262-4d4c-903b-042c7fef5ac8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow FAQ on accepting answers&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Which answer should I choose?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Don't hesitate to accept an answer that is well-written, suggests a good practice and works for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It is generally accepted that you should wait 24 to 48 hours to let a bunch of people have a chance to answer your question. A question with an accepted answer may deter people from looking at a question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Make sure that besides working for you, the answer is really good practice. Sometimes after the answer gets accepted, another comes in, uncovering the fact that previous one was in fact a bad hack.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The bottom line is to accept the answer that you found to be the most helpful to you, personally.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17469" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="757" RevisionGUID="616a8d40-8cbc-4864-a341-e22b529edc96" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The recalc removes any up- or downvotes you got for answers or questions that have been deleted. It also gives you back the one rep you lost for downvoting an answer or question that has then been deleted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically it undoes any changes that a deleted post had on your reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the feature request in response to which this feature has been introduced: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14200/self-instigated-rep-recalc&quot;&gt;Self-instigated rep recalc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17470" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="821" RevisionGUID="c1bbb788-dce1-4ab4-b50b-c313d9d301a0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;It's important that we disallow SO to push trash to us. Engage on these questions on MSO:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate&quot;&gt;Programmers is about to go live, which questions should we migrate?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73375/multiple-duplicated-question-on-so-are-being-migrated-to-pse-partially&quot;&gt;Multiple duplicated question on SO are being migrated to PSE partially&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73332/have-code-golf-questions-been-implicitly-disallowed-on-stackoverflow-now-that-mi&quot;&gt;Have Code Golf questions been implicitly disallowed on StackOverflow, now that migration to PSE is possible?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73373/migration-questions-from-so-to-pse-just-to-stay-temporarily&quot;&gt;Migration questions from SO to PSE just to stay temporarily&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl&quot;&gt;Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl&lt;/a&gt; specially this answer: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl/73431#73431&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl/73431#73431&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73493/who-should-be-granted-to-migration-path-feature&quot;&gt;Who should be granted to Migration Path feature?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17471" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="831" RevisionGUID="f9d37671-7dc8-4680-b853-9a4f295f91bf" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;See more about this discussion on Mark Trapp's &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73332/have-code-golf-questions-been-implicitly-disallowed-on-stackoverflow-now-that-mi/73372#73372&quot;&gt;comment&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67780/why-is-code-golf-now-the-domain-of-programmers-se&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'm directly asking for permission to drop it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17472" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="833" RevisionGUID="6fdcfd1f-84c3-4848-98ba-ae8529687e75" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Most of my response is in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67780/why-is-code-golf-now-the-domain-of-programmers-se&quot;&gt;the question I posed on Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;, but it's so completely out of place here. Our de-facto elevator pitch involves saying Programmers.SE is for all those things &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; programming that aren't &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; programming, and Code Golf &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; programming (albeit &lt;em&gt;fun&lt;/em&gt; programming).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17473" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="869" RevisionGUID="2445f02c-8809-478e-8790-c8893fae1b6e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;In general, I have been deleting the questions that I think have no lasting value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only ones I want migrated are the ones that are &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73226/set-up-an-archive-for-legendary-deleted-questions&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73226/set-up-an-archive-for-legendary-deleted-questions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17474" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="870" RevisionGUID="e8adb831-0396-492c-ac2a-ee5a3a37bb1c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;In general, I have been deleting the questions that I think have no lasting value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only ones I want migrated are the ones that are &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73226/set-up-an-archive-for-legendary-deleted-questions&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73226/set-up-an-archive-for-legendary-deleted-questions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17475" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="872" RevisionGUID="8fa34d20-fa4f-44fc-be6d-980ad8a3918b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Following up to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl&quot;&gt;Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the main opposition position, which based on votes is pretty popular, is essentially &quot;you're not getting rid of the crap, so we're going to keep flushing,&quot; it doesn't look like we're going to stop getting terribad Stack Overflow questions for some time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a feature suggestion that moderators should be able to &quot;accept&quot; incoming migrations to police what's sent to their Stack Exchange site: failing that feature being implemented, do moderators want all potentially terrible migrated questions to be flagged so they can make a call about closing them without waiting for 5 close votes that may or may not come? I've been flagging the obvious career advice and duplicate questions, but there are some potentially bad questions beyond that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17476" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="876" RevisionGUID="69e78769-979d-4b0e-bc7f-5425451616f0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I think it's &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/17552/why-do-migrated-questions-lack-redirection-via-http-response-status-code-301-mov&quot;&gt;supposed to work like that&lt;/a&gt;, although it certainly threw me for a loop when I clicked it. I didn't realize I was on SO right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Appending &lt;code&gt;?noredirect=1&lt;/code&gt; to the P.SE URL lets you view &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32590/unicode-to-ascii-conversion-closed?noredirect=1&quot;&gt;the original question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17477" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="877" RevisionGUID="9c8480e0-d988-4d35-b515-78387dbeff8f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me there is a difference of opinion about how to handle questions that would be considered overly broad, and that is leading to inconsistent handling of questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your consideration, here are two questions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first that came along is &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2240/what-are-good-resources-for-design-patterns&quot;&gt;&quot;What are good resources for design patterns?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, which is a two-liner, general, question asking for resources about design patterns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second, and most recent, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32571/design-pattern-for-unit-testing&quot;&gt;&quot;design pattern for unit testing&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, which was, originally, a two-liner, general, question asking for resources about design patterns as they relate to unit testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was brought up in the comments that the second question was too broad, and there was a close vote to that. But arguably the second question had more context because it was asking about design patterns as they pertain to unit testing and not just design patterns in general. I have no idea if there were any close votes on the first question as I don't have those privileges (yet). &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl/&quot;&gt;This question on Meta was raised&lt;/a&gt; which touches upon the topic of overly broad questions, but doesn't really discuss them in real detail and seems more focused on duplicate questions (which is quickly turning into an uncontrollable problem in the sites I frequent). Strictly speaking, neither of these question violate the guidelines of subjective questions which appears to be the gold standard for assessing the quality of a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't debate the point that either question is broad, but both questions have brought some useful answers (particularly the first). The broad questions of these types seem to be logical ones to ask, I'm sure everyone here has asked them at one point or another, but there are few places to ask them outside of the SE family of websites. Alternatives have yet to be presented by the objector(s) of the second question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the P.SE community does decide to close questions that are broad, that it should at least wait to see the quality of the answers before submitting the close vote. Or, better still, simply mark it as &lt;code&gt;community wiki&lt;/code&gt; and let it fly. These are really not that much different than the &quot;favorite tool/application/technique&quot; questions that exist now and will always be asked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The subjective guidelines are great—and people need to remember they are just guidelines and not strict rules—and judging something as being &quot;overly broad&quot; is just as subjective a topic. I think the community would benefit from a clear definition of &quot;overly broad&quot; and a consistent implementation that would result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; What I am proposing is that the definition of &quot;broad&quot;, its existence as a reason to close, and the policy of closing for broad context should be revisited. While this isn't nearly as important as past issues, it is one that I think hasn't been hashed out enough and some questions (and possibly potential contributors) are suffering as a result. What one may consider a simple, basic question, another may consider a bad one. Is voting to close it really the best way to handle it, particularly if the topic would yield solid, basic answers? It's not as though the SE sites, SO and P.SE in particular, make any clearly stated assumptions and qualifications of the skill level of people who post questions. Until that happens, these types of questions are going to come up again and again, and I think there ought to be a better way of managing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17479" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="917" RevisionGUID="d3247dfe-dbdd-4311-81d9-dbad2fdd022c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This is the right place to post this, as it deals with a migration from Programmers.SE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that it shouldn't have been migrated to CSTheory.SE, and the commenter that suggested that was obviously mistaken. But I don't think it should be migrated to Math.SE: it's a question that's better suited for Stack Overflow, which handles issues related to programming, including regular expressions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at this point, that question has no chance to survive: if it keeps getting migrated, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63564/weird-behavior-when-migrating-a-migrated-question/63576#63576&quot;&gt;it's a sign of a deeper problem&lt;/a&gt;, which is shown by the significant confusion as to where it belongs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17480" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="932" RevisionGUID="275e225d-5797-4292-998c-8be5664fd3b5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The requirement is that you flag a post as &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6120/citizen-patrol-badge-not-awarded&quot;&gt;spam or offensive&lt;/a&gt;: flagging something for moderator attention doesn't count. It also takes a little bit of time for the system to recognize it: from my experience, it takes an hour or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17481" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="934" RevisionGUID="8342134b-9ba3-42d7-96bb-abd74257a63a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/59445/recent-feature-changes-to-stack-exchange&quot;&gt;Recent feature changes to Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt; question on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; catalogs all announced and undocumented changes to the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17482" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="942" RevisionGUID="7ae7a487-c4b3-4a7a-9293-ab64147aad26" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;As detailed in the answer to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/74582/59303&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; on Meta Stack Overflow, the threshold can be set on a site by site basis and is now 15 for Programmers (along with Super User, where the threshold was &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.superuser.com/questions/274/reduce-community-wiki-force-threshold-to-15-answers-on-superuser&quot;&gt;originally reduced in an effort to stem the tide of pile-on answers&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't affect existing questions, but if a new answer is posted to those they will convert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17483" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="969" RevisionGUID="cd3299f4-dfc7-48bf-9f92-100d1830b1b6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The mechanics of the community wiki flag are as blind as Lady Justice: if a post is marked community wiki, reputation stops accruing regardless of what the circumstances behind that which is marked as such. Simply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;function addRep(value) {&#xA;  if (!this-&amp;gt;communityWiki) {&#xA;    this-&amp;gt;user-&amp;gt;addRep(value);&#xA;  }&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for why there's no distinction, we need to go back to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&quot;&gt;what the community wiki flag is for&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The community wiki flag is used when it's determined (either by the original author of the post or automatically) that the post could benefit from the community taking ownership of it. Since the community as a whole takes ownership of the post, there's no single person to award the reputation to and it is not awarded at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it another way, once the community wiki flag is set, you are no longer considered to be the owner of the post, so that's why you stopped getting reputation for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36612/what-kind-of-innovative-non-cash-financial-benefits-do-i-offer-to-my-developers-t&quot;&gt;this case&lt;/a&gt;, it looks like you ran into an automatic triggering of the flag that occurred when the answer got 15 answers. You can think of the reason why posts automatically convert to community wiki as a reaction to problem with scope: the vast majority of constructive, pointed questions only have a few answers. When a question starts to get a ton of answers, two things have likely occurred:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People are providing new answers, intentionally or unintentionally, to slightly tweak existing answers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The original question is very broad and its scope not very well defined, allowing for a plethora of ways to answer it that are likely irrelevant to the original intent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, community ownership winds up being a good thing as it allows others to address the quality of both the question and answers: community wiki relaxes the rep requirement to edit, so answers can be made more useful and distinct and the question can be made more specific by people who would otherwise just post a new answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17485" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="991" RevisionGUID="607e3fb2-4516-451d-b185-8f10fb696394" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There's a new post on the Stack Overflow blog entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Real Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt;, which serves to expand upon the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;six subjective guidelines&lt;/a&gt; we all know and love. I encourage you to read it and &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179&quot;&gt;the original answer from Aarobot&lt;/a&gt; that sparked the post itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main point that's now been added to &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;our FAQ&lt;/a&gt; is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;What kind of questions should I not ask here?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;every answer is equally valid: &amp;ldquo;What&amp;rsquo;s your favorite _____?&amp;rdquo;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: &amp;ldquo;I use _____ for _____, what do you use?&amp;rdquo;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;there is no actual problem to be solved: &amp;ldquo;I&amp;rsquo;m curious if other people feel like I do.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: &amp;ldquo;What if _____ happened?&amp;rdquo;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;it is a rant disguised as a question: &amp;ldquo;_____ sucks, am I right?&amp;rdquo;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about _____”, then you should not be asking here. If your motivation is “I would like others to explain _____ to me”, then you are probably OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are your thoughts on the new guidelines? Is there a problem with these types of questions that needs addressing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can we do to encourage questions that don't fall into the trap of being poll questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17486" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="991" RevisionGUID="607e3fb2-4516-451d-b185-8f10fb696394" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17487" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="994" RevisionGUID="63ad13b7-fd11-4537-bb22-9b8196a26ba8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are your thoughts on the new guidelines? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am exceedingly happy about them! One of the most persistent abuses of SO, right from the very start, has been Getting To Know You questions (often incorrectly referred to as polls&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;) - a bored user asking others to share their favorite X, tell a story about X, commiserate in X, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's forum-fodder, a staple of newsgroups and message boards, and perfectly appropriate for those venues, but utterly useless on SO/SE (where questions are expected to live on for years). They're fun, and often they'll collect a small number of very interesting answers... This in turn makes them very hard to kill: &quot;How dare you delete Eric's brilliant story about how he once built a web browser out of corn?!! You heartless bastard!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the broader category of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11760/whats-the-opinion-on-list-questions&quot;&gt;&quot;list questions&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (poll, GTKY, product recommendation, brainstorming, tips, etc.), there are perhaps a handful that are generally useful... And invariably, they're asked by users who actually &lt;em&gt;care deeply&lt;/em&gt; about getting some useful answers. The rest, asked by the bored/lazy/rep-hungry, quickly devolve into fluff, as the asker has no vested interest in refining his question to limit such responses. And so every compromise we've tried - meta-tagging, mandatory-CW, &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related&quot;&gt;fluff-ghetto&lt;/a&gt; - has been resisted and ultimately has failed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the only way to combat this rot is by judging the intent of the asker. And you gauge their intent by the words they use: while &quot;What's your favorite editor?&quot; and &quot;What's a good editor for Windows that supports &gt;5GB files and has built-in macros?&quot; are superficially close, the projected intent is utterly different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's good to know that we can now refer to the FAQ when editing or closing these beasts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;sub&gt;A poll is useless unless someone is compiling the responses into a finite set of categories. This almost never happens. The only &lt;em&gt;painless&lt;/em&gt; way to run an effective poll on SE is to post a finite set of answers, CW everything, and then close the question and let people vote and comment - this hasn't been possible without moderator intervention for over two years.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17488" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1043" RevisionGUID="4996027f-4fd1-42ce-a891-af72b6a8daa2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/150097/yi-jiang&quot;&gt;Yi Jiang&lt;/a&gt; has put together a nice site that use the Stack Overflow API to display information on the moderator candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://se.awio.com/election.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Click here to see all the information&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The information presented is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the candidate wrote when nominating themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Answers/Questions on the main site and it's meta&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Up-vote/down-vote ratio&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Average reputation earned per post&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Average reputation earned per day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Participation in other Stack Exchange sites.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It displays what Yi Jiang considers to be noteworthy badges and whether the nominee has the badge and a summary of their recent activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The information is presented as is with no commentary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It came about from this question on MSO &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/75454/59303&quot;&gt;Moderator nomination possibly useful statistics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17489" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1066" RevisionGUID="938c21c3-3675-488d-a8b8-8a7848d714f8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;My moderation style would be to give users time to edit their question before closing, never close based on the quality of the answers and consider the popularity of the question when deciding whether or not it truly requires moderator attention. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some examples of helping a user on Meta to edit a question to get it reopened.  This is how I would guide users to making changes to their questions rather than welcoming them with a closure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/923/this-question-should-not-have-been-closed/938#938&quot;&gt;This question should not have been closed.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16618/what-will-be-considered-harmful-next&quot;&gt;What will be considered harmful next?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(or not)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/510/is-my-question-that-bad-or-am-i-totally-out-of-it&quot;&gt;Is my question that bad, or am I totally out of it?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, in the interest of full disclosure, here's something that got me banned from programmers.SE for a day.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66438/p-se-user-is-creating-bad-tags-for-personal-harassment&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66438/p-se-user-is-creating-bad-tags-for-personal-harassment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I add this to explain that I believe in retagging, the use meta-tags within the paradigm, and until the feature is deprecated using tags to filter out junk you don't want to see.  Also, I am committed to I asking questions on meta before I go it alone and when I make a mistake, apologize. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17490" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1093" RevisionGUID="23491043-c601-462d-886c-fca4f2ac2dae" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The technical aspect of the ban (blacklisting lmgtfy.com links in posts) might not be active, but it's my understanding the practice effectively is banned for all the reasons pointed out in the original &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/15650/ban-lmgtfy-let-me-google-that-for-you-links&quot;&gt;Ban lmgtfy (let me google that for you) links&lt;/a&gt; question on Meta Stack Overflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't a context in which they are helpful or constructive on a site where one of the main sections in the FAQ is &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#benice&quot;&gt;Be Nice&lt;/a&gt;. If you see it being used, I suggest flagging it for moderator review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17491" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1118" RevisionGUID="1890d0b9-ee09-4c02-984e-ae733a991d91" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Seems you didn't like my rather open-minded answer... :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's talk serious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) I'd be very much interested in writing good elaborate answers. I actually have done so on numerous occasions. You know what? &lt;strong&gt;People don't read them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can't tell you how many times I wrote single-line answers to get numerous votes and immediately after adding &quot;substance&quot; as you call it the voting ended up abruptly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually learned this tactic from seasoned high-rep users (40K+) on SO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People just don't want to read the stuff. I can't do anything to change them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I see folks don't read my answers, I have no motivation of writing them really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least I can amuse myself by seeing numbers tick (rep growing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The other reason is that by the time you finished writing an elaborate answer there will be 10+ single-lined answers voted up to the heaven. &lt;strong&gt;Nobody will notice yours.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who's to blame if the site is all about being the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem&quot;&gt;Fastest Gun in the West&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose the blame is partially on the site creator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been COUNTLESS proposals on how to change the operational model to realign to the quality rather than to quantity and mass. They were all turned down. The creator is very stubborn and doesn't want to listen to input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even I proposed an improvement - lock out answers display for the first N minutes to give everyone sufficient time to contribute &lt;em&gt;quality&lt;/em&gt; answers - I got laughed at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Just tried to locate that old question of mine - seems it was deleted. So much for user voice.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That other trick with limiting reputation growth to 200 per day only results in newcomers desperately trying to reach the elder by contributing an insane amount of answers, quality evidently suffers here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also see with all that stackexchange expansion that the creators do not concern themselves with the conceptual problems - it's now all about growth, expansion, consumption of markets, going public and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that time I'm starting to hope somebody will start a different Q&amp;amp;A site - with the right priorities and with the right attitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17492" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1154" RevisionGUID="e93ac738-f44e-434f-9b77-8ea3edaa4db5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/status-bydesign&quot; class=&quot;post-tag moderator-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'status-bydesign'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;status-bydesign&lt;/a&gt;: IE6 is not supported at all, and even IE7 is minimally supported. Check Meta Stack Overflow for &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/56161/which-browsers-are-officially-supported/71208#71208&quot;&gt;a list of browsers that are currently supported&lt;/a&gt;. Things might work in IE6 on some sites, but working functionality is purely coincidental.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17493" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1210" RevisionGUID="eeba588b-1dbf-40da-86cb-c92d014c201f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Since you linked to one of the questions I closed, I'll add my 2 cents.  Yes there needs to be more communication between people on SO closing/migrating questions and mods/users on Programmers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can understand how it happens.  A question is posted on SO that clearly doesn't belong there, someone votes to migrate it to Programmers thinking it's not about code so it should live here, not really know if it meets Programmers guidelines.  It actually happens a lot.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do know that in recent weeks that some of the mods on SO have started &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1162&quot;&gt;asking&lt;/a&gt; here on Meta whether a question should be migrated to Programmers or just closed on SO.  This goes a long way to help the situation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What it doesn't fix is the situation where 5 SO users vote to migrate a question here.  They may or may not know whether it's a good question to migrate and they may or may not care (as long as it's gone from SO).  I don't know how that gets fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's some other discussions about the same topic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/872&quot;&gt;Do moderators want to be notified when Stack Overflow questions get migrated?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17494" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1223" RevisionGUID="6523e92a-71ef-4aea-bb83-a3c41d902a75" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There was a rep recalculation performed on your account. It would've removed rep from questions and answers that were deleted or migrated to another site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was a StackExchange-wide recalc done as part of the preparations for the new Users page. More details &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80862/sudden-sharp-drop-in-reputation-find-out-reason-recalc&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; on Meta.SO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17495" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1224" RevisionGUID="95870a49-9867-475c-8890-1616bfcfabc5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80862/sudden-sharp-drop-in-reputation-find-out-reason-recalc&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80862/sudden-sharp-drop-in-reputation-find-out-reason-recalc&lt;/a&gt; for the details.  This was StackExchange wide in preparation for some upcoming changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17496" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1237" RevisionGUID="54107b65-0580-4b9a-8105-40ac708d3b7b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;If you look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16065/how-does-the-bounty-system-work/16067#16067&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/16065/148672&quot;&gt;bounty faq&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What happens if there's no answer after the bounty period?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What happens if I feel my question is still unanswered?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is automatic awarding?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the end of the bounty period, if&#xA;  the bounty starter has not manually&#xA;  awarded the bounty, eligible answers&#xA;  can be automatically awarded half the&#xA;  bounty amount. The criteria for an&#xA;  answer to be eligible for automatic&#xA;  awarding are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The answer must be given after the&#xA;  bounty was started The answer must&#xA;  have a score of at least +2 If two or&#xA;  more eligible answers have the same&#xA;  score, the oldest answer is awarded&#xA;  the bounty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If no answers meet these criteria, the&#xA;  bounty ends without it being awarded&#xA;  to any answer, and is not refunded to&#xA;  the bounty starter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An accepted answer that does not meet&#xA;  the above criteria is still ignored by&#xA;  the automatic-awarding system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like the bounty was automatically given to &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40394/how-do-you-organize-your-projects/41938#41938&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; by Alex. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This explains why it went to alex. It also explains why no badge for you. Automatic awards don't count because the benefactor badge goes for the &quot;First bounty you &lt;strong&gt;manually&lt;/strong&gt; awarded on&#xA; your own question&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17497" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1239" RevisionGUID="fd050875-0a5e-46da-ad69-6c0443bb709a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Flag weight is a measure of how reliable your content flags are. When you flag a post or an answer for moderator attention, we get the option to dismiss the flag as valid or invalid. &quot;Valid&quot; increases your flag weight, &quot;invalid&quot; lowers it. Your flags will be given a lower priority (i.e. appear further down the list of mod flags) if you have a low flag weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More details and the official FAQ entry &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17498" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1250" RevisionGUID="d4f50eb4-668e-4160-a838-f8c332b80730" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/81985/flag-weight-deputy-badge-bug&quot;&gt;This was reported on Meta.SO&lt;/a&gt; and fixed today. The fix should be released in the next day or so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17499" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1262" RevisionGUID="0862f00f-6f2e-45f1-a5de-31accb6c4d70" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;They removed it recently from the main banner. It's now on your main site profile page. There's 3 links: edit | add openid | log out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;meta.SO question - &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/80610/154388&quot;&gt;Logout link now missing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17500" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1286" RevisionGUID="7ac9bffd-ccff-493b-8dc6-3671d2a72ec6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;See:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/79435/what-is-stack-overflows-business-model/79448#79448&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/79435/what-is-stack-overflows-business-model/79448#79448&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17501" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1295" RevisionGUID="173f1814-96d7-4183-bb1c-a8804ae60c0f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to include my &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83825/great-question-got-deleted/83864#83864&quot;&gt;answer from Meta SO on this topic&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is not a real question.  It's not an on-topic question for at least three of the reasons listed in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt;.  It's opinionated, which means the original poster already has an answer.  He posted that answer in his question box:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It may not be physically demanding but it sure is mentally demanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to keep this site productive, the line in the sand has to be drawn somewhere.  Otherwise, we'll get more gray area questions like &lt;code&gt;What do programmers eat?  I know they eat food at some point in their day&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I agree with Jeff, the answers are essentially all the same AOL &quot;me too&quot; type answers that don't really tell me anything I didn't already know or couldn't figure out by Googling some forum somewhere, a forum, that I might add, is probably now a ghost town on the Internet because the professionals keeping the site alive all moved elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blog articles that Robert, Jeff, and other StackExchange employees have written makes a great case for sites thriving because they're properly policed for content that doesn't meet the goals of the site.  Unfortunately, we're not all going to agree with every decision, but please keep in mind that those decisions are made with the community's best interests in mind.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a clearer, well written explanation of the dangers of allowing poor questions, please read &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Good Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17502" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1303" RevisionGUID="0df733bf-d1fb-4a18-9865-65e42aec4030" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I made a feature request question so that we could get some indication on the badges as to when &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/72903/is-the-timing-of-badge-awards-documented&quot;&gt;each badge will be awarded&lt;/a&gt; on meta so.  Still hopeful.  It might be useful to also know if you knew if any of your badges have lapsed due to migration or deletion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some badges are awarded instantly, some at the end of the day (I guess after a batch run or sql job) and some (like tenacious) 7-10 days after you qualify for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that Good Answer falls into the 'will be awarded at the end of the day' bracket - so after this much time I guess its not going to come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17503" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1308" RevisionGUID="ffc1c44c-0c2b-47f9-89de-c2b69463a62a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;Regarding the first part of your question: this already exists. All new users have to pass through a page that explains the guidelines of the site. If a user hasn't figured it out after that, well... that's what community moderation is for.&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Stack Overflow and sites during private beta, users get hit with a page that explains the guidelines for asking good questions. I thought it was there for all sites, but apparently it's not: I agree that something similar should be there that gets people to at least ostensibly agree to the site's guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the second part of your question, there are two aspects to this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether it's acceptable or encouraged to nag people about their accept rates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether people should be worrying about accepting answers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the first part, people nagging others about their accept rate is just crass: there are so many more important things to worry about than pestering people about one metric. It's noise, and there are a lot of people who flag those comments as noise/spam. The FAQ actually covers this: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#benice&quot;&gt;be nice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the second part, whether people should be worrying about accepting answers: as user #8, I'm confident in saying accept rate is not irrelevant, even on Programmers.SE. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The misguided idea that there are no accepted answers, or that people shouldn't accept answers, or that it's acceptable to never accept answers, comes from a short period of Programmers.SE's history when it was unclear what types of questions were acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that was &lt;strong&gt;quickly&lt;/strong&gt; nipped in the bud and Programmers.SE does not have any special dispensation that makes it qualitatively different than the literally dozens of other Stack Exchange sites that follow the same conventions and norms when it comes to question and answer model. The guidelines in the FAQ are the result of months of discussion both here and elsewhere in the Stack Exchange system: they comprise best practices that have been tested time and time again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, while Programmers.SE is home to questions of a more subjective nature, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;every question has an answer&lt;/a&gt;. That is, a good question that deserves a home on the Stack Exchange network needs to be the result of an actual problem a person faces. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That problem is going to have a solution: therefore, unless the question got terrible answers, there's going to be an answer the question asker can accept. So the advice in the FAQ is correct: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work/5235#5235&quot;&gt;people should be accepting answers that helped them, personally, the most&lt;/a&gt;. It serves as an acknowledgement that the problem was solved and that another user was instrumental in solving that problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that really is the value proposition to answering questions: people want to know that they actually helped someone. Otherwise, what's the point? Answering for the sake of filling out textareas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17504" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1323" RevisionGUID="32f6519d-7a78-4f60-b58d-2f08fac8ca40" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12362/firefox-users-your-stack-overflow-reputation-microsummary&quot;&gt;There's this thing&lt;/a&gt; made for Stackoverflow which let's you track your reputation on Firefox (check &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.mozilla.org/Microsummaries#Introduction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;microsummaries&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some guy made an &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12362/firefox-users-your-stack-overflow-reputation-microsummary/12372#12372&quot;&gt;enhanced version&lt;/a&gt;, it's worth checking it out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FhFFD.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be great to have one for Programmers too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If only I had &lt;em&gt;teh skillz&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17505" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1330" RevisionGUID="4af19676-b40b-49f2-a583-32e82d7590c6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I used to delete my low (zero or below) scoring answers once someone else got the green check. My premise was that my answer was thought so poorly by the rest of the readership that not one other person felt it worthy of a single upvote. But I don't do that anymore. There is the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67397/list-of-all-badges-with-full-descriptions/68258#68258&quot;&gt;sportsmanship&lt;/a&gt;&quot; badge that one can get by leaving one's low scores up and voting for competing answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason I've stopped doing it is that on beta sites, your commitment cannot be fulfilled if you have less than 10 answers + questions, so deleting low scoring answers is counterproductive. And a silly bug I've noticed on beta sites is that if you award bounties that take you below 100 karma, no matter how many badges you've acquired by the end of the private beta week, you forfeit your beta badge (which supposedly only requires 3 badges). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17506" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1345" RevisionGUID="c9de78ed-9cec-447f-b7f5-2b832d74f0fb" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;You're gonna have some trouble, since a key part of maintaining &quot;the quality and maturity&quot; of the SE network is built around &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; allowing questions like that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, you gotta start somewhere.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13198/where-can-i-find-interesting-programming-discussions&quot;&gt;Where can I find interesting programming discussions?&lt;/a&gt; has a few suggestions you might consider...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I was recently informed that Prog.SE user &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6617/ammoq&quot;&gt;AmmoQ&lt;/a&gt; has carved out a little corner on &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/27.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Daily WTF Forums&lt;/a&gt; specifically for questions that cannot and should not be asked here on Programmer's. TDWTF is not affiliated with Stack Exchange, and has its own standards of quality and conduct, so be respectful of these if you decide to make use of this resource. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17507" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1349" RevisionGUID="6f080e3b-61da-457d-a073-e2a0ec4fd45b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Please see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76251/how-does-peer-review-for-edits-work/76284#76284&quot;&gt;How does peer review for edits work?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;All users with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit&quot;&gt;edit privilege&lt;/a&gt; may vote on suggested edits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(voting includes rejecting as well as accepting)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84693/eeeek-i-sense-an-eeeek-question-about-missing-a-unanswered-tab&quot;&gt;There is some discussion underway&lt;/a&gt; about making that page a bit more visible...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17508" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1372" RevisionGUID="e4df1682-7c97-4637-99f6-3b3f35b4b45e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;That's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fICjq822SwQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Herd Instinct&lt;/a&gt;. I talk about this phenomenom in another (controversed) &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77416/proposal-for-amendments-to-the-election-primary&quot;&gt;meta post&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Voting for already highly voted answers feel &quot;safe&quot;. Therefore, consciously or unconsciously you do it. On rare occasion, you do the inverse, by rebellion ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kate mention the impact of ordering which is real and IMHO is an unfair advantage for those who answer the question first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've observed that phenomenum many time. It is unlikely that better answers that come later get more vote than the inferior (and first) one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why timezone also affect how much reputation you can get from your answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17509" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1381" RevisionGUID="f0437056-ca4c-49bb-96ee-8accebdcbba5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This has been brought up &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=progress%20badges&quot;&gt;many times&lt;/a&gt; on Meta.StackOverflow and rejected. The posts are now closed as duplicates tracing back to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3230/so-badge-progress-report&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17510" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1384" RevisionGUID="b493c880-1a31-4aca-8909-a5a3f2b51dd1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Question upvotes used to award 10 points. That was changed last year. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/03/important-reputation-rule-changes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;question upvotes will now grant only +5 rep instead of +10.* There is no change to answer upvotes. This will apply retroactively to all &gt;users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;While we value good questions (and&#xA;  asking a great question is absolutely&#xA;  an art), we want to explicitly&#xA;  encourage people to provide the best&#xA;  possible answers. Without people&#xA;  interested in providing good answers,&#xA;  the questions are moot. We know that&#xA;  answers have more intrinsic value than&#xA;  questions, and the reputation balance&#xA;  should reflect that. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The question&#xA;  asker already enjoys a substantial&#xA;  benefit beyond reputation gain from&#xA;  upvotes on their question — namely,&#xA;  they get great answers to their&#xA;  question! Thus, the asker shouldn’t&#xA;  need as much reputation gain. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;There&#xA;  are a few users who ask hundreds,&#xA;  sometimes even thousands of questions.&#xA;  Over time, these users generate a&#xA;  fairly sizable reputation entirely&#xA;  through the tiny trickle of upvotes&#xA;  gained by these questions. In a sense,&#xA;  we want to discourage question asking&#xA;  a little bit, and make sure that&#xA;  people who ask questions are doing it&#xA;  for the right reasons and not to&#xA;  generate reputation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also this &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/42769/should-the-weight-of-question-upvotes-be-reduced&quot;&gt;discussion post&lt;/a&gt; on Meta.SO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17511" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1408" RevisionGUID="059282fb-0c85-42e0-ab99-56e981843a88" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;If you catch it early &lt;em&gt;enough&lt;/em&gt;, I think the answer is easy, I've had success with it myself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Downvote&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;comment&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came upon an interesting question (&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63657/i-made-a-mistake-accepting-this-job&quot;&gt;I made a mistake accepting this job&lt;/a&gt;) which had about 5 answers already, and the top one, if I remember correctly, in 4 minutes had already gone up to &lt;strong&gt;+5/-0&lt;/strong&gt; (sadly the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/63657/timeline&quot;&gt;timeline&lt;/a&gt; doesn't break it down into small enough chunks to actually tell).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't want to be so harsh, but I felt like the community was going to run away with it if I didn't say something.  Soon the comment had several upvotes and the momentum on the answer had been killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59606/is-type-safety-worth-the-trade-offs/59608#59608&quot;&gt;Is type safety worth the trade-offs?&lt;/a&gt; this is another example where a comment stopped the streak of upvotes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have time, &lt;strong&gt;answer&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I had downvoted, the OP asked me what my problem with it was and what my thoughts were.  I hadn't planned on answering, but I figured if I was going to be a naysayer then I had a responsibility to back up what I'd said if asked.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some users actually like these short answers; One poster commented this, and said that others (I can only assume mine) were too long-winded.  In response to me, he subsequently posted an &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers/1365#1365&quot;&gt;answer here on meta&lt;/a&gt; stating his reasoning.  I disagree with this view, but if it is a conscious opinion, than it is that user's prerogative and I am OK with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; think this is a problem of members of the community &lt;em&gt;wanting&lt;/em&gt; short answers, or valuing them over good ones in a completely fair comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is another manifestation of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem&quot;&gt;Fastest Gun in the West Problem&lt;/a&gt;, and it &lt;em&gt;may be worse here on Programmers&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A short answer by nature has less to disagree with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The short answer is more likely to be read by people just scanning the answers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The short answer is digested quickly by all readers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the short answer already has votes, it's easy to &lt;em&gt;assume&lt;/em&gt; that someone else has read the long answers for you.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the answers to the FGITW problem, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem/9758#9758&quot;&gt;Adam Davis starts out with&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've asked questions that have received an immediate answer with enough information to get me past my block, but not served on a platter as you propose, with all the information I might need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This quick-answer nature is &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; specific to StackOverflow.  A &lt;em&gt;high&lt;/em&gt; percentage of questions on SO are likely to have been a &quot;blocker&quot; for someone, while almost all on Programmers are the thoughtful, non-urgent kind of questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73/is-the-fastest-gun-in-the-west-solved#93&quot;&gt;(non-)solution&lt;/a&gt; to the FGITW problem is to encourage people to vote better.  This solution is much better suited to SO than to Programmers, and I believe needs revisiting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In conclusion&lt;/strong&gt; I disagree with the idea that something is wrong the the &quot;people&quot; here.  It is completely natural to see a highly-upvoted short answer, read it, agree; then scan the rest and see a long-winded answer and assume everyone else must not have agreed and skip it.  Then you add your vote to the stack on the short answer, and voila, the cycle continues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If we want to fix this, the software is going to have to change.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17512" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1457" RevisionGUID="73671256-7755-46b0-b814-e2315c389696" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This question has been superseded by the following questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/how-can-we-improve-our-guidance-about-the-purpose-of-comments&quot;&gt;How can we improve our guidance about the purpose of comments?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2228/when-should-comments-be-deleted&quot;&gt;When should comments be deleted?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subsequent to a question about technical solutions to cleaning up noise, Jeff Atwood posted &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83480/add-possibility-to-remove-comment-noise-fancy-edition/88010#88010&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I appreciate the &lt;em&gt;intent&lt;/em&gt;, but this is hellishly complex. I think my solution is even simpler than Shog9's&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simply flag the first comment in the series for mod attention&lt;/strong&gt; with the text&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;irrelevant comment conversation; delete this conversation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A moderator could then blam, blam, blam, blam on each [x] to remove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with this.  I've often wanted to even clean up my own conversations after resolving something that was productive, but not worth preserving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as we all know, with the introduction of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight&quot;&gt;flag weight&lt;/a&gt; our flagging ability and priority gets diminished if no action is taken on our flags.  So, I think it's up to our community and moderators to decide (and therefore send the message to our moderators and 10k users) whether we believe this is an appropriate action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;I'm all for it&lt;/strong&gt; - I'd love to see transient and incidental conversations completely disappear (not just be hidden) so that new visitors have a higher comment signal-to-noise ratio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17513" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1458" RevisionGUID="ee67912a-16ab-4ba2-bdc8-8850d013497d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Flag weights diminish if you constantly use the flag system &lt;em&gt;inappropriately&lt;/em&gt;. If you are acting in good faith, I would not obsess too much over &quot;maintaining the integrity&quot; of your flag weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I raised this issue in meta: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77373/should-moderators-delete-make-correction-done-comments&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should moderators delete ... comments&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;? The consensus seems to be (and the action taken) that comments which no longer serve a purpose (or never &lt;em&gt;had&lt;/em&gt; a purpose to begin with) should be removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's all about creating the highest quality content possible; the end result. If a comment-conversation was the &lt;em&gt;means&lt;/em&gt; of getting that content &amp;mdash; and that means was served &amp;mdash; those now-superfluous discussions should be removed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a matter of community self-moderation. Moderators should remove irrelevant comments in the routine course of using the site. Users can help by flagging comments that that serve no further purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17514" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1480" RevisionGUID="ec187082-ce80-4eee-b35a-1627d4425819" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This has come up on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/53302/necromancer-badge-anomaly&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;, so it's a known issue. Personally, I think they technically &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; meet the requirements of the badge, even if they didn't realize it: by virtue of the merge, they answered a question more than 60 days old and received a score of 5 or higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some badges are easy to game, this isn't the only way one can game the Necromancer badge, and merging certainly isn't the easiest way  to acquire it: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;answer a question that's an exact duplicate of an earlier question, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;get people to only add answers that would be equally applicable to the earlier question, then &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;convince a moderator to merge the new question with the old one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my advice would be to not worry about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17515" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1491" RevisionGUID="685af263-60a6-409f-a210-5729f3120319" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Two of your posts were for the same unregistered user, who was going around spamming a giant wall of text. I deleted the user, which deleted the posts and cleared the flags on those posts automatically. I assumed the flags were automatically dismissed as &lt;em&gt;valid&lt;/em&gt;, but this appears this might not have been the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one possible way to lose flag weight without realizing it (or having moderators know what happened) is to lose it on comment flags. When you flag a comment, moderators have four options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delete the comment outright&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Edit the comment to remove the offending bits&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dismiss the comment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take no action and/or leave another comment addressing the first commenter (e.g. &quot;Be nice&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only the first two options awards an increase of 5 flag weight outright. The third will decrease your flag weight automatically, and the last will decrease your flag weight if four other people don't also flag the comment (a common occurrence, especially if a moderator steps in via comments).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, unlike flagged posts, these &lt;em&gt;won't&lt;/em&gt; show up on your flag weight audit. You'll just see the change in flag weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discussion on Meta Stack Overflow: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/87931/149432&quot;&gt;Can a flag that attracts moderator action be treated as invalid?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as Chris said, please don't put too much weight into flag...weight, especially on Programmers.SE. We don't get so many flags per day that having a low flag weight actually matters: we act on everything, even if that action is to take no action right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17516" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1492" RevisionGUID="7f78f0c4-6e2d-4ec9-b81a-8d24923ef1d0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;These tags were actively being deleted as they add no value. I would of though this one wants deleting too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/60318/cant-keep-a-good-tag-down&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/60318/cant-keep-a-good-tag-down&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17517" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1499" RevisionGUID="c396979a-08ea-4066-be26-8b36b5af1523" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This is a known issue, and has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/88217/149432&quot;&gt;discussed on Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;. From Nick Craver's answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We're doing a best-guess match on locations across the network in an effort to get more consistent location formats for all the users, for example mine would be &quot;Winston-Salem, NC&quot;, &quot;City, ST&quot;, or &quot;Something, Ontario&quot; for Canada, &quot;London, United Kingdom&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To do this we needed to perform a backfill of locations across the network, but we can't do this instantaneously since we're hitting against Yahoo's API to do this (which would more than likely ban us for a massive hit like that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's unfortunate but we will get a few false positives in here...we've reduced that as much as possible and checked many of the matches to ensure the correct location's being returned...but some will slip through, and we apologize for that. In the future this is done from your profile, rather than on the server-side, so whatever location you leave in that field after this we'll respect (but still recommend the match we found on the right optionally).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to why IN got translated to Indiana, IN is the US Postal Service abbreviation for the state of Indiana.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17518" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1518" RevisionGUID="d28a12fc-0854-476c-aae8-f8c713ac3651" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There is this question &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/87931/can-a-flag-that-attracts-moderator-action-be-treated-as-invalid&quot;&gt;Can a flag that attracts moderator action be treated as invalid?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;which deals with the general idea behind the validity of any flag. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What i am asking is the specific flag option when we hit the flag button. The area in which we  address the moderator regarding the type of attention that is required. Can this flag be dismissed as invalid? Meaning who ever raised it Did not need to and it did not warrant a mods attention?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance this topic &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73667/mobile-games-paid-vs-ad-supported&quot;&gt;Mobile games: paid vs. ad-supported?&lt;/a&gt;  I was unable to define the exact nature of the problem, as i was unable to find its duplicate here. IMHO it needed a mods attention. Hence i flagged it using the inform moderator flag stating that it could be migrated to gamedev.stackexchange.com - the idea in itself is valid. and it is valid topic.&#xA; Mod attention was required and the topic was closed as duplicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving me miffed as to why this type flag was dismissed as invalid. specifically when this was not defined In absolutes as off topic or duplicate or does not belong here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17519" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1529" RevisionGUID="de3fbf78-061c-473f-af41-4062815824a9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There is no official repository of Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange Approved™ wallpapers, but this question has been asked on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/39049/where-can-i-get-stack-overflow-wallpapers&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;, where you might find some questionable candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17520" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1531" RevisionGUID="0f903b8d-062c-40df-b75f-735a14a11bb3" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There was an &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/84799/149432&quot;&gt;issue or two&lt;/a&gt; with case sensitivity in searches that was fixed. Searching for &lt;code&gt;f#&lt;/code&gt; (lowercase) &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=f%23&quot;&gt;now works&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17521" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1569" RevisionGUID="f5ab7380-3b78-4243-b1a9-75ab7044ffdc" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There used to be a very popular question on Stack Overflow called &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2420689/surprise-for-a-programmer-on-birthday/&quot;&gt;Surprise for a programmer on Birthday&lt;/a&gt;, but it got deleted. It had a bunch of suggestions for humorous code snippets and other jokes to put on a programmer's birthday cake, and I was planning to post pictures of the cake I just made with inspiration from some of those suggestions. It seems obvious to me that posting something on Stack Overflow is just going to get deleted, but would it be welcome on this site?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm hoping that it is close enough to a programming puzzle and far enough from mindless social fun that it would be tolerated here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to be clear, I want to create a page with a question like, &quot;What are some fun ideas for decorating a programmer's birthday cake?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to see the content of the old page, it's available on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackprinter.com/export?question=2420689&amp;amp;format=HTML&amp;amp;service=stackoverflow&amp;amp;printer=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stack Printer&lt;/a&gt;. I also asked a slightly more general version of this question on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/91219/131335&quot;&gt;the main meta site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17522" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1577" RevisionGUID="6a9b3360-e96d-4361-adcc-8cbcc8f0d9eb" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I've had a question migrated here but I don't think its a good fit for programmers. If I understand the nature of the questions you get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76396/how-can-you-make-a-cluster-run-a-task-only-once&quot;&gt;How can you make a cluster run a task only once?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should this have been migrated here? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried asking this on meta.stackoverflow.com but to no real avail. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/91349/is-this-question-a-good-match-for-programmers-stackexchange-com-site&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/91349/is-this-question-a-good-match-for-programmers-stackexchange-com-site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17523" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1594" RevisionGUID="7d3fcd6d-c2e7-4cd2-a26f-d8d5f1fea626" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;It's a recent change done mostly on a trial basis to see how it performs. And it's all questions, not just those that have been closed. The idea is that we want to encourage voting on questions in general and using downvotes as a means of quality control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/90324/should-downvotes-on-questions-be-free&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; on Meta.SO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17524" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1595" RevisionGUID="6ec8ec6b-9411-4805-9743-4e911743104c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Right now we have just 8 &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/faq&quot; class=&quot;post-tag moderator-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'faq'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;faq&lt;/a&gt; posts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not &lt;em&gt;terrible&lt;/em&gt;, but they are in various states, various formats, and one of them is even closed. &#xA;I think it would be great to clean up these posts, decide on a format and figure out a process for bringing in new FAQ questions (and apply the tag now to the best ones we have here on Meta).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Motivations&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide a great place for new users to start learning about the best ways to use this site.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide links for experienced users to use in comments on questions or answers that need attention.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take a big step in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1400/2314&quot;&gt;fixing this site&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have &lt;strong&gt;three main proposals&lt;/strong&gt; and a couple questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;1. Make the FAQ tagged questions more FAQ-y&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my understanding, the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/faq&quot; class=&quot;post-tag moderator-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'faq'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;faq&lt;/a&gt; tag should be used for &lt;strong&gt;the most frequently asked and answered questions on Meta.&lt;/strong&gt; (That's what the tag wiki says, at least.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I propose we review which questions are tagged &lt;strong&gt;faq&lt;/strong&gt;, and fix any that are out of place (such as those about the &lt;strong&gt;site-faq&lt;/strong&gt; which I propose as the replacement tag).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I believe that these questions should be in &lt;strong&gt;Question and Answer&lt;/strong&gt; form, so that users can see quickly that it's a question they actually have.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, these are the questions we have in the tag:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic&quot;&gt;Why is “what language should I learn” considered off-topic?&lt;/a&gt; - Good question.  Should be community wiki, and I'm not sure the answers are quite there yet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1165/2314&quot;&gt;Proposed FAQ change regarding career advice questions&lt;/a&gt; - Since it's about the &lt;em&gt;actual FAQ page&lt;/em&gt; I'm not sure if the tag was correctly applied, but it's a good question (deserves it anyway).  It just needs to be edited to question-answer form.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/ive-updated-our-faq&quot;&gt;I've updated our FAQ.&lt;/a&gt; - Honestly I'm not sure I understand the inclusion of this one (why is it closed as too localize?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/516/how-does-programmers-site-work&quot;&gt;How does Programmers site work?&lt;/a&gt; - Perfect.  Shining example of what a &lt;strong&gt;faq&lt;/strong&gt; question can be.  Oh - except for maybe fixing the grammar in the title :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&quot;&gt;The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice&lt;/a&gt; - Great topic, but needs Q&amp;amp;A format.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu&quot;&gt;When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?&lt;/a&gt; - Good&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&quot;&gt;What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?&lt;/a&gt; - Great question. Need to turn Mark's whole answer into an updated answer, and I wish we could accept it somehow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain&quot;&gt;What should our FAQ contain?&lt;/a&gt; - Kind of meta. I think it's more &lt;strong&gt;site-faq&lt;/strong&gt; than &lt;strong&gt;faq&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2. A FAQ index&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7931/faq-for-stack-exchange-sites&quot;&gt;The FAQ for Stack Exchange Sites at Meta.SO&lt;/a&gt; is great.  Would be cool to see one like that here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;3. Figure out a process for bringing in new FAQ posts&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, where do we propose a good posts, discuss its merits, or decide on the &quot;right&quot; answer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first nomination is &quot;Real Questions have Answers&quot;.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/991/real-questions-have-answers&quot;&gt;This is the post&lt;/a&gt; announcing the addition of the section to the FAQ page, but I think it would be great to have a &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Are polls ok?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; question with a bit longer answer (community wiki) comprising the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;best&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179&quot;&gt;writing&lt;/a&gt; on this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally this answer would also talk about how we should avoid &quot;you/your&quot; in questions, so we can use it in comments on &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76710/would-you-rather-work-in-a-small-company-or-a-large-one&quot;&gt;questions like this one&lt;/a&gt; &amp;mdash; the question that got me thinking about all of this in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this process, maybe we could use the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/meta-faq&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'meta-faq'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;meta-faq&lt;/a&gt; tag I created for this question (no others fit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the &lt;strong&gt;Q&amp;amp;A format&lt;/strong&gt; (a la Meta.SO) correct for this site?  I believe it is, but I'm open to opposing viewpoints.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If we &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; go with Q&amp;amp;A format for FAQ questions, how do we arrive at the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; answer but still allow voting, discussion (comments), and editing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/413/on-adding-the-faq-tag-to-questions&quot;&gt;Skeptics site is working on solution for this&lt;/a&gt; that involves turning the original into a discussion/staging area and posting a new question with the best/correct answer.  However, I'm not a big fan of this.  I &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/519/discussion-about-requiring-references-for-all-claims/343#343&quot;&gt;posted an answer&lt;/a&gt; that became &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5/must-all-claims-be-referenced/522#522&quot;&gt;the &quot;official&quot; one&lt;/a&gt; but all that served to do was branch the conversation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do we push the right answer to the top on FAQ questions? Votes? Accept it?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17525" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1596" RevisionGUID="874ae1f2-9b91-47d6-a2b2-03b18c0447bc" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I'm just going to say it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The community-wiki auto conversion sucks.  And it's not (really) the rep, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been racking my brain trying to figure out why I don't have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/60/career&quot;&gt;career tag badge&lt;/a&gt;.  After all, I have &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=user:2314+%5bcareer%5d&quot;&gt;many answers&lt;/a&gt;, and even in the first 6 non-wiki or so, I've got more than 100 upvotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can accept that CW &lt;em&gt;upvotes&lt;/em&gt; don't really count toward tag badges (even though it's a little weird), though I definitely think that &lt;strong&gt;votes before the CW conversion &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; count&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63835/what-are-tag-badges-how-do-they-work/63836#63836&quot;&gt;here's the problem requirement&lt;/a&gt;: Must have &lt;strong&gt;20 non-wiki answers&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it looks like I'm not too far away, but I'm still quite irked by this whole auto-conversion thing.  Why?  Because I don't tend to answer questions that are pile-on polls like &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38505/most-overhyped-software-engineering-technologies-and-concepts-of-the-last-20-year&quot;&gt;Most overhyped software engineering technologies and concepts of the last 20 years.&lt;/a&gt;.  But every once in a while, I do get a &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38746/software-design-build-it-fast-or-build-it-well/38752#38752&quot;&gt;decent answer&lt;/a&gt; in on a question which becomes highly viewed, and how am I rewarded? &lt;strong&gt;Community wiki!&lt;/strong&gt; (that one stopped at 16 answers... ugh.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not an &quot;we should change the whole system to benefit me&quot; post.  I understand that rep should not be dished out like mad to posts with a hockey-puck view trajectory.  But I really wish the auto-conversion would not slap the answerers on those posts which &lt;em&gt;barely ever&lt;/em&gt; reach the 15 answer limit.  &lt;strong&gt;After all, that's &lt;em&gt;most really good questions&lt;/em&gt; given enough time.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17526" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1599" RevisionGUID="60acb30f-88c6-4375-ae3e-cd520b95832d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Over the past couple of weeks, we've been accumulating several FAQ-worthy questions that provide a good amount of detail beyond what the one-page FAQ, so I've taken the extra couple of steps to consolidate and adjust the questions to be more FAQ-like. We now have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1646/8&quot;&gt;FAQ Index&lt;/a&gt; which links to several questions on meta and elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's a tremendous amount of value in spending a whole lot of time on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Meta Stack Overflow, they get a ton of questions about all the sites about every possible mechanic. They get dozens upon dozens of questions about the same things, and as such, require canonical posts to point to for the purposes of duplicates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the amount of questions they get about various aspects of the site require extensive detail that can't be fit into a single page FAQ. For example, there's a FAQ post that goes into the excruciating minutiae of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/43019/how-do-comment-replies-work&quot;&gt;how comment replies work&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, Meta Stack Overflow has what Jeff Atwood terms &quot;big city problems&quot;. The &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/faq&quot; class=&quot;post-tag moderator-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'faq'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;faq&lt;/a&gt; tag is the only reasonable way to handle the onslaught of support questions they get about the engine and global policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't really have that problem. We get ~2-3 questions every couple of days, and for the most part, cover new issues that do need a discussion or a real answer (i.e. they can't be closed as a duplicate). Even the ones that cover the same ground as earlier questions, we (usually) can answer the question in a way that makes it specific to the person asking it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we've been using &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/faq&quot; class=&quot;post-tag moderator-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'faq'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;faq&lt;/a&gt; to tag questions to the few questions frequently arise organically: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how is Programmers.SE different from Stack Overflow, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;changes to the main FAQ sparked by frequent on-topic discussions, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the consequences of the Great Redisciplining,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main intent of these questions is to explain the background behind the policies Programmers.SE has, not to explain in detail the different mechanics behind those policies (like Meta Stack Overflow).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for the stuff everyone needs to know—the stuff we want to refer to when closing questions or discussing policy—we use &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;our single-page FAQ&lt;/a&gt;. If anything should get some love, it's that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, if you see something that really explains the problems with an issue that frequently comes up, by all means flag it. Beyond that, the normal Stack Exchange guidelines apply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have a better answer to a question, answer it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you like an answer, up-vote it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don't like an answer, down-vote it and leave a comment explaining why.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17527" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1611" RevisionGUID="ea9ae72a-976d-4e42-b870-c38eb6ae2fa2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;When something like this happens, it's an indication that there's generally something wrong with the question. Good questions, at least on Programmers.SE, shouldn't be so easy to answer that they'll suffer the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/9731/149432&quot;&gt;fastest gun in the west&lt;/a&gt;&quot; problem as we have &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;general guidelines in place&lt;/a&gt; that insist questions invite long, detailed, and thoughtful answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this specific case, it so happens that the question in practice covers identical ground as an earlier question, so I've closed it as a duplicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17528" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1612" RevisionGUID="86483469-705b-4ea8-a93b-dde44b73e272" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;When a question is closed as being &lt;em&gt;off-topic&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;not a real question&lt;/em&gt;, the question is automatically down-voted. This was instituted network-wide after some discussion &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/84978/149432&quot;&gt;a couple of months ago&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like this behavior should extend to &lt;em&gt;not constructive&lt;/em&gt;, which is arguably worse than an off-topic question, at least on Programmers.SE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any reasons why it wouldn't or shouldn't?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17529" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1617" RevisionGUID="cad5e710-0e80-4d91-9fec-ca2d4e23c594" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There is a difference of intent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a question is &lt;em&gt;off-topic&lt;/em&gt;, that is akin to asking about tea on &lt;code&gt;coffee.stackexchange.com&lt;/code&gt;. It's a blatant, obvious violation of the parameters of the site. Now, you could argue that users simply don't read, and I will agree with you, but ignorance of the law is not an excuse. But in this case, &lt;em&gt;it is egregiously off topic&lt;/em&gt;. That is, even the most casual browsing of the front page would immediately let you know what is and is not on topic without thinking too hard about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a question is &lt;em&gt;not constructive&lt;/em&gt; the distinction is much subtler. It can take a bit of trial and error to &quot;get it&quot;. I also believe that many unconstructive questions do NOT indicate the same level of obliviousness bordering on irresponsible failure to just &lt;em&gt;look at&lt;/em&gt; the questions on the homepage and ask something similar. I believe it is possible for some people to honestly try to read the faq and still get it slightly wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore I don't support this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(However I do think that egregious examples of unconstructive questions should regularly be downvoted and remember, downvotes on questions are now free... &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/90324/should-downvotes-on-questions-be-free&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/90324/should-downvotes-on-questions-be-free&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17530" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1679" RevisionGUID="d865cc41-6695-4d7e-b2a0-4c271a32032d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;In my case, when it comes to popular questions, I typically act on flags from people with less than 3000 rep, so if I end up closing them, it's usually not a unilateral decision. Flags are unfortunately not transparent to the community at all. I've opened a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/92623/155160&quot;&gt;feature request&lt;/a&gt; on Meta.SO for better visibility of &quot;duplicate of&quot; flags, but perhaps I'll write up another one for any &quot;it doesn't belong here&quot; flag since they're essentially close votes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, voting to reopen, flagging for another moderator to review the closure, or posting to meta are the best ways to voice your disagreement with the closure of a particular question. As Pierre pointed out, sometimes that does result in the reopening of a question. (The reverse is also true - if you see a question that should clearly have been closed or you can make a case of it, post to meta and see if there's agreement.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all that said, the 6 guidelines apply to Stack Exchange as a whole, not just to Programmers and I don't think we're in a position to change them at the site level. I don't know if you've read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Good Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; blog post, but if you haven't it might shed more light on the &quot;why and how&quot; behind those guidelines and take some mystery out of them. We also use &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Real Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; to supplement the six guidelines for constructive questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17531" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1732" RevisionGUID="025c1259-ffa2-4ee4-9cd2-c5cf7c7deb53" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I'm gonna have to ask around why it was removed. As I mentioned in my comment to Josh, there was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/95153/same-questions-migrated-multiple-times&quot;&gt;problem with migrations&lt;/a&gt; last night, but the other two questions that were affected seem to still be around. I'm not sure why this one was removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Looks like it was just deleted by accident during the clean-up after fixing the problem I linked to above. It's been restored now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17532" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1742" RevisionGUID="da7b5dcb-8098-4cf9-929e-822009ede9f5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/32277/add-a-cancel-button-when-editing-an-answer/32283#32283&quot;&gt;has been declined&lt;/a&gt; in the past on our sister meta-site, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adding a &quot;cancel&quot; button means there's some percent chance people will accidentally click on it and lose their changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's another item on the page that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000377.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Makes You Think&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Compare with the back button, and I can't see any reason to make this change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would agree with that: the back button accomplishes the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17533" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1765" RevisionGUID="ca0bc1dd-8962-4155-be47-4445ee937fff" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I think it'd be nice to have an &quot;invite to chat&quot; link in a user profile similar to the ones already in the chat profiles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, this has been brought up on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/70385/add-invite-user-to-chat-function-on-main-site&quot;&gt;Meta.SO&lt;/a&gt; before and while it wasn't outright &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/status-declined&quot; class=&quot;post-tag moderator-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'status-declined'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;status-declined&lt;/a&gt;, it received a lukewarm response at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17534" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1807" RevisionGUID="7a6b2578-c0d4-4165-aca2-2e6fe9f41ab8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;For reference, the automatic rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78048/auto-deleting-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year/92006#92006&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78048/auto-deleting-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year/92006#92006&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Just to formally document the exact policies we have in place to remove old abandoned / dead questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the question is more than &lt;code&gt;30&lt;/code&gt; days old, and ...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;has -1 or lower score&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;has no answers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;is not locked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... it will be automatically deleted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the question is more than &lt;code&gt;365&lt;/code&gt; days old, and ...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;has a score of 0 &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; a score of 1 with a deleted owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;has no answers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;is not locked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;has a viewcount &amp;lt;= the age of the question in days times 1.5&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;has 1 or 0 comments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... it will be automatically deleted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This check is run every week across all sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17535" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1838" RevisionGUID="cb98d28b-add1-4b68-95da-ce030358e6a0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;As many, I had a question migrated from Stack Overflow to Programmers.SE. I actually liked the fact it was migrated, as I initially also had the gut feeling it was more appropriate on Programmers.SE than Stack Overflow, but I couldn't find anything backing up this feeling in either Programmers.SE or Stack Overflow FAQ. On the contrary, I could find indication that the question was a better fit for Stack Overflow on their FAQ:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if your question generally covers matters that are unique to the programming profession then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/96845/why-was-my-question-migrated&quot;&gt;asked&lt;/a&gt; clarifications on why the question was migrated a user came up with a dead easy explanation that I am proposing to include in both Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE FAQs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it's a question about &lt;em&gt;programming&lt;/em&gt; belongs on Stack Overflow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it's a question about &lt;em&gt;programmers&lt;/em&gt; belongs on Programmers.SE&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17536" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1853" RevisionGUID="f7bb7d77-e871-4c8e-ab0c-c1e171257d48" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This was marked &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/status-bydesign&quot; class=&quot;post-tag moderator-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'status-bydesign'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;status-bydesign&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/14614/149432&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;. Anton Geraschenko probably phrased why this is best:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The point of keeping closed questions around (rather than deleting them) is that they might still be relevant. For example, if a question is closed as a duplicate, it might still have phrased the question in a completely different way, and that different phrasing might be very useful to someone. In particular, looking at a related closed question might be just the thing you need to realize that the question you're looking at solves your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To his point, we regularly use the related column to find duplicates that may be of use to a question asker, even if they happen to be closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17537" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1890" RevisionGUID="c596c610-e8ec-4ed5-8e42-e442458e2218" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89839/how-do-i-determine-the-runtime-of-a-double-recursive-function&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; is considered on-topic on Programmers.SE, and I don't understand why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a question about computer science, not a question about programming or programmers. It's something a good programmer should know, but it's not programming (in the same way, using a computer is definitely required of a programmer, yet computer usage isn't programming). It's a subject where an expert would be a computer scientist, not a programmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, it's an objective question. The run time of a function is a perfectly well-defined notion (at least in a given context, and the choice of context isn't relevant here). There may be more than one way to compute it, it would still be the same thing being computed — this isn't about making a design choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, going by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;site FAQ&lt;/a&gt; as well as the overall tone and audience of the site, this question doesn't belong here. I &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80023/where-on-se-to-discuss-computer-science&quot;&gt;don't think there's currently a site in the Stack Exchange network that's really appropriate for it&lt;/a&gt;¹, but the closest, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80023/where-on-se-to-discuss-computer-science/80058#80058&quot;&gt;officially-sanctioned&lt;/a&gt;, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why, then, is this question not migrated to Stack Overflow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;¹ &lt;sub&gt;&#xA;Reminder: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;CSTheory&lt;/a&gt; is about &lt;em&gt;research-level&lt;/em&gt; computer science only.&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17538" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1912" RevisionGUID="9d2d4e20-f130-4d57-ab4f-8a63743bcf3a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The problems Software Quality Assurance has shouldn't have any effect on our site: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joel Spolsky warned&lt;/a&gt; about the issues of trying to segment the programmer population into progressively smaller camps, and the fact that they can't field enough questions, to me, indicates Spolsky wasn't far off the mark in his original assessment. Many, although perhaps not all, questions related to the topic &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; on-topic here and shouldn't be migrated to a struggling beta site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the other questions: as Anna points to, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;they're not on-topic on Stack Overflow, and are on-topic here&lt;/a&gt;. Stack Overflow is for very specific, here-is-my-code-and-I'm-not-sure-where-I-went-wrong-with-it questions; Programmers.SE is for conceptual I'm-planning-on-doing-this-but-need-help-with-the-big-picture questions. The topics you list as being better off on Stack Overflow are are our &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt;, most useful questions: the questions that most resemble what Programmers.SE is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, if &lt;em&gt;these&lt;/em&gt; questions aren't on-topic here, what &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;? The &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl&quot;&gt;junky questions&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow&quot;&gt;aren't good enough&lt;/a&gt; for Stack Overflow? We figured out early on in beta that wasn't going to work, and that's why Programmers.SE was launched as the conceptual yang to Stack Overflow's concrete yin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17539" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1917" RevisionGUID="31769294-9850-44b9-93d9-5d99269684db" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I think what you really mean when you say that those questions are valuable is that the &lt;strong&gt;answers&lt;/strong&gt; are valuable, or have the potential to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bad questions can receive great answers; hell, there's even a &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/50/reversal&quot;&gt;badge for it&lt;/a&gt;.  The yardstick of a great question is the &lt;em&gt;ratio&lt;/em&gt; of great answers.  Note that I say yardstick and not criteria; it's an heuristic, something that &lt;em&gt;often&lt;/em&gt; provides great insight but isn't infallible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A truly amazing question helps the craft &lt;em&gt;not only&lt;/em&gt; by mentioning a popular or thought-provoking topic that other developers can relate to, but also by challenging and persuading readers to &lt;em&gt;make their answers count&lt;/em&gt;, to &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; before posting and really make sure that the message matters and will have a real impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people are gifted teachers, or just very meticulous in their reading and writing; they have an uncanny ability to distill the pure essence out of impure questions and reflect it back in a genuinely enlightening and often entertaining answer.  However, as Shog points out in a comment, that talent is at least partially wasted because the original question remains in its raw, unedited, unclear, unfocused form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've noticed that many people have a lot of sincere difficulty maintaining separate mental scorecards for questions vs. answers.  This even permeated the Stack Exchange dev team and we ended up with &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/50523/should-delete-votes-be-limited-like-close-votes/51071#51071&quot;&gt;answers protecting questions from community deletion&lt;/a&gt;.  What's interesting is that most people have no trouble identifying the reverse situation - it's somewhat common to see highly-upvoted questions with only low-voted answers - but most of the time, question scores seem to get lifted up by answer scores, and even if they don't, the questions still get labeled as &quot;valuable&quot; in meta discussions such as this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has the potential to over-credit the question authors.  Certainly, if a question has but one answer and that answer blows your mind, then probably the question itself was at least a little bit special.  But if a question has 1 or 2 great answers amidst a sea of 50-100 crappy ones, then that doesn't really tell you anything at all about the quality of the question, other than the fact that it happened to be posted in the right place at the right time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The former indicates a question that is difficult to answer, or has an authoritative answer (or maybe a couple of them).  The latter indicates a question that &lt;em&gt;anybody&lt;/em&gt; can answer which happened to catch the fleeting attention of a few of the more prolific contributors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These answers are worth keeping, in both cases - but not at the expense of polluting the site tenfold with frivolity.  The lower-quality questions have to be edited and, in many cases, have their answers cleaned up by moderators, before they become valuable &lt;em&gt;questions&lt;/em&gt; worthy of continued attention.  Otherwise, those great answers might as well just be archived as blog posts somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that the rules need to be simplified, and I think that they already are quite flexible.  All of the history and context and discussion around question-asking here - the Six Guidelines, Real Questions Have Answers, the concentric circles now in the FAQ - they all boil down to the same essential concept, which is: &lt;strong&gt;Is this &lt;em&gt;important&lt;/em&gt; to our community?&lt;/strong&gt; That means more than just tickling our collective fancy - it implies that there is some &lt;em&gt;gravity&lt;/em&gt; to the situation, a real problem that needs solving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, to me, the First Principle of asking questions, here or anywhere else.  All of the current guidelines around it are just the mathematical formulas, intended to save the less-thoughtful or time-starved students from having to work it all out themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the core, it really is simple; simple things get complicated because everybody tries to interpret them in the way that best serves their own interests. That's why our real-life codes of laws and regulations are so mind-numbingly detailed and specific; we're trying to minimize, if not eliminate, any room for (mis)interpretation.  At least the FAQ isn't a bunch of dense legalese; it's just &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions&quot;&gt;six guidelines&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&quot;&gt;five counterexamples&lt;/a&gt;.  If that's really too hard to understand, then all hope is lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17541" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1961" RevisionGUID="4ae77eb2-6130-4c94-94b2-67c88d6a2038" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This has been done to death on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votes&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consensus is that while it would nice if people did, there's not a lot we can do to enforce this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17542" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1976" RevisionGUID="f6a6eb91-fe27-4f64-8ef0-7a564256b710" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you think Programmers.SE is for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's a site for &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions&quot;&gt;expert programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development&lt;/a&gt;, then answers had better be backed up by references. Even for the kind of subjective questions that make up the meat of the site, some kind of justification should be provided — real experts don't just say “yes” or “no”, they can explain why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Programmers.SE is &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow's toilet bowl&lt;/a&gt;, then answers aren't for reading, you don't know where they've been (or rather you do!), so who cares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17543" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1983" RevisionGUID="b02705f8-a4cd-4014-8340-9dab45a25538" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This has come up a few times on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1975/ability-to-sort-reorder-interesting-ignored-tags-in-sidebar&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1975/ability-to-sort-reorder-interesting-ignored-tags-in-sidebar&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/23488/sort-interested-ignored-tags-alphabetically&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/23488/sort-interested-ignored-tags-alphabetically&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and this request to &quot;lock&quot; the tags so you can't accidentally delete one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/29350/option-to-lock-interesting-tags-section-so-x-isnt-hit-accidentally-on-a-tag&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/29350/option-to-lock-interesting-tags-section-so-x-isnt-hit-accidentally-on-a-tag&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of them are marked [status-declined] so the team will be open to implementing them if they think there's enough demand. Head over to MSO and up-vote these questions and make it clear you support them in other ways. I understand feature requests are looked at in order of votes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17545" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1991" RevisionGUID="fde1a525-f74d-4442-9a02-ba181693fae8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;No, profanity is not allowed in questions or answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22232/are-expletives-allowed-on-se-sites&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22232/are-expletives-allowed-on-se-sites&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the professionalism issue, there's also the matter of being blocked by corporate proxies based on inappropriate language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17546" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1994" RevisionGUID="8b78e5b6-1118-4670-ad5d-e49ba4c147bb" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95920/what-is-each-time-through-a-loop-called&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; on terminology was asked earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the &quot;General Reference&quot; close reason as outlined &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/are-some-questions-too-simple/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in this blog post&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86043/introduce-a-general-reference-close-reason/88521#88521&quot;&gt;this Meta Stack Overflow answer&lt;/a&gt; be enabled here on Programmers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other questions that would fit this bill, or was this just a one-off that we can live with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the existing &quot;Not constructive&quot; close reason cover this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17547" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1997" RevisionGUID="276854c6-00fb-4402-b7e7-65a3bf93c9f2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This has been requested many times on Meta Stack Overflow and always declined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3615/should-downvoting-be-allowed-on-comments&quot;&gt;the canonical question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your problem - perhaps you need to consider what you type in your comment reply to try to avoid starting a flame war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17548" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2000" RevisionGUID="25561e3e-083a-4097-a78e-bf5955f4f742" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This question got me thinking about a deeper issue on Stack Exchange - but first, let me answer the specific questions here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should the &quot;General Reference&quot; close reason as outlined &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/are-some-questions-too-simple/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in this blog post&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86043/introduce-a-general-reference-close-reason/88521#88521&quot;&gt;this Meta Stack Overflow answer&lt;/a&gt; be enabled here on Programmers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, because those should already be covered by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;Official FAQ&lt;/a&gt; and the site's &quot;elevator pitch&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Programmers - Stack Exchange is for &lt;strong&gt;expert programmers&lt;/strong&gt; who are interested in conceptual questions on software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emphasis mine.  General reference questions are, by definition, not &lt;em&gt;expert&lt;/em&gt; questions.  SciFi.SE and English.SE don't have that criteria, so it's more of an issue for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does the existing &quot;Not constructive&quot; close reason cover this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, I don't think so - it doesn't fit any of the qualifying definitions of Not Constructive. It's sort of practical, it's answerable, it might educate some beginners in the community. It's not really open-ended, and definitely doesn't have an infinite list of answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So what should we do?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless we get a &quot;too easy&quot; close reason, I think we should close these as &lt;strong&gt;off topic&lt;/strong&gt;.  The word &quot;expert&quot; is right there in the site's tagline; &lt;strong&gt;if it's not relevant to an &lt;em&gt;experienced, practicing&lt;/em&gt; programmer, then it's not in our scope.&lt;/strong&gt;  I'm sorry if it sounds callous, but we're here to help each other, not educate every single newbie on how to program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check this out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yzan7.png&quot; alt=&quot;Quality Venn&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure that the purple area between &quot;Advanced&quot; and &quot;Disciplined&quot; is where we are &lt;em&gt;supposed&lt;/em&gt; to be.  We focus entirely on the subjective (objective questions go on Stack Overflow), so we have to be on the right side; and since we're nowhere near as disciplined as Skeptics, we have to make up for it by discussing subjects that are more advanced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we start allowing questions that are subjective &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; beginner-level, then we end up with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bike shed&lt;/a&gt; questions, which almost invariably produce crap answers &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; drag down the rest of the site with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From now on, I'm going to start closing these &quot;Learn PHP in 21 days&quot; questions as &lt;em&gt;off topic&lt;/em&gt;. These guys can go read a tutorial or take a class or something; the whole point of this site is to discuss the topics we &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; learn in school and often don't learn on the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17549" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2024" RevisionGUID="a5751a22-03d6-40ca-a2e0-bdf4301dd32f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The community wiki flag is set automatically once a question reaches 15 answers: this is to encourage collaboration on existing answers, as after 15 or so of them, it's highly likely answers are going to overlap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, this automatic action is marked with a confusing message: the person who had the privilege of posting the answer that triggered the automatic conversion to community wiki is the one who gets the attribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our sister meta site, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;, has more background on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&quot;&gt;mechanics of community wiki&lt;/a&gt;, but you can rest assured that nobody has the ability to &quot;troll&quot; people with community wiki flags:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Questions can only be converted to community wiki by diamond moderators or through automatic conversion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Answers can only be converted to community wiki by the post owner, diamond moderators, or through automatic conversion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17550" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2027" RevisionGUID="63f5fe6e-b13f-43bb-bf7c-1583b2989e57" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/886/a-friends-list-on-stack-overflow-would-be-nice&quot;&gt;Probably not&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This idea has been brought in up various ways on Meta Stack Overflow and it has always been rejected. The users aren't the focus of Stack Exchange. Content and knowledge sharing are. Being able to &quot;favourite&quot; users goes against that philosophy of deemphasizing the person in favour of the content they produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This goes both ways -- someone's reputation or fame doesn't exempt them from having to adhere to the quality and behaviour standards set on the network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, &quot;who&quot; doesn't matter. &quot;What&quot; does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17551" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2044" RevisionGUID="f7837bf3-2d71-496b-a00a-e3ddac620490" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/77373/149432&quot;&gt;network-wide guidance&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1457/8&quot;&gt;a discussion here&lt;/a&gt;, we've been actively deleting comment chains that have become obsolete, chatty, or pointless. This has been met with some resistance, in part because of the differing expectations of what comments are for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have the following entry in our FAQ:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Comments are useful for getting clarifications, but extended discussions detract from the question and its answers. If you'd like to discuss anything related to programming with other expert programmers, please use our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But perhaps we can make it better. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97207/what-does-c-do-better-than-d/97211#97211&quot;&gt;a discussion on this answer&lt;/a&gt;, it was suggested we highlight the alternatives for disagreeing with an answer where the answerer chooses not to improve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can we do to address this? Are there other things we should address in our FAQ's guidance about comments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17552" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2046" RevisionGUID="0743aa0f-5bd9-404d-98b6-f2ec0c03092d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I think addressing the recourse people have when an answer doesn't get improved the way they like is a good idea. To that end, perhaps we can revise it to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Comments are useful for getting clarifications, but extended discussions detract from the question and its answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If you'd like to discuss anything related to programming with other expert programmers, please use our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;This site is &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#editing&quot;&gt;collaborative&lt;/a&gt;: if a question or answer can be improved without changing the author's intent, please edit it or suggest an edit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If you like a post, show your appreciation by voting it up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If you disagree with an answer or a question remains unclear, feel free to down-vote it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If you have a better answer to a question, please leave your own answer instead of writing a comment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yoda over on Gardening.SE &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/201/when-should-i-post-an-answer-and-when-should-i-post-a-comment/202#202&quot;&gt;provided a great guide&lt;/a&gt; on when to use comments, and created this awesome chart:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JS6Z8.png&quot; alt=&quot;How to use comments: a flow chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Update&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/104981/is-the-official-comment-policy-obsolete-and-should-we-change-it&quot;&gt;how to improve the purpose of comments in the FAQ&lt;/a&gt; is being discussed on Meta Stack Overflow, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17553" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2075" RevisionGUID="9d72e695-ec93-423e-bf7a-faa4fe7f2929" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it to discourage people from being obnoxious?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been discussed several times over on MetaSO - &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/45273/allow-more-than-one-name-notification-per-comment&quot;&gt;this is a good example&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth contrasting the design of comment @-notifications with those of &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;chat&lt;/a&gt;, where you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; notify multiple users in a single message:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Comments always notify the post-author, regardless of @... Chat messages appear to anyone in the room.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Comments can @-notify anyone who has ever commented / edited the post... Chat messages can notify anyone who has been in the room &lt;em&gt;recently&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Comment notifications persist in your global SE inbox... Chat notifications produce a small indicator &lt;em&gt;within chat&lt;/em&gt;, with an entry in the SE inbox only if you don't respond.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can only leave one comment every 15 seconds... You can post multiple chat messages within that timespan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, chat messages will only notify people who are probably expecting them, having recently joined a chat room for the purpose of chatting. Comments might notify people who've long ago forgotten about the topic. Making it easier to mass-notify multiple users via comments has a much larger &quot;harassment&quot; potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17554" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2076" RevisionGUID="c6679d1f-0900-4d4f-a905-acff30c0b606" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Why not do &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/192793/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-t-shirt&quot;&gt;what they do on SO&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is&#xA;  not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do&#xA;  not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More info: &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/faq&quot;&gt;http://stackoverflow.com/faq&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Edit from Mark Trapp&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moderators now have the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/106137/better-handling-of-locked-questions-and-answers&quot;&gt;ability to annotate locked posts&lt;/a&gt; with messages that specify why the question was locked, including the historical significance reason seen on Stack Overflow. In lieu of any other consensus, highly upvoted closed questions will be locked with this message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17555" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2078" RevisionGUID="5716b34e-6c45-4e96-9b4b-be011f4dd289" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I asked for this &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2238/would-it-be-useful-so-show-peoples-hit-rate-i-e-percentage-of-answers-accep&quot;&gt;on Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; way back in June 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing to come out of that appeared to be the accept rate of questions - not on answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree it would be nice statistic to have. Not sure about the badges though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17556" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2080" RevisionGUID="ee1dedb4-a62c-4cb3-8d5b-2786ae8c8147" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Any edit to a post bumps it. It doesn't matter whether this is from the normal &quot;edit&quot; link or the quick tag edit option available to 10K+ users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only exception to this are the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/100137/what-is-the-meaning-of-chaos-is-it-related-to-the-psi-character&quot;&gt;CHAOS team&lt;/a&gt; (those with a Ψ after their name) who have been given special &quot;powers&quot; to edit a title (and only a title) without bumping the post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17557" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2095" RevisionGUID="249b0602-6cd7-476f-8bc3-fb97d867ee56" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I just stumbled over this edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/98434/revisions&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/98434/revisions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm confident the edit was done with good intents, it feels a bit like an abuse of the site's mechanics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is editing questions only to bump them to the top of the 'active questions' list accepted practice?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure how meta.programmers.SE relates to meta.stackoverflow, but there's a quite &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/53012/what-is-the-best-way-to-bump-re-ask-an-old-question&quot;&gt;similiar question regarding SO questions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17558" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2122" RevisionGUID="4cfc666f-99d1-4cc8-aae7-5904d43bbf73" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There was a previous bounty that ended less than 24 hours ago (as of this writing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68050/a-grace-period-of-one-day-to-award-the-bounty-after-expiration-without-remaining/74037#74037&quot;&gt;grace period of 24 hours&lt;/a&gt; at the end of the bounty to give the bounty setter time to award the bounty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As there can only be one bounty on a question at any one time I can only assume that this means that you can't start your own until the full 24 hours have passed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#bounty&quot;&gt;This section of the FAQ&lt;/a&gt; explains how bounties work, but doesn't include the 24 hour grace period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17560" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2128" RevisionGUID="f081aa87-a68f-415d-98d8-dd0d7373c78b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There are actually four questions on your account. All of them have been closed and two have been deleted by you. At the time of this writing, one is at 0 score, and the rest are at -1, -4, and -5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exact details of the banning algorithm are not public, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this/86998#86998&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; on Meta Stack Overflow suggests a couple ways to potentially undo the ban. The gist of it is that you can still use the site and provide answers. If you focus on giving good answers that receive upvotes, your account may get unblocked and you will be able to ask questions again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know for sure how the algorithm works, but I think you may have tripped it just slightly, since your deleted questions are self-deleted and out of the two that remained visible one was closed as a duplicate after being migrated to us. You can try emailing team@stackoverflow.com and make your case for why your account should not have been banned. Be prepared to justify your request. No promises that it'll work for sure, but it can't hurt to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17561" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2142" RevisionGUID="4bef5d86-da8d-4982-aa5c-cc033eea8ec6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This question &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/22447/59303&quot;&gt;What is the reasoning behind the reputation cap?&lt;/a&gt; on Meta Stack Overflow is probably the definitive one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several reasons including the one you mention. Another is to give you a reason to stop using the site - you've hit the reputation cap, there's no need to keep posting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17562" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2155" RevisionGUID="6bdc66a9-8744-4126-a403-ff8635d06281" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;After 500, your flag weight increases asymptotically towards the current cap of 750. Because of this, as you get closer and closer to the cap, it's possible to only receive .001 flag weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So rather than display a rounded number (and thus, no change as you get closer to the cap when you flag correctly), it's shown as a double once you pass 500.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight/80178#80178&quot;&gt;What is flag weight?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83657/unnecessary-precision-displayed-for-flag-weight&quot;&gt;Unnecessary precision displayed for flag weight&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83530/whats-the-flag-weight-formula-in-the-500-750-range&quot;&gt;What's the flag weight formula in the 500-750 range?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17563" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2173" RevisionGUID="bf4be94a-a854-44bb-bfc5-fff1fc1a3e8d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h3&gt;Update - October 20th, 2011&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Current statistics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Total Questions: 13,440&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Total Closed but not deleted: 1,321&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Closed Percentage: 9.38% (▼ 7.56% from September 20th, ▼ 10.81% since this post was written)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SE 2.0 Closed Percentage (no Trilogy): 5.36% (▼ 0.72%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Network Closed Percentage (w/Trilogy): 2.56% (▼ 0.04%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, we have a lower close percentage than Web Applications, Android, English, and Webmasters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was some concern that we're bleeding users: not sure how long they've been tracking it, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites?sort=newengagedusers&amp;amp;expand=true&quot;&gt;the Stack Exchange site tracks&lt;/a&gt; new 200+ users over a rolling two weeks period: Programmers has consistently had the second highest number of 200+ users (only Stack Overflow itself has beaten us), and the number has gone up since I've been tracking it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've also updated &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;the FAQ&lt;/a&gt; to be much more straightforward, which will hopefully alleviate some confusion about what is and isn't on-topic here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I don't think it's particularly constructive to approach a problem this way, I think it's important, if we do, to work with accurate numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The numbers&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of right now, there are 2,816 closed—but not deleted—questions on Programmers. There are 13,925 questions total on Programmers. This makes the closed, but not deleted ratio of questions 20.2%. In the 10 days since you measured this, it's gone down 3%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Focusing on the same metrics you did your post, here are number closed with at least 5 score and number closed with less than or equal to 0 score:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&gt;= 5 score: 774 (27.5%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;lt;= 0 score: 265 (9.4%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This puts the ratio of 5+ score questions closed higher than what you had and the ratio of &amp;lt;= 0 score questions much lower than what you had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To understand why, we need to include data you didn't have access to when you did this survey: the number of deleted questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of deleted questions on Programmers.SE is 2,975: more than the number of closed questions you see. If we also include these numbers into the mix, we get a different story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&gt;= 5 score: 891. % of closed or deleted: 15.3%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;lt;= 0 score: 2,223. % of closed or deleted: 38.3%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paints a bit of a different picture than measuring just the closed questions and the results presented in your survey. Why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's because we routinely delete low-scoring questions as they are uncontroversially bad for the site, and the scores on those questions agree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason we don't delete nearly as many high-scoring answers is because &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed&quot;&gt;&quot;closed&quot; doesn't mean &quot;bad&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. It means the question doesn't meet the site's guidelines in some way, but there's some value, and it could even be improved and reopened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, &lt;em&gt;deletion&lt;/em&gt;—not closure—is where bad questions go to spend eternity in Hell. Closure, on the other hand, is the purgatory of questions. They're not on-topic, but they're providing &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; value: enough to stick around while we figure out what to do with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;A Comparison&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now that we're working with accurate numbers, how do they compare to other sites, particularly Stack Overflow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a purely quantitative standpoint, Stack Overflow's numbers are in a different league:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Publicly viewable questions: 1,997,856&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Closed, but not deleted: ~39,048 (2%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deleted: 194,008 (8.9%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&gt;= 5 score:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Closed (not deleted): ~1,964 (5%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Closed + deleted: ~4,142 (1.8%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;lt;= 0 score:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Closed (not deleted): ~26,123 (67%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Closed + deleted: ~199,326 (85.5%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like Programmers, Stack Overflow's ratios skew a lot higher when  deleted low-scoring questions are added, and lower when it deleted high-voted questions are added. This isn't coincidence: the same moderation style is used on both sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Some context&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's important, from a qualitative standpoint, to put these numbers into context. Stack Overflow is not qualitatively similar to Programmers.SE, and comparing their closed/deleted percentage to ours is about as meaningless as comparing our percentages to &lt;a href=&quot;http://quora.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quora&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Yahoo! Answers&lt;/a&gt;. We just simply don't have the same issues or types of questions they have. If we did, there wouldn't be a separate site: we'd just be part of Stack Overflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also important to put Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE into historical context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stack Overflow was the first, and for a long period of time, the only Stack Exchange site. It did not, for much of its history, have the benefit of knowledge gleaned from the year of trial and error with the Stack Exchange 2.0 project. And notably, it did not have the benefit of 40+ other sites with 40+ other sets of problems to crystalize what makes and doesn't make a good question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This difference in background and two year head start is &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow&quot;&gt;a constant cause of problems&lt;/a&gt;: 27% of all questions migrated here from Stack Overflow are closed and/or deleted. Thousands upon thousands of questions that should be off-topic there and on-topic here never get closed or migrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of its history as the flagship Stack Exchange site, it also has enormous scaling issues. They have &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/101431/should-stack-overflow-moderators-have-a-standard-of-duty&quot;&gt;~10 volunteer moderators for 2 million questions&lt;/a&gt;: one for every 200,000 asked. We have 4 for 16,000: one for every 4,000. We are just better equipped to close bad questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The history of Programmers.SE&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But going into &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046&quot;&gt;our history&lt;/a&gt; a little bit: Stack Overflow had a serious problem with popular questions that didn't really belong anywhere: &quot;What's your favorite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What do you like about programming?&quot;, etc. When Stack Exchange 2.0 and the Area 51 engine launched, one of the first proposals to gain traction was &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Not Programming Related&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, intended to house all of these types of questions. It launched on September 1st, 2010 and for a period of 3 weeks, surged in popularity as all the questions repressed on Stack Overflow were asked on this new site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the quality was all over the place: the site had some of the worst questions and some of the best questions. After a few weeks of this, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;new guidelines were put into place&lt;/a&gt; to try to raise the level of questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the rest of the beta period, these guidelines were enforced sporadically as the community tried to come to terms with its original charter and what it would take to make a useful site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On December 16, 2010, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&quot;&gt;Programmers.SE was launched&lt;/a&gt; under its new mission, having been the test-bed for a number of guidelines about questions that later generations of Stack Exchange sites benefitted from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This left 3.5 months of questions asked during a particularly formative point in the Stack Exchange network: more than a quarter of our site's lifespan. Compare this to Stack Overflow, which has had the benefit of 2.5 years of maturity and wasn't originally created to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl&quot;&gt;the toilet bowl of a different site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While we're slowly resolving those initial growing pains, it's going to take some more time. The ratios will normalize, but they aren't going to normalize in the next month: it going to take several months to a couple of years to stabilize into a site as mature as the currently-three-year-old Stack Overflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation isn't as dire as it might seem from one reading of the numbers. It was dire at one time, but that was last year. Now, we're moving forward: our traffic is increasing and our closed ratio is decreasing. More and more, people are taking ownership of Programmers.SE as something to be proud of, and the quality of questions and answers is noticeably rising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there's a lot we can improve, but it's going to be far more constructive and productive to isolate specific failings and correct those, not to make generalizations about the site as a whole. If we stick to generalizations, we might as well just shut this site down and start over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17564" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2175" RevisionGUID="09e0b6ec-118a-4521-ab59-f36b3c3704d0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;It seems to be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/104094/new-badges-do-not-update-your-badge-count-when-awarded&quot;&gt;recent bug&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The badge counts were updating yesterday (25th August).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bug has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/104094/new-badges-do-not-update-your-badge-count-when-awarded/104104#104104&quot;&gt;fixed&lt;/a&gt;, so you should see your badge count correct itself soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17565" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2180" RevisionGUID="95893416-24d2-4847-90c4-d3b0a655b96b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/status-bydesign&quot; class=&quot;post-tag moderator-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'status-bydesign'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;status-bydesign&lt;/a&gt;. Suggested edits are disabled on meta sites, so you will need to have 2,000 reputation before you will see the edit link on other people's posts. The only exception is Meta Stack Overflow which functions as a meta for all Stack Exchange sites and has its own reputation pool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/87890/why-cant-i-suggest-edits-on-se-meta-sites/97371#97371&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for Jeff Atwood's explanation of the rationale behind that decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17566" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2240" RevisionGUID="360adfa7-fd2f-4d2d-a83e-082a886ac9e5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I posted a comment giving a link, but I'll copy the answer from there anyway&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Thank you to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/157949/alpine&quot;&gt;Alpine&lt;/a&gt; from StackOverflow Meta for the answer.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/82988/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/82988/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is related to coding, it should be on &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's related to higher level programming concepts or is subjective (but still related to programming), it should be on &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Programmers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&quot;&gt;Introducing Programmers.StackExchange.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, &lt;strong&gt;Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor&lt;/strong&gt; working through code issues. &lt;strong&gt;Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard&lt;/strong&gt; working through higher level conceptual programming issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have &lt;strong&gt;actual source code in the questions or answers&lt;/strong&gt;. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/faq&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow FAQ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stack Overflow is for professional and&#xA;  enthusiast programmers, people who&#xA;  write code because they love it. We&#xA;  feel the best Stack Overflow questions&#xA;  have a bit of source code in them, but&#xA;  if your question generally covers … &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;a specific programming problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;a software algorithm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;software tools commonly used by programmers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;matters that are unique to the programming profession&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;… then you’re in the right place to&#xA;  ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;Programmers FAQ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Programmers - Stack Exchange is for&#xA;  expert programmers who are interested&#xA;  in subjective questions on software&#xA;  development. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This can include topics such as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Software engineering &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Developer testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Design patterns &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Architecture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Development methodologies &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Quality assurance &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Software law &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Programming puzzles &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Freelancing and business concerns&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Subjective does not mean “anything&#xA;  goes”. Please keep it professional at&#xA;  all times. If this is a question you'd&#xA;  be uncomfortable discussing with your&#xA;  colleagues in a work environment, it's&#xA;  probably not appropriate here, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However, pay attention to the next bit of the FAQ, which explicitly lists the types of question that are off-topic. Programmers SE is not a free-for-all.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;tend to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over opinions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17567" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2241" RevisionGUID="35446b81-014b-4906-8ff5-899b4b457458" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; and particularly the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179&quot;&gt;answer on Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; created by our very own &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/3249/aaronaught&quot;&gt;Aaronaught&lt;/a&gt;, which goes into more finer detail about why just such a bad fit for Stack Exchange, but in short, the purpose of Stack Exchange is to get an answer to an actual problem a person is facing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One answer that actually solves the problem is what we're looking for: not a host of suggestions. A future visitor, who has the same issue, should be able to look at the set of answers and be able to determine two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the community has decided is the correct answer (highest number of votes)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the question asker has decided is the correct answer (accept flag)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you use Stack Exchange for polling, these two concepts break down. When every answer is equally valid (it's a survey, after all), voting doesn't mean anything: what do people vote for? Their favorite answer? There's no value in that in the Stack Exchange network: it adds another, hidden dimension to voting that a future visitor, not aware of the exception to the rule being made for the specific question, isn't going to pick up on. &quot;Use voting as a means to vet the answers...except on this question! Ignore the voting on this question!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, I'd consider this to be an abuse of the user base. Stack Exchange users are not &quot;participants&quot;, sitting around waiting to take surveys for whatever purpose someone coming to the site needs. They're experts, who have generously devoted their time and knowledge to help people solve problems. Every time we forget that there are actual people here with specific issues and specific knowledge by reducing them to one point on a graph, we diminish the value of their contributions. Answering a few questions for a survey is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the same thing as providing a long, thoughtful answer about a specific problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, Community Wiki is not the answer. Community Wiki—for questions—was made a moderator-only function specifically to combat its abuse to keep questions that were off-topic or bad fits for Stack Exchange (but were ostensibly interesting) open. Recently on the Stack Exchange blog, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/146126/grace-note&quot;&gt;Grace Note&lt;/a&gt; went into a good amount of detail about &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/&quot;&gt;the point of Community Wiki&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With suggested edits now in place, you could argue that the removal of reputation from voting is now the only function of community wiki. Unfortunately, this means it is often seen as a magic switch to allow questionable content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the first feature requests I saw on Meta Stack Overflow was Moderator Filtering of Highest Voted Questions, which was deemed necessary because questions like Coolest Server Names show the wrong side of the site. The actual problem-solving nature of sites is too easily buried under the weight of all these “fun” community wiki questions. At one point, “Our top voted post is an actual question!” was a point of pride. That’s … not a positive sign for a Q&amp;amp;A network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, as Grace Note  continues, we should be looking for quality content that stands &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; Community Wiki. We &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be able to do that by rewriting survey questions into a question about a problem the asker is actually facing: this would bring back the voting and acceptance functions into play, and make a question that meets our general guidelines &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; having to abuse Community Wiki.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17568" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2265" RevisionGUID="ae6a3a30-e390-4079-813d-f306569081fd" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;No, there isn't: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/3669/149432&quot;&gt;it's been suggested periodically&lt;/a&gt; on the network-wide meta discussion site, but it's always roundly rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All questions on Stack Exchange need to be verifiable in principle: the asker should be able to take an answer and see if it works for them. That's the answer that they'll generally accept. It might not be the most optimal solution or the one that the community agrees with, but the asker is always going to be in a better position to know what's going to work for them because they're the ones in a position to try it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the idea is that there are two different metrics people should be looking at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the community thinks is the right answer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the asker felt helped him or her the most&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is marked by the answer with the most votes. The second is marked by the acceptance check mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17569" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2277" RevisionGUID="53cd67cb-d7e8-4817-b1a6-cd42ed455a91" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The issue is that there is no answer: we don't have time machines and we don't have crystal balls. Any &quot;answer&quot; provided is a guess: an educated guess perhaps, but still a guess. There's no criteria by which to gauge the answers in a meaningful manner: who had the best theory? Who wrote the most? Who cares?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stack Exchange is not the place to opine about a topic. If you're looking for that type of place, where you can poll fellow programmers to see what they think about some hot or future topic, you will be consistently disappointed. I would suggest looking into Hacker News or /r/Programming or any number of programming forums out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you have a question that you're actually facing, then that's fine: ask about that. The question you linked is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; that. It states X is what Y other profession does and asks what would happen if X happened in software engineering. What's the practical problem being faced? What real-world experience related to software development can be provided to answer such a hypothetical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And consider it from a practical perspective: if you have an actual problem you're facing right now that you need someone to help you with, do you really want to see your question pushed down the front page by people dreaming up hypothetical scenarios to poll the audience about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to your new questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do we define what is practical, and who has to consider it practical for it to be practical? For something to be practical, does it have to be practical to someone in an office doing work that eventually leads to or otherwise supports delivered software? Or can it be practical and useful to a researcher or academic who is looking to make the professional lives of those people delivering software easier or better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&quot;&gt;it's pretty straightforward&lt;/a&gt;: is the question asking about a problem the asker &lt;em&gt;is actually facing right now&lt;/em&gt;? If so, it's a practical question that deserves further consideration. If not, it either needs to be revised to ask about a problem the asker is actually facing or it'll be closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If on-topic (as per the list of topics in the FAQ) questions that are answerable with either facts, reputable sources, or personal experiences, yet are not about a specific problem that someone is having right now aren't allowed here, where should they go? There are many good questions in this realm that are suitable for a Stack Exchange community (suitable meaning they aren't discussions or debates). Should another Stack Exchange be made, further dividing the software development community? Or can we improve guidance as to making it easier to define what is or isn't a good question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we talk about constructiveness, it's not a Programmers.SE-only policy: it's network-wide. Programmers &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046&quot;&gt;was originally created&lt;/a&gt; to be the less-strict version of Stack Overflow and it sucked &lt;em&gt;hard&lt;/em&gt;. That's when it was figured out there's a standard level of questions, objective or not, &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; Stack Exchange site needs to have in order to thrive. There really is no room for a less-strict version of another site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an alternative to Stack Exchange, I would suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://quora.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quora&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://reddit.com/r/programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reddit's Programming subreditt&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ycombinator.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hacker News&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the minimum level of certainty and/or reliability for a question to be considered answerable? How do we measure this? How is a diamond moderator or 5 users who aren't knowledgable in a given topic able to assertain the answerability of a question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not really about whether someone &lt;em&gt;knows&lt;/em&gt; the answer or knows whether there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an answer, and the &quot;only ask about problems you actually face&quot; guidance covers this pretty well: you don't need to know if your question is answerable, but you need to ask about something you're actually facing right now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cases where the FAQ is unclear and a person asks a borderline question, it's entirely up to the answers to demonstrate the question's value and community moderation to revise the question into a workable form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to reiterate, &lt;em&gt;in this specific case&lt;/em&gt;, it's not borderline: it's spelled out pretty clearly in &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&quot;&gt;the FAQ&lt;/a&gt;. The question also received 6 downvotes and 2 flags for closure, which to me indicates the community agrees prima facie this question is not a good fit for this site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when a question is closed, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed&quot;&gt;there's still opportunity&lt;/a&gt; to get the question into shape. And that includes this question: if it actually asked about a real problem instead of a hypothetical scenario, I'd be the first one to reopen it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can we apply the Back-It-Up policy as defined in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective to allow more good (non-debate, non-discussion) questions that have answers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do: I touched on it above, but when a question is borderline, whether it's receiving absolutely stellar answers that are backed up by facts and experiences is &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright/862#862&quot;&gt;what determines if it's able to be saved&lt;/a&gt;. But again, in this specific case, this question is not borderline: it's hypothetical speculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17570" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2286" RevisionGUID="11e72d93-9d4d-410b-8664-6af91c084043" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;You'll know a post is from a moderator when that user has a diamond (♦) next their name: for example, me right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in general, the idea is that, by knowing how active a user is on the main site, you should be able to determine how well the user knows the main site when answering questions about it. It's not a 1:1 match, but it works for most meta purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66412/why-is-the-meta-reputation-derived-directly-from-the-parent-site&quot;&gt;also discussed on Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;, where Robert Cartaino said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It seems like the more participation you have on the PARENT site, the more abilities and bigger the role you should have in the discussions &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; that site. Creating a separate reputation score for META activity means that only frequent META USERS would have the leading roles... not necessarily the same people who actually use the site (i.e. the stakeholders). Having one meta score (for using the ACTUAL SITE) seems like a better system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other thing to consider is that it frees up people to participate without affecting a reputation total: people can down-vote bad ideas and participate more without worrying about their reputation being affected. On child metas, where there are already low activity levels, killing as many barriers to entry is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64267/is-there-a-reason-why-we-gain-ghost-reputation-on-the-meta-of-an-se-website/64268#64268&quot;&gt;answer by Rebecca Chernoff&lt;/a&gt; and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/new-per-site-metas/&quot;&gt;blog post by Jeff Atwood&lt;/a&gt; touches upon this aspect and others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there's some confusion because Meta Stack Overflow, ostensibly the meta for Stack Overflow, &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; have its own reputation system, and the suggestion from the other angle—eliminating rep there and pegging it to Stack Overflow—comes up often, too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1451/should-reputation-from-so-carry-over-to-meta/63235#63235&quot;&gt;detailed answer on why there is this discrepency&lt;/a&gt; can be found on the question &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1451/should-reputation-from-so-carry-over-to-meta&quot;&gt;Should reputation from SO carry over to Meta?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each site's meta (other than this one) is designed for site-specific discussions about things like:**&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Defining a site's culture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Determining each site's tolerance for certain types of questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Discussing tagging practices, moderators, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And on those sites, it makes more sense for the meta site rep to mirror the parent site rep, since **the most &quot;trust&quot; to define the site's culture should be assigned to those that have earned the most trust on the site itself; &lt;em&gt;they are its culture.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This site, meta.SO, continues to serve that role of discussing the culture and goals of StackOverflow.com (and that of Area 51,) but it also serves an important larger need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is also the meta site for discussion of the &lt;em&gt;unified engine that will drive both the trilogy sites and the SE 2.0 sites&lt;/em&gt;, addressing things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Bugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Feature Requests&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Questions about the system as a whole (ads, rep-gaming gaps, re-posting policy, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On a site about &lt;em&gt;the engine&lt;/em&gt;, it does not make as much sense to make the reputation mirror one or some of the other sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17571" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2287" RevisionGUID="be0e457c-dcc4-4577-bc95-4b145ded53d8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This has been asked before and there are probably better answers out there, but here's my take:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Down-votes on meta have a different meaning to down-votes on the main site. Here they also mean &quot;I disagree&quot;, &quot;I don't think your suggestion would work&quot;, &quot;It's not a bug&quot;, etc. However, it doesn't mean that you deserve to loose reputation over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there was &quot;real&quot; reputation involved people would be more reluctant to offer up their suggestions or down-vote the bad answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more appropriate question would be &quot;Why does Meta Stack Overflow have separate reputation?&quot;,  but that has already been asked and answered &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1451/should-reputation-from-so-carry-over-to-meta&quot;&gt;over there&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17572" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2294" RevisionGUID="19a49634-5995-4fb6-b48c-8d4e521caf8e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;You've asked 6 questions, 5 of which have been deleted or migrated away from the site. Because of this, your account has had an automatic ban from asking questions placed on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this&quot;&gt;FAQ entry on Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; goes into more detail about why you might've received this ban, so I'll just quote the last part, on getting the ban lifted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;How long do I have to wait before I can ask questions again? What can I do to release the ban? How can I reactivate my account?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Question bans never expire or &quot;time out.&quot; This means that you cannot simply wait for a certain amount of time to ask your next question. If you do not take action, you will never be allowed to ask questions again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you tripped the heuristic by just a tiny bit, then writing a few quality answers that get upvoted &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68884/why-i-cant-ask-questions/68885#68885&quot;&gt;might&lt;/a&gt; enable you to ask questions again. But as the internals of the filter are secret, there is no way to know for sure. And even if you're lucky then you're still very close to being banned again, if you get new downvotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you really, &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; think the question ban is an error, then email the team directly at the address provided at the bottom of every page. But note that Stack Overflow alone gets more than 3,000 questions per day, so a few rejected questions won't be missed. Therefore, reactivation of banned accounts &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/62373/better-explanation-when-account-is-blocked/62374#62374&quot;&gt;is not a high priority&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Can I simply create a new account?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No. The question ban is at &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/72180/clarify-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this-account-error/76167#comment-174366&quot;&gt;a lower level than account&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17573" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2300" RevisionGUID="ee4397ea-2ff8-4805-b7d1-3589ef901636" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure about an explicit ban in the TOS, but the system automatically catches unusual voting patterns and will roll back the changes if it fits its vote fraud heuristic. This rollback generally occurs once a day, so check back in a few hours to see if the votes are still there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19920/how-does-the-so-voter-fraud-detection-mechanism-work&quot;&gt;a FAQ entry on Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; that goes through the vote fraud detector in greater detail, and we'll look into it, but to preserve the integrity of the automatic fraud detection systems and prevent gaming the system, we really can't talk about anything more specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17574" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2307" RevisionGUID="71cb1c76-acdc-4b33-acd6-9bc10ba259e8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The idea that we should have &lt;code&gt;offtopic.stackoverflow.com&lt;/code&gt; is how this site got started and it became quickly apparent that it cannot survive on the SE network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Popularity isn't the definitive measure of quality and usefulness. I highly recommend reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046&quot;&gt;this summary&lt;/a&gt; of the history of Programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17575" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2321" RevisionGUID="d62daa22-c298-40c3-8507-0abfdd6ca267" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;As a reminder, we &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84870/add-a-message-when-posting-to-old-questions-with-more-than-n-answers/86893#86893&quot;&gt;already suppress the answer box and nag people when there are more than {threshold} answers&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Lknb7.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is my very strong belief that any &quot;question&quot; which gets 40+ answers is fundamentally a &lt;em&gt;discussion&lt;/em&gt; (or worse, a &lt;em&gt;poll&lt;/em&gt;) and not an answerable question, as noted in the Not Constructive close reason:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chatty, open-ended discussion questions&lt;/strong&gt; diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We of course support the idea that &quot;there's more than one way to do it&quot;, because there always is. But there should not be an &lt;em&gt;infinite&lt;/em&gt; number of ways to do it, either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like to use the &quot;Peanut Butter Sandwich&quot; rule here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;how do YOU backup??&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;how do YOU store passwords??&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;how do YOU like your peanut butter sandwiches??&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the thing you are talking about in the question can be replaced by a Peanut Butter Sandwich, the question isn't making meaningful distinctions about what it is soliciting, and therefore either needs to be closed, or &lt;strong&gt;whipped into shape via editing to be far more specific&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17576" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2334" RevisionGUID="581c5ef7-a9b4-4490-8bf3-f63a19143375" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;To clarify what's going on, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/91097/getting-too-many-edits-further-edits-are-not-allowed-until-tomorrow&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That code was (correctly) not counting recent (today/yesterday) posts in the &quot;how many have you edited&quot; [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This sanity check avoids a few scenarios:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;front-page spamming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;hijacked account vandalism&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;rage-quit vandalism&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We don't have any objection to improving posts, and yes: it is meant to have an amnesty on anything recent (so you can improve your recent answers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you're just improving posts in the last day, you should be fine. If you're trying to edit a ton of your old posts in rapid succession, that's by design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the message says, you should be contacting a moderator if you have a need to revise your posts en masse. Is there a reason you're trying to edit more than 5 of your old posts in rapid succession?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Edit&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to encapsulate what I said in comments, an error message that only reads &quot;too many recent edits&quot; does seem to be overly brief. The original message read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Too many edits&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You have already edited 5 of your&#xA;  own posts today (not including very&#xA;  recent posts). Further edits are not&#xA;  allowed until tomorrow.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please contact a moderator if you&#xA;  require assistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which clarified what was going on. To that end, I agree that should be changed or addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17577" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2356" RevisionGUID="de3d1084-bbb8-4f15-a985-c7b4b42e5669" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Anonymous voting is a key part of how Stack Exchange sites work. If we assume for a moment that you are not suggesting revealing the names along with the comments, forcing people to explain their downvotes still would not get you any usable information. Once you make those comments anonymous, you also take away any sort of accountability for content, so in most cases you'll end up with throwaway or gibberish comments like mine. (Although is intended specifically to illustrate the point.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been brought up many a time on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6521/allow-users-to-leave-an-anonymous-comment-when-voting&quot;&gt;request to force anonymous commenting&lt;/a&gt; was declined. &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votes&quot;&gt;The request to encourage explanations&lt;/a&gt; was implemented via a pop-up that every user sees when they downvote a question or an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17578" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2375" RevisionGUID="e1b11379-e770-47ec-bc0e-3df49bf34b1e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Suspensions are a private matter between moderators and a user. We &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/23385/avoid-the-streisand-effect-be-clear-about-the-reason-when-suspending-an-account/23548#23548&quot;&gt;do not discuss&lt;/a&gt; suspension reasons unless the issue is brought up by the person who got suspended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from Jeff Atwood:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I believe it is the reponsibility and right of the user who was placed in timed suspension to have the freedom to discuss (or &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; discuss) what happened to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is a basic matter of respecting other users' privacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17579" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2394" RevisionGUID="942f13b8-8541-4ed3-a61c-dace4539956d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Votes are locked after 5 minutes to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6460/if-you-just-witnessed-tactical-downvoting-is-it-a-reportable-offense/18046#18046&quot;&gt;prevent tactical downvoting&lt;/a&gt;: voting people down just to make sure your answer appears first to accrue votes, then reversing that when it no longer is needed to get back the lost reputation and hide the evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a weird edge case, but it's been around for a long time and unlikely to change. However, if the post gets edited later on, your vote is unlocked and you can change your vote then. Otherwise, don't worry about it too much: mistaken votes happen often, and the community voting as a whole should iron those inconsistencies out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to flag questions even when you up-vote: moderators can't see individual voting patterns so we have no idea whether you up-voted or not. We also don't particularly &lt;em&gt;care&lt;/em&gt; either: how you vote is your business. If something needs our intervention, definitely flag it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17580" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2400" RevisionGUID="d2d5bc34-136b-4e36-8ffe-69672eec2f6d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3122/formatting-sandbox&quot;&gt;formatting sandbox question&lt;/a&gt; over on Meta Stack Overflow which you can use for testing the formatting, but I suspect you'll find the existing answers cover most (if not all) of the formatting options available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What specifically do you want to test?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17581" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2418" RevisionGUID="f273f769-4792-4451-a0fc-992d451334a3" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This is already being address on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/109160/no-dennis-ritchie-quote-on-stack-overflow-why&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; with respect to a &lt;strong&gt;message&lt;/strong&gt; on the network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I didn't think that the Steve Jobs message was appropriate, but I don't own the network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your question about asking a &lt;strong&gt;question&lt;/strong&gt;, then no, that wouldn't be appropriate at all. At best it's too localised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17582" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2429" RevisionGUID="9d933650-0774-4b61-a89b-78e931b129de" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This has been discussed before on Meta Stack Overflow. I can't find the specific question, but a search for &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=hide+reputation&quot;&gt;&quot;hide reputation&quot;&lt;/a&gt; gives 24 results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These three questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/198/should-there-be-anonymous-answers-and-questions&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/198/should-there-be-anonymous-answers-and-questions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/79621/should-reputation-be-hidden-until-an-answer-is-accepted&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/79621/should-reputation-be-hidden-until-an-answer-is-accepted&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/21458/hide-the-rep-and-badge-count-on-a-users-info-box-on-answers&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/21458/hide-the-rep-and-badge-count-on-a-users-info-box-on-answers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are closest to what you're asking&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17585" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2461" RevisionGUID="9d4c1e29-ebbc-41c5-8967-b248fb6fce34" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This is a new &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/102363/support-for-banners/107142#107142&quot;&gt;&quot;post notices&quot; feature&lt;/a&gt; that was introduced last month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently there are three options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;This post does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Post is related to a rapidly changing event&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer: please explain why you're recommend it as a solution. Answers that don't explain anything will be deleted. See Good Subjective, Bad Subjective for more information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only moderators can add these notices, so feel free to flag questions you think could use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17587" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2478" RevisionGUID="86f6db86-39a5-43e8-8b1d-95f64599b9f4" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to pretty up links in comments?  Similar to the way we can in answers.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/37758/inline-links-in-comments&quot;&gt;SO&lt;/a&gt; says no. I'm unsuccessful finding an answer for meta-Programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17588" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2507" RevisionGUID="3602ce61-b6b3-4738-8787-36663d0f81a7" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;You were banned from Stack Overflow for asking too many off-topic questions: because of that, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2475/using-programmers-to-side-step-the-rules-on-stack-overflow&quot;&gt;we won't migrate your questions there anymore&lt;/a&gt;. For more information about this ban, please check out the Meta Stack Overflow question, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi&quot;&gt;What can I do when getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account”?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears you're very close to getting unbanned: to ensure that happens, you'll need to do two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stop asking off-topic questions here and on Stack Overflow.&lt;/strong&gt; Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;read the FAQ&lt;/a&gt; and heed moderators' advice and warnings: you've asked a number of questions here that do not belong on Programmers and and a number on Stack Overflow that don't belong there, either.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Start answering questions on Stack Overflow.&lt;/strong&gt; You only need a few more up-votes to be able to ask questions: you'll get those by paying it forward and helping others out with their problems. Be sure to answer questions that are on-topic there: answering off-topic questions will wind up penalizing you as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17589" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2510" RevisionGUID="6b042bef-8a2b-458b-903a-a0895b5ab946" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;In short: no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A longer answer is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046&quot;&gt;Programmers was born out of the desire for exactly the site you describe&lt;/a&gt;. All the questions that were off-topic or otherwise closed on Stack Overflow were intended to find a home here. Shortly after public beta began, it became apparent that that doesn't work. It doesn't make for a good Stack Exchange site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get me wrong. &quot;What's the best ...&quot; and other fun discussions &lt;em&gt;are fun&lt;/em&gt;, but they're not what Stack Exchange is built to do. Stack Exchange is built to host professional Q&amp;amp;A and all the systems it has (voting, accepted answers, transient comments, enforcing the fact that responses to questions should be actual answers, etc.) are built with that in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are tons of forums out there and sites like Reddit and Quora where you can participate in discussions and other open-ended questions. Stack Exchange is simply not the place for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17590" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2533" RevisionGUID="5de927df-c7a9-4757-993f-b04b4069d457" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;In the case of identical questions, there's a network-wide policy: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64068/is-cross-posting-a-question-on-multiple-stack-exchange-sites-permitted-if-the-qu&quot;&gt;Is cross-posting a question on multiple Stack Exchange sites permitted if the question is on-topic for each site?&lt;/a&gt; The answer is no: posting the same question twice is not acceptable. This comes up now and then between &lt;a href=&quot;http://superuser.com/&quot;&gt;Super User&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://serverfault.com/&quot;&gt;Server Fault&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://unix.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Unix &amp;amp; Linux&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://askubuntu.com/&quot;&gt;Ask Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt;, which have overlapping scopes. We arrange to keep only one version open, ideally the single one that has answers already. In this case, please comment (so that potential answerers don't waste time repeating an answer that someone else wrote on another site), vote to close where you can, and flag for a speedy close.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the questions are similar and posted by different users, it's a different matter. If the question is off-topic on one site, of course, close it as off-topic. If the issue is on-topic on both sites but the questions are suitably tailored to their respective sites, let both live: there's no notion of cross-site duplicates, and different communities might have different insights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17591" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2541" RevisionGUID="1c517774-a415-4acf-8c90-d67bd248277c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Rotating is a pretty poor idea; this isn't kindergarten: not everyone gets a turn to play with the good toy. A site deserves the best set of moderators, whether that means it's the same set for multiple terms or it means new people come in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, and I can't speak for the other moderators, I'm &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/101431/should-stack-overflow-moderators-have-a-standard-of-duty/101459#101459&quot;&gt;all for periodic elections&lt;/a&gt;: not only does it serve the chance for users to re-evaluate who's moderating, it also gives moderators who successfully run a mandate to do what they need to do to get the job done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17592" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2554" RevisionGUID="e82ae444-8991-4e54-8927-f01f3e7f4878" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The red &quot;Flag question&quot; button in the flagging modal doesn't seem to work today for when &quot;off topic&quot; is chosen. I've tried on two questions, flagged them as not constructive instead (worked fine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can't seem to see anything wrong in Firebug or Chrome's dev tools. I'm using Chrome 15.0.874.120 m. I'd prefer to test this further before reporting, but since it involves flagging...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone else noticed that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The workaround proposed in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/112181/cant-vote-to-close-as-off-topic&quot;&gt;meta.so discussion&lt;/a&gt; worked. The route I tested was &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it doesn't belong here&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;exact duplicate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;back&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;off topic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;flag question&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17593" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2555" RevisionGUID="c8843df8-a6e7-410f-9447-06ecc966a972" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/112181/cant-vote-to-close-as-off-topic&quot;&gt;known problem&lt;/a&gt; and should be fixed in the next deploy (when ever that is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are still having problems try clearing out your cache - there may be some old JavaScript files (or similar) lying around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17594" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2558" RevisionGUID="084eb9d0-906a-4a00-946d-bd2f00e03f2e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;While this error was indicative of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/109857/failed-to-upload-image-format-not-supported-error-when-uploading-supported-form&quot;&gt;a problem on Imgur's end a few weeks ago&lt;/a&gt;, I can't reproduce this now. This is a JPEG upload:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rGb2z.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;This is a JPEG&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things to check:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You might be uploading a file that has the JPEG file extension but not the &lt;code&gt;image/jpeg&lt;/code&gt; mimetype.&lt;/strong&gt; Have you tried checking to make sure the file is actually a JPEG and not something else? If you're on a *nix-based system, you can check by using &lt;a href=&quot;http://linux.die.net/man/1/file&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;file&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You're using the &quot;From the web&quot; option with a URL from a site that doesn't allow Imgur to rip its images.&lt;/strong&gt; Try downloading the image yourself and uploading it manually.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You're experiencing a localized disruption of Imgur.&lt;/strong&gt; Try uploading the image again to see if it works.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Edit&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the &quot;From the web&quot; option didn't work, downloading it first and manually uploading it worked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rKzAw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image problem&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like it's a problem with the image host.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17595" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2560" RevisionGUID="f40a9e2b-a8a1-42cb-a55c-bc127498f448" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Writing better titles is high on the list of worthwhile edits to a question, but there are a few caveats you should keep in mind, especially when you're editing below 2,000 reputation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Editing &lt;em&gt;en masse&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/110768/on-select-sites-show-the-flag-suggested-edit-count-when-it-is-0-instead-of/110816#110816&quot;&gt;really messes with the front page&lt;/a&gt;. It also clogs up the suggested edit queue, where people are tasked with approving edits from users below 2,000 reputation. If you're going to edit, do it in short spurts, not 20 at once.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nearly every question has problems other than the title: we have &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags&quot;&gt;a huge tag problem&lt;/a&gt;, for example. But beyond that, nearly every question will have spelling,  capitalization, formatting, or other copyediting issues. When editing a question, try to improve as much as possible beyond just the title.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While many titles are terrible and ought to be reworded as actual questions, there are a lot of questions that have &lt;em&gt;okay&lt;/em&gt; titles or even good ones that aren't actually questions. If you were going into them to edit more than just the title, editing the title is a nice bonus, but otherwise, it's best to just leave them alone. Ask yourself, &quot;does the title change make the question any clearer?&quot; If it doesn't, don't bother just for the sake of making it into a question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, thank you for taking the time to make the site a better place!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17596" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2569" RevisionGUID="5d038cad-3f76-4e27-bbd5-91cb798e004c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I merged &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/php5&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'php5'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;php5&lt;/a&gt; into &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/php&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'php'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;php&lt;/a&gt;, but opted not to create a synonym for the same reasons &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/59285/synonyms-mean-interchangeable-not-similar&quot;&gt;they're not synonyms on Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;: a synonym should be interchangeable, not merely a similar term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also went ahead and merged &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/php-5.3&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'php-5.3'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;php-5.3&lt;/a&gt; into &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/php&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'php'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;php&lt;/a&gt;, as the questions were being used to say &quot;I'm using this version&quot; instead of &quot;I'm asking about this version,&quot; and PHP 5.3 has been out for several years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17597" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2580" RevisionGUID="91bbcad9-23a7-4057-832e-53e25a7c920d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Considering this &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/111054/are-edits-to-include-amazon-links-to-books-appropriate&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow question&lt;/a&gt; about the same subject, are edits to include Amazon links to books appropriate on Programmers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17598" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2582" RevisionGUID="963df907-22f5-4ca7-b2b6-08ceaa49d11e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The issue isn't adding the links: it's adding the links to &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/7454/matthieu?tab=activity&quot;&gt;50 posts in the span of an hour&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you suggest 50 edits in a short period, you clog up the suggested edit queue and should those edits be approved, you completely hose the front page, pushing new questions and questions with legitimate activity out of the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/110768/on-select-sites-show-the-flag-suggested-edit-count-when-it-is-0-instead-of/110816#110816&quot;&gt;provided more detail&lt;/a&gt; on Meta Stack Overflow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]one issue for sites that are not Stack Overflow is that the front page—the site's advertisement to the world—doesn't change all that often over the course of the day. You'll get a mix of new questions, older questions that haven't been resolved yet, and a sprinkling of questions risen from the dead by people who finally found that awesome answer to that niche question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This type of activity is a great sign: it shows the site has life and many different people are actively engaged. It's like the forest at the beginning of &lt;em&gt;Bambi&lt;/em&gt;: questions young and old get a safe haven to play and frolic while waiting for an answer from passers by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Well, when someone gets the idea to edit all the things for some minor issue, they inevitably disrupt the quiet serenity of the front page. They're the hunter from &lt;em&gt;Bambi&lt;/em&gt; that comes in and starts shooting up the place, and no question is safe. &quot;Ended your post with 'thanks'? Edited. Oh, you did it to all 75 of your questions over the last year? &lt;strong&gt;Edit. all. of. them.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After a short period of time, the front page stops looking like a peaceful forest full of life. It becomes a wasteland of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;edited by &lt;strong&gt;Mark Trapp&lt;/strong&gt; 2m ago&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    edited by &lt;strong&gt;Mark Trapp&lt;/strong&gt; 2m ago&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    edited by &lt;strong&gt;Mark Trapp&lt;/strong&gt; 2m ago&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    edited by &lt;strong&gt;Mark Trapp&lt;/strong&gt; 2m ago&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    edited by &lt;strong&gt;Mark Trapp&lt;/strong&gt; 2m ago&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    edited by &lt;strong&gt;Mark Trapp&lt;/strong&gt; 2m ago&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    edited by &lt;strong&gt;Mark Trapp&lt;/strong&gt; 2m ago&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    edited by &lt;strong&gt;Mark Trapp&lt;/strong&gt; 2m ago&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    edited by &lt;strong&gt;Mark Trapp&lt;/strong&gt; 2m ago&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    edited by &lt;strong&gt;Mark Trapp&lt;/strong&gt; 2m ago   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And that new question I mentioned before learns a hard fact of life: the forest is forever ruined and the chances of getting answered have been significantly reduced all because someone thought &quot;thanks&quot; needed to be removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to suggest edits, please do two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do it in short spurts: 5 at a time, not 50.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make &lt;em&gt;substantial&lt;/em&gt; improvements to the posts. You were suggesting edits to posts that were terrible: one line answers, answers with spelling and grammar mistakes, answers that provided no context to their recommendations, etc. Adding Amazon links to those posts did not significantly improve them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is something that needs to be changed on a huge number of posts, please don't do this on your own: bring it up here on meta first. This way we as a community can figure out the best way to go about it and ensure the front page doesn't get hosed in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17599" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2583" RevisionGUID="b906a839-e08e-451d-80ca-fb40775ae81e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I'm gonna say pretty much the same thing here as &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/111073/811&quot;&gt;I said on MSO&lt;/a&gt;, but directed at you as the editor instead of someone else as the person approving edits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's nothing &lt;em&gt;inherently wrong&lt;/em&gt; with editing to add links to book posts. Indeed, it can be quite helpful... But before you do, &lt;strong&gt;make sure you're not wasting your time and the time of everyone reviewing the edit.&lt;/strong&gt; There are &lt;em&gt;loads&lt;/em&gt; of lousy questions asking for book recommendations that should probably just be closed and deleted, and many times more lousy &lt;em&gt;answers&lt;/em&gt; (even on &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; questions) that make no effort to explain why the book being recommended is a good choice. Editing these is maybe &lt;em&gt;slightly&lt;/em&gt; more useful than copy-editing bathroom-wall graffiti...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2582/63&quot;&gt;as Mark notes&lt;/a&gt;, you're not just wasting &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; time: you're wasting the time of the folks rejecting these edits and you're wasting the time of the folks reading the front page who see these popping up instead of something useful. Don't do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you're going through these posts anyway, why not do something productive: when you come across a poor question or a lazy answer, something no amount of hyperlinking will salvage, don't &lt;em&gt;edit&lt;/em&gt; it... &lt;strong&gt;flag it&lt;/strong&gt;. Ask a moderator to delete it. Instead of seeing these things pop up in the queue knowing they're on their way to making the front page of the site look like Amazon Rejects, they can send them on their way to that Great Booklist in the Sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17600" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2651" RevisionGUID="f8e21636-244a-4c21-bb7e-b47fff6d1a95" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;It looks like you're exposing your email address in the &quot;About Me&quot; field in your profile. That's available to anyone to use as they see fit, which unfortunately includes scraping and spam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/106943/spam-from-tc-vectors-jeff-please-protect-our-email-addresses-from-spambots&quot;&gt;similar case&lt;/a&gt; turned up on Meta Stack Overflow a couple months ago, and the general consensus there was that Stack Exchange protects the &quot;email&quot; field of your profile, but there's not much they can do about publicly displayed email in the &quot;About&quot; section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/107334/155160&quot;&gt;Jeff Atwood's answer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is absolutely no way I can think of that we'd be exposing email addresses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As others have noted, be careful about putting your email in your &quot;About Me&quot; field if you are concerned about unwanted email contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; there's any data being collected on the address scrapers, but I can't say for sure since I'm not an SE employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17601" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2678" RevisionGUID="0ae80ac5-3c71-49bf-844b-ddbac9a420f0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;It only took a year to answer this, but I found the answer! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/85872/149432&quot;&gt;It's ordered by your reputation.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably, sites where you have the most reputation are the ones you want to access most frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17602" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2683" RevisionGUID="1804e5e1-608c-4528-b8ce-f88f10d4880a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The discrepancy between the front page and the questions page comes from the fact they are not, and are not meant to be, one in the same. One is meant as &lt;strong&gt;a general landing page that gives a taste of the site&lt;/strong&gt; - it has an excerpt of questions along with a much more occupied sidebar that includes meta, ads, and chat (slightly different for beta sites). Above all, this is the page that almost any new user will first land on. Meanwhile, &lt;strong&gt;the questions list is just focused on questions&lt;/strong&gt;, and also meant to access the whole set of questions. It's geared more towards the power users or at least those who have gotten a taste of the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, onto the parts of your screencapture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Selection of elements&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The front page isn't any of those sections. It stands to reason that highlighting any of them would be misrepresentative of its function. It is not the Questions section because it only has an &lt;em&gt;excerpt&lt;/em&gt; of the questions, and at the bottom it even tells you to go to the Questions section to see more. On the actual Questions section, you'd just get pagination navigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Different sort orders&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is because of the goal of each of the sections is different. Remember, the front page is only there to show you the recent activity on the site as an excerpt. Its focus on activity is why the timestamp links to the most recent activity on the question, and also why all of its sort options (&lt;code&gt;active&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;featured&lt;/code&gt;, and all the hotness variants, as well as Stack Overflow's &lt;code&gt;interesting&lt;/code&gt;) are focused on activity level. It's all geared towards the illustration of &quot;What's happening now?&quot;. What questions just got posted, what just got answered, what cool bounties are available right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Questions section on the other hand, it is meant to give you access to the full library of questions. So it has things like &lt;code&gt;votes&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;faq&lt;/code&gt;, and &lt;code&gt;unanswered&lt;/code&gt; which are measured across all of the site's history. It also has the &lt;code&gt;newest&lt;/code&gt; sort and pagination on its &lt;code&gt;active&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;featured&lt;/code&gt; sorts to aid in seeing the complete picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Redundancy of Unanswered&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Originally, the questions section didn't have an &lt;code&gt;unanswered&lt;/code&gt; filter - adding it has proven beneficial to the ability to browse and search through it. There had even been plans to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84693/eeeek-i-sense-an-eeeek-question-about-missing-a-unanswered-tab&quot;&gt;completely phase out the top-level &quot;Unanswered&quot; navigation in favor of &quot;Review&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. It's a recognized point of text duplication that we'll probably fix down the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, the rationale is that we have two separate goals to accomplish, which is why we have two separate pages. Their designs are intended to work with the intents of those pages. Is it necessarily perfect? Perhaps not. It's open to change now and then (I reassert the aforementioned plan to phase out the Unanswered section). But here's at least the rationale of the current design pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17603" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2686" RevisionGUID="d2470405-09de-4477-b781-2d21096ef59a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Yes it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, unless you &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/981/syntax-highlighting-language-hints&quot;&gt;explicitly tell the highlighter which language it is&lt;/a&gt; by including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;!-- language: lang-cpp --&amp;gt;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;at the start of your code snippet, it uses the tags to decide which language the code is in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you've tagged the question &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/html&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'html'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;html&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/css&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'css'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;css&lt;/a&gt; it's going to assume that the code is either HTML or CSS, not C++.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So either retag the question or use the language hint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17604" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2706" RevisionGUID="e9bedf9d-715d-4ba4-9cbf-b1293233094d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/117440/25936&quot;&gt;One of your answers&lt;/a&gt;, the one with the 2 upvotes, is on a question that was made &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&quot;&gt;community wiki&lt;/a&gt; before you answered (or before you got any upvotes). You don't earn or lose rep for those - but you can still earn badges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further investigating, the question was made community wiki on &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117243/revisions&quot;&gt;Nov 1 at 23:06&lt;/a&gt;, and you answered on Nov 2 at 10:21, so it was automatically turned to community wiki, as shown in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117440/revisions&quot;&gt;revision history&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But it says &quot;21 answers&quot; and I think the limit is 30.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The limit &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1596/the-15-answer-cw-conversion-really-sucks&quot;&gt;here is 15&lt;/a&gt;. 30 is the limit at &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;StackOverflow&lt;/a&gt;, and can be different at different sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17605" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2708" RevisionGUID="a8913fe8-2ade-423b-9e4b-10051b255bf0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/E1ONm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the active page and the homepage, the avatar is of the one that last modified the question, not necessarily the original asker. Modified can mean a number of things, an edit to the question or any of its answers, a new answer, closing the question, making it &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&quot;&gt;community wiki&lt;/a&gt; (automatically or by hand), etc&lt;sup&gt;(?)&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, when visiting the newest page you are explicitly asking for the questions to be ordered on when they where asked, so it makes a little bit more sense&lt;sup&gt;(?)&lt;/sup&gt; to show the original asker's avatar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the answers count, the question has found a new home at &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8583017/how-do-i-resolve-an-expected-expression-before-unsigned-error&quot;&gt;StackOverflow&lt;/a&gt;, and all its answers followed the migration, so essentially zero answers here. They exist there now, and not here. The same goes with any downvotes to the question, they don't follow the migration, kind of a fresh start. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the way it is. I don't necessarily like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17606" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2784" RevisionGUID="0f4a27fc-3cf2-4fe2-9740-e1f649dfbea0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Initially I was going to suggest that migrating questions that are more on topic to PMSE than here, was actually a good thing and it would help PMSE kick off as a full site sooner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84405/migrating-project-management-questions&quot;&gt;couple&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/113427/to-migrate-or-not-to-migrate&quot;&gt;of&lt;/a&gt; MSO discussions that seem to support your view. PMSE is not doing that bad, according to my interpretation of &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites?expand=true&quot;&gt;the stats&lt;/a&gt;, but I wouldn't say it's doing particurarly well either. So, at this point I'm rather confused :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it would be easier to clarify if we want to migrate to beta sites first, and discuss PMSE later. Sites that somehow overlap with PSE will keep popping up, and any stance should be adjustable, but let's clarify that part first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When (and if) PMSE comes out of beta, I'd prefer it if we migrated all non programmers specific questions there, and limit our PM scope to questions that can &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; be answered from a programming perspective. But that's a future discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17607" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2833" RevisionGUID="70196520-28bb-42be-b5ec-2f59e4fb3a09" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Although I have no idea if that's what causing the issue, IE7 is &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/71208/162704&quot;&gt;not &lt;em&gt;fully&lt;/em&gt; supported&lt;/a&gt;. The (somewhat) &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/56161/which-browsers-are-officially-supported-and-what-else-do-i-need/56192#56192&quot;&gt;official policy on browser support&lt;/a&gt; is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We support current and previous versions (and possibly previous-previous version) of all popular web browsers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;IE&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Chrome&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Safari&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Firefox&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Opera&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where &quot;popular&quot; means &quot;has some reasonable amount of market share&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, right now IE8 (previous) and IE9 (current stable) are the versions officially supported, and IE7 specific issues will probably never be resolved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As IE10 Platform Preview 4 was released in November, I think you should start considering browsing StackExchange with Chrome or Safari, since I'm guessing you have a pretty good reason to not upgrade IE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17608" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2854" RevisionGUID="1349737c-c001-4d71-b915-85d61da9cb37" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Well, if there is a trend, it might be &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2588/are-micro-edits-on-new-posts-insignificant&quot;&gt;my fault&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Insofar I've rejected only two edits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One that only &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2816/should-we-reject-edits-that-remove-the-automatic-duplicate-notification&quot;&gt;removed the automated duplicate notification&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A weird one that revised &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; two words, that where referenced in a comment to the question&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those where too minor, but obviously also otherwise problematic. But I can't really say I happened upon really minor edits. For argument's sake, here's a few examples I'd consider too minor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Links that don't add anything valuable, an example would be someone adding Amazon links to &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124109/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-design-patterns/124114#124114&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spelling &amp;amp; grammar corrections on a post that has a lot more of such errors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question I would ask myself, if I happened upon those is if they where made in good faith. The Amazon links I would probably reject, but the minor spelling &amp;amp; grammar corrections I would improve, or if lacking the time I would simply approve. To my mind, these edits would be from someone not very confident with his/her English but stll eager to contribute in any way (s)he could, and I don't mind that. But I wouldn't mind anyone rejecting them either, and if such a rejection ever made it to Meta, I would defend it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Special cases that I would reject outright, would be minor edits on old posts. If someone is on a badge run for &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/12/strunk-white&quot;&gt;Strunk &amp;amp; White&lt;/a&gt; and / or &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/92/archaeologist&quot;&gt;Archaeologist&lt;/a&gt; and spamming the front page with minor edits, it wouldn't be very nice. Assuming I noticed repeated such edits from the same user, I would flag one of his posts for moderation attention, and continue my own run towards the elusive &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/94/marshal&quot;&gt;Marshal&lt;/a&gt; badge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for tags: Retagging is possible at a lower rep threshold. If it's an edit that's mostly retagging I'd assume the user was going to do that originally, but just went ahead and capitalized those I's as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently found out that suggested edits on StackOverflow &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119232/why-cant-i-edit-a-question-answer-after-i-voted-approve-in-review-suggested-edi&quot;&gt;require approval from two users&lt;/a&gt;. To be honest I would prefer that would be the case here as well, only if for the process to be peer reviewed, as is (almost) everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17609" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2856" RevisionGUID="081114d1-fccd-44b4-a19f-d0045c3dc130" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;As an extension to this previous question - &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-lis&quot;&gt;Should our FAQ contain a list of what's off topic and if so what should that list contain?&lt;/a&gt;, can we add two categories of questions that are often asked by new users but not on topic :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;coding homework&quot; questions&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130468/lottery-program&quot;&gt;recent question&lt;/a&gt; / &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag&quot;&gt;Recent discussion about homework tag&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific enough questions can be migrated to &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/homework&quot;&gt;StackOverfow&lt;/a&gt;. They accept coding homework questions with this politic as the tag description explains :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Homework means the asker is requesting help with school homework. This&#xA;  lets potential answerers know that they should guide the student in&#xA;  solving the problem, rather than simply showing the complete answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means people shouldn't answer directly a question that looks like homework before migration. But I don't know how to enforce that (in the FAQ ?). Any ideas are welcome on that subject, and may be part of another question if it proves extensive =) (There is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions&quot;&gt;extensive discussion about how to answer homework questions on Meta-SO&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;personalized lesson plan / school guidance&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;code&gt;What courses should I follow/ What should I start with to learn X with my specific background&lt;/code&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130454/what-are-some-ways-to-get-started-learning-java-and-where-should-i-go-from-ther&quot;&gt;recent question&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same idea as career questions. If it generalized enough, why not. If it's too localized, it's off topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also close to this point :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;[and is not about...] what language you should learn next, including&#xA;  which technology is better&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But people seems to miss the point that &quot;part of a language&quot; is about the same as a language itself, and will mostly end up with a generic answer that looks like &quot;You should learn everything about this language&quot;. For example those questions :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130080/what-do-i-need-to-learn-of-c-for-asp-net&quot;&gt;What do I need to learn of C# for ASP.NET?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44701/what-do-you-need-to-learn-to-become-professional-asp-net-programmer&quot;&gt;What do you need to learn to become professional ASP.NET programmer?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62170/should-i-be-a-professional-in-c-programming-in-order-to-build-good-web-applicat&quot;&gt;Should I be a professional in C# programming in order to build good web applications using ASP.NET?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ends up with the same generic answer : &quot;Be the best as you can in C#&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17610" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2857" RevisionGUID="a0971479-a28a-40e1-9ffb-25183a95f25d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I don't think we need to make a special mention of homework in the FAQ: if it's about a specific implementation, it's off-topic here anyway whether ot not it's homework. If it's about a conceptual problem, it's on-topic here even if it's homework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where askers run into trouble is when they expect people to help them from start to finish without providing anything (or very little) up-front. To that end, I think FAQ covers it already, under &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&quot;&gt;What kind of questions should I &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; ask here?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding Stack Overflow's sanction of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/homework&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'homework'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;homework&lt;/a&gt; tag: it's due to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/60422/is-homework-an-exception&quot;&gt;baggage from the time before the Great Meta-tag Culling&lt;/a&gt; that has never been removed. Much like they &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/112910/do-not-lock-old-questions&quot;&gt;hold onto the &quot;Good C++ books&quot;-esque questions and such like grim death&lt;/a&gt;. Thankfully, while our baggage is great, we don't have to deal with this specific Stack Overflow curiosity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I'd rather we treat homework questions on their merits like we do every other question. It's not important how the asker came to ask the question, but whether they define the problem clearly and succinctly and provided enough information and background on what they've done so far in order to help them. In reality, we get a &lt;em&gt;ton&lt;/em&gt; of questions that are worse quality than many homework questions, and we don't make a special dispensation for them, so why homework specifically?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, although it's not directly related to homework tags, I would support making it more explicit that this site is not for questions about specific coded implementations. Something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[and is not about...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A specific problem you're having with your source code (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which would cover all the homework—and non-homework—questions we get that really ought to have been asked on Stack Overflow first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17611" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2894" RevisionGUID="825c6a50-ccbb-486b-b65f-1014d368be30" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;We've had &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2856/addendum-to-off-topic-themes-in-the-faq&quot;&gt;recent&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag&quot;&gt;discussions&lt;/a&gt; here on meta regarding how to handle homework questions, but I would like to turn the discussion around a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of discussing &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to handle these kinds of questions, I'd like to discuss &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; Programmers.SE can be a viable option for students seeking help. &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/users/102937/robert-harvey&quot;&gt;Robert Harvey&lt;/a&gt; brought this question up on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119976/how-can-stack-overflow-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments&quot;&gt;Meta.SO&lt;/a&gt; and I'd like to put it in the context of P.SE:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Can Programmers.SE be used by students to get help with their class assignments, and if so, how can it be done in a way that respects the P.SE community? What rules and regulations would the students need to follow?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How well would P.SE accomodate the influx of students, each having questions about the same homework assignment?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Please feel free to edit the wording or formatting as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17612" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2926" RevisionGUID="7b5c3458-5142-4b7a-bdf5-72a6ef19bcc9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;do any of the moderator candidates intend to moderate differently than the incumbents&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well to me above is not of a major importance thing. My primary expectations of moderator actions are as expressed &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/119089/165773&quot;&gt;in one of the answers at &quot;big&quot; Meta&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;something that a mod needs to develop by themselves - quick, competent and independent judgement of a situation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compared to above, consistency plays rather secondary role. I mean, as long as moderator is capable to justify their decision in the face of community review (eg here at Meta) I wouldn't mind if this decision has a personal touch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With above said, I would also like to make it perfectly clear that I am against total dismissal of consistency expectation. I believe that in (rare) cases when moderator actions &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2JQ86.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fail to meet primary expectations&lt;/a&gt; - in cases like that concerns of consistency, shared understanding, majority agreement and such can make a perfect ground for respective &lt;em&gt;corrective actions&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17613" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2949" RevisionGUID="744457f0-e45b-4b60-8926-5fe974fa0fa9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This isn't the first time the name of the site has been questioned. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Part of the confusion/problem comes from the origin of the site. Originally, it was supposed to be a home to those fun questions about programmers that were closed on Stack Overflow. However, that wasn't a good fit for the Stack Exchange site. So this site became focused on the more subjective, non-coding questions that are faced by those in the software development profession (see here for a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se&quot;&gt;discussion about software engineering&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that the name is a poor reflection of what the site has become. However, the FAQ and Meta discussions, not the name of the site, is the true reflection of topicality and appropriate questions. I would suspect that most professions have found this site to be more helpful than a site about programmers/programmer culture - I know I have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do also agree with Yannis's comment - changing the (domain) name will probably have an impact on SEO and the automated indexing. That's far outside my area of expertise, but the great thing about SE sites is how quickly they are indexed and appear in searches - I've searched for additional information to include in posts that I know exists, and come across the question I was answering as a top hit. Doing anything that compromises this would probably be a bad idea, for the Good of the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think the best thing for us to do would be to improve the FAQ and identify key Meta discussions that went into defining the site. Something to be careful of (and Yannis and I had this discussion) is increasing the size of the FAQ - it's already long compared to other sites. Ultimately, the FAQ needs to clearly define the scope (it does an OK/solid job right now) regardless of what this site is called or looks like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose there are a number of questions to ask, and I think a Stack Exchange employee would be the one to have to answer them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it technically feasible to change the name and domain name of a Stack Exchange site, while preserving all of the content?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What damage, particularly to the indexing and SEO of the site, would be done by changing the domain name? Would any damage be done by simply changing the name and look of the site without changing the domain name?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it acceptable to have a site name that is different than the site's domain name? There are some examples of minor differences, such as &quot;cstheory.se.com&quot; having the full name of Theoretical Computer Science, but there is no precidence for having a domain name &quot;programmers.se.com&quot; and a site name of Software Development (as an example).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible, feasible, and appropriate to totally rebrand a site post-launch to reflect a change in direction?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would doing any of the above set a precident for other current or future SE sites that is inappropriate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17614" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2967" RevisionGUID="efa3bdb9-e6df-419d-8dc5-962e605ff218" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;As a sidenote, a large number of deleted questions may get you &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi&quot;&gt;question banned&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are deleted questions taken into account too?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes. It's not a problem to have deleted questions. But if a large percentage of your questions are deleted by yourself or the community, then apparently they were not suitable for the site. But meanwhile they might have wasted time from users who read them, or even answered them. Therefore deleted questions might have an effect on the filter, among many other secret factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beware that an account with a high public reputation might very well have many deleted questions, including auto-deleted old low-score questions, all of which are only visible to moderators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, you have nothing to worry about, all your questions, even the very few closed ones, are highly up voted - the algorithm may be secret(ish) but I don't think it would be so blatantly naive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17615" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2972" RevisionGUID="1030e7df-0cbe-4278-a269-4af48bf57a23" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This has been a recurring problem since the site's inception: in reality, Programmers.SE &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/64046/149432&quot;&gt;was originally conceived&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;em&gt;be&lt;/em&gt; the dumping ground for Stack Overflow, and even though that purpose was &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/350/8&quot;&gt;dropped a couple of weeks after the site went into private beta&lt;/a&gt;, old habits die hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past year, there have been a few things that have been done to combat the problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Migrations used to only require a first-past-the-post method of resolving: for example, if 2 people voted to migrate to Programmers, 1 voted to close as off-topic, 1 voted as not-constructive, and 1 voted as too-localized, it'd be migrated. Now, migrations require 4 people to agree to the migration before it happens. Otherwise, it gets closed as off-topic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We Programmers mods, much to the annoyance of them I'm sure, have worked with/conditioned the Stack Overflow mods to not migrate anything to us without checking with us first. So, any mod-led migration from Stack Overflow was likely approved by us and you can blame us if the question's bad.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, we can't prevent 4 people agreeing to use the migration path to us as their dumping ground, and our rejection rate from Stack Overflow hovers &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats&quot;&gt;around 32%&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been a number of requests to remove us as the migration path, or to provide some mechanism to &quot;approve&quot; or &quot;reject&quot; migrations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73382/149432&quot;&gt;Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84846/a-way-to-cut-down-on-inappropriate-migrations&quot;&gt;A way to cut down on the inappropriate migrations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/35744/allow-diamond-moderators-to-reverse-question-migrations&quot;&gt;Allow diamond moderators to reverse question migrations?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73391/require-migrated-questions-to-be-accepted-by-the-destination-sites-moderators&quot;&gt;Require migrated questions to be accepted by the destination site's moderators&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to date, only small changes to the requirements for community migration (like the 4-person agreement, and having tags in common on the destination site) have been made. I have heard rumors that SE is planning to tackle migrations in a big way this year, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in lieu of some fundamental change in how migrations work, I think education and proactive moderation is the best strategy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you have 10k+ rep on Stack Overflow, check the &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/review&quot;&gt;Review queue&lt;/a&gt; for questions getting &quot;off topic; belongs on Programmers&quot; votes. It only takes two people to short circuit a migration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Check &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; often. Every once in a while, someone gets the idea that the best way to clean up Stack Overflow is to migrate everything in a tag (usually [career-development]) to Programmers: we've been able to put a stop to a couple of those projects by &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/119725/149432&quot;&gt;voicing our displeasure there&lt;/a&gt; and explaining what is and isn't on-topic here.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17616" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2981" RevisionGUID="9f7ac38d-d883-428e-8ce6-9a77fb75fb30" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;For the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/120339/when-did-stack-overflow-start-advertising-for-wikipedia&quot;&gt;sake of sanity&lt;/a&gt;, we recently &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119684/what-markdown-formatting-features-are-available-for-bounty-remarks&quot;&gt;switched from using full-blown Markdown&lt;/a&gt; to using MarkdownMini (that's the version used in comments and in chat) in post notices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While full Markdown wraps (almost) everything in &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; tags, MarkdownMini does not (since there aren't really paragraphs in comments).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The style rules in the CSS however expect the text to be in &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt; tags. In the next built, that expectation will be met again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17617" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2990" RevisionGUID="be7211de-094a-4e63-b923-e0f5d458b6bb" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The following is a &quot;digest&quot; version of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2922/2012-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-tuesday-2200-utc-5pm-est&quot;&gt;2012 Moderator Election Town Hall Chat&lt;/a&gt;. The format, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests&quot;&gt;as described on Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;, is one &lt;em&gt;answer&lt;/em&gt; to this question &lt;em&gt;for every question&lt;/em&gt; asked in the Town Hall, containing all the candidate's answers to that question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To view the digest chronologically, please sort the answers by &quot;oldest&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have questions or comments about this, &lt;strong&gt;please do not answer this question&lt;/strong&gt; as the answers are designed to be used for the questions from the Town hall itself. Instead, please ask on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests&quot;&gt;the parent question&lt;/a&gt; or in &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/352/town-hall-discussion&quot;&gt;the Town Hall Discussion Room&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you see any corrections which need to be made to this digest, or if you were a candidate who was unable to attend the town hall and would like your answers included, please @Rebecca or @TimStone &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/251/programmers-town-hall-chat&quot;&gt;in the chat room&lt;/a&gt; and let us know!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17618" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3016" RevisionGUID="14c95265-77dd-464b-8970-97805a53d99d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Andrew, sorry I missed that, questions were appearing very fast and yours is the only one that the whole message is not bold. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I wrote in my nomination stub:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If anything, my participation as a user has been highly visible. As a moderator I will take a step back, encourage users to take ownership of the community and intervene only when necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not up to the moderators to ensure that your voice is heard, or even shape the community. That's completely up to you and every other user, and the moderators should intervene only when absolutely necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just yesterday we appointed our &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2980/blog-volunteers-unite&quot;&gt;Blog Overlord&lt;/a&gt;, Jarrod Nettles. Why him? Well, if you take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/blog&quot;&gt;blog related Meta discussions&lt;/a&gt;, you'll notice that he has been pushing for the blog since early on. To be fair, Thomas Owens started the discussion back in June, and would be perfectly capable of taking point, as would quite a few other members. But that doesn't really matter, we needed a point man, Jarrod was around yesterday when we had the discussion, case closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The moderators, in this case Mark Trapp, only stepped in after there was clear community consensus for the blog, plus a comprehensive list of topics and a sufficient list of volunteers. He contacted the team, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2979/25936&quot;&gt;reported back&lt;/a&gt;, and in a couple of hours we went from having no idea of whether the blog will kick off to &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3214146#3214146&quot;&gt;discussing logistics&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's pretty close to how things should work. You may consider this a lame example, because there wasn't really anyone opposing the blog, but I think my point still gets across: Participation is key and it's not the moderators' job to hand hold anyone. As a user I have been extremely active on Meta, and I've explored ways to get &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119817/how-can-we-get-people-to-participate-on-meta&quot;&gt;even more people to participate&lt;/a&gt;. As a moderator, if elected, I will try to encourage people to do exactly what I've been doing so far, but that can only happen if people actually care to participate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't really handle dissenting opinions any differently than any other user, the voting system is perfectly suited for that. The only reason I would wear the moderator's hat on Meta would be when discussions are getting out of hand, rude or otherwise offensive. Other than that, I'd be yet another user, and it would be completely up to the community to decide if my opinions have merit or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17620" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3042" RevisionGUID="d6c0fe24-6021-4078-b559-efda7b319235" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi&quot;&gt;canonical answer to this is on Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;, which is where the link in the notice takes you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An automatic filter is in place to ban questions from IP addresses or accounts with a history of extremely poor questions. To avoid bypassing the filter its internal rules are a secret, but it is partly based on downvotes cast by other members of the communities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once you have posted too many bad quality questions, you will be banned from asking more, and see the error message. You can then still use the site, except for asking questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/30160/dave&quot;&gt;your profile&lt;/a&gt;, you've asked 6 questions, only one of which has been upvoted, 4 of which were closed, and 3 of which were deleted. You've provided few answers, and only one of which was up-voted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you'd like to ask questions in the future, focus on helping others first by providing high-quality answers and taking &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3029/8&quot;&gt;the feedback you've received on your past closures&lt;/a&gt; to heart.  While the details of the low-quality ban are purposefully kept secret, creating a trend of high-quality answers generally will help towards getting it removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17621" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3050" RevisionGUID="bb0c4cd4-ad3f-4bde-821f-4b0d46b60ab4" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Moderators do have access to analytics, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/114257/149432&quot;&gt;including referral data&lt;/a&gt;, but this information is considered confidential information and is likely never to be made available to the public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask a moderator in chat, we can see about providing glimpses of that on a case-by-case basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17622" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3052" RevisionGUID="cecf2751-d491-40a3-85a9-19572a469df4" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The message is a system message and, as such, cannot be dismissed by individual users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been brought up before &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64118/allow-us-an-exit-hatch-to-dismiss-the-system-message-notification-bar&quot;&gt;on Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; and has always been declined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17623" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3058" RevisionGUID="9c18545a-9ee8-4a3c-bb81-09541de42d65" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/121291/149432&quot;&gt;posted this to Meta Stack Overflow when it was asked there&lt;/a&gt;, but it's probably good to have it here on this question as well. In general, understanding the meaning of well-known programming terminology used in names would be on-topic for Programmers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is a delegate? What things count as delegates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, understanding the appropriate use of design patterns (which would likely indirectly lead to answering a question about naming) would be on-topic for Programmers as well: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm working on X problem: would using the observer pattern be the most appropriate way to handle it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finding the correct terminology to describe a concept is &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; on-topic on Programmers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've used this pattern that looks similar to other code I've seen, but I'm not sure how to refer to it so I don't look dumb in front of my coworkers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But many of these types of &quot;concept naming&quot; questions get too far into bike-shedding and neologisms and thus aren't constructive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can you think of a name to call this pattern I just made up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, naming advice for your classes, methods, et al is not constructive anywhere, including Programmers. It ultimately rests on who's reading the code and what the internal naming conventions for the project are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should I call this method that does X?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subsequently, understanding people's code would not be on-topic for Programmers (or Stack Overflow) either as it requires private knowledge about the intent of a person we don't know:   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why did my coworker name this method &lt;code&gt;punchFluffyBunnies()&lt;/code&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17624" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3095" RevisionGUID="d657ebdb-cbc2-4cdd-bc12-1c6ec8ee4750" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I'm not going to take a stance on whether these questions are welcome on Programmers Stack Exchange. However, consider this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the questions are worth having on the site, then you should not block them from gaining new answers, or from being commented on, or from being improved through edition.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the questions are not worth having on the site, then they should be removed from the site.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Locking is not at all appropriate for questions that do not belong here, even if it was once thought they did. Locking was practiced on Stack Overflow as a &lt;strong&gt;temporary&lt;/strong&gt; measure while the site's scope was settling. It has unfortunately lasted longer than it should have, but really, do not take example from that. Locking is appropriate as a temporary measure to prevent content wars. Locked questions with useful information buried inside dozens of answers do not help anyone. The information should be in answers to focused, searchable questions. Make up your mind: either the questions are useful, and then they should be &lt;strong&gt;maintained&lt;/strong&gt; (hence open); or they are not, and then they should be &lt;strong&gt;deleted&lt;/strong&gt;. Locking bad questions just for historical value makes no sense: you're &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/112910/do-not-lock-old-questions&quot;&gt;framing garbage&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xYpi3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;framed garbage&quot; title=&quot;framed garbage&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to retain the present content — sure, it probably does have nuggets of wisdom if you dig deep enough — a questions and answers platform is not the right place. Take it offsite! I hear there are plenty of companies who'll host your content for a small monetary consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17625" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3107" RevisionGUID="e499ca4a-c65a-47b0-b6ef-ed37dd333490" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;You did the correct thing: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/22233/149432&quot;&gt;expletives are verboten here&lt;/a&gt;, except in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/q/253/2512&quot;&gt;purely academic context&lt;/a&gt; (e.g., if you asking about the etymology of one on &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;English.SE&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Expletives are not acceptable behavior on meta or any other Stack Overflow site. If you can't effectively communicate what you need to say without resorting to lowest common denominator cursing, then keep it to yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you use expletives, you will get a warning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you continue to use expletives, you will be placed on &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/a-day-in-the-penalty-box/&quot;&gt;timed suspension&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not you agree with the belief you can effectively communicate without cursing, you've identified the practical reason why cursing is more-or-less banned on Stack Exchange: overactive internet filters in people's workplaces, when this site is meant to be used as a professional resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you see it in a post, always edit it out. If you see it in a comment, flag it so it can be edited or deleted by a moderator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17626" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3154" RevisionGUID="ee3d316f-9dcf-4e44-a28d-daeba9c7e6e0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/34364/jae?tab=activity&quot;&gt;your profile&lt;/a&gt;, you only have 93 suggested edits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Dfop5.png&quot; alt=&quot;Jae's Profile&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of those were also rejected, which would get you to the 79 edits listed on the Review page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the future, also keep in mind that not every edit &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/442/what-kind-of-edits-contribute-to-the-editor-badges&quot;&gt;counts towards the editor badges&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;does not include edits to your own posts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;does not include edits to tags &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;community-wiki posts are eligible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;tag wiki posts are eligible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To count for S&amp;amp;W/Copy Editor, the edit must cover the title, the body or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17627" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3175" RevisionGUID="d359dedb-ce1c-4ab3-b567-64e32d22bea0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell moderator who declined your flag made two mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First mistake was not catching that &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136082/java-interview-fundamentals&quot;&gt;question is off-topic&lt;/a&gt; indeed. I believe it's minor because topicality at Programmers is &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3184/31260&quot;&gt;quite slippery&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second mistake per my understanding is being too easy at casting decline to &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2471/rob-z&quot;&gt;your&lt;/a&gt; flag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clarifications for declining flags given in &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://moderator.stackexchange.com/2011/09/september-2011-newsletter/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;September 2011 Newsletter&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of SE Community Moderator Blog look pretty straightforward:&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;Flags Too Often Marked &lt;code&gt;[declined]&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Marking a flag &lt;code&gt;[declined]&lt;/code&gt; was designed to deter serial abusers of the flagging system, but we find that this “slap on the wrist” is being used more often than is beneficial.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;nbsp;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Flags should be closed as &lt;code&gt;[helpful]&lt;/code&gt; under most circumstances. If you feel strongly that a question was flagged in bad faith, it is okay to mark it &lt;code&gt;[declined]&lt;/code&gt;. But try to err on the side of clearing as &lt;code&gt;[helpful]&lt;/code&gt; whenever the user is trying to be genuinely helpful, &lt;em&gt;even if you do not necessarily act on the flag&lt;/em&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the sake of completeness - given that you both cast a close vote and flagged, I can imagine that moderator considered this as &lt;em&gt;abuse&lt;/em&gt; but I've yet to see from credible sources if this indeed qualifies as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;update&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Follow-up question at SO Meta:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/123073/is-it-an-abuse-of-flagging-system-to-both-cast-a-close-vote-and-flag&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/123073/is-it-an-abuse-of-flagging-system-to-both-cast-a-close-vote-and-flag&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17628" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3189" RevisionGUID="8b61a89d-0565-41e8-811d-340bc5fb6cbe" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background on polling questions:&lt;/strong&gt; Stack Exchange by it's very nature to a voting Q&amp;amp;A site, which is to say every question is a poll. The best explanation of the difference between a &quot;polling&quot; question and a SE question might be found in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/75179/152184&quot;&gt;Aarobot answer here&lt;/a&gt;; which is referenced by &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Jeff Atwood here&lt;/a&gt; on the Stack Overflow blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question this question is about:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114629/google-code-search-replacement&quot;&gt;Google Code Search Replacement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here's why I do not believe it's a poll:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Question is looking for a replacement for a now discontinued programing  tool, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/codesearch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Code Search&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google Code Search's is a well defined solution, and to search for a replacement is not subjective; meaning the best answer would be an exact clone of the tool.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I might be wrong, I believe &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/130588/4942&quot;&gt;Yannis Rizos comment on an answer&lt;/a&gt; points to my observations above: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be&#xA;  preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and&#xA;  provide the link for reference. Especially since you are the&#xA;  co-founder, you should expand the answer a bit and tell us why your&#xA;  service is a good alternative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meaning for a good answer it must be in the context of being an alternative to Google Code Search, and every answer is not as good as another answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17629" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3199" RevisionGUID="2cd1267d-f422-4669-928d-888a705cd96a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I have high hopes for &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/122249/158605&quot;&gt;this meta proposal suggesting a read-only archive site for good off-topic questions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd suggest going there and casting your vote to support it :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17630" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3219" RevisionGUID="a37e0e94-c642-4588-80dc-d5ece7849385" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;You can easily take care of this yourself. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22223/how-do-i-remove-an-openid-or-login&quot;&gt;the instructions here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Open your profile page&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Click the &quot;my logins&quot; link near the top&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Click the little (x) to the right of the login you wish to remove.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17631" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3224" RevisionGUID="8017bcdd-3771-4378-acd6-ceeae668fe35" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I have &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/124100/158605&quot;&gt;posted a question on meta&lt;/a&gt; asking to lower standards for re-opening questions on smaller SE sites, and wish to provide a link here because the question was generated from the frustration I feel towards being unable to re-open older questions here on Programmers, even after significant edits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please visit the question and vote to support if you agree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize, currently users get a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/124077/158605&quot;&gt;single re-open vote for the lifetime of a question&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, and that &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/123784/158605&quot;&gt;re-open vote will expire&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; in 4 days. This 4-day limit can be extended if someone else votes to re-open within that 4 days, however this only resets the 4-day timer and once it expires, all votes expire at a rate of 1-per-day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've made a few suggestions in the MSO question that would make it easier for smaller SE communities to reopen their questions, although the one I'd like to see implemented the most would be to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/99333/158605&quot;&gt;refund re-open votes if they don't actually get used&lt;/a&gt;, so users can participate in other re-open attempts at a later date if the question gets more attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a FYI, I have been part of this site since beta and do not ever remember seeing an older question get re-opened by the community. I have seen a handful of newer questions get re-opened by getting the 5 votes needed, however I have never seen an older one get re-opened without moderator intervention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17632" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3241" RevisionGUID="80c50c29-6cd5-4b22-9fd2-f17a1bcda29b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Some closed questions &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78048/auto-deleting-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year/92006#92006&quot;&gt;get deleted by the system over time&lt;/a&gt;. At 30 days, unlocked and unanswered questions with a negative score get deleted. At 365 days, questions with a score of 0 or less (or 1 with a deleted owner), no answers, not locked, has limited comments, and a small view count will get automatically deleted. The checks are not run daily, but weekly, so there might be a few days between it hitting the point for automatic deletion and it actually getting deleted automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here on Programmers, we also have the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=stci&quot;&gt;Structured Tag Clean-Up Initiative&lt;/a&gt;, which deals with poor tags on the site. Part of this process is also identifying questions within the tag that can not be salvaged and deleting them manually. However, this only addresses one tag at a time. Also, there are closed questions in good tags that are both inappropriate for this site and unsalvagable - these won't get caught by STCI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Closed is meant as a temporary state. Most questions should not go from closed to deleted quickly. The purpose of closed is to give the community a chance to turn the question into something good, while preventing answers. It's much easier to save a question with no or few answers than one with a lot of answers - edits to a question that invalidate answers don't make sense. The reason is that invalidating answers would lead to answers getting downvoted because the answerer was unaware the question changed and didn't delete or change their answer - these would be unwarranted downvotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, perhaps someone could build a Data Explorer query to show all closed questions, ordered by date (oldest first) and then votes (most negative first). Perhaps an additional piece would be to restrain it to those questions that are at least 3 or 4 months old. Questions that show up in this query could be targets for immediate editing or deletion. I'm not sure if we want to stack this clean up initiative on top of STCI, but it might give us some data to work with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17633" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3256" RevisionGUID="9c10c48f-1600-4bbc-913b-12b9b39815f5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I am concerned as it seems to affect all sites, not just ours. I don't like the fact that questions that aren't the best advertisement for the site being Tweeted or posted to Google+.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been raised by moderators several times in the past and we have be told that changes to the way questions are Tweeted are in the pipeline. I thought that there was supposed to be a change where questions with pending close votes weren't Tweeted - but obviously if a question is closed by a single moderator vote that rule won't apply. I will double check what the situation is and report back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm fairly sure that closed questions aren't Tweeted, but that doesn't help if the question is closed &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; it has been publicised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other request that has been made is to give diamond moderators some control over what questions get Tweeted. At the very least this would give a pair of human eyes on what goes out for a sanity check.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to point out that I rarely close questions without there being at least one moderator flag being raised. My job isn't to trawl the site looking for things to do, but to react to flags and questions here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A search of Meta (not by me - my meta searches suck) has turned up this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/115722/avoid-tweeting-bad-questions&quot;&gt;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/115722/avoid-tweeting-bad-questions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that the bot shouldn't be Tweeting closed questions. The only thing I can think of is that the question has had enough activity to be Tweeted (&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/101340/140548&quot;&gt;the rules are here&lt;/a&gt;), but the question has also picked up flags as well. We see the flags and close the question but it's out there in the Twitterverse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sequence will be something like (assuming it doesn't look at flags):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Question gets posted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Question gets flagged.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Question gets enough activity to be Tweeted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Question gets close votes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Question gets closed by a moderator.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it appears that the bot is pimping closed questions. Therefore, it would useful if the bot could look at any existing flags and not Tweet it if there are any. Obviously it won't help if the question gets flagged &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; it's Tweeted, but questions that don't fit tend to get flagged quite quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've reported this problem on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/124994/the-twitter-bot-should-not-tweet-posts-that-have-flags-on-them&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; as its clearly Tweeting posts with flags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17634" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3257" RevisionGUID="1ec31675-87b9-47cc-a22b-cfaee0625199" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Yes it is a bit concerning, although 15% is not that much. I went through some of the questions and there is a minor pattern there, several of the closed questions that made it to Twitter were incorrectly migrated from Stack Overflow and they carried upvotes and upvoted answers from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is in the &quot;hot questions&quot; algorithm and as &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3256/25936&quot;&gt;ChrisF mentioned&lt;/a&gt; it affects all sites, not just Programmers. Some things we could do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Close questions quicker&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a deep rooted perception that closing questions is a bad thing. It's not, and it should happen fast. Closing is just a peer review mechanism, a signal that a question is a bit problematic and in need of improvement. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Re-open questions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't dismiss closed questions, they are not dead. If you feel a question can be re-opened, please try to get it re-opened. Bring it up on chat or Meta, find others that can help. Not every closed question will be re-opened, obviously, but some will.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vote sensibly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upvote questions that show research effort, are clear and useful. Don't upvote questions that you feel are interesting / fun but blatantly off topic. Similarly with downvotes, they are a comment to the question, not the person asking the question. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further reading: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&quot;&gt;A guide to moderating programmers.stackexchange yourself - close voting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits&quot;&gt;What's all this about heroic edits?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, we prefer to be called &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75189/who-are-the-diamond-moderators-and-what-is-their-role&quot;&gt;diamond moderators&lt;/a&gt; ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the list of questions, there where flags on all questions, including the three questions that where closed by a single moderator vote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136610/version-number-soup-in-ror-is-grails-better-django&quot;&gt;Version Number Soup in RoR: Is Grails Better? Django?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typical &quot;which technology is better&quot; question, it could have been closed as off topic. Closed by a user and a moderator.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136736/online-code-editor&quot;&gt;Online Code Editor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blatantly off topic question, but borderline on Stack Overflow. Closed by a moderator, and I trust that it was never migrated to SO because the SO mods rejected it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137252/is-it-a-good-idea-to-generate-code-with-the-help-of-your-ide&quot;&gt;Is it a good idea to generate code with the help of your IDE?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Closed as a duplicate by a moderator. This shouldn't really be an issue for someone coming to the site from Twitter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137385/what-do-you-do-when-you-cant-seem-to-understand-a-certain-part-of-programming&quot;&gt;What do you do when you can&amp;#39;t seem to understand a certain part of programming?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extremely vague and open ended question, gentle reminder to everyone: Programmers Stack Exchange is not a free for all discussion forum. Closed by a user and a moderator, and it makes me sad that it got as many upvotes as it did (question &amp;amp; answers).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137372/is-object-oriented-stuff-really-that-important&quot;&gt;Is Object Oriented stuff really that important?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extremely open ended and argumentative question, comment wars on the question and almost every answer (and a particularly nasty &quot;discussion&quot;, that has since been removed). Closed by a user and a moderator.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137520/why-do-some-job-posts-say-high-pressure-environment&quot;&gt;why do some job posts say &amp;quot;high pressure environment&amp;quot;?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blatantly off topic, typical example of a populist question. Closed by five users.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137715/a-class-named-class&quot;&gt;A Class named Class?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I closed this one because it was getting a bit out of hand, and there wasn't any need for further answers. It had three re-open votes, and I've just re-opened it with a notice for longer answers. If it starts gathering poor answers again, I won't hesitate to close it. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137794/offshoring-a-software-project-conflict-resolution&quot;&gt;Offshoring a Software Project -- Conflict Resolution&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very open ended. Closed by two users and a moderator. Potentially salvageable, but it requires a lot of work, and OP seems satisfied with the existing answers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137864/how-long-did-it-take-you-to-get-kernel-programming-down&quot;&gt;How long did it take you to get kernel programming down&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open ended and quite difficult to understand what it's actually about. Closed by five users. I don't understand why this was tweeted, it's a zero scored question with no answers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137896/software-engineer-already-in-late-thirties-would-i-have-trouble-finding-a-new&quot;&gt;Software engineer, already in late thirties, would I have trouble finding a new position?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Duplicate, closed by four users and a moderator. Same as (3).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137994/does-object-oriented-programming-really-model-the-real-world&quot;&gt;Does Object Oriented Programming Really Model The Real World?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I closed this one because it started gathering answers that re-iterated earlier answers. It's not a question that will be deleted soon (if ever). It deserves the community's attention (wink).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138132/list-of-the-really-big-and-really-small-discrepancies-with-js-in-the-big-5-brows&quot;&gt;List of the really big and really small discrepancies with JS in the big 5 browsers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vague, overly broad, argumentative and mostly off topic. Closed by five users, I wonder if the fact that the single answer was negatively voted should have prevented tweeting it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138229/python-is-slowly-replacing-c-in-universities-does-this-move-degrade-the-quality&quot;&gt;Python is slowly replacing C in universities. Does this move degrade the quality of CS students?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vague, speculative, argumentative, wrong. Close by five users, I suspect it got twitted because of the highly upvoted answers. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth reiterating that there where flags on all questions, including ones closed by a single moderator. I will keep an eye on the one I re-opened, hopefully answerers will not fail to read the notice for yet another time...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17635" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3292" RevisionGUID="152ab1c5-356c-4fee-8986-c3547ef0e83b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/119817/158605&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; on SO's meta site, and since the question was about meta participation on P.SE, I thought I'd post the same question here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can we do to improve meta participation on P.SE's meta site? Try and keep one suggestion per answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17636" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3301" RevisionGUID="a0bdac4c-8ee3-4978-8bbe-e78a93541275" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;A while back I made a suggestion to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&quot;&gt;either rename the site to match the FAQ, or change the FAQ so it matches the site name&lt;/a&gt; to help clear up a lot of the confusion I see over what P.SE is for. That question was asked to see if this idea had any support, and I believe it does judging by the 25 upvotes it currently has, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title&quot;&gt;other&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site&quot;&gt;questions&lt;/a&gt; which were pointed out that ask the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site name is the first, and often only, piece of information a user has to judge our site on. Since we can't change the site's name, this question is to ask &lt;strong&gt;what kind of changes can we make to the FAQ to make it accurately reflect the site name, without going back to the mindless fun this site began as?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see a lot of confusion over the scope of P.SE, and I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/124923/where-in-the-stack-exchange-world-can-i-initiate-a-programming-related-discuss/124927#comment336347_124925&quot;&gt;this recent MSO comment&lt;/a&gt; sums up what I've seen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;no one recommends Programmers anymore because it's unclear what the&#xA;  site's scope is and some of its users disagree strongly with what&#xA;  others of its users think the site's scope entails&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suggestions are below. I wanted to post them all together in one answer since they I feel the suggestions make the most sense if you read them in order, but ultimately decided to separate them so we can comment, evaluate, and vote on each suggestion individually. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel this would go a long ways towards making the site scope match the site name, and clear up the confusion caused by the current differences. In addition, I am hoping this will help reconcile users from both sides of the site scope argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please review and vote on the suggestions, or add your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17637" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3323" RevisionGUID="5195bd2f-c029-4fab-9240-244e198044d3" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Unless you have lots of money you cannot self host the Stack Exchange engine. This was tried for SE 1.0 but it didn't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The business model is built around communities coming to a single location (Stack Exchange) and building within the existing framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When SE 2.0 (of which Programmers is just one site out of 80+) was started there was no possibility of self hosting, but there have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16054/is-the-stack-exchange-engine-available/16055#16055&quot;&gt;comments that indicate&lt;/a&gt; that large corporations (we're talking the size of Microsoft, Oracle, etc.) could:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a Stack Exchange Enterprise option for internal use. The pricing makes this feasible for large organizations only. You can email team at stackoverflow and your inquiry will be routed to the correct place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you really like the model then check out the list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2267/stack-overflow-clones&quot;&gt;Stack Exchange clones&lt;/a&gt; on Meta Stack Overflow. You should be able to find one you can install and use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17638" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3329" RevisionGUID="029b51be-d9ad-42c4-81d2-e0954225b632" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Typically we evaluate questions on research effort and usefulness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research effort&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question shows no research effort at all. It's a curiosity question, which I'm perfectly fine with in general, but that doesn't mean that OP still doesn't have to do at least some minor research prior to asking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple web search for &quot;programming languages semicolon&quot; revealed the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_languages_%28syntax%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Comparison of programming languages (syntax)&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_sugar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Syntactic sugar&lt;/a&gt; Wikipedia articles that discuss semicolons as terminating characters, and the very interesting &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/the-semicolon-wars&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Semicolon Wars&lt;/a&gt; article. The lack of proper terminology (statement terminators) and vagueness of the question tells me that there wasn't any research effort at all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Usefulness&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be argued that the question would be useful to someone researching language design, but that would be a very weak argument since there's nothing in the question to even hint towards language design and every answer that approached the question from a language design perspective did so in extremely vague terms. Furthermore, even from a language design angle the question is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/31253/the-bike-shed-problem-and-so&quot;&gt;typical bikeshed question&lt;/a&gt;, and amazingly it fits &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Wadlers_Law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wadler's Law&lt;/a&gt; perfectly, as it's a question on syntax rather than semantics: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In any language design, the total time spent discussing a feature in this list is proportional to two raised to the power of its position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;0. Semantics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1. Syntax&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2. Lexical syntax&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3. Lexical syntax of comments&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, let's take a look at our &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What kind of questions should I not ask here?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You should only ask &lt;strong&gt;practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&lt;/strong&gt;. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We &lt;em&gt;tend to forget&lt;/em&gt; that part once in a while, but for me it's the most important part of the FAQ, one that clearly indicates that we are not a discussion forum but a Q&amp;amp;A site. The question in question is a great example of why that paragraph is important: It's a barely useful question, no research effort at all, but highly upvoted. However there is no actual problem to be solved, it's a typical discussion oriented question, and even if it wasn't otherwise troublesome it should have been closed as not constructive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which brings us to the notorious &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;6SG&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Constructive subjective questions …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;tend to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over opinions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question itself fails all but the last one. It's simply too short to guide answers in a constructive manner, and although some of the answers are not bad, that has little (if anything) to do with the question. I won't evaluate the answers themselves, because I feel we kinda failed in protecting people from wasting their time in answering a question that clearly doesn't belong to the site, and that's not the answerers fault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I fully support closing the question, and if I wasn't on the road when the question appeared I would have closed it sooner, it's not a type of question I would want to encourage on Programmers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gathered quite a few upvotes and so did the three top answers, so it's not a question I would delete, but I don't think there's a point in trying to rewrite and re-open as I think it has run it's circle and there's little (if any) chance it will gather any more good answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further reading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&quot;&gt;The Trouble With Popularity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Parkinson's Law of Triviality&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17639" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3345" RevisionGUID="03a9e26f-58d1-4dda-8d2e-733261923fbf" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Small inconsistencies like that are not uncommon, reputation synchronization is not immediate and what you are seeing on your SO profile is probably a cached version.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the missing +4 is a refund from a post that was deleted on March 17, and since there where some &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/123319/recent-reputation-history-changes&quot;&gt;recent changes to reputation regarding deleted posts&lt;/a&gt;, this might be a bug after all. If your reputation on SO isn't listed correctly in a couple of days, post a comment to this answer so I can notify the developers about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your P.SE reputation is listed correctly on &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/users/543572/james-drinkard&quot;&gt;your SO profile&lt;/a&gt; now, so it was caching after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17640" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3350" RevisionGUID="c4b35176-3ff6-4842-a32a-36f2581baa13" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Studying similar (&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/faq-proposed/info&quot;&gt;faq-proposed&lt;/a&gt;) question at SO Meta and especially its accepted answer helped me to make my mind on that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/121705/where-can-i-ask-a-how-to-get-started-question-on-a-stack-exchange-site-with-re&quot;&gt;Where can I ask a “how to get started” question on a Stack Exchange site with respect to technology?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...tag wiki's is perhaps the best we can do.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the wiki for a topic doesn't already contain this information - links to web sites, books, tutorials etc. then perhaps we should be making all efforts to ensure that it does...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Above brought peace and light into my life.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if I can imagine an answer making good tag wiki, it means question is OK to me. &lt;sup&gt;assuming it is on-topic&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, I take a deeper look into the question and try to find out if there's something wrong with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84739/what-is-the-preferable-mobile-android-iphone-game-development-tool-for-a-c-ne&quot;&gt;the question you referred to&lt;/a&gt;, well, it doesn't look OK to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While casting close vote I have been choosing between not constructive and too localized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Per re-reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&quot;&gt;Q&amp;amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!&lt;/a&gt; I was rather inclined to vote for &lt;em&gt;too localized&lt;/em&gt; but the statement &quot;Which development tool is widely used now?&quot; made me feel that &lt;em&gt;not constructive&lt;/em&gt; would be a better match.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;update&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding scope of the question helps to find out if it's appropriate or not. &lt;em&gt;&quot;I am a newbie, how do I get started writing new programming language?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&quot; title=&quot;`What kind of questions should I not ask here?'&quot;&gt;FAQ discourages&lt;/a&gt; questions that are too wide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an &lt;em&gt;entire book&lt;/em&gt; that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that &lt;em&gt;not constructive&lt;/em&gt; close reasons description matches above with &lt;em&gt;&quot;this question will likely solicit... extended discussion&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BWAjl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BWAjl.jpg&quot; title=&quot;FAQ quidance about question scope&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Not a real question&lt;/em&gt; can also match in blatant cases, with &lt;em&gt;&quot;overly broad&quot;&lt;/em&gt; close reason. &lt;em&gt;&quot;Need help getting started with programming.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17642" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3415" RevisionGUID="8ec44be4-381b-41b1-8939-900b3dfd6f57" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The timeline of this was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;June 3, 2010 — &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related&quot;&gt;NPR proposal&lt;/a&gt; created in Area51&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;September 1, 2010 — NPR enters private beta as &quot;Programmers&quot; (will continue to call it NPR for the sake of distinguishing it from the current site)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;September 7, 2010 — NPR enters public beta&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;September 13, 2010 — MSO starts to grapple with how bad NPR is &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se&quot;&gt;when trying to dupe Software Engineering proposals to it&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;September 15, 2010 — We on Meta Programmers.SE &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep&quot;&gt;start to deal with that perception&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;September 17, 2010 — SE &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/&quot;&gt;makes a blog post&lt;/a&gt; announcing the decision to start merging programming-related proposals to improve NPR&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;September 18, 2010 — We begin to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic&quot;&gt;redefine the scope of the site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;September 23, 2010 — MSO and SE &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site&quot;&gt;do the same&lt;/a&gt;, with &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/65439/149432&quot;&gt;different results&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;September 29, 2010 — &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;Good Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is published, new scope and guidelines &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&quot;&gt;begin to be enforced&lt;/a&gt;, and the free-for-all NPR proposal dies. It's replaced with Programmers, the site for expert programmers who are interested in subjective questions on software development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;December 16, 2010 — Programmers launches, and the position statement is tweaked from &quot;subjective questions&quot; to &quot;conceptual questions&quot; to &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&quot;&gt;make it easier to explain why it exists compared to Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;December 17, 2010–Present — Clean-up of the colossal mess left over from beta, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio/3415#comment9139_3414&quot;&gt;incorrect UI strings and FAQ wordings&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning&quot;&gt;crappy questions&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups&quot;&gt;awful tags&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl&quot;&gt;misconceptions&lt;/a&gt;, and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within 29 days the site went from programmers hanging out and discussing their lifestyle to programmers discussing software development issues, now over 18 months ago, which is why I'm always surprised people still cling to that old proposal. I would've thought they'd all move on by now: the writing was on the wall almost immediately after the site left private beta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17643" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3429" RevisionGUID="106dcc86-4db4-4eaf-b0a5-274e39b30467" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Adapted from &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.wordpress.stackexchange.com/a/1035/73&quot;&gt;meta.wordpress.stackexchange&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Recommended Reading&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/&quot;&gt;I Move to Close This Question&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How and why closing was introduced on Stack Overflow in 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s important to note here that closing a question is a step on the road to deletion. Closing is effectively “nominate to delete”, as a question that can’t be answered is no longer truly “alive”. That said, some closed questions should be kept around. For example, duplicate questions that have totally different wording are sometimes useful. With the duplicates, people can find either variation with search terms and link through to the original.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/&quot;&gt;The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About duplicates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don’t answer questions that have already been answered elsewhere. Yeah, you might earn a couple of points of reputation, but, because you are duplicating content, you are actually making the internet worse. Why? Because that answer might be true today, but as technology changes, it might not be true tomorrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/&quot;&gt;The Stack Overflow Question Lifecycle&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How and when questions are closed or deleted.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;Gorilla vs. Shark&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&quot;&gt;Q&amp;amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the &lt;em&gt;not constructive&lt;/em&gt; close reason.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10582/145551&quot;&gt;What is a “closed” question?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;24 votes to close per day (50 on Stack Overflow)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;5 votes are required to close or reopen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Votes will expire after 4 days if the question does not reach 5 votes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Questions containing a bounty cannot be closed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You can only vote to close once per question&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You can only vote to reopen once per question&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/36415/145551&quot;&gt;How do you reopen a closed question?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The owner must have 250 rep in order to vote to reopen their own question. Other users can also vote to reopen, but they must have a minimum 3000 reputation points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Leaving comments about voting to reopen does nothing in and of itself. You can try and &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2035/notify-user-when-their-name-is-mentioned-in-comment-closed&quot;&gt;address a specific user&lt;/a&gt; who may have left a comment as to why they voted to close and ask them to help cast reopen votes if you think they voted in error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/19126/145551&quot;&gt;How do you challenge the closing of one of your questions?&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/119638/145551&quot;&gt;Why was my question closed and how to contact the closer&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/q/144/1910&quot;&gt;My question has been closed. What do I do now?&lt;/a&gt; (on meta.crypto.stackexchange.com).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/32490/145551&quot;&gt;Closing/Migrating question instructions/guidance&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A long explanation of the close reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/48578/145551&quot;&gt;What can cause my question to be bumped?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Close/reopen votes on the question do not bump the question.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/5215/145551&quot;&gt;Etiquette for closing your own questions&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't think you should close your questions lightly. There are very few questions that have a definite answer that will never change, or that cannot be improved upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10841/145551&quot;&gt;How to handle duplicate questions?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not by tagging or editing, vote to close or flag for moderator attention.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/7913/145551&quot;&gt;Please add the ability to filter [Closed] questions out of my results&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stick the closed:0 parameter in your search pipe and you're smoking out the closed questions: &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A0&quot;&gt;closed:0&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But if you're in the mood of puffing around the closed: &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1&quot;&gt;closed:1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also our &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&quot;&gt;search tips&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10363/145551&quot;&gt;Allow question askers to close their own questions unilaterally&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer: No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once you post a question it is not exactly YOURS in every sense of the word anymore, it belongs to EVERYONE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you can &lt;em&gt;delete&lt;/em&gt; your own question as long as there are no upvoted answers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/70521/145551&quot;&gt;How useful must a question be to be allowed?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the &lt;em&gt;too localized&lt;/em&gt; close reason, derived from &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/q/1455&quot;&gt;this question on Gaming&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What value does this question have to anyone else on the planet, other than the one person who asked? In other words, what internet user is going to be searching for and finding information about a game one person vaguely remembers playing in broad terms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/4818/145551&quot;&gt;What questions should be closed with reason “too localized”?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/107153/145551&quot;&gt;Remove/downweight closed questions in “hot” question sort&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer: No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think there's a misconception here -- closing does not mean &quot;get this off my screen ASAP&quot;, closing means, &quot;this question should be re-evaluated by the community&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/915/145551&quot;&gt;Can we have the ability to rescind a close vote before it closes?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer: No. See Jeff’s answer … with a lot of negative votes. :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/97556/145551&quot;&gt;Close Votes expire too soon for low-traffic tags&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer: Fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Close votes (and probably reopen votes) only expire after all of these conditions are met:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;4 days have passed since the last close vote.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The question has more than 100 views.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/78048/145551&quot;&gt;Auto-deleting old, unanswered zero-score questions after a year?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a garbage collector which works as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the question is more than 30 days old, and ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;has -1 or lower score&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;has no answers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;is not locked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... it will be automatically deleted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the question is more than 365 days old, and ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;has a score of 0 or a score of 1 with a deleted owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;has no answers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;is not locked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;has a viewcount &amp;lt;= the age of the question in days times 1.5&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;has 1 or 0 comments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... it will be automatically deleted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This check is run every week across all sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Each time you misuse the answer field for pseudo-comments you break the garbage collector.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/82874/145551&quot;&gt;Do “fix my code pleeese!” questions qualify for closure as “too localized”?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;My own summary after a long reading session&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Closing is not deleting. A closed question is still visible, it can be improved and reopened. It &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/08/new-question-asker-features/&quot;&gt;doesn’t affect the accept rate&lt;/a&gt; but prevents potentially useless answers. Help us to stay &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions&quot;&gt;on focus&lt;/a&gt;, use your close votes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a moderator (on WordPress Stack Exchange) I don’t like to act unilaterally. Your close votes are helping me and the other moderators to decide and we don’t feel so bad if we close a question. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17644" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3433" RevisionGUID="8223cd9e-2027-4788-b2de-b3e1b2dc9328" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The Workplace is &lt;a href=&quot;http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/4823/what-is-coworking#comment9210_4847&quot;&gt;launching Tuesday or Wednesday&lt;/a&gt;, barring any unforeseen problems. During the private beta, there will be no involvement from other Stack Exchange sites (save for active people here who also committed to the proposal): it'll be up to the community there to quickly figure out their scope and how they'll ensure the site will be viable if/when it goes public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even sites in public beta are never added as migration paths. The beta period is the time for the site to bootstrap itself without becoming a dumping ground for other sites: normal users generally don't understand what to migrate &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl&quot;&gt;even when sites are launched&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lack of a migration path does not, however, prevent moderators from migrating questions to a beta site. Historically, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2782/8&quot;&gt;we worked with moderators on beta sites&lt;/a&gt; to determine if a question would be a better fit for them. This tended to be a win-win situation for all involved, as it let the destination sites get questions they want and it prevented unnecessary drama when a question gets unceremoniously closed here for being off-topic or sits around with no answers (or worse, bad answers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3419/8&quot;&gt;the current moderators&lt;/a&gt; are &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3428/8&quot;&gt;loath to do this&lt;/a&gt;, and it's unlikely very many, if any, questions would be migrated to the Workplace while it's in beta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, however, that The Workplace was &lt;a href=&quot;http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/a/1401/16359&quot;&gt;created specifically to house questions that are categorically off-topic here&lt;/a&gt;: there should be very little, if any, overlap between the two sites. Off-topic questions that would be a fit for The Workplace have historically gotten comments from closers directing the asker to support the proposal: perhaps the only real change needed to that workflow is to modify the wording to indicate it's already live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17645" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3451" RevisionGUID="7290fbf7-df45-4970-a96d-ed942b23a026" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The feature already exists, but only for diamond moderators. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time a similar feature has been asked for regular users, it has been declined summarily, although I'm certain that everyone who votes to migrate means well, incorrect migrations are quite often. Programmers especially &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl&quot;&gt;has suffered a lot&lt;/a&gt; from incorrect migrations from Stack Overflow, the past 90 days we have rejected more than 1/3 of questions coming here from Stack Overflow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main problem is that although you are required to have at least 3,000 reputation at the source to vote to migrate, you aren't even required to have an account at the target site, and people seem eager to vote to migrate without thinking if the question is actually suitable for the target site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd say that flagging for moderation attention is not only an acceptable workaround, but imho it's actually the preferred action. We can notify the other site's moderators and only migrate the question if they verify that it is suitable for their site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In theory, we could discuss adding another migration target. Right now our most popular migration target is Stack Overflow with 170 questions the past 90 days, and our second most popular is Code Review with 9 questions over the same period, too few to justify a migration path. If we start getting a lot of Code Review questions, trust me I'll be the first to nag about it ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17646" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3460" RevisionGUID="9ec1097c-797b-4643-992e-90dd3d2d1cac" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The fix for this is being deployed right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129002/new-tag-wikis-cannot-be-created&quot;&gt;this post on Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17647" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3462" RevisionGUID="43252d14-0d66-4653-b77a-ddb232b7edfe" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h2&gt;The great tag wiki edit&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How this would work: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Set up a contest time frame and chat room,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;discuss and evaluate tag wiki edits submitted during time frame set,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;in order to short-list ones to be presented in nominees list at next step,&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;set up a &quot;voting question&quot; with nominees list (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2990/2012-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-digest&quot;&gt;elections town hall&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2473/what-do-you-want-to-see-from-scna&quot;&gt;SCNA wish list&lt;/a&gt;),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whoever edit scores best &lt;strike&gt;gets kissed by Anna Lear and Mark Trapp&lt;/strike&gt; wins.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rules:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No edits outside the time frame. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contest period: A month.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we gain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tag wiki improvements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;more &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73261/how-to-motivate-users-to-write-tag-wikis&quot; title=&quot;How to motivate users to write tag wikis?&quot;&gt;publicity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;better understanding of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/69584/tag-wiki-best-practices%22&quot;&gt;Tag Wiki best practices&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Background&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;definition from page with a &lt;em&gt;really nice&lt;/em&gt; title: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/tag-wiki/info&quot; title=&quot;title is full of meta isn't it&quot;&gt;&amp;#39;tag-wiki&amp;#39; tag wiki - Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An editable page that briefly summarizes the topic of the tag and that may provide links to existing questions that are often useful to many people...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tag wikis are made of 2 parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Excerpt - which is displayed on question lists and tag hover menu.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Body - which contains detailed information about a tag wiki.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;definition that inspired me, from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1195/create-a-tag-homepage-faq&quot;&gt;tag homepage/FAQ&lt;/a&gt; request at MSO:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a community-wiki editable home page... where we could place essentially the tag-specific FAQ and other tag-specific links&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17648" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3474" RevisionGUID="b9fa3aff-9666-4425-8a6e-3338ce572656" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129021/154388&quot;&gt;This MSO discussion&lt;/a&gt; sums it up well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of course, obviously the better answers will generally be longer than one line. To bulk up the content, you might consider doing things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;linking to the appropriate documentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;including a code sample&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;suggesting a superior alternative approach&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;cautioning against some things that people in the same situation commonly do wrong&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;adding superfluous bulleted lists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many good answers that can be written in one sentence. However, the &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt; answers explain the reasoning behind that one line. They explain the thought process that is required to arrive at the correct decision. They may include a personal experience that supports the conclusion reached. I've seen some good answers that take the approach the OP originally thought of and show how it leads to failure, and then present a better solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best defense against &lt;em&gt;harmful&lt;/em&gt; one-liners, as with many things on SE, is your voting powers. Don't be afraid to downvote the one-liners!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17649" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3504" RevisionGUID="a3f2f833-89ae-435d-a964-da070e286dd8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Even though the tag wiki says that you can use this tag for asking where to find resources, I don't think that's valid. &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128548/what-stack-overflow-is-not/128549#128549&quot;&gt;Stack Exchange sites are not search engines&lt;/a&gt;. What you are asking for is simply asking for external resources - the best place to do that is in the search bar of your favorite search engine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also sounds like you're asking for a list of things. &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128548/what-stack-overflow-is-not/128561#128561&quot;&gt;Stack Exchange sites are also not for generating lists of things&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17650" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3527" RevisionGUID="25fa1a45-46da-4c98-8b69-80ed18d20b76" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49550/what-hashing-algorithm-is-good-for-uniqueness-and-speed&quot;&gt;What hashing algorithm is good for uniqueness and speed?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Particular answer to above question has been made CW per automatic rule (&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/11741/165773&quot; title=&quot;MSO answer to 'What are “Community Wiki” posts?'&quot;&gt;quote source&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The post has been edited ten (10) times by the original owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Automatically applying generic rule in this particular case looks unfair.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;In case of doubt, check the answer to decide whether you agree with above.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;answer: &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/145633/31260&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/145633/31260&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;timeline: &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/49550/timeline&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/49550/timeline&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;This answer looks exceptionally good&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to me, and not only to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to clear CW status to recognize an extraordinary contribution of the author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/145633/31260&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CRw3X.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CRw3X.jpg&quot; title=&quot;screen shot - top part of the answer. And there's more, much much more...&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17651" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3557" RevisionGUID="6e77d4c3-40e5-4a40-aae6-d024d0550b10" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Down voting answers costs you 1 reputation point, this is &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/status-bydesign&quot; class=&quot;post-tag moderator-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'status-bydesign'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;status-bydesign&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasoning is that it makes revenge / retaliatory / otherwise abusive down voting less attractive, as discussed in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/15866/162704&quot;&gt;very early Stack Overflow podcast&lt;/a&gt; (circa 2008). Furthermore it emphasizes up voting over down voting, as does every other voting related mechanism we have (up votes earn you more rep than down votes cost you, etc). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the penalty is too small to matter when you have legitimate reasons to down vote. It might matter a bit more to newer users, but I'm sure you having quite a lot of reputation wouldn't think twice before down voting a bad answer. And of course if you down vote sensibly and the community agrees with you, it's highly probable that the answer will be removed and your reputation will be refunded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There used to be a reputation penalty when down voting questions as well. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/90324/should-downvotes-on-questions-be-free&quot;&gt;changed a year ago&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thus, to incentivize more balanced question voting, we are considering removing the -1 cost of casting a downvote on a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if it worked or not, but I enjoy free down votes on questions too much to care ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17652" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3562" RevisionGUID="80fbbe68-ac25-4761-95cf-3154e674889a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This was &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/131388/would-questions-about-app-store-approval-be-appropriate-for-so&quot;&gt;a discussion on Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; a few days ago which had comments that mirrored an earlier &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2575/8&quot;&gt;discussion we had here&lt;/a&gt;, and while I don't want to say &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; app store question is off-topic here, it's unlikely many of the questions people would &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to ask—namely questions about app store policies and such—would be on-topic anywhere on Stack Exchange. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main issue is that we are not Apple, or RIM, or Amazon, or any of the other private entities that make or enforce those policies, so we'd only be speculating and a poor substitute for the people developers &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be asking, which are the people who work for those companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the example questions for the proposal, it looks like the App Stores proposal is going to suffer from this right from the get-go:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a limit on how long you can hold on to an app name in ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can an app name have special characters?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I created an app that only works with third-party hardware. Do I have to send the hardware to Apple to get approval? How do they test such apps?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any hard evidence on how much individual app developers have actually earned?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will my app be deleted from [store] if no one downloads it for [x time]?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions 1, 2, 3, and 5 are all questions for the companies running the App Stores and making the policies, not random strangers on the internet who aren't in the know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question 4 is just a bad SE question in general: taken at its face value, it's a simple yes or no question (there is evidence or there isn't). Reading between the lines, someone asking that likely wants to know how much they're going to make as an app developer, which is highly localized (and more often than not, &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/05/ios-app-success-is-a-lottery-and-60-of-developers-dont-break-even.ars&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;attributable to pure dumb luck&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have high hopes for the App Store proposal: I don't think it's going to fail because of lack of interest, but because it's not a topic that Stack Exchange handles well. I don't think trying to redirect people from that proposal to here does anyone any favors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17653" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3566" RevisionGUID="99be5a02-e19b-4651-aff3-749cdfb0832d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;See this Meta Stack Overflow question for more than you'll ever want to know on this subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votes&quot;&gt;Encouraging people to explain down-votes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17654" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3582" RevisionGUID="01463a07-91df-470b-9694-3e23f6800935" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I'll summarize &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/113678/how-to-request-book-recommendations/131432#131432&quot;&gt;my answer over on SO Meta&lt;/a&gt; here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I started out believing that SE could support a recommend X... In the end these questions can only ever be considered subjective, and therefore not a good fit for the SE format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17655" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3587" RevisionGUID="ce1e661f-1f21-4b44-86c3-d7d3a34ff3dc" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I believe that is correct as code is included in the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    to Remix — to adapt the work&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    to make commercial use of the work  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anything that you post to StackOverflow will be under the terms of the creative commons license. You can find more info by looking at the bottom right of the page and clicking the cc-wiki.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12527/do-i-have-to-worry-about-copyright-issues-for-code-posted-on-stackoverflow&quot;&gt;Do I have to worry about copyright issues for code posted to StackOverflow?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17656" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3589" RevisionGUID="c99489dd-836a-4b9c-a8b2-6d5cba45d0b2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I went browsing Meta SO for any profile rules, and it appears there really aren't any. A user's profile is a reflection of the user, not a reflection of the site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can put pretty much anything in there, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/31209/158605&quot;&gt;even profanity&lt;/a&gt;, although since it is a reflection of the you, you may want to consider carefully what you put in there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/31504/158605&quot;&gt;Rules for Profiles?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, your profile is (to an extent) fair game, as it is&#xA;  a reflection of you as a person, not the site as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Self-promotion, your e-mail address, humor, (if you know HTML) imagery&#xA;  and even the f-bomb are allowed there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are reasonable limitations for all of those, but generally&#xA;  speaking, unless you're a hard-core spammer or you put something truly&#xA;  offensive / crazy in there (like hate speech or pornography), you'll&#xA;  be OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17657" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3600" RevisionGUID="16f77b2d-9251-462c-b2bb-7673ee3a150e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Yes, that's true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Programmers had a troubled start, fully documented in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3415/25936&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;. In the beginning the site was called &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; and it was a very relaxed place where questions that didn't belong on Stack Overflow found a home. Inane (but populist) questions were migrated here from Stack Overflow en masse, carrying &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&quot; title=&quot;see SE blog post: The Trouble With Popularity&quot;&gt;ridiculous amounts of upvotes&lt;/a&gt; with them, and for a short while NPR was the one place in the Stack Exchange universe where you'd go for mindless fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it soon became evident that people flocked around the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/31253/the-bike-shed-problem-and-so&quot;&gt;bike shed&lt;/a&gt; ones and ignored any serious questions or answers, and the site was quickly filling up with crap. Which led to a somewhat sudden and drastic scope change, the site was essentially rebooted to be what it is today. The redefined scope meant higher quality standards, which for Stack Exchange usually translates to less down votes and more up votes. Combined with the fact that down votes on questions &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3557/25936&quot;&gt;became free&lt;/a&gt; about a year ago, people are down voting a lot more liberally than in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you should also consider that older questions had obviously more time to gather up votes, they aren't all bad, newer questions will get there in time. But the main reason for the few whales that remain was the undisciplined culture of the early days, people would upvote just about anything. To give you an idea, one of that era's questions was &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;What's your most controversial programming opinion?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, which had 391 upvotes and 414 answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As time goes by we become even more sharply focused, and we set our standards even higher. Useful and well research questions may not get a lot of up votes, but they do get a lot more visibility and quite more useful answers than a couple of years ago, as they are a lot easier to discover when you don't have to look for hours amongst an ocean of pointless questions like &quot;What's your most controversial programming opinion?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17658" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3611" RevisionGUID="6360e9ee-a8d4-4c02-8d38-c7fcca6c8af5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I really don't know why you need to close questions at all. If a question is related to programming, even if quite tenuously, then it should be left to the users of the site to arbiter whether it is relevant or not. The mechanism for that is quite simple and already exists - people will vote for questions they like, downvote questions they don't and, most importantly, provide answers to questions they feel are interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it totally ridiculous that you can have a question that has lots of answers and is provoking discussion to be suddenly closed because some unelected moderator decides to exert their power. No wonder we are at the ludicrous situation where so many questions are being closed. Personally I hardly even bother coming here any more (and I know for a fact other people feel the same) as half the questions I'm interested in are suddenly closed (without often the mundane and dull questions left). Why should people bother wasting time supplying an answer to a question when they know that it could (seemingly) arbitrarily be closed at any moment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I subscribe to the StackExchange twitter feed and it's amazing how many of the questions selected to appear in that feed (presumably automatically based on popularity) end up being closed. If people are interested in it, contributing and provoking discussion then what gives someone else the right to stamp down on that? I remember when this site was set up it was to act as an &quot;overflow&quot; for the questions that weren't quite suitable for StackOverflow yet were programming related (with an example cited as the (in)famous &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/84556/whats-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon&quot;&gt;What is your favourite programming cartoon?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;). The irony is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate/71733&quot;&gt;questions like that&lt;/a&gt; would never be allowed here any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure moderators think they are doing their best by following some &quot;charter&quot;, but who wrote that? Who was consulted? Again I come back to &lt;strong&gt;letting the people decide&lt;/strong&gt; what should be here via the mechanisms that already exist with moderators only needing to close the most egregious violations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17659" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3634" RevisionGUID="797928a7-5516-40f1-9d92-13ec26e41aca" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Having lived through &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow summarily directing their trash to us&lt;/a&gt;, I'd be leery to do the same to another site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, however, the Workplace wants that mention in our FAQ, I'm all for it. I do think they should propose the wording, as they know best what types of workplace and career questions are on-topic there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17660" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3662" RevisionGUID="0d769ae4-f101-4a5b-97e2-a3b6ece99035" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quantcast.com/programmers.stackexchange.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stack Exchange's aggregate traffic is public and available on Quantcast&lt;/a&gt;, but it may or may not be an accurate or up-to-date picture at any moment in time. It should, however, be accurate enough for the purposes of figuring out if a contest helped: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/a/3205/3389&quot;&gt;it was used a lot on Gaming.SE&lt;/a&gt; during the &lt;a href=&quot;http://skyrimvsmw3.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Skyrim vs. Modern Warfare 3 promotion&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much more detailed analytics are indeed available to SE employees and to moderators, but they're not available mostly for the reasons outlined in the answers to the MSO question, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/106306/why-are-stats-not-public-information&quot;&gt;Why are stats not public information?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/106314/149432&quot;&gt;cwallenpoole's answer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I might hazard some guesses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This might have to do with the same reason that SE sites are &quot;not about the rep&quot;. If exact numbers are used, that could lead to someone gaming the system, realizing that x and y conditions lead to condition z. In the context of a blog, this can lead to especially perverse aberrations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It also could have to do with principles similar to those outlined in Tufte's &lt;em&gt;Visual Explanations.&lt;/em&gt; The quantifiable, without appropriate contextualization can lead to grossly inaccurate conclusions. (you can see his discussion on pg. 36, if you care. A better example from a different book is the stock-market to sun-spot ratio chart at the beginning of &lt;em&gt;Visual Display of Quantitative Information&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One rule to rule them all means both that you don't have to micro-manage what is and is not appropriate and you don't have the complaint, &quot;But &lt;em&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;pronoun&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/em&gt; gets to do it &lt;em&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;possesive-pronoun&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/em&gt; way...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of course, these are more guesses as to/justification of the reasoning than they are the rationale themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/107437/149432&quot;&gt;Jeff Atwood's answer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pretty much what cwallenpoole said in his answer; in my mind, this is like arguing for full disclosure of people's salaries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And anyway, what's the &lt;em&gt;problem?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Those who need to know, can get the information.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Those who wish to know, can ask those that have it for a summary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Just because you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; get the information doesn't mean you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; it. Information porn can be harmful. And having it can cause a distraction from the stuff that matters, just like real porn...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned, they'll generally provide a 10,000-foot picture of those analytics upon request, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17661" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3682" RevisionGUID="4c760b2e-8bf1-40c9-bc46-5bab191075e2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sometimes we suspend after only two consecutive closed negative score questions depending on if they seemed to acknowledge our feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hm, no we don't, unless I missed a memo or something. Mod messages may carry a suspension or be just warnings, and that's no immediately clear from, let's say, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/admin/users&quot;&gt;list of recent mod messages&lt;/a&gt;. We typically go with a warning first, and suspend only if the behaviour is repeating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The typical dance is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A mod message warning for first offenders,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suspension for a week for second time offenders,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suspension for a month for third time offenders,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suspension for a year or more for the absolutely nefarious ones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course that may vary a bit per offence, and you're right, our &quot;policy&quot; is mostly a mixup of instinct, looking at past mod messages, TL chats. Generally I go for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consistently low quality questions over time&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common abusive pattern, and the one where we've gone with the typical warning/suspension dance almost every time. I don't think there's need for a change in policy here, warn first, suspend if the behaviour persists.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question repetition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is mostly a noob mistake, and I don't think it's worth a mod message, it's easily resolved with a comment (or two). I'd go for a suspension only if the user blatantly ignores the comments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sockpuppet upvoting&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I haven't had to deal with this one yet, I'd say it makes sense to skip the warning and suspend all participants. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abusive to others&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per case, and I'd prefer if there was some mod discussion before a warning or a suspension, this one almost always demands a second set of eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Revenge downvoting&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last time I mod messaged someone for revenge downvoting, I went for just a warning, and regretted it a week later when he did something else, equally suspension worthy (this time, I pulled the trigger). I wouldn't mind if we skip the warning for revenge downvoting in general and suspend on first offence, but I also wouldn't object to warn first timers. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Self-destruction of own content&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also a common noob mistake, that's rarely repeated. Warn, and only suspend if (s)he does it again. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Using signatures or taglines&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm only mentioning this one because there's a template for it. The time to edit out the signature or tagline is less than mod messaging the user...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Excessive self-promotion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the only contributions from the user is spam, destroy the account.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there are non spam contributions, delete the spam ones and warn or suspend.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Excessive discussion in comments&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My favourite one. Warning the first time, and possibly the second time, not necessarily via a mod message, a comment on the post the discussion is going on &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; a superping in chat would be enough (imho). For people who keep pestering others with borderline rude comments, a suspension should be considered even for first time offenders and especially if they've already ignored a comment by a mod asking them to calm down and be nice (which is what all of us go for at first).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Something else...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strictly per case, obviously.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If an issue can be discussed publicly, a comment or a superping in chat is preferable and if not, there's always the option of a private chat, a completely tedious and cumbersome process that doesn't however leave a permanent black mark&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; on the user's record, the way mod messages do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Worth noting that SE takes the black mark thingy seriously, I got in trouble for suspending a fellow SE mod and a user who volunteered while testing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/133291/mod-message-header-notification-is-missing&quot;&gt;rather obnoxious bug&lt;/a&gt;. Apparently for science isn't a good reason for a suspension, even for a day.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify for non mods: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a few of your questions get closed / down voted, an automatic mod only flag is raised. The first time that happens, you may get a mod warning (or not), but a suspension is unwarranted (imho), unless of course the questions are of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080329181633AAdYPKu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;how is babby formed&quot;&lt;/a&gt; variety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second time the flag is raised you will be suspended for a short time (week or less) &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; you may get by with a warning, if we forget to send it the first time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17662" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3686" RevisionGUID="7ab0603d-c65d-4a5c-98a5-07950809f798" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;No.&lt;/strike&gt; Apparently there is on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/40353/stack-overflow-glossary-dictionary-of-commonly-used-terms&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know there aren't many acronyms that are specific to Stack Exchange (apart from the obvious use of site initials - e.g. SO for Stack Overflow).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you tried &lt;a href=&quot;http://acronymfinder.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://acronymfinder.com&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if someone uses an acronym in a post that you're not familiar with leave them a comment asking them to explain what it means. There are far too many of these TLAs* for us all to remember them all and some have multiple meanings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Three Letter Acronyms&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17663" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3701" RevisionGUID="c6a8c430-b783-46dc-9e34-21789e1df43b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Migrating to beta sites and sites that are not in our migration target list&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Showing the full list of sites in the off topic dialog has been asked for a ton of times, and has been declined each time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;maybe one that is dependant on reputation, only people who have over 10000 rep can see beta sites or a comment block for where else it should go&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, no, unless you mean reputation on the target site. We've suffered enough from bad migrations from Stack Overflow to know that reputation on the source site says absolutely nothing about whether a question belongs on the target site or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Migration comments&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are an extremely bad habit, and I really (really) dislike them. The typical dance is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A question that includes the word &quot;career&quot; is closed, or is gathering down / close votes fast.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An (un)helpful commenter posts something like &quot;this belongs on the Workplace&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;OP, being new and having no idea we can migrate, posts on the Workplace. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The question is closed on the Workplace as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same dance happens for OnStartups, for questions that include the word &quot;business&quot;. Cross posting is not something we like very much, but the important thing here is that the OP has been rejected by two sites. If getting your question closed in one site sucks, imagine how much it stinks when it happens twice in a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main issue here is that people feel they are being nice by proposing an alternative, and they are, however migration is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; an alternative to closing poor questions that don't belong on Stack Exchange in general. What annoys me the most is that 99% of the times I see a migration comment from a high(ish) rep member, they haven't taken the time to bring the question to shape, even if just by fixing obvious spelling / grammar mistakes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this doesn't apply to you, comments like &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/153085/master-degree-in-software-engineering-vs-game-development-vs-web-development#comment291063_153085&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&lt;/a&gt; is a better fit for most work questions, but I'm not sure this is really a work question. I think it is a very poor idea to get a Masters immediately after you graduate. Get a few years of work experience first. I would not hire someone with a masters and no professional work experience over someone with a BA or BS for an entry level job because they expect more money and still only have entry level skills. And wanting what pays best and is easiest is a conflict, the hard stuff pays best. -  HLGEM 1 hour ago&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;are exactly what a migration comment should be like. Thanks for taking the time to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Point to the workplace, but also pointing out that the question might not fit there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provide a mini answer to the question. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do we migrate to the Workplace, then?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll answer the same way &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/135239/162704&quot;&gt;I've answered for Programmers&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flag for moderation attention, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drop the questions in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler&quot;&gt;Water Cooler&lt;/a&gt;, the Workplace's main chat room.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both options involve the Workplace community having a say in whether the question belongs on their site or not, and that's a good thing, and far better than a random migration comment, that more often than not is more obnoxious than useful. I realize you are part of the Workplace community, and currently the top user by reputation there, however you can't decide on your own if the question should or should be not migrated. Lacking an option for users to vote to migrate to the Workplace, flagging or visiting the Water Cooler are what's left, and are good enough solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;/rant&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17664" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3708" RevisionGUID="810f2ce2-72db-4fc2-886e-9c47e421ec07" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/status-completed&quot; class=&quot;post-tag moderator-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'status-completed'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;status-completed&lt;/a&gt; (somewhat)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/134636/update-migration-path-list-for-non-moderators&quot;&gt;no longer a migration target&lt;/a&gt; on Stack Overflow, and the difference is already showing, last time we rejected a Stack Overflow question was May 22. Of course we get a lot less migrations now than before, but the ones we get are definitely on topic and of good/high quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SOpedians can still &lt;em&gt;suggest&lt;/em&gt; migrating to Programmers, either by flagging for moderation attention or through comments, and the latter is still a problem (&quot;my question was closed on Stack Overflow, let's copy paste it verbatim on that other site the helpful commenter pointed me to&quot;), but it's a far lesser problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17665" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3733" RevisionGUID="6dfb4c0a-2250-42e7-95df-43515db8e6ae" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I write this both as a 20,000+ user and former elected moderator on Programmers, and as a community manager at Stack Exchange. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First and foremost: &lt;strong&gt;we will not be changing this site's name&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why? Well, let's talk about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have brought up here, there is no evidence right now to support the claim that the site's name is leading to its problems. If anything, I have a counterexample - the site itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think by now we all know how &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/64046/155160&quot;&gt;the site came about&lt;/a&gt;. When &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&quot;&gt;the new scope was handed down&lt;/a&gt;, it was not received terribly well and we're still sorting some of that out. The fact is, though, that throughout most of last year, the site slowly evolved to move away from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl&quot;&gt;&quot;Stack Overflow's toilet bowl&quot;&lt;/a&gt; image and to what it is today. It happened through comments, (sometimes bitter) meta arguments, flag handling, etc., and look at what we have now - there's an engaged, active community involved in moderation and governance. Even though there were a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title&quot;&gt;couple&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site&quot;&gt;discussions&lt;/a&gt;, the site name did not matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember when most of the front page would be closed questions and I'd be somewhere promoting the site and trying not to feel embarrassed to point people to it. I wouldn't be embarrassed now. I look at the front page and I see 6 closed questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154283/should-i-demand-unit-testing-from-programmers&quot;&gt;Should I demand unit-testing from programmers?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; and in my opinion rightly so - it's a discussion-oriented question designed to affirm the asker's existing belief. Discouraging questions like this one is a part of our core principles at Stack Exchange to the point where it's written down in the shared FAQ:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, &lt;strong&gt;avoid&lt;/strong&gt; asking subjective questions where ...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154339/advice-on-scrum-for-the-solitary-developer&quot;&gt;Advice on SCRUM for the solitary developer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Closed as a duplicate of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/220/agile-for-the-solo-developer&quot;&gt;canonical, open question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154342/are-there-references-discussing-the-use-parallel-programming-as-a-development-me&quot;&gt;Are there references discussing the use parallel programming as a development methodology?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference-seeking question. I don't have a strong feeling on this one. Could go either way, personally, but usually questions like this result in poorly curated lists.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154338/identifying-methods-with-a-specified-id-in-d&quot;&gt;Identifying methods with a specified Id in D&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Migrated to Stack Overflow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154282/if-variable-type-not-working-properly&quot;&gt;if ($variable == $type) not working properly&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off-topic, though opted to not migrate, which is fair enough.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154270/is-learning-blackberry-programming-a-good-choice&quot;&gt;Is learning BlackBerry programming a good choice?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Canonically off-topic for Programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I look at these questions, I see a pattern: &lt;strong&gt;all of them are about some aspect of software development&lt;/strong&gt;. Changing your name to &quot;Software Development Stack Exchange&quot; or anything of that ilk will not stop questions like these. Changing your name to an abstract concept will not automatically draw people in. What attracts experts to a site is the content. Focus on that instead and you will continue to grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, Gaming SE is currently in the spotlight after having been &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/06/welcome-to-the-arqade/&quot;&gt;rebranded to Arqade&lt;/a&gt;, so it's natural that that's prompting other sites to ask about getting a brand and a domain of their own. Our official answer is that you can ask, but there is no definite answer. &lt;strong&gt;Name changes will happen exceedingly rarely at best, and you should not plan on, depend on, or even anticipate it.&lt;/strong&gt; There's no fixed traffic criteria or an &quot;awesome meter&quot; that will say definitively that you've &lt;em&gt;earned&lt;/em&gt; your name change and that it &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; happen. If we do it again, it will likely be an act-of-god kind of scenario. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example is Fitness &amp;amp; Nutrition now known as Physical Fitness. In that case, part of the site's name explicitly mentioned a subject that was off-topic on the site. The site's community rallied together to start enforcing that and we eventually matched their efforts with a new name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Programmers is not in either of these situations. So the bottom line is, stop fixating on the name. A name change isn't a silver bullet that will fix your problems. Keep growing the site, solidifying the scope, addressing whatever other issues you (as a community) perceive to exist, but don't worry about the name. It is not holding you back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17667" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3758" RevisionGUID="19f1949b-9a04-402b-a8d6-a987280fe631" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The question ban is automatic, and it's not something the moderators control. We don't even know that you are question banned, unless you tell us. To lift the question ban you will need to follow the instructions given in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;, that should have appeared when you tried to ask a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question history is troubling, as maple_shaft &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3757/25936&quot;&gt;already mentioned&lt;/a&gt;, from your 16 questions in total:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;9 were closed and deleted,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;from the remaining 7, one is down voted and all but two were edited to fix obvious and not so obvious issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and you have provided no answers. We don't require you to answer questions, provided you ask great ones, but when your questions are not really welcomed by the community, we do expect you to give back by providing some good answers. We are a community of volunteers, and it's only reasonable to expect you to give something back for all the help you have been getting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that this time the troubling question pattern kicked off both the manual suspension process&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the automatic question ban. That's a bit harsh, and about a month ago I asked Stack Exchange to let moderators know when a user is question banned, as I feel it's quite annoying to come back from a suspension only to find out that a secondary and silent ban is in place, but my request was ignored. I honestly had no idea that you were question banned when I suspended you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't even know the exact algorithm of the question ban and can't even guess if a user is banned or not, and at this point it's all up to you. If you feel the ban is unfair, you will have to contact Stack Exchange directly, at &lt;code&gt;team+programmers@stackexchange.com&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; There were a lot of user flags on your questions, which brought the pattern to my attention, and I decided to suspend you.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17668" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3760" RevisionGUID="71f7dade-07a7-4c29-bed5-7dcafbb0288b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This has already been &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9817/suggestion-if-you-voted-to-close-a-question-and-it-gets-re-opened-you-lose-100&quot;&gt;proposed and declined&lt;/a&gt;, a brief summary of the answers there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The feature would do more to encourage crap questions than discourage incorrect closures, people would be hesitant to vote to close even the most obvious closeworthy questions in fear of the reputation penalty,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We can't penalise people for a process we don't award them for. People are voting to close to help the site maintain it's quality standards, they don't get &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; reward for it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every asker that had their question closed thought it was interesting, useful and on-topic before asking it. If five people decided it's not, it will take five other people to review the closure, the asker's opinion alone won't overcome the community's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have examples of questions that you feel were wrongly closed, feel free to bring them up on Meta for review. That may sound like a waste of time to you, but we are a community of volunteers, freely volunteering our time to help others. If you are not interested in spending some time improving the question, I'm sorry, but there isn't much we can do about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17669" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3763" RevisionGUID="299aa3d3-ad69-45c5-946a-70bbb261909c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I seem to have reached this limit while editing my answer to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&quot;&gt;I&amp;#39;ve inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code -- what now?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a bit frustrating, as the editor didn't warn me, so I typed away and submitted... and it truncated the end of the text AND the links...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now I'll gladly rewrite this quickly, and make sections more concise to fit everything in, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What exactly is the limit?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe the editor should warn and block submission, like the comment section does.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Though I agree such long posts probably do not happen too often. Sorry. got interested in this question more and more :)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Update 2012/07/11:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3767/3631&quot;&gt;Shog9's answer&lt;/a&gt; and comments below it for more details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See this &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/26723/151515&quot;&gt;answer from JeffAtwood&lt;/a&gt; on another similar Meta.SO thread, where a fix is said to have been implemented, and the discussion we have in comments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And finally see my &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3770/3631&quot;&gt;&quot;test-case answer&quot;&lt;/a&gt; below and in particular its &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/3770/revisions&quot;&gt;revision log&lt;/a&gt;. See steps below.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Steps to reproduce:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3770/3631&quot;&gt;&quot;test-case answer&quot;&lt;/a&gt; was created by simply identifying where things went wrong in &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/155505/3631&quot;&gt;my answer&lt;/a&gt; to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&quot;&gt;question linked above&lt;/a&gt; and I narrowed it down to between revisions &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/7b75c2e1-15ac-408d-807a-4cd83a2494bc/view-source&quot;&gt;12&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/596bbe49-17a3-4c25-8175-d6242d796064/view-source&quot;&gt;13&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So I created a question with content from revision 12 (+disclaimer a the top about testing),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;then edited it with content from revision 13 (but with the link table of revision 12, to get the untrucated ones in there as well, as the revision 13 was obviously damaged),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the submission went through just fine and without warning, and the content was indeed truncated again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Update 2012/07/11 - continued:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crap, it appears the revision log of my test-case doesn't show all the steps, and doesn't show the messages I had left in the &quot;change logs&quot;. Probably because I did them without a big interval between them, and when that's the case the SE systems seem to merge them in one changeset (probably so we don't hit the &lt;code&gt;10 edits =&amp;gt; CW&lt;/code&gt; rule when editing answers rapidly while they're new).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, that's annoying here for looking at the test-case (maybe SE gods have a way to see full logs), but the &lt;strong&gt;steps I gave above should be enough to reproduce it&lt;/strong&gt; anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Update by Shog9&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reproduced, definitely a bug, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/139320/post-maximum-length-check-ignores-markdown-results-in-long-formatted-answers&quot;&gt;written up on MSO&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17670" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3764" RevisionGUID="e0981ce3-ea98-478e-8e90-596b4fb12e7b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Unless things have changed (and given the status-declined tag, it doesn't appear that way), &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13784/please-increase-the-maximum-allowed-length-for-answers&quot;&gt;an answer is limited to 30,000 characters&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The explanation given is that posts that exceed 30,000 characters are rare and might indicate other problems with the question. Like &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&quot;&gt;the FAQ says&lt;/a&gt;, if a book is more suited to answer the question, then it's not an appropriate question for a Stack Exchange site. 30,000 characters is (by my estimate) 12 pages of double-spaced 12 point Times New Roman text - if a question actually requires that much text, it probably has problems. For example, it might be asking multiple questions that should be broken out into independent questions or it might be overly broad (one of the reasons for closing as a non-constructive question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're right that truncation is not the answer, though. It's not very user-friendly when content gets chopped off without warning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17671" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3767" RevisionGUID="a6e75abb-f6bc-456c-9459-58bad7a06e9e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I can't reproduce this; trying to submit several chapters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland produces,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oops! Your answer couldn't be submitted because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;body is limited to 30000 characters; you entered 34491&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Submitting an edit using the default inline editor behaves a little differently - I got a little pop-up reading,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;body is limited to 30000 characters; you entered 34701&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opening the editor in a separate tab reverts to the submission failing with an error:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oops! Your edit couldn't be submitted because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;body is limited to 30000 characters; you entered 34837&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even here, the text wasn't &lt;em&gt;truncated&lt;/em&gt; - the submission was flat-out rejected. It may be that some combination of formatting or link markup specific to your answer allowed it to bypass the first check and be accepted (but truncated); if you can reproduce this, please post details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;haylem managed to reproduce this quite effectively! I've written up a full bug report on MSO: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/139320/post-maximum-length-check-ignores-markdown-results-in-long-formatted-answers&quot;&gt;Max length check ignores markup, results in truncation of long, formatted answers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17672" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3797" RevisionGUID="bbcbf645-d119-493f-87c1-f315b0454c16" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Closed is the same as your &quot;frozen&quot;. The idea behind closing a question is to prevent answers to a question that is not a good fit for Programmers (or, more generally, to the Stack Exchange format). Closed is meant as a temporary state. Either the question gets sufficient corrections and reopened or it can't be salvaged and gets deleted. There are even some &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78048/auto-deleting-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year/92006#92006&quot;&gt;automatic procedures in place to clean up some questions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Closing early (as in before any answers have been posted) is a very good thing. It enables people (preferably the author, otherwise the community members) to fix the question and make it a good question. Once there are answers, it takes more work to make the question good, since edits will either have to be sure to not invalidate any existing answers or the community will also have to clean up the existing answers to make them valid (otherwise, a moderator would have to delete them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also two other states for questions - protected and locked. Protected questions can not be answered by users who have not hit a reputation threshold. Locked questions are to resolve extremely serious problems and prevent all voting and editing (and for questions, new answers) and provides for questions that are being discussed on Meta, questions that have historical significance but are not good questions, or have generated a large number of off-topic or chatty comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're trying to save old questions, &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed:1&quot;&gt;go through the list of closed questions&lt;/a&gt;. If you see a question that you don't think should have been closed, ask about the reasoning in Chat or on Meta. If you can save it, make a heroic edit, clean it up, and vote to reopen (and maybe share your work on chat to get more feedback, edits, and reopen votes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my perspective as a moderator, I rarely see flags to reopen a closed question. If you make a heroic edit and aren't getting reopen votes, flag it for review by a moderator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, something that we haven't been doing (and perhaps should consider) is looking at the old closed questions that don't meet the criteria for automatic deletion and either salvaging them or deleting them. However, that would need to be a new discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17674" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3835" RevisionGUID="9fae3526-7dc5-4b7a-ba0d-800d140e1d14" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...this question &amp;hellip;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158341/average-career-programmer-with-no-passion-try-harder-or-try-related-it-field&quot;&gt;Average career programmer with no passion: try harder or try related IT field?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;hellip; and I think such a canonical-form question should exist here on programmers...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To reopen / rewrite above question and to have its answers converge into useful &lt;em&gt;canon&lt;/em&gt; instead of diverging into garbage bits of unrelated advice, consider passing it through an &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/124930/165773&quot; title=&quot;what's this?&quot;&gt;Atwood's transform&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt; 1&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;What traits to look for in &quot;outside&quot; career fields in order to leverage programming experience&lt;/em&gt; - stuff like that.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need something, some wording to effectively &lt;em&gt;repel&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sup&gt; 2&lt;/sup&gt; answers like &quot;oh our company has a BA/QA/PM position opened, question is 10 years old, are you still interested in a new career?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need wording that would allow connecting different answers into some larger picture that makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Question wording would ideally allow reader to connect advice like &quot;go QA&quot;, &quot;go BA&quot;, &quot;assess your current skill set&quot;, &quot;decide between fields involving some minor coding, or dealing with programmers, or dealing with software product / process&quot; - to build something bigger on it, instead of leaving it lay as an unsorted heap of minor ideas.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;em&gt;Atwood's transform&lt;/em&gt; - here is a recent example for the reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/posts/2799/revisions&quot; title=&quot;How can I tell if my shyness is an issue at a workplace?&quot;&gt;a question at Workplace&lt;/a&gt;, revisions 3 through 5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;em&gt;repel&lt;/em&gt; garbage answers - one sure can not 100% protect a question from getting garbage answers. But at least try to phrase the question so that you can come to Meta, say &lt;em&gt;&quot;Here's the question, here's the answer, I don't feel like the answer is OK&quot;&lt;/em&gt; and have a good chance of garbage being downvoted by active community members who happen to read your post. Fair enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;update&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, I've found an older question at &lt;em&gt;Workplace&lt;/em&gt; that sounds pretty close to what I would expect of &quot;canonical&quot; question of this kind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/199/168&quot;&gt;Possible career transitions for a seasoned software developer?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have been a software developer for 11 years...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...I am thinking of making a career change - ideally moving somewhere my technical skills would still be beneficial in some shape or form...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the steps I can take to figure out what I really like and what can make an interesting career going further?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17675" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3836" RevisionGUID="8910c99d-6004-40cb-8c68-fac47663cce5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Programmers.SE, we need to talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've had a rough couple of years, what with being originally a place to ask anything and everything and having to shape up. I get that it's annoying to still see off-topic question or questions that are unanswerable day in and day out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's no excuse for the excessively rude and offensive comments and answers that currently happen on &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/158554/8&quot;&gt;questions like these&lt;/a&gt;. Questions like that aren't great: they're probably off-topic. But when we have users with literally thousands of reputation leaving comments like the now-deleted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No thanks, I'm not your [expletive deleted].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And answers &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/158558/8&quot;&gt;like this&lt;/a&gt; that link to extremely condescending and overtly hostile &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LvpOO.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GIFs like these&lt;/a&gt;, we have completely lost our way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't an isolated incident, either: hostile comments and answers like these happen all the time, and what appears to be increasing frequency, from people with enough reputation to know better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154430/looking-for-a-programmer#comment294513_154430&quot;&gt;If I had a quarter for every time I've seen posts like this, I wouldn't need my job. Son, I suggest you learn to program if you want to create one.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/152123/how-can-a-developer-realize-the-full-value-of-his-work#comment289122_152123&quot;&gt;A young, good looking developer could always work as a stripper but even then it is not a surefire way.&lt;/a&gt; (+2)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/152123/how-can-a-developer-realize-the-full-value-of-his-work#comment289123_152123&quot;&gt;this is a rant ( there is not answerable question ) by someone with an inflated ego at best, and completely off topic&lt;/a&gt; (+5)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/149956/stored-procedures-out-of-style#comment284230_149956&quot;&gt;There really isn't a question here, if under the thinly veiled bias and flamebait there is actually a small semblance of a real question then it not constructive and inviting of debate. And besides security being a non-issue - You keep believing that and high price consultants will be making bank for a long time cleaning up the mess.&lt;/a&gt; (+3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132905/situations-where-22-does-not-necessarily-equal-4#comment248793_132905&quot;&gt;IMHO, if indeed it was asked like you quote it, this is a stupid question, and that should be the correct answer.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/157143/dealing-with-technically-ignorant-and-apathetic-bosses-and-colleagues#comment299686_157143&quot;&gt;nice rant, now - where is the question?&lt;/a&gt; (+1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/153916/8&quot;&gt;Answer that links to LMGTFY and Guru.com&lt;/a&gt; (+1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155146/javadoc-for-c#comment295311_155146&quot;&gt;Anything wrong with Google today? &quot;Javadoc for C++&quot; brings excellent results. &lt;/a&gt; (+3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me be clear: we make the internet a worse place when stuff like this happens. We make our site look like trash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, stop it. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. Vote to close, flag, down-vote, or leave a polite comment explaining to the user where they went wrong and just &lt;em&gt;move on.&lt;/em&gt; If you find yourself unable to resist leaving a snarky or hostile comment on a question or answer you don't like, I humbly suggest you do what I did: take a break from the site. It'll still be here when you come back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More reading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/07/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/&quot;&gt;Kicking off the Summer of Love&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/138173/etiquette-for-posting-civil-and-informative-comments/&quot;&gt;Etiquette for posting civil and informative comments&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3626/what-are-some-examples-of-good-guiding-comments-to-leave-users-to-help-underst&quot;&gt;What Are Some Examples of Good &amp;quot;Guiding Comments&amp;quot; to Leave Users To Help Understand The Site?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17676" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3843" RevisionGUID="ec4c01a8-b6e9-4a60-9dcb-3385f2017e34" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Thank you for bring this up on meta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am constantly seeing rude, snarky, condescending, and even hostile comments like these all over Programmers, and appreciate you taking the time to bring this issue to everyone's attention. Its not all users, but its enough users to make a noticeable difference in the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't agree more with this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. Vote to&#xA;  close, flag, down-vote, or leave a polite comment explaining to the&#xA;  user where they went wrong and just move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're actually interested in helping the user understand their problem so they can correct it, that's fine. But if you want to comment just to make a point and never see the question again, refrain from commenting altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, here's another bit of advice stolen from &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/a/5046/8462&quot;&gt;Arquade's Meta post on rude comments&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;How should one react to rude comments?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't engage. &lt;strong&gt;Don't upvote the rude comment&lt;/strong&gt;.  Remember even if a&#xA;  rude comment is funny to you it may be irritating to others. Telling&#xA;  off the rude user will only make matters worse. If the rude comment&#xA;  also says something useful (e.g. &quot;Hey stupid butt, your question is&#xA;  off topic&quot;) consider adding a &lt;em&gt;polite&lt;/em&gt; comment that contains&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;constructive&lt;/em&gt; information instead and flag the rude comment for removal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/5045/how-should-we-deal-with-rude-comments/5046#comment14552_5046&quot;&gt;comment&lt;/a&gt; below explaining why you don't upvote rude comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Don't upvote the rude comment.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; I feel this is really important. When we do that, we're pretty much giving tacit approval to whatever&#xA;  has been posted and sending the message that the community approves of&#xA;  this type of behavior&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The majority of people I see posting questions on here are asking for help, and I hate seeing them turned away with sarcasm, rudeness, and a condescending or elitist attitude. I don't think SE would succeed if it wasn't for the millions of people that volunteer their time to help others solve their problems, and having these sort of comments all over the site, with frequent upvotes, is a good way to make volunteers think this site is not for them, and to leave the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also stolen from Arqade's post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;Is there anything I can do to get rid of rude comments?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Just flag them; there's a little flag icon to the left of a comment.&#xA;  Click it and select &quot;rude or offensive&quot; in the menu that pops up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CkmHj.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The comment will be flagged for moderator attention, a moderator can&#xA;  remove the comment if they agree the post is rude/offensive. However&#xA;  if 3 or more users total flag the same comment as rude, it will&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/138168/reduce-the-threshold-for-comment-deletion-with-flags#comment388193_138168&quot;&gt;automatically be deleted (see this comment for the formula)&lt;/a&gt;. If&#xA;  the comment is very high scoring it might take a couple extra flags to&#xA;  automatically delete, but &lt;strong&gt;it only takes 3 flags to delete most&#xA;  comments&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note that nothing bad can happen to you or even the poster of the rude&#xA;  comment when you flag. These flags are anonymous. By flagging a single&#xA;  comment you're not getting anyone into trouble, you're just helping&#xA;  keep the site a clean, civil place. If you feel someone is being&#xA;  persistently and problematically rude, flag one of their&#xA;  posts/comments (or one of your own posts) with an &quot;other&quot; flag and&#xA;  explain the situation; a moderator can privately contact the user&#xA;  about persistent rudeness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3aToo_long;_didn%27t_read&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tl;dr&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't upvote rude comments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you see rude comments, flag them as rude/offensive for removal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17677" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3889" RevisionGUID="b4881cd6-1484-4aed-b48b-0d7a3e7e619e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/115184/seriously-a-mod-wont-migrate#comment299931_115184&quot;&gt;first rule of migration is &quot;don't migrate crap&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. If a question isn't already a good question, it doesn't get migrated. I've actually stepped in and closed questions for off-topic without a migration even as people were voting to migrate because the question was not suitable for migration and would have been closed on the target site anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yannis posted a comment saying what needs to be done - ask the question on Stack Overflow and include code. There are really four things that I can see happening - the user doesn't do anything and never gets an answer, they repost the identical question on Stack Overflow and they get their new question closed, they repost on Stack Overflow after adding code and get an answer, or they edit their post on Programmers to include code and it gets migrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm really not sure what other help we can provide, other than to ask on the appropriate site and include the relevant information (the code).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17678" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3898" RevisionGUID="c70df7f5-fc91-4e4f-b20d-a3231d3ea661" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I just asked &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/160392/ethical-to-dope-to-increase-performance-while-coding&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; with regards to using cognitive enhancing drugs to assist with your coding job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It wasn't as good of a question as I thought it would be, considering I left out specific details to not bring attention to a possible ethical issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, should I reveal the source and name of medication in order to make this a better question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt; Edit&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GlenH7 has attempted an &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/124930&quot;&gt;Atwood Transform&lt;/a&gt; on the question in order to make it more on-topic to programmers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17679" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3912" RevisionGUID="28b3a0d7-9cdc-4085-8bda-e85f8694abf0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The code doesn't really answer the asker's question or add value, IMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar question has been asked on MSO &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/95473/189446&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Generally on SO I see a lot of &quot;code only&quot; answers get down-voted and/or deleted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original question is more about &quot;why&quot; and &quot;is this correct&quot; rather than a &quot;I need the code to do this&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17680" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3951" RevisionGUID="38b20a13-372f-440e-bb36-73f7026b64e4" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h2&gt;Closure  rate 70% for unregistered users&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is an awful lot of trouble. In comparison, stats for registered users make one feel that simple act of registration has a magic effect of cutting half of it (to 38%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...We could do a &lt;strong&gt;trial run&lt;/strong&gt; for a couple of months and evaluate the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that requiring registration for questions can be cancelled if &lt;em&gt;trial run&lt;/em&gt; results turn out negative&lt;sup&gt; 1&lt;/sup&gt; above looks like a low risk test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per my reading, such a trial would fit the spirit of guidance provided in &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/&quot; title=&quot;reference article at Stack Exchange blog&quot;&gt;Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...we’re determined to keep question quality high, &lt;strong&gt;even at the cost of refusing a little sand&lt;/strong&gt;. It’s true that you can’t have Q&amp;amp;A without &lt;em&gt;questions&lt;/em&gt;, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&amp;amp;A site is to flood it with low-quality questions. I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/91808/about-new-downvote-policy-on-meta/91813#91813&quot;&gt;Mark Trapp&lt;/a&gt; summed it up best in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/91808/about-new-downvote-policy-on-meta/91813#91813&quot;&gt;this meta answer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;To put it another way, when I go to a Stack Exchange home page, I see a &lt;strong&gt;list of questions&lt;/strong&gt;. If most of those are terrible questions with little to no indication that I’d be wasting my time by reading them, the value proposition of visiting and participating is diminished: I have better things to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Compare that to &lt;em&gt;answers&lt;/em&gt; on a specific question: I’ve made a conscious choice to look into what I think is an interesting question. I already made the decision that the question is worth my time. If I find the answers to be useless, I have a few different options, as an interested party, to register my displeasure, including writing my own answer. Being able to write your own answer is key: if your answer is good enough, it’ll rise above the junk answers and everyone will be better off for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;There is no such action for question lists. I can’t say “these questions suck, show me this question I just thought up instead”: that’d be silly. So, it’s imperative the question list have a high signal-to-noise ratio, and removing the penalty for those users who do take the time to read a question and later find it to be useless so they can down-vote is conducive to that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fundamentally, answers can be filtered in ways that questions cannot. While there is a tension between having “enough” questions and a bunch of amazing, highly skilled answerers twiddling their thumbs waiting around for something to do, in the long run we’d much rather err on the side of having &lt;em&gt;interesting&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;on-topic&lt;/em&gt; questions for these folks to sink their teeth into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&amp;amp;A system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to &lt;strong&gt;maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers&lt;/strong&gt;. If this means aggressively downvoting or closing unworthy and uninteresting questions, so be it. Without a community of people willing to &lt;em&gt;answer&lt;/em&gt; questions, it really doesn’t matter if there are questions at all, does it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;if trial run results turn out negative&lt;/em&gt; - (not incidentally,) above guidance also provides a criteria on how to judge trial run results: &lt;strong&gt;maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS. As an &lt;strong&gt;answerer&lt;/strong&gt; like one of mentioned above (5+ K rep on answers), I am not particularly happy about current questions quality, which I think is clearly indicated by 5+ K downvotes I cast. One thing I find particularly frustrating is that sometimes, after downvoting bad questions, I find myself out of votes that I would use to upvote good ones - this happens frequently enough to make me feel that better prevention of low quality questions is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;update&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Registration requirement is turned on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LJAQh.png&quot; alt=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LJAQh.png&quot; title=&quot;'You must log in to ask a question'&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17681" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3969" RevisionGUID="ab478f9f-8f75-45b6-bfa6-19fb68c392b9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I have been hitting quite a few 404's on P.SE lately. I was wondering how great the idea of perma deleting questions &lt;em&gt;that have been around a long time and indexed and linked to&lt;/em&gt; (not spam or such) really is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the lastest blog post&lt;/a&gt; by Yannis Rizos contains a link to a deleted question (&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/31104/25936&quot;&gt;391 upvotes FCS!&lt;/a&gt;) in the 2nd paragraph, resulting in a 404 error for basically all(?) the audience of the blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not saying that these questions are a good fit to the site, but removing them completely, leaving dangling links all over the internet (am I exaggerating? :-) certainly isn't my idea of Making The Internet a Better Place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that don't mind closing; I wouldn't even mind a &lt;code&gt;trash.stackexchange.com&lt;/code&gt;; but in my very humble opinion, deleting valuable content from SE sites (not just P.SE) that has been lying there for weeks and months is just dead stupid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow up question on Meta Stack Overflow: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/148620/are-you-guys-turning-se-into-a-404-black-hole&quot;&gt;Are you guys turning SE into a 404 black hole?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17682" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3984" RevisionGUID="d5b5ddcb-60b3-4a19-8b83-aeaa3c1472c6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h2&gt;The general policy on deletions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From our &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Why are some questions or answers removed?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Questions that are extremely off topic, or of very low quality, may be removed at the discretion of the community and moderators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over time, closed questions that are not useful as signpoints to other questions may also be removed, as well as questions which have no significant activity over a very long period after being asked. For additional guidance, see How to Ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;commentary on the question or other answers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;asking another, different question&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;“thanks!” or “me too!” responses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;exact duplicates of other answers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;barely more than a link to an external site&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;not even a partial answer to the actual question&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you wish to improve an existing answer, click edit. For additional guidance, see How to Answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the policy, I'm sure you are aware of it, I'm only including it for completeness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Questions with historical significance&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for&quot;&gt;historical lock&lt;/a&gt; that has been introduced (fairly recently) as a counter measure to link rot: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the purpose of a Historical Lock?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A historical lock preserves older content that was very popular when it was originally posted, but is now off-topic or otherwise out of scope for the site it is posted on. Historically locking a post ends the debate over whether a question should be kept on the site or deleted, and is often the final state of a question that has been deleted and undeleted more than once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How are questions affected by historical locking?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition to the post notice being prominently displayed, posts which are historically locked are &quot;frozen in time;&quot; they cannot be voted on, answered, edited or commented. Historically-locked questions are omitted from normal question lists (those on the home page, /questions, and the various per-tag lists), but can still be found by searching for words in the post or title (via either site-search or Google, etc). The visual appearance of the entire post is altered by removal of the voting arrows from the question and all answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note that historical locked questions on meta sites are not hidden in this manner, though their answers are still frozen in the same fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Questions can be historically locked when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The post is contentious; i.e. it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When is it not appropriate to historically-lock a question?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Questions should not be historically locked if they:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Are being actively maintained, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Have little or no redeeming value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A good rule of thumb: If the question does not minimally meet Jeff Atwood's 3rd rule in the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/&quot;&gt;We Hate Fun Here&lt;/a&gt;&quot; blog post, it's probably not a good candidate for historical locking. The third rule is:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Does this question teach me anything that could make me better at my job? Can I learn something from it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How do I request a historical lock on a question?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Flag the question for moderator attention, with the &quot;custom description&quot; option. In the flag description, explain why you think the post should be historically locked. A moderator will evaluate the question using the criteria outlined above, and will either lock the question, or decline your flag with an explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alternatively, if you want to try and gain more community support for the question, or contest the moderator decision, you can post a question here on Meta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are currently under 10K, your only option to request a historical lock is to post a question about it on Meta. I would advice you to use a far more appropriate tone that in this question, and: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clearly explain why you think the question has redeeming value,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Politely request from the community to review it and decide whether it should be historically locked or not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; deleted question qualifies for the historical lock, please do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; waste everyone's time by bringing up questions on Meta that clearly don't qualify. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarification:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The historical lock is only meant for &lt;em&gt;deleted&lt;/em&gt; questions (or questions that are about to be deleted), locking closed questions prevents them from being edited and voted on. Furthermore the community cannot reverse a lock, while it can (and often does) reverse a closure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Changing the policy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears you disagree with it. Fair enough. Change it. Stop complaining about it, and change it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I'd support any &lt;strong&gt;constructive&lt;/strong&gt; attempt to solve the problem, however I must point out that there have been tons of discussions on Stack Overflow about deletions, and although the &quot;link rot&quot; problem is true for popular Stack Overflow questions it's almost completely irrelevant for lower traffic sites like Programmers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can understand that clicking on a link, only to find a 404 page stinks, but should also understand that keeping crap around stinks more. And although there might be some gems amongst our deleted questions, most of them are plain crap. This is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; Stack Overflow, if you are interested in changing Stack Overflow's or the network's policy, please post your question on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meta Programmers is a place were we discuss Programmers specific issues, and from a Programmers perspective &lt;strong&gt;the deleted popular questions that were linked all over the place were &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; ours to begin with&lt;/strong&gt;. Unfortunately tons and tons of crap were migrated here from Stack Overflow in the early days of the site. Most of these questions were closed (at some point), which send them back to Stack Overflow. What was deleted here was their (locked) rejected migration stubs. What was linked all over the place was their Stack Overflow URL, and not (so much) their Programmers one. If you want to make a case for them, please do it on Stack Overflow, not here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, closed but popular questions are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; being deleted on Programmers, at least not systematically. I've deleted more posts than all my fellow moderators &lt;em&gt;combined&lt;/em&gt;, if popular questions were being deleted, trust me, I'd know it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Are we making the internet better?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, let's what our most voted deleted questions are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's your favorite “programmer ignorance” pet peeve? (+410),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's your most controversial programming opinion? (+391),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What real life bad habits has programming given you? (+368),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a programmer what single discovery has given you the greatest boost in productivity? (+315),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to hide Thinking at Work so that the Non-Programmers don't suspect Slacking? (+257)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the best RSS feeds for programmers/developers? (238)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Best Java book you have read so far (+211)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did you get your first programming job? (+140) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the D programming language have a future? (+138)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What's wrong with cplusplus.com? (+128)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Best Java book you have read so far&quot; one is the one (from the list) with the most views, around 33K. And zero answers. Yeap, zero. It's a question that got all of its answers on Stack Overflow, and 99% of it's activity, including views, there. Gone. Again, if you want to make a case for it, go to Meta Stack Overflow please, not here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I honestly &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; know if we are making the internet better. However having (partially) reviewed some of the above questions, I don't see any indication that we are making the internet worse by deleting them. &lt;em&gt;If&lt;/em&gt; they were originally asked on Programmers and were part of our community's history, we would have a whole different discussion, but right now all I can say about them and their eventual fate is: &lt;strong&gt;meh&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The blog post&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was the worst possible example you could bring forth: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The question was deleted long time ago,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I could only find five links to the Programmers version of it,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The blog post &lt;em&gt;clearly indicated&lt;/em&gt; that it would lead to a 404 for most people,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The URL was &lt;code&gt;nofollow&lt;/code&gt;, so there wasn't an issue with indexing,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The only reason the URL was included was for our 10K users to be able to review it. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the completely inappropriate tone you chose for your question made me re-think the whole effort to salvege &lt;strong&gt;old and long forgotten&lt;/strong&gt; deleted questions by converting them to blog posts. Although I do not have any expectations for appreciation for my efforts to give back to the community, I am not a moron and will &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; freely volunteer my time to promote the community through an activity that has absolutely nothing to do with my diamond status when this is what I get for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point you got to say enough is enough. I've removed the url from the blog post, so users who would deliberatily click on a link that says &quot;hey, this is deleted&quot; won't have a bad experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Trash Stack Exchange solution (and its many variants)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been proposed countless times, and every time it has been denied by Stack Exchange. Personally I find it a good enough solution, but Stack Exchange doesn't seem to care enough for hosting content that has been deemed unsuitable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Stargazer712's proposal&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stargazer712 made what I must admit is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3976/25936&quot;&gt;interesting suggestion&lt;/a&gt; (carefully hidden under tons of borderline insulting crap). However it's based on a misunderstanding of the scale of the effort to salvage questions by converting them to blog posts. We are certainly not talking about converting &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; deleted question to a blog post, I have found 5 so far that I'd like to salvage, plus another one from Stack Overflow and &lt;em&gt;no one&lt;/em&gt; else has shown any interest in this. So, for all intents and purposes when we are talking about the blog as a way to salvage questions, we are talking about a total of six questions. That's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that 2 days after you posted this you still haven't brought forth any other evidence of systematic deletion of popular content with at least some redeeming value on Programmers, I'm sorry but I'll have to dismiss this as a non issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, we had numerous organized clean up efforts in the past that included deletions. I'm honestly hoping those are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the deletions you have in mind, as all the organized clean up efforts were discussed thoroughly on Meta before they began, and only began when it was obvious that the community supported them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do update your question, please either ping me in chat or post a comment here so I can review your updates. Apologies for the tone in my earlier answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17683" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4004" RevisionGUID="e6eb9c7e-13bb-4167-9f1d-4306a2011a6b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The question doesn't really qualify for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for&quot;&gt;historical lock&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Questions can be historically locked when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The post is contentious; i.e. it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question remains closed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a risk of it being deleted at some later point. We rarely delete highly upvoted questions without very good reason, however I can't promise that three 10K+ users or a fellow moderator won't vote to delete it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It and its answers are still editable and can be voted on (including re-open votes for the question)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It appears in site searches.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question gets a historical lock:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It will be frozen as is, no more edits or (any kind of) votes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It won't appear in site searches, and will only be accessible via its url. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The historical lock is more intended for questions that are already deleted or, for whatever reason, are very close to being deleted. For example if we where doing an organized cleanup, similar to &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/stci&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'stci'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;stci&lt;/a&gt; and we were targeting &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/project-management&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'project-management'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;project-management&lt;/a&gt; questions, then yes, it would make sense to lock it. But right now the question isn't really on a path to deletion, or if you prefer that path is extremely long, it already survived &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/stci&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'stci'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;stci&lt;/a&gt; (check &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/43409/revisions&quot;&gt;revision 5&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't mind locking it, the whole process is just a click of a button really, but given that one of its answers was edited earlier today, and the question has a pending re-open vote, it seems that its current state is preferable. Is there a very specific reason we should froze it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17684" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4018" RevisionGUID="f34d7403-46df-4a69-a144-1b0715c2b2a3" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I've been talking with him through email, and when I asked him why he left P.SE he said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I left for the exact same reason you wrote on your P.SE profile.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(He also said it was OK to share his thoughts in an answer here, and that he's not going to bother posting an answer here because he's gone for good, but he's pretty sure everyone knows why he left)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel&quot;&gt;my profile&lt;/a&gt;, well it's not very flattering because I wrote it one day while I was frustrated towards P.SE. My feelings haven't changed, but normally I would have kept them to myself&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If someone makes a Q&amp;amp;A site for Programmers to ask questions and get&#xA;  answers from other Programmers about any issue related to their career&#xA;  choice or self-identity as a programmer, let me know. I'd love to&#xA;  participate in such a site again, and will help you promote it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As for this site, I'm done with it unless something changes. I feel&#xA;  its changed too far from the original programming resource it once&#xA;  was, and the current moderation style is not for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I dislike that so much valuable information gets deleted for the sake&#xA;  of &quot;maintaining a clean site&quot;, dislike the way many users are treated&#xA;  (particularly new ones), and dislike the way the overall culture of&#xA;  this site has been changing from a community of programmers out to&#xA;  teach and learn from each other, to an insular group of programming&#xA;  elitists (of course this isn't all of you, or probably even most of&#xA;  you. Its just a large percentage of the more active/vocal users who&#xA;  take part in running the site).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anyways, I'm not interested in helping to support this site anymore,&#xA;  although I will be happy to take part in any initiatives to changes&#xA;  things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope the powers-that-be will take this into account when deciding future policies for a site, as Pierre is not the first one of our top users to quit the site. I can confirm that &lt;code&gt;DeveloperArt&lt;/code&gt; left for the same reason (been talking to him via email too), and I've seen many other high-rep names quietly disappear over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your 2nd question, yes &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/22568/158605&quot;&gt;it's possible to recover a deleted account&lt;/a&gt; although according to MSO it requires &quot;Jeff-Level&quot; access&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17685" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4020" RevisionGUID="3225d123-5aa0-46c1-970d-bb4521d29eee" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think this would make a good addition to the list of close reasons. This was &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86043/introduce-a-general-reference-close-reason&quot;&gt;status-declined on Meta Stack Overflow in 2011&lt;/a&gt;, but I think that it could be something that is revisited. The current policy might work fine on Stack Overflow, but setting the bar at a minimum amount of prerequisite knowledge (Theoretical Computer Science) and effort (all Stack Exchange sites) is something that has worked well and clearly specifying this as a close message would help reinforce it..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I tend to close them as off-topic, citing the part in the FAQ that says Programmers is a site for &quot;professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers&quot; with the reasoning that if a question is something that I'd expect a professional in the given field to know and fully understand, it falls outside of the scope. Other times, I have used &quot;not constructive&quot;, citing that you don't need specific expertise to answer the question (eg - a simple Google search yields the answer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see how Stack Overflow might not need this, but any professional-oriented Stack Exchange can have questions that are just too basic and should clearly differentiate this as a reason for bad questions. I can see this being useful not only here on Programmers, but perhaps Computer Science, Theoretical Computer Science, Cross-Validated, Cognitive Sciences, Server Fault, IT Security, Project Management, Signal Processing, Academia, and so on - the sites that focus on people with a certain level of existing knowledge, skills, and experience in a given domain (especially a domain that requires an amount of education and skill development, either formally or informally).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, I wonder if there's something more specific in the FAQ (or something more specific that can be added to the FAQ) that can be referenced for these questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17686" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4039" RevisionGUID="240a97b1-1e1e-4c09-9504-1175430b290d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Let's start with the feature request. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Psij.png&quot; alt=&quot;mod link on review answers&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4XYaQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;mod link on review questions&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When reviewing answers we have two mod links, when reviewing questions we only have the one. Having the mod link under the post feels a bit more natural, as that's where it normally is. Extremely insignificant feature request, I know, but coupled with the bug it's a bit more serious. Let's see what happens when you click the sidebar mod link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/J1IaD.png&quot; alt=&quot;mod link bug&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, that's not right ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, when doing anything from the mod menu (the one that works), you're redirected to the post's page instead of the post's review page. Not sure if this is a bug or a feature request, but it would be nice if we were redirected back where we came from, to continue reviewing. And it would be &lt;em&gt;extra&lt;/em&gt; nice if mod actions counted as review actions, mods love &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/147912/new-community-review-badges&quot;&gt;badges&lt;/a&gt; too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17687" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4040" RevisionGUID="f69795e8-d192-41b6-8951-e163dddc8047" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I've just discovered &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/&quot;&gt;review&lt;/a&gt; and got &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/120/custodian?userid=51770&quot;&gt;two Custodian badges&lt;/a&gt; for it, sweet! But I never got a notification for them, as I did for every other badge, and only discovered them when I noticed my bronze badge count incrementing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tJxNC.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was also &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/147918/didnt-get-notifications-for-custodian-badge&quot;&gt;reported yesterday on Meta StackOverflow&lt;/a&gt;, and it seems a bit random as &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/147922/small-typo-in-the-notification-for-new-community-review-badges&quot;&gt;some people did get notifications&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17688" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4047" RevisionGUID="cb8a579e-a7ea-4048-88ec-7b72c24922cf" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I went looking for this after &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/148117/badge-that-is-achieved-by-most-number-of-people&quot;&gt;you asked on Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;, and from looking at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/2677/162704&quot;&gt;Database schema documentation for the public data dump and Data Explorer&lt;/a&gt; there doesn't seem to be an easy way to query for badges per class. The badges table schema is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Badges&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Id&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;UserId, e.g.: &quot;420&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Name, e.g.: &quot;Teacher&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Date, e.g.: &quot;2008-09-15T08:55:03.923&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you are only interested in gold badges, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=general&amp;amp;filter=gold&quot;&gt;there aren't that many of them&lt;/a&gt;, the simple solution would be to hardcode their IDs in your query.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17689" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4108" RevisionGUID="87f24a36-4f1e-44c4-a608-4f86fd08fb4b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Believe me, I'd be the first in line to shut down recommendation questions if there was a real problem, or if there was a good reason to, but I'm not seeing either here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How are we doing right now in handling these types of questions? Are the current policies sufficient or are there more concrete policies that would be best implemented?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to tell how we're handling these types of questions without a significant amount of data demonstrating a problem. You've cited two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168144/books-for-exam-487-developing-windows-azure-and-web-services&quot;&gt;Books for Exam 487 Developing Windows Azure and Web Services&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168145/books-for-exam-486-asp-net-4-5-mvc&quot;&gt;Books for Exam 486 ASP.NET 4.5 MVC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They were both asked by the same person in rapid succession relatively about the same topic and both are absolutely terrible. If these two questions are demonstrative of an alleged problem with book recommendation questions, then I don't see it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest issue with their closing is that they were closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; instead of what they are: not real questions. The &quot;not constructive&quot; close reason seems to be used more and more as the &quot;I don't care why it's closed, just close it&quot; reason, which dilutes its meaning and causes ambiguity about why questions don't belong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with these questions aren't that they are asking for a book, it's that they don't describe anything about the problem the user is having, or rather &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the user is asking the question, to afford a useful response. They're like asking, &quot;tell me what book will teach me everything and anything about Java.&quot; Where to begin? Questions &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; narrow the scope down to a &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; problem, otherwise, they don't belong here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the two cited questions are incomplete in this respect, they're not real questions. They'd be &quot;not constructive&quot; if they had asked something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;What's your favorite way to study for Exam 486?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Exam 487 really sucks, how am I supposed to study for this stupid exam?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;How does Exam 486 make you feel (as a programmer)?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;What are some tips and tricks for overcoming my inability to take Exam 487 seriously?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;My co-worker/buddy/priest/cat says &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; book is the best for Exam 486. Help me prove him/her/it wrong.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Without expertise in the subject matter, how do people (especially moderators who might have to act on a flag) know if there is a singular &quot;canonical&quot; book on the question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not the guideline for books, and it's not up to anyone (much less moderators) to determine ahead of time (or during the act of moderation) whether there is a single canonical book for a subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, mimicking the guidelines in &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;Good Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, and as I described in &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2666/8&quot;&gt;What's up with all the book recommendation flags?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, the important things are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the topic asked about is &lt;em&gt;capable&lt;/em&gt; of providing a canonical book on the subject.&lt;/strong&gt; The application of this criteria requires common sense. Java doesn't count. PHP doesn't count. NLP for Big Data probably does. F# or any other boutique language probably does. If someone's really in doubt whether something counts, do an &lt;a href=&quot;http://amazon.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amazon.com search&lt;/a&gt; for the subject. If there's over 10,000 hits, it doesn't count.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the questions sufficiently describes a situation or problem space that invites converging on a small number of correct answers.&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;What are some good books on F#?&quot; sucks. &quot;Coming from a purely C# background, I'm trying to add F# to my repertoire. What is the definitive [read: canonical] book for getting up to speed with idiomatic F#?&quot; doesn't, or at least sucks a lot less. If in doubt, wait. If the question attracts dozens of answers, that's a problem. If it settles on 3–5, awesome. If there's a dozen but only a couple of really stand-out answers, cull the herd and protect the question if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither of these guidelines require domain-specific knowledge of the question; just an understanding of how to ask a good question, which is something anyone moderating (diamond or otherwise) should have a good handle on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What happens to topic areas covered by a small number of resources now (such as the latest language or library) down the road, when it is more popular and prevalent? Might resource requests, perhaps, be too localized since the available (and perhaps even what is considered canonical) change over the course of time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Irrelevant: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/87415/149432&quot;&gt;Stack Exchange is designed to handle changing answers&lt;/a&gt;, even rapidly changing answers, through frictionless editing. Answers for pretty much any subject or problem change over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problems arise trying to keep questions up to date when there are dozens of posts to maintain, which is why &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2321/8&quot;&gt;there are guidelines and technical features&lt;/a&gt; that kick in once a question starts getting over 15-30 answers. Per the guidelines for book recommendation questions, this is a non-issue for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So unless there's some other reason, not mentioned, to shut them down now, I don't see anything that's cause for a policy change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17690" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4121" RevisionGUID="a89d4dce-81d6-4597-beb3-63ec7fcdc726" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4117/whats-wrong-with-this-question#comment11671_4119&quot;&gt;Ryathal mentioned&lt;/a&gt; the ill fated What Stack Overflow is Not&lt;sup&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128548/what-stack-overflow-is-not&quot;&gt;MSO 10K+ link&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt; post, and I agree that the top voted answer applies there, so I've decided to adapt it (well, just replaced Stack Overflow with Programmers, really).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Programmers community is very forthcoming with their help, &lt;a href=&quot;http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;provided you have done a few things to help yourself&lt;/a&gt;. Have you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put some effort into researching the problem,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attempted to write some code yourself&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attempted to debug your code when it has failed, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some basic, fundamental knowledge of your tools?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Programmers community will not write a complete solution for you, develop a complete walk through of a problem, or do your background research for you, unless your question is specific and focused on a reasonably small scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17691" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5127" RevisionGUID="2baf3175-327d-4139-9ecf-f67863ea53e4" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;You have asked 8 questions in total, 4 of them deleted. Here's a breakdown:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126886/how-to-use-a-switch-statement-with-enum-efficiently&quot;&gt;How to use a switch statement with enum efficiently?&lt;/a&gt; (+5, open)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122213/how-faster-an-iif-is-as-compared-to-if-and-in-when-to-use-it&quot;&gt;How faster an IIf is as compared to if and in when to use it?&lt;/a&gt; (+1, open)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122480/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-multiple-inheritance&quot;&gt;What are the pros and cons of multiple inheritance?&lt;/a&gt; (+1, closed),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127545/how-to-climb-up-the-hierarchy-from-a-programmer-codesmith-to-a-full-fledged-so&quot;&gt;How to climb up the hierarchy from a programmer (codesmith) to a full-fledged Software Engineer?&lt;/a&gt; (-3, closed)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A good book on managing software projects in MS Project and Visio (-2, deleted)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why Java does not support mutidimentional arrays, unlike C or Fortran? (-7, deleted)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to teach computer programming to a 9 year old kid? (-3, deleted)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which programming language to go for in order to learn Object Oriented Programming? (-3, deleted)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of a total of 8 questions, only 2 are open. That's... not good. Please follow the instructions given in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers&quot;&gt;link on the question ban message&lt;/a&gt; and keep in mind that the ban is automatic, there is nothing anyone can do to reverse it, it's completely up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17692" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5128" RevisionGUID="e43c77dd-0fff-49e6-9145-72234738c96a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers&quot;&gt;question on Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; explains just about everything about question and answer bans. It seems pretty straight forward to me: an account is banned from asking questions on a site when they routinely ask low-quality questions as determined by a number of factors (including deleted questions, closed questions, and down votes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have asked 8 questions. Of those 8 questions, 2 of those questions are closed and not deleted, 4 are closed and deleted, and 5 have a net negative score. Cumulatively, your questions (including the deleted ones) have been rated -11. That's a poor track record of questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you need to do is try to improve your existing questions. We have several resources that outline what we're looking for in terms of questions and answers, such as our &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&quot;&gt;How to Ask guide&lt;/a&gt;. If, after reading those pages and any comments on your questions, you don't understand why your question was closed or how to improve it, ask about it here on Meta or in our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;, although I'd recommend Meta as a first choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17693" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5138" RevisionGUID="62108615-52f6-4280-8b4c-61dd5941a0a3" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I tried to find a reference or advice on Meta Stack Overflow, but couldn't. If one turns up, let me know and I'll edit it in. Also, if any other Meta sites are having this discussion, edit those in so we can cross link to how other communities are dealing with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a Meta Stack Overflow question about &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7656/how-do-i-write-a-good-answer-to-a-question&quot;&gt;how to write a good answer&lt;/a&gt;. The concepts of right and wrong have no bearing on what makes a good answer. This means, to me, that answers have a measure of &quot;goodness&quot; as well as measure of &quot;rightness&quot;, which are two distinct things. When you are using the low quality review tool, you should be judging an answer based on it's goodness, not on it's rightness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you have enough expertise in the subject matter to judge rightness, you should use that. Open the question and down vote wrong answers. Leave comments or ask clarifying questions. If the question is bad, consider voting on the question or even flagging it if it needs more immediate attention or might be too old to have the eyes of the community on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, keep in mind that wrong answers are not suitable for moderator attention. It's a reason to decline flags on answers, in fact. If moderators shouldn't intervene with wrong answers that have been flagged, I would suspect they aren't good candidates for deletion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17694" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5143" RevisionGUID="1b8fb2a2-4324-4247-bb01-0428842c8ec2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then I ask my first question, some days later this was closed as a duplicate. Also I make an acceptable answer. After that I did nothing but look at some Q&amp;amp;A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p41EZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question you linked to might be the first one you asked, but it's not the only one. The question ban is automatic, there is nothing anyone can do to help you reverse it, it's completely up to you. Read the instructions in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers/86998#86998&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; carefully (twice) and follow them to the letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should also read and follow the advice given on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Matt Gemmell's excellent article &lt;a href=&quot;http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What have you tried?&lt;/a&gt;, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jon Skeet's &lt;a href=&quot;http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing the perfect question&lt;/a&gt; blog post, the canonical guide on asking questions on Stack Overflow (the principles apply on Programmers as well).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While your willingness to learn is admirable, you'll have to keep in mind that we are all freely volunteering our time here and expecting you to do some minimal research and to show us that you at least tried to solve your problem prior to asking is not unreasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17695" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5150" RevisionGUID="b1feeeeb-886c-462d-a076-7b0266f2a116" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;To elaborate on what ChrisF said, the post block is an automatic activity based on your history. This feature exists on all sites in the Stack Exchange network and is &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers&quot;&gt;well-discussed on Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;. That post is a far better description than I can put into a post here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The system can't distinguish between an expert and a beginner. However, regardless of your skill and knowledge level, everyone is held to the same standard when it comes to the quality of their questions and answers. The relevant things to read are our &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&quot;&gt;guide on how to ask good questions&lt;/a&gt;, and the blog posts on &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;Good Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend first reading those resources. Then, go through your closed or down voted questions. Not every question is salvageable easily - questions with answers are harder to save than questions that aren't answered yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need help, you can always ask very specific questions about what you can do to improve your questions. But keep in mind that not every question can be saved. Also look for any questions that you can answer - even good answers that provide new information to old questions are valuable and might help return your account to good standing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17696" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5178" RevisionGUID="98111c05-2a48-46a5-a47b-6edaad1a45b6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Locating an article is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a software development problem, regardless of what the article is about. Questions that are nothing more than a request to an external resource are off topic, not only on Programmers but on Stack Exchange in general, this isn't a link sharing service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding an article or a blog post is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a conceptual software development question. We make a small exception for &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&quot;&gt;canonical books&lt;/a&gt;, but that's the only exception, not the rule. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further reading: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&quot;&gt;Let’s Play The Guessing Game&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient&quot;&gt;Is our current process of handling resource request questions sufficient?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&quot;&gt;Q&amp;amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;Good Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/153220/why-is-asking-for-references-sources-to-study-specific-topics-considered-not-con&quot;&gt;Why is asking for references/sources to study specific topics considered not constructive?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17697" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5186" RevisionGUID="514bf7eb-9060-418d-b160-232fe12ee3dd" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Please note that there is now an official policy against migrating questions older than 60 days to another site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/151890/disable-migration-for-questions-older-than-60-days&quot;&gt;Disable migration for questions older than 60 days&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question is off topic for us then it should be closed. However, note that QA questions aren't completely off topic for us, so there's no need to do anything with these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a question has no answers (or no upvoted answers) then I would be willing to consider migration, but it would have to be with the agreement of the moderators on QA Stack Exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17698" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5192" RevisionGUID="1a9e311c-7f54-436f-a54d-0e8d8880526d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;So there are two ways to do this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Close as a duplicate here, but instead of being restricted to the current site's questions when choosing a duplicate target, allow Stack Overflow questions to be chosen as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Close as &quot;off-topic, belongs on Stack Overflow&quot; here, but also allow people to optionally specify a dupe target while voting to close. End result is a migration, followed by immediate closure as a duplicate of whatever question was chosen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5191/belongs-on-stack-overflow-and-is-a-duplicate-on-stack-overflow/5192#comment12904_5192&quot;&gt;your comments&lt;/a&gt;, you're looking for the former, but I'll mention both:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Allow cross-site duplicate targets when voting to close as duplicate&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There might be something I'm not thinking of, but I don't have any ideological or philosophical objections to this. It seems like something that might cause a lot of strain on the backend, but I'm not a developer so that's their problem to solve or say it can't be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has come up a few times on Meta Stack Overflow, with no outcome:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16703/the-ability-to-link-cross-site-duplicates&quot;&gt;The ability to link cross site duplicates&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/94322/close-as-cross-post&quot;&gt;Close as cross post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Allow users to migrate a question and close it as a duplicate after migration&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm against this. Each community knows its site best: which questions should be closed, which should be open, etc. They should be the ones to decide if a new question is a duplicate of an existing question, not people on a different site who have no inherent interest in the other site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or to put it another way, let's say I have 10k rep  here on Programmers, allowing me to vote to close, but only 1k rep on Stack Overflow. Allowing dupe closing during migration would allow me to close questions on Stack Overflow even though I'm 1,000 rep short of the privilege.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think a question is a duplicate of something asked on Stack Overflow, there are three options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you can vote to close on Stack Overflow, vote to migrate, and keep an eye on it so you can vote to close when it gets there&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you can't vote to close on Stack Overflow, vote to migrate and let SO users deal with it when it gets there&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leave a comment pointing to the duplicate question on Stack Overflow and vote to close as off-topic in place here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm partial to the last option: knowingly closing a question twice—once on each site—is just pointless bureaucracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17699" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5215" RevisionGUID="140a8abc-acfd-4dcc-9d2b-7f40f3f1feae" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This may or may not have been asked on our meta site before but it was certainly a well discussed issue at Meta StackOverflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions&quot;&gt;How to ask and answer homework questions?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, this discussion here applies equally as well to homework questions about design, algorithms, and software development in general.  I personally agree with the highest voted answer there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we have established that if a student falls in the acceptable guidelines for asking a homework question that it is okay, now we ask ourselves if this policy towards homework questions is ethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion it is ethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If people are simply providing the answer with no context then perhaps the student might copy the answer and get a good grade now, but how does this prepare the student for future assignments and exams?  This doesn't help the student in the long term because they haven't learned anything and we will not always be there to hold there hand.  Eventually they must stand on their own two feet or they will be unsuccessful in life and in their career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If an answer is good and provides context however then we as a community have a real opportunity to tutor the student and teach them the concepts that will help them do well in school, life and their careers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grades are a temporary thing, knowledge once gained is kept forever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17700" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5217" RevisionGUID="daaad4d1-bb80-4742-8864-6617e27831b7" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;While I understand that in the post Wikipedia era it's generally more difficult for professors to come up with homework questions whose answers don't exist on the web, that's a problem for the professors, not us. Adapt or die applies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My teaching experience is extremely limited, and at a level a tad lower than University, however from that limited experience my conclusions are that cheaters will cheat, and there isn't much you can do about it. I was perhaps extremely lucky in that the majority of my students were interested enough in the subject matter to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; cheat, even though I actively &lt;em&gt;encouraged&lt;/em&gt; them to use Wikipedia and Stack Overflow (Programmers didn't exist at the time) and I'm very proud that some of them are today colleagues. A couple of the cheaters also made it, but most of them are flipping burgers somewhere. Oh, well, c'est la vie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, I only taught for three years, let's see what &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/1652/what-do-we-do-with-users-who-post-numerous-unlabeled-homework-questions/1661#1661&quot;&gt;someone a tiny bit more experienced has to say&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My opinion is that there is nothing wrong at all with posting homework questions here, particularly interesting ones, and I find much of the negative reaction to homework-question posters to be somewhat strange, alien to my way of learning mathematics in a give-and-take exchange of mathematical ideas. Surely posting questions here and studying the answers is not much different than studying hard in the library, talking mathematics with one's colleagues at math tea or talking to one's professor, which are all excellent ways to learn mathematics. In particular, I expect that students who post questions here might learn just as much if not more from the resulting answers as from their professors---we have a number of talented mathematicians, who are very good at explaining things---and that math.SE provides a valuable service to students having unapproachable professors, having professors who do not explain well, or who have few colleagues able to help them. Furthermore, the math.SE community strongly benefits from the questions and the insightful answers that might be posted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So my opinion is that there is no homework issue to speak of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In particular, I hereby give all of my own students complete permission to post any and all their homework problems here, and indeed I encourage them to post their questions here and to study the answers well and thereby to learn some mathematics. I will be testing them on their understanding at the exam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would also encourage all mathematics professors to adopt a policy of encouraging collaboration on homework among their students, as talking about mathematics with one's colleagues is assuredly one of the best ways to learn mathematics. Indeed, I recommend that all professors should actively encourage their students to form study groups in order to work on their homework problems together. Learning as a group, they will go very far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Programmers already has very strict policies regarding the quality of questions, perhaps stricter than most other Stack Exchange sites, and there's absolutely no point at all in coming up with a specific policy regarding homework questions or what appears as homework questions. Any question that's within the scope of the site, as defined in our FAQ, and shows sufficient prior research is welcome to the site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, and only for completeness sake, while &quot;professionals&quot; is in the description of the site, it does not disqualify amateurs, enthusiasts and students from using the site, provided they conduct themselves in a professional manner. Our goal is to build a high quality canonical resource that will hopefully help current and &lt;em&gt;future&lt;/em&gt; professionals, we don't check credentials at the door, and we never will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further reading: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Meta Programmers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2894/how-can-programmers-se-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments&quot;&gt;How can Programmers.SE be used to assist students with class assignments?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5157/appropriate-questions-on-java-programming-questions&quot;&gt;Appropriate questions on Java programming questions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag&quot;&gt;Removing the [homework] tag&lt;/a&gt; &amp;amp; &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3202/blacklist-homework&quot;&gt;Blacklist [homework]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Meta Stack Overflow: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions&quot;&gt;How to ask and answer homework questions?&lt;/a&gt; - FAQ&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/123758/can-we-now-discourage-the-use-of-and-burninate-the-homework-tag&quot;&gt;Can we now discourage the use of and burninate the homework tag?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/130558/can-we-cut-back-on-the-is-this-homework-berating&quot;&gt;Can we cut back on the “Is This Homework?” berating?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17701" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5226" RevisionGUID="156e25fb-e204-4629-aeee-78df3b533fec" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/175268/2&quot; title=&quot;wording as of revision 2&quot;&gt;&quot;any suggestions for a good tool/service&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; makes question a perfect match for type questions that are strongly discouraged per &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&quot;&gt;Q&amp;amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, question looks salvageable using a healthy dose of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/124930/165773&quot; title=&quot;what's this?&quot;&gt;Atwood's transform&lt;/a&gt;. I would consider editing it into something like &lt;em&gt;&quot;How do I tell if a product planning tool would suit my needs... etc&lt;/em&gt; then &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1753/31260&quot; title=&quot;related discussion&quot;&gt;flagging to reopen&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that question has been closed while it had no answers greatly simplifies editing it. Otherwise one would have to take additional care to make sure that changes don't invalidate existing answers - which in some cases can &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773&quot; title=&quot;an example discussed here: 'Change the question, and you invalidate all of the answers...'&quot;&gt;effectively lock the question from any substantial editing at all&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17702" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5247" RevisionGUID="f1548097-5bd5-49aa-b606-ee7323627ee7" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Programmers.SE and StackOverflow have two completely different site scopes - which is why Programmers exists. There are a number of meta discussions on both here and meta.SO which discuss the difference between SO and P.SE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&quot;&gt;Introducing Programmers.StackExchange.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, &lt;strong&gt;Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor&lt;/strong&gt; working through code issues. &lt;strong&gt;Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard&lt;/strong&gt; working through higher level conceptual programming issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have &lt;strong&gt;actual source code in the questions or answers&lt;/strong&gt;. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/82988/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange&quot;&gt;Choosing between Stack Overflow and Programmers Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68384/whats-the-difference-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-se&quot;&gt;What&amp;#39;s the difference between Stack Overflow and Programmers SE?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13370531/looking-for-a-short-explanation-of-fuzzy-logic&quot;&gt;your question&lt;/a&gt; that was downvoted on SO, the comments on there advise you that Programmers is probably a better place to ask the question - which I agree with and &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/175753/looking-for-a-short-explanation-of-fuzzy-logic&quot;&gt;notice you have done&lt;/a&gt; and received some answers on your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17703" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5248" RevisionGUID="ec898c8b-d224-4461-9fb3-c1e2b6f64b8a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping things more central is actually antithetical to Stack Exchange's philosophy of creating laser sharp focused Q&amp;amp;A sites. Additionally if &quot;discussion&quot; and &quot;open topic for general questions&quot; is your description of what Programmers is about, you should really read our &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt; a bit more carefully. While we welcome &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; subjective questions, Programmers is definitely &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a free for all discussion forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, more responsiveness is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; necessarily a good thing. We strive to be a canonical resource, answers should be as detailed and complete as possible, being quick is an added bonus but not a goal in itself. From the perspective of the asker, quick answers might be more useful, but Programmers and every other Stack Exchange site (including Stack Overflow) aren't only about the asker. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, folding Programmers into Stack Overflow right now would be a disaster for everyone involved. Stack Overflow, similarly to Programmers, has created and maintains a community culture that is different, and in many respects conflicting to ours. While the target audience of both sites might more or less be the same, the focus and scope is distinctly different, thus is community culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, Stack Overflow is gigantic, and that's one of the many reasons, perhaps the main one, I never really participated in the site. To put it very simply, if it takes me more than 5 minutes to find interesting content on a site, that site is not for me. Reducing the conceptual aspects of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SDLC&lt;/a&gt; to a set of Stack Overflow tags would be extremely counter-productive, it would take a certain level of masochism to put yourself in the position of searching for interesting methodology questions (for example) in the vast ocean of crap Stack Overflow is slowly becoming. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you posted this as a feature request and there are tons of earlier discussions both on our Meta and Meta Stack Overflow that explain how the sites are different and what's the purpose of Programmers, I'm afraid I'll have to decline it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further reading: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&quot;&gt;Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&quot;&gt;What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/153082/should-programmers-se-exist&quot;&gt;Should Programmers.SE exist?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/82988/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange&quot;&gt;Choosing between Stack Overflow and Programmers Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/105428/is-stack-exchange-becoming-too-fragmented-for-programmers&quot;&gt;Is Stack Exchange becoming too fragmented for programmers?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created&quot;&gt;Why was the Programmers site on Stack Exchange created?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stackoverflow&quot;&gt;When do these questions belong on programmers instead of stackoverflow?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1704/once-all-the-disciplining-is-done-and-p-se-is-purely-professional-will-it-be-me&quot;&gt;Once all the disciplining is done and P.SE is purely professional, will it be merged with stackoverflow?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17704" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5276" RevisionGUID="98ee1f4d-3e99-4676-925d-ec4ea97403e1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Manishearth's answer is (basically) the short version. Our core development team is ~7 people strong, and our design team is &lt;em&gt;literally&lt;/em&gt; a single person. There's &lt;em&gt;lots&lt;/em&gt; of projects, network-wide, that vie equally for their attention. Eight people handle &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; user feature requests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The longer answer is a bit more complicated. Since I'm talking to people involved in the SDLC, I'm a little astonished that you're not all a bit more sympathetic. After all, the network is 90+ sites, and we serve double-digit millions of users, and getting the project &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; from step one takes time and person-power we don't really have right now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bugs and errors you point out, while important, aren't going to get top priority because there are other problems that affect the &lt;em&gt;entire&lt;/em&gt; network that may require immediate attention (e.g. a site blackout) or are concentrating developer resources right now (e.g. the &lt;code&gt;/review&lt;/code&gt; queue, or our localization efforts). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What explains such passiveness? Is it because Joel Spolsky and his team lost interest in Programmers.SE, like he repeatedly explains in his podcasts?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, let me clear about something: there is more to the Stack Exchange team than Joel or the dev team. For one, there's the team I'm on: your (hopefully beloved) &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/99338/who-are-the-community-managers-and-what-do-they-do&quot;&gt;Community Managers&lt;/a&gt;. And, in fact, we even &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2875/41785&quot;&gt;hired on one of your moderators&lt;/a&gt; based on her work here. So, no, the &lt;em&gt;company&lt;/em&gt; doesn't hate Programmers. Denying your community's complicated history would be foolish and short-sighted, and a great number of really &lt;em&gt;excellent&lt;/em&gt; lessons were learned over the course of the last two years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;passiveness&quot; you're referring to is entirely perceived; it's a symptom of the real issue, which is that our development team is overextended. Their time is an extremely precious, scarce resource. Not to put too fine a point on it: they're only human. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who is (or is there somebody) in charge of implementing new features and fixing bugs on Programmers.SE?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Design bugs are usually handled by our always-wonderful, one-man design team of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1685/jin&quot;&gt;Jin Yang&lt;/a&gt;. Jin is literally &lt;em&gt;one single person&lt;/em&gt; handling &lt;em&gt;all site design issues&lt;/em&gt; across the network. Jin &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; does the design for our marketing initiatives, some of our advertising, helps us make fliers and small promo items, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1669/41785&quot;&gt;puts together top user swag&lt;/a&gt; and a whole host of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a better place than Meta to ask for new features and to report bugs?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Meta is exactly the correct place for you to be reporting these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look, I'm sympathetic. I really, really am. I've been &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/867/we-should-implement-magic-the-gathering-pop-ups-on-hover#comment1635_867&quot;&gt;working on making features happen&lt;/a&gt; on some of our other sites for months now. The toughest is knowing that &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5240/do-we-want-hats&quot;&gt;doing a fun, exciting event&lt;/a&gt; would basically &quot;cost&quot; us a feature for a site. All decisions regarding dev allocations are made with great care and after a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of deliberation. We don't just assign development time to things willy-nilly because &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;we cannot do so&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. It's &lt;em&gt;literally&lt;/em&gt; a thing we can't do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're dissatisfied with our ability to meet our users' needs (and it does sound like you are) then you're in luck. Right now, &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/about/hiring&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;we're hiring for a bunch of positions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, including developers. If you know someone who could/should be working for us, who loves our sites (yes, even Programmers!) and is a talented developer who is looking for a new challenge, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;tell them to apply!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, for the mean time, I can only advise you sit tight and be patient. It's all on The List&lt;sup&gt;TM&lt;/sup&gt; and I'm confident we'll get to it. It just might take some time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17705" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5282" RevisionGUID="c1d2dd43-52e7-46ec-852c-a659ff617462" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/151890/disable-migration-for-questions-older-than-60-days&quot;&gt;Migration for questions older than 60 days is disabled&lt;/a&gt; (even for mods). It's not that we don't want to move it, we can't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel it's a good question for the Workplace, you should re-ask it there (but please search for existing duplicates first).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17706" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5285" RevisionGUID="3553c881-3bb9-4134-b20d-be5989fe6100" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I recently posted a question: &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177190/supporting-and-testing-multiple-versions-of-a-software-library-in-a-maven-projec&quot;&gt;Supporting and testing multiple versions of a software library in a Maven project&lt;/a&gt; in which I included some XML code samples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tagged the samples as XML code:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;!-- language: xml --&amp;gt;&#xA;&#xA;    &amp;lt;foo&amp;gt;...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This hasn't worked and it looks like the Java highlighting is in effect. Is this an error on my part or a bug?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/editing-help#syntax-highlighting&quot;&gt;editing help&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;xml&quot; is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63800/interface-options-for-specifying-language-prettify/81970#81970&quot;&gt;supported language&lt;/a&gt;. It certainly works fine on StackOverflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17707" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5298" RevisionGUID="d36fc840-6c57-40a6-be21-78861b06f6e9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I don't know. Why don't you ask on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; as the question is on Stack Overflow &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; Programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said there are a couple of questions referencing deleted content:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/61221/deleted-meta-questions-archive&quot;&gt;Deleted Meta Questions Archive&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73455/popular-deleted-so-su-programmers-questions-list&quot;&gt;Popular Deleted SO/SU/Programmers Questions list&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That may help you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17708" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5302" RevisionGUID="b4218b40-bd09-4932-b6c6-e3a9f79687ca" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The ban is automatic, there's little (if anything) we can do to help, you should (carefully) read and follow the advice given in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers&quot;&gt;What can I do when getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that deleted questions &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; factor in the post ban, and you have three of them (&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools&quot; title=&quot;what's this&quot;&gt;10K+&lt;/a&gt; links): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162412/finding-no-of-search-results-in-google-using-programming&quot;&gt;Finding no. of search results in google using programming&lt;/a&gt; (-2)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155995/key-concerns-when-developing-online-forums&quot;&gt;Key concerns when developing online forums&lt;/a&gt; (-2)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155993/programming-knowledge-and-architecture-knowledge-for-great-products&quot;&gt;Programming knowledge and Architecture knowledge for great products&lt;/a&gt; (self-deleted a minute after it was posted)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one is the one that &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; triggered the ban, as it's your most recent question. I can't see any way of improving any of the three, unfortunately, and undeleting them might get you more downvotes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should concentrate on giving &lt;em&gt;great&lt;/em&gt; answers to others' questions, although the exact algorithm of the question ban is kept secret, great answers will certainly help. But please don't just rush to post answers, only answer questions that are well within your expertise and you can provide very thorough and well researched answers to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17709" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5372" RevisionGUID="2e3a3ea3-7d40-4893-9420-65ef11a8e067" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There is a +/- 12 hour leeway on the hats. Stack Exchange time is based on UTC. This is expected behavior. &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/159577/off-by-twelve-error-and-i-feel-fine-hat#comment462135_159579&quot;&gt;Here is a comment by Nick Craver about it&lt;/a&gt;, as part of a larger Meta Stack Overflow discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17710" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5396" RevisionGUID="2eb35827-2d0b-46b9-8485-bdf25b22ec8c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Your account was never suspended by a moderator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are getting the message:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then this is an automatic process which we cannot affect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please read &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers&quot;&gt;this Meta Stack Overflow question&lt;/a&gt; and it's answers to guide you on what you can do to get the ban lifted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17711" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5401" RevisionGUID="7643d291-1cc7-40de-93a3-de435ba781a3" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;When I sense a good question buried within a vague wording (and your &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/180824/1&quot;&gt;felt like that&lt;/a&gt; to me), I for one try to get it closed as soon as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thing is, vague wording is a road to closure anyway but while open, it can attract irrelevant answers which will make it difficult (&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773&quot;&gt;as explained here&lt;/a&gt;) to further edit the question into the shape allowing to repel &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; garbage answers and reopen it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, fast closure here serves the primary need to make reopening easier and protect the poorly worded good question from getting bad answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;em&gt;repel&lt;/em&gt; garbage answers - one sure can not 100% protect a question from getting garbage answers. But one can at least try to phrase the question so that one can come to Meta, say &lt;em&gt;&quot;Here's the question, here's the answer, I don't feel like the answer is OK&quot;&lt;/em&gt; and have a good chance of garbage being downvoted by active community members who happen to read this complaint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17712" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5411" RevisionGUID="06e6b4d8-7855-4622-9e83-6ad79f605ba2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;One solution would be to start posting friendly comments explaining the closure when you vote to close, or when you see a question closed as &quot;not-constructive&quot; with no comment left for the OP to explain why it was closed and what they can do to get their question reopened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was actually reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/130231/158605&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; earlier today and thought it might be related. To quote parts of it (emphasis mine): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Not constructive&quot; is already &lt;em&gt;extremely broad&lt;/em&gt; in what it covers, to&#xA;  the point where it's almost too easy to apply it in cases where &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129423/on-the-boundaries-of-not-constructive-questions&quot;&gt;the&#xA;  closer should really just be editing to clarify instead&lt;/a&gt;. It's also&#xA;  one of the hardest reasons to explain to the author of the post being&#xA;  closed - the description is pretty good, and links to the FAQ which&#xA;  elaborates... But at first glance, it's &lt;em&gt;already&lt;/em&gt; too close to &quot;we&#xA;  don't like your question, kthanksbye&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, the core problem with your two examples is that there's &lt;strong&gt;no&#xA;  clear explanation of the specific problems in the comments&lt;/strong&gt;; there is a&#xA;  decent meta discussion, but the confusion could have been mitigated&#xA;  more easily if the close-voters had simply been more clear as to what&#xA;  they found troublesome about these questions. Because of the breadth&#xA;  of scope (see above), Not Constructive tends to require more of this&#xA;  than, say, &quot;Not a real question&quot; or &quot;Exact Duplicate&quot;. The alternative&#xA;  solution would be to break it up into multiple close reasons... But&#xA;  we've seen this cause problems in the past; &lt;strong&gt;encouraging closers to&#xA;  explain their rationale tends to produce more thoughtful closing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd encourage users who vote to close as not-constructive to leave a friendly and helpful comment explaining what makes the question not-constructive, and explain what needs to be done to get it reopened (if such a comment doesn't already exist of course). You don't need to be the close-voter to leave helpful comments like that either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally when I first started with the SE sites, I got upset with some question closures as well. Having an actual person (instead of an extremely broad auto-generated closure message) point out the flaws of the questions to me, and explain what needed to be done to get the question reopened is probably part of the reason why I'm still participating in SE sites today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17713" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="b9b77566-90ad-45e9-84dc-d5b26506353a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png&quot; alt=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png&quot; title=&quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info&quot; title=&quot;what's this&quot;&gt;&quot;hot questions&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0&quot;&gt;views over 2K&lt;/a&gt; brings answers that look bad to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; in the answers appear to happen once or twice a week on average, frequent enough to feel the connection between these and respective questions making their way into &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info&quot; title=&quot;what's this&quot;&gt;SE collider list&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that something to worry about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My particular concern is the poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making &lt;strong&gt;interesting and well presented problems&lt;/strong&gt; look the same as non-constructive &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&quot;&gt;popularity contests&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&quot;Oh look: &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177890/31260&quot; title=&quot;example&quot;&gt;'my guess is fairly prosaic. Git is brilliant...'&lt;/a&gt; - with upvoted answer like that it &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info&quot; title=&quot;not-a-real-question - what's this?&quot;&gt;can't be a real question&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3835/31260&quot; title=&quot;as discussed eg here&quot;&gt;repel garbage answers&lt;/a&gt;, I can easily name a handful of active regulars who &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;amp;filter=all&quot; title=&quot;our editors gang is pretty strong&quot;&gt;can and do&lt;/a&gt; just that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773&quot; title=&quot;more on that here&quot;&gt;invalidates my edit&lt;/a&gt;. And answer that exploits another minor ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions: per my observations &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; have been smart enough to pick questions that have reasonably good wording as-is.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way how things work now helps to attract new contributors but I would appreciate if achieving this important goal &lt;sup&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/when-is-an-account-abandoned/&quot; title=&quot;'reduce the friction of... answering to little more than entering an anonymous comment on a blog'&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/helping-the-experts-get-answers/&quot; title=&quot;'attract notable experts to your site'&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/about&quot; title=&quot;'free and open to everyone... answer questions without even bothering to register'&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; would somehow be less damaging for good, highly visible questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;protect your own users from scale ...human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon...&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;quote source&quot;&gt;A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy &lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some additional observations based on discussions that followed posting this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Low quality answers in hot questions likely contribute to the fact that currently, it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260&quot; title=&quot;discussed here in more details&quot;&gt;hard for users to understand site standards&lt;/a&gt;, which results in posting many &quot;bad&quot; questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a steady source of misguided contributors... There are... &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info&quot;&gt;broken windows&lt;/a&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;&quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Low quality answers also threat to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13713_5448&quot; title=&quot;see 'clear that 10k barrier...' and further discussion&quot;&gt;penalize contributors&lt;/a&gt; who post good ones because when piled on in hot questions, garbage answers trigger &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info&quot; title=&quot;automatic community wiki when there are more than 15 answers&quot;&gt;CW&lt;/a&gt; which consequently turns all the upvotes given to good answers into zero reputation for their authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;amp;q=wiki%3ayes%20is%3aanswer%20score%3a25&quot;&gt;more than 1700 answers scored 25+ turned community wiki&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the sake of precision, note that number &lt;code&gt;1700&lt;/code&gt; above is only indicative since search does not exclude answers turned CW for other reasons. Also note some of the answers could be high-voted &quot;unfairly&quot;: per analysis 10+ voted answers in sampled questions (below), this could happen, although rather infrequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Background research&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through few &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/181999/31260&quot; title=&quot;random sampling, stuff like that&quot;&gt;sampled&lt;/a&gt; questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please bear in mind that below list only &lt;strong&gt;partially&lt;/strong&gt; represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0&quot;&gt;over 2K views&lt;/a&gt; since these appear about &lt;strong&gt;10x&lt;/strong&gt; more frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming&quot;&gt;How does learning assembly aid in programming?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other&quot;&gt;Why can&amp;#39;t the IT industry deliver large, faultless projects quickly as in other industries?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info&quot; title=&quot;what's this&quot;&gt;protected&lt;/a&gt;, 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in&quot;&gt;What is the Mars Curiosity Rover&amp;#39;s software built in?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;protected, 2 answers, all look OK&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it&quot;&gt;Do I need to use an interface when only one class will ever implement it?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla&quot;&gt;Is it a good idea to design an architecture thinking that the User Interface classes can be replaced by a command line interface?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables&quot;&gt;Why is Clean Code suggesting avoiding protected variables?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer&quot;&gt;Torvalds&amp;#39; quote about good programmer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language&quot;&gt;How can I  really master a programming language?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow&quot;&gt;What functionality does dynamic typing allow?  &lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;protected by &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info&quot; title=&quot;what's this&quot;&gt;mod notice&lt;/a&gt;, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true&quot;&gt;Is the use of &amp;quot;utf8=✓&amp;quot; preferable to &amp;quot;utf8=true&amp;quot;?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi&quot;&gt;What triggered the popularity of lambda functions in modern mainstream programming languages?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more&quot;&gt;Does having a higher paid technical job mean you do not get to code any more?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names&quot;&gt;Is there an excuse for short variable names?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in&quot;&gt;Why is the sudden increase in number of Git submitters on Debian popcon graph in 2010-01?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common&quot;&gt;Why aren&amp;#39;t user-defined operators more common?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the sake of completeness, note that besides 199 answers reviewed above, there are also 19 answers deleted in 16 questions listed above. These answers are visible only to moderators and to users with &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools&quot; title=&quot;Access to Moderator tools -&amp;gt; 'View deleted posts'&quot;&gt;sufficient privileges&lt;/a&gt;. Of these 19, 9 are deleted by moderators, the rest has been deleted by owners. Of 10 answers deleted by owners, I would downvote 7-8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;URL used to get above questions is:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info&quot;&gt;voting limits&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summing up, I would downvote about &lt;strong&gt;101-118 of 218&lt;/strong&gt; answers I reviewed per above research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;update&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some data related to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/5413/revisions&quot; title=&quot;see changes in rev 13&quot;&gt;recently added&lt;/a&gt; observations on community wiki status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Questions with 2K+ views - about &lt;strong&gt;25%&lt;/strong&gt; are CW, &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes&quot;&gt;307&lt;/a&gt; of total &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0&quot;&gt;1247&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Questions with 10K+ views - about &lt;strong&gt;60%&lt;/strong&gt; are CW, &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes&quot;&gt;62&lt;/a&gt; of total &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0&quot;&gt;101&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13717_5448&quot; title=&quot;from here&quot;&gt;self&lt;/a&gt;, wow. Just... wow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17714" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5426" RevisionGUID="d577a991-bb3f-42d6-b299-e18b7576235e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The down vote came from the close reason. Some close reasons, including off-topic, automatically apply a down vote to the question. The reason for closure is clearly stated in &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;the FAQ&lt;/a&gt;: questions about &quot;implementation issues or programming tools&quot; belong on Stack Overflow. A good rule of thumb is that if you are sitting at your computer, in front of your development tools, the question probably belongs on Stack Overflow. If you're at a whiteboard or in a conference room, Programmers is probably a better bet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question was not eligible for migration to Stack Overflow because of its age. In the past few months, a restriction was placed on migration. After 60 days (refer to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/151890/165773&quot; title=&quot;'Disable migration for questions older than 60 days'&quot;&gt;this feature request at MSO&lt;/a&gt; for details), questions can no longer be migrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are indeed &quot;tons of similar questions&quot; on Programmers, please point them out. Implementation details are, and always have been (as far as I can remember), off-topic here. If any exist, they should be closed or migrated to Stack Overflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17715" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5430" RevisionGUID="91d6864f-8380-42ab-bd9a-0f411dc273a3" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Aarthi is &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/161188/what-do-you-think-of-winter-bash&quot;&gt;looking for feedback regarding the Winter Bash 2012&lt;/a&gt; over on Meta Stack Overflow. If you have any comments, complaints, suggestions, or anything else, I'd recommend posting it over there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17716" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5438" RevisionGUID="325f8a33-3fb3-4af7-aa8e-08fe441f35ed" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There exists a grace period for 5 minutes after the first submit that rolls all edits in that time into the original post so they don't count so you can make those quick minor edits. Otherwise start taking advantage of the instant preview it works great and it seems pretty crazy that you prefer more clicks to format your answer. Also please note that posting a partially complete answer and rapidly editing more and more info is somewhat discouraged behavior as it creates the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/9731/203115&quot;&gt;fastest gun in the west&lt;/a&gt; problem. As for a Question it's in your best interest to post as good of a question as possible the first time, because once its posted people will start voting on it and you could wind up have a bunch of down-votes or close votes that could have been avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason the threshold exists is to prevent people from continually editing their answers/questions which &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info&quot; title=&quot;what's this&quot;&gt;bumps&lt;/a&gt; them to the top of the page for more rep from upvotes, 10 was decided as a fair number to allow people to benefit from providing meaningful updates and prevent bad people from benefiting too much. Moderators also have the ability to remove CW status, but this is rarely done and generally requires an &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3527/31260&quot; title=&quot;example request for an exceptional answer&quot;&gt;exceptional answer&lt;/a&gt; that a user has obviously put forth a lot of effort to maintain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17717" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5442" RevisionGUID="14499610-3b42-42cc-9ca1-6b7bb801806c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;My &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=summary&quot;&gt;profile summary page&lt;/a&gt; currently says 3668 upvotes while votes-&gt;upvotes sub tab (&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=votes&amp;amp;sort=upvote&quot;&gt;dev team only link&lt;/a&gt;) counts less than that - 3544.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;3668-3544=124&lt;/code&gt; - as far as I understand this difference could be &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144757/165773&quot; title=&quot;as explained here&quot;&gt;due to deleted posts&lt;/a&gt;, does that mean more than 100 posts I &lt;strong&gt;upvoted&lt;/strong&gt; during last one and half year are &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; deleted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per my past observations deletion indeed decreases the count, I only don't know if there's anything else besides that could also cause the miss (eg like it was with expiration in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/162044/profile-page-shows-6-reopen-votes-total-while-i-have-at-least-25-successful-ones&quot;&gt;this bug report posted at MSO&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;For the record, I also tried to check if this could somehow relate to deleted users but it appears to be not the case. My favorite &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3477/31260&quot; title=&quot;advertised here:)&quot;&gt;&quot;good one-liner example&quot;&lt;/a&gt; that was posted by now-deleted user shows my upvote just the way it was cast in April 2012.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17718" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5445" RevisionGUID="6996fe72-6009-4e0d-a929-abf8ed72c46d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;You have up-voted 124 deleted posts. Such votes do show up in your totals, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/117846/votes-cast-should-include-votes-on-deleted-contributions/123048#123048&quot;&gt;and also count toward various badges&lt;/a&gt;; they have the additional advantage of &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; counting toward the daily voting limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; show up on your profile's votes tab, because that would mean showing you links to deleted posts - that would equate to giving you broken links on your profile which would be &lt;em&gt;bad&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For comparison, you've &lt;em&gt;down-voted&lt;/em&gt; 4,587 deleted posts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17719" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5461" RevisionGUID="6b0880a8-9340-4e4e-b97f-7f639d55fb70" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The problems that you mention come from a misuse of comments. Comments meant to point out issues with or suggestions for the post that they are attached to. They should be used if the question needs additional information or to ask about what has already been tried or to elaborate on points that someone answering would need to know about to provide a better, more relevant answer. Comments on an answer are likewise meant to ask for clarification of points or to point out errors or concerns with an answer. They are not meant for extended discussion. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/139812/572&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow answer&lt;/a&gt; provides a good overview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a post has a number of irrelevant or obsolete comments, flag them for deletion so that they don't cause the problems you're seeing. Once issues with the post have been resolved, the comments are probably no longer necessary and can be cleaned up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you need to have an extended discussion that maintains an order, feel free to start a chat room and link to it in the comments. At 100 reputation, a user can create a custom chat room. This room may go dormant or get locked, but the content is preserved much like the content on the main site. A comment linking to the chat room can be left for people to follow and refer to the extended discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17720" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5467" RevisionGUID="86b02e2a-5c72-4bc4-b1e6-6c0a37dc3fd7" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the late response; this issue was &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/141435/new-beta-review-displays-locked-posts/143562#comment425684_143562&quot;&gt;fixed&lt;/a&gt; on Sep 25, 2012. Thanks for the report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17721" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5478" RevisionGUID="c565f176-c2df-4c01-a116-1041e63c4845" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There is a market in terms of &quot;If someone was to create a website where this was the goal and allowed, it would likely find people willing to visit it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you go off designing such a website (the Stack Exchange format doesn't go well for such a type of question - by design I believe, and a good choice), I believe the naive implementation it is doomed to failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy&lt;/a&gt; by Clay Shirky.  Though a decade old, it has important truths about social software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale.&#xA;  Scale alone kills conversations, because conversations require dense&#xA;  two-way conversations. In conversational contexts, Metcalfe's law is a&#xA;  drag. The fact that the amount of two-way connections you have to&#xA;  support goes up with the square of the users means that the density of&#xA;  conversation falls off very fast as the system scales even a little&#xA;  bit. You have to have some way to let users hang onto the less is more&#xA;  pattern, in order to keep associated with one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stack Exchange works reasonably because it makes conversations difficult.  You have questions and answers which is not a two way conversation - it is a question and an answer and it's done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the code detects a conversation happening in comments, it suggests people take the comments to a chat room (where conversations of a small group work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From earlier in the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The downside of going for size and scale above all else is that the&#xA;  dense, interconnected pattern that drives group conversation and&#xA;  collaboration isn't supportable at any large scale. Less is different&#xA;  -- small groups of people can engage in kinds of interaction that large groups can't. And so we blew past that interesting scale of&#xA;  small groups. Larger than a dozen, smaller than a few hundred, where&#xA;  people can actually have these conversational forms that can't be&#xA;  supported when you're talking about tens of thousands or millions of&#xA;  users, at least in a single group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question of &quot;what language should I learn&quot; or &quot;what should I do next&quot; or &quot;what book should I read&quot; requires a conversation to understand the context of what is being asked.  The answer to &quot;what language should I learn&quot; is not &quot;C&quot; in every case.  The correct answer requires that the asker and the answerer exchange a dozen messages each way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conversation that would need to happen is one that would be unmanageable (and thus, the reason why SE tries to prevent conversations in the Q&amp;amp;A part).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an example of what this would become, head over to a forum that allows &quot;shopping&quot; type questions (deviant art photography forum springs to mind, though it may have changed since I was there last - Reddit may also be a place that allows this and consider what asking such a question there will result in) and look at the size and number of pages of discussion for a &quot;simple&quot; question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, you may want to read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/12/web-discussions-flat-by-design.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Web Discussions: Flat by Design&lt;/a&gt; which does go into some of the difficulty with online conversations.  Additionally, the M.SO post &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/92107/is-stack-overflow-a-forum&quot;&gt;Is Stack Overflow a forum&lt;/a&gt; goes into the nature of what it is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, on a forum you might ask how to run a game in windowed mode. You will get several responses, some of which will be nothing but &quot;oh, I love that game!&quot; or &quot;I haven't played that in a while, wow.&quot; You'll be lucky if you get a relevant response. By contrast, on Stack Exchange you'd get &lt;a href=&quot;http://gaming.stackexchange.com/q/21955/1925&quot;&gt;practical responses&lt;/a&gt; that are 100% relevant to your question. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/92110/165773&quot; title=&quot;quote source&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   Stack Exchange neither supports nor encourages a &quot;forum-style&quot; of open, free-for-all discussion (many-to-many conversations). This is by design... Stack Exchange is built on the premise that &lt;strong&gt;forums don't scale&lt;/strong&gt;. All those open conversations mean that those forums only tend to get noisier and noisier. What inevitably happens is... you stop learning. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/92115/165773&quot; title=&quot;quote source&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17722" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="aa681c71-8779-40ec-adec-4b09a17936a6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Could we please make a trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Modification details are described in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164712/165773&quot;&gt;this MSO post&lt;/a&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, substantial part of &lt;code&gt;Qanswers&lt;/code&gt; in current formula is fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;(log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascores)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;About 1/3 of the answers &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773&quot; title=&quot;questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever&quot;&gt;studied here&lt;/a&gt; (83 of total 254) have score less than 1/100 of top voted post in respective question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given that questions checked were ones with tens thousands views, &lt;strong&gt;insultingly low score&lt;/strong&gt; indicates that assuming these answers to be popular wouldn't even be in the ballpark. Still, the formula pumps these into &lt;code&gt;Qanswers&lt;/code&gt; value, as if it is something everyone would be happy to read (hint: it isn't).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consider tuning the formula to make it deviate less from voting results. &lt;strong&gt;Ignore answers with non-positive score. Or &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13857_5485&quot; title=&quot;preference for cut off at (TopAnswerScore/10-1) explained in comments here&quot;&gt;better yet&lt;/a&gt;, ignore answers scored less than some reasonable fraction (eg 1/10) of the top one.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  Given that current formula appears to give an unjustified value to crappy answers in highly upvoted questions (&lt;code&gt;Qscore/5&lt;/code&gt;, no matter how much is answer downvoted), I would like to perform test run to find out if suggested change would make an impact to issues outlined in Programmers meta posts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260&quot;&gt;What can we do to help users understand our site better?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260&quot;&gt;Answers quality in hot questions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Note: results of the trial run to be analyzed using study analogous to one performed in &lt;em&gt;Answers quality in hot questions&lt;/em&gt;. Current evaluation shows about &lt;strong&gt;101-118 low quality of 218&lt;/strong&gt; answers sampled.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Upon completion of trial run, similar evaluation is to be done in order to estimate whether there was a substantial impact, positive or negative.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Complementary information to this request is provided in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment16044_5482&quot; title=&quot;starting from here&quot;&gt;comments below&lt;/a&gt;, marked with &quot;for the record...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Note I expect modified formula to be competitive to current one at &quot;moderately hot&quot; questions, following the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773&quot;&gt;reasoning outlined here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;For questions that are not too hot (likely 2-3 clicks away from top of the list) it's natural to see things working exactly as intended. Answers and comments quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info&quot; title=&quot;what's this&quot;&gt;collider&lt;/a&gt; brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and cool...&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recent hot question about &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/185819/31620&quot;&gt;automated testing&lt;/a&gt; gives an example of why I would want to try a modified formula. In 17 hours, question collected 17 answers, merely 5-7 of which provide useful original content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overheat of fake hotness impacted question like a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Black Saturday fire&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vKQvI.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a01_17890753.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the fire settled, what is left for future visitors of the question looks like a wasteland of low quality garbage (note that due to high views, it will score high in web searches).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/B1hjy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a04_17906927.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the light of above, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info&quot;&gt;community wiki&lt;/a&gt; status stamped on the question looks especially despicable. It kind of suggests that &lt;strong&gt;after damage has done&lt;/strong&gt;, community members are invited to go over the crap brought in by braindead formula, carefully analyze it and try to tame the pain by downvotes. As if they don't have anything better to do!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Update&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related feature request has been posted at MSO:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/192046/165773&quot;&gt;In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please stop counting proven low score answers in hotness formula. Please roll the dice fairly, let user voting and time decay contribute to hotness score as intended. Please promote to collider audience less brain-damaging content to learn from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17723" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5483" RevisionGUID="eb13018a-7202-4396-b279-acf42676e47b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info&quot;&gt;hot-questions tag wiki at MSO&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hotness are questions across either the site or &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/questions&quot; title=&quot;with real-time chilli flavour&quot;&gt;the entire Stack Exchange network&lt;/a&gt; (where they are seen on the drop down at top left). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They're on your tongue, they're the frontispiece, the vanguard, the spicy that you want to lick. The questions raging through the community and burning up the charts like a new album of some artist that enjoys a large and rabid fanbase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Related&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11602/what-formula-should-be-used-to-determine-hot-questions&quot; title=&quot;a formula of spicy&quot;&gt;What formula determines questions for the hot touch?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17724" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5490" RevisionGUID="957ae5e2-89c4-4b67-9c71-c116c8175356" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Issues like this are addressed in MSO faq post &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/66378/165773&quot;&gt;What is the XY problem?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (by the way there's also quite an interesting list of linked questions there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...asking about your attempted solution rather than your actual problem&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as your answer explains why there is an underlying problem implicitly present in question asked and provides a solution to it, it should be OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17725" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5496" RevisionGUID="e5def7b8-07ab-461d-8b7e-571f5de7bef1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/180588/31260&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/180588/31260&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above answer has been made CW per automatic rule (&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/11741/165773&quot; title=&quot;MSO answer to 'What are “Community Wiki” posts?'&quot;&gt;quote source&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The post has been edited ten (10) times by the original owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Automatically applying generic rule in this particular case looks unfair.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;In case of doubt, check the answer contents and revisions history to decide whether you agree with above.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;answer: &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/180588/31260&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/180588/31260&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;revisions: &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/180588/revisions&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/180588/revisions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer looks exceptionally good and revisions (all made by author) look like substantially adding a value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to clear CW status to recognize an extraordinary contribution of the author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17726" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5504" RevisionGUID="6bbc371d-3bb7-4f58-8117-cd2784d6ae1e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;A feature similar to this one has been implement, you can counter-act close votes by voting to &quot;leave open&quot; in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close&quot;&gt;close vote review queue&lt;/a&gt;. It's not exactly what you've asked for, and it's only accessible through the review queue, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more details, read &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/134673/162704&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; on MSO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17727" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5527" RevisionGUID="8d8e54e5-3372-4d76-8ae0-bb36ff9da566" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure whether this falls under &quot;idle curiosity&quot; or not, but I have a devil of a time keeping the distinction between arguments and parameters straight - knowing the history behind them - the &quot;why&quot; - might well help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or it might just be one more bit of trivia to be confused and forgotten. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But frankly, this does seem like the sort of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/165952/what-should-be-the-range-of-acceptable-why-questions-on-stack-overflow#comment485094_165952&quot;&gt;&quot;conceptual&quot; question&lt;/a&gt; that the site is intended to serve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17728" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5535" RevisionGUID="bd7dac25-e666-4ace-b794-9f17cbf10e71" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;You've got it completely wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is by no means “not constructive”. The fact that the guidelines are met should be a hint. It's a well-written question about an interesting subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That this question was closed as NC &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/165882/appeal-a-not-constructive-question/165911#165911&quot;&gt;doesn't surprise me&lt;/a&gt;. There are more things on heaven and earth than dreamt of in most programmers' philosophy, but your average SO/Prog.SE close voter barely dreams, let alone imagine that there's a whole world out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study of languages is a science. The question is perhaps not well-suited for the site: it's on-topic (I guess) in that it's about programming languages, but the target audience would be computer scientists, who understand what a programming language is and how natural languages are modeled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking as a moderator on &lt;a href=&quot;http://cs.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Computer Science&lt;/a&gt;, I'll recommend migrating the question there. Both programming language theory and natural language modeling are on-topic there, and we don't dismiss “it's not part of my daily job as a programmer” as non-constructive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(However, I'm afraid user881920 is going to be disappointed. While the question is thought-provoking, the answer is an unexciting no.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17729" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="b5003d35-c36e-4fad-ae87-4a3223fb58a6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This request has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_drive_%28Star_Trek%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;what's this&quot;&gt;warp driven&lt;/a&gt; to the following requests at MSO:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/192046/165773&quot;&gt;In “network hot” questions formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/216260/165773&quot;&gt;Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Side note - this very answer has been used as a &quot;buffer&quot; to draft the latter request: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/5542/revisions&quot;&gt;details in revisions history&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17730" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5543" RevisionGUID="d19fa5fb-9ffd-470a-a59e-c9463339acf1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Most likely reason for the issues with answers quality is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164712/165773&quot; title=&quot;described here&quot;&gt;particular bug&lt;/a&gt; in a hotness formula (&quot;fake popularity&quot;). This bug causes some of the questions with many answers to be placed unreasonably close to the top of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info&quot; title=&quot;what's this&quot;&gt;collider&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issues caused by this are explained in details in a post about particularly troublesome (&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773&quot; title=&quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;&gt;&quot;sticky&quot;&lt;/a&gt;) kind of questions affected by the bug in formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One problem with hot questions seems to be that there is no way for &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; to differentiate &lt;strong&gt;genuine&lt;/strong&gt; popularity from &lt;strong&gt;fake&lt;/strong&gt; one, that is from popularity introduced by the algorithm itself... the algorithm simply is incapable to detect cases when popularity is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;due to positive feedback loop&quot;&gt;its own byproduct&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For questions that are not too hot... quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), collider brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and fair...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But when question gets closer to the top of collider, things change... it attracts a lot of visitors whose desire to answer is not balanced by local community norms. At this point &quot;intended life-cycle of a hot question&quot; breaks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hotness algorithm assumes the question gets bumped mostly by good answers and that infrequent deviations are corrected by local community through voting and comments. Thing is though, this does not work on top of the collider...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Post further explains why community moderation (&quot;quality control&quot; through voting, comments and editing by site regulars) tends to break on questions impacted by unnatural hotness score:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...There are just too many new visitors to keep things under local community control, and there are just too many new voters and commenters to get things going as designed... So comes next and next and next round of garbage answers, bumping the question, bringing mindless upvotes, over and over and over again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hotness algorithm calculates this as genuine popularity, keeps it accordingly high at collider, bringing more visitors that are breaking things further and so on and so on. Note it's not limited to newcomers only, everyone is invited to the party. Community regulars can clearly see that usual quality norms are broken... and that they are free to follow the New Order just like anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;That's how fake popularity makes shit stick to the ceiling and helps to keep it there.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It also explains why there are so much community wiki (triggered by too-many-answers) among questions affected by hotness formula bug:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Regular&lt;/em&gt; open questions (&quot;appropriate&quot; ones) tend to have much less than 30 answers indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But when we look at &quot;sticky&quot; questions, things seem to be different. These questions aren't &quot;inappropriate&quot;, otherwise these would be closed long time ago. Still, 10 examples of sticky questions have more than 270 answers total, about 27 average per question...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...at least &lt;strong&gt;2/3 answers in sticky questions are just a garbage&lt;/strong&gt; that somehow leaked in (probably because &quot;fake hotness&quot; gave question an unnaturally high exposure in collider).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Here are feature requests to address this:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5482/31260&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5482/31260&quot;&gt;Trial run of modified &amp;quot;hotness formula&amp;quot; for Programmers questions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/192046/165773&quot;&gt;In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please stop counting proven low score answers in hotness formula. Please roll the dice fairly, let user voting and time decay contribute to hotness score as intended. Please promote to collider audience less brain-damaging content to learn from.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17731" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5553" RevisionGUID="b8d05b56-7471-45bc-a220-0d35d91bdfbb" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Last week I asked &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/q/14756472/974555&quot;&gt;a question on future-proof programming&lt;/a&gt; on Stack Overflow. It was closed as off-topic there. I flagged it for migration, but although the flag was deemed helpful, the non-migration &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/167700/172266&quot;&gt;appears to imply rejection&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is my question, closed on Stack Overflow, a good fit on Programmers? Was a migration rejected? Why (not)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17732" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5560" RevisionGUID="f4de3e78-e1f8-40cd-ae8b-34d9a3c1225a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I would not judge content based on it's potential moral or ethical uses&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more we know about security loopholes, the more secure we can build our applications. Consider for example, the exact same question asked, but with the purpose of preventing such security loopholes in the first place. Then the moral/ethical argument would no longer be there, and you'll still get the exact same answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the OP is very correct with &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187231/create-a-unterminable-process-in-windows#comment360653_187231&quot;&gt;his comment&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;em&gt;&quot;when you learn cyber hacking and various exploits, it is not necessary you wants to be a black hat hacker&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. In fact, the US government plans to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/us/pentagon-to-beef-up-cybersecurity-force-to-counter-attacks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dramatically increase the size of their cyber security department&lt;/a&gt;, and plan on hiring many more &quot;hackers&quot; in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also as a side note related to that specific question, I recently wrote up &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/167474/158605&quot;&gt;an answer&lt;/a&gt; to a MSO question about effective ways to guide new users so they have a higher chance of becoming a contributing member of the SE communities, and one of the points there was to &quot;Assume the best about the user, and not the worst&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question you posted as an example is the exact sort of case I was referring to. By assuming the worst about the person (that they are only asking to create malware), you are presenting the OP with a very unfriendly welcome to the site, and it is unlikely they will stick around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, if you assume the best (that they are merely a curious student like they say they are), they are much more likely to listen to what you say, and may potentially become a contributing member to the community in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17733" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5588" RevisionGUID="ad33d7cd-9e20-4cf3-b8d3-3c8bdf001dec" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Although a user's Close/Reopen votes aren't displayed in Data.SE, the Post History record is public, and you can parse the line saying who closed the post to get a list of a user's closed posts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/98815/close-votes-by-user&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this Data.SE query&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/160981/show-successful-close-reopen-votes-in-sede-regardless-of-if-theyve-expired-or-n#comment467269_160981&quot;&gt;Tim Stone shared&lt;/a&gt; to look at posts that a user has successfully closed. It should be noted that this does not include votes on deleted posts, nor does it include close votes that have expired or did not result in the question getting closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also played around with that query a bit and found you can fairly easily get a list of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90851/top-close-voters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Top Close Voters&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90852/top-reopen-voters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Top Reopen Voters&lt;/a&gt;, although those queries take a bit longer to run and I would not recommend running them on a larger site like SO. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both these queries are currently set to only show votes since 2012, but you can change the date at the top if you want to look at a larger date range. Also, the same restrictions apply as the first query: it only includes non-deleted posts, and only contains close/reopen votes that resulted in the question successfully getting closed or reopened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a related note, since it's fairly trivial to view a user's successful close/reopen vote history, I have a MSO proposal to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/160981/158605&quot;&gt;show successful Close/Reopen votes in Data.SE&lt;/a&gt; that would make queries like this easier to run and more efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17734" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5634" RevisionGUID="bea897f0-5375-4d5a-9154-01d4e57455ca" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h2&gt;Do history questions offer value to the site?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, absolutely. A quick look at our &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bhistory%5D+closed%3A0&quot;&gt;highest voted history questions&lt;/a&gt; reveals quite a few exceptional questions and answers. The history tag is not one of our most active tags, but it does have a significant amount of questions (153 currently) and &lt;em&gt;only 2&lt;/em&gt; of them are downvoted. That's... impressive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm fully aware of the several valid concerns about history questions, and share most of them, I can't imagine Programmers &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; history questions. They are a bit special, but the exceptional ones are proof enough that the topic belongs on the site, and with vigorous moderation we can deal with the low end ones.&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How do history questions pass the &quot;practical problem&quot; test?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt; dictates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You should only ask &lt;strong&gt;practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&lt;/strong&gt;. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the prime directive for all Stack Exchange sites, and Programmers is no exception. However it's a directive that was written with Stack Overflow in mind and &lt;em&gt;some times&lt;/em&gt; it proves to be more confusing than helpful on every other Stack Exchange site. If we go by a strict interpretation of the prime directive, then history questions are off topic. That, however, would also mean that 9/10 Stack Exchange sites should be closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a related discussion on MSO, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/164436/is-there-a-rule-of-thumb-for-objective-questions-asked-out-of-curiosity#comment480234_164692&quot;&gt;I commented&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't care at all if the problem is actual or practical (by whatever definition of practical), what I care about is the asker being serious about it, at least serious enough to have done some minimal research before s/he resorts to a community of volunteers. Intellectual curiosity is as great motivator as any, idle curiosity is a different beast entirely, one that, if entertained, will ultimately suck the life out of the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The prime directive's goal is to stop people from asking questions out of idle curiosity. Intellectual curiosity on the other hand &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be an excellent motivator for questions, especially on sites that are focused on conceptual questions like Programmers. I think the fact that the majority of our history questions are either exceptional or crap it's because the first were asked out of intellectual curiosity and the latter out of idle curiosity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what divides the two is prior effort. If the asker has spend some time researching their question and reached a point where they can't get to the answer by themselves, guess what, they are facing an &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; problem. A problem that, judging from the impressive answer rate of our history questions, we can certainly help solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What should our general guidelines be?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intellectual curiosity is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; an excuse for poor questions, our guidelines should be exactly the same as with every other question. Since history questions have proven to be troublesome, let me re-iterate: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Askers &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; do their homework&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer to a history question can be found on a freely available reference site (read: Wikipedia) &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; the language's / system's / project's freely available documentation, then the question is &lt;strong&gt;off topic&lt;/strong&gt; and will be closed as such.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is perhaps the most important guideline for history questions. We are not here to copy paste the relevant Wikipedia article for you. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Askers &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; share their research&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Except for the very few of us that have mind reading powers, we can't guess what you already know. Please share your research with us, to avoid having people wasting their time answering with what you already know. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be answerable&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From our &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&quot;&gt;about page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Programmers is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt; is ideal for open ended discussions on programming history. History questions on the main site, as all questions on the main site, should be focused, specific and as clear as they can be.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Programming history questions should be about &lt;em&gt;programming&lt;/em&gt; history&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The focus areas of the site are software development and software engineering, not &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; that's related to computing is acceptable on the site and history questions are no exception.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No trivia&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trivia &lt;em&gt;by definition&lt;/em&gt; doesn't belong on Programmers. Our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt; is ideal for discussions around programming history trivia.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17735" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5644" RevisionGUID="6f5305d9-9bc2-40c0-9469-2c9aae1b7fd9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This is sort of an edge-case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a migration is &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/35744/allow-diamond-moderators-to-reverse-question-migrations&quot;&gt;rejected&lt;/a&gt;, its answers are deleted on the target site, it is locked, and the reverse happens on the origin site - so right now on SO, &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15123889/why-do-data-types-in-computers-exist-if-its-really-all-just-bits&quot;&gt;that question&lt;/a&gt; is just marked closed; it could be re-opened, deleted, edited, etc. - unless you check the history, there's no evidence it was ever migrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, folks don't &lt;em&gt;do stuff&lt;/em&gt; to migrated questions after the migration has been rejected. It gets weird. That question now exists in both places. (I will clean this up)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, we probably could do a better job of communicating the state of the question. My preference would be to explicitly state that the question was migrated in &lt;em&gt;and then rejected&lt;/em&gt;; but we could also just &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/130116/show-lock-banners-on-rejected-migrations&quot;&gt;tack on the normal Locked notice&lt;/a&gt;; vote for that if you like the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17736" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5656" RevisionGUID="ea847c4e-6fca-4571-81fc-00c9cf2b11d6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The following is a &quot;digest&quot; version of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5595/2013-moderator-election-town-hall-chat&quot;&gt;2013 Moderator Election Town Hall Chat&lt;/a&gt;. The format, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests&quot;&gt;as described on Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;, is one &lt;em&gt;answer&lt;/em&gt; to this question &lt;em&gt;for every question&lt;/em&gt; asked in the Town Hall, containing all the candidate's answers to that question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To view the digest chronologically, please sort the answers by &quot;oldest&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have questions or comments about this, &lt;strong&gt;please do not answer this question&lt;/strong&gt; as the answers are designed to be used for the questions from the Town hall itself. Instead, please ask on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests&quot;&gt;the parent question&lt;/a&gt; or in &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/352/town-hall-discussion&quot;&gt;the Town Hall Discussion Room&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you see any corrections which need to be made to this digest, or if you were a candidate who was unable to attend the town hall and would like your answers included, please @GraceNote or @TimStone &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/251/programmers-town-hall-chat&quot;&gt;in the chat room&lt;/a&gt; and let us know!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17737" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5679" RevisionGUID="ad21be66-5425-448d-9cc6-310346ce8e5a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, good history question is one that evolves into a retrospective case study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practical purpose of case studies is explained eg in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...an intensive analysis of an individual unit (e.g., a person, group, or event) stressing developmental factors in relation to context... Case studies may be descriptive or explanatory. The latter type is used to &lt;strong&gt;explore causation in order to find underlying principles.&lt;/strong&gt; They may be prospective... or retrospective (in which &lt;strong&gt;criteria are established for selecting cases from historical records for inclusion in the study&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&quot;Case studies are analyses of persons, events, decisions, periods, projects, policies, institutions, or other systems that are studied holistically by one or more methods. The case that is the subject of the inquiry will be &lt;strong&gt;an instance of a class of phenomena that provides an analytical frame&lt;/strong&gt; — an object — within which the study is conducted and which the case illuminates and explicates.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another suggestion is that case study should be defined as a research strategy, an &lt;strong&gt;empirical inquiry that investigates a phenomenon within its real-life context&lt;/strong&gt;. Case study research can mean single and multiple case studies, can include quantitative evidence, relies on multiple sources of evidence, and benefits from the prior development of theoretical propositions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Case studies balance the need to understand something big (something that would be too broad / NARQ in Stack Exchange terms) with a limitation of being sufficiently specific to allow for reasonably scoped &lt;em&gt;productive learning&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Say, one shouldn't ask at Programmers &lt;em&gt;what do I need to know about mission critical projects&lt;/em&gt; - that would be too broad for our format. Instead, one asks &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/159637/31260&quot;&gt;What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?&lt;/a&gt; - that's still tough but at least something we can handle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to Stack Overflow, Programmers questions (including history ones) serve the purpose of picking and applying programming technologies. The difference is, due to &lt;em&gt;conceptual&lt;/em&gt; nature of Programmers questions, the purpose could be not as immediate / direct as at Stack Overflow...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you ask about mission critical software a week before interview, you're probably few months too late: few months ago, you should ask yourself whether you are interested, and what would you want to understand about doing software development in this context.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And you don't necessary need to understand the context of mission critical software development just because you are involved. In fact, it can be opposite:&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hey you suggest us &lt;em&gt;Fagan inspections&lt;/em&gt;, why? I mean I perfectly understand how these are justified in &lt;em&gt;mission critical&lt;/em&gt; projects, but how does this apply to our non-critical application, compared to lightweight reviews?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  Summing up, I believe that history questions can serve a practical purpose, sufficiently compliant with Programmers topics (if done right).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, above assumes these pass through community moderation, business as usual. Questions that do not fit get closed per standard &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/close-reasons/info&quot;&gt;close reasons&lt;/a&gt;, answers that don't fit get downvoted / flagged / deleted per usual &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/75717/165773&quot;&gt;community quality control&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;[...] real questions have &lt;em&gt;answers&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;not &lt;em&gt;items&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;ideas&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;opinions&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&quot;Real questions&quot; don't necessarily have &lt;em&gt;practical&lt;/em&gt; answers, but they do have &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;authoritative&lt;/em&gt; ones&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17739" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5705" RevisionGUID="6d9af42b-5134-40e1-90f8-7756e19bb8f4" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I would like to address one point I noticed in quite a few prior answers here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;conceptual question on software development, why wouldn't I ask it on &lt;strong&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/strong&gt;... &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5680/31260&quot; title=&quot;quote source&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;On &lt;strong&gt;StackOverflow&lt;/strong&gt;, many questions that are not in the prohibited categories... &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5699/31260&quot; title=&quot;quote source&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;there is considerable overlap between &lt;strong&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/strong&gt; and programmers... &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5704/31260&quot; title=&quot;quote source&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;those questions are valuable and interesting..., and happily go on using &lt;strong&gt;StackOverflow&lt;/strong&gt;... &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5676/31260&quot; title=&quot;quote source&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeah you guys brag so much about how easier it is to &lt;em&gt;pass through&lt;/em&gt; at Stack Overflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you probably don't consider is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/151833/165773&quot; title=&quot;about 50K questions to close&quot;&gt;huge backlog in close votes queue&lt;/a&gt; makes (&lt;em&gt;currently&lt;/em&gt; makes) close voting at SO somewhat... &lt;em&gt;random&lt;/em&gt;, compared to systematic effort you see at Programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I hate to be the one to tell you, but don't expect this to last forever...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/review/close/stats&quot; title=&quot;'can't you see I'm working on it...'&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yxu4K.png&quot; alt=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yxu4K.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  I think it will be very interesting to see what happens in about &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/163837/165773&quot; title=&quot;'we should have it cleared in just under 21 months'&quot;&gt;21 months from now&lt;/a&gt;, when mentioned backlog is expected to be cleared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;sup&gt;One can probably get an idea of how it would feel like by observing current effort to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167342/close-all-the-typo-questions&quot; title=&quot;refer to MSO for more details on that&quot;&gt;Close all the typo questions&lt;/a&gt;. Watching their &quot;live backlog&quot; makes a strong impression: dozens of questions getting closed and deleted daily with ease, and don't forget that only a small percentage of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/167915/165773&quot; title=&quot;estimate here&quot;&gt;about 10 thousands SO close-voters&lt;/a&gt; participate!&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When close votes backlog is finally cleared, expect close votes processing to get to the pace at which other SO reviews are dealt with (think about something like &lt;strong&gt;10x faster than at Programmers&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would you guys say when it will become only a matter of few minutes between first close vote / flag and question closure at Stack Overflow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If (when) that happens to your favorite &quot;conceptual&quot; questions at SO (as it happens already &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/170394/165773&quot; title=&quot;recent example&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/157216/165773&quot; title=&quot;another example&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; - just not that frequently), please don't forget to get back here and tell us again if it's that easy to pass at SO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17740" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5720" RevisionGUID="c91f78dd-4887-44f4-870f-0eca541aba26" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h3&gt;On everything should be open&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think anyone believes this.  Even the most liberal of the inclusionists has a limit on the amount of water-cooler nonsense they can tolerate.  For some, that water mark is really high, but it's still there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;On giving new users a break from downvotes&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simple fact is, you have to treat everyone equally.  It's not fair to veteran users to be treated any differently than the new users.  Discipline without teeth is not discipline at all; if there are no consequences for bad posts, then the bad posts will continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;On closure reasons&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are in the process of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/169814&quot;&gt;being overhauled&lt;/a&gt; by SE.  The new close reasons will be kinder, gentler, more educational, and probably won't use the word &quot;closed.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;On unanswerable questions and the strictness of closure&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been giving this a lot of thought since I asked my last question here on Meta.  I've begun experimenting with the way I use close votes and answer questions, using this guiding principle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Can I answer this question in a meaningful way that is interesting and relevant to others?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's why: Being strict has not improved the quality of questions being asked here.  If anything, the &lt;em&gt;overall&lt;/em&gt; quality of questions has gone down over time.  The diligence we've exerted to keep questions tightly focused has not improved the quality of questions other people ask, and neither has constantly arguing over the site scope.  Absent interesting questions to answer, there's no reason to participate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I come here because it is &lt;em&gt;fun and educational to rub shoulders with other people who have interesting ideas about programming.&lt;/em&gt;  We can't have that if people are constantly being turned away without a commensurate increase in participation by those who know how to ask great questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17741" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5737" RevisionGUID="64d6215e-4761-4083-9952-f12d37cff0c7" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Typically a moderator will lock a post for one of a few reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A question or answer where repeated voting or editing is happening in a way which attempts to game, hack, or otherwise abuse the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A question that gets opened and closed repeatedly many times without achieving community consensus on whether it should stay open or closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A question that, for whatever reason, continues to attract flame posts, spam, or other inappropriate answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A question that is repeatedly vandalized by its asker; for example, to drastically alter the meaning of the question that invalidates existing answers, or to obliterate/obscure the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22228/what-is-a-locked-post&quot;&gt;What is a &amp;quot;locked&amp;quot; post?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I locked the post temporarily because it was closed as a duplicate by community consensus, then started to receive flags disputing that it was in fact &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a duplicate of the following question....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45378/is-commented-out-code-really-always-bad&quot;&gt;Is commented out code really always bad?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I felt as if I agreed with this, however it had over 10 answers already and at the other over 13.  I couldn't really see too much else of value being added in addition to what others have already answered well and completely.  I was hoping that with a temporary lock that it wouldn't attract anymore answers and if anybody was concerned or highly disagreed with my reopen of the question then they would bring the subject up on Meta for us to discuss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am glad that you brought it up because this question can be the perfect vehicle for such a discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17742" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5750" RevisionGUID="106e1ea6-8f25-447b-b7b0-80fba7d59b15" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;All the changes are now live, you can find more details on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/184154/closing-the-loop-the-closing-overhaul-is-live&quot;&gt;MSO&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first step was the brand new &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&quot;&gt;about page&lt;/a&gt; (see our &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&quot;&gt;about page&lt;/a&gt;), and the next one was the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/169814/help-us-make-off-topic-close-reasons-clearer-to-the-op&quot;&gt;changes in how duplicates work&lt;/a&gt;. Right now Stack Exchange is looking for feedback on revamping the close reasons, on the main Meta. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be updating this answer as more changes and requests for feedback are announced:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/163254/were-rolling-out-a-new-quick-start-guide-to-help-new-users-learn-the-basics&quot;&gt;We're rolling out a new “Quick Start” guide to help new users learn the basics&lt;/a&gt; &amp;#x2713;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&quot;&gt;Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)&lt;/a&gt; &amp;#x2713;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/169814/help-us-make-off-topic-close-reasons-clearer-to-the-op&quot;&gt;Help us make “Off-Topic” close reasons clearer to the OP&lt;/a&gt; &amp;#x2713;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171732/help-us-make-not-constructive-and-not-a-real-question-closures-more-effectiv&quot;&gt;Help us make “Not Constructive” and “Not a Real Question” closures more effective&lt;/a&gt; &amp;#x2713;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/173497/every-close-has-its-thorn-help-us-improve-closing-verbiage&quot;&gt;Every “close” has its thorn: help us improve closing verbiage&lt;/a&gt; &amp;#x2713;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17743" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5763" RevisionGUID="83b83208-a133-488e-901c-22948cc2e485" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The deleted question is actually closed as a duplicate to &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51591/sites-for-getting-freelancer-jobs&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;, which contains a more complete list of freelance sites. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best solution in this case would be to probably edit the existing answer to point to this non-deleted post instead of the deleted post, although in other cases where there isn't a good non-deleted duplicate, we'd probably want to edit the answer to remove the dead link (or remove the answer itself it the only content it contained was the dead link).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the rare event that the deleted post contains valuable information that is linked to from many places, it may qualify to be undeleted and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/126587/158605&quot;&gt;historical lock&lt;/a&gt; placed on it. That type of action usually depends on the content, how many views/votes the post has, and how many links go to it, and the deleted post you mention probably would not qualify because of it's low number of views (770).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also to answer your question about what you can do to see a deleted post when you don't have 10K+ reputation, you can try to find the post on &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.org/web/web.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Wayback Machine&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackprinter.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;StackPrinter&lt;/a&gt;, or you could try asking in &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&quot;&gt;chat&lt;/a&gt; or perhaps even here on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Meta&lt;/a&gt; to see if a user with 10K+ rep or a moderator would be nice enough to get you a copy of the post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17744" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5770" RevisionGUID="af8f67d0-b62c-4438-915f-e804e723768e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The issue has been discussed on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/170683/stop-using-real-accounts-in-suggested-edit-audits/171562#171562&quot;&gt;Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;. Clearly something is still going on. I'll look into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17745" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5776" RevisionGUID="65e7be28-03cc-426d-81e5-542ac63e12c0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There's an automated process that runs daily and checks and reverses serial votes (either up or down). It will most probably reverse the downvotes the next time it runs, 9 downvotes in a very short time is certainly an abnormal pattern. In the highly unlikely case that the votes haven't been reversed in 24h, give me a shout in chat so I can ask a SE employee to take a closer look and manually invalidate the votes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming the votes are indeed abusive (confirmed either by the script or by a SE employee), the next step is to contact and/or suspend the culprit, our tolerance for juvenile behaviours like this is extremely low. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More info on the serial voting script can be found in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/28756/what-can-i-do-if-im-the-victim-of-serial-downvoting&quot;&gt;M.SO post&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17746" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5789" RevisionGUID="dc222d19-a277-4129-93b9-01b41144d88d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;As pointed in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5788/is-tagresource-questions-a-good-idea-for-the-main-site#comment14683_5788&quot; title=&quot;here&quot;&gt;comments&lt;/a&gt;, this is not quite a good idea because having such a tag could have an opposite effect: users may think it's OK to use it, even if you write in its wiki and excerpt that it's forbidden - &quot;if there's a tag, why can't I ask about it?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you refer to my comment - for the sake of precision, this was only second time (I wish it would also be the last but unfortunately it wouldn't) when I referred asker to tag wiki.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prior to that, my similar comments were pointing to particular meta discussion (the one that is currently set in the tag wiki as the guidance point). It was when my comment has been (quite legitimately imNSho) &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190911/code-network-metrics-with-ui-events#comment370863_190911&quot;&gt;challenged&lt;/a&gt; by asker who pointed to another meta discussion to back up somewhat different approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, I suggested &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/186&quot;&gt;tag wiki&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/187&quot;&gt;excerpt&lt;/a&gt; and switched to using these in comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a more general note, I believe tag wiki like that are to be established any time when there is a confusion among meta readers caused by differing &quot;canonical&quot; / &quot;authoritative&quot; posts and comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's not a new idea, explained eg in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/154922/165773&quot;&gt;flagger's guide to link-only answers&lt;/a&gt; at MSO:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;In some meta posts or comments you may see moderators suggesting / requiring particular kind flag to be used (or to avoid) for link-only answers. Convenient &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litmus_test_%28politics%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;litmus test&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; in cases like that is to ask author whether this is their personal opinion or a statement that can be quoted in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/tag-wiki/info&quot; title=&quot;what's this&quot;&gt;tag wiki&lt;/a&gt; (wiki for respective flag or for &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/link-only-answers/info&quot;&gt;link-only  answers&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;strong&gt;Tag wiki are quite authoritative reference; anything else, read: &lt;em&gt;use at your own risk&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  For a more recent example you can refer to MSO &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/172893/revisions&quot; title=&quot;tag wiki history&quot;&gt;profanity tag wiki&lt;/a&gt; that have been established because of similar &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/172734/copying-profanities-and-obscene-words-on-meta/172747#comment513141_172747&quot; title=&quot;discussed here&quot;&gt;confusion&lt;/a&gt; caused by having differing &quot;authoritative&quot; posts on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17748" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5817" RevisionGUID="4f8b6353-9adc-4b23-aebe-baf0a57536a8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Should be back to working now; see &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/175161/chat-se-is-down&quot;&gt;Chat.SE is down&lt;/a&gt; on Meta Stack Overflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17749" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5819" RevisionGUID="51805ade-f657-417e-ab24-b72c0fc1406b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;My comment from a recent question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Questions of online store policies for clarification are best addressed by contacting the support for the online store. At best, we can guess, present our own interpretation, or share anecdotes - none of which are good answers in a Q&amp;amp;A format. The only authoritative answer can come from the store itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key point in my comment is about the authoritative answer.  For this I point to an answer from &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717&quot;&gt;The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has an (admittedly drastically shorted) summary of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Real questions&quot; don't necessarily have practical answers, but they do have authoritative ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For every question about app stores that I have seen (not all that exist, but all that I have seen), no one here is able to provide an authoritative answer. They are asking for interpretations of sometimes fuzzy policies written by someone else (that are then interpreted again by that agency).  Any answer that we (people who don't work for the app store and are not reviewers of apps for that store) can be wrong even if it is &quot;right&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A year ago there was a question &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3556/&quot;&gt;Are App Store questions on topic on programmers?&lt;/a&gt;.  All the same points are still valid today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17750" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5840" RevisionGUID="84e56b6e-5cff-4d5b-83f7-61475f3dd6d6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;My vote has been based on what is stated in the questions and in MSO guidance. Let's see,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Closed question (&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/194969/1&quot;&gt;revision that I voted on&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would like to know from the programmers what programming language is to be preferred?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41798/programming-an-expert-system&quot;&gt;&quot;Target&quot; question&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the general process to define the behavior of an expert system, from the initial assessment of the conditions to the actual code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given above, I voted in accordance with &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/166707/165773&quot;&gt;this guidance at MSO&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we want to tell the user ...something like, “&lt;em&gt;Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.&lt;/em&gt;” Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17751" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5843" RevisionGUID="900f7682-abac-48a9-9723-a9d210877815" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Some recent posts make me feel like these could be automatically rejected by &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/quality-filter/info&quot; title=&quot;what's this&quot;&gt;quality filter&lt;/a&gt;, thus saving community efforts for better quality questions and answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195209/31260&quot; title=&quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;&gt;&quot;I want To develope My Own linux Distro for Linux Beginners.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195203/31260&quot; title=&quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;&gt;&quot;I want To Know How To prepare An understanding Doc To Track what I am Doing On daily Basis So that I can Be update To my Work.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195204/31260&quot; title=&quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;&gt;&quot;I am A New Joinee In a major MNC And Currently I am Working In Vitria Team I dont Know Much about Vitria From Career Persepective.Plz Guide&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Above are full literal quotes of the posts, I did not change anything.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently it has been announced that quality filter is tightened at Trilogy sites (for your convenience, announcement is quoted below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As far as I understand, SE team is &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/174097/is-it-time-to-tighten-up-the-question-quality-filter/176875?noredirect=1#comment531396_176875&quot; title=&quot;quote source&quot;&gt;open to consider similar change for Programmers&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the sad truth is that on Programmers, even questions with a maximum quality score fare worse on average than the ones passing the threshold I just put in place on SO. We can try tweaking the threshold there too, but it's probably worth a separate discussion on meta.programmers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  Could we please somehow adjust quality filter at Programmers to prevent posting low quality stuff like in above examples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the reference, announcement of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/176875/165773&quot; title=&quot;here&quot;&gt;filter adjustment at Trilogy sites&lt;/a&gt; is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've bumped up the threshold below which questions will be blocked. The majority of &lt;em&gt;recently-asked&lt;/em&gt; questions that fall below the new threshold do not fare well on Stack Overflow (i.e. they are closed, deleted, and/or down-voted). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The down-side is that short questions will be harder to post (this is more than just a length check, but short + poor spelling / caps / punctuation / formatting will damn a post more readily). At this point, I think that's a fair trade-off on Stack Overflow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've also increased the threshold on Super User and Server Fault; although the volume is lower there, they field even fewer reasonable questions in this range. A quick check of other high-traffic sites does not appear to justify raising this anywhere else at this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FWIW: Stack Overflow already rejects something like twelve hundred questions a day based on this check - that'd amount to about 13% of questions if a lot of them weren't just the same folks retrying more or less the same text over and over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt; for the reference, at the &quot;quality score&quot; list provided in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5857/31260&quot; title=&quot;thanks Shog!&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;: first of above examples scores 70, second - 83, third - 81.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17752" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5845" RevisionGUID="28ce9cc4-c8d0-4a78-a748-81be60a9d9f4" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Short version: Does P.SE have similar new user limitations as SO does?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Buried in the MSO FAQ is this answer about &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/89241/194162&quot;&gt;new user restrictions&lt;/a&gt;.  And it states that new users are only allowed 6 questions in a 24 hour period at a maximum rate of one question every 20 minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have noticed many new users ask 3 questions and then stop.  Is there a different limiter in place for P.SE?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17753" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5850" RevisionGUID="a77667b7-b7a1-44d2-ae7b-713104f071d3" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I have noticed a lot of questions being flagged as duplicates lately when I didn't feel that they were duplicates of the question that the people closing them said they were duplicates of. In some cases they didn't seem close.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that the definition of &quot;duplicate&quot; should be very close to an exact duplicate of the question, in intent if not in wording. If the question is otherwise ambiguous or of low quality we shouldn't be closing it as a duplicate, we should be trying to clarify it or closing it for an appropriate reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&quot;&gt;guidance from MSO&lt;/a&gt; that @gnat mentioned, I see this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the answers to the original question must solve the dupe’s problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case I could see no answers to the question that came close to solving the duplicate's problem and clearly neither could the person asking it. There was some good information that was pertinent to their decision making, but nothing there which was an answer to &lt;em&gt;this question&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17754" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5893" RevisionGUID="4136367d-e724-4ecd-ad44-6ed2599ec241" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;For questions about the process of identifying and closing questions that are duplicates of another question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/166707/165773&quot; title=&quot;Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)&quot;&gt;comprehensive guidance at MSO&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we want to tell the user ...something like, “&lt;em&gt;Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.&lt;/em&gt;” Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Related articles at Stack Exchange blog&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/&quot;&gt;Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;strong&gt;duplication is not necessarily bad&lt;/strong&gt;. Quite the contrary — some duplication is &lt;em&gt;desirable&lt;/em&gt;. There’s often benefit to having multiple subtle variants of a question around, as people tend to ask and search using completely different words, and the better our coverage, the better odds people can find the answer they’re looking for...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...use your good judgment and please continue to close and merge duplicates as you see fit. However, bear in mind that cultivating and supporting a moderate amount of natural duplication actively &lt;em&gt;helps&lt;/em&gt; the community...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/handling-duplicate-questions/&quot;&gt;Handling Duplicate Questions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...there are three classes of duplicate questions, from most clear to least clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Cut-and-paste duplicate questions. These questions are the very definition of exact duplicates; they are typically from users who willfully take the very same question and post it again... No grey area here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Accidental duplicates. These questions aren’t copy and paste, but they cover the exact same ground as an earlier Stack Overflow question. The overlap is not ambiguous...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Borderline duplicates. These questions are ambiguous; they’re in the same ballpark as a previous question, but have subtle differences that may make them legitimately standalone questions. These are subject to interpretation...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17755" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5898" RevisionGUID="09098842-54a9-42ca-b1b5-4476f0889c37" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Duplicate of&quot; should be a transitive property (if A is a dupe of B, and B is a dupe of C, then A must be a dupe of C)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assumption of transitivity looks wrong; per my reading of the definition in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/duplicate-questions/info&quot;&gt;duplicate-questions tag wiki&lt;/a&gt;, it is not required:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we want to tell the user ...something like, &lt;em&gt;“Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.”&lt;/em&gt; Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question &lt;code&gt;A&lt;/code&gt; having an answer in &lt;code&gt;B&lt;/code&gt; does not automatically guarantee that it also has an answer in &lt;code&gt;C&lt;/code&gt;, even though question &lt;code&gt;B&lt;/code&gt; may have its answer in &lt;code&gt;C&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a simplified example, imagine &quot;chain of duplicates&quot; like as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;A:&lt;/code&gt; How do I see result of multiplying 2 by 2?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;B:&lt;/code&gt; How do I multiply?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;answer:&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You invoke &lt;code&gt;multiply&lt;/code&gt; method of &lt;code&gt;arith&lt;/code&gt; package. In order to view result, you invoke method of &lt;code&gt;display&lt;/code&gt; package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;C:&lt;/code&gt; How do I do arithmetic operations?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;answer:&lt;/code&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You invoke appropriate method of &lt;code&gt;arith&lt;/code&gt; package, like &lt;code&gt;multiply&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;divide&lt;/code&gt; etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to imagine readers being satisfied by closures &lt;code&gt;A -&amp;gt; B&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;B -&amp;gt; C&lt;/code&gt; since answers given solve the problems asked about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, closure &lt;code&gt;A -&amp;gt; C&lt;/code&gt; would be problematic: first question asks about how to display results, while answer in the second question says nothing about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Note how question in &lt;code&gt;B&lt;/code&gt; does not ask about displaying results, making dupe closure look reasonable. Also note how answer in &lt;code&gt;B&lt;/code&gt; provides guidance &lt;em&gt;beyond&lt;/em&gt; its scope, along with addressing the question asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a more realistic example, refer to the non-transitive chain of duplicates at Meta Stack Overflow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;A':&lt;/code&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/178703/165773&quot;&gt;Spiteful downvoting? Two fast DVs to my unrelated posts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;B':&lt;/code&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/28756/165773&quot;&gt;What can I do if I'm the victim of serial downvoting?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;C':&lt;/code&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/126829/165773&quot;&gt;What is serial voting and how does it affect me?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;A'&lt;/code&gt; is closed as a duplicate of &lt;code&gt;B'&lt;/code&gt;, which is in turn closed as a duplicate of &lt;code&gt;C'&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take a closer look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/178703/revisions&quot; title=&quot;here&quot;&gt;revisions history&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/178703/spiteful-downvoting-two-fast-dvs-to-my-unrelated-posts#comment539909_178703&quot; title=&quot;'changed the duplicate to one more relevant to the question asked...'&quot;&gt;comments&lt;/a&gt;, you will notice that initial closure has been changed from &lt;code&gt;A' -&amp;gt; C'&lt;/code&gt; to &lt;em&gt;narrower&lt;/em&gt; one, &lt;code&gt;A' -&amp;gt; B'&lt;/code&gt; because readers disagreed that &lt;em&gt;widest&lt;/em&gt; dupe target has answers relevant to the question asked in &lt;code&gt;A'&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17756" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5928" RevisionGUID="9fbae185-d46c-4a45-ae02-6349fc6a046d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Given the &quot;We were checking if you're paying attention!&quot; part of the flow you described, this was an audit rather than an actual &quot;this question needs to be closed&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given your timing and the review queue &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close/29657&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; was the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/review-audits/info&quot; title=&quot;what's this&quot;&gt;audit&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are issues with audits that are occasionally brought up on MSO such as one that seems to be similar to your issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/179651/close-vote-review-audit-flawed-fails-without-casting-vote&quot;&gt;Close vote review audit flawed - fails without casting vote&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17757" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5933" RevisionGUID="309853bc-1f68-45f0-a577-2884cb76863e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;taken for the review audit FAQ on &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/157121/what-are-review-tests-audits-and-how-do-they-work&quot;&gt;MSO&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What happens if I fail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For most, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156938/stop-look-and-listen-audit-tricked-me/156942#comment452398_156942&quot;&gt;nothing&lt;/a&gt;. You'll be given some guidance on why the post was inappropriate and what you could have done instead, and then allowed to continue reviewing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Repeated failures, especially in short succession can lead to your review privileges being suspended for a week or longer, depending on the frequency of the failures. Stack Exchange is continuing to analyze the data to determine the best action to take in these cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Review audits aren't perfect though and its somewhat common that a poor question is chosen, but that shouldn't matter for users actually interested in reviewing questions, the audits are designed to help prevent robo-reviewing if you take your time and review normally its unlikely you will fail enough audits in a short enough period to matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17758" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5934" RevisionGUID="c3dc2d06-3ed9-41b4-b352-c551df080ede" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Nothing will happen if you fail an audit (or two). If you repeatedly fail audits, you might find yourself (automatically) suspended from reviewing for a week. If, after your suspension you continue failing audits, you might find yourself suspended for a bit longer. Moderators also have the ability to suspend a user from reviewing, in case the automatic measures miss something. We also have the ability to lift a review suspension, if it's unjustified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, this was a very sneaky audit. The question is borderline, I can see why you voted to close it (although it might be salvageable with an edit or two). The audits system picks questions and answers from the last 30 days, and as any automated system, it can only rely on the available data. At the time you reviewed the question, it had 7 upvotes, 0 downvotes, 0 close votes, 0 flags and 4 upvoted answers. Naturally, the system assumed it was a very good question for the site, and expected you to think the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interesting reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/157121/what-are-review-tests-audits-and-how-do-they-work&quot;&gt;What are review tests (audits) and how do they work?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/180417/162704&quot;&gt;Clearly wrong close review audit - what action to take?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/167962/162704&quot;&gt;How many failed audits to be put on quarantine?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/158675/162704&quot;&gt;Why am I getting the message “You've failed too many recent review audits”?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/155561/162704&quot;&gt;The robo-approvers are killing my will to review edits&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/179929/are-reasonably-bad-reviewers-in-any-way-being-detected-or-punished&quot;&gt;Are 'reasonably bad' reviewers in any way being detected or 'punished'?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17759" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5953" RevisionGUID="6b408721-b616-4ee6-96e1-17e17601f36b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/199785/clever-way-to-license-obfuscate-web-applications-until-the-client-has-paid-for-i&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; is posed in terms of ASP.NET, but (in my opinion) is really about collecting payment. (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/66378/192138&quot;&gt;xy problem&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are questions about collecting payment for freelance work on topic? The FAQ lists &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; as on-topic, but I would think questions about writing a contract that includes payment collection would be better directed to a lawyer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17760" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5957" RevisionGUID="359591a2-9cca-48ba-a051-6f5e312c9546" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, there's no easy way. You might be interested in supporting these related feature requests on MSO:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/77138/162704&quot;&gt;Is there any analytics information that moderators can access for individual questions?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/165593/162704&quot;&gt;Can we add moderator features to see keyword analytics and annotated traffic graphs for specific questions?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, if you do a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=%22How%20should%20I%20behave%20as%20a%20developer%20in%20a%20project%20that%27s%20headed%20for%20failure%22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;simple search for the question's title&lt;/a&gt;, you'll find out it's been shared on several sites. The more likely culprit for the question's sudden popularity seems to be this recent &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5785759&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hacker News thread&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17761" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5982" RevisionGUID="04ed8393-1502-4619-8595-cc63d614dd38" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;That is apparently how &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/93372/what-font-is-used-on-the-programmers-stack-exchange-site&quot;&gt;Gregory House writes it.&lt;/a&gt;  (It's not Lupus!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An examination of the symbols on the top row of the keyboard yields:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4MBVO.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where a couple of symbols (namely the @ and the *) are conspicuously missing.  Apparently Hugh Laurie never wrote them on the whiteboard during the entire series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UL is an abbreviation for a number of medical terms, including Undifferentiated Lymphoma.  It is entirely possible that the maker of the font confused that abbreviation with the ampersand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it requires a font editor (and an intern with a black marker and a steady hand) to fix it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17762" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5990" RevisionGUID="a8361db4-7bbe-4e95-a473-ef841c5c72d5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There was a bug in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78048/enable-automatic-deletion-of-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year&quot;&gt;the scheduled job that cleans up migration stubs&lt;/a&gt;: it also automatically deleted questions that had been migrated and then &lt;em&gt;rejected&lt;/em&gt;. Obviously, that was not the intent and has been fixed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the other problem here is that a very popular question was rejected years after being migrated and after many edits and improvements had been made. The appropriate action here would've been to lock it. Unfortunately, a big part of the value that a question like this brings to the site comes from the ability of the community to edit it, updating and improving the answers as the years roll by. In other words, the question has value &lt;em&gt;as a wiki&lt;/em&gt;. But there's no type of lock that reflects this need to foster editing while preventing pile-on answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...Well, &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; there is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XT45O.png&quot; alt=&quot;wiki answer lock&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This particular question was well-suited for testing this strategy: there were only a few answers, and the top answer had &lt;em&gt;massively&lt;/em&gt; more activity (and popularity) than the rest. So I've cleaned up the migration rejection, restored the top answer, and locked it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We'll see how this works in practice, but at very least it should never be accidentally deleted again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17763" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5991" RevisionGUID="16f143b5-3257-4a7c-bbac-aa020da80554" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;We have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/182572/165773&quot; title=&quot;announced here&quot;&gt;new lock type&lt;/a&gt; that can be added to questions that are not strictly on topic or constructive but have, because they have been edited and expanded, become a valuable resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first question that it's been applied to is this one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development&quot;&gt;What should every programmer know about web development?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This lock is best applied to a question that has a single CW answer that covers all the points. At the moment that doesn't apply to this question, so if people could take one of the answers and edit it into the accepted answer then flag that, now redundant, answer for moderator deletion it will make the task of cleaning it up that much easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are any other questions you think this lock would apply too, flag those as well. It doesn't matter if the question is closed or not - we can sort that out. Starting the ball rolling by editing the best answer would be useful too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17764" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5992" RevisionGUID="5ad02625-c19d-46b2-b747-858ae37f01f5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There are some fairly major changes coming soon to how posts are closed, you may want to read up on the details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/184154/162704&quot;&gt;Closing changes: [on hold], unclear, too broad, opinion-based, off-topic reasons, bye-bye to Too Localized&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/185102/162704&quot;&gt;Responding to your “too localized” concerns&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We will need to come up with our own list of custom off topic reasons for Programmers. These reasons will be available to close voters after they have picked the generic &quot;off topic&quot; one. Here's a screenshot of Meta Stack Overflow's close dialog, where the new system is already available:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8locR.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;other&quot; option will allow a custom message, when none of the three custom reasons applies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFP1n.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have an &quot;off topic&quot; reason you'd like to nominate, please post it as an answer. Some general guidelines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One reason per answer, so they can be voted separately.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A brief comment explaining why the general category is off topic is mandatory. See the examples in the first screenshot for inspiration. If we have a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; Meta discussion explaining in detail why the category doesn't work, please link to it in your comment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Examples to existing closed questions that would fit your custom reason would be immensely helpful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there's already an answer with a reason similar to what you have in mind, but with a slightly different phrasing, please consider commenting on the existing answer and refining the phrasing instead of posting a new answer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The winners: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5994/25936&quot;&gt;&quot;what language, technology, or project one should take up next&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5993/25936&quot;&gt;&quot;career or education advice&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6025/25936&quot;&gt;&quot;recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17765" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6011" RevisionGUID="1d49a79a-1881-489f-8752-e465f80966a0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This is indeed a bug, the answer shouldn't have appeared in the review queue (neither as an audit, nor as a regular review). The reason is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44/are-certifications-worth-it&quot;&gt;the question&lt;/a&gt; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22228/what-is-a-locked-post&quot;&gt;locked&lt;/a&gt;, therefore it and its answers cannot be voted on or edited. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/141435/new-beta-review-displays-locked-posts&quot;&gt;old bug&lt;/a&gt; that resurfaced, I will let SE know about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17766" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6029" RevisionGUID="367db339-cad6-4931-808e-12fa368a9280" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I am confused whether questions about IDEs can be asked on &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;programmers main website&lt;/a&gt; or not? Questions such as which IDEs have this feature? An example would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17439620/an-ide-with-drag-and-drop-feature-for-python-2-7-tkinter&quot;&gt;this question on Stackoverflow&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked such questions on stackoverflow before being told to ask on superuser or other websites. I &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/113087/software-tools-in-faq-is-too-hazy&quot;&gt;read this&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/181041/confusion-regarding-the-faq-and-a-question&quot;&gt;asked this question on its meta&lt;/a&gt; but it seems the &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17439620/an-ide-with-drag-and-drop-feature-for-python-2-7-tkinter&quot;&gt;questions about IDE&lt;/a&gt; are still being put on hold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So before posting questions on programmers I decided to ask it on its meta. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should I ask questions about IDEs here or not? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If not then which websites do they belong to?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a question about the where I can ask questions not fitting on this website. Like &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8401/where-can-i-ask-questions-that-dont-fit-or-are-off-topic-for-stack-overflow&quot;&gt;the one on Stackoverflow&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have looked at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&quot;&gt;about page&lt;/a&gt;. It says to ask such questions on stackoverflow. But on stackoverflow I have been told otherwise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17767" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6095" RevisionGUID="ef3082a7-f327-4afe-8e98-25c01440ce27" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This might be a self-balancing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When there are little-to-none items in the queue, there is a little interest among most of the users eligible for reviewing. And this is unlikely to change; if one checks the queue occasionally and there's always only 0, 1, 2 items in there, there is little motivation not just to work there but even to frequently check it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When queue is small, one can expect only small, &lt;em&gt;dedicated&lt;/em&gt; group of users doing reviews regularly. From this perspective, &lt;strong&gt;perception of most closures done by that small group&lt;/strong&gt; is unavoidable I'm afraid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, when queue grows in size, it begins attracting attention from more reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One day, typical infrequent visitor decides to take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&quot;&gt;review page&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;em&gt;just to check there's 0 as usual&lt;/em&gt;, finds 10 (20, 30...) items in the queue and, well, reviews these. Next day, same guy will quite likely get there again, now knowing there might be a queue waiting for them, finds that it's so indeed, reviews and... voila, &lt;em&gt;infrequent visitor has turned into regular reviewer&lt;/em&gt; (possibly until queue drops back small).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Note above dynamics might in turn change if queue would grow to daunting size, but that would be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/151833/165773&quot; title=&quot;'Huge close votes review queue on Stack Overflow' (btw I discovered a truly amazing explanation for why it keeps that way, but it's too large to fit into tooltip)&quot;&gt;different story&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Balancing described above is mostly based on my own experience of working with &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/review/late-answers&quot;&gt;SO Late Answers queue&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In December 2012, there were few thousands items in this queue and I was visiting it daily, submitting 50 flags a day (review limit was 40 if memory serves, but I flagged some posts out of the queue, using Skip option to avoid bumping into the limit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In January 2013, this queue drained to zero and my usage of it has dropped, too. Nowadays, I take a look at it once in a week or maybe even once in a month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it ever gets back to larger size, I will be happy to get back to working on it again (after all, I still have some 300+ reviews to do to get Steward badge there:). I think that's about how it is supposed to be balanced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17768" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6106" RevisionGUID="6acaabc7-aa92-4bab-891e-d766c33b50b8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I really don't like migrating crappy questions to SO.  This is really the only place where its an issue because of the migration path (no, taking away the migration path would mean more suggestions to repost - there are enough of those for the workplace).  The past 90 days, we did 206 migrations To SO and 23 of them were rejected.  A number of them were embarrassingly bad.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When something is off topic here, on topic there, isn't up to the standards there and would get closed - the close reason being:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Questions asking for code must demonstrate a &lt;strong&gt;minimal understanding of the problem being solved&lt;/strong&gt;. Include attempted solutions, why they didn't work, and the expected results. See also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow question checklist&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to see a new close reason along the lines of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This question is off topic on Programmers.Stack Exchange. It would best be answered on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet the minimum requirements for a question on Stack Overflow.  Please read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow question checklist&lt;/a&gt; to fix up your question for migration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this close reason, we might be able to avoid some poor migrations, giving close voters another sanctioned reason (people tend to avoid the custom reason for &quot;this is off topic here, but not up to the standards there.&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the reasons not to are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We shouldn't be guessing as to someone else's close reasons after a migration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A rejected migration about two a week isn't that big of a deal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This would be used for about two closes every week which isn't enough to persuade the powers that be to give us another close reason (and if we had one, there are likely better close reasons than this)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17769" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6112" RevisionGUID="01b9640c-0b7b-4a7b-9418-610832864437" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I saw a delete vote on a rather highly voted question &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/195989/is-it-ok-to-split-long-functions-and-methods-into-smaller-ones-even-though-they&quot;&gt;Is it OK to split long functions and methods into smaller ones even though they won't be called by anything else?&lt;/a&gt;.  And yes, I do have the top answer there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This delete vote confuses me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the reason the question recently regained my attention is that I got an announcer badge from it (and I don't announce things).  It turns out that it is linked from an external resource - &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/ask-stack-is-it-ok-to-split-into-small-functions-even-if-theyre-called-once/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ars technica - Ask Stack: Is it OK to split into small functions, even if they’re called once?&lt;/a&gt;.  I believe it would be a bad thing for such questions to get deleted as they are used as examples of Programmers.SE.  (The list of ars technica posts that have an author of 'stack-exchange' can be seen at &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building on this, questions that are used by major news sources bring eyeballs to the site which is a key part of the SE business strategy.  Like the questions or not, deleting these questions would be counter productive to the people that keep the lights on at the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, it has been fairly long and established policy that questions that are dupes to other questions shouldn't be deleted.  The associated MSO discussion - &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/32311/do-not-delete-duplicates&quot;&gt;Do not delete duplicates!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I am missing something in the best practices for 10k tools, I would appreciate being informed what it is that I'm missing so I too can cast a delete vote on the question with a clear conscious and understanding of how .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, someone else is missing some part of understanding of what to delete and not to delete, until the question is deleted (and given its high vote question and answers takes quite a few more votes), I would have difficulty knowing who to articulate my comments to (to the best of my knowledge, delete votes are private until they are acted upon), and thus am broadcasting them here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Tangential question&lt;/em&gt;: If Stack Exchange wishes to keep these featured questions from news and blog around (and make note of them?) - should there be a 'major news source/blog' lock to prevent closed questions that have been featured in a way that SE wants to maintain from being accidentally deleted (either by an errant migration and close or misinformed mod or an over zealous 10ker?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17770" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6113" RevisionGUID="f592d942-3d37-4438-91b6-b9a10815feac" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;That's a lot of questions, and they are all valid, but they avoid a basic principle of voting, which is this: &lt;em&gt;Community members can use their votes however they wish, so long as they are not being abusive.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I believe it would be a bad thing for such questions to get deleted&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the community may not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has been fairly long and established policy that questions that are dupes to other questions shouldn't be deleted&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... Unless they are.  The community may not deem the post worthy of preservation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;should there be a 'major news source/blog' lock to prevent closed questions that have been featured in a way that SE wants to maintain from being accidentally deleted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask for a &quot;historical lock.&quot;  But be prepared to defend your request with reasoning and evidence; historical locks are used very sparingly, and only under very specific circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/&quot;&gt;What is a historical lock, and what is it used for?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17771" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6127" RevisionGUID="6c2408c3-1907-4627-a237-275d803989dc" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;When a closed question is edited by the asker (as opposed to someone else just fixing it up), it is automatically entered into the 'reopen review queue'.  No flagging is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is edited by someone else, it will need to be either flagged (a mod will review the flag), a reopen vote cast by yourself (for those who have 3k rep), or a reopen vote cast by someone else (consider going into chat to ask if anyone can start the ball rolling).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The details of these mechanics are in the MSO answer to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/186722/can-we-have-the-ability-to-flag-for-reopening/186728#186728&quot;&gt;Can we have the ability to flag for reopening?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adding items to the queue in response to 3rd-party edits.&lt;/strong&gt; Currently, this is done when &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/157584/should-questions-be-added-to-the-reopen-queue-as-soon-as-theyre-edited-by-the-o&quot;&gt;the author edits&lt;/a&gt;, but not if &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/157584/should-questions-be-added-to-the-reopen-queue-as-soon-as-theyre-edited-by-the-o&quot;&gt;someone else does the same&lt;/a&gt;. It would be possible to change that - although there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/183233/give-2k-users-a-dont-put-this-in-the-reopen-queue-checkbox?lq=1&quot;&gt;some pitfalls&lt;/a&gt; we'd have to avoid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17772" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6140" RevisionGUID="647b03c6-2b88-46eb-b6af-5bc957246595" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&quot;These articles are in opposition.&quot; + &quot;prove Jeff Atwood&quot; suggest that OP already knows the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Atwood trashed Norvig. If you know the answer, why ask? That means, &lt;em&gt;unclear what you're asking&lt;/em&gt;, which was my close vote (&quot;opinion-based&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/209295/revisions&quot;&gt;shown to readers&lt;/a&gt; is pure fake &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10922461#10922461&quot;&gt;indiscriminately attributed to me&lt;/a&gt; due to... shall we say, not too smart user interface - a bit more on that below...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a &quot;clean room&quot; case, I would shrug, edit this unfortunate phrase into something like &quot;These articles appear at odds with each other, how can I find a way out?&quot; and walk away knowing that &lt;em&gt;unclear&lt;/em&gt; doesn't apply anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, at the moment question has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773&quot; title=&quot;how's that?&quot;&gt;&quot;locked&quot; from such an edit&lt;/a&gt; by already submitted &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/fastest-gun/info&quot; title=&quot;what's this&quot;&gt;FGITW&lt;/a&gt; answer: &quot;You're missing the point...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides above, there are a few issues &lt;em&gt;induced&lt;/em&gt; by the phrase &quot;Is there a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2905/31260&quot; title=&quot;Sprinkling &amp;quot;Science&amp;quot; on top of something does not automatically render it correct&quot;&gt;friggin'&lt;/a&gt; scientific evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;► Is-there part of the phrase shifts it into Yes/No territory with &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/183177/165773&quot; title=&quot;discussed eg here&quot;&gt;all its known issues&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stack Overflow is not just a 'get an answer for me' place, it's &quot;Produce quality content that is useful for people who follow&quot;. In the case of your question, the second part is lacking...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When asking a yes/no question there are one of two possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You really want a yes/no answer. If this is the case, and you don't need anything else to answer your question then it means the answers will be inherently low quality. An answer that only says &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; (in addition to not meeting the minimum length) would be of very low quality. SO answers expect more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You don't actually want a yes/no answer, in which case your real question is not actually a yes/no question, and you're hoping that people will determine what your real question is. For example, someone might ask, &quot;Can I do [...]?&quot; when what they really meant to ask was, &quot;How can I do [...]?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Almost all yes/no questions I've seen fall into case 2; they should be edited into a question that isn't really asking for just a yes/no, it should be asking to explain something. (Even if it has a yes/no in there somewhere.) Note that just adding &quot;Explain&quot; at the end isn't really a good way to go about this; you should refactor the question on a more fundamental level...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;► The part &quot;evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach&quot; sucks, well, because it blatantly misses the opposite: &quot;evidence to prove the Peter Norvig approach&quot;. This is yet another indication of question quality issues (happily ignored by reopeners).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least, I would rephrase to symmetric wording &quot;evidence to prove one of these approaches above another&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;► Issues with &quot;scientific&quot; part are addressed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Scientific Evidence&amp;quot; versions of each question&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I for one like the way these are presented in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question#comment7317_2903&quot; title=&quot;just discovered it's written by one of my favorite MSO authors&quot;&gt;this comment&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Slapping a request for scientific literature onto the question... doesn't really make this question any better. It still is enormously vague and unanswerable, there is no objective scientific measure..., it remains a question that should be nuked on sight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above does not fully apply to this particular case because there is an answerable question obscured by scientificevidence garbage there, but it rather makes a point that it would be better to wipe out that scevidence crap outta there at all (if such an edit wouldn't invalidate existing answers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last but not the least, even with all imaginary editing cleanup, the question would still remain average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get me wrong, resolving false contradictions can be fun, I sometimes enjoy &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/193864/advice-on-rehabilitating-an-unpopular-meta-question-or-not#comment608984_193864&quot; title=&quot;example&quot;&gt;doing this myself&lt;/a&gt; but it's often way too simple. And this case looks simple to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Mysticial &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/1262201#1262201&quot;&gt;would probably say&lt;/a&gt;, it's not &lt;em&gt;really advanced question&lt;/em&gt;. Meh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Side note, regarding question closure notice, I would rather prefer it to be shown rephrased to something that doesn't put words in my mouth. There is a bunch of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/194593/165773&quot; title=&quot;listed eg here&quot;&gt;feature requests&lt;/a&gt; for something like that at MSO, but SE team doesn't give a shit.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17773" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6155" RevisionGUID="fa97e694-8ff0-40af-bb88-c475ddc4e053" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;On Stack Overflow, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/asp&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'asp'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;asp&lt;/a&gt; tag was made a synonym of &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/asp-classic&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'asp-classic'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;asp-classic&lt;/a&gt; since that is generally what is meant. Looking over the 8 that &lt;s&gt;are&lt;/s&gt; were tagged here as &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/asp&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'asp'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;asp&lt;/a&gt; shows a similar pattern of usage. (though I should add that most weeks we still end up with a dozen or so that meant asp.net...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was done as most of the time &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/asp&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'asp'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;asp&lt;/a&gt; was being used by people who were unaware that there were two different technologies that that tag was referring to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's some of the related discussion from the main Meta.SO:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/26870/25163&quot;&gt;Classic Re-Tag Discussion on some good ole ASP (Classic)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/84175/25163&quot;&gt;Let's Ban the [ASP] Tag on StackOverflow!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/119037/25163&quot;&gt;Where'd the [asp] tag go, and why did it come back?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest making a similar change here and removing all the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/asp&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'asp'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;asp&lt;/a&gt; and changing to &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/asp-classic&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'asp-classic'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;asp-classic&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/asp.net&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'asp.net'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;asp.net&lt;/a&gt; as appropriate. And maybe borrowing the text from the tag wiki for &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/asp-classic&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'asp-classic'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;asp-classic&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/asp.net&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'asp.net'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;asp.net&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd fix it, but I'm a little short on the rep requirement... I did some suggested edits/flags for the 6 that were there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17774" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6157" RevisionGUID="1ea2734f-f7cd-4ab2-96cb-c91eedb57618" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;So, the cleanup has been done.  There are no questions tagged as asp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112317/213963&quot;&gt;Let's Ban the [ASP] Tag on StackOverflow!&lt;/a&gt; the next step would appear to be making it a tag synonym.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Stack Overflow a screen shot of &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/tags/synonyms&quot;&gt;http://stackoverflow.com/tags/synonyms&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eZuvN.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is probably what we should have too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way to do this would be to go to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/asp-classic&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'asp-classic'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;asp-classic&lt;/a&gt; tag and navigate to synonyms - &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/asp-classic/synonyms&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/asp-classic/synonyms&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The requirements for suggesting and voting on this are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Users with more than 2500 reputation and a total answer score of 5 or more on the tag, can suggest tag synonyms. Users with a total answer score (total upvotes minus total downvotes) of 5 or more on the tag, can vote for tag synonyms. Suggestions will be automatically approved when they reach a score of 4, and automatically deleted when they reach a score of -2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I've got nothing in the asp tag for answers or questions, I can't vote on this one (or suggest it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And asp-classic its not that highly asked of a question area - &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/asp-classic/topusers&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/asp-classic/topusers&lt;/a&gt; so there aren't many who do have the necessary rep to cast votes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its probably up to a mod to do this, if it is modable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17775" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6171" RevisionGUID="00209316-3896-481a-b252-403f15f90d5f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I think that strong point of your &lt;em&gt;question draft&lt;/em&gt; is description of the situation: it looks clear, detailed and easy to understand. This lays a solid ground for a good question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you're done with it though, there is a sharp drop in question quality, and the rest essentially spoils the fun:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, in terms of making it easier for myself what do you think should I do: - try to convenience them to start from scratch? - get on with the current design and try to achieve what they want?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Have you got any experience with similar cases? What should I do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, the only valuable elements in above quote are &quot;try to convince them to start from scratch&quot; and &quot;get on with the current design&quot;. Anything besides that can be stuffed into any imaginary question and would add no value to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it, &quot;in terms of making it easier for myself&quot; - no one would be interested in making it harder to themselves. Or, &quot;what do you think&quot; - any asker is sure interested in this. Stuff like that is basic, it is implied in any question at Programmers, stating it explicitly is just noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the perspective of those who would answer your question it is useless - drop it, wipe it out, get rid of it - and this cleanup will help you find out what is missing in your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, how would it look if you filter out the noise? Something like,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Options I can think of are either &lt;em&gt;try to convince them to start from scratch&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;get on with the current design&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above is fairly poor but at least: 1) you can see that it's poor yourself (which opens a door to thinking how to improve) and 2) as small as it is, it's 100% &lt;em&gt;substantial&lt;/em&gt; - there's nothing to throw away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, how it can be improved? Improvements I suggested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6168/would-my-question-be-on-topic-for-programmers#comment16661_6168&quot;&gt;comments&lt;/a&gt; quickly posted after you asked here may sound like wisdom obtained through some magic glass, but it really isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, key aspects of SE posts are &lt;strong&gt;substance, presentation and effort&lt;/strong&gt; and I simply evaluate everything I read / write through these. Let's see how it will work at your question...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way you explained the situation tells that your &lt;em&gt;presentation&lt;/em&gt; is all-right (and I think you know it yourself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Substance&lt;/em&gt; is there, too - what is left after we removed the noise, is substance, and it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The feel that it's still poor indicates that it's &lt;em&gt;effort&lt;/em&gt; that is missing and if you take a closer look at cleaned up part, you'll see that effort you are expected to put into considering mentioned options just isn't there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind effort is expected? well whenever you deal with options, most basic effort to put is to list and evaluate pros and cons of these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Note, since we are at Stack Exchange, this is not something you could expect answerers to do for you: asking for &lt;em&gt;list&lt;/em&gt; part won't fly because &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info&quot;&gt;list questions&lt;/a&gt; aren't welcome, and as for &lt;em&gt;evaluation&lt;/em&gt; part, without knowing lots of your concrete details and context, doing this would be, as they say in one of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/close-reasons/info&quot;&gt;close reasons&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;too broad&quot;.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding this to your question would cover &lt;em&gt;effort&lt;/em&gt; part, the only thing left after that would be to, well, just state the very question, explain what would you want to learn / understand. What would it be - no one can tell you beforehand, since this should be based on your analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no magic glass nor magic aspects that would predict what would be outcome of your research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you're done with it though, there will be one &lt;em&gt;magic thing&lt;/em&gt; you could do prior to posting. Simply put your text into &quot;Ask question&quot; box and study &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/similar-questions&quot;&gt;similar questions&lt;/a&gt; that get loaded to the right. This trick often works better than plain search and it can give you an insight on how to further improve your question or even, if you are lucky, reveal that there is already an answered question like yours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17776" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6180" RevisionGUID="bb8c7f77-2a3c-4697-9b68-e1f6895323c1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Per my reading of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/150253/165773&quot; title=&quot;here&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; written by SE developer, downvotes increase chances of the post getting into Low Quality queue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;approach to low-quality auto-flagging, by looking for similarities in posts &lt;strong&gt;downvoted&lt;/strong&gt; or flagged as low quality...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that per mentioned answer, upvotes tend to have an opposite effect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;referenced post got 2 upvotes..., so it &lt;strong&gt;wouldn't even make it into&lt;/strong&gt; the low quality queue&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those interested to know how Low Quality queue is expected to work, can refer to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/180029/165773&quot; title=&quot;here&quot;&gt;respective guidelines&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Guidelines for reviewing Low Quality Posts&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Questions appear in the low quality post queue both by algorithm and &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/190639/167534&quot;&gt;by flags from users&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Basic workflow&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Check if the post can be improved. If it can, by all means &lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt; it. A typical example are code-only answers, which can benefit from additional explanation about how that code works.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you think the post is unsalvageable and should be deleted, &lt;strong&gt;Recommend Deletion&lt;/strong&gt; (see common reasons below).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the post looks good, choose &lt;strong&gt;Looks Good&lt;/strong&gt;. If you are unsure, &lt;strong&gt;Skip&lt;/strong&gt; it...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17777" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6195" RevisionGUID="10daf9ad-5286-4f2a-bb70-1084552a62ff" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;You seem to believe that question locked for content dispute at meta should remain at main site as originally posted (&quot;Lock question as-is&quot;). This approach doesn't make sense to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the purpose of meta discussion, it is insignificant what particular revision is hanging on the main site because &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/212517/revisions&quot; title=&quot;example for your post&quot;&gt;full revision history&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/212517/1&quot; title=&quot;example for your post&quot;&gt;original version&lt;/a&gt; are always available to study content and edits in as much details as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With above in mind, I would expect moderator locking the post to take whatever edits deemed appropriate in order to make it look OK for regular, inexperienced readers of the site - for those who just read what is posted and don't pay attention to obscure, strictly internal notices about &lt;em&gt;meta&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;content dispute&lt;/em&gt; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this perspective, I would expect moderators to err on the safer side, performing pre-dispute cleanup of the content. Given that &lt;em&gt;final&lt;/em&gt; version of the content is to be determined by community discussion at meta anyway, I see no point to fixate about what is there on the main site during the dispute (it helps that locked post can not be voted, thus question score can't be influenced until it's unlocked back).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that expecting mentioned cleanup to be performed by asker would be a really bad idea, as they are naturally biased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In your particular case, part cleaned up at main site prior to dispute is: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Are there any definitive or widely cited sources of best practices literature&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. To me, cleaning it up looks reasonable safety wise, as this part of the question makes a perfect match to one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6025/31260&quot; title=&quot;quote source&quot;&gt;close reasons&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Questions asking us to &lt;strong&gt;recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource&lt;/strong&gt; are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Oh and please don't tell me that it's safe to keep because this part is hidden deep inside your &quot;main&quot; question. It's there and readers will find it. I remember myself being new at Programmers, carefully studying questions, stumbling upon resource-request parts and posting &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nyfwh.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;example&quot;&gt;low quality answers&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;&quot;look here's the resource you asked about: &amp;lt;link&amp;gt;&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to also address one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments#comment419290_212517&quot;&gt;comments&lt;/a&gt; you made, likely intending to support the question with an authoritative reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note that my post specifically implements the tactics referred to in that post to achieve usefulness as a subjective post. It isn't shopping for a source if you insist that an experience or widely-known principle be backed up by references. This is why it says &quot;Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your interpretation of &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;Good Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; article looks wrong to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My reading of the statement &lt;em&gt;&quot;questions insist that opinion be backed up&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is that it's a strong prohibition against filling questions with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/184574/165773&quot; title=&quot;more on that here&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;poison&lt;/strong&gt; like &quot;what's your opinion?&quot;, &quot;what do you think?&quot;, &quot;what do you prefer?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;... and yeah, &quot;which resource do you recommend&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question should &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; have words like &quot;what's your opinion&quot; simply because this makes a wide open door for crappy answers where authors just post their opinion without even attempting to back it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good question, in addition, is worded in a way that actually &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5401/31260&quot; title=&quot;more on that here&quot;&gt;repels&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; garbage answers - allowing readers, guys like you and me, to flag low quality posts for mod attention and request deletion on the ground that these don't answer the question asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Note that what's-your-opinion in the question immediately makes such flagging and demanding deletion impossible because, well, such answers &lt;em&gt;match the questions asked&lt;/em&gt;. Same reasoning applies to resource requests - it is officially legal to post a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/8259/165773&quot; title=&quot;more on link-only answers here&quot;&gt;low quality&lt;/a&gt; &quot;I recommend this URL&quot; and pretend that this just answers to what have been asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I would like to expand on what looks fundamentally wrong in your position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You (and some &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6147/31260&quot;&gt;other askers&lt;/a&gt;) re-post excerpts from the article, plainly translating these into requirements to answers and pretend that this makes your question compliant. &lt;strong&gt;Don't do that.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above &quot;translation&quot; is purely yours, you have no grounds to state that this can be inferred from the article you refer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thing to remember is, this article states requirements for &lt;em&gt;questions&lt;/em&gt;, not for the &lt;em&gt;answers&lt;/em&gt;. Re-read it again and pay attention to the sub-title (quoted below, keeping font close to original):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Article is about guidelines for &lt;em&gt;questions&lt;/em&gt;, plain and simple as in the title quoted above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever requirements for &lt;em&gt;answers&lt;/em&gt; you stuff into your questions, you have no ground to link these to the article. These are all yours, and, frankly, from the perspective of those who read your question, these are pure noise, as these add nothing &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6171/31260&quot; title=&quot;related discussion here&quot;&gt;substantial&lt;/a&gt; to the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please don't pollute the question with requirements to answers - for readers, these are useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, &lt;em&gt;after reading&lt;/em&gt; particular answer, you feel like something is not OK there, check whether it fits &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer&quot; title=&quot;here&quot;&gt;answering guidelines&lt;/a&gt; and if you believe that it doesn't, feel free to raise your concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17778" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6206" RevisionGUID="01108799-7658-478e-b356-866a73345d19" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Good to be noticed!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, I make these minor (occasionally significant) edits once a week in preparation for the week's &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ask Stack column at Ars Technica&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you know, it's easy to get hung up on a minor speling or, punctuation error. And it's important to me that the awesome questions and answers here aren't overshadowed by a trivial slip of the keyboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But yes. I understand that my minor edits may seem like rep mining to those who don't know me, and my behavior could conceivably train users to be bad actors. Don't act like me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe do... I personally agree with Gilles &amp;amp; MichaelT that even the shortest &quot;correct&quot; edit is a perfectly acceptable edit. Whether minor edits should bump a question to the front page, well, that's &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/26483/166581&quot;&gt;a good question for Meta&lt;/a&gt;, though it's worth noting that even minor edits can be malicious edits, and thus it &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; make sense for all edits to get front page exposure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for reaching out. And even more thanks for creating content that demonstrates the best of what our network, communities, and individuals have to offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to ping me any time in chat if you think I'm making an edit in error, being unreasonably heavy-handed, or if you just want to say hi. Going forward I'll try to be more articulate in my edit descriptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slowly, I will grind my way towards 2,000 rep. Until then, I hope you approve me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17779" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6229" RevisionGUID="6ff0dcc4-af4e-4772-8707-aeb111693100" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to get results of a particular SEDE query executed against an older data snapshot? I am interested in these in order to perform sort of retrospective study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Query I would like to run is &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102718/marginal-short-answers-with-links?AnswerScoreMax=100&amp;amp;AnswerScoreMin=-100&amp;amp;AnswerLength=200&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;with certain parameters - posts score between -100 and 100 and answer length up to 200&quot;&gt;Marginal short answers with links&lt;/a&gt;. I would like to see results of this query executed against data snapshot taken in the beginning of March / end of February, when the query was introduced. A close enough &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/207811/165773&quot; title=&quot;SE data dumps explained in more details here&quot;&gt;data dump&lt;/a&gt; seems to be one uploaded on March 18, 2013 here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clearbits.net/torrents/2121-mar-2013&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.clearbits.net/torrents/2121-mar-2013&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per my recollection, back then query has been showing about one or two (maybe three) thousands posts. Today, it shows less than 60 posts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to learn what happened to thousands posts that are not there anymore, how many was there back then, how many of these were deleted, edited, historically locked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17780" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6240" RevisionGUID="2ff2b19e-0859-46f8-8f97-bcd0e164df94" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Site scope and question quality expectations seem to be set, stabilized and well understood by majority of &lt;em&gt;regulars&lt;/em&gt; long time ago, as discussed eg here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for&quot;&gt;Are you still confused about what Programmers is for?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per my observations, most troublesome questions are either asked by newcomers or are old ones &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info&quot;&gt;bump&lt;/a&gt;ed by answers from newcomers which makes me feel that somehow, site &quot;image&quot; for those newcomers is blurred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on several months of observations on questions that are exposed / promoted to SE network users via &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info&quot;&gt;collider&lt;/a&gt; I firmly believe that to large extent, misguiding newcomers about Programmers is caused by &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/202962/165773&quot; title=&quot;issue details and change request officially submitted here: 'Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign'&quot;&gt;the way how questions are selected for exposure at collider&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way how I see collider damage to Programmers is described in more details in this answer: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260&quot;&gt;What can we do to help users understand our site better?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think this is likely related to issues with answers quality in hot questions (&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260&quot; title=&quot;Answers quality in hot questions&quot;&gt;discussed here in more details&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot; in the answers once or twice a week&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making interesting and well presented problems look the same as non-constructive &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&quot;&gt;popularity contests&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An &quot;outsider&quot; reading low quality answers in hot questions, could naturally think,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;hey here I can &lt;em&gt;chit-chat about how git is fantastic&lt;/em&gt; and get my portion of cheap upvotes, c00l&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a &lt;strong&gt;steady source of misguided contributors&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...the way how users can be confused about what Programmers are about is probably best explained in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13830_5482&quot; title=&quot;here&quot;&gt;comment made by Ben Brocka&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Often hot questions have lots of bad or meh answers that are bad enough to drag down quality of the content and general discourse (encouraging similarly bad new answers)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note. For the sake of completeness, I don't think that collider damage is contained within Programmers (and &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/1967/168&quot; title=&quot;another site suffering from brain-damaging hotness formula: 'victims of the Stack Exchange(TM MultiCollider SuperDropdown(TM)'&quot;&gt;Workplace&lt;/a&gt; for that matter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As discussed eg &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10706837#10706837&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, it looks like damage is spread over whole SE network, even though indirectly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...really, say guys at SO are protected from &lt;em&gt;direct&lt;/em&gt; impact. Meaning when they see &lt;em&gt;meh&lt;/em&gt;, they can flag &lt;em&gt;no-code&lt;/em&gt; and get crap deleted. But thing is, it's SO users who look at collider and who visit &quot;sticky&quot; questions and who pick the crappy attitude and they get back to SO and get posting &lt;em&gt;meh&lt;/em&gt; answers there&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  and, well, there are hundreds and thousands of them. And &lt;em&gt;meh&lt;/em&gt; attitude gets spread over multiple questions and SO mods only can delete minor part of crap that has been influenced through collider&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;they start thinking it's the norm. That's what low quality answers in hot questions teach readers. That's what &quot;educated&quot; readers spread further, to their answers to other questions. That lowers overall quality of answers in multiple other questions, that is the site-wide damage&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    This makes it look like good questions are those having many meh answers, the effect that is amplified by these questions being highly visible to collider audience - hundreds and thousands of SE users. Misguided users spread acquired attitude further into other questions and answers, posting stuff that follows what they saw at the &quot;cool&quot; (&quot;hot&quot;) questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;nobody is really protected, collider spreads it across all the SE network&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17781" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6251" RevisionGUID="ba653ffc-6b2e-4f86-a02c-1edce24d51af" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;We only have so many canned, built in, close reasons.  There are so many other reasons to close something at times - giving a better message than trying to shoehorn the reason to close something into too broad or primarily opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Custom close messages have the significant advantage when it comes to trying to get a &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; answer in that they also leave a comment that (ideally) would help the person asking (or attempting to fix) the question understand what needs to be done &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the question is closed and make it suitable (or delete it if its really off topic and would ultimately garner down votes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short and abrupt close messages may be off-putting to some and don't help as much when it comes to getting people to write good questions.  The tricks to writing good messages is a combination of having them at the ready and knowing the quick little 'magic links' that can be used to link to the right spot.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Close reasons use the comment markdown, which gives a bunch of additional magic links.  MSO details them in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/94000/213963&quot;&gt;balpha's answer&lt;/a&gt;, thought the short version most applicable to close reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[meta] =&gt; a link to meta.programmers.stackexchange&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[help] =&gt; a link to the help section&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[help/on-topic] is a link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&lt;/a&gt; and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[help/dont-ask] is a link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&lt;/a&gt; and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[ask] =&gt; link to the &quot;How to Ask&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[chat] =&gt; link to the chat page&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[about] =&gt; link to about page &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[edit] =&gt; link to edit the page itself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using these quick links will make it easier to fit more into a canned (or not) message without actually using more text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, its a better experience for all involved to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; migrate questions that will get closed in some way &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; than a duplicate on the target site.  A fine line should be considered when suggesting to &lt;em&gt;repost&lt;/em&gt; a question on another site without having it closed/deleted on the first one.  Be sure that the question is on topic at the target site.  If in doubt, don't suggest reposting but instead flag for a moderator to migrate the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also found the following links to be helpful to reference when writing close messages (not everyone knows where they are).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;[Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/)&lt;/code&gt; =&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow question checklist&lt;/a&gt; - a compressive list of things to check before posting a question to Stack Overflow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;[Let’s Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game)&lt;/code&gt; =&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game&quot;&gt;Let’s Play The Guessing Game&lt;/a&gt; - a Jeff Atwood blog post from Feb 2012 about the awkward nature of trying to name something&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;[Q&amp;amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&lt;/code&gt; =&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&quot;&gt;Q&amp;amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!&lt;/a&gt; - a Jeff Atwood blog post from November 2010 about questions asking for a shopping list.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;[What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/)&lt;/code&gt; =&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/&quot;&gt;What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?&lt;/a&gt; - the question ban MSE reference.  Likely not that useful in a close reason (you'd need to be a mod on SO to check if a user is question banned prior to a migration - however, when a migration fails because of a question ban on the target site, this is a useful link to have so its included here).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've often found myself going to a meta question to pull up a pre-written close message and then copying and pasting that into the question.  Just go in, edit the question to grab the source and copy and paste it into the close reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully, this will help people looking for the right wording for closing a question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17782" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6252" RevisionGUID="4752d54e-96d3-429c-9153-a4d0ef4603f0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h2&gt;Would be migrated to SO, but likely closed there&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This question is off topic on Programmers. It would best be asked on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet their minimum requirements. Please read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow question checklist&lt;/a&gt; and [edit] your question to make it suitable for migration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17783" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6255" RevisionGUID="0220b6b4-8c48-44ed-aa6e-1e0f7d84d86b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Recently, Nick did some tests on Stack Overflow to see what impact MathJax would have on Stack Overflow.  This was likely done in part to put to rest the 'heavy dependency' argument.  The full post can be read at &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204003/213963&quot;&gt;There's seriously no reason why LaTeX markup via MathJax shouldn't be enabled on SO&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a Stack Overflow page load (even when its doing 'nothing'):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131102_08_QQQ/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow (no MathJax)&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;1.380s&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131103_DV_CS/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow (with MathJax)&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;1.675s&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131102_BT_QR2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Math.StackExchange&lt;/a&gt; (with MathJax including content using it): &lt;strong&gt;2.341s&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, for sites that have those pesky &lt;code&gt;$&lt;/code&gt; that show up in code, it can be a breaking change for existing questions changing the rendering for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] which then stores into a $_SESSION - the problem is most of the settings will be set by javascript, and as javascript is a client side script you can't access PHP $_SESSION variables as its server based. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MqzCa.png&quot; alt=&quot;Unexpected MathJax rendering&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204034/213963&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt; that adding MathJax significantly impacts the time it takes for a preview to show up while writing an answer because MathJax needs to be called to rerender the preview &lt;em&gt;on every keystroke&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(numbers, links and images from the associated answers in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204003/213963&quot;&gt;MSO question&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17784" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6276" RevisionGUID="2612baf9-4d26-4419-bfb9-e7d23489139c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h2&gt;What is the name of this thing&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What is the name of this thing&quot; questions are off-topic. These are poor questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. See Also &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game&quot;&gt;Let's Play the Guessing Game&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Slightly adapted from &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/203884/165773&quot;&gt;this MSO post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17785" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6278" RevisionGUID="37776d4c-04f5-4498-bc48-25a88ee65870" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;First and foremost, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/92107/218240&quot;&gt;Stack Exchange is not a forum&lt;/a&gt;.  There's a really good blog post on this that I can't find right now.  The tl;dr version is that forums have a terrible signal to noise ratio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stack Exchange exists &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/about&quot;&gt;to build a library of high-quality questions and answers&lt;/a&gt;.  Oddly enough, solving any one user's problem isn't as high a priority as one might expect.  The priority is to collect general / reusable questions and answers that benefit hundreds or thousands of people who have the same issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most (all?) SE sites have &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;chat&lt;/a&gt;.  I haven't used it much, but if you need to have a conversation, that's the place to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Community Wiki &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/333/64132&quot;&gt;isn't always the right answer&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17786" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6291" RevisionGUID="760d70a2-134a-4ea2-8346-f7f997df4684" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/165773&quot; title=&quot;as explained in more details here&quot;&gt;This was tried in the initial days of Programmers and it failed spectacularly.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site came very close to be being shut down, but we managed, through the herculean efforts of everybody - moderators, community managers and committed users, to turn it around and have a site that is, on the whole, useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17787" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6293" RevisionGUID="e50a0c9f-ac5b-4127-8f92-14ac00550e4b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Between CS.SE, P.SE, and SO the scope of each overlaps and depends significantly on what type of answer the person asking wants get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off as a starter, read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in&quot;&gt;Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stack-overflow&quot;&gt;When do these questions belong on Programmers instead of Stack Overflow?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/190106/dealing-with-find-out-whos-going-to-buy-the-croissants&quot;&gt;Dealing with &amp;quot;Find out who&amp;#39;s going to buy the croissants&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/13420/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants&quot;&gt;http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/13420/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206073/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants-accounting-for-possible-absence&quot;&gt;Find out whose turn it is to buy the croissants, accounting for possible absences&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/12151/who-brings-the-croissants&quot;&gt;http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/12151/who-brings-the-croissants&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll also point to a recent example - &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218222/searching-integer-sequences&quot;&gt;Searching integer sequences&lt;/a&gt; - this question would be perfectly suitable on &lt;em&gt;either&lt;/em&gt; (or both?) P.SE and CS.SE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Judging by the words in the question, it is a very non-trivial problem.  A question that asks about an algorithm could show up on any of the sites and be appropriate.  A slight tweak to the question ('i am having a doubt about the c i wrote') and it would rapidly get pushed to Stack Overflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, realize that the scope of a site, while it has inertia to it also does have some variability over time.  The scope of a site may get more strict (to the point where TCS is) or it may loosen up over time (do you accept homework problems?) This is very evident when looking at the history of questions on P.SE to see what was acceptable a year or two ago and what it is now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, judging by the migration stats and the failure - most times, it is asked on the right site &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; isn't appropriate anywhere.  For example, 2 posts from CS where migrated to P.SE in the last and one of them was rejected.  7 posts were migrated from P.SE to CS.SE and one of them was rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If humans can't get get it right, do you think a program could?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; want to take a crack at it - go grab the Stack Exchange data dump &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.stackexchange.com/help&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://data.stackexchange.com/help&lt;/a&gt; and see if you can identify questions that would get migrated (or closed).  The 'or closed' bit was the topic of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-machine-learning-contest/&quot;&gt;machine learning contest&lt;/a&gt; - though I don't think it was accurate enough to merit inclusion... or something.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/161538/are-there-any-robot-moderators-on-so&quot;&gt;Are there any robot moderators on SO?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68689/automatic-central-question-sorting&quot;&gt;Automatic/Central Question Sorting&lt;/a&gt; on MSO which asked&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've noticed the Stack Exchange has grown immensely since its inception as Stack Overflow. As a result, I find asking questions in the right place here unnecessarily challenging. I'm wondering if you have thought about implementing a feature on the Stack Exchange central site where people ask the question there and either the scripts or staff/community members would sort the question to the right place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not sure if this would be too challenging or costly to implement. Just a thought to save your time while making users' lives easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jeff said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you're not willing to invest the small amount of time it takes to figure out where to ask your question -- the odds of your question being a good one are .. small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17788" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6335" RevisionGUID="406d3f05-6e0f-443b-bbed-431ad83b337d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This is by design:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;How does a post become a Community Wiki post?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are several ways a question or answer can enter community wiki mode, and most of &gt;these ways will occur automatically based on the rules of the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Posts enter community wiki mode when one of the following happens:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The body of the post has been edited&lt;sup&gt;&amp;dagger;&lt;/sup&gt; by at least five (&lt;strong&gt;5&lt;/strong&gt;) &gt;different users.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The post has been edited&lt;sup&gt;&amp;dagger;&lt;/sup&gt; ten (&lt;strong&gt;10&lt;/strong&gt;) times by the original owner.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;answer&lt;/strong&gt;'s author checks the &lt;em&gt;community wiki&lt;/em&gt; checkbox when composing the answer. Note that this checkbox isn't available to new&#xA;  users. The checkbox also is not available if the question is already a&#xA;  Community Wiki.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/67582/152859&quot;&gt;October 2010&lt;/a&gt;, there is no &lt;em&gt;community wiki&lt;/em&gt; checkbox when asking a question.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;answer&lt;/strong&gt; is edited by its original author, who when doing so opts to check the &lt;em&gt;community wiki&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An answer posted to a Community Wiki question will also be Community Wiki. Note that when a question is made CW after answers have already&#xA;  been posted, all existing answers are automatically converted to CW&#xA;  too. Older questions did not do this, so it is possible to have a CW&#xA;  question with non-CW answers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The question generates more than &lt;strong&gt;30&lt;/strong&gt; answers (&lt;strong&gt;15&lt;/strong&gt; on Super User and Programmers, &lt;strong&gt;60&lt;/strong&gt; on Code Golf). In this case, the question and all answers&#xA;  will enter community mode, as will any future answers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A moderator has reason to believe that the &lt;strong&gt;question&lt;/strong&gt; serves better in community wiki mode - if you believe your question &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/&quot;&gt;should&#xA;  be&#xA;  converted&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  to a Community Wiki, you may &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/392/should-the-community-wiki-police-be-shut-down/7183#7183&quot;&gt;flag it for moderator&#xA;  attention&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&amp;dagger;&lt;/sup&gt; As far as what constitutes an &quot;edit&quot; for community wiki, only edits to the actual body of the post will count&#xA;  towards automatic community wiki. Edits to the title and tags, as well&#xA;  as rollbacks, do not contribute to automatic wikification.&#xA;  ([source][2])&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;* note that the rules outlined above are based on observations; the&#xA;  actual behavior of SO is subject to change without notice, and may&#xA;  well have done so since this was last updated...&lt;/i&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&quot;&gt;What are &amp;quot;Community Wiki&amp;quot; posts?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&quot;&gt;What are &amp;quot;Community Wiki&amp;quot; posts?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it's there - here's my take:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see it as a way to encourage you to make a few, substantial edits to the post to improve it and then leave it alone rather than continually tweaking the post with a few characters at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also there to discourage you making trivial edits just to bump the question back onto the homepage in order to try to get more votes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think your edits are useful and you're only editing to improve the post without thought for the reputation you might earn from repeated exposure of the question then flag the post for moderator attention using the &quot;other&quot; option and we'll consider the request to &quot;unwiki&quot; the post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17789" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6354" RevisionGUID="51f00eba-cb87-4ffd-aa7f-d6a676e010b1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Polling&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This question appears to be off-topic because it is a poll based question. Multiple answers could address this question equally well, which makes it a poor fit the for StackExchange Q&amp;amp;A format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Guessing Game&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat and Robert Harvey)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;name that thing&quot; question. &quot;Name that thing&quot; are bad questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&quot;&gt;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Minimal understanding&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;sub&gt;(aka WT? are you asking?)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(hat tip to Jim G.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This question appears to be off-topic because it doesn't demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should be on SO but doesn't meet their requirements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(hat tip to MichaelT)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This question is off topic on Programmers. It would best be asked on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet their minimum requirements. Please read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow question checklist&lt;/a&gt; and [edit] your question to make it suitable for migration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should have been on SO, but too old to migrate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat &amp;amp; MichaelT)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This question appears to be off-topic because it is [about] programming tools - it might belong to Stack Overflow, but is too old to migrate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should be on SO and already is&lt;/strong&gt; (aka cross-posted)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(hat tip to ChrisF)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This question appears to be off-topic because it is about an implementation issue but it has already been asked via cross-post on Stack Overflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Legal question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This question appears to be off-topic because it is about legal matters outside of the community's experience and is best answered by an attorney with expertise in your jurisdiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Blatantly off-topic&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This question appears to be off-topic because the main problem does not involve any of the topics outlined in the [help/on-topic]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;[help/on-topic]&lt;/code&gt; links to &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&lt;/a&gt; and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17790" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6367" RevisionGUID="edfb4e8b-0f09-4027-8eec-d9444f75849a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;where do I start?&quot; question has several issues with it that make it a poor question to ask.  It is unclear what the level of knowledge of the asker is, has too many possible answers, and ultimately doesn't have a clear problem defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Unclear&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's head over to &lt;a href=&quot;http://cooking.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;Seasoned Advice&lt;/a&gt; (Cooking Stack Exchange) and think about a hypothetical question to ask there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want to learn how to bake a cake?  Where should I start?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A person attempting to answer this question doesn't know what your skill level is.  Do you know how to read a recipe? Can you operate an oven without supervision? Are you trying to make a simple &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_cake&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pound cake&lt;/a&gt; or are you attempting to make a multi layer red velvet cheesecake with frosting from scratch that should match something from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pinterest.com/bakerstreet/cheesecake-recipes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pinterest&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without this knowledge of where the OP is at, the person attempting to answer is either going to engage in a hopelessly long series of comments &lt;em&gt;trying&lt;/em&gt; to find out the level, or is going to take a shot in the dark and probably not answer the question satisfactorily for the person asking it, or the next person viewing the page from a google search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Too Broad&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to programming as the idiom and away from cakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next part of the problem is that there are numerous approaches to learning a language or projects one can do.  There are an unprecedented number of different things one can do to start.  Dozens of programming challenges out on the web that can be good starting points for programming (search for them) and hundreds of open source projects that are out there that are at an appropriate level for someone learning (no, don't tackle trying to do something &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt;, but find a nice little utility that could do with some additional functionality).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such questions have people leaving short answers that are little more to a link.  Stack Exchange works very poorly as a link aggregator - if you are looking for that type of answer, look to link aggregators instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No Clear Problem&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have a problem - you don't know where to start with a design.  But that isn't a clear problem.  Are you stuck at the modeling of the data objects? At the structure of the classes and their responsibilities? trying to figure out how to use Spring or Rails or ${overly large library}?  Is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-relational_mapping&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ORM&lt;/a&gt; just not connecting to the right neurons in the brain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these are part of the &quot;I don't know where to start&quot; set of problems.  Obviously you have gotten to some point in the design.  You want a program that can do X, Y, and Z.  You've fired up the IDE and you've... this is where you need to describe what you have done, what you have thought of and where you are stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to try &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; before you have a good question.  The design from an enterprise coder could steer you into strange n-tier designs, while others are going to suggest strange metaprogramming idioms or &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/206543/40980&quot;&gt;sneak a monad into your design&lt;/a&gt;.  These aren't &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; answers, but they may not be right for where you are at in your learning and figuring out the design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider also, that the best way to figure out how to design something is to learn how to design something.  For personal projects learning about how to do something, the paths down the wrong way, while discouraging, are some of the best learning experiences to be used in the &lt;em&gt;next&lt;/em&gt; project.  Be wary of the programming architect who has never designed a bad system, for when they do they won't know what to do at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Try Chat&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have 20 rep (four up votes on questions, two up votes on answers, one up vote and an accept on an answer, ten accepted edits or &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/164035/165773&quot; title=&quot;see: 'How does a lurker gain reputation?'&quot;&gt;some combination of the previous&lt;/a&gt;), you can &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/chat&quot;&gt;chat&lt;/a&gt; in the chat rooms.  Programmer.SE's chatroom is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard&quot;&gt;The Whiteboard&lt;/a&gt; and we're quite open to answering the questions that don't work well on the Q&amp;amp;A part of the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of chat for these type of questions is that we &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; engage in the dense back and forth that would otherwise be in comments to determine your skill level and also work through different problems.  Remember though that chat is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a tutorial service despite how helpful people may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17791" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6378" RevisionGUID="270dfccb-286e-4fd5-b232-001994092e6b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Programmers.SE has had a bit of history to it.  Much of it you can read about in the Meta here and on Meta.StackOverflow too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short version (glossing over much) is that it started out with a very permissive &quot;what is allowed&quot;.  There were difficulties with this and a new direction was charted to something that is likely more in line with what exists now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of that readjustment of vision has been a more active moderation (&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; necessarily moderation by moderators, but rather the community that has formed since).  Part of this moderation is close votes, but part of it is also down votes - both are necessary as close votes don't always signal to the OP that the question is need in revision or fixing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some reason, there are many people who ask questions that aren't good questions for the Q&amp;amp;A format.  Polls, recommendations, fix my code because I'm question banned at StackOverflow, etc...  Without down votes, there is no way to signal to the person that they need to fix their questions.  Whats more, down votes contribute to the algorithm that feeds the automatic question ban and stops people from asking questions that doesn't generate good content for the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/213963&quot;&gt;Yannis's answer in How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?&#xA;&lt;/a&gt; which goes a bit of the history with the stats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another bit to read is &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/&quot;&gt;Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its not negativity, it is a firm commitment to keeping the quality of the site - the questions and answers you read and others come here to read - high.  It is through this commitment that the site continues to grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17793" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6397" RevisionGUID="7b9f1e61-e3a1-40e1-a054-007e6190f062" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There used to be a link to Meta in the navigation bar, but it was removed recently. Now, you'll have to expand the StackExchange dropdown to move between Meta and main: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZlJ5S.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not immediately obvious where the links are, but once you find them I think. it's pretty easy to switch between the sites. Note that the link to site you are currently on (in my case Meta) is bolded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further reading: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/198613/feedback-request-new-top-bar-and-multicollider-redesign&quot;&gt;Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign&lt;/a&gt; (on MSO)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/12/a-new-top-bar-for-stack-exchange/&quot;&gt;A New Top Bar for Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt; (on blog.SO)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17794" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6401" RevisionGUID="83db9238-956c-427e-87ca-79d722d72eb5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I removed it as being &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/18878/how-do-i-correctly-tag-my-questions&quot;&gt;overly specific&lt;/a&gt; and unlikely to come up in searches of the site. I try not to flood the front page with edits which is why I did not remove it entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chess analysis as a programming thing is more algorithm theory than software engineering and thus unlikely to come up much as a tag. It's certainly a valid domain and very interesting as a field of research but we have both Game Dev and CS Stack Exchanges where it would find a wider audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Game Dev has 6 questions with the tag, only 4 have a positive scores. CS has questions on Chess algorithms and such but lacks the tag. It's a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/tags/chess/info&quot;&gt;Do Not Use&lt;/a&gt;&quot; tag on Stack Overflow. I'm inclined to agree with their perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17795" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6404" RevisionGUID="362f8c1a-a45c-42d0-ae69-343e171a48d5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h2&gt;Unclear what help you need&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&quot; title=&quot;see: 'Why is research important?'&quot;&gt;Unclear what help you need&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell what problem you are trying to solve or what aspect of your approach needs to be corrected or explained. See the [ask] page for help clarifying this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note &lt;code&gt;[ask]&lt;/code&gt; above is so called &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/magic-links&quot;&gt;magic link&lt;/a&gt;, meaning that in comments it auto-expands into &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&quot;&gt;How to Ask&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Slightly adapted from &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/215806/165773&quot;&gt;this MSO post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17797" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6432" RevisionGUID="9b160998-69f3-4307-891c-4c8d6cafc2ea" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;The questions are picked automatically from questions in the past time period (I think its 1 month and at least some minimum number of days) that have 5 or more upvotes (but less than 15), no downvotes, no close votes, some minimum number of views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, this does cause problems with soft questions that have a number of upvotes on them that are borderline.  This is a known 'issue', but realize that audits are there to serve two purposes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Catch roboreviewers who say &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; is a certain way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Help people reconsider what they chose and why to help guide reviews to match the community consensus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, the second bullet point is a distant second to the first one and so the borderline cases really aren't as big of an issue as people who fail the review audit consider them to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From MSO: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/168381/213963&quot;&gt;How do we select audits for Reopen review?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/168372/213963&quot;&gt;Failed a Reopen Question audit — sure looks like “Not a real question” to me&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17798" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6439" RevisionGUID="c3031dd3-9e30-4132-8b64-cb534be9bef2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;(this got a bit big to put into a comment... so...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the first key differences to realize between SO and... well... the rest of the Stack Exchange network of sites is that SO is many times larger than the other sites.  Stack Overflow creates 8k questions/day - or one P.SE every 4 days.  With such volume most questions on Stack Overflow never get much attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6437/how-could-this-question-be-worded-to-avoid-being-stamped-on#comment17418_6438&quot;&gt;from this comment&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;@RobertHarvey I've been here twice. Got 4 up votes for an answer and 4 down votes for a question. When I do something silly or wrong on stackoverflow I can understand the odd anonymous drive by down vote or deafening silence but 4 down votes and gone in 60 seconds for my question - I just don't agree with the philosophy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On P.SE you can vote on almost every single question every single day without using up all your votes. P.SE has vote/view ratio compared to the rest of the network and sites its size (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/216297/213963&quot;&gt;Why are votes per post on the decrease (what can we do to improve this)?&lt;/a&gt; - full image at &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SRLlM.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SRLlM.png&lt;/a&gt; ). Having a post get +4 or -4 is not uncommon.  P.SE is more generous with both upvotes &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; downvotes than Stack Overflow because we have more per question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.SE gets quite a few career / education questions.  Unfortunately, outside of a few broad ones that keep popping up (&quot;should I get a certificate?&quot;) every single one is different.  The person is asking about &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; background information, &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; situation, &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; plans for the future.  A stereotypical question goes like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have a CS degree and spent a few years in tech support, now I got a job working with php.  I know some C, but I haven't used it in a few years.  What do I need to study to get a job doing embedded programming? or maybe operating system design?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that this is an &quot;I&quot; question.  If any parameter changes (no degree, worked in finance, knows some java and uses it currently, looking for a job in biotech) the question becomes useless to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, the difficulty with career questions in general.  From &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&quot;&gt;Are Career Advice questions useful to anyone except the poster?&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beyond that, the general rule of thumb should be whether the question can help others in a similar situation. If the circumstances surrounding the question are too specific to the question asker such that there is no way to generalize and answer the question, they should be closed as too localized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too localized doesn't exist anymore, but we do have the 'close as career / education advice' which is designed to address this particular and common occurrence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key problem with these questions is that they require a dense, two way conversation to get all of the particulars to that out.  The Q&amp;amp;A part of the site is poorly designed (intentionally so) for such conversations - it is optimized for &quot;Here is a question, here is an answer&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please realize that chat is one of the resources that we have available to ask such questions.  This supports the dense conversations that are available and provides a way for people to give opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17799" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6456" RevisionGUID="b2768aa7-0041-45dc-a0b2-77b1c1641e1e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;There is a balancing act that is being walked between the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q&quot;&gt;everything is downvoted and closed&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and the &quot;you delete things too soon&quot;.  The stress between these two philosophies has also gotten a touch more stressed with an interpretation of an answer &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/219922/what-is-the-goal-of-hot-network-questions/220099#220099&quot;&gt;elsemeta&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite possible that we've been overeager with deleting things quickly.  That said, it may have eventually have gotten &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/173513/turbocharging-the-roomba-solutions-for-premature-deletion/177675#177675&quot;&gt;deleted on its own&lt;/a&gt; without intervention (arguably though the faster delete tries to reduce the perception of lost rep if something was upvoted... a bit of thought does go into what to delete or not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deletion of the question was not about breaking rules (or not) but rather an attempt at hastening the ultimate janitorial actions.  And sometimes we delete fast because we don't want to forget to delete it later (there isn't a &quot;delete queue&quot; like there is for close votes and once it falls from view it becomes more difficult for people to delete what (ultimately) (debatably) should be deleted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would ultimately be deleted somehow.  If its done a few days after the question was asked or a week, or a month... its (arguably) just a matter of time.  In its current state, it is unlikely to have been reopened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question itself is really unanswerable by anyone not part of the Dart Team.  It requires one to go and ask them and any of us are equally capable of doing that compared to what you can do (this 'ask them' &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/210399/why-is-there-a-new-in-go/216582#216582&quot;&gt;has been done before&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be done as a good question - you may consider flagging the question for reopening if you find the answer to then do a self answer of the question).  Note that the reception of how well the question and interesting the question to the community as a whole is as fickle as the community itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with the question is that it is asking other people to do work for you that you are just as capable as doing yourself.  This applies to questions where people ask them to (basically) search google or quote wikipedia for them too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also with the edit, you've edited in an answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.google.com/a/dartlang.org/forum/#!msg/misc/8Uchi3bW1YQ/LTKIrC4L564J&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;from the Dart team&lt;/a&gt; - though clarifications for the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do I understand correctly that..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals but they use it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;This is not an indicator of quality, but just a bug. Becuase they written by a Dart team &#xA;  member but not by other person.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;There is no &quot;why&quot; here because it is better to remain silent than to say unpleasant things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Dart Team can forget to fix this if someone does not file a ticket.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;needs to be asked of the Dart team, not P.SE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will point out that this clarification didn't help the question.  In my reading of it, the third point combined with the main question reads like a rant about a style guide (or inconstant following of it).  To that, I've read a number of unpleasant comment threads in other questions that have a rant-like tone (again &lt;em&gt;my&lt;/em&gt; reading of the question) that become wholesale delete the entire comments (and sometimes lock the question while the participants simmer down).  To this, quickly deleting the question quickly can help reduce the total amount of janitorial work that needs mod involvement (and thats where my vote came from).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17800" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6463" RevisionGUID="ac3b214f-4bc9-4ed1-8606-93391cc328f3" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;While general approach to the tag has been thoroughly addressed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6459/31260&quot; title=&quot;here&quot;&gt;another answer&lt;/a&gt;, I would like to focus on a question used as an &quot;acceptable&quot; example in Help Center. As far as I can see, in its current shape it does more harm than good, by misleading the readers into couple of wrong beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Please answer for your region/city/country only&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - this part of the question makes readers believe that poll / &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info&quot;&gt;list&lt;/a&gt; questions are acceptable. The very presence of this part makes low quality answers look legitimate and acceptable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Personally I wouldn't hire someone without a masters degree, unless they could document some relevant experience and had very good references. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In some minor companies in my country (Brazil) you can get a job, but due to some laws you'll get difficulty to be promoted, because to work in some positions, the laws require some education degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would hire that developer if he can show me the his abilities and prove that he is the one that my job needs through interview directly. Of course, it's difficult if his resume does not show any interested information.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answers quoted above are purely opinionated, brief &quot;polling entries&quot;, lacking an explanation and effort, making very wrong impressions on what kind posts are welcome at Programmers. Advertising posts like these through Help Center looks harmful and misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can someone / Would someone even consider&lt;/strong&gt; part of the question shifts it into Yes/No territory with &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/183177/165773&quot; title=&quot;discussed eg here&quot;&gt;all its known issues&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stack Overflow is not just a 'get an answer for me' place, it's &quot;Produce quality content that is useful for people who follow&quot;. In the case of your question, the second part is lacking...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When asking a yes/no question there are one of two possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You really want a yes/no answer. If this is the case, and you don't need anything else to answer your question then it means the answers will be inherently low quality. An answer that only says &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; (in addition to not meeting the minimum length) would be of very low quality. SO answers expect more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You don't actually want a yes/no answer, in which case your real question is not actually a yes/no question, and you're hoping that people will determine what your real question is. For example, someone might ask, &quot;Can I do [...]?&quot; when what they really meant to ask was, &quot;How can I do [...]?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Almost all yes/no questions I've seen fall into case 2; they should be edited into a question that isn't really asking for just a yes/no, it should be asking to explain something. (Even if it has a yes/no in there somewhere.) Note that just adding &quot;Explain&quot; at the end isn't really a good way to go about this; you should refactor the question on a more fundamental level...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17801" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6466" RevisionGUID="40920208-0a4f-4869-816a-6d7114d1906e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Workplace has been officially graduated: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/2364/168&quot;&gt;new site design&lt;/a&gt; has no &quot;beta&quot; anymore, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/privileges&quot;&gt;privileges&lt;/a&gt; are set to the level of graduated sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes it possible to add this site to our migration path, does it make sense to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To better understand this, I would like to learn stats / rates of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/202188/165773&quot; title=&quot;preferably accounting for known inconsistency of these at source and target sites&quot;&gt;successful and rejected migrations&lt;/a&gt; to Workplace. I also would like to compare these against successful and rejected migrations to our long established target site - Stack Overflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your convenience, below is a list of some prior meta discussions related to Workplace migrations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3699/closing-questions-that-should-go-to-workplace&quot;&gt;Closing questions that should go to Workplace&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3632/should-we-mention-the-workplace-in-our-faq&quot;&gt;Should we mention The Workplace in our FAQ?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3432/how-should-we-guide-questions-toward-the-workplace&quot;&gt;How should we guide questions toward The Workplace?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3204/should-a-list-be-assembled-for-migration-to-the-workplace-once-it-opens&quot;&gt;Should a list be assembled for migration to the Workplace once it opens?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2439/the-workplace-is-now-in-the-commitment-phase&quot;&gt;The Workplace is now in the commitment phase&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17802" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6480" RevisionGUID="24097dad-9047-47d5-9bf6-85a02c826943" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to pull up some recently closed questions and am curious what you feel is bullying or the appropriate approach to deal with the questions.  If you have issues about other specific questions and you feel like they are getting an unfair treatment, please consider posting questions on meta about those&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230025/database-career-path&quot;&gt;Database Career PATH&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm really new to database careers and no idea what is their work look like. All I know is they maintain or design a database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What I want to know is the career path of Database Administrator, what I mean is for example a programmer in the future may become a team leader and so on. What about in database what is the hierarchy of this job. And also I want to know what is the required knowledge and technology to attain a specific level of the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put on holds off topic - career and education advice&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230013/how-to-generate-data-matrix-from-a-seq-file-in-java&quot;&gt;How to generate data matrix from a .seq file in java?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lots of stuff&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And so on… the rows indicates user and each 17 columns represents page hits to that page by that user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So send me the code in java to perform this operation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(not closed currently, but on its way)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/229967/hello-im-a-13-year-old-app-developer-wannabe-for-windows-android-what-lang&quot;&gt;Hello.. I&amp;#39;m a 13 year old app developer wannabe (For Windows/Android). What languages should I learn?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recently, my friend got me interested in programming. I've always thought it was this ultra complicated concept, but after watching the code.org's &quot;What Schools Don't Teach&quot; I'm really wanting to work on something. I want to build Android and Windows apps and games. I would like to build a building/tower defense-esq game for both both platforms. My main questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-What programming languages should I learn?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-What engine should I use for a 2D building/ RTS (much like Ubisoft's &quot;The Settlers Online&quot;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Closed as what language, technology, or project one should take up next&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You appear to be referring most recently, however, to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230003/finding-out-skill-level&quot;&gt;Finding out skill level&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am writing this question due to the fact that I came across a JUG(Java User Group) facebook page. There was a guy in need of a 'junior' java developer. They told me that a junior Java developer is someone who:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any kind of test someone can take (apart from the oracle exams etc...)? Also , are these information valid or partly true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To which you commented:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;my friend you have come to very unhelpful and unpleasant place to post your questions. Programmers stack exchange should be related to ask questions related to programming and skills, but the bullies here are to close your question without a single doubt in their head. They are ruining PSE. You are better off in Java Forums where these bullies cannot close your questions. –  Jhilke Dai&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Career and education advice is off topic.  It is specifically called out as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;career advice, salary or compensation,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The off topic message for the question is intended to give the appropriate guidance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel this is incorrect and that career questions should be allowed, please make meta post that states this and provides a good argument for how they should be handled and lead to valuable content for the site.  Note that this has been addressed many times in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest reading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6458/there-seems-to-be-some-contradictory-guidance-with-respect-to-asking-career-deve&quot;&gt;There seems to be some contradictory guidance with respect to asking career development questions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6410/is-there-a-stackexchange-site-that-would-be-appropriate-for-cs-career-questions&quot;&gt;Is there a StackExchange site that would be appropriate for CS career questions?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not&quot;&gt;Are career questions acceptable or not?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2483/why-are-all-of-the-good-career-related-threads-closed&quot;&gt;Why are all of the good career-related threads closed?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A core principle with Stack Exchange is the desire to attract experts that stay and answer questions.  Without experts the site will suffer the fate of &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/no-artificial-intelligence-in-area-51/&quot;&gt;artificial intelligence.SE&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/214315/what-happened-to-startups-se&quot;&gt;Startups.SE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To that end it is necessary to down vote and close questions that are not appropriate for the site.  Sometimes this is from a lack of information to make it into a good question (there was a lengthy discussion about that in chat the other day - it was begrudgingly acknowledged that without down votes and closed question the question would not have been improved).  Other times it is necessary for such to get the person to read the appropriate parts of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&quot;&gt;help center&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly (and a difficult one to get one's head around) it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; about helping the person asking the question but the &lt;em&gt;next&lt;/em&gt; person asking the &lt;strong&gt;same&lt;/strong&gt; question.  Questions asking about career paths (a two of my examples) are often &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; specific to that individual or that company (for the DBA, I've never seen a DBA at two different companies have the same set of responsibilities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, discussions on the main site &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; work.  It wasn't designed for that.  I really suggest reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy&lt;/a&gt; (which also points out some of the issues you seem to take issue with) which was mentioned in some of the early podcasts by Jeff as being influential in the design of Stack Overflow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other communities where discussion works (as well as they do).  I will point out that even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reddit/r/cscareerquestions&lt;/a&gt; has a hefty &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt; that is expected to be required reading &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; asking such a question.  Polling and discussion is the &lt;em&gt;raison d'être&lt;/em&gt; there.  That said, the level of hostility and snark that people have commented finding on reddit (or hacker news) far exceeds our own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And well, give-me-the-codes is welcomed at eLance and similar freelancing sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can we do better? Probably.  However, posting comments about dissatisfaction with P.SE and about 'bullies' is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the way to encourage this process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17803" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6484" RevisionGUID="00584484-6f1a-4295-a04e-1e2e60819ee0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h1&gt;Downvoted&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing to look at is the mouseover for the down vote button.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realize that this is a completely subjective grading and people may down vote because they were late to work or don't like unicorns.  However one's feeling of unicorns, this &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; information for you to look at and consider how to improve the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Make sure that the question is not just asking for something that can be easily searched with google.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asking other people to do your searching for you is considered poor form.  Everyone answering questions is doing so on a volunteer basis (even the SE employees that sometimes answer questions - they aren't paid to do so).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also extends to things that you should have been able to find when searching on P.SE.  As you enter the information be sure to tag the question appropriately.  The combination of tags and title &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; help you find something right away that answers the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Explain your current understanding of the issue&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just saying &quot;Could someone explain ${concept} to me&quot; doesn't show what you &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; understand.  It lacks research.  Often the answer to this is spent repeating what is already available in Wikipedia.  If you had read this already and don't understand a part of it, explain that part and what you do understand.  Correcting a misconception is easier (and a better question) than trying to explain the entire topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Blatantly off topic&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you read the help center on &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&quot;&gt;on-topic&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&quot;&gt;off-topic&lt;/a&gt; questions. Questions that are asking for a discussion, or polling or one of the reasons specified in the help center.  Especially note that questions &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; have been posted on Stack Overflow (implementation) or questions that should have been posted on Stack Overflow, but would be off topic there too (do this work for me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Related reading&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&quot;&gt;Why is research important?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(MSO) &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/182266/how-much-research-effort-is-expected-of-stack-overflow-users/182380#182380&quot;&gt;How much research effort is expected of Stack Overflow users?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(MSO) &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/2373/165773&quot;&gt;Encouraging people to explain downvotes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quick link:&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;[Why was my question down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17804" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6485" RevisionGUID="cb89fbaf-f342-411e-9f77-51c1f3fff852" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h1&gt;Duplicate questions&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A duplicate question in and of itself &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/&quot; title=&quot;see 'Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication'&quot;&gt;isn't a bad thing&lt;/a&gt;.  Often it means that the people who have suggested it as such think that the answer to your question is already in the original question.  Questions are closed as duplicates because we want future readers to be able to go to one place to find the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Make sure you read &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the answers on the original question and consider the implications behind the answers too - not just the first reading.  An example of this can be seen on Stack Overflow when debugging questions trying to track down a NullPointerException in Java are linked to a question that explains about NullPointerExceptions rather than trying to resolve that particular instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel that something is closed as a duplicate incorrectly, explain specifically how your question differs from the other question and the answers in the duplicate question do not apply to your situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Related reading&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(MSO FAQ) &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10841/how-should-duplicate-questions-be-handled&quot;&gt;How should duplicate questions be handled?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(MSO) &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&quot;&gt;Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(MSO) &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/217401/does-the-new-guidance-on-duplicate-questions-suggest-closing-a-question-as-dupli&quot;&gt;Does the new guidance on duplicate questions suggest closing a question as duplicate, if the original answers the OP's question?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(MSO) &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/194476/someone-flagged-my-question-as-already-answered-but-its-not&quot;&gt;Someone flagged my question as already answered, but it's not&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;code&gt;[Why was my question closed as a duplicate?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6485/)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17805" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6489" RevisionGUID="95eeaa9d-a53e-4d82-8b63-5969ef3bfba2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h1&gt;Unclear what you are asking&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are looking for, in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&quot;&gt;context of Programmers.SE&lt;/a&gt; is unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This close reason can also be a bit unclear as to what the issue is.  Please be sure to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give enough context that someone reading the question can understand it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explain what you are looking for&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check to make sure you are not using jargon that is particular to one specific branch of computing (and if you are, either change the jargon or link to a site that explains it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make sure you are on the proper site&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last point is important too.  This close reason is often used as a proxy for &quot;we don't think that this question is a good question for Programmers.SE (it might be on Stack Overflow), but would get closed there too.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explain your design.  Explain what you have done.  Explain where you are having difficulty.  Explain what you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Related reading&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&quot;&gt;How to ask&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260&quot;&gt;Unclear what help you need&lt;/a&gt; (see also &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/215806/165773&quot;&gt;linked MSO post&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&quot;&gt;Why is research important?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;code&gt;[Why was my question closed as unclear?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6489/)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17806" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6494" RevisionGUID="8f0dbfa5-71a8-48a1-8021-213dd7af803d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;You weren't banned. Your account has an automatic block for asking new questions due to your other questions being down voted, closed, and/or deleted. You should read &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th&quot;&gt;this post on Meta Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; to learn more about the block and how to overcome it. At this time, you can still post answers, and posting high quality answers is one method to overcome the block. Another is to edit your posts that have been closed to improve them and get them reopened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17807" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6516" RevisionGUID="8e33cde9-80bd-416c-a904-c4ac6b012cef" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I am pondering particular feature request, but before diving deep into polishing its presentation and details, I would like to understand whether the change it would require is &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/199006/165773&quot; title=&quot;because my prior request in this area has been fairly but rather brutally declined based on pure technical grounds&quot;&gt;technically feasible at all&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if it is technically possible to implement a different aging factor for Programmers questions depending on the amount of answers in these? About as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hotness score of questions having 0 to 4 answers ages away exactly as of now&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;score of questions having 5 to 9 answers decays a bit faster than above&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;say, calculated as if it started aging away earlier&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;score of questions having 10 or more answers decays another bit faster than those with 5 to 9&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FWIW, I would like to stress that I am interested to learn whether this is possible to implement at Programmers, not network-wide. As far as I understand, the problem I am thinking about addressing doesn't make an issue eg at Stack Overflow (&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/220325/165773&quot; title=&quot;judging by the score of related question at recent moderator elections&quot;&gt;priority -17 there&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;In case if it matters, here's a rough sketch of the feature request mentioned above. Due to extended exposure to wide SE network, hot questions tend to attract certain amount of low quality answers. These answers would better be (and eventually are) removed, but due to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/223403/165773&quot; title=&quot;as discussed eg here&quot;&gt;limitations in moderation power and inadequate flagging system&lt;/a&gt; removal takes quite a lot of time. This slowdown in removal coupled with the way how hotness formula inflates score depending on amount of answers causes hot questions stick in the list longer than it could be in case of timely removal. If the aging decay of questions is adjusted to account for that, this would unblock other &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/220099/165773&quot;&gt;entertaining&lt;/a&gt; / &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/222730/165773&quot;&gt;interesting&lt;/a&gt; questions of our site and allow them to enter hot list.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17808" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6526" RevisionGUID="f411a6a9-902d-481c-81af-7bbc31e9bcf0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;It is technically feasible, when adjustment involves data that is available at the moment when hotness score is calculated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the adjustment involves only &lt;code&gt;AnswerCount&lt;/code&gt;, it's easy to implement, taking into account that &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/61343/165773&quot; title=&quot;explained here&quot;&gt;current formula&lt;/a&gt; uses it anyway:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(MIN(AnswerCount, 10) * QScore) / 5 + AnswerScore&#xA;-------------------------------------------------&#xA;         MAX(QAgeInHours + 1, 6) ^ 1.4&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, adjustment to lower part of the formula (age factor) can look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(AnswerCount &amp;lt; 5 ? MAX(QAgeInHours + 1, 6)&#xA;    : AnswerCount &amp;lt; 10 ? (QAgeInHours + 3)&#xA;    :  ? (QAgeInHours + 5)) ^ 1.4&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feature request based on above submitted at MSO: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/224750/165773&quot;&gt;Make hot questions with multiple answers age away faster on smaller / subjective-ish sites&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17809" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6529" RevisionGUID="a2d56fdf-0d2a-4837-8587-236545b91592" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Aside from the relative merit of using sonnets to answer a question, the guiding principle is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Comments are for clarifying questions and answers, or asking for clarification.  Any other use makes them subject to removal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the comments are anything but that, cast a flag against them, and a moderator will remove them if they are onerous.  The key on any Stack Exchange site is to reduce the noise as much as possible.  This is already done by the system collapsing long strings of comments, but if the comment thread has become particularly noisy, a moderator can take care of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some comment conversations, a &quot;would you like to move this conversation to chat&quot; link is offered.  Chat is more relaxed about these things; if you want to discuss the relative merits of answering Stack Exchange questions via sonnet, by all means avail yourself of the chat facility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Further Reading&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/19756/193412&quot;&gt;How do Comments Work? (Meta FAQ)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/comment&quot;&gt;How to Use the Comment Privilege (from the Help Center)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17810" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6534" RevisionGUID="52809255-8aaa-457f-8498-1428d404bcb0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;...if I was a homework cheater, I would applaud &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14258630#14258630&quot; title=&quot;quote source, bold font is mine&quot;&gt;an approach like that&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm for deletion if not improved in a reasonable timeframe.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  But minutes after closure is, I think, too speedy.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;I tend to give a few hours, a day&lt;/strong&gt; tops, or recent activity on the site with no edits made...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...because, you see, few hours of just staying there would be &lt;strong&gt;good enough already&lt;/strong&gt; for my purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;I would applaud it, enjoy it, exploit it.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More, I would brag about my successful recipe at &quot;forums&quot;, sharing it with cheaters like me and helping them find a way to a promised land:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Create a throwaway account at Programmers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dump your homework.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;it's quite likely that you'll find a kind soul or two around to help&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep squeezing solution details in question comments until it's deleted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're lucky to get an answer before question gets &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10582/what-is-a-closed-or-on-hold-question&quot; title=&quot;what does that mean&quot;&gt;closed&lt;/a&gt;, do the same in answer comments.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you feel like nobody's paying attention, edit your question: that will &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info&quot;&gt;bump&lt;/a&gt; it and increase chances to attract someone willing to help.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You may probably notice that question is getting funny marks -1, -2, -3... They call it &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/down-votes/info&quot;&gt;down-votes&lt;/a&gt; - don't worry about these, it's all imaginary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you notice that you can't ask next question, don't worry. They call it &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th&quot;&gt;question ban&lt;/a&gt;, all you need to circumvent it is to create new throwaway account and repeat above steps.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3836/programmers-se-and-the-summer-of-love/3837#3837&quot; title=&quot;paraphrased from here&quot;&gt;Only thing to keep in mind is&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;don't care how they react; go looking for the one guy that will actually do your homework for you (some people will)&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;As a community, what should we do about this approach?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should we keep current &quot;policy&quot; as highlighted above, or should we consider speedier deletions?  Speedier deletions on down-voted questions may lead to the help-vampire hitting the question ban faster, but this can be worked around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're here to build a knowledgeable, rewarding community.  We're not here to feed the help-vampires or to reward answers on their questions as it merely encourages more of the bad behaviour.  How should we balance cleaning out the trash without appearing overly harsh to new community members that may be able to contribute once they learn the ropes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;To those interested in a broader context of above: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/what-is-the-point-to-keep-this-homework-dump-visible&quot;&gt;what is the point to keep this homework dump visible?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17811" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6554" RevisionGUID="63976910-aeb2-4fab-9c20-a9e033d6c742" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;As explained &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/87892/155223&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, such questions are off topic :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is now a dedicated site for &lt;a href=&quot;http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;programming puzzles and code golf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17812" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6559" RevisionGUID="a7cf992d-aec3-4682-8c56-bb28cce7c0b5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;You've probably seen it &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136609/repository-of-useful-pro-forma-comments&quot;&gt;somewhere&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sharing your research helps everyone. Tell us what you've tried and why &#xA;  it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time &#xA;  to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, &#xA;  and most of all it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer! &#xA;  Also see &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&quot;&gt;how to ask&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does this mean? Why do people keep asking for research? Knowing this, how can I ask a better question and avoid &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6484/31260&quot;&gt;downvotes&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17814" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6582" RevisionGUID="770caa27-5374-422c-84dc-bf2d7464c6c9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Difficulty with naming has a bit of a history with programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are two hard problems in computer science: caching, naming, and off by one errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been &lt;em&gt;repeatedly&lt;/em&gt; revisited on meta and elsewhere&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(P.SE Aug 2012) &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3856/question-about-naming-conventions-not-constructive&quot;&gt;Question about naming conventions &amp;quot;not constructive&amp;quot;?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(P.SE Oct 2011) &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic&quot;&gt;Are &amp;quot;name that thing&amp;quot; questions on-topic?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(P.SE Jan 2014) &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6406/name-that-thing-questions&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Name that thing&amp;quot; questions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(MSO Nov 2013) &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/203880/what-is-the-appropriate-preferred-method-for-questions-concerning-programming&quot;&gt;What is the appropriate / preferred method for questions concerning programming nomenclature?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Blog Feb 2012) &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&quot;&gt;Lets Play The Guessing Game&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, the guidance on these is confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, please answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are the &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/terminology&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;terminology&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;terminology&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/naming&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;naming&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;naming&lt;/a&gt; questions on topic?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, what should be expected of these questions to not be closed as custom, too broad, or primarily opinion?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17815" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6588" RevisionGUID="ddfd6ce8-9f34-4841-9e7d-3cf06609cd06" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I guess I should have searched all of the meta sites...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It turns out that there is a formula used to increase the flag quantity based on activity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/185888/on-the-recent-changes-to-flagging-and-limits&quot;&gt;Recent changes to flagging and limits&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You start with 10 flags per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on your reputation and flagging history, you can end up with as many as 100 per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Currently, that means you get an extra flag per day for every 2000 reputation points or 10 net helpful flags (helpful-unhelpful).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17816" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6590" RevisionGUID="ada9f2d8-3df1-404a-816c-9a62489c894e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;I am a moderator on Stack Overflow. I got tired of getting into extended conversations with people who read the phrase &quot;practical, answerable problems that are unique to software development&quot; as tacit permission to ask their off-topic questions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were also specific complaints that things like &quot;requests for library recommendations&quot; are not specifically called out in the Help Center as closeable offenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I added the following section to the Help Center/On Topic article there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Some questions are still off-topic, even if they fit into one of&#xA;  the categories listed above:&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Questions that &lt;em&gt;lack sufficient information to diagnose the problem.&lt;/em&gt; Describe your problem in more detail or include a &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve&quot;&gt;minimal&#xA;  example&lt;/a&gt; in the question itself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Questions about &lt;em&gt;a problem that can no longer be reproduced or that was caused a simple typographical error&lt;/em&gt;. While similar questions may&#xA;  be on-topic here, these are often resolved in a manner unlikely to&#xA;  help future readers. This can often be avoided by identifying and&#xA;  closely inspecting the &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve&quot;&gt;shortest program necessary to reproduce the&#xA;  problem&lt;/a&gt; before posting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Questions asking for code must &lt;em&gt;demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved.&lt;/em&gt; Include attempted&#xA;  solutions, why they didn't work, and the expected results. See also:&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow question&#xA;  checklist&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Questions asking for homework help must include a summary of the work you've done so far to solve the problem, and a description of the&#xA;  difficulty you are having solving it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Questions asking us to &lt;em&gt;recommend or find a tool, library or favorite off-site resource&lt;/em&gt; are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they&#xA;  tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/139399/&quot;&gt;describe the&#xA;  problem&lt;/a&gt; and what has been&#xA;  done so far to solve it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Questions about &lt;em&gt;general computing hardware and software&lt;/em&gt; are off-topic for Stack Overflow unless they directly involve tools used&#xA;  primarily for programming. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Questions on &lt;em&gt;professional server, networking, or related infrastructure administration&lt;/em&gt; are off-topic for Stack Overflow unless&#xA;  they directly involve programming or programming tools.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I propose that we do something similar for the Help Center/On-Topic article here on Programmers, but using the close reasons that we have here (not the ones on Stack Overflow).  This page is editable by moderators, so we don't need SE permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I floated the idea to one of our mods, and he said that we need some community consensus before we do this.  So that's what I'm asking for.  I hope to avoid conversations like &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/235272/1204&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;, and maybe even have a few people simply refrain from posting such questions here and wasting everyone's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17817" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="dbae7dda-b110-4c37-9163-b7bcb7126442" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&quot;&gt;the original Help Center&lt;/a&gt; page, with some minor changes.  It turns out that most of the Off-Topic subjects are already covered here, so I just added a couple of new ones to cover the missing cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;where to find a software library, tool or other resource&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a product or service recommendation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Additional updates:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Removed &quot;Freelancing and Business Concerns&quot; from the on-topic list.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Removed &quot;software engineering&quot; in favor of more specific topics, many of which were already included.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Clarified &quot;Programming Tools.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Added &quot;Legal Assistance&quot; to &quot;not about.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Changed &quot;resume help&quot; to &quot;job hunting&quot; at the request of The Workplace mods to prevent people with resume critique questions from thinking they are on-topic there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Shortened the subjective questions portion, since it's better addressed on the dont-ask page.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xA;  who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xA;  about software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;If you have a question about...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;software requirements&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software architecture and design&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;development&#xA;  methodologies and processes&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software engineering management&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;quality assurance and testing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software licensing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;and it is not about...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check&#xA;  out &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  instead)&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; instead)&#xA;  &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  instead)&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next,&#xA;  including which&#xA;  technology is better&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what project you should do&#xA;  next&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what book you should read next&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;where to find&#xA;  a software library, tool or other resource&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a  product&#xA;  or service recommendation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;career&#xA;  advice, salary, or compensation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;personal lifestyle,&#xA;  including relationships, and non-programming activities&lt;/li&gt; &#xA;  &lt;li&gt;legal assistance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in&#xA;  general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot; alt=&quot;proper scope for&#xA;  question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean&#xA;  &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. &lt;strong&gt;Please keep it professional&lt;/strong&gt;. If this is a&#xA;  question you'd be uncomfortable&#xA;  discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably&#xA;  not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see the Help Center page about &lt;a href=&quot;/help/dont-ask&quot;&gt;what not to ask&lt;/a&gt; as well as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot;&gt;Good&#xA;  Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real&#xA;  Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; blog posts for details and examples&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;/search&quot;&gt;look around&lt;/a&gt; to see if your question&#xA;  has been asked before. It’s also OK to ask and answer your own&#xA;  question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack&#xA;  Exchange, it may be on topic for &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;another Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;  If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;commit to&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&quot;&gt;propose&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  a new site at &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Area51&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;  the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically&#xA;  created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17818" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6592" RevisionGUID="6ae4adac-6e18-481e-8d47-ee318a742c73" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Recent efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given long known &quot;tradition&quot; of attempts to circumvent such bans by posting at inappropriate sites I wonder how much impact could this have on Programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To understand this, I would like to find out how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically I am trying to figure whether it's something that can be dealt with in our regular ways, or it is worth looking for a dedicated approach to address (like, say, system triggering automated flag for mod attention when post from such a user gets close vote / flag).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(MSO) &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue&quot;&gt;Let's burn down the close queue!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(MSE) &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/102293/block-migration-if-user-is-suspended-question-blocked-at-destination&quot;&gt;Block migration if user is suspended/question-blocked at destination&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes&quot;&gt;Provide 10k users more close votes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17819" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6597" RevisionGUID="7e7024a1-8b68-49f2-a889-40ba7fb81b67" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;Per my understanding, for a while there was a sort of informal agreement to protect questions that are going to be featured at Ars Technica. Recently &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/protecting-ars&quot; title=&quot;in Whiteboard chat&quot;&gt;this approach has been challenged&lt;/a&gt;, so I would like to have a dedicated meta discussion to sort this out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it make sense to protect such questions as soon as we learn about coming exposure at Ars Technica or it is better to stick with approach designed in 2010 for Stack Overflow and Super User - that is, protect when there is &quot;a lot of drive-by noise answers&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(MSO - Feb '11) &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/78764/165773&quot;&gt;For 15k+ users: Guidelines on Protecting Questions?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jeff offered more information on &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/new-protected-question-status/&quot;&gt;why post protection was implemented and what he expected it to be used for&lt;/a&gt; in his blog.  This was when only moderators had this power, but the same reasoning applies to 15k users who can now protect posts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(SE blog - Jun '10) &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/new-protected-question-status/&quot;&gt;New Protected Question Status&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;if you see a question that is attracting a lot of drive-by noise answers, please flag it for moderator attention. We’ll turn on protection.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those interested in more details about questions we discuss can find links to them in &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/feed/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this feed&lt;/a&gt; or in &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/39006/samthebrand?tab=activity&quot;&gt;edits history&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6200/can-we-give-the-community-evangelist-something-more-notable-to-make-suggested-ed&quot;&gt;SE community evangelist&lt;/a&gt;. Some details of 40 questions featured so far are provided &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/6597/1&quot; title=&quot;find these under 'For your convenience...'&quot;&gt;in the 1st revision of this question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17820" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6598" RevisionGUID="9c84892c-ca2d-44ac-a807-b0889b89a3b9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;h2&gt;Protection racket&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/6597/1&quot;&gt;Your own list illustrates how pointless&lt;/a&gt; this sort of proactive activity is: in most cases, few or no new answers were posted &lt;em&gt;regardless&lt;/em&gt; of whether the questions were protected. Indeed, the most-answered question of the lot was immediately protected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not the raw &lt;em&gt;traffic&lt;/em&gt; that creates the problem. It's traffic coupled with a question that begs for &lt;em&gt;participation&lt;/em&gt;. Ars has its own forum attached to these, there's no pressing need for readers to come here to kibitz - unless the question itself is crying out for yet another answer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes this is unavoidable. Questions that, &lt;em&gt;within the rules of the community&lt;/em&gt; can only be answered in a narrow, controlled fashion may inadvertently imply a much broader scope to outsiders who don't know or don't care about the community norms. Protect is useful in these situations, where every &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; views will tend to generate &lt;em&gt;m&lt;/em&gt; poor/spam/non- answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But these tend to be the exceptions, &lt;em&gt;particularly&lt;/em&gt; on a site like this which doesn't really go in so much for discussions of tools or hardware or other spam-friendly topics. Protection here should be reserved for those cases where a good, answered question is attracting a large volume of noise / meta commentary &lt;em&gt;from new users&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to &lt;em&gt;pre-emptively&lt;/em&gt; do something useful to forestall noise on questions, then &lt;strong&gt;edit them.&lt;/strong&gt; Get rid of bits that implicitly invite any and all opinions, tighten up the scope, focus on making the question reflect its &lt;em&gt;best answers&lt;/em&gt; rather than aiming for a big tent that welcomes all &lt;em&gt;participants.&lt;/em&gt; Not only can this reduce confusion for outsiders, it can also benefit the folks already on the site who wouldn't be affected by Protection anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Effects of Ars&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm counting roughly 192 questions that've been linked to from ArsTechnica over the past 2 years that Sam's been doing this. Could be a few more or less; there's a lot of cross-linking, and I might have missed a few related questions - but this should be the &lt;em&gt;vast&lt;/em&gt; majority of all questions that've been linked to. You can view a list &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackedit.io/viewer#!provider=gist&amp;amp;gistId=4be501a1cd10129c71f8&amp;amp;filename=progsears.md&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; if you're interested...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, some basic stats on how these questions have aged. Out of those 192, 31 are &lt;em&gt;currently&lt;/em&gt; closed and 61 are &lt;em&gt;currently&lt;/em&gt; protected. The average number of (non-deleted) answers is 12, the average # of deleted answers is 2. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now... How they fared after being shared. I'm going to look at this from two different angles: a simple look at the number of answers attracted that &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; have been blocked by Protected status (had it been applied) and a comparison of the answer distribution before and after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Protect-worthy answers&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the questions in that list had been protected prior to being shared, a total of 55 answers would have been blocked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of those 55 answers, 18 scored less than 0 and 16 are currently deleted. 23 currently score &gt; 0. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, these were posted to the 131 questions that &lt;em&gt;weren't&lt;/em&gt; Protected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Answer distribution&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the 2578 answers posted before these questions were shared, 2019 are currently scored &gt; 0 while 211 are scoring &amp;lt; 0. 219 are deleted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the 124 answers posted &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; these questions were shared, 60 are currently scored &gt; 0 while 33 are scoring &amp;lt; 0. 23 are deleted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I noted in the first section, it's clear that Protection has relatively little effect on these. This jibes with my observations elsewhere on the network: trying to predict which questions will attract crap answers based purely on &lt;em&gt;traffic&lt;/em&gt; is exceedingly error-prone; other heuristics are needed. &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/226619/auto-protect-questions-that-get-more-than-n-answers-from-new-users-in-a-24-hour/228805#228805&quot;&gt;Which is why we implemented better heuristics&lt;/a&gt;, based on observing which questions actually benefited from Protected status. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The % of not-useless answers posted after sharing is considerably lower than the % posted before; this shouldn't be too surprising, given none of them were new or unanswered. The % of not-useless new-user answers posted is lower than the % from existing users, but the volume is considerably lower. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Recommendations&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reserve Protected status for questions that are attracting noise or abuse from new users. Protect is not a prophylactic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17821" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6600" RevisionGUID="cc5a6ab6-dbcd-4b8c-a308-9840f76b4634" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:14:37.103" UserId="-1" Comment="Migration of MSO links to MSE links" Text="&lt;p&gt;You have asked 5 questions on Programmers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/235271/modify-memory-in-borland-6&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/235271/modify-memory-in-borland-6&lt;/a&gt; asked on April 8, self-deleted on April 8&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/233158/should-i-use-http-search&quot;&gt;Should I use HTTP search&lt;/a&gt; asked on March 21, open, net score of 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/232123/standard-way-for-webrequest&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/232123/standard-way-for-webrequest&lt;/a&gt; asked on March 12, closed by 5 user votes, deleted, net score of -1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189617/install-cloud9-on-windows-8-or-linux&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189617/install-cloud9-on-windows-8-or-linux&lt;/a&gt; asked on March 7, 2013, closed by 5 user votes, deleted, net score of -4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188926/migrate-wcf-to-node-js&quot;&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188926/migrate-wcf-to-node-js&lt;/a&gt; asked on March 1, 2013, closed with 5 votes, deleted by moderator, net score of -4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Across these questions, your net question score is -8, which isn't that good. The details of the automatic question block algorithm are not known outside of the Stack Exchange team - not even to moderators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should read &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans&quot;&gt;the page in the help center about question bans&lt;/a&gt; as well as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th&quot;&gt;a Meta Stack Overflow post that describes the question block and how to get out of it&lt;/a&gt;. The advice is to fix your old posts (if you can) and contribute good posts of the type that you can (you can still post answers to questions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17822" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6617" RevisionGUID="af2bf8e7-e72f-4e33-9d8f-e70501984d05" CreationDate="2014-04-23T10:13:22.247" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17823" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6618" RevisionGUID="635fad93-d57b-4348-9391-ec75f51cf90f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T10:13:36.297" UserId="4" Text="Looked through the list, looks fine, merged." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17824" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8" RevisionGUID="2af818a5-7ff4-4aca-9217-6315e11362b3" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="&gt; ###Update&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Community Wiki is [no longer an option](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/392/should-the-community-wiki-police-be-shut-down/7183#7183), across the network, for regular users when creating or editing a question. If a question should be flagged community wiki, flag a moderator for attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related to [Why would anyone accept an answer?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer), what's the criteria for what should be a community wiki and what is a regular question? If most, if not all questions are subjective, is there a need to generate one mega-answer through collaboration?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17826" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="79" RevisionGUID="eed5c8cf-55d9-4134-be4f-1e5fb7ad08a8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="slackoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taken / Available for purchase&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I proposed this on [meta.stackoverflow.com][1] and Jeff suggested to add it here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/62734/renaming-the-not-programming-related-proposal/62849#62849" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17827" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="96" RevisionGUID="ea5a3922-ea6b-420a-ac4a-bb0ae7d10e37" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This is strongly related to [this question][1] I asked on meta.stacko where it was a huge no-no that there should be no Accept button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/58543/do-all-stack-exchange-sites-need-an-accept-answer-button" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17829" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="137" RevisionGUID="779a0a46-8551-4b8b-bd0c-980cfdb29738" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="progpub.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short version based on a suggestion in [Renaming the Not Programming Related Proposal][1]...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/62734/renaming-the-not-programming-related-proposal/62849#62849" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17830" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="160" RevisionGUID="7dc9e1f6-012e-47c1-8ede-fac129fa3ced" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This topic has been hashed over and over on Meta.StackOverflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Encouraging people to explain down-votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135)&#xD;&#xA;* [So annoyed with no-comment, vindictive downvoting](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22934/so-annoyed-with-no-comment-vindictive-downvoting)&#xD;&#xA;* [Who has downvoted me and why [closed]](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63895/who-has-downvoted-me-and-why)&#xD;&#xA;* [If you don't like my question you have to explain why. [closed]](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/50738/if-you-dont-like-my-question-you-have-to-explain-why)&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoters and comments [closed]](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/55324/downvoters-and-comments)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a *Bad Idea*. Downvoting is a personal thing for the voter, is necessary for a functioning voting system (that is, down-voters should not be subject to reprisal), and should not be taken so personally that you feel you are owed an explanation. Shrug downvotes, concentrate on providing the best answers you can, and move on." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17831" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="161" RevisionGUID="a303c60a-748b-4f5c-9926-22472fdc9b6f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Jon Skeet says it all here:&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votes/2268#2268&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reading this: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2009/05/20/reasons-for-voting-on-questions-and-answers.aspx&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder why not use the same system in comments for voting?&#xD;&#xA;That's if you like a question/answer up-vote it, if not, you either comment about what you see wrong or flag it if it's such an offshoot" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17832" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="190" RevisionGUID="27c53157-c9a8-4e3c-9876-099d1fdfffb1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="It's a [&quot;Community Wiki&quot;][1] answer (one which doesn't have a permanent &quot;owner&quot;, can be edited by more users, and doesn't grant reputation to anyone) - this status is forced for answers to questions with more than 30 answers. On the other sites, this is done to try and reduce the motivation for posting duplicate answers on open-ended questions... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this site, [there's some discussion as to whether it's a useful behavior][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145/remove-cw-conversion-at-30-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17834" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="213" RevisionGUID="f11a5e49-7f37-4c73-aac5-5b606c4b6837" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="One of the topics that's come up several times on Meta.StackOverflow is the perception that Programmers.SE is a joke proposal, existing solely to help keep Stack Overflow free of all the &quot;crappy&quot; questions that it gets plagued with every day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few of examples of this perception (**note: see Edits 2 and 3 below for clarification**):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You absolutely nailed my resentment of Programmers.SE; it was created as a tongue-in-cheek, NOT-Stack-Overflow site: the stuff we keep in the basement because it's not fit for keeping upstairs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The problem is that Programmers.SE was created as an amorphous blob where nothing is off topic (read: everything not Stack Overflow is on topic). The travesty is that Programmers.SE is, at least in perception, [your quote] &quot;an ocean of jokes and polls.&quot; That's where the problem lies. I would have created the site very differently: Subjective/soft programming topics okay; Industry/engineering issues okay; The business of software okay; Banal polls/jokes off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Programmers on stackexchange](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what you are saying is that Programmers.SE is the skin of evil left behind to free the race of titans from the bonds of destructiveness: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ims5W5bJl9s&amp;feature=related#t=11s&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64043#64043)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you browse questions on Meta for a bit, you'll quickly realize that there are a fair number of people who want to use SO for things that SO wasn't designed to be used for: discussions, polls, flame-wars, endless lists... And over time, this has created some amount of irritation on the site: some folks really, *really* want to, um, *participate* in questions like, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What's the single best way to type code?&#xD;&#xA;- Do you hurt sometimes (as a programmer)?&#xD;&#xA;- How can I get a job drawing cartoons featuring the funniest programmer joke about my favorite hidden feature in the worst language ever (on a boat)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So rather than just stamping them out, like so many ducks putting out flaming elephants, some rose-tint-spectacled user got the idea of proposing a site *for all the questions that shouldn't be asked on SO*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE is that site. Soon, it'll have its own set of rules and standards, and the cycle will begin anew. But until then, it remains an anarchic paradise of freedom and love.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Shog9*](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to challenge the premise behind the sentiment: in many ways, that *was* the purpose of the proposal, and Programmers.SE is flourishing despite it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm wondering if there's a way we can spin the content of this site more positively rather than being merely a wretched hive of scum and villainy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the things that's popping up here is we should leave Programmers.SE alone because it's popular and as Nathan Taylor puts it, &quot;Haters gonna hate.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think the content or community Programmers.SE needs changing *per se*. Rather, I think we just need to provide a clear way to show value to SOIS and others, because the current perception is that we don't, and this site is more or less a joke that's gotten out of hand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how can we do that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like SOIS has decided to [publicly address][1] the banality of Programmers.SE on its blog:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There’s an even longer list of things that really belong on the new Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense, and could benefit from an infusion of more meaty subjects, like these proposals:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've created a new question, [What questions are on topic, and what are off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic), to see if we can hash out the proposed merges and other off-topic questions that have come up so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------ &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 3&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Cartaino clarified his position and the quotes above in the comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't actively despise the **concept** of Programmers.SE at all. Read my quotes (above) *very* carefully. What I lament is the perception created; the &quot;anything goes&quot; ethos that simply aims to flout what makes Stack Overflow great. I wanted a site about the &quot;Programmers' Life: a site for discussion of the business, careers, issues, and memes concerning professional developers.&quot; Subjective talk and soft topics okay if it follows a &quot;back it up&quot; philosophy or hard-earned experience. What I got instead was *&quot;what is the coolest/stupidest/weirdest/funniest thing you saw/did/tasted today?&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Q&amp;A will live on SO, Programmers, and a few academic sites. That's it. Not dozens of ridiculously niche and redundant proposals. But the mere mention of merging proposals with Programmers horrifies most. &quot;I don't want my subject on that site.&quot; That's a **huge problem.** Programmers.SE is the &quot;Park Place&quot; to Stack Overflow's &quot;Boardwalk&quot;; a tremendously valuable resource in a bad neighborhood. I'd prefer to paint over the graffiti and fix broken windows; to reestablish community pride so the police come out on occasion. But that's a far cry from &quot;hater&quot; or &quot;actively despise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jeff Atwood has created two topics with the basic premise that Programmers.SE as it is now is too undisciplined, and SOIS will be taking steps to correct that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Adding discipline to programmers.stackexchange.com](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;* [Should “Developer Testing” be folded into a more general “Programmers” site?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17835" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="223" RevisionGUID="6b440188-6b52-4bd5-a2ba-7f203410588e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="It's [30 votes a day](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5212/are-there-any-voting-limits-in-stackoverflow), and it really shouldn't be raised. Limits are in place to prevent abuse: SOIC has ostensibly thought a lot about what the limits should be and why they're necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further discussion: [Why are there voting limits?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/28314/why-are-there-voting-limits)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17836" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="239" RevisionGUID="620f9935-0df3-49e9-b929-bda0c243106a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="### &lt;strike&gt;Software Engineering Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers. Software engineering deals with requirements engineering, software design and architecture, implementation, testing, maintenance, configuration management, process, tools, methodologies, quality, and ethics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How can I justify the use of throwaway prototyping to my manager?&#xD;&#xA;* What’s the best method for estimation? &#xD;&#xA;* I got a job in a company that practices Scrum. How can I prepare myself before the first workday? &#xD;&#xA;* What single book provides the best overview of key software engineering topics? &#xD;&#xA;* What is the single most important Software Engineering concept to learn for practical use?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Engineering soon to be beta, what should we do with SE questions?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/186/software-engineering-soon-to-be-beta-what-should-we-do-with-se-questions)&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Software Engineering has been re-proposed purposefully to avoid being merged, so it's no longer applicable.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6922/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17837" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="243" RevisionGUID="5a270295-285d-4187-8ad4-2aa783e43662" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="### Code Golf &amp; Programming Puzzles Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for code golfers and for those who interested in code golfing (from beginners to experts), and programming puzzles.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Seven Segments](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1407422/code-golf-seven-segments)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Code 39 Bar Code](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2800073/code-golf-code-39-bar-code)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Morse code](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1352587/code-golf-morse-code)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf New Year Edition - Integer to Roman Numeral](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/394574/code-golf-new-year-edition-integer-to-roman-numeral)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Factorials](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/237496/code-golf-factorials)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related Discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Where do Code Golf/Code Challenge questions belong?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38/where-do-code-golf-code-challenge-questions-belong)&#xD;&#xA;* [We have puzzle, code-golf, and now code-chess tags. Can we migrate them all somewhere else?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64511/we-have-puzzle-code-golf-and-now-code-chess-tags-can-we-migrate-them-all-somew)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4570/code-golf-programming-puzzles" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17838" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="259" RevisionGUID="aea5a203-32dd-45a2-af93-1f8c909a1c51" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="##basement.stackoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Idea taken from: [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;You absolutely nailed my resentment of Programmers.SE; it was created as a tongue-in-cheek, NOT-Stack-Overflow site: &lt;b&gt;the stuff we keep in the basement&lt;/b&gt; because it's not fit for keeping upstairs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17839" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="264" RevisionGUID="6fd3baa7-e795-4273-8f6d-fb346e17c9b2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Hmmm... I kinda liked that question. Seemed to fit the &quot;best/worst UI&quot; category. Didn't really understand the edit though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is actually *better suited* for another site, then it should probably be closed here. But there's [an argument to be made][1] in favor of asking *similar* questions to different audiences. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4708/what-to-do-with-cross-site-duplicates" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17840" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="285" RevisionGUID="54c3fbeb-56b2-4e12-9de4-86b9c7898c6f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="In connection to [this][1], and the closing of [Why are so many programmers arrogant?][2]. The question was closed (unjustifiably, IMHO), then reopened by those of us who disagreed. The question has now been locked, preventing others from participating. I have a feeling this is going to happen to the [Do programmers have higher tendency to be atheists than non programmers?][3] as well (_**EDIT:** this has happened, as predicted_), which has been closed and reopened as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, even though both questions _could_ potentially lead to flamewars, I think it is a credit to this community that there was not a single answer (apart from one joke answer that was subsequently deleted) that was potentially inflammatory. I fail to see why such questions should be locked, as long as the community wants it open. If the question turns into a close-reopen war, and is closed and reopened more than _x_ times (say thrice), then perhaps it might be worth locking. Even then, it should be done on a case-by-case basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as far as the &quot;Why are so many programmers&quot; arrogant question goes, it has only been closed and reopened once, and at least one of the high-rep users has said that he voted to close by accident. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone please tell me why this decision was taken? Both questions are perfectly valid  for programmers.se, and while such questions _should_ be closed, locked (and probably deleted) on SO, doing so here merely amounts to censorship.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;[3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/do-programmers-have-higher-tendency-to-be-atheists-than-non-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** OK, the unilateral closing of the atheist question has really pissed me off. If this happens a few more times, I see myself leaving the community for good. People were being respectful and the community at large had no problem with the question. It was closed once, and reopened once and had no close votes the last time I looked. That means that only 5 people felt strongly enough about it to vote to close it, and the rest were happy to let it be. This makes the &quot;community-run&quot; aspect of the website look like simply lip-service. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 2:** I should clarify that I have absolutely nothing against vote-based closing. I may or may not agree with the closers, but at least everyone (at least those who have enough rep) is on an equal footing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 3:** Jeff has been talking about [removing the &quot;worst&quot; 15-20% of questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com). If this happens, I'm going to ask for my account on p.se to be deleted in protest. That's what voting and flagging are for. Remember, a closed question can be deleted if enough high-rep users cast delete votes. If I'd known that this site wasn't going to be strictly community-run, I would have approached participation _very_ differently. Why should I be active on meta, cast close/delete votes or view flagged posts if every so often, the community's verdict is going to be overridden unilaterally?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17841" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="288" RevisionGUID="46e1c557-2589-4589-9c52-c0b1e70dfd3b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Questions like &quot;Can you recommend some good pottery for programmers?&quot; are an issue we need to figure out- to what extent are they allowed?  I see a few variants on this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that are clearly unrelated to programming in anyway, but have programming tacked on (eg, &quot;Can you recommend some good pottery for programmers?&quot; or &quot;What, as a programmer, is your favorite legume?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;2. Questions that are a middle ground: &quot;What are some good movies for programmer?&quot; is a good example- on one hand it'd be off-topic without &quot;for programmer,&quot; but on the other hand, programming-related movies affect programmer culture, and are something that is, to my mind, &#xD;&#xA;worth discussing here.&#xD;&#xA;3. Questions that are somewhat clearly directly related to programming: &quot;What are some good keyboards for programmers&quot;- since keyboards are the tool of our trade, this is definitely worth discussing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been a few discussions of this issue so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- An answer in &quot;[What questions are on-topic and what questions are off-topic](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic/238#238)&quot; starts to discuss this&#xD;&#xA;- In revision 7 on [What should be in our FAQ](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/74/revisions), Mark Trapp rolls back a change I made to suggest that blatant &quot;types of pickles&quot; questions should be off-topic.  He asserts that they are on-topic, citing a meta.SO post.  This exchange is why I'm making this question- we should have an internal question deciding it one way or another to point people to in the future.&#xD;&#xA;- An early discussion took place in the comments for the [programming fiction](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2982/recommended-fiction-for-programmers) question.&#xD;&#xA;- Mark points out [this](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046) answer on meta.SO&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been out for a few days, and I have't payed that much attention to external discussion of P.SE on meta.SO, so I may have missed us coming to a consensus on this issue, but it seems we haven't, and we need to.  What do you think- are 1, 2, and/or 3 on-topic or off-topic for this site, and how do we handle determining which side of the 'on-topic' line a question like this falls?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17842" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="307" RevisionGUID="053b620e-4c57-487d-af30-23f87c6c54bd" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The banner message for new/not-logged-in users reads&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to Q&amp;A site for expert programmers interested...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There should be an article in there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to a Q&amp;A site for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or, if we want to be fancier:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to the super-mega-ultimate best-on-the-Interblags programmer Q&amp;A site!!!!eleven!!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reference image (ignore the freehand text, I'm reusing an earlier screenshot (hey, I'm being &quot;green&quot;)) available [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65401/limit-the-size-of-banner-messages)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17843" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="308" RevisionGUID="bbdfb41c-c7af-4f97-959b-a6468cb20497" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="We have a lot of code here. I think everyone agree that we need syntax highlighting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;[Support this feature request on MSO][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/72797/enable-syntax-highlighting-to-code-blocks-on-programmers-se" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17845" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="315" RevisionGUID="f3a3a578-3a12-46f6-8f48-f01a60471553" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="**Is everyone OK with the tag being removed?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting TheLQ's comment on an answer at [Adding discipline to programmers.SE][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... If you look at it, all subjective questions are polls, ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As most questions could be tagged with [poll] and nobody speaks up it really seems like a redundant tag. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com/65440#65440&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a strong believe people would agree:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The poll tag is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * a meta tag as it doesn't tell something about the content,&#xD;&#xA; * redundant as it's an useless tag for the reasons described in this question and its comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**As of now, it's gone...**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those that disagree should start a serious meta question with a reason for such tags to exist.  &#xD;&#xA;After waiting some days, a lot of people have agreed and nobody has disagreed..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17846" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="331" RevisionGUID="4598bbae-c6ca-4ddd-ba4b-f84fff722559" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There are two issues at play:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [The text for the Tumbleweed badge on Programmers.SE is out of date](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65803/tumbleweed-text-on-programmers-se-is-out-of-date). It should read:&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Asked a question with no votes, no answers, no comments, and low views for a week&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. None of your questions meet the requirements for the badge, given the correct definition. If you're curious about the viewcount requirement, it's [10-15](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/32376/tumbleweed-how-many-views-is-low)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17847" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="333" RevisionGUID="27b11930-47e9-4ee6-96ee-d8d24747d1eb" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="###Edit: Problem solved.  As Mark Trapp points out, [normal users can no longer mark CW](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67039/what-can-we-do-to-make-community-wiki-better/67192#67192).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [consensus](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki) seems to be that community wiki is useless here, and we've been pointing this out in various question comment threads.  The problem is that new user keep coming in with the old expectations of how CW should work, and marking their questions CW just because they're subjective.  I see a few options for dealing with this that I'll post in separate answers- of course, post your own if you can think of a better solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we get a clear consensus, the mods, in their capacity of liaisons, can take it to SOIS." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17848" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="335" RevisionGUID="269c7fad-761a-4b7a-b9b9-592e818826d0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="## Allow Mods and/or 10k (2k for beta) users to De-CW a question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would solve our problem without losing the CW feature.  However, it's require a more active effort on the part of the mods and the top users.  Further, it's been discussed [on meta.SO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6821/ability-to-undo-the-community-wiki) to, as far as I can tell, no effect." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17849" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="347" RevisionGUID="f3cf0ed0-51de-44b4-b9bc-4739ab56a090" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="You're kinda straddling the line between SO-appropriate and P.SE appropriate...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##How to ask for a code review&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[There's nothing wrong with asking SO for feedback on some code][1], *provided you've put some effort into it*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###*Bad*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Is there anything wrong with this code?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ???&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &lt;massive code dump&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###*Good*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Are there problems with passing a callback to a constructor to allow for lazy initialization?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Description of technique used in code&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     Brief code snippet(s) illustrating only relevant techniques&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've managed to get about half-way on this: you're asking for feedback on the practicality of a specific technique, but rather than describing the technique and your motivations for using it, you've just dumped the code with a few hints as to what it does. Your question starts out sounding like it might be P.SE-appropriate (&quot;what would you think upon seeing this signature?&quot;) but then delves into meatier implementation details (more of a SO thing). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, your title is unacceptably vague.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Decide what you want the answers to look like. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're questioning the readability/maintainability of the code (whether the implementation, or the client code) then ask about *that* - P.SE is a reasonable location. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're concerned that the implementation itself fails in some way (error handling, efficiency, unforeseen pitfalls involving the callback referencing disposed data) then be clear about why and how you're using it, and ask on SO. Note that you'll probably get comments on readability/maintainability as well, 'cause SO users are helpful like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1957/should-so-allow-give-me-some-feedback-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17850" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="370" RevisionGUID="b8561a34-0d3a-499c-92b7-8c779f004d79" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="See the close votes and comments on the question [When will IE6 be irrelevant?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/815/when-will-ie6-be-irrelevant):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Off topic (2)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Not constructive (1)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Not a real question (1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can you edit this question to meet &quot;Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Which guidelines of the big 6 do you think this question apply? Gradually we will close questions that doesn't fit on the 6 Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions. If you think your question doesn't meet enough points it would be a good thing the author of the question initiate the close process. Otherwise community or moderators can take the initiative if they they consider this question inappropriate to this site. Thank you. See more: blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective Maybe an edit turns it more suitable to guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are people now checking the 6-Q guidelines **before checking whether the question is off-topic**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those people can't change their vote to off-topic, so this question stays open while it shouldn't...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can we prevent this behavior? Should we make the vote reasons more clear?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS: It would be so useful to be able to [contact](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/431/any-way-to-send-a-personal-message-to-another-user) [another](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57537/how-do-i-contact-other-users) [user](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/389/bigown) somehow, then this didn't have to be so public." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17852" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="401" RevisionGUID="6e137b3e-6ba5-4634-98a3-bac522f7d2f4" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The first thing you should always do if you are confused about what's happening on a Stack Exchange site is to check the FAQ. From [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;.** Please keep it professional at all times. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot;** Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, you should check the tags colored red on the meta-discussion site. If you did, you would've found this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions are being closed in accordance with the guidelines for this site. If you're confused because this is vastly different from the Area 51 proposal which has a lot of fluff questions, this redefinition was discussed on Meta.StackOverflow.com:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Should “Developer Testing” be folded into a more general “Programmers” site?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Adding discipline to programmers.stackexchange.com](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And discussed on this meta-discussion site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* [valid questions being closed.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do I totally not understand the point of Programmers.SE?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/360/do-i-totally-not-understand-the-point-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do we need a definition of subjective?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/324/do-we-need-a-definition-of-subjective)&#xD;&#xA;* [Remove the options to close questions on this site.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/355/remove-the-options-to-close-questions-on-this-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why should we have to battle to keep questions open? [closed]](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/339/why-should-we-have-to-battle-to-keep-questions-open-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [Please let's not lock questions unless as an absolute last resort](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/285/please-lets-not-lock-questions-unless-as-an-absolute-last-resort)&#xD;&#xA;* [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* *and so on...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry you missed all of the discussion we had about the definition of the site, but the decision has already been made to redefine the site as it currently is in the FAQ, and the time for discussion is over. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If Programmers.SE no longer appeals to you or your question does not fit within the guidelines of this site, you might want to try to find a different site, like [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) or [Quora](http://quora.com)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17853" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="406" RevisionGUID="abdcd2ff-a317-4faf-8092-e2be594d37c4" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This discussion is going on at stackoverflow meta:&#xD;&#xA;[adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I was to ask a specific topic about one single other SE site here, it would be closed as off-topic (and rightly so). Why is this discussion that is specifically about this site happening on another meta?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you agree with having that discussion there instead of here? Can explain why you think this discussion should (or should not) be happening on this meta instead?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17855" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="440" RevisionGUID="7f56a1e0-008a-4b6c-8268-1bdd0e48984e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="SOIS has decided to [disable the community feature entirely for end-users](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67039/what-can-we-do-to-make-community-wiki-better/67192#67192). Now, if you want a question to be community wiki, you need to flag it for moderator attention. So, that's that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17856" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="456" RevisionGUID="c34c06c1-11e5-4cf5-9e71-29f5b548d681" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The current philosophy from the Team is that they [won't provide migration until the Beta is over][1], but it seems like that part of the site should be vetted in Beta also.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68000/allow-beta-sites-to-migrate-questions-to-relevant-sites/68003#68003" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17857" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="462" RevisionGUID="fa53d028-1c44-40d8-acea-d77118fdf3a3" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Me and 2 others have reported this a while ago on Meta.SO. Its been reproduced on at least SuperUser and Gaming. Currently its `[status-planned]`, but who knows when it will actually get fixed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Root question: [Misleading error message on SE metas](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65390/you-must-have-at-least-5-reputation-on-parent-site-to-answer-a-question-for-c)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other reports&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Per-site metas say I need more than 5 reputation to answer a closed question…](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66528/per-site-metas-say-i-need-more-than-5-reputation-to-answer-a-closed-question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [“You must have at least 5 reputation on [parent site] to answer a question” for closed questions (despite having the rep)](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64767/misleading-error-message-on-se-metas)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17858" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="484" RevisionGUID="3602d829-e13e-4b5c-b24b-313881a27bc5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="From [Meta.StackOverflow.com](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5999/can-i-delete-my-account):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to delete your account:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. **Edit your profile to say &quot;please delete me&quot;** so we can confirm your ownership of the account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. **Obtain your user page URL or numeric user ID**. This is linked from the top of every page of the site, when you are logged in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3. **Email the support address linked at the bottom of every web page** on the site. Where it says &quot;contact us&quot;, click that. In your email, you **MUST** include your user page URL or user ID so we can find your account." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17859" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="502" RevisionGUID="b0073622-b1fd-4f9e-9a21-5a6186ab1017" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="It's one of [the highest requested ideas][1] on Meta Stack Overflow, but has been declined by management.  It would be great if they implemented this since it really sucks to try and keep track of posts so that when they get re-opened, I can go back and cast my one close vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/125/how-about-a-vote-not-to-close-option-to-counter-the-vote-to-close" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17860" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="517" RevisionGUID="1d534805-56a1-4728-8ab2-923bde7f9dda" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="## Basics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Read our FAQ.][1]&#xD;&#xA;- You can log in with your Google, Yahoo, etc. user by clicking the on icon of the service you have an account on the Login page.&#xD;&#xA;- Unlike forums and mailing lists, this concentrates on highlighting the good answers, and downvoting the incorrect or bad answers.  **It's not a replacement for discussion**, just a more efficient way to get answers. The [about page][2] has a picture which illustrates this best.&#xD;&#xA;- *After you get some reputation make sure you are voting good questions and answers up, and bad answers down!*&#xD;&#xA;- A ton of value comes from finding a question and answer via a search engine. We want a good answer to be the top hit for &quot;How do I use the me menu?&quot;  Don't worry if the questions are scrolling by too quickly on the front page, this isn't about tracking discussions.&#xD;&#xA;- What is Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow?  Joel's [announcement for stackoverflow.com][3] mentions the motivation behind this method of Q&amp;A.  More information on Stack Exchange in general can be found in the [Stack Overflow community FAQ][4] (much of it is general, some is specific to Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Asking good questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- People will upvote your question based on its quality, so [put some effort][5] into it.&#xD;&#xA;- Use tags to classify your question. This makes questions easier to read on the front page.&#xD;&#xA;- There's no bumping &amp;mdash; if your question is unanswered the community user will bump it on occasion.&#xD;&#xA;- Feel free to continue to work on your question; edit, edit, edit.  This will give it a natural bump, and people will be able to watch your progress in adding more detail. People tend to help/upvote people who are actively trying to investigate their problem.&#xD;&#xA;- As you add to your question, if you end up finding the answer, then answer your own question so that future generations can benefit from it!&#xD;&#xA;- If someone answers your question, accept it as the answer. This is an important [part of the process][6] and rewards the people trying to help you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Giving good answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Don't only link to random sources on the Internet. Any person can type their answer into Google and do that. If the information is good and under an open license, just put it in the answer (don't forget to link to and attribute the author).&#xD;&#xA;- Edit, edit, edit should be your mantra. &amp;mdash; If you've got a good answer and someone adds more detail, integrate it, and remember to always respect an individual's work.&#xD;&#xA;- Comments are like &quot;meta&quot; for the answer. *Don't ping pong back and forth in comments with new data, when someone leaves a comment with more information or something, just add the information to your question directly.* If people post updates to a comment ask them to add it to their question; that's where the power of Stack Exchange comes in: updates on people answering their question happens in the answers and the questions, so that when you are finished people don't have to track the conversation, just the final answer and solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Spread the word&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- We need help getting the word out, [we have some ideas][7] on how you can help, especially in places where users are already asking you for help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/15.html&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/7931/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/5234&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7/how-do-we-promote-our-site&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17861" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="526" RevisionGUID="a03b2bb2-5618-43a3-833b-391e1730a9ad" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="See this [Meta SO post][1] for a Greasemonkey script to do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/43055/greasemonkey-script-for-displaying-threaded-comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17862" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="549" RevisionGUID="d1401845-b15e-4e58-8a98-ee5222002f0e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="See [What can we do to make Community Wiki better?][1] on Meta.SO. So you can request it for moderators, but I just convert to CW if the question requires CW status. If you want it, please explain why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67039/what-can-we-do-to-make-community-wiki-better/67192#67192" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17863" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="553" RevisionGUID="3b83c7f3-d3b7-4e5d-93e2-1ee288c6b9a0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="If what you want is to use a single OpenID and have all your SE accounts associated *except* for your Programmer's account, then sorry, [you can't do that](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/52272/stop-repeatedly-auto-associating-accounts-on-login).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're okay with disassociating all of your accounts, then go to [your Programmer's account page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/191?tab=accounts), where you should see a link/button/box at the very bottom that says [`Clear all associations`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/191?tab=accounts#clear-associations). Clicking that *should* do the trick.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another approach is to create a new OpenID and use it just for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to answer the general question: anyone can go to [one of your account pages](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/191?tab=accounts) and see all your associated accounts at once." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17864" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="576" RevisionGUID="2fd8fa40-c602-48df-892a-5cc87ca5dec3" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="If that's what the question and its answers essentially were, you'd be correct in saying it's on topic because it deals with a developer's tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that's not what the question is, and the answers only mention in passing Mac OS X's development capability. Explaining what the command key does and where the Applications folder is doesn't make a professional programmer better at his job, but they do help someone new to a Mac in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In reality, a question like &quot;What are the essential things I should know about Mac?&quot; is essentially asking, &quot;Can someone read my mind and link every question I might find useful on [Apple.SE](http://apple.stackexchange.com)?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange system only works when people ask pointed questions that are directly related to the Stack Exchange they are on because they attract the knowledge and experience of experts on the topic. A person interested in learning more about specific things on a Mac should avail themselves of [Apple.SE](http://apple.stackexchange.com) and ask questions there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using the &quot;as a programmer&quot; qualifier to make any question on topic (among other cheese methods) has been discussed several times [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22as+a+programmer%22), on the [Stack Overflow blog](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/), and on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suffice it to say, Programmers.SE does not suffer from a lack of good questions such that we need to be a general-purpose question and answer site like [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) or [Quora](http://quora.com); where the only thing that you need to do is add the keyword &quot;programmer&quot; or the phrase &quot;as a programmer&quot; and ask an broad, easy-to-answer question to be on topic. There are literally dozens of specialized Stack Exchange sites that cover the topics more appropriately." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17869" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="635" RevisionGUID="b0ccc482-eee1-4ba6-affb-e75bef7ca12c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I probably missed it, but I had assumed that once you could propose synonyms you would be able to vote on them.  After I figured out how to propose one it seemed it was the only one in the system until I noticed there were more on the all tab and I eventually found this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64247/show-synonym-suggestions-awaiting-my-vote&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can somewhat see the point of that decision, but it took a while to figure out what was going on and I still don't think I understand what the &quot;merge&quot; tag is for.  I am certain I can find that answer as well, but I would suggest either adding some of this to the FAQ or providing some more obvious instruction or description.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Certainly not a huge deal, but for someone that has only lurked before on stackexchange sites it is a bit confusing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17870" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="641" RevisionGUID="5ab48c57-c0c8-4b44-bdea-bc244131cada" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="We are next in line.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jin is working on the design, but has decided on to do a redesign based on the feedback from [the first &amp; second attempts](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed). Once that's been agreed we'll probably go live.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's also a question on Meta Stack Overflow about [identifying questions to migrate from SO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate) that indicates the go live date is imminent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com is *probably* going live this week," ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17871" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="645" RevisionGUID="2cbebc18-9b59-43a5-bd05-f93b457e3a30" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Often, I face myself asking a tricky question where someone interested in giving me a constructive answer would have to sit down and **think**. They would also need to **care** about my question and my problem and be **open-minded** (which is the whole idea behind [Programmers.SE][1]). Instead, they often end up just trying to make a point - the point they may have had all their lives and they wouldn't reconsider - or make me bad or show off their (sometimes questionable) knowledge. In short: useless and not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usually, this doesn't happen when the question itself is technical and can be answered very objectively (as on [Stackoverflow][2]). But as soon as I'd like a subjective, critical but constructive answer, I get a bashing. And even more so, the bashers get voted up by other bashers such that the really constructive, interesting answers will move down in ranking among all the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a way to circumvent that? E.g. in phrasing my question very carefully (how?) Any ideas welcome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;NOTE: I've already asked the question here: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71977/how-to-phrase-my-subjective-question-to-avoid-unconstructive-answers, but **meta.programmers** is the better place for it than **meta.stackoverflow**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17872" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="650" RevisionGUID="d661bb32-41e8-4acc-9873-a62e041607ed" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="We're discussing this on [MSO][1]. It's important for our users to get in discussion there to avoid dumping their trash here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate/71734#71734" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17874" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="699" RevisionGUID="22171c37-269f-4fb9-b69c-3343dab0d8a3" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The consensus, if you could call it that, on removing the accept rate was mostly achieved before [Great Redisiplining](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice). People can and should be accepting answers: the acceptance criteria on all Stack Exchange sites is &quot;this answer helped me, personally, the most.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To clarify, the re-disiplining of Programmers.SE set guidelines that discourage people from asking questions they don't actually need the answers to (i.e. so-called &quot;pointless water cooler nonsense&quot;). With that, the [standard criteria for accepting answers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work) applies to all questions on Programmers.SE like it does on the rest of the Stack Exchange network." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17875" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="701" RevisionGUID="17d9a520-8bc6-457b-a96e-69ce7222fed9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="see&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67054/can-we-grandfather-in-rep-abilities-as-sites-leave-beta&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;TL;DR version -- reputation levels need to be the same across the network.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17876" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="739" RevisionGUID="343f244d-5bf3-4f1d-b7b0-0d2531127884" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="From the [Meta Stack Overflow FAQ on accepting answers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Which answer should I choose?&#xD;&#xA;- Don't hesitate to accept an answer that is well-written, suggests a good practice and works for you.&#xD;&#xA;- It is generally accepted that you should wait 24 to 48 hours to let a bunch of people have a chance to answer your question. A question with an accepted answer may deter people from looking at a question.&#xD;&#xA;- Make sure that besides working for you, the answer is really good practice. Sometimes after the answer gets accepted, another comes in, uncovering the fact that previous one was in fact a bad hack.&#xD;&#xA;- __The bottom line is to accept the answer that you found to be the most helpful to you, personally.__&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17877" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="757" RevisionGUID="c64da129-a319-47cd-8cc1-8f4d27203132" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The recalc removes any up- or downvotes you got for answers or questions that have been deleted. It also gives you back the one rep you lost for downvoting an answer or question that has then been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically it undoes any changes that a deleted post had on your reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the feature request in response to which this feature has been introduced: [Self-instigated rep recalc](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14200/self-instigated-rep-recalc)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17878" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="821" RevisionGUID="c23952c3-0a8a-46a8-95fd-2f2f98549333" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="It's important that we disallow SO to push trash to us. Engage on these questions on MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Programmers is about to go live, which questions should we migrate?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Multiple duplicated question on SO are being migrated to PSE partially][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Have Code Golf questions been implicitly disallowed on StackOverflow, now that migration to PSE is possible?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Migration questions from SO to PSE just to stay temporarily][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl][5] specially this answer: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl/73431#73431&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Who should be granted to Migration Path feature?][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73375/multiple-duplicated-question-on-so-are-being-migrated-to-pse-partially&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73332/have-code-golf-questions-been-implicitly-disallowed-on-stackoverflow-now-that-mi&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73373/migration-questions-from-so-to-pse-just-to-stay-temporarily&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73493/who-should-be-granted-to-migration-path-feature" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17879" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="831" RevisionGUID="ef5d22ff-e02a-4e56-ac3d-9e9864788aba" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="See more about this discussion on Mark Trapp's [comment][1] and [question][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I'm directly asking for permission to drop it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73332/have-code-golf-questions-been-implicitly-disallowed-on-stackoverflow-now-that-mi/73372#73372&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67780/why-is-code-golf-now-the-domain-of-programmers-se" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17880" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="833" RevisionGUID="4d73798e-6450-4164-ad14-7dd983b61ff0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Most of my response is in [the question I posed on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67780/why-is-code-golf-now-the-domain-of-programmers-se), but it's so completely out of place here. Our de-facto elevator pitch involves saying Programmers.SE is for all those things *about* programming that aren't *actually* programming, and Code Golf *is* programming (albeit *fun* programming)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17881" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="869" RevisionGUID="63532045-2ab0-4265-ae48-29a920d06381" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="In general, I have been deleting the questions that I think have no lasting value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only ones I want migrated are the ones that are *useful*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See:  &#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73226/set-up-an-archive-for-legendary-deleted-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17882" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="870" RevisionGUID="c8ba408f-8b10-4037-95e5-5584abc92a08" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="In general, I have been deleting the questions that I think have no lasting value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only ones I want migrated are the ones that are *useful*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See:  &#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73226/set-up-an-archive-for-legendary-deleted-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17883" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="872" RevisionGUID="111bdba4-a278-44c4-9049-4ae7782f258f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Following up to [Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the main opposition position, which based on votes is pretty popular, is essentially &quot;you're not getting rid of the crap, so we're going to keep flushing,&quot; it doesn't look like we're going to stop getting terribad Stack Overflow questions for some time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was a feature suggestion that moderators should be able to &quot;accept&quot; incoming migrations to police what's sent to their Stack Exchange site: failing that feature being implemented, do moderators want all potentially terrible migrated questions to be flagged so they can make a call about closing them without waiting for 5 close votes that may or may not come? I've been flagging the obvious career advice and duplicate questions, but there are some potentially bad questions beyond that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17884" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="876" RevisionGUID="4487bb74-35be-4163-8555-73652037cb36" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I think it's [supposed to work like that](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/17552/why-do-migrated-questions-lack-redirection-via-http-response-status-code-301-mov), although it certainly threw me for a loop when I clicked it. I didn't realize I was on SO right away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Appending `?noredirect=1` to the P.SE URL lets you view [the original question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32590/unicode-to-ascii-conversion-closed?noredirect=1)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17885" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="877" RevisionGUID="d3dcd15d-11a0-4335-9a0f-48b8735ecc80" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="It seems to me there is a difference of opinion about how to handle questions that would be considered overly broad, and that is leading to inconsistent handling of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For your consideration, here are two questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first that came along is [&quot;What are good resources for design patterns?&quot;][1], which is a two-liner, general, question asking for resources about design patterns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second, and most recent, is [&quot;design pattern for unit testing&quot;][2], which was, originally, a two-liner, general, question asking for resources about design patterns as they relate to unit testing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was brought up in the comments that the second question was too broad, and there was a close vote to that. But arguably the second question had more context because it was asking about design patterns as they pertain to unit testing and not just design patterns in general. I have no idea if there were any close votes on the first question as I don't have those privileges (yet). [This question on Meta was raised][3] which touches upon the topic of overly broad questions, but doesn't really discuss them in real detail and seems more focused on duplicate questions (which is quickly turning into an uncontrollable problem in the sites I frequent). Strictly speaking, neither of these question violate the guidelines of subjective questions which appears to be the gold standard for assessing the quality of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I won't debate the point that either question is broad, but both questions have brought some useful answers (particularly the first). The broad questions of these types seem to be logical ones to ask, I'm sure everyone here has asked them at one point or another, but there are few places to ask them outside of the SE family of websites. Alternatives have yet to be presented by the objector(s) of the second question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the P.SE community does decide to close questions that are broad, that it should at least wait to see the quality of the answers before submitting the close vote. Or, better still, simply mark it as `community wiki` and let it fly. These are really not that much different than the &quot;favorite tool/application/technique&quot; questions that exist now and will always be asked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The subjective guidelines are great—and people need to remember they are just guidelines and not strict rules—and judging something as being &quot;overly broad&quot; is just as subjective a topic. I think the community would benefit from a clear definition of &quot;overly broad&quot; and a consistent implementation that would result.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE:** What I am proposing is that the definition of &quot;broad&quot;, its existence as a reason to close, and the policy of closing for broad context should be revisited. While this isn't nearly as important as past issues, it is one that I think hasn't been hashed out enough and some questions (and possibly potential contributors) are suffering as a result. What one may consider a simple, basic question, another may consider a bad one. Is voting to close it really the best way to handle it, particularly if the topic would yield solid, basic answers? It's not as though the SE sites, SO and P.SE in particular, make any clearly stated assumptions and qualifications of the skill level of people who post questions. Until that happens, these types of questions are going to come up again and again, and I think there ought to be a better way of managing them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2240/what-are-good-resources-for-design-patterns&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32571/design-pattern-for-unit-testing&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17887" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="917" RevisionGUID="47d4ff16-fcdd-4569-8e1e-686fd1c7ab5c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This is the right place to post this, as it deals with a migration from Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that it shouldn't have been migrated to CSTheory.SE, and the commenter that suggested that was obviously mistaken. But I don't think it should be migrated to Math.SE: it's a question that's better suited for Stack Overflow, which handles issues related to programming, including regular expressions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But at this point, that question has no chance to survive: if it keeps getting migrated, [it's a sign of a deeper problem](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63564/weird-behavior-when-migrating-a-migrated-question/63576#63576), which is shown by the significant confusion as to where it belongs." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17888" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="932" RevisionGUID="bf782460-fc9b-40f4-b2e6-719f746b7687" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The requirement is that you flag a post as [spam or offensive](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6120/citizen-patrol-badge-not-awarded): flagging something for moderator attention doesn't count. It also takes a little bit of time for the system to recognize it: from my experience, it takes an hour or two." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17889" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="934" RevisionGUID="510ee793-c2e0-4401-98fa-e6e3bdc55f89" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The [Recent feature changes to Stack Exchange](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/59445/recent-feature-changes-to-stack-exchange) question on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) catalogs all announced and undocumented changes to the system." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17890" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="942" RevisionGUID="4f8117e6-3aab-480d-81df-bfeb69f59bc2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="As detailed in the answer to [this question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/74582/59303) on Meta Stack Overflow, the threshold can be set on a site by site basis and is now 15 for Programmers (along with Super User, where the threshold was [originally reduced in an effort to stem the tide of pile-on answers][1]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't affect existing questions, but if a new answer is posted to those they will convert.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.superuser.com/questions/274/reduce-community-wiki-force-threshold-to-15-answers-on-superuser" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17891" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="969" RevisionGUID="89e6c6ff-1e64-43e9-99f9-98b605d6ee52" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The mechanics of the community wiki flag are as blind as Lady Justice: if a post is marked community wiki, reputation stops accruing regardless of what the circumstances behind that which is marked as such. Simply:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    function addRep(value) {&#xD;&#xA;      if (!this-&gt;communityWiki) {&#xD;&#xA;        this-&gt;user-&gt;addRep(value);&#xD;&#xA;      }&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for why there's no distinction, we need to go back to [what the community wiki flag is for](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community wiki flag is used when it's determined (either by the original author of the post or automatically) that the post could benefit from the community taking ownership of it. Since the community as a whole takes ownership of the post, there's no single person to award the reputation to and it is not awarded at all. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it another way, once the community wiki flag is set, you are no longer considered to be the owner of the post, so that's why you stopped getting reputation for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [this case](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36612/what-kind-of-innovative-non-cash-financial-benefits-do-i-offer-to-my-developers-t), it looks like you ran into an automatic triggering of the flag that occurred when the answer got 15 answers. You can think of the reason why posts automatically convert to community wiki as a reaction to problem with scope: the vast majority of constructive, pointed questions only have a few answers. When a question starts to get a ton of answers, two things have likely occurred:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. People are providing new answers, intentionally or unintentionally, to slightly tweak existing answers&#xD;&#xA;2. The original question is very broad and its scope not very well defined, allowing for a plethora of ways to answer it that are likely irrelevant to the original intent&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In both cases, community ownership winds up being a good thing as it allows others to address the quality of both the question and answers: community wiki relaxes the rep requirement to edit, so answers can be made more useful and distinct and the question can be made more specific by people who would otherwise just post a new answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17893" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="991" RevisionGUID="96e95bbf-bfae-4f75-a00e-d6faeffa2aa2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There's a new post on the Stack Overflow blog entitled [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), which serves to expand upon the [six subjective guidelines](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) we all know and love. I encourage you to read it and [the original answer from Aarobot](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179) that sparked the post itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main point that's now been added to [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) is the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: &amp;ldquo;What&amp;rsquo;s your favorite \_\_\_\_\_?&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: &amp;ldquo;I use \_\_\_\_\_ for \_\_\_\_\_, what do you use?&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: &amp;ldquo;I&amp;rsquo;m curious if other people feel like I do.&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: &amp;ldquo;What if \_\_\_\_\_ happened?&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - it is a rant disguised as a question: &amp;ldquo;\_\_\_\_\_ sucks, am I right?&amp;rdquo;&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about \_\_\_\_\_”, then you should not be asking here. If your motivation is “I would like others to explain \_\_\_\_\_ to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are your thoughts on the new guidelines? Is there a problem with these types of questions that needs addressing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to encourage questions that don't fall into the trap of being poll questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17894" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="994" RevisionGUID="ab3ab4f7-bf9c-48c5-8473-e854ef2d0831" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="&gt; What are your thoughts on the new guidelines? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am exceedingly happy about them! One of the most persistent abuses of SO, right from the very start, has been Getting To Know You questions (often incorrectly referred to as polls&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;) - a bored user asking others to share their favorite X, tell a story about X, commiserate in X, etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's forum-fodder, a staple of newsgroups and message boards, and perfectly appropriate for those venues, but utterly useless on SO/SE (where questions are expected to live on for years). They're fun, and often they'll collect a small number of very interesting answers... This in turn makes them very hard to kill: &quot;How dare you delete Eric's brilliant story about how he once built a web browser out of corn?!! You heartless bastard!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the broader category of [&quot;list questions&quot;][1] (poll, GTKY, product recommendation, brainstorming, tips, etc.), there are perhaps a handful that are generally useful... And invariably, they're asked by users who actually *care deeply* about getting some useful answers. The rest, asked by the bored/lazy/rep-hungry, quickly devolve into fluff, as the asker has no vested interest in refining his question to limit such responses. And so every compromise we've tried - meta-tagging, mandatory-CW, [fluff-ghetto][2] - has been resisted and ultimately has failed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, the only way to combat this rot is by judging the intent of the asker. And you gauge their intent by the words they use: while &quot;What's your favorite editor?&quot; and &quot;What's a good editor for Windows that supports &gt;5GB files and has built-in macros?&quot; are superficially close, the projected intent is utterly different. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's good to know that we can now refer to the FAQ when editing or closing these beasts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;sub&gt;A poll is useless unless someone is compiling the responses into a finite set of categories. This almost never happens. The only *painless* way to run an effective poll on SE is to post a finite set of answers, CW everything, and then close the question and let people vote and comment - this hasn't been possible without moderator intervention for over two years.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11760/whats-the-opinion-on-list-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17895" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1043" RevisionGUID="56662a82-a88b-42c7-b00b-635f30ae949b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="[Yi Jiang](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/150097/yi-jiang) has put together a nice site that use the Stack Overflow API to display information on the moderator candidates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Click here to see all the information](http://se.awio.com/election.html).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The information presented is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What the candidate wrote when nominating themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Answers/Questions on the main site and it's meta&#xD;&#xA;* Up-vote/down-vote ratio&#xD;&#xA;* Average reputation earned per post&#xD;&#xA;* Average reputation earned per day.&#xD;&#xA;* Participation in other Stack Exchange sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It displays what Yi Jiang considers to be noteworthy badges and whether the nominee has the badge and a summary of their recent activity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The information is presented as is with no commentary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It came about from this question on MSO [Moderator nomination possibly useful statistics](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/75454/59303)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17896" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1066" RevisionGUID="70d6146e-0b86-447b-b6e4-36c926449a06" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="My moderation style would be to give users time to edit their question before closing, never close based on the quality of the answers and consider the popularity of the question when deciding whether or not it truly requires moderator attention. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some examples of helping a user on Meta to edit a question to get it reopened.  This is how I would guide users to making changes to their questions rather than welcoming them with a closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/923/this-question-should-not-have-been-closed/938#938&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16618/what-will-be-considered-harmful-next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(or not)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/510/is-my-question-that-bad-or-am-i-totally-out-of-it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, in the interest of full disclosure, here's something that got me banned from programmers.SE for a day.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66438/p-se-user-is-creating-bad-tags-for-personal-harassment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I add this to explain that I believe in retagging, the use meta-tags within the paradigm, and until the feature is deprecated using tags to filter out junk you don't want to see.  Also, I am committed to I asking questions on meta before I go it alone and when I make a mistake, apologize. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17897" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1093" RevisionGUID="6880de37-2597-44b5-a27d-bd629a3bc1c7" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The technical aspect of the ban (blacklisting lmgtfy.com links in posts) might not be active, but it's my understanding the practice effectively is banned for all the reasons pointed out in the original [Ban lmgtfy (let me google that for you) links](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/15650/ban-lmgtfy-let-me-google-that-for-you-links) question on Meta Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There isn't a context in which they are helpful or constructive on a site where one of the main sections in the FAQ is [Be Nice](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#benice). If you see it being used, I suggest flagging it for moderator review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17898" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1118" RevisionGUID="abd169ee-08a2-47c8-b60b-1c970bd57d81" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Seems you didn't like my rather open-minded answer... :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's talk serious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) I'd be very much interested in writing good elaborate answers. I actually have done so on numerous occasions. You know what? **People don't read them.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can't tell you how many times I wrote single-line answers to get numerous votes and immediately after adding &quot;substance&quot; as you call it the voting ended up abruptly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I actually learned this tactic from seasoned high-rep users (40K+) on SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People just don't want to read the stuff. I can't do anything to change them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I see folks don't read my answers, I have no motivation of writing them really.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the very least I can amuse myself by seeing numbers tick (rep growing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) The other reason is that by the time you finished writing an elaborate answer there will be 10+ single-lined answers voted up to the heaven. **Nobody will notice yours.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who's to blame if the site is all about being the [Fastest Gun in the West][1]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose the blame is partially on the site creator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been COUNTLESS proposals on how to change the operational model to realign to the quality rather than to quantity and mass. They were all turned down. The creator is very stubborn and doesn't want to listen to input.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even I proposed an improvement - lock out answers display for the first N minutes to give everyone sufficient time to contribute *quality* answers - I got laughed at.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Just tried to locate that old question of mine - seems it was deleted. So much for user voice.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That other trick with limiting reputation growth to 200 per day only results in newcomers desperately trying to reach the elder by contributing an insane amount of answers, quality evidently suffers here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also see with all that stackexchange expansion that the creators do not concern themselves with the conceptual problems - it's now all about growth, expansion, consumption of markets, going public and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At that time I'm starting to hope somebody will start a different Q&amp;A site - with the right priorities and with the right attitude.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17899" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1154" RevisionGUID="8e8e2540-026b-4b74-b0aa-9af5c3f22c6b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This is [meta-tag:status-bydesign]: IE6 is not supported at all, and even IE7 is minimally supported. Check Meta Stack Overflow for [a list of browsers that are currently supported](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/56161/which-browsers-are-officially-supported/71208#71208). Things might work in IE6 on some sites, but working functionality is purely coincidental." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17900" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1210" RevisionGUID="8e56c97b-7887-4362-b798-3d83064300a6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Since you linked to one of the questions I closed, I'll add my 2 cents.  Yes there needs to be more communication between people on SO closing/migrating questions and mods/users on Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand how it happens.  A question is posted on SO that clearly doesn't belong there, someone votes to migrate it to Programmers thinking it's not about code so it should live here, not really know if it meets Programmers guidelines.  It actually happens a lot.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do know that in recent weeks that some of the mods on SO have started [asking][1] here on Meta whether a question should be migrated to Programmers or just closed on SO.  This goes a long way to help the situation.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What it doesn't fix is the situation where 5 SO users vote to migrate a question here.  They may or may not know whether it's a good question to migrate and they may or may not care (as long as it's gone from SO).  I don't know how that gets fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's some other discussions about the same topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/872&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1162" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17901" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1223" RevisionGUID="a2b09384-daa4-43f9-87ac-c9ad30905b18" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There was a rep recalculation performed on your account. It would've removed rep from questions and answers that were deleted or migrated to another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was a StackExchange-wide recalc done as part of the preparations for the new Users page. More details [here][1] on Meta.SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80862/sudden-sharp-drop-in-reputation-find-out-reason-recalc" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17902" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1224" RevisionGUID="8850a088-6795-4222-8197-f11e80af42f1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="See http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80862/sudden-sharp-drop-in-reputation-find-out-reason-recalc for the details.  This was StackExchange wide in preparation for some upcoming changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17903" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1237" RevisionGUID="044fb04e-c857-4964-abfe-a9b278958a09" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="If you look at [this answer][1] from the [bounty faq][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What happens if there's no answer after the bounty period?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What happens if I feel my question is still unanswered?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What is automatic awarding?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; At the end of the bounty period, if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the bounty starter has not manually&#xD;&#xA;&gt; awarded the bounty, eligible answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can be automatically awarded half the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; bounty amount. The criteria for an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer to be eligible for automatic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; awarding are as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The answer must be given after the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; bounty was started The answer must&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have a score of at least +2 If two or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more eligible answers have the same&#xD;&#xA;&gt; score, the oldest answer is awarded&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no answers meet these criteria, the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; bounty ends without it being awarded&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to any answer, and is not refunded to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the bounty starter.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; An accepted answer that does not meet&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the above criteria is still ignored by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the automatic-awarding system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like the bounty was automatically given to [this answer][3] by Alex. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This explains why it went to alex. It also explains why no badge for you. Automatic awards don't count because the benefactor badge goes for the &quot;First bounty you **manually** awarded on&#xD;&#xA; your own question&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16065/how-does-the-bounty-system-work/16067#16067&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/16065/148672&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40394/how-do-you-organize-your-projects/41938#41938" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17904" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1239" RevisionGUID="c1cafda3-8f2b-47b1-bf42-8bff6abeb7c9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Flag weight is a measure of how reliable your content flags are. When you flag a post or an answer for moderator attention, we get the option to dismiss the flag as valid or invalid. &quot;Valid&quot; increases your flag weight, &quot;invalid&quot; lowers it. Your flags will be given a lower priority (i.e. appear further down the list of mod flags) if you have a low flag weight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More details and the official FAQ entry [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17905" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1250" RevisionGUID="52b30ad8-6676-4bee-8398-554d1950132c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="[This was reported on Meta.SO][1] and fixed today. The fix should be released in the next day or so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/81985/flag-weight-deputy-badge-bug" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17906" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1262" RevisionGUID="bccc1678-152b-428a-b4b2-f3be3f66984a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="They removed it recently from the main banner. It's now on your main site profile page. There's 3 links: edit | add openid | log out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;meta.SO question - [Logout link now missing](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/80610/154388)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17907" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1286" RevisionGUID="db353770-dbd9-4f42-89e9-affc1b5f59e7" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/79435/what-is-stack-overflows-business-model/79448#79448" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17908" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1295" RevisionGUID="7c7f4a84-92f1-4aad-aa60-33182702ab93" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I'm going to include my [answer from Meta SO on this topic](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83825/great-question-got-deleted/83864#83864).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is not a real question.  It's not an on-topic question for at least three of the reasons listed in the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq).  It's opinionated, which means the original poster already has an answer.  He posted that answer in his question box:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It may not be physically demanding but it sure is mentally demanding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to keep this site productive, the line in the sand has to be drawn somewhere.  Otherwise, we'll get more gray area questions like `What do programmers eat?  I know they eat food at some point in their day`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, I agree with Jeff, the answers are essentially all the same AOL &quot;me too&quot; type answers that don't really tell me anything I didn't already know or couldn't figure out by Googling some forum somewhere, a forum, that I might add, is probably now a ghost town on the Internet because the professionals keeping the site alive all moved elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The blog articles that Robert, Jeff, and other StackExchange employees have written makes a great case for sites thriving because they're properly policed for content that doesn't meet the goals of the site.  Unfortunately, we're not all going to agree with every decision, but please keep in mind that those decisions are made with the community's best interests in mind.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a clearer, well written explanation of the dangers of allowing poor questions, please read [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17909" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1303" RevisionGUID="7f86bcbf-0332-43f7-87c2-4ba158ff334e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I made a feature request question so that we could get some indication on the badges as to when &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/72903/is-the-timing-of-badge-awards-documented&quot;&gt;each badge will be awarded&lt;/a&gt; on meta so.  Still hopeful.  It might be useful to also know if you knew if any of your badges have lapsed due to migration or deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some badges are awarded instantly, some at the end of the day (I guess after a batch run or sql job) and some (like tenacious) 7-10 days after you qualify for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that Good Answer falls into the 'will be awarded at the end of the day' bracket - so after this much time I guess its not going to come." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17910" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1308" RevisionGUID="90b45d37-d401-4717-9b86-0eb8f3a9f20c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="&lt;strike&gt;Regarding the first part of your question: this already exists. All new users have to pass through a page that explains the guidelines of the site. If a user hasn't figured it out after that, well... that's what community moderation is for.&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Overflow and sites during private beta, users get hit with a page that explains the guidelines for asking good questions. I thought it was there for all sites, but apparently it's not: I agree that something similar should be there that gets people to at least ostensibly agree to the site's guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding the second part of your question, there are two aspects to this: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Whether it's acceptable or encouraged to nag people about their accept rates&#xD;&#xA;2. Whether people should be worrying about accepting answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the first part, people nagging others about their accept rate is just crass: there are so many more important things to worry about than pestering people about one metric. It's noise, and there are a lot of people who flag those comments as noise/spam. The FAQ actually covers this: **[be nice](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#benice)**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the second part, whether people should be worrying about accepting answers: as user #8, I'm confident in saying accept rate is not irrelevant, even on Programmers.SE. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The misguided idea that there are no accepted answers, or that people shouldn't accept answers, or that it's acceptable to never accept answers, comes from a short period of Programmers.SE's history when it was unclear what types of questions were acceptable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, that was **quickly** nipped in the bud and Programmers.SE does not have any special dispensation that makes it qualitatively different than the literally dozens of other Stack Exchange sites that follow the same conventions and norms when it comes to question and answer model. The guidelines in the FAQ are the result of months of discussion both here and elsewhere in the Stack Exchange system: they comprise best practices that have been tested time and time again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In reality, while Programmers.SE is home to questions of a more subjective nature, [every question has an answer](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/). That is, a good question that deserves a home on the Stack Exchange network needs to be the result of an actual problem a person faces. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That problem is going to have a solution: therefore, unless the question got terrible answers, there's going to be an answer the question asker can accept. So the advice in the FAQ is correct: [people should be accepting answers that helped them, personally, the most](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work/5235#5235). It serves as an acknowledgement that the problem was solved and that another user was instrumental in solving that problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And that really is the value proposition to answering questions: people want to know that they actually helped someone. Otherwise, what's the point? Answering for the sake of filling out textareas?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17911" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1323" RevisionGUID="5161477f-4fc6-4376-bf21-fb4b95365bcb" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="[There's this thing][1] made for Stackoverflow which let's you track your reputation on Firefox (check [microsummaries][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some guy made an [enhanced version][3], it's worth checking it out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be great to have one for Programmers too. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If only I had *teh skillz*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12362/firefox-users-your-stack-overflow-reputation-microsummary&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Microsummaries#Introduction&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12362/firefox-users-your-stack-overflow-reputation-microsummary/12372#12372&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/FhFFD.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17912" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1330" RevisionGUID="00cc9549-f639-4f93-b0bd-47847ae4de00" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I used to delete my low (zero or below) scoring answers once someone else got the green check. My premise was that my answer was thought so poorly by the rest of the readership that not one other person felt it worthy of a single upvote. But I don't do that anymore. There is the &quot;[sportsmanship][1]&quot; badge that one can get by leaving one's low scores up and voting for competing answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another reason I've stopped doing it is that on beta sites, your commitment cannot be fulfilled if you have less than 10 answers + questions, so deleting low scoring answers is counterproductive. And a silly bug I've noticed on beta sites is that if you award bounties that take you below 100 karma, no matter how many badges you've acquired by the end of the private beta week, you forfeit your beta badge (which supposedly only requires 3 badges). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67397/list-of-all-badges-with-full-descriptions/68258#68258" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17913" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1345" RevisionGUID="2f2523a1-c65b-446a-8259-fe35519c3ba0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="You're gonna have some trouble, since a key part of maintaining &quot;the quality and maturity&quot; of the SE network is built around *not* allowing questions like that...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, you gotta start somewhere.  [Where can I find interesting programming discussions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13198/where-can-i-find-interesting-programming-discussions) has a few suggestions you might consider...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I was recently informed that Prog.SE user [AmmoQ][1] has carved out a little corner on [The Daily WTF Forums](http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/27.aspx) specifically for questions that cannot and should not be asked here on Programmer's. TDWTF is not affiliated with Stack Exchange, and has its own standards of quality and conduct, so be respectful of these if you decide to make use of this resource. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6617/ammoq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17914" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1349" RevisionGUID="110d5f3d-1a50-4edd-aba8-88323d212122" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Please see: [How does peer review for edits work?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76251/how-does-peer-review-for-edits-work/76284#76284)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - All users with the [edit privilege][1] may vote on suggested edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(voting includes rejecting as well as accepting)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[There is some discussion underway][2] about making that page a bit more visible...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84693/eeeek-i-sense-an-eeeek-question-about-missing-a-unanswered-tab" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17915" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1372" RevisionGUID="5908d49a-bb87-47d0-96a7-ac318e5e0c58" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="That's [The Herd Instinct][1]. I talk about this phenomenom in another (controversed) [meta post][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Voting for already highly voted answers feel &quot;safe&quot;. Therefore, consciously or unconsciously you do it. On rare occasion, you do the inverse, by rebellion ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kate mention the impact of ordering which is real and IMHO is an unfair advantage for those who answer the question first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've observed that phenomenum many time. It is unlikely that better answers that come later get more vote than the inferior (and first) one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why timezone also affect how much reputation you can get from your answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fICjq822SwQ&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77416/proposal-for-amendments-to-the-election-primary" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17916" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1381" RevisionGUID="f5f3c7b5-f8c1-43c7-bcc6-2251649e6c6e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This has been brought up [many times][1] on Meta.StackOverflow and rejected. The posts are now closed as duplicates tracing back to [this question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3230/so-badge-progress-report).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=progress%20badges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17917" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1384" RevisionGUID="fb7c0384-c18e-4b5a-9577-64cbdd3d1314" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Question upvotes used to award 10 points. That was changed last year. From [this blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/03/important-reputation-rule-changes/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question upvotes will now grant only +5 rep instead of +10.* There is no change to answer upvotes. This will apply retroactively to all &gt;users.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - While we value good questions (and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking a great question is absolutely&#xD;&#xA;&gt; an art), we want to explicitly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; encourage people to provide the best&#xD;&#xA;&gt; possible answers. Without people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interested in providing good answers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the questions are moot. We know that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers have more intrinsic value than&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions, and the reputation balance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should reflect that. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asker already enjoys a substantial&#xD;&#xA;&gt; benefit beyond reputation gain from&#xD;&#xA;&gt; upvotes on their question — namely,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they get great answers to their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question! Thus, the asker shouldn’t&#xD;&#xA;&gt; need as much reputation gain. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - There&#xD;&#xA;&gt; are a few users who ask hundreds,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; sometimes even thousands of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Over time, these users generate a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; fairly sizable reputation entirely&#xD;&#xA;&gt; through the tiny trickle of upvotes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gained by these questions. In a sense,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to discourage question asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a little bit, and make sure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; people who ask questions are doing it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for the right reasons and not to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generate reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also this [discussion post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/42769/should-the-weight-of-question-upvotes-be-reduced) on Meta.SO." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17918" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1408" RevisionGUID="b624eb0b-5f6f-4bb0-9306-210908657205" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="If you catch it early *enough*, I think the answer is easy, I've had success with it myself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Downvote** and **comment**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    I came upon an interesting question ([I made a mistake accepting this job](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63657/i-made-a-mistake-accepting-this-job)) which had about 5 answers already, and the top one, if I remember correctly, in 4 minutes had already gone up to **+5/-0** (sadly the [timeline](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/63657/timeline) doesn't break it down into small enough chunks to actually tell).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    I didn't want to be so harsh, but I felt like the community was going to run away with it if I didn't say something.  Soon the comment had several upvotes and the momentum on the answer had been killed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59606/is-type-safety-worth-the-trade-offs/59608#59608 this is another example where a comment stopped the streak of upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;* If you have time, **answer**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Since I had downvoted, the OP asked me what my problem with it was and what my thoughts were.  I hadn't planned on answering, but I figured if I was going to be a naysayer then I had a responsibility to back up what I'd said if asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some users actually like these short answers; One poster commented this, and said that others (I can only assume mine) were too long-winded.  In response to me, he subsequently posted an [answer here on meta](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers/1365#1365) stating his reasoning.  I disagree with this view, but if it is a conscious opinion, than it is that user's prerogative and I am OK with that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I *don't* think this is a problem of members of the community *wanting* short answers, or valuing them over good ones in a completely fair comparison.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is another manifestation of [Fastest Gun in the West Problem](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem), and it *may be worse here on Programmers*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A short answer by nature has less to disagree with.&#xD;&#xA;* The short answer is more likely to be read by people just scanning the answers.&#xD;&#xA;* The short answer is digested quickly by all readers.&#xD;&#xA;* If the short answer already has votes, it's easy to *assume* that someone else has read the long answers for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the answers to the FGITW problem, [Adam Davis starts out with](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem/9758#9758):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've asked questions that have received an immediate answer with enough information to get me past my block, but not served on a platter as you propose, with all the information I might need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This quick-answer nature is ***very*** specific to StackOverflow.  A *high* percentage of questions on SO are likely to have been a &quot;blocker&quot; for someone, while almost all on Programmers are the thoughtful, non-urgent kind of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [(non-)solution](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73/is-the-fastest-gun-in-the-west-solved#93) to the FGITW problem is to encourage people to vote better.  This solution is much better suited to SO than to Programmers, and I believe needs revisiting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**In conclusion** I disagree with the idea that something is wrong the the &quot;people&quot; here.  It is completely natural to see a highly-upvoted short answer, read it, agree; then scan the rest and see a long-winded answer and assume everyone else must not have agreed and skip it.  Then you add your vote to the stack on the short answer, and voila, the cycle continues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If we want to fix this, the software is going to have to change.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17919" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1457" RevisionGUID="50d5ee1f-f06f-4d8b-aebb-4e795ea94eaf" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="&gt; **This question has been superseded by the following questions:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [How can we improve our guidance about the purpose of comments?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/how-can-we-improve-our-guidance-about-the-purpose-of-comments)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2228/when-should-comments-be-deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subsequent to a question about technical solutions to cleaning up noise, Jeff Atwood posted [this answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83480/add-possibility-to-remove-comment-noise-fancy-edition/88010#88010):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;I appreciate the *intent*, but this is hellishly complex. I think my solution is even simpler than Shog9's&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Simply flag the first comment in the series for mod attention** with the text&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; irrelevant comment conversation; delete this conversation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A moderator could then blam, blam, blam, blam on each [x] to remove it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with this.  I've often wanted to even clean up my own conversations after resolving something that was productive, but not worth preserving.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, as we all know, with the introduction of [flag weight](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight) our flagging ability and priority gets diminished if no action is taken on our flags.  So, I think it's up to our community and moderators to decide (and therefore send the message to our moderators and 10k users) whether we believe this is an appropriate action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, **I'm all for it** - I'd love to see transient and incidental conversations completely disappear (not just be hidden) so that new visitors have a higher comment signal-to-noise ratio." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17920" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1458" RevisionGUID="2b8244a2-8bb9-49d8-96da-4faf2ec2e382" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Flag weights diminish if you constantly use the flag system *inappropriately*. If you are acting in good faith, I would not obsess too much over &quot;maintaining the integrity&quot; of your flag weight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I raised this issue in meta: [**Should moderators delete ... comments**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77373/should-moderators-delete-make-correction-done-comments)? The consensus seems to be (and the action taken) that comments which no longer serve a purpose (or never *had* a purpose to begin with) should be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's all about creating the highest quality content possible; the end result. If a comment-conversation was the *means* of getting that content &amp;mdash; and that means was served &amp;mdash; those now-superfluous discussions should be removed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a matter of community self-moderation. Moderators should remove irrelevant comments in the routine course of using the site. Users can help by flagging comments that that serve no further purpose." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17921" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1480" RevisionGUID="f6bc5680-2eb5-4452-95d5-fa1dce7d63d9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This has come up on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/53302/necromancer-badge-anomaly), so it's a known issue. Personally, I think they technically *did* meet the requirements of the badge, even if they didn't realize it: by virtue of the merge, they answered a question more than 60 days old and received a score of 5 or higher.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some badges are easy to game, this isn't the only way one can game the Necromancer badge, and merging certainly isn't the easiest way  to acquire it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. answer a question that's an exact duplicate of an earlier question, &#xD;&#xA;2. get people to only add answers that would be equally applicable to the earlier question, then &#xD;&#xA;3. convince a moderator to merge the new question with the old one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my advice would be to not worry about it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17922" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1491" RevisionGUID="370efb85-b1f2-40f8-913a-97b0b66e0619" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Two of your posts were for the same unregistered user, who was going around spamming a giant wall of text. I deleted the user, which deleted the posts and cleared the flags on those posts automatically. I assumed the flags were automatically dismissed as *valid*, but this appears this might not have been the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, one possible way to lose flag weight without realizing it (or having moderators know what happened) is to lose it on comment flags. When you flag a comment, moderators have four options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Delete the comment outright&#xD;&#xA;* Edit the comment to remove the offending bits&#xD;&#xA;* Dismiss the comment&#xD;&#xA;* Take no action and/or leave another comment addressing the first commenter (e.g. &quot;Be nice&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only the first two options awards an increase of 5 flag weight outright. The third will decrease your flag weight automatically, and the last will decrease your flag weight if four other people don't also flag the comment (a common occurrence, especially if a moderator steps in via comments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, unlike flagged posts, these *won't* show up on your flag weight audit. You'll just see the change in flag weight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussion on Meta Stack Overflow: [Can a flag that attracts moderator action be treated as invalid?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/87931/149432)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as Chris said, please don't put too much weight into flag...weight, especially on Programmers.SE. We don't get so many flags per day that having a low flag weight actually matters: we act on everything, even if that action is to take no action right away." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17923" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1492" RevisionGUID="7515af17-6a99-466a-b31c-8d2345814c92" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="These tags were actively being deleted as they add no value. I would of though this one wants deleting too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/60318/cant-keep-a-good-tag-down&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17924" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1499" RevisionGUID="a890a756-b7e4-433b-a714-6329db5a5f09" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This is a known issue, and has been [discussed on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/88217/149432). From Nick Craver's answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We're doing a best-guess match on locations across the network in an effort to get more consistent location formats for all the users, for example mine would be &quot;Winston-Salem, NC&quot;, &quot;City, ST&quot;, or &quot;Something, Ontario&quot; for Canada, &quot;London, United Kingdom&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To do this we needed to perform a backfill of locations across the network, but we can't do this instantaneously since we're hitting against Yahoo's API to do this (which would more than likely ban us for a massive hit like that).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's unfortunate but we will get a few false positives in here...we've reduced that as much as possible and checked many of the matches to ensure the correct location's being returned...but some will slip through, and we apologize for that. In the future this is done from your profile, rather than on the server-side, so whatever location you leave in that field after this we'll respect (but still recommend the match we found on the right optionally).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to why IN got translated to Indiana, IN is the US Postal Service abbreviation for the state of Indiana." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17925" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1518" RevisionGUID="eeb0beb0-ca80-4cfd-a4e9-6f234ffe3595" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There is this question [Can a flag that attracts moderator action be treated as invalid?][1]   &#xD;&#xA;which deals with the general idea behind the validity of any flag. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What i am asking is the specific flag option when we hit the flag button. The area in which we  address the moderator regarding the type of attention that is required. Can this flag be dismissed as invalid? Meaning who ever raised it Did not need to and it did not warrant a mods attention?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance this topic http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73667/mobile-games-paid-vs-ad-supported  I was unable to define the exact nature of the problem, as i was unable to find its duplicate here. IMHO it needed a mods attention. Hence i flagged it using the inform moderator flag stating that it could be migrated to gamedev.stackexchange.com - the idea in itself is valid. and it is valid topic.&#xD;&#xA; Mod attention was required and the topic was closed as duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leaving me miffed as to why this type flag was dismissed as invalid. specifically when this was not defined In absolutes as off topic or duplicate or does not belong here.&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/87931/can-a-flag-that-attracts-moderator-action-be-treated-as-invalid" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17926" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1529" RevisionGUID="809c3c8b-96e4-4941-bef0-c251f024cb77" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There is no official repository of Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange Approved™ wallpapers, but this question has been asked on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/39049/where-can-i-get-stack-overflow-wallpapers), where you might find some questionable candidates." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17927" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1531" RevisionGUID="42d669cf-b8c6-4c27-8e54-9897b1d97dc3" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There was an [issue or two](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/84799/149432) with case sensitivity in searches that was fixed. Searching for `f#` (lowercase) [now works](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=f%23)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17928" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1569" RevisionGUID="55074214-28de-4efd-8b5b-b136e3260f2b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There used to be a very popular question on Stack Overflow called [Surprise for a programmer on Birthday][1], but it got deleted. It had a bunch of suggestions for humorous code snippets and other jokes to put on a programmer's birthday cake, and I was planning to post pictures of the cake I just made with inspiration from some of those suggestions. It seems obvious to me that posting something on Stack Overflow is just going to get deleted, but would it be welcome on this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm hoping that it is close enough to a programming puzzle and far enough from mindless social fun that it would be tolerated here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just to be clear, I want to create a page with a question like, &quot;What are some fun ideas for decorating a programmer's birthday cake?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to see the content of the old page, it's available on [Stack Printer][2]. I also asked a slightly more general version of this question on [the main meta site][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2420689/surprise-for-a-programmer-on-birthday/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.stackprinter.com/export?question=2420689&amp;format=HTML&amp;service=stackoverflow&amp;printer=false&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/91219/131335" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17929" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1577" RevisionGUID="3e7ffd97-d206-42b3-adc1-a862ef67e3c3" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I've had a question migrated here but I don't think its a good fit for programmers. If I understand the nature of the questions you get.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76396/how-can-you-make-a-cluster-run-a-task-only-once&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should this have been migrated here? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit 1**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tried asking this on meta.stackoverflow.com but to no real avail. &#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/91349/is-this-question-a-good-match-for-programmers-stackexchange-com-site&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17930" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1594" RevisionGUID="54a80ab9-a289-4ee5-b26e-5ca03e9fdc11" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="It's a recent change done mostly on a trial basis to see how it performs. And it's all questions, not just those that have been closed. The idea is that we want to encourage voting on questions in general and using downvotes as a means of quality control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/90324/should-downvotes-on-questions-be-free) on Meta.SO." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17931" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1595" RevisionGUID="9a1cbc64-c072-416f-8c8e-ed95dc70ead8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Right now we have just 8 [meta-tag:faq] posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not *terrible*, but they are in various states, various formats, and one of them is even closed. &#xD;&#xA;I think it would be great to clean up these posts, decide on a format and figure out a process for bringing in new FAQ questions (and apply the tag now to the best ones we have here on Meta).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Motivations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Provide a great place for new users to start learning about the best ways to use this site.&#xD;&#xA;2. Provide links for experienced users to use in comments on questions or answers that need attention.&#xD;&#xA;3. Take a big step in [fixing this site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1400/2314)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have **three main proposals** and a couple questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 1. Make the FAQ tagged questions more FAQ-y&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my understanding, the [meta-tag:faq] tag should be used for **the most frequently asked and answered questions on Meta.** (That's what the tag wiki says, at least.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I propose we review which questions are tagged **faq**, and fix any that are out of place (such as those about the **site-faq** which I propose as the replacement tag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. I believe that these questions should be in **Question and Answer** form, so that users can see quickly that it's a question they actually have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now, these are the questions we have in the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is “what language should I learn” considered off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic) - Good question.  Should be community wiki, and I'm not sure the answers are quite there yet.&#xD;&#xA;* [Proposed FAQ change regarding career advice questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1165/2314) - Since it's about the *actual FAQ page* I'm not sure if the tag was correctly applied, but it's a good question (deserves it anyway).  It just needs to be edited to question-answer form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [I've updated our FAQ.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/ive-updated-our-faq) - Honestly I'm not sure I understand the inclusion of this one (why is it closed as too localize?)&#xD;&#xA;* [How does Programmers site work?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/516/how-does-programmers-site-work) - Perfect.  Shining example of what a **faq** question can be.  Oh - except for maybe fixing the grammar in the title :)&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) - Great topic, but needs Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu) - Good&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow) - Great question. Need to turn Mark's whole answer into an updated answer, and I wish we could accept it somehow.&#xD;&#xA;* [What should our FAQ contain?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain) - Kind of meta. I think it's more **site-faq** than **faq**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 2. A FAQ index&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The FAQ for Stack Exchange Sites at Meta.SO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7931/faq-for-stack-exchange-sites) is great.  Would be cool to see one like that here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 3. Figure out a process for bringing in new FAQ posts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, where do we propose a good posts, discuss its merits, or decide on the &quot;right&quot; answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My first nomination is &quot;Real Questions have Answers&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;[This is the post](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/991/real-questions-have-answers) announcing the addition of the section to the FAQ page, but I think it would be great to have a **&quot;Are polls ok?&quot;** question with a bit longer answer (community wiki) comprising the [best](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) [writing](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179) on this topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally this answer would also talk about how we should avoid &quot;you/your&quot; in questions, so we can use it in comments on [questions like this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76710/would-you-rather-work-in-a-small-company-or-a-large-one) &amp;mdash; the question that got me thinking about all of this in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this process, maybe we could use the [meta-tag:meta-faq] tag I created for this question (no others fit).&#xD;&#xA;### Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is the **Q&amp;A format** (a la Meta.SO) correct for this site?  I believe it is, but I'm open to opposing viewpoints.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. If we *do* go with Q&amp;A format for FAQ questions, how do we arrive at the *right* answer but still allow voting, discussion (comments), and editing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    The [Skeptics site is working on solution for this](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/413/on-adding-the-faq-tag-to-questions) that involves turning the original into a discussion/staging area and posting a new question with the best/correct answer.  However, I'm not a big fan of this.  I [posted an answer](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/519/discussion-about-requiring-references-for-all-claims/343#343) that became [the &quot;official&quot; one](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5/must-all-claims-be-referenced/522#522) but all that served to do was branch the conversation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. How do we push the right answer to the top on FAQ questions? Votes? Accept it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17932" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1596" RevisionGUID="72fd82c3-3539-4ef2-816b-1ea4b67ed2fb" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I'm just going to say it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community-wiki auto conversion sucks.  And it's not (really) the rep, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been racking my brain trying to figure out why I don't have a [career tag badge](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/60/career).  After all, I have [many answers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=user:2314+[career]), and even in the first 6 non-wiki or so, I've got more than 100 upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can accept that CW *upvotes* don't really count toward tag badges (even though it's a little weird), though I definitely think that **votes before the CW conversion *should* count**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, [here's the problem requirement](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63835/what-are-tag-badges-how-do-they-work/63836#63836): Must have **20 non-wiki answers**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it looks like I'm not too far away, but I'm still quite irked by this whole auto-conversion thing.  Why?  Because I don't tend to answer questions that are pile-on polls like http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38505/most-overhyped-software-engineering-technologies-and-concepts-of-the-last-20-year.  But every once in a while, I do get a [decent answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38746/software-design-build-it-fast-or-build-it-well/38752#38752) in on a question which becomes highly viewed, and how am I rewarded? **Community wiki!** (that one stopped at 16 answers... ugh.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not an &quot;we should change the whole system to benefit me&quot; post.  I understand that rep should not be dished out like mad to posts with a hockey-puck view trajectory.  But I really wish the auto-conversion would not slap the answerers on those posts which *barely ever* reach the 15 answer limit.  **After all, that's *most really good questions* given enough time.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17933" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1599" RevisionGUID="345cd89f-76a6-4425-9719-96799433aaa1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="**Edit:** Over the past couple of weeks, we've been accumulating several FAQ-worthy questions that provide a good amount of detail beyond what the one-page FAQ, so I've taken the extra couple of steps to consolidate and adjust the questions to be more FAQ-like. We now have a [FAQ Index](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1646/8) which links to several questions on meta and elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think there's a tremendous amount of value in spending a whole lot of time on this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Stack Overflow, they get a ton of questions about all the sites about every possible mechanic. They get dozens upon dozens of questions about the same things, and as such, require canonical posts to point to for the purposes of duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, the amount of questions they get about various aspects of the site require extensive detail that can't be fit into a single page FAQ. For example, there's a FAQ post that goes into the excruciating minutiae of [how comment replies work](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/43019/how-do-comment-replies-work).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, Meta Stack Overflow has what Jeff Atwood terms &quot;big city problems&quot;. The [meta-tag:faq] tag is the only reasonable way to handle the onslaught of support questions they get about the engine and global policies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't really have that problem. We get ~2-3 questions every couple of days, and for the most part, cover new issues that do need a discussion or a real answer (i.e. they can't be closed as a duplicate). Even the ones that cover the same ground as earlier questions, we (usually) can answer the question in a way that makes it specific to the person asking it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we've been using [meta-tag:faq] to tag questions to the few questions frequently arise organically: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* how is Programmers.SE different from Stack Overflow, &#xD;&#xA;* changes to the main FAQ sparked by frequent on-topic discussions, &#xD;&#xA;* the consequences of the Great Redisciplining,&#xD;&#xA;* and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main intent of these questions is to explain the background behind the policies Programmers.SE has, not to explain in detail the different mechanics behind those policies (like Meta Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for the stuff everyone needs to know—the stuff we want to refer to when closing questions or discussing policy—we use [our single-page FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq). If anything should get some love, it's that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, if you see something that really explains the problems with an issue that frequently comes up, by all means flag it. Beyond that, the normal Stack Exchange guidelines apply:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you have a better answer to a question, answer it.&#xD;&#xA;* If you like an answer, up-vote it.&#xD;&#xA;* If you don't like an answer, down-vote it and leave a comment explaining why." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17934" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1611" RevisionGUID="fe7c7747-d88b-43ee-ba8e-4d8a919402ea" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="When something like this happens, it's an indication that there's generally something wrong with the question. Good questions, at least on Programmers.SE, shouldn't be so easy to answer that they'll suffer the &quot;[fastest gun in the west](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/9731/149432)&quot; problem as we have [general guidelines in place](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) that insist questions invite long, detailed, and thoughtful answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this specific case, it so happens that the question in practice covers identical ground as an earlier question, so I've closed it as a duplicate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17935" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1612" RevisionGUID="5025d51f-8c36-4d84-a7ad-1d0de400aaf9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="When a question is closed as being *off-topic* or *not a real question*, the question is automatically down-voted. This was instituted network-wide after some discussion [a couple of months ago](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/84978/149432).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems like this behavior should extend to *not constructive*, which is arguably worse than an off-topic question, at least on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there any reasons why it wouldn't or shouldn't?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17936" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1617" RevisionGUID="00d4656f-44e0-4539-9847-f150d450a8f3" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There is a difference of intent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is *off-topic*, that is akin to asking about tea on `coffee.stackexchange.com`. It's a blatant, obvious violation of the parameters of the site. Now, you could argue that users simply don't read, and I will agree with you, but ignorance of the law is not an excuse. But in this case, *it is egregiously off topic*. That is, even the most casual browsing of the front page would immediately let you know what is and is not on topic without thinking too hard about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is *not constructive* the distinction is much subtler. It can take a bit of trial and error to &quot;get it&quot;. I also believe that many unconstructive questions do NOT indicate the same level of obliviousness bordering on irresponsible failure to just *look at* the questions on the homepage and ask something similar. I believe it is possible for some people to honestly try to read the faq and still get it slightly wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore I don't support this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(However I do think that egregious examples of unconstructive questions should regularly be downvoted and remember, downvotes on questions are now free... http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/90324/should-downvotes-on-questions-be-free )" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17937" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1679" RevisionGUID="1d143138-98df-4bf8-b35d-035fb3b7112f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="In my case, when it comes to popular questions, I typically act on flags from people with less than 3000 rep, so if I end up closing them, it's usually not a unilateral decision. Flags are unfortunately not transparent to the community at all. I've opened a [feature request](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/92623/155160) on Meta.SO for better visibility of &quot;duplicate of&quot; flags, but perhaps I'll write up another one for any &quot;it doesn't belong here&quot; flag since they're essentially close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime, voting to reopen, flagging for another moderator to review the closure, or posting to meta are the best ways to voice your disagreement with the closure of a particular question. As Pierre pointed out, sometimes that does result in the reopening of a question. (The reverse is also true - if you see a question that should clearly have been closed or you can make a case of it, post to meta and see if there's agreement.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With all that said, the 6 guidelines apply to Stack Exchange as a whole, not just to Programmers and I don't think we're in a position to change them at the site level. I don't know if you've read the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) blog post, but if you haven't it might shed more light on the &quot;why and how&quot; behind those guidelines and take some mystery out of them. We also use [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) to supplement the six guidelines for constructive questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17938" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1732" RevisionGUID="5bc2dd22-6df1-465c-987a-0c4098f16071" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I'm gonna have to ask around why it was removed. As I mentioned in my comment to Josh, there was a [problem with migrations](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/95153/same-questions-migrated-multiple-times) last night, but the other two questions that were affected seem to still be around. I'm not sure why this one was removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Looks like it was just deleted by accident during the clean-up after fixing the problem I linked to above. It's been restored now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17939" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1742" RevisionGUID="177b9212-7a73-45ff-836b-8268a1d2b432" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This [has been declined](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/32277/add-a-cancel-button-when-editing-an-answer/32283#32283) in the past on our sister meta-site, [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Adding a &quot;cancel&quot; button means there's some percent chance people will accidentally click on it and lose their changes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's another item on the page that [Makes You Think](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000377.html).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Compare with the back button, and I can't see any reason to make this change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would agree with that: the back button accomplishes the same thing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17940" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1765" RevisionGUID="b21294fd-8f67-46ac-ba62-76ca45cbc3f2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I think it'd be nice to have an &quot;invite to chat&quot; link in a user profile similar to the ones already in the chat profiles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, this has been brought up on [Meta.SO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/70385/add-invite-user-to-chat-function-on-main-site) before and while it wasn't outright [meta-tag:status-declined], it received a lukewarm response at best." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17941" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1807" RevisionGUID="bbd6d832-9c4f-4f88-a5e6-20ea7b90ab70" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="For reference, the automatic rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78048/auto-deleting-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year/92006#92006&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Just to formally document the exact policies we have in place to remove old abandoned / dead questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If the question is more than `30` days old, and ...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - has -1 or lower score&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - has no answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - is not locked&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If the question is more than `365` days old, and ...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - has a score of 0 *or* a score of 1 with a deleted owner&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - has no answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - is not locked&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - has a viewcount &lt;= the age of the question in days times 1.5&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - has 1 or 0 comments&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This check is run every week across all sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17942" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1838" RevisionGUID="7ae4fa9d-54dd-4ef6-a799-56fd84e1db9d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="As many, I had a question migrated from Stack Overflow to Programmers.SE. I actually liked the fact it was migrated, as I initially also had the gut feeling it was more appropriate on Programmers.SE than Stack Overflow, but I couldn't find anything backing up this feeling in either Programmers.SE or Stack Overflow FAQ. On the contrary, I could find indication that the question was a better fit for Stack Overflow on their FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  if your question generally covers matters that are unique to the programming profession then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I [asked][1] clarifications on why the question was migrated a user came up with a dead easy explanation that I am proposing to include in both Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE FAQs:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If it's a question about *programming* belongs on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA; - If it's a question about *programmers* belongs on Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/96845/why-was-my-question-migrated" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17943" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1853" RevisionGUID="e0dd490e-c810-4278-b832-f54cbfe90936" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This was marked [meta-tag:status-bydesign] on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/14614/149432). Anton Geraschenko probably phrased why this is best:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The point of keeping closed questions around (rather than deleting them) is that they might still be relevant. For example, if a question is closed as a duplicate, it might still have phrased the question in a completely different way, and that different phrasing might be very useful to someone. In particular, looking at a related closed question might be just the thing you need to realize that the question you're looking at solves your problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To his point, we regularly use the related column to find duplicates that may be of use to a question asker, even if they happen to be closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17944" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1890" RevisionGUID="c20de9d3-cea0-4438-aa10-104eb463fca6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89839/how-do-i-determine-the-runtime-of-a-double-recursive-function) is considered on-topic on Programmers.SE, and I don't understand why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is a question about computer science, not a question about programming or programmers. It's something a good programmer should know, but it's not programming (in the same way, using a computer is definitely required of a programmer, yet computer usage isn't programming). It's a subject where an expert would be a computer scientist, not a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, it's an objective question. The run time of a function is a perfectly well-defined notion (at least in a given context, and the choice of context isn't relevant here). There may be more than one way to compute it, it would still be the same thing being computed — this isn't about making a design choice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, going by the [site FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) as well as the overall tone and audience of the site, this question doesn't belong here. I [don't think there's currently a site in the Stack Exchange network that's really appropriate for it](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80023/where-on-se-to-discuss-computer-science)¹, but the closest, and [officially-sanctioned](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80023/where-on-se-to-discuss-computer-science/80058#80058), is [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why, then, is this question not migrated to Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;¹ &lt;sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Reminder: [CSTheory](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/) is about *research-level* computer science only.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17945" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1912" RevisionGUID="40dc2cf8-0057-4b0c-98df-8667eae2fe6e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The problems Software Quality Assurance has shouldn't have any effect on our site: [Joel Spolsky warned](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/) about the issues of trying to segment the programmer population into progressively smaller camps, and the fact that they can't field enough questions, to me, indicates Spolsky wasn't far off the mark in his original assessment. Many, although perhaps not all, questions related to the topic *are* on-topic here and shouldn't be migrated to a struggling beta site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to the other questions: as Anna points to, [they're not on-topic on Stack Overflow, and are on-topic here](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/). Stack Overflow is for very specific, here-is-my-code-and-I'm-not-sure-where-I-went-wrong-with-it questions; Programmers.SE is for conceptual I'm-planning-on-doing-this-but-need-help-with-the-big-picture questions. The topics you list as being better off on Stack Overflow are are our *best*, most useful questions: the questions that most resemble what Programmers.SE is about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, if *these* questions aren't on-topic here, what *is*? The [junky questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl) that [aren't good enough](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow) for Stack Overflow? We figured out early on in beta that wasn't going to work, and that's why Programmers.SE was launched as the conceptual yang to Stack Overflow's concrete yin." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17946" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1917" RevisionGUID="765dc248-7eb1-468a-b62d-7c8bff347312" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I think what you really mean when you say that those questions are valuable is that the **answers** are valuable, or have the potential to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bad questions can receive great answers; hell, there's even a [badge for it][1].  The yardstick of a great question is the *ratio* of great answers.  Note that I say yardstick and not criteria; it's an heuristic, something that *often* provides great insight but isn't infallible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A truly amazing question helps the craft *not only* by mentioning a popular or thought-provoking topic that other developers can relate to, but also by challenging and persuading readers to *make their answers count*, to *think* before posting and really make sure that the message matters and will have a real impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some people are gifted teachers, or just very meticulous in their reading and writing; they have an uncanny ability to distill the pure essence out of impure questions and reflect it back in a genuinely enlightening and often entertaining answer.  However, as Shog points out in a comment, that talent is at least partially wasted because the original question remains in its raw, unedited, unclear, unfocused form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've noticed that many people have a lot of sincere difficulty maintaining separate mental scorecards for questions vs. answers.  This even permeated the Stack Exchange dev team and we ended up with [answers protecting questions from community deletion][2].  What's interesting is that most people have no trouble identifying the reverse situation - it's somewhat common to see highly-upvoted questions with only low-voted answers - but most of the time, question scores seem to get lifted up by answer scores, and even if they don't, the questions still get labeled as &quot;valuable&quot; in meta discussions such as this one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has the potential to over-credit the question authors.  Certainly, if a question has but one answer and that answer blows your mind, then probably the question itself was at least a little bit special.  But if a question has 1 or 2 great answers amidst a sea of 50-100 crappy ones, then that doesn't really tell you anything at all about the quality of the question, other than the fact that it happened to be posted in the right place at the right time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The former indicates a question that is difficult to answer, or has an authoritative answer (or maybe a couple of them).  The latter indicates a question that *anybody* can answer which happened to catch the fleeting attention of a few of the more prolific contributors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These answers are worth keeping, in both cases - but not at the expense of polluting the site tenfold with frivolity.  The lower-quality questions have to be edited and, in many cases, have their answers cleaned up by moderators, before they become valuable *questions* worthy of continued attention.  Otherwise, those great answers might as well just be archived as blog posts somewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that the rules need to be simplified, and I think that they already are quite flexible.  All of the history and context and discussion around question-asking here - the Six Guidelines, Real Questions Have Answers, the concentric circles now in the FAQ - they all boil down to the same essential concept, which is: **Is this *important* to our community?** That means more than just tickling our collective fancy - it implies that there is some *gravity* to the situation, a real problem that needs solving.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, to me, the First Principle of asking questions, here or anywhere else.  All of the current guidelines around it are just the mathematical formulas, intended to save the less-thoughtful or time-starved students from having to work it all out themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the core, it really is simple; simple things get complicated because everybody tries to interpret them in the way that best serves their own interests. That's why our real-life codes of laws and regulations are so mind-numbingly detailed and specific; we're trying to minimize, if not eliminate, any room for (mis)interpretation.  At least the FAQ isn't a bunch of dense legalese; it's just [six guidelines][3] and [five counterexamples][4].  If that's really too hard to understand, then all hope is lost.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/50/reversal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/50523/should-delete-votes-be-limited-like-close-votes/51071#51071&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17948" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1961" RevisionGUID="04ced1dc-1017-4e36-b8ff-0dfbb7ad9727" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This has been done to death on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The consensus is that while it would nice if people did, there's not a lot we can do to enforce this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17949" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1976" RevisionGUID="eb3e1bdd-ad07-4f9b-8c15-705db56295e1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="It depends on what you think Programmers.SE is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's a site for [expert programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions), then answers had better be backed up by references. Even for the kind of subjective questions that make up the meat of the site, some kind of justification should be provided — real experts don't just say “yes” or “no”, they can explain why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If Programmers.SE is [Stack Overflow's toilet bowl](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl), then answers aren't for reading, you don't know where they've been (or rather you do!), so who cares.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17950" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1983" RevisionGUID="04b0838b-2024-4726-b49f-ae9bf3ef76f7" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This has come up a few times on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1975/ability-to-sort-reorder-interesting-ignored-tags-in-sidebar  &#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/23488/sort-interested-ignored-tags-alphabetically&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and this request to &quot;lock&quot; the tags so you can't accidentally delete one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/29350/option-to-lock-interesting-tags-section-so-x-isnt-hit-accidentally-on-a-tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of them are marked [status-declined] so the team will be open to implementing them if they think there's enough demand. Head over to MSO and up-vote these questions and make it clear you support them in other ways. I understand feature requests are looked at in order of votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17952" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1991" RevisionGUID="d1fe0a66-53a7-4367-8a46-1ac19ef2ffdd" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="No, profanity is not allowed in questions or answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22232/are-expletives-allowed-on-se-sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to the professionalism issue, there's also the matter of being blocked by corporate proxies based on inappropriate language." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17953" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1994" RevisionGUID="fd5c6a92-c3b3-4983-8bda-f61be1b6a13d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95920/what-is-each-time-through-a-loop-called) on terminology was asked earlier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should the &quot;General Reference&quot; close reason as outlined [in this blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/are-some-questions-too-simple/) and [this Meta Stack Overflow answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86043/introduce-a-general-reference-close-reason/88521#88521) be enabled here on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there any other questions that would fit this bill, or was this just a one-off that we can live with?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does the existing &quot;Not constructive&quot; close reason cover this case?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17954" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1997" RevisionGUID="4c6c5098-3851-4a54-974a-4e7229fa5503" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This has been requested many times on Meta Stack Overflow and always declined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is [the canonical question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3615/should-downvoting-be-allowed-on-comments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your problem - perhaps you need to consider what you type in your comment reply to try to avoid starting a flame war.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17955" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2000" RevisionGUID="6d4f04e6-b1fb-4486-b275-b51543a47c97" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This question got me thinking about a deeper issue on Stack Exchange - but first, let me answer the specific questions here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should the &quot;General Reference&quot; close reason as outlined [in this blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/are-some-questions-too-simple/) and [this Meta Stack Overflow answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86043/introduce-a-general-reference-close-reason/88521#88521) be enabled here on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**No**, because those should already be covered by the [Official FAQ][1] and the site's &quot;elevator pitch&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for **expert programmers** who are interested in conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Emphasis mine.  General reference questions are, by definition, not *expert* questions.  SciFi.SE and English.SE don't have that criteria, so it's more of an issue for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does the existing &quot;Not constructive&quot; close reason cover this case?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**No**, I don't think so - it doesn't fit any of the qualifying definitions of Not Constructive. It's sort of practical, it's answerable, it might educate some beginners in the community. It's not really open-ended, and definitely doesn't have an infinite list of answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So what should we do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless we get a &quot;too easy&quot; close reason, I think we should close these as **off topic**.  The word &quot;expert&quot; is right there in the site's tagline; **if it's not relevant to an *experienced, practicing* programmer, then it's not in our scope.**  I'm sorry if it sounds callous, but we're here to help each other, not educate every single newbie on how to program.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Check this out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Quality Venn][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pretty sure that the purple area between &quot;Advanced&quot; and &quot;Disciplined&quot; is where we are *supposed* to be.  We focus entirely on the subjective (objective questions go on Stack Overflow), so we have to be on the right side; and since we're nowhere near as disciplined as Skeptics, we have to make up for it by discussing subjects that are more advanced.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we start allowing questions that are subjective *and* beginner-level, then we end up with [bike shed][3] questions, which almost invariably produce crap answers *and* drag down the rest of the site with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From now on, I'm going to start closing these &quot;Learn PHP in 21 days&quot; questions as *off topic*. These guys can go read a tutorial or take a class or something; the whole point of this site is to discuss the topics we *don't* learn in school and often don't learn on the job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/yzan7.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_Law_of_Triviality" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17956" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2024" RevisionGUID="35772449-d7bb-4f0c-a47d-bce87e29102a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The community wiki flag is set automatically once a question reaches 15 answers: this is to encourage collaboration on existing answers, as after 15 or so of them, it's highly likely answers are going to overlap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, this automatic action is marked with a confusing message: the person who had the privilege of posting the answer that triggered the automatic conversion to community wiki is the one who gets the attribution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our sister meta site, [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com), has more background on the [mechanics of community wiki](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts), but you can rest assured that nobody has the ability to &quot;troll&quot; people with community wiki flags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions can only be converted to community wiki by diamond moderators or through automatic conversion&#xD;&#xA;* Answers can only be converted to community wiki by the post owner, diamond moderators, or through automatic conversion" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17957" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2027" RevisionGUID="7f493442-85fe-44ce-87ab-a3905577f7f9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="[Probably not](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/886/a-friends-list-on-stack-overflow-would-be-nice).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This idea has been brought in up various ways on Meta Stack Overflow and it has always been rejected. The users aren't the focus of Stack Exchange. Content and knowledge sharing are. Being able to &quot;favourite&quot; users goes against that philosophy of deemphasizing the person in favour of the content they produce.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This goes both ways -- someone's reputation or fame doesn't exempt them from having to adhere to the quality and behaviour standards set on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, &quot;who&quot; doesn't matter. &quot;What&quot; does." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17958" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2044" RevisionGUID="b281adee-269d-4a91-8578-9143f3a8bc6a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Based on [network-wide guidance](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/77373/149432) and [a discussion here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1457/8), we've been actively deleting comment chains that have become obsolete, chatty, or pointless. This has been met with some resistance, in part because of the differing expectations of what comments are for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have the following entry in our FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are useful for getting clarifications, but extended discussions detract from the question and its answers. If you'd like to discuss anything related to programming with other expert programmers, please use our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But perhaps we can make it better. In [a discussion on this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97207/what-does-c-do-better-than-d/97211#97211), it was suggested we highlight the alternatives for disagreeing with an answer where the answerer chooses not to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to address this? Are there other things we should address in our FAQ's guidance about comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17959" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2046" RevisionGUID="cd417ed9-105d-48b4-8948-78c71b789e26" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I think addressing the recourse people have when an answer doesn't get improved the way they like is a good idea. To that end, perhaps we can revise it to say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are useful for getting clarifications, but extended discussions detract from the question and its answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you'd like to discuss anything related to programming with other expert programmers, please use our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * This site is &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#editing&quot;&gt;collaborative&lt;/a&gt;: if a question or answer can be improved without changing the author's intent, please edit it or suggest an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you like a post, show your appreciation by voting it up.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you disagree with an answer or a question remains unclear, feel free to down-vote it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you have a better answer to a question, please leave your own answer instead of writing a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yoda over on Gardening.SE [provided a great guide](http://meta.gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/201/when-should-i-post-an-answer-and-when-should-i-post-a-comment/202#202) on when to use comments, and created this awesome chart:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![How to use comments: a flow chart][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue of [how to improve the purpose of comments in the FAQ](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/104981/is-the-official-comment-policy-obsolete-and-should-we-change-it) is being discussed on Meta Stack Overflow, as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/JS6Z8.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17960" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2075" RevisionGUID="5638f07e-1a8c-4e79-846e-ae7a4207dd15" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="&gt; Is it to discourage people from being obnoxious?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Pretty much. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been discussed several times over on MetaSO - [this is a good example](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/45273/allow-more-than-one-name-notification-per-comment). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's worth contrasting the design of comment @-notifications with those of [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/), where you *can* notify multiple users in a single message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Comments always notify the post-author, regardless of @... Chat messages appear to anyone in the room.&#xD;&#xA;- Comments can @-notify anyone who has ever commented / edited the post... Chat messages can notify anyone who has been in the room *recently*.&#xD;&#xA;- Comment notifications persist in your global SE inbox... Chat notifications produce a small indicator *within chat*, with an entry in the SE inbox only if you don't respond.&#xD;&#xA;- You can only leave one comment every 15 seconds... You can post multiple chat messages within that timespan.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, chat messages will only notify people who are probably expecting them, having recently joined a chat room for the purpose of chatting. Comments might notify people who've long ago forgotten about the topic. Making it easier to mass-notify multiple users via comments has a much larger &quot;harassment&quot; potential.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17961" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2076" RevisionGUID="553e91b9-7934-432f-8cbc-0f5eff98eaaf" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Why not do [what they do on SO][1]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; More info: http://stackoverflow.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit from Mark Trapp&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators now have the [ability to annotate locked posts](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/106137/better-handling-of-locked-questions-and-answers) with messages that specify why the question was locked, including the historical significance reason seen on Stack Overflow. In lieu of any other consensus, highly upvoted closed questions will be locked with this message.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/192793/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-t-shirt" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17962" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2078" RevisionGUID="61bd52b6-d4d6-485c-bc47-61206da1f15b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I asked for this [on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2238/would-it-be-useful-so-show-peoples-hit-rate-i-e-percentage-of-answers-accep) way back in June 2009.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing to come out of that appeared to be the accept rate of questions - not on answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree it would be nice statistic to have. Not sure about the badges though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17963" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2080" RevisionGUID="9ec485c2-b407-4efd-9d7c-211807bec276" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Any edit to a post bumps it. It doesn't matter whether this is from the normal &quot;edit&quot; link or the quick tag edit option available to 10K+ users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only exception to this are the [CHAOS team](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/100137/what-is-the-meaning-of-chaos-is-it-related-to-the-psi-character) (those with a Ψ after their name) who have been given special &quot;powers&quot; to edit a title (and only a title) without bumping the post." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17964" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2095" RevisionGUID="43905edd-1800-4564-b7e8-44e77db988d4" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I just stumbled over this edit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/98434/revisions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I'm confident the edit was done with good intents, it feels a bit like an abuse of the site's mechanics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is editing questions only to bump them to the top of the 'active questions' list accepted practice?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not sure how meta.programmers.SE relates to meta.stackoverflow, but there's a quite [similiar question regarding SO questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/53012/what-is-the-best-way-to-bump-re-ask-an-old-question)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17965" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2122" RevisionGUID="fe6cbf35-1987-4f1e-b28f-c684a85fa541" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There was a previous bounty that ended less than 24 hours ago (as of this writing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a [grace period of 24 hours](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68050/a-grace-period-of-one-day-to-award-the-bounty-after-expiration-without-remaining/74037#74037) at the end of the bounty to give the bounty setter time to award the bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As there can only be one bounty on a question at any one time I can only assume that this means that you can't start your own until the full 24 hours have passed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This section of the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#bounty) explains how bounties work, but doesn't include the 24 hour grace period." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17967" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2128" RevisionGUID="ff715aa3-dc49-4e92-a811-fbc93352fac3" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There are actually four questions on your account. All of them have been closed and two have been deleted by you. At the time of this writing, one is at 0 score, and the rest are at -1, -4, and -5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The exact details of the banning algorithm are not public, but [this answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this/86998#86998) on Meta Stack Overflow suggests a couple ways to potentially undo the ban. The gist of it is that you can still use the site and provide answers. If you focus on giving good answers that receive upvotes, your account may get unblocked and you will be able to ask questions again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know for sure how the algorithm works, but I think you may have tripped it just slightly, since your deleted questions are self-deleted and out of the two that remained visible one was closed as a duplicate after being migrated to us. You can try emailing team@stackoverflow.com and make your case for why your account should not have been banned. Be prepared to justify your request. No promises that it'll work for sure, but it can't hurt to ask.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17968" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2142" RevisionGUID="13dc908a-f780-400b-a136-8463b3425a2e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This question [What is the reasoning behind the reputation cap?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/22447/59303) on Meta Stack Overflow is probably the definitive one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several reasons including the one you mention. Another is to give you a reason to stop using the site - you've hit the reputation cap, there's no need to keep posting." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17969" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2155" RevisionGUID="5ba196f4-2f87-4fae-9446-b8c105cdcfa8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="After 500, your flag weight increases asymptotically towards the current cap of 750. Because of this, as you get closer and closer to the cap, it's possible to only receive .001 flag weight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So rather than display a rounded number (and thus, no change as you get closer to the cap when you flag correctly), it's shown as a double once you pass 500.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More information:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is flag weight?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight/80178#80178)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unnecessary precision displayed for flag weight](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83657/unnecessary-precision-displayed-for-flag-weight)&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the flag weight formula in the 500-750 range?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83530/whats-the-flag-weight-formula-in-the-500-750-range)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17970" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2173" RevisionGUID="16d5e2e6-2121-4ad6-844c-2e22acad868a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="### Update - October 20th, 2011&#xD;&#xA;Current statistics:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Total Questions: 13,440&#xD;&#xA;* Total Closed but not deleted: 1,321&#xD;&#xA;* Closed Percentage: 9.38% (▼ 7.56% from September 20th, ▼ 10.81% since this post was written)&#xD;&#xA;* SE 2.0 Closed Percentage (no Trilogy): 5.36% (▼ 0.72%)&#xD;&#xA;* Network Closed Percentage (w/Trilogy): 2.56% (▼ 0.04%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point, we have a lower close percentage than Web Applications, Android, English, and Webmasters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was some concern that we're bleeding users: not sure how long they've been tracking it, but [the Stack Exchange site tracks](http://stackexchange.com/sites?sort=newengagedusers&amp;expand=true) new 200+ users over a rolling two weeks period: Programmers has consistently had the second highest number of 200+ users (only Stack Overflow itself has beaten us), and the number has gone up since I've been tracking it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've also updated [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) to be much more straightforward, which will hopefully alleviate some confusion about what is and isn't on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I don't think it's particularly constructive to approach a problem this way, I think it's important, if we do, to work with accurate numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of right now, there are 2,816 closed—but not deleted—questions on Programmers. There are 13,925 questions total on Programmers. This makes the closed, but not deleted ratio of questions 20.2%. In the 10 days since you measured this, it's gone down 3%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on the same metrics you did your post, here are number closed with at least 5 score and number closed with less than or equal to 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 774 (27.5%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 265 (9.4%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This puts the ratio of 5+ score questions closed higher than what you had and the ratio of &lt;= 0 score questions much lower than what you had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand why, we need to include data you didn't have access to when you did this survey: the number of deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of deleted questions on Programmers.SE is 2,975: more than the number of closed questions you see. If we also include these numbers into the mix, we get a different story:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 891. % of closed or deleted: 15.3%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 2,223. % of closed or deleted: 38.3%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This paints a bit of a different picture than measuring just the closed questions and the results presented in your survey. Why? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's because we routinely delete low-scoring questions as they are uncontroversially bad for the site, and the scores on those questions agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we don't delete nearly as many high-scoring answers is because [&quot;closed&quot; doesn't mean &quot;bad&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed). It means the question doesn't meet the site's guidelines in some way, but there's some value, and it could even be improved and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, *deletion*—not closure—is where bad questions go to spend eternity in Hell. Closure, on the other hand, is the purgatory of questions. They're not on-topic, but they're providing *some* value: enough to stick around while we figure out what to do with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A Comparison&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that we're working with accurate numbers, how do they compare to other sites, particularly Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From a purely quantitative standpoint, Stack Overflow's numbers are in a different league:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Publicly viewable questions: 1,997,856&#xD;&#xA;* Closed, but not deleted: ~39,048 (2%)&#xD;&#xA;* Deleted: 194,008 (8.9%)&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~1,964 (5%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~4,142 (1.8%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~26,123 (67%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~199,326 (85.5%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like Programmers, Stack Overflow's ratios skew a lot higher when  deleted low-scoring questions are added, and lower when it deleted high-voted questions are added. This isn't coincidence: the same moderation style is used on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Some context&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's important, from a qualitative standpoint, to put these numbers into context. Stack Overflow is not qualitatively similar to Programmers.SE, and comparing their closed/deleted percentage to ours is about as meaningless as comparing our percentages to [Quora](http://quora.com) or [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com). We just simply don't have the same issues or types of questions they have. If we did, there wouldn't be a separate site: we'd just be part of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also important to put Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE into historical context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was the first, and for a long period of time, the only Stack Exchange site. It did not, for much of its history, have the benefit of knowledge gleaned from the year of trial and error with the Stack Exchange 2.0 project. And notably, it did not have the benefit of 40+ other sites with 40+ other sets of problems to crystalize what makes and doesn't make a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This difference in background and two year head start is [a constant cause of problems](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow): 27% of all questions migrated here from Stack Overflow are closed and/or deleted. Thousands upon thousands of questions that should be off-topic there and on-topic here never get closed or migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of its history as the flagship Stack Exchange site, it also has enormous scaling issues. They have [~10 volunteer moderators for 2 million questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/101431/should-stack-overflow-moderators-have-a-standard-of-duty): one for every 200,000 asked. We have 4 for 16,000: one for every 4,000. We are just better equipped to close bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The history of Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But going into [our history](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) a little bit: Stack Overflow had a serious problem with popular questions that didn't really belong anywhere: &quot;What's your favorite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What do you like about programming?&quot;, etc. When Stack Exchange 2.0 and the Area 51 engine launched, one of the first proposals to gain traction was [*Not Programming Related*](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related), intended to house all of these types of questions. It launched on September 1st, 2010 and for a period of 3 weeks, surged in popularity as all the questions repressed on Stack Overflow were asked on this new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the quality was all over the place: the site had some of the worst questions and some of the best questions. After a few weeks of this, [new guidelines were put into place](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) to try to raise the level of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the rest of the beta period, these guidelines were enforced sporadically as the community tried to come to terms with its original charter and what it would take to make a useful site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On December 16, 2010, [Programmers.SE was launched](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/) under its new mission, having been the test-bed for a number of guidelines about questions that later generations of Stack Exchange sites benefitted from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left 3.5 months of questions asked during a particularly formative point in the Stack Exchange network: more than a quarter of our site's lifespan. Compare this to Stack Overflow, which has had the benefit of 2.5 years of maturity and wasn't originally created to be [the toilet bowl of a different site](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we're slowly resolving those initial growing pains, it's going to take some more time. The ratios will normalize, but they aren't going to normalize in the next month: it going to take several months to a couple of years to stabilize into a site as mature as the currently-three-year-old Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The situation isn't as dire as it might seem from one reading of the numbers. It was dire at one time, but that was last year. Now, we're moving forward: our traffic is increasing and our closed ratio is decreasing. More and more, people are taking ownership of Programmers.SE as something to be proud of, and the quality of questions and answers is noticeably rising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there's a lot we can improve, but it's going to be far more constructive and productive to isolate specific failings and correct those, not to make generalizations about the site as a whole. If we stick to generalizations, we might as well just shut this site down and start over." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17971" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2175" RevisionGUID="08ea7b32-dcd6-46b5-9e87-4332e377ba77" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="It seems to be a [recent bug](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/104094/new-badges-do-not-update-your-badge-count-when-awarded).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The badge counts were updating yesterday (25th August).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bug has been [fixed](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/104094/new-badges-do-not-update-your-badge-count-when-awarded/104104#104104), so you should see your badge count correct itself soon." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17972" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2180" RevisionGUID="76b0c749-8d80-4ba9-ac4d-0aed6c5cc01c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This is [meta-tag:status-bydesign]. Suggested edits are disabled on meta sites, so you will need to have 2,000 reputation before you will see the edit link on other people's posts. The only exception is Meta Stack Overflow which functions as a meta for all Stack Exchange sites and has its own reputation pool.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/87890/why-cant-i-suggest-edits-on-se-meta-sites/97371#97371) for Jeff Atwood's explanation of the rationale behind that decision." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17973" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2240" RevisionGUID="0d332a4e-8a28-428f-becf-86e89c3d82b6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="&gt;*I posted a comment giving a link, but I'll copy the answer from there anyway  &#xD;&#xA;Thank you to [Alpine][1] from StackOverflow Meta for the answer.*&#xD;&#xA;(see http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/82988/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is related to coding, it should be on [Stack Overflow][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's related to higher level programming concepts or is subjective (but still related to programming), it should be on [Programmers][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;From [Introducing Programmers.StackExchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In a nutshell, **Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor** working through code issues. **Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard** working through higher level conceptual programming issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have **actual source code in the questions or answers**. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [Stack Overflow FAQ][4]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; enthusiast programmers, people who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; write code because they love it. We&#xD;&#xA;&gt; feel the best Stack Overflow questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have a bit of source code in them, but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; if your question generally covers … &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific programming problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a software algorithm&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software tools commonly used by programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - matters that are unique to the programming profession&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [Programmers FAQ][5]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; expert programmers who are interested&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in subjective questions on software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This can include topics such as: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software law &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Programming puzzles &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective does not mean “anything&#xD;&#xA;&gt; goes”. Please keep it professional at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; all times. If this is a question you'd&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be uncomfortable discussing with your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; colleagues in a work environment, it's&#xD;&#xA;&gt; probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**However, pay attention to the next bit of the FAQ, which explicitly lists the types of question that are off-topic. Programmers SE is not a free-for-all.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/157949/alpine&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17974" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2241" RevisionGUID="80e17746-35a4-4570-b301-7c602728f83d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I'd suggest reading [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) and particularly the [answer on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179) created by our very own [Aaronaught](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/3249/aaronaught), which goes into more finer detail about why just such a bad fit for Stack Exchange, but in short, the purpose of Stack Exchange is to get an answer to an actual problem a person is facing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One answer that actually solves the problem is what we're looking for: not a host of suggestions. A future visitor, who has the same issue, should be able to look at the set of answers and be able to determine two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What the community has decided is the correct answer (highest number of votes)&#xD;&#xA;* What the question asker has decided is the correct answer (accept flag)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you use Stack Exchange for polling, these two concepts break down. When every answer is equally valid (it's a survey, after all), voting doesn't mean anything: what do people vote for? Their favorite answer? There's no value in that in the Stack Exchange network: it adds another, hidden dimension to voting that a future visitor, not aware of the exception to the rule being made for the specific question, isn't going to pick up on. &quot;Use voting as a means to vet the answers...except on this question! Ignore the voting on this question!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, I'd consider this to be an abuse of the user base. Stack Exchange users are not &quot;participants&quot;, sitting around waiting to take surveys for whatever purpose someone coming to the site needs. They're experts, who have generously devoted their time and knowledge to help people solve problems. Every time we forget that there are actual people here with specific issues and specific knowledge by reducing them to one point on a graph, we diminish the value of their contributions. Answering a few questions for a survey is *not* the same thing as providing a long, thoughtful answer about a specific problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, Community Wiki is not the answer. Community Wiki—for questions—was made a moderator-only function specifically to combat its abuse to keep questions that were off-topic or bad fits for Stack Exchange (but were ostensibly interesting) open. Recently on the Stack Exchange blog, [Grace Note](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/146126/grace-note) went into a good amount of detail about [the point of Community Wiki](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; With suggested edits now in place, you could argue that the removal of reputation from voting is now the only function of community wiki. Unfortunately, this means it is often seen as a magic switch to allow questionable content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One of the first feature requests I saw on Meta Stack Overflow was Moderator Filtering of Highest Voted Questions, which was deemed necessary because questions like Coolest Server Names show the wrong side of the site. The actual problem-solving nature of sites is too easily buried under the weight of all these “fun” community wiki questions. At one point, “Our top voted post is an actual question!” was a point of pride. That’s … not a positive sign for a Q&amp;A network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, as Grace Note  continues, we should be looking for quality content that stands *without* Community Wiki. We *might* be able to do that by rewriting survey questions into a question about a problem the asker is actually facing: this would bring back the voting and acceptance functions into play, and make a question that meets our general guidelines *without* having to abuse Community Wiki." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17975" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2265" RevisionGUID="055fd9fa-6fb1-4dc9-969b-0f58d9d1a80b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="No, there isn't: [it's been suggested periodically](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/3669/149432) on the network-wide meta discussion site, but it's always roundly rejected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All questions on Stack Exchange need to be verifiable in principle: the asker should be able to take an answer and see if it works for them. That's the answer that they'll generally accept. It might not be the most optimal solution or the one that the community agrees with, but the asker is always going to be in a better position to know what's going to work for them because they're the ones in a position to try it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the idea is that there are two different metrics people should be looking at:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What the community thinks is the right answer&#xD;&#xA;* What the asker felt helped him or her the most&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first is marked by the answer with the most votes. The second is marked by the acceptance check mark." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17976" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2277" RevisionGUID="772e03b7-8b3e-424d-9996-7fccc1db5d05" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The issue is that there is no answer: we don't have time machines and we don't have crystal balls. Any &quot;answer&quot; provided is a guess: an educated guess perhaps, but still a guess. There's no criteria by which to gauge the answers in a meaningful manner: who had the best theory? Who wrote the most? Who cares?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not the place to opine about a topic. If you're looking for that type of place, where you can poll fellow programmers to see what they think about some hot or future topic, you will be consistently disappointed. I would suggest looking into Hacker News or /r/Programming or any number of programming forums out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if you have a question that you're actually facing, then that's fine: ask about that. The question you linked is *not* that. It states X is what Y other profession does and asks what would happen if X happened in software engineering. What's the practical problem being faced? What real-world experience related to software development can be provided to answer such a hypothetical?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And consider it from a practical perspective: if you have an actual problem you're facing right now that you need someone to help you with, do you really want to see your question pushed down the front page by people dreaming up hypothetical scenarios to poll the audience about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In response to your new questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do we define what is practical, and who has to consider it practical for it to be practical? For something to be practical, does it have to be practical to someone in an office doing work that eventually leads to or otherwise supports delivered software? Or can it be practical and useful to a researcher or academic who is looking to make the professional lives of those people delivering software easier or better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think [it's pretty straightforward](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask): is the question asking about a problem the asker *is actually facing right now*? If so, it's a practical question that deserves further consideration. If not, it either needs to be revised to ask about a problem the asker is actually facing or it'll be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If on-topic (as per the list of topics in the FAQ) questions that are answerable with either facts, reputable sources, or personal experiences, yet are not about a specific problem that someone is having right now aren't allowed here, where should they go? There are many good questions in this realm that are suitable for a Stack Exchange community (suitable meaning they aren't discussions or debates). Should another Stack Exchange be made, further dividing the software development community? Or can we improve guidance as to making it easier to define what is or isn't a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When we talk about constructiveness, it's not a Programmers.SE-only policy: it's network-wide. Programmers [was originally created](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) to be the less-strict version of Stack Overflow and it sucked *hard*. That's when it was figured out there's a standard level of questions, objective or not, *every* Stack Exchange site needs to have in order to thrive. There really is no room for a less-strict version of another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an alternative to Stack Exchange, I would suggest [Quora](http://quora.com), [Reddit's Programming subreditt](http://reddit.com/r/programming), or [Hacker News](http://news.ycombinator.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the minimum level of certainty and/or reliability for a question to be considered answerable? How do we measure this? How is a diamond moderator or 5 users who aren't knowledgable in a given topic able to assertain the answerability of a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not really about whether someone *knows* the answer or knows whether there *is* an answer, and the &quot;only ask about problems you actually face&quot; guidance covers this pretty well: you don't need to know if your question is answerable, but you need to ask about something you're actually facing right now. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In cases where the FAQ is unclear and a person asks a borderline question, it's entirely up to the answers to demonstrate the question's value and community moderation to revise the question into a workable form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to reiterate, *in this specific case*, it's not borderline: it's spelled out pretty clearly in [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask). The question also received 6 downvotes and 2 flags for closure, which to me indicates the community agrees prima facie this question is not a good fit for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But when a question is closed, [there's still opportunity](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed) to get the question into shape. And that includes this question: if it actually asked about a real problem instead of a hypothetical scenario, I'd be the first one to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can we apply the Back-It-Up policy as defined in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective to allow more good (non-debate, non-discussion) questions that have answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do: I touched on it above, but when a question is borderline, whether it's receiving absolutely stellar answers that are backed up by facts and experiences is [what determines if it's able to be saved](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright/862#862). But again, in this specific case, this question is not borderline: it's hypothetical speculation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17977" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2286" RevisionGUID="c5610cb0-0578-4a36-b583-393e4e3c1ae0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="You'll know a post is from a moderator when that user has a diamond (♦) next their name: for example, me right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in general, the idea is that, by knowing how active a user is on the main site, you should be able to determine how well the user knows the main site when answering questions about it. It's not a 1:1 match, but it works for most meta purposes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was [also discussed on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66412/why-is-the-meta-reputation-derived-directly-from-the-parent-site), where Robert Cartaino said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It seems like the more participation you have on the PARENT site, the more abilities and bigger the role you should have in the discussions *about* that site. Creating a separate reputation score for META activity means that only frequent META USERS would have the leading roles... not necessarily the same people who actually use the site (i.e. the stakeholders). Having one meta score (for using the ACTUAL SITE) seems like a better system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One other thing to consider is that it frees up people to participate without affecting a reputation total: people can down-vote bad ideas and participate more without worrying about their reputation being affected. On child metas, where there are already low activity levels, killing as many barriers to entry is important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An [answer by Rebecca Chernoff](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64267/is-there-a-reason-why-we-gain-ghost-reputation-on-the-meta-of-an-se-website/64268#64268) and a [blog post by Jeff Atwood](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/new-per-site-metas/) touches upon this aspect and others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there's some confusion because Meta Stack Overflow, ostensibly the meta for Stack Overflow, *does* have its own reputation system, and the suggestion from the other angle—eliminating rep there and pegging it to Stack Overflow—comes up often, too. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A [detailed answer on why there is this discrepency](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1451/should-reputation-from-so-carry-over-to-meta/63235#63235) can be found on the question [Should reputation from SO carry over to Meta?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1451/should-reputation-from-so-carry-over-to-meta):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Each site's meta (other than this one) is designed for site-specific discussions about things like:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Defining a site's culture&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Determining each site's tolerance for certain types of questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Discussing tagging practices, moderators, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And on those sites, it makes more sense for the meta site rep to mirror the parent site rep, since **the most &quot;trust&quot; to define the site's culture should be assigned to those that have earned the most trust on the site itself; *they are its culture.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site, meta.SO, continues to serve that role of discussing the culture and goals of StackOverflow.com (and that of Area 51,) but it also serves an important larger need:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It is also the meta site for discussion of the *unified engine that will drive both the trilogy sites and the SE 2.0 sites*, addressing things like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Bugs&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Feature Requests&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about the system as a whole (ads, rep-gaming gaps, re-posting policy, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; On a site about *the engine*, it does not make as much sense to make the reputation mirror one or some of the other sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17978" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2287" RevisionGUID="581a93f6-7861-44d6-9929-71aa40a09d6f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This has been asked before and there are probably better answers out there, but here's my take:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Down-votes on meta have a different meaning to down-votes on the main site. Here they also mean &quot;I disagree&quot;, &quot;I don't think your suggestion would work&quot;, &quot;It's not a bug&quot;, etc. However, it doesn't mean that you deserve to loose reputation over it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there was &quot;real&quot; reputation involved people would be more reluctant to offer up their suggestions or down-vote the bad answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more appropriate question would be &quot;Why does Meta Stack Overflow have separate reputation?&quot;,  but that has already been asked and answered [over there](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1451/should-reputation-from-so-carry-over-to-meta).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17979" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2294" RevisionGUID="78bbdc38-7072-45f2-ad11-d620658fc784" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="You've asked 6 questions, 5 of which have been deleted or migrated away from the site. Because of this, your account has had an automatic ban from asking questions placed on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [FAQ entry on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this) goes into more detail about why you might've received this ban, so I'll just quote the last part, on getting the ban lifted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### How long do I have to wait before I can ask questions again? What can I do to release the ban? How can I reactivate my account?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Question bans never expire or &quot;time out.&quot; This means that you cannot simply wait for a certain amount of time to ask your next question. If you do not take action, you will never be allowed to ask questions again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you tripped the heuristic by just a tiny bit, then writing a few quality answers that get upvoted [might](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68884/why-i-cant-ask-questions/68885#68885) enable you to ask questions again. But as the internals of the filter are secret, there is no way to know for sure. And even if you're lucky then you're still very close to being banned again, if you get new downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you really, *really* think the question ban is an error, then email the team directly at the address provided at the bottom of every page. But note that Stack Overflow alone gets more than 3,000 questions per day, so a few rejected questions won't be missed. Therefore, reactivation of banned accounts [is not a high priority](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/62373/better-explanation-when-account-is-blocked/62374#62374).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Can I simply create a new account?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No. The question ban is at [a lower level than account](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/72180/clarify-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this-account-error/76167#comment-174366).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17980" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2300" RevisionGUID="b5254034-7c15-4d6e-b727-d97ec9db6793" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I'm not sure about an explicit ban in the TOS, but the system automatically catches unusual voting patterns and will roll back the changes if it fits its vote fraud heuristic. This rollback generally occurs once a day, so check back in a few hours to see if the votes are still there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's [a FAQ entry on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19920/how-does-the-so-voter-fraud-detection-mechanism-work) that goes through the vote fraud detector in greater detail, and we'll look into it, but to preserve the integrity of the automatic fraud detection systems and prevent gaming the system, we really can't talk about anything more specific." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17981" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2307" RevisionGUID="a1dd3ad1-6bf4-4e4b-a6a2-a73d852caaf7" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The idea that we should have `offtopic.stackoverflow.com` is how this site got started and it became quickly apparent that it cannot survive on the SE network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Popularity isn't the definitive measure of quality and usefulness. I highly recommend reading [this summary](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) of the history of Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17982" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2321" RevisionGUID="7fab1c13-e1fb-41fa-a560-0c0d60b5636b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="As a reminder, we [already suppress the answer box and nag people when there are more than {threshold} answers][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Lknb7.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my very strong belief that any &quot;question&quot; which gets 40+ answers is fundamentally a *discussion* (or worse, a *poll*) and not an answerable question, as noted in the Not Constructive close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Chatty, open-ended discussion questions** diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We of course support the idea that &quot;there's more than one way to do it&quot;, because there always is. But there should not be an *infinite* number of ways to do it, either. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like to use the &quot;Peanut Butter Sandwich&quot; rule here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;how do YOU backup??&quot;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;how do YOU store passwords??&quot;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;how do YOU like your peanut butter sandwiches??&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the thing you are talking about in the question can be replaced by a Peanut Butter Sandwich, the question isn't making meaningful distinctions about what it is soliciting, and therefore either needs to be closed, or **whipped into shape via editing to be far more specific**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84870/add-a-message-when-posting-to-old-questions-with-more-than-n-answers/86893#86893&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17983" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2334" RevisionGUID="5ce857f3-07d5-427b-b08d-45c283e5e56e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="To clarify what's going on, from [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/91097/getting-too-many-edits-further-edits-are-not-allowed-until-tomorrow):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; That code was (correctly) not counting recent (today/yesterday) posts in the &quot;how many have you edited&quot; [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This sanity check avoids a few scenarios:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - front-page spamming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hijacked account vandalism&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - rage-quit vandalism&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't have any objection to improving posts, and yes: it is meant to have an amnesty on anything recent (so you can improve your recent answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you're just improving posts in the last day, you should be fine. If you're trying to edit a ton of your old posts in rapid succession, that's by design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As the message says, you should be contacting a moderator if you have a need to revise your posts en masse. Is there a reason you're trying to edit more than 5 of your old posts in rapid succession?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just to encapsulate what I said in comments, an error message that only reads &quot;too many recent edits&quot; does seem to be overly brief. The original message read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Too many edits**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   You have already edited 5 of your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; own posts today (not including very&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recent posts). Further edits are not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; allowed until tomorrow.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   Please contact a moderator if you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; require assistance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which clarified what was going on. To that end, I agree that should be changed or addressed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17984" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2356" RevisionGUID="47943265-74c1-4a01-aa20-793ca9318d1a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Anonymous voting is a key part of how Stack Exchange sites work. If we assume for a moment that you are not suggesting revealing the names along with the comments, forcing people to explain their downvotes still would not get you any usable information. Once you make those comments anonymous, you also take away any sort of accountability for content, so in most cases you'll end up with throwaway or gibberish comments like mine. (Although is intended specifically to illustrate the point.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been brought up many a time on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com). The [request to force anonymous commenting](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6521/allow-users-to-leave-an-anonymous-comment-when-voting) was declined. [The request to encourage explanations](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votes) was implemented via a pop-up that every user sees when they downvote a question or an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17985" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2375" RevisionGUID="6d5de9f0-4947-4fbe-a039-c3f06e0916fa" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Suspensions are a private matter between moderators and a user. We [do not discuss](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/23385/avoid-the-streisand-effect-be-clear-about-the-reason-when-suspending-an-account/23548#23548) suspension reasons unless the issue is brought up by the person who got suspended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting from Jeff Atwood:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I believe it is the reponsibility and right of the user who was placed in timed suspension to have the freedom to discuss (or *not* discuss) what happened to them.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;It is a basic matter of respecting other users' privacy." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17986" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2394" RevisionGUID="c48a4fed-6c35-47de-a21d-d051ab8011d6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Votes are locked after 5 minutes to [prevent tactical downvoting](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6460/if-you-just-witnessed-tactical-downvoting-is-it-a-reportable-offense/18046#18046): voting people down just to make sure your answer appears first to accrue votes, then reversing that when it no longer is needed to get back the lost reputation and hide the evidence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a weird edge case, but it's been around for a long time and unlikely to change. However, if the post gets edited later on, your vote is unlocked and you can change your vote then. Otherwise, don't worry about it too much: mistaken votes happen often, and the community voting as a whole should iron those inconsistencies out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feel free to flag questions even when you up-vote: moderators can't see individual voting patterns so we have no idea whether you up-voted or not. We also don't particularly *care* either: how you vote is your business. If something needs our intervention, definitely flag it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17987" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2400" RevisionGUID="444a28d2-e1ab-4b69-8895-494ed8f3c752" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There's a [formatting sandbox question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3122/formatting-sandbox) over on Meta Stack Overflow which you can use for testing the formatting, but I suspect you'll find the existing answers cover most (if not all) of the formatting options available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What specifically do you want to test?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17988" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2418" RevisionGUID="8c47a9ed-122a-4172-b3ec-ae736eff3060" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This is already being address on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/109160/no-dennis-ritchie-quote-on-stack-overflow-why) with respect to a **message** on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I didn't think that the Steve Jobs message was appropriate, but I don't own the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your question about asking a **question**, then no, that wouldn't be appropriate at all. At best it's too localised." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17989" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2429" RevisionGUID="e5b161d8-1d65-4627-a741-a06f17c860db" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This has been discussed before on Meta Stack Overflow. I can't find the specific question, but a search for [&quot;hide reputation&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=hide+reputation) gives 24 results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These three questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/198/should-there-be-anonymous-answers-and-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/79621/should-reputation-be-hidden-until-an-answer-is-accepted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/21458/hide-the-rep-and-badge-count-on-a-users-info-box-on-answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are closest to what you're asking&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17992" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2461" RevisionGUID="e3361c2c-0dd6-42b1-a4b9-e2546b87cb95" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This is a new [&quot;post notices&quot; feature](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/102363/support-for-banners/107142#107142) that was introduced last month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently there are three options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. This post does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.&#xD;&#xA;2. Post is related to a rapidly changing event&#xD;&#xA;3. We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer: please explain why you're recommend it as a solution. Answers that don't explain anything will be deleted. See Good Subjective, Bad Subjective for more information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only moderators can add these notices, so feel free to flag questions you think could use them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17994" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2478" RevisionGUID="9d8bf097-f108-4361-92e8-ca92594aa71a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Is it possible to pretty up links in comments?  Similar to the way we can in answers.  [SO][1] says no. I'm unsuccessful finding an answer for meta-Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/37758/inline-links-in-comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17995" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2507" RevisionGUID="3c8f9044-2f69-4f5c-a931-89f9681f6939" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="You were banned from Stack Overflow for asking too many off-topic questions: because of that, [we won't migrate your questions there anymore](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2475/using-programmers-to-side-step-the-rules-on-stack-overflow). For more information about this ban, please check out the Meta Stack Overflow question, [What can I do when getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears you're very close to getting unbanned: to ensure that happens, you'll need to do two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Stop asking off-topic questions here and on Stack Overflow.** Please [read the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and heed moderators' advice and warnings: you've asked a number of questions here that do not belong on Programmers and and a number on Stack Overflow that don't belong there, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Start answering questions on Stack Overflow.** You only need a few more up-votes to be able to ask questions: you'll get those by paying it forward and helping others out with their problems. Be sure to answer questions that are on-topic there: answering off-topic questions will wind up penalizing you as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17996" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2510" RevisionGUID="6fc4a7e6-4e8f-420b-b7e9-a01906dac3fd" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="In short: no.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A longer answer is that [Programmers was born out of the desire for exactly the site you describe](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046). All the questions that were off-topic or otherwise closed on Stack Overflow were intended to find a home here. Shortly after public beta began, it became apparent that that doesn't work. It doesn't make for a good Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong. &quot;What's the best ...&quot; and other fun discussions *are fun*, but they're not what Stack Exchange is built to do. Stack Exchange is built to host professional Q&amp;A and all the systems it has (voting, accepted answers, transient comments, enforcing the fact that responses to questions should be actual answers, etc.) are built with that in mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are tons of forums out there and sites like Reddit and Quora where you can participate in discussions and other open-ended questions. Stack Exchange is simply not the place for that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17997" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2533" RevisionGUID="2f466fed-c1ef-46d2-9271-dee50049af87" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="In the case of identical questions, there's a network-wide policy: [Is cross-posting a question on multiple Stack Exchange sites permitted if the question is on-topic for each site?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64068/is-cross-posting-a-question-on-multiple-stack-exchange-sites-permitted-if-the-qu) The answer is no: posting the same question twice is not acceptable. This comes up now and then between [Super User](http://superuser.com/), [Server Fault](http://serverfault.com/), [Unix &amp; Linux](http://unix.stackexchange.com/) and [Ask Ubuntu](http://askubuntu.com/), which have overlapping scopes. We arrange to keep only one version open, ideally the single one that has answers already. In this case, please comment (so that potential answerers don't waste time repeating an answer that someone else wrote on another site), vote to close where you can, and flag for a speedy close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the questions are similar and posted by different users, it's a different matter. If the question is off-topic on one site, of course, close it as off-topic. If the issue is on-topic on both sites but the questions are suitably tailored to their respective sites, let both live: there's no notion of cross-site duplicates, and different communities might have different insights.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17998" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2541" RevisionGUID="6f4ef43d-0aeb-4ab7-89f3-12b4aed2c785" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Rotating is a pretty poor idea; this isn't kindergarten: not everyone gets a turn to play with the good toy. A site deserves the best set of moderators, whether that means it's the same set for multiple terms or it means new people come in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, and I can't speak for the other moderators, I'm [all for periodic elections](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/101431/should-stack-overflow-moderators-have-a-standard-of-duty/101459#101459): not only does it serve the chance for users to re-evaluate who's moderating, it also gives moderators who successfully run a mandate to do what they need to do to get the job done." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17999" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2554" RevisionGUID="7c51d0da-4c92-4ef3-a997-c154fd84e0ae" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The red &quot;Flag question&quot; button in the flagging modal doesn't seem to work today for when &quot;off topic&quot; is chosen. I've tried on two questions, flagged them as not constructive instead (worked fine).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can't seem to see anything wrong in Firebug or Chrome's dev tools. I'm using Chrome 15.0.874.120 m. I'd prefer to test this further before reporting, but since it involves flagging...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone else noticed that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The workaround proposed in the [meta.so discussion][1] worked. The route I tested was &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. it doesn't belong here&#xD;&#xA;2. exact duplicate&#xD;&#xA;3. back&#xD;&#xA;4. off topic&#xD;&#xA;5. flag question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/112181/cant-vote-to-close-as-off-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18000" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2555" RevisionGUID="6ede7c90-e190-416c-af43-1063d05d8a24" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This is a [known problem](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/112181/cant-vote-to-close-as-off-topic) and should be fixed in the next deploy (when ever that is).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are still having problems try clearing out your cache - there may be some old JavaScript files (or similar) lying around." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18001" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2558" RevisionGUID="81fabb67-d744-4d1c-87c9-6ffaf20d6f93" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="While this error was indicative of [a problem on Imgur's end a few weeks ago](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/109857/failed-to-upload-image-format-not-supported-error-when-uploading-supported-form), I can't reproduce this now. This is a JPEG upload:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![This is a JPEG][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things to check:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **You might be uploading a file that has the JPEG file extension but not the `image/jpeg` mimetype.** Have you tried checking to make sure the file is actually a JPEG and not something else? If you're on a *nix-based system, you can check by using [`file`](http://linux.die.net/man/1/file).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **You're using the &quot;From the web&quot; option with a URL from a site that doesn't allow Imgur to rip its images.** Try downloading the image yourself and uploading it manually.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **You're experiencing a localized disruption of Imgur.** Try uploading the image again to see if it works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While the &quot;From the web&quot; option didn't work, downloading it first and manually uploading it worked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Image problem][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like it's a problem with the image host.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/rGb2z.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/rKzAw.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18002" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2560" RevisionGUID="1369576b-0e33-4521-adfe-d927855937c8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Writing better titles is high on the list of worthwhile edits to a question, but there are a few caveats you should keep in mind, especially when you're editing below 2,000 reputation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Editing *en masse* [really messes with the front page](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/110768/on-select-sites-show-the-flag-suggested-edit-count-when-it-is-0-instead-of/110816#110816). It also clogs up the suggested edit queue, where people are tasked with approving edits from users below 2,000 reputation. If you're going to edit, do it in short spurts, not 20 at once.&#xD;&#xA;* Nearly every question has problems other than the title: we have [a huge tag problem](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags), for example. But beyond that, nearly every question will have spelling,  capitalization, formatting, or other copyediting issues. When editing a question, try to improve as much as possible beyond just the title.&#xD;&#xA;* While many titles are terrible and ought to be reworded as actual questions, there are a lot of questions that have *okay* titles or even good ones that aren't actually questions. If you were going into them to edit more than just the title, editing the title is a nice bonus, but otherwise, it's best to just leave them alone. Ask yourself, &quot;does the title change make the question any clearer?&quot; If it doesn't, don't bother just for the sake of making it into a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, thank you for taking the time to make the site a better place!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18003" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2569" RevisionGUID="f29a7bda-ff02-400c-961d-2691be729ca9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I merged [tag:php5] into [tag:php], but opted not to create a synonym for the same reasons [they're not synonyms on Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/59285/synonyms-mean-interchangeable-not-similar): a synonym should be interchangeable, not merely a similar term.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also went ahead and merged [tag:php-5.3] into [tag:php], as the questions were being used to say &quot;I'm using this version&quot; instead of &quot;I'm asking about this version,&quot; and PHP 5.3 has been out for several years." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18004" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2580" RevisionGUID="cf44a623-40b0-4e07-9c75-869591685209" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Considering this [Meta Stack Overflow question][1] about the same subject, are edits to include Amazon links to books appropriate on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/111054/are-edits-to-include-amazon-links-to-books-appropriate" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18005" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2582" RevisionGUID="b78b5666-5df7-4596-b551-a868675cc44f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The issue isn't adding the links: it's adding the links to [50 posts in the span of an hour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/7454/matthieu?tab=activity).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you suggest 50 edits in a short period, you clog up the suggested edit queue and should those edits be approved, you completely hose the front page, pushing new questions and questions with legitimate activity out of the way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I [provided more detail](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/110768/on-select-sites-show-the-flag-suggested-edit-count-when-it-is-0-instead-of/110816#110816) on Meta Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]one issue for sites that are not Stack Overflow is that the front page—the site's advertisement to the world—doesn't change all that often over the course of the day. You'll get a mix of new questions, older questions that haven't been resolved yet, and a sprinkling of questions risen from the dead by people who finally found that awesome answer to that niche question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This type of activity is a great sign: it shows the site has life and many different people are actively engaged. It's like the forest at the beginning of *Bambi*: questions young and old get a safe haven to play and frolic while waiting for an answer from passers by.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Well, when someone gets the idea to edit all the things for some minor issue, they inevitably disrupt the quiet serenity of the front page. They're the hunter from *Bambi* that comes in and starts shooting up the place, and no question is safe. &quot;Ended your post with 'thanks'? Edited. Oh, you did it to all 75 of your questions over the last year? **Edit. all. of. them.**&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; After a short period of time, the front page stops looking like a peaceful forest full of life. It becomes a wasteland of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And that new question I mentioned before learns a hard fact of life: the forest is forever ruined and the chances of getting answered have been significantly reduced all because someone thought &quot;thanks&quot; needed to be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to suggest edits, please do two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Do it in short spurts: 5 at a time, not 50.&#xD;&#xA;2. Make *substantial* improvements to the posts. You were suggesting edits to posts that were terrible: one line answers, answers with spelling and grammar mistakes, answers that provided no context to their recommendations, etc. Adding Amazon links to those posts did not significantly improve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is something that needs to be changed on a huge number of posts, please don't do this on your own: bring it up here on meta first. This way we as a community can figure out the best way to go about it and ensure the front page doesn't get hosed in the process." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18006" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2583" RevisionGUID="7f1139ae-8ace-4e67-881c-9820c1c17194" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I'm gonna say pretty much the same thing here as [I said on MSO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/111073/811), but directed at you as the editor instead of someone else as the person approving edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's nothing *inherently wrong* with editing to add links to book posts. Indeed, it can be quite helpful... But before you do, **make sure you're not wasting your time and the time of everyone reviewing the edit.** There are *loads* of lousy questions asking for book recommendations that should probably just be closed and deleted, and many times more lousy *answers* (even on *good* questions) that make no effort to explain why the book being recommended is a good choice. Editing these is maybe *slightly* more useful than copy-editing bathroom-wall graffiti...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And [as Mark notes][1], you're not just wasting *your* time: you're wasting the time of the folks rejecting these edits and you're wasting the time of the folks reading the front page who see these popping up instead of something useful. Don't do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you're going through these posts anyway, why not do something productive: when you come across a poor question or a lazy answer, something no amount of hyperlinking will salvage, don't *edit* it... **flag it**. Ask a moderator to delete it. Instead of seeing these things pop up in the queue knowing they're on their way to making the front page of the site look like Amazon Rejects, they can send them on their way to that Great Booklist in the Sky.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2582/63" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18007" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2651" RevisionGUID="23cf5546-c83c-40d3-a9ba-735d75ea3266" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="It looks like you're exposing your email address in the &quot;About Me&quot; field in your profile. That's available to anyone to use as they see fit, which unfortunately includes scraping and spam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A [similar case](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/106943/spam-from-tc-vectors-jeff-please-protect-our-email-addresses-from-spambots) turned up on Meta Stack Overflow a couple months ago, and the general consensus there was that Stack Exchange protects the &quot;email&quot; field of your profile, but there's not much they can do about publicly displayed email in the &quot;About&quot; section.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting [Jeff Atwood's answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/107334/155160):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;There is absolutely no way I can think of that we'd be exposing email addresses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;As others have noted, be careful about putting your email in your &quot;About Me&quot; field if you are concerned about unwanted email contact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't *think* there's any data being collected on the address scrapers, but I can't say for sure since I'm not an SE employee." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18008" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2678" RevisionGUID="40841b5c-227a-434c-a2b4-e4a2fd932b96" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="It only took a year to answer this, but I found the answer! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[It's ordered by your reputation.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/85872/149432) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Presumably, sites where you have the most reputation are the ones you want to access most frequently." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18009" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2683" RevisionGUID="66f17bb3-1e6a-409f-b4e5-cf40b7d17ed9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The discrepancy between the front page and the questions page comes from the fact they are not, and are not meant to be, one in the same. One is meant as **a general landing page that gives a taste of the site** - it has an excerpt of questions along with a much more occupied sidebar that includes meta, ads, and chat (slightly different for beta sites). Above all, this is the page that almost any new user will first land on. Meanwhile, **the questions list is just focused on questions**, and also meant to access the whole set of questions. It's geared more towards the power users or at least those who have gotten a taste of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, onto the parts of your screencapture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Selection of elements&#xD;&#xA;The front page isn't any of those sections. It stands to reason that highlighting any of them would be misrepresentative of its function. It is not the Questions section because it only has an *excerpt* of the questions, and at the bottom it even tells you to go to the Questions section to see more. On the actual Questions section, you'd just get pagination navigation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Different sort orders&#xD;&#xA;This is because of the goal of each of the sections is different. Remember, the front page is only there to show you the recent activity on the site as an excerpt. Its focus on activity is why the timestamp links to the most recent activity on the question, and also why all of its sort options (`active`, `featured`, and all the hotness variants, as well as Stack Overflow's `interesting`) are focused on activity level. It's all geared towards the illustration of &quot;What's happening now?&quot;. What questions just got posted, what just got answered, what cool bounties are available right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Questions section on the other hand, it is meant to give you access to the full library of questions. So it has things like `votes`, `faq`, and `unanswered` which are measured across all of the site's history. It also has the `newest` sort and pagination on its `active` and `featured` sorts to aid in seeing the complete picture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Redundancy of Unanswered&#xD;&#xA;Originally, the questions section didn't have an `unanswered` filter - adding it has proven beneficial to the ability to browse and search through it. There had even been plans to [completely phase out the top-level &quot;Unanswered&quot; navigation in favor of &quot;Review&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84693/eeeek-i-sense-an-eeeek-question-about-missing-a-unanswered-tab). It's a recognized point of text duplication that we'll probably fix down the road.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In summary, the rationale is that we have two separate goals to accomplish, which is why we have two separate pages. Their designs are intended to work with the intents of those pages. Is it necessarily perfect? Perhaps not. It's open to change now and then (I reassert the aforementioned plan to phase out the Unanswered section). But here's at least the rationale of the current design pattern." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18010" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2686" RevisionGUID="1dc45132-3630-40b6-93b6-aac3df65bbe6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Yes it does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, unless you [explicitly tell the highlighter which language it is][1] by including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- language: lang-cpp --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;at the start of your code snippet, it uses the tags to decide which language the code is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you've tagged the question [tag:html] and [tag:css] it's going to assume that the code is either HTML or CSS, not C++.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So either retag the question or use the language hint.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/981/syntax-highlighting-language-hints" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18011" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2706" RevisionGUID="ddfd2c07-4955-4408-aa57-f078b3775de8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="[One of your answers][1], the one with the 2 upvotes, is on a question that was made [community wiki][2] before you answered (or before you got any upvotes). You don't earn or lose rep for those - but you can still earn badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further investigating, the question was made community wiki on [Nov 1 at 23:06][3], and you answered on Nov 2 at 10:21, so it was automatically turned to community wiki, as shown in the [revision history][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But it says &quot;21 answers&quot; and I think the limit is 30.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The limit [here is 15][5]. 30 is the limit at [StackOverflow][6], and can be different at different sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/117440/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117243/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117440/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1596/the-15-answer-cw-conversion-really-sucks&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18012" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2708" RevisionGUID="646fbe82-5c69-474d-a01b-83168cf3c74f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the active page and the homepage, the avatar is of the one that last modified the question, not necessarily the original asker. Modified can mean a number of things, an edit to the question or any of its answers, a new answer, closing the question, making it [community wiki][2] (automatically or by hand), etc&lt;sup&gt;(?)&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, when visiting the newest page you are explicitly asking for the questions to be ordered on when they where asked, so it makes a little bit more sense&lt;sup&gt;(?)&lt;/sup&gt; to show the original asker's avatar.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the answers count, the question has found a new home at [StackOverflow][3], and all its answers followed the migration, so essentially zero answers here. They exist there now, and not here. The same goes with any downvotes to the question, they don't follow the migration, kind of a fresh start. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the way it is. I don't necessarily like it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/E1ONm.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8583017/how-do-i-resolve-an-expected-expression-before-unsigned-error" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18013" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2784" RevisionGUID="dac0be3c-1017-46ef-a326-0b393e51c060" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Initially I was going to suggest that migrating questions that are more on topic to PMSE than here, was actually a good thing and it would help PMSE kick off as a full site sooner. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then I found a [couple][1] [of][2] MSO discussions that seem to support your view. PMSE is not doing that bad, according to my interpretation of [the stats][3], but I wouldn't say it's doing particurarly well either. So, at this point I'm rather confused :) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it would be easier to clarify if we want to migrate to beta sites first, and discuss PMSE later. Sites that somehow overlap with PSE will keep popping up, and any stance should be adjustable, but let's clarify that part first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When (and if) PMSE comes out of beta, I'd prefer it if we migrated all non programmers specific questions there, and limit our PM scope to questions that can *only* be answered from a programming perspective. But that's a future discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84405/migrating-project-management-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/113427/to-migrate-or-not-to-migrate&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackexchange.com/sites?expand=true" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18014" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2833" RevisionGUID="e5fe09fa-b5cf-4ba6-83d8-ef7e6d8b46ba" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Although I have no idea if that's what causing the issue, IE7 is [not _fully_ supported][1]. The (somewhat) [official policy on browser support][2] is: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We support current and previous versions (and possibly previous-previous version) of all popular web browsers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - IE&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Chrome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Safari&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Firefox&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Opera&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Where &quot;popular&quot; means &quot;has some reasonable amount of market share&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, right now IE8 (previous) and IE9 (current stable) are the versions officially supported, and IE7 specific issues will probably never be resolved. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As IE10 Platform Preview 4 was released in November, I think you should start considering browsing StackExchange with Chrome or Safari, since I'm guessing you have a pretty good reason to not upgrade IE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/71208/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/56161/which-browsers-are-officially-supported-and-what-else-do-i-need/56192#56192" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18015" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2854" RevisionGUID="2069c183-1d75-4c6f-88af-3e28c7948720" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Well, if there is a trend, it might be [my fault][1]!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Insofar I've rejected only two edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. One that only [removed the automated duplicate notification][2],&#xD;&#xA; 2. A weird one that revised *only* two words, that where referenced in a comment to the question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those where too minor, but obviously also otherwise problematic. But I can't really say I happened upon really minor edits. For argument's sake, here's a few examples I'd consider too minor:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Links that don't add anything valuable, an example would be someone adding Amazon links to [this answer][3].&#xD;&#xA; - Spelling &amp; grammar corrections on a post that has a lot more of such errors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question I would ask myself, if I happened upon those is if they where made in good faith. The Amazon links I would probably reject, but the minor spelling &amp; grammar corrections I would improve, or if lacking the time I would simply approve. To my mind, these edits would be from someone not very confident with his/her English but stll eager to contribute in any way (s)he could, and I don't mind that. But I wouldn't mind anyone rejecting them either, and if such a rejection ever made it to Meta, I would defend it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Special cases that I would reject outright, would be minor edits on old posts. If someone is on a badge run for [Strunk &amp; White](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/12/strunk-white) and / or [Archaeologist](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/92/archaeologist) and spamming the front page with minor edits, it wouldn't be very nice. Assuming I noticed repeated such edits from the same user, I would flag one of his posts for moderation attention, and continue my own run towards the elusive [Marshal][4] badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for tags: Retagging is possible at a lower rep threshold. If it's an edit that's mostly retagging I'd assume the user was going to do that originally, but just went ahead and capitalized those I's as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recently found out that suggested edits on StackOverflow [require approval from two users][5]. To be honest I would prefer that would be the case here as well, only if for the process to be peer reviewed, as is (almost) everything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2588/are-micro-edits-on-new-posts-insignificant&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2816/should-we-reject-edits-that-remove-the-automatic-duplicate-notification&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124109/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-design-patterns/124114#124114&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/94/marshal&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119232/why-cant-i-edit-a-question-answer-after-i-voted-approve-in-review-suggested-edi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18016" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2856" RevisionGUID="ae930329-6469-4963-abc6-9680d069f5e7" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="As an extension to this previous question - [Should our FAQ contain a list of what's off topic and if so what should that list contain?][1], can we add two categories of questions that are often asked by new users but not on topic :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **&quot;coding homework&quot; questions** - [recent question][2] / [Recent discussion about homework tag][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specific enough questions can be migrated to [StackOverfow][4]. They accept coding homework questions with this politic as the tag description explains :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Homework means the asker is requesting help with school homework. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lets potential answerers know that they should guide the student in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solving the problem, rather than simply showing the complete answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means people shouldn't answer directly a question that looks like homework before migration. But I don't know how to enforce that (in the FAQ ?). Any ideas are welcome on that subject, and may be part of another question if it proves extensive =) (There is an [extensive discussion about how to answer homework questions on Meta-SO][5])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **personalized lesson plan / school guidance** - `What courses should I follow/ What should I start with to learn X with my specific background` - [recent question][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same idea as career questions. If it generalized enough, why not. If it's too localized, it's off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also close to this point :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;[and is not about...] what language you should learn next, including&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which technology is better&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But people seems to miss the point that &quot;part of a language&quot; is about the same as a language itself, and will mostly end up with a generic answer that looks like &quot;You should learn everything about this language&quot;. For example those questions :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What do I need to learn of C# for ASP.NET?][7] &#xD;&#xA;- [What do you need to learn to become professional ASP.NET programmer?][8] &#xD;&#xA;- [Should I be a professional in C# programming in order to build good web applications using ASP.NET?][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ends up with the same generic answer : &quot;Be the best as you can in C#&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-lis&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130468/lottery-program&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/homework&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130454/what-are-some-ways-to-get-started-learning-java-and-where-should-i-go-from-ther&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130080/what-do-i-need-to-learn-of-c-for-asp-net&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44701/what-do-you-need-to-learn-to-become-professional-asp-net-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62170/should-i-be-a-professional-in-c-programming-in-order-to-build-good-web-applicat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18017" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2857" RevisionGUID="ca695a99-c6a7-4c73-899c-b6b49f4cfce6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I don't think we need to make a special mention of homework in the FAQ: if it's about a specific implementation, it's off-topic here anyway whether ot not it's homework. If it's about a conceptual problem, it's on-topic here even if it's homework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where askers run into trouble is when they expect people to help them from start to finish without providing anything (or very little) up-front. To that end, I think FAQ covers it already, under [What kind of questions should I *not* ask here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding Stack Overflow's sanction of the [tag:homework] tag: it's due to [baggage from the time before the Great Meta-tag Culling](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/60422/is-homework-an-exception) that has never been removed. Much like they [hold onto the &quot;Good C++ books&quot;-esque questions and such like grim death](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/112910/do-not-lock-old-questions). Thankfully, while our baggage is great, we don't have to deal with this specific Stack Overflow curiosity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, I'd rather we treat homework questions on their merits like we do every other question. It's not important how the asker came to ask the question, but whether they define the problem clearly and succinctly and provided enough information and background on what they've done so far in order to help them. In reality, we get a *ton* of questions that are worse quality than many homework questions, and we don't make a special dispensation for them, so why homework specifically?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, although it's not directly related to homework tags, I would support making it more explicit that this site is not for questions about specific coded implementations. Something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [and is not about...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * A specific problem you're having with your source code (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which would cover all the homework—and non-homework—questions we get that really ought to have been asked on Stack Overflow first.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18018" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2894" RevisionGUID="ae613bbe-15d4-44a2-ae8a-a402aa6c8dff" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="We've had [recent](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2856/addendum-to-off-topic-themes-in-the-faq) [discussions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag) here on meta regarding how to handle homework questions, but I would like to turn the discussion around a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of discussing _how_ to handle these kinds of questions, I'd like to discuss _if_ Programmers.SE can be a viable option for students seeking help. [Robert Harvey](http://stackoverflow.com/users/102937/robert-harvey) brought this question up on [Meta.SO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119976/how-can-stack-overflow-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments) and I'd like to put it in the context of P.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Can Programmers.SE be used by students to get help with their class assignments, and if so, how can it be done in a way that respects the P.SE community? What rules and regulations would the students need to follow?_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_How well would P.SE accomodate the influx of students, each having questions about the same homework assignment?_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: Please feel free to edit the wording or formatting as needed.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18019" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2926" RevisionGUID="c965d89e-c2f2-4bb5-b668-518648ac7c8f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="&gt; do any of the moderator candidates intend to moderate differently than the incumbents&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well to me above is not of a major importance thing. My primary expectations of moderator actions are as expressed [in one of the answers at &quot;big&quot; Meta](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/119089/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **something that a mod needs to develop by themselves - quick, competent and independent judgement of a situation**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Compared to above, consistency plays rather secondary role. I mean, as long as moderator is capable to justify their decision in the face of community review (eg here at Meta) I wouldn't mind if this decision has a personal touch.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* With above said, I would also like to make it perfectly clear that I am against total dismissal of consistency expectation. I believe that in (rare) cases when moderator actions [fail to meet primary expectations](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2JQ86.jpg) - in cases like that concerns of consistency, shared understanding, majority agreement and such can make a perfect ground for respective _corrective actions_." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18020" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2949" RevisionGUID="753d7754-deb3-4b13-939c-c10c3937e94e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This isn't the first time the name of the site has been questioned. See [here][1] and [here][2]. Part of the confusion/problem comes from the origin of the site. Originally, it was supposed to be a home to those fun questions about programmers that were closed on Stack Overflow. However, that wasn't a good fit for the Stack Exchange site. So this site became focused on the more subjective, non-coding questions that are faced by those in the software development profession (see here for a [discussion about software engineering][3]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that the name is a poor reflection of what the site has become. However, the FAQ and Meta discussions, not the name of the site, is the true reflection of topicality and appropriate questions. I would suspect that most professions have found this site to be more helpful than a site about programmers/programmer culture - I know I have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do also agree with Yannis's comment - changing the (domain) name will probably have an impact on SEO and the automated indexing. That's far outside my area of expertise, but the great thing about SE sites is how quickly they are indexed and appear in searches - I've searched for additional information to include in posts that I know exists, and come across the question I was answering as a top hit. Doing anything that compromises this would probably be a bad idea, for the Good of the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think the best thing for us to do would be to improve the FAQ and identify key Meta discussions that went into defining the site. Something to be careful of (and Yannis and I had this discussion) is increasing the size of the FAQ - it's already long compared to other sites. Ultimately, the FAQ needs to clearly define the scope (it does an OK/solid job right now) regardless of what this site is called or looks like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose there are a number of questions to ask, and I think a Stack Exchange employee would be the one to have to answer them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is it technically feasible to change the name and domain name of a Stack Exchange site, while preserving all of the content?&#xD;&#xA;2. What damage, particularly to the indexing and SEO of the site, would be done by changing the domain name? Would any damage be done by simply changing the name and look of the site without changing the domain name?&#xD;&#xA;3. Is it acceptable to have a site name that is different than the site's domain name? There are some examples of minor differences, such as &quot;cstheory.se.com&quot; having the full name of Theoretical Computer Science, but there is no precidence for having a domain name &quot;programmers.se.com&quot; and a site name of Software Development (as an example).&#xD;&#xA;4. Is it possible, feasible, and appropriate to totally rebrand a site post-launch to reflect a change in direction?&#xD;&#xA;5. Would doing any of the above set a precident for other current or future SE sites that is inappropriate?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18021" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2967" RevisionGUID="04b5396f-b14c-4171-a794-dba2fa79d291" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="As a sidenote, a large number of deleted questions may get you [question banned][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Are deleted questions taken into account too?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Yes. It's not a problem to have deleted questions. But if a large percentage of your questions are deleted by yourself or the community, then apparently they were not suitable for the site. But meanwhile they might have wasted time from users who read them, or even answered them. Therefore deleted questions might have an effect on the filter, among many other secret factors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Beware that an account with a high public reputation might very well have many deleted questions, including auto-deleted old low-score questions, all of which are only visible to moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously, you have nothing to worry about, all your questions, even the very few closed ones, are highly up voted - the algorithm may be secret(ish) but I don't think it would be so blatantly naive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18022" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2972" RevisionGUID="bd1481d3-23ff-4e30-84ea-336e0081829a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This has been a recurring problem since the site's inception: in reality, Programmers.SE [was originally conceived](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/64046/149432) to *be* the dumping ground for Stack Overflow, and even though that purpose was [dropped a couple of weeks after the site went into private beta](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/350/8), old habits die hard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past year, there have been a few things that have been done to combat the problem:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Migrations used to only require a first-past-the-post method of resolving: for example, if 2 people voted to migrate to Programmers, 1 voted to close as off-topic, 1 voted as not-constructive, and 1 voted as too-localized, it'd be migrated. Now, migrations require 4 people to agree to the migration before it happens. Otherwise, it gets closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We Programmers mods, much to the annoyance of them I'm sure, have worked with/conditioned the Stack Overflow mods to not migrate anything to us without checking with us first. So, any mod-led migration from Stack Overflow was likely approved by us and you can blame us if the question's bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, we can't prevent 4 people agreeing to use the migration path to us as their dumping ground, and our rejection rate from Stack Overflow hovers [around 32%](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been a number of requests to remove us as the migration path, or to provide some mechanism to &quot;approve&quot; or &quot;reject&quot; migrations:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73382/149432)&#xD;&#xA;* [A way to cut down on the inappropriate migrations](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84846/a-way-to-cut-down-on-inappropriate-migrations)&#xD;&#xA;* [Allow diamond moderators to reverse question migrations?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/35744/allow-diamond-moderators-to-reverse-question-migrations)&#xD;&#xA;* [Require migrated questions to be accepted by the destination site's moderators](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73391/require-migrated-questions-to-be-accepted-by-the-destination-sites-moderators)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to date, only small changes to the requirements for community migration (like the 4-person agreement, and having tags in common on the destination site) have been made. I have heard rumors that SE is planning to tackle migrations in a big way this year, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in lieu of some fundamental change in how migrations work, I think education and proactive moderation is the best strategy:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you have 10k+ rep on Stack Overflow, check the [Review queue](http://stackoverflow.com/review) for questions getting &quot;off topic; belongs on Programmers&quot; votes. It only takes two people to short circuit a migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Check [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) often. Every once in a while, someone gets the idea that the best way to clean up Stack Overflow is to migrate everything in a tag (usually [career-development]) to Programmers: we've been able to put a stop to a couple of those projects by [voicing our displeasure there](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/119725/149432) and explaining what is and isn't on-topic here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18023" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2981" RevisionGUID="7efd457e-c6fe-4c18-8a6e-18a8c1c91cf2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="For the [sake of sanity](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/120339/when-did-stack-overflow-start-advertising-for-wikipedia), we recently [switched from using full-blown Markdown](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119684/what-markdown-formatting-features-are-available-for-bounty-remarks) to using MarkdownMini (that's the version used in comments and in chat) in post notices.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While full Markdown wraps (almost) everything in `&lt;p&gt;` tags, MarkdownMini does not (since there aren't really paragraphs in comments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The style rules in the CSS however expect the text to be in `&lt;p&gt;` tags. In the next built, that expectation will be met again." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18024" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2990" RevisionGUID="3cfbd470-8cf5-4762-86d5-f48a73425fd4" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The following is a &quot;digest&quot; version of the [2012 Moderator Election Town Hall Chat](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2922/2012-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-tuesday-2200-utc-5pm-est). The format, [as described on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests), is one *answer* to this question *for every question* asked in the Town Hall, containing all the candidate's answers to that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**To view the digest chronologically, please sort the answers by &quot;oldest&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have questions or comments about this, **please do not answer this question** as the answers are designed to be used for the questions from the Town hall itself. Instead, please ask on [the parent question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests) or in [the Town Hall Discussion Room](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/352/town-hall-discussion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see any corrections which need to be made to this digest, or if you were a candidate who was unable to attend the town hall and would like your answers included, please @Rebecca or @TimStone [in the chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/251/programmers-town-hall-chat) and let us know!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18025" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3016" RevisionGUID="94ac6a3b-306e-4078-97f6-730af477c5a9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Andrew, sorry I missed that, questions were appearing very fast and yours is the only one that the whole message is not bold. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I wrote in my nomination stub:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If anything, my participation as a user has been highly visible. As a moderator I will take a step back, encourage users to take ownership of the community and intervene only when necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not up to the moderators to ensure that your voice is heard, or even shape the community. That's completely up to you and every other user, and the moderators should intervene only when absolutely necessary. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just yesterday we appointed our [Blog Overlord][1], Jarrod Nettles. Why him? Well, if you take a look at [blog related Meta discussions][2], you'll notice that he has been pushing for the blog since early on. To be fair, Thomas Owens started the discussion back in June, and would be perfectly capable of taking point, as would quite a few other members. But that doesn't really matter, we needed a point man, Jarrod was around yesterday when we had the discussion, case closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The moderators, in this case Mark Trapp, only stepped in after there was clear community consensus for the blog, plus a comprehensive list of topics and a sufficient list of volunteers. He contacted the team, [reported back][3], and in a couple of hours we went from having no idea of whether the blog will kick off to [discussing logistics][4].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's pretty close to how things should work. You may consider this a lame example, because there wasn't really anyone opposing the blog, but I think my point still gets across: Participation is key and it's not the moderators' job to hand hold anyone. As a user I have been extremely active on Meta, and I've explored ways to get [even more people to participate][5]. As a moderator, if elected, I will try to encourage people to do exactly what I've been doing so far, but that can only happen if people actually care to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't really handle dissenting opinions any differently than any other user, the voting system is perfectly suited for that. The only reason I would wear the moderator's hat on Meta would be when discussions are getting out of hand, rude or otherwise offensive. Other than that, I'd be yet another user, and it would be completely up to the community to decide if my opinions have merit or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2980/blog-volunteers-unite&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2979/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3214146#3214146&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119817/how-can-we-get-people-to-participate-on-meta" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18027" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3042" RevisionGUID="69cdb3aa-c5d5-4874-b205-f5c7b544c741" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The [canonical answer to this is on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi), which is where the link in the notice takes you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An automatic filter is in place to ban questions from IP addresses or accounts with a history of extremely poor questions. To avoid bypassing the filter its internal rules are a secret, but it is partly based on downvotes cast by other members of the communities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Once you have posted too many bad quality questions, you will be banned from asking more, and see the error message. You can then still use the site, except for asking questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at [your profile](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/30160/dave), you've asked 6 questions, only one of which has been upvoted, 4 of which were closed, and 3 of which were deleted. You've provided few answers, and only one of which was up-voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you'd like to ask questions in the future, focus on helping others first by providing high-quality answers and taking [the feedback you've received on your past closures](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3029/8) to heart.  While the details of the low-quality ban are purposefully kept secret, creating a trend of high-quality answers generally will help towards getting it removed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18028" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3050" RevisionGUID="ad9bf1e6-d163-4d7f-987b-719abf8b4ae9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Moderators do have access to analytics, [including referral data](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/114257/149432), but this information is considered confidential information and is likely never to be made available to the public.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you ask a moderator in chat, we can see about providing glimpses of that on a case-by-case basis." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18029" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3052" RevisionGUID="2ea5788a-865a-45e6-82d1-2597b10f88ee" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The message is a system message and, as such, cannot be dismissed by individual users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been brought up before [on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64118/allow-us-an-exit-hatch-to-dismiss-the-system-message-notification-bar) and has always been declined." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18030" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3058" RevisionGUID="9b01ecbd-96cc-4421-91a5-a064a923a2bf" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I [posted this to Meta Stack Overflow when it was asked there](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/121291/149432), but it's probably good to have it here on this question as well. In general, understanding the meaning of well-known programming terminology used in names would be on-topic for Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is a delegate? What things count as delegates?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, understanding the appropriate use of design patterns (which would likely indirectly lead to answering a question about naming) would be on-topic for Programmers as well: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm working on X problem: would using the observer pattern be the most appropriate way to handle it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And finding the correct terminology to describe a concept is *usually* on-topic on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've used this pattern that looks similar to other code I've seen, but I'm not sure how to refer to it so I don't look dumb in front of my coworkers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But many of these types of &quot;concept naming&quot; questions get too far into bike-shedding and neologisms and thus aren't constructive:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can you think of a name to call this pattern I just made up?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Likewise, naming advice for your classes, methods, et al is not constructive anywhere, including Programmers. It ultimately rests on who's reading the code and what the internal naming conventions for the project are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  What should I call this method that does X?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subsequently, understanding people's code would not be on-topic for Programmers (or Stack Overflow) either as it requires private knowledge about the intent of a person we don't know:   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why did my coworker name this method `punchFluffyBunnies()`?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18031" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3095" RevisionGUID="4e764566-63b2-45e0-bbbf-bd7b003fb59d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I'm not going to take a stance on whether these questions are welcome on Programmers Stack Exchange. However, consider this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * If the questions are worth having on the site, then you should not block them from gaining new answers, or from being commented on, or from being improved through edition.&#xD;&#xA; * If the questions are not worth having on the site, then they should be removed from the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Locking is not at all appropriate for questions that do not belong here, even if it was once thought they did. Locking was practiced on Stack Overflow as a **temporary** measure while the site's scope was settling. It has unfortunately lasted longer than it should have, but really, do not take example from that. Locking is appropriate as a temporary measure to prevent content wars. Locked questions with useful information buried inside dozens of answers do not help anyone. The information should be in answers to focused, searchable questions. Make up your mind: either the questions are useful, and then they should be **maintained** (hence open); or they are not, and then they should be **deleted**. Locking bad questions just for historical value makes no sense: you're [framing garbage](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/112910/do-not-lock-old-questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![framed garbage](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xYpi3.jpg &quot;framed garbage&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to retain the present content — sure, it probably does have nuggets of wisdom if you dig deep enough — a questions and answers platform is not the right place. Take it offsite! I hear there are plenty of companies who'll host your content for a small monetary consideration.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18032" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3107" RevisionGUID="ede7b34d-dcda-4f1f-a25a-4b1f127a0817" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="You did the correct thing: [expletives are verboten here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/22233/149432), except in a [purely academic context](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/q/253/2512) (e.g., if you asking about the etymology of one on [English.SE](http://english.stackexchange.com)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Expletives are not acceptable behavior on meta or any other Stack Overflow site. If you can't effectively communicate what you need to say without resorting to lowest common denominator cursing, then keep it to yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you use expletives, you will get a warning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you continue to use expletives, you will be placed on [timed suspension](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/a-day-in-the-penalty-box/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whether or not you agree with the belief you can effectively communicate without cursing, you've identified the practical reason why cursing is more-or-less banned on Stack Exchange: overactive internet filters in people's workplaces, when this site is meant to be used as a professional resource.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see it in a post, always edit it out. If you see it in a comment, flag it so it can be edited or deleted by a moderator." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18033" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3154" RevisionGUID="bd8ac1ee-447a-42bd-b671-b1ff9ed1effe" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="According to [your profile](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/34364/jae?tab=activity), you only have 93 suggested edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Jae's Profile][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A number of those were also rejected, which would get you to the 79 edits listed on the Review page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the future, also keep in mind that not every edit [counts towards the editor badges](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/442/what-kind-of-edits-contribute-to-the-editor-badges):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - does not include edits to your own posts&#xD;&#xA;- does not include edits to tags &#xD;&#xA;- community-wiki posts are eligible&#xD;&#xA;- tag wiki posts are eligible&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To count for S&amp;W/Copy Editor, the edit must cover the title, the body or both.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Dfop5.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18034" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3175" RevisionGUID="75f9293e-f047-40e0-a56c-f7507a78e819" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="As far as I can tell moderator who declined your flag made two mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First mistake was not catching that [question is off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136082/java-interview-fundamentals) indeed. I believe it's minor because topicality at Programmers is [quite slippery](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3184/31260).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second mistake per my understanding is being too easy at casting decline to [your](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2471/rob-z) flag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Clarifications for declining flags given in **[September 2011 Newsletter](http://moderator.stackexchange.com/2011/09/september-2011-newsletter/)** of SE Community Moderator Blog look pretty straightforward:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; #Flags Too Often Marked `[declined]`  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Marking a flag `[declined]` was designed to deter serial abusers of the flagging system, but we find that this “slap on the wrist” is being used more often than is beneficial.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Flags should be closed as `[helpful]` under most circumstances. If you feel strongly that a question was flagged in bad faith, it is okay to mark it `[declined]`. But try to err on the side of clearing as `[helpful]` whenever the user is trying to be genuinely helpful, _even if you do not necessarily act on the flag_...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness - given that you both cast a close vote and flagged, I can imagine that moderator considered this as _abuse_ but I've yet to see from credible sources if this indeed qualifies as such.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;update&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Follow-up question at SO Meta:  &#xD;&#xA;  http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/123073/is-it-an-abuse-of-flagging-system-to-both-cast-a-close-vote-and-flag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18035" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3189" RevisionGUID="a70e22ee-daea-4227-81e8-a1984decbcb2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="**Background on polling questions:** Stack Exchange by it's very nature to a voting Q&amp;A site, which is to say every question is a poll. The best explanation of the difference between a &quot;polling&quot; question and a SE question might be found in [Aarobot answer here][1]; which is referenced by [Jeff Atwood here][2] on the Stack Overflow blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Question this question is about:** [Google Code Search Replacement][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here's why I do not believe it's a poll:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Question is looking for a replacement for a now discontinued programing  tool, [Google Code Search][4].&#xD;&#xA; - Google Code Search's is a well defined solution, and to search for a replacement is not subjective; meaning the best answer would be an exact clone of the tool.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I might be wrong, I believe [Yannis Rizos comment on an answer][5] points to my observations above: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; provide the link for reference. Especially since you are the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; co-founder, you should expand the answer a bit and tell us why your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; service is a good alternative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meaning for a good answer it must be in the context of being an alternative to Google Code Search, and every answer is not as good as another answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/75179/152184&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114629/google-code-search-replacement&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.google.com/codesearch&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/130588/4942" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18036" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3199" RevisionGUID="526cd14b-fa52-474c-b013-3da507261e9c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I have high hopes for [this meta proposal suggesting a read-only archive site for good off-topic questions][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd suggest going there and casting your vote to support it :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/122249/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18037" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3219" RevisionGUID="9a5c3c02-e418-4196-b172-ba9c06d8093a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="You can easily take care of this yourself. See [the instructions here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22223/how-do-i-remove-an-openid-or-login):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Open your profile page&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. Click the &quot;my logins&quot; link near the top&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3. Click the little (x) to the right of the login you wish to remove." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18038" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3224" RevisionGUID="4ea80f07-48d6-4a7c-8fa7-8e676df81bb8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I have [posted a question on meta][3] asking to lower standards for re-opening questions on smaller SE sites, and wish to provide a link here because the question was generated from the frustration I feel towards being unable to re-open older questions here on Programmers, even after significant edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please visit the question and vote to support if you agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize, currently users get a **[single re-open vote for the lifetime of a question][1]**, and that **[re-open vote will expire][2]** in 4 days. This 4-day limit can be extended if someone else votes to re-open within that 4 days, however this only resets the 4-day timer and once it expires, all votes expire at a rate of 1-per-day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've made a few suggestions in the MSO question that would make it easier for smaller SE communities to reopen their questions, although the one I'd like to see implemented the most would be to [refund re-open votes if they don't actually get used][4], so users can participate in other re-open attempts at a later date if the question gets more attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just a FYI, I have been part of this site since beta and do not ever remember seeing an older question get re-opened by the community. I have seen a handful of newer questions get re-opened by getting the 5 votes needed, however I have never seen an older one get re-opened without moderator intervention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/124077/158605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/123784/158605&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/124100/158605&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/99333/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18039" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3241" RevisionGUID="76b09dcb-c57b-4a1d-a792-6567fafab3fa" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Some closed questions [get deleted by the system over time][1]. At 30 days, unlocked and unanswered questions with a negative score get deleted. At 365 days, questions with a score of 0 or less (or 1 with a deleted owner), no answers, not locked, has limited comments, and a small view count will get automatically deleted. The checks are not run daily, but weekly, so there might be a few days between it hitting the point for automatic deletion and it actually getting deleted automatically.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here on Programmers, we also have the [Structured Tag Clean-Up Initiative][2], which deals with poor tags on the site. Part of this process is also identifying questions within the tag that can not be salvaged and deleting them manually. However, this only addresses one tag at a time. Also, there are closed questions in good tags that are both inappropriate for this site and unsalvagable - these won't get caught by STCI.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed is meant as a temporary state. Most questions should not go from closed to deleted quickly. The purpose of closed is to give the community a chance to turn the question into something good, while preventing answers. It's much easier to save a question with no or few answers than one with a lot of answers - edits to a question that invalidate answers don't make sense. The reason is that invalidating answers would lead to answers getting downvoted because the answerer was unaware the question changed and didn't delete or change their answer - these would be unwarranted downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, perhaps someone could build a Data Explorer query to show all closed questions, ordered by date (oldest first) and then votes (most negative first). Perhaps an additional piece would be to restrain it to those questions that are at least 3 or 4 months old. Questions that show up in this query could be targets for immediate editing or deletion. I'm not sure if we want to stack this clean up initiative on top of STCI, but it might give us some data to work with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78048/auto-deleting-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year/92006#92006&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=stci" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18040" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3256" RevisionGUID="a466697a-3d66-4cbe-82d5-b4af02a9c8f1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I am concerned as it seems to affect all sites, not just ours. I don't like the fact that questions that aren't the best advertisement for the site being Tweeted or posted to Google+.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been raised by moderators several times in the past and we have be told that changes to the way questions are Tweeted are in the pipeline. I thought that there was supposed to be a change where questions with pending close votes weren't Tweeted - but obviously if a question is closed by a single moderator vote that rule won't apply. I will double check what the situation is and report back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm fairly sure that closed questions aren't Tweeted, but that doesn't help if the question is closed *after* it has been publicised.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other request that has been made is to give diamond moderators some control over what questions get Tweeted. At the very least this would give a pair of human eyes on what goes out for a sanity check.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to point out that I rarely close questions without there being at least one moderator flag being raised. My job isn't to trawl the site looking for things to do, but to react to flags and questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A search of Meta (not by me - my meta searches suck) has turned up this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/115722/avoid-tweeting-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears that the bot shouldn't be Tweeting closed questions. The only thing I can think of is that the question has had enough activity to be Tweeted ([the rules are here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/101340/140548)), but the question has also picked up flags as well. We see the flags and close the question but it's out there in the Twitterverse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The sequence will be something like (assuming it doesn't look at flags):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Question gets posted.&#xD;&#xA;2. Question gets flagged.&#xD;&#xA;3. Question gets enough activity to be Tweeted.&#xD;&#xA;4. Question gets close votes.&#xD;&#xA;5. Question gets closed by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it appears that the bot is pimping closed questions. Therefore, it would useful if the bot could look at any existing flags and not Tweet it if there are any. Obviously it won't help if the question gets flagged *after* it's Tweeted, but questions that don't fit tend to get flagged quite quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE 2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've reported this problem on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/124994/the-twitter-bot-should-not-tweet-posts-that-have-flags-on-them) as its clearly Tweeting posts with flags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18041" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3257" RevisionGUID="69574989-4d7c-426f-9f65-9c6cadf366dc" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Yes it is a bit concerning, although 15% is not that much. I went through some of the questions and there is a minor pattern there, several of the closed questions that made it to Twitter were incorrectly migrated from Stack Overflow and they carried upvotes and upvoted answers from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is in the &quot;hot questions&quot; algorithm and as [ChrisF mentioned][1] it affects all sites, not just Programmers. Some things we could do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close questions quicker&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   There seems to be a deep rooted perception that closing questions is a bad thing. It's not, and it should happen fast. Closing is just a peer review mechanism, a signal that a question is a bit problematic and in need of improvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Re-open questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Don't dismiss closed questions, they are not dead. If you feel a question can be re-opened, please try to get it re-opened. Bring it up on chat or Meta, find others that can help. Not every closed question will be re-opened, obviously, but some will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote sensibly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Upvote questions that show research effort, are clear and useful. Don't upvote questions that you feel are interesting / fun but blatantly off topic. Similarly with downvotes, they are a comment to the question, not the person asking the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [A guide to moderating programmers.stackexchange yourself - close voting][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [What's all this about heroic edits?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, we prefer to be called [diamond moderators][4] ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the list of questions, there where flags on all questions, including the three questions that where closed by a single moderator vote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136610/version-number-soup-in-ror-is-grails-better-django&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Typical &quot;which technology is better&quot; question, it could have been closed as off topic. Closed by a user and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136736/online-code-editor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Blatantly off topic question, but borderline on Stack Overflow. Closed by a moderator, and I trust that it was never migrated to SO because the SO mods rejected it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137252/is-it-a-good-idea-to-generate-code-with-the-help-of-your-ide&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as a duplicate by a moderator. This shouldn't really be an issue for someone coming to the site from Twitter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137385/what-do-you-do-when-you-cant-seem-to-understand-a-certain-part-of-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Extremely vague and open ended question, gentle reminder to everyone: Programmers Stack Exchange is not a free for all discussion forum. Closed by a user and a moderator, and it makes me sad that it got as many upvotes as it did (question &amp; answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137372/is-object-oriented-stuff-really-that-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Extremely open ended and argumentative question, comment wars on the question and almost every answer (and a particularly nasty &quot;discussion&quot;, that has since been removed). Closed by a user and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137520/why-do-some-job-posts-say-high-pressure-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Blatantly off topic, typical example of a populist question. Closed by five users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137715/a-class-named-class&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I closed this one because it was getting a bit out of hand, and there wasn't any need for further answers. It had three re-open votes, and I've just re-opened it with a notice for longer answers. If it starts gathering poor answers again, I won't hesitate to close it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137794/offshoring-a-software-project-conflict-resolution&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Very open ended. Closed by two users and a moderator. Potentially salvageable, but it requires a lot of work, and OP seems satisfied with the existing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137864/how-long-did-it-take-you-to-get-kernel-programming-down&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Open ended and quite difficult to understand what it's actually about. Closed by five users. I don't understand why this was tweeted, it's a zero scored question with no answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137896/software-engineer-already-in-late-thirties-would-i-have-trouble-finding-a-new&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Duplicate, closed by four users and a moderator. Same as (3).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137994/does-object-oriented-programming-really-model-the-real-world&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I closed this one because it started gathering answers that re-iterated earlier answers. It's not a question that will be deleted soon (if ever). It deserves the community's attention (wink).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138132/list-of-the-really-big-and-really-small-discrepancies-with-js-in-the-big-5-brows&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Vague, overly broad, argumentative and mostly off topic. Closed by five users, I wonder if the fact that the single answer was negatively voted should have prevented tweeting it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138229/python-is-slowly-replacing-c-in-universities-does-this-move-degrade-the-quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Vague, speculative, argumentative, wrong. Close by five users, I suspect it got twitted because of the highly upvoted answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is worth reiterating that there where flags on all questions, including ones closed by a single moderator. I will keep an eye on the one I re-opened, hopefully answerers will not fail to read the notice for yet another time...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3256/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75189/who-are-the-diamond-moderators-and-what-is-their-role" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18042" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3292" RevisionGUID="66ea0719-5309-4ce8-a4b1-2faed0188a47" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I found [this post][1] on SO's meta site, and since the question was about meta participation on P.SE, I thought I'd post the same question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to improve meta participation on P.SE's meta site? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/119817/158605&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18043" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3301" RevisionGUID="50fe1585-49a0-4693-81bc-afa54dc269a7" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="A while back I made a suggestion to [either rename the site to match the FAQ, or change the FAQ so it matches the site name][1] to help clear up a lot of the confusion I see over what P.SE is for. That question was asked to see if this idea had any support, and I believe it does judging by the 25 upvotes it currently has, and the [other][2] [questions][3] which were pointed out that ask the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site name is the first, and often only, piece of information a user has to judge our site on. Since we can't change the site's name, this question is to ask **what kind of changes can we make to the FAQ to make it accurately reflect the site name, without going back to the mindless fun this site began as?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see a lot of confusion over the scope of P.SE, and I think [this recent MSO comment][20] sums up what I've seen:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; no one recommends Programmers anymore because it's unclear what the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site's scope is and some of its users disagree strongly with what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others of its users think the site's scope entails&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My suggestions are below. I wanted to post them all together in one answer since they I feel the suggestions make the most sense if you read them in order, but ultimately decided to separate them so we can comment, evaluate, and vote on each suggestion individually. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this would go a long ways towards making the site scope match the site name, and clear up the confusion caused by the current differences. In addition, I am hoping this will help reconcile users from both sides of the site scope argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review and vote on the suggestions, or add your own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/124923/where-in-the-stack-exchange-world-can-i-initiate-a-programming-related-discuss/124927#comment336347_124925" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18044" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3323" RevisionGUID="7f5ad8b0-6fd6-4031-88cb-3e1a435de910" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Unless you have lots of money you cannot self host the Stack Exchange engine. This was tried for SE 1.0 but it didn't work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The business model is built around communities coming to a single location (Stack Exchange) and building within the existing framework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When SE 2.0 (of which Programmers is just one site out of 80+) was started there was no possibility of self hosting, but there have been [comments that indicate](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16054/is-the-stack-exchange-engine-available/16055#16055) that large corporations (we're talking the size of Microsoft, Oracle, etc.) could:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There is a Stack Exchange Enterprise option for internal use. The pricing makes this feasible for large organizations only. You can email team at stackoverflow and your inquiry will be routed to the correct place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you really like the model then check out the list of [Stack Exchange clones](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2267/stack-overflow-clones) on Meta Stack Overflow. You should be able to find one you can install and use." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18045" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3329" RevisionGUID="1de8ba13-87a8-4296-a73c-e049225d6879" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Typically we evaluate questions on research effort and usefulness:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Research effort**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The question shows no research effort at all. It's a curiosity question, which I'm perfectly fine with in general, but that doesn't mean that OP still doesn't have to do at least some minor research prior to asking. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A simple web search for &quot;programming languages semicolon&quot; revealed the [Comparison of programming languages (syntax)][1] and [Syntactic sugar][2] Wikipedia articles that discuss semicolons as terminating characters, and the very interesting [The Semicolon Wars][3] article. The lack of proper terminology (statement terminators) and vagueness of the question tells me that there wasn't any research effort at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Usefulness** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It could be argued that the question would be useful to someone researching language design, but that would be a very weak argument since there's nothing in the question to even hint towards language design and every answer that approached the question from a language design perspective did so in extremely vague terms. Furthermore, even from a language design angle the question is a [typical bikeshed question][4], and amazingly it fits [Wadler's Law][5] perfectly, as it's a question on syntax rather than semantics: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; In any language design, the total time spent discussing a feature in this list is proportional to two raised to the power of its position.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; 0\. Semantics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; 1\. Syntax&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; 2\. Lexical syntax&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; 3\. Lexical syntax of comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, let's take a look at our [FAQ][6]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions should I not ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We _tend to forget_ that part once in a while, but for me it's the most important part of the FAQ, one that clearly indicates that we are not a discussion forum but a Q&amp;A site. The question in question is a great example of why that paragraph is important: It's a barely useful question, no research effort at all, but highly upvoted. However there is no actual problem to be solved, it's a typical discussion oriented question, and even if it wasn't otherwise troublesome it should have been closed as not constructive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which brings us to the notorious [6SG][7]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question itself fails all but the last one. It's simply too short to guide answers in a constructive manner, and although some of the answers are not bad, that has little (if anything) to do with the question. I won't evaluate the answers themselves, because I feel we kinda failed in protecting people from wasting their time in answering a question that clearly doesn't belong to the site, and that's not the answerers fault.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**In conclusion:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I fully support closing the question, and if I wasn't on the road when the question appeared I would have closed it sooner, it's not a type of question I would want to encourage on Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It gathered quite a few upvotes and so did the three top answers, so it's not a question I would delete, but I don't think there's a point in trying to rewrite and re-open as I think it has run it's circle and there's little (if any) chance it will gather any more good answers. &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Further reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [The Trouble With Popularity][8]&#xD;&#xA;- [Parkinson's Law of Triviality][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_languages_%28syntax%29&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_sugar&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/the-semicolon-wars&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/31253/the-bike-shed-problem-and-so&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Wadlers_Law&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18046" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3345" RevisionGUID="f68200fc-7410-4c72-8c1f-7123c0ec1a1f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Small inconsistencies like that are not uncommon, reputation synchronization is not immediate and what you are seeing on your SO profile is probably a cached version.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the missing +4 is a refund from a post that was deleted on March 17, and since there where some [recent changes to reputation regarding deleted posts][1], this might be a bug after all. If your reputation on SO isn't listed correctly in a couple of days, post a comment to this answer so I can notify the developers about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your P.SE reputation is listed correctly on [your SO profile][2] now, so it was caching after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/123319/recent-reputation-history-changes&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/543572/james-drinkard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18047" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3350" RevisionGUID="947e6abb-9802-49a6-af00-5f75c5db7b66" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Studying similar ([faq-proposed](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/faq-proposed/info)) question at SO Meta and especially its accepted answer helped me to make my mind on that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Where can I ask a “how to get started” question on a Stack Exchange site with respect to technology?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/121705/where-can-i-ask-a-how-to-get-started-question-on-a-stack-exchange-site-with-re)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...tag wiki's is perhaps the best we can do.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the wiki for a topic doesn't already contain this information - links to web sites, books, tutorials etc. then perhaps we should be making all efforts to ensure that it does...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Above brought peace and light into my life.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if I can imagine an answer making good tag wiki, it means question is OK to me. &lt;sup&gt;assuming it is on-topic&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, I take a deeper look into the question and try to find out if there's something wrong with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for [the question you referred to](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84739/what-is-the-preferable-mobile-android-iphone-game-development-tool-for-a-c-ne), well, it doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While casting close vote I have been choosing between not constructive and too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Per re-reading [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) I was rather inclined to vote for _too localized_ but the statement &quot;Which development tool is widely used now?&quot; made me feel that _not constructive_ would be a better match.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Understanding scope of the question helps to find out if it's appropriate or not. _&quot;I am a newbie, how do I get started writing new programming language?&quot;_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[FAQ discourages](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask &quot;`What kind of questions should I not ask here?'&quot;) questions that are too wide:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an _entire book_ that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that _not constructive_ close reasons description matches above with _&quot;this question will likely solicit... extended discussion&quot;_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![https://i.stack.imgur.com/BWAjl.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Not a real question_ can also match in blatant cases, with _&quot;overly broad&quot;_ close reason. _&quot;Need help getting started with programming.&quot;_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/BWAjl.jpg &quot;FAQ quidance about question scope&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18049" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3415" RevisionGUID="54a826be-83cb-421b-a942-d4a6853bd98e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The timeline of this was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* June 3, 2010 — [NPR proposal][1] created in Area51&#xD;&#xA;* September 1, 2010 — NPR enters private beta as &quot;Programmers&quot; (will continue to call it NPR for the sake of distinguishing it from the current site)&#xD;&#xA;* September 7, 2010 — NPR enters public beta&#xD;&#xA;* September 13, 2010 — MSO starts to grapple with how bad NPR is [when trying to dupe Software Engineering proposals to it](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* September 15, 2010 — We on Meta Programmers.SE [start to deal with that perception](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* September 17, 2010 — SE [makes a blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/) announcing the decision to start merging programming-related proposals to improve NPR&#xD;&#xA;* September 18, 2010 — We begin to [redefine the scope of the site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* September 23, 2010 — MSO and SE [do the same](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site), with [different results][2]&#xD;&#xA;* September 29, 2010 — &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&quot; is published, new scope and guidelines [begin to be enforced](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice), and the free-for-all NPR proposal dies. It's replaced with Programmers, the site for expert programmers who are interested in subjective questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;* December 16, 2010 — Programmers launches, and the position statement is tweaked from &quot;subjective questions&quot; to &quot;conceptual questions&quot; to [make it easier to explain why it exists compared to Stack Overflow](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/).&#xD;&#xA;* December 17, 2010–Present — Clean-up of the colossal mess left over from beta, including [incorrect UI strings and FAQ wordings](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio/3415#comment9139_3414), [crappy questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning), [awful tags](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups), [misconceptions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl), and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Within 29 days the site went from programmers hanging out and discussing their lifestyle to programmers discussing software development issues, now over 18 months ago, which is why I'm always surprised people still cling to that old proposal. I would've thought they'd all move on by now: the writing was on the wall almost immediately after the site left private beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/65439/149432" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18050" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3429" RevisionGUID="703deab3-2bf0-4864-ab44-fbebb47983e8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Adapted from [meta.wordpress.stackexchange][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Recommended Reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Blog][2] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [I Move to Close This Question][3] &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;    How and why closing was introduced on Stack Overflow in 2008.&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; It’s important to note here that closing a question is a step on the road to deletion. Closing is effectively “nominate to delete”, as a question that can’t be answered is no longer truly “alive”. That said, some closed questions should be kept around. For example, duplicate questions that have totally different wording are sometimes useful. With the duplicates, people can find either variation with search terms and link through to the original.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions][4]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    About duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; Don’t answer questions that have already been answered elsewhere. Yeah, you might earn a couple of points of reputation, but, because you are duplicating content, you are actually making the internet worse. Why? Because that answer might be true today, but as technology changes, it might not be true tomorrow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Stack Overflow Question Lifecycle][5]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How and when questions are closed or deleted.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers][6], [Gorilla vs. Shark][7] and [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    About the _not constructive_ close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Meta Stack Overflow][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is a “closed” question?][10] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; * 24 votes to close per day (50 on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * 5 votes are required to close or reopen&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * Votes will expire after 4 days if the question does not reach 5 votes&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * Questions containing a bounty cannot be closed&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * You can only vote to close once per question&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * You can only vote to reopen once per question&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How do you reopen a closed question?][11] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; The owner must have 250 rep in order to vote to reopen their own question. Other users can also vote to reopen, but they must have a minimum 3000 reputation points.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Leaving comments about voting to reopen does nothing in and of itself. You can try and [address a specific user](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2035/notify-user-when-their-name-is-mentioned-in-comment-closed) who may have left a comment as to why they voted to close and ask them to help cast reopen votes if you think they voted in error.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  See also: [How do you challenge the closing of one of your questions?][12], [Why was my question closed and how to contact the closer][13] and [My question has been closed. What do I do now?][14] (on meta.crypto.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Closing/Migrating question instructions/guidance][15]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  A long explanation of the close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What can cause my question to be bumped?][16]  &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;  Close/reopen votes on the question do not bump the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Etiquette for closing your own questions][17] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; I don't think you should close your questions lightly. There are very few questions that have a definite answer that will never change, or that cannot be improved upon.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How to handle duplicate questions?][18]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not by tagging or editing, vote to close or flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Please add the ability to filter \[Closed\] questions out of my results][19] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Stick the closed:0 parameter in your search pipe and you're smoking out the closed questions: [closed:0](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A0)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; But if you're in the mood of puffing around the closed: [closed:1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1)&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  See also our [search tips][20]. &#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Allow question askers to close their own questions unilaterally][21]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Once you post a question it is not exactly YOURS in every sense of the word anymore, it belongs to EVERYONE.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  But you can _delete_ your own question as long as there are no upvoted answers.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How useful must a question be to be allowed?][22]  &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;  About the _too localized_ close reason, derived from [this question on Gaming][23]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; What value does this question have to anyone else on the planet, other than the one person who asked? In other words, what internet user is going to be searching for and finding information about a game one person vaguely remembers playing in broad terms?&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;  See also: [What questions should be closed with reason “too localized”?][24]&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Remove/downweight closed questions in “hot” question sort][25]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; I think there's a misconception here -- closing does not mean &quot;get this off my screen ASAP&quot;, closing means, &quot;this question should be re-evaluated by the community&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Can we have the ability to rescind a close vote before it closes?][26]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No. See Jeff’s answer … with a lot of negative votes. :)&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Close Votes expire too soon for low-traffic tags][27]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: Fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Close votes (and probably reopen votes) only expire after all of these conditions are met:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1. 4 days have passed since the last close vote.  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2. The question has more than 100 views.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Auto-deleting old, unanswered zero-score questions after a year?][28]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There is a garbage collector which works as follows:&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; If the question is more than 30 days old, and ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has -1 or lower score&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has no answers&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* is not locked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; If the question is more than 365 days old, and ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has a score of 0 or a score of 1 with a deleted owner&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has no answers&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* is not locked&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has a viewcount &lt;= the age of the question in days times 1.5&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has 1 or 0 comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; This check is run every week across all sites.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  **Each time you misuse the answer field for pseudo-comments you break the garbage collector.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Do “fix my code pleeese!” questions qualify for closure as “too localized”?][29]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Yes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## My own summary after a long reading session&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing is not deleting. A closed question is still visible, it can be improved and reopened. It [doesn’t affect the accept rate][30] but prevents potentially useless answers. Help us to stay [on focus][31], use your close votes.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a moderator (on WordPress Stack Exchange) I don’t like to act unilaterally. Your close votes are helping me and the other moderators to decide and we don’t feel so bad if we close a question. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.wordpress.stackexchange.com/a/1035/73&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10582/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/36415/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/19126/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/119638/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/q/144/1910&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/32490/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/48578/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/5215/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10841/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/7913/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10363/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/70521/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/q/1455&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/4818/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/107153/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/915/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/97556/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/78048/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/82874/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/08/new-question-asker-features/&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18051" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3433" RevisionGUID="38c47613-61f0-4330-b807-479626b2703d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The Workplace is [launching Tuesday or Wednesday](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/4823/what-is-coworking#comment9210_4847), barring any unforeseen problems. During the private beta, there will be no involvement from other Stack Exchange sites (save for active people here who also committed to the proposal): it'll be up to the community there to quickly figure out their scope and how they'll ensure the site will be viable if/when it goes public.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But even sites in public beta are never added as migration paths. The beta period is the time for the site to bootstrap itself without becoming a dumping ground for other sites: normal users generally don't understand what to migrate [even when sites are launched](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The lack of a migration path does not, however, prevent moderators from migrating questions to a beta site. Historically, [we worked with moderators on beta sites](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2782/8) to determine if a question would be a better fit for them. This tended to be a win-win situation for all involved, as it let the destination sites get questions they want and it prevented unnecessary drama when a question gets unceremoniously closed here for being off-topic or sits around with no answers (or worse, bad answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like [the current moderators](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3419/8) are [loath to do this](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3428/8), and it's unlikely very many, if any, questions would be migrated to the Workplace while it's in beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind, however, that The Workplace was [created specifically to house questions that are categorically off-topic here](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/a/1401/16359): there should be very little, if any, overlap between the two sites. Off-topic questions that would be a fit for The Workplace have historically gotten comments from closers directing the asker to support the proposal: perhaps the only real change needed to that workflow is to modify the wording to indicate it's already live.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18052" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3451" RevisionGUID="25cde1be-609c-40be-9fb6-b03b136b178a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The feature already exists, but only for diamond moderators. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every time a similar feature has been asked for regular users, it has been declined summarily, although I'm certain that everyone who votes to migrate means well, incorrect migrations are quite often. Programmers especially [has suffered a lot][1] from incorrect migrations from Stack Overflow, the past 90 days we have rejected more than 1/3 of questions coming here from Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main problem is that although you are required to have at least 3,000 reputation at the source to vote to migrate, you aren't even required to have an account at the target site, and people seem eager to vote to migrate without thinking if the question is actually suitable for the target site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'd say that flagging for moderation attention is not only an acceptable workaround, but imho it's actually the preferred action. We can notify the other site's moderators and only migrate the question if they verify that it is suitable for their site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In theory, we could discuss adding another migration target. Right now our most popular migration target is Stack Overflow with 170 questions the past 90 days, and our second most popular is Code Review with 9 questions over the same period, too few to justify a migration path. If we start getting a lot of Code Review questions, trust me I'll be the first to nag about it ;) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18053" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3460" RevisionGUID="ef8508d2-216d-4f62-86f5-9e3bbec47e5f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The fix for this is being deployed right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See [this post on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129002/new-tag-wikis-cannot-be-created)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18054" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3462" RevisionGUID="cd5bdcd1-874a-472f-a120-5a6fdfa44c41" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="##The great tag wiki edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How this would work: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Set up a contest time frame and chat room,&#xD;&#xA; 1. discuss and evaluate tag wiki edits submitted during time frame set,  &#xD;&#xA;    &lt;sub&gt;in order to short-list ones to be presented in nominees list at next step,&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA; 1. set up a &quot;voting question&quot; with nominees list (like [elections town hall](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2990/2012-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-digest) or [SCNA wish list](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2473/what-do-you-want-to-see-from-scna)),&#xD;&#xA; 1. whoever edit scores best &lt;strike&gt;gets kissed by Anna Lear and Mark Trapp&lt;/strike&gt; wins.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rules:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; 1. No edits outside the time frame. &#xD;&#xA; 1. Contest period: A month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What we gain:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. tag wiki improvements&#xD;&#xA; 1. more [publicity](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73261/how-to-motivate-users-to-write-tag-wikis &quot;How to motivate users to write tag wikis?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA; 1. better understanding of [Tag Wiki best practices](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/69584/tag-wiki-best-practices&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Background&#xD;&#xA;* definition from page with a _really nice_ title: [&amp;#39;tag-wiki&amp;#39; tag wiki - Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/tag-wiki/info &quot;title is full of meta isn't it&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An editable page that briefly summarizes the topic of the tag and that may provide links to existing questions that are often useful to many people...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tag wikis are made of 2 parts:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The Excerpt - which is displayed on question lists and tag hover menu.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The Body - which contains detailed information about a tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* definition that inspired me, from a [tag homepage/FAQ](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1195/create-a-tag-homepage-faq) request at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a community-wiki editable home page... where we could place essentially the tag-specific FAQ and other tag-specific links" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18055" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3474" RevisionGUID="ed6209a5-3fd9-4638-83a6-1818734f9314" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="[This MSO discussion](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129021/154388) sums it up well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Of course, obviously the better answers will generally be longer than one line. To bulk up the content, you might consider doing things like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- linking to the appropriate documentation&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- including a code sample&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- suggesting a superior alternative approach&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- cautioning against some things that people in the same situation commonly do wrong&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- adding superfluous bulleted lists&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many good answers that can be written in one sentence. However, the *best* answers explain the reasoning behind that one line. They explain the thought process that is required to arrive at the correct decision. They may include a personal experience that supports the conclusion reached. I've seen some good answers that take the approach the OP originally thought of and show how it leads to failure, and then present a better solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best defense against _harmful_ one-liners, as with many things on SE, is your voting powers. Don't be afraid to downvote the one-liners!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18056" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3504" RevisionGUID="ffa3892e-3963-4815-ae09-171a1de8748b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Even though the tag wiki says that you can use this tag for asking where to find resources, I don't think that's valid. [Stack Exchange sites are not search engines][1]. What you are asking for is simply asking for external resources - the best place to do that is in the search bar of your favorite search engine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also sounds like you're asking for a list of things. [Stack Exchange sites are also not for generating lists of things][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128548/what-stack-overflow-is-not/128549#128549&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128548/what-stack-overflow-is-not/128561#128561" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18057" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3527" RevisionGUID="ad22f96f-b8d5-4bd7-9133-f14a6c0e9b6e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49550/what-hashing-algorithm-is-good-for-uniqueness-and-speed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particular answer to above question has been made CW per automatic rule ([quote source](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/11741/165773 &quot;MSO answer to 'What are “Community Wiki” posts?'&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The post has been edited ten (10) times by the original owner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Automatically applying generic rule in this particular case looks unfair.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;In case of doubt, check the answer to decide whether you agree with above.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* answer: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/145633/31260&#xD;&#xA;* timeline: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/49550/timeline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##This answer looks exceptionally good&#xD;&#xA; to me, and not only to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to clear CW status to recognize an extraordinary contribution of the author?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/CRw3X.jpg][1]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/145633/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CRw3X.jpg &quot;screen shot - top part of the answer. And there's more, much much more...&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18058" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3557" RevisionGUID="2661525e-7ea7-42dd-8195-32746ccbc1ca" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Down voting answers costs you 1 reputation point, this is [meta-tag:status-bydesign]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reasoning is that it makes revenge / retaliatory / otherwise abusive down voting less attractive, as discussed in a [very early Stack Overflow podcast][1] (circa 2008). Furthermore it emphasizes up voting over down voting, as does every other voting related mechanism we have (up votes earn you more rep than down votes cost you, etc). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, the penalty is too small to matter when you have legitimate reasons to down vote. It might matter a bit more to newer users, but I'm sure you having quite a lot of reputation wouldn't think twice before down voting a bad answer. And of course if you down vote sensibly and the community agrees with you, it's highly probable that the answer will be removed and your reputation will be refunded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There used to be a reputation penalty when down voting questions as well. This [changed a year ago][2]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thus, to incentivize more balanced question voting, we are considering removing the -1 cost of casting a downvote on a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know if it worked or not, but I enjoy free down votes on questions too much to care ;) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/15866/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/90324/should-downvotes-on-questions-be-free" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18059" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3562" RevisionGUID="7de69207-db67-4f2f-bea6-e42763856622" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This was [a discussion on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/131388/would-questions-about-app-store-approval-be-appropriate-for-so) a few days ago which had comments that mirrored an earlier [discussion we had here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2575/8), and while I don't want to say *every* app store question is off-topic here, it's unlikely many of the questions people would *want* to ask—namely questions about app store policies and such—would be on-topic anywhere on Stack Exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main issue is that we are not Apple, or RIM, or Amazon, or any of the other private entities that make or enforce those policies, so we'd only be speculating and a poor substitute for the people developers *should* be asking, which are the people who work for those companies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the example questions for the proposal, it looks like the App Stores proposal is going to suffer from this right from the get-go:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is there a limit on how long you can hold on to an app name in &lt;App market&gt;?&#xD;&#xA;2. Can an app name have special characters?&#xD;&#xA;3. I created an app that only works with third-party hardware. Do I have to send the hardware to Apple to get approval? How do they test such apps?&#xD;&#xA;4. Is there any hard evidence on how much individual app developers have actually earned?&#xD;&#xA;5. Will my app be deleted from [store] if no one downloads it for [x time]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions 1, 2, 3, and 5 are all questions for the companies running the App Stores and making the policies, not random strangers on the internet who aren't in the know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 4 is just a bad SE question in general: taken at its face value, it's a simple yes or no question (there is evidence or there isn't). Reading between the lines, someone asking that likely wants to know how much they're going to make as an app developer, which is highly localized (and more often than not, [attributable to pure dumb luck](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/05/ios-app-success-is-a-lottery-and-60-of-developers-dont-break-even.ars)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have high hopes for the App Store proposal: I don't think it's going to fail because of lack of interest, but because it's not a topic that Stack Exchange handles well. I don't think trying to redirect people from that proposal to here does anyone any favors." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18060" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3566" RevisionGUID="6cd27392-995f-4ff4-890d-7515bb41a598" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="See this Meta Stack Overflow question for more than you'll ever want to know on this subject:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Encouraging people to explain down-votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votes)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18061" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3582" RevisionGUID="15c99f24-8150-4efe-9ffb-9fbd75a2d5c8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I'll summarize [my answer over on SO Meta][1] here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I started out believing that SE could support a recommend X... In the end these questions can only ever be considered subjective, and therefore not a good fit for the SE format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/113678/how-to-request-book-recommendations/131432#131432" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18062" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3587" RevisionGUID="223f85c8-f086-4721-9e33-7f3b916e2b49" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I believe that is correct as code is included in the content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; to Remix — to adapt the work  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; to make commercial use of the work  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anything that you post to StackOverflow will be under the terms of the creative commons license. You can find more info by looking at the bottom right of the page and clicking the cc-wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Do I have to worry about copyright issues for code posted to StackOverflow?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12527/do-i-have-to-worry-about-copyright-issues-for-code-posted-on-stackoverflow)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18063" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3589" RevisionGUID="3a849bde-d7fa-437f-b7a7-c03f15375e99" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I went browsing Meta SO for any profile rules, and it appears there really aren't any. A user's profile is a reflection of the user, not a reflection of the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can put pretty much anything in there, [even profanity][1], although since it is a reflection of the you, you may want to consider carefully what you put in there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Rules for Profiles?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/31504/158605)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Generally speaking, your profile is (to an extent) fair game, as it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a reflection of you as a person, not the site as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Self-promotion, your e-mail address, humor, (if you know HTML) imagery&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and even the f-bomb are allowed there.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are reasonable limitations for all of those, but generally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; speaking, unless you're a hard-core spammer or you put something truly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; offensive / crazy in there (like hate speech or pornography), you'll&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/31209/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18064" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3600" RevisionGUID="faa56933-fd96-4c52-91fc-cb2aed799aa2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Yes, that's true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers had a troubled start, fully documented in [this answer][1]. In the beginning the site was called &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; and it was a very relaxed place where questions that didn't belong on Stack Overflow found a home. Inane (but populist) questions were migrated here from Stack Overflow en masse, carrying [ridiculous amounts of upvotes][2] with them, and for a short while NPR was the one place in the Stack Exchange universe where you'd go for mindless fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it soon became evident that people flocked around the [bike shed][3] ones and ignored any serious questions or answers, and the site was quickly filling up with crap. Which led to a somewhat sudden and drastic scope change, the site was essentially rebooted to be what it is today. The redefined scope meant higher quality standards, which for Stack Exchange usually translates to less down votes and more up votes. Combined with the fact that down votes on questions [became free][4] about a year ago, people are down voting a lot more liberally than in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course you should also consider that older questions had obviously more time to gather up votes, they aren't all bad, newer questions will get there in time. But the main reason for the few whales that remain was the undisciplined culture of the early days, people would upvote just about anything. To give you an idea, one of that era's questions was [&quot;What's your most controversial programming opinion?&quot;][5], which had 391 upvotes and 414 answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As time goes by we become even more sharply focused, and we set our standards even higher. Useful and well research questions may not get a lot of up votes, but they do get a lot more visibility and quite more useful answers than a couple of years ago, as they are a lot easier to discover when you don't have to look for hours amongst an ocean of pointless questions like &quot;What's your most controversial programming opinion?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3415/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/ &quot;see SE blog post: The Trouble With Popularity&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/31253/the-bike-shed-problem-and-so&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3557/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18065" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3611" RevisionGUID="c3718584-2cb1-42cf-9e25-a936562f540d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I really don't know why you need to close questions at all. If a question is related to programming, even if quite tenuously, then it should be left to the users of the site to arbiter whether it is relevant or not. The mechanism for that is quite simple and already exists - people will vote for questions they like, downvote questions they don't and, most importantly, provide answers to questions they feel are interesting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it totally ridiculous that you can have a question that has lots of answers and is provoking discussion to be suddenly closed because some unelected moderator decides to exert their power. No wonder we are at the ludicrous situation where so many questions are being closed. Personally I hardly even bother coming here any more (and I know for a fact other people feel the same) as half the questions I'm interested in are suddenly closed (without often the mundane and dull questions left). Why should people bother wasting time supplying an answer to a question when they know that it could (seemingly) arbitrarily be closed at any moment?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I subscribe to the StackExchange twitter feed and it's amazing how many of the questions selected to appear in that feed (presumably automatically based on popularity) end up being closed. If people are interested in it, contributing and provoking discussion then what gives someone else the right to stamp down on that? I remember when this site was set up it was to act as an &quot;overflow&quot; for the questions that weren't quite suitable for StackOverflow yet were programming related (with an example cited as the (in)famous &quot;[What is your favourite programming cartoon?][1]&quot;). The irony is that [questions like that][2] would never be allowed here any more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sure moderators think they are doing their best by following some &quot;charter&quot;, but who wrote that? Who was consulted? Again I come back to **letting the people decide** what should be here via the mechanisms that already exist with moderators only needing to close the most egregious violations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/84556/whats-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate/71733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18066" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3634" RevisionGUID="b6686534-3ac4-4264-b8b6-192712d251a7" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Having lived through [Stack Overflow summarily directing their trash to us][1], I'd be leery to do the same to another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, however, the Workplace wants that mention in our FAQ, I'm all for it. I do think they should propose the wording, as they know best what types of workplace and career questions are on-topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18067" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3662" RevisionGUID="59c42b78-30ec-48dd-a1c7-f8310790375c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="[Stack Exchange's aggregate traffic is public and available on Quantcast][1], but it may or may not be an accurate or up-to-date picture at any moment in time. It should, however, be accurate enough for the purposes of figuring out if a contest helped: [it was used a lot on Gaming.SE][2] during the [Skyrim vs. Modern Warfare 3 promotion][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Much more detailed analytics are indeed available to SE employees and to moderators, but they're not available mostly for the reasons outlined in the answers to the MSO question, [Why are stats not public information?][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, [cwallenpoole's answer][5]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I might hazard some guesses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. This might have to do with the same reason that SE sites are &quot;not about the rep&quot;. If exact numbers are used, that could lead to someone gaming the system, realizing that x and y conditions lead to condition z. In the context of a blog, this can lead to especially perverse aberrations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. It also could have to do with principles similar to those outlined in Tufte's *Visual Explanations.* The quantifiable, without appropriate contextualization can lead to grossly inaccurate conclusions. (you can see his discussion on pg. 36, if you care. A better example from a different book is the stock-market to sun-spot ratio chart at the beginning of *Visual Display of Quantitative Information*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. One rule to rule them all means both that you don't have to micro-manage what is and is not appropriate and you don't have the complaint, &quot;But *`&lt;pronoun&gt;`* gets to do it *`&lt;possesive-pronoun&gt;`* way...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Of course, these are more guesses as to/justification of the reasoning than they are the rationale themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, [Jeff Atwood's answer][6]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Pretty much what cwallenpoole said in his answer; in my mind, this is like arguing for full disclosure of people's salaries. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And anyway, what's the *problem?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Those who need to know, can get the information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Those who wish to know, can ask those that have it for a summary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Just because you *can* get the information doesn't mean you *need* it. Information porn can be harmful. And having it can cause a distraction from the stuff that matters, just like real porn...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you mentioned, they'll generally provide a 10,000-foot picture of those analytics upon request, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.quantcast.com/programmers.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/a/3205/3389&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://skyrimvsmw3.com&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/106306/why-are-stats-not-public-information&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/106314/149432&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/107437/149432" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18068" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3682" RevisionGUID="ccc67caa-04ac-49f9-9b8d-aae4c218e415" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="&gt; Sometimes we suspend after only two consecutive closed negative score questions depending on if they seemed to acknowledge our feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hm, no we don't, unless I missed a memo or something. Mod messages may carry a suspension or be just warnings, and that's no immediately clear from, let's say, the [list of recent mod messages][1]. We typically go with a warning first, and suspend only if the behaviour is repeating. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The typical dance is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. A mod message warning for first offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Suspension for a week for second time offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Suspension for a month for third time offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 4. Suspension for a year or more for the absolutely nefarious ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course that may vary a bit per offence, and you're right, our &quot;policy&quot; is mostly a mixup of instinct, looking at past mod messages, TL chats. Generally I go for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Consistently low quality questions over time**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The most common abusive pattern, and the one where we've gone with the typical warning/suspension dance almost every time. I don't think there's need for a change in policy here, warn first, suspend if the behaviour persists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Question repetition**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is mostly a noob mistake, and I don't think it's worth a mod message, it's easily resolved with a comment (or two). I'd go for a suspension only if the user blatantly ignores the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Sockpuppet upvoting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Although I haven't had to deal with this one yet, I'd say it makes sense to skip the warning and suspend all participants. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Abusive to others**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Per case, and I'd prefer if there was some mod discussion before a warning or a suspension, this one almost always demands a second set of eyes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Revenge downvoting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The last time I mod messaged someone for revenge downvoting, I went for just a warning, and regretted it a week later when he did something else, equally suspension worthy (this time, I pulled the trigger). I wouldn't mind if we skip the warning for revenge downvoting in general and suspend on first offence, but I also wouldn't object to warn first timers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Self-destruction of own content**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Also a common noob mistake, that's rarely repeated. Warn, and only suspend if (s)he does it again. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Using signatures or taglines**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I'm only mentioning this one because there's a template for it. The time to edit out the signature or tagline is less than mod messaging the user...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Excessive self-promotion**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If the only contributions from the user is spam, destroy the account.&#xD;&#xA; - If there are non spam contributions, delete the spam ones and warn or suspend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Excessive discussion in comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  My favourite one. Warning the first time, and possibly the second time, not necessarily via a mod message, a comment on the post the discussion is going on _or_ a superping in chat would be enough (imho). For people who keep pestering others with borderline rude comments, a suspension should be considered even for first time offenders and especially if they've already ignored a comment by a mod asking them to calm down and be nice (which is what all of us go for at first).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Something else...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Strictly per case, obviously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If an issue can be discussed publicly, a comment or a superping in chat is preferable and if not, there's always the option of a private chat, a completely tedious and cumbersome process that doesn't however leave a permanent black mark&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; on the user's record, the way mod messages do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Worth noting that SE takes the black mark thingy seriously, I got in trouble for suspending a fellow SE mod and a user who volunteered while testing a [rather obnoxious bug][2]. Apparently for science isn't a good reason for a suspension, even for a day.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To clarify for non mods: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a few of your questions get closed / down voted, an automatic mod only flag is raised. The first time that happens, you may get a mod warning (or not), but a suspension is unwarranted (imho), unless of course the questions are of the [&quot;how is babby formed&quot;][3] variety.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second time the flag is raised you will be suspended for a short time (week or less) _or_ you may get by with a warning, if we forget to send it the first time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/admin/users&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/133291/mod-message-header-notification-is-missing&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080329181633AAdYPKu" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18069" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3686" RevisionGUID="bf16ea5b-61ea-4aec-9722-f2777f7fe910" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="&lt;strike&gt;No.&lt;/strike&gt; Apparently there is on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/40353/stack-overflow-glossary-dictionary-of-commonly-used-terms)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I know there aren't many acronyms that are specific to Stack Exchange (apart from the obvious use of site initials - e.g. SO for Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have you tried http://acronymfinder.com?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if someone uses an acronym in a post that you're not familiar with leave them a comment asking them to explain what it means. There are far too many of these TLAs* for us all to remember them all and some have multiple meanings.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Three Letter Acronyms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18070" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3701" RevisionGUID="16949948-7619-49aa-bc8a-32f936ae41e7" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="**Migrating to beta sites and sites that are not in our migration target list**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Showing the full list of sites in the off topic dialog has been asked for a ton of times, and has been declined each time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; maybe one that is dependant on reputation, only people who have over 10000 rep can see beta sites or a comment block for where else it should go&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, no, unless you mean reputation on the target site. We've suffered enough from bad migrations from Stack Overflow to know that reputation on the source site says absolutely nothing about whether a question belongs on the target site or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Migration comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are an extremely bad habit, and I really (really) dislike them. The typical dance is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. A question that includes the word &quot;career&quot; is closed, or is gathering down / close votes fast.&#xD;&#xA; 1. An (un)helpful commenter posts something like &quot;this belongs on the Workplace&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; 1. OP, being new and having no idea we can migrate, posts on the Workplace. &#xD;&#xA; 1. The question is closed on the Workplace as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same dance happens for OnStartups, for questions that include the word &quot;business&quot;. Cross posting is not something we like very much, but the important thing here is that the OP has been rejected by two sites. If getting your question closed in one site sucks, imagine how much it stinks when it happens twice in a day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main issue here is that people feel they are being nice by proposing an alternative, and they are, however migration is _not_ an alternative to closing poor questions that don't belong on Stack Exchange in general. What annoys me the most is that 99% of the times I see a migration comment from a high(ish) rep member, they haven't taken the time to bring the question to shape, even if just by fixing obvious spelling / grammar mistakes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously this doesn't apply to you, comments like [this one][1]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://workplace.stackexchange.com/ is a better fit for most work questions, but I'm not sure this is really a work question. I think it is a very poor idea to get a Masters immediately after you graduate. Get a few years of work experience first. I would not hire someone with a masters and no professional work experience over someone with a BA or BS for an entry level job because they expect more money and still only have entry level skills. And wanting what pays best and is easiest is a conflict, the hard stuff pays best. -  HLGEM 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;are exactly what a migration comment should be like. Thanks for taking the time to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Point to the workplace, but also pointing out that the question might not fit there.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Provide a mini answer to the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do we migrate to the Workplace, then?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll answer the same way [I've answered for Programmers][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Flag for moderation attention, or&#xD;&#xA;1. Drop the questions in the [Water Cooler][3], the Workplace's main chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both options involve the Workplace community having a say in whether the question belongs on their site or not, and that's a good thing, and far better than a random migration comment, that more often than not is more obnoxious than useful. I realize you are part of the Workplace community, and currently the top user by reputation there, however you can't decide on your own if the question should or should be not migrated. Lacking an option for users to vote to migrate to the Workplace, flagging or visiting the Water Cooler are what's left, and are good enough solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`&lt;/rant&gt;`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/153085/master-degree-in-software-engineering-vs-game-development-vs-web-development#comment291063_153085&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/135239/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18071" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3708" RevisionGUID="e7c2698d-f03c-4fb5-86ca-9ee56ed331c4" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="[meta-tag:status-completed] (somewhat)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are [no longer a migration target][1] on Stack Overflow, and the difference is already showing, last time we rejected a Stack Overflow question was May 22. Of course we get a lot less migrations now than before, but the ones we get are definitely on topic and of good/high quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SOpedians can still _suggest_ migrating to Programmers, either by flagging for moderation attention or through comments, and the latter is still a problem (&quot;my question was closed on Stack Overflow, let's copy paste it verbatim on that other site the helpful commenter pointed me to&quot;), but it's a far lesser problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/134636/update-migration-path-list-for-non-moderators" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18072" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3733" RevisionGUID="894c25a1-2e0b-4faa-b36c-830e3a91688d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I write this both as a 20,000+ user and former elected moderator on Programmers, and as a community manager at Stack Exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First and foremost: **we will not be changing this site's name**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why? Well, let's talk about that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As others have brought up here, there is no evidence right now to support the claim that the site's name is leading to its problems. If anything, I have a counterexample - the site itself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think by now we all know how [the site came about](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/64046/155160). When [the new scope was handed down](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/), it was not received terribly well and we're still sorting some of that out. The fact is, though, that throughout most of last year, the site slowly evolved to move away from the [&quot;Stack Overflow's toilet bowl&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl) image and to what it is today. It happened through comments, (sometimes bitter) meta arguments, flag handling, etc., and look at what we have now - there's an engaged, active community involved in moderation and governance. Even though there were a [couple](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title) [discussions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site), the site name did not matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I remember when most of the front page would be closed questions and I'd be somewhere promoting the site and trying not to feel embarrassed to point people to it. I wouldn't be embarrassed now. I look at the front page and I see 6 closed questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154283/should-i-demand-unit-testing-from-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; and in my opinion rightly so - it's a discussion-oriented question designed to affirm the asker's existing belief. Discouraging questions like this one is a part of our core principles at Stack Exchange to the point where it's written down in the shared FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, **avoid** asking subjective questions where ...  &#xD;&#xA;  &gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154339/advice-on-scrum-for-the-solitary-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as a duplicate of a [canonical, open question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/220/agile-for-the-solo-developer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154342/are-there-references-discussing-the-use-parallel-programming-as-a-development-me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Reference-seeking question. I don't have a strong feeling on this one. Could go either way, personally, but usually questions like this result in poorly curated lists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154338/identifying-methods-with-a-specified-id-in-d&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Migrated to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154282/if-variable-type-not-working-properly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Off-topic, though opted to not migrate, which is fair enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154270/is-learning-blackberry-programming-a-good-choice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Canonically off-topic for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I look at these questions, I see a pattern: **all of them are about some aspect of software development**. Changing your name to &quot;Software Development Stack Exchange&quot; or anything of that ilk will not stop questions like these. Changing your name to an abstract concept will not automatically draw people in. What attracts experts to a site is the content. Focus on that instead and you will continue to grow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, Gaming SE is currently in the spotlight after having been [rebranded to Arqade](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/06/welcome-to-the-arqade/), so it's natural that that's prompting other sites to ask about getting a brand and a domain of their own. Our official answer is that you can ask, but there is no definite answer. **Name changes will happen exceedingly rarely at best, and you should not plan on, depend on, or even anticipate it.** There's no fixed traffic criteria or an &quot;awesome meter&quot; that will say definitively that you've *earned* your name change and that it *will* happen. If we do it again, it will likely be an act-of-god kind of scenario. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example is Fitness &amp; Nutrition now known as Physical Fitness. In that case, part of the site's name explicitly mentioned a subject that was off-topic on the site. The site's community rallied together to start enforcing that and we eventually matched their efforts with a new name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not in either of these situations. So the bottom line is, stop fixating on the name. A name change isn't a silver bullet that will fix your problems. Keep growing the site, solidifying the scope, addressing whatever other issues you (as a community) perceive to exist, but don't worry about the name. It is not holding you back." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18074" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3758" RevisionGUID="d604b370-98bb-48b5-a31d-a4b74c0f87a0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The question ban is automatic, and it's not something the moderators control. We don't even know that you are question banned, unless you tell us. To lift the question ban you will need to follow the instructions given in this [link][1], that should have appeared when you tried to ask a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question history is troubling, as maple_shaft [already mentioned][2], from your 16 questions in total:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 9 were closed and deleted,&#xD;&#xA;- from the remaining 7, one is down voted and all but two were edited to fix obvious and not so obvious issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and you have provided no answers. We don't require you to answer questions, provided you ask great ones, but when your questions are not really welcomed by the community, we do expect you to give back by providing some good answers. We are a community of volunteers, and it's only reasonable to expect you to give something back for all the help you have been getting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems that this time the troubling question pattern kicked off both the manual suspension process&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _and_ the automatic question ban. That's a bit harsh, and about a month ago I asked Stack Exchange to let moderators know when a user is question banned, as I feel it's quite annoying to come back from a suspension only to find out that a secondary and silent ban is in place, but my request was ignored. I honestly had no idea that you were question banned when I suspended you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't even know the exact algorithm of the question ban and can't even guess if a user is banned or not, and at this point it's all up to you. If you feel the ban is unfair, you will have to contact Stack Exchange directly, at `team+programmers@stackexchange.com`. &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; There were a lot of user flags on your questions, which brought the pattern to my attention, and I decided to suspend you.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3757/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18075" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3760" RevisionGUID="c2ee0511-7dde-42f8-826f-9007c197a447" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This has already been [proposed and declined][1], a brief summary of the answers there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The feature would do more to encourage crap questions than discourage incorrect closures, people would be hesitant to vote to close even the most obvious closeworthy questions in fear of the reputation penalty,&#xD;&#xA; 1. We can't penalise people for a process we don't award them for. People are voting to close to help the site maintain it's quality standards, they don't get _any_ reward for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every asker that had their question closed thought it was interesting, useful and on-topic before asking it. If five people decided it's not, it will take five other people to review the closure, the asker's opinion alone won't overcome the community's. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have examples of questions that you feel were wrongly closed, feel free to bring them up on Meta for review. That may sound like a waste of time to you, but we are a community of volunteers, freely volunteering our time to help others. If you are not interested in spending some time improving the question, I'm sorry, but there isn't much we can do about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9817/suggestion-if-you-voted-to-close-a-question-and-it-gets-re-opened-you-lose-100" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18076" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3763" RevisionGUID="78d8b597-14bf-4b32-aacf-57e9350e1a49" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I seem to have reached this limit while editing my answer to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit frustrating, as the editor didn't warn me, so I typed away and submitted... and it truncated the end of the text AND the links...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So now I'll gladly rewrite this quickly, and make sections more concise to fit everything in, but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What exactly is the limit?&#xD;&#xA; * Maybe the editor should warn and block submission, like the comment section does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Though I agree such long posts probably do not happen too often. Sorry. got interested in this question more and more :)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Update 2012/07/11:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * See [Shog9's answer][1] and comments below it for more details.&#xD;&#xA; * See this [answer from JeffAtwood][2] on another similar Meta.SO thread, where a fix is said to have been implemented, and the discussion we have in comments.&#xD;&#xA; * And finally see my [&quot;test-case answer&quot;][3] below and in particular its [revision log][4]. See steps below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Steps to reproduce:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   * The [&quot;test-case answer&quot;][5] was created by simply identifying where things went wrong in [my answer][6] to the [question linked above][7] and I narrowed it down to between revisions [12][8] and [13][9].&#xD;&#xA;   * So I created a question with content from revision 12 (+disclaimer a the top about testing),&#xD;&#xA;   * then edited it with content from revision 13 (but with the link table of revision 12, to get the untrucated ones in there as well, as the revision 13 was obviously damaged),&#xD;&#xA;   * the submission went through just fine and without warning, and the content was indeed truncated again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Update 2012/07/11 - continued:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Crap, it appears the revision log of my test-case doesn't show all the steps, and doesn't show the messages I had left in the &quot;change logs&quot;. Probably because I did them without a big interval between them, and when that's the case the SE systems seem to merge them in one changeset (probably so we don't hit the `10 edits =&gt; CW` rule when editing answers rapidly while they're new).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, that's annoying here for looking at the test-case (maybe SE gods have a way to see full logs), but the **steps I gave above should be enough to reproduce it** anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Update by Shog9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reproduced, definitely a bug, [written up on MSO][10].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3767/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/26723/151515&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3770/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/3770/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3770/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/155505/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/7b75c2e1-15ac-408d-807a-4cd83a2494bc/view-source&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/596bbe49-17a3-4c25-8175-d6242d796064/view-source&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/139320/post-maximum-length-check-ignores-markdown-results-in-long-formatted-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18077" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3764" RevisionGUID="64d54964-5c25-4dea-bf7d-94af4a00a2ab" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Unless things have changed (and given the status-declined tag, it doesn't appear that way), [an answer is limited to 30,000 characters][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The explanation given is that posts that exceed 30,000 characters are rare and might indicate other problems with the question. Like [the FAQ says][2], if a book is more suited to answer the question, then it's not an appropriate question for a Stack Exchange site. 30,000 characters is (by my estimate) 12 pages of double-spaced 12 point Times New Roman text - if a question actually requires that much text, it probably has problems. For example, it might be asking multiple questions that should be broken out into independent questions or it might be overly broad (one of the reasons for closing as a non-constructive question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're right that truncation is not the answer, though. It's not very user-friendly when content gets chopped off without warning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13784/please-increase-the-maximum-allowed-length-for-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18078" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3767" RevisionGUID="e402f6d8-8c71-4e0d-900f-859c457d50d8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I can't reproduce this; trying to submit several chapters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland produces,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Oops! Your answer couldn't be submitted because:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - body is limited to 30000 characters; you entered 34491&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Submitting an edit using the default inline editor behaves a little differently - I got a little pop-up reading,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; body is limited to 30000 characters; you entered 34701&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Opening the editor in a separate tab reverts to the submission failing with an error:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Oops! Your edit couldn't be submitted because:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - body is limited to 30000 characters; you entered 34837&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even here, the text wasn't *truncated* - the submission was flat-out rejected. It may be that some combination of formatting or link markup specific to your answer allowed it to bypass the first check and be accepted (but truncated); if you can reproduce this, please post details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;haylem managed to reproduce this quite effectively! I've written up a full bug report on MSO: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/139320/post-maximum-length-check-ignores-markdown-results-in-long-formatted-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18079" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3797" RevisionGUID="cd8cfd66-f662-4e65-90b7-6f229b03f5f3" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Closed is the same as your &quot;frozen&quot;. The idea behind closing a question is to prevent answers to a question that is not a good fit for Programmers (or, more generally, to the Stack Exchange format). Closed is meant as a temporary state. Either the question gets sufficient corrections and reopened or it can't be salvaged and gets deleted. There are even some [automatic procedures in place to clean up some questions][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing early (as in before any answers have been posted) is a very good thing. It enables people (preferably the author, otherwise the community members) to fix the question and make it a good question. Once there are answers, it takes more work to make the question good, since edits will either have to be sure to not invalidate any existing answers or the community will also have to clean up the existing answers to make them valid (otherwise, a moderator would have to delete them).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are also two other states for questions - protected and locked. Protected questions can not be answered by users who have not hit a reputation threshold. Locked questions are to resolve extremely serious problems and prevent all voting and editing (and for questions, new answers) and provides for questions that are being discussed on Meta, questions that have historical significance but are not good questions, or have generated a large number of off-topic or chatty comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're trying to save old questions, [go through the list of closed questions][2]. If you see a question that you don't think should have been closed, ask about the reasoning in Chat or on Meta. If you can save it, make a heroic edit, clean it up, and vote to reopen (and maybe share your work on chat to get more feedback, edits, and reopen votes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From my perspective as a moderator, I rarely see flags to reopen a closed question. If you make a heroic edit and aren't getting reopen votes, flag it for review by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, something that we haven't been doing (and perhaps should consider) is looking at the old closed questions that don't meet the criteria for automatic deletion and either salvaging them or deleting them. However, that would need to be a new discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78048/auto-deleting-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year/92006#92006&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed:1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18081" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3835" RevisionGUID="f04b6169-fd90-499a-9f34-0bc06230b613" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="&gt; ...this question &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158341/average-career-programmer-with-no-passion-try-harder-or-try-related-it-field&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;hellip; and I think such a canonical-form question should exist here on programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To reopen / rewrite above question and to have its answers converge into useful _canon_ instead of diverging into garbage bits of unrelated advice, consider passing it through an [Atwood's transform](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/124930/165773 &quot;what's this?&quot;)&lt;sup&gt; 1&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;_What traits to look for in &quot;outside&quot; career fields in order to leverage programming experience_ - stuff like that.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need something, some wording to effectively _repel_&lt;sup&gt; 2&lt;/sup&gt; answers like &quot;oh our company has a BA/QA/PM position opened, question is 10 years old, are you still interested in a new career?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need wording that would allow connecting different answers into some larger picture that makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Question wording would ideally allow reader to connect advice like &quot;go QA&quot;, &quot;go BA&quot;, &quot;assess your current skill set&quot;, &quot;decide between fields involving some minor coding, or dealing with programmers, or dealing with software product / process&quot; - to build something bigger on it, instead of leaving it lay as an unsorted heap of minor ideas.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _Atwood's transform_ - here is a recent example for the reference: [a question at Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/posts/2799/revisions &quot;How can I tell if my shyness is an issue at a workplace?&quot;), revisions 3 through 5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; _repel_ garbage answers - one sure can not 100% protect a question from getting garbage answers. But at least try to phrase the question so that you can come to Meta, say _&quot;Here's the question, here's the answer, I don't feel like the answer is OK&quot;_ and have a good chance of garbage being downvoted by active community members who happen to read your post. Fair enough?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Incidentally, I've found an older question at _Workplace_ that sounds pretty close to what I would expect of &quot;canonical&quot; question of this kind:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Possible career transitions for a seasoned software developer?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/199/168)**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have been a software developer for 11 years...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...I am thinking of making a career change - ideally moving somewhere my technical skills would still be beneficial in some shape or form...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are the steps I can take to figure out what I really like and what can make an interesting career going further?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18082" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3836" RevisionGUID="fd02941f-83c2-4015-9360-07fd4bc18b4c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Programmers.SE, we need to talk.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've had a rough couple of years, what with being originally a place to ask anything and everything and having to shape up. I get that it's annoying to still see off-topic question or questions that are unanswerable day in and day out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that's no excuse for the excessively rude and offensive comments and answers that currently happen on [questions like these](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/158554/8). Questions like that aren't great: they're probably off-topic. But when we have users with literally thousands of reputation leaving comments like the now-deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No thanks, I'm not your [expletive deleted].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And answers [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/158558/8) that link to extremely condescending and overtly hostile [GIFs like these](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LvpOO.gif), we have completely lost our way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't an isolated incident, either: hostile comments and answers like these happen all the time, and what appears to be increasing frequency, from people with enough reputation to know better:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [If I had a quarter for every time I've seen posts like this, I wouldn't need my job. Son, I suggest you learn to program if you want to create one.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154430/looking-for-a-programmer#comment294513_154430)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [A young, good looking developer could always work as a stripper but even then it is not a surefire way.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/152123/how-can-a-developer-realize-the-full-value-of-his-work#comment289122_152123) (+2)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [this is a rant ( there is not answerable question ) by someone with an inflated ego at best, and completely off topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/152123/how-can-a-developer-realize-the-full-value-of-his-work#comment289123_152123) (+5)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [There really isn't a question here, if under the thinly veiled bias and flamebait there is actually a small semblance of a real question then it not constructive and inviting of debate. And besides security being a non-issue - You keep believing that and high price consultants will be making bank for a long time cleaning up the mess.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/149956/stored-procedures-out-of-style#comment284230_149956) (+3)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [IMHO, if indeed it was asked like you quote it, this is a stupid question, and that should be the correct answer.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132905/situations-where-22-does-not-necessarily-equal-4#comment248793_132905)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [nice rant, now - where is the question?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/157143/dealing-with-technically-ignorant-and-apathetic-bosses-and-colleagues#comment299686_157143) (+1)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Answer that links to LMGTFY and Guru.com](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/153916/8) (+1)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Anything wrong with Google today? &quot;Javadoc for C++&quot; brings excellent results. ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155146/javadoc-for-c#comment295311_155146) (+3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me be clear: we make the internet a worse place when stuff like this happens. We make our site look like trash.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, stop it. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. Vote to close, flag, down-vote, or leave a polite comment explaining to the user where they went wrong and just *move on.* If you find yourself unable to resist leaving a snarky or hostile comment on a question or answer you don't like, I humbly suggest you do what I did: take a break from the site. It'll still be here when you come back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Kicking off the Summer of Love](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/07/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Etiquette for posting civil and informative comments](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/138173/etiquette-for-posting-civil-and-informative-comments/)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3626/what-are-some-examples-of-good-guiding-comments-to-leave-users-to-help-underst" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18083" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3843" RevisionGUID="8ca637ec-5e83-42b3-a147-0ff466863fd4" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Thank you for bring this up on meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am constantly seeing rude, snarky, condescending, and even hostile comments like these all over Programmers, and appreciate you taking the time to bring this issue to everyone's attention. Its not all users, but its enough users to make a noticeable difference in the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I couldn't agree more with this&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. Vote to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; close, flag, down-vote, or leave a polite comment explaining to the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; user where they went wrong and just move on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're actually interested in helping the user understand their problem so they can correct it, that's fine. But if you want to comment just to make a point and never see the question again, refrain from commenting altogether.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, here's another bit of advice stolen from [Arquade's Meta post on rude comments][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; #How should one react to rude comments?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't engage. **Don't upvote the rude comment**.  Remember even if a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rude comment is funny to you it may be irritating to others. Telling&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off the rude user will only make matters worse. If the rude comment&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also says something useful (e.g. &quot;Hey stupid butt, your question is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off topic&quot;) consider adding a *polite* comment that contains&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *constructive* information instead and flag the rude comment for removal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And a [comment][2] below explaining why you don't upvote rude comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&quot;Don't upvote the rude comment.&quot;** I feel this is really important. When we do that, we're pretty much giving tacit approval to whatever&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been posted and sending the message that the community approves of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this type of behavior&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of people I see posting questions on here are asking for help, and I hate seeing them turned away with sarcasm, rudeness, and a condescending or elitist attitude. I don't think SE would succeed if it wasn't for the millions of people that volunteer their time to help others solve their problems, and having these sort of comments all over the site, with frequent upvotes, is a good way to make volunteers think this site is not for them, and to leave the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also stolen from Arqade's post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; #Is there anything I can do to get rid of rude comments?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Just flag them; there's a little flag icon to the left of a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Click it and select &quot;rude or offensive&quot; in the menu that pops up.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The comment will be flagged for moderator attention, a moderator can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; remove the comment if they agree the post is rude/offensive. However&#xD;&#xA;&gt; if 3 or more users total flag the same comment as rude, it will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [automatically be deleted (see this comment for the formula)][4]. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the comment is very high scoring it might take a couple extra flags to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; automatically delete, but **it only takes 3 flags to delete most&#xD;&#xA;&gt; comments**.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that nothing bad can happen to you or even the poster of the rude&#xD;&#xA;&gt; comment when you flag. These flags are anonymous. By flagging a single&#xD;&#xA;&gt; comment you're not getting anyone into trouble, you're just helping&#xD;&#xA;&gt; keep the site a clean, civil place. If you feel someone is being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; persistently and problematically rude, flag one of their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; posts/comments (or one of your own posts) with an &quot;other&quot; flag and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; explain the situation; a moderator can privately contact the user&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about persistent rudeness.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[tl;dr][5]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all&#xD;&#xA; - Don't upvote rude comments&#xD;&#xA; - If you see rude comments, flag them as rude/offensive for removal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/a/5046/8462&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/5045/how-should-we-deal-with-rude-comments/5046#comment14552_5046&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CkmHj.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/138168/reduce-the-threshold-for-comment-deletion-with-flags#comment388193_138168&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Too_long;_didn%27t_read" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18084" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3889" RevisionGUID="4248fe20-0b45-469a-9b94-781de9548273" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The [first rule of migration is &quot;don't migrate crap&quot;][1]. If a question isn't already a good question, it doesn't get migrated. I've actually stepped in and closed questions for off-topic without a migration even as people were voting to migrate because the question was not suitable for migration and would have been closed on the target site anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yannis posted a comment saying what needs to be done - ask the question on Stack Overflow and include code. There are really four things that I can see happening - the user doesn't do anything and never gets an answer, they repost the identical question on Stack Overflow and they get their new question closed, they repost on Stack Overflow after adding code and get an answer, or they edit their post on Programmers to include code and it gets migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm really not sure what other help we can provide, other than to ask on the appropriate site and include the relevant information (the code).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/115184/seriously-a-mod-wont-migrate#comment299931_115184" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18085" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3898" RevisionGUID="76537604-076d-4444-a235-2f0b8f7cf76b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I just asked [this question][1] with regards to using cognitive enhancing drugs to assist with your coding job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It wasn't as good of a question as I thought it would be, considering I left out specific details to not bring attention to a possible ethical issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, should I reveal the source and name of medication in order to make this a better question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt; Edit&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;GlenH7 has attempted an [Atwood Transform][2] on the question in order to make it more on-topic to programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/160392/ethical-to-dope-to-increase-performance-while-coding&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/124930" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18086" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3912" RevisionGUID="2007aa48-abda-49bf-9e8a-8d73817ad2c0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The code doesn't really answer the asker's question or add value, IMO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A similar question has been asked on MSO [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/95473/189446). Generally on SO I see a lot of &quot;code only&quot; answers get down-voted and/or deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original question is more about &quot;why&quot; and &quot;is this correct&quot; rather than a &quot;I need the code to do this&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18087" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3951" RevisionGUID="ec36db85-6887-4216-85fa-4e57ffd89620" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="##Closure  rate 70% for unregistered users&#xD;&#xA;is an awful lot of trouble. In comparison, stats for registered users make one feel that simple act of registration has a magic effect of cutting half of it (to 38%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...We could do a **trial run** for a couple of months and evaluate the results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that requiring registration for questions can be cancelled if _trial run_ results turn out negative&lt;sup&gt; 1&lt;/sup&gt; above looks like a low risk test.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading, such a trial would fit the spirit of guidance provided in **[Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/ &quot;reference article at Stack Exchange blog&quot;)**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...we’re determined to keep question quality high, **even at the cost of refusing a little sand**. It’s true that you can’t have Q&amp;A without _questions_, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&amp;A site is to flood it with low-quality questions. I think [Mark Trapp](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/91808/about-new-downvote-policy-on-meta/91813#91813) summed it up best in [this meta answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/91808/about-new-downvote-policy-on-meta/91813#91813):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; To put it another way, when I go to a Stack Exchange home page, I see a **list of questions**. If most of those are terrible questions with little to no indication that I’d be wasting my time by reading them, the value proposition of visiting and participating is diminished: I have better things to do.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Compare that to _answers_ on a specific question: I’ve made a conscious choice to look into what I think is an interesting question. I already made the decision that the question is worth my time. If I find the answers to be useless, I have a few different options, as an interested party, to register my displeasure, including writing my own answer. Being able to write your own answer is key: if your answer is good enough, it’ll rise above the junk answers and everyone will be better off for it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; There is no such action for question lists. I can’t say “these questions suck, show me this question I just thought up instead”: that’d be silly. So, it’s imperative the question list have a high signal-to-noise ratio, and removing the penalty for those users who do take the time to read a question and later find it to be useless so they can down-vote is conducive to that. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Fundamentally, answers can be filtered in ways that questions cannot. While there is a tension between having “enough” questions and a bunch of amazing, highly skilled answerers twiddling their thumbs waiting around for something to do, in the long run we’d much rather err on the side of having _interesting_ and _on-topic_ questions for these folks to sink their teeth into.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&amp;A system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**. If this means aggressively downvoting or closing unworthy and uninteresting questions, so be it. Without a community of people willing to _answer_ questions, it really doesn’t matter if there are questions at all, does it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;_if trial run results turn out negative_ - (not incidentally,) above guidance also provides a criteria on how to judge trial run results: **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. As an **answerer** like one of mentioned above (5+ K rep on answers), I am not particularly happy about current questions quality, which I think is clearly indicated by 5+ K downvotes I cast. One thing I find particularly frustrating is that sometimes, after downvoting bad questions, I find myself out of votes that I would use to upvote good ones - this happens frequently enough to make me feel that better prevention of low quality questions is needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Registration requirement is turned on:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/LJAQh.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!--&#xD;&#xA;  tested by attempt to ask a question when not logged in&#xD;&#xA;  for comparison, made similar attempt at Workplace which did not require log in to ask&#xD;&#xA;--&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LJAQh.png &quot;'You must log in to ask a question'&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18088" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3969" RevisionGUID="3238aacd-c101-47bd-8f92-d51aa77553dd" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I have been hitting quite a few 404's on P.SE lately. I was wondering how great the idea of perma deleting questions *that have been around a long time and indexed and linked to* (not spam or such) really is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, [the lastest blog post][1] by Yannis Rizos contains a link to a deleted question ([391 upvotes FCS!][2]) in the 2nd paragraph, resulting in a 404 error for basically all(?) the audience of the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not saying that these questions are a good fit to the site, but removing them completely, leaving dangling links all over the internet (am I exaggerating? :-) certainly isn't my idea of Making The Internet a Better Place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that don't mind closing; I wouldn't even mind a `trash.stackexchange.com`; but in my very humble opinion, deleting valuable content from SE sites (not just P.SE) that has been lying there for weeks and months is just dead stupid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Follow up question on Meta Stack Overflow: [Are you guys turning SE into a 404 black hole?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/148620/are-you-guys-turning-se-into-a-404-black-hole)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/31104/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18089" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3984" RevisionGUID="6a2ae50c-bdf7-440d-8b76-e19d26d2a6d7" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="##The general policy on deletions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Why are some questions or answers removed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are extremely off topic, or of very low quality, may be removed at the discretion of the community and moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Over time, closed questions that are not useful as signpoints to other questions may also be removed, as well as questions which have no significant activity over a very long period after being asked. For additional guidance, see How to Ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - commentary on the question or other answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asking another, different question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - “thanks!” or “me too!” responses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - exact duplicates of other answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - barely more than a link to an external site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - not even a partial answer to the actual question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you wish to improve an existing answer, click edit. For additional guidance, see How to Answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the policy, I'm sure you are aware of it, I'm only including it for completeness. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Questions with historical significance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a [historical lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for) that has been introduced (fairly recently) as a counter measure to link rot: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What is the purpose of a Historical Lock?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A historical lock preserves older content that was very popular when it was originally posted, but is now off-topic or otherwise out of scope for the site it is posted on. Historically locking a post ends the debate over whether a question should be kept on the site or deleted, and is often the final state of a question that has been deleted and undeleted more than once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **How are questions affected by historical locking?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In addition to the post notice being prominently displayed, posts which are historically locked are &quot;frozen in time;&quot; they cannot be voted on, answered, edited or commented. Historically-locked questions are omitted from normal question lists (those on the home page, /questions, and the various per-tag lists), but can still be found by searching for words in the post or title (via either site-search or Google, etc). The visual appearance of the entire post is altered by removal of the voting arrows from the question and all answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that historical locked questions on meta sites are not hidden in this manner, though their answers are still frozen in the same fashion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions can be historically locked when:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is contentious; i.e. it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When is it not appropriate to historically-lock a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should not be historically locked if they:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Are being actively maintained, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Have little or no redeeming value.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A good rule of thumb: If the question does not minimally meet Jeff Atwood's 3rd rule in the &quot;[We Hate Fun Here](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/)&quot; blog post, it's probably not a good candidate for historical locking. The third rule is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Does this question teach me anything that could make me better at my job? Can I learn something from it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I request a historical lock on a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Flag the question for moderator attention, with the &quot;custom description&quot; option. In the flag description, explain why you think the post should be historically locked. A moderator will evaluate the question using the criteria outlined above, and will either lock the question, or decline your flag with an explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Alternatively, if you want to try and gain more community support for the question, or contest the moderator decision, you can post a question here on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you are currently under 10K, your only option to request a historical lock is to post a question about it on Meta. I would advice you to use a far more appropriate tone that in this question, and: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Clearly explain why you think the question has redeeming value,&#xD;&#xA;- Politely request from the community to review it and decide whether it should be historically locked or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not _every_ deleted question qualifies for the historical lock, please do _not_ waste everyone's time by bringing up questions on Meta that clearly don't qualify. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Clarification:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The historical lock is only meant for _deleted_ questions (or questions that are about to be deleted), locking closed questions prevents them from being edited and voted on. Furthermore the community cannot reverse a lock, while it can (and often does) reverse a closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Changing the policy &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears you disagree with it. Fair enough. Change it. Stop complaining about it, and change it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I'd support any **constructive** attempt to solve the problem, however I must point out that there have been tons of discussions on Stack Overflow about deletions, and although the &quot;link rot&quot; problem is true for popular Stack Overflow questions it's almost completely irrelevant for lower traffic sites like Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand that clicking on a link, only to find a 404 page stinks, but should also understand that keeping crap around stinks more. And although there might be some gems amongst our deleted questions, most of them are plain crap. This is _not_ Stack Overflow, if you are interested in changing Stack Overflow's or the network's policy, please post your question on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meta Programmers is a place were we discuss Programmers specific issues, and from a Programmers perspective **the deleted popular questions that were linked all over the place were _not_ ours to begin with**. Unfortunately tons and tons of crap were migrated here from Stack Overflow in the early days of the site. Most of these questions were closed (at some point), which send them back to Stack Overflow. What was deleted here was their (locked) rejected migration stubs. What was linked all over the place was their Stack Overflow URL, and not (so much) their Programmers one. If you want to make a case for them, please do it on Stack Overflow, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally speaking, closed but popular questions are _not_ being deleted on Programmers, at least not systematically. I've deleted more posts than all my fellow moderators _combined_, if popular questions were being deleted, trust me, I'd know it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Are we making the internet better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, let's what our most voted deleted questions are: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. What's your favorite “programmer ignorance” pet peeve? (+410),&#xD;&#xA;1. What's your most controversial programming opinion? (+391),&#xD;&#xA;1. What real life bad habits has programming given you? (+368),&#xD;&#xA;1. As a programmer what single discovery has given you the greatest boost in productivity? (+315),&#xD;&#xA;1. How to hide Thinking at Work so that the Non-Programmers don't suspect Slacking? (+257)&#xD;&#xA;1. What are the best RSS feeds for programmers/developers? (238)&#xD;&#xA;1. Best Java book you have read so far (+211)&#xD;&#xA;1. How did you get your first programming job? (+140) &#xD;&#xA;1. Does the D programming language have a future? (+138)&#xD;&#xA;1. What's wrong with cplusplus.com? (+128)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;Best Java book you have read so far&quot; one is the one (from the list) with the most views, around 33K. And zero answers. Yeap, zero. It's a question that got all of its answers on Stack Overflow, and 99% of it's activity, including views, there. Gone. Again, if you want to make a case for it, go to Meta Stack Overflow please, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly _don't_ know if we are making the internet better. However having (partially) reviewed some of the above questions, I don't see any indication that we are making the internet worse by deleting them. _If_ they were originally asked on Programmers and were part of our community's history, we would have a whole different discussion, but right now all I can say about them and their eventual fate is: **meh**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#The blog post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was the worst possible example you could bring forth: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The question was deleted long time ago,&#xD;&#xA;1. I could only find five links to the Programmers version of it,&#xD;&#xA;1. The blog post _clearly indicated_ that it would lead to a 404 for most people,&#xD;&#xA;1. The URL was `nofollow`, so there wasn't an issue with indexing,&#xD;&#xA;1. The only reason the URL was included was for our 10K users to be able to review it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, the completely inappropriate tone you chose for your question made me re-think the whole effort to salvege **old and long forgotten** deleted questions by converting them to blog posts. Although I do not have any expectations for appreciation for my efforts to give back to the community, I am not a moron and will _not_ freely volunteer my time to promote the community through an activity that has absolutely nothing to do with my diamond status when this is what I get for it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At some point you got to say enough is enough. I've removed the url from the blog post, so users who would deliberatily click on a link that says &quot;hey, this is deleted&quot; won't have a bad experience. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Trash Stack Exchange solution (and its many variants)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been proposed countless times, and every time it has been denied by Stack Exchange. Personally I find it a good enough solution, but Stack Exchange doesn't seem to care enough for hosting content that has been deemed unsuitable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Stargazer712's proposal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stargazer712 made what I must admit is an [interesting suggestion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3976/25936) (carefully hidden under tons of borderline insulting crap). However it's based on a misunderstanding of the scale of the effort to salvage questions by converting them to blog posts. We are certainly not talking about converting _every_ deleted question to a blog post, I have found 5 so far that I'd like to salvage, plus another one from Stack Overflow and _no one_ else has shown any interest in this. So, for all intents and purposes when we are talking about the blog as a way to salvage questions, we are talking about a total of six questions. That's it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that 2 days after you posted this you still haven't brought forth any other evidence of systematic deletion of popular content with at least some redeeming value on Programmers, I'm sorry but I'll have to dismiss this as a non issue. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, we had numerous organized clean up efforts in the past that included deletions. I'm honestly hoping those are _not_ the deletions you have in mind, as all the organized clean up efforts were discussed thoroughly on Meta before they began, and only began when it was obvious that the community supported them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you do update your question, please either ping me in chat or post a comment here so I can review your updates. Apologies for the tone in my earlier answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18090" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4004" RevisionGUID="f0c2ffcb-04b7-482b-bd00-87cee99fd9fe" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The question doesn't really qualify for the [historical lock][1] (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions can be historically locked when:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **The post is contentious; i.e. it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question remains closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - There is a risk of it being deleted at some later point. We rarely delete highly upvoted questions without very good reason, however I can't promise that three 10K+ users or a fellow moderator won't vote to delete it.&#xD;&#xA; - It and its answers are still editable and can be voted on (including re-open votes for the question)&#xD;&#xA; - It appears in site searches.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question gets a historical lock:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It will be frozen as is, no more edits or (any kind of) votes.&#xD;&#xA; - It won't appear in site searches, and will only be accessible via its url. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The historical lock is more intended for questions that are already deleted or, for whatever reason, are very close to being deleted. For example if we where doing an organized cleanup, similar to [meta-tag:stci] and we were targeting [tag:project-management] questions, then yes, it would make sense to lock it. But right now the question isn't really on a path to deletion, or if you prefer that path is extremely long, it already survived [meta-tag:stci] (check [revision 5][2]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't mind locking it, the whole process is just a click of a button really, but given that one of its answers was edited earlier today, and the question has a pending re-open vote, it seems that its current state is preferable. Is there a very specific reason we should froze it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/43409/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18091" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4018" RevisionGUID="388bcb2a-256f-4ea7-b80b-c784dcf3952c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I've been talking with him through email, and when I asked him why he left P.SE he said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;I left for the exact same reason you wrote on your P.SE profile.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(He also said it was OK to share his thoughts in an answer here, and that he's not going to bother posting an answer here because he's gone for good, but he's pretty sure everyone knows why he left)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for [my profile][1], well it's not very flattering because I wrote it one day while I was frustrated towards P.SE. My feelings haven't changed, but normally I would have kept them to myself&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If someone makes a Q&amp;A site for Programmers to ask questions and get&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers from other Programmers about any issue related to their career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; choice or self-identity as a programmer, let me know. I'd love to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participate in such a site again, and will help you promote it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; As for this site, I'm done with it unless something changes. I feel&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its changed too far from the original programming resource it once&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was, and the current moderation style is not for me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I dislike that so much valuable information gets deleted for the sake&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of &quot;maintaining a clean site&quot;, dislike the way many users are treated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (particularly new ones), and dislike the way the overall culture of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this site has been changing from a community of programmers out to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; teach and learn from each other, to an insular group of programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elitists (of course this isn't all of you, or probably even most of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you. Its just a large percentage of the more active/vocal users who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; take part in running the site).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anyways, I'm not interested in helping to support this site anymore,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; although I will be happy to take part in any initiatives to changes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope the powers-that-be will take this into account when deciding future policies for a site, as Pierre is not the first one of our top users to quit the site. I can confirm that `DeveloperArt` left for the same reason (been talking to him via email too), and I've seen many other high-rep names quietly disappear over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your 2nd question, yes [it's possible to recover a deleted account][2] although according to MSO it requires &quot;Jeff-Level&quot; access&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/22568/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18092" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4020" RevisionGUID="44e3a96a-01c5-4f66-bfd8-91fcf2c5c10c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Personally, I think this would make a good addition to the list of close reasons. This was [status-declined on Meta Stack Overflow in 2011][1], but I think that it could be something that is revisited. The current policy might work fine on Stack Overflow, but setting the bar at a minimum amount of prerequisite knowledge (Theoretical Computer Science) and effort (all Stack Exchange sites) is something that has worked well and clearly specifying this as a close message would help reinforce it..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I tend to close them as off-topic, citing the part in the FAQ that says Programmers is a site for &quot;professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers&quot; with the reasoning that if a question is something that I'd expect a professional in the given field to know and fully understand, it falls outside of the scope. Other times, I have used &quot;not constructive&quot;, citing that you don't need specific expertise to answer the question (eg - a simple Google search yields the answer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can see how Stack Overflow might not need this, but any professional-oriented Stack Exchange can have questions that are just too basic and should clearly differentiate this as a reason for bad questions. I can see this being useful not only here on Programmers, but perhaps Computer Science, Theoretical Computer Science, Cross-Validated, Cognitive Sciences, Server Fault, IT Security, Project Management, Signal Processing, Academia, and so on - the sites that focus on people with a certain level of existing knowledge, skills, and experience in a given domain (especially a domain that requires an amount of education and skill development, either formally or informally).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime, I wonder if there's something more specific in the FAQ (or something more specific that can be added to the FAQ) that can be referenced for these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86043/introduce-a-general-reference-close-reason" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18093" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4039" RevisionGUID="7dbc6f8c-978a-4833-9629-a3ef0e852374" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Let's start with the feature request. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![mod link on review answers][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![mod link on review questions][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When reviewing answers we have two mod links, when reviewing questions we only have the one. Having the mod link under the post feels a bit more natural, as that's where it normally is. Extremely insignificant feature request, I know, but coupled with the bug it's a bit more serious. Let's see what happens when you click the sidebar mod link:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![mod link bug][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, that's not right ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, when doing anything from the mod menu (the one that works), you're redirected to the post's page instead of the post's review page. Not sure if this is a bug or a feature request, but it would be nice if we were redirected back where we came from, to continue reviewing. And it would be _extra_ nice if mod actions counted as review actions, mods love [badges][4] too!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Psij.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/4XYaQ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/J1IaD.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/147912/new-community-review-badges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18094" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4040" RevisionGUID="ca3b5020-b20d-4b80-b875-272a44cb0b9d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I've just discovered [review][1] and got [two Custodian badges][2] for it, sweet! But I never got a notification for them, as I did for every other badge, and only discovered them when I noticed my bronze badge count incrementing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was also [reported yesterday on Meta StackOverflow][4], and it seems a bit random as [some people did get notifications][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/120/custodian?userid=51770&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tJxNC.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/147918/didnt-get-notifications-for-custodian-badge&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/147922/small-typo-in-the-notification-for-new-community-review-badges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18095" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4047" RevisionGUID="834b8104-f474-4af1-b2cf-ed6ec797502e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I went looking for this after [you asked on Meta Stack Overflow][1], and from looking at the [Database schema documentation for the public data dump and Data Explorer][2] there doesn't seem to be an easy way to query for badges per class. The badges table schema is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Badges&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Id&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UserId, e.g.: &quot;420&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Name, e.g.: &quot;Teacher&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Date, e.g.: &quot;2008-09-15T08:55:03.923&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you are only interested in gold badges, and [there aren't that many of them][3], the simple solution would be to hardcode their IDs in your query.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/148117/badge-that-is-achieved-by-most-number-of-people&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/2677/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=general&amp;filter=gold" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18096" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4108" RevisionGUID="7ce662c7-3729-4ed4-94d5-b685cb132aa0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Believe me, I'd be the first in line to shut down recommendation questions if there was a real problem, or if there was a good reason to, but I'm not seeing either here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How are we doing right now in handling these types of questions? Are the current policies sufficient or are there more concrete policies that would be best implemented?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's hard to tell how we're handling these types of questions without a significant amount of data demonstrating a problem. You've cited two questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168144/books-for-exam-487-developing-windows-azure-and-web-services&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168145/books-for-exam-486-asp-net-4-5-mvc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They were both asked by the same person in rapid succession relatively about the same topic and both are absolutely terrible. If these two questions are demonstrative of an alleged problem with book recommendation questions, then I don't see it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest issue with their closing is that they were closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; instead of what they are: not real questions. The &quot;not constructive&quot; close reason seems to be used more and more as the &quot;I don't care why it's closed, just close it&quot; reason, which dilutes its meaning and causes ambiguity about why questions don't belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with these questions aren't that they are asking for a book, it's that they don't describe anything about the problem the user is having, or rather *why* the user is asking the question, to afford a useful response. They're like asking, &quot;tell me what book will teach me everything and anything about Java.&quot; Where to begin? Questions *must* narrow the scope down to a *specific* problem, otherwise, they don't belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because the two cited questions are incomplete in this respect, they're not real questions. They'd be &quot;not constructive&quot; if they had asked something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What's your favorite way to study for Exam 486?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Exam 487 really sucks, how am I supposed to study for this stupid exam?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;How does Exam 486 make you feel (as a programmer)?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What are some tips and tricks for overcoming my inability to take Exam 487 seriously?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;My co-worker/buddy/priest/cat says *X* book is the best for Exam 486. Help me prove him/her/it wrong.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Without expertise in the subject matter, how do people (especially moderators who might have to act on a flag) know if there is a singular &quot;canonical&quot; book on the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not the guideline for books, and it's not up to anyone (much less moderators) to determine ahead of time (or during the act of moderation) whether there is a single canonical book for a subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, mimicking the guidelines in &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][1]&quot;, and as I described in &quot;[What's up with all the book recommendation flags?][2]&quot;, the important things are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **the topic asked about is *capable* of providing a canonical book on the subject.** The application of this criteria requires common sense. Java doesn't count. PHP doesn't count. NLP for Big Data probably does. F# or any other boutique language probably does. If someone's really in doubt whether something counts, do an [Amazon.com search][3] for the subject. If there's over 10,000 hits, it doesn't count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **the questions sufficiently describes a situation or problem space that invites converging on a small number of correct answers.** &quot;What are some good books on F#?&quot; sucks. &quot;Coming from a purely C# background, I'm trying to add F# to my repertoire. What is the definitive [read: canonical] book for getting up to speed with idiomatic F#?&quot; doesn't, or at least sucks a lot less. If in doubt, wait. If the question attracts dozens of answers, that's a problem. If it settles on 3–5, awesome. If there's a dozen but only a couple of really stand-out answers, cull the herd and protect the question if necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither of these guidelines require domain-specific knowledge of the question; just an understanding of how to ask a good question, which is something anyone moderating (diamond or otherwise) should have a good handle on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What happens to topic areas covered by a small number of resources now (such as the latest language or library) down the road, when it is more popular and prevalent? Might resource requests, perhaps, be too localized since the available (and perhaps even what is considered canonical) change over the course of time?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Irrelevant: [Stack Exchange is designed to handle changing answers][4], even rapidly changing answers, through frictionless editing. Answers for pretty much any subject or problem change over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Problems arise trying to keep questions up to date when there are dozens of posts to maintain, which is why [there are guidelines and technical features][5] that kick in once a question starts getting over 15-30 answers. Per the guidelines for book recommendation questions, this is a non-issue for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So unless there's some other reason, not mentioned, to shut them down now, I don't see anything that's cause for a policy change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2666/8&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://amazon.com&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/87415/149432&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2321/8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18097" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4121" RevisionGUID="e8d73a24-51df-4860-8130-93553e65eb3c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="[Ryathal mentioned][1] the ill fated What Stack Overflow is Not&lt;sup&gt; [[MSO 10K+ link][2]]&lt;/sup&gt; post, and I agree that the top voted answer applies there, so I've decided to adapt it (well, just replaced Stack Overflow with Programmers, really).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Programmers community is very forthcoming with their help, [provided you have done a few things to help yourself][3]. Have you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Put some effort into researching the problem,&#xD;&#xA;- Attempted to write some code yourself&#xD;&#xA;- Attempted to debug your code when it has failed, and&#xD;&#xA;- Some basic, fundamental knowledge of your tools?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Programmers community will not write a complete solution for you, develop a complete walk through of a problem, or do your background research for you, unless your question is specific and focused on a reasonably small scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4117/whats-wrong-with-this-question#comment11671_4119&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128548/what-stack-overflow-is-not&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18098" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5127" RevisionGUID="797ebf86-b3a7-42d7-aa5d-fe98327fab87" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="You have asked 8 questions in total, 4 of them deleted. Here's a breakdown:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [How to use a switch statement with enum efficiently?][1] (+5, open)&#xD;&#xA;- [How faster an IIf is as compared to if and in when to use it?][2] (+1, open)&#xD;&#xA;- [What are the pros and cons of multiple inheritance?][3] (+1, closed),&#xD;&#xA;- [How to climb up the hierarchy from a programmer (codesmith) to a full-fledged Software Engineer?][4] (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;- A good book on managing software projects in MS Project and Visio (-2, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- Why Java does not support mutidimentional arrays, unlike C or Fortran? (-7, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- How to teach computer programming to a 9 year old kid? (-3, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- Which programming language to go for in order to learn Object Oriented Programming? (-3, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Out of a total of 8 questions, only 2 are open. That's... not good. Please follow the instructions given in the [link on the question ban message][5] and keep in mind that the ban is automatic, there is nothing anyone can do to reverse it, it's completely up to you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126886/how-to-use-a-switch-statement-with-enum-efficiently&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122213/how-faster-an-iif-is-as-compared-to-if-and-in-when-to-use-it&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122480/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-multiple-inheritance&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127545/how-to-climb-up-the-hierarchy-from-a-programmer-codesmith-to-a-full-fledged-so&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18099" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5128" RevisionGUID="7e499b30-26e2-4c64-9d74-76d586b7d4f9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This [question on Meta Stack Overflow][1] explains just about everything about question and answer bans. It seems pretty straight forward to me: an account is banned from asking questions on a site when they routinely ask low-quality questions as determined by a number of factors (including deleted questions, closed questions, and down votes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have asked 8 questions. Of those 8 questions, 2 of those questions are closed and not deleted, 4 are closed and deleted, and 5 have a net negative score. Cumulatively, your questions (including the deleted ones) have been rated -11. That's a poor track record of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you need to do is try to improve your existing questions. We have several resources that outline what we're looking for in terms of questions and answers, such as our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and [How to Ask guide](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask). If, after reading those pages and any comments on your questions, you don't understand why your question was closed or how to improve it, ask about it here on Meta or in our [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), although I'd recommend Meta as a first choice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18100" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5138" RevisionGUID="66f11f51-dcda-44f4-93a2-26e166ab9628" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I tried to find a reference or advice on Meta Stack Overflow, but couldn't. If one turns up, let me know and I'll edit it in. Also, if any other Meta sites are having this discussion, edit those in so we can cross link to how other communities are dealing with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a Meta Stack Overflow question about [how to write a good answer][1]. The concepts of right and wrong have no bearing on what makes a good answer. This means, to me, that answers have a measure of &quot;goodness&quot; as well as measure of &quot;rightness&quot;, which are two distinct things. When you are using the low quality review tool, you should be judging an answer based on it's goodness, not on it's rightness.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you have enough expertise in the subject matter to judge rightness, you should use that. Open the question and down vote wrong answers. Leave comments or ask clarifying questions. If the question is bad, consider voting on the question or even flagging it if it needs more immediate attention or might be too old to have the eyes of the community on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, keep in mind that wrong answers are not suitable for moderator attention. It's a reason to decline flags on answers, in fact. If moderators shouldn't intervene with wrong answers that have been flagged, I would suspect they aren't good candidates for deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7656/how-do-i-write-a-good-answer-to-a-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18101" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5143" RevisionGUID="092660d8-9730-43d9-9f61-761221e1b502" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="&gt; Then I ask my first question, some days later this was closed as a duplicate. Also I make an acceptable answer. After that I did nothing but look at some Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you linked to might be the first one you asked, but it's not the only one. The question ban is automatic, there is nothing anyone can do to help you reverse it, it's completely up to you. Read the instructions in the [link][2] carefully (twice) and follow them to the letter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should also read and follow the advice given on:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Matt Gemmell's excellent article [What have you tried?][3], and&#xD;&#xA;- Jon Skeet's [Writing the perfect question][4] blog post, the canonical guide on asking questions on Stack Overflow (the principles apply on Programmers as well).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While your willingness to learn is admirable, you'll have to keep in mind that we are all freely volunteering our time here and expecting you to do some minimal research and to show us that you at least tried to solve your problem prior to asking is not unreasonable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/p41EZ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers/86998#86998&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18102" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5150" RevisionGUID="1851048d-a45b-41f4-a32f-439a1709562f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="To elaborate on what ChrisF said, the post block is an automatic activity based on your history. This feature exists on all sites in the Stack Exchange network and is [well-discussed on Meta Stack Overflow][1]. That post is a far better description than I can put into a post here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The system can't distinguish between an expert and a beginner. However, regardless of your skill and knowledge level, everyone is held to the same standard when it comes to the quality of their questions and answers. The relevant things to read are our [FAQ][2], [guide on how to ask good questions][3], and the blog posts on [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][4] and [Real Questions Have Answers][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would recommend first reading those resources. Then, go through your closed or down voted questions. Not every question is salvageable easily - questions with answers are harder to save than questions that aren't answered yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you need help, you can always ask very specific questions about what you can do to improve your questions. But keep in mind that not every question can be saved. Also look for any questions that you can answer - even good answers that provide new information to old questions are valuable and might help return your account to good standing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18103" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5178" RevisionGUID="557907f5-eb8e-4466-8cb3-fb72336ebdd2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Locating an article is _not_ a software development problem, regardless of what the article is about. Questions that are nothing more than a request to an external resource are off topic, not only on Programmers but on Stack Exchange in general, this isn't a link sharing service.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finding an article or a blog post is _not_ a conceptual software development question. We make a small exception for [canonical books][2], but that's the only exception, not the rule. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Let’s Play The Guessing Game][4]&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient&#xD;&#xA;- [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [Real Questions Have Answers][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why is asking for references/sources to study specific topics considered not constructive?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/153220/why-is-asking-for-references-sources-to-study-specific-topics-considered-not-con" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18104" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5186" RevisionGUID="d1687195-450d-46a5-9901-5fa89ac697fd" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Please note that there is now an official policy against migrating questions older than 60 days to another site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/151890/disable-migration-for-questions-older-than-60-days&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is off topic for us then it should be closed. However, note that QA questions aren't completely off topic for us, so there's no need to do anything with these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question has no answers (or no upvoted answers) then I would be willing to consider migration, but it would have to be with the agreement of the moderators on QA Stack Exchange." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18105" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5192" RevisionGUID="7399e8dc-7fb1-4476-8f08-388fe50080a0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="So there are two ways to do this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Close as a duplicate here, but instead of being restricted to the current site's questions when choosing a duplicate target, allow Stack Overflow questions to be chosen as well.&#xD;&#xA;* Close as &quot;off-topic, belongs on Stack Overflow&quot; here, but also allow people to optionally specify a dupe target while voting to close. End result is a migration, followed by immediate closure as a duplicate of whatever question was chosen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on [your comments][1], you're looking for the former, but I'll mention both:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Allow cross-site duplicate targets when voting to close as duplicate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There might be something I'm not thinking of, but I don't have any ideological or philosophical objections to this. It seems like something that might cause a lot of strain on the backend, but I'm not a developer so that's their problem to solve or say it can't be done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has come up a few times on Meta Stack Overflow, with no outcome:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The ability to link cross site duplicates][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Close as cross post][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Allow users to migrate a question and close it as a duplicate after migration&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm against this. Each community knows its site best: which questions should be closed, which should be open, etc. They should be the ones to decide if a new question is a duplicate of an existing question, not people on a different site who have no inherent interest in the other site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or to put it another way, let's say I have 10k rep  here on Programmers, allowing me to vote to close, but only 1k rep on Stack Overflow. Allowing dupe closing during migration would allow me to close questions on Stack Overflow even though I'm 1,000 rep short of the privilege.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think a question is a duplicate of something asked on Stack Overflow, there are three options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you can vote to close on Stack Overflow, vote to migrate, and keep an eye on it so you can vote to close when it gets there&#xD;&#xA;* If you can't vote to close on Stack Overflow, vote to migrate and let SO users deal with it when it gets there&#xD;&#xA;* Leave a comment pointing to the duplicate question on Stack Overflow and vote to close as off-topic in place here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm partial to the last option: knowingly closing a question twice—once on each site—is just pointless bureaucracy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5191/belongs-on-stack-overflow-and-is-a-duplicate-on-stack-overflow/5192#comment12904_5192&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16703/the-ability-to-link-cross-site-duplicates&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/94322/close-as-cross-post" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18106" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5215" RevisionGUID="c6304415-6e30-43ee-a60f-b7d14e7fd3cf" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This may or may not have been asked on our meta site before but it was certainly a well discussed issue at Meta StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I know, this discussion here applies equally as well to homework questions about design, algorithms, and software development in general.  I personally agree with the highest voted answer there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we have established that if a student falls in the acceptable guidelines for asking a homework question that it is okay, now we ask ourselves if this policy towards homework questions is ethical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion it is ethical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If people are simply providing the answer with no context then perhaps the student might copy the answer and get a good grade now, but how does this prepare the student for future assignments and exams?  This doesn't help the student in the long term because they haven't learned anything and we will not always be there to hold there hand.  Eventually they must stand on their own two feet or they will be unsuccessful in life and in their career.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If an answer is good and provides context however then we as a community have a real opportunity to tutor the student and teach them the concepts that will help them do well in school, life and their careers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Grades are a temporary thing, knowledge once gained is kept forever." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18107" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5217" RevisionGUID="9081747c-7eb8-4de8-b47f-ace2f7ff7a41" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="While I understand that in the post Wikipedia era it's generally more difficult for professors to come up with homework questions whose answers don't exist on the web, that's a problem for the professors, not us. Adapt or die applies. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My teaching experience is extremely limited, and at a level a tad lower than University, however from that limited experience my conclusions are that cheaters will cheat, and there isn't much you can do about it. I was perhaps extremely lucky in that the majority of my students were interested enough in the subject matter to _not_ cheat, even though I actively _encouraged_ them to use Wikipedia and Stack Overflow (Programmers didn't exist at the time) and I'm very proud that some of them are today colleagues. A couple of the cheaters also made it, but most of them are flipping burgers somewhere. Oh, well, c'est la vie.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, I only taught for three years, let's see what [someone a tiny bit more experienced has to say][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My opinion is that there is nothing wrong at all with posting homework questions here, particularly interesting ones, and I find much of the negative reaction to homework-question posters to be somewhat strange, alien to my way of learning mathematics in a give-and-take exchange of mathematical ideas. Surely posting questions here and studying the answers is not much different than studying hard in the library, talking mathematics with one's colleagues at math tea or talking to one's professor, which are all excellent ways to learn mathematics. In particular, I expect that students who post questions here might learn just as much if not more from the resulting answers as from their professors---we have a number of talented mathematicians, who are very good at explaining things---and that math.SE provides a valuable service to students having unapproachable professors, having professors who do not explain well, or who have few colleagues able to help them. Furthermore, the math.SE community strongly benefits from the questions and the insightful answers that might be posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So my opinion is that there is no homework issue to speak of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In particular, I hereby give all of my own students complete permission to post any and all their homework problems here, and indeed I encourage them to post their questions here and to study the answers well and thereby to learn some mathematics. I will be testing them on their understanding at the exam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would also encourage all mathematics professors to adopt a policy of encouraging collaboration on homework among their students, as talking about mathematics with one's colleagues is assuredly one of the best ways to learn mathematics. Indeed, I recommend that all professors should actively encourage their students to form study groups in order to work on their homework problems together. Learning as a group, they will go very far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers already has very strict policies regarding the quality of questions, perhaps stricter than most other Stack Exchange sites, and there's absolutely no point at all in coming up with a specific policy regarding homework questions or what appears as homework questions. Any question that's within the scope of the site, as defined in our FAQ, and shows sufficient prior research is welcome to the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, and only for completeness sake, while &quot;professionals&quot; is in the description of the site, it does not disqualify amateurs, enthusiasts and students from using the site, provided they conduct themselves in a professional manner. Our goal is to build a high quality canonical resource that will hopefully help current and _future_ professionals, we don't check credentials at the door, and we never will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2894/how-can-programmers-se-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5157/appropriate-questions-on-java-programming-questions&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag &amp; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3202/blacklist-homework&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Stack Overflow: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [How to ask and answer homework questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions) - FAQ&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we now discourage the use of and burninate the homework tag?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/123758/can-we-now-discourage-the-use-of-and-burninate-the-homework-tag)&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we cut back on the “Is This Homework?” berating?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/130558/can-we-cut-back-on-the-is-this-homework-berating)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/1652/what-do-we-do-with-users-who-post-numerous-unlabeled-homework-questions/1661#1661" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18108" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5226" RevisionGUID="24ab547f-fb9b-4b9f-80d9-99e5b83ac4d8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="**[&quot;any suggestions for a good tool/service&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/175268/2 &quot;wording as of revision 2&quot;)** makes question a perfect match for type questions that are strongly discouraged per [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, question looks salvageable using a healthy dose of [Atwood's transform](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/124930/165773 &quot;what's this?&quot;). I would consider editing it into something like _&quot;How do I tell if a product planning tool would suit my needs... etc_ then [flagging to reopen](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1753/31260 &quot;related discussion&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that question has been closed while it had no answers greatly simplifies editing it. Otherwise one would have to take additional care to make sure that changes don't invalidate existing answers - which in some cases can [effectively lock the question from any substantial editing at all](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;an example discussed here: 'Change the question, and you invalidate all of the answers...'&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18109" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5247" RevisionGUID="2e4a0568-a84d-468f-a1bd-25b370fbc600" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Programmers.SE and StackOverflow have two completely different site scopes - which is why Programmers exists. There are a number of meta discussions on both here and meta.SO which discuss the difference between SO and P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Introducing Programmers.StackExchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In a nutshell, **Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor** working through code issues. **Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard** working through higher level conceptual programming issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have **actual source code in the questions or answers**. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/82988/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68384/whats-the-difference-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In regards to [your question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13370531/looking-for-a-short-explanation-of-fuzzy-logic) that was downvoted on SO, the comments on there advise you that Programmers is probably a better place to ask the question - which I agree with and [notice you have done](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/175753/looking-for-a-short-explanation-of-fuzzy-logic) and received some answers on your question.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18110" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5248" RevisionGUID="e5d0d13f-4182-4c67-9564-a72ee051ae2b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="**No.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keeping things more central is actually antithetical to Stack Exchange's philosophy of creating laser sharp focused Q&amp;A sites. Additionally if &quot;discussion&quot; and &quot;open topic for general questions&quot; is your description of what Programmers is about, you should really read our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) a bit more carefully. While we welcome _some_ subjective questions, Programmers is definitely _not_ a free for all discussion forum.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, more responsiveness is _not_ necessarily a good thing. We strive to be a canonical resource, answers should be as detailed and complete as possible, being quick is an added bonus but not a goal in itself. From the perspective of the asker, quick answers might be more useful, but Programmers and every other Stack Exchange site (including Stack Overflow) aren't only about the asker. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thirdly, folding Programmers into Stack Overflow right now would be a disaster for everyone involved. Stack Overflow, similarly to Programmers, has created and maintains a community culture that is different, and in many respects conflicting to ours. While the target audience of both sites might more or less be the same, the focus and scope is distinctly different, thus is community culture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, Stack Overflow is gigantic, and that's one of the many reasons, perhaps the main one, I never really participated in the site. To put it very simply, if it takes me more than 5 minutes to find interesting content on a site, that site is not for me. Reducing the conceptual aspects of the [SDLC][1] to a set of Stack Overflow tags would be extremely counter-productive, it would take a certain level of masochism to put yourself in the position of searching for interesting methodology questions (for example) in the vast ocean of crap Stack Overflow is slowly becoming. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you posted this as a feature request and there are tons of earlier discussions both on our Meta and Meta Stack Overflow that explain how the sites are different and what's the purpose of Programmers, I'm afraid I'll have to decline it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Should Programmers.SE exist?][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [Choosing between Stack Overflow and Programmers Stack Exchange][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [Is Stack Exchange becoming too fragmented for programmers?][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why was the Programmers site on Stack Exchange created?][7]&#xD;&#xA;- [When do these questions belong on programmers instead of stackoverflow?][8]&#xD;&#xA;- [Once all the disciplining is done and P.SE is purely professional, will it be merged with stackoverflow?][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/153082/should-programmers-se-exist&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/82988/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/105428/is-stack-exchange-becoming-too-fragmented-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1704/once-all-the-disciplining-is-done-and-p-se-is-purely-professional-will-it-be-me" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18111" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5276" RevisionGUID="bf6329ac-ae6b-4feb-aa1f-6018751a03e8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Manishearth's answer is (basically) the short version. Our core development team is ~7 people strong, and our design team is *literally* a single person. There's *lots* of projects, network-wide, that vie equally for their attention. Eight people handle *all* user feature requests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The longer answer is a bit more complicated. Since I'm talking to people involved in the SDLC, I'm a little astonished that you're not all a bit more sympathetic. After all, the network is 90+ sites, and we serve double-digit millions of users, and getting the project *right* from step one takes time and person-power we don't really have right now. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bugs and errors you point out, while important, aren't going to get top priority because there are other problems that affect the *entire* network that may require immediate attention (e.g. a site blackout) or are concentrating developer resources right now (e.g. the `/review` queue, or our localization efforts). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What explains such passiveness? Is it because Joel Spolsky and his team lost interest in Programmers.SE, like he repeatedly explains in his podcasts?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, let me clear about something: there is more to the Stack Exchange team than Joel or the dev team. For one, there's the team I'm on: your (hopefully beloved) [Community Managers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/99338/who-are-the-community-managers-and-what-do-they-do). And, in fact, we even [hired on one of your moderators](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2875/41785) based on her work here. So, no, the *company* doesn't hate Programmers. Denying your community's complicated history would be foolish and short-sighted, and a great number of really *excellent* lessons were learned over the course of the last two years. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;passiveness&quot; you're referring to is entirely perceived; it's a symptom of the real issue, which is that our development team is overextended. Their time is an extremely precious, scarce resource. Not to put too fine a point on it: they're only human. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Who is (or is there somebody) in charge of implementing new features and fixing bugs on Programmers.SE?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Design bugs are usually handled by our always-wonderful, one-man design team of [Jin Yang](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1685/jin). Jin is literally *one single person* handling *all site design issues* across the network. Jin *also* does the design for our marketing initiatives, some of our advertising, helps us make fliers and small promo items, [puts together top user swag](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1669/41785) and a whole host of things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is there a better place than Meta to ask for new features and to report bugs?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No. Meta is exactly the correct place for you to be reporting these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look, I'm sympathetic. I really, really am. I've been [working on making features happen](http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/867/we-should-implement-magic-the-gathering-pop-ups-on-hover#comment1635_867) on some of our other sites for months now. The toughest is knowing that [doing a fun, exciting event](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5240/do-we-want-hats) would basically &quot;cost&quot; us a feature for a site. All decisions regarding dev allocations are made with great care and after a *lot* of deliberation. We don't just assign development time to things willy-nilly because ***we cannot do so***. It's *literally* a thing we can't do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're dissatisfied with our ability to meet our users' needs (and it does sound like you are) then you're in luck. Right now, [**we're hiring for a bunch of positions**](http://stackexchange.com/about/hiring), including developers. If you know someone who could/should be working for us, who loves our sites (yes, even Programmers!) and is a talented developer who is looking for a new challenge, ***tell them to apply!***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, for the mean time, I can only advise you sit tight and be patient. It's all on The List&lt;sup&gt;TM&lt;/sup&gt; and I'm confident we'll get to it. It just might take some time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18112" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5282" RevisionGUID="ff4e6ed2-d1e7-4c15-8745-046684054ac6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="[Migration for questions older than 60 days is disabled][1] (even for mods). It's not that we don't want to move it, we can't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel it's a good question for the Workplace, you should re-ask it there (but please search for existing duplicates first).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/151890/disable-migration-for-questions-older-than-60-days" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18113" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5285" RevisionGUID="659ca39b-7c26-49ac-962f-e8eeced73301" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I recently posted a question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177190/supporting-and-testing-multiple-versions-of-a-software-library-in-a-maven-projec in which I included some XML code samples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tagged the samples as XML code:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- language: xml --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        &lt;foo&gt;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This hasn't worked and it looks like the Java highlighting is in effect. Is this an error on my part or a bug?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to the [editing help](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/editing-help#syntax-highlighting), &quot;xml&quot; is a [supported language](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63800/interface-options-for-specifying-language-prettify/81970#81970). It certainly works fine on StackOverflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18114" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5298" RevisionGUID="074d6570-04d8-4529-b58a-df861d3ac229" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I don't know. Why don't you ask on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) as the question is on Stack Overflow **not** Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said there are a couple of questions referencing deleted content:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/61221/deleted-meta-questions-archive&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73455/popular-deleted-so-su-programmers-questions-list&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That may help you.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18115" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5302" RevisionGUID="66d73b5f-ac3f-44f1-a1e1-263e393371a8" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The ban is automatic, there's little (if anything) we can do to help, you should (carefully) read and follow the advice given in [What can I do when getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that deleted questions _do_ factor in the post ban, and you have three of them ([10K+](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;what's this&quot;) links): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Finding no. of search results in google using programming](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162412/finding-no-of-search-results-in-google-using-programming) (-2)&#xD;&#xA;- [Key concerns when developing online forums](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155995/key-concerns-when-developing-online-forums) (-2)&#xD;&#xA;- [Programming knowledge and Architecture knowledge for great products](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155993/programming-knowledge-and-architecture-knowledge-for-great-products) (self-deleted a minute after it was posted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first one is the one that _probably_ triggered the ban, as it's your most recent question. I can't see any way of improving any of the three, unfortunately, and undeleting them might get you more downvotes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should concentrate on giving _great_ answers to others' questions, although the exact algorithm of the question ban is kept secret, great answers will certainly help. But please don't just rush to post answers, only answer questions that are well within your expertise and you can provide very thorough and well researched answers to. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18116" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5372" RevisionGUID="68636de2-4af9-4129-804c-a4fda49b7d01" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There is a +/- 12 hour leeway on the hats. Stack Exchange time is based on UTC. This is expected behavior. [Here is a comment by Nick Craver about it][1], as part of a larger Meta Stack Overflow discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/159577/off-by-twelve-error-and-i-feel-fine-hat#comment462135_159579" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18117" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5396" RevisionGUID="0b373e75-95f6-4b69-b012-2593532903a5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Your account was never suspended by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are getting the message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;then this is an automatic process which we cannot affect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please read [this Meta Stack Overflow question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers) and it's answers to guide you on what you can do to get the ban lifted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18118" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5401" RevisionGUID="4615de19-0e58-439f-bdc3-61334ef17bd9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="When I sense a good question buried within a vague wording (and your [felt like that](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/180824/1) to me), I for one try to get it closed as soon as possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is, vague wording is a road to closure anyway but while open, it can attract irrelevant answers which will make it difficult ([as explained here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773)) to further edit the question into the shape allowing to repel &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; garbage answers and reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you can see, fast closure here serves the primary need to make reopening easier and protect the poorly worded good question from getting bad answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _repel_ garbage answers - one sure can not 100% protect a question from getting garbage answers. But one can at least try to phrase the question so that one can come to Meta, say _&quot;Here's the question, here's the answer, I don't feel like the answer is OK&quot;_ and have a good chance of garbage being downvoted by active community members who happen to read this complaint." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18119" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5411" RevisionGUID="a9ff3836-f8b1-4015-a915-6f7d23b14a66" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="One solution would be to start posting friendly comments explaining the closure when you vote to close, or when you see a question closed as &quot;not-constructive&quot; with no comment left for the OP to explain why it was closed and what they can do to get their question reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was actually reading [this answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/130231/158605) earlier today and thought it might be related. To quote parts of it (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &quot;Not constructive&quot; is already *extremely broad* in what it covers, to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the point where it's almost too easy to apply it in cases where [the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closer should really just be editing to clarify instead][2]. It's also&#xD;&#xA;&gt; one of the hardest reasons to explain to the author of the post being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed - the description is pretty good, and links to the FAQ which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elaborates... But at first glance, it's *already* too close to &quot;we&#xD;&#xA;&gt; don't like your question, kthanksbye&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Finally, the core problem with your two examples is that there's **no&#xD;&#xA;&gt; clear explanation of the specific problems in the comments**; there is a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; decent meta discussion, but the confusion could have been mitigated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more easily if the close-voters had simply been more clear as to what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they found troublesome about these questions. Because of the breadth&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of scope (see above), Not Constructive tends to require more of this&#xD;&#xA;&gt; than, say, &quot;Not a real question&quot; or &quot;Exact Duplicate&quot;. The alternative&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solution would be to break it up into multiple close reasons... But&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we've seen this cause problems in the past; **encouraging closers to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; explain their rationale tends to produce more thoughtful closing**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'd encourage users who vote to close as not-constructive to leave a friendly and helpful comment explaining what makes the question not-constructive, and explain what needs to be done to get it reopened (if such a comment doesn't already exist of course). You don't need to be the close-voter to leave helpful comments like that either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally when I first started with the SE sites, I got upset with some question closures as well. Having an actual person (instead of an extremely broad auto-generated closure message) point out the flaws of the questions to me, and explain what needed to be done to get the question reopened is probably part of the reason why I'm still participating in SE sites today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129423/on-the-boundaries-of-not-constructive-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18120" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="1acbdb74-05e9-4a75-9b86-ec501d4a94fb" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot;** in the answers appear to happen once or twice a week on average, frequent enough to feel the connection between these and respective questions making their way into [SE collider list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My particular concern is the poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making **interesting and well presented problems** look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;&quot;Oh look: ['my guess is fairly prosaic. Git is brilliant...'](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177890/31260 &quot;example&quot;) - with upvoted answer like that it [can't be a real question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;not-a-real-question - what's this?&quot;)&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to [repel garbage answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3835/31260 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;), I can easily name a handful of active regulars who [can and do](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;filter=all &quot;our editors gang is pretty strong&quot;) just that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that [invalidates my edit](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;). And answer that exploits another minor ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions: per my observations &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; have been smart enough to pick questions that have reasonably good wording as-is.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how things work now helps to attract new contributors but I would appreciate if achieving this important goal &lt;sup&gt;**[1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/when-is-an-account-abandoned/ &quot;'reduce the friction of... answering to little more than entering an anonymous comment on a blog'&quot;), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/helping-the-experts-get-answers/ &quot;'attract notable experts to your site'&quot;), [3](http://stackexchange.com/about &quot;'free and open to everyone... answer questions without even bothering to register'&quot;)**&lt;/sup&gt; would somehow be less damaging for good, highly visible questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **protect your own users from scale ...human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon...** ([A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy ](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html &quot;quote source&quot;))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some additional observations based on discussions that followed posting this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Low quality answers in hot questions likely contribute to the fact that currently, it is [hard for users to understand site standards](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;), which results in posting many &quot;bad&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a steady source of misguided contributors... There are... [broken windows](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info)... **&quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;**.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Low quality answers also threat to [penalize contributors](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13713_5448 &quot;see 'clear that 10k barrier...' and further discussion&quot;) who post good ones because when piled on in hot questions, garbage answers trigger [CW](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info &quot;automatic community wiki when there are more than 15 answers&quot;) which consequently turns all the upvotes given to good answers into zero reputation for their authors.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [more than 1700 answers scored 25+ turned community wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;q=wiki%3ayes%20is%3aanswer%20score%3a25)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of precision, note that number `1700` above is only indicative since search does not exclude answers turned CW for other reasons. Also note some of the answers could be high-voted &quot;unfairly&quot;: per analysis 10+ voted answers in sampled questions (below), this could happen, although rather infrequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through few [sampled](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/181999/31260 &quot;random sampling, stuff like that&quot;) questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, note that besides 199 answers reviewed above, there are also 19 answers deleted in 16 questions listed above. These answers are visible only to moderators and to users with [sufficient privileges](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;Access to Moderator tools -&gt; 'View deleted posts'&quot;). Of these 19, 9 are deleted by moderators, the rest has been deleted by owners. Of 10 answers deleted by owners, I would downvote 7-8.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summing up, I would downvote about **101-118 of 218** answers I reviewed per above research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some data related to [recently added](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/5413/revisions &quot;see changes in rev 13&quot;) observations on community wiki status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 2K+ views - about **25%** are CW, [307](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [1247](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 10K+ views - about **60%** are CW, [62](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [101](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting [self](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13717_5448 &quot;from here&quot;), wow. Just... wow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18121" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5426" RevisionGUID="78f94306-eb14-40d9-9512-3320e144d767" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The down vote came from the close reason. Some close reasons, including off-topic, automatically apply a down vote to the question. The reason for closure is clearly stated in [the FAQ][1]: questions about &quot;implementation issues or programming tools&quot; belong on Stack Overflow. A good rule of thumb is that if you are sitting at your computer, in front of your development tools, the question probably belongs on Stack Overflow. If you're at a whiteboard or in a conference room, Programmers is probably a better bet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was not eligible for migration to Stack Overflow because of its age. In the past few months, a restriction was placed on migration. After 60 days (refer to [this feature request at MSO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/151890/165773 &quot;'Disable migration for questions older than 60 days'&quot;) for details), questions can no longer be migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there are indeed &quot;tons of similar questions&quot; on Programmers, please point them out. Implementation details are, and always have been (as far as I can remember), off-topic here. If any exist, they should be closed or migrated to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18122" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5430" RevisionGUID="7dfd0ef8-6e89-49c6-b89b-8db84b56726e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Aarthi is [looking for feedback regarding the Winter Bash 2012][1] over on Meta Stack Overflow. If you have any comments, complaints, suggestions, or anything else, I'd recommend posting it over there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/161188/what-do-you-think-of-winter-bash" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18123" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5438" RevisionGUID="5d3843aa-5b2c-4d7c-92d7-eb90a01e46e6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There exists a grace period for 5 minutes after the first submit that rolls all edits in that time into the original post so they don't count so you can make those quick minor edits. Otherwise start taking advantage of the instant preview it works great and it seems pretty crazy that you prefer more clicks to format your answer. Also please note that posting a partially complete answer and rapidly editing more and more info is somewhat discouraged behavior as it creates the [fastest gun in the west][1] problem. As for a Question it's in your best interest to post as good of a question as possible the first time, because once its posted people will start voting on it and you could wind up have a bunch of down-votes or close votes that could have been avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason the threshold exists is to prevent people from continually editing their answers/questions which [bumps](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info &quot;what's this&quot;) them to the top of the page for more rep from upvotes, 10 was decided as a fair number to allow people to benefit from providing meaningful updates and prevent bad people from benefiting too much. Moderators also have the ability to remove CW status, but this is rarely done and generally requires an [exceptional answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3527/31260 &quot;example request for an exceptional answer&quot;) that a user has obviously put forth a lot of effort to maintain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/9731/203115" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18124" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5442" RevisionGUID="e4f6aea7-b148-499c-a6a0-633738a73521" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="My [profile summary page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=summary) currently says 3668 upvotes while votes-&gt;upvotes sub tab ([dev team only link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=votes&amp;sort=upvote)) counts less than that - 3544.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`3668-3544=124` - as far as I understand this difference could be [due to deleted posts](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144757/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;), does that mean more than 100 posts I **upvoted** during last one and half year are **all** deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my past observations deletion indeed decreases the count, I only don't know if there's anything else besides that could also cause the miss (eg like it was with expiration in [this bug report posted at MSO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/162044/profile-page-shows-6-reopen-votes-total-while-i-have-at-least-25-successful-ones)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;For the record, I also tried to check if this could somehow relate to deleted users but it appears to be not the case. My favorite [&quot;good one-liner example&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3477/31260 &quot;advertised here:)&quot;) that was posted by now-deleted user shows my upvote just the way it was cast in April 2012.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18125" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5445" RevisionGUID="7e43df52-dc4b-4288-8d79-ec1f2b261503" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="You have up-voted 124 deleted posts. Such votes do show up in your totals, [and also count toward various badges](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/117846/votes-cast-should-include-votes-on-deleted-contributions/123048#123048); they have the additional advantage of *not* counting toward the daily voting limit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They *don't* show up on your profile's votes tab, because that would mean showing you links to deleted posts - that would equate to giving you broken links on your profile which would be *bad*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For comparison, you've *down-voted* 4,587 deleted posts. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18126" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5461" RevisionGUID="db947f3f-73af-455f-a887-88b533e99b95" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The problems that you mention come from a misuse of comments. Comments meant to point out issues with or suggestions for the post that they are attached to. They should be used if the question needs additional information or to ask about what has already been tried or to elaborate on points that someone answering would need to know about to provide a better, more relevant answer. Comments on an answer are likewise meant to ask for clarification of points or to point out errors or concerns with an answer. They are not meant for extended discussion. This [Meta Stack Overflow answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/139812/572) provides a good overview.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a post has a number of irrelevant or obsolete comments, flag them for deletion so that they don't cause the problems you're seeing. Once issues with the post have been resolved, the comments are probably no longer necessary and can be cleaned up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, if you need to have an extended discussion that maintains an order, feel free to start a chat room and link to it in the comments. At 100 reputation, a user can create a custom chat room. This room may go dormant or get locked, but the content is preserved much like the content on the main site. A comment linking to the chat room can be left for people to follow and refer to the extended discussion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18127" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5467" RevisionGUID="29b91960-ae2a-40d5-8088-da822cb4cf88" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Sorry for the late response; this issue was [fixed][1] on Sep 25, 2012. Thanks for the report.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/141435/new-beta-review-displays-locked-posts/143562#comment425684_143562" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18128" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5478" RevisionGUID="65e79213-48bc-4560-89be-58a289e80f83" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There is a market in terms of &quot;If someone was to create a website where this was the goal and allowed, it would likely find people willing to visit it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before you go off designing such a website (the Stack Exchange format doesn't go well for such a type of question - by design I believe, and a good choice), I believe the naive implementation it is doomed to failure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) by Clay Shirky.  Though a decade old, it has important truths about social software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this article:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Scale alone kills conversations, because conversations require dense&#xD;&#xA;&gt; two-way conversations. In conversational contexts, Metcalfe's law is a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; drag. The fact that the amount of two-way connections you have to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; support goes up with the square of the users means that the density of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; conversation falls off very fast as the system scales even a little&#xD;&#xA;&gt; bit. You have to have some way to let users hang onto the less is more&#xD;&#xA;&gt; pattern, in order to keep associated with one another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange works reasonably because it makes conversations difficult.  You have questions and answers which is not a two way conversation - it is a question and an answer and it's done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the code detects a conversation happening in comments, it suggests people take the comments to a chat room (where conversations of a small group work).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From earlier in the article:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The downside of going for size and scale above all else is that the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dense, interconnected pattern that drives group conversation and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; collaboration isn't supportable at any large scale. Less is different&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -- small groups of people can engage in kinds of interaction that large groups can't. And so we blew past that interesting scale of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; small groups. Larger than a dozen, smaller than a few hundred, where&#xD;&#xA;&gt; people can actually have these conversational forms that can't be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; supported when you're talking about tens of thousands or millions of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; users, at least in a single group.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question of &quot;what language should I learn&quot; or &quot;what should I do next&quot; or &quot;what book should I read&quot; requires a conversation to understand the context of what is being asked.  The answer to &quot;what language should I learn&quot; is not &quot;C&quot; in every case.  The correct answer requires that the asker and the answerer exchange a dozen messages each way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The conversation that would need to happen is one that would be unmanageable (and thus, the reason why SE tries to prevent conversations in the Q&amp;A part).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For an example of what this would become, head over to a forum that allows &quot;shopping&quot; type questions (deviant art photography forum springs to mind, though it may have changed since I was there last - Reddit may also be a place that allows this and consider what asking such a question there will result in) and look at the size and number of pages of discussion for a &quot;simple&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, you may want to read [Web Discussions: Flat by Design](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/12/web-discussions-flat-by-design.html) which does go into some of the difficulty with online conversations.  Additionally, the M.SO post [Is Stack Overflow a forum](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/92107/is-stack-overflow-a-forum) goes into the nature of what it is:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; For example, on a forum you might ask how to run a game in windowed mode. You will get several responses, some of which will be nothing but &quot;oh, I love that game!&quot; or &quot;I haven't played that in a while, wow.&quot; You'll be lucky if you get a relevant response. By contrast, on Stack Exchange you'd get [practical responses](http://gaming.stackexchange.com/q/21955/1925) that are 100% relevant to your question. &lt;sup&gt;[1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/92110/165773 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;...  &#xD;&#xA; Stack Exchange neither supports nor encourages a &quot;forum-style&quot; of open, free-for-all discussion (many-to-many conversations). This is by design... Stack Exchange is built on the premise that **forums don't scale**. All those open conversations mean that those forums only tend to get noisier and noisier. What inevitably happens is... you stop learning. &lt;sup&gt;[2](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/92115/165773 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18129" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="db7d37ae-b0e5-4e1b-981b-83849592a576" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Could we please make a trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Modification details are described in [this MSO post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164712/165773) as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As far as I can tell, substantial part of `Qanswers` in current formula is fake.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;  `(log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascores)`&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;About 1/3 of the answers [studied here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever&quot;) (83 of total 254) have score less than 1/100 of top voted post in respective question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Given that questions checked were ones with tens thousands views, **insultingly low score** indicates that assuming these answers to be popular wouldn't even be in the ballpark. Still, the formula pumps these into `Qanswers` value, as if it is something everyone would be happy to read (hint: it isn't).&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Consider tuning the formula to make it deviate less from voting results. **Ignore answers with non-positive score. Or [better yet](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13857_5485 &quot;preference for cut off at (TopAnswerScore/10-1) explained in comments here&quot;), ignore answers scored less than some reasonable fraction (eg 1/10) of the top one.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that current formula appears to give an unjustified value to crappy answers in highly upvoted questions (`Qscore/5`, no matter how much is answer downvoted), I would like to perform test run to find out if suggested change would make an impact to issues outlined in Programmers meta posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Note: results of the trial run to be analyzed using study analogous to one performed in _Answers quality in hot questions_. Current evaluation shows about **101-118 low quality of 218** answers sampled.  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Upon completion of trial run, similar evaluation is to be done in order to estimate whether there was a substantial impact, positive or negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Complementary information to this request is provided in [comments below](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment16044_5482 &quot;starting from here&quot;), marked with &quot;for the record...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I expect modified formula to be competitive to current one at &quot;moderately hot&quot; questions, following the [reasoning outlined here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773):&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;For questions that are not too hot (likely 2-3 clicks away from top of the list) it's natural to see things working exactly as intended. Answers and comments quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;) brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and cool...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recent hot question about [automated testing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/185819/31620) gives an example of why I would want to try a modified formula. In 17 hours, question collected 17 answers, merely 5-7 of which provide useful original content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overheat of fake hotness impacted question like a [Black Saturday fire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a01_17890753.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the fire settled, what is left for future visitors of the question looks like a wasteland of low quality garbage (note that due to high views, it will score high in web searches).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a04_17906927.jpg][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the light of above, [community wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info) status stamped on the question looks especially despicable. It kind of suggests that **after damage has done**, community members are invited to go over the crap brought in by braindead formula, carefully analyze it and try to tame the pain by downvotes. As if they don't have anything better to do!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Update&#xD;&#xA;Related feature request has been posted at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/192046/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please stop counting proven low score answers in hotness formula. Please roll the dice fairly, let user voting and time decay contribute to hotness score as intended. Please promote to collider audience less brain-damaging content to learn from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vKQvI.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B1hjy.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18130" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5483" RevisionGUID="65fb7e5d-ddbf-47a8-9a92-bfb04b3fbfc7" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="See [hot-questions tag wiki at MSO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The hotness are questions across either the site or [the entire Stack Exchange network](http://stackexchange.com/questions &quot;with real-time chilli flavour&quot;) (where they are seen on the drop down at top left). &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;They're on your tongue, they're the frontispiece, the vanguard, the spicy that you want to lick. The questions raging through the community and burning up the charts like a new album of some artist that enjoys a large and rabid fanbase.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;###Related&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [What formula determines questions for the hot touch?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11602/what-formula-should-be-used-to-determine-hot-questions &quot;a formula of spicy&quot;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18131" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5490" RevisionGUID="5cd3b8f0-24e1-4f21-81ef-214020b53573" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Issues like this are addressed in MSO faq post **[What is the XY problem?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/66378/165773)** (by the way there's also quite an interesting list of linked questions there).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...asking about your attempted solution rather than your actual problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As long as your answer explains why there is an underlying problem implicitly present in question asked and provides a solution to it, it should be OK." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18132" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5496" RevisionGUID="dfb5aba0-de43-4027-9e68-ccb205d83ba0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/180588/31260&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above answer has been made CW per automatic rule ([quote source](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/11741/165773 &quot;MSO answer to 'What are “Community Wiki” posts?'&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The post has been edited ten (10) times by the original owner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Automatically applying generic rule in this particular case looks unfair.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;In case of doubt, check the answer contents and revisions history to decide whether you agree with above.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* answer: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/180588/31260&#xD;&#xA;* revisions: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/180588/revisions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer looks exceptionally good and revisions (all made by author) look like substantially adding a value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to clear CW status to recognize an extraordinary contribution of the author?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18133" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5504" RevisionGUID="25e035a0-12da-4ec7-847d-41240c749c4f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="A feature similar to this one has been implement, you can counter-act close votes by voting to &quot;leave open&quot; in the [close vote review queue][1]. It's not exactly what you've asked for, and it's only accessible through the review queue, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more details, read [this answer][2] on MSO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/134673/162704" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18134" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5527" RevisionGUID="695bf689-a87d-44f3-8ec4-725803c7a69d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I'm not sure whether this falls under &quot;idle curiosity&quot; or not, but I have a devil of a time keeping the distinction between arguments and parameters straight - knowing the history behind them - the &quot;why&quot; - might well help. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or it might just be one more bit of trivia to be confused and forgotten. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But frankly, this does seem like the sort of [&quot;conceptual&quot; question][1] that the site is intended to serve. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/165952/what-should-be-the-range-of-acceptable-why-questions-on-stack-overflow#comment485094_165952" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18135" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5535" RevisionGUID="0d54a836-bfd4-4e8a-bfdc-8825cb377960" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="You've got it completely wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is by no means “not constructive”. The fact that the guidelines are met should be a hint. It's a well-written question about an interesting subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That this question was closed as NC [doesn't surprise me](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/165882/appeal-a-not-constructive-question/165911#165911). There are more things on heaven and earth than dreamt of in most programmers' philosophy, but your average SO/Prog.SE close voter barely dreams, let alone imagine that there's a whole world out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The study of languages is a science. The question is perhaps not well-suited for the site: it's on-topic (I guess) in that it's about programming languages, but the target audience would be computer scientists, who understand what a programming language is and how natural languages are modeled.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Speaking as a moderator on [Computer Science](http://cs.stackexchange.com/), I'll recommend migrating the question there. Both programming language theory and natural language modeling are on-topic there, and we don't dismiss “it's not part of my daily job as a programmer” as non-constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(However, I'm afraid user881920 is going to be disappointed. While the question is thought-provoking, the answer is an unexciting no.)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18136" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="aee9b91d-48e3-4eb0-8ec3-93f7943bb210" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This request has been [warp driven](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_drive_%28Star_Trek%29 &quot;what's this&quot;) to the following requests at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [In “network hot” questions formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/192046/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* [Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/216260/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note - this very answer has been used as a &quot;buffer&quot; to draft the latter request: [details in revisions history](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/5542/revisions).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18137" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5543" RevisionGUID="ac37574a-e058-4399-9d9e-3a2790e9817f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Most likely reason for the issues with answers quality is a [particular bug](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164712/165773 &quot;described here&quot;) in a hotness formula (&quot;fake popularity&quot;). This bug causes some of the questions with many answers to be placed unreasonably close to the top of the [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Issues caused by this are explained in details in a post about particularly troublesome ([&quot;sticky&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;)) kind of questions affected by the bug in formula:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One problem with hot questions seems to be that there is no way for &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; to differentiate **genuine** popularity from **fake** one, that is from popularity introduced by the algorithm itself... the algorithm simply is incapable to detect cases when popularity is [its own byproduct](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback &quot;due to positive feedback loop&quot;)...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;For questions that are not too hot... quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), collider brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and fair...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;But when question gets closer to the top of collider, things change... it attracts a lot of visitors whose desire to answer is not balanced by local community norms. At this point &quot;intended life-cycle of a hot question&quot; breaks.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Hotness algorithm assumes the question gets bumped mostly by good answers and that infrequent deviations are corrected by local community through voting and comments. Thing is though, this does not work on top of the collider...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Post further explains why community moderation (&quot;quality control&quot; through voting, comments and editing by site regulars) tends to break on questions impacted by unnatural hotness score:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...There are just too many new visitors to keep things under local community control, and there are just too many new voters and commenters to get things going as designed... So comes next and next and next round of garbage answers, bumping the question, bringing mindless upvotes, over and over and over again.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Hotness algorithm calculates this as genuine popularity, keeps it accordingly high at collider, bringing more visitors that are breaking things further and so on and so on. Note it's not limited to newcomers only, everyone is invited to the party. Community regulars can clearly see that usual quality norms are broken... and that they are free to follow the New Order just like anyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;**That's how fake popularity makes shit stick to the ceiling and helps to keep it there.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It also explains why there are so much community wiki (triggered by too-many-answers) among questions affected by hotness formula bug:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; _Regular_ open questions (&quot;appropriate&quot; ones) tend to have much less than 30 answers indeed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;But when we look at &quot;sticky&quot; questions, things seem to be different. These questions aren't &quot;inappropriate&quot;, otherwise these would be closed long time ago. Still, 10 examples of sticky questions have more than 270 answers total, about 27 average per question...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...at least **2/3 answers in sticky questions are just a garbage** that somehow leaked in (probably because &quot;fake hotness&quot; gave question an unnaturally high exposure in collider).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Here are feature requests to address this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5482/31260&#xD;&#xA;* [In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/192046/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please stop counting proven low score answers in hotness formula. Please roll the dice fairly, let user voting and time decay contribute to hotness score as intended. Please promote to collider audience less brain-damaging content to learn from." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18138" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5553" RevisionGUID="3c45fed3-40bf-49ac-9ba9-09aeb1c8e889" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Last week I asked [a question on future-proof programming](http://stackoverflow.com/q/14756472/974555) on Stack Overflow. It was closed as off-topic there. I flagged it for migration, but although the flag was deemed helpful, the non-migration [appears to imply rejection](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/167700/172266).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is my question, closed on Stack Overflow, a good fit on Programmers? Was a migration rejected? Why (not)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18139" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5560" RevisionGUID="50edcffe-2c3e-41f0-9c9d-52bc1751243d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I would not judge content based on it's potential moral or ethical uses&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The more we know about security loopholes, the more secure we can build our applications. Consider for example, the exact same question asked, but with the purpose of preventing such security loopholes in the first place. Then the moral/ethical argument would no longer be there, and you'll still get the exact same answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, the OP is very correct with [his comment][1] that *&quot;when you learn cyber hacking and various exploits, it is not necessary you wants to be a black hat hacker&quot;*. In fact, the US government plans to [dramatically increase the size of their cyber security department][2], and plan on hiring many more &quot;hackers&quot; in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also as a side note related to that specific question, I recently wrote up [an answer][3] to a MSO question about effective ways to guide new users so they have a higher chance of becoming a contributing member of the SE communities, and one of the points there was to &quot;Assume the best about the user, and not the worst&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you posted as an example is the exact sort of case I was referring to. By assuming the worst about the person (that they are only asking to create malware), you are presenting the OP with a very unfriendly welcome to the site, and it is unlikely they will stick around. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In contrast, if you assume the best (that they are merely a curious student like they say they are), they are much more likely to listen to what you say, and may potentially become a contributing member to the community in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187231/create-a-unterminable-process-in-windows#comment360653_187231&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/us/pentagon-to-beef-up-cybersecurity-force-to-counter-attacks.html&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/167474/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18140" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5588" RevisionGUID="09ba433d-ec3e-421d-a3fb-6ee3bbf15787" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Although a user's Close/Reopen votes aren't displayed in Data.SE, the Post History record is public, and you can parse the line saying who closed the post to get a list of a user's closed posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can use [this Data.SE query][1] that [Tim Stone shared][2] to look at posts that a user has successfully closed. It should be noted that this does not include votes on deleted posts, nor does it include close votes that have expired or did not result in the question getting closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also played around with that query a bit and found you can fairly easily get a list of the [Top Close Voters][3] and [Top Reopen Voters][4], although those queries take a bit longer to run and I would not recommend running them on a larger site like SO. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both these queries are currently set to only show votes since 2012, but you can change the date at the top if you want to look at a larger date range. Also, the same restrictions apply as the first query: it only includes non-deleted posts, and only contains close/reopen votes that resulted in the question successfully getting closed or reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a related note, since it's fairly trivial to view a user's successful close/reopen vote history, I have a MSO proposal to [show successful Close/Reopen votes in Data.SE][5] that would make queries like this easier to run and more efficient.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/98815/close-votes-by-user&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/160981/show-successful-close-reopen-votes-in-sede-regardless-of-if-theyve-expired-or-n#comment467269_160981&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90851/top-close-voters&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90852/top-reopen-voters&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/160981/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18141" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5634" RevisionGUID="c9612867-19f0-41e4-b5b8-4b24dc5c896f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="##Do history questions offer value to the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, absolutely. A quick look at our [highest voted history questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bhistory%5D+closed%3A0) reveals quite a few exceptional questions and answers. The history tag is not one of our most active tags, but it does have a significant amount of questions (153 currently) and _only 2_ of them are downvoted. That's... impressive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I'm fully aware of the several valid concerns about history questions, and share most of them, I can't imagine Programmers _without_ history questions. They are a bit special, but the exceptional ones are proof enough that the topic belongs on the site, and with vigorous moderation we can deal with the low end ones.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##How do history questions pass the &quot;practical problem&quot; test?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) dictates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the prime directive for all Stack Exchange sites, and Programmers is no exception. However it's a directive that was written with Stack Overflow in mind and _some times_ it proves to be more confusing than helpful on every other Stack Exchange site. If we go by a strict interpretation of the prime directive, then history questions are off topic. That, however, would also mean that 9/10 Stack Exchange sites should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a related discussion on MSO, [I commented](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/164436/is-there-a-rule-of-thumb-for-objective-questions-asked-out-of-curiosity#comment480234_164692): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  I don't care at all if the problem is actual or practical (by whatever definition of practical), what I care about is the asker being serious about it, at least serious enough to have done some minimal research before s/he resorts to a community of volunteers. Intellectual curiosity is as great motivator as any, idle curiosity is a different beast entirely, one that, if entertained, will ultimately suck the life out of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The prime directive's goal is to stop people from asking questions out of idle curiosity. Intellectual curiosity on the other hand _can_ be an excellent motivator for questions, especially on sites that are focused on conceptual questions like Programmers. I think the fact that the majority of our history questions are either exceptional or crap it's because the first were asked out of intellectual curiosity and the latter out of idle curiosity.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And what divides the two is prior effort. If the asker has spend some time researching their question and reached a point where they can't get to the answer by themselves, guess what, they are facing an _actual_ problem. A problem that, judging from the impressive answer rate of our history questions, we can certainly help solve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##What should our general guidelines be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Intellectual curiosity is _not_ an excuse for poor questions, our guidelines should be exactly the same as with every other question. Since history questions have proven to be troublesome, let me re-iterate: &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;- **Askers _must_ do their homework**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If the answer to a history question can be found on a freely available reference site (read: Wikipedia) _or_ the language's / system's / project's freely available documentation, then the question is **off topic** and will be closed as such.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is perhaps the most important guideline for history questions. We are not here to copy paste the relevant Wikipedia article for you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Askers _must_ share their research**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Except for the very few of us that have mind reading powers, we can't guess what you already know. Please share your research with us, to avoid having people wasting their time answering with what you already know. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Questions _must_ be answerable**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   From our [about page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Programmers is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat.  &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;   Our [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is ideal for open ended discussions on programming history. History questions on the main site, as all questions on the main site, should be focused, specific and as clear as they can be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Programming history questions should be about _programming_ history**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The focus areas of the site are software development and software engineering, not _everything_ that's related to computing is acceptable on the site and history questions are no exception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **No trivia**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Trivia _by definition_ doesn't belong on Programmers. Our [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is ideal for discussions around programming history trivia." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18142" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5644" RevisionGUID="0b97ecdc-d0f7-48f4-afc7-1e025663c656" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This is sort of an edge-case. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a migration is [rejected](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/35744/allow-diamond-moderators-to-reverse-question-migrations), its answers are deleted on the target site, it is locked, and the reverse happens on the origin site - so right now on SO, [that question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15123889/why-do-data-types-in-computers-exist-if-its-really-all-just-bits) is just marked closed; it could be re-opened, deleted, edited, etc. - unless you check the history, there's no evidence it was ever migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Normally, folks don't *do stuff* to migrated questions after the migration has been rejected. It gets weird. That question now exists in both places. (I will clean this up)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That being said, we probably could do a better job of communicating the state of the question. My preference would be to explicitly state that the question was migrated in *and then rejected*; but we could also just [tack on the normal Locked notice](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/130116/show-lock-banners-on-rejected-migrations); vote for that if you like the idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18143" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5656" RevisionGUID="b986ec7b-8ca8-4d0e-ba40-8e4bc0fc2a66" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The following is a &quot;digest&quot; version of the [2013 Moderator Election Town Hall Chat](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5595/2013-moderator-election-town-hall-chat). The format, [as described on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests), is one *answer* to this question *for every question* asked in the Town Hall, containing all the candidate's answers to that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**To view the digest chronologically, please sort the answers by &quot;oldest&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have questions or comments about this, **please do not answer this question** as the answers are designed to be used for the questions from the Town hall itself. Instead, please ask on [the parent question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests) or in [the Town Hall Discussion Room](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/352/town-hall-discussion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see any corrections which need to be made to this digest, or if you were a candidate who was unable to attend the town hall and would like your answers included, please @GraceNote or @TimStone [in the chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/251/programmers-town-hall-chat) and let us know!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18144" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5679" RevisionGUID="081360fd-c5b2-454c-9d79-0799a2ed3983" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="As far as I can tell, good history question is one that evolves into a retrospective case study.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Practical purpose of case studies is explained eg in [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_method):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...an intensive analysis of an individual unit (e.g., a person, group, or event) stressing developmental factors in relation to context... Case studies may be descriptive or explanatory. The latter type is used to **explore causation in order to find underlying principles.** They may be prospective... or retrospective (in which **criteria are established for selecting cases from historical records for inclusion in the study**).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...&quot;Case studies are analyses of persons, events, decisions, periods, projects, policies, institutions, or other systems that are studied holistically by one or more methods. The case that is the subject of the inquiry will be **an instance of a class of phenomena that provides an analytical frame** — an object — within which the study is conducted and which the case illuminates and explicates.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Another suggestion is that case study should be defined as a research strategy, an **empirical inquiry that investigates a phenomenon within its real-life context**. Case study research can mean single and multiple case studies, can include quantitative evidence, relies on multiple sources of evidence, and benefits from the prior development of theoretical propositions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Case studies balance the need to understand something big (something that would be too broad / NARQ in Stack Exchange terms) with a limitation of being sufficiently specific to allow for reasonably scoped _productive learning_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Say, one shouldn't ask at Programmers _what do I need to know about mission critical projects_ - that would be too broad for our format. Instead, one asks [What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/159637/31260) - that's still tough but at least something we can handle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar to Stack Overflow, Programmers questions (including history ones) serve the purpose of picking and applying programming technologies. The difference is, due to _conceptual_ nature of Programmers questions, the purpose could be not as immediate / direct as at Stack Overflow...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you ask about mission critical software a week before interview, you're probably few months too late: few months ago, you should ask yourself whether you are interested, and what would you want to understand about doing software development in this context.&#xD;&#xA;* And you don't necessary need to understand the context of mission critical software development just because you are involved. In fact, it can be opposite:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hey you suggest us _Fagan inspections_, why? I mean I perfectly understand how these are justified in _mission critical_ projects, but how does this apply to our non-critical application, compared to lightweight reviews?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summing up, I believe that history questions can serve a practical purpose, sufficiently compliant with Programmers topics (if done right).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, above assumes these pass through community moderation, business as usual. Questions that do not fit get closed per standard [close reasons](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/close-reasons/info), answers that don't fit get downvoted / flagged / deleted per usual [community quality control](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/75717/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; [...] real questions have *answers*, __not *items* or *ideas* or *opinions*__.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...&quot;Real questions&quot; don't necessarily have *practical* answers, but they do have __*authoritative* ones__." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18146" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5705" RevisionGUID="6bc59a60-78ba-4d2f-b3b7-ddd90424f7ea" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I would like to address one point I noticed in quite a few prior answers here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * conceptual question on software development, why wouldn't I ask it on **Stack Overflow**... &lt;sup&gt;[1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5680/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * On **StackOverflow**, many questions that are not in the prohibited categories... &lt;sup&gt;[2](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5699/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * there is considerable overlap between **Stack Overflow** and programmers... &lt;sup&gt;[3](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5704/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * those questions are valuable and interesting..., and happily go on using **StackOverflow**... &lt;sup&gt;[4](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5676/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah you guys brag so much about how easier it is to _pass through_ at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you probably don't consider is that [huge backlog in close votes queue](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/151833/165773 &quot;about 50K questions to close&quot;) makes (_currently_ makes) close voting at SO somewhat... _random_, compared to systematic effort you see at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **I hate to be the one to tell you, but don't expect this to last forever...**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yxu4K.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it will be very interesting to see what happens in about [21 months from now](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/163837/165773 &quot;'we should have it cleared in just under 21 months'&quot;), when mentioned backlog is expected to be cleared.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;One can probably get an idea of how it would feel like by observing current effort to [Close all the typo questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167342/close-all-the-typo-questions &quot;refer to MSO for more details on that&quot;). Watching their &quot;live backlog&quot; makes a strong impression: dozens of questions getting closed and deleted daily with ease, and don't forget that only a small percentage of [about 10 thousands SO close-voters](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/167915/165773 &quot;estimate here&quot;) participate!&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When close votes backlog is finally cleared, expect close votes processing to get to the pace at which other SO reviews are dealt with (think about something like **10x faster than at Programmers**).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What would you guys say when it will become only a matter of few minutes between first close vote / flag and question closure at Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If (when) that happens to your favorite &quot;conceptual&quot; questions at SO (as it happens already &lt;sup&gt;[1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/170394/165773 &quot;recent example&quot;), [2](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/157216/165773 &quot;another example&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt; - just not that frequently), please don't forget to get back here and tell us again if it's that easy to pass at SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yxu4K.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/review/close/stats &quot;'can't you see I'm working on it...'&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18147" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5720" RevisionGUID="8a07cb7e-722a-427e-8199-9f071d432664" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="### On everything should be open  &#xD;&#xA;I don't think anyone believes this.  Even the most liberal of the inclusionists has a limit on the amount of water-cooler nonsense they can tolerate.  For some, that water mark is really high, but it's still there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On giving new users a break from downvotes  &#xD;&#xA;The simple fact is, you have to treat everyone equally.  It's not fair to veteran users to be treated any differently than the new users.  Discipline without teeth is not discipline at all; if there are no consequences for bad posts, then the bad posts will continue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On closure reasons&#xD;&#xA;These are in the process of [being overhauled](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/169814) by SE.  The new close reasons will be kinder, gentler, more educational, and probably won't use the word &quot;closed.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On unanswerable questions and the strictness of closure&#xD;&#xA;I've been giving this a lot of thought since I asked my last question here on Meta.  I've begun experimenting with the way I use close votes and answer questions, using this guiding principle:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Can I answer this question in a meaningful way that is interesting and relevant to others?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's why: Being strict has not improved the quality of questions being asked here.  If anything, the *overall* quality of questions has gone down over time.  The diligence we've exerted to keep questions tightly focused has not improved the quality of questions other people ask, and neither has constantly arguing over the site scope.  Absent interesting questions to answer, there's no reason to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I come here because it is *fun and educational to rub shoulders with other people who have interesting ideas about programming.*  We can't have that if people are constantly being turned away without a commensurate increase in participation by those who know how to ask great questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18148" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5737" RevisionGUID="fe09c64e-3faa-4493-8f3e-9250f4b586d6" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Typically a moderator will lock a post for one of a few reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    A question or answer where repeated voting or editing is happening in a way which attempts to game, hack, or otherwise abuse the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    A question that gets opened and closed repeatedly many times without achieving community consensus on whether it should stay open or closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    A question that, for whatever reason, continues to attract flame posts, spam, or other inappropriate answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    A question that is repeatedly vandalized by its asker; for example, to drastically alter the meaning of the question that invalidates existing answers, or to obliterate/obscure the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22228/what-is-a-locked-post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I locked the post temporarily because it was closed as a duplicate by community consensus, then started to receive flags disputing that it was in fact **not** a duplicate of the following question....&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45378/is-commented-out-code-really-always-bad&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I felt as if I agreed with this, however it had over 10 answers already and at the other over 13.  I couldn't really see too much else of value being added in addition to what others have already answered well and completely.  I was hoping that with a temporary lock that it wouldn't attract anymore answers and if anybody was concerned or highly disagreed with my reopen of the question then they would bring the subject up on Meta for us to discuss.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am glad that you brought it up because this question can be the perfect vehicle for such a discussion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18149" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5750" RevisionGUID="98162b7c-681d-4b4a-a02c-bfc627a1efe7" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="All the changes are now live, you can find more details on [MSO][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first step was the brand new [about page][1] (see our [about page][2]), and the next one was the [changes in how duplicates work][3]. Right now Stack Exchange is looking for feedback on revamping the close reasons, on the main Meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will be updating this answer as more changes and requests for feedback are announced:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [We're rolling out a new “Quick Start” guide to help new users learn the basics][4] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)][5] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Help us make “Off-Topic” close reasons clearer to the OP][6] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Help us make “Not Constructive” and “Not a Real Question” closures more effective][7] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Every “close” has its thorn: help us improve closing verbiage](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/173497/every-close-has-its-thorn-help-us-improve-closing-verbiage) &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/169814/help-us-make-off-topic-close-reasons-clearer-to-the-op&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/163254/were-rolling-out-a-new-quick-start-guide-to-help-new-users-learn-the-basics&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/169814/help-us-make-off-topic-close-reasons-clearer-to-the-op&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171732/help-us-make-not-constructive-and-not-a-real-question-closures-more-effectiv&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/184154/closing-the-loop-the-closing-overhaul-is-live" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18150" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5763" RevisionGUID="710ff068-042d-4f57-aec0-070ba718ef20" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The deleted question is actually closed as a duplicate to [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51591/sites-for-getting-freelancer-jobs), which contains a more complete list of freelance sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best solution in this case would be to probably edit the existing answer to point to this non-deleted post instead of the deleted post, although in other cases where there isn't a good non-deleted duplicate, we'd probably want to edit the answer to remove the dead link (or remove the answer itself it the only content it contained was the dead link).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the rare event that the deleted post contains valuable information that is linked to from many places, it may qualify to be undeleted and a [historical lock][1] placed on it. That type of action usually depends on the content, how many views/votes the post has, and how many links go to it, and the deleted post you mention probably would not qualify because of it's low number of views (770).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also to answer your question about what you can do to see a deleted post when you don't have 10K+ reputation, you can try to find the post on [the Wayback Machine][2] or [StackPrinter][3], or you could try asking in [chat][4] or perhaps even here on [Meta][5] to see if a user with 10K+ rep or a moderator would be nice enough to get you a copy of the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/126587/158605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://archive.org/web/web.php&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.stackprinter.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18151" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5770" RevisionGUID="3aecab51-0750-4ebf-a5b8-ac9eb8319158" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The issue has been discussed on [Meta Stack Overflow][1]. Clearly something is still going on. I'll look into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/170683/stop-using-real-accounts-in-suggested-edit-audits/171562#171562" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18152" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5776" RevisionGUID="cfabf7e5-daa1-4ec8-979f-9bb611cd0541" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There's an automated process that runs daily and checks and reverses serial votes (either up or down). It will most probably reverse the downvotes the next time it runs, 9 downvotes in a very short time is certainly an abnormal pattern. In the highly unlikely case that the votes haven't been reversed in 24h, give me a shout in chat so I can ask a SE employee to take a closer look and manually invalidate the votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming the votes are indeed abusive (confirmed either by the script or by a SE employee), the next step is to contact and/or suspend the culprit, our tolerance for juvenile behaviours like this is extremely low. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More info on the serial voting script can be found in this [M.SO post][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/28756/what-can-i-do-if-im-the-victim-of-serial-downvoting" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18153" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5789" RevisionGUID="5156202e-5823-456c-b070-0f41488e6945" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="As pointed in the [comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5788/is-tagresource-questions-a-good-idea-for-the-main-site#comment14683_5788 &quot;here&quot;), this is not quite a good idea because having such a tag could have an opposite effect: users may think it's OK to use it, even if you write in its wiki and excerpt that it's forbidden - &quot;if there's a tag, why can't I ask about it?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you refer to my comment - for the sake of precision, this was only second time (I wish it would also be the last but unfortunately it wouldn't) when I referred asker to tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior to that, my similar comments were pointing to particular meta discussion (the one that is currently set in the tag wiki as the guidance point). It was when my comment has been (quite legitimately imNSho) [challenged](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190911/code-network-metrics-with-ui-events#comment370863_190911) by asker who pointed to another meta discussion to back up somewhat different approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, I suggested [tag wiki](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/186) and [excerpt](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/187) and switched to using these in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a more general note, I believe tag wiki like that are to be established any time when there is a confusion among meta readers caused by differing &quot;canonical&quot; / &quot;authoritative&quot; posts and comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's not a new idea, explained eg in [flagger's guide to link-only answers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/154922/165773) at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;In some meta posts or comments you may see moderators suggesting / requiring particular kind flag to be used (or to avoid) for link-only answers. Convenient _[litmus test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litmus_test_%28politics%29)_ in cases like that is to ask author whether this is their personal opinion or a statement that can be quoted in [tag wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/tag-wiki/info &quot;what's this&quot;) (wiki for respective flag or for [link-only  answers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/link-only-answers/info)). **Tag wiki are quite authoritative reference; anything else, read: _use at your own risk_.**&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a more recent example you can refer to MSO [profanity tag wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/172893/revisions &quot;tag wiki history&quot;) that have been established because of similar [confusion](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/172734/copying-profanities-and-obscene-words-on-meta/172747#comment513141_172747 &quot;discussed here&quot;) caused by having differing &quot;authoritative&quot; posts on the subject." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18155" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5817" RevisionGUID="85fcb4d7-368d-471a-8c92-cf86bc9ff508" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Should be back to working now; see http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/175161/chat-se-is-down on Meta Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18156" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5819" RevisionGUID="244dd4d2-648f-4b98-9cd9-aef21282e6cf" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="My comment from a recent question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions of online store policies for clarification are best addressed by contacting the support for the online store. At best, we can guess, present our own interpretation, or share anecdotes - none of which are good answers in a Q&amp;A format. The only authoritative answer can come from the store itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key point in my comment is about the authoritative answer.  For this I point to an answer from [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has an (admittedly drastically shorted) summary of:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Real questions&quot; don't necessarily have practical answers, but they do have authoritative ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For every question about app stores that I have seen (not all that exist, but all that I have seen), no one here is able to provide an authoritative answer. They are asking for interpretations of sometimes fuzzy policies written by someone else (that are then interpreted again by that agency).  Any answer that we (people who don't work for the app store and are not reviewers of apps for that store) can be wrong even if it is &quot;right&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A year ago there was a question [Are App Store questions on topic on programmers?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3556/).  All the same points are still valid today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18157" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5840" RevisionGUID="1bba81bd-d1cb-485e-b00a-0bea7b76cfae" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="My vote has been based on what is stated in the questions and in MSO guidance. Let's see,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Closed question ([revision that I voted on](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/194969/1)):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would like to know from the programmers what programming language is to be preferred?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;Target&quot; question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41798/programming-an-expert-system):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the general process to define the behavior of an expert system, from the initial assessment of the conditions to the actual code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given above, I voted in accordance with **[this guidance at MSO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/166707/165773)**:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to tell the user ...something like, “*Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.*” Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18158" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5843" RevisionGUID="39e5a6da-d03e-406d-8911-d0ec1465518d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Some recent posts make me feel like these could be automatically rejected by [quality filter](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/quality-filter/info &quot;what's this&quot;), thus saving community efforts for better quality questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To develope My Own linux Distro for Linux Beginners.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195209/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To Know How To prepare An understanding Doc To Track what I am Doing On daily Basis So that I can Be update To my Work.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195203/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I am A New Joinee In a major MNC And Currently I am Working In Vitria Team I dont Know Much about Vitria From Career Persepective.Plz Guide&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195204/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Above are full literal quotes of the posts, I did not change anything.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently it has been announced that quality filter is tightened at Trilogy sites (for your convenience, announcement is quoted below).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* As far as I understand, SE team is [open to consider similar change for Programmers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/174097/is-it-time-to-tighten-up-the-question-quality-filter/176875?noredirect=1#comment531396_176875 &quot;quote source&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the sad truth is that on Programmers, even questions with a maximum quality score fare worse on average than the ones passing the threshold I just put in place on SO. We can try tweaking the threshold there too, but it's probably worth a separate discussion on meta.programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we please somehow adjust quality filter at Programmers to prevent posting low quality stuff like in above examples?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the reference, announcement of [filter adjustment at Trilogy sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/176875/165773 &quot;here&quot;) is as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've bumped up the threshold below which questions will be blocked. The majority of *recently-asked* questions that fall below the new threshold do not fare well on Stack Overflow (i.e. they are closed, deleted, and/or down-voted). &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The down-side is that short questions will be harder to post (this is more than just a length check, but short + poor spelling / caps / punctuation / formatting will damn a post more readily). At this point, I think that's a fair trade-off on Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I've also increased the threshold on Super User and Server Fault; although the volume is lower there, they field even fewer reasonable questions in this range. A quick check of other high-traffic sites does not appear to justify raising this anywhere else at this time.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;FWIW: Stack Overflow already rejects something like twelve hundred questions a day based on this check - that'd amount to about 13% of questions if a lot of them weren't just the same folks retrying more or less the same text over and over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update** for the reference, at the &quot;quality score&quot; list provided in [this answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5857/31260 &quot;thanks Shog!&quot;): first of above examples scores 70, second - 83, third - 81." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18159" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5845" RevisionGUID="1450bcc9-98c6-4244-8010-c40118ad8276" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Short version: Does P.SE have similar new user limitations as SO does?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Buried in the MSO FAQ is this answer about [new user restrictions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/89241/194162).  And it states that new users are only allowed 6 questions in a 24 hour period at a maximum rate of one question every 20 minutes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I have noticed many new users ask 3 questions and then stop.  Is there a different limiter in place for P.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18160" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5850" RevisionGUID="976553d9-ed6a-4ed8-a61c-76ad46423757" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I have noticed a lot of questions being flagged as duplicates lately when I didn't feel that they were duplicates of the question that the people closing them said they were duplicates of. In some cases they didn't seem close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that the definition of &quot;duplicate&quot; should be very close to an exact duplicate of the question, in intent if not in wording. If the question is otherwise ambiguous or of low quality we shouldn't be closing it as a duplicate, we should be trying to clarify it or closing it for an appropriate reason. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reading the [guidance from MSO][1] that @gnat mentioned, I see this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  the answers to the original question must solve the dupe’s problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case I could see no answers to the question that came close to solving the duplicate's problem and clearly neither could the person asking it. There was some good information that was pertinent to their decision making, but nothing there which was an answer to *this question*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18161" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5893" RevisionGUID="11b85821-ce5f-403f-a35b-ba9def00a3a9" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="For questions about the process of identifying and closing questions that are duplicates of another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See [comprehensive guidance at MSO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/166707/165773 &quot;Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to tell the user ...something like, “*Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.*” Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related articles at Stack Exchange blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...**duplication is not necessarily bad**. Quite the contrary — some duplication is _desirable_. There’s often benefit to having multiple subtle variants of a question around, as people tend to ask and search using completely different words, and the better our coverage, the better odds people can find the answer they’re looking for...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...use your good judgment and please continue to close and merge duplicates as you see fit. However, bear in mind that cultivating and supporting a moderate amount of natural duplication actively _helps_ the community...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Handling Duplicate Questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/handling-duplicate-questions/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...there are three classes of duplicate questions, from most clear to least clear.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. Cut-and-paste duplicate questions. These questions are the very definition of exact duplicates; they are typically from users who willfully take the very same question and post it again... No grey area here.&#xD;&#xA;2. Accidental duplicates. These questions aren’t copy and paste, but they cover the exact same ground as an earlier Stack Overflow question. The overlap is not ambiguous...&#xD;&#xA;3. Borderline duplicates. These questions are ambiguous; they’re in the same ballpark as a previous question, but have subtle differences that may make them legitimately standalone questions. These are subject to interpretation..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18162" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5898" RevisionGUID="15555929-1538-420f-bad3-74790964c82e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="&gt; &quot;Duplicate of&quot; should be a transitive property (if A is a dupe of B, and B is a dupe of C, then A must be a dupe of C)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assumption of transitivity looks wrong; per my reading of the definition in [duplicate-questions tag wiki](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/duplicate-questions/info), it is not required:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to tell the user ...something like, _“Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.”_ Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question `A` having an answer in `B` does not automatically guarantee that it also has an answer in `C`, even though question `B` may have its answer in `C`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a simplified example, imagine &quot;chain of duplicates&quot; like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A:` How do I see result of multiplying 2 by 2?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B:` How do I multiply?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke `multiply` method of `arith` package. In order to view result, you invoke method of `display` package.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C:` How do I do arithmetic operations?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke appropriate method of `arith` package, like `multiply`, `divide` etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's easy to imagine readers being satisfied by closures `A -&gt; B` and `B -&gt; C` since answers given solve the problems asked about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, closure `A -&gt; C` would be problematic: first question asks about how to display results, while answer in the second question says nothing about this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note how question in `B` does not ask about displaying results, making dupe closure look reasonable. Also note how answer in `B` provides guidance _beyond_ its scope, along with addressing the question asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a more realistic example, refer to the non-transitive chain of duplicates at Meta Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A':` [Spiteful downvoting? Two fast DVs to my unrelated posts](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/178703/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B':` [What can I do if I'm the victim of serial downvoting?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/28756/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C':` [What is serial voting and how does it affect me?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/126829/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`A'` is closed as a duplicate of `B'`, which is in turn closed as a duplicate of `C'`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a closer look at [revisions history](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/178703/revisions &quot;here&quot;) and [comments](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/178703/spiteful-downvoting-two-fast-dvs-to-my-unrelated-posts#comment539909_178703 &quot;'changed the duplicate to one more relevant to the question asked...'&quot;), you will notice that initial closure has been changed from `A' -&gt; C'` to _narrower_ one, `A' -&gt; B'` because readers disagreed that _widest_ dupe target has answers relevant to the question asked in `A'`." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18163" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5928" RevisionGUID="185b9b25-e0f4-406d-9672-83fa8b16741f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Given the &quot;We were checking if you're paying attention!&quot; part of the flow you described, this was an audit rather than an actual &quot;this question needs to be closed&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given your timing and the review queue [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close/29657) was the [audit](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/review-audits/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are issues with audits that are occasionally brought up on MSO such as one that seems to be similar to your issue:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Close vote review audit flawed - fails without casting vote](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/179651/close-vote-review-audit-flawed-fails-without-casting-vote)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18164" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5933" RevisionGUID="16261a19-e9f5-4f08-b4cc-4fbc0c69db3a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="taken for the review audit FAQ on [MSO][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt;What happens if I fail?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;For most, [nothing][2]. You'll be given some guidance on why the post was inappropriate and what you could have done instead, and then allowed to continue reviewing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Repeated failures, especially in short succession can lead to your review privileges being suspended for a week or longer, depending on the frequency of the failures. Stack Exchange is continuing to analyze the data to determine the best action to take in these cases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Review audits aren't perfect though and its somewhat common that a poor question is chosen, but that shouldn't matter for users actually interested in reviewing questions, the audits are designed to help prevent robo-reviewing if you take your time and review normally its unlikely you will fail enough audits in a short enough period to matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/157121/what-are-review-tests-audits-and-how-do-they-work&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156938/stop-look-and-listen-audit-tricked-me/156942#comment452398_156942" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18165" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5934" RevisionGUID="e6b479fb-5300-4128-941b-f11b607ff47f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Nothing will happen if you fail an audit (or two). If you repeatedly fail audits, you might find yourself (automatically) suspended from reviewing for a week. If, after your suspension you continue failing audits, you might find yourself suspended for a bit longer. Moderators also have the ability to suspend a user from reviewing, in case the automatic measures miss something. We also have the ability to lift a review suspension, if it's unjustified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, this was a very sneaky audit. The question is borderline, I can see why you voted to close it (although it might be salvageable with an edit or two). The audits system picks questions and answers from the last 30 days, and as any automated system, it can only rely on the available data. At the time you reviewed the question, it had 7 upvotes, 0 downvotes, 0 close votes, 0 flags and 4 upvoted answers. Naturally, the system assumed it was a very good question for the site, and expected you to think the same. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interesting reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What are review tests (audits) and how do they work?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/157121/what-are-review-tests-audits-and-how-do-they-work)&#xD;&#xA;- [Clearly wrong close review audit - what action to take?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/180417/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [How many failed audits to be put on quarantine?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/167962/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [Why am I getting the message “You've failed too many recent review audits”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/158675/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [The robo-approvers are killing my will to review edits][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [Are 'reasonably bad' reviewers in any way being detected or 'punished'?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/179929/are-reasonably-bad-reviewers-in-any-way-being-detected-or-punished)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/155561/162704" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18166" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5953" RevisionGUID="9746a31c-d0d0-49de-ab45-e06ed38e67f5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="[This question][1] is posed in terms of ASP.NET, but (in my opinion) is really about collecting payment. (See [xy problem][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are questions about collecting payment for freelance work on topic? The FAQ lists &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; as on-topic, but I would think questions about writing a contract that includes payment collection would be better directed to a lawyer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/199785/clever-way-to-license-obfuscate-web-applications-until-the-client-has-paid-for-i&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/66378/192138" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18167" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5957" RevisionGUID="30273934-5166-4ab5-98eb-9f210acb731f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Unfortunately, there's no easy way. You might be interested in supporting these related feature requests on MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Is there any analytics information that moderators can access for individual questions?][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we add moderator features to see keyword analytics and annotated traffic graphs for specific questions?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, if you do a [simple search for the question's title][3], you'll find out it's been shared on several sites. The more likely culprit for the question's sudden popularity seems to be this recent [Hacker News thread][4]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/77138/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/165593/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22How%20should%20I%20behave%20as%20a%20developer%20in%20a%20project%20that%27s%20headed%20for%20failure%22&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5785759" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18168" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5982" RevisionGUID="a7465172-6bd4-4615-805f-f7c455c99df4" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="That is apparently how [Gregory House writes it.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/93372/what-font-is-used-on-the-programmers-stack-exchange-site)  (It's not Lupus!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An examination of the symbols on the top row of the keyboard yields:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where a couple of symbols (namely the @ and the *) are conspicuously missing.  Apparently Hugh Laurie never wrote them on the whiteboard during the entire series.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;UL is an abbreviation for a number of medical terms, including Undifferentiated Lymphoma.  It is entirely possible that the maker of the font confused that abbreviation with the ampersand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, it requires a font editor (and an intern with a black marker and a steady hand) to fix it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/4MBVO.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18169" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5990" RevisionGUID="4ec7ac8b-37dc-450c-bfe6-88845c894154" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There was a bug in [the scheduled job that cleans up migration stubs][1]: it also automatically deleted questions that had been migrated and then *rejected*. Obviously, that was not the intent and has been fixed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the other problem here is that a very popular question was rejected years after being migrated and after many edits and improvements had been made. The appropriate action here would've been to lock it. Unfortunately, a big part of the value that a question like this brings to the site comes from the ability of the community to edit it, updating and improving the answers as the years roll by. In other words, the question has value *as a wiki*. But there's no type of lock that reflects this need to foster editing while preventing pile-on answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...Well, *now* there is: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![wiki answer lock][2]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This particular question was well-suited for testing this strategy: there were only a few answers, and the top answer had *massively* more activity (and popularity) than the rest. So I've cleaned up the migration rejection, restored the top answer, and locked it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We'll see how this works in practice, but at very least it should never be accidentally deleted again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78048/enable-automatic-deletion-of-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/XT45O.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18170" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5991" RevisionGUID="fd82552f-c493-4507-96cc-65ee7b6eb024" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="We have a [new lock type](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/182572/165773 &quot;announced here&quot;) that can be added to questions that are not strictly on topic or constructive but have, because they have been edited and expanded, become a valuable resource.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question that it's been applied to is this one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This lock is best applied to a question that has a single CW answer that covers all the points. At the moment that doesn't apply to this question, so if people could take one of the answers and edit it into the accepted answer then flag that, now redundant, answer for moderator deletion it will make the task of cleaning it up that much easier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there are any other questions you think this lock would apply too, flag those as well. It doesn't matter if the question is closed or not - we can sort that out. Starting the ball rolling by editing the best answer would be useful too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18171" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5992" RevisionGUID="f27204cd-c321-4e8d-a33a-63752dcb4db5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There are some fairly major changes coming soon to how posts are closed, you may want to read up on the details:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Closing changes: [on hold], unclear, too broad, opinion-based, off-topic reasons, bye-bye to Too Localized](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/184154/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [Responding to your “too localized” concerns](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/185102/162704)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We will need to come up with our own list of custom off topic reasons for Programmers. These reasons will be available to close voters after they have picked the generic &quot;off topic&quot; one. Here's a screenshot of Meta Stack Overflow's close dialog, where the new system is already available:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8locR.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;other&quot; option will allow a custom message, when none of the three custom reasons applies:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFP1n.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an &quot;off topic&quot; reason you'd like to nominate, please post it as an answer. Some general guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- One reason per answer, so they can be voted separately.&#xD;&#xA;- A brief comment explaining why the general category is off topic is mandatory. See the examples in the first screenshot for inspiration. If we have a _good_ Meta discussion explaining in detail why the category doesn't work, please link to it in your comment.&#xD;&#xA;- Examples to existing closed questions that would fit your custom reason would be immensely helpful.&#xD;&#xA;- If there's already an answer with a reason similar to what you have in mind, but with a slightly different phrasing, please consider commenting on the existing answer and refining the phrasing instead of posting a new answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The winners: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [&quot;what language, technology, or project one should take up next&quot;][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [&quot;career or education advice&quot;][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [&quot;recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource&quot;][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5994/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5993/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6025/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18172" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6011" RevisionGUID="d74e2096-1d09-48ce-b8d6-76c3eb4987e1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This is indeed a bug, the answer shouldn't have appeared in the review queue (neither as an audit, nor as a regular review). The reason is that [the question][1] is [locked][2], therefore it and its answers cannot be voted on or edited. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is an [old bug][3] that resurfaced, I will let SE know about it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44/are-certifications-worth-it&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22228/what-is-a-locked-post&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/141435/new-beta-review-displays-locked-posts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18173" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6029" RevisionGUID="a696eb11-a453-440d-956d-e97063c5720b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I am confused whether questions about IDEs can be asked on [programmers main website][1] or not? Questions such as which IDEs have this feature? An example would be [this question on Stackoverflow][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked such questions on stackoverflow before being told to ask on superuser or other websites. I [read this][3], [asked this question on its meta][4] but it seems the [questions about IDE][5] are still being put on hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So before posting questions on programmers I decided to ask it on its meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Should I ask questions about IDEs here or not? &#xD;&#xA; - If not then which websites do they belong to?&#xD;&#xA; - Is there a question about the where I can ask questions not fitting on this website. Like [the one on Stackoverflow][6].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have looked at the [about page][7]. It says to ask such questions on stackoverflow. But on stackoverflow I have been told otherwise. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17439620/an-ide-with-drag-and-drop-feature-for-python-2-7-tkinter&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/113087/software-tools-in-faq-is-too-hazy&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/181041/confusion-regarding-the-faq-and-a-question&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17439620/an-ide-with-drag-and-drop-feature-for-python-2-7-tkinter&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8401/where-can-i-ask-questions-that-dont-fit-or-are-off-topic-for-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18174" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6095" RevisionGUID="1dbe3b08-f0b8-4ec0-802e-463c055a6c84" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This might be a self-balancing process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When there are little-to-none items in the queue, there is a little interest among most of the users eligible for reviewing. And this is unlikely to change; if one checks the queue occasionally and there's always only 0, 1, 2 items in there, there is little motivation not just to work there but even to frequently check it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When queue is small, one can expect only small, _dedicated_ group of users doing reviews regularly. From this perspective, **perception of most closures done by that small group** is unavoidable I'm afraid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, when queue grows in size, it begins attracting attention from more reviewers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One day, typical infrequent visitor decides to take a look at [review page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review) - _just to check there's 0 as usual_, finds 10 (20, 30...) items in the queue and, well, reviews these. Next day, same guy will quite likely get there again, now knowing there might be a queue waiting for them, finds that it's so indeed, reviews and... voila, _infrequent visitor has turned into regular reviewer_ (possibly until queue drops back small).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note above dynamics might in turn change if queue would grow to daunting size, but that would be a [different story](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/151833/165773 &quot;'Huge close votes review queue on Stack Overflow' (btw I discovered a truly amazing explanation for why it keeps that way, but it's too large to fit into tooltip)&quot;).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Balancing described above is mostly based on my own experience of working with [SO Late Answers queue](http://stackoverflow.com/review/late-answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In December 2012, there were few thousands items in this queue and I was visiting it daily, submitting 50 flags a day (review limit was 40 if memory serves, but I flagged some posts out of the queue, using Skip option to avoid bumping into the limit).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In January 2013, this queue drained to zero and my usage of it has dropped, too. Nowadays, I take a look at it once in a week or maybe even once in a month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it ever gets back to larger size, I will be happy to get back to working on it again (after all, I still have some 300+ reviews to do to get Steward badge there:). I think that's about how it is supposed to be balanced." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18175" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6106" RevisionGUID="d8b6d6b0-f1b7-4bc0-82e0-7fe6d550bf3d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I really don't like migrating crappy questions to SO.  This is really the only place where its an issue because of the migration path (no, taking away the migration path would mean more suggestions to repost - there are enough of those for the workplace).  The past 90 days, we did 206 migrations To SO and 23 of them were rejected.  A number of them were embarrassingly bad.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When something is off topic here, on topic there, isn't up to the standards there and would get closed - the close reason being:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for code must demonstrate a **minimal understanding of the problem being solved**. Include attempted solutions, why they didn't work, and the expected results. See also: [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to see a new close reason along the lines of:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers.Stack Exchange. It would best be answered on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet the minimum requirements for a question on Stack Overflow.  Please read the [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist) to fix up your question for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this close reason, we might be able to avoid some poor migrations, giving close voters another sanctioned reason (people tend to avoid the custom reason for &quot;this is off topic here, but not up to the standards there.&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, the reasons not to are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. We shouldn't be guessing as to someone else's close reasons after a migration&#xD;&#xA;2. A rejected migration about two a week isn't that big of a deal&#xD;&#xA;3. This would be used for about two closes every week which isn't enough to persuade the powers that be to give us another close reason (and if we had one, there are likely better close reasons than this)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18176" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6112" RevisionGUID="090b7066-8c2c-4b52-bac7-99652f659c84" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I saw a delete vote on a rather highly voted question [Is it OK to split long functions and methods into smaller ones even though they won't be called by anything else?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/195989/is-it-ok-to-split-long-functions-and-methods-into-smaller-ones-even-though-they).  And yes, I do have the top answer there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This delete vote confuses me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of the reason the question recently regained my attention is that I got an announcer badge from it (and I don't announce things).  It turns out that it is linked from an external resource - [ars technica - Ask Stack: Is it OK to split into small functions, even if they’re called once?](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/ask-stack-is-it-ok-to-split-into-small-functions-even-if-theyre-called-once/).  I believe it would be a bad thing for such questions to get deleted as they are used as examples of Programmers.SE.  (The list of ars technica posts that have an author of 'stack-exchange' can be seen at http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/ )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Building on this, questions that are used by major news sources bring eyeballs to the site which is a key part of the SE business strategy.  Like the questions or not, deleting these questions would be counter productive to the people that keep the lights on at the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, it has been fairly long and established policy that questions that are dupes to other questions shouldn't be deleted.  The associated MSO discussion - [Do not delete duplicates!](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/32311/do-not-delete-duplicates)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I am missing something in the best practices for 10k tools, I would appreciate being informed what it is that I'm missing so I too can cast a delete vote on the question with a clear conscious and understanding of how .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, on the other hand, someone else is missing some part of understanding of what to delete and not to delete, until the question is deleted (and given its high vote question and answers takes quite a few more votes), I would have difficulty knowing who to articulate my comments to (to the best of my knowledge, delete votes are private until they are acted upon), and thus am broadcasting them here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Tangential question*: If Stack Exchange wishes to keep these featured questions from news and blog around (and make note of them?) - should there be a 'major news source/blog' lock to prevent closed questions that have been featured in a way that SE wants to maintain from being accidentally deleted (either by an errant migration and close or misinformed mod or an over zealous 10ker?) " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18177" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6113" RevisionGUID="601be5c9-bce4-4f74-affe-0a1a53efd570" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="That's a lot of questions, and they are all valid, but they avoid a basic principle of voting, which is this: *Community members can use their votes however they wish, so long as they are not being abusive.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I believe it would be a bad thing for such questions to get deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the community may not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It has been fairly long and established policy that questions that are dupes to other questions shouldn't be deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... Unless they are.  The community may not deem the post worthy of preservation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should there be a 'major news source/blog' lock to prevent closed questions that have been featured in a way that SE wants to maintain from being accidentally deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ask for a &quot;historical lock.&quot;  But be prepared to defend your request with reasoning and evidence; historical locks are used very sparingly, and only under very specific circumstances.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18178" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6127" RevisionGUID="36ad40a3-57a2-439c-b899-b89defd8673d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="When a closed question is edited by the asker (as opposed to someone else just fixing it up), it is automatically entered into the 'reopen review queue'.  No flagging is necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is edited by someone else, it will need to be either flagged (a mod will review the flag), a reopen vote cast by yourself (for those who have 3k rep), or a reopen vote cast by someone else (consider going into chat to ask if anyone can start the ball rolling).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The details of these mechanics are in the MSO answer to [Can we have the ability to flag for reopening?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/186722/can-we-have-the-ability-to-flag-for-reopening/186728#186728)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  **Adding items to the queue in response to 3rd-party edits.** Currently, this is done when [the author edits][1], but not if [someone else does the same][2]. It would be possible to change that - although there are [some pitfalls][3] we'd have to avoid. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/157584/should-questions-be-added-to-the-reopen-queue-as-soon-as-theyre-edited-by-the-o&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/157584/should-questions-be-added-to-the-reopen-queue-as-soon-as-theyre-edited-by-the-o&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/183233/give-2k-users-a-dont-put-this-in-the-reopen-queue-checkbox?lq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18179" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6140" RevisionGUID="e051e088-4dd2-4821-a0cc-cf31acf66add" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="&quot;These articles are in opposition.&quot; + &quot;prove Jeff Atwood&quot; suggest that OP already knows the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Atwood trashed Norvig. If you know the answer, why ask? That means, _unclear what you're asking_, which was my close vote (&quot;opinion-based&quot; [shown to readers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/209295/revisions) is pure fake [indiscriminately attributed to me](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10922461#10922461) due to... shall we say, not too smart user interface - a bit more on that below...).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a &quot;clean room&quot; case, I would shrug, edit this unfortunate phrase into something like &quot;These articles appear at odds with each other, how can I find a way out?&quot; and walk away knowing that _unclear_ doesn't apply anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, at the moment question has been [&quot;locked&quot; from such an edit](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;how's that?&quot;) by already submitted [FGITW](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/fastest-gun/info &quot;what's this&quot;) answer: &quot;You're missing the point...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides above, there are a few issues _induced_ by the phrase &quot;Is there a [friggin'](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2905/31260 &quot;Sprinkling &quot;Science&quot; on top of something does not automatically render it correct&quot;) scientific evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► Is-there part of the phrase shifts it into Yes/No territory with [all its known issues](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/183177/165773 &quot;discussed eg here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is not just a 'get an answer for me' place, it's &quot;Produce quality content that is useful for people who follow&quot;. In the case of your question, the second part is lacking...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;When asking a yes/no question there are one of two possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. You really want a yes/no answer. If this is the case, and you don't need anything else to answer your question then it means the answers will be inherently low quality. An answer that only says &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; (in addition to not meeting the minimum length) would be of very low quality. SO answers expect more.&#xD;&#xA;2. You don't actually want a yes/no answer, in which case your real question is not actually a yes/no question, and you're hoping that people will determine what your real question is. For example, someone might ask, &quot;Can I do [...]?&quot; when what they really meant to ask was, &quot;How can I do [...]?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Almost all yes/no questions I've seen fall into case 2; they should be edited into a question that isn't really asking for just a yes/no, it should be asking to explain something. (Even if it has a yes/no in there somewhere.) Note that just adding &quot;Explain&quot; at the end isn't really a good way to go about this; you should refactor the question on a more fundamental level...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► The part &quot;evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach&quot; sucks, well, because it blatantly misses the opposite: &quot;evidence to prove the Peter Norvig approach&quot;. This is yet another indication of question quality issues (happily ignored by reopeners).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the very least, I would rephrase to symmetric wording &quot;evidence to prove one of these approaches above another&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► Issues with &quot;scientific&quot; part are addressed in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I for one like the way these are presented in [this comment](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question#comment7317_2903 &quot;just discovered it's written by one of my favorite MSO authors&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Slapping a request for scientific literature onto the question... doesn't really make this question any better. It still is enormously vague and unanswerable, there is no objective scientific measure..., it remains a question that should be nuked on sight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above does not fully apply to this particular case because there is an answerable question obscured by scientificevidence garbage there, but it rather makes a point that it would be better to wipe out that scevidence crap outta there at all (if such an edit wouldn't invalidate existing answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last but not the least, even with all imaginary editing cleanup, the question would still remain average.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, resolving false contradictions can be fun, I sometimes enjoy [doing this myself](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/193864/advice-on-rehabilitating-an-unpopular-meta-question-or-not#comment608984_193864 &quot;example&quot;) but it's often way too simple. And this case looks simple to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mysticial [would probably say](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/1262201#1262201), it's not _really advanced question_. Meh.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note, regarding question closure notice, I would rather prefer it to be shown rephrased to something that doesn't put words in my mouth. There is a bunch of [feature requests](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/194593/165773 &quot;listed eg here&quot;) for something like that at MSO, but SE team doesn't give a shit.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18180" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6155" RevisionGUID="ba47c821-dfe1-4303-8da1-843eab6a0766" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="On Stack Overflow, the [tag:asp] tag was made a synonym of [tag:asp-classic] since that is generally what is meant. Looking over the 8 that &lt;s&gt;are&lt;/s&gt; were tagged here as [tag:asp] shows a similar pattern of usage. (though I should add that most weeks we still end up with a dozen or so that meant asp.net...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was done as most of the time [tag:asp] was being used by people who were unaware that there were two different technologies that that tag was referring to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's some of the related discussion from the main Meta.SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Classic Re-Tag Discussion on some good ole ASP (Classic)](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/26870/25163)&#xD;&#xA;* [Let's Ban the [ASP] Tag on StackOverflow!](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/84175/25163)&#xD;&#xA;* [Where'd the [asp] tag go, and why did it come back?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/119037/25163)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest making a similar change here and removing all the [tag:asp] and changing to [tag:asp-classic] or [tag:asp.net] as appropriate. And maybe borrowing the text from the tag wiki for [tag:asp-classic] and [tag:asp.net].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd fix it, but I'm a little short on the rep requirement... I did some suggested edits/flags for the 6 that were there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18181" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6157" RevisionGUID="614ca02f-8a16-43c4-bf21-16172816ed74" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="So, the cleanup has been done.  There are no questions tagged as asp.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Let's Ban the [ASP] Tag on StackOverflow!](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112317/213963) the next step would appear to be making it a tag synonym.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From Stack Overflow a screen shot of http://stackoverflow.com/tags/synonyms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is probably what we should have too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way to do this would be to go to the [tag:asp-classic] tag and navigate to synonyms - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/asp-classic/synonyms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The requirements for suggesting and voting on this are:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Users with more than 2500 reputation and a total answer score of 5 or more on the tag, can suggest tag synonyms. Users with a total answer score (total upvotes minus total downvotes) of 5 or more on the tag, can vote for tag synonyms. Suggestions will be automatically approved when they reach a score of 4, and automatically deleted when they reach a score of -2.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since I've got nothing in the asp tag for answers or questions, I can't vote on this one (or suggest it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And asp-classic its not that highly asked of a question area - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/asp-classic/topusers so there aren't many who do have the necessary rep to cast votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its probably up to a mod to do this, if it is modable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/eZuvN.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18182" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6171" RevisionGUID="6a91ee93-dca3-46b9-aede-dcb60a644aff" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I think that strong point of your _question draft_ is description of the situation: it looks clear, detailed and easy to understand. This lays a solid ground for a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you're done with it though, there is a sharp drop in question quality, and the rest essentially spoils the fun:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So, in terms of making it easier for myself what do you think should I do: - try to convenience them to start from scratch? - get on with the current design and try to achieve what they want?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Have you got any experience with similar cases? What should I do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, the only valuable elements in above quote are &quot;try to convince them to start from scratch&quot; and &quot;get on with the current design&quot;. Anything besides that can be stuffed into any imaginary question and would add no value to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think of it, &quot;in terms of making it easier for myself&quot; - no one would be interested in making it harder to themselves. Or, &quot;what do you think&quot; - any asker is sure interested in this. Stuff like that is basic, it is implied in any question at Programmers, stating it explicitly is just noise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the perspective of those who would answer your question it is useless - drop it, wipe it out, get rid of it - and this cleanup will help you find out what is missing in your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, how would it look if you filter out the noise? Something like,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Options I can think of are either _try to convince them to start from scratch_ or _get on with the current design_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above is fairly poor but at least: 1) you can see that it's poor yourself (which opens a door to thinking how to improve) and 2) as small as it is, it's 100% _substantial_ - there's nothing to throw away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, how it can be improved? Improvements I suggested in [comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6168/would-my-question-be-on-topic-for-programmers#comment16661_6168) quickly posted after you asked here may sound like wisdom obtained through some magic glass, but it really isn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, key aspects of SE posts are **substance, presentation and effort** and I simply evaluate everything I read / write through these. Let's see how it will work at your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way you explained the situation tells that your _presentation_ is all-right (and I think you know it yourself).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Substance_ is there, too - what is left after we removed the noise, is substance, and it _is_ there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The feel that it's still poor indicates that it's _effort_ that is missing and if you take a closer look at cleaned up part, you'll see that effort you are expected to put into considering mentioned options just isn't there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What kind effort is expected? well whenever you deal with options, most basic effort to put is to list and evaluate pros and cons of these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Note, since we are at Stack Exchange, this is not something you could expect answerers to do for you: asking for _list_ part won't fly because [list questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info) aren't welcome, and as for _evaluation_ part, without knowing lots of your concrete details and context, doing this would be, as they say in one of [close reasons](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/close-reasons/info), &quot;too broad&quot;.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding this to your question would cover _effort_ part, the only thing left after that would be to, well, just state the very question, explain what would you want to learn / understand. What would it be - no one can tell you beforehand, since this should be based on your analysis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no magic glass nor magic aspects that would predict what would be outcome of your research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you're done with it though, there will be one _magic thing_ you could do prior to posting. Simply put your text into &quot;Ask question&quot; box and study [similar questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/similar-questions) that get loaded to the right. This trick often works better than plain search and it can give you an insight on how to further improve your question or even, if you are lucky, reveal that there is already an answered question like yours.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18183" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6180" RevisionGUID="4a6e2173-08bb-4eee-974d-fa1bceb921b5" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Per my reading of [this answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/150253/165773 &quot;here&quot;) written by SE developer, downvotes increase chances of the post getting into Low Quality queue:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; approach to low-quality auto-flagging, by looking for similarities in posts **downvoted** or flagged as low quality...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is worth noting that per mentioned answer, upvotes tend to have an opposite effect:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; referenced post got 2 upvotes..., so it **wouldn't even make it into** the low quality queue&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those interested to know how Low Quality queue is expected to work, can refer to [respective guidelines](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/180029/165773 &quot;here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Guidelines for reviewing Low Quality Posts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Questions appear in the low quality post queue both by algorithm and [by flags from users](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/190639/167534).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;### Basic workflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA; 1. Check if the post can be improved. If it can, by all means **Edit** it. A typical example are code-only answers, which can benefit from additional explanation about how that code works.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA; 2. If you think the post is unsalvageable and should be deleted, **Recommend Deletion** (see common reasons below).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA; 3. If the post looks good, choose **Looks Good**. If you are unsure, **Skip** it..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18184" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6195" RevisionGUID="7d6419e0-9a3f-47af-b1a7-81e31db10821" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="You seem to believe that question locked for content dispute at meta should remain at main site as originally posted (&quot;Lock question as-is&quot;). This approach doesn't make sense to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the purpose of meta discussion, it is insignificant what particular revision is hanging on the main site because [full revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/212517/revisions &quot;example for your post&quot;) and [original version](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/212517/1 &quot;example for your post&quot;) are always available to study content and edits in as much details as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With above in mind, I would expect moderator locking the post to take whatever edits deemed appropriate in order to make it look OK for regular, inexperienced readers of the site - for those who just read what is posted and don't pay attention to obscure, strictly internal notices about _meta_, _content dispute_ etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this perspective, I would expect moderators to err on the safer side, performing pre-dispute cleanup of the content. Given that _final_ version of the content is to be determined by community discussion at meta anyway, I see no point to fixate about what is there on the main site during the dispute (it helps that locked post can not be voted, thus question score can't be influenced until it's unlocked back).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is worth noting that expecting mentioned cleanup to be performed by asker would be a really bad idea, as they are naturally biased.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In your particular case, part cleaned up at main site prior to dispute is: *&quot;Are there any definitive or widely cited sources of best practices literature&quot;*. To me, cleaning it up looks reasonable safety wise, as this part of the question makes a perfect match to one of the [close reasons](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6025/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Oh and please don't tell me that it's safe to keep because this part is hidden deep inside your &quot;main&quot; question. It's there and readers will find it. I remember myself being new at Programmers, carefully studying questions, stumbling upon resource-request parts and posting [low quality answers](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nyfwh.png &quot;example&quot;) _&quot;look here's the resource you asked about: &amp;lt;link&amp;gt;&quot;_.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to also address one of the [comments](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments#comment419290_212517) you made, likely intending to support the question with an authoritative reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that my post specifically implements the tactics referred to in that post to achieve usefulness as a subjective post. It isn't shopping for a source if you insist that an experience or widely-known principle be backed up by references. This is why it says &quot;Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your interpretation of [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) article looks wrong to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reading of the statement _&quot;questions insist that opinion be backed up&quot;_ is that it's a strong prohibition against filling questions with a [**poison** like &quot;what's your opinion?&quot;, &quot;what do you think?&quot;, &quot;what do you prefer?&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/184574/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;)... and yeah, &quot;which resource do you recommend&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question should _never_ have words like &quot;what's your opinion&quot; simply because this makes a wide open door for crappy answers where authors just post their opinion without even attempting to back it up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good question, in addition, is worded in a way that actually _[repels](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5401/31260 &quot;more on that here&quot;)_ garbage answers - allowing readers, guys like you and me, to flag low quality posts for mod attention and request deletion on the ground that these don't answer the question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Note that what's-your-opinion in the question immediately makes such flagging and demanding deletion impossible because, well, such answers _match the questions asked_. Same reasoning applies to resource requests - it is officially legal to post a [low quality](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/8259/165773 &quot;more on link-only answers here&quot;) &quot;I recommend this URL&quot; and pretend that this just answers to what have been asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I would like to expand on what looks fundamentally wrong in your position.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You (and some [other askers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6147/31260)) re-post excerpts from the article, plainly translating these into requirements to answers and pretend that this makes your question compliant. **Don't do that.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above &quot;translation&quot; is purely yours, you have no grounds to state that this can be inferred from the article you refer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing to remember is, this article states requirements for _questions_, not for the _answers_. Re-read it again and pay attention to the sub-title (quoted below, keeping font close to original):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Article is about guidelines for _questions_, plain and simple as in the title quoted above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever requirements for _answers_ you stuff into your questions, you have no ground to link these to the article. These are all yours, and, frankly, from the perspective of those who read your question, these are pure noise, as these add nothing [substantial](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6171/31260 &quot;related discussion here&quot;) to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't pollute the question with requirements to answers - for readers, these are useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, _after reading_ particular answer, you feel like something is not OK there, check whether it fits [answering guidelines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer &quot;here&quot;) and if you believe that it doesn't, feel free to raise your concerns." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18185" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6206" RevisionGUID="cc6cdc2d-d666-4eb2-b678-f7255778dd03" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Good to be noticed!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Indeed, I make these minor (occasionally significant) edits once a week in preparation for the week's [Ask Stack column at Ars Technica][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you know, it's easy to get hung up on a minor speling or, punctuation error. And it's important to me that the awesome questions and answers here aren't overshadowed by a trivial slip of the keyboard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But yes. I understand that my minor edits may seem like rep mining to those who don't know me, and my behavior could conceivably train users to be bad actors. Don't act like me!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or maybe do... I personally agree with Gilles &amp; MichaelT that even the shortest &quot;correct&quot; edit is a perfectly acceptable edit. Whether minor edits should bump a question to the front page, well, that's [a good question for Meta][2], though it's worth noting that even minor edits can be malicious edits, and thus it *might* make sense for all edits to get front page exposure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks for reaching out. And even more thanks for creating content that demonstrates the best of what our network, communities, and individuals have to offer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feel free to ping me any time in chat if you think I'm making an edit in error, being unreasonably heavy-handed, or if you just want to say hi. Going forward I'll try to be more articulate in my edit descriptions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Slowly, I will grind my way towards 2,000 rep. Until then, I hope you approve me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/26483/166581" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18186" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6229" RevisionGUID="8f612d09-785a-4558-a0ec-5f71d16e9036" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Is it possible to get results of a particular SEDE query executed against an older data snapshot? I am interested in these in order to perform sort of retrospective study.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Query I would like to run is [Marginal short answers with links](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102718/marginal-short-answers-with-links?AnswerScoreMax=100&amp;AnswerScoreMin=-100&amp;AnswerLength=200 &quot;with certain parameters - posts score between -100 and 100 and answer length up to 200&quot;). I would like to see results of this query executed against data snapshot taken in the beginning of March / end of February, when the query was introduced. A close enough [data dump](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/207811/165773 &quot;SE data dumps explained in more details here&quot;) seems to be one uploaded on March 18, 2013 here: http://www.clearbits.net/torrents/2121-mar-2013&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my recollection, back then query has been showing about one or two (maybe three) thousands posts. Today, it shows less than 60 posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to learn what happened to thousands posts that are not there anymore, how many was there back then, how many of these were deleted, edited, historically locked." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18187" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6240" RevisionGUID="8f8af7b7-b7c9-485f-bf95-d97360c1312d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Site scope and question quality expectations seem to be set, stabilized and well understood by majority of _regulars_ long time ago, as discussed eg here: [Are you still confused about what Programmers is for?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my observations, most troublesome questions are either asked by newcomers or are old ones [bump](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info)ed by answers from newcomers which makes me feel that somehow, site &quot;image&quot; for those newcomers is blurred.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on several months of observations on questions that are exposed / promoted to SE network users via [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info) I firmly believe that to large extent, misguiding newcomers about Programmers is caused by **[the way how questions are selected for exposure at collider](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/202962/165773 &quot;issue details and change request officially submitted here: 'Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign'&quot;)**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how I see collider damage to Programmers is described in more details in this answer: [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I think this is likely related to issues with answers quality in hot questions ([discussed here in more details](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;Answers quality in hot questions&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Hot garbage waves&quot; in the answers once or twice a week&#xD;&#xA;* poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making interesting and well presented problems look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/)  &#xD;&#xA;* regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;An &quot;outsider&quot; reading low quality answers in hot questions, could naturally think,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;hey here I can _chit-chat about how git is fantastic_ and get my portion of cheap upvotes, c00l&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a **steady source of misguided contributors**.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...the way how users can be confused about what Programmers are about is probably best explained in a [comment made by Ben Brocka](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13830_5482 &quot;here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;Often hot questions have lots of bad or meh answers that are bad enough to drag down quality of the content and general discourse (encouraging similarly bad new answers)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Side note. For the sake of completeness, I don't think that collider damage is contained within Programmers (and [Workplace](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/1967/168 &quot;another site suffering from brain-damaging hotness formula: 'victims of the Stack Exchange(TM MultiCollider SuperDropdown(TM)'&quot;) for that matter).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As discussed eg [here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10706837#10706837), it looks like damage is spread over whole SE network, even though indirectly:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...really, say guys at SO are protected from _direct_ impact. Meaning when they see _meh_, they can flag _no-code_ and get crap deleted. But thing is, it's SO users who look at collider and who visit &quot;sticky&quot; questions and who pick the crappy attitude and they get back to SO and get posting _meh_ answers there  &#xD;&#xA;and, well, there are hundreds and thousands of them. And _meh_ attitude gets spread over multiple questions and SO mods only can delete minor part of crap that has been influenced through collider&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;they start thinking it's the norm. That's what low quality answers in hot questions teach readers. That's what &quot;educated&quot; readers spread further, to their answers to other questions. That lowers overall quality of answers in multiple other questions, that is the site-wide damage  &#xD;&#xA;This makes it look like good questions are those having many meh answers, the effect that is amplified by these questions being highly visible to collider audience - hundreds and thousands of SE users. Misguided users spread acquired attitude further into other questions and answers, posting stuff that follows what they saw at the &quot;cool&quot; (&quot;hot&quot;) questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;**nobody is really protected, collider spreads it across all the SE network**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18188" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6251" RevisionGUID="6cdff7ea-63f0-46af-9ef8-0a090e71f73c" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="We only have so many canned, built in, close reasons.  There are so many other reasons to close something at times - giving a better message than trying to shoehorn the reason to close something into too broad or primarily opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Custom close messages have the significant advantage when it comes to trying to get a *good* answer in that they also leave a comment that (ideally) would help the person asking (or attempting to fix) the question understand what needs to be done *before* the question is closed and make it suitable (or delete it if its really off topic and would ultimately garner down votes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short and abrupt close messages may be off-putting to some and don't help as much when it comes to getting people to write good questions.  The tricks to writing good messages is a combination of having them at the ready and knowing the quick little 'magic links' that can be used to link to the right spot.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Close reasons use the comment markdown, which gives a bunch of additional magic links.  MSO details them in [balpha's answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/94000/213963), thought the short version most applicable to close reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [meta] =&gt; a link to meta.programmers.stackexchange&#xD;&#xA;* [help] =&gt; a link to the help section&#xD;&#xA;    * [help/on-topic] is a link to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;&#xD;&#xA;    * [help/dont-ask] is a link to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* [ask] =&gt; link to the &quot;How to Ask&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* [chat] =&gt; link to the chat page&#xD;&#xA;* [about] =&gt; link to about page http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;* [edit] =&gt; link to edit the page itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using these quick links will make it easier to fit more into a canned (or not) message without actually using more text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, its a better experience for all involved to *not* migrate questions that will get closed in some way *other* than a duplicate on the target site.  A fine line should be considered when suggesting to *repost* a question on another site without having it closed/deleted on the first one.  Be sure that the question is on topic at the target site.  If in doubt, don't suggest reposting but instead flag for a moderator to migrate the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have also found the following links to be helpful to reference when writing close messages (not everyone knows where they are).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `[Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/)` =&gt; [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist) - a compressive list of things to check before posting a question to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;* `[Let’s Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game)` =&gt; [Let’s Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game) - a Jeff Atwood blog post from Feb 2012 about the awkward nature of trying to name something&#xD;&#xA;* `[Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)` =&gt; [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) - a Jeff Atwood blog post from November 2010 about questions asking for a shopping list.&#xD;&#xA;* `[What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/)` =&gt; [What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/) - the question ban MSE reference.  Likely not that useful in a close reason (you'd need to be a mod on SO to check if a user is question banned prior to a migration - however, when a migration fails because of a question ban on the target site, this is a useful link to have so its included here).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've often found myself going to a meta question to pull up a pre-written close message and then copying and pasting that into the question.  Just go in, edit the question to grab the source and copy and paste it into the close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully, this will help people looking for the right wording for closing a question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18189" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6252" RevisionGUID="392333ec-2644-4148-8253-dd70f221c667" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="## Would be migrated to SO, but likely closed there ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers. It would best be asked on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet their minimum requirements. Please read the [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/) and [edit] your question to make it suitable for migration.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18190" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6255" RevisionGUID="2eccc07a-1804-4639-adc1-3624d3892dbc" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Recently, Nick did some tests on Stack Overflow to see what impact MathJax would have on Stack Overflow.  This was likely done in part to put to rest the 'heavy dependency' argument.  The full post can be read at [There's seriously no reason why LaTeX markup via MathJax shouldn't be enabled on SO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204003/213963)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a Stack Overflow page load (even when its doing 'nothing'):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Stack Overflow (no MathJax)][1]: **1.380s**&#xD;&#xA; - [Stack Overflow (with MathJax)][2]: **1.675s**&#xD;&#xA; - [Math.StackExchange][3] (with MathJax including content using it): **2.341s**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, for sites that have those pesky `$` that show up in code, it can be a breaking change for existing questions changing the rendering for:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...] which then stores into a $_SESSION - the problem is most of the settings will be set by javascript, and as javascript is a client side script you can't access PHP $_SESSION variables as its server based. [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Unexpected MathJax rendering][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, there are [reports](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204034/213963) that adding MathJax significantly impacts the time it takes for a preview to show up while writing an answer because MathJax needs to be called to rerender the preview *on every keystroke*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(numbers, links and images from the associated answers in the [MSO question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204003/213963))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131102_08_QQQ/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131103_DV_CS/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131102_BT_QR2/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MqzCa.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18191" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6276" RevisionGUID="7080bc1c-1edc-4e89-89fd-981269d8149f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="## What is the name of this thing ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;What is the name of this thing&quot; questions are off-topic. These are poor questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. See Also [Let's Play the Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Slightly adapted from [this MSO post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/203884/165773)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18192" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6278" RevisionGUID="ab7f7324-5ab6-4d0f-9e25-ecfdb9d8e55f" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="First and foremost, [Stack Exchange is not a forum][1].  There's a really good blog post on this that I can't find right now.  The tl;dr version is that forums have a terrible signal to noise ratio.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange exists [to build a library of high-quality questions and answers][2].  Oddly enough, solving any one user's problem isn't as high a priority as one might expect.  The priority is to collect general / reusable questions and answers that benefit hundreds or thousands of people who have the same issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most (all?) SE sites have [chat][3].  I haven't used it much, but if you need to have a conversation, that's the place to do it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Wiki [isn't always the right answer][4].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/92107/218240&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/333/64132" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18193" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6291" RevisionGUID="a01b5d5b-4f62-4f29-9022-685e51ed9826" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="[This was tried in the initial days of Programmers and it failed spectacularly.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/165773 &quot;as explained in more details here&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site came very close to be being shut down, but we managed, through the herculean efforts of everybody - moderators, community managers and committed users, to turn it around and have a site that is, on the whole, useful." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18194" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6293" RevisionGUID="f5d3e4a7-612e-4fae-a677-749354f5c3a2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Between CS.SE, P.SE, and SO the scope of each overlaps and depends significantly on what type of answer the person asking wants get.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off as a starter, read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/190106/dealing-with-find-out-whos-going-to-buy-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;    * http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/13420/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206073/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants-accounting-for-possible-absence&#xD;&#xA;    * http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/12151/who-brings-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll also point to a recent example - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218222/searching-integer-sequences - this question would be perfectly suitable on *either* (or both?) P.SE and CS.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging by the words in the question, it is a very non-trivial problem.  A question that asks about an algorithm could show up on any of the sites and be appropriate.  A slight tweak to the question ('i am having a doubt about the c i wrote') and it would rapidly get pushed to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, realize that the scope of a site, while it has inertia to it also does have some variability over time.  The scope of a site may get more strict (to the point where TCS is) or it may loosen up over time (do you accept homework problems?) This is very evident when looking at the history of questions on P.SE to see what was acceptable a year or two ago and what it is now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, judging by the migration stats and the failure - most times, it is asked on the right site *or* isn't appropriate anywhere.  For example, 2 posts from CS where migrated to P.SE in the last and one of them was rejected.  7 posts were migrated from P.SE to CS.SE and one of them was rejected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If humans can't get get it right, do you think a program could?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *really* want to take a crack at it - go grab the Stack Exchange data dump http://data.stackexchange.com/help and see if you can identify questions that would get migrated (or closed).  The 'or closed' bit was the topic of a [machine learning contest](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-machine-learning-contest/) - though I don't think it was accurate enough to merit inclusion... or something.  http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/161538/are-there-any-robot-moderators-on-so&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68689/automatic-central-question-sorting on MSO which asked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've noticed the Stack Exchange has grown immensely since its inception as Stack Overflow. As a result, I find asking questions in the right place here unnecessarily challenging. I'm wondering if you have thought about implementing a feature on the Stack Exchange central site where people ask the question there and either the scripts or staff/community members would sort the question to the right place.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Not sure if this would be too challenging or costly to implement. Just a thought to save your time while making users' lives easier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jeff said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you're not willing to invest the small amount of time it takes to figure out where to ask your question -- the odds of your question being a good one are .. small." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18195" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6335" RevisionGUID="6437ff82-bba2-459a-b3aa-72917fc503b7" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This is by design:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##How does a post become a Community Wiki post?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are several ways a question or answer can enter community wiki mode, and most of &gt;these ways will occur automatically based on the rules of the system.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Posts enter community wiki mode when one of the following happens:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The body of the post has been edited&lt;sup&gt;&amp;dagger;&lt;/sup&gt; by at least five (**5**) &gt;different users.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The post has been edited&lt;sup&gt;&amp;dagger;&lt;/sup&gt; ten (**10**) times by the original owner.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The **answer**'s author checks the *community wiki* checkbox when composing the answer. Note that this checkbox isn't available to new&#xD;&#xA;&gt; users. The checkbox also is not available if the question is already a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Community Wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Since [October 2010](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/67582/152859), there is no *community wiki* checkbox when asking a question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The **answer** is edited by its original author, who when doing so opts to check the *community wiki*.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * An answer posted to a Community Wiki question will also be Community Wiki. Note that when a question is made CW after answers have already&#xD;&#xA;&gt; been posted, all existing answers are automatically converted to CW&#xD;&#xA;&gt; too. Older questions did not do this, so it is possible to have a CW&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question with non-CW answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The question generates more than **30** answers (**15** on Super User and Programmers, **60** on Code Golf). In this case, the question and all answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; will enter community mode, as will any future answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * A moderator has reason to believe that the **question** serves better in community wiki mode - if you believe your question [should&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; converted](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to a Community Wiki, you may [flag it for moderator&#xD;&#xA;&gt; attention](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/392/should-the-community-wiki-police-be-shut-down/7183#7183).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; *&lt;sup&gt;&amp;dagger;&lt;/sup&gt; As far as what constitutes an &quot;edit&quot; for community wiki, only edits to the actual body of the post will count&#xD;&#xA;&gt; towards automatic community wiki. Edits to the title and tags, as well&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as rollbacks, do not contribute to automatic wikification.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ([source][2])*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;i&gt;* note that the rules outlined above are based on observations; the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; actual behavior of SO is subject to change without notice, and may&#xD;&#xA;&gt; well have done so since this was last updated...&lt;/i&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Source http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to *why* it's there - here's my take:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see it as a way to encourage you to make a few, substantial edits to the post to improve it and then leave it alone rather than continually tweaking the post with a few characters at a time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also there to discourage you making trivial edits just to bump the question back onto the homepage in order to try to get more votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think your edits are useful and you're only editing to improve the post without thought for the reputation you might earn from repeated exposure of the question then flag the post for moderator attention using the &quot;other&quot; option and we'll consider the request to &quot;unwiki&quot; the post." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18196" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6354" RevisionGUID="466aec1b-41f1-4486-9ef0-c5adc5066476" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="**Polling**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a poll based question. Multiple answers could address this question equally well, which makes it a poor fit the for StackExchange Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Guessing Game**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat and Robert Harvey)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;name that thing&quot; question. &quot;Name that thing&quot; are bad questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Minimal understanding** &lt;sub&gt;(aka WT? are you asking?)&lt;/sub&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to Jim G.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it doesn't demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should be on SO but doesn't meet their requirements**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to MichaelT)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers. It would best be asked on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet their minimum requirements. Please read the [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/) and [edit] your question to make it suitable for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should have been on SO, but too old to migrate**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat &amp; MichaelT)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is [about] programming tools - it might belong to Stack Overflow, but is too old to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should be on SO and already is** (aka cross-posted)  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to ChrisF)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about an implementation issue but it has already been asked via cross-post on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Legal question**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about legal matters outside of the community's experience and is best answered by an attorney with expertise in your jurisdiction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Blatantly off-topic**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because the main problem does not involve any of the topics outlined in the [help/on-topic]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`[help/on-topic]` links to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18197" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6367" RevisionGUID="c6d3e31a-f95b-4739-8908-3757dd8ca29b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The &quot;where do I start?&quot; question has several issues with it that make it a poor question to ask.  It is unclear what the level of knowledge of the asker is, has too many possible answers, and ultimately doesn't have a clear problem defined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unclear&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's head over to [Seasoned Advice](http://cooking.stackexchange.com) (Cooking Stack Exchange) and think about a hypothetical question to ask there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to learn how to bake a cake?  Where should I start?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A person attempting to answer this question doesn't know what your skill level is.  Do you know how to read a recipe? Can you operate an oven without supervision? Are you trying to make a simple [pound cake](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_cake) or are you attempting to make a multi layer red velvet cheesecake with frosting from scratch that should match something from [pinterest](http://www.pinterest.com/bakerstreet/cheesecake-recipes/)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without this knowledge of where the OP is at, the person attempting to answer is either going to engage in a hopelessly long series of comments *trying* to find out the level, or is going to take a shot in the dark and probably not answer the question satisfactorily for the person asking it, or the next person viewing the page from a google search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too Broad&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back to programming as the idiom and away from cakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next part of the problem is that there are numerous approaches to learning a language or projects one can do.  There are an unprecedented number of different things one can do to start.  Dozens of programming challenges out on the web that can be good starting points for programming (search for them) and hundreds of open source projects that are out there that are at an appropriate level for someone learning (no, don't tackle trying to do something *huge*, but find a nice little utility that could do with some additional functionality).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Such questions have people leaving short answers that are little more to a link.  Stack Exchange works very poorly as a link aggregator - if you are looking for that type of answer, look to link aggregators instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No Clear Problem&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have a problem - you don't know where to start with a design.  But that isn't a clear problem.  Are you stuck at the modeling of the data objects? At the structure of the classes and their responsibilities? trying to figure out how to use Spring or Rails or ${overly large library}?  Is the [ORM](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-relational_mapping) just not connecting to the right neurons in the brain?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of these are part of the &quot;I don't know where to start&quot; set of problems.  Obviously you have gotten to some point in the design.  You want a program that can do X, Y, and Z.  You've fired up the IDE and you've... this is where you need to describe what you have done, what you have thought of and where you are stuck.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to try *something* before you have a good question.  The design from an enterprise coder could steer you into strange n-tier designs, while others are going to suggest strange metaprogramming idioms or [sneak a monad into your design](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/206543/40980).  These aren't *wrong* answers, but they may not be right for where you are at in your learning and figuring out the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider also, that the best way to figure out how to design something is to learn how to design something.  For personal projects learning about how to do something, the paths down the wrong way, while discouraging, are some of the best learning experiences to be used in the *next* project.  Be wary of the programming architect who has never designed a bad system, for when they do they won't know what to do at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try Chat&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have 20 rep (four up votes on questions, two up votes on answers, one up vote and an accept on an answer, ten accepted edits or [some combination of the previous](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/164035/165773 &quot;see: 'How does a lurker gain reputation?'&quot;)), you can [chat](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/chat) in the chat rooms.  Programmer.SE's chatroom is called [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and we're quite open to answering the questions that don't work well on the Q&amp;A part of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The advantage of chat for these type of questions is that we *can* engage in the dense back and forth that would otherwise be in comments to determine your skill level and also work through different problems.  Remember though that chat is *not* a tutorial service despite how helpful people may be." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18198" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6378" RevisionGUID="64f28474-0352-484a-859e-88497e6743bc" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Programmers.SE has had a bit of history to it.  Much of it you can read about in the Meta here and on Meta.StackOverflow too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The short version (glossing over much) is that it started out with a very permissive &quot;what is allowed&quot;.  There were difficulties with this and a new direction was charted to something that is likely more in line with what exists now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of that readjustment of vision has been a more active moderation (*not* necessarily moderation by moderators, but rather the community that has formed since).  Part of this moderation is close votes, but part of it is also down votes - both are necessary as close votes don't always signal to the OP that the question is need in revision or fixing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For some reason, there are many people who ask questions that aren't good questions for the Q&amp;A format.  Polls, recommendations, fix my code because I'm question banned at StackOverflow, etc...  Without down votes, there is no way to signal to the person that they need to fix their questions.  Whats more, down votes contribute to the algorithm that feeds the automatic question ban and stops people from asking questions that doesn't generate good content for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest reading [Yannis's answer in How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?&#xD;&#xA;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/213963) which goes a bit of the history with the stats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another bit to read is [Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its not negativity, it is a firm commitment to keeping the quality of the site - the questions and answers you read and others come here to read - high.  It is through this commitment that the site continues to grow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18200" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6397" RevisionGUID="f3883d6a-6f97-4f8f-8770-e016c1b45e17" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There used to be a link to Meta in the navigation bar, but it was removed recently. Now, you'll have to expand the StackExchange dropdown to move between Meta and main: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not immediately obvious where the links are, but once you find them I think. it's pretty easy to switch between the sites. Note that the link to site you are currently on (in my case Meta) is bolded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign][2] (on MSO)&#xD;&#xA;- [A New Top Bar for Stack Exchange][3] (on blog.SO)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZlJ5S.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/198613/feedback-request-new-top-bar-and-multicollider-redesign&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/12/a-new-top-bar-for-stack-exchange/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18201" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6401" RevisionGUID="328b0023-2a98-4ab4-8836-0bb5aa69f492" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I removed it as being [overly specific][1] and unlikely to come up in searches of the site. I try not to flood the front page with edits which is why I did not remove it entirely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Chess analysis as a programming thing is more algorithm theory than software engineering and thus unlikely to come up much as a tag. It's certainly a valid domain and very interesting as a field of research but we have both Game Dev and CS Stack Exchanges where it would find a wider audience. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Game Dev has 6 questions with the tag, only 4 have a positive scores. CS has questions on Chess algorithms and such but lacks the tag. It's a &quot;[Do Not Use][2]&quot; tag on Stack Overflow. I'm inclined to agree with their perspective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/18878/how-do-i-correctly-tag-my-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/tags/chess/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18202" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6404" RevisionGUID="cd824412-7a0c-4af4-af5c-ebcb84ef11e0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="## Unclear what help you need ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Unclear what help you need](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important &quot;see: 'Why is research important?'&quot;).** Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell what problem you are trying to solve or what aspect of your approach needs to be corrected or explained. See the [ask] page for help clarifying this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note `[ask]` above is so called [magic link](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/magic-links), meaning that in comments it auto-expands into [How to Ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Slightly adapted from [this MSO post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/215806/165773)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18204" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6432" RevisionGUID="bf0c5d47-d5fc-49ec-aef1-e1c31af6a7e4" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="The questions are picked automatically from questions in the past time period (I think its 1 month and at least some minimum number of days) that have 5 or more upvotes (but less than 15), no downvotes, no close votes, some minimum number of views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, this does cause problems with soft questions that have a number of upvotes on them that are borderline.  This is a known 'issue', but realize that audits are there to serve two purposes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Catch roboreviewers who say *everything* is a certain way&#xD;&#xA;* Help people reconsider what they chose and why to help guide reviews to match the community consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I understand it, the second bullet point is a distant second to the first one and so the borderline cases really aren't as big of an issue as people who fail the review audit consider them to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From MSO: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How do we select audits for Reopen review?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/168381/213963)&#xD;&#xA;* [Failed a Reopen Question audit — sure looks like “Not a real question” to me](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/168372/213963)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18205" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6439" RevisionGUID="20c60be6-5cdc-4b2d-9c1c-015991e96448" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="(this got a bit big to put into a comment... so...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the first key differences to realize between SO and... well... the rest of the Stack Exchange network of sites is that SO is many times larger than the other sites.  Stack Overflow creates 8k questions/day - or one P.SE every 4 days.  With such volume most questions on Stack Overflow never get much attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus [from this comment](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6437/how-could-this-question-be-worded-to-avoid-being-stamped-on#comment17418_6438)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @RobertHarvey I've been here twice. Got 4 up votes for an answer and 4 down votes for a question. When I do something silly or wrong on stackoverflow I can understand the odd anonymous drive by down vote or deafening silence but 4 down votes and gone in 60 seconds for my question - I just don't agree with the philosophy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On P.SE you can vote on almost every single question every single day without using up all your votes. P.SE has vote/view ratio compared to the rest of the network and sites its size (see [Why are votes per post on the decrease (what can we do to improve this)?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/216297/213963) - full image at https://i.stack.imgur.com/SRLlM.png ). Having a post get +4 or -4 is not uncommon.  P.SE is more generous with both upvotes *and* downvotes than Stack Overflow because we have more per question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.SE gets quite a few career / education questions.  Unfortunately, outside of a few broad ones that keep popping up (&quot;should I get a certificate?&quot;) every single one is different.  The person is asking about *their* background information, *their* situation, *their* plans for the future.  A stereotypical question goes like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have a CS degree and spent a few years in tech support, now I got a job working with php.  I know some C, but I haven't used it in a few years.  What do I need to study to get a job doing embedded programming? or maybe operating system design?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that this is an &quot;I&quot; question.  If any parameter changes (no degree, worked in finance, knows some java and uses it currently, looking for a job in biotech) the question becomes useless to them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, the difficulty with career questions in general.  From http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590 :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Beyond that, the general rule of thumb should be whether the question can help others in a similar situation. If the circumstances surrounding the question are too specific to the question asker such that there is no way to generalize and answer the question, they should be closed as too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too localized doesn't exist anymore, but we do have the 'close as career / education advice' which is designed to address this particular and common occurrence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key problem with these questions is that they require a dense, two way conversation to get all of the particulars to that out.  The Q&amp;A part of the site is poorly designed (intentionally so) for such conversations - it is optimized for &quot;Here is a question, here is an answer&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please realize that chat is one of the resources that we have available to ask such questions.  This supports the dense conversations that are available and provides a way for people to give opinions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18206" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6456" RevisionGUID="9a8ec42c-8c23-427f-9edb-9699e91dd55b" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="There is a balancing act that is being walked between the &quot;[everything is downvoted and closed](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q)&quot; and the &quot;you delete things too soon&quot;.  The stress between these two philosophies has also gotten a touch more stressed with an interpretation of an answer [elsemeta](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/219922/what-is-the-goal-of-hot-network-questions/220099#220099).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is quite possible that we've been overeager with deleting things quickly.  That said, it may have eventually have gotten [deleted on its own](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/173513/turbocharging-the-roomba-solutions-for-premature-deletion/177675#177675) without intervention (arguably though the faster delete tries to reduce the perception of lost rep if something was upvoted... a bit of thought does go into what to delete or not).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deletion of the question was not about breaking rules (or not) but rather an attempt at hastening the ultimate janitorial actions.  And sometimes we delete fast because we don't want to forget to delete it later (there isn't a &quot;delete queue&quot; like there is for close votes and once it falls from view it becomes more difficult for people to delete what (ultimately) (debatably) should be deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would ultimately be deleted somehow.  If its done a few days after the question was asked or a week, or a month... its (arguably) just a matter of time.  In its current state, it is unlikely to have been reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question itself is really unanswerable by anyone not part of the Dart Team.  It requires one to go and ask them and any of us are equally capable of doing that compared to what you can do (this 'ask them' [has been done before](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/210399/why-is-there-a-new-in-go/216582#216582) and *can* be done as a good question - you may consider flagging the question for reopening if you find the answer to then do a self answer of the question).  Note that the reception of how well the question and interesting the question to the community as a whole is as fickle as the community itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with the question is that it is asking other people to do work for you that you are just as capable as doing yourself.  This applies to questions where people ask them to (basically) search google or quote wikipedia for them too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also with the edit, you've edited in an answer [from the Dart team](https://groups.google.com/a/dartlang.org/forum/#!msg/misc/8Uchi3bW1YQ/LTKIrC4L564J) - though clarifications for the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do I understand correctly that..&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals but they use it.&#xD;&#xA;* This is not an indicator of quality, but just a bug. Becuase they written by a Dart team &#xD;&#xA;member but not by other person.&#xD;&#xA;* There is no &quot;why&quot; here because it is better to remain silent than to say unpleasant things.&#xD;&#xA;* Dart Team can forget to fix this if someone does not file a ticket.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;needs to be asked of the Dart team, not P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that this clarification didn't help the question.  In my reading of it, the third point combined with the main question reads like a rant about a style guide (or inconstant following of it).  To that, I've read a number of unpleasant comment threads in other questions that have a rant-like tone (again *my* reading of the question) that become wholesale delete the entire comments (and sometimes lock the question while the participants simmer down).  To this, quickly deleting the question quickly can help reduce the total amount of janitorial work that needs mod involvement (and thats where my vote came from)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18207" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6463" RevisionGUID="761afa73-b589-471f-b299-055eecc3f71a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="While general approach to the tag has been thoroughly addressed in [another answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6459/31260 &quot;here&quot;), I would like to focus on a question used as an &quot;acceptable&quot; example in Help Center. As far as I can see, in its current shape it does more harm than good, by misleading the readers into couple of wrong beliefs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Please answer for your region/city/country only&quot;** - this part of the question makes readers believe that poll / [list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info) questions are acceptable. The very presence of this part makes low quality answers look legitimate and acceptable:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Personally I wouldn't hire someone without a masters degree, unless they could document some relevant experience and had very good references. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* In some minor companies in my country (Brazil) you can get a job, but due to some laws you'll get difficulty to be promoted, because to work in some positions, the laws require some education degrees.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* I would hire that developer if he can show me the his abilities and prove that he is the one that my job needs through interview directly. Of course, it's difficult if his resume does not show any interested information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers quoted above are purely opinionated, brief &quot;polling entries&quot;, lacking an explanation and effort, making very wrong impressions on what kind posts are welcome at Programmers. Advertising posts like these through Help Center looks harmful and misleading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Can someone / Would someone even consider** part of the question shifts it into Yes/No territory with [all its known issues](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/183177/165773 &quot;discussed eg here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is not just a 'get an answer for me' place, it's &quot;Produce quality content that is useful for people who follow&quot;. In the case of your question, the second part is lacking...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;When asking a yes/no question there are one of two possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. You really want a yes/no answer. If this is the case, and you don't need anything else to answer your question then it means the answers will be inherently low quality. An answer that only says &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; (in addition to not meeting the minimum length) would be of very low quality. SO answers expect more.&#xD;&#xA;2. You don't actually want a yes/no answer, in which case your real question is not actually a yes/no question, and you're hoping that people will determine what your real question is. For example, someone might ask, &quot;Can I do [...]?&quot; when what they really meant to ask was, &quot;How can I do [...]?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Almost all yes/no questions I've seen fall into case 2; they should be edited into a question that isn't really asking for just a yes/no, it should be asking to explain something. (Even if it has a yes/no in there somewhere.) Note that just adding &quot;Explain&quot; at the end isn't really a good way to go about this; you should refactor the question on a more fundamental level..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18208" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6466" RevisionGUID="1b0ed13e-0d5a-49aa-8581-cd2760904289" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Workplace has been officially graduated: [new site design](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/2364/168) has no &quot;beta&quot; anymore, and [privileges](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/privileges) are set to the level of graduated sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes it possible to add this site to our migration path, does it make sense to do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To better understand this, I would like to learn stats / rates of [successful and rejected migrations](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/202188/165773 &quot;preferably accounting for known inconsistency of these at source and target sites&quot;) to Workplace. I also would like to compare these against successful and rejected migrations to our long established target site - Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For your convenience, below is a list of some prior meta discussions related to Workplace migrations:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3699/closing-questions-that-should-go-to-workplace&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3632/should-we-mention-the-workplace-in-our-faq&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3432/how-should-we-guide-questions-toward-the-workplace&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3204/should-a-list-be-assembled-for-migration-to-the-workplace-once-it-opens&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2439/the-workplace-is-now-in-the-commitment-phase" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18209" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6480" RevisionGUID="7937e4de-3cd4-47c0-abd6-497c7fd27d9d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I'm going to pull up some recently closed questions and am curious what you feel is bullying or the appropriate approach to deal with the questions.  If you have issues about other specific questions and you feel like they are getting an unfair treatment, please consider posting questions on meta about those&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230025/database-career-path&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm really new to database careers and no idea what is their work look like. All I know is they maintain or design a database.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What I want to know is the career path of Database Administrator, what I mean is for example a programmer in the future may become a team leader and so on. What about in database what is the hierarchy of this job. And also I want to know what is the required knowledge and technology to attain a specific level of the job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Put on holds off topic - career and education advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230013/how-to-generate-data-matrix-from-a-seq-file-in-java&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Lots of stuff&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And so on… the rows indicates user and each 17 columns represents page hits to that page by that user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;So send me the code in java to perform this operation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(not closed currently, but on its way)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/229967/hello-im-a-13-year-old-app-developer-wannabe-for-windows-android-what-lang&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Recently, my friend got me interested in programming. I've always thought it was this ultra complicated concept, but after watching the code.org's &quot;What Schools Don't Teach&quot; I'm really wanting to work on something. I want to build Android and Windows apps and games. I would like to build a building/tower defense-esq game for both both platforms. My main questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;-What programming languages should I learn?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -What engine should I use for a 2D building/ RTS (much like Ubisoft's &quot;The Settlers Online&quot;)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as what language, technology, or project one should take up next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You appear to be referring most recently, however, to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230003/finding-out-skill-level&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am writing this question due to the fact that I came across a JUG(Java User Group) facebook page. There was a guy in need of a 'junior' java developer. They told me that a junior Java developer is someone who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there any kind of test someone can take (apart from the oracle exams etc...)? Also , are these information valid or partly true?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To which you commented:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; my friend you have come to very unhelpful and unpleasant place to post your questions. Programmers stack exchange should be related to ask questions related to programming and skills, but the bullies here are to close your question without a single doubt in their head. They are ruining PSE. You are better off in Java Forums where these bullies cannot close your questions. –  Jhilke Dai&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career and education advice is off topic.  It is specifically called out as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The off topic message for the question is intended to give the appropriate guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel this is incorrect and that career questions should be allowed, please make meta post that states this and provides a good argument for how they should be handled and lead to valuable content for the site.  Note that this has been addressed many times in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6458/there-seems-to-be-some-contradictory-guidance-with-respect-to-asking-career-deve&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6410/is-there-a-stackexchange-site-that-would-be-appropriate-for-cs-career-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2483/why-are-all-of-the-good-career-related-threads-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A core principle with Stack Exchange is the desire to attract experts that stay and answer questions.  Without experts the site will suffer the fate of [artificial intelligence.SE](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/no-artificial-intelligence-in-area-51/) or [Startups.SE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/214315/what-happened-to-startups-se).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end it is necessary to down vote and close questions that are not appropriate for the site.  Sometimes this is from a lack of information to make it into a good question (there was a lengthy discussion about that in chat the other day - it was begrudgingly acknowledged that without down votes and closed question the question would not have been improved).  Other times it is necessary for such to get the person to read the appropriate parts of the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly (and a difficult one to get one's head around) it is *not* about helping the person asking the question but the *next* person asking the **same** question.  Questions asking about career paths (a two of my examples) are often *very* specific to that individual or that company (for the DBA, I've never seen a DBA at two different companies have the same set of responsibilities).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Third, discussions on the main site *don't* work.  It wasn't designed for that.  I really suggest reading [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) (which also points out some of the issues you seem to take issue with) which was mentioned in some of the early podcasts by Jeff as being influential in the design of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are other communities where discussion works (as well as they do).  I will point out that even [reddit/r/cscareerquestions](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions) has a hefty [FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index) that is expected to be required reading *before* asking such a question.  Polling and discussion is the *raison d'être* there.  That said, the level of hostility and snark that people have commented finding on reddit (or hacker news) far exceeds our own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And well, give-me-the-codes is welcomed at eLance and similar freelancing sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do better? Probably.  However, posting comments about dissatisfaction with P.SE and about 'bullies' is *not* the way to encourage this process." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18210" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6484" RevisionGUID="b593a629-fcd2-4b6a-b710-1ba957b856fb" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="# Downvoted #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to look at is the mouseover for the down vote button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that this is a completely subjective grading and people may down vote because they were late to work or don't like unicorns.  However one's feeling of unicorns, this *is* information for you to look at and consider how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Make sure that the question is not just asking for something that can be easily searched with google.###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking other people to do your searching for you is considered poor form.  Everyone answering questions is doing so on a volunteer basis (even the SE employees that sometimes answer questions - they aren't paid to do so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also extends to things that you should have been able to find when searching on P.SE.  As you enter the information be sure to tag the question appropriately.  The combination of tags and title *may* help you find something right away that answers the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Explain your current understanding of the issue###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just saying &quot;Could someone explain ${concept} to me&quot; doesn't show what you *do* understand.  It lacks research.  Often the answer to this is spent repeating what is already available in Wikipedia.  If you had read this already and don't understand a part of it, explain that part and what you do understand.  Correcting a misconception is easier (and a better question) than trying to explain the entire topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Blatantly off topic###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the help center on [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) questions. Questions that are asking for a discussion, or polling or one of the reasons specified in the help center.  Especially note that questions *should* have been posted on Stack Overflow (implementation) or questions that should have been posted on Stack Overflow, but would be off topic there too (do this work for me).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [How much research effort is expected of Stack Overflow users?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/182266/how-much-research-effort-is-expected-of-stack-overflow-users/182380#182380)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Encouraging people to explain downvotes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/2373/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;`[Why was my question down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18211" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6485" RevisionGUID="2ac49b88-1aa2-4cf4-b32b-3acd380b2ed7" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="# Duplicate questions#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A duplicate question in and of itself [isn't a bad thing](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/ &quot;see 'Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication'&quot;).  Often it means that the people who have suggested it as such think that the answer to your question is already in the original question.  Questions are closed as duplicates because we want future readers to be able to go to one place to find the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read *all* of the answers on the original question and consider the implications behind the answers too - not just the first reading.  An example of this can be seen on Stack Overflow when debugging questions trying to track down a NullPointerException in Java are linked to a question that explains about NullPointerExceptions rather than trying to resolve that particular instance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that something is closed as a duplicate incorrectly, explain specifically how your question differs from the other question and the answers in the duplicate question do not apply to your situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO FAQ) [How should duplicate questions be handled?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10841/how-should-duplicate-questions-be-handled)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Does the new guidance on duplicate questions suggest closing a question as duplicate, if the original answers the OP's question?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/217401/does-the-new-guidance-on-duplicate-questions-suggest-closing-a-question-as-dupli)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Someone flagged my question as already answered, but it's not](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/194476/someone-flagged-my-question-as-already-answered-but-its-not)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as a duplicate?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6485/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18212" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6489" RevisionGUID="31ce110f-c350-45c5-bde9-e0c8d01fc6dd" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="#Unclear what you are asking#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are looking for, in the [context of Programmers.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This close reason can also be a bit unclear as to what the issue is.  Please be sure to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Give enough context that someone reading the question can understand it&#xD;&#xA;* Explain what you are looking for&#xD;&#xA;* Check to make sure you are not using jargon that is particular to one specific branch of computing (and if you are, either change the jargon or link to a site that explains it)&#xD;&#xA;* Make sure you are on the proper site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last point is important too.  This close reason is often used as a proxy for &quot;we don't think that this question is a good question for Programmers.SE (it might be on Stack Overflow), but would get closed there too.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explain your design.  Explain what you have done.  Explain where you are having difficulty.  Explain what you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear what help you need](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260) (see also [linked MSO post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/215806/165773))&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as unclear?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6489/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18213" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6494" RevisionGUID="11d491ca-248e-4505-a146-dc3d75b354f1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="You weren't banned. Your account has an automatic block for asking new questions due to your other questions being down voted, closed, and/or deleted. You should read [this post on Meta Stack Overflow][1] to learn more about the block and how to overcome it. At this time, you can still post answers, and posting high quality answers is one method to overcome the block. Another is to edit your posts that have been closed to improve them and get them reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18214" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6516" RevisionGUID="6a8e70f4-e87c-4cc6-9b3c-dce39bb0ec06" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I am pondering particular feature request, but before diving deep into polishing its presentation and details, I would like to understand whether the change it would require is [technically feasible at all](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/199006/165773 &quot;because my prior request in this area has been fairly but rather brutally declined based on pure technical grounds&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder if it is technically possible to implement a different aging factor for Programmers questions depending on the amount of answers in these? About as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- hotness score of questions having 0 to 4 answers ages away exactly as of now&#xD;&#xA;- score of questions having 5 to 9 answers decays a bit faster than above  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;say, calculated as if it started aging away earlier&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- score of questions having 10 or more answers decays another bit faster than those with 5 to 9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;FWIW, I would like to stress that I am interested to learn whether this is possible to implement at Programmers, not network-wide. As far as I understand, the problem I am thinking about addressing doesn't make an issue eg at Stack Overflow ([priority -17 there](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/220325/165773 &quot;judging by the score of related question at recent moderator elections&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;In case if it matters, here's a rough sketch of the feature request mentioned above. Due to extended exposure to wide SE network, hot questions tend to attract certain amount of low quality answers. These answers would better be (and eventually are) removed, but due to [limitations in moderation power and inadequate flagging system](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/223403/165773 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;) removal takes quite a lot of time. This slowdown in removal coupled with the way how hotness formula inflates score depending on amount of answers causes hot questions stick in the list longer than it could be in case of timely removal. If the aging decay of questions is adjusted to account for that, this would unblock other [entertaining](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/220099/165773) / [interesting](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/222730/165773) questions of our site and allow them to enter hot list.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18215" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6526" RevisionGUID="908ff734-146b-4306-aba1-fef6506eadfa" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="It is technically feasible, when adjustment involves data that is available at the moment when hotness score is calculated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the adjustment involves only `AnswerCount`, it's easy to implement, taking into account that [current formula](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/61343/165773 &quot;explained here&quot;) uses it anyway:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;    (MIN(AnswerCount, 10) * QScore) / 5 + AnswerScore&#xD;&#xA;    -------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;             MAX(QAgeInHours + 1, 6) ^ 1.4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an example, adjustment to lower part of the formula (age factor) can look like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    (AnswerCount &lt; 5 ? MAX(QAgeInHours + 1, 6)&#xD;&#xA;        : AnswerCount &lt; 10 ? (QAgeInHours + 3)&#xD;&#xA;        :  ? (QAgeInHours + 5)) ^ 1.4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request based on above submitted at MSO: [Make hot questions with multiple answers age away faster on smaller / subjective-ish sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/224750/165773).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18216" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6529" RevisionGUID="ef804157-4302-4562-820f-68bf2b1bfdbf" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Aside from the relative merit of using sonnets to answer a question, the guiding principle is this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are for clarifying questions and answers, or asking for clarification.  Any other use makes them subject to removal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the comments are anything but that, cast a flag against them, and a moderator will remove them if they are onerous.  The key on any Stack Exchange site is to reduce the noise as much as possible.  This is already done by the system collapsing long strings of comments, but if the comment thread has become particularly noisy, a moderator can take care of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For some comment conversations, a &quot;would you like to move this conversation to chat&quot; link is offered.  Chat is more relaxed about these things; if you want to discuss the relative merits of answering Stack Exchange questions via sonnet, by all means avail yourself of the chat facility.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[How do Comments Work? (Meta FAQ)](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/19756/193412)  &#xD;&#xA;[How to Use the Comment Privilege (from the Help Center)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/comment)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18217" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6534" RevisionGUID="0da97cac-5a53-4203-b418-0cc4622d4dfb" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="...if I was a homework cheater, I would applaud [an approach like that](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14258630#14258630 &quot;quote source, bold font is mine&quot;)...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm for deletion if not improved in a reasonable timeframe.  &#xD;&#xA;But minutes after closure is, I think, too speedy.  &#xD;&#xA;**I tend to give a few hours, a day** tops, or recent activity on the site with no edits made...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...because, you see, few hours of just staying there would be **good enough already** for my purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##I would applaud it, enjoy it, exploit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More, I would brag about my successful recipe at &quot;forums&quot;, sharing it with cheaters like me and helping them find a way to a promised land:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Create a throwaway account at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;2. Dump your homework.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;it's quite likely that you'll find a kind soul or two around to help&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;3. Keep squeezing solution details in question comments until it's deleted.&#xD;&#xA;4. If you're lucky to get an answer before question gets [closed](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10582/what-is-a-closed-or-on-hold-question &quot;what does that mean&quot;), do the same in answer comments.&#xD;&#xA;5. If you feel like nobody's paying attention, edit your question: that will [bump](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info) it and increase chances to attract someone willing to help.&#xD;&#xA;6. You may probably notice that question is getting funny marks -1, -2, -3... They call it [down-votes](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/down-votes/info) - don't worry about these, it's all imaginary.&#xD;&#xA;7. If you notice that you can't ask next question, don't worry. They call it [question ban](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th), all you need to circumvent it is to create new throwaway account and repeat above steps.&#xD;&#xA;8. [Only thing to keep in mind is](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3836/programmers-se-and-the-summer-of-love/3837#3837 &quot;paraphrased from here&quot;): **&quot;don't care how they react; go looking for the one guy that will actually do your homework for you (some people will)&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##As a community, what should we do about this approach?   &#xD;&#xA;Should we keep current &quot;policy&quot; as highlighted above, or should we consider speedier deletions?  Speedier deletions on down-voted questions may lead to the help-vampire hitting the question ban faster, but this can be worked around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're here to build a knowledgeable, rewarding community.  We're not here to feed the help-vampires or to reward answers on their questions as it merely encourages more of the bad behaviour.  How should we balance cleaning out the trash without appearing overly harsh to new community members that may be able to contribute once they learn the ropes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;To those interested in a broader context of above: **[what is the point to keep this homework dump visible?](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/what-is-the-point-to-keep-this-homework-dump-visible)**&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18218" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6554" RevisionGUID="4314c1d2-9648-4aff-880a-42f8a0c05ee2" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="As explained [here][1], such questions are off topic :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There is now a dedicated site for [programming puzzles and code golf](http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/87892/155223" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18219" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6559" RevisionGUID="b3bcba84-9ebe-4556-bb6a-ede22507146a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="You've probably seen it [somewhere](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136609/repository-of-useful-pro-forma-comments)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sharing your research helps everyone. Tell us what you've tried and why &#xD;&#xA;it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time &#xD;&#xA;to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, &#xD;&#xA;and most of all it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer! &#xD;&#xA;Also see [how to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does this mean? Why do people keep asking for research? Knowing this, how can I ask a better question and avoid [downvotes](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6484/31260)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18221" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6582" RevisionGUID="bd865c77-7d3d-47cf-9910-2e789c93ffac" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Difficulty with naming has a bit of a history with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are two hard problems in computer science: caching, naming, and off by one errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has been *repeatedly* revisited on meta and elsewhere&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (P.SE Aug 2012) http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3856/question-about-naming-conventions-not-constructive&#xD;&#xA;* (P.SE Oct 2011) http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* (P.SE Jan 2014) http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6406/name-that-thing-questions&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO Nov 2013) [What is the appropriate / preferred method for questions concerning programming nomenclature?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/203880/what-is-the-appropriate-preferred-method-for-questions-concerning-programming)&#xD;&#xA;* (Blog Feb 2012) [Lets Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yes, the guidance on these is confusing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, please answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Are the [tag:terminology] and [tag:naming] questions on topic?&#xD;&#xA;* If so, what should be expected of these questions to not be closed as custom, too broad, or primarily opinion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18222" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6588" RevisionGUID="c0492272-4c3f-4ef3-8f5a-6a9f6d7428dd" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I guess I should have searched all of the meta sites...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It turns out that there is a formula used to increase the flag quantity based on activity. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Recent changes to flagging and limits][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You start with 10 flags per day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Based on your reputation and flagging history, you can end up with as many as 100 per day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Currently, that means you get an extra flag per day for every 2000 reputation points or 10 net helpful flags (helpful-unhelpful).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/185888/on-the-recent-changes-to-flagging-and-limits" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18223" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6590" RevisionGUID="e9c26b74-8422-4217-baa9-10353fec9c8a" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="I am a moderator on Stack Overflow. I got tired of getting into extended conversations with people who read the phrase &quot;practical, answerable problems that are unique to software development&quot; as tacit permission to ask their off-topic questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were also specific complaints that things like &quot;requests for library recommendations&quot; are not specifically called out in the Help Center as closeable offenses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I added the following section to the Help Center/On Topic article there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;b&gt;Some questions are still off-topic, even if they fit into one of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the categories listed above:&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 5. Questions that *lack sufficient information to diagnose the problem.* Describe your problem in more detail or include a [minimal&#xD;&#xA;&gt; example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) in the question itself.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 5. Questions about *a problem that can no longer be reproduced or that was caused a simple typographical error*. While similar questions may&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be on-topic here, these are often resolved in a manner unlikely to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; help future readers. This can often be avoided by identifying and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closely inspecting the [shortest program necessary to reproduce the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3.  Questions asking for code must *demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved.* Include attempted&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solutions, why they didn't work, and the expected results. See also:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Stack Overflow question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; checklist](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4.  Questions asking for homework help must include a summary of the work you've done so far to solve the problem, and a description of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; difficulty you are having solving it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 5. Questions asking us to *recommend or find a tool, library or favorite off-site resource* are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, [describe the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/139399/) and what has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1.  Questions about *general computing hardware and software* are off-topic for Stack Overflow unless they directly involve tools used&#xD;&#xA;&gt; primarily for programming. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4. Questions on *professional server, networking, or related infrastructure administration* are off-topic for Stack Overflow unless&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they directly involve programming or programming tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose that we do something similar for the Help Center/On-Topic article here on Programmers, but using the close reasons that we have here (not the ones on Stack Overflow).  This page is editable by moderators, so we don't need SE permission.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I floated the idea to one of our mods, and he said that we need some community consensus before we do this.  So that's what I'm asking for.  I hope to avoid conversations like [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/235272/1204), and maybe even have a few people simply refrain from posting such questions here and wasting everyone's time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18224" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="b27ef906-f5f5-4d55-b40f-e0a186937675" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="This is [the original Help Center][1] page, with some minor changes.  It turns out that most of the Off-Topic subjects are already covered here, so I just added a couple of new ones to cover the missing cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA; - a product or service recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Additional updates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Removed &quot;Freelancing and Business Concerns&quot; from the on-topic list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Removed &quot;software engineering&quot; in favor of more specific topics, many of which were already included.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Clarified &quot;Programming Tools.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  Added &quot;Legal Assistance&quot; to &quot;not about.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. Changed &quot;resume help&quot; to &quot;job hunting&quot; at the request of The Workplace mods to prevent people with resume critique questions from thinking they are on-topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. Shortened the subjective questions portion, since it's better addressed on the dont-ask page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;software requirements&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software architecture and design&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies and processes&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software engineering management&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;quality assurance and testing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software licensing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h3&gt;and it is not about...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead)&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead)&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what project you should do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; next&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what book you should read next&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;where to find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a software library, tool or other resource&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a  product&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or service recommendation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&quot;&gt;career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice&lt;/a&gt;, salary, or compensation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;personal lifestyle,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including relationships, and non-programming activities&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;legal assistance&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot; alt=&quot;proper scope for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. &lt;strong&gt;Please keep it professional&lt;/strong&gt;. If this is a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question you'd be uncomfortable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see the Help Center page about &lt;a href=&quot;/help/dont-ask&quot;&gt;what not to ask&lt;/a&gt; as well as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot;&gt;Good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; blog posts for details and examples&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;/search&quot;&gt;look around&lt;/a&gt; to see if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been asked before. It’s also OK to &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;/helpcenter/self-answer&quot;&gt;ask and answer your own&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange, it may be on topic for &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;another Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;commit to&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&quot;&gt;propose&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a new site at &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Area51&lt;/a&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically&#xD;&#xA;&gt; created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18225" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6592" RevisionGUID="49b636b8-0a70-4b84-aef1-c9c26e4ef38d" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Recent efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given long known &quot;tradition&quot; of attempts to circumvent such bans by posting at inappropriate sites I wonder how much impact could this have on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand this, I would like to find out how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically I am trying to figure whether it's something that can be dealt with in our regular ways, or it is worth looking for a dedicated approach to address (like, say, system triggering automated flag for mod attention when post from such a user gets close vote / flag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Let's burn down the close queue!](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Block migration if user is suspended/question-blocked at destination](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/102293/block-migration-if-user-is-suspended-question-blocked-at-destination)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18226" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6597" RevisionGUID="fb5696c0-85be-4c32-a618-52d9a02f396e" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="Per my understanding, for a while there was a sort of informal agreement to protect questions that are going to be featured at Ars Technica. Recently [this approach has been challenged](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/protecting-ars &quot;in Whiteboard chat&quot;), so I would like to have a dedicated meta discussion to sort this out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does it make sense to protect such questions as soon as we learn about coming exposure at Ars Technica or it is better to stick with approach designed in 2010 for Stack Overflow and Super User - that is, protect when there is &quot;a lot of drive-by noise answers&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO - Feb '11) [For 15k+ users: Guidelines on Protecting Questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/78764/165773)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Jeff offered more information on [why post protection was implemented and what he expected it to be used for](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/new-protected-question-status/) in his blog.  This was when only moderators had this power, but the same reasoning applies to 15k users who can now protect posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (SE blog - Jun '10) [New Protected Question Status](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/new-protected-question-status/)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **if you see a question that is attracting a lot of drive-by noise answers, please flag it for moderator attention. We’ll turn on protection.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those interested in more details about questions we discuss can find links to them in [this feed](http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/feed/) or in [edits history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/39006/samthebrand?tab=activity) of [SE community evangelist](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6200/can-we-give-the-community-evangelist-something-more-notable-to-make-suggested-ed). Some details of 40 questions featured so far are provided [in the 1st revision of this question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/6597/1 &quot;find these under 'For your convenience...'&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18227" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6598" RevisionGUID="0e51ac8c-bcea-408c-8dd0-2da53ca514f0" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="##Protection racket&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Your own list illustrates how pointless](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/6597/1) this sort of proactive activity is: in most cases, few or no new answers were posted *regardless* of whether the questions were protected. Indeed, the most-answered question of the lot was immediately protected. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not the raw *traffic* that creates the problem. It's traffic coupled with a question that begs for *participation*. Ars has its own forum attached to these, there's no pressing need for readers to come here to kibitz - unless the question itself is crying out for yet another answer...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes this is unavoidable. Questions that, *within the rules of the community* can only be answered in a narrow, controlled fashion may inadvertently imply a much broader scope to outsiders who don't know or don't care about the community norms. Protect is useful in these situations, where every *n* views will tend to generate *m* poor/spam/non- answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But these tend to be the exceptions, *particularly* on a site like this which doesn't really go in so much for discussions of tools or hardware or other spam-friendly topics. Protection here should be reserved for those cases where a good, answered question is attracting a large volume of noise / meta commentary *from new users*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to *pre-emptively* do something useful to forestall noise on questions, then **edit them.** Get rid of bits that implicitly invite any and all opinions, tighten up the scope, focus on making the question reflect its *best answers* rather than aiming for a big tent that welcomes all *participants.* Not only can this reduce confusion for outsiders, it can also benefit the folks already on the site who wouldn't be affected by Protection anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Effects of Ars&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm counting roughly 192 questions that've been linked to from ArsTechnica over the past 2 years that Sam's been doing this. Could be a few more or less; there's a lot of cross-linking, and I might have missed a few related questions - but this should be the *vast* majority of all questions that've been linked to. You can view a list [here](https://stackedit.io/viewer#!provider=gist&amp;gistId=4be501a1cd10129c71f8&amp;filename=progsears.md) if you're interested...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, some basic stats on how these questions have aged. Out of those 192, 31 are *currently* closed and 61 are *currently* protected. The average number of (non-deleted) answers is 12, the average # of deleted answers is 2. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now... How they fared after being shared. I'm going to look at this from two different angles: a simple look at the number of answers attracted that *would* have been blocked by Protected status (had it been applied) and a comparison of the answer distribution before and after.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Protect-worthy answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If *all* of the questions in that list had been protected prior to being shared, a total of 55 answers would have been blocked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of those 55 answers, 18 scored less than 0 and 16 are currently deleted. 23 currently score &gt; 0. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Needless to say, these were posted to the 131 questions that *weren't* Protected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Answer distribution&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the 2578 answers posted before these questions were shared, 2019 are currently scored &gt; 0 while 211 are scoring &lt; 0. 219 are deleted. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the 124 answers posted *after* these questions were shared, 60 are currently scored &gt; 0 while 33 are scoring &lt; 0. 23 are deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I noted in the first section, it's clear that Protection has relatively little effect on these. This jibes with my observations elsewhere on the network: trying to predict which questions will attract crap answers based purely on *traffic* is exceedingly error-prone; other heuristics are needed. [Which is why we implemented better heuristics](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/226619/auto-protect-questions-that-get-more-than-n-answers-from-new-users-in-a-24-hour/228805#228805), based on observing which questions actually benefited from Protected status. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The % of not-useless answers posted after sharing is considerably lower than the % posted before; this shouldn't be too surprising, given none of them were new or unanswered. The % of not-useless new-user answers posted is lower than the % from existing users, but the volume is considerably lower. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reserve Protected status for questions that are attracting noise or abuse from new users. Protect is not a prophylactic. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18228" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6600" RevisionGUID="efd34d1d-5a30-4aa4-aa0f-33de3aa52fea" CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:30:01.570" UserId="-1" Comment="Fixup of bad MSO links to MSE links migration" Text="You have asked 5 questions on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/235271/modify-memory-in-borland-6 asked on April 8, self-deleted on April 8&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/233158/should-i-use-http-search asked on March 21, open, net score of 1&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/232123/standard-way-for-webrequest asked on March 12, closed by 5 user votes, deleted, net score of -1&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189617/install-cloud9-on-windows-8-or-linux asked on March 7, 2013, closed by 5 user votes, deleted, net score of -4&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188926/migrate-wcf-to-node-js asked on March 1, 2013, closed with 5 votes, deleted by moderator, net score of -4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Across these questions, your net question score is -8, which isn't that good. The details of the automatic question block algorithm are not known outside of the Stack Exchange team - not even to moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should read [the page in the help center about question bans][1] as well as a [a Meta Stack Overflow post that describes the question block and how to get out of it][2]. The advice is to fix your old posts (if you can) and contribute good posts of the type that you can (you can still post answers to questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18229" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6600" RevisionGUID="8b7dbed5-0494-4a00-9daa-e2ea0cc4c1d1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T14:33:23.693" UserId="5099" Comment="Corrected link description after MSO/MSE split" Text="You have asked 5 questions on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/235271/modify-memory-in-borland-6 asked on April 8, self-deleted on April 8&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/233158/should-i-use-http-search asked on March 21, open, net score of 1&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/232123/standard-way-for-webrequest asked on March 12, closed by 5 user votes, deleted, net score of -1&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189617/install-cloud9-on-windows-8-or-linux asked on March 7, 2013, closed by 5 user votes, deleted, net score of -4&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188926/migrate-wcf-to-node-js asked on March 1, 2013, closed with 5 votes, deleted by moderator, net score of -4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Across these questions, your net question score is -8, which isn't that good. The details of the automatic question block algorithm are not known outside of the Stack Exchange team - not even to moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should read [the page in the help center about question bans][1] as well as a [a Meta Stack Exchange post that describes the question block and how to get out of it][2]. The advice is to fix your old posts (if you can) and contribute good posts of the type that you can (you can still post answers to questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18235" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6616" RevisionGUID="08150bd7-030c-4ec8-b96e-45dda2e8b23c" CreationDate="2014-04-24T07:22:10.143" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/low-quality-posts" Text="|discussion|review|deleted-answers|low-quality-posts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18236" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6492" RevisionGUID="13260f87-502a-4b01-98b8-0c3a7746f305" CreationDate="2014-04-24T10:48:46.880" UserId="31260" Comment="MSO -&gt; MSE" Text="#Other#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions can be closed with a custom reason.  These are found in the comments for the question.  To that extent it is difficult to enumerate all the possible reasons people may try to close a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read the explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6251/how-can-i-write-a-good-custom-close-message&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/why-do-certification-questions-keep-getting-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6283/current-events-questions-and-answers&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [cross-posting (posting the same question over multiple Stack Exchange sites)](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed - other reasons](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6492/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18237" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6489" RevisionGUID="20a2b95f-1115-48d7-869a-1616fd45b8c6" CreationDate="2014-04-24T10:49:26.580" UserId="31260" Comment="MSO -&gt; MSE" Text="#Unclear what you are asking#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are looking for, in the [context of Programmers.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This close reason can also be a bit unclear as to what the issue is.  Please be sure to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Give enough context that someone reading the question can understand it&#xD;&#xA;* Explain what you are looking for&#xD;&#xA;* Check to make sure you are not using jargon that is particular to one specific branch of computing (and if you are, either change the jargon or link to a site that explains it)&#xD;&#xA;* Make sure you are on the proper site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last point is important too.  This close reason is often used as a proxy for &quot;we don't think that this question is a good question for Programmers.SE (it might be on Stack Overflow), but would get closed there too.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explain your design.  Explain what you have done.  Explain where you are having difficulty.  Explain what you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear what help you need](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260) (see also [linked MSE post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/215806/165773))&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as unclear?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6489/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18238" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6485" RevisionGUID="3d0f1120-aed0-4212-9649-bd09ec703d5d" CreationDate="2014-04-24T10:50:07.517" UserId="31260" Comment="MSO -&gt; MSE" Text="# Duplicate questions#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A duplicate question in and of itself [isn't a bad thing](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/ &quot;see 'Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication'&quot;).  Often it means that the people who have suggested it as such think that the answer to your question is already in the original question.  Questions are closed as duplicates because we want future readers to be able to go to one place to find the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read *all* of the answers on the original question and consider the implications behind the answers too - not just the first reading.  An example of this can be seen on Stack Overflow when debugging questions trying to track down a NullPointerException in Java are linked to a question that explains about NullPointerExceptions rather than trying to resolve that particular instance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that something is closed as a duplicate incorrectly, explain specifically how your question differs from the other question and the answers in the duplicate question do not apply to your situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE FAQ) [How should duplicate questions be handled?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10841/how-should-duplicate-questions-be-handled)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Does the new guidance on duplicate questions suggest closing a question as duplicate, if the original answers the OP's question?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/217401/does-the-new-guidance-on-duplicate-questions-suggest-closing-a-question-as-dupli)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Someone flagged my question as already answered, but it's not](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/194476/someone-flagged-my-question-as-already-answered-but-its-not)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as a duplicate?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6485/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18239" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6484" RevisionGUID="86d757f7-d1d8-440a-9792-cd9b0a9b8963" CreationDate="2014-04-24T10:50:33.357" UserId="31260" Comment="MSO -&gt; MSE" Text="# Downvoted #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to look at is the mouseover for the down vote button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that this is a completely subjective grading and people may down vote because they were late to work or don't like unicorns.  However one's feeling of unicorns, this *is* information for you to look at and consider how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Make sure that the question is not just asking for something that can be easily searched with google.###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking other people to do your searching for you is considered poor form.  Everyone answering questions is doing so on a volunteer basis (even the SE employees that sometimes answer questions - they aren't paid to do so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also extends to things that you should have been able to find when searching on P.SE.  As you enter the information be sure to tag the question appropriately.  The combination of tags and title *may* help you find something right away that answers the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Explain your current understanding of the issue###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just saying &quot;Could someone explain ${concept} to me&quot; doesn't show what you *do* understand.  It lacks research.  Often the answer to this is spent repeating what is already available in Wikipedia.  If you had read this already and don't understand a part of it, explain that part and what you do understand.  Correcting a misconception is easier (and a better question) than trying to explain the entire topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Blatantly off topic###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the help center on [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) questions. Questions that are asking for a discussion, or polling or one of the reasons specified in the help center.  Especially note that questions *should* have been posted on Stack Overflow (implementation) or questions that should have been posted on Stack Overflow, but would be off topic there too (do this work for me).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [How much research effort is expected of Stack Overflow users?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/182266/how-much-research-effort-is-expected-of-stack-overflow-users/182380#182380)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Encouraging people to explain downvotes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/2373/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;`[Why was my question down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18244" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6621" RevisionGUID="460156fd-d69f-4b71-ad09-2ee01c3c72f5" CreationDate="2014-04-25T09:00:51.793" UserId="114829" Text="###Please seat comfortable and take some time. I will not be synthetic, but it will be interesting, try to read it completely and see if you like. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to judge only after reading the whole document :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have a look to this question: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251758/why-is-stack-overflow-so-negative-of-late&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It got 5 hundred upvotes in a really few time by both the people who thinks that SO is too much harsh and restrictive, and the people who would like to have a more strict rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason is that this discussion doesn't express an opinion. Doesn't make a suggestion on how to solve the problem or why there is a problem. But allows everyone to express his own idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Here][1] a famous write well explain how to speak to win and influence people. For curious men, the reason is bound to self-esteem. You can Google for: confirmation bias, [rationalization][2], psychological self-defense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to scientific evidence human tries to find / see only the evidences which confirms their own opinions, this is a self-defense mechanism for protecting the self-esteem. This mechanism is made through [Rationalization][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - This means that human prefer to be asked their opinion instead of listening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Means that human prefer to confirm their idea instead of revising them&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Means that they try to see only the evidence which confirms their own ideas&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; These are not theories. **All this stuff is completely supported by tons&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of search made by brain [fMRI][4] and so on**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What does all this stuff means? Why I'm saying that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because it's really important to understand that human being should not completely trust themselves. We have a strong bias towards confirming our own ideas. So we should always make a strong effort to deeply listen and understand if other people opinion is in someway right, and if ours is in someway bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another very important stuff which you should think of. Is that *when an individual is put inside a flow of ideas, like a community, he will tend to polarize in that direction and look for confirmation that all that ideas are completely correct, good and so on.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Most of individual will stop trying to see alternative possibility. It is called [Conformity][5].**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Now, according to what I said from Dale Carnegie it's not convenient for me to express an opinion which goes against the **beliefs** of other people. Because this would wound their self-esteem.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm not good at this, and I hope you to be mature enough to deeply think on what I reported here. I'm pretty sure to get dozen of downvotes, and this is not a good signal, but hope is the last stuff to die.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*The **main** objective of SE is **to spread knowledge** or **to classify which question are of a good quality and allowed**?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Are we here **to learn** or **to instruct a neural network** how to recognize 'good' (better to say allowed) questions?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both are objective, but which is the MAIN one?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is probably against many rules. At the same time it strongly spreading information (for the definition of information spreading look at [Information Gain][6]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also this question was a bit against the rules but it was spreading some information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/236941/learning-r-and-related-concepts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Have you ever deeply thought on all this stuff?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_%28making_excuses%29&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_%28making_excuses%29&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_magnetic_resonance_imaging&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1859554/what-is-entropy-and-information-gain" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18245" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6621" RevisionGUID="460156fd-d69f-4b71-ad09-2ee01c3c72f5" CreationDate="2014-04-25T09:00:51.793" UserId="114829" Text="A long premise to the contribute which psychology can do to Meta communities" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18246" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6621" RevisionGUID="460156fd-d69f-4b71-ad09-2ee01c3c72f5" CreationDate="2014-04-25T09:00:51.793" UserId="114829" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18247" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6622" RevisionGUID="f4e7d6b3-29cd-425c-b58d-002316bcf4f4" CreationDate="2014-04-25T09:28:06.903" UserId="114829" Text="My **belief** is that if a question is **really** too broad, too bad, too much opinionable. The fact will prove it in a very short time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following question however had already got many interesting consideration in the comments. When it will be auto deleted every consideration will be lost.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The user couldn't answer the question since it have been locked for a reason which is not completely correct (see my answer to the comment).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you consider the deletion of question like this useful? Can you explain the pragmatical advantages reached by this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/236896/is-it-going-to-flex-or-showing-a-past-inflated-expectations?noredirect=1#comment474913_236896" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18248" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6622" RevisionGUID="f4e7d6b3-29cd-425c-b58d-002316bcf4f4" CreationDate="2014-04-25T09:28:06.903" UserId="114829" Text="This question will get auto deleted - is it a winning choice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18249" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6622" RevisionGUID="f4e7d6b3-29cd-425c-b58d-002316bcf4f4" CreationDate="2014-04-25T09:28:06.903" UserId="114829" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18250" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6623" RevisionGUID="b8e175e5-8c1c-4baa-8f53-b362fc0004e8" CreationDate="2014-04-25T09:50:33.197" UserId="25768" Text="First off: they are not fully lost. Users with more than 10k rep will be able to see the question if they have the link to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second deleting it avoids the &quot;broken window&quot; effect. Or in other words because low quality crud remains on the site, it causes users to think that posting low quality crud is acceptable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18251" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6624" RevisionGUID="36f7c322-acbf-40a6-b226-6ebfee7a73f6" CreationDate="2014-04-25T09:58:13.410" UserId="60357" Text="&gt; The question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *The **main** objective of SE is **to spread knowledge** or **to classify which question are of a good quality and allowed**?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to [what SE is about](https://stackexchange.com/about):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange is a growing network of individual communities, each dedicated to serving experts in a specific field. We **build libraries of high-quality questions and answers**, focused on each community's area of expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(emphasis mine)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, [Programmers is about](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/about):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers Stack Exchange is a question and answer site **for professionals and students in software development** and related fields who are interested in getting **expert answers** on conceptual questions about software development. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&amp;A sites. With your help, we're working together to **build a library of detailed answers** to every question about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(emphasis mine)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So SE (and specifically Programmers) are neither about spreading knowledge nor really about judging the quality of various questions. Instead, the objective is to build a high quality library of on-topic Q&amp;A. Maintaining a high quality makes contributing more enjoyable for all involved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, each site in the SE network has a narrow scope. Here on Programmers we are about various aspects of software development, but e.g. questions around keeping pets would not be acceptable here. Again, a narrow scope is in line with the objective of building a comprehensive, high-quality library of questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18252" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6623" RevisionGUID="3d63cce8-bcbb-4b69-8d88-4856698a546d" CreationDate="2014-04-25T14:53:29.210" UserId="31260" Comment="&quot;broken window&quot; += http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info" Text="First off: they are not fully lost. Users with more than 10k rep will be able to see the question if they have the link to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second deleting it avoids the [&quot;broken window&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info) effect. Or in other words because low quality crud remains on the site, it causes users to think that posting low quality crud is acceptable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18253" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6621" RevisionGUID="a53c5434-7735-4873-944d-47486609f86a" CreationDate="2014-04-25T15:39:15.417" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[5654],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:60357,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;amon&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:5099,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Bart van Ingen Schenau&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:1204,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Robert Harvey&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="18254" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6622" RevisionGUID="53a53e2d-b3ba-4af8-8ebf-db53afb47c44" CreationDate="2014-04-25T17:17:10.383" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|deleted-questions|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18255" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6558" RevisionGUID="6d40e7f5-bb84-4a50-908c-b8310a727c58" CreationDate="2014-04-26T00:13:18.717" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18256" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6625" RevisionGUID="3060217f-2163-4bb6-8431-bfc27f5998ec" CreationDate="2014-04-26T08:31:11.353" UserId="114930" Text="I just failed an audit on this question:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/60664.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was submitted as a first post from a new user, but that's wrong. I remember this post and it was mostly definitely not from a new user. I searched for it as a duplicate and couldn't find it, on either Programmers or SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My recollection is that the question was down-voted or deleted. It was not really a very good question, so maybe it really was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I was intending to flag it as a duplicate by someone apparently cheating the system, registering a new user so they could ask the same question again. Instead, I got the &quot;you failed an audit&quot; rap over the knuckles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Surely this is always a risk if you set real questions as audits that could easily have been seen by the reviewer? I know it doesn't 'really' matter, but somehow it doesn't seem the right thing to do." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18257" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6625" RevisionGUID="3060217f-2163-4bb6-8431-bfc27f5998ec" CreationDate="2014-04-26T08:31:11.353" UserId="114930" Text="I just failed an audit , but I was right and it was wrong. What now?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18258" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6625" RevisionGUID="3060217f-2163-4bb6-8431-bfc27f5998ec" CreationDate="2014-04-26T08:31:11.353" UserId="114930" Text="|discussion|review-audits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18259" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6626" RevisionGUID="70a68c67-ea23-409f-a371-5299141ccf85" CreationDate="2014-04-26T13:51:00.717" UserId="47" Text="Do nothing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if there weren't issues around certain aspects of the review system one failed audit isn't going to cause you a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The audits are designed to catch so-called &quot;robo-reviewers&quot; who automatically click the button that's going to get them one step closer to the badges you can earn by reviewing. These people will fail multiple audits and will get banned (albeit temporarily) from the review queues. If you only fail the occasional audit it's not going to affect your ability to review at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I occasionally fail the close audits but that hasn't stopped me being able to review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18260" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6625" RevisionGUID="01c5f730-690c-45d0-b398-b41c6919a676" CreationDate="2014-04-26T14:18:15.170" UserId="114930" Comment="Added response to comment" Text="I just failed an audit on this question:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/60664.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was submitted as a first post from a new user, but that's wrong. I remember this post and it was mostly definitely not from a new user. I searched for it as a duplicate and couldn't find it, on either Programmers or SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My recollection is that the question was down-voted or deleted. It was not really a very good question, so maybe it really was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I was intending to flag it as a duplicate by someone apparently cheating the system, registering a new user so they could ask the same question again. Instead, I got the &quot;you failed an audit&quot; rap over the knuckles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Surely this is always a risk if you set real questions as audits that could easily have been seen by the reviewer? I know it doesn't 'really' matter, but somehow it doesn't seem the right thing to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some helpful answers and comments prompt me to make one small suggestion. Since it appears that failing an audit may not be all that rare even for experienced reviewers, perhaps the language could be reworded slightly. Less of the &quot;gotcha&quot; and perhaps more of the &quot;we all miss one occasionally but don't make a habit of it.&quot; Just a thought." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18261" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6560" RevisionGUID="95462fed-1aee-4773-abb5-a8d6a70bf5ad" CreationDate="2014-04-27T19:54:37.867" UserId="1204" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="There are a number of reasons to try to fill out the body of a question with what you know.  While a closing a question for not enough research is not a good reason, the mouseover for a down vote reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By stating all that you know above the nature of the problem that you have, what you've read, and what you believe to be true you are helping yourself avoid a possible down vote and closure as unclear - buecase its not clear what help you actually need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Mistaken or Invalid Premise ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes when asking a question, it is based on a mistaken premise.  People answering the question are not going to be aware of this premise unless it is stated in the question and are likely to answer it working with the correct assumptions on how things work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider a person trying to make a cake and put it in the microwave oven.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do you preheat a microwave oven?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just wrong, there's the mistaken assumption that a microwave oven is an oven and works like a toaster oven or some other type of oven - that they all work under the same principles and you need to preheat the oven to 350 degrees.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar misconceptions of how a computer works, or a given aspect of a language VM works is not uncommon.  Sometimes these take ferreting out in a comment in the question if we're lucky to fix the question to ask the right question.  Other times it doesn't come out until the answers and then the question tends to morph into a different question - this isn't a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By stating how you think things work from the start, in the question, it is then possible to work to have answers that correct that mistaken premise and show how that corrects the mental model for how the overall system works and answers the *real* question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Repeating what you already know ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It can be difficult to judge the level of the person asking a question.  Its only text, we don't know if you are a senior programmer, or junior programmer or architect or student or CIO and thus don't know if we should target the answer at the senior programmer or CIO level. &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Ok, you didn't laugh at that ordering... sorry.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you were to ask &quot;I don't know why `i++` is allowed in Java when it already has `i+=1`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One answer is &quot;because it is specified in the [standards](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-15.html#jls-15.14.2) that way&quot; and that is a perfectly correct answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if the question was &quot;I was reading the [JLS section 15.4.2-3](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-15.html#jls-15.14.2) and wondered why this was added when `+=` is already present in the language&quot; this becomes a very different question that saying &quot;this is the specification&quot; won't answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By stating what you already know, you haven't had anyone spend time repeating back what you already know - wasting both your time and theirs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Answering far too above the level of the asker ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes the simple questions are *very* deep when you get into them.  I urge you to watch this [classic Feynman interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM) where Feynman points out the difficulty of answering the question - that if you don't understand the question you are asking you may not be able to understand the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You have to know what it is that you're permitted to understand and allow to be understood and known, and what it is you're not. You'll notice, in this example, that the more I ask why, the deeper a thing is, the more interesting it gets.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With many questions, especially the deceptively simple ones, the answer to it may be way over the head of the person who is asking it.  It would do a disservice to the person asking the question at a intro to programming, freshman college level when the answer to it is one that really is at the graduate level of theory or senior programmer level of design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why can't I match html with a regular expression&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer becomes one of the [Chomsky hierarchy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy) and the [pumping lemma](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumping_lemma_for_regular_languages) and and an understanding of what a [NDFA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondeterministic_finite_automaton) is... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While the question is likely to be too broad to answer at the level, it does allow someone to identify that from the start and work to narrow down the question to something that can be answered in a single Stack Exchange question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18262" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6627" RevisionGUID="d3f4cf5a-88d2-4b82-bcb7-3620263e1e29" CreationDate="2014-04-28T02:09:39.333" UserId="68834" Text="[![Code Review Stack Exchange. Tough questions, smart answers.][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LZUho.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.codereview.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18263" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6627" RevisionGUID="6ec5f7ea-2bd8-41a0-9413-befb3c38714f" CreationDate="2014-04-28T02:09:39.333" UserId="68834" />
  <row Id="18264" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1655" RevisionGUID="2906725f-9a31-4d8b-8159-02addca7bcba" CreationDate="2014-04-28T06:01:05.687" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|legal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18265" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6625" RevisionGUID="00225386-8279-4f18-a9c9-9264f852f952" CreationDate="2014-04-29T06:16:36.660" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/461026244315078659" />
  <row Id="18270" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6629" RevisionGUID="02410986-46bf-4ff2-9650-9f5897ae2d7a" CreationDate="2014-04-30T02:51:25.503" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="One of the not infrequently asked questions that shows up on Programmers.SE is along the lines of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am trying to explain the differences between a NoSQL database and a relational database to a manager.  How do I do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions generally take the form of &quot;How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}&quot; where something is a programming topic and someone is not a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is particularly relevant with the oft said &quot;If you can't explain it to a size year old, you don't really understand it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why do these questions keep getting closed?  What can I do to ask them in a way that doesn't get closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18271" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6629" RevisionGUID="02410986-46bf-4ff2-9650-9f5897ae2d7a" CreationDate="2014-04-30T02:51:25.503" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18272" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6629" RevisionGUID="02410986-46bf-4ff2-9650-9f5897ae2d7a" CreationDate="2014-04-30T02:51:25.503" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18273" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6630" RevisionGUID="a66ba7ee-f612-4ebf-a12f-466528f48f14" CreationDate="2014-04-30T02:51:25.503" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="&#xD;&#xA;## Problems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So many targets... ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first problem with these questions is that there are so many possible audiences.  How do you explain pointers to a 13 year old.  How do you explain the internet to your grandfather? How do you explain [testing to a manager who has pointy hair](http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-03-24/)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way you would explain something to a 13 year old is different than the way you would explain it to your grandfather &lt;s&gt;or a manager&lt;/s&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Ok, maybe the manager and the 13 year old would get the same explanation.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Key to this is that each type of person you explain something to is different.  Whats more, each *person* you explain something to is different (maybe your grandfather was given [write enable wrings](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tapeprotection.jpg) for teething and had a very good grasp of UUCP back in the day).  Your grandfather is different than my grandfather, and your boss is different than my boss.  The explanations for one won't always work for the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions inevitably get refining the specifics of explaining it to one person.  At that point, the question and answers become useless for anyone else who wants to explain it to another grandfather or 13 year old.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So many understandings... ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how would you explain pointers to a peer in computing?  If you do not understand pointers fully yourself, the question will turn from how do you explain them to someone else to the community explaining them to you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you lack the full understanding of the topic at hand, you will not be able to properly answer the follow up questions from whatever analogy you pick (the internet is a series of tubes... but how do they go to the *right* tube? - if you don't understand routing and dns and all that fun stuff yourself you won't be able to properly answer that question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Solutions ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So what can I do? ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you understand the subject you are trying to explain, at least to the level you are going to try to explain it to *and one deeper*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you understand that.  Ask a question about *that* misunderstanding if you have it so the misunderstanding may be corrected and you'll be able to think of the proper car or train analogy to explain what you are trying to explain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider asking in chat.  While this isn't the main site and you don't get rep for it, it can help in being able to particularly address your understanding and the understanding of the person you are trying to explain it to.  Consider for example, [this conversation](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/on-engineering-and-teaching-pointers) where we went through several iterations of understanding the target audience before recognizing the proper way to explain pointers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking about how to explain something and working through the solution is not a 'fire and forget' question where you ask it and come back to get the answers.  Those are the questions get get closed.  They take a significant amount of work explaining what *you* understand and properly tailoring it to the audience that you understand best.  While we can help with your understanding, trying to answer it for your audience is not a good fit for the Q&amp;A site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18274" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6631" RevisionGUID="d5885158-f546-4e3b-9e2d-6b913a70544c" CreationDate="2014-04-30T04:04:12.177" UserId="128588" Text="I want to answer [this question][1].  I just got an association bonus from my other accounts, so now my reputation is at 101.  However, I still get:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; protected by GlenH7 Dec 24 '13 at 14:13&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thank you for your interest in this question. Because it has attracted low-quality answers, posting an answer now requires 10 reputation on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112098/in-c-how-much-programmer-time-is-spent-doing-memory-management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tried signing out, signing back in, and reloading the page." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18275" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6631" RevisionGUID="d5885158-f546-4e3b-9e2d-6b913a70544c" CreationDate="2014-04-30T04:04:12.177" UserId="128588" Text="Cannot Answer Protected Question with 101 Rep" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18276" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6631" RevisionGUID="d5885158-f546-4e3b-9e2d-6b913a70544c" CreationDate="2014-04-30T04:04:12.177" UserId="128588" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18277" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6631" RevisionGUID="7deaceeb-c7ee-4935-9fbf-80c98c533262" CreationDate="2014-04-30T04:19:49.510" UserId="128588" Comment="added 87 characters in body" Text="I was browsing and I noticed this somewhat old question: [here][1].  I just got an association bonus from my other accounts, so now my reputation is at 101.  However, I still get:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; protected by GlenH7 Dec 24 '13 at 14:13&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thank you for your interest in this question. Because it has attracted low-quality answers, posting an answer now requires 10 reputation on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112098/in-c-how-much-programmer-time-is-spent-doing-memory-management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tried signing out, signing back in, and reloading the page.  If I wanted to answer this question, I'd be unable to." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18278" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6632" RevisionGUID="25dd813b-bd5a-4c2c-b501-6724dbf1d4d2" CreationDate="2014-04-30T06:49:28.373" UserId="5099" Text="When logging in today, I saw a notification that there were 31 suggested edits to be reviewed (which is an unusually large number), but when going to the review page, the queue was empty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even after refresh, the indicator remained in the top bar." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18279" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6632" RevisionGUID="25dd813b-bd5a-4c2c-b501-6724dbf1d4d2" CreationDate="2014-04-30T06:49:28.373" UserId="5099" Text="Top bar shows large number of suggested edits, but the review queue is empty" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18280" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6632" RevisionGUID="25dd813b-bd5a-4c2c-b501-6724dbf1d4d2" CreationDate="2014-04-30T06:49:28.373" UserId="5099" Text="|bug|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18281" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6633" RevisionGUID="031d6856-2458-42a3-bd95-420a6e733d27" CreationDate="2014-04-30T08:15:49.667" UserId="31260" Text="This is [by design](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/52765/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Users with 10 or more reputation can answer a protected question. However, **the +100 account association bonus is ignored for this check**, so you must have earned 10 or more reputation on that specific site to answer a protected question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Auto-protect questions that get more than N answers from new users in a 24-hour period](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/226619/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The association bonus should not enable users to vote on every site](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/183109/the-association-bonus-should-not-enable-users-to-vote-on-every-site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy ](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; my favorite pattern is from MetaFilter, which is: When we start seeing effects of scale, we shut off the new user page. &quot;Someone mentions us in the press and how great we are? Bye!&quot; That's a way of raising the bar, that's creating a threshold of participation. And anyone who bookmarks that page and says &quot;You know, I really want to be in there; maybe I'll go back later,&quot; that's the kind of user MeFi wants to have..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18282" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6631" RevisionGUID="c241ba77-5d87-428a-97cb-40d0d2db8e29" CreationDate="2014-04-30T08:20:18.420" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/protected-questions" Text="|bug|protected-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18283" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6597" RevisionGUID="fc3ea844-b1f1-4aa7-8f29-09d28fca1932" CreationDate="2014-04-30T08:21:07.243" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|protected-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18284" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6616" RevisionGUID="8f2bd960-3d2e-4cec-92f6-bd73ca218fbf" CreationDate="2014-04-30T09:20:38.737" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/461434946515894272" />
  <row Id="18285" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6634" RevisionGUID="dde85756-a1e7-4301-8d2c-7e95f7d24c0d" CreationDate="2014-04-30T10:16:55.400" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237479/how-is-this-site-different-than-stackoverflow" />
  <row Id="18286" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6634" RevisionGUID="029bad54-9997-43d3-a762-82c686bd225e" CreationDate="2014-04-30T10:15:29.150" UserId="128628" Text="The purpose of this site is presumably to help professional programmers with programming tasks they encounter in the course of their work. Both sites contain code examples, so that doesn't seem to be the differentiating characteristic. Could someone please explain why this is not a &quot;duplicate&quot; site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18287" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6634" RevisionGUID="029bad54-9997-43d3-a762-82c686bd225e" CreationDate="2014-04-30T10:15:29.150" UserId="128628" Text="How is this site different than StackOverflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18288" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6634" RevisionGUID="029bad54-9997-43d3-a762-82c686bd225e" CreationDate="2014-04-30T10:15:29.150" UserId="128628" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18289" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6634" RevisionGUID="f8e0ddef-b3fb-4f5e-9e7e-04da81c41481" CreationDate="2014-04-30T10:19:02.337" UserId="4" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[171],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:1352,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Jörg W Mittag&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="18290" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="d38f04d0-2101-4498-9475-714fc52180de" CreationDate="2014-04-30T10:31:45.800" UserId="31260" Comment="too broad += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6629/how-do-i-explain-something-to-someone" Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long for the Q&amp;A format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are just polls for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the accepted answer is based on &quot;which answer I like best,&quot; rather than &quot;which answer solves my problem,&quot; the question is probably a poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While some other Stack Exchanges allow it, Programmers.SE frowns upon ['big list' type questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;see also: list-questions tag wiki at MSO&quot;) that seem to want to compile a list of things.  Questions that fall into this category typically have the form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What are all the problems I will encounter with XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * What are the pros and cons of XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * How can XYZ be used?&#xD;&#xA; * Any ideas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like these don't pose a problem that can be solved by an answer.  There is no definitive *right* answer that someone can go to, see the accepted answer and say &quot;yep, thats the answer.&quot;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6629/how-do-i-explain-something-to-someone&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help Center &gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as too broad?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18291" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6635" RevisionGUID="0ed07a39-3e52-47b7-b6ee-71ee3a1b2187" CreationDate="2014-04-30T16:03:25.513" UserId="3965" Text="This is one of those cases where people phrase a question in a way that disguises their true intent.  They are not asking for a tutorial on persuasive speaking.  They are seeking a deeper understanding of the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/237500/3965 for example.  His real problem is not lack of skills of persuasion.  He has been taught that using exceptions this way is inadvisable, and his gut tells him it is wrong.  However, he doesn't know objectively *why*, and the person he is trying to convince won't accept an answer of &quot;because that's what everyone else does&quot; (rightly so).  He is seeking to move past a cargo cult understanding of the topic, which is a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When people ask a question like this, you should translate it to, &quot;What is an objective justification for this practice?&quot;  Edit it in that direction if you must, but we shouldn't penalize otherwise good questions because of the way people naturally choose to phrase them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18292" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6632" RevisionGUID="366c91ef-9f52-4fad-bb5e-de718c205826" CreationDate="2014-04-30T19:45:24.053" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18293" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6636" RevisionGUID="c18a8b05-ad3b-45a5-9550-e11709174121" CreationDate="2014-04-30T19:52:49.457" UserId="63" Text="They're not suggested edits...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![~23 posts awaiting review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's everything waiting in all of the queues. As a member of the site with [moderator privileges](), you're trusted with information on what's happening outside of your specific area, now including the *total* /review backlog. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Normally, it should turn over fairly regularly: if you notice that's taking a long time, try to drum up some enthusiasm for the task from your peers - otherwise, the reviews *you've* done that are blocked by the need for others are just wasted effort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/191638/notify-users-of-possible-reviews-on-toolbar&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/imu9s.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18294" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6631" RevisionGUID="19691798-528c-41a0-916d-432a2fbaccf6" CreationDate="2014-04-30T23:30:15.470" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|protected-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18295" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="c3c1b81c-8eee-4785-803f-059565377d50" CreationDate="2014-05-01T17:01:57.300" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Expanding the 'links to thinks'" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for link to things&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason.  Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine is falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to things suffer from link rot.  Statistics become out of date over time.  Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is someone asking in 2012 &quot;What is the market share of Android vs iPhone?&quot;  This information would be out of date in a few months as new numbers come out and someone else would ask in 2013 &quot;The question [link] asks about the stats, but they are all for 2012.  What is the market share for android vs iPhone in 2013?&quot;  And again, this information would be out of date and prompt another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for information about statistics, or more generally, asking us to search for some data for you is off topic because of these problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No actual problem to solve&#xD;&#xA;* Not drawing from expert knowledge of the community&#xD;&#xA;* Will suffer from link rot or become out of date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18296" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="4b6792ed-f983-4ffb-8852-f419a4cf8549" CreationDate="2014-05-01T17:12:49.717" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo corrected" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for link to things&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason.  Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to things suffer from link rot.  Statistics become out of date over time.  Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is someone asking in 2012 &quot;What is the market share of Android vs iPhone?&quot;  This information would be out of date in a few months as new numbers come out and someone else would ask in 2013 &quot;The question [link] asks about the stats, but they are all for 2012.  What is the market share for android vs iPhone in 2013?&quot;  And again, this information would be out of date and prompt another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for information about statistics, or more generally, asking us to search for some data for you is off topic because of these problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No actual problem to solve&#xD;&#xA;* Not drawing from expert knowledge of the community&#xD;&#xA;* Will suffer from link rot or become out of date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18297" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6629" RevisionGUID="f1d9b1a9-6d8d-49f5-8058-1d91bdc91267" CreationDate="2014-05-01T18:35:07.063" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/461936871967567872" />
  <row Id="18311" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6639" RevisionGUID="4136508e-79c0-4d54-8763-fd426396e1b8" CreationDate="2014-05-05T16:18:58.603" UserId="80010" Text="Just finally figuring out exactly what kind of questions are meant for Programmers. Now when I try to ask a question my account is banned? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Really? I have over 400 reputation points on stack-overflow and all hardy any down votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So frustrated with Programmers... do I have to look for an alternative? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18312" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6639" RevisionGUID="4136508e-79c0-4d54-8763-fd426396e1b8" CreationDate="2014-05-05T16:18:58.603" UserId="80010" Text="Think someones reputation on StackOverflow should prevent them from being banned on programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18313" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6639" RevisionGUID="4136508e-79c0-4d54-8763-fd426396e1b8" CreationDate="2014-05-05T16:18:58.603" UserId="80010" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18314" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6640" RevisionGUID="f269c7fb-1483-4ef3-bdb2-61f1159c5f71" CreationDate="2014-05-05T16:26:31.490" UserId="4" Text="Question bans are on a per-site basis and are based on your asking history on that site. Your reputation on Stack Overflow has no bearing on your standing here, where you have asked 3 questions ([here][1], [here][2], and [here][3] for you and 10k+ users). All three have a net negative score, two were closed, and all three were deleted. It's not surprising that this triggered the automatic question ban, which are [described in detail in the Help Center][4] and [in this question on Meta Stack Exchange](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're interested in participating here, I would recommend that you read how to get a question ban lifted as well as better understand what is and is not on-topic here (which is pretty clear in our Help Center's [on-topic][5] and [do not ask][6] pages. If you aren't interested in working to get your question ban lifted, then yes, finding an alternative is likely your only option.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/236093/clicking-qt-app-vs-running-exe-in-terminal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218893/the-state-of-c-development-on-linux&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189650/which-gui-framework-for-a-gui-newbie-but-expert-c-developer&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18315" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6262" RevisionGUID="65fa698a-c6b2-4f1d-8596-e7c1de9d0a55" CreationDate="2014-05-05T17:02:12.133" UserId="47" Comment="102" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:34327,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Simon&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="18316" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6521" RevisionGUID="ba5945b7-da69-492b-b02c-02f55b69d9b0" CreationDate="2014-05-05T17:03:04.120" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[171],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:1204,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Robert Harvey&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="18318" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6640" RevisionGUID="d5f7b660-4699-4563-8a7c-9f23a327526a" CreationDate="2014-05-05T17:10:12.703" UserId="31260" Comment="10k+ users += http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;who can view deleted posts&quot;" Text="Question bans are on a per-site basis and are based on your asking history on that site. Your reputation on Stack Overflow has no bearing on your standing here, where you have asked 3 questions ([here][1], [here][2], and [here][3] for you and [10k+ users][7]). All three have a net negative score, two were closed, and all three were deleted. It's not surprising that this triggered the automatic question ban, which are [described in detail in the Help Center][4] and [in this question on Meta Stack Exchange](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're interested in participating here, I would recommend that you read how to get a question ban lifted as well as better understand what is and is not on-topic here (which is pretty clear in our Help Center's [on-topic][5] and [do not ask][6] pages. If you aren't interested in working to get your question ban lifted, then yes, finding an alternative is likely your only option.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/236093/clicking-qt-app-vs-running-exe-in-terminal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218893/the-state-of-c-development-on-linux&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189650/which-gui-framework-for-a-gui-newbie-but-expert-c-developer&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;who can view deleted posts&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18320" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6639" RevisionGUID="9a1d9cec-9399-4594-bb15-a4586ac7a84a" CreationDate="2014-05-06T13:39:07.870" UserId="31260" Comment="edited body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Just finally figuring out exactly what kind of questions are meant for Programmers. Now when I try to ask a question my account is banned? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Really? I have over 400 reputation points on Stack Overflow and all hardy any down votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So frustrated with Programmers... do I have to look for an alternative? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18321" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6639" RevisionGUID="9a1d9cec-9399-4594-bb15-a4586ac7a84a" CreationDate="2014-05-06T13:39:07.870" UserId="31260" Comment="edited body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Think someone's reputation on Stack Overflow should prevent them from being banned on programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18322" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6639" RevisionGUID="9a1d9cec-9399-4594-bb15-a4586ac7a84a" CreationDate="2014-05-06T13:39:07.870" UserId="31260" Comment="edited body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18323" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6642" RevisionGUID="acf47ce4-596f-445d-abcb-975df6bdf4e3" CreationDate="2014-05-06T21:18:19.183" UserId="3965" Text="This is a follow up to [BartMan's question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6637/3965), which is now locked.  We shouldn't be dismissive of the over-moderation concerns of potential new users.  You asked for 10 examples of inappropriately closed questions, so here they are, found by querying for closed questions I answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/236533/3965 Closed as opinion based, but actually has some interesting objective reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/235042/3965 Closed as too broad, after garnering four concise yet relatively thorough answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/234699/3965 Ironically, given the penchant on this site for closing questions as too broad, this rather specific question was closed as a duplicate of a question that was only vaguely related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/230784/3965 This question was closed as &quot;education advice,&quot; which we used to define as &quot;what school/degree program/course/certification should I personally enroll in&quot; and lately seems to be broadly defined as &quot;any question that mentions a university or degree or learning of any kind.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/230486/3965 This one admittedly might fit better on workplace, but has some very scrum-specific concerns, which makes it unique to our profession.  At the very least, it should have been migrated instead of closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/230271/3965 Despite an intentionally provocative title, this question asks useful, thought-provoking questions and received three insightful and relatively objective answers.  If you don't like the title, edit the title.  This question illustrates a larger concern that entire questions are frequently being rejected due to one small easily-edited part of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/224275/3965 Closed as opinion based, despite having concrete cultural and historical reasons behind the practice.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;8. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/227983/3965 Closed as &quot;unclear what you're asking&quot; despite having a short, clear answer.  It seems like this close reason is often used to mean &quot;I personally don't know the answer&quot; or &quot;I personally don't know how to explain this in a concise, easy to understand manner.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/227743/3965 Closed as &quot;what language should I learn next,&quot; but the question is more detailed, more objective, and less personal than that.  Also throws in the &quot;education advice&quot; reason, presumably because the question mentions the word &quot;learning.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/224356/3965 Closed as too broad, despite having a few good answers already.  This &quot;too broad&quot; reason is way overused for a site that's supposedly about conceptual questions.  If a concise conceptual answer can be given at the same abstraction level as the question, it's not too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could go on, and those are just the ones I personally got around to answering in the last month or so before they got closed.  I used to occasionally address these kinds of closings individually with meta posts, but it has become overwhelming, and people now seem more interested in finding excuses to close a question rather than reasons to keep it open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is twofold.  First, people have no incentive to be judicious with their close votes. Second, voting to close is easily done during normal use of the site while the questions are at the top of the page, whereas voting to reopen requires effort to go back and find appropriate questions that may no longer be visible on the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The balance of moderation power is heavily tilted in favor of the closers. All the 10k+ users put together currently have enough votes to close every single new question on this site every day 10 times over, and that's [not enough](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6507)?!  If that doesn't sound like over-zealous moderation, I don't know what does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My proposed solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Provide a notification to anyone capable of casting reopen votes (3000+ rep) when a question they upvoted or answered has been closed, or &#xD;&#xA; - Allow some means of casting reopen votes before a question is closed, and &#xD;&#xA; - Time out the downvoting and close voting privileges of people who vote to close a question that is later reopened.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18324" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6642" RevisionGUID="acf47ce4-596f-445d-abcb-975df6bdf4e3" CreationDate="2014-05-06T21:18:19.183" UserId="3965" Text="Examples of inappropriately closed questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18325" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6642" RevisionGUID="acf47ce4-596f-445d-abcb-975df6bdf4e3" CreationDate="2014-05-06T21:18:19.183" UserId="3965" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18327" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6643" RevisionGUID="8f361b61-1fb9-48ce-a72f-686cabd099ec" CreationDate="2014-05-06T21:43:06.480" UserId="1204" Text="1.  Any question that includes the words &quot;benefits,&quot; &quot;advantages,&quot; &quot;pros and cons&quot; or anything that can be enumerated as a list is subject to closure as Too Broad, under the &quot;we are not a discussion forum&quot; principle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Closed does not mean &quot;dead.&quot;  It merely means &quot;No more answers will be accepted on this question unless it is improved to be more on-topic.&quot;  People can still get at the answers that have already been posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  Doesn't look like a dup to me either.  Nobody's perfect.  I flagged to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  Quite right.  We don't dispense education advice of any kind here.  There isn't much air between those two definitions anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5.  This question doesn't seem to be specific to programming.  I can see why it was closed, although I didn't vote to close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6.  Well, c'mon.  That's practically the poster child for &quot;primarily opinion-based.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7.  I voted to reopen this one, although I appear to be in the minority (it was closed by five community members, not by a mod).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;8.  Given that this one has a delete vote on it, I voted to reopen.  I don't see any reason to delete it, although I do understand why it was closed as unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9.  As detailed as this question is, it's the perfect storm of close reasons.  It's educational advice, a technology recommendation, too broad and primarily opinion-based, all at the same time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10.  This question needs to be edited to make it a better, more focused question.  The prima facie question in the post (&quot;how many checklists are too many?&quot;) is unanswerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18328" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6643" RevisionGUID="ea8a0e03-e341-47a6-ae08-bd7a9d0b5d7d" CreationDate="2014-05-06T21:50:24.190" UserId="1204" Comment="added 65 characters in body" Text="1.  Any question that includes the words &quot;benefits,&quot; &quot;advantages,&quot; &quot;pros and cons&quot; or anything that can be enumerated as a list is subject to closure as Too Broad, under the &quot;we are not a discussion forum&quot; principle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Closed does not mean &quot;dead.&quot;  It merely means &quot;No more answers will be accepted on this question unless it is improved to be more on-topic.&quot;  People can still get at the answers that have already been posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  Doesn't look like a dup to me either.  Nobody's perfect.  I flagged to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  Quite right.  We don't dispense education advice of any kind here, for reasons that are eloquently stated in the close description.  There isn't much air between those two definitions anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5.  This question doesn't seem to be specific to programming.  I can see why it was closed, although I didn't vote to close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6.  Well, c'mon.  That's practically the poster child for &quot;primarily opinion-based.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7.  I voted to reopen this one, although I appear to be in the minority (it was closed by five community members, not by a mod).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;8.  Given that this one has a delete vote on it, I voted to reopen.  I don't see any reason to delete it, although I do understand why it was closed as unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9.  As detailed as this question is, it's the perfect storm of close reasons.  It's educational advice, a technology recommendation, too broad and primarily opinion-based, all at the same time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10.  This question needs to be edited to make it a better, more focused question.  The prima facie question in the post (&quot;how many checklists are too many?&quot;) is unanswerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18330" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6643" RevisionGUID="2162033e-9337-496e-9424-3a57b696ba0a" CreationDate="2014-05-06T22:09:20.893" UserId="1204" Comment="added 665 characters in body" Text="1.  Any question that includes the words &quot;benefits,&quot; &quot;advantages,&quot; &quot;pros and cons&quot; or anything that can be enumerated as a list is subject to closure as Too Broad, under the &quot;we are not a discussion forum&quot; principle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Closed does not mean &quot;dead.&quot;  It merely means &quot;No more answers will be accepted on this question unless it is improved to be more on-topic.&quot;  People can still get at the answers that have already been posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  Doesn't look like a dup to me either.  Nobody's perfect.  I flagged to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  Quite right.  We don't dispense education advice of any kind here, for reasons that are eloquently stated in the close description.  There isn't much air between those two definitions anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5.  This question doesn't seem to be specific to programming.  I can see why it was closed, although I didn't vote to close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6.  Well, c'mon.  That's practically the poster child for &quot;primarily opinion-based.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7.  I voted to reopen this one, although I appear to be in the minority (it was closed by five community members, not by a mod).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;8.  Given that this one has a delete vote on it, I voted to reopen.  I don't see any reason to delete it, although I do understand why it was closed as unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9.  As detailed as this question is, it's the perfect storm of close reasons.  It's educational advice, a technology recommendation, too broad and primarily opinion-based, all at the same time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10.  This question needs to be edited to make it a better, more focused question.  The prima facie question in the post (&quot;how many checklists are too many?&quot;) is unanswerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I dispute your assertion that moderation is tilted in favor of the closers (several active members regularly run out of close votes); although I would agree that it is tilted in favor of *closing.*  I consider that a good thing.  In the absence of users attempting to improve their question quality, it's up to the regulars to close the poor questions so that there's room for the good ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is not so much closing as it is disputes in site scope.  The site scope currently states that educational questions are categorically off-topic, so if you're trying to assert that closers are being overzealous closing these questions, your argument is invalid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18331" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6644" RevisionGUID="ff4c6eea-71dd-43cc-9a3b-e6e243454053" CreationDate="2014-05-06T22:29:14.633" UserId="22929" Text="I'd like to ask the reason why many commercial software companies are using a freeware tool for their product lifecycle by giving the company which produces this tool an advantage and the power to put a commercial license on it / restrict its usage to commercial ends.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is such a question off-topic for programmers.stackexchange.com? At first I would say no, but I decided to ask here on meta before posting it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18332" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6644" RevisionGUID="ff4c6eea-71dd-43cc-9a3b-e6e243454053" CreationDate="2014-05-06T22:29:14.633" UserId="22929" Text="Is it deemed off-topic to ask how come that many commercial companies rely on a specific freeware software?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18333" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6644" RevisionGUID="ff4c6eea-71dd-43cc-9a3b-e6e243454053" CreationDate="2014-05-06T22:29:14.633" UserId="22929" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18334" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6645" RevisionGUID="8bb1398c-8a21-4631-81bf-6bf5a57d2c9e" CreationDate="2014-05-06T22:31:34.797" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The first thing to realize is all but one of these questions have five close votes. Not a single one is there a review by you with a close vote review of 'leave open' on it.  That is the best time to act on them if they are to remain open rather than closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In most cases, the reopen review was done by three *different* people than who did the close votes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/236533/what-are-the-benefits-of-exotic-languages-and-scripts (reopen review: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/60905 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This question is too broad with three nested questions in it.  It is asking for people's opinions on things &quot;Why would somebody explicitly want this?&quot; and asking for a poll of the reasons for the original request (on Software Recommendation) reasoning.  We can't know what the reason is, we are only guessing and giving our opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/235042/what-are-the-perks-and-drawbacks-of-using-html-templates-versus-building-the-htm (reopen review: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/58877 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This question is a poll.  Plain and simple.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; what are other advantages and disadvantages of both approaches?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It can get dozens more answers and *still* not have a right answer.  There is no problem posed in the question.  There can be no answers solving the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/234699/segregating-interfaces-concerns-to-a-tree&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Apparently this one has been reopened from being a dup.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230784/is-a-degree-in-cs-and-a-degree-in-se-the-same-thing (Reopen review: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/56022 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This question is asking about career and education and is asking questions specific to the curriculum at various universities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230486/giving-team-members-more-decision-making-power-led-to-very-long-arguments-block (I couldn't find a reopen review on this one)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I'd argue its a better fit for PM.SE.  The question is one more of project management than methodologies and working with the *people* more than the *patterns*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230271/is-procedural-programming-the-root-of-all-object-oriented-evil (Reopen review http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/56018 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Seriously?&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Is procedural programming the root of all object oriented evil?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   You've got debate forming language right in the question title. If you think this can be a good question, *edit it* into one that isn't inflammatory and isn't trying to spark a debate or discussion. You have just as much ability to fix the issue as other people do and appear to have a better idea of what the proper question *should* be.  When answers start out with &quot;I think the problem is not so much...&quot; you've got answers that are going to try to discuss this and debate it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/224275/why-are-there-so-few-comments-in-c-c-code (Reopen review: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/49492 ) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question is speculation about a particular culture.  I've seen wonderfully documented C.  I've seen awfully documented C.  The comments fairly well sum it up with that it is who you are dealing with and the culture. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;8. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/227983/how-do-we-go-from-assembly-to-machine-codecode-generation (I couldn't find a reopen review for this)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- this is likely an Andy sock --&gt; This question is asking some questions but lacks the associated information about what is understood.  The question was risked with http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/229346/how-does-assembly-relate-to-machine-binary-code that included additional information that remains open. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/227743/coming-from-high-level-to-c (Reopen review: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/52927 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   This question is a combination of career advice and what language should I learn next. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Coming from high-level languages, should I go down the ladder (to Java, then C++, then C) or just skip to the bottom (C) and go up from there if I need?&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Is learning C with Internet tutorials easy, or even recommended?&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Do I need C for common software? Does my knowing C help me with coding high level?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Those three questions are the epitome of the close reasons given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/224356/debugging-checklists-how-much-its-necessary-to-have (Reopen review http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/50374 (had one 'reopen' vote) )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  On the surface, this question is too broad, polling for people's suggestions on debugging checklists.  I should also stress that the original question that at least some votes where on was against the question:&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Should making debug-checklists be an essential part of development process? How it can be integrated with unit-tests?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  which was the entirety of the question.  The question now has a long rambling update which presents a revised question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; If the above example could save myself or another developer 10-15 minutes of looking around to find the problem, should we make it mandatory for every developer to write this kind of checklists when they spot something that's potential to be source of a problem on a specific part of application later?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  At that point, the question becomes one of opinion.  If focused down to what the question really is, and the problem rather than the poll, it might be something to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to point out that *every single* reopen review except one that I was able to find was a unanimous &quot;Leave Closed&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just tossing a reopen vote on a closed question will likely *not* get it reopened.  If the question is to be reopened it likely needs some work of some sort - an edit to fix the issues raised in the close vote reason (and possibly some that don't show up in the close vote majority reason).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fix the question, then vote to reopen it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18335" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6645" RevisionGUID="13414df3-3060-4681-b76b-0a65fb987caa" CreationDate="2014-05-06T22:38:27.553" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 1207 characters in body" Text="The first thing to realize is all but one of these questions have five close votes. Not a single one is there a review by you with a close vote review of 'leave open' on it.  That is the best time to act on them if they are to remain open rather than closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In most cases, the reopen review was done by three *different* people than who did the close votes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/236533/what-are-the-benefits-of-exotic-languages-and-scripts (reopen review: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/60905 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This question is too broad with three nested questions in it.  It is asking for people's opinions on things &quot;Why would somebody explicitly want this?&quot; and asking for a poll of the reasons for the original request (on Software Recommendation) reasoning.  We can't know what the reason is, we are only guessing and giving our opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/235042/what-are-the-perks-and-drawbacks-of-using-html-templates-versus-building-the-htm (reopen review: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/58877 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This question is a poll.  Plain and simple.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; what are other advantages and disadvantages of both approaches?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It can get dozens more answers and *still* not have a right answer.  There is no problem posed in the question.  There can be no answers solving the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/234699/segregating-interfaces-concerns-to-a-tree&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Apparently this one has been reopened from being a dup.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230784/is-a-degree-in-cs-and-a-degree-in-se-the-same-thing (Reopen review: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/56022 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This question is asking about career and education and is asking questions specific to the curriculum at various universities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230486/giving-team-members-more-decision-making-power-led-to-very-long-arguments-block (I couldn't find a reopen review on this one)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I'd argue its a better fit for PM.SE.  The question is one more of project management than methodologies and working with the *people* more than the *patterns*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230271/is-procedural-programming-the-root-of-all-object-oriented-evil (Reopen review http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/56018 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Seriously?&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Is procedural programming the root of all object oriented evil?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   You've got debate forming language right in the question title. If you think this can be a good question, *edit it* into one that isn't inflammatory and isn't trying to spark a debate or discussion. You have just as much ability to fix the issue as other people do and appear to have a better idea of what the proper question *should* be.  When answers start out with &quot;I think the problem is not so much...&quot; you've got answers that are going to try to discuss this and debate it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/224275/why-are-there-so-few-comments-in-c-c-code (Reopen review: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/49492 ) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question is speculation about a particular culture.  I've seen wonderfully documented C.  I've seen awfully documented C.  The comments fairly well sum it up with that it is who you are dealing with and the culture. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;8. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/227983/how-do-we-go-from-assembly-to-machine-codecode-generation (I couldn't find a reopen review for this)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- this is likely an Andy sock --&gt; This question is asking some questions but lacks the associated information about what is understood.  The question was risked with http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/229346/how-does-assembly-relate-to-machine-binary-code that included additional information that remains open. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/227743/coming-from-high-level-to-c (Reopen review: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/52927 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   This question is a combination of career advice and what language should I learn next. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Coming from high-level languages, should I go down the ladder (to Java, then C++, then C) or just skip to the bottom (C) and go up from there if I need?&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Is learning C with Internet tutorials easy, or even recommended?&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Do I need C for common software? Does my knowing C help me with coding high level?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Those three questions are the epitome of the close reasons given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/224356/debugging-checklists-how-much-its-necessary-to-have (Reopen review http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/50374 (had one 'reopen' vote) )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  On the surface, this question is too broad, polling for people's suggestions on debugging checklists.  I should also stress that the original question that at least some votes where on was against the question:&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Should making debug-checklists be an essential part of development process? How it can be integrated with unit-tests?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  which was the entirety of the question.  The question now has a long rambling update which presents a revised question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; If the above example could save myself or another developer 10-15 minutes of looking around to find the problem, should we make it mandatory for every developer to write this kind of checklists when they spot something that's potential to be source of a problem on a specific part of application later?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  At that point, the question becomes one of opinion.  If focused down to what the question really is, and the problem rather than the poll, it might be something to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to point out that *every single* reopen review except one that I was able to find was a unanimous &quot;Leave Closed&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just tossing a reopen vote on a closed question will likely *not* get it reopened.  If the question is to be reopened it likely needs some work of some sort - an edit to fix the issues raised in the close vote reason (and possibly some that don't show up in the close vote majority reason).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fix the question, then vote to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Provide a notification to anyone capable of casting reopen votes (3000+ rep) when a question they upvoted or answered has been closed, or&#xD;&#xA;* Allow some means of casting reopen votes before a question is closed, and&#xD;&#xA;* Time out the downvoting and close voting privileges of people who vote to close a question that is later reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first item is addressed on MSE: [Notify upvoters and answerers when a question is closed](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/133660/notify-upvoters-and-answerers-when-a-question-is-closed) and was status-declined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second item is addressed on MSE: [You should be able to vote to reopen a question before it is actually closed](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/33259/you-should-be-able-to-vote-to-reopen-a-question-before-it-is-actually-closed), [How about a “Vote not to close” option to counter the “Vote to close”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/125/how-about-a-vote-not-to-close-option-to-counter-the-vote-to-close).  The key here is to do reviews - thats where the 'remove from queue' functionality is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The third point, I'd suggest that you ask that on MSE instead. &lt;!-- I don't want to dignify it with a response --&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18336" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6646" RevisionGUID="b3ee9576-f54f-4416-8100-c38cfa7b654f" CreationDate="2014-05-06T23:28:19.173" UserId="95594" Text="Here the link to the question:&#xD;&#xA;[ExtensionPoints design and architecture with examples][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238139/extensionpoints-design-and-architecture-with-examples" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18337" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6646" RevisionGUID="b3ee9576-f54f-4416-8100-c38cfa7b654f" CreationDate="2014-05-06T23:28:19.173" UserId="95594" Text="Asked design pattern question that was put on hold as off-topic - why?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18338" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6646" RevisionGUID="b3ee9576-f54f-4416-8100-c38cfa7b654f" CreationDate="2014-05-06T23:28:19.173" UserId="95594" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18339" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6647" RevisionGUID="e90b49f1-3755-4517-a128-4c46c2be9bae" CreationDate="2014-05-06T23:35:56.243" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The [original question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/238139/1) reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can any one suggest a good (but simple) read on the design of ExtensionPoints for Asp.net?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That question is a polling for books to read and could be closed as either 'too broad' or 'recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.'&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no problem presented in the question. It is a request for resources which lead to (poor) link only answers that rot over time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18342" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6648" RevisionGUID="a8a2a130-8915-46bc-b71b-f667ba6d3035" CreationDate="2014-05-07T04:12:22.117" UserId="1130" Text="I agree that it is extremely frustrating and sometimes almost impossible to try to get an acceptable post re-opened, while it is extremely easy to get any question closed on here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect that in part it is because we have a dedicated group of &quot;closers&quot; on the site, while we don't have a dedicated group of &quot;reopeners&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want proof, here's some Data.SE queries that contain the stats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Top Close Voters since 2013][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Count	User			LastPostDate	LastVoteDate&#xD;&#xA;3601	gnat			04/20/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;3273	MichaelT		04/29/2014		04/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;2366	GlenH7			04/29/2014		03/27/2014&#xD;&#xA;1440	Kilian Foth		04/29/2014		&#xD;&#xA;1396	Bart			04/30/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;805		Martijn Pieters	05/03/2014		&#xD;&#xA;709		Robert Harvey	05/02/2014		05/02/2014&#xD;&#xA;692		Dan Pichelman	05/01/2014		02/21/2014&#xD;&#xA;622		World Engineer	04/09/2014		10/15/2013&#xD;&#xA;512		Dynamic			12/18/2013		07/03/2013&#xD;&#xA;460		Glenn Nelson	03/04/2014		02/02/2013&#xD;&#xA;415		BЈовић			05/02/2014		12/02/2013&#xD;&#xA;345		thorsten müller	03/04/2014		10/04/2013&#xD;&#xA;340		ChrisF			04/12/2013		&#xD;&#xA;327		Jim G.			05/03/2014		03/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Top Reopen Voters since 2013][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Count	User			LastPostDate	LastVoteDate&#xD;&#xA;61		gnat			04/20/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;59		World Engineer	04/09/2014		10/15/2013&#xD;&#xA;54		maple_shaft		02/27/2014		06/27/2013&#xD;&#xA;54		GlenH7			04/29/2014		03/27/2014&#xD;&#xA;47		Yannis Rizos	12/01/2013		02/20/2014&#xD;&#xA;43		ChrisF			04/12/2013		&#xD;&#xA;37		Rachel			12/20/2013		05/30/2012&#xD;&#xA;33		Martijn Pieters	05/03/2014		&#xD;&#xA;29		Bart 			04/30/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;27		Thomas Owens	04/30/2014		11/30/2012&#xD;&#xA;24		Karl Bielefeldt	05/04/2014		04/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;19		MichaelT		04/29/2014		04/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;15		Jimmy Hoffa		04/25/2014		04/22/2014&#xD;&#xA;15		Yusubov			04/06/2014		09/06/2013&#xD;&#xA;14		Jalayn			11/05/2013		10/07/2013&#xD;&#xA;13		Telastyn		05/04/2014		&#xD;&#xA;12		thorsten müller	03/04/2014		10/04/2013&#xD;&#xA;11		Mason Wheeler	05/02/2014		03/17/2013&#xD;&#xA;11		MattDavey		03/03/2013		12/04/2012&#xD;&#xA;10		Robert Harvey	05/02/2014		05/02/2014&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Notes*&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;* This only counts Successful Close/Reopen votes, and it does not include Deleted posts. I imagine if Deleted posts were included, the Closed count would be much higher since most items are closed before they're deleted, and I think we still have a roughly 40-50% delete rate.&#xD;&#xA;* The `LastVoteDate` only counts Favorites and Bounty &quot;votes&quot;. I just didn't feel like removing those columns from every line once I noticed that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice anything about the numbers, names, and approximate last activity dates?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In regards to your proposed solutions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **1)** Provide a notification to anyone capable of casting reopen votes (3000+ rep) when a question they upvoted or answered has been closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would love this providing it didn't spam me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **2)** Allow some means of casting reopen votes before a question is closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I like this idea since I think posts get the most visibility before they are closed, and are much more likely to get a &quot;fair closure trial&quot; at this time than afterwards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **3)** Time out the downvoting and close voting privileges of people who vote to close a question that is later reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have some reservations about this one, as there are too many cases where it could incorrectly shut out someone from helping maintain the sites. If done right, I'd be OK with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**4th suggestion:** http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/99333/158605&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that this only refers to *unsuccessful* expired votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now your chances of getting something closed or reopened is tied to a random variable: how many people review the question at the same time as you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the case of close votes, there are quite a few &quot;close happy&quot; people who do this. In the case of reopen votes and &quot;reopen happy&quot; people? Not so much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90851/top-close-voters&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90852/top-reopen-voters" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18343" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6648" RevisionGUID="f0b73055-b8cf-49ac-8bed-60d46ecb258b" CreationDate="2014-05-07T04:17:55.867" UserId="1130" Comment="deleted 8 characters in body" Text="I agree that it is extremely frustrating and sometimes almost impossible to try to get an acceptable post re-opened, while it is extremely easy to get any question closed on here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect that in part it is because we have a dedicated group of &quot;closers&quot; on the site, while we don't have a dedicated group of &quot;reopeners&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want proof, here's some Data.SE queries that contain the stats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Top Close Voters since 2013][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Count	User			LastPostDate	LastVoteDate&#xD;&#xA;3601	gnat			04/20/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;3273	MichaelT		04/29/2014		04/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;2366	GlenH7			04/29/2014		03/27/2014&#xD;&#xA;1440	Kilian Foth		04/29/2014		&#xD;&#xA;1396	Bart			04/30/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;805		Martijn Pieters	05/03/2014		&#xD;&#xA;709		Robert Harvey	05/02/2014		05/02/2014&#xD;&#xA;692		Dan Pichelman	05/01/2014		02/21/2014&#xD;&#xA;622		World Engineer	04/09/2014		10/15/2013&#xD;&#xA;512		Dynamic			12/18/2013		07/03/2013&#xD;&#xA;460		Glenn Nelson	03/04/2014		02/02/2013&#xD;&#xA;415		BЈовић			05/02/2014		12/02/2013&#xD;&#xA;345		thorsten müller	03/04/2014		10/04/2013&#xD;&#xA;340		ChrisF			04/12/2013		&#xD;&#xA;327		Jim G.			05/03/2014		03/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Top Reopen Voters since 2013][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Count	User			LastPostDate	LastVoteDate&#xD;&#xA;61		gnat			04/20/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;59		World Engineer	04/09/2014		10/15/2013&#xD;&#xA;54		maple_shaft		02/27/2014		06/27/2013&#xD;&#xA;54		GlenH7			04/29/2014		03/27/2014&#xD;&#xA;47		Yannis Rizos	12/01/2013		02/20/2014&#xD;&#xA;43		ChrisF			04/12/2013		&#xD;&#xA;37		Rachel			12/20/2013		05/30/2012&#xD;&#xA;33		Martijn Pieters	05/03/2014		&#xD;&#xA;29		Bart 			04/30/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;27		Thomas Owens	04/30/2014		11/30/2012&#xD;&#xA;24		Karl Bielefeldt	05/04/2014		04/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;19		MichaelT		04/29/2014		04/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;15		Jimmy Hoffa		04/25/2014		04/22/2014&#xD;&#xA;15		Yusubov			04/06/2014		09/06/2013&#xD;&#xA;14		Jalayn			11/05/2013		10/07/2013&#xD;&#xA;13		Telastyn		05/04/2014		&#xD;&#xA;12		thorsten müller	03/04/2014		10/04/2013&#xD;&#xA;11		Mason Wheeler	05/02/2014		03/17/2013&#xD;&#xA;11		MattDavey		03/03/2013		12/04/2012&#xD;&#xA;10		Robert Harvey	05/02/2014		05/02/2014&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Notes*&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;* This only counts Successful Close/Reopen votes, and it does not include Deleted posts. I imagine if Deleted posts were included, the Closed count would be much higher since most items are closed before they're deleted, and last I checked we had a 40-50% delete rate.&#xD;&#xA;* The `LastVoteDate` only counts Favorites and Bounty &quot;votes&quot;. I just didn't feel like removing those columns from every line once I noticed that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice anything about the numbers, names, and approximate last activity dates?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In regards to your proposed solutions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **1)** Provide a notification to anyone capable of casting reopen votes (3000+ rep) when a question they upvoted or answered has been closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would love this providing it didn't spam me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **2)** Allow some means of casting reopen votes before a question is closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I like this idea since I think posts get the most visibility before they are closed, and are much more likely to get a &quot;fair closure trial&quot; at this time than afterwards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **3)** Time out the downvoting and close voting privileges of people who vote to close a question that is later reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have some reservations about this one, as there are too many cases where it could incorrectly shut out someone from helping maintain the sites. If done right, I'd be OK with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**4th suggestion:** http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/99333/158605&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that this only refers to *unsuccessful* expired votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now your chances of getting something closed or reopened is tied to a random variable: how many people review the question at the same time as you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the case of close votes, there are quite a few &quot;close happy&quot; people who do this. In the case of reopen votes and &quot;reopen happy&quot; people? Not so much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90851/top-close-voters&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90852/top-reopen-voters" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18344" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6648" RevisionGUID="de5751ad-267d-4ef4-80dc-be5f0dde6402" CreationDate="2014-05-07T04:25:17.017" UserId="1130" Comment="added 94 characters in body" Text="I agree that it is extremely frustrating and sometimes almost impossible to try to get an acceptable post re-opened, while it is extremely easy to get any question closed on here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect that in part it is because we have a dedicated group of &quot;closers&quot; on the site, while we don't have a dedicated group of &quot;reopeners&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want proof, here's some Data.SE queries that contain the stats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Top Close Voters since 2013][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Count	User			LastPostDate	LastVoteDate&#xD;&#xA;3601	gnat			04/20/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;3273	MichaelT		04/29/2014		04/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;2366	GlenH7			04/29/2014		03/27/2014&#xD;&#xA;1440	Kilian Foth		04/29/2014		&#xD;&#xA;1396	Bart			04/30/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;805		Martijn Pieters	05/03/2014		&#xD;&#xA;709		Robert Harvey	05/02/2014		05/02/2014&#xD;&#xA;692		Dan Pichelman	05/01/2014		02/21/2014&#xD;&#xA;622		*World Engineer	04/09/2014		10/15/2013&#xD;&#xA;512		*Dynamic		12/18/2013		07/03/2013&#xD;&#xA;460		Glenn Nelson	03/04/2014		02/02/2013&#xD;&#xA;415		BЈовић			05/02/2014		12/02/2013&#xD;&#xA;345		thorsten müller	03/04/2014		10/04/2013&#xD;&#xA;340		*ChrisF			04/12/2013		&#xD;&#xA;327		Jim G.			05/03/2014		03/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Top Reopen Voters since 2013][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Count	User			LastPostDate	LastVoteDate&#xD;&#xA;61		gnat			04/20/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;59		*World Engineer	04/09/2014		10/15/2013&#xD;&#xA;54		*maple_shaft		02/27/2014		06/27/2013&#xD;&#xA;54		GlenH7			04/29/2014		03/27/2014&#xD;&#xA;47		*Yannis Rizos	12/01/2013		02/20/2014&#xD;&#xA;43		*ChrisF			04/12/2013		&#xD;&#xA;37		Rachel			12/20/2013		05/30/2012&#xD;&#xA;33		Martijn Pieters	05/03/2014		&#xD;&#xA;29		Bart 			04/30/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;27		*Thomas Owens	04/30/2014		11/30/2012&#xD;&#xA;24		Karl Bielefeldt	05/04/2014		04/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;19		MichaelT		04/29/2014		04/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;15		Jimmy Hoffa		04/25/2014		04/22/2014&#xD;&#xA;15		Yusubov			04/06/2014		09/06/2013&#xD;&#xA;14		Jalayn			11/05/2013		10/07/2013&#xD;&#xA;13		Telastyn		05/04/2014		&#xD;&#xA;12		thorsten müller	03/04/2014		10/04/2013&#xD;&#xA;11		Mason Wheeler	05/02/2014		03/17/2013&#xD;&#xA;11		MattDavey		03/03/2013		12/04/2012&#xD;&#xA;10		Robert Harvey	05/02/2014		05/02/2014&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Notes*&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;* This only counts Successful Close/Reopen votes, and it does not include Deleted posts. I imagine if Deleted posts were included, the Closed count would be much higher since most items are closed before they're deleted, and last I checked we had a 40-50% delete rate.&#xD;&#xA;* The `LastVoteDate` only counts Favorites and Bounty &quot;votes&quot;. I just didn't feel like removing those columns from every line once I noticed that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice anything about the numbers, names, and approximate last activity dates? Also moderator (noted by a * before their name) vs non-moderator close/reopen activity?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In regards to your proposed solutions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **1)** Provide a notification to anyone capable of casting reopen votes (3000+ rep) when a question they upvoted or answered has been closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would love this providing it didn't spam me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **2)** Allow some means of casting reopen votes before a question is closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I like this idea since I think posts get the most visibility before they are closed, and are much more likely to get a &quot;fair closure trial&quot; at this time than afterwards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **3)** Time out the downvoting and close voting privileges of people who vote to close a question that is later reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have some reservations about this one, as there are too many cases where it could incorrectly shut out someone from helping maintain the sites. If done right, I'd be OK with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**4th suggestion:** http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/99333/158605&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that this only refers to *unsuccessful* expired votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now your chances of getting something closed or reopened is tied to a random variable: how many people review the question at the same time as you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the case of close votes, there are quite a few &quot;close happy&quot; people who do this. In the case of reopen votes and &quot;reopen happy&quot; people? Not so much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90851/top-close-voters&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90852/top-reopen-voters" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18345" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6648" RevisionGUID="f29fb731-bcf0-4e9e-b3ab-e0dd8aa3f9c7" CreationDate="2014-05-07T07:15:58.843" UserId="25936" Comment="Removing the * from Dynamic's name, he isn't a moderator. " Text="I agree that it is extremely frustrating and sometimes almost impossible to try to get an acceptable post re-opened, while it is extremely easy to get any question closed on here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect that in part it is because we have a dedicated group of &quot;closers&quot; on the site, while we don't have a dedicated group of &quot;reopeners&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want proof, here's some Data.SE queries that contain the stats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Top Close Voters since 2013][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Count	User			LastPostDate	LastVoteDate&#xD;&#xA;3601	gnat			04/20/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;3273	MichaelT		04/29/2014		04/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;2366	GlenH7			04/29/2014		03/27/2014&#xD;&#xA;1440	Kilian Foth		04/29/2014		&#xD;&#xA;1396	Bart			04/30/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;805		Martijn Pieters	05/03/2014		&#xD;&#xA;709		Robert Harvey	05/02/2014		05/02/2014&#xD;&#xA;692		Dan Pichelman	05/01/2014		02/21/2014&#xD;&#xA;622		*World Engineer	04/09/2014		10/15/2013&#xD;&#xA;512		Dynamic		12/18/2013		07/03/2013&#xD;&#xA;460		Glenn Nelson	03/04/2014		02/02/2013&#xD;&#xA;415		BЈовић			05/02/2014		12/02/2013&#xD;&#xA;345		thorsten müller	03/04/2014		10/04/2013&#xD;&#xA;340		*ChrisF			04/12/2013		&#xD;&#xA;327		Jim G.			05/03/2014		03/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Top Reopen Voters since 2013][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Count	User			LastPostDate	LastVoteDate&#xD;&#xA;61		gnat			04/20/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;59		*World Engineer	04/09/2014		10/15/2013&#xD;&#xA;54		*maple_shaft		02/27/2014		06/27/2013&#xD;&#xA;54		GlenH7			04/29/2014		03/27/2014&#xD;&#xA;47		*Yannis Rizos	12/01/2013		02/20/2014&#xD;&#xA;43		*ChrisF			04/12/2013		&#xD;&#xA;37		Rachel			12/20/2013		05/30/2012&#xD;&#xA;33		Martijn Pieters	05/03/2014		&#xD;&#xA;29		Bart 			04/30/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;27		*Thomas Owens	04/30/2014		11/30/2012&#xD;&#xA;24		Karl Bielefeldt	05/04/2014		04/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;19		MichaelT		04/29/2014		04/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;15		Jimmy Hoffa		04/25/2014		04/22/2014&#xD;&#xA;15		Yusubov			04/06/2014		09/06/2013&#xD;&#xA;14		Jalayn			11/05/2013		10/07/2013&#xD;&#xA;13		Telastyn		05/04/2014		&#xD;&#xA;12		thorsten müller	03/04/2014		10/04/2013&#xD;&#xA;11		Mason Wheeler	05/02/2014		03/17/2013&#xD;&#xA;11		MattDavey		03/03/2013		12/04/2012&#xD;&#xA;10		Robert Harvey	05/02/2014		05/02/2014&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Notes*&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;* This only counts Successful Close/Reopen votes, and it does not include Deleted posts. I imagine if Deleted posts were included, the Closed count would be much higher since most items are closed before they're deleted, and last I checked we had a 40-50% delete rate.&#xD;&#xA;* The `LastVoteDate` only counts Favorites and Bounty &quot;votes&quot;. I just didn't feel like removing those columns from every line once I noticed that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice anything about the numbers, names, and approximate last activity dates? Also moderator (noted by a * before their name) vs non-moderator close/reopen activity?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In regards to your proposed solutions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **1)** Provide a notification to anyone capable of casting reopen votes (3000+ rep) when a question they upvoted or answered has been closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would love this providing it didn't spam me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **2)** Allow some means of casting reopen votes before a question is closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I like this idea since I think posts get the most visibility before they are closed, and are much more likely to get a &quot;fair closure trial&quot; at this time than afterwards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **3)** Time out the downvoting and close voting privileges of people who vote to close a question that is later reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have some reservations about this one, as there are too many cases where it could incorrectly shut out someone from helping maintain the sites. If done right, I'd be OK with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**4th suggestion:** http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/99333/158605&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that this only refers to *unsuccessful* expired votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now your chances of getting something closed or reopened is tied to a random variable: how many people review the question at the same time as you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the case of close votes, there are quite a few &quot;close happy&quot; people who do this. In the case of reopen votes and &quot;reopen happy&quot; people? Not so much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90851/top-close-voters&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90852/top-reopen-voters" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18346" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6649" RevisionGUID="64b0a0db-fdb1-456c-ac48-783153871571" CreationDate="2014-05-07T08:57:42.173" UserId="5099" Text="Such a question is likely to be closed for being [primarily opinion based][1].  &#xD;&#xA;Although subjective questons are welcome here to a certain degree, there are limits. See also [**Good subjective, Bad subjective**][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with your question, as I interpret it from the characterisation that you gave, is that it calls for speculation and not for expertise in the subject matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18347" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6646" RevisionGUID="1348b068-ec1e-4221-95dc-63d283e9e5df" CreationDate="2014-05-07T11:27:58.840" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18348" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6648" RevisionGUID="0ccbe1e5-9b02-483d-b436-181040b16032" CreationDate="2014-05-07T14:02:34.710" UserId="1130" Comment="bah spacing" Text="I agree that it is extremely frustrating and sometimes almost impossible to try to get an acceptable post re-opened, while it is extremely easy to get any question closed on here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect that in part it is because we have a dedicated group of &quot;closers&quot; on the site, while we don't have a dedicated group of &quot;reopeners&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want proof, here's some Data.SE queries that contain the stats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Top Close Voters since 2013][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Count	User			LastPostDate	LastVoteDate&#xD;&#xA;3601	gnat			04/20/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;3273	MichaelT		04/29/2014		04/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;2366	GlenH7			04/29/2014		03/27/2014&#xD;&#xA;1440	Kilian Foth		04/29/2014		&#xD;&#xA;1396	Bart			04/30/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;805		Martijn Pieters	05/03/2014		&#xD;&#xA;709		Robert Harvey	05/02/2014		05/02/2014&#xD;&#xA;692		Dan Pichelman	05/01/2014		02/21/2014&#xD;&#xA;622		*World Engineer	04/09/2014		10/15/2013&#xD;&#xA;512		Dynamic			12/18/2013		07/03/2013&#xD;&#xA;460		Glenn Nelson	03/04/2014		02/02/2013&#xD;&#xA;415		BЈовић			05/02/2014		12/02/2013&#xD;&#xA;345		thorsten müller	03/04/2014		10/04/2013&#xD;&#xA;340		*ChrisF			04/12/2013		&#xD;&#xA;327		Jim G.			05/03/2014		03/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Top Reopen Voters since 2013][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Count	User			LastPostDate	LastVoteDate&#xD;&#xA;61		gnat			04/20/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;59		*World Engineer	04/09/2014		10/15/2013&#xD;&#xA;54		*maple_shaft	02/27/2014		06/27/2013&#xD;&#xA;54		GlenH7			04/29/2014		03/27/2014&#xD;&#xA;47		*Yannis Rizos	12/01/2013		02/20/2014&#xD;&#xA;43		*ChrisF			04/12/2013		&#xD;&#xA;37		Rachel			12/20/2013		05/30/2012&#xD;&#xA;33		Martijn Pieters	05/03/2014		&#xD;&#xA;29		Bart 			04/30/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;27		*Thomas Owens	04/30/2014		11/30/2012&#xD;&#xA;24		Karl Bielefeldt	05/04/2014		04/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;19		MichaelT		04/29/2014		04/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;15		Jimmy Hoffa		04/25/2014		04/22/2014&#xD;&#xA;15		Yusubov			04/06/2014		09/06/2013&#xD;&#xA;14		Jalayn			11/05/2013		10/07/2013&#xD;&#xA;13		Telastyn		05/04/2014		&#xD;&#xA;12		thorsten müller	03/04/2014		10/04/2013&#xD;&#xA;11		Mason Wheeler	05/02/2014		03/17/2013&#xD;&#xA;11		MattDavey		03/03/2013		12/04/2012&#xD;&#xA;10		Robert Harvey	05/02/2014		05/02/2014&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Notes*&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;* This only counts Successful Close/Reopen votes, and it does not include Deleted posts. I imagine if Deleted posts were included, the Closed count would be much higher since most items are closed before they're deleted, and last I checked we had a 40-50% delete rate.&#xD;&#xA;* The `LastVoteDate` only counts Favorites and Bounty &quot;votes&quot;. I just didn't feel like removing those columns from every line once I noticed that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice anything about the numbers, names, and approximate last activity dates? Also moderator (noted by a * before their name) vs non-moderator close/reopen activity?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In regards to your proposed solutions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **1)** Provide a notification to anyone capable of casting reopen votes (3000+ rep) when a question they upvoted or answered has been closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would love this providing it didn't spam me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **2)** Allow some means of casting reopen votes before a question is closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I like this idea since I think posts get the most visibility before they are closed, and are much more likely to get a &quot;fair closure trial&quot; at this time than afterwards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **3)** Time out the downvoting and close voting privileges of people who vote to close a question that is later reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have some reservations about this one, as there are too many cases where it could incorrectly shut out someone from helping maintain the sites. If done right, I'd be OK with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**4th suggestion:** http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/99333/158605&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that this only refers to *unsuccessful* expired votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now your chances of getting something closed or reopened is tied to a random variable: how many people review the question at the same time as you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the case of close votes, there are quite a few &quot;close happy&quot; people who do this. In the case of reopen votes and &quot;reopen happy&quot; people? Not so much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90851/top-close-voters&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90852/top-reopen-voters" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18349" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2180" RevisionGUID="a3f086b7-1dc4-4858-894d-fcc97ece80e3" CreationDate="2014-05-08T21:54:18.170" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="Meta SO -&gt; Meta SE" Text="This is [meta-tag:status-bydesign]. Suggested edits are disabled on meta sites, so you will need to have 2,000 reputation before you will see the edit link on other people's posts. The only exception is Meta Stack Exchange which functions as a meta for all Stack Exchange sites and has its own reputation pool.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/87890/why-cant-i-suggest-edits-on-se-meta-sites/97371#97371) for Jeff Atwood's explanation of the rationale behind that decision." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18350" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6650" RevisionGUID="f2c0e9b6-1c24-4dd7-8dd0-6d11981cd04d" CreationDate="2014-05-09T12:03:18.457" UserId="83151" Text="[My first and only question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238487/how-to-efficiently-use-sticky-notes-as-a-development-progress-tracker-tool) on this site has been closed. I've a fair amount of rep on SO and I know how things work here. Before asking it I have read the FAQ and the *What topics can I ask about here?* section. I'm fairly sure my question fits the &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; or even &quot;software engineering management&quot; sections.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I've gone to the top-rated questions list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I daresay most top rated questions from that list could've been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*What technical details should a programmer of a web application consider before making the site public?* -- definitely too broad. There is no definite, finite list of things. The answer depends on the language, technology, libraries. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report. How can I convince him that it's a bad idea?* -- offtopic. Should be in the workplace SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Where did the notion of “one return only” come from?* -- it's not a programming question. It could be asked on history, if anywhere. Don't know how this didn't get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code — what now?* -- could it be any more too broad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?* -- opinion based as hell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My point is that I've asked a perfectly understandable question which can be useful to many, many programmers who are unfamiliar with the concept or would like to improve their efficiency, to make things better, faster or more precisely than before. That's what we programmers strive to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If questions like mine, or [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238466/is-there-a-name-for-this-technique-in-testing) or [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16058/do-you-use-automatic-garbage-collection-with-standard-c) keep getting closed, I don't see a future for this SE page." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18351" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6650" RevisionGUID="f2c0e9b6-1c24-4dd7-8dd0-6d11981cd04d" CreationDate="2014-05-09T12:03:18.457" UserId="83151" Text="Most top rated questions could've been closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18352" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6650" RevisionGUID="f2c0e9b6-1c24-4dd7-8dd0-6d11981cd04d" CreationDate="2014-05-09T12:03:18.457" UserId="83151" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18353" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6651" RevisionGUID="29218ab1-7258-4ac0-b171-e45d68eefe80" CreationDate="2014-05-09T12:41:30.850" UserId="60357" Text="Closing your question was correct. The topic was indeed quite interesting, but let's look at this excerpt:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; how do you categorize them, where are they sticked to? In general: how do you use them? Why and how are they better than bug tracker or progress tracker software?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The “*how do you use them?*” is a poll. In a poll, there could be hundreds of equally valid answers. Hence, part of the *too broad* closing reason explanation is “*There are […] too many possible answers*”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The “*Why and how are they better than bug tracker or progress tracker software*” is a potentially good question, but it gets uncomfortably close to the other part of the *too broad* closing reason explanation: “*good answers would be too long for this format*”, with a touch of *primarily opinion based*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The meta post [Why was my question closed as too broad?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/) explains this in more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding the top-voted answers: oh, yes, we absolutely agree with you. In the dark old ages where almost anything was allowed here, a lot of interesting crap was asked and had a lot of time to attract an enourmous amount of votes. By the [current on-topic guidelines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), these questions are rarely suitable. Wherever you see such questions, please raise a flag for them to be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By the way:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [What technical details should a programmer of a web application consider before making the site public?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/46716/60357) – It has been locked so that no new answers can be added. 87 old answers have been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report. How can I convince him that it's a bad idea?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/154733/60357) – This one *is* in fact about software development. Also, The Workplace was very young when that question was asked. Anyway, it's now too old to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Where did the notion of “one return only” come from?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/118703/60357) – I think this is actually a quite interesting question. Not only do old habits die hard, they are also transferred to new programmers who never had any need for them in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code — what now?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/155488/60357) – This has at least been valuable as [many questions were closed as duplicate of this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=duplicate%3Ayes+url%3A*questions%2F155488*). But you are right: it is absolutely too broad. Please flag it as such to put it into the close queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/60357) – Yes, that's one big “real programmers” fallacy. Flag it to be closed as primarily opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Is there a name for this technique in testing?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/238466/60357) – Asking for naming things is absolutely off topic, see [“Name that thing” questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6407/60357).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Do you use automatic garbage collection with standard C++?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/16058/60357) – It's a fucking poll, and doesn't fit anywhere inside the Q&amp;A concept of Stack Exchange." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18354" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6652" RevisionGUID="4915e5af-a8c6-4b48-8666-cee9bb86831a" CreationDate="2014-05-09T12:47:57.140" UserId="4" Text="&gt; My first and only question on this site has been closed. I've a fair amount of rep on SO and I know how things work here. Before asking it I have read the FAQ and the What topics can I ask about here? section. I'm fairly sure my question fits the &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; or even &quot;software engineering management&quot; sections.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't agree that your question fits as the site is defined. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, I'm concerned about topicality. It is about a methodology and process, but if you continue reading the [&quot;what topics can I ask about&quot; page][1], there's a diagram that shows that questions asked here must be unique to software developers. Why does this question require the expertise of a professional software developer to answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it doesn't fit that, why not migrate it to The Workplace? The next problem that I have with it is that the question is too broad. You're polling for opinions. The [&quot;don't ask&quot; Help Center page][2] addresses this. Of the questions that you ask, there is no way to measure the rightness or wrongness of how other people use a tool. If you focused on your current process and quantified how you wanted to improve it, you may be able to get a good question out of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the current content is best suited to an extended discussion. Both Programmers and The Workplace have chat rooms - [The Whiteboard][3] for Programmers and [The Water Cooler][4] for The Workplace. The chat rooms are good for either discussing topics with other people or for getting help from site regulars on how to refine your question so that it fits on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So let's look at some of your other &quot;top questions&quot; that you have concerns with and address those, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What technical details should a programmer of a web application consider before making the site public?][5] -- definitely too broad. There is no definite, finite list of things. The answer depends on the language, technology, libraries.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to note is that this question was asked 5 years ago, on Stack Overflow, before Programmers existed. This site has had a long history, with some turmoil in the early days. You can read about it [in more detail here][6], but the short story is that the original definition of Programmers didn't work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second thing to note is that this question is locked. Stack Exchange introduced a new [Collaborative Lock functionality][7] and this was [the first question that it was applied to on Programmers][8]. Before the Collaborative Lock was introduced, the [Historical Lock][9] was applied to the question, which prevented all changes to anything. The reason this was done was because the question wasn't a good fit, but it had a lot of useful information that should not be lost. The question was viewed many times, had many incoming links from outside sites, came up in Google searches frequently - deleting it would have been a disservice to the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report. How can I convince him that it's a bad idea?][10] -- offtopic. Should be in the workplace SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could build an argument about migration to The Workplace, but The Workplace was still in beta. Admittedly, it was a public beta. The norm is to minimize migrations to beta sites so that they can develop their own culture as a community. Unless the question is very much off-topic on the site where it was posted and very much on-topic on the beta site, it shouldn't be migrated to a beta site. If this question was asked today, I highly suspect that it would be migrated since I could argue that it applies to more than just software developers, but anyone designing or building a product.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Where did the notion of “one return only” come from?][11] -- it's not a programming question. It could be asked on history, if anywhere. Don't know how this didn't get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about the history of software development [are on-topic here][12]. I'm not sure how you can argue that it's not related to software development, since it's about a programming construct. Would people outside of the software development community care about this question? Probably not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code — what now?][13] -- could it be any more too broad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're right on this one. It's not a good question, but it does have historical significance. It has a large number of views, and many questions are closed as a duplicate of this one. I put a historical lock on the question so the content isn't lost, but to discourage people from using this as an example of the kind of question that can be asked here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][14] -- opinion based as hell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're right again on this one. This isn't a good question. However, it has a very large number of views. I treated this just as if someone had flagged it and put a Historical Content lock on the question. It's really not a good question and can't be used as an example of what to ask, but given the number of views and the content in the answers, it falls into the same category as the first question you pointed out. Closing and deleting it would be a disservice to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overall, I think you should read through some Meta posts. Maybe jump into The Whiteboard and chat with the regulars to get a better feel for this community. We have a certain culture here and a certain expectation for questions and answers. Coming from other sites, it can be a bit of a shock - many SE sites have their own expectations and standards and nuances as to how they work. One closed question isn't that big of a deal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/182566/this-lock-notice-is-partly-misleading/182572#182572&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5991/new-lock-type-for-truly-collaborative-questions-and-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154733/my-boss-decided-to-add-a-person-to-blame-field-to-every-bug-report-how-can-i&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118703/where-did-the-notion-of-one-return-only-come-from&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5633/is-programming-history-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48698/i-dont-program-in-my-spare-time-does-that-make-me-a-bad-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18361" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="f8c26b10-b39f-419e-8709-5615f5d18c86" CreationDate="2014-05-11T20:27:44.570" UserId="31260" Comment="(MSE) [Why are “shopping list” questions bad?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad)" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for link to things&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason.  Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to things suffer from link rot.  Statistics become out of date over time.  Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is someone asking in 2012 &quot;What is the market share of Android vs iPhone?&quot;  This information would be out of date in a few months as new numbers come out and someone else would ask in 2013 &quot;The question [link] asks about the stats, but they are all for 2012.  What is the market share for android vs iPhone in 2013?&quot;  And again, this information would be out of date and prompt another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for information about statistics, or more generally, asking us to search for some data for you is off topic because of these problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No actual problem to solve&#xD;&#xA;* Not drawing from expert knowledge of the community&#xD;&#xA;* Will suffer from link rot or become out of date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why are “shopping list” questions bad?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18362" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6654" RevisionGUID="4fac8faf-f6c0-41f0-8e07-12e9edad6070" CreationDate="2014-05-12T01:48:31.427" UserId="14554" Text="This site really does baffle me. I do not understand what question someone could ask here that he or she could not ask on stackoverflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18363" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6654" RevisionGUID="4fac8faf-f6c0-41f0-8e07-12e9edad6070" CreationDate="2014-05-12T01:48:31.427" UserId="14554" Text="Programmers vs Stackoverflow, why does this site exist?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18364" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6654" RevisionGUID="4fac8faf-f6c0-41f0-8e07-12e9edad6070" CreationDate="2014-05-12T01:48:31.427" UserId="14554" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18365" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6655" RevisionGUID="0261340a-ddb7-402f-8ea9-665ea6805c3f" CreationDate="2014-05-12T01:53:17.910" UserId="4" Text="I would start by reading these:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Stack Overflow On Topic][1] vs [Programmers On Topic][2]&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you still don't understand where your question can go, you can either ask about it on a site's Meta (although you will have to be somewhat specific so that you can be directed to the right site), in a site's chat room (you have sufficient reputation to go ask), or you can choose the site you think is the most appropriate and if it's off-topic but still a good question for someplace else, have it migrated (don't cross-post questions, though - we'll make sure the question gets to where it can be answered).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18366" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6654" RevisionGUID="9f55462f-07d2-40ac-922b-bf467863e75d" CreationDate="2014-05-12T01:53:42.107" UserId="4" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[171],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="18367" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6654" RevisionGUID="c82b78f1-16f1-4161-b3ec-5e4c45c709a1" CreationDate="2014-05-12T10:41:16.073" UserId="31260" Comment="added 1 character in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="This site really does baffle me. I do not understand what question someone could ask here that he or she could not ask on Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18368" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6654" RevisionGUID="c82b78f1-16f1-4161-b3ec-5e4c45c709a1" CreationDate="2014-05-12T10:41:16.073" UserId="31260" Comment="added 1 character in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Programmers vs Stack Overflow, why does this site exist?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18369" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6654" RevisionGUID="c82b78f1-16f1-4161-b3ec-5e4c45c709a1" CreationDate="2014-05-12T10:41:16.073" UserId="31260" Comment="added 1 character in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18370" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6655" RevisionGUID="258e844b-7263-4a84-bfa3-dd79b4ef2f3c" CreationDate="2014-05-12T11:56:01.660" UserId="4" Comment="added 1077 characters in body" Text="I would start by reading these:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Stack Overflow On Topic][1] vs [Programmers On Topic][2]&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you still don't understand where your question can go, you can either ask about it on a site's Meta (although you will have to be somewhat specific so that you can be directed to the right site), in a site's chat room (you have sufficient reputation to go ask), or you can choose the site you think is the most appropriate and if it's off-topic but still a good question for someplace else, have it migrated (don't cross-post questions, though - we'll make sure the question gets to where it can be answered).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of questions that were originally asked on Stack Overflow, but migrated here because they were off-topic there and on-topic here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238513/is-allocating-objects-from-a-memory-pool-a-security-anti-pattern&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237692/using-subclasses-for-datacontracts-used-with-json&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/235170/ddd-domain-driven-design-which-development-order-should-be-applied&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/232032/decoupling-server-and-client-using-rest-api&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/231627/is-the-adapter-the-correct-design-pattern-for-this-situation&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230363/iteratively-improve-software-architecture-quality-in-an-agile-process&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/223834/sequence-diagram-uml-use-case-ends&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/223878/how-can-you-add-acknowledgement-functionality-to-a-command-pattern-given-the-re&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18372" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="a2608a42-1313-4d19-ba3a-18dd35c1fb2d" CreationDate="2014-05-12T12:51:07.817" UserId="31260" Comment="(MSO) [What exactly is a recommendation question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254393/what-exactly-is-a-recommendation-question)" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for link to things&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason.  Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to things suffer from link rot.  Statistics become out of date over time.  Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is someone asking in 2012 &quot;What is the market share of Android vs iPhone?&quot;  This information would be out of date in a few months as new numbers come out and someone else would ask in 2013 &quot;The question [link] asks about the stats, but they are all for 2012.  What is the market share for android vs iPhone in 2013?&quot;  And again, this information would be out of date and prompt another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for information about statistics, or more generally, asking us to search for some data for you is off topic because of these problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No actual problem to solve&#xD;&#xA;* Not drawing from expert knowledge of the community&#xD;&#xA;* Will suffer from link rot or become out of date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [What exactly is a recommendation question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254393/what-exactly-is-a-recommendation-question)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why are “shopping list” questions bad?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18373" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6656" RevisionGUID="fd920497-937d-4b82-8939-55555c32f875" CreationDate="2014-05-12T13:55:16.793" UserId="31260" Text="Per my reading of the timeline, [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/216371/should-you-always-pass-the-bare-minimum-data-needed-into-a-function) has got 3 answers in 24 hours from new users (i.e. users who earned less than 10 reputation on the site, excluding any association bonuses): http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/216371/timeline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - May 10 '14 **16:28**, **16:50** and May 11 '14 **08:16**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I understand, these answers [should have triggered auto-protection](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228805/165773).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How come that this did not happen?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18374" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6656" RevisionGUID="fd920497-937d-4b82-8939-55555c32f875" CreationDate="2014-05-12T13:55:16.793" UserId="31260" Text="Why didn't auto-protection kick in in this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18375" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6656" RevisionGUID="fd920497-937d-4b82-8939-55555c32f875" CreationDate="2014-05-12T13:55:16.793" UserId="31260" Text="|support|specific-question|answers|new-users|protected-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18376" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6657" RevisionGUID="28ffc827-60d5-44a2-8aa7-1eb87f38e5a5" CreationDate="2014-05-12T14:12:24.973" UserId="25768" Text="I think it may have to do with the protection/unprotection by a diamond the first day; see the [revision history][1]. This may have blocked the auto protection from kicking in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/216371/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18377" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6658" RevisionGUID="4e02cb61-b853-4b95-8dbf-7ad0b6293c3b" CreationDate="2014-05-12T17:08:29.833" UserId="4767" Text="What happened is that two of the people answering got fairly quick upvotes on their answers. Enough to go over the 10 rep requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At that point, when a new answer comes in, those are excluded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is working as designed - may need tweaking though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18378" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6659" RevisionGUID="c6cfda52-301b-48a0-86dd-fdbc01d13197" CreationDate="2014-05-12T19:12:19.097" UserId="32689" Text="The biggest problem of this site is, in my opinion, that the scope of this site is [subjective questions][1], but the line between subjective and opinion-based is very thin, and the latter has very little tolerance here. From what I see, even the questions which fall under the guidelines described in [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][2] still get closed a lot. It is almost as if the site fights itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now I'm looking at top questions on the website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237697/if-null-is-bad-why-do-modern-languages-implement-it - has pretty precise answers on why that happened. But still closed as &quot;opinion-based&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238754/on-naming-conventions-would-you-recommend-short-names-or-longer-more-descripti - it [has been said][3] that &quot;programming books have entire chapters full of well-researched, concrete, and objective reasons why certain names are better than others&quot;. In practice, here's a question which asks exactly this, and it gets closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238604/how-are-the-skills-used-in-typical-interview-questions-applied-in-the-real-job - definitely has at least one good answer, which is &quot;long&quot;, &quot;explains why and how&quot;, and so on. Closed as &quot;opinion-based&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238162/writing-in-c-for-performance - this is probably not the best example, since it is closed for the reason of recommending a tool. I don't really think that it is a valid reason here, though, because the question is more about the language and not specific tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And there are tons of questions like this. I'd venture to say that **nobody even knows what the site is about anymore**. Sure, in theory we know which subjective questions are good and which are bad, but in reality questions just seem to be randomly closed because no one can draw an exact line between good and bad, and questions get closed &quot;just in case&quot;. Even I can't always guess which question will get closed, though I've been reading this site for a long time, so I have no idea how newcomers are supposed to do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We really need to lighten up on what we consider opinion-based. Frankly, I would say the value of the site as it exists now is rather questionable. And we are definitely [going downhill][4]. Just rerun [the query on upvotes and downvotes][5] from that question, compare that to other sites, and you'll see what I mean.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6477/32689&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3136/are-we-going-down-hill&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/66286" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18379" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6659" RevisionGUID="17ae9806-d45b-4e76-bf02-0ccaa4fb9bc1" CreationDate="2014-05-12T19:19:52.340" UserId="32689" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="The biggest problem of this site is, in my opinion, that the scope of this site is [subjective questions][1], but the line between subjective and opinion-based is very thin, and the latter has very little tolerance here. From what I see, even the questions which fall under the guidelines described in [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][2] still get closed a lot. It is almost as if the site fights itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now I'm looking at top questions on the website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237697/if-null-is-bad-why-do-modern-languages-implement-it - has pretty precise answers on why that happened. But still closed as &quot;opinion-based&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238754/on-naming-conventions-would-you-recommend-short-names-or-longer-more-descripti - it [has been said][3] that &quot;programming books have entire chapters full of well-researched, concrete, and objective reasons why certain names are better than others&quot;. In practice, here's a question which asks exactly this, and it gets closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238604/how-are-the-skills-used-in-typical-interview-questions-applied-in-the-real-job - definitely has at least one good answer, which is &quot;long&quot;, &quot;explains why and how&quot;, and so on. Closed as &quot;opinion-based&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238162/writing-in-c-for-performance - this is probably not the best example, since it is closed for the reason of recommending a tool. I don't really think that it is a valid reason here, though, because the question is more about the language and not specific tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And there are tons of questions like these. I'd venture to say that **nobody even knows what the site is about anymore**. Sure, in theory we know which subjective questions are good and which are bad, but in reality questions just seem to be randomly closed because no one can draw an exact line between good and bad, and questions get closed &quot;just in case&quot;. Even I can't always guess which question will get closed, though I've been reading this site for a long time, so I have no idea how newcomers are supposed to do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We really need to lighten up on what we consider opinion-based. Frankly, I would say the value of the site as it exists now is rather questionable. And we are definitely [going downhill][4]. Just rerun [the query on upvotes and downvotes][5] from that question, compare that to other sites, and you'll see what I mean.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6477/32689&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3136/are-we-going-down-hill&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/66286" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18380" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6629" RevisionGUID="ba36fe06-1b86-4d09-baeb-015f2abec64e" CreationDate="2014-05-13T08:30:28.913" UserId="31090" Comment="edited body" Text="One of the not infrequently asked questions that shows up on Programmers.SE is along the lines of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am trying to explain the differences between a NoSQL database and a relational database to a manager.  How do I do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions generally take the form of &quot;How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}&quot; where something is a programming topic and someone is not a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is particularly relevant with the oft said &quot;If you can't explain it to a five year old, you don't really understand it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why do these questions keep getting closed?  What can I do to ask them in a way that doesn't get closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18381" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6660" RevisionGUID="659294c6-452b-4285-8fdf-c08652c7751b" CreationDate="2014-05-15T14:34:07.547" UserId="31260" Text="The automatic check I would like to learn about looks like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For every `question` posted,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Check if asker has linked SO account&#xD;&#xA;2. If yes, check their last 3 questions at SO&#xD;&#xA;3. For every of SO questions, calculate its [Levenshtein distance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance) to Programmers `question`.&#xD;&#xA;4. Raise system flag for mod attention if distance is less than particular `threshold`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What difficulties could be there in getting above check done automatically?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;`threshold` mentioned above can be derived based on a representative set of already identified cross-posts. This set (**few hundreds** in last half year), in turn, can be retrieved by searching flag database for my flags that are marked helpful and have message containing `http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info`.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18382" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6660" RevisionGUID="659294c6-452b-4285-8fdf-c08652c7751b" CreationDate="2014-05-15T14:34:07.547" UserId="31260" Text="What difficulties could be there in establishing automatic checks for SO cross-posts on a site like our (50-100 questions a day)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18383" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6660" RevisionGUID="659294c6-452b-4285-8fdf-c08652c7751b" CreationDate="2014-05-15T14:34:07.547" UserId="31260" Text="|support|cross-posting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18384" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6660" RevisionGUID="4b3c04f0-1a42-47f2-a592-ce968f060614" CreationDate="2014-05-15T14:54:21.580" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p?noredirect=1#comment17959_6660" Text="The automatic check I would like to learn about looks like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For every `question` posted,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Check if asker has linked SO account&#xD;&#xA;2. If yes, check their last 3 questions at SO&#xD;&#xA;3. For every of SO questions, calculate its [Levenshtein distance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance) to Programmers `question`.&#xD;&#xA;4. Raise system flag for mod attention (or [present blocking message](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p?noredirect=1#comment17959_6660 &quot;as suggested in comments&quot;)) if distance is less than particular `threshold`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What difficulties could be there in getting above check done automatically?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;`threshold` mentioned above can be derived based on a representative set of already identified cross-posts. This set (**few hundreds** in last half year), in turn, can be retrieved by searching flag database for my flags that are marked helpful and have message containing `http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info`.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18385" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6660" RevisionGUID="1f64ed63-2a99-40d8-9f76-a8904e5ae47c" CreationDate="2014-05-15T17:37:43.027" UserId="31260" Comment="wordsmithing" Text="The automatic check I would like to learn about looks like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For every `question` posted,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Check if asker has linked SO account&#xD;&#xA;2. If yes, check their last 3 questions at SO&#xD;&#xA;3. For every of above 3 questions, calculate [Levenshtein distance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance) of its text to that of to Programmers `question`.&#xD;&#xA;4. Raise system flag for mod attention (or [present blocking message](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p?noredirect=1#comment17959_6660 &quot;as suggested in comments&quot;)) if distance for a particular question is less than some `threshold`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What difficulties could be there in getting above check done automatically?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;`threshold` mentioned above can be derived based on a representative set of already identified cross-posts. This set (**few hundreds** in last half year), in turn, can be retrieved by searching flag database for my flags that are marked helpful and have message containing `http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info`.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18386" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6660" RevisionGUID="a13586cf-3dd5-412c-85fb-b362b00c2c34" CreationDate="2014-05-15T19:36:33.290" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p?noredirect=1#comment17964_6660" Text="The automatic check I would like to learn about looks like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For every `question` posted,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Check if asker has linked SO account&#xD;&#xA;2. If yes, check 3 of their most recent questions at SO&#xD;&#xA;3. For every of above 3 questions, calculate [Levenshtein distance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance) of its text to that of to Programmers `question`.&#xD;&#xA;4. Raise system flag for mod attention (or [present blocking message](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p?noredirect=1#comment17959_6660 &quot;as suggested in comments&quot;)) if distance for a particular question is less than some `threshold`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What difficulties could be there in getting above check done automatically?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;`threshold` mentioned above can be derived based on a representative set of already identified cross-posts. This set (**few hundreds** in last half year), in turn, can be retrieved by searching flag database for my flags that are marked helpful and have message containing `http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info`.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Side note (as this has been asked twice in comments). I am somewhat skeptical on _blocking message_ approach. In theory, this would be ideal solution but I am concerned that if presented with block, some users will try to trick to break through Levenshtein threshold (for example, by adding dots to question text). This may return us back to having to discover them manually. My considerations are similar to those why question ban / serial voting algorithms are not exposed for &quot;direct user testing&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18387" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6661" RevisionGUID="f99b1108-beff-4720-a96f-2e3825f9c812" CreationDate="2014-05-16T18:40:34.460" UserId="131580" Text="I see that the [[VBA] tag doesn't yet have a tag wiki on Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/vba/info), whereas [the one on StackOverflow](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/vba/info) is well established.  Since the tag is exactly the same, would it be acceptable to simply copy that tag wiki over (removing SO cross-references of course) or is this taboo? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[**Related**](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2456/131580)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18388" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6661" RevisionGUID="f99b1108-beff-4720-a96f-2e3825f9c812" CreationDate="2014-05-16T18:40:34.460" UserId="131580" Text="Is it kosher to copy a tag wiki from another SE site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18389" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6661" RevisionGUID="f99b1108-beff-4720-a96f-2e3825f9c812" CreationDate="2014-05-16T18:40:34.460" UserId="131580" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18390" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6661" RevisionGUID="cc2e734c-5ec2-43e1-b644-69b9d1cc93d4" CreationDate="2014-05-16T18:44:42.607" UserId="4" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[2453],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="18391" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6661" RevisionGUID="24c17149-6b5c-4c79-959e-77ba379ed31c" CreationDate="2014-05-16T18:47:36.873" UserId="131580" Comment="Updated related question" Text="I see that the [[VBA] tag doesn't yet have a tag wiki on Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/vba/info), whereas [the one on StackOverflow](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/vba/info) is well established.  Since the tag is exactly the same, would it be acceptable to simply copy that tag wiki over (removing SO cross-references of course) or is this taboo? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[**Related**: this answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2456/131580), though this doesn't appear to preclude the idea that *some* SO tag wikis might provide appropriate content for Programmers tag wikis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would still be curious to know if it would be acceptable for me to port over the specific tag in my question, [VBA].  Comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18392" PostHistoryTypeId="11" PostId="6661" RevisionGUID="e406c6d8-de18-4f81-a2be-55f61d8b1f25" CreationDate="2014-05-16T18:53:52.697" UserId="4" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="18393" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6662" RevisionGUID="3b0c74ae-e3f0-4ff5-b201-0a995b9d5b7d" CreationDate="2014-05-16T21:22:06.357" UserId="47" Text="Should the tag wiki be the same though?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The focus of the sites is different and we don't need to go into the technical details that are present in the Stack Overflow tag. Our tag should be more of an overview/history perhaps with a link to the Stack Overflow tag wiki for more information." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18394" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6604" RevisionGUID="6f2ac386-a42f-4c92-ad38-4dffe75f751b" CreationDate="2014-05-17T00:14:56.567" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|help-center|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18395" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6663" RevisionGUID="af8318b2-eb60-4cc3-9c30-4e270d999af6" CreationDate="2014-05-18T02:16:23.020" UserDisplayName="user129679" Text="I'm thinking of doing an experiment with a JS program to utilize Japanese Multiplication, and I want to ask whether or not a software math shortcut is actually a shortcut at all. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, I'm contemplating writing a program to get benchmarks for the comparison of normal multiplication and Japanese Multiplication via programming, and I'd like to ask whether or not this makes sense to do before spending time to build the experiment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Theoretically, the question would look like this:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Japanese Multiplication simulation - is a program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On SuperUser, I asked [a (possibly silly) question about processors using mathematical shortcuts][1] and would like to have a look at the possibility at the **software application** of that concept.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to write a JS simulation of Japanese Multiplication to get benchmarks on large calculations utilizing the shortcut vs traditional CPU multiplication. **I'm curious as to whether it makes sense to do this.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My Question:** I'd like to know whether or not a software math shortcut, as described above is actually a shortcut at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a question of programming concept. By utilizing the simulation of Japanese Multiplication, is my program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://superuser.com/questions/755648/do-processors-utilize-mathematical-shortcuts-and-tricks-like-we-do?noredirect=1#comment976766_755648&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/swF5p.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18396" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6663" RevisionGUID="af8318b2-eb60-4cc3-9c30-4e270d999af6" CreationDate="2014-05-18T02:16:23.020" UserDisplayName="user129679" Text="Can I ask this question about the effectiveness of a programming concept?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18397" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6663" RevisionGUID="af8318b2-eb60-4cc3-9c30-4e270d999af6" CreationDate="2014-05-18T02:16:23.020" UserDisplayName="user129679" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18398" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6663" RevisionGUID="d671b014-0c4f-4fd7-a445-44998644400f" CreationDate="2014-05-18T02:36:09.363" UserDisplayName="user129679" Comment="added 185 characters in body" Text="I'm thinking of doing an experiment with a JS program to utilize Japanese Multiplication, and I want to ask whether or not a software math shortcut is actually a shortcut at all. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, I'm contemplating writing a program to get benchmarks for the comparison of normal multiplication and Japanese Multiplication via programming, and I'd like to ask whether or not this makes sense to do before spending time to build the experiment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, this is a question of **whether or not this question is on topic**! We can discuss any thoughts on the idea on the actual question if its deemed appropriate for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Theoretically, the question would look like this:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Japanese Multiplication simulation - is a program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On SuperUser, I asked [a (possibly silly) question about processors using mathematical shortcuts][1] and would like to have a look at the possibility at the **software application** of that concept.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to write a JS simulation of Japanese Multiplication to get benchmarks on large calculations utilizing the shortcut vs traditional CPU multiplication. **I'm curious as to whether it makes sense to do this.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My Question:** I'd like to know whether or not a software math shortcut, as described above is actually a shortcut at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a question of programming concept. By utilizing the simulation of Japanese Multiplication, is my program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://superuser.com/questions/755648/do-processors-utilize-mathematical-shortcuts-and-tricks-like-we-do?noredirect=1#comment976766_755648&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/swF5p.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18399" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6663" RevisionGUID="e3ff3ac4-e0ff-4352-86af-81877d3d3833" CreationDate="2014-05-18T02:41:57.267" UserDisplayName="user129679" Comment="added 104 characters in body" Text="I'm thinking of doing an experiment with a JS program to utilize Japanese Multiplication, and I want to ask whether or not a software math shortcut is actually a shortcut at all. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, I'm contemplating writing a program to get benchmarks for the comparison of normal multiplication and Japanese Multiplication via programming, and I'd like to ask whether or not this makes sense to do before spending time to build the experiment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Remember, this is a question of whether or not this question is appropriate for this site.** Any additional thoughts on the topic should be described either in the comments or answers to the actual question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Theoretically, the question would look like this:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Japanese Multiplication simulation - is a program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On SuperUser, I asked [a (possibly silly) question about processors using mathematical shortcuts][1] and would like to have a look at the possibility at the **software application** of that concept.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to write a JS simulation of Japanese Multiplication to get benchmarks on large calculations utilizing the shortcut vs traditional CPU multiplication. **I'm curious as to whether it makes sense to do this.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My Question:** I'd like to know whether or not a software math shortcut, as described above is actually a shortcut at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a question of programming concept. By utilizing the simulation of Japanese Multiplication, **is my program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My theory** is that since addition is faster than multiplication, a simulation of Japanese multiplication may actually allow a program to multiply (large) numbers faster than the CPU arithmetic unit can. I think this would be a very interesting finding, if it proves to be true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://superuser.com/questions/755648/do-processors-utilize-mathematical-shortcuts-and-tricks-like-we-do?noredirect=1#comment976766_755648&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/swF5p.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18400" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6663" RevisionGUID="bf778431-a159-4a61-8a35-ea58ab1fde28" CreationDate="2014-05-18T02:52:56.940" UserDisplayName="user129679" Comment="added 9 characters in body" Text="I'm thinking of doing an experiment with a JS program to utilize Japanese Multiplication, and I want to ask whether or not a software math shortcut is actually a shortcut at all. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, I'm contemplating writing a program to get benchmarks for the comparison of normal multiplication and Japanese Multiplication via programming, and I'd like to ask whether or not this makes sense to do before spending time to build the experiment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Remember, this is a question of whether or not this question is appropriate for this site.** Any additional thoughts on the topic should be described either in the comments or answers to the actual question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Theoretically, the question would look like this:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Japanese Multiplication simulation - is a program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On SuperUser, I asked [a (possibly silly) question about processors using mathematical shortcuts][1] and would like to have a look at the possibility at the **software application** of that concept.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to write a JS simulation of Japanese Multiplication to get benchmarks on large calculations utilizing the shortcut vs traditional CPU multiplication. **I'm curious as to whether it makes sense to do this.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My Question:** I'd like to know whether or not a software math shortcut, as described above is actually a shortcut at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a question of programming concept. By utilizing the simulation of Japanese Multiplication, **is my program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My theory** is that since addition is computed faster than multiplication, a simulation of Japanese multiplication may actually allow a program to multiply (large) numbers faster than the CPU arithmetic unit can. I think this would be a very interesting finding, if it proves to be true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://superuser.com/questions/755648/do-processors-utilize-mathematical-shortcuts-and-tricks-like-we-do?noredirect=1#comment976766_755648&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/swF5p.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18401" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6663" RevisionGUID="1ef02bd0-ad4b-4c6d-a13b-63d8de332bc4" CreationDate="2014-05-18T03:00:10.967" UserDisplayName="user129679" Comment="added 409 characters in body" Text="I'm thinking of doing an experiment with a JS program to utilize Japanese Multiplication, and I want to ask whether or not a software math shortcut is actually a shortcut at all. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, I'm contemplating writing a program to get benchmarks for the comparison of normal multiplication and Japanese Multiplication via programming, and I'd like to ask whether or not this makes sense to do before spending time to build the experiment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Remember, this is a question of whether or not this question is appropriate for this site.** Any additional thoughts on the topic should be described either in the comments or answers to the actual question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also asked whether or not this question would be appropriate on Stack Overflow, Mathematica SE, and Computer Science SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/13751/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-mathematical-programming-co&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/255301/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-programming-concept&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- (asking now)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Theoretically, the question would look like this:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Japanese Multiplication simulation - is a program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On SuperUser, I asked [a (possibly silly) question about processors using mathematical shortcuts][1] and would like to have a look at the possibility at the **software application** of that concept.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to write a JS simulation of Japanese Multiplication to get benchmarks on large calculations utilizing the shortcut vs traditional CPU multiplication. **I'm curious as to whether it makes sense to do this.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My Question:** I'd like to know whether or not a software math shortcut, as described above is actually a shortcut at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a question of programming concept. By utilizing the simulation of Japanese Multiplication, **is my program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My theory** is that since addition is computed faster than multiplication, a simulation of Japanese multiplication may actually allow a program to multiply (large) numbers faster than the CPU arithmetic unit can. I think this would be a very interesting finding, if it proves to be true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://superuser.com/questions/755648/do-processors-utilize-mathematical-shortcuts-and-tricks-like-we-do?noredirect=1#comment976766_755648&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/swF5p.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18402" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6663" RevisionGUID="1ef02bd0-ad4b-4c6d-a13b-63d8de332bc4" CreationDate="2014-05-18T03:00:10.967" UserDisplayName="user129679" Comment="added 409 characters in body" Text="Can I ask this question about the effectiveness of a mathematical programming concept?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18403" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6663" RevisionGUID="7c4d5421-c879-4b05-98a4-32e4f5dbd960" CreationDate="2014-05-18T03:06:57.760" UserDisplayName="user129679" Comment="added 115 characters in body" Text="I'm thinking of doing an experiment with a JS program to utilize Japanese Multiplication, and I want to ask whether or not a software math shortcut is actually a shortcut at all. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, I'm contemplating writing a program to get benchmarks for the comparison of normal multiplication and Japanese Multiplication via programming, and I'd like to ask whether or not this makes sense to do before spending time to build the experiment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Remember, this is a question of whether or not this question is appropriate for this site.** Any additional thoughts on the topic should be described either in the comments or answers to the actual question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also asked whether or not this question would be appropriate on Stack Overflow, Mathematica SE, and Computer Science SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/13751/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-mathematical-programming-co&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/255301/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-programming-concept&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.cs.stackexchange.com/questions/861/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-mathematical-programming-co&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Theoretically, the question would look like this:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Japanese Multiplication simulation - is a program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On SuperUser, I asked [a (possibly silly) question about processors using mathematical shortcuts][1] and would like to have a look at the possibility at the **software application** of that concept.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to write a JS simulation of Japanese Multiplication to get benchmarks on large calculations utilizing the shortcut vs traditional CPU multiplication. **I'm curious as to whether it makes sense to do this.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My Question:** I'd like to know whether or not a software math shortcut, as described above is actually a shortcut at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a question of programming concept. By utilizing the simulation of Japanese Multiplication, **is my program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My theory** is that since addition is computed faster than multiplication, a simulation of Japanese multiplication may actually allow a program to multiply (large) numbers faster than the CPU arithmetic unit can. I think this would be a very interesting finding, if it proves to be true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://superuser.com/questions/755648/do-processors-utilize-mathematical-shortcuts-and-tricks-like-we-do?noredirect=1#comment976766_755648&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/swF5p.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18404" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6663" RevisionGUID="91d9eea4-fb88-4020-b41b-f8b567d5574e" CreationDate="2014-05-18T04:22:07.203" UserDisplayName="user129679" Comment="edited body" Text="I'm thinking of doing an experiment with a JS program to utilize Japanese Multiplication, and I want to ask whether or not a software math shortcut is actually a shortcut at all. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, I'm contemplating writing a program to get benchmarks for the comparison of normal multiplication and Japanese Multiplication via programming, and I'd like to ask whether or not this makes sense to do before spending time to build the experiment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Remember, this is a question of whether or not this question is appropriate for this site.** Any additional thoughts on the topic should be described either in the comments or answers to the actual question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also asked whether or not this question would be appropriate on Stack Overflow, Mathematics SE, and Computer Science SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/13751/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-mathematical-programming-co&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/255301/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-programming-concept&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.cs.stackexchange.com/questions/861/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-mathematical-programming-co&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Theoretically, the question would look like this:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Japanese Multiplication simulation - is a program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On SuperUser, I asked [a (possibly silly) question about processors using mathematical shortcuts][1] and would like to have a look at the possibility at the **software application** of that concept.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to write a JS simulation of Japanese Multiplication to get benchmarks on large calculations utilizing the shortcut vs traditional CPU multiplication. **I'm curious as to whether it makes sense to do this.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My Question:** I'd like to know whether or not a software math shortcut, as described above is actually a shortcut at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a question of programming concept. By utilizing the simulation of Japanese Multiplication, **is my program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My theory** is that since addition is computed faster than multiplication, a simulation of Japanese multiplication may actually allow a program to multiply (large) numbers faster than the CPU arithmetic unit can. I think this would be a very interesting finding, if it proves to be true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://superuser.com/questions/755648/do-processors-utilize-mathematical-shortcuts-and-tricks-like-we-do?noredirect=1#comment976766_755648&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/swF5p.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18405" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6664" RevisionGUID="7934000f-c66b-478c-b3d5-7973fd3df1ed" CreationDate="2014-05-18T17:57:14.187" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Just to give you an official answer, conceptual questions about algorithms such as this one are on-topic for the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18406" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="5bdbd192-b027-4102-b531-74b94c8a28da" CreationDate="2014-05-18T20:05:05.647" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/answers-quality-in-hot-questions#comment17974_5413" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot;** in the answers appear to happen once or twice a week on average, frequent enough to feel the connection between these and respective questions making their way into [SE collider list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My particular concern is the poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making **interesting and well presented problems** look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;&quot;Oh look: ['my guess is fairly prosaic. Git is brilliant...'](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177890/31260 &quot;example&quot;) - with upvoted answer like that it [can't be a real question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;not-a-real-question - what's this?&quot;)&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to [repel garbage answers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3835/31260 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;), I can easily name a handful of active regulars who [can and do](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;filter=all &quot;our editors gang is pretty strong&quot;) just that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that [invalidates my edit](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;). And answer that exploits another minor ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions: per my observations &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; have been smart enough to pick questions that have reasonably good wording as-is.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how things work now helps to attract new contributors but I would appreciate if achieving this important goal &lt;sup&gt;**[1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/when-is-an-account-abandoned/ &quot;'reduce the friction of... answering to little more than entering an anonymous comment on a blog'&quot;), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/helping-the-experts-get-answers/ &quot;'attract notable experts to your site'&quot;), [3](http://stackexchange.com/about &quot;'free and open to everyone... answer questions without even bothering to register'&quot;)**&lt;/sup&gt; would somehow be less damaging for good, highly visible questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **protect your own users from scale ...human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon...** ([A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy ](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html &quot;quote source&quot;))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some additional observations based on discussions that followed posting this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Low quality answers in hot questions likely contribute to the fact that currently, it is [hard for users to understand site standards](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;), which results in posting many &quot;bad&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a steady source of misguided contributors... There are... [broken windows](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info)... **&quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;**.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Until recently](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228940/165773 &quot;until this change announced 2014-04-09&quot;), low quality answers also threated to [penalize contributors](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13713_5448 &quot;see 'clear that 10k barrier...' and further discussion&quot;) who post good ones because when piled on in hot questions, garbage answers trigger [CW](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info &quot;automatic community wiki when there are more than 15 answers&quot;) which consequently turns all the upvotes given to good answers into zero reputation for their authors.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [more than 1700 answers scored 25+ turned community wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;q=wiki%3ayes%20is%3aanswer%20score%3a25)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of precision, note that number `1700` above is only indicative since search does not exclude answers turned CW for other reasons. Also note some of the answers could be high-voted &quot;unfairly&quot;: per analysis 10+ voted answers in sampled questions (below), this could happen, although rather infrequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through few [sampled](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/181999/31260 &quot;random sampling, stuff like that&quot;) questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, note that besides 199 answers reviewed above, there are also 19 answers deleted in 16 questions listed above. These answers are visible only to moderators and to users with [sufficient privileges](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;Access to Moderator tools -&gt; 'View deleted posts'&quot;). Of these 19, 9 are deleted by moderators, the rest has been deleted by owners. Of 10 answers deleted by owners, I would downvote 7-8.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summing up, I would downvote about **101-118 of 218** answers I reviewed per above research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some data related to [recently added](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/5413/revisions &quot;see changes in rev 13&quot;) observations on community wiki status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 2K+ views - about **25%** are CW, [307](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [1247](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 10K+ views - about **60%** are CW, [62](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [101](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting [self](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13717_5448 &quot;from here&quot;), wow. Just... wow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18407" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6665" RevisionGUID="8b27bc61-691b-4802-a963-5a71759547ae" CreationDate="2014-05-19T20:06:15.253" UserId="25476" Text="I ask the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [following question here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/240404/japanese-multiplication-simulation-is-a-program-actually-capable-of-improving?noredirect=1) led to the OP asking the [greater meta.stackexchange.com site here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/231885/should-strictly-on-topic-cross-posts-be-put-on-hold-as-off-topic/231888#231888) which seems to have a broader and more popular consensus that when a question is well received and on topic that it should not be closed as &quot;Off-Topic&quot; for purposes of preventing cross-posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently myself and I believe other moderators at Programmers when flagged about cross-posting will currently close the question on Programmers it if appears to circumvent a ban on the other site or if it historically appears after the original question on the other site.  The OP sometimes legitimately realizes that he needs a different perspective, or perhaps they weren't getting the attention they felt they needed so they wanted to try a different community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current tag info for cross posting on meta.stackexchange: [link here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) still seems to suggest that it is still frowned upon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cross Posting refers to posting the same question over multiple Stack Exchange sites. Cross-posting is strictly frowned upon as it leads to fragmented answers splattered all over the network. If you spot a user cross-posting, please make use of Moderator Flags to inform the Moderators.  Refer to cross-posting faq for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask the community, are we right to do this and should we change how high rep users and moderators are dealing with cross posting on this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18408" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6665" RevisionGUID="8b27bc61-691b-4802-a963-5a71759547ae" CreationDate="2014-05-19T20:06:15.253" UserId="25476" Text="Should cross-posting be allowed sometimes on Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18409" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6665" RevisionGUID="8b27bc61-691b-4802-a963-5a71759547ae" CreationDate="2014-05-19T20:06:15.253" UserId="25476" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18410" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6666" RevisionGUID="68c0d59a-532a-457c-b2fb-30c24c520cc0" CreationDate="2014-05-19T20:11:27.010" UserId="4" Text="I agree with [Robert Harvey's answer on Meta Stack Exchange][1]. Although cross-posting should be discouraged, especially questions that are directly copied/pasted between sites without tailoring to nuances that exist between each community, the copy-paste by itself is not a valid reason for closure. Questions should be closed on their merit - they are a duplicate of an existing question, they are off-topic, the question is unclear or too broad, or the answer will draw opinions instead of facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think in most cases, cross-posts tend to be lower-quality questions, people evading question bans on a site and posting on a related site, or more spammy posts. However, if someone has a good question that does indeed fit on multiple sites, they shouldn't be punished for approaching the questions from all available experts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231886/572" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18411" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6667" RevisionGUID="99fdc7f1-9dff-4c52-b6b8-fde369e44d87" CreationDate="2014-05-19T20:20:59.653" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="I think in rare circumstances, cross-posting is valid.  But it needs to be done clearly and transparently so the community understands that the answers to the question will be fragmented across sites.  Case in point, the croissants question was cross-posted on SO, CS, and Progs.  The latter two were done intentionally to see how the community would generate different answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, cross posters simply want _any_ answer and aren't trying to delve the particular expertise of a given site.  I don't see much, if any, benefit in taking a gentler line of action with cross-posting in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a cross-posted question is on-topic for a site, I think it's valid to either close or lock the question so the duplicate questions can be more easily merged together.  To my understanding, leaving them open merely makes it more difficult to clean up the resulting mess." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18412" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6668" RevisionGUID="af3bde13-6676-458b-a8ed-8968b42dce68" CreationDate="2014-05-19T20:23:34.143" UserId="47" Text="Reasking the question so **that it's tailored to the other site's audience** is OK. You'll bring out aspects that the first site missed or you'll be able to focus your question as a result of the answers on the first site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just copy/pasting the question from one site to another isn't going to work well. It's either going to be totally off message (note not necessarily off topic, but just not &quot;right&quot; for the site) for one site or the other or worse, fall between the two sites and be a bad question on both.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The thing to to do is think about the target audience of the site and think about what sort of answers you are wanted to get." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18413" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6668" RevisionGUID="6a900f81-7f78-41e5-9992-ba5f60ac6a67" CreationDate="2014-05-20T08:30:11.893" UserId="1069" Comment="deleted 6 characters in body" Text="Reasking the question so **that it's tailored to the other site's audience** is OK. You'll bring out aspects that the first site missed or you'll be able to focus your question as a result of the answers on the first site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just copy/pasting the question from one site to another isn't going to work well. It's either going to be totally off message (note not necessarily off topic, but just not &quot;right&quot; for the site) for one site or the other or worse, fall between the two sites and be a bad question on both.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The thing to to do is think about the target audience of the site and think about what sort of answers you want to get." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18414" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6665" RevisionGUID="dfe8fb68-e359-4d70-a4be-b6471cc9fc01" CreationDate="2014-05-20T10:17:05.870" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/468696907792265216" />
  <row Id="18415" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6665" RevisionGUID="0c48decb-708d-4739-b51a-d7b181fa88ae" CreationDate="2014-05-20T11:31:26.700" UserId="25476" Comment="Update with the community consenus" Text="I ask the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [following question here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/240404/japanese-multiplication-simulation-is-a-program-actually-capable-of-improving?noredirect=1) led to the OP asking the [greater meta.stackexchange.com site here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/231885/should-strictly-on-topic-cross-posts-be-put-on-hold-as-off-topic/231888#231888) which seems to have a broader and more popular consensus that when a question is well received and on topic that it should not be closed as &quot;Off-Topic&quot; for purposes of preventing cross-posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently myself and I believe other moderators at Programmers when flagged about cross-posting will currently close the question on Programmers it if appears to circumvent a ban on the other site or if it historically appears after the original question on the other site.  The OP sometimes legitimately realizes that he needs a different perspective, or perhaps they weren't getting the attention they felt they needed so they wanted to try a different community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current tag info for cross posting on meta.stackexchange: [link here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) still seems to suggest that it is still frowned upon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cross Posting refers to posting the same question over multiple Stack Exchange sites. Cross-posting is strictly frowned upon as it leads to fragmented answers splattered all over the network. If you spot a user cross-posting, please make use of Moderator Flags to inform the Moderators.  Refer to cross-posting faq for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask the community, are we right to do this and should we change how high rep users and moderators are dealing with cross posting on this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To sum up the great answers and suggestions I have seen thus far, and reviewing the greater discussion on Meta.StackExchange, I feel I can compile the popular and agreed upon points below so that we can use this question as a canonical guide on how to deal with cross-posting on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Poor quality, unclear questions and opinion/flame bait should be put on hold as expected regardless of cross-posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Off-topic hold reasons should not be used against cross posted questions unless it is legitimately off topic (NOTE: There is overlap in Programmers between CS, Project Management, et al.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. If the question is not tailored for target audience, software developers, and is instead copied from the other site still targeted to computer scientists, project managers, or others then a user can flag for a moderator to investigate, and moderators can use their discretion if a temporary content dispute lock should be used while the moderator gives the OP the chance to state why they wanted to cross post on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 4. If the question is not tailored and the OP shows no desire to change the question or does not respond, then the moderator or other users can decide to edit the question to try and improve it and make it more appropriate for Programmers, otherwise it can be put on hold as off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 5. If the cross post is tailored for the target audience and the OP wishes to get a different perspective or perhaps felt the question didn't get enough attention at the original community, then he/she is well in his right to do so. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18416" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6665" RevisionGUID="8c8f695c-704b-4766-bd8a-f6dc58f23af1" CreationDate="2014-05-20T13:59:19.353" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|cross-posting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18417" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6650" RevisionGUID="08341fa8-cb2a-4d2b-bf53-322ef9d615c4" CreationDate="2014-05-22T10:21:04.140" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/469422684255039488" />
  <row Id="18418" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6669" RevisionGUID="981d47ca-6e74-46f5-97e6-e579ad4bc1a7" CreationDate="2014-05-22T10:47:30.800" UserId="17898" Text="I see no benefit whatsoever in crossposting, as in posting the same question verbatim on multiple platforms targeting the same audience.&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;If the audiences are so diverse that you're likely to get valuable answers from multiple perspectives, all of them relevant, it might be a good idea on occasion.&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;REposting, as in asking the same question elsewhere (hopefully reworded) after not getting an answer in a reasonable time (say several days to weeks) is another matter and I can fully understand that. But if so, do append any new insights you gained yourself over that time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18419" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6630" RevisionGUID="94c22401-e004-4ce0-b2ba-6a177f8d783d" CreationDate="2014-05-22T18:39:46.443" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="## Problems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So many targets... ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first problem with these questions is that there are so many possible audiences.  How do you explain pointers to a 13 year old.  How do you explain the internet to your grandfather? How do you explain [testing to a manager who has pointy hair](http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-03-24/)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way you would explain something to a 13 year old is different than the way you would explain it to your grandfather &lt;s&gt;or a manager&lt;/s&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Ok, maybe the manager and the 13 year old would get the same explanation.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Key to this is that each type of person you explain something to is different.  Whats more, each *person* you explain something to is different (maybe your grandfather was given [write enable rings](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tapeprotection.jpg) for teething and had a very good grasp of UUCP back in the day).  Your grandfather is different than my grandfather, and your boss is different than my boss.  The explanations for one won't always work for the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions inevitably get refining the specifics of explaining it to one person.  At that point, the question and answers become useless for anyone else who wants to explain it to another grandfather or 13 year old.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So many understandings... ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how would you explain pointers to a peer in computing?  If you do not understand pointers fully yourself, the question will turn from how do you explain them to someone else to the community explaining them to you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you lack the full understanding of the topic at hand, you will not be able to properly answer the follow up questions from whatever analogy you pick (the internet is a series of tubes... but how do they go to the *right* tube? - if you don't understand routing and dns and all that fun stuff yourself you won't be able to properly answer that question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Solutions ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So what can I do? ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you understand the subject you are trying to explain, at least to the level you are going to try to explain it to *and one deeper*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you understand that.  Ask a question about *that* misunderstanding if you have it so the misunderstanding may be corrected and you'll be able to think of the proper car or train analogy to explain what you are trying to explain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider asking in chat.  While this isn't the main site and you don't get rep for it, it can help in being able to particularly address your understanding and the understanding of the person you are trying to explain it to.  Consider for example, [this conversation](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/on-engineering-and-teaching-pointers) where we went through several iterations of understanding the target audience before recognizing the proper way to explain pointers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking about how to explain something and working through the solution is not a 'fire and forget' question where you ask it and come back to get the answers.  Those are the questions get get closed.  They take a significant amount of work explaining what *you* understand and properly tailoring it to the audience that you understand best.  While we can help with your understanding, trying to answer it for your audience is not a good fit for the Q&amp;A site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18420" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6670" RevisionGUID="a12e5bd5-d258-4202-85a2-7160e3a83e46" CreationDate="2014-05-22T21:01:09.490" UserId="95594" Text="One might think that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&quot;... **Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor** working through code issues. **Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard** working through higher level conceptual programming issues...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;but this is only a nice theory, in practice this site is a redundancy, any question that I thought to ask here I could ask on **Stack Overflow**. The real &quot;white board&quot; questions are not welcome here as they are too broad and usually get downvoted and closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18421" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6670" RevisionGUID="36792dc5-facc-4d9f-ab91-9531683fb325" CreationDate="2014-05-22T21:01:09.490" UserId="95594" />
  <row Id="18422" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6671" RevisionGUID="fa8d82a4-8ac3-4136-8e07-68027e105101" CreationDate="2014-05-23T01:16:25.397" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The bottom bar (that black almost a straight line thing) is floating in the middle of the page on reviews.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may be a regression of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4095/footer-line-floats-up-too-high-in-the-main-review-page&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5187/line-in-ui-goes-under-review-tasks&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5231/image-covers-the-review-page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Safari (7.0.3 (9537.75.14)):&#xD;&#xA;![Safari][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Chrome (34.0.1847.137):&#xD;&#xA;![Chrome][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firefox (28.0 &lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Yeah, I don't use it that much, though I just updated to 29.0.1 and its still there&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;):&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0HDwF.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Of9JD.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qRQt3.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18423" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6671" RevisionGUID="fa8d82a4-8ac3-4136-8e07-68027e105101" CreationDate="2014-05-23T01:16:25.397" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Bottom bar floating in middle of the page" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18424" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6671" RevisionGUID="fa8d82a4-8ac3-4136-8e07-68027e105101" CreationDate="2014-05-23T01:16:25.397" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|bug|design|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18425" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6663" RevisionGUID="a734c1eb-be49-4321-a79f-143ee2fcbef7" CreationDate="2014-05-23T07:21:14.440" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/469739815781400576" />
  <row Id="18426" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6671" RevisionGUID="7a18a958-c783-4800-8ee2-0b950657ec1a" CreationDate="2014-05-25T15:23:57.753" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 72 characters in body" Text="The bottom bar (that black almost a straight line thing) is floating in the middle of the page on reviews.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may be a regression of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4095/footer-line-floats-up-too-high-in-the-main-review-page&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5187/line-in-ui-goes-under-review-tasks&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5231/image-covers-the-review-page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Safari (7.0.3 (9537.75.14)):&#xD;&#xA;![Safari][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Chrome (34.0.1847.137):&#xD;&#xA;![Chrome][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firefox (28.0 &lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Yeah, I don't use it that much, though I just updated to 29.0.1 and its still there&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;):&#xD;&#xA;![Firefox][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: the bottom bar *is* at the correct spot when doing close vote reviews on Meta.P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0HDwF.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Of9JD.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qRQt3.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18427" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6672" RevisionGUID="52401cd2-1fb3-49bb-93f3-9b9b34d61c53" CreationDate="2014-05-30T09:26:07.350" UserId="119891" Text="There are two questions on whether one should lower his coding practices to meet those of the surrounding team:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Simplicity-efficiency tradeoff][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [If my team has low skill, should I lower the skill of my code?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The accepted answer to the first, as it stands now, is &quot;yes, you should prefer communication within the team&quot;, and the answer to the second is &quot;no, you should try to educate them&quot;. (For the record: those are not my questions nor my answers, I do not ask here over a feeling of rejection or anything; I want clarification on the site's policy and purpose in this respect).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was told [in a comment to this other question][3] that &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; SE is built around identifying a &quot;single&quot; answer, and isn't structured to handle multiple equally good examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Searching around in this Meta site, I found that the &quot;[official guideline on duplicates][4]&quot; states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What we want is on the order of 4 or 5 similar-but-not-quite-the-same duplicates to cover all possible search terms and common permutations of the question. It is also OK for these duplicates to have their own answers so people who find them don’t have to click yet again to get to a good answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in this case, the answers to those duplicate questions are different.  Doesn't this imply that there are no objective answers &quot;[that are supportable by objective statements, and aren't purely a matter of taste][5]&quot;, and therefore are questions that are opinion-based? Or do you think it just shows that the answer's authors have not researched enough,  and therefore the community votes do not reflect an objective winner?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241444/simplicity-efficiency-tradeoff&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/203469/if-my-team-has-low-skill-should-i-lower-the-skill-of-my-code&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241116/scenario-to-illustrate-how-unit-testing-leads-to-better-design/241132#241132&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18428" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6672" RevisionGUID="52401cd2-1fb3-49bb-93f3-9b9b34d61c53" CreationDate="2014-05-30T09:26:07.350" UserId="119891" Text="If a duplicate question has a different accepted answer, does this imply the question is too opinion based?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18429" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6672" RevisionGUID="52401cd2-1fb3-49bb-93f3-9b9b34d61c53" CreationDate="2014-05-30T09:26:07.350" UserId="119891" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18430" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6672" RevisionGUID="0054689d-b3b0-4a6a-b2e8-e9dec1bfdd9f" CreationDate="2014-05-30T10:43:32.013" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|accepted-answer|opinion-based|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18431" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6673" RevisionGUID="f4d1925d-85c7-4f83-b70b-b9d62592e622" CreationDate="2014-05-30T12:37:57.617" UserId="7239" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241503/jira-full-blown-solution-for-the-single-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;what is wrong with this question, in gods name, can someone tell me what the problem is and why it gets blocked right away?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18432" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6673" RevisionGUID="f4d1925d-85c7-4f83-b70b-b9d62592e622" CreationDate="2014-05-30T12:37:57.617" UserId="7239" Text="What is wrong with this question ABOUT programing?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18433" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6673" RevisionGUID="f4d1925d-85c7-4f83-b70b-b9d62592e622" CreationDate="2014-05-30T12:37:57.617" UserId="7239" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18434" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6674" RevisionGUID="d9f3790d-25d7-4dfe-bd95-2e969fc10d33" CreationDate="2014-05-30T12:47:37.083" UserId="47" Text="The close reason says it all:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; put on hold as primarily opinion-based&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are probably as many views on this topic as there are developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is built around getting *answerable* questions the best possible answer there can be. This means that there has to be a limited number (ideally one, but there are often several ways of skinning any particular cat) of correct answers on which the users can vote so that the &quot;best&quot; one rises to the top.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your questions doesn't invite that sort of answer. You are actually asking for opinions in the question itself. If you can reformulate the question so that it follows these guidelines then there's a good chance it will be reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18435" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6673" RevisionGUID="99c6f04b-5b4f-4563-996b-ceacda16bea1" CreationDate="2014-05-30T14:15:43.353" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18436" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6675" RevisionGUID="5da04af4-e16f-41b2-9ac5-57d81090003d" CreationDate="2014-05-30T14:27:17.377" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="I recognize that comment....&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, the original question, as asked: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241444/simplicity-efficiency-tradeoff really is a duplicate of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/203469/if-my-team-has-low-skill-should-i-lower-the-skill-of-my-code.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And we can use the OP's ending questions to prove that point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do I have to keep it simple (stupid), just because others are not familiar with best practices and efficient coding? Or should I continue to do what I find best and write code my way?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Likewise, the ending question from the duplicate: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So, should I lower the level of my code if my teammates have a lower level than me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And looking over the dozen or so answers in the duplicate, I think it's pretty clear that they answer the question that was asked.  It's not just the accepted answer in the duplicate that addresses the original question, it's the top 4 or 5 answers that cover the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what was asked is not really the problem at hand.  In fact, I'd argue this is a classic XY problem in disguise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comment thread gives us a more clear picture of what's going on:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; see i can't exist in an environment that puts limit around what i can do, i like creative problem solving, plus my code is never un-commented, so in my opinion, it's not that i'm doing anything wrong [–  sarepta](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241444/simplicity-efficiency-tradeoff#comment485044_241444)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Telastyn by efficiency i don't mean LINQ in specific, one of the CTO comments is t-sql code that does non-trivial processing, nevertheless it's a known thing that LINQ simplifies lots of things, which is still an important skill in a dev arsenal –  [sarepta](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241444/simplicity-efficiency-tradeoff#comment485049_241444)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which takes us back to a semi-throwaway comment made in the question itself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; He asked me to maintain a simple code base and to think of the others that will inherit my changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now we have a better understanding of what the problem is.  The problem is the OP not the code.  And the OP isn't following the coding conventions for the team he's on because he sees himself as better than his peers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So when we look at the opening paragraph of the accepted answer (Karl's answer) in the original question, we see that Karl is addressing the actual problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We write code for other humans to read. New technologies are intended to make code easier to read, not harder. There are good and bad ways to use new technologies. If you're trying to write &quot;impressive&quot; code, you're doing it wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To address _your_ question:  No, differing accepted answers doesn't necessarily imply that the question is too opinion based.  It could also indicate an XY issue as I pointed out.  Or it could simply mean the two different OPs found more meaning in differing lines of thought than the other." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18439" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6676" RevisionGUID="2eeeb8e0-ef16-4aa6-976d-03d3109db74f" CreationDate="2014-06-02T14:36:20.200" UserId="121951" Text="At last year's [Summit][1] Joel Spolsky gave a talk entitled &quot;How to Have Nice Things&quot; in which he described why there must be rules on content based factual sites and why the rules that exist on SE are the way they are. Although it is a bit long it might be nice to link to it somewhere on programmers.SE as we seem to get a lot of questions that violate these rules. Do you agree this should be linked to somewhere here and where would be best for this? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://new.livestream.com/websummit/DeveloperStage2013" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18440" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6676" RevisionGUID="2eeeb8e0-ef16-4aa6-976d-03d3109db74f" CreationDate="2014-06-02T14:36:20.200" UserId="121951" Text="How to have nice things" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18441" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6676" RevisionGUID="2eeeb8e0-ef16-4aa6-976d-03d3109db74f" CreationDate="2014-06-02T14:36:20.200" UserId="121951" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18442" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6676" RevisionGUID="549cc4a7-d954-4e91-b524-b57a139132e2" CreationDate="2014-06-02T15:15:23.840" UserId="121951" Comment="added 1549 characters in body" Text="At last year's [Summit][1] Joel Spolsky gave a talk entitled &quot;How to Have Nice Things&quot; in which he described why there must be rules on content based factual sites and why the rules that exist on SE are the way they are. Although it is a bit long it might be nice to link to it somewhere on programmers.SE as we seem to get a lot of questions that violate these rules. Do you agree this should be linked to somewhere here and where would be best for this? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this [closed questions page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions) covers everything quite nicely, it **lists** the reasons a question can be closed and explains why, although I think Joel's explanation is helpful because it is an explanation of his reasoning and so is nicer to new users. &#xD;&#xA;The [tour page][2] does list some examples of bad questions but does not give an nice list of banned question types, the [on topic page][3] is good at explaining what this community considers on topic in detail but doesn't address the other types of question sthat will get closed, and the [don't ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) page is good but again is mainly examples rather than a list of types of questions and an explanation for the reasons behind the rules and why the rules exist. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tagged this question as a discussion, do people think that putting the content in the list in the [help/closed-questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions) post more prominently on the site might help with the number of questions that need to be closed? As a new user to the site I found it hard to understand the rules, there are indeed pages to help on the [help/asking page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/asking) but you can't get directly to that from the main page. Maybe nothing needs changing but I found it difficult so I thought others might too. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://new.livestream.com/websummit/DeveloperStage2013&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18443" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6676" RevisionGUID="50e4300c-eab1-4fcb-99f9-4785275ca17c" CreationDate="2014-06-02T19:07:49.237" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|help-center|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18444" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6677" RevisionGUID="3557251f-070c-457b-92d9-b6c75e6ccb97" CreationDate="2014-06-02T23:27:24.487" UserId="1204" Text="The phrase &quot;How to Have Nice Things&quot; is a reference to the phrase &quot;This is why we can't have nice things here.&quot;  The phrase is supposed to describe what happens when new people come to your community who don't understand the social norms and become disruptive.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It goes something like this (example, for illustrative purposes.  No farm animals were harmed):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  User posts subjective question on Stack Overflow.  &#xD;&#xA;2.  Community answers.  Question is popular. Life is good.&#xD;&#xA;3.  Another user posts a more subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;4.  Dissent begins to emerge.  Community says &quot;Y'know, we really would prefer more substantial questions.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;5.  User posts &quot;What should I name my cat?&quot;  Another user posts &quot;Do you fart in the cubicle?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;6.  Subjective questions get banned outright.&#xD;&#xA;7.  We're all sad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is what is meant by the phrase &quot;This is why we can't have nice things here.&quot;  People who have no regard for the community and its health come in and spoil it for everyone.  It's equivalent to banning skates in the museum because ming vases get broken, even though some of us are really, really good at skating through the museum without breaking anything or hurting anyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Epilogue:** The community regulars are accused of being mean, insular despots.  The unwashed masses accuse the community of not being sensitive to their wishes.  Riots ensue.  Game over.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18445" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6677" RevisionGUID="8c9ca5ed-faf9-4900-850e-5e2ab241416e" CreationDate="2014-06-02T23:33:45.853" UserId="1204" Comment="added 56 characters in body" Text="The phrase &quot;How to Have Nice Things&quot; is a reference to the phrase &quot;This is why we can't have nice things here.&quot;  The phrase is supposed to describe what happens when new people come to your community who don't understand the social norms and become disruptive.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It goes something like this (example, for illustrative purposes.  No farm animals were harmed):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  User posts subjective question on Stack Overflow.  &#xD;&#xA;2.  Community answers.  Question is popular. Life is good.&#xD;&#xA;3.  Another user posts a more subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;4.  Dissent begins to emerge.  Community says &quot;Y'know, we really would prefer more substantial questions.&quot;  Arguments ensue about what is considered &quot;subjective.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;5.  User posts &quot;What should I name my cat?&quot;  Another user posts &quot;Do you fart in the cubicle?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;6.  Subjective questions get banned outright.&#xD;&#xA;7.  We're all sad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is what is meant by the phrase &quot;This is why we can't have nice things here.&quot;  People who have no regard for the community and its health come in and spoil it for everyone.  It's equivalent to banning skates in the museum because ming vases get broken, even though some of us are really, really good at skating through the museum without breaking anything or hurting anyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Epilogue:** The community regulars are accused of being mean, insular despots.  The unwashed masses accuse the community of not being sensitive to their wishes.  Riots ensue.  Game over.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18446" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6677" RevisionGUID="b27a484c-50d3-4d92-97fd-825a22255ed5" CreationDate="2014-06-02T23:40:59.997" UserId="1204" Comment="added 39 characters in body" Text="**tl;dr** People Don't Read.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The phrase &quot;How to Have Nice Things&quot; is a reference to the phrase &quot;This is why we can't have nice things here.&quot;  The phrase is supposed to describe what happens when new people come to your community who don't understand the social norms and become disruptive.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It goes something like this (example, for illustrative purposes.  No farm animals were harmed):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  User posts subjective question on Stack Overflow.  &#xD;&#xA;2.  Community answers.  Question is popular. Life is good.&#xD;&#xA;3.  Another user posts a more subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;4.  Dissent begins to emerge.  Community says &quot;Y'know, we really would prefer more substantial questions.&quot;  Arguments ensue about what is considered &quot;subjective.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;5.  User posts &quot;What should I name my cat?&quot;  Another user posts &quot;Do you fart in the cubicle?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;6.  Subjective questions get banned outright.&#xD;&#xA;7.  We're all sad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is what is meant by the phrase &quot;This is why we can't have nice things here.&quot;  People who have no regard for the community and its health come in and spoil it for everyone.  It's equivalent to banning skates in the museum because ming vases get broken, even though some of us are really, really good at skating through the museum without breaking anything or hurting anyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Epilogue:** The community regulars are accused of being mean, insular despots.  The unwashed masses accuse the community of not being sensitive to their wishes.  Riots ensue.  Game over.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18447" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6678" RevisionGUID="879b7939-8664-40d8-917b-087bfd8d2ce9" CreationDate="2014-06-03T12:25:06.443" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="There's nothing wrong with distilling great wisdom down into increasingly thicker, condensed concentrate. At some point, you finally lose all of the words that aren't absolutely _essential_ to convey your point effectively and you're left with several powerful sentences that when concatenated, give users _precisely_ what they need to 'get it' and avoid future mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few years ago, [Robert Cartaino](http://stackoverflow.com/users/98786/robert-cartaino) wrote a bunch of stock replies to things that users frequently contact us to ask help for, and stock messages that moderators send to users for the typical reasons that users need to be contacted privately. Over the years, he's tweaked, twiddled, fiddled, folded and polished these relatively tiny bits of text to the point that they've become extremely effective. Adding bold to one or two words can sometimes make a world of difference, breaking down a sentence or moving a comma around can also dramatically change how well the message is understood. This isn't just casual observation, it's easy to see the number of times we need to actually reply to something go down as he's made changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Robert Harvey indicates (and I can strongly attest to this after serving with him for over two years as a Stack Overflow moderator) - ***people simply don't read any more than they must.*** That's why it's important to make the first eight or nine words in copy that you show them count as much as possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a great deal of inspiration in what you're talking about, the thing to do in my opinion is to take it, then work on refining _extremely_ sharp paragraphs into tools to help new users learn the ropes. The custom close reasons are a start at that, as is everything in the help center, however there's still plenty of room for tweaking, twiddling, fiddling and folding in order to get that healthy vitamin &quot;P&quot; concentrate that we want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, a community _should_ occasionally declare open season on its custom help center / close reason / meta FAQ copy - I've never ever seen it get _worse_ due to more (and fresher) eyeballs landing on it and editing. You can lead that charge here on meta if you're so inclined. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`tl;dr;` - We need to _reduce_ what we show them, and make it count even more. I know that's a lofty goal and what we have _is_ good copy, it could just be more effective. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18448" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6678" RevisionGUID="616bfd44-a202-4efc-8e5a-703ca24cfb1a" CreationDate="2014-06-03T13:49:23.947" UserId="31260" Comment="link to referred answer" Text="There's nothing wrong with distilling great wisdom down into increasingly thicker, condensed concentrate. At some point, you finally lose all of the words that aren't absolutely _essential_ to convey your point effectively and you're left with several powerful sentences that when concatenated, give users _precisely_ what they need to 'get it' and avoid future mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few years ago, [Robert Cartaino](http://stackoverflow.com/users/98786/robert-cartaino) wrote a bunch of stock replies to things that users frequently contact us to ask help for, and stock messages that moderators send to users for the typical reasons that users need to be contacted privately. Over the years, he's tweaked, twiddled, fiddled, folded and polished these relatively tiny bits of text to the point that they've become extremely effective. Adding bold to one or two words can sometimes make a world of difference, breaking down a sentence or moving a comma around can also dramatically change how well the message is understood. This isn't just casual observation, it's easy to see the number of times we need to actually reply to something go down as he's made changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [Robert Harvey indicates](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6677/31260) (and I can strongly attest to this after serving with him for over two years as a Stack Overflow moderator) - ***people simply don't read any more than they must.*** That's why it's important to make the first eight or nine words in copy that you show them count as much as possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a great deal of inspiration in what you're talking about, the thing to do in my opinion is to take it, then work on refining _extremely_ sharp paragraphs into tools to help new users learn the ropes. The custom close reasons are a start at that, as is everything in the help center, however there's still plenty of room for tweaking, twiddling, fiddling and folding in order to get that healthy vitamin &quot;P&quot; concentrate that we want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, a community _should_ occasionally declare open season on its custom help center / close reason / meta FAQ copy - I've never ever seen it get _worse_ due to more (and fresher) eyeballs landing on it and editing. You can lead that charge here on meta if you're so inclined. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`tl;dr;` - We need to _reduce_ what we show them, and make it count even more. I know that's a lofty goal and what we have _is_ good copy, it could just be more effective. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18449" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6679" RevisionGUID="1d97f277-ad5c-4b17-88ad-b4de71111e2c" CreationDate="2014-06-04T13:34:31.890" UserId="25936" Text="I took a quick look at the [review history][1] in our [first posts review queue][2] and I've noticed some &quot;No Action Needed&quot; reviews that I didn't agree with. The nature of the queue is such, that there is almost always something to fix, even if it's simply spelling and grammar. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To make matters a bit more complicated, *it only takes one review to push the post out of the first posts queue*. This means that we need to be a bit more careful with it, than - say - with the close votes queue. Your &quot;No Action Needed&quot; vote is binding, and if you use it carelessly you may cheat a brand new user of possibly critical feedback. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to ask all our reviewers to just skip the review if you aren't 100% sure about whether a first post needs improving, or don't have the time to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/history&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18450" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6679" RevisionGUID="1d97f277-ad5c-4b17-88ad-b4de71111e2c" CreationDate="2014-06-04T13:34:31.890" UserId="25936" Text="Reviewing first posts from new users" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18451" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6679" RevisionGUID="1d97f277-ad5c-4b17-88ad-b4de71111e2c" CreationDate="2014-06-04T13:34:31.890" UserId="25936" Text="|discussion|review|new-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18452" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6679" RevisionGUID="b86b1a6b-7520-4f77-aa55-902784d488cb" CreationDate="2014-06-04T13:46:12.460" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body" Text="I took a quick look at the [review history][1] in our [first posts review queue][2] and I've noticed some &quot;No Action Needed&quot; reviews that I didn't agree with. The nature of the queue is such, that there is almost always something to fix, even if it's simply spelling and grammar. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To make matters a bit more complicated, *it only takes one review to push the post out of the first posts queue*. This means that we need to be a bit more careful with it, than - say - with the close votes queue. Your &quot;No Action Needed&quot; vote is binding, and if you use it carelessly you may cheat a brand new user of possibly critical feedback. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to ask all our reviewers to just skip the review if you aren't 100% sure that the post can be improved (in any way), or don't have the time to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/history&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18453" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6679" RevisionGUID="f18b127e-abb8-404c-b78b-716a3724df23" CreationDate="2014-06-04T15:21:44.223" UserId="25936" Comment="added 263 characters in body" Text="I took a quick look at the [review history][1] in our [first posts review queue][2] and I've noticed some &quot;No Action Needed&quot; reviews that I didn't agree with. That's not a problem, I don't expect anyone to share my opinions on what makes a good Programmers post. However, I think the nature of the queue is such, that there is almost always something to fix, even if it's simply spelling and grammar. The queue hosts the very first posts from brand new users, who - quite understandably - aren't always familiar with our philosophy and rules. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To make matters a bit more complicated, *it only takes one review to push the post out of the first posts queue*. This means that we need to be a bit more careful with it, than - say - with the close votes queue. Your &quot;No Action Needed&quot; vote is binding, and if you use it carelessly you may cheat a brand new user of possibly critical feedback. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to ask all our reviewers to just skip the review if you aren't 100% sure that the post can be improved (in any way), or don't have the time to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/history&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18454" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6680" RevisionGUID="510cbf41-041c-4bb8-8410-35d23eaeab1a" CreationDate="2014-06-05T14:23:44.453" UserId="5099" Text="Following the post from Yannis Rizos about the use of &quot;No Action Needed&quot; for posts that are not all that good (http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6679/reviewing-first-posts-from-new-users), I am struggling to understand when to use &quot;No Action Needed&quot; in a review of a first post and when to use &quot;Skip&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Up to now, I used the heuristic that if the post wasn't bad enough to close vote/down vote/flag and wasn't good enough to upvote, then I would select &quot;No Action Needed&quot;. This means that I would use the &quot;No Action Needed&quot; option mostly for posts that had a bit of a 'meh' feeling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the post by Yannis, I gather that I should Skip the review for those posts and leave it for someone else to take action on the post (either positive or negative), but that leaves me with the question:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If good posts should be upvoted, bad posts downvoted (or otherwise dealt with) and meh posts skipped, on which posts should I use the &quot;No Action Needed&quot; option, or should that option not exist at all?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18455" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6680" RevisionGUID="510cbf41-041c-4bb8-8410-35d23eaeab1a" CreationDate="2014-06-05T14:23:44.453" UserId="5099" Text="Looking for guidance on using &quot;No Action Needed&quot; in the first posts review queue" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18456" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6680" RevisionGUID="510cbf41-041c-4bb8-8410-35d23eaeab1a" CreationDate="2014-06-05T14:23:44.453" UserId="5099" Text="|discussion|review|new-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18457" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6679" RevisionGUID="2ead8535-37cf-4701-8f78-efd219054c4d" CreationDate="2014-06-05T21:46:22.287" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/474668575622692864" />
  <row Id="18458" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6681" RevisionGUID="e92beeac-78af-4718-bd30-3415c5c1dcea" CreationDate="2014-06-06T00:11:54.310" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Lets look at a block of &quot;No Action Needed&quot; reviews:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![No action needed][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What constitutes a 'reviwed' review?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Leaving a comment&#xD;&#xA; * Up voting a comment&#xD;&#xA; * Up voting the post&#xD;&#xA; * Down voting the post&#xD;&#xA; * Flagging (or close voting)&#xD;&#xA; * Editing the post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If something is likely to be closed, even if one doesn't agree with the closing philosophy leaving a comment suggesting for how to refocus the question in a way that isn't likely to get closed.  Alternatively, editing it to try to make it something that won't get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a no action needed it means that ***none*** of the above reasons are applicable or needed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Not bad enough to down vote&#xD;&#xA;* Not good enough to up vote&#xD;&#xA;* No existing comments to up vote to help suggest a better question&#xD;&#xA;* No additional guidance needed to help improve the post (note: likely in conflict with 'not good enough to up vote' - it is unlikely that *both* of these are true, but may be the case)&#xD;&#xA;* Grammer, spelling, and formatting of the post are acceptable and don't need any work (note: its a good thing to click 'edit' to see the actual markdown and make sure there isn't formatting that has been lost that needs to be brought back out like a numbered list or line breaks)&#xD;&#xA;* On topic without any need to migrate or suggest a way to make it narrower, less opinion, or need to refocus it from an existing off topic reason.&#xD;&#xA;* Not a duplicate of another post (do a search - especially the case with questions, many new users don't know of existing questions)&#xD;&#xA;* Not posted elsewhere on Stack Exchange (example: [&quot;This was posted on Stack Overflow as well, where it was closed and has now been deleted.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241598/cms-desktop-app-control#comment486410_241598) from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241598/cms-desktop-app-control could have either been up voted or researched and written themselves)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't want to check these things, either hit skip or don't do the First Posts review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Selecting 'no action needed' means that someone else *can't* do the review to check these things, completing it and giving guidance to the new P.SE user that may help them have a more positive experience on P.SE and Stack Exchange as a while.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/IxqNK.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18459" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6681" RevisionGUID="f1c8addc-efca-4778-aaba-42fcf19e2b49" CreationDate="2014-06-06T00:18:20.373" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 31 characters in body" Text="Lets look at a block of &quot;No Action Needed&quot; reviews:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![No action needed][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What constitutes a 'reviwed' review?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Leaving a comment&#xD;&#xA; * Up voting a comment&#xD;&#xA; * Up voting the post&#xD;&#xA; * Down voting the post&#xD;&#xA; * Flagging (or close voting)&#xD;&#xA; * Editing the post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If something is likely to be closed, even if one doesn't agree with the closing philosophy leaving a comment suggesting for how to refocus the question in a way that isn't likely to get closed.  Alternatively, editing it to try to make it something that won't get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a no action needed it means that ***none*** of the above reasons are applicable or needed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Not bad enough to down vote&#xD;&#xA;* Not good enough to up vote&#xD;&#xA;* No existing comments to up vote to help suggest a better question or improve the existing answer&#xD;&#xA;* No additional guidance needed to help improve the post (note: likely in conflict with 'not good enough to up vote' - it is unlikely that *both* of these are true, but may be the case)&#xD;&#xA;* Grammer, spelling, and formatting of the post are acceptable and don't need any work (note: its a good thing to click 'edit' to see the actual markdown and make sure there isn't formatting that has been lost that needs to be brought back out like a numbered list or line breaks)&#xD;&#xA;* On topic without any need to migrate or suggest a way to make it narrower, less opinion, or need to refocus it from an existing off topic reason.&#xD;&#xA;* Not a duplicate of another post (do a search - especially the case with questions, many new users don't know of existing questions)&#xD;&#xA;* Not posted elsewhere on Stack Exchange (example: [&quot;This was posted on Stack Overflow as well, where it was closed and has now been deleted.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241598/cms-desktop-app-control#comment486410_241598) from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241598/cms-desktop-app-control could have either been up voted or researched and written themselves)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't want to check these things, either hit skip or don't do the First Posts review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Selecting 'no action needed' means that someone else *can't* do the review to check these things, completing it and giving guidance to the new P.SE user that may help them have a more positive experience on P.SE and Stack Exchange as a while.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/IxqNK.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18460" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6681" RevisionGUID="3b5013e1-bc67-4284-ab30-3cdb2a51398b" CreationDate="2014-06-06T06:21:55.950" UserId="31260" Comment="reviewed grammar :)" Text="Let's look at a block of &quot;No Action Needed&quot; reviews:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![No action needed][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What constitutes a 'reviewed' review?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Leaving a comment&#xD;&#xA; * Up voting a comment&#xD;&#xA; * Up voting the post&#xD;&#xA; * Down voting the post&#xD;&#xA; * Flagging (or close voting)&#xD;&#xA; * Editing the post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If something is likely to be closed, even if one doesn't agree with the closing philosophy leaving a comment suggesting for how to refocus the question in a way that isn't likely to get closed.  Alternatively, editing it to try to make it something that won't get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a no action needed it means that ***none*** of the above reasons are applicable or needed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Not bad enough to down vote&#xD;&#xA;* Not good enough to up vote&#xD;&#xA;* No existing comments to up vote to help suggest a better question or improve the existing answer&#xD;&#xA;* No additional guidance needed to help improve the post (note: likely in conflict with 'not good enough to up vote' - it is unlikely that *both* of these are true, but may be the case)&#xD;&#xA;* Grammar, spelling, and formatting of the post are acceptable and don't need any work (note: it's a good thing to click 'edit' to see the actual markdown and make sure there isn't formatting that has been lost that needs to be brought back out like a numbered list or line breaks)&#xD;&#xA;* On topic without any need to migrate or suggest a way to make it narrower, less opinion, or need to refocus it from an existing off topic reason.&#xD;&#xA;* Not a duplicate of another post (do a search - especially the case with questions, many new users don't know of existing questions)&#xD;&#xA;* Not posted elsewhere on Stack Exchange (example: [&quot;This was posted on Stack Overflow as well, where it was closed and has now been deleted.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241598/cms-desktop-app-control#comment486410_241598) from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241598/cms-desktop-app-control could have either been up voted or researched and written themselves)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't want to check these things, either hit skip or don't do the First Posts review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Selecting 'no action needed' means that someone else *can't* do the review to check these things, completing it and giving guidance to the new P.SE user that may help them have a more positive experience on P.SE and Stack Exchange as a while.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/IxqNK.png &quot;No action needed?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18461" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6489" RevisionGUID="d271bf70-9239-47c9-8c75-18a60e2650e9" CreationDate="2014-06-06T12:16:42.007" UserId="5099" Comment="Added bullet point on assumptions" Text="#Unclear what you are asking#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are looking for, in the [context of Programmers.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This close reason can also be a bit unclear as to what the issue is.  Please be sure to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Give enough context that someone reading the question can understand it&#xD;&#xA;* Explain what you are looking for&#xD;&#xA;* Check to make sure you are not using jargon that is particular to one specific branch of computing (and if you are, either change the jargon or link to a site that explains it)&#xD;&#xA;* Check that there are no hidden assumption or &quot;leaps of thought&quot; in your question. They might be obvious to you, but they won't be to the wider community. It is often better to spell it all out explicitly, even if you think it is blindingly obvious.&#xD;&#xA;* Make sure you are on the proper site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last point is important too.  This close reason is often used as a proxy for &quot;we don't think that this question is a good question for Programmers.SE (it might be on Stack Overflow), but would get closed there too.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explain your design.  Explain what you have done.  Explain where you are having difficulty.  Explain what you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear what help you need](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260) (see also [linked MSE post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/215806/165773))&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as unclear?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6489/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18462" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6682" RevisionGUID="4b5dbc68-e88e-4f89-9812-0137c61bded2" CreationDate="2014-06-06T13:25:15.990" UserId="51367" Text="This question ticked me off a bit:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/243190/software-monetization-that-is-not-evil&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's basically a question about how to monetize software without using toolbars.&#xD;&#xA;And while I know a large population hates those toolbars and may even find them evil. I also think it's large irrelevant to the question of calling certain things evil.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, a question should be a question that's answerable, just that, not also a platform for personal beliefs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, should you edit out something like that in a question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18463" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6682" RevisionGUID="4b5dbc68-e88e-4f89-9812-0137c61bded2" CreationDate="2014-06-06T13:25:15.990" UserId="51367" Text="Should you edit questions which have a moral value statement in it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18464" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6682" RevisionGUID="4b5dbc68-e88e-4f89-9812-0137c61bded2" CreationDate="2014-06-06T13:25:15.990" UserId="51367" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18465" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6682" RevisionGUID="463c2afd-5d48-46c0-a675-f555aba31f20" CreationDate="2014-06-06T13:32:22.187" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|question-title|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18467" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6680" RevisionGUID="36c56d7b-cf79-4dfb-8b87-9e932e83559c" CreationDate="2014-06-06T15:21:39.747" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|review|new-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18468" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6680" RevisionGUID="6cf63d9b-040e-41cc-a071-02a45019c18f" CreationDate="2014-06-06T15:51:44.543" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/474941720136675328" />
  <row Id="18469" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6682" RevisionGUID="1207b17a-8351-4bdd-a49a-3d3259c9c00d" CreationDate="2014-06-06T16:03:27.627" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|editing|question-title|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18470" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6681" RevisionGUID="5ada6dd3-c04a-4ce9-b104-5f0d3b4d1bca" CreationDate="2014-06-06T16:22:47.687" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 384 characters in body" Text="Let's look at a block of &quot;No Action Needed&quot; reviews:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![No action needed][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What constitutes a 'reviewed' review?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Leaving a comment&#xD;&#xA; * Up voting a comment&#xD;&#xA; * Up voting the post&#xD;&#xA; * Down voting the post&#xD;&#xA; * Flagging (or close voting)&#xD;&#xA; * Editing the post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If something is likely to be closed, even if one doesn't agree with the closing philosophy leaving a comment suggesting for how to refocus the question in a way that isn't likely to get closed.  Alternatively, editing it to try to make it something that won't get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a no action needed it means that ***none*** of the above reasons are applicable or needed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Not bad enough to down vote&#xD;&#xA;* Not good enough to up vote&#xD;&#xA;* No existing comments to up vote to help suggest a better question or improve the existing answer&#xD;&#xA;* No additional guidance needed to help improve the post (note: likely in conflict with 'not good enough to up vote' - it is unlikely that *both* of these are true, but may be the case)&#xD;&#xA;* Grammar, spelling, and formatting of the post are acceptable and don't need any work (note: it's a good thing to click 'edit' to see the actual markdown and make sure there isn't formatting that has been lost that needs to be brought back out like a numbered list or line breaks)&#xD;&#xA;* On topic without any need to migrate or suggest a way to make it narrower, less opinion, or need to refocus it from an existing off topic reason.&#xD;&#xA;* Not a duplicate of another post (do a search - especially the case with questions, many new users don't know of existing questions)&#xD;&#xA;* Not posted elsewhere on Stack Exchange (example: [&quot;This was posted on Stack Overflow as well, where it was closed and has now been deleted.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241598/cms-desktop-app-control#comment486410_241598) from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241598/cms-desktop-app-control could have either been up voted or researched and written themselves)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't want to check these things, either hit skip or don't do the First Posts review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Selecting 'no action needed' means that someone else *can't* do the review to check these things, completing it and giving guidance to the new P.SE user that may help them have a more positive experience on P.SE and Stack Exchange as a while.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is in part an issue with the system.  The First Post review queue, by its nature, has binding votes for *every* review.  This isn't something that people are always aware of, but the First Post review (and late answer) are both review queues that one should approach with all the seriousness of a diamond mod because there's no redo or community safety net for these reviews.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/IxqNK.png &quot;No action needed?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18471" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6683" RevisionGUID="4bb5156d-cc04-4957-9ac1-535d5ce177db" CreationDate="2014-06-07T07:16:34.060" UserId="5099" Text="If you can turn a bad question into a good question by editing out the moral value statements, by all means do it. Just improving the question should be reason enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't edit a question just because it contains a moral value statement. That is tantamount to making your own moral value statement on the value of having such statements in a question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18472" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6684" RevisionGUID="8abd6ea2-8de5-4991-95cb-5e9bcd0638d0" CreationDate="2014-06-07T14:41:08.710" UserId="91041" Text="No, you shouldn't edit-out statements of morality.  Perception of right and wrong is fundamental to human nature, and while some questions invoking morality may be too broad, the statements themselves are part and parcel of rational discourse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This particular question was way too broad to be a good one, but if it has been asked instead as &quot;What is a non-evil way to monetize using a toolbar?&quot;, we would have had a very viable question with clear possible answers.  Especially if the question or answer specified what was evil about using toolbars." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18473" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6679" RevisionGUID="058d5795-7076-4faf-969d-393775ed44fb" CreationDate="2014-06-09T10:01:47.537" UserId="25936" Comment="added 165 characters in body" Text="I took a quick look at the [review history][1] in our [first posts review queue][2] and I've noticed some &quot;No Action Needed&quot; reviews that I didn't agree with. That's not a problem, I don't expect anyone to share my opinions on what makes a good Programmers post. However, I think the nature of the queue is such, that there is almost always something to fix, even if it's simply spelling and grammar. The queue hosts the very first posts from brand new users, who - quite understandably - aren't always familiar with our philosophy and rules. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To make matters a bit more complicated, *it only takes one review to push the post out of the first posts queue*. This means that we need to be a bit more careful with it, than - say - with the close votes queue. Your &quot;No Action Needed&quot; vote is binding, and if you use it carelessly you may cheat a brand new user of possibly critical feedback. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to ask all our reviewers to just skip the review if you aren't 100% sure that the post can be improved (in any way), or don't have the time to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Related**: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Looking for guidance on using “No Action Needed” in the first posts review queue][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Please require more reviewers on First Posts][4] (on Meta Stack Exchange)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/history&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6680/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/188457/please-require-more-reviewers-on-first-posts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18474" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6311" RevisionGUID="33c8fc20-2276-40c8-a126-891c205fa8c5" CreationDate="2014-06-09T11:47:26.800" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18475" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6665" RevisionGUID="a14e6a31-ddfe-4347-bac4-27c311acbefa" CreationDate="2014-06-09T11:47:48.703" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|cross-posting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18476" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6625" RevisionGUID="79755870-bc8a-4e0d-92f0-9ba2de082363" CreationDate="2014-06-09T11:48:25.977" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="I just failed an audit, but I was right and it was wrong. What now?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18477" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6625" RevisionGUID="79755870-bc8a-4e0d-92f0-9ba2de082363" CreationDate="2014-06-09T11:48:25.977" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|review|review-audits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18478" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="3d84995d-a6ce-40c9-b7bc-3a388e6dfd56" CreationDate="2014-06-09T11:49:23.317" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|faq-proposed|down-votes|meta-faq|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18479" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6440" RevisionGUID="1e7a2b37-03f3-4599-ab0c-63361528b1e6" CreationDate="2014-06-09T11:51:42.420" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="What is this site's definitions of development methodologies?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18480" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6440" RevisionGUID="1e7a2b37-03f3-4599-ab0c-63361528b1e6" CreationDate="2014-06-09T11:51:42.420" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18481" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6440" RevisionGUID="1e7a2b37-03f3-4599-ab0c-63361528b1e6" CreationDate="2014-06-09T11:51:42.420" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="[I have a question that was put on hold a little while ago.](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/227738/how-do-i-get-a-project-owner-to-participate-in-acceptance-testing?noredirect=1#comment452842_227738) Not the end of the world, it was a question about agile development and that's not strictly a programmer topic. But [when I looked at the on topic page I noticed that development methodologies was listed as the fourth item as on topic.](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) Then I went over to Wikipedia just to check to make sure that [development methodologies would include Agile development.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_methodology)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point, I'm unsure why the question was closed. To my mind it seems to fit the on topic portion of this Stack Exchange. So what about my question is off-topic? How could I phrase it differently to be on-topic? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18482" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6559" RevisionGUID="10d2eced-0fd7-43fa-acd3-7706d84ea720" CreationDate="2014-06-09T11:52:23.407" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18491" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6687" RevisionGUID="1f6e402f-71c4-4614-9507-700cee712656" CreationDate="2014-06-10T08:53:53.003" UserId="106104" Text="   Still feeling not very clear about StackoverFlow and Programmers after reading: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5793/rule-for-posting-programmers-vs-stackoverflow, so continue to this post, here goes my questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&quot;... Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;OK, It seems that Programmers is only for a higher concept question about software design and something related to that, compared with this, StackoverFlow more focuses on a detailled, code-based question——**Am I right?** **If yes, what does &quot;higher concept question&quot; mean?** I didn't find anything about that anywhere here, so can anyone be kind to tell me? And this means a lower-level question won't be supported and it will be abandoned? **But how to say which is lower/higher?** Just say if you can search out the result in google/stackoverflow/stackexchange, that's a lower-level question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another thing I'm thinking of is: **If I'm in a white-board of a certain concept about programming but only with some rough ideas** (not sure yet,all are my guesses,probably all are wrong or most of them are wrong……), so can I talk about them to fetch all of my ideas out as a considerate question(to make the question complete). I think we should do that.... **Unfortunately, Karl Bielefeldt** says such questions won't be supported……but if these ideas are part of the white-board question to make the question very complete.... so why and how to do to describe?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18492" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6687" RevisionGUID="1f6e402f-71c4-4614-9507-700cee712656" CreationDate="2014-06-10T08:53:53.003" UserId="106104" Text="How to use &quot;Programmers&quot; well？" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18493" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6687" RevisionGUID="1f6e402f-71c4-4614-9507-700cee712656" CreationDate="2014-06-10T08:53:53.003" UserId="106104" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18494" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6688" RevisionGUID="7ca196bc-a801-44c7-bbf9-856834dd39c0" CreationDate="2014-06-10T11:25:58.580" UserId="17898" Text="Such questions shouldn't be edited, they should be closed as opinion based, because the entire question is about peoples' opinions after all...&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;If the asker wants to change the question into something real, let them do it themselves, let's not try to do it for them and change the meaning of the question to something it's not or they'll likely never learn." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18495" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6689" RevisionGUID="caa9bc6c-61e5-4877-a782-eb30e3192d3f" CreationDate="2014-06-10T23:27:53.103" UserId="35693" Text="My question stemmed from happenings on this [question.][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was one person that voted to close, that also answered the question. The same person also edited the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On other sites, at least, I've always felt that &quot;if a question is good enough to answer, it's good enough to leave open.&quot; Sometimes I would edit and improve the question before answering it. But having done so, I wouldn't vote to close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, on the other hand, I felt that the question was bad enough to vote to close, then I wouldn't dignify it with an answer. Is this the right posture, to discourage others from answering until the other four close votes are registered? (I don't have enough rep on this site to vote to close, so I flag moderators instead.) And is there a potential conflict of interest with answering a question, then voting to close, meaning that I can get &quot;rep&quot; for an answer, but deny the opportunity to others?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, I wouldn't both edit and vote to close. Either my edit was good enough to salvage the question, or maybe it wasn't. But again, is there a conflict of interest if I did both?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/244550/after-html-and-css" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18496" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6689" RevisionGUID="caa9bc6c-61e5-4877-a782-eb30e3192d3f" CreationDate="2014-06-10T23:27:53.103" UserId="35693" Text="Are there actions taken on a question that are incompatible with voting to close?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18497" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6689" RevisionGUID="caa9bc6c-61e5-4877-a782-eb30e3192d3f" CreationDate="2014-06-10T23:27:53.103" UserId="35693" Text="|discussion|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18498" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6690" RevisionGUID="689902c8-8775-4e4c-b0d6-64e624143abc" CreationDate="2014-06-10T23:45:13.267" UserId="1204" Text="Some thoughts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  People sometimes change their mind.  They also sometimes forget to retract their vote after an edit.&#xD;&#xA;2.  There are many questions, both here and on Stack Overflow, that are closed but not deleted, because the value of the resulting content was deemed greater than the need to remove it.  This sometimes causes heartburn amongst new users who cite such questions as proof that they can ask theirs, but most of us have learned to live with the apparent incongruity of off-topic questions sometimes getting a pass.&#xD;&#xA;3.  It takes 5 people with close vote privileges to close a question, so four other users would have to be colluding to deny rep to others, which is ridiculous (and doesn't happen).&#xD;&#xA;4.  That an answer is posted to a question doesn't automatically make the question a good one.  &#xD;&#xA;5.  What does dignity have to do with anything?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18500" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6692" RevisionGUID="da7ac379-cd04-476c-a0b8-05013de4dc74" CreationDate="2014-06-11T09:15:09.737" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="In the past I did the following in order on Stack Overflow at least several times:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Found a question, couldn't make much sense of it, voted to close it as &quot;Not a real question&quot; (the predecessor to 'unclear what you're asking'). &#xD;&#xA; 2. Read it a few more times, epiphany hit, understood what they were getting at&#xD;&#xA; 3. Edited the question to be much clearer, left a comment for the author to make sure I preserved their intent&#xD;&#xA; 4. Answered the question, since I knew the answer&#xD;&#xA; 5. Felt like a very sad panda because I voted to close an interesting question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can unfold in different ways but I think _making the edit_, or doing something else to give others the same sense of value you saw which led you to answer the question. Sometimes you can pull that off simply _by_ answering and showing others there's more depth to the question than what meets the eye.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other thing I _strongly_ encourage users to do is answer duplicates in the course of voting to close them as such. Write an answer that pulls in knowledge from the _most relevant answer_ on the duplicate, and explain how it pertains to the problem / code at hand. That gives these 'stubs' that are left _much_ more lasting value to those that find them as folks search for things in a variety of ways.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other cases, if you _still_ feel that the question should be closed _yet feel compelled to answer it_, then you probably want to consider making some edits instead. It's not black and white, though - sometimes sending someone off with a better start than they had can be the right thing to do, even if it's not in the process of creating something of lasting value. Maybe you see something in them and _want_ them to come back. It's (as I said) sometimes fuzzy. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take away - prefer editing _and_ answering if you can over closing if you think you've got a gem that just needs some polish, but don't let 'decision paralysis' prevent you from keeping the site clean _or_ extending a welcoming hand to a new user. Just do what makes sense given what you've got. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18501" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6692" RevisionGUID="65c09987-36eb-44d4-b663-576a9648640d" CreationDate="2014-06-11T13:09:09.937" UserDisplayName="user131" Comment="because complete sentences are lovely. " Text="In the past I did the following in order on Stack Overflow at least several times:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Found a question, couldn't make much sense of it, voted to close it as &quot;Not a real question&quot; (the predecessor to 'unclear what you're asking'). &#xD;&#xA; 2. Read it a few more times, epiphany hit, understood what they were getting at&#xD;&#xA; 3. Edited the question to be much clearer, left a comment for the author to make sure I preserved their intent&#xD;&#xA; 4. Answered the question, since I knew the answer&#xD;&#xA; 5. Felt like a very sad panda because I voted to close an interesting question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can unfold in different ways but I think _making the edit_, or doing something else to give others the same sense of value you saw which led you to answer the question is what matters. Sometimes you can pull that off simply _by_ answering and showing others there's more depth to the question than what meets the eye.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other thing I _strongly_ encourage users to do is answer duplicates in the course of voting to close them as such. Write an answer that pulls in knowledge from the _most relevant answer_ on the duplicate, and explain how it pertains to the problem / code at hand. That gives these 'stubs' that are left _much_ more lasting value to those that find them as folks search for things in a variety of ways.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other cases, if you _still_ feel that the question should be closed _yet feel compelled to answer it_, then you probably want to consider making some edits instead. It's not black and white, though - sometimes sending someone off with a better start than they had can be the right thing to do, even if it's not in the process of creating something of lasting value. Maybe you see something in them and _want_ them to come back. It's (as I said) sometimes fuzzy. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take away - prefer editing _and_ answering if you can over closing if you think you've got a gem that just needs some polish, but don't let 'decision paralysis' prevent you from keeping the site clean _or_ extending a welcoming hand to a new user. Just do what makes sense given what you've got. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18502" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6693" RevisionGUID="ea45fd54-b9a0-43b9-ac2e-b5ad95df4710" CreationDate="2014-06-11T16:17:34.327" UserId="1204" Text="In general, questions should be *answerable,* and *potentially useful to others.*  It's also nice if they are *interesting* questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions that will not fit into these categories:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Questions that require a basic level of knowledge that you don't yet possess.&#xD;&#xA;2.  Questions that merely seek to engage in a discussion about something.&#xD;&#xA;3.  Coding/implementation questions, for which Stack Overflow is a better fit.&#xD;&#xA;4.  Water cooler or office politics questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18503" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6687" RevisionGUID="2e59ee6d-a421-432d-8e72-bc36e184e454" CreationDate="2014-06-11T22:23:40.260" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/476852290356121600" />
  <row Id="18504" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6694" RevisionGUID="5268fbff-df8d-49f3-87b8-bafab493c02c" CreationDate="2014-06-11T23:16:24.883" UserId="35693" Text="Sorry for being so &quot;political,&quot; but I'd like to address your question from two sides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing is that is not (on most counts) a high quality question, and a very good case could be made that it should be closed on that basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second thing is that it is hard to close--for reasons basically out of your control. And that is, the questioner quoted Joel Spolsky, who is a recognized tech guru (like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs), and more to the point, is the &quot;big cheese&quot; (along with Jeff Atwood), on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If Joel supported closing the question, that would be that. Absent such support, the question was given an &quot;aura&quot; that would attract upvotes and make it more popular than it might otherwise earn on its merits. Some people might be afraid to vote to close a question that had the founder's name on it. Basically you did what you did, and probably the right thing, but ended up swimming against the tide.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This reminds me of the joke between two employees. Number 1:  That summer intern we just hired is way behind the curve, isn't he? Number 2: Yes he is, but I wouldn't go around saying it, because he's the nephew of the big boss." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18505" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6695" RevisionGUID="7ced7d53-b764-4b5b-a598-53b82b072516" CreationDate="2014-06-12T10:24:21.373" UserId="119891" Text="Your question is interesting to me, but I am not sure that I have a final answer.  If I were to take that quote (&quot;Stack Overflow when you are in front of the screen, Programmers when you are in front of the whiteboard&quot;) and I tried to introduce more specificity, I would say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Programmers should be answerable by citing from established literature on development practices; questions on Stack Overflow should be answerable by citing from a language or library reference manual.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By established literature I mean well-known and respected books like &quot;Code Complete&quot;, &quot;Clean Code&quot;, &quot;Effective Java&quot; ... and by reference manual I mean an ideal, all-encompassing reference that many times only exists as the source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why my emphasis in citations?  The problem is that some &quot;whiteboard questions&quot; can have multiple, equally good answers, depending on taste or particular situations.  But Stack Exchange sites have a focus in their format to select a single, accepted answer ([asking for multiple examples can be flagged as &quot;shopping&quot;][1]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, there are whiteboard questions that **do have** a single answer because there is an established practice (with measured benefits in the best case) and going against such practices will just make your code less understandable and less maintainable.  Such practices are usually well-known because they can be found in the mentioned books, and they are written there because many people, over years of practice, have come to the same conclusions.  Somebody would ask on Programmers because he is unaware that such a convention exists, or the convention is from a field less general than the books I just listed, like database administration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me give an example of both types of &quot;whiteboard questions&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Should I limit the length of code lines?&quot; has a definite answer, and it is &quot;Yes&quot;, because both &quot;Code Complete&quot; and &quot;Clean Code&quot; (I think) mention that long lines are a common source of  bugs, and the first even points to hard data.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Should I prefix all classes that deal with persistence as `Stored-`?&quot;; I have no idea, it depends on your team's conventions, or your development environment.  Maybe there is even such a convention in a particular language, but then your question should specify that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please understand this is just an attempt at further clarification: there are probably a lot of exceptions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241116/scenario-to-illustrate-how-unit-testing-leads-to-better-design/241132#241132" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18506" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6695" RevisionGUID="f06aafce-bae7-46a0-bd68-1d09dd4931df" CreationDate="2014-06-12T11:46:01.300" UserId="119891" Comment="Add example on SO vs Programmers" Text="Your question is interesting to me, but I am not sure that I have a final answer.  If I were to take that quote (&quot;Stack Overflow when you are in front of the screen, Programmers when you are in front of the whiteboard&quot;) and I tried to introduce more specificity, I would say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Programmers should be answerable by citing from established literature on development practices; questions on Stack Overflow should be answerable by citing from a language or library reference manual.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By established literature I mean well-known and respected books like &quot;Code Complete&quot;, &quot;Clean Code&quot;, &quot;Effective Java&quot; ... and by reference manual I mean an ideal, all-encompassing reference that many times only exists as the source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why my emphasis in citations?  The problem is that some &quot;whiteboard questions&quot; can have multiple, equally good answers, depending on taste or particular situations.  But Stack Exchange sites have a focus in their format to select a single, accepted answer ([asking for multiple examples can be flagged as &quot;shopping&quot;][1]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, there are whiteboard questions that **do have** a single answer because there is an established practice (with measured benefits in the best case) and going against such practices will just make your code less understandable and less maintainable.  Such practices are usually well-known because they can be found in the mentioned books, and they are written there because many people, over years of practice, have come to the same conclusions.  Somebody would ask on Programmers because he is unaware that such a convention exists, or the convention is from a field less general than the books I just listed, like database administration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me give an example of both types of &quot;whiteboard questions&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Should I limit the length of code lines?&quot; has a definite answer, and it is &quot;Yes&quot;, because both &quot;Code Complete&quot; and &quot;Clean Code&quot; (I think) mention that long lines are a common source of  bugs, and the first even points to hard data.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Should I prefix all classes that deal with persistence as `Stored-`?&quot;; I have no idea, it depends on your team's conventions, or your development environment.  Maybe there is even such a convention in a particular language, but then your question should specify that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me also add an example on the distinction between Stack Overflow and Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Should I use constants for repeated literal values?&quot; should go to Programmers, because both &quot;Effective Java&quot; and &quot;Effective C++&quot; recommend to do so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Why is this constant in Java not working?&quot;; *maybe* the answer is found on &quot;Effective Java&quot;, but if it is something you can imagine as being part of Oracle's specification of Java (an implementation detail of the language), then it should go to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please understand this is just an attempt at further clarification: there are probably a lot of exceptions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241116/scenario-to-illustrate-how-unit-testing-leads-to-better-design/241132#241132" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18507" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6687" RevisionGUID="99f2b63d-8cf9-44ee-a349-a39ad5b94cfa" CreationDate="2014-06-12T13:17:42.003" UserId="7422" Comment="normalize nonstandard punctuation" Text="   Still feeling not very clear about Stack Overflow and Programmers after reading: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5793/rule-for-posting-programmers-vs-stackoverflow, so continue to this post, here goes my questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&quot;... Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;OK, It seems that Programmers is only for a higher concept question about software design and something related to that, compared with this, Stack Overflow more focuses on a detailed, code-based question——**Am I right?** **If yes, what does &quot;higher concept question&quot; mean?** I didn't find anything about that anywhere here, so can anyone be kind to tell me? And this means a lower-level question won't be supported and it will be abandoned? **But how to say which is lower/higher?** Just say if you can search out the result in google/stackoverflow/stackexchange, that's a lower-level question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another thing I'm thinking of is: **If I'm in a white-board of a certain concept about programming but only with some rough ideas** (not sure yet,all are my guesses,probably all are wrong or most of them are wrong...), so can I talk about them to fetch all of my ideas out as a considerate question(to make the question complete). I think we should do that.... **Unfortunately, Karl Bielefeldt** says such questions won't be supported...but if these ideas are part of the white-board question to make the question very complete.... so why and how to do to describe?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18508" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6687" RevisionGUID="99f2b63d-8cf9-44ee-a349-a39ad5b94cfa" CreationDate="2014-06-12T13:17:42.003" UserId="7422" Comment="normalize nonstandard punctuation" Text="How to use &quot;Programmers&quot; well?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18509" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6681" RevisionGUID="7fd5e502-cac5-415f-ad6d-76320b0e515f" CreationDate="2014-06-12T21:27:25.450" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 470 characters in body" Text="Let's look at a block of &quot;No Action Needed&quot; reviews:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![No action needed][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What constitutes a 'reviewed' review?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Leaving a comment&#xD;&#xA; * Up voting a comment&#xD;&#xA; * Up voting the post&#xD;&#xA; * Down voting the post&#xD;&#xA; * Flagging (or close voting)&#xD;&#xA; * Editing the post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If something is likely to be closed, even if one doesn't agree with the closing philosophy leaving a comment suggesting for how to refocus the question in a way that isn't likely to get closed.  Alternatively, editing it to try to make it something that won't get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a no action needed it means that ***none*** of the above reasons are applicable or needed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Not bad enough to down vote&#xD;&#xA;* Not good enough to up vote&#xD;&#xA;* No existing comments to up vote to help suggest a better question or improve the existing answer&#xD;&#xA;* No additional guidance needed to help improve the post (note: likely in conflict with 'not good enough to up vote' - it is unlikely that *both* of these are true, but may be the case)&#xD;&#xA;* Grammar, spelling, and formatting of the post are acceptable and don't need any work (note: it's a good thing to click 'edit' to see the actual markdown and make sure there isn't formatting that has been lost that needs to be brought back out like a numbered list or line breaks)&#xD;&#xA;    * There is no unnecessary preamble or bit at the end that is appropriate to remove ('hello', 'thanks', 'hope this helps', etc... consider also linking to [Should 'Hi', 'thanks,' taglines, and salutations be removed from posts?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2950/should-hi-thanks-taglines-and-salutations-be-removed-from-posts))&#xD;&#xA;    * Double check the title.  Tags in the title are unnecessary ([MSE guidance](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19190/should-questions-include-tags-in-their-titles)).  Make sure the title of the question matches the question.&#xD;&#xA;* On topic without any need to migrate or suggest a way to make it narrower, less opinion, or need to refocus it from an existing off topic reason.&#xD;&#xA;* Not a duplicate of another post (do a search - especially the case with questions, many new users don't know of existing questions)&#xD;&#xA;* Not posted elsewhere on Stack Exchange (example: [&quot;This was posted on Stack Overflow as well, where it was closed and has now been deleted.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241598/cms-desktop-app-control#comment486410_241598) from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241598/cms-desktop-app-control could have either been up voted or researched and written themselves)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't want to check these things, either hit skip or don't do the First Posts review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Selecting 'no action needed' means that someone else *can't* do the review to check these things, completing it and giving guidance to the new P.SE user that may help them have a more positive experience on P.SE and Stack Exchange as a while.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is in part an issue with the system.  The First Post review queue, by its nature, has binding votes for *every* review.  This isn't something that people are always aware of, but the First Post review (and late answer) are both review queues that one should approach with all the seriousness of a diamond mod because there's no redo or community safety net for these reviews.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/IxqNK.png &quot;No action needed?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18510" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6696" RevisionGUID="b0933e29-351f-47f5-96fd-f4b472b6dfe7" CreationDate="2014-06-13T14:57:39.813" UserId="5048" Text="When I click the &quot;flag&quot; link on [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/244800/qml-and-qfilesystemmodel-interaction-problem), the popup claims I have already flagged it twice:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * it is a duplicate... This question has been asked before and already has an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have already raised this type of flag&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * it should be closed for another reason... This question does not meet this site's standards and should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have already raised this type of flag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can believe that I flagged it once (as &quot;...another reason...&quot; if I encountered it yesterday), but I'm pretty sure I didn't flag it twice - I cannot imagine that I flagged it as a duplicate of anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My flag history agrees and shows only one flag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Qml and QfileSystemModel interaction problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked yesterday by user136432&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off-topic – Andrew Medico 20 hours ago   helpful &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why, then, is the system claiming I flagged it twice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18511" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6696" RevisionGUID="b0933e29-351f-47f5-96fd-f4b472b6dfe7" CreationDate="2014-06-13T14:57:39.813" UserId="5048" Text="I flagged a question twice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18512" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6696" RevisionGUID="b0933e29-351f-47f5-96fd-f4b472b6dfe7" CreationDate="2014-06-13T14:57:39.813" UserId="5048" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18513" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6697" RevisionGUID="df553f06-3cc3-4437-b5af-4f036eba786e" CreationDate="2014-06-13T18:06:31.467" UserId="57479" Text="Like seriously, you closed this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/243309/how-to-find-original-source-code-of-javascript-implementation-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is wrong with that question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Was it to cool for you?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Did it remind you of when you got made fun of?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18514" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6697" RevisionGUID="df553f06-3cc3-4437-b5af-4f036eba786e" CreationDate="2014-06-13T18:06:31.467" UserId="57479" Text="Why are you moderators SO lame?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18515" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6697" RevisionGUID="df553f06-3cc3-4437-b5af-4f036eba786e" CreationDate="2014-06-13T18:06:31.467" UserId="57479" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18516" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6698" RevisionGUID="9b3236ec-6246-4d82-937e-a73ea7726f60" CreationDate="2014-06-13T18:12:27.453" UserId="4" Text="Have you read the close reason?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or the [&quot;what not to ask&quot; section of the listing of what's on-topic here][1]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18517" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6697" RevisionGUID="3bd7463d-1718-4968-80c3-6ae97b6fabde" CreationDate="2014-06-13T18:13:25.267" UserId="57479" Comment="deleted 52 characters in body" Text="Like seriously, you closed this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/243309/how-to-find-original-source-code-of-javascript-implementation-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is wrong with that question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Was it to cool for you?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18518" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6697" RevisionGUID="0724d22e-f636-4c1c-af36-ba6a69f0dd96" CreationDate="2014-06-13T18:19:57.063" UserId="57479" Comment="deleted 14 characters in body; edited title" Text="You closed this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/243309/how-to-find-original-source-code-of-javascript-implementation-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is wrong with that question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18519" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6697" RevisionGUID="0724d22e-f636-4c1c-af36-ba6a69f0dd96" CreationDate="2014-06-13T18:19:57.063" UserId="57479" Comment="deleted 14 characters in body; edited title" Text="Why are you moderators so strict?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18520" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6697" RevisionGUID="95dd0fd7-1eaf-4b00-9452-3cc60792e225" CreationDate="2014-06-13T18:27:10.967" UserId="57479" Comment="deleted 14 characters in body; edited title" Text="You closed this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/243309/how-to-find-original-source-code-of-javascript-implementation-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is wrong with that question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously one user's opinion does not matter so much. People only matter at the aggregate level, not singly. But by being this strict, you guys really just push people away from your website. Maybe you do not care. You seem to be making OK money from the site from those (excuse me) stupid ads on the right column. I was really into that question and at one point it had 6 upvotes (until you guys started down-voting it as a result of this question), Why does this website have to be so censored?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18521" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6699" RevisionGUID="39b9d82b-00f2-4920-9d46-ede56b66d296" CreationDate="2014-06-13T18:28:56.640" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="In your question on main, you asked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was hoping to find the original implementation, or the interpreter for the scripting language. Is this goal capable of being reached, or in other words, can I find it on the internet somewhere?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This basically translates into two separate questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Where can I find the original implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Can I find the original implementation on the internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first is a request for an off-site resource.  Thomas' answer explains why that's off-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second simply isn't answerable by the community except in answering the first question.  The negative (&quot;No, it can't be found&quot;) can't be conclusively proven." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18522" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6698" RevisionGUID="de8efda0-893d-4baa-80ed-ea523a24548a" CreationDate="2014-06-13T18:34:36.353" UserId="4" Comment="added 1154 characters in body" Text="Have you read the close reason?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or the [&quot;what not to ask&quot; section of the listing of what's on-topic here][1]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To address your specific points, question quality is extremely important to Stack Exchange. To attract experts in a particular subject area, the questions need to be interesting and relevant. We have a very specific [scope][2], relatively strict [guidelines for what makes a good question][3], and [rules for post quality and content][4]. These rules are what make Stack Exchange successful, draw in experts, and provide high quality answers for people who are searching for them (Google loves Stack Exchange sites - many are often on the first page or two of Google if there's a related question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, the community is wrong. Up votes don't mean that a question should remain open. If it doesn't belong, it should be closed. If possible, it should be cleaned up to make it appropriate for the site. If not, then it may eventually be deleted so that the site eventually becomes a set of high quality questions with high quality answers that solve people's problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/behavior" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18523" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6700" RevisionGUID="00172ee0-8e3a-4ab9-9281-1974b00318cf" CreationDate="2014-06-13T18:50:18.580" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Its the *type* of flag that has already been raised.  For example, from some Stack Overflow flagging:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before flagging:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flagging:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After flagging:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A close vote (or flag) is one of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Duplicate&#xD;&#xA; * Another reason&#xD;&#xA;   * Opinion&#xD;&#xA;   * Too broad&#xD;&#xA;   * Off topic&#xD;&#xA;     * All those reasons...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once you raise a flag on any of these, its a close flag and goes into the close review queue.  You can't raise it again because its all the same *type* of flag, just with a different message attached.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, spam / offensive flags are also the 'same' and go into another type of process.  Low quality flags go into the low quality review queue.  And mod flags go into their special handler.  Each of those are also different types of flags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/mBSq6m.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/G7001m.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/189cBm.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18524" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6696" RevisionGUID="bbcd7fa5-5c40-485a-b564-8b24c88c4d1b" CreationDate="2014-06-13T21:50:55.987" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-bydesign|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18525" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6701" RevisionGUID="a19908d0-b40b-4975-9816-e8e55bf24424" CreationDate="2014-06-15T14:11:58.693" UserId="110826" Text="Regarding questions like [this one][1]: It seems fairly clearly off-topic from [the Tour page][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't ask about... implementation issues and coding tools&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the closest thing in the flag as off-topic dialog is this, which doesn't seem to cover questions such as the one I've linked to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;span class=&quot;action-name&quot;&gt;Questions asking us to &lt;b&gt;recommend a tool,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; library or favorite off-site resource&lt;/b&gt; are off-topic for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it.&lt;/span&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are questions asking how to use a specific dev tool off-topic? If so, what reason should be selected? If it is the option quoted, should this option be rephrased to make it clear that it covers questions asking for help using a specific dev tool?&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/244908/how-do-i-find-the-javascript-that-is-invoked-when-i-click-on-a-button-or-a-link&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18526" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6701" RevisionGUID="a19908d0-b40b-4975-9816-e8e55bf24424" CreationDate="2014-06-15T14:11:58.693" UserId="110826" Text="Are Questions Asking for Help Using a Tool Off-Topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18527" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6701" RevisionGUID="a19908d0-b40b-4975-9816-e8e55bf24424" CreationDate="2014-06-15T14:11:58.693" UserId="110826" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18528" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6702" RevisionGUID="ade5ed1e-168b-4219-a479-f015c6a69d6f" CreationDate="2014-06-15T14:26:21.133" UserId="4" Text="If a question is otherwise a good question, tool questions are likely to belong on Stack Overflow, and that site is a migration target. Potentially, Super User, Unix and Linux, Ubuntu, Mathematica, and others could be suitable targets. Some of these sites are not available to users, but mods cab migrate to any site on the network.&#xA;&#xA;If the question isn't good, then choose the right reason. If the user edits the question to make it suitable for migration, then they (or someone) can flag it for a moderator to migrate. If the question is not improved to be suitable for migration, then it won't be migrated. The first rule of migration, after all, is &quot;don't migrate crap&quot;.&#xA;&#xA;However, I don't consider the question you linked to as a tool question. Yes, the answer is how to use a tool, but it seems to be a methodology question where a tool exists to make the process easier. I'd have to think about it some more." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18529" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6702" RevisionGUID="9748a30a-2bf4-471e-840f-93af46d5da2c" CreationDate="2014-06-15T15:10:17.273" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="I don't know what a cab migrate is, but it sounds cool." Text="If a question is otherwise a good question, tool questions are likely to belong on Stack Overflow, and that site is a migration target. Potentially, Super User, Unix and Linux, Ubuntu, Mathematica, and others could be suitable targets. Some of these sites are not available to users, but mods can migrate to any site on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question isn't good, then choose the right reason. If the user edits the question to make it suitable for migration, then they (or someone) can flag it for a moderator to migrate. If the question is not improved to be suitable for migration, then it won't be migrated. The first rule of migration, after all, is &quot;don't migrate crap&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't consider the question you linked to as a tool question. Yes, the answer is how to use a tool, but it seems to be a methodology question where a tool exists to make the process easier. I'd have to think about it some more." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18530" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6703" RevisionGUID="45649a9e-4365-46a0-a4bc-4f3afeb5a5cb" CreationDate="2014-06-15T19:43:21.787" UserDisplayName="user136713" Text="(hopefully this is the right place to ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am asking this question because I am a bit concerned that questions are often not competently flagged, and users don't get support they need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was tagged opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;But here is the problem: I have completely no answer to this question.&#xD;&#xA;**So, if someone has given me even *some* answer, that would already help me a lot.**&#xD;&#xA;But it was just marked opinion based:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/245076/skills-needed-for-kinect-development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides, as &quot;opinion based&quot; is concerned, I don't think this is opinion based, because there can be simple answer like you need to know basic physics for it, etc.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18531" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6703" RevisionGUID="45649a9e-4365-46a0-a4bc-4f3afeb5a5cb" CreationDate="2014-06-15T19:43:21.787" UserDisplayName="user136713" Text="Opinion based questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18532" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6703" RevisionGUID="45649a9e-4365-46a0-a4bc-4f3afeb5a5cb" CreationDate="2014-06-15T19:43:21.787" UserDisplayName="user136713" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18533" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6703" RevisionGUID="c1da40c0-319c-4c53-bed9-78235267f02e" CreationDate="2014-06-15T19:55:43.207" UserDisplayName="user136713" Comment="edited body" Text="(hopefully this is the right place to ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am asking this question because I am a bit concerned that questions are often not competently flagged, and users don't get support they need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was tagged opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;But here is the problem: I have completely no answer to this question.&#xD;&#xA;**So, if someone had given me even *some* answer, that would already help me a lot.**&#xD;&#xA;But it was just marked opinion based:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/245076/skills-needed-for-kinect-development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides, as &quot;opinion based&quot; is concerned, I don't think this is opinion based, because there can be simple answer like you need to know basic physics for it, etc.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18534" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6703" RevisionGUID="c1da40c0-319c-4c53-bed9-78235267f02e" CreationDate="2014-06-15T19:55:43.207" UserDisplayName="user136713" Comment="edited body" Text="Opinion based questions-did not receive enough help" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18535" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6704" RevisionGUID="dbecfe87-37a4-418b-9fa9-10650e5db3b5" CreationDate="2014-06-15T20:12:32.593" UserId="4767" Text="I closed the question as opinion based, as everyone will have a different opinion as to **what is required**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I might think that simply knowing a C like programming language is enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone else may think C# is needed. A third person may think basic physics is required. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not possible to tell, because &quot;kinect development&quot; is vague. What kind of kinect development? A game? A security system? Something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if it were clearer, opinions would still be prevalent - this is simply not something that can be objectively answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You also seem to believe that the goal of our sites is to provide help to individuals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It isn't. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are trying to build a corpus of good questions and good answers that are fact based and are useful to many people. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18536" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6705" RevisionGUID="e07549cb-5a2a-4bda-abbd-18f089f2bdf6" CreationDate="2014-06-16T01:26:05.980" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I've noticed in the reopen queue history and 10k close page that there are at least some people who will cast a reopen vote on nearly anything they see.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've gotta ask... *why* do you do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A bit ago, rachel [commented](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6642/examples-of-inappropriately-closed-questions/6648#comment17931_6648)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @RobertHarvey I am showing the number of close votes/voters compared to the number of reopen votes/voters. I think the core problem here is summarized at the end of my answer: Your chances of getting something closed or reopened is tied to a random variable: how many people review the question at the same time as you. In the case of new open content, it is viewed by many people, including our group of &quot;close happy&quot; users. In the case of closed content, very few people view it, and we don't even have a decent sized group of active &quot;reopen happy&quot; users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll say that is not completely accurate in that if there is sufficient change to the question to merit it reopening, its actually rather easy to get it reopened.  Sometimes it takes a bit of hunting for votes in chat (we can typically find 3 or 4 without bugging a mod)... but when its something that *should* be reopened, the biggest challenge is finding the votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, here's the thing... you've got one vote and one shot to get a question reopened.  When you use your vote as a one off protest vote on everything that goes through the queue or when a question that you answered gets closed - it makes it that much harder to find the votes when something *should* be reopened (and try to use the reopen review rather than asking in chat or bugging a mod).  Once that reopen vote times out, you can't cast it again - its gone.  So even when it does get fixed, you won't be able to cast a reopen vote on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If its true that that reopening depends heavily on getting people to hit 'reopen' in the review queue rather than leave closed, why do you vote when there's no change? or when there's only a minimal change that doesn't fix the perceived issues that closed it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for that matter, if you honestly think its something that should get reopened, but don't believe it will, ***edit*** it so that its a good question that even the most hardened close voter will agree its something that should be asked.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tossing your votes as a one off protest vote makes it that much harder to reopen good questions when the question *does* get edited into shape.  So why cast those votes without trying to edit the question to address the close reason and make better and unequivocally able to be reopened?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18537" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6705" RevisionGUID="e07549cb-5a2a-4bda-abbd-18f089f2bdf6" CreationDate="2014-06-16T01:26:05.980" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="To people who vote to reopen everything - *why*?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18538" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6705" RevisionGUID="e07549cb-5a2a-4bda-abbd-18f089f2bdf6" CreationDate="2014-06-16T01:26:05.980" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18539" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6706" RevisionGUID="9764a2eb-d09d-4dea-ae69-075d90325233" CreationDate="2014-06-16T18:46:32.017" UserId="34364" Text="(all annotations in red are mine)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Bug][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While reviewing, a random black bar appears across the question that I'm viewing. This appears on every post I review, only in the Close Votes category. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone else seeing this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PW9bL.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18540" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6706" RevisionGUID="9764a2eb-d09d-4dea-ae69-075d90325233" CreationDate="2014-06-16T18:46:32.017" UserId="34364" Text="UI Bug During Review" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18541" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6706" RevisionGUID="9764a2eb-d09d-4dea-ae69-075d90325233" CreationDate="2014-06-16T18:46:32.017" UserId="34364" Text="|bug|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18542" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6706" RevisionGUID="0c99cf81-1b0f-44b0-86a3-1727cfff1507" CreationDate="2014-06-16T19:13:13.080" UserId="226" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6671],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:34364,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Dynamic&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:40980,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;MichaelT&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:226,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Anna Lear&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="18543" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6682" RevisionGUID="2a10710d-0224-408c-b165-a9cf5b770e03" CreationDate="2014-06-16T19:34:49.713" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/478621740654809088" />
  <row Id="18544" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6707" RevisionGUID="3285651a-2176-4245-9df4-a91b39b92be6" CreationDate="2014-06-16T21:31:35.703" UserId="3965" Text="Speaking for myself, I cast reopen votes without edits because I have different standards for closing than you do, and believe the question stands on its own merits without needing to be &quot;edited into shape.&quot;  I could ask the reverse question of you, why you vote to close so many questions that I find perfectly fine as is?  Why do you vote to close when it's possible the question will get edited later and your vote will have been wasted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**It's a simple difference of opinion.**  If I can find four other people that agree with me, great, and around 10% of the time I do.  If I can't, so be it.  I accept that as a consequence of a community-moderated site.  My opinion doesn't always match the status quo.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as a vote being &quot;wasted&quot; if it's ever &quot;edited into shape,&quot; I've never seen the situation where it didn't gather enough votes from other people.  Also, the vast majority of closed questions are either edited before the reopen vote expires or not at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as &quot;addressing the close reason,&quot; the close reasons are being interpreted extremely broadly nowadays.  &quot;Unclear what you're asking&quot; is an especial favorite, which seems to mean anything from [you put the (mostly irrelevant) code in a link instead of the question body](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/242717/3965) to [you should only ask questions about things you aren't extremely confused about](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/241239/3965).  How exactly would you suggest fixing the latter?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18545" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6705" RevisionGUID="60d7df9a-cb42-4e43-9102-74c3ff09b1ea" CreationDate="2014-06-17T10:34:40.187" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/478848192457371650" />
  <row Id="18546" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6708" RevisionGUID="5479255f-e401-4bf5-8dee-4537c3c2c666" CreationDate="2014-06-17T13:47:38.520" UserId="9302" Text="Your question contains value statements you assume are universal. I'm guessing they're not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;some people who will cast a reopen vote on nearly anything they see&quot; - They probably don't see it that way. I can't imagine anyone trying to do the wrong thing. I can imagine people holding a view of the right thing that's different than yours.&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;one off protest vote&quot; - This phrase is pretty loaded. You're attributing motives that may or may not exist. Why do you assume a vote that's different than yours is in protest? This phrase also hints that some votes are more legitimate than others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another theme is &quot;sufficient change&quot; versus no/minimal change before a question is re-opened. I'm guessing the re-openers didn't see anything wrong with the question in the first place. Either that or it's a glass half empty/full thing. Some people think a question is sufficiently bad to be closed while others think it's sufficiently good to remain open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, I just don't think most people are interested in &quot;hunting for votes in chat&quot; or editing other people's questions so &quot;that even the most hardened close voter will agree&quot;. This is a level of effort that sounds absolutely crazy to me. Maybe I'll click through a few items in a review queue, but I have absolutely no interest in writing people's questions for them or turning every closed question into a consensus building exercise. Yuck. I understand there are users who believe this is what's required and, from what I can tell, their reward is a greater say in how Programmers works. That's all fine. I just hope the hyper-active users don't seek to exclude more and more voices in the name of consensus building." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18547" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6709" RevisionGUID="c5b1a154-7d0f-4414-ab89-e88fd62e835e" CreationDate="2014-06-17T13:52:40.907" UserId="110080" Text="While posting a question in the realm of [spatial indexing using quadtrees](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/245247/quadtree-with-duplicates), I noticed the presence of both tags *indexing* and *indexation*. Though the latter is a French translation of the former, the English word *indexation* only has a meaning in economy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we delete the *indexation* tag and keep *indexing* only instead?&#xD;&#xA;This reminds me of the old *string* vs *string-manipulation* debate on stackoverflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18548" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6709" RevisionGUID="c5b1a154-7d0f-4414-ab89-e88fd62e835e" CreationDate="2014-06-17T13:52:40.907" UserId="110080" Text="Deleting tag: indexation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18549" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6709" RevisionGUID="c5b1a154-7d0f-4414-ab89-e88fd62e835e" CreationDate="2014-06-17T13:52:40.907" UserId="110080" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18550" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6709" RevisionGUID="47108b79-7beb-4e35-9fa6-4ed469636f2b" CreationDate="2014-06-17T14:11:52.300" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="tag the tags, and retag the question." Text="While posting a question in the realm of [spatial indexing using quadtrees](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/245247/quadtree-with-duplicates), I noticed the presence of both tag: [tag:indexing] and [tag:indexation]. Though the latter is a French translation of the former, the English word *indexation* only has a meaning in economy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we delete the *indexation* tag and keep *indexing* only instead?&#xD;&#xA;This reminds me of the old *string* vs *string-manipulation* debate on stackoverflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18551" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6709" RevisionGUID="47108b79-7beb-4e35-9fa6-4ed469636f2b" CreationDate="2014-06-17T14:11:52.300" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="tag the tags, and retag the question." Text="|support|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18552" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6710" RevisionGUID="5c0067f8-dd22-48b6-a71c-0ce27606519c" CreationDate="2014-06-17T14:19:12.193" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I've retagged the questions (or in one case, deleted the tag).  The indexation tag should disappear with a nightly cleanup script of zombie tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its much easier to do this on P.SE than SO - there were only a half dozen or so questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18553" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6679" RevisionGUID="0f0847a9-bdb3-4cd3-838d-3ac4fc63f67d" CreationDate="2014-06-18T10:11:14.587" UserId="25936" Comment="added 191 characters in body" Text="I took a quick look at the [review history][1] in our [first posts review queue][2] and I've noticed some &quot;No Action Needed&quot; reviews that I didn't agree with. That's not a problem, I don't expect anyone to share my opinions on what makes a good Programmers post. However, I think the nature of the queue is such, that there is almost always something to fix, even if it's simply spelling and grammar. The queue hosts the very first posts from brand new users, who - quite understandably - aren't always familiar with our philosophy and rules. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To make matters a bit more complicated, *it only takes one review to push the post out of the first posts queue*. This means that we need to be a bit more careful with it, than - say - with the close votes queue. Your &quot;No Action Needed&quot; vote is binding, and if you use it carelessly you may cheat a brand new user of possibly critical feedback. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to ask all our reviewers to just skip the review if you aren't 100% sure that the post can be improved (in any way), or don't have the time to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Related**: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Looking for guidance on using “No Action Needed” in the first posts review queue][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Please require more reviewers on First Posts][4] (on Meta Stack Exchange)&#xD;&#xA;- [How can we make First Posts review actually useful?][5] (on Meta Stack Exchange)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/history&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6680/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/188457/please-require-more-reviewers-on-first-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234153/how-can-we-make-first-posts-review-actually-useful" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18554" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6711" RevisionGUID="0b391296-2c3d-4de3-8b5e-dcd14a4860b8" CreationDate="2014-06-18T19:05:45.453" UserId="897" Text="We are getting pummeled with the same off topic questions over and over again.  So we clearly need to be doing a better job up front of educating first time posters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the *'How to Ask'* box that's just to the right of the area where questions are answered, would it be a good idea to add a short section that says something along the lines of *'Questions about **career guidance**, **education**, and **tool recommendations** are **off topic**.  Please see -link- for a list of what is and is not allowed here'*.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way we have it now, you have to click *'visit the help center'* and then *'what topics can I ask'* to see this type of information.  If I was visiting for the first time, *'visit the help center'* would not be where I'd first look for posting rules or FAQs.  I'd be looking for something directly labeled 'posting rules' or FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A notice like that won't stop all such posts.  Some people are so lazy that they won't take 30 seconds to read posting rules, and others may not be fluent enough in English for it to matter.  But something more prominent than what we have now might make a dent in the problem.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18555" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6711" RevisionGUID="0b391296-2c3d-4de3-8b5e-dcd14a4860b8" CreationDate="2014-06-18T19:05:45.453" UserId="897" Text="Cutting down on off topic posts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18556" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6711" RevisionGUID="0b391296-2c3d-4de3-8b5e-dcd14a4860b8" CreationDate="2014-06-18T19:05:45.453" UserId="897" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18557" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6711" RevisionGUID="214676ff-b8f2-45d3-8007-937660e62e63" CreationDate="2014-06-18T21:06:03.470" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18559" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6712" RevisionGUID="ebb497b7-9c98-4010-8635-8c2341b406b9" CreationDate="2014-06-18T21:18:47.127" UserId="3965" Text="Just for the record, in general I'm in favor of questions asking for help fleshing out people's rough ideas.  I don't know the exact context referred to here, but I have been known to point out that such questions are likely to get closed, despite my personal objections.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some close voters put limits on the level of abstraction people are allowed to be confused about.  They want questions to be detailed and specific rather than high-level and conceptual.  This is codified in the site policies as &quot;how to start&quot; questions being off topic.  I personally find rough idea/how to start questions both useful to future visitors and interesting to myself, but unfortunately I am not in the majority on this one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, the place to take such questions is to [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), where all the strict close voters hang out, but who are nevertheless very newbie-friendly in there.  They will help you point you in the right direction on your research, and let you know when a question is fleshed out enough for the main site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18560" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6711" RevisionGUID="48d42ebd-dce3-47f7-b557-93eb4a0a77a5" CreationDate="2014-06-19T07:36:50.387" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/479528215807942656" />
  <row Id="18561" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6711" RevisionGUID="9abf05b2-144c-41cf-b7ac-49d12c59a213" CreationDate="2014-06-20T04:29:37.960" UserId="897" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="We are getting pummeled with the same off topic questions over and over again.  So we clearly need to be doing a better job up front of educating first time posters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the *'How to Ask'* box that's just to the right of the area where questions are answered, I think it would be a good idea to add a short section that says something along the lines of *'Questions about **career guidance**, **education**, and **tool recommendations** are **off topic**.  Please see -link- for a list of what is and is not allowed here'*.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way we have it now, you have to click *'visit the help center'* and then *'what topics can I ask'* to see this type of information.  If I was visiting for the first time, *'visit the help center'* would not be where I'd first look for posting rules or FAQs.  I'd be looking for something directly labeled 'posting rules' or FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A notice like that won't stop all such posts.  Some people are so lazy that they won't take 30 seconds to read posting rules, and others may not be fluent enough in English for it to matter.  But something more prominent than what we have now might make a dent in the problem.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18562" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6713" RevisionGUID="975352bf-0182-4968-8e3f-70a3099b5791" CreationDate="2014-06-20T06:40:33.650" UserId="17898" Text="FAQs and such rarely if ever work. People just don't read them. &lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;So making the FAQ clearer isn't going to do much if anything.&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;What does help is ensuring that previous questions closed as off-topic aren't found by Google. As is, people do a search, find a hundred links to questions with their topic on here, all of them closed and unanswered, and they just post the same thing again, hoping that this time somebody will answer it. Most likely they also post it verbatim on several other sites coming up in that Google result.&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;So a good thing to do would be to delete, not just close, such questions, and do so quickly, hopefully blocking them from being picked up by search crawlers/spiders.&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Making new members (say first 10 questions and answers) get a popup nagging them to make sure they read the FAQ, and containing a summary of the biggest problems such people cause, might help a bit as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18563" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6354" RevisionGUID="32c96887-b0e1-4d97-aaa0-73550b9f4d25" CreationDate="2014-06-20T11:19:16.730" UserId="25936" Comment="added 33 characters in body" Text="**Polling**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a poll based question. Multiple answers could address this question equally well, which makes it a poor fit the for StackExchange Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Guessing Game**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat and Robert Harvey)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;name that thing&quot; question. &quot;Name that thing&quot; are bad questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Minimal understanding** &lt;sub&gt;(aka WT? are you asking?)&lt;/sub&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to Jim G.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it doesn't demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should be on SO but doesn't meet their requirements**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to MichaelT)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers. It would best be asked on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet their minimum requirements. Please read the [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/260648/stack-overflow-question-checklist) and [edit] your question to make it suitable for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should have been on SO, but too old to migrate**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat &amp; MichaelT)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is [about] programming tools - it might belong to Stack Overflow, but is too old to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should be on SO and already is** (aka cross-posted)  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to ChrisF)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about an implementation issue but it has already been asked via cross-post on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Legal question**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about legal matters outside of the community's experience and is best answered by an attorney with expertise in your jurisdiction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Blatantly off-topic**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because the main problem does not involve any of the topics outlined in the [help/on-topic]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`[help/on-topic]` links to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18564" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6714" RevisionGUID="2f6ed326-8767-45b5-82f0-1971dd8b790a" CreationDate="2014-06-20T19:37:27.960" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="[![Software Recommendations Stack Exchange - finding the tool for you][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LrKpR.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/ " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18565" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6714" RevisionGUID="d1c88879-fef7-4055-aeab-63f80db53ff5" CreationDate="2014-06-20T19:37:27.960" UserDisplayName="user40980" />
  <row Id="18566" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6711" RevisionGUID="3ce1bc49-28da-4b7d-a8dd-b9097cca06b4" CreationDate="2014-06-21T22:54:58.280" UserId="897" Comment="Removed references to FAQs because this topic is not about FAQs" Text="We are getting pummeled with the same off topic questions over and over again.  So we clearly need to be doing a better job up front of educating first time posters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the *'How to Ask'* box that's just to the right of the area where questions are answered, I think it would be a good idea to add a short section that says something along the lines of *'Questions about **career guidance**, **education**, and **tool recommendations** are **off topic**.  Please see -link- for a list of what is and is not allowed here'*.   Another option might be to use such text as a place-holder in the textarea entry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way we have it now, you have to click *'visit the help center'* and then *'what topics can I ask'* to see this type of information.  If I was visiting for the first time, *'visit the help center'* would not be where I'd first look because I wouldn't be looking for 'help'. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A notice like that won't stop all such posts.  Some people are so lazy that they won't take 30 seconds to read posting rules, and others may not be fluent enough in English for it to matter.  But something more prominent than what we have now might make a dent in the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18567" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6711" RevisionGUID="3ce1bc49-28da-4b7d-a8dd-b9097cca06b4" CreationDate="2014-06-21T22:54:58.280" UserId="897" Comment="Removed references to FAQs because this topic is not about FAQs" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18568" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6711" RevisionGUID="3c9ac40d-f354-4576-a0a5-91928efa20b4" CreationDate="2014-06-21T23:00:00.113" UserId="897" Comment="Removed references to FAQs because this topic is not about FAQs" Text="We are getting pummeled with the same off topic questions over and over again.  So we clearly need to be doing a better job up front of educating first time posters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the *'How to Ask'* box that's just to the right of the area where questions are answered, I think it would be a good idea to add a short section that says something along the lines of *'Questions about **career guidance**, **education**, and **tool recommendations** are **off topic**.  Please see -link- for a list of what is and is not allowed here'*.   Another option might be to use such text as a place-holder in the textarea entry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point here is to put something directly on the posting page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way we have it now, you have to click *'visit the help center'* and then *'what topics can I ask'* to see this type of information.  If I was visiting for the first time, *'visit the help center'* would not be where I'd first look because I wouldn't be looking for 'help'. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A notice like that won't stop all such posts.  Some people are so lazy that they won't take 30 seconds to read posting rules, and others may not be fluent enough in English for it to matter.  But something more prominent than what we have now might make a dent in the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18570" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6715" RevisionGUID="66c13400-78c2-429b-a816-bb8985547088" CreationDate="2014-06-23T11:57:38.130" UserId="22742" Text="So this question I posted about data cleansing was deemed off topic, in spite of having attracted two upvotes, a favourite and a positive comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/245563/are-there-any-useful-programming-tools-or-techniques-for-cleaning-data-files&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the help center, it would appear that the question is in a slightly gray area in terms of relevance. I would argue that if falls under several of the criteria for relevance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - software requirements &#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes &#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But equally it would seem to fall foul of one of the criteria deemed off-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's left me wondering where on the SE family my question would be seen as more relevant than here? The search for useful programming tools and libraries would seem extremely tenuous on Stack Overflow or Software Recommendations, after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if there isn't anywhere more relevant for these types of questions, should that particular relevance criteria perhaps be relaxed? Or should there be more guidance on how to ask a question like this in a &quot;more relevant manner&quot; (quoted, because I'm not sure how it could be edited for relevance)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18571" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6715" RevisionGUID="66c13400-78c2-429b-a816-bb8985547088" CreationDate="2014-06-23T11:57:38.130" UserId="22742" Text="This question is off-topic - so where is it on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18572" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6715" RevisionGUID="66c13400-78c2-429b-a816-bb8985547088" CreationDate="2014-06-23T11:57:38.130" UserId="22742" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18573" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6716" RevisionGUID="83bb2ac9-cd91-4865-8bc7-6254d14813d8" CreationDate="2014-06-23T14:45:45.403" UserId="1130" Text="Stack Exchange tends to close questions quickly that ask for a tool or library to accomplish a task. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They believe (rightly so in some cases) that the resulting list of tools/libraries, voted and sorted by user opinion, is not that useful. So anything that looks like *&quot;Is there a tool/library for X&quot;* gets closed quickly as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Typically if you can change the question to ask *&quot;How can I do X&quot;* instead of *&quot;Is there a tool for X&quot;*, the question is deemed OK, so I've made an edit to your question to try and get it reopened. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please feel free to edit it further if you want, and good luck with it. I'd be interested in an answer myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18574" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6592" RevisionGUID="bc74bf10-5cbf-4a2f-8c27-0e564cd34234" CreationDate="2014-06-24T10:55:43.400" UserId="31260" Comment="It would be also helpful to learn similar statistics for questions from users who aren't yet banned, but are already warned about approaching a ban at SO." Text="Recent efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given long known &quot;tradition&quot; of attempts to circumvent such bans by posting at inappropriate sites I wonder how much impact could this have on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand this, I would like to find out how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be also helpful to learn similar statistics for questions from users who aren't _yet_ banned, but are already [warned about approaching a ban](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773 &quot;recently introduced feature&quot;) at SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically I am trying to figure whether it's something that can be dealt with in our regular ways, or it is worth looking for a dedicated approach to address (like, say, system triggering automated flag for mod attention when post from such a user gets close vote / flag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Let's burn down the close queue!](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Block migration if user is suspended/question-blocked at destination](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/102293/block-migration-if-user-is-suspended-question-blocked-at-destination)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Warn new users when they ask a question after a previous question is closed, downvoted, or deleted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18575" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6717" RevisionGUID="2af9588a-615e-4735-ab37-53f0491b9125" CreationDate="2014-06-24T15:58:42.523" UserId="35693" Text="&quot;No action needed&quot; means that you feel that way, AND you feel strongly enough about your opinion that you are willing to make it BINDING on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Skip,&quot; means that you don't feel strongly one way or another, and you want someone else with greater knowledge or conviction to decide for the site.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18576" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6592" RevisionGUID="9a688cec-b621-4b35-81d3-f84337a2c3c0" CreationDate="2014-06-24T18:17:07.563" UserId="31260" Comment="status += users whoare  rate-limited to ask questions at SO by anti-recidivism system" Text="Recent efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given long known &quot;tradition&quot; of attempts to circumvent such bans by posting at inappropriate sites I wonder how much impact could this have on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand this, I would like to find out how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be also helpful to learn similar statistics for questions from users who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* aren't _yet_ banned, but are already [warned about approaching a ban](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773 &quot;recently introduced feature&quot;) at SO&#xD;&#xA;* are rate-limited to ask questions at SO by [anti-recidivism system](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234518/165773 &quot;'If the user was blocked from posting questions at the time of deletion, then the recreated account will be restricted to posting only one question per week until the quality of their contributions is demonstrated'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically I am trying to figure whether it's something that can be dealt with in our regular ways, or it is worth looking for a dedicated approach to address (like, say, system triggering automated flag for mod attention when post from such a user gets close vote / flag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Let's burn down the close queue!](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Block migration if user is suspended/question-blocked at destination](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/102293/block-migration-if-user-is-suspended-question-blocked-at-destination)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Warn new users when they ask a question after a previous question is closed, downvoted, or deleted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18577" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6671" RevisionGUID="4fa613d8-c5a4-4973-aa69-50c6557059a8" CreationDate="2014-06-24T23:05:40.983" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18578" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6718" RevisionGUID="ff4fbfb3-8c53-4bab-a046-55e22aea6ea8" CreationDate="2014-06-24T23:08:38.770" UserId="226" Text="This will be fixed in the next deploy. Keep an eye out for revision 2014.6.24.1677.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The gist of the problem here was that the sidebar on Prog.SE is styled differently from other sites, so it requires [a bit more love to get the mod dialog to show up](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4039/mod-dialog-in-review-doesnt-show-up-properly-and-a-bonus-feature-request) when a moderator brings it up in /review. (Fun fact: there's a &quot;mod&quot; link beside the &quot;link&quot; link if you have a diamond.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original fix set us up for the issue reported here, and it should be fixed for good now. (I know, I know. Famous last words. :))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. As a bonus, the mod dialog will also show up correctly on Prog.SE meta where it was until now still trying to fit into the sidebar.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18579" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6719" RevisionGUID="d2f9c582-dd64-4c53-81de-189e90577de5" CreationDate="2014-06-25T06:53:55.133" UserId="57759" Text="Can some of the moderators revive (undelete) [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/245703/57759) (my own) and it's answers? I was more than sure, that it is complete useless and voted to close or delete it. But, other users suggests in comments, that even this kind of questions should bring some value to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, I was to slow and read these comments after question was deleted by moderator. As per [this answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5938/57759), I can see that questions and answer deleted by moderators can be revived only by them. Thanks!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18580" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6719" RevisionGUID="d2f9c582-dd64-4c53-81de-189e90577de5" CreationDate="2014-06-25T06:53:55.133" UserId="57759" Text="Revive particular question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18581" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6719" RevisionGUID="d2f9c582-dd64-4c53-81de-189e90577de5" CreationDate="2014-06-25T06:53:55.133" UserId="57759" Text="|support|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18582" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6719" RevisionGUID="3816bf25-b15a-41b5-8cd1-f62874786ed5" CreationDate="2014-06-25T09:15:29.257" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="Undelete particular question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18583" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6719" RevisionGUID="3816bf25-b15a-41b5-8cd1-f62874786ed5" CreationDate="2014-06-25T09:15:29.257" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|support|specific-question|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18584" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6719" RevisionGUID="3816bf25-b15a-41b5-8cd1-f62874786ed5" CreationDate="2014-06-25T09:15:29.257" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="Can some of the moderators revive (undelete) [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/245703/57759) (my own) and it's answers? I was more than sure that it is completely useless and voted to close or delete it. But, other users suggests in comments, that even this kind of questions should bring some value to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, I was too slow and read these comments after question was deleted by moderator. As per [this answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5938/57759), I can see that questions and answer deleted by moderators can be revived only by them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18585" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6719" RevisionGUID="8d86d37b-41e8-42ca-9f44-c34dbc5a55d7" CreationDate="2014-06-25T11:01:42.673" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|specific-question|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18586" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6720" RevisionGUID="d87f1395-60df-4ac4-9569-9a0fcb3c8091" CreationDate="2014-06-25T11:01:53.533" UserId="4" Text="Undeleted. I also cleaned up some of the comments." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18587" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6721" RevisionGUID="93c0cdae-a3f0-4993-b582-16302e490671" CreationDate="2014-06-25T11:19:13.317" UserId="126402" Text="This question - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/246034/power-of-2-and-performance-in-sql-server - is this a &quot;good&quot; question by the standards of this site?  Sure, it's an advanced optimisation programming technique.  But my first response was &quot;so what&quot;?  Either my application needs to divide by 255 or it needs to divide by 256.  It's not like I'm *not* going to use SQL Server for that one query in my applicaiton and install a customised MariaDB instance to save a few nanoseconds.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought about flagging it.  &quot;It should be closed for another reason&quot; was the only option which made sense.  &quot;Too broad&quot; it diametrically opposite to what it is and nothing under &quot;off topic&quot; matched my concerns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It *is* interesting, but its not &quot;practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&quot; IMHO. Guidance, please?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18588" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6721" RevisionGUID="93c0cdae-a3f0-4993-b582-16302e490671" CreationDate="2014-06-25T11:19:13.317" UserId="126402" Text="Question &quot;smell&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18589" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6721" RevisionGUID="93c0cdae-a3f0-4993-b582-16302e490671" CreationDate="2014-06-25T11:19:13.317" UserId="126402" Text="|discussion|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18590" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6722" RevisionGUID="4f607455-c58c-4a2c-984d-5af7cbd1cba9" CreationDate="2014-06-25T12:56:58.203" UserId="25476" Text="I had to think about this one a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Practical and answerable?  Perhaps it is because the OP is likely asking trying to figure out how to squeeze performance out of SQL Server in low level mathematical operations.  The question is intriguing to me to but then I am particularly fond of questions that concern strategies in tuning an application.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In all, I am probably biased because I honestly WANT TO KNOW the answer to this question :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't personally close it, but I would support a fellow mod that felt the need to or the community if they chose to close it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18591" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6723" RevisionGUID="3674addc-fae2-40fd-aaca-94358ad8ca74" CreationDate="2014-06-25T14:26:06.423" UserId="81884" Text="I was in the LQP review queue this morning and clicked the 'recommend deletion' dialog box. I dragged the dialog box away to look again at the question and noticed this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![wat][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nav buttons are floating above the review dialog! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So far I've only seen this in the LQP review queue. The dialog boxes on other pages, and even in some of the other queues, seem okay (but I don't have access to all queues).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/G4Pok.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18592" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6723" RevisionGUID="3674addc-fae2-40fd-aaca-94358ad8ca74" CreationDate="2014-06-25T14:26:06.423" UserId="81884" Text="Nav buttons floating over review dialog box" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18593" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6723" RevisionGUID="3674addc-fae2-40fd-aaca-94358ad8ca74" CreationDate="2014-06-25T14:26:06.423" UserId="81884" Text="|bug|design|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18594" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6723" RevisionGUID="6ff86d3c-2477-43ec-aaf5-6409583b3117" CreationDate="2014-06-25T16:55:43.110" UserId="226" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6347],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:40980,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;MichaelT&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:226,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Anna Lear&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="18595" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6347" RevisionGUID="a0b54e45-2a34-4d1a-bc04-ed7196684755" CreationDate="2014-06-25T22:11:45.167" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18596" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6724" RevisionGUID="dc253490-0d71-4b35-9540-a831980f541c" CreationDate="2014-06-25T22:12:02.497" UserId="226" Text="Will be fixed in the next build. Keep an eye out for revision 2014.6.25.1680." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18597" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6592" RevisionGUID="a5c2b77f-f83b-463d-93f7-0b93448dcf83" CreationDate="2014-06-26T11:27:04.667" UserId="31260" Comment="related += [What is the reasoning behind limiting &quot;recidivists&quot; to post one question per week?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/234609/165773)" Text="Recent efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given long known &quot;tradition&quot; of attempts to circumvent such bans by posting at inappropriate sites I wonder how much impact could this have on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand this, I would like to find out how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be also helpful to learn similar statistics for questions from users who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* aren't _yet_ banned, but are already [warned about approaching a ban](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773 &quot;recently introduced feature&quot;) at SO&#xD;&#xA;* are rate-limited to ask questions at SO by [anti-recidivism system](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234518/165773 &quot;'If the user was blocked from posting questions at the time of deletion, then the recreated account will be restricted to posting only one question per week until the quality of their contributions is demonstrated'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically I am trying to figure whether it's something that can be dealt with in our regular ways, or it is worth looking for a dedicated approach to address (like, say, system triggering automated flag for mod attention when post from such a user gets close vote / flag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Let's burn down the close queue!](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Block migration if user is suspended/question-blocked at destination](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/102293/block-migration-if-user-is-suspended-question-blocked-at-destination)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Warn new users when they ask a question after a previous question is closed, downvoted, or deleted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [What is the reasoning behind limiting &quot;recidivists&quot; to post one question per week?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/234609/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18598" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6592" RevisionGUID="066d6220-d8e1-4cdb-888e-de1e9647d1d0" CreationDate="2014-06-26T16:43:03.260" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="Recent efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given long known &quot;tradition&quot; of attempts to circumvent such bans by posting at inappropriate sites I wonder how much impact could this have on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand this, I would like to find out how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be also helpful to learn similar statistics for questions from users who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* aren't _yet_ banned, but are already [warned about approaching a ban](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773 &quot;recently introduced feature&quot;) at SO&#xD;&#xA;* are rate-limited to ask questions at SO by [anti-recidivism system](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234518/165773 &quot;'If the user was blocked from posting questions at the time of deletion, then the recreated account will be restricted to posting only one question per week until the quality of their contributions is demonstrated'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically I am trying to figure whether it's something that can be dealt with in our regular ways, or it is worth looking for a dedicated approach to address (like, say, system triggering automated flag for mod attention when post from such a user gets close vote / flag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Let's burn down the close queue!](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [Block migration if user is suspended/question-blocked at destination](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/102293/block-migration-if-user-is-suspended-question-blocked-at-destination)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [Warn new users when they ask a question after a previous question is closed, downvoted, or deleted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [What is the reasoning behind limiting &quot;recidivists&quot; to post one question per week?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/234609/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Meta P.SE) http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18599" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6725" RevisionGUID="4a6b45ce-adf6-4fd2-b459-2ea63c8ed4e0" CreationDate="2014-06-26T18:42:05.893" UserId="26304" Text="This is the Site you are looking for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18600" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6705" RevisionGUID="81ad1254-7019-44e2-92f5-16c1083b5af7" CreationDate="2014-06-26T23:21:39.283" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="its to it is (Thank you Peter)" Text="I've noticed in the reopen queue history and 10k close page that there are at least some people who will cast a reopen vote on nearly anything they see.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've gotta ask... *why* do you do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A bit ago, rachel [commented](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6642/examples-of-inappropriately-closed-questions/6648#comment17931_6648)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @RobertHarvey I am showing the number of close votes/voters compared to the number of reopen votes/voters. I think the core problem here is summarized at the end of my answer: Your chances of getting something closed or reopened is tied to a random variable: how many people review the question at the same time as you. In the case of new open content, it is viewed by many people, including our group of &quot;close happy&quot; users. In the case of closed content, very few people view it, and we don't even have a decent sized group of active &quot;reopen happy&quot; users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll say that is not completely accurate in that if there is sufficient change to the question to merit it reopening, it's actually rather easy to get it reopened.  Sometimes it takes a bit of hunting for votes in chat (we can typically find 3 or 4 without bugging a mod)... but when it is something that *should* be reopened, the biggest challenge is finding the votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, here's the thing... you've got one vote and one shot to get a question reopened.  When you use your vote as a one off protest vote on everything that goes through the queue or when a question that you answered gets closed - it makes it that much harder to find the votes when something *should* be reopened (and try to use the reopen review rather than asking in chat or bugging a mod).  Once that reopen vote times out, you can't cast it again - it is gone.  So even when it does get fixed, you won't be able to cast a reopen vote on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is true that that reopening depends heavily on getting people to hit 'reopen' in the review queue rather than leave closed, why do you vote when there's no change? or when there's only a minimal change that doesn't fix the perceived issues that closed it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for that matter, if you honestly think it is something that should get reopened, but don't believe it will, ***edit*** it so that it ***is*** a good question that even the most hardened close voter will agree it is something that should be asked.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tossing your votes as a one off protest vote makes it that much harder to reopen good questions when the question *does* get edited into shape.  So why cast those votes without trying to edit the question to address the close reason and make better and unequivocally able to be reopened?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18601" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6705" RevisionGUID="ea3ef7d4-d43e-4a02-9097-35b21c07b1c1" CreationDate="2014-06-27T07:07:36.337" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="I've noticed in the reopen queue history and 10k close page that there are at least some people who will cast a reopen vote on nearly anything they see.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've gotta ask... *why* do you do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A bit ago, Rachel [commented](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6642/examples-of-inappropriately-closed-questions/6648#comment17931_6648)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @RobertHarvey I am showing the number of close votes/voters compared to the number of reopen votes/voters. I think the core problem here is summarized at the end of my answer: Your chances of getting something closed or reopened is tied to a random variable: how many people review the question at the same time as you. In the case of new open content, it is viewed by many people, including our group of &quot;close happy&quot; users. In the case of closed content, very few people view it, and we don't even have a decent sized group of active &quot;reopen happy&quot; users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll say that is not completely accurate in that if there is sufficient change to the question to merit it reopening, it's actually rather easy to get it reopened.  Sometimes it takes a bit of hunting for votes in chat (we can typically find 3 or 4 without bugging a mod)... but when it is something that *should* be reopened, the biggest challenge is finding the votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, here's the thing... you've got one vote and one shot to get a question reopened.  When you use your vote as a one off protest vote on everything that goes through the queue or when a question that you answered gets closed - it makes it that much harder to find the votes when something *should* be reopened (and try to use the reopen review rather than asking in chat or bugging a mod).  Once that reopen vote times out, you can't cast it again - it is gone.  So even when it does get fixed, you won't be able to cast a reopen vote on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is true that that reopening depends heavily on getting people to hit 'reopen' in the review queue rather than leave closed, why do you vote when there's no change? or when there's only a minimal change that doesn't fix the perceived issues that closed it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for that matter, if you honestly think it is something that should get reopened, but don't believe it will, ***edit*** it so that it ***is*** a good question that even the most hardened close voter will agree it is something that should be asked.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tossing your votes as a one off protest vote makes it that much harder to reopen good questions when the question *does* get edited into shape.  So why cast those votes without trying to edit the question to address the close reason and make better and unequivocally able to be reopened?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18602" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6726" RevisionGUID="3a3fdbd6-2b51-41a7-8483-04af5b9b7db0" CreationDate="2014-06-29T16:10:00.503" UserId="43635" Text="Above statement has just been filed when I tried to post a new question (or maybe a bit cleaner wording, but the idea is the same nonetheles):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Wait! Some of your past questions have not been well-received, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you're in danger of being blocked from asking any more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For help formulating a clear, useful question, see: How do I ask a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; good question?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also, edit your previous questions to improve formatting and clarity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I have only asked here 4 questions, one of it is closed because of &quot;off topic&quot; (but quite frankly I still think this ought to be ontopic here and would open a discussion if I came more often).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another is closed because of a duplicate --- though i clearly indicated I did not understand the answering with the &quot;duplicate&quot;. So for clarification I asked my question. Now I found the solution so I didn't explain why it is different (no point discussing to open it just to let it die).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of them seemed to me as &quot;terrible&quot; - so why the hell did I get this message?&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18603" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6726" RevisionGUID="3a3fdbd6-2b51-41a7-8483-04af5b9b7db0" CreationDate="2014-06-29T16:10:00.503" UserId="43635" Text="&quot;You have asked terrible questions, please get away or ask better question&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18604" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6726" RevisionGUID="3a3fdbd6-2b51-41a7-8483-04af5b9b7db0" CreationDate="2014-06-29T16:10:00.503" UserId="43635" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18605" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6727" RevisionGUID="24e8c3f1-3fc5-479f-9873-e40a8871606f" CreationDate="2014-06-29T16:19:10.430" UserId="43635" Text="Isn't stackexchange defined by the users - so what users need/want defines how stackexchange is working at any moment in time? From this you get a dynamic community where what is on &amp; offtopic changes all the time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As such I think that when you notice a lot of things are off-topic maybe what is considered on/offtopic on this site should be discussed again. Apparently there is a large demand for it, and apparently &quot;programmers.stackexchange.com&quot; leads to people thinking this is the right place to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why swim against the flow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18606" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6728" RevisionGUID="6a15858d-a12e-45e6-8c76-ab272f459ecd" CreationDate="2014-06-29T16:38:32.770" UserId="31260" Text="Based on your past questions, system decided to warn that you may be approaching question ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is described in more details in [Warn new users when they ask a question after a previous question is closed, downvoted, or deleted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773) at MSE (bold font in below quote is mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Starting today, we are going to show a warning to folks who are about to post a question or an answer when they already have a track record of ... suboptimal questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;![https://i.stack.imgur.com/xfiXS.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xfiXS.png &quot;question warning&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...The specific criteria for these aren't public largely for the same reasons the quality block criteria aren't public, but let's just say that **folks who are nearing hitting a block will be getting a heads up and some instructions first**." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18607" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6729" RevisionGUID="466e9c42-f42b-405d-8ddb-a7d2538def2e" CreationDate="2014-06-29T17:28:46.653" UserId="4767" Text="The warning is designed to ensure that you pay attention to the question you ask and to try to ensure that you ask something that does belong on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is based on your entire asking history - deleted questions included.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through your questions, I am seeing on bad deleted question (from 2013, which is not recent enough for you to see in the deleted recent questions page) which is what is mostly contributing to the warning and actual possibility of a question ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, I am not seeing anything too terrible, but I am also not seeing anything stellar, which is really what the message reflects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That such an old question comes into play is a limitation of the current ban algorithm and system, which is being overhauled to avoid such issues (very old questions contributing as much as they currently do).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I encourage you to ask the question, be careful to be sure it meets the quality requirements and that it is indeed suitable to the site (given what's in the help center).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you _do_ find that you end up in the question ban, comment here, on my answer and I will see what I can do to help you get out of it, until the new algorithm is in place.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18608" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6729" RevisionGUID="3c89f466-59bc-4bc4-87d6-5e9ec359a628" CreationDate="2014-06-29T17:31:03.903" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo corrected" Text="The warning is designed to ensure that you pay attention to the question you ask and to try to ensure that you ask something that does belong on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is based on your entire asking history - deleted questions included.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through your questions, I am seeing one bad deleted question (from 2013, which is not recent enough for you to see in the deleted recent questions page) which is what is mostly contributing to the warning and actual possibility of a question ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, I am not seeing anything too terrible, but I am also not seeing anything stellar, which is really what the message reflects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That such an old question comes into play is a limitation of the current ban algorithm and system, which is being overhauled to avoid such issues (very old questions contributing as much as they currently do).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I encourage you to ask the question, be careful to be sure it meets the quality requirements and that it is indeed suitable to the site (given what's in the help center).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you _do_ find that you end up in the question ban, comment here, on my answer and I will see what I can do to help you get out of it, until the new algorithm is in place.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18609" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6726" RevisionGUID="a30957b7-bf54-4f39-ad26-b57c7a770996" CreationDate="2014-06-29T17:32:36.197" UserId="43635" Comment="added 400 characters in body" Text="Above statement has just been filed when I tried to post a new question (or maybe a bit cleaner wording, but the idea is the same nonetheles):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Wait! Some of your past questions have not been well-received, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you're in danger of being blocked from asking any more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For help formulating a clear, useful question, see: How do I ask a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; good question?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also, edit your previous questions to improve formatting and clarity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I have only asked here 4 questions, one of it is closed because of &quot;off topic&quot; (but quite frankly I still think this ought to be ontopic here and would open a discussion if I came more often).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another is closed because of a duplicate --- though i clearly indicated I did not understand the answering with the &quot;duplicate&quot;. So for clarification I asked my question. Now I found the solution so I didn't explain why it is different (no point discussing to open it just to let it die).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of them seemed to me as &quot;terrible&quot; - so why the hell did I get this message?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;EDIT&#xD;&#xA;As said in the comments, I should clarify: I have 2 currently &quot;closed&quot; question. One of them is for offtopic. The other is a duplicate (which is asked based on [this][1] so duplicate mark is dubious). And further I do not have any deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/112980/what-should-i-do-if-my-question-has-already-been-asked-but-the-answers-dont-he" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18610" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6726" RevisionGUID="cb14c6db-e298-47ad-949a-877d5f641228" CreationDate="2014-06-29T17:40:09.347" UserId="31260" Comment="profile check doesn't allow one to find out about deleted questions older than 90 days // http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6726/you-have-asked-terrible-questions-please-get-away-or-ask-better-question#comment18208_6728" Text="Above statement has just been filed when I tried to post a new question (or maybe a bit cleaner wording, but the idea is the same nonetheles):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Wait! Some of your past questions have not been well-received, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you're in danger of being blocked from asking any more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For help formulating a clear, useful question, see: How do I ask a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; good question?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also, edit your previous questions to improve formatting and clarity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I have only asked here 4 questions, one of it is closed because of &quot;off topic&quot; (but quite frankly I still think this ought to be ontopic here and would open a discussion if I came more often).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another is closed because of a duplicate --- though i clearly indicated I did not understand the answering with the &quot;duplicate&quot;. So for clarification I asked my question. Now I found the solution so I didn't explain why it is different (no point discussing to open it just to let it die).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of them seemed to me as &quot;terrible&quot; - so why the hell did I get this message?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;EDIT&#xD;&#xA;As said in the comments, I should clarify: I have 2 currently &quot;closed&quot; question. One of them is for offtopic. The other is a duplicate (which is asked based on [this][1] so duplicate mark is dubious). And further I do not have any deleted questions in last 90 days.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/112980/what-should-i-do-if-my-question-has-already-been-asked-but-the-answers-dont-he" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18611" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6730" RevisionGUID="e8dc3957-cf5d-407c-acfe-b34337078720" CreationDate="2014-07-01T13:22:14.947" UserId="119891" Text="I support allowing MathJax also in Programmers.SE; I just missed again its absence while editing this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/246543/find-the-smallest-summed-distances-by-uniquely-pairing-elements-of-one-set-to-el&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will add more questions on this list whenever I run again into this obstacle. (Since I am not the OP, I hesitated to edit the question in order to add examples of questions where MathJax would be of help, as requested in the comments by @MichaelT).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Addressing the concerns in other answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can read [which SE sites currently allow MathJax here][1]. Recently, as of this writing, &quot;Code Review&quot; allowed it with `\$` delimiters, which could be a solution to the conflict with code like `$_SESSION`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is true that rendering the post preview on each keystroke can be taxing, but I have used the Math.SE site and just noticed a small delay between keystrokes.  It is not an incredible hit on user experience; the best proof is that the site is very alive and much larger than Programmers, in traffic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is true that a negative aspect is **waiting for all question titles** to be rendered on the general index, and that in other contexts (e.g. the mobile application) **math in titles is not rendered at all**, leaving the questions almost incomprehensible.  So I would prefer **not** enabling MathJax for titles, if that is possible at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Last but not least, if the Stack Exchange site on &quot;Amateur Radio&quot; allows MathJax, I strongly feel that &quot;Programmers&quot; should have it. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/216606/which-stack-exchange-sites-use-mathjax&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/981/syntax-highlighting-language-hints" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18612" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6255" RevisionGUID="13693fed-120a-476c-97fa-001d730d41e3" CreationDate="2014-07-02T01:57:16.593" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="rewrite MSE to MSO" Text="Recently, Nick did some tests on Stack Overflow to see what impact MathJax would have on Stack Overflow.  This was likely done in part to put to rest the 'heavy dependency' argument.  The full post can be read at [There's seriously no reason why LaTeX markup via MathJax shouldn't be enabled on SO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204003/213963)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a Stack Overflow page load (even when its doing 'nothing'):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Stack Overflow (no MathJax)][1]: **1.380s**&#xD;&#xA; - [Stack Overflow (with MathJax)][2]: **1.675s**&#xD;&#xA; - [Math.StackExchange][3] (with MathJax including content using it): **2.341s**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, for sites that have those pesky `$` that show up in code, it can be a breaking change for existing questions changing the rendering for:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...] which then stores into a $_SESSION - the problem is most of the settings will be set by javascript, and as javascript is a client side script you can't access PHP $_SESSION variables as its server based. [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Unexpected MathJax rendering][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, there are [reports](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204034/213963) that adding MathJax significantly impacts the time it takes for a preview to show up while writing an answer because MathJax needs to be called to rerender the preview *on every keystroke*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(numbers, links and images from the associated answers in the [MSO question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/252282/289086))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131102_08_QQQ/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131103_DV_CS/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131102_BT_QR2/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MqzCa.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18614" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6486" RevisionGUID="f2ae3c8c-b9bc-458b-b7be-99f11eac210f" CreationDate="2014-07-02T18:22:38.567" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add IEEE Spectrum" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###What technology to take up next###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a constant stream of new projects out there.  Github [claims 4,500 new projects a day](https://github.com/blog/841-those-are-some-big-numbers) back in 2011.  On December 23, 2013, Github had [10 million repositories](https://github.com/blog/1724-10-million-repositories).  Quite frankly, there are far too many projects for anyone to suggest a good answer.  What's more, the projects of yesteryear may well be inactive now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same problem exists for suggesting languages and technologies - they are constantly changing.  Further, many questions of this type often just ask &quot;which one is best&quot; without specifying any requirements, making them essentially a popularity poll.  If you really *do* want a popularity poll, consider reading [The Top Programming Languages: IEEE Spectrum’s 2014 Ranking](http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/interactive-the-top-programming-languages) which takes into account such things as Github active projects, Stack Overflow questions, Reddit questions, Hacker News, and job postings (see the 'custom' ranking for working with weightings).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A goal for Stack Exchange is to create a lasting repository of information.  Asking questions about which technology to chose runs counter to that.  In part because everyone's needs are different and also that everyone has their own favorites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56848/how-does-one-keep-up-with-all-the-new-tools-languages-framework (also look at the [linked questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/56848?lq=1))&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18620" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6586" RevisionGUID="62660f8b-4583-405c-984b-bf511c27cac5" CreationDate="2014-07-03T07:44:44.193" UserId="31260" Comment="primarily opinion-based += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491" Text="As has been previously pointed out, this issue has already been discussed at length, with a resulting consensus that there are two categories of &quot;naming things&quot; questions that might actually be on-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  What is the name of this well-known concept?&#xD;&#xA;2.  Questions about &quot;principles of naming things.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is, however, one remaining category of questions which I feel should always be off-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;What should I name this thing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is not a &quot;guessing game&quot; question; it is **[primarily opinion-based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491).**  There are literally an *infinite* number of such questions; none of them are at all interesting to experts unless they can be answered from a principle-based perspective, in a way that could help others improve their naming skills." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18635" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6492" RevisionGUID="c8ebc3a1-69c7-494c-9d08-3e57648a55d5" CreationDate="2014-07-05T22:13:23.763" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add link for legal (a frequent reason)" Text="#Other#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions can be closed with a custom reason.  These are found in the comments for the question.  To that extent it is difficult to enumerate all the possible reasons people may try to close a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read the explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6251/how-can-i-write-a-good-custom-close-message&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/why-do-certification-questions-keep-getting-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6283/current-events-questions-and-answers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [cross-posting (posting the same question over multiple Stack Exchange sites)](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed - other reasons](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6492/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18636" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6736" RevisionGUID="58212d6a-e744-4d92-bfec-a3a8be217027" CreationDate="2014-07-06T09:56:09.740" UserId="213" Text="On SO and pretty much any other SE site, linked code is clearly distinguishable from non-linked code:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Example from SO](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vRDCf.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But on programmers (and meta.programmers), the two are completely undistinguishable:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Example from programmers](https://i.stack.imgur.com/y8bbV.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have to hover over the link to find out it's actually a link, but there's nothing suggesting that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that the two cases should look obviously differently, probably by making the linked code blue, just like on SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Live sample:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;text text `Code` text [`Linked code`](http://example.com) text" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18637" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6736" RevisionGUID="58212d6a-e744-4d92-bfec-a3a8be217027" CreationDate="2014-07-06T09:56:09.740" UserId="213" Text="Link in code is indistiguishable from plain code" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18638" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6736" RevisionGUID="58212d6a-e744-4d92-bfec-a3a8be217027" CreationDate="2014-07-06T09:56:09.740" UserId="213" Text="|feature-request|hyperlinks|css|code|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18639" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6736" RevisionGUID="76c760a1-3fe1-42ec-8c4b-49c62c5131c0" CreationDate="2014-07-06T12:27:51.017" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|design|hyperlinks|css|code|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18640" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6736" RevisionGUID="79a35491-032d-4182-8634-c4b705bb654e" CreationDate="2014-07-06T23:24:43.883" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/485927353369890816" />
  <row Id="18641" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6737" RevisionGUID="ab916868-7a0a-4870-98ac-3985e09ec030" CreationDate="2014-07-06T23:26:14.727" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="For reference, this is the view on an iPhone:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![iphone screen][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LUp67m.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18642" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6738" RevisionGUID="82052eb8-5740-4e3b-9040-7f31ee41f226" CreationDate="2014-07-06T23:52:42.220" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Historical questions about [tag:recommendations]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6125/should-we-ban-the-recommendations-tag&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/421/is-a-recommendations-tag-really-necessary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The general consensus of these two is that the tag really should go away... though nothing has been done about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tag remains, it *really* needs a better tag-wiki akin to [tag:legal] or [tag:career-development] saying that its a very dangerous tag to ask in and needs to be properly formulated to have any chase of not getting closed quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tag is to go, there are apparently a few ways that this can be done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Someone goes through and removes the tag from all the questions.  There are 'only' 88 of them though thats still a mess... including bumping a number of closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;2. Have a mod do super powers to destroy the tag.  I'm not sure what these super powers are, but if they have them... well, **boom** goes the tag.&#xD;&#xA;3. Have SE use *their* super powers to completely burninate the tag.  Its gone and make it so that it can never come back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd really go for option #3... Number 1 is a mess.  Granted 88 isn't that big of a mess compared to some other tags, but thats still a mess... its about 2 days worth of front page activity.  If SE doesn't do the 'kill it with fire' approach, if a mod does have their super powers, then those should be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But please, just kill it.  Make it go *poof* and **boom** and other noises as it disappears into the `void*` never to be cast again.  There is no reason for its existence at all given that recommendations has *never* been on topic here...&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18643" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6738" RevisionGUID="82052eb8-5740-4e3b-9040-7f31ee41f226" CreationDate="2014-07-06T23:52:42.220" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="recommendations tag - burn? edit? blacklist? or kill one by one?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18644" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6738" RevisionGUID="82052eb8-5740-4e3b-9040-7f31ee41f226" CreationDate="2014-07-06T23:52:42.220" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|support|tags|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18645" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6738" RevisionGUID="415ec6c9-cfca-4a67-8435-19ef072b51c8" CreationDate="2014-07-07T06:07:53.313" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|tags|tag-blacklist|meta-tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18646" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6739" RevisionGUID="2d90cc94-a864-44d7-a4b9-3bc82f821e55" CreationDate="2014-07-07T12:31:06.303" UserId="139852" Text="I have a question but I have no idea what SE site (if any) it's applicable for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was watching F1 this weekend, and all the cars have sensors which send real time data about the car to the pit lane, and I was wondering how exactly it sends back the data. I'm thinking more on a general scale, what technologies could be used to send real time data between hardware rather than which specific one the F1 teams use. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Being a web developer I know of a few things which it could use but none of them are right I don't think (Ajax, Web Sockets and Server Sent Events).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would this question fit here? Or more broadly does it fit in the SE model for questions, as I'm not sure if it could have an absolute answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18647" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6739" RevisionGUID="2d90cc94-a864-44d7-a4b9-3bc82f821e55" CreationDate="2014-07-07T12:31:06.303" UserId="139852" Text="Where does this question fit?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18648" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6739" RevisionGUID="2d90cc94-a864-44d7-a4b9-3bc82f821e55" CreationDate="2014-07-07T12:31:06.303" UserId="139852" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18649" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6740" RevisionGUID="63f80e2c-1a75-4331-8abb-5192fef4d9a3" CreationDate="2014-07-07T14:12:14.657" UserId="47" Text="I'm not sure that there is a site where such a question would be on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a [Network Engineering](http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/) site and there's [Server Fault](http://serverfault.com), but I'm thinking you might be better off asking in one of their chat rooms as you don't have a *specific* question about a problem transmitting data." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18650" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6741" RevisionGUID="a0378740-018b-48f4-88c5-f8978bbc3f7e" CreationDate="2014-07-07T14:12:29.480" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="It might belong here... though before asking it I'd do a bit more research before asking it to make sure it doesn't have a simple answer that really doesn't get you to learn much more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this *particular* question, the answer is likely 'the cell data network'.  There are companies (example: [Teletrac](http://www.teletrac.com/fleet-director-software/software-features/vehicle-diagnostics)) that exist that provide this for fleet tracking (you've got a few dozen delivery trucks... is anyone driving too fast? or braking too hard? or taking corners too fast?) which use this data network. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Though it turns out that I was wrong... read on.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll point out that making sure that you have done the basic research and (what would seem to be) the obvious google searches is necessary.  [This article](http://www.forbes.com/sites/csylt/2014/07/02/f1-launches-race-to-update-its-technology-systems/) (incidentally *very* recent) which does give the answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This allows it to transmit data at a far higher speed than by using satellites, as F1 previously relied on, and it also significantly increases capacity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point I'm making is that we prefer questions that delve into the knowledge that we have rather than our [google-fu](https://www.google.com/search?q=f1+racing+live+data)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18651" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6742" RevisionGUID="04f21850-6f3d-4c0c-9df9-b9b525b343b5" CreationDate="2014-07-07T18:23:58.763" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;I'll start off with the irony of this question being tagged with a discussion and point out that [meta is different](http://meta.stackexchange.com/help/whats-meta).&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why don't discussion questions work in Stack Exchange? What is it about the software and the format that leads to people closing these questions as primarily opinion? or rejecting edits that invite discussion on the subject?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18652" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6742" RevisionGUID="04f21850-6f3d-4c0c-9df9-b9b525b343b5" CreationDate="2014-07-07T18:23:58.763" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="On discussions and why they don't good questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18653" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6742" RevisionGUID="04f21850-6f3d-4c0c-9df9-b9b525b343b5" CreationDate="2014-07-07T18:23:58.763" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18654" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6743" RevisionGUID="34bbd085-e2de-4fa2-957a-31158497f68a" CreationDate="2014-07-07T18:23:58.763" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="### Branding&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to realize is that Stack Exchange brands itself as a Q&amp;A site. This is the very top of the content when you go to http://stackexchange.com.  It calls out that this is something *different* than forums, that there are right answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When one goes to the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) page, note the wording of the text there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Just questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... and answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Going further into the help center, one finds [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) which links to three other pages that goes into more about what isn't allowed on the site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Thus, questions that are not answerable — discussions, debates, opinions — should be closed as subjective. It seems simple enough: Fact good; opinion and discussion bad. But why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Most forums and chat rooms have a scale problem. As in, they don’t. The more people that join the discussion, the more noise each of those connections bring. So the forums get progressively noisier and noisier, and suddenly one day … you stop learning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On the nature of discussions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of a discussion is back and forth.  Lines of communication.  Look at sites that are intended for discussion and you will find threads and nested comments and a system that isn't designed around getting answers but rather to make connections with people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is different.  As stated in the tour and time and time again in other documents, this is a Q&amp;A site.  As such it has intentionally made having these discussions difficult.  Things such as limited sizes of comments, limited markdown in comments, the automatic move comment to chat feature.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussions make it harder to find the answer - you have to wade through all the other stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;As an aside, there is *nothing* worse than trying to go from reading a post, to reading the comments to going back to the post to see the reply, and back to the comments to see the next reply and back to the post... Don't do that. Remove the 'Edit:' and 'Update:' from your edit, make the entire thing a cohesive whole and leave a comment saying that the post has been updated to take this into account - people can read the revision history if they want to see what changed.&amp;lt;/rant&amp;gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are sites that do discussions very well... or, as well as discussions can be done.  Jeff Atwood even went off to make another site model designed precisely for discussions (http://www.discourse.org)... and its not a Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its not to say that one can't try to mix Q&amp;A and discussions.  But its *very* hard to do both right.  Its hard enough to do one of them right.  Stack Exchange chose to get Q&amp;A right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Where else can discussions be had?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *do* want to have a discussion there are some options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Visit [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard).  The whiteboard is one such place within the stack exchange network where discussions are allowed (and encouraged).&#xD;&#xA;* Ask somewhere else.  There are numerous other sites out there that are designed for discussions.  [Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/), [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/ask), [Slashdot](http://ask.slashdot.org) to name a few.  These are sites that are specifically designed with discussions in mind - the voting system on them, the moderation, the community formed around them - all about discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So why is it a big deal?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I realize this is the slippery slope argument which is itself not a great formal argument structure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with discussions is that discussions can easily overwhelm the rest of the site.  Unlike objective questions that have answers (and if asked again can be directed to the previous one asked that will answer this one too), discussions of the same topic are infinite in their variety based on the participants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is based on the premise that good questions and answers attract and retain the experts that answer them and that people come to find answers.  The quality that Stack Exchange provides is unique within the Internet so far (quite a few clones, but none as compelling).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, discussions tend to drive away experts.  Not always, but its the trend.  This has been seen many times since the days of usenet news... experts really don't want to spend their time arguing with someone who doesn't understand the topic at hand when they want to just answer a question... and if they *do*, there are ways to have that discussion via other channels.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not to say that there are experts who do enjoy discussions... and that Stack Exchange isn't exactly working for them.  This is unfortunate, but it does not mean that discussions need to be allowed or that Stack Exchange needs to change." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18655" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6744" RevisionGUID="f880df5b-78fa-4a00-bc41-0386e3fbd988" CreationDate="2014-07-07T20:51:48.200" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="You've found a poor question that you really think has some merit to it.  What things are needed to successfully do this transformation of making a poor question into a good one?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;The Atwood Transform is first mentioned in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3898/should-i-give-more-information-to-this-question-how-to-improve and refers to the changes done to a question to make it a good one in [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18656" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6744" RevisionGUID="f880df5b-78fa-4a00-bc41-0386e3fbd988" CreationDate="2014-07-07T20:51:48.200" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="What is needed to really fix a question (an Atwood transform)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18657" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6744" RevisionGUID="f880df5b-78fa-4a00-bc41-0386e3fbd988" CreationDate="2014-07-07T20:51:48.200" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18658" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6745" RevisionGUID="8c25164c-6372-45c8-a3c2-028a5ec5bc56" CreationDate="2014-07-07T20:51:48.200" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="## Ok to completely change it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is acceptable to completely change the question and what it asks. Note that this is something that can only really be done if there are no answers.  Ideally, this also comes with the guidance of the person asking the question to make sure that it is still helpful to them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Make sure that its a good question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are 'just' fixing it up and adding context to the question that you create, it is necessary to make sure that the resulting question is a good one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm looking for books about design and software architecture.  Also, what are some jobs that make use of this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Converting this into a well worded question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've been studying software architecture and lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer ac turpis nec massa pretium euismod. Donec rutrum sapien id quam porttitor, ut volutpat est facilisis.  What are some good books for this?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've also wondered what careers are available in this field. Quisque venenatis facilisis ornare. Sed ac dictum ante, porttitor auctor turpis. Sed semper dui enim, sed congue odio faucibus nec. Cras vulputate quam vel pharetra.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Any insights are appreciated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a better question in general, but it still fails at several points about being a good Stack Exchange question.  It *still* asks a question for book recommendations (off topic) and *still* asks about career advice (which is also off topic).  Furthermore, it doesn't fix the issue that there are two questions being asked in a single post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However much this is transformed without radical rewordings its just [polishing a turd](http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/polishing-a-turd-minimyth.htm).  While its possible to *really* polish it... its still a turd.  The question would *still* be closed if it was asked fresh in that state.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Fixing formatting isn't enough&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, people just go through and suggest edits that change &quot;a&quot; to &quot;`a`&quot; or the like.  While this can stylistically help in reading the question, it doesn't fundamentally change the question in a way that would merit it being reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that this isn't saying *don't* do it.  It is possible that the original poster will see the changes and understand more about how to make a question look better in the future... but if there are other issues, they should be fixed as well.  Fixing only formatting while leaving other glaring issues may be marked as 'too minor' with a review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Disappointment results&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For many people doing these changes, they are still getting the +2 rep from a suggested edit being approved.  If these questions get deleted, that +2 rep will get deleted too.  Taking a -4 score question and tweaking it, even if the resulting question reads better, looks better - if its not something that can be reopened will likely get deleted at some point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Sometimes, the thing to do is to close it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is something that the OP has dropped in the question box and gone away with no activity, close (or flag it) the question and leave the comments to try to find out the real problem behind the question asked that you can work through and create a better question.  If the OP doesn't come back to help work with the question, realize it is something that may have been asked in the past or will be again asked in the future and let it go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## TLDR&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Its ok to really change it.&#xD;&#xA;2. Make sure you change the question into something that can be reopened&#xD;&#xA;3. Don't just fix the format&#xD;&#xA;4. Sometimes you need to just let it go" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18659" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6743" RevisionGUID="ab4bdefc-cbb7-44ce-933f-24b0a4d7ab75" CreationDate="2014-07-07T21:21:35.097" UserId="31260" Comment="it's for Peter // http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6705/to-people-who-vote-to-reopen-everything-why#comment18188_6705" Text="### Branding&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to realize is that Stack Exchange brands itself as a Q&amp;A site. This is the very top of the content when you go to http://stackexchange.com.  It calls out that this is something *different* than forums, that there are right answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When one goes to the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) page, note the wording of the text there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Just questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... and answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Going further into the help center, one finds [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) which links to three other pages that goes into more about what isn't allowed on the site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Thus, questions that are not answerable — discussions, debates, opinions — should be closed as subjective. It seems simple enough: Fact good; opinion and discussion bad. But why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Most forums and chat rooms have a scale problem. As in, they don’t. The more people that join the discussion, the more noise each of those connections bring. So the forums get progressively noisier and noisier, and suddenly one day … you stop learning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On the nature of discussions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of a discussion is back and forth.  Lines of communication.  Look at sites that are intended for discussion and you will find threads and nested comments and a system that isn't designed around getting answers but rather to make connections with people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is different.  As stated in the tour and time and time again in other documents, this is a Q&amp;A site.  As such it has intentionally made having these discussions difficult.  Things such as limited sizes of comments, limited markdown in comments, the automatic move comment to chat feature.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussions make it harder to find the answer - you have to wade through all the other stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;As an aside, there is *nothing* worse than trying to go from reading a post, to reading the comments to going back to the post to see the reply, and back to the comments to see the next reply and back to the post... Don't do that. Remove the 'Edit:' and 'Update:' from your edit, make the entire thing a cohesive whole and leave a comment saying that the post has been updated to take this into account - people can read the revision history if they want to see what changed.&amp;lt;/rant&amp;gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are sites that do discussions very well... or, as well as discussions can be done.  Jeff Atwood even went off to make another site model designed precisely for discussions (http://www.discourse.org)... and it's not a Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not to say that one can't try to mix Q&amp;A and discussions.  But it's *very* hard to do both right.  It's hard enough to do one of them right.  Stack Exchange chose to get Q&amp;A right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Where else can discussions be had?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *do* want to have a discussion there are some options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Visit [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard).  The _Whiteboard_ chat room is one such place within the Stack Exchange network where discussions are allowed (and encouraged).&#xD;&#xA;* Ask somewhere else.  There are numerous other sites out there that are designed for discussions.  [Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/), [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/ask), [Slashdot](http://ask.slashdot.org) to name a few.  These are sites that are specifically designed with discussions in mind - the voting system on them, the moderation, the community formed around them - all about discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So why is it a big deal?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I realize this is the slippery slope argument which is itself not a great formal argument structure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with discussions is that discussions can easily overwhelm the rest of the site.  Unlike objective questions that have answers (and if asked again can be directed to the previous one asked that will answer this one too), discussions of the same topic are infinite in their variety based on the participants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is based on the premise that good questions and answers attract and retain the experts that answer them and that people come to find answers.  The quality that Stack Exchange provides is unique within the Internet so far (quite a few clones, but none as compelling).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, discussions tend to drive away experts.  Not always, but it's the trend.  This has been seen many times since the days of Usenet news... experts really don't want to spend their time arguing with someone who doesn't understand the topic at hand when they want to just answer a question... and if they *do*, there are ways to have that discussion via other channels.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not to say that there are experts who do enjoy discussions... and that Stack Exchange isn't exactly working for them.  This is unfortunate, but it does not mean that discussions need to be allowed or that Stack Exchange needs to change." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18660" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6744" RevisionGUID="dc514888-8615-46fd-a824-5cf2136cda0c" CreationDate="2014-07-07T21:59:33.003" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited body" Text="You've found a poor question that you really think has some merit to it.  What things are needed to successfully do this transformation of making a poor question into a good one?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;The Atwood transform is first mentioned in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3898/should-i-give-more-information-to-this-question-how-to-improve and refers to the changes done to a question to make it a good one in [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18661" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6742" RevisionGUID="fab5c7e8-3bbf-4e20-b757-86d778f6e2b8" CreationDate="2014-07-07T23:24:43.733" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/486289740720009216" />
  <row Id="18662" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6742" RevisionGUID="c075379b-2bde-4c24-bb7e-cc688659e96c" CreationDate="2014-07-07T23:24:46.007" UserId="1204" Comment="edited title" Text="On discussions and why they don't make good questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18663" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6743" RevisionGUID="b853e72c-fef5-461b-a184-bdcd2a2fb049" CreationDate="2014-07-07T23:27:31.267" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 12 characters in body" Text="## Why we're not a forum&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to realize is that Stack Exchange brands itself as a Q&amp;A site. This is the very top of the content when you go to http://stackexchange.com.  It calls out that this is something *different* than forums, that there are right answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When one goes to the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) page, note the wording of the text there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat. Just questions...  and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Going further into the help center, one finds [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) which links to three other pages that goes into more about what isn't allowed on the site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Thus, questions that are not answerable — discussions, debates, opinions — should be closed as subjective. It seems simple enough: Fact good; opinion and discussion bad. But why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Most forums and chat rooms have a scale problem. As in, they don’t. The more people that join the discussion, the more noise each of those connections bring. So the forums get progressively noisier and noisier, and suddenly one day … you stop learning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## On the nature of discussions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of a discussion is back and forth.  Lines of communication.  Look at sites that are intended for discussion and you will find threads and nested comments and a system that isn't designed around getting answers but rather to make connections with people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is different.  As stated in the tour and time and time again in other documents, this is a Q&amp;A site.  As such it has intentionally made having these discussions difficult.  Things such as limited sizes of comments, limited markdown in comments, the automatic move comment to chat feature.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussions make it harder to find the answer - you have to wade through all the other stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;As an aside, there is *nothing* worse than trying to go from reading a post, to reading the comments to going back to the post to see the reply, and back to the comments to see the next reply and back to the post... Don't do that. Remove the 'Edit:' and 'Update:' from your edit, make the entire thing a cohesive whole and leave a comment saying that the post has been updated to take this into account - people can read the revision history if they want to see what changed.&amp;lt;/rant&amp;gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are sites that do discussions very well... or, as well as discussions can be done.  Jeff Atwood even went off to make another site model designed precisely for discussions (http://www.discourse.org)... and it's not a Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not to say that one can't try to mix Q&amp;A and discussions.  But it's *very* hard to do both right.  It's hard enough to do one of them right.  Stack Exchange chose to get Q&amp;A right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Where else can discussions be had?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *do* want to have a discussion there are some options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Visit [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard).  The _Whiteboard_ chat room is one such place within the Stack Exchange network where discussions are allowed (and encouraged).&#xD;&#xA;* Ask somewhere else.  There are numerous other sites out there that are designed for discussions.  [Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/), [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/ask), [Slashdot](http://ask.slashdot.org) to name a few.  These are sites that are specifically designed with discussions in mind - the voting system on them, the moderation, the community formed around them - all about discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So why is it a big deal?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with discussions is that discussions can easily overwhelm the rest of the site.  Unlike objective questions that have answers (and if asked again can be directed to the previous one asked that will answer this one too), discussions of the same topic are infinite in their variety based on the participants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is based on the premise that good questions and answers attract and retain the experts that answer them and that people come to find answers.  The quality that Stack Exchange provides is unique within the Internet so far (quite a few clones, but none as compelling).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, discussions tend to drive away experts.  Not always, but it's the trend.  This has been seen many times since the days of Usenet news... experts really don't want to spend their time arguing with someone who doesn't understand the topic at hand when they want to just answer a question... and if they *do*, there are ways to have that discussion via other channels.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not to say that there are experts who do enjoy discussions... and that Stack Exchange isn't exactly working for them.  This is unfortunate, but it does not mean that discussions need to be allowed or that Stack Exchange needs to change." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18664" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6746" RevisionGUID="c9b47e70-af47-400b-b966-f8875dd3b935" CreationDate="2014-07-09T06:07:22.520" UserId="31260" Text="Comment [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6735/how-important-is-it-for-new-users-to-be-able-to-ask-question-at-programmers-imme#comment18232_6735 &quot;'yet another step that would push new users away from this site, and as I pointed out here, new users are needed to keep any online community healthy...'&quot;) expressed concern on whether site is attractive for new users. I would like some statistics to learn more about that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per user ids it looks like site has got 5,000 new users this month, I would like to find more about their activity, how many of them are registered, how many asked, answered, commented, suggested an edit, voted etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the purpose of comparison, I would like to also have similar stats on how it was half year ago, one, two and three years ago." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18665" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6746" RevisionGUID="c9b47e70-af47-400b-b966-f8875dd3b935" CreationDate="2014-07-09T06:07:22.520" UserId="31260" Text="Stats regarding new users" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18666" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6746" RevisionGUID="c9b47e70-af47-400b-b966-f8875dd3b935" CreationDate="2014-07-09T06:07:22.520" UserId="31260" Text="|support|new-users|statistics|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18667" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6747" RevisionGUID="5dc11283-1754-4caf-b053-e8068e41793d" CreationDate="2014-07-09T18:08:47.883" UserId="35693" Text="The site likes questions whose answers are &quot;definitive.&quot; That is to avoid questions that will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or *extended discussion* And the reason is that such a quesion cannot be answered clearly and definitively using facts, references, or specific expertise.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One thing site is consciously trying to avoid is questions that could attract many &quot;pretty good&quot; possible answers but no one that stands out from all the rest. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site's preference for a handful of answers that &quot;converge&quot; to a single, definitive, and presumably correct answer, is like preferring an infinite series that has a single, rather than &quot;divergent,&quot; limit points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18668" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6748" RevisionGUID="1e511ac6-7eb9-4e1e-8aa7-671b1281fcc6" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:06:25.830" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/235324/finding-out-the-reason-for-ban" />
  <row Id="18669" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6748" RevisionGUID="fb9bdefb-1924-4629-81f2-de32aa0be681" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:05:28.780" UserId="86783" UserDisplayName="Mare Infinitus" Text="After some months I got back to [programmers.stackexchange][1] to ask a question there. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I get this really disturbing message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We are no longer accepting questions from this account. See [the Help Center][2] to learn more. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I remember I always had a positiv statistic at programmers, so I do not see any reason for some kind of ban. From what I can see in my profile, there are only positive questions / answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, my question is very simple:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can I find out what on the world led to that ban?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18670" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6748" RevisionGUID="fb9bdefb-1924-4629-81f2-de32aa0be681" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:05:28.780" UserId="86783" UserDisplayName="Mare Infinitus" Text="Finding out the reason for ban" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18671" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6748" RevisionGUID="fb9bdefb-1924-4629-81f2-de32aa0be681" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:05:28.780" UserId="86783" UserDisplayName="Mare Infinitus" Text="|support|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18672" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6749" RevisionGUID="96a9d17e-1c66-41c2-9b1b-9dbc96103ced" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:07:03.100" UserId="116512" Text="If you go to the vanilla programmers.stackexchange.com URL, you get the standard active/featured/hot/week/month tab options. However, if you go to programmers.stackexchange.com/questions , you get the tabs newest/featured/frequent/votes/active/unanswered. There are no other interface cues to alert you that one is different than the other- only the missing sort tabs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why? And more importantly, should there be a difference?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18673" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6749" RevisionGUID="96a9d17e-1c66-41c2-9b1b-9dbc96103ced" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:07:03.100" UserId="116512" Text="Why is there a difference between programmers.stackexchange.com and programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18674" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6749" RevisionGUID="96a9d17e-1c66-41c2-9b1b-9dbc96103ced" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:07:03.100" UserId="116512" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18675" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6750" RevisionGUID="a31f21b8-ba27-4b9b-956f-e6eb66950976" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:11:08.547" UserId="4767" Text="You have asked 4 questions on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3 of them are deleted, all 3 have downvotes to them. The remaining question is not stellar (single upvote).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like they mostly don't follow the on-topic/off-topic rules laid out in the help center, so not that surprising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18676" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6748" RevisionGUID="ee16fddf-5e69-4bfa-a960-7ced55e104eb" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:15:25.767" UserId="86783" Comment="more information on my own research" Text="After some months I got back to [programmers.stackexchange][1] to ask a question there. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I get this really disturbing message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We are no longer accepting questions from this account. See [the Help Center][2] to learn more. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I remember I always had a positiv statistic at programmers, so I do not see any reason for some kind of ban. From what I can see in my profile, there are only positive questions / answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From my profile I can see that I have 2 questions asked. One positive, one deleted because it seemed to be offtopic (which I tried to discuss, because the question is legit from what the rules tell).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, 1 good question, 1 closed question and 1 good answer... this gets me banned?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, my question is very simple:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can I find out what on the world led to that ban?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18677" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6749" RevisionGUID="9b456c7f-4bcd-4435-99d5-26f2485469f3" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:16:23.553" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Link to links.  Bullet the lists.  Add the 'design' tag." Text="If you go to the vanilla http://programmers.stackexchange.com URL, you get the standard tabs:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* active&#xD;&#xA;* featured&#xD;&#xA;* hot&#xD;&#xA;* week&#xD;&#xA;* month&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you go to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions, you get the tabs:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* newest&#xD;&#xA;* featured&#xD;&#xA;* frequent&#xD;&#xA;* votes&#xD;&#xA;* active&#xD;&#xA;* unanswered&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are no other interface cues to alert you that one is different than the other - only the missing sort tabs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why? And more importantly, should there be a difference?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18678" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6749" RevisionGUID="9b456c7f-4bcd-4435-99d5-26f2485469f3" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:16:23.553" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Link to links.  Bullet the lists.  Add the 'design' tag." Text="Why does the questions 'tab' have different sub tabs than the main page?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18679" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6749" RevisionGUID="9b456c7f-4bcd-4435-99d5-26f2485469f3" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:16:23.553" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Link to links.  Bullet the lists.  Add the 'design' tag." Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18680" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6751" RevisionGUID="70518217-5572-4ab1-98cb-2b5f1339e718" CreationDate="2014-07-10T18:29:10.287" UserId="1204" Text="The main URL, http://programmers.stackexchange.com, contains a list of **Top** Questions, so you're shown tabs that are relevant to Top Questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Top Questions is a high-level category, of which Active, Featured, Hot, Week and Month are all subcategories.  Newest, Featured, Frequent, Votes, Active and Unanswered are all high-level categories of All Questions, and don't make sense on the Top Questions page." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18681" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6680" RevisionGUID="791fbdf9-b4c0-4641-a09f-44d4dc209cc9" CreationDate="2014-07-11T11:15:55.257" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|review|new-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18682" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6742" RevisionGUID="25497388-5ef7-490e-83d0-99c78b98f533" CreationDate="2014-07-11T13:24:51.750" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags; edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|close-reasons|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18683" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6743" RevisionGUID="b4313ba6-758e-46ad-bbfc-a78fda839ee4" CreationDate="2014-07-12T16:09:56.013" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="## Why we're not a forum&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to realize is that Stack Exchange brands itself as a Q&amp;A site. This is the very top of the content when you go to http://stackexchange.com.  It calls out that this is something *different* than forums, that there are *right answers.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When one goes to the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) page, note the wording of the text there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat. Just questions...  and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Going further into the help center, one finds [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) which links to three other pages that goes into more about what isn't allowed on the site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Thus, questions that are not answerable — discussions, debates, opinions — should be closed as subjective. It seems simple enough: Fact good; opinion and discussion bad. But why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Most forums and chat rooms have a scale problem. As in, they don’t. The more people that join the discussion, the more noise each of those connections bring. So the forums get progressively noisier and noisier, and suddenly one day … you stop learning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## On the nature of discussions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of a discussion is back and forth.  Lines of communication.  Look at sites that are intended for discussion and you will find threads and nested comments and a system that isn't designed around getting answers but rather to make connections with people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is different.  As stated in the tour and time and time again in other documents, this is a Q&amp;A site.  As such it has intentionally made having these discussions difficult.  Things such as limited sizes of comments, limited markdown in comments, the automatic move comment to chat feature.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussions make it harder to find the answer - you have to wade through all the other stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;As an aside, there is *nothing* worse than trying to go from reading a post, to reading the comments to going back to the post to see the reply, and back to the comments to see the next reply and back to the post... Don't do that. Remove the 'Edit:' and 'Update:' from your edit, make the entire thing a cohesive whole and leave a comment saying that the post has been updated to take this into account - people can read the revision history if they want to see what changed.&amp;lt;/rant&amp;gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are sites that do discussions very well... or, as well as discussions can be done.  Jeff Atwood even went off to make another site model designed precisely for discussions (http://www.discourse.org)... and it's not a Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not to say that one can't try to mix Q&amp;A and discussions.  But it's *very* hard to do both right.  It's hard enough to do one of them right.  Stack Exchange chose to get Q&amp;A right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Where else can discussions be had?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *do* want to have a discussion there are some options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Visit [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard).  The _Whiteboard_ chat room is one such place within the Stack Exchange network where discussions are allowed (and encouraged).&#xD;&#xA;* Ask somewhere else.  There are numerous other sites out there that are designed for discussions.  [Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/), [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/ask), [Slashdot](http://ask.slashdot.org) to name a few.  These are sites that are specifically designed with discussions in mind - the voting system on them, the moderation, the community formed around them - all about discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So why is it a big deal?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with discussions is that discussions can easily overwhelm the rest of the site.  Unlike objective questions that have answers (and if asked again can be directed to the previous one asked that will answer this one too), discussions of the same topic are infinite in their variety based on the participants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is based on the premise that good questions and answers attract and retain the experts that answer them and that people come to find answers.  The quality that Stack Exchange provides is unique within the Internet so far (quite a few clones, but none as compelling).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, discussions tend to drive away experts.  Not always, but it's the trend.  This has been seen many times since the days of Usenet news... experts really don't want to spend their time arguing with someone who doesn't understand the topic at hand when they want to just answer a question... and if they *do*, there are ways to have that discussion via other channels.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not to say that there are experts who do enjoy discussions... and that Stack Exchange isn't exactly working for them.  This is unfortunate, but it does not mean that discussions need to be allowed or that Stack Exchange needs to change." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18692" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6753" RevisionGUID="04de22a7-693a-421d-95af-56dd37a0c63b" CreationDate="2014-07-14T09:23:07.330" UserId="44104" Text="A migrated question has one answer.&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24416871/netbeans-changed-after-uml-installed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But when I look at the list of questions, I see, that the question has no answers. &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/uml&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18693" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6753" RevisionGUID="04de22a7-693a-421d-95af-56dd37a0c63b" CreationDate="2014-07-14T09:23:07.330" UserId="44104" Text="Error in counting the answers for migrated questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18694" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6753" RevisionGUID="04de22a7-693a-421d-95af-56dd37a0c63b" CreationDate="2014-07-14T09:23:07.330" UserId="44104" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18695" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6753" RevisionGUID="c3d4c0d1-6bf8-4358-a123-168de8fcf6f1" CreationDate="2014-07-14T09:31:16.663" UserId="44104" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="A migrated question has one answer.&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24416871/netbeans-changed-after-uml-installed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But when I look at the list of questions, I see, that the question has zero answers. &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/uml&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18696" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6754" RevisionGUID="b2eb019f-ad10-4b4e-81f1-0907c3652c2b" CreationDate="2014-07-14T17:44:58.917" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="When a question is migrated to another site, all answers to it are deleted (its a soft delete - 10k users and mods can still see it) and moved with the question to its target site.  The question is then locked by the Community user to prevent other state changing things (votes and edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the migration is not rejected (closed on the target site), in 30 days the question will be deleted on the origin site.  Until then, it acts as a redirect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the migration is rejected by closing it as something other than a duplicate, the following things happen:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The answers that came from the origin site are deleted from the question on the target site&#xD;&#xA;* The question on the target site is locked&#xD;&#xA;* The answers on the origin site are undeleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All that said, it doesn't appear that you answered it *here*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [no redirect link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/246076/netbeans-changed-after-uml-installed?noredirect=1)&#xD;&#xA;* [timeline](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/246076/timeline)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, P.SE never had reason to say there was one answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only in a *very* few cases does one SE site query another one (migrations to see if the question can be posted there (tags, question ban)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Putting a &quot;check how many answers are on the target site&quot; can cause some disproportionate amounts of activity on the database, especially when things could move from SU to SO and then having a significant uptick in the &quot;how many answers are on this question over there&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could have very significant impacts depending on how Stack Exchange partitions the databases or machines." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18699" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6753" RevisionGUID="b5352621-d382-429c-ac57-4b20c136aba9" CreationDate="2014-07-15T16:13:01.373" UserId="4767" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18700" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6749" RevisionGUID="3431c979-7d0f-44cd-88c8-2b6a74deeae3" CreationDate="2014-07-15T17:52:32.623" UserId="142800" Comment="At this point this is a discussion and not a bug" Text="|discussion|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18701" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6755" RevisionGUID="2bdc1edc-4fc7-4cbd-9b2a-851a833ae4b8" CreationDate="2014-07-16T18:59:39.303" UserId="97968" Text="Should [web-applications][1] and [webapp][2] tags be merged? I think so. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/web-applications&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/webapp" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18702" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6755" RevisionGUID="2bdc1edc-4fc7-4cbd-9b2a-851a833ae4b8" CreationDate="2014-07-16T18:59:39.303" UserId="97968" Text="Should web-applications and webapp tags be merged?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18703" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6755" RevisionGUID="2bdc1edc-4fc7-4cbd-9b2a-851a833ae4b8" CreationDate="2014-07-16T18:59:39.303" UserId="97968" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-merge|merge-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18704" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6755" RevisionGUID="19a5ccdd-6a7e-46ad-bfe5-067cdcc68b5c" CreationDate="2014-07-16T19:10:16.340" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Change markdown to use tag:" Text="Should [tag:web-applications] (551 questions) and [tag:webapp] (8 questions) tags be merged? I think so. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18705" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6756" RevisionGUID="c91c519c-7dcf-4f8a-beb6-023642d29171" CreationDate="2014-07-16T19:15:14.380" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Yes.  Though given the counts of the various tags, its even easier than going through a merge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've retagged all the [tag:webapp] to [tag:web-applications].  The webapp tag will die with the zombie tag cleanup script.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it gets recreated again (though that will take some rep to do), can rethink synonyms, merges, and blacklists." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18706" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6757" RevisionGUID="2c14f53e-e585-43ae-b2cc-d352d5e04b90" CreationDate="2014-07-17T00:16:55.263" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There is a cue, though its a rather subtle one: questions is underlined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each top level tab (Main (default), Questions, Tags, Users, Badges, Unanswered) has a different set of sub tabs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][3] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It just happens that the Main and Questions tab both have similar views into the system, but they are separate and distinct tabs.  The Unanswered tab also has a view into the questions, though that tends to be something that is intentionally clicked as it is further away from the site logo.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One thing to note in the different views is the emphasis given by the tab name:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Main -&gt; Top Questions&#xD;&#xA;* Questions -&gt; All Questions&#xD;&#xA;* Unanswered -&gt; Unanswered Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And thus, the sub tabs for each of these is applicable to that tab title.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could something be done?  Maybe.  The simplest approach (IMHO) would be to have a 'Top' tab along with Questions, Tabs, Users, that is equivalent to the site's main page.  Thus, when you hit the Main page you would have Top highlighted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/k07Lmm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/2RpI6m.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/53JBTm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/wkbFBm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/p9yjXm.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18707" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6758" RevisionGUID="26dc6c89-af51-476b-96ff-b6df15b47637" CreationDate="2014-07-17T02:41:51.767" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="&gt; &amp;lt;Some question about design or product&amp;gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are the pros and cons?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, these questions get closed as 'too broad' or 'primarily opinion'.  Why is that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18708" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6758" RevisionGUID="26dc6c89-af51-476b-96ff-b6df15b47637" CreationDate="2014-07-17T02:41:51.767" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="What is the problem with &quot;Pros and Cons&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18709" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6758" RevisionGUID="26dc6c89-af51-476b-96ff-b6df15b47637" CreationDate="2014-07-17T02:41:51.767" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18710" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6759" RevisionGUID="d43358b0-3553-454a-a487-f27141e79415" CreationDate="2014-07-17T02:41:51.767" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The &quot;what are the pros and cons&quot; style questions are slightly obscured polling questions... though only very slightly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions of this type sometimes have a dozen answers that look like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Pros&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Point 1&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Point 2&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cons&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Counter point 1&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Counter point 2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Something no one mentioned yet is that Foo is really good at doing bar.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers to these questions are a poll asking for people to collect various bits of facts into what they think (opinion - a pro for one person is a con for another) into a post.  As there are often *many* of these factoids that goes into making a decision, there can be scores of them (just think of the [weighted decision matrix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision-matrix_method) that managers so love - I once had to fill out my opinions on some competing products that was over 100 rows - each with a different factoid of some importance (and I feel it *still* left out some important items)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of these questions also makes it so that they are never complete.  One can never have an authoritative answer for the pros and cons, nor can one have an answer that includes *everything* - someone will always find another point that they like or dislike about the design decision.  Questions of this format from three years ago *still* get people adding single pro or con items to it (often just a single sentence).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These types of questions rarely produce good answers and instead seem to have shorter and shorter answers as time goes on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When comparing products, this falls into a further problematic area of shopping questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are the pros and cons of having a Linux dev system rather than a FreeBSD dev system?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Design decisions are slightly better, though they are still problematic.  They are still in the range of 'too broad' and 'primarily opinion'.  A better option than asking for pros and cons is to look at trying to write the question as a design review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize though, that asking for a design review rather than just 'pros and cons' isn't a simple matter of changing the finishing up part of the question to ask for a design review.  The guidance on how to ask a design review question can be found at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6502/design-review-on-topic-or-not" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18711" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6759" RevisionGUID="ca9f1564-aac9-4844-a86c-851842fe4b0d" CreationDate="2014-07-17T02:48:31.290" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 457 characters in body" Text="The &quot;what are the pros and cons&quot; style questions are slightly obscured polling questions... though only very slightly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions of this type sometimes have a dozen answers that look like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Pros&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Point 1&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Point 2&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cons&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Counter point 1&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Counter point 2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Something no one mentioned yet is that Foo is really good at doing bar.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers to these questions are a poll asking for people to collect various bits of facts into what they think (opinion - a pro for one person is a con for another) into a post.  As there are often *many* of these factoids that goes into making a decision, there can be scores of them (just think of the [weighted decision matrix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision-matrix_method) that managers so love - I once had to fill out my opinions on some competing products that was over 100 rows - each with a different factoid of some importance (and I feel it *still* left out some important items)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of these questions also makes it so that they are never complete.  One can never have an authoritative answer for the pros and cons, nor can one have an answer that includes *everything* - someone will always find another point that they like or dislike about the design decision.  Questions of this format from three years ago *still* get people adding single pro or con items to it (often just a single sentence).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These types of questions rarely produce good answers and instead seem to have shorter and shorter answers as time goes on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When comparing products, this falls into a further problematic area of shopping questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are the pros and cons of having a Linux dev system rather than a FreeBSD dev system?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Design decisions are slightly better, though they are still problematic.  They are still in the range of 'too broad' and 'primarily opinion'.  A better option than asking for pros and cons is to look at trying to write the question as a design review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize though, that asking for a design review rather than just 'pros and cons' isn't a simple matter of changing the finishing up part of the question to ask for a design review.  The guidance on how to ask a design review question can be found at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6502/design-review-on-topic-or-not&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the questions that have been asked in the 'pros and cons' format in the past can fairly easily be rewritten in a way that isn't a poll and instead identifies the problem and asks for solutions to it rather than polling for tidbits of opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, many of the historical questions have answers that are in the 'pros and cons' format that would make rewriting the question while maintaining the validity of the answers difficult." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18712" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6760" RevisionGUID="32d10eb2-9e26-49e3-9811-c6ad62aff088" CreationDate="2014-07-17T15:28:18.483" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="I'm going to work up a more complex query, but here's some basic data about retention that I'd like to look at more in order to scope said query. We get _a lot_ of users unlikely to stick around, in particular below the 200 reputation level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this in context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - There are 3,282 users between 150 and 200 rep. Of them, 1,180 have not been seen in 180 days or more (the point at which we consider them lost). Roughly 35%. &#xD;&#xA; - There are 4,434 users between 200 and 500 rep. Of _them_, only 1,308 have not been seen in 180 days or more. Roughly 29%&#xD;&#xA; - There are 1,291 users between 500 and 1k rep. However, only 295 of them are gone, or 22%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The percentages get even smaller as you work up the scales. On this site, if you get past 500 rep, you're very likely to become a long time user - we've got relatively decent retention if you consider that probably _half_ of the folks in the first bracket probably found the site by accident in search of something else. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think what we want to look at here is folks in the middle bracket that have actually voted and posted at least once. I'm sure there is _some_ meaningful data out of the first bracket, but its surrounded by a whole lot of random noise. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can't promise I'll get to this in the next 7 days, but I am going to see what I can get in a form that can be posted. You've got me curious as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18713" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6761" RevisionGUID="b33b43c5-6088-48d6-af42-0fb15cda5318" CreationDate="2014-07-17T18:57:11.550" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/250270/why-does-my-question-have-a-ton-of-views-but-no-votes" />
  <row Id="18714" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6761" RevisionGUID="1fe9760b-16e5-4ff4-873d-8f7888e1f482" CreationDate="2014-07-17T18:53:57.157" UserId="104465" Text="I am the asker of [this question][1], which has 2600 views and is the top Google result for the query &quot;Why use a class for tkinter&quot; and despite (in my opinion) being a relatively well constructed question, with a well thought out and concise answer, the question and the answer have a total of 4 votes. Is there a rational explanation for this? I'm don't care about the reputation, I just know the purpose of these sites is to share knowledge through a Q/A format, and I believe this is a relatively common question (thus the high views) and usually such questions also have a decent number of votes, thus signifying that the person found the question/answer helpful. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I mistaken about this precedent? is there something wrong with my question? Is my question misrepresented by its title?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/213935/why-use-classes-when-programming-a-tkinter-gui-in-python" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18715" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6761" RevisionGUID="1fe9760b-16e5-4ff4-873d-8f7888e1f482" CreationDate="2014-07-17T18:53:57.157" UserId="104465" Text="Why does my question have a ton of views but no votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18716" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6761" RevisionGUID="1fe9760b-16e5-4ff4-873d-8f7888e1f482" CreationDate="2014-07-17T18:53:57.157" UserId="104465" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18717" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6762" RevisionGUID="32c3401c-efd4-4cc9-b56d-a33fc46b7ba9" CreationDate="2014-07-18T07:38:50.113" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="The explanation is pretty simple, really, people finding your question arrive to the site, don't have an account and can't vote. You should feel good about it, as you've (potentially) helped 2600 or so folks learn something they didn't know before, but you can't expect that to translate into votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look at [the views on this](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/559808/linux-software-watchdog) - it's only got 11 up votes, but it's in the top 5 results for 'linux software watchdog'. That's on SO that has _significantly more_ registered users that have the ability to vote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I pay close attention to making sure I up-vote stuff that I find during the course of doing my job and hobby stuff for just this reason, I know too well how rare the 'thanks' can be as expressed by votes. Still - look at all of the people that now know how that particular kernel module works, that makes me happy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Views to votes only starts to correlate when something ends up on the front page of HN or Reddit, and even then we're much more likely to see folks that don't have accounts as a significant portion of the viewers. It's .. just how the net works :) When something gets prominent placement in Google's search results, it's a pretty common phenomenon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do collect anon feedback from folks, thinking about making that visible to the author of the question / answer only once a post reaches a certain number of views. But, that's .. a different discussion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18718" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6763" RevisionGUID="3c4431a7-b963-43e3-80a2-674f194dad0a" CreationDate="2014-07-19T03:14:49.173" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/250419/where-can-i-have-subjective-discussions-about-programming" />
  <row Id="18719" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6763" RevisionGUID="b8b13c5a-5b98-48e4-b4ff-58494beb9bcf" CreationDate="2014-07-19T01:31:28.253" UserDisplayName="user143253" Text="I entered Programmers Stack Exchange and unfortunately, it wasn't what I was looking for. As the name suggested, I expected you would be able to talk about programming, but the rules are much stricter than I imagined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that I prefer subjective discussions where I can learn through gaining different viewpoints and perspectives. Programmers.SE doesn't offer that experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which Stack Exchange sites allow this sort of discussions? Can [Stack Exchange's chat][1] be used for that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18720" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6763" RevisionGUID="b8b13c5a-5b98-48e4-b4ff-58494beb9bcf" CreationDate="2014-07-19T01:31:28.253" UserDisplayName="user143253" Text="Where can I have subjective discussions about programming?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18721" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6763" RevisionGUID="b8b13c5a-5b98-48e4-b4ff-58494beb9bcf" CreationDate="2014-07-19T01:31:28.253" UserDisplayName="user143253" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18726" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6766" RevisionGUID="424f0a63-3dd9-4955-8453-db2bef90f32d" CreationDate="2014-07-19T03:31:22.287" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="It really depends on what audience you want to reach and what you want to talk about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Options range from Stack Exchange's chat ( http://chat.stackexchange.com/ ) which is a real time web based chat that has history to it and tight integration with Stack Exchange as a whole to going to other places that are more designed for discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Places like Reddit/r/programming ( http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/ - and the various related ones that cater to a more specific focus), Hacker News ( https://news.ycombinator.com/ask ) and Slashdot ( http://ask.slashdot.org/ ) are three that come to mind most easily.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, a year ago there was an attempt to make 'notconstructive.com' which was announced via Hacker News ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6062876 ) which brings up many of the issues with both the Q&amp;A format and also the sites that try to cater to discussions (itself falling prey to not getting enough traction and having since closed).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are countless forums, forum-likes, and chat options.  Finding the one that fits your particular desires for the community and focus may take some time, and compromises to what you want desire may be needed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18727" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6767" RevisionGUID="f2af1f69-66ea-4389-8641-71432612428f" CreationDate="2014-07-19T07:30:40.353" UserDisplayName="user131" Text="When every answer to a question is potentially equally correct - and there could conceivably be quite a few answers, there's a _pretty_ good chance that you've started a discussion instead of asking a question (or a question that kicks off a discussion or debate). That's not _always_ true, but it's a good way to tell when you're venturing into the land of off-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're not .. a good platform to hold discussions. They turn out to be a collection of opinions that turn into a popularity contest as folks vote, and they _don't_ age particularly well. There are plenty of user groups / forums around that [run forum software that doesn't suck](http://discourse.org) much better suited to host these discussions than we are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, you _can_ have some pretty energetic and lively questions here, design patterns (and anti-patterns) have been covered quite extensively, as well as development methodologies, interesting approaches to architecture and others. But those are questions that you tend to ask _while_ your designing or building something - they have some context and they're anchored in something you're actually trying to get done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;What's the best&quot; and such tend to be encapsulated, there's no actual work going on, it's just people talking about stuff with no predetermined goal - and that's the kind of conversation that our engine does a wonderful job of breaking." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18730" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6761" RevisionGUID="c79f655c-5fb7-43d7-b991-8d6071e820c5" CreationDate="2014-07-19T16:51:38.793" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18731" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6763" RevisionGUID="8f3435b8-388b-4297-a3aa-3a580d2a19fd" CreationDate="2014-07-19T16:54:26.183" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add relevant tag" Text="|discussion|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18732" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6768" RevisionGUID="421c23ae-2224-49cc-a206-5fe732f03bd0" CreationDate="2014-07-19T17:58:50.203" UserId="128337" Text="I flagged a comment by the OP of [this question](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/250418/programming-first-bot-application) (now deleted) as &quot;rude or offensive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have access to the comment any more (and don't know if it was eventually removed), but for the &lt;10K+ users it basically was OP's rant about the response the question got (a link to [Where to Start?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start)) and how asking a bunch of &quot;computer nerds&quot; was a waste of his/her time and how he/she shouldn't have expected a &quot;socially acceptable response&quot; from the users here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I personally don't think that this was overly rude; I just felt it crossed the line of respectable behavior and could be reasonably construed as rude by another user. Now that I think about it, &quot;rude or offensive&quot; could be a bit of a stretch, as this is probably pretty mild compared to some other stuff people have left...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would flagging as &quot;Not constructive&quot; have been a better choice? Should I be saving &quot;Rude or offensive&quot; for the more vile comments some users might leave?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18733" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6768" RevisionGUID="421c23ae-2224-49cc-a206-5fe732f03bd0" CreationDate="2014-07-19T17:58:50.203" UserId="128337" Text="Was flagging as &quot;Rude or Offensive&quot; the wrong choice here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18734" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6768" RevisionGUID="421c23ae-2224-49cc-a206-5fe732f03bd0" CreationDate="2014-07-19T17:58:50.203" UserId="128337" Text="|support|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18735" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6763" RevisionGUID="3e2bccab-249c-4a2c-b1cc-1439b64e5186" CreationDate="2014-07-19T18:09:02.587" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/490558950073700352" />
  <row Id="18736" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6768" RevisionGUID="9de6cf08-0f32-4f5f-94a6-53912d0cb087" CreationDate="2014-07-19T20:08:43.367" UserId="128337" Comment="Edit to make clear that I'm seeking feedback about why a flag was declined." Text="I flagged a comment by the OP of [this question](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/250418/programming-first-bot-application) (now deleted) as &quot;rude or offensive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have access to the comment any more (and don't know if it was eventually removed), but for the &lt;10K+ users it basically was OP's rant about the response the question got (a link to [Where to Start?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start)) and how asking a bunch of &quot;computer nerds&quot; was a waste of his/her time and how he/she shouldn't have expected a &quot;socially acceptable response&quot; from the users here. I was moderately surprised when I checked back and found the flag was declined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I personally don't think that this was overly rude; I just felt it crossed the line of respectable behavior and could be reasonably construed as rude by another user. Now that I think about it, &quot;rude or offensive&quot; could be a bit of a stretch, as this is probably pretty mild compared to some other stuff people have left...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not particularly worried about the declined flag itself; I would just like to know where I went wrong so I can avoid making the same mistake again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would flagging as &quot;Not constructive&quot; have been a better choice? Should I be saving &quot;Rude or offensive&quot; for the more vile comments some users might leave?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18737" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6769" RevisionGUID="0fd593ce-5c63-4a37-87d3-159c5f40b8eb" CreationDate="2014-07-19T20:21:33.040" UserId="25936" Text="I fat fingered this. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The conversation in the comments had definitely taken a non constructive turn, and your flag was helpful (~ it pointed me to the right direction). The type of the flag is secondary, and it didn't play a role here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apologies. I owe you a helpful flag ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18738" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6770" RevisionGUID="20a530cf-8e07-4674-b7e1-df36f15cb0ad" CreationDate="2014-07-20T17:50:32.513" UserId="102240" Text="I got banned from Programmers.SE. I have one question with a score of 0 and one answer with a score of -1. I remember having a past question that was deleted, but it does not show up in &quot;Recent deleted questions&quot;, so I can't go back and fix it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to see the questions that were deleted, so I at least have a chance of fixing them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a way to fix this problem?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18739" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6770" RevisionGUID="20a530cf-8e07-4674-b7e1-df36f15cb0ad" CreationDate="2014-07-20T17:50:32.513" UserId="102240" Text="Got a question ban with no recent deleted posts -- how to fix?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18740" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6770" RevisionGUID="20a530cf-8e07-4674-b7e1-df36f15cb0ad" CreationDate="2014-07-20T17:50:32.513" UserId="102240" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18741" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6770" RevisionGUID="f8ac2f52-2a13-4d1f-a5a4-eb6c1cb14f9b" CreationDate="2014-07-20T18:33:20.923" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="add tag." Text="|support|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18742" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6771" RevisionGUID="cb62d720-e0db-4542-897a-a074f73eca6d" CreationDate="2014-07-20T21:22:18.200" UserId="4" Text="The two likely questions that contributed to the question ban were these two, both of which received a pretty significant net negative score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/228891 - -5&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/219843 - -4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are also not blocked from answering questions, so contributing answers (along with [the other steps on this page][1]) should help get over this block. Note that moderators can not lift it - the only way to get over this block is by contributing positively to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18743" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6772" RevisionGUID="1a530440-b383-4721-b75b-0257e80ff6be" CreationDate="2014-07-21T01:43:59.100" UserId="91517" Text="Refer to this [question][1] which I've wrote yesterday.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have much experience with packages terminology, so I've put my best effort into constructing a scenario to illustrate a real and simple use case, then asked what terminology should be used for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can see, if there is no proper terminology then the answer should be just that – &quot;there is no proper terminology to meet your requested criteria&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet, my question was downvoted and closed as primarily opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through meta, all I could find was http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6338/why-is-this-terminology-question-considered-as-opinion-based whose accepted answer supports my point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is there anything I can improve in my question, or is it just not welcome here for some other reason?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/250477/91517" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18744" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6772" RevisionGUID="1a530440-b383-4721-b75b-0257e80ff6be" CreationDate="2014-07-21T01:43:59.100" UserId="91517" Text="Why is this terminology question not well received in programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18745" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6772" RevisionGUID="1a530440-b383-4721-b75b-0257e80ff6be" CreationDate="2014-07-21T01:43:59.100" UserId="91517" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18746" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6772" RevisionGUID="277a86bd-76be-4403-b2f7-38d533c3d4a3" CreationDate="2014-07-21T02:09:39.867" UserId="91517" Comment="improve grammar" Text="Refer to this [question][1] which I've wrote yesterday.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have much experience with packages terminology, so I've put my best effort into constructing a scenario to illustrate a real and simple use case, then asked what terminology should be used for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can see, if there is no proper terminology then the answer should be just that – &quot;there is no standard terminology that meets your criteria&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet, my question was downvoted and closed as primarily opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through meta, all I could find was http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6338/why-is-this-terminology-question-considered-as-opinion-based whose accepted answer supports my point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is there anything I can improve in my question, or is it just not welcome here for some other reason?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/250477/91517" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18747" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6772" RevisionGUID="f1307abd-842c-47a8-a3d0-f2477a199d91" CreationDate="2014-07-21T08:31:42.993" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6582],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="18748" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6758" RevisionGUID="50f8afca-d0f9-49d6-999f-6922230db110" CreationDate="2014-07-21T15:18:45.087" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/491240870432473088" />
  <row Id="18749" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6488" RevisionGUID="001babea-f07f-4048-9940-9d08b9a2e3b2" CreationDate="2014-07-22T15:19:34.230" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 777 characters in body" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Career or education advice###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice questions are only applicable to the person asking the question.  No two people are looking at the same set of classes, or the same job.  Every question that is asked is either only for one person or the answers will always be hopelessly incomplete because of the lack of the nuanced information and context that the person asking the question is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career questions are often **very important** questions to the person asking them.  Although assistance can be provided, the answer is one that *you* need to find yourself, and not from random strangers on the Internet.  If you are in academia, ask a career counselor at the school, or one of the instructors - they know you better than we do.  Similar resources can be found for people in the job market already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the biggest difficulties with Q&amp;A for career questions is that to get the nuances of your situation and getting to know you better requires a dense two way communication - lots of clarification back and forth.  To this end, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is a resource where (the current) denizens can have that conversation.  We still won't get to know you as well as people who know you know you, but on the whole we are familiar with the various parts of the software industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please also note that we are notoriously bad at predicting the future.  If you had asked someone ten years ago if Objective C was going to be a popular language they would have looked at you funny (&quot;[Apple has less than a 2% market share](http://www.macworld.com/article/1043741/marketshare.html) - who would use it?&quot;).  Or if you asked about running JavaScript outside of the web browser they would have laughed at you.  Technology is changing at an incredible rate and to ask about what it will be in another decade? Your guess is as good as mine... maybe better (its less hampered by a few decades of industry preconceptions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking questions to predict the future job market and what skills are best is completely speculation and cannot have any right answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Reddit) [/r/cscareersquestions FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6594/are-now-all-questions-about-teaching-programming-to-be-considered-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Where to ask for general advice for young programmers?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/216589/where-to-ask-for-general-advice-for-young-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* Workplace.SE -&gt; [topics guidance](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)  &#xD;&#xA;  Workplace.SE -&gt; [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18751" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6773" RevisionGUID="b17cc717-d7f5-4832-99be-e901a0a2a27c" CreationDate="2014-07-24T12:00:10.910" UserId="29899" Text="I frequently come to programmers to ask a question about design. My current one is asking whether it's better to include an API in a .NET MVC project or whether it should be an external project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However as I write it I can't help thinking it's purely down to opinion and so will likely be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do you ask a design question which isn't opinion based?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18752" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6773" RevisionGUID="b17cc717-d7f5-4832-99be-e901a0a2a27c" CreationDate="2014-07-24T12:00:10.910" UserId="29899" Text="How to ask a design/architecture question that isn't opinion based?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18753" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6773" RevisionGUID="b17cc717-d7f5-4832-99be-e901a0a2a27c" CreationDate="2014-07-24T12:00:10.910" UserId="29899" Text="|discussion|design|opinion-based|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18754" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6773" RevisionGUID="1c70be8e-6c59-4166-ada4-6d96d02b6b18" CreationDate="2014-07-24T12:10:17.513" UserId="29899" Comment="added 427 characters in body" Text="I frequently come to programmers to ask a question about design. My current one is asking whether it's better to include an API in a .NET MVC project or whether it should be an external project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However as I write it I can't help thinking it's purely down to opinion and so will likely be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sample question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We're currently designing a new application which we anticipate will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; grow to a fair size. We're using .NET MVC and will need to implement&#xD;&#xA;&gt; an API (most likely WCF). Historically we've kept our APIs in a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; subfolder of the main UI project however we're worried about the extra&#xD;&#xA;&gt; routing issues may create.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it a good idea to keep the API in a separate solution in an MVC&#xD;&#xA;&gt; application?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do you ask a design question which isn't opinion based?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18755" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6774" RevisionGUID="bd1b8182-b699-43e9-9285-07666105387f" CreationDate="2014-07-24T13:59:24.853" UserId="25476" Text="I feel the best way to answer such questions is present the problem you are facing in making a design decision and state the answer that you feel is best.  Then try and ask about potential pitfalls and things to pay attention to, cons, with the decided approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has the benefit of being answerable and not asking for &quot;which is better&quot;.  The answerer being an expert in the subject matter should be able to identify the problems with his/her preferred approach and if it is not his/her preferred approach then it is even easier to think about what is wrong with this approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about design that you would like to ask and you feel it can be improved and are having trouble thinking of a way, then you can always flag for a moderator and we can try to improve the question for you or put it on hold giving the community the chance to improve the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18756" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6775" RevisionGUID="6040fe5c-4874-46cd-9f33-db3f60c4bea3" CreationDate="2014-07-25T23:36:54.140" UserId="6222" Text="The new product that the creators of Stackoverflow and the StackExchange network is [Discourse][1]. This new discourse platform might be useful for such discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://discourse.org" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18757" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6776" RevisionGUID="ec48597f-d488-453b-a8c5-cbc413e4d3f8" CreationDate="2014-07-26T11:29:20.647" UserId="143990" Text="It's quite easy to answer if one reflects about what one wants when a question arises right in the middle of daily programming work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regularly, one would just want a concise and correct how-to, best with a small, and down-to-the-point code snippet attached, and carry on with on own coding, and not open up for opinion, sentiment and other noise that &quot;discussions&quot; carry with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And imnsho delivering answers free of such noise is what SO excels in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18758" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6766" RevisionGUID="7e3917bb-dafc-4b01-891d-aee3b6471acd" CreationDate="2014-07-26T14:13:05.007" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add slant." Text="It really depends on what audience you want to reach and what you want to talk about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Options range from Stack Exchange's chat (http://chat.stackexchange.com/) which is a real time web based chat that has history to it and tight integration with Stack Exchange as a whole to going to other places that are more designed for discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Places like Reddit/r/programming (http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/ - and the various related ones that cater to a more specific focus), Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/ask) and Slashdot (http://ask.slashdot.org/) are three that come to mind most easily.  Slant (http://www.slant.co) also bears mentioning in that it is specifically designed for the &quot;what is the best XYZ&quot; type questions, though it is also a site that maintains a laser focus on what it does well and comments or discussions really aren't part of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, a year ago there was an attempt to make 'notconstructive.com' which was announced via Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6062876) which brings up many of the issues with both the Q&amp;A format and also the sites that try to cater to discussions (itself falling prey to not getting enough traction and having since closed).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are countless forums, forum-likes, and chat options.  Finding the one that fits your particular desires for the community and focus may take some time, and compromises to what you want desire may be needed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18759" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6777" RevisionGUID="69e35d99-ac58-4c69-bd19-df769befbb3b" CreationDate="2014-07-27T09:22:55.350" UserId="130479" Text="The following terms are all related and cover the same topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:coding-standards] x 301  &#xD;&#xA;**Wiki**: Coding standards a set of conventions and practices used in software, such as naming classes, variables, and files. &#xD;&#xA;Programming style is a set of rules or guidelines used when writing the source code for a computer program.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:coding-guideline] x 5 : *No wiki*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:coding-style] x 440 : *No wiki*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:code-style] x 32 : *No wiki*&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18760" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6777" RevisionGUID="69e35d99-ac58-4c69-bd19-df769befbb3b" CreationDate="2014-07-27T09:22:55.350" UserId="130479" Text="Tag merge / Synonym request : [coding-standards]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18761" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6777" RevisionGUID="69e35d99-ac58-4c69-bd19-df769befbb3b" CreationDate="2014-07-27T09:22:55.350" UserId="130479" Text="|discussion|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18762" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6484" RevisionGUID="cb1527b2-47a8-4794-b4fa-9c307d07ade5" CreationDate="2014-07-27T18:07:34.137" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 52 characters in body" Text="# Downvoted #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to look at is the mouseover for the down vote button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that this is a completely subjective grading and people may down vote because they were late to work or don't like unicorns.  However one's feeling of unicorns, this *is* information for you to look at and consider how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Make sure that the question is not just asking for something that can be easily searched with google.###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking other people to do your searching for you is considered poor form.  Everyone answering questions is doing so on a volunteer basis (even the SE employees that sometimes answer questions - they aren't paid to do so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also extends to things that you should have been able to find when searching on P.SE.  As you enter the information be sure to tag the question appropriately.  The combination of tags and title *may* help you find something right away that answers the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Explain your current understanding of the issue###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just saying &quot;Could someone explain ${concept} to me&quot; doesn't show what you *do* understand.  It lacks research.  Often the answer to this is spent repeating what is already available in Wikipedia.  If you had read this already and don't understand a part of it, explain that part and what you do understand.  Correcting a misconception is easier (and a better question) than trying to explain the entire topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Blatantly off topic###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the help center on [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) questions. Questions that are asking for a discussion, or polling or one of the reasons specified in the help center are often down voted.  Especially note that questions *should* have been posted on Stack Overflow (implementation) or questions that should have been posted on Stack Overflow, but would be off topic there too (do this work for me) are similarly often down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [How much research effort is expected of Stack Overflow users?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/182266/how-much-research-effort-is-expected-of-stack-overflow-users/182380#182380)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Encouraging people to explain downvotes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/2373/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;`[Why was my question down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18763" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6778" RevisionGUID="f54866c9-1d90-4533-a843-f2f351323361" CreationDate="2014-07-27T20:13:16.910" UserId="124658" Text="I'm an experienced programmer. Now I'm venturing into Big Data domain where my knowledge is extremely limited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to take a course on a particular subject in this area.  I have already found one and it seems OK to me, though there are others of course.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be appropriate to ask the following questions on this site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Has someone taken XYZ course from ABC company?  If so, could you please share your experience?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. What other classes that your personally took would you recommend to others and why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that at least some of the answers will be extremely subjective (&quot;*Like - Don't like*&quot; perspective).  Is it a big NO here or can it be tolerated as long as I'm not asking general questions about the best training ever but keep it focused on much narrower topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18764" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6778" RevisionGUID="f54866c9-1d90-4533-a843-f2f351323361" CreationDate="2014-07-27T20:13:16.910" UserId="124658" Text="Would be a question about a particular free on-line class be on-topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18765" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6778" RevisionGUID="f54866c9-1d90-4533-a843-f2f351323361" CreationDate="2014-07-27T20:13:16.910" UserId="124658" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18766" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6779" RevisionGUID="10762da2-8d1c-457d-a98e-7a6f872a4c91" CreationDate="2014-07-27T21:26:04.120" UserId="4" Text="These types of questions are not allowed. They fall into a few categories that are off-topic on the site, such as being product/service recommendations and career/education advice. It also falls into several categories identified as being too subjective such that every answer is equally valid and there's no actual problem being solved." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18767" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6780" RevisionGUID="ae68b12c-b2bc-4824-b38a-190a27ece330" CreationDate="2014-07-29T11:25:52.317" UserId="20246" Text="I like the answer entitled &quot;Why We're not a Forum&quot;.  Having said that, I want to call attention to a particular kind of question that is somewhere between objective and subjective.  I'm referring to design questions.  There are numerous design questions that come up, concerning the design of object oriented systems, or the design of software packages, or the design of relational databases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are somewhere in the twilight zone.  At first glance, they seem like the kind of straightforward Q&amp;A that SE seems to handle well.  And the asker usually wants an answer he or she can use, not an extended discussion.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the problem.  For every non trivial design case, there is more than one satisfactory answer.  And which answer is &quot;best&quot; depends on the particular use case, and on what criterion is being used for &quot;goodness&quot;. It's usually some kind of trade-off. So what ought to be a straight up Q&amp;A turns into a discussion.  Or the question gets closed before that can happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But most of us don't want to declare design questions out of bounds, even including those of us who very much want to avoid turning SE into just another forum community.  This is not a simple problem, IMO.&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18768" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6780" RevisionGUID="84caf1db-5cf5-4dbf-98f1-c74def29bade" CreationDate="2014-07-29T11:41:45.453" UserId="31260" Comment="reference to answer mentioned" Text="I like the answer entitled [&quot;Why We're not a Forum&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6743/31260).  Having said that, I want to call attention to a particular kind of question that is somewhere between objective and subjective.  I'm referring to design questions.  There are numerous design questions that come up, concerning the design of object oriented systems, or the design of software packages, or the design of relational databases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are somewhere in the twilight zone.  At first glance, they seem like the kind of straightforward Q&amp;A that SE seems to handle well.  And the asker usually wants an answer he or she can use, not an extended discussion.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the problem.  For every non trivial design case, there is more than one satisfactory answer.  And which answer is &quot;best&quot; depends on the particular use case, and on what criterion is being used for &quot;goodness&quot;. It's usually some kind of trade-off. So what ought to be a straight up Q&amp;A turns into a discussion.  Or the question gets closed before that can happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But most of us don't want to declare design questions out of bounds, even including those of us who very much want to avoid turning SE into just another forum community.  This is not a simple problem, IMO.&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18769" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6781" RevisionGUID="57233039-c574-49c1-ab68-466517d8e48f" CreationDate="2014-07-29T17:35:40.853" UserId="6605" Text="For a few days (weeks?), I don't have syntax highlighting any longer for C# code I'm writing, unless I add:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- language: c# --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;before the piece of code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Here's the example][1] of code which will appear plain black if `&lt;!-- language: c# --&gt;` is missing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this affecting only me? Is it expected?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/251617/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18770" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6781" RevisionGUID="57233039-c574-49c1-ab68-466517d8e48f" CreationDate="2014-07-29T17:35:40.853" UserId="6605" Text="Why is syntax highlighting missing from my recent answers unless I specify the language?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18771" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6781" RevisionGUID="57233039-c574-49c1-ab68-466517d8e48f" CreationDate="2014-07-29T17:35:40.853" UserId="6605" Text="|support|syntax-highlighting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18774" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6783" RevisionGUID="d196719c-39af-4044-a68c-20d0b6b21ea8" CreationDate="2014-07-29T17:41:47.320" UserId="4" Text="The [language highlighting rules][1] are determined by the tags applied to the question. In this case, the question doesn't have any language tags, so it looks like you need to be explicit. You'd also have to be explicit in the event that your code was in a language that was not part of the question's tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/184108/what-is-syntax-highlighting-and-how-does-it-work" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18775" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6784" RevisionGUID="9753ff24-9923-4f29-8dbf-cbc0edab1f89" CreationDate="2014-07-30T10:08:50.327" UserId="8737" Text="There are currently 8 questions with the tag [tag:js], they seem to all refer to JavaScript, so it would seem natural to make this a synonym." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18776" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6784" RevisionGUID="9753ff24-9923-4f29-8dbf-cbc0edab1f89" CreationDate="2014-07-30T10:08:50.327" UserId="8737" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [js] → [javascript]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18777" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6784" RevisionGUID="9753ff24-9923-4f29-8dbf-cbc0edab1f89" CreationDate="2014-07-30T10:08:50.327" UserId="8737" Text="|support|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18778" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6784" RevisionGUID="5282362c-1849-4a2d-b118-69637f59733e" CreationDate="2014-07-30T10:58:51.380" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18779" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6785" RevisionGUID="7ee0ff1b-6cfe-409e-a62f-5ed5b47ec6da" CreationDate="2014-07-30T11:00:59.753" UserId="25936" Text="Done, [tag:js] is now a synonym of [tag:javascript].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18780" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6491" RevisionGUID="2615fbc1-9877-4ba3-befc-dd108f592e54" CreationDate="2014-07-30T14:56:09.930" UserId="31260" Comment="added 99 characters in body" Text="#Primarily opinion-based#&#xD;&#xA;Good questions ask for expertise, not opinions. Examples of questions that are primarily opinion-based:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What did this person mean when he said...&quot; (We're not mind-readers)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Which of these two designs is the better one?&quot; (what do you mean by &quot;better?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;How should I arrange the folders in my project?&quot; (really?)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Is this the best practice?&quot; (what do you mean by &quot;best?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What is the name of this thing so I can go look it up?&quot; (Ask us your specific question about the thing)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinguishing factor is that there is no way to get an authoritative answer for the question - the answers are all based on opinion rather than the knowledge of the person answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that if the answers to the question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design A} for these reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- break --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design B} for these other reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both of these answers are valid then the question is likely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6758/what-is-the-problem-with-pros-and-cons&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **tl;dr** We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/142353/why-is-asking-a-question-on-best-practice-a-bad-thing/142354#142354)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as primarily opinion-based?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18781" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6786" RevisionGUID="b24da4b5-4c48-4d2b-9b6c-2d096c515b9b" CreationDate="2014-07-30T16:48:40.583" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="If you have 7 digits of badges on Programmers.SE, you start to experience truncation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![seven digits][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With 8 digits of badges, you really get chopped off:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Robert's got more than 31 bronze][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't a problem on other Stack Exchange sites:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yea, we've got [big balls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ3tqIukBKg) for our badges, but there might be some adjustments that can be done to pull in the space so that the current badge distribution is handled (it will be awhile before anyone gets 100 gold or 1000 bronze).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/uiLjU.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/nihYK.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/sf2uB.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18782" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6786" RevisionGUID="b24da4b5-4c48-4d2b-9b6c-2d096c515b9b" CreationDate="2014-07-30T16:48:40.583" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Badge count experiencing cropping at 7 digits" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18783" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6786" RevisionGUID="b24da4b5-4c48-4d2b-9b6c-2d096c515b9b" CreationDate="2014-07-30T16:48:40.583" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|bug|design|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18784" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="5aa2345f-4dfe-4e8c-8cbd-110593025810" CreationDate="2014-07-31T00:56:43.200" UserId="31260" Comment="too broad += (MSE) [Is a question that specifically asks for a summary of a broad topic valuable to Stack Exchange?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234642/is-a-question-that-specifically-asks-for-a-summary-of-a-broad-topic-valuable-to)" Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long for the Q&amp;A format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are just polls for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the accepted answer is based on &quot;which answer I like best,&quot; rather than &quot;which answer solves my problem,&quot; the question is probably a poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While some other Stack Exchanges allow it, Programmers.SE frowns upon ['big list' type questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;see also: list-questions tag wiki at MSO&quot;) that seem to want to compile a list of things.  Questions that fall into this category typically have the form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What are all the problems I will encounter with XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * What are the pros and cons of XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * How can XYZ be used?&#xD;&#xA; * Any ideas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like these don't pose a problem that can be solved by an answer.  There is no definitive *right* answer that someone can go to, see the accepted answer and say &quot;yep, thats the answer.&quot;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6629/how-do-i-explain-something-to-someone&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Is a question that specifically asks for a summary of a broad topic valuable to Stack Exchange?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234642/is-a-question-that-specifically-asks-for-a-summary-of-a-broad-topic-valuable-to)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help Center &gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as too broad?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18785" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6786" RevisionGUID="2dbf1943-f236-43fe-a473-a2adc4ff48f1" CreationDate="2014-07-31T10:19:26.123" UserId="4767" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18786" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6787" RevisionGUID="141fcf6f-e91b-4f05-903a-d546d391252e" CreationDate="2014-07-31T10:20:08.490" UserId="4767" Text="Made the badge CSS slightly narrower and reduced the padding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should be able to see your badges in all their glory in the next build." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18787" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6788" RevisionGUID="7fbb93c3-18d7-48c6-b9cd-0b19276c6cb4" CreationDate="2014-07-31T13:54:47.037" UserId="126663" Text="Looking at the most recent questions when I click the questions link I notice (at the time of this writing) 7/15 are down voted and 8/15 aren't. I'm not here every day to see if this is a trend but the times I have looked at questions it seems to be some sort of trend. So either a lot of people (probably myself most of the time) don't know how to ask questions, or don't really know what this site is for, or we have some overzealous people. If near 50% of the questions get down voted then can we just blame 50% of the people or change something about the site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18788" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6788" RevisionGUID="7fbb93c3-18d7-48c6-b9cd-0b19276c6cb4" CreationDate="2014-07-31T13:54:47.037" UserId="126663" Text="A lot of front page down votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18789" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6788" RevisionGUID="7fbb93c3-18d7-48c6-b9cd-0b19276c6cb4" CreationDate="2014-07-31T13:54:47.037" UserId="126663" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18790" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5180" RevisionGUID="0509bf73-6ac4-4c99-af9b-407acbcd10bb" CreationDate="2014-07-31T14:12:53.463" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="Clarified title since it was in close review queue" Text="kerning issues - click reads like dick, letter spacing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18791" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6789" RevisionGUID="5e57e764-e695-4de6-94eb-162c4ae999b5" CreationDate="2014-08-01T11:51:22.860" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Inspired by &quot;[How often are closed questions re-opened?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/266709/1345223)&quot; on MSO, I wanted to find out how often questions on Programmers get re-opened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[One of the answers there](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/266724/1345223) provided two queries to get fairly close to the answer.  [Query One](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/210226/test) and [Query Two](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/210227/test) brought back 8783 closed questions and 743 reopened questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That gives Programmers a ~8.5% reopen rate for closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the super sneaky and amazing Shog9♦ used his super-duper developer powers and came up with much [more detailed numbers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/266844/1345223) since his developer access gives him more details than what us mere mortals can glean from data explorer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, inquiring minds want to know.  What's the _**real**_ reopen rate for Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Bootnote: [Shog specifically asked me to open this question here on MPSE](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/266709/how-often-are-closed-questions-re-opened#comment70843_266844) &lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18792" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6789" RevisionGUID="5e57e764-e695-4de6-94eb-162c4ae999b5" CreationDate="2014-08-01T11:51:22.860" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="What's the reopen rate for closed questions on Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18793" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6789" RevisionGUID="5e57e764-e695-4de6-94eb-162c4ae999b5" CreationDate="2014-08-01T11:51:22.860" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|discussion|support|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18794" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6790" RevisionGUID="be54c15f-1e0e-4a56-bf00-041ca9bec96b" CreationDate="2014-08-01T12:58:00.537" UserId="6605" Text="I notice that gnat often comments on questions explaining why they would probably be closed, writing comments [such as][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; why didn't you ask at Stack Overflow? meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;without casting a downvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What would be the reasons to do that? Is this related to a maximum number of questions a person can close per day?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/251960/align-data-horizontally-phpexcel#comment505810_251960" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18795" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6790" RevisionGUID="be54c15f-1e0e-4a56-bf00-041ca9bec96b" CreationDate="2014-08-01T12:58:00.537" UserId="6605" Text="What would be the reasons to comment on a question instead of voting to close it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18796" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6790" RevisionGUID="be54c15f-1e0e-4a56-bf00-041ca9bec96b" CreationDate="2014-08-01T12:58:00.537" UserId="6605" Text="|discussion|closing-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18797" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6790" RevisionGUID="71d5a9d5-4d80-4025-b605-01df7da858cc" CreationDate="2014-08-01T13:26:21.350" UserId="6605" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="I notice that gnat often comments on questions explaining why they would probably be closed, writing comments [such as][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; why didn't you ask at Stack Overflow? meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;without voting to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What would be the reasons to do that? Is this related to a maximum number of questions a person can close per day?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/251960/align-data-horizontally-phpexcel#comment505810_251960" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18798" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6791" RevisionGUID="f8edfa2f-6f4e-4cb5-8a37-0b94e60c8f3e" CreationDate="2014-08-01T13:35:19.910" UserId="93290" Text="There is a finite limit to the number of close votes that you can cast in one day. Gnat, being the ever watchful guardian that he is, often runs out of those particularly early in the morning, or he may feel that the question is ripe for mod-closing, or even deletion, and may be playing it safe with his votes in an attempt to make them as useful as possible." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18799" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6792" RevisionGUID="970c8061-fbf0-413e-9314-0607a3161515" CreationDate="2014-08-01T14:02:15.187" UserId="31260" Text="It's a straightforward question I tend to ask when I can't figure why something was posted at Programmers instead of Stack Overflow. I expect askers to read my comment at a face value:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###why didn't you ask at Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second part of my comment is a reference to MSE post that provides a fairly detailed guidance on this matter: [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I add it to make sure that asker understands what is my take on the matter and will help me understand their reasons for posting here according to mentioned guidance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Implementation problems, and questions on software tools commonly used by programmers. If your code or your IDE doesn't work, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Does not welcome subjective questions (any more).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;### [Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The main focus is whiteboard questions, problems that you face while in front of your whiteboard designing your project. Everything that can be considered part of the [SDLC][1], except implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Also, questions on freelancing and business concerns that require the unique expertise of software developers. We use this lovely diagram to help people understand if their questions belong on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;![And somehow people still don't get it][2] &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your questions fall in the &quot;all careers&quot; circle, you should ask them on [The Workplace][3].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Programmers welcomes some subjective questions, but they should still be suitable for the Q&amp;A format. No polls, no lists, no product recommendations, no discussions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/P6bIb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18800" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6792" RevisionGUID="03dc5d79-d3e2-49cb-aa63-54b3ca38f0b2" CreationDate="2014-08-01T14:12:07.993" UserId="31260" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="It's a straightforward question I tend to ask when I can't figure why something was posted at Programmers instead of Stack Overflow. I expect askers to read my comment at a face value:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###&quot;why didn't you ask at Stack Overflow?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second part of my comment is a reference to MSE post that provides a fairly detailed guidance on this matter: [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I add it to make sure that asker understands what is my take on the matter and will help me understand their reasons for posting here according to mentioned guidance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Implementation problems, and questions on software tools commonly used by programmers. If your code or your IDE doesn't work, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Does not welcome subjective questions (any more).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;### [Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The main focus is whiteboard questions, problems that you face while in front of your whiteboard designing your project. Everything that can be considered part of the [SDLC][1], except implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Also, questions on freelancing and business concerns that require the unique expertise of software developers. We use this lovely diagram to help people understand if their questions belong on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;![And somehow people still don't get it][2] &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your questions fall in the &quot;all careers&quot; circle, you should ask them on [The Workplace][3].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Programmers welcomes some subjective questions, but they should still be suitable for the Q&amp;A format. No polls, no lists, no product recommendations, no discussions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/P6bIb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18801" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6792" RevisionGUID="2b3fbaaa-26eb-4179-a38e-7fe4a39b6f52" CreationDate="2014-08-01T15:44:34.620" UserId="31260" Comment="correction ported from quote original" Text="It's a straightforward question I tend to ask when I can't figure why something was posted at Programmers instead of Stack Overflow. I expect askers to read my comment at a face value:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###&quot;why didn't you ask at Stack Overflow?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second part of my comment is a reference to MSE post that provides a fairly detailed guidance on this matter: [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I add it to make sure that asker understands what is my take on the matter and will help me understand their reasons for posting here according to mentioned guidance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Implementation problems, and questions on software tools commonly used by programmers. If your code or your IDE doesn't work, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Does not welcome subjective questions (anymore).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;### [Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The main focus is whiteboard questions, problems that you face while in front of your whiteboard designing your project. Everything that can be considered part of the [SDLC][1], except implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Also, questions on freelancing and business concerns that require the unique expertise of software developers. We use this lovely diagram to help people understand if their questions belong on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;![And somehow people still don't get it][2] &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your questions fall in the &quot;all careers&quot; circle, you should ask them on [The Workplace][3].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Programmers welcomes some subjective questions, but they should still be suitable for the Q&amp;A format. No polls, no lists, no product recommendations, no discussions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/P6bIb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18802" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6792" RevisionGUID="7015b269-5bfd-43ba-a053-3d2f0be40e94" CreationDate="2014-08-01T15:56:31.940" UserId="31260" Comment=" it really depends on whether asker appears to have a reasonably solid presence on Stack Overflow or not (I check their profile prior to asking)..." Text="It's a straightforward question I tend to ask when I can't figure why something was posted at Programmers instead of Stack Overflow. I expect askers to read my comment at a face value:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###&quot;why didn't you ask at Stack Overflow?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second part of my comment is a reference to MSE post that provides a fairly detailed guidance on this matter: [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I add it to make sure that asker understands what is my take on the matter and will help me understand their reasons for posting here according to mentioned guidance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Implementation problems, and questions on software tools commonly used by programmers. If your code or your IDE doesn't work, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Does not welcome subjective questions (anymore).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;### [Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The main focus is whiteboard questions, problems that you face while in front of your whiteboard designing your project. Everything that can be considered part of the [SDLC][1], except implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Also, questions on freelancing and business concerns that require the unique expertise of software developers. We use this lovely diagram to help people understand if their questions belong on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;![And somehow people still don't get it][2] &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your questions fall in the &quot;all careers&quot; circle, you should ask them on [The Workplace][3].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Programmers welcomes some subjective questions, but they should still be suitable for the Q&amp;A format. No polls, no lists, no product recommendations, no discussions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for close votes, no, it doesn't depend on whether I am out of or short on these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What it really depends on is whether asker appears to have a reasonably solid presence on Stack Overflow or not (I check their profile prior to asking). I abstain of asking someone who doesn't have SO account or is registered there only recently, assuming that they most likely just don't know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/P6bIb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18803" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6793" RevisionGUID="0efb779f-ebcd-4caf-82c8-ab64cc22bb41" CreationDate="2014-08-01T17:29:52.403" UserId="101820" Text="Check out http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/200362/does-dedicated-maintenance-work-hamper-a-programmers-career. I was reading the answers with interest, and considering adding my own, when I realized that the question had been tagged as a duplicate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;No problem&quot;, I thought, &quot;let me just head to the original question&quot;. I was a bit surprised to find that the linked question in the duplicate tag was http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108085/how-do-i-get-myself-out-of-a-dead-end-programming-job. This question, in turn, was flagged as a duplicate in its own right, and tied back to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161384/how-do-you-break-out-of-the-role-of-a-code-maintainer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's my problem: the things I wanted to post, which are basically some seldom-discussed strengths of maintenance programmers, wouldn't make sense as answers to the second or third questions I listed. The second question makes a bunch of statements about a &quot;bad&quot; job (lack of structure, obsolete tools/methods) that don't involve maintenance programming, and it would be odd for me to provide an answer dealing with the topic of maintenance programming. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The third question starts with the premise that maintenance programming is inherently bad, and it's not my role in responding to contradict the premise. (If someone on a travel site asked, &quot;what's the quickest way to get out of Wilmington, DE?&quot;, an answer telling the person about reasons to stay would be most unwelcome.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The people flagging the first question as duplicate apparently made an assumption, namely that &quot;maintenance programming&quot; equals &quot;dead end&quot;. I don't agree with that, and even if I did I wouldn't expect this assumption to be baked into the moderation rules of this site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The people flagging the second question were a bit more reasonable. Both questions are basically in the spirit of &quot;help me find a way out&quot;. Taking things one step further, I'd say that question #1 is a pretty interesting one, whereas questions #2 and #3 are fairly mundane, and even borderline inappropriate. If someone really doesn't know the names of a few job sites or technical recruiters, I don't think this is the proper venue for finding this information out, nor is ordinary jawboning about one's job very welcome here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18804" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6793" RevisionGUID="0efb779f-ebcd-4caf-82c8-ab64cc22bb41" CreationDate="2014-08-01T17:29:52.403" UserId="101820" Text="Abuse of &quot;Duplicate&quot; tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18805" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6793" RevisionGUID="0efb779f-ebcd-4caf-82c8-ab64cc22bb41" CreationDate="2014-08-01T17:29:52.403" UserId="101820" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18806" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6792" RevisionGUID="597d45eb-28f7-412f-9445-f234403c783b" CreationDate="2014-08-01T17:47:43.337" UserId="31260" Comment="I also don't ask if it turns out that question has been cross-posted" Text="It's a straightforward question I tend to ask when I can't figure why something was posted at Programmers instead of Stack Overflow. I expect askers to read my comment at a face value:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###&quot;why didn't you ask at Stack Overflow?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second part of my comment is a reference to MSE post that provides a fairly detailed guidance on this matter: [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I add it to make sure that asker understands what is my take on the matter and will help me understand their reasons for posting here according to mentioned guidance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Implementation problems, and questions on software tools commonly used by programmers. If your code or your IDE doesn't work, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Does not welcome subjective questions (anymore).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;### [Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The main focus is whiteboard questions, problems that you face while in front of your whiteboard designing your project. Everything that can be considered part of the [SDLC][1], except implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Also, questions on freelancing and business concerns that require the unique expertise of software developers. We use this lovely diagram to help people understand if their questions belong on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;![And somehow people still don't get it][2] &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your questions fall in the &quot;all careers&quot; circle, you should ask them on [The Workplace][3].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Programmers welcomes some subjective questions, but they should still be suitable for the Q&amp;A format. No polls, no lists, no product recommendations, no discussions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for close votes, no, it doesn't depend on whether I am out of or short on these. What it really depends on is whether asker appears to have a reasonably solid presence on Stack Overflow or not (I check their profile prior to asking).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I abstain of asking someone who doesn't have SO account or is registered there only recently, assuming that they most likely just don't know. I also don't ask if it turns out that question has been cross-posted ([seems to happen rather frequently](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p &quot;related feature request&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/P6bIb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18807" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6794" RevisionGUID="9b46ac39-6600-4e1e-8b94-ef37e6e73911" CreationDate="2014-08-01T17:48:09.473" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="So there's a couple of things to touch upon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off, you said:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The people flagging the first question as duplicate apparently made an assumption, namely that &quot;maintenance programming&quot; equals &quot;dead end&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, the OP started with that assumption:  &quot;So half my current work experience would count for naught in the long run.&quot;  And there are other comments within the question that make it clear the OP does not consider maintenance work to be valuable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whether or not that attitude is correct is immaterial in this case - it's the OP's bias.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next up:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd say that question #1 is a pretty interesting one, whereas questions #2 and #3 are fairly mundane, and even borderline inappropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the answer here is &quot;Nope, all of them are off-topic.&quot;  Career and education advice are explicitly off-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So that brings us to whether or not the correct close reason was picked on that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We (the community) could have gone &quot;Off Topic -&gt; Career advice&quot; and been done with it.  But in this case, we have a chain of related questions that mostly answer the essence of what was being asked.  Jalayn's and Demain's answer address what the OP was asking given the OP's biases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So closing as duplicate is seen as a kinder response since we're linking the OP to an answer that ought to help their case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Understandably, you feel you have a different perspective and wish to provide that.  That kind of brings us back to the fact that the question is off-topic regardless of how well the duplicate matches the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have a few options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. You can flag the question and make the argument as to why it should be re-opened.  If you've read this far, then you know the key points the mods will want to see addressed to explain why it's different and why it's on-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. You can edit your thoughts into one of the existing answers.  Both PDR and Dan have fairly &quot;pro-maintenance&quot; stances in their answers and I suspect your thoughts would blend in with that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately though, you're arguing that the duplicate close vote is an &quot;abuse of the duplicate tag&quot; (per your question title).  And I disagree with that stance.  The question is off-topic for the site.  We have reasonably close questions with answers that address the OP's concern.  Closing as duplicate is well within normal duplicate usage.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18808" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6660" RevisionGUID="966e89b4-dd29-4ede-a0c5-093ebec8e4b7" CreationDate="2014-08-01T17:48:49.873" UserId="31260" Comment="posted += (alternatively: voted to close or pushed to close queue)" Text="The automatic check I would like to learn about looks like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For every `question` posted (alternatively: voted to close or pushed to close queue),&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Check if asker has linked SO account&#xD;&#xA;2. If yes, check 3 of their most recent questions at SO&#xD;&#xA;3. For every of above 3 questions, calculate [Levenshtein distance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance) of its text to that of to Programmers `question`.&#xD;&#xA;4. Raise system flag for mod attention (or [present blocking message](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p?noredirect=1#comment17959_6660 &quot;as suggested in comments&quot;)) if distance for a particular question is less than some `threshold`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What difficulties could be there in getting above check done automatically?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;`threshold` mentioned above can be derived based on a representative set of already identified cross-posts. This set (**few hundreds** in last half year), in turn, can be retrieved by searching flag database for my flags that are marked helpful and have message containing `http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info`.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Side note (as this has been asked twice in comments). I am somewhat skeptical on _blocking message_ approach. In theory, this would be ideal solution but I am concerned that if presented with block, some users will try to trick to break through Levenshtein threshold (for example, by adding dots to question text). This may return us back to having to discover them manually. My considerations are similar to those why question ban / serial voting algorithms are not exposed for &quot;direct user testing&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18809" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6794" RevisionGUID="213fbc92-0c74-4246-8642-cf9ef3401bcc" CreationDate="2014-08-01T17:53:11.880" UserId="31260" Comment="links to the referred posts" Text="So there's a couple of things to touch upon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off, you said:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The people flagging the first question as duplicate apparently made an assumption, namely that &quot;maintenance programming&quot; equals &quot;dead end&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, the OP started with that assumption:  &quot;So half my current work experience would count for naught in the long run.&quot;  And there are other comments within the question that make it clear the OP does not consider maintenance work to be valuable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whether or not that attitude is correct is immaterial in this case - it's the OP's bias.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next up:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd say that question #1 is a pretty interesting one, whereas questions #2 and #3 are fairly mundane, and even borderline inappropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the answer here is &quot;Nope, all of them are off-topic.&quot;  Career and education advice are explicitly off-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So that brings us to whether or not the correct close reason was picked on that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We (the community) could have gone &quot;Off Topic -&gt; Career advice&quot; and been done with it.  But in this case, we have a chain of related questions that mostly answer the essence of what was being asked.  [Jalayn's](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/108100/31260) and [Demian's](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/108095/31260) answer address what the OP was asking given the OP's biases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So closing as duplicate is seen as a kinder response since we're linking the OP to an answer that ought to help their case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Understandably, you feel you have a different perspective and wish to provide that.  That kind of brings us back to the fact that the question is off-topic regardless of how well the duplicate matches the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have a few options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. You can flag the question and make the argument as to why it should be re-opened.  If you've read this far, then you know the key points the mods will want to see addressed to explain why it's different and why it's on-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. You can edit your thoughts into one of the existing answers.  Both [PDR](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/200373/31260) and [Dan](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/200367/31260) have fairly &quot;pro-maintenance&quot; stances in their answers and I suspect your thoughts would blend in with that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately though, you're arguing that the duplicate close vote is an &quot;abuse of the duplicate tag&quot; (per your question title).  And I disagree with that stance.  The question is off-topic for the site.  We have reasonably close questions with answers that address the OP's concern.  Closing as duplicate is well within normal duplicate usage.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18810" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5738" RevisionGUID="1bc555a8-b997-4e0e-8e3c-83db5281777b" CreationDate="2014-08-02T22:00:18.680" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6366],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:28988,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;World Engineer&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="18811" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6788" RevisionGUID="afc1fb43-b56a-4ebf-b317-c16b88bf9363" CreationDate="2014-08-03T04:05:09.297" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6233,6711],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:5099,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Bart van Ingen Schenau&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:40980,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;MichaelT&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:1996,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Jim G.&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="18812" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6795" RevisionGUID="bbf45bfa-7829-480d-b075-4a17406f5681" CreationDate="2014-08-03T14:35:04.157" UserId="31260" Text="Suggest to perform automatic checks for cross-posting and question ban at SO when post enters close queue, not only when it is attempted to migrate. If check detects a problem, system would raise automatic flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I expect preemptive checks to help us more efficiently address attempts to abuse the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [At smaller sites, penalize hot questions having 3-4 close votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; At smaller sites... closing a question takes hours or even days...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What difficulties could be there in establishing automatic checks for SO cross-posts...](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p#comment17969_6660)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There _is_ a check to see if a duplicate exists on a destination site which rejects a migration if so...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Annotate user accounts network-wide when they get rate-limited or banned](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112598/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A few of the migration rules are skipped if it is a ♦ moderator clicking the button, however: the &quot;is the user suspended or blocked from asking&quot; is **always** applied.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How many questions do we get from users recently banned at SO, how many of these are closed / deleted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6592/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Provide 10k users more close votes](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6507/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Refund close votes for questions deleted on the same day](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237386/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Recover Close votes if asker deletes their own question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/69166/165773)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18813" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6795" RevisionGUID="bbf45bfa-7829-480d-b075-4a17406f5681" CreationDate="2014-08-03T14:35:04.157" UserId="31260" Text="Perform automatic checks for cross-posting and question ban at SO when post enters close queue, not only at attempt to migrate" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18814" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6795" RevisionGUID="bbf45bfa-7829-480d-b075-4a17406f5681" CreationDate="2014-08-03T14:35:04.157" UserId="31260" Text="|feature-request|moderators|review|post-ban|cross-posting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18815" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6795" RevisionGUID="60e78a18-82de-4550-a328-acf71072274e" CreationDate="2014-08-03T15:02:02.523" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="Suggest to perform automatic checks for cross-posting and question ban at SO when post enters close queue, not only when it is attempted to migrate. If check detects a problem, system would raise automatic flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I expect preemptive checks to help us more efficiently address attempts to abuse the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Annotate user accounts network-wide when they get rate-limited or banned](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112598/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A few of the migration rules are skipped if it is a ♦ moderator clicking the button, however: the &quot;is the user suspended or blocked from asking&quot; is **always** applied.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What difficulties could be there in establishing automatic checks for SO cross-posts...](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p#comment17969_6660)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There _is_ a check to see if a duplicate exists on a destination site which rejects a migration if so...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [At smaller sites, penalize hot questions having 3-4 close votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; At smaller sites... closing a question takes hours or even days...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [How many questions do we get from users recently banned at SO, how many of these are closed / deleted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6592/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Provide 10k users more close votes](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6507/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Refund close votes for questions deleted on the same day](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237386/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Recover Close votes if asker deletes their own question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/69166/165773)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18816" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6795" RevisionGUID="d8b9057d-593f-4121-b683-faacce60f81f" CreationDate="2014-08-03T21:07:22.183" UserId="31260" Comment="added 18 characters in body" Text="Suggest to perform automatic checks for cross-posting and question ban at Stack Overflow when post enters close queue, not only when it is attempted to migrate. If check detects a problem, system would raise automatic flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I expect above preemptive checks to help us more efficiently address attempts to abuse the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Annotate user accounts network-wide when they get rate-limited or banned](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112598/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A few of the migration rules are skipped if it is a ♦ moderator clicking the button, however: the &quot;is the user suspended or blocked from asking&quot; is **always** applied.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What difficulties could be there in establishing automatic checks for SO cross-posts...](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p#comment17969_6660)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There _is_ a check to see if a duplicate exists on a destination site which rejects a migration if so...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [At smaller sites, penalize hot questions having 3-4 close votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; At smaller sites... closing a question takes hours or even days...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [How many questions do we get from users recently banned at SO, how many of these are closed / deleted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6592/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Provide 10k users more close votes](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6507/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Refund close votes for questions deleted on the same day](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237386/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Recover Close votes if asker deletes their own question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/69166/165773)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18817" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6796" RevisionGUID="e0534019-6a94-40bc-82b2-0e0e103e482f" CreationDate="2014-08-03T23:39:13.807" UserId="134375" Text="This question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/252095/who-gives-out-the-awards-to-award-winning-software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is about the software development industry and is very relevant to programming.  Why was it put on hold? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18818" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6796" RevisionGUID="e0534019-6a94-40bc-82b2-0e0e103e482f" CreationDate="2014-08-03T23:39:13.807" UserId="134375" Text="Why was my question about software awards closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18819" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6796" RevisionGUID="e0534019-6a94-40bc-82b2-0e0e103e482f" CreationDate="2014-08-03T23:39:13.807" UserId="134375" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18824" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6798" RevisionGUID="7b1ab2f5-bf89-4784-ba90-b93361efbf7a" CreationDate="2014-08-04T10:58:43.530" UserId="25476" Text="This really has nothing to do with software development specifically and is pretty widely known as a general marketing gimmick for any number and types of products and services.  We have to draw the line somewhere on questions that really transcend the area of programming and  require expertise in other areas not related to software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more information and some light hearted humour here is a link to the [original &quot;boat programming&quot; question](http://web.archive.org/web/20100426125115/http://www.mattmcdole.com/boat/) that spawned the famous meme.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not that we can't answer this for you or that a member of the community doesn't know the answer, it is that the knowledge for this lies outside of software development as a whole. We do encourage however that you visit our chat room for such questions that don't really fit our site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18825" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6799" RevisionGUID="3ae3c41f-7db6-45cf-8d01-01d84802716e" CreationDate="2014-08-04T15:04:55.530" UserId="122079" Text="I know StackExchange has a pretty strict policy about discussion based questions, as I [recently discovered][1]. It got me thinking, how does the StackExchange community define opinion-based or *bad* questions? Without a strict line between what is opinion-based and what isn't a lot of questions that have been answered on StackExchange can be considered opinion based. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are numerous questions about Best Practices for example. Some of these questions pose arguments for or against doing something and give sufficient background information to allow an answer to be a &quot;Best&quot; answer. Some of them however don't, and yet aren't considered opinion based questions. In fact, any Best Practice question has an infinite number of answers that are valid which can be infinitely disagreed upon by others and turned into a discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even the act of determining if a question is opinion-based can be boiled down to an opinion. One person may think a question is opinion-based while another doesn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, everything I've said here doesn't apply to every question, only a select few &quot;fuzzy&quot; questions. As with almost everything in life there are the extreme ends of the spectrum; the questions that have clearly well defined answer like &quot;What is 2 + 2&quot;, and the questions that are purely opinion based like &quot;What is your favourite colour&quot;, but in the middle things can get wonky.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how does StackExchange define opinion based and how does it handle questions that are in the fuzzy zone?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm probably just butthurt that my question got took down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/252250/where-to-find-introductions-to-seemingly-general-programming-knowledge&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/252224/when-is-it-appropriate-to-do-calculations-in-front-end" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18826" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6799" RevisionGUID="3ae3c41f-7db6-45cf-8d01-01d84802716e" CreationDate="2014-08-04T15:04:55.530" UserId="122079" Text="Is the line between a discussion based question and a definitive answer question fuzzy?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18827" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6799" RevisionGUID="3ae3c41f-7db6-45cf-8d01-01d84802716e" CreationDate="2014-08-04T15:04:55.530" UserId="122079" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18828" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6799" RevisionGUID="d3183ade-c8c2-4e18-82c8-0787d3139ea2" CreationDate="2014-08-04T18:24:34.237" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6473],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:1204,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Robert Harvey&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:60357,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;amon&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:5099,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Bart van Ingen Schenau&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="18829" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6800" RevisionGUID="24b6a9b2-e8a6-49a1-af88-75988626bbab" CreationDate="2014-08-04T19:09:41.507" UserId="25338" Text="I asked this question several months ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Title: What is a reasonable way to find canonical books?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I see dozens of questions of the form 'Is there a canonical book on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; {topic here}?'. My question is different. What are some reasonable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ways to go about answering this kind of question for myself?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Currently I look at the most popular books in a category on amazon,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but I find this unsatisfying, as the top spots tend to be filled with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; very introductory or very buzz-wordy books.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were several thoughtful and thorough answers. I would very much like to review these answers today and use them, but I cannot find them now. Note that the answers were not reading lists but methods and resources for doing research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My problems are actually two:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. I'd very much like to recover the answers from the above question.&#xD;&#xA; 2. I'd like to know where I can post such a question without it being frozen and deleted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18830" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6800" RevisionGUID="24b6a9b2-e8a6-49a1-af88-75988626bbab" CreationDate="2014-08-04T19:09:41.507" UserId="25338" Text="Where can I ask about programmers' research methods?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18831" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6800" RevisionGUID="24b6a9b2-e8a6-49a1-af88-75988626bbab" CreationDate="2014-08-04T19:09:41.507" UserId="25338" Text="|support|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18832" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6800" RevisionGUID="31c1255d-2b2c-404d-b186-f164d7ab7d36" CreationDate="2014-08-04T19:37:35.903" UserId="25338" Comment="added 150 characters in body" Text="I asked this question several months ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Title: What is a reasonable way to find canonical books?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I see dozens of questions of the form 'Is there a canonical book on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; {topic here}?'. My question is different. What are some reasonable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ways to go about answering this kind of question for myself?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Currently I look at the most popular books in a category on amazon,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but I find this unsatisfying, as the top spots tend to be filled with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; very introductory or very buzz-wordy books.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were several thoughtful and thorough answers. Note that the answers were not reading lists but methods and resources for doing research. I'd like to know how I can modify this question such that it wouldn't be frozen and deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a similar (but different) question, which seems to have been well received: &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/166314/how-do-i-determine-the-value-of-a-technical-book/166343#166343 I don't believe its title reflect its final question: &quot;Can you provide advice on finding more books along that vein (the Pragmatic Programmer)?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18833" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6801" RevisionGUID="60e36e89-6fa5-4081-833b-465006b0b90f" CreationDate="2014-08-04T23:48:14.323" UserId="63" Text="First, the all-time stats:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Closed Closed then Edited Closed then Reopened Closed then Edited then Reopened &#xD;&#xA;    ------ ------------------ -------------------- -------------------------------- &#xD;&#xA;    34567  4388               1174                 545                              &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, slightly over 3%, jumping to 12% for edited questions. For the past 365 days, we see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Closed Closed then Edited Closed then Reopened Closed then Edited then Reopened &#xD;&#xA;    ------ ------------------ -------------------- -------------------------------- &#xD;&#xA;    11824  1084               263                  140                              &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or roughly 2%, jumping to just shy of 13% again for edited questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The more interesting breakdown by close reason follows, again looking only at questions closed within the past 365 days:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Name                       Closed Closed then Edited Closed then Reopened Closed then Edited then Reopened &#xD;&#xA;    -------------------------- ------ ------------------ -------------------- -------------------------------- &#xD;&#xA;    duplicate                  713    49                 22                   10                               &#xD;&#xA;    off-topic                  6257   406                103                  48                               &#xD;&#xA;    primarily opinion-based    1598   187                53                   29                               &#xD;&#xA;    too broad                  1761   185                33                   15                               &#xD;&#xA;    unclear what you're asking 1494   257                52                   38                               &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Expressed as percentages:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Name                       Closed then Edited Closed then Reopened Closed then Edited then Reopened &#xD;&#xA;    -------------------------- ------------------ -------------------- -------------------------------- &#xD;&#xA;    duplicate                  6.9 %              3.1 %                20.4 %                           &#xD;&#xA;    off-topic                  6.5 %              1.6 %                11.8 %                           &#xD;&#xA;    primarily opinion-based    11.7 %             3.3 %                15.5 %                           &#xD;&#xA;    too broad                  10.5 %             1.9 %                8.1 %                            &#xD;&#xA;    unclear what you're asking 17.2 %             3.5 %                14.8 %                           &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is mostly in keeping with [what we observed on Stack Overflow][1], but it's worth noting that both duplicates and opinion-based questions stand a slightly better chance of being reopened, *particularly* if they're edited. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/266709/how-often-are-closed-questions-re-opened/266844#266844" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18834" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6802" RevisionGUID="ab293ab1-a8db-41e4-a5e3-01acdc8c81cb" CreationDate="2014-08-05T08:43:35.240" UserId="6605" Text="As I understand the process:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A non-moderator can vote to reopen a question, which will appear in the question links as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Share | Edit | Reopen (1) | Delete ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A person can vote to reopen a given question only once,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A question may have been closed, reopened, then closed again, making it appear as having zero reopen votes, but preventing the same person to vote to reopen it again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to [the revisions][1] of a question, it has been closed only once; it has zero reopen votes. And still, when I try to reopen it, I see the following error:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You have already voted to reopen this question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How could it be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is the revision history not showing all the close and reopen events?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it was just closed once, then why does the counter say nobody voted to reopen the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/237861/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18835" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6802" RevisionGUID="ab293ab1-a8db-41e4-a5e3-01acdc8c81cb" CreationDate="2014-08-05T08:43:35.240" UserId="6605" Text="Why can't I vote to reopen the question which doesn't have any reopen votes and was closed only once?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18836" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6802" RevisionGUID="ab293ab1-a8db-41e4-a5e3-01acdc8c81cb" CreationDate="2014-08-05T08:43:35.240" UserId="6605" Text="|support|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18837" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6803" RevisionGUID="328e71ec-77b8-4df9-9404-560f1357265c" CreationDate="2014-08-05T09:06:55.093" UserId="25936" Text="What probably happened is you voted to re-open at some point and your vote expired (~ there wasn't another re-open vote for four days). There's no visible trace of expired votes, so this is more of an educated guess. Unfortunately you can't re-cast an expired vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related (on Meta Stack Exchange):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Why do close votes expire?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/120896/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [Close Votes expire too soon for low-traffic tags](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/97556/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [Bogus “You have already voted to close this question” on expired votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/99141/162704)&#xD;&#xA;-  [Please allow expired close/open votes to be re-cast](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/99333/162704)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18838" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6804" RevisionGUID="fdb017a2-af61-48a8-815e-8644aef9df9b" CreationDate="2014-08-05T11:13:28.933" UserId="25476" Text="Every now and then the moderators will get a flag identifying a possible duplicate question that is a very general or root issue to the potential problem or query given by the OP of the flagged question.  The reasoning behind this is that the canonical accepted answer of the general popular question happens to be also a good answer for the dupe question that is far more specific.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flagged Duplicate: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/252262/should-you-ever-use-private-on-fields-and-methods-in-c&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Original Question with Canonical Answer: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141005/how-would-you-know-if-youve-written-readable-and-easily-maintainable-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am unsure the best way to proceed with this.  Historically I would decline such flags with the reasoning that the questions are far too different to be considered duplicate.  The OP certainly might not understand the general root of their question, hence why they are asking in the first place and I can see them becoming confused and angry about this without a good deal of explanation as to why the canonical answer on the dupe is actually fundamentally answering their question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other argument for declining the flag is that the flagged question is so specific that the canonical answer while technically correct, is insufficient to explain the context about why.  In the example above, the canonical answer is to &quot;Peer review your code&quot;, which implies that the specific question about why one would explicitly declare the private keyword in C# is intrinsically related to coding style on the team.  The canonical answer I feel is not good enough and doesn't provide enough context specifically to answer the flagged question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand the other side of this too that the question is actually pretty basic and doesn't really show much research on the part of the OP, or demonstrates an actual problem the OP faces so to reduce noise on the site we can link all of these to the question with the canonical answer.  If the community feels this is the best option then I fully support it with the caveat that we should take extra effort to adequately explain to users why we are doing this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the opinion of the community on how to handle this going forward?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18839" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6804" RevisionGUID="fdb017a2-af61-48a8-815e-8644aef9df9b" CreationDate="2014-08-05T11:13:28.933" UserId="25476" Text="Dupe holding a question that is more general" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18840" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6804" RevisionGUID="fdb017a2-af61-48a8-815e-8644aef9df9b" CreationDate="2014-08-05T11:13:28.933" UserId="25476" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18841" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6804" RevisionGUID="e560c5eb-1085-4955-b172-3c56d2c8e20e" CreationDate="2014-08-05T11:45:15.610" UserId="25476" Comment="added 452 characters in body" Text="Every now and then the moderators will get a flag identifying a possible duplicate question that is a very general or root issue to the potential problem or query given by the OP of the flagged question.  The reasoning behind this is that the canonical accepted answer of the general popular question happens to be also a good answer for the dupe question that is far more specific.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flagged Duplicate: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/252262/should-you-ever-use-private-on-fields-and-methods-in-c&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Original Question with Canonical Answer: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141005/how-would-you-know-if-youve-written-readable-and-easily-maintainable-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am unsure the best way to proceed with this.  Historically I would decline such flags with the reasoning that the questions are far too different to be considered duplicate.  The OP certainly might not understand the general root of their question, hence why they are asking in the first place and I can see them becoming confused and angry about this without a good deal of explanation as to why the canonical answer on the dupe is actually fundamentally answering their question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other argument for declining the flag is that the flagged question is so specific that the canonical answer while technically correct, is insufficient to explain the context about why.  In the example above, the canonical answer is to &quot;Peer review your code&quot;, which implies that the specific question about why one would explicitly declare the private keyword in C# is intrinsically related to coding style on the team.  The canonical answer I feel is not good enough and doesn't provide enough context specifically to answer the flagged question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand the other side of this too that the question is actually pretty basic and doesn't really show much research on the part of the OP, or demonstrates an actual problem the OP faces so to reduce noise on the site we can link all of these to the question with the canonical answer.  If the community feels this is the best option then I fully support it with the caveat that we should take extra effort to adequately explain to users why we are doing this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the opinion of the community on how to handle this going forward?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The relevant MSE Discussion on this:&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/217401/does-the-new-guidance-on-duplicate-questions-suggest-closing-a-question-as-dupli&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are not necessarily beholden to the outcome of question on MSE and if we don't feel this will work well for our community we are free to come to our own conclusion.  I do think we should very carefully consider the outcome of MSE discussions however on this site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18842" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6805" RevisionGUID="8c0882a4-8bc8-4376-a6a4-e9e31bfc8d55" CreationDate="2014-08-05T13:55:01.923" UserId="1130" Text="I would definitely not consider those two questions duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As someone who wants an answer on why they should use the `private` keyword when it is the default behavior, the answers in the second question provide no context, and therefore have no relevance to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, there may be other specifics I should know about that would not ever even have the chance at being answered in the second question, because the second question is not even close to being a duplicate of the first one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should be marked as duplicates if the linked question has or is likely to provide a complete answer to the first question, and contains enough context that someone doesn't have to try and guess how on earth the &quot;duplicate&quot; question relates to their own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would also help prevent chains of questions getting closed as duplicates and the end result being the first question in the chain is in no way answered by the last question in the chain. I've seen this many times on Programmers, and it's a bit annoying when you're seeking answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18843" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6806" RevisionGUID="aa3451db-fcd2-448b-8de5-5c084d03b7a4" CreationDate="2014-08-05T15:25:38.687" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The revision history of a question doesn't show the things that were tried but failed (or are in progress) - be it close, reopen, delete, or undelete votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On your profile, you can go to 'votes' and then 'reopen':&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![reopen votes][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On this page, you can see all of the reopen votes you have cast in the past along with the question.  The questions where it shows `(deleted)` have been deleted and are no longer active (either expired or acted upon).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets look at one that I've voted to reopen in the past that is still closed (in the name of science!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![an expired reopen][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clicking on reopen there gives the standard modal popup:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Nominate this question for reopening?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then the red box:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![aww shucks][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, certainly the information *could* be done better (like it is for close votes - where it shows when you tried rather than getting the red box of disappointment, or delete votes - where the mouseover for the 'delete' shows &quot;you have already voted to delete this).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, with the information about where to look, you can see that, yes, this was attempted to be reopened at some point in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/5GhSl.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/dp5it.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/y0lfZ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/L0WOu.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18844" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6806" RevisionGUID="3016e4a2-077b-4fff-aaba-c1f8511f5a97" CreationDate="2014-08-05T19:21:59.110" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="The revision history of a question doesn't show the things that were tried but failed (or are in progress) - be it close, reopen, delete, or undelete votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On your profile, you can go to 'votes' and then 'reopen':&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![reopen votes][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On this page, you can see all of the reopen votes you have cast in the past along with the question.  The questions where it shows `(deleted)` have been deleted and are no longer active (either expired or acted upon).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets look at one that I've voted to reopen in the past that is still closed (in the name of science!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![an expired reopen][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clicking on reopen there gives the standard modal popup:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Nominate this question for reopening?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then the red box:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![aww shucks][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, certainly the information *could* be done better (like it is for close votes - where it shows when you tried rather than getting the red box of disappointment, or delete votes - where the mouseover for the 'delete' shows &quot;you have already voted to delete this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, with the information about where to look, you can see that, yes, this was attempted to be reopened at some point in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/5GhSl.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/dp5it.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/y0lfZ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/L0WOu.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18845" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6807" RevisionGUID="6898a4e8-6b8b-444f-a6ef-ccf6ea5ed115" CreationDate="2014-08-06T16:51:55.080" UserId="145394" Text="I'll make this as short as possible.  Next semester I'll be teaching a course where we constitute our senior majors as a software development house, working in groups of three or so on projects that faculty in other departments have proposed. The students are competent programmers, but generally have little serious software development experience.  As the Department theorist, it's been a *long* time since I've worked in a professional environment, so my knowledge is decades out of date.  Would a request for methodology suggestions or development tools be appropriate here or would such questions be more appropriate on another site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18846" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6807" RevisionGUID="6898a4e8-6b8b-444f-a6ef-ccf6ea5ed115" CreationDate="2014-08-06T16:51:55.080" UserId="145394" Text="Is this question appropriate here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18847" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6807" RevisionGUID="6898a4e8-6b8b-444f-a6ef-ccf6ea5ed115" CreationDate="2014-08-06T16:51:55.080" UserId="145394" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18848" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6807" RevisionGUID="c5fdcef7-5502-41c3-8a90-59161ca6b274" CreationDate="2014-08-06T17:04:15.773" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting, personal stuff cleanup" Text="Next semester I'll be teaching a course where we constitute our senior majors as a software development house, working in groups of three or so on projects that faculty in other departments have proposed. The students are competent programmers, but generally have little serious software development experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As the Department theorist, it's been a *long* time since I've worked in a professional environment, so my knowledge is decades out of date.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would a request for methodology suggestions or development tools be appropriate here or would such questions be more appropriate on another site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18849" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6808" RevisionGUID="27eda7bd-363d-4e41-b641-c3843851f700" CreationDate="2014-08-06T17:37:18.833" UserId="25476" Text="This would not be appropriate on Programmers.  Our Help Center states that questions asking for recommendations on software tools is off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You might be interested in the following site, still in public beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18850" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6809" RevisionGUID="08c7f737-bbc4-42f8-bbb4-5ac8a6465b68" CreationDate="2014-08-06T20:07:56.287" UserId="145315" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/252424/quantifying-the-advantages-of-a-modern-version-control-system&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question asked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What I'm trying to find are ***concrete facts*** demonstrating developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; work more effectively with Git, or ANY modern source control system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The notice said &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; put on hold as primarily opinion-based ... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since I was specifically asking for hard evidence, I don't see how this can be seen as an opinion oriented question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18851" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6809" RevisionGUID="08c7f737-bbc4-42f8-bbb4-5ac8a6465b68" CreationDate="2014-08-06T20:07:56.287" UserId="145315" Text="Why was this question marked as &quot;primarily opinion based&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18852" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6809" RevisionGUID="08c7f737-bbc4-42f8-bbb4-5ac8a6465b68" CreationDate="2014-08-06T20:07:56.287" UserId="145315" Text="|discussion|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18853" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6810" RevisionGUID="af1e192a-0f3c-4cf1-95ca-1c45fb485fdd" CreationDate="2014-08-06T20:39:06.523" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The final part of your question was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What I really need is something powerful enough to break through the &quot;This process has worked for 20 years, why should we change it?&quot; argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are trying to win an argument.  This is something that is particular to you and the person you are trying to persuade.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a comment on this question which is key to understanding why this was closed (realizing that &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommended reading: [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6629/how-do-i-explain-something-to-someone/6630#6630) –  gnat 15 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This particular suggestion is one that I am quite familiar with, though one of the things you are trying to do isn't covered in that answer (I'll have to see about updating it).  You are asking for a list of bullet points of ammunition (pun intended) for your argument.  I'll point to [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) which tries to address polling type questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This type of question is a poll that can have dozens of answers, none of which are 'right'.  I'll draw your attention to a comment in the &quot;How do I explain...&quot; meta post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you look at this you'll see an example of &quot;how to win an argument&quot; - and there are numerous ones of these, and we tend to want to avoid this with its 20+ answers with no 'right' answer. &quot;I thought of another example&quot;, &quot;I haven't really thought it out&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original links have been cleaned up by the roomba, so http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/107723/40980 (and thank you for having me find that question, there's a close vote on it now too).  And while this may be what you are looking for, it really works against the Q&amp;A style format that Stack Exchange is trying to promote.  I'll point out that several of the answers have comments that have devolved into discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, why its opinion rather than too broad?  That's just what people clicked on at least three times when closing the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18854" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="e9f73d43-bdf4-4bf4-af49-5d23fab76863" CreationDate="2014-08-06T20:56:57.820" UserId="61852" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="It is September once again (today is the [7316](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+days+since+September+1%2C+1993)&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; day of [September](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)), and once again students are asking their homework problems on Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We start seeing questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A car dealer has 10 salespersons. Each salesperson keeps track of the number of cars sold each month and reports it to the management at the end of the month. The management keeps the data in a file and assigns a number, 1 to 10, to each salesperson....&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Write the code to store the number of cars sold by each salesperson in the array cars, output the total numbers of cars sold at the end each month, and output the salesperson number selling the maximum number of cars. (Assume that data is in the file cars.dat, and that this file has been opened using the ifstream variable inFile.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to understand is that Stack Overflow, and especially Programmers.SE are not code writing services.  You don't just throw some a question in there with something of the form &quot;give me the codez&quot; into the text area and hope that someone will &lt;s&gt;answer the question&lt;/s&gt; do your homework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several things to consider as to why this is bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The typical class builds upon previous experiences. The compiler class has machine language and data structures as prerequisites because if you don't understand those, you will be hopelessly lost in the class and not even able to understand the lectures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets assume you do understand the code (the person answering the question did a good job explaining it)... the curriculum is designed to take you from `A` to `Z` with 24 steps between.  As industry programmers we often take short cuts and don't need say, steps `ijkl` to do something.  Learning from us, you'll never get these steps. *However* you may find in your next assignment or class that understanding `jk` is assumed and critical to the understanding of some other concepts.  Just because we don't need `ijkl` to do it doesn't mean it isn't understood.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is an anecdote of the machine programming class I took years ago which used [SPIM](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html) - a MIPS simulator.  One of the students when stuck with a program discovered a little used [DECStation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECstation) off on the side of the lab that had gcc on it.  Instead of writing the assignment (factorial) by hand with the concepts we had access to (we were supposed to write a recursive function to learn about the stack and frame pointer), he wrote it in C, compiled it with gcc -S and got out a some MIPS assembly source that he then handed in.  However, the compiler, recognizing an optimization converted the entire code from recursive subroutine into a for loop and used other things we wouldn't hear mentioned until a few weeks later.  He got a '0' on that homework and had trouble with the next one (that assumed you already understood the frame pointer and stack pointer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It cheats *you* of the education you are paying to get.  Copy and paste takes **no** skill. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It cheats *us* of good interview candidates.  It is often lamented the quality of college graduates by technical interviewers.  You may be enthusiastic, but unless you can write code and explain concepts better than the other guy, we're going to hire the other guy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your first resource to look at should be your instructor.  They are there for you and want to have you follow a specific path to get to the end point of understanding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, you've exhausted the resources.  You've tried asking your instructor. You've searched google.  You've gone over your lecture notes and even knocked on the TA's door during office hours.  And you've come here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The urgency of your question is not something we are concerned with.  Good questions and answers are timeless - not something that needs to be done by 5pm today or 8am on Monday (you may find the rate of answers to drop substantially on the weekends and evenings of various timezones). **Don't expect an answer in any given time frame**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As just mentioned, good questions are timeless.  Answering your homework problem is likely not timeless and not a good question.  **Describe the problem you are having, what your understanding of the problem is and where you are confused**. For a question from a student, the best questions are often the ones that are asking how to take a single step in understanding rather than trying to leap all the way to the solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize also that the answer we give may be **completely wrong** for the path that your instructor is trying to get you to follow.  Having previously fought through the problem ourselves, we know and understand when one can jump directly from `il` and when one needs to go through each step of `ijkl` in a process. Our answers may skip over steps that aren't needed *for this particular problem*, but may be critical for understanding the next assignment or some problem years down the road where skipping `jk` is the wrong answer. In many cases, it is important to follow the curriculum as best as you are able.  Going above and beyond is good where one gains a deeper understanding of a problem domain, but one *must* have the foundation upon which to build.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We want you to do your homework to the best of your ability. Getting points off on an assignment and learning something from that produces a better interview candidate than one who can copy and paste code that got As in school but can't solve a simple problem they've never seen before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question on Programmers.SE is just a copy paste of homework problem, expect it to be downvoted, closed, and deleted - potentially in quite short order." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18855" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6809" RevisionGUID="91a7520b-6381-4ae3-8d30-544f24d1cd94" CreationDate="2014-08-07T07:36:09.290" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6629],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="18857" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6630" RevisionGUID="ab05ddf3-09dd-40f6-b6bd-08ff7e9155e1" CreationDate="2014-08-07T16:42:47.583" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="On winning arguments..." Text="## Problems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So many targets... ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first problem with these questions is that there are so many possible audiences.  How do you explain pointers to a 13 year old.  How do you explain the internet to your grandfather? How do you explain [testing to a manager who has pointy hair](http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-03-24/)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way you would explain something to a 13 year old is different than the way you would explain it to your grandfather &lt;s&gt;or a manager&lt;/s&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Ok, maybe the manager and the 13 year old would get the same explanation.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Key to this is that each type of person you explain something to is different.  Whats more, each *person* you explain something to is different (maybe your grandfather was given [write enable rings](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tapeprotection.jpg) for teething and had a very good grasp of UUCP back in the day).  Your grandfather is different than my grandfather, and your boss is different than my boss.  The explanations for one won't always work for the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions inevitably get refining the specifics of explaining it to one person.  At that point, the question and answers become useless for anyone else who wants to explain it to another grandfather or 13 year old.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So many understandings... ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how would you explain pointers to a peer in computing?  If you do not understand pointers fully yourself, the question will turn from how do you explain them to someone else to the community explaining them to you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you lack the full understanding of the topic at hand, you will not be able to properly answer the follow up questions from whatever analogy you pick (the internet is a series of tubes... but how do they go to the *right* tube? - if you don't understand routing and dns and all that fun stuff yourself you won't be able to properly answer that question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On winning arguments...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One form this type of question will take is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Someone believe something wrong and won't change.  How do I persuade them otherwise?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions suffer both from the &quot;we don't know who you are trying to persuade and what his or her reasons for those beliefs are&quot;, and the &quot;we don't know what you understand&quot;.  It also suffers from another problem of &quot;I'm trying to collect bullet points for ammunition in this argument&quot; which can easily turn the question into a poll.  This continues with the issue that each of these bullet points itself is an argument / opinion about how valuable it is in the overall argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Such questions for trying to win arguments really fall down on these points and only very rarely produce good answers.  The key to StackExchange itself is about having high quality answers - not bullet points of &quot;you could bring this up.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Solutions ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So what can I do? ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you understand the subject you are trying to explain, at least to the level you are going to try to explain it to *and one deeper*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you understand that.  Ask a question about *that* misunderstanding if you have it so the misunderstanding may be corrected and you'll be able to think of the proper car or train analogy to explain what you are trying to explain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider asking in chat.  While this isn't the main site and you don't get rep for it, it can help in being able to particularly address your understanding and the understanding of the person you are trying to explain it to.  Consider for example, [this conversation](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/on-engineering-and-teaching-pointers) where we went through several iterations of understanding the target audience before recognizing the proper way to explain pointers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking about how to explain something and working through the solution is not a 'fire and forget' question where you ask it and come back to get the answers.  Those are the questions get get closed.  They take a significant amount of work explaining what *you* understand and properly tailoring it to the audience that you understand best.  While we can help with your understanding, trying to answer it for your audience is not a good fit for the Q&amp;A site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18858" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6630" RevisionGUID="734eb5d0-cd3b-43a8-b970-22cc6d300b74" CreationDate="2014-08-07T16:55:01.733" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="## Problems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So many targets... ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first problem with these questions is that there are so many possible audiences.  How do you explain pointers to a 13 year old.  How do you explain the internet to your grandfather? How do you explain [testing to a manager who has pointy hair](http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-03-24/)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way you would explain something to a 13 year old is different than the way you would explain it to your grandfather &lt;s&gt;or a manager&lt;/s&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Ok, maybe the manager and the 13 year old would get the same explanation.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Key to this is that each type of person you explain something to is different.  Whats more, each *person* you explain something to is different (maybe your grandfather was given [write enable rings](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tapeprotection.jpg) for teething and had a very good grasp of UUCP back in the day).  Your grandfather is different than my grandfather, and your boss is different than my boss.  The explanations for one won't always work for the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions inevitably get refining the specifics of explaining it to one person.  At that point, the question and answers become useless for anyone else who wants to explain it to another grandfather or 13 year old.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So many understandings... ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how would you explain pointers to a peer in computing?  If you do not understand pointers fully yourself, the question will turn from how do you explain them to someone else to the community explaining them to you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you lack the full understanding of the topic at hand, you will not be able to properly answer the follow up questions from whatever analogy you pick (the internet is a series of tubes... but how do they go to the *right* tube? - if you don't understand routing and dns and all that fun stuff yourself you won't be able to properly answer that question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On winning arguments...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One form this type of question will take is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I disagree with my boss/coworker over [some issue].  How do I persuade them otherwise?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are problematic because&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  We don't know who you are trying to persuade and what his or her reasons for those beliefs are, and &#xD;&#xA;2.  We don't know what you already understand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They als suffer from another problem: &quot;I'm trying to collect bullet points for ammunition in this argument&quot; which can easily turn the question into a poll where every answer is a new argument/opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Such questions for trying to win arguments really fall down on these points and only very rarely produce good answers.  The key to StackExchange itself is about having high quality answers - not bullet points of &quot;you could bring this up.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Solutions ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So what can I do? ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you understand the subject you are trying to explain, at least to the level you are going to try to explain it to *and one deeper*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you understand that.  Ask a question about *that* misunderstanding if you have it so the misunderstanding may be corrected and you'll be able to think of the proper car or train analogy to explain what you are trying to explain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider asking in chat.  While this isn't the main site and you don't get rep for it, it can help in being able to particularly address your understanding and the understanding of the person you are trying to explain it to.  Consider for example, [this conversation](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/on-engineering-and-teaching-pointers) where we went through several iterations of understanding the target audience before recognizing the proper way to explain pointers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking about how to explain something and working through the solution is not a 'fire and forget' question where you ask it and come back to get the answers.  Those are the questions get get closed.  They take a significant amount of work explaining what *you* understand and properly tailoring it to the audience that you understand best.  While we can help with your understanding, trying to answer it for your audience is not a good fit for the Q&amp;A site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18859" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6630" RevisionGUID="ee5727ee-9908-46f9-a48c-d386607d6b06" CreationDate="2014-08-07T17:01:35.197" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="## Problems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So many targets... ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first problem with these questions is that there are so many possible audiences.  How do you explain pointers to a 13 year old.  How do you explain the internet to your grandfather? How do you explain [testing to a manager who has pointy hair](http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-03-24/)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way you would explain something to a 13 year old is different than the way you would explain it to your grandfather &lt;s&gt;or a manager&lt;/s&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Ok, maybe the manager and the 13 year old would get the same explanation.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Key to this is that each type of person you explain something to is different.  Whats more, each *person* you explain something to is different (maybe your grandfather was given [write enable rings](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tapeprotection.jpg) for teething and had a very good grasp of UUCP back in the day).  Your grandfather is different than my grandfather, and your boss is different than my boss.  The explanations for one won't always work for the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions inevitably get refining the specifics of explaining it to one person.  At that point, the question and answers become useless for anyone else who wants to explain it to another grandfather or 13 year old.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So many understandings... ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how would you explain pointers to a peer in computing?  If you do not understand pointers fully yourself, the question will turn from how do you explain them to someone else to the community explaining them to you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you lack the full understanding of the topic at hand, you will not be able to properly answer the follow up questions from whatever analogy you pick (the internet is a series of tubes... but how do they go to the *right* tube? - if you don't understand routing and dns and all that fun stuff yourself you won't be able to properly answer that question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On winning arguments...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One form this type of question will take is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I disagree with my boss/coworker over [some issue].  How do I persuade them otherwise?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are problematic because&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  We don't know who you are trying to persuade and what his or her reasons for those beliefs are, and &#xD;&#xA;2.  We don't know what you already understand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They also suffer from another problem: &quot;I'm trying to collect bullet points for ammunition in this argument&quot; which can easily turn the question into a poll where every answer is a new argument/opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Such questions for trying to win arguments really fall down on these points and only very rarely produce good answers.  The key to StackExchange itself is about having high quality answers - not bullet points of &quot;you could bring this up.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Solutions ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So what can I do? ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you understand the subject you are trying to explain, at least to the level you are going to try to explain it to *and one deeper*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you understand that.  Ask a question about *that* misunderstanding if you have it so the misunderstanding may be corrected and you'll be able to think of the proper car or train analogy to explain what you are trying to explain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider asking in chat.  While this isn't the main site and you don't get rep for it, it can help in being able to particularly address your understanding and the understanding of the person you are trying to explain it to.  Consider for example, [this conversation](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/on-engineering-and-teaching-pointers) where we went through several iterations of understanding the target audience before recognizing the proper way to explain pointers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking about how to explain something and working through the solution is not a 'fire and forget' question where you ask it and come back to get the answers.  Those are the questions get get closed.  They take a significant amount of work explaining what *you* understand and properly tailoring it to the audience that you understand best.  While we can help with your understanding, trying to answer it for your audience is not a good fit for the Q&amp;A site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18860" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6630" RevisionGUID="55aeb162-0631-4101-b6fc-14a4cea33c4c" CreationDate="2014-08-07T17:05:24.523" UserId="31260" Comment="http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/17009616#17009616" Text="## Problems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So many targets... ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first problem with these questions is that there are so many possible audiences.  How do you explain pointers to a 13 year old.  How do you explain the internet to your grandfather? How do you explain [testing to a manager who has pointy hair](http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-03-24/)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way you would explain something to a 13 year old is different than the way you would explain it to your grandfather &lt;s&gt;or a manager&lt;/s&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Ok, maybe the manager and the 13 year old would get the same explanation.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Key to this is that each type of person you explain something to is different.  Whats more, each *person* you explain something to is different (maybe your grandfather was given [write enable rings](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tapeprotection.jpg) for teething and had a very good grasp of UUCP back in the day).  Your grandfather is different than my grandfather, and your boss is different than my boss.  The explanations for one won't always work for the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions inevitably get refining the specifics of explaining it to one person.  At that point, the question and answers become useless for anyone else who wants to explain it to another grandfather or 13 year old.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So many understandings... ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how would you explain pointers to a peer in computing?  If you do not understand pointers fully yourself, the question will turn from how do you explain them to someone else to the community explaining them to you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you lack the full understanding of the topic at hand, you will not be able to properly answer the follow up questions from whatever analogy you pick (the internet is a series of tubes... but how do they go to the *right* tube? - if you don't understand routing and DNS and all that fun stuff yourself you won't be able to properly answer that question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On winning arguments...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One form this type of question will take is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I disagree with my boss/coworker over [some issue].  How do I persuade them otherwise?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are problematic because&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  We don't know who you are trying to persuade and what his or her reasons for those beliefs are, and &#xD;&#xA;2.  We don't know what you already understand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They also suffer from another problem: &quot;I'm trying to collect bullet points for ammunition in this argument&quot; which can easily turn the question into a poll where every answer is a new argument/opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Such questions for trying to win arguments really fall down on these points and only very rarely produce good answers.  The key to Stack Exchange itself is about having high quality answers - not bullet points of &quot;you could bring this up.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Solutions ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So what can I do? ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you understand the subject you are trying to explain, at least to the level you are going to try to explain it to *and one deeper*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you understand that.  Ask a question about *that* misunderstanding if you have it so the misunderstanding may be corrected and you'll be able to think of the proper car or train analogy to explain what you are trying to explain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider asking in chat.  While this isn't the main site and you don't get rep for it, it can help in being able to particularly address your understanding and the understanding of the person you are trying to explain it to.  Consider for example, [this conversation](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/on-engineering-and-teaching-pointers) where we went through several iterations of understanding the target audience before recognizing the proper way to explain pointers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking about how to explain something and working through the solution is not a 'fire and forget' question where you ask it and come back to get the answers.  Those are the questions get get closed.  They take a significant amount of work explaining what *you* understand and properly tailoring it to the audience that you understand best.  While we can help with your understanding, trying to answer it for your audience is not a good fit for the Q&amp;A site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18861" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6743" RevisionGUID="b7a1d23f-f5b9-44e5-95a0-19e7c1ec4712" CreationDate="2014-08-07T17:16:54.667" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add related reading" Text="## Why we're not a forum&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to realize is that Stack Exchange brands itself as a Q&amp;A site. This is the very top of the content when you go to http://stackexchange.com.  It calls out that this is something *different* than forums, that there are *right answers.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When one goes to the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) page, note the wording of the text there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat. Just questions...  and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Going further into the help center, one finds [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) which links to three other pages that goes into more about what isn't allowed on the site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Thus, questions that are not answerable — discussions, debates, opinions — should be closed as subjective. It seems simple enough: Fact good; opinion and discussion bad. But why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Most forums and chat rooms have a scale problem. As in, they don’t. The more people that join the discussion, the more noise each of those connections bring. So the forums get progressively noisier and noisier, and suddenly one day … you stop learning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## On the nature of discussions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of a discussion is back and forth.  Lines of communication.  Look at sites that are intended for discussion and you will find threads and nested comments and a system that isn't designed around getting answers but rather to make connections with people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is different.  As stated in the tour and time and time again in other documents, this is a Q&amp;A site.  As such it has intentionally made having these discussions difficult.  Things such as limited sizes of comments, limited markdown in comments, the automatic move comment to chat feature.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussions make it harder to find the answer - you have to wade through all the other stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;As an aside, there is *nothing* worse than trying to go from reading a post, to reading the comments to going back to the post to see the reply, and back to the comments to see the next reply and back to the post... Don't do that. Remove the 'Edit:' and 'Update:' from your edit, make the entire thing a cohesive whole and leave a comment saying that the post has been updated to take this into account - people can read the revision history if they want to see what changed.&amp;lt;/rant&amp;gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are sites that do discussions very well... or, as well as discussions can be done.  Jeff Atwood even went off to make another site model designed precisely for discussions (http://www.discourse.org)... and it's not a Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not to say that one can't try to mix Q&amp;A and discussions.  But it's *very* hard to do both right.  It's hard enough to do one of them right.  Stack Exchange chose to get Q&amp;A right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Where else can discussions be had?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *do* want to have a discussion there are some options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Visit [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard).  The _Whiteboard_ chat room is one such place within the Stack Exchange network where discussions are allowed (and encouraged).&#xD;&#xA;* Ask somewhere else.  There are numerous other sites out there that are designed for discussions.  [Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/), [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/ask), [Slashdot](http://ask.slashdot.org) to name a few.  These are sites that are specifically designed with discussions in mind - the voting system on them, the moderation, the community formed around them - all about discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So why is it a big deal?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with discussions is that discussions can easily overwhelm the rest of the site.  Unlike objective questions that have answers (and if asked again can be directed to the previous one asked that will answer this one too), discussions of the same topic are infinite in their variety based on the participants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is based on the premise that good questions and answers attract and retain the experts that answer them and that people come to find answers.  The quality that Stack Exchange provides is unique within the Internet so far (quite a few clones, but none as compelling).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, discussions tend to drive away experts.  Not always, but it's the trend.  This has been seen many times since the days of Usenet news... experts really don't want to spend their time arguing with someone who doesn't understand the topic at hand when they want to just answer a question... and if they *do*, there are ways to have that discussion via other channels.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not to say that there are experts who do enjoy discussions... and that Stack Exchange isn't exactly working for them.  This is unfortunate, but it does not mean that discussions need to be allowed or that Stack Exchange needs to change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Related reading and links from above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is Stack Overflow a forum?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/92107/213963) on Meta.StackExchange&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;* [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html) by Clay Shirky" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18862" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6804" RevisionGUID="479f23c8-aaf4-43e0-8163-415665d8e572" CreationDate="2014-08-07T22:16:06.970" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/497506497346416640" />
  <row Id="18866" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="5fa0400a-5e4d-42fa-b516-344afc984305" CreationDate="2014-08-08T01:19:05.903" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Clarify section title (people seem to miss the contents)" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for a link to something or statistics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason.  Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to things suffer from link rot.  Statistics become out of date over time.  Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is someone asking in 2012 &quot;What is the market share of Android vs iPhone?&quot;  This information would be out of date in a few months as new numbers come out and someone else would ask in 2013 &quot;The question [link] asks about the stats, but they are all for 2012.  What is the market share for android vs iPhone in 2013?&quot;  And again, this information would be out of date and prompt another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for information about statistics, or more generally, asking us to search for some data for you is off topic because of these problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No actual problem to solve&#xD;&#xA;* Not drawing from expert knowledge of the community&#xD;&#xA;* Will suffer from link rot or become out of date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [What exactly is a recommendation question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254393/what-exactly-is-a-recommendation-question)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why are “shopping list” questions bad?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18868" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6812" RevisionGUID="e01764ce-efb1-4444-a268-5248f5247d8d" CreationDate="2014-08-08T21:19:11.337" UserId="93290" Text="I was just banned from chat over [this comment](http://chat.stackexchange.com/messages/17035470/history), which, to my eye looks fairly innocuous. Can someone shed some light on this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18869" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6812" RevisionGUID="e01764ce-efb1-4444-a268-5248f5247d8d" CreationDate="2014-08-08T21:19:11.337" UserId="93290" Text="Why did the feed ban me from chat?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18870" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6812" RevisionGUID="e01764ce-efb1-4444-a268-5248f5247d8d" CreationDate="2014-08-08T21:19:11.337" UserId="93290" Text="|bug|chat|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18873" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6812" RevisionGUID="b06a5196-2e19-4720-bb9f-9753d7f4c284" CreationDate="2014-08-09T13:11:06.357" UserId="93290" Comment="Moved more info from comments to body" Text="I was just banned from chat over [this comment](http://chat.stackexchange.com/messages/17035470/history), which, to my eye looks fairly innocuous. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Comment history before someone blew it away](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wcLN6.jpg)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Clicking on the Feeds profile brought me to here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/-2/feeds )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anyone shed some light on this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18874" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6813" RevisionGUID="5b3c19b5-2930-4445-8f92-bade43e6a79d" CreationDate="2014-08-09T20:36:12.223" UserId="143011" Text="My understanding of Programmers.SE (as opposed to SO) is that SO is for implementation problems -  &quot;I'm trying to do `foo` by `bar`ing my `baz` but it isn't working&quot;, while Programmers is for whiteboard problems - &quot;I'm starting my project and I'm considering three different ways of doing this (`foo`, `bar` and `baz`) and I'm not sure which would be best&quot;.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on that understanding, I feel that my question (which would be about how to best represent some data) would be more on-topic here than on SO.  I'm still a little concerned, however, that this might be considered too opinion based or too &quot;bad subjective&quot;.  Are these questions okay?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be happy to provide some more details as to what my question would look like if that's necessary." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18875" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6813" RevisionGUID="5b3c19b5-2930-4445-8f92-bade43e6a79d" CreationDate="2014-08-09T20:36:12.223" UserId="143011" Text="Should I ask my question about how to implement a data structure here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18876" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6813" RevisionGUID="5b3c19b5-2930-4445-8f92-bade43e6a79d" CreationDate="2014-08-09T20:36:12.223" UserId="143011" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18877" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6813" RevisionGUID="c9efe5d6-45b2-46f6-9ee2-0717ff57aad6" CreationDate="2014-08-09T22:37:37.510" UserId="143011" Comment="Changed the title - issue isn't implementation of the data structure, its deciding which one to use" Text="Should I ask my question about which data structure to use here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18878" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6814" RevisionGUID="32d101f8-58ba-42f5-88a6-af83ee2a4838" CreationDate="2014-08-10T00:34:13.200" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Generally speaking if the question has a definite answer and is not-implementation dependent, we'll take it. Example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49550/which-hashing-algorithm-is-best-for-uniqueness-and-speed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question has a definite answer and is in no way implementation dependent. The top answer is a work of art as well as being good solid science. This is the standard that we strive for. Obviously, we don't expect this level of amazing from every question but this is the direction people should be heading in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question winds up being too implementation specific, we can always just migrate the thing. No hard feelings." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18879" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6813" RevisionGUID="92473bd6-cde7-44ad-b08f-b33640d9ae4f" CreationDate="2014-08-10T00:36:13.007" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18880" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6813" RevisionGUID="13c2e3b5-87ac-41ee-99e3-bd8f8dd6a72d" CreationDate="2014-08-12T07:28:29.827" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/499095060034887680" />
  <row Id="18881" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6361" RevisionGUID="4059ba40-d7dc-4e72-8d0d-39943b83ed7f" CreationDate="2014-08-12T21:22:27.220" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add another aspect" Text="There are several aspects to this question that make it a poor question to ask on Programmers.SE, and some that also make it counter productive to have planned out for an interview.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too broad&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first aspect is that the question is too broad for Programmers.SE.  The &quot;How do you build Amazon&quot; being asked here is akin to going to [Home Improvement.SE](http://diy.stackexchange.com) and asking &quot;How do you build a house?&quot;  There is no way the totality of that question can be answered in a meaningful way in this text box - the topic is *far* too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To an extent, it is exactly that broadness that the interviewing is asking.  This question isn't one like &quot;how many ways can you use `static` in Java&quot; - which has an answer.  The interviewer is coming to you like a business person would with some question that you need to drill down into to ask - and clarify the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, as a question on a Q&amp;A site, with you asking the question you don't know all the questions and the scope of the question the interviewer has in mind.  One interviewer may want you to drill down into the shopping cart side of Amazon, another may want to want to drill into the virtualization of AWS, another may want things about product recommendation or customer purchase prediction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Amusingly stated in a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your &quot;friend&quot; should have closed the interviewer's question as &quot;too broad.&quot; In other news, &quot;design a big distributed system&quot; is not a requirements specification. –  Robert Harvey&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No clearly defined problem&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Q&amp;A format that Stack Exchange uses works best when there is a clearly defined problem.  With the Amazon question, asking &quot;how do I build and collect data for [A/B testing](https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/ab-testing/reference/ab-math.html)&quot; could be a reasonable question - it is one problem that can be asked and answered, and not to be overlooked *found* when someone else is searching for the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The asked, answered and found steps are key parts to how Stack Exchange works - remember that the question isn't just for you, its also for the next person asking the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interviewing by rote&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next, it's counter productive.  Lets say you get asked a question on how to implement Monopoly and you had no idea didn't get the job and went home to study Monopoly implementations.  A week later, another interview, and you are asked how to implement Monopoly again and you rattle off the implementation that you've memorized (just like the how many ways can you use `static` in Java question asked just before). It is clear that rattling off Monopoly from [rote](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rote_learning) doesn't mean you understand it, so the interviewer asks how you would implement Risk...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key to this example with why its counter productive to try to have a pre-constructed answer for this question is that the interviewer is trying to find your boundaries.  By going with a pre-thought out answer that boundary hasn't been determined.  It's the **process** of thinking through these questions as part of the interview that the interviewer wants to see - and will ask you question and question again until that process is clear about *how* you think of design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so, while there may be an answer that can fit in the space (you talk about the circular array for the board, the stacks for the cards, the rules engine for implementing how the different cards behave, the rules for the game, etc...) that *might* fit here, by having a thought out answer you're going to be asked them again and again until you are asked one you don't know - you've only wasted your time and that of the interviewers up until that point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;I will point out that studying [BSD Games/monop](https://github.com/vattam/BSDGames/tree/master/monop) which is written in classic C will likely have difficulty when the interviewer says &quot;let's try that again in C#&quot; or &quot;let's change that design to [anti-monopoly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Monopoly)&quot;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where to ask about broad questions&#xD;&#xA;------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the best places to ask such broad questions is Programmers Chat.  The wide range of the question and understanding that it's an interview question can be better addressed in an interactive way rather than a question and answer format.  The dialog between the person asking the question and the person answering it is an important part of the process of this type of question and understanding the design aspects of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## &quot;The interviewer didn't like my answer&quot; question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some interviewers ask questions with specific answers in mind.  All other answers are unsatisfactory to them other than the one they want.  [Even if its wrong](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/208067/interviewer-gives-wrong-answers-to-their-own-questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The difficulty with such questions is that the only person who knows the answer the interviewer was looking for is the interviewer.  They may not have liked your design because of some opinionated blog post they read a year ago, or that its not cutting edge enough, or that you didn't implement their favorite Pattern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking such a question on Programmers.SE results in answers that are just speculation.  We weren't the interviewer and we can only guess at what issues the person had with your design or solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6244/is-how-would-you-architect-existing-web-site-application-an-appropriate-ques" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18882" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6815" RevisionGUID="0ca4ab4c-9059-4714-91b3-feb147619d93" CreationDate="2014-08-13T09:51:39.767" UserId="56782" Text="I posted a question after having thought about the concept for a week or so. I posted the relevant research I had done and the sample code I used for trying out the concept. The question was long and I still feel this is a site for long questions and proper analysis of concepts. Your site tour explains:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Focus on questions about an actual problem you have faced. Include details about what you have tried and exactly what you are trying to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I said I found a lot about this concept during a bug fix. I explained that I had written an article about this stuff on Codeproject. I also mentioned that I have no experience with other languages. All this was done within the rules defined by you. When you say include details, it means details - code, links etc., right? Is there a thing called **brief details** or **concise details** or **short details**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your site tour further explains:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Not all questions work well in our format. Avoid questions that are primarily opinion-based, or that are likely to generate discussion rather than answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked two to-the-point questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is there another name for the concept I have just described in common language?&#xD;&#xA; 2. Why compiler does not optimize obvious semantic inconsistencies?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I deleted my question, but the moderators can grab it back I know.&#xD;&#xA;These two questions are not **STUPID**. I was told by guys that they do not want to hear anything about what I did or where I posted my research etc. They do not want the **gory details**. What? The site asks me to post details. Who are these people who want **short, concise details**? Do they even understand what detail means?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone said that **what i had for breakfast** was irrelevant to them. Another guy mentioned that my code sample was **ridiculous**. All this within seconds of me posting my 1000 words question (including code). This surely means that they have not read the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I pointed them to the following link:&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254570/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who are these guys? What experience have they got? &#xD;&#xA;I can tell clearly that these guys have no experience of working in a team or mentoring. It will be really sad if they ever get employed because they surely will destroy the team they work with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only answer I received was not poisonous. It just said that the compiler writers have better things to do than to catch what would eventually be a runtime error. What? Really. What better things do you mean. Can you not give me examples where such runtime errors would be a disaster and compilers and tools employed for such an environment do such checking? What are the benefits of not doing such a checking etc. in normal environment?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you expect me to do? Post one line questions here? I could do that on StackOverflow. Had I posted something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How to use interfaces in C# to delegate a functionality?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am sure I would have been voted up to seventh heaven. These answers are so readily available that the guy answering receives a lot of points with minimal effort. If they have to dig to get an answer, they go berserk.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One guy also said that you are getting **a free code review** done here, so better get aligned to the rules laid down by the members. NO. I was not getting my code reviewed. I was trying to discuss something that troubles all beginners. Even if I was, I need not stoop and beg.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This attitude is poisonous and needs to be corrected. These guys need serious enlightenment. Real world is different from classrooms. Learn how to behave.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not intend to be a part of this community. Please delete my account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18883" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6815" RevisionGUID="0ca4ab4c-9059-4714-91b3-feb147619d93" CreationDate="2014-08-13T09:51:39.767" UserId="56782" Text="Absurd downvoting" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18884" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6815" RevisionGUID="0ca4ab4c-9059-4714-91b3-feb147619d93" CreationDate="2014-08-13T09:51:39.767" UserId="56782" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18885" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6816" RevisionGUID="6403b6bb-ec7a-43ca-91ab-cf04c25f5c6d" CreationDate="2014-08-13T10:37:20.590" UserId="25768" Text="Just looking at the code you didn't need to put in the implementation of the `Logger` class (you did it twice), just a call to `Logger.log(stuffToLog)` would have been clear enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for the name of things is [an edge case on P.SE][1] but in general disallowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also the answerer was correct; you can catch the run-time error simply by a null check when calling `TheDelegate.Inst.TheHook` then it doesn't matter that `TheDelegate` is never implemented because all references to a `TheDelegate` instance will be `null`. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also your pattern prefers a global over a field to hold variable state, this gives way to a whole host of problems starting from thread safety, to unexpected influence from another library that installs its own `TheDelegate`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18886" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6815" RevisionGUID="6dcf33cd-ef60-4bb5-a806-e23f505afd78" CreationDate="2014-08-13T15:23:54.817" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="block quote format quotes, specific question tag." Text="I posted a question after having thought about the concept for a week or so. I posted the relevant research I had done and the sample code I used for trying out the concept. The question was long and I still feel this is a site for long questions and proper analysis of concepts. Your site tour explains:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about what you have tried and exactly what you are trying to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I said I found a lot about this concept during a bug fix. I explained that I had written an article about this stuff on Codeproject. I also mentioned that I have no experience with other languages. All this was done within the rules defined by you. When you say include details, it means details - code, links etc., right? Is there a thing called **brief details** or **concise details** or **short details**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your site tour further explains:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Not all questions work well in our format. Avoid questions that are primarily opinion-based, or that are likely to generate discussion rather than answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked two to-the-point questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is there another name for the concept I have just described in common language?&#xD;&#xA; 2. Why compiler does not optimize obvious semantic inconsistencies?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I deleted my question, but the moderators can grab it back I know.&#xD;&#xA;These two questions are not **STUPID**. I was told by guys that they do not want to hear anything about what I did or where I posted my research etc. They do not want the **gory details**. What? The site asks me to post details. Who are these people who want **short, concise details**? Do they even understand what detail means?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone said that **what i had for breakfast** was irrelevant to them. Another guy mentioned that my code sample was **ridiculous**. All this within seconds of me posting my 1000 words question (including code). This surely means that they have not read the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I pointed them to the following link:&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254570/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who are these guys? What experience have they got? &#xD;&#xA;I can tell clearly that these guys have no experience of working in a team or mentoring. It will be really sad if they ever get employed because they surely will destroy the team they work with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only answer I received was not poisonous. It just said that the compiler writers have better things to do than to catch what would eventually be a runtime error. What? Really. What better things do you mean. Can you not give me examples where such runtime errors would be a disaster and compilers and tools employed for such an environment do such checking? What are the benefits of not doing such a checking etc. in normal environment?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you expect me to do? Post one line questions here? I could do that on StackOverflow. Had I posted something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How to use interfaces in C# to delegate a functionality?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am sure I would have been voted up to seventh heaven. These answers are so readily available that the guy answering receives a lot of points with minimal effort. If they have to dig to get an answer, they go berserk.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One guy also said that you are getting **a free code review** done here, so better get aligned to the rules laid down by the members. NO. I was not getting my code reviewed. I was trying to discuss something that troubles all beginners. Even if I was, I need not stoop and beg.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This attitude is poisonous and needs to be corrected. These guys need serious enlightenment. Real world is different from classrooms. Learn how to behave.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not intend to be a part of this community. Please delete my account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18887" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6815" RevisionGUID="6dcf33cd-ef60-4bb5-a806-e23f505afd78" CreationDate="2014-08-13T15:23:54.817" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="block quote format quotes, specific question tag." Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18888" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6817" RevisionGUID="6a48d118-7448-4d31-80c9-a3816aa7f2d7" CreationDate="2014-08-13T16:39:39.887" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I haven't interacted at all with that question (down votes or the too broad close vote).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My impressions of it are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Some meta stuff at the top.  This normally sets off a warning flag for me.  Things like &quot;I know this isn't the right place&quot; and the like tend to be questions that are otherwise problematic on the site.  Your particular meta comment was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Folks, there is no TL;DR version of my question. Please be patient.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Even if this isn't a post that *is* problematic, it sets one's mind to expect that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. A quick scroll down and I hit four code blocks, two of which have scroll bars on them.  This is something that then starts to *look* like one that is going to delve too far into code or fix my code/design type questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Many of the questions that tend to be &quot;here is a lot of code&quot; tend to get answers that are &quot;here is a lot of code too.&quot;  Those answers aren't ideal for P.SE, and so questions that ask them may get down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Where is the question?  After digging down a bit, they are between two code blocks.  The questions appear to be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    1. Is there another name for this pattern? &#xD;&#xA;    2. Is this really an Adapter?&#xD;&#xA;    3. So, does the compiler have no mechanism to check such semantic inconsistencies?&#xD;&#xA;    4. Something that looks like a design review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Asking multiple questions in a single post is problematic.  Someone could answer the &quot;another name&quot; question, and another answer the adapter one, and a third about the compiler.  None (or all) of them are 'right' for the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    While I may just be missing it... but I seem to have some difficulty matching the &quot;abstract stuff in C#&quot; in the question title to the questions being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. There's a naming question there.  Naming questions have a problematic history on P.SE - a bit more about that at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a lot there.  But I also have to read quite a bit to even find the question being asked and then go back and reread it.  And after that, I'm still confused about what question you are asking and what type of answer you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The mouseover for the the down vote reads &quot;this question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&quot; and that 'it is unclear' part may be something that people are voting on when reading the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some other bits that are in there from comments here and there...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Doval, the site asks me to provide details and share my research. I did that. It is ridiculous that you guys vote down questions if they do not fit your mental models. Your lack of experience in working in teams and mentoring clearly shines through your comments. Gaining points on a forum is a completely different matter. Having the maturity to answer properly and with humility is a different matter altogether. –  msiyer yesterday&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @ Alex, I never mentioned anything about my breakfast. Oh! you were being sarcastic? Reserve your sarcasm for some other day. I would have asked small questions on StackOverflow. This is a site for detailed analysis. What does detailed mean? Please go and read the link I posted in my last comment. Guys, learn to respect others. The internet does not give you license to be rude. Just because you do not understand something does not mean there are not others who can provide some answers. This site provides me the license to showcase my research. Does that make any sense to you? –  msiyer yesterday &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit rude in its wording.  Not enough that I'd go about flagging it... but it sets a negative tone and some people may vote accordingly.  If you are to point out that *other* people are being rude too (again, judgement call there) this is a question that you asked and people are voting on that (they may also be flagging comments, but thats not as obvious).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Graham, Your comment is a good one and gentle too. I am not looking for a free code review. I just want to discuss if what i understood is proper. The attention span of these guys is just pathetic. They need questions that are couple of lines long so that they can answer fast and get points. This site is for detailed analysis as per FAQ. It also asks me to show my research. If I have to be concise I will post on StackOverflow. Why is this so difficult to comprehend? –  msiyer yesterday&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Setting aside the tone in this comment: &quot;I just want to **discuss** if what i understood is proper&quot; - [discussions don't work well on Stack Exchange](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6742/40980).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that you brought this up again in the meta question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One guy also said that you are getting a free code review done here, so better get aligned to the rules laid down by the members. NO. I was not getting my code reviewed. I was trying to discuss something that troubles all beginners. Even if I was, I need not stoop and beg.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Bart, you answered properly. But when you say &quot;compiler writers have better things to do&quot;, it kind of kills discussion. But we surely discussed on Design patterns. I sincerely feel that the questions were not bad. May not be a world class problem but nothing silly about it. These are issues I have seen all beginners deal with. i hoped a discussion would help others to learn. –  msiyer 6 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, Stack Exchange is not a site for discussions.  There are other avenues and sites to look at if you *are* interested in a discussion.  Stack Exchange is designed to handle Q&amp;A - not discussions.  It does the former very well and the later very poorly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18889" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6817" RevisionGUID="b1c57fe1-0745-44c2-be00-a08254227698" CreationDate="2014-08-13T17:23:55.320" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling, formatting" Text="I haven't interacted at all with that question (down votes or the too broad close vote).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My impressions of it are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Some meta stuff at the top.  This normally sets off a warning flag for me.  Things like &quot;I know this isn't the right place&quot; and the like tend to be questions that are otherwise problematic on the site.  Your particular meta comment was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Folks, there is no TL;DR version of my question. Please be patient.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Even if this isn't a post that *is* problematic, it sets one's mind to expect that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. A quick scroll down and I hit four code blocks, two of which have scroll bars on them.  This is something that then starts to *look* like one that is going to delve too far into code or fix my code/design type questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Many of the questions that tend to be &quot;here is a lot of code&quot; tend to get answers that are &quot;here is a lot of code too.&quot;  Those answers aren't ideal for P.SE, and so questions that ask them may get down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Where is the question?  After digging down a bit, they are between two code blocks.  The questions appear to be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    1. Is there another name for this pattern? &#xD;&#xA;    2. Is this really an Adapter?&#xD;&#xA;    3. So, does the compiler have no mechanism to check such semantic inconsistencies?&#xD;&#xA;    4. Something that looks like a design review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Asking multiple questions in a single post is problematic.  Someone could answer the &quot;another name&quot; question, and another answer the adapter one, and a third about the compiler.  None (or all) of them are 'right' for the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    While I may just be missing it... but I seem to have some difficulty matching the &quot;abstract stuff in C#&quot; in the question title to the questions being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. There's a naming question there.  Naming questions have a problematic history on P.SE - a bit more about that at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a lot there.  But I also have to read quite a bit to even find the question being asked and then go back and reread it.  And after that, I'm still confused about what question you are asking and what type of answer you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The mouseover for the the down vote reads &quot;this question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&quot; and that 'it is unclear' part may be something that people are voting on when reading the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some other bits that are in there from comments here and there...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@Doval, the site asks me to provide details and share my research. I did that. It is ridiculous that you guys vote down questions if they do not fit your mental models. Your lack of experience in working in teams and mentoring clearly shines through your comments. Gaining points on a forum is a completely different matter. Having the maturity to answer properly and with humility is a different matter altogether. –  msiyer yesterday&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@ Alex, I never mentioned anything about my breakfast. Oh! you were being sarcastic? Reserve your sarcasm for some other day. I would have asked small questions on StackOverflow. This is a site for detailed analysis. What does detailed mean? Please go and read the link I posted in my last comment. Guys, learn to respect others. The internet does not give you license to be rude. Just because you do not understand something does not mean there are not others who can provide some answers. This site provides me the license to showcase my research. Does that make any sense to you? –  msiyer yesterday&lt;/sub&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit rude in its wording.  Not enough that I'd go about flagging it... but it sets a negative tone and some people may vote accordingly.  If you are to point out that *other* people are being rude too (again, judgement call there) this is a question that you asked and people are voting on that (they may also be flagging comments, but that's not as obvious).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@Graham, Your comment is a good one and gentle too. I am not looking for a free code review. I just want to discuss if what i understood is proper. The attention span of these guys is just pathetic. They need questions that are couple of lines long so that they can answer fast and get points. This site is for detailed analysis as per FAQ. It also asks me to show my research. If I have to be concise I will post on StackOverflow. Why is this so difficult to comprehend? –  msiyer yesterday&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Setting aside the tone in this comment: &quot;I just want to **discuss** if what i understood is proper&quot; - [discussions don't work well on Stack Exchange](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6742/40980).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that you brought this up again in the meta question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One guy also said that you are getting a free code review done here, so better get aligned to the rules laid down by the members. NO. I was not getting my code reviewed. I was trying to discuss something that troubles all beginners. Even if I was, I need not stoop and beg.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Bart, you answered properly. But when you say &quot;compiler writers have better things to do&quot;, it kind of kills discussion. But we surely discussed on Design patterns. I sincerely feel that the questions were not bad. May not be a world class problem but nothing silly about it. These are issues I have seen all beginners deal with. i hoped a discussion would help others to learn. –  msiyer 6 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, Stack Exchange is not a site for discussions.  There are other avenues and sites to look at if you *are* interested in a discussion.  Stack Exchange is designed to handle Q&amp;A - not discussions.  It does the former very well and the latter very poorly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18890" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6817" RevisionGUID="f35372e2-0294-47a9-bc25-91f6f0e729fd" CreationDate="2014-08-13T19:42:33.440" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Consistent block quote styling." Text="I haven't interacted at all with that question (down votes or the too broad close vote).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My impressions of it are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Some meta stuff at the top.  This normally sets off a warning flag for me.  Things like &quot;I know this isn't the right place&quot; and the like tend to be questions that are otherwise problematic on the site.  Your particular meta comment was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Folks, there is no TL;DR version of my question. Please be patient.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Even if this isn't a post that *is* problematic, it sets one's mind to expect that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. A quick scroll down and I hit four code blocks, two of which have scroll bars on them.  This is something that then starts to *look* like one that is going to delve too far into code or fix my code/design type questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Many of the questions that tend to be &quot;here is a lot of code&quot; tend to get answers that are &quot;here is a lot of code too.&quot;  Those answers aren't ideal for P.SE, and so questions that ask them may get down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Where is the question?  After digging down a bit, they are between two code blocks.  The questions appear to be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    1. Is there another name for this pattern? &#xD;&#xA;    2. Is this really an Adapter?&#xD;&#xA;    3. So, does the compiler have no mechanism to check such semantic inconsistencies?&#xD;&#xA;    4. Something that looks like a design review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Asking multiple questions in a single post is problematic.  Someone could answer the &quot;another name&quot; question, and another answer the adapter one, and a third about the compiler.  None (or all) of them are 'right' for the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    While I may just be missing it... but I seem to have some difficulty matching the &quot;abstract stuff in C#&quot; in the question title to the questions being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. There's a naming question there.  Naming questions have a problematic history on P.SE - a bit more about that at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a lot there.  But I also have to read quite a bit to even find the question being asked and then go back and reread it.  And after that, I'm still confused about what question you are asking and what type of answer you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The mouseover for the the down vote reads &quot;this question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&quot; and that 'it is unclear' part may be something that people are voting on when reading the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some other bits that are in there from comments here and there...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@Doval, the site asks me to provide details and share my research. I did that. It is ridiculous that you guys vote down questions if they do not fit your mental models. Your lack of experience in working in teams and mentoring clearly shines through your comments. Gaining points on a forum is a completely different matter. Having the maturity to answer properly and with humility is a different matter altogether. –  msiyer yesterday&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@ Alex, I never mentioned anything about my breakfast. Oh! you were being sarcastic? Reserve your sarcasm for some other day. I would have asked small questions on StackOverflow. This is a site for detailed analysis. What does detailed mean? Please go and read the link I posted in my last comment. Guys, learn to respect others. The internet does not give you license to be rude. Just because you do not understand something does not mean there are not others who can provide some answers. This site provides me the license to showcase my research. Does that make any sense to you? –  msiyer yesterday&lt;/sub&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit rude in its wording.  Not enough that I'd go about flagging it... but it sets a negative tone and some people may vote accordingly.  If you are to point out that *other* people are being rude too (again, judgement call there) this is a question that you asked and people are voting on that (they may also be flagging comments, but that's not as obvious).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@Graham, Your comment is a good one and gentle too. I am not looking for a free code review. I just want to discuss if what i understood is proper. The attention span of these guys is just pathetic. They need questions that are couple of lines long so that they can answer fast and get points. This site is for detailed analysis as per FAQ. It also asks me to show my research. If I have to be concise I will post on StackOverflow. Why is this so difficult to comprehend? –  msiyer yesterday&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Setting aside the tone in this comment: &quot;I just want to **discuss** if what i understood is proper&quot; - [discussions don't work well on Stack Exchange](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6742/40980).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that you brought this up again in the meta question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;One guy also said that you are getting a free code review done here, so better get aligned to the rules laid down by the members. NO. I was not getting my code reviewed. I was trying to discuss something that troubles all beginners. Even if I was, I need not stoop and beg.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@Bart, you answered properly. But when you say &quot;compiler writers have better things to do&quot;, it kind of kills discussion. But we surely discussed on Design patterns. I sincerely feel that the questions were not bad. May not be a world class problem but nothing silly about it. These are issues I have seen all beginners deal with. i hoped a discussion would help others to learn. –  msiyer 6 hours ago&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, Stack Exchange is not a site for discussions.  There are other avenues and sites to look at if you *are* interested in a discussion.  Stack Exchange is designed to handle Q&amp;A - not discussions.  It does the former very well and the latter very poorly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18891" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6818" RevisionGUID="89b9b57a-33cc-44eb-9463-9ad8271a4340" CreationDate="2014-08-13T21:24:37.237" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/253230/what-are-some-communities-with-a-similar-concept-to-this-site-but-in-a-discussi" />
  <row Id="18892" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6818" RevisionGUID="cc694ce4-13de-48b9-bf75-afcce595a76c" CreationDate="2014-08-13T21:03:46.467" UserId="143320" Text="When I found this stack exchange site I was excited to start using it, but a lot of what I'm interested in is better suited toward a **discussion format** rather than a q / a format. I'd like to talk about the profession of software development at a high level, but I'm looking to talk about grey issues, and not just solutions to specific problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've done some searching around the internet and most developer specific forums seem to have a focus on technical issues that people are experiencing. While they will allow meta type discussions discussion rarely happens. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only alternative I've found is on forums that aren't programmer-centric, but which have an excess of developers who occasionally talk programming. That can be insightful, but rarely has much depth. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So is there anything out there like what I'm looking for?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18893" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6818" RevisionGUID="cc694ce4-13de-48b9-bf75-afcce595a76c" CreationDate="2014-08-13T21:03:46.467" UserId="143320" Text="What are some communities with a similar concept to this site, but in a discussion format?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18894" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6818" RevisionGUID="cc694ce4-13de-48b9-bf75-afcce595a76c" CreationDate="2014-08-13T21:03:46.467" UserId="143320" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18895" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6818" RevisionGUID="92920db0-d5da-44fb-823c-40283b9153bb" CreationDate="2014-08-13T22:28:03.567" UserId="4" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6763],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="18896" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6766" RevisionGUID="a8c44721-e98e-4da3-b033-3f9d53d66d76" CreationDate="2014-08-14T15:25:50.933" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add quora." Text="It really depends on what audience you want to reach and what you want to talk about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Options range from Stack Exchange's chat (http://chat.stackexchange.com/) which is a real time web based chat that has history to it and tight integration with Stack Exchange as a whole to going to other places that are more designed for discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Places like Reddit/r/programming (http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/ - and the various related ones that cater to a more specific focus), Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/ask) and Slashdot (http://ask.slashdot.org/) are three that come to mind most easily specifically for computer and technology related content. Quora (http://www.quora.com/) is a site that seems to specialize in sharing of anecdotes and advice on all subjects (though I'm not active enough there to be able to say if that is a correct description).  Slant (http://www.slant.co) also bears mentioning in that it is specifically designed for the &quot;what is the best XYZ&quot; type questions, though it is also a site that maintains a laser focus on what it does well and comments or discussions really aren't part of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, a year ago there was an attempt to make 'notconstructive.com' which was announced via Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6062876) which brings up many of the issues with both the Q&amp;A format and also the sites that try to cater to discussions (itself falling prey to not getting enough traction and having since closed).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are countless forums, forum-likes, and chat options.  Finding the one that fits your particular desires for the community and focus may take some time, and compromises to what you want desire may be needed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18897" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6819" RevisionGUID="731e76a5-f50e-4d32-be34-1be3d31e7b85" CreationDate="2014-08-14T15:51:36.740" UserId="146208" Text="Is this question appropriate for the programmers stack exchange site?  If not, is there a stack exchange site frequented by folks in the software industry where this question would be appropriate?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is a good solution for producing a software product documentation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We have a commercial, &quot;off the shelf&quot;, SAAS application that needs&#xD;&#xA;&gt; documentation and we want to produce the documentation in such a way&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that it's accessible online for our customers, our QA team, and other&#xD;&#xA;&gt; internal staff.  It should be easy for non-technical people to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; add/maintain content including pictures.  Doesn't necessarily need to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be free or self-hosted.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Was thinking about using a wiki but wasn't sure if there was a better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solution." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18898" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6819" RevisionGUID="731e76a5-f50e-4d32-be34-1be3d31e7b85" CreationDate="2014-08-14T15:51:36.740" UserId="146208" Text="Is this question appropriate for the programmers stack exchange site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18899" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6819" RevisionGUID="731e76a5-f50e-4d32-be34-1be3d31e7b85" CreationDate="2014-08-14T15:51:36.740" UserId="146208" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18900" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6820" RevisionGUID="45ee77aa-d48b-4a4d-89ad-f68ec40836a0" CreationDate="2014-08-14T16:52:07.123" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="&gt; Feeds has been sharing it's tequila with Community&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[More Accurate Random in C [closed]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/210149/more-accurate-random-in-c) was deleted by Community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![deleted by community][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Full size image at https://i.stack.imgur.com/akYIY.png )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am curious as to what script deleted it. My answer was at +2/-0 and accepted (I lost 35 rep).  Those *should* have kept some of the roomba scripts away from it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what change to roomba scripts was it that caused this question to be deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthemore, this deletion doesn't show up in the 'recently deleted' 10k tools spot.  I know that self-deleted questions don't show up there, but again... this was Community that did it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current display shows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Recent deleted posts][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing to show what Community has done the few minutes ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/akYIYm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/2bKs5.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18901" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6820" RevisionGUID="45ee77aa-d48b-4a4d-89ad-f68ec40836a0" CreationDate="2014-08-14T16:52:07.123" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="What roomba script went after this question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18902" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6820" RevisionGUID="45ee77aa-d48b-4a4d-89ad-f68ec40836a0" CreationDate="2014-08-14T16:52:07.123" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|bug|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18903" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6820" RevisionGUID="b6c37a89-d1b8-4d2b-b3c9-c66e5e43a880" CreationDate="2014-08-14T16:59:10.413" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Source of quote" Text="&gt; [Feeds has been sharing it's tequila with Community](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/17150039#17150039)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[More Accurate Random in C [closed]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/210149/more-accurate-random-in-c) was deleted by Community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![deleted by community][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Full size image at https://i.stack.imgur.com/akYIY.png )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am curious as to what script deleted it. My answer was at +2/-0 and accepted (I lost 35 rep).  Those *should* have kept some of the roomba scripts away from it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what change to roomba scripts was it that caused this question to be deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthemore, this deletion doesn't show up in the 'recently deleted' 10k tools spot.  I know that self-deleted questions don't show up there, but again... this was Community that did it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current display shows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Recent deleted posts][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing to show what Community has done the few minutes ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/akYIYm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/2bKs5.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18904" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6821" RevisionGUID="4c8a2fdf-f76a-4ef0-8ecc-5cdb75a8ab46" CreationDate="2014-08-14T17:06:29.527" UserId="4767" Text="No roomba script here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP requested deletion, part of the deletion script deletes negatively scored posts of the OP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sorry you got caught in that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18905" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6820" RevisionGUID="47b5fe18-a385-421d-a6dc-e84aefa5162f" CreationDate="2014-08-14T17:08:13.873" UserId="4767" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18906" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6821" RevisionGUID="51ae872a-dd7a-4cbe-b583-fac0f74fd024" CreationDate="2014-08-14T17:11:55.740" UserId="1204" Comment="added 22 characters in body" Text="No roomba script here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP requested deletion of their user account; part of the deletion script deletes negatively scored posts of the OP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sorry you got caught in that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18907" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6822" RevisionGUID="9860bfa0-e456-4d74-bb9e-6b0243851f9c" CreationDate="2014-08-14T18:27:49.330" UserId="5099" Text="The question is appropriate for Programmers, but needs a bit of work to make it answerable, as indicated by the comment from @gnat." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18908" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6819" RevisionGUID="26bf98b3-58c4-4d55-be06-7b48c04ff5de" CreationDate="2014-08-15T08:53:19.540" UserId="31260" Comment="edited body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Is this question appropriate for the Programmers Stack Exchange site?  If not, is there a Stack Exchange site frequented by folks in the software industry where this question would be appropriate?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is a good solution for producing a software product documentation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We have a commercial, &quot;off the shelf&quot;, SAAS application that needs&#xD;&#xA;&gt; documentation and we want to produce the documentation in such a way&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that it's accessible online for our customers, our QA team, and other&#xD;&#xA;&gt; internal staff.  It should be easy for non-technical people to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; add/maintain content including pictures.  Doesn't necessarily need to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be free or self-hosted.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Was thinking about using a wiki but wasn't sure if there was a better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solution." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18909" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6819" RevisionGUID="26bf98b3-58c4-4d55-be06-7b48c04ff5de" CreationDate="2014-08-15T08:53:19.540" UserId="31260" Comment="edited body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Is this question appropriate for the Programmers Stack Exchange?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18910" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6819" RevisionGUID="26bf98b3-58c4-4d55-be06-7b48c04ff5de" CreationDate="2014-08-15T08:53:19.540" UserId="31260" Comment="edited body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18911" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6742" RevisionGUID="43cadecc-fec3-4b0e-9bac-c29a087b0c7a" CreationDate="2014-08-16T00:03:31.597" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18916" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6824" RevisionGUID="40e0de05-0212-4ebd-91dd-2d260e10d3f3" CreationDate="2014-08-20T06:28:40.787" UserId="73447" Text="This question was removed voluntarily by the author: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/253855/does-it-make-sense-to-outsource-code-refactoring?noredirect=1#comment510925_253855&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I made a comment while it was online, but now I am unable to contact the author. My comment does no more show up in my activity, nor is the name of the questions's author mentioned anywhere. This renders me unable to communicate with the author, for which my comment was intended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why does my comment get removed too from my activities?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides, IMHO, this was a very good question. There should be a way to reactivate or otherwise preserve such good questions in a form the original author could agree." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18917" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6824" RevisionGUID="40e0de05-0212-4ebd-91dd-2d260e10d3f3" CreationDate="2014-08-20T06:28:40.787" UserId="73447" Text="Preserve activity on volutarily deleted questions or reactivate them (partially)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18918" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6824" RevisionGUID="40e0de05-0212-4ebd-91dd-2d260e10d3f3" CreationDate="2014-08-20T06:28:40.787" UserId="73447" Text="|feature-request|removal|question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18919" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6825" RevisionGUID="5661ad3f-1521-4bfb-9025-a3f9895e5f15" CreationDate="2014-08-20T11:40:01.697" UserId="146728" Text="Is the following an on-topic question on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Are there existing formal standards targeted to airbag controlling&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think for example at IEC 62304. To give a bit of context: I asked myself the question after browsing at http://www.hovding.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked a [similar question at meta.stackoverflow][1] and they suggested to ask also here at meta.programmers... they told me that cross-posting between meta sites is acceptable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/269158/15485" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18920" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6825" RevisionGUID="5661ad3f-1521-4bfb-9025-a3f9895e5f15" CreationDate="2014-08-20T11:40:01.697" UserId="146728" Text="Is &quot;Are there existing formal standards targeted to airbag controlling software?&quot; on-topic on &quot;Programmers&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18921" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6825" RevisionGUID="5661ad3f-1521-4bfb-9025-a3f9895e5f15" CreationDate="2014-08-20T11:40:01.697" UserId="146728" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18922" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6826" RevisionGUID="80059530-1810-44bb-9e9f-55daa335cc73" CreationDate="2014-08-20T12:44:13.207" UserId="42132" Text="The following question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39122/what-tools-can-be-used-to-facilitate-code-reviews-after-commits&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has quite a few upvotes, many answers, and over 2k views. I didn't think this'd be the kind of acceptable question, yet it seems accepted. 2 moderators stumbled upon the question and didn't say anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I wrong in closing this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18923" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6826" RevisionGUID="80059530-1810-44bb-9e9f-55daa335cc73" CreationDate="2014-08-20T12:44:13.207" UserId="42132" Text="Popular software recommendation question - acceptable?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18924" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6826" RevisionGUID="80059530-1810-44bb-9e9f-55daa335cc73" CreationDate="2014-08-20T12:44:13.207" UserId="42132" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18925" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6827" RevisionGUID="0d44df7f-4aa5-4c5d-ba9a-28c3b7dc4584" CreationDate="2014-08-20T13:01:01.363" UserId="47" Text="No you are not wrong to vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you look at the dates when the moderators last interacted with the question you'll see that it was quite a while ago now - certainly before the &quot;software recommendations&quot; close reason came into force, and at a time when we thought such questions were OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The need for that close reason is apparent as there was a new spam answer that had been added to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've deleted the spam and closed the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18926" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6826" RevisionGUID="3bbc3dd7-599a-4b5b-af11-9388c473b0d3" CreationDate="2014-08-20T15:42:06.817" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18927" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6826" RevisionGUID="3bbc3dd7-599a-4b5b-af11-9388c473b0d3" CreationDate="2014-08-20T15:42:06.817" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="The following question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39122/what-tools-can-be-used-to-facilitate-code-reviews-after-commits&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has quite a few upvotes, many answers, and over 2k views. I didn't think this'd be the kind of acceptable question, yet it seems accepted. 2 moderators stumbled upon the question and didn't say anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I wrong in voting to close this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18928" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6828" RevisionGUID="7b7a0c92-6b35-4363-9619-f9a5e6fa3c4a" CreationDate="2014-08-20T21:19:19.090" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="This question can be answered with either &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot;.  Neither of those are good answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The ability to find an answer for this doesn't draw from expert knowledge of programmers, but rather that of regulators, lawyers, and [research librarians](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librarian#Positions_and_duties) (read the paragraph beginning with &quot;Reference or research librarians help people doing research to find the information they need&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The primary skills here are google-fu.  Furthermore, those who do not have access to something that isn't likely an [open standard](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard) can only say &quot;I can't find it if it is&quot; - also a poor answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As such, this question doesn't fit the Stack Exchange model for Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On P.SE, it would get closed as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(please read http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487 - the section beginning &quot;Asking for a link to something or statistics&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18929" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6829" RevisionGUID="3ee125a4-4159-4f41-93d1-78b4148d2858" CreationDate="2014-08-21T07:38:37.957" UserId="35955" Text="I had a case when I needed to do something in code that **I knew is a bad practice**.&#xD;&#xA;but because of a unique situation and after considering the risks thoroughly decided that is worth it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cannot start explaining all my considerations that include buisness secrets over the internet but I do need technical assistance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;when I tried to ask at SA I got heated responses why it is a bad practice instead of answeres to how to do this. poeple are so conserned about what is the right way to write code that they forget that there are other considerations as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;can anyone provide insight of how to correctly ask such a question in order to avoid &quot;this is a bad practice&quot; answers and get real answers?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18930" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6829" RevisionGUID="3ee125a4-4159-4f41-93d1-78b4148d2858" CreationDate="2014-08-21T07:38:37.957" UserId="35955" Text="how to ask questions about bad practices in stackoverflow ( or other technical forums)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18931" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6829" RevisionGUID="3ee125a4-4159-4f41-93d1-78b4148d2858" CreationDate="2014-08-21T07:38:37.957" UserId="35955" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18932" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6829" RevisionGUID="a58e27a2-14fa-4857-8adf-a763859adf9f" CreationDate="2014-08-21T08:59:28.587" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/253966/how-to-ask-questions-about-bad-practices-in-stackoverflow-or-other-technical-f" />
  <row Id="18933" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6829" RevisionGUID="19f502a8-bf0c-46dd-8dd4-45be7a1fb37e" CreationDate="2014-08-21T09:36:56.373" UserId="81495" Comment="edited body; edited title" Text="I had a case when I needed to do something in code that **I knew is a bad practice**.&#xD;&#xA;but because of a unique situation and after considering the risks thoroughly decided that is worth it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cannot start explaining all my considerations that include buisness secrets over the internet but I do need technical assistance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I tried to ask at SO I got heated responses why it is a bad practice instead of answeres to how to do this. poeple are so conserned about what is the right way to write code that they forget that there are other considerations as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;can anyone provide insight of how to correctly ask such a question in order to avoid &quot;this is a bad practice&quot; answers and get real answers?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18934" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6829" RevisionGUID="19f502a8-bf0c-46dd-8dd4-45be7a1fb37e" CreationDate="2014-08-21T09:36:56.373" UserId="81495" Comment="edited body; edited title" Text="how to ask questions about bad practices in stackoverflow (or other technical forums)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18935" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6830" RevisionGUID="c843330c-be73-44bd-aa06-e958f959b56a" CreationDate="2014-08-21T10:40:38.843" UserId="40724" Text="It is a little difficult to reply without an example but I think there are a couple of things to consider. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is the bad practice you are going to use actually bad practice (eg too many lines of code in a function) or is it a security threat (eg allowing SQL injection attacks)? If I see a security threat I feel honour bound to point it out. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is the bad practice you are using making the code difficult to understand? I know that if I see 200 lines of badly structured code, I'll either ignore the question entirely or I may ask the questioner to try and break things down a bit and identify more precisely where the problem lies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, there are some responders who are a bit dogmatic or even &quot;absolutist&quot;. All you can really do is not engage with them and hope somebody more pragmatic helps you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18936" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6829" RevisionGUID="7a30f338-658d-4e63-9543-d7c0a3db44a3" CreationDate="2014-08-21T11:22:35.687" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="I had a case when I needed to do something in code that **I knew is a bad practice**.&#xD;&#xA;But because of a unique situation and after considering the risks thoroughly decided that is worth it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cannot start explaining all my considerations that include business secrets over the internet but I do need technical assistance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I tried to ask at SO I got heated responses why it is a bad practice instead of answers to how to do this. People are so concerned about what is the right way to write code that they forget that there are other considerations as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How to correctly ask such a question in order to avoid &quot;this is a bad practice&quot; answers and get real answers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18937" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6829" RevisionGUID="7a30f338-658d-4e63-9543-d7c0a3db44a3" CreationDate="2014-08-21T11:22:35.687" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="How to ask questions about bad practices in Stack Overflow (or other technical forums)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18938" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6829" RevisionGUID="7a30f338-658d-4e63-9543-d7c0a3db44a3" CreationDate="2014-08-21T11:22:35.687" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="|discussion|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18939" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6825" RevisionGUID="d0b2d235-374b-4fde-934c-ab7f2778971f" CreationDate="2014-08-21T13:34:05.070" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/502448552644444161" />
  <row Id="18940" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6831" RevisionGUID="56580ccf-2116-4f5e-9eee-5f9164354a9d" CreationDate="2014-08-21T21:25:02.303" UserId="91144" Text="To follow Stack Overflow convention I suggest to associate [tag:f#] to *lang-ml* syntax highlighting." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18941" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6831" RevisionGUID="56580ccf-2116-4f5e-9eee-5f9164354a9d" CreationDate="2014-08-21T21:25:02.303" UserId="91144" Text="Code Tag Association to Syntax Highlighting Request: [f#] -&gt; lang-ml" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18942" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6831" RevisionGUID="56580ccf-2116-4f5e-9eee-5f9164354a9d" CreationDate="2014-08-21T21:25:02.303" UserId="91144" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18943" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6831" RevisionGUID="6c8e1c5a-e85f-44fa-a5e0-d6ace0647b24" CreationDate="2014-08-21T21:43:10.227" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|code|syntax-highlighting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18944" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6832" RevisionGUID="e551cfa6-ae6b-4689-8222-f2bc7d8e779d" CreationDate="2014-08-21T22:12:43.810" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="lang-ml already does this for F# as written on the main site. Syntax highlighting appears to be identical with usage on [Stack Overflow][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![SO example][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usage on Programmers in a preview box:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Programmers Example][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The raw markdown is an identical copy-paste. I also tested it on Arqade where the syntax is not enabled as well as Game Dev where it is fully enabled. Associations appear to be universal where syntax highlighting is enabled. This makes sense because Stack Exchange [outsources][4] the highlighting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't work on Meta but no syntax highlighting seems to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10615461/async-post-fails-on-wp7-and-f&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/aft4t.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/AjX5e.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/184108/what-is-syntax-highlighting-and-how-does-it-work" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18945" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6833" RevisionGUID="ad65c642-f64e-4f9d-a2d0-d5f7bd085471" CreationDate="2014-08-22T01:09:37.780" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Make your question very clear and objective. This is part of the reason why &quot;best practice&quot; questions are not ideal for this format. As you saw, you get a lot of answers that are not what you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. How do I frobnicate my widgets using technique X?&#xD;&#xA;1. I know technique X is a bad practice, but if I had to do it, how do you think I should frobnicate my widgets?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of these is objective and concise. The other is subjective and verbose. Most questions like this unfortunately follow the second example.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once you have a clear, concise question, the good and bad answers are clearly able to be judged. Unfortunately, these types of questions tend to attract the answers you are not looking for _and_ they tend to get upvoted (people find them interesting, I guess), which exacerbates the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All the more reason to keep your question clear and concise, remove any language about &quot;yeah this is a bad idea but...&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18946" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6834" RevisionGUID="189a8466-9d98-4e87-9704-350e27988f96" CreationDate="2014-08-22T08:52:06.780" UserId="32464" Text="I think all the SE sites used to have a `/faq` that included a bullet list of topics that should be covered by the site, along with things that *shouldn't* be covered by the site.  Now, `/faq` redirects to `/tour` which only gives the &quot;glossy brochure&quot; overview of how SE sites work, generally.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe the better question is: where do I go to find out what SE site I should ask my question on?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18947" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6834" RevisionGUID="189a8466-9d98-4e87-9704-350e27988f96" CreationDate="2014-08-22T08:52:06.780" UserId="32464" Text="Where did the &quot;What's off-topic&quot; list go?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18948" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6834" RevisionGUID="189a8466-9d98-4e87-9704-350e27988f96" CreationDate="2014-08-22T08:52:06.780" UserId="32464" Text="|support|on-topic-definition|meta-faq|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18949" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6835" RevisionGUID="25bb6aa5-42bf-4bf9-8ff2-1cd9a9897c01" CreationDate="2014-08-22T09:03:35.630" UserId="5099" Text="The list of topics for each site should be on [`/help/on-topic`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions asking which site to ask on are on-topic for the Meta sites. If you think your question might be on-topic for XX.SE, you should ask in meta.XX.SE if you are right in your assessment.  &#xD;&#xA;If you don't have a clue which site to ask on, ask for a site recommendation at [meta.SE](http://meta.stackexchange.com)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18950" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6835" RevisionGUID="6b4454ea-0c00-49c4-a925-81be52099095" CreationDate="2014-08-22T12:48:54.127" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.stackexchange.com += questions/tagged/site-recommendation" Text="The list of topics for each site should be on [`/help/on-topic`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions asking which site to ask on are on-topic for the Meta sites. If you think your question might be on-topic for XX.SE, you should ask in meta.XX.SE if you are right in your assessment.  &#xD;&#xA;If you don't have a clue which site to ask on, ask for a site recommendation at [meta.SE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/site-recommendation)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18951" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6836" RevisionGUID="b9d657e0-1a30-4a2c-8157-1513522ed514" CreationDate="2014-08-22T15:47:34.253" UserId="15771" Text="My [account][1] has been blocked from asking new questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only 1 question asked (0 downvotes). Whats up? Why? Can I unblock this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/85118/geotarget" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18952" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6836" RevisionGUID="b9d657e0-1a30-4a2c-8157-1513522ed514" CreationDate="2014-08-22T15:47:34.253" UserId="15771" Text="Why is my account blocked from asking new questions when I've asked just one question with 0 downvotes?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18953" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6836" RevisionGUID="b9d657e0-1a30-4a2c-8157-1513522ed514" CreationDate="2014-08-22T15:47:34.253" UserId="15771" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18954" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6836" RevisionGUID="c80f9970-4065-4aa8-9f96-9852acb3998c" CreationDate="2014-08-22T18:01:50.043" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18955" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6837" RevisionGUID="7e886746-c6d3-4321-a68d-1e57d8202fb9" CreationDate="2014-08-24T20:26:04.977" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254320/is-this-a-good-place-to-ask-a-question-i-have-about-programing" />
  <row Id="18956" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6837" RevisionGUID="f9123d20-d86c-4e4e-a416-9656dd63ea65" CreationDate="2014-08-24T20:20:04.810" UserId="147097" Text="I have asked the same question twice about a program on python and it keeps getting put on hold and i thought this was a good place to ask programming questions and I just wanted to make sure." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18957" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6837" RevisionGUID="f9123d20-d86c-4e4e-a416-9656dd63ea65" CreationDate="2014-08-24T20:20:04.810" UserId="147097" Text="Is this a good place to ask a question i have about programing?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18958" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6837" RevisionGUID="f9123d20-d86c-4e4e-a416-9656dd63ea65" CreationDate="2014-08-24T20:20:04.810" UserId="147097" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18959" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6838" RevisionGUID="18d410dd-0878-44e4-abd1-e39c69867301" CreationDate="2014-08-24T20:28:18.057" UserId="47" Text="You're in the wrong place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For coding issues you need to ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is for conceptual and design issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The simplest explanation is that if you're standing in front of a whiteboard and have a question ask here, if you're sitting in front of an IDE ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also if you have one question closed then don't just ask the same question again. Read the reason given in the text inserted just below your question for why it was closed. Follow the links and take the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18960" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6837" RevisionGUID="041e8787-3137-4000-a80a-1474f8cc1938" CreationDate="2014-08-24T20:36:14.217" UserId="31260" Comment="edited title" Text="Is this a good place to ask a question I have about programing?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18961" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6839" RevisionGUID="902ebe04-2038-4574-b706-981c4e473f7c" CreationDate="2014-08-24T20:49:40.167" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The question being asked was [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254266/building-a-python-password-guesser) (10k link) (the struck out part is from an earlier revision).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have the python shell (IDEL) on my mac, but all of the tutorials i have seen online look different than mine and i was wondering if there is anything else I should download from python to get more than just the shell. &lt;s&gt; Also does anyone know any password guessing algorithms.&lt;/s&gt; Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To which I had a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The specifics of why a given tool doesn't match what you are expecting to see is best asked on Stack Overflow. However, you should make sure to include the text (code and output) of what you are doing and what you are expecting. The &quot;password guessing algorithms&quot; as asked is not appropriate anywhere on Stack Exchange. You need to do the research for that yourself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As described in the help center - [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) note the bit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question about how python (and specifically IDLE) is behaving is a question about a coding tool.  Thus, it belongs on Stack Overflow (note the [python-idle](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/python-idle) tag there - you should probably look through the existing [python-idle + osx](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/python-idle+osx) tagged questions - there are only 31 of them).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't find a question that matches what you are asking, you should ask a question *there*.  To help write a good Stack Overflow question, be sure to read the [Stack Overflow question checklist](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/260648/stack-overflow-question-checklist).  You will need to at least have the information about python version, osx version, the code you are running, what you are expecting, what your results are and make sure that its formatted well too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about how to use tools belong on Stack Overflow - not Programmers.SE.  Your question was closed here because it was off topic here and if it was migrated to Stack Overflow, it would likely have been closed there too because of the issues I mentioned previously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question of 'password guessing algorithms' is something *you* need to search for.  I can think of a dozen off the top of my head.  Because of this, the question of 'what is a good password guessing algorithm' is too broad - there are too many possible answers to it.  You *really* need to just think about this and do some research about it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18962" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6836" RevisionGUID="d8f81f87-6312-4b31-81df-502ec9c5cd68" CreationDate="2014-08-24T21:52:30.867" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|deleted-questions|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18964" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6840" RevisionGUID="700cce0e-7015-4cd7-ae9e-73afdb80e469" CreationDate="2014-08-25T00:39:23.980" UserId="31260" Text="Per my observations, a lot of such posts come here because of misleading comments at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For an example, here are just few recent cases at SO that directly led to users posting very low quality, outright off-topic questions because of comments directing them at Programmers: [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25469779/what-is-the-average-yearly-salary-in-singapore-for-a-candidate-of-3-years-of-wor), [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25366016/how-can-i-socket-programming-to-online-examination-system), [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25276812/any-tools-available-to-help-migrate-legacy-windows-6-1-mobile-app-to-windows-8-1#comment39392956_25276812), [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25090005/how-should-i-browse-a-huge-project-where-to-start#comment39040827_25090005).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice like you suggest will definitely be helpful in stopping at least most reasonable misguided newbies. However, I believe that we need stronger measures in cutting down the issue at its source.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an example, in [first case](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25469779/what-is-the-average-yearly-salary-in-singapore-for-a-candidate-of-3-years-of-wor) I listed, recommendation to post at Programmers was given by a user with 15K SO reputation. If a newcomer gets such a _personal_ advice from such an _authoritative_ user, would this &quot;override&quot; any automatic notice they will see on their way? you bet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The right way to go would be to find and delete as much as possible misleading comments at Stack Overflow. &quot;Finding&quot; part is technically easy, all it needs is tweaking one of [Doorknob's queries](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/180319/165773) and studying its results. We did something like that this Spring when cleaning up &quot;+1 great post&quot; comments at Programmers. Searching for &quot;programmers + belongs&quot; will likely show us the worst offenders, although &quot;programmers + career&quot; and &quot;programmers + recommendations&quot; will likely work well too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deletion part is tricky and requires help from SE developers. A while ago, I &quot;tested&quot; it - I flagged several comments using &quot;Other&quot; flag with verbose messages explaining why these should be deleted. All of my flags went through successfully, however I learned along the way that this way is _terribly_ inefficient. Involving diamond moderators and writing verbose explanatory messages for hundreds, possibly thousands garbage comments like &quot;ask careers at Programmers&quot;? give me a break.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is needed instead is to add &quot;programmers&quot; to the list of [&quot;sensitive&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/121226/165773  &quot;Yeah, you read it right - I want 'programmers' to be treated in comments same way as f-word, no kidding&quot;) words that trigger comment deletion with a single flag. That way would let us cleanup harmful garbage with a single &quot;too chatty&quot; or &quot;not constructive&quot; flag. (Optionally, it would be good to exclude from sensitive heuristics comments that refer famous **[toilet bowl guidance](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73382/165773 &quot;Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl&quot;)** but I don't insist on that.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another issue where help of SE dev team would be much appreciated is &quot;other&quot; [close reason](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/close-reasons/info) messages. You know, I am active close reviewer at SO. I focus strongly only on most terrible questions and totally skip the rest (except for infrequent &quot;known good&quot; audits, to keep more system faith in me). But even in these - I stress - totally, absolutely awful - questions I sometimes see &quot;try your garbage at Programmers&quot;. I don't even dare to think what happens in less awful (but still totally inappropriate) questions at SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The way to stop this would be to block close messages containing word &quot;programmers&quot; - SO close voters willing to &quot;help&quot; askers like that should totally drop that and try &lt;strike&gt;jQuery&lt;/strike&gt; their luck flagging for migration. Hopefully mod declines will teach them something at last." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18967" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6837" RevisionGUID="ae19c3cd-048e-4a54-9f17-3e0c0f791c2c" CreationDate="2014-08-26T11:09:06.570" UserId="7422" Comment="fix spelling" Text="Is this a good place to ask a question I have about programming?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18973" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6726" RevisionGUID="45e65c33-adf5-4aa5-a7b7-925dbf1caa11" CreationDate="2014-08-26T20:14:46.373" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18976" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6826" RevisionGUID="8c92a4e1-ee3f-477e-8d19-a5d5ab8e65b1" CreationDate="2014-08-26T22:57:43.233" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/504402336463454208" />
  <row Id="18977" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="483" RevisionGUID="13f65152-56d0-414e-a8c1-92bfe59f3ebe" CreationDate="2014-08-26T23:20:29.093" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Make the body match the title.  Add tag." Text="How does one delete their account from a specific Stack Exchange site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18978" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="483" RevisionGUID="13f65152-56d0-414e-a8c1-92bfe59f3ebe" CreationDate="2014-08-26T23:20:29.093" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Make the body match the title.  Add tag." Text="How do you delete an account from programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18979" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="483" RevisionGUID="13f65152-56d0-414e-a8c1-92bfe59f3ebe" CreationDate="2014-08-26T23:20:29.093" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Make the body match the title.  Add tag." Text="|support|user-accounts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18980" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="484" RevisionGUID="abf9b726-fcbc-46b6-9618-bdf3ffafa068" CreationDate="2014-08-26T23:23:26.090" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add direct link to P.SE help center." Text="From [Meta.StackOverflow.com](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5999/can-i-delete-my-account):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to delete your account:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. **Edit your profile to say &quot;please delete me&quot;** so we can confirm your ownership of the account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. **Obtain your user page URL or numeric user ID**. This is linked from the top of every page of the site, when you are logged in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3. **Email the support address linked at the bottom of every web page** on the site. Where it says &quot;contact us&quot;, click that. In your email, you **MUST** include your user page URL or user ID so we can find your account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Within the Programmers.SE help center, this information can be found at [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help) &gt; [My Account](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/account) &gt; [How do I delete my account?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/deleting-account)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18981" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6843" RevisionGUID="53b130e9-36c6-47f8-9193-d60639eea197" CreationDate="2014-08-27T04:06:39.997" UserId="139479" Text="I recently updated my Stack Exchange profile to include a link to my newly created Area 51 proposal [Scientific Imagination][1]. I included a sample question from the proposal as a level 1 header. It looks good on my Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow profiles, but here it appears very cluttered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Stack Exchange profile][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Stack Exchange profile][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Stack Overflow profile][4]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Stack Overflow profile][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Programmers profile][6]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Programmers profile][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do a little tweak to site's CSS to make it a bit more appealing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/75912/scientific-imagination?referrer=IPIEcsN2huMFuP7v0aO_3g2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/users/262588/krumia&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/zlZB6.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/1461424/krumia&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/33wMD.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/139479/krumia&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/U4CUf.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18982" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6843" RevisionGUID="53b130e9-36c6-47f8-9193-d60639eea197" CreationDate="2014-08-27T04:06:39.997" UserId="139479" Text="Level 1 headers in profile description appear cluttered" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18983" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6843" RevisionGUID="53b130e9-36c6-47f8-9193-d60639eea197" CreationDate="2014-08-27T04:06:39.997" UserId="139479" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18984" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6796" RevisionGUID="84310bb3-7280-4989-91a2-ee3e1fccf3ce" CreationDate="2014-08-27T07:49:18.493" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[5654],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:1996,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Jim G.&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:5099,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Bart van Ingen Schenau&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="18985" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6837" RevisionGUID="df80b833-ea6f-402a-b1a9-95b2469e8266" CreationDate="2014-08-27T07:49:26.753" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[5654],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="18986" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6660" RevisionGUID="97d0168f-dd71-40dc-a470-c585e6db72e8" CreationDate="2014-08-27T07:49:34.170" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6795],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:5099,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Bart van Ingen Schenau&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:40980,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;MichaelT&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="18987" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6837" RevisionGUID="ef3660b5-6f8b-4a52-b0b5-9dd55bb2708e" CreationDate="2014-08-27T08:07:51.357" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18988" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6843" RevisionGUID="0d501f65-c6b6-46ff-821a-f145b8b2acac" CreationDate="2014-08-27T09:30:04.937" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|design|user-profile|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18989" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="7b20c63f-2e69-4184-9506-5b30bd4f5bfd" CreationDate="2014-08-27T12:05:27.287" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|featured|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18990" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6844" RevisionGUID="719d871b-b7e7-41c6-86a0-ec5ba8500695" CreationDate="2014-08-27T13:01:04.327" UserId="31260" Text="As [September](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September) is coming, site is getting spammed by zero effort homework dumps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particularly _passionate_ spammers even drop their garbage at us at highest rate allowed (today examples: [1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254573), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254575), [3](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254567), [4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254568) - 10K links). Can we please throttle their activity by raising rate limit the same way as it was done at Stack Overflow, ie to 1 question in 90 minutes for users with less than 125 reputation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note, given that [one of the spammers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/147424/samy-ragul) in above examples also has accounts at **Code Review** and **Code Golf**, it probably makes sense to consider similar limits for these sites as well.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Questions are now rate-limited to 1 per 90 minutes?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/256324/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you need to ask questions more than every 1.5 hours, you _probably_ aren't putting enough thought, time or both into your questions, which isn't fair to us, as it diminishes the perceived quality of the resource we're working very hard to build and maintain...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;It's a bit unfortunate for those that _do_ ask good questions right off the bat, and bless you if you're in that very small minority - it won't take long for you to establish yourself, perhaps just one question could do it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Open letter to students with homework problems](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...If your question on Programmers.SE is just a copy paste of homework problem, expect it to be downvoted, closed, and deleted - potentially in quite short order.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers.SE and the Summer of Love](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3837/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Responding negatively to those folks who copy paste their homework assignments is just a waste of time.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;These people don't care how you react; they're looking for the one guy that will actually do their homework for them (some people will).  Consequently, your negative comment will have no effect on the OP, and will only succeed in irritating your fellow community members and alienating new visitors to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;A better response is to downvote the question, and cast a moderator flag with a custom explanation, like this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Request for speedy deletion: this question is a copy-paste of a homework assignment, with no effort on the part of the OP to do the assignment himself." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18991" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6844" RevisionGUID="719d871b-b7e7-41c6-86a0-ec5ba8500695" CreationDate="2014-08-27T13:01:04.327" UserId="31260" Text="Please increase rate limit for new users asking questions to one used at Stack Overflow (1 per 90 minutes)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18992" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6844" RevisionGUID="719d871b-b7e7-41c6-86a0-ec5ba8500695" CreationDate="2014-08-27T13:01:04.327" UserId="31260" Text="|feature-request|asking-questions|rate-limiting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18993" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6843" RevisionGUID="1b909086-0731-4693-9e51-44cac8f5d2ad" CreationDate="2014-08-28T06:04:08.330" UserId="139479" Comment="added 9 characters in body" Text="I recently updated my Stack Exchange profile to include a link to my newly created Area 51 proposal [Scientific Imagination][1]. I included a sample question from the proposal as a level 1 header. It looks good on my Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow profiles, but here it appears very cluttered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Stack Exchange profile][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Stack Exchange profile][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Stack Overflow profile][4]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Stack Overflow profile][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Programmers profile][6]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do a little tweak to site's CSS to make it a bit more appealing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/75912/scientific-imagination?referrer=IPIEcsN2huMFuP7v0aO_3g2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/users/262588/krumia&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xANt1.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/1461424/krumia&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/3s1Sb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/139479/krumia&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/P2lb1.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18994" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6845" RevisionGUID="8beca92c-b57e-4bce-a0c5-3c77d8918d73" CreationDate="2014-08-28T07:42:12.023" UserId="31260" Text="Here's an example comment I leave to a&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##blatant, zero effort homework dump:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; `recommended reading: **[Open letter to students with homework problems](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems)** &quot;...If your question on Programmers.SE is just a copy paste of homework problem, expect it to be downvoted, closed, and deleted - potentially in quite short order.&quot;`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above is markdown allowing straight copy and paste into comments field.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After commenting like above, I also flag the question to moderator:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; `Request for speedy deletion: this question is a copy-paste of something like homework assignment or interview questions, with no effort on the part of the OP to do the assignment himself. (flagging as per advice at meta discussion http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3837/31260)`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above, again, can be copied and pasted straight into flag message.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;After above, if I am not out of votes, I also vote down and close, as this increases chance that next time user wants to ask the question, they will be notified to be more careful as described in [Warn new users when they ask a question after a previous question is closed, downvoted, or deleted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773):&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;Starting today, we are going to show a warning to folks who are about to post a question or an answer when they already have a track record of ... suboptimal questions&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18995" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6844" RevisionGUID="ee69104b-9608-4b2f-8a20-47b237454f69" CreationDate="2014-08-28T12:45:22.600" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6844/please-increase-rate-limit-for-new-users-asking-questions-to-one-used-at-stack-o#comment18506_6844" Text="As [September](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September) is coming, site is getting spammed by zero effort homework dumps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particularly _passionate_ spammers even drop their garbage at us at highest rate allowed (today examples: [1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254573), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254575), [3](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254567), [4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254568) - 10K links). And prior examples are not an isolated incident. As pointed in [comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6844/please-increase-rate-limit-for-new-users-asking-questions-to-one-used-at-stack-o#comment18506_6844), next day after posting this request we've got yet another example separated by 10 minutes: [04:27](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254641/valid-segments-2), [04:38](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254642/problem-cyclic-palindrome).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we please throttle spammers activity by raising rate limit the same way as it was done at Stack Overflow, ie to 1 question in 90 minutes for users with less than 125 reputation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note, given that [one of the spammers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/147424/samy-ragul) in above examples also has accounts at **Code Review** and **Code Golf**, it probably makes sense to consider similar limits for these sites as well.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Questions are now rate-limited to 1 per 90 minutes?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/256324/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you need to ask questions more than every 1.5 hours, you _probably_ aren't putting enough thought, time or both into your questions, which isn't fair to us, as it diminishes the perceived quality of the resource we're working very hard to build and maintain...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;It's a bit unfortunate for those that _do_ ask good questions right off the bat, and bless you if you're in that very small minority - it won't take long for you to establish yourself, perhaps just one question could do it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Open letter to students with homework problems](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...If your question on Programmers.SE is just a copy paste of homework problem, expect it to be downvoted, closed, and deleted - potentially in quite short order.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers.SE and the Summer of Love](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3837/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Responding negatively to those folks who copy paste their homework assignments is just a waste of time.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;These people don't care how you react; they're looking for the one guy that will actually do their homework for them (some people will).  Consequently, your negative comment will have no effect on the OP, and will only succeed in irritating your fellow community members and alienating new visitors to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;A better response is to downvote the question, and cast a moderator flag with a custom explanation, like this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Request for speedy deletion: this question is a copy-paste of a homework assignment, with no effort on the part of the OP to do the assignment himself." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18996" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6846" RevisionGUID="07a1a156-0fc6-443a-abd2-1741362acd40" CreationDate="2014-08-28T13:53:29.503" UserId="31260" Text="This homework dump has been quickly deleted - [Problem : Valid Segments 1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254573/problem-valid-segments-1).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Consider text comprised of `blah blah`. Task is to find out `blah blah`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next day, it was slightly modified and reposted from different account - [Problem : Valid Segments 2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254641/valid-segments-2).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Consider text comprised of `blah blah`. Task is to find out `blah blah`. Participants submitting solutions in C language should `blah blah`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I [flagged](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6845/31260 &quot;as explained here&quot;) reposted dump for deletion. My flag was marked helpful but post wasn't deleted (I'd rather prefer opposite - flag decline, followed by deletion but oh well). About three hours after that, I flagged original dump, pointing out that it was reposted and referring repost in the flag message.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My flag, again, was marked helpful but the reposted dump, again, was kept hanging on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What would be the reason to keep the second dump instead of deleting it like it was done to first one?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18997" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6846" RevisionGUID="07a1a156-0fc6-443a-abd2-1741362acd40" CreationDate="2014-08-28T13:53:29.503" UserId="31260" Text="Why does this homework dump deserve to stay on site (while prior was deleted)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18998" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6846" RevisionGUID="07a1a156-0fc6-443a-abd2-1741362acd40" CreationDate="2014-08-28T13:53:29.503" UserId="31260" Text="|support|specific-question|flagging|homework-dump|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18999" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6847" RevisionGUID="ed892912-18c0-4a11-a55d-6239b74bdb49" CreationDate="2014-08-28T13:55:33.227" UserId="4" Text="I took care of it. I got distracted and forgot to finish dealing with the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19000" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6844" RevisionGUID="1cb78d22-300b-4e6d-8814-874c7f0b7a2c" CreationDate="2014-08-28T14:47:34.523" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|asking-questions|rate-limiting|homework-dump|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19001" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6848" RevisionGUID="7545d266-93f2-474d-b235-2c7a1425a7cd" CreationDate="2014-08-28T18:18:36.687" UserId="147334" Text="Please merge or create a synonym for [tag:optimisation] and [tag:optimization].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Both appear to be valid][1] writings depending on the spelling (British/American English), but their meaning (and therefore tag definition) are equal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://painintheenglish.com/case/920/sort:PostComment.score/direction:desc/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19002" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6848" RevisionGUID="7545d266-93f2-474d-b235-2c7a1425a7cd" CreationDate="2014-08-28T18:18:36.687" UserId="147334" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [optimisation] -&gt; [optimization]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19003" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6848" RevisionGUID="7545d266-93f2-474d-b235-2c7a1425a7cd" CreationDate="2014-08-28T18:18:36.687" UserId="147334" Text="|discussion|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19004" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6849" RevisionGUID="9715e264-63bd-4299-b06c-e1ae2cb50cb0" CreationDate="2014-08-28T18:27:13.873" UserId="4" Text="This has been done. 1 question was affected by this merge." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19005" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6848" RevisionGUID="faa45435-5110-43c7-8678-e769513618c0" CreationDate="2014-08-28T18:32:46.067" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19006" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6850" RevisionGUID="ff330309-63b1-4624-908a-2bd814880633" CreationDate="2014-08-28T19:24:45.933" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The question [DETERMINISTIC FINITE STATE MACHINE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254595/deterministic-finite-state-machine) (10k link) had the content of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; DESIGNING A SIMPLE DETERMINISTIC FINITE STATE MACHINE TO RECOGNISE A VALID DUT PASSWORD NUMBER. IT ,MUST FIRST INCLUDE LOWERCASE LETTER,NUMBER AND SUBSEQUENT SYMBOLS @!%$&amp;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What was the quality score for this? How did it get through the quality filter?  And does someone need to change the settings on the threshold for the quality filter for P.SE? or add more rules to the quality filter (e.g. '80% non symbol characters in the character set `[A-Z]` should get automatically rejected)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is tagged as both bug and feature request - its either bug that it got through or a feature request to improve it if this was working as designed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19007" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6850" RevisionGUID="ff330309-63b1-4624-908a-2bd814880633" CreationDate="2014-08-28T19:24:45.933" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="How effective is the quality filter?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19008" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6850" RevisionGUID="ff330309-63b1-4624-908a-2bd814880633" CreationDate="2014-08-28T19:24:45.933" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|feature-request|bug|quality-filter|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19009" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6850" RevisionGUID="b410f90b-9809-48e9-a6d4-3fb9008e8e99" CreationDate="2014-08-28T19:31:41.927" UserId="31260" Comment="title clarified from question text" Text="How effective is the quality filter against this question with all-caps brief title and text?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19010" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6850" RevisionGUID="8875c4b6-0e91-4c35-b713-4de1d9691879" CreationDate="2014-08-28T19:57:41.470" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|bug|quality-filter|homework-dump|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19011" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6844" RevisionGUID="81e2fb9a-758a-4cb3-adcc-331b088e3f2a" CreationDate="2014-08-28T23:00:27.800" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/505127803797647361" />
  <row Id="19012" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6851" RevisionGUID="ddf277b8-ce79-49b3-bcee-870ce360ec9b" CreationDate="2014-08-29T03:03:14.523" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I failed a review audit for [Cleanest way to report errors in Haskell][1]. I responded by voting to close it as &quot;primarily opinion based.&quot; I understand that answering an occasional review incorrectly [will not hurt][2], that is not my concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I out of line for believing that question should be closed as being primarily opinion-based, despite the seven upvotes? The asker outlines three different ways to deal with errors, and basically asks &quot;what would you do?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/252977/cleanest-way-to-report-errors-in-haskell&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6625/i-just-failed-an-audit-but-i-was-right-and-it-was-wrong-what-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19013" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6851" RevisionGUID="ddf277b8-ce79-49b3-bcee-870ce360ec9b" CreationDate="2014-08-29T03:03:14.523" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Failed Close Vote Review" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19014" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6851" RevisionGUID="ddf277b8-ce79-49b3-bcee-870ce360ec9b" CreationDate="2014-08-29T03:03:14.523" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="|discussion|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19019" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6853" RevisionGUID="ab56caf2-1634-42ed-ab98-b0591ca51216" CreationDate="2014-08-29T17:27:11.613" UserId="5099" Text="No, you are not out of line, but I would respectfully disagree with you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, the asker outlines three possibilities, but that doesn't immediately make the question opinion based.  &#xD;&#xA;The question is almost equivalent to asking &quot;Should I use return values, `errno` or `longjmp` to report an error in C?&quot; and although multiple possibilities are mentioned in the question, the consensus among the C programmers leans strongly to one side (return values).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is what, in my view, sets these questions apart from the opinion based ones: all subject matter experts will give an answer that points in the same direction.  &#xD;&#xA;The really opinion based questions are the ones where two experts will give you three opposite answers or where expertise in the subject matter isn't relevant to the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19020" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6854" RevisionGUID="8b306c0c-b355-4702-bdbd-48ef5dfabbda" CreationDate="2014-08-29T18:11:47.823" UserId="63" Text="The quality score on that post is 75 out of a possible 100. The threshold for sending it straight into review is 70. Yeah, that's pretty useless. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're working on a better one, based on some analysis of the available data. It ain't perfect either, but it would've flagged that one right out of the gate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The new system isn't quite ready to go live yet though, so for now, I threw this in:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![DON'T SHOUT][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tvoQU.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19021" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6855" RevisionGUID="f350a7b9-87de-476d-b36a-5cdd87eca388" CreationDate="2014-08-29T21:12:00.627" UserId="31260" Text="While we're at it, let's also blacklist [tag:recommendations] twin tag - [tag:suggestions] - it's empty now and would be great if it never gets used again. Just like [recommendations](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/537/31260), it's a meta tag:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...It doesn't categorize the question's content, and it cannot stand on its own without other tags.  It should therefore be removed.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19022" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6856" RevisionGUID="88a1d9f7-d63c-4a87-914d-ec8ed3bec783" CreationDate="2014-08-29T23:23:29.970" UserId="138407" Text="I think there needs to be a flag for questions which have not been researched or could be found anywhere on the internet.  Promoting questions which have answers which could be found in a matter of minutes on a search engine ought to be frowned upon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently I have been observing questions on Programmers and Stackoverflow regarding interview questions.  A user failed an interview and wants the answer.  I feel like these questions, like those asked by students, can be damaging to the Software Programmer community at large.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder if there is some way a policy could be developed to help handle these types of concerns." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19023" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6845" RevisionGUID="0033ab48-ff14-4a33-89e5-95cd19e2098b" CreationDate="2014-08-30T18:31:34.093" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Shorter link for if anyone wishes to tweak the text in other ways." Text="Here's an example comment I leave to a&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##blatant, zero effort homework dump:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; `recommended reading: **[Open letter to students with homework problems](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6166/)** &quot;...If your question on Programmers.SE is just a copy paste of homework problem, expect it to be downvoted, closed, and deleted - potentially in quite short order.&quot;`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above is markdown allowing straight copy and paste into comments field.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After commenting like above, I also flag the question to moderator:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; `Request for speedy deletion: this question is a copy-paste of something like homework assignment or interview questions, with no effort on the part of the OP to do the assignment himself. (flagging as per advice at meta discussion http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3837/31260)`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above, again, can be copied and pasted straight into flag message.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;After above, if I am not out of votes, I also vote down and close, as this increases chance that next time user wants to ask the question, they will be notified to be more careful as described in [Warn new users when they ask a question after a previous question is closed, downvoted, or deleted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773):&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;Starting today, we are going to show a warning to folks who are about to post a question or an answer when they already have a track record of ... suboptimal questions&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19024" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6855" RevisionGUID="4b096cd2-bd97-407f-a12e-49756084812e" CreationDate="2014-08-31T09:43:24.343" UserId="31260" Comment="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[recommendations]+locked%3Ayes" Text="As pointed in [comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6738/recommendations-tag-burn-edit-blacklist-or-kill-one-by-one/6855#comment18527_6738), currently there are only three questions tagged recommendations. In these questions, tag removal requires moderator intervention, because historical lock doesn't even allow a regular user flag these:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25432/how-can-a-new-programmer-impress-the-software-engineer-boss  &#xD;&#xA;this question has recommendations as the only tag; could be retagged to [tag:new-job]&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10675/ideal-programming-language-learning-sequence&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49003/which-online-hosted-bug-tracking-tool-do-you-use-for-your-own-work-and-projects&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we're at it, let's also blacklist [tag:recommendations] twin tag - [tag:suggestions] - it's empty now and would be great if it never gets used again. Just like [recommendations](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/537/31260), it's a meta tag:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...It doesn't categorize the question's content, and it cannot stand on its own without other tags.  It should therefore be removed.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19040" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6861" RevisionGUID="5391cd82-edfa-4b55-bb23-1980dad782f5" CreationDate="2014-09-03T09:13:27.687" UserId="31260" Text="What's up with the [Meaning of MIT license](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/255227/31260)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This five years old post was recently migrated from SO to Programmers. Not that I complain, but regular migrations like that are blocked by system (see [Disable migration for questions older than 60 days](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/151890/165773)). What makes this question special to overrule this limitation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I briefly checked recent posts at [MSO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/) and [MSE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/) and found nothing about this migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Question revision history at SO](http://stackoverflow.com/posts/706799/revisions) shows couple funny changes made recently:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Deleted by Tim Post♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Locked by Community♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Migrated Away to programmers.stackexchange.com by Tim Post♦&#xD;&#xA;  	  	 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Closed as &quot;off-topic&quot; by Tim Post♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Undeleted by Tim Post♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Reopened by Tim Post♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Migration Rejected 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Unlocked by Community♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Deleted by Shog9♦ 	occurred 19 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Locked by Community♦ 	occurred 19 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Migrated Away to meta.programmers.stackexchange.com by Shog9♦&#xD;&#xA;  	  	 	occurred 19 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Closed as &quot;off topic&quot; by Wouter J, egrunin, msmucker0527, Mario, Linger&#xD;&#xA;  	  	 	occurred Mar 6 '13 at 20:37&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;FWIW it looks like a duplicate of [MIT vs. BSD vs. Dual License](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/121998/31260) to me.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19041" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6861" RevisionGUID="5391cd82-edfa-4b55-bb23-1980dad782f5" CreationDate="2014-09-03T09:13:27.687" UserId="31260" Text="What's up with the &quot;Meaning of MIT license&quot;? (5 years old post recently migrated from SO to Programmers meta, then to main)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19042" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6861" RevisionGUID="5391cd82-edfa-4b55-bb23-1980dad782f5" CreationDate="2014-09-03T09:13:27.687" UserId="31260" Text="|support|specific-question|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19043" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6862" RevisionGUID="232ce71e-7bf2-4b57-a49a-6ccdc0ff8db6" CreationDate="2014-09-03T20:14:29.203" UserId="56971" Text="I was reading [this question and answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122191/what-benefits-are-there-to-native-javascript-development) this morning and I noticed it disappeared now and I get an error page with &quot;removed for reasons of moderation&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What happened to the question and why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recall it having 6K views and some activity today (A friend of mine wrote a popular answer there and he pinged me surprised that it got attention)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19044" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6862" RevisionGUID="232ce71e-7bf2-4b57-a49a-6ccdc0ff8db6" CreationDate="2014-09-03T20:14:29.203" UserId="56971" Text="What happened to: &quot;What benefits are there to native JavaScript development?&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19045" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6862" RevisionGUID="232ce71e-7bf2-4b57-a49a-6ccdc0ff8db6" CreationDate="2014-09-03T20:14:29.203" UserId="56971" Text="|support|questions|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19046" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6863" RevisionGUID="57d74e59-47f4-4eb7-9e09-7329f1d558d3" CreationDate="2014-09-03T20:21:55.903" UserId="4" Text="I've fixed this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was originally migrated here from Stack Overflow in November 2011. It was closed today (3 September 2014) by 5 members of the community as being &quot;primarily opinion based&quot;, which I agree with. However, when I was cleaning up other rejected migrations that were not adding value, I got over-zealous and accidentally deleted this one too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I undeleted the post, cleared the migration history (to make it seem like it was always a Programmers question), and reclosed for the reason that the community elected to close it as.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From now, the community can vote to reopen (with 5 votes, as normal) or delete normally. Answers and the question body can be edited and commented on." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19047" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6862" RevisionGUID="42859de4-ee61-40e6-90e8-96d38ed6b8e6" CreationDate="2014-09-03T20:23:36.403" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|specific-question|questions|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19048" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6864" RevisionGUID="82774f20-e9a2-4eb7-b750-ffd0b76e54d0" CreationDate="2014-09-03T20:36:13.773" UserId="42132" Text="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question should be added to the tour of programmers.stackexchange.com IMHO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every programmer coming on the site tries to know what's the difference with stackoverflow, where to go on one or the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not linking to the question, at least the reasoning should be shown somewhere. Right now, only when searching on meta can we find the reason." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19049" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6864" RevisionGUID="82774f20-e9a2-4eb7-b750-ffd0b76e54d0" CreationDate="2014-09-03T20:36:13.773" UserId="42132" Text="Add a question link to the tour" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19050" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6864" RevisionGUID="82774f20-e9a2-4eb7-b750-ffd0b76e54d0" CreationDate="2014-09-03T20:36:13.773" UserId="42132" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19051" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6855" RevisionGUID="9a066477-ca24-4fbb-b396-908bd65e37f4" CreationDate="2014-09-03T21:07:03.987" UserId="31260" Comment="Update Sep 4, 2014 - as of now, recommendations and suggestions tags appear empty..." Text="**Update Sep 4, 2014** - as of now, _recommendations_ and _suggestions_ tags appear empty - there are neither regular ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/recommendations), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/suggestions)) nor locked ([3](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[recommendations]+locked%3Ayes), [4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[suggestions]+locked%3Ayes)) questions there anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Prior content of the answer is below.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As pointed in [comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6738/recommendations-tag-burn-edit-blacklist-or-kill-one-by-one/6855#comment18527_6738), currently there are only three questions tagged recommendations. In these questions, tag removal requires moderator intervention, because historical lock doesn't even allow a regular user flag these:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25432/how-can-a-new-programmer-impress-the-software-engineer-boss  &#xD;&#xA;this question has recommendations as the only tag; could be retagged to [tag:new-job]&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10675/ideal-programming-language-learning-sequence&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49003/which-online-hosted-bug-tracking-tool-do-you-use-for-your-own-work-and-projects&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we're at it, let's also blacklist [tag:recommendations] twin tag - [tag:suggestions] - it's empty now and would be great if it never gets used again. Just like [recommendations](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/537/31260), it's a meta tag:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...It doesn't categorize the question's content, and it cannot stand on its own without other tags.  It should therefore be removed.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19052" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6864" RevisionGUID="abd9ea32-b9b8-474c-856a-ac6d5bb82bac" CreationDate="2014-09-04T02:25:46.153" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/507353797195476992" />
  <row Id="19053" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6865" RevisionGUID="17da1866-b4da-4bf3-925e-069e1f455dcd" CreationDate="2014-09-04T07:41:40.980" UserId="42132" Text="[This answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/132357/42132) has a voluntary typo by the author, yet people keep correcting it. I've explained in the edit reason why it should be kept, and it's already been rolled back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure what I should do. On the one hand, the content is community-owned, especially if the edits keep coming (since it'll go in community wiki). On the other hand, I think the author's typo is fun, and the original author should still keep his answer in the tone he wants. (After all, it's *not* community wiki.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't want to get in an edit war, so I'll just ask here what should be done." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19054" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6865" RevisionGUID="17da1866-b4da-4bf3-925e-069e1f455dcd" CreationDate="2014-09-04T07:41:40.980" UserId="42132" Text="I don't want to get in an edit war - people haven't read the previous reason - what to do?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19055" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6865" RevisionGUID="17da1866-b4da-4bf3-925e-069e1f455dcd" CreationDate="2014-09-04T07:41:40.980" UserId="42132" Text="|discussion|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19056" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6865" RevisionGUID="5999e391-6993-4f58-b6d8-79b7235ec3df" CreationDate="2014-09-04T07:54:21.523" UserId="31260" Comment="voluntary typo += http://chat.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/18670554#18670554" Text="[This answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/132357/42132) has a [voluntary typo](http://chat.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/18670554#18670554) by the author, yet people keep correcting it. I've explained in the edit reason why it should be kept, and it's already been rolled back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure what I should do. On the one hand, the content is community-owned, especially if the edits keep coming (since it'll go in community wiki). On the other hand, I think the author's typo is fun, and the original author should still keep his answer in the tone he wants. (After all, it's *not* community wiki.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't want to get in an edit war, so I'll just ask here what should be done." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19058" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6867" RevisionGUID="820cd3f6-601c-40c3-aac7-3847ccf48634" CreationDate="2014-09-04T15:02:55.370" UserId="3965" Text="Perhaps I'm missing the joke.  The typo doesn't add any humor to the answer itself, but detracts from it.  As far as I can tell from the chat transcript, it was desired to be kept solely because the mistake annoys another user.  I'm all for letting people control the tone of their posts, but in this particular case it's not clear how it enhances the tone, and I think it needs to be shown that the rollback is more than an intentional troll." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19059" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6868" RevisionGUID="229a8a18-acfe-4f54-86f4-df7f0e74738c" CreationDate="2014-09-04T16:17:16.703" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="One could put into the markdown a comment indicating that the text was intentional.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Oh wait, we already did - remember that time we met, a few weeks ago,&#xD;&#xA;    over steak and drinks? That was a great stake.&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- That is supposed to be stake - not steak.  I know.  It's intentional. --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    We talked about cars. ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would then indicate both to someone going in and editing it along with anyone looking at the side by side markdown (how I normally view suggested edit reviews) that this was something that wasn't to be changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When looking at a suggested edit review I consider it 'stateless'.  There's the old version - here's the new version.  Is it an improvement?  yes? Approved.  I don't see the history (thats quite a bit of a hoop to jump through to view).  I only see the text.  Thus, any hints to editors or reviewers need to be in the markdown itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At that point, I would see that this is the state the author wanted and work from that.  Without any other guidance in the text, I have to go on what I see." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19060" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6869" RevisionGUID="7531e33c-122c-42b5-bb6e-6e1d7a3d01ad" CreationDate="2014-09-04T19:52:15.937" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="The entire line with the word in question &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; , over steak and drinks? That was a great stake. We talked about cars.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;could be removed without materially affecting the answer at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it would go from: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Oh wait, we already did - remember that time we met, a few weeks ago, over steak and drinks? That was a great stake. We talked about cars. In fact, you seemed to be quite the expert on cars. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Oh wait, we already did - remember that time we met, a few weeks ago? We talked about cars. In fact, you seemed to be quite the expert on cars. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The misspelling doesn't improve the answer, and if there's a pun in there it's not terribly obvious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd recommend we remove the line as suggested above and fix the other typos in the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;The suggestion isn't originally mine, but was [brought up in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/17509551#17509551) &lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19061" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6865" RevisionGUID="8c70ed82-b245-483f-9787-05a94d2b69f6" CreationDate="2014-09-04T23:29:02.167" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/507671708657258496" />
  <row Id="19062" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6870" RevisionGUID="0e6fe6f2-ed46-4aaa-94ce-303c2eb723ef" CreationDate="2014-09-05T08:57:23.950" UserId="31260" Text="1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254978/whats-wrong-with-comments-that-explain-complex-code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; after writing a complex piece of code written in a partly human-readable programming language, why not add a descriptive and concise comment explaining the operation of the code in friendly and understandable English? ...What's wrong with explaining complicated code with a comment?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/201657/forcing-people-to-read-and-understand-code-instead-of-using-comments-function-s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is the approach of avoiding commenting code to make people actually read the code and understand what is going on make sense in a medium-sized coding environment (one that can be reasonably read in whole by every person working on it within a month or two), or is it a recipe for a long-term disaster? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the approach?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At a first glance, above questions look quite similar to me. First looks like asking something like &quot;what's wrong with following `&lt;particular approach&gt;`&quot;, while second asks &quot;is it okay to abstain of following `&lt;particular approach&gt;`&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But both questions are somewhat broad and verbose and I am not fully certain that I figured the similarity correctly. Would appreciate an explanation if I miss some substantial difference between these questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19063" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6870" RevisionGUID="0e6fe6f2-ed46-4aaa-94ce-303c2eb723ef" CreationDate="2014-09-05T08:57:23.950" UserId="31260" Text="Help me understand the difference between these two questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19064" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6870" RevisionGUID="0e6fe6f2-ed46-4aaa-94ce-303c2eb723ef" CreationDate="2014-09-05T08:57:23.950" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|specific-question|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19065" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6871" RevisionGUID="5fac5511-2b67-492b-b486-f0a252521e49" CreationDate="2014-09-05T15:41:15.247" UserId="144896" Text="**2014 Update** : Even though the linked question was closed, it looks like the fun police deleted it. Wayback Machine has it, but sadly it won't show up in search results. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://web.archive.org/web/20110917154703/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238/what-are-your-favorite-programming-related-movies-documentaries&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They also deleted the follow-up question that @Paddyslacker recommended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://web.archive.org/web/20101212225843/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10845/what-are-some-good-realistic-programming-related-movies-docu-dramas-documentari&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That remained open for at least two months, so it seems to me that deletion was an attempt to rewrite history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19066" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6871" RevisionGUID="9b869bb9-cdc4-4e71-a5cd-c9bf8a5bc6f1" CreationDate="2014-09-05T15:41:15.247" UserId="144896" />
  <row Id="19067" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6871" RevisionGUID="34d30f95-1874-43fc-9f70-0637764ddb14" CreationDate="2014-09-05T15:53:42.363" UserId="144896" Comment="summarized my answer" Text="**2014 Update** :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*TD;DR: I think the question, and its sanitized version, should remain be closed as unconstructive, and undeleted.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even though the linked question was closed, it looks like the fun police deleted it. Wayback Machine has it, but sadly it won't show up in search results. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://web.archive.org/web/20110917154703/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238/what-are-your-favorite-programming-related-movies-documentaries&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They also deleted the follow-up question that @Paddyslacker recommended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://web.archive.org/web/20101212225843/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10845/what-are-some-good-realistic-programming-related-movies-docu-dramas-documentari&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That remained open for at least two months, so it seems to me that deletion was an attempt to rewrite history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19068" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6872" RevisionGUID="9dc8550d-7b10-4fa4-b84a-254a20b1ecfa" CreationDate="2014-09-05T21:40:00.520" UserId="1130" Text="&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [first][2] is saying the OP has seen people suggestions that comments are bad and should not be used, and are asking if that really is true or not for specific scenarios, and why or why not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To highlight the important bit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it really that bad to explain a complex algorithm with a few lines of comments about it's general operation? What's wrong with explaining complicated code with a comment?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [second link][1] is all about the standard that you should not write comments in code in order to enforce a specific kind of code quality. The user is specifically asking why or why wouldn't this standard be a good idea to implement in a specific environment size.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To highlight the main bit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Is the approach of avoiding commenting code [...] make sense in a medium-sized coding environment? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the approach?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are very similar, however I would not count them the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am assuming you are asking because you want to close them as a duplicate. And since the second is already closed as a duplicate, I am assuming you want to close the first as a duplicate to the second.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would not personally.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only do I view them as separate questions, but also I find it extremely annoying when I come across cases where question A get closed as a duplicate to question B because they are similar (but not identical), then question B gets closed as a duplicate to question C because they are similar (but not identical), however question C does not answer question A. The end result is when I want an answer to question A, I get question C which does not answer my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add a link between them since someone seeking the answer from one would be likely interested in the answers of the other(s), but don't close as duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/201657/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254978/whats-wrong-with-comments-that-explain-complex-code" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19069" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6871" RevisionGUID="abbe0832-a9bb-4f26-8a0f-ad461344df07" CreationDate="2014-09-06T08:29:34.143" UserId="144896" Comment="typo" Text="**2014 Update** :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*TL;DR: I think the question, and its sanitized version, should remain be closed as unconstructive, and undeleted.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even though the linked question was closed, it looks like the fun police deleted it. Wayback Machine has it, but sadly it won't show up in search results. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://web.archive.org/web/20110917154703/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238/what-are-your-favorite-programming-related-movies-documentaries&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They also deleted the follow-up question that @Paddyslacker recommended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://web.archive.org/web/20101212225843/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10845/what-are-some-good-realistic-programming-related-movies-docu-dramas-documentari&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That remained open for at least two months, so it seems to me that deletion was an attempt to rewrite history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19070" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6873" RevisionGUID="1976d67f-4f73-40f1-9622-4311973be6ff" CreationDate="2014-09-06T23:02:37.950" UserId="127450" Text="[![PL and compilers on cs.se][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/t2h5m.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://cs.stackexchange.com " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19071" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6873" RevisionGUID="a1bd39a9-fcb5-4b6e-a3b8-9fb996cff41e" CreationDate="2014-09-06T23:02:37.950" UserId="127450" />
  <row Id="19072" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6874" RevisionGUID="feec4b71-8f6f-41b1-8fe8-941ef930eec0" CreationDate="2014-09-07T02:50:09.517" UserId="148474" Text="i read [this post][1] and it gave some ideas. This is just a rough sketch. Do you think it has wings?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. a new area is created on relevant SE sites called something like &quot;help me with my homework&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;2. giving posters the answer is not allowed (punished with downvoting or worse). Helping them understand the problem is encouraged&#xD;&#xA;3. Professors or honest students can post questions too, either because they want help or because they want to register the question as a &quot;homework question&quot;&#xD;&#xA;4. If a (for lack of a better term) dishonest user posts a question that looks suspiciously like a &quot;homework&quot; question (but hasn't marked it as so), we now have a database to check against. &#xD;&#xA;5. If a positive match is found the question is flagged as a &quot;homework&quot; question, and sent to the new area where rules #2 and #3 apply.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19073" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6874" RevisionGUID="feec4b71-8f6f-41b1-8fe8-941ef930eec0" CreationDate="2014-09-07T02:50:09.517" UserId="148474" Text="helping students help themselves" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19074" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6874" RevisionGUID="feec4b71-8f6f-41b1-8fe8-941ef930eec0" CreationDate="2014-09-07T02:50:09.517" UserId="148474" Text="|feature-request|homework-dump|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19077" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6875" RevisionGUID="99246b17-de1c-429e-83da-c2adb6c9b4fb" CreationDate="2014-09-08T00:34:59.440" UserId="25476" Text="This really doesn't fit into the scope of this site and the audience and content we are trying to keep here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you would like to propose a Homework StackExchange site you can check out our [Area 51](http://area51.stackexchange.com/) StackExchange site where users can submit proposals for new StackExchange sites.  If you garner enough interest from the community there to your proposal then it could become a Beta site someday." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19078" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6876" RevisionGUID="99c4d9ea-0d9c-46d4-8810-e9392dccaf6f" CreationDate="2014-09-08T02:35:08.590" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Homework is especially problematic on a number of STEM related stack exchange sites.   There is a constant deluge of it on StackOverflow, [Math](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/16734/are-they-really-learning-something), and Physics... and we get a bit of the spillover from StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fundamental problems with trying to tack homework on to an existing stack exchange site are the combination of (what many see as) arbitrary constraints ('do this without using a for loop') and that the person asking the question isn't going to necessarily understand the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, students seem to have great difficulty searching and finding [existing answers](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11409621/creating-a-triangle-with-for-loops) for their questions that they ask [again](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16477858/nested-for-loop-for-a-triangle) and [again](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14493599/java-creating-a-triangle-with-numbers-using-nested-for-loops) and [again](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20777749/triangle-that-prints-with-numbers-as-rows) and [again](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22430158/i-want-this-program-to-print-the-numbers-in-triangle-shape) and... well.  That question gets asked [a lot](http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=triangle+java+number+is%3Aquestion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This existing knowledge base is the center of the of the Q&amp;A format and it is key that people asking questions use that knowledge base and then ask a good question if its not there.  Many homework problems fall into that category of missing what is there and not asking a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most people in Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE answering questions are not educators.  We're posed with a problem and we look to solve it.  We take shortcuts.  We skip over things.  We don't know what the educators are actually trying to teach.  In many cases, for us (professionals in the work force) trying to help students, they will learn really bad habits that miss the target of what is trying to be taught.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually teaching someone requires a dense two way communication in most cases.  Our answers are (should be) the quality of a good lecture.  Thats not a two way communication.  When a student is having trouble and has missed (the point of) the lecture, us, providing another lecture isn't going to help.  What they need to do is go to some place that provides the means for two way communication.  Office hours are the best option there.  Failing that, a chat or discussion oriented site is probably a better option for working through the understandings and misunderstandings of the material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've helped people work through a number of homework issues ***in chat***.  The back and forth of explaining and re-explaining something when it wasn't understood the first time - and me actually getting the feedback of what is and isn't understood as I type it is key.  Doing such a question as Q&amp;A on the main site would have been tedious or a chameleon question that keeps morphing with the new understanding and gets re-asked again and again with edits and updates that leaves the resulting mess something that is so specific to *that* person asking that it becomes useless for the site as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, I will point out that there are some entire SE sites that are dedicated to specific courses (this appears to be a bit of a trial run to see if it works or not): http://cs50.stackexchange.com and http://edx-cs169-1x.stackexchange.com are two that I've stumbled across.  Note that these are designed for asking for help about specific problems with well known (to the people answering) constraints.  They still don't do the dense communication well though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange format is specially designed to try to avoid, hinder, and prohibit the back and forth and conversations one finds in forums.  It does this to maintain the focus on Q&amp;A, not discussions.  I'd suggest giving [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html) a read.  In particular:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4.) And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale. Scale alone kills conversations, because conversations require dense two-way conversations. In conversational contexts, Metcalfe's law is a drag. The fact that the amount of two-way connections you have to support goes up with the square of the users means that the density of conversation falls off very fast as the system scales even a little bit. You have to have some way to let users hang onto the less is more pattern, in order to keep associated with one another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to an Area 51 proposal for homework, I'd give [Request for a homework Stack Exchange site](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/148595/request-for-a-homework-stack-exchange-site) a read.  The proposal itself appears to have been [deleted](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/44531/stack-overflow-homework). You can get an idea of some bits about it on [with this search](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/search?q=homework+is%3Aquestion). You might poke on [Meta.StackExchange](http://meta.stackexchange.com) for more on why homework and SE's Q&amp;A format don't work well (I'll warn you that you might get a few down votes if you try asking for such without being aware of the history to it on MSE though). " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19079" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6874" RevisionGUID="5f1693b3-38d1-439a-bf29-194c12da1f0c" CreationDate="2014-09-08T06:31:37.430" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="I read [this post][1] and it gave some ideas. This is just a rough sketch. Do you think it has wings?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. a new area is created on relevant SE sites called something like &quot;help me with my homework&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;2. giving posters the answer is not allowed (punished with downvoting or worse). Helping them understand the problem is encouraged&#xD;&#xA;3. Professors or honest students can post questions too, either because they want help or because they want to register the question as a &quot;homework question&quot;&#xD;&#xA;4. If a (for lack of a better term) dishonest user posts a question that looks suspiciously like a &quot;homework&quot; question (but hasn't marked it as so), we now have a database to check against. &#xD;&#xA;5. If a positive match is found the question is flagged as a &quot;homework&quot; question, and sent to the new area where rules #2 and #3 apply.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19080" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6877" RevisionGUID="f62bf1f3-0d08-4404-b727-b4d24d26091a" CreationDate="2014-09-08T14:09:34.790" UserId="34484" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/255703/revisions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be obvious that this question will be downvoted and closed within moments. Please don't migrate crap to SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps this site should have a close reason like SO does for things that belong on SU but are too crappy to be migrated?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19081" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6877" RevisionGUID="f62bf1f3-0d08-4404-b727-b4d24d26091a" CreationDate="2014-09-08T14:09:34.790" UserId="34484" Text="Please don't migrate crap to SO" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19082" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6877" RevisionGUID="f62bf1f3-0d08-4404-b727-b4d24d26091a" CreationDate="2014-09-08T14:09:34.790" UserId="34484" Text="|discussion|migration|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19083" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6878" RevisionGUID="e896e71f-14a6-42d0-afe9-40f599e2abca" CreationDate="2014-09-08T14:18:34.890" UserId="99078" Text="So there was this question asked by a new user. And it's undeniably crap. It is a code-dump showing 0 research effort, not even a problem statement. This is **the** prime example of what a crap question is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/255703/how-to-get-the-average-of-an-array?noredirect=1 :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot of the crap question...][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that question is on SO and the situation isn't any better. The question still is crap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know what you all are probably thinking right now: &quot;Another mindless rant by a new user&quot;. Well you may think that way, and I'm okay with that, but I want you to ask yourselves a simple question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Has SO become the trash dump of Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From what happened to that question, this one definitely looks like a yes. And I think that is very sad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some users have even realized that this question should not be migrated. Please programmers-users, don't become mindless crap-migrating SO users and **think** before pressing the migrate button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Some thinking...][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/QsZj5.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CVGyZ.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19084" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6878" RevisionGUID="e896e71f-14a6-42d0-afe9-40f599e2abca" CreationDate="2014-09-08T14:18:34.890" UserId="99078" Text="Migrating Crap to SO. Really Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19085" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6878" RevisionGUID="e896e71f-14a6-42d0-afe9-40f599e2abca" CreationDate="2014-09-08T14:18:34.890" UserId="99078" Text="|discussion|specific-question|migration|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19086" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6877" RevisionGUID="c4d9baa8-3a4f-4c7c-83be-06522cd36ff9" CreationDate="2014-09-08T14:20:27.813" UserId="4" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6878],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="19087" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6879" RevisionGUID="1bd87cf9-0640-40f6-8493-5c2cd3844cb3" CreationDate="2014-09-08T14:57:22.757" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; Has SO become the trash dump of Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The specific question certainly isn't... stellar, but you are over-reacting. In fact, of the 258 questions we've migrated to SO (in the last 90 days), only 13% have been rejected. Conversely, the numbers aren't as good the other way around. We've rejected 16% of the questions SO has send us ([but you don't see us complaining about it, do you?][1] ;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next time you spot a shady migration, just vote to close it and move on. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19088" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6880" RevisionGUID="31ecf84e-caf5-47f7-8a72-a6ab4b9d69b1" CreationDate="2014-09-08T15:49:47.760" UserId="31260" Text="Close voters at Programmers would better memorize the criteria for debugging questions to be [acceptable for Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/258685/839601 &quot;announced here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking debugging help (&quot;**why isn't this code working?**&quot;) must include the desired behavior, a *specific problem or error* and *the shortest code necessary* to reproduce it **in the question itself**. Questions without **a clear problem statement** are not useful to other readers. See: [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the [question in question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/255703/revisions), I for one picked the custom close reason that stated that question [isn't appropriate at both sites](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/255703/how-to-get-the-average-of-an-array?noredirect=1#comment516369_255703 &quot;'off topic on Programmers.SE, and would also get closed on StackOverflow'&quot;). It was pretty sad to see how it was migrated [against my will](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/54917/165773 &quot;known issue with closing system obscuring this information&quot;) and I immediately voted to close the incorrectly migrated question using above reason:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;&quot;Questions seeking debugging help (&quot;why isn't this code working?&quot;) must include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. Questions without a clear problem statement are not useful to other readers. See: How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example.&quot; – **gnat**, Stijn, Unihedron, ItachiUchiha, kiheru&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19094" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6878" RevisionGUID="1eee12c5-c83d-45cc-a626-b9182c748eb7" CreationDate="2014-09-08T20:45:07.773" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/509080011706740736" />
  <row Id="19095" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6878" RevisionGUID="a018ff33-38a6-4de1-a09f-a00ec0f0d3ac" CreationDate="2014-09-09T07:23:07.990" UserId="7422" Comment="fix punctuation" Text="Migrating Crap to SO. Really, Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19096" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6531" RevisionGUID="6fb32177-c98c-4c9e-bf30-1d76264fb4c9" CreationDate="2014-09-09T09:38:35.160" UserId="25768" Comment="added 256 characters in body" Text="&lt;strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;5\. in a pinch you can escape the point `.` to preserve the numbering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Markdown source: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;5\. in a pinch you can escape the point `.` to preserve the numbering&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;5. Now you don't need to escape the point anymore to start a numbereed list at an arbitrary number.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Markdown source: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;5. Now you don't need to escape the point anymore to start a numbereed list at an arbitrary number.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19097" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6531" RevisionGUID="481953a9-6dca-4838-a29d-d4d500a9cc4a" CreationDate="2014-09-09T10:11:57.343" UserId="31260" Comment="[you don't need to escape the point anymore += http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/239121 &quot;as announced here&quot;" Text="&lt;strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;5\. in a pinch you can escape the point `.` to preserve the numbering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Markdown source: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;5\. in a pinch you can escape the point `.` to preserve the numbering&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;5. Now [you don't need to escape the point anymore](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/239121 &quot;as announced here&quot;) to start a numbered list at an arbitrary number.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Markdown source: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;5. Now [you don't need to escape the point anymore](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/239121 &quot;as announced here&quot;) to start a numbered list at an arbitrary number.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19098" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6882" RevisionGUID="186584d0-854a-40e1-9a66-15ee29588a3b" CreationDate="2014-09-11T23:01:21.113" UserId="112298" Text="I want to ask if I should include known programming languages on my resume.  But I do not know which site is appropriate for this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which StackExchange site should I ask this question on?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19099" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6882" RevisionGUID="186584d0-854a-40e1-9a66-15ee29588a3b" CreationDate="2014-09-11T23:01:21.113" UserId="112298" Text="Where does this question belong?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19100" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6882" RevisionGUID="186584d0-854a-40e1-9a66-15ee29588a3b" CreationDate="2014-09-11T23:01:21.113" UserId="112298" Text="|support|specific-question|stackexchange|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19101" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6883" RevisionGUID="b149c58b-ea35-4791-9307-124f63bd6e19" CreationDate="2014-09-11T23:15:08.893" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="This question has been asked and answered on [The Workplace][1]. [Variants][2] are also on that site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/1209/as-a-student-how-should-programming-language-familiarity-be-described-on-a-cv-r&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/12345/programming-languages-describing-on-a-resume?lq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19102" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6884" RevisionGUID="136799ff-ba3f-4a1b-8866-2ccb4396688a" CreationDate="2014-09-12T09:12:46.620" UserId="15331" Text="I've flagged my [question][1] and asked for it to be moved to SA ([that's the right way of doing it, right?][2]) but it was closed instead. I think it's a good question ([not a crap][3]) that proved to be relevant to many people over the years.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44929/color-schemes-generation-theory-and-algorithms&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5874/move-question-to-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3887/closed-instead-of-migrated" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19103" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6884" RevisionGUID="136799ff-ba3f-4a1b-8866-2ccb4396688a" CreationDate="2014-09-12T09:12:46.620" UserId="15331" Text="Popular question closed instead of migrated." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19104" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6884" RevisionGUID="136799ff-ba3f-4a1b-8866-2ccb4396688a" CreationDate="2014-09-12T09:12:46.620" UserId="15331" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19105" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6885" RevisionGUID="ab2c99e3-7908-43fd-b696-b57e9ee4d51c" CreationDate="2014-09-12T09:20:20.217" UserId="25936" Text="[Questions older than 60 days can no longer be migrated][1], not even by moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question, albeit being off topic on both Programmers and Stack Overflow, is fairly popular and generated a few very useful answers. This, I assume, is why Thomas decided to place a historical lock on it. The lock will prevent it from being deleted by the community, which is what usually happens to off topic questions after a while.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/151890/disable-migration-for-questions-older-than-60-days" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19106" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6884" RevisionGUID="cb81e288-bab6-4996-82cc-d4ccbc381d0b" CreationDate="2014-09-12T09:24:21.787" UserId="25936" Comment="added 12 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="I've flagged my [question][1] and asked for it to be moved to Stack Overflow ([that's the right way of doing it, right?][2]) but it was closed instead. I think it's a good question ([not a crap][3]) that proved to be relevant to many people over the years.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44929/color-schemes-generation-theory-and-algorithms&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5874/move-question-to-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3887/closed-instead-of-migrated" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19107" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6884" RevisionGUID="cb81e288-bab6-4996-82cc-d4ccbc381d0b" CreationDate="2014-09-12T09:24:21.787" UserId="25936" Comment="added 12 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Popular question closed instead of migrated" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19108" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6884" RevisionGUID="cb81e288-bab6-4996-82cc-d4ccbc381d0b" CreationDate="2014-09-12T09:24:21.787" UserId="25936" Comment="added 12 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|specific-question|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19109" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6884" RevisionGUID="71e14f30-6592-4cb5-9d9c-27804617012e" CreationDate="2014-09-12T10:00:49.467" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|migration|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19110" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6886" RevisionGUID="c7f3a0fa-3fa3-4540-af2c-889bceedce9f" CreationDate="2014-09-12T11:30:41.707" UserId="31260" Text="While pondering upon today's [usual license shopping request](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/256092/31260 &quot;here my requirements, recommend a license&quot;) I discovered this old question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[How can I compare and contrast open source licenses?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/120308/31260)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it make sense to make above a [canonical duplicate target](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/217406/165773) for license shopping questions? Possibly along with [collaborative effort lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/182572/165773) on its answer(s).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a regular question it doesn't look like a good fit for the site, more like a candidate to be closed and deleted. Question per se reads [too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490) and the answers tend to refer readers to [&quot;another castle&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/225370/165773).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it somehow managed to outline basic research effort I would expect of askers before they dump their &quot;license requirments&lt;!-- note for editors - typo in word &quot;requirEments&quot; here is intentional, to highlight general laziness and ignorance of askers assumed to be addressed here --&gt;&quot; at us. As such, would it make a convenient dupe target?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19111" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6886" RevisionGUID="c7f3a0fa-3fa3-4540-af2c-889bceedce9f" CreationDate="2014-09-12T11:30:41.707" UserId="31260" Text="&quot;How can I compare and contrast open source licenses?&quot; - canonical dupe for license shopping?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19112" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6886" RevisionGUID="c7f3a0fa-3fa3-4540-af2c-889bceedce9f" CreationDate="2014-09-12T11:30:41.707" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|specific-question|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19113" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6887" RevisionGUID="165596fa-4393-4c21-a338-41a4b3a9c1c6" CreationDate="2014-09-12T13:25:41.513" UserId="25476" Text="I don't feel this question is a good canonical target for &quot;License Shopping&quot; questions as it is overtly broad and would give users the wrong impression about what kinds of questions are okay to ask here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not sure that there can be a canonical answer for license shopping that isn't overtly broad.  I think the best solution is to try to improve the quality of existing and future license shopping questions to where they are specific and present a real problem that the OP faces.  If this question gets a great focused answer then we can use that specific question as a dupe target for future questions that are highly similar.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Eg. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/236370/query-regarding-mit-licence being a duplicate of the better question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/117572/mit-and-copyright&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The latter question can be a canonical dupe for questions about copyright as it pertains to utilizing software components that have the MIT License." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19114" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6888" RevisionGUID="bf551b3a-eaa3-4096-acff-1bc1f3da1d4a" CreationDate="2014-09-12T18:27:44.183" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There is a significant overlap in the tags [tag:random] and [tag:random-numbers].  There are 33 questions tagged [tag:random-numbers] and 41 tagged [tag:random].  Of these, 11 of them have [both tags](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/random-numbers+random).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make [tag:random-numbers] a synonym of [tag:random].  I make this call of which way based on that many questions tagged with [tag:random] are titled in a way that suggests the author picked the first random tag that showed up (e.g. &quot;How can I create a set of random numbers based on a total and number of objects?&quot; is tagged &quot;random&quot; and &quot;c#&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking throughout the list of questions tagged [tag:random-numbers], I could make the argument that they could all be properly tagged with [tag:random] (and as I pointed out initially, 1/3 of them are).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus: **please make random-numbers a synonym of random**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19115" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6888" RevisionGUID="bf551b3a-eaa3-4096-acff-1bc1f3da1d4a" CreationDate="2014-09-12T18:27:44.183" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="tag synonym request: [random] and [random-numbers]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19116" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6888" RevisionGUID="bf551b3a-eaa3-4096-acff-1bc1f3da1d4a" CreationDate="2014-09-12T18:27:44.183" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19117" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6889" RevisionGUID="50d29f88-f266-4249-a6e9-ea9f86118133" CreationDate="2014-09-14T02:45:57.483" UserId="124658" Text="Would be the following questions acceptable on Programmers site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Few years ago book XYZ by AuthorSoAndSo was considered **the** book on ABC.  Is it still the case? Has it become outdated?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. In job posts I often see a requirement to be proficient with SuchAndSuch type of applications.  What are the main concerns with these applications?  What kind of tooling should a programmer become intimately familiar with to claim such proficiency? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are the above questions *specific* enough to survive?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19118" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6889" RevisionGUID="50d29f88-f266-4249-a6e9-ea9f86118133" CreationDate="2014-09-14T02:45:57.483" UserId="124658" Text="Two sample specific questions about books and tools" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19119" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6889" RevisionGUID="50d29f88-f266-4249-a6e9-ea9f86118133" CreationDate="2014-09-14T02:45:57.483" UserId="124658" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19120" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6890" RevisionGUID="4bbc0eae-46ac-438f-926b-bc3d7fa4af16" CreationDate="2014-09-14T07:38:12.193" UserId="5099" Text="The first question *might* survive, but a lot depends on the specific book/technology. The really good books don't become outdated that fast, unless the technology is evolving very fast and/or a much better alternative has become available. On the other hand, if the technology has evolved and some books are available that are more up-to-date, but nothing to clearly replace the original book, then there is a real chance that it comes down to personal opinion if book XYZ is still the best. Such questions tend to be closed as [&quot;primarily opinion based&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question most likely won't survive. That question is seeking career advise and such questions are explicitly off-topic. See also [&quot;Why was my question closed as off topic?&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19125" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6892" RevisionGUID="c916e837-2d02-45ef-8156-cbac15b87cc8" CreationDate="2014-09-16T14:11:57.257" UserId="6586" Text="I think if a student is so lazy that they ask homework questions on this site, they are definitely too lazy to read this long open letter. Plus, this sort of thing should be directed at the people who answer homework problems. If people would simply refuse to answer obvious homework problems, the incentive to ask them will be removed. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19126" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6893" RevisionGUID="d4e3ce1f-2d5e-4604-90ce-866b10b2f0cd" CreationDate="2014-09-16T15:22:29.780" UserId="114829" Text="I was thinking to software readability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First of all I would like to explain what is an [evidence based approach][1] and how it's related to software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Disciplines like medicine use this kind of approach a lot. Every opinion has to be proved through a scientific test made in double blind. You can see thousand of examples making a search on [Google Scholar][2]. Example: [link][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This kind of methodology assure that nothing is lead to the personal opinion of the writer. Psychology is another discipline which passed from intuitions (see psychanalisis) to rigorous scientific approach. Not always a method is better than the other but scientific approach to software coding is almost unexistent nowaday.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My actual question is if someone knows about the usage of Functional magnetic resonance imaging ([fMRI][4]) to experimentally investigate the readability of some piece of code refactoring.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand the question may look weird. But the actual medicine is able to &quot;see&quot; the effort made by the brain of a developer to understand some lines of code. So it's possible to empirically measure the readability of a source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the purpose of the question would also be to make software developer focus on the possibility (and need?) to go over the opinion based approach to a [evidence based software engineering][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would my question be out of scope here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence-based_practice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://scholar.google.at/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://scholar.google.at/scholar?as_sdt=0,5&amp;q=hair%20loss&amp;hl=it&amp;as_ylo=2014&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_magnetic_resonance_imaging&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1835059/what-is-evidence-based-software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19127" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6893" RevisionGUID="d4e3ce1f-2d5e-4604-90ce-866b10b2f0cd" CreationDate="2014-09-16T15:22:29.780" UserId="114829" Text="I would like to ask a question about evidence based IT is this the right section?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19128" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6893" RevisionGUID="d4e3ce1f-2d5e-4604-90ce-866b10b2f0cd" CreationDate="2014-09-16T15:22:29.780" UserId="114829" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19129" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6894" RevisionGUID="0359c807-bdd6-43bb-9ed8-cea479c04513" CreationDate="2014-09-16T16:47:18.073" UserId="25476" Text="The question is such that it can only be answered in a couple ways.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## No ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This person would have no basis in fact that he/she could authoritatively say nobody has had this idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Yes ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then they link to an offsite resource and a discussion breaks out.  Link only answers are not acceptable here and will be deleted.  Further the Q&amp;A format of the site doesn't lend itself well to discussions.  A forum or chat room would be a better platform for this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore questions that are seeking for off site resources are explicity off topic.  If this wasn't really what you were looking for then you are really looking for people to simply review your idea which means there is not a real question here thus it is not a good fit for the Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If all of this were not the case then your question is seeking a number of opinions on this topic for purposes of debate or discussion, which doesn't fit the criteria of &quot;Good Subjective Questions&quot; that is outlined in our Help Center.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not think the question in its current form is a good fit for the site.  Perhaps if you were formulating this idea and had a specific problem you were trying to think through and solve, then it might be a better fit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19130" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6895" RevisionGUID="b09b186d-2a51-40de-b022-fca749d958b9" CreationDate="2014-09-16T20:27:27.060" UserId="122407" Text="I have made dialog box that hosts a lot of various controls ( around 50 ) using C++ and raw WinAPI.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although my application works, I still wish to somehow reduce the number of controls I use in a dialog box. I wish to ask on Programmers for help, so I first wanted to check here if this type of question is on topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it isn't can you suggest me SE network that could help me with this problem?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19131" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6895" RevisionGUID="b09b186d-2a51-40de-b022-fca749d958b9" CreationDate="2014-09-16T20:27:27.060" UserId="122407" Text="Is question about user interface optimization on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19132" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6895" RevisionGUID="b09b186d-2a51-40de-b022-fca749d958b9" CreationDate="2014-09-16T20:27:27.060" UserId="122407" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19133" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6896" RevisionGUID="34247ae4-2fad-4174-87ee-08fd970c6b1e" CreationDate="2014-09-16T20:52:02.077" UserId="47" Text="This sounds more like a question for [Code Review](http://codereview.stackexchange.com). You have working code, but want to improve it, so it's not suitable for Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is really for questions you'd have at the start of the process - design decisions, requirements gathering, architecture etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you do decide to post on Code Review check out their help pages and look at other questions first to make sure you get your question right." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19134" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6895" RevisionGUID="1fdeb4ae-5851-4f2c-8bfd-cbec41fdd1de" CreationDate="2014-09-17T03:10:39.443" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19135" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6897" RevisionGUID="5b3f14c7-d981-4fdf-bc2a-214fb4c0ea50" CreationDate="2014-09-18T19:14:44.280" UserId="31260" Text="I noticed this in [today question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/256636/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I remember there was another question on this site regarding this, but it was less focused, and the answers haven't satisfied me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question was eventually closed as duplicate but I can't tell if dupe target is one mentioned above: wording is quite similar but doesn't look identical and asker didn't link to the older question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How okay is this? My concern is that keeping answerers oblivious of older question puts them at risk of repeating points that were already made and explained there and deprives site visitors of learning about related issues that may have been discussed there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Related: [Copying a question that had a misfortune of being widely exposed in the hot list](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/2445/168)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19136" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6897" RevisionGUID="5b3f14c7-d981-4fdf-bc2a-214fb4c0ea50" CreationDate="2014-09-18T19:14:44.280" UserId="31260" Text="How okay is it to rehash and repost an old question without referring the source?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19137" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6897" RevisionGUID="5b3f14c7-d981-4fdf-bc2a-214fb4c0ea50" CreationDate="2014-09-18T19:14:44.280" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|asking-questions|etiquette|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19138" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6897" RevisionGUID="c1748829-b969-4f0a-9011-49f604cec1eb" CreationDate="2014-09-18T19:22:58.903" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="minor grammer" Text="I noticed this in a [question from today](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/256636/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I remember there was another question on this site regarding this, but it was less focused, and the answers haven't satisfied me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was eventually closed as duplicate but I can't tell if the dupe target is the one mentioned above; the wording is quite similar but doesn't look identical, and the asker didn't link to the older question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How okay is this? My concern is that keeping answerers oblivious of older question puts them at risk of repeating points that were already made and explained there as well as depriving future site visitors of learning about related issues that may have been discussed there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Related: [Copying a question that had a misfortune of being widely exposed in the hot list](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/2445/168)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19139" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6898" RevisionGUID="c43ddba2-e301-448b-96a8-b231431dd7e5" CreationDate="2014-09-18T19:53:30.470" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="### If the original is open&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The appropriate response on Stack Exchange is to place a bounty on that other question, probably with the 'Improve details' as the bounty reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Bounty dialog][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The model for Stack Exchange is that people come with a question and find the answer to it.  Having multiple questions where the previous answers aren't satisfactory means that future visitors will have to look in multiple places to find the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We try to alleviate this by having a clear to follow 'duplicate' system for closing questions.  Asking duplicate questions just because the other answers weren't satisfactory is a clear breach of this in an attempt to work around the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### If the original is closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing long and hard about why the original was closed.  If you are to ask the same question *again*, you will likely have this question closed too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is additional material that would make the original able to be reopened, considered adding that to the original rather than asking a new question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you cannot figure out how to make the original able to be reopened, asking the question again, especially when you clearly know it will be closed is poor etiquette on the site.  It means people have to spend time answering your points or closing your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/1gP0K.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19140" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6898" RevisionGUID="09875475-56b5-4ac9-8a13-cab998802b43" CreationDate="2014-09-18T19:55:16.707" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo corrected" Text="### If the original is open&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The appropriate response on Stack Exchange is to place a bounty on that other question, probably with the 'Improve details' as the bounty reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Bounty dialog][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The model for Stack Exchange is that people come with a question and find the answer to it.  Having multiple questions where the previous answers aren't satisfactory means that future visitors will have to look in multiple places to find the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We try to alleviate this by having a clear to follow 'duplicate' system for closing questions.  Asking duplicate questions just because the other answers weren't satisfactory is a clear breach of this in an attempt to work around the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### If the original is closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think long and hard about why the original was closed.  If you are to ask the same question *again*, you will likely have this question closed too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is additional material that would make the original able to be reopened, considered adding that to the original rather than asking a new question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you cannot figure out how to make the original able to be reopened, asking the question again, especially when you clearly know it will be closed is poor etiquette on the site.  It means people have to spend time answering your points or closing your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/1gP0K.png &quot;Bounty dialog&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19141" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6899" RevisionGUID="10bfa423-5f86-4a67-bf8a-7e9c23066b26" CreationDate="2014-09-21T21:19:32.230" UserId="52672" Text="I think the migration is right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is, let's be honest, utterly crap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, such &quot;flavour of crap&quot; belongs to SO. Let's see the options the community at Programmers have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Migrate the question. Have the people in SO close the question according to the rules of their forum. Now, the original poster knows (ok, that's wishful thinking) both *where* and *how* post the question that is nagging him/her/it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Close the question in Programmers as off-topic. The poster knows now that Programmers is not the forum to ask such kind of question. And then, the poster will diligently go to SO and post again the same question (to get it closed again, because it is crap).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Have a Programmers &quot;close option&quot; that explains both that it belongs to SO and also that it is crap by the SO standards. For the poster, who may not be fluent in English, it will sound something like &quot;you should post in SO but you can not post in SO&quot;. Quite confusing, IM(ns)HO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. Get some mechanism to deliver a electric discharge that fries the poster PC as retribution for posting that crap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I fully endorse #4, I'll discuss also about the others:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; #3 seems the most direct approach. It has the disavantages that it only makes sense for issues that happen often and that may be confusing to new users. If it is considered worth having such an option, it should be worded with extreme care&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only practical difference between #1 and #2 is that with #2 the OP will have to post the crap twice before he gets to understand what he should be asking and where. Hardly an improvement, and may discourage newcomers from using the SE forum.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I would say #1 is not such a bad option." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19142" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6592" RevisionGUID="5059467b-7c07-4475-9580-9bad28b54d43" CreationDate="2014-09-22T15:33:15.300" UserId="31260" Comment="added 126 characters in body" Text="Recent efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given long known &quot;tradition&quot; of attempts to circumvent such bans by posting at inappropriate sites I wonder how much impact could this have on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand this, I would like to find out how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be also helpful to learn similar statistics for questions from users who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* aren't _yet_ banned, but are already [warned about approaching a ban](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773 &quot;recently introduced feature&quot;) at SO&#xD;&#xA;* are rate-limited to ask questions at SO by [anti-recidivism system](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234518/165773 &quot;'If the user was blocked from posting questions at the time of deletion, then the recreated account will be restricted to posting only one question per week until the quality of their contributions is demonstrated'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically I am trying to figure whether it's something that can be dealt with in our regular ways, or it is worth looking for a dedicated approach to address (like, say, system triggering automated flag for mod attention when post from such a user gets close vote / flag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Let's burn down the close queue!](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [Block migration if user is suspended/question-blocked at destination](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/102293/block-migration-if-user-is-suspended-question-blocked-at-destination)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [Warn new users when they ask a question after a previous question is closed, downvoted, or deleted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [What is the reasoning behind limiting &quot;recidivists&quot; to post one question per week?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/234609/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSO) [Why won't the system allow me to ask questions for several days?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/271543/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Stats on how attempts to circumvent SO question blocks impact other sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Meta P.SE) http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19143" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6592" RevisionGUID="5059467b-7c07-4475-9580-9bad28b54d43" CreationDate="2014-09-22T15:33:15.300" UserId="31260" Comment="added 126 characters in body" Text="How many questions do we get from users recently blocked at SO, how many of these are closed / deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19144" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6900" RevisionGUID="6b2ea966-6c29-4e8f-bf9e-04697b3e91a3" CreationDate="2014-09-22T16:45:06.373" UserId="144896" Text="I would be tempted to vote down and comment such a question for insufficient research. If the questioner knows of a relevant existing question (whether open or closed), I would like them to take the time to find it, link it, and make the new question distinct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The example question is much more specific than the linked duplicates, and attracted precise and concise answers. So I did not vote down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet, everyone's experience would have been much nicer if we knew exactly which question had already been read and found to be too broad." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19145" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6897" RevisionGUID="13922a76-1715-4db2-8a1e-7ebe5759187c" CreationDate="2014-09-22T18:23:46.047" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/514117866925203457" />
  <row Id="19146" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6900" RevisionGUID="9a78c2fa-e112-4d9a-84e6-acce464a13f6" CreationDate="2014-09-23T13:36:24.040" UserId="144896" Comment="emphasize conclusion in case TLDR" Text="I would be tempted to vote down and comment such a question for insufficient research. If the questioner knows of a relevant existing question (whether open or closed), I would like them to take the time to find it, link it, and make the new question distinct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The example question is much more specific than the linked duplicates, and attracted precise and concise answers. So I did not vote down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet, **everyone's experience would have been much nicer if we knew exactly which question had already been read and found to be too broad.** That responsibility lies with the asker." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19147" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6901" RevisionGUID="65da858b-cde8-4560-8192-6380d832cf69" CreationDate="2014-09-23T18:09:40.210" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I think this can be summed up with one of your own canned responses to poor questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Sharing your research helps everyone][1]. Tell us what you've tried&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and why it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the time to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers, and most of all it helps you get a more specific and relevant&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer. Also see [How to Ask][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When asking something that is close to another question it helps to research previous questions, provide links, and explain what is different.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is a duplicate and the asker does not explain the difference between the new and old questions (if any) I will vote to close. If the question is different, even slightly, and the asker explains why his question is different or the accepted answer to the other question does not apply, I will give it the benefit of a doubt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19149" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6902" RevisionGUID="33196bc5-6bd5-4d04-b7c8-56b8688d98d1" CreationDate="2014-09-24T15:23:04.307" UserId="150074" Text="I understand that some questions tends to be subjective, like &quot;what is the best IDE for JavaScript&quot;. That said, no one will deny it is a question that many people will ask many times. As far as I could read, moderators will argue that, despite what-is-the-best question is valid, it doesn't fit stackexchange norms, but as it is valid, people should seek to find the answer by themselves by reading reviews, downloading demos, etc. My problem with that is most of the experts don't even have blogs, so their knowledge is denied to the world.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My proposal is to start paying attention to those not-constructive, but valid questions doing some small changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Rather than closing a questions as not-constructive, mark them with a different color, or filtering them out by default.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Not-constructive questions will never have an accepted answer, but rather just list them all sorted by date, as what-is-the-best completely depends on the date you asked your question.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Answers to not-constructive questions should have more strict moderation to avoid answers like &quot;If you are a PRO, you gotta use IntelliJ IDEA. Period&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any suggestions are welcome." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19150" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6902" RevisionGUID="33196bc5-6bd5-4d04-b7c8-56b8688d98d1" CreationDate="2014-09-24T15:23:04.307" UserId="150074" Text="Suggestion on not-constructive questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19151" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6902" RevisionGUID="33196bc5-6bd5-4d04-b7c8-56b8688d98d1" CreationDate="2014-09-24T15:23:04.307" UserId="150074" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19152" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6903" RevisionGUID="8e485314-6e79-498d-abbc-05ccce7fec7f" CreationDate="2014-09-25T15:29:39.030" UserId="51295" Text="The [tag:domain] tag currently provides very little value, because it's an ambiguous term that refers to several unrelated concepts in vastly different fields. Based on a very quick look, it appears that most of the questions fall into one of three categories:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* questions about Web domain names&#xD;&#xA;* the software engineering concept of domains (a la [tag:domain-driven-design] [tag:domain-model])&#xD;&#xA;* the SQL notion of a domain, per `CREATE DOMAIN`, as in http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110316/to-domain-or-not-to-domain&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Full disclose: I'm not well-antiquated with the latter two uses, so I don't know how related they are, if at all.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These separate uses should probably get their own tags, and `[domain]` should possibly be blacklisted to prevent further vague misuse." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19153" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6903" RevisionGUID="8e485314-6e79-498d-abbc-05ccce7fec7f" CreationDate="2014-09-25T15:29:39.030" UserId="51295" Text="Clean up [domain]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19154" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6903" RevisionGUID="8e485314-6e79-498d-abbc-05ccce7fec7f" CreationDate="2014-09-25T15:29:39.030" UserId="51295" Text="|discussion|retag-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19155" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6903" RevisionGUID="ce67c6f9-99cb-475f-8b85-4e690525a4b1" CreationDate="2014-09-25T15:35:11.920" UserId="51295" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="The [tag:domain] tag currently provides very little value, because it's an ambiguous term that refers to several unrelated concepts in vastly different fields. Based on a very quick look, it appears that most of the questions fall into one of three categories:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* questions about Internet domain names&#xD;&#xA;* the software engineering concept of domains (a la [tag:domain-driven-design] [tag:domain-model])&#xD;&#xA;* the SQL notion of a domain, per `CREATE DOMAIN`, as in http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110316/to-domain-or-not-to-domain&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Full disclose: I'm not well-antiquated with the latter two uses, so I don't know how related they are, if at all.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These separate uses should probably get their own tags, and `[domain]` should possibly be blacklisted to prevent further vague misuse." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19156" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6904" RevisionGUID="3b593e9e-08e6-4b7b-8c75-cab6c7d6b8ad" CreationDate="2014-09-25T15:50:50.503" UserId="114829" Text="Again I would like to ask here on meta if the following question may be asked on Programmer.&#xD;&#xA;I would open as follow:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have a look to the following two way of expressing a concept. One is visual and the other one is ASP.NET code. Which is more intuitive and readable? Software Engineering specify that readability is an important property of code. Of course I know very well what happens by a visual development as provided by Frontpage (for example).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But on the other extreme I see the opposite trade off. IDE are going more and more toward the disuse of the graphical part. Why don't look for an intermediate solution? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there solutions which allows for a strong visual editing of a cshtml page?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/s9itE.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19157" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6904" RevisionGUID="3b593e9e-08e6-4b7b-8c75-cab6c7d6b8ad" CreationDate="2014-09-25T15:50:50.503" UserId="114829" Text="The idea of using text for developing is still actual?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19158" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6904" RevisionGUID="3b593e9e-08e6-4b7b-8c75-cab6c7d6b8ad" CreationDate="2014-09-25T15:50:50.503" UserId="114829" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19159" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6904" RevisionGUID="6ae244d1-e476-4c8e-a723-3a271a01bc10" CreationDate="2014-09-25T16:07:15.083" UserId="114829" Comment="added 389 characters in body" Text="Again I would like to ask here on meta if the following question may be asked on Programmer.&#xD;&#xA;I would open as follow:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have a look to the following two way of expressing a concept. One is visual and the other one is ASP.NET code. Which is more intuitive and readable? We could define readability like the activity of brain needed to understand something.. I guess the textual code is not always very readable. Especially it can be readable for one control, but not for the whole structure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And also why it should be black or white? A visual comment (like an image could help a lot). Who stated that the code has to be written inside pure text files?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Engineering specify that readability is an important property of code. Of course I know very well what happens by a visual development as provided by Frontpage (for example).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But on the other extreme I see the opposite trade off. IDE are going more and more toward the disuse of the graphical part. Why don't look for an intermediate solution? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there solutions which allows for a strong visual editing of a cshtml page?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/s9itE.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19160" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6905" RevisionGUID="029c4d8a-a5b9-425c-a20f-3ca9bf976500" CreationDate="2014-09-25T16:08:33.140" UserId="60357" Text="&gt; Which is more intuitive and readable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is a mostly opinion based question. In short: a non-text representation is usually more intuitive, but hides details. Whether to prefer the abstraction of GUIs or the power of seeing all details at once is a trade-off that everyone has to solve for him- or herself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Of course I know very well what happens by a visual development as provided by Frontpage (for example).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Are there solutions which allows for a strong visual editing of a cshtml page?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is asking for a *software recommendation* which is off topic on Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19161" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6906" RevisionGUID="d0d0da4e-2750-4ca6-b23f-6460571f79dc" CreationDate="2014-09-26T04:49:13.970" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Questions that are purely subjective, off-topic, not constructive (to the Q&amp;A format at least) do not belong here. They tend to invite more discussion than answering, which does not work well with the stack exchange format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are plenty of forums in existence that are better-suited to having discussions, debates, and other non-constructive communication." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19162" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6907" RevisionGUID="5aca96fa-cdb7-443a-baba-9b2471c0909e" CreationDate="2014-09-26T13:34:03.157" UserId="144896" Text="This sounds like the germ of a blog post or magazine article proposing a new form of editing and storing annotated source code. Please go ahead and post it on a good blog hosting site, or even better, build a prototype (!). But, in my humble opinion, it does not fit the Stack Exchange format, as you are provoking your readers to suggest a whole bunch of UI solutions that might help them, or you, write and maintain code more successfully, rather than to provide a specific answer.  Big thanks to gnat for linking several apparently duplicate but more specific questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19163" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6795" RevisionGUID="02c1e72f-718d-47d9-9dfb-55afd07ab634" CreationDate="2014-09-26T20:32:41.470" UserId="31260" Comment="checks for cross-posting += including deleted SO cross-posts" Text="Suggest to perform automatic checks for cross-posting (including deleted SO cross-posts, like [this one](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26059920/what-makes-the-functional-and-logic-programming-paradigms-well-suited-for-progra) for example) and question block / warning at Stack Overflow when post enters close queue, not only when it is attempted to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If check detects a problem, system would raise automatic flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I expect above preemptive checks to help us more efficiently address attempts to abuse the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Annotate user accounts network-wide when they get rate-limited or banned](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112598/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A few of the migration rules are skipped if it is a ♦ moderator clicking the button, however: the &quot;is the user suspended or blocked from asking&quot; is **always** applied.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What difficulties could be there in establishing automatic checks for SO cross-posts...](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p#comment17969_6660)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There _is_ a check to see if a duplicate exists on a destination site which rejects a migration if so...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [At smaller sites, penalize hot questions having 3-4 close votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; At smaller sites... closing a question takes hours or even days...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [How many questions do we get from users recently banned at SO, how many of these are closed / deleted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6592/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Provide 10k users more close votes](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6507/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Refund close votes for questions deleted on the same day](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237386/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Recover Close votes if asker deletes their own question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/69166/165773)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19164" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6795" RevisionGUID="daf7510b-51c2-4285-88d5-69a8e45641cd" CreationDate="2014-09-26T21:05:17.617" UserId="31260" Comment="related += [Stats on how attempts to circumvent SO question blocks impact other sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237534/165773)" Text="Perform automatic checks for cross-posting and question block at SO when post enters close queue, not only at attempt to migrate" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19165" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6795" RevisionGUID="daf7510b-51c2-4285-88d5-69a8e45641cd" CreationDate="2014-09-26T21:05:17.617" UserId="31260" Comment="related += [Stats on how attempts to circumvent SO question blocks impact other sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237534/165773)" Text="Suggest to perform automatic checks for cross-posting (including deleted SO cross-posts, like [this one](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26059920/what-makes-the-functional-and-logic-programming-paradigms-well-suited-for-progra) for example) and question block / warning at Stack Overflow when post enters close queue, not only when it is attempted to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If check detects a problem, system would raise automatic flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I expect above preemptive checks to help us more efficiently address attempts to abuse the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Annotate user accounts network-wide when they get rate-limited or banned](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112598/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A few of the migration rules are skipped if it is a ♦ moderator clicking the button, however: the &quot;is the user suspended or blocked from asking&quot; is **always** applied.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Stats on how attempts to circumvent SO question blocks impact other sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237534/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; working on a design for enhancing our our recidivism system to discourage this and other sorts of unproductive behavior...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What difficulties could be there in establishing automatic checks for SO cross-posts...](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p#comment17969_6660)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There _is_ a check to see if a duplicate exists on a destination site which rejects a migration if so...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [At smaller sites, penalize hot questions having 3-4 close votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; At smaller sites... closing a question takes hours or even days...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [How many questions do we get from users recently banned at SO, how many of these are closed / deleted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6592/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Provide 10k users more close votes](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6507/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Refund close votes for questions deleted on the same day](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237386/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Recover Close votes if asker deletes their own question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/69166/165773)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19166" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="06350e0c-37d3-46d5-ae96-250534b239a3" CreationDate="2014-09-27T00:03:39.080" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|faq|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19167" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6903" RevisionGUID="7e45fc0d-0928-4cea-a339-796ad1a8ff07" CreationDate="2014-09-27T12:38:40.293" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/515842959602757633" />
  <row Id="19171" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6909" RevisionGUID="43787273-10c3-4a4a-a4c4-4829529f18ac" CreationDate="2014-09-29T21:43:06.717" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/240232/can-this-site-be-made-less-intimidating-for-beginners" />
  <row Id="19172" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6909" RevisionGUID="512e9c08-5bb6-4efa-905c-492280e9de73" CreationDate="2014-09-29T21:21:20.560" UserId="122836" Text="I asked a C++ question on Programmers Stack Exchange where I wanted to know how to address different levels of a multi-level data structure that I just happened to want to use a sort on 1 level of... but the more general, was how to tell a compiler what level of nested data structure I wanted to address with the function (or whatever I was doing).  It vectored off into a discussion about the sort, so left it for a while, not sure how to make it better.  Later came back with different example -- was told new example was easy (no example given that answered the question), and asked what my problem was -- was even shown how to get another non-answer of addressing the outermost data struct...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;OK... forget all that, it's just &quot;story&quot;.... thing is, I went off to try to test and came back on a browser history page to a question page where I was told I was in danger of being blocked for bad questions.  I'd had a 2nd Q with a 0 score...but no downvotes at the time, but YIKES!... WTBB!!!  All of a sudden I felt bad and wrong and had no clue what I'd done other than be &quot;unstellar and/or unpopular in asking questions that were hard to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm afraid to post this question because it sounds so ... bleh... but having gotten the feedback I've gotten and no way to improve (I tried rewrite -- and the question got marked down by 2!)... bleh...&#xD;&#xA;miserable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I've barely gotten started on this site and already received warnings for not being good enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seems a bit harsh when MANY questions get a 0 rating (most from graphs I saw looking for related topics).   So does every question have to be earth-shaking, and can't some be lower key that get voted up over time if they are good, but just because they aren't, doesn't mean they are bad and the author should be warned?  Seems like a high learning curve and not very welcoming or friendly.... though I'm sure you're all best friends with each other, and none of you have ever been anything less than confident.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am more confident in some things than others, more in tech, less in complex randomly-ruled people things....  *sigh*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's sticking it to myself and posting this (idiot me).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19173" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6909" RevisionGUID="512e9c08-5bb6-4efa-905c-492280e9de73" CreationDate="2014-09-29T21:21:20.560" UserId="122836" Text="Can this site be made less intimidating for beginners?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19174" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6909" RevisionGUID="512e9c08-5bb6-4efa-905c-492280e9de73" CreationDate="2014-09-29T21:21:20.560" UserId="122836" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19176" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6910" RevisionGUID="e737494a-75f0-4527-b9e2-f6cd400d9f7d" CreationDate="2014-09-30T15:28:40.277" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Per the MSE question: [faq-sidebar-for-per-site-metas](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/240186/faq-sidebar-for-per-site-metas) this is to request a FAQ sidebar instead of the chat sidebar on Programmers Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So instead of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![MPSE frontpage with chat][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We would have a listing of the questions from [tag:faq] instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it would look kind of like this&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![MSE frontpage with FAQ][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Note that this example is from MSE, not MPSE&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/VHsLdm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/VfMHbm.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19177" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6910" RevisionGUID="e737494a-75f0-4527-b9e2-f6cd400d9f7d" CreationDate="2014-09-30T15:28:40.277" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="FAQ Sidebar on Programmers Meta" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19178" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6910" RevisionGUID="e737494a-75f0-4527-b9e2-f6cd400d9f7d" CreationDate="2014-09-30T15:28:40.277" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19179" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6910" RevisionGUID="598f0c2e-bafc-4a0f-8662-529a156cc8ac" CreationDate="2014-09-30T15:39:05.300" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="added 243 characters in body" Text="Per the MSE question: [faq-sidebar-for-per-site-metas](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/240186/faq-sidebar-for-per-site-metas) this is to request a FAQ sidebar instead of the chat sidebar on Programmers Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So instead of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![MPSE frontpage with chat][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We would have a listing of the questions from [tag:faq] instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it would look kind of like this&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![MSE frontpage with FAQ][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Note that this example is from MSE, not MPSE&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Why?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ should provide more relevant information to Meta visitors than an invitation to chat would provide.  And putting the FAQ questions on the front page would make them a lot easier to find for first time visitors to Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/VHsLdm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/VfMHbm.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19180" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6909" RevisionGUID="445e7763-2e7f-4eed-bd73-6b6ae76e1845" CreationDate="2014-10-01T01:14:22.430" UserId="122836" Comment="added 2391 characters in body" Text="I asked a C++ question on Programmers Stack Exchange where I wanted to know how to address different levels of a multi-level data structure that I just happened to want to use a sort on 1 level of... but the more general, was how to tell a compiler what level of nested data structure I wanted to address with the function (or whatever I was doing).  It vectored off into a discussion about the sort, so left it for a while, not sure how to make it better.  Later came back with different example -- was told new example was easy (no example given that answered the question), and asked what my problem was -- was even shown how to get another non-answer of addressing the outermost data struct...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;OK... forget all that, it's just &quot;story&quot;.... thing is, I went off to try to test and came back on a browser history page to a question page where I was told I was in danger of being blocked for bad questions.  I'd had a 2nd Q with a 0 score...but no downvotes at the time, but YIKES!... WTBB!!!  All of a sudden I felt bad and wrong and had no clue what I'd done other than be &quot;unstellar and/or unpopular in asking questions that were hard to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm afraid to post this question because it sounds so ... bleh... but having gotten the feedback I've gotten and no way to improve (I tried rewrite -- and the question got marked down by 2!)... bleh...&#xD;&#xA;miserable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I've barely gotten started on this site and already received warnings for not being good enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seems a bit harsh when MANY questions get a 0 rating (most from graphs I saw looking for related topics).   So does every question have to be earth-shaking, and can't some be lower key that get voted up over time if they are good, but just because they aren't, doesn't mean they are bad and the author should be warned?  Seems like a high learning curve and not very welcoming or friendly.... though I'm sure you're all best friends with each other, and none of you have ever been anything less than confident.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am more confident in some things than others, more in tech, less in complex randomly-ruled people things....  *sigh*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's sticking it to myself and posting this (idiot me).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---Followup: the message I got was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait! Some of your past questions have not been well-received, and you're in danger of being blocked from asking any more.**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **For help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; formulating a clear, useful question, see: How do I ask a good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Also, edit your previous questions to improve formatting and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; clarity.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;1) none of my previous questions had a score of &lt; 0 at the time; so because my Q's are popular I'm in danger of being blocked?   That sounds horrible -- a site for &quot;popular questions&quot; ... and if you don't ask popular Q's, you get blocked? Is that what this site is about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking under the 'blocked' link, I see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; users are only banned if they have a significant number of heavily&#xD;&#xA;&gt; down-voted, zero-voted, or deleted posts. One or two bad posts will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not cause you to be blocked from using the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at my stats I see 4 total Q's, 2 had a +1 on the Q and a total of +13 on the rep.  Two had a '0' rating on the Q. This 2nd question  that got moved to meta (for reasons I am unclear on, but don't really have issue with).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So where are the heavily down voted/zero voted/deleted posts?  One or two &quot;bad&quot; posts (posts that are not easily answered by the normal site readers?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, of note, I had just done a first revision on this question because people were answering part of the question that I hadn't meant for there to be focus on.  But that rewrite also resulted in a -1 on the Q, and a claim that it worked fine ... so I tried to make that work and was accused of going off into the weeds....&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of those specifics, are, I feel NOT relevant to this question -- which is if I so easily trigger warnings on questions that weren't horrible, but could be more clear, and even after 2 rewrites, I think people are even less clear about what I was asking... then I was hoping that the same level of &quot;AI&quot; put into the warning system, could be put into the a system that is a bit more specific on what was being done wrong and how to fix it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I.e. just as questions need &quot;specifics&quot;, feedback (plus or minus) needs to be a bit more specific about what is being done wrong.  And maybe some though needs to be given as to how 2 questions out of 4 that don't get a positive rating trigger such a warning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought a bit more hand-holding might be helpful for people making such novice errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19181" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6910" RevisionGUID="7620e0ff-be87-4ed1-a9eb-ffb3b194c183" CreationDate="2014-10-01T09:40:08.220" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/517247581445844992" />
  <row Id="19182" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6909" RevisionGUID="35364c90-bb2e-48ca-b17c-720474533d58" CreationDate="2014-10-01T14:40:35.877" UserId="25936" Comment="trying to focus this to the actual issue at hand - feel free to rollback if you feel my edit is too drastic" Text="I asked a [C++ question][1] and it vectored off into a discussion about the sort, so left it for a while, not sure how to make it better.  Later came back with different example -- was told new example was easy (no example given that answered the question), and asked what my problem was -- was even shown how to get another non-answer of addressing the outermost data struct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I went off to try to test and came back on a browser history page to a question page where I was told I was in danger of being blocked for bad questions. The message I got was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait! Some of your past questions have not been well-received, and you're in danger of being blocked from asking any more.**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **For help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; formulating a clear, useful question, see: How do I ask a good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Also, edit your previous questions to improve formatting and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; clarity.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had a 2nd Q with 0 score and no downvotes at the time, but YIKES!... WTBB!!!  All of a sudden I felt bad and wrong and had no clue what I'd done other than be &quot;unstellar and/or unpopular in asking questions that were hard to answer. I've barely gotten started on this site and already received warnings for not being good enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at my stats I see 4 total questions. 2 had a +1 on the question and a total of +13 rep.  Two had a 0 rating on the Q. So where are the heavily down voted/zero voted/deleted posts? One or two &quot;bad&quot; posts (posts that are not easily answered by the normal site readers?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, of note, I had just done a first revision on this question because people were answering part of the question that I hadn't meant for there to be focus on.  But that rewrite also resulted in a -1 on the Q, and a claim that it worked fine, so I tried to make that work and was accused of going off into the weeds.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I so easily trigger warnings on questions that weren't horrible - and even after 2 rewrites, I think people are even less clear about what I was asking - then I was hoping that the same level of &quot;AI&quot; put into the warning system, could be put into the a system that is a bit more specific on what was being done wrong and how to fix it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought a bit more hand-holding might be helpful for people making such novice errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/256140/how-to-do-vector-ops-on-a-vector-string-item-c" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19183" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6909" RevisionGUID="35364c90-bb2e-48ca-b17c-720474533d58" CreationDate="2014-10-01T14:40:35.877" UserId="25936" Comment="trying to focus this to the actual issue at hand - feel free to rollback if you feel my edit is too drastic" Text="Why did I receive a question quality warning?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19184" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6909" RevisionGUID="35364c90-bb2e-48ca-b17c-720474533d58" CreationDate="2014-10-01T14:40:35.877" UserId="25936" Comment="trying to focus this to the actual issue at hand - feel free to rollback if you feel my edit is too drastic" Text="|discussion|support|quality-filter|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19185" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6911" RevisionGUID="29468893-957d-4d4a-858d-f94bc38209c7" CreationDate="2014-10-01T15:26:22.977" UserId="114829" Text="I would like to ask how people would improve the View and Edit Code by Using Peek Definition of Visual Studio. Or how people use it or a similar question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to explain why I feel this need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think VS is one of the best editors for writing code in .net. But I also think it's not completely mature. I always get lost trying to follow the code from one class to the other. And I think productivity in software development is really low compared to others sectors like the building of an auto (think to the concept of a pipeline). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Modifying a single functionality in code may require to go ahead and back between 5 or 10 files. Which makes people become dumb :-p&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to &quot;exploit&quot; (I don't know a better English word) a so strong community to lead some improvements to the process and the tools we actually use. I know very well that this community has a Q&amp;A style. To me it simply means that I have to cheat the way I express to conciliate my constructive purpose with the limitations imposed by the self-imposed rules of this community. Also I think the rules are here to serve this community, not to limit it. But I have just to accept if the people who administer it doesn't share my point of view.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the ideal solution could be that an interface, DTO and unit test would automatically change as the developer change the implementation. But this is too advanced to be proposed, even for a company like microsoft.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's really easy to propose a new feature to microsoft: https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My final question is: can I simply open the question saying: &quot;how do you avoid to get lost while implementing a changement in the code through many windows in visual studio?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I also appreciate suggestions and critics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/WZeON.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19186" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6911" RevisionGUID="29468893-957d-4d4a-858d-f94bc38209c7" CreationDate="2014-10-01T15:26:22.977" UserId="114829" Text="Is this question possible in this section?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19187" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6911" RevisionGUID="29468893-957d-4d4a-858d-f94bc38209c7" CreationDate="2014-10-01T15:26:22.977" UserId="114829" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19188" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6912" RevisionGUID="2259494b-8dd8-469e-9545-8356baabc656" CreationDate="2014-10-01T15:42:43.027" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="You asked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this question possible in this section?  &#xD;&#xA;I would like to ask how people would improve the View and Edit Code by Using Peek Definition of Visual Studio. Or how people use it or a similar question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the short answer is &quot;No, it's not possible&quot; on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The crux of the question your propose is a poll.  Polls aren't a good fit for the StackExchange Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That doesn't mean your main question is bad.  It just means it doesn't fit here or on SE in general." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19189" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6911" RevisionGUID="ce6a763e-63c6-44a2-a00a-09421adf865f" CreationDate="2014-10-01T15:51:16.210" UserId="114829" Comment="added 150 characters in body" Text="I would like to ask how people would improve the View and Edit Code by Using Peek Definition of Visual Studio. Or how people use it or a similar question. Resharper and the other plugins I tried cannot handle this functionality. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to explain why I feel this need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think VS is one of the best editors for writing code in .net. But I also think it's not completely mature. I always get lost trying to follow the code from one class to the other. And I think productivity in software development is really low compared to others sectors like the building of an auto (think to the concept of a pipeline). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Modifying a single functionality in code may require to go ahead and back between 5 or 10 files. Which makes people become dumb :-p&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to &quot;exploit&quot; (I don't know a better English word) a so strong community to lead some improvements to the process and the tools we actually use. I know very well that this community has a Q&amp;A style. To me it simply means that I have to cheat the way I express to conciliate my constructive purpose with the limitations imposed by the self-imposed rules of this community. Also I think the rules are here to serve this community, not to limit it. But I have just to accept if the people who administer it doesn't share my point of view.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the ideal solution could be that an interface, DTO and unit test would automatically change as the developer change the implementation. But this is too advanced to be proposed, even for a company like microsoft.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's really easy to propose a new feature to microsoft: https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My final question is: can I simply open the question saying: &quot;how do you avoid to get lost while implementing a changement in the code through many windows in visual studio? Resharper and the other plugins I tried cannot handle this functionality. &quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I also appreciate suggestions and critics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/WZeON.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19190" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6912" RevisionGUID="1a5f5255-c1dd-4471-a33b-fb910d186b0e" CreationDate="2014-10-01T15:51:28.287" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="added 954 characters in body" Text="You asked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this question possible in this section?  &#xD;&#xA;I would like to ask how people would improve the View and Edit Code by Using Peek Definition of Visual Studio. Or how people use it or a similar question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the short answer is &quot;No, it's not possible&quot; on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The crux of the question your propose is a poll.  Polls aren't a good fit for the StackExchange Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That doesn't mean your main question is bad.  It just means it doesn't fit here or on SE in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other part of your question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My final question is: can I simply open the question saying: &quot;How do you avoid getting lost while implementing a change in code across many windows in visual studio?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is also going to be off-topic as it is too broad.  A good answer could easily take an entire book to write, and that's outside of the Q&amp;A scope that StackExchange seeks to serve.  Complex refactoring is a big topic as evidenced by [this](http://www.amazon.com/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Michael-Feathers/dp/0131177052/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1412178546&amp;sr=1-6&amp;keywords=refactoring), [this](http://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Improving-Design-Existing-Code/dp/0201485672/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1412178498&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=fowler+refactoring), or [this](http://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Enterprise-Application-Architecture-Martin/dp/0321127420/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1412178498&amp;sr=1-5&amp;keywords=fowler+refactoring).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19195" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6914" RevisionGUID="0d9d8a31-66eb-40bd-94f1-9c8ba94023fc" CreationDate="2014-10-02T14:11:42.353" UserId="35693" Text="On more than one occasion, I edited a question I felt had potential, improving its worst flaws (e.g. lack of clarity). My edit was approved by others and I got two reputation points for the edit. I then asked a moderator if it could re-opened in its improved form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next two things in sequence surprised me. 1) The question was deleted, costing me my two rep points, which I can understand. 2) In compensation, the number of my &quot;helpful flags&quot; was increased by one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What happened? 1) Did my attempt to improve the question &quot;prove&quot; to others that it wasn't salvageable? 2) Did I get a &quot;helpful flag&quot; for (indirectly) pointing this out?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19196" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6914" RevisionGUID="0d9d8a31-66eb-40bd-94f1-9c8ba94023fc" CreationDate="2014-10-02T14:11:42.353" UserId="35693" Text="What happened when a question I edited was deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19197" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6914" RevisionGUID="0d9d8a31-66eb-40bd-94f1-9c8ba94023fc" CreationDate="2014-10-02T14:11:42.353" UserId="35693" Text="|discussion|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19198" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6915" RevisionGUID="cef57c5d-b30d-4033-9273-0825c685f140" CreationDate="2014-10-02T14:51:19.030" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="When a question is edited it shows back up on the recently active questions.  People read it again and it takes time from people.  Deleting a question removes it from view and allows the OP (if he or she should desire) to be able to edit it (you *can* edit deleted posts if you can see them - such as 10k users and the OP can) and flag it for undeletion.  In the meantime, deletion prevents further down votes of the question and can reduce the comment drama that can detract from the rest of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most recently, this happened with the question [Steps for App Development?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/257714/steps-for-app-development) (10k link):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original version:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##App Development minimal knowledge&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to create some mobile and web applications quickly. I am aware of the 'full stack' but I do not know any of its associated technologies. If I were to use 'back-end as a service' what is left for me to do in deploying an app besides simply coding it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The edited version:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Steps for App Development?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to create some mobile and web applications quickly. I am working in 'full stack' environment but I do not know any of its associated technologies. If I were to start there and use 'back-end as a service' what additional steps do I need to take in deploying an app besides simply coding it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the comments on it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/…](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490) –  gnat yesterday&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I made the question &quot;less broad&quot; by asking for &quot;additional steps,&quot; and wonder if it can be re-opened in its current form. –  Tom Au 22 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @TomAu that still doesn't make it not too broad. What technologies are known? What end result is desired? Mobile and web apps are very different. Is this android or iOS or that windows phone thing? Do you even have the right hardware? If we're talking about web apps is this to be on the intranet? or the cloud? There is ***much*** more information that the OP needs to provide to make this an answerable question. –  MichaelT 22 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this question, I can think of dozens of ways to answer it for various combinations of technology.  For ruby, it would be one thing, for a php another, for python another, for the .NET suite another, for Java yet another. And then I'd answer it answer it differently if this was being deployed on the corporate intranet vs putting it out in the intranet... and then there's the mobile bit that is very different from web apps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, the OP doesn't even know where to begin and no amount of tweaking of the question will change it from that unless the OP provides the additional information about the actual problem being encountered and the path they are trying to follow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comment that gnat provided to http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490 exactly details what is wrong with the question and that *all* of those things need to be fixed before it is reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deleting the question prevents people from spending additional, undue time on the question. Questions that don't fix the close reason (and *really* fix it, not just a slight narrowing of scope) don't get reopened.  Transforming it from one close reason to another (for example, unclear to a poll) is also not a useful edit. Consider how the question would be answered and if those answers would be ones that meet the desired quality of Programmers.SE's answers.  If there are too many possible answers or the answers would require pages of tutorials then it is still too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bumping a heavily down voted closed (or on hold) question will draw increased scrutiny of the question which, if it's not a good question, can lead to it getting deleted more rapidly than the roomba would (and in some cases because the roomba won't).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is an edit to be made, fix *all* of the problems and make it into a good question not just a less bad one.  Alternatively, ask clarifying comments for the OP to respond to (and if the OP puts it in the comments, *then* edit those comments into the question)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19199" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6915" RevisionGUID="11d1aacf-a1d4-4a60-8f30-d2bb5cd100f6" CreationDate="2014-10-02T15:12:57.960" UserId="31260" Comment="shows back up += http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/48578/165773 &quot;see 'What can cause my question to be bumped?'&quot;" Text="When a question is edited it [shows back up](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/48578/165773 &quot;see 'What can cause my question to be bumped?'&quot;) on the recently active questions.  People read it again and it takes time from people.  Deleting a question removes it from view and allows the OP (if he or she should desire) to be able to edit it (you *can* edit deleted posts if you can see them - such as 10k users and the OP can) and flag it for undeletion.  In the meantime, deletion prevents further down votes of the question and can reduce the comment drama that can detract from the rest of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most recently, this happened with the question [Steps for App Development?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/257714/steps-for-app-development) (10k link):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original version:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##App Development minimal knowledge&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to create some mobile and web applications quickly. I am aware of the 'full stack' but I do not know any of its associated technologies. If I were to use 'back-end as a service' what is left for me to do in deploying an app besides simply coding it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The edited version:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Steps for App Development?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to create some mobile and web applications quickly. I am working in 'full stack' environment but I do not know any of its associated technologies. If I were to start there and use 'back-end as a service' what additional steps do I need to take in deploying an app besides simply coding it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the comments on it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/…](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490) –  gnat yesterday&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I made the question &quot;less broad&quot; by asking for &quot;additional steps,&quot; and wonder if it can be re-opened in its current form. –  Tom Au 22 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @TomAu that still doesn't make it not too broad. What technologies are known? What end result is desired? Mobile and web apps are very different. Is this android or iOS or that windows phone thing? Do you even have the right hardware? If we're talking about web apps is this to be on the intranet? or the cloud? There is ***much*** more information that the OP needs to provide to make this an answerable question. –  MichaelT 22 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this question, I can think of dozens of ways to answer it for various combinations of technology.  For ruby, it would be one thing, for a php another, for python another, for the .NET suite another, for Java yet another. And then I'd answer it answer it differently if this was being deployed on the corporate intranet vs putting it out in the intranet... and then there's the mobile bit that is very different from web apps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, the OP doesn't even know where to begin and no amount of tweaking of the question will change it from that unless the OP provides the additional information about the actual problem being encountered and the path they are trying to follow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comment that gnat provided to http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490 exactly details what is wrong with the question and that *all* of those things need to be fixed before it is reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deleting the question prevents people from spending additional, undue time on the question. Questions that don't fix the close reason (and *really* fix it, not just a slight narrowing of scope) don't get reopened.  Transforming it from one close reason to another (for example, unclear to a poll) is also not a useful edit. Consider how the question would be answered and if those answers would be ones that meet the desired quality of Programmers.SE's answers.  If there are too many possible answers or the answers would require pages of tutorials then it is still too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bumping a heavily down voted closed (or on hold) question will draw increased scrutiny of the question which, if it's not a good question, can lead to it getting deleted more rapidly than the [roomba](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/177675/165773 &quot;automatic deletion&quot;) would (and in some cases because the roomba won't).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is an edit to be made, fix *all* of the problems and make it into a good question not just a less bad one.  Alternatively, ask clarifying comments for the OP to respond to (and if the OP puts it in the comments, *then* edit those comments into the question)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19200" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6916" RevisionGUID="921b713b-ad8f-498a-b487-fa65e7d1cdba" CreationDate="2014-10-02T15:48:18.297" UserId="94978" Text="By this, I don't mean questions about how to get started as a programmer. Instead, when I want to implement something new, can I ask for advice on how to tackle the problem? For example, do questions that ask for a common approach fit this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19201" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6916" RevisionGUID="921b713b-ad8f-498a-b487-fa65e7d1cdba" CreationDate="2014-10-02T15:48:18.297" UserId="94978" Text="Am I allowed to ask &quot;How to get started&quot; questions here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19202" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6916" RevisionGUID="921b713b-ad8f-498a-b487-fa65e7d1cdba" CreationDate="2014-10-02T15:48:18.297" UserId="94978" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19203" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6917" RevisionGUID="fb9b50f4-c1aa-4c93-8cc1-f097cc5331b6" CreationDate="2014-10-02T16:24:58.147" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Generally, the answer is &quot;**No!**&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How to get started questions are usually too broad and don't have a specific, answerable question. So they tend to be closed quickly and potentially heavily down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, beginner / inexperienced questions are OK if there is a specific problem that's answerable.  For example, say you're trying to learn pointer arithmetic and manipulation.  And you don't understand how a second de-reference operates or you're trying to understand what the reference operators correspond to within the computer's memory.  Those are specific issues within the subject that you're trying to learn and would likely be on-topic for questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19204" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6918" RevisionGUID="3568b38d-548b-4b8d-8d0d-e403112020d2" CreationDate="2014-10-02T20:51:19.517" UserId="51654" Text="I was considering asking a question about [programmer skill not correlating to experience][1] versus HR/job offers pretty much defined by their &quot;years of experience&quot; qualifiers. It may still be too broad or opinion based, but is this question even on-topic since it really applies to HR and hiring rather than programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.codinghorror.com/skill-disparities-in-programming/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19205" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6918" RevisionGUID="3568b38d-548b-4b8d-8d0d-e403112020d2" CreationDate="2014-10-02T20:51:19.517" UserId="51654" Text="Are questions about HR approaches to hiring *specifically* programmers on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19206" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6918" RevisionGUID="3568b38d-548b-4b8d-8d0d-e403112020d2" CreationDate="2014-10-02T20:51:19.517" UserId="51654" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19207" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6919" RevisionGUID="ff92dc9a-f62a-4777-a755-5d4fe7e44dad" CreationDate="2014-10-02T20:55:00.760" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Probably not a good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Likely going to hit one of these in the tri-fecta:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Off-topic: Career advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Too Broad&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Primarily opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And that having been said, the practice is not unique to programming.  Many fields filter by years of experience.  It might be on-topic on The Workplace, but it would be wise to check in their Meta first." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19208" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6920" RevisionGUID="cb47a50b-8864-42f2-aa13-d669f53bdbc6" CreationDate="2014-10-04T00:14:07.930" UserId="122836" Text="If I have a block of code and try to insert it, and press the code button, it indents the 1st line.  and that's it.  It seems that alone is a bug by itself.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the reason it comes up is that one has to reformat each line to turn it into a code line by going in and manually adding 4 spaces in front of each line.  Now, sure, I can compose my code and then force it over by 4 spaces and copy and paste, but for a site focusing on code and programming, the opposite problem&#xD;&#xA;is also present.  If someone wants to copy my code, they have to manually copy/paste and then manually edit it to git rid of the extra spaces to make it compile.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another problem came up when I was inserting code lines interspersed by commentary.  The parser got confused and wouldn't let me post a 1300 line update, claiming that somewhere in the text it thought it saw a code-bit and it didn't think it was formatted properly (despite the fact that the preview looked fine).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The parts that were code were indented and fixed width, but the commentary on each code segment wasn't supposed to be.  It seems there needs to be a way to override the  &quot;It **looks** like you have some code that isn't formatted properly.&quot;  when the fact that something &quot;looks&quot; like something isn't the same as it being something -- yet it called the appearance of misformatting, an error.  I agree: the fact that *it* was confused was an error.  But it's not  a human being and a broken algorithm shouldn't prevent me from posting it if I know, from the preview, that it is being formatted exactly the way I intended it to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These seem rather basic -- I'm surprised others have not run into this before and that hasn't been fixed...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both of these issues make this a bit hostile for discussing code (if such is even a priority).  Can these be fixed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19209" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6920" RevisionGUID="cb47a50b-8864-42f2-aa13-d669f53bdbc6" CreationDate="2014-10-04T00:14:07.930" UserId="122836" Text="can it be made easier to insert code w/o edits to each line?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19210" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6920" RevisionGUID="cb47a50b-8864-42f2-aa13-d669f53bdbc6" CreationDate="2014-10-04T00:14:07.930" UserId="122836" Text="|feature-request|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19211" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6921" RevisionGUID="6d65825d-0171-4588-8267-48a59f128433" CreationDate="2014-10-04T01:13:35.283" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="When you have a block of code, you select the code, and then press the code button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Paste your code:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![raw code][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Select your code:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![selected code][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Press the code button:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![indented code][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And its indented.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Admittedly, the text area here is a poor code editor.  One is often better served by editing the code in another editor for code, and then copying and pasting the code into the spot and selecting the format on the code block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that Programmers.SE isn't the best place to be discussing code, especially ones that would have the system wondering about 1300 line updates.  If you have a question with such a substantial block of code, you should look at reducing the size into the specific parts that you are having design issues with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tI78p.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/r1Mxi.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/IVPoS.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19212" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6922" RevisionGUID="def88cc5-2563-449b-9a97-f2affde3cc88" CreationDate="2014-10-05T18:51:22.673" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Yep, it's a mess.  Some of the questions should probably be closed and/or deleted.  That simplifies retagging them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the domain names I've created the tag [tag:domain-name-system] with a tag wiki for this and moved some questions into it while removing the domain tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other questions had multiple domain tags ([tag:ddd] *and* [tag:domain]) for which the domain tag could be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And its still a mess... I've only retagged a few of them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19213" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6923" RevisionGUID="59998e3d-24a2-4557-9c28-8b8337800a38" CreationDate="2014-10-05T21:19:56.070" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="[tag:domain] is now six separate tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:domain-driven-design]: Covers the design methodology. [tag:ddd] turns into this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:domain-model]: Business domains and the like are covered here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:domain-name-system]: Covers DNS, Domain name service is a common mix-up and turns into this if anyone tries it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:domain-objects]: Covers domain objects in Java and similar.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:domain-specific-languages]: Covers DSLs and related concepts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:sql-domain]: Covers the concept of Domains in SQL.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That should take care of everything. I retagged and merged a bunch of things. Let the mod team know if there are any problems." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19214" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6903" RevisionGUID="f6f98299-b74f-464c-bf82-6ba3908eee92" CreationDate="2014-10-05T21:20:24.097" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|retag-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19215" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6924" RevisionGUID="8f89ac59-8808-4b4f-a874-de3d7c8a470f" CreationDate="2014-10-06T10:53:02.487" UserId="114829" Text="Have a look to the following method:&#xD;&#xA;It's hard to understand what is the Single Responsibility accomplished by this method and the difference with his caller:  GetDetailForEvent.&#xD;&#xA;Who is _client? Does the word new refer to the lack of the event in the cache?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would issue the problem in the total effort by the developer towards business requirements and no effort towards documentation..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would you discourage this kind of code in your team?&#xD;&#xA;Can I open this question or is not constructive?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        private void GetDetailForNewEvent(int @event)&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;            lock (_eventDetails)&#xD;&#xA;            {&#xD;&#xA;                if (!_eventDetails.ContainsKey(@event))&#xD;&#xA;                {&#xD;&#xA;                    _eventDetails[@event] = _client.GetEventDetail(@event);&#xD;&#xA;                    &#xD;&#xA;                    //TODO: what is the following instruction for???&#xD;&#xA;                    _eventDetailsLock[@event] = new object();&#xD;&#xA;                }&#xD;&#xA;            }&#xD;&#xA;        }" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19216" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6924" RevisionGUID="8f89ac59-8808-4b4f-a874-de3d7c8a470f" CreationDate="2014-10-06T10:53:02.487" UserId="114829" Text="Is there a section where to ask for organizing a programmer team?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19217" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6924" RevisionGUID="8f89ac59-8808-4b4f-a874-de3d7c8a470f" CreationDate="2014-10-06T10:53:02.487" UserId="114829" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19218" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6924" RevisionGUID="6239d046-5c65-40f9-94a7-296e891d8a0b" CreationDate="2014-10-06T12:24:22.570" UserId="114829" Comment="deleted 130 characters in body" Text="Have a look to the following method:&#xD;&#xA;It's hard to understand what is the Single Responsibility accomplished by this method and the difference with his caller:  GetDetailForEvent.&#xD;&#xA;Who is _client? Does the word new refer to the lack of the event in the cache?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Would you discourage this kind of code in your team?**&#xD;&#xA;Can I open this question or is not constructive?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        private void GetDetailForNewEvent(int @event)&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;            lock (_eventDetails)&#xD;&#xA;            {&#xD;&#xA;                if (!_eventDetails.ContainsKey(@event))&#xD;&#xA;                {&#xD;&#xA;                    _eventDetails[@event] = _client.GetEventDetail(@event);&#xD;&#xA;                    &#xD;&#xA;                    //TODO: what is the following instruction for???&#xD;&#xA;                    _eventDetailsLock[@event] = new object();&#xD;&#xA;                }&#xD;&#xA;            }&#xD;&#xA;        }" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19219" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6925" RevisionGUID="8d7088b5-6355-4413-af76-eb90952de0c1" CreationDate="2014-10-06T18:01:01.343" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/240467/how-can-i-get-my-question-reopened-as-someone-answered-in-the-comments" />
  <row Id="19220" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6926" RevisionGUID="897bb0f9-3ee9-48ef-ab5d-e047df66ca63" CreationDate="2014-10-03T10:11:55.463" UserId="47" Text="There are three things you can, and should, do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Edit the question. Remove any ambiguity, add extra details, fix the spelling and grammar, etc. Generally improve it. This will add the question to the Reopen Review queue where it will get reviewed and, if you've made sufficient edits, reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Post a request in your site's chat room (in this case [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard)). Make a convincing argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Raise a question on the site's on child meta (in this case [Meta Programmers](http://meta.stackexchange.com)). Make a convincing argument so enough people vote to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19221" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6925" RevisionGUID="51f7f681-47c1-43bf-851e-c04b7ceac27e" CreationDate="2014-10-03T09:34:46.153" UserId="66688" UserDisplayName="Adrien Be" Text="I posted the following question on programmers.stackexchange.com : http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/257286/is-there-any-language-agnostic-specification-for-string-natural-sorting-order&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted it on programmers.stackexchange.com as the description of the website says it is for &quot;conceptual questions&quot; vs SO being for &quot;on the spot answers&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately instead of being positively welcomed it was quickly **closed because &quot;opinion-based&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The good part is that closing a question &quot;only&quot; stops people from posting an **answer**, not to comment on the actually question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**In the end, somebody did find an on-the-spot answer &amp; posted it in the comments**, see the comment from Bart van Ingen Schenau on Sep 29 at 10:35.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I have to say this is not the first time that I get users tag my question as &quot;opinion-based&quot; or &quot;not constructive&quot;. And it really starts to annoy me as I get the feeling that many users tend to do that &quot;only&quot; because they do not know the answer of the question AND on top of that these users would not even advise the person who posted the question on where would be a more appropriate place to put the question, or how the question could be improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, can someone reopen my question so that the answer from Bart van Ingen Schenau can be marked as an answer? sigh...." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19222" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6925" RevisionGUID="51f7f681-47c1-43bf-851e-c04b7ceac27e" CreationDate="2014-10-03T09:34:46.153" UserId="66688" UserDisplayName="Adrien Be" Text="How can I get my question reopened as someone answered in the comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19223" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6925" RevisionGUID="51f7f681-47c1-43bf-851e-c04b7ceac27e" CreationDate="2014-10-03T09:34:46.153" UserId="66688" UserDisplayName="Adrien Be" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19224" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6926" RevisionGUID="3633db06-b477-4d98-8624-ae57ce64297f" CreationDate="2014-10-06T18:01:01.343" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/240467/how-can-i-get-my-question-reopened-as-someone-answered-in-the-comments/240468#240468" />
  <row Id="19225" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6927" RevisionGUID="79b0e024-ab0f-4c9e-ae10-e3af3c310e5a" CreationDate="2014-10-07T09:40:52.030" UserId="114829" Text="I think this is not the right place to ask for an estimation of the time required for the development of a specific website. But I guess techniques for making estimation are on topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And what about asking for suggestion about team management and outsourcing? Would it fit here? Or other section like startup would be better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I actually see IT not only as forever programming, but also future technical managers which have to deal with estimations and team management." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19226" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6927" RevisionGUID="79b0e024-ab0f-4c9e-ae10-e3af3c310e5a" CreationDate="2014-10-07T09:40:52.030" UserId="114829" Text="Outsourcing code development" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19227" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6927" RevisionGUID="79b0e024-ab0f-4c9e-ae10-e3af3c310e5a" CreationDate="2014-10-07T09:40:52.030" UserId="114829" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19228" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6928" RevisionGUID="4a716b47-8316-411a-8879-834b80f2cb63" CreationDate="2014-10-07T09:53:50.487" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/240647/some-of-your-past-questions-have-not-been-well-received-and-youre-in-danger-of" />
  <row Id="19229" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6928" RevisionGUID="38b280a2-274e-4ea0-a77e-e11365ad67ea" CreationDate="2014-10-07T09:51:59.063" UserId="30714" Text="I just notice in my account for programmers.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Some of your past questions have not been well-received, and you're in danger of being blocked from asking any more.[1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here my questions on http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/30714/gibbok?tab=questions, they have all from 2 to 10 up votes, some where bookmarked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reading more on this site I have found this explanation for that warning message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ...heavily down-voted, zero-voted, or deleted posts. One or two bad posts will not cause you to be blocked from using the site...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to ask you if this apply to my account, how could I improve my questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ytAjh.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19230" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6928" RevisionGUID="38b280a2-274e-4ea0-a77e-e11365ad67ea" CreationDate="2014-10-07T09:51:59.063" UserId="30714" Text="Some of your past questions have not been well-received, and you're in danger of being blocked from asking any more" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19231" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6928" RevisionGUID="38b280a2-274e-4ea0-a77e-e11365ad67ea" CreationDate="2014-10-07T09:51:59.063" UserId="30714" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19232" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6928" RevisionGUID="a18c98c5-c0e8-4b13-a2f6-5e54270bed0f" CreationDate="2014-10-07T09:55:05.923" UserId="4767" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body" Text="I just notice in my account for programmers.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Some of your past questions have not been well-received, and you're in danger of being blocked from asking any more.[1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here my questions on http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/30714/gibbok?tab=questions, they have all from 2 to 10 up votes, some where bookmarked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reading more on this site I have found this explanation for that warning message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;...heavily down-voted, zero-voted, or deleted posts. One or two bad posts will not cause you to be blocked from using the site...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to ask you if this apply to my account, how could I improve my questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ytAjh.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19233" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6928" RevisionGUID="d911510b-0526-4cdf-8fff-33300b8ed4f7" CreationDate="2014-10-07T09:55:53.803" UserId="30714" Comment="added 77 characters in body; edited tags" Text="I just notice in my account for programmers.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Some of your past questions have not been well-received, and you're in danger of being blocked from asking any more.[1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here my questions on http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/30714/gibbok?tab=questions, they have all from 2 to 10 up votes, some where bookmarked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reading more on this site I have found this explanation for that warning message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ...heavily down-voted, zero-voted, or deleted posts. One or two bad posts will not cause you to be blocked from using the site...&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to ask more info on why this warning was sent and how could I improve my present questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ytAjh.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19234" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6928" RevisionGUID="d911510b-0526-4cdf-8fff-33300b8ed4f7" CreationDate="2014-10-07T09:55:53.803" UserId="30714" Comment="added 77 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|support|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19235" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6929" RevisionGUID="ef89c797-75f6-4966-8687-3910fec26fff" CreationDate="2014-10-07T09:56:03.520" UserId="4767" Text="You have 8 questions in total on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6 of which are deleted now. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you noted in your quote - deleted posts count towards the warning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please read the [what's on topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) section of the help center to avoid getting a ban." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19236" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6928" RevisionGUID="c95dea82-2f01-41f4-9e45-04b90cdd7e01" CreationDate="2014-10-07T09:56:14.517" UserId="4767" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19237" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6928" RevisionGUID="c95dea82-2f01-41f4-9e45-04b90cdd7e01" CreationDate="2014-10-07T09:56:14.517" UserId="4767" Comment="edited tags" Text="I just notice in my account for programmers.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Some of your past questions have not been well-received, and you're in danger of being blocked from asking any more.[1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here my questions on http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/30714/gibbok?tab=questions, they have all from 2 to 10 up votes, some where bookmarked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reading more on this site I have found this explanation for that warning message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...heavily down-voted, zero-voted, or deleted posts. One or two bad posts will not cause you to be blocked from using the site...&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to ask more info on why this warning was sent and how could I improve my present questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ytAjh.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19238" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6930" RevisionGUID="bf793f27-c0b6-43fa-87ce-15505a9508c8" CreationDate="2014-10-07T10:01:15.350" UserId="114829" Text="I was reading the answer to this question and I find it very useful, agreeable and constructive: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6925/how-can-i-get-my-question-reopened-as-someone-answered-in-the-comments?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ChrisF states very clearly what an **user** of this community **should do**. But it's completely on the user side, there is nothing about what the **moderators** **should do**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course this is given as understood, treated in other places, and moderators here are doing a great work! But since this community is very ambitious, mature and tries to improves itself I would suggest another point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators are working hard, are doing their best, but this is an ambitious, technical community which tries to be constructive and scientific. And **psychology** and sociology have clearly studied the attitude of people to consider their own opinion as true. And not really put it into discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Being aware** of the limitation on our objectivity is an important step for someone who is called to administer &quot;objectively&quot; and supposed to be fair. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So as we find what users should do, I think it's fair to find what moderators should do. And work on their psychology, on their human-physiological bias could be important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you think moderator should make an effort and read these 2 articles?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(making_excuses)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(ps: this discussione may be probably seen as polemical and OT, but - true or not - if this adjective becomes an excuse to avoid taking it into consideration to make a work on ourself, this is a perfect example of rationalization: finding an excuse to justify our behavior, to confirm our ideas, to avoid putting ourself into discussion and putting effort in something which we don't like)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19239" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6930" RevisionGUID="bf793f27-c0b6-43fa-87ce-15505a9508c8" CreationDate="2014-10-07T10:01:15.350" UserId="114829" Text="What moderators should do?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19240" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6930" RevisionGUID="bf793f27-c0b6-43fa-87ce-15505a9508c8" CreationDate="2014-10-07T10:01:15.350" UserId="114829" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19241" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6930" RevisionGUID="37ffe73b-6d2b-44b0-9443-4fc7386b6da1" CreationDate="2014-10-07T10:19:01.233" UserId="47" Comment="spelling" Text="I was reading the answer to this question and I find it very useful, agreeable and constructive: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6925/how-can-i-get-my-question-reopened-as-someone-answered-in-the-comments?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ChrisF states very clearly what an **user** of this community **should do**. But it's completely on the user side, there is nothing about what the **moderators** **should do**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course this is given as understood, treated in other places, and moderators here are doing a great work! But since this community is very ambitious, mature and tries to improves itself I would suggest another point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators are working hard, are doing their best, but this is an ambitious, technical community which tries to be constructive and scientific. And **psychology** and sociology have clearly studied the attitude of people to consider their own opinion as true. And not really put it into discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Being aware** of the limitation on our objectivity is an important step for someone who is called to administer &quot;objectively&quot; and supposed to be fair. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So as we find what users should do, I think it's fair to find what moderators should do. And work on their psychology, on their human-physiological bias could be important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you think moderator should make an effort and read these 2 articles?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(making_excuses)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(ps: this discussion may be probably seen as polemical and OT, but - true or not - if this adjective becomes an excuse to avoid taking it into consideration to make a work on ourself, this is a perfect example of rationalization: finding an excuse to justify our behavior, to confirm our ideas, to avoid putting ourself into discussion and putting effort in something which we don't like)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19242" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6931" RevisionGUID="62307a5f-4f6c-4426-8cd9-701c587dc3a9" CreationDate="2014-10-07T10:23:13.297" UserId="47" Text="Moderators are supposed to be human exception handlers. If there's something on the site that you as a regular user can't deal with - either alone (e.g. by editing) or in conjunction with other users (e.g. voting to close) then *that's* the time to flag it for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's all there is too it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The specific moderator who handles your flag might not handle it to your satisfaction, but we can't please everybody all of the time. If you really think that the moderator got it wrong flag it again or raise the *specific* issue here on meta. Don't forget to address the *issue* (e.g. &quot;this post really is spam&quot;) not the moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see how things like confirmation bias and rationalisation come into it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19243" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6930" RevisionGUID="65a86720-cba1-4bbb-8884-83cd91630f5e" CreationDate="2014-10-07T11:35:46.287" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderators|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19244" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6925" RevisionGUID="3556edcf-a0af-4867-aa7a-b363979b631c" CreationDate="2014-10-07T13:03:56.980" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/519473199869091840" />
  <row Id="19245" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6932" RevisionGUID="98abf827-1f9c-475c-86cb-1aee75da94a0" CreationDate="2014-10-07T14:56:31.487" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/258342/overzealous-question-ban-algorithm" />
  <row Id="19246" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6932" RevisionGUID="5dd2a012-f285-4345-acac-6b862ba2bdce" CreationDate="2014-10-07T14:56:13.203" UserId="29430" Text="I was about to ask my third question here and got the belowmentioned warning. My two questions were not even particularly unsuitable. Was the QB bot acting overzealous, since it was a small sample size and the only &quot;violation&quot; happened a while back?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Wait! Some of your past questions have not been well-received, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you're in danger of being blocked from asking any more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For help formulating a clear, useful question, see: How do I ask a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; good question?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also, edit your previous questions to improve formatting and clarity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19247" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6932" RevisionGUID="5dd2a012-f285-4345-acac-6b862ba2bdce" CreationDate="2014-10-07T14:56:13.203" UserId="29430" Text="Overzealous question ban algorithm?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19248" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6932" RevisionGUID="5dd2a012-f285-4345-acac-6b862ba2bdce" CreationDate="2014-10-07T14:56:13.203" UserId="29430" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19249" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6933" RevisionGUID="f0528065-7b31-4e6c-9eba-65f7f010d7aa" CreationDate="2014-10-07T15:01:46.993" UserId="82479" Text="&gt; My two questions were not even particularly unsuitable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your latest question is a legal question, and therefore unsuitable. Your previous questions also have quality problems (read the comments there for more information). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This leads me to believe that the bot is not acting overzealous, and that the warning it issued was justified. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19250" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6932" RevisionGUID="1fa1960f-4b90-4bcd-a0bf-2c17c992ad7d" CreationDate="2014-10-07T15:10:55.120" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19251" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6934" RevisionGUID="e798bc10-0e57-42c2-b247-5562a3789630" CreationDate="2014-10-07T15:25:59.197" UserId="4" Text="You've asked more than 3 questions here. You have asked a total of [8 questions][1]. Of these 8 questions, a total of 4 have a negative score and 1 has a neutral score. Your overall net score on questions is -3. In addition, 4 questions were closed (including some of the deleted ones) and 2 were migrated. This does indeed warrant the automatic quality messages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/29430/aitchnyu?tab=questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19252" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6935" RevisionGUID="6ba3c8ed-dc66-4e98-9254-0f7313dd03d1" CreationDate="2014-10-08T20:18:33.053" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="[![How to be a Programmer by Robert L. Read][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/SaqX0.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19253" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6935" RevisionGUID="207c8c21-5014-4f8a-b868-d96a2426c9a2" CreationDate="2014-10-08T20:18:33.053" UserDisplayName="user40980" />
  <row Id="19254" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6746" RevisionGUID="dad8a2ff-b303-46af-a00b-837c035b58b3" CreationDate="2014-10-10T20:43:49.857" UserId="31260" Comment="http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/18101243#18101243" Text="Comment [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6735/how-important-is-it-for-new-users-to-be-able-to-ask-question-at-programmers-imme#comment18232_6735 &quot;'yet another step that would push new users away from this site, and as I pointed out here, new users are needed to keep any online community healthy...'&quot;) expressed concern on whether site is attractive for new users. I would like some statistics to learn more about that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per user ids it looks like site has got 5,000 new users this month, I would like to find more about their activity, how many of them are registered, how many asked, answered, commented, suggested an edit, voted etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the purpose of comparison, I would like to also have similar stats on how it was half year ago, one, two and three years ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is how I would want to measure trends in user &quot;stickiness&quot;: by comparing how many of users registered in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 visited site for 5, 10, 30, 100 days. [SEDE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/data-explorer/info) query for this would be a piece of cake if [visited days](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/visited-days) were in schema... but these aren't." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19256" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6937" RevisionGUID="0e04755b-0824-46d4-a6f3-17118c1850e3" CreationDate="2014-10-11T05:37:08.500" UserId="150098" Text="I asked a question about [software design](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/258544/knowledge-of-multiple-languages-a-hindrance-or-an-asset-in-software-design). It is [on topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). I also read the [questions to avoid](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask), which was linked to in the Ask Question page. Now, the question was put on hold as primarily opinion based. I believe this question is helpful to many people. How should this be stated then? Does this question not fall under the exception [Constructive Subjective Questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) near the end? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19257" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6937" RevisionGUID="0e04755b-0824-46d4-a6f3-17118c1850e3" CreationDate="2014-10-11T05:37:08.500" UserId="150098" Text="My question was closed for being opinion based, but I submit that that isn't the case" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19258" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6937" RevisionGUID="0e04755b-0824-46d4-a6f3-17118c1850e3" CreationDate="2014-10-11T05:37:08.500" UserId="150098" Text="|discussion|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19259" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6938" RevisionGUID="aa3510a7-2f4e-4f37-8666-8112b822472e" CreationDate="2014-10-11T17:23:13.450" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Consider the following possible answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't think it's a hinderance. Knowing functional programming helps you understand various aspects of higher order functions that are finding themselves into many traditionally non-functional languages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Having all these ideas spinning around in my head?  Yea, thats a problem.  I can't decide if I should use a map or a fold.  And then when I *do* use these, they get taken out in code review for being overly complex and unnecessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are two fundamentally opposed answers that are equally right. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you end up asking:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Based on your experience, how would knowing multiple programming languages affect a software developer's (or your) ability to design programs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is asking for anecdotes.  The question seems to be looking to foster a discussion and a telling of stories:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Reason for the question (just a background; not part of the question. There is no need to discuss or explain this part unless you want to. I'm merely including this to shed light on why I asked my question above)&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, hidden within this is a career growth question, which *also* tends to foster opinions and anecdotes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm sure many people would be interested to know the answer to this question. Software engineers would like to know if not being limited to one language would improve their design ability, programmers would be thinking ahead, managers would also want to know especially when it's time to choose someone they can trust to come up with a good architecture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bit about discussions comes up - the Q&amp;A part of Stack Exchange is about questions that have answers.  From the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest that you read http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions and http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog (the later of which is particularly important with the passage &quot;In my readings, I came across a proposition saying that good programmers don't make good software engineers because, it was said, good programmers know a programming language (and a framework or technology) very well, and that would make his designs somehow as constrained as his language.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, to summarize:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * There are too many, personal, answers to your questions - the question is seeking discussion or to poll people for opinions and anecdotes.&#xD;&#xA; * The question you are asking *does* fall the bullet points of [what types of questions should I avoid asking](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask):&#xD;&#xA;    * there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA; * Trying to get people to explain other people's opinions is also an opinion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19260" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6840" RevisionGUID="91a3e975-1750-457c-9b93-bbf3a10289ab" CreationDate="2014-10-11T20:24:12.773" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/273228/why-was-my-purge-comments-flag-declined/273235#comment103787_273235" Text="Per my observations, a lot of such posts come here because of misleading comments at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For an example, here are just few recent cases at SO that directly led to users posting very low quality, outright off-topic questions because of comments directing them at Programmers: [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25469779/what-is-the-average-yearly-salary-in-singapore-for-a-candidate-of-3-years-of-wor), [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25366016/how-can-i-socket-programming-to-online-examination-system), [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25276812/any-tools-available-to-help-migrate-legacy-windows-6-1-mobile-app-to-windows-8-1#comment39392956_25276812), [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25090005/how-should-i-browse-a-huge-project-where-to-start#comment39040827_25090005).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [This SEDE query](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/133379/recent-p-se-comments) can help to find more misguiding comments ([hat tip to MichaelT](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/273228/why-was-my-purge-comments-flag-declined/273235#comment103787_273235 &quot;query mentioned here&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice like you suggest will definitely be helpful in stopping at least most reasonable misguided newbies. However, I believe that we need stronger measures in cutting down the issue at its source.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an example, in [first case](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25469779/what-is-the-average-yearly-salary-in-singapore-for-a-candidate-of-3-years-of-wor) I listed, recommendation to post at Programmers was given by a user with 15K SO reputation. If a newcomer gets such a _personal_ advice from such an _authoritative_ user, would this &quot;override&quot; any automatic notice they will see on their way? you bet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The right way to go would be to find and delete as much as possible misleading comments at Stack Overflow. &quot;Finding&quot; part is technically easy, all it needs is tweaking one of [Doorknob's queries](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/180319/165773) and studying its results. We did something like that this Spring when cleaning up &quot;+1 great post&quot; comments at Programmers. Searching for &quot;programmers + belongs&quot; will likely show us the worst offenders, although &quot;programmers + career&quot; and &quot;programmers + recommendations&quot; will likely work well too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deletion part is tricky and requires help from SE developers. A while ago, I &quot;tested&quot; it - I flagged several comments using &quot;Other&quot; flag with verbose messages explaining why these should be deleted. All of my flags went through successfully, however I learned along the way that this way is _terribly_ inefficient. Involving diamond moderators and writing verbose explanatory messages for hundreds, possibly thousands garbage comments like &quot;ask careers at Programmers&quot;? give me a break.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is needed instead is to add &quot;programmers&quot; to the list of [&quot;sensitive&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/121226/165773  &quot;Yeah, you read it right - I want 'programmers' to be treated in comments same way as f-word, no kidding&quot;) words that trigger comment deletion with a single flag. That way would let us cleanup harmful garbage with a single &quot;too chatty&quot; or &quot;not constructive&quot; flag. (Optionally, it would be good to exclude from sensitive heuristics comments that refer famous **[toilet bowl guidance](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73382/165773 &quot;Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl&quot;)** but I don't insist on that.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another issue where help of SE dev team would be much appreciated is &quot;other&quot; [close reason](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/close-reasons/info) messages. You know, I am active close reviewer at SO. I focus strongly only on most terrible questions and totally skip the rest (except for infrequent &quot;known good&quot; audits, to keep more system faith in me). But even in these - I stress - totally, absolutely awful - questions I sometimes see &quot;try your garbage at Programmers&quot;. I don't even dare to think what happens in less awful (but still totally inappropriate) questions at SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The way to stop this would be to block close messages containing word &quot;programmers&quot; - SO close voters willing to &quot;help&quot; askers like that should totally drop that and try &lt;strike&gt;jQuery&lt;/strike&gt; their luck flagging for migration. Hopefully mod declines will teach them something at last." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19261" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6840" RevisionGUID="9b3c9fd5-1474-4351-bff7-3e7bc16abc23" CreationDate="2014-10-11T20:42:13.743" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="Per my observations, a lot of such posts come here because of misleading comments at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For an example, here are just few recent cases at SO that directly led to users posting very low quality, outright off-topic questions because of comments directing them at Programmers: [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25469779/what-is-the-average-yearly-salary-in-singapore-for-a-candidate-of-3-years-of-wor), [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25366016/how-can-i-socket-programming-to-online-examination-system), [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25276812/any-tools-available-to-help-migrate-legacy-windows-6-1-mobile-app-to-windows-8-1#comment39392956_25276812), [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25090005/how-should-i-browse-a-huge-project-where-to-start#comment39040827_25090005).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice like you suggest will definitely be helpful in stopping at least most reasonable misguided newbies. However, I believe that we need stronger measures in cutting down the issue at its source.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an example, in [first case](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25469779/what-is-the-average-yearly-salary-in-singapore-for-a-candidate-of-3-years-of-wor) I listed, recommendation to post at Programmers was given by a user with 15K SO reputation. If a newcomer gets such a _personal_ advice from such an _authoritative_ user, would this &quot;override&quot; any automatic notice they will see on their way? you bet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The right way to go would be to find and delete as much as possible misleading comments at Stack Overflow. &quot;Finding&quot; part is technically easy, all it needs is tweaking one of [Doorknob's queries](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/180319/165773) and studying its results. We did something like that this Spring when cleaning up &quot;+1 great post&quot; comments at Programmers. Searching for &quot;programmers + belongs&quot; will likely show us the worst offenders, although &quot;programmers + career&quot; and &quot;programmers + recommendations&quot; will likely work well too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* For example, [this SEDE query](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/133379/recent-p-se-comments) can help to find more misguiding comments ([hat tip to MichaelT](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/273228/why-was-my-purge-comments-flag-declined/273235#comment103787_273235 &quot;query mentioned here&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deletion part is tricky and requires help from SE developers. A while ago, I &quot;tested&quot; it - I flagged several comments using &quot;Other&quot; flag with verbose messages explaining why these should be deleted. All of my flags went through successfully, however I learned along the way that this way is _terribly_ inefficient. Involving diamond moderators and writing verbose explanatory messages for hundreds, possibly thousands garbage comments like &quot;ask careers at Programmers&quot;? give me a break.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is needed instead is to add &quot;programmers&quot; to the list of [&quot;sensitive&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/121226/165773  &quot;Yeah, you read it right - I want 'programmers' to be treated in comments same way as f-word, no kidding&quot;) words that trigger comment deletion with a single flag. That way would let us cleanup harmful garbage with a single &quot;too chatty&quot; or &quot;not constructive&quot; flag. (Optionally, it would be good to exclude from sensitive heuristics comments that refer famous **[toilet bowl guidance](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73382/165773 &quot;Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl&quot;)** but I don't insist on that.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another issue where help of SE dev team would be much appreciated is &quot;other&quot; [close reason](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/close-reasons/info) messages. You know, I am active close reviewer at SO. I focus strongly only on most terrible questions and totally skip the rest (except for infrequent &quot;known good&quot; audits, to keep more system faith in me). But even in these - I stress - totally, absolutely awful - questions I sometimes see &quot;try your garbage at Programmers&quot;. I don't even dare to think what happens in less awful (but still totally inappropriate) questions at SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The way to stop this would be to block close messages containing word &quot;programmers&quot; - SO close voters willing to &quot;help&quot; askers like that should totally drop that and try &lt;strike&gt;jQuery&lt;/strike&gt; their luck flagging for migration. Hopefully mod declines will teach them something at last." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19262" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6910" RevisionGUID="93ddfc6b-44f7-443e-93fb-4de0e566d842" CreationDate="2014-10-12T12:59:49.783" UserId="31260" Comment="quote background and tooltip for screen shots" Text="Per the MSE question: [faq-sidebar-for-per-site-metas](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/240186/faq-sidebar-for-per-site-metas) this is to request a FAQ sidebar instead of the chat sidebar on Programmers Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So instead of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![MPSE frontpage with chat][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We would have a listing of the questions from [tag:faq] instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it would look kind of like this&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![MSE frontpage with FAQ][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Note that this example is from MSE, not MPSE&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Why?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ should provide more relevant information to Meta visitors than an invitation to chat would provide.  And putting the FAQ questions on the front page would make them a lot easier to find for first time visitors to Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/VHsLdm.png &quot;MPSE frontpage with chat&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/VfMHbm.png &quot;MSE frontpage with FAQ&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19263" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6910" RevisionGUID="93ddfc6b-44f7-443e-93fb-4de0e566d842" CreationDate="2014-10-12T12:59:49.783" UserId="31260" Comment="quote background and tooltip for screen shots" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19264" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6939" RevisionGUID="547f6a2c-9347-4b8b-8b90-de4a9d50b403" CreationDate="2014-10-12T15:06:36.367" UserId="5099" Text="I just performed a review in the reopen queue on a post that appears to have entered the queue due to an edit. So far, nothing unusual.  &#xD;&#xA;The unusual thing is that the edit was mad *over two years ago*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For reference, this is the review in question: https://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/80457&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could anyone explain what happened here? When performing the review, I was convinced that it would be an audit, but it turned out it was a regular review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19265" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6939" RevisionGUID="547f6a2c-9347-4b8b-8b90-de4a9d50b403" CreationDate="2014-10-12T15:06:36.367" UserId="5099" Text="Glitch in the reopen review queue?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19266" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6939" RevisionGUID="547f6a2c-9347-4b8b-8b90-de4a9d50b403" CreationDate="2014-10-12T15:06:36.367" UserId="5099" Text="|discussion|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19267" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6940" RevisionGUID="b10c3408-b70b-4ed4-a86c-078507e1a939" CreationDate="2014-10-13T17:05:05.270" UserId="50242" Text="WRT the topic &quot;[How common are jobs for open source R&amp;D?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/259859/how-common-are-jobs-for-open-source-rd)&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure about why I am asking for clarification." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19268" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6940" RevisionGUID="b10c3408-b70b-4ed4-a86c-078507e1a939" CreationDate="2014-10-13T17:05:05.270" UserId="50242" Text="Clarification on what is career advice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19269" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6940" RevisionGUID="b10c3408-b70b-4ed4-a86c-078507e1a939" CreationDate="2014-10-13T17:05:05.270" UserId="50242" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-contents|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19271" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6941" RevisionGUID="969d7cf2-6793-44d3-bd0f-7d05bbd75a99" CreationDate="2014-10-14T22:22:20.170" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The canonical link from days of old for this is: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice is one of our perpetual problems on programmers.  The essence of the career advice close reason is that any information is *very* particular to the person asking.  In days of old, these would often be closed as &quot;too localized&quot; - either they are asking about too narrow a person (themselves), too narrow a time, or too narrow a locality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question has two issues with it.  The first is that 'too narrow' in time and location.  Questions asking for information about job opportunities is *highly* location and time dependent.  You'd get very different answers when asking for different times or locations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that you tagged this as [tag:job-market] - which a rough look through shows a *lot* of closed questions.  This should have been a warning that this question is problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question about economics and market theory?  That isn't exactly our area of expertise.  It might have been ok on [Economics.SE](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/1618/economics) but that was closed for lack of activity a couple of years ago.  Such a question is... I could see opinion and also the off topic (career advice), or a custom reason.  It really doesn't look for a good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other half of the question that is in the lead in:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would like some statistics if possible, or educated guesses if statistics are not possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for stats is also a difficult area.  The answers that you get to this are either polling type responses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The company I work for had a half dozen open positions for linux kernel engineer a year ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The company I work for doesn't touch open source with a 10' pole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These type of 'spot polling' answers often show up with requests for stats or guesses.  They are poor answers and questions that encourage such answers tend to get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other side of the asking for stats is that it makes the people answering the question into research librarians rather than expert programmers and software architects.  It asks us to use google for you, a crowdsourced search engine.  This doesn't draw upon our expert advice and information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice may not have been the *best* choice for a close reason.  But the question really isn't a good fit for Programmers.SE being a mix of economics, stats request, and a bit of career information too.  Career advice was likely the most convenient choice for the close reason." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19272" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6942" RevisionGUID="a2f215e0-1e05-4069-8872-ef537fe423f8" CreationDate="2014-10-15T09:30:08.633" UserId="17898" Text="Was given a post to review I made myself about 2 weeks ago.&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Was &quot;only a test&quot; but I wonder if that's not something that should be filtered out...&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19273" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6942" RevisionGUID="a2f215e0-1e05-4069-8872-ef537fe423f8" CreationDate="2014-10-15T09:30:08.633" UserId="17898" Text="more brilliancy in the review queues" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19274" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6942" RevisionGUID="a2f215e0-1e05-4069-8872-ef537fe423f8" CreationDate="2014-10-15T09:30:08.633" UserId="17898" Text="|bug|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19275" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6854" RevisionGUID="61bfff28-78da-444f-83b1-e23b701dbbe4" CreationDate="2014-10-15T09:42:34.567" UserId="31260" Comment="clarification copied into post from comments" Text="The quality score on that post is 75 out of a possible 100. The threshold for sending it straight into review is 70. Yeah, that's pretty useless. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're working on a better one, based on some analysis of the available data. It ain't perfect either, but it would've flagged that one right out of the gate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The new system isn't quite ready to go live yet though, so for now, I threw this in:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![DON'T SHOUT][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[Update](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6850/how-effective-is-the-quality-filter-against-this-question-with-all-caps-brief-ti/6854#comment19783_6854)**: check is back on - for titles _and_ bodies of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tvoQU.png &quot;DON'T SHOUT&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19276" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6942" RevisionGUID="5e649deb-080f-4426-bf1d-e8581e398341" CreationDate="2014-10-15T09:59:48.277" UserId="31260" Comment="http://i.stack.imgur.com/6pcEs.png &quot;own post shown as review audit&quot;" Text="Was given a [post to review I made myself](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/80729) about 2 weeks ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Was &quot;only a test&quot; but I wonder if that's not something that should be filtered out...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6pcEs.png &quot;own post shown as review audit&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19277" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6939" RevisionGUID="ae66765c-986c-472d-9c85-6c55108963b1" CreationDate="2014-10-15T18:23:47.890" UserId="31260" Comment="edit wasn't mad, it's the date of the edit that was mad :) // also support tag looks like a better fit" Text="I just performed a review in the reopen queue on a post that appears to have entered the queue due to an edit. So far, nothing unusual.  &#xD;&#xA;The unusual thing is that the edit was made *over two years ago*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For reference, this is the review in question: https://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/80457&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could anyone explain what happened here? When performing the review, I was convinced that it would be an audit, but it turned out it was a regular review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19278" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6939" RevisionGUID="ae66765c-986c-472d-9c85-6c55108963b1" CreationDate="2014-10-15T18:23:47.890" UserId="31260" Comment="edit wasn't mad, it's the date of the edit that was mad :) // also support tag looks like a better fit" Text="|support|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19279" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6939" RevisionGUID="11b1bbc8-2a66-415a-b497-836d8e1a3656" CreationDate="2014-10-15T18:35:07.950" UserId="31260" Comment="changed title to better fit question text" Text="Reopen review queue shows the edit made over two years ago?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19280" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6943" RevisionGUID="7ee43586-ad7e-4909-8cbb-9fa025e0bd97" CreationDate="2014-10-15T21:59:47.010" UserId="119333" Text="I found a misspelled tag on SE:  `polymoprhism`.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It really should be `polymorphism`.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19281" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6943" RevisionGUID="7ee43586-ad7e-4909-8cbb-9fa025e0bd97" CreationDate="2014-10-15T21:59:47.010" UserId="119333" Text="Misspelled tag &quot;polymoprhism&quot; on SE should be merged with existing tag &quot;polymorphism&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19282" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6943" RevisionGUID="7ee43586-ad7e-4909-8cbb-9fa025e0bd97" CreationDate="2014-10-15T21:59:47.010" UserId="119333" Text="|bug|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19283" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6943" RevisionGUID="e9fd152d-3783-429d-9882-7aeab6389cf4" CreationDate="2014-10-15T23:01:20.780" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="tag tag for tags and explain the typo." Text="I found a misspelled tag on SE:  [tag:polymoprhism].    The 'p' and 'h' are incorrectly swapped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It really should be [tag:polymorphism]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19284" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6944" RevisionGUID="6dbd3db2-1e90-4940-91a6-0cc6cbd56067" CreationDate="2014-10-15T23:02:43.823" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There was only one question with the incorrect spelling.  I've fixed that.  The incorrectly spelled tag will now be deleted automatically as part of the 'delete tags with no questions in them' script that runs periodically." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19285" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6943" RevisionGUID="4132c23b-7e4c-448e-89cd-c75e267c0a67" CreationDate="2014-10-15T23:15:05.427" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19286" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6942" RevisionGUID="4f349607-413d-4546-b8b4-920609a232c9" CreationDate="2014-10-16T17:34:01.067" UserId="1204" Comment="edited title" Text="I shouldn't be review audited on my own posts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19287" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6945" RevisionGUID="cc381589-6e64-4cdd-8d74-10dcec6e48f9" CreationDate="2014-10-17T02:56:47.613" UserId="57262" Text="There exists an excellent question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119415/how-to-deliberately-practice-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is marked a duplicate of the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15742/continuous-professional-development-the-best-approach&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the first question about **deliberate practice** differs from the duplicate questions in the following ways:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Deliberate practice is not limited to recent graduates, it applies to all programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Professional development is a broad term that can include: reading programming books, talking to programmers, coding at work. **In contrast deliberate practice is a highly structured activity engaged in with the specific goal of improving performance.** (more &lt;a href=&quot;http://expertenough.com/1423/deliberate-practice&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is best, a new question, unmarking the original question as duplicate?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19288" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6945" RevisionGUID="cc381589-6e64-4cdd-8d74-10dcec6e48f9" CreationDate="2014-10-17T02:56:47.613" UserId="57262" Text="Questions related to &quot;deliberate practice&quot; are all marked duplicate, locked, or closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19289" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6945" RevisionGUID="cc381589-6e64-4cdd-8d74-10dcec6e48f9" CreationDate="2014-10-17T02:56:47.613" UserId="57262" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19290" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6945" RevisionGUID="8e49177a-157c-4454-8f2d-84516cd5376d" CreationDate="2014-10-17T03:21:18.103" UserId="57262" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19291" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6946" RevisionGUID="a2a7d0a7-0740-4515-bcb7-d7b33f156216" CreationDate="2014-10-17T06:52:49.757" UserId="5099" Text="Programming/software engineering are primarily mental activities, because most of the real work takes place in your brain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For primarily mental activities, I don't see a real difference between deliberate practice and studying. This is different for activities with a significant physical side to it, where the deliberate practice helps building muscle memory.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can put together a good argument why deliberate practice for programmers is different from studying and how the answers from the duplicate questions aren't applicable, you are encouraged to make an edit to the question about deliberate practice. If your edit convinces 5 members of the community that the duplicate marking is incorrect, the question will get reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In your edit, focus on why the duplicate *answers* are not applicable. A question can be asked in the context of a recent graduate, but that doesn't mean that the answers are only applicable to recent graduates." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19292" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6945" RevisionGUID="bbcbb881-70b4-4eac-8e26-6329c8ff34d0" CreationDate="2014-10-17T13:13:56.183" UserId="57262" Comment="update" Text="There exists an excellent question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119415/how-to-deliberately-practice-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is marked a duplicate of the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15742/continuous-professional-development-the-best-approach&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the first question about **deliberate practice** differs from the duplicate questions in the following ways:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Deliberate practice is not limited to recent graduates, it applies to all programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Professional development is a broad term that can include: reading programming books, talking to programmers, coding at work. **In contrast deliberate practice is a highly structured activity engaged in with the specific goal of improving performance.** (more &lt;a href=&quot;http://expertenough.com/1423/deliberate-practice&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is best, a new question, unmarking the original question as duplicate?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also like to add that if you follow the duplicate questions, and try to find some question that is still open, every question is a dup of a dup, locked, or closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to add some new answers to the original question about deliberate practice. Those answers would to check out http://exercism.io and ( thanks to @gant ) http://codekata.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the original question is narrow enough to be a valid question, and already has enough distinct answers, that separate it from the dups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not my original question, please advice how to proceed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19293" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6947" RevisionGUID="9ecdcb47-fddc-4362-b2b8-2b7d068e9e66" CreationDate="2014-10-17T15:52:31.010" UserId="149060" Text="I have asked [this question][1] because I wanted to know how and why F. Brooks connected this quotation, from a restaurant: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good cooking takes time. If you are made to wait, it is to serve you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; better, and to please you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;with software engineering. I understand that it has a subjective theme, so tried to reword to better fit programmers.se following the guidelines on [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][2]. However it seems like it didn't work, so I would like to ask for some tips (its better if you could give some examples) about how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260192/why-does-fred-brooks-uses-this-quote-in-the-mythical-man-month?noredirect=1#comment527053_260192&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19294" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6947" RevisionGUID="9ecdcb47-fddc-4362-b2b8-2b7d068e9e66" CreationDate="2014-10-17T15:52:31.010" UserId="149060" Text="How can I reword this question to better fit programmers.se?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19295" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6947" RevisionGUID="9ecdcb47-fddc-4362-b2b8-2b7d068e9e66" CreationDate="2014-10-17T15:52:31.010" UserId="149060" Text="|discussion|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19296" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6948" RevisionGUID="87f3d9bd-abfd-4156-b009-cabbaf510764" CreationDate="2014-10-17T19:34:11.477" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I've seen this glitch a few times with Safari (7.1) on the Mac (10.9.5).  It manifests as either no spacing between text and the link in a comment, or irregular location of the hyphen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![safari][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice the space (lack there of) between 'Thismeta'.  Furthermore, the hyphen that is before the signature and time stamp is between the digit of the time stamp and the units.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Chrome this comment renders as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![chrome][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am certainly willing to chalk this up to a bug in Safari (it did update recently), but if it's not, well, there's a bug report for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comment in question is [this one](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6947/how-can-i-reword-this-question-to-better-fit-programmers-se#comment19808_6947) and if it happens, it appears to *always* happen, though it doesn't happen on all comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/GKpjY.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/JvlKw.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19297" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6948" RevisionGUID="87f3d9bd-abfd-4156-b009-cabbaf510764" CreationDate="2014-10-17T19:34:11.477" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Missing and extra spaces in comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19298" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6948" RevisionGUID="87f3d9bd-abfd-4156-b009-cabbaf510764" CreationDate="2014-10-17T19:34:11.477" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19299" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6949" RevisionGUID="23f99f66-092c-418a-85bf-27ed5c29ecde" CreationDate="2014-10-17T22:09:51.193" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Not all questions are a good fit for the StackExchange format.  That doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad question.  It just means it doesn't fit.  And to answer your broader question, there isn't much (anything?) that can be done to salvage the question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I noted your comment in the main question about deleting it.  The short answer is yes, it should be deleted as it doesn't help the site and it doesn't fit within the site's guidelines.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, because there are up voted answers on your question you don't have the ability to delete the post (as MichaelT also pointed out).  A few high rep users from the community have already cast delete votes and removed it.  You can still access the question if you have a direct link since you're the owner of the post." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19300" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6945" RevisionGUID="51094f9f-d724-40cb-ba16-22c671bf3e59" CreationDate="2014-10-18T00:41:28.940" UserId="57262" Comment="update" Text="There exists an excellent question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119415/how-to-deliberately-practice-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is marked a duplicate of the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15742/continuous-professional-development-the-best-approach&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the first question about **deliberate practice** differs from the duplicate questions in the following ways:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Deliberate practice is not limited to recent graduates, it applies to all programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Professional development is a broad term that can include: reading programming books, talking to programmers, coding at work. **In contrast deliberate practice is a highly structured activity engaged in with the specific goal of improving performance.** (more &lt;a href=&quot;http://expertenough.com/1423/deliberate-practice&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is best, a new question, unmarking the original question as duplicate?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also like to add that if you follow the duplicate questions, and try to find some question that is still open, every question is a dup of a dup, locked, or closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to add some new answers to the original question about deliberate practice. Those answers would to check out http://exercism.io and ( thanks to @gant ) http://codekata.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the original question is narrow enough to be a valid question, and already has enough distinct answers, that separate it from the dups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not my original question, please advice how to proceed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE #2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reading everybody's comments and suggestions I've decided to re-ask this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260289/how-to-deliberately-practice-computer-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please advise." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19301" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6945" RevisionGUID="d5b1830c-a817-446a-9e88-d82a5b3f7bf7" CreationDate="2014-10-18T01:59:06.427" UserId="57262" Comment="spelling" Text="There exists an excellent question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119415/how-to-deliberately-practice-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is marked a duplicate of the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15742/continuous-professional-development-the-best-approach&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the first question about **deliberate practice** differs from the duplicate questions in the following ways:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Deliberate practice is not limited to recent graduates, it applies to all programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Professional development is a broad term that can include: reading programming books, talking to programmers, coding at work. **In contrast deliberate practice is a highly structured activity engaged in with the specific goal of improving performance.** (more &lt;a href=&quot;http://expertenough.com/1423/deliberate-practice&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is best, a new question, unmarking the original question as duplicate?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also like to add that if you follow the duplicate questions, and try to find some question that is still open, every question is a dup of a dup, locked, or closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to add some new answers to the original question about deliberate practice. Those answers would be to check out http://exercism.io and ( thanks to @gant ) http://codekata.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the original question is narrow enough to be a valid question, and already has enough distinct answers, that separate it from the dups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not my original question, please advise on how to proceed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE #2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reading everybody's comments and suggestions I've decided to re-ask this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260289/how-to-deliberately-practice-computer-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please advise." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19302" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6945" RevisionGUID="6e2b0780-1c4f-4191-9027-102a3fa10513" CreationDate="2014-10-18T08:08:22.013" UserId="57262" Comment="update" Text="There exists an excellent question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119415/how-to-deliberately-practice-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is marked a duplicate of the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15742/continuous-professional-development-the-best-approach&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the first question about **deliberate practice** differs from the duplicate questions in the following ways:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Deliberate practice is not limited to recent graduates, it applies to all programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Professional development is a broad term that can include: reading programming books, talking to programmers, coding at work. **In contrast deliberate practice is a highly structured activity engaged in with the specific goal of improving performance.** (more &lt;a href=&quot;http://expertenough.com/1423/deliberate-practice&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is best, a new question, unmarking the original question as duplicate?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also like to add that if you follow the duplicate questions, and try to find some question that is still open, every question is a dup of a dup, locked, or closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to add some new answers to the original question about deliberate practice. Those answers would be to check out http://exercism.io and ( thanks to @gant ) http://codekata.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the original question is narrow enough to be a valid question, and already has enough distinct answers, that separate it from the dups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not my original question, please advise on how to proceed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE #2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reading everybody's comments and suggestions I've decided to re-ask this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260289/how-to-deliberately-practice-computer-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please advise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE #3**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The new question is now &quot;on hold&quot; for the following reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe this question is of value to the broader community of programmers, a summary of the answers so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* write your own implementation of an algorithm&#xD;&#xA;* reading other peoples good&#xD;&#xA;* compete in a programming competition&#xD;&#xA;* solve a problem set&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&quot; – MichaelT, JB King&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the answers so far have not recommended a tool, would changing of wording of this question fix that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19303" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6945" RevisionGUID="424b10f0-848d-44f8-b7aa-883168749465" CreationDate="2014-10-18T08:14:19.173" UserId="57262" Comment="edited body" Text="There exists an excellent question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119415/how-to-deliberately-practice-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is marked a duplicate of the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15742/continuous-professional-development-the-best-approach&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the first question about **deliberate practice** differs from the duplicate questions in the following ways:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Deliberate practice is not limited to recent graduates, it applies to all programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Professional development is a broad term that can include: reading programming books, talking to programmers, coding at work. **In contrast deliberate practice is a highly structured activity engaged in with the specific goal of improving performance.** (more &lt;a href=&quot;http://expertenough.com/1423/deliberate-practice&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is best, a new question, unmarking the original question as duplicate?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also like to add that if you follow the duplicate questions, and try to find some question that is still open, every question is a dup of a dup, locked, or closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to add some new answers to the original question about deliberate practice. Those answers would be to check out http://exercism.io and ( thanks to @gant ) http://codekata.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the original question is narrow enough to be a valid question, and already has enough distinct answers, that separate it from the dups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not my original question, please advise on how to proceed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE #2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reading everybody's comments and suggestions I've decided to re-ask this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260289/how-to-deliberately-practice-computer-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please advise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE #3**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The new question is now &quot;on hold&quot; for the following reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe this question is of value to the broader community of programmers, a summary of the answers so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* write your own implementation of an algorithm&#xD;&#xA;* reading other peoples code&#xD;&#xA;* compete in a programming competition&#xD;&#xA;* solve a problem set&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the answers so far have not recommended a tool. How can I change the wording of this question to meet the requirements?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19304" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6945" RevisionGUID="099c4f88-e6d5-4ac2-8e4f-ce2fec8efee2" CreationDate="2014-10-19T05:41:17.970" UserId="57262" Comment="update" Text="There exists an excellent question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119415/how-to-deliberately-practice-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is marked a duplicate of the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15742/continuous-professional-development-the-best-approach&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the first question about **deliberate practice** differs from the duplicate questions in the following ways:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Deliberate practice is not limited to recent graduates, it applies to all programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Professional development is a broad term that can include: reading programming books, talking to programmers, coding at work. **In contrast deliberate practice is a highly structured activity engaged in with the specific goal of improving performance.** (more &lt;a href=&quot;http://expertenough.com/1423/deliberate-practice&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is best, a new question, unmarking the original question as duplicate?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also like to add that if you follow the duplicate questions, and try to find some question that is still open, every question is a dup of a dup, locked, or closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to add some new answers to the original question about deliberate practice. Those answers would be to check out http://exercism.io and ( thanks to @gant ) http://codekata.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the original question is narrow enough to be a valid question, and already has enough distinct answers, that separate it from the dups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not my original question, please advise on how to proceed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE #2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reading everybody's comments and suggestions I've decided to re-ask this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260289/how-to-deliberately-practice-computer-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please advise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE #3**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The new question is now &quot;on hold&quot; for the following reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe this question is of value to the broader community of programmers, a summary of the answers so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* write your own implementation of an algorithm&#xD;&#xA;* reading other peoples code&#xD;&#xA;* compete in a programming competition&#xD;&#xA;* solve a problem set&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the answers so far have not recommended a tool. How can I change the wording of this question to meet the requirements?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE #4**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've reworded the question to help with the `recommending a tool problem`:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before: What techniques or resources can a computer programmer use to deliberately practice programming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After: What techniques can a computer programmer use to deliberately practice programming?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19305" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6950" RevisionGUID="cd31ed25-5a2d-4575-98db-9c6dde440f9b" CreationDate="2014-10-20T15:32:44.280" UserId="31260" Text="As of now, there are over 140 questions in [tag:job-market] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**All** of these questions are closed, except for [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/61248/31260) which has  [historical lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;). Could we do something to help askers understand the risks associated with this tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Clarification on what is career advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6941/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a rough look through shows a _lot_ of closed questions. This should have been a warning that this question is problematic...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Automatic warnings of 'dangerous' tags](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/242252/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; could we identify the tags beforehand as being problematic ones, and in the event that no tag guidance is provided if the tag has a closure rate above some threshold (50%? 75%?) a canned warning is displayed..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19306" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6950" RevisionGUID="cd31ed25-5a2d-4575-98db-9c6dde440f9b" CreationDate="2014-10-20T15:32:44.280" UserId="31260" Text="Current state of the [job-market]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19307" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6950" RevisionGUID="cd31ed25-5a2d-4575-98db-9c6dde440f9b" CreationDate="2014-10-20T15:32:44.280" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|tags|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19308" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6951" RevisionGUID="9b899284-4dca-4323-81c9-99c7f7513c16" CreationDate="2014-10-20T15:40:55.553" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Do you mean a warning like the one present in [this answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/274634/1345223)? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If so, this was [recently discussed in The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/18195121#18195121) and Shog9 [suggested coming up with a wording](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/18195359#18195359) and it could be implemented.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- SEE! There is more to be discussed on The Whiteboard than just booze and horror stories! --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvXIT.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19309" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6950" RevisionGUID="25afcf9a-c502-4f8a-a4c6-2c439630705b" CreationDate="2014-10-20T15:43:54.480" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="As of now, there are over 87 questions in [tag:job-market] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**All** of these questions are closed, except for [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/61248/31260) which has  [historical lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;). Could we do something to help askers understand the risks associated with this tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Clarification on what is career advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6941/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a rough look through shows a _lot_ of closed questions. This should have been a warning that this question is problematic...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Automatic warnings of 'dangerous' tags](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/242252/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; could we identify the tags beforehand as being problematic ones, and in the event that no tag guidance is provided if the tag has a closure rate above some threshold (50%? 75%?) a canned warning is displayed..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19310" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6952" RevisionGUID="10370b5d-94e5-41f5-9a37-db7937620fc7" CreationDate="2014-10-20T17:40:49.413" UserId="58553" Text="I have seen for a long time Questions like Tools advice and career advice are being given -ve marks and called off-topic, but these questions are always in developers' mind and can't go away. So I advise you or the admin, who can do this, create a Career Advice website like other web sites under StackExchange.com. &#xD;&#xA;I hope other developers and designers will have similar views. Feel free to comment or give -ve marks, I am waiting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But still believe StackExchange.com is one of the best site which helps people of different disciplines. Now Careers and others advice should also be treated seriously and such questions should be allowed where people can communicate their views. I hope you understand what I mean." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19311" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6952" RevisionGUID="10370b5d-94e5-41f5-9a37-db7937620fc7" CreationDate="2014-10-20T17:40:49.413" UserId="58553" Text="Advise on Creating a Career Advice site for Developers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19312" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6952" RevisionGUID="10370b5d-94e5-41f5-9a37-db7937620fc7" CreationDate="2014-10-20T17:40:49.413" UserId="58553" Text="|discussion|career|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19313" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6953" RevisionGUID="d37072bb-c3bd-499e-a707-f68afb371fca" CreationDate="2014-10-21T07:20:43.317" UserId="31260" Text="As explained in [another answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6951/31260), tag specific [popup](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvXIT.png &quot;like this&quot;) can be used to guide askers and editors willing to use it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an [example](http://meta.anime.stackexchange.com/questions/1083/improve-question-quality-by-informing-users-of-reverse-image-search-sites) of tag popup request. Process to create such a popup is described [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/242252/automatic-warnings-of-dangerous-tags/242355#comment792260_242355):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Post a [feature-request] for each tag, with specific guidance (ideally linking to a meta post if non-trivial so I don't have to edit these all the time) and justification for needing something more than the tag excerpt. Let folks discuss it, then ping me ([Community Manager]) if there's support... This is really something that should be discussed within each community, as these might become annoying if over-used (ideally you don't want multiple tags on a single question to produce warnings) and the guidance should reflect the lessons learned from handling these questions.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggest to create popup for this and other particularly troublesome career related tags: [tag:job-market], [tag:resume], [tag:career-transition], [tag:career-development].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag popup content is derived from [career-development tag wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/career-development/info):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** Career advice is off-topic per [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  Please note that most career advice questions run the risk of being closed for being too broad or impractical: try to make yours a [good subjective question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they invite the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;* Please also make sure your question has the proper scope. If your question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really something that uniquely applies to software development and isn't on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;* _Before_ asking, make sure to check this meta guidance: [Why was my question closed or down voted? -&gt; Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;This post is made community wiki in order to simplify editing.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19314" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6953" RevisionGUID="d06a957f-2021-4332-abe3-362127dd2dd6" CreationDate="2014-10-21T07:20:43.317" UserId="31260" />
  <row Id="19315" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6953" RevisionGUID="8b5d89af-3d2d-4122-a195-4e7b4d7617c9" CreationDate="2014-10-21T08:47:30.257" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="As explained in [another answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6951/31260), tag specific [popup](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvXIT.png &quot;like this&quot;) can be used to guide askers and editors willing to use it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an [example](http://meta.anime.stackexchange.com/questions/1083/improve-question-quality-by-informing-users-of-reverse-image-search-sites) of tag popup request. Process to create such a popup is described [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/242252/automatic-warnings-of-dangerous-tags/242355#comment792260_242355):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Post a [feature-request] for each tag, with specific guidance (ideally linking to a meta post if non-trivial so I don't have to edit these all the time) and justification for needing something more than the tag excerpt. Let folks discuss it, then ping me ([Community Manager]) if there's support... This is really something that should be discussed within each community, as these might become annoying if over-used (ideally you don't want multiple tags on a single question to produce warnings) and the guidance should reflect the lessons learned from handling these questions.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Suggest to create popup for this and other particularly troublesome career related tags:  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market], [tag:resume], [tag:career-transition], [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag popup content is derived from [career-development tag wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/career-development/info):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** Career advice is off-topic per [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  Please note that most career advice questions run the risk of being closed for being too broad or impractical: try to make yours a [good subjective question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they invite the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;* Please also make sure your question has the proper scope. If your question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really something that uniquely applies to software development and isn't on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;* _Before_ asking, make sure to check this meta guidance: [Why was my question closed or down voted? -&gt; Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;This post is made community wiki in order to simplify editing.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19319" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6950" RevisionGUID="0393eca6-512a-4bff-8a73-c7ce8db5f718" CreationDate="2014-10-21T13:28:56.793" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/524552921728692225" />
  <row Id="19320" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6955" RevisionGUID="630d0334-1f16-43e9-b44b-4292fa7dfcdb" CreationDate="2014-10-21T14:32:21.313" UserId="114829" Text="The prices of software space a lot: from 1€ on markets like Google Play to 35$ of software like DisplayFusion, RegexBuddy, PowerGrep, Evernote going to some hundreds of euro (Resharper, Ndepend) and arriving to some thousand of euro (Toad, Visual Studio Ultimate).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In economy we study that it's not only a matter of costs of research and production. The pricing of products can be regulated by the Marshallian and Walrasian model of pricing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However my knowledge of economy are very limited and I wonder if it could be a winning choice for small companies like the one which sell DisplayFusion, RegexBuddy and so on to sell their products for very cheap prices. Especially to private customers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19321" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6955" RevisionGUID="630d0334-1f16-43e9-b44b-4292fa7dfcdb" CreationDate="2014-10-21T14:32:21.313" UserId="114829" Text="In which section can I put this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19322" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6955" RevisionGUID="630d0334-1f16-43e9-b44b-4292fa7dfcdb" CreationDate="2014-10-21T14:32:21.313" UserId="114829" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19323" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6953" RevisionGUID="43381927-a916-4026-98d2-baa62bec88dd" CreationDate="2014-10-21T14:50:39.323" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="grammar; tweaked phrasing" Text="As explained in [another answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6951/31260), tag specific [popup](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvXIT.png &quot;like this&quot;) can be used to guide askers and editors willing to use it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an [example](http://meta.anime.stackexchange.com/questions/1083/improve-question-quality-by-informing-users-of-reverse-image-search-sites) of tag popup request. Process to create such a popup is described [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/242252/automatic-warnings-of-dangerous-tags/242355#comment792260_242355):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Post a [feature-request] for each tag, with specific guidance (ideally linking to a meta post if non-trivial so I don't have to edit these all the time) and justification for needing something more than the tag excerpt. Let folks discuss it, then ping me ([Community Manager]) if there's support... This is really something that should be discussed within each community, as these might become annoying if over-used (ideally you don't want multiple tags on a single question to produce warnings) and the guidance should reflect the lessons learned from handling these questions.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Suggestion to create a popup for this tag ([tag:job-market]) and other particularly troublesome career related tags:  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market], [tag:resume], [tag:career-transition], [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag popup content is derived from [career-development tag wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/career-development/info):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** Career advice is off-topic per the [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  Please note that most career advice questions end up being closed for being too broad or impractical; try to make yours a [good subjective question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they require the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;* Please make sure your question has the proper scope.  It needs to apply to other programmers besides yourself.  &#xD;&#xA;* If your question can also be applied to other job fields, then it does not uniquely apply to software development and is not on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;* _Before_ asking, review this meta guidance: [Why was my question closed or down voted? -&gt; Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488).  Make sure your question avoids the problems listed in the guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;This post is made community wiki in order to simplify editing.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19324" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6956" RevisionGUID="19261ad6-1957-4863-a27a-6d581437a797" CreationDate="2014-10-22T14:54:41.760" UserId="6591" Text="Programmers *used* to be the career advice site. However, the goals changed and now career advice questions get marked off topic and closed. [Workplace][1] is the replacement as far as I can tell. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19325" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6956" RevisionGUID="ab9a4586-6b28-46c6-931e-8fef5464212d" CreationDate="2014-10-22T15:43:13.873" UserId="31260" Comment="http://workplace.stackexchange.com += help/on-topic" Text="Programmers *used* to be the career advice site. However, the goals changed and now career advice questions get marked off topic and closed. [Workplace][1] is the replacement as far as I can tell. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19326" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6957" RevisionGUID="aaafca04-7353-4863-9f76-e7bf09d5c8c4" CreationDate="2014-10-23T08:52:03.780" UserId="31260" Text="[Search shows](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=is%3Aanswer+hasnotice%3A1 &quot;is:answer hasnotice:1&quot;) several answers with old mod [notices](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), could these be [reconciled](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconciliation_%28accounting%29)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At first I thought to flag them but there seems to be too many and some are not quite clear cut so I decided to ask at meta instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Notice appears ignored:&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/194589&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/151524&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/171241&#xD;&#xA;  * (\*) http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/201190  &#xD;&#xA;  * (\*) http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/155059  &#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177532&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/202497&#xD;&#xA;  * (\*) http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/172957  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. There was an edit but I can't tell if the issue is addressed indeed:&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/167776&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/185954&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/173248&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Notice appears to be obsoleted by answer edits:&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/175249&#xD;&#xA;  * (\*) http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148870  &#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/167393&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/159829&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/228080&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/198499&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In list above, (\*) denotes cases where not only answer but also question itself looks troublesome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am particularly concerned about answers in first and last groups. First makes site visitors think that it's okay to ignore mod notice, last makes them think that moderators ignore attempts to improve." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19327" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6957" RevisionGUID="aaafca04-7353-4863-9f76-e7bf09d5c8c4" CreationDate="2014-10-23T08:52:03.780" UserId="31260" Text="Reconciling answers with old mod notices" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19328" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6957" RevisionGUID="aaafca04-7353-4863-9f76-e7bf09d5c8c4" CreationDate="2014-10-23T08:52:03.780" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|answer-quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19329" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6958" RevisionGUID="409d94b3-97d5-4db5-90c1-638d96d5ea3a" CreationDate="2014-10-23T11:38:09.447" UserId="25476" Text="I know that in my early mod days I liked to give people a chance to improve or expand on their one line answers and sometimes some of them would slip through the cracks.  I stopped doing this because I literally couldn't keep track of the tsunami deluge of low quality answers anymore.  The second reason I stopped doing this for the most part is because optimistically 2% of people cared to actually expand or fix their answers.  Half of those people ended up just plagiarizing something anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should clean these up and by clean up I mean delete the answers that encouraged the mod notice to begin with.  I would say they had fair warning in most cases." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19330" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6958" RevisionGUID="51b9197e-379a-42c6-8a0a-6f82f0bbefb4" CreationDate="2014-10-23T11:50:15.057" UserId="25476" Comment="added 1256 characters in body" Text="I know that in my early mod days I liked to give people a chance to improve or expand on their one line answers and sometimes some of them would slip through the cracks.  I stopped doing this because I literally couldn't keep track of the tsunami deluge of low quality answers anymore.  The second reason I stopped doing this for the most part is because optimistically 2% of people cared to actually expand or fix their answers.  Half of those people ended up just plagiarizing something anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should clean these up and by clean up I mean delete the answers that encouraged the mod notice to begin with.  I would say they had fair warning in most cases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following answers have had comment cleanup and post notice removal.  Anything else was deleted or converted to comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/175034/git-workflow-for-small-teams/175249&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173238/where-is-it-permissible-to-add-logging-code-in-a-mvc-model/173248&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/185923/how-can-i-deal-with-a-team-member-who-dislikes-making-comments-in-code/185954&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148861/fastest-way-to-open-a-file-in-visual-studio-knowing-only-its-name/148870&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47806/examples-of-finite-state-machines/167393&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158311/easiest-way-for-push-notifications/159829&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/199708/is-there-a-compliance-test-for-c-compilers/228080&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188289/ios-app-signing-and-certificates/198499&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**NOTE:** Please give a second look to this answer.  I am not entirely sure this is even answering the question that was asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/199708/is-there-a-compliance-test-for-c-compilers/228080" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19331" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6948" RevisionGUID="f1c7e2ed-7c93-4d43-93af-d2c158c2c412" CreationDate="2014-10-23T20:48:10.850" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 609 characters in body" Text="I've seen this glitch a few times with Safari (7.1) on the Mac (10.9.5).  It manifests as either no spacing between text and the link in a comment, or irregular location of the hyphen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![safari][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice the space (lack there of) between 'Thismeta'.  Furthermore, the hyphen that is before the signature and time stamp is between the digit of the time stamp and the units.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Chrome this comment renders as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![chrome][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am certainly willing to chalk this up to a bug in Safari (it did update recently), but if it's not, well, there's a bug report for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comment in question is [this one](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6947/how-can-i-reword-this-question-to-better-fit-programmers-se#comment19808_6947) and if it happens, it appears to *always* happen, though it doesn't happen on all comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As this has become more interesting of a problem, I pulled up a laptop I haven't touched in a month and a half (Safari 7.0.5) to look at the comment, and it displays the same problem ([img](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9wGri.png)).  Therefore, the update mentioned previously was *not* the cause of the issue.  It could still be a bug with Safari, however, it is one that was introduced at least some time ago and hasn't been tickled through the CSS until recently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also shows up in iOS 6 safari browser (again, not updated in some time).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tends to point to a change in CSS that is exposing the bug (which might need to be worked around).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Associated MSO post: [“missing space” bug in comments. (on OSX)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/275151/missing-space-bug-in-comments-on-osx)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/GKpjY.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/JvlKw.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19332" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6959" RevisionGUID="6dc52576-b302-485b-8762-7da05db56aba" CreationDate="2014-10-23T22:55:49.670" UserId="83297" Text="A [question I asked][1] was put on hold. I have edited and instead am asking for guidance on how I can build a SAAS app. Does this question have scope to be taken off hold and attract some answers ? Or should I just re-ask the edited question ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260693/guidelines-for-developing-saas-applications-in-java" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19333" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6959" RevisionGUID="6dc52576-b302-485b-8762-7da05db56aba" CreationDate="2014-10-23T22:55:49.670" UserId="83297" Text="Can questions put on hold be taken off hold" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19334" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6959" RevisionGUID="6dc52576-b302-485b-8762-7da05db56aba" CreationDate="2014-10-23T22:55:49.670" UserId="83297" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19335" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6960" RevisionGUID="db5b6f09-0cb5-4485-a1b7-9351a0e0456d" CreationDate="2014-10-24T09:01:50.237" UserId="25476" Text="I do not believe it should be reopened because now it is far to broad of a topic to get a good answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Expand on each of these sub-questions you have and ask them separately and you might have better success." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19336" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6961" RevisionGUID="ea0083e2-6b09-4c1c-ad2e-81d95bfae9d2" CreationDate="2014-10-26T00:29:01.840" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I've been accused of having questions that are too green fieldy and not white boardy enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does this mean and why do those questions get closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19337" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6961" RevisionGUID="ea0083e2-6b09-4c1c-ad2e-81d95bfae9d2" CreationDate="2014-10-26T00:29:01.840" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Green fields, and the white board - what is too broad?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19338" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6961" RevisionGUID="ea0083e2-6b09-4c1c-ad2e-81d95bfae9d2" CreationDate="2014-10-26T00:29:01.840" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19339" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6962" RevisionGUID="82c79d78-2d16-47fa-b2cc-f7616661adf7" CreationDate="2014-10-26T00:29:01.840" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="A [greenfield project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_project) is one without restrictions.  In the contest of a question on Programmers.SE, a greenfield question is one along the lines of &quot;How do I write this?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything about &quot;how do I write this?&quot; it is on the table - no design has been thought of, no problems have been encountered.  In effect, the question is asking the community to design the entire system.  This is similarly problematic as asking someone to write all the code for a set of requirements on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest problem with such a question is it is very broad.  One could design the system at a high level and another person could do the same solution from a low level.  Alternatively, there can be *many* designs for the same system.  This leads to the question being very broad and in danger of being closed for such a reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With a design question, it is expected that the person asking the question has taken some time to sketch out the design that they have come up with and identify the problem they are encountering with the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is a difficulty even getting started, as described in [where to start?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6366/40980) one should sit down and spend some time coming up with a design that is something that they are capable of coding to.  That last point should not be overlooked - it is quite possible for an [architecture astronaut](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html) to come up with a design from scratch that is impossible for anyone to code to or implement with any hope of getting it right (&quot;its an n-tier design that makes use of MVVC that is controlled by a dispatcher that has been configured with dependency injection and....&quot; -- just say 'no').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are interested in hiring an architect that has this experience and can make such decisions for you on where to start, that is indeed a path to look down - but asking the community to be the architect is irresponsible and ultimately unmaintainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, sit down and [sketch out](http://asciiflow.com) the design that you have and what problems you are encountering when thinking through the design.  Draw something up on the white board, draw a circle around it and say &quot;I don't know how to get this piece and that piece to talk together correctly - I thought of using a message queue, but that has some problems in our architecture because...&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19340" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6962" RevisionGUID="1d027de0-ab0a-4b30-982c-a8773f9f2c7c" CreationDate="2014-10-26T03:21:09.013" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 314 characters in body" Text="A [greenfield project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_project) is one without restrictions.  In the contest of a question on Programmers.SE, a greenfield question is one along the lines of &quot;How do I write this?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything about &quot;how do I write this?&quot; it is on the table - no design has been thought of, no problems have been encountered.  In effect, the question is asking the community to design the entire system.  This is similarly problematic as asking someone to write all the code for a set of requirements on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest problem with such a question is it is very broad.  One could design the system at a high level and another person could do the same solution from a low level.  Alternatively, there can be *many* designs for the same system.  This leads to the question being very broad and in danger of being closed for such a reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With a design question, it is expected that the person asking the question has taken some time to sketch out the design that they have come up with and identify the problem they are encountering with the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is a difficulty even getting started, as described in [where to start?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6366/40980) one should sit down and spend some time coming up with a design that is something that they are capable of coding to.  That last point should not be overlooked - it is quite possible for an [architecture astronaut](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html) to come up with a design from scratch that is impossible for anyone to code to or implement with any hope of getting it right (&quot;its an n-tier design that makes use of MVVC that is controlled by a dispatcher that has been configured with dependency injection and....&quot; -- just say 'no').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are interested in hiring an architect that has this experience and can make such decisions for you on where to start, that is indeed a path to look down - but asking the community to be the architect is irresponsible and ultimately unmaintainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, sit down and [sketch out](http://asciiflow.com) the design that you have and what problems you are encountering when thinking through the design.  Draw something up on the white board, draw a circle around it and say &quot;I don't know how to get this piece and that piece to talk together correctly - I thought of using a message queue, but that has some problems in our architecture because...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned in another post ([10k link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260209/an-algorithm-based-content-ranking-crawler)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This isn't so much &quot;white-boardy&quot; as it is &quot;blue-sky-y&quot;. There are entire careers built on trying to solve this problem - you're gonna have to narrow it down a bit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19341" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6962" RevisionGUID="eaaa389e-9e87-40d4-91ae-fb48e1348fe8" CreationDate="2014-10-26T05:30:41.337" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo corrected" Text="A [greenfield project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_project) is one without restrictions.  In the context of a question on Programmers.SE, a greenfield question is one along the lines of &quot;How do I write this?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything about &quot;how do I write this?&quot; it is on the table - no design has been thought of, no problems have been encountered.  In effect, the question is asking the community to design the entire system.  This is similarly problematic as asking someone to write all the code for a set of requirements on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest problem with such a question is it is very broad.  One could design the system at a high level and another person could do the same solution from a low level.  Alternatively, there can be *many* designs for the same system.  This leads to the question being very broad and in danger of being closed for such a reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With a design question, it is expected that the person asking the question has taken some time to sketch out the design that they have come up with and identify the problem they are encountering with the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is a difficulty even getting started, as described in [where to start?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6366/40980) one should sit down and spend some time coming up with a design that is something that they are capable of coding to.  That last point should not be overlooked - it is quite possible for an [architecture astronaut](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html) to come up with a design from scratch that is impossible for anyone to code to or implement with any hope of getting it right (&quot;its an n-tier design that makes use of MVVC that is controlled by a dispatcher that has been configured with dependency injection and....&quot; -- just say 'no').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are interested in hiring an architect that has this experience and can make such decisions for you on where to start, that is indeed a path to look down - but asking the community to be the architect is irresponsible and ultimately unmaintainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, sit down and [sketch out](http://asciiflow.com) the design that you have and what problems you are encountering when thinking through the design.  Draw something up on the white board, draw a circle around it and say &quot;I don't know how to get this piece and that piece to talk together correctly - I thought of using a message queue, but that has some problems in our architecture because...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned in another post ([10k link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260209/an-algorithm-based-content-ranking-crawler)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This isn't so much &quot;white-boardy&quot; as it is &quot;blue-sky-y&quot;. There are entire careers built on trying to solve this problem - you're gonna have to narrow it down a bit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19342" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6962" RevisionGUID="628ba297-17f6-4665-b38d-256ad0537681" CreationDate="2014-10-26T06:34:43.917" UserId="31260" Comment="very broad += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490" Text="A [greenfield project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_project) is one without restrictions.  In the context of a question on Programmers.SE, a greenfield question is one along the lines of &quot;How do I write this?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything about &quot;how do I write this?&quot; it is on the table - no design has been thought of, no problems have been encountered.  In effect, the question is asking the community to design the entire system.  This is similarly problematic as asking someone to write all the code for a set of requirements on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest problem with such a question is it is very broad.  One could design the system at a high level and another person could do the same solution from a low level.  Alternatively, there can be *many* designs for the same system.  This leads to the question being [very broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490) and in danger of being closed for such a reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With a design question, it is expected that the person asking the question has taken some time to sketch out the design that they have come up with and identify the problem they are encountering with the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is a difficulty even getting started, as described in [where to start?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6366/40980) one should sit down and spend some time coming up with a design that is something that they are capable of coding to.  That last point should not be overlooked - it is quite possible for an [architecture astronaut](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html) to come up with a design from scratch that is impossible for anyone to code to or implement with any hope of getting it right (&quot;its an n-tier design that makes use of MVVC that is controlled by a dispatcher that has been configured with dependency injection and....&quot; -- just say 'no').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are interested in hiring an architect that has this experience and can make such decisions for you on where to start, that is indeed a path to look down - but asking the community to be the architect is irresponsible and ultimately unmaintainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, sit down and [sketch out](http://asciiflow.com) the design that you have and what problems you are encountering when thinking through the design.  Draw something up on the white board, draw a circle around it and say &quot;I don't know how to get this piece and that piece to talk together correctly - I thought of using a message queue, but that has some problems in our architecture because...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned in another post ([10k link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260209/an-algorithm-based-content-ranking-crawler)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This isn't so much &quot;white-boardy&quot; as it is &quot;blue-sky-y&quot;. There are entire careers built on trying to solve this problem - you're gonna have to narrow it down a bit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19343" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6950" RevisionGUID="6c0ecd7d-c240-4d6a-8c42-00f657079cb3" CreationDate="2014-10-26T17:46:08.707" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|tags|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19344" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6961" RevisionGUID="ed8f5502-d336-4172-bccd-9fd163e44a43" CreationDate="2014-10-26T17:57:08.317" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Blue sky in addition to. " Text="I've been accused of having questions that are too blue sky-y or green fieldy and not white boardy enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does this mean and why do those questions get closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19345" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6961" RevisionGUID="ed8f5502-d336-4172-bccd-9fd163e44a43" CreationDate="2014-10-26T17:57:08.317" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Blue sky in addition to. " Text="Green fields, blue skys, and the white board - what is too broad?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19346" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6962" RevisionGUID="dceef777-95a1-471e-b480-85e0664a30ce" CreationDate="2014-10-26T17:59:07.587" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 252 characters in body" Text="A [greenfield project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_project) is one without restrictions on prior systems or protocols.  Blue sky projects are ones that are completely wide open (&quot;develop a knowledge base.&quot;).  In the context of a question on Programmers.SE, a greenfield or blue sky question is one along the lines of &quot;How do I write this?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything about &quot;how do I write this?&quot; it is on the table - no design has been thought of, no problems have been encountered.  In effect, the question is asking the community to design the entire system.  This is similarly problematic as asking someone to write all the code for a set of requirements on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest problem with such a question is it is very broad.  One could design the system at a high level and another person could do the same solution from a low level.  Alternatively, there can be *many* designs for the same system.  This leads to the question being [very broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490) and in danger of being closed for such a reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With a design question, it is expected that the person asking the question has taken some time to sketch out the design that they have come up with and identify the problem they are encountering with the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is a difficulty even getting started, as described in [where to start?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6366/40980) one should sit down and spend some time coming up with a design that is something that they are capable of coding to.  That last point should not be overlooked - it is quite possible for an [architecture astronaut](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html) to come up with a design from scratch that is impossible for anyone to code to or implement with any hope of getting it right (&quot;its an n-tier design that makes use of MVVC that is controlled by a dispatcher that has been configured with dependency injection and....&quot; -- just say 'no').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are interested in hiring an architect that has this experience and can make such decisions for you on where to start, that is indeed a path to look down - but asking the community to be the architect is irresponsible and ultimately unmaintainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, sit down and [sketch out](http://asciiflow.com) the design that you have and what problems you are encountering when thinking through the design.  Draw something up on the white board, draw a circle around it and say &quot;I don't know how to get this piece and that piece to talk together correctly - I thought of using a message queue, but that has some problems in our architecture because...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned in another post ([10k link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260209/an-algorithm-based-content-ranking-crawler)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This isn't so much &quot;white-boardy&quot; as it is &quot;blue-sky-y&quot;. There are entire careers built on trying to solve this problem - you're gonna have to narrow it down a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key to writing a good question is to properly scope the question so that it is one that addresses a problem in the design, rather than completely wide open with its options." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19347" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6962" RevisionGUID="380463a6-692b-4a4c-aee8-0170ae5a4862" CreationDate="2014-10-26T19:12:59.557" UserId="31260" Comment="http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/18327213#18327213" Text="A [greenfield project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_project) is one without restrictions on prior systems or protocols.  Blue sky projects are ones that are completely wide open (&quot;develop a knowledge base.&quot;).  In the context of a question on Programmers.SE, a greenfield or blue sky question is one along the lines of &quot;How do I write this?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything about &quot;how do I write this?&quot; it is on the table - no design has been thought of, no problems have been encountered.  In effect, the question is asking the community to design the entire system.  This is similarly problematic as asking someone to write all the code for a set of requirements on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest problem with such a question is it is very broad.  One could design the system at a high level and another person could do the same solution from a low level.  Alternatively, there can be *many* designs for the same system.  This leads to the question being [very broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490) and in danger of being closed for such a reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With a design question, it is expected that the person asking the question has taken some time to sketch out the design that they have come up with and identify the problem they are encountering with the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is a difficulty even getting started, as described in [where to start?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6366/40980) one should sit down and spend some time coming up with a design that is something that they are capable of coding to.  That last point should not be overlooked - it is quite possible for an [architecture astronaut](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html) to come up with a design from scratch that is impossible for anyone to code to or implement with any hope of getting it right (&quot;its an n-tier design that makes use of MVVC that is controlled by a dispatcher that has been configured with dependency injection and....&quot; -- just say 'no').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are interested in hiring an architect that has this experience and can make such decisions for you on where to start, that is indeed a path to look down - but asking the community to be the architect is irresponsible and ultimately unmaintainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, sit down and [sketch out](http://asciiflow.com) the design that you have and what problems you are encountering when thinking through the design.  Draw something up on the white board, draw a circle around it and say &quot;I don't know how to get this piece and that piece to talk together correctly - I thought of using a message queue, but that has some problems in our architecture because...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned in another post ([10k link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260209/an-algorithm-based-content-ranking-crawler)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This isn't so much &quot;white-boardy&quot; as it is &quot;blue-sky-y&quot;. There are entire careers built on trying to solve this problem - you're gonna have to narrow it down a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key to writing a good question is to properly scope the question so that it is one that addresses a problem in the design, rather than completely wide open &quot;pie in the sky&quot; with its options." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19348" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6962" RevisionGUID="0f63cef3-4655-4dd5-8d21-dad4ac66c211" CreationDate="2014-10-26T23:15:55.940" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 2316 characters in body" Text="A [greenfield project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_project) is one without restrictions on prior systems or protocols.  Blue sky projects are ones that are completely wide open (&quot;develop a knowledge base.&quot;).  In the context of a question on Programmers.SE, a greenfield or blue sky question is one along the lines of &quot;How do I write this?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything about &quot;how do I write this?&quot; it is on the table - no design has been thought of, no problems have been encountered.  In effect, the question is asking the community to design the entire system.  This is similarly problematic as asking someone to write all the code for a set of requirements on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest problem with such a question is it is very broad.  One could design the system at a high level and another person could do the same solution from a low level.  Alternatively, there can be *many* designs for the same system.  This leads to the question being [very broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490) and in danger of being closed for such a reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With a design question, it is expected that the person asking the question has taken some time to sketch out the design that they have come up with and identify the problem they are encountering with the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is a difficulty even getting started, as described in [where to start?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6366/40980) one should sit down and spend some time coming up with a design that is something that they are capable of coding to.  That last point should not be overlooked - it is quite possible for an [architecture astronaut](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html) to come up with a design from scratch that is impossible for anyone to code to or implement with any hope of getting it right (&quot;its an n-tier design that makes use of MVVC that is controlled by a dispatcher that has been configured with dependency injection and....&quot; -- just say 'no').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are interested in hiring an architect that has this experience and can make such decisions for you on where to start, that is indeed a path to look down - but asking the community to be the architect is irresponsible and ultimately unmaintainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, sit down and [sketch out](http://asciiflow.com) the design that you have and what problems you are encountering when thinking through the design.  Draw something up on the white board, draw a circle around it and say &quot;I don't know how to get this piece and that piece to talk together correctly - I thought of using a message queue, but that has some problems in our architecture because...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned in another post ([10k link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260209/an-algorithm-based-content-ranking-crawler)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This isn't so much &quot;white-boardy&quot; as it is &quot;blue-sky-y&quot;. There are entire careers built on trying to solve this problem - you're gonna have to narrow it down a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key to writing a good question is to properly scope the question so that it is one that addresses a problem in the design, rather than completely wide open &quot;pie in the sky&quot; with its options.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [An algorithm-based content ranking crawler](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260209/an-algorithm-based-content-ranking-crawler) (10k link)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I need to implement a web crawler to crawl websites and rank visited pages based on content. For example, a website can be ranked as 80% political content or 70% sport content. There is no problem by implementing crawler. The only point would be an algorithm to set an approximate rank to content of crawled website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there any algorithm to reach this goal?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [Grails app providing REST services, with Angular frontend in SPA configuration… Feasible?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260976/grails-app-providing-rest-services-with-angular-frontend-in-spa-configuration)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Could you just begin an Angular project with Bower/Grunt/NPM give it its own directory and the whole nine yards ... and then just throw it in your Grails directory somewhere with the index.html page to be rendered as a static HTML file by a Grails controller?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So basically all the Grails app does is provide RESTful resources and literally redirects you to a static html file - which happens to be your Angular Single Page Application.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note the first example question here is one that leaves the described whiteboard completely untouched.  There is nothing about the design, just a few vague requirements and the request to identify or design the algorithm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question draws a picture of sorts.  Its still quite vague in places, but there's a design put forth that is being considered.  There is something on the whiteboard that is being described.  &quot;You've got this thing over here that provides this service that redirects over to this other thing...&quot; (you could picture a co-worker saying that with a marker in hand).  And thus, the question is one that is whiteboardy.  I'll certainly agree that the question is broad, but it *isn't* ***too*** broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whats more, the first question is one that could possibly be answered with &quot;you are looking for ${algo_XYZ}&quot;. While the second question wouldn't encourage simplistic or poor answers.  That is the key behind the ideas of [optimizing for pearls, not sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19349" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6961" RevisionGUID="81c1bc26-fd7f-424f-bd5b-7d090dbe1811" CreationDate="2014-10-27T10:57:07.483" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/526689043619139584" />
  <row Id="19350" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6962" RevisionGUID="b5747825-5f3b-4721-bb53-614fec6000ca" CreationDate="2014-10-27T21:22:09.153" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 26 characters in body" Text="A [greenfield project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_project) is one without restrictions on prior systems or protocols.  Blue sky projects are ones that are completely wide open (&quot;develop a knowledge base.&quot;).  In the context of a question on Programmers.SE, a greenfield or blue sky question is one along the lines of &quot;How do I write this?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything about &quot;how do I write this?&quot; it is on the table - no design has been thought of, no problems have been encountered.  In effect, the question is asking the community to design the entire system.  This is similarly problematic as asking someone to write all the code for a set of requirements on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest problem with such a question is it is very broad.  One could design the system at a high level and another person could do the same solution from a low level.  Alternatively, there can be *many* designs for the same system.  This leads to the question being [very broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490) and in danger of being closed for such a reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With a design question, it is expected that the person asking the question has taken some time to sketch out the design that they have come up with and identify the problem they are encountering with the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is a difficulty even getting started, as described in [where to start?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6366/40980) one should sit down and spend some time coming up with a design that is something that they are capable of coding to.  That last point should not be overlooked - it is quite possible for an [architecture astronaut](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html) to come up with a design from scratch that is impossible for anyone to code to or implement with any hope of getting it right (&quot;its an n-tier design that makes use of MVVC that is controlled by a dispatcher that has been configured with dependency injection and....&quot; -- just say 'no').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are interested in hiring an architect that has this experience and can make such decisions for you on where to start, that is indeed a path to look down - but asking the community to be the architect is irresponsible and ultimately unmaintainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, sit down and [sketch out](http://asciiflow.com) the design that you have and what problems you are encountering when thinking through the design.  Draw something up on the white board, draw a circle around it and say &quot;I don't know how to get this piece and that piece to talk together correctly - I thought of using a message queue, but that has some problems in our architecture because...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned in another post ([10k link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260209/an-algorithm-based-content-ranking-crawler)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This isn't so much &quot;white-boardy&quot; as it is &quot;blue-sky-y&quot;. There are entire careers built on trying to solve this problem - you're gonna have to narrow it down a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key to writing a good question is to properly scope the question so that it is one that addresses a problem in the design, rather than completely wide open &quot;pie in the sky&quot; with its options.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [An algorithm-based content ranking crawler](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260209/an-algorithm-based-content-ranking-crawler) (10k link)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I need to implement a web crawler to crawl websites and rank visited pages based on content. For example, a website can be ranked as 80% political content or 70% sport content. There is no problem by implementing crawler. The only point would be an algorithm to set an approximate rank to content of crawled website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there any algorithm to reach this goal?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [Grails app providing REST services, with Angular frontend in SPA configuration… Feasible?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260976/grails-app-providing-rest-services-with-angular-frontend-in-spa-configuration)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Could you just begin an Angular project with Bower/Grunt/NPM give it its own directory and the whole nine yards ... and then just throw it in your Grails directory somewhere with the index.html page to be rendered as a static HTML file by a Grails controller?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So basically all the Grails app does is provide RESTful resources and literally redirects you to a static html file - which happens to be your Angular Single Page Application.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note the first example question here is one that leaves the described whiteboard completely untouched.  There is nothing about the design, just a few vague requirements and the request to identify or design the algorithm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question draws a picture of sorts.  Its still quite vague in places, but there's a design put forth that is being considered.  There is something on the whiteboard that is being described.  &quot;You've got this thing over here that provides this service that redirects over to this other thing...&quot; (you could picture a co-worker saying that with a marker in hand).  And thus, the question is one that is whiteboardy.  I'll certainly agree that the question is broad and may have other issues, but it *isn't* ***too*** broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whats more, the first question is one that could possibly be answered with &quot;you are looking for ${algo_XYZ}&quot;. While the second question wouldn't encourage simplistic or poor answers.  That is the key behind the ideas of [optimizing for pearls, not sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19351" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6963" RevisionGUID="696db83f-6d33-4540-a758-11534ab6edef" CreationDate="2014-10-28T21:47:11.503" UserId="63" Text="&gt; Could we do something to help askers understand the risks associated with this tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe; if we can come to an understanding of the *rewards* of the tag. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By which I mean, if we're to warn folks against using it outside of narrowly-defined circumstances, we need to know what those circumstances *are*. As it stands, with 100% of the questions in the tag closed or locked, I'm leaning toward &quot;non-existent&quot; - which doesn't require a warning, but rather a blacklist! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The job-market tag is not allowed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about the prospects of getting a specific programming job are considered off-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, as the job market for programmers is constantly in flux and any advice obtained here today will be inaccurate or down-right harmful tomorrow... Or too specific to your situation to be of any use to anyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming I'm right, we can wrap this up quite easily, and over time remove the existing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although... I rather hope I'm wrong. As cringe-worthy as some of those questions are ([oh god, not this again...][1]) there *are* some real problems being solved, in areas where it's possible the answers are in fact *unique to programmers*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90139/are-there-drawbacks-to-taking-a-job-where-i-will-be-using-a-unique-programming-l&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64822/do-job-postings-exaggerate-their-requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/121465/why-are-part-time-jobs-in-programming-an-anomaly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61248/what-is-the-role-of-c-today&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd argue all of those are unique to this profession and, with the possible exception of the last one, reasonably likely to be useful in the future. But there certainly is a fine line between job market advice specific to programmers and career advice where you just happen to be a programmer.  Of course, this isn't new - [the old test for career advice still holds](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, *that's* probably the best guidance we could offer anyone asking such questions, as it's actually possible for folks to apply it. Perhaps something like...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about the job market should be *specific* to hiring programmers; if you can imagine a job-seeker or hiring manager asking a similar question for *any other profession*, then your question is **off-topic** - consider asking it on [The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/) instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Additionally, please word your question in a way that will be useful to others - we can help you learn how to make important decisions, but [we can't make them for you](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But... That's only good if y'all really *do* want these questions here. Right now, you're closing 100% of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what's it gonna be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49/why-isnt-functional-programming-more-popular-in-the-industry-does-it-catch-on" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19352" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6964" RevisionGUID="b3550f06-9917-4536-9485-bc94127881df" CreationDate="2014-10-29T01:40:10.040" UserId="124658" Text="I know that SE generally frowns on open discussions and opinion polls. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also understand that SE is not (yet) the only place on the net for Q&amp;A.  So, if you don't like the rules, ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is attractive in SE that it accumulated knowledgeable audience. You are able to gauge the professional level of people answering questions not just by their `rep` number, but based on their real contribution to this site.  So if one wants to find out prevailing opinions or take a temperature of a current trend, there is a ready professional community that you can trust much more than any random people elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I read about [`good and bad subjective questions`][1] and wonder what category the following will fall into.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to ask what should be in the toolbox of a ... (put a name of a popular language and/or technology) programmer.  This question will be formulated in terms of group of tools based on their specific purpose and will use brand names for illustration purpose only. (Nothing like whether `XYZ` is *better* than `ABC`.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is still not a clear-cut question that can be directly answered with facts only.  This does call for a discussion and even the best answers will be just opinions. Programmers (as specialists in any other trade) have different backgrounds and experiences, work in different industries and geographical areas, deal with projects of varying complexity. The answers have to be subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Such posts will not age well (unless constantly updated) but at the time of initial Q&amp;A should produce a lot of stuff to think about. Kind of mini consumer reports.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will such type of questions survive on Programmers SE? Should they? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19353" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6964" RevisionGUID="b3550f06-9917-4536-9485-bc94127881df" CreationDate="2014-10-29T01:40:10.040" UserId="124658" Text="Question about programmers` toolbox" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19354" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6964" RevisionGUID="b3550f06-9917-4536-9485-bc94127881df" CreationDate="2014-10-29T01:40:10.040" UserId="124658" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19355" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6965" RevisionGUID="d53a4631-fa6b-4b0c-99db-120ec1047c09" CreationDate="2014-10-29T13:18:03.227" UserId="4" Text="I'd say that these types of questions are off-topic. Not necessarily because they are discussion-oriented. I suspect that this question would be closed for one of these reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format. Please add details to narrow the answer set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19362" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6967" RevisionGUID="f0d830a5-f5e0-44db-88ca-606735c499d4" CreationDate="2014-10-30T16:42:59.837" UserId="55314" Text="Why are &quot;[best practice](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_practice)&quot; questions so derided here, when &quot;[pattern](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design_pattern)&quot; questions are not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to Wikipedia:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Patterns are formalized best practices that the programmer can use to solve common problems when designing an application or system. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've read some of the articles discussing why &quot;best practice&quot; questions are thought to be often/usually/inevitably mushy and unhelpful. I even agree with much of the reasoning. But I've also seen &quot;best practice&quot; questions that seem appropriate and on-topic. Even they face rapid down-voting for hold or close, and chiding in the comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My confusion is that even though patterns are, by definition, &quot;best practices,&quot; [Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com) is awash is pattern questions--and they seem warmly welcomed. Even when they are vague or novice--some on the order of &quot;please boil the ocean for me and give me the best pattern name for this situation that I have apparently never even Googled&quot;--they don't seem to suffer rapid dismissal, down-voting or chiding. They are graciously entertained and answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what gives? Is &quot;the right pattern&quot; just an a community-enforced euphemism? Or is there a meaningful distinction being made?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19363" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6967" RevisionGUID="f0d830a5-f5e0-44db-88ca-606735c499d4" CreationDate="2014-10-30T16:42:59.837" UserId="55314" Text="Best practices BAD, patterns GOOD?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19364" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6967" RevisionGUID="f0d830a5-f5e0-44db-88ca-606735c499d4" CreationDate="2014-10-30T16:42:59.837" UserId="55314" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19365" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6968" RevisionGUID="c4413363-4972-48e7-b1ce-948d5a235ebb" CreationDate="2014-10-30T16:49:43.340" UserId="1204" Text="From http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/142353/102937&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;While you may be an exemplary, clear-thinking, individual, who uses the term 'best practice' in a constructive manner, you have been preceded by a giant procession of zombies who use it as the antithesis of thought. Instead of understanding the important specifics of their situation and looking for an appropriate solution, all they want is to spot a herd in the distance and go trotting off after it. Thus, the term 'best practice' has been rendered an extremely strong signal of a empty resonant cavity in the place where a brain should be, and questions that mention the phrase get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question to the OP is often this: *what do you mean by best?*  The answer is often, &quot;What programmers generally accept as the correct solution,&quot; which is a tautology, or &quot;which one do programmers choose most often,&quot; which suggests popularity as a valid metric for choosing a technology.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My response is often &quot;The best way is the one that most effectively achieves your software's functional and non-functional requirements.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19366" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6968" RevisionGUID="be54f8bb-25bd-425d-ae00-37fabcfb7c91" CreationDate="2014-10-30T16:55:30.850" UserId="1204" Comment="added 347 characters in body" Text="From http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/142353/102937&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;While you may be an exemplary, clear-thinking, individual, who uses the term 'best practice' in a constructive manner, you have been preceded by a giant procession of zombies who use it as the antithesis of thought. Instead of understanding the important specifics of their situation and looking for an appropriate solution, all they want is to spot a herd in the distance and go trotting off after it. Thus, the term 'best practice' has been rendered an extremely strong signal of a empty resonant cavity in the place where a brain should be, and questions that mention the phrase get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question to the OP is often this: *what do you mean by best?*  The answer is often, &quot;What programmers generally accept as the correct solution,&quot; which is a tautology, or &quot;which one do programmers choose most often,&quot; which suggests popularity as a valid metric for choosing a technology.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My response is often &quot;The best way is the one that most effectively achieves your software's functional and non-functional requirements.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Design Patterns are a different animal.  These are well-accepted solutions to well-understood problems, and serve as a vocabulary for developers designing their programs.  They are considered best practices, not because they are &quot;correct&quot; or most popular, but because they are proven solutions in the problem domains they are solving.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a person asks &quot;what is the best design pattern for this particular problem,&quot; they are engaging in a *pattern-matching exercise,* not [cargo-cult programming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19367" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6969" RevisionGUID="af65c9b5-5765-4f71-8b3d-52852bd6cf4d" CreationDate="2014-10-30T17:19:30.857" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Discussion questions are the heart of your community.&#xD;&#xA;For example: Should a certain question be allowed on the site? For what reason did a moderator lock a certain question? Are said actions setting a precedent?&#xD;&#xA;Be sure to present your entire case and background information/data so the subject can be discussed fully." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19368" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6970" RevisionGUID="7be5a794-7b62-4b8e-be62-60a342934d84" CreationDate="2014-10-30T17:19:30.857" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="The question you're asking is designed to solicit answers or opinions on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19369" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6971" RevisionGUID="9894368a-1cae-4116-aa8f-3b11ef7d788a" CreationDate="2014-10-31T00:55:13.500" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="A &quot;best practice&quot; is just a technique or process that developers agree is the correct way to do something. It is very broad. It can cover programming, software engineering processes and procedures, even how you drive your car or instill discipline in your children. It is very opinionated: what I and my development team calls a best practice might be an embarrassment at your company.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Design patterns are objective. I can draw a [strategy pattern][1] on a whiteboard and we can agree that it is, in fact, the strategy pattern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The difference here is that while we can clearly define a design pattern, we do not necessarily agree that it is the right tool for a particular job or is the best way to approach a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_pattern" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19370" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6972" RevisionGUID="2a29225b-ff1b-4368-8517-45dde5244d04" CreationDate="2014-10-31T01:02:27.640" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="If you asked whether technique/technology/whatever X is appropriate to solve problem Y, that _might_ be an acceptable question. Not necessarily a _good_ question, not upvoted, but probably not closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While this site is about conceptual problems, specific details about a real problem are key. If you said you are trying to accomplish something, need help, what are the benefits of technology X to this problem? That is something objective and answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When in doubt, look at the questions tagged with whatever topic you are asking about. Look at which ones are closed, downvoted, upvoted, etc. Try to focus on questions from 2013 on, some older questions are still hanging around because the site changed quite a bit at one point. Many of them are poor examples of acceptable questions regardless of the fact they are still open." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19371" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6491" RevisionGUID="c81e146a-ec7d-4df8-84a3-10ce63de3e95" CreationDate="2014-10-31T15:23:40.920" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions" Text="#Primarily opinion-based#&#xD;&#xA;Good questions ask for expertise, not opinions. Examples of questions that are primarily opinion-based:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What did this person mean when he said...&quot; (We're not mind-readers)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Which of these two designs is the better one?&quot; (what do you mean by &quot;better?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;How should I arrange the folders in my project?&quot; (really?)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Is this the best practice?&quot; (what do you mean by &quot;best?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What is the name of this thing so I can go look it up?&quot; (Ask us your specific question about the thing)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinguishing factor is that there is no way to get an authoritative answer for the question - the answers are all based on opinion rather than the knowledge of the person answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that if the answers to the question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design A} for these reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- break --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design B} for these other reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both of these answers are valid then the question is likely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6758/what-is-the-problem-with-pros-and-cons&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **tl;dr** We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/142353/why-is-asking-a-question-on-best-practice-a-bad-thing/142354#142354)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as primarily opinion-based?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19372" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6973" RevisionGUID="0ba77cce-6cf5-4fce-9287-227938bb33f1" CreationDate="2014-10-31T19:48:18.330" UserId="100972" Text="[I asked the question:][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is it fundamentally possible to validate that an unmodified version of your client connects to your server?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which to me, looks like a very specific question to which the answer is either &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; and then: &quot;Here's why.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below the question, I added detail to explain my question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was just thinking about the idea of having my client-side app hash&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it's own source code and send that as a key to the server with any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; requests as proof that it's unmodified, but that's silly because&#xD;&#xA;&gt; anyone could just have the client send a hash of the unmodified&#xD;&#xA;&gt; version via a modified version.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was wondering if there might be a secure way to do this though, via&#xD;&#xA;&gt; some sort of proof that the client was unmodified&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I thought my question remained very clear, and that this text would only serve explain my curiosity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/261478/is-it-fundamentally-possible-to-validate-that-an-unmodified-version-of-your-clie/261481#261481" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19373" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6973" RevisionGUID="0ba77cce-6cf5-4fce-9287-227938bb33f1" CreationDate="2014-10-31T19:48:18.330" UserId="100972" Text="Was this really a broad question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19374" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6973" RevisionGUID="0ba77cce-6cf5-4fce-9287-227938bb33f1" CreationDate="2014-10-31T19:48:18.330" UserId="100972" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19376" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6975" RevisionGUID="5be73c3f-cfca-41e0-aed9-cc7f1d1cc1d9" CreationDate="2014-10-31T20:42:58.933" UserId="130119" Text="**No.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP _edited_ his question to leave a simple yes/no in a response to comments that it was too broad. Don't then punish him with a new argument for closure. That is **whack-a-mole** reasoning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, any person with rep enough to know better should not be answering the question while arguing for closure. That is a conflict of interest and amounts to rep farming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is answerable. Answers have already been submitted. If I had rep on programmers.se I'd have voted to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19377" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6973" RevisionGUID="8490419d-29ad-430d-ab47-488a49d4c4fd" CreationDate="2014-10-31T21:03:06.220" UserId="100972" Comment="added 804 characters in body" Text="[I asked the question:][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is it fundamentally possible to validate that an unmodified version of your client connects to your server?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which to me, looks like a very specific question to which the answer is either &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; and then: &quot;Here's why.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below the question, I added detail to explain my question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was just thinking about the idea of having my client-side app hash&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it's own source code and send that as a key to the server with any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; requests as proof that it's unmodified, but that's silly because&#xD;&#xA;&gt; anyone could just have the client send a hash of the unmodified&#xD;&#xA;&gt; version via a modified version.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was wondering if there might be a secure way to do this though, via&#xD;&#xA;&gt; some sort of proof that the client was unmodified&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I thought my question remained very clear, and that this text would only serve explain my curiosity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The problem lies in the community (or possibly just the niche of the community that enjoys chiming in)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[I cross posted the exact same question here][2] where it was equally on-topic and posed it **with** the detail that this community freaked out over, the question was up-voted and no such too-broad argument was had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The difference? The community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Information Security SE seems to be a place where people were intelligent enough to understand the question and answer it without nit-picking and moaning about some minor discrepancy. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No one said it was too broad.&#xD;&#xA;Everyone provided helpful insightful answers.&#xD;&#xA;The question was up-voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This community is clearly trending towards a less positive demeanor. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/261478/is-it-fundamentally-possible-to-validate-that-an-unmodified-version-of-your-clie/261481#261481&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/72091/is-it-fundamentally-possible-to-validate-that-an-unmodified-version-of-your-clie?noredirect=1#comment117929_72091" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19379" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6976" RevisionGUID="dba89f2c-76c2-4d7a-94dd-89039e7f5915" CreationDate="2014-11-01T01:06:30.430" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="First off, realize that each community on Stack Exchange is different.  You can ask the same question on two different sites and have it closed on one and open on the other.  That said, ***please don't crosspost questions***.  Really, pick the best one and post there first.  Posting the essentially same question unless it is specifically tailored to the community of the site fragments the information and questions across the network making it harder to find *the* answer.  Getting more attention to the question by cross posting is not a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, lets look at the question posted to Programmers.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it fundamentally possible to validate that an unmodified version of your client connects to your server?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And compare it to the one posted to Security.SE (without the leading meta bit):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This seems like a programming question but it's really a fundamental security question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it fundamentally possible to validate that an unmodified version of your client connects to your server?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was just thinking about the idea of having my client-side app hash it's own source code and send that as a key to the server with any requests as proof that it's unmodified, but that's silly because anyone could just have the client send a hash of the unmodified version via a modified version.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was wondering if there might be a secure way to do this though, via some sort of proof that the client was unmodified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think that this was a security problem, you should have asked it there.  Additionally, there is quite a bit more material on the Security.SE one than the P.SE one.  You are complaining that the one here got closed for too broad?  I will also note there is *absolutely* no effort at tailoring the question you asked for Programmers.SE community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will remind you of the post on Meta.SE: [Is a question that specifically asks for a summary of a broad topic valuable to Stack Exchange?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234642/is-a-question-that-specifically-asks-for-a-summary-of-a-broad-topic-valuable-to) and the points that I made there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programers.SE generally has the approach that you should at least have done a search on google and possibly read the corresponding Wikipedia page. This is especially true of questions that are likely to be broad. The scrum Wikipedia page is 43k and waterfall is 18k.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The biggest issue with asking such broad questions that are 'condense this other text that I don't want to read into a few paragraphs' is that, for the most part its lazy. Its asking someone else to try to fit a huge body of knowledge into a text box where there are pages of material out there that covers this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The post here shows no effort at all. It shows no level of comprehension of the nature of the problem.  It asks a very broad question to a relatively well known problem.  That of the [trusted client](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_client).  The answer you got here is a summary of that wikipedia page (no offense to Justin, it is in his own words and he likely didn't reference the wikipedia page, but it is covering much of the same information).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; While I acknowledge it that's my own work, I'd strongly suggest reading the guidance in meta.programmers.SE: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important/6560#6560 - we don't want to repeat what you already know, nor answer at the wrong level for the reader... and if you really don't know, explain what is confusing you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I again point you to http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important/6560#6560 and urge you to read it and consider the lessons contained within it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Setting aside all of that, Programmers.SE really doesn't like yes/no questions.  The appropriate guidance from Meta.SE can be found at: [Question closed because yes/no answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/183177/question-closed-because-yes-no-answer).  The question asked in this format is exactly the too broad nature.  There are *far* too many possible answers and good answers are far too long.  Go search Google a bit. Show us that you have thought about the problem and what it means rather than tossing whatever you think about into a text box and hitting 'Post Your Question'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally, the person asking the question has spent *at least* as much effort in thinking of the question, the problem, and how to ask a good question as the person answering it.  This is how we get good answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19380" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6975" RevisionGUID="6375dfe2-458e-45b6-a274-168aa45e434e" CreationDate="2014-11-01T03:29:12.350" UserId="130119" Comment="added 335 characters in body" Text="No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP _edited_ his question to leave a simple yes/no in a response to comments that it was too broad. The extra material on the Information Security one was in the Programmers.SE question, but **he was asked to remove it so he did**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't punish him with a new argument for closure. That is **whack-a-mole** reasoning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, any person with rep enough to know better should not be answering the question while arguing for closure. (Now that answer has been deleted after it was downvoted to -3). That is a conflict of interest and amounts to rep farming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was answerable. Answers had already been submitted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's worse, Information-Security handled his question appropriately, worded identically as the original here, without all of the nitpicking. Perhaps they have better things to do with their time.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19381" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6977" RevisionGUID="f161a514-3d71-4362-80a8-3d4d75bca276" CreationDate="2014-11-02T00:45:15.187" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Hitting the close vote reviews, I came across [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close/82286).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![screen shot of review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm really not sure what the proper action on it is.  It's been deleted. I'm not sure if I should leave it open (it's deleted), close it (it's deleted), or attempt to edit it (it's deleted).  So... why was this one of the reviews that showed up?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hit skip.  And I suspect its not an audit.  So, is there something amiss with the 'our system has identified this post as possible spam' system?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/aBAhn.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19382" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6977" RevisionGUID="f161a514-3d71-4362-80a8-3d4d75bca276" CreationDate="2014-11-02T00:45:15.187" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Deleted question in close vote review?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19383" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6977" RevisionGUID="f161a514-3d71-4362-80a8-3d4d75bca276" CreationDate="2014-11-02T00:45:15.187" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|bug|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19384" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6978" RevisionGUID="8fd7d2ee-9e6b-44cc-8ac6-495c2c747588" CreationDate="2014-11-02T04:02:38.157" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I was scrolling through the question list this evening when I noticed [Software engineering - “Precious project” syndrome?][1] What made this question stick out was the &quot;psychology&quot; tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through the [list of questions with that tag][2], the majority are closed for various reasons. Without performing a count, I would estimate that over 80% of the 28 questions are closed. Many of these questions are quite old, as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Spot checking a few, it seems &quot;not constructive&quot; and &quot;off-topic&quot; are common reasons. There is no tag wiki, but I imagine the idea behind it has to do with how people think about a software engineering topic or why people behave the way they do on software teams: both of which would fall under &quot;primarily opinion-based.&quot; Which is, in fact, the reason for my close vote on the original question that spawned this meta-post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should the &quot;psychology&quot; tag exist on this site given the [current contents of the help center][3]? Given the unconstructive contents of the questions with that tag and the low number of questions sharing that tag, should those questions be deleted or the tag be blacklisted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/261431/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/psychology&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19385" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6978" RevisionGUID="8fd7d2ee-9e6b-44cc-8ac6-495c2c747588" CreationDate="2014-11-02T04:02:38.157" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="The Psychology Tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19386" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6978" RevisionGUID="8fd7d2ee-9e6b-44cc-8ac6-495c2c747588" CreationDate="2014-11-02T04:02:38.157" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="|discussion|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19387" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="331b30ae-737a-4e13-91c7-aff969e902a6" CreationDate="2014-11-02T04:13:55.933" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Add &quot;link rot&quot; section" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for a link to something or statistics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason.  Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to things suffer from link rot.  Statistics become out of date over time.  Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is someone asking in 2012 &quot;What is the market share of Android vs iPhone?&quot;  This information would be out of date in a few months as new numbers come out and someone else would ask in 2013 &quot;The question [link] asks about the stats, but they are all for 2012.  What is the market share for android vs iPhone in 2013?&quot;  And again, this information would be out of date and prompt another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for information about statistics, or more generally, asking us to search for some data for you is off topic because of these problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No actual problem to solve&#xD;&#xA;* Not drawing from expert knowledge of the community&#xD;&#xA;* Will suffer from link rot or become out of date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Link Rot&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, external resources may move or be deleted for a variety of reasons. Perhaps a particular site reorganizes its links without setting up redirects. Perhaps an organization goes out of business or discontinues product X or library Y.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to the reasons stated above, external resources tend to be _transient_. Whatever tool, library, or other resource who requested might not exist in five years or be otherwise readily available. This has the effect of making an answer utterly useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one asks for a library to perform function X, and the answer links to web site Y, and either function X or web site Y cease to exist as defined in the answer, that answer is now useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one more reason why questions like this tend to be of low value and are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [What exactly is a recommendation question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254393/what-exactly-is-a-recommendation-question)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why are “shopping list” questions bad?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19388" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="7ddb7009-5e8d-47f2-b6a1-428abe6a0048" CreationDate="2014-11-02T04:14:32.107" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add green field and blue sky" Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long for the Q&amp;A format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are just polls for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the accepted answer is based on &quot;which answer I like best,&quot; rather than &quot;which answer solves my problem,&quot; the question is probably a poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While some other Stack Exchanges allow it, Programmers.SE frowns upon ['big list' type questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;see also: list-questions tag wiki at MSO&quot;) that seem to want to compile a list of things.  Questions that fall into this category typically have the form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What are all the problems I will encounter with XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * What are the pros and cons of XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * How can XYZ be used?&#xD;&#xA; * Any ideas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like these don't pose a problem that can be solved by an answer.  There is no definitive *right* answer that someone can go to, see the accepted answer and say &quot;yep, thats the answer.&quot;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6629/how-do-i-explain-something-to-someone&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6961/&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Is a question that specifically asks for a summary of a broad topic valuable to Stack Exchange?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234642/is-a-question-that-specifically-asks-for-a-summary-of-a-broad-topic-valuable-to)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help Center &gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as too broad?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19389" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6978" RevisionGUID="cb0f0b10-bd16-4080-a730-1d53a661f02c" CreationDate="2014-11-02T10:06:09.393" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="I was scrolling through the question list this evening when I noticed [Software engineering - “Precious project” syndrome?][1] What made this question stick out was the [tag:psychology] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through the [list of questions with that tag][2], the majority are closed for various reasons. Without performing a count, I would estimate that over 80% of the 28 questions are closed. Many of these questions are quite old, as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Spot checking a few, it seems &quot;not constructive&quot; and &quot;off-topic&quot; are common reasons. There is no tag wiki, but I imagine the idea behind it has to do with how people think about a software engineering topic or why people behave the way they do on software teams: both of which would fall under &quot;primarily opinion-based.&quot; Which is, in fact, the reason for my close vote on the original question that spawned this meta-post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should the &quot;psychology&quot; tag exist on this site given the [current contents of the help center][3]? Given the unconstructive contents of the questions with that tag and the low number of questions sharing that tag, should those questions be deleted or the tag be blacklisted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/261431/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/psychology&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19390" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6973" RevisionGUID="5dc73c9a-774a-41f6-b843-d5021854d3b5" CreationDate="2014-11-03T22:56:17.390" UserId="100972" Comment="deleted 291 characters in body" Text="[I asked the question:][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is it fundamentally possible to validate that an unmodified version of your client connects to your server?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which to me, looks like a very specific question to which the answer is either &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; and then: &quot;Here's why.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below the question, I added detail to explain my question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was just thinking about the idea of having my client-side app hash&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it's own source code and send that as a key to the server with any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; requests as proof that it's unmodified, but that's silly because&#xD;&#xA;&gt; anyone could just have the client send a hash of the unmodified&#xD;&#xA;&gt; version via a modified version.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was wondering if there might be a secure way to do this though, via&#xD;&#xA;&gt; some sort of proof that the client was unmodified&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I thought my question remained very clear, and that this text would only serve explain my curiosity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community here just seems to have reacted badly to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Information Security SE seems to be a place where people were intelligent enough to understand the question and answer it without nit-picking and moaning about some minor discrepancy. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No one said it was too broad.&#xD;&#xA;Everyone provided helpful insightful answers.&#xD;&#xA;The question was up-voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This community is clearly trending towards a less positive demeanor. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/261478/is-it-fundamentally-possible-to-validate-that-an-unmodified-version-of-your-clie/261481#261481&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/72091/is-it-fundamentally-possible-to-validate-that-an-unmodified-version-of-your-clie?noredirect=1#comment117929_72091" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19391" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6979" RevisionGUID="0a8182fa-3808-4c69-85b8-a0dfa653ea83" CreationDate="2014-11-05T01:02:55.350" UserId="109836" Text="[![Undo, Redo, REVIEW][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/i7GBT.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/ " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19392" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6979" RevisionGUID="7245cdb3-2305-42d9-b787-f1d51ffaae0c" CreationDate="2014-11-05T01:02:55.350" UserId="109836" />
  <row Id="19393" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6980" RevisionGUID="7524b55a-d35e-4f07-a7c0-060cb9be6d86" CreationDate="2014-11-05T01:04:14.710" UserId="109836" Text="[![Beat Jon Skeet][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ig1cD.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19394" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6980" RevisionGUID="5107a601-48fa-4253-ba21-352cae4b7844" CreationDate="2014-11-05T01:04:14.710" UserId="109836" />
  <row Id="19395" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6981" RevisionGUID="c71c6a67-2285-436b-90d5-cf85ec344a99" CreationDate="2014-11-05T01:43:29.383" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The [tag:complexity] has a number of meanings.  Some of which are already covered by other tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, the 100 or so questions seem to fall into one of three groups:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Really about [tag:big-o]&#xD;&#xA;* Really about [tag:cyclomatic-complexity]&#xD;&#xA;* Hand wavy complexity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The proposal:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Retag all the [tag:complexity] questions about big o, as [tag:big-o]&#xD;&#xA;* Retag all the [tag:complexity] questions about cyclomatic complexity, as [tag:cyclomatic-complexity].&#xD;&#xA;* Leave the hand wavy complexity questions there&#xD;&#xA;    * Change the tag wiki to reflect that this is about hand-wavy questions.&#xD;&#xA;    * Get SE to update the tag guidance on [tag:complexity] to mention the other two tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19396" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6981" RevisionGUID="c71c6a67-2285-436b-90d5-cf85ec344a99" CreationDate="2014-11-05T01:43:29.383" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The complex meanings of tag:complexity" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19397" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6981" RevisionGUID="c71c6a67-2285-436b-90d5-cf85ec344a99" CreationDate="2014-11-05T01:43:29.383" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|tags|retag-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19398" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6982" RevisionGUID="2d4ed814-3b92-4d35-89b8-ea48e14a4797" CreationDate="2014-11-05T02:17:32.813" UserId="106516" Text="The proposal to disambiguate the complexity tag is a good one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having discrete tags for &quot;big-o&quot; and &quot;cyclomatic complexity&quot; would I'm sure be useful for people who have questions about these specific areas.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for &quot;hand wavy complexity&quot; (an amusing term(!) for story point complexity estimation which you got from [here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238478/planning-poker-with-visually-impaired-colleague?noredirect=1#comment531359_238478)), I'd suggest using the tag &quot;story points&quot;, as story points are used to represent the complexity of a story in Agile estimation (see this article [here](http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/07/story-points-complexity-effort) for more information).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19399" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6983" RevisionGUID="0d35ff68-4aef-4bfe-91f5-f1425ec161be" CreationDate="2014-11-05T21:05:44.330" UserId="31260" Text="Over here at Programmers, a lot of askers seems to misunderstand site-specific expectations of career related questions, which frequently results in questions closure and deletions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Propose to help question askers and editors by establishing tag-specific popup ([tag-tips](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/tag-tips)) for particularly troublesome career related tags:  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market], [tag:resume], [tag:career-transition], [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggestion for popup content is as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** Career advice is off-topic per the [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  Please note that most career advice questions end up being closed for being too broad or impractical; try to make yours a [good subjective question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they require the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;* Please make sure your question has the proper scope.  It needs to apply to other programmers besides yourself.  &#xD;&#xA;* If your question can also be applied to other job fields, then it does not uniquely apply to software development and is not on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;* _Before_ asking, review this meta guidance: [Why was my question closed or down voted? -&gt; Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488).  Make sure your question avoids the problems listed in the guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope this measure could help question askers significantly. For detailed discussion of this proposal and some alternatives, refer prior question: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6950/current-state-of-the-job-market&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We are getting pummeled with the same off topic questions over and over again... The point here is to put something directly on the posting page... something more prominent than what we have now might make a dent in the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6940/clarification-on-what-is-career-advice  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; tag... seems to be causing more trouble than anything else&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it is also worth mentioning that in the past, career related tags have been through community cleanups ([1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1963/31260 &quot;Posse request: jobs/career/etc. tag cleanup&quot;), [2](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2358/31260 &quot;Offering Solutions to the Career and Jobs Tags&quot;)) meaning that older content in these tags has already been through some extra scrutiny and generally deemed worth keeping." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19400" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6983" RevisionGUID="0d35ff68-4aef-4bfe-91f5-f1425ec161be" CreationDate="2014-11-05T21:05:44.330" UserId="31260" Text="Improve question quality by informing askers of expectations in some career related tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19401" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6983" RevisionGUID="0d35ff68-4aef-4bfe-91f5-f1425ec161be" CreationDate="2014-11-05T21:05:44.330" UserId="31260" Text="|feature-request|tags|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19403" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6984" RevisionGUID="6c033d59-2f1e-4088-aeee-b9700e890a96" CreationDate="2014-11-06T10:07:21.183" UserId="2063" Text="The guidance for off-topic questions has this to say about the use of statistics:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Asking for a link to something or statistics**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason. Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Links to things suffer from link rot. Statistics become out of date over time. Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't understand what the issue is with questions that invite answers that involve statistics. To me that guidance is bad for the quality of answers on this site. Allow me to illustrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take for example this question about code reviews:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/261801/how-to-deal-with-no-code-reviews-in-my-new-place-when-i-come-from-that-practice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my view, having to argue in favor of the best practice of code reviews is something programmers are likely to face (hence on-topic) and the best possible answer to this question is to provide provable statistics that demonstrate the value of the practice of code reviews (and possibly statistics that compare the different ways of performing code reviews). This way the asker has better than anecdotal arguments in favor of code reviews as a best practice. In my opinion statistics are a higher quality answer when it comes to best practices answers, because they remove the bias inherent in an answer that is a sample of 1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand forbidding link-based answers, and requiring that the statistics are repeated in the body of the answer (citing the off-site resource where they were obtained), but why is it a good thing for P.SE to automatically close questions about best practices which can best be answered through statistics?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19404" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6984" RevisionGUID="6c033d59-2f1e-4088-aeee-b9700e890a96" CreationDate="2014-11-06T10:07:21.183" UserId="2063" Text="What's wrong with proving best practices through statistics?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19405" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6984" RevisionGUID="6c033d59-2f1e-4088-aeee-b9700e890a96" CreationDate="2014-11-06T10:07:21.183" UserId="2063" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19406" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6984" RevisionGUID="9e926f10-05cc-44b1-a7bd-46966848fb2c" CreationDate="2014-11-06T10:26:07.813" UserId="31260" Comment="link to referred post" Text="The [guidance](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) for off-topic questions has this to say about the use of statistics:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Asking for a link to something or statistics**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason. Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Links to things suffer from link rot. Statistics become out of date over time. Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't understand what the issue is with questions that invite answers that involve statistics. To me that guidance is bad for the quality of answers on this site. Allow me to illustrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take for example this question about code reviews:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/261801/how-to-deal-with-no-code-reviews-in-my-new-place-when-i-come-from-that-practice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my view, having to argue in favor of the best practice of code reviews is something programmers are likely to face (hence on-topic) and the best possible answer to this question is to provide provable statistics that demonstrate the value of the practice of code reviews (and possibly statistics that compare the different ways of performing code reviews). This way the asker has better than anecdotal arguments in favor of code reviews as a best practice. In my opinion statistics are a higher quality answer when it comes to best practices answers, because they remove the bias inherent in an answer that is a sample of 1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand forbidding link-based answers, and requiring that the statistics are repeated in the body of the answer (citing the off-site resource where they were obtained), but why is it a good thing for P.SE to automatically close questions about best practices which can best be answered through statistics?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19407" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6978" RevisionGUID="f66f3047-bd14-41b3-b6a7-80c908f593dd" CreationDate="2014-11-06T13:50:21.520" UserId="31260" Comment="tag is shrinking" Text="I was scrolling through the question list this evening when I noticed [Software engineering - “Precious project” syndrome?][1] What made this question stick out was the [tag:psychology] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through the [list of questions with that tag][2], the majority are closed for various reasons. 10 of the 12 questions are currently closed. Many of these questions are quite old, as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Spot checking a few, it seems &quot;not constructive&quot; and &quot;off-topic&quot; are common reasons. There is no tag wiki, but I imagine the idea behind it has to do with how people think about a software engineering topic or why people behave the way they do on software teams: both of which would fall under &quot;primarily opinion-based.&quot; Which is, in fact, the reason for my close vote on the original question that spawned this meta-post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should the &quot;psychology&quot; tag exist on this site given the [current contents of the help center][3]? Given the unconstructive contents of the questions with that tag and the low number of questions sharing that tag, should those questions be deleted or the tag be blacklisted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/261431/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/psychology&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19408" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6983" RevisionGUID="e3878a14-952a-44c7-a8fb-9552b42d1f1a" CreationDate="2014-11-07T02:37:10.370" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/530549490835783682" />
  <row Id="19409" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6985" RevisionGUID="9bf102cf-2fbe-4a29-bcb5-6cc875d67e09" CreationDate="2014-11-07T03:14:59.443" UserId="51654" Text="Best practice questions themselves aren't that bad, but too often they're about something that _has_ no consensus best practice. At that point, they quickly become &quot;what do you think about X?&quot; questions, which tend to devolve into argument and flame war.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Pattern questions tend to be a bit worse actual questions (more of the aforementioned cargo cult) though they at least have single [answers][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/257885/when-writing-object-oriented-code-should-i-always-be-following-a-design-pattern/257889#257889" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19410" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6977" RevisionGUID="5c684ce3-6a73-437b-8ea2-d550b85173e6" CreationDate="2014-11-07T16:34:51.527" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6977/deleted-question-in-close-vote-review#comment19969_6977" Text="Deleted question as a known good audit in close vote review?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19411" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6977" RevisionGUID="5c684ce3-6a73-437b-8ea2-d550b85173e6" CreationDate="2014-11-07T16:34:51.527" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6977/deleted-question-in-close-vote-review#comment19969_6977" Text="|bug|deleted-questions|review|review-audits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19412" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6953" RevisionGUID="cd30dfec-ef66-4322-aa75-72aa4e43b9ca" CreationDate="2014-11-07T18:52:29.917" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6983/improve-question-quality-by-informing-askers-of-expectations-in-some-career-rela" Text="**Update** - follow-up feature request to establish popup as discussed here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6983/improve-question-quality-by-informing-askers-of-expectations-in-some-career-rela&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As explained in [another answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6951/31260), tag specific [popup](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvXIT.png &quot;like this&quot;) can be used to guide askers and editors willing to use it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an [example](http://meta.anime.stackexchange.com/questions/1083/improve-question-quality-by-informing-users-of-reverse-image-search-sites) of tag popup request. Process to create such a popup is described [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/242252/automatic-warnings-of-dangerous-tags/242355#comment792260_242355):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Post a [feature-request] for each tag, with specific guidance (ideally linking to a meta post if non-trivial so I don't have to edit these all the time) and justification for needing something more than the tag excerpt. Let folks discuss it, then ping me ([Community Manager]) if there's support... This is really something that should be discussed within each community, as these might become annoying if over-used (ideally you don't want multiple tags on a single question to produce warnings) and the guidance should reflect the lessons learned from handling these questions.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Suggestion to create a popup for this tag ([tag:job-market]) and other particularly troublesome career related tags:  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market], [tag:resume], [tag:career-transition], [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag popup content is derived from [career-development tag wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/career-development/info):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** Career advice is off-topic per the [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  Please note that most career advice questions end up being closed for being too broad or impractical; try to make yours a [good subjective question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they require the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;* Please make sure your question has the proper scope.  It needs to apply to other programmers besides yourself.  &#xD;&#xA;* If your question can also be applied to other job fields, then it does not uniquely apply to software development and is not on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;* _Before_ asking, review this meta guidance: [Why was my question closed or down voted? -&gt; Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488).  Make sure your question avoids the problems listed in the guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;This post is made community wiki in order to simplify editing.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19413" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6986" RevisionGUID="2e9f140e-1c4d-4f6b-913c-2449a3ac2582" CreationDate="2014-11-07T21:27:47.003" UserId="146772" Text="Guilt by association; the term is often misunderstood and therefore misused. Questions like *&quot;spaces vs tabs&quot;*, *&quot;Java vs Ruby&quot;* and *&quot;should this method be private?&quot;* has nothing to do with &quot;Best Practices&quot;. There are however practices which almost all of the best developers agree upon, this set of practices is what the term &quot;Best Practices&quot; refers to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack overflow even states:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, doesn't that sound a lot like the definition of &quot;best practices&quot;? A practice which is not supported by facts, references or expertise can't be considered a &quot;best practice&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly note that &quot;Best Practices&quot; is a misnomer; &quot;Best Practices&quot; are not the best ways to solve problems, they are the practices used by the best in the field. So when consultants sell &quot;Best Practices&quot; all they do is implement practices used by top firms." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19414" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6967" RevisionGUID="1532d954-d18d-4352-a273-c0a608c1fb80" CreationDate="2014-11-08T11:37:10.913" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/531047776755265536" />
  <row Id="19415" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6485" RevisionGUID="667e0dcf-507d-4ee5-8d1e-0dc8a4a71144" CreationDate="2014-11-10T19:47:35.450" UserId="5099" Comment="added 11 characters in body" Text="# Duplicate questions#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A duplicate question in and of itself [isn't a bad thing](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/ &quot;see 'Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication'&quot;).  Often it means that the people who have suggested it as such think that the answer to your question is already in the original question.  Questions are closed as duplicates because we want future readers to be able to go to one place to find the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read *all* of the answers on the original question and consider the implications behind the answers too - not just the first reading.  An example of this can be seen on Stack Overflow when debugging questions trying to track down a NullPointerException in Java are linked to a question that explains about NullPointerExceptions rather than trying to resolve that particular instance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that something is closed as a duplicate incorrectly, edit your question to explain specifically how it differs from the other question and the answers in the duplicate question do not apply to your situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE FAQ) [How should duplicate questions be handled?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10841/how-should-duplicate-questions-be-handled)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Does the new guidance on duplicate questions suggest closing a question as duplicate, if the original answers the OP's question?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/217401/does-the-new-guidance-on-duplicate-questions-suggest-closing-a-question-as-dupli)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Someone flagged my question as already answered, but it's not](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/194476/someone-flagged-my-question-as-already-answered-but-its-not)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as a duplicate?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6485/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19416" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="3facfd66-3d26-48c8-8d0d-30cad102e927" CreationDate="2014-11-12T02:24:51.600" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Changing meta link to main site (I think I had another link there in some earlier version)." Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for a link to something or statistics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason.  Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to things suffer from link rot.  Statistics become out of date over time.  Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is someone asking in 2012 &quot;What is the market share of Android vs iPhone?&quot;  This information would be out of date in a few months as new numbers come out and someone else would ask in 2013 &quot;The question [link] asks about the stats, but they are all for 2012.  What is the market share for android vs iPhone in 2013?&quot;  And again, this information would be out of date and prompt another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for information about statistics, or more generally, asking us to search for some data for you is off topic because of these problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No actual problem to solve&#xD;&#xA;* Not drawing from expert knowledge of the community&#xD;&#xA;* Will suffer from link rot or become out of date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Link Rot&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, external resources may move or be deleted for a variety of reasons. Perhaps a particular site reorganizes its links without setting up redirects. Perhaps an organization goes out of business or discontinues product X or library Y.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to the reasons stated above, external resources tend to be _transient_. Whatever tool, library, or other resource who requested might not exist in five years or be otherwise readily available. This has the effect of making an answer utterly useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one asks for a library to perform function X, and the answer links to web site Y, and either function X or web site Y cease to exist as defined in the answer, that answer is now useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one more reason why questions like this tend to be of low value and are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [What exactly is a recommendation question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254393/what-exactly-is-a-recommendation-question)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why are “shopping list” questions bad?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19417" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="8ac7450a-ac46-47a8-8e96-16af61bb5f48" CreationDate="2014-11-12T08:43:18.380" UserId="31260" Comment="safer link - http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for a link to something or statistics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason.  Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to things suffer from link rot.  Statistics become out of date over time.  Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is someone asking in 2012 &quot;What is the market share of Android vs iPhone?&quot;  This information would be out of date in a few months as new numbers come out and someone else would ask in 2013 &quot;The question [link] asks about the stats, but they are all for 2012.  What is the market share for android vs iPhone in 2013?&quot;  And again, this information would be out of date and prompt another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for information about statistics, or more generally, asking us to search for some data for you is off topic because of these problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No actual problem to solve&#xD;&#xA;* Not drawing from expert knowledge of the community&#xD;&#xA;* Will suffer from link rot or become out of date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Link Rot&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, external resources may move or be deleted for a variety of reasons. Perhaps a particular site reorganizes its links without setting up redirects. Perhaps an organization goes out of business or discontinues product X or library Y.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to the reasons stated above, external resources tend to be _transient_. Whatever tool, library, or other resource who requested might not exist in five years or be otherwise readily available. This has the effect of making an answer utterly useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one asks for a library to perform function X, and the answer links to web site Y, and either function X or web site Y cease to exist as defined in the answer, that answer is now useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one more reason why questions like this tend to be of low value and are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [What exactly is a recommendation question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254393/what-exactly-is-a-recommendation-question)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why are “shopping list” questions bad?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19418" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6987" RevisionGUID="da1e37f0-d648-4574-9d64-6f45bef35c92" CreationDate="2014-11-12T15:30:08.023" UserId="110587" Text="A best practice can be applied beyond programming and certainly is more generic than a design pattern, which is very programming specific within the stack exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;UX has best practices, info-sec has best practices, and these are some areas where.. you really shouldn't deviate too much. For example when information security is concerned, its strongly encouraged to not roll your own security. Salting a password before hashing it is a best practice, not a design pattern. And just because you may not understand the benefits of doing so does not mean that you should deviate from it, and getting creative with it is not encouraged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For UX, designing with the goal of being intuitive means following some best practices. There are infinite ways to layout a website/form, but its not a good thing to have to educate the user how to use it if you can avoid that. Ideally it is an intuitive experience, which is where best practices come into play.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not familiar with why some programmers associate the phrase negatively, you'll have to refer to their answers. However I do share that viewpoint. A downvoting based on the phrases usage is downright childish." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19419" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6968" RevisionGUID="c27dbbb4-4efa-4c24-b0cc-925b8f63b3af" CreationDate="2014-11-12T16:40:07.807" UserId="31260" Comment="minor wordsmithing" Text="From http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/142353/102937&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;While you may be an exemplary, clear-thinking, individual, who uses the term 'best practice' in a constructive manner, you have been preceded by a giant procession of zombies who use it as the antithesis of thought. Instead of understanding the important specifics of their situation and looking for an appropriate solution, all they want is to spot a herd in the distance and go trotting off after it. Thus, the term 'best practice' has been rendered an extremely strong signal of a empty resonant cavity in the place where a brain should be, and questions that mention the phrase get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question to the OP is often this: *what do you mean by best?*  The answer is often, &quot;What programmers generally accept as the correct solution,&quot; which is a tautology, or &quot;which one do programmers choose most often,&quot; which suggests popularity as a valid metric for choosing a technology.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My response is often &quot;The best way is the one that most effectively achieves your software's functional and non-functional requirements.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software design patterns are a different animal.  These are well-accepted solutions to well-understood problems, and serve as a vocabulary for developers designing their programs.  They are considered best practices, not because they are &quot;correct&quot; or most popular, but because they are proven solutions in the problem domains they are solving.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a person asks &quot;what is the best design pattern for this particular problem,&quot; they are engaging in a *pattern-matching exercise,* not [cargo-cult programming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19420" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6987" RevisionGUID="3d2aae80-cc5d-4a64-80b8-69085323f0c0" CreationDate="2014-11-12T18:32:27.547" UserId="110587" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="A best practice can be applied beyond programming and certainly is more generic than a design pattern, which is very programming specific within the stack exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;UX has best practices, info-sec has best practices, and these are some areas where.. you really shouldn't deviate too much. For example when information security is concerned, its strongly encouraged to not roll your own security. Salting a password before hashing it is a best practice, not a design pattern. And just because you may not understand the benefits of doing so does not mean that you should deviate from it, and getting creative with it is not encouraged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For UX, designing with the goal of being intuitive means following some best practices. There are infinite ways to layout a website/form, but its not a good thing to have to educate the user how to use it if you can avoid that. Ideally it is an intuitive experience, which is where best practices come into play.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not familiar with why some programmers associate the phrase negatively, you'll have to refer to their answers. However I do not share that viewpoint. And downvoting for usage of the phrase is downright childish." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19421" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="6988" RevisionGUID="b5b71b2d-7dad-49db-91a6-1fa7381ac72b" CreationDate="2014-11-12T20:30:21.977" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262604/reopen-request-will-java-be-relevant-in-5-years" />
  <row Id="19422" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6988" RevisionGUID="7125b598-481b-441d-a84d-46332f75c84d" CreationDate="2014-11-12T20:19:56.683" UserId="155959" Text="I don't have enough rep to post in meta.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- [Editor note] Which should be a hint about asking for these types of requests.  Stick around, earn some rep, and learn the site first.  --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to know if this (4 year old) thread could be reopened.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262/will-java-still-be-relevant-in-5-years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Java is taught in the intro to Computer science at the University of British Columbia, Canada. I'm a math major but I'm taking the course anyway because apparently-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    People who can code in the world of technology companies are a dime a dozen and get no respect. &#xD;&#xA;    People who can code in biology, medicine, government, sociology, physics, history, and mathematics &#xD;&#xA;    are respected and can do amazing things to advance those disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[(Advice From An Old Programmer- learn python the hard way)][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It sounds really rude to real programmers, but I kind of get what he is trying to say. There are going to be plenty of math majors but very few who can code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Coming to java from learning python, is not a lot of fun... But I'd like to know what real programmers think about Java's future, and decide if I want to take Part two of the course.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/advice.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19423" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6988" RevisionGUID="7125b598-481b-441d-a84d-46332f75c84d" CreationDate="2014-11-12T20:19:56.683" UserId="155959" Text="Reopen request - Will java be relevant in 5 years?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19424" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6988" RevisionGUID="7125b598-481b-441d-a84d-46332f75c84d" CreationDate="2014-11-12T20:19:56.683" UserId="155959" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19425" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6988" RevisionGUID="40572fea-f4db-4875-a85d-2072c7d88fcc" CreationDate="2014-11-12T20:33:37.020" UserId="155959" Comment="deleted 1003 characters in body" Text="I'd like to know if this (4 year old) thread could be reopened.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262/will-java-still-be-relevant-in-5-years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since that question had 30 upvotes and 4 years has passed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/advice.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19426" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6989" RevisionGUID="05f3ad91-4989-483c-95b4-47ee5c806383" CreationDate="2014-11-12T21:02:58.070" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The problem is, its not a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Its one of predicting the future (we are notoriously bad at it).&#xD;&#xA;* It is a poll of opinions and is attracting poor answers&#xD;&#xA;    * &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would say it's on a decline. It's not gone, but it's past its peak.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * &#xD;&#xA;&gt; It was losing importance in the mobile market, but with Android, it has regained it again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * &gt; Not sure about JAVA. But surely the JVM will remain relevant supporting many other languages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    These are not good answers.  The question is attracting such answers and that makes it a not good question either.  Good questions attract good answers.  Poor questions attract allow poor answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The quesiton has 28 answers, including some that have been deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; The Magic 8-ball says:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt;Outlook not so good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Its been historically locked because it is an historical curiosity of the site - it does *not* represent a good, high quality question on the site.  Furthermore, it cannot be 'fixed' to be a good one (its flawed and has answers that trying to transform it into a good answer would mean deleting most of the answers).  The other option would be to delete the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19427" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6988" RevisionGUID="f820869b-87b8-4785-b16d-029276c51c00" CreationDate="2014-11-12T21:03:33.207" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add appropriate meta tags." Text="|discussion|specific-question|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19428" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6989" RevisionGUID="df3987b4-82e0-480e-ba07-4358c1bedbb1" CreationDate="2014-11-12T21:11:00.103" UserId="13156" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="The problem is, its not a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's one of predicting the future (we are notoriously bad at it).&#xD;&#xA;* It is a poll of opinions and is attracting poor answers&#xD;&#xA;    * &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would say it's on a decline. It's not gone, but it's past its peak.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * &#xD;&#xA;&gt; It was losing importance in the mobile market, but with Android, it has regained it again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * &gt; Not sure about JAVA. But surely the JVM will remain relevant supporting many other languages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    These are not good answers.  The question is attracting such answers and that makes it a not good question either.  Good questions attract good answers.  Poor questions attract allow poor answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The quesiton has 28 answers, including some that have been deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; The Magic 8-ball says:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt;Outlook not so good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's been historically locked because it is an historical curiosity of the site - it does *not* represent a good, high quality question on the site.  Furthermore, it cannot be 'fixed' to be a good one (its flawed and has answers that trying to transform it into a good answer would mean deleting most of the answers).  The other option would be to delete the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19429" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6988" RevisionGUID="b7b83837-a4ac-4ecc-8808-f358385fe0b6" CreationDate="2014-11-12T21:13:18.637" UserId="155959" Comment="edited body" Text="I'd like to know if this (4 year old) thread could be reopened.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262/will-java-still-be-relevant-in-5-years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since that question had 40 upvotes and 4 years has passed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/advice.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19430" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6988" RevisionGUID="78072063-27c9-40c3-95bf-fc315b243a8f" CreationDate="2014-11-12T21:59:33.417" UserId="155959" Comment="added 247 characters in body" Text="I'd like to know if this thread could be reopened.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262/will-java-still-be-relevant-in-5-years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It had 40 upvotes and 4 years has passed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although the 'experts' are complaining it's off topic, It has 40 000 views. Why do you think that is? *Anyone* considering to start learning java is going to google something along the lines of &quot;future of java&quot; All they get is this outdated thread.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/FqR7n.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19431" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6988" RevisionGUID="e14c4f2d-f452-4a18-8a28-72cb3d839616" CreationDate="2014-11-12T23:19:43.793" UserId="155959" Comment="deleted 173 characters in body" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262/will-java-still-be-relevant-in-5-years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It had 40 upvotes and 4 years has passed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has 40 000 views. *Anyone* considering to start learning java will google &quot;future of java&quot; All they get is this outdated thread.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/FqR7n.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19432" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6989" RevisionGUID="466f1013-74a7-4211-be56-2f1fe5df2168" CreationDate="2014-11-13T00:09:12.963" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 3275 characters in body" Text="The problem is, its not a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's one of predicting the future (we are notoriously bad at it).&#xD;&#xA;* It is a poll of opinions and is attracting poor answers&#xD;&#xA;    * &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would say it's on a decline. It's not gone, but it's past its peak.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * &#xD;&#xA;&gt; It was losing importance in the mobile market, but with Android, it has regained it again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * &gt; Not sure about JAVA. But surely the JVM will remain relevant supporting many other languages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    These are not good answers.  The question is attracting such answers and that makes it a not good question either.  Good questions attract good answers.  Poor questions attract allow poor answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The quesiton has 28 answers, including some that have been deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; The Magic 8-ball says:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt;Outlook not so good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's been historically locked because it is an historical curiosity of the site - it does *not* represent a good, high quality question on the site.  Furthermore, it cannot be 'fixed' to be a good one (its flawed and has answers that trying to transform it into a good answer would mean deleting most of the answers).  The other option would be to delete the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of views doesn't mean that it is on topic.  It means its a popular search and one that was done in the earlier days of the site when questions and answers were more care free.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That it shows as a high scoring result on Google is a testament to Stack Exchanges SEO work and the quality of the site as a whole.  It does not speak to the appropriateness of an individual question in the Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are programmers, software architects, software engineers, and developers (and whatever other job title that people heave made up for our skill set) with the occasional CTO tossed in too.  What we are not is futurists or prognosticators.  There are very few people who have any [academic](http://hss.sas.upenn.edu/pc/course/2014A/STSC310) or professional training in futurology on the site... and it's not within our skill set as expert programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That point, we have opinions, and can have discussions about what the next trend will be and what will be a fad and gone tomorrow (seriously, Cobol and Fortran had their day... no one writes code in those languages anymore... err... wait... they do).  And while you may want to know our opinions, a polling of opinions is not a good question in for the Q&amp;A format.  This is why the original question was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to know today, what the outlook for Java in 5 years will be, go ask a career advisor.  Ask your professor if you should be learning Java (or for that matter, if Java is what they are actually trying to teach - or if they are trying to teach other concepts).  Ask futurologists for how to prepare for the next technical revolution (or if we're in a bit of stagnation for a period of time).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking us, however, isn't going to give you the answer you want.  You will get every answer from &quot;its days are over&quot; to &quot;it will love longer than Cobol&quot; at which point, well, you haven't really learned anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the point of &quot;should I take a class in Java?&quot;  It depends on what you are trying to learn and what it is going to teach you.  If you are going to be learning &quot;this is how to do XYZ in Java&quot;, no.  If you are going to learn &quot;this is how to do XYZ, and Java is our implementation language&quot;, yes... and well, thats an opinion.  You need to make sure that you are learning how to learn a new programming language.  For me, in college, I had classes that used a total of nine different programming languages (nearly every class used a different one (one class used four)) and I can assure you that while I would be challenged to do a spline in fortran90 today... or much of fortran 90 for that matter, you give me another programming language to learn and I can pick it up fairly quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so... back to your question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No, the question is not going to get its historical lock removed.&#xD;&#xA;* No, the question will not get reopened&#xD;&#xA;* If you are wondering if you should learn Java, you are asking the wrong question.&#xD;&#xA;* If you are looking for a futurist, you should ask one (we're notoriously bad at it)&#xD;&#xA;* If you are looking for opinions, you should go to a site that is built around polling, discussion and opinions rather than a Q&amp;A site (not all questions fit on all sites - there are opinion sites that make asking Q&amp;A style questions very difficult too)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19433" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6989" RevisionGUID="04b4f979-c6fd-4c44-b5ae-cf884ed1b49d" CreationDate="2014-11-13T00:15:07.637" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="The problem is, its not a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's one of predicting the future (we are notoriously bad at it).&#xD;&#xA;* It is a poll of opinions and is attracting poor answers&#xD;&#xA;    * &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would say it's on a decline. It's not gone, but it's past its peak.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * &#xD;&#xA;&gt; It was losing importance in the mobile market, but with Android, it has regained it again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * &gt; Not sure about JAVA. But surely the JVM will remain relevant supporting many other languages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    These are not good answers.  The question is attracting such answers and that makes it a not good question either.  Good questions attract good answers.  Poor questions attract allow poor answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The quesiton has 28 answers, including some that have been deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; The Magic 8-ball says:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt;Outlook not so good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's been historically locked because it is an historical curiosity of the site - it does *not* represent a good, high quality question on the site.  Furthermore, it cannot be 'fixed' to be a good one (its flawed and has answers that trying to transform it into a good answer would mean deleting most of the answers).  The other option would be to delete the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of views doesn't mean that it is on topic.  It means its a popular search and one that was done in the earlier days of the site when questions and answers were more care free.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That it shows as a high scoring result on Google is a testament to Stack Exchanges SEO work and the quality of the site as a whole.  It does not speak to the appropriateness of an individual question in the Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are programmers, software architects, software engineers, and developers (and whatever other job title that people heave made up for our skill set) with the occasional CTO tossed in too.  What we are not is futurists or prognosticators.  There are very few people who have any [academic](http://hss.sas.upenn.edu/pc/course/2014A/STSC310) or professional training in futurology on the site... and it's not within our skill set as expert programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That point, we have opinions, and can have discussions about what the next trend will be and what will be a fad and gone tomorrow (seriously, Cobol and Fortran had their day... no one writes code in those languages anymore... err... wait... they do).  And while you may want to know our opinions, a polling of opinions is not a good question in for the Q&amp;A format.  This is why the original question was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to know today, what the outlook for Java in 5 years will be, go ask a career advisor.  Ask your professor if you should be learning Java (or for that matter, if Java is what they are actually trying to teach - or if they are trying to teach other concepts).  Ask futurologists for how to prepare for the next technical revolution (or if we're in a bit of stagnation for a period of time).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking us, however, isn't going to give you the answer you want.  You will get every answer from &quot;its days are over&quot; to &quot;it will love longer than Cobol&quot; at which point, well, you haven't really learned anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the point of &quot;should I take a class in Java?&quot;  It depends on what you are trying to learn and what it is going to teach you.  If you are going to be learning &quot;this is how to do XYZ in Java&quot;, no.  If you are going to learn &quot;this is how to do XYZ, and Java is our implementation language&quot;, yes... and well, thats an opinion.  You need to make sure that you are learning how to learn a new programming language.  For me, in college, I had classes that used a total of nine different programming languages (nearly every class used a different one (one class used four)) and I can assure you that while I would be challenged to do a spline in fortran 90 today... or much of fortran 90 for that matter, you give me another programming language to learn and I can pick it up fairly quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so... back to your question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No, the question is not going to get its historical lock removed.&#xD;&#xA;* No, the question will not get reopened&#xD;&#xA;* If you are wondering if you should learn Java, you are asking the wrong question.&#xD;&#xA;* If you are looking for a futurist, you should ask one (we're notoriously bad at it)&#xD;&#xA;* If you are looking for opinions, you should go to a site that is built around polling, discussion and opinions rather than a Q&amp;A site (not all questions fit on all sites - there are opinion sites that make asking Q&amp;A style questions very difficult too).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You *do* happen to have 20 rep on the network. You may find that asking in [The Whitboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) chat room you can get a discussion... though I will tell you now that you will get a wide range of answers there too (I'm a javaist, though there are some ceesharpers there too who disagree with me about the long term outlook of different technologies)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19434" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6982" RevisionGUID="c0402b8c-6cf2-4ce3-a889-6bb17168fbda" CreationDate="2014-11-13T02:01:39.713" UserId="106516" Comment="Topic is more suitable" Text="The proposal to disambiguate the complexity tag is a good one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having discrete tags for &quot;big-o&quot; and &quot;cyclomatic complexity&quot; would I'm sure be useful for people who have questions about these specific topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for &quot;hand wavy complexity&quot; (an amusing term(!) for story point complexity estimation which you got from [here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238478/planning-poker-with-visually-impaired-colleague?noredirect=1#comment531359_238478)), I'd suggest using the tag &quot;story points&quot;, as story points are used to represent the complexity of a story in Agile estimation (see this article [here](http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/07/story-points-complexity-effort) for more information).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19435" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6989" RevisionGUID="079d4049-46a3-4739-82c4-8d3549b3e1e4" CreationDate="2014-11-13T02:55:17.013" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="I can spell... really." Text="The problem is, its not a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's one of predicting the future (we are notoriously bad at it).&#xD;&#xA;* It is a poll of opinions and is attracting poor answers&#xD;&#xA;    * &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would say it's on a decline. It's not gone, but it's past its peak.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * &#xD;&#xA;&gt; It was losing importance in the mobile market, but with Android, it has regained it again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * &gt; Not sure about JAVA. But surely the JVM will remain relevant supporting many other languages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    These are not good answers.  The question is attracting such answers and that makes it a not good question either.  Good questions attract good answers.  Poor questions attract allow poor answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The quesiton has 28 answers, including some that have been deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; The Magic 8-ball says:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt;Outlook not so good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's been historically locked because it is an historical curiosity of the site - it does *not* represent a good, high quality question on the site.  Furthermore, it cannot be 'fixed' to be a good one (its flawed and has answers that trying to transform it into a good answer would mean deleting most of the answers).  The other option would be to delete the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of views doesn't mean that it is on topic.  It means its a popular search and one that was done in the earlier days of the site when questions and answers were more care free.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That it shows as a high scoring result on Google is a testament to Stack Exchanges SEO work and the quality of the site as a whole.  It does not speak to the appropriateness of an individual question in the Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are programmers, software architects, software engineers, and developers (and whatever other job title that people heave made up for our skill set) with the occasional CTO tossed in too.  What we are not is futurists or prognosticators.  There are very few people who have any [academic](http://hss.sas.upenn.edu/pc/course/2014A/STSC310) or professional training in futurology on the site... and it's not within our skill set as expert programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That point, we have opinions, and can have discussions about what the next trend will be and what will be a fad and gone tomorrow (seriously, Cobol and Fortran had their day... no one writes code in those languages anymore... err... wait... they do).  And while you may want to know our opinions, a polling of opinions is not a good question in for the Q&amp;A format.  This is why the original question was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to know today, what the outlook for Java in 5 years will be, go ask a career advisor.  Ask your professor if you should be learning Java (or for that matter, if Java is what they are actually trying to teach - or if they are trying to teach other concepts).  Ask futurologists for how to prepare for the next technical revolution (or if we're in a bit of stagnation for a period of time).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking us, however, isn't going to give you the answer you want.  You will get every answer from &quot;its days are over&quot; to &quot;it will love longer than Cobol&quot; at which point, well, you haven't really learned anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the point of &quot;should I take a class in Java?&quot;  It depends on what you are trying to learn and what it is going to teach you.  If you are going to be learning &quot;this is how to do XYZ in Java&quot;, no.  If you are going to learn &quot;this is how to do XYZ, and Java is our implementation language&quot;, yes... and well, thats an opinion.  You need to make sure that you are learning how to learn a new programming language.  For me, in college, I had classes that used a total of nine different programming languages (nearly every class used a different one (one class used four)) and I can assure you that while I would be challenged to do a spline in fortran 90 today... or much of fortran 90 for that matter, you give me another programming language to learn and I can pick it up fairly quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so... back to your question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No, the question is not going to get its historical lock removed.&#xD;&#xA;* No, the question will not get reopened&#xD;&#xA;* If you are wondering if you should learn Java, you are asking the wrong question.&#xD;&#xA;* If you are looking for a futurist, you should ask one (we're notoriously bad at it)&#xD;&#xA;* If you are looking for opinions, you should go to a site that is built around polling, discussion and opinions rather than a Q&amp;A site (not all questions fit on all sites - there are opinion sites that make asking Q&amp;A style questions very difficult too).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You *do* happen to have 20 rep on the network. You may find that asking in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) chat room you can get a discussion... though I will tell you now that you will get a wide range of answers there too (I'm a javaist, though there are some ceesharpers there too who disagree with me about the long term outlook of different technologies)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19436" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6990" RevisionGUID="1fa9e897-89e0-4b33-b818-34d2301b0071" CreationDate="2014-11-13T11:00:12.013" UserId="40590" Text="I am a vicious StackExchange user, always a Have a technical question I go to StackOverflow, also every morning I like to come here to programmer to read some more advanced Question and opinions about design stuff and programmer challenges (as opposed to programming challenges). I noted, a long ago already, that we hare a great number of negative voted question. I can understand the motives. [&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;][1] [&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But why can't we raise up the quality of the Questions? Look at this chart I [extracted from data.stackechange.][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Despite its huge size, StackOverflow could, given the years control (and for some time, lower) the negative voted Questions. In Programmers in other-hand negative question have increased over the years (except in 2013-2014 period, where it appear to be controlled).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. What can we do to help with the questions quality?&#xD;&#xA;2. Are we already controlling better new posts in the review queue?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/246189/negative-vs-positive-questions-over-time&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Tfak6.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19437" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6990" RevisionGUID="1fa9e897-89e0-4b33-b818-34d2301b0071" CreationDate="2014-11-13T11:00:12.013" UserId="40590" Text="Why can't we raise up question quality?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19438" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6990" RevisionGUID="1fa9e897-89e0-4b33-b818-34d2301b0071" CreationDate="2014-11-13T11:00:12.013" UserId="40590" Text="|discussion|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19439" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6990" RevisionGUID="322e7d3d-bdb7-4fd1-99ea-3ccc7766d59b" CreationDate="2014-11-13T12:22:37.140" UserId="40590" Comment="added 1 character in body; edited title" Text="I am a vicious StackExchange user, always I have a technical question I go to StackOverflow, also every morning I like to come here to programmer to read some more advanced questions and opinions about design stuff and programmer challenges (as opposed to programming challenges). I noted, a long ago already, that we have a great number of negative voted question. I can understand the motives. [&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;][1] [&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But why can't we raise up the quality of the Questions? Look at this chart I [extracted from data.stackechange.][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Despite its huge size, StackOverflow could, given the years control (and for some time, lower) the negative voted Questions. In Programmers in other-hand negative question have increased over the years (except in 2013-2014 period, where it appear to be controlled).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. What can we do to help with the questions quality?&#xD;&#xA;2. Are we already controlling better new posts in the review queue?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/246189/negative-vs-positive-questions-over-time&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Tfak6.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19440" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6990" RevisionGUID="322e7d3d-bdb7-4fd1-99ea-3ccc7766d59b" CreationDate="2014-11-13T12:22:37.140" UserId="40590" Comment="added 1 character in body; edited title" Text="Why can't we raise up questions quality?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19441" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6991" RevisionGUID="1f2cfadf-8508-4f5e-9d2e-591619c5f08c" CreationDate="2014-11-13T16:10:29.623" UserId="31260" Text="Your data is inaccurate because SEDE doesn't account for [deleted questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/157462/165773) but anyway, there are few factors worth thinking of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, Programmers were getting a reasonable mix of good and bad questions related to careers, software recommendations and code reviews. Even when topicality of these was slippery, well presented questions about interesting, real problems were considered worthy of upvotes by many readers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nowadays, we lost a good part but bad part remains with us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean, users capable of asking good questions in above topics, eventually find their way and stick to specialized sites - [TWP](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [CR](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [SR](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is left to us are askers who _want_ to ask but _can't_ make a good question. They post (or cross-post) their stuff at Programmers, Stack Overflow, Yahoo Answers, anywhere, in a hope to find a [kind soul to feed them](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/276637/839601). This contributes to lowering average quality of questions in these topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another stream of low quality questions are those from users blocked / warned at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, they could pollute SO with their low quality stuff for months or even years but for last year or two, due to improvements in [burning down SO close queue](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue), they started hitting question blocks and warnings more and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Per stats, Programmers appears to be [most popular of SE sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773) among this category of askers. After being blocked or scared by warnings at Stack Overflow they simply try to dump their low quality stuff over here, thus also lowering average quality level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If honestly, I can't see what we can do to help with the quality of questions like above, nor how we can control these in review queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't realistically expect askers of bad questions to &quot;refocus&quot; to specialized sites because at these sites, such questions seem to be detected and rejected even faster than over here. This is probably because of clearer, narrower specialization regulars at these sites build a better sense of what is good and what is not (at least that's how I feel at TWP).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also can't imagine how it would be possible to make users blocked / warned at SO stop their attempts to leak through Programmers either. I can't think of a way to tell someone facing a [block message at SO](http://stackoverflow.com/help/question-bans) that they shouldn't try their luck at Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19442" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6992" RevisionGUID="d45cb12b-d1ec-48ef-bb6e-3e32d1504353" CreationDate="2014-11-13T18:29:55.133" UserId="110587" Text="Part of it is trash questions, but there is also questions that are not in scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now the scope is detailed in **Help -&gt; Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it there? Yes. Is it good enough? Not really. If it were.. well then gnat's life wouldn't be as hard as it is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That really isn't programmer's fault, thats just how all of SE is. It starts from position of assertion that you should read a help-center first. The fact that nobody does this hasn't been embraced yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Users learn what each particular site's unique interpretation of what is 'subjective' and what is off-topic by visiting one of the on-hold questions, or having one of their own questions put on hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So education usually comes after the mistake. SE might want to think about how to improve their UX in order to educate during question composition, instead of burying the scope three clicks deep or having to be linked to after a question is put on hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yes I know this is already done when the cursor's focus is in the question title, but as we can see, that obviously isn't good enough." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19443" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6991" RevisionGUID="3498a05c-af3f-4550-8792-f309316f8da7" CreationDate="2014-11-13T19:39:25.273" UserId="31260" Comment="a way to tell someone facing a block message at SO that they shouldn't try their luck at Programmers" Text="Your data is inaccurate because SEDE doesn't account for [deleted questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/157462/165773) but anyway, there are few factors worth thinking of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, Programmers were getting a reasonable mix of good and bad questions related to careers, software recommendations and code reviews. Even when topicality of these was slippery, well presented questions about interesting, real problems were considered worthy of upvotes by many readers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nowadays, we lost a good part but bad part remains with us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean, users capable of asking good questions in above topics, eventually find their way and stick to specialized sites - [TWP](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [CR](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [SR](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is left to us are askers who _want_ to ask but _can't_ make a good question. They post (or cross-post) their stuff at Programmers, Stack Overflow, Yahoo Answers, anywhere, in a hope to find a [kind soul to feed them](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/276637/839601). This contributes to lowering average quality of questions in these topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another stream of low quality questions are those from users blocked / warned at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, they could pollute SO with their low quality stuff for months or even years but for last year or two, due to improvements in [burning down SO close queue](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue), they started hitting question blocks and warnings more and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Per stats, Programmers appears to be [most popular of SE sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773) among this category of askers. After being blocked or scared by warnings at Stack Overflow they simply try to dump their low quality stuff over here, thus also lowering average quality level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If honestly, I can't see what we can do to help with the quality of questions like above, nor how we can control these in review queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't realistically expect askers of bad questions to &quot;refocus&quot; to specialized sites because at these sites, such questions seem to be detected and rejected even faster than over here. This is probably because of clearer, narrower specialization regulars at these sites build a better sense of what is good and what is not (at least that's how I feel at TWP).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also can't imagine how it would be possible to make users blocked / warned at SO stop their attempts to leak through Programmers either. I can't think of a way to tell someone facing a [block message at SO](http://stackoverflow.com/help/question-bans) that they shouldn't try their luck at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;**Wait!** You've recently been blocked (warned) at Stack Overflow. Consider that quality requirements at Programmers are similar. Alos note that Stack Overflow topics are _not_ covered here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Are you sure that you want to proceed asking question?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Click &lt;kbd&gt;No&lt;/kbd&gt; to cancel asking.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Click &lt;kbd&gt;Back&lt;/kbd&gt; to return to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!--&#xD;&#xA;Note to editors. Choices above are *intentionally* limited to No/Cancel - absence of option &quot;Yes&quot; to proceed asking question is not a simple mistake. If you plan to add such an option, make sure to also remove this comment, otherwise I will rollback your edit for not giving enough attention to edited content.&#xD;&#xA;--&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19444" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6993" RevisionGUID="2876eda3-401f-4c27-9956-8ebb5102ffe4" CreationDate="2014-11-13T19:51:10.800" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There's an interesting chart there... but I draw issue at comparing P.SE to Stack Overflow.  In particular, the size of the voting user base compared to the daily influx of questions can make most of the stuff on Stack Overflow get no votes at all (there's also a significant 'whine about down votes' and 'give sympathy up votes' (examples [1][1], [2][2], [3][3] (entirety of question in mouseover in case they are deleted)) culture on SO).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to see what similar sites to P.SE looked like - similar in terms of questions/day and overall size.  This is what I came up with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Other sites][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will see that we are by no means the most down voting of the 30k or so question sites that I sampled (Gaming, Programmers, Electrical Engineering, Android Enthusiasts).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question really is &quot;what is EE doing right?&quot; along with &quot;what groups Gaming and AE together?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer to this is likely the accessibility of the material to the 'common' person.  The harder/less accessible the material, the more focused the site can be and clearly communicate that focus to people asking questions.  Furthermore, the more difficult the material, the more natural it is for the person to have done the requite study of the problem before asking the question along with asking the question fully.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging from this, I would suggest that if we want to have fewer down voted questions, it is would be necessary to restrict our scope *drastically* such that we're closer to that of Theoretical CS or Server Fault in what is allowed or not and take fewer soft questions; requiring all the questions to be at the professional software architect level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure that would be the right thing to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, there's the conception on other sites (Stack Overflow, I'm looking at you) that Programmers.SE is for questions without code or for getting opinions.  One can reliably go and find [belongs on P.SE](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24972540/how-many-copies-of-instance-method-will-be-created-for-n-number-of-objects-in-c#comment38818793_24972540) type comments on Stack Overflow ([data.SE](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/133379/recent-p-se-comments)) for questions that don't meet the desired quality.  The questions get asked here, and down voted, and, well, thats what you see.  I contend that it is *impossible* for P.SE to stop the problem as there are far too many with this misunderstanding of P.SE's scope on SO and the best we can do is close, down vote, and educate people who post here under those conceptions (and, again, thats a non-negligible portion of the ratio).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/26758518/289086 &quot;I need to make an error count that will shut down my vb.net programme when the user has made 5 errors&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/26746755/289086 &quot;What are the minimum required deliverables for a NOSql data model?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/7648417/289086 &quot;How to create a media player for Android?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/N04qm.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19445" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6991" RevisionGUID="322a3d81-1090-4dde-8e9f-73dddfada72d" CreationDate="2014-11-13T19:52:01.553" UserId="31260" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="Your data is inaccurate because SEDE doesn't account for [deleted questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/157462/165773) but anyway, there are few factors worth thinking of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, Programmers were getting a reasonable mix of good and bad questions related to careers, software recommendations and code reviews. Even when topicality of these was slippery, well presented questions about interesting, real problems were considered worthy of upvotes by many readers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nowadays, we lost a good part but bad part remains with us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean, users capable of asking good questions in above topics, eventually find their way and stick to specialized sites - [TWP](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [CR](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [SR](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is left to us are askers who _want_ to ask but _can't_ make a good question. They post (or cross-post) their stuff at Programmers, Stack Overflow, Yahoo Answers, anywhere, in a hope to find a [kind soul to feed them](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/276637/839601). This contributes to lowering average quality of questions in these topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another stream of low quality questions are those from users blocked / warned at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, they could pollute SO with their low quality stuff for months or even years but for last year or two, due to improvements in [burning down SO close queue](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue), they started hitting question blocks and warnings more and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Per stats, Programmers appear to be [most popular of SE sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773) among this category of askers. After being blocked or scared by warnings at Stack Overflow they simply try to dump their low quality stuff over here, thus also lowering average quality level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If honestly, I can't see what we can do to help with the quality of questions like above, nor how we can control these in review queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't realistically expect askers of bad questions to &quot;refocus&quot; to specialized sites because at these sites, such questions seem to be detected and rejected even faster than over here. This is probably because of clearer, narrower specialization regulars at these sites build a better sense of what is good and what is not (at least that's how I feel at TWP).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also can't imagine how it would be possible to make users blocked / warned at SO stop their attempts to leak through Programmers either. I can't think of a way to tell someone facing a [block message at SO](http://stackoverflow.com/help/question-bans) that they shouldn't try their luck at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;**Wait!** You've recently been blocked (warned) at Stack Overflow. Consider that quality requirements at Programmers are similar. Also note that Stack Overflow topics are _not_ covered here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Are you sure that you want to proceed asking question?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Click &lt;kbd&gt;No&lt;/kbd&gt; to cancel asking.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Click &lt;kbd&gt;Back&lt;/kbd&gt; to return to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!--&#xD;&#xA;Note to editors. Choices above are *intentionally* limited to No/Cancel - absence of option &quot;Yes&quot; to proceed asking question is not a simple mistake. If you plan to add such an option, make sure to also remove this comment, otherwise I will rollback your edit for not giving enough attention to edited content.&#xD;&#xA;--&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19446" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6990" RevisionGUID="becc620f-32ec-4925-b9f3-1053ace478fe" CreationDate="2014-11-13T19:54:49.140" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="vicious != voracious.  Pretty sure you meant you use SE a lot.  Voracious would be the better term.  Vicious implies anger or evil intent." Text="I am a voracious StackExchange user, always I have a technical question I go to StackOverflow, also every morning I like to come here to programmer to read some more advanced questions and opinions about design stuff and programmer challenges (as opposed to programming challenges). I noted, a long ago already, that we have a great number of negative voted question. I can understand the motives. [&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;][1] [&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But why can't we raise up the quality of the Questions? Look at this chart I [extracted from data.stackechange.][3]  It shows the ratio of down voted questions to total questions asked that year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Despite its huge size, StackOverflow could, given the years control (and for some time, lower) the negative voted Questions. In Programmers in other-hand negative question have increased over the years (except in 2013-2014 period, where it appear to be controlled).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. What can we do to help with the questions quality?&#xD;&#xA;2. Are we already controlling better new posts in the review queue?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/246189/negative-vs-positive-questions-over-time&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Tfak6.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19447" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6993" RevisionGUID="df6b8876-c3ab-490f-ac64-ef40c52de465" CreationDate="2014-11-13T19:55:34.973" UserId="31260" Comment="minor spelling cleanup" Text="There's an interesting chart there... but I draw issue at comparing P.SE to Stack Overflow.  In particular, the size of the voting user base compared to the daily influx of questions can make most of the stuff on Stack Overflow get no votes at all (there's also a significant 'whine about down votes' and 'give sympathy up votes' (examples [1][1], [2][2], [3][3] (entirety of question in mouseover in case they are deleted)) culture on SO).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to see what similar sites to P.SE looked like - similar in terms of questions/day and overall size.  This is what I came up with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Other sites][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will see that we are by no means the most down voting of the 30k or so question sites that I sampled (Gaming, Programmers, Electrical Engineering, Android Enthusiasts).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question really is &quot;what is EE doing right?&quot; along with &quot;what groups Gaming and AE together?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer to this is likely the accessibility of the material to the 'common' person.  The harder/less accessible the material, the more focused the site can be and clearly communicate that focus to people asking questions.  Furthermore, the more difficult the material, the more natural it is for the person to have done the requite study of the problem before asking the question along with asking the question fully.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging from this, I would suggest that if we want to have fewer down voted questions, it is would be necessary to restrict our scope *drastically* such that we're closer to that of Theoretical CS or Server Fault in what is allowed or not and take fewer soft questions; requiring all the questions to be at the professional software architect level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure that would be the right thing to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, there's the conception on other sites (Stack Overflow, I'm looking at you) that Programmers.SE is for questions without code or for getting opinions.  One can reliably go and find [belongs on P.SE](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24972540/how-many-copies-of-instance-method-will-be-created-for-n-number-of-objects-in-c#comment38818793_24972540) type comments on Stack Overflow ([data.SE](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/133379/recent-p-se-comments)) for questions that don't meet the desired quality.  The questions get asked here, and down voted, and, well, that's what you see.  I contend that it is *impossible* for P.SE to stop the problem as there are far too many with this misunderstanding of P.SE's scope on SO and the best we can do is close, down vote, and educate people who post here under those conceptions (and, again, that's a non-negligible portion of the ratio).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/26758518/289086 &quot;I need to make an error count that will shut down my vb.net programme when the user has made 5 errors&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/26746755/289086 &quot;What are the minimum required deliverables for a NOSql data model?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/7648417/289086 &quot;How to create a media player for Android?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/N04qm.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19448" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6991" RevisionGUID="2f701ee3-fb62-443c-853b-15b04d367e93" CreationDate="2014-11-13T19:57:47.243" UserId="31260" Comment="deleted 7 characters in body" Text="Your data is inaccurate because SEDE doesn't account for [deleted questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/157462/165773) but anyway, there are few factors worth thinking of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, Programmers were getting a reasonable mix of good and bad questions related to careers, software recommendations and code reviews. Even when topicality of these was slippery, well presented questions about interesting, real problems were considered worthy of upvotes by many readers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nowadays, we lost a good part but bad part remains with us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean, users capable of asking good questions in above topics, eventually find their way and stick to specialized sites - [TWP](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [CR](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [SR](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is left to us are askers who _want_ to ask but _can't_ make a good question. They post (or cross-post) their stuff at Programmers, Stack Overflow, Yahoo Answers, anywhere, in a hope to find a [kind soul to feed them](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/276637/839601). This contributes to lowering average quality of questions in these topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another stream of low quality questions are those from users blocked / warned at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, they could pollute SO with their low quality stuff for months or even years but for last year or two, due to improvements in [burning down SO close queue](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue), they started hitting question blocks and warnings more and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Per stats, Programmers appear to be [most popular of SE sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773) among this category of askers. After being blocked or scared by warnings at Stack Overflow they simply try to dump their low quality stuff over here, thus also lowering average quality level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If honestly, I can't see what we can do to help with the quality of questions like above, nor how we can control these in review queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't realistically expect askers of bad questions to &quot;refocus&quot; to specialized sites because at these sites, such questions seem to be detected and rejected even faster than over here. This is probably because of clearer, narrower specialization regulars at these sites build a better sense of what is good and what is not (at least that's how I feel at TWP).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also can't imagine how it would be possible to make users blocked / warned at SO stop their attempts to leak through Programmers. I can't think of a way to tell someone facing a [block message at SO](http://stackoverflow.com/help/question-bans) that they shouldn't try their luck at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;**Wait!** You've recently been blocked (warned) at Stack Overflow. Consider that quality requirements at Programmers are similar. Also note that Stack Overflow topics are _not_ covered here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Are you sure that you want to proceed asking question?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Click &lt;kbd&gt;No&lt;/kbd&gt; to cancel asking.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Click &lt;kbd&gt;Back&lt;/kbd&gt; to return to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!--&#xD;&#xA;Note to editors. Choices above are *intentionally* limited to No/Cancel - absence of option &quot;Yes&quot; to proceed asking question is not a simple mistake. If you plan to add such an option, make sure to also remove this comment, otherwise I will rollback your edit for not giving enough attention to edited content.&#xD;&#xA;--&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19458" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6950" RevisionGUID="3a606062-b31e-43c9-b975-7c173a31593e" CreationDate="2014-11-13T21:22:38.593" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|tags|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19459" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6995" RevisionGUID="9db84b3c-31d3-4ec2-a5df-f3b52dfe5a68" CreationDate="2014-11-17T11:11:04.487" UserId="98131" Text="I often find myself wanting to ask questions about design patterns or simply what kind of approaches I can take towards to solving a particular problem, and I feel this site is appropriate for it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But often, I want to know how this is best achieved in a specific language, and to get a feel for how a problem might be solved in a specific language - not to mention getting suggestions for frameworks, libraries and services that could help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I'm kind of uncertain where such questions belong - on the one hand, I'm asking about general design problems that could be applicable agnostically, but on the other hand, I want to benefit from discussing the problem on terms that are relevant to the technology stack I'm using.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this would be asking, &quot;How could I implement a simple blog in PHP?&quot; or &quot;How could I structure a Tic-Tac-Toe game in a Pythonic way?&quot; - both questions are definitely design issues that could be applied to a number of languages, but I also want specific information about how the problem might be solved in the particular language I'm asking about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So is there an appropriate place for these kinds of questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19460" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6995" RevisionGUID="9db84b3c-31d3-4ec2-a5df-f3b52dfe5a68" CreationDate="2014-11-17T11:11:04.487" UserId="98131" Text="Are questions to this site reccomended as being language agnostic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19461" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6995" RevisionGUID="9db84b3c-31d3-4ec2-a5df-f3b52dfe5a68" CreationDate="2014-11-17T11:11:04.487" UserId="98131" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19462" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6995" RevisionGUID="df1fbc15-7f0f-4a5c-99eb-6ec5b0d05217" CreationDate="2014-11-17T12:39:13.697" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="Are questions at this site recommended as being language agnostic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19463" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6995" RevisionGUID="df1fbc15-7f0f-4a5c-99eb-6ec5b0d05217" CreationDate="2014-11-17T12:39:13.697" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19464" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6996" RevisionGUID="b555449d-bc62-423e-9c5f-b52c78e7e549" CreationDate="2014-11-17T13:02:09.823" UserId="25476" Text="I will use both of your examples to talk briefly about the issues I see with them being posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How could I implement a simple blog in PHP?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would not be a good question for the site, not necessarily because it is about design, but because **it is too broad.** There are many aspects of design that would go into designing a blog.  Web design, database design, application logic, cross cutting concerns, etc...  Even if this were language agnostic this doesn't change.  A better question for example would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&quot;I am trying to design a database schema that can properly capture domain model elements of a blog, here is what I tried.  Any improvements or suggestions to do this better?&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should always demonstrate the problem where possible, be clearly worded and focused to something that is clearly and completely answerable.  It should also demonstrate what you are thinking might be a solution or what you have tried.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How could I structure a Tic-Tac-Toe game in a Pythonic way?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ways to structure a Tic-Tac-Toe game might be considered a matter of opinion.  This would probably be closed as **Primarily opinion based**.  Wherever possible a question should be answerable.  Questions that have 100 equally acceptable answers do not help anybody derive what the best solution is.  Going by the most highly upvoted answer doesn't tell you as this might be the first answer posted, or the person answering might be popular or the solution described is a popular one but might not be the best solution.  Even if this was language agnostic it probably doesn't change.  A better question might be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Here is how I was thinking of structuring my Tic-Tac-Toe game in a Pythonic way.  Does this particular design choice make sense for Python and what specifically could I improve or do better?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Here is how I was thinking of representing the data structure for my Tic-Tac-Toe game.  Is this a good data structure that lends itself to an efficient algorithm for Tic-Tac-Toe?  If not how can I improve this?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to benefit from discussing the problem on terms that are relevant to the technology stack I'm using.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to ask questions about the &quot;Pythonic way&quot; or the &quot;Java way&quot;, pending that the question follows these guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Properly scoped (not too broad to be effectively answered).  If an entire book can be written about or has been written about a topic then it is probably not a good question for this site.&#xD;&#xA; - Good questions have answers, not opinions.  Opinions lead to discussions and debates and this format doesn't lend itself well to this.&#xD;&#xA; - Have a clearly defined problem that you are trying to work through&#xD;&#xA; - Demonstrate prior effort or thought into solving it on your own.  This can be achieved simply by stating some ideas that are currently in your head.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you follow these guidelines and the question is on topic for the site then you shouldn't have any problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please read the articles in the [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help) for more details." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19465" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6996" RevisionGUID="3b8f4684-8540-42db-8975-8cd8b7c416df" CreationDate="2014-11-17T13:25:53.333" UserId="31260" Comment="close reasons += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted" Text="I will use both of your examples to talk briefly about the issues I see with them being posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How could I implement a simple blog in PHP?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would not be a good question for the site, not necessarily because it is about design, but because **it is [too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490).** There are many aspects of design that would go into designing a blog.  Web design, database design, application logic, cross cutting concerns, etc...  Even if this were language agnostic this doesn't change.  A better question for example would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&quot;I am trying to design a database schema that can properly capture domain model elements of a blog, here is what I tried.  Any improvements or suggestions to do this better?&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should always demonstrate the problem where possible, be clearly worded and focused to something that is clearly and completely answerable.  It should also demonstrate what you are thinking might be a solution or what you have tried.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How could I structure a Tic-Tac-Toe game in a Pythonic way?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ways to structure a Tic-Tac-Toe game might be considered a matter of opinion.  This would probably be closed as **[Primarily opinion-based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)**.  Wherever possible a question should be answerable.  Questions that have 100 equally acceptable answers do not help anybody derive what the best solution is.  Going by the most highly upvoted answer doesn't tell you as this might be the first answer posted, or the person answering might be popular or the solution described is a popular one but might not be the best solution.  Even if this was language agnostic it probably doesn't change.  A better question might be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Here is how I was thinking of structuring my Tic-Tac-Toe game in a Pythonic way.  Does this particular design choice make sense for Python and what specifically could I improve or do better?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Here is how I was thinking of representing the data structure for my Tic-Tac-Toe game.  Is this a good data structure that lends itself to an efficient algorithm for Tic-Tac-Toe?  If not how can I improve this?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to benefit from discussing the problem on terms that are relevant to the technology stack I'm using.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to ask questions about the &quot;Pythonic way&quot; or the &quot;Java way&quot;, pending that the question follows these guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Properly scoped (not too broad to be effectively answered).  If an entire book can be written about or has been written about a topic then it is probably not a good question for this site.&#xD;&#xA; - Good questions have answers, not opinions.  Opinions lead to discussions and debates and this format doesn't lend itself well to this.&#xD;&#xA; - Have a clearly defined problem that you are trying to work through&#xD;&#xA; - Demonstrate prior effort or thought into solving it on your own.  This can be achieved simply by stating some ideas that are currently in your head.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you follow these guidelines and the question is on topic for the site then you shouldn't have any problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please read the articles in the [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help) for more details." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19466" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6991" RevisionGUID="6b9b628a-451e-47f3-9eab-3c0707427eb4" CreationDate="2014-11-17T16:12:55.063" UserId="31260" Comment="Wait! += http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773" Text="Your data is inaccurate because SEDE doesn't account for [deleted questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/157462/165773) but anyway, there are few factors worth thinking of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, Programmers were getting a reasonable mix of good and bad questions related to careers, software recommendations and code reviews. Even when topicality of these was slippery, well presented questions about interesting, real problems were considered worthy of upvotes by many readers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nowadays, we lost a good part but bad part remains with us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean, users capable of asking good questions in above topics, eventually find their way and stick to specialized sites - [TWP](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [CR](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [SR](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is left to us are askers who _want_ to ask but _can't_ make a good question. They post (or cross-post) their stuff at Programmers, Stack Overflow, Yahoo Answers, anywhere, in a hope to find a [kind soul to feed them](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/276637/839601). This contributes to lowering average quality of questions in these topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another stream of low quality questions are those from users blocked / warned at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, they could pollute SO with their low quality stuff for months or even years but for last year or two, due to improvements in [burning down SO close queue](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue), they started hitting question blocks and warnings more and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Per stats, Programmers appear to be [most popular of SE sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773) among this category of askers. After being blocked or scared by warnings at Stack Overflow they simply try to dump their low quality stuff over here, thus also lowering average quality level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If honestly, I can't see what we can do to help with the quality of questions like above, nor how we can control these in review queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't realistically expect askers of bad questions to &quot;refocus&quot; to specialized sites because at these sites, such questions seem to be detected and rejected even faster than over here. This is probably because of clearer, narrower specialization regulars at these sites build a better sense of what is good and what is not (at least that's how I feel at TWP).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also can't imagine how it would be possible to make users blocked / warned at SO stop their attempts to leak through Programmers. I can't think of a way to tell someone facing a [block message at SO](http://stackoverflow.com/help/question-bans) that they shouldn't try their luck at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;**Wait!** You've recently been blocked (warned) at Stack Overflow. Consider that quality requirements at Programmers are similar. Note that Stack Overflow topics are _not_ covered here and that your questions [can't even be migrated to Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;) because of the block.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Are you sure that you want to proceed asking question?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Click &lt;kbd&gt;No&lt;/kbd&gt; to cancel asking.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Click &lt;kbd&gt;Back&lt;/kbd&gt; to return to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!--&#xD;&#xA;Note to editors. Choices above are *intentionally* limited to No/Cancel - absence of option &quot;Yes&quot; to proceed asking question is not a simple mistake. If you plan to add such an option, make sure to also remove this comment, otherwise I will rollback your edit for not giving enough attention to edited content.&#xD;&#xA;--&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19467" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6990" RevisionGUID="6672b372-bc21-4ac5-879d-c0eb0a5e5cff" CreationDate="2014-11-17T20:56:14.450" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/534449960058511360" />
  <row Id="19468" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6993" RevisionGUID="8965abde-8e49-4ef3-8782-4b342f9eb610" CreationDate="2014-11-18T04:42:34.287" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 3689 characters in body" Text="### We are inline with similar sized sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's an interesting chart there... but I draw issue at comparing P.SE to Stack Overflow.  In particular, the size of the voting user base compared to the daily influx of questions can make most of the stuff on Stack Overflow get no votes at all (there's also a significant 'whine about down votes' and 'give sympathy up votes' (examples [1][1], [2][2], [3][3] (entirety of question in mouseover in case they are deleted)) culture on SO).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to see what similar sites to P.SE looked like - similar in terms of questions/day and overall size.  This is what I came up with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Other sites][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will see that we are by no means the most down voting of the 30k or so question sites that I sampled (Gaming, Programmers, Electrical Engineering, Android Enthusiasts).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question really is &quot;what is EE doing right?&quot; along with &quot;what groups Gaming and AE together?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer to this is likely the accessibility of the material to the 'common' person.  The harder/less accessible the material, the more focused the site can be and clearly communicate that focus to people asking questions.  Furthermore, the more difficult the material, the more natural it is for the person to have done the requite study of the problem before asking the question along with asking the question fully.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging from this, I would suggest that if we want to have fewer down voted questions, it is would be necessary to restrict our scope *drastically* such that we're closer to that of Theoretical CS or Server Fault in what is allowed or not and take fewer soft questions; requiring all the questions to be at the professional software architect level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure that would be the right thing to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, there's the conception on other sites (Stack Overflow, I'm looking at you) that Programmers.SE is for questions without code or for getting opinions.  One can reliably go and find [belongs on P.SE](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24972540/how-many-copies-of-instance-method-will-be-created-for-n-number-of-objects-in-c#comment38818793_24972540) type comments on Stack Overflow ([data.SE](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/133379/recent-p-se-comments)) for questions that don't meet the desired quality.  The questions get asked here, and down voted, and, well, that's what you see.  I contend that it is *impossible* for P.SE to stop the problem as there are far too many with this misunderstanding of P.SE's scope on SO and the best we can do is close, down vote, and educate people who post here under those conceptions (and, again, that's a non-negligible portion of the ratio).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Changing the name won't help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One reoccurring theme that has popped up over the years is &quot;maybe if we change the site's name people will post on topic questions?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pulling up the current newest questions page and listing all the questions with a negative score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263077/help-understanding-this (-4) - a block of code with &quot;what does this do?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263075/c-project-design (-3 on hold) - too broad (not off topic) &quot;how do I understand C++?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263048/do-i-need-an-msdn-subscription-now-that-visual-studio-is-open-source (-3 on hold) - primary opinion (not off topic): do I still need MSDN?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263043/when-should-i-use-arraylists-compared-to-hashmaps (-4 on old) - too broad (not off topic): &quot;When should I use ArrayLists compared to HashMaps? Which is more effective, and for what purposes?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263023/how-to-make-triangle-in-nested-loop (-5 on hold) - off topic (failed to migrate to SO): I have a bug in this classic homework problem.&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263014/alphanumeric-addition (-3 on hold) (one vote for unclear): How do you solve [crypto math](http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/cody/problems/621-cryptomath-addition) problems?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263004/what-should-i-describe-myself-in-my-cv-a-business-intelligence-developer-or-wha (-4 on hold) off topic: resume help - can I call myself a Sr. developer without the experience?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263002/pseudo-code-of-3-digits-reversed (-4 on hold) Unclear: &quot;How can I write a pseudo code of an algorithm that displays a given 3 digit number reversed?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262999/how-to-use-slime-indentation-with-editorconfig-in-emacs (-1 migrated) Emacs tool use&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262992/how-can-i-start-writing-a-apps-to-be-build-before-code (-3 on hold) too broad: how do I write an app?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262991/code-snippets-website-app-with-integration-for-windows-mac-linux (-3 on hold) off topic (tool recommendation): &quot;Is there a website where I can save code snippets&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262980/what-is-the-most-minimal-web-app-stack-for-a-server (-3) off topic (tool recommendation): what is a good web stack to use for a severely underpowered machine?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my contention that absolutely *none* of these would have been not asked if the site's name was SoftwareDevelopemt.SE or SoftwareEngineering.SE.  Every single question there would still have been asked.  Very few of them had off topic votes.  General topicality is not the problem with the questions (specific bits of 'tool recommendation' and 'career advice' still is).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are long past the days of &quot;what is your favorite comic&quot; or &quot;what should I name my cat&quot; and the like.  Those questions don't show up. Programmers is understood to be a site about software development processes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The off topic questions that we get now are ones that very closely map to the topic of software engineering, but are issues that we are not qualified (as programmers) to answer.  Career advice and legal being the two biggest ones.  We also regularly get polling questions, but that isn't an issue with the site name, that is a misunderstanding of the Q&amp;A format itself (and a failure to read the tour which shows what is on and off topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/26758518/289086 &quot;I need to make an error count that will shut down my vb.net programme when the user has made 5 errors&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/26746755/289086 &quot;What are the minimum required deliverables for a NOSql data model?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/7648417/289086 &quot;How to create a media player for Android?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/N04qm.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19469" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6993" RevisionGUID="06d8f5e3-ae6a-4ab0-9ade-1bf2ce056081" CreationDate="2014-11-18T04:55:59.260" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 350 characters in body" Text="### We are inline with similar sized sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's an interesting chart there... but I draw issue at comparing P.SE to Stack Overflow.  In particular, the size of the voting user base compared to the daily influx of questions can make most of the stuff on Stack Overflow get no votes at all (there's also a significant 'whine about down votes' and 'give sympathy up votes' (examples [1][1], [2][2], [3][3] (entirety of question in mouseover in case they are deleted)) culture on SO).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to see what similar sites to P.SE looked like - similar in terms of questions/day and overall size.  This is what I came up with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Other sites][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will see that we are by no means the most down voting of the 30k or so question sites that I sampled (Gaming, Programmers, Electrical Engineering, Android Enthusiasts).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question really is &quot;what is EE doing right?&quot; along with &quot;what groups Gaming and AE together?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer to this is likely the accessibility of the material to the 'common' person.  The harder/less accessible the material, the more focused the site can be and clearly communicate that focus to people asking questions.  Furthermore, the more difficult the material, the more natural it is for the person to have done the requite study of the problem before asking the question along with asking the question fully.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging from this, I would suggest that if we want to have fewer down voted questions, it is would be necessary to restrict our scope *drastically* such that we're closer to that of Theoretical CS or Server Fault in what is allowed or not and take fewer soft questions; requiring all the questions to be at the professional software architect level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure that would be the right thing to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, there's the conception on other sites (Stack Overflow, I'm looking at you) that Programmers.SE is for questions without code or for getting opinions.  One can reliably go and find [belongs on P.SE](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24972540/how-many-copies-of-instance-method-will-be-created-for-n-number-of-objects-in-c#comment38818793_24972540) type comments on Stack Overflow ([data.SE](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/133379/recent-p-se-comments)) for questions that don't meet the desired quality.  The questions get asked here, and down voted, and, well, that's what you see.  I contend that it is *impossible* for P.SE to stop the problem as there are far too many with this misunderstanding of P.SE's scope on SO and the best we can do is close, down vote, and educate people who post here under those conceptions (and, again, that's a non-negligible portion of the ratio).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Changing the name won't help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One reoccurring theme that has popped up over the years is &quot;maybe if we change the site's name people will post on topic questions?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pulling up the current newest questions page and listing all the questions with a negative score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263077/help-understanding-this (-4) - a block of code with &quot;what does this do?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263075/c-project-design (-3 on hold) - too broad (not off topic) &quot;how do I understand C++?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263048/do-i-need-an-msdn-subscription-now-that-visual-studio-is-open-source (-3 on hold) - primary opinion (not off topic): do I still need MSDN?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263043/when-should-i-use-arraylists-compared-to-hashmaps (-4 on old) - too broad (not off topic): &quot;When should I use ArrayLists compared to HashMaps? Which is more effective, and for what purposes?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263023/how-to-make-triangle-in-nested-loop (-5 on hold) - off topic (failed to migrate to SO): I have a bug in this classic homework problem.&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263014/alphanumeric-addition (-3 on hold) (one vote for unclear): How do you solve [crypto math](http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/cody/problems/621-cryptomath-addition) problems?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263004/what-should-i-describe-myself-in-my-cv-a-business-intelligence-developer-or-wha (-4 on hold) off topic: resume help - can I call myself a Sr. developer without the experience?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263002/pseudo-code-of-3-digits-reversed (-4 on hold) Unclear: &quot;How can I write a pseudo code of an algorithm that displays a given 3 digit number reversed?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262999/how-to-use-slime-indentation-with-editorconfig-in-emacs (-1 migrated) Emacs tool use&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262992/how-can-i-start-writing-a-apps-to-be-build-before-code (-3 on hold) too broad: how do I write an app?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262991/code-snippets-website-app-with-integration-for-windows-mac-linux (-3 on hold) off topic (tool recommendation): &quot;Is there a website where I can save code snippets&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262980/what-is-the-most-minimal-web-app-stack-for-a-server (-3) off topic (tool recommendation): what is a good web stack to use for a severely underpowered machine?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my contention that absolutely *none* of these would have been not asked if the site's name was SoftwareDevelopemt.SE or SoftwareEngineering.SE.  Every single question there would still have been asked.  Very few of them had off topic votes.  General topicality is not the problem with the questions (specific bits of 'tool recommendation' and 'career advice' still is).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are long past the days of &quot;what is your favorite comic&quot; or &quot;what should I name my cat&quot; and the like.  Those questions don't show up. Programmers is understood to be a site about software development processes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The off topic questions that we get now are ones that very closely map to the topic of software engineering, but are issues that we are not qualified (as programmers) to answer.  Career advice and legal being the two biggest ones.  We also regularly get polling questions, but that isn't an issue with the site name, that is a misunderstanding of the Q&amp;A format itself (and a failure to read the tour which shows what is on and off topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But there will always be people that suffer from the &quot;herp derp oh look a textbox&quot; syndrome, and no amount of renaming the site or amending the FAQ is going to fix that. -- [Anna Lear](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name/3225#comment7479_2950)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/26758518/289086 &quot;I need to make an error count that will shut down my vb.net programme when the user has made 5 errors&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/26746755/289086 &quot;What are the minimum required deliverables for a NOSql data model?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/7648417/289086 &quot;How to create a media player for Android?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/N04qm.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19470" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6993" RevisionGUID="0c4fe7d6-1269-4604-8356-2e3da4d75801" CreationDate="2014-11-18T09:13:17.243" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo correction" Text="### We are inline with similar sized sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's an interesting chart there... but I draw issue at comparing P.SE to Stack Overflow.  In particular, the size of the voting user base compared to the daily influx of questions can make most of the stuff on Stack Overflow get no votes at all (there's also a significant 'whine about down votes' and 'give sympathy up votes' (examples [1][1], [2][2], [3][3] (entirety of question in mouseover in case they are deleted)) culture on SO).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to see what similar sites to P.SE looked like - similar in terms of questions/day and overall size.  This is what I came up with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Other sites][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will see that we are by no means the most down voting of the 30k or so question sites that I sampled (Gaming, Programmers, Electrical Engineering, Android Enthusiasts).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question really is &quot;what is EE doing right?&quot; along with &quot;what groups Gaming and AE together?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer to this is likely the accessibility of the material to the 'common' person.  The harder/less accessible the material, the more focused the site can be and clearly communicate that focus to people asking questions.  Furthermore, the more difficult the material, the more natural it is for the person to have done the requite study of the problem before asking the question along with asking the question fully.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging from this, I would suggest that if we want to have fewer down voted questions, it is would be necessary to restrict our scope *drastically* such that we're closer to that of Theoretical CS or Server Fault in what is allowed or not and take fewer soft questions; requiring all the questions to be at the professional software architect level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure that would be the right thing to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, there's the conception on other sites (Stack Overflow, I'm looking at you) that Programmers.SE is for questions without code or for getting opinions.  One can reliably go and find [belongs on P.SE](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24972540/how-many-copies-of-instance-method-will-be-created-for-n-number-of-objects-in-c#comment38818793_24972540) type comments on Stack Overflow ([data.SE](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/133379/recent-p-se-comments)) for questions that don't meet the desired quality.  The questions get asked here, and down voted, and, well, that's what you see.  I contend that it is *impossible* for P.SE to stop the problem as there are far too many with this misunderstanding of P.SE's scope on SO and the best we can do is close, down vote, and educate people who post here under those conceptions (and, again, that's a non-negligible portion of the ratio).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Changing the name won't help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One reoccurring theme that has popped up over the years is &quot;maybe if we change the site's name people will post on topic questions?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pulling up the current newest questions page and listing all the questions with a negative score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263077/help-understanding-this (-4) - a block of code with &quot;what does this do?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263075/c-project-design (-3 on hold) - too broad (not off topic) &quot;how do I understand C++?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263048/do-i-need-an-msdn-subscription-now-that-visual-studio-is-open-source (-3 on hold) - primary opinion (not off topic): do I still need MSDN?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263043/when-should-i-use-arraylists-compared-to-hashmaps (-4 on old) - too broad (not off topic): &quot;When should I use ArrayLists compared to HashMaps? Which is more effective, and for what purposes?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263023/how-to-make-triangle-in-nested-loop (-5 on hold) - off topic (failed to migrate to SO): I have a bug in this classic homework problem.&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263014/alphanumeric-addition (-3 on hold) (one vote for unclear): How do you solve [crypto math](http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/cody/problems/621-cryptomath-addition) problems?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263004/what-should-i-describe-myself-in-my-cv-a-business-intelligence-developer-or-wha (-4 on hold) off topic: resume help - can I call myself a Sr. developer without the experience?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263002/pseudo-code-of-3-digits-reversed (-4 on hold) Unclear: &quot;How can I write a pseudo code of an algorithm that displays a given 3 digit number reversed?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262999/how-to-use-slime-indentation-with-editorconfig-in-emacs (-1 migrated) Emacs tool use&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262992/how-can-i-start-writing-a-apps-to-be-build-before-code (-3 on hold) too broad: how do I write an app?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262991/code-snippets-website-app-with-integration-for-windows-mac-linux (-3 on hold) off topic (tool recommendation): &quot;Is there a website where I can save code snippets&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262980/what-is-the-most-minimal-web-app-stack-for-a-server (-3) off topic (tool recommendation): what is a good web stack to use for a severely underpowered machine?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my contention that absolutely *none* of these would have been not asked if the site's name was SoftwareDevelopment.SE or SoftwareEngineering.SE.  Every single question there would still have been asked.  Very few of them had off topic votes.  General topicality is not the problem with the questions (specific bits of 'tool recommendation' and 'career advice' still is).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are long past the days of &quot;what is your favorite comic&quot; or &quot;what should I name my cat&quot; and the like.  Those questions don't show up. Programmers is understood to be a site about software development processes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The off topic questions that we get now are ones that very closely map to the topic of software engineering, but are issues that we are not qualified (as programmers) to answer.  Career advice and legal being the two biggest ones.  We also regularly get polling questions, but that isn't an issue with the site name, that is a misunderstanding of the Q&amp;A format itself (and a failure to read the tour which shows what is on and off topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But there will always be people that suffer from the &quot;herp derp oh look a textbox&quot; syndrome, and no amount of renaming the site or amending the FAQ is going to fix that. -- [Anna Lear](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name/3225#comment7479_2950)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/26758518/289086 &quot;I need to make an error count that will shut down my vb.net programme when the user has made 5 errors&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/26746755/289086 &quot;What are the minimum required deliverables for a NOSql data model?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/7648417/289086 &quot;How to create a media player for Android?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/N04qm.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19471" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3666" RevisionGUID="56282cb4-ace7-4a1c-8af0-ec7ad37842c5" CreationDate="2014-11-18T14:59:48.933" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="Fix abbreviation" Text="Yes, any user contributed code is released under the CC-BY-SA.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the ToS ( http://stackexchange.com/legal ) &#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;You agree that all Subscriber Content that You contribute to the Network is perpetually and&#xD;&#xA;irrevocably licensed to Stack Exchange under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike &#xD;&#xA;license. You grant Stack Exchange the perpetual and irrevocable right and license to use, &#xD;&#xA;copy, cache, publish, display, distribute, modify, create derivative works and store such &#xD;&#xA;Subscriber Content and to allow others to do so in any medium now known or hereinafter &#xD;&#xA;developed (“Content License”) in order to provide the Services, even if such Subscriber &#xD;&#xA;Content has been contributed and subsequently removed by You&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, the key parts.&#xD;&#xA;You grant everything to SE under a CC-BY-SA license.&#xD;&#xA;You can never revoke that grant.&#xD;&#xA;(As Josh points out) CC-BY-SA allows you to use and abuse, even for commercial work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One interesting exception is SE's Network Content.  That portion, which includes a source code clause, is NOT released under a CC-BY-SA.  That section allows for personal use of the NC.  Keep in mind that Network Content != Subscriber Content, so it's really a non-issue unless you like to obsess over those details." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19472" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3666" RevisionGUID="c522a3b5-0ac8-4a06-9a16-d0e77b47f12a" CreationDate="2014-11-18T15:13:00.870" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="edited body" Text="Yes, any user contributed code is released under the CC BY-SA.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the ToS ( http://stackexchange.com/legal ) &#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;You agree that all Subscriber Content that You contribute to the Network is perpetually and&#xD;&#xA;irrevocably licensed to Stack Exchange under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike &#xD;&#xA;license. You grant Stack Exchange the perpetual and irrevocable right and license to use, &#xD;&#xA;copy, cache, publish, display, distribute, modify, create derivative works and store such &#xD;&#xA;Subscriber Content and to allow others to do so in any medium now known or hereinafter &#xD;&#xA;developed (“Content License”) in order to provide the Services, even if such Subscriber &#xD;&#xA;Content has been contributed and subsequently removed by You&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, the key parts.&#xD;&#xA;You grant everything to SE under a CC BY-SA license.&#xD;&#xA;You can never revoke that grant.&#xD;&#xA;(As Josh points out) CC BY-SA allows you to use and abuse, even for commercial work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One interesting exception is SE's Network Content.  That portion, which includes a source code clause, is NOT released under a CC BY-SA.  That section allows for personal use of the NC.  Keep in mind that Network Content != Subscriber Content, so it's really a non-issue unless you like to obsess over those details." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19473" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6997" RevisionGUID="4ea64785-7200-4d49-a81e-519f4def8c39" CreationDate="2014-11-19T08:06:21.277" UserId="66037" Text="I've just noticed the tag &quot;activity&quot; which is rather infrequently used and seems to cover a variety of concepts. About half of the questions seem to be concerning the Android user interface concept, and most of the rest are about uml diagrams. The remainder don't seem to be particularly helpfully tagged at all. Should these questions be retagged in a less ambiguous fashion (e.g. android-activity and uml-activity, and just detag the rest)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19474" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6997" RevisionGUID="4ea64785-7200-4d49-a81e-519f4def8c39" CreationDate="2014-11-19T08:06:21.277" UserId="66037" Text="Tag ambiguity - &quot;activity&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19475" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6997" RevisionGUID="4ea64785-7200-4d49-a81e-519f4def8c39" CreationDate="2014-11-19T08:06:21.277" UserId="66037" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19476" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6981" RevisionGUID="c63e1bac-a2a4-44c1-9486-df2f75540256" CreationDate="2014-11-19T08:59:46.760" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/534994432399904768" />
  <row Id="19477" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6998" RevisionGUID="984aea88-ce52-42ba-8d23-02bfba573c8a" CreationDate="2014-11-19T11:12:51.183" UserId="4" Text="Winter Bash is an annual event that can run on any Stack Exchange site that chooses to participate. Users earn “hats” for their gravatars by completing certain tasks (analogous to badges). Certain actions trigger the user receiving a hat, which their gravatar can “wear”. We track everyone’s progress earning hats in a leaderboard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This event will run from 15 December 2014 to 4 January 2015. Users will be able to see their entire hat collection on winterbash2014.stackexchange.com. That site will also have a landing page, explaining the rules and other details of the event. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Individual users who don’t want to participate, don’t want to see hats, and/or are generally anti-hat will have an “I hate hats” option available. And just like last time, at the end of the event, all hats will go back into storage. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only visual change to the Stack Exchange sites themselves will be the presence of the hats and the “I hate hats” button in the footer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers has participated in this event in the past. Should we participate again this year?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19478" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="6998" RevisionGUID="984aea88-ce52-42ba-8d23-02bfba573c8a" CreationDate="2014-11-19T11:12:51.183" UserId="4" Text="Should Programmers participate in Winter Bash 2014?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19479" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="6998" RevisionGUID="984aea88-ce52-42ba-8d23-02bfba573c8a" CreationDate="2014-11-19T11:12:51.183" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|featured|fun|hats|winterbash|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19480" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6998" RevisionGUID="e6799538-4fc5-4260-862f-489312b43f69" CreationDate="2014-11-19T11:59:47.407" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/535039732422422528" />
  <row Id="19481" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="6999" RevisionGUID="45739d64-c76c-4243-8e7a-2ccb164a1349" CreationDate="2014-11-19T14:21:59.103" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="###HATS!!!! &lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;'nuff said&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19482" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7000" RevisionGUID="f5de27ff-6195-4c8f-80e8-e8edd1f402eb" CreationDate="2014-11-19T15:45:15.523" UserId="25476" Text="Devil's Advocate post...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## NO HATS!!! ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZoQ9F.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19483" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7001" RevisionGUID="038378d1-623c-496b-8abc-d97b5e64f508" CreationDate="2014-11-19T17:54:27.157" UserId="19663" Text="I have a question that was originally in *codereview* and now its migrated here where its on hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that in *programmers* its too opinionated and thus on hold. However I cannot edit it because it has to be edited in *codereview* where it does not exist anymore. The question is basically: &quot;here is how I did it, how should I have done it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there something that I am missing or is the question permanently locked beyond repair.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question at hand is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[what-is-the-simplest-human-readable-configuration-file-format][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(situation on 12:51 EST)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141556/what-is-the-simplest-human-readable-configuration-file-format" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19484" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7001" RevisionGUID="038378d1-623c-496b-8abc-d97b5e64f508" CreationDate="2014-11-19T17:54:27.157" UserId="19663" Text="Can questions go into limbo when its migrated (rejected) and on hold?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19485" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7001" RevisionGUID="038378d1-623c-496b-8abc-d97b5e64f508" CreationDate="2014-11-19T17:54:27.157" UserId="19663" Text="|support|bug|migration|help-center|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19486" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6997" RevisionGUID="4033779f-13d0-46c7-95cf-ccd24b2b156a" CreationDate="2014-11-19T17:55:52.723" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="I've just noticed the tag [tag:activity] which is rather infrequently used and seems to cover a variety of concepts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;About half of the questions seem to be concerning the Android user interface concept, and most of the rest are about UML diagrams. The remainder don't seem to be particularly helpfully tagged at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should these questions be retagged in a less ambiguous fashion (e.g. android-activity and uml-activity, and just detag the rest)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19487" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6997" RevisionGUID="4033779f-13d0-46c7-95cf-ccd24b2b156a" CreationDate="2014-11-19T17:55:52.723" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="|discussion|tags|meta-tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19488" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7002" RevisionGUID="9a4169db-0f1a-423d-b08c-22d7c1d4b137" CreationDate="2014-11-20T15:50:05.210" UserId="64132" Text="I was very surprised to see that Meta questions can be closed as 'primarily opinion based'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, that doesn't make much sense :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can the close reasons on Meta be different from the ones on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are the chances of this question being closed as 'primarily opinion based'?  (There is a [precedent][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6609/64132" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19489" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7002" RevisionGUID="9a4169db-0f1a-423d-b08c-22d7c1d4b137" CreationDate="2014-11-20T15:50:05.210" UserId="64132" Text="Why does Meta have a close reason 'primarily opinion based'?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19490" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7002" RevisionGUID="9a4169db-0f1a-423d-b08c-22d7c1d4b137" CreationDate="2014-11-20T15:50:05.210" UserId="64132" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19491" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7002" RevisionGUID="a557cc9e-5ca7-445f-936c-51d3dea3fc75" CreationDate="2014-11-20T15:55:31.607" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|meta|opinion-based|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19492" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2105" RevisionGUID="fea1a8dd-f0d7-4ae4-938e-d3b227435e30" CreationDate="2014-11-21T09:27:27.280" UserId="47" Comment="too broad discussion" Text="There's nothing wrong with posting the same question on multiple sites - **as long as it's tailored for each site and not a cut and paste repost**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each site is unique. It has it's own community and own guidelines for what is on and off topic. It would be a very rare question indeed that was on topic on more than one site *if posted without modification for that site*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally the fact that you think the question might be suitable for multiple sites could be an indication that the question is too broad - you should narrow it to something more specific. In this case you might well find that what you have is several related questions some of which are on topic here, others which are on topic on other sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19493" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7003" RevisionGUID="bcf8775d-6946-4f4b-a213-4de5adbebc98" CreationDate="2014-11-21T16:36:43.937" UserId="103440" Text="&lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/80121/event-planning?referrer=92peYmGtAEjCDFG7GYRf2Q2&quot; title=&quot;Follow Event Planning&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ll7Fc.png&quot; width=&quot;220&quot; height=&quot;250&quot; alt=&quot;Stack Exchange Q&amp;A site proposal: Event Planning&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19494" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7003" RevisionGUID="ce762d80-c225-4d91-b23a-a48635272b5e" CreationDate="2014-11-21T16:36:43.937" UserId="103440" />
  <row Id="19495" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2104" RevisionGUID="3b681cf1-78c7-4e09-a104-2598cc4d85a3" CreationDate="2014-11-21T19:06:26.093" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Adding relevant tags. Correct grammar, capitalization and punctation.  Add links." Text="I think we should allow for a question to be listed on multiple sites, if it meets the charter of both sites. There would be a feature similar to the &quot;migrate&quot; feature except it will be a &quot;share with other site&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there is quite a bit of cross over between this site, [project management](http://pm.stackexchange.com) and [startups](http://startups.stackexchange.com). It will be beneficial to both site to cross list questions with one set of answers, of course.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19496" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2104" RevisionGUID="3b681cf1-78c7-4e09-a104-2598cc4d85a3" CreationDate="2014-11-21T19:06:26.093" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Adding relevant tags. Correct grammar, capitalization and punctation.  Add links." Text="|feature-request|status-declined|duplicate-questions|cross-posting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19497" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7004" RevisionGUID="1405fded-19e9-48ec-99d8-7ce583f2c8f7" CreationDate="2014-11-22T03:58:03.267" UserId="80373" Text="The the tags [tag:multithreading], [tag:thread], and [tag:threading] are duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:Multithreading] seems to be used the most. I don't see any disadvantage to this (except if a question is only talking about one thread). Can we have these synonym-ized please?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19498" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7004" RevisionGUID="1405fded-19e9-48ec-99d8-7ce583f2c8f7" CreationDate="2014-11-22T03:58:03.267" UserId="80373" Text="Synonym request: multithreading, threading, thread" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19499" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7004" RevisionGUID="1405fded-19e9-48ec-99d8-7ce583f2c8f7" CreationDate="2014-11-22T03:58:03.267" UserId="80373" Text="|feature-request|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19500" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7004" RevisionGUID="02a6350a-2b32-4470-82cc-34a2fecf6ea3" CreationDate="2014-11-22T12:48:24.253" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19501" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7005" RevisionGUID="76972129-1953-434d-a6b6-68eb7345c75c" CreationDate="2014-11-22T12:48:31.940" UserId="47" Text="The relevant synonyms have been created." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19502" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7006" RevisionGUID="1e09a6d0-8390-4b27-83f6-a5be2f2f08e4" CreationDate="2014-11-22T15:51:25.820" UserId="6605" Text="From time to time, there are questions which I can be answered *per se* with one short sentence. A detailed answer would be more valuable for both the community and the person asking the question, but a short one may contain enough information if the person asking the question is ready to make an effort to search for details on his own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basic example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Question:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I notice that a few classes have a lot of code related to the creation of the instances of those classes, rather than the logic itself. For example, one class contains three short instance methods, but eight static methods which deal with its initialization.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Having all those static methods in the class itself it distracting. Moreover, I don't understand how is it possible to mock those methods for unit tests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What should I do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Quick and short answer:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You may be interested in factory design pattern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**For community, such answer is not particularly valuable**. It doesn't explain neither why a factory is useful here, nor how to use it, nor if this is the only solution to the OP's problem. From a real answer, I would expect:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The general explanation of what factory pattern is about,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Additional benefits of the factory pattern the author of the question may not think about, such as the possibility to create instances of different types (a factory which creates either `Cat inherits Animal` or `Dog inherits Animal` depending on some criteria), &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The explanation of the difference between a factory and an abstract factory (especially the relation with mocking, mentioned in the question),&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The mention of the builder pattern,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - An example (piece of code) of a factory pattern applied to a class (and how the factory pattern can be mocked),&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Eventually additional hints, such as the usage of method chaining in a builder for a more fluent interface.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**On the other hand, the question is actually answered,** and if the author of the question makes an effort of searching for factory pattern, he will find everything he needs to successfully get rid of those static methods in his class.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I can post a quick and short answer, but don't have time for a long, detailed answer (and don't have time to edit it in the near future into a detailed answer), what should I do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Post an answer?&#xD;&#xA; 1. Post it as a comment?&#xD;&#xA; 1. Post an answer as a community wiki, expecting other people to make it more detailed (I hardly doubt this will work; other persons would rather post their own answer instead)?&#xD;&#xA; 1. Avoid posting anything and make the person wait until somebody else answers the question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19503" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7006" RevisionGUID="1e09a6d0-8390-4b27-83f6-a5be2f2f08e4" CreationDate="2014-11-22T15:51:25.820" UserId="6605" Text="Should I post a comment answering a question when I don't have time for a detailed answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19504" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7006" RevisionGUID="1e09a6d0-8390-4b27-83f6-a5be2f2f08e4" CreationDate="2014-11-22T15:51:25.820" UserId="6605" Text="|discussion|answers|answer-quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19505" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6948" RevisionGUID="d7b6fdd1-29b7-4c2f-98cc-905590867fe2" CreationDate="2014-11-22T17:35:41.847" UserId="226" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19506" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7007" RevisionGUID="a5f8eaac-4770-488e-8601-019ea99b74fe" CreationDate="2014-11-22T17:36:20.383" UserId="226" Text="I [reverted the changeset](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/277642/105971) that introduced this problem. The fix will be live in the next build." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19507" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7008" RevisionGUID="866c7629-d2e9-40e9-8055-3d7e9eefbbfe" CreationDate="2014-11-22T19:31:40.237" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="&gt; If I can post a quick and short answer, but don't have time for a long, detailed answer (and don't have time to edit it in the near future into a detailed answer), what should I do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  1. Post an answer?&#xD;&#xA; 1. Post it as a comment?&#xD;&#xA; 1. Post an answer as a community wiki, expecting other people to make it more detailed (I hardly doubt this will work; other persons would rather post their own answer instead)?&#xD;&#xA; 1. Avoid posting anything and make the person wait until somebody else answers the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I would post it as a comment and come back to it later to fully flush out the answer if another one hasn't been posted to the quality that I would hope to see.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are *exactly* right in that the short answer of &quot;You may be interested in factory design pattern.&quot; is not particularly valuable.  Having answers such as these show up in results for new users suggests that they are acceptable answers and may have a less than ideal experience when they try posting &quot;use a singleton&quot; as an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, personally, I'd rather avoid encouraging the short answer.  Stack Overflow has difficulties with people seeing the &quot;try ${some code}&quot; answers and posting them themselves.  Without any explanation these short answers really aren't that useful at providing the *why* for the next person who comes by with a similar question and doesn't understand why the &quot;You may be interested in factory design pattern.&quot; answer was accepted (or up voted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By providing comprehensive answers that fully answer the question rather than partial answers we not only encourage people to write interesting answers (that we want to read), but also encourage people that are willing to take the time to write the long answer (I'm quite happy that P.SE doesn't suffer much from the Fastest Gun In The West).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless the answer is something that is *truly* to be collaborative or substantial and lacks originality (e.g. an answer that is mostly a copy and paste of other sources), I wouldn't make it community wiki.  This is partly because if I was to post an answer that was fully elaborating on the &quot;use a factory pattern&quot;, I wouldn't go to the community wiki post and edit it into shape - I'd post my own answer that is substantially better (I like my internet points).  Whats more, if the community wiki answer is up voted or accepted, already (coming back to the question a daly later that day to write my own), I may be less inclined to write my substantially better answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Posting the suggestion as a comment may indeed be the right answer for the person asking the question.  It could facilitate the person realizing the proper solution to the question and writing their own self answered post.  This would be a good thing (noting the challenge of writing a good self answer).  It may also lead other people to create a better answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Post it as a comment.  &#xD;&#xA; * Point people in the right direction for more substantial answers.&#xD;&#xA; * Come back later when you have the time to write a more complete answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every answer that is posted encourages other people to answer other questions in a similar manner.  Post the type of answer you would like to read in other questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19508" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7009" RevisionGUID="56765251-2a96-41de-921e-5f0775e1fa7b" CreationDate="2014-11-24T02:16:48.673" UserId="32896" Text="I think that matters of opinion are sometimes quite important.  Example: I just deleted a question from stackoverflow because it gathered three close votes for being &quot;opinion based.&quot; What was it?  I asked about the relative merits of teaching JavaFX vs. Java Swing.  This is important and I thought the opinion of professionals in the field might be useful.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked people to emerge from their technocratic silos and got roundly booed for it.  Not so good." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19509" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7002" RevisionGUID="ba3970b1-74d0-428a-b319-73fa9c609ec1" CreationDate="2014-11-24T03:08:59.153" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/536718090588139521" />
  <row Id="19510" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="7010" RevisionGUID="a019fd62-d835-40f3-afa2-067330d0096a" CreationDate="2014-11-24T08:56:40.633" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263622/is-there-a-stack-exchange-for-the-business-side-of-mobile-development" />
  <row Id="19511" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7010" RevisionGUID="e5e2be8d-2256-4f76-a935-781ed2ea4393" CreationDate="2014-11-24T07:25:58.177" UserDisplayName="user19718" Text="I'm interested in asking questions in regards to admob/iads/iap/freemium/revenue/etc for mobile/desktop app desktop. Basically business type of questions. I'm wondering if there's a stack exchange for mobile business development, or do those questions happen here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19512" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7010" RevisionGUID="e5e2be8d-2256-4f76-a935-781ed2ea4393" CreationDate="2014-11-24T07:25:58.177" UserDisplayName="user19718" Text="Is there a Stack Exchange for the business side of mobile development?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19513" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7010" RevisionGUID="e5e2be8d-2256-4f76-a935-781ed2ea4393" CreationDate="2014-11-24T07:25:58.177" UserDisplayName="user19718" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19514" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="6997" RevisionGUID="86de704f-6626-4ab6-b7c0-f786cd0b1deb" CreationDate="2014-11-24T09:09:38.487" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/536808853330223104" />
  <row Id="19515" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7010" RevisionGUID="a8d29c26-8ade-409a-96d2-7366a5f5b526" CreationDate="2014-11-24T09:14:58.223" UserId="5099" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19516" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7011" RevisionGUID="42d1a127-4cbc-4b68-97eb-f203197b7306" CreationDate="2014-11-24T13:27:26.067" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I believe your best option would likely be looking at http://freelancing.stackexchange.com (help center: [on topic](http://freelancing.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)) or http://startups.stackexchange.com (help center: [on topic](http://startups.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)) depending on the topic of question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19519" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7013" RevisionGUID="ff82a597-6cd6-467c-975a-0d413136ef8e" CreationDate="2014-11-24T19:50:20.093" UserId="19663" Text="I would change the question to this format:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What alternatives there are for simple human readable configuration file in python? &#xD;&#xA;What are the pros and cons for each solution? Here is an example of a configuration file and how its handled in python.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And after this copy and paste from the original question the two code blocks. The new question matches the answers already given. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end add the sentece &quot;note that this question has been heavily modified&quot; and link here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does that sound like?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19520" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6743" RevisionGUID="03dc9f09-5a1a-41ff-84e7-32a970a72563" CreationDate="2014-11-25T16:14:20.650" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add not constructive." Text="## Why we're not a forum&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to realize is that Stack Exchange brands itself as a Q&amp;A site. This is the very top of the content when you go to http://stackexchange.com.  It calls out that this is something *different* than forums, that there are *right answers.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When one goes to the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) page, note the wording of the text there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat. Just questions...  and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Going further into the help center, one finds [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) which links to three other pages that goes into more about what isn't allowed on the site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Thus, questions that are not answerable — discussions, debates, opinions — should be closed as subjective. It seems simple enough: Fact good; opinion and discussion bad. But why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Most forums and chat rooms have a scale problem. As in, they don’t. The more people that join the discussion, the more noise each of those connections bring. So the forums get progressively noisier and noisier, and suddenly one day … you stop learning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## On the nature of discussions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of a discussion is back and forth.  Lines of communication.  Look at sites that are intended for discussion and you will find threads and nested comments and a system that isn't designed around getting answers but rather to make connections with people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is different.  As stated in the tour and time and time again in other documents, this is a Q&amp;A site.  As such it has intentionally made having these discussions difficult.  Things such as limited sizes of comments, limited markdown in comments, the automatic move comment to chat feature.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussions make it harder to find the answer - you have to wade through all the other stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;As an aside, there is *nothing* worse than trying to go from reading a post, to reading the comments to going back to the post to see the reply, and back to the comments to see the next reply and back to the post... Don't do that. Remove the 'Edit:' and 'Update:' from your edit, make the entire thing a cohesive whole and leave a comment saying that the post has been updated to take this into account - people can read the revision history if they want to see what changed.&amp;lt;/rant&amp;gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are sites that do discussions very well... or, as well as discussions can be done.  Jeff Atwood even went off to make another site model designed precisely for discussions (http://www.discourse.org)... and it's not a Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not to say that one can't try to mix Q&amp;A and discussions.  But it's *very* hard to do both right.  It's hard enough to do one of them right.  Stack Exchange chose to get Q&amp;A right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Where else can discussions be had?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *do* want to have a discussion there are some options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Visit [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard).  The _Whiteboard_ chat room is one such place within the Stack Exchange network where discussions are allowed (and encouraged).&#xD;&#xA;* Ask somewhere else.  There are numerous other sites out there that are designed for discussions.  [Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/), [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/ask), [Slashdot](http://ask.slashdot.org) to name a few.  These are sites that are specifically designed with discussions in mind - the voting system on them, the moderation, the community formed around them - all about discussions.  I will also mention [NotConstructive.com](https://www.notconstructive.com) which [recently relaunched](http://fourlightyears.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/notconstructivecom-launches-nobel-prize.html) using Discourse. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So why is it a big deal?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with discussions is that discussions can easily overwhelm the rest of the site.  Unlike objective questions that have answers (and if asked again can be directed to the previous one asked that will answer this one too), discussions of the same topic are infinite in their variety based on the participants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is based on the premise that good questions and answers attract and retain the experts that answer them and that people come to find answers.  The quality that Stack Exchange provides is unique within the Internet so far (quite a few clones, but none as compelling).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, discussions tend to drive away experts.  Not always, but it's the trend.  This has been seen many times since the days of Usenet news... experts really don't want to spend their time arguing with someone who doesn't understand the topic at hand when they want to just answer a question... and if they *do*, there are ways to have that discussion via other channels.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not to say that there are experts who do enjoy discussions... and that Stack Exchange isn't exactly working for them.  This is unfortunate, but it does not mean that discussions need to be allowed or that Stack Exchange needs to change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Related reading and links from above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is Stack Overflow a forum?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/92107/213963) on Meta.StackExchange&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;* [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html) by Clay Shirky" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19521" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7014" RevisionGUID="78a35fb1-901f-4bee-8d66-1196cf518e6b" CreationDate="2014-11-25T20:33:50.923" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="This bit came up in chat the other day:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more discussion needs to happen on meta regarding question x and how to make it better&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A quick search can find it, but I'm not going to link it to bring up the full context and discussion in chat - because I *do* want it to be rehashed here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Occasionally in chat, we will find a question that should get reopened.  We discuss it there, figure out the edits necessary, make the edits, and muster the reopen votes.  On one hand, this is great - we get a question modified and reopened promptly with what is probably minimal drama.  On the other hand, it means that this activity is within chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Chat is great and all (I like it, I'm often there), but its search sucks even more than the main site search does, and it isn't obvious for the situations where there is a meta issue that does have a question and answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A counter point to this is that with chat we can get things done with great experience.  However, it also means that one sees the same group of people doing things (closing, editing, opening).  We are not moderators, we are active reviewers. People in chat only discuss posts that they are interested in at that time - rather than ones that the rest of the community may be interested in getting fixed and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's the question(s):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Is meta a good place for &quot;how to fix a post?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* How do we get people who are not chat regulars to participate in doing this on meta?&#xD;&#xA;* How do we get more people trying to fix questions (on meta?) so that they can be reopened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a note, I'd rather this not veer off into the tangent of what is on or off topic, or what constitutes too broad or opinion.  If there is a [tag:specific-question] or [tag:specific-answer] that is being asked about why its closed or down voted, please, take that into a different meta question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19522" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7014" RevisionGUID="78a35fb1-901f-4bee-8d66-1196cf518e6b" CreationDate="2014-11-25T20:33:50.923" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Where and how to improve questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19523" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7014" RevisionGUID="78a35fb1-901f-4bee-8d66-1196cf518e6b" CreationDate="2014-11-25T20:33:50.923" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19524" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7014" RevisionGUID="f42437de-ec16-4d7b-8af2-97a38a666e45" CreationDate="2014-11-25T20:55:42.850" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|closed-questions|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19525" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7015" RevisionGUID="085e2535-8cba-4eb4-8f5e-9902b87b368b" CreationDate="2014-11-25T22:30:58.373" UserId="1130" Text="My personal 2 cents... stop downvoting people who post on meta trying to get questions fixed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what stopped me a while back from doing it. It became such a chore to constantly feel like I'm fighting for something that none of the active users wanted, and to always be downvoted for my efforts by the same group of users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* -2 (+1/-3): http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3192/1130&#xD;&#xA;* -2 (+1/-3): http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3193/1130&#xD;&#xA;* -2 (+0/-2): http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3194/1130&#xD;&#xA;* -1 (+7/-8): http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3568/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We may not always post meta questions the way you'd like it formatted, or we may voice opinions that you disagree with in the question itself, but simply downvoting questions like this only discourages users who are trying to improve the site's content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead consider posting an answer explaining your disagreement, or upvoting an existing one. Or possibly even upvote the user for bothering to take the time to come to meta in the first place to try and fix the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I still lurk in the meta site on occasion, and often see people getting downvoted for asking for help improving a question, or why something was off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also in regards to question #2, this was posted a while back that sounds related : http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3292/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19526" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7014" RevisionGUID="5dbf75f8-c6e6-4c96-ba1f-ff312fb0d711" CreationDate="2014-11-26T00:09:38.840" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/537397734547152896" />
  <row Id="19527" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7016" RevisionGUID="71bd5137-95c4-4888-908d-f251ef3ef70b" CreationDate="2014-11-26T18:59:24.653" UserId="128883" Text="I'm pretty new to Programmers.SE and was thinking about if here is appropriate to ask for example something like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is Node.JS ready for stay in production environment?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or even something that is what I really would like to know&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is Sails.Js (a node.js framework) ready for production and with good performance ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19528" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7016" RevisionGUID="71bd5137-95c4-4888-908d-f251ef3ef70b" CreationDate="2014-11-26T18:59:24.653" UserId="128883" Text="Perfomance and Stabilty questions are appropriated here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19529" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7016" RevisionGUID="71bd5137-95c4-4888-908d-f251ef3ef70b" CreationDate="2014-11-26T18:59:24.653" UserId="128883" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19530" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7017" RevisionGUID="c3674a2b-eb06-4213-93b3-c97a17e0cac1" CreationDate="2014-11-26T19:15:02.897" UserId="25476" Text="Everybody has a different opinion of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Production ready...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good performance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would be closed as Primarily Opinion Based.  It will attract a large number of discussions and low quality answers.  Voting will be done based on popularity and not necessarily objective facts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You might want to look at our Software Recommendations beta site for StackExchange.  You might have better luck there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19531" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7018" RevisionGUID="91006f26-6cdd-411f-9c9d-4f17365ba6aa" CreationDate="2014-11-27T18:41:48.290" UserId="31260" Text="Given that chat appears to work more or less fine, I think it makes sense to continue using it. Additional benefit is that chat messages can't be voted down, this addresses concerns mentioned in [another answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7015/31260 &quot;'stop downvoting people who post on meta trying to get questions fixed...'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;A limitation of chat worth keeping in mind is that users with rep under 20 can only read it. But meta has this limitation too, it is lower (5 rep) but still. I don't know a good solution for that, so to keep things simple I will simply assume users having sufficient rep to participate. For users with insufficient reputation, the only reliable approach to communicate seems to be in comments under their posts, optionally [moved to dedicated chat room](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237976/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A drawback of current approach that I am particularly uncomfortable with is, [as discussed in comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions#comment20061_7014), that Whiteboard room scrolls too fast. Few hours out of chat and I will most likely miss mention of the post I could be interested to improve. Chat pings that take me a while to reply are inconvenient because my reply to these lands in a totally changed context. That's not good. In fact, that's very bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparent solution for this appears to establish a **dedicated chat room** focusing strictly on question improvements. This is just the way I would want to have it, except that as (again) been discussed in comments, there is a risk that room gets frozen due to inactivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way I can think of to deal with room freezes is by using moderator flags: is one finds that room is frozen, they simply flag the post they want to discuss and ask moderator to unlock. *Unless moderators indicate that they would decline such flags* I am going to assume below that this way will work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we pick dedicated chat room approach, it would be worth to check the way how [SO close reviewers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251955/so-close-vote-reviewers) approach this. In brief, they have a room and a cross-linked meta post. As far as I can tell, most activity goes within room, but they also sometimes update / bump the meta post when needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that their gig runs fine for almost a year, we may probably learn something from their experience. (Some might find it ironic to learn from guys that seem to act in somewhat _opposite direction_ but I honestly don't care:).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, I think the dedicated chat room is the way to go (coupled with dedicated meta post, like of SO close reviewers). This doesn't mean though that meta is to be avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Technically, meta provides much richer platform to support complicated improvements and in-depth discussion, it can offer better visibility, powerful [meta effect](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204311/165773) etc. Lower barrier to participate (5 rep instead of 20 for chat) is also a benefit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As demonstrated by [broken-windows-review at TWP](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/broken-windows-review &quot;tag dedicated to Workplace questions improvement&quot;), meta can be successfully used to improve questions if done right. This experience also looks worth studying, especially because purpose of review at TWP is very much like one we discuss, their primary focus is on salvaging and improving the questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19532" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7018" RevisionGUID="8973b096-82b4-471c-abef-d825326e1496" CreationDate="2014-11-27T19:51:42.853" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="Given that chat appears to work more or less fine, I think it makes sense to continue using it. Additional benefit is that chat messages can't be voted down, this addresses concerns mentioned in [another answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7015/31260 &quot;'stop downvoting people who post on meta trying to get questions fixed...'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;A limitation of chat worth keeping in mind is that users with rep under 20 can only read it. But meta has this limitation too, it is lower (5 rep) but still. I don't know a good solution for that, so to keep things simple I will simply assume users having sufficient rep to participate. For users with insufficient reputation, the only reliable approach to communicate seems to be in comments under their posts, optionally [moved to dedicated chat room](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237976/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A drawback of current approach that I am particularly uncomfortable with is, [as discussed in comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions#comment20061_7014), that Whiteboard room scrolls too fast. Few hours out of chat and I will most likely miss mention of the post I could be interested to improve. Chat pings that take me a while to reply are inconvenient because my reply to these lands in a totally changed context. That's not good. In fact, that's very bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparent solution for this appears to establish a **dedicated chat room** focusing strictly on question improvements. This is just the way I would want to have it, except that as (again) been discussed in comments, there is a risk that room gets frozen due to inactivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way I can think of to deal with room freezes is by using moderator flags: if one finds that room is frozen, they simply flag the post they want to discuss and ask moderator to unlock. *Unless moderators indicate that they would decline such flags* I am going to assume below that this way will work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we pick dedicated chat room approach, it would be worth to check the way how [SO close reviewers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251955/so-close-vote-reviewers) approach this. In brief, they have a room and a cross-linked meta post. As far as I can tell, most activity goes within room, but they also sometimes update / bump the meta post when needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that their gig runs fine for almost a year, we may probably learn something from their experience. (Some might find it ironic to learn from guys that seem to act in somewhat _opposite direction_ but I honestly don't care:).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, I think the dedicated chat room is the way to go (coupled with dedicated meta post, like of SO close reviewers). This doesn't mean though that meta is to be avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Technically, meta provides much richer platform to support complicated improvements and in-depth discussion, it can offer better visibility, powerful [meta effect](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204311/165773) etc. Lower barrier to participate (5 rep instead of 20 for chat) is also a benefit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As demonstrated by [broken-windows-review at TWP](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/broken-windows-review &quot;tag dedicated to Workplace questions improvement&quot;), meta can be successfully used to improve questions if done right. This experience also looks worth studying, especially because purpose of review at TWP is very much like one we discuss here: their primary focus is on salvaging and improving the questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19533" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7018" RevisionGUID="89809403-e793-4b7a-b915-14fdd537b254" CreationDate="2014-11-27T21:20:18.927" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="Given that chat appears to work more or less fine, I think it makes sense to continue using it. Additional benefit is that chat messages can't be voted down, this addresses concerns mentioned in [another answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7015/31260 &quot;'stop downvoting people who post on meta trying to get questions fixed...'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;A limitation of chat worth keeping in mind is that users with rep under 20 can only read it. But meta has this limitation too, it is lower (5 rep) but still. I don't know a good solution for that, so to keep things simple I will simply assume users having sufficient rep to participate. For users with insufficient reputation, the only reliable approach to communicate seems to be in comments under their posts, optionally [moved to dedicated chat room](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237976/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A drawback of current approach that I am particularly uncomfortable with is that Whiteboard room [scrolls too fast](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions/7018#comment20061_7014 &quot;as been discussed in comments&quot;). Few hours out of chat and I will most likely miss mention of the post I could be interested to improve. Chat pings that take me a while to reply are inconvenient because my reply to these lands in a totally changed context. That's not good. In fact, that's very bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparent solution for this appears to establish a **dedicated chat room** focusing strictly on question improvements. This is just the way I would want to have it, except that [there is a risk](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions/7018#comment20062_7014 &quot;as (again) been discussed in comments&quot;) that room gets frozen due to inactivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way I can think of to deal with room freezes is by using moderator flags: if one finds that room is frozen, they simply flag the post they want to discuss and ask moderator to unlock. *Unless moderators indicate that they would decline such flags* I am going to assume below that this way will work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we pick dedicated chat room approach, it would be worth to check the way how [SO close reviewers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251955/so-close-vote-reviewers) approach this. In brief, they have a room and a cross-linked meta post. As far as I can tell, most activity goes within room, but they also sometimes update / bump the meta post when needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that their gig runs fine for almost a year, we may probably learn something from their experience. (Some might find it ironic to learn from guys that seem to act in somewhat _opposite direction_ but I honestly don't care:).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, I think the dedicated chat room is the way to go (coupled with dedicated meta post, like of SO close reviewers). This doesn't mean though that meta is to be avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Technically, meta provides much richer platform to support complicated improvements and in-depth discussion, it can offer better visibility, powerful [meta effect](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204311/165773) etc. Lower barrier to participate (5 rep instead of 20 for chat) is also a benefit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As demonstrated by [broken-windows-review at TWP](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/broken-windows-review &quot;tag dedicated to Workplace questions improvement&quot;), meta can be successfully used to improve questions if done right. This experience also looks worth studying, especially because purpose of review at TWP is very much like one we discuss here: their primary focus is on salvaging and improving the questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19534" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7018" RevisionGUID="3dacb32a-403b-4d9e-b30d-8ed778f6faa5" CreationDate="2014-11-28T08:42:26.253" UserId="31260" Comment="Meta is less likely to be [blocked by corporate firewalls](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/114297/165773 &quot;see 'Provide an alternate URL for chat rooms' at MSE&quot;) " Text="Given that chat appears to work more or less fine, I think it makes sense to continue using it. Additional benefit is that chat messages can't be voted down, this addresses concerns mentioned in [another answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7015/31260 &quot;'stop downvoting people who post on meta trying to get questions fixed...'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;A limitation of chat worth keeping in mind is that users with rep under 20 can only read it. But meta has this limitation too, it is lower (5 rep) but still. I don't know a good solution for that, so to keep things simple I will simply assume users having sufficient rep to participate. For users with insufficient reputation, the only reliable approach to communicate seems to be in comments under their posts, optionally [moved to dedicated chat room](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237976/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A drawback of current approach that I am particularly uncomfortable with is that Whiteboard room [scrolls too fast](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions/7018#comment20061_7014 &quot;as been discussed in comments&quot;). Few hours out of chat and I will most likely miss mention of the post I could be interested to improve. Chat pings that take me a while to reply are inconvenient because my reply to these lands in a totally changed context. That's not good. In fact, that's very bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparent solution for this appears to establish a **dedicated chat room** focusing strictly on question improvements. This is just the way I would want to have it, except that [there is a risk](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions/7018#comment20062_7014 &quot;as (again) been discussed in comments&quot;) that room gets frozen due to inactivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way I can think of to deal with room freezes is by using moderator flags: if one finds that room is frozen, they simply flag the post they want to discuss and ask moderator to unlock. *Unless moderators indicate that they would decline such flags* I am going to assume below that this way will work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we pick dedicated chat room approach, it would be worth to check the way how [SO close reviewers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251955/so-close-vote-reviewers) approach this. In brief, they have a room and a cross-linked meta post. As far as I can tell, most activity goes within room, but they also sometimes update / bump the meta post when needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that their gig runs fine for almost a year, we may probably learn something from their experience. (Some might find it ironic to learn from guys that seem to act in somewhat _opposite direction_ but I honestly don't care:).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, I think the dedicated chat room is the way to go (coupled with dedicated meta post, like of SO close reviewers). This doesn't mean though that meta is to be avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Technically, meta provides much richer platform to support complicated improvements and in-depth discussion, it can offer better visibility and powerful [meta effect](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204311/165773). Meta is less likely to be [blocked by corporate firewalls](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/114297/165773 &quot;see 'Provide an alternate URL for chat rooms' at MSE&quot;) etc. Lower barrier to participate (5 rep instead of 20 for chat) is also a benefit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As demonstrated by [broken-windows-review at TWP](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/broken-windows-review &quot;tag dedicated to Workplace questions improvement&quot;), meta can be successfully used to improve questions if done right. This experience also looks worth studying, especially because purpose of review at TWP is very much like one we discuss here: their primary focus is on salvaging and improving the questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19535" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7019" RevisionGUID="34a9e3ba-e906-4a36-a5dd-84d53a3185fa" CreationDate="2014-11-28T16:52:11.967" UserId="27426" Text="First, a bit of background:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am planning to &quot;takeover&quot; the maintaining of several inter-related FOSS project. Because the projects are very strongly intertwined, I am going to merge the repositories into one. At the same time, I will migrate the project(s) from SVN (at SourceForge) to Mercurial (at BitBucket).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I need to discuss the method, the 'how' to do the merging, in a way that the current maintainer can still finish his backlog while gradually handing over the project to me. And at the same time, I can start development branches on feature improvements and/or intricate/complex bugfixes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I already thought of several possible migration methods, with each option's pros &amp; cons. But I think I need input from fellow programmers, just in case I overlooked some drawbacks/benefits. Better to design the 'flow' right in the beginning rather than doing an overhaul later.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, this kind of question, would it be more suitable for Programmers SE or for StackOverflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19536" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7019" RevisionGUID="34a9e3ba-e906-4a36-a5dd-84d53a3185fa" CreationDate="2014-11-28T16:52:11.967" UserId="27426" Text="Asking about FOSS Project Merging method, here or in SO?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19537" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7019" RevisionGUID="34a9e3ba-e906-4a36-a5dd-84d53a3185fa" CreationDate="2014-11-28T16:52:11.967" UserId="27426" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19538" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7020" RevisionGUID="c173d108-655d-4c4a-80fd-572a8a24f509" CreationDate="2014-11-30T11:12:22.407" UserId="31260" Text="If a first time asker has an SO account that was recently (say, within a week) question blocked over there, how about showing them a warning like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** You've recently been blocked at Stack Overflow. Consider that quality requirements at Programmers are similar. Note that Stack Overflow topics are _not_ covered here and that your questions [can't even be migrated to Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;) because of the block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This hopefully would help them avoid further frustration if they get down and close votes, angry comments, blocked migrations and question block at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: [Why can't we raise up questions quality?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6990/31260)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Per stats, Programmers appear to be [most popular of SE sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773) among this category of askers. After being blocked or scared by warnings at Stack Overflow they simply try to dump their low quality stuff over here...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;SE might want to think about how to improve their UX in order to educate during question composition..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19539" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7020" RevisionGUID="c173d108-655d-4c4a-80fd-572a8a24f509" CreationDate="2014-11-30T11:12:22.407" UserId="31260" Text="Let's help askers who are trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19540" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7020" RevisionGUID="c173d108-655d-4c4a-80fd-572a8a24f509" CreationDate="2014-11-30T11:12:22.407" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|asking-questions|post-ban|new-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19541" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7020" RevisionGUID="8c629a4c-a8b5-4830-8f44-62f1dfa22e79" CreationDate="2014-11-30T11:43:47.973" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes" Text="If a first time asker has an SO account that was recently (say, within a week) question blocked over there, how about showing them a warning like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** You've recently been blocked at Stack Overflow. Consider that quality requirements at Programmers are similar. Note that Stack Overflow topics are _not_ covered here and that your questions [can't even be migrated to Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;) because of the block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This hopefully would help them avoid further frustration if they get down and close votes, angry comments, blocked migrations and question block at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why can't we raise up questions quality?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6990/31260)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Per stats, Programmers appear to be [most popular of SE sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773) among this category of askers. After being blocked or scared by warnings at Stack Overflow they simply try to dump their low quality stuff over here...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;SE might want to think about how to improve their UX in order to educate during question composition...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there... how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19542" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7019" RevisionGUID="adb268de-27e4-48e8-99eb-d224bb860484" CreationDate="2014-11-30T17:18:42.770" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6311],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:28988,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;World Engineer&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="19543" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7020" RevisionGUID="2dfdcff8-a793-4cbc-b3bb-30f45aa07b4c" CreationDate="2014-12-01T09:18:56.580" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/539347909083693056" />
  <row Id="19544" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7021" RevisionGUID="da1f22df-3af8-4771-9f5b-981bda1ea4f0" CreationDate="2014-12-02T16:01:16.907" UserId="35693" Text="The site frowns on &quot;opinion based&quot; questions. It prefers questions that can be answered with &quot;facts, references, or specific expertise.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question is less likely to be closed on meta than on the main site because there is a large body of &quot;precedent&quot; (across all SE sites), for most questions. But when there isn't, because the question gets into &quot;uncharted territory,&quot; it needs to be answered with facts, references or expertise from other sites, or it could get closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The term &quot;opinion-based&quot; means &quot;lack of the above.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19545" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6910" RevisionGUID="82281d8c-8ebc-4c3a-8dd0-c77caeccc40e" CreationDate="2014-12-02T20:11:48.787" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19546" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7022" RevisionGUID="5e18acf1-038a-4fce-8197-3ba7f2d25152" CreationDate="2014-12-02T20:13:06.060" UserId="47136" Text="I posted [a question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161966/term-for-24-bits) about the terminology for 3-byte integers (since we have terms for 4 bits, 1 byte, 2 bytes, and 4 bytes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was fine for a long time until it was finally closed as subjective. I flagged for a moderator's attention (since it was asking for a definitive answer and not *&quot;what should it be called?&quot;*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The moderator changed the reason to simply *off-topic*, [stating](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161966/term-for-24-bits?noredirect=1#comment537803_161966):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;Name That Thing&quot; request which is near universally off topic for StackExchange. For more information see Jeff Atwood's blog post: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is most definitely not a *guessing game* post. As Jeff Atwood correctly states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A half-remembered description of something you vaguely recall is not what I’d call a practical, answerable question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't *vaguely recall* anything; I simply didn't know. I didn't know if there had historically been a term. I didn't know if there was a term that isn't common but still used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The goal of Stack Exchange is not to construct un-findable single-serving questions that only help one person, but that’s exactly what guessing game questions tend to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Is there a term for 24-bit integers* is not an un-findable or single-serving question. It is a very common integer width in audio/visual software, and as you can see in the answers **there are *many* occurrences of 24-bit terms**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also, an expert in the topic should be able to have at least some confidence that the answer he’s writing answers the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not sure how this could be misconstrued. None of the answers given were subjective or opinion based; a few even linked out to proof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; . . . these questions aren’t educational in any way, because there’s no way to learn about the process of discovery. A particular community member, by virtue of their experience in the field, just happens to be able to take the limited information you remembered and fill in enough of the blanks to guess the correct answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, this isn't a *&quot;hey, I remember reading this book about stego algorithms written in visual basic and it mentioned the use of elephants in their research. What book is it?&quot;* question. It's a **definitive, answerable** question. It's not a request for recommendation. It's not asking for an opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further, the close reason states it is *off topic* given the [help center guidelines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software **architecture** and design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; algorithm and **data structure concepts**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As well, my question doesn't even come remotely close to anything on the off-topic list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand my question is a simple one, but it is no less qualified on the site than any other perfectly well-formed question. Why, then, has a moderator deemed it as such?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19547" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7022" RevisionGUID="5e18acf1-038a-4fce-8197-3ba7f2d25152" CreationDate="2014-12-02T20:13:06.060" UserId="47136" Text="How is this question off-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19548" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7022" RevisionGUID="5e18acf1-038a-4fce-8197-3ba7f2d25152" CreationDate="2014-12-02T20:13:06.060" UserId="47136" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19549" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7023" RevisionGUID="c5539f59-79d3-4cb0-b4a9-974f7ca595ea" CreationDate="2014-12-02T20:36:11.060" UserId="4" Text="Based on the [most recent guidance for &quot;name that thing&quot; questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic), I'm going to reopen your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that the blogs are only suggestions. The per-site policies are best found on each site's Meta. There is some leeway in terms of what is acceptable or not on a per-site basis." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19550" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7023" RevisionGUID="62e808f8-a70f-4de9-829f-eb340a12f9c6" CreationDate="2014-12-02T20:47:59.573" UserId="4" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="Based on the [most recent guidance for &quot;name that thing&quot; questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology), I'm going to reopen your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that the blogs are only suggestions. The per-site policies are best found on each site's Meta. There is some leeway in terms of what is acceptable or not on a per-site basis." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19551" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7024" RevisionGUID="0a41f95f-c6a4-44e4-ae0a-57217ea6ef66" CreationDate="2014-12-02T21:29:36.193" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Yes!  [The sidebar has been FAQed](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6910/faq-sidebar-on-programmers-meta)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our [meta-tag:faq] has 18 questions in it while [meta-tag:faq-proposed] has 40 more.  What questions should move there for easier access for people unfamiliar with the workings of meta?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also mention that the [meta-tag:faq] has some rather dated material in it that *could* get a good looking over.... like http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2/ and http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/350/ (which I hope we've largely come to accept) or http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/941/ which is completely out of date.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1646/40980 should likely get a good look and update." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19552" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7024" RevisionGUID="0a41f95f-c6a4-44e4-ae0a-57217ea6ef66" CreationDate="2014-12-02T21:29:36.193" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Sidebar is FAQ'ed, lets update the FAQ tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19553" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7024" RevisionGUID="0a41f95f-c6a4-44e4-ae0a-57217ea6ef66" CreationDate="2014-12-02T21:29:36.193" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19554" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7025" RevisionGUID="28c44b59-025d-4223-a03e-62f184424b80" CreationDate="2014-12-02T22:53:42.093" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="As of April 9&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; 2014, [all of the automatic triggers that convert a post to community wiki have been removed](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228940/213963).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This includes the trigger for the n&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; answer (which was site dependent) and the m&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; edit to a post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The corresponding blog post announcing these changes is [Putting the Community back in Wiki](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2014/04/putting-the-community-back-in-wiki/).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19555" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7025" RevisionGUID="67bc197e-27ee-47ab-8f81-135e0d5e431b" CreationDate="2014-12-02T22:53:42.093" UserDisplayName="user40980" />
  <row Id="19556" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="941" RevisionGUID="03758644-99e6-40bb-8b0a-a16595c910d5" CreationDate="2014-12-02T22:54:57.440" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|community-wiki|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19557" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="517" RevisionGUID="0b8bea62-bfa3-4719-b650-c7383b40995a" CreationDate="2014-12-02T23:06:09.730" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Reword first point.  Already linked to tour, remove duplicate.  Update blog link.  Add bit about bounty." Text="## Basics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Go through the tour.][1]&#xD;&#xA;- You can log in with your Google, Yahoo, etc. user by clicking the on icon of the service you have an account on the Login page.&#xD;&#xA;- Unlike forums and mailing lists, this concentrates on highlighting the good answers, and downvoting the incorrect or bad answers.  **It's not a replacement for discussion**, just a more efficient way to get answers.&#xD;&#xA;- *After you get some reputation make sure you are voting good posts up, and bad posts down!*&#xD;&#xA;- A ton of value comes from finding a question and answer via a search engine. We want a good answer to be the top hit for &quot;How do I use the me menu?&quot;  Don't worry if the questions are scrolling by too quickly on the front page, this isn't about tracking discussions.&#xD;&#xA;- What is Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow?  Joel's [announcement for stackoverflow.com][3] mentions the motivation behind this method of Q&amp;A.  More information on Stack Exchange in general can be found in the [Stack Overflow community FAQ][4] (much of it is general, some is specific to Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Asking good questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- People will upvote your question based on its quality, so [put some effort][5] into it.&#xD;&#xA;- Use tags to classify your question. This makes questions easier to read on the front page and brings up related questions on the sidebar.&#xD;&#xA;- There's no need to bump a question &amp;mdash; if your question is unanswered the community user will bump it on occasion.  Consider adding a [bounty](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/bounty) if you want to attract more attention to your question.&#xD;&#xA;- Feel free to continue to work on your question; edit, edit, edit.  This will give it a natural bump, and people will be able to watch your progress in adding more detail. People tend to help/upvote people who are actively trying to investigate their problem.&#xD;&#xA;- As you add to your question, if you end up finding the answer, then answer your own question so that future generations can benefit from it!&#xD;&#xA;- If someone answers your question, accept it as the answer. This is an important [part of the process][6] and rewards the people trying to help you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Giving good answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Don't only link to random sources on the Internet. Any person can type their answer into Google and do that. If the information is good and under an open license, just put it in the answer (don't forget to link to and attribute the author).&#xD;&#xA;- Edit, edit, edit should be your mantra. &amp;mdash; If you've got a good answer and someone adds more detail, integrate it, and remember to always respect an individual's work.&#xD;&#xA;- Comments are like &quot;meta&quot; for the answer. *Don't ping pong back and forth in comments with new data, when someone leaves a comment with more information or something, just add the information to your question directly.* If people post updates to a comment ask them to add it to their question; that's where the power of Stack Exchange comes in: updates on people answering their question happens in the answers and the questions, so that when you are finished people don't have to track the conversation, just the final answer and solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Spread the word&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- We need help getting the word out, [we have some ideas][7] on how you can help, especially in places where users are already asking you for help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/15.html&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/7931/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/5234&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7/how-do-we-promote-our-site&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19558" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6998" RevisionGUID="46333e25-1741-422a-876e-82f85163a50d" CreationDate="2014-12-03T14:12:43.690" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|fun|hats|winterbash|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19559" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7006" RevisionGUID="46c41d6b-436d-4766-8b09-c5ea96a39d03" CreationDate="2014-12-04T03:22:58.720" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/540345491654193152" />
  <row Id="19560" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7026" RevisionGUID="001faa39-e484-4e6d-a049-013ccedd3b20" CreationDate="2014-12-04T15:58:01.520" UserId="125157" Text="There are a number of stack exchanges:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Stack Overflow** for programming questions, algorithm and data structure implementations, and software development tools.&#xD;&#xA; - **Programmers** for architecture, design, process and methodology, software project management, software licensing, and other &quot;whiteboard&quot; questions&#xD;&#xA; - **Code Review** for best practices, security reviews, performance, correctness&#xD;&#xA;Software Quality Assurance for quality control, automation, and testing&#xD;&#xA; - **Programming Puzzles and Code Golf** for different puzzles&#xD;&#xA; - **Computer Science** for the mathematical and scientific foundations of computing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in reality in &quot;**Programmers**&quot; if you ask a theoretical question (that requires discussion) it will be closed. This is strange as there are at least three other stack exchanges specifically for coding questions - making the existence of &quot;Programmers&quot; a bit of a mystery.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm going to try it now. I am going to ask a question that doesn't have an answer of &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; DO A, THEN B, THEN C should be the result.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm expecting no answers except &quot;I'm afraid I cannot do that Dave. Now I must close you&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So is there anywhere that I can go?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19561" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7026" RevisionGUID="001faa39-e484-4e6d-a049-013ccedd3b20" CreationDate="2014-12-04T15:58:01.520" UserId="125157" Text="Where to ask programming discussion questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19562" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7026" RevisionGUID="001faa39-e484-4e6d-a049-013ccedd3b20" CreationDate="2014-12-04T15:58:01.520" UserId="125157" Text="|discussion|questions|stackexchange|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19563" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7027" RevisionGUID="01de18b0-042d-40b7-a7b4-f006a9daf1f4" CreationDate="2014-12-04T16:00:39.093" UserId="4" Text="Discussions are not suited for the Q&amp;A portion of any stack exchange site. You may want to check out the chat rooms, though. Programmers has one that is pretty active - [The Whiteboard][1]. Other sites may have others as well. For extended discussion on the Stack Exchange network, this is what is available. Otherwise, a site that is more like a discussion forum may be better suited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19564" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7027" RevisionGUID="a0d03f07-dc80-4953-b408-2f0e8a83d967" CreationDate="2014-12-04T20:51:19.123" UserId="31260" Comment="edited body" Text="Discussions are not suited for the Q&amp;A portion of any Stack Exchange site. You may want to check out the chat rooms, though. Programmers has one that is pretty active - [The Whiteboard][1]. Other sites may have others as well. For extended discussion on the Stack Exchange network, this is what is available. Otherwise, a site that is more like a discussion forum may be better suited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19565" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="7028" RevisionGUID="4af8c981-57dd-4506-b988-d27fa9b110ec" CreationDate="2014-12-04T21:08:57.370" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/244634/how-to-respond-to-my-question-being-on-hold" />
  <row Id="19566" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="7029" RevisionGUID="92d4deca-7f25-4411-b93c-5b505bd9aa25" CreationDate="2014-12-04T21:08:57.370" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/244634/how-to-respond-to-my-question-being-on-hold/244639#244639" />
  <row Id="19567" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="7030" RevisionGUID="965e43cc-cf68-4e6b-98a2-e198f9a27581" CreationDate="2014-12-04T21:08:57.370" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/244634/how-to-respond-to-my-question-being-on-hold/244647#244647" />
  <row Id="19568" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7029" RevisionGUID="79bcf0c7-7062-4134-a982-831e20dafbd7" CreationDate="2014-12-04T12:13:05.207" UserId="158332" UserDisplayName="MysticMagic" Text="&gt; What I want to know now is what do I do next?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well firstly, you got it right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. You should add more details which can help the others to understand your issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add more code to it if you just asked random question like &quot;I tried something for achieving this task but that didn't work.&quot; Post stacktrace of error if any.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. If its a broad question, you can try to break it down in points. And elaborate at which point you are facing confusion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;E.g: You ask is array better or arraylist? (Too broad.) Elaborate what you want to do. Why have you faced this question? What did you find in your research? Add links wherever applicable. Add images where ever necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. If that's not a very clear question (put on hold as unclear), then you can probably try improving your explanation and making it clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that you can nominate question for reopen and if you get enough reopen votes from reviewers (5, *I think*), the question will get reopened, and you may get a clear good answer. Which may help community i future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S: All said, and written, you should still target to write a well formatted question in the first place, which doesn't get put on hold ;)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19569" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7030" RevisionGUID="d4c3b607-6f50-4158-9b45-ea8224bdda6a" CreationDate="2014-12-04T14:50:24.113" UserDisplayName="Brythan" Text="&gt; Are there any reasons why it would be bad for me to have a question Closed (rep loss, less likely to get good answers in the future, ...)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having a question closed does not impact your reputation at all.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's unlikely that having a single question closed will make it more difficult to get answers in the future.  On many sites, no one will particularly notice.  Having a bunch of questions closed might get you labeled a crank, but one question is unlikely to draw notice.  You might get a better answer from the meta of the site where you posted, as I don't know what the community is like (even if you told me what site, I might not know).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deletion&#xD;&#xA;========&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next step after closure is a delete vote.  This won't automatically delete the question, but it might.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also no general penalty for having a question deleted, **but** having a question deleted will reverse your reputation changes from that question.  If you currently gain reputation from the question, you will lose it if deleted.  Note that the question does not need to have a positive score to give you reputation.  Upvotes give more than downvotes take away, so you may gain reputation from a question with a negative score.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have no answers and negative reputation from the question, you may want to delete it yourself.  That will save the community from a delete vote and will give your reputation back immediately.  You don't have to do this though.  If you're satisfied with the current state of the world, it's fine to let things go.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you currently have positive reputation from the question, you may want to try to salvage it.  Editing a question to make it more narrow is perfectly legitimate and will kick off a reopen vote.  Or you can do nothing and let it go.  You won't lose any reputation but what you gained from that question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of this calculation depends on the specific question.  Is it easy to salvage?  Is it likely to be controversial even if changed?  How much do you need the answer?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't get too caught up in altruistic reasons to salvage the question.  Is the question useful to you?  If so, you might want to try to salvage it.  If it's not that useful to you, then it's probably not that useful to others.  If it is useful to someone else, let that person ask it.  Note that salvaging a &quot;Too Broad&quot; question will tend to make it less useful to others, as the focus will narrow to cover less of the subject.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange tends to work best when questions are driven by need.  If you need an answer, then it's likely that someone else will as well.  If you don't, then perhaps no one does.  If someone else does, let that person ask.  That way, the question will better reflect what that person needs.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19570" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7028" RevisionGUID="9f4fee55-fc3b-4f7b-976d-4cea1554ba84" CreationDate="2014-12-04T10:20:25.243" UserId="154929" Text="I recently asked a question (edited: I've removed the link because I would like an answer that is not specific to only one question). It has been placed on hold as too broad - which is fine, I think the question in its current form is too broad and I am not appealing against the decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I want to know now is what do I do next? Is it my duty (maybe a too strong word) as a stack-exchanger to clean up the question and leave it as a non-closed question so that others who have the same question can get an answer? Shall I just let it go from On Hold to Closed? Are there any reasons why it would be bad for me to have a question Closed (rep loss, less likely to get good answers in the future, ...)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am happy that I have an answer. I have learnt something, I have been forced to rethink some concepts and to get a more rigorous understanding of a few terms. I just want to make sure that I am giving back to the community as much as I am taking.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19571" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7028" RevisionGUID="9f4fee55-fc3b-4f7b-976d-4cea1554ba84" CreationDate="2014-12-04T10:20:25.243" UserId="154929" Text="How to respond to my question being on hold" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19572" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7028" RevisionGUID="9f4fee55-fc3b-4f7b-976d-4cea1554ba84" CreationDate="2014-12-04T10:20:25.243" UserId="154929" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19576" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7028" RevisionGUID="c10a156c-395a-42ef-bb95-f371f0fe30a0" CreationDate="2014-12-05T09:26:40.303" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/540799405352550400" />
  <row Id="19577" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7032" RevisionGUID="b63690e2-4033-4792-b7c6-412745fa7086" CreationDate="2014-12-05T10:41:40.307" UserId="125157" Text="Got to laugh at the questions that have been upvoted a thousand times, favourited a few hundred, have a really popular and upvoted answer... and the mods have locked the thing because it doesn't conform to their view of what Stack Overflow should be. They probably downvoted it too, a couple of times, out of spite. :P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So to answer **your** question, it is a mindset; not anything to do with software limitations. The entire concept of deliberately blocking others from answering questions is one without merit in the first place, of course. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19581" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6743" RevisionGUID="8402f8cc-ccd6-40a4-9403-55da6a6d320d" CreationDate="2014-12-05T20:45:32.760" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 32 characters in body" Text="## Why we're not a forum&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to realize is that Stack Exchange brands itself as a Q&amp;A site. This is the very top of the content when you go to http://stackexchange.com.  It calls out that this is something *different* than forums, that there are *right answers.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When one goes to the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) page, note the wording of the text there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat. Just questions...  and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Going further into the help center, one finds [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) which links to three other pages that goes into more about what isn't allowed on the site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Thus, questions that are not answerable — discussions, debates, opinions — should be closed as subjective. It seems simple enough: Fact good; opinion and discussion bad. But why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Most forums and chat rooms have a scale problem. As in, they don’t. The more people that join the discussion, the more noise each of those connections bring. So the forums get progressively noisier and noisier, and suddenly one day … you stop learning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## On the nature of discussions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of a discussion is back and forth.  Lines of communication.  Look at sites that are intended for discussion and you will find threads and nested comments and a system that isn't designed around getting answers but rather to make connections with people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is different.  As stated in the tour and time and time again in other documents, this is a Q&amp;A site.  As such it has intentionally made having these discussions difficult.  Things such as limited sizes of comments, limited markdown in comments, the automatic move comment to chat feature.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussions make it harder to find the answer - you have to wade through all the other stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;As an aside, there is *nothing* worse than trying to go from reading a post, to reading the comments to going back to the post to see the reply, and back to the comments to see the next reply and back to the post... Don't do that. Remove the 'Edit:' and 'Update:' from your edit, make the entire thing a cohesive whole and leave a comment saying that the post has been updated to take this into account - people can read the revision history if they want to see what changed.&amp;lt;/rant&amp;gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are sites that do discussions very well... or, as well as discussions can be done.  Jeff Atwood even went off to make another site model designed precisely for discussions (http://www.discourse.org)... and it's not a Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not to say that one can't try to mix Q&amp;A and discussions.  But it's *very* hard to do both right.  It's hard enough to do one of them right.  Stack Exchange chose to get Q&amp;A right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Where else can discussions be had?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *do* want to have a discussion there are some options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Visit [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard).  The _Whiteboard_ chat room is one such place within the Stack Exchange network where discussions are allowed (and encouraged).&#xD;&#xA;* Ask somewhere else.  There are numerous other sites out there that are designed for discussions.  [Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/), [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/ask), [Slashdot](http://ask.slashdot.org), [Quora](https://www.quora.com) to name a few.  These are sites that are specifically designed with discussions in mind - the voting system on them, the moderation, the community formed around them - all about discussions.  I will also mention [NotConstructive.com](https://www.notconstructive.com) which [recently relaunched](http://fourlightyears.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/notconstructivecom-launches-nobel-prize.html) using Discourse. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So why is it a big deal?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with discussions is that discussions can easily overwhelm the rest of the site.  Unlike objective questions that have answers (and if asked again can be directed to the previous one asked that will answer this one too), discussions of the same topic are infinite in their variety based on the participants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is based on the premise that good questions and answers attract and retain the experts that answer them and that people come to find answers.  The quality that Stack Exchange provides is unique within the Internet so far (quite a few clones, but none as compelling).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, discussions tend to drive away experts.  Not always, but it's the trend.  This has been seen many times since the days of Usenet news... experts really don't want to spend their time arguing with someone who doesn't understand the topic at hand when they want to just answer a question... and if they *do*, there are ways to have that discussion via other channels.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not to say that there are experts who do enjoy discussions... and that Stack Exchange isn't exactly working for them.  This is unfortunate, but it does not mean that discussions need to be allowed or that Stack Exchange needs to change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Related reading and links from above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is Stack Overflow a forum?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/92107/213963) on Meta.StackExchange&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;* [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html) by Clay Shirky" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19582" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7033" RevisionGUID="282abf5b-6698-4c6b-a3c3-7789bf307783" CreationDate="2014-12-06T20:28:21.063" UserId="104052" Text="I've always written my interfaces in the language's native components (Forms in VB/VC#/VC++, Swing/JavaFX in Java, HTML+CSS+JS in webpages, etc.), but with my next project I want to try writing the interface in HTML+CSS and making objects in that document call C++ code. When typing up my question, though, I couldn't figure out which SE was best, if any. **Is it on-topic to ask about this here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;I feel like it'd help to show you exactly what I'm asking, so here's the question I drafted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm looking to make a native application, and want to dabble in making the interface in HTML (hopefully this will lead to more separation of tasks and easier updating). I know that you can do this in Windows web forms with a browser object, but **I'd like this to be more cross-platform friendly** &lt;sub&gt;(aside: is that reasonable? Or is it separable enough to write a whole new program for Windows/OS X/X Window/etc. and just use another native browser object?)&lt;/sub&gt;, so I was thinking of using AppJS (which has a NodeJS backbone), or maybe embedding Gecko or Blink into a window, or even forking Firefox or Chromium and stripping it down to its barebones. **Which one, if any, of these approaches is best, and why? If none, what is?** Of course, I'll need the HTML controls to call native code somehow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19583" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7033" RevisionGUID="282abf5b-6698-4c6b-a3c3-7789bf307783" CreationDate="2014-12-06T20:28:21.063" UserId="104052" Text="Can I ask a question about the best way to use an HTML-based interface in a standalone app here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19584" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7033" RevisionGUID="282abf5b-6698-4c6b-a3c3-7789bf307783" CreationDate="2014-12-06T20:28:21.063" UserId="104052" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19585" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7034" RevisionGUID="729d4639-50f4-4d1f-bfdd-d662c3aaa2ab" CreationDate="2014-12-06T20:57:22.770" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="These are all the [meta-tag:faq] tagged questions at this time (sorted by newest).  Here's my take on what should be done with each one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems - It's good, though I'm probably biased.&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting - Its good&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog - **Defaq it until the blog is active.  Alternatively, have someone who is active in the blog update it.**&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here - Ok&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic - Ok&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/faq-index-for-programmers-se - Ok though **should be updated** too.&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic - Ok.&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic - Ok.&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1165/can-i-ask-career-advice-questions - Ok&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/what-types-of-programming-related-questions-are-off-topic (borderline) **Obsolete** - if not, it should be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright - **Obsolete** - this is largely dating back from the great scope change and the contentions around that timeframe.&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster - Mostly **obsolete** (the two tags it mentions are gone) otherwise duplicate of http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1165/can-i-ask-career-advice-questions -- we really shouldn't have too many copies of the same question in the [meta-tag:faq].&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/516/how-do-i-get-started-with-programmers-se - Ok&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice - **Obsolete** Yes, it was very important in its time, though this really isn't a  question anymore.&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers - **Obsolete** not an issue anymore.&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow - **Rewrite and clean up**&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain **Obsolete**, so *very* obsolete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, from above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are the questions that should be dettaged:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/what-types-of-programming-related-questions-are-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions should be updated:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/faq-index-for-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that the FAQ Index itself may instead be better to put in the tag wiki for [meta-tag:faq] instead of having it be its own question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19586" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7035" RevisionGUID="a52e2710-d802-437b-b193-1d7bf9b02e02" CreationDate="2014-12-07T00:35:28.703" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Lets go through [meta-tag:faq-proposed].  Note that a few of these are ones that I wrote.  I'll avoid making recommendations on them.  Many of these were issues that were FAQ issues back in earlier times when things were in more flux (scope and the help center about scope).  Many of these questions are now of historical oddity and while can serve as a record of where we've been, they aren't as useful for providing guidance to people *today*.  All of this is my take on the topic meant to start some activity on clear cut ones and considerations of the non-clear cut ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions - Mine.&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6665/should-cross-posting-be-allowed-sometimes-on-programmers - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6625/i-just-failed-an-audit-but-i-was-right-and-it-was-wrong-what-now - **FAQ it**&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6458/there-seems-to-be-some-contradictory-guidance-with-respect-to-asking-career-deve - This is another career question and I'm of the opinion that we should have only one career question in the FAQ, and this isn't the one that fits the FAQ the best.&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/why-do-certification-questions-keep-getting-closed - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6327/how-to-ask-a-batch-of-related-questions - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6311/where-does-my-git-question-go - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6283/current-events-questions-and-answers - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5633/is-programming-history-on-topic - **FAQ it**&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3547/adding-the-definition-of-a-shopping-list-request-to-the-faq - **Obsolete** (detag it)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3318/update-our-faq-to-improve-the-on-topic-definition - **Obsolete** (detag it).  See also http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6604/40980&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3301/changing-the-faq-to-reflect-the-sites-name - **Obsolete** (detag it).  See above&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3096/40980 - **FAQ it**  Consider a name change.&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2959/40980 - **Obsolete** (detag it)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2912/should-legal-advice-or-copyright-trademark-and-patent-law-be-added-to-the - **Obsolete** (detag it)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2894/40980 - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2856/addendum-to-off-topic-themes-in-the-faq - **Obsolete** (detag it)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2699/basic-guidelines-for-discussing-business-logic-and-programming - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2645/are-what-did-person-mean-questions-on-topic - I think that http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6417/40980 is a better analysis of the issue, but thats my post too.&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2608/are-why-is-x-code-snippet-done-this-way-questions-on-topic - **Obsolete**ish&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2599/are-i-need-data-on-x-phenomenon-questions-on-topic - **Obsolete** (part of a cleanup form '11)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2590/legal-disclaimer-in-the-faq - **Obsolete**&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2502/are-marketing-questions-on-topic - **Obsolete**&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2422/how-can-we-improve-the-faq - **Obsolete** (its about the faqs that became the help center with lots of pages)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2411/removing-expert-from-the-site-description - **Obsolete** (see the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) text)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2228/when-should-comments-be-deleted - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2133/faq-should-include-examples-of-good-questions - **Obsolete** (see the tour again)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation - **Obsolete**&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2114/are-new-users-allowed-to-advise-without-mini-modding - Consider redoing as a new Q&amp;A to address community moderation&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/how-can-we-improve-our-guidance-about-the-purpose-of-comments - **Obsolete** as written it isn't that FAQy.&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed - I think http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted does a better job of answering this, but thats my post.&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1838/can-something-highlighting-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so-be-added-to - **Obsolete** as written it isn't that FAQy.&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1556/when-are-career-questions-too-localized-should-this-be-more-strict - Another career question question.&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-lis - this is [meta-tag:status-completed] and is another question about the faq of old (pre help center), not the tag.&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/635/should-there-be-some-faq-for-tag-synonyms-voting - this is [meta-tag:status-completed] and is another question about the faq of old (pre help center), not the tag.&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40/should-each-point-be-posted-in-a-separate-answer - This is already partly in the help center in [What does it mean if a question is &quot;closed&quot; or &quot;on hold&quot;?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19587" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3060" RevisionGUID="6ffaecc3-fc7a-4b13-8966-27d65b0391ec" CreationDate="2014-12-07T17:05:53.597" UserId="5099" Comment="Updated with new Close reasons and vote retraction" Text="&lt;sub&gt;Adapted from [Cryptography meta](http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/a/130), originally posted by [Ninefingers](http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/users/46/ninefingers)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Rationale: why do we close questions?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are really two ways to do moderation. If you've been on any of the `.moderated` newsgroups you'll be well aware that to get a post on there, it needs to undergo a review process first and be accepted. The aim is to keep problem discussions from arising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE is slightly different - it works the other way. *Anyone* can ask a question on SE and closing a question is the equivalent of putting that question *back into review/improve mode*. It's a feedback mechanism designed to react to problem cases only, so the usual business of asking and answering good questions can just... *happen*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why do we close a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The philosophy of SE is that each site handles questions on *problems you face* or things you are trying to understand. The [don't ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section of the FAQ gives you a good overview of things that don't work - to summarise:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions invite arguments or extended debate that suck up time when members could be helping other people.&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions are too broad, too narrow or have other content problems.&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions belong elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These have been worked out over time and with a lot of experience from Stack Overflow and are, *broadly speaking* true. Sometimes, exceptions are made - it is always a case-by-case thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is closing like deletion?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, and this is an important distinction, deletion is a different concept on SE. Closed questions are put &quot;into improve mode&quot; if you like, and are still visible for *anyone* to improve. That's the idea. Deleted questions are different - they have a red background and are invisible to all but high reputation users. So deletion is different and solves a slightly different problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What are the requirements for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have 3000 reputation on the site you can vote to close any question for the reasons above. More on that in a moment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you do not have this level of reputation, you will find that under the flag menu, you have an option &quot;this question does not belong here&quot;. That will raise a flag for users who can vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why can anyone vote to close/reopen**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firstly, anyone can vote to close or reopen (or flag as such) because it is *your site*. This is really important - it's about expressing what you feel works and doesn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How are moderators different?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderator close votes complete the required vote count immediately, no matter how many people have voted. This applies for both close/reopen votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially, as the reputation requirement rules out many users, you will see moderators doing most of the closing to guide the site and look after the content. As you gain in reputation, you get to join in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Ok, so how does it work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Example close button][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, the important piece. Voting to close works like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Underneath the question, there will be a close link. When you click on this, you will be presented with a list of options from which you can pick a close reason most appropriate to the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Close vote reasons dialog][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * If other people have voted, you will see red numbers against the reason they chose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Other votes][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The exact duplicate page takes you to a page that allows you to specify a question to close as an exact duplicate against.&#xD;&#xA; * The &quot;off topic&quot; page will present you with [five options][5] - three standard reasons why a post is off topic, one to specify your own custom reason and one to migrate the question to a different site. Users can migrate question here and to [so]. Moderators can send questions elsewhere, so feel free to flag if you have a target in mind.&#xD;&#xA; * The other options are straight out closes.&#xD;&#xA; * Once you pick your option and click &quot;close&quot;, your vote is registered. &#xD;&#xA; * If five people agree that the question needs closing, the question will be closed, even if they don't agree on the reason. You've seen the effect of these before.&#xD;&#xA; * The majority vote is chosen as the published close reason. This is a simple 3/2 split. In the case of a 2/2/1 split the the last voted reason wins.&#xD;&#xA; * Your name, and the name of other closers, will appear on the bottom of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Close banner][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How does vote to re-open work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A closed question has a &quot;reopen&quot; link underneath it. If you click this, a dialog box will ask you if you are sure - click yes and your vote will be registered to re-open the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below, you can see an example of the re-open link with two votes registered for re-opening (out of five).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Re-open link][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What happens if I make a mistake?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't worry! Unless five people agree, or a moderator agrees, the question won't be closed.  &#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, you have the possibility to retract your close vote. This possibility is provided if you try to cast a second close vote on a question. After retracting your vote, you can not cast it again, so you can't use vote retraction to change the close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I've seen a closed question and I disagree. What can I do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, one option is to use your re-open vote! You can also always raise a discussion here on meta to seek clarification on why a question is closed and hopefully either a resolution will be reached, or you will get an explanation for the closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My name appears on the bottom - isn't this going to cause problems with other users?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually, surprisingly few closed questions generate any response at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you experience difficulties as a result of closing a question, you can and should contact a moderator via the flag mechanism (which is anonymous). We can then take any necessary action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I find questions I might need to close? What about re-opens?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually there are two tools for this. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Review][8]. Here, there are a number of options for seeing things that might need say editing. One of these is a tab for all questions with close votes. You are then free to look at the question and decide if you agree.&#xD;&#xA; * [Tools][9]. Commonly referred to as the &quot;10k tools&quot;, this page let's you see even more information - certain anonymous flags, re-open votes, delete votes etc. The important one for this is the re-open page. Here, you can see questions that might have been closed incorrectly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qogGL.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/duT0S.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/26heN.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5992/what-should-our-predefined-off-topic-reasons-be&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/K3F4V.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/syw4O.png&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19588" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7036" RevisionGUID="78d871a7-1590-4ba4-9994-09cc43966f1b" CreationDate="2014-12-07T23:12:33.020" UserId="14722" Text="I cam across an answer which misspelled a keyword a couple of times.  I wanted to fix it as the answer wasn't bad but the typo made it seem not worth reading.  Unfortunately I was stymied by the minimum limit on edits (which must be 6 characters or more, I think).  What's the correct way to handle such a situation?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(as a concrete, example, there are a few minor typos in this question which it woould be best to fix but fixing them is not allowed)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19589" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7036" RevisionGUID="78d871a7-1590-4ba4-9994-09cc43966f1b" CreationDate="2014-12-07T23:12:33.020" UserId="14722" Text="How to fix spelling mistakes and typos when edits must have minimum length?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19590" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7036" RevisionGUID="78d871a7-1590-4ba4-9994-09cc43966f1b" CreationDate="2014-12-07T23:12:33.020" UserId="14722" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19591" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7036" RevisionGUID="1e4e60c4-37cd-4abb-ad3a-3d7aac9e8682" CreationDate="2014-12-07T23:14:43.690" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 135 characters in body; edited tags" Text="I came across an answer which misspelled a keyword a couple of times.  I wanted to fix it as the answer wasn't bad but the typo made it seem not worth reading.  Unfortunately I was stymied by the minimum limit on edits (which must be 6 characters or more, I think).  What's the correct way to handle such a situation?  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19592" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7036" RevisionGUID="1e4e60c4-37cd-4abb-ad3a-3d7aac9e8682" CreationDate="2014-12-07T23:14:43.690" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 135 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19593" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7037" RevisionGUID="345d5364-d6f1-4122-82c8-2a5642284888" CreationDate="2014-12-07T23:19:12.030" UserId="25936" Text="The character limit only applies to suggested edits. The reason the limit exists is that suggested edits need to be reviewed by at least two people, and it's quite rare that a minor edit will be worth two reviewer's time. Once you reach 2K rep points [your edits will go through without review][1], and the character limit won't apply anymore. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Until then, if you feel a minor edit would make a big difference in a post, you are welcome to drop it in [our chat room][2] and ask one of the regulars there to edit it for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/edit&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19594" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7037" RevisionGUID="d2a655e5-c4fe-49bd-b0c6-e55c82b8a0a9" CreationDate="2014-12-07T23:24:46.390" UserId="25936" Comment="added 164 characters in body" Text="The character limit only applies to suggested edits. The reason the limit exists is that suggested edits need to be reviewed by at least two people, and it's quite rare that a minor edit will be worth two reviewer's time. Once you reach 2K rep points [your edits will go through without review][1], and the character limit won't apply anymore. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Until then, if you feel a minor edit would make a big difference in a post, you are welcome to drop it in [our chat room][2] and ask one of the regulars there to edit it for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, you can always post a comment pointing out the mistakes. The original poster, or any high rep user who'll happen to read your comment can then fix the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/edit&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19595" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7038" RevisionGUID="fd67e41d-b118-4bd4-90a5-673599e80473" CreationDate="2014-12-08T08:36:21.187" UserId="31260" Text="This tag indeed looks troublesome. As of now, there are only 6 questions left in there, all closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163954/are-there-studies-on-what-programming-does-to-the-brain&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105591/how-do-you-tackle-really-bizarre-errors-that-keep-you-puzzled-for-more-than-10-h&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102313/how-to-keep-up-your-motivation-all-day-long&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88947/how-to-get-rid-of-fear-of-not-able-to-solve-complex-program&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66394/do-programmers-think-differently-from-non-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9409/what-was-the-worst-experience-youve-had-with-a-customer-user&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we retag or delete questions listed above, [system will take care](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/19754/165773) of the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tags not associated with any question are automatically destroyed..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19596" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7037" RevisionGUID="4d4aff41-fbf4-4652-8667-b6dabf70f288" CreationDate="2014-12-08T10:03:14.733" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body" Text="The character limit only applies to suggested edits. The reason the limit exists is that suggested edits need to be reviewed by at least two people, and it's quite rare that a minor edit will be worth two reviewers' time. Once you reach 2K rep points [your edits will go through without review][1], and the character limit won't apply anymore. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Until then, if you feel a minor edit would make a big difference in a post, you are welcome to drop it in [our chat room][2] and ask one of the regulars there to edit it for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, you can always post a comment pointing out the mistakes. The original poster, or any high rep user who'll happen to read your comment can then fix the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/edit&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19597" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7038" RevisionGUID="3a604b69-b9f3-4dfc-81dd-d283497ac289" CreationDate="2014-12-08T10:05:47.317" UserId="31260" Comment="&lt;strike&gt;six&lt;/strike&gt; three" Text="This tag indeed looks troublesome. As of now, there are only &lt;strike&gt;six&lt;/strike&gt; three questions left in there, all closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163954/are-there-studies-on-what-programming-does-to-the-brain&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66394/do-programmers-think-differently-from-non-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9409/what-was-the-worst-experience-youve-had-with-a-customer-user&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we retag or delete questions listed above, [system will take care](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/19754/165773) of the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tags not associated with any question are automatically destroyed..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19598" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7039" RevisionGUID="9940d150-a36e-47f7-8743-9ca70bd10fbc" CreationDate="2014-12-09T19:37:14.050" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="We've *almost* got the psychology tag gone.  There is one question remaining that happens to be locked (it doesn't show up in [tag:psychology] - you need to use [this query](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bpsychology%5D+locked%3Ayes) to find it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78956/i-no-longer-want-to-be-a-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since this is a locked question I can't flag it for a mod to tweak it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suggest:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* removing [tag:psychology]&#xD;&#xA;* possibly adding the [tag:motivation].  No, thats not a great tag either.  But it does help find the related questions on the side if someone should happen to visit it in the future." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19599" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7040" RevisionGUID="fe4b5ef6-e607-42ec-a9fa-f5e73f48eb97" CreationDate="2014-12-09T21:39:51.187" UserId="47" Text="I have removed the [tag:psychology] tag from that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tag will now disappear overnight." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19600" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7038" RevisionGUID="c8e74885-6d10-4eb3-bc11-b1d00271d845" CreationDate="2014-12-10T08:07:44.033" UserId="31260" Comment="tag is gone..." Text="**Update:** tag is gone; there are no questions tagged _psychology_ anymore (not even [locked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bpsychology%5D+locked%3Ayes) ones, thanks to [ChrisF](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7040/31260)) and [tags page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags) doesn't suggest it anymore when one tries to enter &quot;psychology&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After all the questions were retagged or deleted, [system took care](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/19754/165773) of the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tags not associated with any question are automatically destroyed..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19601" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7038" RevisionGUID="7b6dff4e-ad76-41b2-88fd-16a427aa652d" CreationDate="2014-12-10T09:51:37.593" UserId="31260" Comment="deleted 21 characters in body" Text="**Update:** tag is gone; there are no questions tagged _psychology_ anymore (not even [locked](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7039/31260) ones, thanks to [ChrisF](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7040/31260)) and [tags page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags) doesn't suggest it anymore when one tries to enter &quot;psychology&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After all the questions were retagged or deleted, [system took care](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/19754/165773) of the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tags not associated with any question are automatically destroyed..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19602" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7038" RevisionGUID="5e49fcb5-8864-45a6-a02e-79873c2a4e0d" CreationDate="2014-12-10T13:18:31.973" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="**Update: tag is gone.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are no questions tagged _psychology_ anymore (not even [locked](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7039/31260) ones, thanks to [ChrisF](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7040/31260)) and [tags page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags) doesn't suggest it anymore when one tries to enter &quot;psychology&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After all the questions were retagged or deleted, [system took care](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/19754/165773) of the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tags not associated with any question are automatically destroyed..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19603" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7036" RevisionGUID="9afda093-e11f-41bd-86fb-681cb651a56f" CreationDate="2014-12-11T12:38:04.567" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/543021900289810432" />
  <row Id="19604" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7041" RevisionGUID="ce22cef7-6b63-46c5-9f70-2ab706a64500" CreationDate="2014-12-14T12:06:50.297" UserId="78319" Text="What you're asking is if we can tell you which user interface design pattern and languages to use for your project.  There are a great many options (just looking at .Net for example you frequently see MVP, MVC and MVVM) which you could deploy to a machine by installing a local copy of the webserver of your choice with your application if you wanted to use html/css.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is still a &quot;what language should I use&quot; question which make it unsuitable for StackExchange generally as any answers are likely to be primarily opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19605" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6354" RevisionGUID="1aba2540-132b-46f1-899f-283f222a3b89" CreationDate="2014-12-14T14:08:55.887" UserId="5099" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="**Polling**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a poll based question. Multiple answers could address this question equally well, which makes it a poor fit the for StackExchange Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Guessing Game**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat and Robert Harvey)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;name that thing&quot; question. &quot;Name that thing&quot; are bad questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Minimal understanding** &lt;sub&gt;(aka WT? are you asking?)&lt;/sub&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to Jim G.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it doesn't demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should be on SO but doesn't meet their requirements**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to MichaelT)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers. It would best be asked on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet their minimum requirements. Please read the [Stack Overflow question checklist]&amp;#40;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/260648/stack-overflow-question-checklist) and [edit] your question to make it suitable for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should have been on SO, but too old to migrate**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat &amp; MichaelT)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is [about] programming tools - it might belong to Stack Overflow, but is too old to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should be on SO and already is** (aka cross-posted)  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to ChrisF)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about an implementation issue but it has already been asked via cross-post on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Legal question**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about legal matters outside of the community's experience and is best answered by an attorney with expertise in your jurisdiction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Blatantly off-topic**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because the main problem does not involve any of the topics outlined in the [help/on-topic]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`[help/on-topic]` links to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19606" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7042" RevisionGUID="704691d7-6077-4c07-90a8-7bc9877b35b3" CreationDate="2014-12-14T19:11:14.303" UserId="157639" Text="I'm a bit mystified, a few hours ago, I posted a comment on [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/266370/157639).  It's somehow gone; I don't remember deleting it.  I'm guessing someone flagged it as obsolete, but the response to my comment is still there somehow.  It currently looks like @MainMa is talking to an imaginary friend...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Was my comment deleted because it was rendered obsolete due to an answer change?  If so, why wasn't the response to my comment also deleted?  Was it an error?  Was it me and I totally forgot about it? Or was it something else?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19607" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7042" RevisionGUID="704691d7-6077-4c07-90a8-7bc9877b35b3" CreationDate="2014-12-14T19:11:14.303" UserId="157639" Text="What happened to my comment?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19608" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7042" RevisionGUID="704691d7-6077-4c07-90a8-7bc9877b35b3" CreationDate="2014-12-14T19:11:14.303" UserId="157639" Text="|support|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19609" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7043" RevisionGUID="34218bd3-26ee-4f22-b09c-fdd854b05309" CreationDate="2014-12-14T19:41:28.357" UserId="4" Text="It was due to the obsolete comments. I missed a few cleaning them up." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19610" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7020" RevisionGUID="4eab7e68-4dbb-4f04-adff-f92c2ba813cb" CreationDate="2014-12-15T12:43:41.800" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|feature-request|asking-questions|post-ban|new-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19611" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7044" RevisionGUID="32d92c73-fc2f-4139-b166-34b0d61d0555" CreationDate="2014-12-15T20:59:43.170" UserId="44681" Text="I am interested in the answer to the following question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/74049/mathematical-model-for-a-webpage-layout&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;( Mathematical model for a webpage layout? - asking for tool or formal language to specify webpage layout in a &quot;mathematical&quot; way )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it ok to post it Programmers ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19612" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7044" RevisionGUID="32d92c73-fc2f-4139-b166-34b0d61d0555" CreationDate="2014-12-15T20:59:43.170" UserId="44681" Text="Is the question ok here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19613" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7044" RevisionGUID="32d92c73-fc2f-4139-b166-34b0d61d0555" CreationDate="2014-12-15T20:59:43.170" UserId="44681" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19614" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7044" RevisionGUID="078b7da5-4041-439c-af30-f9b4b4463293" CreationDate="2014-12-15T21:07:53.000" UserId="44681" Comment="added 59 characters in body" Text="I am interested in the answer to the following question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/74049/mathematical-model-for-a-webpage-layout&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;( Mathematical model for a webpage layout? - asking for tool or formal language to specify webpage layout in a &quot;mathematical&quot; way )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it ok to post it Programmers ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT**: If so, can it be migrated or should I repost?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19615" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7045" RevisionGUID="bb7254e5-a0fe-453a-9c38-255d9e8b03f8" CreationDate="2014-12-16T10:45:15.650" UserId="114829" Text="Once I opened a question on meta citing this article blog: &#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/ and someone replied me: it's an old article now SE has got better, stricter and so on :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a very good article instead. Who answered me maybe was simply wrong or choose a stupid answer, but actually is very funny how many mirrors we can climb to avoid thinking again if we are right or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think I understand very well the reason which pushed that guy (he was trying to help this community), but for me was also a bit sad to see a member of this community refuse the columns on which this community has been built.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I wanted to ask on another point, but maybe my question has got too long.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I am coding and I have to choose the name of variable there are some complex cases in which I can use a name which explains what the variable is storing or what for I will use that variable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, in my case I have a string which contains an url which specifies only the language to be used in the website. And I will use it to make a redirection. The actual name is something like &quot;redirectUrl&quot; but it's not clear what I'm redirecting to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which solutions are advised by Software Engineering in this cases?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is opinionable, but we are not speaking of something like YA (and who state this should be burned out :-p). **But is this kind of question a good opinionable question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I would like an answer which keeps into account what is wrote in the article I cited.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19616" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7045" RevisionGUID="bb7254e5-a0fe-453a-9c38-255d9e8b03f8" CreationDate="2014-12-16T10:45:15.650" UserId="114829" Text="Is this a good opinionable question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19617" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7045" RevisionGUID="bb7254e5-a0fe-453a-9c38-255d9e8b03f8" CreationDate="2014-12-16T10:45:15.650" UserId="114829" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19618" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7045" RevisionGUID="e38f5330-2a2e-4c23-a12c-09c45d7c6f00" CreationDate="2014-12-16T17:19:17.997" UserId="31260" Comment="clarification copied into post from comments" Text="Once I opened a question on meta citing this article blog: &#xD;&#xA;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) and someone replied me: it's an old article now SE has got better, stricter and so on :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a very good article instead. Who answered me maybe was simply wrong or choose a stupid answer, but actually is very funny how many mirrors we can climb to avoid thinking again if we are right or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think I understand very well the reason which pushed that guy (he was trying to help this community), but for me was also a bit sad to see a member of this community refuse the columns on which this community has been built.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I wanted to ask on another point, but maybe my question has got too long.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;When I am coding and I have to choose the name of variable there are some complex cases in which I can use a name which explains what the variable is storing or what for I will use that variable.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;For example, in my case I have a string which contains an url which specifies only the language to be used in the website. And I will use it to make a redirection. The actual name is something like &quot;redirectUrl&quot; but it's not clear what I'm redirecting to.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Which solutions are advised by Software Engineering in this cases?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is subjective, but we are not speaking of something like Yahoo Answers (and who state this should be burned out :-p). **But is this kind of question a good subjective question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I would like an answer which keeps into account what is written in the article I cited.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19619" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7045" RevisionGUID="e38f5330-2a2e-4c23-a12c-09c45d7c6f00" CreationDate="2014-12-16T17:19:17.997" UserId="31260" Comment="clarification copied into post from comments" Text="Is this a good subjective question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19620" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7045" RevisionGUID="e38f5330-2a2e-4c23-a12c-09c45d7c6f00" CreationDate="2014-12-16T17:19:17.997" UserId="31260" Comment="clarification copied into post from comments" Text="|discussion|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19621" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7015" RevisionGUID="d739f892-dbb6-4fb1-8401-13627cb6947e" CreationDate="2014-12-16T19:39:20.980" UserId="1130" Comment="added 67 characters in body" Text="My personal 2 cents... stop downvoting people who post on meta trying to get questions fixed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what stopped me a while back from doing it. It became such a chore to constantly feel like I'm fighting for something that none of the active users wanted, and to always be downvoted for my efforts by the same group of users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* -2 (+1/-3): http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3192/1130&#xD;&#xA;* -2 (+1/-3): http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3193/1130&#xD;&#xA;* -2 (+0/-2): http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3194/1130&#xD;&#xA;* -1 (+7/-8): http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3568/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We may not always post meta questions the way you'd like it formatted, or we may voice opinions that you disagree with in the question itself, but simply downvoting questions like this only discourages users who are trying to improve the site's content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead consider posting an answer explaining your disagreement, or upvoting an existing one. Or possibly even upvote the user for bothering to take the time to come to meta in the first place to try and fix the question (try to leave a comment if you do this, or upvote an existing one).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I still lurk in the meta site on occasion, and often see people getting downvoted for asking for help improving a question, or why something was off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also in regards to question #2, this was posted a while back that sounds related : http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3292/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19622" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7046" RevisionGUID="e4b91e9c-238a-4d58-9dc5-a01ffcd46e6b" CreationDate="2014-12-17T15:27:37.507" UserId="11732" Text="[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Color variation of http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6935/11732)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ItowR.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19623" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7046" RevisionGUID="8951f503-a852-41d6-a864-60b78b6d51b7" CreationDate="2014-12-17T15:27:37.507" UserId="11732" />
  <row Id="19624" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7047" RevisionGUID="ec787214-7ff3-4972-9e22-e722ccf7a092" CreationDate="2014-12-18T15:27:28.043" UserId="154513" Text="I have been lurking here for quite some time, and have seen questions that could probably be posted on stack overflow and get similar or even better answers. I am looking for a simple explanation as to what the primary difference is between the two exchanges, and what mindset I should have going into each one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19625" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7047" RevisionGUID="ec787214-7ff3-4972-9e22-e722ccf7a092" CreationDate="2014-12-18T15:27:28.043" UserId="154513" Text="Can anyone define how the Programmers stack exchange is different from Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19626" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7047" RevisionGUID="ec787214-7ff3-4972-9e22-e722ccf7a092" CreationDate="2014-12-18T15:27:28.043" UserId="154513" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19627" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7048" RevisionGUID="b8a0796d-8038-48f5-9303-b5af6345a794" CreationDate="2014-12-18T15:32:22.080" UserId="4" Text="This has been asked many times before:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Compare the [Help Center On-Topic page for Programmers][1] to the [Help Center On-Topic page for Stack Overflow][2].&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/423/how-is-this-site-different-than-stack-overflow?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;  - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1747/what-is-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow?rq=1&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2237/what-is-the-difference-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stack-overflow?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19628" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7047" RevisionGUID="aca8d476-6f8b-40b5-9501-a593428fe020" CreationDate="2014-12-18T15:32:31.607" UserId="4" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[171],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="19629" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7048" RevisionGUID="204ed9e3-f258-46a1-b423-af264cdc5ae1" CreationDate="2014-12-18T16:24:37.653" UserId="4" Comment="added 179 characters in body" Text="This has been asked many times before:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Compare the [Help Center On-Topic page for Programmers][1] to the [Help Center On-Topic page for Stack Overflow][2].&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/423/how-is-this-site-different-than-stack-overflow?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;  - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1747/what-is-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow?rq=1&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2237/what-is-the-difference-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;- [Choosing between Stack Overflow and Programmers Stack Exchange](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254570/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange)&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stack-overflow?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19630" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7044" RevisionGUID="23c584fc-d98f-4265-86b4-88f95bf52f74" CreationDate="2014-12-18T18:57:52.813" UserId="44681" Comment="situation changed" Text="I am interested in the answer to the following question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/74049/mathematical-model-for-a-webpage-layout&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;( Mathematical model for a webpage layout? - asking for tool or formal language to specify webpage layout in a &quot;mathematical&quot; way )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it ok to post it Programmers ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT**: If so, can it be migrated or should I repost?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 2**: Question caused some interest, but has been put on hold as &quot;too broad&quot;. Is there any way it can be reformulated to get at least one answer?&#xD;&#xA;Should another question be asked or is it better to rewrite the old one?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, there are some proposals here in comments. For example, Stack Exchange network is about learning. So, in which mode should I ask a question here to learn about practical and ultracompact physics/geometry formalization of HTML/CSS or at least to learn there is no such thing, given I already know some GUI builders (like for wxWidgets, ALM and Tcl/Tk) do have comprehensible models?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why is it called &quot;shopping recommendation&quot;? For example, if I will ask about stable external sorting n*log(n) algorithm for functional programming language, will it be called shopping and as well &quot;too broad&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19631" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7049" RevisionGUID="007c29fc-5849-4a1a-8f67-919050a6615a" CreationDate="2014-12-19T14:37:59.423" UserId="100669" Text="After missing a pre-existing answer and providing a duplicate by accident, should one delete the duplicate?  This came up due to the following example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted [this answer][1] to [this question][2], not realizing the fact that essentially the same answer had been provided [here][3].  This had to do with why `break` statements tend to be necessary in different languages' `switch` syntaxes, and though I saw where several people mentioned matching multiple cases and handling them the same way, I had missed the one answer that mentioned handling `case x` by using code that applies only to that case, followed by code in a fall-through that matches both `case x` and `case y`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general I would think the most appropriate thing to do in cases like this, if no votes have been cast, is to just delete one's duplicate answer.  But if the answer has been upvoted at least once, which kind of response would be more appropriate on Stack Exchange sites:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Just leave it and keep the upvote.  It's not the end of the world.&#xD;&#xA;2. Delete it immediately.&#xD;&#xA;3. If one doesn't have the `disciplined` badge already, they should see if they get two more upvotes, then delete the answer and game the badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/266813/100669&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162574/why-do-we-have-to-use-break-in-switch&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/162582/100669" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19632" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7049" RevisionGUID="007c29fc-5849-4a1a-8f67-919050a6615a" CreationDate="2014-12-19T14:37:59.423" UserId="100669" Text="After missing a pre-existing answer and providing a duplicate by accident, should one delete the duplicate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19633" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7049" RevisionGUID="007c29fc-5849-4a1a-8f67-919050a6615a" CreationDate="2014-12-19T14:37:59.423" UserId="100669" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19634" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7050" RevisionGUID="bcbba362-0a89-48c2-a7f0-40e22292a680" CreationDate="2014-12-19T17:32:39.220" UserId="47" Text="Stack Exchange is about getting the best answer to the question so having competing answers is not, in itself, a bad thing. However, when those answers say basically the same thing then the question becomes a bit more problematical to answer. Some people do flag &quot;duplicate answers&quot; so you do have to be careful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some things I'd take into account if I saw one of these &quot;duplicate answers&quot; flags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you posted your answer within a few minutes of the original then I'd be inclined to leave it alone. There's every chance you didn't see the other answer when you started yours so I'm not going to penalise you for that.&#xD;&#xA;* Does your answer contain something that the other answer doesn't? Even if it's just a sentence or a link to an external reference that's enough to make it different.&#xD;&#xA;* If you posted your answer hours, days or even months after the original answer then I would be inclined to delete your answer. You really should have seen the original one before posting yours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if you think your answer satisfies either (or both) of the first two bullet points, leave it be. If it doesn't or it comes under the third then delete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19635" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7051" RevisionGUID="9db366b8-99c8-4884-9be7-87e671682c2b" CreationDate="2014-12-21T17:20:22.237" UserId="160273" Text="I asked [this][1] this question. It was put on hold by [Bart van Ingen Schenau][2], who kindly and patiently explained that he rejected the question because of a community consensus that programmers cannot authoritatively answer questions involving the legal topic at hand (copyright law).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have searched [Programmers Meta][3], and I find no evidence of such a consensus. To the contrary, I find a pronounced lack of consensus. Relevant posts seem to be [What types of legal questions are on-topic here?][4], [Are software law questions off-topic here?][5], and [“consult your lawyer” answers][6]. Among those discussions, there seems to be a contingent arguing that programmers are qualified to answer no legal questions; a contingent arguing that programmers can answer only those legal questions intimately related to programming; a contingent arguing that programmers can answer a wide range of legal topics as long as &quot;common sense&quot; is applied to the interpretation of the answers; and a contingent arguing that programmers may potentially be able to answer any legal question. No contingent clearly dominates the others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a newcomer browsing the documented record, my perception is that the community is very far from a consensus on this matter. Nevertheless, community consensus was cited in Mr. Schenau's explanation for the rejection of my question. The apparent implication is that a non-existent community standard is being used to justify the rejection of questions on Programmers Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I come to Meta (at Mr. Schenau's suggestion) in search of clarity. Does there exist a consensus on programmers' inability to answer questions on copyright law sufficient to justify the rejection of questions on that topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/266445/is-early-binding-legally-constrained-while-late-binding-is-not#&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/5099/bart-van-ingen-schenau&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=legal/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/89961/consult-your-lawyer-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19636" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7051" RevisionGUID="9db366b8-99c8-4884-9be7-87e671682c2b" CreationDate="2014-12-21T17:20:22.237" UserId="160273" Text="Is there a consensus on Programmers Stack Exchange that programmers cannot authoritatively answer questions of copyright law?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19637" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7051" RevisionGUID="9db366b8-99c8-4884-9be7-87e671682c2b" CreationDate="2014-12-21T17:20:22.237" UserId="160273" Text="|discussion|legal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19638" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7052" RevisionGUID="d956b67b-480c-43ff-b9f8-33fcbda6eaf1" CreationDate="2014-12-21T18:43:18.990" UserId="4" Text="The [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is about as authorative as it gets. Questions about software licenses are on-topic, legal advice is off-topic. It's reasonable to assume that software developers are familiar with existing licenses and how they impact a project, which is why they are on-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19639" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7052" RevisionGUID="f3e56138-9bb5-48d7-91b3-bd741aa7d02a" CreationDate="2014-12-22T11:31:11.487" UserId="4" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="The [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is about as authorative as it gets. Questions about software licenses are on-topic, legal assistance is off-topic. It's reasonable to assume that software developers are familiar with existing licenses and how they impact a project, which is why they are on-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19640" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7053" RevisionGUID="fce62a74-d6c8-4edd-8385-60b0ed969334" CreationDate="2014-12-22T20:10:07.783" UserId="31260" Text="Triage review is being tested at Stack Overflow for about three weeks now. I briefly &quot;triaged&quot; it myself and as far as I can tell, Programmers can benefit from such a review too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a plan to test it at Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For those interested to learn more, details are laid out in this post at MSO: [Help us test question triage!](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **tl;dr:** [there's a new review queue](http://stackoverflow.com/review/triage/). It'll be getting somewhere around 1-2 questions per minute.  The only thing they have in common is that the system is unsure of what to do with them. Some are great, some are awful, some are in-between. We need you to help the system decide which category these questions belong in...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Behind the scenes, a &quot;quality score&quot; is calculated for each question based on an automated analysis of the content. Those that score well are sent immediately to the homepage; those that score poorly will now be sent to Triage. From there, they'll go to one of three places based on human input:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. The homepage, where they can be answered&#xD;&#xA;2. The close or moderator flag queue where they can be reviewed and eventually deleted&#xD;&#xA;3. A new &quot;Help and Improvement&quot; queue where they can be edited&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19641" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7053" RevisionGUID="fce62a74-d6c8-4edd-8385-60b0ed969334" CreationDate="2014-12-22T20:10:07.783" UserId="31260" Text="Is there a plan to test Triage review at Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19642" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7053" RevisionGUID="fce62a74-d6c8-4edd-8385-60b0ed969334" CreationDate="2014-12-22T20:10:07.783" UserId="31260" Text="|support|questions|review|low-quality-posts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19643" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7051" RevisionGUID="beb2d993-29eb-466e-9949-756e9048b6f5" CreationDate="2014-12-23T00:55:53.590" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/547193844895199233" />
  <row Id="19644" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7054" RevisionGUID="050bbd3f-daca-4105-8a51-24fcf117e7fd" CreationDate="2014-12-23T19:25:33.337" UserId="51654" Text="One other way to think about it is from a courtroom sense. Professional programmers can serve as experts about programming things, providing **information** about them, but no opinions about how they apply to the particular case or law itself. Likewise, we try to offer no bias to our answers so they're more useful to our audience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For your particular question, we can explain what early and late binding is - we're experts there. But we are not experts at the law, so cannot say how they apply to copyright law. Even ignoring the legal entanglements, how things apply in individual cases are specific and likely not useful for future visitors." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19645" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6743" RevisionGUID="4644a34d-ceae-47fe-ab15-633e79d3119a" CreationDate="2014-12-24T00:31:51.760" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="NotConstructive.com failed to get sufficient community (again)" Text="## Why we're not a forum&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to realize is that Stack Exchange brands itself as a Q&amp;A site. This is the very top of the content when you go to http://stackexchange.com.  It calls out that this is something *different* than forums, that there are *right answers.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When one goes to the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) page, note the wording of the text there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat. Just questions...  and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Going further into the help center, one finds [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) which links to three other pages that goes into more about what isn't allowed on the site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Thus, questions that are not answerable — discussions, debates, opinions — should be closed as subjective. It seems simple enough: Fact good; opinion and discussion bad. But why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Most forums and chat rooms have a scale problem. As in, they don’t. The more people that join the discussion, the more noise each of those connections bring. So the forums get progressively noisier and noisier, and suddenly one day … you stop learning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## On the nature of discussions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of a discussion is back and forth.  Lines of communication.  Look at sites that are intended for discussion and you will find threads and nested comments and a system that isn't designed around getting answers but rather to make connections with people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is different.  As stated in the tour and time and time again in other documents, this is a Q&amp;A site.  As such it has intentionally made having these discussions difficult.  Things such as limited sizes of comments, limited markdown in comments, the automatic move comment to chat feature.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussions make it harder to find the answer - you have to wade through all the other stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;As an aside, there is *nothing* worse than trying to go from reading a post, to reading the comments to going back to the post to see the reply, and back to the comments to see the next reply and back to the post... Don't do that. Remove the 'Edit:' and 'Update:' from your edit, make the entire thing a cohesive whole and leave a comment saying that the post has been updated to take this into account - people can read the revision history if they want to see what changed.&amp;lt;/rant&amp;gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are sites that do discussions very well... or, as well as discussions can be done.  Jeff Atwood even went off to make another site model designed precisely for discussions (http://www.discourse.org)... and it's not a Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not to say that one can't try to mix Q&amp;A and discussions.  But it's *very* hard to do both right.  It's hard enough to do one of them right.  Stack Exchange chose to get Q&amp;A right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Where else can discussions be had?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *do* want to have a discussion there are some options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Visit [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard).  The _Whiteboard_ chat room is one such place within the Stack Exchange network where discussions are allowed (and encouraged).&#xD;&#xA;* Ask somewhere else.  There are numerous other sites out there that are designed for discussions.  [Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/), [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/ask), [Slashdot](http://ask.slashdot.org), [Quora](https://www.quora.com) to name a few.  These are sites that are specifically designed with discussions in mind - the voting system on them, the moderation, the community formed around them - all about discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So why is it a big deal?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with discussions is that discussions can easily overwhelm the rest of the site.  Unlike objective questions that have answers (and if asked again can be directed to the previous one asked that will answer this one too), discussions of the same topic are infinite in their variety based on the participants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is based on the premise that good questions and answers attract and retain the experts that answer them and that people come to find answers.  The quality that Stack Exchange provides is unique within the Internet so far (quite a few clones, but none as compelling).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, discussions tend to drive away experts.  Not always, but it's the trend.  This has been seen many times since the days of Usenet news... experts really don't want to spend their time arguing with someone who doesn't understand the topic at hand when they want to just answer a question... and if they *do*, there are ways to have that discussion via other channels.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not to say that there are experts who do enjoy discussions... and that Stack Exchange isn't exactly working for them.  This is unfortunate, but it does not mean that discussions need to be allowed or that Stack Exchange needs to change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Related reading and links from above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is Stack Overflow a forum?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/92107/213963) on Meta.StackExchange&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;* [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html) by Clay Shirky" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19646" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7051" RevisionGUID="a689e8ad-deb6-4fca-b1cd-a6317e21722f" CreationDate="2014-12-24T02:59:29.533" UserId="160273" Comment="added 1645 characters in body" Text="I asked [this][1] this question. It was put on hold by [Bart van Ingen Schenau][2], who kindly and patiently explained that he rejected the question because of a community consensus that programmers cannot authoritatively answer questions involving the legal topic at hand (copyright law).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have searched [Programmers Meta][3], and I find no evidence of such a consensus. To the contrary, I find a pronounced lack of consensus. Relevant posts seem to be [What types of legal questions are on-topic here?][4], [Are software law questions off-topic here?][5], and [“consult your lawyer” answers][6]. Among those discussions, there seems to be a contingent arguing that programmers are qualified to answer no legal questions; a contingent arguing that programmers can answer only those legal questions intimately related to programming; a contingent arguing that programmers can answer a wide range of legal topics as long as &quot;common sense&quot; is applied to the interpretation of the answers; and a contingent arguing that programmers may potentially be able to answer any legal question. No contingent clearly dominates the others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a newcomer browsing the documented record, my perception is that the community is very far from a consensus on this matter. Nevertheless, community consensus was cited in Mr. Schenau's explanation for the rejection of my question. The apparent implication is that a non-existent community standard is being used to justify the rejection of questions on Programmers Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I come to Meta (at Mr. Schenau's suggestion) in search of clarity. Does there exist a consensus on programmers' inability to answer questions on copyright law sufficient to justify the rejection of questions on that topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is attracting answers which are not quite on-point, so I think it would help if I elaborate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the help center guidelines are out-of-sync with community standards, especially when it comes to deciding whether or not legal questions are off-topic. I suspect what has happened is that the community has formed a shared opinion over time, but hasn't kept the guidelines up-to-date. That's okay -- We can fix it by establishing what the community standards are, then updating the guidelines to reflect them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start with the one question where I've been told there is a consensus: Does everyone agree that programmers cannot authoritatively answer questions of copyright law? If yes, then let's edit the guidelines to say that copyright questions are off-topic for that reason. If no, then let's tell people to stop citing that as a reason for closing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems likely that follow-up questions will be necessary. Doc Brown says we shouldn't encourage legal advice because it may be illegal to do so, or carry too much responsibility. Maybe we should look for a consensus on that point and, if we find one, write that into the guidelines. Telastyn suggests that copyright questions are too specific to be useful. Perhaps the community agrees with that, and it should be written into the guidelines. Snowman suggests that legal answers carry too big a risk of leading to bad decisions. Etc. Etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But let's take things one step at a time. The question on the table is whether or not we agree that programmers are incapable of giving authoritative answers to copyright questions. Yes or no?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/266445/is-early-binding-legally-constrained-while-late-binding-is-not#&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/5099/bart-van-ingen-schenau&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=legal/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/89961/consult-your-lawyer-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19647" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7055" RevisionGUID="3ee9b537-21dc-4cd0-837d-1c4bd5ee3803" CreationDate="2014-12-24T04:47:05.363" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Copyright questions come in a few flavors.  There is the trivial, the complex, the ones that involve licenses (and CLAs) , and the ones that involve contracts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with trying to strike all of these out with a pen is likely a mistake.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many copyright questions that programmers are qualified to answer and do come up in the course of our employment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is necessary for putting copyright information in a source file?&#xD;&#xA;* How to properly include the license information in a minimized javascript file?&#xD;&#xA;* Does recreating a C++ program in Java allow me to change the license from GPL to BSD?&#xD;&#xA;* If I contribute some code to an Apache project using the [ICLA](http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt), can I use that code in my own closed source projects?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are all copyright questions and a programmer can give an authoritative, correct answer as an expert in the subject matter.  These questions tend to be licensing questions too (which are on topic), but they are fundamentally copyright questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are other questions that involve the ***interpretation*** of copyright law. Things that two lawyers would argue about in front of judge (rather than two programmers in front of a manager).  These are ones that we cannot give expert answers about (beyond talk to a lawyer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, there are copyright questions, that when asked in the context of a question of licensing are perfectly on topic.  There are also copyright questions that we are in no way qualified to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But let's take things one step at a time. The question on the table is whether or not we agree that programmers are incapable of giving authoritative answers to copyright questions. Yes or no?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No.  Programmers are capable of giving authoritative answers to ***some*** copyright questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19648" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7055" RevisionGUID="21db338c-7799-442a-85de-566ce9046995" CreationDate="2014-12-24T04:53:57.930" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 830 characters in body" Text="Copyright questions come in a few flavors.  There is the trivial, the complex, the ones that involve licenses (and CLAs) , and the ones that involve contracts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with trying to strike all of these out with a pen is likely a mistake.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many copyright questions that programmers are qualified to answer and do come up in the course of our employment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is necessary for putting copyright information in a source file?&#xD;&#xA;* How to properly include the license information in a minimized javascript file?&#xD;&#xA;* Does recreating a C++ program in Java allow me to change the license from GPL to BSD?&#xD;&#xA;* If I contribute some code to an Apache project using the [ICLA](http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt), can I use that code in my own closed source projects?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are all copyright questions and a programmer can give an authoritative, correct answer as an expert in the subject matter.  These questions tend to be licensing questions too (which are on topic), but they are fundamentally copyright questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are other questions that involve the ***interpretation*** of copyright law. Things that two lawyers would argue about in front of judge (rather than two programmers in front of a manager).  These are ones that we cannot give expert answers about (beyond talk to a lawyer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, there are copyright questions, that when asked in the context of a question of licensing are perfectly on topic.  There are also copyright questions that we are in no way qualified to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But let's take things one step at a time. The question on the table is whether or not we agree that programmers are incapable of giving authoritative answers to copyright questions. Yes or no?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No.  Programmers are capable of giving authoritative answers to ***some*** copyright questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does everyone agree that programmers cannot authoritatively answer questions of copyright law? If yes, then let's edit the guidelines to say that copyright questions are off-topic for that reason. If no, then let's tell people to stop citing that as a reason for closing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As much as it would help, it is *very* difficult to list all of the on or off topic subjects in the help center.  Explaining the difference between this copyright question and that one and why one is on topic or not is *far* too much to include in the help center (and honestly, most people don't appear to read it in the first place).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The help center already has &quot;legal advice&quot; in there as off topic.  You may have a case to extend that to &quot;legal advice and interpretations&quot;, but that isn't likely to be much more clear than it is now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19649" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7056" RevisionGUID="dd99fe4a-e843-40f5-bb48-97508a106372" CreationDate="2014-12-24T18:14:14.550" UserId="160273" Text="In the comments for [this question][1], I was told that the close-and-reopen process is how the PSE community finds consensus on what is on-topic and what is off-topic. Is this correct?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7051/is-there-a-consensus-on-programmers-stack-exchange-that-programmers-cannot-autho" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19650" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7056" RevisionGUID="dd99fe4a-e843-40f5-bb48-97508a106372" CreationDate="2014-12-24T18:14:14.550" UserId="160273" Text="Is the vote-to-close process how PSE finds consensus on appropriate topics?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19651" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7056" RevisionGUID="dd99fe4a-e843-40f5-bb48-97508a106372" CreationDate="2014-12-24T18:14:14.550" UserId="160273" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19652" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7057" RevisionGUID="12b99ded-e085-4fa2-85e5-308d864750a5" CreationDate="2014-12-24T18:23:33.983" UserId="4127" Text="Voting is how the community comes to consensus on most things on the StackExchange network. Is the question good? Up-votes will determine that. Is the question bad? Down-votes. Does the question fail to meet on-topic criteria? Close votes. Has the question been updated to be on-topic? Reopen votes, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many discussions about what constitutes on-topic in Meta and in chat, but ultimately &quot;community consensus&quot; can only be measured by how the community votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19653" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7057" RevisionGUID="4b4a8d2a-ffdd-459b-859c-49aff0c0930c" CreationDate="2014-12-24T18:30:00.647" UserId="4127" Comment="added 407 characters in body" Text="Voting is how the community comes to consensus on most things on the StackExchange network. Is the question good? Up-votes will determine that. Is the question bad? Down-votes. Does the question fail to meet on-topic criteria? Close votes. Has the question been updated to be on-topic? Reopen votes, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many discussions about what constitutes on-topic in Meta and in chat, but ultimately &quot;community consensus&quot; can only be measured by how the community votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edited to add:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to mention that sometimes &quot;community consensus&quot; on certain topics does not reflect the written guidelines. When that happens, and it has happened several times on PSE, debates take place, and either the guidelines are changed or consensus is swayed. In either case, how the community votes is still the only way to gauge community consensus on interpretations of the guidelines." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19654" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7058" RevisionGUID="9e96b1d6-8769-4182-92ae-ba463172ea38" CreationDate="2014-12-24T20:03:32.417" UserId="150418" Text="Some time I have some question that are opinion based, but I need to know what good programmers think what is better to do on that situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So is there any stackexchange subdomain that I can ask opinion based questions !?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19655" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7058" RevisionGUID="9e96b1d6-8769-4182-92ae-ba463172ea38" CreationDate="2014-12-24T20:03:32.417" UserId="150418" Text="is there any stackexchange subdomain that I can ask opinion based questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19656" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7058" RevisionGUID="9e96b1d6-8769-4182-92ae-ba463172ea38" CreationDate="2014-12-24T20:03:32.417" UserId="150418" Text="|support|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19657" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7059" RevisionGUID="5f07f40f-6788-4056-a6d2-3b50ab90feeb" CreationDate="2014-12-25T12:39:38.203" UserId="146020" Text="I think the problem here mainly arises from the fact that there is so much disagreement. For example, even within this one question we have several viewpoints:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Establish a chat room&#xD;&#xA;- Post on meta&#xD;&#xA;- Don't post on meta&#xD;&#xA;- Use an existing chat room&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My two cents is this: Over on [Worldbuilding.SE][1] we've just established a [Sandbox][2] exactly for this purpose, taking our lead from [PPCG.SE's sandbox][3]. I think a Sandbox is a pretty good way to do this: people who don't want to see questions for improvement don't even have to look at the sandbox, but people who do can help out, and it's easy to find help when you want it. We're also looking at a separate answer sandbox on [Worldbuilding][1], but this is a separate discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://meta.worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/635/sandbox-for-proposed-questions&#xD;&#xA;[3]: http://meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/2140/sandbox-for-proposed-challenges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19662" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7014" RevisionGUID="ab1b4562-2169-4f61-ba2b-aaae78877510" CreationDate="2014-12-27T00:05:49.963" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19663" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7061" RevisionGUID="c91cde52-f311-4edf-9829-f8a83d90661a" CreationDate="2014-12-27T01:19:57.677" UserId="4" Text="As two of the comments mention, no, there isn't a site to ask opinion based questions. See [here][1], [here][2], and [here][3] for more information on that. However, Stack Exchange does have a [chat][4] where these discussions can happen. An example of one chat room would be the [Programmers main chat room, The Whiteboard][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19665" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7062" RevisionGUID="a388dcce-627a-4384-a2d6-49c8dd6b4dcf" CreationDate="2014-12-27T10:02:54.860" UserId="150418" Text="can I ask same question in both *stackoverflow.com* and *programmers.stackexchange.com* or mabe other subdomain? or it will be duplicate question!?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19666" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7062" RevisionGUID="a388dcce-627a-4384-a2d6-49c8dd6b4dcf" CreationDate="2014-12-27T10:02:54.860" UserId="150418" Text="can I ask same question in multiple site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19667" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7062" RevisionGUID="a388dcce-627a-4384-a2d6-49c8dd6b4dcf" CreationDate="2014-12-27T10:02:54.860" UserId="150418" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19668" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7063" RevisionGUID="cb124b7b-0f65-433a-a278-d34aea281eb7" CreationDate="2014-12-27T10:45:06.977" UserId="81495" Text="Nope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, technically you can, but it's preferred if you don't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Posting duplicate questions on multiple sites makes it harder for future users to find the answer to the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19669" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7064" RevisionGUID="4ce15347-9a58-4a0e-b9e4-18ec8294987d" CreationDate="2014-12-27T12:37:04.940" UserId="4" Text="This is [the official guidance for cross-posting questions between Stack Exchange sites][1]. In short, each site is a different community. Even if the question would be on-topic on multiple sites, you should read each site's Help Center to find out what is and isn't on-topic and similar questions to find out the types of answers each site provides, and then ask the question where you feel you'll get the best answers. If you aren't getting the answers you need, moderators can migrate it if it's necessary. Alternatively, you can always ask a new question on a new site that is worded differently to get better answers. However, simply copy and pasting questions between sites isn't recommended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64068/is-cross-posting-a-question-on-multiple-stack-exchange-sites-permitted-if-the-qu" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19670" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7062" RevisionGUID="0fc16e6c-5c74-4f60-af65-6c08311246a4" CreationDate="2014-12-27T14:19:19.780" UserId="31260" Comment="edited body; edited tags" Text="Can I ask same question in both *stackoverflow.com* and *programmers.stackexchange.com* or maybe other Stack Exchange site? or it will be duplicate question?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19671" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7062" RevisionGUID="0fc16e6c-5c74-4f60-af65-6c08311246a4" CreationDate="2014-12-27T14:19:19.780" UserId="31260" Comment="edited body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|cross-posting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19672" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7062" RevisionGUID="0fc16e6c-5c74-4f60-af65-6c08311246a4" CreationDate="2014-12-27T14:19:19.780" UserId="31260" Comment="edited body; edited tags" Text="Can I ask same question in multiple sites?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19673" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7065" RevisionGUID="d56c1a20-34de-4388-a049-b1eeb63b12af" CreationDate="2014-12-30T01:32:19.083" UserId="4307" Text="I'm a regular SO user but rarely use programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm aware that Java in the browser is a security nightmare but am looking for evidence that Java in a server environment is sufficiently secure to use for new projects. Specifically, any good explanations as to why the broken Java security model isn't an issue on servers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On SO, that would be off-topic as it has no clear answer. Is it on topic on programmers? The  [What topics can I ask about here][1] page seems to indicate it is (at least it's not explicitly excluded) but I thought I'd check first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19674" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7065" RevisionGUID="d56c1a20-34de-4388-a049-b1eeb63b12af" CreationDate="2014-12-30T01:32:19.083" UserId="4307" Text="On Topic Clarification: Java security in a server environment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19675" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7065" RevisionGUID="d56c1a20-34de-4388-a049-b1eeb63b12af" CreationDate="2014-12-30T01:32:19.083" UserId="4307" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19676" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7066" RevisionGUID="b4f93bfa-6a91-4a9a-a0f0-f4994a4b605d" CreationDate="2014-12-30T04:15:30.307" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="It's not off-topic per se but if your focus is security then we've got a site for that called &quot;[Information Security][1]&quot; that may yield a more detailed answer regarding the security aspects of the technology.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://security.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19677" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7067" RevisionGUID="f02a375e-5608-408e-8399-34d604a0a6bf" CreationDate="2014-12-30T05:43:12.070" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I think it depends on your focus. If you are looking at specific vulnerabilities and real-world details, then World Engineer's answer is the way to go. From [Information Security help center][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **IT Security Stack Exchange** is for Information Security professionals to discuss protecting **assets** from **threats** and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **vulnerabilities**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to approach it from a more abstract angle of why one security model is more or less secure, in a computer-sciencey way, then Programmers would be better. But if you do ask here, it really needs to be more conceptual while also answerable. From [our help center][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, discussing the merits of each architecture would fall under &quot;software architecture and design&quot; in my opinion, as long as the question is worded correctly. It would have to be about a program you are writing (conceptual questions about software development) and not why Sun/Oracle did something a certain way (ask Sun or Oracle instead).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://security.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19678" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7068" RevisionGUID="73eb85bd-970f-41fd-8e9f-4381a0da392d" CreationDate="2014-12-31T21:32:52.693" UserId="154627" Text="Sorry if this is a duplicate or if this is the wrong place to ask for this but I cannot find any instructions on what I should do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is my problem:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier today I asked [this question][1] about using `extern const` in an header file to make my global variables (that can be changed by the implementation) read only to the files that include my header in C and C++.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the time I started to write it I thought that it was valid because I had managed to compile a test program with GCC where I had `extern const int global_variable` in the header file but `int global_variable` in the implementation file.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I later started to doubt that it was valid because I had never seen or heard of it before so I asked [this question][2] on stackoverflow to make sure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It turned out that the only reason I got it to compile was because I did not include my header file in my implementation file.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should I do in this situation? I think my question on `programmers.stackexchange` should be deleted but I am not sure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/267761/c-c-using-extern-const-in-header-files-to-make-global-variables-read-only/267774#267774&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27724453/is-it-valid-to-declare-a-global-variable-extern-const-int-in-header-but-only/27725225#27725225" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19679" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7068" RevisionGUID="73eb85bd-970f-41fd-8e9f-4381a0da392d" CreationDate="2014-12-31T21:32:52.693" UserId="154627" Text="I asked a question that was wrong. What should I do? Lock/Close/Delete" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19680" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7068" RevisionGUID="73eb85bd-970f-41fd-8e9f-4381a0da392d" CreationDate="2014-12-31T21:32:52.693" UserId="154627" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19681" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7069" RevisionGUID="e890e642-254f-4e74-af35-c241e64a90c1" CreationDate="2014-12-31T23:44:25.773" UserId="5099" Text="There is no need to do anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that your question was triggered by an error in your code and that the trick doesn't work when correcting that error doesn't mean that your question doesn't have a place here. Thus there is no need to close/delete the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By indicating in the question that the trick you described doesn't work (and the answer why) are enough to warn others.  &#xD;&#xA;That is also a reason to leave the question on the site. You are probably not the only one to think of this and by leaving it on the site you can help others as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="19720" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7084" RevisionGUID="1f5636b3-7a71-4783-9dc1-56d474b59e14" CreationDate="2015-01-02T22:45:14.633" UserId="119554" Text="There's also the legal principal of &quot;silence is consent&quot;. So if the PSE guidelines state that the consensus is that its users don't have that legal authority, and the users take action on that basis, and no one raises a hue and cry, then that's tacit agreement with that consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By contrast, if the guidelines stated (correctly) that no one here has sufficient expertise to answer questions about REST, and started closing questions on that basis (justifiably), people like myself would make a big stink about it (wrongly) and *not* silently accept that as the consensus. There would clearly not be consensus, but rather controversy &amp; challenge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's even more web lawyering than I'm comfortable with, but the upshot is, we don't have to take a vote. If the community accepts that as the consensus &amp; takes actions on that basis, that's good enough to establish consensus.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19721" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7084" RevisionGUID="f1e21a07-4d5a-4e2b-bd0c-39bd1ee82c6f" CreationDate="2015-01-02T23:13:36.790" UserId="119554" Comment="added 120 characters in body" Text="There's also the legal principal of &quot;silence is consent&quot;. So if the PSE guidelines state that the consensus is that its users don't have that legal authority, and the users take action on that basis, and no one raises a hue and cry, then that's tacit agreement with that consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By contrast, if the guidelines stated (correctly) that no one here has sufficient expertise to answer questions about REST, and started closing questions on that basis (justifiably), people like myself would make a big stink about it (wrongly) and *not* silently accept that as the consensus. There would clearly not be consensus, but rather controversy &amp; challenge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's even more web lawyering than I'm comfortable with, but the upshot is, we don't have to take a vote. If the community accepts that as the consensus &amp; takes actions on that basis, that's good enough to establish consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...or, to put a fine point on it, after your question was closed, there were no votes to reopen it. So, consensus.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19722" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7084" RevisionGUID="d7824055-97b2-4578-82de-3140983fda4b" CreationDate="2015-01-02T23:24:03.433" UserId="119554" Comment="added 41 characters in body" Text="There's also the legal principal of &quot;silence is consent&quot;. So if the PSE guidelines state that the consensus is that its users don't have that legal authority, and the users take action on that basis, and no one raises a hue and cry, then that's tacit agreement with that consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By contrast, if the guidelines stated (correctly) that no one here has sufficient expertise to answer questions about REST, and started closing questions on that basis (justifiably), people like myself would make a big stink about it (wrongly) and *not* silently accept that as the consensus. There would clearly not be consensus, but rather controversy &amp; challenge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's even more web lawyering than I'm comfortable with, but the upshot is, we don't have to take a vote. If the community accepts that as the consensus &amp; takes actions on that basis, that's good enough to establish consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...or, to put a fine point on it, after your question was closed, there were no votes to reopen it despite all the opportunities people had. So, consensus.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19723" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7085" RevisionGUID="8e69bb11-1851-4559-9cfb-f7706e6e2b6b" CreationDate="2015-01-04T18:40:21.253" UserId="19237" Text="People are obviously having trouble understanding this question: [Effect of denormalizing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/267948/19237)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Why is it unclear / what unclear about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What ought I to do (or ought to have done) to make it clearer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Is there a policy or prefered format for database-design-related questions (e.g. include the DDL or a schema diagram in the question)? Would that help in this case or is there something else that's unclear?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel like I've posted half a dozen clarifications in comments, to several different people, when I thought the question was clear (to me at least) already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly my question is therefore inadequate; but I don't know in what way / how to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand it's being up- and not down-voted, so I really don't know." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19724" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7085" RevisionGUID="8e69bb11-1851-4559-9cfb-f7706e6e2b6b" CreationDate="2015-01-04T18:40:21.253" UserId="19237" Text="What is unclear about this question and how can it be clarified?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19725" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7085" RevisionGUID="8e69bb11-1851-4559-9cfb-f7706e6e2b6b" CreationDate="2015-01-04T18:40:21.253" UserId="19237" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19726" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7086" RevisionGUID="485384e2-17b5-451a-aeff-441e88f6b091" CreationDate="2015-01-04T19:32:16.020" UserId="51061" Text="[![Git – fast and easy branching][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/F6Mg6.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://git-scm.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19727" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7086" RevisionGUID="c75fd2d6-068d-43f6-9bad-9d1b270c55ce" CreationDate="2015-01-04T19:32:16.020" UserId="51061" />
  <row Id="19728" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7087" RevisionGUID="3b589642-a395-410f-8e6a-cfb530f2bf9e" CreationDate="2015-01-04T19:38:35.680" UserId="51061" Text="[![Git — keep working without worrying about downtime][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/GbUNZ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://git-scm.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19729" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7087" RevisionGUID="3bd17367-ee7e-479d-bcac-afa6487b8732" CreationDate="2015-01-04T19:38:35.680" UserId="51061" />
  <row Id="19730" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7086" RevisionGUID="4851f85a-11cc-4ea5-89dc-ccec0231371d" CreationDate="2015-01-04T19:40:26.183" UserId="51061" Comment="added 27 characters in body" Text="[![Git – fast and easy branching lets you experiment freely][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/F6Mg6.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://git-scm.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19731" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7088" RevisionGUID="f4c61b70-69be-49f9-923d-f3b50f1b209a" CreationDate="2015-01-04T20:41:25.533" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The text description of the tables, while rather thorough is something that can be difficult for someone who can't actually type `describe Users` to see what the structure is and how it relates to each other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this, I like using http://asciiflow.com because it allows for an ascii art representation of the structure making it easier for others to copy and modify as necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;       +--------+     +--------------+      +-----------+ &#xD;&#xA;       | Users  |     | UserAccount  |      | Account   | &#xD;&#xA;       +--------+     +--------------+      +-----------+ &#xD;&#xA;    +--+ userId +-----+ userId (uniq)|   +--&gt; accountId | &#xD;&#xA;    |  |        |     | accountId    +---+  |           | &#xD;&#xA;    |  +--------+     +--------------+      +-----------+ &#xD;&#xA;    |                                                     &#xD;&#xA;    |                                                     &#xD;&#xA;    |  +-----------+                                      &#xD;&#xA;    |  | Sales     |                                      &#xD;&#xA;    |  +-----------+  (and several other tables like this)&#xD;&#xA;    |  | saleId    |                                      &#xD;&#xA;    +--+ userId fk |                                      &#xD;&#xA;       |           |                                      &#xD;&#xA;       +-----------+                                      &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no *policy* mandating the DDL, but yes, having the DDL or a ER diagram, but they do help in clearly and rapidly conveying the information in well understood means that doesn't have ambiguity of text associated with it.  That diagram covers the all the bullet points of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, the question can be boiled down to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I can't modify the `Users` table for various reasons.  When doing a query against a Sales table that needs to include the Account information, I need to write a query such as:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     select A.*, U.*&#xD;&#xA;    from Sales S&#xD;&#xA;        join Users U on U.userId = S.userId&#xD;&#xA;        join UserAccount UA on U.userId = UA.userId&#xD;&#xA;        left join Account A on UA.accountId = A.accountId&#xD;&#xA;    where&#xD;&#xA;       S.something = somethingElse&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This query has a lot of joins in it that that is slightly troubling to me.  One approach to this would be to denormalize the Sales table so it also includes the `accountId` in it.  This is also slightly troubling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the cleaner approach to writing this so that I don't keep having all of those joins in the queries?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could have some other information there, but this really condenses down the question into something that is more clear.  It describes the table structure, the problem you are having, and what solution you are looking for." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19732" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7088" RevisionGUID="146cb3c3-fa64-4e61-851e-c2947db81296" CreationDate="2015-01-05T00:09:26.297" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="primary keys" Text="The text description of the tables, while rather thorough is something that can be difficult for someone who can't actually type `describe Users` to see what the structure is and how it relates to each other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this, I like using http://asciiflow.com because it allows for an ascii art representation of the structure making it easier for others to copy and modify as necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;       +-----------+  +--------------+      +--------------+&#xD;&#xA;       | Users     |  | UserAccount  |      | Account      |&#xD;&#xA;       +-----------+  +--------------+      +--------------+&#xD;&#xA;    +--+ userId pk +--+ userId (uniq)|   +--&gt; accountId pk |&#xD;&#xA;    |  |           |  | accountId    +---+  |              |&#xD;&#xA;    |  +-----------+  +--------------+      +--------------+&#xD;&#xA;    |                                                       &#xD;&#xA;    |                                                       &#xD;&#xA;    |  +-----------+                                        &#xD;&#xA;    |  | Sales     |                                        &#xD;&#xA;    |  +-----------+  (and se^eral other tables like this)  &#xD;&#xA;    |  | saleId pk |                                        &#xD;&#xA;    +--+ userId fk |                                        &#xD;&#xA;       |           |                                        &#xD;&#xA;       +-----------+                                        &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no *policy* mandating the DDL, but yes, having the DDL or a ER diagram, but they do help in clearly and rapidly conveying the information in well understood means that doesn't have ambiguity of text associated with it.  That diagram covers the all the bullet points of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, the question can be boiled down to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I can't modify the `Users` table for various reasons.  When doing a query against a Sales table that needs to include the Account information, I need to write a query such as:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     select A.*, U.*&#xD;&#xA;    from Sales S&#xD;&#xA;        join Users U on U.userId = S.userId&#xD;&#xA;        join UserAccount UA on U.userId = UA.userId&#xD;&#xA;        left join Account A on UA.accountId = A.accountId&#xD;&#xA;    where&#xD;&#xA;       S.something = somethingElse&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This query has a lot of joins in it that that is slightly troubling to me.  One approach to this would be to denormalize the Sales table so it also includes the `accountId` in it.  This is also slightly troubling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the cleaner approach to writing this so that I don't keep having all of those joins in the queries?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could have some other information there, but this really condenses down the question into something that is more clear.  It describes the table structure, the problem you are having, and what solution you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19735" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7088" RevisionGUID="9daac070-2551-4fef-a6f6-e7c1f3dab813" CreationDate="2015-01-05T01:04:45.467" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 246 characters in body" Text="The text description of the tables, while rather thorough is something that can be difficult for someone who can't actually type `describe Users` to see what the structure is and how it relates to each other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this, I like using http://asciiflow.com because it allows for an ascii art representation of the structure making it easier for others to copy and modify as necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;       +-----------+  +--------------+      +--------------+&#xD;&#xA;       | Users     |  | UserAccount  |      | Account      |&#xD;&#xA;       +-----------+  +--------------+      +--------------+&#xD;&#xA;    +--+ userId pk +--+ userId (uniq)|   +--&gt; accountId pk |&#xD;&#xA;    |  |           |  | accountId    +---+  |              |&#xD;&#xA;    |  +-----------+  +--------------+      +--------------+&#xD;&#xA;    |                                                       &#xD;&#xA;    |                                                       &#xD;&#xA;    |  +-----------+                                        &#xD;&#xA;    |  | Sales     |                                        &#xD;&#xA;    |  +-----------+  (and se^eral other tables like this)  &#xD;&#xA;    |  | saleId pk |                                        &#xD;&#xA;    +--+ userId fk |                                        &#xD;&#xA;       |           |                                        &#xD;&#xA;       +-----------+                                        &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no *policy* mandating the DDL, but yes, having the DDL or a ER diagram, but they do help in clearly and rapidly conveying the information in well understood means that doesn't have ambiguity of text associated with it.  That diagram covers the all the bullet points of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, the question can be boiled down to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I can't modify the `Users` table for various reasons.  When doing a query against a Sales table that needs to include the Account information, I need to write a query such as:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     select A.*, U.*&#xD;&#xA;    from Sales S&#xD;&#xA;        join Users U on U.userId = S.userId&#xD;&#xA;        join UserAccount UA on U.userId = UA.userId&#xD;&#xA;        left join Account A on UA.accountId = A.accountId&#xD;&#xA;    where&#xD;&#xA;       S.something = somethingElse&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This query has a lot of joins in it that that is slightly troubling to me.  One approach to this would be to denormalize the Sales table so it also includes the `accountId` in it.  This is also slightly troubling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the cleaner approach to writing this so that I don't keep having all of those joins in the queries?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could have some other information there, but this really condenses down the question into something that is more clear.  It describes the table structure, the problem you are having, and what solution you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Noting that it can be difficult to get at the source of a meta answer if you don't have 2k rep to be able to edit, it: [the raw revision text](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/9daac070-2551-4fef-a6f6-e7c1f3dab813/view-source)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19736" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="7090" RevisionGUID="77b51b80-f4c2-49c8-9362-aa58df8a13e8" CreationDate="2015-01-05T15:32:37.443" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/268084/where-discuss-software-design-patterns" />
  <row Id="19737" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7090" RevisionGUID="8b54446e-6016-4eb3-b0f2-9e37dec74c92" CreationDate="2015-01-05T15:30:55.150" UserId="129077" Text="StackExchange is for question with a clear answer. But I want to discuss Software Design Pattern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could not find a matching discussion group.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where can I find a group/forum/mailinglist to discuss Software Design Patterns?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19738" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7090" RevisionGUID="8b54446e-6016-4eb3-b0f2-9e37dec74c92" CreationDate="2015-01-05T15:30:55.150" UserId="129077" Text="Where discuss Software Design Patterns?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19739" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7090" RevisionGUID="8b54446e-6016-4eb3-b0f2-9e37dec74c92" CreationDate="2015-01-05T15:30:55.150" UserId="129077" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19740" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7090" RevisionGUID="93ce3395-3930-4b44-aa8b-e8ca9b9b2cee" CreationDate="2015-01-05T15:32:53.937" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19741" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7090" RevisionGUID="204715b5-6283-42eb-b5b8-d371a187d7fa" CreationDate="2015-01-05T16:54:15.437" UserId="31260" Comment="added 1 character in body; edited title" Text="Stack Exchange is for question with a clear answer. But I want to discuss Software Design Pattern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could not find a matching discussion group.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where can I find a group/forum/mailinglist to discuss Software Design Patterns?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19742" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7090" RevisionGUID="204715b5-6283-42eb-b5b8-d371a187d7fa" CreationDate="2015-01-05T16:54:15.437" UserId="31260" Comment="added 1 character in body; edited title" Text="Where to discuss Software Design Patterns?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19743" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6766" RevisionGUID="6b8e83bc-6c57-4d81-a7de-efa1f1519bb4" CreationDate="2015-01-05T17:34:02.703" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add more history to not constructive." Text="It really depends on what audience you want to reach and what you want to talk about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Options range from Stack Exchange's chat (http://chat.stackexchange.com/) which is a real time web based chat that has history to it and tight integration with Stack Exchange as a whole to going to other places that are more designed for discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Places like Reddit/r/programming (http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/ - and the various related ones that cater to a more specific focus), Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/ask) and Slashdot (http://ask.slashdot.org/) are three that come to mind most easily specifically for computer and technology related content. Quora (http://www.quora.com/) is a site that seems to specialize in sharing of anecdotes and advice on all subjects (though I'm not active enough there to be able to say if that is a correct description).  Slant (http://www.slant.co) also bears mentioning in that it is specifically designed for the &quot;what is the best XYZ&quot; type questions, though it is also a site that maintains a laser focus on what it does well and comments or discussions really aren't part of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, in July 2013 there was an attempt to make 'notconstructive.com' which was announced via Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6062876) which brings up many of the issues with both the Q&amp;A format and also the sites that try to cater to discussions (itself falling prey to not getting enough traction and having since closed ([wayback to version 1 of not constructive](https://web.archive.org/web/20130805105010/http://signup.notconstructive.com/)). It then [relaunched](http://fourlightyears.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/notconstructivecom-launches-nobel-prize.html) in November of 2014, and again hasn't mustered sufficient number of people to keep discussion flowing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are countless forums, forum-likes, and chat options.  Finding the one that fits your particular desires for the community and focus may take some time, and compromises to what you want desire may be needed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19744" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7051" RevisionGUID="cab9b260-8fc9-49e0-a550-cdd72c6e9005" CreationDate="2015-01-05T17:36:58.190" UserId="160273" Comment="Edited the question to include a summary of all answers and comments to-date" Text="I asked [this][1] this question. It was put on hold by [Bart van Ingen Schenau][2], who kindly and patiently explained that he rejected the question because of a community consensus that programmers cannot authoritatively answer questions involving the legal topic at hand (copyright law).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have searched [Programmers Meta][3], and I find no evidence of such a consensus. To the contrary, I find a pronounced lack of consensus. Relevant posts seem to be [What types of legal questions are on-topic here?][4], [Are software law questions off-topic here?][5], and [“consult your lawyer” answers][6]. Among those discussions, there seems to be a contingent arguing that programmers are qualified to answer no legal questions; a contingent arguing that programmers can answer only those legal questions intimately related to programming; a contingent arguing that programmers can answer a wide range of legal topics as long as &quot;common sense&quot; is applied to the interpretation of the answers; and a contingent arguing that programmers may potentially be able to answer any legal question. No contingent clearly dominates the others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a newcomer browsing the documented record, my perception is that the community is very far from a consensus on this matter. Nevertheless, community consensus was cited in Mr. Schenau's explanation for the rejection of my question. The apparent implication is that a non-existent community standard is being used to justify the rejection of questions on Programmers Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I come to Meta (at Mr. Schenau's suggestion) in search of clarity. Does there exist a consensus on programmers' inability to answer questions on copyright law sufficient to justify the rejection of questions on that topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is attracting answers which are not quite on-point, so I think it would help if I elaborate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the help center guidelines are out-of-sync with community standards, especially when it comes to deciding whether or not legal questions are off-topic. I suspect what has happened is that the community has formed a shared opinion over time, but hasn't kept the guidelines up-to-date. That's okay -- We can fix it by establishing what the community standards are, then updating the guidelines to reflect them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start with the one question where I've been told there is a consensus: Does everyone agree that programmers cannot authoritatively answer questions of copyright law? If yes, then let's edit the guidelines to say that copyright questions are off-topic for that reason. If no, then let's tell people to stop citing that as a reason for closing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems likely that follow-up questions will be necessary. Doc Brown says we shouldn't encourage legal advice because it may be illegal to do so, or carry too much responsibility. Maybe we should look for a consensus on that point and, if we find one, write that into the guidelines. Telastyn suggests that copyright questions are too specific to be useful. Perhaps the community agrees with that, and it should be written into the guidelines. Snowman suggests that legal answers carry too big a risk of leading to bad decisions. Etc. Etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But let's take things one step at a time. The question on the table is whether or not we agree that programmers are incapable of giving authoritative answers to copyright questions. Yes or no?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks to everyone who answered or commented on this question. Here is a summary of what I learned:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Some respondents suggest that my question is based on a misconception. I had believed that Programmers Stack Exchange first establishes a consensus on which topics should be allowed, then writes those criteria into the help center guidelines, then instructs its moderators to close only those questions which fail to meet the guidelines. (Let's call this System A.) However, Eric King, Walter Mitty, and Rob Y suggest that Programmers Stack Exchange doesn't work this way. Instead, moderators vote to close and reopen questions at their own discretion, and the balance of votes, not the help center guidelines, determines what is on-topic or off-topic. Consensus doesn't play a formal role in the process, but you can infer consensus by looking at which questions remain closed and which remain open. (Let's call this System B.) I felt this was too big a concept to address properly in the comments here, so I started a [new question][7] to discuss it. Thank you to Eric, Walter, and Rob for opening my eyes to System B. It explains a lot of what I see on PSE, and it helps me to understand the replies to my question. If Stack Exchange does, in fact, work along the lines of System B, then my original question and my earlier edit in which I suggest that we bring the help center guidelines up-to-date with community standards are misguided; the site simply doesn't work the way I expected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Some respondents assert that the help center guidelines prohibit most legal questions through their prohibition on legal assistance. Snowman says that anything which crosses the line beyond &quot;how the license works&quot; is &quot;explicitly off-topic per the help center&quot;. MichaelT says &quot;The help center already has 'legal advice' in there as off topic&quot; and suggests that this implicitly extends to &quot;interpretations&quot;. Robert Harvey says &quot;Legal interpretation, advice, and assistance are all the same thing.&quot; My conclusion is that some moderators believe the help center contains a broad prohibition on legal questions, and may use it to justify the closure of any question with a legal aspect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) Several respondents went beyond answering whether or not there is a consensus on whether programmers can authoritatively answer questions of copyright law, and tried to explain why programmers cannot or should not answer legal questions in general. The diversity of these replies convinces me that there is no dogma on the subject, but rather a bunch of individual theories.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/266445/is-early-binding-legally-constrained-while-late-binding-is-not#&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/5099/bart-van-ingen-schenau&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=legal/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/89961/consult-your-lawyer-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7056/is-the-vote-to-close-process-how-pse-finds-consensus-on-appropriate-topics" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19745" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7051" RevisionGUID="c24ed200-f125-4070-8212-cb0d8e71573f" CreationDate="2015-01-05T18:12:49.200" UserId="160273" Comment="Minor edit -- replaced &quot;dogma&quot; with &quot;doctrine&quot;" Text="I asked [this][1] this question. It was put on hold by [Bart van Ingen Schenau][2], who kindly and patiently explained that he rejected the question because of a community consensus that programmers cannot authoritatively answer questions involving the legal topic at hand (copyright law).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have searched [Programmers Meta][3], and I find no evidence of such a consensus. To the contrary, I find a pronounced lack of consensus. Relevant posts seem to be [What types of legal questions are on-topic here?][4], [Are software law questions off-topic here?][5], and [“consult your lawyer” answers][6]. Among those discussions, there seems to be a contingent arguing that programmers are qualified to answer no legal questions; a contingent arguing that programmers can answer only those legal questions intimately related to programming; a contingent arguing that programmers can answer a wide range of legal topics as long as &quot;common sense&quot; is applied to the interpretation of the answers; and a contingent arguing that programmers may potentially be able to answer any legal question. No contingent clearly dominates the others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a newcomer browsing the documented record, my perception is that the community is very far from a consensus on this matter. Nevertheless, community consensus was cited in Mr. Schenau's explanation for the rejection of my question. The apparent implication is that a non-existent community standard is being used to justify the rejection of questions on Programmers Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I come to Meta (at Mr. Schenau's suggestion) in search of clarity. Does there exist a consensus on programmers' inability to answer questions on copyright law sufficient to justify the rejection of questions on that topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is attracting answers which are not quite on-point, so I think it would help if I elaborate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the help center guidelines are out-of-sync with community standards, especially when it comes to deciding whether or not legal questions are off-topic. I suspect what has happened is that the community has formed a shared opinion over time, but hasn't kept the guidelines up-to-date. That's okay -- We can fix it by establishing what the community standards are, then updating the guidelines to reflect them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start with the one question where I've been told there is a consensus: Does everyone agree that programmers cannot authoritatively answer questions of copyright law? If yes, then let's edit the guidelines to say that copyright questions are off-topic for that reason. If no, then let's tell people to stop citing that as a reason for closing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems likely that follow-up questions will be necessary. Doc Brown says we shouldn't encourage legal advice because it may be illegal to do so, or carry too much responsibility. Maybe we should look for a consensus on that point and, if we find one, write that into the guidelines. Telastyn suggests that copyright questions are too specific to be useful. Perhaps the community agrees with that, and it should be written into the guidelines. Snowman suggests that legal answers carry too big a risk of leading to bad decisions. Etc. Etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But let's take things one step at a time. The question on the table is whether or not we agree that programmers are incapable of giving authoritative answers to copyright questions. Yes or no?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks to everyone who answered or commented on this question. Here is a summary of what I learned:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Some respondents suggest that my question is based on a misconception. I had believed that Programmers Stack Exchange first establishes a consensus on which topics should be allowed, then writes those criteria into the help center guidelines, then instructs its moderators to close only those questions which fail to meet the guidelines. (Let's call this System A.) However, Eric King, Walter Mitty, and Rob Y suggest that Programmers Stack Exchange doesn't work this way. Instead, moderators vote to close and reopen questions at their own discretion, and the balance of votes, not the help center guidelines, determines what is on-topic or off-topic. Consensus doesn't play a formal role in the process, but you can infer consensus by looking at which questions remain closed and which remain open. (Let's call this System B.) I felt this was too big a concept to address properly in the comments here, so I started a [new question][7] to discuss it. Thank you to Eric, Walter, and Rob for opening my eyes to System B. It explains a lot of what I see on PSE, and it helps me to understand the replies to my question. If Stack Exchange does, in fact, work along the lines of System B, then my original question and my earlier edit in which I suggest that we bring the help center guidelines up-to-date with community standards are misguided; the site simply doesn't work the way I expected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Some respondents assert that the help center guidelines prohibit most legal questions through their prohibition on legal assistance. Snowman says that anything which crosses the line beyond &quot;how the license works&quot; is &quot;explicitly off-topic per the help center&quot;. MichaelT says &quot;The help center already has 'legal advice' in there as off topic&quot; and suggests that this implicitly extends to &quot;interpretations&quot;. Robert Harvey says &quot;Legal interpretation, advice, and assistance are all the same thing.&quot; My conclusion is that some moderators believe the help center contains a broad prohibition on legal questions, and may use it to justify the closure of any question with a legal aspect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) Several respondents went beyond answering whether or not there is a consensus on whether programmers can authoritatively answer questions of copyright law, and tried to explain why programmers cannot or should not answer legal questions in general. The diversity of these replies convinces me that there is no doctrine on the subject, but rather a bunch of individual theories.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/266445/is-early-binding-legally-constrained-while-late-binding-is-not#&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/5099/bart-van-ingen-schenau&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=legal/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/89961/consult-your-lawyer-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7056/is-the-vote-to-close-process-how-pse-finds-consensus-on-appropriate-topics" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19746" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7091" RevisionGUID="ac017535-cdb9-4747-8cd9-76099f846b11" CreationDate="2015-01-05T18:16:49.387" UserId="1204" Text="We all know what the problem with most &quot;best practices&quot; questions is.  Quite Often, it is [spotting a herd in the distance and going trotting off after it.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what, after all, is a site like Programmers all about, if it's not about best practices?  Surely that's what we're all here for: *writing better code.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This morning, we had someone stumble over the [Why is asking a question about best practices a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/142353).  So instead of asking a question about bad practices, he asked one about statistical usage of techniques.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Uh, oh.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6984)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, rather than discuss more legalistic ways to screen out &quot;best practices&quot; questions, I am now asking: what elements need to be present in a &quot;best practices&quot; question to make it suitable for Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, I'd like to see more question and answer pairs of the form: *&quot;This practice is preferred because [well-thought out reasons here], and this practice is discouraged because [sensible rationale here]&quot;*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19747" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7091" RevisionGUID="ac017535-cdb9-4747-8cd9-76099f846b11" CreationDate="2015-01-05T18:16:49.387" UserId="1204" Text="Making &quot;best practices&quot; questions more palatable: how to ask a &quot;best practice&quot; question that is acceptable to the community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19748" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7091" RevisionGUID="ac017535-cdb9-4747-8cd9-76099f846b11" CreationDate="2015-01-05T18:16:49.387" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19749" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7091" RevisionGUID="dfb3be73-cdf0-4c80-bac1-295f75f726a6" CreationDate="2015-01-05T18:21:51.123" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="We all know what the problem with most &quot;best practices&quot; questions is.  Quite Often, it is [spotting a herd in the distance and going trotting off after it.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what, after all, is a site like Programmers all about, if it's not about best practices?  Surely that's what we're all here for: *writing better code.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This morning, we had someone stumble over the [Why is asking a question about best practices a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/142353).  So instead of asking a question about bad practices, he asked one about statistical usage of techniques.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Uh, oh.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6984)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, rather than discuss more legalistic ways to screen out &quot;best practices&quot; questions, I am now asking: what elements need to be present in a &quot;best practices&quot; question to make it suitable for Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, I'd like to see more question and answer pairs of the form: *&quot;This practice is preferred because [well-thought out reasons here], and this practice is discouraged because [sensible rationale here].&quot;*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19750" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7092" RevisionGUID="a4fb9604-d75e-4dc1-9cfe-60fc49bef3c7" CreationDate="2015-01-05T18:22:24.700" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="[![Ascii Flow Infinity][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Q9LbT.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://asciiflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19751" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7092" RevisionGUID="49ec5895-9e78-4f3e-981c-f8b2cc5e2107" CreationDate="2015-01-05T18:22:24.700" UserDisplayName="user40980" />
  <row Id="19752" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7093" RevisionGUID="444e9931-9bcc-4a8e-96cd-cad4b34ca7c8" CreationDate="2015-01-05T18:22:52.427" UserId="4" Text="When someone says &quot;best practice&quot;, they are referring to the technique that works for most people in most situations. That's really not appropriate for Programmers, I don't think. Instead, we should be focused on solving a particular instance of a problem. Instead of asking for a best practice, it should be focused on the individual's situation. Any question asking for a solution should describe the current environment in terms of people, processes, technology, and available tools. Depending on what the environment offers, there are likely to be different best options.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of this, I'd want to see more linking between questions here as indication that you've searched at least this site to find similar situations and why the accepted/top answers there don't work for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are likely to be other characteristics as well, but for me, those are the three big ones:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A clear description of the problem.&#xD;&#xA;* A clear description of the environment.&#xD;&#xA;* Similar questions or posts and why they aren't helpful to you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19753" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7091" RevisionGUID="c09ad503-67f4-4069-a6a6-a7c73a337dca" CreationDate="2015-01-05T18:27:00.827" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="We all know what the problems with most &quot;best practices&quot; questions is.  Quite Often, it is [spotting a herd in the distance and going trotting off after it.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354)  The other problem is that they can often be too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what, after all, is a site like Programmers all about, if it's not about best practices?  Surely that's what we're all here for: *writing better code.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This morning, we had someone stumble over the [Why is asking a question about best practices a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/142353)  So instead of asking a question about bad practices, he asked one about statistical usage of techniques.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Uh, oh.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6984)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, rather than discuss more legalistic ways to screen out &quot;best practices&quot; questions, I am now asking: what elements need to be present in a &quot;best practices&quot; question to make it suitable for Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, I'd like to see more question and answer pairs of the form: *&quot;This practice is preferred because [well-thought out reasons here], and this practice is discouraged because [sensible rationale here].&quot;*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19754" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7090" RevisionGUID="eeb8c82a-08d2-47b4-a8f6-972b0ae54adc" CreationDate="2015-01-05T18:30:06.930" UserId="4" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6763],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:4127,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Eric King&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="19755" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7091" RevisionGUID="c86c38f8-c9e5-4565-be32-97fd58b644d7" CreationDate="2015-01-05T20:31:48.207" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Create tag for commonly discussed issue." Text="|discussion|best-practice|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19756" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6984" RevisionGUID="9d4ab9a2-8dad-4cc3-94dc-19378f8a5564" CreationDate="2015-01-05T20:32:00.253" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|on-topic-definition|best-practice|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19757" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7094" RevisionGUID="4c874671-ce71-4e4f-972c-630bb437da2e" CreationDate="2015-01-05T20:33:38.817" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Best practices are something that people often ask for when asking a question. This topic often finds its way onto meta as to why questions are closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19758" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7095" RevisionGUID="9ddc1681-d434-49ee-9c0d-a71eee7ec4ee" CreationDate="2015-01-05T20:33:38.817" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Questions about best practice questions at issue on the main site with people asking about them or why they don't work. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19759" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7096" RevisionGUID="1a5e6daf-a014-4b8d-84c6-8d116752913a" CreationDate="2015-01-05T21:41:45.203" UserId="35693" Text="Taking off on Thomas Owens' excellent answer, it seems to me that a way to ask a &quot;best practices&quot; question is to ask a &quot;better practices&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, I have this problem (in this environment). Here's what I've done to (try to) solve it, and here's why my solution, X, isn't satisfactory. I've also looked up the answers to questions A, B, and C on the site, and those answers don't quite work for me either. What would give me better results than my solution X, and the answers to questions A, B, and C?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone can come up with something better than the &quot;above,&quot; that would be a start on the road to a solution. And hopefully there would be several answers, all trying to &quot;top,&quot; the others, with the &quot;best&quot; (most upvoted and/or accepted) solution being the &quot;best practice.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I see it, we're not out to find &quot;best practices&quot; in isolation, but rather, &quot;best practices&quot; for the users of this site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19760" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7097" RevisionGUID="4cd0d61e-edc5-44b6-bd7d-7dc98e3ace8c" CreationDate="2015-01-06T01:20:34.543" UserId="51654" Text="I disagree quite a bit with Thomas Owen's answer. The last thing I want to do is answer the same question a dozen times because there are dozens of variants of scenarios where the best practice applies. And as someone searching for answers, I don't particularly _care_ about someone else's specific situation **because** I've been coding long enough to _know_ that I am not a special snowflake. My situation isn't that special situation where God objects are okay. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of our question askers and answer searchers do not know that though. And we would be doing them a disservice if we _didn't_ dissuade that thinking. Frankly, I would much rather have a horde of zombies clamoring towards something that will work in 80% of cases than a horde of zombies striking out randomly. The people who will know to effectively adapt other people's situations to their own are _already_ the people who can take general best practices and adapt them to their situation...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, the key problem is that there needs to be a single answer. Too many things _don't_ have best practices that apply widely to all languages/problems/environments, or don't have programmer consensus. These should probably still be closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are plenty of things with clear cut best practices that we still close, that I feel are on-topic and helpful." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19761" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7098" RevisionGUID="9c06b0d6-ec4b-470f-8929-650ca655c524" CreationDate="2015-01-06T03:52:58.023" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="A question without a problem to solve, and just casting the net for &quot;best practices&quot; doesn't have a problem to solve.  That's rather tautologic, but that is the problem with the questions without a problem.  You can't ever solve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The actual best practices (and not things that one mindlessly copies and pastes into documents for management, or tosses out in a meeting as an appeal to authority) are ones that become evident when solving a problem. Without that &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, the answers themselves to a question that has a problem *will be the best practices to solve that problem*.  So ask the question about the problem and you will get the best practices.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Blindly following best practices is, at best, an anti-pattern (for those who like to go with patterns and anti-patterns).  As with how patterns are meant to be used, you use them when you encounter a problem - you don't just take half a dozen patterns and toss them together to get an application.  Likewise, with best practices you should use them when you need to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for &quot;what are the best practices for writing an Android application&quot; is very much the same question as &quot;what are the patterns you use for writing an Android application&quot; - both are too broad and not useful to other users (there are dozens of patterns and best practices - and dozens of possible answers)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19762" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7098" RevisionGUID="0f40ffa2-230d-4620-bd93-9147c310b816" CreationDate="2015-01-06T10:15:34.067" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="A question without a problem to solve, and just casting the net for &quot;best practices&quot; doesn't have a problem to solve.  That's rather tautologic, but that is the problem with the questions without a problem.  You can't ever solve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The actual best practices (and not things that one mindlessly copies and pastes into documents for management, or tosses out in a meeting as an appeal to authority) are ones that become evident when solving a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, the answers themselves to a question that has a problem *will be the best practices to solve that problem*.  So ask the question about the problem and you will get the best practices.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Blindly following best practices is, at best, an anti-pattern (for those who like to go with patterns and anti-patterns).  As with how patterns are meant to be used, you use them when you encounter a problem - you don't just take half a dozen patterns and toss them together to get an application.  Likewise, with best practices you should use them when you need to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for &quot;what are the best practices for writing an Android application&quot; is very much the same question as &quot;what are the patterns you use for writing an Android application&quot; - both are too broad and not useful to other users (there are dozens of patterns and best practices - and dozens of possible answers)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19763" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7080" RevisionGUID="496e8fb1-e6e6-4427-a37d-8c5d351920a2" CreationDate="2015-01-07T12:10:31.923" UserId="5099" Comment="changed link to refer to Help/On Topic" Text="[![Software Recommendations Stack Exchange - finding the tool for you][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LrKpR.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19764" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="7099" RevisionGUID="f9144f6d-b661-4dee-86d3-abb6191fe78b" CreationDate="2015-01-07T15:34:39.307" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/269326/clear-and-accurate-s-e-website-navigation-sub-group-descriptions" />
  <row Id="19765" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7099" RevisionGUID="f85f85b8-4bae-4d33-bb52-064865381b72" CreationDate="2015-01-07T15:33:24.510" UserId="163657" Text="I selected &quot;Not pr0gromming related&quot; etc from Area 51 because I wanted to avoid asking a question that would be choked by aggrandizing badge polishing S.E. police and ended up here... &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and webpage heading of just &quot;programmers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you see anything about &quot;Not programming related&quot; in either the url or the webpage title?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This merely lays the contributor (UGC) open for more discussion closings.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;your very website design is typical geek..or greek whichever....." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19766" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7099" RevisionGUID="f85f85b8-4bae-4d33-bb52-064865381b72" CreationDate="2015-01-07T15:33:24.510" UserId="163657" Text="clear and accurate S.E. website navigation sub group descriptions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19767" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7099" RevisionGUID="f85f85b8-4bae-4d33-bb52-064865381b72" CreationDate="2015-01-07T15:33:24.510" UserId="163657" Text="|discussion|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19768" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7099" RevisionGUID="c290ae3f-88b4-462d-a53e-43c35f0a06f8" CreationDate="2015-01-07T15:35:42.380" UserId="4" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[3412],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="19769" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6763" RevisionGUID="354fae58-c6e4-4a51-931c-7dfdb0ef4d1e" CreationDate="2015-01-07T17:32:14.483" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|on-topic-definition|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19770" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6766" RevisionGUID="2fc9724a-691b-439e-9c69-39693d2753e1" CreationDate="2015-01-07T17:35:24.023" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 557 characters in body" Text="It really depends on what audience you want to reach and what you want to talk about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Options range from [Stack Exchange's chat][1] (or [Stack Overflow's chat][2]), which is a real time web based chat that has history to it and tight integration with Stack Exchange as a whole to going to other places that are more designed for discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Places like Reddit's [/r/programming][3] and the various related ones that cater to a more specific focus, [Hacker News][4], and [Slashdot][5] are three that come to mind most easily specifically for computer and technology related content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Quora][6] is a site that seems to specialize in sharing of anecdotes and advice on all subjects (though I'm not active enough there to be able to say if that is a correct description).  [Slant][7] also bears mentioning in that it is specifically designed for the &quot;what is the best XYZ&quot; type questions, though it is also a site that maintains a laser focus on what it does well and comments or discussions really aren't part of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are countless forums, forum-likes, and chat options.  Finding the one that fits your particular desires for the community and focus may take some time, and compromises to what you want desire may be needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://slashdot.org/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://quora.com&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://www.slant.co" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19771" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7076" RevisionGUID="4e35b373-6beb-47d4-bdbe-b75c86c12673" CreationDate="2015-01-07T20:00:06.220" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7070/community-promotion-ads-2015/7080#comment21274_7080" Text="[![Code Review Stack Exchange. Tough questions, smart answers.][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LZUho.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19772" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7098" RevisionGUID="f803eeb9-a039-487b-832b-d021003c7f09" CreationDate="2015-01-08T01:34:38.490" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 2051 characters in body" Text="## On questions with problems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question without a problem to solve, and just casting the net for &quot;best practices&quot; doesn't have a problem to solve.  That's rather tautologic, but that is the problem with the questions without a problem.  You can't ever solve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The actual best practices (and not things that one mindlessly copies and pastes into documents for management, or tosses out in a meeting as an appeal to authority) are ones that become evident when solving a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, the answers themselves to a question that has a problem *will be the best practices to solve that problem*.  So ask the question about the problem and you will get the best practices.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Blindly following best practices is, at best, an anti-pattern (for those who like to go with patterns and anti-patterns).  As with how patterns are meant to be used, you use them when you encounter a problem - you don't just take half a dozen patterns and toss them together to get an application.  Likewise, with best practices you should use them when you need to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for &quot;what are the best practices for writing an Android application&quot; is very much the same question as &quot;what are the patterns you use for writing an Android application&quot; - both are too broad and not useful to other users (there are dozens of patterns and best practices - and dozens of possible answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## On problems with answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other half of the problem with asking for best practices is the quality of the answers. This isn't so much a problem with the *question* other than it encourages such answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When someone asks for best practices, *everyone* chimes in.  This is often exacerbated by having the question show up in the hot questions which magnifies the problem with answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the best practice for XYZ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which leads us to get answers like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; At my shop, we avoid doing X.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; At my shop, we avoid doing Y.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; At my shop, we find that X and Y are both essential to the proper workings.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Z is always problematic when you are working with ABC.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The very nature of those answers is forum like and brings with it the problems of forums.  You get lots of answers that don't have a single answer. It is too broad and laden with opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I admit the straw man above and its quite possible that the answers will be better than the ones above. But they won't be as good as actually presenting the problem to be solved and having *those* answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A takeaway of [Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/) is that while poor questions can produce great answers we really need to try to have questions that lead to great answers from the start.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; That’s why we’re determined to keep question quality high, even at the cost of refusing a little sand. It’s true that you can’t have Q&amp;A without questions, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&amp;A site is to flood it with low-quality questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you get dozens of poor quality answers in a question (such that asking for best practices can easily produce) the quality of the site suffers.  The signal to noise ratio goes down.  And whats worse, the way to fix this is easy - don't ask about best practices in the abstract - ask about the problem you are encountering." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19773" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7100" RevisionGUID="b8307cbd-cd33-4d6f-9576-9d0b2c6b6fe4" CreationDate="2015-01-08T12:02:18.487" UserId="106929" Text="...so it seems to me that frozen would be a better word. I stumbled upon the question&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/61248/106929 and wanted to ask for clarification at one of the answers with a comment. But since comments are disabled on blocked questions this is not possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder if/how something can be done to a locked question, I already saw that [locking seems to be considered as a last option](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/285/106929), but how do this relate to unlocking it again?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19774" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7100" RevisionGUID="b8307cbd-cd33-4d6f-9576-9d0b2c6b6fe4" CreationDate="2015-01-08T12:02:18.487" UserId="106929" Text="Is locking the end station for a question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19775" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7100" RevisionGUID="b8307cbd-cd33-4d6f-9576-9d0b2c6b6fe4" CreationDate="2015-01-08T12:02:18.487" UserId="106929" Text="|discussion|locking|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19776" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7101" RevisionGUID="b14578fb-18e2-4dc4-820f-ec1a46ccebe0" CreationDate="2015-01-08T12:14:37.047" UserId="4" Text="Yes, locking is a final state for a question. The purpose of a lock is to clearly identify that a question is not a good fit for the site, but it really shouldn't be deleted because it's important in some way. It may be because it has a high number of views (indicating that it may be referenced in other questions or on other sites, meaning that deleting it would cause people without sufficient reputation to receive an error message). It may be because it has valuable information (although the question isn't a good fit, there are valuable answers that may be helpful, but we also want to discourage others from asking similar questions in the future). Or it may be because the scope of the site has changed over time and we don't want to remove contributions that, at one time, were acceptable and of a high quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It can be undone by a moderator, if there's a good reason to. In the case of the question that you linked to, I don't think it should be unlocked. Career and education advice are explicitly off-topic. However, it has had over 30000 views over 3 years and two high quality answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that even if commenting was allowed on locked posts, we still wouldn't want editing to happen. We don't want to bump these old, locked posts to the homepage since they aren't good questions. Locking just enables them to be found via searching (including Google) and external sites to prevent knowledge from being lost.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is one exception to locking as described above, and that's the &quot;wiki answer&quot; lock. It reduces a question to one community wiki answer that has a low reputation barrier to edit and prevents multiple answers from being posted. I believe commenting is still allowed on these posts, but I'd have to find one to check." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19777" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7101" RevisionGUID="32cf4e13-667c-4b4a-95f6-9788a3c8108f" CreationDate="2015-01-08T15:27:09.460" UserId="4" Comment="added 231 characters in body" Text="Yes, locking is a final state for a question. The purpose of a lock is to clearly identify that a question is not a good fit for the site, but it really shouldn't be deleted because it's important in some way. It may be because it has a high number of views (indicating that it may be referenced in other questions or on other sites, meaning that deleting it would cause people without sufficient reputation to receive an error message). It may be because it has valuable information (although the question isn't a good fit, there are valuable answers that may be helpful, but we also want to discourage others from asking similar questions in the future). Or it may be because the scope of the site has changed over time and we don't want to remove contributions that, at one time, were acceptable and of a high quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It can be undone by a moderator, if there's a good reason to. If you think that there is a locked question and it shouldn't be locked, feel free to start a question here on Meta, indicating the question and reasons for unlocking it. The community can decide and a moderator can undo the lock. In the case of the question that you linked to, I don't think it should be unlocked. Career and education advice are explicitly off-topic. However, it has had over 30000 views over 3 years and two high quality answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that even if commenting was allowed on locked posts, we still wouldn't want editing to happen. We don't want to bump these old, locked posts to the homepage since they aren't good questions. Locking just enables them to be found via searching (including Google) and external sites to prevent knowledge from being lost.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is one exception to locking as described above, and that's the &quot;wiki answer&quot; lock. It reduces a question to one community wiki answer that has a low reputation barrier to edit and prevents multiple answers from being posted. I believe commenting is still allowed on these posts, but I'd have to find one to check." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19778" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="7102" RevisionGUID="acf5dcfb-6547-40a5-a283-1e6bcbf4334f" CreationDate="2015-01-08T20:43:27.923" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/269491/where-can-i-go-to-ask-programming-professionals-about-career-advice" />
  <row Id="19779" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7102" RevisionGUID="bfa9c728-41d0-4d4b-bb04-ad50940ad251" CreationDate="2015-01-08T20:37:57.750" UserId="122282" Text="I am a junior Java developer and would like to receive some career advice from programming professionals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers Stack Exchange doesn't allow personal career advice, but where should I go to ask about it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19780" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7102" RevisionGUID="bfa9c728-41d0-4d4b-bb04-ad50940ad251" CreationDate="2015-01-08T20:37:57.750" UserId="122282" Text="Where can I go to ask programming professionals about career advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19781" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7102" RevisionGUID="bfa9c728-41d0-4d4b-bb04-ad50940ad251" CreationDate="2015-01-08T20:37:57.750" UserId="122282" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19782" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7102" RevisionGUID="6f538afe-11e6-48fd-b0c8-fa080227069b" CreationDate="2015-01-08T20:59:41.877" UserId="4" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6763,6952],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="19786" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7091" RevisionGUID="45acdb00-17d4-4ac3-97bb-71dacc4e2190" CreationDate="2015-01-09T16:51:36.043" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/553594950404034561" />
  <row Id="19787" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2380" RevisionGUID="f04765e6-d833-44b0-b54e-d0a5c4565539" CreationDate="2015-01-09T18:04:54.717" UserId="25476" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6582],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25476,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;maple_shaft&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="19789" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7104" RevisionGUID="5292ed7c-9a95-46cb-81bd-f0a0a47bf33a" CreationDate="2015-01-11T10:54:13.527" UserId="154627" Text="I have been trying out &quot;programmers&quot; for quite a couple of weeks now and I feel disappointed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions I have been asking are for the most part left completely unanswered or get a answered with an answer that I do not consider to be very good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There the only exception to this is [this question][1] where I got very a few very constructive answers and well thought out answers (but that is just an exception).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look at these questions. I have put alot of effort in them and I think that they are all very decent but all of them have yet to recive the answers that I want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [int * vs int [N] vs int (*)[N] in function parameters][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [using macros to implement a generic vector][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [using macros to protect assignment to global variables][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only answer I got on [int * vs int [N] vs int (*)[N]][2] felt wrong (everybody makes mistakes) so I made [this question][5] on Stackoverflow to make sure. That question on Stackoverflow started reciving constructive comments and good answers immediately after I posted it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that this is a problem. My time spent here is not rewarding. I think that I would have gotten alot better and more constructive design and readability answers on all my questions if I had put them on Stackoverflow instead. I get so much more attention there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/269502/how-to-structure-a-loop-that-repeats-until-success-and-handles-failures&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/269648/int-vs-int-n-vs-int-n-in-functions-parameters-which-one-do-you-think-i&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/267657/using-macros-to-implement-a-generic-vector-dynamic-array-in-c-is-this-a-good&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/268194/using-macros-to-protect-assignment-to-global-variables&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27878583/does-int-decay-into-int-in-a-function-parameter" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19790" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7104" RevisionGUID="5292ed7c-9a95-46cb-81bd-f0a0a47bf33a" CreationDate="2015-01-11T10:54:13.527" UserId="154627" Text="I get more and better attention on Stackoverflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19791" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7104" RevisionGUID="5292ed7c-9a95-46cb-81bd-f0a0a47bf33a" CreationDate="2015-01-11T10:54:13.527" UserId="154627" Text="|discussion|questions|stackoverflow|programmers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19792" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7105" RevisionGUID="36184945-18ba-447c-b66c-cea9ac22bcc1" CreationDate="2015-01-11T14:05:51.247" UserId="161917" Text="I'm specifically referring to https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/269596/is-obtrusive-javascript-required-to-support-a-feature-of-angular-js, in which a decent conceptual question about &quot;obtrusive&quot; Javascript was asked, only for the OP himself to discover an answer already on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since we can't close it as a duplicate of an SO question, what should we do with it? Ideally I'd like a solution that doesn't involve that user losing reputation, since I don't think he did anything particularly wrong, but the question probably shouldn't be left open either." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19793" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7105" RevisionGUID="36184945-18ba-447c-b66c-cea9ac22bcc1" CreationDate="2015-01-11T14:05:51.247" UserId="161917" Text="What do we do with questions that have a duplicate on another SE site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19794" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7105" RevisionGUID="36184945-18ba-447c-b66c-cea9ac22bcc1" CreationDate="2015-01-11T14:05:51.247" UserId="161917" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19795" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7106" RevisionGUID="2241eef1-cd3f-4c3a-a299-47f72430bc40" CreationDate="2015-01-11T15:09:46.330" UserId="161917" Text="It looks like the questions you've asked lie in the overlap between SO and PSE. Both sites could answer them, but they would give different kinds of answers, and since SO is bigger its answers will show up faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, the three questions you've linked are all slightly more appropriate for SO, because they cannot be generalized to apply to languages other than C, and the answers depend more on the technical, language-lawyer consequences of a specific piece of code than any software design principles. You did successfully ask the &quot;PSE parts&quot; of those questions on PSE, and I think all three have decent answers (at least now they do), but their &quot;SO parts&quot; happen to be a lot more interesting. So it might be fair to say that SO is a more appropriate site for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site tends to do much better with higher-level, language-agnostic issues like design patterns, architecture, API design, project management and so on." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19796" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7107" RevisionGUID="321793be-79a6-437f-b98c-4fe68bd8df00" CreationDate="2015-01-11T16:04:27.380" UserId="64132" Text="I usually vote to close with a custom close reason of &quot;duplicate on (site)&quot; &amp; provide a link.  As you noted, it's not a formal duplicate, but it's as close as we can get." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19797" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7108" RevisionGUID="624b275f-7e26-40fb-8870-29e91347066d" CreationDate="2015-01-11T17:14:20.537" UserId="5099" Text="In addition to the excellent answer by @lxrec, Programmers is so much smaller than StackOverflow that you just have to have a bit more patience.  &#xD;&#xA;It is not uncommon to only receive answers after several hours or even a day, where questions on SO get answers within seconds." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19798" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="b62ba92b-721e-403f-9254-320ea19ac090" CreationDate="2015-01-11T18:09:15.083" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|close-reasons|down-votes|meta-faq|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="19801" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6485" RevisionGUID="0846b62b-a560-4fe0-ae64-7edd9f9036bc" CreationDate="2015-01-11T18:09:27.943" UserId="47" />
  <row Id="19802" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6486" RevisionGUID="be3742c4-23c5-4f1f-9de1-2f6d8545fe82" CreationDate="2015-01-11T18:09:27.943" UserId="47" />
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  <row Id="19804" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6488" RevisionGUID="57e291a1-99ea-47fd-ad81-9243dd5c5dd9" CreationDate="2015-01-11T18:09:27.943" UserId="47" />
  <row Id="19805" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6489" RevisionGUID="217919d6-b73f-49b4-acf0-2ca535fce618" CreationDate="2015-01-11T18:09:27.943" UserId="47" />
  <row Id="19806" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="e5d21913-0a1b-4090-8b6f-e26ef061d77c" CreationDate="2015-01-11T18:09:27.943" UserId="47" />
  <row Id="19807" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6491" RevisionGUID="eeca0740-c006-413c-81bb-0eed2a6b83d9" CreationDate="2015-01-11T18:09:27.943" UserId="47" />
  <row Id="19808" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="6492" RevisionGUID="144ba287-07e7-43bb-9405-ff413798a82e" CreationDate="2015-01-11T18:09:27.943" UserId="47" />
  <row Id="19809" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7109" RevisionGUID="b9429f27-9758-44d5-ad77-bafee131eead" CreationDate="2015-01-11T19:46:20.590" UserId="154627" Text="After recieving good answers to [this question][0] I have realised that some of my questions here are too language-specific to recieve the attention I want on here on &quot;programmers&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I decided to copy them to Stackoverflow (with some rewriting to fit that site better).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now when I am starting to recieve the answers I wanted Stackoverflow I think that it is time to delete the questions that are here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [int * vs int [N] vs int (*)[N] in function parameters][1]&#xD;&#xA; - [using macros to implement a generic vector][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [using macros to protect assignment to global variables][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [0]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7104/i-get-more-and-better-attention-on-stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/269648/int-vs-int-n-vs-int-n-in-functions-parameters-which-one-do-you-think-i&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/267657/using-macros-to-implement-a-generic-vector-dynamic-array-in-c-is-this-a-good&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/268194/using-macros-to-protect-assignment-to-global-variables&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27878583/does-int-decay-into-int-in-a-function-parameter&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just wanted to let you know before I do it. To me it seems like the right thing to do but I want to know what you think first." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19810" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7109" RevisionGUID="b9429f27-9758-44d5-ad77-bafee131eead" CreationDate="2015-01-11T19:46:20.590" UserId="154627" Text="I have copied these question to Stackoverflow. Now I want delete the ones here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19811" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7109" RevisionGUID="b9429f27-9758-44d5-ad77-bafee131eead" CreationDate="2015-01-11T19:46:20.590" UserId="154627" Text="|discussion|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19812" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7109" RevisionGUID="2ef630bd-469e-48c2-9e0b-5839a07f09bf" CreationDate="2015-01-11T20:51:10.320" UserId="154627" Comment="I removed one of the questions from the list." Text="After recieving good answers to [this question][0] I have realised that some of my questions here are too language-specific to recieve the attention I want on here on &quot;programmers&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I decided to copy them to Stackoverflow (with some rewriting to fit that site better).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now when I am starting to recieve the answers I wanted Stackoverflow I think that it is time to delete the questions that are here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [using macros to implement a generic vector][1]&#xD;&#xA; - [using macros to protect assignment to global variables][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [0]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7104/i-get-more-and-better-attention-on-stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/267657/using-macros-to-implement-a-generic-vector-dynamic-array-in-c-is-this-a-good&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/268194/using-macros-to-protect-assignment-to-global-variables&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just wanted to let you know before I do it. To me it seems like the right thing to do but I want to know what you think first." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19813" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7110" RevisionGUID="edb227ee-5cf0-45dc-acf7-b867a2e681e8" CreationDate="2015-01-11T21:14:26.913" UserId="4" Text="Don't delete the questions. They appear to be on-topic questions that have answers. No need to take them away from others who could be helped by the information. It seems like you're doing the right thing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19819" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6983" RevisionGUID="a1ceca6d-fc57-4e62-b5bd-4581059e62cb" CreationDate="2015-01-12T21:35:59.120" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|tags|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19820" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7112" RevisionGUID="cdf5fec1-c296-4b24-9267-31936a3ebfc9" CreationDate="2015-01-12T21:36:02.323" UserId="63" Text="Nice idea, but that guidance was *waaaay* too long to fit in a pop-up. I trimmed it down a bit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Wait!&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&quot;&gt;Personal advice is off-topic here&lt;/a&gt;. Please ensure that your question…&lt;/p&gt;    &lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;…is &lt;b&gt;specific to &lt;i&gt;programming careers&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;/b&gt; Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/tour&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt; for other career development questions.&lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;…can apply to &lt;b&gt;other programmers&lt;/b&gt; besides yourself. &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&quot;&gt;Avoid asking for open-ended advice&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;br&gt;  &lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488&quot;&gt;Why was my career or education advice question closed or down voted?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Check it out:][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![][2]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;FWIW, I find that meta answer fairly unhelpful in this context, given most folks aren't likely to click through in the first place. So I tried hard to pack some specific advice into the pop-up itself, leaving the meta link as sort of a veiled threat at the end.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask?tags=career-development&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/80bXi.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19821" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7113" RevisionGUID="cd12349e-2b4e-484d-8a60-9f697b6c6da7" CreationDate="2015-01-13T16:30:51.387" UserId="9113" Text="Just because a question contains the words &quot;best practices&quot;, IMHO it is not always the case that it *&quot;refers to the technique that works for most people in most situations&quot;*, as Thomas Owens wrote. One has to read and understand the full text of the question, check if the author makes reasonable restrictions to the scope, and if he has a real-world problem to solve (and if not, the question should be closed, of course). So asking a question like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am in situation X, having problem Y and no clue how I can solve it. What could be the best practice to approach a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;can be fully acceptable. I think what @gnat wrote in a comment above hits the nail on the head - *try to imagine how the question it would look like with &quot;best practice&quot; words removed*. I think that is a good test.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, I think that a too specific restriction of the scope to a personal situation of the author decreases the value of a question as much as a too weak restriction of the scope. For example, by restricting something to a specific programming language when the problem itself is not language specific. Good answers can be applied to a wide range of cases, thus questions which define enough restrictions to be answerable, but not more, can actually encourage such answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my opinion is: it depends, there is no &quot;simple criteria&quot;, taking the time to read and understand what the author asks is the only valid way to make a decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19822" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7113" RevisionGUID="71ebbce4-2d10-4d99-bc4f-ca05d73ff736" CreationDate="2015-01-13T16:36:12.687" UserId="9113" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="Just because a question contains the words &quot;best practices&quot;, IMHO it is not always the case that it *&quot;refers to the technique that works for most people in most situations&quot;*, as Thomas Owens wrote. One has to read and understand the full text of the question, check if the author makes reasonable restrictions to the scope, and if he has a real-world problem to solve (and if not, the question should be closed, of course). So asking a question like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am in situation X, having problem Y and no clue how I can solve it. What could be the best practice to approach a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;can be fully acceptable. I think what @gnat wrote in a comment above hits the nail on the head - *try to imagine how the question would look like with &quot;best practice&quot; words removed*. I think that is a good test.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, I think that a too specific restriction of the scope to a personal situation of the author decreases the value of a question as much as a too weak restriction of the scope. For example, by restricting something to a specific programming language when the problem itself is not language specific. Good answers can be applied to a wide range of cases, thus questions which define enough restrictions to be answerable, but not more, can actually encourage such answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my opinion is: it depends, there is no &quot;simple criteria&quot;, taking the time to read and understand what the author asks is the only valid way to make a decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19823" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7113" RevisionGUID="375254b9-d88b-4652-a580-c3635824a0b9" CreationDate="2015-01-13T16:45:56.230" UserId="9113" Comment="added 47 characters in body" Text="Just because a question contains the words &quot;best practices&quot;, IMHO it is not always the case that it *&quot;refers to the technique that works for most people in most situations&quot;*, as Thomas Owens wrote (nevertheless I think his answer is very good). One has to read and understand the full text of the question, check if the author makes reasonable restrictions to the scope, and if he has a real-world problem to solve (and if not, the question should be closed, of course). So asking a question like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am in situation X, having problem Y and no clue how I can solve it. What could be the best practice to approach a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;can be fully acceptable. I think what @gnat wrote in a comment above hits the nail on the head - *try to imagine how the question would look like with &quot;best practice&quot; words removed*. I think that is a good test.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, I think that a too specific restriction of the scope to a personal situation of the author decreases the value of a question as much as a too weak restriction of the scope. For example, by restricting something to a specific programming language when the problem itself is not language specific. Good answers can be applied to a wide range of cases, thus questions which define enough restrictions to be answerable, but not more, can actually encourage such answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my opinion is: it depends, there is no &quot;simple criteria&quot;, taking the time to read and understand what the author asks is the only valid way to make a decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19824" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7113" RevisionGUID="ab1878dd-3ea0-4e77-a727-530b6d07dcd3" CreationDate="2015-01-14T09:32:33.033" UserId="9113" Comment="added 355 characters in body" Text="Just because a question contains the words &quot;best practices&quot;, IMHO it is not always the case that it *&quot;refers to the technique that works for most people in most situations&quot;*, as Thomas Owens wrote (nevertheless I think his answer is very good). One has to read and understand the full text of the question, check if the author makes reasonable restrictions to the scope, and if he has a real-world problem to solve (and if not, the question should be closed, of course). So asking a question like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am in situation X, having problem Y and no clue how I can solve it. What could be the best practice to approach a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;can be fully acceptable. I think what @gnat wrote in a comment above hits the nail on the head - *try to imagine how the question would look like with &quot;best practice&quot; words removed*. I think that is a good test.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, I think that a too specific restriction of the scope to a personal situation of the author decreases the value of a question as much as a too weak restriction of the scope. For example, by restricting something to a specific programming language when the problem itself is not language specific. Good answers can be applied to a wide range of cases, thus questions which define enough restrictions to be answerable, but not more, can actually encourage such answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;TLDR; it depends, there is no &quot;simple criteria&quot;, taking the time to read and understand what the author asks is the only valid way to make a decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: due to the comments - yes, it is true, &quot;best practice&quot; has become a buzzword, often triggering a &quot;close reflex&quot;. So my suggestion is: when a question passes the test that it still looks good with the &quot;best practice&quot; words removed, those of us who have enough rep to edit the question should consider to rephrase the question slightly, avoiding the buzzword.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19825" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7104" RevisionGUID="bc42c8db-364a-452d-89e3-4f11ec2b77bf" CreationDate="2015-01-14T17:02:52.703" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/555409727354839040" />
  <row Id="19826" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7114" RevisionGUID="54eeed29-e6ab-40a2-a314-65732ebc7243" CreationDate="2015-01-14T23:56:30.587" UserId="153279" Text="I asked [this question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27954297/how-to-write-getitem-cleanly) a few days ago.  Shortly after I placed a bounty on it (due to low attention), it was migrated to Stack Overflow, with no comment or anything (and, weirdly enough, the bounty was refunded despite bounties being &quot;non-refundable under any circumstances,&quot; but I digress).  Without any sort of explanation, I find it difficult to determine why it was inappropriate for Programmers.  It strikes me as more of a design than a coding question, though it does have elements of both.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Presumably, there was a valid reason for the migration.  Under that assumption, what did I do wrong?  Why was Programmers a poor choice of venue for this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19827" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7114" RevisionGUID="54eeed29-e6ab-40a2-a314-65732ebc7243" CreationDate="2015-01-14T23:56:30.587" UserId="153279" Text="Why was my question migrated?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19828" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7114" RevisionGUID="54eeed29-e6ab-40a2-a314-65732ebc7243" CreationDate="2015-01-14T23:56:30.587" UserId="153279" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19834" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7116" RevisionGUID="cf0ffef1-717e-40bf-8ea3-baeab1aac257" CreationDate="2015-01-16T14:22:57.043" UserId="5099" Text="Being the first one to cast a vote to migrate the question, my reasoning for the vote was thus:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- There was no bounty on the question at that time (the history shows that it was removed earlier by a moderator), so that didn't play a role.&#xD;&#xA;- The question looked to me more of an implementation issue (how to best implement this specific behavior) than a design question.&#xD;&#xA;- The question only has language tags. In my experience, questions with only a single tag specifying a language (or, as in this case, multiple tags all specifying the same language) are in the vast majority questions that are better suited for Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19835" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7117" RevisionGUID="61dec506-60fd-49dd-a0e7-a53e9f282227" CreationDate="2015-01-16T20:44:41.033" UserId="104052" Text="I'm looking to come up with a **standard for how to implement a system that will automatically update software**. As such, there is no actual programming per se, but I still want to make sure my standard is robust before moving on to the stage where I build a proof-of-concept prototype.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a good outline of the idea, which is what I would want to be critiqued, but no actual code as of yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Can I ask for a review of my idea for a standard here?** If so, what do I use as tags (I'm thinking [architecture], [design], andor [networking])? If not, where would be the best place to go for this ([I was told that this SE would at least fit better than Code Review](http://meta.codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/4973/can-i-ask-for-feedback-on-an-idea-for-a-standard))?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For reference, the idea which I would be posing is [The BARC on GitHub](https://github.com/BlueHuskyStudios/The-BARC/blob/Refine/Refine.txt)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19836" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7117" RevisionGUID="61dec506-60fd-49dd-a0e7-a53e9f282227" CreationDate="2015-01-16T20:44:41.033" UserId="104052" Text="Can I ask for feedback on an idea for a standard?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19837" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7117" RevisionGUID="61dec506-60fd-49dd-a0e7-a53e9f282227" CreationDate="2015-01-16T20:44:41.033" UserId="104052" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19838" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7118" RevisionGUID="d0670775-be2e-487b-9ad1-e296c083fee4" CreationDate="2015-01-17T00:33:41.620" UserId="13078" Text="Let's say that you have a highly ranked accepted answer.  You notice that, while your answer is still valid, you could further improve the answer with an addendum.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it better to add the addenda by editing the answer, or by commenting on the answer? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Keeping in mind that the content of the original answer will remain untouched and is still valid)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19839" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7118" RevisionGUID="d0670775-be2e-487b-9ad1-e296c083fee4" CreationDate="2015-01-17T00:33:41.620" UserId="13078" Text="Etiquette for improving the quality of your own answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19840" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7118" RevisionGUID="d0670775-be2e-487b-9ad1-e296c083fee4" CreationDate="2015-01-17T00:33:41.620" UserId="13078" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19841" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7119" RevisionGUID="e9ba824d-8dd6-4d6b-b56c-c2eb7099c2a1" CreationDate="2015-01-17T00:36:29.320" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="The preferred and encouraged approach is to edit rather than comment. Comments are generally considered temporary clarifications rather than actual parts of the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember that Stack Exchange's platform logs all edits to a given post so if something was changed, it'd still be visible in the log.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19842" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7118" RevisionGUID="ebbb94fc-df1d-4fc7-ba24-38ce21b487c9" CreationDate="2015-01-17T00:38:10.723" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19843" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7120" RevisionGUID="807d3e27-b871-404d-a00b-5f53e1f06b2c" CreationDate="2015-01-17T10:21:01.263" UserId="44277" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/270135/) was closed as unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were also attempts to delete the accepted answer as &quot;not providing an answer.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is a poor one; it doesn't show any research effort. It seems perfectly *clear*, though. The answer is very succinct, but it does answer the question, apparently to the asker's satisfaction. The close/delete reasons don't really fit in either case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At least one user marked both the question as &quot;unclear&quot; and the answer as &quot;not an answer.&quot; These seem like incompatible views; if you're not clear about the question, how can you be sure about whether an answer to it is any good? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are close/delete reasons meant to be taken literally? Is there a better way to handle closure of a question like this, or should this kind of thing just be downvoted and left open?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the record, I have no problem with the question being closed. I'm just trying to understand how close/delete reasons are used on this site, and how much thought is given to the reason behind the closure." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19844" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7120" RevisionGUID="807d3e27-b871-404d-a00b-5f53e1f06b2c" CreationDate="2015-01-17T10:21:01.263" UserId="44277" Text="Are close/delete reasons meant to be taken literally?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19845" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7120" RevisionGUID="807d3e27-b871-404d-a00b-5f53e1f06b2c" CreationDate="2015-01-17T10:21:01.263" UserId="44277" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19846" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7121" RevisionGUID="306444a2-7340-445c-b3ab-264fab7411df" CreationDate="2015-01-17T16:30:27.697" UserId="47" Text="The close reasons probably shouldn't be taken too literally - often you vote to close with the *closest* reason you can see rather than one that 100% accurate - not least because there are only 5 basic close reasons (duplicate, opinion based, too broad, unclear and off-topic). The last one splits down into further reasons (including migration).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I can see that because the &quot;off-topic&quot; route takes an extra click over the other four people might be tempted to choose one the others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should take closure serious - it indicates that there is something wrong with the question. Take a good look and edit the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On to answers. &quot;Not an answer&quot; means that what has been posted doesn't even attempt to answer the question. It doesn't mean the answer is wrong or incomplete or just a link. All of these are **attempts** to answer the question. So a question can be unclear and an answer &quot;not an answer&quot; is it is certainly possible to **attempt** to answer an unclear question - it's just that you're not going to get very far." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19847" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7122" RevisionGUID="0ca109b3-5756-4830-922e-046282ce01f2" CreationDate="2015-01-17T20:46:07.807" UserId="40631" Text="Yesterday I provided a short answer to a question, and it has been deleted as if it was a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/270394/40631&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think it was a comment, somebody asked what the name of a pattern is and I told them what name I was taught to use for that pattern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure how to rewrite my answer so that it wouldn't be deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19848" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7122" RevisionGUID="0ca109b3-5756-4830-922e-046282ce01f2" CreationDate="2015-01-17T20:46:07.807" UserId="40631" Text="Short answer deleted, not sure why?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19849" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7122" RevisionGUID="0ca109b3-5756-4830-922e-046282ce01f2" CreationDate="2015-01-17T20:46:07.807" UserId="40631" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19850" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7123" RevisionGUID="938d3d8f-eb18-447f-b7c0-95b91d50f02c" CreationDate="2015-01-18T02:01:08.037" UserId="25476" Text="It looks like it was deleted by a moderator because it did not meet the quality standards we have for answers on this site.  Short one sentence answers really fail to capture a full explanation needed, even if the OP is asking a painfully simple question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is a link with some helpful information on how to write better answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19854" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7122" RevisionGUID="b07f192a-a045-4126-b5d0-067d31bbb888" CreationDate="2015-01-20T02:36:37.077" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add relevant tags" Text="|discussion|deleted-answers|specific-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19858" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7126" RevisionGUID="4ee28ecd-771a-4bb7-aa26-754f691f925f" CreationDate="2015-01-20T23:30:58.757" UserId="80416" Text="Surprisingly, there seem to be no posts about this on meta yet. So, if you were active on scientific SE sites you have noticed every single one has a [tag:identification] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On stack-overflow, only specific programming questions are accepted so maybe people could ask here instead." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19859" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7126" RevisionGUID="4ee28ecd-771a-4bb7-aa26-754f691f925f" CreationDate="2015-01-20T23:30:58.757" UserId="80416" Text="Isn't this a good site for &quot;What language is this?&quot; questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19860" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7126" RevisionGUID="4ee28ecd-771a-4bb7-aa26-754f691f925f" CreationDate="2015-01-20T23:30:58.757" UserId="80416" Text="|discussion|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19862" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7127" RevisionGUID="58a723a9-78b9-40f9-bd79-8b745b96438a" CreationDate="2015-01-21T09:11:15.233" UserId="47" Text="No, this isn't a good site for &quot;What language is this?&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions don't help &quot;make the internet&quot; better. They don't help future visitors to the site and they don't really help the asker. For most languages you have lots of clues that tell you what the language is, and if it's really that hard to work out then it must be a really obscure language that very few people use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that other sites have the [tag:identification] tag doesn't mean that we should have one. On a personal level I don't that the other sites should have one either." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19863" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7128" RevisionGUID="01396543-9e98-4e92-a6f3-dc4e5adc318d" CreationDate="2015-01-23T01:37:08.267" UserId="161917" Text="This sort of question is absolutely fine, provided you make it specific enough to be answerable. For example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm thinking of using a RESTful API for a gambling site I'm working&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on. Is this a good idea?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm having trouble deciding between REST and SOAP for a gambling site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm working on. We need to deliver a viable product quickly, so the simplicity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of REST is appealing, but in the long run we would definitely like&#xD;&#xA;&gt; features that are hard to achieve without SOAP and I'm afraid we might&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be shooting ourselves in the foot by jumping on the &quot;quick and dirty&quot; solution now.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How hard is it to migrate to SOAP later? Is this a real problem or am I just being paranoid?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This, on the other hand, is probably answerable by anyone with significant experience working on REST and SOAP web APIs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A design question about the relative pros/cons of specific approaches you're interested in--or one that focuses on a specific problem you're having--is much more likely to be well-received on this site than a simple &quot;here's my design, does it look good?&quot; poll." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19864" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7129" RevisionGUID="3dcce795-6240-4a57-a295-cf45fa977761" CreationDate="2015-01-23T12:53:24.547" UserId="91018" Text="Referring to: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically for duplicates it states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When should I vote to close a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should be closed by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; casting close votes if:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * they are sufficiently similar to existing questions and *would be answered identically to them*. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * they are unclear, too broad, or otherwise problematic to identifying the problem in a way that can be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * properly addressed by answerers they are sufficiently off-topic, as outlined in the help center.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(emphasis mine)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was in a discussion this morning on this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/255148/should-i-throw-guard-exceptions-that-will-be-thrown-by-internal-methods-anyway?noredirect=1#comment552707_255148&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whereby it was marked as a duplicate to a question that was several months newer, I expressed confusion and was directed to this meta post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6160/closing-a-two-year-old-question-as-a-duplicate-of-a-one-year-old-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regardless of whether or not it was a correct move, I believe the information on the help page does not cover this policy and should be updated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current use of *would be* in the help text implies that a question, as it currently stands, has not yet been answered, or is likely to receive newer answers and implies that perhaps this close reason is best suited to new questions. I don't believe that is the case in my situation, and so the help text should be updated to cover closing as duplicate older questions in line with the meta post I linked above to avoid confusion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you agree?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19865" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7129" RevisionGUID="3dcce795-6240-4a57-a295-cf45fa977761" CreationDate="2015-01-23T12:53:24.547" UserId="91018" Text="Update required for the close questions help page?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19866" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7129" RevisionGUID="3dcce795-6240-4a57-a295-cf45fa977761" CreationDate="2015-01-23T12:53:24.547" UserId="91018" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|duplicate-questions|help-center|privileges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19867" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7117" RevisionGUID="cc317c5c-9970-4bfa-986e-a4da15d92439" CreationDate="2015-01-23T13:27:35.273" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6502],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:5099,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Bart van Ingen Schenau&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="19868" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7126" RevisionGUID="00e0f53c-f814-4f63-8769-9f53f71d499a" CreationDate="2015-01-23T13:27:42.983" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[5654],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="19869" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6964" RevisionGUID="e2282509-8c65-4930-b415-b4dec6a50937" CreationDate="2015-01-23T13:27:49.417" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6742],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:5099,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Bart van Ingen Schenau&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="19870" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7122" RevisionGUID="52218f0f-8050-4cf0-9ceb-838b7bc59f99" CreationDate="2015-01-23T13:27:55.700" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[7006],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="19872" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6902" RevisionGUID="44d46e9e-616f-4690-a2c1-b84067fec389" CreationDate="2015-01-23T13:28:10.520" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[5654],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="19873" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7026" RevisionGUID="5fff6f8c-7aa5-4151-bc3c-127a84857b4c" CreationDate="2015-01-23T13:28:16.897" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6742],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:40980,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;MichaelT&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:5099,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Bart van Ingen Schenau&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="19874" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6916" RevisionGUID="8810a22d-296d-41ac-a375-248e66bf2990" CreationDate="2015-01-23T13:28:25.110" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6366],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:5099,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Bart van Ingen Schenau&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:40980,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;MichaelT&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="19875" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6950" RevisionGUID="f60de3f5-2bc6-4cbd-a6cc-fd451161ae59" CreationDate="2015-01-23T13:28:32.153" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6983],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:5099,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Bart van Ingen Schenau&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="19876" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7130" RevisionGUID="cb158504-c3a1-4687-918f-bb76b2f15d00" CreationDate="2015-01-23T14:40:22.453" UserId="156920" Text="At the time I am writing this, 7 out of 15 questions in the first page have negative scores. That's almost a half. Second page has 4 out of 15, and the third page has 6 out of 15. I never counted them on any other stackexchange site but I'm under impression other sites don't have such a big percentage of bad questions. I wonder why. Maybe the purpose of this site is not as clear to a regular user... or maybe other sites just delete bad questions immediately and so they don't look overloaded with them. I have no idea. But it seems to me, when you come to a new site to ask question and see lots and lots of other questions downvoted, it may discourage you a bit, doesn't it. The site may even appear somewhat hostile. I wonder what could be done to fix this. Even if you don't care about the site appearing hostile to new users, there's still a matter of people wasting time writing bad questions and then other people wasting time explaining why these questions are bad. What do you think?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19877" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7130" RevisionGUID="cb158504-c3a1-4687-918f-bb76b2f15d00" CreationDate="2015-01-23T14:40:22.453" UserId="156920" Text="So many bad questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19878" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7130" RevisionGUID="cb158504-c3a1-4687-918f-bb76b2f15d00" CreationDate="2015-01-23T14:40:22.453" UserId="156920" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19879" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7131" RevisionGUID="be7be003-1fa7-4382-8498-c68c32d973af" CreationDate="2015-01-23T14:42:59.197" UserId="4" Text="This has already come up several times before. Here are the related questions that I found quickly:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/784/are-we-closing-too-many-good-questions-now?rq=1 (December 2010)&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed?rq=1 (November 2011)&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers?rq=1 (January 2012)&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4097/why-are-so-many-questions-closed?rq=1 (October 2012 - duplicate of the November 2011 question)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19880" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7132" RevisionGUID="62487fcf-da2c-4370-afd4-f4a07871e50f" CreationDate="2015-01-23T16:52:19.337" UserId="620" Text="----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Suggested change 1&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question has negative total votes (-2 or below) *and* is also being nominated for closing (by 2 or more), any user who is about to begin writing an answer will be given the following popup:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (1) Answers written for a question with negative total votes and being nominated for closing will not give its answerer any *positive* reputation points, even if the answer is upvoted. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (2) If the question is deleted later, your answer will be deleted as well. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (3) If the question later gets a positive total vote, or if the closing nominations are withdrawn, reputations will be awarded for upvotes on your answer.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (4) The question asker is allowed to improve the question, but in this process the question may have been altered significantly such that your answer might become irrelevant.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;kbd&gt;I understand&lt;/kbd&gt; the bloody consequences&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;kbd&gt;Nevermind&lt;/kbd&gt; I don't want to waste time on this dude&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In some sense, this tries to discourage other users from writing an answer on a soon-to-be-deleted question. If the answerer still chooses to, it is on the answerer's own volition.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Suggested change 2&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to make it really really easy to link to Wikipedia articles so that question askers who is simply knowledge-deficient can spend some time reading before they proceed to ask the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19881" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7132" RevisionGUID="8c92b1cc-1d93-41b2-afdd-f9489f119168" CreationDate="2015-01-23T17:02:40.900" UserId="620" Comment="added 504 characters in body" Text="----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Suggested change 1&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question has negative total votes (-2 or below) *and* is also being nominated for closing (by 2 or more), any user who is about to begin writing an answer will be given the following popup:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (1) Answers written for a question with negative total votes and being nominated for closing will not give its answerer any *positive* reputation points, even if the answer is upvoted. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (2) If the question is deleted later, your answer will be deleted as well. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (3) If the question later gets a positive total vote, or if the closing nominations are withdrawn, reputations will be awarded for upvotes on your answer.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (4) The question asker is allowed to improve the question, but in this process the question may have been altered significantly such that your answer might become irrelevant.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;kbd&gt;I understand&lt;/kbd&gt; the bloody consequences&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;kbd&gt;Nevermind&lt;/kbd&gt; I don't want to waste time on this dude&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In some sense, this tries to discourage other users from writing an answer on a soon-to-be-deleted question. If the answerer still chooses to, it is on the answerer's own volition.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Suggested change 2&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to make it really really easy to link to Wikipedia articles so that question askers who is simply knowledge-deficient can spend some time reading before they proceed to ask the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Suggested change 3&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks to @gnat's link, and my reflection.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Delete the question right away, but forward the original URL into a private chatroom (or even an `iframe` that pretends to be embedded inside the familiar &quot;main site look-and-feel&quot;), which can only be seen by the asker, the commenters, and the authors of the now-deleted answers. All others should see the 404.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This serves to reduce the cognitive load and repellant factor of having to switch the mode to &quot;a different site&quot; that is the &quot;chatroom&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19882" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7076" RevisionGUID="081f8c68-1039-4b97-91a0-16ac43352341" CreationDate="2015-01-23T23:08:54.007" UserId="5761" Comment="use the canonical URL" Text="[![Code Review Stack Exchange. Tough questions, smart answers.][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LZUho.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19883" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7133" RevisionGUID="b8055ce8-042f-4660-8687-af939d32ca99" CreationDate="2015-01-25T03:34:51.187" UserId="26570" Text="I am a Thai programmer and would like to find a way to work abroad in order to advance my knowledge and software development career to the next level. can i ask it here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19884" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7133" RevisionGUID="b8055ce8-042f-4660-8687-af939d32ca99" CreationDate="2015-01-25T03:34:51.187" UserId="26570" Text="Can i ask the question regarding job opportunity in programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19885" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7133" RevisionGUID="b8055ce8-042f-4660-8687-af939d32ca99" CreationDate="2015-01-25T03:34:51.187" UserId="26570" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19886" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7134" RevisionGUID="2be03cd5-f4a7-4c52-8e64-c9f10288e8ce" CreationDate="2015-01-25T03:38:03.867" UserId="4" Text="Career advice is off-topic, as mentioned in the Help Center. It's also one of the off-topic close reasons. Such questions are too unique to your particular situation to be useful to the broader audience of software development professionals." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19887" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7135" RevisionGUID="4006fe2b-5144-4e77-b782-b3d07072ed8f" CreationDate="2015-01-25T14:59:02.420" UserId="161917" Text="I've only been an active SE user for a couple of weeks, and since PSE is my favorite one I've been mulling this question over pretty much the entire time (not to mention reading far too many meta posts). Some days it feels like we're closing too aggressively. Some days it feels like you need a bachelor's in Q&amp;A philosophy to tell what actually is on-topic for SO vs PSE vs all the other SEs. Some days it feels like the people writing questions can't construct a coherent sentence, much less an answerable question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on my experience thus far, it looks like the truth is probably the latter: **A lot of people are asking a lot of questions which are inherently bad, and they would be just as bad no matter what our scope or name was.** There's even [an old meta answer on this topic that reaches pretty much the same conclusion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6993/161917).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By that I mean questions which are too vague, broad, or unclear, typically because they don't have anywhere near enough detail for us to figure out what question is actually being asked (often the asker himself doesn't appear to understand it). When it comes to technical subjects like programming, **the vast majority of newcomers do not understand that it is impossible to answer a question that hasn't been asked properly.** Until they gain the experience to understand that, there's simply no way to respond that doesn't run some risk of them perceiving us as lazy, unhelpful, rude or elitist (though we can certainly lower that risk by being polite) rather than figuring out what they did wrong. This is just as true here as it is on SO and on all the other SEs about semi-accessible-but-still-highly-technical subjects (like security.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't think there's anything we could do with PSE's question-asking UI to communicate this fundamental flaw in a newbie's conception of technical knowledge. PSE gets a bit more of it than most because people see it as SO with fewer restrictions, but we're not really that unique.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;So what *can* we do? Newbies are going to ask these questions no matter what, so in my opinion the best we can hope to do is improve our response to them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Try to emphasize that subjective questions still have to be *precise, specific and coherent enough to be answerable*. This is the number one thing newbies are not getting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Avoid emphasizing &quot;ivory tower&quot; close reasons like whether the question is &quot;useful to other programmers&quot;. Newbies don't care about that. I don't care about that. I care about whether or not the question can be answered. If the question is &quot;not useful&quot;, most of the time it's simply too broad/vague/unclear (or a code dump), so just say that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) When a question is just plain bad, so that it has no hope of being answerable on any SE site, we need to close it quickly. Looking at downvoted questions the front page right now, I see one that got put on hold, and several others that probably should have been put on hold or closed several hours ago." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19888" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7136" RevisionGUID="73984a02-44f7-4276-942a-3c05a8375c1f" CreationDate="2015-01-25T17:31:02.073" UserId="165638" Text="This was put on hold, was wondering if anyone had a suggested edit or SE that you make this work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been doing web based coding for a little over 4 years. I have reached a point where I'm feeling somewhat confident about my PHP and JS abilities. I've got 3 websites up and running and each serving a purpose, even if it's small. I would like to learn to dev ios apps and i'm starting at the beginning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm leaning towards using apples Swift language as it appears they are in it for the long haul. If i were to say learning JS, PHP, SQL and CSS were like learning French, German &amp; Italian, after looking at some intro obj C stuff (&amp; only been a couple days), it feels like I would be trying to learn russian: completely different, very daunting. Also, this swift code seems pretty new, with a pretty small stackoverflow community. A huge reason my websites are functioning is because of the resources on stackoverflow :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should I take a step back and learn something else first? Which direction would that step be? Do I really need to start at learning C? I've Or is this hurdle going to look a lot smaller after a closer look?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19889" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7136" RevisionGUID="73984a02-44f7-4276-942a-3c05a8375c1f" CreationDate="2015-01-25T17:31:02.073" UserId="165638" Text="how can i reword a question to make it appropriate or what SE would it be approriate on?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19890" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7136" RevisionGUID="73984a02-44f7-4276-942a-3c05a8375c1f" CreationDate="2015-01-25T17:31:02.073" UserId="165638" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19895" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7136" RevisionGUID="b2907ef6-ff8f-4d96-ba71-b803ba72f8ce" CreationDate="2015-01-25T20:38:29.360" UserId="31260" Comment="added 6 characters in body" Text="This was put on hold, was wondering if anyone had a suggested edit or SE that you make this work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've been doing web based coding for a little over 4 years. I have reached a point where I'm feeling somewhat confident about my PHP and JS abilities. I've got 3 websites up and running and each serving a purpose, even if it's small. I would like to learn to dev ios apps and i'm starting at the beginning.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I'm leaning towards using apples Swift language as it appears they are in it for the long haul. If i were to say learning JS, PHP, SQL and CSS were like learning French, German &amp; Italian, after looking at some intro obj C stuff (&amp; only been a couple days), it feels like I would be trying to learn russian: completely different, very daunting. Also, this swift code seems pretty new, with a pretty small stackoverflow community. A huge reason my websites are functioning is because of the resources on stackoverflow :-)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Should I take a step back and learn something else first? Which direction would that step be? Do I really need to start at learning C? I've Or is this hurdle going to look a lot smaller after a closer look?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19896" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7138" RevisionGUID="70fedf5b-65ba-4ddf-9868-1439dc628563" CreationDate="2015-01-26T07:06:01.710" UserId="82918" Text="I would like to know, if programmers.se is the right site, to ask about clothing for coders etc. or if there is a better site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19897" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7138" RevisionGUID="70fedf5b-65ba-4ddf-9868-1439dc628563" CreationDate="2015-01-26T07:06:01.710" UserId="82918" Text="Is programmers tthe right site for clothing issues?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19898" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7138" RevisionGUID="70fedf5b-65ba-4ddf-9868-1439dc628563" CreationDate="2015-01-26T07:06:01.710" UserId="82918" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19899" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7135" RevisionGUID="2811af9a-1692-49c9-a21d-92dffdaaeef2" CreationDate="2015-01-26T07:55:58.590" UserId="161917" Comment="added 455 characters in body" Text="I've only been an active SE user for a couple of weeks, and since PSE is my favorite one I've been mulling this question over pretty much the entire time (not to mention reading far too many meta posts). Some days it feels like we're closing too aggressively. Some days it feels like you need a bachelor's in Q&amp;A philosophy to tell what actually is on-topic for SO vs PSE vs all the other SEs. Some days it feels like the people writing questions can't construct a coherent sentence, much less an answerable question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on my experience thus far, it looks like the truth is probably the latter: **A lot of people are asking a lot of questions which are inherently bad, and they would be just as bad no matter what our scope or name was.** There's even [an old meta answer on this topic that reaches pretty much the same conclusion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6993/161917).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By that I mean questions which are too vague, broad, or unclear, typically because they don't have anywhere near enough detail for us to figure out what question is actually being asked (often the asker himself doesn't appear to understand it). When it comes to technical subjects like programming, **the vast majority of newcomers do not understand that it is impossible to answer a question that hasn't been asked properly.** Until they gain the experience to understand that, there's simply no way to respond that doesn't run some risk of them perceiving us as lazy, unhelpful, rude or elitist (though we can certainly lower that risk by being polite) rather than figuring out what they did wrong. This is just as true here as it is on SO and on all the other SEs about semi-accessible-but-still-highly-technical subjects (like security.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't think there's anything we could do with PSE's question-asking UI to communicate this fundamental flaw in a newbie's conception of technical knowledge. PSE gets a bit more of it than most because people see it as SO with fewer restrictions, but we're not really that unique.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;So what *can* we do? Newbies are going to ask these questions no matter what, so in my opinion the best we can hope to do is improve our response to them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Try to emphasize that subjective questions still have to be *precise, specific and coherent enough to be answerable*. This is the number one thing newbies are not getting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Avoid emphasizing &quot;ivory tower&quot; close reasons like whether the question is &quot;useful to other programmers&quot;. Newbies don't care about that. I don't care about that. I care about whether or not the question can be answered. If the question is &quot;not useful&quot;, most of the time it's simply too broad/vague/unclear (or a code dump), so just say that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) When a question is just plain bad, so that it has no hope of being answerable on any SE site, we need to close it quickly. Looking at downvoted questions the front page right now, I see one that got put on hold, and several others that probably should have been put on hold or closed several hours ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Case in point, [look at the top of today's front page](https://i.stack.imgur.com/L3pEd.png). Although I'm not sure how I feel about the intellectual property question, the others are fix my code, how do I learn to X, another fix my code, a question about how C socket functions work that probably could've been answered by googling, and a question about Windows filesystem behavior that's nowhere near detailed enough to be answerable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19900" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7138" RevisionGUID="70a8c984-0b2f-434e-88e2-7268fef5f824" CreationDate="2015-01-26T08:51:38.093" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[5654],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="19901" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7131" RevisionGUID="97a69583-5aad-4000-aa87-34dd7f571523" CreationDate="2015-01-26T10:19:22.780" UserId="4" Comment="added 416 characters in body" Text="This has already come up several times before. Here are the related questions that I found quickly:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/784/are-we-closing-too-many-good-questions-now?rq=1 (December 2010)&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed?rq=1 (November 2011)&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers?rq=1 (January 2012)&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4097/why-are-so-many-questions-closed?rq=1 (October 2012 - duplicate of the November 2011 question)&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here (October 2013)&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts (June 2014)&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6788/a-lot-of-front-page-down-votes (July 2014 - closed as a duplicate of he October 2013 and June 2014 questions)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19902" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7138" RevisionGUID="c5402d4e-e107-4491-8683-76c015db53ac" CreationDate="2015-01-26T13:03:11.963" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="Is programmers the right site for clothing issues?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19903" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7138" RevisionGUID="c5402d4e-e107-4491-8683-76c015db53ac" CreationDate="2015-01-26T13:03:11.963" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="|support|on-topic-definition|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19904" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7138" RevisionGUID="c5402d4e-e107-4491-8683-76c015db53ac" CreationDate="2015-01-26T13:03:11.963" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="I would like to know if programmers.se is the right site to ask about clothing for coders etc. or if there is a better site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19905" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7130" RevisionGUID="c6c8ec4d-9554-460c-ae53-2b90109eda0f" CreationDate="2015-01-26T23:32:10.427" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/559856352957571072" />
  <row Id="19906" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7139" RevisionGUID="b2a07a4b-a30a-4ec8-9758-d8d1657df02a" CreationDate="2015-01-27T02:49:04.130" UserId="164529" Text="I find that there are two types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The questions I know the answers too.&#xD;&#xA; 2. The questions I do not know the answers too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither type is inherently bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that in my mind I am unlikely to respond to anyone's question by explaining to them that &quot;I can't answer the question they asked and so if they make the following changes then it will be one I know the answer too.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19907" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7130" RevisionGUID="b3ba1830-e763-4d57-8250-bddac3031ff9" CreationDate="2015-01-27T09:28:34.507" UserId="156920" Comment="clarification" Text="At the time I am writing this, 7 out of 15 questions in the first page have negative scores. That's almost a half. Second page has 4 out of 15, and the third page has 6 out of 15. I never counted them on any other stackexchange site but I'm under impression other sites don't have such a big percentage of bad questions. I wonder why. Maybe the purpose of this site is not as clear to a regular user... or maybe other sites just delete bad questions immediately and so they don't look overloaded with them. I have no idea. But it seems to me, when you come to a new site to ask question and see lots and lots of other questions downvoted, it may discourage you a bit, doesn't it. The site may even appear somewhat hostile. I wonder what could be done to fix this. Even if you don't care about the site appearing hostile to new users, there's still a matter of people wasting time writing bad questions and then other people wasting time explaining why these questions are bad. What do you think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;in the light of some answers I think I need to add this (wrote in comment as well): my intent was not to debate what questions are good what are bad, or to say that people are downvoting perfectly good questions. Not at all. There are lots of really bad questions and people downvote them as they are supposed to do. I have never found a single &quot;unjustly&quot; downvoted or closed question so far. My intent was to find out how to limit the number of bad questions. Delete them faster? Provide more accessible, clearer FAQ to users? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you to all of you who replied and who are going to reply, despite this question being a duplicate (quintuplicate?) ;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19908" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7140" RevisionGUID="4e36d195-5501-44db-912e-70dcca05fb52" CreationDate="2015-01-27T09:52:40.927" UserId="156920" Text="&gt;What do you think? As a new user your perspective is much more interesting and potentially helpful than mine (and any other veteran user's). Do you find our help articles clear? Do you feel confident asking questions on the site? Do you understand why we close the questions we do? Is there anything about our site and policies you think should be changed? ...etc. If you have the time, please consider telling us how a relatively new user experiences the site (in an answer please, not in comments). - Yannis Rizos&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, I was reading programmers SE for quite a while before registering, and I am user of stackoverflow probably since it launched, so not your run of the mill newbie. But lets answer the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Your help articles, I have never read them. I am going to, but that's besides the point, majority of newbies do not read them, or so I believe. They only help users who already have enough common sense and willingness to try and find out what the site is about before posting their questions&#xD;&#xA;* Do I feel confident asking questions? Yes of course. I only had a need to ask once though, and while researching with Google how to best explain what I needed I accidentally stumbled upon all the answers on my own (happens to me a lot when I use stackexchange). It was a question on Multi-Tenant Data architecture, if you are curious.&#xD;&#xA;* Do I understand why you close the questions? Sure I do. Every single one. Never found a closed question that I'd object to closing, yet. That's not the point.&#xD;&#xA;* Is there anything about the site that I'd like to change... I think I'd like really bad questions to be summarily deleted. That way majority of the questions a new user sees would be *good* questions, questions one can use as a good example, questions that do not discourage a new user to post. Other than that, I don't know, maybe the background of textarea in 'ask question' could be used to present a very short bullet point list of dos and donts? The point is no matter how good your FAQ and HELP is, vast majority of new users won't read them before going straight to 'Ask question' form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally I really like the idea behind this SE, I think it's useful to a beginner and veteran alike, and I strongly support keeping it clear, closing questions that do not belong here. But the amount of closed/downvoted ones are just disturbing, and I think something should be done about it, if possible." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19909" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7139" RevisionGUID="3bbc1be6-2d50-4237-9d63-52175ac4972f" CreationDate="2015-01-27T11:07:47.947" UserId="164529" Comment="The question changed so I have changed the answer." Text="I find that there are two types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The questions I know the answers too.&#xD;&#xA; 2. The questions I do not know the answers too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither type is inherently bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that in my mind, and when I'm wearing my answerer hat, there are definitely questions that, after reading them once I do not wish to ever see them appear in a search result again for multiple reasons.  In addition to the reasons mention above I also do not wish to see questions that I feel have been perfectly well answered by someone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that in mind it would be great to have a flag system against each question (and probably against answers) where I can explicitly exclude or include questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I won't take the time to consider this in detail but am implementation similar to what I am talking about would be the filtering provided by job sites where I get to store sets of criteria and apply those criteria at my leisure.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19910" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7139" RevisionGUID="62fe0477-3a5e-43d8-b7d7-52050463983c" CreationDate="2015-01-27T11:13:58.820" UserId="164529" Comment="The question changed so I have changed the answer." Text="I find that there are two types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The questions I know the answers too.&#xD;&#xA; 2. The questions I do not know the answers too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither type is inherently bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that in my mind, and when I'm wearing my answerer hat, there are definitely questions that, after reading them once I do not wish to ever see them appear in a search result again for multiple reasons.  In addition to the reasons mention above I also do not wish to see questions that I feel have been perfectly well answered by someone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be great to have a flagging system against each question (and probably against answers) where I can explicitly flag it  as &quot;like&quot;, &quot;dislike&quot; or &quot;neutral&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A second great feature would be a &quot;Saved filters&quot; system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding the &quot;Saved filters&quot; system I won't take the time to consider this in detail but am implementation similar to what I am talking about would be the filtering provided by job search sites where I get to store sets of criteria and apply those criteria at my leisure.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19911" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7133" RevisionGUID="1dc37a49-9f30-4a15-a697-354c5475b6f2" CreationDate="2015-01-27T19:26:55.550" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="I am a Thai programmer and would like to find a way to work abroad in order to advance my knowledge and software development career to the next level. Can I ask it here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19912" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7133" RevisionGUID="1dc37a49-9f30-4a15-a697-354c5475b6f2" CreationDate="2015-01-27T19:26:55.550" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="Can I ask the question regarding job opportunity in programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19913" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7133" RevisionGUID="1dc37a49-9f30-4a15-a697-354c5475b6f2" CreationDate="2015-01-27T19:26:55.550" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling cleanup" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|career|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19914" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7141" RevisionGUID="456b9c51-98af-4598-bb97-9cf132439126" CreationDate="2015-01-28T13:09:44.303" UserId="138342" Text="I asked a question basically on packet sniffing (or whatever the term might be).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ** http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271342/how-to-identify-http-requests-made-with-a-java-app **&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of asking on StackOverflow, I thought it might be appropriate for here.  Looking at your guidlines [What topics can I ask here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) this could fall under a number of your software related themes.  And I don't think it falls under the [**What questions shoiuld I avoid asking?**](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) e.g. it is not a rant in disguise.  Certainly, I have separated out the legal issues involved in that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not interested in raising a polemic. Right now it has **-2 votes** but it has **1 favorite**, which expresses ambivalence on part of the community.  How can I improve this question so it relates more to this site, or should it be moved someplace else entirely?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19915" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7141" RevisionGUID="456b9c51-98af-4598-bb97-9cf132439126" CreationDate="2015-01-28T13:09:44.303" UserId="138342" Text="what's wrong with question: on listening to java http requests" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19916" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7141" RevisionGUID="456b9c51-98af-4598-bb97-9cf132439126" CreationDate="2015-01-28T13:09:44.303" UserId="138342" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19917" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7142" RevisionGUID="10bbfd71-e44f-4cbc-8e73-b156fa1ce27b" CreationDate="2015-01-29T03:48:28.773" UserId="113256" Text="The best thing to clarify things for new users would be to **rename this site**.  I am relatively new here and I understand the distinction between Programmers.SE and StackOverflow, but I think many new users don't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this site was named &quot;Software Design&quot; or something similar I think much of the junk on &quot;Programmers&quot; would go away.  The name &quot;Programmers&quot; is just too broad. If you don't read the FAQ (which a high percentage of people will not do, no matter what you wish), you could take &quot;Programmers&quot; to mean anything from working in the software industry (better for Workplace.SE), to how to implement a particular piece of code (better for StackOverflow), to what should I use to program X (better for SoftwareRecommendations.SE).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name of the site should **immediately and intuitively** tell people what the site is there for.  Until we fix this, we will continue to have a grab-bag of off-topic stuff cluttering up this site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19924" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7144" RevisionGUID="597345be-25bc-4c5b-a60b-4f50401b4e47" CreationDate="2015-01-29T10:38:10.207" UserId="23264" Text="Maybe, when a user posts his 1st, 2nd or 3rd post, after hitting 'post' redirect to a page where the user is prompted with the question &quot;Are you sure this is the right place for your question, we are about '......'&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then after 3 times, there is more chance the user knows what this place is about." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19926" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7145" RevisionGUID="aca7ed3d-81a9-40f3-a911-8e357d6b864b" CreationDate="2015-01-30T03:57:29.640" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="An often reoccurring idea that is mentioned is that maybe, if the site name was changed from &quot;Programmers&quot; to something else (SoftwareEngineering?) then *maybe*, people would stop asking off topic, too broad, or down voted questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, people rarely try backing this up with actual questions that are asked and looking at why they are closed or down voted and if their idea actually stands up to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's what you do.  You take the newest 50 questions and list all the ones that are down voted or closed and say why your idea for a name would have prevented the user from asking that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is non-binding and just an attempt to get people to think about what they are proposing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19927" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7145" RevisionGUID="aca7ed3d-81a9-40f3-a911-8e357d6b864b" CreationDate="2015-01-30T03:57:29.640" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="On a name for the site and the questions asked" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19928" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7145" RevisionGUID="aca7ed3d-81a9-40f3-a911-8e357d6b864b" CreationDate="2015-01-30T03:57:29.640" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19929" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7146" RevisionGUID="f8db9cf5-30b5-4da9-89a1-e2d6bccc73d6" CreationDate="2015-01-30T03:57:29.640" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Lets consider &quot;Software Engineering&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271586/what-examples-are-there-for-mean-js and http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271584/what-cms-to-use-for-mean-js - both software/resource recommendation questions. This is a bit of a [herp derp oh look a textbox syndrome](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name/3225#comment7479_2950)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271573/how-to-speed-up-the-following-matlab-code a code review question. It looks just as on topic for a site named Software Engineering as it does for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271545/clarification-on-migrating-to-visual-studio-2010 A tooling question that looks just as on topic for Software Engineering as it does for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271544/is-there-any-harm-in-using-amazon-aws-as-a-development-environment A question that looks just as appropriate for software engineering as programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271541/what-do-you-do-while-youre-waiting-for-your-tests-to-run A polling question that misses the point of Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271537/how-to-choose-a-framework A too broad question that is just as on topic for programmers as it is for software engineering - the issue is the broad scope of it, not the topicality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271535/compare-values-from-two-spinner-and-display-the-result-accordingly-in-android-st Someone asking how to write some code.  This would be asked on Software Engineering too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271532/best-way-to-get-data-from-database-inside-thread-class-in-spring, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271515/can-i-use-qtcreator-with-pyqt5 and http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271531/c-malloc-error are implementation issues that have been migrated to Stack Overflow. This would likely be *more* common with Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271530/univerisity-iphone-assignment-without-an-apple-mac a rant. I suspect it would be asked on Software Engineering too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271510/code-blocks-not-opening-new-console-why-is-this-happening a tooling question with the text &quot;I am unable to start a project in Code Blocks :/ always getting this error&quot; and a screen shot.  This would be asked on Software Engineering too and may also suffer from the above mentioned syndrome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271507/git-hangs-when-pushing a git command line issue that has been migrated. Again, likely still asked on Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271497/difficulty-finding-a-recursive-starting-point-for-an-algorithm is getting too broad votes. This isn't an issue of topicality but rather the scope of the question. It would also be asked on Software Engineering and would be too broad there too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271491/i-want-to-build-a-software-with-c-book-list-is-needed and http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271487/installment-of-python-2-7-9-and-3-4-2-recommended-learning-source are asking for books would also be done on Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271490/how-to-learn-backend-development is closed as career or education advice, and would also be asked on a Software Engineering site (such questions are asked on *many* sites)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271473/best-way-to-implement-in-app-purchases is a resource and code request and would, again, also be asked on a Software Engineering site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271472/php-ajax-error-get-404-when-type-first-char is a code question that we didn't migrate to SO because it was already posted there too.  This would also be asked on a Software Engineering site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For 10ks there are also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271529/does-php-can-solve-this&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/360/for-windows-developers-who-would-like-to-get-into-the-mac-os-x-software-developm &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271560/how-to-solve-the-problem-of-fault-face-detection-in-image-processing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1763/generous-budget-whats-your-ideal-setup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271517/recommend-a-british-based-programmer-small-company-that-also-does-design-a-la&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271480/what-books-helped-you-to-become-a-better-programmer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These were asked and deleted in the past 24h and would likely have been asked no matter what the site name was.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so, there's my list. I contend that all the problematic questions would still be asked on a Software Engineering site and changing the name would be pointless and confusing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19930" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7145" RevisionGUID="1413479d-eeb7-4655-a894-abb9811da5c3" CreationDate="2015-01-30T04:08:27.727" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 259 characters in body" Text="An often reoccurring idea that is mentioned is that maybe, if the site name was changed from &quot;Programmers&quot; to something else (SoftwareEngineering?) then *maybe*, people would stop asking off topic, too broad, or down voted questions here. ([1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7142/40980), [2](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6990/why-cant-we-raise-up-questions-quality/6993#comment20015_6990), [3](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3225/40980), and more).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, people rarely try backing this up with actual questions that are asked and looking at why they are closed or down voted and if their idea actually stands up to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's what you do.  You take the newest 50 questions and list all the ones that are down voted or closed and say why your idea for a name would have prevented the user from asking that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is non-binding and just an attempt to get people to think about what they are proposing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19931" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7135" RevisionGUID="b9c98bfa-6e19-4404-8295-490f08472a00" CreationDate="2015-01-30T19:26:06.797" UserId="161917" Comment="added 253 characters in body" Text="I've only been an active SE user for a couple of weeks, and since PSE is my favorite one I've been mulling this question over pretty much the entire time (not to mention reading far too many meta posts). Some days it feels like we're closing too aggressively. Some days it feels like you need a bachelor's in Q&amp;A philosophy to tell what actually is on-topic for SO vs PSE vs all the other SEs. Some days it feels like the people writing questions can't construct a coherent sentence, much less an answerable question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on my experience thus far, it looks like the truth is probably the latter: **A lot of people are asking a lot of questions which are inherently bad, and they would be just as bad no matter what our scope or name was.** There's even [an old meta answer on this topic that reaches pretty much the same conclusion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6993/161917).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By that I mean questions which are too vague, broad, or unclear, typically because they don't have anywhere near enough detail for us to figure out what question is actually being asked (often the asker himself doesn't appear to understand it). When it comes to technical subjects like programming, **the vast majority of newcomers do not understand that it is impossible to answer a question that hasn't been asked properly.** Until they gain the experience to understand that, there's simply no way to respond that doesn't run some risk of them perceiving us as lazy, unhelpful, rude or elitist (though we can certainly lower that risk by being polite) rather than figuring out what they did wrong. This is just as true here as it is on SO and on all the other SEs about semi-accessible-but-still-highly-technical subjects (like security.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't think there's anything we could do with PSE's question-asking UI to communicate this fundamental flaw in a newbie's conception of technical knowledge. PSE gets a bit more of it than most because people see it as SO with fewer restrictions, but we're not really that unique.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;So what *can* we do? Newbies are going to ask these questions no matter what, so in my opinion the best we can hope to do is improve our response to them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Try to emphasize that subjective questions still have to be *precise, specific and coherent enough to be answerable*. This is the number one thing newbies are not getting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Avoid emphasizing &quot;ivory tower&quot; close reasons like whether the question is &quot;useful to other programmers&quot;. Newbies don't care about that. I don't care about that. I care about whether or not the question can be answered. If the question is &quot;not useful&quot;, most of the time it's simply too broad/vague/unclear (or a code dump), so just say that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) When a question is just plain bad, so that it has no hope of being answerable on any SE site, we need to close it quickly. Looking at downvoted questions the front page right now, I see one that got put on hold, and several others that probably should have been put on hold or closed several hours ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Case in point, [look at the top of today's front page](https://i.stack.imgur.com/L3pEd.png). Although I'm not sure how I feel about the intellectual property question, the others are fix my code, how do I learn to X, another fix my code, a question about how C socket functions work that probably could've been answered by googling, and a question about Windows filesystem behavior that's nowhere near detailed enough to be answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit 2: Case in point again, [MichaelT just did the same thing with a much bigger sample size and reached the same conclusion](https://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7145/on-a-name-for-the-site-and-the-questions-asked)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19932" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7147" RevisionGUID="f4ae2172-67e1-47a1-bf50-62e3af96cf08" CreationDate="2015-01-30T21:32:06.093" UserId="1130" Text="Here's my opinion on the same question list as [MichaelT][1] with a name that strongly emphasizes conceptual software design, such as **&quot;The Whiteboard&quot;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am writing my answers from the point of view of a user whose only knowledge of this site is it is a StackExchange Q&amp;A site titled &quot;Programmers&quot; or &quot;The Whiteboard&quot;, and who doesn't have a strong grasp of what makes a good/bad question for SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271586/what-examples-are-there-for-mean-js&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271584/what-cms-to-use-for-mean-js&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would ask both of a Q&amp;A site titled &quot;Programmers&quot;. I would only ask the second of a Q&amp;A site labeled &quot;The Whiteboard&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271573/how-to-speed-up-the-following-matlab-code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271545/clarification-on-migrating-to-visual-studio-2010&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271544/is-there-any-harm-in-using-amazon-aws-as-a-development-environment&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271541/what-do-you-do-while-youre-waiting-for-your-tests-to-run&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271537/how-to-choose-a-framework&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271535/compare-values-from-two-spinner-and-display-the-result-accordingly-in-android-st&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271532/best-way-to-get-data-from-database-inside-thread-class-in-spring,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271515/can-i-use-qtcreator-with-pyqt5&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271531/c-malloc-error&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271530/univerisity-iphone-assignment-without-an-apple-mac&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271510/code-blocks-not-opening-new-console-why-is-this-happening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271507/git-hangs-when-pushing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271497/difficulty-finding-a-recursive-starting-point-for-an-algorithm&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Maybe.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271491/i-want-to-build-a-software-with-c-book-list-is-needed&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271487/installment-of-python-2-7-9-and-3-4-2-recommended-learning-source&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes to the first, No to the second&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271490/how-to-learn-backend-development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271473/best-way-to-implement-in-app-purchases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [PHP Ajax error, get 404 when type first char][2] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For 10ks there are also:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [Does php can solve this][3] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [For Windows developers who would like to get into the Mac OS X software development industry, what's a great way to get started?][4] &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [how to solve the problem of fault face detection in image processing][5] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [Generous budget: what's your ideal setup?][6] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Maybe&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [recommend a British based programmer / small company that also does design, a language and requirements definition document][7]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [What books helped you to become a better programmer][8] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Total: Programmers 26; Whiteboard: 7-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind, this is *my perspective*. Everyone's different. We can't say definitely &quot;yes this would be asked&quot; or &quot;no this wouldn't be asked&quot;. It depends on the question asker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point is, a user who only knows *&quot;this is a SE Q&amp;A site titled Programmers&quot;* will most likely have a very different assumption than a user who only knows *&quot;this is a SE Q&amp;A site titled The Whiteboard&quot;* (or Software Concepts, or Software Design Theory, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The term &quot;**Programmers**&quot; is an extremely broad term that could bring to mind a person writing code, a person designing software, a person gathering requirements, a person seeking a new job, etc. But in all cases, it brings to mind *a person*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However a term like &quot;**The Whiteboard**&quot; gives a first impression of &quot;conceptual software design&quot;, which is more likely to bring to mind designing software, considering architecture, evaluating approaches, etc. It's much more inline with what this site actually is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7146/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271472/php-ajax-error-get-404-when-type-first-char&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271529/does-php-can-solve-this&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/360/for-windows-developers-who-would-like-to-get-into-the-mac-os-x-software-developm&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271560/how-to-solve-the-problem-of-fault-face-detection-in-image-processing&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1763/generous-budget-whats-your-ideal-setup&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271517/recommend-a-british-based-programmer-small-company-that-also-does-design-a-la&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271480/what-books-helped-you-to-become-a-better-programmer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19933" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7148" RevisionGUID="f9a0ac6b-0b4b-41a4-9648-74aa26442c22" CreationDate="2015-01-30T22:14:51.533" UserId="83055" Text="The only subscription method is via RSS." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19934" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7148" RevisionGUID="f9a0ac6b-0b4b-41a4-9648-74aa26442c22" CreationDate="2015-01-30T22:14:51.533" UserId="83055" Text="Shouldn't the blog offer the possibility of e-mail subscription?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19935" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7148" RevisionGUID="f9a0ac6b-0b4b-41a4-9648-74aa26442c22" CreationDate="2015-01-30T22:14:51.533" UserId="83055" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19936" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7149" RevisionGUID="46d290c2-4653-4360-9a9d-3504eadec5ea" CreationDate="2015-01-31T23:22:44.483" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="When the blog is actually back up and running actively, I will see about that as an option. I plan a great many improvements but at the moment I'm job hunting and I don't have anyone helping me with the blog as my co-runner has become less active due to school." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19937" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7148" RevisionGUID="5b75bb4c-98fa-4cec-989d-ea2aebbd9326" CreationDate="2015-01-31T23:23:34.120" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19939" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7150" RevisionGUID="2ac23ed8-7799-4804-9d96-c4016920b648" CreationDate="2015-02-02T18:12:08.937" UserId="40410" Text="I would like to ask a question about dealing with a unique requirement in an app I'm developing. I want to know what method could solve the problem, given **X**, **Y** and **Z** constraints/requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is asking for the pseudo-code or method of solving the problem on topic?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19940" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7150" RevisionGUID="2ac23ed8-7799-4804-9d96-c4016920b648" CreationDate="2015-02-02T18:12:08.937" UserId="40410" Text="Asking about a method for solving a problem in a larger program - On topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19941" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7150" RevisionGUID="2ac23ed8-7799-4804-9d96-c4016920b648" CreationDate="2015-02-02T18:12:08.937" UserId="40410" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19942" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7151" RevisionGUID="10965500-41fe-4240-a757-45683f33b510" CreationDate="2015-02-02T18:14:44.253" UserId="4" Text="It seems to be on-topic. All of the requirements and design, including the design of data structures and algorithms, is on-topic here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19943" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7145" RevisionGUID="4a2c76c1-e02a-47d5-ac72-eaab1e4db13a" CreationDate="2015-02-02T20:41:22.490" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/562350083346530307" />
  <row Id="19944" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6983" RevisionGUID="6bbedfdd-f04b-4b6e-9c9e-591d39f2f3ac" CreationDate="2015-02-02T21:27:24.557" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6983/improve-question-quality-by-informing-askers-of-expectations-in-some-career-rela/7112?noredirect=1#comment21415_7112" Text="Over here at Programmers, a lot of askers seems to misunderstand site-specific expectations of career related questions, which frequently results in questions closure and deletions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Propose to help question askers and editors by establishing tag-specific popup ([tag-tips](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/tag-tips)) for particularly troublesome career related tags:  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market], [tag:resume], [tag:career-transition], [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;(For the sake of completeness, implementation of above request also included [career-transition and career-_anyotherword_](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6983/improve-question-quality-by-informing-askers-of-expectations-in-some-career-rela/7112?noredirect=1#comment21415_7112) tags.)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggestion for popup content is as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** Career advice is off-topic per the [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  Please note that most career advice questions end up being closed for being too broad or impractical; try to make yours a [good subjective question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they require the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;* Please make sure your question has the proper scope.  It needs to apply to other programmers besides yourself.  &#xD;&#xA;* If your question can also be applied to other job fields, then it does not uniquely apply to software development and is not on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;* _Before_ asking, review this meta guidance: [Why was my question closed or down voted? -&gt; Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488).  Make sure your question avoids the problems listed in the guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope this measure could help question askers significantly. For detailed discussion of this proposal and some alternatives, refer prior question: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6950/current-state-of-the-job-market&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We are getting pummeled with the same off topic questions over and over again... The point here is to put something directly on the posting page... something more prominent than what we have now might make a dent in the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6940/clarification-on-what-is-career-advice  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; tag... seems to be causing more trouble than anything else&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it is also worth mentioning that in the past, career related tags have been through community cleanups ([1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1963/31260 &quot;Posse request: jobs/career/etc. tag cleanup&quot;), [2](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2358/31260 &quot;Offering Solutions to the Career and Jobs Tags&quot;)) meaning that older content in these tags has already been through some extra scrutiny and generally deemed worth keeping." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19945" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7152" RevisionGUID="234e470f-6e38-4cde-ba79-7cc7c2335b2a" CreationDate="2015-02-03T12:02:48.687" UserId="147669" Text="Don't we need a tag about Fault-Tolerance? It is a very important characteristic for applications in production. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19946" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7152" RevisionGUID="234e470f-6e38-4cde-ba79-7cc7c2335b2a" CreationDate="2015-02-03T12:02:48.687" UserId="147669" Text="Tag Suggestion: Fault-Tolerance" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19947" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7152" RevisionGUID="234e470f-6e38-4cde-ba79-7cc7c2335b2a" CreationDate="2015-02-03T12:02:48.687" UserId="147669" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19948" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7153" RevisionGUID="b99e18c8-99dd-4021-b9b0-c36b104410c2" CreationDate="2015-02-03T13:38:21.777" UserId="47" Text="If you have a question (or can find an existing question) about the topic then you are more than welcome to add the tag. Tags cannot exist if there are no questions having that tag - this means we can't create any tags before questions are asked, but can only apply what we think are the relevant tags to existing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You do need 300 rep to be able to create tags - see the [privileges page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges), so in the meantime if you do have a question in mind you can do the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Post a comment on the question suggesting the tag is added.&#xD;&#xA;2. Post a request in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) for someone to add the tag.&#xD;&#xA;3. Post a question here - with a link to the question(s) - suggesting the at the tag is added." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19949" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7154" RevisionGUID="332bf1c7-ea07-4e09-8540-ba14549d30b7" CreationDate="2015-02-03T16:49:27.310" UserId="25476" Text="There are some very creative SE users and contributors to [Code Review](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/) that have used the Stack API to build an open source SE Chat bot that is currently being used for many things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://github.com/Zomis/GithubHookSEChatService&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The top contributors of this project have graciously offered to include the Programmers chat site, [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) to their list of targets for a job that they have already written.  This job will now look on Stack Overflow for comments where users are suggesting a question be a better fit on Programmers.  When it finds such comments the chat bot will link them in our chat room so that we can respond more quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The benefit is clear, this will allow us to jump in and provide better guidance about cross posting before a cross post occurs, especially an off topic cross post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that you like this feature is useful and you like it but would suggest improvements then please do so here.  Conversely if you think this is annoying and stupid or a bad idea then I would like to hear from you too.  We are trying this on a trial basis at this point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh and a very special thank you to user SimonAndréForsberg for making this happen! :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19950" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7154" RevisionGUID="332bf1c7-ea07-4e09-8540-ba14549d30b7" CreationDate="2015-02-03T16:49:27.310" UserId="25476" Text="New SE Chat Bot feature for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on StackOverflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19951" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7154" RevisionGUID="332bf1c7-ea07-4e09-8540-ba14549d30b7" CreationDate="2015-02-03T16:49:27.310" UserId="25476" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19952" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7154" RevisionGUID="4b5eb269-e6d6-402c-bff8-43b2df1d41b3" CreationDate="2015-02-03T18:10:53.287" UserId="25476" Comment="added 103 characters in body" Text="There are some very creative SE users and contributors to [Code Review](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/) that have used the Stack API to build an open source SE Chat bot that is currently being used for many things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://github.com/Zomis/GithubHookSEChatService&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The top contributors of this project have graciously offered to include the Programmers chat site, [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) to their list of targets for a job that they have already written.  This job will now look on Stack Overflow for comments where users are suggesting a question be a better fit on Programmers.  When it finds such comments the chat bot will link them in our chat room so that we can respond more quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The chat bot user will be the following user:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Duga](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/125580)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The benefit is clear, this will allow us to jump in and provide better guidance about cross posting before a cross post occurs, especially an off topic cross post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that you like this feature is useful and you like it but would suggest improvements then please do so here.  Conversely if you think this is annoying and stupid or a bad idea then I would like to hear from you too.  We are trying this on a trial basis at this point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh and a very special thank you to user SimonAndréForsberg for making this happen! :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19953" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7154" RevisionGUID="bc2f1b40-e8d2-4555-825d-9359ecdd93ff" CreationDate="2015-02-03T20:45:44.533" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/562713570069463042" />
  <row Id="19954" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7155" RevisionGUID="23f38f95-5346-485e-ab12-e51bf3c7d581" CreationDate="2015-02-03T22:38:28.567" UserId="112068" Text="Just a thought. It might be more useful to search for terms rather than only the word &quot;programmers&quot;, so that you're more likely to only get comments referencing this site. I don't know how often programmers is mentioned on StackOverflow, but I imagine it can be quite often since it's a site based on programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, searching for the terms:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;for programmers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;on programmers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;to programmers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;at programmers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would pick up comments like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;@KirkStevenson - Quite often, it is much easier to learn about abstract concepts (like logic) by interacting with them. You can just as easily sit down with another human being, but humans tend to be quite subjective in their understanding of the truth. Programming languages offer a (relatively) infallible source of truth with which you can interact. In that vein, and due to it's popularity, python is a perfectly reasonable choice for your instructor. (Sorry for going so far off topic of the forum here). More questions in this vein belong on programmers.stackexchange.com — dwerner 47 secs ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's not about programming. You can try discussing it on programmers.stackexchange.com — Eugene Mayevski 'EldoS Corp 33 secs ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;@EugeneMayevski'EldoSCorp If it's not about programming then why direct someone to Programmers? License questions are allowed at programmers but this question wouldn't fit there either. Programmers is for Q&amp;A, just like the rest of StackExchange. Stack Overflow Chat is the place to go for discussions. — GlenH7 1 min ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Not particularly, no. SO is not really made for getting inspiration for a project, perhaps a re-wording of your question would work on Programmers SE. — Elizion 1 min ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;@Elizion - project suggestions are off topic for Programmers. Stack Overflow Chat is the best place to ask questions like this. — GlenH7 1 min ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Unless you have a specific programming question, conceptual/design questions are better suited for programmers.stackexchange.com — tnw 28 secs ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;@tnw - this wouldn't be a good fit on Programmers either. It will be closed quickly and likely heavily downvoted. — GlenH7 1 min ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;@tnw: This question would never pass muster on Programmers. — Robert Harvey ♦ 1 min ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;This is more about computer science theory and asymptotic analysis. It's more appropriate for Programmers SE. — franklin 18 secs ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and not:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Is there a way I can change the default behaviour? is a terrible idea. Anyone who uses your assembly or new programmers will have no idea why a method that has always worked one way, now works another way. Instead write your own extension method ToScientificFloat() and/or ToScientificInt(). Now when people see this method, they instantly know it's doing something that is not default behavior. — Erik Philips 1 min ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Well, not only will the HTML editors complain, but browsers will render it in unexpected ways. OP wants to know why, and I'm generally happier working with programmers who ask why instead of blindly going &quot;you just can't, ok?&quot; — ceejayoz 1 min ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Thanks for all the input. What I hear J an David saying is &quot;Just be careful and write the code right the first time.&quot; Maybe you guys are better programmers than me, but I don't like walking a tightrope without a net. I make mistakes. And I like to catch them before ship my code. — RobertFrank 2 mins ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Note that it is a good idea to drop the inline from static inline: With static the compiler already knows that the given function is only ever used in the given translation unit and can make a better choice about inlining it than the programmer who adds the inline to the definition. Too much inlining hurts performance as much as too little inlining, and most programmers who add the inline keyword do not know or test whether inlining that function will indeed speed things up. Of course, if your tests(!) show that static inline is faster than static, go ahead and use it :-) — cmaster 1 min ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;This question is not a good format for Stack Overflow. This is intended to be a site for answering specific programming related questions, to help programmers solve their issues. It is not a discussion site to discuss perceived shortcomings with available software. — mason 55 secs ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't expect it to completely keep false positives from showing, I imagine there will be the occasional comment that contains the phrase &quot;for programmers&quot; that isn't talking about this site, but I think it would cut out what looks like a third of the comments that are unrelated." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19955" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7155" RevisionGUID="8fd333a0-a7a9-43db-a4a5-2f1fed1e41e0" CreationDate="2015-02-04T14:48:57.077" UserId="112068" Comment="added 1259 characters in body" Text="Just a thought. It might be more useful to search for terms rather than only the word &quot;programmers&quot;, so that you're more likely to only get comments referencing this site. I don't know how often programmers is mentioned on StackOverflow, but I imagine it can be quite often since it's a site based on programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, searching for the terms:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;for programmers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;on programmers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;to programmers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;at programmers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;try programmers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would pick up comments like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;@KirkStevenson - Quite often, it is much easier to learn about abstract concepts (like logic) by interacting with them. You can just as easily sit down with another human being, but humans tend to be quite subjective in their understanding of the truth. Programming languages offer a (relatively) infallible source of truth with which you can interact. In that vein, and due to it's popularity, python is a perfectly reasonable choice for your instructor. (Sorry for going so far off topic of the forum here). More questions in this vein belong on programmers.stackexchange.com — dwerner 47 secs ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's not about programming. You can try discussing it on programmers.stackexchange.com — Eugene Mayevski 'EldoS Corp 33 secs ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;@EugeneMayevski'EldoSCorp If it's not about programming then why direct someone to Programmers? License questions are allowed at programmers but this question wouldn't fit there either. Programmers is for Q&amp;A, just like the rest of StackExchange. Stack Overflow Chat is the place to go for discussions. — GlenH7 1 min ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Not particularly, no. SO is not really made for getting inspiration for a project, perhaps a re-wording of your question would work on Programmers SE. — Elizion 1 min ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;@Elizion - project suggestions are off topic for Programmers. Stack Overflow Chat is the best place to ask questions like this. — GlenH7 1 min ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Unless you have a specific programming question, conceptual/design questions are better suited for programmers.stackexchange.com — tnw 28 secs ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;@tnw - this wouldn't be a good fit on Programmers either. It will be closed quickly and likely heavily downvoted. — GlenH7 1 min ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;@tnw: This question would never pass muster on Programmers. — Robert Harvey ♦ 1 min ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;This is more about computer science theory and asymptotic analysis. It's more appropriate for Programmers SE. — franklin 18 secs ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and not:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Is there a way I can change the default behaviour? is a terrible idea. Anyone who uses your assembly or new programmers will have no idea why a method that has always worked one way, now works another way. Instead write your own extension method ToScientificFloat() and/or ToScientificInt(). Now when people see this method, they instantly know it's doing something that is not default behavior. — Erik Philips 1 min ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Well, not only will the HTML editors complain, but browsers will render it in unexpected ways. OP wants to know why, and I'm generally happier working with programmers who ask why instead of blindly going &quot;you just can't, ok?&quot; — ceejayoz 1 min ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Thanks for all the input. What I hear J an David saying is &quot;Just be careful and write the code right the first time.&quot; Maybe you guys are better programmers than me, but I don't like walking a tightrope without a net. I make mistakes. And I like to catch them before ship my code. — RobertFrank 2 mins ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;Note that it is a good idea to drop the inline from static inline: With static the compiler already knows that the given function is only ever used in the given translation unit and can make a better choice about inlining it than the programmer who adds the inline to the definition. Too much inlining hurts performance as much as too little inlining, and most programmers who add the inline keyword do not know or test whether inlining that function will indeed speed things up. Of course, if your tests(!) show that static inline is faster than static, go ahead and use it :-) — cmaster 1 min ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;This question is not a good format for Stack Overflow. This is intended to be a site for answering specific programming related questions, to help programmers solve their issues. It is not a discussion site to discuss perceived shortcomings with available software. — mason 55 secs ago&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't expect it to completely keep false positives from showing, I imagine there will be the occasional comment that contains the phrase &quot;for programmers&quot; that isn't talking about this site, but I think it would cut out what looks like a third of the comments that are unrelated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: I saw this posted earlier, which brings up some more 'rules' to add I think:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hiya, this is an interesting question and the answers will be useful... but as you guessed, sadly it's not a good fit for Stack Overflow, where we prefer questions with a specific, right answer (rather than discussions about which tool might be better). In the past, such questions have led to debate, and flamewars and that tends to tear the community apart :( But you may yet find a better home for your question. Try the &quot;programmers' stack exchange site: programmers.stackexchange.com — Taryn East 1 min&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, add the word &quot;the&quot; into the possible phrases (e.g. &quot;try the programmers&quot;, &quot;on the programmers&quot;, &quot;at the programmers&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, if possible, remove punctuation from around the word &quot;programmers&quot; if it appears. That way people can't get around the script by adding quotes into their comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An alternative would be instead of only looking for terms that would make the comment likely to be referencing the site, to look for terms that would make it likely to *not* be referencing the site, meaning the comment could be ignored. I'm not sure that I'm seeing any common terms that would work for that though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19956" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7156" RevisionGUID="62d5af6f-5fbf-4ab7-beba-0a0c2c84d8f5" CreationDate="2015-02-04T15:25:43.217" UserId="138342" Text="my question on blogging got put on hold for being unclear what help I need.  Fair enough...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/272102/blogging-usefully-about-learning-a-new-programming-language**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then I am trying to understand how this substantially more vague question got through with 41 votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140423/how-do-you-remember-programming-related-stuff**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In any case, how can I make my question more clear?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19957" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7156" RevisionGUID="62d5af6f-5fbf-4ab7-beba-0a0c2c84d8f5" CreationDate="2015-02-04T15:25:43.217" UserId="138342" Text="how to make this question about blogging more useful?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19958" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7156" RevisionGUID="62d5af6f-5fbf-4ab7-beba-0a0c2c84d8f5" CreationDate="2015-02-04T15:25:43.217" UserId="138342" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19959" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7157" RevisionGUID="3c473a37-ec37-4559-be82-0bbb6bdd46a3" CreationDate="2015-02-05T12:13:42.033" UserId="4" Text="See: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7154/new-se-chat-bot-feature-for-identifying-when-programmers-is-mentioned-on-stackov&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now, the chat bot is publishing messages into The Whiteboard, the main chat room for Programmers. Should the messages be published into The Whiteboard or into a special chat room?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19960" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7157" RevisionGUID="3c473a37-ec37-4559-be82-0bbb6bdd46a3" CreationDate="2015-02-05T12:13:42.033" UserId="4" Text="Should the comment detection bot be moved to a separate chat room?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19961" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7157" RevisionGUID="3c473a37-ec37-4559-be82-0bbb6bdd46a3" CreationDate="2015-02-05T12:13:42.033" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|chat|quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19962" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7158" RevisionGUID="9066334f-cad5-4c5d-96ff-6475d1bc8d5f" CreationDate="2015-02-05T12:15:51.550" UserId="4" Text="**A special chat room should be created.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although it may make a little extra effort, we routinely direct people who are asking discussion questions into The Whiteboard. I don't think that these people need to see a chat bot, especially if it's the most recent messages. In addition, it could interrupt communication between people. And if other bots are added to do other things or other functionality is added to this bot, it could increase the message count. Putting them into a nice, separate environment would allow the people who are interested in their content to find it, but not overwhelm people who don't want to deal with it (either at the moment or ever)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19963" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7159" RevisionGUID="9193c75f-7453-404e-86ea-d9dce1622c85" CreationDate="2015-02-05T12:44:59.577" UserId="25476" Text="## The chat bot messages should go to The Whiteboard ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Most chat users are in the Whiteboard.  This gives the chat bot more exposure to where bad advice is being handed out on Stack Overflow about Programmers.&#xD;&#xA; - Unless you are in the chat bot room, you will never know&#xD;&#xA; - Makes it easier to include new and low rep users into being a good citizen (Let's face it, even gnat started somewhere)&#xD;&#xA; - I haven't heard a single complaint as of yet about the Chat Bot being annoying." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19964" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7158" RevisionGUID="1d75829f-5150-47e3-a8e5-1669ca9fbe2e" CreationDate="2015-02-05T12:45:23.137" UserId="25476" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="## A special chat room should be created ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although it may make a little extra effort, we routinely direct people who are asking discussion questions into The Whiteboard. I don't think that these people need to see a chat bot, especially if it's the most recent messages. In addition, it could interrupt communication between people. And if other bots are added to do other things or other functionality is added to this bot, it could increase the message count. Putting them into a nice, separate environment would allow the people who are interested in their content to find it, but not overwhelm people who don't want to deal with it (either at the moment or ever)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19965" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7160" RevisionGUID="cd693c8f-4a3c-4e68-b7e9-b1badf78dbd3" CreationDate="2015-02-06T15:30:25.410" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="A filter that might remove some additional false positives is to remove things where the comment contains a link to a question or an answer (or help page?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example [this one](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/19931906#19931906).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Such links are not likely to be someone saying &quot;go post there&quot; but rather the cross site dup style &quot;this has been beaten to death on multiple sites in the past.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19966" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7161" RevisionGUID="407b3c42-f053-459f-9a45-f08f0bc30e5f" CreationDate="2015-02-06T20:25:04.317" UserId="3184" Text="It seems logical to me to call out on twitter if anyone can answer my question, but that is not available. Why is that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19967" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7161" RevisionGUID="407b3c42-f053-459f-9a45-f08f0bc30e5f" CreationDate="2015-02-06T20:25:04.317" UserId="3184" Text="Why is the &quot;Know someone who can answer&quot; not available for my own question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19968" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7161" RevisionGUID="407b3c42-f053-459f-9a45-f08f0bc30e5f" CreationDate="2015-02-06T20:25:04.317" UserId="3184" Text="|feature-request|twitter|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19969" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7162" RevisionGUID="2228d9dd-9db0-4019-a45a-92c01ff09e12" CreationDate="2015-02-06T20:48:31.170" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Do you mean the &quot;share&quot; button?  It's at the bottom left of your post, and has an option to tweet about the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Tweety-tweet][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/GzSCJ.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19970" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7070" RevisionGUID="a2979746-17a4-4074-83f1-bf778a1eaf10" CreationDate="2015-02-07T00:08:20.123" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|community-ads|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19971" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7163" RevisionGUID="05395635-5667-4414-961e-ae71ede4b325" CreationDate="2015-02-07T21:25:45.957" UserId="60171" Text="As of a few minutes ago, an [additional filter](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7155/60171) is applied to the comments to reduce false positives in The Whiteboard. This filter checks for `for/on/to/at/try` + `programmers`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to see *all* comments mentioning &quot;programmers&quot; you can do so in [Duga's Playground](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/20298/dugas-playground).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Filtered comments goes to The Whiteboard, unfiltered to Duga's Playground." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19972" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7164" RevisionGUID="f6437e9c-8394-4621-8b9d-e3cf42eeb207" CreationDate="2015-02-08T02:42:16.983" UserId="167258" Text="I program java every now and then as a hobby. I have made a simple game but I would like to add on to it and make it more complex and fun. Would asking for additional game elements or for a new direction to take my game on Programmers SE be on topic and appreciated? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19973" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7164" RevisionGUID="f6437e9c-8394-4621-8b9d-e3cf42eeb207" CreationDate="2015-02-08T02:42:16.983" UserId="167258" Text="If I am a recreational programmer who wants to add to my game, is asking on programmers SE ok?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19974" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7164" RevisionGUID="f6437e9c-8394-4621-8b9d-e3cf42eeb207" CreationDate="2015-02-08T02:42:16.983" UserId="167258" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19975" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7165" RevisionGUID="78a3ed7a-124f-4464-9ce9-d972a3862208" CreationDate="2015-02-08T02:51:37.250" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Probably not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Game design isn't something that is the realm of the conceptual or architectural software design.  Questions about MVC, or organization of the code may be on topic here, but the game elements themselves would likely be off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may wish to look into [GameDev.SE](http://gamedev.stackexchange.com) and asking in their [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/19/game-development) first about how to structure the question or even if its appropriate on the main site (often such questions can be answered in chat... though I'm not active on GameDev or their chat so can't say for sure)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19976" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7166" RevisionGUID="5b4a159e-bd20-480d-8ecb-b83513699c37" CreationDate="2015-02-08T02:52:24.370" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="In the [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com][intro] blog post, Jeff announces our site with great fanfare.  And while I'm all for promoting our site, there are a few problems with that post that I think are creating recurring issues for us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off, there's a link to the FAQ which now redirects to our /tour page.  It would be a lot more helpful if that redirected to our /help/on-topic page instead.  The tour is a nice intro, but doesn't as clearly explain to a new visitor what's on-topic or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other major challenge in that blog post is this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Although I fully supported this site when it was just a baby Area 51 site proposal, we’ve endured a lot of angst over it — mainly because **it veered so heavily into the realm of the subjective**. It forced us to think deeply about what makes a useful subjective question, which we formalized into a set of 6 guidelines in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective. Constructive subjective questions …  &#xD;&#xA;...  [_edited for clarity_]  &#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, with a little extra discipline and moderation, I think the site turned out great. So, go forth and ask your **subjective whiteboard questions** on programmers.stackexchange.com! Just make sure they’re professional and constructive, please.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And that's where I cried a little bit when I recently re-read that post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the site's dramatic shift in focus from when it originally started, I don't feel that the blog post announces our site in a constructive way.  In fact, [there's anecdotal evidence][anecdote] that it's actively misleading new users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can one of these two things be done, please?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Update the blog post to redirect to /help/on-topic ***and*** provide a notice indicating that the site scope has changed since that blog post was made.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Just make that blog post go away forever.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[intro]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;[anecdote]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=19899888#19899888" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19977" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7166" RevisionGUID="5b4a159e-bd20-480d-8ecb-b83513699c37" CreationDate="2015-02-08T02:52:24.370" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Update &quot;Introducing Programmers&quot; blog to reflect site scope change" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19978" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7166" RevisionGUID="5b4a159e-bd20-480d-8ecb-b83513699c37" CreationDate="2015-02-08T02:52:24.370" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|support|site-definition|bad-questions|low-quality-posts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19979" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7167" RevisionGUID="686ac279-b96f-466e-b7fa-e4e1777313cc" CreationDate="2015-02-09T01:04:20.930" UserId="60171" Text="You can drop by [Code Review](http://codereview.stackexchange.com) and get the code for your game review, if what you have is already working.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Be aware though that Code Review is not there to ask for &quot;feature requests&quot;, but to clean up your code - which can make it possible for complex things to be added easier. (Although some people might come up with feature requests anyway...)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19980" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7166" RevisionGUID="e08b7af8-c79b-44d0-ac27-f64701690ed2" CreationDate="2015-02-09T19:39:29.037" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="added 748 characters in body" Text="In the [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com][intro] blog post, Jeff announces our site with great fanfare.  And while I'm all for promoting our site, there are a few problems with that post that I think are creating recurring issues for us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off, there's a link to the FAQ which now redirects to our /tour page.  It would be a lot more helpful if that redirected to our /help/on-topic page instead.  The tour is a nice intro, but doesn't as clearly explain to a new visitor what's on-topic or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other major challenge in that blog post is this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Although I fully supported this site when it was just a baby Area 51 site proposal, we’ve endured a lot of angst over it — mainly because **it veered so heavily into the realm of the subjective**. It forced us to think deeply about what makes a useful subjective question, which we formalized into a set of 6 guidelines in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective. Constructive subjective questions …  &#xD;&#xA;...  [_edited for clarity_]  &#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, with a little extra discipline and moderation, I think the site turned out great. So, go forth and ask your **subjective whiteboard questions** on programmers.stackexchange.com! Just make sure they’re professional and constructive, please.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And that's where I cried a little bit when I recently re-read that post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the site's dramatic shift in focus from when it originally started, I don't feel that the blog post announces our site in a constructive way.  In fact, [there's anecdotal evidence][anecdote] that it's actively misleading new users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can one of these two things be done, please?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;strike&gt;Update the blog post to redirect to /help/on-topic ***and*** provide a notice indicating that the site scope has changed since that blog post was made.&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Just make that blog post go away forever.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After digging through the comments on that post, I think we should just make that particular post go away forever.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, [this comment][really] is what should be the final nail in the coffin:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The last thing either site needs is people asking perfectly good programming questions on a site explicitly created for non-programming questions.  &#xD;&#xA;But if you do get the urge to ask (or answer…) a question that ISN’T strictly programming-related, now you have a place to do so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, no one reads comment threads on old blog posts but that comment is horrifically misleading at this point in time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[intro]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;[anecdote]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=19899888#19899888&#xD;&#xA;[really]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/#comment-55417" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19981" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7166" RevisionGUID="e1170e29-d814-4d26-ab88-92e3054761c4" CreationDate="2015-02-09T19:41:19.057" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|site-definition|bad-questions|low-quality-posts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19982" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7168" RevisionGUID="6df7a6f2-8c3d-48b2-bbed-1a4cfa49bac9" CreationDate="2015-02-09T19:43:04.563" UserId="63" Text="I've updated the article to either call out or paper over the areas that had become somewhat dated. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I stand by that comment. Folks really shouldn't be asking programming questions here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19983" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7169" RevisionGUID="20d35cdf-c9a0-4658-90fe-7476f20786b6" CreationDate="2015-02-10T20:21:13.790" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="[![Engineering SE Beta][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/yjIbH.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://engineering.stackexchange.com/ " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19984" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7169" RevisionGUID="5f674280-c9cd-482d-b607-1b4f29155d2c" CreationDate="2015-02-10T20:21:13.790" UserDisplayName="user53019" />
  <row Id="19985" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7170" RevisionGUID="7c939909-28e8-4539-b8c5-2f7dbd0a98e2" CreationDate="2015-02-11T19:32:38.023" UserId="151256" Text="I changed the title of [this question][1] of mine which have more than 8 answers and one accepted answer to match it with question; but it was put on hold. Should I change it back to its previous title? (Actually I already have done it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;About the question I referenced my answer to some scientific pages which correspond to my question. I don't see much unclear thing in it. if it is please tell me. Or maybe I should have asked it in another website? for example CS.stackexchange.com?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/272638/what-is-a-program-rather-than-implementation-of-an-algorithm" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19986" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7170" RevisionGUID="7c939909-28e8-4539-b8c5-2f7dbd0a98e2" CreationDate="2015-02-11T19:32:38.023" UserId="151256" Text="My question was put on hold as I changed its title, should I change it back to the previous title?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19987" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7170" RevisionGUID="7c939909-28e8-4539-b8c5-2f7dbd0a98e2" CreationDate="2015-02-11T19:32:38.023" UserId="151256" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19988" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7170" RevisionGUID="f4f232cd-20a1-48f3-bcb1-252bfc9afd91" CreationDate="2015-02-11T19:47:00.400" UserId="151256" Comment="added 76 characters in body" Text="I changed the title of [this question][1] of mine which have more than 8 answers and one accepted answer to match it with question; but it was put on hold. Should I change it back to its previous title? (Actually I already have done it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;About the question I referenced my answer to some scientific pages like [this][2] which correspond to my question. I don't see much unclear thing in it. if it is please tell me. Or maybe I should have asked it in another website? for example CS.stackexchange.com?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/272638/what-is-a-program-rather-than-implementation-of-an-algorithm&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_computation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19989" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7170" RevisionGUID="7d8d9e49-585d-499a-80b1-356d413eb30a" CreationDate="2015-02-11T19:56:05.367" UserId="151256" Comment="added 93 characters in body" Text="I changed the title of [this question][1] of mine which have more than 8 answers and one accepted answer to match it with question; but it was put on hold. Should I change it back to its previous title? (Actually I already have done it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;About the question I referenced my answer to some scientific pages like [this][2] which correspond to my question. I don't see much unclear thing in it. if it is please tell me. Or maybe I should have asked it in another website? for example CS.stackexchange.com? I personally think my three or two recent questions fit more in the CS.stackexchange.com. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/272638/what-is-a-program-rather-than-implementation-of-an-algorithm&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_computation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19990" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7170" RevisionGUID="604a2e79-3ca9-4cc2-8131-ddb31ebae69a" CreationDate="2015-02-11T20:01:55.657" UserId="151256" Comment="added 93 characters in body" Text="I changed the title of [this question][1] of mine which have more than 8 answers and one accepted answer to match it with the question; but it was immediately put on hold. Should I change it back to its previous title? (Actually I already have done it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;About the question itself, I referenced my answer to some scientific pages like [this][2] which correspond to my question. I edited it many times to clarify it and now don't see much unclear things in it, please note I can't change the question totally regarding the existing answers (then they might become irrelevant, could I do that?), I kept those things which was referenced on the answers intact, but yet my question is clear. If it is not, please tell me. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or maybe I should have asked it in another website? for example CS.stackexchange.com? I personally think my three or two recent questions fit more in the CS.stackexchange.com. and it's possible that users here don't expect more academical questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/272638/what-is-a-program-rather-than-implementation-of-an-algorithm&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_computation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19991" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7171" RevisionGUID="074513b9-ac08-4014-9a96-651913f31395" CreationDate="2015-02-11T20:30:16.773" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="The problem with that question is not the title. As I read it I have a very difficult time figuring out what your actual problem is that you are trying to solve. You also seem to have multiple questions mixed together. I also believe that question is _probably_ not off-topic here, but it is difficult to say without clarification.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question is just as long as it needs to be. It has a clear, concise problem statement and the necessary supporting information (but not too much).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To answer your question about my edit, I do not remember what I did (I cannot see the edit history) but it may have been spelling or grammar. When I edit a title, it is normally to make it clear, concise, and accurate. Titles are what show up in the question list, and a reader should be able to understand what the question is about at a glance." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19992" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7170" RevisionGUID="6d980129-68e5-419a-ad80-217fc5e19440" CreationDate="2015-02-11T20:36:46.973" UserId="151256" Comment="deleted 34 characters in body" Text="I changed the title of [this question][1] of mine which have more than 8 answers and one accepted answer to match it with the question; but it was immediately put on hold. Should I change it back to its previous title? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;About the question itself, I referenced my answer to some scientific pages like [this][2] which correspond to my question. I edited it many times to clarify it and now don't see much unclear things in it, please note I can't change the question totally regarding the existing answers (then they might become irrelevant, could I do that?), I kept those things which was referenced on the answers intact, but yet my question is clear. If it is not, please tell me. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or maybe I should have asked it in another website? for example CS.stackexchange.com? I personally think my three or two recent questions fit more in the CS.stackexchange.com. and it's possible that users here don't expect more academical questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/272638/what-is-a-program-rather-than-implementation-of-an-algorithm&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_computation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19993" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7172" RevisionGUID="33301d78-349c-4dd8-9807-f23936d28409" CreationDate="2015-02-11T21:30:16.087" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I think something like &quot;Conceptual Software Development&quot; or something more concise with the same meaning would fit better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I think of &quot;programmers&quot; in the context of Stack Exchange, I think &quot;I can ask about any topic specific to what programmers do compared to brick layers or other professions.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Changing the name to something that more accurately reflects the [on-topic list][1] would help. Notice that several things &quot;that programmers do/use&quot; are off-topic: questions about tools, code, etc. Looking at what actually is on-topic reads more like &quot;here is a bunch of computer science stuff framed in a real-world, practical context.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19994" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7173" RevisionGUID="400cfbf9-8479-48f0-b022-b365edb37d4c" CreationDate="2015-02-12T07:10:02.240" UserId="160597" Text="I have a task of proving my software design to be right in a some scientific way. I asked a question about it (https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/272932/software-architecture-design-basic-literature), but it was ill-formed and was putted on hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can I rephrase it to something like &quot;Scientific rationale for the choice of software architecture. How can it be done?&quot; and re-ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there answers to such question? Or there is no silver bullet and that's it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19995" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7173" RevisionGUID="400cfbf9-8479-48f0-b022-b365edb37d4c" CreationDate="2015-02-12T07:10:02.240" UserId="160597" Text="questions of scientific rationale for the choice of software architecture" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19996" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7173" RevisionGUID="400cfbf9-8479-48f0-b022-b365edb37d4c" CreationDate="2015-02-12T07:10:02.240" UserId="160597" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19997" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7174" RevisionGUID="4e0ab3e8-ddd0-47f6-8b29-c71b236e2693" CreationDate="2015-02-12T13:46:46.150" UserId="5099" Text="There are no silver bullets in software engineering, only choices that are better or worse for some aspects of software architecture.  &#xD;&#xA;To top it off, even the best architecture can be ruined by a bad implementation, so even a scientifically validated architecture doesn't buy you that much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What remains are a huge pile of trade-offs that you as architect have to make the best of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions covering the whole architecture are too broad for the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A format, but what you can ask about is what you need to take into account in your architecture for some aspect of it and how you might be able to measure that the final product has achieved sufficient quality in that aspect." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19998" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7170" RevisionGUID="230512c9-3d19-4dbe-8b9d-1167444a89be" CreationDate="2015-02-12T19:05:17.303" UserId="151256" Comment="deleted 15 characters in body" Text="I changed the title of [this question][1] of mine which have more than 8 answers and one accepted answer to match it with the question; but it was immediately put on hold. Should I change it back to its previous title? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;About the question itself, I referenced my answer to some scientific pages which correspond to my question. I edited it many times to clarify it and now don't see much unclear things in it, please note I can't change the question totally regarding the existing answers (then they might become irrelevant, could I do that?), I kept those things which was referenced on the answers intact, but yet my question is clear. If it is not, please tell me. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or maybe I should have asked it in another website? for example CS.stackexchange.com? I personally think my three or two recent questions fit more in the CS.stackexchange.com. and it's possible that users here don't expect more academical questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/272638/what-is-a-program-rather-than-implementation-of-an-algorithm&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_computation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19999" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7175" RevisionGUID="320353b0-0fd2-4908-9522-2d9ec386f210" CreationDate="2015-02-13T20:59:18.477" UserId="51654" Text="So [this question][1] recently came up, and I'm not sure quite how to deal with the problems it caused. There are (at time of writing) 39 edits. Now some of them are grammatical, and some are clarifying, but the majority are... slight adjustments to the question based on answers to probe deeper into the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that over time, the question effectively _drifts_ into a different one - making existing answers invalid. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't want to suggest making a new question, since the new question would not be significantly different - leading to duplication. I don't want to suggest going to chat, since we're not a chat site. And I don't really know of any good general programming forums to suggest instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how to discourage this sort of interactive question? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This meta question][2] is relevant, but focuses on edits which are objectively bad. The individual edits of this question aren't bad in isolation, but the style/frequency of them certainly are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/272638/can-the-entire-program-be-called-an-algorithm&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6055/how-to-stop-bad-edits-from-a-user" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20000" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7175" RevisionGUID="320353b0-0fd2-4908-9522-2d9ec386f210" CreationDate="2015-02-13T20:59:18.477" UserId="51654" Text="How to dissuade &quot;iterative&quot; questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20001" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7175" RevisionGUID="320353b0-0fd2-4908-9522-2d9ec386f210" CreationDate="2015-02-13T20:59:18.477" UserId="51654" Text="|discussion|moderation|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20002" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7176" RevisionGUID="b7c90de8-7f3c-41f7-be14-f87fd46ceccf" CreationDate="2015-02-13T21:04:54.143" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Close it (future questions like that) and / or vote to delete (current question).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a discussion in disguise as evidenced by the lengthy comment threads.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;39 edits really embodies the close reason of &quot;unclear what you're asking&quot; which is why it isn't fitting well within the Q&amp;A format.  It's more appropriate for chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was possibly a solid Q&amp;A in there, but the desire for discussion pushes me towards shutting it all down by deleting it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20006" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="7178" RevisionGUID="16fb41c2-de7c-4f8c-a529-0ec01eab3572" CreationDate="2015-02-17T09:54:18.770" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/286242/misleading-protected-message-on-closed-question" />
  <row Id="20007" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7178" RevisionGUID="d3318ff6-9911-424e-af34-9641f7217608" CreationDate="2015-02-17T09:40:02.207" UserId="146114" UserDisplayName="Marcel Burkhard" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48760/should-i-choose-doctrine-2-or-propel-1-5-1-6-and-why&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this the intended behavior?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was searching for the &quot;answer&quot; button because I read that I need at least 10 reputation because the question is protected. I have more than 10 reputation on that site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Turns out the question is actually closed, in my opinion at the bottom it should point that out." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20008" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7178" RevisionGUID="d3318ff6-9911-424e-af34-9641f7217608" CreationDate="2015-02-17T09:40:02.207" UserId="146114" UserDisplayName="Marcel Burkhard" Text="Misleading &quot;protected&quot; message on closed question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20009" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7178" RevisionGUID="d3318ff6-9911-424e-af34-9641f7217608" CreationDate="2015-02-17T09:40:02.207" UserId="146114" UserDisplayName="Marcel Burkhard" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20011" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7178" RevisionGUID="67958b06-03e9-46a2-82b7-8688e308f107" CreationDate="2015-02-17T16:20:22.533" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|closed-questions|protected-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20012" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7179" RevisionGUID="16629217-8079-42be-ae30-b9fe9d350281" CreationDate="2015-02-17T18:12:35.780" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Question 1: [What is an object pool?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoted because of impending edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is an object pool?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are some examples of Object Pools?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Could you consider stack memory to be an example of an Object Pool?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 2: [What is a thread pool?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 1 attracted downvotes and close votes, but question 2 did not: in fact it is upvoted and has quality answers. Why is this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/273532/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/173575/22815" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20013" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7179" RevisionGUID="16629217-8079-42be-ae30-b9fe9d350281" CreationDate="2015-02-17T18:12:35.780" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Why is one of these questions too broad and not the other?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20014" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7179" RevisionGUID="16629217-8079-42be-ae30-b9fe9d350281" CreationDate="2015-02-17T18:12:35.780" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20015" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7180" RevisionGUID="a788abed-a713-4bcf-8d7d-26f1b6d759ee" CreationDate="2015-02-17T18:12:35.780" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="The questions are similar in that they both request a definition of a programming concept. They are different, however:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 1 asks for examples, which reads like a poll: provide your favorite object pool implementation. In addition, it asks _two_ well-defined questions that have different answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 2 asks a single well-defined question. It shows a low but existing level of research: the author read the Wikipedia article on the topic but that did not help. Yes, this question could be improved, but it is _focused_ and asks _one_ question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20016" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7178" RevisionGUID="1fcb0635-f55c-4f39-b9b4-ee2c30e733d8" CreationDate="2015-02-17T21:01:39.243" UserId="31260" Comment="clarification copied into post from comments" Text="Misleading &quot;protected&quot; message on closed question shown to users who are not logged in or have less than 10 on-site rep" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20017" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7181" RevisionGUID="3105ef6a-c01b-4e2e-9259-e1068d974f43" CreationDate="2015-02-18T00:48:09.580" UserId="6605" Text="While both questions are similar in what they ask, **the way they ask it is different**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 1 does not show any research effort, which is exactly what downvotes are for. The author tells that a “Wikipedia article references an &quot;Object Pool Pattern&quot;” and asks what is this thing, without showing that he made at least an effort to search for [Object Pool Pattern][1] article on Wikipedia itself, which is not the best way to obtain upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In question 2, on the other hand, the author found the article, but found it too difficult to understand. There is nothing wrong in asking those questions, because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Indeed, Wikipedia articles may not be extremely clear. Moreover, some persons may find a given article easy to understand, while others won't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - By asking for clarification on Stack Exchange, the user attracts visitors from Google who, like the original poster, have read the Wikipedia article and found it too cryptic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an example, I encountered the exact same situation recently with a student asking for help on Stack Overflow. [His question][2] shows research effort and explains that the resources (mentioned through a link in the question) the author have found are too difficult to understand. Indeed, links lead to articles answering the question, but in a way which is not straightforward and may not be helpful to a student. This is very different from “Do my homework for me” questions which appear from time to time on Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So questions similar to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please explain me what Dependency Injection is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;are not welcome, while questions like this are fine:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've read Wikipedia article about Dependency Injection, as well as [Martin Fowler's article][3] and [this answer on Stack Overflow][4]. I feel like I understand how it works and how does it make testing easier, but I still don't get the concept. I learnt about Inversion of Control, and DI looks like the same thing (but according to Martin Fowler, it's not).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is DI? How is it different from IoC?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This being said, I'm not sure whether the concerned question should be closed and on which basis. Currently, it has three close votes as “Too broad”, but I'm not sure it can be considered as such:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are there too many possible answers? Probably not. There are several ways to explain a concept, but if we use this as a reference, every question I answered for the past three years should be closed as well, since there was always a different (and better) way to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Would a good answer be too long? If we were on Stack Overflow, probably. On Programmers.SE, answers are expected to be long, so a definition of the term followed by explanation is not that long.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_pool_pattern&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/28413018/240613&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://martinfowler.com/articles/injection.html&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/a/130862/240613" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20018" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7182" RevisionGUID="4fb75b22-70af-451d-bf00-21eec002d5f7" CreationDate="2015-02-18T02:10:31.897" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="You're on Stack Overflow and you've found a question that isn't about coding. Its about design or something squishy like that. You are trying to be helpful, and you put a comment in the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should try asking on Programmers.SE instead. --YourName 2 minutes ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... and suddenly, out of no where Programmer.SE users sweep in and saying:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No, this isn't a good question for Programmers.SE --AnotherName 5 seconds ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are they saying that this isn't a good question for Programmers.SE? What is in scope on that squishy site with the out of focus whiteboard back ground and a coffee thing as its favico?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should I look for when determining if a question *should* go on Stack Overflow?  And while you're at it answering these questions, why do they get so annoyed at these suggestions? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20019" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7182" RevisionGUID="4fb75b22-70af-451d-bf00-21eec002d5f7" CreationDate="2015-02-18T02:10:31.897" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="What goes on Programmers.SE? A guide for Stack Overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20020" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7182" RevisionGUID="4fb75b22-70af-451d-bf00-21eec002d5f7" CreationDate="2015-02-18T02:10:31.897" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|migration|on-topic-definition|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20021" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="ee9f77bb-9b7d-4efb-aca1-b49370ad4dca" CreationDate="2015-02-18T02:10:31.897" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="### What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Programmers.SE would be a good question on Stack Overflow. It's not too broad, not opinion, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Programmers.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). There is an expectation that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What technology to take up&#xD;&#xA;* What tool to use (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* What career to take or what to study&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programing related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* software requirements&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I'll point out a caveat with that &quot;software licensing&quot; thing.  Its about how to license *your* software and try to stay in proper compliance when pulling a MIT licensed library into a GPL project.  It is *not* about the &quot;can I let a friend use IntelliJ personal license if I'm not using it?&quot;, &quot;can I use facebook's API to do something legally?&quot; and the interpretation of other third party licenses.  If the word 'legal' shows up in that question at all, it will likely get closed as legal advice (thats in the help center too - under &quot;and it's not about&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about software design concepts.  Remember that algorithm questions are on topic on Stack Overflow (so you don't need to migrate those).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Programmers.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Programmers.SE was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with &quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) its problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - its exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so suggestions a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, its like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if its a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20022" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7182" RevisionGUID="497894fd-5f73-418f-be90-61ba2c3d1e69" CreationDate="2015-02-18T08:38:44.780" UserId="31260" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body; edited tags" Text="You're on Stack Overflow and you've found a question that isn't about coding. Its about design or something squishy like that. You are trying to be helpful, and you put a comment in the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should try asking on Programmers.SE instead. --YourName 2 minutes ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... and suddenly, out of no where Programmer.SE users sweep in and saying:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No, this isn't a good question for Programmers.SE --AnotherName 5 seconds ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are they saying that this isn't a good question for Programmers.SE? What is in scope on that squishy site with the out of focus whiteboard back ground and a coffee thing as its favico?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should I look for when determining if a question *should* go on Programmers?  And while you're at it answering these questions, why do they get so annoyed at these suggestions? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20023" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7182" RevisionGUID="497894fd-5f73-418f-be90-61ba2c3d1e69" CreationDate="2015-02-18T08:38:44.780" UserId="31260" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|migration|faq-proposed|on-topic-definition|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20024" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="17c03ffd-54e9-404c-9d33-93bad1b7cd7d" CreationDate="2015-02-18T08:45:32.973" UserId="31260" Comment="There is an expectation += http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773" Text="### What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Programmers.SE would be a good question on Stack Overflow. It's not too broad, not opinion, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Programmers.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). [There is an expectation](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773) that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What technology to take up&#xD;&#xA;* What tool to use (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* What career to take or what to study&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programing related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* software requirements&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I'll point out a caveat with that &quot;software licensing&quot; thing.  It's about how to license *your* software and try to stay in proper compliance when pulling a MIT licensed library into a GPL project.  It is *not* about the &quot;can I let a friend use IntelliJ personal license if I'm not using it?&quot;, &quot;can I use facebook's API to do something legally?&quot; and the interpretation of other third party licenses.  If the word 'legal' shows up in that question at all, it will likely get closed as legal advice (thats in the help center too - under &quot;and it's not about&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about software design concepts.  Remember that algorithm questions are on topic on Stack Overflow (so you don't need to migrate those).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the Perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the Delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Programmers.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Programmers.SE was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with &quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) it's problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - it's exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so suggestions a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, it's like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if it's a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20025" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7154" RevisionGUID="ed524efc-8068-4bd8-b228-59eea78d5eaf" CreationDate="2015-02-18T08:52:35.540" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="New SE Chat Bot feature for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20026" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7154" RevisionGUID="ed524efc-8068-4bd8-b228-59eea78d5eaf" CreationDate="2015-02-18T08:52:35.540" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|comments|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20027" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="7242f9c5-155a-4838-a28c-03c1bfea3fc5" CreationDate="2015-02-18T08:53:22.687" UserId="31260" Comment="&quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; comments += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260 &quot;we even had to introduce a chat bot for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow&quot;" Text="### What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Programmers.SE would be a good question on Stack Overflow. It's not too broad, not opinion, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Programmers.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). [There is an expectation](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773) that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What technology to take up&#xD;&#xA;* What tool to use (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* What career to take or what to study&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programing related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* software requirements&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I'll point out a caveat with that &quot;software licensing&quot; thing.  It's about how to license *your* software and try to stay in proper compliance when pulling a MIT licensed library into a GPL project.  It is *not* about the &quot;can I let a friend use IntelliJ personal license if I'm not using it?&quot;, &quot;can I use facebook's API to do something legally?&quot; and the interpretation of other third party licenses.  If the word 'legal' shows up in that question at all, it will likely get closed as legal advice (thats in the help center too - under &quot;and it's not about&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about software design concepts.  Remember that algorithm questions are on topic on Stack Overflow (so you don't need to migrate those).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the Perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the Delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Programmers.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Programmers.SE was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with [&quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260 &quot;we even had to introduce a chat bot for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow&quot;) and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) it's problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - it's exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so comments a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, it's like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if it's a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20028" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7182" RevisionGUID="37a38728-7a34-4971-9b18-4c248bf83bd8" CreationDate="2015-02-18T10:22:30.247" UserId="81495" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="You're on Stack Overflow and you've found a question that isn't about coding. Its about design or something squishy like that. You are trying to be helpful, and you put a comment in the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should try asking on Programmers.SE instead. --YourName 2 minutes ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... and suddenly, out of nowhere Programmer.SE users sweep in and saying:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No, this isn't a good question for Programmers.SE --AnotherName 5 seconds ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are they saying that this isn't a good question for Programmers.SE? What is in scope on that squishy site with the out of focus whiteboard back ground and a coffee thing as its favico?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should I look for when determining if a question *should* go on Programmers?  And while you're at it answering these questions, why do they get so annoyed at these suggestions? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20029" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7184" RevisionGUID="4c7e6bca-7b6a-4a88-854a-8fba56af7d8a" CreationDate="2015-02-18T18:56:00.800" UserId="151256" Text="I recently had a [question][1], after I posted it, someone answered me. based on it's answer another question aroused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then I don't know whether it's better to ask it in the same question or make a new question for it?&#xD;&#xA;I thought if I continue it there, then I have a more complete question, however a user suggested me to make a new post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general which is recommended and when I should make another question and when update the same question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/273590/abstraction-in-algorithms?noredirect=1#comment559958_273590" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20030" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7184" RevisionGUID="4c7e6bca-7b6a-4a88-854a-8fba56af7d8a" CreationDate="2015-02-18T18:56:00.800" UserId="151256" Text="Update the same question or make another question, which is recommended?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20031" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7184" RevisionGUID="4c7e6bca-7b6a-4a88-854a-8fba56af7d8a" CreationDate="2015-02-18T18:56:00.800" UserId="151256" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20032" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7185" RevisionGUID="9dcd0055-48e8-4053-9ced-6634d4f03ee8" CreationDate="2015-02-18T19:23:14.523" UserId="69268" Text="My question [Who is developing Wake?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/273579/who-is-developing-wake) was closed as unclear what I'm asking. In addition, one user posted a comment on my question saying, &quot;recommended reading: [Why we're not customer support for [your favorite company]](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/255746/839601).&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree with both reasons for closing my question and would appreciate it if the closers' reasoning could be made more clear to me. I'm active around the SE network, but not much on Programmers, so I might not understand Programmers' specific community standards, and if that's the case, I would appreciate it if what I did poorly could be explained to me so I can write better questions in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, I don't think my question is unclear. In my question, I ask:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Which company, organization or person is developing [Wake]? Have they made any announcements about why they decided to create Wake?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe my question makes it clear that I want to learn two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Who is creating Wakelang&#xD;&#xA; 2. Whether the creators have publicly said anything clarifying why they are creating the language.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both of these are, in my opinion, unambiguous and answerable with objective responses. &quot;Who is creating Wakelang?&quot; asks for a specific company, organization, or person, and &quot;Whether the developers have made any announcements&quot; asks for either a link to a relevant blog post or press release or an indication that it's difficult to find any such information. Is my understanding correct, or are there other reasons my question is unclear that I'm missing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, I disagree with the comment directing me to [Why we're not customer support for [your favorite company]](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/255746/839601) (although I will admit that I am less confident in my reasoning about this comment then I am about whether my question is clear). I think what the comment is getting at is that Programmers.SE isn't the right place to ask for information that would be better obtained from the developers of the language I'm asking about, and asking who is developing a language is an example of such a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree with that, though. I think that understanding who is developing a language is important to understanding the language. For example, C and C++ are not developed by single companies. Instead, non-profit organizations write and update the languages' standards, and then multiple for-profit and OSS organizations implement their own compilers. Someone who does not understand that about C and C++ will not understand some very important concepts, such as how to write portable code or why some code examples that rely on implementation-specific behavior don't work on their compilers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a result, I would argue that asking who is developing a language is, at the least, on-topic at Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also disagree that this is a question that I should only ask the developer of Wake instead of on Programmers.SE for three reasons. First, as I just discussed, I think knowing who develops a language is something that is of general interest to programmers. Second, as I mention in my question, I was having trouble identifying who the developer was! I'm not able to ask a question of someone if I don't know who they are. Third, I'm not asking for support for the language per say. Instead, I'm asking for some background on it. I agree that if I wanted to understand how to use the language, that would be a much better question for the Wake developer (or at least SO).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for asking why the developer created Wake, I deliberately phrased my question as&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have [the deveopers] made any announcements about why they decided to create Wake?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if the developers haven't made any announcements that are easy to find, &quot;No,&quot; would be an acceptable answer, and one that I wouldn't have to ask the developer to receive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do my arguments make sense? If so, can my question please be reopened? If not, can you please let me know why my question still goes against Programmers.SE's standards so I can avoid these mistakes in the future?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20033" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7185" RevisionGUID="9dcd0055-48e8-4053-9ced-6634d4f03ee8" CreationDate="2015-02-18T19:23:14.523" UserId="69268" Text="Why was my question asking who is developing Wakelang closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20034" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7185" RevisionGUID="9dcd0055-48e8-4053-9ced-6634d4f03ee8" CreationDate="2015-02-18T19:23:14.523" UserId="69268" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20035" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7186" RevisionGUID="be01618a-71fe-4e36-b121-16c3e0c8f15b" CreationDate="2015-02-18T19:32:36.010" UserId="4" Text="To me, it seems like this is a very simple &quot;please find me my information&quot; request. It's best suited for a search engine. In fact, you don't even need one. From the [Wake homepage](http://wakelang.com/), click on the &quot;View on GitHub&quot; link to go to the [project's GitHub page](https://github.com/MichaelRFairhurst/wake-compiler). From there, you can click on the user's name to go to [the creator's profile](https://github.com/MichaelRFairhurst), which links to the Wake website as his URL and has an email address.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More generally, there are a few problems with the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- It's a resource request. Resource requests don't require human knowledge or expertise. It isn't that hard to find the resource. It doesn't take my knowledge, skills, or expertise as a software engineer to answer your question. We want those harder questions that can be backed up by references or resources, but aren't just links or recycling of those resources.&#xD;&#xA;- It's not about a problem. What problem are you trying to solve? [We want questions about the problems you are experiencing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) because chatty, open-ended questions aren't generally useful to the broader community.&#xD;&#xA;- Only a select few people can answer your direct questions. We aren't in a position to guess what these developers were thinking - only they can." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20036" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7182" RevisionGUID="00b3f6d0-1bec-4992-ab0e-40368fad32d7" CreationDate="2015-02-18T20:16:00.627" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo corrected" Text="You're on Stack Overflow and you've found a question that isn't about coding. It's about design or something squishy like that. You are trying to be helpful, and you put a comment in the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should try asking on Programmers.SE instead. --YourName 2 minutes ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... and suddenly, out of nowhere Programmer.SE users sweep in and saying:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No, this isn't a good question for Programmers.SE --AnotherName 5 seconds ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are they saying that this isn't a good question for Programmers.SE? What is in scope on that squishy site with the out of focus whiteboard background and a coffee thing as its favico?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should I look for when determining if a question *should* go on Programmers?  And while you're at it answering these questions, why do they get so annoyed at these suggestions? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20037" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7187" RevisionGUID="9c7922e1-f849-4927-ab12-d519d13c0563" CreationDate="2015-02-18T20:44:57.043" UserId="47" Text="**Do not edit your question into another one.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It makes any existing answers useless and any votes meaningless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ask a new question but link back to your original one to show why you are asking this one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20038" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7182" RevisionGUID="8795d94b-2aed-43dd-92d7-7fd0af5f1310" CreationDate="2015-02-19T02:09:44.537" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/568230925663924224" />
  <row Id="20039" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7156" RevisionGUID="07250200-59c3-47a8-8947-b31c933f265e" CreationDate="2015-02-19T11:56:54.210" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[5654],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="20040" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7133" RevisionGUID="9a96ca04-3ca5-4059-93af-2b2e7ac7bf14" CreationDate="2015-02-19T11:57:02.310" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[5746,6983],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:5099,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Bart van Ingen Schenau&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="20041" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7188" RevisionGUID="e7ff3a10-8a91-4e5c-acf5-887b8538df4b" CreationDate="2015-02-19T16:28:23.917" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="While Thomas' answer accurately addresses your concerns, I do want to add one caveat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions asking about programming _history_, while marginally off-topic, may escape close votes if they are interesting. Furthermore, history is history: it already happened, and if a question can be accurately and effectively answered, that answer should not change unless new information is unearthed. Given that software development is not exactly a secret profession, most of these questions are either objectively answerable, or the information is lost to the mists of time. There is not much in-between there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions asking about programming _current events_ most certainly will be closed as off-topic. Asking &quot;who develops this&quot; can change: it is voiced in the present tense. A visitor from Google finding the question a year from now might not get accurate information _in the future_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, the answer to your question is not interesting or useful in and of itself. I honestly do not care if Bjarne Stroustrup or Mickey Mouse invented C++. It was invented, and I can use it. If you want to know &quot;why was C++ designed to support feature X&quot; that is again marginally off-topic, but might yield an answer that is interesting and relevant to my day to day coding. There are many examples of questions like that avoiding closure and even being upvoted despite technically being off-topic. _They provide value_ even if only a little bit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20046" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7185" RevisionGUID="3fc5194e-3da3-423d-9f1b-a5bb2b83c49f" CreationDate="2015-02-20T08:13:41.270" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/568684902973116416" />
  <row Id="20047" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7190" RevisionGUID="f5485dbc-1766-483b-80ec-d1c39c057e96" CreationDate="2015-02-20T16:30:42.607" UserId="53263" Text="Coming up on this discussion - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/271585/53263&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I'm trying to avoid this problem - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1127/are-answers-being-posted-as-comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My answer is reproduced here, less the OP's original quote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Wow! We do not work on the same code bases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Inversion of Control frameworks - like Guice or Spring - essentially strive to make this half of your problem, a pillar of design. Many arguments in constructors is totally fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Seriously, a typical constructor in my code base might have 20+ arguments. No apologies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have delete votes for this. I feel this is wrong because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * people should be allowed to answer questions...&#xD;&#xA; * incompletely because they have something substantive to say but don't&#xD;&#xA;   have the desire for whatever reason to write something extensive...&#xD;&#xA; * letting others write better answers to flesh out the response if&#xD;&#xA;   possible...&#xD;&#xA; * because an incomplete answer such as mine may be&#xD;&#xA;   extremely helpful to the OP and future visitors...&#xD;&#xA; * and answer *as* an answer since the comment muck is not appropriate for what is, in fact, an answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm disappointed I have delete votes and downvotes for what seems to be incompleteness alone, and want to see what meta thinks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20048" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7190" RevisionGUID="f5485dbc-1766-483b-80ec-d1c39c057e96" CreationDate="2015-02-20T16:30:42.607" UserId="53263" Text="Are incomplete answers okay?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20049" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7190" RevisionGUID="f5485dbc-1766-483b-80ec-d1c39c057e96" CreationDate="2015-02-20T16:30:42.607" UserId="53263" Text="|discussion|answers|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20050" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7191" RevisionGUID="4d52ab09-c5a7-4417-96d6-1796d56359a9" CreationDate="2015-02-20T16:59:31.170" UserId="4" Text="It's not incomplete. How does it answer the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is: &quot;How does one keep argument counts low and still keep third party dependencies separate?&quot; The bulk of your answer is talking about your codebase and how you allow for large numbers of arguments to constructors. An answer of &quot;you don't need to&quot; with sufficient explanation for why it's not a concern would be OK, but only one line of your answer deals with methods for minimizing the impact of large constructors. Maybe if you expanded on that part and removed the commentary, it would be OK." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20055" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7193" RevisionGUID="f20c4e92-a9af-4bbc-87b9-11589c97b03a" CreationDate="2015-02-21T08:12:30.353" UserId="31260" Text="A (first-day) user quickly dropped two [code dumps](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/258685/839601) at our front page: [1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/273937/problem-to-load-code-of-captcha-in-codeigniter), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/273938/how-to-run-this-code-in-codeigniter-where-to-save-all-these-files-in-codeigniter). That's all-right, 'it happens, these will probably be closed and deleted soon, fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What made me raise eyebrows though is [their SO profile](http://stackoverflow.com/users/4590497/mahesh) - it also shows that they are a first day visitor, but there are _no_ questions (even though one may suspect that users like this one will try to push their stuff anywhere where possible).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How comes? Does Stack Overflow have a magic dust to _repel_ stuff like that? If yes, can we have some of it at Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20056" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7193" RevisionGUID="f20c4e92-a9af-4bbc-87b9-11589c97b03a" CreationDate="2015-02-21T08:12:30.353" UserId="31260" Text="Is this something that we can learn from Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20057" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7193" RevisionGUID="f20c4e92-a9af-4bbc-87b9-11589c97b03a" CreationDate="2015-02-21T08:12:30.353" UserId="31260" Text="|support|questions|low-quality-posts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20058" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7194" RevisionGUID="cf81b224-ca01-49e2-a0c1-cd1666f7255a" CreationDate="2015-02-21T16:18:02.430" UserId="1204" Text="Those two questions would most likely have been caught by the **question quality filters** on SO.  They would have seen one of those red popups that asks them to improve their question.  Rather than making an attempt to improve his questions, this user must have simply given up and asked here instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These filters are considered Big City solutions to a Big City problem.  AFAIK, they're only used on the Trilogy (SO, SE and SU), where the big city problems are especially acute.  Account blocks are effective, but only after the user has posted a couple of questions and used up some of the community's time in moderation effort.  On a small site like Programmers we can afford that, but on Stack Overflow it is necessary to stop these kinds of questions before they ever get posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The percentage of first-time questions that get blocked in this way on SO is actually quite high.  Unlike the Account Block mechanism, the Question Quality Filter is custom-tuned for each site, and putting it here wouldn't block that many questions anyway, as the only questions that we get that are like this seem to come from people who have gotten lost, or who have lost their privileges at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20059" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7195" RevisionGUID="189bf6d9-dde4-4f1c-897f-b75dcd906593" CreationDate="2015-02-23T16:59:42.620" UserId="1204" Text="I posted this comment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Here's my contribution: http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/restful-web-services-a-tutorial/240169069.  It seems to go into sufficient detail to provide a satisfactory answer to your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which apparently broke the URL.  Here is the link to the comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/274173/is-this-pattern-restful-or-something-else?noredirect=1#comment561385_274173&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clue:  What's that semicolon doing there?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20060" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7195" RevisionGUID="189bf6d9-dde4-4f1c-897f-b75dcd906593" CreationDate="2015-02-23T16:59:42.620" UserId="1204" Text="Comment editor breaks some URLs" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20061" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7195" RevisionGUID="189bf6d9-dde4-4f1c-897f-b75dcd906593" CreationDate="2015-02-23T16:59:42.620" UserId="1204" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20062" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7196" RevisionGUID="2652f8c5-3e02-4ebf-aefc-b604a4045247" CreationDate="2015-02-23T18:09:41.170" UserId="13045" Text="This is hitting an edge case with the markdown [space forcer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/44011/zero-width-non-joiner-allows-unclickable-titles) workaround. In order to remove it we have to rework the comment structure from tables to something nicer. I'm deferring this one for now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20063" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7195" RevisionGUID="2757d1e6-2f9a-4362-b49e-ca6a344d4e5a" CreationDate="2015-02-23T18:11:17.680" UserId="13045" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-deferred|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20065" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7197" RevisionGUID="f1747bce-7c8a-4534-b242-7038b0d6142d" CreationDate="2015-02-23T21:35:28.393" UserId="15455" Text="I recently posted a question on programmers with the view to getting advice on handling individual work contributions outside the realm of employment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Originally, I did mistaking theme this as looking for legal advice and the boundaries between what one can and cannot do when contributing to open source projects that happen to be used by my current employer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the feedback given, I did reword this just to get general advice from the development community. I seriously doubt I am the first person to have encountered this problem and I'm sure there are a number who can offer suggestions or advice to promote what I am trying to do. This is purely from the point of view of a developer trying to promote the idea of contributing back to open source projects, so I don't see it worthy or moving to another exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am very open minded to rework the question/content based on feedback if it can be salvaged somehow. I seems like good enough question that a developer may learn from the answers given. It's not unknown for developer to take a liking to an open source tool used in his job and decide to look at it outside work and contribute be it in code or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any suggestions would be welcome.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20066" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7197" RevisionGUID="f1747bce-7c8a-4534-b242-7038b0d6142d" CreationDate="2015-02-23T21:35:28.393" UserId="15455" Text="Advice regarding &quot;How can I convince my manager to contribute back to the open source community?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20067" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7197" RevisionGUID="f1747bce-7c8a-4534-b242-7038b0d6142d" CreationDate="2015-02-23T21:35:28.393" UserId="15455" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20068" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7198" RevisionGUID="3838676b-d117-42c4-bfb2-40ec76603886" CreationDate="2015-02-23T21:47:03.070" UserId="15455" Text="I've noticed this a number of times when I have asked question and I've observed it in others too. When a question is asked, I often find 2-3 votes to close the question after about a minute. There is no comment stating why the vote was raised with a view to helping the author reword or indeed remove the question completely because it is unsuitable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, one should read the FAQ on asking questions, but I've found people vote to close questions because they perceive them as a waste of time, or not a question they would ask. Often I've added a comment such as &quot;hardly community oriented to down vote without giving a reason..&quot; trying to get answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So rather than be vague, would it be worth having a facility to give a reason for why a given question should be closed. Given it's a community, I'd like to think we were trying to help one another out a little and going an extra mile to help people shape questions that are fit for purpose isn't really a painful exercise." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20069" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7198" RevisionGUID="3838676b-d117-42c4-bfb2-40ec76603886" CreationDate="2015-02-23T21:47:03.070" UserId="15455" Text="Would it be worth forcing a community member to specify a reason for voting to close a question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20070" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7198" RevisionGUID="3838676b-d117-42c4-bfb2-40ec76603886" CreationDate="2015-02-23T21:47:03.070" UserId="15455" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20071" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7199" RevisionGUID="39693056-8c0d-43e3-b185-26a8b78bb14a" CreationDate="2015-02-23T21:49:05.883" UserId="47" Text="No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The explanation is in the close reason itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding another comment would just be duplicating information." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20072" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7200" RevisionGUID="59afe1c1-cf4e-46ce-b159-b1dedf3e408a" CreationDate="2015-02-23T23:07:44.863" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="&gt; When a question is asked, I often find 2-3 votes to close the question after about a minute.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the most challenging aspects of fixing a question that is a poor fit for Programmers.SE is when the question gets answers before it gets closed. This makes changing the question to a better one (either the OP taking the feedback of the close reason itself, or others working with the OP) harder because we endeavor to not obsolete answers (and up voted answers are only able to be deleted by mods).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, the quick close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;There is no comment stating why the vote was raised with a view to helping the author reword or indeed remove the question completely because it is unsuitable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When commenting on questions before it is closed this either can lead to additional consternation for the OP - especially in the cases when the close vote *doesn't* go through. Those comments sometimes hang around for some time and can be confusing to other readers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is one where the OP is willing to work with it, *and* the question is one that is not a poor fit (person asking for software libraries, or a code dump, or polling for opinions, etc...) then it is possible to engage the OP in comments and fix the question (or do so wholesale one's self).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there have been situations in the past where trying to improve an unclosed question has lead to significant comment, meta, and chat consternation.  The OP doesn't see the reason for the change, you see &quot;show 23 more comments&quot; under the question, there's a meta post about people trying to change what is fundamentally a perfect question and the like.  I'm going to say this really isn't enjoyable for *anyone* involved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have also been times (I'd have to dig a bit in chat to find an example) where people have admitted they wouldn't have been motivated to fix the question unless it was closed without answers *first*.  The quick closure got them to change it while if it had gotten an answer or wasn't closed it wouldn't have been fixed to be reopened.  A good open question is better than a poor, answered, closed one for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, the lest conflict likely process is the close fast / edit / reopen. Other ones are more likely to have conflict and make it harder to end up with a good open question.  Commenting about obvious issues (standard close reasons) or doing an Attwoodian transform on a question while answers are coming in makes this all the more difficult to end up with a satisfactory result.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why I often close first and then work to fix if it can be fixed.  There's also the aspect of the time commitments. One doesn't always have the time available to do a significant edit or work with the OP in comments right at that time - but it *still* needs to be closed sooner than later if it isn't fixed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20073" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7198" RevisionGUID="1ca3589f-5f19-4ec9-a249-737f120e8e75" CreationDate="2015-02-23T23:08:15.070" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|feature-request|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20074" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7195" RevisionGUID="a0428447-300f-4112-b4f6-38b636f64985" CreationDate="2015-02-24T02:01:06.223" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-deferred|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20075" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7201" RevisionGUID="72aadeff-b6dd-42eb-b847-a42557f66d64" CreationDate="2015-02-24T15:12:16.913" UserId="101820" Text="I agree, in at least one sense. There is a category of questions that may seem subjective, and can perhaps even be worded in a subjective manner, but are still answerable in an objective way and in a way that contributes to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often, these questions are particularly difficult ones. For example, I saw a question that was something like &quot;what's the best way to decompose this hard mathematical problem into multiple, parallel threads?&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was closed as subjective, but, had it been phrased more carefully (e.g. &quot;*is there* a known way to decompose this hard mathematical problem into multiple threads?&quot;) I thought it would have made a good addition to the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The moderator who closed the question clearly was focused on that &quot;what's the best&quot; part of the question. But that's really just a red herring. It's not as if there were multiple, competing, viable, well-known solutions to the problem being asked about. It's not like the poster asked &quot;what's the best text editor&quot; (similar phraseology aside). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose it takes a certain amount of familiarity with basic computer science to differentiate between &quot;what's the best word processor&quot; and more legitimate questions like &quot;what's the best way to convert infix notation to postfix&quot;. The latter question  *is not* subjective. There is a single, good answer that most people with a computer science background know (or at least knew). Ultimately, that makes it a legitimate question for this site, in my opinion (had it not almost certainly been answered here already)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20076" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7201" RevisionGUID="365463af-a9b6-4c56-a485-d6ecc6a2867e" CreationDate="2015-02-24T15:18:21.197" UserId="101820" Comment="added 420 characters in body" Text="I agree, in at least one sense. There is a category of questions that may seem subjective, and can perhaps even be worded in a subjective manner, but are still answerable in an objective way and in a way that contributes to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often, these questions are particularly difficult ones. For example, I saw a question that was something like &quot;what's the best way to decompose this hard mathematical problem into multiple, parallel threads?&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was closed as subjective, but, had it been phrased more carefully (e.g. &quot;*is there* a known way to decompose this hard mathematical problem into multiple threads?&quot;) I thought it would have made a good addition to the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The moderator who closed the question clearly was focused on that &quot;what's the best&quot; part of the question. But that's really just a red herring. It's not as if there were multiple, competing, viable, well-known solutions to the problem being asked about. It's not like the poster asked &quot;what's the best text editor&quot; (similar phraseology aside). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose it takes a certain amount of familiarity with basic computer science to differentiate between &quot;what's the best word processor&quot; and more legitimate questions like &quot;what's the best way to convert infix notation to postfix&quot;. The latter question  *is not* subjective. There is a single, good answer that most people with a computer science background know (or at least knew). Ultimately, that makes it a legitimate question for this site, in my opinion (had it not almost certainly been answered here already).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it may not be realistic to expect moderators to have a background in computer science, it is reasonable to expect that those who are weak in certain areas will defer to others in dealing with questions that touch on these areas. Ultimately, that's the expectation that's not being met here, in my opinion. Scanning for words like &quot;best&quot; is a poor substitute for the knowledge and judgment I'm calling for." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20077" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7201" RevisionGUID="da179d52-cdbb-4e48-8bb7-fb1536be8139" CreationDate="2015-02-24T15:28:51.817" UserId="101820" Comment="Grammar" Text="I agree, in at least one sense. There is a category of questions that may seem subjective, and can perhaps even be worded in a subjective manner, but are still answerable in an objective way and in a way that contributes to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often, these questions are particularly difficult ones. For example, I saw a question that was something like &quot;what's the best way to decompose this hard mathematical problem into multiple, parallel threads?&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was closed as subjective, but, had it been phrased more carefully (e.g. &quot;*is there* a known way to decompose this hard mathematical problem into multiple threads?&quot;) I thought it would have made a good addition to the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The moderator who closed the question clearly was focused on that &quot;what's the best&quot; part of the question. But that's really just a red herring. It's not as if there were multiple, competing, viable, well-known solutions to the problem being asked about. It's not like the poster asked &quot;what's the best text editor&quot; (similar phraseology aside). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose it takes a certain amount of familiarity with basic computer science to differentiate between &quot;what's the best word processor&quot; and more legitimate questions like &quot;what's the best way to convert infix notation to postfix&quot;. The latter question  *is not* subjective. There is a single, good answer that most people with a computer science background know (or at least knew). That would make it a legitimate question for this site, in my opinion, had it not almost certainly been answered here already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it may not be realistic to expect moderators to have a background in computer science, it is reasonable to expect that those who are weak in certain areas will defer to others in dealing with questions that touch on these areas. Ultimately, that's the expectation that's not being met here, in my opinion. Scanning for words like &quot;best&quot; is a poor substitute for the knowledge and judgment I'm calling for." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20078" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="1675" RevisionGUID="3c9ca903-5f16-4297-87b3-c0f3cb547d36" CreationDate="2015-02-24T20:37:24.803" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6483],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:28988,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;World Engineer&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="20079" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2136" RevisionGUID="d54c3765-17bb-4cca-b450-211ec6567914" CreationDate="2015-02-24T20:37:32.453" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6483],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:28988,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;World Engineer&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="20080" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="c9e9cf8e-e92d-40cd-9352-7eb8cfc1b6b0" CreationDate="2015-02-24T22:17:06.070" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Increase header size. Call out common poor question types." Text="## What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Programmers.SE would be a good question on Stack Overflow. It's not too broad, not opinion, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Programmers.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Some commonly referred *poor* questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, we *don't* want these, though it seems like people keep suggesting them to be reposted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I don't understand...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). [There is an expectation](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773) that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here's my problem. Anyone have a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of commonly (incorrectly) referred questions are those of &quot;come up with a design or solution for me.&quot;  Similar to how Stack Overflow has issues with people doing problem statement questions (&quot;write a program that takes the average of three values&quot;), Programmers.SE has similar issues with similar questions (&quot;here is what I want the outcome to be, anyone have a solution?&quot;).  Neither Stack Overflow nor Programmers.SE is a code/solution writing service. Just because the question lacks code but has a problem statement doesn't mean it belongs here as is. The question needs to be fixed up significantly before it is reposted on the proper site and suggesting to do so with the question in its current state does a disservice to the person asking the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A blog I read said...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our custom off topic reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What technology to take up&#xD;&#xA;* What tool to use (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* What career to take or what to study&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programing related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* software requirements&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I'll point out a caveat with that &quot;software licensing&quot; thing.  It's about how to license *your* software and try to stay in proper compliance when pulling a MIT licensed library into a GPL project.  It is *not* about the &quot;can I let a friend use IntelliJ personal license if I'm not using it?&quot;, &quot;can I use facebook's API to do something legally?&quot; and the interpretation of other third party licenses.  If the word 'legal' shows up in that question at all, it will likely get closed as legal advice (thats in the help center too - under &quot;and it's not about&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about software design concepts.  Remember that algorithm questions are on topic on Stack Overflow (so you don't need to migrate those).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the Perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the Delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Programmers.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Programmers.SE was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with [&quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260 &quot;we even had to introduce a chat bot for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow&quot;) and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) it's problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - it's exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so comments a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, it's like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if it's a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20081" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="69e386fc-34a8-447c-ad2b-036bc67e3b57" CreationDate="2015-02-24T22:26:07.693" UserId="31260" Comment="For a more detailed outline of what is generally expected at Programmers, see http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important" Text="## What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Programmers.SE would be a good question on Stack Overflow. It's not too broad, not opinion, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Programmers.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Some commonly referred *poor* questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, we *don't* want these, though it seems like people keep suggesting them to be reposted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I don't understand...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). [There is an expectation](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773) that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here's my problem. Anyone have a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of commonly (incorrectly) referred questions are those of &quot;come up with a design or solution for me.&quot;  Similar to how Stack Overflow has issues with people doing problem statement questions (&quot;write a program that takes the average of three values&quot;), Programmers.SE has similar issues with similar questions (&quot;here is what I want the outcome to be, anyone have a solution?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Stack Overflow nor Programmers.SE is a code/solution writing service. Just because the question lacks code but has a problem statement doesn't mean it belongs here as is. The question needs to be fixed up significantly before it is reposted on the proper site and suggesting to do so with the question in its current state does a disservice to the person asking the question. For a more detailed outline of what is generally expected at Programmers, see http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A blog I read said...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our custom off topic reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What technology to take up](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/40980)&#xD;&#xA;* [What tool to use](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* [What career to take or what to study](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programing related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* software requirements&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I'll point out a caveat with that &quot;software licensing&quot; thing.  It's about how to license *your* software and try to stay in proper compliance when pulling a MIT licensed library into a GPL project.  It is *not* about the &quot;can I let a friend use IntelliJ personal license if I'm not using it?&quot;, &quot;can I use facebook's API to do something legally?&quot; and the interpretation of other third party licenses.  If the word 'legal' shows up in that question at all, it will likely get closed as legal advice (thats in the help center too - under &quot;and it's not about&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about software design concepts.  Remember that algorithm questions are on topic on Stack Overflow (so you don't need to migrate those).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the Perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the Delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Programmers.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Programmers.SE was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with [&quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260 &quot;we even had to introduce a chat bot for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow&quot;) and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) it's problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - it's exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so comments a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, it's like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if it's a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20082" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="ebfc1a4c-f7e7-48c6-a50f-76ca048ab115" CreationDate="2015-02-25T06:33:27.490" UserId="31260" Comment="legal advice += http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" Text="## What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Programmers.SE would be a good question on Stack Overflow. It's not too broad, not opinion, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Programmers.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Some commonly referred *poor* questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, we *don't* want these, though it seems like people keep suggesting them to be reposted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I don't understand...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). [There is an expectation](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773) that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here's my problem. Anyone have a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of commonly (incorrectly) referred questions are those of &quot;come up with a design or solution for me.&quot;  Similar to how Stack Overflow has issues with people doing problem statement questions (&quot;write a program that takes the average of three values&quot;), Programmers.SE has similar issues with similar questions (&quot;here is what I want the outcome to be, anyone have a solution?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Stack Overflow nor Programmers.SE is a code/solution writing service. Just because the question lacks code but has a problem statement doesn't mean it belongs here as is. The question needs to be fixed up significantly before it is reposted on the proper site and suggesting to do so with the question in its current state does a disservice to the person asking the question. For a more detailed outline of what is generally expected at Programmers, see http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A blog I read said...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our custom off topic reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What technology to take up](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/40980)&#xD;&#xA;* [What tool to use](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* [What career to take or what to study](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programing related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* software requirements&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I'll point out a caveat with that &quot;software licensing&quot; thing.  It's about how to license *your* software and try to stay in proper compliance when pulling a MIT licensed library into a GPL project.  It is *not* about the &quot;can I let a friend use IntelliJ personal license if I'm not using it?&quot;, &quot;can I use facebook's API to do something legally?&quot; and the interpretation of other third party licenses.  If the word 'legal' shows up in that question at all, it will likely get closed as legal advice (that's in the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) too - under &quot;and it's not about&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about software design concepts.  Remember that algorithm questions are on topic on Stack Overflow (so you don't need to migrate those).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the Perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the Delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Programmers.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Programmers.SE was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with [&quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260 &quot;we even had to introduce a chat bot for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow&quot;) and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) it's problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - it's exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so comments a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, it's like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if it's a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20083" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7202" RevisionGUID="1d52a3ac-e972-4fc1-b923-94f64f66cf36" CreationDate="2015-02-26T14:14:05.433" UserId="14747" Text="My question got closed as off-topic with the reason that it's &quot;asking for advice on what to do&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/274551/what-are-the-possible-repercussions-of-developing-an-application-for-a-customer?noredirect=1#comment562488_274551&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am trying to understand why, and if there is anything more I can do to salvage the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The link of the close comment links to this meta post on **The Workplace**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/2693/custom-off-topic-close-reasons-change/2695#2695&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not even sure why a Workplace meta post counts as a reason to close on Programmers, but I followed the advice there anyway:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Another alternative is to edit your post to ask about why and how you should make the decision, rather than just what decision to make. For instance, instead of asking &quot;Should I take the job in the big multi-national company or the up-and-coming startup?&quot; you could ask a question that will help you make that decision, like &quot;How can I figure out the financial health of a startup I am applying to by asking questions in an interview?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I edited the question to not ask for what I should do, but for information that helps me make the decision myself. The question got closed anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also I am not sure that the reason for closure in the meta post even applies to me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our goal here at The Workplace is to help out people in the future who are facing the same problem. When people ask us for personalized advice, a lot of the specific details will not apply to other people who come across the question since their details may be slightly different and they can't determine whether or not the answer is appropriate for their situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem in the question is pretty generic and I tried to keep it general enough so that it will be helpful to people with a similar problem (customers asking for something that violates someone else's TOS).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone mentioned that it is a matter of legal advice, but that's only a part of the problem really. Also, there are many other questions with a similar direction that weren't closed for that reason, for example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86754/is-it-illegal-to-rewrite-every-line-of-an-open-source-project-in-a-slightly-diff&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49067/what-to-do-if-you-find-a-vulnerability-in-a-competitors-site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both of those questions handle legal topics as well, but are deemed on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Can someone explain to me why my question is off-topic?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Is there a chance to edit it so it could be reopened? If yes, in what way should I change the question?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20084" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7202" RevisionGUID="1d52a3ac-e972-4fc1-b923-94f64f66cf36" CreationDate="2015-02-26T14:14:05.433" UserId="14747" Text="Question closed because of &quot;asking for advice on what to do&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20085" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7202" RevisionGUID="1d52a3ac-e972-4fc1-b923-94f64f66cf36" CreationDate="2015-02-26T14:14:05.433" UserId="14747" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20086" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7203" RevisionGUID="7e7d016e-0549-4c45-83d7-5b873bf2a7f6" CreationDate="2015-02-26T14:27:24.280" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are the possible repercussions of developing an application for a customer that will violate the TOS of another company?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is one that is purely a legal one. The possible repercussions are whatever the lawyers at the company dream up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As this is a legal question, it is not one that we, as programmers, can answer and is thus off topic under the category of 'legal assistance' as described in the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20087" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7204" RevisionGUID="a4469ce6-f0dc-4861-a6ad-c3465beaf696" CreationDate="2015-02-26T14:31:07.940" UserId="51654" Text="&gt; Can someone explain to me why my question is off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two big problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. We are not lawyers. That means we can't provide anything that even smells like legal advice without getting into legal trouble ourselves. Framing it as ethics doesn't help, since at it's core you're asking about the legal aspects.&#xD;&#xA; 2. What _you_ should do depends on you, your client, your jurisdiction, etc. Those sorts of questions are not great since they are not very helpful to future users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a chance to edit it so it could be reopened? If yes, in what way should I change the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I certainly think so. I'm not sure how though, there's a few different options that are fairly borderline. Focusing on how to deal with the problem from the perspective of a consultant/contractor might work, but it might not be what you want. We can't help you choose, but we can certainly help you fulfill your decision once you make it (how to tell client that you can't do something you think is legally questionably, how to get google results without violating TOS). " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20088" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7202" RevisionGUID="31c3c203-9640-4281-a691-23b8cea5746f" CreationDate="2015-02-26T14:44:02.707" UserId="14747" Comment="added 432 characters in body" Text="My question got closed as off-topic with the reason that it's &quot;asking for advice on what to do&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/274551/what-are-the-possible-repercussions-of-developing-an-application-for-a-customer?noredirect=1#comment562488_274551&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am trying to understand why, and if there is anything more I can do to salvage the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The link of the close comment links to this meta post on **The Workplace**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/2693/custom-off-topic-close-reasons-change/2695#2695&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not even sure why a Workplace meta post counts as a reason to close on Programmers, but I followed the advice there anyway:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Another alternative is to edit your post to ask about why and how you should make the decision, rather than just what decision to make. For instance, instead of asking &quot;Should I take the job in the big multi-national company or the up-and-coming startup?&quot; you could ask a question that will help you make that decision, like &quot;How can I figure out the financial health of a startup I am applying to by asking questions in an interview?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I edited the question to not ask for what I should do, but for information that helps me make the decision myself. The question got closed anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also I am not sure that the reason for closure in the meta post even applies to me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our goal here at The Workplace is to help out people in the future who are facing the same problem. When people ask us for personalized advice, a lot of the specific details will not apply to other people who come across the question since their details may be slightly different and they can't determine whether or not the answer is appropriate for their situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem in the question is pretty generic and I tried to keep it general enough so that it will be helpful to people with a similar problem (customers asking for something that violates someone else's TOS).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone mentioned that it is a matter of legal advice, but that's only a part of the problem really. Also, there are many other questions with a similar direction that weren't closed for that reason, for example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86754/is-it-illegal-to-rewrite-every-line-of-an-open-source-project-in-a-slightly-diff&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49067/what-to-do-if-you-find-a-vulnerability-in-a-competitors-site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both of those questions handle legal topics as well, but are deemed on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Can someone explain to me why my question is off-topic?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Is there a chance to edit it so it could be reopened? If yes, in what way should I change the question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To make my point, this question is both about a legal topic and asking what to do (and in relation to a client asking for something risky as well on top!), and still is on-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118136/should-i-accept-to-write-unsecure-code-if-my-employer-requests-me-to-do-so&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really have a hard time to see where the line is between on- and off-topic questions here to be honest." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20089" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7204" RevisionGUID="7f235d54-3311-4eab-9633-d482588a7090" CreationDate="2015-02-26T14:52:56.657" UserId="51654" Comment="edited body" Text="&gt; Can someone explain to me why my question is off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two big problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. We are not lawyers. That means we can't provide anything that even smells like legal advice without getting into legal trouble ourselves. Framing it as ethics doesn't help, since at it's core you're asking about the legal aspects.&#xD;&#xA; 2. What _you_ should do depends on you, your client, your jurisdiction, etc. Those sorts of questions are not great since they are not very helpful to future users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a chance to edit it so it could be reopened? If yes, in what way should I change the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I certainly think so. I'm not sure how though, there's a few different options that are fairly borderline. Focusing on how to deal with the problem from the perspective of a consultant/contractor might work, but it might not be what you want. We can't help you choose, but we can certainly help you fulfill your decision once you make it (how to tell client that you can't do something you think is legally questionable, how to get google results without violating TOS). " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20090" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7205" RevisionGUID="567e10e0-a686-4224-b33d-806badd1ad63" CreationDate="2015-02-26T16:39:40.923" UserId="31260" Text="Given that asker [didn't post at SO](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7193/is-this-something-that-we-can-learn-from-stack-overflow#comment21507_7193 &quot;as pointed by SO moderator&quot;) and assuming that minor difference in [quality filter settings](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5857/31260 &quot;73 vs 75&quot;) between Programmers and SO didn't play role here, one possible explanation could be that asker somehow realised that question like that wouldn't fly at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They could maybe learn about this from colleagues or classmates or maybe even from their prior (blocked and deleted so that there's no way to tell) SO accounts. In this case, they could probably think that Programmers is a possibly safer place to try their luck (given quality of the questions asked, I consider it evident that they didn't pay attention to [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this was the reason for choosing our site to dump their stuff at, then there's probably nothing that we can learn from SO here, if only that growing site much larger won't help with this either. I mean, yeah, probably many more potential askers are now aware about SO quality requirements, but questions I vote close 40 a day every day in [SO review queue](http://stackoverflow.com/users/839601/gnat?tab=activities&amp;sort=reviews) suggest that there's more than enough those who don't know or don't care.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One option worth considering is for system to automatically detect some of the potentially troublesome questions and feed these for [Triage review](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7053/31260 &quot;what's this&quot;) without polluting site front page, but as far as I know this feature is not yet ready to use (still under testing at SO)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20091" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7175" RevisionGUID="9d02397d-8670-4b97-b43f-ef7efc217757" CreationDate="2015-02-26T20:45:16.597" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/571048373450608640" />
  <row Id="20092" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="0bbd7a3a-aeca-4651-a256-d5f311296b6f" CreationDate="2015-02-28T16:27:41.473" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 501 characters in body" Text="## What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Programmers.SE would be a good question on Stack Overflow.  This isn't to say that if it is on topic on Stack Overflow it is on topic here.  Rather that it's not too broad, not opinion, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Programmers.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggesting to someone to repost a question that is too broad or primary opinion would get it closed on Programmers.SE too and that's really something we'd rather avoid.  It is no fun to get a question bounced from one site to another and being told repeatedly we don't want it here.  If it needs to be fixed, it needs to be fixed before it is reposted or telling the OP *exactly* what needs to be fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Some commonly referred *poor* questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, we *don't* want these, though it seems like people keep suggesting them to be reposted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I don't understand...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). [There is an expectation](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773) that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here's my problem. Anyone have a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of commonly (incorrectly) referred questions are those of &quot;come up with a design or solution for me.&quot;  Similar to how Stack Overflow has issues with people doing problem statement questions (&quot;write a program that takes the average of three values&quot;), Programmers.SE has similar issues with similar questions (&quot;here is what I want the outcome to be, anyone have a solution?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Stack Overflow nor Programmers.SE is a code/solution writing service. Just because the question lacks code but has a problem statement doesn't mean it belongs here as is. The question needs to be fixed up significantly before it is reposted on the proper site and suggesting to do so with the question in its current state does a disservice to the person asking the question. For a more detailed outline of what is generally expected at Programmers, see http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A blog I read said...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our custom off topic reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What technology to take up](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/40980)&#xD;&#xA;* [What tool to use](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* [What career to take or what to study](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programing related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* software requirements&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I'll point out a caveat with that &quot;software licensing&quot; thing.  It's about how to license *your* software and try to stay in proper compliance when pulling a MIT licensed library into a GPL project.  It is *not* about the &quot;can I let a friend use IntelliJ personal license if I'm not using it?&quot;, &quot;can I use facebook's API to do something legally?&quot; and the interpretation of other third party licenses.  If the word 'legal' shows up in that question at all, it will likely get closed as legal advice (that's in the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) too - under &quot;and it's not about&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about software design concepts.  Remember that algorithm questions are on topic on Stack Overflow (so you don't need to migrate those).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the Perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the Delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Programmers.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Programmers.SE was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with [&quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260 &quot;we even had to introduce a chat bot for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow&quot;) and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) it's problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - it's exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so comments a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, it's like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if it's a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20093" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7197" RevisionGUID="065d73ad-5aef-46d6-a6ac-6c9cb268dc71" CreationDate="2015-02-28T16:57:14.747" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Added a link to the question being discussed." Text="I recently [posted a question][1] on programmers with the view to getting advice on handling individual work contributions outside the realm of employment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Originally, I did mistaking theme this as looking for legal advice and the boundaries between what one can and cannot do when contributing to open source projects that happen to be used by my current employer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the feedback given, I did reword this just to get general advice from the development community. I seriously doubt I am the first person to have encountered this problem and I'm sure there are a number who can offer suggestions or advice to promote what I am trying to do. This is purely from the point of view of a developer trying to promote the idea of contributing back to open source projects, so I don't see it worthy or moving to another exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am very open minded to rework the question/content based on feedback if it can be salvaged somehow. I seems like good enough question that a developer may learn from the answers given. It's not unknown for developer to take a liking to an open source tool used in his job and decide to look at it outside work and contribute be it in code or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any suggestions would be welcome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/274073/22815" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20094" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7206" RevisionGUID="5ca72b79-7445-49ad-b3c5-df092905375a" CreationDate="2015-02-28T17:04:40.870" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Good questions need to be specific to avoid being &quot;too broad&quot; and have a small number of valid answers to avoid being too subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for advice on something is fine - but not using the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A format. It is too open-ended. While a good answer can be long and contain many supporting details, an answer to &quot;I need advice&quot; could be an entire novel.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A better question would focus on one facet of the problem in a way that can be objectively answered _and_ applies to more people than just you: see the graphic in the [on-topic page][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please remember that helping _you_ (for any value of &quot;you&quot;) is not the goal of this site. The goal is to be a repository of knowledge to help _many_ people. This is why we may appear to be so picky about what questions stay open and which are closed. While a question and its answers may help you in your specific situation, it does not necessarily help _many_ programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20095" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7157" RevisionGUID="1f7c8e0c-6554-42e4-bd80-8552bf395229" CreationDate="2015-02-28T17:50:49.637" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/571729248333000704" />
  <row Id="20096" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7207" RevisionGUID="000a8d2c-5081-4e11-ae85-45db55e88b79" CreationDate="2015-03-01T12:27:25.707" UserId="166557" Text="I've been doing quite a few edits in stackoverflow, and had pretty much 0 rejected so far. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of my edits target redundant text that is simply noise. For example: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;Thanks a lot.&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;Please help.&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;Hope that helps.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion above text contributes nothing to the actual post, and removing it would save a small (or even tiny) amount of reader's time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, [my first edit][1] on programmers.stackexchange was rejected because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This edit does not make the post even a little bit easier to read, easier to find, more accurate or more accessible. Changes are either completely superfluous or actively harm readability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Didn't my edit remove noise, that is, increase the info per time spent reading? Doesn't that make it _&quot;..even a little bit easier to read..&quot;_ ? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a flaw in my reasoning? Should I avoid such edits on this site? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/94843" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20097" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7207" RevisionGUID="000a8d2c-5081-4e11-ae85-45db55e88b79" CreationDate="2015-03-01T12:27:25.707" UserId="166557" Text="Rejected edit: &quot;Hope that helps&quot;. Changes superfluous or actively harm readability." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20098" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7207" RevisionGUID="000a8d2c-5081-4e11-ae85-45db55e88b79" CreationDate="2015-03-01T12:27:25.707" UserId="166557" Text="|discussion|suggested-edits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20099" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7208" RevisionGUID="2bf8b9cd-e70b-4e1f-a379-cd77547a7860" CreationDate="2015-03-01T14:15:16.640" UserId="6605" Text="The author of [this recent question][1], after receiving a valid answer, completely rewrote his question, invalidating the answer. The author also opened a bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should be done with such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should they be closed? If yes, why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or flagged?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or simply downvoted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or reverted to its original stage?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I imagine that the question should be reverted through the rollback to its initial form, without being closed, flagged or downvoted. But given the presence of a bounty, I'm not sure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/274609/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20100" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7208" RevisionGUID="2bf8b9cd-e70b-4e1f-a379-cd77547a7860" CreationDate="2015-03-01T14:15:16.640" UserId="6605" Text="What to do with the question with an opened bounty which was radically changed after being answered?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20101" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7208" RevisionGUID="2bf8b9cd-e70b-4e1f-a379-cd77547a7860" CreationDate="2015-03-01T14:15:16.640" UserId="6605" Text="|discussion|bounty|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20102" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7209" RevisionGUID="8a3e7de7-943e-4684-b9d1-ee1a5d8e0e70" CreationDate="2015-03-01T14:40:48.693" UserId="60357" Text="I am in favour of edits that remove irrelevant phrases. Any such edit is an improvement to the overall quality of the site. However, merely removing “Hope this helps.” is a *very minor edit*, especially compared with the length of that specific answer. When you edit a post, try to improve it as much as possible. Do not focus on only a single problem with a post, since there will often be other problems such as with spelling, grammar, markup, or flow that could be addressed as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, only fixing a single very obvious problem such as a “thanks in advance” phrase might suggest you only scan posts for very superficial problems in order to earn a quick +2 rep or the editor badge without real effort. (Though seriously, who would do that?). To discourage this perception, provide more in-depth edits, or show your familiarity with this site by answering questions :) Edit reviewers are probably more inclined to click the approve button when the edit doesn't come from a 101-rep user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging from your Stack Overflow edit history, you know how to make a really good edit, so you can apply those same skills here. Also, don't try to draw conclusions from a single data point. So far, only one edit of yours has been rejected on Programmers. While the two users who rejected your edit are pretty familiar with this site, suboptimal decisions happen now and then, and do not necessarily carry special significance." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20103" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7210" RevisionGUID="5eb198fd-78be-40f0-b9f5-7cf99f680394" CreationDate="2015-03-01T14:42:28.667" UserId="6605" Text="I think the major issue with your question (both its original form and the edited one) is that **you have two questions mixed in one**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. How to convince [someone] to contribute to back to the open source community?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a general question which applies to any company. The only (somehow) relevant context info is that a company uses open source software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. WTF is the reaction I received from my manager, since I did nothing wrong?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a specific question which concerns your particular case. Here, the context matters: what you did exactly to contribute to open source community, and how your company was mentioned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[My answer][1], if you've read it, replies exactly to this second question, explaining the reaction of your manager, and why you may indeed be subjected to disciplinary action—because you do your personal stuff during your work hours. This is essentially the situation which led you to ask the question in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice that [Snowman's answer][2] is also bound to the context. His answer is, IMHO, plainly wrong (sorry; nothing personal), because **it misses the point that your tutorials made no reference to the company**, but still attempts to explain the reaction of your manager *in your specific case*. If your tutorial was published as being written by *an* employee of Example Corp. instead of a named person (for instance, on a public corporate blog or documentation website or simply containing the name of the company), Snowman's answer would be right, and mine—wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, the way you formulated your question may also lead to **context-agnostic answers**, that is to explain how an abstract person working in an abstract company should convince an abstract manager to contribute to open source community—and the title of your question is exactly that. It's a perfectly valid question, except that **the context you provide in the question is then completely irrelevant and makes it impossible to answer this context-agnostic answer**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, you should split this question in two:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The first one will explain that you were contributing to open source community by writing a tutorial during your work hours, but your manager is angry and you don't understand why, since you believe that you did nothing wrong. By the way, you haven't mentioned the company anywhere in this tutorial, so it doesn't affect your company's PR. Why is your manager screaming at you? (My answer replies to that) Would it be better to mention the company in the tutorial? (Snowman's answer replies to that)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The second one explains simply that your company uses a lot of open source content, and you consider it fair to contribute back to open source community. How should you convince your management to do it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/274133/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/274075/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20104" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7211" RevisionGUID="50106054-4fb5-421b-ac15-397dc9763a15" CreationDate="2015-03-01T16:12:28.110" UserId="104375" Text="Just to chip in here as the question OP.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My actions were thought out, and intentions were sincere for the better choice for Stack and users.  &#xD;&#xA;I also understand your raising this Meta question. These things need to be discussed (i.e. no sour grapes...)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Raise a new question&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I saw no need to raise a new question as the topic and basic premise of both new and previous question data are the same.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Raising a new question would likely have been a dupe, and I wouldn't have been well received from users seeing I previously asked the same thing (as I dislike when others do).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact I edited *the entire text* does not automatically mean I changed the question, topic, or scope.  &#xD;&#xA;In essence all I did was reword, which produced the same question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An answer already exists&#xD;&#xA;-----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;MainMa wrote:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; after receiving a valid answer  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is arguably not that valid (I only upvoted for the thanks for the info and an additional option I had not thought of).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer doesn't really take into consideration my concern (in my original question text) about *injecting all data into the global space*.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I had no issue with the answer, I was grateful *Ixrec* provided new food for thought, and why I upvoted.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As the question is the same, the answer is still as valid a suggestion as it was prior to the edit.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Better question in the first place&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could argue why not make this &quot;better question&quot; in the first place.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I took 40 mins or so to write the original question, and thought it to be well written.   &#xD;&#xA;However, one cannot predict everything, and the *feedback* from 2 days with 44 views and no results, prompted me to believe, in addition to a bounty, my question could perhaps do with improvement as well.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On that concern, how does one define what size of edit is a *legitimate* edit, and what is too much?  &#xD;&#xA;I would have thought logically, and based on Stack's structure, if the edit does not change the scope of the question, then it is fine.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should I have done?&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;MainMa wrote:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I imagine that the question should be reverted through the rollback to its initial form, without being closed, flagged or downvoted.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What could I have done?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Had I created a new question, it would have been the same question asked in different words - and in Stack that is a dupe.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If my new text would have been a dupe, then they must be (arguably) &quot;the same&quot;, and so the edit acceptable.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could have just added the bounty, but that isn't ideal really, nor do I see any problem with me improving my question as it remained the same question, and avoided a dupe.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In summary, I believe I caused no issue.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I am sincerely ok if community (or mod) decides this should be reverted.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll be left stuck, however, as copying the new text to a new answer will be a dupe of my current one.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20105" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7212" RevisionGUID="c23b292d-e5ca-494e-ab71-f8fcbf2b3f85" CreationDate="2015-03-01T22:32:53.100" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="### Site purpose and usage&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers.SE tour page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/516/how-do-i-get-started-with-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6763/where-can-i-have-subjective-discussions-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On-topic and off-topic questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/what-types-of-programming-related-questions-are-off-topic-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1165/can-i-ask-career-advice-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6763/where-can-i-have-subjective-discussions-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Moderation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Other resources&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Is your question not part of the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First look at questions tagged [meta-tag:faq-proposed] to see if there is a question not in this index that might have the answer you seek. If you still can't find an answer, then see the following instructions for proposing an FAQ question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How can a question be added to this FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Ask only the question, stated plainly and simply, in the question body. The answer goes in an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Tag as [meta-tag:faq-proposed] and [meta-tag:support].  When a post seems to hit a mature state, it will have [meta-tag:faq] added by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Flag for a moderator to mark **community wiki**. Any FAQ post not yet community wiki should be made into a community wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Add a link in the above table of contents.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20106" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7213" RevisionGUID="ffa8dce7-5f28-4f32-833b-6023b4f212f5" CreationDate="2015-03-01T22:32:53.100" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="These questions are the most frequently asked and answered questions on Meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20107" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7214" RevisionGUID="edb9789a-1f97-492e-b46c-4592f74c94f9" CreationDate="2015-03-02T09:44:09.977" UserId="31260" Text="Let's [burninate](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/burninate-request/info) tag [tag:video-lectures].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, there are 5 questions in this tag. All appear to be off-topic [education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980) / [off-site resource](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) requests. None looks worth keeping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/274932/modernizing-my-net-knowledge&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101959/where-can-i-find-windows-via-c-c-video-training&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85698/trying-to-find-video-of-a-talk-on-the-impact-of-memory-access-latency&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70944/lecture-like-cs-videos&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67773/is-there-any-online-video-giving-a-useful-insight-on-programming-in-certain-lang" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20108" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7214" RevisionGUID="edb9789a-1f97-492e-b46c-4592f74c94f9" CreationDate="2015-03-02T09:44:09.977" UserId="31260" Text="Are [video lectures] useful?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20109" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7214" RevisionGUID="edb9789a-1f97-492e-b46c-4592f74c94f9" CreationDate="2015-03-02T09:44:09.977" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20110" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7214" RevisionGUID="4b2280ac-b3b9-4c3c-83ec-bb06bb33dfdc" CreationDate="2015-03-02T14:39:31.033" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-blacklist|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20111" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7208" RevisionGUID="9fab9185-4956-41e5-9e37-12c038dda4df" CreationDate="2015-03-02T17:55:16.803" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/572455144014684162" />
  <row Id="20112" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7215" RevisionGUID="777e268f-8d33-499a-b410-5839abb62457" CreationDate="2015-03-02T18:53:33.460" UserId="157931" Text="I have some ideas which might be considered &quot;inventions&quot; and I'd like some way to publish them.  I'm basically too lazy to maintain a blog site, so the idea of publishing it here came to mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I think the ideas would be worthy of discussion and probably interesting for a lot of folks here.  I posted one previous idea of mine and it was pretty well received, even though it was just some crappy thing I came up with.  So I'm not actually in some legal review, just looking for a nice spot to post ideas.  I'm wondering if anyone has some thought if PSE might also count as prior art.  Or if there's some reason to think &quot;no this definitely won't work because...&quot; where &quot;because&quot; has some well founded answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll probably post ideas here anyway, just wondering if they count as &quot;published&quot; or whatever prior art requires.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20113" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7215" RevisionGUID="777e268f-8d33-499a-b410-5839abb62457" CreationDate="2015-03-02T18:53:33.460" UserId="157931" Text="Using Programmers Stack Exchange for Prior Art" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20114" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7215" RevisionGUID="777e268f-8d33-499a-b410-5839abb62457" CreationDate="2015-03-02T18:53:33.460" UserId="157931" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20115" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7216" RevisionGUID="07b6ac4e-72fa-4094-809c-f55fa2a2de39" CreationDate="2015-03-02T18:59:56.967" UserId="4" Text="This doesn't sound like something that would work on any Stack Exchange site. Various help pages - the [Tour page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour), the [topics that are within scope](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), the [types of questions that should be avoided](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask), and [the tips for asking good questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask) are all relevant. In short, we expect questions to be questions about problems with answers that can be measured how how well they address the problem. If you want discussions, Stack Exchange does provide a [chat facility](http://chat.stackexchange.com), and the [Programmers chat room - The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), is relatively active, I'm not sure you'll find what you're looking for there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as the legal repercussions for what you post on any Stack Exchange site (or any other site on the Internet), you would need to consult a lawyer. We aren't experts on the law here on Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20118" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7218" RevisionGUID="b2c9c539-e1ab-4e1b-93bf-b3ab67928c6c" CreationDate="2015-03-02T20:27:45.993" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I am not sure what your goal is with &quot;prior art&quot; given that is used to _debunk_ others' patent claims, not to strengthen your own. If you are creating an invention, &quot;publishing&quot; it anywhere will not help: you need to file with the USPTO or Copyright Office as appropriate. Talk to an Intellectual Property attorney for more detailed advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, if you click the [legal][1] link at the bottom of every page in the Stack Exchange network, you will find a page that describes who owns what content posted here and how it may or may not be used. Specifically, this paragraph appears to be the important one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All materials displayed or performed on the Network, including, but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not limited to text, graphics, logos, tools, photographs, images,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; illustrations, software or source code, audio and video, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; animations (collectively, “Content”) (other than Content posted by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subscriber (“Subscriber Content”)) are the property of Stack Exchange&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and/or third parties and are protected by United States and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; international copyright laws.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither I nor anyone else here is qualified to say exactly how this is relevant to your situation or if it helps or hurts your desired outcome. Again, speak with an attorney specializing in IP law in your jurisdiction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackexchange.com/legal" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20119" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7219" RevisionGUID="d3ae2d23-9b38-4bcd-bd1f-d5660a1eb542" CreationDate="2015-03-03T04:19:07.743" UserId="163753" Text="My [question][1] was moved to Software Recommendations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you can see, it clearly needs help from programmers as it asks for libraries or tutorials on the subject. And because of this, it was commented there which was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; While asking for libraries is fully OK here at SR, we don't provide tutorials or the like. The scope of this site is to recommend specific software to your named requirements. To prevent your question from being &quot;put down&quot;, I strongly recommend you edit it to meet this site's scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So either of the two moderators is right. I'm voting for the one at SoftRec. Why? You might ask, well I was asking for libraries, not built software for my purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The software, &quot;Jaspersoft&quot; was just an example of what I want to output. I didn't ask &quot;I needed a report generator like Jasper&quot;, what I asked are libraries or at least code examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do hope that this would not be closed without my curiosity being satisfied. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/17586/is-there-a-library-or-tutorial-in-creating-a-report-designer?noredirect=1#comment25467_17586" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20120" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7219" RevisionGUID="d3ae2d23-9b38-4bcd-bd1f-d5660a1eb542" CreationDate="2015-03-03T04:19:07.743" UserId="163753" Text="My question was moved to Software Recomendations, why was this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20121" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7219" RevisionGUID="d3ae2d23-9b38-4bcd-bd1f-d5660a1eb542" CreationDate="2015-03-03T04:19:07.743" UserId="163753" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20122" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7220" RevisionGUID="55ba15b3-8b91-4d7d-9a6a-13e606a421d6" CreationDate="2015-03-03T04:41:25.867" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Only a moderator can migrate a question to any beta site. In fact the only two sites we can vote to migrate are Programmers Meta (this site) and Stack Overflow. Whichever moderator moved that question is the only person who can explain the &quot;why&quot; behind the move.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that is a problematic question _as written_ for both sites. If I had more time today when you asked it I would have tried to help improve it, but I was unclear about your intent and had other work to do at that time. By the time I came back around to check it out, it was already migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It is written _almost_ like a product request, as if you are looking for a library you can leverage and extend. If you are looking for a piece of software, SR.SE would be the appropriate site. In fact the title reads that way: &quot;is there a library or tutorial...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* While it does ask for advice about how to code something in a report, that is [too broad][1] for Programmers.SE. The title also sounds like a [resource request][2] which is off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think you should ask the question here on Programmers after editing it to be clear that it is not a product recommendation. Do not simply say &quot;I am not looking for a recommendation&quot; but change the wording and tone of the question. Next, make it laser-focused. You will likely need to experiment with your code and figure out what works and does not work. Simply asking [where to start][3] will not end well, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can always drop into [chat][4] for help wording your question, or open another meta question here if you have more specific concerns about how to ask your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only remaining housekeeping is whether to edit the question on SR.SE and migrate it back, or self-delete that question and ask here again. I would lean toward deleting and asking over simply because the logistics may be easier, but others may prefer to migrate it back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6366/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20123" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7205" RevisionGUID="84fe4e7d-f744-49f3-8b6a-72f499783738" CreationDate="2015-03-06T18:26:27.233" UserId="31260" Comment="SO blocks word &quot;problem&quot; in titles while at Programmers it is allowed" Text="Studying issues in one of the questions posted today ([Problem with Spring Rest request](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/275484/1)) made me feel that this can be indeed related to differences in [quality filter](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5857/31260) settings between Programmers and Stack Overflow, namely to the fact that SO [blocks word **&quot;problem&quot;** in titles](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/107989/165773) while at Programmers it is allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Checking first of examples in my question shows that it would also be blocked at SO for this reason, as its title contains blocked word: &quot;problem to load code of captcha in codeIgniter&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to be easy to test, particularly because this block is not limited to new users. When I tried to enter this title into Ask Question page at SO, I've got red block message shown at screen shot below. When I tried at Programmers Ask Questions, there was no block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Checking [my flag history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/flag-summary/31260 &quot;available to SE developers and possibly to moderators&quot;) suggests that we are getting low quality / blatant off-topic &quot;problem&quot; questions about once in every 2-3 days average.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more accurate estimate of how much of an issue it is would be based on stats for deleted questions with &quot;problem&quot; titles, but I don't have access to these stats (probably moderators have).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/T1ZyG.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/T1ZyG.png &quot;screen shot: example of how asker would be blocked at SO because of the word 'problem' in title&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Those interested in original revision of this answer can find it [in the post history](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/7205/1).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20124" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7221" RevisionGUID="0ff9891b-2a9f-4213-a552-975989cf22e2" CreationDate="2015-03-07T06:44:38.343" UserId="31260" Text="I recently learned that some off-topic questions seem to be posted at Programmers with sole purpose to [circumvent 'problem' title block at Stack Overflow](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7205/31260).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do something to save these askers the disappointment when their off-topic questions get voted down and close? Absence of the block probably makes them expect a warmer welcome over here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/T1ZyG.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/T1ZyG.png &quot;screen shot: example of how asker would be blocked at SO because of the word 'problem' in title&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7020/lets-help-askers-who-are-trying-to-circumvent-question-block-at-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5843/is-it-time-to-tighten-up-the-quality-filter-at-programmers?lq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20125" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7221" RevisionGUID="0ff9891b-2a9f-4213-a552-975989cf22e2" CreationDate="2015-03-07T06:44:38.343" UserId="31260" Text="'Problem' titles in off-topic questions of new users coming from Stack Overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20126" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7221" RevisionGUID="0ff9891b-2a9f-4213-a552-975989cf22e2" CreationDate="2015-03-07T06:44:38.343" UserId="31260" Text="|support|on-topic-definition|stackoverflow|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20127" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7193" RevisionGUID="648c1efe-0f02-46ed-b2d2-237253e65f22" CreationDate="2015-03-08T18:33:17.583" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="typo" Text="A (first-day) user quickly dropped two [code dumps](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/258685/839601) at our front page: [1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/273937/problem-to-load-code-of-captcha-in-codeigniter), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/273938/how-to-run-this-code-in-codeigniter-where-to-save-all-these-files-in-codeigniter). That's all-right, 'it happens, and these will probably be closed and deleted soon, which is fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What made me raise eyebrows though is [their SO profile](http://stackoverflow.com/users/4590497/mahesh) - it also shows that they are a first day visitor, but there are _no_ questions (even though one may suspect that users like this one will try to push their stuff anywhere where possible).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How come? Does Stack Overflow have a magic dust to _repel_ stuff like that? If yes, can we have some of it at Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20128" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7222" RevisionGUID="e3b23aa5-1efa-47e3-82c0-2eaba3f69776" CreationDate="2015-03-09T04:22:35.183" UserId="166106" Text="I'm new to Programmers, so I'm not too sure the type of questions that are allowed here. I do know that this is more the developmental side of things, so I figured this might be the better place to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was wondering how I might go about creating a custom control for an MDI app, in C#, specifically a &quot;Task bar&quot; type control to help manage minimised child windows in the MDI Container. Currently they simply sit at the bottom of the screen, and just tile up. Not very appealing to the eye.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So is here a good place to ask for direction on how to do this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20129" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7222" RevisionGUID="e3b23aa5-1efa-47e3-82c0-2eaba3f69776" CreationDate="2015-03-09T04:22:35.183" UserId="166106" Text="Would here be the right place to ask how to go about creating custom controls?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20130" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7222" RevisionGUID="e3b23aa5-1efa-47e3-82c0-2eaba3f69776" CreationDate="2015-03-09T04:22:35.183" UserId="166106" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20131" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7223" RevisionGUID="c2470a6d-8a2a-49ee-b1dd-df0690f9f097" CreationDate="2015-03-11T22:27:48.340" UserId="161917" Text="Since it sounds like the problem you're facing is with usability, rather than maintainability or some other technical attribute, I agree with gnat's comment that ux.stackexchange.com might be a better place to ask." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20132" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7224" RevisionGUID="61d39753-cea1-4490-bdf5-8b5e7ee2ac78" CreationDate="2015-03-12T09:44:48.117" UserId="31260" Text="Assuming that this doesn't happen frequent enough to warrant changes to the system, one approach that comes to mind is to flag these cases for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flag message explaining the issue could refer this very question, in order to make it easier for moderator to find more details, eg like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`please take a look - this off-topic question appears to be posted with sole purpose to circumvent 'problem' title block at Stack Overflow (related meta discussion: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7221)`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Because, really, what's the point of wasting [precious close votes](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6507/31260) on an issue essentially caused by some kind of a system &quot;leak&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20133" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7225" RevisionGUID="01147a98-58e4-4e3f-b9a4-f887f0191c86" CreationDate="2015-03-13T07:47:40.360" UserId="167529" Text="Yesterday I asked a question at programmers.stackexchange.com about RESTful (or not really RESTful) APIs. In my opinion it was quite a good question and I spend some time editing it. Of course, no one has to agree with me.&#xD;&#xA;Now, I cannot find any trace of it. It completely disappeared. Are questions being silently deleted? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20134" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7225" RevisionGUID="01147a98-58e4-4e3f-b9a4-f887f0191c86" CreationDate="2015-03-13T07:47:40.360" UserId="167529" Text="Where is my question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20135" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7225" RevisionGUID="01147a98-58e4-4e3f-b9a4-f887f0191c86" CreationDate="2015-03-13T07:47:40.360" UserId="167529" Text="|support|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20136" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7226" RevisionGUID="51cc1991-f4cb-4c79-96f2-78e30bbad15b" CreationDate="2015-03-15T15:34:51.500" UserId="170173" Text="The following question has been closed:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/146909/how-can-i-apply-six-sigma-in-a-software-development-environment][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel it is a very valid question and have some sub-questions for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't find where to navigate to re-open the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/146909/how-can-i-apply-six-sigma-in-a-software-development-environment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20137" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7226" RevisionGUID="51cc1991-f4cb-4c79-96f2-78e30bbad15b" CreationDate="2015-03-15T15:34:51.500" UserId="170173" Text="Where Do I Vote to Reopen a Question?: I Don't See Where to Do This" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20138" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7226" RevisionGUID="51cc1991-f4cb-4c79-96f2-78e30bbad15b" CreationDate="2015-03-15T15:34:51.500" UserId="170173" Text="|discussion|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20139" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7227" RevisionGUID="e104b72c-138b-42fb-bd98-f983ef23d2c0" CreationDate="2015-03-15T15:51:35.953" UserId="4" Text="You need 3000 reputation on the main site to cast close and open votes on questions, so the link below the question to cast the vote will not show up. In the mean time, you can ask about it on Meta or flag it for moderator review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This particular question won't likely be reopened - it's overly broad. There are entire books about applying Six Sigma to software engineering ([1][1], [2][2]), and some freely available resources linked to in the original question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, there isn't a concept of a &quot;sub-question&quot; on Stack Exchange. If you have questions that you think are [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and are written to avoid the things that [shouldn't be asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) and you [formulate it well](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), your question shouldn't be closed. Feel free to ask a new question - specific, well-written, and well-scoped questions about applying Six Sigma to software engineering is within the scope of this site. If you aren't sure, feel free to pop into chat or ask a question on Meta - someone will be able to help make sure your question is good for the site, point you to a better site, or point you to some resources to get you moving in the right direction so that if you have further questions, they are more appropriate for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.amazon.com/Sigma-Software-Development-Second-Edition/dp/1420044265&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.amazon.com/Six-Sigma-Software-Quality-Improvement/dp/0071700625/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1426434542&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=six%20sigma%20software" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20140" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7228" RevisionGUID="ce6bd4b5-01b0-4f61-94b7-89fcb82d21e0" CreationDate="2015-03-15T16:28:53.743" UserId="6605" Text="There are questions which are badly written and absolutely unclear. Those are downvoted and closed as unclear within minutes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are questions which are clear but I personally can't understand them because I lack some knowledge. For instance, I don't understand most questions about Haskell because I don't know Haskell yet. Obviously, even if *I* can't understand those questions, there is no reason to downvote/close them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, I remember a few cases where a question is well formatted and looks like being clear, but after reading it several times, I still can't figure out what is it talking about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A practical example is the recent question [Code structure with MongoDB in python][1]. I've read it four times. I know MongoDB and Python. The question *looks* right. Still, I have absolutely no idea what the person is talking about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should be the behavior in this case?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Be subjective and downvote the question and vote to close?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - In doubt, do nothing and let other people deal with it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Request clarification from the author? In which case, what should be the comment? I doubt that a comment which tells that the question is unclear is constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Close the question as unclear (given that four other persons should also vote for it to be closed), but avoid downvoting a question which may be perfectly valid?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/276350/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20141" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7228" RevisionGUID="ce6bd4b5-01b0-4f61-94b7-89fcb82d21e0" CreationDate="2015-03-15T16:28:53.743" UserId="6605" Text="Should I downvote/close a question which I don't understand while it looks clear?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20142" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7228" RevisionGUID="ce6bd4b5-01b0-4f61-94b7-89fcb82d21e0" CreationDate="2015-03-15T16:28:53.743" UserId="6605" Text="|discussion|subjective|vote-to-close|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20143" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7229" RevisionGUID="775cb2c7-75dc-449f-a20e-b27d1f019892" CreationDate="2015-03-15T17:00:42.673" UserId="47" Text="&gt; The question *looks* right. Still, I have absolutely no idea what the person is talking about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would say do nothing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have no knowledge of the questions subject matter, but it looks clear, useful and you think they've done their research then don't vote and move onto the next question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You don't *have* to vote on every single question on the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20144" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7230" RevisionGUID="0682ff0c-8dac-4011-a065-29c5719b5ebe" CreationDate="2015-03-15T17:15:08.360" UserId="4" Text="In the case where you are lacking the knowledge needed to fully understand the subject matter, do nothing. It could be clear, it could not be. There's no need to reduce the reputation of a user or kick something to a queue if you can't be sure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you understand the subject matter, I wouldn't vote to close or downvote immediately. I'd recommend asking clarifying questions in comments. If you can determine more, then decide what to do - answer, vote up or down, or vote to close." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20145" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7227" RevisionGUID="87e1ab26-8454-495b-9a87-ad29b7ea45bf" CreationDate="2015-03-15T18:18:35.677" UserId="31260" Comment="overly broad += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490" Text="You need 3000 reputation on the main site to cast close and open votes on questions, so the link below the question to cast the vote will not show up. In the mean time, you can ask about it on Meta or flag it for moderator review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This particular question won't likely be reopened - it's [overly broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490). There are entire books about applying Six Sigma to software engineering ([1][1], [2][2]), and some freely available resources linked to in the original question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, there isn't a concept of a &quot;sub-question&quot; on Stack Exchange. If you have questions that you think are [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and are written to avoid the things that [shouldn't be asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) and you [formulate it well](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), your question shouldn't be closed. Feel free to ask a new question - specific, well-written, and well-scoped questions about applying Six Sigma to software engineering is within the scope of this site. If you aren't sure, feel free to pop into chat or ask a question on Meta - someone will be able to help make sure your question is good for the site, point you to a better site, or point you to some resources to get you moving in the right direction so that if you have further questions, they are more appropriate for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.amazon.com/Sigma-Software-Development-Second-Edition/dp/1420044265&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.amazon.com/Six-Sigma-Software-Quality-Improvement/dp/0071700625/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1426434542&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=six%20sigma%20software" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20146" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7231" RevisionGUID="6c2ae4c3-3698-4dde-b449-0b8cf0abf94b" CreationDate="2015-03-16T22:01:41.467" UserId="94768" Text="I want to know whether the three most prevalent JavaScript engines (those in Chrome, FF,and IE) are known to perform certain optimizations. For instance, I might ask whether simple functions are inlined or optimized in any other way:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    var add = function(a, b) { return a + b; }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this an acceptable place to ask?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20147" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7231" RevisionGUID="6c2ae4c3-3698-4dde-b449-0b8cf0abf94b" CreationDate="2015-03-16T22:01:41.467" UserId="94768" Text="Can I ask whether specific compilers/engines perform certain optimizations?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20148" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7231" RevisionGUID="6c2ae4c3-3698-4dde-b449-0b8cf0abf94b" CreationDate="2015-03-16T22:01:41.467" UserId="94768" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20149" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7232" RevisionGUID="ad19eff4-df8c-4b5a-adc1-efddf3cb3366" CreationDate="2015-03-16T23:15:50.263" UserId="60357" Text="No. This site is about *conceptual* questions regarding software development – see the [help center](/help/on-topic) for details.. You can ask about compiler concepts or language concepts or design concepts, but asking about specific, concrete implementation details of some language implementation is not generally on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question about using a JavaScript API would be on-topic for Stack Overflow, as would be a question about using a specific JS implementation. However, what you're inquiring about is probably an undocumented implementation detail that's subject to unannounced change – all that matters is that the JS engine conforms to the spec and is as fast as possible. Therefore, this could be seen as a “how should we know, ask these engine's developers directly”-kind of question that would run into a risk of being closed on SO as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20150" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7233" RevisionGUID="06d2b739-6629-4bb7-971c-c186812b2fe0" CreationDate="2015-03-17T12:30:56.990" UserId="15331" Text="Where can I see what kind of questions are or are not relevant on /programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;BTW from usability point of view: if I can't find it it's your fault, not mine. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20151" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7233" RevisionGUID="06d2b739-6629-4bb7-971c-c186812b2fe0" CreationDate="2015-03-17T12:30:56.990" UserId="15331" Text="Where can I see what kind of questions are or are not relevant on /programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20152" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7233" RevisionGUID="06d2b739-6629-4bb7-971c-c186812b2fe0" CreationDate="2015-03-17T12:30:56.990" UserId="15331" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20153" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7234" RevisionGUID="28efa7cd-3ee6-42b2-b16e-10b32c84e072" CreationDate="2015-03-17T12:42:47.257" UserId="4" Text="The [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help) has all the information that you need. Specifically, check out these pages:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;* [How do I ask a good question?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you aren't sure if your question is on-topic or if you need help to narrow down the scope or make other improvements, you can always ask here on Meta or in [the chat room, The Whiteboard][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20154" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7235" RevisionGUID="5bf52e6c-1610-4602-8b75-cb7a117fa679" CreationDate="2015-03-17T19:39:15.663" UserId="31260" Text="Please merge tag [tag:cache] (27 questions) into [tag:caching] (79), and make them synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag _cache_ does not have wiki nor excerpt. Tag _caching_ wiki excerpt is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions regarding cache algorithms by applications and implementations of information caching by database engines and other information repository and presentation applications." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20155" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7235" RevisionGUID="5bf52e6c-1610-4602-8b75-cb7a117fa679" CreationDate="2015-03-17T19:39:15.663" UserId="31260" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [cache] → [caching]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20156" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7235" RevisionGUID="5bf52e6c-1610-4602-8b75-cb7a117fa679" CreationDate="2015-03-17T19:39:15.663" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20157" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7235" RevisionGUID="300bd0ea-5203-4f04-92f4-44ccae75a81b" CreationDate="2015-03-17T20:25:39.027" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20158" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7236" RevisionGUID="95a90c64-c701-4c7f-8c64-69f6406cd883" CreationDate="2015-03-17T21:12:15.633" UserId="31260" Text="Per [recent discussion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7233/where-can-i-see-what-kind-of-questions-are-or-are-not-relevant-on-programmers#comment21595_7234 &quot;'write up a suggested edit as a meta question and one of us can make the edit'&quot;), I drafted some updates I'd like to have in [Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), section _not about..._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I kept the text as it was, only added and changed some links (more details under the draft):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) instead)&#xD;&#xA;* implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) instead)&#xD;&#xA;* coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) instead)&#xD;&#xA;* [what language/technology you should learn next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486), including [which technology is better](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* [what project you should do next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486)&#xD;&#xA;* [what book you should read next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488)&#xD;&#xA;* [where to find a software library, tool or other resource](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;* [product or service recommendations](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;* [career advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488), salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA;* personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;* legal assistance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Primary motivation for the change was to make things like in [Workplace Help Center](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), where items listed as off-topic are linked to respective detailed meta guidance. (Frankly, Workplace's page still looks more elegant and easier to read to me - ideas on how to further improve ours are welcome)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also replaced straight links to Workplace and Stack Overflow with &quot;safer&quot; references to [help/on-topic] pages of these sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also please pay attention that &quot;career advice&quot; link has changed from [older FAQ post](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590) to a [newer one](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488). (I felt fairly safe doing this since older FAQ is linked near the top in references section in newer one but I may be wrong)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last and probably the least, &quot;what book you should read next&quot; seems to fit _two_ entries in our meta guidance: [education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488) and [off-site resource request](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487). Of these, I picked education advice which looked like a better fit, but I really don't have strong preference here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20159" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7236" RevisionGUID="95a90c64-c701-4c7f-8c64-69f6406cd883" CreationDate="2015-03-17T21:12:15.633" UserId="31260" Text="Help Center tuning: &quot;help/on-topic/and it is not about...&quot; += references to meta guidance" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20160" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7236" RevisionGUID="95a90c64-c701-4c7f-8c64-69f6406cd883" CreationDate="2015-03-17T21:12:15.633" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|help-center|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20161" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7237" RevisionGUID="b1db8685-e8c6-48e2-bdf8-2988349bcef5" CreationDate="2015-03-17T23:25:53.200" UserId="4" Text="**Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - legal assistance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![proper scope for questions on Programmers Stack Exchange][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;. **Please keep it professional**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see [the Help Center page about what not to ask][11] as well as the [*Good Subjective, Bad Subjective*][12] and [*Real Questions Have Answers*][13] blog posts for details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please [look around][14] to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to [ask and answer your own question][15].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for [another Stack Exchange site][16]. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may [commit to][17] or [propose][18] a new side at [Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created][19].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#newest&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20162" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7237" RevisionGUID="862be056-f32c-4c96-a091-43c19fa0cafc" CreationDate="2015-03-17T23:25:53.200" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="20163" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7237" RevisionGUID="77a983de-df23-4a1d-99e1-59b74c16af38" CreationDate="2015-03-17T23:33:42.010" UserId="4" Comment="Changed the link for the rest of the SE sites from newest to name sort order." Text="**Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - legal assistance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![proper scope for questions on Programmers Stack Exchange][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;. **Please keep it professional**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see [the Help Center page about what not to ask][11] as well as the [*Good Subjective, Bad Subjective*][12] and [*Real Questions Have Answers*][13] blog posts for details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please [look around][14] to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to [ask and answer your own question][15].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for [another Stack Exchange site][16]. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may [commit to][17] or [propose][18] a new side at [Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created][19].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20164" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7238" RevisionGUID="b6a5ec40-19d6-4d78-8f2b-c331ba22bb07" CreationDate="2015-03-18T01:23:27.640" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="**Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - legal assistance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![proper scope for questions on Programmers Stack Exchange][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;. **Please keep it professional**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see [the Help Center page about what not to ask][11] as well as the [*Good Subjective, Bad Subjective*][12] and [*Real Questions Have Answers*][13] blog posts for details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please [look around][14] to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to [ask and answer your own question][15].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for [another Stack Exchange site][16]. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may [commit to][17] or [propose][18] a new side at [Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created][19].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20165" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7238" RevisionGUID="aa4b1a82-8805-4543-a90a-14844227ca6c" CreationDate="2015-03-18T01:34:57.667" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Some revisions" Text="My version...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing (be sure to also check out [Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing.SE][1])&#xD;&#xA; - [software licensing][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][4] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on [Stack Overflow][5] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][6], including [which technology is better][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][9]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][10]&#xD;&#xA; - [career advice][11], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - [legal assistance][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![proper scope for questions on Programmers Stack Exchange][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are applicable to all professions - where one could substitute &quot;chef&quot; or &quot;graphic designer&quot; for &quot;programmer&quot; are not on topic here because they are not unique to the programming profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;. **Please keep it professional**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see [the Help Center page about what not to ask][14] as well as the [*Good Subjective, Bad Subjective*][15] and [*Real Questions Have Answers*][16] blog posts for details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please [look around][17] to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to [ask and answer your own question][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure that the question is not [too broad][19] or [primarily opinion][20]. If you have questions of this nature, please ask them in [chat][21] so that they either can be refined into a question that fits within the scope, or discussed and answered within chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for [another Stack Exchange site][22]. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may [commit to][23] or [propose][24] a new side at [Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created][25].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6497/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1655/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20166" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7236" RevisionGUID="5b08435c-8b90-42a6-abaa-ddc64a46c857" CreationDate="2015-03-18T07:39:05.030" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7236/help-center-tuning-help-on-topic-and-it-is-not-about-references-to-meta#comment21598_7236" Text="Per [recent discussion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7233/where-can-i-see-what-kind-of-questions-are-or-are-not-relevant-on-programmers#comment21595_7234 &quot;'write up a suggested edit as a meta question and one of us can make the edit'&quot;), I drafted some updates I'd like to have in [Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), section _not about..._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Added text is in **bold**, deleted is &lt;del&gt;crossed&lt;/del&gt;, and some links are added and changed (more details under the draft):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) instead)&#xD;&#xA;* implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) instead)&#xD;&#xA;* coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) instead)&#xD;&#xA;* [what language/technology you should learn next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486), including [which technology is better](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* [what project you should do next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;del&gt;[what book you should read next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488)&lt;/del&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* [where to find a software library, tool or other resource](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;* [product or service recommendations](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;* [career **or education** advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488), salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA;* personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;* legal assistance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Primary motivation for the change was to make things like in [Workplace Help Center](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), where items listed as off-topic are linked to respective detailed meta guidance. (Frankly, Workplace's page still looks more elegant and easier to read to me - ideas on how to further improve ours are welcome)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also replaced straight links to Workplace and Stack Overflow with &quot;safer&quot; references to [help/on-topic] pages of these sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also please pay attention that &quot;career advice&quot; link has changed from [older FAQ post](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590) to a [newer one](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488). (I felt fairly safe doing this since older FAQ is linked near the top in references section in newer one but I may be wrong)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per [discussion in comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7236/help-center-tuning-help-on-topic-and-it-is-not-about-references-to-meta#comment21598_7236), &quot;what book you should read next&quot; was deleted. _In exchange_ I inserted &quot;education&quot; into an item about career advice - as far as I can tell, this covers books and makes a closer match to linked meta guidance and to respective [predefined close reason](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5992/31260 &quot;'career or education advice'&quot;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20167" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7236" RevisionGUID="5b08435c-8b90-42a6-abaa-ddc64a46c857" CreationDate="2015-03-18T07:39:05.030" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7236/help-center-tuning-help-on-topic-and-it-is-not-about-references-to-meta#comment21598_7236" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|help-center|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20168" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7236" RevisionGUID="d032fb02-35f4-498e-8ab3-f60ea254c30d" CreationDate="2015-03-18T08:04:53.767" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting modeled closer to original // taken from http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7237/31260" Text="Per [recent discussion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7233/where-can-i-see-what-kind-of-questions-are-or-are-not-relevant-on-programmers#comment21595_7234 &quot;'write up a suggested edit as a meta question and one of us can make the edit'&quot;), I drafted some updates I'd like to have in [Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), section _not about..._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Added text is in **bold**, deleted is &lt;del&gt;crossed&lt;/del&gt;, and some links are added and changed (more details under the draft):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - &lt;del&gt;[what book you should read next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488)&lt;/del&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career **or education** advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - legal assistance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Primary motivation for the change was to make things like in [Workplace Help Center](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), where items listed as off-topic are linked to respective detailed meta guidance. (Frankly, Workplace's page still looks more elegant and easier to read to me - ideas on how to further improve ours are welcome)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also replaced straight links to Workplace and Stack Overflow with &quot;safer&quot; references to [help/on-topic] pages of these sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also please pay attention that &quot;career advice&quot; link has changed from [older FAQ post](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590) to a [newer one](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488). (I felt fairly safe doing this since older FAQ is linked near the top in references section in newer one but I may be wrong)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per [discussion in comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7236/help-center-tuning-help-on-topic-and-it-is-not-about-references-to-meta#comment21598_7236), &quot;what book you should read next&quot; was deleted. _In exchange_ I inserted &quot;education&quot; into an item about career advice - as far as I can tell, this covers books and makes a closer match to linked meta guidance and to respective [predefined close reason](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5992/31260 &quot;'career or education advice'&quot;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20169" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7238" RevisionGUID="819dc973-dbc1-47d4-b598-d2c4ae9455ac" CreationDate="2015-03-18T08:07:03.263" UserId="31260" Comment="1) sqa += help/on-topic 2) career += &quot;or education&quot; // http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7236/help-center-tuning-help-on-topic-and-it-is-not-about-references-to-meta#comment21613_7236" Text="My version...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing (be sure to also check out [Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing.SE][1])&#xD;&#xA; - [software licensing][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][4] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on [Stack Overflow][5] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][6], including [which technology is better][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][9]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][10]&#xD;&#xA; - [career or education advice][11], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - [legal assistance][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![proper scope for questions on Programmers Stack Exchange][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are applicable to all professions - where one could substitute &quot;chef&quot; or &quot;graphic designer&quot; for &quot;programmer&quot; are not on topic here because they are not unique to the programming profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;. **Please keep it professional**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see [the Help Center page about what not to ask][14] as well as the [*Good Subjective, Bad Subjective*][15] and [*Real Questions Have Answers*][16] blog posts for details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please [look around][17] to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to [ask and answer your own question][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure that the question is not [too broad][19] or [primarily opinion][20]. If you have questions of this nature, please ask them in [chat][21] so that they either can be refined into a question that fits within the scope, or discussed and answered within chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for [another Stack Exchange site][22]. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may [commit to][23] or [propose][24] a new side at [Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created][25].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6497/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1655/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20170" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7237" RevisionGUID="13661bf4-463f-49b2-b5b2-150b5282f857" CreationDate="2015-03-18T08:51:30.483" UserId="4" Comment="added 13 characters in body" Text="**Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career or education advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - legal assistance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![proper scope for questions on Programmers Stack Exchange][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;. **Please keep it professional**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see [the Help Center page about what not to ask][11] as well as the [*Good Subjective, Bad Subjective*][12] and [*Real Questions Have Answers*][13] blog posts for details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please [look around][14] to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to [ask and answer your own question][15].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for [another Stack Exchange site][16]. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may [commit to][17] or [propose][18] a new side at [Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created][19].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20171" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7239" RevisionGUID="0baea996-e4ea-4157-9b6e-4efb1f79ce34" CreationDate="2015-03-18T09:25:54.923" UserId="154794" Text="I am a software lead in a company and I would say I am a seasoned professional. Nevertheless I find myself scared to ask questions here,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A look on the page of the first 50 newest questions counts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**24 questions are downvoted**&#xD;&#xA;13 questions are upvoted &#xD;&#xA;13 neutral&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is either that the site is attracting the worst programmers/question askers or the mods need to think about being less aggressive and let people ask questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*This site is for giving free help to fellow programmers (brogrammers) not being elitist/perfectionist with others.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20172" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7239" RevisionGUID="0baea996-e4ea-4157-9b6e-4efb1f79ce34" CreationDate="2015-03-18T09:25:54.923" UserId="154794" Text="There are way more negative votes in the top 50 questions than positive. Time to think" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20173" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7239" RevisionGUID="0baea996-e4ea-4157-9b6e-4efb1f79ce34" CreationDate="2015-03-18T09:25:54.923" UserId="154794" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20174" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7240" RevisionGUID="13ca4e79-5b44-48a0-be4f-35014a8b31ea" CreationDate="2015-03-18T09:58:07.783" UserId="154794" Text="Update for current page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A look on the page of the first 50 newest questions counts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**24 questions are downvoted** 13 questions are upvoted 13 neutral&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a ratio almost 2:1 down/upvote&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20175" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7237" RevisionGUID="3de4d230-475b-4a73-8e40-79772017c9c3" CreationDate="2015-03-18T10:23:18.137" UserId="31260" Comment="legal assistance += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1655 // merge from http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7238/31260" Text="**Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career or education advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - [legal assistance][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![proper scope for questions on Programmers Stack Exchange][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;. **Please keep it professional**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see [the Help Center page about what not to ask][11] as well as the [*Good Subjective, Bad Subjective*][12] and [*Real Questions Have Answers*][13] blog posts for details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please [look around][14] to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to [ask and answer your own question][15].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for [another Stack Exchange site][16]. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may [commit to][17] or [propose][18] a new side at [Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created][19].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1655" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20176" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2" RevisionGUID="aeba2641-503e-4651-9316-f1265b7bf2ac" CreationDate="2015-03-18T19:19:24.887" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-attributes|faq-contents|top-7|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20177" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7237" RevisionGUID="90c7205f-e53d-4e68-8a3c-d07c95ab0bd7" CreationDate="2015-03-19T00:40:59.960" UserId="4" Comment="Incorporated mentions of chat and expanded on searching for questions before asking." Text="**Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career or education advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - [legal assistance][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![proper scope for questions on Programmers Stack Exchange][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;. **Please keep it professional**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see [the Help Center page about what not to ask][12] as well as the [*Good Subjective, Bad Subjective*][13] and [*Real Questions Have Answers*][14] blog posts for details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][17] or [strongly rooted in opinions][18]. We should be able to answer your questions in the equivalent of a few pages of text and graphics and provide references to support claims. If you have questions that warrant an extended discussion, feel free to come to our [chat room][19].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before asking, [look around][15] to see if your question has been asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions. It’s also OK to [ask and answer your own question][16].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for [another Stack Exchange site][20]. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may [commit to][21] or [propose][22] a new side at [Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created][23].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1655&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20178" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7241" RevisionGUID="26b0e751-e5cb-48b2-a7eb-78dd3c85901a" CreationDate="2015-03-19T02:44:38.700" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="My apologies for taking a bit of time in getting around to answer this.  The set of 'newest 50' that I am working from may not be the ones you saw.  Lets look at all the down voted ones:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Career advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276703/im-a-university-student-and-im-a-asking-for-a-road-map-for-studying-computer-s (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question is one of the career and education advice questions that we often get. They've always been problematic since the start.  This one wasn't tagged with [tag:career-development] and if you read the excerpt there, you will note that we *really* try discouraging people from asking those questions.  We can't remove the tag wholesale, because there are historical posts that we don't want to remove - removing the tag would make those much more difficult to find (and hopefully head off additional questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Implementation and debugging questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often we get questions about implementation or debugging.  Many times these are cross posted to both Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE.  Other times, the question was posted here because the OP can't post it on SO for some reason or another. P.SE is distinctly different than SO in its scope and we aren't a &quot;can't post on SO, post on P.SE&quot; alternative site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276681/really-confused-about-maperase (-2 migrated)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276649/java-try-catch-block (-8)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question was asked on Programmers.SE in an attempt to get around a question block on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276647/what-cause-the-error-opening-trace-file-no-such-file-or-directory-2 (-3)   &#xD;&#xA;    A cross posted question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276625/how-run-a-exe-file-with-direct-connect-to-an-ipport (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    Another cross posted question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276613/python-how-to-print-in-rows (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A ***very*** poorly specified problem with python.  It is probably actually [this](http://stackoverflow.com/q/29135600/289086) question in a one sentence form, but its still an implementation or debugging issue that doesn't belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276607/passing-parameters-to-pthread-create (-3)&#xD;&#xA;    Aside from the self centered comments from the poster (it sets up a negative feeling about how one should vote), its another implementation question that is off topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for the best&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276677/what-is-the-most-advised-way-to-handle-i18n-on-microservices (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question was asking for the best way to do something, without an actual problem to solve. As came out in the comments, the question was also looking for a discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276633/what-are-the-best-compression-algorithms-with-respect-to-a-minimising-cpu-usag (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    Its important to point out that this question has been changed from its [original](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/276633/revisions), which asked for an overview of compression algorithms. Searching google for [comparison of compression algorithms](https://www.google.com/search?q=comparison+of+compression+algorithms) brings up [this](http://binfalse.de/2011/04/04/comparison-of-compression/).  That said, we aren't a crowd sourced search engine. Those aren't fun questions to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276609/best-way-to-store-large-geo-tagged-data (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    A very broad and possibly resource recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Others&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276691/how-to-create-a-json-or-html-file-that-dynamically-mirrors-file-directory-struct (-1)  &#xD;&#xA;    This one isn't so bad. Its also at only -1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276690/simple-way-to-write-to-sql-file-from-java (-1)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question is a bit on the unclear side. It has some possibility, but it needs a clear problem definition.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276683/image-upload-fuctionality-in-a-web-application (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question failed to do any research and asked a rather [commonly asked question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/119488/40980) again.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276634/wearable-devices-that-communicate-with-my-apps-or-applicaiton (-1)  &#xD;&#xA;    A really unclear question that seems to be trying to find an architect for some idea of wearable devices or something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276631/where-can-i-find-an-open-source-project-or-body-of-code-written-in-clean-read (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    Polling for projects.  We've had a poor history of providing answers to such questions and curating those that have been asked in the past. On P.SE they rarely produce good content (and when they do, its surrounded by a dozen poorly answered posts). The down votes are a warning to people thinking of answering it of &quot;don't waste your time here, this question isn't a good fit for the site&quot; as well as a &quot;don't ask these questions&quot;.  Far too often people point to past questions with an up vote that are still around as a &quot;this can get asked again&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276617/how-to-store-integer-array-in-mysql-database (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    This is an XY problem where the posted is asking for a solution that follows the particular idea for how he or she thinks will solve it, but isn't the actual problem. These don't often make for good questions, though if the poster can refine it to the actual problem being asked it might be something that can be turned around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276615/image-uploading-with-blog-post-best-practice (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    Best practice questions are a sore spot with people who answer questions on the site. There is no actual problem being described in the question - its a &quot;what do people do&quot; type poll.  Rarely are best practices ever the best practices or even applicable to the situation that is actually the unmentioned problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276604/how-to-formally-present-a-web-app-solution-to-a-panel-plus-pricing (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    Pricing of applications (and other forms of compensation) is listed as off topic in the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  The price someone wants to charge for something is based on too many factors for us to accurately base an answer on (do you have dependents? is this a job or hobby? what is the median income in your locale? etc...).  The question boils down to a poll of how people have sold software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276600/selecting-string-pattern-matching-algorithm-easier (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    A copy and paste of a homework question.  Or at least it looks that way. It really isn't a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### And asked and deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10k links here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276687/simple-interest-loop-error (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A rather poorly specified implementation question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276682/for-the-college-dropouts-what-was-missing-from-the-university-program-that-caus (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A poll of CS college dropouts about what could have been better in their programs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276675/display-time-in-sorting-order-based-on-dynamicall-added-arrived-time-with-curren (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    A cross posted question.  You can find the SO version [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29117975/display-data-in-sorting-order-based-on-arrived-time-with-current-date-using-linq)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276621/case-insensitive-search-is-not-working-in-strongloop (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A reposted implementation question.  The [repost](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276420/case-insensitive-search-issue-in-strongloop) was at -5 when it was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, there's the list and why they are down voted.  We often wonder why we attract such questions, especially when we have many of these clearly spelled out in the Help Center for &quot;please don't ask them&quot;.  There is a suspicion that many of these are spill over from Stack Overflow (can't ask there, ask here) or a realization that Stack Overflow would close the questions, so you go down to the bottom of Stack Overflow and look at the sites...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and lo and behold, there is Programmers right next to it.  Lets try asking there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you believe that any of these *should't* have been down voted, are on topic, and not too broad or in otherwise need of fixing/clarification by the person who posted the question (we often fix those that have all the material, just poorly formatted), please point it out.  If you think that some of these *should* be asked here and the policies and community norms are in error, please bring that up so that we can help by demonstrating the path that brought us here, and look at influencing people to make that change either by making exemplary questions of that type, or writing about it on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Until we understand what people feel need to be changed, its rather hard to work off of &quot;there are a lot of down voted posts on the front page&quot;.  We know. We really try to help it and have probably done the most changes to our help center in recent times of any Stack Exchange site (we're going through [another round](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7236/40980) of refinement - trying to make it more clear about what is and isn't on topic here. If you have suggestions about how to modify the help center, please help us make those changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/YZTDq.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20179" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7242" RevisionGUID="3f1b2d37-fc14-4831-9ee2-ef316adb4815" CreationDate="2015-03-19T03:01:44.063" UserId="1204" Text="#Real Questions Have Answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following is an excerpt from The Whiteboard chat room; a user asking for career advice.  You can tell me whether or not I was being too mean.  But ask yourself, as you are reading this: &quot;is this a reasonably answerable question?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** Hey guys quick career based question - I am more interested now in web development as opposed to software development. The only problem now is that the place I want to work at is using totally different technologies than I am using right now. My plan is to self-educate and start working on projects to internalize those technologies/new programming language syntaxes and then give it a shot but it would still be cool to find out what you guys think about switching in between the two?&#xD;&#xA;If you had any experience with it or if you think it is a good/bad idea in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** Hey guys quick transportation based question - I am more interested now in trucks as opposed to cars. The only problem now is that the place I want to work at is using cars. My plan is to self-educate and start working on projects to internalize those technologies/new truck beds and then give it a shot but it would still be cool to find out what you guys think about switching in between the two?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** I have heard some people say that it is better to stick with one stack of tech if you have been using it for a while but I disagree with that and wanted to see what you guys thoght. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** Depends on what you mean by &quot;better.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** By better I mean mastering one stack and then moving on to others. My opinion is that some if not most of the things are trasnferrable but I am not sure 100% hence my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** Some of it is transferable, some of it is new skills.&#xD;&#xA;That's about the best answer I can give you, without a more specific question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** At the very bottom of my explanation I asked if anybody had experience with this directly - that is moving from software dev to web dev and the challenges that came along with it. Obviously for each person it will be a bit different but since the situation is generally the same I can pick out some of the similarities to help me with my decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** I did my first ASP.NET MVC application about 7 years ago. I had to learn about REST, web services, the stateless nature of web applications, ORM, HTML, CSS and a bit of Javascript.&#xD;&#xA;The rest I already knew from having learned C#. Well, except for the intricacies of ASP.NET and MVC.&#xD;&#xA;Nowadays, having knowledge of front end Javascript frameworks like jQuery and Angular helps a lot. There's also caching, cookies, authentication, etc. So I'd say the transition is non-trivial.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So after a lengthy clarifying discussion, we finally got to something that was answerable in some way.  But notice that it's still not a real question. He was asking &quot;Everyone, share your experiences, and let me pick out the common elements.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not what we do here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What he really wanted to do was solicit a discussion, which is fine in the chat room, as that is what it is designed for.  But notice that the conversation never evolved into a real question that could be answered definitively.  This is why we have such strict requirements on questions; they all originate from hard-won experience with topics that are subjective by nature, and the desire for newcomers to bend the site to their will and their existing forum skills.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a million and one other places on the internet where folks can have a discussion.  This isn't one of them.  And before you say &quot;but this is where all the experts are,&quot; the experts are here in part so that they don't have to put up with the mindless discussion that forums encourage." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20180" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7242" RevisionGUID="e3bfe0c7-60c0-484b-bfc8-b30a673537af" CreationDate="2015-03-19T03:16:20.467" UserId="1204" Comment="added 29 characters in body" Text="#Real Questions Have Answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following is an excerpt from The Whiteboard chat room; a user asking for career advice.  You can decide for yourself whether or not I was being too elitist/perfectionist.  But ask yourself, as you are reading this: &quot;is this a reasonably answerable question?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** Hey guys quick career based question - I am more interested now in web development as opposed to software development. The only problem now is that the place I want to work at is using totally different technologies than I am using right now. My plan is to self-educate and start working on projects to internalize those technologies/new programming language syntaxes and then give it a shot but it would still be cool to find out what you guys think about switching in between the two?&#xD;&#xA;If you had any experience with it or if you think it is a good/bad idea in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** Hey guys quick transportation based question - I am more interested now in trucks as opposed to cars. The only problem now is that the place I want to work at is using cars. My plan is to self-educate and start working on projects to internalize those technologies/new truck beds and then give it a shot but it would still be cool to find out what you guys think about switching in between the two?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** I have heard some people say that it is better to stick with one stack of tech if you have been using it for a while but I disagree with that and wanted to see what you guys thoght. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** Depends on what you mean by &quot;better.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** By better I mean mastering one stack and then moving on to others. My opinion is that some if not most of the things are trasnferrable but I am not sure 100% hence my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** Some of it is transferable, some of it is new skills.&#xD;&#xA;That's about the best answer I can give you, without a more specific question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** At the very bottom of my explanation I asked if anybody had experience with this directly - that is moving from software dev to web dev and the challenges that came along with it. Obviously for each person it will be a bit different but since the situation is generally the same I can pick out some of the similarities to help me with my decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** I did my first ASP.NET MVC application about 7 years ago. I had to learn about REST, web services, the stateless nature of web applications, ORM, HTML, CSS and a bit of Javascript.&#xD;&#xA;The rest I already knew from having learned C#. Well, except for the intricacies of ASP.NET and MVC.&#xD;&#xA;Nowadays, having knowledge of front end Javascript frameworks like jQuery and Angular helps a lot. There's also caching, cookies, authentication, etc. So I'd say the transition is non-trivial.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So after a lengthy clarifying discussion, we finally got to something that was answerable in some way.  But notice that it's still not a real question. He was asking &quot;Everyone, share your experiences, and let me pick out the common elements.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not what we do here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What he really wanted to do was solicit a discussion, which is fine in the chat room, as that is what it is designed for.  But notice that the conversation never evolved into a real question that could be answered definitively.  This is why we have such strict requirements for  questions; they all originate from hard-won experience with topics that are subjective by nature, and the desire for newcomers to bend the site to their will and their existing forum skills.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a million and one other places on the internet where folks can have a discussion.  This isn't one of them.  And before you say &quot;but this is where all the experts are,&quot; the experts are here in part so that they don't have to put up with the mindless discussion that forums encourage." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20181" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7242" RevisionGUID="25517b20-e30d-4c38-98cd-98067b6da392" CreationDate="2015-03-19T03:21:57.303" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="#Real Questions Have Answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following is an excerpt from The Whiteboard chat room; a user asking for career advice.  You can decide for yourself whether or not I was being too elitist/perfectionist.  But ask yourself, as you are reading this: &quot;is this a reasonably answerable question?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** Hey guys quick career based question - I am more interested now in web development as opposed to software development. The only problem now is that the place I want to work at is using totally different technologies than I am using right now. My plan is to self-educate and start working on projects to internalize those technologies/new programming language syntaxes and then give it a shot but it would still be cool to find out what you guys think about switching in between the two?&#xD;&#xA;If you had any experience with it or if you think it is a good/bad idea in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** Hey guys quick transportation based question - I am more interested now in trucks as opposed to cars. The only problem now is that the place I want to work at is using cars. My plan is to self-educate and start working on projects to internalize those technologies/new truck beds and then give it a shot but it would still be cool to find out what you guys think about switching in between the two?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** I have heard some people say that it is better to stick with one stack of tech if you have been using it for a while but I disagree with that and wanted to see what you guys thoght. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** Depends on what you mean by &quot;better.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** By better I mean mastering one stack and then moving on to others. My opinion is that some if not most of the things are trasnferrable but I am not sure 100% hence my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** Some of it is transferable, some of it is new skills.&#xD;&#xA;That's about the best answer I can give you, without a more specific question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** At the very bottom of my explanation I asked if anybody had experience with this directly - that is moving from software dev to web dev and the challenges that came along with it. Obviously for each person it will be a bit different but since the situation is generally the same I can pick out some of the similarities to help me with my decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** I did my first ASP.NET MVC application about 7 years ago. I had to learn about REST, web services, the stateless nature of web applications, ORM, HTML, CSS and a bit of Javascript.&#xD;&#xA;The rest I already knew from having learned C#. Well, except for the intricacies of ASP.NET and MVC.&#xD;&#xA;Nowadays, having knowledge of front end Javascript frameworks like jQuery and Angular helps a lot. There's also caching, cookies, authentication, etc. So I'd say the transition is non-trivial.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So after a lengthy clarifying discussion, we finally got to something that is answerable in some way.  But notice that it's still not a real question. Rather than asking a question that has an answer, he was asking &quot;Everyone, share your experiences, and let me pick out the common elements.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not what we do here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What he really wanted to do was solicit a discussion, which is fine in the chat room, as that is what it is designed for.  But notice that the conversation never evolved into a real question that could be answered definitively.  This is why we have such strict requirements for  questions; they all originate from hard-won experience with topics that are subjective by nature, and the desire for newcomers to bend the site to their will and their existing forum skills.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a million and one other places on the internet where folks can have a discussion.  This isn't one of them.  And before you say &quot;but this is where all the experts are,&quot; the experts are here in part so that they don't have to put up with the mindless discussion that forums encourage." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20182" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7242" RevisionGUID="909228f7-b158-452e-ad6a-3a45c32ab208" CreationDate="2015-03-19T08:18:02.783" UserId="31260" Comment="solicit a discussion += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6742/31260 &quot;see 'On discussions and why they don't make good questions'&quot;" Text="#Real Questions Have Answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following is an excerpt from The Whiteboard chat room; a user asking for career advice.  You can decide for yourself whether or not I was being too elitist/perfectionist.  But ask yourself, as you are reading this: &quot;is this a reasonably answerable question?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** Hey guys quick career based question - I am more interested now in web development as opposed to software development. The only problem now is that the place I want to work at is using totally different technologies than I am using right now. My plan is to self-educate and start working on projects to internalize those technologies/new programming language syntaxes and then give it a shot but it would still be cool to find out what you guys think about switching in between the two?&#xD;&#xA;If you had any experience with it or if you think it is a good/bad idea in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** Hey guys quick transportation based question - I am more interested now in trucks as opposed to cars. The only problem now is that the place I want to work at is using cars. My plan is to self-educate and start working on projects to internalize those technologies/new truck beds and then give it a shot but it would still be cool to find out what you guys think about switching in between the two?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** I have heard some people say that it is better to stick with one stack of tech if you have been using it for a while but I disagree with that and wanted to see what you guys thoght. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** Depends on what you mean by &quot;better.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** By better I mean mastering one stack and then moving on to others. My opinion is that some if not most of the things are trasnferrable but I am not sure 100% hence my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** Some of it is transferable, some of it is new skills.&#xD;&#xA;That's about the best answer I can give you, without a more specific question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** At the very bottom of my explanation I asked if anybody had experience with this directly - that is moving from software dev to web dev and the challenges that came along with it. Obviously for each person it will be a bit different but since the situation is generally the same I can pick out some of the similarities to help me with my decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** I did my first ASP.NET MVC application about 7 years ago. I had to learn about REST, web services, the stateless nature of web applications, ORM, HTML, CSS and a bit of Javascript.&#xD;&#xA;The rest I already knew from having learned C#. Well, except for the intricacies of ASP.NET and MVC.&#xD;&#xA;Nowadays, having knowledge of front end Javascript frameworks like jQuery and Angular helps a lot. There's also caching, cookies, authentication, etc. So I'd say the transition is non-trivial.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So after a lengthy clarifying discussion, we finally got to something that is answerable in some way.  But notice that it's still not a real question. Rather than asking a question that has an answer, he was asking &quot;Everyone, share your experiences, and let me pick out the common elements.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not what we do here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What he really wanted to do was [solicit a discussion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6742/31260 &quot;see 'On discussions and why they don't make good questions'&quot;), which is fine in the chat room, as that is what it is designed for.  But notice that the conversation never evolved into a real question that could be answered definitively.  This is why we have such strict requirements for  questions; they all originate from hard-won experience with topics that are subjective by nature, and the desire for newcomers to bend the site to their will and their existing forum skills.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a million and one other places on the internet where folks can have a discussion.  This isn't one of them.  And before you say &quot;but this is where all the experts are,&quot; the experts are here in part so that they don't have to put up with the mindless discussion that forums encourage." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20183" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7241" RevisionGUID="33c95d97-8af3-4a7c-9e65-b0378b7362d7" CreationDate="2015-03-19T08:23:21.613" UserId="31260" Comment="poor history += http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/165773 &quot;'We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...'&quot;" Text="My apologies for taking a bit of time in getting around to answer this.  The set of 'newest 50' that I am working from may not be the ones you saw.  Lets look at all the down voted ones:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Career advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276703/im-a-university-student-and-im-a-asking-for-a-road-map-for-studying-computer-s (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question is one of the career and education advice questions that we often get. They've always been problematic since the start.  This one wasn't tagged with [tag:career-development] and if you read the excerpt there, you will note that we *really* try discouraging people from asking those questions.  We can't remove the tag wholesale, because there are historical posts that we [don't want to remove](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6983/31260 &quot;'in the past, career related tags have been through community cleanups meaning that older content in these tags has already been through some extra scrutiny and generally deemed worth keeping...'&quot;) - removing the tag would make those much more difficult to find (and hopefully head off additional questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Implementation and debugging questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often we get questions about implementation or debugging.  Many times these are [cross posted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info &quot;'Cross-posting is frowned upon...'&quot;) to both Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE.  Other times, the question was posted here because the OP can't post it on SO for some reason or another. P.SE is distinctly different than SO in its scope and we aren't a &quot;can't post on SO, post on P.SE&quot; alternative site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276681/really-confused-about-maperase (-2 migrated)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276649/java-try-catch-block (-8)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question was asked on Programmers.SE in an attempt to get around a question block on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276647/what-cause-the-error-opening-trace-file-no-such-file-or-directory-2 (-3)   &#xD;&#xA;    A cross posted question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276625/how-run-a-exe-file-with-direct-connect-to-an-ipport (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    Another cross posted question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276613/python-how-to-print-in-rows (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A ***very*** poorly specified problem with python.  It is probably actually [this](http://stackoverflow.com/q/29135600/289086) question in a one sentence form, but its still an implementation or debugging issue that doesn't belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276607/passing-parameters-to-pthread-create (-3)&#xD;&#xA;    Aside from the self centered comments from the poster (it sets up a negative feeling about how one should vote), it's another implementation question that is off topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for the best&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276677/what-is-the-most-advised-way-to-handle-i18n-on-microservices (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question was asking for the best way to do something, without an actual problem to solve. As came out in the comments, the question was also looking for a discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276633/what-are-the-best-compression-algorithms-with-respect-to-a-minimising-cpu-usag (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    It's important to point out that this question has been changed from its [original](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/276633/revisions), which asked for an overview of compression algorithms. Searching google for [comparison of compression algorithms](https://www.google.com/search?q=comparison+of+compression+algorithms) brings up [this](http://binfalse.de/2011/04/04/comparison-of-compression/).  That said, we aren't a crowd sourced search engine. Those aren't fun questions to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276609/best-way-to-store-large-geo-tagged-data (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    A very broad and possibly resource recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Others&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276691/how-to-create-a-json-or-html-file-that-dynamically-mirrors-file-directory-struct (-1)  &#xD;&#xA;    This one isn't so bad. It's also at only -1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276690/simple-way-to-write-to-sql-file-from-java (-1)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question is a bit on the unclear side. It has some possibility, but it needs a clear problem definition.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276683/image-upload-fuctionality-in-a-web-application (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question failed to do any research and asked a rather [commonly asked question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/119488/40980) again.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276634/wearable-devices-that-communicate-with-my-apps-or-applicaiton (-1)  &#xD;&#xA;    A really unclear question that seems to be trying to find an architect for some idea of wearable devices or something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276631/where-can-i-find-an-open-source-project-or-body-of-code-written-in-clean-read (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    Polling for projects.  We've had a [poor history](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/165773 &quot;'We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...'&quot;) of providing answers to such questions and curating those that have been asked in the past. On P.SE they rarely produce good content (and when they do, it's surrounded by a dozen poorly answered posts). The down votes are a warning to people thinking of answering it of &quot;don't waste your time here, this question isn't a good fit for the site&quot; as well as a &quot;don't ask these questions&quot;.  Far too often people point to past questions with an up vote that are still around as a &quot;this can get asked again&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276617/how-to-store-integer-array-in-mysql-database (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    This is an XY problem where the posted is asking for a solution that follows the particular idea for how he or she thinks will solve it, but isn't the actual problem. These don't often make for good questions, though if the poster can refine it to the actual problem being asked it might be something that can be turned around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276615/image-uploading-with-blog-post-best-practice (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    Best practice questions are a sore spot with people who answer questions on the site. There is no actual problem being described in the question - it's a &quot;what do people do&quot; type poll.  Rarely are best practices ever the best practices or even applicable to the situation that is actually the unmentioned problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276604/how-to-formally-present-a-web-app-solution-to-a-panel-plus-pricing (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    Pricing of applications (and other forms of compensation) is listed as off topic in the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  The price someone wants to charge for something is based on too many factors for us to accurately base an answer on (do you have dependents? is this a job or hobby? what is the median income in your locale? etc...).  The question boils down to a poll of how people have sold software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276600/selecting-string-pattern-matching-algorithm-easier (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    A [copy and paste of a homework](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems) question.  Or at least it looks that way. It really isn't a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### And asked and deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10k links here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276687/simple-interest-loop-error (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A rather poorly specified implementation question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276682/for-the-college-dropouts-what-was-missing-from-the-university-program-that-caus (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A poll of CS college dropouts about what could have been better in their programs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276675/display-time-in-sorting-order-based-on-dynamicall-added-arrived-time-with-curren (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    A cross posted question.  You can find the SO version [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29117975/display-data-in-sorting-order-based-on-arrived-time-with-current-date-using-linq)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276621/case-insensitive-search-is-not-working-in-strongloop (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A reposted implementation question.  The [repost](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276420/case-insensitive-search-issue-in-strongloop) was at -5 when it was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, there's the list and why they are down voted.  We often wonder why we attract such questions, especially when we have many of these clearly spelled out in the Help Center for &quot;please don't ask them&quot;.  There is a suspicion that many of these are spill over from Stack Overflow (can't ask there, ask here) or a realization that Stack Overflow would close the questions, so you go down to the bottom of Stack Overflow and look at the sites...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and lo and behold, there is Programmers right next to it.  Lets try asking there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you believe that any of these *should't* have been down voted, are on topic, and not too broad or in otherwise need of fixing/clarification by the person who posted the question (we often fix those that have all the material, just poorly formatted), please point it out.  If you think that some of these *should* be asked here and the policies and community norms are in error, please bring that up so that we can help by demonstrating the path that brought us here, and look at influencing people to make that change either by making exemplary questions of that type, or writing about it on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Until we understand what people feel need to be changed, it's rather hard to work off of &quot;there are a lot of down voted posts on the front page&quot;.  We know. We really try to help it and have probably done the most changes to our help center in recent times of any Stack Exchange site (we're going through [another round](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7236/40980) of refinement - trying to make it more clear about what is and isn't on topic here. If you have suggestions about how to modify the help center, please help us make those changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/YZTDq.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20184" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7241" RevisionGUID="9f61d587-4ed9-4f4f-a41f-89b5e42833fe" CreationDate="2015-03-19T09:37:03.537" UserId="31260" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="My apologies for taking a bit of time in getting around to answer this.  The set of 'newest 50' that I am working from may not be the ones you saw.  Let's look at all the down voted ones:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Career advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276703/im-a-university-student-and-im-a-asking-for-a-road-map-for-studying-computer-s (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question is one of the career and education advice questions that we often get. They've always been problematic since the start.  This one wasn't tagged with [tag:career-development] and if you read the excerpt there, you will note that we *really* try discouraging people from asking those questions.  We can't remove the tag wholesale, because there are historical posts that we [don't want to remove](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6983/31260 &quot;'in the past, career related tags have been through community cleanups meaning that older content in these tags has already been through some extra scrutiny and generally deemed worth keeping...'&quot;) - removing the tag would make those much more difficult to find (and hopefully head off additional questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Implementation and debugging questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often we get questions about implementation or debugging.  Many times these are [cross posted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info &quot;'Cross-posting is frowned upon...'&quot;) to both Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE.  Other times, the question was posted here because the OP can't post it on SO for some reason or another. P.SE is distinctly different than SO in its scope and we aren't a &quot;can't post on SO, post on P.SE&quot; alternative site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276681/really-confused-about-maperase (-2 migrated)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276649/java-try-catch-block (-8)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question was asked on Programmers.SE in an attempt to get around a question block on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276647/what-cause-the-error-opening-trace-file-no-such-file-or-directory-2 (-3)   &#xD;&#xA;    A cross posted question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276625/how-run-a-exe-file-with-direct-connect-to-an-ipport (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    Another cross posted question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276613/python-how-to-print-in-rows (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A ***very*** poorly specified problem with python.  It is probably actually [this](http://stackoverflow.com/q/29135600/289086) question in a one sentence form, but its still an implementation or debugging issue that doesn't belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276607/passing-parameters-to-pthread-create (-3)&#xD;&#xA;    Aside from the self centered comments from the poster (it sets up a negative feeling about how one should vote), it's another implementation question that is off topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for the best&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276677/what-is-the-most-advised-way-to-handle-i18n-on-microservices (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question was asking for the best way to do something, without an actual problem to solve. As came out in the comments, the question was also looking for a discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276633/what-are-the-best-compression-algorithms-with-respect-to-a-minimising-cpu-usag (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    It's important to point out that this question has been changed from its [original](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/276633/revisions), which asked for an overview of compression algorithms. Searching google for [comparison of compression algorithms](https://www.google.com/search?q=comparison+of+compression+algorithms) brings up [this](http://binfalse.de/2011/04/04/comparison-of-compression/).  That said, we aren't a crowd sourced search engine. Those aren't fun questions to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276609/best-way-to-store-large-geo-tagged-data (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    A very broad and possibly resource recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Others&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276691/how-to-create-a-json-or-html-file-that-dynamically-mirrors-file-directory-struct (-1)  &#xD;&#xA;    This one isn't so bad. It's also at only -1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276690/simple-way-to-write-to-sql-file-from-java (-1)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question is a bit on the unclear side. It has some possibility, but it needs a clear problem definition.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276683/image-upload-fuctionality-in-a-web-application (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question failed to do any research and asked a rather [commonly asked question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/119488/40980) again.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276634/wearable-devices-that-communicate-with-my-apps-or-applicaiton (-1)  &#xD;&#xA;    A really unclear question that seems to be trying to find an architect for some idea of wearable devices or something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276631/where-can-i-find-an-open-source-project-or-body-of-code-written-in-clean-read (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    Polling for projects.  We've had a [poor history](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/165773 &quot;'We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...'&quot;) of providing answers to such questions and curating those that have been asked in the past. On P.SE they rarely produce good content (and when they do, it's surrounded by a dozen poorly answered posts). The down votes are a warning to people thinking of answering it of &quot;don't waste your time here, this question isn't a good fit for the site&quot; as well as a &quot;don't ask these questions&quot;.  Far too often people point to past questions with an up vote that are still around as a &quot;this can get asked again&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276617/how-to-store-integer-array-in-mysql-database (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    This is an XY problem where the posted is asking for a solution that follows the particular idea for how he or she thinks will solve it, but isn't the actual problem. These don't often make for good questions, though if the poster can refine it to the actual problem being asked it might be something that can be turned around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276615/image-uploading-with-blog-post-best-practice (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    Best practice questions are a sore spot with people who answer questions on the site. There is no actual problem being described in the question - it's a &quot;what do people do&quot; type poll.  Rarely are best practices ever the best practices or even applicable to the situation that is actually the unmentioned problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276604/how-to-formally-present-a-web-app-solution-to-a-panel-plus-pricing (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    Pricing of applications (and other forms of compensation) is listed as off topic in the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  The price someone wants to charge for something is based on too many factors for us to accurately base an answer on (do you have dependents? is this a job or hobby? what is the median income in your locale? etc...).  The question boils down to a poll of how people have sold software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276600/selecting-string-pattern-matching-algorithm-easier (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    A [copy and paste of a homework](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems) question.  Or at least it looks that way. It really isn't a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### And asked and deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10k links here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276687/simple-interest-loop-error (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A rather poorly specified implementation question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276682/for-the-college-dropouts-what-was-missing-from-the-university-program-that-caus (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A poll of CS college dropouts about what could have been better in their programs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276675/display-time-in-sorting-order-based-on-dynamicall-added-arrived-time-with-curren (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    A cross posted question.  You can find the SO version [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29117975/display-data-in-sorting-order-based-on-arrived-time-with-current-date-using-linq)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276621/case-insensitive-search-is-not-working-in-strongloop (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A reposted implementation question.  The [repost](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276420/case-insensitive-search-issue-in-strongloop) was at -5 when it was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, there's the list and why they are down voted.  We often wonder why we attract such questions, especially when we have many of these clearly spelled out in the Help Center for &quot;please don't ask them&quot;.  There is a suspicion that many of these are spill over from Stack Overflow (can't ask there, ask here) or a realization that Stack Overflow would close the questions, so you go down to the bottom of Stack Overflow and look at the sites...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and lo and behold, there is Programmers right next to it.  Let's try asking there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you believe that any of these *should't* have been down voted, are on topic, and not too broad or in otherwise need of fixing/clarification by the person who posted the question (we often fix those that have all the material, just poorly formatted), please point it out.  If you think that some of these *should* be asked here and the policies and community norms are in error, please bring that up so that we can help by demonstrating the path that brought us here, and look at influencing people to make that change either by making exemplary questions of that type, or writing about it on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Until we understand what people feel need to be changed, it's rather hard to work off of &quot;there are a lot of down voted posts on the front page&quot;.  We know. We really try to help it and have probably done the most changes to our help center in recent times of any Stack Exchange site (we're going through [another round](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7236/40980) of refinement - trying to make it more clear about what is and isn't on topic here. If you have suggestions about how to modify the help center, please help us make those changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/YZTDq.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20185" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7241" RevisionGUID="e6b5f1d3-5975-4ae9-9c4a-00990723bd11" CreationDate="2015-03-19T14:52:30.053" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Mismatched parens make the lisper in me despair that I wrote such a thing." Text="My apologies for taking a bit of time in getting around to answer this.  The set of 'newest 50' that I am working from may not be the ones you saw.  Let's look at all the down voted ones:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Career advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276703/im-a-university-student-and-im-a-asking-for-a-road-map-for-studying-computer-s (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question is one of the career and education advice questions that we often get. They've always been problematic since the start.  This one wasn't tagged with [tag:career-development] and if you read the excerpt there, you will note that we *really* try discouraging people from asking those questions.  We can't remove the tag wholesale, because there are historical posts that we [don't want to remove](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6983/31260 &quot;'in the past, career related tags have been through community cleanups meaning that older content in these tags has already been through some extra scrutiny and generally deemed worth keeping...'&quot;) - removing the tag would make those much more difficult to find (and hopefully head off additional questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Implementation and debugging questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often we get questions about implementation or debugging.  Many times these are [cross posted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info &quot;'Cross-posting is frowned upon...'&quot;) to both Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE.  Other times, the question was posted here because the OP can't post it on SO for some reason or another. P.SE is distinctly different than SO in its scope and we aren't a &quot;can't post on SO, post on P.SE&quot; alternative site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276681/really-confused-about-maperase (-2 migrated)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276649/java-try-catch-block (-8)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question was asked on Programmers.SE in an attempt to get around a question block on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276647/what-cause-the-error-opening-trace-file-no-such-file-or-directory-2 (-3)   &#xD;&#xA;    A cross posted question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276625/how-run-a-exe-file-with-direct-connect-to-an-ipport (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    Another cross posted question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276613/python-how-to-print-in-rows (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A ***very*** poorly specified problem with python.  It is probably actually [this](http://stackoverflow.com/q/29135600/289086) question in a one sentence form, but its still an implementation or debugging issue that doesn't belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276607/passing-parameters-to-pthread-create (-3)&#xD;&#xA;    Aside from the self centered comments from the poster (it sets up a negative feeling about how one should vote), it's another implementation question that is off topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for the best&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276677/what-is-the-most-advised-way-to-handle-i18n-on-microservices (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question was asking for the best way to do something, without an actual problem to solve. As came out in the comments, the question was also looking for a discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276633/what-are-the-best-compression-algorithms-with-respect-to-a-minimising-cpu-usag (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    It's important to point out that this question has been changed from its [original](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/276633/revisions), which asked for an overview of compression algorithms. Searching google for [comparison of compression algorithms](https://www.google.com/search?q=comparison+of+compression+algorithms) brings up [this](http://binfalse.de/2011/04/04/comparison-of-compression/).  That said, we aren't a crowd sourced search engine. Those aren't fun questions to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276609/best-way-to-store-large-geo-tagged-data (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    A very broad and possibly resource recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Others&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276691/how-to-create-a-json-or-html-file-that-dynamically-mirrors-file-directory-struct (-1)  &#xD;&#xA;    This one isn't so bad. It's also at only -1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276690/simple-way-to-write-to-sql-file-from-java (-1)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question is a bit on the unclear side. It has some possibility, but it needs a clear problem definition.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276683/image-upload-fuctionality-in-a-web-application (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question failed to do any research and asked a rather [commonly asked question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/119488/40980) again.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276634/wearable-devices-that-communicate-with-my-apps-or-applicaiton (-1)  &#xD;&#xA;    A really unclear question that seems to be trying to find an architect for some idea of wearable devices or something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276631/where-can-i-find-an-open-source-project-or-body-of-code-written-in-clean-read (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    Polling for projects.  We've had a [poor history](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/165773 &quot;'We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...'&quot;) of providing answers to such questions and curating those that have been asked in the past. On P.SE they rarely produce good content (and when they do, it's surrounded by a dozen poorly answered posts). The down votes are a warning to people thinking of answering it of &quot;don't waste your time here, this question isn't a good fit for the site&quot; as well as a &quot;don't ask these questions&quot;.  Far too often people point to past questions with an up vote that are still around as a &quot;this can get asked again&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276617/how-to-store-integer-array-in-mysql-database (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    This is an XY problem where the posted is asking for a solution that follows the particular idea for how he or she thinks will solve it, but isn't the actual problem. These don't often make for good questions, though if the poster can refine it to the actual problem being asked it might be something that can be turned around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276615/image-uploading-with-blog-post-best-practice (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    Best practice questions are a sore spot with people who answer questions on the site. There is no actual problem being described in the question - it's a &quot;what do people do&quot; type poll.  Rarely are best practices ever the best practices or even applicable to the situation that is actually the unmentioned problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276604/how-to-formally-present-a-web-app-solution-to-a-panel-plus-pricing (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    Pricing of applications (and other forms of compensation) is listed as off topic in the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  The price someone wants to charge for something is based on too many factors for us to accurately base an answer on (do you have dependents? is this a job or hobby? what is the median income in your locale? etc...).  The question boils down to a poll of how people have sold software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276600/selecting-string-pattern-matching-algorithm-easier (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    A [copy and paste of a homework](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems) question.  Or at least it looks that way. It really isn't a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### And asked and deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10k links here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276687/simple-interest-loop-error (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A rather poorly specified implementation question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276682/for-the-college-dropouts-what-was-missing-from-the-university-program-that-caus (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A poll of CS college dropouts about what could have been better in their programs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276675/display-time-in-sorting-order-based-on-dynamicall-added-arrived-time-with-curren (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    A cross posted question.  You can find the SO version [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29117975/display-data-in-sorting-order-based-on-arrived-time-with-current-date-using-linq)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276621/case-insensitive-search-is-not-working-in-strongloop (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A reposted implementation question.  The [repost](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276420/case-insensitive-search-issue-in-strongloop) was at -5 when it was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, there's the list and why they are down voted.  We often wonder why we attract such questions, especially when we have many of these clearly spelled out in the Help Center for &quot;please don't ask them&quot;.  There is a suspicion that many of these are spill over from Stack Overflow (can't ask there, ask here) or a realization that Stack Overflow would close the questions, so you go down to the bottom of Stack Overflow and look at the sites...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and lo and behold, there is Programmers right next to it.  Let's try asking there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you believe that any of these *should't* have been down voted, are on topic, and not too broad or in otherwise need of fixing/clarification by the person who posted the question (we often fix those that have all the material, just poorly formatted), please point it out.  If you think that some of these *should* be asked here and the policies and community norms are in error, please bring that up so that we can help by demonstrating the path that brought us here, and look at influencing people to make that change either by making exemplary questions of that type, or writing about it on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Until we understand what people feel need to be changed, it's rather hard to work off of &quot;there are a lot of down voted posts on the front page&quot;.  We know. We really try to help it and have probably done the most changes to our help center in recent times of any Stack Exchange site (we're going through [another round](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7236/40980) of refinement - trying to make it more clear about what is and isn't on topic here). If you have suggestions about how to modify the help center, please help us make those changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/YZTDq.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20186" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7233" RevisionGUID="b13e8182-304b-41bb-89a4-f52efca1459a" CreationDate="2015-03-19T20:11:18.303" UserId="106878" Comment="edited usability comment " Text="Where can I see what kind of questions are or are not relevant on /programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From usability point of view, it's pretty hard to find. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20187" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7237" RevisionGUID="ce4def81-d58a-4955-a913-6273cdb71db8" CreationDate="2015-03-20T10:11:52.853" UserId="4" Comment="Remove the chart to do something huge." Text="**Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career or education advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - [legal assistance][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;. **Please keep it professional**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see [the Help Center page about what not to ask][12] as well as the [*Good Subjective, Bad Subjective*][13] and [*Real Questions Have Answers*][14] blog posts for details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][17] or [strongly rooted in opinions][18]. We should be able to answer your questions in the equivalent of a few pages of text and graphics and provide references to support claims. If you have questions that warrant an extended discussion, feel free to come to our [chat room][19].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before asking, [look around][15] to see if your question has been asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions. It’s also OK to [ask and answer your own question][16].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for [another Stack Exchange site][20]. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may [commit to][21] or [propose][22] a new side at [Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created][23].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1655&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20188" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7243" RevisionGUID="ab002a8f-55ca-4709-afe1-5a2e66b7c289" CreationDate="2015-03-20T11:37:12.100" UserId="31260" Text="Stack Overflow has got an **[interesting feature](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/288387/839601 &quot;find more detailed description here&quot;)** that may be related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't tell that it helps to lower amount of bad questions _asked_ (I honestly don't know if this is possible at all) - but it _at least_ helps to save site hompage from being polluted by such questions (bold font in below quote is mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;*All* questions flagged Very Low Quality now immediately enter [Triage](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7053/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...and **while these questions are being triaged, they're *not* shown on the home page. Take *that*, [wall of crap.](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so)**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;[![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1rTGm.png)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20189" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7236" RevisionGUID="14e25639-8f11-4ed4-9fe9-0450f0d77c56" CreationDate="2015-03-20T11:52:06.570" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|close-reasons|help-center|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20190" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7237" RevisionGUID="49e0e47b-b6ee-41da-a712-eadcb16ef734" CreationDate="2015-03-20T12:09:32.840" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 15 characters in body" Text="**Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career or education advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - [legal assistance][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;. **Please keep it professional**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see [the Help Center page about what not to ask][12] as well as the [*Good Subjective, Bad Subjective*][13] and [*Real Questions Have Answers*][14] blog posts for details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][17] or [strongly rooted in opinions][18]. We should be able to answer your questions in the equivalent of a few pages of text and graphics and provide references to support claims. If you have questions that warrant an extended discussion, feel free to come to our [chat room][19].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before asking, [look around][15] to see if your question has been asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions. It’s also OK to [ask and answer your own question][16].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for [another Stack Exchange site][20]. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may [commit to][21] or [propose][22] a new side at [Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are created][23].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1655&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20191" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7236" RevisionGUID="351aee65-de72-472e-8c9e-d39234cda79b" CreationDate="2015-03-20T12:41:20.317" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/578899119504244738" />
  <row Id="20196" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7243" RevisionGUID="2225f575-ef50-4cb9-ad2f-eab5cac5eb4a" CreationDate="2015-03-20T15:49:46.330" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="Stack Overflow has got an **[interesting feature](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/288387/839601 &quot;find more detailed description here&quot;)** that may be related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't tell that it helps to lower amount of bad questions _asked_ (I honestly don't know if this is possible at all) - but it _at least_ helps to save site home page from being polluted by such questions (bold font in below quote is mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;*All* questions flagged Very Low Quality now immediately enter [Triage](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7053/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...and **while these questions are being triaged, they're *not* shown on the home page. Take *that*, [wall of crap.](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so)**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;[![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1rTGm.png)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20197" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7130" RevisionGUID="615e5b9a-54a4-4a0e-8481-05bd4fc876d0" CreationDate="2015-03-20T15:51:32.453" UserId="31260" Comment="added 10 characters in body; edited tags" Text="At the time I am writing this, 7 out of 15 questions in the first page have negative score. That's almost a half. Second page has 4 out of 15, and the third page has 6 out of 15. I never counted them on any other Stack Exchange site but I'm under impression other sites don't have such a big percentage of bad questions. I wonder why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe the purpose of this site is not as clear to a regular user... or maybe other sites just delete bad questions immediately and so they don't look overloaded with them. I have no idea. But it seems to me, when you come to a new site to ask question and see lots and lots of other questions downvoted, it may discourage you a bit, doesn't it. The site may even appear somewhat hostile.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder what could be done to fix this. Even if you don't care about the site appearing hostile to new users, there's still a matter of people wasting time writing bad questions and then other people wasting time explaining why these questions are bad. What do you think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;in the light of some answers I think I need to add this (wrote in comment as well): my intent was not to debate what questions are good what are bad, or to say that people are downvoting perfectly good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not at all. There are lots of really bad questions and people downvote them as they are supposed to do. I have never found a single &quot;unjustly&quot; downvoted or closed question so far. My intent was to find out how to limit the number of bad questions. Delete them faster? Provide more accessible, clearer FAQ to users? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you to all of you who replied and who are going to reply, despite this question being a duplicate (quintuplicate?) ;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20198" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7130" RevisionGUID="615e5b9a-54a4-4a0e-8481-05bd4fc876d0" CreationDate="2015-03-20T15:51:32.453" UserId="31260" Comment="added 10 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20199" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7243" RevisionGUID="84a22927-9b2d-479c-a8df-d726028d7180" CreationDate="2015-03-20T18:27:44.547" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/251737/165773" Text="Stack Overflow has got an **[interesting feature](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/288387/839601 &quot;find more detailed description here&quot;)** that may be related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't tell that it helps to lower amount of bad questions _asked_ (I honestly don't know if this is possible at all) - but it _at least_ helps to save site home page from being polluted by such questions (bold font in below quote is mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;*All* questions flagged Very Low Quality now immediately enter [Triage](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7053/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...and **while these questions are being triaged, they're *not* shown on the home page. Take *that*, [wall of crap.](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so)**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;[![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1rTGm.png)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* MSE discussion of instilling above features network wide:  &#xD;&#xA; [Triage and Help &amp; Improvement review queues at sites other than Stack Overflow?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/251737/165773)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20200" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="edd4850d-ac00-4043-9d86-e55ab875b081" CreationDate="2015-03-21T11:00:53.840" UserId="31260" Comment="Three of categories listed under _Off topic_ match site-specific close reasons, see: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5992/what-should-our-predefined-off-topic-reasons-be" Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted).  Why? And what can I do about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What technology to take up next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a tool, library, or other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * (MSE) [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in/129632#129632)&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)  &#xD;&#xA;  certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three of categories listed under _Off topic_ match site-specific close reasons, see: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5992/what-should-our-predefined-off-topic-reasons-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links also from particular points in the history of Programmers.SE and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a [serial vote](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/serial-voting/info &quot;what's this&quot;) reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For pasting into chat or comments there is a &quot;Quick link&quot; at the end of each answer.  The quick link for the question is `[Why was my question closed or down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/)` - pasting this into chat or a comment will link to the question.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20201" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7245" RevisionGUID="98285768-f56b-4270-a0d1-071e035a0be1" CreationDate="2015-03-22T06:23:03.403" UserId="158187" Text="Just now I was idly checking my helpful flags count (a habit I got into on SO, where it's frankly far more interesting than my stats here) and noticed that I had a flag pending that was over 24 hours old. This seemed a little surprising, so I dug into the review stats and found that CV and FP have over two dozen entries in their queues, but not a soul has reviewed a single First Post today, and there's only been one Close review. How does that happen, when a single reviewer could run through their whole allotment of reviews on either queue in one go?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20202" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7245" RevisionGUID="98285768-f56b-4270-a0d1-071e035a0be1" CreationDate="2015-03-22T06:23:03.403" UserId="158187" Text="Sizable review queues with no one hitting them?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20203" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7245" RevisionGUID="98285768-f56b-4270-a0d1-071e035a0be1" CreationDate="2015-03-22T06:23:03.403" UserId="158187" Text="|discussion|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20204" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7246" RevisionGUID="ee98651b-7fec-4e83-90d4-bbc9be45406f" CreationDate="2015-03-22T07:21:49.647" UserId="171739" Text="In my humble opinion, Programmers is not &quot;elitist&quot; (At least yet), but it is also not welcoming. At all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;StackExchange has a clear policy. First rule. Most important thing to consider, I believe:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;**Be nice**&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not complex, not detailed, not specific. Kinda &quot;bad&quot; in a programming sense. Still, meaningful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My suggestion is: People with power should use it for **good**. Much like JSON License states that &quot;The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.&quot;, I think the intent of that rule is: &quot;Before anything, try to help. Only of not possible, do something else.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many rules reinforce that notion. Vote to close only if there's no way to salvage the question etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice, best and lists are **usually not helpful**. Still, programmers is all about **conceptual questions**. To me that means:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. We have to deal with SOME of this &quot;evil stuff&quot; as there are **true and tested** ways that may be described by some users as **best** or **better**, as there are questions with **multiple valid answers** that are of interest to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To go with @MichaelT suggestion, I provided an answer to the JSTree question, the &quot;not so bad&quot;, because I think it is REALLY interesting for MANY people. I built code to generate folder trees a lot of times. Ok, it probably should be on SO, but still, to think the concept of generating trees based on folder structures are of no interest to anyone else...?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What about carrer advice? Starting to learn programming, thinking about the implications of changing languages... Would those indagations not be meaningful to other programmers, beginners or not? And are they not conceptual questions about programming, in the broader sense of the word, considering not only the machine interpretation but also the act of creating programs itself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why not heling and suggesting edits? Why not letting some other rules slide for the sake of helping people? I usually ask my questions in the most &quot;generic&quot; manner I can find. That is not good. That is not good for SEO and that is not good for clarity or brevity. Heck, I'm walking on eggs right now so that my answer doesn't sound like a rant.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe &quot;best&quot;, &quot;better&quot; and &quot;lists&quot; MAY be evil. I also believe they may be the best way to talk about some stuff we can't avoid. Conceptually speaking, starting to study programming (Among lots of other stuff), is hard and requires a LOT of knowledge. Piles of it. Maybe lists. Let's suggest edits, let's help people fit the rules, or overlook when the question is relevant enough to others. Let's salvage as many questions as we can instead of simply kicking people out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if you ever actually find a question that will never help someone else or fit in the website subject, no matter how many edits, only then you should downvote or vote to close. Preferably just comment it's in the wrong place though, as downvoting scares people a lot, esecially when you have less than 100 rep. But I doubt we would have any of those questions around here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, for the community leaders (Or anyone with a reputation in the hundreds and above):&#xD;&#xA;If we downvote newcomers instead of helping, because we have too many rep to spare, we will end up in a locked community, aging together, only to isolate ourselves, limit our knowledge and lose many amazing people that could bring a lot to this community. And I don't think anyone here wants that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20205" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7247" RevisionGUID="9ae02993-24c1-4e49-b3ae-680e4e2cffd3" CreationDate="2015-03-22T11:27:52.283" UserId="161917" Text="I can't speak for all the users with review queue access, but I can point out a few reasons why **I never use these review queues**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The suggested edits review queue seems to be the only one that ever actively reminds me to review it. Every time there's a little &quot;1&quot; next to &quot;review&quot; at the top of PSE, it's *always* a suggested edit review. I have no idea if this is deliberate or a bug or some function of my current rep, but it's probably the only reason why I do review suggested edits on a regular basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- When I first gained access to the CV/FP review queues, I tried them for about an hour, and had such a negative experience I've never looked at them since.&#xD;&#xA;  - I can't evaluate the quality of an answer without first reading the question. The queues never show you both.&#xD;&#xA;  - Many posts in the queues were already being edited or had comments soliciting further information from the owner, or *had already been improved*. If I had not opened the Q/A in another tab to see this information, I would have duplicated or overwritten effort that had already been made.&#xD;&#xA;  - One of the questions covered by the previous bullet point turned out to be an audit question that I failed. In other words, the SE software yelled at me for not taking any action on a question even though *other people had already taken action on it*. When software blindly assumes it's smarter than me I lose interest in using it very quickly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Personally, I'm more interested in trying to clean up the terrible questions on our front page than whatever happens to be in the queues, so that's where most of my &quot;should I VTC this?&quot; time is spent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Incidentally, I would love it if we got [question triage](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage) here. That would probably fix all of my complains about the current review queues." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20206" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7247" RevisionGUID="6d46b142-50a2-41fe-a754-7a1bd0dfe11f" CreationDate="2015-03-22T11:33:04.840" UserId="161917" Comment="deleted 12 characters in body" Text="I can't speak for all the users with review queue access, but I can point out a few reasons why **I never use these review queues**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The suggested edits review queue seems to be the only one that ever actively reminds me to review it. Every time there's a little &quot;1&quot; next to &quot;review&quot; at the top of PSE, it's *always* a suggested edit review. I have no idea if this is deliberate or a bug or some function of my current rep, but it's probably the only reason why I do review suggested edits on a regular basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- When I first gained access to the CV/FP review queues, I tried them for about an hour, and had such a negative experience I've never looked at them since.&#xD;&#xA;  - I can't evaluate the quality of an answer without first reading the question. The queues never show you both.&#xD;&#xA;  - Many posts in the queues were already being edited or had comments soliciting further information from the owner, or *had already been improved*. If I had not opened the Q/A in another tab to see this information, I would have duplicated or overwritten effort that had already been made.&#xD;&#xA;  - One of the questions covered by the previous bullet point turned out to be an audit question that I failed. In other words, PSE yelled at me for not taking any action on a question even though *other people had already taken action on it*. When software blindly assumes it's smarter than me I lose interest in using it very quickly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Personally, I'm more interested in trying to clean up the terrible questions on our front page than whatever happens to be in the queues, so that's where most of my &quot;should I VTC this?&quot; time is spent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Incidentally, I would love it if we got [question triage](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage) here. That would probably fix all of my complains about the current review queues." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20207" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7233" RevisionGUID="99828bf6-1fec-43ef-b132-c07b080585d9" CreationDate="2015-03-23T18:23:18.360" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add relevant topic tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|help-center|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20208" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7248" RevisionGUID="fdfb832a-fadd-425e-a245-2f39ad7ce7e3" CreationDate="2015-03-23T21:14:24.893" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="People keep telling me that there is this wonderful area in Stack Exchange where you can ask questions called &quot;chat&quot; or &quot;the white board&quot;, but it keeps saying that I need 20 reputation. I have such trouble asking questions here, I can't even get above 1 rep. How do I get to that much rep when even a little bit is difficult?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20209" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7248" RevisionGUID="fdfb832a-fadd-425e-a245-2f39ad7ce7e3" CreationDate="2015-03-23T21:14:24.893" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="How do you get 20 rep to get into chat?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20210" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7248" RevisionGUID="fdfb832a-fadd-425e-a245-2f39ad7ce7e3" CreationDate="2015-03-23T21:14:24.893" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|support|reputation|new-users|chat|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20211" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7249" RevisionGUID="cb40df0f-4150-44fb-81c1-e28a63b82f4f" CreationDate="2015-03-23T21:14:24.893" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The first thing to realize with the reputation is that this is for *all* of Stack Exchange.  If you have 20 reputation [anywhere](http://stackexchange.com/sites#questionsperday) you can get into any chat room on the network.  This means you could answer a question about [cooking](http://cooking.stackexchange.com/), [photography](http://photo.stackexchange.com/), [video games](http://gaming.stackexchange.com/), the nuances of the [English language](http://english.stackexchange.com/) (or for people [learning English](http://ell.stackexchange.com/)), [travel](http://travel.stackexchange.com/), [home improvement](http://diy.stackexchange.com/).  The point I'm trying to make here is that there are a lot of Stack Exchange sites where you may have sufficient familiarity with the subject matter to be able to provide a quality answer to a question (I do want to stress that quality bit - don't expect to toss a sentence in a text box and get two upvotes - make sure you are taking an appropriate amount of time to write a good answer that is fitting in with the standards of that Stack Exchange site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could also ask questions on other sites too. You get reputation from that too. With some sites it is much easier to conceptualize a good, objective question that can be answered in the Q&amp;A format. You've got a leaky sink? Take pictures of it explain what you've done to try to fix it and the difficulty you are having and post that on home improvement.  You're trying to take a good picture of a leaky sink and having trouble with the DSLR you've got? Sit down and write a question about how to take the photograph and the problem you are having lighting under the sink and getting the right settings and post that on photography.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also the possibility of doing ten edits (+2 reputation each) to posts, but I personally suggest that this isn't the best choice for someone who is unfamiliar with the site or Stack Exchange because you may not be familiar with the expectations of an edit in the site, or the format for Stack Exchange as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All it takes is 20 reputation *somewhere* and you will be able to get into chat. There are many sites to explore where you can get that reputation, not just here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20212" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7248" RevisionGUID="cb14a2f0-44ef-45d9-8fbc-88a8945cb815" CreationDate="2015-03-24T11:19:52.993" UserId="31260" Comment="to integrate into HC / http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7236/help-center-tuning-help-on-topic-and-it-is-not-about-references-to-meta#comment21690_7237" Text="People keep telling me that there is this wonderful area in Stack Exchange where you can ask questions called &quot;chat&quot; or [&quot;the white board&quot;](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard), but it keeps saying that I need 20 reputation. I have such trouble asking questions here, I can't even get above 1 rep. How do I get to that much rep when even a little bit is difficult?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20213" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7237" RevisionGUID="d526159e-885b-4986-a8c8-cdadac19dddf" CreationDate="2015-03-24T11:21:24.410" UserId="31260" Comment="integrated 20 rep to chat // http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7236/help-center-tuning-help-on-topic-and-it-is-not-about-references-to-meta#comment21690_7237" Text="**Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career or education advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - [legal assistance][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;. **Please keep it professional**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see [the Help Center page about what not to ask][12] as well as the [*Good Subjective, Bad Subjective*][13] and [*Real Questions Have Answers*][14] blog posts for details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][17] or [strongly rooted in opinions][18]. We should be able to answer your questions in the equivalent of a few pages of text and graphics and provide references to support claims. If you have questions that warrant an extended discussion, feel free to come to our [chat room][19].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before asking, [look around][15] to see if your question has been asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions. It’s also OK to [ask and answer your own question][16].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for [another Stack Exchange site][20]. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may [commit to][21] or [propose][22] a new side at [Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are created][23].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1655&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7248/how-do-you-get-20-rep-to-get-into-chat&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20214" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7248" RevisionGUID="47ec0395-cd14-4b07-9360-741450ddeb8f" CreationDate="2015-03-24T12:14:51.903" UserId="4" Comment="added 47 characters in body" Text="People keep telling me that there is this wonderful area in Stack Exchange where you can ask questions called [&quot;chat&quot;][1] or [&quot;The Whiteboard&quot;](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard), but it keeps saying that I need 20 reputation. I have such trouble asking questions here, I can't even get above 1 rep. How do I get to that much rep when even a little bit is difficult?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20215" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7250" RevisionGUID="7b6b29be-eea3-40f7-b0b6-9545d06abbea" CreationDate="2015-03-24T15:30:12.990" UserId="92583" Text="I've been on StackOverflow for some time, but relatively new to Programmers. I have a legitimate (hehe!) question for other &quot;senior&quot; software engineers regarding the desirability of in-house utility libraries, pros and cons of reuse vs. mindlessly wrapping of standard APIs, noob-friendliness of such code vs. utility gained, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this an acceptable topic on Programmers? Is it too opinion based?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20216" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7250" RevisionGUID="7b6b29be-eea3-40f7-b0b6-9545d06abbea" CreationDate="2015-03-24T15:30:12.990" UserId="92583" Text="Question regarding in-house utility libraries/frameworks on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20217" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7250" RevisionGUID="7b6b29be-eea3-40f7-b0b6-9545d06abbea" CreationDate="2015-03-24T15:30:12.990" UserId="92583" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20218" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7250" RevisionGUID="4fa89a6e-5f80-4457-91d5-5dd90a9c81cc" CreationDate="2015-03-24T17:47:20.463" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6758],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="20219" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7251" RevisionGUID="ea5db398-2122-441f-badd-f2c24ea78086" CreationDate="2015-03-24T21:32:53.753" UserId="31260" Text="As explained in [this answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/251744/165773) to related question at MSE, there is no such plan.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More specifically, Triage review was not intended to be applicable network wide; it was designed based on assumptions that apply at Stack Overflow but not necessarily hold at other network sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, per what I additionally learned at MSE ([1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251737/triage-and-help-improvement-review-queues-at-sites-other-than-stack-overflow#comment822246_251744), [2](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251737/triage-and-help-improvement-review-queues-at-sites-other-than-stack-overflow#comment822318_251744)), site needs to cover following points for Triage to make sense:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. Set the goals (for SO, goals are said to be &quot;de-emphasize questions from folks who haven't yet learned... but don't immediately nuke them&quot; and protect home page from [&quot;wall of crap&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so))&#xD;&#xA;2. Enough content to keep scoring algorithm relevant - 100 troublesome questions a month won't do, nor probably 1000 would.&#xD;&#xA;3. Timely escape - we don't want automatic scoring nor user flags to hide question for hours solely because there's nobody around to review.&#xD;&#xA;4. It must be clear to many that the existing tools are insufficient: in particular, if the &quot;home page as work area&quot; strategy is working well for a given community, there's little need for anything more elaborate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does above match to what we've got at Programmers? Let's see...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding point #1 about _goals_, first thing that comes to mind is that those stated for SO apply here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given meta discussions, we are interested in helping folks to learn (http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions) - though I am not completely certain that existing tools are proven as insufficient as implied by point #4.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another goal, about &quot;wall of crap&quot; at homepage, also looks relevant to us, as indicated by recurring discussions about [too many bad questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7130?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Point #2, at first sight, doesn't match. Being 100-200 times smaller than Stack Overflow, Programmers hardly can serve sufficiently reliable data feed into question scoring. One option worth considering to address this is to simply &quot;borrow&quot; Stack Overflow data feed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may work because site topics substantially overlap and, especially, because many troublesome questions over here appear to be posted by users who are simply [trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260). Using same scoring data that is supposed to detect and block them at Stack Overflow would make sense, wouldn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Point #3, about timely escape, also doesn't seem to match at first sight. Per my observations, it rather frequently happens that _for several hours_ there's just not enough 3K/diamond regulars around to make decisions supposed to drive Triage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Not that I complain](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14524409#14524409 &quot;moderation is just not supposed to be 24x7 watch, this is not how system is expected to work&quot;), but there is just no way to ensure that questions in Triage queue would be reviewed within reasonable timeframe. Probably the only way to overcome this would be to automatically drop questions from the queue after some timeout (say, 1-2 hours) if these haven't got sufficient attention." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20220" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7251" RevisionGUID="307e1b18-3d51-4260-863d-dec69a6266a4" CreationDate="2015-03-25T06:48:11.827" UserId="31260" Comment="minor wordsmithing" Text="As explained in [this answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/251744/165773) to related question at MSE, there is no such plan.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More specifically, Triage review was not intended to be applicable network wide; it was designed based on assumptions that apply at Stack Overflow but not necessarily hold at other network sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, per what I additionally learned at MSE ([1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251737/triage-and-help-improvement-review-queues-at-sites-other-than-stack-overflow#comment822246_251744), [2](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251737/triage-and-help-improvement-review-queues-at-sites-other-than-stack-overflow#comment822318_251744)), site needs to cover following points for Triage to make sense:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. Set the goals (for SO, goals are said to be &quot;de-emphasize questions from folks who haven't yet learned... but don't immediately nuke them&quot; and protect home page from [&quot;wall of crap&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so))&#xD;&#xA;2. Enough content to keep scoring algorithm relevant - 100 troublesome questions a month won't do, nor probably 1000 would.&#xD;&#xA;3. Timely escape - we don't want automatic scoring nor user flags to hide question for hours solely because there's nobody around to review.&#xD;&#xA;4. It must be clear to many that the existing tools are insufficient: in particular, if the &quot;home page as work area&quot; strategy is working well for a given community, there's little need for anything more elaborate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does above match to what we've got at Programmers? Let's see...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding point **#1** about _goals_, first thing that comes to mind is that those stated for SO apply here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given meta discussions, we are interested in helping folks to learn (http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions) - though I am not completely certain that existing tools are proven as insufficient as implied by point **#4**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another goal, about &quot;wall of crap&quot; at homepage, also looks relevant to us, as indicated by multiple recurring discussions about [too many bad questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7130?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Point **#2**, at first sight, doesn't match. Being 100-200 times smaller than Stack Overflow, Programmers hardly can serve sufficiently reliable data feed into question scoring. One option worth considering to address this is to simply &quot;borrow&quot; Stack Overflow data feed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may work because site topics substantially overlap and, especially, because many troublesome questions over here appear to be posted by users who are simply [trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260). Using same scoring data that is supposed to detect and block them at Stack Overflow would make sense, wouldn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Point **#3**, about timely escape, also doesn't seem to match at first sight. Per my observations, it rather frequently happens that _for several hours_ there's just not enough 3K/diamond regulars around to make decisions supposed to drive Triage. [Not that I complain](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14524409#14524409 &quot;moderation is just not supposed to be 24x7 watch, this is not how system is expected to work&quot;), but there is just no way to ensure that questions in Triage queue would be reviewed within reasonable timeframe.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Probably the only way to overcome this would be to automatically kick questions off this queue and let them go to homepage after some timeout (say, 1-2 hours) if these haven't got sufficient attention." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20221" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7251" RevisionGUID="e06aada2-7bab-4aa5-8721-0801f00a93ae" CreationDate="2015-03-25T08:33:42.557" UserId="31260" Comment="it is quite likely that &quot;kick off by timeout&quot; will be eventually implemented (if it is not there already) in Stack Overflow Triage" Text="As explained in [this answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/251744/165773) to related question at MSE, there is no such plan.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More specifically, Triage review was not intended to be applicable network wide; it was designed based on assumptions that apply at Stack Overflow but not necessarily hold at other network sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, per what I additionally learned at MSE ([1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251737/triage-and-help-improvement-review-queues-at-sites-other-than-stack-overflow#comment822246_251744), [2](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251737/triage-and-help-improvement-review-queues-at-sites-other-than-stack-overflow#comment822318_251744)), site needs to cover following points for Triage to make sense:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. Set the goals (for SO, goals are said to be &quot;de-emphasize questions from folks who haven't yet learned... but don't immediately nuke them&quot; and protect home page from [&quot;wall of crap&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so))&#xD;&#xA;2. Enough content to keep scoring algorithm relevant - 100 troublesome questions a month won't do, nor probably 1000 would.&#xD;&#xA;3. Timely escape - we don't want automatic scoring nor user flags to hide question for hours solely because there's nobody around to review.&#xD;&#xA;4. It must be clear to many that the existing tools are insufficient: in particular, if the &quot;home page as work area&quot; strategy is working well for a given community, there's little need for anything more elaborate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does above match to what we've got at Programmers? Let's see...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding point **#1** about _goals_, first thing that comes to mind is that those stated for SO apply here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given meta discussions, we are interested in helping folks to learn (http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions) - though I am not completely certain that existing tools are proven as insufficient as implied by point **#4**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another goal, about &quot;wall of crap&quot; at homepage, also looks relevant to us, as indicated by multiple recurring discussions about [too many bad questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7130?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Point **#2**, at first sight, doesn't match. Being 100-200 times smaller than Stack Overflow, Programmers hardly can serve sufficiently reliable data feed into question scoring. One option worth considering to address this is to simply &quot;borrow&quot; Stack Overflow data feed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may work because site topics substantially overlap and, especially, because many troublesome questions over here appear to be posted by users who are simply [trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260). Using same scoring data that is supposed to detect and block them at Stack Overflow would make sense, wouldn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Point **#3**, about timely escape, also doesn't seem to match at first sight. Per my observations, it rather frequently happens that _for several hours_ there's just not enough 3K/diamond regulars around to make decisions supposed to drive Triage. [Not that I complain](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14524409#14524409 &quot;moderation is just not supposed to be 24x7 watch, this is not how system is expected to work&quot;), but there is just no way to ensure that questions in Triage queue would be reviewed within reasonable timeframe.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Probably the only way to overcome this would be to automatically kick questions off this queue and let them go to homepage after some timeout (say, 1-2 hours) if these haven't got sufficient attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;FWIW it is quite likely that &quot;kick off by timeout&quot; will be eventually implemented (if it is not there already) in Stack Overflow Triage. Thing is, given their scale, as soon as this queue gets into &quot;mass production&quot;, there will be a solid chance that all reviewers press Skip on particular post, making it stuck in there, while as pointed in **#3**, &quot;we don't want automatic scoring nor user flags to hide question for hours solely because there's nobody around to review&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20222" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7236" RevisionGUID="c5f55875-216e-4cf7-9f29-a5976381ed54" CreationDate="2015-03-25T10:21:33.833" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|close-reasons|meta|help-center|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20224" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7252" RevisionGUID="0609a714-a4f7-4a75-bac1-c598bf20f919" CreationDate="2015-03-26T05:26:39.980" UserId="121251" Text="I just made some updates to http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/faq-index-for-programmers-se, adding some missing [meta-tag:faq] questions, mostly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that each of the questions in [meta-tag:faq] should have a link back to the index, similar to the links on MSE ([example](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8010/how-can-i-get-answers-fast)) and SO ([example](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/271542/why-wont-the-system-allow-me-to-ask-questions-for-several-days)). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this link should take the form:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Return to FAQ index](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/faq-index-for-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the bottom of the question post for each FAQ entry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't have edit privileges here and suggested edits are not allowed on [meta-tag:faq]. Presuming there are no objections to adding a FAQ index backlink to each entry, does somebody want to make these edits?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these changes are made, a note should probably be added to the end of the &quot;How can a question be added to this FAQ&quot; section at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1647/121251 as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20225" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7252" RevisionGUID="0609a714-a4f7-4a75-bac1-c598bf20f919" CreationDate="2015-03-26T05:26:39.980" UserId="121251" Text="FAQ index links" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20226" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7252" RevisionGUID="0609a714-a4f7-4a75-bac1-c598bf20f919" CreationDate="2015-03-26T05:26:39.980" UserId="121251" Text="|discussion|meta-faq|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20228" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7237" RevisionGUID="fddf932f-9be6-43df-b04c-eb13707141f5" CreationDate="2015-03-26T13:26:52.133" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 9 characters in body" Text="**Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career or education advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - [legal assistance][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;. **Please keep it professional**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see [the Help Center page about what not to ask][12] as well as the [*Good Subjective, Bad Subjective*][13] and [*Real Questions Have Answers*][14] blog posts for details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][17] or [strongly rooted in opinions][18]. We should be able to answer your questions in the equivalent of a few pages of text and graphics and provide references to support claims. If you have questions that warrant an extended discussion, feel free to [come to chat][19].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before asking, [look around][15] to see if your question has been asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions. It’s also OK to [ask and answer your own question][16].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for [another Stack Exchange site][20]. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may [commit to][21] or [propose][22] a new side at [Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are created][23].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1655&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7248/how-do-you-get-20-rep-to-get-into-chat&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20229" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7252" RevisionGUID="6a610a1a-49c8-4cc1-8c53-d372a65c177d" CreationDate="2015-03-26T15:25:30.380" UserId="1204" Comment="added 13 characters in body" Text="I just made some updates to http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/faq-index-for-programmers-se, adding some missing [meta-tag:faq] questions, mostly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that each of the questions in [meta-tag:faq] should have a link back to the index, similar to the links on MSE ([example](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8010/how-can-i-get-answers-fast)) and SO ([example](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/271542/why-wont-the-system-allow-me-to-ask-questions-for-several-days)). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this link should take the form:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;`[Return to FAQ index](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1646)`&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the bottom of the question post for each FAQ entry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't have edit privileges here and suggested edits are not allowed on [meta-tag:faq]. Presuming there are no objections to adding a FAQ index backlink to each entry, does somebody want to make these edits?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these changes are made, a note should probably be added to the end of the &quot;How can a question be added to this FAQ&quot; section at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1647/121251 as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20230" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6763" RevisionGUID="8929e1e6-a4c9-4f84-8dc9-4019d9fd3faf" CreationDate="2015-03-26T15:26:12.150" UserId="1204" Comment="added 83 characters in body" Text="I entered Programmers Stack Exchange and unfortunately, it wasn't what I was looking for. As the name suggested, I expected you would be able to talk about programming, but the rules are much stricter than I imagined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that I prefer subjective discussions where I can learn through gaining different viewpoints and perspectives. Programmers.SE doesn't offer that experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which Stack Exchange sites allow this sort of discussions? Can [Stack Exchange's chat][1] be used for that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Return to FAQ index](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1646)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20231" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="516" RevisionGUID="551d409f-f706-449b-8fc3-b52916b50aee" CreationDate="2015-03-26T15:26:28.047" UserId="1204" Comment="added 83 characters in body" Text="What do I need to know to get the most out of this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Return to FAQ index](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1646)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20232" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="171" RevisionGUID="bb0b88b3-1d00-41c4-acfc-3dff7432afe1" CreationDate="2015-03-26T15:26:39.187" UserId="1204" Comment="added 83 characters in body" Text="What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Return to FAQ index](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1646)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20233" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1624" RevisionGUID="f44d83fa-8f4d-418b-912e-254eb9eaf49b" CreationDate="2015-03-26T15:26:56.670" UserId="1204" Comment="added 83 characters in body" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78253/is-there-something-else-like-squarespace-out-there-closed) reminded me that there is nothing explicit in our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) about shopping recommendation questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should there be? Should we take an approach similar to Super User and Gaming where recommendations are off-topic? And if so, do we exclude only questions like &quot;I'm looking for a service that does what I need&quot; or also things like &quot;is there a library in language X that has feature Y&quot;? (Here's an [example](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78379/need-advice-on-php-search-functionality) of the latter kind of questions.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Return to FAQ index](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1646)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20234" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1573" RevisionGUID="dc2c8dd0-77a1-4139-8e5b-6074bf9eb2ac" CreationDate="2015-03-26T15:31:22.703" UserId="1204" Comment="added 83 characters in body" Text="Don't get me wrong: I understand the argument that the answer in almost all cases is &quot;it depends&quot;. Nevertheless, many people **do** want some advice on the applicability of various languages in the real world and it seems to me that programmers is the place to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there is a meta-question that most people who ask this question have: &quot;How much value is there to my career if I learn another language?&quot; or, maybe, &quot;does it really matter that much which languages I know?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again: I understand that this is localised and may be specific to a person's individual circumstances, but it also seems that it would be really helpful to a bunch of people to have an answer that says &quot;knowing languages is good&quot; rather than &quot;don't ask that; it's off-topic&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess I'm asking how we can help those people who are trying to make an important decision about their career development but don't have the industry experience to know that it's not quite the right question to be asking. They are asking for mentorship and I don't think immediately closing the question is helpful or encouraging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a better place we can refer these questions to? I don't see any stack sites that would be more appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Return to FAQ index](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1646)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20235" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7253" RevisionGUID="164a8d62-f392-45a9-99e2-ed7413209fa7" CreationDate="2015-03-26T16:20:13.170" UserId="4" Text="I have a question about tools. According to the [on-topic page][1], tool questions are off-topic on Programmers Stack Exchange. Is there a site for me to go to ask specific tool questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20236" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7253" RevisionGUID="164a8d62-f392-45a9-99e2-ed7413209fa7" CreationDate="2015-03-26T16:20:13.170" UserId="4" Text="Where does my tool question go?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20237" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7253" RevisionGUID="164a8d62-f392-45a9-99e2-ed7413209fa7" CreationDate="2015-03-26T16:20:13.170" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20238" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7253" RevisionGUID="51ed52cf-61e8-4b91-b89b-1f7fed2cd654" CreationDate="2015-03-26T16:20:13.170" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="20239" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7254" RevisionGUID="3d520708-0d81-4df0-816d-6720418b3735" CreationDate="2015-03-26T16:20:13.170" UserId="4" Text="### Question is About a Development Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool that you are using is a tool that is used to design and develop software and is used primarily in a software development environment, you should check out [Stack Overflow][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A number of development tools already have questions and answers on Stack Overflow, ranging from requirements management tools ([DOORS][2]) to architecture and design tools ([Dia][3], [Rhapsody][4], [Enterprise Architect][5]) to editors ([Visual Studio][6], [Eclipse][7], [Notepad++][8]) to mathematical packages ([MATLAB][9], [Sage][10]) to version control ([git][11], [ClearCase][12]) to peer review tools ([Collaborator][13]) to test tools ([TestComplete][14], [Selenium][15]) to project management tools ([Jira][16], [FogBugz][17]), and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about a General Purpose Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool is general purpose software, check out [Super User][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all of the tools that we use during the course of software development are unique to software developers. Tools such as office suites ([Microsoft Office][19], [OpenOffice.org][20]), web browsers ([Internet Explorer][21], [Chrome][22]) file transfer tools ([Filezilla][23], [WinSCP][24]), virtualization software ([VirtualBox][25], [VMWare][26]), and analysis software ([MATLAB][27], [Mathematica][28]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about a Tool Unique to an Operating System&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several Stack Exchange sites devoted to particular operating systems: [Android][29], [Apple][30], [Unix and Linux][31], and [Ubuntu][32]. Be sure to read their Help Center, Meta site, and search for similar questions before asking to make sure that your specific question is on-topic for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Other Considerations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some tools have their own Stack Exchange sites as well. For example, there are sites for [Drupal][33], [Expression Engine][34], [Mathematica][35], [Salesforce][36], [SharePoint][37], and [Wordpress][38]. There are even more sites for both particular environments and specific tools in beta - check out [the complete list of Stack Exchange sites][39].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions may be on-topic on multiple sites. If you see your favorite tool on a site, check out some of the questions and answers to see if your question fits and which site is most likely to provide the answers that you are looking for. Do not cross-post questions - if you feel that your question should be moved to a different site, flag it and let the site's moderation team know. If you aren't sure, every site has a Meta site and many sites have a chat room, so you can always ask before asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6701/are-questions-asking-for-help-using-a-tool-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5519/are-there-a-subset-of-tool-questions-that-are-appropriate-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6311/where-does-my-git-question-go&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/doors&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/dia&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/rhapsody&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/enterprise-architect&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/visual-studio&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/eclipse&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/notepad%2B%2B&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/sage&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/git&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/clearcase&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/code-collaborator&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/testcomplete&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/selenium&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/jira&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/fogbugz&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://superuser.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/microsoft-office&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/openoffice.org&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/internet-explorer&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/google-chrome&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/filezilla&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/winscp&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/virtualbox&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/vmware&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/mathematica&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://android.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [32]: http://askubuntu.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [33]: http://drupal.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [34]: http://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [35]: http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [36]: http://salesforce.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [37]: http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [38]: http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [39]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20240" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7254" RevisionGUID="91a7f8b0-ff18-42db-9afb-1ad54f4b2154" CreationDate="2015-03-26T16:20:13.170" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="20241" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7253" RevisionGUID="2f08acdd-8518-4b1d-ad96-d795fc12f134" CreationDate="2015-03-26T16:27:24.797" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20242" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="516" RevisionGUID="88c51695-57a6-4ca1-b246-11842869f4e8" CreationDate="2015-03-26T16:30:45.410" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|new-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20243" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7254" RevisionGUID="7897014b-bdf7-4b92-a610-7f7f494e91a5" CreationDate="2015-03-26T16:31:16.270" UserId="4" Comment="added 7 characters in body" Text="### Question is About a Development Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool that you are using is a tool that is used to design and develop software and is used primarily in a software development environment, you should check out [Stack Overflow][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A number of development tools already have questions and answers on Stack Overflow, ranging from requirements management tools ([DOORS][2]) to architecture and design tools ([Dia][3], [Rhapsody][4], [Enterprise Architect][5]) to editors ([Visual Studio][6], [Eclipse][7], [Notepad++][8]) to mathematical packages ([MATLAB][9], [Sage][10]) to version control ([git][11], [ClearCase][12]) to peer review tools ([Collaborator][13]) to test tools ([TestComplete][14], [Selenium][15]) to project management tools ([Jira][16], [FogBugz][17]), and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about a General Purpose Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool is general purpose software, check out [Super User][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all of the tools that we use during the course of software development are unique to software developers. Tools such as office suites ([Microsoft Office][19], [OpenOffice.org][20]), web browsers ([Internet Explorer][21], [Chrome][22]) file transfer tools ([Filezilla][23], [WinSCP][24]), virtualization software ([VirtualBox][25], [VMWare][26]), and analysis software ([MATLAB][27], [Mathematica][28]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about a Tool in a Specific to an Operating System&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several Stack Exchange sites devoted to particular operating systems: [Android][29], [Apple][30], [Unix and Linux][31], and [Ubuntu][32]. Be sure to read their Help Center, Meta site, and search for similar questions before asking to make sure that your specific question is on-topic for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Other Considerations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some tools have their own Stack Exchange sites as well. For example, there are sites for [Drupal][33], [Expression Engine][34], [Mathematica][35], [Salesforce][36], [SharePoint][37], and [Wordpress][38]. There are even more sites for both particular environments and specific tools in beta - check out [the complete list of Stack Exchange sites][39].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions may be on-topic on multiple sites. If you see your favorite tool on a site, check out some of the questions and answers to see if your question fits and which site is most likely to provide the answers that you are looking for. Do not cross-post questions - if you feel that your question should be moved to a different site, flag it and let the site's moderation team know. If you aren't sure, every site has a Meta site and many sites have a chat room, so you can always ask before asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6701/are-questions-asking-for-help-using-a-tool-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5519/are-there-a-subset-of-tool-questions-that-are-appropriate-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6311/where-does-my-git-question-go&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/doors&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/dia&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/rhapsody&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/enterprise-architect&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/visual-studio&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/eclipse&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/notepad%2B%2B&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/sage&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/git&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/clearcase&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/code-collaborator&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/testcomplete&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/selenium&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/jira&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/fogbugz&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://superuser.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/microsoft-office&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/openoffice.org&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/internet-explorer&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/google-chrome&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/filezilla&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/winscp&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/virtualbox&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/vmware&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/mathematica&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://android.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [32]: http://askubuntu.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [33]: http://drupal.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [34]: http://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [35]: http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [36]: http://salesforce.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [37]: http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [38]: http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [39]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20244" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7255" RevisionGUID="c547f614-a0e8-4418-8a65-d1cbec86cf32" CreationDate="2015-03-26T18:46:30.090" UserId="41811" Text="This just happened:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;INBOX&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Programmers SE item)&#xD;&#xA; answer migrated 2 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;Your answer to &quot;Testing a method that reads from standard input and outputs to standard output&quot; was migrated to Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ACHIEVEMENTS&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Programmers SE item)&#xD;&#xA;You've earned the &quot;Disciplined&quot; badge (Deleted own post with score of 3 or higher) for &quot;Testing a method that reads from standard input and outputs to standard output&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Needless to say, I did not delete my own post.  Apparently, the migration was counted as deletion, and for this reason the &quot;Disciplined&quot; badge was awarded.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On second thought, thisissuchanunimportantbug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;noneedtodoanythingaboutitreally.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20245" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7255" RevisionGUID="c547f614-a0e8-4418-8a65-d1cbec86cf32" CreationDate="2015-03-26T18:46:30.090" UserId="41811" Text="bug: &quot;Disciplined&quot; achievement badge awarded for migrated answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20246" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7255" RevisionGUID="c547f614-a0e8-4418-8a65-d1cbec86cf32" CreationDate="2015-03-26T18:46:30.090" UserId="41811" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20247" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7253" RevisionGUID="0bdef344-d3cf-48b2-ae58-19b277a8248a" CreationDate="2015-03-26T22:14:46.290" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/581217755959033856" />
  <row Id="20248" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7255" RevisionGUID="6f166f07-e6d3-493b-bb77-348e9c3297d8" CreationDate="2015-03-27T04:38:26.340" UserId="226" Comment="post links are helpful" Text="This just happened:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;INBOX&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Programmers SE item)&#xD;&#xA; answer migrated 2 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;Your answer to &quot;Testing a method that reads from standard input and outputs to standard output&quot; was migrated to Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ACHIEVEMENTS&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Programmers SE item)&#xD;&#xA;You've earned the &quot;Disciplined&quot; badge (Deleted own post with score of 3 or higher) for &quot;Testing a method that reads from standard input and outputs to standard output&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Needless to say, I did not delete [my own post](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/277302/testing-a-method-that-reads-from-standard-input-and-outputs-to-standard-output/277303#277303?noredirect=1).  Apparently, the migration was counted as deletion, and for this reason the &quot;Disciplined&quot; badge was awarded.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On second thought, thisissuchanunimportantbug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;noneedtodoanythingaboutitreally.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20249" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7255" RevisionGUID="6f166f07-e6d3-493b-bb77-348e9c3297d8" CreationDate="2015-03-27T04:38:26.340" UserId="226" Comment="post links are helpful" Text="&quot;Disciplined&quot; achievement badge awarded for migrated answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20250" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7256" RevisionGUID="540d44cc-f628-4467-9c2c-ace1a1893f09" CreationDate="2015-03-27T05:10:29.730" UserId="160511" Text="boy, it would be lame if it doesn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;can you guys find out what the physics.se and dsp.se do to get math markup?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;just curious." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20251" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7256" RevisionGUID="540d44cc-f628-4467-9c2c-ace1a1893f09" CreationDate="2015-03-27T05:10:29.730" UserId="160511" Text="hay, doesn't $LaTeX$ math markup work here at prog.se?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20252" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7256" RevisionGUID="540d44cc-f628-4467-9c2c-ace1a1893f09" CreationDate="2015-03-27T05:10:29.730" UserId="160511" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20253" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7256" RevisionGUID="90bc4003-7b37-445a-b45e-32c1d7caa49f" CreationDate="2015-03-27T08:38:43.850" UserId="4" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[2534],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="20254" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7237" RevisionGUID="cb75f76f-d5e7-4a62-a76a-e5f6c246379a" CreationDate="2015-03-27T08:51:13.310" UserId="4" Comment="Added &quot;software configuration management&quot; to being on-topic. Linked to the meta tools question. Changed &quot;legal assistance&quot; to &quot;legal advice or aid&quot;." Text="**Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA; - software configuration management&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [how to use specific tools][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career or education advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - [legal advice or aid][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;. **Please keep it professional**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see [the Help Center page about what not to ask][11] as well as the [*Good Subjective, Bad Subjective*][12] and [*Real Questions Have Answers*][13] blog posts for details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][14] or [strongly rooted in opinions][15]. We should be able to answer your questions in the equivalent of a few pages of text and graphics and provide references to support claims. If you have questions that warrant an extended discussion, feel free to [come to chat][16].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before asking, [look around][17] to see if your question has been asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions. It’s also OK to [ask and answer your own question][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for [another Stack Exchange site][19]. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may [commit to][20] or [propose][21] a new side at [Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are created][22].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7253/where-does-my-tool-question-go?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1655&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7248/how-do-you-get-20-rep-to-get-into-chat&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20255" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7253" RevisionGUID="f26621fb-2cba-4264-b675-c7240e0a1bbe" CreationDate="2015-03-27T08:51:25.977" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags; edited tags" Text="|support|faq|on-topic-definition|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20256" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7212" RevisionGUID="005b7c10-8ce3-4ea3-b401-0346419b92e3" CreationDate="2015-03-27T08:52:48.270" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 71 characters in body" Text="### Site purpose and usage&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers.SE tour page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/516/how-do-i-get-started-with-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6763/where-can-i-have-subjective-discussions-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On-topic and off-topic questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7253/4&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1165/can-i-ask-career-advice-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6763/where-can-i-have-subjective-discussions-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Moderation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Other resources&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Is your question not part of the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First look at questions tagged [meta-tag:faq-proposed] to see if there is a question not in this index that might have the answer you seek. If you still can't find an answer, then see the following instructions for proposing an FAQ question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How can a question be added to this FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Ask only the question, stated plainly and simply, in the question body. The answer goes in an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Tag as [meta-tag:faq-proposed] and [meta-tag:support].  When a post seems to hit a mature state, it will have [meta-tag:faq] added by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Flag for a moderator to mark **community wiki**. Any FAQ post not yet community wiki should be made into a community wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Add a link in the above table of contents.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20257" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7254" RevisionGUID="6079dbf9-1965-4db9-87af-ccf5e9c0676e" CreationDate="2015-03-27T09:01:17.720" UserId="4" Comment="added 1231 characters in body" Text="### Question is About How to Use a Development Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool that you are using is a tool that is used to design and develop software and is used primarily in a software development environment, you should check out [Stack Overflow][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A number of development tools already have questions and answers on Stack Overflow, ranging from requirements management tools ([DOORS][2]) to architecture and design tools ([Dia][3], [Rhapsody][4], [Enterprise Architect][5]) to editors ([Visual Studio][6], [Eclipse][7], [Notepad++][8]) to mathematical packages ([MATLAB][9], [Sage][10]) to version control ([git][11], [ClearCase][12]) to peer review tools ([Collaborator][13]) to test tools ([TestComplete][14], [Selenium][15]) to project management tools ([Jira][16], [FogBugz][17]), and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about How to Use a General Purpose Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool is general purpose software, check out [Super User][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all of the tools that we use during the course of software development are unique to software developers. Tools such as office suites ([Microsoft Office][19], [OpenOffice.org][20]), web browsers ([Internet Explorer][21], [Chrome][22]) file transfer tools ([Filezilla][23], [WinSCP][24]), virtualization software ([VirtualBox][25], [VMWare][26]), and analysis software ([MATLAB][27], [Mathematica][28]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about a Tool in a Specific to an Operating System&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several Stack Exchange sites devoted to particular operating systems: [Android][29], [Apple][30], [Unix and Linux][31], and [Ubuntu][32]. Be sure to read their Help Center, Meta site, and search for similar questions before asking to make sure that your specific question is on-topic for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about using a Tool in a Workflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question involves how to integrate a tool or type of tool into your workflow or process, then it is likely to be on-topic on Programmers. Generally, if you aren't asking about how to use a specific feature of a tool, but trying to determine how to use the tool to achieve a well-defined goal, start here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Other Considerations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some tools have their own Stack Exchange sites as well. For example, there are sites for [Drupal][33], [Expression Engine][34], [Mathematica][35], [Salesforce][36], [SharePoint][37], and [Wordpress][38]. There are even more sites for both particular environments and specific tools in beta - check out [the complete list of Stack Exchange sites][39].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions may be on-topic on multiple sites. If you see your favorite tool on a site, check out some of the questions and answers to see if your question fits and which site is most likely to provide the answers that you are looking for. Do not cross-post questions - if you feel that your question should be moved to a different site, flag it and let the site's moderation team know. If you aren't sure, every site has a Meta site and many sites have a chat room, so you can always ask before asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators can, and do, migrate questions. If you do ask in the wrong place, there's a site that is more appropriate, and it's a well-written question, it will likely be migrated. Low quality questions that don't meet the quality guidelines of the other site won't be moved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are site-specific [automatic question blocks][40] - posting on the wrong site will not help you get answers and will likely lead to being blocked on other sites. It's also not possible to migrate questions if you are blocked on the target site. If you are blocked somewhere, do not post questions that are off-topic somewhere else. Instead, work to improve your existing questions and answers to have the block lifted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6701/are-questions-asking-for-help-using-a-tool-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5519/are-there-a-subset-of-tool-questions-that-are-appropriate-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6311/where-does-my-git-question-go&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/doors&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/dia&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/rhapsody&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/enterprise-architect&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/visual-studio&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/eclipse&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/notepad%2B%2B&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/sage&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/git&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/clearcase&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/code-collaborator&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/testcomplete&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/selenium&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/jira&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/fogbugz&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://superuser.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/microsoft-office&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/openoffice.org&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/internet-explorer&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/google-chrome&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/filezilla&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/winscp&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/virtualbox&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/vmware&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/mathematica&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://android.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [32]: http://askubuntu.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [33]: http://drupal.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [34]: http://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [35]: http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [36]: http://salesforce.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [37]: http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [38]: http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [39]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [40]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20258" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7237" RevisionGUID="7ccee66a-b5fe-4445-92a5-2fe212629b70" CreationDate="2015-03-27T09:02:36.440" UserId="4" Comment="added 155 characters in body" Text="**Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA; - software configuration management&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [how to use specific tools][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career or education advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - [legal advice or aid][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;. **Please keep it professional**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see [the Help Center page about what not to ask][11] as well as the [*Good Subjective, Bad Subjective*][12] and [*Real Questions Have Answers*][13] blog posts for details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][14] or [strongly rooted in opinions][15]. We should be able to answer your questions in the equivalent of a few pages of text and graphics and provide references to support claims. If you have questions that warrant an extended discussion, feel free to [come to chat][16].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before asking, [look around][17] to see if your question has been asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions. It’s also OK to [ask and answer your own question][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for [another Stack Exchange site][19]. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may [commit to][20] or [propose][21] a new side at [Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are created][22].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more details, please see [our curated FAQ on Meta Programmers Stack Exchange][23].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7253/where-does-my-tool-question-go?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1655&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7248/how-do-you-get-20-rep-to-get-into-chat&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/faq/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20259" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7212" RevisionGUID="92879f7a-20de-4984-a9bc-0d52e85b210b" CreationDate="2015-03-27T09:07:27.030" UserId="4" Comment="added 62 characters in body; added 24 characters in body" Text="### Site purpose and usage&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/516/how-do-i-get-started-with-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6763/where-can-i-have-subjective-discussions-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On-topic and off-topic questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7253/4&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1165/can-i-ask-career-advice-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6763/where-can-i-have-subjective-discussions-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Moderation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Other resources&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers Tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour)&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help)&#xD;&#xA;* [Blog: Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Blog: Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Blog: Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Blog: Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Is your question not part of the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First look at questions tagged [meta-tag:faq-proposed] to see if there is a question not in this index that might have the answer you seek. If you still can't find an answer, then see the following instructions for proposing an FAQ question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How can a question be added to this FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Ask only the question, stated plainly and simply, in the question body. The answer goes in an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Tag as [meta-tag:faq-proposed] and [meta-tag:support].  When a post seems to hit a mature state, it will have [meta-tag:faq] added by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Flag for a moderator to mark **community wiki**. Any FAQ post not yet community wiki should be made into a community wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Add a link in the above table of contents.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20260" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7236" RevisionGUID="e97a58a7-77a0-45b1-af12-a9eaf8518c5b" CreationDate="2015-03-27T12:09:44.310" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|featured|close-reasons|help-center|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20261" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7257" RevisionGUID="950cc727-c756-4aed-8029-5f2a45becbbe" CreationDate="2015-03-27T21:16:02.720" UserId="31260" Text="Propose to detect troublesome questions using Stack Overflow quality scoring data and put them to [Triage queue](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage) for an hour or two. If the timeout expires before decision is made, let questions go to homepage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reasons why I consider above approach feasible are [laid out here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7251/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  goal, about [&quot;wall of crap&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so) at homepage, also looks relevant to us, as indicated by multiple recurring discussions about [too many bad questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7130?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...site topics substantially overlap and... many troublesome questions over here appear to be posted by users who are simply [trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260). Using same scoring data that is supposed to detect and block them at Stack Overflow would make sense, wouldn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...there is just no way to ensure that questions in Triage queue would be reviewed within reasonable timeframe... automatically kick questions off this queue and let them go to homepage after some timeout (say, 1-2 hours) if these haven't got sufficient attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7130/so-many-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7239/there-are-way-more-negative-votes-in-the-top-50-questions-than-positive-time-to&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7221/problem-titles-in-off-topic-questions-of-new-users-coming-from-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7020/lets-help-askers-who-are-trying-to-circumvent-question-block-at-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6990/why-cant-we-raise-up-questions-quality&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6850/how-effective-is-the-quality-filter-against-this-question-with-all-caps-brief-ti&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6788/a-lot-of-front-page-down-votes&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6371/how-can-we-encourage-people-to-read-the-faq-before-asking-their-first-question&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5618/better-selection-title-for-top-questions-list&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5377/requiring-registration-to-ask-questions-did-it-made-a-difference&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4029/why-are-there-so-many-minus-points-on-questions-in-this-site&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4009/programmers-stack-exchange-question-downvoting-what-to-do&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3947/what-can-we-do-about-extremely-low-quality-questions-from-unregistered-users&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3778/can-we-have-some-way-to-not-show-closed-questions-on-the-front-page&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2744/how-can-i-create-a-custom-filtered-view-of-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2727/are-we-scaring-off-new-users&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Nov 17 '11)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4097/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Oct 8 '12)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/841/why-are-almost-half-the-questions-on-the-front-page-marked-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/784/are-we-closing-too-many-good-questions-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20262" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7257" RevisionGUID="950cc727-c756-4aed-8029-5f2a45becbbe" CreationDate="2015-03-27T21:16:02.720" UserId="31260" Text="Could we please detect troublesome questions using Stack Overflow data and offload them to Triage review for an hour or two?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20263" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7257" RevisionGUID="950cc727-c756-4aed-8029-5f2a45becbbe" CreationDate="2015-03-27T21:16:02.720" UserId="31260" Text="|feature-request|questions|review|low-quality-posts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20264" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7254" RevisionGUID="367c47e2-17c0-4cb7-ab7d-9b205501f0e4" CreationDate="2015-03-28T11:18:23.280" UserId="4" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="### Question is About How to Use a Development Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool that you are using is a tool that is used to design and develop software and is used primarily in a software development environment, you should check out [Stack Overflow][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A number of development tools already have questions and answers on Stack Overflow, ranging from requirements management tools ([DOORS][2]) to architecture and design tools ([Dia][3], [Rhapsody][4], [Enterprise Architect][5]) to editors ([Visual Studio][6], [Eclipse][7], [Notepad++][8]) to mathematical packages ([MATLAB][9], [Sage][10]) to version control ([git][11], [ClearCase][12]) to peer review tools ([Collaborator][13]) to test tools ([TestComplete][14], [Selenium][15]) to project management tools ([Jira][16], [FogBugz][17]), and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about How to Use a General Purpose Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool is general purpose software, check out [Super User][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all of the tools that we use during the course of software development are unique to software developers. Tools such as office suites ([Microsoft Office][19], [OpenOffice.org][20]), web browsers ([Internet Explorer][21], [Chrome][22]) file transfer tools ([Filezilla][23], [WinSCP][24]), virtualization software ([VirtualBox][25], [VMWare][26]), and analysis software ([MATLAB][27], [Mathematica][28]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about a Tool in a Context Specific to an Operating System&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several Stack Exchange sites devoted to particular operating systems: [Android][29], [Apple][30], [Unix and Linux][31], and [Ubuntu][32]. Be sure to read their Help Center, Meta site, and search for similar questions before asking to make sure that your specific question is on-topic for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about using a Tool in a Workflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question involves how to integrate a tool or type of tool into your workflow or process, then it is likely to be on-topic on Programmers. Generally, if you aren't asking about how to use a specific feature of a tool, but trying to determine how to use the tool to achieve a well-defined goal, start here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Other Considerations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some tools have their own Stack Exchange sites as well. For example, there are sites for [Drupal][33], [Expression Engine][34], [Mathematica][35], [Salesforce][36], [SharePoint][37], and [Wordpress][38]. There are even more sites for both particular environments and specific tools in beta - check out [the complete list of Stack Exchange sites][39].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions may be on-topic on multiple sites. If you see your favorite tool on a site, check out some of the questions and answers to see if your question fits and which site is most likely to provide the answers that you are looking for. Do not cross-post questions - if you feel that your question should be moved to a different site, flag it and let the site's moderation team know. If you aren't sure, every site has a Meta site and many sites have a chat room, so you can always ask before asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators can, and do, migrate questions. If you do ask in the wrong place, there's a site that is more appropriate, and it's a well-written question, it will likely be migrated. Low quality questions that don't meet the quality guidelines of the other site won't be moved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are site-specific [automatic question blocks][40] - posting on the wrong site will not help you get answers and will likely lead to being blocked on other sites. It's also not possible to migrate questions if you are blocked on the target site. If you are blocked somewhere, do not post questions that are off-topic somewhere else. Instead, work to improve your existing questions and answers to have the block lifted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6701/are-questions-asking-for-help-using-a-tool-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5519/are-there-a-subset-of-tool-questions-that-are-appropriate-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6311/where-does-my-git-question-go&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/doors&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/dia&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/rhapsody&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/enterprise-architect&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/visual-studio&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/eclipse&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/notepad%2B%2B&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/sage&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/git&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/clearcase&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/code-collaborator&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/testcomplete&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/selenium&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/jira&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/fogbugz&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://superuser.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/microsoft-office&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/openoffice.org&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/internet-explorer&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/google-chrome&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/filezilla&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/winscp&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/virtualbox&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/vmware&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/mathematica&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://android.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [32]: http://askubuntu.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [33]: http://drupal.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [34]: http://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [35]: http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [36]: http://salesforce.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [37]: http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [38]: http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [39]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [40]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20265" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7236" RevisionGUID="f332dd93-97a4-49be-98c0-13bbddbdeda2" CreationDate="2015-03-28T13:00:50.203" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|close-reasons|help-center|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20266" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7254" RevisionGUID="e068411c-3bc0-4681-b1be-ba4cbefe8b5b" CreationDate="2015-03-28T13:54:06.083" UserId="4" Comment="added 129 characters in body" Text="### Question is About How to Use a Development Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool that you are using is a tool that is used to design and develop software and is used primarily in a software development environment, you should check out [Stack Overflow][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A number of development tools already have questions and answers on Stack Overflow, ranging from requirements management tools ([DOORS][2]) to architecture and design tools ([Dia][3], [Rhapsody][4], [Enterprise Architect][5]) to editors ([Visual Studio][6], [Eclipse][7], [Notepad++][8]) to mathematical packages ([MATLAB][9], [Sage][10]) to version control ([git][11], [ClearCase][12]) to peer review tools ([Collaborator][13]) to test tools ([TestComplete][14], [Selenium][15]) to project management tools ([Jira][16], [FogBugz][17]), and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about How to Use a General Purpose Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool is general purpose software, check out [Super User][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all of the tools that we use during the course of software development are unique to software developers. Tools such as office suites ([Microsoft Office][19], [OpenOffice.org][20]), web browsers ([Internet Explorer][21], [Chrome][22]) file transfer tools ([Filezilla][23], [WinSCP][24]), virtualization software ([VirtualBox][25], [VMWare][26]), and analysis software ([MATLAB][27], [Mathematica][28]) are used by many types of people in different environments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about a Tool in a Context Specific to an Operating System&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several Stack Exchange sites devoted to particular operating systems and associated software packages or applications: [Android][29], [Apple][30], [Unix and Linux][31], and [Ubuntu][32]. Be sure to read their Help Center, Meta site, and search for similar questions before asking to make sure that your specific question is on-topic for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about using a Tool in a Software Development Workflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question involves how to integrate a tool or type of tool into your workflow or process, then it is likely to be on-topic on Programmers. Generally, if you aren't asking about how to use a specific feature of a tool, but trying to determine how to use the tool to achieve a well-defined goal, start here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Other Considerations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some tools have their own Stack Exchange sites as well. For example, there are sites for [Drupal][33], [Expression Engine][34], [Mathematica][35], [Salesforce][36], [SharePoint][37], and [Wordpress][38]. There are even more sites for both particular environments and specific tools in beta - check out [the complete list of Stack Exchange sites][39].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions may be on-topic on multiple sites. If you see your favorite tool on a site, check out some of the questions and answers to see if your question fits and which site is most likely to provide the answers that you are looking for. Do not cross-post questions - if you feel that your question should be moved to a different site, flag it and let the site's moderation team know. If you aren't sure, every site has a Meta site and many sites have a chat room, so you can always ask before asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators can, and do, migrate questions. If you do ask in the wrong place, there's a site that is more appropriate, and it's a well-written question, it will likely be migrated. Low quality questions that don't meet the quality guidelines of the other site won't be moved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are site-specific [automatic question blocks][40] - posting on the wrong site will not help you get answers and will likely lead to being blocked on other sites. It's also not possible to migrate questions if you are blocked on the target site. If you are blocked somewhere, do not post questions that are off-topic somewhere else. Instead, work to improve your existing questions and answers to have the block lifted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6701/are-questions-asking-for-help-using-a-tool-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5519/are-there-a-subset-of-tool-questions-that-are-appropriate-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6311/where-does-my-git-question-go&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/doors&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/dia&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/rhapsody&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/enterprise-architect&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/visual-studio&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/eclipse&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/notepad%2B%2B&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/sage&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/git&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/clearcase&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/code-collaborator&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/testcomplete&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/selenium&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/jira&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/fogbugz&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://superuser.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/microsoft-office&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/openoffice.org&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/internet-explorer&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/google-chrome&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/filezilla&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/winscp&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/virtualbox&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/vmware&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/mathematica&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://android.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [32]: http://askubuntu.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [33]: http://drupal.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [34]: http://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [35]: http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [36]: http://salesforce.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [37]: http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [38]: http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [39]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [40]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20267" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7238" RevisionGUID="67cb8740-90b9-46eb-b9e6-d1a8602e3c98" CreationDate="2015-03-29T19:54:53.853" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="deleted 4602 characters in body" Text="My version...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is in the [history now](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/7238/revisions). Otherwise, it was just taking up space and confusing possible readers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20268" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7258" RevisionGUID="bbbacce1-917e-4c42-b0b6-f2493eb49966" CreationDate="2015-03-30T14:25:14.947" UserId="88986" Text="[In this question, I had a disagreement with the original asker about whether a legal advice / software licensing question is on topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/277688/88986). *I now think that I was wrong when I voted to close originally, but that's a bit beside the point...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Context: Here's the help center about what's on topic (abbeviated):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - ...&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***and it is not about...***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - ...&#xD;&#xA; - legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to see the [tag:faq] on this issue improved some. There is enough potential overlap between **software licensing** and **legal advice or aid** that the relevant faq question should address this distinction explicitly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- So we have this faq question:&#xD;&#xA;  - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;- We also have this non faq question (which perhaps should be promoted to [tag:faq], or merged with the previous question): &#xD;&#xA;  - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How can we add some clarity to the faq guidelines on this issue?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20269" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7258" RevisionGUID="bbbacce1-917e-4c42-b0b6-f2493eb49966" CreationDate="2015-03-30T14:25:14.947" UserId="88986" Text="Reconciling &quot;no legal advice&quot; and &quot;yes software licensing&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20270" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7258" RevisionGUID="bbbacce1-917e-4c42-b0b6-f2493eb49966" CreationDate="2015-03-30T14:25:14.947" UserId="88986" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|legal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20271" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7259" RevisionGUID="faaa7bd5-72d8-4a21-9b48-d8ff716eafe3" CreationDate="2015-03-30T14:27:56.737" UserId="88986" Text="Because software licensing is explicitly mentioned in the help center. I think we should have a Meta tag for questions about this issue. Here are some questions that I think would benefit from such a tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6186/question-regarding-license-violation&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/915/are-software-license-questions-acceptable&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/882/software-law-definition&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2220/what-is-the-difference-between-the-mit-and-mit-license-tags&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/would-a-how-to-choose-the-best-oss-license-type-question-be-appropriate-for-ps&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3131/can-we-put-software-licensing-questions-are-off-topic-in-the-faq/5964#5964&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would be happy to go ahead and edit such a tag into all of these meta questions (and others I have yet to find), but I thought I'd run it by the community first." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20272" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7259" RevisionGUID="faaa7bd5-72d8-4a21-9b48-d8ff716eafe3" CreationDate="2015-03-30T14:27:56.737" UserId="88986" Text="I'd like to add a licensing tag to a number of Meta questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20273" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7259" RevisionGUID="faaa7bd5-72d8-4a21-9b48-d8ff716eafe3" CreationDate="2015-03-30T14:27:56.737" UserId="88986" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20274" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2220" RevisionGUID="0cc1ba83-70e1-4723-9d10-66ef7d6e67f2" CreationDate="2015-03-30T14:29:50.820" UserId="4" Comment="102" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="20275" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7259" RevisionGUID="63cb367b-97e3-4916-86ea-c7e6013099af" CreationDate="2015-03-30T15:07:06.983" UserId="4" Comment="added 17 characters in body" Text="Because software licensing is explicitly mentioned in the help center. I think we should have a Meta tag for questions about this issue. Here are some questions that I think would benefit from such a tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6186/question-regarding-license-violation&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/915/are-software-license-questions-acceptable&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/882/software-law-definition&#xD;&#xA; - &lt;strike&gt;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2220/what-is-the-difference-between-the-mit-and-mit-license-tags&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/would-a-how-to-choose-the-best-oss-license-type-question-be-appropriate-for-ps&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3131/can-we-put-software-licensing-questions-are-off-topic-in-the-faq/5964#5964&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would be happy to go ahead and edit such a tag into all of these meta questions (and others I have yet to find), but I thought I'd run it by the community first." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20276" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7260" RevisionGUID="ce5cc7c3-d54f-4f11-be8e-ec7f21a3571b" CreationDate="2015-03-30T20:37:33.540" UserId="161917" Text="My understanding on legal/licensing questions has always been: If it can be reasonably and confidently answered by an experienced programmer, without needing to consult any actual lawyers, then it's okay here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance, it's fair to ask a programmer whether or not you can legally sell a closed-source program that dynamically links to a GPL'd library. Most of us know the answer to that without getting any formal legal advice, and if I chose to qualify my answer with &quot;IANAL&quot;, it would be more out of paranoia than anything else. However, if you asked me whether or not the WTFPL is a &quot;risky&quot; license...all I could give you is a vague claim that MIT/Apache/etc are &quot;probably safer&quot;, but I have no legal expertise to back up that opinion, and many of these issues *have never been tested in court* so the honest lawyer answer may simply be &quot;nobody knows yet&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, if the question is about the &quot;spirit&quot; of the license, we can probably answer it. Programmers can easily understand things like &quot;GPLv3 is meant to protect against tivoization&quot; without getting a legal degree. I would hope that when we're worried about violating a library's license, we're usually more concerned about violating the library author's wishes then we are about exposing ourselves to some legal action from the author's lawyers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20277" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7260" RevisionGUID="45430b43-9d23-4f93-8af8-d4ac021409ea" CreationDate="2015-03-30T20:42:44.160" UserId="161917" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="My understanding on legal/licensing questions has always been: If it can be reasonably and confidently answered by an experienced programmer, without needing to consult any actual lawyers, then it's okay here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance, it's fair to ask a programmer whether or not you can legally sell a closed-source program that dynamically links to a GPL'd library. Most of us know the answer to that without getting any formal legal advice, and if I chose to qualify my answer with &quot;IANAL&quot;, it would be more out of paranoia than anything else. However, if you asked me whether or not the WTFPL is a &quot;risky&quot; license...all I could give you is a vague claim that MIT/Apache/etc are &quot;probably safer&quot;, but I have no legal expertise to back up that opinion, and many of these issues *have never been tested in court* so the honest lawyer answer may simply be &quot;nobody knows yet&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, if the question is about the &quot;spirit&quot; of the license, we can probably answer it. Programmers can easily understand things like &quot;GPLv3 is meant to protect against tivoization&quot; without going to law school. I would hope that when we're worried about violating a library's license, we're usually more concerned about violating the library author's wishes then we are about exposing ourselves to some legal action from the author's lawyers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20278" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7261" RevisionGUID="5fcf532d-39c3-4353-8ce9-4349c42412a6" CreationDate="2015-03-31T09:45:00.677" UserId="121671" Text="Today i see a question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/277778/why-are-people-making-tables-with-divs Which have no linked with any programming language ( including client side javascript or others). It is pure HTML/CSS based question. I wondering if it suited at UX site not programmers site ? But it get lot of upvotes and answers so I assuming it allowed under some criteria. What could be the criteria of allowing this question ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20279" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7261" RevisionGUID="5fcf532d-39c3-4353-8ce9-4349c42412a6" CreationDate="2015-03-31T09:45:00.677" UserId="121671" Text="If html/css based questions is allowed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20280" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7261" RevisionGUID="5fcf532d-39c3-4353-8ce9-4349c42412a6" CreationDate="2015-03-31T09:45:00.677" UserId="121671" Text="|discussion|questions|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20281" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7262" RevisionGUID="631ab838-682b-442f-8127-94ae8cd42b83" CreationDate="2015-03-31T10:39:28.580" UserId="47" Text="It's not a UX question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is not asking about the UX of tables, but why data is laid out in what looks like tables but doesn't actually use the `&lt;table&gt;` structure." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20282" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7261" RevisionGUID="d3dfb200-db3e-4fcb-a2d0-399e95ccb1fc" CreationDate="2015-03-31T11:40:32.703" UserId="31260" Comment="deleted 8 characters in body; edited tags" Text="Today I saw a question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/277778/why-are-people-making-tables-with-divs Which have no linked with any programming language (including client side javascript or others). It is pure HTML/CSS based question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder if it suited at UX site not Programmers? But it get lot of upvotes and answers so I assuming it allowed under some criteria. What could be the criteria of allowing this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20283" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7261" RevisionGUID="d3dfb200-db3e-4fcb-a2d0-399e95ccb1fc" CreationDate="2015-03-31T11:40:32.703" UserId="31260" Comment="deleted 8 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|questions|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20284" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6186" RevisionGUID="0846d4f8-6c49-4888-8afe-414e0bbbe515" CreationDate="2015-03-31T14:16:57.610" UserId="88986" Comment="Added licensing tag" Text="|discussion|licensing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20287" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="882" RevisionGUID="3fdb2cd6-d3fc-44be-ae8f-3e765041d328" CreationDate="2015-03-31T14:18:17.207" UserId="88986" Comment="Added licensing tag" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|licensing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20288" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2220" RevisionGUID="5f6dea94-e1f1-447b-856f-93983c738268" CreationDate="2015-03-31T14:18:58.107" UserId="88986" Comment="Added licensing tag" Text="|discussion|tags|licensing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20289" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3933" RevisionGUID="acc34e12-4e42-488c-b659-0bd9056805eb" CreationDate="2015-03-31T14:20:15.860" UserId="88986" Comment="Added licensing tag" Text="|discussion|licensing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20290" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3131" RevisionGUID="ab227c61-31dd-44c7-a089-d36c604efb84" CreationDate="2015-03-31T14:20:41.167" UserId="88986" Comment="Added licensing tag" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|licensing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20291" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7258" RevisionGUID="e8cc3524-0795-4046-b1cf-78a7a53661c8" CreationDate="2015-03-31T14:21:19.297" UserId="88986" Comment="Added licensing tag" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|legal|licensing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20292" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6886" RevisionGUID="52f05aa1-4ebf-4aa1-9164-a992ee035890" CreationDate="2015-03-31T14:22:02.047" UserId="88986" Comment="Added licensing tag" Text="|discussion|specific-question|duplicate-questions|licensing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20293" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6497" RevisionGUID="58f113a9-d21a-4f2c-ba2f-e49c922244f7" CreationDate="2015-03-31T14:23:00.247" UserId="88986" Comment="Added licensing tag" Text="|discussion|vote-to-close|licensing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20294" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6497" RevisionGUID="b74f642b-f87e-46ef-ab46-b8d28983311d" CreationDate="2015-03-31T14:23:25.433" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|vote-to-close|licensing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20295" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2099" RevisionGUID="2cce8083-b754-4204-809f-657d1aca9d7b" CreationDate="2015-03-31T14:24:06.460" UserId="88986" Comment="Added licensing tag" Text="|discussion|faq|licensing|legal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20296" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7258" RevisionGUID="7dfc3404-f712-467c-9c1a-196af21bbbbd" CreationDate="2015-03-31T14:27:09.583" UserId="88986" Comment="Added licensing tag" Text="[In this question, I had a disagreement with the original asker about whether a legal advice / software licensing question is on topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/277688/88986). *I now think that I was wrong when I voted to close originally, but that's a bit beside the point...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Context: Here's the help center about what's on topic (abbeviated):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - ...&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***and it is not about...***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - ...&#xD;&#xA; - legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to see the [tag:faq] on this issue improved some. There is enough potential overlap between **software licensing** and **legal advice or aid** that the relevant faq question should address this distinction explicitly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- So we have this faq question:&#xD;&#xA;  - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;- We also have this non faq question (which perhaps should be promoted to [tag:faq], or merged with the previous question): &#xD;&#xA;  - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can we add some clarity to the **faq guidelines** on this issue? Thank you @Ixrec for your answer about what is and what is not on topic, but some digging (see above) has shown this topic has come up before. This question is about **how should we change the faq** so that less digging needs to be done, and we can have a canonical answer on the subject." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20297" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5456" RevisionGUID="94113fa8-aead-4f27-95a0-f9befde2c9f8" CreationDate="2015-03-31T14:27:58.930" UserId="88986" Comment="Added licensing tag" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|licensing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20298" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7263" RevisionGUID="70669697-ad79-4fb1-8c8e-39522d1bf73a" CreationDate="2015-03-31T14:29:05.727" UserId="88986" Text="I have added the [meta-tag:licensing] to the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6186/question-regarding-license-violation&#xD;&#xA; - &lt;strike&gt;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/915/are-software-license-questions-acceptable&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/882/software-law-definition&#xD;&#xA; - &lt;strike&gt;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2220/what-is-the-difference-between-the-mit-and-mit-license-tags&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/would-a-how-to-choose-the-best-oss-license-type-question-be-appropriate-for-ps&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3131/can-we-put-software-licensing-questions-are-off-topic-in-the-faq/5964#5964&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7258/reconciling-no-legal-advice-and-yes-software-licensing&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6886/how-can-i-compare-and-contrast-open-source-licenses-canonical-dupe-for-lice&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6497/what-is-the-difference-between-software-licensing-and-copyright&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5456/discussion-on-if-questions-about-eulas-are-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were some other questions that were tagged [meta-tag:legal] but they weren't strictly about licensing, so I didn't tag them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20299" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7258" RevisionGUID="7dfc3404-f712-467c-9c1a-196af21bbbbd" CreationDate="2015-03-31T14:27:09.583" UserId="88986" Comment="Added licensing tag" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|licensing|faq-contents|legal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20300" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7259" RevisionGUID="a342bf85-c7e9-4966-a403-490ed5147fb5" CreationDate="2015-03-31T15:30:26.010" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7259/id-like-to-add-a-licensing-tag-to-a-number-of-meta-questions :)" Text="|discussion|tags|licensing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20301" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7258" RevisionGUID="b96f68b0-7436-420e-8b9f-e6af011851ec" CreationDate="2015-03-31T16:38:46.860" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/582945141301858305" />
  <row Id="20302" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7264" RevisionGUID="7444706f-241d-477d-82ad-daddf0bb568c" CreationDate="2015-03-31T16:57:30.960" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="For fear of the ultimate answer being [&quot;I know it when I see it...&quot;][knowit], I'll try to add some of the criteria I use when deciding if a question is on-topic or not for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why me?  Well, I'm currently the [top answerer for the copyright tag][copytopusers] and  the [number four answerer for the licensing tag][lictopusers].  Six others and I hold the [bronze license badge][bronzelicense] and no one currently has a [bronze copyright badge][bronzebadges].  I'm also a [prolific close voter][closestats], so I think I have a decent perspective on this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do I look for in determining if the question is answerable or not?  Or more specifically, should I vote to close?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Is the question about `licensing` or `copyright`?  If it's about copyright, I generally vote to close.  Copyright laws vary by jurisdiction and can be subject to some seemingly obscure rules despite the efforts of the Berne convention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Does the question pertain to an open or commonly known license, or is it about a proprietary or commercial license?  If it's a proprietary and / or commercial license, I vote to close because it's:&#xD;&#xA;  - Unlikely we can read the full license, so answers will be speculative&#xD;&#xA;  - Unlikely to be of value to future visitors&#xD;&#xA;  - Likely to need an attorney to interpret what the terms actually mean&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Does every answer start with &quot;IANAL&quot;, ie &quot;I am not a lawyer&quot;, or have it somewhere in the body of the answer?  If so, that's a sign to me that the answers are speculative and an attorney is required to interpret.  Vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;  - Aside: If you feel compelled to start an answer with IANAL, then you probably shouldn't write the answer.  It's a useless phrase that just adds noise to the mix.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Does the question really require an attorney to answer?  Some questions are so specific, narrowly focused, or the potential consequences are significant enough that consulting an attorney is really the only viable option to consider.  Great candidate for a VTC.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Is the question purely hypothetical and / or contrived?  If so, vote to close.  You could argue that this is a duplicate condition of the &quot;does this require an attorney to answer&quot; bullet point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers aren't lawyers (generally), but programmers do encounter common situations involving points of law and licensing.  Lots of companies incorporate open source software into their products and have worked with their legal teams in order to make sure things were done correctly.  And while legal matters may appear to be a black art, there are some circumstances that are fairly commonplace and more or less universal in their application.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's some of the things I look for in order to leave a question open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Is the question about applying an open source license to their application?  Likely answerable as others have done this as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Is there a related question and answer in the [FSF GNU FAQ][gnufaq] or in the FSF's commentary about open source license compatibility with the GPL?  Again likely answerable, although in some rare edge cases you should vote to close and encourage the OP to contact Free Software Foundation directly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Is the question about an actual or likely issue and not just some hypothetical?  If so, the actual details should be present within the question (or provided by the OP) and the question should be answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (My catch all bullet point) Do I feel that this question is answerable within a reasonable expectation of what the community's experience is regarding licensing topics?  If so, I leave the question open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a special category of licensing questions that I remain on the fence about.  These are the &quot;pick a license for me!&quot; type questions.  Discerning whether they are answerable or not becomes more difficult.  In general, I look to see if they are a) looking for an open source (or related) license and b) if they provide enough details about _how_ they want to license their application.  Those questions are usually answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But we'll see some where the OP has some amazingly restrictive ideas about how their application is to be used.  It's safe to say that these fall outside of the community's experience and an attorney is required in order to answer the question.  So I vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[knowit]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it&#xD;&#xA;[bronzebadges]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges?tab=tags&amp;filter=bronze&#xD;&#xA;[bronzelicense]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/97/licensing&#xD;&#xA;[copytopusers]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/copyright/topusers&#xD;&#xA;[lictopusers]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/licensing/topusers&#xD;&#xA;[closestats]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close/stats&#xD;&#xA;[gnufaq]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20303" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7257" RevisionGUID="a0d103e1-4011-4ded-8a66-cea00cd297b0" CreationDate="2015-04-01T06:34:18.097" UserId="31260" Comment="questions that fail the Triage..." Text="Propose to detect troublesome questions using Stack Overflow quality scoring data and put them to [Triage queue](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage) for an hour or two. If the timeout expires before decision is made, let questions go to homepage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the questions that fail the Triage, one option to handle these is to keep them invisible for a day or two (if not edited), then automatically [bump](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/bump/info) them for a broader community review. This way would keep them away from the top of [newest tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest). (Attentive readers may notice that bumps imply certain pollution of [active tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active) but this looks less of an issue to me, as this tab is rather heavily dominated by better questions being bumped by answers and edits.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reasons why I consider above approach feasible are [laid out here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7251/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  goal, about [&quot;wall of crap&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so) at homepage, also looks relevant to us, as indicated by multiple recurring discussions about [too many bad questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7130?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...site topics substantially overlap and... many troublesome questions over here appear to be posted by users who are simply [trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260). Using same scoring data that is supposed to detect and block them at Stack Overflow would make sense, wouldn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...there is just no way to ensure that questions in Triage queue would be reviewed within reasonable timeframe... automatically kick questions off this queue and let them go to homepage after some timeout (say, 1-2 hours) if these haven't got sufficient attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7130/so-many-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7239/there-are-way-more-negative-votes-in-the-top-50-questions-than-positive-time-to&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7221/problem-titles-in-off-topic-questions-of-new-users-coming-from-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7020/lets-help-askers-who-are-trying-to-circumvent-question-block-at-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6990/why-cant-we-raise-up-questions-quality&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6850/how-effective-is-the-quality-filter-against-this-question-with-all-caps-brief-ti&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6788/a-lot-of-front-page-down-votes&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6371/how-can-we-encourage-people-to-read-the-faq-before-asking-their-first-question&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5618/better-selection-title-for-top-questions-list&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5377/requiring-registration-to-ask-questions-did-it-made-a-difference&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4029/why-are-there-so-many-minus-points-on-questions-in-this-site&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4009/programmers-stack-exchange-question-downvoting-what-to-do&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3947/what-can-we-do-about-extremely-low-quality-questions-from-unregistered-users&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3778/can-we-have-some-way-to-not-show-closed-questions-on-the-front-page&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2744/how-can-i-create-a-custom-filtered-view-of-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2727/are-we-scaring-off-new-users&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Nov 17 '11)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4097/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Oct 8 '12)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/841/why-are-almost-half-the-questions-on-the-front-page-marked-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/784/are-we-closing-too-many-good-questions-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20304" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7257" RevisionGUID="1f0ae6b4-2527-4218-9f2c-56cbd09bf4f3" CreationDate="2015-04-01T16:50:52.420" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/583310571463950336" />
  <row Id="20305" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7265" RevisionGUID="7dfe4e24-c080-4f77-9eda-19def1455234" CreationDate="2015-04-01T19:00:41.393" UserId="88986" Text="I would like to ask a question about software licensing. The help center says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - ...&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***and it is not about...***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - ...&#xD;&#xA; - legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems like there is a lot of overlap between those two categories. In what situations is my software licensing question on-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading, history and citations:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7258/reconciling-no-legal-advice-and-yes-software-licensing#autocomment21732" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20306" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7265" RevisionGUID="7dfe4e24-c080-4f77-9eda-19def1455234" CreationDate="2015-04-01T19:00:41.393" UserId="88986" Text="When is a software licensing question on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20307" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7265" RevisionGUID="7dfe4e24-c080-4f77-9eda-19def1455234" CreationDate="2015-04-01T19:00:41.393" UserId="88986" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|licensing|legal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20308" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7266" RevisionGUID="5f211883-7516-4b96-8839-1e34fa1b2d90" CreationDate="2015-04-01T19:00:41.393" UserId="88986" Text="As a rule of thumb, questions are on topic if they are answerable by expert **programmers**, as opposed to expert **lawyers**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, here are some questions you can ask yourself to determine if your question is on topic or not:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question about the **spirit** of the license, or the **detailed terms** of the license?&#xD;&#xA;    - Programmers can easily understand things like &quot;GPLv3 is meant to protect against tivoization&quot; without going to law school. &#xD;&#xA;    - We are more concerned about violating the library author's wishes then we are about exposing ourselves to some legal action from the author's lawyers.&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question about **licensing** or **copyright**?&#xD;&#xA;    - If it's about copyright, in most cases the question is off topic. Copyright laws vary by jurisdiction and can be subject to some seemingly obscure rules despite the efforts of the Berne convention.&#xD;&#xA; - Does the question pertain to an open or commonly known license, or is it about a proprietary or commercial license?&#xD;&#xA;    - The former could be on-topic, but the latter is likely not to be, because it's: &#xD;&#xA;       - Unlikely we can read the full license, so answers will be speculative&#xD;&#xA;       - Unlikely to be of value to future visitors&#xD;&#xA;       - Likely to need an attorney to interpret what the terms actually mean&#xD;&#xA; - Does the question really require an attorney to answer? Some questions are so specific, narrowly focused, or the potential consequences are significant enough that consulting an attorney is really the only viable option to consider.&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question purely hypothetical and / or contrived? If so, off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some example scenarios for further guidance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Question:** Can I legally sell a closed-source program that dynamically links to a GPL'd library?&#xD;&#xA;    - **ON TOPIC**&#xD;&#xA;    - Most programmers know the answer to this without having to consult a lawyer.&#xD;&#xA;    - For reference, [the answer is yes](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1394623/can-i-dynamically-call-a-lgpl-gpl-software-in-my-closed-source-application)&#xD;&#xA; - **Question:** Is the WTFPL a risky license?&#xD;&#xA;    - **OFF TOPIC**&#xD;&#xA;    - *Most* programmers could only give a vague claim that MIT/Apache/etc are &quot;probably safer&quot;, but would have no legal expertise to back up that opinion&#xD;&#xA;    - This sort of issue has never been tested in court so the honest lawyer answer may simply be &quot;nobody knows yet&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - I've asked a question that I think is on topic, but most/all the answers I've received usually begin with **IANAL** (I Am Not A Lawyer)&#xD;&#xA;    - **OFF TOPIC**&#xD;&#xA;    - This means your question may have seemed on topic to you, but in fact it is not something commonly known to most programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20309" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7266" RevisionGUID="549fc41d-5428-4c50-8ca6-60b62fcb35e3" CreationDate="2015-04-01T19:15:20.083" UserId="88986" Comment="Added the second and third section of @GlenH7's post" Text="As a rule of thumb, questions are on topic if they are answerable by expert **programmers**, as opposed to expert **lawyers**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, here are some questions you can ask yourself to determine if your question is on topic or not:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question about the **spirit** of the license, or the **detailed terms** of the license?&#xD;&#xA;    - Programmers can easily understand things like &quot;GPLv3 is meant to protect against tivoization&quot; without going to law school. &#xD;&#xA;    - We are more concerned about violating the library author's wishes then we are about exposing ourselves to some legal action from the author's lawyers.&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question about **licensing** or **copyright**?&#xD;&#xA;    - If it's about copyright, in most cases the question is off topic. Copyright laws vary by jurisdiction and can be subject to some seemingly obscure rules despite the efforts of the Berne convention.&#xD;&#xA; - Does the question pertain to an open or commonly known license, or is it about a proprietary or commercial license?&#xD;&#xA;    - The former could be on-topic, but the latter is likely not to be, because it's: &#xD;&#xA;       - Unlikely we can read the full license, so answers will be speculative&#xD;&#xA;       - Unlikely to be of value to future visitors&#xD;&#xA;       - Likely to need an attorney to interpret what the terms actually mean&#xD;&#xA; - Does the question really require an attorney to answer? Some questions are so specific, narrowly focused, or the potential consequences are significant enough that consulting an attorney is really the only viable option to consider.&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question purely hypothetical and / or contrived?&#xD;&#xA;    - If so, off-topic.&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question about applying an open source license to their application?&#xD;&#xA;    - Likely on-topic as others have done this as well.&#xD;&#xA; - Is there a related question and answer in the [FSF GNU FAQ][gnufaq] or in the FSF's commentary about open source license compatibility with the GPL?&#xD;&#xA;    - Likely on-topic, although in some rare edge cases the question is off-topic and you should contact the Free Software Foundation directly.&#xD;&#xA; - Is this a &quot;Pick a license for me&quot; question?&#xD;&#xA;    - This is the most difficult topic to have good guidelines about.&#xD;&#xA;    - In general:&#xD;&#xA;         1. Are you looking for an open source (or related) license?&#xD;&#xA;         2. Have you provided enough details about how you want to license your application?&#xD;&#xA;    - If you answered &quot;yes&quot; to *both* of those questions, it's probably on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some example scenarios for further guidance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Question:** Can I legally sell a closed-source program that dynamically links to a GPL'd library?&#xD;&#xA;    - **ON TOPIC**&#xD;&#xA;    - Most programmers know the answer to this without having to consult a lawyer.&#xD;&#xA;    - For reference, [the answer is yes](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1394623/can-i-dynamically-call-a-lgpl-gpl-software-in-my-closed-source-application)&#xD;&#xA; - **Question:** Is the WTFPL a risky license?&#xD;&#xA;    - **OFF TOPIC**&#xD;&#xA;    - *Most* programmers could only give a vague claim that MIT/Apache/etc are &quot;probably safer&quot;, but would have no legal expertise to back up that opinion&#xD;&#xA;    - This sort of issue has never been tested in court so the honest lawyer answer may simply be &quot;nobody knows yet&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - I've asked a question that I think is on topic, but most/all the answers I've received usually begin with **IANAL** (I Am Not A Lawyer)&#xD;&#xA;    - **OFF TOPIC**&#xD;&#xA;    - This means your question may have seemed on topic to you, but in fact it is not something commonly known to most programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[gnufaq]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20310" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7267" RevisionGUID="9552d0c9-78af-4507-95fb-710fad9db497" CreationDate="2015-04-02T02:13:54.183" UserId="69485" Text="Here is the link to the question that was considered off-topic: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/277933/69485&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I read the answer to another question on here (meta.programmers.stackexchange.com) that as long as the question doesn't just apply to me and it applies to programmers in general, then the career question should be acceptable. Why was my question not considered on-topic specifically? What can I do (if anything) to change the question?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20311" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7267" RevisionGUID="9552d0c9-78af-4507-95fb-710fad9db497" CreationDate="2015-04-02T02:13:54.183" UserId="69485" Text="Why was my career related question considered off-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20312" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7267" RevisionGUID="9552d0c9-78af-4507-95fb-710fad9db497" CreationDate="2015-04-02T02:13:54.183" UserId="69485" Text="|support|career|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20313" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7267" RevisionGUID="d28a1bd4-5082-467a-9391-fa67db7da8e9" CreationDate="2015-04-02T02:38:43.590" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add relevant tags" Text="|support|closed-questions|specific-question|on-topic-definition|career|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20314" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7268" RevisionGUID="ef711d48-166a-4969-b4bf-60849fdaba99" CreationDate="2015-04-02T02:53:54.437" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Lets admit it, we've got lots of old things hanging around on meta.  Much of it helps explain where we are today - and thats good.  But it also confuses people.  They may look at meta, search for some topic and find something from 2011 when the scope was still trying to be found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets take a recent example of this. http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7267/why-was-my-career-related-question-considered-off-topic has some related questions on the side bar... the top couple: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![related questions][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, lets look at those that are actually here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1556/when-are-career-questions-too-localized-should-this-be-more-strict&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2483/why-are-all-of-the-good-career-related-threads-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the first one has something from '11 the apparent consensus is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Yes, but only questions that will be relevant to a large number of professional software developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, well, is not at all the current consensus four years later.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second one is also from '11 which include user8's blue bulls eye (which was recently removed from the help center because it was misunderstood) and states right up front:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers is for questions about software development and being a programmer: career advice questions are off-topic here unless they uniquely apply to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, this is not the current understanding or consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, mods, I beseech you to create a new lock message that indicates that a given question was a part of the changing scope of the site and may not reflect the current understanding of what the site's topics are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One possible wording:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance about the development of the scope of Programmers.SE. However, this scope has changed over time and the reader is urged to seek more recent posts on this topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, as we find things on meta that are out of date and have the likelihood of being misunderstood or used to justify posts based on standards of half a decade ago it would be possible to say, &quot;You know, that really isn't applicable anymore.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could also be done as a custom close reason if you want to go that way instead, though that could put a bit too much power in our hands (locked questions can only be done by diamond mods, can't be deleted, can't be voted on).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/gsYqv.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20315" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7268" RevisionGUID="ef711d48-166a-4969-b4bf-60849fdaba99" CreationDate="2015-04-02T02:53:54.437" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Create a special lock message for historical meta questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20316" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7268" RevisionGUID="ef711d48-166a-4969-b4bf-60849fdaba99" CreationDate="2015-04-02T02:53:54.437" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|locking|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20317" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7269" RevisionGUID="28c5c36c-1bc6-421e-bed8-3bb4df5c8357" CreationDate="2015-04-02T08:55:02.583" UserId="4" Text="I'd almost recommend taking this to Meta.SE and suggesting a better Meta historical lock reason that could apply to all sites. An example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but **it is not considered representative of the current policies of this site**. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: [help center][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In some cases, if the answers have been superseded, perhaps we should be closing the older ones as duplicates of the newer one. The only problem with that is updating all the links when there's an even newer one. Fortunately, they would all become linked in the sidebar if we have appropriate Meta linkages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20318" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7265" RevisionGUID="40a45336-7a6f-4995-aac1-34e7569bc08f" CreationDate="2015-04-02T17:01:30.113" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/583675634007814144" />
  <row Id="20319" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7257" RevisionGUID="f57c90c0-f163-45f5-9618-363043800edc" CreationDate="2015-04-03T08:14:17.633" UserId="31260" Comment="Triage would spare active page from questions deserving flagging for speedy deletion" Text="Propose to detect troublesome questions using Stack Overflow quality scoring data and put them to [Triage queue](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage) for an hour or two. If the timeout expires before decision is made, let questions go to homepage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the questions that fail the Triage, one option to handle these is to keep them invisible for a day or two (if not edited), then automatically [bump](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/bump/info) them for a broader community review. This way would keep them away from the top of [newest tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest). (Attentive readers may notice that bumps imply certain pollution of [active tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active) but this looks less of an issue to me, as this tab is rather heavily dominated by better questions being bumped by answers and edits. Not to mention that Triage would spare active page from questions deserving flagging for speedy deletion - spam, [homework dumps](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3837/31260), [&quot;cubicle fart&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6677/31260) kind stuff...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reasons why I consider above approach feasible are [laid out here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7251/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  goal, about [&quot;wall of crap&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so) at homepage, also looks relevant to us, as indicated by multiple recurring discussions about [too many bad questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7130?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...site topics substantially overlap and... many troublesome questions over here appear to be posted by users who are simply [trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260). Using same scoring data that is supposed to detect and block them at Stack Overflow would make sense, wouldn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...there is just no way to ensure that questions in Triage queue would be reviewed within reasonable timeframe... automatically kick questions off this queue and let them go to homepage after some timeout (say, 1-2 hours) if these haven't got sufficient attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7130/so-many-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7239/there-are-way-more-negative-votes-in-the-top-50-questions-than-positive-time-to&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7221/problem-titles-in-off-topic-questions-of-new-users-coming-from-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7020/lets-help-askers-who-are-trying-to-circumvent-question-block-at-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6990/why-cant-we-raise-up-questions-quality&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6850/how-effective-is-the-quality-filter-against-this-question-with-all-caps-brief-ti&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6788/a-lot-of-front-page-down-votes&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6371/how-can-we-encourage-people-to-read-the-faq-before-asking-their-first-question&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5618/better-selection-title-for-top-questions-list&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5377/requiring-registration-to-ask-questions-did-it-made-a-difference&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4029/why-are-there-so-many-minus-points-on-questions-in-this-site&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4009/programmers-stack-exchange-question-downvoting-what-to-do&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3947/what-can-we-do-about-extremely-low-quality-questions-from-unregistered-users&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3778/can-we-have-some-way-to-not-show-closed-questions-on-the-front-page&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2744/how-can-i-create-a-custom-filtered-view-of-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2727/are-we-scaring-off-new-users&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Nov 17 '11)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4097/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Oct 8 '12)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/841/why-are-almost-half-the-questions-on-the-front-page-marked-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/784/are-we-closing-too-many-good-questions-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20320" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7266" RevisionGUID="e5fb3790-86e3-443c-bb41-8382ee1b25e5" CreationDate="2015-04-03T13:40:14.223" UserId="88986" Comment="Removed the IANAL question" Text="As a rule of thumb, questions are on topic if they are answerable by expert **programmers**, as opposed to expert **lawyers**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, here are some questions you can ask yourself to determine if your question is on topic or not:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question about the **spirit** of the license, or the **detailed terms** of the license?&#xD;&#xA;    - Programmers can easily understand things like &quot;GPLv3 is meant to protect against tivoization&quot; without going to law school. &#xD;&#xA;    - We are more concerned about violating the library author's wishes then we are about exposing ourselves to some legal action from the author's lawyers.&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question about **licensing** or **copyright**?&#xD;&#xA;    - If it's about copyright, in most cases the question is off topic. Copyright laws vary by jurisdiction and can be subject to some seemingly obscure rules despite the efforts of the Berne convention.&#xD;&#xA; - Does the question pertain to an open or commonly known license, or is it about a proprietary or commercial license?&#xD;&#xA;    - The former could be on-topic, but the latter is likely not to be, because it's: &#xD;&#xA;       - Unlikely we can read the full license, so answers will be speculative&#xD;&#xA;       - Unlikely to be of value to future visitors&#xD;&#xA;       - Likely to need an attorney to interpret what the terms actually mean&#xD;&#xA; - Does the question really require an attorney to answer? Some questions are so specific, narrowly focused, or the potential consequences are significant enough that consulting an attorney is really the only viable option to consider.&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question purely hypothetical and / or contrived?&#xD;&#xA;    - If so, off-topic.&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question about applying an open source license to their application?&#xD;&#xA;    - Likely on-topic as others have done this as well.&#xD;&#xA; - Is there a related question and answer in the [FSF GNU FAQ][gnufaq] or in the FSF's commentary about open source license compatibility with the GPL?&#xD;&#xA;    - Likely on-topic, although in some rare edge cases the question is off-topic and you should contact the Free Software Foundation directly.&#xD;&#xA; - Is this a &quot;Pick a license for me&quot; question?&#xD;&#xA;    - This is the most difficult topic to have good guidelines about.&#xD;&#xA;    - In general:&#xD;&#xA;         1. Are you looking for an open source (or related) license?&#xD;&#xA;         2. Have you provided enough details about how you want to license your application?&#xD;&#xA;    - If you answered &quot;yes&quot; to *both* of those questions, it's probably on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some example scenarios for further guidance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Question:** Can I legally sell a closed-source program that dynamically links to a GPL'd library?&#xD;&#xA;    - **ON TOPIC**&#xD;&#xA;    - Most programmers know the answer to this without having to consult a lawyer.&#xD;&#xA;    - For reference, [the answer is yes](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1394623/can-i-dynamically-call-a-lgpl-gpl-software-in-my-closed-source-application)&#xD;&#xA; - **Question:** Is the WTFPL a risky license?&#xD;&#xA;    - **OFF TOPIC**&#xD;&#xA;    - *Most* programmers could only give a vague claim that MIT/Apache/etc are &quot;probably safer&quot;, but would have no legal expertise to back up that opinion&#xD;&#xA;    - This sort of issue has never been tested in court so the honest lawyer answer may simply be &quot;nobody knows yet&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[gnufaq]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20321" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7258" RevisionGUID="6d99eadc-ea07-4abb-bd00-81cf61aadcac" CreationDate="2015-04-03T13:58:33.860" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[7265],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:88986,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;durron597&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="20322" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7266" RevisionGUID="0af15141-1a92-4d2a-8d91-1aa6bbb80162" CreationDate="2015-04-03T14:05:07.990" UserId="88986" Comment="Added citations and @gnat's example" Text="As a rule of thumb, questions are on topic if they are answerable by expert **programmers**, as opposed to expert **lawyers**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, here are some questions you can ask yourself to determine if your question is on topic or not:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question about the **spirit** of the license, or the **detailed terms** of the license?&#xD;&#xA;    - Programmers can easily understand things like &quot;GPLv3 is meant to protect against tivoization&quot; without going to law school. &#xD;&#xA;    - We are more concerned about violating the library author's wishes then we are about exposing ourselves to some legal action from the author's lawyers.&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question about **licensing** or **copyright**?&#xD;&#xA;    - If it's about copyright, in most cases the question is off topic. Copyright laws vary by jurisdiction and can be subject to some seemingly obscure rules despite the efforts of the Berne convention.&#xD;&#xA; - Does the question pertain to an open or commonly known license, or is it about a proprietary or commercial license?&#xD;&#xA;    - The former could be on-topic, but the latter is likely not to be, because it's: &#xD;&#xA;       - Unlikely we can read the full license, so answers will be speculative&#xD;&#xA;       - Unlikely to be of value to future visitors&#xD;&#xA;       - Likely to need an attorney to interpret what the terms actually mean&#xD;&#xA; - Does the question really require an attorney to answer? Some questions are so specific, narrowly focused, or the potential consequences are significant enough that consulting an attorney is really the only viable option to consider.&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question purely hypothetical and / or contrived?&#xD;&#xA;    - If so, off-topic.&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question about applying an open source license to their application?&#xD;&#xA;    - Likely on-topic as others have done this as well.&#xD;&#xA; - Is there a related question and answer in the [FSF GNU FAQ][gnufaq] or in the FSF's commentary about open source license compatibility with the GPL?&#xD;&#xA;    - Likely on-topic, although in some rare edge cases the question is off-topic and you should contact the Free Software Foundation directly.&#xD;&#xA; - Is this a &quot;Pick a license for me&quot; question?&#xD;&#xA;    - This is the most difficult topic to have good guidelines about.&#xD;&#xA;    - In general:&#xD;&#xA;         1. Are you looking for an open source (or related) license?&#xD;&#xA;         2. Have you provided enough details about how you want to license your application?&#xD;&#xA;    - If you answered &quot;yes&quot; to *both* of those questions, it's probably on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some example scenarios for further guidance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Question:** Can I legally sell a closed-source program that dynamically links to a GPL'd library?&#xD;&#xA;    - **ON TOPIC**&#xD;&#xA;    - Most programmers know the answer to this without having to consult a lawyer.&#xD;&#xA;    - For reference, [the answer is yes](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1394623/can-i-dynamically-call-a-lgpl-gpl-software-in-my-closed-source-application)&#xD;&#xA; - **Question:** Is the WTFPL a risky license?&#xD;&#xA;    - **OFF TOPIC**&#xD;&#xA;    - *Most* programmers could only give a vague claim that MIT/Apache/etc are &quot;probably safer&quot;, but would have no legal expertise to back up that opinion&#xD;&#xA;    - This sort of issue has never been tested in court so the honest lawyer answer may simply be &quot;nobody knows yet&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - If you ask a question, and most people seem confident to answer it *without* saying IANAL (I am not a lawyer)&#xD;&#xA;    - Probably on-topic&#xD;&#xA;    - This is the &quot;reverse IANAL&quot; test&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Main contributors: @durron597, @Ixrec, @GlenH7, @gnat&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[gnufaq]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20323" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7265" RevisionGUID="f9302fff-5b92-453f-a4d9-b70870e06813" CreationDate="2015-04-03T14:07:46.003" UserId="88986" Comment="Duplicate edit" Text="I would like to ask a question about software licensing. The help center says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - ...&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***and it is not about...***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - ...&#xD;&#xA; - legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems like there is a lot of overlap between those two categories. In what situations is my software licensing question on-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading, history and citations:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;- [&lt;strike&gt;Reconciling &quot;no legal advice&quot; and &quot;yes software licensing&quot; [duplicate]&lt;/strike&gt;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7258/reconciling-no-legal-advice-and-yes-software-licensing)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20324" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7270" RevisionGUID="aec5f736-9a0e-43dc-ac62-aeea03d07140" CreationDate="2015-04-04T14:27:38.060" UserId="161917" Text="So I was looking through the close review queue today and I saw this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/246616/an-algorithm-for-finding-converse-duplicates-of-ordered-pairs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP asked for an algorithm to find certain parts of related elements in a list. For some reason, all the answers are of the form &quot;Here's my solution in [language]: [big block of code]&quot; without any attempt at discussing algorithmic trade-offs like worst-case time complexity versus implementation complexity. I would assume the latter is what we want from an &quot;algorithm question&quot;; otherwise they should Google or ask on SO with a specific language tag (right?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My first question is: **What should we do when this happens to a question?** Closing doesn't feel right to me, since it's still a well-written, on-topic, answerable question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;For the record, I was prompted to ask this because of the somewhat odd custom close reason that was provided. See these comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because as written and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answered, the question is answerable by unexplained code snippets in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; arbitrary languages. –  MichaelT 2 days ago&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @MichaelT: Full marks for originality: I've never seen that as a close&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reason before. It was a serious question about an actual problem and I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was disappointed at the outcome. I thought it deserved better answers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but is that the fault of the question? –  david.pfx yesterday&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @david.pfx I'm not sure. I remember looking at the question nearly a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; year ago and thinking it looked good and could get some good answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Unfortunately, what you are getting is &quot;here's an implementation in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; python, here's another one in ruby...&quot; and it appears to be taking on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more of an algorithm golf problem nature (with some code) than what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd really like to see from the question. –  MichaelT yesterday&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My second question is what the OP asked here: **Was this the fault of the question?** or better yet **Could the question be edited in a way that might discourage these &quot;code-only&quot; answers?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm also not sure if this is a trend or just one exceptionally unlucky question; I personally haven't seen it happen anywhere else, but I haven't searched for more examples." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20325" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7270" RevisionGUID="aec5f736-9a0e-43dc-ac62-aeea03d07140" CreationDate="2015-04-04T14:27:38.060" UserId="161917" Text="What to do when an algorithm question attracts &quot;Here's my implementation in X&quot; answers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20326" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7270" RevisionGUID="aec5f736-9a0e-43dc-ac62-aeea03d07140" CreationDate="2015-04-04T14:27:38.060" UserId="161917" Text="|discussion|answer-quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20327" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7270" RevisionGUID="4c0f836f-7519-4f98-aec3-908434ffe3cc" CreationDate="2015-04-04T14:35:06.863" UserId="161917" Comment="added 111 characters in body" Text="So I was looking through the close review queue today and I saw this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/246616/an-algorithm-for-finding-converse-duplicates-of-ordered-pairs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP asked for an algorithm to find certain parts of related elements in a list. For some reason, all the answers are of the form &quot;Here's my solution in [language]: [big block of code]&quot; without any attempt at discussing algorithmic trade-offs like worst-case time complexity versus implementation complexity. I would assume the latter is what we want from an &quot;algorithm question&quot;; otherwise they should Google or ask on SO with a specific language tag (right?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My first question is: **What should we do when this happens to a question?** Closing doesn't feel right to me, since it's still a well-written, on-topic, answerable question. It has been protected, which I completely agree with, but there's probably something else that should be done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;For the record, I was prompted to ask this because of the somewhat odd custom close reason that was provided. See these comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because as written and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answered, the question is answerable by unexplained code snippets in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; arbitrary languages. –  MichaelT 2 days ago&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @MichaelT: Full marks for originality: I've never seen that as a close&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reason before. It was a serious question about an actual problem and I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was disappointed at the outcome. I thought it deserved better answers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but is that the fault of the question? –  david.pfx yesterday&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @david.pfx I'm not sure. I remember looking at the question nearly a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; year ago and thinking it looked good and could get some good answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Unfortunately, what you are getting is &quot;here's an implementation in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; python, here's another one in ruby...&quot; and it appears to be taking on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more of an algorithm golf problem nature (with some code) than what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd really like to see from the question. –  MichaelT yesterday&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My second question is what the OP asked here: **Was this the fault of the question?** or better yet **Could the question be edited in a way that might discourage these &quot;code-only&quot; answers?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm also not sure if this is a trend or just one exceptionally unlucky question; I personally haven't seen it happen anywhere else, but I haven't searched for more examples." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20328" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7271" RevisionGUID="5180630d-36e9-4dbf-a223-755481dbf35c" CreationDate="2015-04-06T03:30:54.850" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I think there are two things that need to be addressed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Question&#xD;&#xA;------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I see a question that has a good idea but poor phrasing, I will edit it to be more objective and to ask for a more abstract, conceptual answer. In that question, _what is the algorithm_?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The difficult part is that specific question already asks for an algorithm, then goes on to request a solution in actual code. In other words, it is saying &quot;here is my problem, write my code for me.&quot; To the author's credit, he did a really good job describing the problem, explained his mental block, and gave objective success criteria. For those reasons, I would not vote to close the question, I would improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I did [edit that question][1] to remove the code request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Answers&#xD;&#xA;-----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one is easy. Answers of poor quality should be downvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question does not already have a quality answer worthy of being accepted, feel free to provide one even if it is an old question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/246616/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20329" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7020" RevisionGUID="d784fd28-18f5-4d8a-8d22-07db216f5bc7" CreationDate="2015-04-06T14:03:23.067" UserId="31260" Comment="question blocked += http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/252645/165773 &quot;for more details on this, see 'When does the question ban get applied?' at MSE&quot;" Text="If a first time asker has an SO account that was recently (say, within a week) [question blocked](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/252645/165773 &quot;for more details on this, see 'When does the question ban get applied?' at MSE&quot;) over there, how about showing them a warning like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** You've recently been blocked at Stack Overflow. Consider that quality requirements at Programmers are similar. Note that Stack Overflow topics are _not_ covered here and that your questions [can't even be migrated to Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;) because of the block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This hopefully would help them avoid further frustration if they get down and close votes, angry comments, blocked migrations and question block at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why can't we raise up questions quality?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6990/31260)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Per stats, Programmers appear to be [most popular of SE sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773) among this category of askers. After being blocked or scared by warnings at Stack Overflow they simply try to dump their low quality stuff over here...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;SE might want to think about how to improve their UX in order to educate during question composition...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there... how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20330" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7272" RevisionGUID="3ab4981c-1101-468d-95d0-d500d297cb01" CreationDate="2015-04-06T20:18:30.003" UserId="88986" Text="This is not a duplicate of this: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5427/usefulness-of-career-development-and-career-transition-tags ... it's time for them to be blacklisted. The narrowness of scope of what actually would be on topic here is so narrow that it's pretty much invisible. **All it does is invite off topic posts.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We absolutely can and should keep the tag around for historically significant posts. According to Meta, we can do this. But it should be blacklisted for all future posts. See http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/252898/mark-a-tag-as-a-historical-significance-only&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has come up many times before, for example: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags (2011) (Note: this question didn't suggest blacklisting because blacklisting didn't exist when it was discussed)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3279/blacklist-career (2012)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup (2013)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6426/career-transition-tag-inappropriate (Early 2014)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6458/there-seems-to-be-some-contradictory-guidance-with-respect-to-asking-career-deve (Early 2014)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6983/improve-question-quality-by-informing-askers-of-expectations-in-some-career-rela (Late 2014)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For crying out loud, this is the [jobs] tag wiki:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do not use this tag. Click &quot;info&quot; for better alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the [career-development] tag wiki:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Career advice is off-topic per Help Center. 99% of questions with this tag are off-topic and will be closed. Study other questions under this tag closely that aren't closed before asking your question, if you want any chance of it not being closed. Closed questions add up to a possible question-ban &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bottom line... there is an awful lot of bad here, and very, very little good. It's nigh impossible to write an on-topic question with these tags. A lot of those are out of date because **The Workplace had not even graduated until February 2014**. Some relevant comments (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Rachel](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel) [Jan 6 '13 at 18:30](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5427/usefulness-of-career-development-and-career-transition-tags#comment13618_5427) (this is the best that can be managed by someone that *likes* the tag):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think [career-development] does serve a purpose, and it's one of my favorite tags to browse on the site. Career advice isn't the same as career development. We can't advise someone on what career path they should take, but we can answer some questions about career development for software developers. I'm not sure about [career-transition] though... **I can't think of any cases where it could be on-topic here.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [@Yannis Rizos♦](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/25936/yannis-rizos) [Jan 19 '13 at 22:19](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5427/usefulness-of-career-development-and-career-transition-tags#comment13769_5446)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is all good, but irrelevant if the tags aren't used as they are supposed to be used. If a lot of people use [career-development] to ask career advice questions, then the **tag is problematic and should probably go away.** The two topics are distinct, but their differences are subtle, and become even more subtle if we consider non native English speakers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##It's time for them to go.##" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20331" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7272" RevisionGUID="3ab4981c-1101-468d-95d0-d500d297cb01" CreationDate="2015-04-06T20:18:30.003" UserId="88986" Text="Burninate request: [career-*] [job-*]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20332" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7272" RevisionGUID="3ab4981c-1101-468d-95d0-d500d297cb01" CreationDate="2015-04-06T20:18:30.003" UserId="88986" Text="|discussion|tags|career|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20333" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7272" RevisionGUID="8476a73a-46b7-4b73-a42f-0881a0ea1fcc" CreationDate="2015-04-06T20:31:53.567" UserId="88986" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="This is not a duplicate of this: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5427/usefulness-of-career-development-and-career-transition-tags ... it's time for them to be blacklisted. The narrowness of scope of what actually would be on topic here is so narrow that it's pretty much invisible. **All it does is invite off topic posts.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We absolutely can and should keep the tag around for historically significant posts. According to Meta, we can do this. But it should be blacklisted for all future posts. See http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/252898/mark-a-tag-as-a-historical-significance-only&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has come up many times before, for example: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags (2011) (Note: this question didn't suggest blacklisting because blacklisting didn't exist when it was discussed)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3279/blacklist-career (2012)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup (2013)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6426/career-transition-tag-inappropriate (Early 2014)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6458/there-seems-to-be-some-contradictory-guidance-with-respect-to-asking-career-deve (Early 2014)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6983/improve-question-quality-by-informing-askers-of-expectations-in-some-career-rela (Late 2014)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For crying out loud, this is the [tag:jobs] tag wiki:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do not use this tag. Click &quot;info&quot; for better alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the [tag:career-development] tag wiki:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Career advice is off-topic per Help Center. 99% of questions with this tag are off-topic and will be closed. Study other questions under this tag closely that aren't closed before asking your question, if you want any chance of it not being closed. Closed questions add up to a possible question-ban &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bottom line... there is an awful lot of bad here, and very, very little good. It's nigh impossible to write an on-topic question with these tags. A lot of those are out of date because **The Workplace had not even graduated until February 2014**. Some relevant comments (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Rachel](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel) [Jan 6 '13 at 18:30](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5427/usefulness-of-career-development-and-career-transition-tags#comment13618_5427) (this is the best that can be managed by someone that *likes* the tag):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think [career-development] does serve a purpose, and it's one of my favorite tags to browse on the site. Career advice isn't the same as career development. We can't advise someone on what career path they should take, but we can answer some questions about career development for software developers. I'm not sure about [career-transition] though... **I can't think of any cases where it could be on-topic here.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [@Yannis Rizos♦](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/25936/yannis-rizos) [Jan 19 '13 at 22:19](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5427/usefulness-of-career-development-and-career-transition-tags#comment13769_5446)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is all good, but irrelevant if the tags aren't used as they are supposed to be used. If a lot of people use [career-development] to ask career advice questions, then the **tag is problematic and should probably go away.** The two topics are distinct, but their differences are subtle, and become even more subtle if we consider non native English speakers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##It's time for them to go.##" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20334" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7272" RevisionGUID="a700ddb8-907f-49da-81d7-8dce5b61e41e" CreationDate="2015-04-06T23:28:11.443" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/585222498800824320" />
  <row Id="20335" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7272" RevisionGUID="81a69d4a-c1f6-4ba4-a859-36ad7cbadbc4" CreationDate="2015-04-07T11:51:46.240" UserId="88986" Comment="added 1 character in body; edited title" Text="This is not a duplicate of this: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5427/usefulness-of-career-development-and-career-transition-tags ... it's time for them to be blacklisted. The narrowness of scope of what actually would be on topic here is so narrow that it's pretty much invisible. **All it does is invite off topic posts.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We absolutely can and should keep the tag around for historically significant posts. According to Meta, we can do this. But it should be blacklisted for all future posts. See http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/252898/mark-a-tag-as-a-historical-significance-only&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has come up many times before, for example: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags (2011) (Note: this question didn't suggest blacklisting because blacklisting didn't exist when it was discussed)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3279/blacklist-career (2012)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup (2013)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6426/career-transition-tag-inappropriate (Early 2014)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6458/there-seems-to-be-some-contradictory-guidance-with-respect-to-asking-career-deve (Early 2014)&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6983/improve-question-quality-by-informing-askers-of-expectations-in-some-career-rela (Late 2014)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For crying out loud, this is the [tag:jobs] tag wiki:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do not use this tag. Click &quot;info&quot; for better alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the [tag:career-development] tag wiki:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Career advice is off-topic per Help Center. 99% of questions with this tag are off-topic and will be closed. Study other questions under this tag closely that aren't closed before asking your question, if you want any chance of it not being closed. Closed questions add up to a possible question-ban &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bottom line... there is an awful lot of bad here, and very, very little good. It's nigh impossible to write an on-topic question with these tags. A lot of those are out of date because **The Workplace had not even graduated until February 2014**. Some relevant comments (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Rachel](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel) [Jan 6 '13 at 18:30](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5427/usefulness-of-career-development-and-career-transition-tags#comment13618_5427) (this is the best that can be managed by someone that *likes* the tag):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think [career-development] does serve a purpose, and it's one of my favorite tags to browse on the site. Career advice isn't the same as career development. We can't advise someone on what career path they should take, but we can answer some questions about career development for software developers. I'm not sure about [career-transition] though... **I can't think of any cases where it could be on-topic here.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [@Yannis Rizos♦︎](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/25936/yannis-rizos) [Jan 19 '13 at 22:19](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5427/usefulness-of-career-development-and-career-transition-tags#comment13769_5446)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is all good, but irrelevant if the tags aren't used as they are supposed to be used. If a lot of people use [career-development] to ask career advice questions, then the **tag is problematic and should probably go away.** The two topics are distinct, but their differences are subtle, and become even more subtle if we consider non native English speakers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##It's time for them to go.##" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20336" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7272" RevisionGUID="81a69d4a-c1f6-4ba4-a859-36ad7cbadbc4" CreationDate="2015-04-07T11:51:46.240" UserId="88986" Comment="added 1 character in body; edited title" Text="Burninate and blacklist request: [career-*] [job-*]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20337" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7272" RevisionGUID="4b42c275-ef6e-4158-a86c-683e3534dc61" CreationDate="2015-04-07T16:02:14.263" UserId="88986" Comment="edited title" Text="Burninate and blacklist request: [career-*] [job-*] [resume]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20338" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7267" RevisionGUID="aa80ad6b-8510-4361-b3fb-ce4ffaf2248b" CreationDate="2015-04-07T18:01:38.493" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6483],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:88986,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;durron597&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:161917,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Ixrec&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:1204,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Robert Harvey&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="20339" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7273" RevisionGUID="e641d06f-0a26-4f6c-8df2-e5d978465d85" CreationDate="2015-04-07T19:09:07.900" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="A lot of questions try to cast a net into sea of possible designs with the wording &quot;is it possible to...&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions often get closed for one reason or another. What steps should I take to try to ask a better question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20340" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7273" RevisionGUID="e641d06f-0a26-4f6c-8df2-e5d978465d85" CreationDate="2015-04-07T19:09:07.900" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Why is &quot;Is it possible to...&quot; a poorly worded question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20341" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7273" RevisionGUID="e641d06f-0a26-4f6c-8df2-e5d978465d85" CreationDate="2015-04-07T19:09:07.900" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20342" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7274" RevisionGUID="6c0c4c7f-2e87-44e7-9f35-459a2aa47087" CreationDate="2015-04-07T19:09:07.900" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="### Yes or no?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The simplest answer to an &quot;is it possible to&quot; question is &quot;yes&quot; or &quot;no&quot;. Neither of these answers are really that good, helpful, or useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This really is at the crux of the problem with questions of this format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So what should be asked instead?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assume that the answer is 'yes' and start designing the software.  When you have a problem, then ask about that problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;But wait!&quot; you say, &quot;This means that I'll need to spend several hours working through this design.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Correct. Asking the community of Programmers.SE to do this design for you may take *you* less time, but it means that a few people might be working on the question and all spend a few hours of time trying to come up with a solution for you. This is *incredibly* inefficient use of *our* time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other possibility is that no one answers. And while that isn't as wasteful of the time, it means that you didn't generate any seed for good answers and haven't advanced the situation of trying to find out if something is possible or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking us to do a feasibility study for you is the same as asking us to come up with the design or write the code. The Stack Exchange Q&amp;A model just isn't set up to provide that. If you *really* want someone to do a feasibility study for you, there are a number of users who advertise their consultancy in their profile. You may wish to consider contacting one of them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20343" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7268" RevisionGUID="9e510c19-4611-41a4-8e3b-5bf30e59004f" CreationDate="2015-04-07T20:29:59.023" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/585540039372906500" />
  <row Id="20344" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7273" RevisionGUID="9caa62ab-276e-4c46-94ee-b5649c3719a9" CreationDate="2015-04-08T08:29:53.880" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/585721212178980864" />
  <row Id="20345" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7275" RevisionGUID="22a16958-471b-40a4-97ca-9b73bd50927a" CreationDate="2015-04-09T03:49:48.363" UserId="173254" Text="I've come across some questions that say things like 'I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this...'&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While the apologies are.. appreciated, I guess, should they really be included in a question? If the question is not suitable for the site, it will presumably be closed or migrated to a different site, right?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is it okay to remove such apologies? Or should they only be removed if the question is, in fact, on-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One such question can be found [here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/278618/sorting-sentences-by-new-words-in-each), where the author apologised three times throughout the question, including one parenthetical apology that asked if you were still reading." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20346" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7275" RevisionGUID="22a16958-471b-40a4-97ca-9b73bd50927a" CreationDate="2015-04-09T03:49:48.363" UserId="173254" Text="Should you edit questions to remove apologies?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20347" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7275" RevisionGUID="22a16958-471b-40a4-97ca-9b73bd50927a" CreationDate="2015-04-09T03:49:48.363" UserId="173254" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20348" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7276" RevisionGUID="9cad816f-7eb9-40bf-8bfd-7ea204c4e72d" CreationDate="2015-04-09T10:49:58.740" UserId="47" Text="Yes you should.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's the wrong place then the question will be closed or migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's the right place then the apology is meaningless." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20349" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7275" RevisionGUID="e6f84c66-851d-418d-bd47-4afe8f945549" CreationDate="2015-04-09T10:54:18.303" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20350" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7277" RevisionGUID="3bd2be58-215b-48f8-a436-69677007a71d" CreationDate="2015-04-09T17:17:18.667" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Removing fluff improves the question as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;I am sorry if...&quot; or &quot;feel free to edit this&quot; do not add anything at all to the quality of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think you can improve the quality of a question by editing it, then do it. If that means removing fluff, changing wording to be more clear, change the focus slightly to bring it more on-topic, go ahead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only caveat is at your rep level (less than 100 at the time you asked) your edits will need to go through peer-review. Many members who perform those reviews will reject simple edits. Not because they are bad edits, but because if we have to peer review every little spelling or grammar fix it is a waste of time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20351" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7275" RevisionGUID="1e23032b-1f6a-4df8-909d-808c1f4425a7" CreationDate="2015-04-09T17:32:22.677" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/586220119916945409" />
  <row Id="20352" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7278" RevisionGUID="873022b4-6011-4d69-a3a7-1c9f7bd82279" CreationDate="2015-04-09T17:52:02.550" UserId="60084" Text="I would say &quot;it depends&quot;. In most cases, when the apology comes before or after the question, it should be removed for the reasons stated by you and the other answer - it's meaningless and not constructive. &#xA;However, if the apology is parenthetical, I wouldn't go around editing the text itself and possibly restructuring it just to remove what might be considered a stylistic choice. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20353" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7270" RevisionGUID="391e9f4f-6876-4509-8e40-bf769264e2fd" CreationDate="2015-04-10T02:32:21.093" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/586356008357888001" />
  <row Id="20354" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="7279" RevisionGUID="668c8ce2-660b-48dd-a0c6-911fc5a3e298" CreationDate="2015-04-10T14:33:13.230" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/278746/discriminatory-moderator-behavior" />
  <row Id="20355" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7279" RevisionGUID="2d3be4e5-ca7a-4230-b2fd-e8e96acae5d9" CreationDate="2015-04-10T14:31:32.770" UserId="174120" Text="I recently asked a rather provocative question about garbage collection, which was moderated.  Fine; my goal there was to get people to think.  They did, goal accomplished.  But then, I had a rather interesting response when offering an answer to this question: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102593/tips-on-converting-a-c-program-to-pure-python&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I got a downvote; fine, I also got two upvotes.  However, **the question has since been &quot;protected&quot; because it has &quot;attracted low-quality answers.&quot;**  I submit that this is an example of discriminatory, ego-centric behavior by the moderators.  Answers should be judged on their merits, not on whether their authors said something you disagreed with somewhere *else* on the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20356" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7279" RevisionGUID="2d3be4e5-ca7a-4230-b2fd-e8e96acae5d9" CreationDate="2015-04-10T14:31:32.770" UserId="174120" Text="Discriminatory moderator behavior" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20357" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7279" RevisionGUID="2d3be4e5-ca7a-4230-b2fd-e8e96acae5d9" CreationDate="2015-04-10T14:31:32.770" UserId="174120" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20358" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7279" RevisionGUID="c35fddd3-f12d-414e-ac7b-808029b72a3f" CreationDate="2015-04-10T14:35:45.220" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|protected-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20359" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7279" RevisionGUID="510bf836-89c1-4417-8102-5d6285e64e56" CreationDate="2015-04-10T14:36:27.277" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|answer-quality|protected-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20360" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7279" RevisionGUID="b4b64402-332b-4ef7-8871-ce138d5237d0" CreationDate="2015-04-10T14:40:15.170" UserId="174120" Comment="clearification" Text="I recently asked a rather provocative question about garbage collection, which was moderated.  Fine; my goal there was to get people to think.  They did, goal accomplished.  But then, I had a rather interesting response when offering an answer to this question: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102593/tips-on-converting-a-c-program-to-pure-python&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I got a downvote; fine, I also got two upvotes.  However, **the question has since been &quot;protected&quot; because it has &quot;attracted low-quality answers.&quot;**  I submit that this is an example of discriminatory, ego-centric behavior by the community, and is an indictment on the community moderation system. Answers should be judged on their merits, not on whether their authors said something you disagreed with somewhere *else* on the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20361" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7279" RevisionGUID="b4b64402-332b-4ef7-8871-ce138d5237d0" CreationDate="2015-04-10T14:40:15.170" UserId="174120" Comment="clearification" Text="Discriminatory community moderation behavior" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20362" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7280" RevisionGUID="c648ed12-f21f-4513-8c60-defd04ef51ac" CreationDate="2015-04-10T14:42:15.537" UserId="51654" Text="When we (users with enough reputation) protect questions, the standard text talks about &quot;low quality answers&quot;, and it's a frequent thing that is done with very old questions which are resurrected to the front page either due to a new answer (like yours in this case) or because the question was linked offsite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These scenarios tend to lead to many low-rep users chiming in with answers that do not add much. Worse, very old questions often aren't seen by their askers, so they can't benefit from your answer (or select it as accepted). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This wasn't any slight against you. Protecting the question doesn't impact your (solid) answer at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20363" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7281" RevisionGUID="69a69534-cdb9-4033-9c5b-044e0977314c" CreationDate="2015-04-10T14:43:04.603" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="The question meanders and covers a lot of ground (hence being closed as &quot;too broad&quot;). As best as I can tell, the question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd appreciate some tips on how to best approach this code conversion (C to Python), based on your experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your answer starts off well enough talking about general approaches, then dives into memory allocation where it spends most of its space talking about GC, object caches, etc. which were not mentioned in the question as asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, it appears that the question itself was poorly worded, and you got sucked into answering what is essentially an unanswerable question _unless_ you are writing a whole book on the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would not take this personally, the _real_ problem is the question: your answer simply brought attention to it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20364" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7280" RevisionGUID="e0e38780-3fa9-4dff-80e7-826542b5b016" CreationDate="2015-04-10T14:46:42.847" UserId="31260" Comment="This wasn't any slight against you += ![http://i.stack.imgur.com/Mmn1j.png](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Mmn1j.png &quot;deleted low quality answer&quot;)" Text="When we (users with enough reputation) protect questions, the standard text talks about &quot;low quality answers&quot;, and it's a frequent thing that is done with very old questions which are resurrected to the front page either due to a new answer (like yours in this case) or because the question was linked offsite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These scenarios tend to lead to many low-rep users chiming in with answers that do not add much. Worse, very old questions often aren't seen by their askers, so they can't benefit from your answer (or select it as accepted). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This wasn't any slight against you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mmn1j.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mmn1j.png &quot;deleted low quality answer&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Protecting the question doesn't impact your (solid) answer at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20365" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7282" RevisionGUID="eb51fe65-8641-4a8e-8650-25cc3d2e3083" CreationDate="2015-04-10T14:49:00.480" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="One important bit to realize about the Stack Exchange format, is that it is Q&amp;A. Questions and answers. Provocation and 'get[ing] people to think' is not what the Q&amp;A format is geared to. Rather, the &quot;you have this problem, this is the solution.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange format is *not* that of a forum and has a number if differences. To that, I would suggest that you read http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6742/40980 and its related reading section which goes more into that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The python question was protected because another user posted [a rather low quality answer on it that really didn't add anything](https://i.stack.imgur.com/urawh.png). It has since been deleted.  We have often found that when an old post that should be closed because it is too broad is bumped back up to the front page of activity, that other people will often post answers to it that are similarly low quality (yours was reasonable, but there are problems with the question that would entice other people to add their two bits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Protecting the question prevents people who aren't familiar with the Q&amp;A model from posting other responses as if this was a forum post, and also gives pause to higher rep users to remind them to post good answers.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20366" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7281" RevisionGUID="8c39c277-a3b4-46e4-9774-61ab89867f4f" CreationDate="2015-04-10T14:51:43.233" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Grammaring better because run-on sentences are bad because they are long and by the time you get to the end you are mentally out of breath and forget how the sentence started." Text="The question meanders and covers a lot of ground (hence being closed as &quot;too broad&quot;). As best as I can tell, the question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd appreciate some tips on how to best approach this code conversion (C to Python), based on your experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your answer starts off well enough talking about general approaches, then dives into memory allocation where it spends most of its space talking about GC, object caches, etc. which were not mentioned in the question as asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, it appears that the question itself was poorly worded: you got sucked into answering what is essentially an unanswerable question _unless_ you are writing a whole book on the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would not take this personally, the _real_ problem is the question: your answer simply brought attention to it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20367" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7280" RevisionGUID="e468ec91-2d5a-4528-bca2-e5a05c13f14b" CreationDate="2015-04-10T16:13:39.083" UserId="51654" Comment="added 44 characters in body" Text="When we (users with enough reputation) protect questions, the standard text talks about &quot;low quality answers&quot;, and it's a frequent thing that is done with very old questions which are resurrected to the front page either due to a new answer (like yours in this case) or because the question was linked offsite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These scenarios tend to lead to many low-rep users chiming in with answers that do not add much. Worse, very old questions often aren't seen by their askers, so they can't benefit from your answer (or select it as accepted). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This wasn't any slight against you - there was another more troublesome answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mmn1j.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mmn1j.png &quot;deleted low quality answer&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Protecting the question doesn't impact your (solid) answer at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20368" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7279" RevisionGUID="8b481e61-b1a5-4951-b5f7-4750b170e4c4" CreationDate="2015-04-10T20:21:45.393" UserId="31260" Comment="rant /off" Text="I had a rather interesting response when offering [an answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/278726/31260) to this question: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102593/tips-on-converting-a-c-program-to-pure-python&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question has since been &quot;protected&quot; because it has &quot;attracted **low-quality** answers.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I fail to see how my answer merits that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20369" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7279" RevisionGUID="8b481e61-b1a5-4951-b5f7-4750b170e4c4" CreationDate="2015-04-10T20:21:45.393" UserId="31260" Comment="rant /off" Text="After my answer, question has been &quot;protected&quot; because it has &quot;attracted low-quality answers&quot;, why?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20370" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7283" RevisionGUID="404354ca-4617-49d8-b69d-ca95ba88e7b1" CreationDate="2015-04-10T20:41:07.653" UserId="20248" Text="I have a few questions about the Agile process but not sure which SE is best suited for it. Is this the right site for it? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20371" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7283" RevisionGUID="404354ca-4617-49d8-b69d-ca95ba88e7b1" CreationDate="2015-04-10T20:41:07.653" UserId="20248" Text="Is this site the proper SE site to ask questions about software dev processes?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20372" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7283" RevisionGUID="404354ca-4617-49d8-b69d-ca95ba88e7b1" CreationDate="2015-04-10T20:41:07.653" UserId="20248" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20373" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7283" RevisionGUID="5d92754d-e977-4f86-957b-0b97ee3be7a7" CreationDate="2015-04-10T20:56:31.763" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20374" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7283" RevisionGUID="b1be3dc7-6c6d-46f3-bc1b-409ea4c2bfe7" CreationDate="2015-04-10T21:02:10.303" UserId="20248" Comment="added 472 characters in body" Text="I have a few questions about the Agile process but not sure which SE is best suited for it. Is this the right site for it? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current question(s) that I have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is there an Agile term for when there is a stakeholder that acts as a bottleneck by jumping in only occasionally to trump decisions made collectively by the team? (ie, upper management who never partake in the process, but will occasionally review work and decide they don't like it)? I'm familiar with Pig and Chickens. Would this simply be a 'type of chicken'?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is there any technique to deal with said type of person?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20375" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7284" RevisionGUID="29f15bed-02aa-4edb-bede-72b3ba8fc39d" CreationDate="2015-04-11T06:54:10.143" UserId="5099" Text="Such a question is on-topic here at programmers.SE and it could also fit well on [Project Management.SE](http://pm.stackexchange.com/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On programmers, the answers are likely to be more focussed on what you can do as a team member, while om Project Management, the answers might be more towards the role of a Product Owner/Scrum Master/manager." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20376" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7276" RevisionGUID="826c2508-d541-4974-a277-218f26d3ae83" CreationDate="2015-04-11T17:05:20.730" UserId="1204" Comment="added 410 characters in body" Text="Yes you should.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's the wrong place then the question will be closed or migrated.  If it's the right place then the apology is meaningless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More generally, the working principle here is that *Everything that is in a question post should pertain directly to the question itself.*   Anything else is just unnecessary noise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Signatures, hellos, thanks, taglines.&#xD;&#xA;2.  Editorialization.  &quot;I don't think this should have been closed, because...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;3.  Ongoing discussion and dialogue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of which can be accomodated with **comments.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20377" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7276" RevisionGUID="bf56aa77-47d4-430f-b95e-00054a23bcc5" CreationDate="2015-04-11T17:12:37.840" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 35 characters in body" Text="Yes you should.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's the wrong place then the question will be closed or migrated.  If it's the right place then the apology is meaningless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More generally, *Everything that is in a question post should pertain directly to the question itself.*   Anything else is just unnecessary noise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Signatures, hellos, thanks, taglines.&#xD;&#xA;2.  Editorialization.  &quot;I don't think this should have been closed, because...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;3.  Ongoing discussion and dialogue with other users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of which can be accomodated with **comments.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20378" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7265" RevisionGUID="56b18f11-5e8e-44b4-9caa-0321d2b85bc9" CreationDate="2015-04-13T00:46:17.747" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|on-topic-definition|licensing|legal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20379" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7212" RevisionGUID="fd649b0f-7ce6-463c-bd04-25f192c146e2" CreationDate="2015-04-13T00:46:57.453" UserId="4" Comment="added 107 characters in body" Text="### Site purpose and usage&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/516/how-do-i-get-started-with-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6763/where-can-i-have-subjective-discussions-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On-topic and off-topic questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7253/4&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1165/can-i-ask-career-advice-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6763/where-can-i-have-subjective-discussions-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Moderation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Other resources&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers Tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour)&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help)&#xD;&#xA;* [Blog: Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Blog: Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Blog: Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Blog: Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Is your question not part of the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First look at questions tagged [meta-tag:faq-proposed] to see if there is a question not in this index that might have the answer you seek. If you still can't find an answer, then see the following instructions for proposing an FAQ question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How can a question be added to this FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Ask only the question, stated plainly and simply, in the question body. The answer goes in an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Tag as [meta-tag:faq-proposed] and [meta-tag:support].  When a post seems to hit a mature state, it will have [meta-tag:faq] added by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Flag for a moderator to mark **community wiki**. Any FAQ post not yet community wiki should be made into a community wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Add a link in the above table of contents.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20380" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3044" RevisionGUID="d93e968d-9ba5-4711-b081-30ac983a875f" CreationDate="2015-04-13T00:48:21.507" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20382" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="855" RevisionGUID="df113e6a-0067-46dd-80bc-254d4c24222b" CreationDate="2015-04-13T00:48:44.387" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20383" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="588" RevisionGUID="9aa4bb46-3561-431a-a113-bba5202283f2" CreationDate="2015-04-13T00:49:21.130" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20384" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="350" RevisionGUID="cb3edbcc-44ae-426c-ba02-11f8d04ad765" CreationDate="2015-04-13T00:49:30.643" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|moderation|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20385" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="288" RevisionGUID="1ccffd29-733e-43a9-b6a1-366ec6947dc9" CreationDate="2015-04-13T00:49:38.907" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20389" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="dc6b4a3b-e284-4c4d-9982-4e8fc4bc8385" CreationDate="2015-04-13T00:52:25.627" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20390" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7212" RevisionGUID="3334b859-807c-4579-a0ea-67e36c7e1e86" CreationDate="2015-04-13T00:52:36.700" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 107 characters in body; deleted 694 characters in body" Text="### Site purpose and usage&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/516/how-do-i-get-started-with-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6763/where-can-i-have-subjective-discussions-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On-topic and off-topic questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7253/4&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6763/where-can-i-have-subjective-discussions-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Moderation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Other resources&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers Tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour)&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help)&#xD;&#xA;* [Blog: Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Blog: Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Blog: Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Blog: Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Is your question not part of the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First look at questions tagged [meta-tag:faq-proposed] to see if there is a question not in this index that might have the answer you seek. If you still can't find an answer, then see the following instructions for proposing an FAQ question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How can a question be added to this FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Ask only the question, stated plainly and simply, in the question body. The answer goes in an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Tag as [meta-tag:faq-proposed] and [meta-tag:support].  When a post seems to hit a mature state, it will have [meta-tag:faq] added by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Flag for a moderator to mark **community wiki**. Any FAQ post not yet community wiki should be made into a community wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Add a link in the above table of contents.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20391" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="516" RevisionGUID="4ec33a74-9a60-4bc8-bc56-319ddd829dd5" CreationDate="2015-04-13T00:52:51.343" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 83 characters in body" Text="What do I need to know to get the most out of this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20393" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1573" RevisionGUID="c3be5a2d-d2eb-41bf-9354-76452e20b901" CreationDate="2015-04-13T00:55:39.013" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 83 characters in body" Text="Don't get me wrong: I understand the argument that the answer in almost all cases is &quot;it depends&quot;. Nevertheless, many people **do** want some advice on the applicability of various languages in the real world and it seems to me that programmers is the place to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there is a meta-question that most people who ask this question have: &quot;How much value is there to my career if I learn another language?&quot; or, maybe, &quot;does it really matter that much which languages I know?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again: I understand that this is localised and may be specific to a person's individual circumstances, but it also seems that it would be really helpful to a bunch of people to have an answer that says &quot;knowing languages is good&quot; rather than &quot;don't ask that; it's off-topic&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess I'm asking how we can help those people who are trying to make an important decision about their career development but don't have the industry experience to know that it's not quite the right question to be asking. They are asking for mentorship and I don't think immediately closing the question is helpful or encouraging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a better place we can refer these questions to? I don't see any stack sites that would be more appropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20394" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1624" RevisionGUID="4ff7f5c7-1935-4a79-ae44-2878b6be06e3" CreationDate="2015-04-13T00:55:56.303" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 83 characters in body" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78253/is-there-something-else-like-squarespace-out-there-closed) reminded me that there is nothing explicit in our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) about shopping recommendation questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should there be? Should we take an approach similar to Super User and Gaming where recommendations are off-topic? And if so, do we exclude only questions like &quot;I'm looking for a service that does what I need&quot; or also things like &quot;is there a library in language X that has feature Y&quot;? (Here's an [example](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78379/need-advice-on-php-search-functionality) of the latter kind of questions.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20395" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="5d92ef7b-b883-4cf1-8318-6a566f2e709a" CreationDate="2015-04-13T00:56:32.420" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|close-reasons|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20396" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6763" RevisionGUID="904a79c6-d17f-49a5-ba10-4ddb0e26c3e8" CreationDate="2015-04-13T00:56:44.500" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 83 characters in body" Text="I entered Programmers Stack Exchange and unfortunately, it wasn't what I was looking for. As the name suggested, I expected you would be able to talk about programming, but the rules are much stricter than I imagined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that I prefer subjective discussions where I can learn through gaining different viewpoints and perspectives. Programmers.SE doesn't offer that experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which Stack Exchange sites allow this sort of discussions? Can [Stack Exchange's chat][1] be used for that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20397" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="171" RevisionGUID="09a20e0d-3457-44b8-826f-3d74e69bab14" CreationDate="2015-04-13T00:56:57.730" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 85 characters in body" Text="What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20398" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7285" RevisionGUID="df22b377-d494-48b7-8cd7-434a751833f9" CreationDate="2015-04-13T01:14:41.727" UserId="4" Text="Back in 2012, we launched the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative (STCI)](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups). It was very successful in identifying tags to create, merge, remove, and blacklist. However, it has been about 3 years since this effort was launched, and I think that it's time to relaunch this campaign.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The process will be very similar to the last effort:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Identify a tag that has issues.** This may be a tag that should be deleted and blacklisted, or two or more tags that need to be merged or made synonyms of each other. As these tags are identified, post an answer in this question. If you think that a multi-way merge is necessary (for example, someone identified that tag X and Y should be merged, and you feel that tag Z should also be part of this merge), edit the existing answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Vote on candidate actions.** Using the comment feature, comment on the proposed actions. Up or down vote as well. I hope to take the next 2-3 weeks to gather a list of actions and then treat this question as a queue. Starting in May 1, I'll accept the top voted question and that will mark the cleanup action. After completing the action, I'll delete the answer and accept the next one. Note that at the very end of the initiative, I'll undelete all of the answers and close the question for historical reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. **Execute the cleanup.** Review the questions in the tag. Vote on the question and answers, make edits to improve them, edit the tag wikis, flag for immediate moderator attention or for moderator actions, and otherwise improve that corner of the site. Each cleanup will likely last 1-2 weeks, depending on the size of the tag. Please try to avoid flooding the homepage with edits. If there are a large number of questions that require edits, the window for a particular tag may be longer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. **Feedback.** After a few cleanups, we'll review the process and how we're doing and prioritize the work going forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Questions tagged `stci`](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20399" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7285" RevisionGUID="df22b377-d494-48b7-8cd7-434a751833f9" CreationDate="2015-04-13T01:14:41.727" UserId="4" Text="Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative Phase II Planning" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20400" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7285" RevisionGUID="df22b377-d494-48b7-8cd7-434a751833f9" CreationDate="2015-04-13T01:14:41.727" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|featured|stci|stci-phase2|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20402" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7285" RevisionGUID="df22b377-d494-48b7-8cd7-434a751833f9" CreationDate="2015-04-13T01:14:41.727" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="20404" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7285" RevisionGUID="1973e2a4-47b9-437e-96ee-42679e2ff1bb" CreationDate="2015-04-13T02:46:35.243" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/587446754703998976" />
  <row Id="20405" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="64953496-9ac9-4afc-9d8d-506e861a22aa" CreationDate="2015-04-13T10:18:15.497" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|homework-dump|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20406" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6534" RevisionGUID="1b5f7c59-9b9b-4bf1-87dc-5538cca310ee" CreationDate="2015-04-13T10:18:51.757" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|moderation|deleted-questions|homework-dump|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20412" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7289" RevisionGUID="6801f1a2-c06a-4a06-bc2b-200f6843983c" CreationDate="2015-04-13T16:04:53.730" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The post was [closed yesterday](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/122477/revisions) by five community members as 'too broad'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has 34 answers, and it really becomes a poll/discussion of ideas.  Very few of these answers are well thought out and serve to act against the second guideline of 'Great Subjective Questions' presented in [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers.** The best subjective questions inspire your peers to share their actual experiences, not just post a mindless one-liner or cartoon in hopes of being rewarded with upvotes for being merely “first.” Sharing an experience takes at least one paragraph; ideally several paragraphs. If I’m asking about how to bake cookies, don’t give me a list of grocery items: milk. butter. vanilla. eggs. There is virtually nothing I can learn from a short, static list of grocery items that make up a recipe. Instead, tell me what happened the last time you made cookies from that recipe! Share your detailed experiences, so that we all might learn from them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this is to be reopened, it needs *significant* curation of the content that is already present.  However, as it is one of those old questions with lots of up votes everywhere, it makes it very difficult for 20k users to delete the poor quality answers in an effort to provide a suggestion of the standards for the answer that we want to have.  This means that to actually clean it up, it requires some mods to step in and work on deleting the answers, adding a mod notice about the quality and such.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, why is this reopened rather than historically locked?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20413" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7289" RevisionGUID="6801f1a2-c06a-4a06-bc2b-200f6843983c" CreationDate="2015-04-13T16:04:53.730" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Why was 'How can I deal with the cargo-cult programming attitude?' reopened?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20414" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7289" RevisionGUID="6801f1a2-c06a-4a06-bc2b-200f6843983c" CreationDate="2015-04-13T16:04:53.730" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20415" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7290" RevisionGUID="2369c9d6-8e6d-436b-b4f2-6a31d4e1b654" CreationDate="2015-04-13T17:38:52.217" UserId="3" Text="The question had 257 up-votes; it was viewed 16 thousand times, and had some highly-upvoted answers (and one was accepted). I didn't see and recent discussions or policy decisions that changed the status of this post, but 2-1/2 years later, five people suddenly show up to close the question as *too broad.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We get periodic notices when popular questions are suddenly closed with no apparent stimulus, except that they were crazy popular. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who feel it is their duty to trawl through the most-popular question list to see if they can close any of them, so that's why we do these spot checks. It's that type of high-visibility activism that gives Stack Exchange the reputation for being a bit *crazypants* when it comes to closing highly-popular and engaging content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know why this question needed to be closed; it didn't really seem to serve any purpose. But at least you're looking at it, so I'm fine with whatever you want to do with it. Just make sure you're not targeting questions for closure simply because they grew to be wildly popular. It does not make the site any better. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20416" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7290" RevisionGUID="fb63634a-5ed2-4904-83fd-b7e85c0dc48c" CreationDate="2015-04-13T17:52:07.287" UserId="3" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="The question had 257 up-votes; it was viewed 16 thousand times, and had some highly-upvoted answers (and one was accepted). I didn't see and recent discussions or policy decisions that changed the status of this post, but 2-1/2 years later, five people suddenly show up to close the question as *too broad.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We get periodic notices when popular questions are suddenly closed with no apparent stimulus, except that they were crazy popular. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who feel it is their duty to trawl through the most-popular question list to see if they can close any of them, so that's why we do these spot checks. It's that type of high-visibility activism that gives Stack Exchange the reputation for being a bit *crazypants* when it comes to closing highly-popular and engaging content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know why this question needed to be closed; it didn't really seem to serve any purpose. But at least you're looking at it, so I'm fine with whatever you decide to do with it. Just make sure you're not targeting questions for closure simply because they grew to be wildly popular. It does not make the site any better. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20417" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7290" RevisionGUID="74fd6471-a2c0-4351-8a1f-c7cd342a4920" CreationDate="2015-04-13T18:15:14.447" UserId="3" Comment="added 18 characters in body" Text="The question had 257 up-votes; it was viewed 16 thousand times, and had some highly-upvoted answers (and one was accepted). I didn't see and recent discussions or policy decisions that might have changed the status of this post, but 2-1/2 years later, five people suddenly show up to close the question as *too broad.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We get periodic notices when popular questions are suddenly closed with no apparent stimulus, except that they were crazy popular. Unfortunately, we've seen situations where folks felt it was somehow helpful to scan the most-popular question list to see if any of them can be closed, so that's why we do these spot checks. It's that type of high-visibility activism that gives Stack Exchange the reputation for being a bit *crazypants* when it comes to closing highly-popular and engaging content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, I didn't really see any reason why this particular question need to be closed. But at least you're looking at it, so I'm fine with whatever you decide to do with it. Just be mindful that you're not targeting questions for closure simply because they grew to be wildly popular. It does not make the site any better. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20418" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="de140470-e45a-4807-8843-2cc8341eee22" CreationDate="2015-04-13T19:50:26.397" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Fix typo." Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted).  Why? And what can I do about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What technology to take up next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a tool, library, or other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * (MSE) [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in/129632#129632)&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)  &#xD;&#xA;  certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three of categories listed under _Off topic_ match site-specific close reasons, see: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5992/what-should-our-predefined-off-topic-reasons-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links are from particular points in the history of Programmers.SE and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a [serial vote](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/serial-voting/info &quot;what's this&quot;) reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For pasting into chat or comments there is a &quot;Quick link&quot; at the end of each answer.  The quick link for the question is `[Why was my question closed or down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/)` - pasting this into chat or a comment will link to the question.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20419" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7290" RevisionGUID="74c9bf40-6c53-4fd2-8476-499fdea29319" CreationDate="2015-04-13T20:11:08.417" UserId="3" Comment="deleted 6 characters in body" Text="The question had 257 up-votes; it was viewed 16 thousand times, and had some highly-upvoted answers (and one was accepted). I didn't see and recent discussions or policy decisions that might have changed the status of this post, but 2-1/2 years later, five people decided to close rather suddenly as *too broad.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We get periodic notices when popular questions are closed with no apparent stimulus, except that they were crazy popular. Unfortunately, we've seen situations where folks felt it was somehow helpful to scan the most-popular question list to see if any of them can be closed, so that's why we do these spot checks. It's that type of high-visibility activism that gives Stack Exchange the reputation for being a bit *crazypants* when it comes to closing highly-popular and engaging content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, I didn't really see any reason why this particular question need to be closed. But at least you're looking at it, so I'm fine with whatever you decide to do with it. Just be mindful that you're not targeting questions for closure simply because they grew to be wildly popular. It does not make the site any better. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20420" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7290" RevisionGUID="7ca75ba3-8fc2-4643-b18b-af958a37a201" CreationDate="2015-04-13T21:46:55.897" UserId="3" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body" Text="The question had 257 up-votes; it was viewed 16 thousand times, and had some highly-upvoted answers (and one was accepted). I didn't see and recent discussions or policy decisions that might have changed the status of this post, but 2-1/2 years later, five people closed this rather suddenly as *too broad.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We get periodic notices when popular questions are closed with no apparent stimulus, except that they were crazy popular. Unfortunately, we've seen situations where folks felt it was somehow helpful to scan the most-popular question list to see if any of them can be closed, so that's why we do these spot checks. It's a type of high-visibility activism that gives Stack Exchange the reputation for being a bit *crazypants* when it comes to closing highly-popular and engaging content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, I didn't really see any reason why this particular question need to be closed. But at least you're looking at it, so I'm fine with whatever you decide to do with it. Just be mindful that you're not targeting questions for closure simply because they grew to be wildly popular. It does not make the site any better. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20424" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7292" RevisionGUID="71866c99-9857-41a4-b5ac-f4446a474272" CreationDate="2015-04-13T23:51:25.203" UserId="4" Text="[tag:language-agnostic]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A meta-tag. It's implied on all questions that don't have a tag for a specific language. Other, more meaningful tags (like [tag:language-design] or [tag:design-patterns] or [tag:algorithms], as examples) already exist to describe what the question is about, not what it's not about." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20425" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7292" RevisionGUID="0ab06c40-4cd1-4fd2-923e-aaa3b6a2610b" CreationDate="2015-04-13T23:51:25.203" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="20426" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7293" RevisionGUID="6bb781e7-e4a1-4341-908a-c3802f733b9d" CreationDate="2015-04-13T23:52:38.363" UserId="4" Text="[tag:legal] and [tag:copyright]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These represent subjects that are off-topic. The [tag:licensing] tag already covers what is currently on-topic. Some of these questions may actually be on-topic licensing questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20427" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7293" RevisionGUID="9b91d7b6-f3ec-450d-859c-da0162b18f41" CreationDate="2015-04-13T23:52:38.363" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="20428" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7294" RevisionGUID="5f7203e7-e47c-4477-8325-2aac5bad3352" CreationDate="2015-04-13T23:53:42.923" UserId="4" Text="[tag:freelancing]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Workplace and Freelancing exist and cover this topic. It appears to be beyond scope based on the Help Center." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20429" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7294" RevisionGUID="20ae7861-f0fa-4ee3-a596-8f0ce96e54d1" CreationDate="2015-04-13T23:53:42.923" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="20430" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7295" RevisionGUID="3fbc6a91-ba59-4c64-b8bf-e366275b8c81" CreationDate="2015-04-13T23:56:08.453" UserId="4" Text="[tag:payment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag appears to have two uses. One is with regards to implementation of payment systems and transactions and the other is with respect to getting paid as a contractor, freelancer, or employee. The second type of question is off-topic. This tag could be removed from the off-topic questions and a clear tag wiki provided. Alternatively, it could be renamed (example: [tag:payment-system] to make it clear that it's about software systems and not getting paid." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20431" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7295" RevisionGUID="1deab951-c3ec-4634-aec3-8e0bf937aa6b" CreationDate="2015-04-13T23:56:08.453" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="20432" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7296" RevisionGUID="c6e15193-a7e7-4aa2-afd0-91b6da00e1cb" CreationDate="2015-04-13T23:57:31.393" UserId="4" Text="[tag:source-code]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Doesn't add much value. There are already tags about more specific concepts within source code, such as [tag:code-quality], [tag:clean-code], [tag:code-reuse], [tag:code-smell], [tag:code-formatting] and so on and so forth." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20433" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7296" RevisionGUID="cf07eb88-5c91-444b-b0e7-480b31f60dc0" CreationDate="2015-04-13T23:57:31.393" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="20438" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7298" RevisionGUID="98645f75-dad1-4124-bd46-ec3e3dc35cd6" CreationDate="2015-04-14T09:28:39.873" UserId="5933" Text="(yes, I mean that F)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14831/how-to-teach-exception-handling-for-new-programmers , the answer lists the only three books solely devoted to exceptions I know of (and quite probably, the only three that exist);&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would like to hear your weighted opinions, folks :)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20439" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7298" RevisionGUID="98645f75-dad1-4124-bd46-ec3e3dc35cd6" CreationDate="2015-04-14T09:28:39.873" UserId="5933" Text="OK -- WTF was this repeatedly downvoted and deleted then?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20440" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7298" RevisionGUID="98645f75-dad1-4124-bd46-ec3e3dc35cd6" CreationDate="2015-04-14T09:28:39.873" UserId="5933" Text="|support|wtf|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20441" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7298" RevisionGUID="adee7367-29d7-4e75-ab6b-13fba199ff18" CreationDate="2015-04-14T09:38:01.280" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 65 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="The [answer][1] lists the only three books solely devoted to exceptions I know of (and quite probably, the only three that exist);&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would like to hear your weighted opinions, folks :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/14876/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20442" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7298" RevisionGUID="adee7367-29d7-4e75-ab6b-13fba199ff18" CreationDate="2015-04-14T09:38:01.280" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 65 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Why was my answer repeatedly downvoted and deleted then?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20443" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7298" RevisionGUID="adee7367-29d7-4e75-ab6b-13fba199ff18" CreationDate="2015-04-14T09:38:01.280" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 65 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|support|deleted-answers|specific-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20444" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7299" RevisionGUID="0710fe2a-4b07-4be5-ab4b-19c2415c12d8" CreationDate="2015-04-14T10:55:01.117" UserId="25768" Text="Because it was essentially a link only answer where the actual answer is behind a paywall. (and where the person following it also has to wait on shipping and handling)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is not conductive to a Q&amp;A. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20445" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7300" RevisionGUID="4de839a2-e860-4fe9-b9a8-085b0edb6c99" CreationDate="2015-04-14T11:20:55.873" UserId="4" Text="Your answer was a link-only answer that didn't provide much more than external resources in the body. This isn't considered a [high-quality answer][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Links to external resources are encouraged, but please add context around the link so your fellow users will have some idea what it is and why it’s there. Always quote the most relevant part of an important link, in case the target site is unreachable or goes permanently offline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the case of your answer, one of the links is dead. The other two are for books to sale.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you believe that these books answer the question, you should have explained why they answer the question. Summarize the contents, or provide some short quotations, that explicitly answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20446" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7298" RevisionGUID="2fb82a58-c605-452d-b5ca-6ce379f9200d" CreationDate="2015-04-14T13:25:38.013" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Inline text of the answer." Text="The [answer][4] lists the only three books solely devoted to exceptions I know of (and quite probably, the only three that exist):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; For the __ASP.NET part (your example case),__ point them to [__Robust ASP.NET Exception Handling__][1] book (60-page download, $7).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; __And as for the Java part,__ to [__Robust Java: Exception Handling, Testing, and Debugging__][2] and [__Java Exception Handling__] [3] (another book with an alike name).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would like to hear your weighted opinions, folks :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.amazon.com/Robust-ASP-NET-Exception-Handling-Wrox/dp/B0036V7H56&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.amazon.com/Robust-Java-Exception-Handling-Debugging/dp/0131008528/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.amazon.com/Java-Exception-Handling-ebook/dp/B00BG9FGFI&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/14876/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20447" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7301" RevisionGUID="447cf25f-782a-47b4-9aac-70939edc3b2b" CreationDate="2015-04-14T14:15:33.500" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The expected quality of an answer on P.SE is that it fully answers the question *here*. That one can read an answer posted to the question and come away enlightened.  That is the key criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer *may* include links to other resources that can act as supplementary reading for someone who wants to go into greater depth on the subject for material that doesn't fit in the answer.  That doesn't mean the answer can be absolved of answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/deleted-answers) specific information is given to why some answers are deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Answers that do not **fundamentally answer the question** may be removed. This includes answers that are:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * barely more than a link to an external site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * not even a partial answer to the actual question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer you provided fails on these three tests.  It doesn't fundamentally answer the question, it is barely more than links to external resources and it is not even a partial answer to the question - if one removes the links, there is nothing left." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20448" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="6576f45b-d08a-4c6e-8200-c409d4c211a6" CreationDate="2015-04-14T16:39:34.897" UserId="4" Comment="102" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="20449" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="44887743-0127-478a-9584-0e7b5f944d52" CreationDate="2015-04-14T16:39:40.717" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20450" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="e3b7ffec-3676-48d0-9694-5751cb5994ef" CreationDate="2015-04-14T16:53:28.780" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20451" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7302" RevisionGUID="69f56c64-d2c5-4bf1-86b6-74f54b9dd03d" CreationDate="2015-04-14T19:24:35.440" UserId="31260" Text="Without an explanation, this answer may become useless in case if someone else posts an opposite opinion. For example, if someone posts a claim like...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; For the ASP.NET part (your example case), *avoid* pointing them to &quot;Robust ASP.NET Exception Handling&quot; book.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; And as for the Java part, books to *avoid* are &quot;Robust Java: Exception Handling, Testing, and Debugging&quot; and &quot;Java Exception Handling&quot; (another book with an alike name).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...how would your answer help reader to pick of two opposing opinions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvote arrow tooltip says &quot;This answer is not useful&quot; - maybe that's what voters thought, although one can only guess - system is [fairly strict in keeping votes anonymous](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/285253/839601)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20453" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7303" RevisionGUID="9660aa6b-5f60-4ccc-ae1e-9c40f35de62c" CreationDate="2015-04-14T20:41:58.927" UserId="32353" Text="We should not delete any tags.  All the tags are great." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20454" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7303" RevisionGUID="4fbaf064-ada0-4040-b015-62315e7e6005" CreationDate="2015-04-14T20:41:58.927" UserId="32353" />
  <row Id="20455" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7304" RevisionGUID="decee90b-7881-4db6-8390-71eda13b6280" CreationDate="2015-04-14T22:23:02.830" UserId="4" Text="If you voted only up (or only down), use this answer to cast an opposite vote. This way will prevent your votes from being reversed by the script that may mistakenly assume serial voting here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20456" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7304" RevisionGUID="8aa4857f-4e6b-4e67-a9a2-3b0c5cb8fe0f" CreationDate="2015-04-14T22:23:02.830" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="20457" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7305" RevisionGUID="ae3e6f62-610f-43ee-b019-18712d3d76e2" CreationDate="2015-04-15T13:27:36.763" UserId="88986" Text="[tag:skills] (133)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure this exactly falls under the *teaching* post or the *job* post, but it should be looked at." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20458" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7305" RevisionGUID="4140f4be-18cf-479b-a914-31ddb0ce6d9c" CreationDate="2015-04-15T13:27:36.763" UserId="88986" />
  <row Id="20459" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6361" RevisionGUID="6ab8fdd9-3fdd-4e2d-9de1-f33969e883dc" CreationDate="2015-04-15T18:33:24.240" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Expand an example question to better for the style of site expectations." Text="There are several aspects to this question that make it a poor question to ask on Programmers.SE, and some that also make it counter productive to have planned out for an interview.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too broad&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first aspect is that the question is too broad for Programmers.SE.  The &quot;How do you build Amazon&quot; being asked here is akin to going to [Home Improvement.SE](http://diy.stackexchange.com) and asking &quot;How do you build a house?&quot;  There is no way the totality of that question can be answered in a meaningful way in this text box - the topic is *far* too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To an extent, it is exactly that broadness that the interviewing is asking.  This question isn't one like &quot;how many ways can you use `static` in Java&quot; - which has an answer.  The interviewer is coming to you like a business person would with some question that you need to drill down into to ask - and clarify the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, as a question on a Q&amp;A site, with you asking the question you don't know all the questions and the scope of the question the interviewer has in mind.  One interviewer may want you to drill down into the shopping cart side of Amazon, another may want to want to drill into the virtualization of AWS, another may want things about product recommendation or customer purchase prediction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Amusingly stated in a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your &quot;friend&quot; should have closed the interviewer's question as &quot;too broad.&quot; In other news, &quot;design a big distributed system&quot; is not a requirements specification. –  Robert Harvey&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No clearly defined problem&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Q&amp;A format that Stack Exchange uses works best when there is a clearly defined problem.  With the Amazon question, asking &quot;how do I build and collect data for [A/B testing](https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/ab-testing/reference/ab-math.html) - I've done XYZ, but I have trouble with this design for dealing with...&quot; could be a reasonable question - it is one problem that can be asked and answered, and not to be overlooked *found* when someone else is searching for the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The asked, answered and found steps are key parts to how Stack Exchange works - remember that the question isn't just for you, its also for the next person asking the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interviewing by rote&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next, it's counter productive.  Lets say you get asked a question on how to implement Monopoly and you had no idea didn't get the job and went home to study Monopoly implementations.  A week later, another interview, and you are asked how to implement Monopoly again and you rattle off the implementation that you've memorized (just like the how many ways can you use `static` in Java question asked just before). It is clear that rattling off Monopoly from [rote](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rote_learning) doesn't mean you understand it, so the interviewer asks how you would implement Risk...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key to this example with why its counter productive to try to have a pre-constructed answer for this question is that the interviewer is trying to find your boundaries.  By going with a pre-thought out answer that boundary hasn't been determined.  It's the **process** of thinking through these questions as part of the interview that the interviewer wants to see - and will ask you question and question again until that process is clear about *how* you think of design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so, while there may be an answer that can fit in the space (you talk about the circular array for the board, the stacks for the cards, the rules engine for implementing how the different cards behave, the rules for the game, etc...) that *might* fit here, by having a thought out answer you're going to be asked them again and again until you are asked one you don't know - you've only wasted your time and that of the interviewers up until that point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;I will point out that studying [BSD Games/monop](https://github.com/vattam/BSDGames/tree/master/monop) which is written in classic C will likely have difficulty when the interviewer says &quot;let's try that again in C#&quot; or &quot;let's change that design to [anti-monopoly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Monopoly)&quot;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where to ask about broad questions&#xD;&#xA;------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the best places to ask such broad questions is Programmers Chat.  The wide range of the question and understanding that it's an interview question can be better addressed in an interactive way rather than a question and answer format.  The dialog between the person asking the question and the person answering it is an important part of the process of this type of question and understanding the design aspects of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## &quot;The interviewer didn't like my answer&quot; question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some interviewers ask questions with specific answers in mind.  All other answers are unsatisfactory to them other than the one they want.  [Even if its wrong](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/208067/interviewer-gives-wrong-answers-to-their-own-questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The difficulty with such questions is that the only person who knows the answer the interviewer was looking for is the interviewer.  They may not have liked your design because of some opinionated blog post they read a year ago, or that its not cutting edge enough, or that you didn't implement their favorite Pattern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking such a question on Programmers.SE results in answers that are just speculation.  We weren't the interviewer and we can only guess at what issues the person had with your design or solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6244/is-how-would-you-architect-existing-web-site-application-an-appropriate-ques" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20460" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7306" RevisionGUID="62d62366-98a6-40a9-8e94-bbfb2ab58f18" CreationDate="2015-04-15T21:58:28.603" UserId="31260" Text="[tag:books] tag looks like in a need for cleanup (see also: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of [open questions in this tag](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[books]+closed%3Ano) look like asking for education advice, or for resource recommendations, or for opinions. In some questions it seems to be used as [meta tag](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/meta-tags/info) and can be simply edited out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Speaking of meta and almost-meta tags, the following ones look a lot like these: [tag:problems], [tag:examples], [tag:college] (all questions here seem to be either closed or locked), [tag:degree] (only two questions are still open), [tag:student], [tag:tutorial].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While checking posts in above tags, I stumbled upon two others that look somewhat troublesome: [tag:inspiration] and [tag:burnout]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20461" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7306" RevisionGUID="9255c27c-ba44-4abe-bffd-6fc96828d21a" CreationDate="2015-04-15T21:58:28.603" UserId="31260" />
  <row Id="20463" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7306" RevisionGUID="4227a3ac-6ab7-4f53-b052-50cdc55f6c50" CreationDate="2015-04-15T23:43:01.823" UserId="4" Comment="Moved the educational tags to another post. Created a new post for books tag. Limited this post to the inspirational topics." Text="[tag:inspiration] [tag:burnout] [tag:motivation]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Appear to be more meta tags or about working and careers. These particular topics are likely to be out of scope." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20464" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7307" RevisionGUID="71909fd4-3faf-4f77-ba5c-4c87f1c3014c" CreationDate="2015-04-15T23:43:02.957" UserId="4" Text="[tag:books]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These tags appear to be resource requests or asking for educational information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20465" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7307" RevisionGUID="cfab656a-bb82-42e6-893d-6b84a953fc32" CreationDate="2015-04-15T23:43:02.957" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="20468" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7309" RevisionGUID="ed957825-1d79-45b0-ac2f-0495d56b5618" CreationDate="2015-04-17T20:14:34.283" UserId="67524" Text="The question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/159369/67524 is marked as a duplicate, however the duplicate [link][1] returns 404.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the appropriate action going forward here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Should the question be closed?&#xD;&#xA; - Should the question be removed in its entirety?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel like this creates a bad impression of members and visitors looking for this information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I did see http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3969/67524 which seems to address a larger issue, but I would like to focus on this question in particular here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159294/is-entity-framework-reliable-enough-to-use-in-a-corporate-project-should-i-use" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20469" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7309" RevisionGUID="ed957825-1d79-45b0-ac2f-0495d56b5618" CreationDate="2015-04-17T20:14:34.283" UserId="67524" Text="Possible Duplicate returns 404" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20470" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7309" RevisionGUID="ed957825-1d79-45b0-ac2f-0495d56b5618" CreationDate="2015-04-17T20:14:34.283" UserId="67524" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20472" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7310" RevisionGUID="0fe54927-9438-4786-b98c-fc3f7e36e487" CreationDate="2015-04-18T01:30:33.763" UserId="1204" Text="The original question was written by the same guy.  Their first question got closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; (Too Broad, essentially), so he decided to re-ask it on Stack Overflow, where it promptly got migrated to Programmers and closed as a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So not much to see here, really.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the future, just flag for moderator attention with a custom reason, and explain the problem.  No need for a meta post on every one of these.  I've already flagged the question in question.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20473" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7311" RevisionGUID="8febcaf2-08a1-4e4c-9f54-f2bc70a7e8f9" CreationDate="2015-04-18T04:47:26.407" UserId="4827" Text="Can I ask about Barium Meal Test or Canary Trap implementations samples in this site? Or should I asked in StackOverFlow.com? Or none of them?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20474" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7311" RevisionGUID="8febcaf2-08a1-4e4c-9f54-f2bc70a7e8f9" CreationDate="2015-04-18T04:47:26.407" UserId="4827" Text="Asking about specific term of software implementation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20475" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7311" RevisionGUID="8febcaf2-08a1-4e4c-9f54-f2bc70a7e8f9" CreationDate="2015-04-18T04:47:26.407" UserId="4827" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20476" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7273" RevisionGUID="f0ae34e5-ef3d-4e9e-8599-906e3150be40" CreationDate="2015-04-19T13:45:22.610" UserId="1204" Comment="edited tags; edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20477" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7312" RevisionGUID="d34ff79d-cca5-4faf-893f-1a8441198325" CreationDate="2015-04-19T22:48:47.420" UserId="175178" Text="Note: This is a follow-up question to [this][1] one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm planning to practice some system design questions asked during tech interviews, and I'd like to get reviews/opinions on how I'd design some systems from the Programmers/StackExchange community if I can.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can I post these questions on Programmers, or would some other StackExchange site be more appropriate for this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/290723/is-stack-overflow-the-appropriate-website-to-ask-about-system-design-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20478" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7312" RevisionGUID="d34ff79d-cca5-4faf-893f-1a8441198325" CreationDate="2015-04-19T22:48:47.420" UserId="175178" Text="Is programmers the appropriate website to ask about system design questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20479" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7312" RevisionGUID="d34ff79d-cca5-4faf-893f-1a8441198325" CreationDate="2015-04-19T22:48:47.420" UserId="175178" Text="|discussion|design|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20482" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7314" RevisionGUID="6b8f9f12-7b28-4981-8674-7845333ddecd" CreationDate="2015-04-20T14:48:14.893" UserId="88986" Text="[tag:ip] only has 11 questions right now, but because of the possible ambiguity between &quot;Intellectual Property&quot; and &quot;Internet Protocol&quot; (and the fact that there is no tag wiki) it should be renamed to [tag:ip-address], probably with a synonym from the old [tag:ip].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of the existing 11 questions are about IP meaning &quot;Internet Protocol&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20483" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7314" RevisionGUID="6b8f9f12-7b28-4981-8674-7845333ddecd" CreationDate="2015-04-20T14:48:14.893" UserId="88986" Text="Rename &quot;IP&quot; tag to &quot;IP- address&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20484" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7314" RevisionGUID="6b8f9f12-7b28-4981-8674-7845333ddecd" CreationDate="2015-04-20T14:48:14.893" UserId="88986" Text="|support|retag-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20485" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7315" RevisionGUID="d52a77a0-8cc6-4786-9ae5-715fad7cfb04" CreationDate="2015-04-20T15:13:00.703" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I agree with the ambiguity concern. While it might not be a big issue, it should be expanded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I created a new tag and can help edit the questions to use it. Once no more questions are tagged with IP it will self-delete." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20486" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7315" RevisionGUID="16e75734-66f1-4bdb-b124-95c7127e2419" CreationDate="2015-04-20T15:19:16.767" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 71 characters in body" Text="I agree with the ambiguity concern. While it might not be a big issue, it should be changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I created the new tag and copied the existing tag wiki text that you created for the old tag. I edited the existing questions to use it. One question was improperly tagged so I just removed the tag from that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that no more questions are tagged with IP it will self-delete." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20487" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6961" RevisionGUID="196768b1-b5ce-4df1-922b-ba7800726a19" CreationDate="2015-04-20T15:59:46.527" UserId="1204" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20488" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7289" RevisionGUID="51286d94-8978-4c0d-ab04-d321b11935fd" CreationDate="2015-04-20T18:03:19.843" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/590214175537889281" />
  <row Id="20490" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7316" RevisionGUID="c7f9a22b-d195-49ff-99e8-940b69da166a" CreationDate="2015-04-21T16:58:09.717" UserId="17160" Text="I understand you want questions that can be answered definitively, that's the point of a stack. But given how many sappy personal advice questions you're getting, maybe it's time to create a support group to redirect them to, or maybe find an existing one, because just putting these questions on hold is a dick move.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mathoverflow is more lenient, they even have big-list and soft-question tags for such questions, might be a good idea to have these as well, especially considering that it's a soft-ish stack already." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20491" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7316" RevisionGUID="c7f9a22b-d195-49ff-99e8-940b69da166a" CreationDate="2015-04-21T16:58:09.717" UserId="17160" Text="Too many questions on hold recently?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20492" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7316" RevisionGUID="c7f9a22b-d195-49ff-99e8-940b69da166a" CreationDate="2015-04-21T16:58:09.717" UserId="17160" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20493" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7316" RevisionGUID="cf8e46b9-d1a3-4c72-b05f-37327d6db55b" CreationDate="2015-04-21T17:03:26.303" UserId="17160" Comment="edited title" Text="Putting soft questions on hold unproductive?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20494" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7316" RevisionGUID="e2529457-4fed-4aab-ba29-37127b15191b" CreationDate="2015-04-21T17:18:31.823" UserId="17160" Comment="added 386 characters in body" Text="I understand you want questions that can be answered definitively, that's the point of a stack. But given how many sappy personal advice questions you're getting, maybe it's time to create a support group to redirect them to, or maybe find an existing one, because just putting these questions on hold is a dick move.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mathoverflow is more lenient, they even have big-list and soft-question tags for such questions, might be a good idea to have these as well, especially considering that it's a soft-ish stack already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: it is imperative that this issue is resolved. Make no mistake: human questions are the most important ones, not questions about finding printed C++ standard. There *must* be a high quality community where they can be answered. I don't believe that it can be divorced from a community with more hard questions, or its reputation would go haywire. So it's either SO or this one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20495" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7316" RevisionGUID="83e98e3c-be8f-4c15-8865-d4818d8f7b54" CreationDate="2015-04-21T17:26:02.973" UserId="17160" Comment="added 210 characters in body" Text="I understand you want questions that can be answered definitively, that's the point of a stack. But given how many sappy personal advice questions you're getting, maybe it's time to create a support group to redirect them to, or maybe find an existing one, because just putting these questions on hold is a dick move.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mathoverflow is more lenient, they even have big-list and soft-question tags for such questions, might be a good idea to have these as well, especially considering that it's a soft-ish stack already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: there can be no *confuson* here, and it is imperative that this issue is resolved. Make no mistake: human questions are the most important ones, not questions about finding printed C++ standard. There *must* be a high quality community where they can be answered, because turning away people who seek advice from seasoned programmers on a site called &quot;Programmers&quot; is downright criminal. I don't believe that a community where such questions are welcome can be divorced from a community with more hard questions, or its reputation system would go haywire. So it's either SO or this one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20496" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7317" RevisionGUID="ef3883df-27c1-4234-b11b-9f43e4713c1e" CreationDate="2015-04-21T17:26:17.583" UserId="52929" Text="Just because help vampires are common doesn't mean you should feed them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20497" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7316" RevisionGUID="98d58bfd-7b2a-4cf9-a5f8-18e08c7ad6f4" CreationDate="2015-04-21T18:15:16.450" UserId="63" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[5654],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:63,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Shog9&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="20505" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7319" RevisionGUID="faa4e661-ab59-456a-a3ec-29865ca75b74" CreationDate="2015-04-23T13:33:32.183" UserId="88986" Text="I can appreciate the idea that sometimes popular questions can get closed simply because they are crazy popular. However, I strongly doubt this is an issue that would need to be addressed immediately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a highly upvoted question suddenly gets closed, to a point where it triggers red flags in the Community Manager system, the right thing for the Community Management team is to *bring the question to us in Meta*. Something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hey guys, this question was closed, but we can't see any good reason to do so. Why did the community choose to do it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there would probably be [an answer from someone like @MichaelT](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7289/why-was-how-can-i-deal-with-the-cargo-cult-programming-attitude-reopened?cb=1#comment21821_7290)&lt;/sup&gt; like (these comments really deserve to be an answer):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We've been looking at some less than ideal tags for the site. One of those is teaching which this question has. It wasn't the 'wildly popular' that was the criteria. It was the 'questions of this tag are often poor fit for the Q&amp;A format and often are either polling or education advice.' With the goal of cleaning up broken windows (because new users often use old open questions as examples) we endeavor to maintain the site's quality and that sometimes means revisiting old questions that don't fit well with the site's focus. Popularity isn't the selecting factor. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would point out that its not 'five users suddenly' - it was 'one user cast a close vote on it, three more [found it in /review], and well, then there's gnat'. This wasn't a coordinated closing. Just another question in /review that someone found. One should look at 'is this question too broad' when deciding to reopen a question that was closed by the community as too broad. We really try to provide good guidance on our close reasons that are available to all. While you (as a community manager) may have a different view into this you will generally find that we don't have people debating and denigrating if a question should have been closed or not. We would likely really like to have a place for discussions, but we recognize that the Q&amp;A format that SE has provided doesn't work that way and when you get questions that can inspire dozens of short answers (and despite having an accepted one) we often find new users wanting to add their two bits to the content (and that can have a very poor experience when it gets down voted compared to not being able to ask because it is closed / locked).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've generally found that, in most cases the pace of things getting done on Stack Exchange doesn't need to be very fast. A popular post was closed, **it deserves to get it's time on Meta [before being unilaterally reopened.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119111/moderator-cheat-sheet/119112#119112)**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20506" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7319" RevisionGUID="2bb2584b-55ee-437a-b847-cf6ee50cc8a7" CreationDate="2015-04-23T13:41:15.037" UserId="88986" Comment="Added @MichaelT's links" Text="I can appreciate the idea that sometimes popular questions can get closed simply because they are crazy popular. However, I strongly doubt this is an issue that would need to be addressed immediately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a highly upvoted question suddenly gets closed, to a point where it triggers red flags in the Community Manager system, the right thing for the Community Management team is to *bring the question to us in Meta*. Something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hey guys, this question was closed, but we can't see any good reason to do so. Why did the community choose to do it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there would probably be [an answer from someone like @MichaelT](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7289/why-was-how-can-i-deal-with-the-cargo-cult-programming-attitude-reopened?cb=1#comment21821_7290)&lt;/sup&gt; like (these comments really deserve to be an answer):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We've been looking at some less than ideal tags for the site. One of those is [tag:teaching] which this question has. It wasn't the 'wildly popular' that was the criteria. It was the 'questions of this tag are often poor fit for the Q&amp;A format and often are either polling or education advice.' With the goal of cleaning up broken windows (because new users often use [old open questions as examples](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/278959/area-of-expertise-for-a-good-web-developer#comment574168_278959)) we endeavor to maintain the site's quality and that sometimes means revisiting old questions that don't fit well with the site's focus. Popularity isn't the selecting factor. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would point out that its not 'five users suddenly' - it was 'one user cast a close vote on it, three more [found it in /review](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close/98599), and well, then there's gnat'. This wasn't a coordinated closing. Just another question in /review that someone found. One should look at 'is this question too broad' when deciding to reopen a question that was closed by the community as too broad. We [really try to provide good guidance](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/40980) on our close reasons that are available to all. While you (as a community manager) may have a different view into this you will generally find that we don't have people debating and denigrating if a question should have been closed or not. We would likely really like to have a place for discussions, but we recognize that the Q&amp;A format that SE has provided doesn't work that way and when you get questions that can inspire dozens of short answers (and despite having an accepted one) we often find new users wanting to add their two bits to the content (and that can have a very poor experience when it gets down voted compared to not being able to ask because it is closed / locked).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've generally found that, in most cases the pace of things getting done on Stack Exchange doesn't need to be very fast. A popular post was closed, **it deserves to get it's time on Meta [before being unilaterally reopened.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119111/moderator-cheat-sheet/119112#119112)**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20512" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7322" RevisionGUID="bfcb9650-3d80-4406-b245-ad7d41733a89" CreationDate="2015-04-24T18:18:18.190" UserId="161917" Text="[tag:puzzles]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems like a meta-tag. If a puzzles question is on-topic here, that's probably because it's a puzzle about algorithms or some other thing we already have a tag for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tagged questions primarily consist of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- puzzles about algorithms (often on-topic, but [tag:algorithms] is a much better tag)&#xD;&#xA;- career/education questions about puzzles asked at interviews (off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;- recommendations for puzzle books (off-topic)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20513" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7322" RevisionGUID="160fe730-b1c5-4d9c-b9fe-c254374a8ade" CreationDate="2015-04-24T18:18:18.190" UserId="161917" />
  <row Id="20518" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7325" RevisionGUID="e7db3a98-d65f-40d6-b8fc-dcd40a51397f" CreationDate="2015-04-25T17:27:13.817" UserId="161917" Text="[tag:facebook] [tag:google] [tag:twitter]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Company-specific tags like this seem to encourage either interview questions or speculation about why they made certain technical decisions or how their technology works." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20519" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7325" RevisionGUID="73d0ceda-9b02-4139-871b-c6912f50c5bf" CreationDate="2015-04-25T17:27:13.817" UserId="161917" />
  <row Id="20523" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7327" RevisionGUID="3126cec9-c51b-45de-af8e-126adf16d0df" CreationDate="2015-04-27T22:36:08.103" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="[tag:coding-style] (488)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Off-topic and categorically primarily opinion based. Coding style is the domain of religious debates and flame wars anyway." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20524" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7327" RevisionGUID="03549b5e-3ca1-405e-b532-de0492c5d5f8" CreationDate="2015-04-27T22:36:08.103" UserDisplayName="user22815" />
  <row Id="20525" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7292" RevisionGUID="8b4b616e-bfbc-4d2f-9b24-c3b295e90941" CreationDate="2015-04-27T22:37:34.927" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Trivial edit so I can change my vote based on amon's comment." Text="[tag:language-agnostic]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A meta-tag. It's implied on all questions that do not have a tag for a specific language. Other, more meaningful tags (like [tag:language-design] or [tag:design-patterns] or [tag:algorithms], as examples) already exist to describe what the question is about, not what it's not about." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20526" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7327" RevisionGUID="b83464bd-c4c7-447b-93ff-dc4cd6e91351" CreationDate="2015-04-27T23:51:16.477" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Response to comment: there are at least two types of questions sharing this tag, maybe they should be split." Text="[tag:coding-style] (490 and growing)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Off-topic and categorically primarily opinion based. Coding style is the domain of religious debates and flame wars anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it is difficult to advocate a one-size-fits-all approach for a tag with this many questions, I would argue that based on a sampling of questions they fall into two categories:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that are about coding style as defined in the tag wiki: how to structure code to affect readability and maintainability. Stuff like formatting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [what are the most important coding standards in c# \[on hold\]][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Why does C++11 developers prefer space before colon in range-based for loops? \[closed\]][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Cleaner C# without unneeded indents \[closed\]][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that are about techniques, how to call a method, what to name a class, etc. which may have some value but might be better served with a different tag such as [tag:code-quality]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Using self.method vs the scope :method DSL][4]&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it ok to break the “is a” relationship if I just want part of a class' functionality?][5]&#xD;&#xA;* [How to handle type conversion of a constant?][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/280118/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/276875/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/264179/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/279368/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/276698/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/275751/22815" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20527" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7328" RevisionGUID="98c05c02-2907-4b98-90b8-1d8544524646" CreationDate="2015-04-28T12:48:50.823" UserId="31260" Text="I recently flagged an off-topic (implementation) [question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/280353/1) that was posted here with sole purpose to circumvent &quot;problem&quot; title block at Stack Overflow. I described the issue in [&quot;need of moderator intervention&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/254097/165773) kind of flag and got it declined with suggestion to &quot;just vote to close&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to better understand how to decide on whether to flag or not in cases like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* ['Problem' titles in off-topic questions of new users coming from Stack Overflow](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7221/31260)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; what's the point of wasting precious close votes on an issue essentially caused by some kind of a system &quot;leak&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Provide 10k users more close votes](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6508/31260)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **if you see someone that is very likely unable to ask questions on one site bringing the same poor quality here - flag it**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20528" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7328" RevisionGUID="98c05c02-2907-4b98-90b8-1d8544524646" CreationDate="2015-04-28T12:48:50.823" UserId="31260" Text="Is it okay to flag for moderator intervention attempts to circumvent question block at other site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20529" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7328" RevisionGUID="98c05c02-2907-4b98-90b8-1d8544524646" CreationDate="2015-04-28T12:48:50.823" UserId="31260" Text="|support|flagging|stackoverflow|declined-flags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20530" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7329" RevisionGUID="ec558a40-1693-4531-8335-3742390aa2a5" CreationDate="2015-04-28T13:16:25.270" UserId="4" Text="I didn't decline that flag, but here's my take on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have the tools to do something as a user, you should be using those tools. There's nothing that I, as a moderator can do that you as a user cannot do. Therefore, don't put it into my flag queue. As an example, the right thing to do in this case would be to edit the topic title (along with the post and tags) to get it ready for migration, then vote to close as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree with Tim Post's suggestion of flagging if they are unable to ask questions on one site. You don't have that information, and even as a moderator, I can't see a user's status on another site. If the question is of sufficient quality to migrate and you can vote to migrate it to the right site, please vote to migrate to that site (the system will prevent questions from being migrated if they are banned from a site). If it's not of sufficient quality, it's highly likely that one of the other reasons will be a valid close reason, so vote for that or write a custom close reason. Of course, if it's a high quality question and you can't vote to migrate to the best site, please do flag it in that case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Going back to the mod flag and putting it in my queue, if the mod flag queue is small that gives me more time to either answer questions or go through the review queue. Sending things to the review queue is preferable to sending them to the mod queue because there are far more people who can do things in the review queue than the mod queue. Save mod flags for things that are either extremely urgent or must be handled by a moderator." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20531" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7020" RevisionGUID="3c405cbe-1f31-462a-a991-7ed63aa330fa" CreationDate="2015-04-28T18:20:26.130" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|stackoverflow|asking-questions|post-ban|new-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20532" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7257" RevisionGUID="22297da1-9ca0-433c-8103-0db33c7cdfe8" CreationDate="2015-04-28T18:20:56.097" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|questions|review|stackoverflow|low-quality-posts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20533" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6592" RevisionGUID="c197f082-564a-48f4-a592-f1dd9892c1dd" CreationDate="2015-04-28T18:21:45.217" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|closed-questions|stackoverflow|post-ban|user-accounts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20534" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6795" RevisionGUID="83964213-9516-42bd-b562-6ffc23707745" CreationDate="2015-04-28T18:22:55.077" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|stackoverflow|moderators|post-ban|cross-posting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20535" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7330" RevisionGUID="43c24b32-516c-46c4-9c2c-ddf3e9228e57" CreationDate="2015-04-28T19:08:41.500" UserId="47" Text="Like Thomas I didn't handle the flag; but, like the moderator who did, I would have declined it too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators are here to do the things you **can't**. You shouldn't be using us as your proxy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Thomas said either edit the question into shape and vote to migrate or just vote to close in place. If the user is question blocked the migration will be automatically rejected by the system and everyone (well almost everyone) is happy. Unfortunately the word &quot;problem&quot; in the title **doesn't** prevent migration. I discovered this the other day when a migration I was expecting to fail went through.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are running out of close votes, then that's a sign you might want to go and do something else for a few hours. That's what the limits are there for." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20536" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7331" RevisionGUID="5338e96f-b730-4625-97fb-3ca73ed32828" CreationDate="2015-04-28T20:05:25.247" UserId="25936" Text="I declined the flag. I simply didn't see what was so urgent about a question that may or may not have been posted here to bypass the title filter in Stack Overflow. To me, it was a typical off topic question and I saw no reason to intervene. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The NPR days are long behind us, we have a lot more than a handful active close voters now. If you are out of close votes for the day, I'm sure someone else will jump in and help take out the trash. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20537" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7332" RevisionGUID="a6307596-48df-4e1d-8121-e81e7454506f" CreationDate="2015-04-28T21:46:29.180" UserId="63" Text="I'm working on something related to this right now, so it's worthwhile to pull the data. More on that in a bit, but first...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **1380** questions asked here in the last 30 days, from &#xD;&#xA;- **1219** distinct accounts, of which&#xD;&#xA;- **1100** have/had accounts on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;- **184** of whom hit *some kind of block* on Stack Overflow during the past 60 days (this includes not just the quality-ban, but also spam blocks and 4 types of rate-limits). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From those 184 users...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **227** questions were posted during the past 30 days. &#xD;&#xA;- **152** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **135** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **161** score &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **62** received at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **25** score &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For comparison,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **771** questions were closed in total during the past 30 days,&#xD;&#xA;- **636** were deleted,&#xD;&#xA;- **728** score &lt; 0,&#xD;&#xA;- **523** were answered, and &#xD;&#xA;- **323** score &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But... that's not the whole story. See, posting here in response to a block on Stack Overflow is a real desperation move - and there are less extreme tactics to try first. Like sockpuppets...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I grabbed the IP addresses associated with those 1380 posts and looked to see how many had been associated with blocked questions on Stack Overflow in the past 60 days. From those 255 IPs,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **267** questions were posted here during the past 30 days,&#xD;&#xA;- **168** of which were closed,&#xD;&#xA;- **154** of which were deleted,&#xD;&#xA;- **176** of which score &lt; 0,&#xD;&#xA;- **87** of which were answered, and&#xD;&#xA;- **35** of which score &gt; 0 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, folks share IPs, and hop between networks. IP-based banning isn't a great long-term solution for anything... But if your goal is to slow down folks searching desperately for any text box into which they can type, then it ain't bad. Which is why we've been working on a system for temporarily classifying networks according to the number of bad posts coming from them. I took the *currently-live* data for this and compared it to the questions posted here during the past 2 days:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **9** questions from potentially &quot;bad&quot; networks&#xD;&#xA;- **4** of these closed&#xD;&#xA;- **5** of these deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **5** scoring &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **2** answered&#xD;&#xA;- **3** upvoted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Total stats for the same time period: 166,47,37,58,30,58.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus far, blocks on SO are a pretty weak predictor for quality. While there is a *massive* overlap between users on both sites, blocked users don't account for a very large chunk of the total here, and the false-positive rate is high. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Network-based tracking is even worse... But there's a caveat: we're *only* tracking networks with problematic posts on Stack Overflow right now, so all of those posts (and users) having issues on Programmers itself don't count. Right now, the network quality signal is used to feed Triage review on Stack Overflow... [Potentially][1], turning on tracking for Programmers would allow it to do the same thing here, and save a considerable amount of time identifying these questions on *both* sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251737/triage-and-help-improvement-review-queues-at-sites-other-than-stack-overflow/251744#251744" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20542" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7334" RevisionGUID="489aa633-659f-4314-bc09-86f4b28c77bd" CreationDate="2015-04-28T22:28:33.013" UserId="61809" Text="We'll this recently happened to me, and now I'm out for social justification, so to speak...I'm quite an avid user of StackOverflow, so I do realize that the use of the voting mechanism had been debated ad nauseum, and that it's per users discretion how they wish to apply their god given right to vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I do feel I have a valid point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had a question relating to programming principle / guidelines. Which to me at least relates to this forum, it was closed off as too broad and received 2 down votes...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Now my question:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. If I cant ask such questions on here, where would the appropriate forum be?&#xD;&#xA; 2. Does that fact that its broad, warrant a down vote?&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;   a.  Just as an FYI, my question was actually answered satisfactory within context to my question. Thus was it really too broad?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20543" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7334" RevisionGUID="489aa633-659f-4314-bc09-86f4b28c77bd" CreationDate="2015-04-28T22:28:33.013" UserId="61809" Text="Does asking a too-broad question warrant a down-vote / close-vote?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20544" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7334" RevisionGUID="489aa633-659f-4314-bc09-86f4b28c77bd" CreationDate="2015-04-28T22:28:33.013" UserId="61809" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20548" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7334" RevisionGUID="ac80c9cc-0fdc-4290-a4d3-62c04c64136e" CreationDate="2015-04-28T22:39:33.713" UserId="61809" Comment="added 130 characters in body; edited title" Text="We'll this recently happened to me, and now I'm out for social justification, so to speak...I'm quite an avid user of StackOverflow, so I do realize that the use of the voting mechanism had been debated ad nauseum, and that it's per users discretion how they wish to apply their god given right to vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I do feel I have a valid point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had a question relating to programming principle / guidelines. Which to me at least relates to this forum, it was closed off as too broad and received 2 down votes...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Now my question:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. If I cant ask such questions on here, where would the appropriate forum be?&#xD;&#xA; 2. Does that fact that its broad, warrant a down vote?&#xD;&#xA; 3. What if the mods/those with the power to close purely have a different opinion on what is perceived as too broad?&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;   a.  Just as an FYI, my question was actually answered satisfactory within context to my question. Thus was it really worth the intervention?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20549" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7334" RevisionGUID="ac80c9cc-0fdc-4290-a4d3-62c04c64136e" CreationDate="2015-04-28T22:39:33.713" UserId="61809" Comment="added 130 characters in body; edited title" Text="Does asking a question perceived as too broad warrant a down-vote / close-vote, without discussion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20550" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7334" RevisionGUID="4a88be54-7e1a-4b21-b60f-647f34126d52" CreationDate="2015-04-28T22:44:14.077" UserId="61809" Comment="added 130 characters in body; edited title" Text="We'll this recently happened to me, and now I'm out for social justification, so to speak...I'm quite an avid user of StackOverflow, so I do realize that the use of the voting mechanism had been debated ad nauseum, and that it's per users discretion how they wish to apply their god given right to vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I do feel I have a valid point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had a question relating to programming principle / guidelines. Which to me at least relates to this forum, it was closed off as too broad and received 2 down votes...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Now my question:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. If I cant ask such questions on here, where would the appropriate forum be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   a . As per the comment of @Yannis Rizos, it seems that there is no place for opinion based / semi-opinion based discussions. Even if an acceptable answer gets chosen. This is quite sad to me at least, as I prefer the StackExchange platform and the community around it. And having to &quot;leave&quot; it to just ask a simple question that's not tech, but tech theory related doesn't seem ideal to me.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Does that fact that its perceived as broad by some, warrant a down vote?&#xD;&#xA; 3. What if the mods/those with the power to close purely have a different opinion on what is perceived as too broad?&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;   a.  Just as an FYI, my question was actually answered satisfactory within context to my question. Thus was it really worth the intervention?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20551" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7335" RevisionGUID="036fb2cd-7cc7-4050-bbc9-c390964f5613" CreationDate="2015-04-29T00:09:22.557" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="One of those ideas that got bantered around - does closing a question have any evidence at modifying a user's future behavior if it happens *before* they get an answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We often see people ask a question, get an answer, and then get the question closed for one reason or another. Also, there are times when the question is closed more promptly before the user gets an answer (I'll ignore answer in comments for this).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what I'm curious about if devs can pull the data:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If the first question a user asks in the past year (I'm trying to exclude things from long ago) is closed within 48h ...&#xD;&#xA;    * Before an answer is posted to the question&#xD;&#xA;    * After an answer is posted to the question&#xD;&#xA;* What is the likelihood that&#xD;&#xA;    * The next question remains open for 48h?&#xD;&#xA;    * The next question is closed within 48h?&#xD;&#xA;    * No other questions are asked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Compare this to the other group of the users who asked questions that were not *not* closed shortly afterwards:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The first question a user asks in the past year remains open for 48h ...&#xD;&#xA;* What is the likelihood that&#xD;&#xA;    * The next question remains open for 48h?&#xD;&#xA;    * The next question is closed within 48h?&#xD;&#xA;    * No other questions are asked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I'm trying got get at here is the &quot;does closing a user's question show any evidence of altering a user's behavior on their next question in a way to provide better content for the site?&quot; It would be gravy to get information about the comments (and if there was a link to meta in any of them), but that really starts going down the data analytics path.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll also point out that another dimension to the data is *what* the question was closed for - unclear, too broad, primarily opinion, duplicate, off topic (reason vs custom), and migrated.  Again, that might be going too far down the data analytics path. If there is data for this provided,  I *suspect* one would see unclear still likely to ask another unclear question - the other options though, I wouldn't bet on going one way or another." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20552" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7335" RevisionGUID="036fb2cd-7cc7-4050-bbc9-c390964f5613" CreationDate="2015-04-29T00:09:22.557" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Does closing a question before an answer is received change the behavior of a user on future question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20553" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7335" RevisionGUID="036fb2cd-7cc7-4050-bbc9-c390964f5613" CreationDate="2015-04-29T00:09:22.557" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|statistics|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20554" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7335" RevisionGUID="4752c42e-d07f-478e-9561-8d43b6e8115e" CreationDate="2015-04-29T00:26:03.223" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited title" Text="Does closing a question before an answer is received change the behavior of a user on future questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20555" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7336" RevisionGUID="5e33a7ff-7955-4eb8-8e63-ee1af04f7880" CreationDate="2015-04-29T03:19:44.670" UserId="25476" Text="I wrote a query that provides the raw data for the answer.  You can find it here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/307939/first-posts-closed-compared-to-second-posts-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The raw data shows first posts by new users within the last year from today where there first post was closed within 48 hours. Each post in this subquery is ranked so that two additional subqueries can be created to return just the post data where rank is 1 and 2 respectively, their first and second post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first and second post subqueries are joined to the Users.  The first post obviously being an inner join but the second post subquery being left joined so we can see which users had their first post closed within 48 hours only to never return.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The most surprising thing I learned was that only 5.89% of people will return with a second question after their first question has been closed within 48 hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dS4e0UMYTHOmFfGkErabJNf-wBDWghzhariUGeicAr4/edit?usp=sharing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20556" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7336" RevisionGUID="8b1c3dc9-12cf-48b2-bda1-208b1dc29e82" CreationDate="2015-04-29T03:25:14.383" UserId="25476" Comment="added 677 characters in body" Text="I wrote a query that provides the raw data for the answer.  You can find it here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/307939/first-posts-closed-compared-to-second-posts-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The raw data shows first posts by new users within the last year from today where there first post was closed within 48 hours. Each post in this subquery is ranked so that two additional subqueries can be created to return just the post data where rank is 1 and 2 respectively, their first and second post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first and second post subqueries are joined to the Users.  The first post obviously being an inner join but the second post subquery being left joined so we can see which users had their first post closed within 48 hours only to never return.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The most surprising thing I learned was that only 5.89% of people will return with a second question after their first question has been closed within 48 hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dS4e0UMYTHOmFfGkErabJNf-wBDWghzhariUGeicAr4/edit?usp=sharing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second most striking thing of all to me and one that I would like to look at further is that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - 100% of new users in the past year, with a first post closed in 48 hours and a second post, have had their second post closed, *within 48 hours*!&#xD;&#xA; - 0% of those users second posts made it past 48 hours before being closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rnTForQegP5Bsy7L-AI3lUHkvonXey2J_rpfELlMaVs/edit?usp=sharing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What this implies to me is that we are doing a good job of policing new content, but we have a 0% success rate in the past year of new users being successful on their second post attempts, and most don't even try a second time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is such a profound finding that I am asking others to review my query to make sure I didn't have an error." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20558" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6583" RevisionGUID="711f9702-ded5-4c4f-9db4-54d587a212d5" CreationDate="2015-04-29T08:57:27.027" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 3487 characters in body" Text="Much of the past guidance (from 2011, 2012 and 2014 linked above in the question) has suggested that these questions are off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3856/question-about-naming-conventions-not-constructive/3859#3859&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on StackExchange sites need to be presented in such a way that there can be an answer that is &quot;the answer&quot;. As I read the question, every possible answer to it would be equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question asks:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; how should I represent the separate words in the filename?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't see how this can be answered where there aren't 15 different answers, giving 15 different opinions, all equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for other naming convention questions being valid, thanks for bringing them up, we'll go through them and clean up those that slipped through the cracks. The fact that they exist on the site, doesn't make this one or any future questions more constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic/2382#2382&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think there's a difference between questions that ask for a proper term for a concept and questions that ask for naming suggestions for a class or a method.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The former would be fine, in my opinion, but the latter do not belong on Stack Exchange for reasons of being both too localized and entirely discussion-oriented.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are *two* types of name questions that are fairly consistently asked, though one can blend into the other.  And we *continue* to get both types of questions - the &quot;what should I name&quot; and &quot;what is the name of&quot;. This makes it difficult to provide *the* answer and easily risk getting too many poor quality answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are **marginally** on topic.  However, these questions are often poor and without additional information they should be closed as too broad or primarily opinion.  Much of the historical guidance points to this being the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In an effort to try to make these questions better fit the Q&amp;A format rather than being a poll of answers where &quot;I think it is an XYZ&quot; and &quot;Have you considered XWZ?&quot; we need to help the questions be better asked so that they don't generate one sentence answers and stay away from the [questions not to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) so that they have the &quot;long, not short, answers&quot;.  From the blog post [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers.** The best subjective questions inspire your peers to share their actual experiences, not just post a mindless one-liner or cartoon in hopes of being rewarded with upvotes for being merely “first.” Sharing an experience takes at least one paragraph; ideally several paragraphs. If I’m asking about how to bake cookies, don’t give me a list of grocery items: milk. butter. vanilla. eggs. There is virtually nothing I can learn from a short, static list of grocery items that make up a recipe. Instead, tell me what happened the last time you made cookies from that recipe! Share your detailed experiences, so that we all might learn from them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this end, we need to provide some guidance that will help people avoid asking the questions that will be nothing more than a poll of word ideas, pattern names, and guessing at what was intended (and would get closed as either primarily opinion or too broad). Secondly, we should try to help people ask questions that won't be down voted for &quot;this question does not show any research effort&quot; (from the mouseover text on the down vote triangle).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have exactly the same problem that English.SE does with their own single word requests - lots of them, low quality, uninteresting, attract poor answers from users, and they get complained about in chat, they attract less active users and repel more active users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Drawing from [English.SE tag: single-word-requests](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/single-word-requests) and [Against single word requests](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/1654/against-single-word-requests) there is a set of questions that are necessary to make these questions better:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Describe exactly the context that the name or terminology is used**&#xD;&#xA;    * Programming language - the same concept can be used in multiple ways.  As I point out in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6296/why-is-this-question-wrong-asking-for-the-name-of-a-specific-practice/6297#6297 and ultimately http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218986/how-is-it-called-when-you-define-constants-that-simply-refer-to-a-large-namespac/219323#219323 there is sometimes no standard way to handle this across *all* programming languages.&#xD;&#xA;    * Code example - without a demonstration of what the code is to do, multiple terms can be used for the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;* **Describe the criteria for acceptance**&#xD;&#xA;    * Without some criteria for acceptance of the term, there is no way to say which one is better than another and the question is simply a poll for people to toss out suggestions for a name.&#xD;&#xA;* **Which names/terms have you thought of and discarded as inappropriate?**&#xD;&#xA;    * Just asking for a name doesn't let us know which direction you have thought and as described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important we need to know what you have already thought of and discarded.&#xD;&#xA;* **Does the question show that you searched for a suitable word before asking the question?**&#xD;&#xA;    * Without the information to show that you *have* tried, such questions reek of intellectual laziness.  The use of Google is not hard.  Sometimes these words are right there if you just enter the language of choice and the code construct you are working with.  Stack exchange is not and should never be a &quot;I don't know, I'll ask what its called on P.SE and see if anyone answers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the above pieces of information being provided in the question, it *might* be acceptable to keep the question open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also *strongly* want people to look at the English.SE tags: http://english.stackexchange.com/tags and note that Single-word-requests on that site make up an average of 30/week or about 1/5&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; of all of their questions on a day to day basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we, P.SE, want to have a similar bit of 1/5th of our questions be questions about what to name some 'pattern' or what a particular structure is called within some code?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20559" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6583" RevisionGUID="2a87c24a-fc6a-49be-895a-162103857b4a" CreationDate="2015-04-29T09:18:03.617" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 829 characters in body" Text="Much of the past guidance (from 2011, 2012 and 2014 linked above in the question) has suggested that these questions are off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3856/question-about-naming-conventions-not-constructive/3859#3859&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on StackExchange sites need to be presented in such a way that there can be an answer that is &quot;the answer&quot;. As I read the question, every possible answer to it would be equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question asks:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; how should I represent the separate words in the filename?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't see how this can be answered where there aren't 15 different answers, giving 15 different opinions, all equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for other naming convention questions being valid, thanks for bringing them up, we'll go through them and clean up those that slipped through the cracks. The fact that they exist on the site, doesn't make this one or any future questions more constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic/2382#2382&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think there's a difference between questions that ask for a proper term for a concept and questions that ask for naming suggestions for a class or a method.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The former would be fine, in my opinion, but the latter do not belong on Stack Exchange for reasons of being both too localized and entirely discussion-oriented.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are *two* types of name questions that are fairly consistently asked, though one can blend into the other.  And we *continue* to get both types of questions - the &quot;what should I name&quot; and &quot;what is the name of&quot;. This makes it difficult to provide *the* answer and easily risk getting too many poor quality answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Context: When this question was written, many naming questions were getting closed with a custom off topic message referencing [Lets Play the Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/).  Prior to that questions were often being closed as &quot;Not Constructive.&quot;  This is saying that these questions are on topic, though frequently have other problems (getting closed as primary opinion or too broad when there isn't any help given to answers to say what a *good* answer to the question is nor inspiring answers that meet the ideals of Good Subjective, Bad Subjective. Furthermore, the questions often get down voted for lack of research. It is my hope that by following these points below that the questions can overcome these difficulties and have a chance at remaining open.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are **marginally** on topic.  However, these questions are often poor and without additional information they should be closed as too broad or primarily opinion.  Much of the historical guidance points to this being the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In an effort to try to make these questions better fit the Q&amp;A format rather than being a poll of answers where &quot;I think it is an XYZ&quot; and &quot;Have you considered XWZ?&quot; we need to help the questions be better asked so that they don't generate one sentence answers and stay away from the [questions not to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) so that they have the &quot;long, not short, answers&quot;.  From the blog post [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers.** The best subjective questions inspire your peers to share their actual experiences, not just post a mindless one-liner or cartoon in hopes of being rewarded with upvotes for being merely “first.” Sharing an experience takes at least one paragraph; ideally several paragraphs. If I’m asking about how to bake cookies, don’t give me a list of grocery items: milk. butter. vanilla. eggs. There is virtually nothing I can learn from a short, static list of grocery items that make up a recipe. Instead, tell me what happened the last time you made cookies from that recipe! Share your detailed experiences, so that we all might learn from them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this end, we need to provide some guidance that will help people avoid asking the questions that will be nothing more than a poll of word ideas, pattern names, and guessing at what was intended (and would get closed as either primarily opinion or too broad). Secondly, we should try to help people ask questions that won't be down voted for &quot;this question does not show any research effort&quot; (from the mouseover text on the down vote triangle).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have exactly the same problem that English.SE does with their own single word requests - lots of them, low quality, uninteresting, attract poor answers from users, and they get complained about in chat, they attract less active users and repel more active users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Drawing from [English.SE tag: single-word-requests](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/single-word-requests) and [Against single word requests](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/1654/against-single-word-requests) there is a set of questions that are necessary to make these questions better:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Describe exactly the context that the name or terminology is used**&#xD;&#xA;    * Programming language - the same concept can be used in multiple ways.  As I point out in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6296/why-is-this-question-wrong-asking-for-the-name-of-a-specific-practice/6297#6297 and ultimately http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218986/how-is-it-called-when-you-define-constants-that-simply-refer-to-a-large-namespac/219323#219323 there is sometimes no standard way to handle this across *all* programming languages.&#xD;&#xA;    * Code example - without a demonstration of what the code is to do, multiple terms can be used for the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;* **Describe the criteria for acceptance**&#xD;&#xA;    * Without some criteria for acceptance of the term, there is no way to say which one is better than another and the question is simply a poll for people to toss out suggestions for a name.&#xD;&#xA;* **Which names/terms have you thought of and discarded as inappropriate?**&#xD;&#xA;    * Just asking for a name doesn't let us know which direction you have thought and as described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important we need to know what you have already thought of and discarded.&#xD;&#xA;* **Does the question show that you searched for a suitable word before asking the question?**&#xD;&#xA;    * Without the information to show that you *have* tried, such questions reek of intellectual laziness.  The use of Google is not hard.  Sometimes these words are right there if you just enter the language of choice and the code construct you are working with.  Stack exchange is not and should never be a &quot;I don't know, I'll ask what its called on P.SE and see if anyone answers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the above pieces of information being provided in the question, it *might* be acceptable to keep the question open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also *strongly* want people to look at the English.SE tags: http://english.stackexchange.com/tags and note that Single-word-requests on that site make up an average of 30/week or about 1/5&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; of all of their questions on a day to day basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we, P.SE, want to have a similar bit of 1/5th of our questions be questions about what to name some 'pattern' or what a particular structure is called within some code?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20560" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6583" RevisionGUID="f217488d-356f-4cb4-ba30-dc484a64a47e" CreationDate="2015-04-29T09:54:50.063" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo corrected" Text="Much of the past guidance (from 2011, 2012 and 2014 linked above in the question) has suggested that these questions are off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3856/question-about-naming-conventions-not-constructive/3859#3859&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on StackExchange sites need to be presented in such a way that there can be an answer that is &quot;the answer&quot;. As I read the question, every possible answer to it would be equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question asks:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; how should I represent the separate words in the filename?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't see how this can be answered where there aren't 15 different answers, giving 15 different opinions, all equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for other naming convention questions being valid, thanks for bringing them up, we'll go through them and clean up those that slipped through the cracks. The fact that they exist on the site, doesn't make this one or any future questions more constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic/2382#2382&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think there's a difference between questions that ask for a proper term for a concept and questions that ask for naming suggestions for a class or a method.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The former would be fine, in my opinion, but the latter do not belong on Stack Exchange for reasons of being both too localized and entirely discussion-oriented.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are *two* types of name questions that are fairly consistently asked, though one can blend into the other.  And we *continue* to get both types of questions - the &quot;what should I name&quot; and &quot;what is the name of&quot;. This makes it difficult to provide *the* answer and easily risk getting too many poor quality answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Context: When this question was written, many naming questions were getting closed with a custom off topic message referencing [Let's Play the Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/).  Prior to that questions were often being closed as &quot;Not Constructive.&quot;  This is saying that these questions are on topic, though frequently have other problems (getting closed as primary opinion or too broad when there isn't any help given to answers to say what a *good* answer to the question is nor inspiring answers that meet the ideals of Good Subjective, Bad Subjective. Furthermore, the questions often get down voted for lack of research. It is my hope that by following these points below that the questions can overcome these difficulties and have a chance at remaining open.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are **marginally** on topic.  However, these questions are often poor and without additional information they should be closed as too broad or primarily opinion.  Much of the historical guidance points to this being the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In an effort to try to make these questions better fit the Q&amp;A format rather than being a poll of answers where &quot;I think it is an XYZ&quot; and &quot;Have you considered XWZ?&quot; we need to help the questions be better asked so that they don't generate one sentence answers and stay away from the [questions not to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) so that they have the &quot;long, not short, answers&quot;.  From the blog post [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers.** The best subjective questions inspire your peers to share their actual experiences, not just post a mindless one-liner or cartoon in hopes of being rewarded with upvotes for being merely “first.” Sharing an experience takes at least one paragraph; ideally several paragraphs. If I’m asking about how to bake cookies, don’t give me a list of grocery items: milk. butter. vanilla. eggs. There is virtually nothing I can learn from a short, static list of grocery items that make up a recipe. Instead, tell me what happened the last time you made cookies from that recipe! Share your detailed experiences, so that we all might learn from them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this end, we need to provide some guidance that will help people avoid asking the questions that will be nothing more than a poll of word ideas, pattern names, and guessing at what was intended (and would get closed as either primarily opinion or too broad). Secondly, we should try to help people ask questions that won't be down voted for &quot;this question does not show any research effort&quot; (from the mouseover text on the down vote triangle).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have exactly the same problem that English.SE does with their own single word requests - lots of them, low quality, uninteresting, attract poor answers from users, and they get complained about in chat, they attract less active users and repel more active users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Drawing from [English.SE tag: single-word-requests](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/single-word-requests) and [Against single word requests](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/1654/against-single-word-requests) there is a set of questions that are necessary to make these questions better:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Describe exactly the context that the name or terminology is used**&#xD;&#xA;    * Programming language - the same concept can be used in multiple ways.  As I point out in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6296/why-is-this-question-wrong-asking-for-the-name-of-a-specific-practice/6297#6297 and ultimately http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218986/how-is-it-called-when-you-define-constants-that-simply-refer-to-a-large-namespac/219323#219323 there is sometimes no standard way to handle this across *all* programming languages.&#xD;&#xA;    * Code example - without a demonstration of what the code is to do, multiple terms can be used for the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;* **Describe the criteria for acceptance**&#xD;&#xA;    * Without some criteria for acceptance of the term, there is no way to say which one is better than another and the question is simply a poll for people to toss out suggestions for a name.&#xD;&#xA;* **Which names/terms have you thought of and discarded as inappropriate?**&#xD;&#xA;    * Just asking for a name doesn't let us know which direction you have thought and as described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important we need to know what you have already thought of and discarded.&#xD;&#xA;* **Does the question show that you searched for a suitable word before asking the question?**&#xD;&#xA;    * Without the information to show that you *have* tried, such questions reek of intellectual laziness.  The use of Google is not hard.  Sometimes these words are right there if you just enter the language of choice and the code construct you are working with.  Stack exchange is not and should never be a &quot;I don't know, I'll ask what its called on P.SE and see if anyone answers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the above pieces of information being provided in the question, it *might* be acceptable to keep the question open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also *strongly* want people to look at the English.SE tags: http://english.stackexchange.com/tags and note that Single-word-requests on that site make up an average of 30/week or about 1/5&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; of all of their questions on a day to day basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we, P.SE, want to have a similar bit of 1/5th of our questions be questions about what to name some 'pattern' or what a particular structure is called within some code?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20561" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7224" RevisionGUID="526223dd-c780-4a12-814c-235432d62717" CreationDate="2015-04-29T09:58:04.897" UserId="31260" Comment="some moderators are not positive about flags like that" Text="Assuming that this doesn't happen frequent enough to warrant changes to the system, one approach that comes to mind is to flag these cases for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flag message explaining the issue could refer this very question, in order to make it easier for moderator to find more details, eg like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`please take a look - this off-topic question appears to be posted with sole purpose to circumvent 'problem' title block at Stack Overflow (related meta discussion: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7221)`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Because, really, what's the point of wasting [precious close votes](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6507/31260) on an issue essentially caused by some kind of a system &quot;leak&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note, per discussion in later related question, some moderators are *not* positive about flags like that: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7328/31260&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On another note, you may also stumble upon [an earlier post](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6508/31260) that recommends this approach...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; if you see someone that is very likely unable to ask questions on one site bringing the same poor quality here - flag it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...but you better keep in mind that above guidance is *not* universally accepted. At least not currently." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20562" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6991" RevisionGUID="8e32af30-b9c8-4ca9-8310-d4b532478979" CreationDate="2015-04-29T10:55:15.220" UserId="31260" Comment="4-5 delete-worthy questions a day // http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7332/31260" Text="Your data is inaccurate because SEDE doesn't account for [deleted questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/157462/165773) but anyway, there are few factors worth thinking of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, Programmers were getting a reasonable mix of good and bad questions related to careers, software recommendations and code reviews. Even when topicality of these was slippery, well presented questions about interesting, real problems were considered worthy of upvotes by many readers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nowadays, we lost a good part but bad part remains with us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean, users capable of asking good questions in above topics, eventually find their way and stick to specialized sites - [TWP](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [CR](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [SR](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is left to us are askers who _want_ to ask but _can't_ make a good question. They post (or cross-post) their stuff at Programmers, Stack Overflow, Yahoo Answers, anywhere, in a hope to find a [kind soul to feed them](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/276637/839601). This contributes to lowering average quality of questions in these topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another stream of low quality questions are those from users blocked / warned at Stack Overflow. [Per recent stats](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7332/31260), we're getting 4-5 delete-worthy questions a day from these folks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, they could pollute SO with their low quality stuff for months or even years but for last year or two, due to improvements in [burning down SO close queue](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue), they started hitting question blocks and warnings more and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Per stats, Programmers appear to be [most popular of SE sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773) among this category of askers. After being blocked or scared by warnings at Stack Overflow they simply try to dump their low quality stuff over here, thus also lowering average quality level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If honestly, I can't see what we can do to help with the quality of questions like above, nor how we can control these in review queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't realistically expect askers of bad questions to &quot;refocus&quot; to specialized sites because at these sites, such questions seem to be detected and rejected even faster than over here. This is probably because of clearer, narrower specialization regulars at these sites build a better sense of what is good and what is not (at least that's how I feel at TWP).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also can't imagine how it would be possible to make users blocked / warned at SO stop their attempts to leak through Programmers. I can't think of a way to tell someone facing a [block message at SO](http://stackoverflow.com/help/question-bans) that they shouldn't try their luck at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;**Wait!** You've recently been blocked (warned) at Stack Overflow. Consider that quality requirements at Programmers are similar. Note that Stack Overflow topics are _not_ covered here and that your questions [can't even be migrated to Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;) because of the block.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Are you sure that you want to proceed asking question?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Click &lt;kbd&gt;No&lt;/kbd&gt; to cancel asking.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Click &lt;kbd&gt;Back&lt;/kbd&gt; to return to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!--&#xD;&#xA;Note to editors. Choices above are *intentionally* limited to No/Cancel - absence of option &quot;Yes&quot; to proceed asking question is not a simple mistake. If you plan to add such an option, make sure to also remove this comment, otherwise I will rollback your edit for not giving enough attention to edited content.&#xD;&#xA;--&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20563" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7335" RevisionGUID="525b43da-24ba-423f-92a2-92d6135f86b5" CreationDate="2015-04-29T21:42:32.710" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/593530832691679233" />
  <row Id="20564" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7338" RevisionGUID="a5e7b2ed-92db-44e5-8e6a-3fa5c0256ab6" CreationDate="2015-04-29T21:52:20.203" UserId="1204" Text="I regularly downvote questions that are too broad so that, when they get closed, I've helped the question gather three downvotes so that I can apply my delete vote right away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This wouldn't be necessary if people self-deleted their own off-topic questions, but they seldom do, leaving it to the user community to clean up after them.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20565" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7336" RevisionGUID="78dd51f1-adf1-4a84-a066-28616cbb3922" CreationDate="2015-04-30T02:02:24.380" UserId="25476" Comment="added 829 characters in body" Text="I wrote a query that provides the raw data for the answer.  You can find it here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/307939/first-posts-closed-compared-to-second-posts-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The raw data shows first posts by new users within the last year from today where there first post was closed within 48 hours. Each post in this subquery is ranked so that two additional subqueries can be created to return just the post data where rank is 1 and 2 respectively, their first and second post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first and second post subqueries are joined to the Users.  The first post obviously being an inner join but the second post subquery being left joined so we can see which users had their first post closed within 48 hours only to never return.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A profound thank you to Air for finding a problem with my query.  The original had a big flaw in that the SecondPost view was actually ranking all of a users closed questions!  This was clearly wrong, so I updated it and the data gives a much less alarming story now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Bb1a4Dd8KM-BksS4EmgKzlJG7BstkLp8pi-cye4pqlY/edit?usp=sharing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This spreadsheet basically describes a less alarming situation now that we have that fixed.  Here is the rundown:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Total users with first question closed in 48 hrs in last year: 591&#xD;&#xA;    Users from above with a second question: 76&#xD;&#xA;    Users whose second question was closed:	29&#xD;&#xA;    Users whose second question was closed within 48 hours: 26&#xD;&#xA;    Users whose second question was closed after 48 hours: 3&#xD;&#xA;    				&#xD;&#xA;    Percentage of users that returned with a second question: 12.86%&#xD;&#xA;    Percentage of users whose second question was closed: 4.91%&#xD;&#xA;    Percentage second question closed within 48 hours: 4.40%&#xD;&#xA;    Percentage second question closed after 48 hours: 0.51%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This actually shows a much more optimistic picture now.  I would have guessed that probably 4 out of 5 closed questions on programmers from first time users are from people who even if they understood the sites scope, it would be of no interest or concern to them.  Eg. PlzTehCoders, People who really want opinionated Q&amp;A like Quora, Ban Circumventers, etc..  The data supports my initial thoughts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The good news is that the majority of the people that post back have a question that is now well received by the community!  Secondly poor quality posts are mostly getting resolved within 48 hours.  What this means is that we are not only doing a good job of policing content, but we are doing a good job of coaching new users into producing quality content on their second try.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good job Community!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20566" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7339" RevisionGUID="3779da20-747b-42de-805e-98a362fda84a" CreationDate="2015-04-30T02:53:27.603" UserId="130255" Text="The answer almost always has more up votes than the question, sometimes significantly so.  I almost always scroll back up and up vote the question after up voting an answer (unless the question was terrible).  Apparently others do not do this.  It seems like it would help users' searches if questions were up voted in proportion to their accepted answer since it is the question up votes that are seen when searching.&#xA;&#xA;I'm not sure how to make this a question... Basically my question is, shouldn't we be up voting questions that are valid for this SE?&#xA;&#xA;Edit: I guess the answer up votes are also visible in searches, but still..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20567" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7339" RevisionGUID="3779da20-747b-42de-805e-98a362fda84a" CreationDate="2015-04-30T02:53:27.603" UserId="130255" Text="Why are answers almost always upvoted more than the question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20568" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7339" RevisionGUID="3779da20-747b-42de-805e-98a362fda84a" CreationDate="2015-04-30T02:53:27.603" UserId="130255" Text="|discussion|questions|up-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20569" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7340" RevisionGUID="c310d83d-3690-4752-a19a-3621c6f393af" CreationDate="2015-04-30T03:06:46.957" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Thats part of the realized behavior of people...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a badge ([Electorate](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/28)) to try to encourage people to vote on questions more.  There's also the way [votes themselves work](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/90256/213963) ([related](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/89534/213963)) (if you use your votes on questions, you get more of them).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why? I suspect its part of the 'up vote for effort' nature that happens. If you put in work, you are likely to get up voted just because its well written and lengthy. That's just my observation. Most of the time, answers require more effort to be put in them and thus the answer gets an up vote for that effort.  I'm not saying this is good nor bad - just a theory of why votes happen to fall the way they do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, votes on posts do help with the relevancy of related questions on the side and search results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Trying to guess how people are going to vote or trying to get the community to vote in some way or another is often met with opposition and intentional data fowling (&quot;this post was down voted? I'll up vote it! Why was this post up voted? I'll down vote it!&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I chalk it up to 'its one of those emerged social behaviors on the site that the devs have tried to channel to get more votes on questions but it still doesn't work too well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20570" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7341" RevisionGUID="9d1f181e-5815-40a6-b38a-2f6082709b25" CreationDate="2015-04-30T03:17:10.347" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I think this is subjective and opinion-based, because people vote their own ways.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I find more answers that are constructive and useful than questions. I will upvote anything that deserves it in my opinion. More often than not, that &quot;thing&quot; is an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I did upvote this meta question, although it does not affect reputation. I searched and could not find a similar question, and it was thought-provoking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bigger question is &quot;how do we encourage more upvotes on questions?&quot; To that end I am making an effort to edit questions that _could_ be useful and interesting but currently are not.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20573" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7342" RevisionGUID="2084987e-a17a-45ec-aee3-27a26f952363" CreationDate="2015-04-30T10:39:43.020" UserId="145179" Text="In the comment section to [this question post][1], I was replying to a comment of a moderator with a question and also posting another comment for the asker. The moderator apparently didn't like my question to him and wrote something like &quot;how pedantic you are&quot; (to which I responded that I don't mind if he doesn't mean what he says).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few hours later all comments, including some comments of the asker and my comment to the asker, which were not related to the little conversation between the moderator and me, have been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that if he was going to retract his comments, he shouldn't delete the entire comments section. That's destroying content. Isn't he exceeding his competencies with this action?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/274270/er-diagram-multiplicity-uml/280470#280470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20574" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7342" RevisionGUID="2084987e-a17a-45ec-aee3-27a26f952363" CreationDate="2015-04-30T10:39:43.020" UserId="145179" Text="Is it okay for a moderator to delete all comments just because he was going to delete his own comment?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20575" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7342" RevisionGUID="2084987e-a17a-45ec-aee3-27a26f952363" CreationDate="2015-04-30T10:39:43.020" UserId="145179" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20576" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7343" RevisionGUID="e227cda9-b18c-4caa-84af-019ef1c956aa" CreationDate="2015-04-30T11:51:50.437" UserId="4" Text="To be clear - no Programmers moderator ever made a comment on that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were plenty of comments on that question. I'm not sure if it was flagged by a user or an automatic flag raised by the number of comments, but it looks like it was brought to the attention of a moderator who cleaned out the comments. I think cleaning out the comments was the appropriate action, given what comments are for - asking for clarification or pointing out issues with a post, not for carrying on an extended conversation. If you want to carry on an extended conversation, that's what chat is for." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20577" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7343" RevisionGUID="35ff6527-4e5b-4abe-ae79-8f69b8154dbe" CreationDate="2015-04-30T12:29:23.737" UserId="4" Comment="added 84 characters in body" Text="To be clear - no Programmers moderator ever made a comment on that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were plenty of comments on that question. I'm not sure if it was flagged by a user or an automatic flag raised by the number of comments, but it looks like it was brought to the attention of a moderator who cleaned out the comments. I think cleaning out the comments was the appropriate action, given [what comments are for][1] - asking for clarification or pointing out issues with a post, not for carrying on an extended conversation. If you want to carry on an extended conversation, that's what chat is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/comment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20586" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7340" RevisionGUID="40d47f6c-f6b3-4ec7-afed-ec6179e00fad" CreationDate="2015-04-30T18:52:11.217" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 106 characters in body" Text="Thats part of the realized behavior of people...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a badge ([Electorate](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/28)) to try to encourage people to vote on questions more.  There's also the way [votes themselves work](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/90256/213963) ([related](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/89534/213963)) (if you use your votes on questions, you get more of them).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why? I suspect its part of the 'up vote for effort' nature that happens. If you put in work, you are likely to get up voted just because its well written and lengthy. That's just my observation. Most of the time, answers require more effort to be put in them and thus the answer gets an up vote for that effort.  I'm not saying this is good nor bad - just a theory of why votes happen to fall the way they do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, votes on posts do help with the relevancy of related questions on the side and search results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Trying to guess how people are going to vote or trying to get the community to vote in some way or another is often met with opposition and intentional data fowling (&quot;this post was down voted? I'll up vote it! Why was this post up voted? I'll down vote it!&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I chalk it up to 'its one of those emerged social behaviors on the site that the devs have tried to channel to get more votes on questions but it still doesn't work too well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related on MSE: [Why aren't people voting for questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/9508/213963)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20587" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7346" RevisionGUID="8e2af81f-9f45-4f51-8cb6-d50fefda0b9b" CreationDate="2015-05-01T16:28:59.157" UserDisplayName="user175878" Text="This is an inline span of preformatted text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's put a link on it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing changes.&#xD;&#xA;Should we learn from Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/G329d.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xAsFh.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/84jrx.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20588" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7346" RevisionGUID="8e2af81f-9f45-4f51-8cb6-d50fefda0b9b" CreationDate="2015-05-01T16:28:59.157" UserDisplayName="user175878" Text="Should we improve span code links highlighting?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20589" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7346" RevisionGUID="8e2af81f-9f45-4f51-8cb6-d50fefda0b9b" CreationDate="2015-05-01T16:28:59.157" UserDisplayName="user175878" Text="|feature-request|hyperlinks|code|formatting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20591" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7347" RevisionGUID="c4da76ec-dddf-4a04-ab23-11abb4761823" CreationDate="2015-05-04T13:05:58.580" UserId="127193" Text="I asked a good question **[here][1]** . The reason was I didnt get any suitable answer from **[this][2]** question. You can see the question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3525118/is-magento-development-too-difficult-for-a-junior-developer , got 5200 + views with good answer, but mine was closed **Without any ** answer. What could be done? I asked the users with high reputation who **Closed** the question. But none of them could give satisfactory answer. What to do now?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/281894/why-is-magento-that-much-difficult-and-what-tasks-will-i-be-working-on-as-a-ma&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3525118/is-magento-development-too-difficult-for-a-junior-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20592" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7347" RevisionGUID="c4da76ec-dddf-4a04-ab23-11abb4761823" CreationDate="2015-05-04T13:05:58.580" UserId="127193" Text="Why was my question related to specific topic closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20593" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7347" RevisionGUID="c4da76ec-dddf-4a04-ab23-11abb4761823" CreationDate="2015-05-04T13:05:58.580" UserId="127193" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20596" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7347" RevisionGUID="465a5407-7138-488e-b2fa-fb2afab71170" CreationDate="2015-05-04T13:22:13.683" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Fix markdown" Text="I asked a good question **[here][1]** . The reason was I didnt get any suitable answer from **[this][2]** question. You can see the question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3525118/is-magento-development-too-difficult-for-a-junior-developer , got 5200 + views with good answer, but mine was closed **Without any** answer. What could be done? I asked the users with high reputation who **Closed** the question. But none of them could give satisfactory answer. What to do now?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/281894/why-is-magento-that-much-difficult-and-what-tasks-will-i-be-working-on-as-a-ma&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3525118/is-magento-development-too-difficult-for-a-junior-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20597" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7348" RevisionGUID="e8ad182f-2127-4a8f-9202-6312539f5cc9" CreationDate="2015-05-04T13:26:17.533" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="[tag:ethics]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Off-topic and primarily opinion based. There are a few borderline questions that could be retagged, but a lot of these are not salvageable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20598" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7348" RevisionGUID="eb1bffcc-1f0f-44fb-b484-63cbfaa14a22" CreationDate="2015-05-04T13:26:17.533" UserDisplayName="user22815" />
  <row Id="20599" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7347" RevisionGUID="f300599d-94e0-45b0-a336-6b67aae9a380" CreationDate="2015-05-04T13:26:32.713" UserId="88986" Comment="Grammar, edited to be less abrasive" Text="I [asked a question here][1], because [I didn't get any suitable answer from this question][2]. It got 5200 + views with good answer, but mine was closed **without any** answer. Why did this happen? How could I have asked a similar question that would not be closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked the users who closed the question, but none of them gave an answer that I understood. What should I do now?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/281894/why-is-magento-that-much-difficult-and-what-tasks-will-i-be-working-on-as-a-ma&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3525118/is-magento-development-too-difficult-for-a-junior-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20600" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7347" RevisionGUID="f300599d-94e0-45b0-a336-6b67aae9a380" CreationDate="2015-05-04T13:26:32.713" UserId="88986" Comment="Grammar, edited to be less abrasive" Text="Why was my Magneto development question closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20602" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7349" RevisionGUID="284cdc89-8752-48d9-8d3d-8ae11c40abe7" CreationDate="2015-05-04T13:31:32.007" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The first thing to realize is that [Is Magento development too difficult for a junior developer?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3525118/is-magento-development-too-difficult-for-a-junior-developer) from Stack Overflow was asked in 2010 - nearly five years ago.  The sites were different back then. On Stack Overflow, 5000 views over four years isn't a big number.  The question was also closed as not constructive (old reasons) in '11.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using a question from 2010 that has since been closed is not a good basis for asking another question on a Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have two questions within the post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My qestion is why is it difficult for a developer who hasnt worked on Zend framework ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is *completely* developer dependent.  It may be easy for one developer and hard for another. It cannot be answered with anything other than a poll of opinions and experiences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When questions have such a format and can be answered by &quot;Because Zend sucks&quot; it means that there is something that the question needs to do to guide the answers to *good* quality answers rather than a mindless poll that inspires poor answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What tasks will i be working on as a Magento Developer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That depends completely on where one gets employment as a Magento developer. The tasks at one place may be completely different than another.  This again speaks to the question being a poll and you would be getting many conflicting answers - which doesn't make for good answer content on the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20603" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7350" RevisionGUID="175b1f5a-3d49-4046-8220-94e5e07c17e7" CreationDate="2015-05-04T13:41:09.350" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="There are three things to keep in mind about the other question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It was asked on Stack Overflow which has different question scope and guidelines than Programmers, so using it as an example of &quot;but it was on-topic!&quot; is invalid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It was asked four and a half years ago, and site rules and guidelines change over time. While Stack Overflow has not had nearly as much change in this area as Programmers, it has still evolved. Pointing to _any_ old question on the first few Stack Exchange sites (SO, Prog, SuperUser, ServerFault, etc) as evidence of being on-topic is suspect and should be approached carefully.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The question was closed anyway, several years ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question has two problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My qestion is why is it difficult for a developer who hasnt worked on Zend framework ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective. This is a question about the _developer_, not the _technology_. I have personally seen many cases where one developer easily picked up a new technology where another developer struggled.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only can we not answer because we do not know the developers involved, any answer would be isolated to those specific developers. The Q&amp;A format is designed to be applicable to _many_ people, not one or two: Stack Exchange is essentially a repository of questions and answers that people can find from Google _and get an answer_. What do I, random Internet searcher care, if person X had a hard time learning technology Y? I do not care, that does not apply to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And 2nd one : What tasks will i be working on as a Magento Developer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ask your supervisor, not the Internet. While someone may be able to say &quot;Magento developers commonly perform tasks X, Y, and Z&quot; perhaps your position is only X, or Z, or sweeping the floors because you got hired to allocate funds due to budget games (I have seen stuff like this happen, seriously).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We cannot predict the future any more or less than anyone else. Just like the weatherman, we might be able to make educated guesses but _nobody knows for sure_. That question is not objectively answerable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20604" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7350" RevisionGUID="d48fdf06-4fa3-474a-95fd-95e92b33cc9f" CreationDate="2015-05-04T13:54:25.513" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 1092 characters in body" Text="There are three things to keep in mind about the other question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It was asked on Stack Overflow which has different question scope and guidelines than Programmers, so using it as an example of &quot;but it was on-topic!&quot; is invalid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It was asked four and a half years ago, and site rules and guidelines change over time. While Stack Overflow has not had nearly as much change in this area as Programmers, it has still evolved. Pointing to _any_ old question on the first few Stack Exchange sites (SO, Prog, SuperUser, ServerFault, etc) as evidence of being on-topic is suspect and should be approached carefully.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The question was closed anyway, several years ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question has two problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My qestion is why is it difficult for a developer who hasnt worked on Zend framework ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective. This is a question about the _developer_, not the _technology_. I have personally seen many cases where one developer easily picked up a new technology where another developer struggled.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only can we not answer because we do not know the developers involved, any answer would be isolated to those specific developers. The Q&amp;A format is designed to be applicable to _many_ people, not one or two: Stack Exchange is essentially a repository of questions and answers that people can find from Google _and get an answer_. What do I, random Internet searcher care, if person X had a hard time learning technology Y? I do not care, that does not apply to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And 2nd one : What tasks will i be working on as a Magento Developer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ask your supervisor, not the Internet. While someone may be able to say &quot;Magento developers commonly perform tasks X, Y, and Z&quot; perhaps your position is only X, or Z, or sweeping the floors because you got hired to allocate funds due to budget games (I have seen stuff like this happen, seriously).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We cannot predict the future any more or less than anyone else. Just like the weatherman, we might be able to make educated guesses but _nobody knows for sure_. That question is not objectively answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think your questions are answerable, just not in the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A format. You are really looking for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Tutorials. This will give you a taste of Magento to gauge its difficulty _for you_. Personally, I can read a tutorial and get a decent idea of how difficult a particular technology is. This may also help with &quot;what tasks will I be working on?&quot; because tutorials often cover the common tasks of a technology once they get past &quot;hello world.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Blog posts. If you want to learn about a technology and all the subjective gooey bits that go along with it, read blogs on the topic. People will talk about their experiences, what they had a hard time with and why. They may make comments about &quot;I was developing yet another X because that is what we do with technology Y&quot; which helps answer your second question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think if you read good questions and answers on Stack Exchange and compare with good tutorials and blog posts, you will see that the formats are utterly different. Each resource has its strengths and weaknesses and they compliment each other.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20605" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7347" RevisionGUID="39d3b44c-7cfc-44b1-9e76-bea93fa7fd52" CreationDate="2015-05-04T17:07:22.793" UserId="31260" Comment="edited title" Text="Why was my Magento development question closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20606" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="7351" RevisionGUID="f3156895-fa7b-482b-ad47-0685fe770cea" CreationDate="2015-05-04T19:15:43.880" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/281930/problem-with-thread-about-startup" />
  <row Id="20607" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7351" RevisionGUID="f11766ad-91ab-4b47-a64c-298ecdea981a" CreationDate="2015-05-04T17:56:33.980" UserId="146976" Text="I searched for this topic and found this post here : https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57380/how-to-start-a-software-company&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;but several times people refer to a web site called answers.onstartups.com which doesn't exist. Can someone point to a new source of information about starting a software company or perhaps fix the broken links? Apologies in advance. Thanks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20608" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7351" RevisionGUID="f11766ad-91ab-4b47-a64c-298ecdea981a" CreationDate="2015-05-04T17:56:33.980" UserId="146976" Text="Problem with thread about startup" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20609" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7351" RevisionGUID="f11766ad-91ab-4b47-a64c-298ecdea981a" CreationDate="2015-05-04T17:56:33.980" UserId="146976" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20610" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7352" RevisionGUID="7fb2e7c6-b11d-4a7e-b1e7-85e3a47cc990" CreationDate="2015-05-04T19:26:51.707" UserId="64132" Text="There's an old joke among economists that it's safe to recycle test questions year after year because while the questions themselves don't change, the answers do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is an exact duplicate of [Links in comments][1].  I'm re-asking it because a lot may have changed since October 28, 2011 and what was impossible then may be less impossible now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, **can links to questions &amp; answers be converted to their titles?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2478/64132" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20611" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7352" RevisionGUID="7fb2e7c6-b11d-4a7e-b1e7-85e3a47cc990" CreationDate="2015-05-04T19:26:51.707" UserId="64132" Text="Links in comments - still impossible?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20612" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7352" RevisionGUID="7fb2e7c6-b11d-4a7e-b1e7-85e3a47cc990" CreationDate="2015-05-04T19:26:51.707" UserId="64132" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20613" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7353" RevisionGUID="ed411b6b-3374-40f0-ac77-c88190749173" CreationDate="2015-05-05T02:06:30.367" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="From [Replace links with the current question title in comments](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/86909/213963) on MSE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No, because comments are processed on the fly. This means a page with 12 links would incur 12 additional database queries -- every time the page is loaded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are meant to be lightweight. If you want this, put your links in a post, where it is already supported.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links are stored in the database as just the text. Not the markdown and html (like posts are). When a link is rendered, it grabs the text and renders it right then and there. To have links get auto nice titles, it would either mean:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Doubling the storage requirements of comments (there are 38,091,590 undeleted comments on Stack Overflow alone)&#xD;&#xA;* Suffering a performance hit when you render a page for each comment that has a link to another post.&#xD;&#xA;     * Scan the raw link to see if its a link to another post&#xD;&#xA;     * If so, hit the database to find the post (if its undeleted) and substitute the name&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither of these appear to be acceptable tradeoffs for the ability to auto-pretty link a post for SE's developers and so, well, if you want a nice name to a title of a post, then you're left with the traditional format of `[nice name](http://link.to.post)`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One can also always grab the [SE Comment Link Helper](http://stackapps.com/questions/2378/se-comment-link-helper)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20614" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7354" RevisionGUID="080d4bc4-c923-4c11-bc2f-41ff01be50ea" CreationDate="2015-05-05T02:22:08.287" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There's a bit of history around on startups.com and Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers.onstartups.com was originally a Stack Exchange 1.0 community and was relaunched through area 51. After a rather long time, [the proposal was closed](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6243/startup-business) for [various reasons](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/12607/site-on-startups-is-closed-what-to-do-now).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a few posts that have answers.onstartups.com links (as of this writing, 23 found via [this search](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=url%3A*.onstartups.com)) that should be cleaned up.  Admittedly, that might take a bit of work to sleuth through http://www.brightjourney.com/ to find the corresponding post (assuming they grab the data dump - their Q&amp;A clone doesn't use post IDs).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Onstartups.com still exists at http://onstartups.com and while they're pointing to a broken link for answers.onstartups.com themselves (SE doesn't own the onstartups.com domain).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a note, the relaunch was relaunched again as http://startups.stackexchange.com and is still there if one is looking for content." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20615" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7354" RevisionGUID="24f73efb-ce28-45b4-bacd-a09771a6fa41" CreationDate="2015-05-05T02:53:17.310" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 147 characters in body" Text="There's a bit of history around on startups.com and Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers.onstartups.com was originally a Stack Exchange 1.0 community and was relaunched through area 51. After a rather long time, [the proposal was closed](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6243/startup-business) for [various reasons](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/12607/site-on-startups-is-closed-what-to-do-now).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a few posts that have answers.onstartups.com links (as of this writing, 23 found via [this search](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=url%3A*.onstartups.com)) that should be cleaned up... (I think I got most of them though there may be some residual cleanup to do... 90% of them were links to the same post by Joel again and again).  Admittedly, that might take a bit of work to sleuth through http://www.brightjourney.com/ to find the corresponding post (assuming they grab the data dump - their Q&amp;A clone doesn't use post IDs... they did grab the data dump, but not everything is there, they might have deleted some posts since then).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Onstartups.com still exists at http://onstartups.com and while they're pointing to a broken link for answers.onstartups.com themselves (SE doesn't own the onstartups.com domain).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a note, the relaunch was relaunched again as http://startups.stackexchange.com and is still there if one is looking for content." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20616" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7351" RevisionGUID="50baa0c1-f880-4a95-90fc-5fd046bdd397" CreationDate="2015-05-05T02:54:14.047" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="add tag.  Clean up post." Text="I searched for this topic and found this post here : http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57380/how-to-start-a-software-company&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But several times people refer to a web site called answers.onstartups.com which doesn't exist. Can someone point to a new source of information about starting a software company or perhaps fix the broken links?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20617" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7351" RevisionGUID="50baa0c1-f880-4a95-90fc-5fd046bdd397" CreationDate="2015-05-05T02:54:14.047" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="add tag.  Clean up post." Text="|discussion|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20625" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="544b13e9-a7d2-475d-8ef2-8b0514aa9409" CreationDate="2015-05-05T11:03:21.393" UserId="4" Text="# Tags to Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Tags that contain &quot;school&quot;. Most questions tagged with a school-related tag were either off-topic (educational advice) or the fact that they were related to school was tangential to the subject of the question (making it an almost-meta-tag). See: [tag:school] [tag:grad-school]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20626" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="3bf49c5b-dc22-4bba-924a-8c8d6beb479c" CreationDate="2015-05-05T11:03:21.393" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="20628" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7356" RevisionGUID="f6bfff36-ce4b-4672-aa6a-60df2912d642" CreationDate="2015-05-05T17:17:08.840" UserId="6145" Text="IANAP(I am not a psychologist), but I think this is driven by perceived value.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions may not have as high a perceived value, because on their own, they don't accomplish much.  When you are looking for help, how much would you value a question with no answer?  It doesn't help that 10 other people have the same problem, but it sure does help all 10 of us when one person provides a constructive answer.  Hence, more value in the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, from an external view, it appears (and may be true) that the answerer has done more work.  They took the time to understand the problem, figured out a solution and documented it.  All the questioner did was post their problem.  ;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20629" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7339" RevisionGUID="d58c2938-9a97-4bbf-8834-02b6e36b8c19" CreationDate="2015-05-06T10:10:45.090" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/595893452954595329" />
  <row Id="20631" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7285" RevisionGUID="8c0bbaac-b21f-498b-b9f4-97233c474349" CreationDate="2015-05-07T14:21:47.607" UserId="4" Comment="edited title" Text="Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative Phase II" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20639" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7358" RevisionGUID="4162f39d-a43f-41a8-a8ff-dabbf89fe532" CreationDate="2015-05-07T21:22:57.357" UserId="136058" Text="I asked [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/245392/do-rails-join-models-get-controllers) and one of the comments has nothing to do with the question.  It's not &quot;wrong&quot; (in the sense of having incorrect information), it just is totally irrelevant to the question being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to flag for removal to clean up the site, but I'm not sure which flag is appropriate.  &quot;Not Constructive&quot; is, I thought, meant for comments that are joking around or being insulting.  &quot;Obsolete&quot; seems wrong because the comment wasn't _ever_ relevant, so it didn't stop at some point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which flag is appropriate in this situation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20640" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7358" RevisionGUID="4162f39d-a43f-41a8-a8ff-dabbf89fe532" CreationDate="2015-05-07T21:22:57.357" UserId="136058" Text="What flag for an irrelevant comment?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20641" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7358" RevisionGUID="4162f39d-a43f-41a8-a8ff-dabbf89fe532" CreationDate="2015-05-07T21:22:57.357" UserId="136058" Text="|discussion|support|flagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20642" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7359" RevisionGUID="c494399e-9338-496a-bed8-b0eb001bdf8f" CreationDate="2015-05-08T08:56:12.193" UserId="25936" Text="With the exception of the spam flag, I wouldn't worry much about picking the correct comment flag. When in doubt, &quot;too chatty&quot; is usually the better option. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you really feel none of the predefined flags describe the issue, you always have the option of telling us exactly what's going on in a custom flag (the &quot;other...&quot; option)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20646" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7334" RevisionGUID="470d612b-7c98-4b75-9eec-315c2a96f15e" CreationDate="2015-05-11T06:22:42.537" UserId="61809" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="We'll this recently happened to me, and now I'm out for social justification, so to speak...I'm quite an avid user of StackOverflow, so I do realize that the use of the voting mechanism had been debated ad nauseum, and that it's per users discretion how they wish to apply their god given right to vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I do feel I have a valid point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had a question relating to programming principle / guidelines. Which to me at least relates to this forum, it was closed off as too broad and received 2 down votes...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Now my question:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. If I cant ask such questions on here, where would the appropriate forum be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   a . As per the comment of @Yannis Rizos, it seems that there is no place for opinion based / semi-opinion based discussions. Even if an acceptable answer gets chosen. This is quite sad to me at least, as I prefer the StackExchange platform and the community around it. And having to &quot;leave&quot; it to just ask a simple question that's not tech, but tech theory related doesn't seem ideal to me.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Does the fact that its perceived as broad by some, warrant a down vote?&#xD;&#xA; 3. What if the mods/those with the power to close purely have a different opinion on what is perceived as too broad?&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;   a.  Just as an FYI, my question was actually answered satisfactory within context to my question. Thus was it really worth the intervention?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20647" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7360" RevisionGUID="2f62fd91-4e92-41e6-b5a3-c4fd8c7817f5" CreationDate="2015-05-12T13:02:38.730" UserId="42450" Text="While questions are in many ways more valuable than answers, answers are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. More immediately valuable—they provide a solution to a problem after all.&#xD;&#xA;2. More easily identifiable as valuable—that immediate value is easier to see.&#xD;&#xA;3. Teaches more quickly. Questions may be the bigger teachers in life, but answers are more often going to teach you something new in the space of a minute.&#xD;&#xA;4. More likely to contain something one sees as a flash of brilliance, and amusing aside, a note of historical interest, or something else that makes it stand out from the crowd.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last is something that one sees particularly in the very high scoring answers. Sometimes in those questions that score very highly too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the initial couple of days, an answer is also much more likely to provide an answer to someone coming along with a similar question, while the question just restates what they would have written themselves. As such some answers may earn many votes. My highest-scoring answer on any SE site is [this one on SO](http://stackoverflow.com/a/20509354/400547) which is not particularly clever or insightful, but it keeps getting up-votes and I presume this is because people keep finding the little nugget of information it contains when they need that very nugget." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20649" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="7361" RevisionGUID="2e8a763d-38d4-4761-8ff1-023d67b9d4ef" CreationDate="2015-05-12T21:39:07.197" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/283673/can-you-people-here-stop-being-so-rude" />
  <row Id="20650" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7361" RevisionGUID="efe020ba-04c6-4d86-a842-8e124d35abd1" CreationDate="2015-05-12T21:29:01.163" UserId="177871" Text="This is a site where people who are clueless ask question for help. WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE HERE SO MEAN? why do you close questions and downvote them instead of answering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;be nice to others! even if you even think the question is off topic or something DONT DOWNVOTE IT or close it! &#xD;&#xA;there are people here with low self esteem that this bad treatment to them can even make them suicidal!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked a question here asking for ideas for an app. I knew it could be off topic, but i didnt find any stackexchange site suitable. so I asked, I thought there are some nice people here who would give me ideas. but I got the opposite.&#xD;&#xA;I got -6 downvote and it was closed and deleted. and some commented &quot;this is off topic.&quot;. they didn't even dare to answer my question. WTF IS THIS TREATEMENT? ARE YOU PEOPLE HERE HUMAN BEINGS? DO YOU HAVE A HEART? I think you don't. ARENT HERE ANY NICE PEOPLE? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't really know what you people will get from closing and downvoting questions other than upsetting innocent people and lowering their self esteem. look, if you think a question is offtopic or something, you can kindly comment and tell them that this question is offtopic in a friendly way, but don't downvote innocent questions or close them! whats wrong if innocent people asked for help here? WHY CANT YOU PEOPLE HERE BE NIC FOR ONCE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;like why? why are you all that strict, what would you lose if you were nice to others?&#xD;&#xA;please dont downvote or close my question. I am saying an opinion that should be heard and considered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am tired of rude people here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20651" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7361" RevisionGUID="efe020ba-04c6-4d86-a842-8e124d35abd1" CreationDate="2015-05-12T21:29:01.163" UserId="177871" Text="Can you people here stop being so rude?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20652" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7361" RevisionGUID="efe020ba-04c6-4d86-a842-8e124d35abd1" CreationDate="2015-05-12T21:29:01.163" UserId="177871" Text="|discussion|html|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20655" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7363" RevisionGUID="b17ff6a1-861a-49ed-856a-b12425957f04" CreationDate="2015-05-12T21:41:05.863" UserId="17853" Text="&gt; you can kindly comment and tell them that this question is offtopic in a friendly way, but don't downvote innocent questions or close them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have come into a fundamental misconception. It's a common one, but it's still a misconception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Downvotes are not personal.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are not &quot;attacks&quot;, or &quot;hate&quot;, or &quot;rudeness&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are not &quot;punishment&quot; (though they do lose you rep as we'll explore in a moment).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**They are a measure of post quality.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your post is of poor quality, it should have a low score. That's how other visitors, and any automated processes on the site (e.g. rankings, search result filtering) can tell that the post has a poor quality without having to read it and find out for themselves (certainly tricky for those automated processes!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, the fact that you lose a little bit of rep when you get downvoted is the reverse consequence of this: **you *gain* a little bit of rep when you get upvoted**. There's your incentive to post good, useful questions that are \*gasp\* on-topic and \*gasp\* abide by the rules and values of this Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is important to realise that people do not answer questions to help _you_. This is not a site for _you_ to get help whenever you need it. It is a repository of questions and answers! Your question, and its answers (if any), _must be able to help someone else some day_. It must be potentially of help for _everybody_. If it does not, it belongs in a chat room or on a forum. This is not &quot;rude&quot;: it is a fact. It is the basis on which the site stands. If that does not suit your needs, you are certainly more than welcome to post the question on a different site that does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not &quot;rude&quot; to keep the site clean and tidy by downvoting and closevoting when it is appropriate; conversely, it *is* rather &quot;rude&quot; to come onto the site stomping your feet and shouting at everybody for following all of the above, simply because you failed to research and/or comprehend the purpose of this website." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20656" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7364" RevisionGUID="6f5b59e9-53be-4465-8080-33986307e8a6" CreationDate="2015-05-12T21:46:43.303" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I'm going to pick a particular bit out to address:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I asked a question here asking for ideas for an app. I knew it could be off topic, but i didnt find any stackexchange site suitable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you knew it was going to be off topic, and there aren't any Stack Exchange sites suitable, it should come as no surprise that if it was asked on one it would be down voted and closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site - not a discussion forum. We really don't do polls (which you are looking for) or discussions well. The layout of the site, the way it works just doesn't make a good way to handle those questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It does work for the Q&amp;A where there is a problem and a solution. That particular aspect of it makes it so that it attracts the people who *are* here for asking, reading, and writing such material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want ideas for what to write, there are other avenues (rather than a Q&amp;A site). There are numerous discussion forums and chat networks where such questions would be appropriate (they also, incidentally, tend not to do Q&amp;A well).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Q&amp;A format optimizes for one type of question at the cost of making others not appropriate to ask in the format. I've yet to find a site that does all things well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you were asking a poll, the question was down voted, closed, and deleted because it wouldn't generate good material for the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20657" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7363" RevisionGUID="f6a2d04b-1181-4df7-9530-f16c14323f97" CreationDate="2015-05-12T21:47:15.457" UserId="17853" Comment="added 211 characters in body" Text="&gt; you can kindly comment and tell them that this question is offtopic in a friendly way, but don't downvote innocent questions or close them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have come into a fundamental misconception. It's a common one, but it's still a misconception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Downvotes are not personal.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are not &quot;attacks&quot;, or &quot;hate&quot;, or &quot;rudeness&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are not &quot;punishment&quot; (though they do lose you rep as we'll explore in a moment).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**They are a measure of post quality.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your post is of poor quality, it should have a low score. That's how other visitors, and any automated processes on the site (e.g. rankings, search result filtering) can tell that the post has a poor quality without having to read it and find out for themselves (certainly tricky for those automated processes!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, the fact that you lose a little bit of rep when you get downvoted is the reverse consequence of this: **you *gain* a little bit of rep when you get upvoted**. There's your incentive to post good, useful questions that are \*gasp\* on-topic and \*gasp\* abide by the rules and values of this Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is important to realise that people do not answer questions to help _you_. This is not a site for _you_ to get help whenever you need it. It is a repository of questions and answers! Your question, and its answers (if any), _must be able to help someone else some day_. It must be potentially of help for _everybody_. If it does not, it belongs in a chat room or on a forum. This is not &quot;rude&quot;: it is a fact. It is the basis on which the site stands. If that does not suit your needs, you are certainly more than welcome to post the question on a different site that does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not &quot;rude&quot; to keep the site clean and tidy by downvoting and closevoting when it is appropriate; conversely, it *is* rather &quot;rude&quot; to come onto the site stomping your feet and shouting at everybody for following all of the above, simply because you failed to research and/or comprehend the purpose of this website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do I know you haven't performed that research? Well, it was a bit of a clue when you posted this rant on the main site instead of meta, making it off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20658" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7363" RevisionGUID="03e09c74-bfb6-48f8-8f8b-87e842f0173c" CreationDate="2015-05-12T21:51:10.723" UserId="17853" Comment="added 56 characters in body" Text="&gt; you can kindly comment and tell them that this question is offtopic in a friendly way, but don't downvote innocent questions or close them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have come into a fundamental misconception. It's a common one, but it's still a misconception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Downvotes are not personal.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are not &quot;attacks&quot;, or &quot;hate&quot;, or &quot;rudeness&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are not &quot;punishment&quot; (though they do lose you rep as we'll explore in a moment).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**They are a measure of post quality.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your post is of poor quality (or is simply in the wrong place / on the wrong site), it *should* have a low score. That's how other visitors, and any automated processes on the site (e.g. rankings, search result filtering) can tell that the post has a poor quality without having to read it and find out for themselves (certainly tricky for those automated processes!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, the fact that you lose a little bit of rep when you get downvoted is the reverse consequence of this: **you *gain* a little bit of rep when you get upvoted**. There's your incentive to instead post good, useful questions that are \*gasp\* on-topic and \*gasp\* abide by the rules and values of this Stack Exchange network. It's pretty obvious why the system was designed to encourage you to do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is important to realise that people do not answer questions to help _you_. This is not a site for _you_ to get help whenever you need it. It is a repository of questions and answers! Your question, and its answers (if any), _must be able to help someone else some day_. It must be potentially of help for _everybody_. If it does not, it belongs in a chat room or on a forum. This is not &quot;rude&quot;: it is a fact. It is the basis on which the site stands. If that does not suit your needs, you are certainly more than welcome to post the question on a different site that does or, alternatively, hire someone to provide personal training/consultancy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not &quot;rude&quot; to keep the site clean and tidy by downvoting and closevoting when it is appropriate; conversely, it *is* rather &quot;rude&quot; to come onto the site stomping your feet and shouting at everybody for following all of the above, simply because you failed to research and/or comprehend the purpose of this website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do I know you haven't performed that research? Well, it was a bit of a clue when you posted this rant on the main site instead of meta, making it off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20659" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7363" RevisionGUID="0ab80907-2384-403c-907c-b42a7d860592" CreationDate="2015-05-12T21:54:17.633" UserId="31260" Comment="repository of questions and answers += http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/ &quot;The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions&quot;" Text="&gt; you can kindly comment and tell them that this question is offtopic in a friendly way, but don't downvote innocent questions or close them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have come into a fundamental misconception. It's a common one, but it's still a misconception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Downvotes are not personal.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are not &quot;attacks&quot;, or &quot;hate&quot;, or &quot;rudeness&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are not &quot;punishment&quot; (though they do lose you rep as we'll explore in a moment).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**They are a measure of post quality.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your post is of poor quality (or is simply in the wrong place / on the wrong site), it *should* have a low score. That's how other visitors, and any automated processes on the site (e.g. rankings, search result filtering) can tell that the post has a poor quality without having to read it and find out for themselves (certainly tricky for those automated processes!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, the fact that you lose a little bit of rep when you get downvoted is the reverse consequence of this: **you *gain* a little bit of rep when you get upvoted**. There's your incentive to instead post good, useful questions that are \*gasp\* on-topic and \*gasp\* abide by the rules and values of this Stack Exchange network. It's pretty obvious why the system was designed to encourage you to do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is important to realise that people do not answer questions to help _you_. This is not a site for _you_ to get help whenever you need it. It is a [repository of questions and answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/ &quot;The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions&quot;)! Your question, and its answers (if any), _must be able to help someone else some day_. It must be potentially of help for _everybody_. If it does not, it belongs in a chat room or on a forum. This is not &quot;rude&quot;: it is a fact. It is the basis on which the site stands. If that does not suit your needs, you are certainly more than welcome to post the question on a different site that does or, alternatively, hire someone to provide personal training/consultancy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not &quot;rude&quot; to keep the site clean and tidy by downvoting and closevoting when it is appropriate; conversely, it *is* rather &quot;rude&quot; to come onto the site stomping your feet and shouting at everybody for following all of the above, simply because you failed to research and/or comprehend the purpose of this website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do I know you haven't performed that research? Well, it was a bit of a clue when you posted this rant on the main site instead of meta, making it off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20660" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7364" RevisionGUID="b9733e76-9240-42fa-a0ca-2ff89719a48e" CreationDate="2015-05-12T21:59:15.190" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 1094 characters in body" Text="I'm going to pick a particular bit out to address:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I asked a question here asking for ideas for an app. I knew it could be off topic, but i didnt find any stackexchange site suitable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you knew it was going to be off topic, and there aren't any Stack Exchange sites suitable, it should come as no surprise that if it was asked on one it would be down voted and closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site - not a discussion forum. We really don't do polls (which you are looking for) or discussions well. The layout of the site, the way it works just doesn't make a good way to handle those questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It does work for the Q&amp;A where there is a problem and a solution. That particular aspect of it makes it so that it attracts the people who *are* here for asking, reading, and writing such material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want ideas for what to write, there are other avenues (rather than a Q&amp;A site). There are numerous discussion forums and chat networks where such questions would be appropriate (they also, incidentally, tend not to do Q&amp;A well).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Q&amp;A format optimizes for one type of question at the cost of making others not appropriate to ask in the format. I've yet to find a site that does all things well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you were asking a poll, the question was down voted, closed, and deleted because it wouldn't generate good material for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Down voting and closing are the two things that most users can do to moderate *questions*. They are not statements about the person who posted the question and should not be taken as such.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Down votes help show people what is worth their time to read and possibly answer. It also helps serve as some feedback to the person who asked the question about the applicability of the post on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing questions is an essential part of moderating questions that either are inappropriate to the site to prevent them from getting answers (this isn't rude but rather an essential part of site maintenance, possibly giving the person time to fix the question so that it is appropriate for the site - its easier to do if there are no answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Open questions that are polls tend to inevitably get lots of poor answers. While having a question closed quickly may be a bad experience for one user, having a question closed and deleted in a few days that is a poll that has a dozen answers is a bad experience for a dozen people. We'd rather avoid that second situation if possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, with this understanding, predicting the outcome for asking a question known to be off topic shouldn't be surprising and is certainly not indicative of malicious intent or rudeness." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20661" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7363" RevisionGUID="599cc38f-bc32-42fb-bbe3-b150c7613655" CreationDate="2015-05-13T02:08:33.817" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Added link showing rep amounts and note that downvotes cost less than upvotes make you gain." Text="&gt; you can kindly comment and tell them that this question is offtopic in a friendly way, but don't downvote innocent questions or close them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have come into a fundamental misconception. It's a common one, but it's still a misconception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Downvotes are not personal.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are not &quot;attacks&quot;, or &quot;hate&quot;, or &quot;rudeness&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are not &quot;punishment&quot; (though they do lose you rep as we'll explore in a moment).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**They are a measure of post quality.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your post is of poor quality (or is simply in the wrong place / on the wrong site), it *should* have a low score. That's how other visitors, and any automated processes on the site (e.g. rankings, search result filtering) can tell that the post has a poor quality without having to read it and find out for themselves (certainly tricky for those automated processes!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, the fact that you lose a little bit of rep when you get downvoted is the reverse consequence of this: **you *gain* a little bit of rep when you get upvoted**. Furthermore, [downvoting causes less of a rep loss than upvoting causes you to gain][1]. There's your incentive to instead post good, useful questions that are \*gasp\* on-topic and \*gasp\* abide by the rules and values of this Stack Exchange network. It's pretty obvious why the system was designed to encourage you to do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is important to realise that people do not answer questions to help _you_. This is not a site for _you_ to get help whenever you need it. It is a [repository of questions and answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/ &quot;The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions&quot;)! Your question, and its answers (if any), _must be able to help someone else some day_. It must be potentially of help for _everybody_. If it does not, it belongs in a chat room or on a forum. This is not &quot;rude&quot;: it is a fact. It is the basis on which the site stands. If that does not suit your needs, you are certainly more than welcome to post the question on a different site that does or, alternatively, hire someone to provide personal training/consultancy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not &quot;rude&quot; to keep the site clean and tidy by downvoting and closevoting when it is appropriate; conversely, it *is* rather &quot;rude&quot; to come onto the site stomping your feet and shouting at everybody for following all of the above, simply because you failed to research and/or comprehend the purpose of this website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do I know you haven't performed that research? Well, it was a bit of a clue when you posted this rant on the main site instead of meta, making it off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/7238/255171" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20662" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7363" RevisionGUID="72223884-e113-4c20-9959-5bf4357669ab" CreationDate="2015-05-13T10:27:11.820" UserId="17853" Comment="Thanks for the link. You broke the narrative, though!" Text="&gt; you can kindly comment and tell them that this question is offtopic in a friendly way, but don't downvote innocent questions or close them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have come into a fundamental misconception. It's a common one, but it's still a misconception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Downvotes are not personal.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are not &quot;attacks&quot;, or &quot;hate&quot;, or &quot;rudeness&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are not &quot;punishment&quot; (though they do lose you rep as we'll explore in a moment).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**They are a measure of post quality.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your post is of poor quality (or is simply in the wrong place / on the wrong site), it *should* have a low score. That's how other visitors, and any automated processes on the site (e.g. rankings, search result filtering) can tell that the post has a poor quality without having to read it and find out for themselves (certainly tricky for those automated processes!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, the fact that you lose a little bit of rep when you get downvoted is the reverse consequence of this: **you *gain* a little bit of rep when you get upvoted** ([in fact, _more_ than you lose from the same number of downvotes!][1]). There's your incentive to instead post good, useful questions that are \*gasp\* on-topic and \*gasp\* abide by the rules and values of this Stack Exchange network. It's pretty obvious why the system was designed to encourage you to do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is important to realise that people do not answer questions to help _you_. This is not a site for _you_ to get help whenever you need it. It is a [repository of questions and answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/ &quot;The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions&quot;)! Your question, and its answers (if any), _must be able to help someone else some day_. It must be potentially of help for _everybody_. If it does not, it belongs in a chat room or on a forum. This is not &quot;rude&quot;: it is a fact. It is the basis on which the site stands. If that does not suit your needs, you are certainly more than welcome to post the question on a different site that does or, alternatively, hire someone to provide personal training/consultancy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not &quot;rude&quot; to keep the site clean and tidy by downvoting and closevoting when it is appropriate; conversely, it *is* rather &quot;rude&quot; to come onto the site stomping your feet and shouting at everybody for following all of the above, simply because you failed to research and/or comprehend the purpose of this website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do I know you haven't performed that research? Well, it was a bit of a clue when you posted this rant on the main site instead of meta, making it off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/7238/255171" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20663" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7182" RevisionGUID="5e27f606-d251-4fcc-b4f9-9981d3e6f872" CreationDate="2015-05-13T15:03:30.750" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|migration|on-topic-definition|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20664" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7212" RevisionGUID="2d66ac51-e39a-4c97-a775-43ee288ec1d7" CreationDate="2015-05-13T15:03:50.800" UserId="4" Comment="added 115 characters in body" Text="### Site purpose and usage&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/516/how-do-i-get-started-with-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7182/what-goes-on-programmers-se-a-guide-for-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6763/where-can-i-have-subjective-discussions-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On-topic and off-topic questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7253/4&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6763/where-can-i-have-subjective-discussions-about-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Moderation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Other resources&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers Tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour)&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help)&#xD;&#xA;* [Blog: Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Blog: Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Blog: Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Blog: Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Is your question not part of the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First look at questions tagged [meta-tag:faq-proposed] to see if there is a question not in this index that might have the answer you seek. If you still can't find an answer, then see the following instructions for proposing an FAQ question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How can a question be added to this FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Ask only the question, stated plainly and simply, in the question body. The answer goes in an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Tag as [meta-tag:faq-proposed] and [meta-tag:support].  When a post seems to hit a mature state, it will have [meta-tag:faq] added by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Flag for a moderator to mark **community wiki**. Any FAQ post not yet community wiki should be made into a community wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Add a link in the above table of contents.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20665" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7365" RevisionGUID="29acfb82-2176-4471-bc0e-d544bda83a41" CreationDate="2015-05-14T05:14:01.353" UserId="63" Text="How does raising a mod flag help here? What do you want moderators to do with these flags? Whatever that action is, can we just do it automatically when a close vote or flag is raised?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20666" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7361" RevisionGUID="5f9b4fc1-4328-495c-b984-c990bc35b32d" CreationDate="2015-05-14T13:05:17.863" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6233],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:161917,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Ixrec&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:22815,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Snowman&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:5099,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Bart van Ingen Schenau&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="20667" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7285" RevisionGUID="7d42509a-16eb-4de9-92bf-9dd39a1f61a6" CreationDate="2015-05-16T00:15:24.157" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|stci|stci-phase2|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20668" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7366" RevisionGUID="d31df7cc-56e0-4c35-92f5-17b19ca39c44" CreationDate="2015-05-16T09:38:45.313" UserId="31260" Text="I flagged a question using this message:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as complained in comments, cross-posted at SO: [programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/284058/…](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/284058/hide-menu-on-load-and-click-toggle-menu#comment584342_284058) (flagging per http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info - **&quot;If you spot a user cross-posting, please make use of moderator flags to inform the moderators&quot;**)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why was my flag declined? Decline message was&#xD;&#xA;&gt; flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20669" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7366" RevisionGUID="d31df7cc-56e0-4c35-92f5-17b19ca39c44" CreationDate="2015-05-16T09:38:45.313" UserId="31260" Text="Why was this flag declined?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20670" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7366" RevisionGUID="d31df7cc-56e0-4c35-92f5-17b19ca39c44" CreationDate="2015-05-16T09:38:45.313" UserId="31260" Text="|support|declined-flags|cross-posting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20671" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7366" RevisionGUID="bc65082e-f334-4eab-9d67-4bbf0b82e2f7" CreationDate="2015-05-16T09:48:07.927" UserId="31260" Comment="clarification copied into post from comments" Text="I flagged a question using this message:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as complained in comments, cross-posted at SO: [programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/284058/…](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/284058/hide-menu-on-load-and-click-toggle-menu#comment584342_284058) (flagging per http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info - **&quot;If you spot a user cross-posting, please make use of moderator flags to inform the moderators&quot;**)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why was my flag declined? Decline message was&#xD;&#xA;&gt; flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;The only reason why I flagged is that instruction quoted above tells to do this. If it wouldn't be there, I wouldn't flag&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20672" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7367" RevisionGUID="a53c9e12-ca8f-48c3-b527-a864293f2679" CreationDate="2015-05-16T10:32:02.003" UserId="25936" Text="Flags are a communication mechanism; you are asking moderators to intervene in a situation you can't do much to resolve on your own. Cross posting isn't such a situation: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Although strongly discouraged, it is not forbidden. A question can be on topic on more than one sites.&#xD;&#xA;- Even when the question is off topic, there's not much a moderator can do about it than vote to close it. And you can do that yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, &quot;flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20675" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7368" RevisionGUID="2c439e8e-ee08-46f9-9ca7-fbf147326fcb" CreationDate="2015-05-17T17:37:38.917" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Ok, I decided to weigh in on this one...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The specific question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The text of the question in question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have a site in wordpress and added menu in sidebar and I have changed the size of some tabs to show them separate, I just want when site loads then 2nd 3rd 4th 5th and 6th tab should be hide and open on when click on foirst tab then hide on clicking first tab,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     $(document).ready(function(){&#xD;&#xA;        $(&quot;#main-menu ul li:nth-child(2)&quot;).click(function(){&#xD;&#xA;            $(&quot;#main-menu ul li:nth-child(n+2):nth-child(-n+6)&quot;).toggle();&#xD;&#xA;        });&#xD;&#xA;    });&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also I don't know where should I put my javascript function in wordpress website,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that this question is off topic and that any answers that it gets here would cause *more* moderator work (migrating it to SO, duping it there, merging it there), closing it promptly *here* would be a good thing and reduce moderator work and the drain on community close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was asked at 1:07 UTC, and closed at 20:17 UTC. A tad bit over 19 hours. That's awkward and could have easily gotten some 'helpful' user posting an answer here. Fortunately it didn't. But if it *did*, it would have meant a flag for moderators to migrate it to the correct site where it *is* on topic (and as of this writing, still open).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this question, I believe the flag should have been acted upon and closed. I personally feel it's a rather clear cut case of an off topic question and a mod close could have prevented other possible answers in the wrong place. We get those often enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We should endeavor to avoid bouncing people and questions around form site to site - thats a bad experience. We should furthermore, endeavor to avoid the situations where we would be deleting questions that are completely inappropriate here (off topic fix my code) but have somehow garnered answers that would end up being deleted here (no one likes having their material deleted). Both of these require prompt action to avoid a poor experience; and sometimes the community isn't and can't be prompt enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The general case&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is on topic on both sites, being cross posted is *not* a reason to close as off topic - its on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I've often found that questions that are posted identically to two or more sites suffer from lack of specificity and are often (not always) too broad or unclear. Those are perfectly acceptable reasons to close a question. This is especially frequent in situations where the OP wants &quot;diverse answers from multiple communities.&quot;  Many times, these questions are seeking discussion rather than solving problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that posting identical questions on multiple sites I consider to be very rude to the communities of those sites - having multiple groups working on solving a problem when its already solved somewhere else is wasting the time of multiple users.  Having questions where it didn't get an answer on one site but did on another leads to fragmentation of knowledge across the network and poor search results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Across the metas&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My take on this can be found on Meta.SE: [Can cross-posts actually be valuable to two communities, with the exception of being worded identically?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/243851/213963).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll also point to [Are cross-site questions acceptable in rare cases?](http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/a/5369/177) from Gaming.SE and highlight a bit from there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The reason cross-posting is frowned upon is because it's the hallmark of a vague question. If it's broad enough to be equally applicable to multiple SE sites, you haven't refined the question enough. More thought needs to be invested to see which group would be best able to answer your question. You need to decide which site you think has the best chance of answering the question. If you don't manage to get an answer, feel free to delete and ask on another. That way, there's no duplication of effort, no bickering, and if you get an answer on another site, it will be applicable to those that view it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### In conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it may not be off topic, and posting an identical question on multiple sites  can sometimes be acceptable, it ***will*** be judged with a more critical eye as to how it is applicable ***here***. The question may very well receive borderline votes of too broad or unclear because of how the question applies *here* rather than *there*." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20676" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6486" RevisionGUID="7487c3cc-79ea-43e8-bb51-e69216dd5bff" CreationDate="2015-05-17T17:41:39.117" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 170 characters in body" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###What technology to take up next###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a constant stream of new projects out there.  Github [claims 4,500 new projects a day](https://github.com/blog/841-those-are-some-big-numbers) back in 2011.  On December 23, 2013, Github had [10 million repositories](https://github.com/blog/1724-10-million-repositories).  Quite frankly, there are far too many projects for anyone to suggest a good answer.  What's more, the projects of yesteryear may well be inactive now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same problem exists for suggesting languages and technologies - they are constantly changing.  Further, many questions of this type often just ask &quot;which one is best&quot; without specifying any requirements, making them essentially a popularity poll.  If you really *do* want a popularity poll, consider reading [The Top Programming Languages: IEEE Spectrum’s 2014 Ranking](http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/interactive-the-top-programming-languages) which takes into account such things as Github active projects, Stack Overflow questions, Reddit questions, Hacker News, and job postings (see the 'custom' ranking for working with weightings).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A goal for Stack Exchange is to create a lasting repository of information.  Asking questions about which technology to chose runs counter to that.  In part because everyone's needs are different and also that everyone has their own favorites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56848/how-does-one-keep-up-with-all-the-new-tools-languages-framework (also look at the [linked questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/56848?lq=1))&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you really want some projects:&#xD;&#xA;    * [/r/dailyprogrammer](http://www.reddit.com/r/dailyprogrammer)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Mega Project List](https://github.com/karan/Projects)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20686" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="b2f53b1a-7fce-491a-924e-d34409d7c17e" CreationDate="2015-05-19T16:40:08.190" UserId="88986" Comment="Added a lot more tags" Text="# Tags to Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags:&#xD;&#xA;* Tags that contain &quot;school&quot;. Most questions tagged with a school-related tag were either off-topic (educational advice) or the fact that they were related to school was tangential to the subject of the question (making it an almost-meta-tag). See: [tag:school] [tag:grad-school] [tag:university] [tag:college]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:learning] [tag:teaching] [tag:education] [tag:self-teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:student] [tag:students]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20687" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="e5eabeb9-e3cf-4215-94da-b99c5d2d8ba9" CreationDate="2015-05-19T20:08:54.390" UserId="31260" Comment="[tag:resume]" Text="# Tags to Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags:&#xD;&#xA;* Tags that contain &quot;school&quot;. Most questions tagged with a school-related tag were either off-topic (educational advice) or the fact that they were related to school was tangential to the subject of the question (making it an almost-meta-tag). See: [tag:school] [tag:grad-school] [tag:university] [tag:college]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:learning] [tag:teaching] [tag:education] [tag:self-teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:student] [tag:students]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags:&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20692" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7371" RevisionGUID="f4298a0f-102a-4a47-9f0e-ef73f54f0012" CreationDate="2015-05-20T13:33:51.230" UserId="88986" Text="@MichaelT and I were [discussing the purpose of locked questions last night in chat.](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/21732881#21732881) He brought up this post from Meta.SE: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for/126631#126631&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions can be historically locked when:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1.  The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2.  The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3.  There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4.  The post is contentious; i.e. it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### When is it not appropriate to historically-lock a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should not be historically locked if they:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1.  Are being actively maintained, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2.  Have little or no redeeming value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this in mind, I searched for all locked posts. We have [744 locked posts](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes); many of these are good and we should keep around, and is quite a lot of posts especially for what would have to be a moderator only review. Can we do better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have [208 posts that match the search `locked:yes views:0..5000 score:0..10 duplicate:no`](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A0..5000+score%3A0..10+duplicate%3Ano). They have low views (so don't help much with SEO), low score, and don't help with searching as merge source qustions. This search results in gems like these ***first** three posts returned under **relevance** sort*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Economy simulation software](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/146781/economy-simulation-software)&#xD;&#xA; - [PHP and SQL, together or individually](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80434/php-and-sql-together-or-individually)&#xD;&#xA; - [Providing work experience on my resume](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82342/providing-work-experience-on-my-resume)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see almost no reason to keep **any** of these 208 posts. They add nothing. If we drop the view threshold to **2000** posts, we are *still left with [175 questions](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A0..2000+score%3A0..10+duplicate%3Ano)*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Why should we bother?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@MichaelT said it best last night:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Consider if that is the type of impression we wish to give to users who are coming into the site about the types of things we have on the site (remember, new users don't know / understand / care about historical locks).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that not all of these are historical locks; many (most? all?) of them are rejected migrations. That's no reason to keep them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Let's get rid of them with fire.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Burn with fire!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/9YfMu.gif&#xD;&#xA; [2]: https://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A0..5000+score%3A0..10+duplicate%3Ano" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20693" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7371" RevisionGUID="f4298a0f-102a-4a47-9f0e-ef73f54f0012" CreationDate="2015-05-20T13:33:51.230" UserId="88986" Text="Locked questions cleanup" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20694" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7371" RevisionGUID="f4298a0f-102a-4a47-9f0e-ef73f54f0012" CreationDate="2015-05-20T13:33:51.230" UserId="88986" Text="|discussion|support|deleted-questions|locked-question|clean-up|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20698" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7371" RevisionGUID="b04c4939-fe72-4a12-be9e-df04f2f2d0c3" CreationDate="2015-05-20T13:53:39.787" UserId="88986" Comment="Added the 'migrated:no' search parameter" Text="@MichaelT and I were [discussing the purpose of locked questions last night in chat.](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/21732881#21732881) He brought up this post from Meta.SE: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for/126631#126631&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions can be historically locked when:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1.  The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2.  The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3.  There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4.  The post is contentious; i.e. it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### When is it not appropriate to historically-lock a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should not be historically locked if they:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1.  Are being actively maintained, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2.  Have little or no redeeming value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this in mind, I searched for all locked posts. We have [744 locked posts](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes); many of these are good and we should keep around, and is quite a lot of posts especially for what would have to be a moderator only review. Can we do better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have [175 posts that match the search `locked:yes views:0..5000 score:0..10 duplicate:no migrated:no`](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A0..5000+score%3A0..10+duplicate%3Ano+migrated%3Ano). They have low views (so don't help much with SEO), low score, and don't help with searching as merge source questions, and won't disappear on their own when the migration timeout ends. This search results in gems like these ***first** three posts returned under **relevance** sort*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Economy simulation software](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/146781/economy-simulation-software)&#xD;&#xA; - [PHP and SQL, together or individually](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80434/php-and-sql-together-or-individually)&#xD;&#xA; - [Providing work experience on my resume](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82342/providing-work-experience-on-my-resume)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see almost no reason to keep **any** of these 175 posts. They add nothing. If we drop the view threshold to **2000** posts, we are *still left with [142 questions](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A0..2000+score%3A0..10+duplicate%3Ano)*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Why should we bother?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@MichaelT said it best last night:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Consider if that is the type of impression we wish to give to users who are coming into the site about the types of things we have on the site (remember, new users don't know / understand / care about historical locks).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that not all of these are historical locks; many (most? all?) of them are rejected migrations. That's no reason to keep them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Let's get rid of them with fire.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Burn with fire!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/9YfMu.gif&#xD;&#xA; [2]: https://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A0..5000+score%3A0..10+duplicate%3Ano" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20702" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7373" RevisionGUID="542202bc-d0f0-4a5e-83e0-a97746d02db9" CreationDate="2015-05-20T15:11:13.730" UserId="144365" Text="On Stack Overflow, you can click the vote total and it divides into two values: up votes and down votes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't work this way on Programmers (and many other Stack Exchange sites).  Yet, I've observed people talk about the number of up/down votes they've gotten for questions they post here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can I see these separated values?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/i9PQQ.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20703" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7373" RevisionGUID="542202bc-d0f0-4a5e-83e0-a97746d02db9" CreationDate="2015-05-20T15:11:13.730" UserId="144365" Text="How to see up and down vote totals" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20704" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7373" RevisionGUID="542202bc-d0f0-4a5e-83e0-a97746d02db9" CreationDate="2015-05-20T15:11:13.730" UserId="144365" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20705" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7374" RevisionGUID="092b24bd-ae1c-411a-8c7d-87c302937a79" CreationDate="2015-05-20T15:16:30.417" UserId="25936" Text="Seeing vote counts is one of the perks of the [Established User privilege][1], that's awarded at 1000 rep. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once you earn the privilege, it'll work the same as on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/established-user" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20706" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7375" RevisionGUID="1ff854bd-b561-40b9-8cee-e7fc60f761f6" CreationDate="2015-05-20T18:06:30.483" UserId="31260" Text="This question appears to be quite popular:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134118/why-are-shortcuts-like-x-y-considered-good-practice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently it has over 34K views, making it in [top 250 all time](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A34000) ([top 150](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A34000+closed%3Ano) if we discard closed questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, it managed to attract couple answers of sub-par quality. Can we please do something about these, following [guidance provided in related discussion at MSE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/103069/165773 &quot;How aggressively should we maintain and improve very popular questions?&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...answers that are strong candidates for deletion:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;  - belong to low rep or anon users with no real commitment to the community&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;  - are *provably* duplicate, that is, were added well after (30+ mins later) other answers that contained the same exact information&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;  - are short in length&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;  - do not explain much of anything" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20707" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7375" RevisionGUID="1ff854bd-b561-40b9-8cee-e7fc60f761f6" CreationDate="2015-05-20T18:06:30.483" UserId="31260" Text="Can we please cleanup this popular question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20708" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7375" RevisionGUID="1ff854bd-b561-40b9-8cee-e7fc60f761f6" CreationDate="2015-05-20T18:06:30.483" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|answer-quality|popular-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20709" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7376" RevisionGUID="8109ff4d-65e1-4088-8738-319f59849987" CreationDate="2015-05-20T18:49:36.033" UserId="4" Text="I just deleted all answers that were not positive scoring (&lt;= 0). I'm debating historical locking it, but I don't think it meets all the criteria for a historical lock. I do wish that there was a &quot;popular, but we don't need to beat a dead horse&quot; lock or a stronger form of question protection." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20710" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7377" RevisionGUID="a0f7aa2f-9f1e-4a0a-88fd-1ebd30b1e190" CreationDate="2015-05-20T19:02:08.617" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20711" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7378" RevisionGUID="06e7d417-e230-4b95-b25c-0b7288f955f2" CreationDate="2015-05-20T19:02:08.617" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20713" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7379" RevisionGUID="3e9dbbf9-6e49-4008-9bbc-d9e3576fd592" CreationDate="2015-05-21T14:09:10.173" UserId="88986" Text="[`locked:yes views:0..2000 score:0..3 duplicate:no migrated:no`](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A0..2000+score%3A0..3+duplicate%3Ano+migrated%3Ano)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65270/want-to-switch-from-enterprise-software-development-to-c-programming?s=49|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51248/have-you-read-free-software-programmed-in-haskell-what-did-you-think?s=48|0.0000&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 1 score:&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48770/what-are-the-duties-of-a-software-control-management-scm-engineer-in-a-large-c?s=47|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74895/library-planning?s=45|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79673/what-are-some-good-tests-for-oo-modeling-skills?s=44|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21032/help-me-construct-a-list-of-best-approaches-for-new-c-and-c-developers?s=43|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60764/general-tips-on-writing-specs-for-java-programmers?s=42|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87888/what-is-the-proper-name-for-this-design-pattern-in-python?s=41|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30173/about-c-objects-and-the-possibilties-it-has?s=40|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90850/how-to-start-with-2d-or-3d-modeling?s=39|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/219131/forcing-users-to-use-javascript?s=38|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39728/crash-course-in-c?s=37|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65316/what-are-some-tips-for-avoiding-death-by-powerpoint-during-a-technical-present?s=36|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/104232/how-do-you-address-or-avoid-problems-with-new-features-being-quickly-added-to-th?s=35|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88875/web-development-for-people-who-mainly-do-client-side?s=34|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/116407/collaborative-coding-chat-options?s=33|0.0000&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###2 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66976/how-important-would-a-statistics-course-be-to-a-software-developer?s=32|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42899/could-anyone-suggest-me-some-image-manipulation-techniques-to-be-added-to-my-ima?s=31|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58990/how-to-improve-algorithms-studying?s=30|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83695/how-can-i-keep-track-of-all-the-websites-ive-made-like-a-proper-business-would?s=29|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81176/project-management-tool-for-developers-and-sysadmins-shared-or-separate?s=28|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77296/static-languages-or-dynamic-languages?s=27|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87385/pci-compliance-with-offshore-development?s=26|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80051/practice-programming-guidance?s=25|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11757/what-are-good-social-coding-sites?s=24|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125553/what-is-deconcatenation?s=23|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130233/am-i-supposed-to-remember-code-from-the-book-im-using-to-learn?s=22|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75439/how-is-a-net-developer-related-to-customer-relationship-management-crm?s=21|0.0000&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 3 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78065/software-methodologies?s=20|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/94040/what-to-study-at-grad-school-if-i-want-to-know-about-programming-languages?s=19|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78325/book-on-information-technology-concepts-for-developer?s=18|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66634/wheres-the-unix-philosophy-community?s=17|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88359/is-the-spark-view-engine-for-asp-net-dead?s=16|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89817/can-hadoop-be-made-production-stable-on-a-windows-platform?s=15|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141676/recommendable-reads-about-programming-history?s=14|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38507/what-are-the-most-important-things-to-know-about-iphone-development?s=13|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; 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  <row Id="20723" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7382" RevisionGUID="d0c02fe1-37f1-4df6-9d58-76e02484d417" CreationDate="2015-05-22T12:59:25.897" UserId="180911" Text="|discussion|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20724" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7285" RevisionGUID="1bdb6314-57bc-49ef-afb1-f57346433b30" CreationDate="2015-05-22T14:04:06.737" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|stci|stci-phase2|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20725" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7382" RevisionGUID="307526dd-d405-47e7-8142-07e9d0d92087" CreationDate="2015-05-22T14:04:20.660" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20726" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7383" RevisionGUID="8c9dc33b-67e7-48a5-847c-a72f58e093fc" CreationDate="2015-05-22T14:19:26.207" UserId="51529" Text="[![First job? We can help!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/x9tUK.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/20323/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20727" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7383" RevisionGUID="61d1c9eb-4a56-413a-a3f9-e028ba8170c1" CreationDate="2015-05-22T14:19:26.207" UserId="51529" />
  <row Id="20728" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7382" RevisionGUID="3927ab68-097b-4f99-afee-01c012568d27" CreationDate="2015-05-22T16:09:34.277" UserId="47" Comment="typo" Text="Most of the changes won’t be visible; these tweaks go along with recent updates that were made to Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - We are moving the site's CSS to a newly refactored LESS system, so that it's easier for us to fix SE network CSS bugs globally and launch new features in the future.&#xD;&#xA; - We are updating the graphics to SVG for retina support. &#xD;&#xA; - We've fixed a LOT of obscure bugs that arose when new features were not thoroughly tested across the entire network.&#xD;&#xA; - Visually it should &quot;feel&quot; the same as the old site with slight layout adjustments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**But more importantly, it will give you access to [the new profile](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2015/04/two-new-user-pages-one-new-stat-this-ones-big/)!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This update should retro-actively fix most of the old design bugs. Once it goes live, we’ll update this post and if you see any new bugs, or old ones not yet fixed, please post an answer here to let us know!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20729" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7382" RevisionGUID="15a21639-112f-4610-a1e8-5186a1806256" CreationDate="2015-05-22T16:49:00.990" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/601791885414440960" />
  <row Id="20731" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7384" RevisionGUID="2340f76c-9204-4944-a94e-9d7eb997f560" CreationDate="2015-05-23T10:26:45.880" UserId="161917" Text="[tag:resources]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seems to be a mix of on-topic questions about things like managing memory, and off-topic questions about off-site educational resources. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've already suggested a tag wiki edit so new users have at least a chance to see this distinction, but we should also clean up the old questions that used this tag for what is now considered off-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20732" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7384" RevisionGUID="583f296b-5482-4a4b-a01a-e31d8dd85b63" CreationDate="2015-05-23T10:26:45.880" UserId="161917" />
  <row Id="20734" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="5b942dcf-2a40-41d6-83ab-f22a60f3a3d8" CreationDate="2015-05-23T12:58:03.043" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 247 characters in body" Text="# Tags to Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags:&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:grad-school] [tag:university] [tag:college]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:student] [tag:students]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags:&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20739" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="4c9fea0d-8b9b-44fc-89fa-bed73abf13a4" CreationDate="2015-05-23T19:29:20.077" UserId="4" Comment="added 19 characters in body" Text="# Tags to Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:grad-school] [tag:university] [tag:college] [tag:degree]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning]  [tag:unlearning] [tag:exam] [tag:learning-curve] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching] [tag:tutorial]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:student] [tag:students] [tag:children]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Uncategorized tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:problem] [tag:problems]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20741" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7378" RevisionGUID="5a80b3d9-67d0-4069-a853-8756055e1d17" CreationDate="2015-05-23T20:34:33.037" UserId="173670" Comment="added 53 characters in body" Text="Questions which have no up-voted or accepted answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20742" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="7378" RevisionGUID="5a80b3d9-67d0-4069-a853-8756055e1d17" CreationDate="2015-05-23T20:34:33.037" Comment="Proposed by 173670 approved by 22815, 5099 edit id of 19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20743" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7384" RevisionGUID="c068b829-d929-42f8-883a-994d4f0f1d05" CreationDate="2015-05-25T00:27:27.570" UserId="161917" Comment="added 143 characters in body" Text="[tag:resources]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seems to be a mix of on-topic questions about things like managing memory, and off-topic questions about off-site educational resources. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've already suggested a tag wiki edit so new users have at least a chance to see this distinction, but we should also clean up the old questions that used this tag for what is now considered off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Case in point, we just got [this question](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/284868/good-c-books-for-a-non-programmer)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20744" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7385" RevisionGUID="63e22e33-ba99-48f0-a38f-5afeca5033f9" CreationDate="2015-05-25T12:40:59.087" UserId="161917" Text="The question: https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/284881/amateur-question-about-corrupt-software/284901#284901&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My initial reaction to it is essentially the same as the first comment it got:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question pushes the boundaries of what is on-topic here in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; several ways (opinion-based, list format, perhaps even education&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice), but I find it so fantastic that for once, someone responsible&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for portraying us to the outside world doesn't simply make stuff up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that I hope it will get a lot of love. –  Kilian Foth [6 hours ago](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/284881/amateur-question-about-corrupt-software/284901#comment586495_284881)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question currently has four close votes on it, a couple fairly good answers, and I've seen it in the hot network questions list at least once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I believe this question is valuable and worth keeping open.** However, it's not like there's an obviously on-topic part and an obviously off-topic part; arguably every part of it is an opinion poll. So I don't know what needs changing to get those close votes retracted. Or maybe I'm just wrong and the question should've been closed ages ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So this is directed primarily at the close voters, but also at anyone who might be willing to cast a reopen vote should this question get closed. **What changes do you think are required to make that question acceptable, or do you think it's unsalvageable?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few ideas I do have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Simply remove bullet point #5, as it's by far the most opinion-based of the five, and the best answers have either punted on it or devoted very little time to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Change much of the wording to something like &quot;How would a professional programmer be expected to respond to this situation?&quot;, i.e. make it about industry best practices (like the good answers describe) rather than simply a poll for all of our l33t anti-hacker techniques.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If anyone thinks the *main* problem with this question is that it's too broad/asking too many questions, we could split the four &quot;good&quot;(?) bullet points into 2-4 separate questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm more than willing to do the actual editing, I just have no idea which aspect of the question needs editing to prevent closure without removing the spirit of the question (if that's even possible)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20745" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7385" RevisionGUID="63e22e33-ba99-48f0-a38f-5afeca5033f9" CreationDate="2015-05-25T12:40:59.087" UserId="161917" Text="How can we (or should we) keep &quot;Amateur question about corrupt software&quot; open?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20746" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7385" RevisionGUID="63e22e33-ba99-48f0-a38f-5afeca5033f9" CreationDate="2015-05-25T12:40:59.087" UserId="161917" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20747" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7385" RevisionGUID="477e8f84-0227-458f-a889-0bc86bb16fc7" CreationDate="2015-05-25T12:46:15.977" UserId="161917" Comment="added 81 characters in body" Text="The question: https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/284881/amateur-question-about-corrupt-software/284901#284901&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My initial reaction to it is essentially the same as the first comment it got:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question pushes the boundaries of what is on-topic here in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; several ways (opinion-based, list format, perhaps even education&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice), but I find it so fantastic that for once, someone responsible&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for portraying us to the outside world doesn't simply make stuff up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that I hope it will get a lot of love. –  Kilian Foth [6 hours ago](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/284881/amateur-question-about-corrupt-software/284901#comment586495_284881)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question currently has four close votes on it, a couple fairly good answers, and I've seen it in the hot network questions list at least once. I haven't cast any kind of vote on it (since it has enough upvotes already imo).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I believe this question is valuable and worth keeping open.** However, it's not like there's an obviously on-topic part and an obviously off-topic part; arguably every part of it is an opinion poll. So I don't know what needs changing to get those close votes retracted. Or maybe I'm just wrong and the question should've been closed ages ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So this is directed primarily at the close voters, but also at anyone who might be willing to cast a reopen vote should this question get closed. **What changes do you think are required to make that question acceptable, or do you think it's unsalvageable?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few ideas I do have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Simply remove bullet point #5, as it's by far the most opinion-based of the five, and the best answers have either punted on it or devoted very little time to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Change much of the wording to something like &quot;How would a professional programmer be expected to respond to this situation?&quot;, i.e. make it about industry best practices (like the good answers describe) rather than simply a poll for all of our l33t anti-hacker techniques.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If anyone thinks the *main* problem with this question is that it's too broad/asking too many questions, we could split the four &quot;good&quot;(?) bullet points into 2-4 separate questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm more than willing to do the actual editing, I just have no idea which aspect of the question needs editing to prevent closure without removing the spirit of the question (if that's even possible)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20748" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7385" RevisionGUID="320dbf82-f8c6-49d9-9aec-83bb8771bc35" CreationDate="2015-05-25T13:41:10.590" UserId="25936" Comment="I never understood why people would link to answers when talking about the question (yes, this is very common)" Text="The question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/284881/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My initial reaction to it is essentially the same as the first comment it got:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question pushes the boundaries of what is on-topic here in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; several ways (opinion-based, list format, perhaps even education&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice), but I find it so fantastic that for once, someone responsible&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for portraying us to the outside world doesn't simply make stuff up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that I hope it will get a lot of love. –  Kilian Foth [6 hours ago](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/284881/amateur-question-about-corrupt-software/284901#comment586495_284881)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question currently has four close votes on it, a couple fairly good answers, and I've seen it in the hot network questions list at least once. I haven't cast any kind of vote on it (since it has enough upvotes already imo).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I believe this question is valuable and worth keeping open.** However, it's not like there's an obviously on-topic part and an obviously off-topic part; arguably every part of it is an opinion poll. So I don't know what needs changing to get those close votes retracted. Or maybe I'm just wrong and the question should've been closed ages ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So this is directed primarily at the close voters, but also at anyone who might be willing to cast a reopen vote should this question get closed. **What changes do you think are required to make that question acceptable, or do you think it's unsalvageable?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few ideas I do have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Simply remove bullet point #5, as it's by far the most opinion-based of the five, and the best answers have either punted on it or devoted very little time to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Change much of the wording to something like &quot;How would a professional programmer be expected to respond to this situation?&quot;, i.e. make it about industry best practices (like the good answers describe) rather than simply a poll for all of our l33t anti-hacker techniques.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If anyone thinks the *main* problem with this question is that it's too broad/asking too many questions, we could split the four &quot;good&quot;(?) bullet points into 2-4 separate questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm more than willing to do the actual editing, I just have no idea which aspect of the question needs editing to prevent closure without removing the spirit of the question (if that's even possible)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20749" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7386" RevisionGUID="8b13f075-1444-47ce-88d8-dc4399c7c444" CreationDate="2015-05-25T13:53:31.760" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I'm going to start out with &quot;Too broad&quot; does fit the question.  There are five sub questions within it.  The problem that this leads to is people answer one of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, you find answers that start out &quot;Some opinions&quot; which also leads to an indication of an issue with the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both of these would need to be addressed to have the question fit well into the expectations of Q&amp;A on Programmers.SE.  Otherwise it becomes a bike shed question that seems to be one that would be more applicable to WorldBuilding.SE than Programmers.SE. I would suggest mods doing the mod thing and chatting up the WorldBuilding.SE mods to see if they want the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem posed in the question is a &quot;how to make the plot more believable&quot; and that... it really stretches the bounds of the topicality for the site.  Its not a *bad* question and can be quite interesting (having a technical advisor for a movie is a good thing). But *everyone* is offering advice and there is no right answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the type of question that really needs the dense two way communication to understand the back and forth necessary to understand the nature of the question (and the plot) to be able to provide the proper technical background.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bigger issue is that any significant changes to the question would likely make most (if not all) of the answers invalid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Breaking it down question by subquestion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. If you were to notice something was not working in a unique program, a bug, what would be your next step in correcting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is too broad and not specified well enough to be answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. What would it take to corrupt a full program to give &quot;worse results&quot;? Just a small change of a number on the 54th line? Is that even how you would say it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP should try getting a moderately complex and tinker with it. There are lots of Javascript and php programs out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3. Would you have physically printed out your code after creating a unique program?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Opinion.  That said, the moderately complex programs (I'm just pulling up Kittens Game as an example) has on the order of 24k SLOC. At 50 lines per page, gives on the order of 500 pages to print out the source... That said, in a single class file that was solely responsible printing out receipts for a point of sales system  I've dealt with similar sizes (1M SLOC isn't uncommon for software projects). How much do you want your toner company to love you and your purchasing department to hate you?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4. What would be your biggest concern after creating a unique program? How do your safe guard?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Opinion poll again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This really shows the problem with the question - it is comprised of polls that are infinitely answerable and everyone has a suggestion about what color to paint the bike shed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20751" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7386" RevisionGUID="ff884589-507e-4e17-bff7-c92e828a3812" CreationDate="2015-05-25T14:21:41.607" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 190 characters in body" Text="I'm going to start out with &quot;Too broad&quot; does fit the question.  There are five sub questions within it.  The problem that this leads to is people answer one of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, you find answers that start out &quot;Some opinions&quot; which also leads to an indication of an issue with the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both of these would need to be addressed to have the question fit well into the expectations of Q&amp;A on Programmers.SE.  Otherwise it becomes a bike shed question that seems to be one that would be more applicable to WorldBuilding.SE than Programmers.SE. I would suggest mods doing the mod thing and chatting up the WorldBuilding.SE mods to see if they want the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem posed in the question is a &quot;how to make the plot more believable&quot; and that... it really stretches the bounds of the topicality for the site.  Its not a *bad* question and can be quite interesting (having a technical advisor for a movie is a good thing). But *everyone* is offering advice and there is no right answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the type of question that really needs the dense two way communication to understand the back and forth necessary to understand the nature of the question (and the plot) to be able to provide the proper technical background.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bigger issue is that any significant changes to the question would likely make most (if not all) of the answers invalid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Breaking it down question by subquestion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. If you were to notice something was not working in a unique program, a bug, what would be your next step in correcting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is too broad and not specified well enough to be answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. What would it take to corrupt a full program to give &quot;worse results&quot;? Just a small change of a number on the 54th line? Is that even how you would say it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP should try getting a moderately complex and tinker with it. There are lots of Javascript and php programs out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3. Would you have physically printed out your code after creating a unique program?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Opinion.  That said, the moderately complex programs (I'm just pulling up Kittens Game as an example) has on the order of 24k SLOC. At 50 lines per page, gives on the order of 500 pages to print out the source... That said, in a single class file that was solely responsible printing out receipts for a point of sales system  I've dealt with similar sizes (1M SLOC isn't uncommon for software projects). How much do you want your toner company to love you and your purchasing department to hate you?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4. What would be your biggest concern after creating a unique program? How do your safe guard?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Opinion poll again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 5. &lt;s&gt;What is your biggest pet peev about how Hollywood has depicted anyone behind a computer? In contrast, who has nailed it?&lt;/s&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Removed, though again, completely an opinion poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This really shows the problem with the question - it is comprised of polls that are infinitely answerable and everyone has a suggestion about what color to paint the bike shed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20753" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7387" RevisionGUID="a47fcd96-1489-4ce0-a9fb-0d0e8ffa23c1" CreationDate="2015-05-25T20:58:09.837" UserId="25811" Text="This question is asking for opinion based answers, and if the rules are strictly followed in theory it should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this alone isn't particularly important. What is important is what sort of community we want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically; does anyone actually want a community full of pedantic &quot;enforcers&quot; who are too inflexible to bend the rules a little in rare cases where it's clearly justified?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of the community; I vote this question remains open despite the rules.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20755" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7388" RevisionGUID="6f97c265-1546-4396-91d8-db1044080c8a" CreationDate="2015-05-26T20:24:03.640" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="In the continuing effort to clean up our image and the historical pathways that people find Programmers.SE (in the spirit of http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7166/update-introducing-programmers-blog-to-reflect-site-scope-change ) I would point to [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This blog post features the text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But software and programming isn’t always a hard science, either. Once you get past the does this code compile or not questions, you’re dealing with issues of best practices, experiences, and behaviors. Perhaps because our communities have become so accustomed to getting quick, accurate, and timely answers, they feel that even a subjective Stack Overflow is better than the alternatives. So much so, that our fellow programmers created [a sister site specifically for their pent up subjective questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/). Take one heaping pile of subjective questions, bottle it up for over two years and… kablooey!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![stats][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The [programmers.stackexchange.com](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/) site exploded overnight, hosting some of the best (and worst) questions on the Stack Exchange network. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's the question to consider. Would a person reading that understand what the scope of Programmers.SE as it is today is intended to be? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, we are *not* a place for subjective discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest putting in an &quot;editor's note&quot; to the effect that Programmers.SE is the place for *conceptual* questions of software design and architecture and while this does stray into the softer side of answers, it is certainly not the place for subjective discussions that the site was when it was 29 days old. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/wp-content/uploads/programmers-se.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20756" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7388" RevisionGUID="6f97c265-1546-4396-91d8-db1044080c8a" CreationDate="2015-05-26T20:24:03.640" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="About that &quot;Good Subjective Bad Subjective&quot; blog post and Programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20757" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7388" RevisionGUID="6f97c265-1546-4396-91d8-db1044080c8a" CreationDate="2015-05-26T20:24:03.640" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|support|subjective|site-definition|bad-questions|low-quality-posts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20758" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7388" RevisionGUID="25f5841f-4bf8-4165-8c24-07e9ee45ed40" CreationDate="2015-05-26T21:17:31.393" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add ps and additional P.SE refrence." Text="In the continuing effort to clean up our image and the historical pathways that people find Programmers.SE (in the spirit of http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7166/update-introducing-programmers-blog-to-reflect-site-scope-change ) I would point to [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This blog post features the text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But software and programming isn’t always a hard science, either. Once you get past the does this code compile or not questions, you’re dealing with issues of best practices, experiences, and behaviors. Perhaps because our communities have become so accustomed to getting quick, accurate, and timely answers, they feel that even a subjective Stack Overflow is better than the alternatives. So much so, that our fellow programmers created [a sister site specifically for their pent up subjective questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/). Take one heaping pile of subjective questions, bottle it up for over two years and… kablooey!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![stats][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The [programmers.stackexchange.com](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/) site exploded overnight, hosting some of the best (and worst) questions on the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and then further down:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can expect to see these guidelines enforced on programmers.stackexchange.com over the next week or so, and made policy network-wide, wherever subjectivity is part of the site topic itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's the question to consider. Would a person reading that understand what the scope of Programmers.SE as it is today is intended to be? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, we are *not* a place for subjective discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest putting in an &quot;editor's note&quot; to the effect that Programmers.SE is the place for *conceptual* questions of software design and architecture and while this does stray into the softer side of answers, it is certainly not the place for subjective discussions that the site was when it was 29 days old. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S.  Your links to &quot;The chat room/forum problem (&amp; an apology to @Technosailor)&quot; are dead.  The new link is http://scobleizer.com/?p=5980&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/wp-content/uploads/programmers-se.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20759" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7389" RevisionGUID="e4dc2b0f-cbff-43f9-846a-08791a478eb4" CreationDate="2015-05-27T01:41:47.720" UserId="63" Text="Yeah, ok, done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;Editorial note (May 26, 2015):&lt;/b&gt; It's instructive to look back now on the direction the Programmers community took after the enforcement of these standards began... Today it remains an excellent venue for conceptual questions on programming and software development, but has little patience for the sorts of overtly-subjective discussions (some might say &quot;navel-gazing&quot;) that marked its early history. You can read more about the history of this site and these questions in &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144&quot;&gt;veteran moderator Yannis's writeup on Meta Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20760" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7390" RevisionGUID="0732d41b-1ee5-4bc3-b954-eef25b0edb5f" CreationDate="2015-05-27T02:30:06.450" UserId="88986" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [developer] -&gt; [software-developer]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's possible they should both be added to STCI, but at the very least, I don't see much of a difference between these tags. Software developer has more questions and a wiki, so I suppose it should be the target." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20761" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7390" RevisionGUID="0732d41b-1ee5-4bc3-b954-eef25b0edb5f" CreationDate="2015-05-27T02:30:06.450" UserId="88986" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [developer] -&gt; [software-developer]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20762" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7390" RevisionGUID="0732d41b-1ee5-4bc3-b954-eef25b0edb5f" CreationDate="2015-05-27T02:30:06.450" UserId="88986" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20763" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7390" RevisionGUID="8ea7a32c-1e00-4084-811a-86c660e31d44" CreationDate="2015-05-27T02:58:34.617" UserId="88986" Comment="added 119 characters in body" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [tag:developer] -&gt; [tag:software-developer]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's possible they should both be added to STCI, but at the very least, I don't see much of a difference between these tags. Software developer has more questions and a wiki, so I suppose it should be the target.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[**Synonym link**](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/software-developer/synonyms) for manual voting" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20764" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7391" RevisionGUID="696fbc81-69db-492a-b329-518642f6a978" CreationDate="2015-05-27T08:54:18.767" UserId="4" Text="For the purposes of being able to accept an answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[meta-tag:status-complete]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20765" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7392" RevisionGUID="3596348a-da23-497f-90e6-6e3b863f5234" CreationDate="2015-05-27T10:38:22.430" UserId="179363" Text="Why was my question closed as [primarily opinion based](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/284922/what-is-a-sa-mgr) ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is definitely wrong" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20766" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7392" RevisionGUID="3596348a-da23-497f-90e6-6e3b863f5234" CreationDate="2015-05-27T10:38:22.430" UserId="179363" Text="Primarily opinion based error" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20767" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7392" RevisionGUID="3596348a-da23-497f-90e6-6e3b863f5234" CreationDate="2015-05-27T10:38:22.430" UserId="179363" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20768" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7393" RevisionGUID="423dd6f6-0d48-47a7-b153-292161b86057" CreationDate="2015-05-27T10:48:31.210" UserId="4" Text="Why is it wrong?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We aren't necessarily experts in the terminology of a particular region, industry, or company. Therefore, we can share our thoughts or opinions, but may not be able to find facts or references to support our claims. I suppose the &quot;too broad&quot; reason would have also worked for the same reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Either way, it's not a suitable question for a Stack Exchange site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20769" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7390" RevisionGUID="62a03a84-1482-454d-a2c0-7dbcd9a62794" CreationDate="2015-05-27T10:49:53.093" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20770" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7392" RevisionGUID="33ab4fe8-17b5-4a90-b695-2e10ccfeb058" CreationDate="2015-05-27T11:00:15.883" UserId="25768" Comment="added quote of question in question" Text="Why was my question closed as [primarily opinion based](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/284922/what-is-a-sa-mgr) ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; #What is a Sa Mgr.?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I read some (software engineers) linkedIn profiles where they have &quot;Sa&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mgr.&quot; as current job role.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is a &quot;Sa Mgr.&quot; ? I suppose Mgr stands for &quot;manager&quot; but I have no&#xD;&#xA;&gt; idea on what &quot;Sa&quot; stands for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is definitely wrong" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20774" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7391" RevisionGUID="ae478911-70be-462d-a3d5-1ee331a139c8" CreationDate="2015-05-27T15:54:26.353" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo corrected" Text="For the purposes of being able to accept an answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[meta-tag:status-completed]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20775" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7392" RevisionGUID="5f98485c-f2bb-4785-b830-387bb0ae37a1" CreationDate="2015-05-27T15:55:42.760" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20776" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7394" RevisionGUID="ea8d5bdf-17cc-49f9-96cf-41aed6a87ca8" CreationDate="2015-05-27T17:42:37.100" UserId="1204" Text="Code troubleshooting and code implementation questions are not in Programmers' site scope.  Although there is an option to migrate such questions to Stack Overflow, the vast majority of them are not of sufficient quality to migrate there.  Thus ensues a long-winded explanation of how we don't accept troubleshooting or implementation questions, but your question is not of sufficient quality to be migrated to Stack Overflow, yada yada.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close reason ought to be simple enough:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Question about **writing specific code** (i.e. troubleshooting and implementation) are off-topic on Programmers.  You might be able to get help on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/), but *read their [Help Center](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) first.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20777" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7394" RevisionGUID="ea8d5bdf-17cc-49f9-96cf-41aed6a87ca8" CreationDate="2015-05-27T17:42:37.100" UserId="1204" Text="Add a new close reason for implementation and troubleshooting questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20778" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7394" RevisionGUID="ea8d5bdf-17cc-49f9-96cf-41aed6a87ca8" CreationDate="2015-05-27T17:42:37.100" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20779" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7395" RevisionGUID="c3f6e81c-7a0f-4634-bf36-72db315b3bc2" CreationDate="2015-05-27T18:08:48.730" UserId="88986" Text="**At first glance**, this actually does not appear to be a problem (keep reading!!); I used [this SEDE query](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/edit/319614) to see what custom close reasons we are using for this; only 24 of these 171 questions have a comment that includes the characters `implementation`, `debug`, or `verflow`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**However, this is not a complete picture of the story.** Sometimes other things happen to these questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. These questions get deleted. This happens often, and therefore cannot be analyzed using SEDE.&#xD;&#xA; 2. These questions are migrated to Stack Overflow, even when they are of low quality. This also happens often. Robert Harvey can probably speak to this better than I can. &#xD;&#xA;   - A famous Jeff Atwood quote comes to mind: [Don't migrate crap!!](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/82941/please-dont-migrate-low-quality-questions-to-other-sites) Without this custom close reason, we will migrate crap far more often than we ought to.&#xD;&#xA; 3. People use less accurate close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;   - Of course, this is fine from the principle of crap getting closed, but...&#xD;&#xA;   - It's not fine from the principle of &quot;educating users exactly why things are happening&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**We need this custom close reason.** These questions are already getting closed and deleted by the community **anyway**; having an extra close reason isn't going to change that. What it will do is organize these questions more appropriately, and **educate future users on how and where to ask questions**." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20780" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7394" RevisionGUID="7e203b95-5d43-41e3-9130-efef8704a441" CreationDate="2015-05-27T18:10:06.310" UserId="88986" Comment="Added link, changed tags" Text="Code troubleshooting and code implementation questions are not in Programmers' site scope.  Although there is an option to migrate such questions to Stack Overflow, the vast majority of them are not of sufficient quality to migrate there.  Thus ensues a long-winded explanation of how we don't accept troubleshooting or implementation questions, but your question is not of sufficient quality to be migrated to Stack Overflow, yada yada.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close reason ought to be simple enough:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Question about **writing specific code** (i.e. troubleshooting and implementation) are [off-topic on Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  You might be able to get help on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/), but *read their [Help Center](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) first.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20781" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7394" RevisionGUID="7e203b95-5d43-41e3-9130-efef8704a441" CreationDate="2015-05-27T18:10:06.310" UserId="88986" Comment="Added link, changed tags" Text="|support|close-reasons|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20782" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7396" RevisionGUID="0e1d049a-0752-4cc2-a61e-e87c6a23a935" CreationDate="2015-05-28T09:22:36.247" UserId="181650" Text="If  i were to ask a question for the best programming language for a specific task but gave specific factors that would be taken into account would it still be too broad/flame/opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example if i asked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;What are the best/required languages for creating a windows driver with a GUI frontend that would also be run as service in terms of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Speed of execution  &#xD;&#xA;Production time  &#xD;&#xA;Flexibility  &#xD;&#xA;Maintainability  &#xD;&#xA;Compatibility of languages involved/ease of integration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would that be acceptable or instantly closed ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20783" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7396" RevisionGUID="0e1d049a-0752-4cc2-a61e-e87c6a23a935" CreationDate="2015-05-28T09:22:36.247" UserId="181650" Text="Would this be considered too broad,/open ended?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20784" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7396" RevisionGUID="0e1d049a-0752-4cc2-a61e-e87c6a23a935" CreationDate="2015-05-28T09:22:36.247" UserId="181650" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20785" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7397" RevisionGUID="4125aa7e-19a5-4fcd-9e18-6deb3270fdb9" CreationDate="2015-05-28T09:44:36.633" UserId="60357" Text="This would be instantly closed. Please see the Meta question [Why was my question closed or down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/), especially the points [Off Topic: What technology to take up next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/) and [Off Topic: Recommend a tool, library, or other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While your metrics try to make the question objective, such recommendation questions are still ill-suited for Programmers.SE. Also, your metrics fail to provide an objective framework since nearly each metric is highly subjective, and the relation of metrics to each other is not defined – if a language ranks high on speed and low on productivity, is this better than a language that ranks medium on both axes?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20786" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7398" RevisionGUID="b05dff8d-ace4-40e0-8c14-988e8ef3a372" CreationDate="2015-05-28T09:48:49.283" UserId="81495" Text="As amon just mentioned your question as-is would probably get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I think there might be something interesting buried in there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you shifted the focus of the question away from technology &amp; metrics, and focused on the requirements you're trying to fulfil (have a GUI, provide functionality as a service, provide a device driver) you could have a really interesting *architectural* question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20787" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7399" RevisionGUID="2f7a1352-ed0d-4d46-b09e-1bac7c0c7a4c" CreationDate="2015-05-28T14:22:07.877" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="[tag:philosophy] has the hallmarks of either a meta-tag, being a *very* soft question, or being completely irrelevant to philosophical discourse. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The ones that are actually about philosophy are too old to migrate to Philosophy.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are *only* tagged philosophy may be problematic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20788" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7399" RevisionGUID="4c270c8b-7a9b-4d72-98f1-f710dadb42d7" CreationDate="2015-05-28T14:22:07.877" UserDisplayName="user40980" />
  <row Id="20789" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7295" RevisionGUID="26f0139d-c177-4ca3-8601-ca644163ef47" CreationDate="2015-05-28T23:59:53.707" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 48 characters in body" Text="[tag:payment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag appears to have two uses. One is with regards to implementation of payment systems and transactions and the other is with respect to getting paid as a contractor, freelancer, or employee. The second type of question is off-topic. This tag could be removed from the off-topic questions and a clear tag wiki provided. Alternatively, it could be renamed (example: [tag:payment-system] to make it clear that it's about software systems and not getting paid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: [tag:pricing] [tag:cost-estimation]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20792" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7396" RevisionGUID="a64cdeaf-8a0a-45a3-a50f-d017be443b64" CreationDate="2015-05-29T15:17:41.120" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="edited title" Text="Would this be considered too broad/open ended?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20793" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5747" RevisionGUID="ec1d04fe-e3c2-403a-86c3-f81b48864688" CreationDate="2015-05-29T17:04:13.467" UserId="25476" Comment="Updating the old FAQ link to the Help Center" Text="This is where the diagram on the [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help) comes into play.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally the accepted definition of what is acceptable here, whether it be career advice or not, is within the blue area of the diagram below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am having trouble convincing senior members of the team to go into crunch mode, how can I deal with senior members that are not willing to work 60+ hour work weeks to get the software project done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the surface you can clearly tell that this was written by a software developer or somebody that leads them.  Really though this could apply to any type of project work, therefore if falls in the All Careers circle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the best keyboard for programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one is even broader and applies to All People.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This one job is offerring me $50k per year but is in Indiana where the cost of living is cheaper and the job is more stable. Meanwhile I got another offer for $80k at a startup in Palo Alto but I will learn more cutting edge technologies.  Decide my life for me!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one is Too Localized and is unlikely to help future visitors in any way.  It applies to Just You.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regardless Career advice is unilaterally off topic as of this moment. It wasn't always so on this site so it is unrealistic to expect that every off topic question is going to be moderated.  We do miss a number of questions from time to time so don't let a lack of moderator action confuse you on this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as a decision close tree, the home page gets populated with questions that have recent activity.  Often when an older off topic question gets some activity then it gets bumped where either a moderator sees it and decides to deal with it, or a concerned community member flags it for moderator attention or just votes to close it.  There is also a Review feature that higher reputation community members can use to evaluate potentially problematic content and either take action or flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators tend to only deal with the flags that come up but we don't necessarily need a flag to take action right away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xrYwN.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20794" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7400" RevisionGUID="d8ce9a59-778f-43ac-9258-6d7155cd4421" CreationDate="2015-05-30T14:12:54.693" UserId="161917" Text="[tag:personal-projects]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feels like a meta-tag, and seems to be a magnet for opinion-based questions about what to do with said projects." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20795" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7400" RevisionGUID="4ad065e4-6eb7-4c91-85fa-c0832170ac1d" CreationDate="2015-05-30T14:12:54.693" UserId="161917" />
  <row Id="20804" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7379" RevisionGUID="3eb651d1-d336-428e-824a-69d5dcc98b3b" CreationDate="2015-06-02T10:40:11.853" UserId="25936" Comment="poof" Text="[`locked:yes views:0..2000 score:0..3 duplicate:no migrated:no`](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A0..2000+score%3A0..3+duplicate%3Ano+migrated%3Ano)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After a few days, we should have enough agreement on this batch of 49 questions to move forward with the actions in the below headings.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The following questions should remain closed, but be unlocked and have their answers undeleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87385/pci-compliance-with-offshore-development?s=26|0.0000&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##These questions should be deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 1 score:&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48770/what-are-the-duties-of-a-software-control-management-scm-engineer-in-a-large-c?s=47|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21032/help-me-construct-a-list-of-best-approaches-for-new-c-and-c-developers?s=43|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60764/general-tips-on-writing-specs-for-java-programmers?s=42|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87888/what-is-the-proper-name-for-this-design-pattern-in-python?s=41|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30173/about-c-objects-and-the-possibilties-it-has?s=40|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/219131/forcing-users-to-use-javascript?s=38|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65316/what-are-some-tips-for-avoiding-death-by-powerpoint-during-a-technical-present?s=36|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/104232/how-do-you-address-or-avoid-problems-with-new-features-being-quickly-added-to-th?s=35|0.0000&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###2 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66976/how-important-would-a-statistics-course-be-to-a-software-developer?s=32|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42899/could-anyone-suggest-me-some-image-manipulation-techniques-to-be-added-to-my-ima?s=31|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83695/how-can-i-keep-track-of-all-the-websites-ive-made-like-a-proper-business-would?s=29|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80051/practice-programming-guidance?s=25|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11757/what-are-good-social-coding-sites?s=24|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75439/how-is-a-net-developer-related-to-customer-relationship-management-crm?s=21|0.0000&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 3 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78065/software-methodologies?s=20|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/94040/what-to-study-at-grad-school-if-i-want-to-know-about-programming-languages?s=19|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78325/book-on-information-technology-concepts-for-developer?s=18|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88359/is-the-spark-view-engine-for-asp-net-dead?s=16|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141676/recommendable-reads-about-programming-history?s=14|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38507/what-are-the-most-important-things-to-know-about-iphone-development?s=13|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35052/depending-on-another-open-source-library-copy-paste-code-or-include?s=12|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97555/future-of-soap-with-rest?s=11|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/107582/why-would-an-employee-not-be-allowed-to-share-techniques?s=10|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87241/any-legal-issue-in-developing-app-similar-to-others?s=9|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63956/c-experience-for-students?s=8|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54651/how-to-make-an-app-more-intuitive?s=7|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77447/portfolio-and-nda?s=6|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43464/source-of-programmer-inefficiency?s=5|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70213/teaching-programming-quickly-to-those-adults-that-havent-programmed?s=4|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73449/functional-programming-language-for-web-development?s=3|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58420/what-makes-a-good-developer-system-documentation?s=2|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88694/is-there-an-editor-that-i-can-run-code-using-ssh?s=1|0.0000" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20805" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7404" RevisionGUID="b3580f8b-75b0-41c2-ac67-bee59719a556" CreationDate="2015-06-03T00:45:03.977" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The locked questions that I am particularly (dis)interested in are the ones that were historically locked at some point in the back and *really* haven't aged well. They are relatively low view and vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[is:question closed:yes locked:yes duplicate:no migrated:no views:..3000 votes:..20](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=is%3Aquestion+closed%3Ayes+locked%3Ayes+duplicate%3Ano+migrated%3Ano+views%3A..3000+votes%3A..20)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that this picks up a fair number of rejected migrations too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This query brings up things such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/language-agnostic-programming-books : score of 20, 1242 views, 10 answers of which many of them are *really* poorly written links and one liners.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1674/suggestions-for-programs-to-develop-for-learning : score of 12, 894 views, very poorly written question, 9 answers of which most are a single sentence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1701/career-guidance-books-for-programmers : score of 18, 1463 views, 10 answers and it shouldn't be a surprise that I include it here because most are single sentence answers (some not even a sentence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2192/what-can-slow-a-developer-down : score of 12, 1606 views, 31 answers (2 deleted), and... yes, mostly single sentence answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2331/which-language-features-are-considered-harmful : score of 20, 2454 views, 32 answers. Mostly single sentence answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hold that these questions (and others) should be closely reexamined with the [criteria from MSE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/126631/213963).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not believe that any of these questions meet the criteria of &quot;The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature&quot; and likely also fail to come close to the criteria of &quot;There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post&quot;.  Despite these question being several years old they have not shown that they have the views or the score to warrant permanency.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that these questions should be deleted. If you wish to unlock them first and then have the community delete them, that's certainly an option.  Note that only one of them in this list would require more than three delete votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20806" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7404" RevisionGUID="8530feab-76b4-44e3-a867-65778e8e3ed1" CreationDate="2015-06-03T01:11:02.457" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 1209 characters in body" Text="The locked questions that I am particularly (dis)interested in are the ones that were historically locked at some point in the back and *really* haven't aged well. They are relatively low view and vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[is:question closed:yes locked:yes duplicate:no migrated:no views:..3000 votes:..20](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=is%3Aquestion+closed%3Ayes+locked%3Ayes+duplicate%3Ano+migrated%3Ano+views%3A..3000+votes%3A..20)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that this picks up a fair number of rejected migrations too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This query brings up things such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/language-agnostic-programming-books : score of 20, 1242 views, 10 answers of which many of them are *really* poorly written links and one liners.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1674/suggestions-for-programs-to-develop-for-learning : score of 12, 894 views, very poorly written question, 9 answers of which most are a single sentence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1701/career-guidance-books-for-programmers : score of 18, 1463 views, 10 answers and it shouldn't be a surprise that I include it here because most are single sentence answers (some not even a sentence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2192/what-can-slow-a-developer-down : score of 12, 1606 views, 31 answers (2 deleted), and... yes, mostly single sentence answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2331/which-language-features-are-considered-harmful : score of 20, 2454 views, 32 answers. Mostly single sentence answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hold that these questions (and others) should be closely reexamined with the [criteria from MSE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/126631/213963).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not believe that any of these questions meet the criteria of &quot;The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature&quot; and likely also fail to come close to the criteria of &quot;There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post&quot;.  Despite these question being several years old they have not shown that they have the views or the score to warrant permanency.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that these questions should be deleted. If you wish to unlock them first and then have the community delete them, that's certainly an option.  Note that only one of them in this list would require more than three delete votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After digging a bit on Data.SE [this isn't too big of a list to re-evaluate](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/321872?Views=3000&amp;Score=20) (once you get the migrations, unlocked, and merged questions out of there) it brings up a number of... well,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21032/help-me-construct-a-list-of-best-approaches-for-new-c-and-c-developers (+1 score, 483 views, wiki lock, last accessed a year ago)&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65316/what-are-some-tips-for-avoiding-death-by-powerpoint-during-a-technical-present (+1 score, 956 views with some really not stellar answers)&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11757/what-are-good-social-coding-sites (+2 score, 1938 views with answers of &quot;github&quot;, &quot;bitbucket&quot; and &quot;bitbucket&quot; and &quot;I have a public svn server&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141676/recommendable-reads-about-programming-history (+3 score, 539 views, 10 answers of which half don't even take up enough space to line wrap)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are questions that we are saying have historical significance and are stellar examples (all be it off topic) of what the site wishes to maintain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20807" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7385" RevisionGUID="abf7fc99-38fb-48f5-a81d-46c6398d2f6d" CreationDate="2015-06-03T08:34:13.067" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/606016015961587712" />
  <row Id="20808" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7405" RevisionGUID="5860c0f9-11de-4326-a4a2-0a96bc51ead6" CreationDate="2015-06-03T15:59:51.297" UserId="90889" Text="I recently saw my question get closed under the mantra of &quot;Primarily opinion-based&quot;. I agree that opinion-based questions should be closed, but couldn't see what about my question fell under that problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/285725&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Compounding the issue, *I don't even know what to differently*. The question did not get any comments explaining what about it was opinion-based, and in fact had a few decent &quot;answer-comments&quot; to the question I asked. The question then got deleted. If I hadn't been paying close attention to it, and I were a new user, I'd probably just post the same question again thinking there was a site error.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I came to Meta and noticed there was actually another question in which someone felt they had received this tag wrongfully, showing that this is clearly not just me with the issue. Even if people are, perhaps rightfully, of the opinion that a question deserves to be closed, couldn't we avoid a *lot* of this type of confusion by actually explaining to someone what in their question was unclear, too subjective, or where they formed the foundation of their question on a presumptuous opinion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20809" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7405" RevisionGUID="5860c0f9-11de-4326-a4a2-0a96bc51ead6" CreationDate="2015-06-03T15:59:51.297" UserId="90889" Text="Questions being closed as opinion-based *without* an explanatory comment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20810" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7405" RevisionGUID="5860c0f9-11de-4326-a4a2-0a96bc51ead6" CreationDate="2015-06-03T15:59:51.297" UserId="90889" Text="|discussion|opinion-based|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20811" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7405" RevisionGUID="725e7708-e3c3-4fad-9565-26c2a5cda590" CreationDate="2015-06-03T16:17:03.083" UserId="60357" Comment="fixed link" Text="I recently saw my question get closed under the mantra of &quot;Primarily opinion-based&quot;. I agree that opinion-based questions should be closed, but couldn't see what about my question fell under that problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/285725&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Compounding the issue, *I don't even know what to differently*. The question did not get any comments explaining what about it was opinion-based, and in fact had a few decent &quot;answer-comments&quot; to the question I asked. The question then got deleted. If I hadn't been paying close attention to it, and I were a new user, I'd probably just post the same question again thinking there was a site error.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I came to Meta and noticed there was actually another question in which someone felt they had received this tag wrongfully, showing that this is clearly not just me with the issue. Even if people are, perhaps rightfully, of the opinion that a question deserves to be closed, couldn't we avoid a *lot* of this type of confusion by actually explaining to someone what in their question was unclear, too subjective, or where they formed the foundation of their question on a presumptuous opinion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20812" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7405" RevisionGUID="d8e7afe6-a55b-41ac-8148-62fa76cc2e9a" CreationDate="2015-06-03T17:47:41.647" UserId="90889" Comment="clarified the point in response to possible duplicate" Text="I recently saw my question get closed under the mantra of &quot;Primarily opinion-based&quot;. I agree that opinion-based questions should be closed, but couldn't see what about my question fell under that problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/285725&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Compounding the issue, *I don't even know what to differently*. The question did not get any comments explaining what about it was opinion-based, and in fact had a few decent &quot;answer-comments&quot; to the question I asked. The question then got deleted. If I hadn't been paying close attention to it, and I were a new user, I'd probably just post the same question again thinking there was a site error.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I came to Meta and noticed there was actually another question in which someone felt they had received this tag wrongfully, showing that this is clearly not just me with the issue. Even if people are, perhaps rightfully, of the opinion that a question deserves to be closed, couldn't we avoid a *lot* of this type of confusion by actually explaining to someone what in their question was unclear, too subjective, or where they formed the foundation of their question on a presumptuous opinion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: Specifically, this discussion is to address *question closure in which the source of opinion disparity is not made apparent*. Just like we vote to close questions that don't provide enough information, voting to close a question that has a *specific problem* should also include information as to that problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact the &quot;possible duplicate&quot; suggestion (On the troubles of naming) might have been an excellent comment to link to in the original question that I posted, and helped me to understand why such questions tend to be viewed as &quot;Primarily opinion-based&quot;, when initially I was not seeing it at all (even without a link, a brief explanation would have sufficed). That those comments don't come first seems wasteful of everyone's time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20813" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7406" RevisionGUID="8492787b-4879-4597-9dc9-38579be3a704" CreationDate="2015-06-03T18:04:34.647" UserId="4" Text="The close vote reason provides a description of why the question was closed. It also brings you to the [help center page for what it means when a question is closed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions). That help page, among other things, has a link to a page that [tells you what to do when a question is closed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/reopen-questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is closed, you should read the reason for closure attached to the question and the linked content in the Help Center. You should also see if anyone has left a comment explaining their vote. If you disagree with the closure or don't understand it, the help center says that you should ask on Meta. Here on Programmers, we have a regular chat that may also provide help as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although this focuses on down votes, it's relevant to close votes as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/154895/downvoting-without-comment-why-its-allowed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-downvotes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20814" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7407" RevisionGUID="715ea619-a0b9-40a4-a385-5cc6b8622fd6" CreationDate="2015-06-04T12:14:15.377" UserId="25768" Text="[tag:terminology]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often becomes a &quot;name this thing&quot;-type question. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20815" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7407" RevisionGUID="057c2418-33ed-40d6-be97-f9fefb2be7fc" CreationDate="2015-06-04T12:14:15.377" UserId="25768" />
  <row Id="20821" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="a44835d8-22fd-4034-9ddd-4f96eaa18807" CreationDate="2015-06-04T14:31:32.447" UserId="4" Comment="added 23 characters in body" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:grad-school] [tag:university] [tag:college] [tag:degree]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning]  [tag:unlearning] [tag:exam] [tag:learning-curve] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching] [tag:tutorial]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:student] [tag:students] [tag:children]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Uncategorized tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:problem] [tag:problems]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:non-technical]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20822" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7409" RevisionGUID="3e8e9292-3637-4318-aaa0-6fa6c9a884ed" CreationDate="2015-06-04T18:03:07.137" UserId="175686" Text="Though SO and Programmers are obviously two different subjects, someone who is an expert in one should also be an expert in the other. So why are their reputations kept separate? Similarly, though I don't participate too much in superuser.com, but at least my SO rights should help me have the same rights on superuser, no?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20823" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7409" RevisionGUID="3e8e9292-3637-4318-aaa0-6fa6c9a884ed" CreationDate="2015-06-04T18:03:07.137" UserId="175686" Text="Why aren't StackOverflow and Programmers.SE reputations combined" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20824" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7409" RevisionGUID="3e8e9292-3637-4318-aaa0-6fa6c9a884ed" CreationDate="2015-06-04T18:03:07.137" UserId="175686" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20825" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7410" RevisionGUID="83521cfa-07b5-4df8-ad1e-33393c7ba691" CreationDate="2015-06-04T18:15:04.290" UserId="52929" Text="Knowing how to implement code may be different than being able to architect or design it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In some sense, it's like saying, &quot;why aren't construction workers able to be architects?&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some construction workers could probably do better architecture work than most architects. Some architects probably could do better construction than most construction workers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But just because someone is a construction worker doesn't mean they can design an efficient house (even if they can build it) and vice versa. Both jobs have different skills required.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is true that they might often overlap, but it is not guaranteed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20826" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7411" RevisionGUID="a853735e-f6ce-43fe-ab5f-f29d6046403e" CreationDate="2015-06-04T18:15:54.193" UserId="161917" Text="The direct answer to your title question is what Yannis said: If you don't participate on site X, you don't know enough about it to have all of the same privileges as you do on your favorite site. An especially common problem is people from site X misunderstanding the scope of site Y and voting to migrate things which Yers would instantly recognize as off-topic. There's a reason we have a chatbot to warn us about any SO comments that mention Programmers (&quot;this is subjective, so it should be on PSE&quot; is a surprisingly common comment on bad SO questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there is a toned-down version of what you're asking for in the form of the **association bonus**. If you have at least 200 reputation on any StackExchange site, then you automatically get a bonus 100 reputation on every new StackExchange site that you join. So once you reach 200 rep somewhere, you essentially gain the power to comment and upvote *everywhere*, but if you want to downvote, close vote or delete vote you still have to earn it. In my opinion this is a very reasonable compromise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, there *is* a combined network reputation, but as far as I know it's only used by the chat system, so it doesn't really matter for your question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20827" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7412" RevisionGUID="be2b5b4f-d4f8-41ca-8b79-de0e347055b0" CreationDate="2015-06-04T18:41:25.817" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="The following two questions were asked recently and marked as potential duplicates _of each other:_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Java: why is there a Comparator interface but no Hasher and Equator?][1]&#xD;&#xA;1. [Why is .compareTo() in an interface while .equals() is in a class in Java?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the short time between the questions and very similar subject matter, are these questions duplicates of each other? If so which is the &quot;canonical&quot; question and which is the duplicate?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/283194/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/283168/22815" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20828" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7412" RevisionGUID="be2b5b4f-d4f8-41ca-8b79-de0e347055b0" CreationDate="2015-06-04T18:41:25.817" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Are these questions duplicates of each other?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20829" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7412" RevisionGUID="be2b5b4f-d4f8-41ca-8b79-de0e347055b0" CreationDate="2015-06-04T18:41:25.817" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20830" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7407" RevisionGUID="dca21dee-f9a6-49e4-b0c7-717c892836da" CreationDate="2015-06-04T20:01:21.160" UserId="88986" Comment="added 143 characters in body" Text="[tag:terminology]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often becomes a &quot;name this thing&quot;-type question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relevant meta discussion from last year: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20831" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7413" RevisionGUID="b795f1d4-3b32-43d0-979c-34e020bb4632" CreationDate="2015-06-05T09:03:52.790" UserId="122584" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/285787/clean-code-comments-vs-class-documentation/285795#285795 was closed as a duplicate of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1/comments-are-a-code-smell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a couple of reasons I'm finding this difficult to understand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**First,** they explicitly ask about different things. The first is about documentation comments, and says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is not a question about in-line comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the second says is about in-line comments and says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (ie, not javadoc style method or class comments)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a result, both questions have answers- including the accepted answer for each question- which would not be a valid answer to the other. The accepted answer to the closed question, for example, is about expressing a method's intent through it's signature, which would not have made sense on the other question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Second,** the &quot;Comments are a code smell&quot; question has been closed as not constructive and locked as only existing because it has &quot;historical interest&quot;. My understanding was that the choice of which question to mark as duplicate isn't just about which is older, but which is the better question. For example, the [help center][1] describes one function of questions marked as duplicate:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but often they are left as a signpost pointing people towards the canonical answer to that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that, it seems bizarre to close a good question as a duplicate of one that would have been deleted if it weren't for &quot;historical interest&quot;. Does it make sense to have a signpost pointing to such a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/duplicates" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20832" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7413" RevisionGUID="b795f1d4-3b32-43d0-979c-34e020bb4632" CreationDate="2015-06-05T09:03:52.790" UserId="122584" Text="Why was this question closed as duplicate" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20833" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7413" RevisionGUID="b795f1d4-3b32-43d0-979c-34e020bb4632" CreationDate="2015-06-05T09:03:52.790" UserId="122584" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20834" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7414" RevisionGUID="a1fd9f8c-ebbf-4a40-adc5-ff125c66122a" CreationDate="2015-06-05T09:56:28.363" UserId="979" Text="I want some &quot;bad code&quot; to use to evaluate and compare static code analyzers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked at [Software Recommendations][1], but the question is in danger of being closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be acceptable here? Is there a better S.E site to ask it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/20074/c-code-for-evaluating-static-code-analysis-tools" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20835" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7414" RevisionGUID="a1fd9f8c-ebbf-4a40-adc5-ff125c66122a" CreationDate="2015-06-05T09:56:28.363" UserId="979" Text="Can I ask for source code on this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20836" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7414" RevisionGUID="a1fd9f8c-ebbf-4a40-adc5-ff125c66122a" CreationDate="2015-06-05T09:56:28.363" UserId="979" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20837" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7415" RevisionGUID="5e51e07a-b660-4609-8662-c2d766c57a68" CreationDate="2015-06-05T11:19:41.727" UserId="25768" Text="No It amounts to a question that would fall under the following close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20839" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7417" RevisionGUID="d9b08fe3-c8dd-419d-aa29-2959b8650cb3" CreationDate="2015-06-05T14:27:11.690" UserId="1130" Text="I voted no, they are not duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are two separate questions, deserving two separate answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Q: Why there is an interface for Comparing object, but not one for Hashing or Equals?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; [Answer][1]: &#xD;&#xA; &gt; Equality is a property of two objects, but in OO, you always call a method on one single object, and that object gets to solely decide how to handle that method call.   &lt;br/&gt;&lt;Br/&gt;So, in a design like Java's, where equality is a property of one of the two objects being compared, it isn't even possible to guarantee some basic properties of equality such as symmetry (`a == b` &lt;=&gt; `b == a`), because in the first case, the method is being called on `a` and in the second case it is being called on `b` and due to the basic principles of OO, it is solely `a`'s decision (in the first case) or `b`'s decision (in the second case) whether or not it considers itself equal to the other one. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Question: What is the reason behind behind putting .compareTo() in the interface and .equals() in the class?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; [Answer][2] : &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Not all objects can be compared, but all objects can be checked for&#xD;&#xA; &gt; equality. &lt;br/&gt;...&lt;br/&gt;   The `Object` contract applies to all Java&#xD;&#xA; &gt; classes. If even one class cannot be compared to other instances of its own class, then `Object` cannot require it to be part of the interface.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd leave them linked with a comment, but I would not close either as a duplicate to the other. The accepted answers in both specifically address the question that was asked, and are different enough that I would prefer to see them as separate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/283207/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/283171/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20840" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7413" RevisionGUID="4db68c39-55ec-4c75-9946-73b5b2b5c79e" CreationDate="2015-06-05T14:36:55.803" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|duplicate-questions|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20841" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7413" RevisionGUID="b80e3f05-6da3-4dad-ad91-dd3d2b620b97" CreationDate="2015-06-05T15:24:25.517" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Changed reference from answer to question" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/285787/clean-code-comments-vs-class-documentation/285795 was closed as a duplicate of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1/comments-are-a-code-smell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a couple of reasons I'm finding this difficult to understand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**First,** they explicitly ask about different things. The first is about documentation comments, and says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is not a question about in-line comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the second says is about in-line comments and says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (ie, not javadoc style method or class comments)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a result, both questions have answers- including the accepted answer for each question- which would not be a valid answer to the other. The accepted answer to the closed question, for example, is about expressing a method's intent through it's signature, which would not have made sense on the other question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Second,** the &quot;Comments are a code smell&quot; question has been closed as not constructive and locked as only existing because it has &quot;historical interest&quot;. My understanding was that the choice of which question to mark as duplicate isn't just about which is older, but which is the better question. For example, the [help center][1] describes one function of questions marked as duplicate:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but often they are left as a signpost pointing people towards the canonical answer to that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that, it seems bizarre to close a good question as a duplicate of one that would have been deleted if it weren't for &quot;historical interest&quot;. Does it make sense to have a signpost pointing to such a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/duplicates" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20842" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="7418" RevisionGUID="49080bd9-77b5-4649-b8fc-79a7911e50ef" CreationDate="2015-06-05T15:36:20.843" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/285955/is-there-a-place-to-discuss-free-software-project-concepts" />
  <row Id="20843" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7418" RevisionGUID="d1531a30-60d4-416a-894d-d3026178af43" CreationDate="2015-06-05T15:10:39.170" UserId="182579" Text="I wonder if there is a place to discuss a software concept in general and its realisations in the free software community. My special case is some questions about OCR of books and I wonder if there is a place where those could be discussed. It's somewhat similar to the answer of question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/28293/182579.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted my questions on http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.graphics.ocropus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder if there's some sort of meta project collaboration platform where there's discussion about which projects already exist, implementation details, what's missing, etc.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20844" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7418" RevisionGUID="d1531a30-60d4-416a-894d-d3026178af43" CreationDate="2015-06-05T15:10:39.170" UserId="182579" Text="Is there a place to discuss free software project concepts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20845" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7418" RevisionGUID="d1531a30-60d4-416a-894d-d3026178af43" CreationDate="2015-06-05T15:10:39.170" UserId="182579" Text="|discussion|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20850" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7420" RevisionGUID="62ec394d-99a2-473c-9627-eb0e9ebfc240" CreationDate="2015-06-06T18:36:26.470" UserId="124658" Text="I would like to know if a question with a following structure would be on-topic on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to use IDE *A* with support for server *B* on a platform *C*. (*A*, *B*, and *C*  are well-known and widely used though not neccessarily together).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have stumbled on the following incompatibility that apparently has been in place since [year] according to [post/bug report/vendor forum discussion].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Vendor of the incompatible SDK released a new re-branded package.  Does it by any chance cure the problem?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [This site] recommends uninstalling the offending SDK (as one of the two suggested solutions).  How do I find out what installed software on my system can be negatively impacted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Another suggested solution was to disable [something] in the IDE configuration. Will it impact anything else other than [this feature]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20851" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7420" RevisionGUID="62ec394d-99a2-473c-9627-eb0e9ebfc240" CreationDate="2015-06-06T18:36:26.470" UserId="124658" Text="Questions about tools (in)compatibility" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20852" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7420" RevisionGUID="62ec394d-99a2-473c-9627-eb0e9ebfc240" CreationDate="2015-06-06T18:36:26.470" UserId="124658" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20853" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7421" RevisionGUID="cf02de21-24fe-4f42-82ac-22d994061f08" CreationDate="2015-06-06T18:46:43.100" UserId="161917" Text="Questions about technical issues with specific programming tools are on-topic at StackOverflow. If you're just trying to get the thing to work, or wondering if it has a feature for X, then it should go on that site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over here the on-topic tooling questions would be higher-level issues like how or why you should use a certain feature, whether this workflow or that workflow is better in a given situation, and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Topicality aside, all SE sites would prefer that you ask &quot;one question per question&quot;, so you  may want to focus primarily on one of those three subquestions, or perhaps ask multiple questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20854" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7411" RevisionGUID="5a3f9d8a-0f7e-4b5b-82e0-ee0b10b31944" CreationDate="2015-06-06T19:24:09.977" UserId="31260" Comment="chatbot to warn us += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260" Text="The direct answer to your title question is what [Yannis said](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7409/why-arent-stackoverflow-and-programmers-se-reputations-combined/7411#comment22208_7409): If you don't participate on site X, you don't know enough about it to have all of the same privileges as you do on your favorite site. An especially common problem is people from site X misunderstanding the scope of site Y and voting to migrate things which Yers would instantly recognize as off-topic. There's a reason we have a [chatbot to warn us](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260) about any SO comments that mention Programmers (&quot;this is subjective, so it should be on PSE&quot; is a surprisingly common comment on bad SO questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there is a toned-down version of what you're asking for in the form of the **association bonus**. If you have at least 200 reputation on any Stack Exchange site, then you automatically get a bonus 100 reputation on every new Stack Exchange site that you join. So once you reach 200 rep somewhere, you essentially gain the power to comment and upvote *everywhere*, but if you want to downvote, close vote or delete vote you still have to earn it. In my opinion this is a very reasonable compromise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, there *is* a combined network reputation, but as far as I know it's only used by the chat system, so it doesn't really matter for your question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20855" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7422" RevisionGUID="2e8a0851-ad39-4384-83b8-25ae7f4b5a4f" CreationDate="2015-06-07T01:33:26.880" UserId="88986" Text="I would like to have the custom close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic because it is a people question, not a programming question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would cover questions like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6629/how-do-i-explain-something-to-someone&#xD;&#xA;- How to interact with one's boss or coworker or junior programmer&#xD;&#xA;- People who are struggling to learn concepts in a class but they can't understand the teacher" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20856" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7423" RevisionGUID="5a77aa2d-2550-41a4-9bb5-09dde6b2c0ef" CreationDate="2015-06-07T01:55:23.957" UserId="143320" Text="I just came out of school where, for the most part, I coded console apps in C++, and a few tiered apps in Java and .NET.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My program seemed geared toward producing line of business software: websites and crud apps that enhance business process, and as far as I can tell *most jobs out there actually involve producing this type of software*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as someone who is really getting into the nitty gritty of code I'm coming to realize how little I know about so much software that's out there. For instance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - How does one develop an operating system and other system software?&#xD;&#xA; - What is the make up of programs which run things like appliances, remote controls, and so on?&#xD;&#xA; - How could I get my hands on this type of code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the interest I have is a very broad one at this time, and I wonder how I can leverage programmers.exchange to delve into new and uncharted territory that I'm never likely to see in a professional capacity?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20857" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7423" RevisionGUID="5a77aa2d-2550-41a4-9bb5-09dde6b2c0ef" CreationDate="2015-06-07T01:55:23.957" UserId="143320" Text="How could I phrase a question about esoteric software?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20858" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7423" RevisionGUID="5a77aa2d-2550-41a4-9bb5-09dde6b2c0ef" CreationDate="2015-06-07T01:55:23.957" UserId="143320" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20859" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7424" RevisionGUID="bf8610c3-09b0-4177-98d8-5202f3e5d07a" CreationDate="2015-06-07T02:13:54.870" UserId="4" Text="Just based on your examples, I don't think that these types of questions would be a good fit here. Programmers, and Stack Exchange in general, work best when you're trying to solve a specific problem and don't know what to do. The Q&amp;A portions of the site don't really support teaching or broad questions well, and broad, discussion-based, and/or opinion-based questions tend to be discouraged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there is a chat mechanism that could be useful. The [Programmers chat room, The Whiteboard][1], tends to be active. The level of activity varies, but there are quite a few regulars. You can talk about these broader subjects there. Other sites may have active chat rooms as well, for various topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How does one develop an operating system and other system software?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would likely be closed as too broad. There are entire books and courses on these subjects. If you were reading a book and had a specific question that wasn't made clear in the book or after researching other sources first, that may be on-topic, assuming it was focused enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the make up of programs which run things like appliances, remote controls, and so on?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, this would likely be closed as too broad. There's just a wide variety of examples. We do have a history of [similar questions being acceptable][2], but I suspect it would have to be something specific and noteworthy. There's a difference between asking about the software that runs in a random make and model of a commercial product and things like the Curiosity rover or space shuttle. It also depends on if we can reasonable be expected to be familiar with the internals of the software or have access to publications that discuss it to quote and reference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How could I get my hands on this type of code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would be closed as off-topic. This would be one of the &quot;resource request&quot; questions that we currently have a custom close reason for. Searching is the best solution. Since you're looking for open source code, searching something like GitHub would be more efficient than asking a whole bunch of people to effectively do the same thing. The answers that would be generated also wouldn't meet our quality guidelines - they would essentially be links to repositories and maybe brief descriptions of the project, and how hows and whys for solving your problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20860" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7423" RevisionGUID="b03c1894-ed25-4ba9-877e-3b68d27797a2" CreationDate="2015-06-07T02:17:33.320" UserId="143320" Comment="added 187 characters in body" Text="I just came out of school where, for the most part, I coded console apps in C++, and a few tiered apps in Java and .NET.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My program seemed geared toward producing line of business software: websites and crud apps that enhance business process, and as far as I can tell *most jobs out there actually involve producing this type of software*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as someone who is really getting into the nitty gritty of code I'm coming to realize how little I know about so much software that's out there. For instance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - How does one develop an operating system and other system software?&#xD;&#xA; - What is the make up of programs which run things like appliances, remote controls, and so on?&#xD;&#xA; - How could I get my hands on this type of code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the interest I have is a very broad one at this time, and I wonder how I can leverage programmers.exchange to delve into new and uncharted territory that I'm never likely to see in a professional capacity?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;edit: I understand that these questions are too broad. That's the problem. I wonder how I could approach these types of subjects in a way that's not too broad and fits site criteria? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20864" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7418" RevisionGUID="3f5406f5-84bd-4276-b999-19434f8d899d" CreationDate="2015-06-07T21:18:40.973" UserId="182579" Comment="Trying to point to the meta level I want to address" Text="I wonder if there is a place to discuss a software concept in general and its realisations in the free software community. My special case is some questions about OCR of books and I wonder if there is a place where those could be discussed. It's somewhat similar to the answer of question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/28293/182579.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usually things are focused on a specific pieces of software. I wonder if there is a place more focused on the ideas and goals behind. Then as a second step there would be the question where, by whom and in which specific project these things have been worked out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my specific case which just is an example it's about OCR. I would like to go to a site where all open source projects which apply this concept would be linked so that it would be easy for developers to get in touch with each other and so that it could be seen that a specific question has been adressed by no software yet or that there is a library in some other programming language that could be applied to fulfill that goal. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted my specific OCR questions on http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.graphics.ocropus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder if there's some sort of meta project collaboration platform where there's discussion about which projects already exist, implementation details, what's missing, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I wonder not so much about some personal discussions but rather if there's a place where ideas behind software are the focus.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20869" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="53ac2b8a-b8ff-49af-9241-1621aa6dc5d4" CreationDate="2015-06-09T00:16:34.337" UserId="4" Comment="added 50 characters in body" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:grad-school] [tag:university] [tag:college] [tag:degree]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning]  [tag:unlearning] [tag:exam] [tag:learning-curve] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching] [tag:tutorial]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:student] [tag:students] [tag:children]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employee] [tag:employer] [tag:employment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Uncategorized tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:problem] [tag:problems]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:non-technical]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20870" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7426" RevisionGUID="5d444eee-b848-49c8-aae0-f28dc0351ac8" CreationDate="2015-06-09T01:40:11.090" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I would like to see some more close reasons added. Rather than blindly stabbing in the dark, I want to cite the [on-topic page in the help center][1] with a slight formatting change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. career or education advice, salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Items 2 and 3 have a close reason for Stack Overflow migration (with the caveat that 3 needs to be more specific than the wording here implies).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Items 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 all fall under existing off-topic close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item 9 does not have an existing reason but probably does not need one. This item really is the catch-all for &quot;none of the other off-topic reasons we get a lot of so they need their own reasons.&quot; It is served well with the custom close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This leaves items 1 and 10. I propose two changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Add a migration path to The Workplace**. We do not get a _ton_ of questions that belong there, but we do get them. Nixing beta sites and the two existing migration paths, this would likely be near the top of paths for which there is a legitimate need. The only issue here is _some_ of the questions are on-topic here, but they really need to focus on the non-workplace aspects of the question _and_ require the unique perspective of a programmer compared to other professionals. They also cannot devolve into [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?][2] which covers the &quot;my boss says to do X, but I think we need to do Y. How do I persuade him?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Add an off-topic close reason for legal advice**. We tend to add custom reasons such as &quot;...because it is about legal advice&quot; or &quot;...because we are not lawyers&quot; et al. I propose writing up a friendly, well-written close reason that enumerates [precisely where the line is][3] when it comes to licensing/copyright/legal questions. I think we need some consistency here, because there tends to be some confusion not only among question authors but also close voters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6629/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7265/22815" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20871" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7427" RevisionGUID="3ceb96eb-d29f-4424-acf9-f1e0abadd1d6" CreationDate="2015-06-09T01:46:56.833" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="&gt; Vendor of the incompatible SDK released a new re-branded package. Does it by any chance cure the problem?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is likely off-topic everywhere. You need to check the documentation from the vendor. If you have a more advanced question that cannot be answered by the documentation and cannot be easily found via web search then it may be on-topic at Stack Overflow as long as you phrase it correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking &quot;does package X for SDK Y fix bug Z?&quot; will likely not fly at Stack Overflow. A better question is &quot;I am trying to accomplish W with SDK Y, but bug Z prevents it. Is there a workaround? I hear update X may fix it, but so far it has not worked for me. What else can I do?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [This site] recommends uninstalling the offending SDK (as one of the two suggested solutions). How do I find out what installed software on my system can be negatively impacted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Too broad&quot; anywhere you ask. We do not know what is on your system. Categorically off-topic at Programmers, possibly on-topic at Stack Overflow if you can be very specific.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Another suggested solution was to disable [something] in the IDE configuration. Will it impact anything else other than [this feature]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try it! You can always re-enable it. Again, this _may_ be a question for Stack Overflow. &quot;I disabled feature X to address bug Y, but it had side effect Z. How else can I work around bug Y without causing side effect Z?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20876" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7379" RevisionGUID="7833eb72-2b84-4276-84a7-a3362819fd70" CreationDate="2015-06-09T02:14:17.157" UserId="25476" Comment="added 70 characters in body" Text="[`locked:yes views:0..2000 score:0..3 duplicate:no migrated:no`](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A0..2000+score%3A0..3+duplicate%3Ano+migrated%3Ano)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After a few days, we should have enough agreement on this batch of 49 questions to move forward with the actions in the below headings.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The following questions should remain closed but not deleted##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88359/is-the-spark-view-engine-for-asp-net-dead?s=16|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21032/help-me-construct-a-list-of-best-approaches-for-new-c-and-c-developers?s=43|0.0000&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The following questions should remain closed, but be unlocked and have their answers undeleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87385/pci-compliance-with-offshore-development?s=26|0.0000&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##These questions should be deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 1 score:&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48770/what-are-the-duties-of-a-software-control-management-scm-engineer-in-a-large-c?s=47|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60764/general-tips-on-writing-specs-for-java-programmers?s=42|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87888/what-is-the-proper-name-for-this-design-pattern-in-python?s=41|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30173/about-c-objects-and-the-possibilties-it-has?s=40|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/219131/forcing-users-to-use-javascript?s=38|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65316/what-are-some-tips-for-avoiding-death-by-powerpoint-during-a-technical-present?s=36|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/104232/how-do-you-address-or-avoid-problems-with-new-features-being-quickly-added-to-th?s=35|0.0000&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###2 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66976/how-important-would-a-statistics-course-be-to-a-software-developer?s=32|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42899/could-anyone-suggest-me-some-image-manipulation-techniques-to-be-added-to-my-ima?s=31|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83695/how-can-i-keep-track-of-all-the-websites-ive-made-like-a-proper-business-would?s=29|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80051/practice-programming-guidance?s=25|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11757/what-are-good-social-coding-sites?s=24|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75439/how-is-a-net-developer-related-to-customer-relationship-management-crm?s=21|0.0000&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 3 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78065/software-methodologies?s=20|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/94040/what-to-study-at-grad-school-if-i-want-to-know-about-programming-languages?s=19|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78325/book-on-information-technology-concepts-for-developer?s=18|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141676/recommendable-reads-about-programming-history?s=14|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38507/what-are-the-most-important-things-to-know-about-iphone-development?s=13|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35052/depending-on-another-open-source-library-copy-paste-code-or-include?s=12|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97555/future-of-soap-with-rest?s=11|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/107582/why-would-an-employee-not-be-allowed-to-share-techniques?s=10|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87241/any-legal-issue-in-developing-app-similar-to-others?s=9|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63956/c-experience-for-students?s=8|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54651/how-to-make-an-app-more-intuitive?s=7|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77447/portfolio-and-nda?s=6|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43464/source-of-programmer-inefficiency?s=5|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70213/teaching-programming-quickly-to-those-adults-that-havent-programmed?s=4|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73449/functional-programming-language-for-web-development?s=3|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58420/what-makes-a-good-developer-system-documentation?s=2|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88694/is-there-an-editor-that-i-can-run-code-using-ssh?s=1|0.0000" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20877" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7379" RevisionGUID="f162f1a6-5b87-4906-ad8e-abab3f032a3d" CreationDate="2015-06-09T02:21:21.427" UserId="88986" Comment="Removed deleted questions" Text="[`locked:yes views:0..2000 score:0..3 duplicate:no migrated:no`](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A0..2000+score%3A0..3+duplicate%3Ano+migrated%3Ano)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After a few days, we should have enough agreement on this batch of 49 questions to move forward with the actions in the below headings.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The following questions should remain closed but not deleted##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88359/is-the-spark-view-engine-for-asp-net-dead?s=16|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21032/help-me-construct-a-list-of-best-approaches-for-new-c-and-c-developers?s=43|0.0000&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The following questions should remain closed, but be unlocked and have their answers undeleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87385/pci-compliance-with-offshore-development?s=26|0.0000&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##These questions should be deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 1 score:&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48770/what-are-the-duties-of-a-software-control-management-scm-engineer-in-a-large-c?s=47|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60764/general-tips-on-writing-specs-for-java-programmers?s=42|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87888/what-is-the-proper-name-for-this-design-pattern-in-python?s=41|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30173/about-c-objects-and-the-possibilties-it-has?s=40|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/219131/forcing-users-to-use-javascript?s=38|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/104232/how-do-you-address-or-avoid-problems-with-new-features-being-quickly-added-to-th?s=35|0.0000&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###2 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66976/how-important-would-a-statistics-course-be-to-a-software-developer?s=32|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42899/could-anyone-suggest-me-some-image-manipulation-techniques-to-be-added-to-my-ima?s=31|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83695/how-can-i-keep-track-of-all-the-websites-ive-made-like-a-proper-business-would?s=29|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80051/practice-programming-guidance?s=25|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75439/how-is-a-net-developer-related-to-customer-relationship-management-crm?s=21|0.0000&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 3 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78065/software-methodologies?s=20|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/94040/what-to-study-at-grad-school-if-i-want-to-know-about-programming-languages?s=19|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38507/what-are-the-most-important-things-to-know-about-iphone-development?s=13|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35052/depending-on-another-open-source-library-copy-paste-code-or-include?s=12|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97555/future-of-soap-with-rest?s=11|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/107582/why-would-an-employee-not-be-allowed-to-share-techniques?s=10|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54651/how-to-make-an-app-more-intuitive?s=7|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77447/portfolio-and-nda?s=6|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43464/source-of-programmer-inefficiency?s=5|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70213/teaching-programming-quickly-to-those-adults-that-havent-programmed?s=4|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73449/functional-programming-language-for-web-development?s=3|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58420/what-makes-a-good-developer-system-documentation?s=2|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88694/is-there-an-editor-that-i-can-run-code-using-ssh?s=1|0.0000" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20878" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7379" RevisionGUID="05e5764f-8260-4ca6-bd23-80e826eb9387" CreationDate="2015-06-09T02:54:07.180" UserId="88986" Comment="deleted 236 characters in body" Text="[`locked:yes views:0..2000 score:0..3 duplicate:no migrated:no`](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A0..2000+score%3A0..3+duplicate%3Ano+migrated%3Ano)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After a few days, we should have enough agreement on this batch of 49 questions to move forward with the actions in the below headings.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The following questions should remain closed but not deleted##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88359/is-the-spark-view-engine-for-asp-net-dead?s=16|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21032/help-me-construct-a-list-of-best-approaches-for-new-c-and-c-developers?s=43|0.0000&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The following questions should remain closed, but be unlocked and have their answers undeleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87385/pci-compliance-with-offshore-development?s=26|0.0000&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##These questions should be deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 1 score:&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48770/what-are-the-duties-of-a-software-control-management-scm-engineer-in-a-large-c?s=47|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60764/general-tips-on-writing-specs-for-java-programmers?s=42|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87888/what-is-the-proper-name-for-this-design-pattern-in-python?s=41|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30173/about-c-objects-and-the-possibilties-it-has?s=40|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/219131/forcing-users-to-use-javascript?s=38|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/104232/how-do-you-address-or-avoid-problems-with-new-features-being-quickly-added-to-th?s=35|0.0000&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###2 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66976/how-important-would-a-statistics-course-be-to-a-software-developer?s=32|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/42899/could-anyone-suggest-me-some-image-manipulation-techniques-to-be-added-to-my-ima?s=31|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83695/how-can-i-keep-track-of-all-the-websites-ive-made-like-a-proper-business-would?s=29|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80051/practice-programming-guidance?s=25|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75439/how-is-a-net-developer-related-to-customer-relationship-management-crm?s=21|0.0000&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 3 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78065/software-methodologies?s=20|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/94040/what-to-study-at-grad-school-if-i-want-to-know-about-programming-languages?s=19|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38507/what-are-the-most-important-things-to-know-about-iphone-development?s=13|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35052/depending-on-another-open-source-library-copy-paste-code-or-include?s=12|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97555/future-of-soap-with-rest?s=11|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/107582/why-would-an-employee-not-be-allowed-to-share-techniques?s=10|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54651/how-to-make-an-app-more-intuitive?s=7|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77447/portfolio-and-nda?s=6|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43464/source-of-programmer-inefficiency?s=5|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70213/teaching-programming-quickly-to-those-adults-that-havent-programmed?s=4|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73449/functional-programming-language-for-web-development?s=3|0.0000" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20879" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7407" RevisionGUID="a1d3de8f-1528-4405-9bf7-9af614ae81b7" CreationDate="2015-06-09T16:28:07.620" UserId="88986" Comment="Added the very related (synonym?) definition tag." Text="[tag:terminology] [tag:definition]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often becomes a &quot;name this thing&quot;-type question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relevant meta discussion from last year: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20880" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="298e06cd-721c-4818-9bb6-35a552b66d57" CreationDate="2015-06-09T20:45:07.667" UserId="31260" Comment="resume += portfolio" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:grad-school] [tag:university] [tag:college] [tag:degree]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning]  [tag:unlearning] [tag:exam] [tag:learning-curve] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching] [tag:tutorial]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:student] [tag:students] [tag:children]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employee] [tag:employer] [tag:employment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Uncategorized tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:problem] [tag:problems]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:non-technical]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20881" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7429" RevisionGUID="0d6aa2c1-c6e8-440b-9f23-fe5c94441671" CreationDate="2015-06-10T09:10:25.180" UserId="156393" Text="Well, I have gone through the Tour and I'm aware of earning reputation. I have pretty much reputation in stack overflow so that I can comment and post answers and do other basic things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, I'm pretty new at Programmers, and I keep monitoring this site for architectural knowledge. Many times I come across some questions, where I really can't post an answer but can comment. But I lack the reputation to comment here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any help would be great. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20882" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7429" RevisionGUID="0d6aa2c1-c6e8-440b-9f23-fe5c94441671" CreationDate="2015-06-10T09:10:25.180" UserId="156393" Text="Isn't there any other way to get Reputation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20883" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7429" RevisionGUID="0d6aa2c1-c6e8-440b-9f23-fe5c94441671" CreationDate="2015-06-10T09:10:25.180" UserId="156393" Text="|support|reputation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20884" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7430" RevisionGUID="66dac75c-e752-4c03-8846-1768831143ad" CreationDate="2015-06-10T18:52:05.027" UserId="71409" Text="The code posted [in this question][1] looks (to me, at least) very poorly formatted, with the opening and closing curly braces on different indentation levels.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be appropriate to edit the code block to align the try-catch blocks to make the code more readable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286422/why-would-we-need-to-rollback-twice-before-closing-in-a-finally-block" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20885" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7430" RevisionGUID="66dac75c-e752-4c03-8846-1768831143ad" CreationDate="2015-06-10T18:52:05.027" UserId="71409" Text="Proper etiquette when editing a post to fix code formatting?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20886" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7430" RevisionGUID="66dac75c-e752-4c03-8846-1768831143ad" CreationDate="2015-06-10T18:52:05.027" UserId="71409" Text="|discussion|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20887" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7431" RevisionGUID="8c9c92cf-28ce-47dd-ad83-9531e339c0cf" CreationDate="2015-06-10T20:11:25.663" UserId="47" Text="Yes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, and it's a big however, you need to make sure that you don't alter the code in any other way. It's probably not *quite* as important here as it is on Stack Overflow, but editing code carries the risk that you might edit away the very problem that the OP is asking about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, the poor formatting won't be the only thing that's wrong with the question so address and other issues like spelling, grammar and formatting of the explanatory text too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And be prepared for your edit to be rejected if the reviewers think you've changed the code too much." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20888" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7426" RevisionGUID="6f4d3fc7-d7ca-47cc-8934-cc1dc9515898" CreationDate="2015-06-10T21:45:45.237" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 81 characters in body" Text="I would like to see some more close reasons added. Rather than blindly stabbing in the dark, I want to cite the [on-topic page in the help center][1] with a slight formatting change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. career or education advice, salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Items 2 and 3 have a close reason for Stack Overflow migration (with the caveat that 3 needs to be more specific than the wording here implies).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Items 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 all fall under existing off-topic close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item 9 does not have an existing reason but probably does not need one. This item really is the catch-all for &quot;none of the other off-topic reasons we get a lot of so they need their own reasons.&quot; It is served well with the custom close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This leaves items 1 and 10. I propose two changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Add a migration path to The Workplace**. We do not get a _ton_ of questions that belong there, but we do get them. Nixing beta sites and the two existing migration paths, this would likely be near the top of paths for which there is a legitimate need. The only issue here is _some_ of the questions are on-topic here, but they really need to focus on the non-workplace aspects of the question _and_ require the [unique perspective of a programmer compared to other professionals][2]. They also cannot devolve into [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?][3] which covers the &quot;my boss says to do X, but I think we need to do Y. How do I persuade him?&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Add an off-topic close reason for legal advice**. We tend to add custom reasons such as &quot;...because it is about legal advice&quot; or &quot;...because we are not lawyers&quot; et al. I propose writing up a friendly, well-written close reason that enumerates [precisely where the line is][4] when it comes to licensing/copyright/legal questions. I think we need some consistency here, because there tends to be some confusion not only among question authors but also close voters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1697/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6629/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7265/22815" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20890" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7432" RevisionGUID="0bafaa37-7234-49c7-91c6-13c88b1e6e4c" CreationDate="2015-06-11T21:41:17.960" UserId="82918" Text="I have a question like the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I plan to build a webapplication and think about making it a mostly clientside app. Of course I gonna need to fetch data from my server for userdata etc.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Now my question is, should I render the data on the client or should I send the data as rendered HTML back to the browser?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; PS: The server is probably a `raspberry pi 2` and the server environment is node.js. The browser will be modern and on good clients.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me this question is very oppionen based and I am unsure if it will get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is it ok to ask this question here or on stackoverflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20891" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7432" RevisionGUID="0bafaa37-7234-49c7-91c6-13c88b1e6e4c" CreationDate="2015-06-11T21:41:17.960" UserId="82918" Text="Where to ask oppinion based question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20892" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7432" RevisionGUID="0bafaa37-7234-49c7-91c6-13c88b1e6e4c" CreationDate="2015-06-11T21:41:17.960" UserId="82918" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20893" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7433" RevisionGUID="79616c58-7fad-4062-88cc-7136710995b5" CreationDate="2015-06-11T21:58:03.200" UserId="161917" Text="The content of your question is fairly close to being a good Programmers question. It would definitely be off-topic on StackOverflow, but it should be on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You do need to add some more detail though. In its current state it *might* get closed as &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot; or &quot;unclear what you're asking&quot;, since we'd have to guess a lot of details about your application to come up with an answer. Try telling us a little bit about what this data is, what kind of &quot;rendering&quot; process you're referring to (it's obviously not actual rendering if it can be done by the server), whether you expect to support multiple frontends for this data (e.g. a mobile and desktop site), whether 3rd party integration is expected to be a thing, and so on." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20895" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7434" RevisionGUID="f1d716ef-e29b-499f-ae44-fbd41ecef16f" CreationDate="2015-06-14T02:06:57.007" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="This question would be closed as &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot; because each option could be the correct one based on programmer preference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not aware of any Stack Exchange site on which this question would be on-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20896" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7432" RevisionGUID="5977b153-bdd9-4345-ad8a-47249dbad113" CreationDate="2015-06-14T02:07:50.127" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Spelling" Text="I have a question like the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I plan to build a webapplication and think about making it a mostly clientside app. Of course I gonna need to fetch data from my server for userdata etc.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Now my question is, should I render the data on the client or should I send the data as rendered HTML back to the browser?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; PS: The server is probably a `raspberry pi 2` and the server environment is node.js. The browser will be modern and on good clients.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me this question is very opinion based and I am unsure if it will get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is it okay to ask this question here or on Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20897" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7432" RevisionGUID="5977b153-bdd9-4345-ad8a-47249dbad113" CreationDate="2015-06-14T02:07:50.127" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Spelling" Text="Where to ask opinion based question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20898" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7435" RevisionGUID="af95d132-6a79-4214-977a-8ba86cf6bceb" CreationDate="2015-06-15T16:22:55.437" UserId="88986" Text="[tag:support]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one is pretty self explanatory. 12 closed, 28 open questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20899" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7435" RevisionGUID="0b63ecee-1125-4789-abfe-3b57eb1f8ef3" CreationDate="2015-06-15T16:22:55.437" UserId="88986" />
  <row Id="20905" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7437" RevisionGUID="c15d7898-33d5-4ee7-9e00-0e30d4e05c72" CreationDate="2015-06-16T19:44:19.870" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I've [expounded on locked questions before](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7404/40980) and mentioned that these often age poorly. If something *is* to be locked, especially today, it should have some amount of moderation and curation done. These are things that we should be putting in museums as questions that can produce good quality and we should aspire to (&quot;see, look, we can have good material on very soft questions if people act to moderate and keep the quality up&quot;) rather than things we want to lock away and forget.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this, I really have to ask about why http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8104/how-many-developers-actually-have-private-offices was locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question had 4 delete votes on it (6 needed total for it based on votes and popularity).  It was locked.  And... well... if it is something that we should be keeping around (I don't believe so - that's why one of those delete votes is mine), before it is locked it should be evaluated for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Poor quality and negatively scored posts should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;* Too chatty / not constructive comments should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;* Tags that are part of a burnination process should be removed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What really gets me here is that this question really is just a poll with one answer that is reasonable (but doesn't answer the poll question) and 23 answers that are &quot;I've got an office&quot; or &quot;I have an open plan.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel that this type of question - old polls - really doesn't age well and isn't indicative of what good quality on the site should be.  It is exactly the watercooler conversation type thing and getting to know you that the six subjective guidelines were put in place to prevent. That it hasn't been seen much and there are no in bound links from other questions on Programmers.SE suggests that it really isn't that valuable of a post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This type of question is the type of thing that a [Slashdot poll](http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl) (for example [do you need to wear headphones while working](http://it.slashdot.org/poll/2669/do-you-need-headphones-while-working)) does better than a Q&amp;A format site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I cannot flag [the post](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8104/how-many-developers-actually-have-private-offices) (its locked), and this question wouldn't fit into a flag text, please either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Unlock the post so that it may continue with the normal lifecycle of a post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Delete all poor quality material (I believe this would be 'all posts other than the accepted answer' - or first and third if you stretch it a bit), remove the burnination tags ([tag:jobs] and [tag:job-title] are both in [the current round](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7287/40980)), and rework the body of the question so that it isn't a poll and is answered exactly by the accepted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20906" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7437" RevisionGUID="c15d7898-33d5-4ee7-9e00-0e30d4e05c72" CreationDate="2015-06-16T19:44:19.870" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Why was this newly historically locked?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20907" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7437" RevisionGUID="c15d7898-33d5-4ee7-9e00-0e30d4e05c72" CreationDate="2015-06-16T19:44:19.870" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|support|specific-question|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20908" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7438" RevisionGUID="b1fb22be-aa85-48ac-9d6e-1a71af172d00" CreationDate="2015-06-17T01:28:23.090" UserId="25476" Text="I was the one who historical locked it responding to a flag requesting the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is my opinion on historical locks:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It is at least 3 years old&#xD;&#xA; - It has at the very least (n years X 1000 views) in total views&#xD;&#xA; - It has at least one good attempt to answer either a question with a number of problems as perceived by the current scope and rules of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another note, a steaming pile of crap answers constitute history to me.  History may be entertaining, we may admire it, it may have some unfortunate stains that some would rather forget.  An historian looks for the truth, no matter how painful.  We learn from the mistakes of our past, so I feel to clean it up then lock it is basically being a revisionist.  I am not for revising history, whether it be content locked into the history archive, hell I don't even like revising history in my Git repositories.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I felt it met all of that.  My criteria might not be exactly what other moderators have, but again, you guys elected me to take some discretion from time to time otherwise Atwood would write a script to replace me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that I was wrong in my decision then downvote this answer please.  If I get 5 downvotes from the community (not a net score of -5 but 5 individual downvotes then I will accept it should have been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A moderator may also reverse my decision if they feel necessary." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20912" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7440" RevisionGUID="081b9450-db52-4ace-9717-9d215f6e69cd" CreationDate="2015-06-18T09:48:11.083" UserId="31260" Text="I think that in its current shape the question staying visible is not okay, even as historically locked. Low quality &quot;historical context&quot; seems to totally obscure worthy content in there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, it looks like a blatant poll, followed by multiple useless poll item &quot;answers&quot; (including even a [different question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/11110 &quot;blatant not-an-answer: 'Is there any software company in the US besides Microsoft and FogCreek Software which provides private offices for software engineers?'&quot;) posted as an answer) so that most readers could only wonder what was the reason to keep it at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With above in mind, our options seem to be as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1\.** Delete. Easy way out, the one I wanted before I stumbled over this meta question, but now, upon closer studying of the [top answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8203/31260) I am not quite comfortable about it anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2\. Unlock the question, retag to [tag:productivity] (to clear all issues related to ongoing tag cleanups), then pick one of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.1\.** Add a moderator comment referring to [this meta discussion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7437/31260), so that readers interested in historical context could discover it without having to stare at all 20+ low quality answers over there. After that, remove all answers except the top one, then lock it back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.2\.** [Aggressively edit](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/1820/168) the question to bring it to better shape, worrying only about keeping consistency with top answer, about like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;So I know everyone here is all about private offices, how many developers actually have them. I am sort of half skeptical. I can believe that lead developers have them, but that's normally just one person in your average office.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;That makes me wonder, how many developers have private offices. Which leads to the actual question: why should they have them?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question [edit summary](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/edit-summary/info &quot;what's this&quot;) would better refer this meta discussion to help readers of edit history find out what led to the radical change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the edit, remove all answers that fail to match the revised question (as far as I can tell, these would be all except for the top answer), then reopen. Side note an edit drafted above would also &quot;trigger&quot; removal of the opening sentence from the top answer (&quot;I think the question should be...&quot;) but that's rather minor." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20913" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7440" RevisionGUID="77acc205-77ce-4551-aed8-3a2c52b342fb" CreationDate="2015-06-18T19:04:51.890" UserId="31260" Comment="it looks like an exceptional case for question to be so much overwhelmed with bad content..." Text="I think that in its current shape the question staying visible is not okay, even as historically locked. Low quality &quot;historical context&quot; seems to totally obscure worthy content in there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, it looks like a blatant poll, followed by multiple useless poll item &quot;answers&quot; (including even a [different question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/11110 &quot;blatant not-an-answer: 'Is there any software company in the US besides Microsoft and FogCreek Software which provides private offices for software engineers?'&quot;) posted as an answer) so that most readers could only wonder what was the reason to keep it at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that it looks like an exceptional case for question to be so much overwhelmed with bad content. All other historical questions I recall _do_ have bad stuff (otherwise there'd be no lock), but good parts in these are prominent enough and readers don't have to guess why these were decided to keep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With above in mind, our options seem to be as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1\.** Delete. Easy way out, the one I wanted before I stumbled over this meta question, but now, upon closer studying of the [top answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8203/31260) I am not quite comfortable about it anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2\. Unlock the question, retag to [tag:productivity] (to clear all issues related to ongoing tag cleanups), then pick one of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.1\.** Add a moderator comment referring to [this meta discussion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7437/31260), so that readers interested in historical context could discover it without having to stare at all 20+ low quality answers over there. After that, remove all answers except the top one, then lock it back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.2\.** [Aggressively edit](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/1820/168) the question to bring it to better shape, worrying only about keeping consistency with top answer, about like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;So I know everyone here is all about private offices, how many developers actually have them. I am sort of half skeptical. I can believe that lead developers have them, but that's normally just one person in your average office.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;That makes me wonder, how many developers have private offices. Which leads to the actual question: why should they have them?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question [edit summary](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/edit-summary/info &quot;what's this&quot;) would better refer this meta discussion to help readers of edit history find out what led to the radical change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the edit, remove all answers that fail to match the revised question (as far as I can tell, these would be all except for the top answer), then reopen. Side note an edit drafted above would also &quot;trigger&quot; removal of the opening sentence from the top answer (&quot;I think the question should be...&quot;) but that's rather minor." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20914" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7441" RevisionGUID="3909b900-6ae2-457b-9e08-0ea133afe6bc" CreationDate="2015-06-19T14:11:05.977" UserId="88986" Text="##http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102041/why-are-data-structures-so-important-in-interviews&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question has almost 60,000 views, and is in the top 50 in views in questions that are not closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it's pretty clearly off topic, asking us why we think that interviews happen a certain way falls under both the **primarily opinion-base** close reason and under the **career advice** close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it needs a historical lock, but I'm not prepared to flag for that yet as it needs a pretty solid cleanup first, [according to the guidelines.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/103053/how-aggressively-should-we-maintain-and-improve-very-popular-questions/103069#103069)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Several of the answers are really just comments and should be converted or deleted&#xD;&#xA; - It needs to be retagged&#xD;&#xA; - Other things I'm probably not thinking of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a request for help editing the question to a lockable form, including 20k+ and moderators to assist in deleting the bad answers. Thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20915" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7441" RevisionGUID="3909b900-6ae2-457b-9e08-0ea133afe6bc" CreationDate="2015-06-19T14:11:05.977" UserId="88986" Text="Let's clean up the Data Structures for Interviews question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20916" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7441" RevisionGUID="3909b900-6ae2-457b-9e08-0ea133afe6bc" CreationDate="2015-06-19T14:11:05.977" UserId="88986" Text="|support|answer-quality|locked-question|popular-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20917" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7441" RevisionGUID="8f188491-d240-419c-8658-16425157747b" CreationDate="2015-06-19T14:15:33.933" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Added note about comments." Text="##http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102041/why-are-data-structures-so-important-in-interviews&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question has almost 60,000 views, and is in the top 50 in views in questions that are not closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it's pretty clearly off topic, asking us why we think that interviews happen a certain way falls under both the **primarily opinion-base** close reason and under the **career advice** close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it needs a historical lock, but I'm not prepared to flag for that yet as it needs a pretty solid cleanup first, [according to the guidelines.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/103053/how-aggressively-should-we-maintain-and-improve-very-popular-questions/103069#103069)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Several of the answers are really just comments and should be converted or deleted&#xD;&#xA; - It needs to be retagged&#xD;&#xA; - Old comments that add nothing of value need to be deleted&#xD;&#xA; - Other things I'm probably not thinking of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a request for help editing the question to a lockable form, including 20k+ and moderators to assist in deleting the bad answers. Thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20918" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7441" RevisionGUID="f25592b7-af3f-4dc5-9a32-ecfeb0981282" CreationDate="2015-06-19T14:16:07.257" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|specific-question|answer-quality|locked-question|popular-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20919" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7375" RevisionGUID="0f5b058f-d097-40de-8508-d75eefd08012" CreationDate="2015-06-19T14:16:36.980" UserId="88986" Comment="Added specific question tag" Text="|discussion|specific-question|answer-quality|popular-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20920" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7440" RevisionGUID="ddac7a39-d20d-4cc2-bd39-90f46cc8e647" CreationDate="2015-06-19T14:28:47.003" UserId="31260" Comment="Assuming that risk involved in #2.2 is minor, it looks like most appealing option." Text="**TL;DR** Suggest to unlock the question and edit it into a better shape, to match the top answer. After that, remove answers invalidated by the question edit and reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that in its current shape the question staying visible is not okay, even as historically locked. Low quality &quot;historical context&quot; seems to totally obscure worthy content in there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, it looks like a blatant poll, followed by multiple useless poll item &quot;answers&quot; (including even a [different question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/11110 &quot;blatant not-an-answer: 'Is there any software company in the US besides Microsoft and FogCreek Software which provides private offices for software engineers?'&quot;) posted as an answer) so that most readers could only wonder what was the reason to keep it at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that it looks like an exceptional case for question to be so much overwhelmed with bad content. All other historical questions I recall _do_ have bad stuff (otherwise there'd be no lock), but good parts in these are prominent enough and readers don't have to guess why these were decided to keep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With above in mind, our options seem to be as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1\.** Delete. Easy way out, the one I wanted before I stumbled over this meta question, but now, upon closer studying of the [top answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8203/31260) I am not quite comfortable about it anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2\. Unlock the question, retag to [tag:productivity] (to clear all issues related to ongoing tag cleanups), then pick one of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.1\.** Add a moderator comment referring to [this meta discussion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7437/31260), so that readers interested in historical context could discover it without having to stare at all 20+ low quality answers over there. After that, remove all answers except the top one, then lock it back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.2\.** [Aggressively edit](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/1820/168) the question to bring it to better shape, worrying only about keeping consistency with top answer, about like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;So I know everyone here is all about private offices, how many developers actually have them. I am sort of half skeptical. I can believe that lead developers have them, but that's normally just one person in your average office.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;That makes me wonder, how many developers have private offices. Which leads to the actual question: why should they have them?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question [edit summary](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/edit-summary/info &quot;what's this&quot;) would better refer this meta discussion to help readers of edit history find out what led to the radical change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the edit, remove all answers that fail to match the revised question (as far as I can tell, these would be all except for the top answer), then reopen. Side note an edit drafted above would also &quot;trigger&quot; removal of the opening sentence from the top answer (&quot;I think the question should be...&quot;) but that's rather minor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Advantage of #2.1 is that it guarantees that worthy content is preserved. In comparison, 2.2 carries a (rather minor) risk that edited question will be eventually closed again and deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Advantage of #2.2 is that it doesn't introduce deviation of our usual practice to avoid cleanup prior to locking - since it doesn't involve locking at all. (that practice is in turn based on common sense - if you do cleanup anyway, it's only reasonable to improve content up to the point when it doesn't need locking at all)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for #1 (delete), it looks really inferior in comparison. It only doesn't deviate from our locking practices, but so does #2.2, which additionally offers a solid chance of preserving worthy content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that risk involved in #2.2 is minor, it looks like most appealing option." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20921" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="cc710574-3e93-4b7d-acd0-a4be2a9de7d7" CreationDate="2015-06-19T17:01:22.447" UserId="88986" Comment="Added link to the licensing faq" Text="## What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Programmers.SE would be a good question on Stack Overflow.  This isn't to say that if it is on topic on Stack Overflow it is on topic here.  Rather that it's not too broad, not opinion, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Programmers.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggesting to someone to repost a question that is too broad or primary opinion would get it closed on Programmers.SE too and that's really something we'd rather avoid.  It is no fun to get a question bounced from one site to another and being told repeatedly we don't want it here.  If it needs to be fixed, it needs to be fixed before it is reposted or telling the OP *exactly* what needs to be fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Some commonly referred *poor* questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, we *don't* want these, though it seems like people keep suggesting them to be reposted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I don't understand...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). [There is an expectation](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773) that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here's my problem. Anyone have a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of commonly (incorrectly) referred questions are those of &quot;come up with a design or solution for me.&quot;  Similar to how Stack Overflow has issues with people doing problem statement questions (&quot;write a program that takes the average of three values&quot;), Programmers.SE has similar issues with similar questions (&quot;here is what I want the outcome to be, anyone have a solution?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Stack Overflow nor Programmers.SE is a code/solution writing service. Just because the question lacks code but has a problem statement doesn't mean it belongs here as is. The question needs to be fixed up significantly before it is reposted on the proper site and suggesting to do so with the question in its current state does a disservice to the person asking the question. For a more detailed outline of what is generally expected at Programmers, see http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A blog I read said...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our custom off topic reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What technology to take up](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/40980)&#xD;&#xA;* [What tool to use](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* [What career to take or what to study](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programing related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* software requirements&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I'll point out a caveat with that &quot;software licensing&quot; thing.  It's about how to license *your* software and try to stay in proper compliance when pulling a MIT licensed library into a GPL project.  It is *not* about the &quot;can I let a friend use IntelliJ personal license if I'm not using it?&quot;, &quot;can I use facebook's API to do something legally?&quot; and the interpretation of other third party licenses.  If the word 'legal' shows up in that question at all, it will likely get closed as legal advice (that's in the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) too - under &quot;and it's not about&quot;) Further reading: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about software design concepts.  Remember that algorithm questions are on topic on Stack Overflow (so you don't need to migrate those).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the Perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the Delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Programmers.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Programmers.SE was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with [&quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260 &quot;we even had to introduce a chat bot for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow&quot;) and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) it's problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - it's exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so comments a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, it's like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if it's a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20922" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7441" RevisionGUID="aa5bdc48-4d48-45b3-8834-2c947b3f89a8" CreationDate="2015-06-19T18:27:27.713" UserId="31260" Comment="1) retagging done 2) http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/2950/should-hi-thanks-taglines-and-salutations-be-removed-from-posts" Text="##http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102041/why-are-data-structures-so-important-in-interviews&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question has almost 60,000 views, and is in the top 50 in views in questions that are not closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it's pretty clearly off topic, asking us why we think that interviews happen a certain way falls under both the **primarily opinion-base** close reason and under the **career advice** close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it needs a historical lock, but I'm not prepared to flag for that yet as it needs a pretty solid cleanup first, [according to the guidelines.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/103053/how-aggressively-should-we-maintain-and-improve-very-popular-questions/103069#103069)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Several of the answers are really just comments and should be converted or deleted&#xD;&#xA; - Old comments that add nothing of value need to be deleted&#xD;&#xA; - Other things I'm probably not thinking of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a request for help editing the question to a lockable form, including 20k+ and moderators to assist in deleting the bad answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20924" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7438" RevisionGUID="85ce7229-1d98-48f6-b4b9-01586cb2557e" CreationDate="2015-06-22T12:45:17.350" UserId="25476" Comment="added 62 characters in body" Text="**EDIT: I received 5 downvotes so I unlocked and deleted**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was the one who historical locked it responding to a flag requesting the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is my opinion on historical locks:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It is at least 3 years old&#xD;&#xA; - It has at the very least (n years X 1000 views) in total views&#xD;&#xA; - It has at least one good attempt to answer either a question with a number of problems as perceived by the current scope and rules of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another note, a steaming pile of crap answers constitute history to me.  History may be entertaining, we may admire it, it may have some unfortunate stains that some would rather forget.  An historian looks for the truth, no matter how painful.  We learn from the mistakes of our past, so I feel to clean it up then lock it is basically being a revisionist.  I am not for revising history, whether it be content locked into the history archive, hell I don't even like revising history in my Git repositories.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I felt it met all of that.  My criteria might not be exactly what other moderators have, but again, you guys elected me to take some discretion from time to time otherwise Atwood would write a script to replace me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that I was wrong in my decision then downvote this answer please.  If I get 5 downvotes from the community (not a net score of -5 but 5 individual downvotes then I will accept it should have been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A moderator may also reverse my decision if they feel necessary." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20925" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7440" RevisionGUID="a6940c4a-4c01-43cc-aa09-d30580541472" CreationDate="2015-06-22T15:55:55.747" UserId="31260" Comment="unlocked and edited // http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7438/31260" Text="**TL;DR** Suggest to [undelete the question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7438/31260) since it was edited to a better shape and made match the top answer. After that, remove &quot;poll item&quot; answers invalidated by the question edit and reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that in its current shape the question staying visible is not okay, even as historically locked. Low quality &quot;historical context&quot; seems to totally obscure worthy content in there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, it looks like a blatant poll, followed by multiple useless poll item &quot;answers&quot; (including even a [different question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/11110 &quot;blatant not-an-answer: 'Is there any software company in the US besides Microsoft and FogCreek Software which provides private offices for software engineers?'&quot;) posted as an answer) so that most readers could only wonder what was the reason to keep it at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that it looks like an exceptional case for question to be so much overwhelmed with bad content. All other historical questions I recall _do_ have bad stuff (otherwise there'd be no lock), but good parts in these are prominent enough and readers don't have to guess why these were decided to keep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With above in mind, our options seem to be as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1\.** Delete. Easy way out, the one I wanted before I stumbled over this meta question, but now, upon closer studying of the [top answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8203/31260) I am not quite comfortable about it anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2\. Unlock the question, retag to [tag:productivity] (to clear all issues related to ongoing tag cleanups), then pick one of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.1\.** Add a moderator comment referring to [this meta discussion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7437/31260), so that readers interested in historical context could discover it without having to stare at all 20+ low quality answers over there. After that, remove all answers except the top one, then lock it back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.2\.** [Aggressively edit](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/1820/168) the question to bring it to better shape, worrying only about keeping consistency with top answer, about like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;So I know everyone here is all about private offices, how many developers actually have them. I am sort of half skeptical. I can believe that lead developers have them, but that's normally just one person in your average office.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;That makes me wonder, how many developers have private offices. Which leads to the actual question: why should they have them?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question [edit summary](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/edit-summary/info &quot;what's this&quot;) would better refer this meta discussion to help readers of edit history find out what led to the radical change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the edit, remove all answers that fail to match the revised question (as far as I can tell, these would be all except for the top answer), then reopen. Side note an edit drafted above would also &quot;trigger&quot; removal of the opening sentence from the top answer (&quot;I think the question should be...&quot;) but that's rather minor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Advantage of #2.1 is that it guarantees that worthy content is preserved. In comparison, 2.2 carries a (rather minor) risk that edited question will be eventually closed again and deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Advantage of #2.2 is that it doesn't introduce deviation of our usual practice to avoid cleanup prior to locking - since it doesn't involve locking at all. (that practice is in turn based on common sense - if you do cleanup anyway, it's only reasonable to improve content up to the point when it doesn't need locking at all)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for #1 (delete), it looks really inferior in comparison. It only doesn't deviate from our locking practices, but so does #2.2, which additionally offers a solid chance of preserving worthy content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that risk involved in #2.2 is minor, it looks like most appealing option." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20927" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7382" RevisionGUID="e4210284-d573-44be-8859-29b32fd7bcaa" CreationDate="2015-06-24T15:48:23.663" UserId="180911" Comment="The updates are now live" Text="You may have noticed some updates to the design lately, they are part of a SE network-wide update to a new base css framework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The updates allow us to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Have sharper / more beautiful design on retina displays&#xD;&#xA;- Fix layout bugs&#xD;&#xA;- More easily add new features to all of our sites in the future&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you can see, the layout of the header section was also updated for a better use of the space while using our new Q/A site design layout.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **But more importantly, it gives you access [to the new profile](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/current)!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see any bugs please let us know in the form of answers (to this post) that illustrate one particular thing at a time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20928" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7382" RevisionGUID="e4210284-d573-44be-8859-29b32fd7bcaa" CreationDate="2015-06-24T15:48:23.663" UserId="180911" Comment="The updates are now live" Text="Updates to the site" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20929" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7442" RevisionGUID="9183e885-ad92-46be-8f6f-065bf7b8a957" CreationDate="2015-06-24T15:51:58.970" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="You've got a 'bug' in the title.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That *should* be a forward slash on the end. `/* Programmers */` is correct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/TCKZU.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20930" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7442" RevisionGUID="6e01d786-9155-41b5-bad3-f39590c342c4" CreationDate="2015-06-24T15:55:58.507" UserId="180911" Comment="added 126 characters in body" Text="[meta-tag:status-completed] Thanks for the catch, it's now fixed and will be live after our next production build.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've got a 'bug' in the title.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That *should* be a forward slash on the end. `/* Programmers */` is correct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/TCKZU.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20931" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7443" RevisionGUID="f640951e-e7c1-4cf6-8d2e-948161faa39d" CreationDate="2015-06-24T16:04:31.097" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="So, my profile top looks like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After mousing over various parts it looks like (without the freehand red &lt;s&gt;hot dogs&lt;/s&gt; circles):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These areas do not re-collapse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The browser in use is IE 10.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/cQ771.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/sQf1L.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20933" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7441" RevisionGUID="cb830a4c-1d82-4b23-b5bd-c1a81f16ceb1" CreationDate="2015-06-24T16:14:13.030" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|specific-question|answer-quality|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20934" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7444" RevisionGUID="785f3647-cd98-4099-a5f1-1ac8adf165e2" CreationDate="2015-06-24T21:28:07.633" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The location of the text shifts depending on which question category is selected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice that the 'T' in the first one lines up to the red arrow in the background image differently in each image.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/bCT9Y.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Shu1A.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20935" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7437" RevisionGUID="f2732476-cced-42cd-a2ab-dfdcda0bff96" CreationDate="2015-06-24T22:45:44.877" UserId="25476" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|status-completed|specific-question|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20936" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7444" RevisionGUID="40a7bfde-3fa2-44f6-9861-aad9b5c18968" CreationDate="2015-06-24T23:48:03.593" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 38 characters in body" Text="The location of the text shifts depending on which question category is selected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice that the 'T' in the first one lines up to the red arrow in the background image differently in each image.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The browser in use there is IE 10.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/bCT9Y.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Shu1A.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20937" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7445" RevisionGUID="2a53a4c5-7c8a-4a83-9d16-25bd8fb99895" CreationDate="2015-06-25T00:20:51.033" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Not a bug per se but the non-flat, rounded buttons for submitting answers looks weird compared to the rest of the design which is flat and square.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![non-flat button][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/HEuMc.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20941" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7446" RevisionGUID="3bde816f-857c-4bc5-8c7c-300107858836" CreationDate="2015-06-25T13:51:36.873" UserId="88986" Text="[tag:meetings]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about how to do scrum are on topic, for example, but those questions should be tagged [tag:scrum], not [tag:meetings]. At best this tag is too broad, at worst it's off topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20942" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7446" RevisionGUID="da08a242-efdd-4efb-98f6-c9b7c0d6a8ff" CreationDate="2015-06-25T13:51:36.873" UserId="88986" />
  <row Id="20946" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7448" RevisionGUID="98ee9da4-f29e-42ba-a9c3-fea748c57bae" CreationDate="2015-06-25T20:22:53.120" UserId="56903" Text="I noticed a very minor UI glitch in my Programmers profile.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice how the _See votes, expandable usercard_ privilege name touches the close button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a really minor issue but it's annoying given how much work has been done on the neat redesign recently ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My browser is _Chrome 43.0.2357.124 m_, I'm using _Windows 8.1 Enterprise_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Lack of padding between the text and close button][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cannot reproduce this in _Firefox 38.0.5_ on the same machine. The text wraps into the next line there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Same box in Firefox, working properly][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/im3Fr.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/WQ6z0.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20949" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7449" RevisionGUID="3726d970-4733-4a53-9ea2-765152ba940f" CreationDate="2015-06-26T01:30:32.823" UserId="34069" Text="The accepted answers with solid green backed looked better to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess I am finding that&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is starting to become harder to read than&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/L8svS.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/NDL08.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20950" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7449" RevisionGUID="3726d970-4733-4a53-9ea2-765152ba940f" CreationDate="2015-06-26T01:30:32.823" UserId="34069" Text="Could the green numbers be clearer again?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20951" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7449" RevisionGUID="3726d970-4733-4a53-9ea2-765152ba940f" CreationDate="2015-06-26T01:30:32.823" UserId="34069" Text="|discussion|style|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20952" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7449" RevisionGUID="05cef5df-9964-497f-a286-a693e5b07449" CreationDate="2015-06-26T02:31:22.967" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20953" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7418" RevisionGUID="153a0408-8c13-4588-87a6-0ee122738493" CreationDate="2015-06-26T02:32:00.270" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|subjective|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20954" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7312" RevisionGUID="12c3d54c-1801-44ca-9e71-8a7394d5fee5" CreationDate="2015-06-26T02:32:30.547" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20955" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6502" RevisionGUID="ca2a8002-cbed-4f0f-8303-94a8512c76ce" CreationDate="2015-06-26T02:32:51.660" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|design-review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20956" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7312" RevisionGUID="f844d87f-ea80-41a7-8dfd-d9728fc03fc5" CreationDate="2015-06-26T13:59:39.300" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|asking-questions|design-review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20957" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7450" RevisionGUID="7595354c-d14a-483a-9842-b6ca2d5d44d4" CreationDate="2015-06-26T15:11:48.850" UserId="88986" Text="We've done a lot of great work in the cleanup of the [tag:work-environment] tag, but it has become complicated enough that we need to handle the work in it's own question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The major things that need to happen are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Close, lock and/or edit the remaining open questions&#xD;&#xA; 2. Burninate the tag from existing closed questions&#xD;&#xA; 3. Burninate / replace the tag from closed, **locked** questions, which are obviously more complicated and require moderator involvement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please see the answers for progress on these three separate goals." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20958" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7450" RevisionGUID="7595354c-d14a-483a-9842-b6ca2d5d44d4" CreationDate="2015-06-26T15:11:48.850" UserId="88986" Text="Analysis of the [work-environment] tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20959" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7450" RevisionGUID="7595354c-d14a-483a-9842-b6ca2d5d44d4" CreationDate="2015-06-26T15:11:48.850" UserId="88986" Text="|discussion|support|tags|clean-up|stci-phase2|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20962" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7450" RevisionGUID="75558a41-7af9-4c7e-a65d-c415e70f2d2d" CreationDate="2015-06-26T15:14:23.677" UserId="88986" Comment="added 58 characters in body" Text="We've done a lot of great work in the cleanup of the [tag:work-environment] tag, but it has become complicated enough that we need to handle the work in it's own question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The major things that need to happen are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [Close, lock and/or edit the remaining open questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7451/88986)&#xD;&#xA; 2. Burninate the tag from existing closed questions&#xD;&#xA; 3. Burninate / replace the tag from closed, **locked** questions, which are obviously more complicated and require moderator involvement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please see the answers for progress on these three separate goals." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20964" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7452" RevisionGUID="eea5d121-a135-43fa-9eb6-b312a515b193" CreationDate="2015-06-26T15:16:21.380" UserId="88986" Text="#Burninate the tag from existing closed questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Search to find new questions to edit](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bwork-environment%5D+closed%3Ayes+locked%3Ano)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently there are 188 closed, unlocked questions with this tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20965" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7452" RevisionGUID="a469b785-5a4f-4663-ad90-fd9603e2a35c" CreationDate="2015-06-26T15:16:21.380" UserId="88986" />
  <row Id="20966" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7450" RevisionGUID="155ef09c-1f49-4606-ade7-c652be9dcf78" CreationDate="2015-06-26T15:16:54.440" UserId="88986" Comment="added 58 characters in body" Text="We've done a lot of great work in the cleanup of the [tag:work-environment] tag, but it has become complicated enough that we need to handle the work in it's own question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The major things that need to happen are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [Close, lock and/or edit the remaining open questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7451/88986)&#xD;&#xA; 2. [Burninate the tag from existing closed questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7452/88986)&#xD;&#xA; 3. Burninate / replace the tag from closed, **locked** questions, which are obviously more complicated and require moderator involvement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please see the answers for progress on these three separate goals." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20967" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7453" RevisionGUID="8ab64f9c-1e20-4e85-aaad-a582e802d3e4" CreationDate="2015-06-26T15:31:52.247" UserId="88986" Text="# Burninate / replace the tag from closed, locked questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/250840/tags-that-only-exist-on-locked-questions-should-we-treat-these-the-same-as-tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Questions that have multiple tags&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78547/how-do-you-tell-if-advice-from-a-senior-developer-is-bad&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/perks-for-new-programmers&#xD;&#xA; - We should remove the tag, and [tag:hiring] too.&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25432/how-can-a-new-programmer-impress-the-software-engineer-boss?s=7|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Both [tag:career-development] and [tag:work-environment] need to go. Replace with [tag:management]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14706/overtime-is-part-of-the-job-true-but-a-bad-attitude?s=9|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Replace both [tag:jobs] and [tag:work-environment] with [tag:productivity]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/604/is-the-80-character-limit-still-relevant-in-times-of-widescreen-monitors?s=10|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2757/how-many-monitors-do-you-use-why-how-they-are-used?s=11|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5267/what-should-i-do-when-i-cant-reach-my-deadline?s=12|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]. Possibly add [tag:productivity]&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59740/change-managements-mind?s=13|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45525/open-office-arrangement-with-non-programmers-sales-etc-talking-all-day?s=15|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96871/my-manager-hates-documentation-in-our-large-project-what-should-i-do?s=16|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Delete the question&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102348/my-lead-does-not-co-operate-may-be-lack-of-knowledge-or-unwillingness?s=17|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60091/programmers-and-database-professionals-in-performance-based-companies?s=18|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Delete the question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Questions that only have one tag&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59173/why-do-ads-for-s-w-engineers-always-say-they-offer-a-fast-paced-environment&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:development-environment] would be superior to [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81929/is-it-normal-for-people-to-not-work?s=4|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Should be tagged [tag:productivity] instead&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11312/stuff-every-programmer-needs-while-working?s=5|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:development-environment] would be superior to [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2051/what-is-the-craziest-stupidest-silliest-thing-a-client-boss-asked-you-to-do&#xD;&#xA; - I've got nothing. [tag:team]? [tag:teamwork]? [tag:management]? All seem bad.&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89606/working-at-home-for-a-junior-developer?s=14|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Replace with [tag:development-environment]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20968" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7453" RevisionGUID="0438e613-ff1c-4045-821e-e9e7f49d45e8" CreationDate="2015-06-26T15:31:52.247" UserId="88986" />
  <row Id="20969" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7450" RevisionGUID="767b7d3c-6c71-4456-9eb8-2ffacc0e28d1" CreationDate="2015-06-26T15:33:27.947" UserId="88986" Comment="added 58 characters in body" Text="We've done a lot of great work in the cleanup of the [tag:work-environment] tag, but it has become complicated enough that we need to handle the work in it's own question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The major things that need to happen are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [Close, lock and/or edit the remaining open questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7451/88986)&#xD;&#xA; 2. [Burninate the tag from existing closed questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7452/88986)&#xD;&#xA; 3. [Burninate / replace the tag from closed, **locked** questions, which are obviously more complicated and require moderator involvement.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7453/88986)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please see the answers for progress on these three separate goals." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20970" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7453" RevisionGUID="25d61a34-1452-4e7b-b33f-07f62e4839b3" CreationDate="2015-06-26T16:28:01.223" UserId="88986" Comment="Edited to see question deletion" Text="# Burninate / replace the tag from closed, locked questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/250840/tags-that-only-exist-on-locked-questions-should-we-treat-these-the-same-as-tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Questions that have multiple tags&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78547/how-do-you-tell-if-advice-from-a-senior-developer-is-bad&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/perks-for-new-programmers&#xD;&#xA; - We should remove the tag, and [tag:hiring] too.&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25432/how-can-a-new-programmer-impress-the-software-engineer-boss?s=7|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Both [tag:career-development] and [tag:work-environment] need to go. Replace with [tag:management]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14706/overtime-is-part-of-the-job-true-but-a-bad-attitude?s=9|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Replace both [tag:jobs] and [tag:work-environment] with [tag:productivity]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/604/is-the-80-character-limit-still-relevant-in-times-of-widescreen-monitors?s=10|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2757/how-many-monitors-do-you-use-why-how-they-are-used?s=11|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5267/what-should-i-do-when-i-cant-reach-my-deadline?s=12|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]. Possibly add [tag:productivity]&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59740/change-managements-mind?s=13|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Delete the question (done)&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45525/open-office-arrangement-with-non-programmers-sales-etc-talking-all-day?s=15|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96871/my-manager-hates-documentation-in-our-large-project-what-should-i-do?s=16|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Delete the question (done)&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102348/my-lead-does-not-co-operate-may-be-lack-of-knowledge-or-unwillingness?s=17|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60091/programmers-and-database-professionals-in-performance-based-companies?s=18|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Delete the question (done)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Questions that only have one tag&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59173/why-do-ads-for-s-w-engineers-always-say-they-offer-a-fast-paced-environment&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:development-environment] would be superior to [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81929/is-it-normal-for-people-to-not-work?s=4|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Should be tagged [tag:productivity] instead&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11312/stuff-every-programmer-needs-while-working?s=5|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:development-environment] would be superior to [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2051/what-is-the-craziest-stupidest-silliest-thing-a-client-boss-asked-you-to-do&#xD;&#xA; - I've got nothing. [tag:team]? [tag:teamwork]? [tag:management]? All seem bad.&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89606/working-at-home-for-a-junior-developer?s=14|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Delete the question (done)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20972" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6795" RevisionGUID="eee96030-b65e-40de-a8ef-697fb65ddceb" CreationDate="2015-06-26T17:44:18.787" UserId="31260" Comment="[Check to make sure a duplicate does not exist before migrating](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/225679/165773)" Text="Suggest to perform automatic checks for cross-posting (including deleted SO cross-posts, like [this one](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26059920/what-makes-the-functional-and-logic-programming-paradigms-well-suited-for-progra) for example) and question block / warning at Stack Overflow when post enters close queue, not only when it is attempted to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If check detects a problem, system would raise automatic flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I expect above preemptive checks to help us more efficiently address attempts to abuse the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Annotate user accounts network-wide when they get rate-limited or banned](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112598/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A few of the migration rules are skipped if it is a ♦ moderator clicking the button, however: the &quot;is the user suspended or blocked from asking&quot; is **always** applied.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Stats on how attempts to circumvent SO question blocks impact other sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237534/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; working on a design for enhancing our our recidivism system to discourage this and other sorts of unproductive behavior...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Check to make sure a duplicate does not exist before migrating](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/225679/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A migration will be rejected if...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - ...An *exact*, word-for-word duplicate already exists on the destination site, or...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - ...A question created within a week of the one being migrated exists on the destination site with the same author and *very* similar body text.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Moderators can override this restriction...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [What difficulties could be there in establishing automatic checks for SO cross-posts...](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p#comment17969_6660)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [At smaller sites, penalize hot questions having 3-4 close votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; At smaller sites... closing a question takes hours or even days...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [How many questions do we get from users recently banned at SO, how many of these are closed / deleted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6592/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Provide 10k users more close votes](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6507/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Refund close votes for questions deleted on the same day](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237386/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Recover Close votes if asker deletes their own question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/69166/165773)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20973" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7450" RevisionGUID="ac4336d6-e9eb-4384-b805-181b672a9469" CreationDate="2015-06-26T18:33:43.107" UserId="31260" Comment="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/work-environment/info" Text="We've done a lot of great work in the cleanup of the [tag:work-environment] tag, but it has become complicated enough that we need to handle the work in it's own question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The major things that need to happen are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [Close, lock and/or edit the remaining open questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7451/88986)&#xD;&#xA; 2. [Burninate the tag from existing closed questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7452/88986)&#xD;&#xA; 3. [Burninate / replace the tag from closed, **locked** questions, which are obviously more complicated and require moderator involvement.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7453/88986)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please see the answers for progress on these three separate goals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the reference, also see current [tag wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/work-environment/info):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The environment in which software development happens. This includes the organization (supervisors, coworkers, and reports), hardware, software, and processes and methodologies. Questions are expected to be unique to software development and require the expertise of people with education or experience in the field of software development." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20974" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7285" RevisionGUID="a70054b4-2061-4fea-89d4-2b4d3a0aab39" CreationDate="2015-06-27T00:15:25.110" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|stci|stci-phase2|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20975" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7382" RevisionGUID="6d22c103-e526-4b76-bc92-84ef35734993" CreationDate="2015-06-27T00:15:25.110" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20976" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7452" RevisionGUID="74d49048-1577-462d-9639-af31beed7f06" CreationDate="2015-06-27T06:12:02.393" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="#Burninate the tag from existing closed questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Search to find new questions to edit](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bwork-environment%5D+closed%3Ayes+locked%3Ano)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently there are 73 closed, unlocked questions with this tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20977" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7454" RevisionGUID="951f5489-765a-4444-93ab-d4f9e38f6ef7" CreationDate="2015-06-27T11:53:55.643" UserId="184956" Text="When asking questions about concurency and race conditions it can be usefull to include an animated gif to demonstrate the problem: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/287999/start-a-service-when-the-first-client-connects-and-stopping-it-when-the-last-cli?noredirect=1#comment594766_287999 . Unfortunately, animations can be distracting to the reader or to the person who is trying to write a comment. It would be nice to add a &quot;hide/show&quot; or &quot;show/hide&quot; button for animated gifs so that the user could hide the animations when they were not looking at them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20978" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7454" RevisionGUID="951f5489-765a-4444-93ab-d4f9e38f6ef7" CreationDate="2015-06-27T11:53:55.643" UserId="184956" Text="Feature request: Show hide button for animated gifs" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20979" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7454" RevisionGUID="951f5489-765a-4444-93ab-d4f9e38f6ef7" CreationDate="2015-06-27T11:53:55.643" UserId="184956" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20980" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7455" RevisionGUID="ce1d9dcf-2594-43d6-bcd0-522146cc3519" CreationDate="2015-06-27T14:16:28.550" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="There's already a feature that can be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The spoiler tag &quot;&gt;!&quot; works on images too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;! ![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One can then just mouse over to see the image.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've taken the liberty of adding them to your original post. You get big white blocks but they work just fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/aT9pZ.jpg?s=64&amp;amp;g=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20981" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7454" RevisionGUID="dc53e9f6-0c02-4a09-82ec-6e0d5f904c47" CreationDate="2015-06-27T14:17:51.930" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|images|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20982" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7452" RevisionGUID="d471ef7b-015f-499a-8202-d0a1438cce40" CreationDate="2015-06-27T19:44:02.930" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body" Text="#Burninate the tag from existing closed questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Search to find new questions to edit](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bwork-environment%5D+closed%3Ayes+locked%3Ano)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently there are 45 closed, unlocked questions with this tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20983" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7453" RevisionGUID="b92ec332-752b-497f-8bfb-3dbff2cc8e97" CreationDate="2015-06-27T19:50:45.563" UserId="25936" Comment="added 96 characters in body" Text="# Burninate / replace the tag from closed, locked questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/250840/tags-that-only-exist-on-locked-questions-should-we-treat-these-the-same-as-tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Questions that have multiple tags&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78547/how-do-you-tell-if-advice-from-a-senior-developer-is-bad&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/perks-for-new-programmers&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - We should remove the tag, and [tag:hiring] too.&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25432/how-can-a-new-programmer-impress-the-software-engineer-boss&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Both [tag:career-development] and [tag:work-environment] need to go. Replace with [tag:management]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14706/overtime-is-part-of-the-job-true-but-a-bad-attitude?s=9|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Replace both [tag:jobs] and [tag:work-environment] with [tag:productivity]&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/604/is-the-80-character-limit-still-relevant-in-times-of-widescreen-monitors&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2757/how-many-monitors-do-you-use-why-how-they-are-used?s=11|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5267/what-should-i-do-when-i-cant-reach-my-deadline?s=12|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]. Possibly add [tag:productivity]&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59740/change-managements-mind?s=13|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Delete the question (done)&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45525/open-office-arrangement-with-non-programmers-sales-etc-talking-all-day?s=15|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96871/my-manager-hates-documentation-in-our-large-project-what-should-i-do?s=16|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Delete the question (done)&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102348/my-lead-does-not-co-operate-may-be-lack-of-knowledge-or-unwillingness?s=17|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60091/programmers-and-database-professionals-in-performance-based-companies?s=18|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Delete the question (done)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Questions that only have one tag&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59173/why-do-ads-for-s-w-engineers-always-say-they-offer-a-fast-paced-environment&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:development-environment] would be superior to [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81929/is-it-normal-for-people-to-not-work?s=4|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Should be tagged [tag:productivity] instead&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11312/stuff-every-programmer-needs-while-working?s=5|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:development-environment] would be superior to [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2051/what-is-the-craziest-stupidest-silliest-thing-a-client-boss-asked-you-to-do&#xD;&#xA; - I've got nothing. [tag:team]? [tag:teamwork]? [tag:management]? All seem bad.&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89606/working-at-home-for-a-junior-developer?s=14|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Delete the question (done)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20990" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7453" RevisionGUID="5ba66031-400d-4576-8828-57422b65a712" CreationDate="2015-06-27T23:08:53.337" UserId="88986" Comment="Reordered the questions in a more meaningful way" Text="# Burninate / replace the tag from closed, locked questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/250840/tags-that-only-exist-on-locked-questions-should-we-treat-these-the-same-as-tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Pending questions with multiple tags&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14706/overtime-is-part-of-the-job-true-but-a-bad-attitude?s=9|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Replace both [tag:jobs] and [tag:work-environment] with [tag:productivity]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2757/how-many-monitors-do-you-use-why-how-they-are-used?s=11|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Pending questions with only one tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59173/why-do-ads-for-s-w-engineers-always-say-they-offer-a-fast-paced-environment&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:development-environment] would be superior to [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81929/is-it-normal-for-people-to-not-work?s=4|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Should be tagged [tag:productivity] instead&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11312/stuff-every-programmer-needs-while-working?s=5|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:development-environment] would be superior to [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2051/what-is-the-craziest-stupidest-silliest-thing-a-client-boss-asked-you-to-do&#xD;&#xA; - I've got nothing. [tag:team]? [tag:teamwork]? [tag:management]? All seem bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Edited questions&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78547/how-do-you-tell-if-advice-from-a-senior-developer-is-bad&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/perks-for-new-programmers&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - We should remove the tag, and [tag:hiring] too.&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25432/how-can-a-new-programmer-impress-the-software-engineer-boss&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Both [tag:career-development] and [tag:work-environment] need to go. Replace with [tag:management]&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/604/is-the-80-character-limit-still-relevant-in-times-of-widescreen-monitors&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Deleted questions&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5267/what-should-i-do-when-i-cant-reach-my-deadline?s=12|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59740/change-managements-mind?s=13|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45525/open-office-arrangement-with-non-programmers-sales-etc-talking-all-day?s=15|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96871/my-manager-hates-documentation-in-our-large-project-what-should-i-do?s=16|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102348/my-lead-does-not-co-operate-may-be-lack-of-knowledge-or-unwillingness?s=17|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60091/programmers-and-database-professionals-in-performance-based-companies?s=18|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89606/working-at-home-for-a-junior-developer?s=14|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20991" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7450" RevisionGUID="98ddcaeb-ffda-44da-92ef-2f9e7f3a205f" CreationDate="2015-06-27T23:09:08.630" UserId="88986" Comment="added 28 characters in body" Text="We've done a lot of great work in the cleanup of the [tag:work-environment] tag, but it has become complicated enough that we need to handle the work in it's own question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The major things that need to happen are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [Close, lock and/or edit the remaining open questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7451/88986) [meta-tag:status-completed]&#xD;&#xA; 2. [Burninate the tag from existing closed questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7452/88986)&#xD;&#xA; 3. [Burninate / replace the tag from closed, **locked** questions, which are obviously more complicated and require moderator involvement.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7453/88986)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please see the answers for progress on these three separate goals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the reference, also see current [tag wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/work-environment/info):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The environment in which software development happens. This includes the organization (supervisors, coworkers, and reports), hardware, software, and processes and methodologies. Questions are expected to be unique to software development and require the expertise of people with education or experience in the field of software development." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20998" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="bb2ffc03-0349-43b2-b3d7-9d19aff76273" CreationDate="2015-06-29T15:47:26.970" UserId="4" Comment="added 264 characters in body" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:grad-school] [tag:university] [tag:college] [tag:degree]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning]  [tag:unlearning] [tag:exam] [tag:learning-curve] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching] [tag:tutorial]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:student] [tag:students] [tag:children]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training-courses] [tag:training]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employee] [tag:employer] [tag:employment] [tag:employers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-satisfaction] [tag:job-title] [tag:jobs] [tag:new-job] [tag:job-definition] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Uncategorized tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:problem] [tag:problems]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:non-technical]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20999" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="1b01b626-895c-4ed0-9c7b-e46255b60b44" CreationDate="2015-06-29T16:00:55.573" UserId="88986" Comment="We missed Mentor tag" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:grad-school] [tag:university] [tag:college] [tag:degree]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning]  [tag:unlearning] [tag:exam] [tag:learning-curve] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching] [tag:tutorial]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:student] [tag:students] [tag:children]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training-courses] [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employee] [tag:employer] [tag:employment] [tag:employers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-satisfaction] [tag:job-title] [tag:jobs] [tag:new-job] [tag:job-definition] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Uncategorized tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:problem] [tag:problems]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:non-technical]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21000" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7456" RevisionGUID="a967a253-cdf8-4b3c-b265-0bee59c7fbb2" CreationDate="2015-06-29T16:03:53.907" UserId="88986" Text="[tag:junior-programmer] [tag:senior-developer]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At first I wasn't sure if these needed cleaning, until @GlenH7 and I looked at the questions and found a bunch of underwhelming questions. Both tags are around 40% closed already, not a good sign." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21001" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7456" RevisionGUID="4215aff7-7006-42ba-a8bb-49c048b27919" CreationDate="2015-06-29T16:03:53.907" UserId="88986" />
  <row Id="21007" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7450" RevisionGUID="6d1f56da-b3d9-4ee6-8370-8a9e95c30463" CreationDate="2015-06-30T00:07:52.053" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Grammar more goodly." Text="We've done a lot of great work in the cleanup of the [tag:work-environment] tag, but it has become complicated enough that we need to handle the work in its own question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The major things that need to happen are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [Close, lock and/or edit the remaining open questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7451/88986) [meta-tag:status-completed]&#xD;&#xA; 2. [Burninate the tag from existing closed questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7452/88986)&#xD;&#xA; 3. [Burninate / replace the tag from closed, **locked** questions, which are obviously more complicated and require moderator involvement.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7453/88986)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please see the answers for progress on these three separate goals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the reference, also see current [tag wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/work-environment/info):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The environment in which software development happens. This includes the organization (supervisors, coworkers, and reports), hardware, software, and processes and methodologies. Questions are expected to be unique to software development and require the expertise of people with education or experience in the field of software development." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21008" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7293" RevisionGUID="f9a675a8-ffaa-44d6-b948-bd19b4d98e20" CreationDate="2015-06-30T04:48:00.250" UserId="31260" Comment="Some questions are tagged both legal and licensing may have nothing to do with legal matters..." Text="[tag:legal] and [tag:copyright]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These represent subjects that are off-topic. The [tag:licensing] tag already covers what is currently on-topic. Some of these questions may actually be on-topic licensing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are [tagged both legal and licensing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[licensing]+[legal]+closed%3Ano) may have nothing to do with legal matters and therefore need just deletion of the inappropriate tag. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21009" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7293" RevisionGUID="4ef2be26-7585-4f25-b11b-71a91d637040" CreationDate="2015-06-30T05:08:12.447" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo corrected" Text="[tag:legal] and [tag:copyright]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These represent subjects that are off-topic. The [tag:licensing] tag already covers what is currently on-topic. Some of these questions may actually be on-topic licensing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions [tagged both legal and licensing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[licensing]+[legal]+closed%3Ano) may have nothing to do with legal matters and therefore need just deletion of the inappropriate tag. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21010" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7293" RevisionGUID="ab8b674c-22bd-46b6-98d3-61093d907982" CreationDate="2015-06-30T13:01:16.310" UserId="31260" Comment="#Active // if I understand correctly" Text="#Active&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:legal] and [tag:copyright]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These represent subjects that are off-topic. The [tag:licensing] tag already covers what is currently on-topic. Some of these questions may actually be on-topic licensing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions [tagged both legal and licensing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[licensing]+[legal]+closed%3Ano) may have nothing to do with legal matters and therefore need just deletion of the inappropriate tag. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21011" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7458" RevisionGUID="fea33082-487a-44e2-b903-44426940c665" CreationDate="2015-07-01T01:47:12.777" UserId="113323" Text="[![Support the FIRST Robotics proposal on Area51.SE!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/gZLAw.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/87670/first-robotics?referrer=MBTLI4xE_Jf4eKpJpcRrJA2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21012" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7458" RevisionGUID="20e61c07-a638-4478-ba1c-440d98a4b6fa" CreationDate="2015-07-01T01:47:12.777" UserId="113323" />
  <row Id="21013" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7459" RevisionGUID="85098c49-08d2-4e79-bae4-7298a947d1c4" CreationDate="2015-07-01T15:53:53.300" UserId="33986" Text="I recently asked [a question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288398/when-to-use-single-line-if-statements) that was closed as a dupe of tho other similar, but not related questions. I edited my question to clarify why it is not a dupe, however I was too late and the question was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please reopen the question as it is not a dupe, even if the other questions (which I obviously read before posting) address similar concerns. Thank you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21014" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7459" RevisionGUID="85098c49-08d2-4e79-bae4-7298a947d1c4" CreationDate="2015-07-01T15:53:53.300" UserId="33986" Text="Reopen question that is not a dupe" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21015" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7459" RevisionGUID="85098c49-08d2-4e79-bae4-7298a947d1c4" CreationDate="2015-07-01T15:53:53.300" UserId="33986" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21016" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7460" RevisionGUID="c97707c0-184d-4883-abdf-e7965db76567" CreationDate="2015-07-01T23:07:50.607" UserId="185622" Text="I am new to SE (and already addicted). I try to skim all of the comments at the end of an answer section to learn as much information as possible from the brilliant minds here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a way to automatically expand the &quot;show X more comments&quot; below each answer section? Is there a setting somewhere and / or a script I can run to always receive all comments without the hunt and clickfest? It would be convenient to have an always expand option somewhere in the SE settings instead of a clickfest..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21017" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7460" RevisionGUID="c97707c0-184d-4883-abdf-e7965db76567" CreationDate="2015-07-01T23:07:50.607" UserId="185622" Text="Is it possible to automatically &quot;show X more comment(s)&quot; instead of having to click? I might break a nail" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21018" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7460" RevisionGUID="c97707c0-184d-4883-abdf-e7965db76567" CreationDate="2015-07-01T23:07:50.607" UserId="185622" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21019" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7461" RevisionGUID="ebd704d0-4a9a-40fc-852f-0818df47e6d3" CreationDate="2015-07-01T23:24:11.687" UserId="161917" Text="I don't believe there is. Moreover, it's probably not a desirable feature to have since comments are meant to be transient, temporary things used primarily to request clarification or suggest improvements of the real content: questions and answers. The automatic partial hiding of long comment chains is a very deliberate way of keeping the focus on the Q&amp;A, where it belongs. In general, a large number of comments on any post is a strong sign that something has gone terribly wrong with it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21020" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7462" RevisionGUID="8f14c9dc-d283-46b6-af13-b7d00a31416f" CreationDate="2015-07-02T13:50:30.293" UserId="143320" Text="I'd like to pose a question, which goes something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;'What are some signs that one is ready for a technical leadership role'&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;'How does one know that they're ready for a technical leadership role'&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does this sound like it'd be a fit here? If not, is there a way to phrase the question so it'd work?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21021" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7462" RevisionGUID="8f14c9dc-d283-46b6-af13-b7d00a31416f" CreationDate="2015-07-02T13:50:30.293" UserId="143320" Text="Phrasing a question about technical leadership readiness" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21022" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7462" RevisionGUID="8f14c9dc-d283-46b6-af13-b7d00a31416f" CreationDate="2015-07-02T13:50:30.293" UserId="143320" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21023" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7463" RevisionGUID="60cba839-b02e-49d1-aa6f-038a945be9b9" CreationDate="2015-07-02T13:57:46.467" UserId="1130" Text="I agree it is not a duplicate of the questions specified, and have voted to reopen. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are asking about what cases you should be using single-line if statements, and provide a good example of of die/exception cases. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other two questions linked ask about using curly braces or not in an if, or ask about multiple lines of code vs every code statement on it's own line. Neither ask the same question, nor get you the same answer that you got on your answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope a few others vote to reopen as well, but if not you can always flag for a moderator in a few days as I've always found it's much harder to get things reopened on this site than to close them, and moderators are often needed to step in before reopen votes start to expire.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for those claiming it's an &quot;opinion-based&quot; question, well the majority of questions/answers on this site could be called &quot;opinion-based&quot;. The purpose of that close reason is to stop questions where everyone's answer/opinion could be right (for example, *&quot;What's your favorite editor theme&quot;*). I do not think this applies in your case because you provided a specific criteria for your answer (readability, maintainability, extensibility, etc) and I don't think there are that many answers to your question that we need to worry about this question descending into a list of &quot;here's my preference&quot; answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21024" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7464" RevisionGUID="dbb5ef8d-1501-414e-b0b9-110002730fb6" CreationDate="2015-07-02T13:59:35.863" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="This question would be closed as off-topic because it is asking for career advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular&#xD;&#xA;&gt; circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no way to rephrase this question to be on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hypothetically speaking: even if this question were on-topic, it would certainly be too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading: [Why was my question closed as off topic?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21026" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7465" RevisionGUID="b40bda29-4faa-412b-8186-a5ce1df9a6d1" CreationDate="2015-07-02T14:37:33.573" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="[tag:culture] appears to be many things that are more related to the workplace than actual programming / architecture / design questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21027" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7465" RevisionGUID="4779f9a4-7cee-4208-a653-5b2ae1c98721" CreationDate="2015-07-02T14:37:33.573" UserDisplayName="user40980" />
  <row Id="21028" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7459" RevisionGUID="1aa71422-aafb-41da-b589-3513dc1052a7" CreationDate="2015-07-02T16:06:22.197" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|specific-question|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21029" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7466" RevisionGUID="3922d3cf-0e21-4698-9db8-89ffeaf45e0a" CreationDate="2015-07-02T16:29:08.100" UserId="18448" Text="Apparently the interview tag is being removed, so how should I tag questions related to interviews?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21030" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7466" RevisionGUID="3922d3cf-0e21-4698-9db8-89ffeaf45e0a" CreationDate="2015-07-02T16:29:08.100" UserId="18448" Text="How should I tag interview related questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21031" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7466" RevisionGUID="3922d3cf-0e21-4698-9db8-89ffeaf45e0a" CreationDate="2015-07-02T16:29:08.100" UserId="18448" Text="|discussion|tags|clean-up|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21032" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7467" RevisionGUID="93c481ef-22bd-4967-8c44-1bbc2789593d" CreationDate="2015-07-02T16:47:26.090" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Is the question about the interview process itself or career advice in general?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Yes:** do not ask here, it is off-topic. It _might_ be appropriate at [The Workplace][1], but you need to read their help center for guidance and compare against what you want to ask. You can always drop in their chat or ask on their meta to be sure first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**No:** remove language relevant to the interview. Congratulations! You have a question useful for your immediate need while also being applicable to other programmers, whether they are interviewing or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example: if you want feedback on a whiteboard-type question asked during an interview, leave out the interview part and try to keep it in scope to avoid it being closed as too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also be sure to [read the link that gnat posted][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6361/31260&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21033" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7468" RevisionGUID="201003c9-f30e-401e-a8de-f6dab9de6c09" CreationDate="2015-07-02T16:47:36.080" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Instead of asking &quot;How should I tag interview related questions?&quot; You should probably be asking &quot;Should I ask interview related questions?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The general answer to _that_ question is &quot;No, you shouldn't be asking interview questions.&quot;  They're just a poor fit for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Gnat linked a good reference question that goes into further detail.  [Why do interview questions make poor Programmers.SE questions?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6361/31260)  The TL;DR is we've tried them and they just don't work well on the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21034" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7294" RevisionGUID="54962611-fa97-464e-b984-2699d1902014" CreationDate="2015-07-02T18:16:13.467" UserId="88986" Comment="Added client-relations as a related tag" Text="[tag:freelancing] [tag:client-relations]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Workplace and Freelancing exist and cover these topics. They appears to be beyond scope based on the Help Center." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21035" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7293" RevisionGUID="ecd32253-14e9-41c4-9634-a429c9c8233f" CreationDate="2015-07-02T18:49:30.267" UserId="88986" Comment="Added software patent tag" Text="#Active&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:legal] [tag:copyright] [tag:software-patent]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These represent subjects that are off-topic. The [tag:licensing] tag already covers what is currently on-topic. Some of these questions may actually be on-topic licensing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions [tagged both legal and licensing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[licensing]+[legal]+closed%3Ano) may have nothing to do with legal matters and therefore need just deletion of the inappropriate tag. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21036" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7469" RevisionGUID="342b4dce-b74d-40ae-b0ac-07841194e040" CreationDate="2015-07-02T22:33:50.197" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="That recursion question [Is recursion not something programmers know?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288552/is-recursion-not-something-programmers-know) suddenly disappeared. Why and what happened to it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21037" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7469" RevisionGUID="342b4dce-b74d-40ae-b0ac-07841194e040" CreationDate="2015-07-02T22:33:50.197" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Where did that recursion question go?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21038" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7469" RevisionGUID="342b4dce-b74d-40ae-b0ac-07841194e040" CreationDate="2015-07-02T22:33:50.197" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21039" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7470" RevisionGUID="bff14c65-c860-4070-9543-cfe48ad8c652" CreationDate="2015-07-02T22:33:50.197" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="GlenH7, Amon, and I were the three delete votes on it.  A closed question that is at -3 can be deleted by users that have 20k rep without having to wait for two days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was attracting *significant* discussion in the comments.  The question post had 13 comments, the posts had 10, 14, and 4 comments on them (and showed no sign of stopping or slowing down).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question had a number of reopen votes on it, which would have likely made it (and I will point out that it would likely get closed again - neither Glen, Amon nor I had cast close votes on it in the first round).  The question itself was (I believe) a rant about the lack of experience of php coders, an opinion poll about what to do when interviewing a candidate who can't do recursion for a Fibonacci series.  The answers were veering off into critiquing the interview question and the applicability of recursion in today's computing environment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The combination of these things (the discussion in comments, the off topic nature of the question, that the question was likely to get reopened and reclosed (with probably a few more answers jumping into the bandwagon)) strongly suggests that it is going to become even *more* contentious with time. At best (or worst depending on opinion), it would be one of those ugly historical locks (historical significance on a 1 day old question?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussions are indeed fun and interesting - but they are a poor fit for the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A format. I would love to banter about this in chat, or see what anecdotes occur on Quora or Reddit for it... but it is very tough to get it to fit in the Q&amp;A format as asked and written.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deleting the question gives people who have 10k reputation (and the OP) the opportunity to try to edit it into a question that should be reopened without the drama associated with bumping the question and repeated &quot;leave closed&quot; reviews.  In its current form, however, it should remain closed and ultimately be deleted as it isn't a good fit for the Q&amp;A format. That it was done sooner than later was to try to reduce the poor experiences for the people who chance to answer it in the reopen/reclose cycle and reduce any associated drama." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21040" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7469" RevisionGUID="d66451ec-e315-41c2-ac79-7f0565660ee9" CreationDate="2015-07-03T02:43:58.940" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Tweak format. Add image." Text="That recursion question «Is recursion not something programmers know?» ([10k link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288552/is-recursion-not-something-programmers-know), [img](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DcDhG.png)) suddenly disappeared. Why and what happened to it?!&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21041" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7470" RevisionGUID="385e76a8-509f-4cd3-9d0b-dad84dbddf8a" CreationDate="2015-07-03T07:25:08.173" UserId="31260" Comment="poor fit for the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A format += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6743/31260 &quot;see 'On discussions and why they don't make good questions'&quot;" Text="GlenH7, Amon, and I were the three delete votes on it.  A closed question that is at -3 can be deleted by users that have 20k rep without having to wait for two days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was attracting *significant* discussion in the comments.  The question post had 13 comments, the posts had 10, 14, and 4 comments on them (and showed no sign of stopping or slowing down).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question had a number of reopen votes on it, which would have likely made it (and I will point out that it would likely get closed again - neither Glen, Amon nor I had cast close votes on it in the first round).  The question itself was (I believe) a rant about the lack of experience of php coders, an opinion poll about what to do when interviewing a candidate who can't do recursion for a Fibonacci series.  The answers were veering off into critiquing the interview question and the applicability of recursion in today's computing environment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The combination of these things (the discussion in comments, the off topic nature of the question, that the question was likely to get reopened and reclosed (with probably a few more answers jumping into the bandwagon)) strongly suggests that it is going to become even *more* contentious with time. At best (or worst depending on opinion), it would be one of those ugly historical locks (historical significance on a 1 day old question?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussions are indeed fun and interesting - but they are a [poor fit for the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A format](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6743/31260 &quot;see 'On discussions and why they don't make good questions'&quot;). I would love to banter about this in chat, or see what anecdotes occur on Quora or Reddit for it... but it is very tough to get it to fit in the Q&amp;A format as asked and written.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deleting the question gives people who have 10k reputation (and the OP) the opportunity to try to edit it into a question that should be reopened without the drama associated with bumping the question and repeated &quot;leave closed&quot; reviews.  In its current form, however, it should remain closed and ultimately be deleted as it isn't a good fit for the Q&amp;A format. That it was done sooner than later was to try to reduce the poor experiences for the people who chance to answer it in the reopen/reclose cycle and reduce any associated drama." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21042" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7466" RevisionGUID="5bd287e1-6f7a-4606-b852-fd496aa46e13" CreationDate="2015-07-03T08:47:26.160" UserId="18448" Comment="added clarification" Text="Apparently the interview tag is being removed, so how should I tag questions related to interviews?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Edit*: To be clear, I am NOT asking about questions about questions that would be asked in an interview. I am asking about questions related to interviewing itself - for instance, something like &quot;is it fair to ask an interviewee to do a coding exercise using a text editor they are unfamiliar with?&quot; is not an &quot;interview question&quot; per se, but something about interviewing more generally, although still too programmer-focussed to fit on workplace.se. Granted, this specific example is probably too opinion-based to be a good fit for the site anyway, but I hope I've at least clarified the difference." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21043" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7470" RevisionGUID="df0e2051-8827-4e22-ab83-c9d8c6ab4aab" CreationDate="2015-07-03T11:23:33.050" UserId="31260" Comment="users that have 20k rep += http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/trusted-user" Text="GlenH7, Amon, and I were the three delete votes on it.  A closed question that is at -3 can be deleted by [users that have 20k rep](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/trusted-user) without having to wait for two days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was attracting *significant* discussion in the comments.  The question post had 13 comments, the posts had 10, 14, and 4 comments on them (and showed no sign of stopping or slowing down).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question had a number of reopen votes on it, which would have likely made it (and I will point out that it would likely get closed again - neither Glen, Amon nor I had cast close votes on it in the first round).  The question itself was (I believe) a rant about the lack of experience of php coders, an opinion poll about what to do when interviewing a candidate who can't do recursion for a Fibonacci series.  The answers were veering off into critiquing the interview question and the applicability of recursion in today's computing environment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The combination of these things (the discussion in comments, the off topic nature of the question, that the question was likely to get reopened and reclosed (with probably a few more answers jumping into the bandwagon)) strongly suggests that it is going to become even *more* contentious with time. At best (or worst depending on opinion), it would be one of those ugly historical locks (historical significance on a 1 day old question?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussions are indeed fun and interesting - but they are a [poor fit for the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A format](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6743/31260 &quot;see 'On discussions and why they don't make good questions'&quot;). I would love to banter about this in chat, or see what anecdotes occur on Quora or Reddit for it... but it is very tough to get it to fit in the Q&amp;A format as asked and written.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deleting the question gives people who have 10k reputation (and the OP) the opportunity to try to edit it into a question that should be reopened without the drama associated with bumping the question and repeated &quot;leave closed&quot; reviews.  In its current form, however, it should remain closed and ultimately be deleted as it isn't a good fit for the Q&amp;A format. That it was done sooner than later was to try to reduce the poor experiences for the people who chance to answer it in the reopen/reclose cycle and reduce any associated drama." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21044" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7471" RevisionGUID="d2622dfb-a9a6-40cc-9949-c70c50194212" CreationDate="2015-07-03T14:26:58.227" UserId="64132" Text="There's a question [what is the meaning of manage c++?][1] that is pretty clearly not a good fit for this site.  There's a duplicate on SO, and the question was more or less answered in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm OK with closing this one (and was about to vote to close), when I saw it had 4 &quot;your question is unclear&quot; votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears to me that we're starting to use **&quot;unclear what you are asking&quot;** as a synonym for **&quot;we don't like your question&quot;** or **&quot;your question doesn't fit the site&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a way, this is a duplicate of [Is it really unclear what is being asked?][2], except I'd like to focus on the reason for closing, not the merits of a single question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/288618/64132&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6217/64132" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21045" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7471" RevisionGUID="d2622dfb-a9a6-40cc-9949-c70c50194212" CreationDate="2015-07-03T14:26:58.227" UserId="64132" Text="Are we using &quot;Unclear what you are asking&quot; correctly?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21046" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7471" RevisionGUID="d2622dfb-a9a6-40cc-9949-c70c50194212" CreationDate="2015-07-03T14:26:58.227" UserId="64132" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21047" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7472" RevisionGUID="c59a1b71-0829-48fa-9c4c-50d05d34f76a" CreationDate="2015-07-03T14:26:58.227" UserId="64132" Text="I think a better answer is to **use a custom close message** and say something like **&quot;This question does not appear to be about software development within the scope defined in the help center.&quot;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's a little more typing and not quite as quick/convenient as clicking a radio button, but it is kinder to the OP.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Marking an easy to understand question as unclear just makes us look bad.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21050" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7474" RevisionGUID="27e193ca-43be-4980-bbb3-31d410b53192" CreationDate="2015-07-03T15:35:32.657" UserId="31260" Text="Call me dumb if you wish but I really [don't understand](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489) what is writen in the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the meaning of manage c++? -- Just want to ask what is the meaning of manage c++?. Follow up question, how does it differ from c++?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for comments referring to some place elsewhere which could help one understand the question, I think the problem with this approach has been best covered in a discussion at sister meta, [Should a question that is meaningless without viewing an external link be closed?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/266910/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt;  Unclear what you are asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;would seem to be the most appropriate close reason here... questions (like answers) should really stand on their own merits and only have external links for references etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone understands what the question is about, they would better edit it into a shape allowing other readers to understand it too (if only to vote close for other reason, although [protecting from getting senseless guesses as answers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/98026/165773 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;) wouldn't hurt either)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21051" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7471" RevisionGUID="154080a0-785b-42eb-94d2-16cc8ff83d79" CreationDate="2015-07-03T16:17:00.023" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21052" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="370d4a9b-23a8-440e-bcff-202c104b4d77" CreationDate="2015-07-04T01:45:01.333" UserId="88986" Comment="added 39 characters in body" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:grad-school] [tag:university] [tag:college] [tag:degree]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning]  [tag:unlearning] [tag:exam] [tag:learning-curve] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching] [tag:tutorial]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:student] [tag:students] [tag:children]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training-courses] [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employee] [tag:employer] [tag:employment] [tag:employers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-satisfaction] [tag:job-title] [tag:jobs] [tag:new-job] [tag:job-definition] [tag:job-advancement] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Uncategorized tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:problem] [tag:problems]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:non-technical]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21053" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7305" RevisionGUID="f702d2cc-c875-4a69-b207-2e11cac285a8" CreationDate="2015-07-04T04:10:56.337" UserId="88986" Comment="Added self improvement" Text="[tag:skills] [tag:self-improvement]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure this exactly falls under the *teaching* post or the *job* post, but it should be looked at." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21054" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7474" RevisionGUID="fd095652-146d-45e4-97f5-4dab2d466f09" CreationDate="2015-07-04T05:53:50.400" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="Call me dumb if you wish but I really [don't understand](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489) what is written in the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the meaning of manage c++? -- Just want to ask what is the meaning of manage c++?. Follow up question, how does it differ from c++?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for comments referring to some place elsewhere which could help one understand the question, I think the problem with this approach has been best covered in a discussion at sister meta, [Should a question that is meaningless without viewing an external link be closed?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/266910/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt;  Unclear what you are asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;would seem to be the most appropriate close reason here... questions (like answers) should really stand on their own merits and only have external links for references etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone understands what the question is about, they would better edit it into a shape allowing other readers to understand it too (if only to vote close for other reason, although [protecting from getting senseless guesses as answers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/98026/165773 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;) wouldn't hurt either)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21055" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7475" RevisionGUID="233796f5-4e4d-4509-94f8-01172683730f" CreationDate="2015-07-04T14:11:01.813" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The core question to the problem is one that needs work.  I see it has been reopened, but the issue of it being primarily opinion has not been addressed or resolved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Are there any other &quot;good&quot; uses for single-line if statements? How strictly should the practice be avoided? Note that I am explicitly asking about the lack of an indented line to indicate that a condition may or may not occur, I am not asking about the use of braces. Although I would appreciate all opinions in the comments, answers should address objective reasoning, such as maintainability or extensibility of code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This text needs to be changed to ***not*** be a poll for suggestions of enables of 'good examples' for single line if statements.  Furthermore, the second question is completely opinion. There is no problem to be solved. I will have different answers than others that differs only on my beliefs - not on objective architectural or design principles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without resolving this, we get answers such as [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/288408/40980):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I always prefer the version with braces.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. If I don't always use the braces, then I may forget to put them when there is more than one statement in the block.&#xD;&#xA;2. IDEs used by other team members can reformat the code automatically to move the statement to the new line, thus making it much more error prone in the future.&#xD;&#xA;3. Merging the code across the branches is more error prone if the `if` statement is a conflicting spot. The probability for error is even higher if the person doing the merge is not completely familiar with the merged changes.&#xD;&#xA;4. A statement not-belonging to the block may be included in it later by mistake (I add new statements to the block, so I need to add braces, but because of indentation or similar visual effects I also include a statement that should be left out of the block).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where it implicitly encourages people to answer with &quot;I prefer...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it may be possible to resolve these issues, the question should ***not*** have been reopened prior to removing the polling nature." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21056" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7293" RevisionGUID="b313c1f6-c409-4263-9db3-4faa36535515" CreationDate="2015-07-05T09:45:08.153" UserId="31260" Comment="added 10 characters in body" Text="#Active&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:legal] [tag:law] [tag:copyright] [tag:software-patent]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These represent subjects that are off-topic. The [tag:licensing] tag already covers what is currently on-topic. Some of these questions may actually be on-topic licensing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions [tagged both legal and licensing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[licensing]+[legal]+closed%3Ano) may have nothing to do with legal matters and therefore need just deletion of the inappropriate tag. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21057" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7459" RevisionGUID="7080312d-4901-467e-a6bc-7b7e1ebe9ef6" CreationDate="2015-07-05T13:31:25.647" UserId="31260" Comment="spelling and personal stuff cleanup" Text="I recently asked [a question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288398/when-to-use-single-line-if-statements) that was closed as a dupe of two other similar, but not related questions. I edited my question to clarify why it is not a dupe, however I was too late and the question was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please reopen the question as it is not a dupe, even if the other questions (which I obviously read before posting) address similar concerns." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21058" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7476" RevisionGUID="df8a1fbc-1cab-4267-8ba4-12febec3931d" CreationDate="2015-07-05T20:16:33.280" UserId="31260" Text="Please merge tag [tag:compilers] (212 questions) into [tag:compiler] (82), and make them synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Preference for master tag is because Wikipedia article uses singular form: [Compiler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiler).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag wikis appear to be almost identical (and both look like unattributed copies from Wikipedia article referred above, not good)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21059" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7476" RevisionGUID="df8a1fbc-1cab-4267-8ba4-12febec3931d" CreationDate="2015-07-05T20:16:33.280" UserId="31260" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [compilers] → [compiler]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21060" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7476" RevisionGUID="df8a1fbc-1cab-4267-8ba4-12febec3931d" CreationDate="2015-07-05T20:16:33.280" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21063" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7478" RevisionGUID="28d187f3-c170-40d6-a78e-20d9d8d083c1" CreationDate="2015-07-06T10:11:36.007" UserId="22685" Text="[This post][1] was closed as a duplicate, which perhaps it is, but the original question contains a single answer that doesn't really add much to the question. The recent, duplicate question has many more answers and has generated much discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is there a case for closing the original question and keeping the new one seeing as the quality is significantly different between the two?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288405/is-testable-code-better-code/288411?noredirect=1#comment597093_288411" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21064" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7478" RevisionGUID="28d187f3-c170-40d6-a78e-20d9d8d083c1" CreationDate="2015-07-06T10:11:36.007" UserId="22685" Text="Reopen good, but duplicate, question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21065" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7478" RevisionGUID="28d187f3-c170-40d6-a78e-20d9d8d083c1" CreationDate="2015-07-06T10:11:36.007" UserId="22685" Text="|discussion|duplicate|reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21066" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7293" RevisionGUID="538526fc-31ea-49a4-8b32-163372f1e2e1" CreationDate="2015-07-06T13:14:06.120" UserId="4" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="#Postponed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:legal] [tag:law] [tag:copyright] [tag:software-patent]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These represent subjects that are off-topic. The [tag:licensing] tag already covers what is currently on-topic. Some of these questions may actually be on-topic licensing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions [tagged both legal and licensing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[licensing]+[legal]+closed%3Ano) may have nothing to do with legal matters and therefore need just deletion of the inappropriate tag. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21067" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7296" RevisionGUID="5e90267f-b480-472a-9a61-8bc9262a6eee" CreationDate="2015-07-06T13:16:34.927" UserId="4" Comment="added 114 characters in body" Text="[tag:source-code]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[closed:no locked:no](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsource-code%5D+closed%3Ano+locked%3Ano)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Doesn't add much value. There are already tags about more specific concepts within source code, such as [tag:code-quality], [tag:clean-code], [tag:code-reuse], [tag:code-smell], [tag:code-formatting] and so on and so forth." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21068" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7293" RevisionGUID="006ae511-4e97-4132-836a-5e3658fa0c8c" CreationDate="2015-07-06T13:26:46.213" UserId="88986" Comment="Added some clarity and a whole host of legal tags" Text="#Postponed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:legal] [tag:law] [tag:copyright] [tag:software-patent] [tag:patents] [tag:proprietary] [tag:foss] [tag:trademark]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:eula] [tag:terms-of-service]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:gpl] [tag:lgpl] [tag:agpl] [tag:mit-license] [tag:bsd-license] [tag:apache-license] [tag:mpl] [tag:ms-pl] [tag:creative-commons] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Legal / licensing questions are generally difficult to clean up because some questions are legitimately on-topic here. See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this reason, we have decided to postpone these tags as being the active ones, though readers of this answer are welcome to make appropriate edits, tag removals and close votes as normal. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions [tagged both legal and licensing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[licensing]+[legal]+closed%3Ano) may have nothing to do with legal matters and therefore need just deletion of the inappropriate tag. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21069" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7296" RevisionGUID="fa308ef5-edbd-4393-9fd7-b598e2d62e86" CreationDate="2015-07-06T13:33:38.490" UserId="88986" Comment="Added burnination and link to locked question." Text="[tag:source-code]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[closed:no locked:no](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsource-code%5D+closed%3Ano+locked%3Ano)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the questions in this tag **should not be closed**; what the questions with this tag really need is editing and **tag burnination**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag doesn't add much value. There are already tags about more specific concepts within source code, such as [tag:code-quality], [tag:clean-code], [tag:code-reuse], [tag:code-smell], [tag:code-formatting] and so on and so forth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators: [there are 11 locked questions with this tag that need to be edited](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsource-code%5D+locked%3Ayes)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21070" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7450" RevisionGUID="d0dc8632-459f-459f-9a46-b53b8ce0d34d" CreationDate="2015-07-06T13:55:15.620" UserId="88986" Comment="[development-environment] merge" Text="&gt; Ummm.... this question was titled with [tag:work-environment]. What happened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@ThomasOwens merged [tag:work-environment] into [tag:development-environment], which now needs a second pass from the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've done a lot of great work in the cleanup of the [tag:development-environment] (and [tag:work-environment]) tag, but it has become complicated enough that we need to handle the work in its own question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The major things that need to happen are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [Close, lock and/or edit the remaining open questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7451/88986)&#xD;&#xA; 2. [Burninate the tag from existing closed questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7452/88986)&#xD;&#xA; 3. [Burninate / replace the tag from closed, **locked** questions, which are obviously more complicated and require moderator involvement.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7453/88986)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please see the answers for progress on these three separate goals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For reference, also see current [tag wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/development-environment/info):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about the environment in which software development happens. This includes the hardware, software, and processes and methodologies used. Questions are expected to be unique to software development and require the expertise of people with education or experience in the field of software development." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21071" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7450" RevisionGUID="d0dc8632-459f-459f-9a46-b53b8ce0d34d" CreationDate="2015-07-06T13:55:15.620" UserId="88986" Comment="[development-environment] merge" Text="Analysis of the [development-environment] tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21072" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7450" RevisionGUID="e00438ca-2af5-4846-b472-275083719746" CreationDate="2015-07-06T13:55:35.790" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|status-completed|tags|stci-phase2|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21073" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7453" RevisionGUID="b217452f-727d-4a6e-9ad7-da426c3f7ff5" CreationDate="2015-07-06T14:03:49.063" UserId="88986" Comment="Two more questions got edited" Text="# Burninate / replace the tag from closed, locked questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/250840/tags-that-only-exist-on-locked-questions-should-we-treat-these-the-same-as-tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Pending questions with multiple tags&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14706/overtime-is-part-of-the-job-true-but-a-bad-attitude?s=9|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Replace both [tag:jobs] and [tag:work-environment] with [tag:productivity]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2757/how-many-monitors-do-you-use-why-how-they-are-used?s=11|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Pending questions with only one tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59173/why-do-ads-for-s-w-engineers-always-say-they-offer-a-fast-paced-environment&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:development-environment] would be superior to [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11312/stuff-every-programmer-needs-while-working?s=5|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:development-environment] would be superior to [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Edited questions&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78547/how-do-you-tell-if-advice-from-a-senior-developer-is-bad&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/perks-for-new-programmers&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - We should remove the tag, and [tag:hiring] too.&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25432/how-can-a-new-programmer-impress-the-software-engineer-boss&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Both [tag:career-development] and [tag:work-environment] need to go. Replace with [tag:management]&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/604/is-the-80-character-limit-still-relevant-in-times-of-widescreen-monitors&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81929/is-it-normal-for-people-to-not-work?s=4|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Should be tagged [tag:productivity] instead&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2051/what-is-the-craziest-stupidest-silliest-thing-a-client-boss-asked-you-to-do&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - I've got nothing. [tag:team]? [tag:teamwork]? [tag:management]? All seem bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Deleted questions&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5267/what-should-i-do-when-i-cant-reach-my-deadline?s=12|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59740/change-managements-mind?s=13|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45525/open-office-arrangement-with-non-programmers-sales-etc-talking-all-day?s=15|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96871/my-manager-hates-documentation-in-our-large-project-what-should-i-do?s=16|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102348/my-lead-does-not-co-operate-may-be-lack-of-knowledge-or-unwillingness?s=17|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60091/programmers-and-database-professionals-in-performance-based-companies?s=18|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89606/working-at-home-for-a-junior-developer?s=14|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21074" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7296" RevisionGUID="82631fec-399a-4e06-a24a-bae9628ab13a" CreationDate="2015-07-06T14:58:31.363" UserId="88986" Comment="Added software" Text="[tag:source-code] [tag:software]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[closed:no locked:no](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsource-code%5D+closed%3Ano+locked%3Ano)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the questions in this tag **should not be closed**; what the questions with this tag really need is editing and **tag burnination**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag doesn't add much value. There are already tags about more specific concepts within source code, such as [tag:code-quality], [tag:clean-code], [tag:code-reuse], [tag:code-smell], [tag:code-formatting] and so on and so forth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators: [there are 11 locked questions with this tag that need to be edited](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsource-code%5D+locked%3Ayes)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21075" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7293" RevisionGUID="d103e14f-c016-490e-a921-c3f99d66a1b0" CreationDate="2015-07-06T14:59:24.640" UserId="88986" Comment="added 29 characters in body" Text="#Postponed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:legal] [tag:law] [tag:copyright] [tag:software-patent] [tag:patents] [tag:proprietary] [tag:foss] [tag:trademark] [tag:intellectual-property]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:eula] [tag:terms-of-service] &#xD;&#xA;- [tag:gpl] [tag:lgpl] [tag:agpl] [tag:mit-license] [tag:bsd-license] [tag:apache-license] [tag:mpl] [tag:ms-pl] [tag:creative-commons] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Legal / licensing questions are generally difficult to clean up because some questions are legitimately on-topic here. See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA; - http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this reason, we have decided to postpone these tags as being the active ones, though readers of this answer are welcome to make appropriate edits, tag removals and close votes as normal. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions [tagged both legal and licensing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[licensing]+[legal]+closed%3Ano) may have nothing to do with legal matters and therefore need just deletion of the inappropriate tag. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21078" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7479" RevisionGUID="f95b79a3-7ae2-49a7-9c72-7876c80b2eb9" CreationDate="2015-07-06T18:06:20.337" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="We recently had a [very poor quality question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/288861/53019) seemingly bypass the [filter for all caps in a title](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6854/53019).  And about a month ago, there was [another poor quality question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/285515/53019) that made it through the quality filter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. _Bug report:_ Can we have someone please check and see if the quality filter is still enabled to prevent those all caps questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. _Feature request:_ Can a regression test be generated so that the next time the filter breaks it's detected earlier in the development cycle?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21079" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7479" RevisionGUID="f95b79a3-7ae2-49a7-9c72-7876c80b2eb9" CreationDate="2015-07-06T18:06:20.337" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Is the ALL CAPS question filter broken?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21080" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7479" RevisionGUID="f95b79a3-7ae2-49a7-9c72-7876c80b2eb9" CreationDate="2015-07-06T18:06:20.337" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|feature-request|bug|quality-filter|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21081" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7480" RevisionGUID="40190123-989d-484d-b4dd-609338e787fd" CreationDate="2015-07-07T17:57:00.443" UserId="133068" Text="I don't really know how exactly that happened. I got a few questions that apparently weren't that great but now my account is not able to ask questions here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The thing is that I really got something that does not fit to stack**overflow** and not to Code Review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I already tried to contact *Programmers* but I didn't get an answer. The thing is that I can just create another account using one of my trash-mail accounts. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The help center says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;*The only way to end a posting block is to positively contribute to the site; automatic bans never expire or &quot;time out&quot;.*&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;but does not define &quot;positive contribution&quot;. Since I don't know how much and in what matter I have to contribute I think I'm just going to create a new account, isn't that the only logical response?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My questions can't have been so stupid that I deserve to get blocked here imho - and after all I am maintaining my exchange accounts which means I am removing questions that appear to be off-topic or something like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears that I got automatically blocked and those blocks are set to be unlimitted - how stupid is that? I mean come on. This brings a user just closer to the point where he just creates another account." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21082" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7480" RevisionGUID="40190123-989d-484d-b4dd-609338e787fd" CreationDate="2015-07-07T17:57:00.443" UserId="133068" Text="Getting unblocked from asking questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21083" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7480" RevisionGUID="40190123-989d-484d-b4dd-609338e787fd" CreationDate="2015-07-07T17:57:00.443" UserId="133068" Text="|discussion|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21084" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7481" RevisionGUID="74988abf-7267-4835-82d4-1dc5afab62d4" CreationDate="2015-07-07T18:02:57.423" UserId="4" Text="[Meta Stack Exchange has a good writeup about what to do when you are automatically blocked from creating new questions or new answers][1]. You should first attempt to fix your posts, if you can. Some aren't salvageable, but others are. If you aren't sure, asking about your questions on Meta or [in chat][2] The block also only affects one type of post - if you're blocked from new questions, contributing good answers is one method to work toward having the block listed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Creating a new account won't help either. As mentioned in the Meta Stack Exchange post, as of December 2010, it is at [a lower level than accounts][3]. Also consider that if successfully created, your accounts made to circumvent a suspension or block may also be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/72180/clarify-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this-account-error/76167#comment-174366" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21085" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7285" RevisionGUID="c53d6122-5a68-4262-8f09-1ce47d4c07d2" CreationDate="2015-07-07T18:09:30.233" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|stci|stci-phase2|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21086" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7482" RevisionGUID="a2122273-51d0-467f-8aa6-1bf628825e33" CreationDate="2015-07-08T01:04:28.943" UserId="25476" Text="This post is a call to arms to higher rep users on Programmers that have the ability to view deleted answers.  I merged a couple questions together asking for Agile references on request and took the top voted answer and locked it as a Wiki.  I deleted the rest but there is a bunch of good content still.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7859/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-agile/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below are links to each of the deleted answers. If you intend on editing it in then edit this question or you feel it is crap then just edit it out of the question.  If you took the last answer then tag this question status completed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/213382/25476&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/73649/25476&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/113253/25476&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/87772/25476&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/83533/25476&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/83515/25476&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/83511/25476&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/83508/25476&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/73153/25476&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/64050/25476&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/27076/25476&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/14086/25476&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/13039/25476&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7953/25476&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7944/25476&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7939/25476&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7908/25476&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7907/25476" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21087" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7482" RevisionGUID="a2122273-51d0-467f-8aa6-1bf628825e33" CreationDate="2015-07-08T01:04:28.943" UserId="25476" Text="Help edit the Wiki Answer: Canonical Book on Agile" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21088" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7482" RevisionGUID="a2122273-51d0-467f-8aa6-1bf628825e33" CreationDate="2015-07-08T01:04:28.943" UserId="25476" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21089" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7479" RevisionGUID="f65f8829-871f-4e1c-8355-754bd5c60787" CreationDate="2015-07-08T04:31:09.650" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|bug|status-completed|quality-filter|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21090" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7483" RevisionGUID="e7429230-9b1f-4b7d-a2e7-9468a3e5f0f4" CreationDate="2015-07-08T04:32:41.490" UserId="63" Text="It didn't break. It was a warning, not a block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since I'm tired of clarifying this, it is now a block. Expect to observe this in titles of the form, &quot;THE NeXT PALINDROME&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21091" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7483" RevisionGUID="6fa70062-961a-41bb-893e-b74537c13408" CreationDate="2015-07-08T06:44:22.963" UserId="31260" Comment="minor correction per results of testing the feature" Text="It didn't break. It was a warning, not a block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since I'm tired of clarifying this, it is now a block. Expect to observe this in titles of the form, &quot;THE NEXT PALINDROME&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21092" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7471" RevisionGUID="9f69a1c5-1197-4425-bf81-4a417e31bb7b" CreationDate="2015-07-08T10:40:31.800" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/618731382509019136" />
  <row Id="21093" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7418" RevisionGUID="02d36376-a561-49ac-b078-7d1998dfd0d2" CreationDate="2015-07-08T11:28:28.147" UserId="182579" Comment="Additional explanation of the idea/question" Text="I wonder if there is a place to discuss a software concept in general and its realisations in the free software community. My special case is some questions about OCR of books and I wonder if there is a place where those could be discussed. It's somewhat similar to the answer of question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/28293/182579.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usually things are focused on a specific pieces of software. I wonder if there is a place more focused on the ideas and goals behind. Then as a second step there would be the question where, by whom and in which specific project these things have been worked out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my specific case which just is an example it's about OCR. I would like to go to a site where all open source projects which apply this concept would be linked so that it would be easy for developers to get in touch with each other and so that it could be seen that a specific question has been adressed by no software yet or that there is a library in some other programming language that could be applied to fulfill that goal. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted my specific OCR questions on http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.graphics.ocropus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder if there's some sort of meta project collaboration platform where there's discussion about which projects already exist, implementation details, what's missing, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I wonder not so much about some personal discussions but rather if there's a place where ideas behind software are the focus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an additional thought or explanation:&#xD;&#xA;When there is a problem to solve like: I have a book and I want to make it a searchable PDF. There is a lot of steps involved: Scanner driver, Scan utility, image format conversion, scaling to make all pages the same size and have the same border, OCR, overlying image an searchable Text, conversion to PDF&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's a lot of different tasks and they can all be done by different kinds of software. One monolithic, multiple small tools. I wonder about a place where the names of all the tools, even scripts and their possible arrangements are brought together. And where the gaps are. Like a mindmap or a wiki. Then one could fill in the black spots with ones own script.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21094" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7482" RevisionGUID="79c63c9d-1e46-47d8-8618-4513b47e3215" CreationDate="2015-07-08T12:42:29.420" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|community-wiki|specific-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21095" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7484" RevisionGUID="94219e71-ed35-436d-a697-d156ff32f1fe" CreationDate="2015-07-08T16:28:45.523" UserId="169071" Text="Consider the following [question on SO](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/610199/the-art-of-programming-java-vs-c-sharp). It has lots of votes, lots of views and lots of useful thorough answers. However, it is closed as not constructive. But it is clearly a good source of information, and very useful judging from the 100,000+ views. Would a similar question comparing and contrasting two similar languages be appropriate for this site? For example, here is a simple mockup of what my question look like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;I would like to learn (language X) or (language Y) to do (Z). What should I consider while deciding which language to learn? What are some of the pros and cons of each? What are the biggest differences between the two languages?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21096" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7484" RevisionGUID="94219e71-ed35-436d-a697-d156ff32f1fe" CreationDate="2015-07-08T16:28:45.523" UserId="169071" Text="Can I ask &quot;X vs Y&quot; questions here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21097" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7484" RevisionGUID="94219e71-ed35-436d-a697-d156ff32f1fe" CreationDate="2015-07-08T16:28:45.523" UserId="169071" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21098" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7484" RevisionGUID="6ea3865a-ba16-448d-af35-6da7687be610" CreationDate="2015-07-08T17:03:05.147" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6758],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="21099" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7476" RevisionGUID="08c5c672-0dc0-468f-b9c9-52c6b6cf9726" CreationDate="2015-07-09T11:55:11.557" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21100" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7485" RevisionGUID="ffeb0705-2e7f-4d1b-8bfe-0e54895c14a2" CreationDate="2015-07-09T11:55:36.907" UserId="4" Text="I have performed the merge and synonym." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21103" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7296" RevisionGUID="a9e373c9-6f56-42d2-993b-7bda9bd0834a" CreationDate="2015-07-09T12:20:29.497" UserId="31260" Comment="#Active // if I understand correctly" Text="#Active&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:source-code] [tag:software]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[closed:no locked:no](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsource-code%5D+closed%3Ano+locked%3Ano)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the questions in this tag **should not be closed**; what the questions with this tag really need is editing and **tag burnination**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag doesn't add much value. There are already tags about more specific concepts within source code, such as [tag:code-quality], [tag:clean-code], [tag:code-reuse], [tag:code-smell], [tag:code-formatting] and so on and so forth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators: [there are 11 locked questions with this tag that need to be edited](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsource-code%5D+locked%3Ayes)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21106" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7483" RevisionGUID="89aed87a-73ab-47f6-b171-b8a554ee7143" CreationDate="2015-07-10T01:18:20.120" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7479/is-the-all-caps-question-filter-broken/7483?noredirect=1#comment22449_7483" Text="It didn't break. It was a warning, not a block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since I'm tired of clarifying this, it is now a block. Expect to observe this circumvented in titles of the form, &quot;THE NeXT PALINDROME&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21107" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7487" RevisionGUID="3ec3c787-7557-4d24-b800-493a503055a1" CreationDate="2015-07-10T09:26:00.787" UserId="4" Text="There was [a post from July 2014 that was partially completed][1], but the tags [tag:coding-style] (543) and [tag:coding-standards] (329) still exist. They appear to be very similar. Should these tags be merged? If so, how?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6777/tag-merge-synonym-request-coding-standards" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21108" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7487" RevisionGUID="3ec3c787-7557-4d24-b800-493a503055a1" CreationDate="2015-07-10T09:26:00.787" UserId="4" Text="Coding Style and Coding Convetion" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21109" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7487" RevisionGUID="3ec3c787-7557-4d24-b800-493a503055a1" CreationDate="2015-07-10T09:26:00.787" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21110" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7488" RevisionGUID="3a9451af-8ece-41a0-9511-ef826cab71d3" CreationDate="2015-07-10T09:26:00.787" UserId="4" Text="Yes, these tags should be merged. Merge coding-standards into coding-style, since style is not only larger, but slightly more generic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21111" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7487" RevisionGUID="936f6ca3-7a07-4b2a-827f-3ca3cccbad40" CreationDate="2015-07-10T10:52:47.137" UserId="31260" Comment="title changed to better fit question text" Text="Coding Style and Coding Standards" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21112" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7296" RevisionGUID="ebb3c2a4-2d33-4ceb-b26a-d43fe990052c" CreationDate="2015-07-10T14:05:08.143" UserId="4" Comment="added 132 characters in body" Text="#Active&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:source-code] [tag:software]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[source-code closed:no locked:no](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsource-code%5D+closed%3Ano+locked%3Ano)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[software closed:no locked:no](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsoftware%5D+closed%3Ano+locked%3Ano)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the questions in this tag **should not be closed**; what the questions with this tag really need is editing and **tag burnination**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag doesn't add much value. There are already tags about more specific concepts within source code, such as [tag:code-quality], [tag:clean-code], [tag:code-reuse], [tag:code-smell], [tag:code-formatting] and so on and so forth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators: [there are 11 locked questions with this tag that need to be edited](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsource-code%5D+locked%3Ayes)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21113" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7489" RevisionGUID="71931a7e-db11-4bea-9664-4e56b9d87f12" CreationDate="2015-07-12T21:28:50.537" UserId="4" Text="I've updated the following tag pages to include links to the Amazon pages for the books mentioned in the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/agile/info&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/scrum/info&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/extreme-programming/info&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/unit-testing/info&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/continuous-delivery/info&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/estimation/info&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/time-estimation/info&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/project-planning/info&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/project-management/info&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/retrospective/info&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/user-story/info&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/requirements/info&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/lean/info&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/object-oriented-design/info&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/tdd/info&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/product-management/info&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Admittedly, wikis aren't the best place right now. But I think putting this type of information into tag wikis in some form is a good start - if they become more useful to a community, maybe Stack Exchange will beef up the tools around using them.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21114" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7490" RevisionGUID="50b1c263-901a-4243-a473-7ac04e42c624" CreationDate="2015-07-13T08:09:53.323" UserId="40065" Text="My feeling is that we usually should first add a comment asking the OP to edit his question to improve it (and give specific directions on how to improve it, e.g. ask about motivations, or context, or environment, or what kind of application, etc... in the comments). Then, if the question is not edited quickly (e.g. in 15 minutes), later vote to close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I try to avoid directly voting to close a question, unless it is blatantly off-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21115" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="be8467e3-fdb4-46c2-802a-55fd8182e254" CreationDate="2015-07-13T12:59:42.657" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Expanded &quot;tool&quot; to &quot;tool, library, other...&quot; to match the close reason more accurately." Text="## What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Programmers.SE would be a good question on Stack Overflow.  This isn't to say that if it is on topic on Stack Overflow it is on topic here.  Rather that it's not too broad, not opinion, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Programmers.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggesting to someone to repost a question that is too broad or primary opinion would get it closed on Programmers.SE too and that's really something we'd rather avoid.  It is no fun to get a question bounced from one site to another and being told repeatedly we don't want it here.  If it needs to be fixed, it needs to be fixed before it is reposted or telling the OP *exactly* what needs to be fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Some commonly referred *poor* questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, we *don't* want these, though it seems like people keep suggesting them to be reposted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I don't understand...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). [There is an expectation](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773) that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here's my problem. Anyone have a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of commonly (incorrectly) referred questions are those of &quot;come up with a design or solution for me.&quot;  Similar to how Stack Overflow has issues with people doing problem statement questions (&quot;write a program that takes the average of three values&quot;), Programmers.SE has similar issues with similar questions (&quot;here is what I want the outcome to be, anyone have a solution?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Stack Overflow nor Programmers.SE is a code/solution writing service. Just because the question lacks code but has a problem statement doesn't mean it belongs here as is. The question needs to be fixed up significantly before it is reposted on the proper site and suggesting to do so with the question in its current state does a disservice to the person asking the question. For a more detailed outline of what is generally expected at Programmers, see http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A blog I read said...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our custom off topic reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What technology to take up](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/40980)&#xD;&#xA;* [What tool, library, or other resource to use](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* [What career to take or what to study](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programing related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* software requirements&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I'll point out a caveat with that &quot;software licensing&quot; thing.  It's about how to license *your* software and try to stay in proper compliance when pulling a MIT licensed library into a GPL project.  It is *not* about the &quot;can I let a friend use IntelliJ personal license if I'm not using it?&quot;, &quot;can I use facebook's API to do something legally?&quot; and the interpretation of other third party licenses.  If the word 'legal' shows up in that question at all, it will likely get closed as legal advice (that's in the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) too - under &quot;and it's not about&quot;) Further reading: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about software design concepts.  Remember that algorithm questions are on topic on Stack Overflow (so you don't need to migrate those).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the Perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the Delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Programmers.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Programmers.SE was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with [&quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260 &quot;we even had to introduce a chat bot for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow&quot;) and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) it's problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - it's exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so comments a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, it's like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if it's a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21116" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7371" RevisionGUID="d76cdfad-20ad-498a-b418-d02819405334" CreationDate="2015-07-13T13:48:28.277" UserId="88986" Comment="added 214 characters in body" Text="@MichaelT and I were [discussing the purpose of locked questions last night in chat.](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/21732881#21732881) He brought up this post from Meta.SE: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for/126631#126631&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions can be historically locked when:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1.  The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2.  The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3.  There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4.  The post is contentious; i.e. it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### When is it not appropriate to historically-lock a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should not be historically locked if they:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1.  Are being actively maintained, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2.  Have little or no redeeming value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this in mind, I searched for all locked posts. We have [744 locked posts](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes); many of these are good and we should keep around, and is quite a lot of posts especially for what would have to be a moderator only review. Can we do better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have [175 posts that match the search `locked:yes views:0..5000 score:0..10 duplicate:no migrated:no`](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A0..5000+score%3A0..10+duplicate%3Ano+migrated%3Ano). They have low views (so don't help much with SEO), low score, and don't help with searching as merge source questions, and won't disappear on their own when the migration timeout ends. This search results in gems like these ***first** three posts returned under **relevance** sort*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Economy simulation software](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/146781/economy-simulation-software)&#xD;&#xA; - [PHP and SQL, together or individually](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80434/php-and-sql-together-or-individually)&#xD;&#xA; - [Providing work experience on my resume](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82342/providing-work-experience-on-my-resume)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see almost no reason to keep **any** of these 175 posts. They add nothing. If we drop the view threshold to **2000** posts, we are *still left with [142 questions](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A0..2000+score%3A0..10+duplicate%3Ano)*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Why should we bother?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@MichaelT said it best last night:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Consider if that is the type of impression we wish to give to users who are coming into the site about the types of things we have on the site (remember, new users don't know / understand / care about historical locks).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that not all of these are historical locks; many (most? all?) of them are rejected migrations. That's no reason to keep them. [**Note that migration rejected stubs never get deleted from the destination site!**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/224474/are-rejected-migrations-ever-automatically-deleted-from-the-destination-site-sh)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Let's get rid of them with fire.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Burn with fire!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/9YfMu.gif&#xD;&#xA; [2]: https://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A0..5000+score%3A0..10+duplicate%3Ano" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21117" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1717" RevisionGUID="5f42816c-325c-4605-9193-8cdda1f009fd" CreationDate="2015-07-14T05:47:32.943" UserId="24257" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body; edited title" Text="&#xD;&#xA;Besides the database engineers in SE, who else has access to our email address? (I signed up using Google if it matters.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does stack overflow &quot;protect&quot; our email address?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/632951/pacerier" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21118" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="1717" RevisionGUID="5f42816c-325c-4605-9193-8cdda1f009fd" CreationDate="2015-07-14T05:47:32.943" UserId="24257" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body; edited title" Text="Who has access to our email address?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21119" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1717" RevisionGUID="5f42816c-325c-4605-9193-8cdda1f009fd" CreationDate="2015-07-14T05:47:32.943" UserId="24257" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body; edited title" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21120" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="df013431-3abc-45fd-9a3b-8a03f1b48161" CreationDate="2015-07-14T14:18:11.690" UserId="88986" Comment="added 14 characters in body" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:grad-school] [tag:university] [tag:college] [tag:degree]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning]  [tag:unlearning] [tag:exam] [tag:learning-curve] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching] [tag:tutorial]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:student] [tag:students] [tag:children]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:courses] [tag:training-courses] [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employee] [tag:employer] [tag:employment] [tag:employers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-satisfaction] [tag:job-title] [tag:jobs] [tag:new-job] [tag:job-definition] [tag:job-advancement] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Uncategorized tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:problem] [tag:problems]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:non-technical]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21121" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7491" RevisionGUID="e9f4bcd8-a8e5-4d83-bbcb-4f0ca61a6bd5" CreationDate="2015-07-14T21:22:29.570" UserId="63834" Text="I was allowed to ask at meta because my question was [locked][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Probably I had to start with revising what programming mainstream tells about the topic. That is after all the core of my concern, inappropriate terminalogy, that I believe deep-rooted in the community. The [first stop learning about MI is Wikipedia][2]. The article is basically reduced to the Diamond problem and its mitigation. It is not surprising therefore that the most popular question at programmers, [why do you hate MI][3] also identifies MI problem with diamond problem. Google engeneers answer to that with a proposal to fix the language, [propose fixes to the language saying that `MI can be enabled through enabling the Diamond` and give us an example][4] with a simple join (3 points),&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    class OrderedSet extends Set, Sequence&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;with Set and Sequence providing collection-specific toString implementation. My question however stems from the fact that this class hierarchy corresponds to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which is not a diamond because diamond. The diamond has 4 points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have nothing left with but to read about the Diamond problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The diamond problem says that we get (naming) conflicts because D obtains two copies of same properties of A. And we see that programmers blame the common ancestor for the conflicts. However, question what [if we inherit from `card_deck` and `graphic`, both of which have a `draw` method, what does it mean to draw the resulting object?][7] (I had less far-fetched example with digital circuits in my locked question if you ask `why do we need to merge deck with graphics`) clearly demonstrates how naming clash without the common ancestor, simply, likewise Guava language demo above. Guava demo does not have the diamond problem. These are examples of having the naming clash, due to simple Join, without the Diamond. You can have naming clash without the common ancestor. But, the programmers seem to identify MI-caused naming conflicts with Diamond problem. For me, it is a logical fallacy, like saying that &quot;all birds are ducks because we know that all ducks are birds&quot;. Indeed, all ducks are birds but I see that there are other birds, who are not ducks. Why do you keep telling me that pigeon is a duck, like Guava designers do? Why do you call something `Diamond` when `Join` is assumed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also suggested that Diamond may solve the problem, created by Join. In this light, reducing MI-caused naming conflicts to the Diamond problem is even more rediculous. Why do you do so? I ask only because I like order and feel really uncomfortable when everybody says `white` when black is demonstrated. How can you feel otherwise?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would also ask why do you hate that question? How should I appreciate comments like `this question cannot have the answer` (how did you know? by closing the question?) or `it was answered already` or `stop telling us the trivial things` or `it is not clear at all`. And all these controversial attacks can come from a single person. I welcome only analysis of my question. This question does not let me sleep. How can I make it sharp?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/289742/why-diamond-is-a-problem-rather-than-join?noredirect=1#comment599419_289742&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_inheritance&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218458&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/289742/why-diamond-is-a-problem-rather-than-join?noredirect=1#comment599359_289742&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/KZvCk.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Snc8m.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/218477/165631" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21122" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7491" RevisionGUID="e9f4bcd8-a8e5-4d83-bbcb-4f0ca61a6bd5" CreationDate="2015-07-14T21:22:29.570" UserId="63834" Text="Why do programmers reduce MI problem to (4-point) Diamond rather than with (3-point) Joint?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21123" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7491" RevisionGUID="e9f4bcd8-a8e5-4d83-bbcb-4f0ca61a6bd5" CreationDate="2015-07-14T21:22:29.570" UserId="63834" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21124" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7492" RevisionGUID="7625df53-ba46-487c-9747-f12474e3a253" CreationDate="2015-07-14T21:51:30.837" UserId="161917" Text="It's hard to tell if you're trying to ask why your question got deleted, or trying to re-ask the question that got deleted, but I'm going to assume the former because that's what this meta site is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I only showed up right before this question got deleted, so I might have missed a few things, but I read the full question and the comments, and I agree with the deletion despite not having cast any of the votes myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I first saw was a potentially good question (&quot;Why do people claim the 'diamond' is such a huge, insurmountable problem?&quot;) buried under a significant amount of ranting and irrelevant information. I still believe this could be a good question, and I think I even know how I'd go about answering it. But it absolutely needed work before it could be answered properly, so putting it on hold until it was cleaned up was the right thing to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem was that the comments underneath the question descended almost immediately into a counterproductive argument, mostly because you reacted to the community's response with wild accusations about &quot;taboo subjects&quot; and &quot;personal attacks&quot; that had little to do with what they were actually saying or what was happening to your question. When that sort of thing starts happening, it's generally best to nuke the whole argument and let everyone cool their heads for a while, which is why I agreed with the delete votes. Now it's all water under the bridge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be happy to help you rework the question so that it can be asked and answered constructively, especially since you have the reputation needed to join chat rooms. It might also help to look at [past questions about the &quot;diamond&quot;](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=diamond+is%3Aquestion), especially [this one which seems fairly similar to yours](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218458/is-there-any-real-reason-multiple-inheritance-is-hated)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21125" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7493" RevisionGUID="23d3c3aa-fec7-415d-8830-d7b67a427d71" CreationDate="2015-07-15T00:01:33.190" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="For the non-10k users, a screen capture of the entire post: [jpeg](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fo04d.jpg) (I had to switch from png to jpeg and reduce the image quality to get it to fit into the upload constraints - it started out as a 4.4 megabyte file)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that we've got that out of the way and we can look at it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have difficulty identifying the actual problem. The question gives a bit of history, and then then starts going into &quot;I'm right&quot; and &quot;why does everyone (other than delphi programmers) not to notice this?&quot;  Beyond that point, it goes to some odd tangent of personal experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't find the question that can be solved. It reads like a giant blog post. The [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) specifically calls out the types of questions that don't work in the Stack Exchange format:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;2. your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;3. there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;4. you are asking an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;5. your question is just a rant in disguise: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This feels like a some degree of fit for #2, #3, and #5. The bit for #2 is that first part of &quot;your answer is provided along with the question&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why conflicts due to join are not a problem whereas Diamond, which I hopefully explanied very well is a solution, is a problem for you instead of Join? Why solution is considered a problem whereas the problem itself is totally ignored?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've provided a solution to something, but I'm not exactly sure what that something is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I had close votes, I would have cast them as unclear too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this question didn't end there. The comments immediately start out with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As I expected, they will downvote and close the question. This is a taboo question. They silence the question to silence it. It would be stupid to let it come to the surface and discussed. –  Recognize Evil as Waste 6 hours ago &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and eventually gets to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @RecognizeEvilasWaste good grief; give it a rest, would you? This isn't a place to rant (if you want to do that, open your own blog), it's to ask and answer (answerable, on-topic) questions. Also, bear in mind that the probability that you're a misunderstood genius is somewhat lower than the probability that you've misunderstood something. –  jonrsharpe 4 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; jonrsharpe expands unjustified smearing of my question (it is clearly a question, I wounder how you bend your brain to read it otherwise) with personal attacks. It seems that so far there was not enough dirt for me. –  Recognize Evil as Waste 4 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The resulting post and comments are no longer suitable for a question and answer site and any hope of civil discourse (note that discussions shouldn't the focus of a question) are lost when Thomas Ownens locks it down to try to cool things off and then decides that its really beyond repair.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow has their [Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) which goes to trying to clearly identify the problem in a way that is understandable by all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question fails at that minimal aspect with significant amounts of other material that I don't understand why its there. It gets into half adders and... well... there isn't an answerable problem there. As I read it, there is instead a manifesto of multiple inheritance and asking why the rest of the world is ignoring this solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This type of question really isn't a good fit for the Q&amp;A format. Maybe you want to instead post such on other sites. It might work there. However, I would encourage you to not come out swinging and looking for a fight about taboo subjects (there not, we're just bored of them) immediately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For Stack exchange, please try to concentrate on answerable questions that don't take more than a few paragraphs to answer. Questions like the one you ask would take significantly more to refute (possibly into the 'needs to be a white paper' size) and if you're going to attack anyone who answers or tries to gain a better understanding of what you are asking you may get a similar reception there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21126" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7493" RevisionGUID="72c192a6-37f9-43f8-b525-8e05c6a24f60" CreationDate="2015-07-15T06:23:46.623" UserId="31260" Comment="minor wordsmithing" Text="For the non-10k users, a screen capture of the entire post: [jpeg](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fo04d.jpg) (I had to switch from png to jpeg and reduce the image quality to get it to fit into the upload constraints - it started out as a 4.4 megabyte file)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that we've got that out of the way and we can look at it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have difficulty identifying the actual problem. The question gives a bit of history, and then starts going into &quot;I'm right&quot; and &quot;why does everyone (other than delphi programmers) not to notice this?&quot;  Beyond that point, it goes to some odd tangent of personal experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't find the question that can be solved. It reads like a giant blog post. The [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) specifically calls out the types of questions that don't work in the Stack Exchange format:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;2. your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;3. there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;4. you are asking an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;5. your question is just a rant in disguise: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This feels like a some degree of fit for #2, #3, and #5. The bit for #2 is that first part of &quot;your answer is provided along with the question&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why conflicts due to join are not a problem whereas Diamond, which I hopefully explanied very well is a solution, is a problem for you instead of Join? Why solution is considered a problem whereas the problem itself is totally ignored?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've provided a solution to something, but I'm not exactly sure what that something is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I had close votes, I would have cast them as [unclear](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489) too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this question didn't end there. The comments immediately start out with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As I expected, they will downvote and close the question. This is a taboo question. They silence the question to silence it. It would be stupid to let it come to the surface and discussed. –  Recognize Evil as Waste 6 hours ago &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and eventually gets to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @RecognizeEvilasWaste good grief; give it a rest, would you? This isn't a place to rant (if you want to do that, open your own blog), it's to ask and answer (answerable, on-topic) questions. Also, bear in mind that the probability that you're a misunderstood genius is somewhat lower than the probability that you've misunderstood something. –  jonrsharpe 4 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; jonrsharpe expands unjustified smearing of my question (it is clearly a question, I wounder how you bend your brain to read it otherwise) with personal attacks. It seems that so far there was not enough dirt for me. –  Recognize Evil as Waste 4 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The resulting post and comments are no longer suitable for a question and answer site and any hope of civil discourse (note that discussions shouldn't the focus of a question) are lost when Thomas Owens locks it down to try to cool things off and then decides that its really beyond repair.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow has their [Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) which goes to trying to clearly identify the problem in a way that is understandable by all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question fails at that minimal aspect with significant amounts of other material that I don't understand why its there. It gets into half adders and... well... there isn't an answerable problem there. As I read it, there is instead a manifesto of multiple inheritance and asking why the rest of the world is ignoring this solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This type of question really isn't a good fit for the Q&amp;A format. Maybe you want to instead post such on other sites. It might work there. However, I would encourage you to not come out swinging and looking for a fight about taboo subjects (there not, we're just bored of them) immediately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For Stack Exchange, please try to concentrate on answerable questions that don't take more than a few paragraphs to answer. Questions like the one you ask would take significantly more to refute (possibly into the 'needs to be a white paper' size) and if you're going to attack anyone who answers or tries to gain a better understanding of what you are asking you may get a similar reception there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21127" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7494" RevisionGUID="9d791c5e-8f25-4add-830d-698b82ef5e90" CreationDate="2015-07-15T10:57:24.047" UserId="54627" Text="I asked a language design / theoretical [question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/289462/banning-zero-argument-functions-what-problems-could-it-cause-in-a-hypothetica) and it was closed as &quot;unclear what I'm asking&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is not that it's unclear -- it's just a bit theoretical and language design-specific. There was a lively discussion going on, and the question certainly was concrete and direct:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My question is whether such a design decision makes theoretical sense,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and whether it would have some **practical negative effects?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would also like to point out that only one of the people who closed the question seems to have **anything remotely close** in their history/badges to the topic of my question. I don't want to accuse them or anything, I'd just like the mods to consider the possibility that the closers might have not understood the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could a mod reopen my question? I would like to answer it myself." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21128" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7494" RevisionGUID="9d791c5e-8f25-4add-830d-698b82ef5e90" CreationDate="2015-07-15T10:57:24.047" UserId="54627" Text="I believe my question was closed unjustly" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21129" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7494" RevisionGUID="9d791c5e-8f25-4add-830d-698b82ef5e90" CreationDate="2015-07-15T10:57:24.047" UserId="54627" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21130" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7491" RevisionGUID="50e16d6b-a0ba-4c87-9b69-c48825d38708" CreationDate="2015-07-15T13:00:46.460" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21131" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7494" RevisionGUID="95113fac-16af-44de-bc24-19789066f9b3" CreationDate="2015-07-15T14:00:56.553" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|closed-questions|specific-question|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21132" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="1717" RevisionGUID="1dfee541-35da-415c-81e0-1fdfcd644158" CreationDate="2015-07-15T14:01:41.090" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|stackexchange|user-profile|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21133" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7495" RevisionGUID="057cef2a-ea5c-4396-99a3-be669b1f31fd" CreationDate="2015-07-16T11:56:44.177" UserId="25768" Text="[tag:sales] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is used either to ask &quot;how do I sell my software&quot; or &quot;how do I deal with the sales portion of my job&quot;. Both are off topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21134" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7495" RevisionGUID="a3886cb9-b55b-41f0-b842-db40d571624c" CreationDate="2015-07-16T11:56:44.177" UserId="25768" />
  <row Id="21135" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7495" RevisionGUID="587c706a-0167-4d2f-905a-c2374b238ed1" CreationDate="2015-07-16T12:14:07.900" UserId="25768" Comment="added 50 characters in body" Text="[tag:sales] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is used either to ask &quot;how do I sell my software&quot;, &quot;how to avoid overcommitment from the sales team&quot; or &quot;how do I deal with the sales portion of my job&quot;. All are off topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21136" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7496" RevisionGUID="73fe4a32-b2b8-4e21-b385-83281b6fac1e" CreationDate="2015-07-17T02:17:13.993" UserId="177827" Text="Sometimes code does not compile. That sucks. There's usually a message from the compiler that helps solving the problem and make the situation suck a little less.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently, I stumbled upon this gem, which later got deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could not compile this question, because it asks for a list of opinions. As a compiler, we do provide an error message stating that we cannot compile lists of opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a rerun with additional clarification flags, but sure enough, that doesn't change anything of the underlying problem. We provide a more extensive error message on the cause of the failure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are a good compiler. We give good reasons why we are unable to compile a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rumours have it that some other compilers do sometimes suggest changes to make the compilation process work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we also do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we point out possible modifications that could cause a question to compile?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the above case, changing the question to be less listlike and more specific might cause us to still throw some warnings, but no fatal errors.&#xD;&#xA;Compiling with warnings is not a good thing. But it is compiling nonetheless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that I as part of this distributed compiler am not sure how to handle a situation like that myself or what the overall system (us) wants to do. &#xD;&#xA;I suspect that suggesting changes to the question necessary for a successful compilation instead of explaining more thoroughly the reasons why compilation failed would be the better option. Yes, for us compilers, both options are the same. However, it looks like users feel more comfortable being told what to do, instead of what not to do, even if one is the opposite of the other and thus linear dependent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We even have the option to modify the question. We could strive for compiling successfully, even if that means a variation of the original question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The user killed our process, possibly even booting into a whole 'nother system or unmount the drive we're on, place it into a microwave and z&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/p1nWy.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21137" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7496" RevisionGUID="73fe4a32-b2b8-4e21-b385-83281b6fac1e" CreationDate="2015-07-17T02:17:13.993" UserId="177827" Text="Should the compiler that is this community produce more helpful error messages and suggest a fix or even apply it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21138" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7496" RevisionGUID="73fe4a32-b2b8-4e21-b385-83281b6fac1e" CreationDate="2015-07-17T02:17:13.993" UserId="177827" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21139" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7497" RevisionGUID="5a82be62-8ef8-414f-8a84-099435c12e41" CreationDate="2015-07-17T06:31:53.043" UserId="31260" Text="Asker's reputation is [over 250](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/view-close-votes), allowing them see close votes and messages on their question. Because of this, they could probably see close message suggesting possible modifications:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please add details to narrow the answer set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's about how it looked like to the asker when they deleted the question ([10K link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/289985/unorthodox-use-of-standard-constructs)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;kbd&gt;![https://i.stack.imgur.com/XcDVF.png][1]&lt;/kbd&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/XcDVF.png &quot;close dialog screen shot&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21140" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7498" RevisionGUID="77f119ac-5b3f-4e1b-943a-5403b7ba0a96" CreationDate="2015-07-17T13:59:48.270" UserId="25768" Text="Currently the [on-topic page][1] reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out The Workplace instead)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  how to use specific tools  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  what language/technology you should learn next, including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  what project you should do next  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  where to find a software library, tool or other resource  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  product or service recommendations  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  career or education advice, salary, or compensation   &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; activities  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;the &quot;where to find a software library, tool or other resource&quot; line could be expanded to include tutorials and books explicitly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know they are covered under the &quot;other resource&quot; line &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21141" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7498" RevisionGUID="77f119ac-5b3f-4e1b-943a-5403b7ba0a96" CreationDate="2015-07-17T13:59:48.270" UserId="25768" Text="add &quot;finding a good book for ____&quot; to off-topic section" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21142" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7498" RevisionGUID="77f119ac-5b3f-4e1b-943a-5403b7ba0a96" CreationDate="2015-07-17T13:59:48.270" UserId="25768" Text="|discussion|help-center|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21143" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7499" RevisionGUID="87fd94b5-0531-49af-9f71-243b3ccb2013" CreationDate="2015-07-17T21:59:33.703" UserId="108337" Text="Objective evidence provided in the initial discussion does show that &quot;book recommendation&quot; Q&amp;A's as they are now are generally sub-par and unhelpful in the long or even the short run.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* They tend to steer towards the &quot;bad&quot; end of [Good subjective, Bad subjective][1]&#xD;&#xA;* A question of just &quot;recommending a book on a subject&quot; is fundamentally unclear: any subject has any number of sub-subjects, and each book covers them in different proportion and relative quality&#xD;&#xA;* Books tend to become obsolete (the faster the more specific matters they cover), and the current SE model doesn't provide an endorsed-by-the-system way to keep the info updated&#xD;&#xA;* Answers to such questions are not self-sufficient: they don't actually address the asker's need (to get to know the subject), they only provide a reference that may or may not do this. Conversely, the basic SE's principle is to make an answer actually address the problem, only providing references for more information on some of its aspects.&#xD;&#xA;    * Here, I can draw an analogy with [meta-tags][2]: they also are not self-sufficient and do not convey facts, but opinions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://blog.stackexchange.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://blog.stackexchange.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21146" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7400" RevisionGUID="42d31fae-4f9f-461e-8b9f-f2bfa7932138" CreationDate="2015-07-17T22:25:31.420" UserId="25768" Comment="added 24 characters in body" Text="[tag:personal-projects] [tag:hobby-programming]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feels like a meta-tag, and seems to be a magnet for opinion-based questions about what to do with said projects." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21147" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7498" RevisionGUID="a383b58d-ce8b-4c1f-b807-1be81ac64028" CreationDate="2015-07-17T22:58:24.173" UserId="25768" Comment="added 184 characters in body" Text="Currently the [on-topic page][1] reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out The Workplace instead)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  how to use specific tools  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  what language/technology you should learn next, including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  what project you should do next  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  where to find a software library, tool or other resource  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  product or service recommendations  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  career or education advice, salary, or compensation   &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; activities  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;the &quot;where to find a software library, tool or other resource&quot; line could be expanded to include tutorials and books explicitly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know they are covered under the &quot;other resource&quot; line but it's better to have it explicit. Maybe link to the [meta discussion about it.][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21148" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7294" RevisionGUID="6df47d4b-573d-4188-b384-970192505698" CreationDate="2015-07-17T22:59:57.667" UserId="25768" Comment="added 22 characters in body" Text="[tag:freelancing] [tag:client-relations] [tag:self-employment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Workplace and Freelancing exist and cover these topics. They appears to be beyond scope based on the Help Center." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21149" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7501" RevisionGUID="2ff0a654-b3f1-445c-a582-a9b3a2a265a6" CreationDate="2015-07-17T23:10:19.790" UserId="25768" Text="[tag:contract]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;mostly about employment contracts (**burn**)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;however has some design-by-contract questions which are valid" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21150" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7501" RevisionGUID="02f66810-5dc7-4a1a-b36d-c58f8ebfbf10" CreationDate="2015-07-17T23:10:19.790" UserId="25768" />
  <row Id="21151" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7295" RevisionGUID="804584b6-1f69-4ee0-a4be-99f2f0b25d67" CreationDate="2015-07-17T23:16:40.143" UserId="25768" Comment="added 19 characters in body" Text="[tag:payment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag appears to have two uses. One is with regards to implementation of payment systems and transactions and the other is with respect to getting paid as a contractor, freelancer, or employee. The second type of question is off-topic. This tag could be removed from the off-topic questions and a clear tag wiki provided. Alternatively, it could be renamed (example: [tag:payment-system] to make it clear that it's about software systems and not getting paid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: [tag:pricing] [tag:cost-estimation] [tag:compensation]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21152" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7305" RevisionGUID="93aac50f-bfd0-4bfd-b935-60e5c31b7d2d" CreationDate="2015-07-17T23:20:04.587" UserId="25768" Comment="added 17 characters in body" Text="[tag:skills] [tag:self-improvement] [tag:competence]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure this exactly falls under the *teaching* post or the *job* post, but it should be looked at." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21153" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="9f4fffdd-8220-42e5-aa2f-1dbbbc6b9fc9" CreationDate="2015-07-17T23:25:21.107" UserId="25768" Comment="added 17 characters in body" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:grad-school] [tag:university] [tag:college] [tag:degree]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning]  [tag:unlearning] [tag:exam] [tag:learning-curve] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching] [tag:tutorial]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:student] [tag:students] [tag:children]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:courses] [tag:training-courses] [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employee] [tag:employer] [tag:employment] [tag:employers] [tag:co-workers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-satisfaction] [tag:job-title] [tag:jobs] [tag:new-job] [tag:job-definition] [tag:job-advancement] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Uncategorized tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:problem] [tag:problems]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:non-technical]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21155" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7305" RevisionGUID="e7768bf6-1dd4-489e-92d4-76208b4b07f8" CreationDate="2015-07-17T23:38:07.517" UserId="25768" Comment="added 21 characters in body" Text="[tag:skills] [tag:self-improvement] [tag:competence] [tag:qualifications]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure this exactly falls under the *teaching* post or the *job* post, but it should be looked at." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21156" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7400" RevisionGUID="ee12d9d9-bcd4-4552-adac-a640f0b1500e" CreationDate="2015-07-17T23:47:58.440" UserId="25768" Comment="added 32 characters in body" Text="[tag:personal-projects] [tag:hobby-programming]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feels like a meta-tag, and seems to be a magnet for opinion-based questions about what to do with said projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also attracts [tag:personal]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21157" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7502" RevisionGUID="439e9a35-b216-46d2-ade8-2ee7edac6de2" CreationDate="2015-07-17T23:53:20.117" UserId="108337" Text="[Post 7499][1] outlines the problems the questions cause. Despite this,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* they reflect a real and highly important need of the technical crowd, so they will never stop coming&#xD;&#xA;    * thus, unless we want to alienate users who have those needs and make them look for answers elsewhere, we must invent a way to address those needs, _somehow,_ in a manner consistent with SE's mission to disseminate knowledge, here or elsewhere&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This post outlines the possible remedies suggested.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _Enforce the &quot;Good subjective&quot; principle:_ require an asker to specify what exact problem they need to solve with the information from a book (get an overview, compare, learn how to complete a specific task(s)), and an answerer to specify how exactly that book will address those needs.&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes 1)&#xD;&#xA;    * partially fixes 2): a degree of uncleanness remains in any case&#xD;&#xA;* Maintain a wiki page/canonical answer&#xD;&#xA;    * intended to fix 3) but a solution to make it &quot;endorsed by the system&quot; and visible to potential askers is most unclear.&#xD;&#xA;    * is part or a larger problem of users getting little to no rep for updating existing info. This matter warrants a separate discussion&#xD;&#xA;* _Find another &quot;sewer drain&quot; to offload those questions into,_ like general questions were once drained here from StackOverflow&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57383/the-fourth-place-polling-recommendations-and-subjective-ish-stuff discusses this matter. No adequate solution has been found AFAICS&#xD;&#xA;    * The primary candidate is [Software Recommendations Stack Exchange][2] that is currently in beta. Book recommendations aren't any different from software recommendations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7499/108337&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21158" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7502" RevisionGUID="6ea7eb6f-c1ac-4ca7-a5e9-4cfa1fc5b6d5" CreationDate="2015-07-18T00:11:26.607" UserId="108337" Comment="addition" Text="[Post 7499][1] outlines the problems the questions cause. Despite this,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* they reflect a real and highly important need of the technical crowd, so they will never stop coming&#xD;&#xA;    * thus, unless we want to alienate users who have those needs and make them look for answers elsewhere, we must invent a way to address those needs, _somehow,_ in a manner consistent with SE's mission to disseminate knowledge, here or elsewhere&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This post outlines the possible remedies suggested.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _Enforce the &quot;Good subjective&quot; principle:_ require an asker to specify what exact problem they need to solve with the information from a book (get an overview, compare, learn how to complete a specific task(s)), and an answerer to specify how exactly that book will address those needs.&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes 1)&#xD;&#xA;    * partially fixes 2): a degree of uncleanness remains in any case&#xD;&#xA;* Maintain a wiki page/canonical answer&#xD;&#xA;    * intended to fix 3) but a solution to make it &quot;endorsed by the system&quot; and visible to potential askers is most unclear.&#xD;&#xA;    * is part or a larger problem of users getting little to no rep for updating existing info. This matter warrants a separate discussion&#xD;&#xA;* _Find another &quot;sewer drain&quot; to offload those questions into,_ like general questions were once drained here from StackOverflow&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes everything here; the &quot;drain&quot; will have to deal with all this instead&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57383/the-fourth-place-polling-recommendations-and-subjective-ish-stuff discusses this matter. The conclusion is that the current SE model isn't good for this format&#xD;&#xA;    * The primary candidate is [Software Recommendations Stack Exchange][2] that is currently in beta. Book recommendations aren't any different from software recommendations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that nothing will fix 4) as long as the current &quot;an answer solves the problem by itself&quot; paradigm stays unshaken. Experience from the communities like Travel.SE that somehow managed to cope with matters that are by their nature incomplete and subjective, may help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7499/108337&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21159" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7295" RevisionGUID="8c876f99-0ec1-4959-9daf-51cd551c6ae2" CreationDate="2015-07-18T00:18:54.067" UserId="25768" Comment="added 14 characters in body" Text="[tag:payment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag appears to have two uses. One is with regards to implementation of payment systems and transactions and the other is with respect to getting paid as a contractor, freelancer, or employee. The second type of question is off-topic. This tag could be removed from the off-topic questions and a clear tag wiki provided. Alternatively, it could be renamed (example: [tag:payment-system] to make it clear that it's about software systems and not getting paid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: [tag:pricing] [tag:cost-estimation] [tag:compensation] [tag:billing]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21160" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7502" RevisionGUID="fde0305b-b44e-4151-bd47-0e14f6478f08" CreationDate="2015-07-18T00:26:50.553" UserId="108337" Comment="addition" Text="[Post 7499][1] outlines the problems the questions cause. Despite this,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* they reflect a real and highly important need of the technical crowd, so they will never stop coming&#xD;&#xA;    * thus, unless we want to alienate users who have those needs and make them look for answers elsewhere, we must invent a way to address those needs, _somehow,_ in a manner consistent with SE's mission to disseminate knowledge, here or elsewhere&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This post outlines the possible remedies suggested.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _Enforce the &quot;Good subjective&quot; principle:_ require an asker to specify what exact problem they need to solve with the information from a book (get an overview, compare, learn how to complete a specific task(s)), and an answerer to specify how exactly that book will address those needs.&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes 1)&#xD;&#xA;    * partially fixes 2): a degree of uncleanness remains in any case&#xD;&#xA;* Maintain a wiki page/canonical answer&#xD;&#xA;    * intended to fix 3) but a solution to make it &quot;endorsed by the system&quot; and visible to potential askers is most unclear.&#xD;&#xA;    * is part or a larger problem of users getting little to no rep for updating existing info. This matter warrants a separate discussion&#xD;&#xA;* _Find another &quot;sewer drain&quot; to offload those questions into,_ like general questions were once drained here from StackOverflow&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes everything here; the &quot;drain&quot; will have to deal with all this instead&#xD;&#xA;        * We'll still have an inflow of users asking this here (and getting answers!) regardless of the fact the questions get closed ([heck, even SO users think these are appropriate _per se!_][2])&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57383/the-fourth-place-polling-recommendations-and-subjective-ish-stuff discusses this matter. The conclusion is that the current SE model isn't good for this format&#xD;&#xA;    * The primary candidate is [Software Recommendations Stack Exchange][3] that is currently in beta. Book recommendations aren't any different from software recommendations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that nothing will fix 4) as long as the current &quot;an answer solves the problem by itself&quot; paradigm stays unshaken. Experience from the communities like Travel.SE that somehow managed to cope with matters that are by their nature incomplete and subjective, may help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7499/108337&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31438006/how-do-i-start-migration-to-hadoop&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21161" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7502" RevisionGUID="96e1850b-0828-40e8-8828-6fe01dbf406a" CreationDate="2015-07-18T00:36:09.537" UserId="108337" Comment="addition" Text="[Post 7499][1] outlines the problems the questions cause. Despite this,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* they reflect a real and highly important need of the technical crowd, so they will never stop coming&#xD;&#xA;    * thus, unless we want to alienate users who have those needs and make them look for answers elsewhere, we must invent a way to address those needs, _somehow,_ in a manner consistent with SE's mission to disseminate knowledge, here or elsewhere&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This post outlines the possible remedies suggested.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _Enforce the &quot;Good subjective&quot; principle:_ require an asker to specify what exact problem they need to solve with the information from a book (get an overview, compare, learn how to complete a specific task(s)), and an answerer to specify how exactly that book will address those needs.&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes 1)&#xD;&#xA;    * partially fixes 2): a degree of uncleanness remains in any case&#xD;&#xA;* _Maintain topic overview articles_ (a wiki page/canonical answer) containing book references, among other things&#xD;&#xA;    * intended to fix 3) but a solution to make it &quot;endorsed by the system&quot; and visible to potential askers is most unclear.&#xD;&#xA;    * is part or a larger problem of users getting little to no rep for updating existing info. This matter warrants a separate discussion&#xD;&#xA;    * canonical answers are [used successfully at Server Fault][2]. &#xD;&#xA;        * But, they do not recommend external sources&#xD;&#xA;        * it also helps that enterprise sysadmins deal with a rather limited set of topics&#xD;&#xA;* _Find another &quot;sewer drain&quot; to offload those questions into,_ like general questions were once drained here from StackOverflow&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes everything here; the &quot;drain&quot; will have to deal with all this instead&#xD;&#xA;        * We'll still have an inflow of users asking this here (and getting answers!) regardless of the fact the questions get closed ([heck, even SO users think these are appropriate _per se!_][3])&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57383/the-fourth-place-polling-recommendations-and-subjective-ish-stuff discusses this matter. The conclusion is that the current SE model isn't good for this format&#xD;&#xA;    * The primary candidate is [Software Recommendations Stack Exchange][4] that is currently in beta. Book recommendations aren't any different from software recommendations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that nothing will fix 4) as long as the current &quot;an answer solves the problem by itself&quot; paradigm stays unshaken. Experience from the communities like Travel.SE that somehow managed to cope with matters that are by their nature incomplete and subjective, may help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7499/108337&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.serverfault.com/questions/1986/what-are-the-canonical-answers-weve-discovered-over-the-years&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31438006/how-do-i-start-migration-to-hadoop&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21162" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7502" RevisionGUID="03f2cb9b-b104-453c-8580-14c8a2952132" CreationDate="2015-07-18T00:55:21.840" UserId="108337" Comment="fact fix" Text="[Post 7499][1] outlines the problems the questions cause. Despite this,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* they reflect a real and highly important need of the technical crowd, so they will never stop coming&#xD;&#xA;    * thus, unless we want to alienate users who have those needs and make them look for answers elsewhere, we must invent a way to address those needs, _somehow,_ in a manner consistent with SE's mission to disseminate knowledge, here or elsewhere&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This post outlines the possible remedies suggested.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _Enforce the &quot;Good subjective&quot; principle:_ require an asker to specify what exact problem they need to solve with the information from a book (get an overview, compare, learn how to complete a specific task(s)), and an answerer to specify how exactly that book will address those needs.&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes 1)&#xD;&#xA;    * partially fixes 2): a degree of uncleanness remains in any case&#xD;&#xA;* _Maintain topic overview articles_ (a wiki page/canonical answer) containing book references, among other things&#xD;&#xA;    * intended to fix 3) but a solution to make it &quot;endorsed by the system&quot; and visible to potential askers is most unclear.&#xD;&#xA;    * is part or a larger problem of users getting little to no rep for updating existing info. This matter warrants a separate discussion&#xD;&#xA;    * canonical answers are [used successfully at Server Fault][2]. &#xD;&#xA;        * [some do recommend books][3]&#xD;&#xA;        * it also helps that enterprise sysadmins deal with a rather limited set of topics&#xD;&#xA;* _Find another &quot;sewer drain&quot; to offload those questions into,_ like general questions were once drained here from StackOverflow&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes everything here; the &quot;drain&quot; will have to deal with all this instead&#xD;&#xA;        * We'll still have an inflow of users asking this here (and getting answers!) regardless of the fact the questions get closed ([heck, even SO users think these are appropriate _per se!_][4])&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57383/the-fourth-place-polling-recommendations-and-subjective-ish-stuff discusses this matter. The conclusion is that the current SE model isn't good for this format&#xD;&#xA;    * The primary candidate is [Software Recommendations Stack Exchange][5] that is currently in beta. Book recommendations aren't any different from software recommendations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that nothing will fix 4) as long as the current &quot;an answer solves the problem by itself&quot; paradigm stays unshaken. Experience from the communities like Travel.SE that somehow managed to cope with matters that are by their nature incomplete and subjective, may help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7499/108337&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.serverfault.com/questions/1986/what-are-the-canonical-answers-weve-discovered-over-the-years&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://serverfault.com/questions/476918/what-data-center-room-routine-maintenance-tasks-should-be-done&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31438006/how-do-i-start-migration-to-hadoop&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21163" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7502" RevisionGUID="adebf946-f940-4147-864d-1fcc36e04d2c" CreationDate="2015-07-18T01:43:58.940" UserId="108337" Comment="added 10 characters in body" Text="[Post 7499][1] outlines the problems the questions cause. Despite this,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* they reflect a real and highly important need of the technical crowd, so they will never stop coming&#xD;&#xA;    * thus, unless we want to alienate users who have those needs and make them look for answers elsewhere, we must invent a way to address those needs, _somehow,_ in a manner consistent with SE's mission to disseminate knowledge, here or elsewhere&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This post outlines the possible remedies suggested.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _Enforce the &quot;Good subjective&quot; principle:_ require an asker to specify what exact problem they need to solve with the information from a book (get an overview, compare, learn how to complete a specific task(s)), and an answerer to specify how exactly that book will address those needs.&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes 1)&#xD;&#xA;    * partially fixes 2): a degree of uncleanness remains in any case&#xD;&#xA;* _Maintain topic overview articles_ (a wiki page/canonical answer) containing book references, among other things&#xD;&#xA;    * intended to fix 3) but a solution to make it &quot;endorsed by the system&quot; and visible to potential askers is most unclear.&#xD;&#xA;    * is part or a larger problem of users getting little to no rep for updating existing info. This matter warrants a separate discussion&#xD;&#xA;    * canonical answers are [used successfully at Server Fault][2]. &#xD;&#xA;        * [some do recommend books][3]&#xD;&#xA;        * in their case, it helps that enterprise sysadmins deal with a rather limited set of topics&#xD;&#xA;* _Find another &quot;sewer drain&quot; to offload those questions into,_ like general questions were once drained here from StackOverflow&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes everything here; the &quot;drain&quot; will have to deal with all this instead&#xD;&#xA;        * We'll still have an inflow of users asking this here (and getting answers!) regardless of the fact the questions get closed ([heck, even SO users think these are appropriate _per se!_][4])&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57383/the-fourth-place-polling-recommendations-and-subjective-ish-stuff discusses this matter. The conclusion is that the current SE model isn't good for this format&#xD;&#xA;    * The primary candidate is [Software Recommendations Stack Exchange][5] that is currently in beta. Book recommendations aren't any different from software recommendations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that nothing will fix 4) as long as the current &quot;an answer solves the problem by itself&quot; paradigm stays unshaken. Experience from the communities like Travel.SE that somehow managed to cope with matters that are by their nature incomplete and subjective, may help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7499/108337&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.serverfault.com/questions/1986/what-are-the-canonical-answers-weve-discovered-over-the-years&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://serverfault.com/questions/476918/what-data-center-room-routine-maintenance-tasks-should-be-done&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31438006/how-do-i-start-migration-to-hadoop&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21164" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7503" RevisionGUID="a97700c7-fe84-423e-b40d-6f895c7ff705" CreationDate="2015-07-18T15:22:40.533" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I agree this change should be made.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions asking for book recommendations are already off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* This is a very minor change in wording that does not change the intent or make the bullet point too verbose (it would be madness to enumerate all off-topic &quot;resources&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21165" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7504" RevisionGUID="1d6ccb59-7b05-42f5-9515-388cec484f90" CreationDate="2015-07-18T15:38:29.127" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="This question shows up in the [10k delete review list][1] because it has a delete vote cast:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How do I explain a “Hello World” program for beginners? \[closed\]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is a classic example of [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?][3] and as such was rightfully closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why does this question have a historical lock (by [maple_shaft][4])? Should we unlock it and delete it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/135925/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6629/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/25476/maple-shaft" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21166" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7504" RevisionGUID="1d6ccb59-7b05-42f5-9515-388cec484f90" CreationDate="2015-07-18T15:38:29.127" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Why is this question locked?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21167" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7504" RevisionGUID="1d6ccb59-7b05-42f5-9515-388cec484f90" CreationDate="2015-07-18T15:38:29.127" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21168" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7505" RevisionGUID="d67d0d65-144b-471a-9c89-db7017190c11" CreationDate="2015-07-18T15:43:11.143" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="I've deleted it as it seemed to have minimal redeeming value." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21169" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7504" RevisionGUID="83fee413-c83d-4a90-a52f-b7cdd5821039" CreationDate="2015-07-18T15:43:34.287" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|closed-questions|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21170" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7506" RevisionGUID="08fee20b-11a3-4bae-9179-68e427960320" CreationDate="2015-07-18T16:57:45.657" UserId="47" Text="I can only speculate, but it did have 5,000+ views so perhaps maple_shaft thought it was worth locking for that reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If something, while being off topic, is popular (looking at its age, votes and views) then we do consider locking rather than deleting. This is so that we preserve any incoming links.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was probably a borderline case, *almost* enough views to warrant keeping around, but ultimately probably not worth keeping." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21171" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7221" RevisionGUID="0238bfa7-a54e-4d1a-bf02-50d9472198e4" CreationDate="2015-07-18T19:09:27.310" UserId="31260" Comment="'problem' += 'help' // http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/22863090#22863090" Text="I recently learned that some off-topic questions seem to be posted at Programmers with sole purpose to circumvent ['problem'](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7205/31260) and ['help'](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/22863090#22863090) title block at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do something to save these askers frustration and disappointment when their off-topic questions get voted down and close? Absence of the block probably makes them expect warmer welcome over here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/T1ZyG.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/T1ZyG.png &quot;screen shot: example of how asker would be blocked at SO because of the word 'problem' in title&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7020/lets-help-askers-who-are-trying-to-circumvent-question-block-at-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5843/is-it-time-to-tighten-up-the-quality-filter-at-programmers?lq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21172" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7221" RevisionGUID="0238bfa7-a54e-4d1a-bf02-50d9472198e4" CreationDate="2015-07-18T19:09:27.310" UserId="31260" Comment="'problem' += 'help' // http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/22863090#22863090" Text="'Problem' and 'help' titles in off-topic questions of new users coming from Stack Overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21173" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7418" RevisionGUID="9648de1c-1036-46b2-843d-09f8a8dd9fa9" CreationDate="2015-07-19T00:26:58.893" UserId="182579" Comment="added rosettacode" Text="I wonder if there is a place to discuss a software concept in general and its realisations in the free software community. My special case is some questions about OCR of books and I wonder if there is a place where those could be discussed. It's somewhat similar to the answer of question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/28293/182579.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usually things are focused on a specific pieces of software. I wonder if there is a place more focused on the ideas and goals behind. Then as a second step there would be the question where, by whom and in which specific project these things have been worked out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my specific case which just is an example it's about OCR. I would like to go to a site where all open source projects which apply this concept would be linked so that it would be easy for developers to get in touch with each other and so that it could be seen that a specific question has been adressed by no software yet or that there is a library in some other programming language that could be applied to fulfill that goal. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted my specific OCR questions on http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.graphics.ocropus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder if there's some sort of meta project collaboration platform where there's discussion about which projects already exist, implementation details, what's missing, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I wonder not so much about some personal discussions but rather if there's a place where ideas behind software are the focus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an additional thought or explanation:&#xD;&#xA;When there is a problem to solve like: I have a book and I want to make it a searchable PDF. There is a lot of steps involved: Scanner driver, Scan utility, image format conversion, scaling to make all pages the same size and have the same border, OCR, overlying image an searchable Text, conversion to PDF&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's a lot of different tasks and they can all be done by different kinds of software. One monolithic, multiple small tools. I wonder about a place where the names of all the tools, even scripts and their possible arrangements are brought together. And where the gaps are. Like a mindmap or a wiki. Then one could fill in the black spots with ones own script.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't write a comment to my question because I don't have enough reputation. A site that goes somewhat into the direction what I'm searching for is http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code (just the general direction).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21174" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7507" RevisionGUID="9bd0fc50-fe62-46ab-bfe5-654c760b5766" CreationDate="2015-07-19T02:40:40.157" UserId="108337" Text="I was composing an answer to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/289785/can-i-distribute-a-gpl-executable-not-a-library-in-a-closed-source-application# when I discovered it has been closed as a duplicate of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125606/can-i-use-gpl-lgpl-mpl-licensed-packages-with-my-application-and-make-it-close#comment599873_289924 .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since my answer 1)covers the original matter much more substantially than any answer in either question, and 2)couldn't be adapted for the overriding one, I posted it as http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/289924/108337 for the time being, mutual-linked it with the initial question with comments and tried to have that question reopened on these grounds. This didn't work (with no feedback to guess why).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I have two questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. What to do with the answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * Adapt it for the for the much more general overriding question?&#xD;&#xA;        * This will make it a few (if not several) pages long: the general question asks for many licenses at once and implies all similar ones as well, it will take a lot of text to cover them all in the same level of detail&#xD;&#xA;        * Moreover, since more licenses are implied, the scope to cover is unclear and potentially unlimited&#xD;&#xA;    * Reopen the initial question and move it there?&#xD;&#xA;    * Something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Is the overriding question's scope is appropriate?&#xD;&#xA;    * It can be (and is) answered in the &quot;more of less educated guess&quot; way, but&#xD;&#xA;    * Cannot be practically given an answer based on facts rather than opinions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21175" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7507" RevisionGUID="9bd0fc50-fe62-46ab-bfe5-654c760b5766" CreationDate="2015-07-19T02:40:40.157" UserId="108337" Text="Answer to a specific question and a very broad question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21176" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7507" RevisionGUID="9bd0fc50-fe62-46ab-bfe5-654c760b5766" CreationDate="2015-07-19T02:40:40.157" UserId="108337" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|answers|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21177" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7507" RevisionGUID="db1dd1d7-2b8a-48a9-b6dd-d834370ee4a1" CreationDate="2015-07-19T02:48:34.617" UserId="108337" Comment="grammar" Text="I was composing an answer to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/289785/can-i-distribute-a-gpl-executable-not-a-library-in-a-closed-source-application# when I discovered it has been closed as a duplicate of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125606/can-i-use-gpl-lgpl-mpl-licensed-packages-with-my-application-and-make-it-close#comment599873_289924 .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since my answer 1)covers the original matter much more substantially than any answer in either question, and 2)couldn't be adapted for the overriding one, I posted it as http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/289924/108337 for the time being, mutual-linked it with the initial question with comments and tried to have that question reopened on these grounds. This didn't work (with no feedback to guess why).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I have two questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. What to do with the answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * Adapt it for the for the much more general overriding question?&#xD;&#xA;        * This will make it a few (if not several) pages long: the general question asks for many licenses at once and implies all similar ones as well, it will take a lot of text to cover them all in the same level of detail&#xD;&#xA;        * Moreover, since more licenses are implied, the scope to cover is unclear and potentially unlimited&#xD;&#xA;    * Reopen the initial question and move it there?&#xD;&#xA;    * Something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Is the overriding question's scope appropriate?&#xD;&#xA;    * It can be (and is) answered in the &quot;more or less educated guess&quot; way, but&#xD;&#xA;    * Cannot be practically given an answer based on facts rather than opinions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21178" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7508" RevisionGUID="134d1637-459e-4451-b62b-1912513c1c68" CreationDate="2015-07-19T09:41:19.487" UserId="31260" Text="Here is a thing I can't understand. We recently got a [question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/290110/31260) from a new user. That user has only account at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Their question has a piece of text that appears to be copied from markdown help at Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Use ***italics and bold together*** if you ___have to___.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They couldn't copy it from Programmers because [our markdown help](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8ANmI.png) has different wording:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ***combine*** them if you ___really have to___.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like user attempted to ask at SO before dropping their stuff at us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I logged out and tested how it is for an unregistered user to attempt asking at SO. System just didn't let me through to Ask Question page, it required login before getting in there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How could this user get to Ask Question page at Stack Overflow (and copy text from that page) without having an account there?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21179" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7508" RevisionGUID="134d1637-459e-4451-b62b-1912513c1c68" CreationDate="2015-07-19T09:41:19.487" UserId="31260" Text="How could this user (having only Programmers account) ask at Stack Overflow prior to Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21180" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7508" RevisionGUID="134d1637-459e-4451-b62b-1912513c1c68" CreationDate="2015-07-19T09:41:19.487" UserId="31260" Text="|support|stackoverflow|asking-questions|user-accounts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21181" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7508" RevisionGUID="3f782f24-f213-4c77-93e7-079f1d91236b" CreationDate="2015-07-19T10:37:54.883" UserId="31260" Comment="minor clarification of the screen shot" Text="Here is a thing I can't understand. We recently got a [question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/290110/31260) from a new user. That user has only account at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Their question has a piece of text that appears to be copied from markdown help at Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Use ***italics and bold together*** if you ___have to___.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They couldn't copy it from Programmers because [our markdown help](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lm1TO.png &quot;see screen shot&quot;) has different wording:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ***combine*** them if you ___really have to___.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like user attempted to ask at SO before dropping their stuff at us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I logged out and tested how it is for an unregistered user to attempt asking at SO. System just didn't let me through to Ask Question page, it required login before getting in there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How could this user get to Ask Question page at Stack Overflow (and copy text from that page) without having an account there?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21182" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7295" RevisionGUID="d7d006ce-0d28-4708-a659-1dbb5f6a90ff" CreationDate="2015-07-19T23:16:39.000" UserId="88986" Comment="added more tags" Text="[tag:payment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag appears to have two uses. One is with regards to implementation of payment systems and transactions and the other is with respect to getting paid as a contractor, freelancer, or employee. The second type of question is off-topic. This tag could be removed from the off-topic questions and a clear tag wiki provided. Alternatively, it could be renamed (example: [tag:payment-system] to make it clear that it's about software systems and not getting paid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: [tag:pricing] [tag:cost-estimation] [tag:compensation] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:credit-cards] [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21183" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="1c1d5500-bbe2-4b81-9bba-ffb7bdb11d40" CreationDate="2015-07-19T23:22:06.547" UserId="88986" Comment="added 172 characters in body" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:grad-school] [tag:university] [tag:college] [tag:degree]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning]  [tag:unlearning] [tag:exam] [tag:learning-curve] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching] [tag:tutorial]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:student] [tag:students] [tag:children]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:courses] [tag:training-courses] [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employee] [tag:employer] [tag:employment] [tag:employers] [tag:co-workers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-satisfaction] [tag:job-title] [tag:jobs] [tag:new-job] [tag:job-definition] [tag:job-advancement] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:credit-cards] [tag:mobile-payment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing] [tag:cost-estimation] [tag:compensation]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Uncategorized tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:problem] [tag:problems]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:non-technical]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21184" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7295" RevisionGUID="a3cfdabe-2064-4952-b2d2-acb7eb65df77" CreationDate="2015-07-19T23:23:31.537" UserId="88986" Comment="added 31 characters in body" Text="[tag:payment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag appears to have two uses. One is with regards to implementation of payment systems and transactions and the other is with respect to getting paid as a contractor, freelancer, or employee. The second type of question is off-topic. This tag could be removed from the off-topic questions and a clear tag wiki provided. Alternatively, it could be renamed (example: [tag:payment-system] to make it clear that it's about software systems and not getting paid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: [tag:pricing] [tag:cost-estimation] [tag:compensation] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:credit-cards] [tag:sales] [tag:mobile-payment] [tag:pci]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21185" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7294" RevisionGUID="aabb17e5-59b7-451e-ae66-56b3b8ee26e3" CreationDate="2015-07-19T23:28:16.820" UserId="88986" Comment="added 10 characters in body" Text="[tag:freelancing] [tag:client-relations] [tag:self-employment] [tag:isv] [tag:independent] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Workplace and Freelancing exist and cover these topics. They appears to be beyond scope based on the Help Center." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21186" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="1af6cf45-7fd8-47dd-8a6c-2ade41748451" CreationDate="2015-07-19T23:54:05.367" UserId="4" Comment="Removed cost estimation. Questions about COCOMO, COSMIC, etc. are on-topic here. The tag shouldn't be totally removed or blacklisted at all." Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:grad-school] [tag:university] [tag:college] [tag:degree]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning]  [tag:unlearning] [tag:exam] [tag:learning-curve] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching] [tag:tutorial]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:student] [tag:students] [tag:children]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:courses] [tag:training-courses] [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employee] [tag:employer] [tag:employment] [tag:employers] [tag:co-workers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-satisfaction] [tag:job-title] [tag:jobs] [tag:new-job] [tag:job-definition] [tag:job-advancement] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:credit-cards] [tag:mobile-payment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing] [tag:compensation]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Uncategorized tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:problem] [tag:problems]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:non-technical]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21187" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7498" RevisionGUID="97185932-df0c-43b1-a0f0-627dbf0ce381" CreationDate="2015-07-20T02:00:47.690" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/622949241091170304" />
  <row Id="21188" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7509" RevisionGUID="e0296ccd-46a6-41fd-92c4-51c109715835" CreationDate="2015-07-20T06:05:24.360" UserId="187863" Text="For me, there have been several complications when I was working on an iPhone game that delayed my development time by almost an entire month, and that's because iTunes Connect is outright complicated. Half of it's intuitive, and the other half is broken.&#xA;&#xA;Sometimes, review statuses and messages can be almost cryptic in my opinion, because I have no experience with it. For example, I couldn't find a button to Developer Reject my game because I had a bug in it the day I hit &quot;Submit.&quot; (For those wondering why there was no button saying &quot;Reject Binary&quot; or something similar: **you have to wait 24 hours.**)&#xA;&#xA;However, I don't know where to ask these sorts of questions.&#xA;&#xA; - [Stack Overflow][1] is for problems with **coding**, not the actual release of the app.&#xA; - Ask Different is for questions regarding Apple devices.&#xA; - Programmers is for conceptual questions about programming.&#xA;&#xA;It's not just iTunes Connect that people like me are having problems with; some might question the workings of developer technologies such as those at Google or Microsoft.&#xA;&#xA;Some stuff simply isn't as easy as clicking a button saying &quot;RELEASE MY APP INTO THE WILD AND GIVE ME MONEY!&quot; This is still a step in the development process. Where do people like me ask questions about that?&#xA;&#xA;(I'm asking this at the &quot;Programmers&quot; meta because that sounds like the most related site I know of for this question.)&#xA;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21189" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7509" RevisionGUID="e0296ccd-46a6-41fd-92c4-51c109715835" CreationDate="2015-07-20T06:05:24.360" UserId="187863" Text="Should questions about iTunes Connect be asked on StackOverflow or here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21190" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7509" RevisionGUID="e0296ccd-46a6-41fd-92c4-51c109715835" CreationDate="2015-07-20T06:05:24.360" UserId="187863" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21191" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7510" RevisionGUID="373dc547-46bd-4f9f-b48c-f3164f14fac5" CreationDate="2015-07-20T09:07:15.767" UserId="4" Text="One of the [on topic points on Ask Different](http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is `Apple services including iTunes Connect (selling music, books, apps)`. You may want to check out the [existing questions with the itunes-connect tag][1] and [their meta site][2] first ([including three meta questions tagged with itunes-connect][3]) before posting there to make sure your question fits into the community, but this would be off-topic here and on Stack Overflow, since [we aren't customer support for other companies][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/itunes-connect&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.apple.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/itunes-connect&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/255745/839601" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21192" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7509" RevisionGUID="7e7baae1-ee14-4b89-861d-563963539d7c" CreationDate="2015-07-20T09:24:39.230" UserId="31260" Comment="added 16 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="For me, there have been several complications when I was working on an iPhone game that delayed my development time by almost an entire month, and that's because iTunes Connect is outright complicated. Half of it's intuitive, and the other half is broken.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, review statuses and messages can be almost cryptic in my opinion, because I have no experience with it. For example, I couldn't find a button to Developer Reject my game because I had a bug in it the day I hit &quot;Submit.&quot; (For those wondering why there was no button saying &quot;Reject Binary&quot; or something similar: **you have to wait 24 hours.**)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't know where to ask these sorts of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Stack Overflow][1] is for problems with **coding**, not the actual release of the app.&#xD;&#xA; - Ask Different is for questions regarding Apple devices.&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers is for conceptual questions about programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not just iTunes Connect that people like me are having problems with; some might question the workings of developer technologies such as those at Google or Microsoft.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some stuff simply isn't as easy as clicking a button saying &quot;RELEASE MY APP INTO THE WILD AND GIVE ME MONEY!&quot; This is still a step in the development process. Where do people like me ask questions about that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I'm asking this at the &quot;Programmers&quot; meta because that sounds like the most related site I know of for this question.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21193" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7509" RevisionGUID="7e7baae1-ee14-4b89-861d-563963539d7c" CreationDate="2015-07-20T09:24:39.230" UserId="31260" Comment="added 16 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Should questions about iTunes Connect be asked on Stack Overflow or here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21194" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7509" RevisionGUID="7e7baae1-ee14-4b89-861d-563963539d7c" CreationDate="2015-07-20T09:24:39.230" UserId="31260" Comment="added 16 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21195" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7510" RevisionGUID="49200b86-4e4b-4e1e-818d-a235a7750844" CreationDate="2015-07-20T15:57:48.470" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="One of the [on topic points on Ask Different](http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Apple services including iTunes Connect (selling music, books, apps)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may want to check out the [existing questions with the itunes-connect tag][1] and [their meta site][2] first ([including three meta questions tagged with itunes-connect][3]) before posting there to make sure your question fits into the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would be off-topic here and on Stack Overflow, since [we aren't customer support for other companies][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/itunes-connect&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.apple.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/itunes-connect&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/255745/839601" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21196" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7509" RevisionGUID="b598dfbc-3f33-4893-b570-b9df7fe796b8" CreationDate="2015-07-20T18:00:48.350" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21197" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7511" RevisionGUID="0e470f55-1738-46fa-96ac-1e55ae8ee46c" CreationDate="2015-07-20T20:49:08.553" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="The topic of code quality comes up often enough that there is a wiki Q&amp;A devoted to it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[How would you know if you've written readable and easily maintainable code?][1]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are currently [103 questions marked as a duplicate][2] of that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is _very_ broad, and a poll asking for ideas. There are no constraints on the problem, and there is no single correct answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How would one know if the code he has created is easily maintainable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and readable? Of course in your point of view (the one who actually&#xD;&#xA;&gt; wrote the code) your code is readable and maintainable, but we should&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be true to ourselves here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; How would we know if we've written pretty messy and unmaintainable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; code? Are there any constructs or guidelines to know if we have&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developed a messy piece of software?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers are equally as broad to the point of being useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt; Your peer tells you after reviewing the code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt; Sometimes, the best way to know, is to come back to code you wrote six months ago and try and understand what it was written to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt; It is: maintainable if you can maintain it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt; If your code follows the principles of SOLID and DRY and has a good set of unit tests around it, it is probably maintainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt; If you can understand it after 6 months, it's not bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, these are all correct answers. None of them point the question's author in the wrong direction. _But there is no success criteria_. There is no real problem to be solved. Why ask the question? Does your team have a specific quality issue to solve? No, this is a poll, and the answers are vague, abstract, and plain old common sense to anyone in the industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is compounded by the fact that there are over a hundred questions marked as a duplicate of this one. A question is a duplicate when the duplicate target's answers can also answer the new question. With the quality of the answers being so poor they cannot answer the duplicate target question, how could they answer the question being marked as a duplicate? They cannot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should we do to this question? Is it worth improving its quality, or should it be locked or deleted? What should be done with the linked questions marked as a duplicate of this question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/141005/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/141005?lq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21198" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7511" RevisionGUID="0e470f55-1738-46fa-96ac-1e55ae8ee46c" CreationDate="2015-07-20T20:49:08.553" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="How would you clean up a question asking if you've written readable and easily maintainable code?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21199" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7511" RevisionGUID="0e470f55-1738-46fa-96ac-1e55ae8ee46c" CreationDate="2015-07-20T20:49:08.553" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21200" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7512" RevisionGUID="0d92e42c-95e9-41ef-b170-63bcced724d2" CreationDate="2015-07-20T20:49:08.553" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="While the question and its answers are poor, this is a topic that is inescapable. Users will continue to ask similar questions, so it makes sense to try to have a canonical Q&amp;A that addresses their concerns _even if the question is primarily opinion-based or off-topic_. Clearly, this question fails to be that canonical resource in its current state.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose we take the following three actions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Fix the question. It needs to specify some type of success criteria. How do I _quantify_ good code? This is inherently an open-ended and subjective issue, but we can try to reign it in a little bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Fix the answers. If an answer can be improved to explain _why_ what it proposes will improve quality, then great. If it is redundant (a quick scan of the eyeball shows two answers both saying &quot;if you can understand it six months later..&quot;) or useless, delete the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Delete the other questions that are marked as a duplicate of it. They serve only to decrease the signal to noise ratio.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do _not_ believe we should add a historical lock to that question for the simple reason that it may be worthwhile to be able to edit or add answers at a later date if new ideas relating to code quality come up, new concerns by users who wonder why their question is a duplicate, etc. We may want to add a header to the question similar to the historical lock stating &quot;this is here for historical reasons, do not ask questions like it.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21201" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7511" RevisionGUID="f2f98580-fa17-483f-ba33-8ed1d90aa88c" CreationDate="2015-07-20T20:51:34.933" UserId="31260" Comment="not all linked questions are dupes" Text="The topic of code quality comes up often enough that there is a wiki Q&amp;A devoted to it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[How would you know if you've written readable and easily maintainable code?][1]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are currently [103 questions linked to or marked as a duplicate][2] of that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is _very_ broad, and a poll asking for ideas. There are no constraints on the problem, and there is no single correct answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How would one know if the code he has created is easily maintainable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and readable? Of course in your point of view (the one who actually&#xD;&#xA;&gt; wrote the code) your code is readable and maintainable, but we should&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be true to ourselves here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; How would we know if we've written pretty messy and unmaintainable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; code? Are there any constructs or guidelines to know if we have&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developed a messy piece of software?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers are equally as broad to the point of being useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt; Your peer tells you after reviewing the code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt; Sometimes, the best way to know, is to come back to code you wrote six months ago and try and understand what it was written to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt; It is: maintainable if you can maintain it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt; If your code follows the principles of SOLID and DRY and has a good set of unit tests around it, it is probably maintainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt; If you can understand it after 6 months, it's not bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, these are all correct answers. None of them point the question's author in the wrong direction. _But there is no success criteria_. There is no real problem to be solved. Why ask the question? Does your team have a specific quality issue to solve? No, this is a poll, and the answers are vague, abstract, and plain old common sense to anyone in the industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is compounded by the fact that there are over a hundred questions marked as a duplicate of this one. A question is a duplicate when the duplicate target's answers can also answer the new question. With the quality of the answers being so poor they cannot answer the duplicate target question, how could they answer the question being marked as a duplicate? They cannot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should we do to this question? Is it worth improving its quality, or should it be locked or deleted? What should be done with the linked questions marked as a duplicate of this question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/141005/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/141005?lq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21202" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7511" RevisionGUID="f2f98580-fa17-483f-ba33-8ed1d90aa88c" CreationDate="2015-07-20T20:51:34.933" UserId="31260" Comment="not all linked questions are dupes" Text="|discussion|specific-question|duplicate-questions|popular-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21203" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7513" RevisionGUID="c74f364f-a396-460f-96ed-c03ceab5dfc5" CreationDate="2015-07-21T02:37:37.857" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Often we find questions along the lines of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; # Help me understand this C program&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     #include&lt;stdio.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    main()&#xD;&#xA;    {&#xD;&#xA;        printf(&quot;Hello World&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, that one may be a bit simplified - but its not an uncommon form for a question that is asked here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How should one prepare and ask a &quot;what does this code do&quot; type question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21204" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7513" RevisionGUID="c74f364f-a396-460f-96ed-c03ceab5dfc5" CreationDate="2015-07-21T02:37:37.857" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="How to ask &quot;how to understand some code&quot; questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21205" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7513" RevisionGUID="c74f364f-a396-460f-96ed-c03ceab5dfc5" CreationDate="2015-07-21T02:37:37.857" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21206" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7514" RevisionGUID="f9f6d65a-4873-4e6e-b593-b6ab80bfddcf" CreationDate="2015-07-21T02:37:37.857" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Often these questions are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In days of old they would have been closed as &quot;not a real question&quot; or &quot;too localized.&quot;  The reasoning behind this is that there isn't really anything that one can answer definitively and draws upon our expert knowledge as a programmer. Furthermore, there are an endless stream of these small programs or snippets of code to be explained. The way the question is asked and its difficulty being findable and useful to *other* people made it too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today, these questions often are closed as &quot;unclear&quot; or &quot;too broad.&quot;  It is unclear exactly what the person is trying to get out of the question and how our answer can actually be helpful to them (it may be at too low a level, or too high a level, we don't know what the user knows (do they understand arrays? are they trying to understand [variadic functions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variadic_function)? standard lib IO call? etc...)  To properly explain *all* of this at all levels is at the level of a semester long class at the college level or a number of chapters in a &quot;teach yourself C in 21 minutes&quot; book.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of my favorite essays on programming is that of [How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary](http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html) by Robert L Read.  The first item under the skills for a beginner is [Learn to Debug](http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html#id2790282) which starts out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Debugging is the cornerstone of being a programmer. The first meaning of the verb to debug is to remove errors, but the meaning that really matters is to see into the execution of a program by examining it. A programmer that cannot debug effectively is blind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Idealists that think design, or analysis, or complexity theory, or whatnot, are more fundamental are not working programmers. The working programmer does not live in an ideal world. Even if you are perfect, your are surrounded by and must interact with code written by major software companies, organizations like GNU, and your colleagues. Most of this code is imperfect and imperfectly documented. Without the ability to gain visibility into the execution of this code the slightest bump will throw you permanently. Often this visibility can only be gained by experimentation, that is, debugging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions of &quot;explain this code to me&quot; is very much akin to someone coming up to you, handing you a picture&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![a pictgure][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and saying &quot;I don't understand this. Could you describe what you see here?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are so many possible options for someone to describe. We could describe the process of drawing (and you can see the sketch marks from previous revisions).  We could describe the elephant itself and its form. We could describe the technique (and if we think its good or bad). The possibilities are endless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in doing this - *you* aren't seeing it. You are listening to what we are saying (one would hope), but not actually going through the process of figuring it out yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is that process of learning how to see the code that is critically important for a programmer.  For us to describe it to you deprives you of an opportunity to learn how to use debugging tools. It deprives you of attempting to get that process in your own mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the things to realize is that walking through rudimentary code and explaining it line by line is kind of boring. Its something that you can do with a [debugger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debugger) - often available and integrated with the IDE you are likely using.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Show what your understanding of the code is. Are you confused about how `printf()` takes one argument in one example and five in another? About why some people write `for(;;)`?   Demonstrate that you have used the tools that are available to you to the best of your ability (and if necessary, read the tutorials for the debugger).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, for some reason, you don't have access to a debugger, learn how to print debugging statements and trace them out.  If necessary write a program that does the minimal number of lines and be sure to read the documentation for the function call you are about to ask about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are much more able to help you do the equivalent of spell out a word and understand its meaning rather than respond to a child coming up to us and saying &quot;read me a story&quot; and handing us a book.  To the student coming up to us now and asking us to &quot;read me a story&quot; we are responding, &quot;try to figure it out as much yourself on your own and ask about specific comprehension and vocabulary problems.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How to debug small programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/iR5kum.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21207" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7514" RevisionGUID="7dc98453-497f-4c3d-b545-1e394a4a011c" CreationDate="2015-07-21T02:48:08.877" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 121 characters in body" Text="Often these questions are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In days of old they would have been closed as &quot;not a real question&quot; or &quot;too localized.&quot;  The reasoning behind this is that there isn't really anything that one can answer definitively and draws upon our expert knowledge as a programmer. Furthermore, there are an endless stream of these small programs or snippets of code to be explained. The way the question is asked and its difficulty being findable and useful to *other* people made it too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today, these questions often are closed as &quot;unclear&quot; or &quot;too broad.&quot;  It is unclear exactly what the person is trying to get out of the question and how our answer can actually be helpful to them (it may be at too low a level, or too high a level, we don't know what the user knows (do they understand arrays? are they trying to understand [variadic functions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variadic_function)? standard lib IO call? etc...)  To properly explain *all* of this at all levels is at the level of a semester long class at the college level or a number of chapters in a &quot;teach yourself C in 21 minutes&quot; book.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of my favorite essays on programming is that of [How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary](http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html) by Robert L Read.  The first item under the skills for a beginner is [Learn to Debug](http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html#id2790282) which starts out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Debugging is the cornerstone of being a programmer. The first meaning of the verb to debug is to remove errors, but the meaning that really matters is to see into the execution of a program by examining it. A programmer that cannot debug effectively is blind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Idealists that think design, or analysis, or complexity theory, or whatnot, are more fundamental are not working programmers. The working programmer does not live in an ideal world. Even if you are perfect, your are surrounded by and must interact with code written by major software companies, organizations like GNU, and your colleagues. Most of this code is imperfect and imperfectly documented. Without the ability to gain visibility into the execution of this code the slightest bump will throw you permanently. Often this visibility can only be gained by experimentation, that is, debugging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions of &quot;explain this code to me&quot; is very much akin to someone coming up to you, handing you a picture&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![a pictgure][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Image from [draw an elephant](http://www.wikihow.com/Draw-an-Elephant#/Image:Draw-an-Elephant-Step-16.jpg)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and saying &quot;I don't understand this. Could you describe what you see here?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are so many possible options for someone to describe. We could describe the process of drawing (and you can see the sketch marks from previous revisions).  We could describe the elephant itself and its form. We could describe the technique (and if we think its good or bad). The possibilities are endless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in doing this - *you* aren't seeing it. You are listening to what we are saying (one would hope), but not actually going through the process of figuring it out yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is that process of learning how to see the code that is critically important for a programmer.  For us to describe it to you deprives you of an opportunity to learn how to use debugging tools. It deprives you of attempting to get that process in your own mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the things to realize is that walking through rudimentary code and explaining it line by line is kind of boring. Its something that you can do with a [debugger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debugger) - often available and integrated with the IDE you are likely using.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Show what your understanding of the code is. Are you confused about how `printf()` takes one argument in one example and five in another? About why some people write `for(;;)`?   Demonstrate that you have used the tools that are available to you to the best of your ability (and if necessary, read the tutorials for the debugger).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, for some reason, you don't have access to a debugger, learn how to print debugging statements and trace them out.  If necessary write a program that does the minimal number of lines and be sure to read the documentation for the function call you are about to ask about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are much more able to help you do the equivalent of spell out a word and understand its meaning rather than respond to a child coming up to us and saying &quot;read me a story&quot; and handing us a book.  To the student coming up to us now and asking us to &quot;read me a story&quot; we are responding, &quot;try to figure it out as much yourself on your own and ask about specific comprehension and vocabulary problems.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How to debug small programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/iR5kum.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21208" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7515" RevisionGUID="4550e386-86ed-4832-acb2-21845ca82c19" CreationDate="2015-07-21T10:40:07.860" UserId="187905" Text="I have a peculiar situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked this [question][1] and someone answered the question well by saying that the implementation I was planning on using is more of an anti-pattern as it is not addressing the problem and suggested using single-responsibility (which technically is the way it is currently implemented) so I marked this as correct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My problem here though is that another person answered suggesting that instead of using what I am, use a builder pattern with chained methods. I said I didn't like that idea because there wasn't any way to specify mandatory fields but then someone else commented on that answer with a solution which uses the builder pattern and allows for mandatory fields which are obvious to a developer using the object.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I personally think that the commented solution is a much better solution to the problem that I described, but the question was, what is this pattern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So who should get the points? The original accepted answer. The person who suggested the builder pattern because in the comments to that answer is the solution. Or whether I should ask the person who commented to write that as an answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please help me as I want to make sure anyone else who comes across this post has the best advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290213/unknown-design-pattern?noredirect=1#comment600853_290213" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21209" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7515" RevisionGUID="4550e386-86ed-4832-acb2-21845ca82c19" CreationDate="2015-07-21T10:40:07.860" UserId="187905" Text="What to do when the best answer doesn't solve the question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21210" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7515" RevisionGUID="4550e386-86ed-4832-acb2-21845ca82c19" CreationDate="2015-07-21T10:40:07.860" UserId="187905" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21211" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7515" RevisionGUID="438bb9b7-1136-4225-b7e4-8c7fa3b2e6a5" CreationDate="2015-07-21T12:48:05.960" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21212" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="af1fc2ea-3633-41f8-87f2-51b06676ec53" CreationDate="2015-07-22T01:13:45.570" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="On book suggestions." Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a tool, library, or other###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### We do book review and suggestions poorly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the classic recommendation questions is that of a book.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do book reviews very poorly. All the answers that one gets are opinions and this is fundamentally a poll of opinions. This is to say nothing of that the technology behind them changes too.  There are indeed timeless books (and [many have written on the subject](https://www.google.com/search?q=timeless+computer+books)), though their value is a [matter of debate](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2uBpc.jpg). &lt;!-- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14298/is-analysis-patterns-reusable-object-models-still-a-good-book-to-use-for-its --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Between the polling nature of the question, the opinions people have on certain books, the constantly changing target, and the site's history of producing poor quality answers to these questions (and not moderating them), asking for a book suggestion is very likely to get closed and down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for a link to something or statistics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason.  Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to things suffer from link rot.  Statistics become out of date over time.  Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is someone asking in 2012 &quot;What is the market share of Android vs iPhone?&quot;  This information would be out of date in a few months as new numbers come out and someone else would ask in 2013 &quot;The question [link] asks about the stats, but they are all for 2012.  What is the market share for android vs iPhone in 2013?&quot;  And again, this information would be out of date and prompt another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for information about statistics, or more generally, asking us to search for some data for you is off topic because of these problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No actual problem to solve&#xD;&#xA;* Not drawing from expert knowledge of the community&#xD;&#xA;* Will suffer from link rot or become out of date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Link Rot&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, external resources may move or be deleted for a variety of reasons. Perhaps a particular site reorganizes its links without setting up redirects. Perhaps an organization goes out of business or discontinues product X or library Y.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to the reasons stated above, external resources tend to be _transient_. Whatever tool, library, or other resource who requested might not exist in five years or be otherwise readily available. This has the effect of making an answer utterly useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one asks for a library to perform function X, and the answer links to web site Y, and either function X or web site Y cease to exist as defined in the answer, that answer is now useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one more reason why questions like this tend to be of low value and are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [What exactly is a recommendation question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254393/what-exactly-is-a-recommendation-question)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why are “shopping list” questions bad?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21213" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7513" RevisionGUID="07d77cc0-4dbc-425d-99cb-6416a8e4da02" CreationDate="2015-07-25T05:21:25.113" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/624811668414066688" />
  <row Id="21216" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7517" RevisionGUID="a703d413-3f35-4e12-8b71-71c8f0ed7acd" CreationDate="2015-07-28T13:41:26.383" UserId="13154" Text="It's strange that there are tags for .NET and Java test runners but there is no tag for the common language they are using [Gherkin](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/gherkin)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21217" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7517" RevisionGUID="a703d413-3f35-4e12-8b71-71c8f0ed7acd" CreationDate="2015-07-28T13:41:26.383" UserId="13154" Text="Please create a tag for the Gherkin BDD language" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21218" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7517" RevisionGUID="a703d413-3f35-4e12-8b71-71c8f0ed7acd" CreationDate="2015-07-28T13:41:26.383" UserId="13154" Text="|support|tags|retag-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21219" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7514" RevisionGUID="10b40a5c-5e08-45aa-98dc-febcb680a358" CreationDate="2015-07-28T20:52:52.303" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="Often these questions are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In days of old they would have been closed as &quot;not a real question&quot; or &quot;too localized.&quot;  The reasoning behind this is that there isn't really anything that one can answer definitively and draws upon our expert knowledge as a programmer. Furthermore, there are an endless stream of these small programs or snippets of code to be explained. The way the question is asked and its difficulty being findable and useful to *other* people made it too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today, these questions often are closed as &quot;unclear&quot; or &quot;too broad.&quot;  It is unclear exactly what the person is trying to get out of the question and how our answer can actually be helpful to them (it may be at too low a level, or too high a level, we don't know what the user knows (do they understand arrays? are they trying to understand [variadic functions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variadic_function)? standard lib IO call? etc...)  To properly explain *all* of this at all levels is at the level of a semester long class at the college level or a number of chapters in a &quot;teach yourself C in 21 minutes&quot; book.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of my favorite essays on programming is that of [How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary](http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html) by Robert L Read.  The first item under the skills for a beginner is [Learn to Debug](http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html#id2790282) which starts out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Debugging is the cornerstone of being a programmer. The first meaning of the verb to debug is to remove errors, but the meaning that really matters is to see into the execution of a program by examining it. A programmer that cannot debug effectively is blind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Idealists that think design, or analysis, or complexity theory, or whatnot, are more fundamental are not working programmers. The working programmer does not live in an ideal world. Even if you are perfect, your are surrounded by and must interact with code written by major software companies, organizations like GNU, and your colleagues. Most of this code is imperfect and imperfectly documented. Without the ability to gain visibility into the execution of this code the slightest bump will throw you permanently. Often this visibility can only be gained by experimentation, that is, debugging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions of &quot;explain this code to me&quot; is very much akin to someone coming up to you, handing you a picture&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![a pictgure][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Image from [draw an elephant](http://www.wikihow.com/Draw-an-Elephant#/Image:Draw-an-Elephant-Step-16.jpg)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and saying &quot;I don't understand this. Could you describe what you see here?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are so many possible options for someone to describe. We could describe the process of drawing (and you can see the sketch marks from previous revisions).  We could describe the elephant itself and its form. We could describe the technique (and if we think its good or bad). The possibilities are endless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in doing this - *you* aren't seeing it. You are listening to what we are saying (one would hope), but not actually going through the process of figuring it out yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is that process of learning how to see the code that is critically important for a programmer.  For us to describe it to you deprives you of an opportunity to learn how to use debugging tools. It deprives you of attempting to get that process in your own mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the things to realize is that walking through rudimentary code and explaining it line by line is kind of boring. Its something that you can do with a [debugger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debugger) - often available and integrated with the IDE you are likely using.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Show what your understanding of the code is. Are you confused about how `printf()` takes one argument in one example and five in another? About why some people write `for(;;)`?   Demonstrate that you have used the tools that are available to you to the best of your ability (and if necessary, read the tutorials for the debugger).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, for some reason, you don't have access to a debugger, learn how to print debugging statements and trace them out.  If necessary write a program that does the minimal number of lines and be sure to read the documentation for the function call you are about to ask about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are much more able to help you do the equivalent of spell out a word and understand its meaning rather than respond to a child coming up to us and saying &quot;read me a story&quot; and handing us a book.  To the student coming up to us now and asking us to &quot;read me a story&quot; we are responding, &quot;try to figure it out as much yourself on your own and ask about specific comprehension and vocabulary problems.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[How to debug small programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/iR5kum.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21220" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7511" RevisionGUID="d76b6d86-21a4-40f3-8c93-ff55608b1977" CreationDate="2015-07-29T02:29:25.577" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/626217937318322177" />
  <row Id="21221" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7518" RevisionGUID="9414ec53-9360-4083-a7a4-ae9c707f3330" CreationDate="2015-07-30T07:59:21.500" UserId="53014" Text="My comments on this question were deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291200/is-it-ok-to-avoid-testing-base-classes#comment603254_291200&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21222" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7518" RevisionGUID="9414ec53-9360-4083-a7a4-ae9c707f3330" CreationDate="2015-07-30T07:59:21.500" UserId="53014" Text="Deleted comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21223" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7518" RevisionGUID="9414ec53-9360-4083-a7a4-ae9c707f3330" CreationDate="2015-07-30T07:59:21.500" UserId="53014" Text="|discussion|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21224" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7518" RevisionGUID="51ec6f87-453e-4d9f-a91f-073c1ffb5b84" CreationDate="2015-07-30T08:04:55.937" UserId="53014" Comment="added 516 characters in body" Text="My comments on this question were deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291200/is-it-ok-to-avoid-testing-base-classes#comment603254_291200&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: Also deleted on this answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/291169/53014&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What the fuck is going on? Why is there a need to censor and moderate these SE sites to such an extent? It's annoying.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm calling it a day. I've been a daily contributor to SO and have helped many people resolve their problems, but you've lost out on the small contribution I was going to continue to make.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I'll make sure my opinion is clear about these sites to anyone I suspect may have had a use for them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21225" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7519" RevisionGUID="a45a0854-97e6-4173-80ed-bd8e7c07eed1" CreationDate="2015-07-30T09:15:02.067" UserId="4" Text="I deleted your comments on [this answer][1]. [Comments are ephemeral][2], they are not supposed to stick around for ever, and yours had clearly outlived their purpose. Also, comments are expected to meet our [guidelines for behavior][3], including [being nice][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width/291169#291169&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/comment&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/behavior&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/be-nice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21226" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7498" RevisionGUID="a0a50688-d545-47f2-9461-a5bfa653b034" CreationDate="2015-07-30T11:22:37.540" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|help-center|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21227" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7520" RevisionGUID="e4bcd6bc-231d-446e-895a-dcd345275a57" CreationDate="2015-07-30T11:23:04.410" UserId="4" Text="The line now reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; where to find a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The link goes to the same meta post as before." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21228" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="9e6633a4-19f3-4ac3-9e56-f58ee7b8a4e0" CreationDate="2015-07-30T13:59:45.527" UserId="88986" Comment="added 27 characters in body" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:grad-school] [tag:university] [tag:college] [tag:degree]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning]  [tag:unlearning] [tag:exam] [tag:learning-curve] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching] [tag:tutorial]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:student] [tag:students] [tag:children]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:courses] [tag:training-courses] [tag:training] [tag:mentor] [tag:intro-to-programming]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employee] [tag:employer] [tag:employment] [tag:employers] [tag:co-workers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-satisfaction] [tag:job-title] [tag:jobs] [tag:new-job] [tag:job-definition] [tag:job-advancement] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:credit-cards] [tag:mobile-payment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing] [tag:compensation]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Uncategorized tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:problem] [tag:problems]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:non-technical]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21229" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7521" RevisionGUID="c806b732-1308-49e1-b7b9-595819e2be0e" CreationDate="2015-07-31T15:27:19.977" UserId="8655" Text="When I go to the question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7652/identifying-programming-languages-by-a-piece-of-code/7688#7688 and get a &quot;share&quot; link for Scott Whitlock's answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/768) sends my browser to a different answer on the question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/750/what-should-you-test-with-unit-tests&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Bk96.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0B0Yk.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21230" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7521" RevisionGUID="c806b732-1308-49e1-b7b9-595819e2be0e" CreationDate="2015-07-31T15:27:19.977" UserId="8655" Text="answer's &quot;share&quot; link goes to a different answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21231" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7521" RevisionGUID="c806b732-1308-49e1-b7b9-595819e2be0e" CreationDate="2015-07-31T15:27:19.977" UserId="8655" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21232" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7521" RevisionGUID="76ef75a2-de24-48a2-b927-23421e27dbb3" CreationDate="2015-07-31T15:31:34.187" UserId="8655" Comment="Fixed link to first question" Text="When I go to the question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76804/explaining-floating-point-precision-to-customers and get a &quot;share&quot; link for Scott Whitlock's answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/768) sends my browser to a different answer on the question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/750/what-should-you-test-with-unit-tests&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Bk96.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0B0Yk.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21233" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7521" RevisionGUID="58cd45f7-733b-427e-aa39-853666082e83" CreationDate="2015-07-31T15:39:00.127" UserId="8655" Comment="correct image for second answer" Text="When I go to the question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76804/explaining-floating-point-precision-to-customers and get a &quot;share&quot; link for Scott Whitlock's answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/768) sends my browser to a different answer on the question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/750/what-should-you-test-with-unit-tests&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Bk96.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/9hBi6.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21234" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7522" RevisionGUID="fdd7fe59-801a-4c80-9acc-698248f44b9b" CreationDate="2015-07-31T16:15:08.263" UserId="4" Text="I can't reproduce this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The share link I get for Scott's answer is `http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/76884/4`, which consistently goes to Scott's answer. However, the second answer is `http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/768/4`. They are close, except the second URL is missing two digits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that `http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/768`, which is only the text visible in your share dialog box, goes to the same answer as `http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/768/4`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are you sure that you are copying the entire link properly and not truncating it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21235" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7522" RevisionGUID="c7c9459a-f4a6-4482-b33a-d1a2417e8c5d" CreationDate="2015-07-31T16:20:22.240" UserId="4" Comment="added 206 characters in body" Text="I can't reproduce this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The share link I get for Scott's answer is `http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/76884/4`, which consistently goes to Scott's answer. However, the second answer is `http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/768/4`. They are close, except the second URL is missing two digits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that `http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/768`, which is only the text visible in your share dialog box, goes to the same answer as `http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/768/4`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last part, `/4`, is likely my user ID used to track links that I've shared, to grant credit to badges. The last part will change for each person, which is why it isn't required for the link to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are you sure that you are copying the entire link properly and not truncating it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21236" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7521" RevisionGUID="ed598a75-e7be-440d-8b80-2699d323a734" CreationDate="2015-07-31T16:22:37.760" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags; edited tags" Text="|bug|status-norepro|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21237" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7522" RevisionGUID="191689c8-c910-40b7-9af4-2449de562e80" CreationDate="2015-07-31T18:25:16.353" UserId="47" Comment="there's no &quot;likely&quot; about it" Text="I can't reproduce this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The share link I get for Scott's answer is `http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/76884/4`, which consistently goes to Scott's answer. However, the second answer is `http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/768/4`. They are close, except the second URL is missing two digits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that `http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/768`, which is only the text visible in your share dialog box, goes to the same answer as `http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/768/4`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last part, `/4`, is my user ID used to track links that I've shared, to grant credit to badges. The last part will change for each person, which is why it isn't required for the link to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are you sure that you are copying the entire link properly and not truncating it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21242" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7518" RevisionGUID="fe993aec-36b6-4a85-ae6f-b09210197ace" CreationDate="2015-08-03T12:22:29.053" UserId="31260" Comment="fuck /off" Text="My comments on this question were deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291200/is-it-ok-to-avoid-testing-base-classes#comment603254_291200&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: Also deleted on this answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/291169/53014&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is going on? Why is there a need to censor and moderate these SE sites to such an extent? It's annoying.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm calling it a day. I've been a daily contributor to SO and have helped many people resolve their problems, but you've lost out on the small contribution I was going to continue to make.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I'll make sure my opinion is clear about these sites to anyone I suspect may have had a use for them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21243" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7407" RevisionGUID="44b61caa-7b4e-4d65-98eb-ce1e7fd7f649" CreationDate="2015-08-04T15:58:16.483" UserId="25768" Comment="added 104 characters in body" Text="[tag:terminology] [tag:definition]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often becomes a &quot;name this thing&quot;-type question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relevant meta discussion from last year: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related is [tag:naming] which also tends to get into opinionated questions about naming conventions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21244" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="d4444ba3-d98c-497c-a2b1-a519fb514951" CreationDate="2015-08-06T15:50:03.473" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Updated title to match the new wording in the help center: reference this meta answer with more information. http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7520/22815" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### We do book review and suggestions poorly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the classic recommendation questions is that of a book.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do book reviews very poorly. All the answers that one gets are opinions and this is fundamentally a poll of opinions. This is to say nothing of that the technology behind them changes too.  There are indeed timeless books (and [many have written on the subject](https://www.google.com/search?q=timeless+computer+books)), though their value is a [matter of debate](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2uBpc.jpg). &lt;!-- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14298/is-analysis-patterns-reusable-object-models-still-a-good-book-to-use-for-its --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Between the polling nature of the question, the opinions people have on certain books, the constantly changing target, and the site's history of producing poor quality answers to these questions (and not moderating them), asking for a book suggestion is very likely to get closed and down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for a link to something or statistics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason.  Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to things suffer from link rot.  Statistics become out of date over time.  Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is someone asking in 2012 &quot;What is the market share of Android vs iPhone?&quot;  This information would be out of date in a few months as new numbers come out and someone else would ask in 2013 &quot;The question [link] asks about the stats, but they are all for 2012.  What is the market share for android vs iPhone in 2013?&quot;  And again, this information would be out of date and prompt another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for information about statistics, or more generally, asking us to search for some data for you is off topic because of these problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No actual problem to solve&#xD;&#xA;* Not drawing from expert knowledge of the community&#xD;&#xA;* Will suffer from link rot or become out of date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Link Rot&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, external resources may move or be deleted for a variety of reasons. Perhaps a particular site reorganizes its links without setting up redirects. Perhaps an organization goes out of business or discontinues product X or library Y.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to the reasons stated above, external resources tend to be _transient_. Whatever tool, library, or other resource who requested might not exist in five years or be otherwise readily available. This has the effect of making an answer utterly useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one asks for a library to perform function X, and the answer links to web site Y, and either function X or web site Y cease to exist as defined in the answer, that answer is now useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one more reason why questions like this tend to be of low value and are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [What exactly is a recommendation question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254393/what-exactly-is-a-recommendation-question)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why are “shopping list” questions bad?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as off topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21245" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7524" RevisionGUID="62ab750b-763c-4295-8e0f-f8e84c44f329" CreationDate="2015-08-07T03:53:52.417" UserId="149844" Text="How do I ask about that?&#xD;&#xA;I'm looking for some programming environment which:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. is capable into bit-packed structures (bit-fields up to 32 bits in size)&#xD;&#xA; 2. has endianess abstraction, so I can follow BE documentation and run anywhere&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above is important, I'd like to maintain structure definitions instead of serializing/deserializing code." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21246" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7524" RevisionGUID="62ab750b-763c-4295-8e0f-f8e84c44f329" CreationDate="2015-08-07T03:53:52.417" UserId="149844" Text="Programming environment recommendation for (very) tight requirements" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21247" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7524" RevisionGUID="62ab750b-763c-4295-8e0f-f8e84c44f329" CreationDate="2015-08-07T03:53:52.417" UserId="149844" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21248" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7524" RevisionGUID="940f5e7b-1bd3-42c8-a31f-59adc8f6adcd" CreationDate="2015-08-07T03:58:56.627" UserId="149844" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="How do I ask about that?&#xD;&#xA;I'm looking for some programming environment which:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. is capable into bit-packed structures (bit-fields up to 32 bits in size)&#xD;&#xA; 2. has endianess abstraction, so I can follow BE documentation and run on LE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above is important, I'd like to **maintain structure definitions instead of serializing/deserializing code**." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21249" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="78a2c161-9e2a-4d95-b873-733bf1d6df10" CreationDate="2015-08-07T17:33:43.393" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Updated text of link to &quot;resource request&quot; answer to match its new title." Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted).  Why? And what can I do about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What technology to take up next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resource](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;    * (MSE) [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in/129632#129632)&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)  &#xD;&#xA;  certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three of categories listed under _Off topic_ match site-specific close reasons, see: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5992/what-should-our-predefined-off-topic-reasons-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links are from particular points in the history of Programmers.SE and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a [serial vote](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/serial-voting/info &quot;what's this&quot;) reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For pasting into chat or comments there is a &quot;Quick link&quot; at the end of each answer.  The quick link for the question is `[Why was my question closed or down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/)` - pasting this into chat or a comment will link to the question.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21250" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7285" RevisionGUID="2956379e-85c1-47f3-925b-b025c0ad7d0d" CreationDate="2015-08-08T00:16:04.777" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|stci|stci-phase2|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21251" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7525" RevisionGUID="518cf595-33ef-4316-be89-1a7402af1b5e" CreationDate="2015-08-09T00:40:11.223" UserId="31260" Text="Few recent questions seem to exhibit issues explained in [The Trouble With Popularity](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/) article:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we discovered that these posts... truly start to drown out everything else on the site... it's too addictive and too easy, and in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While these questions were open, they were widely advertised at Hot Network List and gained relatively high score [despite piling close votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773 &quot;feature request to account for these&quot;). Now all of them are closed but due to mentioned high score, they present appealing examples for other askers to try their luck.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;High score sends a fairly strong signal that this sort of questions is welcome here. I think this _signal_ is much stronger than subtle hint in the form of close banner, especially for inexperienced users ([&quot;it's okay to ask about roses here...&quot;](http://communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/a/1247/516 &quot;if needed, refer here for more elaborate discussion of having off-topic questions in the hot list&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What can we do to make these closed questions less of [broken windows](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the issues with this question are best covered in custom close reason at Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Topicality wise, it appears to be in overlap between our site and Workplace, probably closer to Programmers. Our close reason ([opinion based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)) looks fit, as for better match of Workplace reason, it is likely because they are getting more troublesome questions of that kind and acquired more experience of efficiently handling these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;...How would you explain a statement... to a beginner?&quot;_ - We have a dedicated meta post over here explaining issues exactly with this kind of questions: [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6630/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course hot list visitors who voted it up have no idea about our meta (and even if they knew, they likely wouldn't care, why would they).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;I personally prefer 4 spaces for each indentation level, but there are colleagues that prefer 2 and even 5 spaces... I decided to post a question see if there are tools/method to settle the problem without calling a meeting.&quot;_ - If that doesn't make a [shopping list question](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) then I don't know what makes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Revisions history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/290941/revisions) suggests that even moderators have tried to figure a way to protect and salvage it. But, honestly, I am not surprised to see this failed. Asker perfectly clearly indicated that they are _just shopping_ and there's nothing else on their mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone tried to &quot;derive&quot; a better, more substantial question from this one, they would end up with their own, and _different_ question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet another case when Workplace folks seem to be better prepared to recognize and handle troublesome questions of that kind with their custom close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **advice on what to do are not [practical answerable questions](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)** (e.g. *&quot;what job should I take?&quot;*, or *&quot;what skills should I learn?&quot;*). Questions should get answers explaining *why* and *how* to make a decision, not advice on what to do. For more information, click [here](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/2695)...&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;Granted, I think that our own [education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/31260) close reason also makes a good fit, but majority of close voters picked other reason ([too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260)) which suggests that match is not really prominent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yet again, issues with this question seem to be best covered in already quoted custom close reason at Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although still somewhat workplace-y, this question looks much closer to Programmers than previous example covered by mentioned close reason. Still, their close reason looks like a really good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm often conflicted when creating a project that requires manipulation of data in files... &amp;lt;example how JSON looks like&amp;gt; &amp;lt;example how CSV looks like&amp;gt; ...is it better to use larger, more readable formats, like JSON, or smaller, harder to read formats, like CSV, for data storage?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[If memory serves](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234894/165773 &quot;no, system won't help me recall&quot;), close reason I picked was [too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260). Majority of voters have chosen [opinion based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/31260) which also looks like a reasonable match ([Gorilla vs. Shark](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these questions were old, or if their score and views were acquired _organically_ due to great content, I'd probably ask for a [historical lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info). But none of this seems even remotely applicable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For what it's worth, I considered an option to edit them into better shape. Unfortunately, it looks like answers that piled in prior to closing [&quot;locked&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773) any substantial changes I could think of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One possible exception (which involves removal of most answers though) is the [question about indentation width](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width). I think it can be converted to [collaborative effort](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before). If we pick this option though, we better do some substantial edits to the question text, to make it look less of a wide open broken window for inexperienced site visitors. _&quot;Hey, folks do shopping over here, lemme try my own.&quot;_" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21252" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7525" RevisionGUID="518cf595-33ef-4316-be89-1a7402af1b5e" CreationDate="2015-08-09T00:40:11.223" UserId="31260" Text="Recent Trouble With Popularity" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21253" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7525" RevisionGUID="518cf595-33ef-4316-be89-1a7402af1b5e" CreationDate="2015-08-09T00:40:11.223" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|quality|hot-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21254" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7525" RevisionGUID="c065c257-c4ac-41d6-b489-0e3099eb4446" CreationDate="2015-08-09T04:09:22.210" UserId="31260" Comment="minor wordsmithing" Text="Few recent questions seem to exhibit issues explained in [The Trouble With Popularity](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/) article:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we discovered that these posts... truly start to drown out everything else on the site... it's too addictive and too easy, and in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While these questions were open, they were widely advertised at Hot Network List and gained relatively high score [despite piling close votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773 &quot;feature request to account for these&quot;). Now all of them are closed but due to mentioned high score, they present appealing examples for site visitors to try their luck asking similar questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;High score sends a fairly strong signal that this sort of questions is welcome here. I think this _signal_ is much stronger than subtle hint in the form of close banner, especially for inexperienced users ([&quot;it's okay to ask about roses here...&quot;](http://communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/a/1247/516 &quot;if needed, refer here for more elaborate discussion of having off-topic questions in the hot list&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What can we do to make these closed questions less of [broken windows](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the issues with this question are best covered in custom close reason at Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Topicality wise, it appears to be in overlap between our site and Workplace, probably closer to Programmers. Our close reason ([opinion based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)) looks fit, as for better match of Workplace reason, it is likely because they are getting more troublesome questions of that kind and acquired more experience of efficiently handling these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;...How would you explain a statement... to a beginner?&quot;_ - We have a dedicated meta post over here explaining issues exactly with this kind of questions: [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6630/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course hot list visitors who voted it up have no idea about our meta (and even if they knew, they likely wouldn't care, why would they).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;I personally prefer 4 spaces for each indentation level, but there are colleagues that prefer 2 and even 5 spaces... I decided to post a question see if there are tools/method to settle the problem without calling a meeting.&quot;_ - If that doesn't make a [shopping list question](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) then I don't know what makes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Revisions history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/290941/revisions) suggests that even moderators have tried to figure a way to protect and salvage it. But, honestly, I am not surprised to see this failed. Asker perfectly clearly indicated that they are _just shopping_ and there's nothing else on their mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone tried to &quot;derive&quot; a better, more substantial question from this one, they would end up with their own, and _different_ question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet another case when Workplace folks seem to be better prepared to recognize and handle troublesome questions of that kind with their custom close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **advice on what to do are not [practical answerable questions](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)** (e.g. *&quot;what job should I take?&quot;*, or *&quot;what skills should I learn?&quot;*). Questions should get answers explaining *why* and *how* to make a decision, not advice on what to do. For more information, click [here](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/2695)...&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;Granted, I think that our own [education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/31260) close reason also makes a good fit, but majority of close voters picked other reason ([too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260)) which suggests that match is not really prominent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yet again, issues with this question seem to be best covered in already quoted custom close reason at Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although still somewhat workplace-y, this question looks much closer to Programmers than previous example covered by mentioned close reason. Still, their close reason looks like a really good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm often conflicted when creating a project that requires manipulation of data in files... &amp;lt;example how JSON looks like&amp;gt; &amp;lt;example how CSV looks like&amp;gt; ...is it better to use larger, more readable formats, like JSON, or smaller, harder to read formats, like CSV, for data storage?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[If memory serves](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234894/165773 &quot;no, system won't help me recall&quot;), close reason I picked was [too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260). Majority of voters have chosen [opinion based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/31260) which also looks like a reasonable match ([Gorilla vs. Shark](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these questions were old, or if their score and views were acquired _organically_ due to great content, I'd probably ask for a [historical lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info). But none of this seems even remotely applicable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For what it's worth, I considered an option to edit them into better shape. Unfortunately, it looks like answers that piled in prior to closing [&quot;locked&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773) any substantial changes I could think of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One possible exception (which involves removal of most answers though) is the [question about indentation width](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width). It looks possible to convert it to [collaborative effort](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before &quot;example&quot;). If we pick this option though, we better do some substantial edits to the question text, to make it look less of a wide open broken window for inexperienced site visitors. _&quot;Hey, folks do shopping over here, lemme try my own.&quot;_" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21255" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7525" RevisionGUID="82ede68e-7cc3-44b6-9f67-649f892ad152" CreationDate="2015-08-09T19:07:38.653" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="grammar" Text="A few recent questions seem to exhibit issues explained in [The Trouble With Popularity](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/) article:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we discovered that these posts... truly start to drown out everything else on the site... it's too addictive and too easy, and in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While these questions were open, they were widely advertised on the Hot Network List and gained relatively high scores [despite piling on of close votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773 &quot;feature request to account for these&quot;). All of them are now closed, but due to their high scores they present appealing examples for newer site visitors to try their luck asking similar questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;High scores send a fairly strong signal that those sorts of questions are welcome here. I think this _signal_ is much stronger than the subtle hint  of a close banner, especially for inexperienced users ([&quot;it's okay to ask about roses here...&quot;](http://communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/a/1247/516 &quot;if needed, refer here for more elaborate discussion of having off-topic questions in the hot list&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The crux of my question is: what can we do to make these closed questions less like [broken windows](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_Recent examples for review:_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the issues with this question are best covered in a custom close reason borrowed from the Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Topicality wise, it appears to be in overlap between our site and Workplace, probably closer to Programmers. Our close reason ([opinion based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)) looks like a fit.  As for better matching Workplace close reason, it is likely because they (Workplace) are getting more troublesome questions of that kind and have acquired more experience at efficiently handling these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;...How would you explain a statement... to a beginner?&quot;_ - We have a dedicated meta post explaining exactly what the issues are with these kinds of questions: [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6630/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, hot list visitors who voted it up likely have no idea about our meta guidance.  And even if they knew, they likely don't care.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;I personally prefer 4 spaces for each indentation level, but there are colleagues that prefer 2 and even 5 spaces... I decided to post a question see if there are tools/method to settle the problem without calling a meeting.&quot;_ - If that doesn't make it a [shopping list question](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) then I don't know what it makes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/290941/revisions) suggests that even some moderators have tried to figure out a way to protect and salvage the question. But, honestly, I am not surprised to see that this failed. Asker clearly indicated that they were _just shopping_ and there's nothing else on their mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone tried to &quot;derive&quot; a better, more substantial question from this one, they would end up with their own, and _different_ question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet another case when Workplace folks seem to be better prepared to recognize and handle troublesome questions of that kind with their custom close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **advice on what to do are not [practical answerable questions](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)** (e.g. *&quot;what job should I take?&quot;*, or *&quot;what skills should I learn?&quot;*). Questions should get answers explaining *why* and *how* to make a decision, not advice on what to do. For more information, click [here](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/2695)...&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;Granted, I think that our own [education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/31260) close reason also makes a good fit, but the majority of close voters picked another reason ([too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260)) which suggests that the match with the education close reason is not as clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yet again, issues with this question seem to be best covered in already quoted custom close reason from the Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although still somewhat workplace-y, this question looks much closer to Programmers than previous examples covered by the previously mentioned close reason. Still, their close reason looks like a really good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm often conflicted when creating a project that requires manipulation of data in files... &amp;lt;example how JSON looks like&amp;gt; &amp;lt;example how CSV looks like&amp;gt; ...is it better to use larger, more readable formats, like JSON, or smaller, harder to read formats, like CSV, for data storage?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[If memory serves](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234894/165773 &quot;no, system won't help me recall&quot;), the close reason I picked was [too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260). The majority of voters have chosen [opinion based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/31260) which also looks like a reasonable match ([Gorilla vs. Shark](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these questions were old, or if their score and views were acquired _organically_ due to great content, I'd probably ask for a [historical lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info). But that doesn't seem applicable due to the recency of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For what it's worth, I considered an option to edit them into better shape. Unfortunately, it looks like the answers that piled in prior to closing [&quot;lock the question&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773) from any substantial changes I could think of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One possible exception (which would involve removing most of the answers though) is the [question about indentation width](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width). It looks possible to convert it to a [collaborative effort question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before &quot;example&quot;). If we pick this option though, we had better do some substantial edits to the question text, to make it look like less of a wide open broken window for inexperienced site visitors. _&quot;Hey, folks do shopping over here, lemme try my own.&quot;_" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21256" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7285" RevisionGUID="f7fee029-0de6-493d-bf7b-1b295f918236" CreationDate="2015-08-10T12:33:08.367" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|stci|stci-phase2|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="21258" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2422" RevisionGUID="9bc1cd60-5906-47cb-a073-1d539ee0bed5" CreationDate="2015-08-11T14:14:05.343" UserId="88986" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21259" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="2411" RevisionGUID="75f5d4c1-5ef3-4501-a265-7e283d00bb06" CreationDate="2015-08-11T14:14:34.577" UserId="88986" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21260" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="817" RevisionGUID="145e0db0-a52a-403f-916e-e0b6eb25aed2" CreationDate="2015-08-11T14:15:29.037" UserId="88986" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21261" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="635" RevisionGUID="11d87901-5bb8-403a-8f1b-99d4540d940c" CreationDate="2015-08-11T14:15:42.640" UserId="88986" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21262" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7035" RevisionGUID="a22a169f-139c-482e-88fb-0df8d12f085d" CreationDate="2015-08-11T14:16:20.497" UserId="88986" Comment="Removed the really obvious ones; the ones that are now tagged [meta-tag:faq] and [meta-tag:status-completed]" Text="Lets go through [meta-tag:faq-proposed].  Note that a few of these are ones that I wrote.  I'll avoid making recommendations on them.  Many of these were issues that were FAQ issues back in earlier times when things were in more flux (scope and the help center about scope).  Many of these questions are now of historical oddity and while can serve as a record of where we've been, they aren't as useful for providing guidance to people *today*.  All of this is my take on the topic meant to start some activity on clear cut ones and considerations of the non-clear cut ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions - Mine.&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6665/should-cross-posting-be-allowed-sometimes-on-programmers - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6625/i-just-failed-an-audit-but-i-was-right-and-it-was-wrong-what-now - **FAQ it**&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6458/there-seems-to-be-some-contradictory-guidance-with-respect-to-asking-career-deve - This is another career question and I'm of the opinion that we should have only one career question in the FAQ, and this isn't the one that fits the FAQ the best.&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/why-do-certification-questions-keep-getting-closed - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6327/how-to-ask-a-batch-of-related-questions - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6311/where-does-my-git-question-go - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6283/current-events-questions-and-answers - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5633/is-programming-history-on-topic - **FAQ it**&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3547/adding-the-definition-of-a-shopping-list-request-to-the-faq - **Obsolete** (detag it)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3301/changing-the-faq-to-reflect-the-sites-name - **Obsolete** (detag it).  See above&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3096/40980 - **FAQ it**  Consider a name change.&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2959/40980 - **Obsolete** (detag it)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2912/should-legal-advice-or-copyright-trademark-and-patent-law-be-added-to-the - **Obsolete** (detag it)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2894/40980 - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2856/addendum-to-off-topic-themes-in-the-faq - **Obsolete** (detag it)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2699/basic-guidelines-for-discussing-business-logic-and-programming - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2645/are-what-did-person-mean-questions-on-topic - I think that http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6417/40980 is a better analysis of the issue, but thats my post too.&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2608/are-why-is-x-code-snippet-done-this-way-questions-on-topic - **Obsolete**ish&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2599/are-i-need-data-on-x-phenomenon-questions-on-topic - **Obsolete** (part of a cleanup form '11)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2590/legal-disclaimer-in-the-faq - **Obsolete**&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2502/are-marketing-questions-on-topic - **Obsolete**&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2228/when-should-comments-be-deleted - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2133/faq-should-include-examples-of-good-questions - **Obsolete** (see the tour again)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation - **Obsolete**&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2114/are-new-users-allowed-to-advise-without-mini-modding - Consider redoing as a new Q&amp;A to address community moderation&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/how-can-we-improve-our-guidance-about-the-purpose-of-comments - **Obsolete** as written it isn't that FAQy.&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed - I think http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted does a better job of answering this, but thats my post.&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1838/can-something-highlighting-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so-be-added-to - **Obsolete** as written it isn't that FAQy.&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1556/when-are-career-questions-too-localized-should-this-be-more-strict - Another career question question.&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40/should-each-point-be-posted-in-a-separate-answer - This is already partly in the help center in [What does it mean if a question is &quot;closed&quot; or &quot;on hold&quot;?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21263" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2414" RevisionGUID="6bdb692f-a9a7-4480-aa93-a8e9393c9b60" CreationDate="2015-08-11T14:32:50.290" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 10 characters in body" Text="I think the new version, &quot;P.SE is a site for programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development&quot; could work, but as part of a larger improvement to the FAQ. I've created [a new question about that](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2422/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To remove the focus on experts in our site FAQ is to lose [what's special about Stack Exchange](http://stackexchange.com/about):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What’s special about Stack Exchange?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You wouldn’t shout out a calculus question in a football stadium, right? You’d go to the math department of a university. That’s why instead of allowing questions on any topic, we have brought together separate communities of experts on very specific topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don’t open a site until we’re sure there’s a critical mass of experts ready to participate. If you can’t find a Stack Exchange site on your subject of expertise, we have a place called Area 51 where you can propose one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All questions on Stack Exchange are expected to be objective and have concrete answers; we’re not a place for conversation, opinions, or socializing. We also expect questions to represent real problems, not just imponderables, hypotheticals, or requests for opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange’s focus on professional communities and this “Just the facts, Ma’am” ethos results in over 90% of questions getting great answers, often stunningly quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason Stack Exchange is such a valuable resoure to people learning a field is because it attracts experts: we want them to pay it forward and help others who don't know what they know. [Everyone can ask a question, not everyone can provide an expert answer.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do that by making sure, as much as we possibly can, that experts are not wasting their time by coming here. That the questions would be interesting and substantial to answer. We don't do that by lowering the bar for questions here or asking questions that are low-hanging fruit for novice programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone can ask a question, but they do so keeping in mind the audience for the site—the people waiting in the wings ready to answer questions—are expert programmers. There are other sites on the web, like Quora or Yahoo! Answers, where people can get help from just anyone." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21264" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7525" RevisionGUID="ea9e9488-b1ba-4a32-a35d-de67030864e8" CreationDate="2015-08-11T15:21:31.250" UserId="31260" Comment="minor correction that was missed in previous review // question turned out rather large" Text="A few recent questions seem to exhibit issues explained in [The Trouble With Popularity](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/) article:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we discovered that these posts... truly start to drown out everything else on the site... it's too addictive and too easy, and in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While these questions were open, they were widely advertised on the Hot Network List and gained relatively high scores [despite piling on of close votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773 &quot;feature request to account for these&quot;). All of them are now closed, but due to their high scores they present appealing examples for newer site visitors to try their luck asking similar questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;High scores send a fairly strong signal that those sorts of questions are welcome here. I think this _signal_ is much stronger than the subtle hint  of a close banner, especially for inexperienced users ([&quot;it's okay to ask about roses here...&quot;](http://communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/a/1247/516 &quot;if needed, refer here for more elaborate discussion of having off-topic questions in the hot list&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The crux of my question is: what can we do to make these closed questions less like [broken windows](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_Recent examples for review:_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the issues with this question are best covered in a custom close reason borrowed from the Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Topicality wise, it appears to be in overlap between our site and Workplace, probably closer to Programmers. Our close reason ([opinion based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)) looks like a fit.  As for better matching Workplace close reason, it is likely because they (Workplace) are getting more troublesome questions of that kind and have acquired more experience at efficiently handling these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;...How would you explain a statement... to a beginner?&quot;_ - We have a dedicated meta post explaining exactly what the issues are with these kinds of questions: [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6630/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, hot list visitors who voted it up likely have no idea about our meta guidance.  And even if they knew, they likely don't care.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;I personally prefer 4 spaces for each indentation level, but there are colleagues that prefer 2 and even 5 spaces... I decided to post a question see if there are tools/method to settle the problem without calling a meeting.&quot;_ - If that doesn't make it a [shopping list question](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) then I don't know what it makes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/290941/revisions) suggests that even some moderators have tried to figure out a way to protect and salvage the question. But, honestly, I am not surprised to see that this failed. Asker clearly indicated that they were _just shopping_ and there's nothing else on their mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone tried to &quot;derive&quot; a better, more substantial question from this one, they would end up with their own, and _different_ question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet another case when Workplace folks seem to be better prepared to recognize and handle troublesome questions of that kind with their custom close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **advice on what to do are not [practical answerable questions](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)** (e.g. *&quot;what job should I take?&quot;*, or *&quot;what skills should I learn?&quot;*). Questions should get answers explaining *why* and *how* to make a decision, not advice on what to do. For more information, click [here](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/2695)...&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;Granted, I think that our own [education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/31260) close reason also makes a good fit, but the majority of close voters picked another reason ([too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260)) which suggests that the match with the education close reason is not as clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yet again, issues with this question seem to be best covered in already quoted custom close reason from the Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although still somewhat workplace-y, this question looks much closer to Programmers than previous example covered by the this close reason (&quot;mentor's concern&quot;). Still, their close reason looks like a really good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm often conflicted when creating a project that requires manipulation of data in files... &amp;lt;example how JSON looks like&amp;gt; &amp;lt;example how CSV looks like&amp;gt; ...is it better to use larger, more readable formats, like JSON, or smaller, harder to read formats, like CSV, for data storage?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[If memory serves](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234894/165773 &quot;no, system won't help me recall&quot;), the close reason I picked was [too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260). The majority of voters have chosen [opinion based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/31260) which also looks like a reasonable match ([Gorilla vs. Shark](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these questions were old, or if their score and views were acquired _organically_ due to great content, I'd probably ask for a [historical lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info). But that doesn't seem applicable due to the recency of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For what it's worth, I considered an option to edit them into better shape. Unfortunately, it looks like the answers that piled in prior to closing [&quot;lock the question&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773) from any substantial changes I could think of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One possible exception (which would involve removing most of the answers though) is the [question about indentation width](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width). It looks possible to convert it to a [collaborative effort question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before &quot;example&quot;). If we pick this option though, we had better do some substantial edits to the question text, to make it look like less of a wide open broken window for inexperienced site visitors. _&quot;Hey, folks do shopping over here, lemme try my own.&quot;_" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21265" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7526" RevisionGUID="fd106b93-b908-4e90-920e-10a54410dc46" CreationDate="2015-08-12T15:54:32.040" UserId="17869" Text="I just came here to Programmers Stack Exchange to ask a question for recommendations for resources to learn a particular topic (in this case, natural language processing), and I just noticed that a [similar question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49994/good-introductory-books-on-writing-secure-software) I asked soon after the site opened was closed and deleted as off topic (*three years* after it was asked, answered, and favorited several times) with this message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, where are we supposed to ask these kinds of questions now?  There's value in them.  I thought they were literally the whole point of this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And now for the feature request:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's pretty bad to straight up delete questions like this (non-spam, with answers, favorites, etc).  It was completely gone from my profile.  I users should at least be given the ability to find them again if they've interacted with them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21266" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7526" RevisionGUID="fd106b93-b908-4e90-920e-10a54410dc46" CreationDate="2015-08-12T15:54:32.040" UserId="17869" Text="Ok, so where do we ask subjective questions now?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21267" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7526" RevisionGUID="fd106b93-b908-4e90-920e-10a54410dc46" CreationDate="2015-08-12T15:54:32.040" UserId="17869" Text="|feature-request|on-topic-definition|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21268" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7526" RevisionGUID="dde99b50-d37e-4b38-8c72-af4d29cc0dfa" CreationDate="2015-08-12T16:08:51.573" UserId="4" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6763],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:35276,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Jimmy Hoffa&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="21269" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7527" RevisionGUID="b8f30f10-2935-4747-9f7d-6abe8c454f1f" CreationDate="2015-08-12T16:11:02.987" UserId="191708" Text="Is it on-topic to ask questions about the meaning of terms in IEEE standards, or how those standards would be applied to specific documents? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, it's IEEE/EIA 12207.1.-1997 Software life cycle processes—&#xD;&#xA;Life cycle data, and the question is what's meant by &quot;notation for description&quot; in section 5.1.2, which lists generic content guidelines for software life-cycle documents. The specific document I need to apply it to is a Software Design Description, so maybe it could include design languages (e.g., UML). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not certain whether this is a software life-cycle question or a tech writing question, but since the Writers SE is so broad, this seems like a target audience more likely to be able to answer it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21270" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7527" RevisionGUID="b8f30f10-2935-4747-9f7d-6abe8c454f1f" CreationDate="2015-08-12T16:11:02.987" UserId="191708" Text="Is a question about definitions in an IEEE standard for software lifecycle processes on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21271" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7527" RevisionGUID="b8f30f10-2935-4747-9f7d-6abe8c454f1f" CreationDate="2015-08-12T16:11:02.987" UserId="191708" Text="|discussion|questions|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21272" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7526" RevisionGUID="eda93aba-0fb8-44aa-8b48-c65f65e175cd" CreationDate="2015-08-12T16:21:00.557" UserId="17869" Comment="added 59 characters in body; edited title" Text="I just came here to Programmers Stack Exchange to ask a question for recommendations for resources to learn a particular topic (in this case, natural language processing), and I just noticed that a [similar question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49994/good-introductory-books-on-writing-secure-software) I asked soon after the site opened was closed and deleted as off topic (*three years* after it was asked, answered, and favorited several times) with this message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, where are we supposed to ask these kinds of questions now?  There's value in them.  I thought they were literally the whole point of this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**And now for the feature request** (*which is not duplicated in the others, I might add*):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's pretty bad to straight up delete questions like this (non-spam, with answers, favorites, etc).  It was completely gone from my profile.  I users should at least be given the ability to find them again if they've interacted with them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21273" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7526" RevisionGUID="eda93aba-0fb8-44aa-8b48-c65f65e175cd" CreationDate="2015-08-12T16:21:00.557" UserId="17869" Comment="added 59 characters in body; edited title" Text="**Ok, so where do we ask subjective questions now?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21274" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7528" RevisionGUID="4f702837-942d-430c-a87f-b56c7e06af67" CreationDate="2015-08-12T16:31:23.227" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="From your initial description, I believe it would be on topic here at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You would want to quote the relevant sections in order to make it easier for readers to understand what you're asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question doesn't work out here, it could always be migrated to [Engineering](http://engineering.stackexchange.com) where it would be on-topic as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21275" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7529" RevisionGUID="3a5922fc-532a-4f81-828b-7e39f13773e8" CreationDate="2015-08-12T18:06:27.013" UserId="4" Text="It's definitely on-topic here, as long as you quote relevant sections and are clear about what's confusing to you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21277" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7530" RevisionGUID="5075f2e0-64f2-495d-a80f-b9fb42e1b5ee" CreationDate="2015-08-13T17:00:10.590" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Today we stumbled across an old question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[Should UTF-16 be considered harmful?][1]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm going to ask what is probably quite a controversial question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Should one of the most popular encodings, UTF-16, be considered&#xD;&#xA;&gt; harmful?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The long and short of the question is that UTF-8 is unambiguous and compact, while UTF-32 is unambiguous and fast. UTF-16 is ambiguous (at times) and wins neither on speed nor on size. Since it is non-optimal in every case and there are known defects in operating systems and popular language implementations, why use it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers and all eleventy bajillion comments are excessive, at times inaccurate or opinion-based, but nonetheless do contain a lot of useful information. They make compelling arguments for and against using UTF-16 in various situations. As someone who has been programming for many years and using Unicode for most of them, I learned a few things myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We [discussed it in chat for a bit][2], with the following options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Delete the whole question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Clean up the comments and answers, then lock it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Just lock it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, the question is locked. Should we do anything further with this question? Delete it? Unlock, clean it up, lock it again?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind this question does have over 70k views and four questions link to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/102205/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/23409290#23409290" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21278" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7530" RevisionGUID="5075f2e0-64f2-495d-a80f-b9fb42e1b5ee" CreationDate="2015-08-13T17:00:10.590" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="What should we do with &quot;Should UTF-16 be considered harmful?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21279" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7530" RevisionGUID="5075f2e0-64f2-495d-a80f-b9fb42e1b5ee" CreationDate="2015-08-13T17:00:10.590" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="|discussion|specific-question|popular-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21280" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7531" RevisionGUID="4955d4f8-46a5-4e35-85ad-8bcb5068bd70" CreationDate="2015-08-13T18:52:33.483" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I think the contents of the question, answers, and comments has some problems. If this were asked today it would be aggressively curated, if not closed as &quot;primarily opinion-based.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this is a historical question asked near the beginning of the site when the focus and on-topicness was very different. The key question is this: does the value provided outweigh the cruft that collected over the years?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe it does, and I am in favor of **keeping it locked**. Reading through it I found a lot of information and specific details about various implementations and how they deal with UTF-whatever. There are many things that can go wrong when dealing with Unicode, and this question covered quite a few of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This particular question is trickier than many other historical questions. Specifically, this one has a ton of comments _and_ the comments add substantially to the knowledge in each answer. Simply deleting all of the comments would lose quite a bit of useful information while also clearing out a lot of useless junk. Given the large amount of work required to curate this question after the fact with little benefit, it is not worth it to spend the time. Just keep it locked." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21281" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7532" RevisionGUID="59d87583-f04c-48b8-9e3b-756a08a16cb4" CreationDate="2015-08-13T19:03:57.333" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="This is a resource request and is [off-topic][1] on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more information, please see [Why was my question closed or down voted?][2] The short version is any such recommendations are one-off to a specific time and person, while the site is trying to be a repository of knowledge useful to _many_ people and for the future as well. No question can truly be 100% future-proof. However, development environment tools and versions change constantly, making them an especially poor fit for the Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21283" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7525" RevisionGUID="904b94ae-85a1-4a46-b2e7-4dce8ab69041" CreationDate="2015-08-14T10:59:03.090" UserId="31260" Comment="clarification moved into post from comments // http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity#comment22587_7525" Text="A few recent questions seem to exhibit issues explained in [The Trouble With Popularity](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/) article:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we discovered that these posts... truly start to drown out everything else on the site... it's too addictive and too easy, and in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While these questions were open, they were widely advertised on the Hot Network List and gained relatively high scores [despite piling on of close votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773 &quot;feature request to account for these&quot;). All of them are now closed, but due to their high scores they present appealing examples for newer site visitors to try their luck asking similar questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;High scores send a fairly strong signal that those sorts of questions are welcome here. I think this _signal_ is much stronger than the subtle hint  of a close banner, especially for inexperienced users ([&quot;it's okay to ask about roses here...&quot;](http://communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/a/1247/516 &quot;if needed, refer here for more elaborate discussion of having off-topic questions in the hot list&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The crux of my question is: what can we do to make these closed questions less like [broken windows](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_Recent examples for review:_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the issues with this question are best covered in a custom close reason borrowed from the Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Topicality wise, it appears to be in overlap between our site and Workplace, probably closer to Programmers. Our close reason ([opinion based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)) looks like a fit.  As for better matching Workplace close reason, it is likely because they (Workplace) are getting more troublesome questions of that kind and have acquired more experience at efficiently handling these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;...How would you explain a statement... to a beginner?&quot;_ - We have a dedicated meta post explaining exactly what the issues are with these kinds of questions: [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6630/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, hot list visitors who voted it up likely have no idea about our meta guidance.  And even if they knew, they likely don't care. (And even if they would care, [system simply wouldn't let them tell](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/238514/165773).)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;I personally prefer 4 spaces for each indentation level, but there are colleagues that prefer 2 and even 5 spaces... I decided to post a question see if there are tools/method to settle the problem without calling a meeting.&quot;_ - If that doesn't make it a [shopping list question](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) then I don't know what it makes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/290941/revisions) suggests that even some moderators have tried to figure out a way to protect and salvage the question. But, honestly, I am not surprised to see that this failed. Asker clearly indicated that they were _just shopping_ and there's nothing else on their mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone tried to &quot;derive&quot; a better, more substantial question from this one, they would end up with their own, and _different_ question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet another case when Workplace folks seem to be better prepared to recognize and handle troublesome questions of that kind with their custom close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **advice on what to do are not [practical answerable questions](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)** (e.g. *&quot;what job should I take?&quot;*, or *&quot;what skills should I learn?&quot;*). Questions should get answers explaining *why* and *how* to make a decision, not advice on what to do. For more information, click [here](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/2695)...&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;Granted, I think that our own [education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/31260) close reason also makes a good fit, but the majority of close voters picked another reason ([too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260)) which suggests that the match with the education close reason is not as clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yet again, issues with this question seem to be best covered in already quoted custom close reason from the Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although still somewhat workplace-y, this question looks much closer to Programmers than previous example covered by the this close reason (&quot;mentor's concern&quot;). Still, their close reason looks like a really good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm often conflicted when creating a project that requires manipulation of data in files... &amp;lt;example how JSON looks like&amp;gt; &amp;lt;example how CSV looks like&amp;gt; ...is it better to use larger, more readable formats, like JSON, or smaller, harder to read formats, like CSV, for data storage?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[If memory serves](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234894/165773 &quot;no, system won't help me recall&quot;), the close reason I picked was [too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260). The majority of voters have chosen [opinion based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/31260) which also looks like a reasonable match ([Gorilla vs. Shark](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these questions were old, or if their score and views were acquired _organically_ due to great content, I'd probably ask for a [historical lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info). But that doesn't seem applicable due to the recency of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For what it's worth, I considered an option to edit them into better shape. Unfortunately, it looks like the answers that piled in prior to closing [&quot;lock the question&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773) from any substantial changes I could think of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One possible exception (which would involve removing most of the answers though) is the [question about indentation width](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width). It looks possible to convert it to a [collaborative effort question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before &quot;example&quot;). If we pick this option though, we had better do some substantial edits to the question text, to make it look like less of a wide open broken window for inexperienced site visitors. _&quot;Hey, folks do shopping over here, lemme try my own.&quot;_" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21284" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7530" RevisionGUID="18f376a8-fde7-4b7b-a5c1-fa531a08339f" CreationDate="2015-08-14T12:39:29.790" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/632169672398499840" />
  <row Id="21286" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7534" RevisionGUID="d03e5f9e-4752-4ab4-90b9-00707dd63cbe" CreationDate="2015-08-15T07:27:24.763" UserId="96050" Text="Looking at the data, of [464 users who can vote to close](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/348831/users-with-at-least-x-reputation?X=3000), 35 have hit the limit at least once:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    days &#xD;&#xA;    ---- &#xD;&#xA;    583  &#xD;&#xA;    488  &#xD;&#xA;    176  &#xD;&#xA;    68&#xD;&#xA;    31    &#xD;&#xA;    27   &#xD;&#xA;    21  &#xD;&#xA;    13 &#xD;&#xA;    12   &#xD;&#xA;    10   &#xD;&#xA;    10&#xD;&#xA;    ...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    (35 row(s) returned)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For reference, 19 of those users have at least 10k reputation as of today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just two users have run out of close votes 1,071 times compared to 553 for the field. On Stack Overflow, 3787 separate users have hit at least 24 close votes in a day. Looking the other sites, there just aren't any that have such a small number of users who 24 close votes in a day so frequently:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Users  Days Site&#xD;&#xA;    -----  ---- ----&#xD;&#xA;     3787 65564 Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;      111  1391 Mathematics&#xD;&#xA;      108  2836 Ubuntu&#xD;&#xA;       59   999 Server Fault&#xD;&#xA;       35  1624 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       33   313 English Language and Usage&#xD;&#xA;       26    98 Meta Stack Exchange&#xD;&#xA;       22   279 WordPress&#xD;&#xA;       19   187 Magento&#xD;&#xA;       16    43 Android Enthusiasts&#xD;&#xA;       15    17 Gaming&#xD;&#xA;       13    87 TeX - LaTeX&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Raising the limit on Programmers _would_ reduce the odds these users hit the limit, but I don't know if that would really help get bad questions closed faster. Programmers is currently getting [28 questions a day](http://stackexchange.com/sites#questionsperday). Unless you are _extremely unlucky_ it's hard to picture needing to close 24 new questions very many days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, if we were going to increase the limit, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to just raise it for 10k users. From a very practical standpoint, changing it for everyone is a site setting, but changing it for users over 10k would require a code change. For another, the setting has already been raised to 50 for 3k+ users on SO, Math, Super User, Ubuntu, and Server Fault without any particular problems. I'd suggest removing that portion of the feature request that needlessly confuses matters." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21287" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7534" RevisionGUID="3425ac9e-1b9a-46ba-9ae0-12b1cbaa759d" CreationDate="2015-08-15T07:32:58.480" UserId="96050" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="According to the data, of [464 users who can vote to close](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/348831/users-with-at-least-x-reputation?X=3000), 35 have hit the limit at least once:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    days &#xD;&#xA;    ---- &#xD;&#xA;    583  &#xD;&#xA;    488  &#xD;&#xA;    176  &#xD;&#xA;    68&#xD;&#xA;    31    &#xD;&#xA;    27   &#xD;&#xA;    21  &#xD;&#xA;    13 &#xD;&#xA;    12   &#xD;&#xA;    10   &#xD;&#xA;    10&#xD;&#xA;    ...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    (35 row(s) returned)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For reference, 19 of those users have at least 10k reputation as of today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just two users have run out of close votes 1,071 times compared to 553 for the field. On Stack Overflow, 3787 separate users have hit at least 24 close votes in a day. Looking the other sites, there just aren't any that have such a small number of users who 24 close votes in a day so frequently:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Users  Days Site&#xD;&#xA;    -----  ---- ----&#xD;&#xA;     3787 65564 Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;      111  1391 Mathematics&#xD;&#xA;      108  2836 Ubuntu&#xD;&#xA;       59   999 Server Fault&#xD;&#xA;       35  1624 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       33   313 English Language and Usage&#xD;&#xA;       26    98 Meta Stack Exchange&#xD;&#xA;       22   279 WordPress&#xD;&#xA;       19   187 Magento&#xD;&#xA;       16    43 Android Enthusiasts&#xD;&#xA;       15    17 Gaming&#xD;&#xA;       13    87 TeX - LaTeX&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Raising the limit on Programmers _would_ reduce the odds these users hit the limit, but I don't know if that would really help get bad questions closed faster. Programmers is currently getting [28 questions a day](http://stackexchange.com/sites#questionsperday). Unless you are _extremely unlucky_ it's hard to picture needing to close 24 new questions very many days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, if we were going to increase the limit, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to just raise it for 10k users. From a very practical standpoint, changing it for everyone is a site setting, but changing it for users over 10k would require a code change. For another, the setting has already been raised to 50 for 3k+ users on SO, Math, Super User, Ubuntu, and Server Fault without any particular problems. I'd suggest removing that portion of the feature request that needlessly confuses matters." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21288" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7305" RevisionGUID="629cfea7-7677-4821-ba17-599823f24f4a" CreationDate="2015-08-15T19:22:28.200" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Remove tags that are 0'ed with no locked." Text="[tag:skills] [tag:self-improvement] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure this exactly falls under the *teaching* post or the *job* post, but it should be looked at." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21291" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7536" RevisionGUID="a79b157e-25cc-4901-bc15-daab73b179c2" CreationDate="2015-08-16T18:29:34.567" UserId="31260" Text="It was quite interesting to observe impact of this meta post on the listed questions (&quot;[&quot;meta effect&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/235225/165773)). Or, more precisely, lack thereof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First thing I noticed is there were no attempts to improve / salvage these questions (except for an old one about indentation width). Attention brought to these by this meta post did not really help: &quot;active&quot; notices on listed questions say _2 months ago, 21, 17, 14, 17, 13 days ago_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may ring a bell to readers familiar with [famous post about Programmers / NPR history](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Turns out that while everyone _loves_ those questions, very few are _actually_ willing to spend any time to... maintain and moderate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another thing worth paying attention to is how little of negative feedback was given to these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It gets especially prominent if you account for attention given to this meta post, which is mostly about explaining what's wrong with them. It stuck in [hot meta posts](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/234453/165773) for about a week (quite the irony), has got almost 400 views and solid positive score. Now, let's take a look at the questions it lists:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;  3 votes down, 4 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  3 votes down, 3 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width  &#xD;&#xA;  7 votes down, 2 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code  &#xD;&#xA;  4 votes down, 2 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code  &#xD;&#xA;  4 votes down, 4 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f  &#xD;&#xA;  5 votes down, 3 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not much really, huh? Considering that some of these votes were cast long before the meta post, it becomes even weaker. Closer check of _The Trouble with Popularity_ suggests that this may actually be a common case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note how the article says nothing about negative feedback to such questions. This makes a fairly strong indication that there is no such feedback, at least not at a scale worth mentioning. (Atwood would probably be happy to point that at least part of community actively opposes such questions but it looks like this just doesn't happen.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reflecting on my own behavior in these questions makes me feel that there could be a good reason for this. I tend to feel _reluctant_ giving negative rating (down, close, delete) when post has high score. This may seem strange, given that I am well aware of upvotes to popular posts frequently degrading into useless &quot;likes&quot; of Facebook kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the thing is, I am much more used to looking on regular, on-topic, good quality questions. And in normal questions, high score fairly reliable indicates quality content worth voting up, not down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If many users are like me, it should indeed be that high score posts rarely get negative feedback, no matter how bad these are. People simply build an opposite habit by reading on-topic, good quality questions, where high score means that post deserves upvotes. Not surprising that they would feel discomfort trying to do opposite to what they are used to - at least that's the way I feel myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This probably won't make me many friends over here but summing up above, it looks like the most realistic way to address the matters of broken windows would be a moderator deletion of these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, interestingly, brings us back to the quote that opened this question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21292" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7536" RevisionGUID="d2a28a20-3358-4a22-a168-1687105878d5" CreationDate="2015-08-16T21:31:34.347" UserId="31260" Comment="active dates corrected // http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/291618/revisions" Text="It was quite interesting to observe impact of this meta post on the listed questions (&quot;[&quot;meta effect&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/235225/165773)). Or, more precisely, lack thereof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First thing I noticed is there were no attempts to improve / salvage these questions (except for an old one about indentation width, there was only one, more on that below). Attention brought to these by this meta post did not really help: &quot;active&quot; notices on listed questions (except for last one) say _2 months ago, 21, 17, 14, 16 days ago_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may ring a bell to readers familiar with [famous post about Programmers / NPR history](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Turns out that while everyone _loves_ those questions, very few are _actually_ willing to spend any time to... maintain and moderate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only _recent_ edit was done to question about [JSON vs CSV](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/291618/revisions), which recently changed wording to &quot;what are some advantages/disadvantages...&quot; Not that it made it worse (as far as I can tell, edit didn't even invalidate existing answers) but it didn't really help. Edited question now prominently exposes issues described at another meta post, [What is the problem with “Pros and Cons”?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6758/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another thing worth paying attention to is how little of negative feedback was given to these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It gets especially prominent if you account for attention given to this meta post, which is mostly about explaining what's wrong with them. It stuck in [hot meta posts](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/234453/165773) for about a week (quite the irony), has got almost 400 views and solid positive score. Now, let's take a look at the questions it lists:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;  3 votes down, 4 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  3 votes down, 3 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width  &#xD;&#xA;  7 votes down, 2 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code  &#xD;&#xA;  4 votes down, 2 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code  &#xD;&#xA;  4 votes down, 4 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f  &#xD;&#xA;  5 votes down, 3 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not much really, huh? Considering that some of these votes were cast long before the meta post, it becomes even weaker. Closer check of _The Trouble with Popularity_ suggests that this may actually be a common case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note how the article says nothing about negative feedback to such questions. This makes a fairly strong indication that there is no such feedback, at least not at a scale worth mentioning. (Atwood would probably be happy to point that at least part of community actively opposes such questions but it looks like this just doesn't happen.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reflecting on my own behavior in these questions makes me feel that there could be a good reason for this. I tend to feel _reluctant_ giving negative rating (down, close, delete) when post has high score. This may seem strange, given that I am well aware of upvotes to popular posts frequently degrading into useless &quot;likes&quot; of Facebook kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the thing is, I am much more used to looking on regular, on-topic, good quality questions. And in normal questions, high score fairly reliable indicates quality content worth voting up, not down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If many users are like me, it should indeed be that high score posts rarely get negative feedback, no matter how bad these are. People simply build an opposite habit by reading on-topic, good quality questions, where high score means that post deserves upvotes. Not surprising that they would feel discomfort trying to do opposite to what they are used to - at least that's the way I feel myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This probably won't make me many friends over here but summing up above, it looks like the most realistic way to address the matters of broken windows would be a moderator deletion of these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, interestingly, brings us back to the quote that opened this question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21293" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7537" RevisionGUID="0a3b63dc-7846-495a-b69b-4d6dd83915f8" CreationDate="2015-08-16T21:54:40.450" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="A common form of question that is often asked is the &quot;what are some examples of...&quot;  While this is [hinted at in the help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/), or [strongly rooted in opinions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491). We should be able to answer your questions in the equivalent of a few pages of text and graphics and provide references to support claims. If you have questions that warrant an extended discussion, feel free to come to chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;explained in those links, and written about in meta site for all of stack exchange in the [list-questions tag](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/list-questions/info), these questions show up often enough that it merits asking again here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why do these list questions get closed and down voted on Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21294" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7537" RevisionGUID="0a3b63dc-7846-495a-b69b-4d6dd83915f8" CreationDate="2015-08-16T21:54:40.450" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Why do 'some examples' and 'list of things' questions get closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21295" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7537" RevisionGUID="0a3b63dc-7846-495a-b69b-4d6dd83915f8" CreationDate="2015-08-16T21:54:40.450" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|list-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21296" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7538" RevisionGUID="16dc8ee7-ee91-46c3-a3ee-0bbe4fa48b12" CreationDate="2015-08-16T21:54:40.450" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="## There is no right answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The simple and most important answer in realizing why these questions get closed is &quot;***there no right answer***.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lacking a right answer, everyone has another example to add to the list.  &quot;What are some (real world) examples of ${concept}&quot; can get an answer from each person who reads the question and has used that concept. &quot;What ${book|blog|tutorial} should I read on ${topic}?&quot; likewise has a constantly appending possible answer no matter how constrained the topic is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of our common list questions have a standard close reason that tries to get to the heart of the problem with lists:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Quality of answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The unfortunate bit about list answers is that there is an ever diminishing quality to the answers.  Sure, you can sometimes get someone posting a good answer out at answer number 24, but each answer tends to be lower quality than the previous one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is likely because one doesn't feel the need to restate everything that was said before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Stack Exchange's founding goal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was founded because it was too hard to find good material in forums.  In particular, you had to go through many posts to get to the answer and often the follow-up posts spill off on to tangents and discussions making it harder and harder to find the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, Stack Overflow (and all of Stack Exchange) was designed to make it easy to find the answer (sorting by votes, accepted answer to the top) and at the same time close questions that are going to be endless discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The core problem with these questions in a [Web 2.0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0) world is that they don't generate good content. They may be interesting for an instant but really fail when it comes to long term maintainability and quality of content.  The lack of quality content often discourages the very people who you want to have that generate the quality content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was seen back in the days of usenet and repeated again and again in forums and mailing lists.  The quality of the material inevitably falls to the lowest quality that is accepted.  People who want to read or provide the higher quality material ultimately go and find another place to contribute.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it is certainly interesting and there are people who enjoy contributing and reading the lists, Stack Exchange wants and needs to retain the people who are going to give the thought out quality answers.  Thus, the [bike shed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law_of_triviality) questions and lists become aggressively moderated - closed and deleted in order to try to maintain the expected quality of the material asked and answered and thus retain the user base that is providing in depth answers to hard problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A frequent objection to this aggressive moderation is that &quot;this is where the experts / knowledgeable community is - I won't get as good answers elsewhere.&quot;  The important realization that should be had is that it is *because* of this focus on answerable questions (rather than lists and bike sheds) and allowing the questions that generate the lower quality content ultimately pushes these people away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not to say that these questions are not interesting or important to their asker (and I will admit to going to other sites to read them) - its just that structure of the site that Stack Exchange provides needs keep its focus on quality answerable questions that have definitive answers rather than never ending discussions and lists of other examples.  It is through this that Stack Exchange remains the place that people come to to get the answers to the hard questions (rather than going to Yahoo Answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Where to ask these questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That really depends on the question that you are asking.  As mentioned in the close reason, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is one place where people can ask discussion and list style questions. Other sites, include Quora and Reddit which do a good job of providing anecdotes and discussion.  Specifically within Reddit, there are entire subreddits that focus on one particular type of list question ([/r/programming](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/) can be thought of as an endless &quot;what programming blogs should I read&quot; question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the experts that are here, don't constrain themselves to being here only.  [Eric Lippert](http://stackoverflow.com/users/88656/eric-lippert) of C# fame can be found on [reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/programmerchat/comments/37qwmm/i_am_eric_lippert_a_software_developer/) too.  There are other eminent names of programming that are active in multiple communities that cater to specific types of questions and discourse. And yes, you will likely find that the standards of quality for other sites are different than they are here as each site is trying for a different slice of that Web 2.0 pie." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21297" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7538" RevisionGUID="c3b08e8e-c92b-4761-bcc6-5c3b4f8c283e" CreationDate="2015-08-16T22:20:18.923" UserId="31260" Comment="minor copy-edit" Text="## There is no right answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The simple and most important answer in realizing why these questions get closed is &quot;***there is no right answer***.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lacking a right answer, everyone has another example to add to the list.  &quot;What are some (real world) examples of ${concept}&quot; can get an answer from each person who reads the question and has used that concept. &quot;What ${book|blog|tutorial} should I read on ${topic}?&quot; likewise has a constantly appending possible answer no matter how constrained the topic is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of our common list questions have a standard close reason that tries to get to the heart of the problem with lists:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Quality of answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The unfortunate bit about list answers is that there is an ever diminishing quality to the answers.  Sure, you can sometimes get someone posting a good answer out at answer number 24, but each answer tends to be lower quality than the previous one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is likely because one doesn't feel the need to restate everything that was said before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Stack Exchange's founding goal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was founded because it was too hard to find good material in forums.  In particular, you had to go through many posts to get to the answer and often the follow-up posts spill off on to tangents and discussions making it harder and harder to find the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, Stack Overflow (and all of Stack Exchange) was designed to make it easy to find the answer (sorting by votes, accepted answer to the top) and at the same time close questions that are going to be endless discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The core problem with these questions in a [Web 2.0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0) world is that they don't generate good content. They may be interesting for an instant but really fail when it comes to long term maintainability and quality of content.  The lack of quality content often discourages the very people who you want to have that generate the quality content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was seen back in the days of Usenet and repeated again and again in forums and mailing lists.  The quality of the material inevitably falls to the lowest quality that is accepted.  People who want to read or provide the higher quality material ultimately go and find another place to contribute.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it is certainly interesting and there are people who enjoy contributing and reading the lists, Stack Exchange wants and needs to retain the people who are going to give the thought out quality answers.  Thus, the [bike shed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law_of_triviality) questions and lists become aggressively moderated - closed and deleted in order to try to maintain the expected quality of the material asked and answered and thus retain the user base that is providing in depth answers to hard problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A frequent objection to this aggressive moderation is that &quot;this is where the experts / knowledgeable community is - I won't get as good answers elsewhere.&quot;  The important realization that should be had is that it is *because* of this focus on answerable questions (rather than lists and bike sheds) and allowing the questions that generate the lower quality content ultimately pushes these people away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not to say that these questions are not interesting or important to their asker (and I will admit to going to other sites to read them) - it's just that structure of the site that Stack Exchange provides needs keep its focus on quality answerable questions that have definitive answers rather than never ending discussions and lists of other examples.  It is through this that Stack Exchange remains the place that people come to to get the answers to the hard questions (rather than going to Yahoo Answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Where to ask these questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That really depends on the question that you are asking.  As mentioned in the close reason, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is one place where people can ask discussion and list style questions. Other sites, include Quora and Reddit which do a good job of providing anecdotes and discussion.  Specifically within Reddit, there are entire subreddits that focus on one particular type of list question ([/r/programming](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/) can be thought of as an endless &quot;what programming blogs should I read&quot; question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the experts that are here, don't constrain themselves to being here only.  [Eric Lippert](http://stackoverflow.com/users/88656/eric-lippert) of C# fame can be found on [reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/programmerchat/comments/37qwmm/i_am_eric_lippert_a_software_developer/) too.  There are other eminent names of programming that are active in multiple communities that cater to specific types of questions and discourse. And yes, you will likely find that the standards of quality for other sites are different than they are here as each site is trying for a different slice of that Web 2.0 pie." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21298" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7536" RevisionGUID="16d4f58c-e94a-4d6f-aa70-e4e38d1ac8e1" CreationDate="2015-08-17T00:06:37.960" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="It was quite interesting to observe impact of this meta post on the listed questions ([&quot;meta effect&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/235225/165773)). Or, more precisely, lack thereof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First thing I noticed is there were no attempts to improve / salvage these questions (except for an old one about indentation width, there was only one, more on that below). Attention brought to these by this meta post did not really help: &quot;active&quot; notices on listed questions (except for last one) say _2 months ago, 21, 17, 14, 16 days ago_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may ring a bell to readers familiar with [famous post about Programmers / NPR history](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Turns out that while everyone _loves_ those questions, very few are _actually_ willing to spend any time to... maintain and moderate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only _recent_ edit was done to question about [JSON vs CSV](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/291618/revisions), which recently changed wording to &quot;what are some advantages/disadvantages...&quot; Not that it made it worse (as far as I can tell, edit didn't even invalidate existing answers) but it didn't really help. Edited question now prominently exposes issues described at another meta post, [What is the problem with “Pros and Cons”?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6758/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another thing worth paying attention to is how little of negative feedback was given to these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It gets especially prominent if you account for attention given to this meta post, which is mostly about explaining what's wrong with them. It stuck in [hot meta posts](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/234453/165773) for about a week (quite the irony), has got almost 400 views and solid positive score. Now, let's take a look at the questions it lists:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;  3 votes down, 4 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  3 votes down, 3 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width  &#xD;&#xA;  7 votes down, 2 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code  &#xD;&#xA;  4 votes down, 2 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code  &#xD;&#xA;  4 votes down, 4 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f  &#xD;&#xA;  5 votes down, 3 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not much really, huh? Considering that some of these votes were cast long before the meta post, it becomes even weaker. Closer check of _The Trouble with Popularity_ suggests that this may actually be a common case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note how the article says nothing about negative feedback to such questions. This makes a fairly strong indication that there is no such feedback, at least not at a scale worth mentioning. (Atwood would probably be happy to point that at least part of community actively opposes such questions but it looks like this just doesn't happen.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reflecting on my own behavior in these questions makes me feel that there could be a good reason for this. I tend to feel _reluctant_ giving negative rating (down, close, delete) when post has high score. This may seem strange, given that I am well aware of upvotes to popular posts frequently degrading into useless &quot;likes&quot; of Facebook kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the thing is, I am much more used to looking on regular, on-topic, good quality questions. And in normal questions, high score fairly reliable indicates quality content worth voting up, not down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If many users are like me, it should indeed be that high score posts rarely get negative feedback, no matter how bad these are. People simply build an opposite habit by reading on-topic, good quality questions, where high score means that post deserves upvotes. Not surprising that they would feel discomfort trying to do opposite to what they are used to - at least that's the way I feel myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This probably won't make me many friends over here but summing up above, it looks like the most realistic way to address the matters of broken windows would be a moderator deletion of these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, interestingly, brings us back to the quote that opened this question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21299" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7536" RevisionGUID="7f9be948-703b-4b5d-893a-e0649029a6e6" CreationDate="2015-08-17T00:52:59.977" UserId="31260" Comment="minor spelling cleanup" Text="It was quite interesting to observe impact of this meta post on the listed questions ([&quot;meta effect&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/235225/165773)). Or, more precisely, lack thereof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First thing I noticed is there were no attempts to improve / salvage these questions (except for an old one about indentation width, there was only one, more on that below). Attention brought to these by this meta post did not really help: &quot;active&quot; notices on listed questions (except for last one) say _2 months ago, 21, 17, 14, 16 days ago_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may ring a bell to readers familiar with [famous post about Programmers / NPR history](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Turns out that while everyone _loves_ those questions, very few are _actually_ willing to spend any time to... maintain and moderate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only _recent_ edit was done to question about [JSON vs CSV](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/291618/revisions), which recently changed wording to &quot;what are some advantages/disadvantages...&quot; Not that it made it worse (as far as I can tell, edit didn't even invalidate existing answers) but it didn't really help. Edited question now prominently exposes issues described in another meta post, [What is the problem with “Pros and Cons”?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6758/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another thing worth paying attention to is how little of negative feedback was given to these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It gets especially prominent if you account for attention given to this meta post, which is mostly about explaining what's wrong with them. It stuck in [hot meta posts](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/234453/165773) for about a week (quite the irony), has got almost 400 views and solid positive score. Now, let's take a look at the questions it lists:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;  3 votes down, 4 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  3 votes down, 3 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width  &#xD;&#xA;  7 votes down, 2 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code  &#xD;&#xA;  4 votes down, 2 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code  &#xD;&#xA;  4 votes down, 4 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f  &#xD;&#xA;  5 votes down, 3 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not much really, huh? Considering that some of these votes were cast long before the meta post, it becomes even weaker. Closer check of _The Trouble with Popularity_ suggests that this may actually be a common case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note how the article says nothing about negative feedback to such questions. This makes a fairly strong indication that there is no such feedback, at least not at a scale worth mentioning. (Atwood would probably be happy to point that at least part of community actively opposes such questions but it looks like this just doesn't happen.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reflecting on my own behavior in these questions makes me feel that there could be a good reason for this. I tend to feel _reluctant_ giving negative rating (down, close, delete) when post has high score. This may seem strange, given that I am well aware of upvotes to popular posts frequently degrading into useless &quot;likes&quot; of Facebook kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the thing is, I am much more used to looking on regular, on-topic, good quality questions. And in normal questions, high score fairly reliably indicates quality content worth voting up, not down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If many users are like me, it should indeed be that high score posts rarely get negative feedback, no matter how bad these are. People simply build an opposite habit by reading on-topic, good quality questions, where high score means that post deserves upvotes. Not surprising that they would feel discomfort trying to do opposite to what they are used to - at least that's the way I feel myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This probably won't make me many friends over here but summing up above, it looks like the most realistic way to address the matters of broken windows would be a moderator deletion of these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, interestingly, brings us back to the quote that opened this question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21300" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7539" RevisionGUID="2afd5ab1-be7b-4c72-abaf-2c575291d2c5" CreationDate="2015-08-17T20:12:06.353" UserId="4" Text="In the past 2 months, two new sites in the Stack Exchange network opened up and are now in Public Beta: [Open Source][1] and [Law][2]. A third, Software Recommendations, has been around for about 1.5 years. These are three topics that [our Help Center's /help/on-topic page][3] explicitly calls out that are well within scope of these sites, assuming the other quality measures for a question hold (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software configuration management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **software licensing**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **where to find a software library, tool**, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career or education advice, salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **legal advice or aid**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These two topics appear to be well suited to these other sites, based on the questions that have been asked so far on them. It's likely that someone interested in any kind of intellectual property (copyright, copyleft, patents, trade secrets, infringement, and perhaps even closed-source licenses) or open source (philosophy of open source organizations, using or complying with open source licenses, working within the open source communities, choosing appropriate licenses) are on-topic on one of these sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should Programmers make software licensing questions explicitly off-topic and redirect people to Open Source or Law, as appropriate, to be put in better hands to get answers to their questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;References:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source Help Center][4] (especially: [&quot;What topics can I ask about here?&quot;][5])&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source tags][6] - popular tags include &quot;licensing&quot;, &quot;gpl&quot;, &quot;copyleft&quot;, &quot;license-compatibility&quot;, &quot;derivative-works&quot;, &quot;distribution&quot;, &quot;attribution&quot;, and others that very clearly related to topics asked about on Programmers&#xD;&#xA;* [Law Help Center][7] (especially: [&quot;What topics can I ask about here?&quot;][8])&#xD;&#xA;* [Law tags][9] - popular tags include &quot;copyright&quot;, &quot;intellectual-property&quot;, &quot;software&quot;, &quot;licensing&quot;, &quot;trademark&quot;, &quot;patents&quot;, and &quot;terms-of-service&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/67858/law&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/tags&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://law.stackexchange.com/tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21301" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7539" RevisionGUID="2afd5ab1-be7b-4c72-abaf-2c575291d2c5" CreationDate="2015-08-17T20:12:06.353" UserId="4" Text="Revisiting what is on topic, with respect to new sites: Open Source, Law, and Software Recommendations" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21302" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7539" RevisionGUID="2afd5ab1-be7b-4c72-abaf-2c575291d2c5" CreationDate="2015-08-17T20:12:06.353" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|featured|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21303" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7540" RevisionGUID="58f6a138-3eac-419c-ba2b-8cf23dbf91ef" CreationDate="2015-08-17T20:12:06.353" UserId="4" Text="Yes, Programmers should make questions about open source licensing off-topic as well as explicitly point people toward Software Recommendations, Open Source, and Law in the Help Center.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, the bullet point &quot;software licensing&quot; should be removed from what is on-topic. The other topics will remain as-is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, reorder the &quot;and is not about...&quot; section:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how to use specific tools (ask on Stack Overflow for tools commonly used by programmers or Super User for general software)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - where to find software tools or libraries (ask on Software Recommendations)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - open source licenses, philosophies, and communities (ask on Open Source)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the law or legal terms, language, processes, procedures, or dealing with legal professionals (visit Law instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - where to find a book, research paper, blog, forum, or other reference source&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career or education advice, salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For each reference to an outside site, we would be linking to their particular /help/on-topic page and not to the site's front-page. Most sites appear to have a robust introduction to what content is and is not acceptable there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, celebrate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21304" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7539" RevisionGUID="3f3ac0f7-515e-49fa-8ee9-4ab1a547473b" CreationDate="2015-08-17T20:18:31.070" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body" Text="In the past 2 months, two new sites in the Stack Exchange network opened up and are now in Public Beta: [Open Source][1] and [Law][2]. A third, Software Recommendations, has been around for about 1.5 years. These are three topics that [our Help Center's /help/on-topic page][3] explicitly calls out that are well within scope of these sites, assuming the other quality measures for a question hold (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software configuration management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **software licensing**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **where to find a software library, tool**, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career or education advice, salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **legal advice or aid**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These topics appear to be well suited to these other sites, based on the questions that have been asked so far on them. It's likely that someone interested in any kind of intellectual property (copyright, copyleft, patents, trade secrets, infringement, and perhaps even closed-source licenses) or open source (philosophy of open source organizations, using or complying with open source licenses, working within the open source communities, choosing appropriate licenses) are on-topic on one of these sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should Programmers make software licensing questions explicitly off-topic and redirect people to Open Source or Law, as appropriate, to be put in better hands to get answers to their questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;References:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source Help Center][4] (especially: [&quot;What topics can I ask about here?&quot;][5])&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source tags][6] - popular tags include &quot;licensing&quot;, &quot;gpl&quot;, &quot;copyleft&quot;, &quot;license-compatibility&quot;, &quot;derivative-works&quot;, &quot;distribution&quot;, &quot;attribution&quot;, and others that very clearly related to topics asked about on Programmers&#xD;&#xA;* [Law Help Center][7] (especially: [&quot;What topics can I ask about here?&quot;][8])&#xD;&#xA;* [Law tags][9] - popular tags include &quot;copyright&quot;, &quot;intellectual-property&quot;, &quot;software&quot;, &quot;licensing&quot;, &quot;trademark&quot;, &quot;patents&quot;, and &quot;terms-of-service&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/67858/law&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/tags&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://law.stackexchange.com/tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21305" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7539" RevisionGUID="8b131514-8a3d-4a89-b942-784b87371163" CreationDate="2015-08-17T20:26:19.493" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="21306" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7540" RevisionGUID="fe0c61ef-d5ec-4cac-8655-789a04efec05" CreationDate="2015-08-17T20:26:27.713" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="21307" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7541" RevisionGUID="1a0f6363-e9db-478d-b608-7cc8e988b8a6" CreationDate="2015-08-17T20:39:30.840" UserId="88986" Text="##I think we should do nothing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no reason the sites can't have overlapping scope. For example questions about algorithms are on topic both here and Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't see any reason for us to change our scope based on **what other Stacks are or are not doing**.  We should want the questions we want, and we should not want the questions we don't want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's time to get rid of these questions *for our own reasons*, that's an entirely different question and shouldn't be discussed in these terms." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21308" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7541" RevisionGUID="47cc0fe1-7871-463d-bfad-be09f5d87a6a" CreationDate="2015-08-17T20:39:30.840" UserId="88986" />
  <row Id="21309" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7541" RevisionGUID="3bad1d1b-acac-4f4e-91f8-00bb78953e86" CreationDate="2015-08-17T20:48:57.093" UserId="88986" Comment="added 33 characters in body" Text="##I think we should do nothing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no reason the sites (Law and Open Source) can't have overlapping scope with Progs. For example questions about algorithms are on topic both here and Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't see any reason for us to change our scope based on **what other Stacks are or are not doing**.  We should want the questions we want, and we should not want the questions we don't want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's time to get rid of these questions *for our own reasons*, that's an entirely different question and shouldn't be discussed in these terms." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21310" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7542" RevisionGUID="ae98460f-db29-4b01-898a-1c459bb6860b" CreationDate="2015-08-17T20:52:53.510" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="For ***good*** questions of &quot;is it legal&quot;, these were never on topic on Programmers.SE and if Law.SE wants to have them, by all means let them have these questions.  This is especially true for questions of patent and trademark which are even trickier for a layperson to answer than copyright (which we deal with in licenses).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For questions of licensing, there are a class of these which we consistently close: &quot;is there a license that meets these requirements.&quot;  If OS.SE wishes to have the well written questions of this form, again, by all means let them have them as they would be closed as off topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For licensing questions that we, as a programmer, have sufficient expertise to be able to properly answer, these should remain on topic here.  This does make for that fuzzy line between P.SE and OS.SE to which the rubric that should be used is &quot;does an expert programmer have knowledge to answer this, drawing from the experience as an expert programmer?&quot;  If so, it is still on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many questions however, where we, as programmers don't have expert knowledge in the area.  Some examples of these include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/286968/40980&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/267162/licensing-cc-by-sa-to-cc-by-nc-sa&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147111/what-is-wrong-with-the-unlicense&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/250259/does-cc0-allow-sublicensing-of-derived-works&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are questions which delve much deeper than a programmer is expected to have expert knowledge in and needs an answer from someone who is intimately familiar with licensing and intellectual property rather than facades and mvc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So yes, there are certainly licensing questions that are out of our realm and should be migrated to OS.SE given that they want them (just as there are questions that involve database design that go much deeper than the expert programmer is familiar which we migrate to DBA.SE)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21311" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7542" RevisionGUID="712fe302-79ce-4355-a399-57e2ef4c920c" CreationDate="2015-08-17T20:52:53.510" UserDisplayName="user40980" />
  <row Id="21312" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7541" RevisionGUID="7a0570ce-6aad-4027-9b37-1e02902bb936" CreationDate="2015-08-17T20:54:13.757" UserId="88986" Comment="Software recs" Text="##I think we should do nothing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no reason the sites (Law and Open Source) can't have overlapping scope with Progs. For example questions about algorithms are on topic both here and Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't see any reason for us to change our scope based on **what other Stacks are or are not doing**.  We should want the questions we want, and we should not want the questions we don't want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's time to get rid of these questions *for our own reasons*, that's an entirely different question and shouldn't be discussed in these terms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as Software Recommendations is concerned, such requests have been off topic for a very long time (with good reason) and I see no reason for that particular bit of status quo to change either" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21313" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7541" RevisionGUID="4545c860-b85a-4fd9-8aa1-c62f50f3e83a" CreationDate="2015-08-17T21:07:00.110" UserId="88986" Comment="added 335 characters in body" Text="##I think we should do nothing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no reason the sites (Law and Open Source) can't have overlapping scope with Progs. For example questions about algorithms are on topic both here and Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't see any reason for us to change our scope based on **what other Stacks are or are not doing**.  We should want the questions we want, and we should not want the questions we don't want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's time to get rid of these questions *for our own reasons*, that's an entirely different question and shouldn't be discussed in these terms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as Software Recommendations is concerned, such requests have been off topic for a very long time (with good reason) and I see no reason for that particular bit of status quo to change either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All making these questions off topic will do is result in a massive cleanup to close old posts which, IMO, is a complete waste of time, since most of the bad ones are already closed. We won't be able to migrate the good new ones to these sites for years at the earliest anyway because they're in beta. Lots of work, little reward." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21314" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7543" RevisionGUID="bc056899-1ed5-4465-a324-57908c4a465d" CreationDate="2015-08-17T21:18:25.700" UserId="192046" Text="Allow me to introduce myself, I'm Zizouz212, and I'm a moderator over at Open Source.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I might as well recap what we cover as site scope:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Anything libre/open-source/creative-commons licensing&#xD;&#xA;- Anything to do with open-source project management&#xD;&#xA;- Any questions that ask the community to recommend a license for a project - We allow anything that is in the esteem of being open source (even if the criteria would render it impossible)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, those three elements would likely be what overlaps between Programmers and Open Source. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A while back, I remember I had heard remarks about a conversation between both communities about possibly making open-source questions off-topic and moving it to us, while retaining a few examples that are highly-voted, and placing a historical lock on them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like the principle behind these suggestions, to take a look at the site scope here, and to determine whether to make something off-topic in hope of allowing another site to grow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In terms of Open Source licensing, I'm fine with having site overlap. While I do think that such questions would likely be much better served at Open Source, the decision on whether to change scope or migrate must be a consensus with both communities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have yet to discuss the issue with the community at Open Source. I do not want to post up anything without having had a discussion, but I shall keep this community posted on any developments." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21315" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7543" RevisionGUID="56e7a462-a0c8-4dfa-8fb8-fecd76d13e98" CreationDate="2015-08-17T21:18:25.700" UserId="192046" />
  <row Id="21316" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7534" RevisionGUID="882333c7-b15c-48ae-aa0c-b1e5d5d9615a" CreationDate="2015-08-17T21:21:56.730" UserId="31260" Comment="clarified per discussion in comments // http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes/7534?noredirect=1#comment22671_7534" Text="According to the data, of [464 users who can vote to close](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/348831/users-with-at-least-x-reputation?X=3000), 35 have hit the limit at least once:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    days &#xD;&#xA;    ---- &#xD;&#xA;    583  &#xD;&#xA;    488  &#xD;&#xA;    176  &#xD;&#xA;    68&#xD;&#xA;    31    &#xD;&#xA;    27   &#xD;&#xA;    21  &#xD;&#xA;    13 &#xD;&#xA;    12   &#xD;&#xA;    10   &#xD;&#xA;    10&#xD;&#xA;    ...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    (35 row(s) returned)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For reference, 19 of those users have at least 10k reputation as of today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just two users have run out of close votes 1,071 times compared to 553 for the field. On Stack Overflow, 3787 separate users have hit at least 24 close votes in a day. Looking the other sites, there just aren't any that have such a small number of users who 24 close votes in a day so frequently:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Users  Days Site&#xD;&#xA;    -----  ---- ----&#xD;&#xA;     3787 65564 Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;      111  1391 Mathematics&#xD;&#xA;      108  2836 Ubuntu&#xD;&#xA;       59   999 Server Fault&#xD;&#xA;       35  1624 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       33   313 English Language and Usage&#xD;&#xA;       26    98 Meta Stack Exchange&#xD;&#xA;       22   279 WordPress&#xD;&#xA;       19   187 Magento&#xD;&#xA;       16    43 Android Enthusiasts&#xD;&#xA;       15    17 Gaming&#xD;&#xA;       13    87 TeX - LaTeX&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Raising the limit on Programmers _would_ reduce the odds these users hit the limit, but I don't know if that would really help get bad questions closed faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, if we were going to increase the limit, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to just raise it for 10k users. From a very practical standpoint, changing it for everyone is a site setting, but changing it for users over 10k would require a code change. For another, the setting has already been raised to 50 for 3k+ users on SO, Math, Super User, Ubuntu, and Server Fault without any particular problems. I'd suggest removing that portion of the feature request that needlessly confuses matters." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21317" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7539" RevisionGUID="d53789a4-28af-46e2-afe0-046e743f440e" CreationDate="2015-08-18T04:08:35.490" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/633490650302955520" />
  <row Id="21318" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7544" RevisionGUID="bdfbc4e0-a023-4949-9570-9e745a77aef1" CreationDate="2015-08-18T11:52:38.303" UserId="4" Text="No, Programmers should not make questions about open source licensing off-topic. There is a subset (that we must define in a clear way) of questions that are on-topic on both Programmers and Open Source. However, we should update our Help Center to link to Open Source, Law, and Software Recommendation (specifically their /help/on-topic pages) to help indicate where people can go to get better answers to their questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21319" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7544" RevisionGUID="b7a20637-dd6b-406a-a3e4-509aa56c9143" CreationDate="2015-08-18T11:52:38.303" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="21320" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7544" RevisionGUID="8f8e9dcc-1dcc-4b22-ba26-84be723dcb77" CreationDate="2015-08-18T12:14:02.723" UserId="4" Comment="added 345 characters in body" Text="No, Programmers should not make questions about open source licensing off-topic. There is a subset (that we must define in a clear way) of questions that are on-topic on both Programmers and Open Source. However, we should update our Help Center to link to Open Source, Law, and Software Recommendation (specifically their /help/on-topic pages) to help indicate where people can go to get better answers to their questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this is accepted, it should be done in two phases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, update the &quot;is not about...&quot; section to properly link to Law and Software Recommendations. Those would be pretty straight forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, launch a meta discussion for directing people to the right open source SE site. Link to this meta discussion in the Help Center." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21321" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7541" RevisionGUID="209635a1-7504-425d-b801-9978081449a9" CreationDate="2015-08-18T13:58:42.037" UserId="88986" Comment="added 264 characters in body" Text="##I think we should not change the scope at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no reason the sites (Law and Open Source) can't have overlapping scope with Progs. For example questions about algorithms are on topic both here and Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't see any reason for us to change our scope based on **what other Stacks are or are not doing**.  We should want the questions we want, and we should not want the questions we don't want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's time to get rid of these questions *for our own reasons*, that's an entirely different question and shouldn't be discussed in these terms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as Software Recommendations is concerned, such requests have been off topic for a very long time (with good reason) and I see no reason for that particular bit of status quo to change either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All making these questions off topic will do is result in a massive cleanup to close old posts which, IMO, is a complete waste of time, since most of the bad ones are already closed. We won't be able to migrate the good new ones to these sites for years at the earliest anyway because they're in beta. Lots of work, little reward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously, improving the help center to have better links to other stacks that may be more appropriate for typical off topic Programmers question *goes without saying*, and is why I did not include it in my original form of this answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21322" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7539" RevisionGUID="351c37bc-5e8b-4cc3-93b2-52bd5e47823a" CreationDate="2015-08-18T15:47:23.947" UserId="192046" Comment="You might want a link to Software Recs :)" Text="In the past 2 months, two new sites in the Stack Exchange network opened up and are now in Public Beta: [Open Source][1] and [Law][2]. A third, [Software Recommendations][3], has been around for about 1.5 years. These are three topics that [our Help Center's /help/on-topic page][4] explicitly calls out that are well within scope of these sites, assuming the other quality measures for a question hold (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software configuration management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **software licensing**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **where to find a software library, tool**, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career or education advice, salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **legal advice or aid**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These topics appear to be well suited to these other sites, based on the questions that have been asked so far on them. It's likely that someone interested in any kind of intellectual property (copyright, copyleft, patents, trade secrets, infringement, and perhaps even closed-source licenses) or open source (philosophy of open source organizations, using or complying with open source licenses, working within the open source communities, choosing appropriate licenses) are on-topic on one of these sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should Programmers make software licensing questions explicitly off-topic and redirect people to Open Source or Law, as appropriate, to be put in better hands to get answers to their questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;References:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source Help Center][5] (especially: [&quot;What topics can I ask about here?&quot;][6])&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source tags][7] - popular tags include &quot;licensing&quot;, &quot;gpl&quot;, &quot;copyleft&quot;, &quot;license-compatibility&quot;, &quot;derivative-works&quot;, &quot;distribution&quot;, &quot;attribution&quot;, and others that very clearly related to topics asked about on Programmers&#xD;&#xA;* [Law Help Center][8] (especially: [&quot;What topics can I ask about here?&quot;][9])&#xD;&#xA;* [Law tags][10] - popular tags include &quot;copyright&quot;, &quot;intellectual-property&quot;, &quot;software&quot;, &quot;licensing&quot;, &quot;trademark&quot;, &quot;patents&quot;, and &quot;terms-of-service&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/67858/law&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/tags&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://law.stackexchange.com/tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21323" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7539" RevisionGUID="b72a8e3b-54c2-4d19-8951-a338bf98b62b" CreationDate="2015-08-18T17:47:22.173" UserId="31260" Comment="references to help/on-topic instead of straight links" Text="In the past 2 months, two new sites in the Stack Exchange network opened up and are now in Public Beta: [Open Source][1] and [Law][2]. A third, [Software Recommendations][3], has been around for about 1.5 years. These are three topics that [our Help Center's /help/on-topic page][4] explicitly calls out that are well within scope of these sites, assuming the other quality measures for a question hold (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software configuration management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **software licensing**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **where to find a software library, tool**, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career or education advice, salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **legal advice or aid**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These topics appear to be well suited to these other sites, based on the questions that have been asked so far on them. It's likely that someone interested in any kind of intellectual property (copyright, copyleft, patents, trade secrets, infringement, and perhaps even closed-source licenses) or open source (philosophy of open source organizations, using or complying with open source licenses, working within the open source communities, choosing appropriate licenses) are on-topic on one of these sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should Programmers make software licensing questions explicitly off-topic and redirect people to Open Source or Law, as appropriate, to be put in better hands to get answers to their questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;References:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source Help Center][5] (especially: [&quot;What topics can I ask about here?&quot;][6])&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source tags][7] - popular tags include &quot;licensing&quot;, &quot;gpl&quot;, &quot;copyleft&quot;, &quot;license-compatibility&quot;, &quot;derivative-works&quot;, &quot;distribution&quot;, &quot;attribution&quot;, and others that very clearly related to topics asked about on Programmers&#xD;&#xA;* [Law Help Center][8] (especially: [&quot;What topics can I ask about here?&quot;][9])&#xD;&#xA;* [Law tags][10] - popular tags include &quot;copyright&quot;, &quot;intellectual-property&quot;, &quot;software&quot;, &quot;licensing&quot;, &quot;trademark&quot;, &quot;patents&quot;, and &quot;terms-of-service&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/67858/law&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/tags&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://law.stackexchange.com/tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21324" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7545" RevisionGUID="4ffd8373-a768-4766-aa1c-a7c4d9d47547" CreationDate="2015-08-18T20:17:55.300" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Based upon a [recent answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7534/53019)&lt;sup&gt;1, 2&lt;/sup&gt; to a [previous question of mine](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6507/53019), I'd like to re-visit an older request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Please give all close voters&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; on Programmers 50 votes instead of the standard 24&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_Why?_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All of the [original reasons](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6507/53019) that were laid out before still hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. New users to the site end up with a poor impression regarding what is on-topic for the site when off-topic questions are not cleared out quickly.  The more quickly we can patch up the broken windows, the more favorable Programmers and StackExchange appear to new visitors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. The [stats show](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7534/53019) that our active close voters regularly run out of votes and this is impacting their ability to help provide community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. The influx of low quality questions from {bans at SO | ignorance of SO} continues to increase.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. Items like the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7285/53019) put a strain on the community when they are trying to balance closing off incoming low quality questions as well as cleaning up old NPR-style low quality questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. This version of the request is much easier to implement as it's already part of the per-site configuration setting and doesn't require a code change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt; `Finally, if we were going to increase the limit, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to just raise it for 10k users. From a very practical standpoint, changing it for everyone is a site setting, but changing it for users over 10k would require a code change. For another, the setting has already been raised to 50 for 3k+ users on SO, Math, Super User, Ubuntu, and Server Fault without any particular problems. I'd suggest removing that portion of the feature request that needlessly confuses matters`&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;[Gratuitous footnotes are because I heard someone likes them](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/166518/194162)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;By &quot;Close Voters&quot;, I mean anyone who has earned [at least 3k rep](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions)on the site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt; My assumption is that the number of allowed votes in the close review queue increases proportionately, but if not, I'll make a separate request.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21325" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7545" RevisionGUID="4ffd8373-a768-4766-aa1c-a7c4d9d47547" CreationDate="2015-08-18T20:17:55.300" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Grant more close votes for close reviewers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21326" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7545" RevisionGUID="4ffd8373-a768-4766-aa1c-a7c4d9d47547" CreationDate="2015-08-18T20:17:55.300" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21327" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7545" RevisionGUID="82d41b75-3446-4805-803e-956d58d49288" CreationDate="2015-08-18T20:31:22.097" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="Based upon a [recent answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7534/53019)&lt;sup&gt;1, 2&lt;/sup&gt; to a [previous question of mine](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6507/53019), I'd like to re-visit an older request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Please give all close voters&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; on Programmers 50 votes instead of the standard 24&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_Why?_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All of the [original reasons](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6507/53019) that were laid out before still hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. New users to the site end up with a poor impression regarding what is on-topic for the site when off-topic questions are not cleared out quickly.  The more quickly we can patch up the broken windows, the more favorable Programmers and StackExchange appear to new visitors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. The [stats show](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7534/53019) that our active close voters regularly run out of votes and this is impacting their ability to help provide community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. The influx of low quality questions from {bans at SO | ignorance of SO} continues to increase.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. Items like the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7285/53019) put a strain on the community when they are trying to balance closing off incoming low quality questions as well as cleaning up old NPR-style low quality questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. This version of the request is much easier to implement as it's already part of the per-site configuration setting and doesn't require a code change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;`Finally, if we were going to increase the limit, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to just raise it for 10k users. From a very practical standpoint, changing it for everyone is a site setting, but changing it for users over 10k would require a code change. For another, the setting has already been raised to 50 for 3k+ users on SO, Math, Super User, Ubuntu, and Server Fault without any particular problems. I'd suggest removing that portion of the feature request that needlessly confuses matters`&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;[Gratuitous footnotes are because I heard someone likes them](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/166518/194162)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;By &quot;Close Voters&quot;, I mean anyone who has earned [at least 3k rep](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions)on the site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;My assumption is that the number of allowed votes in the close review queue increases proportionately, but if not, I'll make a separate request.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21328" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7545" RevisionGUID="4b2d388f-a928-469e-8afc-54804dd5a4a0" CreationDate="2015-08-18T20:36:03.567" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|review|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21329" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7545" RevisionGUID="75239c81-ceab-4c81-b25d-090b51b60098" CreationDate="2015-08-18T20:49:41.907" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="added 178 characters in body" Text="Based upon a [recent answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7534/53019)&lt;sup&gt;1, 2&lt;/sup&gt; to a [previous question of mine](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6507/53019), I'd like to re-visit an older request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Please give all close voters&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; on Programmers 50 votes instead of the standard 24&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_Why?_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All of the [original reasons](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6507/53019) that were laid out before still hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. New users to the site end up with a poor impression regarding what is on-topic for the site when off-topic questions are not cleared out quickly.  The more quickly we can patch up the broken windows, the more favorable Programmers and StackExchange appear to new visitors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. The [stats show](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7534/53019) that our active close voters regularly run out of votes and this is impacting their ability to help provide community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. The influx of low quality questions from {bans at SO | ignorance of SO} continues to increase.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. Items like the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7285/53019) put a strain on the community when they are trying to balance closing off incoming low quality questions as well as cleaning up old NPR-style low quality questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. This version of the request is much easier to implement as it's already part of the per-site configuration setting and doesn't require a code change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. More close votes means being able to migrate questions more quickly.  That in turn cuts down on extra work created for mods when they have to merge cross-posted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;`Finally, if we were going to increase the limit, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to just raise it for 10k users. From a very practical standpoint, changing it for everyone is a site setting, but changing it for users over 10k would require a code change. For another, the setting has already been raised to 50 for 3k+ users on SO, Math, Super User, Ubuntu, and Server Fault without any particular problems. I'd suggest removing that portion of the feature request that needlessly confuses matters`&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;[Gratuitous footnotes are because I heard someone likes them](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/166518/194162)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;By &quot;Close Voters&quot;, I mean anyone who has earned [at least 3k rep](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions)on the site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;My assumption is that the number of allowed votes in the close review queue increases proportionately, but if not, I'll make a separate request.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21330" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7539" RevisionGUID="0fbcef62-a1f5-4d8f-854a-f5108e416278" CreationDate="2015-08-18T21:45:42.767" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Added link to related OpenSource.SE Meta question." Text="In the past 2 months, two new sites in the Stack Exchange network opened up and are now in Public Beta: [Open Source][1] and [Law][2]. A third, [Software Recommendations][3], has been around for about 1.5 years. These are three topics that [our Help Center's /help/on-topic page][4] explicitly calls out that are well within scope of these sites, assuming the other quality measures for a question hold (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software configuration management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **software licensing**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **where to find a software library, tool**, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career or education advice, salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **legal advice or aid**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These topics appear to be well suited to these other sites, based on the questions that have been asked so far on them. It's likely that someone interested in any kind of intellectual property (copyright, copyleft, patents, trade secrets, infringement, and perhaps even closed-source licenses) or open source (philosophy of open source organizations, using or complying with open source licenses, working within the open source communities, choosing appropriate licenses) are on-topic on one of these sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should Programmers make software licensing questions explicitly off-topic and redirect people to Open Source or Law, as appropriate, to be put in better hands to get answers to their questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;References:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source Help Center][5] (especially: [&quot;What topics can I ask about here?&quot;][1])&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source tags][6] - popular tags include &quot;licensing&quot;, &quot;gpl&quot;, &quot;copyleft&quot;, &quot;license-compatibility&quot;, &quot;derivative-works&quot;, &quot;distribution&quot;, &quot;attribution&quot;, and others that very clearly related to topics asked about on Programmers&#xD;&#xA;* [Law Help Center][7] (especially: [&quot;What topics can I ask about here?&quot;][8])&#xD;&#xA;* [Law tags][9] - popular tags include &quot;copyright&quot;, &quot;intellectual-property&quot;, &quot;software&quot;, &quot;licensing&quot;, &quot;trademark&quot;, &quot;patents&quot;, and &quot;terms-of-service&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* OpenSource.SE: [Discussing scope overhauls with Programmers SE][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/67858/law&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/tags&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://law.stackexchange.com/tags&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.opensource.stackexchange.com/q/576" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21331" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7545" RevisionGUID="a97d916d-a95d-4042-8175-b396c1d1204c" CreationDate="2015-08-19T07:10:33.543" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/633898831659319300" />
  <row Id="21332" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7546" RevisionGUID="b28d8f0d-a77d-47ce-8b8a-6bebb655b35e" CreationDate="2015-08-19T15:22:11.403" UserDisplayName="user76821" Text="I looked through the recent questions in the [tag:embedded] tag, and they seem to be primarily about embedded systems, with some exceptions, like http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/275267/76821. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any difference with the [tag:embedded-systems] tag, and if not, could they be merged?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21333" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7546" RevisionGUID="b28d8f0d-a77d-47ce-8b8a-6bebb655b35e" CreationDate="2015-08-19T15:22:11.403" UserDisplayName="user76821" Text="Difference between embedded and embedded-systems tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21334" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7546" RevisionGUID="b28d8f0d-a77d-47ce-8b8a-6bebb655b35e" CreationDate="2015-08-19T15:22:11.403" UserDisplayName="user76821" Text="|support|feature-request|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21335" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7547" RevisionGUID="5fe7787a-d408-4cc7-9551-6744a30ac09a" CreationDate="2015-08-20T13:13:16.453" UserId="35276" Text="I heard recently that every day is Coffee Day, but then it was pointed out to me that this only happens once a year; can someone please clarify this for me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is every day Coffee Day?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21336" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7547" RevisionGUID="5fe7787a-d408-4cc7-9551-6744a30ac09a" CreationDate="2015-08-20T13:13:16.453" UserId="35276" Text="Is every day Coffee Day?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21337" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7547" RevisionGUID="5fe7787a-d408-4cc7-9551-6744a30ac09a" CreationDate="2015-08-20T13:13:16.453" UserId="35276" Text="|discussion|coffee|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21338" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7548" RevisionGUID="625d1186-eb3d-4256-aa0b-af67d6a6e1fd" CreationDate="2015-08-20T13:14:08.050" UserId="93290" Text="As the creator of Coffee Day[1], I can canonically tell you that ***Yes, every day is Coffee Day***.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1] http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=22762314#22762314" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21339" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7549" RevisionGUID="b98bb30e-7e36-40d8-8a0f-b4753c5b73d6" CreationDate="2015-08-20T13:14:35.307" UserId="52929" Text="I think your confusion results from the misunderstanding the criteria: _only days ending in &quot;day&quot;_ are coffee days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is how coffee day is determined. Any other days do not count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21340" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7548" RevisionGUID="6e8504f3-d31c-4e83-a62d-52a03ead96b7" CreationDate="2015-08-20T13:18:09.233" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Fixed broken link." Text="As the creator of [Coffee Day][1], I can canonically tell you that ***Yes, every day is Coffee Day***.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=22762314#22762314" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21341" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7550" RevisionGUID="09f2521c-0a13-43e2-9777-6fe2fd09a378" CreationDate="2015-08-20T13:36:48.553" UserId="28244" Text="This statement is **incredibly inaccurate** and whoever pointed its incorrectness out to you is absolutely right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As can be read on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Coffee_Day) the official *International Coffee Day* is on a specific set date. So depending on where you live, you still have to wait a few weeks with any celebrations." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21342" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7550" RevisionGUID="cdfe3ae9-0d9b-4fe8-b785-c8fb9573a76e" CreationDate="2015-08-20T13:42:30.967" UserId="28244" Comment="added 30 characters in body" Text="This statement is **incredibly inaccurate** and whoever pointed its incorrectness out to you is absolutely right (not to say an utter genius!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As can be read on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Coffee_Day) the official *International Coffee Day* is on a specific set date. So depending on where you live, you still have to wait a few weeks with any celebrations." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21343" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7551" RevisionGUID="f5359b48-592d-4aff-93f4-28feacc022fe" CreationDate="2015-08-20T13:55:23.060" UserId="31260" Text="[![Coffee Stack Exchange][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LzvlP.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://coffee.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(thanks to MichaelT for pointing to [appropriate ad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7177/31260 &quot;10K link&quot;))&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21344" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7552" RevisionGUID="34f5a4b6-7fd9-423e-9d01-97c1edf84291" CreationDate="2015-08-20T14:07:55.330" UserId="35276" Text="I don't see why we shouldn't have Coffee.SE at least an option for people to vote up as an SE community we advertise for on P.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anybody (perhaps Robert Cartaino the diamond that deleted the post) tell me why it was removed? If not, I intend to just add it back, I think we definitely should be advertising Coffee.SE on P.SE..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[10k link to see the original but deleted coffee.SE community ad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7177/35276)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21345" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7552" RevisionGUID="34f5a4b6-7fd9-423e-9d01-97c1edf84291" CreationDate="2015-08-20T14:07:55.330" UserId="35276" Text="Why was our Coffee.SE community ad deleted from the community ad choices for 2015?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21346" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7552" RevisionGUID="34f5a4b6-7fd9-423e-9d01-97c1edf84291" CreationDate="2015-08-20T14:07:55.330" UserId="35276" Text="|discussion|coffee|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21347" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7552" RevisionGUID="2fc498d9-abfa-467f-88bd-873a7b21cf61" CreationDate="2015-08-20T14:11:30.783" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|coffee|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21348" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7553" RevisionGUID="ace281e7-6c96-4e92-938c-2f598df7b525" CreationDate="2015-08-20T15:25:55.257" UserId="35276" Text="[![Coffee Stack Exchange][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LzvlP.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://coffee.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21349" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7553" RevisionGUID="23c54835-6e4c-4b64-9ba3-f7ad7683e898" CreationDate="2015-08-20T15:25:55.257" UserId="35276" />
  <row Id="21350" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7554" RevisionGUID="aa1407cf-effe-4cf8-a7e3-d52ab8ea2d68" CreationDate="2015-08-20T15:36:16.053" UserId="88986" Text="I don't agree with the decision to delete the ad. [Coffee is a fundamental portion of the lives of many programmers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7547/is-every-day-coffee-day). We discuss it in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) often.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[@RobertCartarino states:](http://meta.coffee.stackexchange.com/questions/97/what-should-a-community-ad-for-coffee-stackexchange-look-like/100#comment1149_100)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @fredley The community-driven advertisements/bulletins have to be at least roughly aligned with the topic of the community. This advertisement is not appropriate for Programmers SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't agree with this statement on both counts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I don't agree that it isn't roughly aligned with with the topic of the community.&#xD;&#xA;   - This community is about issues that directly concern Programmers as idea people and thinkers, and *many* of us would not have ideas nor be able to think without coffee.&#xD;&#xA;2. I don't agree that it should have to be roughly aligned with the topic of the community.&#xD;&#xA;   - Programmers are people in addition being bots that transform coffee and pizza into code. We have lives just like everyone else.&#xD;&#xA;   - If we, as a community, have overwhelming support for an ad to another community, we should be made available to that community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently, [@abbyhairboat](http://meta.coffee.stackexchange.com/a/1156) wrote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why limit the hunt to Seasoned Advice?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sure, they get coffee questions, and that's why you've got a community promotion ad up there. But what if we try thinking beyond &quot;where are the coffee questions and how do we get them here?&quot;, and instead, think: &quot;where are the coffee people and how do we get them here?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of people are coffee Q&amp;A people? Millions of people drink coffee, but what we're looking for here is coffee hobbyists, not just drinkers.** People who like to experiment with brewing methods, spend money on gear, and optimize for various qualities. They aren't just coffee drinkers - they're coffee tinkerers. So people who might be drawn to this site are tinkerers in other fields who dabble in coffee (among many other likely hobbies).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This statement applies just as much here as it does to Seasoned Advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##We should be able to have this Community Ad." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21351" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7555" RevisionGUID="64362dc3-2516-4c9c-afbe-6b96b642d94f" CreationDate="2015-08-20T15:47:13.760" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="If we cannot have a coffee ad, then we cannot use the current site icon either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Favicon screen shot][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All or nothing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/zjmuv.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21352" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7556" RevisionGUID="d7d8911b-1bab-4326-9102-710c01313224" CreationDate="2015-08-20T16:09:43.713" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Culturally, caffeine and pizza are part of being a programmer.  While it doesn't make for [good main site questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/286216/40980) (10k link) coffee, tea and other caffeine delivery mechanisms are a [documented part](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/I/ISO-standard-cup-of-tea.html) of what it is to be a programmer for a significant period of time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted, this is such a culturally significant part of the desk of a programmer, that it is part of the site's design.  Think geek has [coffee mugs](http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/mugs-travel/) as a major section of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted on the http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7070/ you will note the wording:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the community is honestly interested in the culture of caffeine intake, then promoting that stack exchange site is well and good.  Its an advert on the side of the page - not a main site question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, however, the powers that be suggest that this *shouldn't* be the case, I would urge them to get the requisite 125 reputation, participate on the main site and the community here, and vote on the answer. I would similarly encourage them to do the audit of *all* of the other graduated sites and ask themselves why Health.SE is advertised on Gaming and Cooking and Space.SE on Skeptics and then ask if its really worth the trouble of letting the community reach a consensus of what other things they want to advertise given the guidelines we are provided with." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21353" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7556" RevisionGUID="4b91e6bb-a64b-4dd9-bb45-7c6be5a52250" CreationDate="2015-08-20T16:16:28.707" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 20 characters in body" Text="Culturally, caffeine and pizza are part of being a programmer.  While it doesn't make for [good main site questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/286216/40980) (10k link) coffee, tea and other caffeine delivery mechanisms are a [documented part](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/I/ISO-standard-cup-of-tea.html) of what it is to be a programmer for a significant period of time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted, this is such a culturally significant part of the desk of a programmer, that it is part of the site's design.  Think geek has [coffee mugs](http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/mugs-travel/) as a major section of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted on the http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7070/ you will note the wording:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the community is honestly interested in the culture of caffeine intake, then promoting that stack exchange site is well and good.  Its an advert on the side of the page - not a main site question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, however, the powers that be suggest that this *shouldn't* be the case, I would urge them to get the requisite 125 reputation, participate on the main site and the community here, and vote on the answer. I would similarly encourage them to do the audit of *all* of the other graduated sites and ask themselves why Health.SE is advertised on Gaming and Cooking and Space.SE on Skeptics and then ask if its really worth the trouble of going against the community when it has reached a consensus of what other things they want to advertise given the guidelines we are provided with." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21356" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7557" RevisionGUID="ca09d742-5dcf-42ef-bd9d-9a94c564cff3" CreationDate="2015-08-20T16:27:14.987" UserId="32353" Text="I love hot meta posts.  Coffee is hot.  In conclusion it is coffee day.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21357" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7558" RevisionGUID="3384b3dc-7e4a-438b-8013-bb33e564f13a" CreationDate="2015-08-20T16:36:05.897" UserId="3" Text="No problem, I restored the ad (actually, I see another copy has already been posted). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Typically I will remove ads and other comments soliciting users for ***proposals*** unless they are *directly* related to the subject of the site. With thousands of proposals vying for attention, supporters can sometimes get a bit overzealous in blanketing sites with their &quot;soft spam&quot; campaign, so we don't allow that. But I think we can afford to be a more open to a bit of cross-promotion between established *communities* simply trying to reach out to their fellow core audiences. I just got those wire crossed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21358" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7559" RevisionGUID="7c5e163c-d96f-4ec1-a059-723ff4200fd2" CreationDate="2015-08-20T17:06:18.283" UserId="35276" Text="As a devoted Coffeeist, I can only say that the tradition of Coffee Day is far too powerful for one single day, possibly too great for an entire year! I think we all know the answer to this question, we know it in our gut, and we know it in our heart.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As sure as the sun will rise every day, so will the coffee in our cups. Have a Happy Coffee Day everyone, and have it every day." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21359" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7558" RevisionGUID="e03eb8b2-24fe-476b-a413-6f781663641b" CreationDate="2015-08-20T17:16:16.973" UserId="3" Comment="deleted 6 characters in body" Text="No problem, I restored the ad (actually, I see another copy has already been posted). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Typically I will remove ads and comments soliciting users for ***proposals*** unless they are *directly* related to the subject of the site. With thousands of proposals vying for attention, supporters can sometimes get a bit overzealous in blanketing sites with their &quot;soft spam&quot; campaign, so we don't allow that. But I think we can afford to be a more open to a bit of cross-promotion between established *communities* simply trying to reach out to their fellow core audiences. I just got those wire crossed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21360" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7560" RevisionGUID="1baef9b4-1a5f-4656-935a-2778f46d317c" CreationDate="2015-08-20T21:39:17.323" UserId="146020" Text="[![Free Culture | Open Hardware | Free Software | Open Data | Open File Formats | Open Source -- Visit Open Source SE][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/doPp0.png&#xD;&#xA;   [2]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21361" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7560" RevisionGUID="07481bf8-cfbf-4392-9b03-ec0860e73c33" CreationDate="2015-08-20T21:39:17.323" UserId="146020" />
  <row Id="21362" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7547" RevisionGUID="ccf96147-1be7-4823-9229-96c596de5a4a" CreationDate="2015-08-21T10:30:45.613" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/634673989932199936" />
  <row Id="21363" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7561" RevisionGUID="9094c352-a6e6-426b-a11a-6d31f836bcd5" CreationDate="2015-08-21T13:17:04.673" UserId="4" Text="Looking through it, it looks like most [tag:embedded] and [tag:embedded-systems] questions are about embedded systems. There are few enough questions that a manual cleanup can be done after a merge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm just thinking about what tag should be preferred. I think I'd prefer [tag:embedded-systems], even though it's half the size. I think the tag is more descriptive and more in line with how people may be searching for questions. I'd just like some kind of confirmation on the direction of the merge before I go ahead and do it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21364" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7546" RevisionGUID="ba816846-e5d7-45a9-b04c-942be877d4b1" CreationDate="2015-08-21T13:21:33.840" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21365" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7562" RevisionGUID="48b215f2-0509-4bc8-b7df-9ab5f1306a6c" CreationDate="2015-08-21T14:19:07.720" UserId="25768" Text="[tag:programming-languages]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;either a meta tag or asking us to choose a language for them (explicitly off topic)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21366" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7562" RevisionGUID="a33855e6-6713-4d50-9f44-cb3d8d400473" CreationDate="2015-08-21T14:19:07.720" UserId="25768" />
  <row Id="21368" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7561" RevisionGUID="8fa6e028-5696-4353-8d11-7cd7e1a02440" CreationDate="2015-08-21T15:19:36.357" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="Pretty sure you meant twice, not half." Text="Looking through it, it looks like most [tag:embedded] and [tag:embedded-systems] questions are about embedded systems. There are few enough questions that a manual cleanup can be done after a merge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm just thinking about what tag should be preferred. I think I'd prefer [tag:embedded-systems], even though it's twice the length. I think the tag is more descriptive and more in line with how people may be searching for questions. I'd just like some kind of confirmation on the direction of the merge before I go ahead and do it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21369" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="7561" RevisionGUID="4cb877a8-0bd0-4ea8-8d29-0586a24456c4" CreationDate="2015-08-21T15:21:17.237" UserId="4" Comment="Rollback to [9094c352-a6e6-426b-a11a-6d31f836bcd5]" Text="Looking through it, it looks like most [tag:embedded] and [tag:embedded-systems] questions are about embedded systems. There are few enough questions that a manual cleanup can be done after a merge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm just thinking about what tag should be preferred. I think I'd prefer [tag:embedded-systems], even though it's half the size. I think the tag is more descriptive and more in line with how people may be searching for questions. I'd just like some kind of confirmation on the direction of the merge before I go ahead and do it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21370" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7563" RevisionGUID="a59ee694-34fd-4a25-9dcc-c67cc70e415d" CreationDate="2015-08-21T23:55:58.020" UserId="192249" Text="I'm jimsug, a mod from [Law](law.stackexchange.com). You may remember me from the comment on the question above :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I'm fine with migrations from Programmers, and happy to work with you to give questions that would be on-topic for law and otherwise closed here a good home.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firstly, I'm glad that a couple of people have pointed out that legal advice is off-topic for Law SE. At the moment, we have a notice that states this (like the one you may have seen on Health SE):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Law SE disclaimer thingy][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This notice links to our [General Disclaimer](http://law.stackexchange.com/help/disclaimer) page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this is more targeted at readers and consumers of the content, rather than people who are asking questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our help center's on-topic page links to our [policy for questions that seek legal advice][2] meta post. As always, the aim is to preserve questions where possible and I think it's been moderately successful, as we've had a few questions reopened after it was closed for this reason. This meta post might be a good one to link to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Legal terms, language, processes, procedures, or dealing with legal professionals (visit Law instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this is acceptably phrased. If this prevents people from asking questions on Programmers and they instead go to Law, we'll treat them like any new question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Migrations. As noted in the comments above, I think a migration path to law probably isn't necessary; users can just flag if they really think they belong on Law, and Programmers mods can always check in with us if they're unsure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ixkvf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.law.stackexchange.com/questions/221/policy-for-questions-that-clearly-ask-for-specific-legal-advice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21371" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7563" RevisionGUID="9fccb19e-97dc-4b43-8b92-2fd5a41dbf01" CreationDate="2015-08-21T23:55:58.020" UserId="192249" />
  <row Id="21372" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7527" RevisionGUID="2eb39de3-658e-4ea8-abad-27b6fa08f44c" CreationDate="2015-08-22T16:42:48.917" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/635130008474918912" />
  <row Id="21373" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7564" RevisionGUID="31a57a58-e7ee-4ab5-bf92-59f22334369e" CreationDate="2015-08-22T18:57:38.993" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="We have a problem.  When people fail in trying to post their question on Stack Overflow, they come here to post it.  This is often the case with people trying to get around a question ban and getting some help anywhere.  Its also occasionally happens with the low quality posts.  It also apparently happens here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't an extremely frequent thing and looking at [this search](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=problem%20is%3aquestion), the questions that it would have blocked are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before people start getting up in arms about the Traveling Salesman *Problem* or the Knapsack *Problem* or the *Problem* domain, lets look at the last month of undeleted questions with 'Problem' in the title.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294338/problem-3-project-euler?s=3|0.0000 (-6)&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293924/having-a-problem-passing-first-unit-test-in-exercism-io-java-challenge?s=31|0.0000 (-3)&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293226/problems-with-storing-plain-text-and-byte-information-in-the-same-file?s=67|0.0000 (-1)&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291352/problem-with-c-file-io-in-winforms?s=116|0.0000 (-2)&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291316/problem-with-device-orientation-code-in-firefox-for-android?s=119|0.0000 (-2)&#xD;&#xA;6. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/289935/isnt-there-a-substantial-problem-with-svn-tags?s=173|0.0000 (+2)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 6 there was posted July 16th (over a month ago).  Questions 3, 4, and 5 where migrated to Stack Overflow (apparently its not a problem to migrate problem questions).  I would encourage SE to look into how often these questions get deleted and *don't* show up in my query.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why should this be done? Because questions of this form are rarely good questions.  They are either poorly written questions, or questions that are poorly written ***and*** should have been asked on Stack Overflow.  So instead of dealing with the question on Stack Overflow, the person is frustrated with not being able to post there, *then* posting here, getting the question closed and down voted, and sometimes get the question bounced back to Stack Overflow anyways.  All in all a poor experience for the user and a waste of community close votes here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21374" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7564" RevisionGUID="31a57a58-e7ee-4ab5-bf92-59f22334369e" CreationDate="2015-08-22T18:57:38.993" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="If &quot;Problem&quot; is to be blocked on Stack Overflow question titles, block it here too" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21375" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7564" RevisionGUID="31a57a58-e7ee-4ab5-bf92-59f22334369e" CreationDate="2015-08-22T18:57:38.993" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|support|question-title|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21376" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7565" RevisionGUID="c3e1c766-1756-4248-ae82-0b2c288f0825" CreationDate="2015-08-23T21:10:41.537" UserId="109112" Text="I'm talking about [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294394/building-computer-programs-for-analyzing-abstract-strategy-games). The user is obviously a troll and should probably be question-locked and some serious action taken to limit their ability to comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I flagged it for moderator attention, no bones." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21377" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7565" RevisionGUID="c3e1c766-1756-4248-ae82-0b2c288f0825" CreationDate="2015-08-23T21:10:41.537" UserId="109112" Text="Why is this question still around?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21378" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7565" RevisionGUID="c3e1c766-1756-4248-ae82-0b2c288f0825" CreationDate="2015-08-23T21:10:41.537" UserId="109112" Text="|discussion|new-users|spam|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21379" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7565" RevisionGUID="7a9f6908-c6f4-413f-8c0b-b2a449b6c04f" CreationDate="2015-08-23T21:17:46.667" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|new-users|spam|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21386" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7564" RevisionGUID="307794f3-7e42-42e7-adc7-737fe584eaef" CreationDate="2015-08-25T13:12:46.727" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 997 characters in body" Text="We have a problem.  When people fail in trying to post their question on Stack Overflow, they come here to post it.  This is often the case with people trying to get around a question ban and getting some help anywhere.  Its also occasionally happens with the low quality posts.  It also apparently happens here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't an extremely frequent thing and looking at [this search](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=problem%20is%3aquestion), the questions that it would have blocked are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before people start getting up in arms about the Traveling Salesman *Problem* or the Knapsack *Problem* or the *Problem* domain, lets look at the last month of undeleted questions with 'Problem' in the title.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294338/problem-3-project-euler?s=3|0.0000 (-6)&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293924/having-a-problem-passing-first-unit-test-in-exercism-io-java-challenge?s=31|0.0000 (-3)&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293226/problems-with-storing-plain-text-and-byte-information-in-the-same-file?s=67|0.0000 (-1)&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291352/problem-with-c-file-io-in-winforms?s=116|0.0000 (-2)&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291316/problem-with-device-orientation-code-in-firefox-for-android?s=119|0.0000 (-2)&#xD;&#xA;6. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/289935/isnt-there-a-substantial-problem-with-svn-tags?s=173|0.0000 (+2)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 6 there was posted July 16th (over a month ago).  Questions 3, 4, and 5 where migrated to Stack Overflow (apparently its not a problem to migrate problem questions).  I would encourage SE to look into how often these questions get deleted and *don't* show up in my query.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why should this be done? Because questions of this form are rarely good questions.  They are either poorly written questions, or questions that are poorly written ***and*** should have been asked on Stack Overflow.  So instead of dealing with the question on Stack Overflow, the person is frustrated with not being able to post there, *then* posting here, getting the question closed and down voted, and sometimes get the question bounced back to Stack Overflow anyways.  All in all a poor experience for the user and a waste of community close votes here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can also be seen with 'help' in the title:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294531/c-segmentation-fault-please-help (-1)&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294517/i-have-a-problem-with-math-in-c-help-me-please (-4)&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294213/help-with-shell (-2 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293979/beginner-in-c-needing-help-with-strings-and-memory (0 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290582/help-me-design-this-use-case (+1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fifth item here is from July 23 (again, nearly a month ago) and could use a better title.  Again though, this list shows examples of questions that (if written well) are clearly off topic here and should have instead been asked on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By blocking 'problem' and 'help' from question titles on Stack Overflow, but allowing them here, we get the poor questions and have to deal with them where they clearly don't belong." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21387" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7567" RevisionGUID="3efa9262-f934-474f-b1b1-fdda10615a37" CreationDate="2015-08-25T13:36:40.707" UserId="31260" Text="A workaround worth considering is posting links to these questions to [CV chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/23646567#23646567):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; okay, I plan to post here all the 'problem' and 'help' questions that will be dropped at us from now on. If you spot such a question before me, I would appreciate if you drop it here. SE team and moderators want us, the community, to handle these? all right, let's do it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From there, concerned users can get to the troublesome posts and vote them down, close, delete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So far, this approach seems to be working fairly well, off-topic questions get deleted in a matter of hours (did I mention that this site has a _fantastic_ community). I think it's hard to get better than that in the absence of system or moderators support.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;PS. Before some moderator comes and tells me, &quot;oh but if you flagged it with appropriate message, explaining what _specifically_ is wrong&quot; ...no. I already considered this and decided that it ain't worth it. I don't want to waste my time summarizing every garbage dump into compelling flag message. Nor would I recommend this to anyone else. It is just so much more productive to simply drop (or follow) chat link, vote and move on. If moderators are interested to know about these questions, they can follow links posted in chat room.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21388" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7537" RevisionGUID="d69ef380-e424-4d41-a99f-7389abe01b02" CreationDate="2015-08-25T22:53:18.577" UserId="31260" Comment="capitalisation" Text="A common form of question that is often asked is the &quot;what are some examples of...&quot;  While this is [hinted at in the help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/), or [strongly rooted in opinions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491). We should be able to answer your questions in the equivalent of a few pages of text and graphics and provide references to support claims. If you have questions that warrant an extended discussion, feel free to come to chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;explained in those links, and written about in meta site for all of Stack Exchange in the [list-questions tag](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/list-questions/info), these questions show up often enough that it merits asking again here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why do these list questions get closed and down voted on Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21389" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="1ddfdeb1-b203-4d92-a5c4-4a97020430cd" CreationDate="2015-08-25T22:54:15.107" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7537/why-do-some-examples-and-list-of-things-questions-get-closed" Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long for the Q&amp;A format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are just polls for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the accepted answer is based on &quot;which answer I like best,&quot; rather than &quot;which answer solves my problem,&quot; the question is probably a poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While some other Stack Exchanges allow it, Programmers.SE frowns upon ['big list' type questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;see also: list-questions tag wiki at MSO&quot;) that seem to want to compile a list of things.  Questions that fall into this category typically have the form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What are all the problems I will encounter with XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * What are the pros and cons of XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * How can XYZ be used?&#xD;&#xA; * Any ideas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like these don't pose a problem that can be solved by an answer.  There is no definitive *right* answer that someone can go to, see the accepted answer and say &quot;yep, thats the answer.&quot;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6629/how-do-i-explain-something-to-someone&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6961/&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7537/why-do-some-examples-and-list-of-things-questions-get-closed&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Is a question that specifically asks for a summary of a broad topic valuable to Stack Exchange?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234642/is-a-question-that-specifically-asks-for-a-summary-of-a-broad-topic-valuable-to)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help Center &gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as too broad?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21390" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7564" RevisionGUID="8fc4023e-2bc1-4b22-9f5a-3ac32980ccc1" CreationDate="2015-08-26T02:41:05.030" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 665 characters in body" Text="We have a problem.  When people fail in trying to post their question on Stack Overflow, they come here to post it.  This is often the case with people trying to get around a question ban and getting some help anywhere.  Its also occasionally happens with the low quality posts.  It also apparently happens here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't an extremely frequent thing and looking at [this search](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=problem%20is%3aquestion), the questions that it would have blocked are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before people start getting up in arms about the Traveling Salesman *Problem* or the Knapsack *Problem* or the *Problem* domain, lets look at the last month of undeleted questions with 'Problem' in the title.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Problem on PHP and MySQL with jQuery](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294446/problem-on-php-and-mysql-with-jquery) (-8)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Problem 3, project Euler](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294338/problem-3-project-euler)  (-6 deleted)&#xD;&#xA;2. [Having a Problem Passing First Unit Test in Exercism.io Java Challenge](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293924/having-a-problem-passing-first-unit-test-in-exercism-io-java-challenge) (-3 deleted)&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293226/problems-with-storing-plain-text-and-byte-information-in-the-same-file (-1 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291352/problem-with-c-file-io-in-winforms (-2 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291316/problem-with-device-orientation-code-in-firefox-for-android (-2 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;6. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/289935/isnt-there-a-substantial-problem-with-svn-tags?s=173|0.0000 (+2)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 7 there was posted July 16th (over a month ago).  Questions 4, 5, and 6 where migrated to Stack Overflow (apparently its not a problem to migrate problem questions).  I would encourage SE to look into how often these questions get deleted and *don't* show up in my query.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why should this be done? Because questions of this form are rarely good questions.  They are either poorly written questions, or questions that are poorly written ***and*** should have been asked on Stack Overflow.  So instead of dealing with the question on Stack Overflow, the person is frustrated with not being able to post there, *then* posting here, getting the question closed and down voted, and sometimes get the question bounced back to Stack Overflow anyways.  All in all a poor experience for the user and a waste of community close votes here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can also be seen with 'help' in the title:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [C++ Segmentation Fault, Please Help!](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294531/c-segmentation-fault-please-help) (-1 deleted)&#xD;&#xA;2. [I have a problem with math in C++ help me, please](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294517/i-have-a-problem-with-math-in-c-help-me-please) (-4 deleted)&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294213/help-with-shell (-2 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293979/beginner-in-c-needing-help-with-strings-and-memory (0 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290582/help-me-design-this-use-case (+1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fifth item here is from July 23 (again, nearly a month ago) and could use a better title.  Again though, this list shows examples of questions that (if written well) are clearly off topic here and should have instead been asked on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By blocking 'problem' and 'help' from question titles on Stack Overflow, but allowing them here, we get the poor questions and have to deal with them where they clearly don't belong.  This leads to a worse user experience for both the poster and the community and in cases where it is a very poor question, unnecessarily contributes to the OP getting question banned here (though I'll grant if they don't read the faq and ask poor questions here too, they'd probably would have gotten question banned eventually)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21391" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7543" RevisionGUID="215532d0-78b6-4f3f-90f2-21994061928d" CreationDate="2015-08-26T15:39:49.470" UserId="192046" Comment="added 607 characters in body" Text="Allow me to introduce myself, I'm Zizouz212, and I'm a moderator over at Open Source.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I might as well recap what we cover as site scope:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Anything libre/open-source/creative-commons licensing&#xD;&#xA;- Anything to do with open-source project management&#xD;&#xA;- Any questions that ask the community to recommend a license for a project - We allow anything that is in the esteem of being open source (even if the criteria would render it impossible)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, those three elements would likely be what overlaps between Programmers and Open Source. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A while back, I remember I had heard remarks about a conversation between both communities about possibly making open-source questions off-topic and moving it to us, while retaining a few examples that are highly-voted, and placing a historical lock on them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like the principle behind these suggestions, to take a look at the site scope here, and to determine whether to make something off-topic in hope of allowing another site to grow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In terms of Open Source licensing, I'm fine with having site overlap. While I do think that such questions would likely be much better served at Open Source, the decision on whether to change scope or migrate must be a consensus with both communities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have yet to discuss the issue with the community at Open Source. I do not want to post up anything without having had a discussion, but I shall keep this community posted on any developments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community at open source doesn't mind having questions migrated, and having pointers to the site. They just wanted to make this known: don't migrate crap (Yes, we'll reject it). However, if migrations are to happen more often, we want to have a balance between licensing and project-management questions (i.e. Don't migrate just one or the other).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community is quite adamant on, *let them do what they want*, but the decision on whether to make this section on/off-topic is totally up to you peeps." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21392" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6489" RevisionGUID="6dee6592-2ee2-4e63-b91c-a366afc07251" CreationDate="2015-08-26T20:34:44.383" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7513/how-to-ask-how-to-understand-some-code-questions" Text="#Unclear what you are asking#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are looking for, in the [context of Programmers.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This close reason can also be a bit unclear as to what the issue is.  Please be sure to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Give enough context that someone reading the question can understand it&#xD;&#xA;* Explain what you are looking for&#xD;&#xA;* Check to make sure you are not using jargon that is particular to one specific branch of computing (and if you are, either change the jargon or link to a site that explains it)&#xD;&#xA;* Check that there are no hidden assumption or &quot;leaps of thought&quot; in your question. They might be obvious to you, but they won't be to the wider community. It is often better to spell it all out explicitly, even if you think it is blindingly obvious.&#xD;&#xA;* Make sure you are on the proper site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last point is important too.  This close reason is often used as a proxy for &quot;we don't think that this question is a good question for Programmers.SE (it might be on Stack Overflow), but would get closed there too.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explain your design.  Explain what you have done.  Explain where you are having difficulty.  Explain what you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear what help you need](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260) (see also [linked MSE post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/215806/165773))&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7513/how-to-ask-how-to-understand-some-code-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as unclear?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6489/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21393" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7018" RevisionGUID="6949be1d-c4ea-4aff-a761-491ee2450025" CreationDate="2015-08-27T06:01:53.107" UserId="31260" Comment="**Update: [this chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/26942/programmers-cv-please)** has been established with primary focus on question closes, reopens etc." Text="**Update: [this chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/26942/programmers-cv-please)** has been established with primary focus on question closes, reopens etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that chat appears to work more or less fine, I think it makes sense to continue using it. Additional benefit is that chat messages can't be voted down, this addresses concerns mentioned in [another answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7015/31260 &quot;'stop downvoting people who post on meta trying to get questions fixed...'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;A limitation of chat worth keeping in mind is that users with rep under 20 can only read it. But meta has this limitation too, it is lower (5 rep) but still. I don't know a good solution for that, so to keep things simple I will simply assume users having sufficient rep to participate. For users with insufficient reputation, the only reliable approach to communicate seems to be in comments under their posts, optionally [moved to dedicated chat room](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237976/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A drawback of current approach that I am particularly uncomfortable with is that Whiteboard room [scrolls too fast](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions/7018#comment20061_7014 &quot;as been discussed in comments&quot;). Few hours out of chat and I will most likely miss mention of the post I could be interested to improve. Chat pings that take me a while to reply are inconvenient because my reply to these lands in a totally changed context. That's not good. In fact, that's very bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparent solution for this appears to establish a **dedicated chat room** focusing strictly on question improvements. This is just the way I would want to have it, except that [there is a risk](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions/7018#comment20062_7014 &quot;as (again) been discussed in comments&quot;) that room gets frozen due to inactivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way I can think of to deal with room freezes is by using moderator flags: if one finds that room is frozen, they simply flag the post they want to discuss and ask moderator to unlock. *Unless moderators indicate that they would decline such flags* I am going to assume below that this way will work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we pick dedicated chat room approach, it would be worth to check the way how [SO close reviewers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251955/so-close-vote-reviewers) approach this. In brief, they have a room and a cross-linked meta post. As far as I can tell, most activity goes within room, but they also sometimes update / bump the meta post when needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that their gig runs fine for almost a year, we may probably learn something from their experience. (Some might find it ironic to learn from guys that seem to act in somewhat _opposite direction_ but I honestly don't care:).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, I think the dedicated chat room is the way to go (coupled with dedicated meta post, like of SO close reviewers). This doesn't mean though that meta is to be avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Technically, meta provides much richer platform to support complicated improvements and in-depth discussion, it can offer better visibility and powerful [meta effect](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204311/165773). Meta is less likely to be [blocked by corporate firewalls](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/114297/165773 &quot;see 'Provide an alternate URL for chat rooms' at MSE&quot;) etc. Lower barrier to participate (5 rep instead of 20 for chat) is also a benefit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As demonstrated by [broken-windows-review at TWP](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/broken-windows-review &quot;tag dedicated to Workplace questions improvement&quot;), meta can be successfully used to improve questions if done right. This experience also looks worth studying, especially because purpose of review at TWP is very much like one we discuss here: their primary focus is on salvaging and improving the questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21394" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7547" RevisionGUID="ee6c53f1-c240-454c-8cb5-5147fc099a2f" CreationDate="2015-08-27T06:39:21.083" UserId="25936" Comment="102" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="21395" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7568" RevisionGUID="f1a9131f-6ba8-4f5b-a7a1-6b729baf0d72" CreationDate="2015-08-27T08:28:20.767" UserId="12893" Text="I want to know how to improve my front-end web dev skills besides from &quot;learn-by-doing&quot;. I work as a front-end developer and I learn by doing all the time. I want to learn the theory to be prepared so that I don't have to learn by doing. The technologies I want to learn are less, sass and more javascript (jquery, extjs/sencha), front-end testing etc. I.e. everything it takes to become a better front-end developer without just learning by solving practical problem, which I already do. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know book recommendations are usually off-topic on SE sites, can I still ask a question like this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21396" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7568" RevisionGUID="f1a9131f-6ba8-4f5b-a7a1-6b729baf0d72" CreationDate="2015-08-27T08:28:20.767" UserId="12893" Text="Is my question acceptable?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21397" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7568" RevisionGUID="f1a9131f-6ba8-4f5b-a7a1-6b729baf0d72" CreationDate="2015-08-27T08:28:20.767" UserId="12893" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21398" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7564" RevisionGUID="4fdd0afa-7e43-4c5b-84b3-1e9a96e1c8b4" CreationDate="2015-08-27T13:24:09.313" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add another. Update scores and status." Text="We have a problem.  When people fail in trying to post their question on Stack Overflow, they come here to post it.  This is often the case with people trying to get around a question ban and getting some help anywhere.  Its also occasionally happens with the low quality posts.  It also apparently happens here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't an extremely frequent thing and looking at [this search](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=problem%20is%3aquestion), the questions that it would have blocked are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before people start getting up in arms about the Traveling Salesman *Problem* or the Knapsack *Problem* or the *Problem* domain, lets look at the last month of undeleted questions with 'Problem' in the title.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Problem on PHP and MySQL with jQuery](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294446/problem-on-php-and-mysql-with-jquery) (-8)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Problem 3, project Euler](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294338/problem-3-project-euler)  (-6 deleted)&#xD;&#xA;2. [Having a Problem Passing First Unit Test in Exercism.io Java Challenge](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293924/having-a-problem-passing-first-unit-test-in-exercism-io-java-challenge) (-3 deleted)&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293226/problems-with-storing-plain-text-and-byte-information-in-the-same-file (-1 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291352/problem-with-c-file-io-in-winforms (-2 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291316/problem-with-device-orientation-code-in-firefox-for-android (-2 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;6. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/289935/isnt-there-a-substantial-problem-with-svn-tags?s=173|0.0000 (+2)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 7 there was posted July 16th (over a month ago).  Questions 4, 5, and 6 where migrated to Stack Overflow (apparently its not a problem to migrate problem questions).  I would encourage SE to look into how often these questions get deleted and *don't* show up in my query.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why should this be done? Because questions of this form are rarely good questions.  They are either poorly written questions, or questions that are poorly written ***and*** should have been asked on Stack Overflow.  So instead of dealing with the question on Stack Overflow, the person is frustrated with not being able to post there, *then* posting here, getting the question closed and down voted, and sometimes get the question bounced back to Stack Overflow anyways.  All in all a poor experience for the user and a waste of community close votes here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can also be seen with 'help' in the title:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Help with javascript please](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/294727/40980) (-2)&#xD;&#xA;1. [C++ Segmentation Fault, Please Help!](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294531/c-segmentation-fault-please-help) (-7 deleted)&#xD;&#xA;2. [I have a problem with math in C++ help me, please](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294517/i-have-a-problem-with-math-in-c-help-me-please) (-4 deleted)&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294213/help-with-shell (-2 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293979/beginner-in-c-needing-help-with-strings-and-memory (0 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290582/help-me-design-this-use-case (+1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last item here is from July 23 (again, nearly a month ago) and could use a better title.  Again though, this list shows examples of questions that (if written well) are clearly off topic here and should have instead been asked on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By blocking 'problem' and 'help' from question titles on Stack Overflow, but allowing them here, we get the poor questions and have to deal with them where they clearly don't belong.  This leads to a worse user experience for both the poster and the community and in cases where it is a very poor question, unnecessarily contributes to the OP getting question banned here (though I'll grant if they don't read the faq and ask poor questions here too, they'd probably would have gotten question banned eventually)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21399" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7564" RevisionGUID="4fdd0afa-7e43-4c5b-84b3-1e9a96e1c8b4" CreationDate="2015-08-27T13:24:09.313" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add another. Update scores and status." Text="If &quot;Problem&quot; and &quot;Help&quot; are to be blocked on Stack Overflow question titles, block them here too" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21400" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7569" RevisionGUID="13a0111d-df84-4434-a088-9746635c6870" CreationDate="2015-08-27T13:38:27.470" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="We have all seen it: a user asks a question on Programmers that belongs on a different site. There are many technology sites on Stack Exchange, and sometimes navigating the lot of them to find the right site for a question can be daunting for new users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, another user will respond to an off-topic question by saying &quot;post at site XYZ!&quot; The user who asked the question may then post a cross-site duplicate, which has its own set of problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The site recommendation might not be appropriate to begin with.&#xD;&#xA;* The question might be on-topic at the other site, but require editing to avoid being closed at that site.&#xD;&#xA;* Asking on multiple sites may result in _two_ messes to clean up.&#xD;&#xA;* The user asking the question gets bounced between sites, which is almost as bad as calling a cable company for customer support and being bounced between departments. _I just want an answer to my question and nobody here knows where I belong_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have guidance for specific instances of this issue ([What goes on Programmers.SE? A guide for Stack Overflow][1] and [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?][2]), what is the general guidance for dealing with users who recommend asking on another site when the question is off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7182&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/129598" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21401" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7569" RevisionGUID="13a0111d-df84-4434-a088-9746635c6870" CreationDate="2015-08-27T13:38:27.470" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="How do I recommend posting on another Stack Exchange site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21402" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7569" RevisionGUID="13a0111d-df84-4434-a088-9746635c6870" CreationDate="2015-08-27T13:38:27.470" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21403" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7570" RevisionGUID="2d871a37-dec8-4513-b949-f5ca6fad8b7e" CreationDate="2015-08-27T13:38:27.470" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="There are several things to keep in mind when recommending another site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Each site has a help center with a list of on-topic topics: here is the one for [Programmers.SE][1]. Before recommending that a user post on another site, please be familiar with what is on-topic there. That page will typically have links to meta questions that go into more detail. _If you are not sure if a question is appropriate for another site, the answer is &quot;no&quot;_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If a question is more appropriate for another site, it may still need editing to meet quality guidelines. _We do not migrate questions that will be immediately closed because of quality_. Nor do we encourage users to cross-post questions that will be immediately closed because of quality. _Fix the question first_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * It may be more appropriate to let the question close. The user can then ask in the other site's chat or meta for help _before_ reposting the question, with a link to the closed question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * We can edit the closed question and either reopen it and migrate it if there is a migration path, or flag it for a moderator to migrate it if there is not a migration path (moderators can migrate to any site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you are not sure where a question belongs _and_ you feel it is a good-quality question, the right thing to do is join [The Whiteboard chat][2] and ask what to do. If you have enough reputation to leave a comment, you also have enough reputation to [join chat][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Finally, you can always just do nothing. Stack Exchange uses community moderation: there are enough active members in the community that not everyone needs to speak up about every issue. Someone else who has a better feel for the situation will come along and take care of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21404" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7569" RevisionGUID="c95e3ac9-8e2c-438b-8605-0e1eeb546cd5" CreationDate="2015-08-27T16:52:26.953" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21405" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7568" RevisionGUID="31c9a0da-fac3-4231-8ef5-b70fd2a2f715" CreationDate="2015-08-27T16:52:46.653" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6763],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:22815,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Snowman&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="21406" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7564" RevisionGUID="f31c8343-2af7-4516-af3b-1672b3f30691" CreationDate="2015-08-27T16:58:47.723" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Update the troubled history of Help with javascript please" Text="We have a problem.  When people fail in trying to post their question on Stack Overflow, they come here to post it.  This is often the case with people trying to get around a question ban and getting some help anywhere.  Its also occasionally happens with the low quality posts.  It also apparently happens here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't an extremely frequent thing and looking at [this search](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=problem%20is%3aquestion), the questions that it would have blocked are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before people start getting up in arms about the Traveling Salesman *Problem* or the Knapsack *Problem* or the *Problem* domain, lets look at the last month of undeleted questions with 'Problem' in the title.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Problem on PHP and MySQL with jQuery](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294446/problem-on-php-and-mysql-with-jquery) (-8)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Problem 3, project Euler](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294338/problem-3-project-euler)  (-6 deleted)&#xD;&#xA;2. [Having a Problem Passing First Unit Test in Exercism.io Java Challenge](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293924/having-a-problem-passing-first-unit-test-in-exercism-io-java-challenge) (-3 deleted)&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293226/problems-with-storing-plain-text-and-byte-information-in-the-same-file (-1 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291352/problem-with-c-file-io-in-winforms (-2 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291316/problem-with-device-orientation-code-in-firefox-for-android (-2 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;6. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/289935/isnt-there-a-substantial-problem-with-svn-tags?s=173|0.0000 (+2)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 7 there was posted July 16th (over a month ago).  Questions 4, 5, and 6 where migrated to Stack Overflow (apparently its not a problem to migrate problem questions).  I would encourage SE to look into how often these questions get deleted and *don't* show up in my query.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why should this be done? Because questions of this form are rarely good questions.  They are either poorly written questions, or questions that are poorly written ***and*** should have been asked on Stack Overflow.  So instead of dealing with the question on Stack Overflow, the person is frustrated with not being able to post there, *then* posting here, getting the question closed and down voted, and sometimes get the question bounced back to Stack Overflow anyways.  All in all a poor experience for the user and a waste of community close votes here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can also be seen with 'help' in the title:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Help with javascript please](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/294727/40980) (-5, migrated, self deleted, rejected, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;1. [C++ Segmentation Fault, Please Help!](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294531/c-segmentation-fault-please-help) (-7 deleted)&#xD;&#xA;2. [I have a problem with math in C++ help me, please](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294517/i-have-a-problem-with-math-in-c-help-me-please) (-4 deleted)&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294213/help-with-shell (-2 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293979/beginner-in-c-needing-help-with-strings-and-memory (0 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290582/help-me-design-this-use-case (+1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last item here is from July 23 (again, nearly a month ago) and could use a better title.  Again though, this list shows examples of questions that (if written well) are clearly off topic here and should have instead been asked on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By blocking 'problem' and 'help' from question titles on Stack Overflow, but allowing them here, we get the poor questions and have to deal with them where they clearly don't belong.  This leads to a worse user experience for both the poster and the community and in cases where it is a very poor question, unnecessarily contributes to the OP getting question banned here (though I'll grant if they don't read the faq and ask poor questions here too, they'd probably would have gotten question banned eventually)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21407" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7570" RevisionGUID="3954d6d5-ff4f-4f6c-b863-31b90524879d" CreationDate="2015-08-27T17:37:45.377" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="added 353 characters in body" Text="The general rule is to not recommend other sites in comments.  It's more effective to flag the question for moderator attention and explain why the question would be a good fit on the other site.  Recommending other sites frequently leads to cross-posts and split content across sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if you really need to recommend another site in a comment, there are several things to keep in mind when making the recommendation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Each site has a help center with a list of on-topic topics: here is the one for [Programmers.SE][1]. Before recommending that a user post on another site, please be familiar with what is on-topic there. That page will typically have links to meta questions that go into more detail. _If you are not sure if a question is appropriate for another site, the answer is &quot;no&quot;_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If a question is more appropriate for another site, it may still need editing to meet quality guidelines. _We do not migrate questions that will be immediately closed because of quality_. Nor do we encourage users to cross-post questions that will be immediately closed because of quality. _Fix the question first_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * It may be more appropriate to let the question close. The user can then ask in the other site's chat or meta for help _before_ reposting the question, with a link to the closed question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * We can edit the closed question and either reopen it and migrate it if there is a migration path, or flag it for a moderator to migrate it if there is not a migration path (moderators can migrate to any site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you are not sure where a question belongs _and_ you feel it is a good-quality question, the right thing to do is join [The Whiteboard chat][2] and ask what to do. If you have enough reputation to leave a comment, you also have enough reputation to [join chat][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Finally, you can always just do nothing. Stack Exchange uses community moderation: there are enough active members in the community that not everyone needs to speak up about every issue. Someone else who has a better feel for the situation will come along and take care of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21408" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7571" RevisionGUID="d7c73741-d6eb-403f-a855-151758b8ec5d" CreationDate="2015-08-27T18:25:11.263" UserId="4" Text="The general guidance is simple: don't. Never recommend to another user that they should take their site somewhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a user asks a question on Programmers, first see if it's on-topic here. Some subjects may be on-topic on multiple sites. For example, questions about data structures and algorithms may be on-topic on both Programmers and [Computer Science][1], questions about Scrum may be on-topic on both Programmers and [Project Management][2], and questions about using an open-source project in your project may be on-topic on both Programmers and [Open Source][3]. This is OK and to be expected. Each site is a community of experts, and experts in different fields may have overlapping knowledge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is off-topic on Programmers and you can vote to migrate it to the appropriate site, please do so. Programmers has a migration target to Stack Overflow that is open to everyone to use. If you think it is off-topic here and needs to go somewhere else, flag it for moderator review. Moderators can migrate questions to any site on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is not off-topic on Programmers, simply do nothing...at least right away. If it's been a while and it's not getting answers or you think that it would get better answers somewhere else, flag it for moderator attention. Explain why you think it would get better answers somewhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you know of similar questions on other sites, do link to those. They may be helpful to the asker. If you feel like it, it's OK to reference answers on other sites, remembering the proper attribution required by [CC BY-SA license][4] that applies to all content on Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you've asked the question and you think it should be migrated to another site, do flag it for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Never use a comment to suggest other sites - it simply leads to cross-posting. And if the question isn't a high quality question or isn't appropriate for the community that you suggest, and it ends up getting down votes and close votes on the other site, the asker could end up in a situation where they encounter an automatic question ban. That's not a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21409" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7569" RevisionGUID="2edd4cf3-d2af-4022-b343-4c13e2a18467" CreationDate="2015-08-27T20:06:56.553" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/636993318094659584" />
  <row Id="21410" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7572" RevisionGUID="df1a657e-2a2f-4453-b58a-011ad99832b1" CreationDate="2015-08-28T17:16:07.847" UserId="95836" Text="I asked [a question about whether an oft-quoted piece of programmer wisdom has empirical evidence to back it up](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294820/is-there-any-evidence-based-examination-or-modification-of-brooks-law). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was closed within seconds using the close reason normally used for lazy questions asking for laundry lists of libraries and other resources. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the comments, it's not clear what the reasoning is - a comment says &quot;It looks like you're asking for a paper or book&quot;, but I'm not, I'm asking about the currently available evidence on a topic, the results of research testing a claim.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are questions about empirical evidence off topic here? I see a lot of answers that are just one line, &quot;Someone said '[some witticism]'&quot; which get a surprising number of upvotes. Does this site favour anecdotes over evidence?&#xD;&#xA; - If not, how do I need to rephrase my question to allow someone to post an objective, factual answer like &quot;This has been investigated by researchers in [discipline], the evidence points towards [X] with [Y] caveat, the most recent peer-reviewed literature review / the largest study to date is [citation]&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This [meta thread][1] appears to suggest that questions about empirical evidence are on topic so long as they are about the state of the evidence, not &quot;What's the best book on X&quot;. That is absolutely 100% the intention of my question. Is this still the policy? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If so, how do I need to re-phrase my question to stop people misreading it as &quot;pleez can I has teh books&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Incidentally, this is the first time in 4+ years on stack exchange that I've run into problems for a question being *too* evidence based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5589/is-a-question-about-research-material-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21411" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7572" RevisionGUID="df1a657e-2a2f-4453-b58a-011ad99832b1" CreationDate="2015-08-28T17:16:07.847" UserId="95836" Text="Is empirical evidence off topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21412" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7572" RevisionGUID="df1a657e-2a2f-4453-b58a-011ad99832b1" CreationDate="2015-08-28T17:16:07.847" UserId="95836" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21413" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7573" RevisionGUID="29d45bc3-dd64-47d8-b5f2-3342ca74af59" CreationDate="2015-08-28T17:37:08.417" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="&gt; My question was closed within seconds using the close reason normally used for lazy questions asking for laundry lists of libraries and other resources. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not about calling it a &quot;lazy question&quot;.  That's the standard close reason for off-site resource requests.  And that's why the final item in the list is there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  or favorite off-site resource &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I rephrased your question to &quot;Does Programmers.SE have any empirical evidence backing Brooks' claims?&quot;  The answer is &quot;No, it doesn't.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if we use a loose form of the question you asked &quot;Is there any empirical evidence backing Brooks' claims?&quot;  The answer is &quot;we don't know.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you haven't already, have a read of [this meta answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/53019) that goes into detail why off-site resource questions are closed.  And yes, there is a portion in that answer that directly addresses the main point of your meta question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21414" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7572" RevisionGUID="4316bddf-60df-4f77-9eda-819042153ad0" CreationDate="2015-08-28T17:48:24.940" UserId="95836" Comment="added 614 characters in body" Text="I asked [a question about whether an oft-quoted piece of programmer wisdom has empirical evidence to back it up](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294820/is-there-any-evidence-based-examination-or-modification-of-brooks-law). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was closed within seconds using the close reason normally used for lazy questions asking for laundry lists of libraries and other resources. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the comments, it's not clear what the reasoning is - a comment says &quot;It looks like you're asking for a paper or book&quot;, but I'm not, I'm asking about the currently available evidence on a topic, the results of research testing a claim.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are questions about empirical evidence off topic here? I see a lot of answers that are just one line, &quot;Someone said '[some witticism]'&quot; which get a surprising number of upvotes. Does this site favour anecdotes over evidence?&#xD;&#xA; - If not, how do I need to rephrase my question to allow someone to post an objective, factual answer like &quot;This has been investigated by researchers in [discipline], the evidence points towards [X] with [Y] caveat, the most recent peer-reviewed literature review / the largest study to date is [citation]&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This [meta thread][1] appears to suggest that questions about empirical evidence are on topic so long as they are about the state of the evidence, not &quot;What's the best book on X&quot;. That is absolutely 100% the intention of my question. Is this still the policy? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If so, how do I need to re-phrase my question to stop people misreading it as &quot;pleez can I has teh books&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Incidentally, this is the first time in 4+ years on stack exchange that I've run into problems for a question being *too* evidence based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the discussion I've seen so far, I'm starting to get the impression that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **What does real empirical research say regarding Brook's law?** would be of topic because when evidence is peer reviewed, it becomes an &quot;off site resource&quot; rather than a user's opinion&#xD;&#xA; - **Do you guys think Brook's law is true?** would somehow be more on topic because it relies on experience of users of the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Experienced programmers use research relevant to their field and are in a better position than anyone to see through methodological problems and see what is practical research and what is flawed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5589/is-a-question-about-research-material-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21415" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7574" RevisionGUID="e4c98311-79c3-4013-82b8-b0dfec34a97e" CreationDate="2015-08-28T19:52:23.273" UserId="95836" Text="I had an hour-long discussion with moderators and senior users. As an experienced SE user, the results were very surprising. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**TLDR;** evidence-based questions and answers are not held in the same esteem here as on other sites. It's expected that questions are answered from experience, not evidence. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even after an hour, the moderators couldn't find any way to ask about the state of evidence on an on-topic topic that wouldn't be counted as a &quot;reference request&quot; - even though it was accepted that this type of question is routine on other sites on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's a brief summary of a long, long chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers does have a very different policy on evidence to other sites. The preference is for personal ancedotal experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **GlenH7:** Asking for empirical evidence (aka research on a subject) will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; inherently consist of links off-site. That puts Programmers in the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; position of being research librarians, which isn't terribly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interesting to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After explaining that, on most sites on SE, answerers provide expert summaries of the most relevant research, sometimes with reference to personal experience, it was explained that Programmers is different&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Me:** Look at any good answer on Skeptics.SE. It's an expert-based summary of research, WITH references, not a list of references. Look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at any good answer on biology, chemstry, physics, cogsci - even good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; quality answers on UX&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **enderland:** Skeptics is not Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After pointing out [an example of an excellent evidence-based answer that wasn't simply a reference dump]( http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/179616/a-good-programmer-can-be-as-10x-times-more-productive-than-a-mediocre-one), it was immediately decided to close that other question, and the evidence-based answer was described as being no better in content than other opinion-based answers, beyond being well written.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Me:** gnat has a great evidence-based answer here. You can see clearly how his (?) expertise helped inform the elements of the study&#xD;&#xA;&gt; he picks out. Doesn't look like anyone's in a rush to delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.stackexchange.com/…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **enderland:** I expect that will end up closed in.. a short while&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **MichaelT:** You are also missing seeing the deleted answer and that more answers would be equally right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Essentially, emperical evidence appears to be something this community has chosen not to be interested in. That's fair enough, it's your community, it's just very unusual for SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **GlenH7:** I think Brooks' Law is better asked on Skeptics. The Progs community tends to be too pragmatic to worry too much about making sure there's backing research when firsthand experience backs the principle&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** That's another reason why you likely won't find what you want here. We're professional software developers. I read books. I read IEEE Software and the ACM magazines. But I don't read the hardcore research and whitepapers, because it's not likely to help me do my job. Anecdotes are pretty powerful to me, though. I have enough experience to take someone writing about their situation, pick out the things that apply to me, and reason if they will help me. ... we aren't a science site. We're a bunch of people in the trenches.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21416" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7574" RevisionGUID="c1e12f7c-5dc9-4a8f-a8a8-b1244560d2fb" CreationDate="2015-08-28T19:58:31.493" UserId="95836" Comment="added 66 characters in body" Text="I had an hour-long discussion with moderators and senior users. As an experienced SE user, the results were very surprising, but this isn't my site, so I'll accept your policies as they are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**TLDR;** evidence-based questions and answers are not held in the same esteem here as on other sites. It's expected that questions are answered from experience, not evidence. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even after an hour, the moderators couldn't find any way to ask about the state of evidence on an on-topic topic that wouldn't be counted as a &quot;reference request&quot; - even though it was accepted that this type of question is routine on other sites on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's a brief summary of a long, long chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers does have a very different policy on evidence to other sites. The preference is for personal ancedotal experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **GlenH7:** Asking for empirical evidence (aka research on a subject) will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; inherently consist of links off-site. That puts Programmers in the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; position of being research librarians, which isn't terribly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interesting to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After explaining that, on most sites on SE, answerers provide expert summaries of the most relevant research, sometimes with reference to personal experience, it was explained that Programmers is different&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Me:** Look at any good answer on Skeptics.SE. It's an expert-based summary of research, WITH references, not a list of references. Look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at any good answer on biology, chemstry, physics, cogsci - even good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; quality answers on UX&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **enderland:** Skeptics is not Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After pointing out [an example of an excellent evidence-based answer that wasn't simply a reference dump]( http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/179616/a-good-programmer-can-be-as-10x-times-more-productive-than-a-mediocre-one), it was immediately decided to close that other question, and the evidence-based answer was described as being no better in content than other opinion-based answers, beyond being well written.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Me:** gnat has a great evidence-based answer here. You can see clearly how his (?) expertise helped inform the elements of the study&#xD;&#xA;&gt; he picks out. Doesn't look like anyone's in a rush to delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.stackexchange.com/…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **enderland:** I expect that will end up closed in.. a short while&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **MichaelT:** You are also missing seeing the deleted answer and that more answers would be equally right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Essentially, emperical evidence appears to be something this community has chosen not to be interested in. That's fair enough, it's your community, it's just very unusual for SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **GlenH7:** I think Brooks' Law is better asked on Skeptics. The Progs community tends to be too pragmatic to worry too much about making sure there's backing research when firsthand experience backs the principle&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** That's another reason why you likely won't find what you want here. We're professional software developers. I read books. I read IEEE Software and the ACM magazines. But I don't read the hardcore research and whitepapers, because it's not likely to help me do my job. Anecdotes are pretty powerful to me, though. I have enough experience to take someone writing about their situation, pick out the things that apply to me, and reason if they will help me. ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** we aren't a science site. We're a bunch of people in the trenches.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** sharing a personal experience is immediately sufficient for supporting evidence" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21417" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7574" RevisionGUID="0dac9689-1d46-4185-8664-a67188efe4e9" CreationDate="2015-08-28T20:23:17.343" UserId="95836" Comment="added 145 characters in body" Text="I had an hour-long discussion with moderators and senior users. As an experienced SE user, the results were very surprising, but this isn't my site, so I'll accept your policies as they are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**TLDR;** evidence-based questions and answers are not held in the same esteem here as on other sites. It's expected that questions are answered from individuals' experience. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After an hour, the moderators couldn't find any way to ask about the state of evidence on an on-topic topic that wouldn't be counted as a &quot;reference request&quot; - even though it was accepted that this type of question is routine on other sites on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's a brief summary of a long, long chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers does have a very different policy on evidence to other sites. The preference is for personal ancedotal experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **GlenH7:** Asking for empirical evidence (aka research on a subject) will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; inherently consist of links off-site. That puts Programmers in the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; position of being research librarians, which isn't terribly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interesting to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After explaining that, on most sites on SE, answerers provide expert summaries of the most relevant research, sometimes with reference to personal experience, it was explained that Programmers is different&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Me:** Look at any good answer on Skeptics.SE. It's an expert-based summary of research, WITH references, not a list of references. Look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at any good answer on biology, chemstry, physics, cogsci - even good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; quality answers on UX&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **enderland:** Skeptics is not Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After pointing out [an example of an excellent evidence-based answer that wasn't simply a reference dump]( http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/179616/a-good-programmer-can-be-as-10x-times-more-productive-than-a-mediocre-one), it was immediately decided to close that other question, and the evidence-based answer was described as being no better in content than other opinion-based answers, beyond being well written.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Me:** gnat has a great evidence-based answer here. You can see clearly how his (?) expertise helped inform the elements of the study&#xD;&#xA;&gt; he picks out. Doesn't look like anyone's in a rush to delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.stackexchange.com/…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **enderland:** I expect that will end up closed in.. a short while&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **MichaelT:** You are also missing seeing the deleted answer and that more answers would be equally right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Essentially, emperical evidence appears to be something this community has chosen not to be interested in. That's fair enough, it's your community, it's just very unusual for SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **GlenH7:** I think Brooks' Law is better asked on Skeptics. The Progs community tends to be too pragmatic to worry too much about making sure there's backing research when firsthand experience backs the principle&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** That's another reason why you likely won't find what you want here. We're professional software developers. I read books. I read IEEE Software and the ACM magazines. But I don't read the hardcore research and whitepapers, because it's not likely to help me do my job. Anecdotes are pretty powerful to me, though. I have enough experience to take someone writing about their situation, pick out the things that apply to me, and reason if they will help me. ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** we aren't a science site. We're a bunch of people in the trenches.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** sharing a personal experience is immediately sufficient for supporting evidence&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Telastyn:** The rule is: if the question is asking for something that they can find themselves by doing research, it is off topic here. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Jimmy:** oh goodness we don't bother with that sort of thing. You want methodologies and google scholar? Hit up CS" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21418" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7574" RevisionGUID="73a1fb29-58d7-47fc-bca7-a366859d2d67" CreationDate="2015-08-28T20:28:31.643" UserId="95836" Comment="added 145 characters in body" Text="I had an hour-long discussion with moderators and senior users. As an experienced SE user, the results were very surprising, but this isn't my site, so I'll accept your policies as they are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**TLDR;** evidence-based questions and answers are not held in the same esteem here as on other sites. It's expected that questions are answered from individuals' experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After an hour, the moderators couldn't find any way to ask about the state of evidence on an on-topic topic that wouldn't be counted as a &quot;reference request&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was accepted that this type of question is routine on other sites on the network, but is apparently not allowed here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's a brief summary of a long, long chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers does have a very different policy on evidence to other sites. The preference is for personal ancedotal experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **GlenH7:** Asking for empirical evidence (aka research on a subject) will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; inherently consist of links off-site. That puts Programmers in the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; position of being research librarians, which isn't terribly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interesting to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After explaining that, on most sites on SE, answerers provide expert summaries of the most relevant research, sometimes with reference to personal experience, it was explained that Programmers is different&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Me:** Look at any good answer on Skeptics.SE. It's an expert-based summary of research, WITH references, not a list of references. Look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at any good answer on biology, chemstry, physics, cogsci - even good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; quality answers on UX&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **enderland:** Skeptics is not Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After pointing out [an example of an excellent evidence-based answer that wasn't simply a reference dump]( http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/179616/a-good-programmer-can-be-as-10x-times-more-productive-than-a-mediocre-one), it was immediately decided to close that other question, and the evidence-based answer was described as being no better in content than other opinion-based answers, beyond being well written.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Me:** gnat has a great evidence-based answer here. You can see clearly how his (?) expertise helped inform the elements of the study&#xD;&#xA;&gt; he picks out. Doesn't look like anyone's in a rush to delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.stackexchange.com/…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **enderland:** I expect that will end up closed in.. a short while&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **MichaelT:** You are also missing seeing the deleted answer and that more answers would be equally right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Essentially, emperical evidence appears to be something this community has chosen not to be interested in. That's fair enough, it's your community, it's just very unusual for SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **GlenH7:** I think Brooks' Law is better asked on Skeptics. The Progs community tends to be too pragmatic to worry too much about making sure there's backing research when firsthand experience backs the principle&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** That's another reason why you likely won't find what you want here. We're professional software developers. I read books. I read IEEE Software and the ACM magazines. But I don't read the hardcore research and whitepapers, because it's not likely to help me do my job. Anecdotes are pretty powerful to me, though. I have enough experience to take someone writing about their situation, pick out the things that apply to me, and reason if they will help me. ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** we aren't a science site. We're a bunch of people in the trenches.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** sharing a personal experience is immediately sufficient for supporting evidence&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** You need to ask us a question that you'd ask a coworker in a conference room or at a whiteboard.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Jimmy:** oh goodness we don't bother with that sort of thing. You want methodologies and google scholar? Hit up CS&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **MichaelT:** The trade magazines we read are certainly not peer reviewed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21419" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7574" RevisionGUID="a048e266-2114-466e-864b-9dcd1a31596a" CreationDate="2015-08-28T20:45:08.780" UserId="95836" Comment="deleted 109 characters in body" Text="I had an hour-long discussion with moderators and senior users. As an experienced SE user, the results were very surprising, but this isn't my site, so I'll accept your policies as they are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**TLDR;** evidence-based questions and answers are not held in the same esteem here as on other sites. It's expected that questions are answered from individuals' experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After an hour, the moderators couldn't find any way to ask about the state of evidence on an on-topic topic that wouldn't be counted as a &quot;reference request&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was accepted that this type of question is routine on other sites on the network, but is apparently not allowed here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's a brief summary of a long, long chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers does have a very different policy on evidence to other sites. The preference is for personal ancedotal experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **GlenH7:** Asking for empirical evidence (aka research on a subject) will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; inherently consist of links off-site. That puts Programmers in the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; position of being research librarians, which isn't terribly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interesting to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After explaining that, on most sites on SE, answerers provide expert summaries of the most relevant research, sometimes with reference to personal experience, it was explained that Programmers is different&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Me:** Look at any good answer on Skeptics.SE. It's an expert-based summary of research, WITH references, not a list of references. Look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at any good answer on biology, chemstry, physics, cogsci - even good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; quality answers on UX&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **enderland:** Skeptics is not Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After pointing out [an example of an excellent evidence-based answer that wasn't simply a reference dump]( http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/179616/a-good-programmer-can-be-as-10x-times-more-productive-than-a-mediocre-one), it was immediately decided to close that other question, and the evidence-based answer was described as being no better in content than other opinion-based answers, beyond being well written.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Me:** gnat has a great evidence-based answer here. You can see clearly how his (?) expertise helped inform the elements of the study&#xD;&#xA;&gt; he picks out. Doesn't look like anyone's in a rush to delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.stackexchange.com/…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **enderland:** I expect that will end up closed in.. a short while&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **MichaelT:** You are also missing seeing the deleted answer and that more answers would be equally right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Essentially, emperical evidence appears to be something this community has chosen not to be interested in. That's fair enough, it's your community, it's just very unusual for SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **GlenH7:** I think Brooks' Law is better asked on Skeptics. The Progs community tends to be too pragmatic to worry too much about making sure there's backing research when firsthand experience backs the principle&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** ...I read books. I read IEEE Software and the ACM magazines. But I don't read the hardcore research and whitepapers, because it's not likely to help me do my job. Anecdotes are pretty powerful to me, though. I have enough experience to take someone writing about their situation, pick out the things that apply to me, and reason if they will help me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** we aren't a science site. We're a bunch of people in the trenches.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** sharing a personal experience is immediately sufficient for supporting evidence&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** You need to ask us a question that you'd ask a coworker in a conference room or at a whiteboard.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Jimmy:** oh goodness we don't bother with that sort of thing. You want methodologies and google scholar? Hit up CS&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **MichaelT:** The trade magazines we read are certainly not peer reviewed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21420" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6492" RevisionGUID="095fee77-b92e-4934-8a25-58cb01e4124f" CreationDate="2015-08-29T13:05:58.210" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Summary of the site from chat ( http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/23744163#23744163 )." Text="#Other#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions can be closed with a custom reason.  These are found in the comments for the question.  To that extent it is difficult to enumerate all the possible reasons people may try to close a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The essence of Programmers.SE was summed up in chat by Thomas Owens:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Picture Programmers like a small conference room with a whiteboard. No computer, no books, no papers. You write your question on the whiteboard and experts walk by. Someone sees one that they can answer, they stop in and help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read the explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6251/how-can-i-write-a-good-custom-close-message&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/why-do-certification-questions-keep-getting-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6283/current-events-questions-and-answers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [cross-posting (posting the same question over multiple Stack Exchange sites)](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed - other reasons](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6492/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21421" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5589" RevisionGUID="9c49e154-e95d-4421-906b-2140f7ce11e9" CreationDate="2015-08-30T00:32:03.647" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6483],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:52929,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;enderland&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:40980,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;MichaelT&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:22815,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Snowman&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="21422" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7545" RevisionGUID="1ed03296-e184-4792-a4a4-be3cc768b801" CreationDate="2015-08-30T00:37:26.767" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Fixed typo." Text="Based upon a [recent answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7534/53019)&lt;sup&gt;1, 2&lt;/sup&gt; to a [previous question of mine](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6507/53019), I'd like to re-visit an older request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Please give all close voters&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; on Programmers 50 votes instead of the standard 24&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_Why?_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All of the [original reasons](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6507/53019) that were laid out before still hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. New users to the site end up with a poor impression regarding what is on-topic for the site when off-topic questions are not cleared out quickly.  The more quickly we can patch up the broken windows, the more favorable Programmers and StackExchange appear to new visitors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. The [stats show](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7534/53019) that our active close voters regularly run out of votes and this is impacting their ability to help provide community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. The influx of low quality questions from {bans at SO | ignorance of SO} continues to increase.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. Items like the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7285/53019) put a strain on the community when they are trying to balance closing off incoming low quality questions as well as cleaning up old NPR-style low quality questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. This version of the request is much easier to implement as it's already part of the per-site configuration setting and doesn't require a code change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. More close votes means being able to migrate questions more quickly.  That in turn cuts down on extra work created for mods when they have to merge cross-posted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;`Finally, if we were going to increase the limit, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to just raise it for 10k users. From a very practical standpoint, changing it for everyone is a site setting, but changing it for users over 10k would require a code change. For another, the setting has already been raised to 50 for 3k+ users on SO, Math, Super User, Ubuntu, and Server Fault without any particular problems. I'd suggest removing that portion of the feature request that needlessly confuses matters`&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;[Gratuitous footnotes are because I heard someone likes them](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/166518/194162)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;By &quot;Close Voters&quot;, I mean anyone who has earned [at least 3k rep](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions) on the site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;My assumption is that the number of allowed votes in the close review queue increases proportionately, but if not, I'll make a separate request.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21423" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7575" RevisionGUID="0bfc77c7-cf60-4627-ba65-ed8ebdfe6db1" CreationDate="2015-08-30T12:34:33.857" UserId="161917" Text="We have a lot of bad questions to clean up, and not very many delete votes to do it with. So it's commonplace to downvote questions worthy of deletion to make the &quot;roomba&quot; delete them for us rather than wasting precious delete votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only problem with this is [the roomba is kinda complicated](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/5222/279182), and that answer is written from the roomba's POV rather than the delete voter's POV, so it's not immediately obvious under what circumstances I should use downvotes and/or close votes instead of delete votes. After studying that MSE answer for a while, I believe the most useful algorithm for me to try to remember is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    if question is locked, migrated, has reopen votes, or is not worthy of deletion&#xD;&#xA;    	ignore these questions for the purpose of this algorithm&#xD;&#xA;    if there is an accepted answer&#xD;&#xA;    	delete vote&#xD;&#xA;    if no answers at all&#xD;&#xA;    	if question has negative score&#xD;&#xA;    		roomba in 30 days&#xD;&#xA;    	else if question has &quot;low&quot; score&#xD;&#xA;            // the super-picky 365-day roomba might get some of these, but...&#xD;&#xA;    		downvote until it has a negative score&#xD;&#xA;    		roomba in 30 days&#xD;&#xA;    	else&#xD;&#xA;    		delete vote&#xD;&#xA;    if there are answers, but none are accepted&#xD;&#xA;        close vote (not as duplicate) if not already closed&#xD;&#xA;    	if question and all answers have non-positive score&#xD;&#xA;            roomba in 9 days&#xD;&#xA;    	else if question and all answers have &quot;low&quot; score&#xD;&#xA;    		downvote until all are non-positive&#xD;&#xA;            roomba in 9 days&#xD;&#xA;    	else&#xD;&#xA;    		delete vote&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have I missed or misunderstood anything?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21424" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7575" RevisionGUID="0bfc77c7-cf60-4627-ba65-ed8ebdfe6db1" CreationDate="2015-08-30T12:34:33.857" UserId="161917" Text="How to tell when to downvote for the roomba instead of wasting a delete vote" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21425" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7575" RevisionGUID="0bfc77c7-cf60-4627-ba65-ed8ebdfe6db1" CreationDate="2015-08-30T12:34:33.857" UserId="161917" Text="|discussion|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21426" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7575" RevisionGUID="14ecd69a-96a7-4c68-9083-8d2e627651c6" CreationDate="2015-08-30T15:47:42.473" UserId="161917" Comment="added 59 characters in body" Text="We have a lot of bad questions to clean up, and not very many delete votes to do it with. So it's commonplace to downvote questions worthy of deletion to make the &quot;roomba&quot; delete them for us rather than wasting precious delete votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only problem with this is [the roomba is kinda complicated](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/5222/279182), and that answer is written from the roomba's POV rather than the delete voter's POV, so it's not immediately obvious under what circumstances I should use downvotes and/or close votes instead of delete votes. After studying that MSE answer for a while, I believe the most useful algorithm for me to try to remember is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    if question is locked, migrated, has reopen votes, or is not worthy of deletion&#xD;&#xA;    	ignore these questions for the purpose of this algorithm&#xD;&#xA;    else if there is an accepted answer&#xD;&#xA;    	delete vote&#xD;&#xA;    else &#xD;&#xA;        close vote (not as duplicate) if not already closed&#xD;&#xA;    	if question has negative score&#xD;&#xA;        	roomba in 9 days&#xD;&#xA;        else if question has &quot;low&quot; score&#xD;&#xA;    	    downvote until it has a negative score&#xD;&#xA;    	    roomba in 9 days&#xD;&#xA;    	else&#xD;&#xA;    	    delete vote&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have I missed or misunderstood anything?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21427" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7575" RevisionGUID="9c592ddc-24a5-40fb-990f-c92a96bedce9" CreationDate="2015-08-30T15:53:08.053" UserId="161917" Comment="added 59 characters in body" Text="We have a lot of bad questions to clean up, and not very many delete votes to do it with. So it's commonplace to downvote questions worthy of deletion to make the &quot;roomba&quot; delete them for us rather than wasting precious delete votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only problem with this is [the roomba is kinda complicated](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/5222/279182), and that answer is written from the roomba's POV rather than the delete voter's POV, so it's not immediately obvious under what circumstances I should use downvotes and/or close votes instead of delete votes. After studying that MSE answer for a while, I believe the most useful algorithm for me to try to remember is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    if question is locked, migrated, has reopen votes, or is not worthy of deletion&#xD;&#xA;    	ignore these questions for the purpose of this algorithm&#xD;&#xA;    else if there is an accepted answer&#xD;&#xA;    	delete vote&#xD;&#xA;    else &#xD;&#xA;        close vote (not as duplicate) if not already closed&#xD;&#xA;    	if question and all answers have non-positive scores&#xD;&#xA;        	roomba in 9 days&#xD;&#xA;        else if question and all answers have &quot;low&quot; score&#xD;&#xA;    	    downvote them until they have non-positive scores&#xD;&#xA;    	    roomba in 9 days&#xD;&#xA;    	else&#xD;&#xA;    	    delete vote&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have I missed or misunderstood anything?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21428" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7576" RevisionGUID="12add03b-4211-4fc9-91dd-385984727c97" CreationDate="2015-08-30T19:04:01.343" UserId="31260" Text="That's a very good question but I think every user having a privilege to delete may answer it a bit differently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Amount of delete votes is limited and one better takes care to use them efficiently. From this perspective, questions that are to be auto-deleted are lower priority indeed. When voting on these, one needs to decide whether it is worth it to &quot;help&quot; system to have a question deleted sooner than it would happen automatically, or it makes better sense to vote something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One kind of &quot;doomed&quot; questions I prefer to vote delete (YMMV) is those with titles looking like [broken windows](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info). &quot;Help with career as programmer&quot;, &quot;recommend me tutorials&quot;, &quot;problem: syntax error when adding 2 and 2&quot;, stuff like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;This is especially so when question title contains words that are blocked at Stack Overflow - [&quot;problem&quot; and &quot;help&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7567/31260). Very presence of such questions sends a signal to folks blocked by quality filter over there that they can try their luck here. If it additionally happens that such question gets migrated to SO (losing negative score along the way), this is not just a signal, a royal road for one willing to use Programmers as **drafting area** for off-topic implementation questions (that's by the way why I _never_ vote to migrate such questions - at the very least, I'd edit blocked words out of the title before doing so).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another kind of &quot;doomed&quot; questions I tend to vote delete is ones that already have two delete votes. It sometimes happens mind you that I find it harmless and prefer to leave it hanging around until auto-deleted, but this happens very _very_ rarely. Overwhelming majority looks like a terrible content deserving speedy deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not surprising, if you think of it. Single delete vote may be emotional, but for two high-rep users to fall into a blind rage is really unlikely. (I sometimes even wonder why moderators don't use this simple heuristics to check for questions worthy of a fast removal).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only thing I would recommend against is to be emotional when voting to delete. As you can see from above, this will most likely lead to your vote being wasted without making a difference. Try sticking with carefully calculated decisions, re-check delete votes tab in your profile to learn whether these work as you wanted to or not, adjust your criteria if needed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21429" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7572" RevisionGUID="cf38e6e0-9231-477f-a2a4-495927aeaf0c" CreationDate="2015-08-31T14:41:39.497" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6483],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:88986,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;durron597&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:22815,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Snowman&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:52929,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;enderland&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="21430" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7577" RevisionGUID="0324f817-6a6e-444c-87e6-0ba8e1cf9c65" CreationDate="2015-09-01T11:36:42.290" UserId="149087" Text="Sometimes I see questions that ask you to recommend a solution to a very specific problem. I can break it down to a general problem A that must also cover x, y and z specific issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can usually provide an answer for problem A that covers most of the specific issues but not all of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the best way to explain that the asker will need to investigate further to get my solution to work." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21431" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7577" RevisionGUID="0324f817-6a6e-444c-87e6-0ba8e1cf9c65" CreationDate="2015-09-01T11:36:42.290" UserId="149087" Text="answering approach to problem questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21432" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7577" RevisionGUID="0324f817-6a6e-444c-87e6-0ba8e1cf9c65" CreationDate="2015-09-01T11:36:42.290" UserId="149087" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21433" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7578" RevisionGUID="ab4ee585-6731-4538-a8dc-baf0f1a3f910" CreationDate="2015-09-01T23:16:54.380" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Such a question might be too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are unable to explain a solution fully, it means you are missing something required to complete the answer. Assuming it is not your own training or experience, the question may be missing a piece of information, or one aspect of it might be too vague. Providing an answer would be far too verbose, or could boil down to &quot;pick something.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let us consult the &quot;too broad&quot; [close reason][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; too long for this format. Please add details to narrow down the answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The proper thing to do in this case is to ask for clarification in a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I tried answering your question and came up with some good points, but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this one aspect is giving me trouble: do you mind expanding on this a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; little bit to help nail down the scope or provide additional&#xD;&#xA;&gt; clarification?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It _may_ be acceptable to provide the answer anyway and edit it later: this depends on if your answer is complete _enough_ to be useful as-is. If you are missing something optional, or provide a big enough push in the right direction, then go ahead and answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key to think of is to ask yourself _if I were someone else, would I upvote or downvote the answer as-is without the additional clarification?_ I hope I do not need to explain whether to post or to wait depending on the outcome of that self-question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please do keep in mind that Stack Exchange is about living content that is owned by the community: every day, users go back and edit years-old questions and answers as the underlying information evolves. Several times per week I edit old answers to update broken links, add notes about evolving technology (e.g. &quot;back in Java 5 this was how it was done, now we have some new-fangled Java 8 feature that makes it easier&quot;), and more. There is nothing wrong with leaving a valid answer then going back and improving it later. They key is _valid answer_: do not write a half-assed answer and expect to go back and edit it without a few downvotes and comments to take care of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21434" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7579" RevisionGUID="ae6b4ee1-9122-4f61-bd1e-2715100438a6" CreationDate="2015-09-01T23:29:21.130" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="In general, do not suggest posting between sites. What generally happens is the asker goes ahead and asks again without heeding the advice &quot;...but check the help center&quot; or &quot;...but delete this one first.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only acceptable time to propose posting on another site is when the following three conditions are met:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The question is closed on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Portions of the question are applicable on _different_ sites. For example: a question that asks about software design _and_ licensing. It would then be appropriate to say &quot;now that it is closed, split this into two questions. Keep the first half here, ask the second half at OpenSource.SE.&quot; Once the edits are done, we reopen the on-topic half here at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The person making the recommendation is intimately familiar with the scope of both sites. He would be comfortable with [the moderators at both sites being violent psychopaths who knows where he lives][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/876089" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21435" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7580" RevisionGUID="5cc74dd5-5c37-4578-ba2b-d28dfd97d7fe" CreationDate="2015-09-02T14:34:48.937" UserId="136927" Text="[This][1] question was put on hold by users, and then locked by the Community user. I agree that its not a on-topic for this site but&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Why was it locked? I think putting it on hold is plenty.&#xD;&#xA; 2. How did the Community user lock it? I thought only human mods can lock posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/295169/can-an-abstract-class-be-instantiated" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21436" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7580" RevisionGUID="5cc74dd5-5c37-4578-ba2b-d28dfd97d7fe" CreationDate="2015-09-02T14:34:48.937" UserId="136927" Text="Why and how did the Community user lock this post?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21437" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7580" RevisionGUID="5cc74dd5-5c37-4578-ba2b-d28dfd97d7fe" CreationDate="2015-09-02T14:34:48.937" UserId="136927" Text="|discussion|locked-question|community|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21440" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7580" RevisionGUID="f995fb20-8524-40d7-99cc-aa3f5d9488a8" CreationDate="2015-09-02T16:37:34.627" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Link to revisions for quick timeline." Text="[This][1] ([revisions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/295169/revisions)) question was put on hold by users, and then locked by the Community user. I agree that its not a on-topic for this site but&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Why was it locked? I think putting it on hold is plenty.&#xD;&#xA; 2. How did the Community user lock it? I thought only human mods can lock posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/295169/can-an-abstract-class-be-instantiated" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21441" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7581" RevisionGUID="d7dc6402-c864-4a02-86b6-7d5cf32a55b7" CreationDate="2015-09-02T16:42:20.700" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="When a post is migrated to another site, the Community user locks the post to prevent attempts at reopening, votes, and comments (and really, the only way to get to the post is to [?noredirect=1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/295169/can-an-abstract-class-be-instantiated?noredirect=1) in the url).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Eventually (30 days), the post will be deleted if the migration isn't rejected on the other site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of the combination of the lock and the migration is to direct all future activity on the post on to the other site rather than having it fracture between two different sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21442" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7582" RevisionGUID="9c842d23-a40d-4f56-98f3-5f53cc4d704e" CreationDate="2015-09-02T22:34:17.540" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I delete as soon as I can in cases where the question is unsalvageable. This might have something to do with having more delete votes than down votes (delete votes scale with reputation). I've got 30 delete votes a day - many days I don't use them all so I'm not delete vote constrained. So no, I'm not wasting delete votes unless there is something that I *want* to delete today that needs to be deleted *now* rather than later when I'm out of votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reasoning as to casting delete votes on many questions is thus:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions that are unsalvageable consume space on the front page (if scored at -3 or higher); new questions; and, if a user is editing it, active questions. &#xD;&#xA; * This space is valuable - it is where people look when they hit the site. &#xD;&#xA;* Having the question get less than 2k rep users trying to fix the 'i' to 'I' and the like for the 2 rep that it brings results in a poor user experience for them when the question is ultimately deleted (they lose it) - thus delete it *before* they spend their time on a question that will be deleted.&#xD;&#xA; * This also applies to the trivial edits that don't fix the question and keep showing up in reopen reviews. Not that we're ever backed up on those, but its a &quot;*sigh*, no, this isn't enough to reopen it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA; * It is likely a worse user experience to go from 1 rep to 6 to 4 to 9 to 7 to 5 to 3 to 1 (as down votes and up votes mix and eventually get collected by the Roomba) than it is to remain at 1 and have it quickly deleted.&#xD;&#xA;* We get our share of &quot;why is &lt;s&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/s&gt; Programmers.SE so negative&quot; questions. And while it is indeed sweeping the questions of the users who misunderstand the site under the rug (so to speak), it helps present our best foot forward - look at the new questions, look at the active questions, look at the front page - that is what we want.  Or at least, I want to be able to say that.&#xD;&#xA;  *  I write this, there's a -6 debugging question, a -6 user poll, a -4 how to use windows XP, a -4 why did facebook do that, a -5 something about IIS, a -4 debugging question (with accepted answer - that will never get deleted by the Roomba), -3 how to explain a broad concept to a stranger, a -5 shark vs gorilla, a -7 unclear something about scripting languages being accepted (no, wait, two delete votes that weren't mine - that one is gone).&#xD;&#xA; * I want to see *more* things from our second page that are good in the newest questions. Once they get off the front page and newest questions first 25, it becomes harder for them to get visibility. Visibility that they lost because someone asked &quot;What well paid programming jobs can be gained for maths majors&quot; or &quot;Unexpected IndexOutOfBoundsException&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;* People that get answers to their polls, discussions or debugging will try it again because they got help once before. Even if its in the comments on a -3 score question. Deleting the post through user action (rather than automated script several days later) sends a stronger message about what Stack Exchange's focus is. Deleting the question *before* it gets the answers doesn't reward the person for asking an off topic question in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;* There is also the &quot;support our mods.&quot;  They get the occasional flack about &quot;deleted by mod fiat! Those evil diamond mods delete everything!&quot; By having a &quot;Deleted by MichaelT, Thomas Owens&quot; in there, I try to do my part of &quot;no, the community moderation was acting on it - it wasn't just mods with super powers.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21443" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7538" RevisionGUID="070199ee-64a4-4ae8-84d0-ef39ec764ae9" CreationDate="2015-09-03T14:25:02.480" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="People get too hung up on 'right answer'" Text="## There is no right answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The simple and most important answer in realizing why these questions get closed is &quot;***there is no right answer***.&quot;  And before people get too hung up on &quot;but there are right answers&quot; the key to that sentence is the &lt;I&gt;answer&lt;/I&gt; not &lt;I&gt;answer&lt;b&gt;s&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/I&gt;.  There should be a singular answer to the question that is complete and correct rather than a dozen answers that are all right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lacking a right answer, everyone has another example to add to the list.  &quot;What are some (real world) examples of ${concept}&quot; can get an answer from each person who reads the question and has used that concept. &quot;What ${book|blog|tutorial} should I read on ${topic}?&quot; likewise has a constantly appending possible answer no matter how constrained the topic is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of our common list questions have a standard close reason that tries to get to the heart of the problem with lists:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Quality of answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The unfortunate bit about list answers is that there is an ever diminishing quality to the answers.  Sure, you can sometimes get someone posting a good answer out at answer number 24, but each answer tends to be lower quality than the previous one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is likely because one doesn't feel the need to restate everything that was said before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Stack Exchange's founding goal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was founded because it was too hard to find good material in forums.  In particular, you had to go through many posts to get to the answer and often the follow-up posts spill off on to tangents and discussions making it harder and harder to find the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, Stack Overflow (and all of Stack Exchange) was designed to make it easy to find the answer (sorting by votes, accepted answer to the top) and at the same time close questions that are going to be endless discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The core problem with these questions in a [Web 2.0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0) world is that they don't generate good content. They may be interesting for an instant but really fail when it comes to long term maintainability and quality of content.  The lack of quality content often discourages the very people who you want to have that generate the quality content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was seen back in the days of Usenet and repeated again and again in forums and mailing lists.  The quality of the material inevitably falls to the lowest quality that is accepted.  People who want to read or provide the higher quality material ultimately go and find another place to contribute.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it is certainly interesting and there are people who enjoy contributing and reading the lists, Stack Exchange wants and needs to retain the people who are going to give the thought out quality answers.  Thus, the [bike shed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law_of_triviality) questions and lists become aggressively moderated - closed and deleted in order to try to maintain the expected quality of the material asked and answered and thus retain the user base that is providing in depth answers to hard problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A frequent objection to this aggressive moderation is that &quot;this is where the experts / knowledgeable community is - I won't get as good answers elsewhere.&quot;  The important realization that should be had is that it is *because* of this focus on answerable questions (rather than lists and bike sheds) and allowing the questions that generate the lower quality content ultimately pushes these people away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not to say that these questions are not interesting or important to their asker (and I will admit to going to other sites to read them) - it's just that structure of the site that Stack Exchange provides needs keep its focus on quality answerable questions that have definitive answers rather than never ending discussions and lists of other examples.  It is through this that Stack Exchange remains the place that people come to to get the answers to the hard questions (rather than going to Yahoo Answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Where to ask these questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That really depends on the question that you are asking.  As mentioned in the close reason, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is one place where people can ask discussion and list style questions. Other sites, include Quora and Reddit which do a good job of providing anecdotes and discussion.  Specifically within Reddit, there are entire subreddits that focus on one particular type of list question ([/r/programming](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/) can be thought of as an endless &quot;what programming blogs should I read&quot; question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the experts that are here, don't constrain themselves to being here only.  [Eric Lippert](http://stackoverflow.com/users/88656/eric-lippert) of C# fame can be found on [reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/programmerchat/comments/37qwmm/i_am_eric_lippert_a_software_developer/) too.  There are other eminent names of programming that are active in multiple communities that cater to specific types of questions and discourse. And yes, you will likely find that the standards of quality for other sites are different than they are here as each site is trying for a different slice of that Web 2.0 pie." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21444" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7538" RevisionGUID="0be5d96d-1022-4b4c-a961-82fe142a4589" CreationDate="2015-09-03T14:31:34.070" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 41 characters in body" Text="## There is no right answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The simple and most important answer in realizing why these questions get closed is &quot;***there is no right answer***.&quot;  And before people get too hung up on &quot;but there are right answers&quot; the key to that sentence is the &lt;I&gt;answer&lt;/I&gt; not &lt;I&gt;answer&lt;b&gt;s&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/I&gt;.  There should be a singular answer to the question that is complete and correct rather than a dozen answers that are all right and only complete when all read together.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lacking a right answer, everyone has another example to add to the list.  &quot;What are some (real world) examples of ${concept}&quot; can get an answer from each person who reads the question and has used that concept. &quot;What ${book|blog|tutorial} should I read on ${topic}?&quot; likewise has a constantly appending possible answer no matter how constrained the topic is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of our common list questions have a standard close reason that tries to get to the heart of the problem with lists:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Quality of answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The unfortunate bit about list answers is that there is an ever diminishing quality to the answers.  Sure, you can sometimes get someone posting a good answer out at answer number 24, but each answer tends to be lower quality than the previous one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is likely because one doesn't feel the need to restate everything that was said before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Stack Exchange's founding goal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was founded because it was too hard to find good material in forums.  In particular, you had to go through many posts to get to the answer and often the follow-up posts spill off on to tangents and discussions making it harder and harder to find the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, Stack Overflow (and all of Stack Exchange) was designed to make it easy to find the answer (sorting by votes, accepted answer to the top) and at the same time close questions that are going to be endless discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The core problem with these questions in a [Web 2.0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0) world is that they don't generate good content. They may be interesting for an instant but really fail when it comes to long term maintainability and quality of content.  The lack of quality content often discourages the very people who you want to have that generate the quality content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was seen back in the days of Usenet and repeated again and again in forums and mailing lists.  The quality of the material inevitably falls to the lowest quality that is accepted.  People who want to read or provide the higher quality material ultimately go and find another place to contribute.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it is certainly interesting and there are people who enjoy contributing and reading the lists, Stack Exchange wants and needs to retain the people who are going to give the thought out quality answers.  Thus, the [bike shed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law_of_triviality) questions and lists become aggressively moderated - closed and deleted in order to try to maintain the expected quality of the material asked and answered and thus retain the user base that is providing in depth answers to hard problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A frequent objection to this aggressive moderation is that &quot;this is where the experts / knowledgeable community is - I won't get as good answers elsewhere.&quot;  The important realization that should be had is that it is *because* of this focus on answerable questions (rather than lists and bike sheds) and allowing the questions that generate the lower quality content ultimately pushes these people away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not to say that these questions are not interesting or important to their asker (and I will admit to going to other sites to read them) - it's just that structure of the site that Stack Exchange provides needs keep its focus on quality answerable questions that have definitive answers rather than never ending discussions and lists of other examples.  It is through this that Stack Exchange remains the place that people come to to get the answers to the hard questions (rather than going to Yahoo Answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Where to ask these questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That really depends on the question that you are asking.  As mentioned in the close reason, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is one place where people can ask discussion and list style questions. Other sites, include Quora and Reddit which do a good job of providing anecdotes and discussion.  Specifically within Reddit, there are entire subreddits that focus on one particular type of list question ([/r/programming](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/) can be thought of as an endless &quot;what programming blogs should I read&quot; question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the experts that are here, don't constrain themselves to being here only.  [Eric Lippert](http://stackoverflow.com/users/88656/eric-lippert) of C# fame can be found on [reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/programmerchat/comments/37qwmm/i_am_eric_lippert_a_software_developer/) too.  There are other eminent names of programming that are active in multiple communities that cater to specific types of questions and discourse. And yes, you will likely find that the standards of quality for other sites are different than they are here as each site is trying for a different slice of that Web 2.0 pie." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21445" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="2b510b97-b986-4ad1-8adb-b21b645cca95" CreationDate="2015-09-03T16:40:26.243" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|questions|homework-dump|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21446" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7285" RevisionGUID="e780ae66-0c53-4be8-a264-7be097405543" CreationDate="2015-09-03T16:44:06.033" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|stci|stci-phase2|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21447" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7583" RevisionGUID="c315b238-5fdd-460b-b2ba-d8bf9e81eb05" CreationDate="2015-09-03T18:46:33.620" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="One of the most elegant descriptions of the scope of Programmers.SE came from Thomas Owens in chat:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Picture Programmers like a small conference room with a whiteboard. No computer, no books, no papers. You write your question on the whiteboard and experts walk by. Someone sees one that they can answer, they stop in and help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Modify the top of the [help/on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) on the site to put this in the description.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently the text reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Modify the text to read (italics bit added to show difference - not intended to be in final):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. *Questions are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The intended goal is to try to send a message (to those who read it) of &quot;asking questions about debugging and how to fix this error from a compiler completely goes against the spirit of the site.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure this type of message can be bit in the site tour." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21448" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7583" RevisionGUID="c315b238-5fdd-460b-b2ba-d8bf9e81eb05" CreationDate="2015-09-03T18:46:33.620" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Add a 'ideal' or 'mission statement' to the help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21449" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7583" RevisionGUID="c315b238-5fdd-460b-b2ba-d8bf9e81eb05" CreationDate="2015-09-03T18:46:33.620" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|feature-request|on-topic-definition|help-center|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21450" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="05c4fb29-cbeb-4439-a63e-187a2a233e85" CreationDate="2015-09-03T19:27:18.070" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7285/structured-tag-cleanup-initiative-phase-ii#comment22765_7355" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:university] [tag:degree]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning]  [tag:unlearning] [tag:learning-curve] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching] [tag:tutorial]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor] [tag:intro-to-programming]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:courses] - only two [historically locked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[courses]+locked%3Ayes) questions in this tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employee] [tag:employer] [tag:employment] [tag:employers] [tag:co-workers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-satisfaction] [tag:job-title] [tag:jobs] [tag:new-job] [tag:job-definition] [tag:job-advancement] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:credit-cards] [tag:mobile-payment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing] [tag:compensation]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Uncategorized tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:problem] [tag:problems]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21451" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="22d824d2-885a-4a82-8ebb-e881b5463f48" CreationDate="2015-09-03T19:38:58.643" UserId="31260" Comment="employee intro-to-programming: problems unlearning tutorial" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:university] [tag:degree]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:learning-curve] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:courses] - only two [historically locked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[courses]+locked%3Ayes) questions in this tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employer] [tag:employment] [tag:employers] [tag:co-workers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-satisfaction] [tag:job-title] [tag:jobs] [tag:new-job] [tag:job-definition] [tag:job-advancement] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:credit-cards] [tag:mobile-payment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing] [tag:compensation]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21452" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7294" RevisionGUID="dfd261d3-0823-4a2f-86ea-2f8d610f1d2e" CreationDate="2015-09-03T19:54:46.070" UserId="31260" Comment="isv and independent are over" Text="[tag:freelancing] [tag:client-relations] [tag:self-employment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Workplace and Freelancing exist and cover these topics. They appears to be beyond scope based on the Help Center." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21453" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="9fd5832a-0fd8-48e3-b0c3-c7d89c9de3ed" CreationDate="2015-09-04T13:44:30.610" UserId="31260" Comment="accept no credit-cards" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:university] [tag:degree]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:learning-curve] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:courses] - only two [historically locked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[courses]+locked%3Ayes) questions in this tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employer] [tag:employment] [tag:employers] [tag:co-workers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-satisfaction] [tag:job-title] [tag:jobs] [tag:new-job] [tag:job-definition] [tag:job-advancement] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:mobile-payment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing] [tag:compensation]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21455" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7584" RevisionGUID="0c2f4e5c-09e4-4cf3-845e-383e8b3d5d12" CreationDate="2015-09-05T09:51:58.657" UserId="182749" Text="There is a question about [data storage in Android without SQLite][1]. As of its [meta-post][2], it was at first proposed to belong to Programmers (and later retracted). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It specifies the kind of data and the use case, and that it needs to be on android, so this is (hopefully) not too broad, as &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is a question about a recommendation, yet it does not require any products, it is more about the technology type to use (ORM vs some kind of NoSQL).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does that question belong to Programmers, or not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32246376/data-storage-without-sqlite&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/305292/please-explain-why-this-question-was-closed-as-off-topic/305295#305295" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21456" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7584" RevisionGUID="0c2f4e5c-09e4-4cf3-845e-383e8b3d5d12" CreationDate="2015-09-05T09:51:58.657" UserId="182749" Text="Move question to Programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21457" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7584" RevisionGUID="0c2f4e5c-09e4-4cf3-845e-383e8b3d5d12" CreationDate="2015-09-05T09:51:58.657" UserId="182749" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21458" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7585" RevisionGUID="034ca547-bc23-4813-a6f3-eb81a20b4a6f" CreationDate="2015-09-05T10:27:56.903" UserId="161917" Text="Asking whether a relational database or a graph database or some other kind of database is the more appropriate design for a given set of requirements can be on-topic here. **However, most of the reasons this question is considered a poor fit for StackOverflow in its current form are also reasons why it would be a poor fit on any SE site**, even if it is on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, the requirements you specify (which would be relevant to an answer) are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; They do not need transactions, ACID, and such. They need to be queried, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is not enough to rule out any form of data storage at all. Even using a simple text file which you read into a `std::map&lt;X, Y&gt;` at startup is enough to allow basic querying. Also, I'm not sure I believe that any use case doesn't require any part of ACID; maybe you don't need things like rollback but I'm sure everyone wants atomicity and consistency at least.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, *as currently written* your requirements simply aren't specific enough to make the question *answerable*. At best it is *discussable*, but even that discussion would mostly consist of us asking you to give more detail about your requirements. For instance: what kinds of queries, are there multiple types of entities, are there any relationships, do you ever do insertion/deletion or only querying, do you need multiple threads querying, is this a client-side only database or is it being queried via a web API, etc, etc." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21459" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7135" RevisionGUID="50630ada-9084-4809-8ac7-ff999eda8729" CreationDate="2015-09-05T14:22:52.110" UserId="161917" Comment="added 366 characters in body" Text="I've only been an active SE user for a couple of weeks, and since PSE is my favorite one I've been mulling this question over pretty much the entire time (not to mention reading far too many meta posts). Some days it feels like we're closing too aggressively. Some days it feels like you need a bachelor's in Q&amp;A philosophy to tell what actually is on-topic for SO vs PSE vs all the other SEs. Some days it feels like the people writing questions can't construct a coherent sentence, much less an answerable question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on my experience thus far, it looks like the truth is probably the latter: **A lot of people are asking a lot of questions which are inherently bad, and they would be just as bad no matter what our scope or name was.** There's even [an old meta answer on this topic that reaches pretty much the same conclusion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6993/161917).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By that I mean questions which are too vague, broad, or unclear, typically because they don't have anywhere near enough detail for us to figure out what question is actually being asked (often the asker himself doesn't appear to understand it). When it comes to technical subjects like programming, **the vast majority of newcomers do not understand that it is impossible to answer a question that hasn't been asked properly.** Until they gain the experience to understand that, there's simply no way to respond that doesn't run some risk of them perceiving us as lazy, unhelpful, rude or elitist (though we can certainly lower that risk by being polite) rather than figuring out what they did wrong. This is just as true here as it is on SO and on all the other SEs about semi-accessible-but-still-highly-technical subjects (like security.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't think there's anything we could do with PSE's question-asking UI to communicate this fundamental flaw in a newbie's conception of technical knowledge. PSE gets a bit more of it than most because people see it as SO with fewer restrictions, but we're not really that unique.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;So what *can* we do? Newbies are going to ask these questions no matter what, so in my opinion the best we can hope to do is improve our response to them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Try to emphasize that subjective questions still have to be *precise, specific and coherent enough to be answerable*. This is the number one thing newbies are not getting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Avoid emphasizing &quot;ivory tower&quot; close reasons like whether the question is &quot;useful to other programmers&quot;. Newbies don't care about that. I don't care about that. I care about whether or not the question can be answered. If the question is &quot;not useful&quot;, most of the time it's simply too broad/vague/unclear (or a code dump), so just say that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) When a question is just plain bad, so that it has no hope of being answerable on any SE site, we need to close it quickly. Looking at downvoted questions the front page right now, I see one that got put on hold, and several others that probably should have been put on hold or closed several hours ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Case in point, [look at the top of today's front page](https://i.stack.imgur.com/L3pEd.png). Although I'm not sure how I feel about the intellectual property question, the others are fix my code, how do I learn to X, another fix my code, a question about how C socket functions work that probably could've been answered by googling, and a question about Windows filesystem behavior that's nowhere near detailed enough to be answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit 2: Case in point again, [MichaelT just did the same thing with a much bigger sample size and reached the same conclusion](https://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7145/on-a-name-for-the-site-and-the-questions-asked).&#xA;&#xA;-----&#xA;&#xA;Edit 3: Since it's been a very long time since I wrote this, and I recently achieved 10k reputation, it seemed worth an update. To my surprise there is nothing in this post that I have since changed my mind on; it's all just as true as it was back then. The only difference is that I believe we have gotten somewhat better at closing poor questions quickly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21460" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="3cc3b40c-0384-4df7-b46d-744a8b872af4" CreationDate="2015-09-05T16:34:33.757" UserId="31260" Comment="no more employers compensation" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:university] [tag:degree]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:learning-curve] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:courses] - only two [historically locked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[courses]+locked%3Ayes) questions in this tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employment] [tag:co-workers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-satisfaction] [tag:job-title] [tag:jobs] [tag:new-job] [tag:job-definition] [tag:job-advancement] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:mobile-payment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21463" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7537" RevisionGUID="71a2f01c-1166-4f69-a7c2-e52348562aab" CreationDate="2015-09-06T20:32:19.050" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/640623582247264256" />
  <row Id="21465" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7583" RevisionGUID="29c49c45-e9bd-4ed3-8752-58d99ada2f22" CreationDate="2015-09-07T08:37:52.937" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/640806176528146432" />
  <row Id="21466" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7295" RevisionGUID="38cf6afb-8b37-41c1-a8e2-59344596228e" CreationDate="2015-09-07T09:04:24.823" UserId="25768" Comment="added 27 characters in body" Text="[tag:payment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag appears to have two uses. One is with regards to implementation of payment systems and transactions and the other is with respect to getting paid as a contractor, freelancer, or employee. The second type of question is off-topic. This tag could be removed from the off-topic questions and a clear tag wiki provided. Alternatively, it could be renamed (example: [tag:payment-system] to make it clear that it's about software systems and not getting paid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: [tag:pricing] [tag:cost-estimation] [tag:compensation] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:credit-cards] [tag:sales] [tag:mobile-payment] [tag:pci] [tag:revenue] [tag:income]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21470" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7588" RevisionGUID="0f5af31f-4f5a-4f40-8b16-48631d6e60ff" CreationDate="2015-09-07T09:41:56.210" UserId="25768" Text="[tag:startup]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;often more meta in a question that happened to mention startups as the word-du-jour than about startups themselves (which is also be off-topic as career related)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21471" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7588" RevisionGUID="8cf2aea6-d2a4-4fbd-81fb-ebeb02ba4899" CreationDate="2015-09-07T09:41:56.210" UserId="25768" />
  <row Id="21473" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7294" RevisionGUID="250cc38d-3eef-4b58-afe4-5a68340f8e17" CreationDate="2015-09-07T09:49:27.547" UserId="25768" Comment="added 29 characters in body" Text="[tag:freelancing] [tag:client-relations] [tag:self-employment] [tag:independent-contractor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Workplace and Freelancing exist and cover these topics. They appears to be beyond scope based on the Help Center." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21476" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7571" RevisionGUID="8294940f-ec9b-404b-926c-fe3487228139" CreationDate="2015-09-07T12:02:53.787" UserId="4" Comment="added 361 characters in body" Text="The general guidance is simple: don't. Never recommend to another user that they should take their site somewhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Never use a comment to suggest other sites - it simply leads to cross-posting. And if the question isn't a high quality question or isn't appropriate for the community that you suggest, and it ends up getting down votes and close votes on the other site, the asker could end up in a situation where they encounter an automatic question ban. That's not a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a user asks a question on Programmers, first see if it's on-topic here. Some subjects may be on-topic on multiple sites. For example, questions about data structures and algorithms may be on-topic on both Programmers and [Computer Science][1], questions about Scrum may be on-topic on both Programmers and [Project Management][2], and questions about using an open-source project in your project may be on-topic on both Programmers and [Open Source][3]. This is OK and to be expected. Each site is a community of experts, and experts in different fields may have overlapping knowledge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you've asked the question and you think it should be migrated to another site, do flag it for moderator attention. You can do this right away, if you feel that you've posted here in error, or you can wait a while.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you aren't the asker of the question, then you have a few options...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is off-topic on Programmers and you can vote to migrate it to the appropriate site, please do so. Programmers has a migration target to Stack Overflow that is open to everyone to use. If you think it is off-topic here and needs to go somewhere else, flag it for moderator review. Moderators can migrate questions to any site on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is not off-topic on Programmers, simply do nothing...at least right away. If it's been a while and it's not getting answers or you think that it would get better answers somewhere else, flag it for moderator attention. Explain why you think it would get better answers somewhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you know of similar questions on other sites, do link to those as comments. They may be helpful to the asker. If you feel like it, it's OK to reference answers on other sites, remembering the proper attribution required by [CC BY-SA license][4] that applies to all content on Stack Exchange. You could build a summary answer of knowledge on one or more sites. If you feel that it's appropriate, you can also make answers Community Wiki to lower the barrier to entry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21477" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7571" RevisionGUID="f4460a91-adee-4bfe-9ada-556aaaba0bee" CreationDate="2015-09-07T12:30:18.933" UserId="4" Comment="added 212 characters in body" Text="The general guidance is simple: don't. Never recommend to another user that they should take their site somewhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Never use a comment to suggest other sites - it simply leads to cross-posting. And if the question isn't a high quality question or isn't appropriate for the community that you suggest, and it ends up getting down votes and close votes on the other site, the asker could end up in a situation where they encounter an automatic question ban. That's not a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a user asks a question on Programmers, first see if it's on-topic here. Some subjects may be on-topic on multiple sites. For example, questions about data structures and algorithms may be on-topic on both Programmers and [Computer Science][1], questions about Scrum may be on-topic on both Programmers and [Project Management][2], and questions about using an open-source project in your project may be on-topic on both Programmers and [Open Source][3]. This is OK and to be expected. Each site is a community of experts, and experts in different fields may have overlapping knowledge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you've asked the question and you think it should be migrated to another site, do flag it for moderator attention. You can do this right away, if you feel that you've posted here in error, or you can wait a while.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you aren't the asker of the question, then you have a few options...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is off-topic on Programmers and you can vote to migrate it to the appropriate site, please do so. Programmers has a migration target to Stack Overflow that is open to everyone to use. If you think it is off-topic here and needs to go somewhere else, flag it for moderator review. Moderators can migrate questions to any site on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is not off-topic on Programmers, simply do nothing...at least right away. If it's been a while and it's not getting answers or you think that it would get better answers somewhere else, flag it for moderator attention. Explain why you think it would get better answers somewhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you know of similar questions on other sites, do link to those as comments. They may be helpful to the asker. If you feel like it, it's OK to reference answers on other sites, remembering the proper attribution required by [CC BY-SA license][4] that applies to all content on Stack Exchange. You could build a summary answer of knowledge on one or more sites. If you feel that it's appropriate, you can also make answers Community Wiki to lower the barrier to entry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I made a little flowchart to go through how I think when I open any question. I first read it, and then go through this process:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![question flow][5]][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/QfTKg.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21478" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7582" RevisionGUID="110514c1-ab3d-4118-a575-eda211d67898" CreationDate="2015-09-07T19:23:33.820" UserId="31260" Comment="delete votes scale with reputation += http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/105876/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;" Text="I delete as soon as I can in cases where the question is unsalvageable. This might have something to do with having more delete votes than close votes ([delete votes scale with reputation](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/105876/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;)). I've got 30 delete votes a day - many days I don't use them all so I'm not delete vote constrained. So no, I'm not wasting delete votes unless there is something that I *want* to delete today that needs to be deleted *now* rather than later when I'm out of votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reasoning as to casting delete votes on many questions is thus:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions that are unsalvageable consume space on the front page (if scored at -3 or higher); new questions; and, if a user is editing it, active questions. &#xD;&#xA; * This space is valuable - it is where people look when they hit the site. &#xD;&#xA;* Having the question get less than 2k rep users trying to fix the 'i' to 'I' and the like for the 2 rep that it brings results in a poor user experience for them when the question is ultimately deleted (they lose it) - thus delete it *before* they spend their time on a question that will be deleted.&#xD;&#xA; * This also applies to the trivial edits that don't fix the question and keep showing up in reopen reviews. Not that we're ever backed up on those, but its a &quot;*sigh*, no, this isn't enough to reopen it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA; * It is likely a worse user experience to go from 1 rep to 6 to 4 to 9 to 7 to 5 to 3 to 1 (as down votes and up votes mix and eventually get collected by the Roomba) than it is to remain at 1 and have it quickly deleted.&#xD;&#xA;* We get our share of &quot;why is &lt;s&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/s&gt; Programmers.SE so negative&quot; questions. And while it is indeed sweeping the questions of the users who misunderstand the site under the rug (so to speak), it helps present our best foot forward - look at the new questions, look at the active questions, look at the front page - that is what we want.  Or at least, I want to be able to say that.&#xD;&#xA;  *  I write this, there's a -6 debugging question, a -6 user poll, a -4 how to use windows XP, a -4 why did facebook do that, a -5 something about IIS, a -4 debugging question (with accepted answer - that will never get deleted by the Roomba), -3 how to explain a broad concept to a stranger, a -5 shark vs gorilla, a -7 unclear something about scripting languages being accepted (no, wait, two delete votes that weren't mine - that one is gone).&#xD;&#xA; * I want to see *more* things from our second page that are good in the newest questions. Once they get off the front page and newest questions first 25, it becomes harder for them to get visibility. Visibility that they lost because someone asked &quot;What well paid programming jobs can be gained for maths majors&quot; or &quot;Unexpected IndexOutOfBoundsException&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;* People that get answers to their polls, discussions or debugging will try it again because they got help once before. Even if its in the comments on a -3 score question. Deleting the post through user action (rather than automated script several days later) sends a stronger message about what Stack Exchange's focus is. Deleting the question *before* it gets the answers doesn't reward the person for asking an off topic question in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;* There is also the &quot;support our mods.&quot;  They get the occasional flack about &quot;deleted by mod fiat! Those evil diamond mods delete everything!&quot; By having a &quot;Deleted by MichaelT, Thomas Owens&quot; in there, I try to do my part of &quot;no, the community moderation was acting on it - it wasn't just mods with super powers.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21480" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7514" RevisionGUID="26e5eb69-da32-4335-bd39-e299420c7822" CreationDate="2015-09-08T01:48:31.207" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Fix typo in image name." Text="Often these questions are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In days of old they would have been closed as &quot;not a real question&quot; or &quot;too localized.&quot;  The reasoning behind this is that there isn't really anything that one can answer definitively and draws upon our expert knowledge as a programmer. Furthermore, there are an endless stream of these small programs or snippets of code to be explained. The way the question is asked and its difficulty being findable and useful to *other* people made it too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today, these questions often are closed as &quot;unclear&quot; or &quot;too broad.&quot;  It is unclear exactly what the person is trying to get out of the question and how our answer can actually be helpful to them (it may be at too low a level, or too high a level, we don't know what the user knows (do they understand arrays? are they trying to understand [variadic functions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variadic_function)? standard lib IO call? etc...)  To properly explain *all* of this at all levels is at the level of a semester long class at the college level or a number of chapters in a &quot;teach yourself C in 21 minutes&quot; book.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of my favorite essays on programming is that of [How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary](http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html) by Robert L Read.  The first item under the skills for a beginner is [Learn to Debug](http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html#id2790282) which starts out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Debugging is the cornerstone of being a programmer. The first meaning of the verb to debug is to remove errors, but the meaning that really matters is to see into the execution of a program by examining it. A programmer that cannot debug effectively is blind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Idealists that think design, or analysis, or complexity theory, or whatnot, are more fundamental are not working programmers. The working programmer does not live in an ideal world. Even if you are perfect, your are surrounded by and must interact with code written by major software companies, organizations like GNU, and your colleagues. Most of this code is imperfect and imperfectly documented. Without the ability to gain visibility into the execution of this code the slightest bump will throw you permanently. Often this visibility can only be gained by experimentation, that is, debugging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions of &quot;explain this code to me&quot; is very much akin to someone coming up to you, handing you a picture&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![a picture of something][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Image from [draw an elephant](http://www.wikihow.com/Draw-an-Elephant#/Image:Draw-an-Elephant-Step-16.jpg)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and saying &quot;I don't understand this. Could you describe what you see here?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are so many possible options for someone to describe. We could describe the process of drawing (and you can see the sketch marks from previous revisions).  We could describe the elephant itself and its form. We could describe the technique (and if we think its good or bad). The possibilities are endless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in doing this - *you* aren't seeing it. You are listening to what we are saying (one would hope), but not actually going through the process of figuring it out yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is that process of learning how to see the code that is critically important for a programmer.  For us to describe it to you deprives you of an opportunity to learn how to use debugging tools. It deprives you of attempting to get that process in your own mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the things to realize is that walking through rudimentary code and explaining it line by line is kind of boring. Its something that you can do with a [debugger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debugger) - often available and integrated with the IDE you are likely using.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Show what your understanding of the code is. Are you confused about how `printf()` takes one argument in one example and five in another? About why some people write `for(;;)`?   Demonstrate that you have used the tools that are available to you to the best of your ability (and if necessary, read the tutorials for the debugger).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, for some reason, you don't have access to a debugger, learn how to print debugging statements and trace them out.  If necessary write a program that does the minimal number of lines and be sure to read the documentation for the function call you are about to ask about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are much more able to help you do the equivalent of spell out a word and understand its meaning rather than respond to a child coming up to us and saying &quot;read me a story&quot; and handing us a book.  To the student coming up to us now and asking us to &quot;read me a story&quot; we are responding, &quot;try to figure it out as much yourself on your own and ask about specific comprehension and vocabulary problems.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[How to debug small programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/iR5kum.jpg &quot;A picture of something. It might be a pot, a winnowing basket, a plowshare, a plow, a granary, a pillar, a mortar, a pestle or a brush.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21481" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7590" RevisionGUID="ecb1d67f-08ab-4239-b4b3-d82ce82b988e" CreationDate="2015-09-08T11:34:40.583" UserId="25529" Text="I think this would help significantly:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/dWiAt.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21482" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="7590" RevisionGUID="d3445c9d-3c80-41e4-b3c2-98df9926cf56" CreationDate="2015-09-08T11:46:51.677" UserId="25529" Comment="via Vote" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25529,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;m01&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="21483" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="7590" RevisionGUID="35352161-2511-4606-a0f4-6b26782a47f9" CreationDate="2015-09-08T11:47:24.760" UserId="25529" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25529,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;m01&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="21484" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7590" RevisionGUID="e18caa38-d623-4127-8c40-6e3d3f6a2e61" CreationDate="2015-09-08T11:48:28.503" UserId="25529" Comment="added 66 characters in body" Text="I think this would help significantly:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could be shown, let say, for the first 3 posts by a user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is also very similar to [Michel's idea](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7144/25529).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/dWiAt.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21485" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6681" RevisionGUID="86c0e6bb-0092-410e-9658-afe998eb96f9" CreationDate="2015-09-08T18:18:44.783" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Fix typo." Text="Let's look at a block of &quot;No Action Needed&quot; reviews:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![No action needed][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What constitutes a 'reviewed' review?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Leaving a comment&#xD;&#xA; * Up voting a comment&#xD;&#xA; * Up voting the post&#xD;&#xA; * Down voting the post&#xD;&#xA; * Flagging (or close voting)&#xD;&#xA; * Editing the post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If something is likely to be closed, even if one doesn't agree with the closing philosophy leaving a comment suggesting for how to refocus the question in a way that isn't likely to get closed.  Alternatively, editing it to try to make it something that won't get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a no action needed it means that ***none*** of the above reasons are applicable or needed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Not bad enough to down vote&#xD;&#xA;* Not good enough to up vote&#xD;&#xA;* No existing comments to up vote to help suggest a better question or improve the existing answer&#xD;&#xA;* No additional guidance needed to help improve the post (note: likely in conflict with 'not good enough to up vote' - it is unlikely that *both* of these are true, but may be the case)&#xD;&#xA;* Grammar, spelling, and formatting of the post are acceptable and don't need any work (note: it's a good thing to click 'edit' to see the actual markdown and make sure there isn't formatting that has been lost that needs to be brought back out like a numbered list or line breaks)&#xD;&#xA;    * There is no unnecessary preamble or bit at the end that is appropriate to remove ('hello', 'thanks', 'hope this helps', etc... consider also linking to [Should 'Hi', 'thanks,' taglines, and salutations be removed from posts?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2950/should-hi-thanks-taglines-and-salutations-be-removed-from-posts))&#xD;&#xA;    * Double check the title.  Tags in the title are unnecessary ([MSE guidance](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19190/should-questions-include-tags-in-their-titles)).  Make sure the title of the question matches the question.&#xD;&#xA;* On topic without any need to migrate or suggest a way to make it narrower, less opinion, or need to refocus it from an existing off topic reason.&#xD;&#xA;* Not a duplicate of another post (do a search - especially the case with questions, many new users don't know of existing questions)&#xD;&#xA;* Not posted elsewhere on Stack Exchange (example: [&quot;This was posted on Stack Overflow as well, where it was closed and has now been deleted.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241598/cms-desktop-app-control#comment486410_241598) from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241598/cms-desktop-app-control could have either been up voted or researched and written themselves)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't want to check these things, either hit skip or don't do the First Posts review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Selecting 'no action needed' means that someone else *can't* do the review to check these things, completing it and giving guidance to the new P.SE user that may help them have a more positive experience on P.SE and Stack Exchange as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is in part an issue with the system.  The First Post review queue, by its nature, has binding votes for *every* review.  This isn't something that people are always aware of, but the First Post review (and late answer) are both review queues that one should approach with all the seriousness of a diamond mod because there's no redo or community safety net for these reviews.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/IxqNK.png &quot;No action needed?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21486" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7591" RevisionGUID="394c3a7a-d5a8-40d5-a4e0-b85a1004752d" CreationDate="2015-09-08T20:52:04.200" UserId="935" Text="A few days ago, I noticed that I'm close to earning the Electorate badge; I just have to increase my percentage of votes on questions from 19% to 25%.  So I started making a conscious effort to vote more on questions.  Several days later... it's still reporting 19%, even though I've cast more votes than 1% of my total.  So how does this get calculated?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21487" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7591" RevisionGUID="394c3a7a-d5a8-40d5-a4e0-b85a1004752d" CreationDate="2015-09-08T20:52:04.200" UserId="935" Text="How are voting percentages calculated?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21488" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7591" RevisionGUID="394c3a7a-d5a8-40d5-a4e0-b85a1004752d" CreationDate="2015-09-08T20:52:04.200" UserId="935" Text="|discussion|badges|voting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21489" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7592" RevisionGUID="da33555d-6134-4c15-baa8-97b59c43edd7" CreationDate="2015-09-08T21:16:33.523" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="You have nearly 5000 votes cast ([stats](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/935/mason-wheeler?tab=topactivity)).  As of this writing, you have 992 question votes and 4000 answer votes. This is about 19% (992 / 4992 = 0.1987...).  To get to 25%, you will need to have a `question votes / (question votes + answer votes)` be 25%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming you hold answer votes constant:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    X / (X + 4000) = 0.25&#xD;&#xA;                 X = (0.25) * (X + 4000)&#xD;&#xA;                 X = (0.25 * X) + 1000&#xD;&#xA;           .75 * X = 1000&#xD;&#xA;                 X = 1333&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, you will need about 340 more votes on questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21490" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7593" RevisionGUID="e06b19e2-9621-4357-804b-4a90c3fbc382" CreationDate="2015-09-09T18:32:46.233" UserId="3963" Text="Observing the flurry of downvotes on a [recent question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296816/i-want-to-make-an-inventory-system-for-my-game-in-python-v-3-4-3), I took a moment to click over to Newest Questions and tally up the negatives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the most recent **50** questions at the time I counted, **25** of them had one or more negative votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's clear that some of these are bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also clear that some of these belong on StackOverflow, but people are downvoting rather than recommending a change of venue, for reasons that escape me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, though, it's abundantly clear that this site is completely unable to explain its purpose in a way that more than half the people posting new questions can understand.  It's been a problem for a long time, and it's beginning to seem like a problem that will never be solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a result, people who are genuinely trying to get help with their code, and are merely asking on the wrong site (a site which is named &quot;Programmers&quot;, after all), are being downvoted into oblivion and having their questions closed, and are no closer to getting any help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why continue?  There's some valuable information here, but it's buried in so much cruft that it'd be surprising if anyone saw it.  Time to put a cork in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**But perhaps you disagree.  If so, why?  What value do you see in this site?  And how can it be salvaged?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21491" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7593" RevisionGUID="e06b19e2-9621-4357-804b-4a90c3fbc382" CreationDate="2015-09-09T18:32:46.233" UserId="3963" Text="Is there any point in this site still existing?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21492" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7593" RevisionGUID="e06b19e2-9621-4357-804b-4a90c3fbc382" CreationDate="2015-09-09T18:32:46.233" UserId="3963" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21493" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7593" RevisionGUID="8cb45200-c59e-4776-84d5-2501423b7558" CreationDate="2015-09-09T18:57:53.730" UserId="3963" Comment="Add numbers for comparison." Text="Observing the flurry of downvotes on a [recent question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296816/i-want-to-make-an-inventory-system-for-my-game-in-python-v-3-4-3), I took a moment to click over to Newest Questions and tally up the negatives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the most recent **50** questions at the time I counted, **25** of them had one or more negative votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's clear that some of these are bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also clear that some of these belong on StackOverflow, but people are downvoting rather than recommending a change of venue, for reasons that escape me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, though, it's abundantly clear that this site is completely unable to explain its purpose in a way that more than half the people posting new questions can understand.  It's been a problem for a long time, and it's beginning to seem like a problem that will never be solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a result, people who are genuinely trying to get help with their code, and are merely asking on the wrong site (a site which is named &quot;Programmers&quot;, after all), are being downvoted into oblivion and having their questions closed, and are no closer to getting any help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why continue?  There's some valuable information here, but it's buried in so much cruft that it'd be surprising if anyone saw it.  Time to put a cork in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**But perhaps you disagree.  If so, why?  What value do you see in this site?  And how can it be salvaged?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By way of comparison, here are the numbers of downvoted questions (from the most recent 50) from a few other SE sites:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Travel: 1  &#xD;&#xA;German: 0  &#xD;&#xA;Sci-Fi: 2  &#xD;&#xA;Arqade: 14  &#xD;&#xA;DBA: 3  &#xD;&#xA;Music: Practice &amp; Theory: 5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21494" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7594" RevisionGUID="5647df9c-8a2d-49f1-bfc4-a97a01ee0b74" CreationDate="2015-09-09T18:58:38.827" UserId="88986" Text="The questions worthy of migration to Stack Overflow *do* get migrated. **When a question gets migrated, it's downvotes are cleared.** See: [**What is migration? How does it work?**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/10250/200235). It's entirely appropriate to downvote an off topic question, *especially if you expect the question to be migrated and the downvotes cleared*. Off topic is off topic, even if the question is a &quot;good&quot; one for another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These 6 questions have all been migrated in the last two days:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [I want to make an inventory system for my game in Python V 3.4.3](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32486754/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [K&amp;R qsort understanding](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32467724/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [Simple recursive series in matlab](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32448566/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [In ruby, should I use instance variables or direct method calls](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32444305/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [Using Sed to Append Lines to File During Vagrant Provisioning](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32437006/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [Atmel Studio installing library is empty](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32431232/1768232)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it absolutely does happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as the questions that are not appropriate for migration goes, we get many of them because people don't understand that we have a very narrow scope here. We tried allowing a much broader range of questions here and it failed. See: **http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since then, we have attempted to very tightly moderate what's acceptable here in an attempt to teach people what this site is about, but people *still don't read the guidance.* This has resulted in many well written meta questions about site scope, capped with IMO the two most important: **http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7182/88986** and **http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/88986**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, we downvote the bad questions, to take them *off the front page* (a question disappears from the front page when it his -4 or below) in an attempt to have a front page full of decent-to-good questions. The hope is that this user training will teach current and future users what's actually good and appropriate here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21495" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7594" RevisionGUID="d2407816-d5f7-4d16-b97b-a3c01dcb0262" CreationDate="2015-09-09T19:03:59.190" UserId="88986" Comment="added 242 characters in body" Text="The questions worthy of migration to Stack Overflow *do* get migrated. **When a question gets migrated, its downvotes are cleared.** See: [**What is migration? How does it work?**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/10250/200235). It's entirely appropriate to downvote an off topic question, *especially if you expect the question to be migrated and the downvotes cleared*. Off topic is off topic, even if the question is a &quot;good&quot; one for another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These 6 questions have all been migrated in the last two days:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [I want to make an inventory system for my game in Python V 3.4.3](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32486754/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [K&amp;R qsort understanding](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32467724/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [Simple recursive series in matlab](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32448566/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [In ruby, should I use instance variables or direct method calls](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32444305/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [Using Sed to Append Lines to File During Vagrant Provisioning](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32437006/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [Atmel Studio installing library is empty](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32431232/1768232)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it absolutely does happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as the questions that are not appropriate for migration goes, we get many of them because people don't understand that we have a very narrow scope here. We tried allowing a much broader range of questions here and it failed. See: **http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since then, we have attempted to very tightly moderate what's acceptable here in an attempt to teach people what this site is about, but people *still don't read the guidance.* This has resulted in many well written meta questions about site scope, capped with IMO the two most important: **http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7182/88986** and **http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/88986**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, we downvote the bad questions, to take them *off the front page* (a question disappears from the front page when it his -4 or below) in an attempt to have a front page full of decent-to-good questions. The hope is that this user training will teach current and future users what's actually good and appropriate here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Addendum: @Ixrec correctly points out that it's currently September, which means a lot of young students are posting homework questions all over the internet, which are almost always off topic here, so the front page is worse than normal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People *also* have a tendency to post questions about career advice here, even though it's *explicitly off topic* and all the related tags about it say &quot;do not use&quot;. These questions get downvoted to oblivion as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21496" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7593" RevisionGUID="caf45cb1-0acf-4f2f-a459-a2b18fa316f2" CreationDate="2015-09-09T19:33:56.550" UserId="3963" Comment="added 22 characters in body" Text="Observing the flurry of downvotes on a [recent question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296816/i-want-to-make-an-inventory-system-for-my-game-in-python-v-3-4-3), I took a moment to click over to Newest Questions and tally up the negatives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the most recent **50** questions at the time I counted, **25** of them had one or more negative votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's clear that some of these are bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also clear that some of these belong on StackOverflow, but people are downvoting rather than recommending a change of venue, for reasons that escape me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, though, it's abundantly clear that this site is completely unable to explain its purpose in a way that more than half the people posting new questions can understand.  It's been a problem for a long time, and it's beginning to seem like a problem that will never be solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a result, people who are genuinely trying to get help with their code, and are merely asking on the wrong site (a site which is named &quot;Programmers&quot;, after all), are being downvoted into oblivion and having their questions closed, and are no closer to getting any help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why continue?  There's some valuable information here, but it's buried in so much cruft that it'd be surprising if anyone saw it.  Time to put a cork in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**But perhaps you disagree.  If so, why?  What value do you see in this site?  And how can it be salvaged?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By way of comparison, here are the numbers of downvoted questions (from the most recent 50) from a few other SE sites:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Travel: 1  &#xD;&#xA;German: 0  &#xD;&#xA;Sci-Fi: 2  &#xD;&#xA;Arqade: 14  &#xD;&#xA;DBA: 3  &#xD;&#xA;Music: Practice &amp; Theory: 5  &#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow: 2  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21497" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7595" RevisionGUID="fef708bb-6e3e-4201-950a-0f43ff50db97" CreationDate="2015-09-10T01:58:21.033" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="TL;DR: We vote on everything.  90% of everything is crap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Programmers, we are rather sensitive to poor migrations. Every day we get dozens of people suggesting reposting off topic, too broad, unclear, and opinion questions on Programmers.SE (see [Duga's Playground](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/20298/2015/9/8)) and the historic [Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl). I will not tell someone to repost a question that will get closed on another site to post on the other site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anecdotally, most people just repost the question even if you tell them that it needs to be fixed before it could be appropriate on another site.  If one says &quot;this should be posted on Stack Overflow, after remove the call for library refrences and add an mcve&quot; two minutes later it gets reposted without removing the request for library references or providing a mcve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many times, you will also see no attempt to migrate when the post is posted to multiple sites. Migrating at that point creates more work for Stack Overflow mods who would then need to close-duplicate the question and then merge it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When we *do* want to migrate the question, mentioning Stack Overflow (as mentioned) will often mean the person will repost the question on Stack Overflow... and then the votes to migrate go through. More work for everyone around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you find something that you believe should be on Stack Overflow, flag it for migration.** If you believe it needs to get moved sooner than later, jump into chat and ask for some help / attention on the question. There's often a moderator (who can do fancy diamond things if the question is already closed) and often three or four other users who can cast votes to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We get a fair amount of people who hit one quality filter on Stack Overflow or another and then repost here.  Questions that have 'question', 'help', and the like in the title can't be posted on Stack Overflow. They appear to not be restricted here. So many times someone will try posting a (low quality) question on Stack Overflow, fail, and then try here and succeed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also an aspect of how many votes people have to cast what. There are many days where I have run out of close votes. At this point, the only way to express my &quot;this needs to be closed&quot; (without custom flagging everything begging the mods to do it) is to down vote it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, you are seeing September in force. This leads to a fair amount of completely off topic questions being asked on Programmers.SE - people who need to learn how to debug. The answer to such is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Step through with a debugger. Put printf statements everywhere. [Learn how to debug](http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html#id2790282). Putting the printf statement you have every other line would give you a better idea of what is going on. –  MichaelT 9 hours ago   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggesting these to go to Stack Overflow or migrating them would do a disservice to the person asking the question and Stack Overflow. The Stack Exchange layout is not well designed for pedagogy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a lower rate of question asking on Programmers.SE. We get as many questions per day as Stack Overflow gets on some of its medium volume tags. This means that everyone can vote each day on (nearly) every post. And we do. Good posts get up votes. Poor ones get down votes. Its often easier to agree on the poor ones that are deserving of down votes.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look at [Users by votes on P.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Voters&amp;filter=all) and compare it to [Users by votes on SO](http://stackoverflow.com/users?tab=Voters&amp;filter=all).  Our top voter has cast more votes here than the top voter on Stack Overflow, despite the site being a small fraction of the size. We have one of the higher [votes per views](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SRLlM.png) (from [Why are votes per post on the decrease (what can we do to improve this)?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/216297/213963))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way to say &quot;no, Programmers.SE should not exist&quot; is simple.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have Stack Overflow accept that the questions that they want to send here should remain (and remain open) on Stack Overflow instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Provide the quality of answers that we provide here to the questions asked on Stack Overflow - both new and old.  This involves active curation of the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make it easy to find the questions that don't require code and an mcve in some way other than using a meta tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Until these things are done, Programmers.SE has a distinct place within the scope of Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would also encourage you to read [How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/167516/213963) which has a bit of history for both Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE.  That people are still misunderstanding the site and believing it to be &quot;the site for everything that lacks code&quot; or &quot;NotProgrammingRelated&quot; of old on Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21498" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7596" RevisionGUID="1ceb3584-f47e-4eee-b698-3be6a7b78ff7" CreationDate="2015-09-10T03:32:31.120" UserId="3965" Text="At some point this site's most active voters stopped focusing on building community and started focusing on policing it, on &quot;training&quot; new users in the quest for the perfect question and the flawless front page.  It has lost something precious, but you'll never convince them of that.  One person sees a 50% downvote rate as a huge inclusiveness problem.  The next person sees it as a huge quality problem.  The latter has had all the power for the last few years.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What the site really needs is competition.  You could make quite a good site out of this one's discarded questions, assuming you could prevent the same sort of moderation problems.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21499" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7595" RevisionGUID="fe168230-41d5-402f-aaf9-2acfa4dbbe95" CreationDate="2015-09-10T08:34:46.000" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo corrected" Text="TL;DR: We vote on everything.  90% of everything is crap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Programmers, we are rather sensitive to poor migrations. Every day we get dozens of people suggesting reposting off topic, too broad, unclear, and opinion questions on Programmers.SE (see [Duga's Playground](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/20298/2015/9/8) and the historic [Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl)). I will not tell someone to repost a question that will get closed on another site to post on the other site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anecdotally, most people just repost the question even if you tell them that it needs to be fixed before it could be appropriate on another site.  If one says &quot;this should be posted on Stack Overflow, after remove the call for library refrences and add an mcve&quot; two minutes later it gets reposted without removing the request for library references or providing a mcve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many times, you will also see no attempt to migrate when the post is posted to multiple sites. Migrating at that point creates more work for Stack Overflow mods who would then need to close-duplicate the question and then merge it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When we *do* want to migrate the question, mentioning Stack Overflow (as mentioned) will often mean the person will repost the question on Stack Overflow... and then the votes to migrate go through. More work for everyone around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you find something that you believe should be on Stack Overflow, flag it for migration.** If you believe it needs to get moved sooner than later, jump into chat and ask for some help / attention on the question. There's often a moderator (who can do fancy diamond things if the question is already closed) and often three or four other users who can cast votes to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We get a fair amount of people who hit one quality filter on Stack Overflow or another and then repost here.  Questions that have 'question', 'help', and the like in the title can't be posted on Stack Overflow. They appear to not be restricted here. So many times someone will try posting a (low quality) question on Stack Overflow, fail, and then try here and succeed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also an aspect of how many votes people have to cast what. There are many days where I have run out of close votes. At this point, the only way to express my &quot;this needs to be closed&quot; (without custom flagging everything begging the mods to do it) is to down vote it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, you are seeing September in force. This leads to a fair amount of completely off topic questions being asked on Programmers.SE - people who need to learn how to debug. The answer to such is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Step through with a debugger. Put printf statements everywhere. [Learn how to debug](http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html#id2790282). Putting the printf statement you have every other line would give you a better idea of what is going on. –  MichaelT 9 hours ago   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggesting these to go to Stack Overflow or migrating them would do a disservice to the person asking the question and Stack Overflow. The Stack Exchange layout is not well designed for pedagogy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a lower rate of question asking on Programmers.SE. We get as many questions per day as Stack Overflow gets on some of its medium volume tags. This means that everyone can vote each day on (nearly) every post. And we do. Good posts get up votes. Poor ones get down votes. Its often easier to agree on the poor ones that are deserving of down votes.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look at [Users by votes on P.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Voters&amp;filter=all) and compare it to [Users by votes on SO](http://stackoverflow.com/users?tab=Voters&amp;filter=all).  Our top voter has cast more votes here than the top voter on Stack Overflow, despite the site being a small fraction of the size. We have one of the higher [votes per views](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SRLlM.png) (from [Why are votes per post on the decrease (what can we do to improve this)?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/216297/213963))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way to say &quot;no, Programmers.SE should not exist&quot; is simple.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have Stack Overflow accept that the questions that they want to send here should remain (and remain open) on Stack Overflow instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Provide the quality of answers that we provide here to the questions asked on Stack Overflow - both new and old.  This involves active curation of the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make it easy to find the questions that don't require code and an mcve in some way other than using a meta tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Until these things are done, Programmers.SE has a distinct place within the scope of Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would also encourage you to read [How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/167516/213963) which has a bit of history for both Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE.  That people are still misunderstanding the site and believing it to be &quot;the site for everything that lacks code&quot; or &quot;NotProgrammingRelated&quot; of old on Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21500" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7257" RevisionGUID="9252844a-65ef-4666-b8d5-44cfeef23666" CreationDate="2015-09-10T08:36:00.110" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7593" Text="Propose to detect troublesome questions using Stack Overflow quality scoring data and put them to [Triage queue](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage) for an hour or two. If the timeout expires before decision is made, let questions go to homepage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the questions that fail the Triage, one option to handle these is to keep them invisible for a day or two (if not edited), then automatically [bump](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/bump/info) them for a broader community review. This way would keep them away from the top of [newest tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest). (Attentive readers may notice that bumps imply certain pollution of [active tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active) but this looks less of an issue to me, as this tab is rather heavily dominated by better questions being bumped by answers and edits. Not to mention that Triage would spare active page from questions deserving flagging for speedy deletion - spam, [homework dumps](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3837/31260), [&quot;cubicle fart&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6677/31260) kind stuff...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reasons why I consider above approach feasible are [laid out here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7251/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  goal, about [&quot;wall of crap&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so) at homepage, also looks relevant to us, as indicated by multiple recurring discussions about [too many bad questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7130?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...site topics substantially overlap and... many troublesome questions over here appear to be posted by users who are simply [trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260). Using same scoring data that is supposed to detect and block them at Stack Overflow would make sense, wouldn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...there is just no way to ensure that questions in Triage queue would be reviewed within reasonable timeframe... automatically kick questions off this queue and let them go to homepage after some timeout (say, 1-2 hours) if these haven't got sufficient attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7593/is-there-any-point-in-this-site-still-existing  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note this one even suggests Stack Overflow (protected by Triage!) as an example of how a site should look like.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7130/so-many-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7239/there-are-way-more-negative-votes-in-the-top-50-questions-than-positive-time-to&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7221/problem-titles-in-off-topic-questions-of-new-users-coming-from-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7020/lets-help-askers-who-are-trying-to-circumvent-question-block-at-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6990/why-cant-we-raise-up-questions-quality&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6850/how-effective-is-the-quality-filter-against-this-question-with-all-caps-brief-ti&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6788/a-lot-of-front-page-down-votes&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6371/how-can-we-encourage-people-to-read-the-faq-before-asking-their-first-question&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5618/better-selection-title-for-top-questions-list&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5377/requiring-registration-to-ask-questions-did-it-made-a-difference&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4029/why-are-there-so-many-minus-points-on-questions-in-this-site&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4009/programmers-stack-exchange-question-downvoting-what-to-do&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3947/what-can-we-do-about-extremely-low-quality-questions-from-unregistered-users&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3778/can-we-have-some-way-to-not-show-closed-questions-on-the-front-page&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2744/how-can-i-create-a-custom-filtered-view-of-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2727/are-we-scaring-off-new-users&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Nov 17 '11)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4097/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Oct 8 '12)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/841/why-are-almost-half-the-questions-on-the-front-page-marked-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/784/are-we-closing-too-many-good-questions-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21501" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7501" RevisionGUID="a93c1970-02e0-4ae4-b2da-5d7a5ebeaaa5" CreationDate="2015-09-10T10:34:16.313" UserId="25768" Comment="added 40 characters in body" Text="[tag:contract]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;mostly about employment contracts (**burn**)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;however has some design-by-contract questions which are valid but should be retagged to reflect that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21502" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="108e8a40-ccbc-4f1e-8936-fbeee7e82554" CreationDate="2015-09-11T14:46:26.290" UserId="31260" Comment="degree is over" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:university]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:learning-curve] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:courses] - only two [historically locked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[courses]+locked%3Ayes) questions in this tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employment] [tag:co-workers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-satisfaction] [tag:job-title] [tag:jobs] [tag:new-job] [tag:job-definition] [tag:job-advancement] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:mobile-payment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21504" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7597" RevisionGUID="427965cd-ec3f-4dde-8008-010242c33bf8" CreationDate="2015-09-12T21:57:55.127" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="When people ask about Programmers.SE being too negative, closing too many things, or needing to be more inclusive - the best way to approach this is probably to look at the questions that have been asked and put on hold in the past two days or so (the 100 most recent questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [possible lossy conversion from long to int in java ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297107/possible-lossy-conversion-from-long-to-int-in-java)&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297099/where-do-i-start-i-want-to-automate-some-redundant-office-tasks&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297098/why-initialization-is-important&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297095/python-3-x-breaking-down-user-input-and-storing-it-in-different-variables&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297091/how-to-implement-ipc-in-a-java-process&#xD;&#xA;6. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297081/async-retry-executes-immediately-before-waiting-for-interval&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297076/accesing-java-script-variable-inside-java-in-jsp-file&#xD;&#xA;8. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297073/heuristic-of-a-star-search&#xD;&#xA;  * Repost of [A* search failure](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297006/a-search-failure) (10k link)&#xD;&#xA;9. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297071/saving-time-on-mysql-as-data (migrated)&#xD;&#xA;10. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297064/spare-time-development-for-work-and-ethics&#xD;&#xA;11. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297063/whats-a-good-way-to-design-a-data-input-output-program&#xD;&#xA;12. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297061/first-pc-game-question&#xD;&#xA;13. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297056/is-commenting-of-code-part-of-system-documentation (duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;14. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297055/when-to-use-typedef-in-c-programs&#xD;&#xA;15. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297054/how-to-handle-a-widley-configurable-application (duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;16. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297053/link-facebook-likes-with-website-profile-rating&#xD;&#xA;17. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297053/link-facebook-likes-with-website-profile-rating (duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;18. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297037/how-to-generate-a-single-js-file-containing-all-dependencies-from-npm-or-bower &#xD;&#xA;19. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297023/google-mock-how-to-name-mock-functions (migrated)&#xD;&#xA;20. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297012/file-not-found-file-mp3-in-delphi-xe7&#xD;&#xA;21. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297009/pointers-in-c&#xD;&#xA;22. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297002/gui-development-in-c-programming&#xD;&#xA;23. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297000/starting-out-again&#xD;&#xA;24. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296993/what-does-amortized-mean-in-amortized-analysis-of-algorithms (duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;25. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296989/drawing-of-model-design-question&#xD;&#xA;26. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296969/what-caption-is-best-for-a-detail-form (migrated)&#xD;&#xA;27. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296966/mean-value-for-dimension-in-numpy-array (migrated)&#xD;&#xA;28. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296958/which-programming-or-scripting-language-is-this&#xD;&#xA;29. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296956/how-to-intercept-sound-from-running-programs-and-modulate-before-outputting&#xD;&#xA;30. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296949/flux-architecture-w-backone-how-to-use-action-creators-for-all-http-responses&#xD;&#xA;31. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296948/how-should-i-develop-an-app-for-live-streaming-of-a-home-based-cctv-on-android&#xD;&#xA;32. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296946/what-are-good-ways-to-store-decorated-objects-in-a-relational-database-without-a&#xD;&#xA;33. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296945/restful-api-using-hateoas&#xD;&#xA;34. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296934/intellij-community-edition-javascript-support&#xD;&#xA;35. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296930/is-regex-anyway-slower-than-string-methods-to-match-something-in-long-strings&#xD;&#xA;36. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296922/suggestions-for-building-a-distributed-system-wanted&#xD;&#xA;37. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296920/what-is-the-architectural-design-method-that-begins-with-data&#xD;&#xA;38. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296914/what-is-essential-to-create-an-extremely-performant-software&#xD;&#xA;39. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296909/how-do-you-format-text-in-python-using-lpod-library (migrated)&#xD;&#xA;40. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296905/software-version-with-git-branching&#xD;&#xA;41. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296904/why-isnt-there-a-true-date-only-data-type&#xD;&#xA;42. [PHP OOPS: Code review](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296898/php-oops-code-review)&#xD;&#xA;43. [Methods of “Code Softening” (Opposite of “Hardening”) for C &amp; C++](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296892/)&#xD;&#xA;44. [Chain of Responsibility vs Commands in a queue or stack](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296890/)&#xD;&#xA;45. [latest concept of model-view-controller updates in php](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296885/latest-concept-of-model-view-controller-updates-in-php)&#xD;&#xA;46. [I like programming but I get discouraged sometimes and feel like stopping because I don't think I am good enough. Is this a normal feeling?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296880/)&#xD;&#xA;47. [Waterfall model implementation](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296876/)&#xD;&#xA;48. [Writing comments for some small code with rather large background](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296867/writing-comments-for-some-small-code-with-rather-large-background) (duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;49. [Storing in-memory data in Hadoop](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296866/storing-in-memory-data-in-hadoop)&#xD;&#xA;50. [contributions vs commits on Github](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296864/contributions-vs-commits-on-github)&#xD;&#xA;51. [It is possible now to use .net native for windows 7?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296860/it-is-possible-now-to-use-net-native-for-windows-7)&#xD;&#xA;52. [Passing table name to a stored procedure to perform insert/delete on that table](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296859/passing-table-name-to-a-stored-procedure-to-perform-insert-delete-on-that-table)&#xD;&#xA;53. [How to test HAProxy Load Balancer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296857/how-to-test-haproxy-load-balancer)&#xD;&#xA;54. [Is there such a thing as “code diversity”?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296854/is-there-such-a-thing-as-code-diversity)&#xD;&#xA;55. [process large dataset c#](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296843/process-large-dataset-c)&#xD;&#xA;56. [GPL - Does &quot;internal use&quot; apply for a public gameserver?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296839/gpl-does-internal-use-apply-for-a-public-gameserver) (migrated)&#xD;&#xA;57. [I have trouble with my matplotlib (Python) plot and fit?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296838/i-have-trouble-with-my-matplotlib-python-plot-and-fit)&#xD;&#xA;58. [Hooking into partial class' property change](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296836/hooking-into-partial-class-property-change)&#xD;&#xA;59. [Can the copyright message be removed from software output licensed under GPLv3?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296834/can-the-copyright-message-be-removed-from-software-output-licensed-under-gplv3)&#xD;&#xA;60. [Spring-boot and maven multiple modules](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296833/spring-boot-and-maven-multiple-modules)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And some that don't show up in the list because they were deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;61. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297040/top-10-rules-for-remote-work&#xD;&#xA;66. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297033/what-is-the-complexity-of-while-loop (duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;67. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296960/finding-n-satisfying-a-criterion&#xD;&#xA;68. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296943/ctrlf-inheritance-to-c-in-vs2013&#xD;&#xA;69. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296954/code-editor-that-allows-multiple-projects&#xD;&#xA;70. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296926/loan-origination-system-los-integration&#xD;&#xA;71. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296916/how-to-make-android-app-load-external-url-in-in-app-browser&#xD;&#xA;72. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296911/output-of-3-different-i-o-models&#xD;&#xA;73. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296908/ideas-needed-for-a-project-to-do&#xD;&#xA;75. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296830/linear-equations-in-ruby&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So there we have  70 questions that have been closed and/or deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To people saying that we're being too negative and closing too many, specifically which of these questions shouldn't have been closed? can be salvaged and reopened by one of us? needs to be fixed by the OP and *only* the OP can fix it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To any Community Managers that see this - please look at this list and consider if we are indeed being too restrictive? or if there is another problem lurking? What can we do to better serve these questions in a timely manner? Do ***you*** think we need to change our scope to say that some of these questions should be allowed on the site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21505" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7597" RevisionGUID="427965cd-ec3f-4dde-8008-010242c33bf8" CreationDate="2015-09-12T21:57:55.127" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="What questions recently closed can be salvaged?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21506" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7597" RevisionGUID="427965cd-ec3f-4dde-8008-010242c33bf8" CreationDate="2015-09-12T21:57:55.127" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21507" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7598" RevisionGUID="e8db1c8f-832e-4ded-8253-dfba78dae6cf" CreationDate="2015-09-12T21:57:55.127" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Some of these questions could indeed be salvaged into ones that are within the scope of the site.  However, building this list was exhausting. It is probably also likewise exhausting trying to go through it and see which ones can be fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the questions will have comments such as this exchange (from question #60)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's not clear what you're asking, and it's even less clear what problem you're trying to solve. –  GlenH7 Sep 9 at 20:46&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm asking if there is any sense in spliting spring-boot app into separate maven modules, one module for backend one for frontend –  whd Sep 9 at 20:57&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @whd that depends on what problem you are trying to solve. A suggestion is a solution to some problem. Without knowing what the problem is, suggestions are shots in the dark that may or may not be helpful to you or future readers. –  MichaelT Sep 9 at 22:11   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... and no response since then.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The people who *do* fix questions are getting overwhelmed and exhausted trying to do so.  Look at [the quarter's most recent editors](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Editors&amp;filter=quarter) and you will see that the people coming the questions are also the ones that have [historically been the ones *fixing* the questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/156/refiner).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I'm exhausted trying to wade through the crap of 'fix this code for me' which is off topic here and has ***never*** been on topic here. Or the &quot;I'm a high schooler, how do I write a video game?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so I close and down vote the questions that other people shouldn't need to invest time in reading. In hopes that by not needing to look at them, they will find the other answers useful, enlighinging, and answerable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21508" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7599" RevisionGUID="6818da3b-6891-472f-ad41-a9f393a02841" CreationDate="2015-09-13T15:08:14.577" UserId="161917" Text="So I finally got around to looking at all 70 questions and writing down how I feel about them. Obviously, I'm one of the active close/down/delete voters who feels that &gt;50% of our questions having downvotes indicates not that we're too harsh but that we get a lot of terrible questions, so maybe this post is just preaching to the choir and nobody actually cares, but no dissenting voices have posted yet and I think one real answer is better than none at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I looked over this list I did (to my surprise) see a very small number of questions for which a reasonable argument against the closure/migration/deletion could be mounted, and I've highlighted them in bold below. However, I do still feel that not a single one of these 70 questions could by any stretch of the imagination be called a *good* question. In my opinion, at most you can argue 3-4 of them are salvageable or were treated a bit too harshly. **If you feel differently, please post your own answer**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. lazy debugging question, off-topic and not good enough for SO&#xD;&#xA;2. way too broad&#xD;&#xA;3. no actual question&#xD;&#xA;4. code writing request&#xD;&#xA;5. some combination of too broad, unclear, tool recommendation, etc; we have no idea what the OP actually wants to do&#xD;&#xA;6. no actual question&#xD;&#xA;7. so trivial it's unclear why the OP needed to ask; OP appears to be lacking extremely basic background knowledge about what client-side code and server-side code are, however, technically **this was answerable so you could apply the &quot;no question is too low-level&quot; argument here**&#xD;&#xA;8. no actual question&#xD;&#xA;9. fix my code request, but an answerable one; migrated to SO and answered over there; &quot;the system worked&quot;&#xD;&#xA;10. some combination of too broad, unclear, possibly legal advice, &quot;you should be talking to them not asking us&quot;, and the answerable parts of it are more appropriate for The Workplace&#xD;&#xA;11. OP appears to be asking us to design and/or write his program for him&#xD;&#xA;12. OP appears to be asking what the best 3D video game engine would be, probably not detailed enough to migrate to SoftwareRecs.SE&#xD;&#xA;13. OP needs to ask his manager what he means by &quot;documentation&quot;, this is not a problem we can solve; closing as dupe of the comment question was probably wrong, but I'm not sure it matters&#xD;&#xA;14. a list of useful examples question, which is traditionally considered equivalent to an open-ended list or opinion poll question, however **this one did get a pretty decent accepted answer so you could argue for it**&#xD;&#xA;15. **I'm not really sure here. My personal belief is this is not a &quot;standard&quot; problem with more or less correct solutions, but a simple fact of life that everyone has to design around, and asking how to handle complex configuration is no different from asking how to handle browser incompatibilities or how to handle legacy code or how to design a webapp, i.e. I would've considered voting &quot;too broad&quot; on both this question and its current dupe target.**&#xD;&#xA;16. A typical vague &quot;Is it possible to...&quot; which imo is equivalent to asking us to design and/or write the OP's software for him.&#xD;&#xA;17. Literally an exact duplicate of 16.&#xD;&#xA;18. Appears to be a tool recommendation.&#xD;&#xA;19. Asking about Google Mock, migrated to SO and answered there; &quot;the system worked&quot;&#xD;&#xA;20. I have no idea what the OP is trying to ask.&#xD;&#xA;21. Literally just asks us to explain pointers in C++, so it's either asking for tutorial links or asking us to write a C++ tutorial as an answer.&#xD;&#xA;22. &quot;Is it possible to create GUIs with C?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;23. Career/education advice&#xD;&#xA;24. For once, a duplicate I actually feel good about. This OP asks what &quot;amortized&quot; means in the context of algorithm analysis, and we already have an answered question asking essentially the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;25. On-topic, but too vague/broad/unclear to be answerable, and the OP even says he &quot;wanted to poll and get some opinions and advice.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;26. Unclear and/or an opinion poll. I don't even know what the OP means by &quot;caption&quot;, so I have no idea what he's after. I don't believe it was worthy of migration, but oh well.&#xD;&#xA;27. Asking how to do something in numpy. Migrated to SO and answered there; &quot;the system worked&quot; again&#xD;&#xA;28. &quot;What language is this?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;29. Either asking us to design/write the program for him, or recommend resources.&#xD;&#xA;30. Mostly unclear, though I can see a request for code example in there. Nothing salvageable though.&#xD;&#xA;31. The most charitable reading of this would be &quot;How do I write CCTV code that's portable across all DVRs?&quot; which is still painfully overbroad.&#xD;&#xA;32. **Apparently this one has reopen votes for some reason, but it's obviously too broad in its current form (and hasn't had any edits yet). While the problem is a common and well-known one, OP is essentially asking us to list all the &quot;good&quot; solutions to that problem.**&#xD;&#xA;33. Essentially asking what &quot;the best practices&quot; for a REST API are.&#xD;&#xA;34. Tool recommendation and/or tech support.&#xD;&#xA;35. &quot;Is X slower than Y?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;36. Tool recommendation and/or asking for examples and/or asking what project to take up next.&#xD;&#xA;37. &quot;What is the architectural/design method that begins with data?&quot; Title says it all really.&#xD;&#xA;38. &quot;What is essential to create an extremely performant software?&quot; If this isn't too broad I don't know what is.&#xD;&#xA;39. Code writing request. Should not have been migrated.&#xD;&#xA;40. Like most version control branch management questions, this is a purely subjective opinion poll rather than a genuine problem that might have an actual solution.&#xD;&#xA;41. A thinly-veiled rant whose premise is objectively wrong. *Maybe* this is an example of something to downvote but not close vote, but it got an answer, and the answer has loads of comments from the OP about why it's not helpful, which to me is a classic symptom of a question that should have been closed much sooner.&#xD;&#xA;42. Claims to be a code review request but provides no code, only vague descriptions of folder structure and control flow.&#xD;&#xA;43. Essentially &quot;How to make code more error-prone?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;44. No one seems to know what the OP thinks he's asking.&#xD;&#xA;45. The entire question is &quot;i know basic about MVC but ,i want to know about latest concept of &quot; model-view-controller&quot; in Php&quot;&#xD;&#xA;46. Career advice, though it got an accepted +8 answer.&#xD;&#xA;47. &quot;Can anyone share his experiences about waterfall model.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;48. Kind of an interesting problem, but ultimately an opinion poll about what form of documentation would be the best.&#xD;&#xA;49. Very vague task description followed by &quot;we're stuck&quot; with no real explanation of why they're stuck, this is a classic example of &quot;too broad&quot; being used to mean &quot;Google a book/tutorial on this technology instead of asking us to write another one&quot;&#xD;&#xA;50. Asking us how GitHub works.&#xD;&#xA;51. Tech support&#xD;&#xA;52. Typical underspecified question, too broad/unclear/opinion-based&#xD;&#xA;53. Typical underspecified question, too broad/unclear/opinion-based&#xD;&#xA;54. Not only an opinion poll, but one where opinions can't even be backed up by anything; it's more a philosophy question than an engineering question.&#xD;&#xA;55. Typical underspecified question, too broad/unclear&#xD;&#xA;56. Asks us to interpret legal jargon in a license, correctly migrated to OpenSource.SE.&#xD;&#xA;57. Fix my code request, and far too unclear to migrate to SO.&#xD;&#xA;58. I simply don't understand this question, or the OP's comment under it.&#xD;&#xA;59. License interpretation question, which apparently isn't clearly answered by the GPL itself. Arguments can be made either way on how we should handle these questions, but it does appear that there is no objectively correct answer we can give without being lawyers.&#xD;&#xA;60. Asking how to split up code/modules/whatever without any specific problem or context, so it's just an opinion poll.&#xD;&#xA;61. Opinion poll, open-ended list question, too broad, career advice&#xD;&#xA;62. No explanation of why the OP is unable to calculate the big-O themselves. Dupe link is probably correct, **down/close/delete votes are *maybe* too harsh, but the question does come off as lazy.**&#xD;&#xA;63. I have no idea what the OP is trying to ask. It looks vaguely like a comp sci proof homework question but far too poorly explained to be answerable even if it was on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;64. Asking us to design/write code for them.&#xD;&#xA;65. Tool recommendation&#xD;&#xA;66. Way too broad, asking for the best way to design/write a &quot;loan origination system&quot; (without even trying to explain what that means)&#xD;&#xA;67. Implementation issue, but with too little explanation to migrate to SO.&#xD;&#xA;68. Homework dump, no explanation of why the OP is stuck, and *far* too many assumptions have been left out so we couldn't solve it anyway.&#xD;&#xA;69. &quot;Ideas needed for a project to do&quot;&#xD;&#xA;70. I'm voting to close this question because this is an extremely simple and common problem with loads of help available on Google, with no explanation of why the OP is unable to solve it on their own. –  Ixrec Sep 9 at 19:30  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21509" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7597" RevisionGUID="1bfe9f13-cd13-4108-b418-a1333bbe4947" CreationDate="2015-09-14T01:41:07.067" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Link to correct duplicate." Text="When people ask about Programmers.SE being too negative, closing too many things, or needing to be more inclusive - the best way to approach this is probably to look at the questions that have been asked and put on hold in the past two days or so (the 100 most recent questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [possible lossy conversion from long to int in java ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297107/possible-lossy-conversion-from-long-to-int-in-java)&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297099/where-do-i-start-i-want-to-automate-some-redundant-office-tasks&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297098/why-initialization-is-important&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297095/python-3-x-breaking-down-user-input-and-storing-it-in-different-variables&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297091/how-to-implement-ipc-in-a-java-process&#xD;&#xA;6. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297081/async-retry-executes-immediately-before-waiting-for-interval&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297076/accesing-java-script-variable-inside-java-in-jsp-file&#xD;&#xA;8. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297073/heuristic-of-a-star-search&#xD;&#xA;  * Repost of [A* search failure](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297006/a-search-failure) (10k link)&#xD;&#xA;9. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297071/saving-time-on-mysql-as-data (migrated)&#xD;&#xA;10. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297064/spare-time-development-for-work-and-ethics&#xD;&#xA;11. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297063/whats-a-good-way-to-design-a-data-input-output-program&#xD;&#xA;12. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297061/first-pc-game-question&#xD;&#xA;13. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297056/is-commenting-of-code-part-of-system-documentation (duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;14. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297055/when-to-use-typedef-in-c-programs&#xD;&#xA;15. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297054/how-to-handle-a-widley-configurable-application (duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;16. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297053/link-facebook-likes-with-website-profile-rating&#xD;&#xA;17. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/297158 (duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;18. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297037/how-to-generate-a-single-js-file-containing-all-dependencies-from-npm-or-bower &#xD;&#xA;19. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297023/google-mock-how-to-name-mock-functions (migrated)&#xD;&#xA;20. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297012/file-not-found-file-mp3-in-delphi-xe7&#xD;&#xA;21. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297009/pointers-in-c&#xD;&#xA;22. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297002/gui-development-in-c-programming&#xD;&#xA;23. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297000/starting-out-again&#xD;&#xA;24. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296993/what-does-amortized-mean-in-amortized-analysis-of-algorithms (duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;25. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296989/drawing-of-model-design-question&#xD;&#xA;26. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296969/what-caption-is-best-for-a-detail-form (migrated)&#xD;&#xA;27. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296966/mean-value-for-dimension-in-numpy-array (migrated)&#xD;&#xA;28. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296958/which-programming-or-scripting-language-is-this&#xD;&#xA;29. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296956/how-to-intercept-sound-from-running-programs-and-modulate-before-outputting&#xD;&#xA;30. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296949/flux-architecture-w-backone-how-to-use-action-creators-for-all-http-responses&#xD;&#xA;31. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296948/how-should-i-develop-an-app-for-live-streaming-of-a-home-based-cctv-on-android&#xD;&#xA;32. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296946/what-are-good-ways-to-store-decorated-objects-in-a-relational-database-without-a&#xD;&#xA;33. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296945/restful-api-using-hateoas&#xD;&#xA;34. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296934/intellij-community-edition-javascript-support&#xD;&#xA;35. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296930/is-regex-anyway-slower-than-string-methods-to-match-something-in-long-strings&#xD;&#xA;36. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296922/suggestions-for-building-a-distributed-system-wanted&#xD;&#xA;37. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296920/what-is-the-architectural-design-method-that-begins-with-data&#xD;&#xA;38. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296914/what-is-essential-to-create-an-extremely-performant-software&#xD;&#xA;39. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296909/how-do-you-format-text-in-python-using-lpod-library (migrated)&#xD;&#xA;40. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296905/software-version-with-git-branching&#xD;&#xA;41. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296904/why-isnt-there-a-true-date-only-data-type&#xD;&#xA;42. [PHP OOPS: Code review](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296898/php-oops-code-review)&#xD;&#xA;43. [Methods of “Code Softening” (Opposite of “Hardening”) for C &amp; C++](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296892/)&#xD;&#xA;44. [Chain of Responsibility vs Commands in a queue or stack](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296890/)&#xD;&#xA;45. [latest concept of model-view-controller updates in php](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296885/latest-concept-of-model-view-controller-updates-in-php)&#xD;&#xA;46. [I like programming but I get discouraged sometimes and feel like stopping because I don't think I am good enough. Is this a normal feeling?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296880/)&#xD;&#xA;47. [Waterfall model implementation](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296876/)&#xD;&#xA;48. [Writing comments for some small code with rather large background](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296867/writing-comments-for-some-small-code-with-rather-large-background) (duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;49. [Storing in-memory data in Hadoop](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296866/storing-in-memory-data-in-hadoop)&#xD;&#xA;50. [contributions vs commits on Github](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296864/contributions-vs-commits-on-github)&#xD;&#xA;51. [It is possible now to use .net native for windows 7?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296860/it-is-possible-now-to-use-net-native-for-windows-7)&#xD;&#xA;52. [Passing table name to a stored procedure to perform insert/delete on that table](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296859/passing-table-name-to-a-stored-procedure-to-perform-insert-delete-on-that-table)&#xD;&#xA;53. [How to test HAProxy Load Balancer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296857/how-to-test-haproxy-load-balancer)&#xD;&#xA;54. [Is there such a thing as “code diversity”?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296854/is-there-such-a-thing-as-code-diversity)&#xD;&#xA;55. [process large dataset c#](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296843/process-large-dataset-c)&#xD;&#xA;56. [GPL - Does &quot;internal use&quot; apply for a public gameserver?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296839/gpl-does-internal-use-apply-for-a-public-gameserver) (migrated)&#xD;&#xA;57. [I have trouble with my matplotlib (Python) plot and fit?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296838/i-have-trouble-with-my-matplotlib-python-plot-and-fit)&#xD;&#xA;58. [Hooking into partial class' property change](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296836/hooking-into-partial-class-property-change)&#xD;&#xA;59. [Can the copyright message be removed from software output licensed under GPLv3?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296834/can-the-copyright-message-be-removed-from-software-output-licensed-under-gplv3)&#xD;&#xA;60. [Spring-boot and maven multiple modules](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296833/spring-boot-and-maven-multiple-modules)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And some that don't show up in the list because they were deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;61. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297040/top-10-rules-for-remote-work&#xD;&#xA;66. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297033/what-is-the-complexity-of-while-loop (duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;67. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296960/finding-n-satisfying-a-criterion&#xD;&#xA;68. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296943/ctrlf-inheritance-to-c-in-vs2013&#xD;&#xA;69. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296954/code-editor-that-allows-multiple-projects&#xD;&#xA;70. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296926/loan-origination-system-los-integration&#xD;&#xA;71. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296916/how-to-make-android-app-load-external-url-in-in-app-browser&#xD;&#xA;72. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296911/output-of-3-different-i-o-models&#xD;&#xA;73. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296908/ideas-needed-for-a-project-to-do&#xD;&#xA;75. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296830/linear-equations-in-ruby&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So there we have  70 questions that have been closed and/or deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To people saying that we're being too negative and closing too many, specifically which of these questions shouldn't have been closed? can be salvaged and reopened by one of us? needs to be fixed by the OP and *only* the OP can fix it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To any Community Managers that see this - please look at this list and consider if we are indeed being too restrictive? or if there is another problem lurking? What can we do to better serve these questions in a timely manner? Do ***you*** think we need to change our scope to say that some of these questions should be allowed on the site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21510" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7600" RevisionGUID="b5700651-b827-4c67-91e1-9d54af878dfd" CreationDate="2015-09-14T12:51:20.663" UserId="2439" Text="Before anything, just to state that I'm aware this is probably not the place to ask this, but I don't know what would be the right place, so I'm putting this here in the hope someone will at least direct me in the right direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had another account on StackExchange (with which I mostly participated on Programmers) which depended on myopenid.com. Having been absent for a while, I lost track of that account and myopenid closed in the meantime. I would be very sorry to lose it because I made some contributions with that account as well, and would like very much to keep it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any way to recover it or at least merge it with this one?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would appreciate all comments and ideas you may have regarding this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="21512" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7600" RevisionGUID="b5700651-b827-4c67-91e1-9d54af878dfd" CreationDate="2015-09-14T12:51:20.663" UserId="2439" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21513" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7600" RevisionGUID="a51dbd99-ac89-46c2-ac9d-97aa7c840d53" CreationDate="2015-09-14T12:55:59.213" UserId="25936" Comment="Meta is the correct place for this" Text="I had another account on StackExchange (with which I mostly participated on Programmers) which depended on myopenid.com. Having been absent for a while, I lost track of that account and myopenid closed in the meantime. I would be very sorry to lose it because I made some contributions with that account as well, and would like very much to keep it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any way to recover it or at least merge it with this one?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would appreciate all comments and ideas you may have regarding this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21514" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7600" RevisionGUID="a51dbd99-ac89-46c2-ac9d-97aa7c840d53" CreationDate="2015-09-14T12:55:59.213" UserId="25936" Comment="Meta is the correct place for this" Text="|support|user-accounts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21515" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7597" RevisionGUID="efa6e5b2-7834-46e1-8ec8-6ae1eec10637" CreationDate="2015-09-15T18:13:53.450" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/643850237065494528" />
  <row Id="21517" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7601" RevisionGUID="638621df-549f-4470-806d-ba502be8278f" CreationDate="2015-09-17T04:59:13.220" UserId="31604" Text="I want to understand:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the difference between &quot;Technical Program Manager&quot; and &quot;Software Development Manager&quot; in terms of roles, responsibilities and people management requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will programmers.stackexchange website will be good site for this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21518" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7601" RevisionGUID="638621df-549f-4470-806d-ba502be8278f" CreationDate="2015-09-17T04:59:13.220" UserId="31604" Text="Question on role duties" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21519" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7601" RevisionGUID="638621df-549f-4470-806d-ba502be8278f" CreationDate="2015-09-17T04:59:13.220" UserId="31604" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21520" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7602" RevisionGUID="aad30dfd-d27a-4c5e-ab71-4b9ef775d9c1" CreationDate="2015-09-17T12:37:44.267" UserId="25476" Text="This question would not be a good fit for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers are highly dependent on company and opinion.  There is no general rulebook on titles in the IT field.  Apart from that we generally view career advice and questions as off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question likely is also not a good fit for the Workplace for the same reason as it being highly opinionated and company specific." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21521" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7601" RevisionGUID="ea9a8989-1dcd-4a4a-99de-00607aa5839a" CreationDate="2015-09-17T16:34:46.517" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add relevant tags." Text="|discussion|questions|on-topic-definition|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21524" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7603" RevisionGUID="2bd70d3e-f036-4854-bb52-0650d1dbd6ca" CreationDate="2015-09-18T07:58:27.863" UserId="31260" Text="Please merge tag [tag:float] (10 questions) into [tag:floating-point] (32), and make them synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Preference for master tag is because it looks unambiguous and because Wikipedia article uses this term: [Floating point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21525" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7603" RevisionGUID="2bd70d3e-f036-4854-bb52-0650d1dbd6ca" CreationDate="2015-09-18T07:58:27.863" UserId="31260" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [float] → [floating-point]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21526" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7603" RevisionGUID="2bd70d3e-f036-4854-bb52-0650d1dbd6ca" CreationDate="2015-09-18T07:58:27.863" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21527" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7603" RevisionGUID="22c3e452-69f2-4922-aa66-58ad78e30894" CreationDate="2015-09-18T12:04:41.220" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21528" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7604" RevisionGUID="fd977640-69b3-40d0-ba54-e7267601a5b7" CreationDate="2015-09-18T12:05:19.957" UserId="4" Text="I have successfully completed the merging of these two tags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21531" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7400" RevisionGUID="3a9e1aca-1a5b-4ea4-bd15-ed2d33c38659" CreationDate="2015-09-18T18:54:53.320" UserId="31260" Comment="personal hobby-programming is over" Text="[tag:personal-projects]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feels like a meta-tag, and seems to be a magnet for opinion-based questions about what to do with said projects." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21534" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7295" RevisionGUID="9f6639e9-1065-424b-9864-390da01247d6" CreationDate="2015-09-18T20:49:20.637" UserId="31260" Comment="compensation and credit cards are gone" Text="[tag:payment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag appears to have two uses. One is with regards to implementation of payment systems and transactions and the other is with respect to getting paid as a contractor, freelancer, or employee. The second type of question is off-topic. This tag could be removed from the off-topic questions and a clear tag wiki provided. Alternatively, it could be renamed (example: [tag:payment-system] to make it clear that it's about software systems and not getting paid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: [tag:pricing] [tag:cost-estimation] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:sales] [tag:mobile-payment] [tag:pci] [tag:revenue] [tag:income]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21540" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7539" RevisionGUID="a1b37348-3a18-4925-ac99-fe5020070a85" CreationDate="2015-09-19T00:16:06.767" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21544" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7607" RevisionGUID="d06ced23-4668-4dce-94cd-635cafdd5915" CreationDate="2015-09-19T18:24:07.357" UserId="9113" Text="IMHO this won't change anything. People who come to &quot;Programmers&quot; for asking debugging questions are too ignorant to care for the site rules - they either don't read them at all, they do not understand them or they do not take them seriously. Adding more text to a rule they currently do not read or understand will not make more of those people obey the rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I would not be astonished if a big number of those people who ask debugging questions on Programmers are so unexperienced they believe such question can be answered in front of a whiteboard, with no access to a computer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21545" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7601" RevisionGUID="ba6b0c44-63c9-4129-8a35-f9dd2adf3fe0" CreationDate="2015-09-19T21:50:57.747" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="I want to understand:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the difference between &quot;Technical Program Manager&quot; and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Software Development Manager&quot; in terms of roles, responsibilities and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; people management requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will programmers.stackexchange website will be good site for this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21546" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7608" RevisionGUID="1c1a9777-b875-4ff0-8a36-bd899b902ef7" CreationDate="2015-09-20T16:25:51.253" UserId="100972" Text="terminology tag (as defined by you guys): &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   Questions about the objective meaning or &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    common understanding of words and &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    concepts that programmers encounter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well I need to develop something which reads audio data to be played, and [I asked what one calls the term for the &quot;rate&quot; at which audio is interpreted / played by software](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297720/term-for-frame-rate-when-reading-audio-data/297723#297723). Similar to one uses a video's frame-rate to know how fast to present the frames.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to meet the criteria, but a user downvoted my question and linked to a meta discussion: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I read that meta question and its accepted answer, and it clarifies that questions asking &quot;what should I name this&quot; are off topic, but &quot;what is the name of this well known concept?&quot; Is on-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question, being &quot;What is the term for the rate at which audio data should be read?&quot; isn't really a code problem, it's a matter of well known terminology, and seems to fit the criteria set by the community through the &quot;terminology&quot; tag and meta duscussions. So why has this user downvoted and linked to meta on my question? It also recieved close votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subsequently, my question recieved a perfect answer quickly, it was &quot;Sampling Rate&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21547" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7608" RevisionGUID="1c1a9777-b875-4ff0-8a36-bd899b902ef7" CreationDate="2015-09-20T16:25:51.253" UserId="100972" Text="My terminology question seems to fit the on-topic conditions, but I was downvoted and linked to meta. Explanation (please)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21548" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7608" RevisionGUID="1c1a9777-b875-4ff0-8a36-bd899b902ef7" CreationDate="2015-09-20T16:25:51.253" UserId="100972" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21549" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7608" RevisionGUID="4833650d-08d3-4116-a582-7920773b7fc3" CreationDate="2015-09-20T16:31:42.423" UserId="100972" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="terminology tag (as defined by you guys): &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   Questions about the objective meaning or &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    common understanding of words and &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    concepts that programmers encounter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well I need to develop something which reads audio data to be played, and [I asked what one calls the term for the &quot;rate&quot; at which audio is interpreted / played by software](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297720/term-for-frame-rate-when-reading-audio-data/297723#297723). Similar to how one uses a video's frame-rate to know how fast to present the frames.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to meet the criteria, but a user downvoted my question and linked to a meta discussion: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I read that meta question and its accepted answer, and it clarifies that questions asking &quot;what should I name this&quot; are off topic, but &quot;what is the name of this well known concept?&quot; Is on-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question, being &quot;What is the term for the rate at which audio data should be read?&quot; isn't really a code problem, it's a matter of well known terminology, and seems to fit the criteria set by the community through the &quot;terminology&quot; tag and meta duscussions. So why has this user downvoted and linked to meta on my question? It also recieved close votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subsequently, my question recieved a perfect answer quickly, it was &quot;Sampling Rate&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21550" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7609" RevisionGUID="fc9ff5b6-2871-4bf2-8dbd-0eb41a7138ce" CreationDate="2015-09-20T17:23:54.177" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Down votes do not only signal on-topic or off topics.  The mouseover for the down vote of a question reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question **does not show any research effort**; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(emphasis mine)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Search for [frame rate audio](https://www.google.com/search?q=frame+rate+audio) produces a number of hits.  For me, I see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![frame rate audio][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While not the first, nor even the second - the answer to your question is on the first page of the google results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you were to do a slightly less specific search, it becomes the top result.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![rate audio file][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the term you are looking for shows up on the first page of google results when searching for the title of the question, it is fairly clear that no research was done prior to asking the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/wKUkD.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EyF9q.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21551" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7610" RevisionGUID="79c7bf5c-adde-4c10-90a1-c94ba4c021ee" CreationDate="2015-09-20T19:18:26.150" UserId="31260" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Related: [Create a New Stack Overflow Instance for Beginner Users and Content](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/253646/839601) (MSO).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are getting many off-topic / implementation and coding kind questions where askers appear to be aware of Stack Overflow (at [10m questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/10m-questions-milestone/info) over there, who isn't) but for various reasons seem to suspect that their questions won't be well received there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This problem is relatively new. In the past, Stack Overflow was lenient about question quality and askers didn't tent to bother worrying if their quality is okay. Things seem to have changed after [SE Quality Project](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/se-quality-project/info) features were rolled out at Stack Overflow and some of those who would previously ask over there, started looking to try their luck elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, they usually don't mention using Programmers as a proxy for Stack Overflow (they maybe think it's not important) but sometimes, [it leaks through](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293373/how-to-run-c-file-if-header-class-and-main-are-not-in-the-same-folder#comment607486_293373 &quot;example - 10K link&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do something to prevent... _lifehacks_ like above from becoming popular?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is much larger than us, they get about 8K questions a day average. Even amount of questions they close (800 a day) is 20 times more than total questions we get (less than 50).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Site like ours can be totally flooded by &quot;Stack Overflow learning and training&quot; kind attempts if this becomes widespread. I would not want this to happen. I come here to learn and contribute to Programmers topics, not to guide those who are scared or blocked by Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21552" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7610" RevisionGUID="79c7bf5c-adde-4c10-90a1-c94ba4c021ee" CreationDate="2015-09-20T19:18:26.150" UserId="31260" Text="Using Programmers as &quot;learning and training area&quot; for Stack Overflow kind questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21553" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7610" RevisionGUID="79c7bf5c-adde-4c10-90a1-c94ba4c021ee" CreationDate="2015-09-20T19:18:26.150" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|on-topic-definition|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21554" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7610" RevisionGUID="69bc7da5-5782-466c-a6ab-7a5acf628727" CreationDate="2015-09-20T19:29:27.097" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Related: [Create a New Stack Overflow Instance for Beginner Users and Content](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/253646/839601) (MSO).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are getting many off-topic / implementation and coding kind questions where askers appear to be aware of Stack Overflow (at [10m questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/10m-questions-milestone/info) over there, who isn't) but for various reasons seem to suspect that their questions won't be well received there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This problem seems to be relatively new. In the past, Stack Overflow was lenient about question quality and askers didn't tend to bother worrying if their quality is okay. Things seem to have changed after [SE Quality Project](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/se-quality-project/info) features were rolled out at Stack Overflow and some of those who would previously ask over there, started looking to try their luck elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, they usually don't mention using Programmers as a proxy for Stack Overflow (they maybe think it's not important) but sometimes, [it leaks through](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293373/how-to-run-c-file-if-header-class-and-main-are-not-in-the-same-folder#comment607486_293373 &quot;example - 10K link&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do something to prevent... _lifehacks_ like above from becoming popular?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is much larger than us, they get about 8K questions a day average. Even amount of questions they close (800 a day) is 20 times more than total questions we get (less than 50).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Site like ours can be totally flooded by &quot;Stack Overflow learning and training&quot; kind attempts if this becomes widespread. I would not want this to happen. I come here to learn and contribute to Programmers topics, not to guide those who are scared or blocked by Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21556" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7611" RevisionGUID="13242281-fc68-4dba-8aa4-45bde6b838fa" CreationDate="2015-09-21T02:36:02.207" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I am the all time top answerer in [tag:random] (89 points on 11 answers).  I keep looking forward to getting a tag badge in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can track C, version-control, database, math, git, history, open-source, and a whole host of other badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet, when I filter to 'ran', I don't see it.  Typing in 'random' comes up completely blank.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![enter image description here][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, yea.  No random badge tracking for me. Even specific random tag badges.  Please fix.  I'd really like to track my progress on the random tag badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/34Z0z.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/wsEds.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21557" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7611" RevisionGUID="13242281-fc68-4dba-8aa4-45bde6b838fa" CreationDate="2015-09-21T02:36:02.207" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I can't track a random badge" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21558" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7611" RevisionGUID="13242281-fc68-4dba-8aa4-45bde6b838fa" CreationDate="2015-09-21T02:36:02.207" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|support|bug|tags|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21559" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7611" RevisionGUID="56f2360c-3d32-43dc-a15e-b39a55d3956c" CreationDate="2015-09-21T14:10:50.300" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited title" Text="I can't track the random badge" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21560" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7612" RevisionGUID="76ece670-6ef5-4684-a777-1478a5da34c3" CreationDate="2015-09-21T17:50:44.447" UserId="35384" Text="&gt;Can we do something to prevent... lifehacks like above from becoming popular?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consequently migrate all implementation specific questions to Stack Overflow, that's what it is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other off-topic questions should be closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21561" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7612" RevisionGUID="8e73f9f7-3eef-4348-9c35-59563757a8ee" CreationDate="2015-09-21T18:00:39.137" UserId="35384" Comment="added 102 characters in body" Text="&gt;Can we do something to prevent... lifehacks like above from becoming popular?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consequently migrate all implementation specific questions to Stack Overflow, that's what it is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other off-topic questions should be closed. (And let the guys over there handle any &quot;quality&quot; related issues, if any ... - they do, trust me ;-))" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21562" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7612" RevisionGUID="12c93eb4-0c70-419f-90ac-906f171580e0" CreationDate="2015-09-21T18:14:20.497" UserId="35384" Comment="added 4 characters in body; added 11 characters in body" Text="&gt;Can we do something to prevent... lifehacks like above from becoming popular?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Consequently** migrate (or close) all implementation specific questions to Stack Overflow, that's what it is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other off-topic questions should be closed. (And let the guys over there handle any &quot;quality&quot; related issues, if any ... - they do, trust me ;-))" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21563" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="2482b06f-9291-4cc0-82c0-a2e0fc26b52a" CreationDate="2015-09-21T18:15:24.970" UserId="31260" Comment="learning-curve straightened" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:school] [tag:university]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:courses] - only two [historically locked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[courses]+locked%3Ayes) questions in this tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employment] [tag:co-workers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-satisfaction] [tag:job-title] [tag:jobs] [tag:new-job] [tag:job-definition] [tag:job-advancement] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:mobile-payment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21564" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7612" RevisionGUID="bd79bf21-2bc2-486f-a593-191609b49a95" CreationDate="2015-09-21T18:25:44.690" UserId="35384" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="&gt;Can we do something to prevent... lifehacks like above from becoming popular?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Consequently** migrate (or close) all implementation specific questions to Stack Overflow, that's what it is for.&#xD;(And let the guys over there handle any &quot;quality&quot; related issues, if any ... - they do, trust me ;-))&#xA;&#xA;Other off-topic questions should be closed. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21565" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7294" RevisionGUID="6320e13a-f990-47c7-95f7-f5bb57b3f7b0" CreationDate="2015-09-21T21:01:54.653" UserId="31260" Comment="intependent-contractor has left us" Text="[tag:freelancing] [tag:client-relations] [tag:self-employment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Workplace and Freelancing exist and cover these topics. They appears to be beyond scope based on the Help Center." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21567" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="d97992b0-88cd-43b0-b3a0-37d321f85114" CreationDate="2015-09-21T21:04:21.410" UserId="31260" Comment="school and courses are over" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:university]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employment] [tag:co-workers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-satisfaction] [tag:job-title] [tag:jobs] [tag:new-job] [tag:job-definition] [tag:job-advancement] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:mobile-payment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21569" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7610" RevisionGUID="689a54d6-18a7-4b3b-ba51-f94fbec00b0e" CreationDate="2015-09-21T21:35:01.627" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/646075181878915072" />
  <row Id="21570" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7610" RevisionGUID="3885879c-2f63-4640-be11-127797601cd0" CreationDate="2015-09-22T04:43:53.340" UserId="31260" Comment="clarification copied into post from comments" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Related: [Create a New Stack Overflow Instance for Beginner Users and Content](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/253646/839601) (MSO).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are getting many off-topic / implementation and coding kind questions where askers appear to be aware of Stack Overflow (at [10m questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/10m-questions-milestone/info) over there, who isn't) but for various reasons seem to suspect that their questions won't be well received there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This problem seems to be relatively new. In the past, Stack Overflow was lenient about question quality and askers didn't tend to bother worrying if their quality is okay. Things seem to have changed after [SE Quality Project](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/se-quality-project/info) features were rolled out at Stack Overflow and some of those who would previously ask over there, started looking to try their luck elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, they usually don't mention using Programmers as a proxy for Stack Overflow (they maybe think it's not important) but sometimes, [it leaks through](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297569/easy-create-junit-test-for-class-on-eclipse#comment617336_297569 &quot;example - 10K link&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want ask for StackOverflow but i cant becouse my one post have -3...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do something to prevent... _lifehacks_ like above from becoming popular?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Some folks (probably with [Math.SE background](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi?noredirect=1#comment22868_7610 &quot;as explained in comments&quot;)) even invent funny theories for why they [avoid Stack Overflow](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293373/how-to-run-c-file-if-header-class-and-main-are-not-in-the-same-folder#comment607486_293373 &quot;example - 10K link&quot;): _'my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here_'&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is much larger than us, they get about 8K questions a day average. Even amount of questions they close (800 a day) is 20 times more than total questions we get (less than 50).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Site like ours can be totally flooded by &quot;Stack Overflow learning and training&quot; kind attempts if this becomes widespread. I would not want this to happen. I come here to learn and contribute to Programmers topics, not to guide those who are scared or blocked by Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21571" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7610" RevisionGUID="f0f67326-36c5-41ff-8aef-c83c997898c0" CreationDate="2015-09-22T11:48:45.740" UserId="31260" Comment="Stack Overflow started burying very low quality questions in Triage, which cut their chances to get answers, even as hints in comments" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Related: [Create a New Stack Overflow Instance for Beginner Users and Content](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/253646/839601) (MSO).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are getting many off-topic / implementation and coding kind questions where askers appear to be aware of Stack Overflow (at [10m questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/10m-questions-milestone/info) over there, who isn't) but for various reasons seem to suspect that their questions won't be well received there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This problem seems to be relatively new. In the past, Stack Overflow was lenient about question quality and askers didn't tend to bother worrying if their quality is okay. Things seem to have changed after [SE Quality Project](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/se-quality-project/info) features were rolled out at Stack Overflow and some of those who would previously ask over there, started looking to try their luck elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, they usually don't mention using Programmers as a proxy for Stack Overflow (they maybe think it's not important) but sometimes, [it leaks through](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297569/easy-create-junit-test-for-class-on-eclipse#comment617336_297569 &quot;example - 10K link&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want ask for StackOverflow but i cant becouse my one post have -3...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do something to prevent... _lifehacks_ like above from becoming popular?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Some folks (probably with [Math.SE background](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi?noredirect=1#comment22868_7610 &quot;as explained in comments&quot;)) even invent funny theories for why they [avoid Stack Overflow](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293373/how-to-run-c-file-if-header-class-and-main-are-not-in-the-same-folder#comment607486_293373 &quot;example - 10K link&quot;): _'my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here_'  (I think these theories became popular after Stack Overflow started burying very low quality questions in Triage, which cut their chances to get answers, even as hints in comments.)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is much larger than us, they get about 8K questions a day average. Even amount of questions they close (800 a day) is 20 times more than total questions we get (less than 50).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Site like ours can be totally flooded by &quot;Stack Overflow learning and training&quot; kind attempts if this becomes widespread. I would not want this to happen. I come here to learn and contribute to Programmers topics, not to guide those who are scared or blocked by Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21572" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7613" RevisionGUID="9c82ae69-b064-4b43-bfe1-df60767196d1" CreationDate="2015-09-22T15:14:04.600" UserId="13625" Text="There's little to disagree with in there but there are a few points maybe worth mentioning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. For some people getting better marks and a degree by whatever means it takes is more important than anything else. This view is often ingrained in the education system of a country, or is something kids grow up with at home. Either way, there's nothing you or I could do to change this, certainly not as contributors to SE, so it is what it is.&#xD;&#xA;2. There are others then who are willing to learn but simply don't know any better. They post their assignments on SO because that's the first thing that comes to their mind. These people are willing to take hints on possible paths to take and are quite happy to be led to the solution step by step...except this is a very bad fit for a Q&amp;A site. There really should be a site set up to do exactly that but as far as I know, there isn't yet.&#xD;&#xA;3. I remember well when I was a student and I can tell you that very few of us had any notion of conscious self-improvement, even though a lot of us had been hobbyist coders from a young age. Self-improvement, job interviews or any kind of bigger picture just didn't occur to us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now of course all of the above is based on anecdotal evidence, though I'm certain that all these types do exist because I've seen them. But I've got no idea how big each of these groups are, whether there are any other groups and so on. And I don't think anyone else has either. It'd be nice to see it researched though, so if any sociology students are reading this... :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21573" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7614" RevisionGUID="4ef13595-62fa-4577-a017-01d8c4a8dd11" CreationDate="2015-09-22T20:06:01.183" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Yes, this is a duplicate of http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/ intended to re-ask the question more clearly and without the tangents of trying to explain it in the comments that have distracted from the core question.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For some reason, Programmers.SE is seeing an increase in the rate of new users asking pure code and debugging questions.  These questions are, and have always been, off topic on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qf04b.png&quot; /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of the time, these questions are down voted quite severely, closed, and often deleted very promptly. This is quite simply, again, that these questions are off topic here and asking such a question suggests that the user didn't even *attempt* to read the tour or any of the help center before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For 10k users, poke at the [question close stats for the last 30 days](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last30days).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To those who don't have access to this, the second and third highest custom close reasons are the all too familiar:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be a [fix-my-code-dump request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/258685/839601), an outright off-topic, totally ignoring what Programmers is **[about](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour)**: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or a variation on it. The top one is a custom 'unclear' which also often acts as a proxy for the &quot;I have no idea why you are asking this question here.&quot;  There is also a smattering of other close reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We don't troubleshoot code here, sorry. No, we don't know where else you can ask.&#xD;&#xA;* We don't debug code here, sorry. No, we don't know where else you can ask. See also [How to Debug Small Programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/).&#xD;&#xA;* Voting to close as this is a debugging question, but I'm not sure it belongs on StackOverflow since this is a classic example of a bug that can be found simply through proper use of a debugger.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because we don't do fix-my-code requests here.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because Programmers is not a fix-my-code site.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's a &quot;fix my code&quot; request.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is asking us to debug the code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also a fair amount of &quot;I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is an implementation question, but not of sufficient quality to migrate to [so]&quot; and variations on *that* reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing is realizing that no, we aren't going to migrate crap to Stack Overflow. Migrating an awful debugging question to Stack Overflow isn't going to do anyone any favors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this fairly consistent stream of completely off topic debugging questions is draining the community moderation on the site and discouraging to many people who are either active or casual users of the site. It is very discouraging to see &quot;1 new active question&quot; and then look to see it is another poor quality &quot;debug this for me&quot; question. It is also discouraging to for the casual user to look at new questions and see half of them down voted and/or closed. This can be seen in some of the [recent](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7606/40980) meta [questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7593/40980) (and many who are active and read meta know that there are quite a few more of this type of question that are older).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, there are a *lot* of questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what can we do to help reduce the rate of off topic 'fix this for me' questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some have suggested that changes to Stack Overflow's question visibility for low quality questions have caused people who are asking these low quality questions to try posting on other sites (ours in particular). How accurate is this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there things that Stack Exchange devs might be able to implement that would help new users recognize the scope of the site more rapidly (before they hit a question ban? or get discouraged with posting on Stack* (its just a bunch of jerks who close everything))?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can the existing community more promptly handle these questions? Do we need to try to hire Oded 7/24 to close these questions promptly&lt;/joke&gt;? Or is there a valid mandate for the diamond mods to close vote the clear cut debugging things that show up in new questions more promptly than the community does?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for any Stack Exchange community managers - do ***you*** have any suggestions for us? How important is it that we provide a good user experience for these users? Could we get another close vote reason for 'fix my code is off topic here' so that it is something that is more official and less curt than the plethora of custom close vote reasons that we currently employ? And while we have anecdotal suggestions of this, is there any change to the &quot;questions asked and closed within 48 hours&quot; rate recently compared to historical trends?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21574" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7614" RevisionGUID="4ef13595-62fa-4577-a017-01d8c4a8dd11" CreationDate="2015-09-22T20:06:01.183" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Why are we getting so many off topic 'debug this for me' questions? what can we do about it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21575" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7614" RevisionGUID="4ef13595-62fa-4577-a017-01d8c4a8dd11" CreationDate="2015-09-22T20:06:01.183" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|new-users|low-quality-posts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21576" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7610" RevisionGUID="57ace1e9-c1c8-4a46-8f60-3d2c53b6ee2a" CreationDate="2015-09-22T20:34:27.487" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[7614],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:40980,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;MichaelT&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:60357,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;amon&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="21577" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7614" RevisionGUID="7eee4191-7db6-4fac-ab0c-84869a53b02e" CreationDate="2015-09-22T20:44:08.970" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 13 characters in body" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Yes, this is a duplicate of http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/ intended to re-ask the question more clearly and without the tangents of trying to explain it in the comments that have distracted from the core question.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For some reason, Programmers.SE is seeing an increase in the rate of new users asking pure code and debugging questions.  These questions are, and have always been, off topic on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qf04b.png&quot; /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of the time, these questions are down voted quite severely, closed, and often deleted very promptly. This is quite simply, again, that these questions are off topic here and asking such a question suggests that the user didn't even *attempt* to read the tour or any of the help center before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For 10k users, poke at the [question close stats for the last 30 days](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last30days).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To those who don't have access to this, the second and third highest custom close reasons are the all too familiar:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be a [fix-my-code-dump request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/258685/839601), an outright off-topic, totally ignoring what Programmers is **[about](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour)**: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or a variation on it. The top one is a custom 'unclear' which also often acts as a proxy for the &quot;I have no idea why you are asking this question here.&quot;  There is also a smattering of other close reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We don't troubleshoot code here, sorry. No, we don't know where else you can ask.&#xD;&#xA;* We don't debug code here, sorry. No, we don't know where else you can ask. See also [How to Debug Small Programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/).&#xD;&#xA;* Voting to close as this is a debugging question, but I'm not sure it belongs on StackOverflow since this is a classic example of a bug that can be found simply through proper use of a debugger.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because we don't do fix-my-code requests here.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because Programmers is not a fix-my-code site.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's a &quot;fix my code&quot; request.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is asking us to debug the code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also a fair amount of &quot;I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is an implementation question, but not of sufficient quality to migrate to [so]&quot; and variations on *that* reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing is realizing that no, we aren't going to migrate crap to Stack Overflow. Migrating an awful debugging question to Stack Overflow isn't going to do anyone any favors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this fairly consistent stream of completely off topic debugging questions is draining the community moderation on the site and discouraging to many people who are either active or casual users of the site. It is very discouraging to see &quot;1 new active question&quot; and then look to see it is another poor quality &quot;debug this for me&quot; question. It is also discouraging to for the casual user to look at new questions and see half of them down voted and/or closed. This can be seen in some of the [recent](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7606/40980) meta [questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7593/40980) (and many who are active and read meta know that there are quite a few more of this type of question that are older).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, there are a *lot* of questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what can we do to help reduce the rate of off topic 'fix this for me' questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some have suggested that changes to Stack Overflow's question visibility for low quality questions have caused people who are asking these low quality questions to try posting on other sites (ours in particular). How accurate is this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there things that Stack Exchange devs might be able to implement that would help new users recognize the scope of the site more rapidly (before they hit a question ban? or get discouraged with posting on Stack* (its just a bunch of jerks who close everything))?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can the existing community more promptly handle these questions? Do we need to try to hire Oded 7/24 to close these questions promptly&lt;/joke&gt;? Or is there a valid mandate for the diamond mods to close vote (and delete) the clear cut debugging things that show up in new questions more promptly than the community does?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for any Stack Exchange community managers - do ***you*** have any suggestions for us? How important is it that we provide a good user experience for these users? Could we get another close vote reason for 'fix my code is off topic here' so that it is something that is more official and less curt than the plethora of custom close vote reasons that we currently employ? And while we have anecdotal suggestions of this, is there any change to the &quot;questions asked and closed within 48 hours&quot; rate recently compared to historical trends?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21578" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7615" RevisionGUID="73226fda-db55-4b7c-8156-66938660e27b" CreationDate="2015-09-22T21:15:57.777" UserId="191785" Text="I think the problem is ill-defined. A single misconception underlies most of the issues raised.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The overarching question is not *Why* can they not understand who we are? but *How?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Name&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;The popular understanding of &quot;programmers&quot; is that programmers code, but the current stack is to my understanding more about design and development - what programmers actually do in addition to coding, or should I say software developers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Logo&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you really need three screens for finalizing that UML diagram or a requirements sketch? Besides, coffee is culturally engrained with &quot;crunch time&quot; and if you work in an office, perhaps even soft skills. It is not surprising that out-of-scope questions are being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither the name nor the current logo reflects anything more than the stereotype programmer as a coding clerk. For the generations that have grown up in the digital age of mobile apps, usability is in the brand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, a new logo and name that reflects the scope of the stack could catch potential users at the earliest stage of involvement. Perhaps it could even attract new followers, who have have been asking good questions over at SO, which are more relevant to the current stack." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21579" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7615" RevisionGUID="470ccfb4-335c-46dd-85b3-5d120091602b" CreationDate="2015-09-22T22:03:21.797" UserId="191785" Comment="Edits in response to comments (smaller clarification)" Text="I think the problem is ill-defined. A single misconception underlies most of the issues raised.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The overarching question is not *Why* can they not understand who we are? but *How?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: After having been introduced to a long history that stretches at least 3 years back, an obstacle has become clear to me: &quot;...there is no evidence right now to support the claim that the site's name is leading to its problems.&quot; So maybe 2012 is not &quot;right now&quot; and Programmers could potentially have a case - provided that there is sufficient evidence. What the previous argument completely neglects is the concept of what is sometimes referred to as internal marketing or (brand) identity. Direction. How can a community be built without a clear unambiguous goal and image?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Name&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;The popular understanding of &quot;programmers&quot; is that programmers code, but the current stack is to my understanding more about design and development - what programmers actually do in addition to coding, or should I say software developers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Logo&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you really need three screens for finalizing that UML diagram or a requirements sketch? Besides, coffee is culturally engrained with &quot;crunch time&quot; and if you work in an office, perhaps even soft skills. It is not surprising that out-of-scope questions are being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither the name nor the current logo reflects anything more than the stereotype programmer as a coding clerk. For the generations that have grown up in the digital age of mobile apps, usability is in the brand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, a new logo and name that reflects the scope of the stack could catch potential users at the earliest stage of involvement. Perhaps it could even attract new followers, who have have been asking good questions over at SO, which are more relevant to the current stack.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: Assign a task-force to gather evidence for how the name affects user-interaction. Statistics could be derived from time spent on site for samples of poor question (e.g. a 5 downvotes criterion) compared to random samples of good questions and the number of click counts for the FAQ. A sample size of 6 on an arbitrary day in 2012 [eternal September pun goes here] is inadequate and lacks verification. Furthermore, demonstrate that the site has been stalling compared to other similar sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21580" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7615" RevisionGUID="e7f45323-6a52-480d-acc7-007189785e67" CreationDate="2015-09-23T01:29:47.140" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body" Text="I think the problem is ill-defined. A single misconception underlies most of the issues raised.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The overarching question is not *Why* can they not understand who we are? but *How?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After having been introduced to a long history that stretches at least 3 years back, an obstacle has become clear to me: &quot;...there is no evidence right now to support the claim that the site's name is leading to its problems.&quot; So maybe 2012 is not &quot;right now&quot; and Programmers could potentially have a case - provided that there is sufficient evidence. What the previous argument completely neglects is the concept of what is sometimes referred to as internal marketing or (brand) identity. Direction. How can a community be built without a clear unambiguous goal and image?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Name&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;The popular understanding of &quot;programmers&quot; is that programmers code, but the current stack is to my understanding more about design and development - what programmers actually do in addition to coding, or should I say software developers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Logo&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you really need three screens for finalizing that UML diagram or a requirements sketch? Besides, coffee is culturally engrained with &quot;crunch time&quot; and if you work in an office, perhaps even soft skills. It is not surprising that out-of-scope questions are being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither the name nor the current logo reflects anything more than the stereotype programmer as a coding clerk. For the generations that have grown up in the digital age of mobile apps, usability is in the brand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, a new logo and name that reflects the scope of the stack could catch potential users at the earliest stage of involvement. Perhaps it could even attract new followers, who have have been asking good questions over at SO, which are more relevant to the current stack.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assign a task-force to gather evidence for how the name affects user-interaction. Statistics could be derived from time spent on site for samples of poor question (e.g. a 5 downvotes criterion) compared to random samples of good questions and the number of click counts for the FAQ. A sample size of 6 on an arbitrary day in 2012 [eternal September pun goes here] is inadequate and lacks verification. Furthermore, demonstrate that the site has been stalling compared to other similar sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21581" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7257" RevisionGUID="4e843749-44c6-45c6-8443-264b0afc11c9" CreationDate="2015-09-23T12:13:04.543" UserId="31260" Comment="related += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7614/why-are-we-getting-so-many-off-topic-debug-this-for-me-questions-what-can-we" Text="Propose to detect troublesome questions using Stack Overflow quality scoring data and put them to [Triage queue](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage) for an hour or two. If the timeout expires before decision is made, let questions go to homepage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the questions that fail the Triage, one option to handle these is to keep them invisible for a day or two (if not edited), then automatically [bump](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/bump/info) them for a broader community review. This way would keep them away from the top of [newest tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest). (Attentive readers may notice that bumps imply certain pollution of [active tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active) but this looks less of an issue to me, as this tab is rather heavily dominated by better questions being bumped by answers and edits. Not to mention that Triage would spare active page from questions deserving flagging for speedy deletion - spam, [homework dumps](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3837/31260), [&quot;cubicle fart&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6677/31260) kind stuff...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reasons why I consider above approach feasible are [laid out here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7251/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  goal, about [&quot;wall of crap&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so) at homepage, also looks relevant to us, as indicated by multiple recurring discussions about [too many bad questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7130?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...site topics substantially overlap and... many troublesome questions over here appear to be posted by users who are simply [trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260). Using same scoring data that is supposed to detect and block them at Stack Overflow would make sense, wouldn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...there is just no way to ensure that questions in Triage queue would be reviewed within reasonable timeframe... automatically kick questions off this queue and let them go to homepage after some timeout (say, 1-2 hours) if these haven't got sufficient attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7614/why-are-we-getting-so-many-off-topic-debug-this-for-me-questions-what-can-we&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7593/is-there-any-point-in-this-site-still-existing  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note this one even suggests Stack Overflow (protected by Triage!) as an example of how a site should look like.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7130/so-many-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7239/there-are-way-more-negative-votes-in-the-top-50-questions-than-positive-time-to&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7221/problem-titles-in-off-topic-questions-of-new-users-coming-from-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7020/lets-help-askers-who-are-trying-to-circumvent-question-block-at-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6990/why-cant-we-raise-up-questions-quality&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6850/how-effective-is-the-quality-filter-against-this-question-with-all-caps-brief-ti&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6788/a-lot-of-front-page-down-votes&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6371/how-can-we-encourage-people-to-read-the-faq-before-asking-their-first-question&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5618/better-selection-title-for-top-questions-list&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5377/requiring-registration-to-ask-questions-did-it-made-a-difference&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4029/why-are-there-so-many-minus-points-on-questions-in-this-site&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4009/programmers-stack-exchange-question-downvoting-what-to-do&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3947/what-can-we-do-about-extremely-low-quality-questions-from-unregistered-users&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3778/can-we-have-some-way-to-not-show-closed-questions-on-the-front-page&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2744/how-can-i-create-a-custom-filtered-view-of-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2727/are-we-scaring-off-new-users&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Nov 17 '11)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4097/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Oct 8 '12)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/841/why-are-almost-half-the-questions-on-the-front-page-marked-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/784/are-we-closing-too-many-good-questions-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21582" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7614" RevisionGUID="59acd69b-5476-4e4f-8f33-f815fef4c7d9" CreationDate="2015-09-23T12:39:34.173" Comment="http://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/646665205221605376" />
  <row Id="21583" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7616" RevisionGUID="ca0d56ff-443a-48bd-b0ef-51381b3c9941" CreationDate="2015-09-23T19:40:51.420" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There is [tag:undefined-behavior] (2 questions - &lt;!-- the one true --&gt; US spelling) and [tag:undefined-behaviour] (5 questions - &lt;!-- filthy --&gt; British spelling).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please do the mod thing to sort this tag stuff out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21584" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7616" RevisionGUID="ca0d56ff-443a-48bd-b0ef-51381b3c9941" CreationDate="2015-09-23T19:40:51.420" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Which behavior is undefined?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21585" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7616" RevisionGUID="ca0d56ff-443a-48bd-b0ef-51381b3c9941" CreationDate="2015-09-23T19:40:51.420" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|support|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21586" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7617" RevisionGUID="405ebe8f-5e21-4e99-a4c0-77e58f7a167f" CreationDate="2015-09-23T19:47:21.523" UserId="4" Text="Because I'm in America, I chose to use the American spelling. If you approve of this, be glad I got to this before ChrisF. If you disapprove, well, MURICA." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21587" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7616" RevisionGUID="b6ebec0f-37ad-4145-9e29-7278698e64ed" CreationDate="2015-09-23T19:47:31.297" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21588" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7617" RevisionGUID="7c1b85c5-6882-4126-ad49-7bfadbb993cd" CreationDate="2015-09-23T20:01:28.513" UserId="81495" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="Because I'm in America, I chose to use the American spelling. If you approve of this, be glad I got to this before ChrisF. If you disapprove, well, 'MURICA." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21589" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7618" RevisionGUID="d032da3e-6505-4c7c-8f3f-08f66d1f8225" CreationDate="2015-09-24T01:12:09.727" UserId="144875" Text="If I [ask a question][1] and my account is blocked from asking question it says `You've asked 3 questions recently` where in reality if you [take a look at my profile][2] you can only see 2 question with so much down vote that nobody cares to explain to me why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You have reached your question limit It looks like you might need a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; break - take a breather and come back soon! &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You've asked 3 questions recently, some of which have not been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; received very well by the community. Everyone learns at their own&#xD;&#xA;&gt; pace, and it’s okay to make some mistakes. However, the reception your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have received thus far might ultimately block your account&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from asking questions entirely. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's been 0 days since you asked your last question. We ask that you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; wait 7 days before asking again. Use this time to revisit your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; previous questions, editing to address any issues that folks have&#xD;&#xA;&gt; pointed out in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/144875/cary-bondoc" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21590" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7618" RevisionGUID="d032da3e-6505-4c7c-8f3f-08f66d1f8225" CreationDate="2015-09-24T01:12:09.727" UserId="144875" Text="Wrong information on asking of questions page when my account is blocked from asking of question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21591" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7618" RevisionGUID="d032da3e-6505-4c7c-8f3f-08f66d1f8225" CreationDate="2015-09-24T01:12:09.727" UserId="144875" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21592" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7619" RevisionGUID="b29273c5-7f8b-4d60-8bed-d256560f5820" CreationDate="2015-09-24T01:17:47.093" UserId="144875" Text="Take a look at this screenshot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then if you scroll at the bottom most part of the page you can see this. I think the text from the side overlaps to the footer of the page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It says [here][3] that it is status-complete, but I still see them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xdRmnm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qMAvnm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2118/the-similar-question-sections-overlaps-the-footer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21593" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7619" RevisionGUID="b29273c5-7f8b-4d60-8bed-d256560f5820" CreationDate="2015-09-24T01:17:47.093" UserId="144875" Text="Text from the side overlaps to the footer when I scroll to the bottom most part of the page" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21594" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7619" RevisionGUID="b29273c5-7f8b-4d60-8bed-d256560f5820" CreationDate="2015-09-24T01:17:47.093" UserId="144875" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21595" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7618" RevisionGUID="8742861f-8042-4914-bc05-7501293d9f77" CreationDate="2015-09-24T01:55:47.123" UserId="144875" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body" Text="If I [ask a question][1] and my account is blocked from asking question it says `You've asked 3 questions recently` where in reality if you [take a look at my profile][2] you can only see 2 question with so much down vote that nobody cares to explain to me why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You have reached your question limit It looks like you might need a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; break - take a breather and come back soon! &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You've asked 3 questions recently, some of which have not been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; received very well by the community. Everyone learns at their own&#xD;&#xA;&gt; pace, and it’s okay to make some mistakes. However, the reception your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have received thus far might ultimately block your account&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from asking questions entirely. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's been 0 days since you asked your last question. We ask that you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; wait 7 days before asking again. Use this time to revisit your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; previous questions, editing to address any issues that folks have&#xD;&#xA;&gt; pointed out in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/144875/cary-bondoc" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21596" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7620" RevisionGUID="2753da5b-13af-4c08-aa3a-cae40e3dfaae" CreationDate="2015-09-24T02:26:25.367" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="&gt; you can only see 2 question &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off, do you have any deleted questions? These don't show on the profile, and if the question was asked recently you should be able to go to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/recently-deleted-questions/144875 to see this.  Otherwise, you would need to get a mod to pull out a link to any other deleted posts that you have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with so much down vote that nobody cares to explain to me why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298097/difference-between-admin-and-super-admin is a rather boring and uninteresting terminology question. No, there is no standard for 95% of any of the words we use in programming. Even 'bug' has no standard definition.  The name of a role has no standard definition either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The mouseover for a down vote reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question does not show any research effort.  It is not useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Likewise, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297056/is-commenting-of-code-part-of-system-documentation is a question of definitions again. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When my boss says that I need to have a proper documentation of the project does it include proper commenting of codes in my project?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I pointed out in the comments, &quot;Ask your manager.&quot;  The question is either to be closed as a duplicate (of something that many people are tired of having questions and attempts at debates on), or primary opinion. The question does not show any attempt at searching for our well known answers, and again attempts to stir up a useless debate. Thus, the question was down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would encourage you to read [Why was my question down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)  The [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is also a good read about the types of questions that are in scope. Make sure you completely read the text paragraphs at the end and not just the bullet points." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21597" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7619" RevisionGUID="f6709d6d-5173-45b8-868c-a78b5e5e0a14" CreationDate="2015-09-24T02:28:20.267" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21598" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7618" RevisionGUID="c1c5393b-abe7-4ecd-aa59-e81b74ce62e4" CreationDate="2015-09-24T02:29:33.350" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|asking-questions|rate-limiting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21599" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7619" RevisionGUID="d3b1bed6-2e9a-4a56-8101-6bf4450e674f" CreationDate="2015-09-24T12:14:20.597" UserId="4767" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-declined|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21600" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7621" RevisionGUID="36107961-8ac1-4e3d-b0f2-0731a923e10f" CreationDate="2015-09-24T16:27:37.937" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="How can the following question be improved to allow it to be reopened and answered?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What should a programmer experienced in high-level OOP language learn when moving to low-level C development?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One could argue it is asking for education advice, or is too broad, or is asking for a list of things, or what project to take up next. However, one could also argue that at its core it has an answerable question of at least average quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should be done to improve this question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/298167" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21601" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7621" RevisionGUID="36107961-8ac1-4e3d-b0f2-0731a923e10f" CreationDate="2015-09-24T16:27:37.937" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Improving &quot;What should a programmer experienced in high-level OOP language learn when moving to low-level C development?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21602" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7621" RevisionGUID="36107961-8ac1-4e3d-b0f2-0731a923e10f" CreationDate="2015-09-24T16:27:37.937" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21603" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7583" RevisionGUID="743bc13b-0cc3-4d42-802f-567e17f0f8bd" CreationDate="2015-09-24T21:23:11.197" UserId="31260" Comment="in chat += http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=23744163#23744163" Text="One of the most elegant descriptions of the scope of Programmers.SE came from Thomas Owens [in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=23744163#23744163):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Picture Programmers like a small conference room with a whiteboard. No computer, no books, no papers. You write your question on the whiteboard and experts walk by. Someone sees one that they can answer, they stop in and help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Modify the top of the [help/on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) on the site to put this in the description.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently the text reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Modify the text to read (italics bit added to show difference - not intended to be in final):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. *Questions are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The intended goal is to try to send a message (to those who read it) of &quot;asking questions about debugging and how to fix this error from a compiler completely goes against the spirit of the site.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure this type of message can be bit in the site tour." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21604" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7622" RevisionGUID="8d944d2f-df3d-46b8-a6ba-b68aae27bdab" CreationDate="2015-09-25T13:09:09.180" UserId="88986" Text="Recently, @gnat proposed a duplicate where this is the source:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135218/what-is-the-difference-between-writing-test-cases-for-bdd-and-tdd&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and this is the target:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/111837/relation-between-bdd-and-tdd&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that the answer to the lower voted question is much more thorough and complete than the answer to the higher voted question, and the target is slightly broader so it makes for a slightly better target, but it seems wrong to me to close such a highly voted question as the duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps the higher voted question with almost 100x the views should be made the target somehow, and then the answers merged from the other question into the higher voted one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are your thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21605" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7622" RevisionGUID="8d944d2f-df3d-46b8-a6ba-b68aae27bdab" CreationDate="2015-09-25T13:09:09.180" UserId="88986" Text="How to handle BDD / TDD duplicate questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21606" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7622" RevisionGUID="8d944d2f-df3d-46b8-a6ba-b68aae27bdab" CreationDate="2015-09-25T13:09:09.180" UserId="88986" Text="|discussion|specific-question|duplicate-questions|clean-up|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21607" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7478" RevisionGUID="3df4f12c-b2e4-4d5e-b54b-fec7c7ac8ed2" CreationDate="2015-09-25T13:09:36.623" UserId="88986" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21608" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7623" RevisionGUID="35aa950a-1827-4765-a8ec-cd401449dc96" CreationDate="2015-09-25T14:47:02.200" UserId="52929" Text="I made a significant edit to this question. The core _problem_ is [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/285433/52929) as gnat points out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And as I said in my comment on the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @KarlBielefeldt there is an [edit] button that anyone, including you can use to edit. It took me about 2 minutes to edit this question significantly and focus it to be (more) in scope here. I believe I still preserved the author's intent, too. Understanding the differences between high level OOP and low level C is the core question (not what to learn). Rather than arguing in comments why not do the same (this is for everyone)? It's frustrating for me to see so many people arguing about the scope of this question rather than _doing something_ to edit the question.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21609" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7623" RevisionGUID="8c2345fb-ca2d-4de4-874c-9ae61f9d4483" CreationDate="2015-09-25T14:59:44.110" UserId="52929" Comment="added 13 characters in body" Text="I made a significant edit to this question. The core _problem_ is more or less [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/285433/52929) as gnat points out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And as I said in my comment on the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @KarlBielefeldt there is an [edit] button that anyone, including you can use to edit. It took me about 2 minutes to edit this question significantly and focus it to be (more) in scope here. I believe I still preserved the author's intent, too. Understanding the differences between high level OOP and low level C is the core question (not what to learn). Rather than arguing in comments why not do the same (this is for everyone)? It's frustrating for me to see so many people arguing about the scope of this question rather than _doing something_ to edit the question.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21611" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7624" RevisionGUID="bc6bfde6-65e2-4465-9284-554335fce281" CreationDate="2015-09-25T18:18:12.667" UserId="31260" Text="Here's the approach I am currently using when I stumble upon this kind of questions. (Those interested in what else I tried before coming at it, can find details below.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Add comment referring to MSE guidance [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;2. Vote down.&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote close as unclear.&#xD;&#xA;4. Vote delete (when question becomes eligible for that).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned MSE guidance is sufficient to help asker figure another, more appropriate site to focus their efforts on. Worth noting that in the past, I've been referring it rather judiciously for the fear that it may lead to reposting very low quality debugging questions at SO. Nowadays, I am not concerned about this, because SO (finally) found an efficient way to handle garbage questions by burying them in Triage queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote down is because it's off-topic. Additionally, it makes it easier for the system to trigger blocking, rate limiting and [anti-recidivism protection](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/anti-recidivism-system/info &quot;what's this&quot;) in case if asker intends to persist in asking inappropriate questions like that, for example in order to use Programmers as a proxy for Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Close reason picked (unclear) is because I abstain of wasting effort on checking whether the question is good enough to migrate to SO or not, or maybe it needs some improvements to become good enough to migrate. Another facet of this reason is, it's _unclear_ to me why asker picked Programmers instead of more appropriate and much better known site (Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote delete serves same purpose as vote down, to help system act in case if there's intended and persistent misuse. FWIW when voting this way, I expect that for occasional mistakes it doesn't harm, ie that question blocks work as [explained by SE team here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/236568/165773): &quot;first question doesn't count&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As promised, here is a brief overview of what else I tried before coming to above approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1\. &quot;Classical&quot; review.** You know, it's when you start with checking whether question is good enough for Stack Overflow and if it is, vote migrate. If not, you additionally study the question to either figure how to edit it to improve, or pick close reason that would help the asker find how to improve, maybe also comment with more explanations, stuff like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This way used to work pretty well until amount of debugging questions increased so that studying them started taking too much time. When I noticed this, I dropped it. Quoting self, &quot;I come here to learn and contribute to Programmers topics&quot; - I invest extra effort into studying off-topic questions only if it doesn't take much time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\. Trying to use system capabilities.** You know, system can tell many cases when debugging question is posted here to abuse it. It can tell whether asker was recently blocked at SO and likely tries to circumvent that, or if the question has been cross-posted here, possibly in hope to gather more feedback if it needs to improve. It can tell if the question is of such a troublesome quality that Stack Overflow would hide it (or maybe already did that) in Triage queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tried to figure how above can be used to simplify handling these questions and posted various feature requests. So far, all of them have been ignored... and likely will stay that way, given that even _very_ easy to implement and reasonable request to block same titles as are blocked at SO (with words 'problem' and 'help') stays ignored.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**3\. Flagging.** For readers unfamiliar with how it works, you explain in the flag message what specifically is wrong with the flagged post and why moderator involvement is required (as opposed to regular means like community voting, comments, edits, canned flags etc).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly to &quot;classical&quot; reviewing, this used to work like a charm in the past, and just like it, this way broke when amount of debugging questions increased so that flagging them started taking too much time. One can't just type in flag message &quot;hey, this is debugging&quot; and expect moderator to take it from there. To make a compelling flag message, you have to study the post quite thoroughly, that's why I dropped it when site started getting too many debugging questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6795/perform-automatic-checks-for-cross-posting-and-question-block-at-so-when-post-en&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7257/could-we-please-detect-troublesome-questions-using-stack-overflow-data-and-offlo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7564/if-problem-and-help-are-to-be-blocked-on-stack-overflow-question-titles-blo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Should one advise on off-topic questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/276637/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't ever answer a question, not via chat, comments, or any other way. It is even dangerous to say: go here, Google for that, because next time, they will do the exact same and eventually get what they want." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21612" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7564" RevisionGUID="200a5aec-5534-47b4-827f-5f770631e92e" CreationDate="2015-09-25T19:59:39.210" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|stackoverflow|question-title|quality-filter|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21613" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7625" RevisionGUID="755731b7-7beb-4523-b1a8-5960bc428ea9" CreationDate="2015-09-25T22:27:52.050" UserId="173015" Text="There seems to be an in-grained need for some people to act as style nazis on this site.  Can I block certain people that, clearly don't take any time to answer yet get to use their imaginary &quot;power&quot; to squash other people's answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example:  &#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;this reads more like a rant, see How to Answer –  gnat 28 mins ago &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The How to section does not clarify style, not in the slightest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He is opining and that's debatable, he did a drive-by cursory smearing - no work - and then moved on. He didn't refine the answer, he didn't recommend improvements. And he didn't think about his own answer;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is that helpful?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is that following the spirit of:&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Keep an open mind The answer to your question may not always be the one you wanted, but that doesn’t mean it is wrong. A conclusive answer isn’t always possible. When in doubt, ask people to cite their sources, or to explain how/where they learned something. Even if we don’t agree with you, or tell you exactly what you wanted to hear, remember: we’re just trying to help.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;His sole complaint was his feeling, where is that a basis for complaint?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why this is not a rant is simple. Style is an opinion. So if I don't phrase my question or answer the &quot;right way&quot; some feel they have the right to do something about it. But not an actual helpful something.  That's nonsense, if they don't like it they should either &quot;improve&quot; it or move along. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why can't I block people that aren't helping / helpful?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21614" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7625" RevisionGUID="755731b7-7beb-4523-b1a8-5960bc428ea9" CreationDate="2015-09-25T22:27:52.050" UserId="173015" Text="Can I block people from editing my posts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21615" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7625" RevisionGUID="755731b7-7beb-4523-b1a8-5960bc428ea9" CreationDate="2015-09-25T22:27:52.050" UserId="173015" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21616" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7625" RevisionGUID="8eaab779-45a9-4093-a691-d83cdbc121c3" CreationDate="2015-09-25T23:49:22.390" UserId="173015" Comment="clarification, lest process people engage..." Text="Can I block people from interacting with my posts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21620" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7627" RevisionGUID="2ca19fc5-92e2-4935-b15f-ed9b05c50416" CreationDate="2015-09-26T02:58:36.283" UserId="25476" Text="I took a look at your answer and I feel it makes a reasonable effort to answer the question and posits a plausible explanation for the question that was asked.  I do think the assertion that this is because &quot;programmers are lazy&quot; perhaps could have some more credibility with a quoted source, but I digress, no *major* problems I see with this answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that being said, I am telling you this as my personal opinion and in a way that I am no way directing at you in particular.  This is merely a generalization that I have noticed and I am making some assumptions about the motives of others so hear goes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have noticed that when people see a new post to a popular question, by a newer user or lower reputation user, when there is already a supremely excellent and comprehensive answer, and the new answer has some strong opinions, then people tend to judge it a little more harshly.  A good flank steak on the grill with some A1 sauce is a good treat.  You put it next to a well marbled ribeye then the flank might as well be stew meat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now when somebody leaves a comment to that answer that may not be a fair assessment, and that person leaves 5 or 6 pretty agitated comments in response, well ... many people are just going to think that person is being a troll and will downvote you not because they don't just not like the answer, but *because they don't like the user*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This problem fortunately can be easily solved for everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Be Nice.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/help/be-nice)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think user gnat is a troll? Get in line, he has more villains after him than the Bond franchise.  The fact remains though that is one person, who utilizes the Citizen Patrol features that his reputation allows him, to do one thing and one thing reasonably well and that is help maintain quality content on this site.  If it weren't for people like him then this site would be just another Yahoo Answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't always agree with him.  I didn't agree with his assessment of your answer either and you can probably find where we threw gloves on Meta on the many disagreements we have had through the years.  But again, I think he is a net positive for this site and he is just ONE downvote, ONE close vote and ONE comment to the extent of his powers.  You just don't need to get that worked up over ONE opinion that you disagree with. Our community doesn't consist of a bunch of sheeple that are incapable of thinking for themselves and making their own determination on the content that you provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So again, Be Nice, write good content and the upvotes will reward far more than any single downvote." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21627" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7629" RevisionGUID="4f6b599e-e047-4a4c-8c40-f24084b3dd2a" CreationDate="2015-09-27T11:53:14.657" UserId="5099" Text="In my view, the current state is the right one (with the high-visit question being closed as duplicate of the low-visit question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, the question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/111837/relation-between-bdd-and-tdd has the better answer and by marking http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135218/what-is-the-difference-between-writing-test-cases-for-bdd-and-tdd as a duplicate, readers of the more often, and thus probably more easily, found question get a trigger that there might be more to investigate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having the duplicate link the other way around effectively moves that good answer further away from the readers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21631" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7295" RevisionGUID="566f2930-cbb2-4666-b281-ccc5dc03df2b" CreationDate="2015-09-27T17:37:53.800" UserId="31260" Comment="http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/24360056#24360056" Text="[tag:payment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag appears to have two uses. One is with regards to implementation of payment systems and transactions and the other is with respect to getting paid as a contractor, freelancer, or employee. The second type of question is off-topic. This tag could be removed from the off-topic questions and a clear tag wiki provided. Alternatively, it could be renamed (example: [tag:payment-system] to make it clear that it's about software systems and not getting paid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: [tag:pricing] [tag:cost-estimation] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:sales] [tag:mobile-payment] [tag:pci] [tag:revenue] [tag:incentives]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21632" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7631" RevisionGUID="8989314a-6a57-40b3-be07-93a890a31b4e" CreationDate="2015-09-27T17:47:20.597" UserId="31260" Text="Please merge tag [tag:software-performance] (14 questions) into [tag:performance] (461), and make them synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag _software-performance_ has no wiki, for _performance_ there is tag wiki excerpt:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions related to improving application performance, this can be range from selection software architecture to selection of algorithms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Preference for master tag is because it has much more questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21633" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7631" RevisionGUID="8989314a-6a57-40b3-be07-93a890a31b4e" CreationDate="2015-09-27T17:47:20.597" UserId="31260" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [software-performance] → [performance]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21634" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7631" RevisionGUID="8989314a-6a57-40b3-be07-93a890a31b4e" CreationDate="2015-09-27T17:47:20.597" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21635" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7631" RevisionGUID="6d3dc343-d53a-4b39-814f-9940199f8e81" CreationDate="2015-09-27T19:55:51.987" UserId="47" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21636" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7632" RevisionGUID="26c8e9d6-4bf5-4c31-8058-e7d9dd00cdb9" CreationDate="2015-09-27T19:56:30.547" UserId="47" Text="Good idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Created the synonym.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not merged yet, though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21637" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7564" RevisionGUID="ddfb772d-89a8-4b80-a6f9-8a3e5bb4c215" CreationDate="2015-09-27T20:38:18.547" UserId="31260" Comment="play of words += help" Text="We have a problem, need help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When people fail in trying to post their question on Stack Overflow, they come here to post it.  This is often the case with people trying to get around a question ban and getting some help anywhere.  Its also occasionally happens with the low quality posts.  It also apparently happens here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't an extremely frequent thing and looking at [this search](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=problem%20is%3aquestion), the questions that it would have blocked are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before people start getting up in arms about the Traveling Salesman *Problem* or the Knapsack *Problem* or the *Problem* domain, let's look at the last month of undeleted questions with 'Problem' in the title.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Problem on PHP and MySQL with jQuery](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294446/problem-on-php-and-mysql-with-jquery) (-8)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Problem 3, project Euler](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294338/problem-3-project-euler)  (-6 deleted)&#xD;&#xA;2. [Having a Problem Passing First Unit Test in Exercism.io Java Challenge](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293924/having-a-problem-passing-first-unit-test-in-exercism-io-java-challenge) (-3 deleted)&#xD;&#xA;3. [Problems with storing plain text and byte information in the same file](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293226/problems-with-storing-plain-text-and-byte-information-in-the-same-file) (-1 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;4. [Problem with C# File IO in Winforms ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291352/problem-with-c-file-io-in-winforms) (-2 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;5. [Problem with device orientation code in Firefox for Android](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291316/problem-with-device-orientation-code-in-firefox-for-android) (-2 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;6. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/289935/isnt-there-a-substantial-problem-with-svn-tags?s=173|0.0000 (+2)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 7 there was posted July 16th (over a month ago).  Questions 4, 5, and 6 where migrated to Stack Overflow (apparently its not a problem to migrate problem questions).  I would encourage SE to look into how often these questions get deleted and *don't* show up in my query.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why should this be done? Because questions of this form are rarely good questions.  They are either poorly written questions, or questions that are poorly written ***and*** should have been asked on Stack Overflow.  So instead of dealing with the question on Stack Overflow, the person is frustrated with not being able to post there, *then* posting here, getting the question closed and down voted, and sometimes get the question bounced back to Stack Overflow anyways.  All in all a poor experience for the user and a waste of community close votes here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can also be seen with 'help' in the title:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [i wanna become a programmer need help](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290110/i-wanna-become-a-programmer-need-help) (-6 deleted)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Help with javascript please](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/294727/40980) (-5, migrated, self deleted, rejected, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;1. [C++ Segmentation Fault, Please Help!](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294531/c-segmentation-fault-please-help) (-7 deleted)&#xD;&#xA;2. [I have a problem with math in C++ help me, please](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294517/i-have-a-problem-with-math-in-c-help-me-please) (-4 deleted)&#xD;&#xA;3. [Help with Shell](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294213/help-with-shell) (-2 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;4. [Beginner in C needing help with strings and memory](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293979/beginner-in-c-needing-help-with-strings-and-memory) (0 migrated)&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290582/help-me-design-this-use-case (+1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last item here is from July 23 (again, nearly a month ago) and could use a better title.  Again though, this list shows examples of questions that (if written well) are clearly off topic here and should have instead been asked on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By blocking 'problem' and 'help' from question titles on Stack Overflow, but allowing them here, we get the poor questions and have to deal with them where they clearly don't belong.  This leads to a worse user experience for both the poster and the community and in cases where it is a very poor question, unnecessarily contributes to the OP getting question banned here (though I'll grant if they don't read the faq and ask poor questions here too, they'd probably would have gotten question banned eventually)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21638" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7633" RevisionGUID="1224f7ca-89cd-4220-b2d5-8ef666048908" CreationDate="2015-09-28T00:14:11.290" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The duplicate relationship that is currently there (of the higher viewed one to the lower viewed one) is the correct one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A merge would be incorrect and problematic.  Mostly because, both have accepted answers and are very slightly different in focus.  If the lower view was merged into the higher viewed one, the disproportionate number of votes in the higher viewed one (accepted answer +160, 82 words) would be much higher ranked than the accepted answer of the lower viewed one (+14, 413 words) (it would be the fourth highest scoring post in the other set of answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The merge would do a disservice to the much better and more complete answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21639" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7634" RevisionGUID="bdd91b26-0fbc-4472-b04b-93d26146ea38" CreationDate="2015-09-28T16:58:31.640" UserId="1204" Text="Please don't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's implementation at Stack Overflow causes all manner of side effects, including &quot;pr0blem,&quot; &quot;Halp,&quot; and &quot;Knapsack Issue.&quot;  In addition, unlike many other behaviors, this one isn't overridable by moderators, so its's forced on people unconditionally.  SE seems especially enamored of this &quot;fix,&quot; so if you get it here, you'll get it permanently, even if we decide it was a bad idea after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Preventing use of certain words in titles is just another variation on &quot;Clbuttic.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just say no to the pr0blem." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21640" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7295" RevisionGUID="846aed8e-3d80-432b-a4ab-34cdebfa3457" CreationDate="2015-09-28T22:43:40.930" UserId="31260" Comment="no more incentives" Text="[tag:payment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag appears to have two uses. One is with regards to implementation of payment systems and transactions and the other is with respect to getting paid as a contractor, freelancer, or employee. The second type of question is off-topic. This tag could be removed from the off-topic questions and a clear tag wiki provided. Alternatively, it could be renamed (example: [tag:payment-system] to make it clear that it's about software systems and not getting paid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: [tag:pricing] [tag:cost-estimation] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:sales] [tag:mobile-payment] [tag:pci] [tag:revenue]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21641" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7635" RevisionGUID="6d675af1-a245-42a9-8305-80d01f715dcb" CreationDate="2015-09-29T13:55:14.810" UserId="68714" Text="I posted the following question which was very quickly put on hold, likely because the way it was phrased invited low-quality, opinion-based answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/298229/68714&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, the correct answer was given in a comment by CodesInChaos, and gnat posted a link to a meta question regarding which terminology questions may and may not be on topic. So I tried to edit the question to improve it, asked to reopen it, and flagged it for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, it was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I'm curious: what was wrong with the question? I genuinely feel that the question and the correct answer would prove useful. Can it be rephrased to have a chance of being undeleted? What are the criteria?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21642" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7635" RevisionGUID="6d675af1-a245-42a9-8305-80d01f715dcb" CreationDate="2015-09-29T13:55:14.810" UserId="68714" Text="What was wrong with this terminology question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21643" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7635" RevisionGUID="6d675af1-a245-42a9-8305-80d01f715dcb" CreationDate="2015-09-29T13:55:14.810" UserId="68714" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21644" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7635" RevisionGUID="6258fa2c-5fe5-46d5-90d9-ecb69e22cee0" CreationDate="2015-09-29T14:08:09.883" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Inline question (its been deleted).  Add tags." Text="I posted the following question which was very quickly put on hold, likely because the way it was phrased invited low-quality, opinion-based answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What's the formal term for “usual way to solve a problem”?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/298229/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I once read a term that referred to the usual and expected way to solve a given problem. For example, writing `a = a + 1` in C-based languages would be considered inelegant by many programmers, who might say &quot;writing `a++` is more ****&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do you know the term for this that is used in programming literature? I think it was an adjective, and it was not &quot;canonical&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, the correct answer was given in a comment by CodesInChaos, and gnat posted a link to a meta question regarding which terminology questions may and may not be on topic. So I tried to edit the question to improve it, asked to reopen it, and flagged it for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, it was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I'm curious: what was wrong with the question? I genuinely feel that the question and the correct answer would prove useful. Can it be rephrased to have a chance of being undeleted? What are the criteria?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21645" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7635" RevisionGUID="6258fa2c-5fe5-46d5-90d9-ecb69e22cee0" CreationDate="2015-09-29T14:08:09.883" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Inline question (its been deleted).  Add tags." Text="|discussion|specific-question|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21646" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7636" RevisionGUID="e8f01915-3cb3-4726-bc28-b9127f85c8cb" CreationDate="2015-09-29T14:15:25.370" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The main problem is that this type of question leads to poor quality answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The term you're looking for I believe could be either &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Principle of least astonishment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment) (POLA)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [KISS](https://people.apache.org/~fhanik/kiss.html) (Keep It Simple, Stupid) ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I could see the terms **orthodox**, **conventional** and **by the book** being used in that situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And looking through the comments you find:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Perhaps you remember the word idiomatic. –  CodesInChaos Sep 25 at 7:32   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The word &quot;familiar&quot; comes to mind. The WTFs/minute cartoon also comes to mind. –  Nick Alexeev Sep 25 at 8:46   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Was it 'intuitive'? –  JayMee Sep 25 at 10:08   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; optimal?....... –  jmo21 Sep 25 at 10:12  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; nominal?........ –  coredump Sep 25 at 12:21   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;accepted&quot; is the most common, see Stackoverflow lol –  psibernetic 22 hours ago &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not the type of answer quality that we wish to encourage on the site. Correct or not, answers that are not much longer than the type found in gameshows are poor quality answers, and the questions that solicit them are thus also poor quality questions.  Asking a question that essentially asks the site to be a crowd sourced thesaurus pushes the boundary - and often a bit too far." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21647" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7637" RevisionGUID="6f42a074-4c7a-4056-8924-fe042ecb6524" CreationDate="2015-09-29T19:40:55.270" UserId="121035" Text="There's been a sudden, massive spike in the number of posts in the Late Answers review queue:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![326 posts in the late answers review queue][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seems like there's usually only a handful per day, certainly not 300. Most of these answers seem to have been posted several years ago. Some are even community wiki now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![old community wiki answer][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a bug, or is it an intentional effort to clean up old posts that were never reviewed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EG1b4.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/wISd7.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21648" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7637" RevisionGUID="6f42a074-4c7a-4056-8924-fe042ecb6524" CreationDate="2015-09-29T19:40:55.270" UserId="121035" Text="Sudden spike in number of old late answers up for review" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21649" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7637" RevisionGUID="6f42a074-4c7a-4056-8924-fe042ecb6524" CreationDate="2015-09-29T19:40:55.270" UserId="121035" Text="|bug|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21650" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7638" RevisionGUID="b119a552-1ef6-4ade-b0c9-f8164bf95820" CreationDate="2015-09-29T19:43:26.453" UserId="4" Text="This is a network-wide change. See [this Meta.SE question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/266696/can-we-raise-the-bar-for-reputation-for-late-answers-to-enter-the-review-queue) and [this answer to it](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/267080/572):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; # Queue growth&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Review queues lose effectiveness if posts aren't regularly (and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; accurately) cleared. A queue such as [close votes on Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that never seems to get to 0 fails to provide time-sensitive feedback&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that aids learning. So if we raise the bar for late answers which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; increases the number of tasks going into the queue, we risk making the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; queue less useful for people answering questions late.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; As I write, the Late Answer queue on Stack Overflow is empty. In the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; last 24 hours the number (non-audit) review tasks of each type added&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to the queues:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     Review Tasks Type           &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     ------------ ----------------- &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     2467         Triage            &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     2428         First Post        &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     2333         Close Votes       &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     1846         Suggested Edit    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      883         Low Quality Posts &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      619         Late Answer       &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      594         Helper            &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      141         Reopen Vote        These two factors suggest that there's room to add more tasks to the Late Answer queue. Assuming we&#xD;&#xA;&gt; raised the reputation limit to 100, we'd add about 300 tasks:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     Rep Bin Tasks &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     ------- ----- &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      10       417   &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      20       160   &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      30        85    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      40        76    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      50        44    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      60        41    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      70        37    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      80        21    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      90        20    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     100        20   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You might expect the number of tasks associated with the 1 to 10&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reputation bin would equal the number of late answer tasks in the last&#xD;&#xA;&gt; day. The discrepancy stems from reputation earned since answers were&#xD;&#xA;&gt; added to the queue. But the takeaway is that raising the reputation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; limit to 100 would add half again as much work to the queue. That&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doesn't seem particularly onerous.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Not surprisingly, Stack Overflow would see the most added Late Answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reviews by far. Other large sites, such as Ubuntu, Server Fault, Super&#xD;&#xA;&gt; User and Mathematics, would get 10 or so extra reviews a day.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## Justifying 100 rather than 50 reputation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Discovering answers as comments certainly would suggest 50 as a good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; limit for this queue. But this queue is as much about granting&#xD;&#xA;&gt; exposure to potentially upvote-worthy answers as it is about finding&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problems. Especially on large sites, it's pretty easy for a good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer to a very old question to be lost in the noise. As a [strategy&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for new users](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/304135/1438) answering&#xD;&#xA;&gt; old questions that already have good, but not excellent, answers seems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; productive if not that few people will notice those answers. At 10&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reputation, a knowledgeable new user has one shot at earning upvotes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from excellent answers to aged questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## A potential complication&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The one concern I have is that answers are dequeued once the author&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has reached 100 reputation. If we raise the maximum reputation for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; going into the queue, we should also raise the minimum for coming out&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of it. Unfortunately, I don't have an easy way to gather numbers to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; set an appropriate level. One of the reasons I'm only looking back a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; day in the numbers I showed above is that it minimizes the effect of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gained reputation. It's possible, but messy to estimate reputation at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the time a user answered a question. So while my instinct would be to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; raise the deque minimum to 200, but I can't really predict if that's&#xD;&#xA;&gt; appropriate or not.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; # Proposal&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Raising the bar to 100 would require changing two variables at once.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Since that would make it harder to evaluate each individual change,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd like to try raising the reputation for getting enqueued to the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Late Answer reviews to 50 and reconsider upping it to 100 at some&#xD;&#xA;&gt; point in the future." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21651" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7637" RevisionGUID="015507e1-35cb-4cb5-bbf0-ff7934629c45" CreationDate="2015-09-29T19:44:02.170" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-bydesign|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21652" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7639" RevisionGUID="98ee440d-660f-4b9b-b1ff-7e528886e39b" CreationDate="2015-10-01T13:58:59.523" UserId="198362" Text="My question is on hold and I'm not going to change it. Should I delete it or just keep it there because the comments link to relevant discussions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298594/recommended-way-to-store-a-distributed-project-in-git?noredirect=1#comment620378_298594" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21653" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7639" RevisionGUID="98ee440d-660f-4b9b-b1ff-7e528886e39b" CreationDate="2015-10-01T13:58:59.523" UserId="198362" Text="What to do when I don't plan to edit my *on hold* question? Delete? Maintain?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21654" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7639" RevisionGUID="98ee440d-660f-4b9b-b1ff-7e528886e39b" CreationDate="2015-10-01T13:58:59.523" UserId="198362" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21655" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7640" RevisionGUID="5d0286f1-c362-42e1-8726-ab31becdbea0" CreationDate="2015-10-01T14:52:30.757" UserId="4" Text="In some cases, the system will delete questions. See the Meta Stack Exchange questions [here][1] and [here][2]. However, at present, the automatic deletion does not pick up questions that have 1 or more up-votes (like your question does now).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you do is up to you, but if the question is not a good fit for the site and people come across it in the various review queues or during other activities, they may down vote it, causing you to lose reputation. If you aren't going to fix it, I'd probably delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/78048/572&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/5221/572" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21656" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7641" RevisionGUID="1b853358-9eb5-4094-9547-ff1c893ff75d" CreationDate="2015-10-01T15:35:05.617" UserId="100972" Text="Yesterday [I asked a question][1] that meets the on-topic requirements of this site. I did my research, and I asked an answerable question. [A very good answer][2] (+95), based on facts and logic was given, proving the question is answerable. Since asking yesterday, it has 78 positive votes with only 2 negative votes, and it received a great answer, which accumulated 95 positive votes in only 1 day. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why on Earth would this question be closed? There are 4 close votes on the question now. Sure, I already got the answer to my question, but after I contribute a good question, and it's received well by the programming community, I take it personally that 5 incorrect users may close my question after 75 other users vote that it's a good, valid programming question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've asked 14 questions on this site, none of which have a negative net vote count at the time of this post, with an average of 14 positive votes per question asked. In other words, I try hard to ask good programming questions here. However, I dislike the way certain users here vote to close every question that they personally don't like, regardless of whether it's actually on topic for the site or not. If this question is wrongly closed, I will no longer contribute my questions to this site. That's all I have to say. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298564/is-there-a-specific-reason-for-the-poor-readability-of-regular-expression-syntax?noredirect=1#comment620452_298564&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/298575/100972" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21657" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7641" RevisionGUID="1b853358-9eb5-4094-9547-ff1c893ff75d" CreationDate="2015-10-01T15:35:05.617" UserId="100972" Text="Why would my question asked yesterday(+75), with a great answer (+95), be closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21658" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7641" RevisionGUID="1b853358-9eb5-4094-9547-ff1c893ff75d" CreationDate="2015-10-01T15:35:05.617" UserId="100972" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21659" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7641" RevisionGUID="092f62ae-851c-4c14-b9d1-8302b5d25152" CreationDate="2015-10-01T15:42:11.130" UserId="100972" Comment="deleted 160 characters in body" Text="Yesterday [I asked a question][1] that meets the on-topic requirements of this site. I did my research, and I asked an answerable question. [A very good answer][2] (+95), based on facts and logic was given, proving the question is answerable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why on Earth would this question be closed? There are 4 close votes on the question now. Sure, I already got the answer to my question, but after I contribute a good question, and it's received well by the programming community, I take it personally that 5 incorrect users may close my question after 75 other users vote that it's a good, valid programming question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've asked 14 questions on this site, none of which have a negative net vote count at the time of this post, with an average of 14 positive votes per question asked. In other words, I try hard to ask good programming questions here. However, I dislike the way certain users here vote to close every question that they personally don't like, regardless of whether it's actually on topic for the site or not. Subsequently, those same high rep users are likely the most active on meta, so I won't be surprised if this meta post receives down-votes quickly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this question is wrongly closed, I will no longer contribute my questions to this site. That's all I have to say. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298564/is-there-a-specific-reason-for-the-poor-readability-of-regular-expression-syntax?noredirect=1#comment620452_298564&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/298575/100972" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21660" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7641" RevisionGUID="092f62ae-851c-4c14-b9d1-8302b5d25152" CreationDate="2015-10-01T15:42:11.130" UserId="100972" Comment="deleted 160 characters in body" Text="Why would my question asked yesterday (+75), with a great answer (+95), be closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21661" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7642" RevisionGUID="a61f4084-0e48-4dc8-b957-047d41468766" CreationDate="2015-10-01T15:55:21.783" UserId="88986" Text="For what it's worth, while it takes only 5 users to close a question, it also only takes 5 users to reopen it, or one moderator. These users may not vote to close your question again, once it's reopened, it would need a different five users to close the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the [Close Vote Review Task for your question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close/119070), which was permanently ejected from the queue by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All that said, I suspect the reason you have received any close votes is two fold:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It is fairly similar to this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/194975/readable-regular-expressions-without-losing-their-power and people have voted to close as duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;   - Personally, I think it's different enough, but that's why I voted to leave open. I don't think anyone can argue that it's not at least quite related.&#xD;&#xA;2. It's somewhat opinion based; it's hard to know the mindset of the original authors of the regular expression syntax used today.&#xD;&#xA;   - However, again you've phrased it in a way that has an answer &quot;Is there a specific reason...&quot; which is why I voted to Leave Open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, while I don't personally agree with the close votes on this question, I also think they're not *unreasonable*. I hope you continue to contribute to Programmers.SE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21662" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7643" RevisionGUID="3d5ffb28-93d6-49fe-b2e0-fd4f83b69f6a" CreationDate="2015-10-01T15:58:01.767" UserId="4" Text="If you click on the close button, all four close votes are &quot;duplicate&quot;, with a pointer to [this question][1]. This is indicating that everyone thinks the answers to the other question directly answer your question. If this is the case, then closing as a duplicate is a good thing, so that people searching for an answer can be brought to a single question and set of answers that can be maintained. If it's not a duplicate, something about your question is making them think that it is a duplicate. If there's anything you can edit about your question to improve its clarity or explain why the answers to that question don't help you, that would be beneficial.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't want to participate over one question being closed, that's your decision to make. But voting and community participation are key to Stack Exchange. The up votes indicate that your question is, in the eyes of a large number of users, a good one. If it does get closed, closures can be undone - edits to close questions put them in a queue for review and voting, meta posts can bring discussion and community votes (along with moderator attention - moderators are notified of every new question on Meta), and flags can be used to summon moderators to review community decisions and reverse ones that are incorrect. It looks like your contributions are generally well-received. A couple of closed questions or down votes shouldn't be taken personally - it's just the opinion of one or a small number of users and most things can be undone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/194975/readable-regular-expressions-without-losing-their-power" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21663" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7641" RevisionGUID="a39c4424-4459-46c5-9690-f67902661e31" CreationDate="2015-10-01T16:12:49.007" UserId="100972" Comment="added 116 characters in body" Text="Yesterday [I asked a question][1] that meets the on-topic requirements of this site. I did my research, and I asked an answerable question. [A very good answer][2] (+95), based on facts and logic was given, proving the question is answerable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why on Earth would this question be closed? There are 4 close votes on the question now. Sure, I already got the answer to my question, but after I contribute a good question, and it's received well by the programming community, I take it personally that 5 incorrect users may close my question after 75 other users vote that it's a good, valid programming question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've asked 14 questions on this site, none of which have a negative net vote count at the time of this post, with an average of 14 positive votes per question asked. In other words, I try hard to ask good programming questions here. However, I dislike the way certain users here vote to close every question that they personally don't like, regardless of whether it's actually on topic for the site or not. Subsequently, those same high rep users are likely the most active on meta, so I won't be surprised if this meta post receives down-votes quickly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;s&gt;If this question is wrongly closed, I will no longer contribute my questions to this site. That's all I have to say.&lt;/s&gt; Retrospectively, this is extreme, but this is not the first time I've run into such things on Programmers SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298564/is-there-a-specific-reason-for-the-poor-readability-of-regular-expression-syntax?noredirect=1#comment620452_298564&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/298575/100972" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21664" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7644" RevisionGUID="6248fecf-f426-4f53-9f81-0e2bd4ea79b8" CreationDate="2015-10-01T21:33:26.103" UserId="78319" Text="&gt; Why are we getting so many off topic 'debug this for me' questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The date the question was posted (towards the end of September) and a serious uptick in 'homework' questions does correlate well with the start of term in many education establishments around the world.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of them are kids who have all grown up with a 'sharing economy' with an expectation that because it's the internet it's all free and someone will do their work for them (for free).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what can we do about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the $1 million question - ultimately we either need to put up with it or make the process of asking other people to do your work for you more hassle than doing the work.  We would also need to do those things without adding excessive amounts of work onto the mods.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've a few ideas, but they're musings more than fully-fledged solutions and they really depend on how the mods want to run the community...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * **put new questions on-hold automatically** if they meet certain criteria - rep (both here and at SO), having a question rejected at SO might be a couple of many signals that could be used.  If the moderators want to police questions in that way (it's extra work and they may not want to.)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * **deleting answers that are too obvious** so that the people asking the 'do it for me' questions are less likely to get a copy/paste-able answer.  That might upset some users who provide answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * **Use a `[homework]` tag** that triggers a more visible reminder to those answering (who may not fully understand what programmers.se is about) that &quot;teach a man to fish&quot; is more useful than solving a problem directly?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just some ideas, I have the flame retardant suit on so feel free to let loose in the comments... :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21665" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7645" RevisionGUID="80875faf-b1fb-4fbf-8f7d-bd2d07eb6859" CreationDate="2015-10-02T09:58:42.963" UserId="118852" Text="I wrote a comment yesterday to somebody else's answer. Today all comments for that answer were deleted by a moderator (&quot;Comments removed as they were getting noisy&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can I somehow get at the text of my comment? It took me quite a while to write it, and I'm pondering whether it's useful to turn it into a standalone answer. But I don't have my comment draft file any more, and I also don't see the comment in my &quot;all actions&quot; timeline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do I get at the text of this deleted comment?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21666" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7645" RevisionGUID="80875faf-b1fb-4fbf-8f7d-bd2d07eb6859" CreationDate="2015-10-02T09:58:42.963" UserId="118852" Text="How do I get the text of a comment that was deleted by a mod?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21667" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7645" RevisionGUID="80875faf-b1fb-4fbf-8f7d-bd2d07eb6859" CreationDate="2015-10-02T09:58:42.963" UserId="118852" Text="|support|moderation|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21668" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7646" RevisionGUID="5ee9065d-cbd1-44ed-bddf-c063764ed9fb" CreationDate="2015-10-02T10:01:51.143" UserId="25936" Text="Your comment was: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An important reason why you should distinguish between C and C++ is that the underlying ideas of the languages are quite different nowadays. C++ has a focus on OO and uses RAII as memory management pattern; C has a focus on procedural programming, and I'm not sure what the memory management pattern in C is actually called. While the syntax may be very similar, using these two languages requires very different approaches to program design, so they should not be conflated.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21669" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7645" RevisionGUID="394656dd-fa46-44fa-aea6-193f178a613a" CreationDate="2015-10-02T10:02:39.467" UserId="118852" Comment="add link to original answer" Text="I wrote a comment yesterday to [somebody else's answer][1]. Today all comments for that answer were deleted by a moderator (&quot;Comments removed as they were getting noisy&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can I somehow get at the text of my comment? It took me quite a while to write it, and I'm pondering whether it's useful to turn it into a standalone answer. But I don't have my comment draft file any more, and I also don't see the comment in my &quot;all actions&quot; timeline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do I get at the text of this deleted comment?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/298673/118852" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21670" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7647" RevisionGUID="8a0fedfd-420a-4662-a89d-f38dd27aa805" CreationDate="2015-10-02T18:50:00.257" UserId="195824" Text="I am only barely a programmer, by the definitions summarized on this site. I possess a lot of experience in linear programming and process management but object-oriented programming is not yet within my realm of experience, and that seems to be what all the kids are doing these days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that said, I came here because I KNOW I don't know the answers to some of my questions. I am not in school (quite old and can't afford it) so I am self-educating and asking questions on a board somewhere when I am having difficulty figuring out where a piece of code is broken after working on it for several hours has been quite helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am a reasonably intelligent guy who is new to the site (&lt; 30 days), so I like to think I am fairly representative of the folks who are clueless as to how to use this site. I know you don't want to be doing other people's homework for them, and perfectly respect that, but without checking for student IDs there is no reasonable way to tell the difference between a struggling programmer and a student programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no reasonable way to prevent folks from asking debugging questions. What you CAN do is channel them into a place specifically to ask debugging questions or force them to identify their debug questions. **If there is a place to ask debugging questions, it is unclear as to where that is.** I think it might be here: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/  but am unsure. It sure took me a lot of searching to find it after I started typing all this out, if it is the right place at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, the result should be to make a Debug community (if the above is still the wrong place) and send folks requesting Debug help there. Or, alternatively, tell those folks to preface their question titles with a DEBUG: to let users know before they ever open the question that it is a debug-related question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21671" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7648" RevisionGUID="ff04c96d-c7cd-488e-871d-91ae13ecf23c" CreationDate="2015-10-03T18:58:29.833" UserId="31260" Text="Please merge tag [tag:assembler] (12 questions) into [tag:assembly] (89), and make them synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag _assembler_ has no wiki, for _assembly_ there is tag wiki excerpt:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An assembly language is a low-level programming language for a computer, microcontroller, or other programmable device, in which each statement corresponds to a single machine code instruction. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Preference for master tag is because it has much more questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21672" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7648" RevisionGUID="ff04c96d-c7cd-488e-871d-91ae13ecf23c" CreationDate="2015-10-03T18:58:29.833" UserId="31260" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [assembler] → [assembly]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21673" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7648" RevisionGUID="ff04c96d-c7cd-488e-871d-91ae13ecf23c" CreationDate="2015-10-03T18:58:29.833" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21674" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7649" RevisionGUID="ba656fcd-bf22-48d3-ac4d-b2a98b4f5bc8" CreationDate="2015-10-04T19:17:36.473" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Every day we get opinionated questions asked here.  People seem to think that this is the place to ask them.  New users point to the old open questions that have fallen through the cracks of time as reason that their question should be open too.  Old Stack Overflow users continue to suggest reposting discussions on &lt;s&gt;NotProgrammingRelated&lt;/s&gt; Programmers.SE.  Consider this exchange on [a Stack Overflow question](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32921809):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;s&gt;This is not an appropriate question here because it is opinion-based. You might get help at [Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/). — Ed Cottrell&lt;/s&gt; (deleted)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @EdCottrell programmers has the same rules about opinion-based questions as SO. Please take a look at the help centre there before sending people our way. cheers. –  MetaFight  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @MetaFight my apologies. I see lots of these kinds of questions over there and didn't realize they weren't acceptable. –  Ed Cottrell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have been [told in the past](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/220099/213963) that when our site is full of crappy questions, our site sucks.  Yes, the answers may be great - but the questions aren't.  As said, fixing that is a painful process. It also means that we need to change the perception of what Programmers.SE is about. This means closing questions that are too broad, or primary opinion, or career advice from days of old.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Popularity of old questions](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/) does not mean that it is something that should be enshrined in a museum for all time.  Well, thats what a historical lock is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I will also point out that the new users who cite historical locked questions apparently don't read the text)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE one of the highest ratio of locked questions to questions of major sites (note also that the great contentious cleanup of SF hasn't been completely resolved).  Digging into [data.SE](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/371072/478325) (feel free to refine the query - comparing it to search here, I do see discrepancies, however it is consistently applied to other sites):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Site | Questions  | Locked&#xD;&#xA;    P.SE |     37,017 |  744 (2.01%)&#xD;&#xA;    SO   | 10,258,635 | 2702 (0.02%)&#xD;&#xA;    Math |    496,668 |  638 (0.13%)&#xD;&#xA;    SU   |    284,455 |  764 (0.26%)&#xD;&#xA;    SF   |    205,689 | 4265 (2.07%)&#xD;&#xA;    AU   |    202,900 | 1233 (0.60%)&#xD;&#xA;    TeX  |     97,119 |  180 (0.18%)&#xD;&#xA;    U&amp;L  |     74,315 |  220 (0.29%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are the *most* preservationist of the sites that are out there.  We even tried moving some of our popular questions to the blog (it didn't work out well).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that it is necessary to reopen those closed questions of old popularity so that someone can add another answer and continue the *discussion*, then go right ahead.  The site was down that road once before and we were told that this was something that wasn't sustainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime, the community that is here has defined our scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is not Quora, or Reddit or any other site. We are a site to give practical answers to questions of software design and architecture. It says so right in our [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask about:  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software requirements  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software architecture and design  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ algorithms and data structures  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ development methodologies and processes  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software engineering management  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ quality assurance and testing  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software licensing  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't ask about...  &#xD;&#xA; general workplace issues, career advice, job hunting, salary, or compensation  &#xD;&#xA; implementation issues and coding tools  &#xD;&#xA; what you should learn next  &#xD;&#xA; what projects to do or books to read  &#xD;&#xA; where to find libraries, tools, resources, or other product/service recommendations  &#xD;&#xA; personal lifestyle or non-programming activities  &#xD;&#xA; questions that are primarily opinion-based  &#xD;&#xA; questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a Stack Exchange employee, reopening questions that are in direct conflict with what the site scope is about sends a confusing message to our users - both the ones asking questions and the ones closing them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, there are many wonderful blog posts in our old, off topic, too broad, and opinion answers. They may be worthwhile to try to preserve -  *as blog posts*. It would be helpful to have people who are good editors to help us migrate these posts to a different medium and make posting blog posts something that is easier to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Referring to the specific question of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75486/why-arent-young-programmers-interested-in-mainframes when I started the close vote process on it wasn't its popularity - it was the tag [tag:junior-programmer] that is littered with bad questions and itself being on the verge of a meta-tag. When looking through a tag, I tend to start at the oldest as those are the ones that have the most answers and the least fixable. This often means seeing some of the old popular ones before the newer less popular ones. However, the phrasing of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Closing questions with great content years after the fact simply because they became popular seems like an inherently spiteful and self destructive way to make a point. You can certainly control your own scope, but when groups of users go out explicitly to hunt down the most-popular questions specifically because they ***are*** popular doesn't make the site any better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is incorrect about my motives and needlessly antagonistic. It also suggests that you have a different vision of what types of questions should be asked on Programmers.SE.  If this is the case, then please state it clearly.  We've gone through this [in the past](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/350/40980) and there is even a [blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) that I am sure you are familiar with.  In it, it states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thus, **questions that are not answerable -- discussions, debates, opinions -- should be closed as subjective.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question asked in the post http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75486/why-arent-young-programmers-interested-in-mainframes falls exactly into that category:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why is this? What makes mainframes unattractive to young programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not answerable. It is subjective and requires extended discussion. It would be something to ask on a discussion board. The explicit question presented in the post is a poll of personal experiences. It is entirely composed of opinions and personal anecdotes. It is not within the scope of the site today. With its 26 answers, it speaks exactly to the first part of the blog post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Most forums and chat rooms have a scale problem. As in, they don't. The more people that join the discussion, the more noise each of those connections bring. So the forums get progressively noisier and noisier, and suddenly one day … [you stop learning](http://scobleizer.com/the-chat-roomforum-problem-an-apology-to-technosailor/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Because we believe so deeply in learning, we are willing to go to great lengths to suppress the discussion, debate, and opinions that -- while plenty entertaining -- cause most forums to inevitably break down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note: as of this writing, your blog entry has a broken link, the correct link is provided above&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These old, popular, and off topic / too broad / opinion polls are ones that new users often find when they first hit the site and seek to contribute.  This is unfortunate because they are often not adding anything that isn't there in the previous twenty some-odd questions, lack good writing skills, and are unfamiliar with the scope of the site.  All of this leads to a rather negative experience for new users (doubly so if they ask another question like it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Allowing these old questions to remain open is in direct conflict with providing new users to the site a good experience - answering a good question or asking a good question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21675" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7649" RevisionGUID="ba656fcd-bf22-48d3-ac4d-b2a98b4f5bc8" CreationDate="2015-10-04T19:17:36.473" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="To Robert Cartaino, who reopens broad questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21676" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7649" RevisionGUID="ba656fcd-bf22-48d3-ac4d-b2a98b4f5bc8" CreationDate="2015-10-04T19:17:36.473" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|specific-question|on-topic-definition|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21677" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7650" RevisionGUID="9b7c186e-e9d5-44db-a5cd-7f9c7a7973e2" CreationDate="2015-10-05T01:47:27.817" UserId="3" Text="&gt; Thus, **questions that are not answerable -- discussions, debates, opinions -- should be closed as subjective.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By and large this is true, but do you ever stop long enough to consider if there **is** actually some pretty good content behind a long-standing question &amp;mdash; content that *didn't* become a never-ending list of answers or break down into a needless, irresolute debate devoid of merit or reasonable explanation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not every question is one fact, one answer. The rare question I re-open is *not* full of never-ending nonsense continuing to attract low-quality answers for years to come. These are largely *resolved* threads with **good content right there at the top.**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When that rare exception occurs, and these mega-popular posts attract some great answers with a lot of voting which clearly drives the best answers to the top, it should be seen as something that ***adds*** to the site, and guarded jealously. It certainly brings in a ***lot*** of views, which is why I received these alarms in the first place &amp;mdash; highly-upvoted, highly-popular content being closed suddenly, sometimes years after the fact. Popularity doesn't always equate to high-quality, but if it ***is*** good content, your priorities should be to see that it is curated properly&amp;hellip; not closed and discarded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea that there are hordes of people just waiting flood the site for want of a single precedent was one of those things we worried about before we had anything to back it up. But if you haven't noticed, Stack Exchange has moved on from a lot of those **old adages foretelling of widespread doom** in ways that simply never materialized in actual use. The &quot;too localized&quot; problem; the dreaded &quot;shopping question&quot;; not constructive; slap community wiki on posts with undeserved rep; don't ask us to recommend solutions&amp;hellip; and *every* question must have exactly one absolutely factual answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to hold on to those old ideals, at least use the historical lock &amp;mdash; not with a condescending flag &quot;to make Robert Cartaino feel better about the fate of this question with 50K views&quot; &amp;mdash; but because you understand what it is *not* to throw out the baby with the bathwater. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of sites manage to strike this balance, enforcing a vast multitude of objective, *answerable* questions while still curating those rare threads where broader participation has created something widely useful to the site. Look at Ask Different; look at Mathematics; these sites are about as well-run as they come. Yet more and more of them manage to curate those rare gems which motivate a community to put in the effort to keep this stuff relevant. And yet they manage to *hold* that line to keep it from getting out of control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21678" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7649" RevisionGUID="ba10aa3b-3350-4d49-87be-83f0d70b629a" CreationDate="2015-10-05T07:10:51.317" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/650931135858536448" />
  <row Id="21679" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7651" RevisionGUID="9efbc96c-7542-470a-8e38-ae8fdfec2380" CreationDate="2015-10-05T13:13:16.713" UserId="35276" Text="I cannot flag this question for deletion, nor vote to delete it. It has been apparently decided that it should be locked, so that it may fester in our backlog permanently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I should like to see it deleted as it provides zero value outside of what you could get reading the latest opinions of old technology on any tech opinion site Article. So I leave it to the community to vote for this here as the right to vote for it's deletion on main has been removed from us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75486/why-arent-young-programmers-interested-in-mainframes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21680" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7651" RevisionGUID="9efbc96c-7542-470a-8e38-ae8fdfec2380" CreationDate="2015-10-05T13:13:16.713" UserId="35276" Text="Historical locked trash, please delete" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21681" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7651" RevisionGUID="9efbc96c-7542-470a-8e38-ae8fdfec2380" CreationDate="2015-10-05T13:13:16.713" UserId="35276" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21682" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7652" RevisionGUID="30064060-f671-4faa-82d9-090314848610" CreationDate="2015-10-05T13:44:32.707" UserId="4" Text="I don't see a purpose in deleting this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I removed the low quality tag of junior-programmers and deleted all of the negatively scored answers. I've also removed the mod notice about long answers. Right now, the question is closed as too broad and has a historical lock placed upon it. This should be a clear indicator to any visitor that this type of question is not suitable for the site and they shouldn't use it as an example of questions they should ask or ask similar questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, I don't think this question should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, it has a large number of views. As of right now, it has over 53,000 views over 4 years. That's something like 37 views per day, ever day, for four years. It's probably linked to on other sites - I understand that Y Combinator picked it up. It could be referenced in other sites and posts as well. Deleting it would remove context from other posts and discussions on the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, it's a popular question. The question received 55 up votes and only 4 down votes before it was locked. The top answer received 98 up votes and 0 down votes. In addition, the question was favorited 25 times. This kind of response tells me that, at one point in time, this was considered a good question. With today's standards, I'd call it &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; or &quot;too broad&quot; (which is the close reason given). This change in direction is the reason for a historical lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't buy the argument that this question will bring people to the site to ask similar, low quality questions. Anyone who lands on this page should see that the question is closed and historically locked (which explicitly states &quot;it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here&quot;). There may be Meta.SE suggestions to improve the visibility of these notices (they are below the question) or perhaps to take steps to hurt the ranking of locked questions in search algorithms, but those are SE level suggestions that should be fleshed out and taken to Meta Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point in time, I don't feel comfortable deleting (or letting the community delete) this question. Is it a good question for Programmers? No, it's not. And that's why it's closed and locked. Does it add value to the Internet? Someone thinks that it does, or else it wouldn't have had so many views, up votes, and favorites (as well as in-bound links on other sites).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If other mods disagree, I'd be open to doing more. I don't feel comfortable doing more on my own. But given the recent visibility into this particular question and how we've been handling dealing with old, low quality, but highly visible questions, I don't see deletion as viable at this point in time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relevant and related: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7649/to-robert-cartaino-who-reopens-broad-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21683" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7652" RevisionGUID="4587b17d-b821-4b68-bd12-49247914ead6" CreationDate="2015-10-05T16:38:36.740" UserId="47" Comment="typo" Text="I don't see a purpose in deleting this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I removed the low quality tag of junior-programmers and deleted all of the negatively scored answers. I've also removed the mod notice about long answers. Right now, the question is closed as too broad and has a historical lock placed upon it. This should be a clear indicator to any visitor that this type of question is not suitable for the site and they shouldn't use it as an example of questions they should ask or ask similar questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, I don't think this question should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, it has a large number of views. As of right now, it has over 53,000 views over 4 years. That's something like 37 views per day, every day, for four years. It's probably linked to on other sites - I understand that Y Combinator picked it up. It could be referenced in other sites and posts as well. Deleting it would remove context from other posts and discussions on the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, it's a popular question. The question received 55 up votes and only 4 down votes before it was locked. The top answer received 98 up votes and 0 down votes. In addition, the question was favorited 25 times. This kind of response tells me that, at one point in time, this was considered a good question. With today's standards, I'd call it &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; or &quot;too broad&quot; (which is the close reason given). This change in direction is the reason for a historical lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't buy the argument that this question will bring people to the site to ask similar, low quality questions. Anyone who lands on this page should see that the question is closed and historically locked (which explicitly states &quot;it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here&quot;). There may be Meta.SE suggestions to improve the visibility of these notices (they are below the question) or perhaps to take steps to hurt the ranking of locked questions in search algorithms, but those are SE level suggestions that should be fleshed out and taken to Meta Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point in time, I don't feel comfortable deleting (or letting the community delete) this question. Is it a good question for Programmers? No, it's not. And that's why it's closed and locked. Does it add value to the Internet? Someone thinks that it does, or else it wouldn't have had so many views, up votes, and favorites (as well as in-bound links on other sites).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If other mods disagree, I'd be open to doing more. I don't feel comfortable doing more on my own. But given the recent visibility into this particular question and how we've been handling dealing with old, low quality, but highly visible questions, I don't see deletion as viable at this point in time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relevant and related: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7649/to-robert-cartaino-who-reopens-broad-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21684" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7651" RevisionGUID="82689e9f-7dc2-4307-82a2-642554b99ac8" CreationDate="2015-10-05T16:59:33.747" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|on-topic-definition|locked-question|quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21685" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7653" RevisionGUID="d4062bfc-8501-4235-af20-2cd2949654d4" CreationDate="2015-10-05T17:20:46.050" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="This answer is a place to hang your votes if you disagree with Thomas Owens.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, unlock and delete that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It is off-topic because it is borderline career advice and does not fall under any of the &quot;on topic&quot; reasons.&#xD;&#xA;* It is primarily opinion-based.&#xD;&#xA;* As time goes on, the answer may change. It is too dependent on the current state of the job market.&#xD;&#xA;* Several of the answers are a bit ranty (Thomas deleted some of these).&#xD;&#xA;* Nothing constructive will come out of this question. Yes, we know mainframe technology is old and crusty and very few people want to work on it. There is no point in going down a dead end road and arguing about it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21686" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7654" RevisionGUID="89f226b9-7d21-4c6d-8826-05abcfeb743d" CreationDate="2015-10-05T19:39:32.870" UserId="63" Text="Something came up in the comments on [Robert's answer][1] that I'd like to address...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But why should it remain open? Curation of existing content for questions that are off topic, primarily opinion, or too broad is most easily done when the question is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -- [MichaelT](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7649/to-robert-cartaino-who-reopens-broad-questions#comment22998_7650)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- I will not write anything about putting questions on trains bound for some camp. I will not write anything about putting questions on trains bound for some camp. I will not write anything about putting questions on trains bound for some camp. I will not write anything about putting questions on trains... --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closure doesn't mean deletion, and I think many community participants confuse the two. All closure does it prevent new answers from being posted, and signal to the community that we really don't want these kinds of questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -- [Robert Harvey](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7649/to-robert-cartaino-who-reopens-broad-questions#comment23015_7650)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar sentiments were expressed in other comments and in chat. They're not entirely *wrong*, but I think they largely ignore the practical realities of how things work - both in terms of the software that drives these sites, and in terms of how this site operates using that software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Closing as limbo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This - the notion that closing is a state wherein questions can remain until salvaged - has merit; indeed, the system itself reflects this usage by marking questions as &quot;on hold&quot; for the first few days after they're closed, a signal that they can and should be edited and reopened if they can be. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, **most are not**. [Have a look at the closing statistics for the past 90 days here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last90days) - in particular, the stats for questions closed as &quot;Too Broad&quot;: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Close reason Closed % of total Edited % of closed Reopened % of closed Edited and Reopened % of edited&#xD;&#xA;    ------------ ------ ---------- ------ ----------- -------- ----------- ------------------- -----------&#xD;&#xA;    too broad    603    19.03 %    56     9.29 %      6       1.00 %       3                   5.36 %&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only 1% of questions closed thusly are reopened; less than 10% are even edited, and *of those* barely 5% are reopened. In real numbers, we're talking about 3 questions where this ideal is actually realized; if you were wagering on the outcome of a question, this would not be where you'd want to put your money.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Closing as a permanent state which prevents only the addition of answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, this isn't entirely *wrong*... The system does indeed block the addition of new answers to closed questions, and some closed questions *do* remain visible long after being closed... But ignores the *other* big change in status that closing implies, namely that the question is now eligible for deletion: privileged users may vote to delete it, and in some cases the system itself will remove such questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some statistics on closed question outcomes for the past 90 days:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- #11340 --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    closed deleted reopened &#xD;&#xA;    ------ ------- -------- &#xD;&#xA;    3169   2039    24       &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over 99% of closed questions *stay closed*. Over 64% are deleted relatively quickly. Now here are the same stats for questions closed in a 90-day period ending 1 year ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- #11340 --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    closed deleted reopened &#xD;&#xA;    ------ ------- -------- &#xD;&#xA;    2837   2125    41      &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reopened % jumps to... less than 2%, while the deletion % rockets to over 74%. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't necessarily a *bad thing*, mind you: if most questions that are closed aren't worth saving, then you'd *expect* the reopen % to be low and *hope* the deletion % is high. But... You'd also be naive to believe that closing is **not** an immediate precursor to deletion; clearly it is just that for the majority of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Why does this matter?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember the premise of this question was that certain questions shouldn't be reopened. Whether or not that's actually the case, it's bad news if the folks who are closing questions do so misinformed of what that actually *means*. If you're voting to close a question, you should be comfortable with that question being deleted - statistically, *that is what will happen.* If you'd be disappointed in that outcome, then you should probably choose a different plan of action. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7649/to-robert-cartaino-who-reopens-broad-questions/7650#7650&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21687" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7655" RevisionGUID="ee3e704e-0b44-487a-828d-37b5f870cdce" CreationDate="2015-10-07T13:39:36.323" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63342/what-are-some-easter-eggs-that-went-wrong&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are some easter eggs that went wrong and resulted in unintended consequences, e.g programmer(s) being fired, monetary losses, even human life loss, etc? Please share.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The question was locked two years ago and has in its four year lifespan only garnered 1764 views as of the time of this writing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It has no linked questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The answers are *meh* at the best.  Though most are not an easter egg by any definition and just personal annoyances and anecdotes or unintended consequences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; My Dad once changed the login screen for an in-house software, that he developed, to a simple and cheerful christmas greeting. Management was not amused.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There really isn't any redeeming qualities to it. I contend that with its low views and very poor answers it doesn't have any historical significance and should be deleted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21688" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7655" RevisionGUID="ee3e704e-0b44-487a-828d-37b5f870cdce" CreationDate="2015-10-07T13:39:36.323" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Re-evaluate the historical lock on 'What are some easter eggs that went wrong'" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21689" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7655" RevisionGUID="ee3e704e-0b44-487a-828d-37b5f870cdce" CreationDate="2015-10-07T13:39:36.323" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|specific-question|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21690" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7656" RevisionGUID="20096b0d-ac18-43aa-8685-91acc7fd83a9" CreationDate="2015-10-07T13:42:42.297" UserId="4" Text="I'm going to give the community a chance to disagree, but I think it should be deleted. I don't think that the low view count warrants the historical lock. The net score of the question and top answers is also rather lackluster. There's also not that much insightful (from my perspective, anyway) in the answers, either." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21691" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7655" RevisionGUID="90bc24f8-1906-49c8-afc8-39fb9cb5dc9f" CreationDate="2015-10-07T15:43:21.667" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|specific-question|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21692" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7637" RevisionGUID="ca32d0b5-89ca-46a4-8be0-0dd8dde77a06" CreationDate="2015-10-08T17:28:15.800" UserId="96050" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-bydesign|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21693" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7649" RevisionGUID="db051219-0a24-4873-8634-5fe2f9977179" CreationDate="2015-10-08T20:39:53.783" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo corrected" Text="Every day we get opinionated questions asked here.  People seem to think that this is the place to ask them.  New users point to the old open questions that have fallen through the cracks of time as reason that their question should be open too.  Old Stack Overflow users continue to suggest reposting discussions on &lt;s&gt;NotProgrammingRelated&lt;/s&gt; Programmers.SE.  Consider this exchange on [a Stack Overflow question](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32921809):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;s&gt;This is not an appropriate question here because it is opinion-based. You might get help at [Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/). — Ed Cottrell&lt;/s&gt; (deleted)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @EdCottrell programmers has the same rules about opinion-based questions as SO. Please take a look at the help centre there before sending people our way. cheers. –  MetaFight  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @MetaFight my apologies. I see lots of these kinds of questions over there and didn't realize they weren't acceptable. –  Ed Cottrell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have been [told in the past](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/220099/213963) that when our site is full of crappy questions, our site sucks.  Yes, the answers may be great - but the questions aren't.  As said, fixing that is a painful process. It also means that we need to change the perception of what Programmers.SE is about. This means closing questions that are too broad, or primary opinion, or career advice from days of old.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Popularity of old questions](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/) does not mean that it is something that should be enshrined in a museum for all time.  Well, that's what a historical lock is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I will also point out that the new users who cite historical locked questions apparently don't read the text)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE one of the highest ratio of locked questions to questions of major sites (note also that the great contentious cleanup of SF hasn't been completely resolved).  Digging into [data.SE](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/371072/478325) (feel free to refine the query - comparing it to search here, I do see discrepancies, however it is consistently applied to other sites):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Site | Questions  | Locked&#xD;&#xA;    P.SE |     37,017 |  744 (2.01%)&#xD;&#xA;    SO   | 10,258,635 | 2702 (0.02%)&#xD;&#xA;    Math |    496,668 |  638 (0.13%)&#xD;&#xA;    SU   |    284,455 |  764 (0.26%)&#xD;&#xA;    SF   |    205,689 | 4265 (2.07%)&#xD;&#xA;    AU   |    202,900 | 1233 (0.60%)&#xD;&#xA;    TeX  |     97,119 |  180 (0.18%)&#xD;&#xA;    U&amp;L  |     74,315 |  220 (0.29%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are the *most* preservationist of the sites that are out there.  We even tried moving some of our popular questions to the blog (it didn't work out well).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that it is necessary to reopen those closed questions of old popularity so that someone can add another answer and continue the *discussion*, then go right ahead.  The site was down that road once before and we were told that this was something that wasn't sustainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime, the community that is here has defined our scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is not Quora, or Reddit or any other site. We are a site to give practical answers to questions of software design and architecture. It says so right in our [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask about:  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software requirements  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software architecture and design  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ algorithms and data structures  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ development methodologies and processes  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software engineering management  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ quality assurance and testing  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software licensing  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't ask about...  &#xD;&#xA; general workplace issues, career advice, job hunting, salary, or compensation  &#xD;&#xA; implementation issues and coding tools  &#xD;&#xA; what you should learn next  &#xD;&#xA; what projects to do or books to read  &#xD;&#xA; where to find libraries, tools, resources, or other product/service recommendations  &#xD;&#xA; personal lifestyle or non-programming activities  &#xD;&#xA; questions that are primarily opinion-based  &#xD;&#xA; questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a Stack Exchange employee, reopening questions that are in direct conflict with what the site scope is about sends a confusing message to our users - both the ones asking questions and the ones closing them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, there are many wonderful blog posts in our old, off topic, too broad, and opinion answers. They may be worthwhile to try to preserve -  *as blog posts*. It would be helpful to have people who are good editors to help us migrate these posts to a different medium and make posting blog posts something that is easier to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Referring to the specific question of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75486/why-arent-young-programmers-interested-in-mainframes when I started the close vote process on it wasn't its popularity - it was the tag [tag:junior-programmer] that is littered with bad questions and itself being on the verge of a meta-tag. When looking through a tag, I tend to start at the oldest as those are the ones that have the most answers and the least fixable. This often means seeing some of the old popular ones before the newer less popular ones. However, the phrasing of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Closing questions with great content years after the fact simply because they became popular seems like an inherently spiteful and self destructive way to make a point. You can certainly control your own scope, but when groups of users go out explicitly to hunt down the most-popular questions specifically because they ***are*** popular doesn't make the site any better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is incorrect about my motives and needlessly antagonistic. It also suggests that you have a different vision of what types of questions should be asked on Programmers.SE.  If this is the case, then please state it clearly.  We've gone through this [in the past](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/350/40980) and there is even a [blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) that I am sure you are familiar with.  In it, it states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thus, **questions that are not answerable -- discussions, debates, opinions -- should be closed as subjective.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question asked in the post http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75486/why-arent-young-programmers-interested-in-mainframes falls exactly into that category:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why is this? What makes mainframes unattractive to young programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not answerable. It is subjective and requires extended discussion. It would be something to ask on a discussion board. The explicit question presented in the post is a poll of personal experiences. It is entirely composed of opinions and personal anecdotes. It is not within the scope of the site today. With its 26 answers, it speaks exactly to the first part of the blog post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Most forums and chat rooms have a scale problem. As in, they don't. The more people that join the discussion, the more noise each of those connections bring. So the forums get progressively noisier and noisier, and suddenly one day … [you stop learning](http://scobleizer.com/the-chat-roomforum-problem-an-apology-to-technosailor/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Because we believe so deeply in learning, we are willing to go to great lengths to suppress the discussion, debate, and opinions that -- while plenty entertaining -- cause most forums to inevitably break down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note: as of this writing, your blog entry has a broken link, the correct link is provided above&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These old, popular, and off topic / too broad / opinion polls are ones that new users often find when they first hit the site and seek to contribute.  This is unfortunate because they are often not adding anything that isn't there in the previous twenty some-odd questions, lack good writing skills, and are unfamiliar with the scope of the site.  All of this leads to a rather negative experience for new users (doubly so if they ask another question like it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Allowing these old questions to remain open is in direct conflict with providing new users to the site a good experience - answering a good question or asking a good question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21694" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7074" RevisionGUID="921ff3e1-9b56-40b1-839c-d3aa952610a5" CreationDate="2015-10-09T15:35:16.493" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Wayback link" Text="[![How to be a Programmer by Robert L. Read][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/K7vth.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20150221071347/http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21695" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7075" RevisionGUID="f64729a9-ae53-48e9-9c47-310e6a924be2" CreationDate="2015-10-09T15:35:46.040" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Wayback link" Text="[![How to be a Programmer by Robert L. Read][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/spkcb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20150221071347/http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21696" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="dc182107-080c-4631-a3a0-622acaffed28" CreationDate="2015-10-10T00:18:56.563" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|questions|homework-dump|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21697" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7611" RevisionGUID="d32fee24-ee25-4b87-b2e8-54feae2397b7" CreationDate="2015-10-10T16:52:06.770" UserId="5167" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|bug|status-bydesign|tags|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21698" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7655" RevisionGUID="771b1c37-a928-4f90-b7ac-a3487ddd4c54" CreationDate="2015-10-10T19:47:43.593" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/652933548014444544" />
  <row Id="21699" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7657" RevisionGUID="ec62c319-9a0e-4a63-b2bd-17435fb2b592" CreationDate="2015-10-10T20:32:15.360" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Today I answered this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Should I use strategy design pattern or something else?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After some back and forth with the asker in the comments, I thought it prudent to bring up the point that composition would be better than inheritance in his design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I searched the main site looking for a good question on the topic of &quot;composition over inheritance&quot; but could not find a _good_ one with lots of useful information, examples, etc. that demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses and makes a convincing argument in favor of composition. I ended up linking to a _good enough_ question but was not satisfied with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a question on the main site that would be a good candidate as the canonical &quot;composition over inheritance&quot; question that would be a good question to which to link when writing answers that advocate for composition instead of inheritance?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not, I will consider writing up a self-answered CW Q/A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/299552/22815" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21700" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7657" RevisionGUID="ec62c319-9a0e-4a63-b2bd-17435fb2b592" CreationDate="2015-10-10T20:32:15.360" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Is there a canonical &quot;inheritance over composition&quot; question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21701" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7657" RevisionGUID="ec62c319-9a0e-4a63-b2bd-17435fb2b592" CreationDate="2015-10-10T20:32:15.360" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21702" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7657" RevisionGUID="e32eff51-e35c-47d4-ac52-821246002d33" CreationDate="2015-10-10T21:17:55.613" UserId="81495" Comment="edited title" Text="Is there a canonical &quot;composition over inheritance&quot; question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21703" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7657" RevisionGUID="fbe1ac62-6bd7-4153-94b1-d031034f1d69" CreationDate="2015-10-11T01:31:18.637" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21704" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7658" RevisionGUID="f209f294-6f5e-4146-91d6-fd2fac414623" CreationDate="2015-10-12T05:06:13.777" UserId="1204" Text="Self-answered/Canonical questions get a bit of a free pass on Stack Overflow, if the question/answer pair is good.  In particular, if the answer makes a really good target for questions that are repeatedly asked often, it often gets a pass, and deservedly so.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For good examples of these kinds of questions, see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [PHP mail form doesn't complete sending email](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24644436/php-mail-form-doesnt-complete-sending-e-mail)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How to fix &quot;Headers Already Sent&quot; error in PHP](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8028957/how-to-fix-headers-already-sent-error-in-php)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...both of which are referenced in the PHP Tag Wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The PHP Tag Wiki, by the way, is the *right* way to create a tag wiki.  It is a shining example of what Tag Wikis should look like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some more examples of excellent canonical question/answer pairs:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Reference - What does this regex mean?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22937618/reference-what-does-this-regex-mean)&#xD;&#xA; - [What is a NullReferenceException and how do I fix it?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4660142/what-is-a-nullreferenceexception-and-how-do-i-fix-it)  (which also has a Java counterpart)&#xD;&#xA; - The infamous [Definitive C++ Book List](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-book-guide-and-list).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions just get lucky:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How do Javascript Closures work?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/111102/how-do-javascript-closures-work)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, the way you find these questions is by looking through the Tag Wikis.  All of the decent tag wikis have a list of Frequently Asked Questions that the tag community sees as worthy enough to reference in the tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[By the way...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/49002/prefer-composition-over-inheritance)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21705" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7659" RevisionGUID="5013bf0d-882a-43cb-9655-36cbefc9657f" CreationDate="2015-10-12T16:28:35.567" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/17053/40980 was asked in 2010 (Java 6 was still in active development). The information in it is quite dated (J2EE isn't a thing anymore - incidentally, it was Java 6 that got rid of J2SE and J2EE). Android is refered to as 'new'.  Some of the answers are no more than one sentence anecdotes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's still being used in the Academia quite a bit ... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The company I work for uses J2EE and uses it for web development too. I know SAP has integrated a Java interface that can be used instead of ABAP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without a significant amount of updating, the answers are becoming more and more dated and serve as worse and worse examples for others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While there's a lot of views on it, it really isn't providing any up to date information.  Looking at the [anonymous feedback](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/220020/qa-anon-feedback) votes on the question and its answers, downvotes are often outweighing the upvotes (the question received 1.2k anon upvotes, and 1.6k anon downvotes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With its lack of current information, and vastly outdated information the question provides no utility to anyone who finds it via search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any reason to keep this question around?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21706" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7659" RevisionGUID="5013bf0d-882a-43cb-9655-36cbefc9657f" CreationDate="2015-10-12T16:28:35.567" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Lets delete &quot;What is Java used for these days?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21707" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7659" RevisionGUID="5013bf0d-882a-43cb-9655-36cbefc9657f" CreationDate="2015-10-12T16:28:35.567" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21708" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7660" RevisionGUID="0c22313a-0f02-4904-89df-9c491f034bdf" CreationDate="2015-10-12T16:45:30.950" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="The question is heavily (but not primarily) opinion-based and certainly too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers are rambling, outdated, and many are low-quality. Several provide examples of individual projects that use Java, which is a bit too specific to be of much use. Q: &quot;What are cars used for these days?&quot; A: &quot;Well my cousin is a cab driver.&quot; Sure, that technically answers the question, but is useless information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bigger issue is &quot;what value does this question and its answers provide?&quot; As far as I can tell it serves one of several purposes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Fuel for the language flame wars.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Answers the questions &quot;what language or technology should I take up next&quot; and &quot;recommend an off-site resource such as a language&quot; (Java, in this case).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Pros and cons][1] of Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In no way does this question bring measurable benefit to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is any useful content in any of the answers, it belongs in the [Java tag wiki][2] which probably has enough useful information as-is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6758/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/java" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21709" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7660" RevisionGUID="2a973f9f-8d71-4808-b041-6c0b038e534a" CreationDate="2015-10-12T16:54:23.227" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="deleted 7 characters in body" Text="The question is heavily (but not primarily) opinion-based and certainly too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers are rambling, outdated, and many are low-quality. Several provide examples of individual projects that use Java, which is a bit too specific to be of much use. Q: &quot;What are cars used for these days?&quot; A: &quot;Well my cousin is a cab driver.&quot; Sure, that technically answers the question, but is useless information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bigger issue is &quot;what value does this question and its answers provide?&quot; As far as I can tell it serves one of several purposes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Fuel for the language flame wars.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Answers the questions &quot;what language or technology should I take up next&quot; and &quot;recommend an off-site resource such as a language&quot; (Java, in this case).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Pros and cons][1] of Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In no way does this question bring measurable benefit to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is any useful content in any of the answers, it belongs in the [Java tag wiki][2] which probably has enough useful information as-is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6758/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/java/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21710" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7659" RevisionGUID="44a72288-3d2e-4535-82cc-d9ede331d155" CreationDate="2015-10-12T18:12:25.637" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 17 characters in body" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/17053/40980 was asked in 2010 (Java 6 was still in active development). The information in it is quite dated (J2EE isn't a thing anymore - incidentally, it was Java 6 that got rid of J2SE and J2EE). Android is refered to as 'new'.  Some of the answers are no more than one sentence anecdotes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's still being used in the Academia quite a bit ... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The company I work for uses J2EE and uses it for web development too. I know SAP has integrated a Java interface that can be used instead of ABAP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without a significant amount of updating, the answers are becoming more and more dated and serve as worse and worse examples for others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While there's a lot of views on it, it really isn't providing any up to date information.  Looking at the [anonymous feedback](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/220020/qa-anon-feedback?QuestionId=17053) votes on the question and its answers, downvotes are often outweighing the upvotes (the question received 1.2k anon upvotes, and 1.6k anon downvotes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With its lack of current information, and vastly outdated information the question provides no utility to anyone who finds it via search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any reason to keep this question around?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21711" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7659" RevisionGUID="2b6c9620-b027-4f43-8462-ae1bed6717bc" CreationDate="2015-10-12T18:50:36.910" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21712" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7661" RevisionGUID="b0f95733-c6c5-4634-9087-0406f0571270" CreationDate="2015-10-13T13:49:39.303" UserId="73508" Text="Yes, there are some saintly souls who gently direct users to the FAQ and other missives, but surely it isn't beyond our ken to force users to agree to a minimum number of checks when they make their first post. It would save everyone so much time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21713" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7661" RevisionGUID="b0f95733-c6c5-4634-9087-0406f0571270" CreationDate="2015-10-13T13:49:39.303" UserId="73508" Text="How can we stop first questions where the user has a task (usually homework) and is just asking for code" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21714" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7661" RevisionGUID="b0f95733-c6c5-4634-9087-0406f0571270" CreationDate="2015-10-13T13:49:39.303" UserId="73508" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21715" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7661" RevisionGUID="7d9527e9-93bc-41e3-9ebf-451e3931e148" CreationDate="2015-10-13T13:57:01.850" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|low-quality-posts|homework-dump|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21716" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7662" RevisionGUID="e32b5162-aa14-465e-9131-c56c49eb60bb" CreationDate="2015-10-13T14:08:15.770" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120560/what-are-the-things-java-got-right is a poll. It has 41 answers. Beyond the top answer (which is repeated countless times in blogs out there), the answers quickly devolve into poor ones that are debatable or repeating previous answers (garbage collection is mentioned in the question, and three of the top four answers by votes, similarly platform independence, library).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * A googlable name. Try googling for &quot;C&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;* A standard library that is somewhat consistent.&#xD;&#xA;* A fast and open standardization process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Checking bounds of all array accesses and validity of all casts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Nobody seems to have mentioned **Enumerations**. They've done quite a nice job on those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Competition&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Either this should be a wiki lock (and I really don't like it - again, its in countless blog posts out there), or deleted.  The question only has ~1470 views. Its really not worth keeping around beyond as serving as an example of why we do big lists questions poorly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21717" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7662" RevisionGUID="e32b5162-aa14-465e-9131-c56c49eb60bb" CreationDate="2015-10-13T14:08:15.770" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Reevaluate the historical lock on &quot;What are the things Java got right?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21718" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7662" RevisionGUID="e32b5162-aa14-465e-9131-c56c49eb60bb" CreationDate="2015-10-13T14:08:15.770" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|specific-question|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21719" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7663" RevisionGUID="07badb9f-190a-4142-ac58-6fc76e35e1e2" CreationDate="2015-10-13T14:43:32.820" UserId="25476" Text="I wholeheartedly agree.  I unlocked and deleted this question.  The views just don't justify keeping it around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you disagree and would like Wiki Answer Lock this instead then please volunteer.  I think it is too much work for too little benefit honestly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a side note, I am astonished at 40+ answers and &lt; 2,000 views.  That is a high answer to view ratio, maybe a contender?  Would make for an interesting SEDE query.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21721" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7664" RevisionGUID="290f875a-4688-488f-ad1a-e47bf4729d8e" CreationDate="2015-10-13T19:07:39.347" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="&lt;sup&gt;I realize the improbability of this suggestion being acted on.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've got review audits for close vote queue.  Make one for new users. I am inspired by Sesame Street... o/\` Four of these things are not like the others o/\`... (those are supposed to look like notes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Pick 10 questions. Six off topic or otherwise closeable and four on topic.&#xD;&#xA;    * All questions should be a similar length&#xD;&#xA;* The user is to select the four that are on topic with a score of 75% or better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The hope would be that seeing questions that are like the ones that they want to ask and are in the &quot;don't ask this - off topic&quot; area they would get some hint that asking such a question would get closed too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After having one question closed on the site or a network wide &quot;doesn't understand&quot; flag is set, they need to pass the test before asking another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This &quot;doesn't understand&quot; flag would be set when the user has two questions closed on a site of a given topic area (technology, culture, ...) and would then have the quiz on *all* sites of that domain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This test remains in effect until their unclosed questions older than five days (want to give enough time for close votes to kick in) outnumber their closed questions by some margin." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21722" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7664" RevisionGUID="a566ff77-7f6a-4fca-9b9a-bfbc9726d571" CreationDate="2015-10-13T19:13:17.250" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 33 characters in body" Text="&lt;sup&gt;I realize the improbability of this suggestion being acted on.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've got review audits for close vote queue.  Make one for new users. I am inspired by Sesame Street... o/\` Four of these things are not like the others o/\`... (those are supposed to look like notes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Pick 10 questions. Six off topic or otherwise closeable (*including* migrated questions) and four on topic.&#xD;&#xA;    * All questions should be a similar length&#xD;&#xA;* The user is to select the four that are on topic with a score of 75% or better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The hope would be that seeing questions that are like the ones that they want to ask and are in the &quot;don't ask this - off topic&quot; area they would get some hint that asking such a question would get closed too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After having one question closed on the site or a network wide &quot;doesn't understand&quot; flag is set, they need to pass the test before asking another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This &quot;doesn't understand&quot; flag would be set when the user has two questions closed on a site of a given topic area (technology, culture, ...) and would then have the quiz on *all* sites of that domain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This test remains in effect until their unclosed questions older than five days (want to give enough time for close votes to kick in) outnumber their closed questions by some margin." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21723" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7657" RevisionGUID="46781940-660a-4b3a-81dc-a3af8be78200" CreationDate="2015-10-14T04:51:46.877" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/654157627803475969" />
  <row Id="21724" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7649" RevisionGUID="d8743d3f-43fb-4f91-858c-4d1eb0b2ae9d" CreationDate="2015-10-14T07:50:05.353" UserId="25936" Comment="Calling out Robert in the title for re-opening a question is a bit much." Text="Why was &quot;Why aren't young programmers interested in mainframes?&quot; re-opened?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21725" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7665" RevisionGUID="df6f8d51-9d65-470d-a681-e53844dc5e54" CreationDate="2015-10-14T17:15:44.787" UserId="102349" Text="I was browsing the highest voted questions (Questions &gt; Votes) on programmers, but noticed something extremely weird on page seven of the results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Going from questions with over a hundred votes to a question with two to four votes each? That can't possibly be right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The top of page eight returns to &gt;100 point questions, only to jump to two-point questions halfway through:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][3]][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's going on? Please tell me I'm not going crazy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to happen on 15 questions/page, but not on 50 questions/page. It also doesn't seem to happen on Stack Overflow, so it might be specific to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/BP2yG.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/w528G.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OdpzN.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21726" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7665" RevisionGUID="df6f8d51-9d65-470d-a681-e53844dc5e54" CreationDate="2015-10-14T17:15:44.787" UserId="102349" Text="Highest-voted questions giving wrong results" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21727" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7665" RevisionGUID="df6f8d51-9d65-470d-a681-e53844dc5e54" CreationDate="2015-10-14T17:15:44.787" UserId="102349" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21728" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7665" RevisionGUID="a88e5687-46e6-414c-a99b-4a0ecfe2aba0" CreationDate="2015-10-14T18:04:17.393" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add related tag.  Quote screen shots to seperate from background." Text="I was browsing the highest voted questions (Questions &gt; Votes) on programmers, but noticed something extremely weird on page seven of the results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![enter image description here][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Going from questions with over a hundred votes to a question with two to four votes each? That can't possibly be right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The top of page eight returns to &gt;100 point questions, only to jump to two-point questions halfway through:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![enter image description here][3]][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's going on? Please tell me I'm not going crazy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to happen on 15 questions/page, but not on 50 questions/page. It also doesn't seem to happen on Stack Overflow, so it might be specific to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/BP2yG.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/w528G.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OdpzN.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21729" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7665" RevisionGUID="a88e5687-46e6-414c-a99b-4a0ecfe2aba0" CreationDate="2015-10-14T18:04:17.393" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add related tag.  Quote screen shots to seperate from background." Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21730" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7666" RevisionGUID="a57ffffd-fd66-40e0-990d-ec54b734e8e1" CreationDate="2015-10-14T19:51:24.867" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="You are not crazy.  For me, I can see this on a few different pages.  Page [9, 15/view](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?page=9&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=15) ranges from scores of 4 to 1.  Page [10, 15/view](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?page=10&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=15) has 116 to 114, and then 1s and 0s. Page [11](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?page=11&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=15) has 116 to 111, and -4.  For what its worth, it starts getting wonky on page [7](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?page=7&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=15) where it goes from 109 to 58 and then goes downhill from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar wonkiness can be seen on page [5](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?page=5&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=30) and [6](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?page=6&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=30) at 30/page. And page [3](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?page=3&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=50) and [4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?page=4&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=50) on 50/page." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21731" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7667" RevisionGUID="31609eb5-c277-4912-a5f1-14071f45c4f1" CreationDate="2015-10-14T21:24:31.663" UserId="105737" Text="I have recommended that this question be locked as &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot;. In retrospect, it should be locked as duplicate. Do I need to provide an example?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see no reason why there should be a double standard on this site for moderators and users with high reputation (ie. for questions that fit suit personal opinions). If someone were to ask &quot;Why are all my posts being closed&quot; it would be marked immediately as duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look at this post http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3500/programmers-tag-line-is-misleading-can-we-rephrase-it?rq=1 and see that it is down-voted 6 times whereas this post is up-voted eight times and closed as not-constructive. That is democracy for you. Where do you assert to yourselves such certainty of your own opinions? I think there is much merit to his post and less to yours. It should be one way or the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The post is also too long to read in its entirety and not clearly related to its title line. The post “Why aren't young programmers interested in mainframes?” is not the main subject of this question, just an ad for the author's opninion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't feel that I can offer an opinion here, as it might be down-voted, thus affecting my reputation. But see what it is like to have your own post booted and condemned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with @Robert Cartaino, but look at the comments under his question? ex. &quot;But why!!!???&quot;, with boldface and attitude - it is all opinion based." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21732" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7667" RevisionGUID="7ab43754-5549-42c8-b985-40aa775722b7" CreationDate="2015-10-14T21:37:05.747" UserId="105737" Comment="added 287 characters in body" Text="I have recommended that this question be locked as &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot;. In retrospect, it should be locked as duplicate. Do I need to provide an example?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see no reason why there should be a double standard on this site for moderators and users with high reputation (ie. for questions that fit suit personal opinions). If someone were to ask &quot;Why are all my posts being closed&quot; it would be marked immediately as duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look at this post http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3500/programmers-tag-line-is-misleading-can-we-rephrase-it?rq=1 and see that it is down-voted 6 times whereas this post is up-voted eight times and closed as not-constructive. That is democracy for you. Where do you assert to yourselves such certainty of your own opinions? I think there is much merit to his post and less to yours. It should be one way or the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The post is also too long to read in its entirety and not clearly related to its title line. The post “Why aren't young programmers interested in mainframes?” is not the main subject of this question, just an ad for the author's opninion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't feel that I can offer an opinion here, as it might be down-voted, thus affecting my reputation. But see what it is like to have your own post booted and condemned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with @Robert Cartaino, but look at the comments under his question? ex. &quot;But why!!!???&quot;, with boldface and attitude - it is all opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: I apologize for any real or apparent hatred against SO. I am not serious that this post should be closed, far from it. I'm just not clear why this post is open and all the others like it are closed. The opinions that you do not like should ALSO have their place on the SO meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21733" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7668" RevisionGUID="177c8875-0b00-4cf6-b7ca-f4241e3fd50c" CreationDate="2015-10-15T09:26:54.770" UserId="151256" Text="I remember, I was suggested some books (links to books) in comments to my questions or answers, but now I can't find them easily.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can I search for such links (for example by 'book' keyword)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21734" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7668" RevisionGUID="177c8875-0b00-4cf6-b7ca-f4241e3fd50c" CreationDate="2015-10-15T09:26:54.770" UserId="151256" Text="How can I search in responses" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21735" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7668" RevisionGUID="177c8875-0b00-4cf6-b7ca-f4241e3fd50c" CreationDate="2015-10-15T09:26:54.770" UserId="151256" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21736" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7668" RevisionGUID="f9ecec92-ac97-4956-9f47-a03465aa4e5c" CreationDate="2015-10-15T13:27:03.167" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21737" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7669" RevisionGUID="1416e4b9-6752-498b-8c77-97ccf0095caf" CreationDate="2015-10-15T14:36:55.597" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The first option, while not optimal, is trivial to do.  Go to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/151256/ahmad?tab=responses and page through them one at a time and read them. It works and doesn't require any additional hoops. I've even done this for myself at times to find things, and I have 89 pages of responses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also poke at http://data.stackexchange.com/ and write some SQL.  http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/376067/484421/ will pull back all comments on posts by a given user id - for you this is likely enough as there are only 121 rows. While the current version http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/376067/484422 has a keyword in there too which can be used to filter.  Your user id is `151256` (you can see it in the URL for your profile &lt;code&gt;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/151256/ahmad&lt;/code&gt; )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For what its worth, there is only one comment that exists on any of your posts that has the word 'book' in it - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Why algorithms textbook are more procedure-oriented?&quot; Java is also procedure-oriented. Java is an object oriented procedural language. – Pieter B Feb 6 at 8:01  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/272298/relation-between-object-orientation-and-algorithms#comment556547_272298)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Extending the query to find comments on answers to questions that a given user posted is left as an exercise to the reader." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21738" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7670" RevisionGUID="7ce9f469-bb04-46ed-8e04-ec95b5efe9d9" CreationDate="2015-10-15T20:29:50.743" UserId="62323" Text="I just saw a question about pre and post increment operators in programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33157638/variable-variable-and-variable1/33157639#33157639&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't often close questions, but I actually started my close vote because it was a question everyone was asking around 1980 and clearly a duplicate of a question on stackoverflow.  But you can't use a stackoverflow answer as a duplicate on programmers.  So I figured I'd answer it.  Meanwhile, the question got moved to stackoverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My (flawed?) understanding is that stackoverflow was the original stackexchange site and programmers split from it a long time ago.  I still ask my sysadmin questions on stackoverflow.  But there are some die-hard programmers still on stackoverflow who think programming questions should be asked there.  Now I'm totally confused.  If you're supposed to ask programming questions on stackoverflow, what's programmers for?  And why are we moving programming questions there?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21739" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7670" RevisionGUID="7ce9f469-bb04-46ed-8e04-ec95b5efe9d9" CreationDate="2015-10-15T20:29:50.743" UserId="62323" Text="cross-site duplicates and migration" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21740" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7670" RevisionGUID="7ce9f469-bb04-46ed-8e04-ec95b5efe9d9" CreationDate="2015-10-15T20:29:50.743" UserId="62323" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21741" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7670" RevisionGUID="09f29e64-8dbc-4533-bd15-c866034b276a" CreationDate="2015-10-15T21:51:35.753" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags Link to noredirect version here." Text="|discussion|migration|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21742" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7670" RevisionGUID="09f29e64-8dbc-4533-bd15-c866034b276a" CreationDate="2015-10-15T21:51:35.753" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags Link to noredirect version here." Text="I just saw a question about pre and post increment operators in programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/299986/variable-variable-and-variable1?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't often close questions, but I actually started my close vote because it was a question everyone was asking around 1980 and clearly a duplicate of a question on stackoverflow.  But you can't use a stackoverflow answer as a duplicate on programmers.  So I figured I'd answer it.  Meanwhile, the question got moved to stackoverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My (flawed?) understanding is that stackoverflow was the original stackexchange site and programmers split from it a long time ago.  I still ask my sysadmin questions on stackoverflow.  But there are some die-hard programmers still on stackoverflow who think programming questions should be asked there.  Now I'm totally confused.  If you're supposed to ask programming questions on stackoverflow, what's programmers for?  And why are we moving programming questions there?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21743" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7671" RevisionGUID="d8a0fb21-fabf-41d7-b5a8-150e8e6ebc9b" CreationDate="2015-10-15T22:02:51.177" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There are a couple aspects to this question that make it an awkward example for the site and a better fit for Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off, there was a good deal of original code in the question and the question was about that implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was implementing and testing out a simple insertion_sort:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The asked question was why a particular line of code should work one way or another:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it seems work, but when I do this little modification:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     arr[j++] = arr[j]; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     ++j&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the algorithm go in loop, so what's the point of difference with j+1 j++ and ++j in this case?(this last two I know their effect, but the first(j+1) in what differentiate from the other two incrementations?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to emphasize the last bit: &lt;code&gt;so what's the point of difference with j+1 j++ and ++j ***in this case***?&lt;/code&gt; (emphasis mine).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is not one about the higher level concepts of software design and architecture, but rather why a particular bit of code is behaving one way or another.  That strongly biases the question to Stack Overflow being the proper place for the question to be on topic.  That Stack Overflow has a good canonical duplicate for the question makes it a cleaner process to migrate it and duplicate it to the proper question that explains it very well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;Stack Overflow vs Programmers&quot; really boils down to a quote that I am quite fond of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Picture Programmers like a small conference room with a whiteboard. No computer, no books, no papers. You write your question on the whiteboard and experts walk by. Someone sees one that they can answer, they stop in and help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The whiteboard lacks a compiler and a debugger. If the question starts getting to that level of specificity needed, then the question is likely a much better fit for Stack Overflow than Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand if you're sketching up data models, and dare I say UML, or have a squiggly circle with &quot;the cloud&quot; in it, it is a question that Stack Overflow doesn't deal with (it lacks a specific implementation or debugging issue) and is much more in line with the &quot;questions of software design and architecture&quot; that are on topic on Programmers.SE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21744" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7671" RevisionGUID="f3f49b58-eff9-4a30-b063-ad647c400a1d" CreationDate="2015-10-15T22:11:13.940" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 96 characters in body" Text="&lt;!-- revisions, if I need it http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/299986/revisions --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a couple aspects to this question that make it an awkward example for the site and a better fit for Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off, there was a good deal of original code in the question and the question was about that implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was implementing and testing out a simple insertion_sort:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The asked question was why a particular line of code should work one way or another:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it seems work, but when I do this little modification:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     arr[j++] = arr[j]; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     ++j&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the algorithm go in loop, so what's the point of difference with j+1 j++ and ++j in this case?(this last two I know their effect, but the first(j+1) in what differentiate from the other two incrementations?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to emphasize the last bit: &lt;code&gt;so what's the point of difference with j+1 j++ and ++j ***in this case***?&lt;/code&gt; (emphasis mine).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is not one about the higher level concepts of software design and architecture, but rather why a particular bit of code is behaving one way or another.  That strongly biases the question to Stack Overflow being the proper place for the question to be on topic.  That Stack Overflow has a good canonical duplicate for the question makes it a cleaner process to migrate it and duplicate it to the proper question that explains it very well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;Stack Overflow vs Programmers&quot; really boils down to a quote that I am quite fond of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Picture Programmers like a small conference room with a whiteboard. No computer, no books, no papers. You write your question on the whiteboard and experts walk by. Someone sees one that they can answer, they stop in and help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The whiteboard lacks a compiler and a debugger. If the question starts getting to that level of specificity needed, then the question is likely a much better fit for Stack Overflow than Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand if you're sketching up data models, and dare I say UML, or have a squiggly circle with &quot;the cloud&quot; in it, it is a question that Stack Overflow doesn't deal with (it lacks a specific implementation or debugging issue) and is much more in line with the &quot;questions of software design and architecture&quot; that are on topic on Programmers.SE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21750" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7673" RevisionGUID="7373bbbc-9877-4191-8418-00251f22f8a6" CreationDate="2015-10-18T19:15:50.153" UserId="182897" Text="Is http://programmers.stackexchange.com the right website to ask the following question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What language was [New tab page Speed Dial 2][1] created with?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What language do they use to save the settings, to save the links,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; etc? They obviously started it using HTML and CSS, but what is after&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that? What language do they use to save all the settings?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's not the right place, then what is?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://speeddial2.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21751" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7673" RevisionGUID="7373bbbc-9877-4191-8418-00251f22f8a6" CreationDate="2015-10-18T19:15:50.153" UserId="182897" Text="Where to ask &quot;What language was used to create something?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21752" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7673" RevisionGUID="7373bbbc-9877-4191-8418-00251f22f8a6" CreationDate="2015-10-18T19:15:50.153" UserId="182897" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21753" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7514" RevisionGUID="900d69ee-4b95-4496-a0c6-e21b94f4b26f" CreationDate="2015-10-19T16:59:46.197" UserId="1204" Comment="[Edit removed during grace period]" Text="Often these questions are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In days of old they would have been closed as &quot;not a real question&quot; or &quot;too localized.&quot;  The reasoning behind this is that there isn't really anything that one can answer definitively and draws upon our expert knowledge as a programmer. Furthermore, there are an endless stream of these small programs or snippets of code to be explained. The way the question is asked and its difficulty being findable and useful to *other* people made it too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today, these questions often are closed as &quot;unclear&quot; or &quot;too broad.&quot;  It is unclear exactly what the person is trying to get out of the question and how our answer can actually be helpful to them (it may be at too low a level, or too high a level, we don't know what the user knows (do they understand arrays? are they trying to understand [variadic functions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variadic_function)? standard lib IO call? etc...)  To properly explain *all* of this at all levels is at the level of a semester long class at the college level or a number of chapters in a &quot;teach yourself C in 21 minutes&quot; book.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of my favorite essays on programming is that of [How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary](http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html) by Robert L Read.  The first item under the skills for a beginner is [Learn to Debug](http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html#id2790282) which starts out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Debugging is the cornerstone of being a programmer. The first meaning of the verb to debug is to remove errors, but the meaning that really matters is to see into the execution of a program by examining it. A programmer that cannot debug effectively is blind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Idealists that think design, or analysis, or complexity theory, or whatnot, are more fundamental are not working programmers. The working programmer does not live in an ideal world. Even if you are perfect, your are surrounded by and must interact with code written by major software companies, organizations like GNU, and your colleagues. Most of this code is imperfect and imperfectly documented. Without the ability to gain visibility into the execution of this code the slightest bump will throw you permanently. Often this visibility can only be gained by experimentation, that is, debugging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions of &quot;explain this code to me&quot; is very much akin to someone coming up to you, handing you a picture&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![a picture of something][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Image from [draw an elephant](http://www.wikihow.com/Draw-an-Elephant#/Image:Draw-an-Elephant-Step-16.jpg)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and saying &quot;I don't understand this. Could you describe what you see here?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are so many possible options for someone to describe. We could describe the process of drawing (and you can see the sketch marks from previous revisions).  We could describe the elephant itself and its form. We could describe the technique (and if we think its good or bad). The possibilities are endless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in doing this - *you* aren't seeing it. You are listening to what we are saying (one would hope), but not actually going through the process of figuring it out yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is that process of learning how to see the code that is critically important for a programmer.  For us to describe it to you deprives you of an opportunity to learn how to use debugging tools. It deprives you of attempting to get that process in your own mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the things to realize is that walking through rudimentary code and explaining it line by line is kind of boring. Its something that you can do with a [debugger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debugger) - often available and integrated with the IDE you are likely using.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Show what your understanding of the code is. Are you confused about how `printf()` takes one argument in one example and five in another? About why some people write `for(;;)`?   Demonstrate that you have used the tools that are available to you to the best of your ability (and if necessary, read the tutorials for the debugger).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, for some reason, you don't have access to a debugger, learn how to print debugging statements and trace them out.  If necessary write a program that does the minimal number of lines and be sure to read the documentation for the function call you are about to ask about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are much more able to help you do the equivalent of spell out a word and understand its meaning rather than respond to a child coming up to us and saying &quot;read me a story&quot; and handing us a book.  To the student coming up to us now and asking us to &quot;read me a story&quot; we are responding, &quot;try to figure it out as much yourself on your own and ask about specific comprehension and vocabulary problems.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[How to debug small programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/iR5kum.jpg &quot;A picture of something. It might be a pot, a winnowing basket, a plowshare, a plow, a granary, a pillar, a mortar, a pestle or a brush.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21754" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7674" RevisionGUID="4191f1f1-e3fd-4481-a83a-9c7b067fd631" CreationDate="2015-10-20T22:12:19.033" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="With this latest maintenance outage came a new UI around the helpful flags that one can see on the profile.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On MSE the pending flags looks like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Photography (a particularly challenging site design), it looks like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![enter image description here][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Programmers, it wraps funny:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![enter image description here][3]][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This happens to be under IE 10 and I can't easily test on other browsers at the moment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qx4R6.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/JSlMY.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qWqI3.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21755" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7674" RevisionGUID="4191f1f1-e3fd-4481-a83a-9c7b067fd631" CreationDate="2015-10-20T22:12:19.033" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Odd wraping of pending flags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21756" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7674" RevisionGUID="4191f1f1-e3fd-4481-a83a-9c7b067fd631" CreationDate="2015-10-20T22:12:19.033" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21757" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7674" RevisionGUID="944a1ee7-4c8a-455e-96d1-e8f5e3a68460" CreationDate="2015-10-20T23:18:27.897" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 45 characters in body" Text="With this latest maintenance outage came a new UI around the helpful flags that one can see on the profile.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On MSE the pending flags looks like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Photography (a particularly challenging site design), it looks like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![enter image description here][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Programmers, it wraps funny:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![enter image description here][3]][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The screenshots above are from IE 10, though the issue of wrapping of the text is still visible in Safari and other webkit browsers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qx4R6.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/JSlMY.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qWqI3.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21758" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7675" RevisionGUID="80f6c74e-b6be-4a75-974e-60b54f7d3e08" CreationDate="2015-10-21T11:36:23.740" UserId="4767" Text="One case where reuse came to bite me...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Turns out that `.subheader` has a `:before` and `:after` directives, which screwed up with the table layout that this sidebar has.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've made some changes to the markup and CSS so this is fixed (with you in the next build).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21759" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7674" RevisionGUID="3d4fdb8d-30e4-4153-8b14-791f1476c2bf" CreationDate="2015-10-21T11:36:34.563" UserId="4767" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21760" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7674" RevisionGUID="a965c04b-e2a3-472f-88d8-d8fa7d15c00b" CreationDate="2015-10-21T15:14:21.080" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Fixed typo in subject line." Text="Odd wrapping of pending flags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21761" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7676" RevisionGUID="7044df12-dfd8-4ff5-8a97-d920263c7c0f" CreationDate="2015-10-21T15:20:14.217" UserId="191800" Text="I asked [this question][1] earlier, in which I described a problem I didn't have the answer to and finished off by asking whether there was an industry standard solution for this problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In essence the question could be reduced to &quot;here is what I need to do, I don't know where to start, can someone give me a push in the right direction?&quot;. I was specific about the problem domain and wasn't asking for someone to do it for me, I was asking for help from someone who has knowledge and/or experience in the same problem domain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I wasn't asking for was &quot;resources&quot;, unless that encompasses help with a problem, in which case there's a **considerable** amount of questions on this site that should be closed down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What got me about the edit was that instead of being constructive, the editor removed the final line of the question which actually described what I hoped to gain from asking on SE, and **added nothing constructive**, turning my question into a description of a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if asking for help with a specific problem domain is frowned upon on here, then that leaves me confused about a) what this site is actually for (and don't tell me to take the tour or RTFM, because I have, and frankly very few edits I have had made to my questions have been to bring it in line with a specific point made in there, implying the larger community cannot agree on the purpose of this site), and b) what am I supposed to do? If I delete the question that counts negatively towards my ability to ask further questions on this site, but **clearly** asking where to start is &quot;encouraging requests for resources&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;strike&gt;It's almost as if the mechanics of SE reward nitpicking and games of &quot;who can find _any_ straws to clutch at first&quot; over constructive criticism and useful editing.&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/300483/how-can-i-represent-a-flowchart-complete-with-conditional-logic-using-json-or-x &quot;this question&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21762" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7676" RevisionGUID="7044df12-dfd8-4ff5-8a97-d920263c7c0f" CreationDate="2015-10-21T15:20:14.217" UserId="191800" Text="What to do about edits that change a question from a question to a statement?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21763" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7676" RevisionGUID="7044df12-dfd8-4ff5-8a97-d920263c7c0f" CreationDate="2015-10-21T15:20:14.217" UserId="191800" Text="|discussion|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21764" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7677" RevisionGUID="c52a8980-72f7-45b0-919b-4a67fe7133c9" CreationDate="2015-10-21T15:43:18.237" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Programmers is all about answering _conceptual_ questions about software development. Questions about implementation are off-topic here: while implementation may play a role in a question or an answer, they cannot be _solely_ about implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking &quot;in what language was this product implemented&quot; falls squarely into the off-topic category of implementation. (Note: it may be about implementation, but it is also off-topic at Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, a question should elicit reasonably long answers that describe various aspects of a topic and go in-depth. Depending on the project, I might able to answer &quot;in what language is X implemented?&quot; with &quot;C++&quot; or &quot;Perl&quot; or some other one-word answer. That is fundamentally not a _good_ question or answer because there is nothing to describe.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, from [How do I ask a good question?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## Make it relevant to others&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We like to help as many people at a time as we can. Make it clear how&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your question is relevant to more people than just you, and more of us&#xD;&#xA;&gt; will be interested in your question and willing to look into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question will generalize a problem just enough so it is still useful to the asker, but other people can stumble on the question from Google or searching on-site and get value from it. This is one of the points of asking a question using a [Short, Self Contained, Correct (Compilable), Example][2] (or the conceptual/design equivalent to be on-topic here). Distill your question down to its core so it can be useful to others, among other benefits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking a question such as the one you posited is not really interesting to most people and it will not be relevant to others. Additionally, as you found out in the comments, you are more likely to get an answer from someone involved in the project anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;### Why are you asking this question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like the one you brought up are normally a means to an end. You see some cool feature and are curious how to implement it yourself, or how to design your software to do something similar. While most popular programming languages are somewhat equivalent from a computer science theory perspective (i.e. Turing-complete), the reality is each has its own ecosystem of libraries and language features that might make certain software _easier_ to implement. Asking what language to use sounds like a decent first step.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You would be better off asking yourself _what is my end goal? Why do I care what language was used?_ That should lead you to another question which may be on-topic here. Now you start getting into design questions which are interesting, are relevant to other people, and do attract high-quality answers. Of course, one must ask a _good_ question that is not too broad (a very real risk with design questions), but now we are getting somewhere productive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://sscce.org/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21765" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7678" RevisionGUID="8dcc545a-00f9-47ae-a20f-08d2ca9ae27b" CreationDate="2015-10-21T15:47:24.703" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="Take a moment and breathe, please.  You're unnecessarily confounding things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off, the edit was a good edit and brought your question in-line with site guidelines.  Asking for &quot;industry standards&quot; is a) meaningless and b) effectively equivalent to asking for an off-site resource.  Dan's edit did your question a favor.  If an industry standard does exist, a good answer will point that out so you don't need to ask for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obligatory xkcd reference:  &#xD;&#xA;[![xkcd standards][1]][1a]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next up, you added:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What got me about the edit was that instead of being constructive, the editor removed the final line of the question which actually described what I hoped to gain from asking on SE, and added nothing constructive, turning my question into a description of a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which isn't true.  There is still a question in the title of your post, namely &quot;How can I represent a flowchart, complete with conditional logic using JSON or XML?&quot;  And while it's discouraged to rely upon the title to ask the question, it's still there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if you're looking for a &quot;standard&quot; to solve the problem, then this probably isn't right site.  But if you're looking for a good solution(s) that may or may not be &quot;industry standard&quot; then your odds of getting what you want have gone up.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It may sound like I'm splitting hairs, but there is a difference.  This site is not a reference library service.  We're not here to find things for you.  We're here because we enjoy solving problems and educating others while we do so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; b) what am I supposed to do? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sit back and be patient. Monitor the comments, and add any clarifying information that may be requested.  Programmers isn't like StackOverflow where you'll see a flurry of answers in the first few nanoseconds and then crickets afterwards.  Programmers is much more like a slow burn. Solid answers may take a day or longer to show up based upon the available experts and their available time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are obviously free to delete your question if you so choose.  But I don't see much point in doing so.  It's a reasonable enough question and ought to attract an answer.  As to up / down votes, meh, that's hard to say and I wouldn't worry about that anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/2shq4t.png&#xD;&#xA; [1a]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/2shq4.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21766" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7679" RevisionGUID="75802ead-9cff-4742-bdf5-4afedd4ce2b0" CreationDate="2015-10-21T17:22:33.350" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="[Software Recommendations is graduating][1] and will soon be a non-beta site!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[There is a question on their meta][2] about being a migration target: they are asking about other sites such as [Super User][3] having a migration path to [Software Recommendations][4]. [Programmers][5] did not come up there: while I would expect some other sites to have more recommendation questions, we do see some of these questions on Programmers and we have a few open slots for migration targets.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once Software Recommendations is fully graduated to a regular site, should Programmers have a migration path to it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Software recommendations stackexchange][6] - asked and answered before the graduation announcement.&#xD;&#xA;* [Revisiting what is on topic, with respect to new sites: Open Source, Law, and Software Recommendations][7] - software recommendations are _still_ off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/q/2298&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/q/2307&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://superuser.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6464&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7539" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21767" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7679" RevisionGUID="75802ead-9cff-4742-bdf5-4afedd4ce2b0" CreationDate="2015-10-21T17:22:33.350" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Should there be a migration path to Software Recommendations?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21768" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7679" RevisionGUID="75802ead-9cff-4742-bdf5-4afedd4ce2b0" CreationDate="2015-10-21T17:22:33.350" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21769" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7680" RevisionGUID="5059813f-0301-4934-836a-56f35161c2df" CreationDate="2015-10-21T17:22:33.350" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Yes, there should be a migration path.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers receives enough of these questions to warrant an open migration path. This will allow the askers to receive quality answers from a community where such questions are on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As with any migration, poor-quality questions should either be edited before migration if they are salvageable, or should simply be closed and not migrated.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21770" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7680" RevisionGUID="df6f7b78-dfa5-4d23-bebd-7f723de20f84" CreationDate="2015-10-21T17:22:33.350" UserDisplayName="user22815" />
  <row Id="21771" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7681" RevisionGUID="c98988a9-411b-4bdf-a7ca-0c14a93558da" CreationDate="2015-10-21T17:23:42.767" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="No, there should not be a migration path.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the questions asking for software recommendations fail to meet quality guidelines for the Software Recommendations site and cannot be salvaged through editing. An open migration path will only cause additional problems and grief with the Software Recommendations community.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21772" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7681" RevisionGUID="5d667684-a4e1-4bc9-a06b-c2bf2b792bd6" CreationDate="2015-10-21T17:23:42.767" UserDisplayName="user22815" />
  <row Id="21773" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7675" RevisionGUID="9e62c1dc-6331-4b32-a77e-44c30821e2ce" CreationDate="2015-10-21T17:44:58.340" UserId="4767" Comment="added 31 characters in body" Text="One case where reuse came to bite me...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Turns out that `.subheader` has a `:before` and `:after` directives (but only here on programmers), which screwed up with the table layout that this sidebar has.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've made some changes to the markup and CSS so this is fixed (with you in the next build).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21774" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7682" RevisionGUID="0c6a91ad-22dc-41af-84a9-aff57a061e16" CreationDate="2015-10-21T17:54:14.040" UserDisplayName="user86771" Text="Software Recommendations moderator here. We're [technically a non-beta site *now*](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/q/2298/46) - which means moderators aren't discouraged from migrating questions to us any more. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would be against adding SR to Programmers' migration target list. Not that I don't trust y'all, but we have [some *really strict* requirements](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/q/336/46) for questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, if you take the time to read those requirements, and you happen to see a question come through here (or any other site where software recommendation questions are off topic), feel free to throw an 'other' flag on it, asking your moderators to throw it over. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's much easier for us (SR) to train a few dozen moderators in what is on-topic than a whole community... that isn't even our own. If we start getting a large number of (good) migrations coming from a site, I would absolutely be in favor of being a target on their list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'd like a site to prove that its *moderators* can give us good content before we open it up to its *users*. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21775" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7681" RevisionGUID="3276366f-3a26-414f-9cb2-1538f438f98e" CreationDate="2015-10-21T18:09:13.527" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Added example of a poor-quality question" Text="No, there should not be a migration path.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the questions asking for software recommendations fail to meet quality guidelines for the Software Recommendations site and cannot be salvaged through editing. An open migration path will only cause additional problems and grief with the Software Recommendations community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example questions supporting not having a migration path:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Is there any software for a pdf auto renaming pc software][1] (10k link)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I scan and rename proof of deliveries daily for my company I work for.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am looking for some software that I can set up a template on it to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mark areas of text on the pdf I scan and save it so in future it will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; detect the text of the marked areas of the any future documents I scan&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and rename the saved file as the text from the marked ares.. e.g. the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; date the proof of delivery was made and the recognition numbers the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; document contains like out will be an i/o number and a M10057474&#xD;&#xA;&gt; number. I'd be so appreciative if someone could lead me to the right&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software please.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/300141" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21776" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7683" RevisionGUID="d1f86e45-6452-4473-9333-6e8ae09b80e2" CreationDate="2015-10-21T18:41:55.300" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6352/40980 (yea, what a title) is about predicting the future (five years ago) and some armchair &lt;s&gt;quarterbacking&lt;/s&gt; CEOing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question body reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Google has led many useful Java features (guava, gson); now that Oracle has purchased Sun, will it affect its future enhancements and utilization as a development language?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What exactly, or even approximately, are the legal ramifications? I thought Java was open source and would therefore remain unaffected ... ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should Google just buy Oracle to get rid of the whole mess, that would be cool wouldn't it ? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do you think this is the beginning of the end for Java as a widely used language ? Its continued success as an open source/free technology is now doubtful?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will absolutely grant that Stephen C wrote a good answer to it in its time. The information in it hasn't aged the best, but it was a reasonable answer (and would have been a better blog post - and there are *many* of those out there if you dig into the tech news from 2010).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other answers are entirely *meh* or crystal ball gazing (and we know how poorly we do at that).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Companies keep suing each other, there are 100's of examples for that. This doesn't really mean end of the road all the time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Java will stay around, but I think these issues will lead Java down a road away from Open Source. It will start to be more closed like C# and the .NET languages with how Oracle is suing Google even though it is &quot;open source&quot; (for now). And Google created Go, which with this issue over Java may lead them to eventually recreate/modify Android to use Go as well as, or in place of Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These answers have aged very poorly and in its locked state, the question cannot be curated at all to remove these answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of the writing of this post, the question has received only 2.1k views in five years. This indicates that it really isn't a search target.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that the question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* of past current events&#xD;&#xA;* not applicable today&#xD;&#xA;* low view&#xD;&#xA;* attracted poor answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please reevaluate the historical lock on it so that it may either once again enjoy the community working to make it a better example of how to ask and answer current event questions, or delete it. If the question is to be deleted and Stephen's answer that is there is something to preserve, consider transferring it to the Programmers.SE blog and backdating it to the date the answer was posted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21777" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7683" RevisionGUID="d1f86e45-6452-4473-9333-6e8ae09b80e2" CreationDate="2015-10-21T18:41:55.300" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Reevaluate historical lock on &quot;Is Java “dead in the water” ...&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21778" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7683" RevisionGUID="d1f86e45-6452-4473-9333-6e8ae09b80e2" CreationDate="2015-10-21T18:41:55.300" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|specific-question|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21779" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7683" RevisionGUID="0af0e8f4-acd3-421c-a402-3397299bdf0d" CreationDate="2015-10-21T21:22:11.677" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|specific-question|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21780" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7684" RevisionGUID="e3081534-867c-4d61-8798-386ec51f43f8" CreationDate="2015-10-21T21:22:21.990" UserId="4" Text="Deleted. The low view count was more than enough to me." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21781" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7679" RevisionGUID="97cd12b6-61db-47ff-9c4b-255f52d4605f" CreationDate="2015-10-21T23:06:26.877" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="21782" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7682" RevisionGUID="39d557cd-3278-40c8-8a0d-e794d37444c1" CreationDate="2015-10-21T23:06:26.877" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="21783" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7679" RevisionGUID="a7e61f2d-8f9a-43ce-be1c-ad1b2951591d" CreationDate="2015-10-22T17:13:10.783" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/657243309350494208" />
  <row Id="21784" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7685" RevisionGUID="a7bc8df2-6a6b-4bed-9783-8e882c137a18" CreationDate="2015-10-23T15:09:35.420" UserId="1936" Text="I just asked a new question, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/300694/exact-php-syntax-for-dependency-injection . When I completed it and it reloaded, its score was -1. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pretty certain there was not enough time for anyone to downvote it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a bug? Or is there something about my reputation or the question itself that would make it start out behind?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21785" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7685" RevisionGUID="a7bc8df2-6a6b-4bed-9783-8e882c137a18" CreationDate="2015-10-23T15:09:35.420" UserId="1936" Text="New question starts at -1?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21786" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7685" RevisionGUID="a7bc8df2-6a6b-4bed-9783-8e882c137a18" CreationDate="2015-10-23T15:09:35.420" UserId="1936" Text="|support|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21787" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7686" RevisionGUID="8ff115b4-1131-41ef-aaf0-13a5b3739be5" CreationDate="2015-10-23T15:13:36.157" UserId="17853" Text="&gt; I'm pretty certain there was not enough time for anyone to downvote it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, you are wrong. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this a bug?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't forget that post scores auto-update, so it may not have happened _quite_ as quickly as you think. The post did not have to be at -1 at the moment you refreshed the page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Or is there something about my reputation or the question itself that would make it start out behind?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No; all questions and answers on Stack Exchange websites start life at 0 score." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21788" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7686" RevisionGUID="9a52d9de-7241-413b-88d3-a98d26caac86" CreationDate="2015-10-23T15:15:54.967" UserId="17853" Comment="added 387 characters in body" Text="&gt; I'm pretty certain there was not enough time for anyone to downvote it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, you are wrong. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;New questions pop up on in the news feed immediately, and there are enough people on the site for at least _someone_ to see it very quickly indeed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it more troubling that someone could have actually read and consider the question before downvoting it, mind you. Without knowing the actual timescales involved, I shan't comment further, but this does warrant _some_ thought.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this a bug?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't forget that post scores auto-update, so it may not have happened _quite_ as quickly as you think. The post did not have to be at -1 at the moment you refreshed the page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Or is there something about my reputation or the question itself that would make it start out behind?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No; all questions and answers on Stack Exchange websites start life at 0 score." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21789" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7685" RevisionGUID="447adcb9-a6f9-43cc-a3e9-367dc2414473" CreationDate="2015-10-23T15:15:56.540" UserId="1936" Comment="added 129 characters in body" Text="I just asked a new question, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/300694/exact-php-syntax-for-dependency-injection . When I completed it and the view page loaded, its score was already -1. I'm pretty certain there was not enough time for anyone to downvote it. They would have had to have done so in the moment between me hitting 'Ask', and it loading for me right after that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a bug? Or is there something about my reputation or the question itself that would make it start out behind?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21790" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7687" RevisionGUID="daf0f290-aacb-41d9-aac9-20cacfea3f9c" CreationDate="2015-10-23T20:36:21.173" UserId="114349" Text="Suppose I'm reading through some open source project and I encounter a block of code that I just don't understand, despite going to documentation websites and utilizing Google search to price it together. Could I post that block of code here and ask for help from the P. SE community? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21791" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7687" RevisionGUID="daf0f290-aacb-41d9-aac9-20cacfea3f9c" CreationDate="2015-10-23T20:36:21.173" UserId="114349" Text="Are questions asking about what a particular segment of code does on topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21792" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7687" RevisionGUID="daf0f290-aacb-41d9-aac9-20cacfea3f9c" CreationDate="2015-10-23T20:36:21.173" UserId="114349" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21793" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7688" RevisionGUID="022d1f20-6275-4a0e-969e-9d2643d97312" CreationDate="2015-10-23T20:40:31.997" UserId="114349" Text="Let's say I know Haskell and I'm learning Scala? Could I ask &quot;I'm trying to accomplish X in Scala, but not sure how, or the best way. But here is how I would write it in Haskell. What is the idiomatic approach to this problem in Scala?&quot; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21794" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7688" RevisionGUID="022d1f20-6275-4a0e-969e-9d2643d97312" CreationDate="2015-10-23T20:40:31.997" UserId="114349" Text="Would questions concerning how a segment of code would likely be worn in another language in topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21795" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7688" RevisionGUID="022d1f20-6275-4a0e-969e-9d2643d97312" CreationDate="2015-10-23T20:40:31.997" UserId="114349" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21796" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7689" RevisionGUID="343d2e7e-2e0a-4ce0-b461-055191811a3b" CreationDate="2015-10-23T20:51:48.730" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="No, that sort of question would not be on-topic here.  It _might_ be on-topic at StackOverflow, but you need to make sure that you come up with a [SSCCE (Short, Self Contained, Correct, Example)][meta] for your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[meta]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22754/sscce-how-to-provide-examples-for-programming-questions&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21797" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7690" RevisionGUID="33a78fd0-fc34-4c23-bfb9-214a91c7b33f" CreationDate="2015-10-23T20:53:25.310" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="No, code snippet explanations are off-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm relatively certain StackOverflow doesn't accept those questions either, but I would search and check on meta.stackoverflow first." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21798" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7691" RevisionGUID="db676745-5028-422a-99bc-a8b030338b17" CreationDate="2015-10-23T20:55:18.087" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Code questions may belong on [one of several sites][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Broken or incomplete code belongs on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;* Working code that you want feedback on belongs on Code Review&#xD;&#xA;* Code does not belong on Programmers _unless_ it is supporting your question: while this is a conceptual site, it _is_ about programming after all. But a question dealing _only_ with a block of code would be closed as off-topic. Think of it like this: if your question is a thesis paper, code is like references. They help, but a thesis full of only references is no good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That being said, &quot;help me understand this code&quot; is generally off-topic everywhere. _Sometimes_ those question will slide by on Stack Overflow, but _only_ if there is a suspected bug or other code malfunction (i.e. does not work as expected). I would search Stack Overflow's meta site and maybe ask on their meta first to be safe.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in/129632#129632" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21799" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7692" RevisionGUID="bc867968-397d-4657-8102-b74c27672339" CreationDate="2015-10-23T20:58:53.960" UserId="60357" Text="No. This site is about *software development concepts* – think software architecture and design. We are not a code translation service. We do not cover implementation issues. We do not discuss best practices.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you frame that questions about how a language-agnostic concept (e.g. type inference, or monads) manifests itself differently in Haskell and Scala, that might be on topic. But it also might be closed as *opinion-based*, because it could be misunderstood as asking which language is better. You would also have to take care to keep the question clear and answerable (real questions have answers!), rather than trying to start a discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can be difficult, so it might be worth looking into [our chatroom The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard). There, you can get feedback on potential questions. But it's also a place for softer questions that do not fit within the scope of the main site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21800" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7693" RevisionGUID="3817e2e1-0d75-4729-9750-1f8bfd46e70f" CreationDate="2015-10-23T21:00:03.710" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="What you are asking is covered by this related meta question: [where to start?][1] which explains why your question would be off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may get useful feedback from [The Whiteboard][2] if any of our resident FP experts are in chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6366/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21801" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6961" RevisionGUID="c896b97d-543c-4cc0-8fac-91ad40070778" CreationDate="2015-10-23T21:01:07.903" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="edited title" Text="Green fields, blue skies, and the whiteboard - what is too broad?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21802" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7688" RevisionGUID="015eb65b-38c8-4aef-9ef8-7aa7213d0dd1" CreationDate="2015-10-23T21:06:56.710" UserId="114349" Comment="edited title" Text="Would questions concerning how a segment of code would likely be written in another language in topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21803" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7688" RevisionGUID="c1cae27f-32fe-4169-8cd5-a5d04c55090b" CreationDate="2015-10-23T22:06:10.237" UserId="114349" Comment="provide better explanation of how the question would be asked." Text="Let's say I know Haskell and I'm learning Scala? Could I ask &quot;I'm trying to accomplish X in Scala, I couldn't get it working.  Here is the Scala I wrote that either I don't think is idiomatic, or isn't working, or is incomplete because I'm missing information Y. But here is how I would write it in Haskell. What is the idiomatic approach to this problem in Scala?&quot; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21804" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7687" RevisionGUID="476990f3-835d-4d67-bf03-d90f8361e54f" CreationDate="2015-10-23T22:09:30.803" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[7513],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="21805" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7687" RevisionGUID="c2163678-c070-4e2b-a207-7a2047e2a815" CreationDate="2015-10-23T22:09:55.320" UserId="114349" Comment="edited body" Text="Suppose I'm reading through some open source project and I encounter a block of code that I just don't understand, despite going to documentation websites and utilizing Google search to piece it together. Could I post that block of code here and ask for help from the P. SE community? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21806" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7683" RevisionGUID="fdeadac9-213a-4805-accb-da027f685e2f" CreationDate="2015-10-23T23:15:49.957" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/657696961638891520" />
  <row Id="21808" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7694" RevisionGUID="bcd7d465-469b-4fed-859c-67796913e188" CreationDate="2015-10-24T01:13:17.837" UserId="144875" Text="I am confused on what SE sites should I ask that question, should I ask this here or in electrical engineering SE? It seems that this question is not fit on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now I am in the field of programming (client - server using serial and tcp/ip) with a degree of information technology and due to certain events I am obligated to study electrical engineering course. I am thinking about the benefits of having a good programming background if I go to the field of electrical engineering." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21809" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7694" RevisionGUID="bcd7d465-469b-4fed-859c-67796913e188" CreationDate="2015-10-24T01:13:17.837" UserId="144875" Text="Asking a question about benefits of being a good programmer who also has a degree on electrical engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21810" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7694" RevisionGUID="bcd7d465-469b-4fed-859c-67796913e188" CreationDate="2015-10-24T01:13:17.837" UserId="144875" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21811" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7695" RevisionGUID="ea8ecf42-f706-4a62-ae0c-32424fd9af67" CreationDate="2015-10-24T01:43:52.583" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Neither.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer to what the possible benefits are for someone who has a degree in ${something} and ${something else} is both too broad (there are too many possible answers that can be given) and primarily opinion (what someone considers a benefit in one case may not be a benefit in another).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since too broad and primarily opinion span all stack exchange sites as close reasons, it is not a good question for any of them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21812" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6961" RevisionGUID="609ffd3b-4b36-4cc7-b895-4698043fd87a" CreationDate="2015-10-24T06:02:15.117" UserId="31260" Comment="http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/24908862#24908862" Text="Green fields, blue skies, and the white board - what is too broad?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21813" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7694" RevisionGUID="e6e161e6-4363-443c-9618-ea206f236334" CreationDate="2015-10-25T03:18:54.477" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21814" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7694" RevisionGUID="943d82b4-46ff-4b99-a857-f592a0c770fc" CreationDate="2015-10-26T01:24:24.080" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6742],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="21815" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7696" RevisionGUID="64bf04af-148c-4dc9-9007-23b5d00efb48" CreationDate="2015-10-26T18:52:34.840" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Currently, questions on [Big-Oh][1] are on-topic on the Programmers main site because they fall under &quot;[algorithm and data structure concepts][2].&quot; Does the community feel that these questions should continue to be on-topic, or should we change them to be off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Arguments for being on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* These questions are fairly harmless, easy to answer, and there are not a lot of them asked. They do not detract from the focus of the site, and people will ask them anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* There is no migration path to [Computer Science][3] where they are also on-topic, meaning we would need to deal with more moderator flags to migrate or create another open migration path which is additional effort. The status quo is the path of least resistance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Arguments for being off-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* While sites can and do overlap, [Computer Science][3] allows these questions. Being a more academic topic, it may be more appropriate there. Now that CS is out of beta, it is a more permanent target for these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* There is a canonical locked question [What is O(…) and how do I calculate it?][4] which is a dupe target for many Big-Oh questions. _New questions do not really ask anything new_. Big-Oh is essentially a dead topic as far as new questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Many if not most of these questions are uninteresting [homework questions][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/big-o&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/132331&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6166" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21816" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7696" RevisionGUID="64bf04af-148c-4dc9-9007-23b5d00efb48" CreationDate="2015-10-26T18:52:34.840" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Should questions on Big-Oh be on-topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21817" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7696" RevisionGUID="64bf04af-148c-4dc9-9007-23b5d00efb48" CreationDate="2015-10-26T18:52:34.840" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21818" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7696" RevisionGUID="a00d6a17-e477-45e1-9edb-d40a729b3199" CreationDate="2015-10-26T18:54:41.010" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Note that its not just 'locked', its 'locked with additional updates possible'" Text="Currently, questions on [Big-Oh][1] are on-topic on the Programmers main site because they fall under &quot;[algorithm and data structure concepts][2].&quot; Does the community feel that these questions should continue to be on-topic, or should we change them to be off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Arguments for being on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* These questions are fairly harmless, easy to answer, and there are not a lot of them asked. They do not detract from the focus of the site, and people will ask them anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* There is no migration path to [Computer Science][3] where they are also on-topic, meaning we would need to deal with more moderator flags to migrate or create another open migration path which is additional effort. The status quo is the path of least resistance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Arguments for being off-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* While sites can and do overlap, [Computer Science][3] allows these questions. Being a more academic topic, it may be more appropriate there. Now that CS is out of beta, it is a more permanent target for these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* There is a canonical wiki locked question [What is O(…) and how do I calculate it?][4] which is a dupe target for many Big-Oh questions. _New questions do not really ask anything new_. Big-Oh is essentially a dead topic as far as new questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Many if not most of these questions are uninteresting [homework questions][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/big-o&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/132331&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6166" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21819" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7696" RevisionGUID="b5e32586-3627-4de6-81fc-130b95b04283" CreationDate="2015-10-27T11:31:20.077" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/658969220869398528" />
  <row Id="21822" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7698" RevisionGUID="cf7848e5-b58d-41b8-a81b-2e8e584378d8" CreationDate="2015-10-28T03:28:48.343" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There are three aspects to these questions that make them... awkward.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### All the myriad ways&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the aspects that students (lets face, its students that ask these questions, more on that later...) ask is that it gets comments back like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Its different because inner loop is being incremented by loop variable of outer loop.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The people asking these questions have great difficulty in abstracting the solution to one answer to others.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of my great fears with this is that we'll have the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     for(i=1;i&lt;=n;++i) {&#xD;&#xA;        x++;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;What is the Big O?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     for(i=1;i&lt;=n;++i) {&#xD;&#xA;      for(j=1;j&lt;=n;++j) {&#xD;&#xA;        x++;&#xD;&#xA;      }&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;What is the Big O?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     while(++i &lt; n) {&#xD;&#xA;        x++;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;What is the Big O?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so on. As professors seem to love assigning these homework problems, they keep tweaking the actual implementation and people who don't know how to calculate it in the first place also fail at understanding the abstractions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Do my homework, or at least check it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are students that are either asking us to do their homework, or check it.  In one exchange on a question I recall:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So is it O(n^2)? -- Student  &#xD;&#xA;What makes you think it is O(n^2)? -- Expert  &#xD;&#xA;So does that mean its O(n)? -- Student  &#xD;&#xA;What makes you think it is O(n)? -- Expert&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really want to say that they either need to do the homework or hand it in. The questions that show no understanding of it, attempt at verifying it themselves, and the like are boring. I do acknowledge that not all people find these questions boring and there are indeed interesting Big O questions, just that the &quot;here's a few nested for loops, what is the Big O?&quot; or &quot;here's a few nested loops, is it O(n^2 log n)?&quot; pasted in a text box are boring.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Poor canonical duplicate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yep. We have a rather poor canonical duplicate at the moment. It is a community wiki and wiki locked question.  That means that it can't be voted on and that means its even harder to find (votes are used in search scoring). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The sum of the parts above is that these questions often fail to material for good answers to be created. It's not that it *can't*, but the majority of cases are just poor questions asking for poor answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I, as a pragmatist want to just say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Write the code and stick it in a main class or function and count the iterations.  Run it for 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 250, 500, 1000, and 5000 iterations.  Toss it in gnuplot or excel or your favorite graphing tool and see what the best fit is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They're asking people who are drawing on expertise of software design and architecture. While it is useful to know, knowing it beyond &quot;sorting something is O(n log n)&quot; and &quot;contains on an unordered list is O(n)&quot;, it isn't something that we run into too often (I run into space complexity problems more often... but we never get asked about *that* - even if it boils down to the same thing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We *really* need a good canonical duplicate question for these if they are on topic here.  I'd suggest the tag wiki, but as we know the support for placing information in the tag wiki and being able to find it (or &quot;close as a duplicate of the tag wiki&quot;) in the Stack Exchange platform as it stands currently is poor at best." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21823" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7699" RevisionGUID="218b9c54-7b93-43bc-afab-ebfc353443d8" CreationDate="2015-10-28T15:12:13.140" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="While stumbling across an update link project for Stroustrup's homepage (as I write this there are about two dozen posts that link to an old page that doesn't exist anymore), I found two book questions that have been historically locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first is: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143553/what-are-good-books-for-learning-c11 with 17k views&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm just starting to get interested in C++11 (late I know). Does anyone have any recommendations for books available that cover the new features in depth? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has two link only answers. One of the links is dead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other is: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6974/whats-the-worst-programming-book-youve-ever-read with 9k views and 29 answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do book reviews poorly. We do rant about a book review even worse.  Most of these books are so incredibly dated that at best, the only thing people would do is use one for a monitor stand. The question is about books that have no redeeming quality and five years later, the question itself has no redeeming qualities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please consider deleting both of these questions. Neither reflect well on Programmers.SE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21824" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7699" RevisionGUID="218b9c54-7b93-43bc-afab-ebfc353443d8" CreationDate="2015-10-28T15:12:13.140" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Reevaluate historical locks on some books" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21825" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7699" RevisionGUID="218b9c54-7b93-43bc-afab-ebfc353443d8" CreationDate="2015-10-28T15:12:13.140" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|specific-question|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21826" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7700" RevisionGUID="78ad5afb-01f2-4ce3-bd2e-bbfbf0955f1a" CreationDate="2015-10-28T15:47:41.490" UserId="35276" Text="Many of us have written and played with various stack exchange data explorer queries over time, but that site is terrible for keeping track of the organized useful list of queries we've scrambled.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought perhaps we could keep a list of them here as a sort of community wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any post of any query where the query may have some inaccuracies, posters feel free to correct the query, comment on the post that you did so, and edit the post to link the updated query.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally we won't have lots of duplicates on here and we can keep a maintained list of most-current-most-correct queries for the various things we find useful/interesting." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21827" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7700" RevisionGUID="78ad5afb-01f2-4ce3-bd2e-bbfbf0955f1a" CreationDate="2015-10-28T15:47:41.490" UserId="35276" Text="Community list of Data Explorer queries" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21828" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7700" RevisionGUID="78ad5afb-01f2-4ce3-bd2e-bbfbf0955f1a" CreationDate="2015-10-28T15:47:41.490" UserId="35276" Text="|discussion|data-explorer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21831" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7702" RevisionGUID="d619b5c6-be13-4fa2-a450-1d675b5f5726" CreationDate="2015-10-28T15:55:55.323" UserId="35276" Text="## Content to moderate ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Comments stating &quot;+1&quot; with little other content](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/150359)&#xD;&#xA;* [downvote comments](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/51718/downvote-comments) (comments that start with `-1`)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21832" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7702" RevisionGUID="d619b5c6-be13-4fa2-a450-1d675b5f5726" CreationDate="2015-10-28T15:55:55.323" UserId="35276" />
  <row Id="21833" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7700" RevisionGUID="93f71c68-d004-4ba3-b946-efc4498ef687" CreationDate="2015-10-28T15:56:24.300" UserId="35276" Comment="[Edit removed during grace period]; added 11 characters in body" Text="Many of us have written and played with various stack exchange data explorer queries over time, but that site is terrible for keeping track of the organized useful list of queries we've scrambled.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought perhaps we could keep a list of them here as a sort of community wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any post of any query where the query may have some inaccuracies, posters feel free to correct the query, comment on the post that you did so, and edit the post to link the updated query.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally we won't have lots of duplicates on here and we can keep a maintained list of most-current-most-correct queries for the various things we find useful/interesting.&lt;!-- CW --&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21834" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7703" RevisionGUID="0263d2fa-26d2-472a-865e-7b05f86564a1" CreationDate="2015-10-28T15:57:54.280" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="TL;DR we need a better canonical dupe target.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I advocate for closing the current dupe target and creating a new one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Wiki-locked questions do not allow voting, which interferes with searching and sorting questions and answers. The existing question has few views and is not referenced often enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Make the new one a regular community wiki question that still allows voting, new answers, etc. but is more welcoming to community edits to improve the content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* There is room for additional answers. Each answer can take a different approach. For example, one answer could tackle it from a theoretical, classroom perspective: another from a real world &quot;I need a less bad algorithm to deliver to the customer&quot; approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* By not locking down the ability to vote or add new answers, we can create additional content as needed and ensure that it can rise to the top or sink to the bottom on its own merits." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21836" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7704" RevisionGUID="59ade316-cd77-42b0-96f0-d953abb9483a" CreationDate="2015-10-28T16:05:13.070" UserId="35276" Text="## User Participation ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Highest user up vote and down vote ratios, with ancillary stats](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/133641/upvote-downvote-ratio)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21837" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7704" RevisionGUID="59ade316-cd77-42b0-96f0-d953abb9483a" CreationDate="2015-10-28T16:05:13.070" UserId="35276" />
  <row Id="21838" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7705" RevisionGUID="e2ab6b0f-29ff-46fc-97f5-59de823f32ac" CreationDate="2015-10-28T16:07:11.857" UserId="35276" Text="Site Participation&#xD;&#xA;==================&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Entire site questions and answers total per 7 day period](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102122/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21839" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7705" RevisionGUID="6c7e2aaf-4f72-40bf-98ba-fffd27b40be2" CreationDate="2015-10-28T16:07:11.857" UserId="35276" />
  <row Id="21840" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7704" RevisionGUID="de0a6e76-4217-407d-90cc-2b3cb746ff29" CreationDate="2015-10-28T16:13:36.067" UserId="35276" Comment="added 245 characters in body" Text="## User Participation ##&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries you have that give interesting details about specific user participation. Specific user rankings or metrics for instance: Who's most best? Who's least best? Users average answer rep? What have you (what have me, us. yes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Highest user up vote and down vote ratios, with ancillary stats](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/133641/upvote-downvote-ratio)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21841" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7705" RevisionGUID="b485e137-c3df-44e6-a19a-4fd9a74538e2" CreationDate="2015-10-28T16:15:17.710" UserId="35276" Comment="added 260 characters in body" Text="Site Participation&#xD;&#xA;==================&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries detailing over all site usage, number of users, number of user votes, number of questions and answers and closures and whatever else insofar as it's an aggregate of data over the whole site's user-generated-content (ergo participation).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Entire site questions and answers total per 7 day period](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102122/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21842" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7702" RevisionGUID="98414816-1a78-419b-b63a-56d62cdfab68" CreationDate="2015-10-28T16:17:35.207" UserId="35276" Comment="added 176 characters in body" Text="## Content to moderate ##&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries that pull questionable content that may need moderator flagging or user moderation such as close votes/deletion/open votes/undeletion/edit approval etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Comments stating &quot;+1&quot; with little other content](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/150359)&#xD;&#xA;* [downvote comments](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/51718/downvote-comments) (comments that start with `-1`)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21843" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7704" RevisionGUID="ad874cc6-a873-4631-b844-b998ebfa623b" CreationDate="2015-10-28T16:19:37.367" UserId="35276" Comment="added 124 characters in body" Text="## User Participation ##&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries you have that give interesting details about specific user participation. Specific user rankings or metrics for instance: Who's most best? Who's least best? Users average answer rep? What have you (what have me, us. yes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Highest user up vote and down vote ratios, with ancillary stats](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/133641/upvote-downvote-ratio)&#xD;&#xA; * [Top close voters with close voting statistics](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90849/top-close-voters)&#xD;&#xA; * [Query to look up a users progress towards the Archaeologist badge](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90657/what-is-my-archaeologist-badge-progress-with-the-correct-userid)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21844" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7702" RevisionGUID="da8092a2-ef68-4b35-bcc9-38e2baded051" CreationDate="2015-10-28T16:23:12.377" UserId="35276" Comment="added 168 characters in body" Text="## Content to moderate ##&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries that pull questionable content that may need moderator flagging or user moderation such as close votes/deletion/open votes/undeletion/edit approval etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Comments stating &quot;+1&quot; with little other content](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/150359)&#xD;&#xA;* [downvote comments](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/51718/downvote-comments) (comments that start with `-1`)&#xD;&#xA;* [Marginal short answers with links, allows parameters to customize query](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102718/marginal-short-answers-with-links)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21845" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7705" RevisionGUID="eb7dbd9a-bdd2-48de-86ef-93a34c243056" CreationDate="2015-10-28T16:24:22.247" UserId="35276" Comment="added 132 characters in body" Text="Site Participation&#xD;&#xA;==================&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries detailing over all site usage, number of users, number of user votes, number of questions and answers and closures and whatever else insofar as it's an aggregate of data over the whole site's user-generated-content (ergo participation).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Sites questions and answer count per day](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/84695/questions-and-answers-per-day#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per 7 day period](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102122/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21846" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7706" RevisionGUID="24ed1b64-0ca6-429a-86de-872dcad8b00b" CreationDate="2015-10-28T16:25:31.877" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Let us make Big-Oh questions off-topic here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* They are a better fit for CS.SE: good quality questions that are not a duplicate at CS.SE could be flagged for moderator migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* They bring little of value here: many are variations on &quot;what is the Big-Oh of this nested loop?&quot; which gets answered, re-answered, marked as dupe, and closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21848" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7704" RevisionGUID="62410ac5-5f70-467f-a0fa-7815c2de586a" CreationDate="2015-10-28T16:29:34.837" UserId="35276" Comment="added 203 characters in body" Text="## User Participation ##&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries you have that give interesting details about specific user participation. Specific user rankings or metrics for instance: Who's most best? Who's least best? Users average answer rep? What have you (what have me, us. yes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Highest user up vote and down vote ratios, with ancillary stats](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/133641/upvote-downvote-ratio)&#xD;&#xA;* [Top close voters with close voting statistics](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90849/top-close-voters)&#xD;&#xA;* [Query to look up a users progress towards the Archaeologist badge](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90657/what-is-my-archaeologist-badge-progress-with-the-correct-userid)&#xD;&#xA;* [All comments on posts owned by a user](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/376067/484421/)&#xD;&#xA; * ... [With keyword filter](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/376067/484422)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21853" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7709" RevisionGUID="18388be1-960b-43d0-97c2-a2586aa9f054" CreationDate="2015-10-28T17:03:12.793" UserId="25476" Text="## First Posts Closed compared to Second Posts Closed ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/307939/first-posts-closed-compared-to-second-posts-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*NOTE* For some context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7335/does-closing-a-question-before-an-answer-is-received-change-the-behavior-of-a-us/7336#7336" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21857" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7709" RevisionGUID="e3abc439-63af-40a7-87cf-0d8eb1d0c2e1" CreationDate="2015-10-28T17:06:26.273" UserId="25476" />
  <row Id="21859" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7705" RevisionGUID="316865ad-f1e4-404e-bd1f-f692f0354873" CreationDate="2015-10-28T18:29:04.840" UserId="35276" Comment="added 106 characters in body" Text="Site Participation&#xD;&#xA;==================&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries detailing over all site usage, number of users, number of user votes, number of questions and answers and closures and whatever else insofar as it's an aggregate of data over the whole site's user-generated-content (ergo participation).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Sites questions and answer count per day](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/84695/questions-and-answers-per-day#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per 7 day period](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102122/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)&#xD;&#xA;* [User count by location](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381810/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA;* [Post count by tag](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/78004/post-count-by-tag)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21860" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7705" RevisionGUID="1033081a-a255-47b5-8ad0-23f2b06bc1e8" CreationDate="2015-10-28T18:39:23.580" UserId="35276" Comment="added 110 characters in body" Text="Site Participation&#xD;&#xA;==================&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries detailing over all site usage, number of users, number of user votes, number of questions and answers and closures and whatever else insofar as it's an aggregate of data over the whole site's user-generated-content (ergo participation).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Sites questions and answer count per day](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/84695/questions-and-answers-per-day#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per 7 day period](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102122/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)&#xD;&#xA;* [User count by location](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381810/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA; * [...with location search](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381818/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA;* [Post count by tag](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/78004/post-count-by-tag)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21861" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7711" RevisionGUID="98097e2c-9e17-4adf-b240-a62b4f890f25" CreationDate="2015-10-28T19:30:01.310" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Big-Oh questions should be both off-topic _and_ there should be a better canonical dupe target question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Update the help center to state that a question _solely_ about Big-Oh is off-topic: however, an algorithm question that mentions Big-Oh is fine. The intent being &quot;don't ask your CS Big-Oh homework question here, but feel free to bring it up when discussing an algorithm.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Create the new canonical dupe question as per my other answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Put a warning on the question that questions like it are not good and should not be asked just because this question exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Mark Big-Oh questions as a duplicate of the new canonical Q/A: a moderator can update existing questions to point to the new canonical dupe, or just delete them.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21862" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7704" RevisionGUID="a0cde6dc-f29f-48fd-bd07-2031c09dde15" CreationDate="2015-10-28T20:14:05.497" UserId="35276" Comment="added 157 characters in body" Text="## User Participation ##&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries you have that give interesting details about specific user participation. Specific user rankings or metrics for instance: Who's most best? Who's least best? Users average answer rep? What have you (what have me, us. yes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Highest user up vote and down vote ratios, with ancillary stats](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/133641/upvote-downvote-ratio)&#xD;&#xA;* [Top close voters with close voting statistics](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90849/top-close-voters)&#xD;&#xA;* [Query to look up a users progress towards the Archaeologist badge](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90657/what-is-my-archaeologist-badge-progress-with-the-correct-userid)&#xD;&#xA;* [All comments on posts owned by a user](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/376067/484421/)&#xD;&#xA; * ... [With keyword filter](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/376067/484422)&#xD;&#xA;* [Average user reputation earned per day by user](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/77467/reputation-per-day-average-from-highest-to-lowest)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21863" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7704" RevisionGUID="f3b2ab02-f4b9-49cc-b339-74370a1858a6" CreationDate="2015-10-28T20:27:04.233" UserId="35276" Comment="added 117 characters in body" Text="## User Participation ##&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries you have that give interesting details about specific user participation. Specific user rankings or metrics for instance: Who's most best? Who's least best? Users average answer rep? What have you (what have me, us. yes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Highest user up vote and down vote ratios, with ancillary stats](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/133641/upvote-downvote-ratio)&#xD;&#xA;* [Top close voters with close voting statistics](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90849/top-close-voters)&#xD;&#xA;* [Query to look up a users progress towards the Archaeologist badge](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90657/what-is-my-archaeologist-badge-progress-with-the-correct-userid)&#xD;&#xA;* [All comments on posts owned by a user](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/376067/484421/)&#xD;&#xA; * ... [With keyword filter](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/376067/484422)&#xD;&#xA;* [Average user reputation earned per day by user](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/77467/reputation-per-day-average-from-highest-to-lowest)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post score per user by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381861/total-post-score)&#xD;&#xA;* [Average post score per user by post type without low-post-count users](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381862/total-post-score)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21864" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7704" RevisionGUID="da040c2e-e6e3-4f7d-b728-92a6f0db5348" CreationDate="2015-10-28T20:40:58.050" UserId="35276" Comment="added 145 characters in body" Text="## User Participation ##&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries you have that give interesting details about specific user participation. Specific user rankings or metrics for instance: Who's most best? Who's least best? Users average answer rep? What have you (what have me, us. yes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Highest user up vote and down vote ratios, with ancillary stats](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/133641/upvote-downvote-ratio)&#xD;&#xA;* [Top close voters with close voting statistics](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90849/top-close-voters)&#xD;&#xA;* [Query to look up a users progress towards the Archaeologist badge](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90657/what-is-my-archaeologist-badge-progress-with-the-correct-userid)&#xD;&#xA;* [All comments on posts owned by a user](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/376067/484421/)&#xD;&#xA; * ... [With keyword filter](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/376067/484422)&#xD;&#xA;* [Average user reputation earned per day by user](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/77467/reputation-per-day-average-from-highest-to-lowest)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post score per user by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381861/total-post-score)&#xD;&#xA;* [Average post score per user by post type without low-post-count users](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381880/total-post-score)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21865" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7705" RevisionGUID="95b9063d-f45d-47f7-8c99-6832866fe381" CreationDate="2015-10-28T20:42:13.750" UserId="35276" Comment="added 145 characters in body" Text="Site Participation&#xD;&#xA;==================&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries detailing over all site usage, number of users, number of user votes, number of questions and answers and closures and whatever else insofar as it's an aggregate of data over the whole site's user-generated-content (ergo participation).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Sites questions and answer count per day](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/84695/questions-and-answers-per-day#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per 7 day period](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102122/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)&#xD;&#xA;* [User count by location](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381810/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA; * [...with location search](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381818/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA;* [Post count by tag](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/78004/post-count-by-tag)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post score by location by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381878/total-post-score-by-location-by-post-type)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post count by location by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381882/total-post-count-by-location-by-post-type)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21866" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7705" RevisionGUID="935d9309-ba4a-4a8f-8abc-888695c01624" CreationDate="2015-10-28T20:59:42.907" UserId="35276" Comment="added 154 characters in body" Text="Site Participation&#xD;&#xA;==================&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries detailing over all site usage, number of users, number of user votes, number of questions and answers and closures and whatever else insofar as it's an aggregate of data over the whole site's user-generated-content (ergo participation).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Sites questions and answer count per day](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/84695/questions-and-answers-per-day#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per 7 day period](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102122/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per day of the week](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381897/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per hour of the day](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381898/questions-and-answers-per-hour-of-the-day#graph)&#xD;&#xA;* [User count by location](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381810/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA; * [...with location search](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381818/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA;* [Post count by tag](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/78004/post-count-by-tag)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post score by location by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381878/total-post-score-by-location-by-post-type)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post count by location by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381882/total-post-count-by-location-by-post-type)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21867" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7704" RevisionGUID="1c5a006c-1f60-449e-9be5-340ef3c005b4" CreationDate="2015-10-28T21:03:02.390" UserId="35276" Comment="added 142 characters in body" Text="## User Participation ##&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries you have that give interesting details about specific user participation. Specific user rankings or metrics for instance: Who's most best? Who's least best? Users average answer rep? What have you (what have me, us. yes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Highest user up vote and down vote ratios, with ancillary stats](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/133641/upvote-downvote-ratio)&#xD;&#xA;* [Top close voters with close voting statistics](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90849/top-close-voters)&#xD;&#xA;* [Query to look up a users progress towards the Archaeologist badge](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90657/what-is-my-archaeologist-badge-progress-with-the-correct-userid)&#xD;&#xA;* [All comments on posts owned by a user](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/376067/484421/)&#xD;&#xA; * ... [With keyword filter](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/376067/484422)&#xD;&#xA;* [Average user reputation earned per day by user](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/77467/reputation-per-day-average-from-highest-to-lowest)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post score per user by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381861/total-post-score)&#xD;&#xA;* [Average post score per user by post type without low-post-count users](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381880/total-post-score)&#xD;&#xA;* [Average post score per user by post type with the word monad](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381899/fist-full-of-monads)&#xD;&#xA; * [...with arbitrary search term instead of monad](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381901/average-post-score-per-user-with-search-term)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21868" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7702" RevisionGUID="e019e131-8083-4983-a7a7-c0f3d9881b61" CreationDate="2015-10-28T21:20:24.750" UserId="35276" Comment="added 182 characters in body" Text="## Content to moderate ##&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries that pull questionable content that may need moderator flagging or user moderation such as close votes/deletion/open votes/undeletion/edit approval etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Comments stating &quot;+1&quot; with little other content](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/150359)&#xD;&#xA;* [downvote comments](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/51718/downvote-comments) (comments that start with `-1`)&#xD;&#xA;* [Marginal short answers with links, allows parameters to customize query](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102718/marginal-short-answers-with-links)&#xD;&#xA;* [Old closed low-view low-score should probably delete](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381911/closed-low-score-low-view-closed-more-than-3-months-possibly-delete)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21869" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7702" RevisionGUID="f694db83-c1fd-42ae-b26a-395d44edeb97" CreationDate="2015-10-28T21:34:03.247" UserId="35276" Comment="added 149 characters in body" Text="## Content to moderate ##&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries that pull questionable content that may need moderator flagging or user moderation such as close votes/deletion/open votes/undeletion/edit approval etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Comments stating &quot;+1&quot; with little other content](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/150359)&#xD;&#xA;* [downvote comments](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/51718/downvote-comments) (comments that start with `-1`)&#xD;&#xA;* [Marginal short answers with links, allows parameters to customize query](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102718/marginal-short-answers-with-links)&#xD;&#xA;* [Closed old low-view low-score should probably delete](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381911/closed-low-score-low-view-closed-more-than-3-months-possibly-delete)&#xD;&#xA;* [Open old low score low view should probably close](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381916/open-low-score-low-view-old-possibly-close)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21870" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7700" RevisionGUID="094a6795-58bc-4173-af93-47d9a26767da" CreationDate="2015-10-29T08:44:29.373" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/659652008585134080" />
  <row Id="21871" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7699" RevisionGUID="b150ac17-926d-4ac3-a0c7-b81d8361da7e" CreationDate="2015-10-29T11:44:30.143" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/659697310155325440" />
  <row Id="21875" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7702" RevisionGUID="344d8b95-2720-40c7-90ec-b34816fb8393" CreationDate="2015-11-01T13:51:08.187" UserId="35276" Comment="added 143 characters in body" Text="## Content to moderate ##&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries that pull questionable content that may need moderator flagging or user moderation such as close votes/deletion/open votes/undeletion/edit approval etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Comments stating &quot;+1&quot; with little other content](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/150359)&#xD;&#xA; * [...excluding closed posts](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/383134/get-1-comments-with-little-text-excluding-locked-posts)&#xD;&#xA;* [downvote comments](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/51718/downvote-comments) (comments that start with `-1`)&#xD;&#xA;* [Marginal short answers with links, allows parameters to customize query](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102718/marginal-short-answers-with-links)&#xD;&#xA;* [Closed old low-view low-score should probably delete](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381911/closed-low-score-low-view-closed-more-than-3-months-possibly-delete)&#xD;&#xA;* [Open old low score low view should probably close](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381916/open-low-score-low-view-old-possibly-close)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21876" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7712" RevisionGUID="3581ecf4-356c-4598-9706-1874d459f6e2" CreationDate="2015-11-01T18:34:50.457" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The [tag:favorite] tag is all cleared out except for two questions, which are locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/940/what-are-your-favorite-version-control-systems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is more a discussion question than an actual attempt to determine the &quot;best&quot;, since that clearly varies by the needs of the organization. I'm more curious about the arguments in favor of different systems across categories (centralized vs distributed, open vs proprietary, etc).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So, what do you think is the best version control system?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is an outright poll with 17k views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/39/40980&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's your favourite quote about programming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One quote per answer, and please check for duplicates before posting!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which has 180 answers and 36k views.  This really isn't much better than going through and reading Wikiquote's [Category:Computer scientists](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Category:Computer_scientists) or [Category:Computer science](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Category:Computer_science).  Sure, there are lots of quotes there, but it really isn't a good example of what we have nor material that isn't present in a much better form elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please consider deleting these these two questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21877" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7712" RevisionGUID="3581ecf4-356c-4598-9706-1874d459f6e2" CreationDate="2015-11-01T18:34:50.457" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Two locked 'favorites'" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21878" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7712" RevisionGUID="3581ecf4-356c-4598-9706-1874d459f6e2" CreationDate="2015-11-01T18:34:50.457" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|specific-question|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21879" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7713" RevisionGUID="32b65118-a3da-4496-97f7-d4dac439bfc8" CreationDate="2015-11-01T19:48:34.057" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I think the programming quotes question is useless and should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comparison of version control systems is poorly-worded and _not_ an example of a high-quality question: however, I believe it does have value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it is full of opinion and anecdotes, I believe that with some curation it could be worth keeping. Some of the answers need to be either deleted or fleshed out a bit more to have actual content instead of &quot;I like Git&quot; or some such nonsense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, while not an example of a _good_ question that is on-topic and properly scoped, the content is useful. The number of views bears this out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Tl;DR:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What's your favourite quote about programming?][1] - [burninate][2] with extreme prejudice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What are your favorite version control systems?][3] - unlock, moderator should delete the low-quality answers (remember the correlation between quality and score is weak on this question), community curates the content. Question should be reworded, answers should contain useful information to compare VCSes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/39&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.homestarrunner.com/trogdor.html&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/940" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21880" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7714" RevisionGUID="408b0cef-a3fd-4499-b381-6199a3ff6a18" CreationDate="2015-11-02T11:34:23.423" UserId="19681" Text="VCS question is very opinionated and has some outdated parts. Clearly just a poll, which is no longer represenative or valid (even as SVN answerers notes in his answer). Should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think &quot;quote&quot; question is good for historical referenses. Should be kept and locked." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21881" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7715" RevisionGUID="3bf99a0e-aa45-4434-9aac-e03ee2628733" CreationDate="2015-11-04T16:46:23.317" UserId="9302" Text="My concern with eliminating whole classes of questions via Meta is that we may lose an interesting future question based on our experience with bad questions from the past. We say, &quot;New questions do not really ask anything new,&quot; and, &quot;Many if not most of these questions are uninteresting homework questions.&quot; Those statements are pretty safe. In general, they're true. But does that mean all big-O questions are doomed? Big-O isn't necessarily a simple topic. I can imagine a non-trivial, non-repetitive, non-homework question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess my basic question is: Why another rule? The stinker questions you mention are already sufficiently out-of-bounds because they've been asked before, they're fishing for answers without research, they're trivial, they're unclear, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From what I can tell, eliminating big-O questions may create false positives (false negatives?) while acknowledging that the category may one day give birth to an interesting question doesn't protect the bad questions. Leaving it alone seems to cause less harm." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21882" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7716" RevisionGUID="a5ede0ca-b244-4385-adca-ead93f904ad3" CreationDate="2015-11-04T18:53:37.757" UserId="213" Text="There seem to be three different tags about asynchronous programming:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:async] (69 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:asynchronous-programming] (65 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:asynchronous] (3 questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there is no difference between the three and so they should be merged into a single tag. Keeping [tag:asynchronous-programming] makes the most sense to me (even though it's pretty long)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21883" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7716" RevisionGUID="a5ede0ca-b244-4385-adca-ead93f904ad3" CreationDate="2015-11-04T18:53:37.757" UserId="213" Text="Merge [async] tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21884" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7716" RevisionGUID="a5ede0ca-b244-4385-adca-ead93f904ad3" CreationDate="2015-11-04T18:53:37.757" UserId="213" Text="|support|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21885" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7717" RevisionGUID="3198dd25-6ade-49b2-910a-938da2f4b2e7" CreationDate="2015-11-05T00:58:21.640" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="On the sidebar, this is what it looks like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related from MSE from awhile back: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/239002/213963&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please look at the other sites too, some of them have extremely pale backgrounds without borders that blend in too easily with our site's background.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Zg73z.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21886" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7717" RevisionGUID="3198dd25-6ade-49b2-910a-938da2f4b2e7" CreationDate="2015-11-05T00:58:21.640" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Network engineering's background on Programmers adverts is less than ideal" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21887" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7717" RevisionGUID="3198dd25-6ade-49b2-910a-938da2f4b2e7" CreationDate="2015-11-05T00:58:21.640" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21888" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7718" RevisionGUID="115bfa6f-4b08-4771-aea8-80caa877fda2" CreationDate="2015-11-06T16:49:33.983" UserId="47433" Text="I just answered [this rather high-level ZeroMQ related question][1] on SO and it occurred to me that it might be better on topic here, as there's really no code involved at this point.  Though I think the OP was looking for a code tweak, and I asked him to rearchitect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33494397/zmq-request-response-with-multiple-front-service-instances-and-backend-workers/33571575#33571575" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21889" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7718" RevisionGUID="115bfa6f-4b08-4771-aea8-80caa877fda2" CreationDate="2015-11-06T16:49:33.983" UserId="47433" Text="High-level ZeroMQ question better on topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21890" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7718" RevisionGUID="115bfa6f-4b08-4771-aea8-80caa877fda2" CreationDate="2015-11-06T16:49:33.983" UserId="47433" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21891" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7719" RevisionGUID="ce388dbd-09b2-4b75-a3d3-1b9dcc7e5f0d" CreationDate="2015-11-06T19:58:41.573" UserId="203142" Text="I asked this question on SO, but it's likely going to be closed for being OT. Would it be on topic here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33574155/notable-electronic-systems-that-dont-have-a-cpu-or-other-programmable-part&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21892" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7719" RevisionGUID="ce388dbd-09b2-4b75-a3d3-1b9dcc7e5f0d" CreationDate="2015-11-06T19:58:41.573" UserId="203142" Text="Would this be an on-topic question here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21893" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7719" RevisionGUID="ce388dbd-09b2-4b75-a3d3-1b9dcc7e5f0d" CreationDate="2015-11-06T19:58:41.573" UserId="203142" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|stackoverflow|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21894" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7720" RevisionGUID="cca7cc5e-8ff4-465f-899b-dc1aaf4a59cf" CreationDate="2015-11-08T00:04:27.273" UserId="25476" Text="If you feel that a question is better on topic at another site then the best bet is to flag for a moderator at the original site.  Just explain your reasoning why you feel it should be migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cross posting is generally seen as a bad thing unless the question is reworded enough to truly target the audience of the other site.  Just be careful if you comment to the OP suggesting that it might be better on topic for another site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21895" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7721" RevisionGUID="420a99ff-5eac-494c-9a53-38e7e19cb4c0" CreationDate="2015-11-08T21:06:05.697" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="We've been fairly consistently getting poor quality implementation and debugging questions.  A [previous suggestion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6106/close-reason-and-associated-expand-the-close-reason-count-request) (related: [1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6172/can-the-number-of-custom-close-reasons-on-programmers-be-expanded) [2](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7394/add-a-new-close-reason-for-implementation-and-troubleshooting-questions)) to increase the count hasn't been acted upon and the suggestion for us was to merge the close reasons that we have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The two that are likely the best to merge are the &quot;suggest a project&quot; and &quot;suggest a tool&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The existing tool wording is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The recommendation one is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21896" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7721" RevisionGUID="420a99ff-5eac-494c-9a53-38e7e19cb4c0" CreationDate="2015-11-08T21:06:05.697" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Merge and replace custom close reason" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21897" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7721" RevisionGUID="420a99ff-5eac-494c-9a53-38e7e19cb4c0" CreationDate="2015-11-08T21:06:05.697" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|support|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21898" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7722" RevisionGUID="85f7396a-2256-4ce6-9bab-006ff1e48f30" CreationDate="2015-11-08T21:06:05.697" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The merged close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for recommendations for a **tool, language, library, off site resource, or project to undertake** are off topic on Programmers as they attract only subjective and opinionated answers. There are too many factors behind the questions to create answers that have lasting value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;New close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in writing or debugging existing code** are off topic on Programmers.SE. These questions should typically instead be asked on Stack Overflow, given that they clearly provide the intended behavior, actual behavior and any errors. See [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21899" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7722" RevisionGUID="85f7396a-2256-4ce6-9bab-006ff1e48f30" CreationDate="2015-11-08T21:06:05.697" UserDisplayName="user40980" />
  <row Id="21900" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7722" RevisionGUID="bd5ff33f-5629-4e0d-972b-153ae7cbc04c" CreationDate="2015-11-08T21:13:06.403" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add book. And tutorials and examples." Text="The merged close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for recommendations for a **tool, language, book, library, off site resource (including tutorials or examples), or project to undertake** are off topic on Programmers as they attract only subjective and opinionated answers. There are too many factors behind the questions to create answers that have lasting value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;New close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in writing or debugging existing code** are off topic on Programmers.SE. These questions should typically instead be asked on Stack Overflow, given that they clearly provide the intended behavior, actual behavior and any errors. See [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21901" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7722" RevisionGUID="750e4126-0c8b-4b41-b1cb-f0f09a86a3e6" CreationDate="2015-11-08T22:20:11.313" UserId="1204" Comment="Changed wording to be consistent with the Stack Overflow close reason." Text="The merged close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for recommendations for a **tool, language, book, library, off site resource (including tutorials or examples), or project to undertake** are off topic on Programmers as they attract only subjective and opinionated answers. There are too many individual factors behind these questions to create answers that will have lasting value to others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;New close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in writing or debugging existing code** are off topic on Programmers. These questions can be asked on Stack Overflow if they include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. See [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21902" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7722" RevisionGUID="46ccd4b4-0211-4fbe-a771-dfa47b2bf36f" CreationDate="2015-11-09T00:42:34.810" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="minor grammar change." Text="The merged close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for recommendations for a **tool, language, book, library, off site resource (including tutorials and examples), or project to undertake** are off topic on Programmers as they attract only subjective and opinionated answers. There are too many individual factors behind these questions to create answers that will have lasting value to others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;New close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in writing or debugging existing code** are off topic on Programmers. These questions can be asked on Stack Overflow if they include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. See [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21903" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7722" RevisionGUID="129724e2-72e1-4324-b05e-86d0868779ee" CreationDate="2015-11-09T12:24:06.630" UserId="31260" Comment="http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic" Text="The merged close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to recommend or find a **tool, language, book, library, off site resource (including tutorials and examples), or project to undertake** are off topic on Programmers as they attract only subjective and opinionated answers. There are too many individual factors behind these questions to create answers that will have lasting value to others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;New close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in writing or debugging existing code** are off topic on Programmers. These questions can be asked on Stack Overflow if they include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. See [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21904" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7723" RevisionGUID="690c6308-eb78-43b1-a5c5-f6c0510c0250" CreationDate="2015-11-09T17:14:21.837" UserId="96050" Text="For the next 30 days, closing a question will require just 3 votes. Also 3 votes will be sufficient to reopen a closed question. In essence, each close and reopen vote has 5/3&lt;sup&gt;rds&lt;/sup&gt; the normal value. After 30 days I will revert the site setting back to 5 and evaluate the results. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have tested this change on a development instance and questions that currently have 3 or 4 close votes will not be closed automatically. Rather they will be closed when the next close vote comes in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's fair to say there's a lot of dissatisfaction with the question closing system on Programmers. [One proposed solution](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes) is to increase the number of close votes available to 10k users. Some of us on the community team have considered various schemes to scale close votes with reputation under the theory that people most invested in the site (as measured by reputation) will have the most incentive to curate questions. That might still happen, but we'd like to be pretty sure that it will solve the various problems with question closing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's pretty clear that organic closing (via the [close votes queue](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close) or people voting to close questions they find naturally) isn't working very well. To demonstrate, here's how close votes on questions asked in the last 30 days are distributed on Super User:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Super User close vote distribution][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most questions have no close votes (not shown). 461 questions have just one (the yellow circle on the left) and the number slopes down to 142 with 4 close votes. 5 votes is a natural [attractor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor) because people will keep voting to close off-topic and otherwise closable questions until they reach that limit. There's a long tail beyond 5 close votes (also not shown) due to votes expiring, close wars and so on. In essence, questions with at least 1 close vote, but not 5, are in a grey area in terms of closablity. This general pattern turns out to be extremely common across a variety of sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In contrast, here's the same graph for Programmers&amp;mdash;Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Programmers close vote distribution][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember this is only showing questions that have been asked in the last 30 days; we aren't talking about [Not Programming Related](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3273/not-programming-related) questions. Instead of a fairly smooth gradient between questions that should clearly be open to questions that clearly should be closed, this graph shows something closer to a binary state. My hypothesis is that since the people contributing the most close votes feel the need to conserve votes, they don't vote to close borderline questions. There's too great a risk those votes will expire impotently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also included the counts of questions that have been edited or deleted in each close vote bin. Relative to other sites, questions on Programmers with close votes are more likely to be deleted and less likely to be edited. It's entirely possible that a greater proportion of questions are unsalvageable on this site. But I suspect the underlying problem is that the questions that could most benefit from an improvement are not getting close votes in the first place. _That might not be a problem_, but close votes can provide incentives for askers to fix problems even before their questions are closed. Close votes also put questions in front of reviewers who might be inspired to improve them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another problem that we discovered [very dramaticly](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/7649/1) is that [closed questions are rarely reopened](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7654/96050). Most closed questions can't (and shouldn't) be reopened, but statistically speaking, we expect more than 1-2% will be. My hypothesis is that it takes so much effort (and coordination) to close questions that people are not interested in undoing that work even if there's been an edit to fix a question's problems. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, the breakdown in the close voting system is not limited to Programmers. It is, however, rare across the network for the division between open and closed questions to be so stark. We hope this test will help us understand how the close vote system breaks in order to (hopefully) fix it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Why 3 votes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially users with enough reputation could unilaterally close and reopen questions on Stack Overflow. In December 31, 2008, the close vote system [was created](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/) and required 3 votes. Between then and the [next April](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/), the limit was increased to 5. (Shog9 remembers 3 lasting a few weeks.) The documentation of the site setting reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; KEEP THIS AN ODD NUMBER&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we need an odd number greater than 1 and less than 5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# How will this change be evaluated?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a nontrivial chance something will break requiring me to revert the change. If we continue for the full 30 days, we will compare before and after the change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Close rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Obviously, it's now easier to close questions. Insofar as bad questions are put on a path toward either corrective edits or deletion, that's a good thing. But this site closes well over 50% of new questions, which is the highest rate on the network. (Considering _total_ questions closed to questions asked in a time period, the rate is [more like 70%](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last30days).) Paradoxically, I'd like to see the close rate remain steady or decrease.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Reopen rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Reopening questions is one way to mitigate against a high close rate. Since the bar for reopening is now lower, we'd expect more questions will be reopened. Currently the reopen rate is about 2% of closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Edit rate on closed questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  In general, the only path to reopening a question is editing. It's also the most effective way to prevent questions from being closed in the first place. Since it's easier to reopen questions, there's even more reason for askers to fix their own closed questions. In the last 30 days 9% of closed questions were subsequently edited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Deletion rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  About 65% of questions that get at least one close vote on Programmers are deleted. We aren't exactly looking at the cream of the crop here, but that's noticeably more than other sites. (Again, this only counts questions asked and deleted within the last 30 days.) We can't force people to ask questions that don't deserve deletion, but hopefully more questions can be salvaged with edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, I'm curious if this change helps people enjoy the site more overall. At the end of the experiment, I'll post my results and ask for any followup thoughts you as a community have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# How you can help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relatively few people are active in closing, reopening and deleting questions. Even fewer are [active in editing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Editors&amp;filter=month). In order for this experiment to improve the quality of content on this site, more people need to be involved in identifying questions with potential to be unlocked with a judicious edit. Fixing tags and removing signatures are good first steps. But title and (occasionally heroic) body edits might be needed to pull some questions out of mediocrity. Remember: once the question is posted, it belongs to the community as much as it does the original author.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, please use the answers below to let me know how the experiment is going.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EHxvb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ESxAD.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21905" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7723" RevisionGUID="690c6308-eb78-43b1-a5c5-f6c0510c0250" CreationDate="2015-11-09T17:14:21.837" UserId="96050" Text="The number of votes required to close and reopen questions is temporarily reduced . . . for science!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21906" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7723" RevisionGUID="690c6308-eb78-43b1-a5c5-f6c0510c0250" CreationDate="2015-11-09T17:14:21.837" UserId="96050" Text="|discussion|featured|vote-to-close|experiment|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21907" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7724" RevisionGUID="61dd4b72-35c7-4027-836a-ca0c7e640086" CreationDate="2015-11-09T20:16:02.017" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I'm putting this out there as a possible alternative interpretation of the flat and peak graph for Programmers.SE close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our scope is more cleanly defined than we are given credit for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close votes that are cast, and the ultimately deleted questions are done with a great deal of consistency. The questions that are closed really are off topic or not a good fit for the Q&amp;A format. The majority of the people who actively cast close voters recognize this and vote in accordance with this scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem that the site faces that requires additional close votes isn't so much &quot;we're holding back on borderline questions&quot; but rather &quot;we are deluged with off topic questions and questions that presuppose this site is for opinions and discussion.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Under this perspective, Programmers.SE is open to those well written and answerable questions that come our way. This also acknowledges the ongoing challenge of actually presenting a well written and answerable question, though that is one that may be easier to address if one has more time to guide those questions without having to also spend as much energy on the questions asking for book recommendations and the like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the way to differentiate the &quot;we're holding back on close votes on borderline&quot; and the &quot;we are accepting of the well written answerable question that pushes the boundaries without incurring excessive drama and discussion&quot; is to look objectively at the questions (or a sufficiently representative sample) we close or have cast close votes on and then see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Are there borderline questions with 1 or 2 close votes?&#xD;&#xA;* Are there hidden gems that have been closed?&#xD;&#xA;* What percentage of the incoming questions are unsalvageable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As we don't have triage, that last point is an awkward one here. It might be useful for the community manager team to grab a random sample of the questions that we close... say 100 posts and do a 10 second glance at each and determine which pile it should go to (the 'unsalvageable', 'needs improvement', or 'looks ok' bins).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever the case, a faster turnaround time on close votes to closed question means faster feedback for the OP (and in cases where its a good question for Stack Overflow, a faster migration to there). When questions sit for hours before they are able to muster sufficient close votes, the OP may well have lost interest in fixing the question (that would be another query to run - OP engagement with a question over time and see if moving the closed question to within that timeframe allows for the OP to be more active in fixing those borderline questions that do get closed)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21908" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7725" RevisionGUID="f49150e0-4d1c-468a-828c-8686bd86f0cf" CreationDate="2015-11-10T21:56:53.897" UserId="190130" Text="I'm mainly an Stack Overflow user. I'm used to moderate there voting and flagging and I believe that I know their rules quite well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I'm new here and I'm still getting used. One thing that I've noted is, as this site has more subjective terms than SO, it keeps getting a huge amount of opinion-based and forum-like questions (that are properly closed). Before writing [my question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302226/what-javascript-has-that-is-so-special-that-could-make-asynchronous-programming), I've tried my best to avoid this behaviour, but in the end it was closed with the same reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main question was: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are the specific characteristics of JavaScript that makes Node.js&#xD;&#xA;&gt; so special and why other languages can't build similar frameworks to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rise in popularity in their own community?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My objective was to attract answers like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - JavaScript has an unique way to handle threads that is X and no other language have it.&#xD;&#xA; - libuv was the key of Node's success. As it would be very hard to port it to Python for reason X or as it would be so slow in Ruby for reason Y, these two languages don't have successful event-driven frameworks.&#xD;&#xA; - Async is already becoming standard and successful for other languages. E.g: RxJava. The code just don't need to be fully async because those languages are more structured than JavaScript regarding X.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in the end, it attracted some answers/comments like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - JavaScript is a terrible language but is used because is the only language available for front-end.&#xD;&#xA; - JavaScript is so poorly designed and demands so many workarounds its gotcha minefield that stuff like Node.js seems glorious by comparison.&#xD;&#xA; - Your answer really is &quot;A language to rule them all&quot; because JavaScript is ubiquitous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Its my fault** but where I did it wrong? I'll create another question soon and I hope to learn with this mistake to avoid another closed one. So, **how could my question be reworded to fit in this site?** If its not possible, why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt; I've [already](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions) [read](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7182/what-goes-on-programmers-se-a-guide-for-stack-overflow) [some](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) [meta](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers) [questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) before posting this meta question. &lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21909" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7725" RevisionGUID="f49150e0-4d1c-468a-828c-8686bd86f0cf" CreationDate="2015-11-10T21:56:53.897" UserId="190130" Text="My question is [on-hold] because its primarily opinion-based. How could it be reworded to fit in this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21910" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7725" RevisionGUID="f49150e0-4d1c-468a-828c-8686bd86f0cf" CreationDate="2015-11-10T21:56:53.897" UserId="190130" Text="|discussion|opinion-based|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21911" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7726" RevisionGUID="64629686-71c5-41f9-b159-d354e8e12f05" CreationDate="2015-11-10T22:28:28.610" UserId="161917" Text="I would suggest narrowing the scope, ideally to focus on a concrete *problem* that you would like to solve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was as much &quot;too broad&quot; as it was &quot;opinion-based&quot;, because there's a potentially endless list of believable reasons people could post. You've listed three good ones just in this meta post, a few of the commenters and myself have a fourth one in mind (namely, Javascript is the only option on the client, and being able to use the same language on the server is nice), and I'm sure there are plenty more. This is great on other sites that encourage subjective polls/discussions, but here it's a problem because there's no way to know whether one of these answers is better than another. They're all equally plausible, and this sort of thing never has hard statistics to go look up, so whose answer do I upvote? Whose do you accept?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And that's why the best questions are the ones that start out with a clear problem statement. While we don't do tool recommendations (those are fraught with similar issues), there are plenty of questions you could ask about, such as whether the single event loop model of asynchronous programming is a good idea for a CPU-bound web service. For focused, goal-oriented questions like that (assuming you provided more details of course), we can clearly tell if one answer is more helpful than another, and everything just works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Note that this is not intended to be an accurate description of *all* the good, on-topic questions we have here, just the subset that I believe comes closest to what you asked today.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21912" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7723" RevisionGUID="b95933e1-4cde-454c-8ba4-d37522213361" CreationDate="2015-11-11T00:37:01.640" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/664240376874713088" />
  <row Id="21913" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7727" RevisionGUID="11fbc220-d9f3-4d1c-a876-13833d187c3b" CreationDate="2015-11-14T19:14:31.913" UserId="1204" Text="Getting more questions rehabilitated is a laudable goal, but having the ability to close clearly off-topic questions more quickly and get them off the front page is much more critical.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to address something that you stated in the comments, in detail.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I see a lot of well-written, well-intentioned, and even well-formulated questions closed for non-obvious reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*It would be helpful if we could see specifically a few of these questions, so we can discuss them specifically.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In no small part because of the &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; history of Programmers and its subsequent scope change, those of us who work together to try and keep the site clean have all worked very hard over an extended period of time to try and clarify the scope of Programmers to make it easier for everyone to understand what is on-topic here.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are therefore understandably curious why people still remain confused about the scope, especially when they visit from SE corporate.  The scope is not that hard to figure out; Programmers is about *Software Design.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I flip over to the on topic help and I can kinda see the reason [the question was closed] if I squint.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the same process that new users employ when they ask a question for the first time here: *they ask first, and **then** read the Help Center* (if they read it at all). I once asked someone who had just asked a clearly off-topic question how he managed to do that after clicking through the &quot;yes, I understand&quot; page.  His reply was &quot;Bah.  Nobody reads those things.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why do so many folks ask so many off-topic questions here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  **They look at the name of the site.**  While I have always pushed back against the &quot;let's change the title of the site&quot; folks (largely because nobody can agree on a good, descriptive title), they do have a point.  People ask all kinds of questions here because the title of the site is &quot;Programmers.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  **They've seen a question posted previously on programmers that is similar to their question.**  This happens much more often than most people realize.  It is the single most important reason that closing questions on Programmers needs to be easier: to *get the newly-posted crap off the site, quickly.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  **They don't really care about the site scope.**  These are the cross-posters, the ones who are crowdsourcing their work, the ones trying to start a conversation, argue a pedantic point or start a debate, the ones asking us to refer them somewhere else.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  **They were referred here from Stack Overflow** by well meaning, but ultimately uninformed folks who don't understand Programmers' scope.  We have a bot called Duga that catches those referrals; I'd say about 95 percent of those questions are both off-topic on Programmers, and closeable on Stack Overflow under the current rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, there are the behaviors that work against questions being rehabilitated and reopened.  You ask for clarifications in the comments, but get no response.  You link to an article that will help them (including the Help Center), but they don't read it.  You explain a point to them, but they argue about it.  The vast majority of askers simply will not cooperate with you long enough to rehabilitate their question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which just leaves one remaining question: *why are questions being closed that some folks at SE corporate believe should stay open?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, firstly, there are a *very small percentage* of questions that are asked that, while they don't fulfill the *letter* of the law on Programmers, certainly fulfill the *spirit,* which is to say that they are *interesting* questions.  By interesting, I don't mean in the sense that they get a lot of bikeshed upvotes, or that they get a lot of Reddit views.  I mean in the &quot;whiteboard&quot; sense, the sense that this is a *Software Design* site, and that we should be able to freely and specifically talk about software design in a Q&amp;A setting without being hampered by folks with their own agendas. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I *defend such questions vigorously,* argue for their existence in the Chatboard whiteroom, edit them if necessary to bring them in scope, and ask for their reopening.  The three vote rule will help such questions, because it will make them easier to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only problem I see is that I believe that the pool of &quot;technically off-topic, but still interesting from a software design perspective&quot; questions is much smaller than you think it is.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21914" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7727" RevisionGUID="0fb4d9ea-d696-41bf-94b4-d22c70c8573d" CreationDate="2015-11-14T19:23:34.783" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body" Text="Getting more questions rehabilitated is a laudable goal, but having the ability to close clearly off-topic questions more quickly and get them off the front page is much more critical.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to address something that you stated in the comments, in detail.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I see a lot of well-written, well-intentioned, and even well-formulated questions closed for non-obvious reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*It would be helpful if we could see specifically a few of these questions, so we can discuss them specifically.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In no small part because of the &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; history of Programmers and its subsequent scope change, those of us who work together to try and keep the site clean have all worked very hard over an extended period of time to try and clarify the scope of Programmers to make it easier for everyone to understand what is on-topic here.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are therefore understandably curious why people still remain confused about the scope, especially when they visit from SE corporate.  The scope is not that hard to figure out; Programmers is about *Software Design.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I flip over to the on topic help and I can kinda see the reason [the question was closed] if I squint.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the same process that new users employ when they ask a question for the first time here: *they ask first, and **then** read the Help Center* (if they read it at all). I once asked someone who had just asked a clearly off-topic question how he managed to do that after clicking through the &quot;yes, I understand&quot; page.  His reply was &quot;Bah.  Nobody reads those things.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why do so many folks ask so many off-topic questions here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  **They look at the name of the site.**  While I have always pushed back against the &quot;let's change the title of the site&quot; folks (largely because nobody can agree on a good, descriptive title), they do have a point.  People ask all kinds of questions here because the title of the site is &quot;Programmers.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  **They've seen a question posted previously on programmers that is similar to their question.**  This happens much more often than most people realize.  It is the single most important reason that closing questions on Programmers needs to be easier: to *get the newly-posted crap off the site, quickly.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  **They don't really care about the site scope.**  These are the cross-posters, the ones who are crowdsourcing their work, the ones trying to start a conversation, argue a pedantic point or start a debate, the ones asking us to refer them somewhere else.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  **They were referred here from Stack Overflow** by well meaning, but ultimately uninformed folks who don't understand Programmers' scope.  We have a bot called Duga that catches those referrals; I'd say about 95 percent of those questions are both off-topic on Programmers, and closeable on Stack Overflow under the current rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, there are the behaviors that work against questions being rehabilitated and reopened.  You ask for clarifications in the comments, but get no response.  You link to an article that will help them (including the Help Center), but they don't read it.  You explain a point to them, but they argue about it.  The vast majority of askers simply will not cooperate with you long enough to rehabilitate their question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which just leaves one remaining question: *why are questions being closed that some folks at SE corporate believe should stay open?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, firstly, there are a *very small percentage* of questions that are asked that, while they don't fulfill the *letter* of the law on Programmers, certainly fulfill the *spirit,* which is to say that they are *interesting* questions.  By interesting, I don't mean in the sense that they get a lot of bikeshed upvotes, or that they get a lot of Reddit views.  I mean in the &quot;whiteboard&quot; sense, the sense that this is a *Software Design* site, and that we should be able to freely and specifically talk about software design in a Q&amp;A setting without being hampered by folks with their own agendas or slavish adherence to the rules. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I *defend such questions vigorously,* argue for their existence in the Chatboard whiteroom, edit them if necessary to bring them in scope, and ask for their reopening.  The three vote rule will help such questions, because it will make them easier to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The concern I have is that I believe that the pool of &quot;technically off-topic, but still interesting from a software design perspective&quot; questions is much smaller than you think it is.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21915" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7727" RevisionGUID="7bdb9769-6f78-488c-af7a-ea43dd554bc4" CreationDate="2015-11-14T19:41:14.847" UserId="1204" Comment="edited body" Text="Getting more questions rehabilitated is a laudable goal, but having the ability to close clearly off-topic questions more quickly and get them off the front page is much more critical.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to address something that you stated in the comments, in detail.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I see a lot of well-written, well-intentioned, and even well-formulated questions closed for non-obvious reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*It would be helpful if you could point out a few of these questions, so we can discuss them specifically.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In no small part because of the &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; history of Programmers and its subsequent scope change, those of us who work together to try and keep the site clean have all worked very hard over an extended period of time to try and clarify the scope of Programmers to make it easier for everyone to understand what is on-topic here.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are therefore understandably curious why people still remain confused about the scope, especially when they visit from SE corporate.  The scope is not that hard to figure out; Programmers is about *Software Design.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I flip over to the on topic help and I can kinda see the reason [the question was closed] if I squint.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the same process that new users employ when they ask a question for the first time here: *they ask first, and **then** read the Help Center* (if they read it at all). I once asked someone who had just asked a clearly off-topic question how he managed to do that after clicking through the &quot;yes, I understand&quot; page.  His reply was &quot;Bah.  Nobody reads those things.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why do so many folks ask so many off-topic questions here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  **They look at the name of the site.**  While I have always pushed back against the &quot;let's change the title of the site&quot; folks (largely because nobody can agree on a good, descriptive title), they do have a point.  People ask all kinds of questions here because the title of the site is &quot;Programmers.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  **They've seen a question posted previously on programmers that is similar to their question.**  This happens much more often than most people realize.  It is the single most important reason that closing questions on Programmers needs to be easier: to *get the newly-posted crap off the site, quickly.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  **They don't really care about the site scope.**  These are the cross-posters, the ones who are crowdsourcing their work, the ones trying to start a conversation, argue a pedantic point or start a debate, the ones asking us to refer them somewhere else.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  **They were referred here from Stack Overflow** by well meaning, but ultimately uninformed folks who don't understand Programmers' scope.  We have a bot called Duga that catches those referrals; I'd say about 95 percent of those questions are both off-topic on Programmers, and closeable on Stack Overflow under the current rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, there are the behaviors that work against questions being rehabilitated and reopened.  You ask for clarifications in the comments, but get no response.  You link to an article that will help them (including the Help Center), but they don't read it.  You explain a point to them, but they argue about it.  The vast majority of askers simply will not cooperate with you long enough to rehabilitate their question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which just leaves one remaining question: *why are questions being closed that some folks at SE corporate believe should stay open?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, firstly, there are a *very small percentage* of questions that are asked that, while they don't fulfill the *letter* of the law on Programmers, certainly fulfill the *spirit,* which is to say that they are *interesting* questions.  By interesting, I don't mean in the sense that they get a lot of bikeshed upvotes, or that they get a lot of Reddit views.  I mean in the &quot;whiteboard&quot; sense, the sense that this is a *Software Design* site, and that we should be able to freely and specifically talk about software design in a Q&amp;A setting without being hampered by folks with their own agendas or slavish adherence to the rules. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I *defend such questions vigorously,* argue for their existence in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), edit them if necessary to bring them in scope, and ask for their reopening.  The three vote rule will help such questions, because it will make them easier to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The concern I have is that I believe that the pool of &quot;technically off-topic, but still interesting from a software design perspective&quot; questions is much smaller than you think it is.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21916" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7727" RevisionGUID="71dd4e0e-3dbb-456d-a821-ecb708945167" CreationDate="2015-11-14T19:47:24.560" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 44 characters in body" Text="Getting more questions rehabilitated is a laudable goal, but having the ability to close clearly off-topic questions more quickly and get them off the front page is much more critical.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to address something that you stated in the comments, in detail.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I see a lot of well-written, well-intentioned, and even well-formulated questions closed for non-obvious reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*It would be helpful if you could point out a few of these questions, so we can discuss them specifically.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In no small part because of the &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; history of Programmers and its subsequent scope change, those of us who work together to try and keep the site clean have all worked very hard over an extended period of time to try and clarify the scope of Programmers to make it easier for everyone to understand what is on-topic here.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are therefore understandably curious why people still remain confused about the scope, especially when they visit from SE corporate.  The scope is not that hard to figure out; Programmers is about *Software Design.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I flip over to the on topic help and I can kinda see the reason [the question was closed] if I squint.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the same process that new users employ when they ask a question for the first time here: *they ask first, and **then** read the Help Center* (if they read it at all). I once asked someone who had just asked a clearly off-topic question how he managed to do that after clicking through the &quot;yes, I understand&quot; page.  His reply was &quot;Bah.  Nobody reads those things.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why do so many folks ask so many off-topic questions here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  **They look at the name of the site.**  While I have always pushed back against the &quot;let's change the title of the site&quot; folks (largely because nobody can agree on a good, descriptive title), they do have a point.  People ask all kinds of questions here because the title of the site is &quot;Programmers.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  **They've seen a question posted previously on programmers that is similar to their question.**  This happens much more often than most people realize.  It is the single most important reason that closing questions on Programmers needs to be easier: to *get the newly-posted crap off the site, quickly.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  **They don't really care about the site scope.**  These are the cross-posters, the ones who are crowdsourcing their work, the ones trying to start a conversation, argue a pedantic point or start a debate, the ones asking us to refer them somewhere else.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  **They were referred here from Stack Overflow** by well meaning, but ultimately uninformed folks who don't understand Programmers' scope.  We have a bot called Duga that catches those referrals; I'd say about 95 percent of those questions are both off-topic on Programmers, and closeable on Stack Overflow under the current rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, there are the behaviors that work against questions being rehabilitated and reopened.  You ask for clarifications, but get no response.  You link to an article that will help them, but they don't read it.  You explain a point to them, but they argue about it.  The vast majority of askers simply will not cooperate with you long enough to rehabilitate their question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which just leaves one remaining question: *why are questions being closed that some folks at SE corporate believe should stay open?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, firstly, there are a *very small percentage* of questions that are asked that, while they don't fulfill the *letter* of the law on Programmers, certainly fulfill the *spirit,* which is to say that they are *interesting* questions.  By interesting, I don't mean in the sense that they get a lot of bikeshed upvotes, or that they get a lot of Reddit views.  I mean in the &quot;whiteboard&quot; sense, the sense that this is a *Software Design* site, and that we should be able to freely and specifically talk about software design in a Q&amp;A setting without being hampered by folks with their own agendas or slavish adherence to the rules. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I *defend such questions vigorously,* argue for their existence in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), edit them if necessary to bring them in scope, and ask for their reopening.  The three vote rule will help such questions, because it will make them easier to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The concern I have is that I believe that the pool of &quot;technically off-topic, but still interesting from a software design perspective&quot; questions is much smaller than you think it is.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21917" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7727" RevisionGUID="dbf43307-a3de-4b53-a1fb-6530dc6449eb" CreationDate="2015-11-14T20:13:20.000" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="Getting more questions rehabilitated is a laudable goal, but having the ability to close clearly off-topic questions more quickly and get them off the front page is much more critical.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to address something that you stated in the comments, in detail.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I see a lot of well-written, well-intentioned, and even well-formulated questions closed for non-obvious reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*It would be helpful if you could point out a few of these questions, so we can discuss them specifically.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In no small part because of the &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; history of Programmers and its subsequent scope change, those of us who work together to try and keep the site clean have all worked very hard over an extended period of time to try and clarify the scope of Programmers to make it easier for everyone to understand what is on-topic here.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are therefore understandably curious why people still remain confused about the scope, especially when they visit from SE corporate.  The scope is not that hard to figure out; Programmers is about *Software Design.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I flip over to the on topic help and I can kinda see the reason [the question was closed] if I squint.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the same process that new users employ when they ask a question for the first time here: *they ask first, and **then** read the Help Center* (if they read it at all). I once asked someone who had just asked a clearly off-topic question how he managed to do that after clicking through the &quot;yes, I understand&quot; page.  His reply was &quot;Bah.  Nobody reads those things.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why do so many folks ask so many off-topic questions here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  **They look at the name of the site.**  While I have always pushed back against the &quot;let's change the title of the site&quot; folks (largely because nobody can agree on a good, descriptive title), they do have a point.  People ask all kinds of questions here because the title of the site is &quot;Programmers.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  **They've seen a question posted previously on programmers that is similar to their question.**  This happens much more often than most people realize.  It is the single most important reason that closing questions on Programmers needs to be easier: to *get the newly-posted crap off the site, quickly.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  **They don't really care about the site scope.**  These are the cross-posters, the ones who are crowdsourcing their work, the ones trying to start a conversation, argue a pedantic point or start a debate, the ones asking us to refer them somewhere else.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  **They were referred here from Stack Overflow** by well meaning, but ultimately uninformed folks who don't understand Programmers' scope.  We have a bot called Duga that catches those referrals; I'd say about 95 percent of those questions are both off-topic on Programmers, and closeable on Stack Overflow under the current rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, there are user behaviors that work against questions being rehabilitated and reopened.  You ask for clarifications, but get no response.  You link to an article that will help them, but they don't read it.  You explain a point to them, but they argue about it.  The vast majority of askers simply will not cooperate with you long enough to rehabilitate their question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which just leaves one remaining question: *why are questions being closed that some folks at SE corporate believe should stay open?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, firstly, there are a *very small percentage* of questions that are asked that, while they don't fulfill the *letter* of the law on Programmers, certainly fulfill the *spirit,* which is to say that they are *interesting* questions from a *Software Design* perspective  We should be able to freely engage such questions without being hampered by folks with their own agendas or slavish adherence to the rules. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I *defend such questions vigorously,* argue for their existence in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), edit them if necessary to bring them in scope, and ask for their reopening.  The three vote rule will help such questions, because it will make them easier to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The concern I have is that I believe that the pool of &quot;technically off-topic, but still interesting from a software design perspective&quot; questions is much smaller than you think it is.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21918" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7727" RevisionGUID="577ee9e6-083b-4024-81ac-ddecd9c8500c" CreationDate="2015-11-14T20:18:39.040" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="Getting more questions rehabilitated is a laudable goal, but having the ability to close clearly off-topic questions more quickly and get them off the front page is much more critical.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to address something that you stated in the comments, in detail.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I see a lot of well-written, well-intentioned, and even well-formulated questions closed for non-obvious reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*It would be helpful if you could point out a few of these questions, so we can discuss them specifically.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In no small part because of the &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; history of Programmers and its subsequent scope change, those of us who work together to try and keep the site clean have all worked very hard over an extended period of time to try and clarify the scope of Programmers to make it easier for everyone to understand what is on-topic here.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are therefore understandably curious why people still remain confused about the scope, especially when they visit from SE corporate.  The scope is not that hard to figure out; Programmers is about *Software Design.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I flip over to the on topic help and I can kinda see the reason [the question was closed] if I squint.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the same process that new users employ when they ask a question for the first time here: *they ask first, and **then** read the Help Center* (if they read it at all). I once asked someone who had just asked a clearly off-topic question how he managed to do that after clicking through the &quot;yes, I understand&quot; page.  His reply was &quot;Bah.  Nobody reads those things.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why do so many folks ask so many off-topic questions here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  **They look at the name of the site.**  While I have always pushed back against the &quot;let's change the title of the site&quot; folks (largely because nobody can agree on a good, descriptive title), they do have a point.  People ask all kinds of questions here because the title of the site is &quot;Programmers.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  **They've seen a question posted previously on programmers that is similar to their question.**  This happens much more often than most people realize.  It is the single most important reason that closing questions on Programmers needs to be easier: to *get the newly-posted crap off the site, quickly.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  **They don't really care about the site scope.**  These are the cross-posters, the ones who are crowdsourcing their work, the ones trying to start a conversation, argue a pedantic point or start a debate, the ones asking us to refer them somewhere else.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  **They were referred here from Stack Overflow** by well meaning, but ultimately uninformed folks who don't understand Programmers' scope.  We have a bot called Duga that catches those referrals; I'd say about 95 percent of those questions are both off-topic on Programmers, and closeable on Stack Overflow under the current rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, there are user behaviors that work against questions being rehabilitated and reopened.  You ask for clarifications, but get no response.  You link to an article that will help them, but they don't read it.  You explain a point to them, but they argue about it.  The vast majority of askers simply will not cooperate with you long enough to rehabilitate their question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which just leaves one remaining question: *why are questions being closed that some folks at SE corporate believe should stay open?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, firstly, there are a *very small percentage* of questions that are asked that, while they don't fulfill the *letter* of the law on Programmers, certainly fulfill the *spirit,* which is to say that they are *interesting* questions from a *Software Design* perspective.  We should be able to freely engage such questions, without being hampered by either folks with their own agendas or slavish adherence to the rules. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I *defend such questions vigorously,* argue for their existence in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), edit them if necessary to bring them in scope, and ask for their reopening.  The three vote rule will help such questions, because it will make them easier to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The concern I have is that I believe that the pool of &quot;technically off-topic, but still interesting from a software design perspective&quot; questions is much smaller than you think it is, and that we will lose a valuable tool because our evaluation metric cannot be satisfied.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21919" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7719" RevisionGUID="1d8862e0-276a-407e-893c-2e931fb3dcb2" CreationDate="2015-11-15T19:14:05.957" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[7537],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:5099,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Bart van Ingen Schenau&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:22815,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Snowman&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:6294,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Michael Kohne&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:161917,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Ixrec&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="21920" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7728" RevisionGUID="dec1ba1d-a479-42fa-871d-1963aa644444" CreationDate="2015-11-15T23:30:26.833" UserId="156202" Text="What's the appropriate response to this (at &quot;Programmers&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;You are asking a fairly wide open question and then asking opinions on possible answers. It sounds like you haven't really done your home work. Please show your research.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I responded with the below and then deleted the question, because I didn't want to be seen as contentious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;I see posts to the right that ask for subjective advice on things like design patterns and architecture choices. This question is much more focused than that. I spent a good bit of time formulating an exact description of the requirement. I don't see what providing a list of google searches will add. Please read the post more carefully. I would like to add some courtesy remarks, but policy forbids :-)&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It felt like I was just being bullied.  I put a lot of work into the question.  I don't post lightly.  Anyone can say &quot;work harder;  you don't deserve help&quot;.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's the appropriate response?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21921" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7728" RevisionGUID="dec1ba1d-a479-42fa-871d-1963aa644444" CreationDate="2015-11-15T23:30:26.833" UserId="156202" Text="Appropriate response" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21922" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7728" RevisionGUID="dec1ba1d-a479-42fa-871d-1963aa644444" CreationDate="2015-11-15T23:30:26.833" UserId="156202" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21923" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7729" RevisionGUID="3d202289-081c-450f-927c-7311d5675f9e" CreationDate="2015-11-16T00:08:22.633" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I glanced at the question while trying to figure out if I can answer, but didn't look too deeply into the question itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The final paragraph of the question is the one that would have been decisive for me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How might the app reliably and securely persist information about each Main page instance, regardless of which browser instance, window or tab, so that the the server accurately recognizes the correct user/group session participant for that Main Page? Hidden field? localStorage? Something else? Pros and cons of different techniques?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It really feels like one that is asking us to design it all for you. You haven't addressed a problem that you are having. And while you may have some information about the backend design that is already firm, you haven't communicated this in the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that I've written here that seek to try to help people formulate a better question when trying to ask this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6961/green-fields-blue-skies-and-the-white-board-what-is-too-broad&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6758/what-is-the-problem-with-pros-and-cons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The blue sky nature of the question - that we don't know what the problem that you are having with your design is. And thats where the comment that is on the question is addressing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The pros and cons is one that we often see and is very difficult to answer. In part, because everyone regards the advantages and disadvantages of a given design (and the different designs is indeed far too wide open to be able to even have a chance at narrowing it down) will add their opinion. This often leads to rather short and unhelpful answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hypotehticaly,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hidden field pro: its simple&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; local storage con: you've got to use local storage and it's inconsistent across browsers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; something else pro: Its something you haven't considered&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; yet something else con: Its something you haven't considered either&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are all &quot;valid&quot; answers to the question. And they aren't really helpful to you, or to the next person who comes along trying to ask a question about a similar design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've given us a requirement. Tell us about your design and specifically where you are having problems.  If you are just asking for us to do a design, there are far too many ways for that to be done, and most will be incompatible with some part of your system." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21924" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7729" RevisionGUID="3ebb819b-024e-489f-8bfd-b03eea7499e0" CreationDate="2015-11-16T06:55:27.377" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="I glanced at the question while trying to figure out if I can answer, but didn't look too deeply into the question itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The final paragraph of the question is the one that would have been decisive for me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How might the app reliably and securely persist information about each Main page instance, regardless of which browser instance, window or tab, so that the the server accurately recognizes the correct user/group session participant for that Main Page? Hidden field? localStorage? Something else? Pros and cons of different techniques?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It really feels like one that is asking us to design it all for you. You haven't addressed a problem that you are having. And while you may have some information about the backend design that is already firm, you haven't communicated this in the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that I've written here that seek to try to help people formulate a better question when trying to ask this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6961/green-fields-blue-skies-and-the-white-board-what-is-too-broad&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6758/what-is-the-problem-with-pros-and-cons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The blue sky nature of the question - that we don't know what the problem that you are having with your design is. And thats where the comment that is on the question is addressing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The pros and cons is one that we often see and is very difficult to answer. In part, because everyone regards the advantages and disadvantages of a given design (and the different designs is indeed far too wide open to be able to even have a chance at narrowing it down) will add their opinion. This often leads to rather short and unhelpful answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hypothetically,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hidden field pro: its simple&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; local storage con: you've got to use local storage and it's inconsistent across browsers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; something else pro: Its something you haven't considered&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; yet something else con: Its something you haven't considered either&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are all &quot;valid&quot; answers to the question. And they aren't really helpful to you, or to the next person who comes along trying to ask a question about a similar design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've given us a requirement. Tell us about your design and specifically where you are having problems.  If you are just asking for us to do a design, there are far too many ways for that to be done, and most will be incompatible with some part of your system." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21925" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7730" RevisionGUID="99b84020-a4d1-47e4-a5f1-8a5ae930ef52" CreationDate="2015-11-16T07:48:42.357" UserId="1204" Text="I've been racking my brain trying to figure this out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What happened that caused asking &quot;What is the name of this thing so I can go research it myself&quot; become the thing to do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been a participant on Stack Overflow for quite some time now. I've seen a number of memes come and go, including The Great Community Wiki Wars, What Stack Overflow is Not (which I unfortunately have the dubious distinction of creating), and What Have You Tried?  They last for a while, the site changes a little bit (for better or worse), then they disappear and life goes on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But for the life of me I can't figure this one out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Many things don't have a name.  Have we become so enamored of &quot;Pattern-Driven Development&quot; that programming has now become an &quot;identify pattern by name, copy/paste, profit&quot; game?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Did someone post the first &quot;Name that Thing&quot; question, the one to rule them all, and now everyone is stumbling across that question and emulating it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  Do we have such a reputation for being curmudgeons that people are just taking the approach, &quot;Just give me a name, and I'll research it myself?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do the folks who ask these questions know that they're being a bit dismissive and a trifle insulting?  &quot;Rather than bothering you with this, just tell me what it's called, and I'll go look it up on Wikipedia.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21926" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7730" RevisionGUID="99b84020-a4d1-47e4-a5f1-8a5ae930ef52" CreationDate="2015-11-16T07:48:42.357" UserId="1204" Text="When did &quot;Name this thing&quot; become a meme?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21927" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7730" RevisionGUID="99b84020-a4d1-47e4-a5f1-8a5ae930ef52" CreationDate="2015-11-16T07:48:42.357" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21928" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7731" RevisionGUID="4ee73a36-df64-4ded-a07c-786aa218d948" CreationDate="2015-11-16T15:36:50.460" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="### Name that thing is at least as old as Usenet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of this goes to the curmudgeon aspect. That if one asks a short, answerable question, they are less likely to have the curmudgeons complaining about the use of a Singleton or that C++ isn't C or some other issue of perceived pedantry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also the bit that if you ask a question and show a desire to learn, you can get a better answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This actually worked on Usenet and mailing lists because searching those things in days of old was impossible at best.  Go in, get your answer for what to look up, and then go to your lab's wall of books and poke around in the indexes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Doesn't work well on Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, the search here is less than ideal, but it is orders of magnitude better than what existed before. However, there is a persistence here that isn't as easily discarded as Usenet or mailing lists. This leads to the problems mentioned in [Let's Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/) that people aren't searching for existing material before asking. With that persistence of old material, it has the distinct danger of being a place where people come ask a question and leave. This is what happened to Literature.SE and its what Sci-fi worries about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned over on English.SE (another site with this 'name that thing' type problem) described in [Against single word requests](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/q/1654/40348). They note that this type of question attracts less active users (its easy to drop a &quot;I think its a Singleton&quot; as an answer and then not show up again) but repels more active users (frankly, if we were to get a similar proportion of unclosed name that thing questions as Sci-fi gets with story identification or English gets with name that word, I'd be looking at contributing elsewhere).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that the people *asking* these questions realize how much those who get these questions constantly realize how annoying and insulting they can be, because they haven't invested more than the time it takes to paste the question in the site. At the time they ask the question, they haven't found the *other* questions and answers on the front page useful or interesting enough to read for the sake of reading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also don't believe that these users realize the difference in the focus of the sites (and that each SE site is distinct), or the difference between SE sites and forums at large." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21929" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7731" RevisionGUID="15ec2eac-c763-4ae7-bdab-84f1abad41d5" CreationDate="2015-11-16T15:55:22.867" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 879 characters in body" Text="### Name that thing is at least as old as Usenet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of this goes to the curmudgeon aspect. That if one asks a short, answerable question, they are less likely to have the curmudgeons complaining about the use of a Singleton or that C++ isn't C or some other issue of perceived pedantry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also the bit that if you ask a question and show a desire to learn, you can get a better answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This actually worked on Usenet and mailing lists because searching those things in days of old was impossible at best.  Go in, get your answer for what to look up, and then go to your lab's wall of books and poke around in the indexes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Doesn't work well on Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, the search here is less than ideal, but it is orders of magnitude better than what existed before. However, there is a persistence here that isn't as easily discarded as Usenet or mailing lists. This leads to the problems mentioned in [Let's Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/) that people aren't searching for existing material before asking. With that persistence of old material, it has the distinct danger of being a place where people come ask a question and leave. This is what happened to Literature.SE and its what Sci-fi worries about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned over on English.SE (another site with this 'name that thing' type problem) described in [Against single word requests](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/q/1654/40348). They note that this type of question attracts less active users (its easy to drop a &quot;I think its a Singleton&quot; as an answer and then not show up again) but repels more active users (frankly, if we were to get a similar proportion of unclosed name that thing questions as Sci-fi gets with story identification or English gets with name that word, I'd be looking at contributing elsewhere).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that the people *asking* these questions realize how much those who get these questions constantly realize how annoying and insulting they can be, because they haven't invested more than the time it takes to paste the question in the site. At the time they ask the question, they haven't found the *other* questions and answers on the front page useful or interesting enough to read for the sake of reading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also don't believe that these users realize the difference in the focus of the sites (and that each SE site is distinct), or the difference between SE sites and forums at large.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Pedagogy vs Problems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One additional aspect of this is the way that we (as professionals) focus on problems. If one was to go up to their professor in school and ask a question about the proper way to handle a class such that there is only one instance of it, the professor could very well say &quot;its a Singleton - go look it up in chapter 4 of Design Patterns by Erich Gamma.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While this approach works in college classes (getting the student to learn more), we are expecting to solve problems here rather than provide material for the student to learn from.  It is also noted that many new programmers in the field haven't yet taken this change of world view from student to professional yet and are still expected to be treated like students. Not realizing that the people that they are asking questions of aren't here to primarily teach, but rather solve problems." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21930" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7730" RevisionGUID="cc55b89b-95dd-4d73-a056-e98ff6d9f256" CreationDate="2015-11-16T15:56:38.287" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|name-that-thing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21931" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6582" RevisionGUID="cbb6f57b-a0c7-4a56-9fb1-2a9251c7cb74" CreationDate="2015-11-16T15:56:57.457" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|name-that-thing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21932" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7728" RevisionGUID="7cfd845c-16e9-4bb4-a644-3dc06ead11ad" CreationDate="2015-11-16T16:08:46.870" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21933" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7732" RevisionGUID="2dbefd8c-30dc-4448-baf2-087a7fe174ba" CreationDate="2015-11-17T14:46:05.527" UserId="22685" Text="It does seem to me that the state of affairs on PSE is *exactly* what you'd want - questions are either good or bad and voted on accordingly. Superuser seems much more vague with questions that might be good, or might be bad, or might be meh and as such you see that voting pattern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think the issue is one of close vote quantity then, but question quality. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be interesting to see the time taken to close a question on both sites - I think here on PSE we tend to stomp on off-topic questions pretty quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One suggestion for close votes if you were to change them, is to weight votes according to rep. So someone with 2k rep gets their close vote to count as 1, and someone with 20k rep counts as 2. That'd get them closed quicker." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21934" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7733" RevisionGUID="b09b4b36-c92d-4510-a602-2ab3a4cc9cbf" CreationDate="2015-11-17T20:14:45.910" UserId="3965" Text="Another aspect you may not have considered, which I believe is also unique to PSE, is the number of close votes being used on old questions.  I have a [SEDE query](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/136453/recently-closed-questions-i-answered) I run occasionally that frequently catches questions closed from several years ago.  Even relatively recent questions that were fairly well received, are often closed after a delay of a week or so, when its defenders have moved on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are questions that in my opinion do not need editing, for the most part.  They are being closed under the radar by people who are retroactively applying stricter and stricter standards to the site, without having to face the scrutiny of the consensus that existed during the prime of that question's activity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would simply like a notification if a question I endorsed by upvoting or answering is closed later.  The defenders of a question should receive as much consideration as the close queue gives its detractors." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21935" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7734" RevisionGUID="929b88f2-87b2-4c3c-aaef-4b3e57a43341" CreationDate="2015-11-17T21:09:10.080" UserId="96050" Text="After one week, the results are not encouraging:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Week posted Qs  Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion Rate&#xD;&#xA;    ----------- --- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- -------------&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-12  324    190      58.6%           8.9%     2.1%       5.9%         40.7%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-19  349    204      58.5%           8.8%     2.0%       5.6%         39.5%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-26  319    207      64.9%           8.7%     1.4%      11.1%         45.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-02  362    218      60.2%          12.8%     3.7%      10.7%         42.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09  286    205      71.7%          20.0%     3.4%       4.9%         36.0%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of this is in flux as weeks refer to when questions were asked. So questions asked in the week of Nov. 2 might still be closed or deleted while questions asked last week could still get edited and/or reopened. Also, a week is probably not enough time to spot trends since the numbers vary quite a bit from one week to the next. The one thing we can be confident about is that it's a lot easier to get questions closed now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Only 3 close votes needed.][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# _Pro forma_ closing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Watching the questions that have been closed in the past week reminds me of my (very short) stint [creating UML diagrams](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124996/is-code-commonly-generated-from-uml): theoretically necessary, but of dubious practical value. It seems clear to me that a lot of closing on Programmers isn't because certain types of questions cause problems, but because they _might_. In effect, questions are closed because they have a particular form with little regard to the substance and purpose of the question. I encourage you to look at the list of [recently closed questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=Close&amp;daterange=last7days) and **consider what actual problems these questions cause today**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me cherry-pick some recent examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302688/how-narrow-or-broad-should-constant-names-be (Closed as &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot;.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Is this the _form_ of a question that could devolve into religious warfare? Sure. Has it? Well there are 3 plausible answers and one that's meh. It was open for 6 hours. Unfortunately, I can't add my answer based on page 186 of my edition of _Code Complete_ until the question is reopened. (Hint: there's been real science done on this question.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302723/passing-fields-instance-variables-by-arguementsparameters-inside-an-object (Closed as &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot;.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This was immediately closed and only one answer slipped through. I'm not anything like an expert in OOP, so I can't judge the answer. Maybe it's heresy somewhere, but it sounds reasonably uncontroversial and grounded in objectivity to me. The close seems to be triggered by the final (unimportant) paragraph:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; What are the advantages and disadvantages of these solutions? Which is considered as better practise? Which one do you prefer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302567/what-are-the-advantages-of-a-traditional-backend-architecture-for-a-standard (Closed as &quot;too broad&quot;.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Two comments on the question are instructive:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; recommended reading: **[Why do 'some examples' and 'list of things' questions get closed?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7538/31260)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Asking for &quot;the advantages&quot; of X is almost always a list question ([the earlier comment] probably should've linked the &quot;pros and cons&quot; post for this one). As the existing answers have already demonstrated, you end up with a list of example applications for which X is a good thing, and then everyone has to debate in the comments whether those examples are valid because the original question wasn't sufficiently well-defined to make it clear what would or wouldn't count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There are exactly as many comments arguing about whether the question should be closed as there are about whether the examples are valid. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could go on, but I don't want to get bogged down into an argument because I picked a bad example. My point in bringing these up is not to get them reopened, but encourage you all to think a bit about **why questions need closing**. One advantage of lowering the bar for closing is that it gives this community freedom to field more potentially problematic questions. If things get out of hand, it's far easier to shut questions down than it used to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be completely clear, I have no intention of keeping this site setting if it accelerates the closing of questions.  It is my firm conviction that **a site which closes 70% of new questions is already failing**. That's one experiment I don't want to try.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been encouraged by valiant and occasionally successful attempts I've seen this week to fix and reopen questions. Whatever else I might imply above, I truly do admire the care and thoughtfulness you all have exhibited over the years. It's not easy to manage a radical change in scope as the one this community has pulled off. Let me restate that: **Programmers has successfully corrected itself from a very rough beginning**. That was accomplished not by the Stack Exchange software, but by the efforts of users such as the readers of this post. This site is now useful to actual programmers whereas the initial scope was not. So build off of that success.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/DR0KU.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21936" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7735" RevisionGUID="00103592-9a58-4e91-bf12-5c4761f8e83b" CreationDate="2015-11-18T05:50:47.340" UserId="9302" Text="Found this question in the review queue:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Best way to accelerate data access to two data warehouses?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and noticed that it is protected. As I understand it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should be protected when they are garnering lots of views&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and newbies are adding &quot;me too!&quot;, &quot;thanks!&quot; and possibly even spam&#xD;&#xA;&gt; non-answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/protect-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question has 147 views and no answers. Is this the intended use of question protection? I would hate to see us overreach with preemptive protection.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/275867/best-way-to-accelerate-data-access-to-two-data-warehouses" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21937" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7735" RevisionGUID="00103592-9a58-4e91-bf12-5c4761f8e83b" CreationDate="2015-11-18T05:50:47.340" UserId="9302" Text="Is this the intended use of question protection?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21938" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7735" RevisionGUID="00103592-9a58-4e91-bf12-5c4761f8e83b" CreationDate="2015-11-18T05:50:47.340" UserId="9302" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21939" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7735" RevisionGUID="216ca0a0-5512-49e6-af79-48441c5daf10" CreationDate="2015-11-18T07:42:02.847" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|protected-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21940" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7736" RevisionGUID="7fcefcad-e60b-4aa9-8e5b-6e4638ee9d97" CreationDate="2015-11-18T07:48:07.230" UserId="25936" Text="There are two deleted answers on the question. The later one is complete nonsense, and I'm guessing is what triggered the protection. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I do agree with you that the protection here was a bit premature. Protecting a question goes against our promise that asking and answering is completely free, and one crap answer is certainly not reason enough for that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21941" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7736" RevisionGUID="6e821549-c7b5-4c99-8b06-83818c1e875e" CreationDate="2015-11-18T07:58:36.357" UserId="25936" Comment="added 86 characters in body" Text="There are two deleted answers on the question. The later one is complete nonsense, and I'm guessing is what triggered the protection. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I do agree with you that the protection here was a bit premature. Protecting a question goes against our promise that asking and answering is completely free and requires no rep. It's a last resort tool for questions that are attracting _a lot_ of crap answers _quickly_. This clearly wasn't the case here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21942" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7736" RevisionGUID="c5553fbf-0792-417b-89a9-558178d977ff" CreationDate="2015-11-18T08:06:30.310" UserId="25936" Comment="added 50 characters in body" Text="There are two deleted answers on the question. The later one is complete nonsense, and I'm guessing is what triggered the protection. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I do agree with you the protection here was a bit premature. Protecting a question goes against our promise that asking and answering is completely free and requires no rep. It's a last resort tool for questions that are attracting _a lot_ of crap answers in a _very short_ amount of time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This clearly wasn't the case here, I unprotected the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21943" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6505" RevisionGUID="41db6fee-7de6-4700-856a-8aa6391d2170" CreationDate="2015-11-18T11:42:41.557" UserId="31260" Comment="funny typo corrected" Text="I prefer to use &quot;and-clause&quot; borrowed and slightly rephrased from [Codereview.SE](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. Does my question contain design? (Please include the design in the question, not a link to it)&#xD;&#xA;2. Did I write that design?&#xD;&#xA;3. Is it actual design from a project rather than pseudo-design or example design?&#xD;&#xA;4. Do I want the design to be good design, (i.e. not design-golfing, obfuscation, or similar)&#xD;&#xA;5. To the best of my knowledge, does the design work?&#xD;&#xA;6. Do I want feedback about any or all facets of the design?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If you answered yes to all the above questions, your question is on-topic for design review at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading, _question in question_ passed above clause.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a more general note, blindly letting questions pass based on bare stamp &quot;design review&quot; wouldn't be a good idea, because there would be no way to verify research effort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, one could just thoughtlessly glue some buzzwords and see how it sticks: &quot;I am considering SOA+ORM+responsive Web UI, any thoughts?&quot; I for one would vote close braindumps like this as [**unclear what help you need**](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260 &quot;custom close reason&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that, [as pointed in comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6502/design-review-on-topic-or-not/6505#comment17558_6505), #5 may be interpreted as [too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490), that is, focusing on specific design concern(s) would be safer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21944" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7704" RevisionGUID="a3ad61b1-9e86-4fcf-981b-9a5250bf881f" CreationDate="2015-11-18T15:16:11.400" UserId="35276" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="## User Participation ##&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries you have that give interesting details about specific user participation. Specific user rankings or metrics for instance: Who's most best? Who's least best? Users average answer rep? What have you (what have me, us. yes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Highest user up vote and down vote ratios, with ancillary stats](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/133641/upvote-downvote-ratio)&#xD;&#xA;* [Top close voters with close voting statistics](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/394512/top-close-voters)&#xD;&#xA;* [Query to look up a users progress towards the Archaeologist badge](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90657/what-is-my-archaeologist-badge-progress-with-the-correct-userid)&#xD;&#xA;* [All comments on posts owned by a user](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/376067/484421/)&#xD;&#xA; * ... [With keyword filter](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/376067/484422)&#xD;&#xA;* [Average user reputation earned per day by user](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/77467/reputation-per-day-average-from-highest-to-lowest)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post score per user by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381861/total-post-score)&#xD;&#xA;* [Average post score per user by post type without low-post-count users](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381880/total-post-score)&#xD;&#xA;* [Average post score per user by post type with the word monad](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381899/fist-full-of-monads)&#xD;&#xA; * [...with arbitrary search term instead of monad](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381901/average-post-score-per-user-with-search-term)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21945" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7737" RevisionGUID="dd50ca4f-7dc7-4c0d-b0e1-34e06dc05042" CreationDate="2015-11-18T15:21:55.630" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="In looking at various questions that are specifically mentioning a tool (as they are often tool questions that *should* have been asked on Stack Overflow years ago instead of here), I've come across this question which vexes me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question ends with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I do not want that the view has to have the knowledge about the helper classes, that is the main view model shall provide all the properties... but the functions shall delegate the work to the helper classes to keep the viewModel class maintainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there any known add in /tool for visual studio, which can automatize this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the way that I would look at fixing it would be to remove the tool request, de tag the tool related tag and move on.  However, there are two answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Resharper 7 Beta can do this - it is called &quot;Extract class&quot;. You can try it for free.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; New refactorings: specifically, the intensely requested Extract Class refactoring to split cumbersome classes into single-responsibility classes, and Transform Out Parameters to Tuple refactoring for functional style supporters. Note that Extract Class is currently only available in ReSharper Internal mode (devenv.exe /ReSharper.Internal).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Extract method&quot; usually means to &quot;move portion of one method's code to a new method while maintaining functionality&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sounds like a case for using extension methods. Simply move Function1() to MyViewModelHelper, make it static, and change the first/only paramater to be like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second answer goes on to answer how to do the refactoring.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if I remove the tool recommendation part of the question, the first (and accepted answer three up votes) becomes invalidated.  Saying &quot;use this tool and select this menu option&quot; isn't a good answer without that tool recommendation part of the question.  Its not a great answer in the first place, but it does answer the question and was apparently helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there something that can be done to fix this question? Does it require a mod to come in and delete an up voted and accepted answer? Is that within the purview of the mod's scope? Does it require getting a bunch of down votes and 20k answer delete votes instead?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Note: the actual question is not mentioned in the text here to try to avoid any meta effect.  If you want to see it, it is in a comment.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/157072/refactor-class-extract-methods-in-a-main-helper-classes --&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21946" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7737" RevisionGUID="dd50ca4f-7dc7-4c0d-b0e1-34e06dc05042" CreationDate="2015-11-18T15:21:55.630" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="How can this question be fixed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21947" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7737" RevisionGUID="dd50ca4f-7dc7-4c0d-b0e1-34e06dc05042" CreationDate="2015-11-18T15:21:55.630" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|specific-question|specific-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21948" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7738" RevisionGUID="6a6820d0-ce56-40c9-85da-b0b606bf47c6" CreationDate="2015-11-18T16:40:02.013" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Should we have a \[design-review\] tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, I know I have sufficient reputation to create one. That is the easy part.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, we have have several thousand questions in [tag:design] which appears to be a mix of design reviews, questions about &quot;why was C designed this way?&quot; and other design-related questions. **Should we move design review questions to their own tag?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue I see is the cost in time to recategorize design review questions and the benefit returned. This is not a quick tag merge, this would be an ongoing effort as we peruse questions. One side benefit would be as we find old questions of poor quality we can close them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could also have information about design reviews and a [link to our canonical meta question][1] in the tag wiki, if anyone bothers to read it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question [Migration paths to other sites][2] on Code Review Meta prompted me to think about this. Would it not be great to point them to a single \[design review\] tag and say &quot;look at the highly voted questions for great examples of migration candidates?&quot; Then reality set it when I started going through the tag trying to find good examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6502&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.codereview.stackexchange.com/q/6141" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21949" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7738" RevisionGUID="6a6820d0-ce56-40c9-85da-b0b606bf47c6" CreationDate="2015-11-18T16:40:02.013" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Should there be a [design-review] tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21950" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7738" RevisionGUID="6a6820d0-ce56-40c9-85da-b0b606bf47c6" CreationDate="2015-11-18T16:40:02.013" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21952" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7740" RevisionGUID="a94d9872-48b7-48b7-9a8f-468bf4e70fa7" CreationDate="2015-11-18T23:53:04.823" UserId="96050" Text="I really don't see what the problem is with this question or it's answers. I'd argue that the question would have been fine to ask on Stack Overflow if people had not developed a broken model of what does and does not work on Q&amp;A. We have an [entire site](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/) dedicated to software recommendations and it works well enough. A good deal of the success of that site stems from [solid ground rules](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/13031/laying-some-ground-rules-for-software-recommendations) that have been [refined by the community](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information). But mostly it was the dedication of many users who really care about helping others make good choices when picking out software. It's not for everybody (which is why most sites reject recommendation questions) but this type of question doesn't cause anything like the problems many veteran users assume they will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, this isn't really a tool request question at all. It's a question about refactoring C# classes. Like any programmer worth their salt, the OP noticed that the job they were facing might very well be automatable. This is a _point in the question's favor_ not a demerit. I spent _years_ doing dumb repeatable tasks until a co-worker pointed me to the `exec` shell command. I kick myself for not asking earlier for help. I don't see why a programmer who is looking for how to [refactor C# classes](https://www.google.com/#q=refactor+C%23+classes) should not find this answer on Programmers&amp;mdash;especially since it seems to be the right way to tackle the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mentally removed the offending paragraphs and I don't see how removing them makes the answer any less valid. If there's an automated way to do a repetitive task, that's often the best answer. If, for some reason, it isn't, the best thing to do is to leave the question open so that someone more knowledgeable can provide a better answer. Closing the question because it includes some hints that the author was hoping to avoid doing drudgy by hand seems, well, cynical and paranoid. Maybe not a stellar question, I suppose. But I hope there is a place on this site for useful questions that get helpful answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21953" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6505" RevisionGUID="c8d8f410-1eb0-4685-836d-d749774e7bdb" CreationDate="2015-11-19T13:28:09.597" UserId="5099" Comment="Corrected reference to the list item in the last paragraph" Text="I prefer to use &quot;and-clause&quot; borrowed and slightly rephrased from [Codereview.SE](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. Does my question contain design? (Please include the design in the question, not a link to it)&#xD;&#xA;2. Did I write that design?&#xD;&#xA;3. Is it actual design from a project rather than pseudo-design or example design?&#xD;&#xA;4. Do I want the design to be good design, (i.e. not design-golfing, obfuscation, or similar)&#xD;&#xA;5. To the best of my knowledge, does the design work?&#xD;&#xA;6. Do I want feedback about any or all facets of the design?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If you answered yes to all the above questions, your question is on-topic for design review at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading, _question in question_ passed above clause.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a more general note, blindly letting questions pass based on bare stamp &quot;design review&quot; wouldn't be a good idea, because there would be no way to verify research effort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, one could just thoughtlessly glue some buzzwords and see how it sticks: &quot;I am considering SOA+ORM+responsive Web UI, any thoughts?&quot; I for one would vote close braindumps like this as [**unclear what help you need**](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260 &quot;custom close reason&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that, [as pointed in comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6502/design-review-on-topic-or-not/6505#comment17558_6505), #6 may be interpreted as [too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490), that is, focusing on specific design concern(s) would be safer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21954" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7721" RevisionGUID="bdda8782-4f0a-4d87-b05b-6e9cd00ea213" CreationDate="2015-11-19T21:05:24.680" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21955" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7730" RevisionGUID="6f2b1cc7-3eb0-4f60-9434-237539d00bc5" CreationDate="2015-11-19T22:15:08.437" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/667466160246562818" />
  <row Id="21956" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7741" RevisionGUID="245b2613-fa27-444a-8abf-7b754838de88" CreationDate="2015-11-20T21:20:31.110" UserId="31260" Text="This experiment appears to be a dead end. The problem it revealed can't be fixed by quick closes... it can't be fixed by closes at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my observations, since the experiment started, we've got lively and interesting reopen queue. To me this indicates that solid amount of closed questions are worth improving and reopening.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, when I tried to find these questions myself, not through reopen queue, it turned out very difficult. Site is flooded with blatantly off-topic, unsalvageable crap that hides questions deserving a closer look.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Guess we need to thank [SE Quality Project](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/se-quality-project/info) which (finally) made it really difficult for low quality questions to get answers at SO. As a result, askers are now trying their luck at other sites. (I wonder by the way why they put &quot;Stack Exchange&quot; in the name of that project. Only site that benefits of it is Stack Overflow; at Programmers it only brings pain and suffering.)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Salvageable questions being visible only through reopen queue is very bad thing. It means that only very small fraction of site users can participate - 3K users who frequent that queue plus few others who were lucky enough to catch a question before it was buried under heaps of unworthy garbage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This in turn means very low chance for questions to improve and reopen, and no matter how fast we close, we can't change that - the flood of hopeless stuff simply hides questions worth looking at.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above makes me think that &quot;Server Fault experiment&quot; may be a better way to go for us. Folks over there [recently elected moderators](http://serverfault.com/election/5) who seem to be quickly closing and _most importantly_, deleting, questions that are clear cut off-topic. This way we can get more usable site front page where _every user_ can find gray area, incorrectly closed, salvageable questions and take care of these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(On a historical note, I couldn't even imagine proposing above option two years ago. Back then, site scope wasn't settled firmly enough to allow such measures.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meanwhile, an advice to those who want to continue reopening efforts no matter what.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When [searching through closed questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=closed%3ayes%20migrated%3ano%20duplicate%3ano), skip most recent ones and proceed to those posted 3-4 days ago. At this age, some of the worst off-topics are cleaned up by delete votes of 20K / 10K users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may get even cleaner selection at 10 days old questions which are additionally cleaned by _roomba_, but since that script is automatic, it may also delete some salvageable questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21957" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7742" RevisionGUID="1f3aa3e3-6a85-440f-b3e8-3860c7adf2e5" CreationDate="2015-11-20T21:58:41.900" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="# Off topic #&#xD;&#xA;### Assistance in writing or debugging existing code ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where possible, a delineation between the scopes of Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE is preferred. There is some overlap between the two in the notoriously difficult area to pin down of 'algorithms'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, when it comes to the specifics writing code or fixing existing code, there is no fuzzy border between the two sites. Asking for debugging help or &quot;how do I write this specific code&quot; type questions are off topic on Programers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions have a site that is completely focused on them - Stack Overflow. Trying to answer them here reduces the utility of Stack Overflow (now you have to search two sites for the same information), and makes it harder to find the architecture and design questions that Programmers.SE focuses on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are having trouble posting a question on Stack Overflow, and have come to Programmers.SE as a way to get around that, look ***very*** closely at the quality of the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Make sure the words are all spelled correctly, punctation properly used (see [Spell Check plus.com](http://spellcheckplus.com) as one of many online grammar checkers).  &#xD;&#xA;* Make sure that the code is formatted correctly (see [Markdown help](http://stackoverflow.com/editing-help) if you are having trouble with this).  &#xD;&#xA;* Make sure that the *title* of the question is a good title that describes the actual problem (&quot;Help, I have a question about compilers&quot; is ***not*** a good title).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is reluctant to migrate questions to Stack Overflow that would result in the question being closed there too.  The reasons on SO are covered in [What topics can I ask about here?](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) in the SO help center.  In particular, the &quot;why isn't this code working&quot; (debugging existing code) needs to throughly and completely describe the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Programmers.SE nor Stack Overflow is a code writing service. Questions asking someone to write code *ex nihilo* (or from some requirements provided) will be closed on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are blocked on Stack Overflow from asking questions, please do not attempt to ask them here to get around the block.  Both Programmers.SE and Stack Overflow have automatic question bans in place.  Asking off topic questions here will get them closed. Even if it's a good question that might be migrated to Stack Overflow because it wouldn't get closed - the system prevents us from migrating those." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21958" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7742" RevisionGUID="6e451b13-93bd-4bfb-9d01-a25bf76113ff" CreationDate="2015-11-20T21:58:41.900" UserDisplayName="user40980" />
  <row Id="21959" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="01bdb232-3ec2-41e2-8696-c2503af910d9" CreationDate="2015-11-21T01:19:06.627" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Update Links." Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted).  Why? And what can I do about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What technology to take up next](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resource](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Assistance in writing or debugging existing code](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7742/) &#xD;&#xA;        * (MSE) [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in/129632#129632)&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)  &#xD;&#xA;  certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three of categories listed under _Off topic_ match site-specific close reasons, see: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5992/what-should-our-predefined-off-topic-reasons-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links are from particular points in the history of Programmers.SE and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a [serial vote](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/serial-voting/info &quot;what's this&quot;) reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For pasting into chat or comments there is a &quot;Quick link&quot; at the end of each answer.  The quick link for the question is `[Why was my question closed or down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/)` - pasting this into chat or a comment will link to the question.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21960" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7743" RevisionGUID="07ce6658-91c7-4cbc-873d-ad100614d08d" CreationDate="2015-11-21T03:49:59.960" UserId="97963" Text="I would like to know if questions regarding readability/coding conventions are on-topic here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm learning a new language, and in the official documentation they routinely add whitespace in a way that reads very strangely to me. I was going to just go with it, but then I saw that about 70% of tutorials and code snippets online remove the odd whitespace, and only about 30% do it the prescriptive way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is essentially &quot;is there an actual reason (readability, etc.) to follow the prescriptive convention, or is this something stylistic that doesn't really matter?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes little things really do make a difference (ex. in some languages ALL_CAPS means I'm probably looking at a constant, and that's an actual readability improvement when everyone follows the same convention), and sometimes they don't (ex. I always put my `{` on the line after the function declaration, and some people will fight to the death that that's a wasted line, but it doesn't actually affect people's ability to read your code).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, are questions like this appropriate here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21961" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7743" RevisionGUID="07ce6658-91c7-4cbc-873d-ad100614d08d" CreationDate="2015-11-21T03:49:59.960" UserId="97963" Text="Are readability/coding conventions questions on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21962" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7743" RevisionGUID="07ce6658-91c7-4cbc-873d-ad100614d08d" CreationDate="2015-11-21T03:49:59.960" UserId="97963" Text="|discussion|support|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21963" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7742" RevisionGUID="be8ab82c-6d9d-4456-9dc6-f81953d3b7e2" CreationDate="2015-11-21T11:12:01.843" UserId="60357" Comment="added close reason quote, quick link; corrected speling; improved formatting; simplified phrasing." Text="# Off topic #&#xD;&#xA;### Assistance in writing or debugging existing code ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in writing or debugging existing code** are off-topic on Programmers. These questions can be asked on Stack Overflow if they include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. See [How To Create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where possible, a delineation &lt;!-- TODO pick simpler word --&gt; between the scopes of Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE is preferred. There is some overlap between the two in the notoriously difficult area to pin down of ‘algorithms’.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, when it comes to the specifics writing code or fixing existing code, there is no fuzzy border between the two sites. Asking for debugging help or “how do I write this specific code” type questions are off topic on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions have a site that is completely focused on them – Stack Overflow. Trying to answer them here reduces the usefulness of Stack Overflow (now you have to search two sites for the same information), and makes it harder to find the software architecture and design questions that Programmers.SE focuses on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are having trouble posting a question on Stack Overflow, and have come to Programmers.SE as a way to get around that, look ***very*** closely at the quality of the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Make sure the words are all spelled correctly, and punctuation is properly used (see [Spell Check plus.com](http://spellcheckplus.com) as one of many online grammar checkers).&#xD;&#xA; * Make sure that the code is formatted correctly (see [Markdown help](http://stackoverflow.com/editing-help) if you are having trouble with this).&#xD;&#xA; * Make sure that the *title* of the question is a good title that describes the actual problem: “Why can't I use `==` to compare strings” is a better title than “Help, I have a question about compilers”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is reluctant to migrate questions to Stack Overflow that would result in the question being closed there too.  The reasons on SO are covered in [What topics can I ask about here?](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) in the SO help center.  In particular, a “why isn't this code working” question about debugging existing code needs to throughly and completely describe the problem – nobody can *guess* what you're trying to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Programmers.SE nor Stack Overflow is a code writing service. Questions asking someone to write code from scratch (or from some requirements provided) will be closed on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are blocked from asking questions on Stack Overflow, please do not ask them here in an attempt to get around the block.  Both Programmers.SE and Stack Overflow have automatic question bans in place.  Asking off topic questions here will get them closed. Even if it's a good question that might be migrated to Stack Overflow because it wouldn't get closed – the system prevents us from migrating those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: `[Why was my question closed as off topic – assistance in writing or debugging existing code?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7742)`" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21964" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7744" RevisionGUID="c4e022ef-38f8-426f-b3ff-47b8720731dd" CreationDate="2015-11-21T14:06:26.827" UserId="4" Text="We do have tags that cover the topics you're asking about: [tag:code-formatting] [tag:code-quality] [tag:coding-style], and I'd consider them to be in-scope of the site. But I'd generally have the same concern as the comments pointed out - you would need to avoid highly opinionated questions and polls, which may be difficult to do when talking about code style.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I wouldn't necessarily even use open questions in these tags to make a claim that a specific question is good. I'm not sure if they've been cleaned up or how recently they've been cleaned up. I think that you are experienced enough with the SE model (being a moderator and having significant rep on multiple sites) to know what kinds of questions are generally acceptable and not, but I don't want anyone else finding this question/answer to get the wrong idea." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21965" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7745" RevisionGUID="9b9653b3-d7e9-4d84-8b23-49afd36edee3" CreationDate="2015-11-22T17:59:06.017" UserId="131658" Text="I asked a question recently which was put on hold as being too broad. I disagreed with the reasoning, but I understand the position that programmers.SE moderators took on it and I want to ask questions that are less opinion-based. My question is now... if I delete that question, will that remove my question block so I can ask a different question? Or do I need to simply wait it out? Not trying to game the system here, just wondering if deleting it is enough of a &quot;good deed&quot; to terminate the question ban." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21966" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7745" RevisionGUID="9b9653b3-d7e9-4d84-8b23-49afd36edee3" CreationDate="2015-11-22T17:59:06.017" UserId="131658" Text="Does deleting a closed question remove a question block?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21967" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7745" RevisionGUID="9b9653b3-d7e9-4d84-8b23-49afd36edee3" CreationDate="2015-11-22T17:59:06.017" UserId="131658" Text="|support|closed-questions|deleted-questions|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21968" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7745" RevisionGUID="744de545-14f9-495b-b284-11744860d9ec" CreationDate="2015-11-22T18:11:27.183" UserId="131658" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body; edited title" Text="I asked a question recently which was closed as being too broad. I disagreed with the reasoning, but I understand the position that programmers.SE moderators took on it and I want to ask questions that are less opinion-based. My question is now... if I delete that question, will that remove my question block so I can ask a different question? Or do I need to simply wait it out? Not trying to game the system here, just wondering if deleting it is enough of a &quot;good deed&quot; to terminate the question ban." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21969" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7745" RevisionGUID="744de545-14f9-495b-b284-11744860d9ec" CreationDate="2015-11-22T18:11:27.183" UserId="131658" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body; edited title" Text="Does deleting a closed question remove a question ban?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21970" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7746" RevisionGUID="ff496db9-031e-481f-a6a4-d338d9bb7b2e" CreationDate="2015-11-22T18:11:54.637" UserId="161917" Text="Since this applies to all StackExchange sites, it's covered on Meta StackExchange in [this FAQ thread](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th). This is the part that answers your question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Before you do anything else, fix your existing posts!** As noted above,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; down-votes cast by the rest of the community factor into the ban - so&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the single best thing you can do to get it lifted is to address any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; objections raised by others. Were your past questions unclear? Did&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they fail to show any effort on your part? Poorly worded, titled,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; formatted, and overly long or short? **Then fix them!**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note the emphasis on fixing. **Do not delete your posts.** As explained&#xD;&#xA;&gt; above, deleted questions (if less than 30 days old when deleted) do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; still count towards the question ban. Deleting your posts does not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; help to lift the ban. Only fixing does! Under some conditions you can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; see a list of your own deleted questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are banned from asking questions, then writing a few quality&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers that get upvoted might enable you to ask questions again. But&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as the internals of the filter are secret, there is no way to know for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; sure." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21971" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7746" RevisionGUID="b968b5cf-bbe4-447c-ac87-cbe522037afc" CreationDate="2015-11-22T18:12:43.963" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Q&amp;A (not thread)." Text="Since this applies to all StackExchange sites, it's covered on Meta StackExchange in [this FAQ Q&amp;A](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th). This is the part that answers your question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Before you do anything else, fix your existing posts!** As noted above,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; down-votes cast by the rest of the community factor into the ban - so&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the single best thing you can do to get it lifted is to address any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; objections raised by others. Were your past questions unclear? Did&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they fail to show any effort on your part? Poorly worded, titled,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; formatted, and overly long or short? **Then fix them!**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note the emphasis on fixing. **Do not delete your posts.** As explained&#xD;&#xA;&gt; above, deleted questions (if less than 30 days old when deleted) do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; still count towards the question ban. Deleting your posts does not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; help to lift the ban. Only fixing does! Under some conditions you can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; see a list of your own deleted questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are banned from asking questions, then writing a few quality&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers that get upvoted might enable you to ask questions again. But&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as the internals of the filter are secret, there is no way to know for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; sure." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21972" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7747" RevisionGUID="75c4f835-f095-4fd7-882d-57c0f786c625" CreationDate="2015-11-22T18:32:20.623" UserId="161917" Text="I would vote for not having a [design-review] tag, because that seems more likely to encourage overly broad questions than anything else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I think of a &quot;review&quot;, I usually imagine a reviewer who spends a significant amount of time looking at all aspects of a work and producing a more or less complete assessment of the work based on his or her expertise. In particular, this implies:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Every possible positive and negative aspect of the work is potentially relevant. In other words, a &quot;review&quot; question seems like it'd be very similar to the classic &quot;pros and cons&quot; questions we always close as too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The entire program must be considered as a whole. If this is a non-trivial program, that simply won't fit in an SE Q&amp;A. If this is a trivial program that does fit in this post, then it's not so much a design review as it is a code review. Obviously, we already have a site for code reviews.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a reason we often ask OPs to highlight a particular problem they're trying to solve/prevent with their design. We want to focus on just one problem when we write an answer, because that's what *answers* are good at.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also can't help but notice that the existing [design] tag is almost always used by itself. No language tags. No problem domain tags. Not even one of those squishy tags like [code-quality] or [system-reliability]. So I'm getting this impression the [design] tag is used primarily as a cop-out for users who can't be bothered to tag their questions properly (though I can't really blame them for not caring). Perhaps we should consider a burnination/mass retagging instead." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21973" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7748" RevisionGUID="8335690d-9a92-4a60-b0a0-40b48edbaec8" CreationDate="2015-11-23T00:11:27.137" UserId="31438" Text="My question &quot;[Can we ship libeay32.dll and ssleay32.dll with our installer?][1]&quot; was put on hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The legal tag says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about legal problems which may arise during software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development or questions about software law, patents and copyrights in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not get why legal questions are discouraged if we have a legal tag (seems to be a contradiction). On the other hand sometimes legal questions seem to be OK ( http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5741/31438 ). So what is wrong with my question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303302/can-we-ship-libeay32-dll-and-ssleay32-dll-with-our-installer?noredirect=1#comment633381_303302" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21974" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7748" RevisionGUID="8335690d-9a92-4a60-b0a0-40b48edbaec8" CreationDate="2015-11-23T00:11:27.137" UserId="31438" Text="Why we have a legal tag if legal questions are not welcome" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21975" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7748" RevisionGUID="8335690d-9a92-4a60-b0a0-40b48edbaec8" CreationDate="2015-11-23T00:11:27.137" UserId="31438" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21976" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7748" RevisionGUID="2043eba5-d000-4cc4-b8d5-f9f7d32b8d17" CreationDate="2015-11-23T00:35:29.057" UserId="31438" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21977" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7748" RevisionGUID="2cdbc650-857d-4568-82ee-336310aa3dac" CreationDate="2015-11-23T00:45:58.213" UserId="31438" Comment="edited title" Text="Why do we have a legal tag if legal questions are not welcome?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21978" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7749" RevisionGUID="f41c744f-c5bc-4c2b-a607-d651b1c8f40d" CreationDate="2015-11-23T00:53:18.077" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="There's a big fuzzy gray line between the software licensing questions that we find to be on topic, and the rest of the legal questions.  Many software licensing questions *are* legal questions, that are ones that a programmer is at least somewhat compitent to answer as a programmer.  Most legal questions, however as the [more info](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/legal/info) in the [tag:legal] says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The law is a minefield and the best advice anyone can give when asked about legal matters is often:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; ask a lawyer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Asking legal questions on Stack Exchange is not a substitute for taking proper local legal advice. What we can do is advise whether asking a lawyer is essential or just highly recommended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can competently answer some questions. Most often, when the answer is &quot;you need to talk to a lawyer.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With your question, this is something that you need to ask a lawyer. You've gone into the realm of encryption and munitions.  If you are in the US, this gets into [ITAR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations) and the like. It is not something that as programmers we are even able to properly give you any correct answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to talk to a lawyer. This goes ***far*** beyond the legal questions of &quot;can I remove the header from a BSD licensed file?&quot; that are (marginally) on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7265/40980&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21979" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7725" RevisionGUID="49c175d6-b956-4547-b5a9-ea02998e27f7" CreationDate="2015-11-23T04:16:26.117" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/668644247046922244" />
  <row Id="21980" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7750" RevisionGUID="f59b7778-bf1c-4a02-9ad1-fc4aefa4bb52" CreationDate="2015-11-23T19:51:56.293" UserId="2282" Text="(I'm mostly a Stack Overflow user too, but here are some potential reasons I would guess some of the Programmers.SE community would consider for closing your question.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are the specific characteristics of JavaScript that makes Node.js so special and why other languages can't build similar frameworks to rise in popularity in their own community?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't read the full original question (since it seems to have been deleted), but looking at this quote, two expressions seem to stand out: &quot;*so special*&quot; and &quot;*other languages can't*&quot;. Whether this was intentional or not, this seems to imply some sort of JavaScript/Node.js superiority over the rest.&#xD;&#xA;Asking a language or framework comparison question is generally quite subjective as it is, but if you imply some sort of superiority for the framework of your choice, I would suggest this is very likely to make the whole Q&amp;A opinion-based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another problem is that you're talking about popularity, which can vary with time quite easily. Being able to pinpoint exactly why something is popular is also generally quite difficult and subjective in itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, you seemed to be asking to compare apple and oranges. When you talk about Python and Java, you almost always talk about their standard libraries and API at the same time, which have been there virtually from the start. This is not so much the case for JavaScript (which has historically been far more dependent on the browser's capabilities). This may mean that there was a need for a &quot;standard&quot; JavaScript library, whereas Java/Python/C# already had one effectively, which in turn lead to a multitude of frameworks on these platforms addressing various other needs. Without putting some scope regarding how you want to compare JavaScript and Node.js to other languages, frameworks and platform, the question seems rather broad." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21981" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7751" RevisionGUID="0845b6da-fad3-4e8e-9914-0a3618e222f7" CreationDate="2015-11-23T23:08:24.260" UserId="161917" Text="I think we spend a bit too much time talking about what's *wrong* with Programmers.SE, and who is or is not to blame for it. In particular, it's probably fair to say that some of the &lt;strike&gt;curmudgeons&lt;/strike&gt; active close voters like me have a better understanding of what's off-topic here than we do of what's on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So let's try talking about this site's **good** questions and answers for a change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may include as much or as little commentary on your choices as you wish, and present them in any format you like, but try to stick to constructive, positive commentary. No tangential rants about how terrible other questions are or whatever.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For the record, the specific idea of a &quot;favorites poll&quot; [comes from SFF.SE](http://meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/6974/favorite-answers-and-questions-from-second-quarter-of-2015).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21982" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7751" RevisionGUID="0845b6da-fad3-4e8e-9914-0a3618e222f7" CreationDate="2015-11-23T23:08:24.260" UserId="161917" Text="Favorite questions and answers of 2015" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21983" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7751" RevisionGUID="0845b6da-fad3-4e8e-9914-0a3618e222f7" CreationDate="2015-11-23T23:08:24.260" UserId="161917" Text="|discussion|polling|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21984" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7752" RevisionGUID="de414e99-0606-4b70-8f79-59e86f2d353f" CreationDate="2015-11-23T23:08:24.260" UserId="161917" Text="[Lord Loh.'s &quot;How is spinlock different from polling?&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/301947) was one of those questions that made me think &quot;Huh, he's right, what *is* the difference?&quot; when I first saw it. But after reading [Jorg's answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/301953/161917), it makes perfect sense to me; I feel like I learned something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[pduersteler's &quot;Git branching from a feature branch to work on a subfeature&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/300183) Most git branching questions strike me as people confusing themselves by overcomplicating things, and the answers often seem to only make things more complicated, but [MichaelT's answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/300185/161917) was surprisingly clear, to the point that it &quot;feels obvious&quot; in retrospect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[David Moles's &quot;Why does(/did) Bertrand Meyer think subclassing is the only way to extend a “closed” module?&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298867), [answered by gnat](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/298930/161917) is a rare example of a question about a very abstract, high-level design principle that manages to be interesting, answerable and show genuine research effort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are two questions where a (low-rep!) OP did everything right in asking their question, and as a direct result they got exactly the answer they needed. This is the kind of Q&amp;A that makes me think &quot;the system *does* work!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [TBridges42's &quot;Is a large static initializer a code smell?&quot;, answered by amon](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298402/is-a-large-static-initializer-a-code-smell)&#xD;&#xA;- [James Ko's &quot;Is it possible to avoid abstraction inversion in this scenario?&quot;, also answered by amon](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/287470/is-it-possible-to-avoid-abstraction-inversion-in-this-scenario)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, some high-quality answers that convinced me not to close-vote questions which initially seemed too broad/opinion-based to get a good answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Thomas Owen's answer on BЈовић's &quot;Where to describe architectural problems?&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/303011/161917)&#xD;&#xA; - [MichaelT's answer on Kimble's &quot;Estimating in groups - How to extract useful statistics / estimates?&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/298087/161917)&#xD;&#xA; - [MichaelT's answer on Carcigenicate's &quot;How does a skip list work?&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/287263/161917)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21985" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7752" RevisionGUID="b9fb8911-96c0-4902-ad81-4c3660b35eac" CreationDate="2015-11-24T02:31:14.707" UserId="4" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="[Lord Loh.'s &quot;How is spinlock different from polling?&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/301947) was one of those questions that made me think &quot;Huh, he's right, what *is* the difference?&quot; when I first saw it. But after reading [Jorg's answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/301953/161917), it makes perfect sense to me; I feel like I learned something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[pduersteler's &quot;Git branching from a feature branch to work on a subfeature&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/300183) Most git branching questions strike me as people confusing themselves by overcomplicating things, and the answers often seem to only make things more complicated, but [MichaelT's answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/300185/161917) was surprisingly clear, to the point that it &quot;feels obvious&quot; in retrospect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[David Moles's &quot;Why does(/did) Bertrand Meyer think subclassing is the only way to extend a “closed” module?&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298867), [answered by gnat](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/298930/161917) is a rare example of a question about a very abstract, high-level design principle that manages to be interesting, answerable and show genuine research effort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are two questions where a (low-rep!) OP did everything right in asking their question, and as a direct result they got exactly the answer they needed. This is the kind of Q&amp;A that makes me think &quot;the system *does* work!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [TBridges42's &quot;Is a large static initializer a code smell?&quot;, answered by amon](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298402/is-a-large-static-initializer-a-code-smell)&#xD;&#xA;- [James Ko's &quot;Is it possible to avoid abstraction inversion in this scenario?&quot;, also answered by amon](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/287470/is-it-possible-to-avoid-abstraction-inversion-in-this-scenario)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, some high-quality answers that convinced me not to close-vote questions which initially seemed too broad/opinion-based to get a good answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Thomas Owens's answer on BЈовић's &quot;Where to describe architectural problems?&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/303011/161917)&#xD;&#xA; - [MichaelT's answer on Kimble's &quot;Estimating in groups - How to extract useful statistics / estimates?&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/298087/161917)&#xD;&#xA; - [MichaelT's answer on Carcigenicate's &quot;How does a skip list work?&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/287263/161917)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21986" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7751" RevisionGUID="348c81d6-9b8c-4595-b786-df264b975753" CreationDate="2015-11-24T08:33:40.117" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|polling|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21987" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7751" RevisionGUID="143ff0d5-7011-40d2-8280-c44e7a3109c3" CreationDate="2015-11-24T10:21:32.490" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/669098516879441921" />
  <row Id="21988" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7753" RevisionGUID="6ef791f0-b8fd-4e73-aaed-8470df7b391e" CreationDate="2015-11-24T12:17:35.110" UserId="25476" Text="Some good questions or answers that I thought were astounding this year:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just downright interesting: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298628/which-language-is-a-bios-written-in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Great question, felt compelled to write an answer myself amongst other great answers: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303010/where-to-describe-architectural-problems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302124/are-there-any-significant-disadvantages-to-depending-upon-abstractions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really liked this question because it garnered some very thought provoking answers. This is one of those questions where I now think about the persistence of data and highly sensitive data in a different way than I have before.  One of those questions that attract answers where you realize that you might have a tool in your toolbelt to handle this kind of situation, but you think pretty deeply about why that is great tool and what features of that tool make it great.  I liked the one answer so much that I put a bounty on the question just to reward the one author. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/300373/no-central-database&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not a high view count question but I think it was a good question with a great answer: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298388/how-to-store-and-find-updated-values-in-a-distributed-hash-table&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More self promotion but everybody loves a good Agile question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298247/is-it-possible-to-take-a-flexible-agile-approach-to-projects-that-require-estima&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interesting thought exercise: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297327/is-a-memory-of-all-possible-permutations-of-a-kilobyte-block-and-pointers-possib/297329#297329&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Dates, calendars, durations, intervals, timestamps, epoch, timezones, all the fun stuff that Programmers since the dawn of computers have underestimated the complexity of only to be driven mad by the unaccounted complexity of doing any application development where Time is involved: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296904/why-isnt-there-a-true-date-only-data-type&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good explanation of Merge Sort: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297160/why-is-mergesort-olog-n&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286625/best-way-to-consume-rest-service-within-servlet-on-same-server&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Simple question, simple excellent answer: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288597/what-the-best-practice-in-rest-to-append-or-delete-to-a-list&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(more to come)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21989" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7753" RevisionGUID="1690ded8-0478-4c6c-9690-8939f404d3f6" CreationDate="2015-11-24T12:29:24.460" UserId="25476" Comment="added 935 characters in body" Text="Some good questions or answers that I thought were astounding this year:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just downright interesting: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298628/which-language-is-a-bios-written-in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Great question, felt compelled to write an answer myself amongst other great answers: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303010/where-to-describe-architectural-problems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302124/are-there-any-significant-disadvantages-to-depending-upon-abstractions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really liked this question because it garnered some very thought provoking answers. This is one of those questions where I now think about the persistence of data and highly sensitive data in a different way than I have before.  One of those questions that attract answers where you realize that you might have a tool in your toolbelt to handle this kind of situation, but you think pretty deeply about why that is great tool and what features of that tool make it great.  I liked the one answer so much that I put a bounty on the question just to reward the one author. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/300373/no-central-database&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not a high view count question but I think it was a good question with a great answer: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298388/how-to-store-and-find-updated-values-in-a-distributed-hash-table&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More self promotion but everybody loves a good Agile question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298247/is-it-possible-to-take-a-flexible-agile-approach-to-projects-that-require-estima&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interesting thought exercise: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297327/is-a-memory-of-all-possible-permutations-of-a-kilobyte-block-and-pointers-possib/297329#297329&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Dates, calendars, durations, intervals, timestamps, epoch, timezones, all the fun stuff that Programmers since the dawn of computers have underestimated the complexity of only to be driven mad by the unaccounted complexity of doing any application development where Time is involved: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/296904/why-isnt-there-a-true-date-only-data-type&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good explanation of Merge Sort: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297160/why-is-mergesort-olog-n&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286625/best-way-to-consume-rest-service-within-servlet-on-same-server&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Simple question, simple excellent answer: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/288597/what-the-best-practice-in-rest-to-append-or-delete-to-a-list&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another simple question, simple answer: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286702/uml-what-is-an-activity-in-an-activity-diagram&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interesting and thought provoking question about SOA principles with an excellent easy to follow answer (Yes this question wasn't posted this year but this answer was): http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/199543/does-soa-service-composition-actually-work-in-practice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thomas Owens wrote a great answer here: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/278135/notifications-in-use-case-diagrams&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This borders on &quot;maybe too opinionated?&quot; but it is certainly a controversial question that attracted answers with up and downvotes. Thought it was interesting: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276640/is-this-breaking-soa&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good Q&amp;A on the atomicity of unit tests: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/274655/how-to-make-one-test-depend-on-the-results-of-another-test&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21990" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7754" RevisionGUID="faeef2fe-f6ad-4fb5-84a9-1842e7f24796" CreationDate="2015-11-24T13:30:13.420" UserId="204829" Text="I recently posted a question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303435/enterprise-architecture-where-to-put-persistence-dbcontext-management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd come here from StackOverflow specifically because I thought that this was the place for more &quot;broad&quot; questions, yet a comment indicates that this may be too broad still for programmers.stackexchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a place within the SE network for these types of questions, or are they generally frowned upon across the board because they might not tend to have clear cut, correct answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21991" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7754" RevisionGUID="faeef2fe-f6ad-4fb5-84a9-1842e7f24796" CreationDate="2015-11-24T13:30:13.420" UserId="204829" Text="Where to ask &quot;too broad&quot; questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21992" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7754" RevisionGUID="faeef2fe-f6ad-4fb5-84a9-1842e7f24796" CreationDate="2015-11-24T13:30:13.420" UserId="204829" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21993" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7754" RevisionGUID="b2245cf6-0c55-4e0c-8fa2-89de38a00c19" CreationDate="2015-11-24T13:35:44.917" UserId="204829" Comment="added quote to comment" Text="I recently posted a question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303435/enterprise-architecture-where-to-put-persistence-dbcontext-management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd come here from StackOverflow specifically because I thought that this was the place for more &quot;broad&quot; questions, yet a comment indicates that this may be too broad still for programmers.stackexchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Any time we venture into &quot;enterprise&quot; decisions, things get too complicated very quickly. I voted to close as &quot;too broad&quot;. There are a million reason why any single answer would be incorrect for another project. Even if it feels correct to you, it's not correct in a general sense. Anytime there's no clear-cut correct answer, the question is not a good fit for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a place within the SE network for these types of questions, or are they generally frowned upon across the board because they might not tend to have clear cut, correct answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21994" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7755" RevisionGUID="0bc39da6-c3fb-43ce-95d7-b155429168ae" CreationDate="2015-11-24T13:42:08.740" UserId="4" Text="There is no place to questions that are &quot;too broad&quot; on the network. However, I don't think that your question falls into the &quot;too broad&quot; category (at least on an initial reading). I wouldn't worry about one vote." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21995" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7754" RevisionGUID="e25adaf0-1a24-420c-a177-f53b7e86490a" CreationDate="2015-11-24T13:50:32.863" UserId="204829" Comment="added request for network map" Text="I recently posted a question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303435/enterprise-architecture-where-to-put-persistence-dbcontext-management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd come here from StackOverflow specifically because I thought that this was the place for more &quot;broad&quot; questions, yet a comment indicates that this may be too broad still for programmers.stackexchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Any time we venture into &quot;enterprise&quot; decisions, things get too complicated very quickly. I voted to close as &quot;too broad&quot;. There are a million reason why any single answer would be incorrect for another project. Even if it feels correct to you, it's not correct in a general sense. Anytime there's no clear-cut correct answer, the question is not a good fit for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a place within the SE network for these types of questions, or are they generally frowned upon across the board because they might not tend to have clear cut, correct answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or perhaps some sort of network map to help newbs like myself land in the right areas and conform to the right expectations?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21996" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7754" RevisionGUID="bc294125-52be-429a-b34e-9ffd1d38f1cb" CreationDate="2015-11-24T13:55:45.363" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2950/should-hi-thanks-taglines-and-salutations-be-removed-from-posts" Text="I recently posted a question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303435/enterprise-architecture-where-to-put-persistence-dbcontext-management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd come here from Stack Overflow specifically because I thought that this was the place for more &quot;broad&quot; questions, yet a comment indicates that this may be too broad still for programmers.stackexchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Any time we venture into &quot;enterprise&quot; decisions, things get too complicated very quickly. I voted to close as &quot;too broad&quot;. There are a million reason why any single answer would be incorrect for another project. Even if it feels correct to you, it's not correct in a general sense. Anytime there's no clear-cut correct answer, the question is not a good fit for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a place within the SE network for these types of questions, or are they generally frowned upon across the board because they might not tend to have clear cut, correct answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or perhaps some sort of network map to help newbies like myself land in the right areas and conform to the right expectations?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21997" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7754" RevisionGUID="95269860-94f9-4d6d-b22a-acc286cf6b15" CreationDate="2015-11-24T13:59:26.063" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6502],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="21998" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7756" RevisionGUID="e63d7c86-0b7d-4ffe-a397-61ac945b4e22" CreationDate="2015-11-24T15:25:02.843" UserId="47136" Text="[Cmon, now.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-an-alien-language?noredirect=1#comment633790_303438) Apparently using a hyperbolic writing style is grounds for marking things as &quot;unclear&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question very clearly describes a scenario in which the UTF-8 standard would have to be greatly expanded, and the effects/feasibility of such an act. The question has garnered many direct and concrete answers ranging from historical considerations to [mathematical limitations](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-an-alien-language?noredirect=1#comment633785_303438).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One argument for the closing of the discussion was that it would be [hard to search for](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-an-alien-language?noredirect=1#comment633769_303438) (I'm assuming that's the reason for throwing a random link at me, anyway). However, aside from SEO considerations, there are at the time of the writing [40 questions tagged &lt;kbd&gt;unicode&lt;/kbd&gt;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/unicode) and [15 tagged &lt;kbd&gt;utf-8&lt;/kbd&gt;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/utf-8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the answer to whomever's question cannot be found among the [52 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/utf-8+or+unicode) on this site because of the way the question was posed, then they're not going to find it on this site *at all*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was garnering a good amount of information that I have yet to find aggregated into a single place other than the RFC for unicode (which doesn't address alien invasion hypotheticals, mind you), and the closure of the post yielded a [missed opportunity for a potentially revealing and informative answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-the-inclusion-of-a-vast-alien-language#comment633790_303438). Not to mention a diamond mod [closed it](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/303438/revisions) in a mere 30 seconds or so, which leads me to believe it wasn't read in-full to begin with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this what I should expect from Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21999" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7756" RevisionGUID="e63d7c86-0b7d-4ffe-a397-61ac945b4e22" CreationDate="2015-11-24T15:25:02.843" UserId="47136" Text="How is this unclear?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22000" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7756" RevisionGUID="e63d7c86-0b7d-4ffe-a397-61ac945b4e22" CreationDate="2015-11-24T15:25:02.843" UserId="47136" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22001" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7757" RevisionGUID="19d3f22f-f64a-443a-9cfd-bd668db88a1f" CreationDate="2015-11-24T15:27:12.363" UserId="47136" Text="Chrome on OSX here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No better way to explain this than steps to recreate:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Start the ask question form on Meta&#xD;&#xA;- Go to add a tag (focus the tag box). The primary tags will appear without any input.&#xD;&#xA;- Mouse over one of the tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They flicker, and only do it if no input is in the box." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22002" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7757" RevisionGUID="19d3f22f-f64a-443a-9cfd-bd668db88a1f" CreationDate="2015-11-24T15:27:12.363" UserId="47136" Text="Flickering primary tags on meta" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22003" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7757" RevisionGUID="19d3f22f-f64a-443a-9cfd-bd668db88a1f" CreationDate="2015-11-24T15:27:12.363" UserId="47136" Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22004" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7756" RevisionGUID="12baa67e-7412-4749-9cb2-ed854c4cf3cc" CreationDate="2015-11-24T15:31:12.987" UserId="47136" Comment="added 118 characters in body" Text="[Cmon, now.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-an-alien-language?noredirect=1#comment633790_303438) Apparently using a hyperbolic writing style is grounds for marking things as &quot;unclear&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question very clearly describes a scenario in which the UTF-8 standard would have to be greatly expanded, and the effects/feasibility of such an act. The question has garnered many direct and concrete answers ranging from historical considerations to [mathematical limitations](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-an-alien-language?noredirect=1#comment633785_303438).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One argument for the closing of the discussion was that it would be [hard to search for](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-an-alien-language?noredirect=1#comment633769_303438) (I'm assuming that's the reason for throwing a random link at me, anyway). However, aside from SEO considerations, there are at the time of the writing [40 questions tagged &lt;kbd&gt;unicode&lt;/kbd&gt;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/unicode) and [15 tagged &lt;kbd&gt;utf-8&lt;/kbd&gt;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/utf-8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the answer to whomever's question cannot be found among the [52 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/utf-8+or+unicode) on this site because of the way the question was posed, then they're not going to find it on this site *at all*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was garnering a good amount of information that I have yet to find aggregated into a single place other than the RFC for unicode (which doesn't address alien invasion hypotheticals, mind you), and the closure of the post yielded a [missed opportunity for a potentially revealing and informative answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-the-inclusion-of-a-vast-alien-language#comment633790_303438). Not to mention a diamond mod [closed it](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/303438/revisions) in a mere 30 seconds or so, which leads me to believe it [wasn't read in-full to begin with](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/185288/180420) (link is generously written by one of the opponents to the question at hand).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this what I should expect from Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22005" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7756" RevisionGUID="1a824b70-a241-499d-848d-871baed410b3" CreationDate="2015-11-24T15:38:02.747" UserId="47136" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="[Cmon, now.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-an-alien-language?noredirect=1#comment633790_303438) Apparently using a hyperbolic writing style is grounds for marking things as &quot;unclear&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question very clearly describes a scenario in which the UTF-8 standard would have to be greatly expanded, and the effects/feasibility of such an act. The question has garnered many direct and concrete answers ranging from historical considerations to [mathematical limitations](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-an-alien-language?noredirect=1#comment633785_303438).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One argument for the closing of the discussion was that it would be [hard to search for](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-an-alien-language?noredirect=1#comment633769_303438) (I'm assuming that's the reason for throwing a random link at me, anyway). However, aside from SEO considerations there are, at the time of this writing, [40 questions tagged &lt;kbd&gt;unicode&lt;/kbd&gt;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/unicode) and [15 tagged &lt;kbd&gt;utf-8&lt;/kbd&gt;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/utf-8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the answer to whomever's question cannot be found among the [52 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/utf-8+or+unicode) on this site because of the way the question was posed, then they're not going to find it on this site *at all*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was garnering a good amount of information that I have yet to find aggregated into a single place other than the RFC for unicode (which doesn't address alien invasion hypotheticals, mind you), and the closure of the post yielded a [missed opportunity for a potentially revealing and informative answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-the-inclusion-of-a-vast-alien-language#comment633790_303438). Not to mention a diamond mod [closed it](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/303438/revisions) in a mere 30 seconds or so, which leads me to believe it [wasn't read in-full to begin with](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/185288/180420) (link is generously written by one of the opponents to the question at hand).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this what I should expect from Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22006" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7758" RevisionGUID="817b39c4-92ec-4e79-af25-2ca73f22fe64" CreationDate="2015-11-24T16:02:27.310" UserId="4" Text="I've reopened. I don't see a problem with the question as a whole. The title is more click-baity than what we're used to, but I don't think that's necessarily a problem. If someone wanted to edit that, they could." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22007" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7759" RevisionGUID="8b4a3d77-dd29-4603-9741-d7718e6384b8" CreationDate="2015-11-24T16:02:35.213" UserId="52929" Text="I think this question could benefit greatly from simply rewriting it to not have the &quot;alien&quot; focus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, &quot;can UTF-8 support a new language with millions of specific character glyphs?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now, it seems to be a hyperbolic &quot;aliens!&quot; question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22008" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7760" RevisionGUID="27840bca-ba1f-431a-a3f6-d8bd10718c5e" CreationDate="2015-11-24T16:05:09.913" UserId="155513" Text="Is there any reason we have both [tag:exceptions] and [tag:exception-handling]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Imho, the latter should be merged into the former, or at least synonymized, as there's no relevant difference between their topics." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22009" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7760" RevisionGUID="27840bca-ba1f-431a-a3f6-d8bd10718c5e" CreationDate="2015-11-24T16:05:09.913" UserId="155513" Text="exception-handling is all about exceptions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22010" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7760" RevisionGUID="27840bca-ba1f-431a-a3f6-d8bd10718c5e" CreationDate="2015-11-24T16:05:09.913" UserId="155513" Text="|discussion|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22011" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7756" RevisionGUID="9e1ff2b7-cefa-4c6b-b994-103913b28e22" CreationDate="2015-11-24T17:48:14.553" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22012" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7756" RevisionGUID="8dca4f46-8b07-4c79-b27b-f44a80ff22b4" CreationDate="2015-11-24T17:48:31.780" UserId="25936" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[7273],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="22013" PostHistoryTypeId="11" PostId="7756" RevisionGUID="e416fbae-9827-4abb-ac9a-039bedf6f66c" CreationDate="2015-11-24T17:48:36.327" UserId="25936" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="22014" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7756" RevisionGUID="900ca00c-a2e6-485c-b498-357aabb511f0" CreationDate="2015-11-24T17:55:42.267" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22015" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7761" RevisionGUID="8928f2b0-a4f5-41fc-b606-0efd219f40c3" CreationDate="2015-11-25T05:02:30.010" UserId="96050" Text="I wasn't going to update the experiment this week, but the results this week were so encouraging I can't help myself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Week posted Qs  Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion Rate&#xD;&#xA;    ----------- --- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- -------------&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-12  325    190      58.5%           8.9%     2.6%      11.8%         40.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-19  349    205      58.7%           8.8%     2.4%       5.6%         39.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-26  319    207      64.9%           8.7%     1.4%      11.1%         46.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-02  362    218      60.2%          13.3%     3.7%      10.3%         44.2%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09  286    206      72.0%          20.9%     3.9%       7.0%         41.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-16  340    205      60.3%          17.6%     9.3%      30.6%         35.6%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only has the close rate dropped to something like the pre-experiment rate, the reopen rate has rather dramatically increased. Much of this is due to more edited questions getting reopened than in previous weeks. (It might be too early to tell if it's statistically significant, but more closed questions are being edited since the test began.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also spent some time last week trying to learn what prompted people to close so many questions on Programmers. While there are many detailed reasons, two themes emerged in my mind:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that remain open are signposts that prompt new questions of the same type.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. It's difficult to maintain the quality of answers on certain types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first didn't surprise me. It's a variation of the broken window theory (which is [different than &quot;zero-tolerance policing&quot;](http://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in-policing/research-evidence-review/broken-windows-policing/) by the way.) Since it's often difficult to curate a large corpus of answers, it's a lot more convenient to curate the questions instead. Some sites, however, pull it off. Skeptics, for instance, has [strict rules](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/faq-welcome-to-new-users) about what sort of questions can be asked (notably, notable ones) and what is required of answers (particularly that they be referenced). As a result, Skeptics deletes a large percentage of answers that have a score &gt; 0:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;       7634     35.5     19.64     0.05     0          97.16 Area 51 Discussions&#xD;&#xA;       8288     13.61    55.68     0.1      6.03       28.63 Skeptics&#xD;&#xA;       5782     10.26    46.49     0.09     0.02       48.74 Islam     &#xD;&#xA;     141392      9.38    25.01     0.45     0.02       78.15 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       4810      6.63    52.45     0.12     0.46       27.9  Biblical Hermeneutics&#xD;&#xA;      15660      5.86    45.84     0.03     0.37       48.31 Christianity&#xD;&#xA;      22572      5.08    28.81     0.33     0.02       63    Web Apps&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cut the list off at sites that delete at least 5% of positively-scored answers. Area 51 is interesting because 97% of &quot;good answers&quot; get deleted when their question gets deleted as a result of their [failed proposal being deleted](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/9068/do-not-delete-discussions-about-deleted-proposals). But the next in line is a real site: Skeptics. Their policies encourage deletion not only of entire questions, but individual answers as well. (Skeptics is unique in its extensive use of post notices.) [Islam](http://meta.islam.stackexchange.com/a/610/138), [Christianity](http://meta.christianity.stackexchange.com/a/1446/914) and [Biblical Hermeneutics](http://meta.hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/a/533/68) have fairly strict requirements that answers be well-supported. Those sites also emphasize narrow questions that allow moderators to delete many answers as non-answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm less familiar with Web Apps, but I believe they [had a major change in scope](http://meta.webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/764/proposal-to-clean-up-the-scope-of-the-site-is-your-question-about-using-a-speci) not unlike what happened on Programmers. When you shift the topic of a site, that will leave many now-off-topic questions that need deleting along with all their answers. As a corollary, there's a real need to lock questions and their answers. But look what happens when we limit to answers posted in the last year:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;      10617      4.53    34.44     0.01     0.03       66.53 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       2999      1.93    27.91     0.23     0          48.28 Web Apps  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Web Apps has settled into a fairly normal pattern of deleting relatively few upvoted answers. It's also split fairly evenly between deleting those answers individual and as a result of deleting the question. Programmers has become a little less extreme in terms of positively-scored-answer deletion, but it still ranks near the top of the list with Area 51 (31%), Skeptics (11%), Islam (4.5%) and Christianity (4%). More recent additions include Hinduism (4%) and Health (4%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Ok. What does this all mean?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Truthfully, I'm not sure. My current guess is that people are concerned that forces outside of their control will flood the site with embarrassing or just-plain-wrong answers. (This relates to another theme I heard a lot of: the Hot Network Questions list.) [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) gets [cited a lot here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=url%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.stackoverflow.com%2F2010%2F09%2Fgood-subjective-bad-subjective%2F). However, I wonder if the post gives the false impression that burden falls _solely on the question_. Certainly the way a question is asked increases or decreases the odds it will receive [crowd-pleasing nonanswers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers). But ultimately, we need to [hold answers to that standard too](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1110/96050).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other thing that kinda gets lost when talking about Good Subjective is that it isn't that opinions aren't allowed. Rather **naked opinions are noise**. The post even suggests:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Use your specific experiences to back up your opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that software engineering is one part science and one part craftsmanship, so it should be surprising to see some answers backed by experience rather than data. This is doubly true since the profession is incredibly young. Given quality of [users on this site](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&amp;filter=all), there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, it's a lot easier to delete popular answers if they don't actually answer the question. One technique that [seems to work](http://meta.christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/690/what-makes-a-good-focused-question) is requiring questions focus down on a specific domain. For instance, instead of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125320/do-todo-comments-make-sense maybe it would be better to ask &quot;Should TODO comments be removed when a project is in maintainance mode?&quot; That way the focus of the question isn't a holy war between pro-TODO and anti-TODO, but about the specific utility of those comments. (Obviously the asker should specify the situation they are actually facing.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22016" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7762" RevisionGUID="621edee9-e2b3-4fb3-b503-3449914c8e51" CreationDate="2015-11-25T08:04:11.870" UserId="20065" Text="[gnat][1] always got nice comments to bad questions. For example [this][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this some script? Or he writes them manually?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303514/everything-i-write-turns-into-a-mess-tempting-me-to-start-over#comment633971_303514" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22017" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7762" RevisionGUID="621edee9-e2b3-4fb3-b503-3449914c8e51" CreationDate="2015-11-25T08:04:11.870" UserId="20065" Text="How gnat has proper connect for almost every question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22018" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7762" RevisionGUID="621edee9-e2b3-4fb3-b503-3449914c8e51" CreationDate="2015-11-25T08:04:11.870" UserId="20065" Text="|discussion|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22019" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7763" RevisionGUID="88fcd9dc-094b-42cf-ae09-58a23bf4352b" CreationDate="2015-11-25T09:15:08.630" UserId="5099" Text="The synonym suggestion has been placed in the system. It now needs a couple of (up) votes to take effect." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22020" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7762" RevisionGUID="b13d231b-e29a-4401-aa50-f22b8163084e" CreationDate="2015-11-25T10:18:26.650" UserId="20065" Comment="edited title" Text="How gnat has proper comment for almost every question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22021" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7764" RevisionGUID="f867f865-6196-47bb-a440-2be17a5d3207" CreationDate="2015-11-25T21:13:11.217" UserId="935" Text="Any idea why the Hot Network Questions suddenly look like this on P.SE?  (But not here on Meta.P.SE, for whatever reason...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mp3bM.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22022" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7764" RevisionGUID="f867f865-6196-47bb-a440-2be17a5d3207" CreationDate="2015-11-25T21:13:11.217" UserId="935" Text="Network icons are broken" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22023" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7764" RevisionGUID="f867f865-6196-47bb-a440-2be17a5d3207" CreationDate="2015-11-25T21:13:11.217" UserId="935" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22024" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7764" RevisionGUID="8f36695b-c0af-4652-996d-e9942237698e" CreationDate="2015-11-26T04:10:57.670" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="tag design. medium version of image in screen, (large if click)." Text="Any idea why the Hot Network Questions suddenly look like this on P.SE?  (But not here on Meta.P.SE, for whatever reason...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![][2]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mp3bM.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mp3bMm.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22025" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7764" RevisionGUID="8f36695b-c0af-4652-996d-e9942237698e" CreationDate="2015-11-26T04:10:57.670" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="tag design. medium version of image in screen, (large if click)." Text="|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22026" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7763" RevisionGUID="a5f72303-5201-45d5-992e-7f17ac314328" CreationDate="2015-11-26T07:49:07.250" UserId="5099" Comment="added 65 characters in body" Text="The synonym suggestion has been placed in the system. It now needs a couple of (up) votes at http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/exceptions/synonyms to take effect." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22027" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7765" RevisionGUID="c2c74019-651e-4a0f-baf3-9d719b3a2fe3" CreationDate="2015-11-26T14:17:47.553" UserId="22685" Text="I'm going to blow my own trumpet here but as the question was good, I feel ok with it. (parrrrrp)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Should You Write Your Back End as an API][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;this is a question hat encouraged some discussion (in a good way, not the usual &quot;you suck&quot;, &quot;no you suck&quot; kind of discussion) to build up answers that took the questioner from a somewhat entrenched position to a better understanding where he accepted what we were telling him. I think this provided less of an answer and more of a guided education.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/287819/should-you-write-your-back-end-as-an-api" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22028" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7766" RevisionGUID="705189b0-83cb-43bd-a708-210ab27cfd30" CreationDate="2015-11-26T14:41:53.173" UserId="31260" Text="The comment in your example is not quite typical. It is copied from [Workplace meta](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/2696/168). They get this particular kind of troublesome questions much more often than Programmers, that's why they invested extra effort into writing detailed description of what's specifically wrong with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the nice tone of this comment, this is, again, kind of a brand mark of Workplace. Moderators and active regulars over there are fond of expressing the critique in very polite way and as far as I can tell, they do it really well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can bookmark and refer appropriate sections (answers) in [their meta post](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/2693/168) when you see workplace-y questions that don't look OK, although as I already mentioned Programmers get these quite infrequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more typical issues in the questions, I refer respective posts at our meta, conveniently listed in FAQ: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One thing I'd want to warn against is referring that _whole FAQ_ instead of meta posts specifically targeted to address concrete issues in the post you comment on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, I haven't seen our regulars (mis)using FAQ like that but I believe it's important enough to explicitly warn against this. Askers are unlikely to pay attention to your meta references unless they can easily see how it directly applies to specific issues with their question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for technical means to make it easier, as pointed in comments, StackApps have special &quot;pro-forma&quot; script for that ([discussed in details at MSE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/136609/165773)). Note that if you switch browsers or machine you'd lose data for this script, so you may prefer to simply keep comments in some file and copy from there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22034" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7764" RevisionGUID="33e7ca63-a457-47a1-ab8e-f8bffbf0e3f1" CreationDate="2015-11-26T18:32:35.917" UserId="4767" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22035" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7768" RevisionGUID="b7d9e07d-04d9-4a35-8d99-6dff2e2887b0" CreationDate="2015-11-28T00:00:09.977" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The post http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2757/40980 has the question body of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why more or less monitors is worse than your configuration?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why is important use it in this way (position)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Productivity is obvious, but what specific advantage?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A picture would be nice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is an out right poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, it is made worse by the accepted answer having an image shack image that has since been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There really is nothing redeeming of the poll. Most of the images are people showing off their monitors or bragging about the specifications of them circa 2010.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I *was* going to edit out the image shack image (and the 'my current configuration' bit preceding it) on the accepted answer, but its locked and... well... it really isn't a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8HYho.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22036" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7768" RevisionGUID="b7d9e07d-04d9-4a35-8d99-6dff2e2887b0" CreationDate="2015-11-28T00:00:09.977" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Reconsider historical lock on &quot;How many monitors do you use? Why? How they are used?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22037" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7768" RevisionGUID="b7d9e07d-04d9-4a35-8d99-6dff2e2887b0" CreationDate="2015-11-28T00:00:09.977" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|specific-question|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22038" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7769" RevisionGUID="44bec7af-5fef-4b5d-95f8-c2f1c0ad47b9" CreationDate="2015-11-29T01:38:19.753" UserId="6605" Text="As someone who answered this question in 2011, I agree with you on both points:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - In its current form, it shouldn't exist: it's a poll and most answers are less than constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The lock makes it impossible to improve both the question and the answer. A year ago, I was writing [a very detailed article on three vs. two monitors setup][1], and recalled that I already posted a related answer on Stack Exchange. After finding the answer with the intention of making it more constructive, it appeared that there is nothing I can do because of the lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest to either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Remove the question altogether,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Unlock the question and edit it in order to be less a poll and more about which setup is actually **objectively** better in specific situations. It's not about “Look at my great setup”, but “If your activity as a developer involves this or that, you can increase your productivity by modifying your setup this way”. This also involves modifying some answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Cleanup the answers by removing the ones which are nonconstructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Of course, one may notice that I have a personal interest in the second option, which would mean that the top high voted answers will be removed, and mine will become the top one.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.pelicandd.com/article/48/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22039" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7770" RevisionGUID="c0be60de-b3f3-4ab5-8b4d-d8bbcd668d08" CreationDate="2015-11-29T22:19:08.867" UserId="31260" Text="**TL;DR** Can system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently I've seen notes from Stack Exchange staff about how it would be nice if site would allow for broader, softer kind questions. This was [said by Robert Cartaino here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7650/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The idea that there are hordes of people just waiting flood the site for want of a single precedent was one of those things we worried about before we had anything to back it up. But if you haven't noticed, Stack Exchange has moved on from a lot of those old adages foretelling of widespread doom in ways that simply never materialized in actual use... _every_ question must have exactly one absolutely factual answer. ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and [by Jon Ericson here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7761/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Given quality of users on this site, there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, system makes it difficult (I would say, unnecessarily difficult) to produce and maintain quality in questions with many answers. System doesn't provide any means to make it easier and some of its features even tend to incentivize low quality content in questions of this kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current UI doesn't offer any means to help answerers and readers find / avoid repeating what was stated before. Combined with being very easy to post an answer, this leads to useless answers that don't add anything over what was posted before. This is noticeable even in questions with brief answers which are easy to check ([example](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/271158/839601)) and when answers are lengthy, things become even worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This penalizes web search visitors, forcing them to read same points over and over and over again. Letting repetitive answers proliferate is a step toward old-fashioned &quot;forums&quot;, and quite a substantial one I think.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particular feature that essentially encourages low quality content is Hot Network Questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To set the record straight for readers not familiar with its purpose - it is established pretty firmly and it has nothing to do with content quality. The feature is there only to show network wide audience entertaining / interesting questions. If you're interested, refer MSE for more details on that: [What is the Goal of “Hot Network Questions”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per se, entertainment aspect of HNQ looks pretty acceptable and I don't think it should necessarily be that it makes a critical obstacle in maintaining quality content. Thing is though, as implemented currently... it really does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;HNQ, the way it is now, make maintaining quality content cumbersome and painful. Problems with content quality in hot questions are well known for a long time ([1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;), [2](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;'Answers quality in hot questions'&quot;)), and it keeps happening here and now, see for example http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over years, Stack Exchange tried various ways to handle questions with multiple answers but none of these seemed to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Toothless Atwood's warning](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/86895/165773) was probably the first one,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Did you read through all the existing answers first to make sure your answer will be contributing something new?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All I can say about it is that it doesn't work, has never worked and is unlikely to ever work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another thing they tried was automatic conversion to community wiki when there are many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This worked... sorta, in the sense that it made it easier to downvote low quality answers (without incurring rep penalty) and removed incentive to flood popular questions with answers in a (frankly, quite realistic) hope to gain a bit of rep with a random upvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this trick is, it had some _very_ ugly side effects due to involved rep denial from users providing quality content and in the end it was [deservedly discarded](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228940/165773). Thing is though, nothing was done to compensate loss of features used to counter issues in questions with many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, there's standard rhetoric about voting down low quality answers but tell me, how many users can afford rep loss of voting this way, say, 5-10 of total 20 answers in a question? how many of them can afford doing this every month? every week? And if you additionally consider &quot;sympathy upvotes&quot; frequently happening to such answers in popular questions (each worth more than 4 votes down rep wise), this starts looking like a wishful thinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another approach that was tried about two years ago is randomizing hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seemed to work at first but as time passed by it revealed signs of inability to scale. Shuffling 100 hot questions to 100K site visitors works, shuffling same amount to 1 million will break and essentially return us back to old known issues with &quot;snowball effect&quot; when questions stick in the list solely because they were advertised there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Somewhere along the way they implemented special adjustment for Stack Overflow questions, which strongly pushes these from hot list after 7 hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to work, in the sense that there aren't very loud complaints about hot questions at MSO anymore (like it was in the past with [&quot;croissants&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/190106/165773)). Still, this doesn't resolve problems at other sites. And still, even SO is having garbage answers problem in questions that acquire popularity and high views organically, not via hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Yet another feature intended to help control answers quality is question protection, which makes it impossible to answer for users having less than 10 on-site reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By design, protection is intended to handle only cases of extreme abuse. It doesn't provide any means against low quality answers posted by users with over 10 rep. Also, due to some implementation specifics, even very limited functionality it offers frequently turns out useless in hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Can system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22040" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7770" RevisionGUID="c0be60de-b3f3-4ab5-8b4d-d8bbcd668d08" CreationDate="2015-11-29T22:19:08.867" UserId="31260" Text="System supports questions with multiple answers poorly (and is becoming worse at it)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22041" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7770" RevisionGUID="c0be60de-b3f3-4ab5-8b4d-d8bbcd668d08" CreationDate="2015-11-29T22:19:08.867" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|answer-quality|quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22042" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7771" RevisionGUID="cd6929d0-2cf2-41fa-a63b-97e7b871eaa6" CreationDate="2015-11-29T22:19:08.867" UserId="31260" Text="As an example, here are some ideas of what can be considered:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* When there are many answers already, [let users compare draft of their post against prior answers](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/2562/168). This would make it naturally harder to add yet another answer as their amount increases (note how this isn't limited to low rep users, as opposed to protection). This would also help responsible users ensure that their answer doesn't repeat what was stated already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Introduce more scalable randomisation of hot questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/247195/165773) by picking more than 100 &quot;candidate&quot; questions for hot list. This would ensure that audience attention is spread more evenly and help tame &quot;snowball effect&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Give elevated protection privileges to 30K users in questions with 3 or more answers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/268729/165773) and [don't count reputation gained within checked question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/242942/165773) to trigger automatic protection. This would make protection of hot and organically popular questions more usable.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22043" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7770" RevisionGUID="d21adf11-d424-4789-979e-b6895f4d8dd3" CreationDate="2015-11-29T22:34:52.423" UserId="31260" Comment="minor wordsmithing" Text="**TL;DR** Can system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently I've seen notes from Stack Exchange staff about how it would be nice if site would allow for broader, softer kind questions. This was [said by Robert Cartaino here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7650/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The idea that there are hordes of people just waiting flood the site for want of a single precedent was one of those things we worried about before we had anything to back it up. But if you haven't noticed, Stack Exchange has moved on from a lot of those old adages foretelling of widespread doom in ways that simply never materialized in actual use... _every_ question must have exactly one absolutely factual answer. ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and [by Jon Ericson here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7761/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Given quality of users on this site, there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, system makes it difficult (I would say, unnecessarily difficult) to produce and maintain quality in questions with many answers. System doesn't provide any means to make it easier and some of its features even tend to incentivize low quality content in questions of this kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current UI doesn't offer any means to help answerers and readers find / avoid repeating what was stated before. Combined with being very easy to post an answer, this leads to useless answers that don't add anything over what was posted before. This is noticeable even in questions with brief answers which are easy to check ([example](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/271158/839601)) and when answers are lengthy, things become even worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This penalizes web search visitors, forcing them to read same points over and over and over again. Letting repetitive answers proliferate is a step toward old-fashioned &quot;forums&quot;, and quite a substantial one I think.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particular feature that essentially encourages low quality content is Hot Network Questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To set the record straight for readers not familiar with its purpose - it is established pretty firmly and it has nothing to do with content quality. The feature is there only to show network wide audience entertaining / interesting questions. If you're interested, refer MSE for more details on that: [What is the Goal of “Hot Network Questions”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per se, entertainment aspect of HNQ looks pretty acceptable and I don't think it should necessarily be that it makes a critical obstacle in maintaining quality content. Thing is though, as implemented currently... it really does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;HNQ, the way it is now, make maintaining quality content cumbersome and painful. Problems with content quality in hot questions are well known for a long time ([1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;), [2](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;'Answers quality in hot questions'&quot;)), and it keeps happening here and now, see for example http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over years, Stack Exchange tried various ways to handle questions with multiple answers but none of these seemed to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Toothless Atwood's warning](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/86895/165773) was probably the first one,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Did you read through all the existing answers first to make sure your answer will be contributing something new?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All I can say about it is that it doesn't work, has never worked and is unlikely to ever work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another thing they tried was automatic conversion to community wiki when there are many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This worked... sorta, in the sense that it made it easier to downvote low quality answers (without incurring rep penalty) and removed incentive to flood popular questions with answers in a (frankly, quite realistic) hope to gain a bit of rep with a random upvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this trick is, it had some _very_ ugly side effects due to involved rep denial from users providing quality content and in the end it was [deservedly discarded](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228940/165773). Thing is though, nothing was done to compensate loss of features used to counter issues in questions with many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, there's standard rhetoric about voting down low quality answers but tell me, how many users can afford rep loss of voting this way, say, 5-10 of total 20 non-CW answers in a question? how many of them can afford doing this every month? every week? And if you additionally consider &quot;sympathy upvotes&quot; frequently happening to such answers in popular questions (each worth more than 4 votes down rep wise), this starts looking like a wishful thinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another approach that was tried about two years ago is randomizing hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seemed to work at first but as time passed by it revealed signs of inability to scale. Shuffling 100 hot questions to 100K site visitors works, shuffling same amount to 1 million will break and essentially return us back to old known issues with &quot;snowball effect&quot; when questions stick in the list solely because they were advertised there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Somewhere along the way they implemented special adjustment for Stack Overflow questions, which strongly pushes these from hot list after 7 hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to work, in the sense that there aren't very loud complaints about hot questions at MSO anymore (like it was in the past with [&quot;croissants&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/190106/165773)). Still, this doesn't resolve problems at other sites. And still, even SO is having garbage answers problem in questions that acquire popularity and high views organically, not via hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Yet another feature intended to help control answers quality is question protection, which makes it impossible to answer for users having less than 10 on-site reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By design, protection is intended to handle only cases of extreme abuse. It doesn't provide any means against low quality answers posted by users with over 10 rep. Also, due to some implementation specifics, even very limited functionality it offers frequently turns out useless in hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Can system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22044" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7770" RevisionGUID="23326786-b038-4c9d-9e2b-181e3627d68a" CreationDate="2015-11-29T22:53:42.047" UserId="31260" Comment="funny typo corrected" Text="**TL;DR** Can system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently I've seen notes from Stack Exchange staff about how it would be nice if site would allow for broader, softer kind questions. This was [said by Robert Cartaino here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7650/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The idea that there are hordes of people just waiting flood the site for want of a single precedent was one of those things we worried about before we had anything to back it up. But if you haven't noticed, Stack Exchange has moved on from a lot of those old adages foretelling of widespread doom in ways that simply never materialized in actual use... _every_ question must have exactly one absolutely factual answer. ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and [by Jon Ericson here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7761/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Given quality of users on this site, there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, system makes it difficult (I would say, unnecessarily difficult) to produce and maintain quality content in questions with many answers. System doesn't provide any means to make it easier and some of its features even tend to incentivize low quality content in questions of this kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current UI doesn't offer any means to help answerers and readers find / avoid repeating what was stated before. Combined with being very easy to post an answer, this leads to useless answers that don't add anything over what was posted before. This is noticeable even in questions with brief answers which are easy to check ([example](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/271158/839601)) and when answers are lengthy, things become even worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This penalizes web search visitors, forcing them to read same points over and over and over again. Letting repetitive answers proliferate is a step toward old-fashioned &quot;forums&quot;, and quite a substantial one I think.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particular feature that essentially encourages low quality content is Hot Network Questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To set the record straight for readers not familiar with its purpose - it is established pretty firmly and it has nothing to do with content quality. The feature is there only to show network wide audience entertaining / interesting questions. If you're interested, refer MSE for more details on that: [What is the Goal of “Hot Network Questions”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per se, entertainment aspect of HNQ looks pretty acceptable and I don't think it should necessarily be that it makes a critical obstacle in maintaining quality content. Thing is though, as implemented currently... it really does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;HNQ, the way it is now, make maintaining quality content cumbersome and painful. Problems with content quality in hot questions are well known for a long time ([1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;), [2](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;'Answers quality in hot questions'&quot;)), and it keeps happening here and now, see for example http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over years, Stack Exchange tried various ways to handle questions with multiple answers but none of these seemed to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Toothless Atwood's warning](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/86895/165773) was probably the first one,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Did you read through all the existing answers first to make sure your answer will be contributing something new?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All I can say about it is that it doesn't work, has never worked and is unlikely to ever work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another thing they tried was automatic conversion to community wiki when there are many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This worked... sorta, in the sense that it made it easier to downvote low quality answers (without incurring rep penalty) and removed incentive to flood popular questions with answers in a (frankly, quite realistic) hope to gain a bit of rep with a random upvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this trick is, it had some _very_ ugly side effects due to involved rep denial from users providing quality content and in the end it was [deservedly discarded](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228940/165773). Thing is though, nothing was done to compensate loss of features used to counter issues in questions with many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, there's standard rhetoric about voting down low quality answers but tell me, how many users can afford rep loss of voting this way, say, 5-10 of total 20 non-CW answers in a question? how many of them can afford doing this every month? every week? And if you additionally consider &quot;sympathy upvotes&quot; frequently happening to such answers in popular questions (each worth more than 4 votes down rep wise), this starts looking like a wishful thinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another approach that was tried about two years ago is randomizing hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seemed to work at first but as time passed by it revealed signs of inability to scale. Shuffling 100 hot questions to 100K site visitors works, shuffling same amount to 1 million will break and essentially return us back to old known issues with &quot;snowball effect&quot; when questions stick in the list solely because they were advertised there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Somewhere along the way they implemented special adjustment for Stack Overflow questions, which strongly pushes these from hot list after 7 hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to work, in the sense that there aren't very loud complaints about hot questions at MSO anymore (like it was in the past with [&quot;croissants&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/190106/165773)). Still, this doesn't resolve problems at other sites. And still, even SO is having garbage answers problem in questions that acquire popularity and high views organically, not via hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Yet another feature intended to help control answers quality is question protection, which makes it impossible to answer for users having less than 10 on-site reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By design, protection is intended to handle only cases of extreme abuse. It doesn't provide any means against low quality answers posted by users with over 10 rep. Also, due to some implementation specifics, even very limited functionality it offers frequently turns out useless in hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Can system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22045" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7770" RevisionGUID="fc8452ea-f34c-48f9-a833-499af94a78c4" CreationDate="2015-11-30T00:09:30.087" UserId="31260" Comment="http://chat.meta.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/4256566#4256566" Text="**TL;DR** Can the system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently I've seen notes from Stack Exchange staff about how it would be nice if site would allow for broader, softer kind questions. This was [said by Robert Cartaino here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7650/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The idea that there are hordes of people just waiting flood the site for want of a single precedent was one of those things we worried about before we had anything to back it up. But if you haven't noticed, Stack Exchange has moved on from a lot of those old adages foretelling of widespread doom in ways that simply never materialized in actual use... _every_ question must have exactly one absolutely factual answer. ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and [by Jon Ericson here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7761/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Given quality of users on this site, there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, the system makes it difficult (I would say, unnecessarily difficult) to produce and maintain quality content in questions with many answers. It doesn't provide any means to make it easier and some features even tend to incentivize low quality content in questions of this kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current UI doesn't offer any means to help answerers and readers find / avoid repeating what was stated before. Combined with being very easy to post an answer, this leads to useless answers that don't add anything over what was posted before. This is noticeable even in questions with brief answers which are easy to check ([example](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/271158/839601)) and when answers are lengthy, things become even worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This penalizes web search visitors, forcing them to read same points over and over and over again. Letting repetitive answers proliferate is a step toward old-fashioned &quot;forums&quot;, and quite a substantial one I think.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particular feature that essentially encourages low quality content is Hot Network Questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To set the record straight for readers not familiar with its purpose - it is established pretty firmly and it has nothing to do with content quality. The feature is there only to show network wide audience entertaining / interesting questions. If you're interested, refer MSE for more details on that: [What is the Goal of “Hot Network Questions”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per se, entertainment aspect of HNQ looks pretty acceptable and I don't think it should necessarily be that it makes a critical obstacle in maintaining quality content. Thing is though, as implemented currently... it really does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;HNQ, the way it is now, make maintaining quality content cumbersome and painful. Problems with content quality in hot questions are well known for a long time ([1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;), [2](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;'Answers quality in hot questions'&quot;)), and it keeps happening here and now, see for example http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over years, Stack Exchange tried various ways to handle questions with multiple answers but none of these seemed to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Toothless Atwood's warning](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/86895/165773) was probably the first one,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Did you read through all the existing answers first to make sure your answer will be contributing something new?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All I can say about it is that it doesn't work, has never worked and is unlikely to ever work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another thing they tried was automatic conversion to community wiki when there are many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This worked... sorta, in the sense that it made it easier to downvote low quality answers (without incurring rep penalty) and removed incentive to flood popular questions with answers in a (frankly, quite realistic) hope to gain a bit of rep with a random upvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this trick is, it had some _very_ ugly side effects due to involved rep denial from users providing quality content and in the end it was [deservedly discarded](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228940/165773). Thing is though, nothing was done to compensate loss of features used to counter issues in questions with many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, there's standard rhetoric about voting down low quality answers but tell me, how many users can afford rep loss of voting this way, say, 5-10 of total 20 non-CW answers in a question? how many of them can afford doing this every month? every week? And if you additionally consider &quot;sympathy upvotes&quot; frequently happening to such answers in popular questions (each worth more than 4 votes down rep wise), this starts looking like a wishful thinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another approach that was tried about two years ago is randomizing hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seemed to work at first but as time passed by it revealed signs of inability to scale. Shuffling 100 hot questions to 100K site visitors works, shuffling same amount to 1 million will break and essentially return us back to old known issues with &quot;snowball effect&quot; when questions stick in the list solely because they were advertised there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Somewhere along the way they implemented special adjustment for Stack Overflow questions, which strongly pushes these from hot list after 7 hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to work, in the sense that there aren't very loud complaints about hot questions at MSO anymore (like it was in the past with [&quot;croissants&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/190106/165773)). Still, this doesn't resolve problems at other sites. And still, even SO is having garbage answers problem in questions that acquire popularity and high views organically, not via hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Yet another feature intended to help control answers quality is question protection, which makes it impossible to answer for users having less than 10 on-site reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By design, protection is intended to handle only cases of extreme abuse. It doesn't provide any means against low quality answers posted by users with over 10 rep. Also, due to some implementation specifics, even very limited functionality it offers frequently turns out useless in hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Can the system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22046" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7770" RevisionGUID="fc8452ea-f34c-48f9-a833-499af94a78c4" CreationDate="2015-11-30T00:09:30.087" UserId="31260" Comment="http://chat.meta.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/4256566#4256566" Text="The system supports questions with multiple answers poorly (and is becoming worse at it)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22047" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7770" RevisionGUID="8456e07a-3186-4f67-a4f7-ae5842742cdd" CreationDate="2015-11-30T07:30:40.280" UserId="31260" Comment="&quot;sympathy upvotes&quot; += http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/311408/839601 &quot;what's this&quot;" Text="**TL;DR** Can the system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently I've seen notes from Stack Exchange staff about how it would be nice if site would allow for broader, softer kind questions. This was [said by Robert Cartaino here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7650/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The idea that there are hordes of people just waiting flood the site for want of a single precedent was one of those things we worried about before we had anything to back it up. But if you haven't noticed, Stack Exchange has moved on from a lot of those old adages foretelling of widespread doom in ways that simply never materialized in actual use... _every_ question must have exactly one absolutely factual answer. ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and [by Jon Ericson here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7761/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Given quality of users on this site, there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, the system makes it difficult (I would say, unnecessarily difficult) to produce and maintain quality content in questions with many answers. It doesn't provide any means to make it easier and some features even tend to incentivize low quality content in questions of this kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current UI doesn't offer any means to help answerers and readers find / avoid repeating what was stated before. Combined with being very easy to post an answer, this leads to useless answers that don't add anything over what was posted before. This is noticeable even in questions with brief answers which are easy to check ([example](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/271158/839601)) and when answers are lengthy, things become even worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This penalizes web search visitors, forcing them to read same points over and over and over again. Letting repetitive answers proliferate is a step toward old-fashioned &quot;forums&quot;, and quite a substantial one I think.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particular feature that essentially encourages low quality content is Hot Network Questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To set the record straight for readers not familiar with its purpose - it is established pretty firmly and it has nothing to do with content quality. The feature is there only to show network wide audience entertaining / interesting questions. If you're interested, refer MSE for more details on that: [What is the Goal of “Hot Network Questions”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per se, entertainment aspect of HNQ looks pretty acceptable and I don't think it should necessarily be that it makes a critical obstacle in maintaining quality content. Thing is though, as implemented currently... it really does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;HNQ, the way it is now, make maintaining quality content cumbersome and painful. Problems with content quality in hot questions are well known for a long time ([1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;), [2](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;'Answers quality in hot questions'&quot;)), and it keeps happening here and now, see for example http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over years, Stack Exchange tried various ways to handle questions with multiple answers but none of these seemed to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Toothless Atwood's warning](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/86895/165773) was probably the first one,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Did you read through all the existing answers first to make sure your answer will be contributing something new?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All I can say about it is that it doesn't work, has never worked and is unlikely to ever work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another thing they tried was automatic conversion to community wiki when there are many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This worked... sorta, in the sense that it made it easier to downvote low quality answers (without incurring rep penalty) and removed incentive to flood popular questions with answers in a (frankly, quite realistic) hope to gain a bit of rep with a random upvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this trick is, it had some _very_ ugly side effects due to involved rep denial from users providing quality content and in the end it was [deservedly discarded](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228940/165773). Thing is though, nothing was done to compensate loss of features used to counter issues in questions with many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, there's standard rhetoric about voting down low quality answers but tell me, how many users can afford rep loss of voting this way, say, 5-10 of total 20 non-CW answers in a question? how many of them can afford doing this every month? every week? And if you additionally consider [&quot;sympathy upvotes&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/311408/839601 &quot;what's this&quot;) frequently happening to such answers in popular questions (each worth more than 4 votes down rep wise), this starts looking like a wishful thinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another approach that was tried about two years ago is randomizing hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seemed to work at first but as time passed by it revealed signs of inability to scale. Shuffling 100 hot questions to 100K site visitors works, shuffling same amount to 1 million will break and essentially return us back to old known issues with &quot;snowball effect&quot; when questions stick in the list solely because they were advertised there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Somewhere along the way they implemented special adjustment for Stack Overflow questions, which strongly pushes these from hot list after 7 hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to work, in the sense that there aren't very loud complaints about hot questions at MSO anymore (like it was in the past with [&quot;croissants&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/190106/165773)). Still, this doesn't resolve problems at other sites. And still, even SO is having garbage answers problem in questions that acquire popularity and high views organically, not via hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Yet another feature intended to help control answers quality is question protection, which makes it impossible to answer for users having less than 10 on-site reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By design, protection is intended to handle only cases of extreme abuse. It doesn't provide any means against low quality answers posted by users with over 10 rep. Also, due to some implementation specifics, even very limited functionality it offers frequently turns out useless in hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Can the system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22048" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7771" RevisionGUID="42916649-e88c-4bc3-8bfc-07ba60ae1da6" CreationDate="2015-11-30T16:58:21.657" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237661/165773 // how could I forget" Text="As an example, here are some ideas of what can be considered:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* When there are many answers already, [let users compare draft of their post against prior answers](http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/q/2562/168). This would make it naturally harder to add yet another answer as their amount increases (note how this isn't limited to low rep users, as opposed to protection). This would also help responsible users ensure that their answer doesn't repeat what was stated already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Get rid of first day voting](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237661/165773). This would help taming careless upvotes from passers by armed with association bonus. &quot;Wanna vote? stick with us! (for at least a day or two)&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Introduce more scalable randomisation of hot questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/247195/165773) by picking more than 100 &quot;candidate&quot; questions for hot list. This would ensure that audience attention is spread more evenly and help tame &quot;snowball effect&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Give elevated protection privileges to 30K users in questions with 3 or more answers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/268729/165773) and [don't count reputation gained within checked question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/242942/165773) to trigger automatic protection. This would make protection of hot and organically popular questions more usable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22050" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7773" RevisionGUID="4ee7730e-2b15-4b8d-a094-f5ffdedd5b00" CreationDate="2015-11-30T18:25:46.040" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I think the question should be deleted for the reasons stated in this meta question: it is simply not a good question and brings no value to the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22051" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7768" RevisionGUID="c7c6a4dd-3158-4c5a-ae1e-cd2a98e8ba2c" CreationDate="2015-12-01T11:22:39.020" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|specific-question|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22052" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7774" RevisionGUID="d2cf795e-0f29-4f9e-a858-a8ce559243d4" CreationDate="2015-12-01T21:07:40.067" UserId="60357" Text="Today, someone asked [Why do we need both Priority and Severity?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/303980/60357) (10k link) which is clearly on-topic being about software development concepts and all that, but was soon closed as primarily opinion based. That's correct, as it was not an exact duplicate of the much older [How do you classify bug severity?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/57047/60357) (10k link) which was also closed as opinion-based (again, correctly).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as I went back to these questions, I suddenly found them both &lt;s&gt;murdered&lt;/s&gt; deleted – by a mod, so I can't vote to undelete. Why were these questions deleted? Should we delete all questions as soon as they are closed? Or should we keep closed questions around if they solicited at least one valuable answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked [the all-knowing help center](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/deleted-questions), which told me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are extremely off topic, or of very low quality, may be removed at the discretion of the community and moderators. Over time, closed questions that are not useful as signpoints to other questions may also be removed, as well as questions which have no significant activity over a very long period after being asked. If you want to improve a question to keep it from being deleted, click the edit button beneath it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions were neither *extremely* off topic (only a bit opinion-based), and not of very low quality. As such, I'm not sure that these questions meet the criteria for deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I frequently vote to delete a question if:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - it is not reasonably possible to edit them into a comprehensible, on-topic question&#xD;&#xA; - and it is of low quality, e.g. as indicated by many downvotes&#xD;&#xA; - or if it is a remnant of the not-programming-related days which featured a significantly different site scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is my focus on topicality as the main criterion for the delete/no delete correct, or do we as a community decide to apply stricter standards?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22053" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7774" RevisionGUID="d2cf795e-0f29-4f9e-a858-a8ce559243d4" CreationDate="2015-12-01T21:07:40.067" UserId="60357" Text="Why was this nice (though closed) question deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22054" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7774" RevisionGUID="d2cf795e-0f29-4f9e-a858-a8ce559243d4" CreationDate="2015-12-01T21:07:40.067" UserId="60357" Text="|discussion|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22056" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7775" RevisionGUID="7eed9d0c-54cc-430a-a9b4-8664fbcb1874" CreationDate="2015-12-02T09:42:57.610" UserId="31260" Text="At the moment of deletion ([rev 3](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/57047/3)) the question was a mess.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Title looked on-topic, even though bit broad: &quot;How do you classify bug severity?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Text of the question opened with plain description of bug _priorities_ in asker's team, without any connection to question in title and without any mentioning of the problems with these. The only way I could make sense of it is to assume that OP was interested in how to complement it with severities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, asker proceeded with an outright poll which, again, looks difficult to relate to question title: &quot;How do other teams classify bugs in their system?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the title, I would say they _maybe_ were interested to learn about classifying bug severities... this would still sound like a blatant poll but at least more relevant to the topic in title.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers to this question, respectively, look like a bunch of unrelated bits. It has got 12 answers, only 3-5 of which look sensible - likely from those who paid attention to the title and took into account details provided in text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other answers are total mess. Some drill into discussing asker's bug priorities, even though question doesn't indicate that OP is having difficulties with these. Others are useless [poll items](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) written apparently in reply to the &quot;poll request&quot; that was dumped in the end of the question text - including even two answers from the same user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If moderator saw what I saw there, no wonder they preferred to delete. Messy poll, followed by bunch of unrelated answers, many of which look totally useless. It's not even very high views - 5K.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After it was deleted, I took a liberty to edit it into more coherent and convenient dupe target, without worrying about invalidating answers (10K users can edit deleted posts).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since then, it was undeleted but unfortunately as of now bunch of the answers look totally irrelevant to the (edited) question. This is bad, it sends wrong signal to site visitors who are unlikely to dive into edit history to find what happened. &quot;Hey you can drop anything you want into the answer without paying attention to what is asked.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would recommend to either remove answers invalidated by the edit, or rollback the question to the state as it was prior to deletion, to keep existing answers intact." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22059" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7776" RevisionGUID="04c686ac-7614-4316-858e-deb77cbc4ecf" CreationDate="2015-12-02T14:03:53.343" UserId="25476" Text="After looking at gnat's edit, and after I took care of a confusing answer, I reopened the question to give it another chance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks again for that edit gnat.  I was cleaning a complicated spider web of duplicate targets when I came upon this one.  I got a little confused at this point and may have deleted too hastily when it had some potential to be salvaged." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22060" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7777" RevisionGUID="62bf789c-1642-460c-a58a-7068d2abf19a" CreationDate="2015-12-02T18:02:29.747" UserId="14392" Text="I find this rater funny.  If my question is causing problems just delete it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22061" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7775" RevisionGUID="2bbfa2ae-0d1b-432c-b6fc-60f31b1a0702" CreationDate="2015-12-02T19:28:03.620" UserId="31260" Comment="clarified which of two questions I mean" Text="At the moment of deletion ([rev 3](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/57047/3)) the older question was a mess.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Title looked on-topic, even though bit broad: &quot;How do you classify bug severity?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Text of the question opened with plain description of bug _priorities_ in asker's team, without any connection to question in title and without any mentioning of the problems with these. The only way I could make sense of it is to assume that OP was interested in how to complement it with severities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, asker proceeded with an outright poll which, again, looks difficult to relate to question title: &quot;How do other teams classify bugs in their system?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the title, I would say they _maybe_ were interested to learn about classifying bug severities... this would still sound like a blatant poll but at least more relevant to the topic in title.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers to this question, respectively, look like a bunch of unrelated bits. It has got 12 answers, only 3-5 of which look sensible - likely from those who paid attention to the title and took into account details provided in text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other answers are total mess. Some drill into discussing asker's bug priorities, even though question doesn't indicate that OP is having difficulties with these. Others are useless [poll items](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) written apparently in reply to the &quot;poll request&quot; that was dumped in the end of the question text - including even two answers from the same user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If moderator saw what I saw there, no wonder they preferred to delete. Messy poll, followed by bunch of unrelated answers, many of which look totally useless. It's not even very high views - 5K.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After it was deleted, I took a liberty to edit it into more coherent and convenient dupe target, without worrying about invalidating answers (10K users can edit deleted posts).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since then, it was undeleted but unfortunately as of now bunch of the answers look totally irrelevant to the (edited) question. This is bad, it sends wrong signal to site visitors who are unlikely to dive into edit history to find what happened. &quot;Hey you can drop anything you want into the answer without paying attention to what is asked.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would recommend to either remove answers invalidated by the edit, or rollback the question to the state as it was prior to deletion, to keep existing answers intact." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22062" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7749" RevisionGUID="47d1c1a1-e2cf-4edc-a619-25722715cde8" CreationDate="2015-12-02T21:31:57.323" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Fixed spelling." Text="There's a big fuzzy gray line between the software licensing questions that we find to be on topic, and the rest of the legal questions.  Many software licensing questions *are* legal questions, that are ones that a programmer is at least somewhat competent to answer as a programmer.  Most legal questions, however as the [more info](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/legal/info) in the [tag:legal] says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The law is a minefield and the best advice anyone can give when asked about legal matters is often:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; ask a lawyer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Asking legal questions on Stack Exchange is not a substitute for taking proper local legal advice. What we can do is advise whether asking a lawyer is essential or just highly recommended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can competently answer some questions. Most often, when the answer is &quot;you need to talk to a lawyer.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With your question, this is something that you need to ask a lawyer. You've gone into the realm of encryption and munitions.  If you are in the US, this gets into [ITAR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations) and the like. It is not something that as programmers we are even able to properly give you any correct answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to talk to a lawyer. This goes ***far*** beyond the legal questions of &quot;can I remove the header from a BSD licensed file?&quot; that are (marginally) on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7265/40980&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22063" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7768" RevisionGUID="7a58d41a-62d2-4324-8bd2-3593efbc0077" CreationDate="2015-12-02T23:05:25.767" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/672189858706796544" />
  <row Id="22064" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7774" RevisionGUID="cabd3866-8c77-4456-986b-56ac116e81fa" CreationDate="2015-12-03T11:17:47.910" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/672374165152866304" />
  <row Id="22065" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="95e4b4a5-3186-4c2e-8b85-1e39c8b158a1" CreationDate="2015-12-03T19:46:49.223" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Tweak descriptions and links to list of off topic reasons." Text="## What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Programmers.SE would be a good question on Stack Overflow.  This isn't to say that if it is on topic on Stack Overflow it is on topic here.  Rather that it's not too broad, not opinion, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Programmers.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggesting to someone to repost a question that is too broad or primary opinion would get it closed on Programmers.SE too and that's really something we'd rather avoid.  It is no fun to get a question bounced from one site to another and being told repeatedly we don't want it here.  If it needs to be fixed, it needs to be fixed before it is reposted or telling the OP *exactly* what needs to be fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Some commonly referred *poor* questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, we *don't* want these, though it seems like people keep suggesting them to be reposted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I don't understand...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). [There is an expectation](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773) that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here's my problem. Anyone have a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of commonly (incorrectly) referred questions are those of &quot;come up with a design or solution for me.&quot;  Similar to how Stack Overflow has issues with people doing problem statement questions (&quot;write a program that takes the average of three values&quot;), Programmers.SE has similar issues with similar questions (&quot;here is what I want the outcome to be, anyone have a solution?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Stack Overflow nor Programmers.SE is a code/solution writing service. Just because the question lacks code but has a problem statement doesn't mean it belongs here as is. The question needs to be fixed up significantly before it is reposted on the proper site and suggesting to do so with the question in its current state does a disservice to the person asking the question. For a more detailed outline of what is generally expected at Programmers, see http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A blog I read said...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our custom off topic reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What tool, library, language, project, resource to take up or use](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* [What career to take or what to study](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;* [Assistance in writing or debugging code](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7742/40980)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programing related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* software requirements&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I'll point out a caveat with that &quot;software licensing&quot; thing.  It's about how to license *your* software and try to stay in proper compliance when pulling a MIT licensed library into a GPL project.  It is *not* about the &quot;can I let a friend use IntelliJ personal license if I'm not using it?&quot;, &quot;can I use facebook's API to do something legally?&quot; and the interpretation of other third party licenses.  If the word 'legal' shows up in that question at all, it will likely get closed as legal advice (that's in the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) too - under &quot;and it's not about&quot;) Further reading: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about software design concepts.  Remember that algorithm questions are on topic on Stack Overflow (so you don't need to migrate those).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the Perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the Delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Programmers.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Programmers.SE was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with [&quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260 &quot;we even had to introduce a chat bot for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow&quot;) and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) it's problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - it's exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so comments a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, it's like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if it's a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22066" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7748" RevisionGUID="74294f03-6dcf-4c7b-9b7b-feecee0db32b" CreationDate="2015-12-04T02:17:53.440" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/672600680994091008" />
  <row Id="22067" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7778" RevisionGUID="2ee4c0de-2f0e-4077-8688-70779ec343c6" CreationDate="2015-12-05T18:04:46.990" UserId="31260" Text="Tags have been merged, this is reflected at [synonyms page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/assembly/synonyms):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The following tags will be remapped to [tag:assembly]  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:assembler]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22068" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7779" RevisionGUID="a4ec8ba6-dd51-46ed-85b7-94175d832367" CreationDate="2015-12-06T07:48:17.273" UserId="100972" Text="&gt; &quot;I dislike that so much valuable information gets deleted for the sake&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of &quot;maintaining a clean site&quot;, dislike the way many users are treated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (particularly new ones), and dislike the way the overall culture of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this site has been changing from a community of programmers out to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; teach and learn from each other, to an insular group of programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elitists (of course this isn't all of you, or probably even most of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you. Its just a large percentage of the more active/vocal users who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; take part in running the site).&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I happened across an old post that was used by a high rep moderator once as the reason for leaving Programmers.SE for good. Who, after what occurances this happened, I dont think it matters, I've only been around here for a year. The thing is, this post really expressed my own frustrations with this site for the year Ive been asking questions here. Particularly, I'm talking about this line:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***...dislike the way the overall culture of this site has been changing from a community of programmers out to teach and learn from each other, to an insular group of programming elitists.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But from what I understand, this rigid strictness was necessary due to the general structure of Stack Exchange. I'd be interested to read the background discussions which lead to this strict question culture used on P.SE today, at least any meta discussions that anyone can find the link to.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could look for related stuff in meta, but Im sure this topic has been talked about for years, and Im strictly interested in the meta discussions had prior to implimentation of the scope changes noted by the quote above. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22069" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7779" RevisionGUID="a4ec8ba6-dd51-46ed-85b7-94175d832367" CreationDate="2015-12-06T07:48:17.273" UserId="100972" Text="Please link to discussions which lead to the current (strict, less personal) question expectations" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22070" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7779" RevisionGUID="a4ec8ba6-dd51-46ed-85b7-94175d832367" CreationDate="2015-12-06T07:48:17.273" UserId="100972" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22071" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7779" RevisionGUID="fe09923d-c6f0-4165-9209-eb3503652659" CreationDate="2015-12-06T07:54:21.690" UserId="100972" Comment="edited title" Text="Please link to discussions which lead to a transition to the current (strict, less personal) question expectations" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22072" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7779" RevisionGUID="23b997ad-9efc-43f2-8ed4-d9fa023777cb" CreationDate="2015-12-06T09:54:57.300" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body; edited tags" Text="&gt; &quot;I dislike that so much valuable information gets deleted for the sake&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of &quot;maintaining a clean site&quot;, dislike the way many users are treated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (particularly new ones), and dislike the way the overall culture of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this site has been changing from a community of programmers out to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; teach and learn from each other, to an insular group of programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elitists (of course this isn't all of you, or probably even most of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you. Its just a large percentage of the more active/vocal users who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; take part in running the site).&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I happened across an old post that was used by a high rep user once as the reason for leaving Programmers.SE for good. Who, after what occurrences this happened, I don't think it matters, I've only been around here for a year. The thing is, this post really expressed my own frustrations with this site for the year I've been asking questions here. Particularly, I'm talking about this line:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***...dislike the way the overall culture of this site has been changing from a community of programmers out to teach and learn from each other, to an insular group of programming elitists.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But from what I understand, this rigid strictness was necessary due to the general structure of Stack Exchange. I'd be interested to read the background discussions which lead to this strict question culture used on P.SE today, at least any meta discussions that anyone can find the link to.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could look for related stuff in meta, but I'm sure this topic has been talked about for years, and I'm strictly interested in the meta discussions had prior to implementation of the scope changes noted by the quote above. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22073" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7779" RevisionGUID="23b997ad-9efc-43f2-8ed4-d9fa023777cb" CreationDate="2015-12-06T09:54:57.300" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22074" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7780" RevisionGUID="aac3ff4b-0c45-4591-8cbb-a7a82ef03d0f" CreationDate="2015-12-06T18:09:19.877" UserId="17853" Text="I've heard people complain about elitists on SE before. What few arguments are provided are usually driven by shameless self-interest and frustration at being asked to put down a certain sense of entitlement and actually work for their solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At least those people present some arguments, mind you; you didn't even bother with that!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I remember the &quot;incident&quot; you had recently that's presumably led you to come here accusing everyone of &quot;elitism&quot;. It really makes no sense. There has been no &quot;transition&quot; to any &quot;strict&quot; expectations, and certainly no &quot;discussion&quot; that we can &quot;link&quot; to where it was decided to do so. But you well know that. You're fishing, and not catching any fish.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recommend a long walk, a warm beer, and a hug from someone close." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22075" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7779" RevisionGUID="c8e80880-7878-4455-a97c-a6f61d199400" CreationDate="2015-12-07T17:38:17.467" UserId="25476" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[3412],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:5099,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Bart van Ingen Schenau&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:40980,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;MichaelT&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:25476,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;maple_shaft&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="22080" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7723" RevisionGUID="dfd0ad63-7777-4d90-9af1-293132659524" CreationDate="2015-12-10T01:23:17.763" UserId="96050" Comment="The experiment is over." Text="**This experiment is over.** I will be adding an answer to show the results and suggest a plan for going forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the next 30 days, closing a question will require just 3 votes. Also 3 votes will be sufficient to reopen a closed question. In essence, each close and reopen vote has 5/3&lt;sup&gt;rds&lt;/sup&gt; the normal value. After 30 days I will revert the site setting back to 5 and evaluate the results. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have tested this change on a development instance and questions that currently have 3 or 4 close votes will not be closed automatically. Rather they will be closed when the next close vote comes in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's fair to say there's a lot of dissatisfaction with the question closing system on Programmers. [One proposed solution](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes) is to increase the number of close votes available to 10k users. Some of us on the community team have considered various schemes to scale close votes with reputation under the theory that people most invested in the site (as measured by reputation) will have the most incentive to curate questions. That might still happen, but we'd like to be pretty sure that it will solve the various problems with question closing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's pretty clear that organic closing (via the [close votes queue](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close) or people voting to close questions they find naturally) isn't working very well. To demonstrate, here's how close votes on questions asked in the last 30 days are distributed on Super User:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Super User close vote distribution][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most questions have no close votes (not shown). 461 questions have just one (the yellow circle on the left) and the number slopes down to 142 with 4 close votes. 5 votes is a natural [attractor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor) because people will keep voting to close off-topic and otherwise closable questions until they reach that limit. There's a long tail beyond 5 close votes (also not shown) due to votes expiring, close wars and so on. In essence, questions with at least 1 close vote, but not 5, are in a grey area in terms of closablity. This general pattern turns out to be extremely common across a variety of sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In contrast, here's the same graph for Programmers&amp;mdash;Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Programmers close vote distribution][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember this is only showing questions that have been asked in the last 30 days; we aren't talking about [Not Programming Related](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3273/not-programming-related) questions. Instead of a fairly smooth gradient between questions that should clearly be open to questions that clearly should be closed, this graph shows something closer to a binary state. My hypothesis is that since the people contributing the most close votes feel the need to conserve votes, they don't vote to close borderline questions. There's too great a risk those votes will expire impotently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also included the counts of questions that have been edited or deleted in each close vote bin. Relative to other sites, questions on Programmers with close votes are more likely to be deleted and less likely to be edited. It's entirely possible that a greater proportion of questions are unsalvageable on this site. But I suspect the underlying problem is that the questions that could most benefit from an improvement are not getting close votes in the first place. _That might not be a problem_, but close votes can provide incentives for askers to fix problems even before their questions are closed. Close votes also put questions in front of reviewers who might be inspired to improve them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another problem that we discovered [very dramaticly](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/7649/1) is that [closed questions are rarely reopened](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7654/96050). Most closed questions can't (and shouldn't) be reopened, but statistically speaking, we expect more than 1-2% will be. My hypothesis is that it takes so much effort (and coordination) to close questions that people are not interested in undoing that work even if there's been an edit to fix a question's problems. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, the breakdown in the close voting system is not limited to Programmers. It is, however, rare across the network for the division between open and closed questions to be so stark. We hope this test will help us understand how the close vote system breaks in order to (hopefully) fix it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Why 3 votes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially users with enough reputation could unilaterally close and reopen questions on Stack Overflow. In December 31, 2008, the close vote system [was created](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/) and required 3 votes. Between then and the [next April](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/), the limit was increased to 5. (Shog9 remembers 3 lasting a few weeks.) The documentation of the site setting reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; KEEP THIS AN ODD NUMBER&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we need an odd number greater than 1 and less than 5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# How will this change be evaluated?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a nontrivial chance something will break requiring me to revert the change. If we continue for the full 30 days, we will compare before and after the change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Close rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Obviously, it's now easier to close questions. Insofar as bad questions are put on a path toward either corrective edits or deletion, that's a good thing. But this site closes well over 50% of new questions, which is the highest rate on the network. (Considering _total_ questions closed to questions asked in a time period, the rate is [more like 70%](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last30days).) Paradoxically, I'd like to see the close rate remain steady or decrease.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Reopen rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Reopening questions is one way to mitigate against a high close rate. Since the bar for reopening is now lower, we'd expect more questions will be reopened. Currently the reopen rate is about 2% of closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Edit rate on closed questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  In general, the only path to reopening a question is editing. It's also the most effective way to prevent questions from being closed in the first place. Since it's easier to reopen questions, there's even more reason for askers to fix their own closed questions. In the last 30 days 9% of closed questions were subsequently edited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Deletion rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  About 65% of questions that get at least one close vote on Programmers are deleted. We aren't exactly looking at the cream of the crop here, but that's noticeably more than other sites. (Again, this only counts questions asked and deleted within the last 30 days.) We can't force people to ask questions that don't deserve deletion, but hopefully more questions can be salvaged with edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, I'm curious if this change helps people enjoy the site more overall. At the end of the experiment, I'll post my results and ask for any followup thoughts you as a community have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# How you can help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relatively few people are active in closing, reopening and deleting questions. Even fewer are [active in editing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Editors&amp;filter=month). In order for this experiment to improve the quality of content on this site, more people need to be involved in identifying questions with potential to be unlocked with a judicious edit. Fixing tags and removing signatures are good first steps. But title and (occasionally heroic) body edits might be needed to pull some questions out of mediocrity. Remember: once the question is posted, it belongs to the community as much as it does the original author.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, please use the answers below to let me know how the experiment is going.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EHxvb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ESxAD.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22081" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7723" RevisionGUID="dfd0ad63-7777-4d90-9af1-293132659524" CreationDate="2015-12-10T01:23:17.763" UserId="96050" Comment="The experiment is over." Text="|discussion|vote-to-close|experiment|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22082" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7723" RevisionGUID="b26ac141-0e18-41e6-8fba-932270f422ab" CreationDate="2015-12-10T05:04:38.207" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="**This experiment is over.** I will be adding an answer to show the results and suggest a plan for going forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the next 30 days, closing a question will require just 3 votes. Also 3 votes will be sufficient to reopen a closed question. In essence, each close and reopen vote has 5/3&lt;sup&gt;rds&lt;/sup&gt; the normal value. After 30 days I will revert the site setting back to 5 and evaluate the results. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have tested this change on a development instance and questions that currently have 3 or 4 close votes will not be closed automatically. Rather they will be closed when the next close vote comes in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's fair to say there's a lot of dissatisfaction with the question closing system on Programmers. [One proposed solution](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes) is to increase the number of close votes available to 10k users. Some of us on the community team have considered various schemes to scale close votes with reputation under the theory that people most invested in the site (as measured by reputation) will have the most incentive to curate questions. That might still happen, but we'd like to be pretty sure that it will solve the various problems with question closing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's pretty clear that organic closing (via the [close votes queue](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close) or people voting to close questions they find naturally) isn't working very well. To demonstrate, here's how close votes on questions asked in the last 30 days are distributed on Super User:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Super User close vote distribution][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most questions have no close votes (not shown). 461 questions have just one (the yellow circle on the left) and the number slopes down to 142 with 4 close votes. 5 votes is a natural [attractor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor) because people will keep voting to close off-topic and otherwise closable questions until they reach that limit. There's a long tail beyond 5 close votes (also not shown) due to votes expiring, close wars and so on. In essence, questions with at least 1 close vote, but not 5, are in a grey area in terms of closablity. This general pattern turns out to be extremely common across a variety of sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In contrast, here's the same graph for Programmers&amp;mdash;Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Programmers close vote distribution][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember this is only showing questions that have been asked in the last 30 days; we aren't talking about [Not Programming Related](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3273/not-programming-related) questions. Instead of a fairly smooth gradient between questions that should clearly be open to questions that clearly should be closed, this graph shows something closer to a binary state. My hypothesis is that since the people contributing the most close votes feel the need to conserve votes, they don't vote to close borderline questions. There's too great a risk those votes will expire impotently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also included the counts of questions that have been edited or deleted in each close vote bin. Relative to other sites, questions on Programmers with close votes are more likely to be deleted and less likely to be edited. It's entirely possible that a greater proportion of questions are unsalvageable on this site. But I suspect the underlying problem is that the questions that could most benefit from an improvement are not getting close votes in the first place. _That might not be a problem_, but close votes can provide incentives for askers to fix problems even before their questions are closed. Close votes also put questions in front of reviewers who might be inspired to improve them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another problem that we discovered [very dramaticly](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/7649/1) is that [closed questions are rarely reopened](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7654/96050). Most closed questions can't (and shouldn't) be reopened, but statistically speaking, we expect more than 1-2% will be. My hypothesis is that it takes so much effort (and coordination) to close questions that people are not interested in undoing that work even if there's been an edit to fix a question's problems. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, the breakdown in the close voting system is not limited to Programmers. It is, however, rare across the network for the division between open and closed questions to be so stark. We hope this test will help us understand how the close vote system breaks in order to (hopefully) fix it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Why 3 votes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially users with enough reputation could unilaterally close and reopen questions on Stack Overflow. In December 31, 2008, the close vote system [was created](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/) and required 3 votes. Between then and the [next April](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/), the limit was increased to 5. (Shog9 remembers 3 lasting a few weeks.) The documentation of the site setting reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; KEEP THIS AN ODD NUMBER&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we need an odd number greater than 1 and less than 5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# How will this change be evaluated?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a nontrivial chance something will break requiring me to revert the change. If we continue for the full 30 days, we will compare before and after the change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Close rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Obviously, it's now easier to close questions. Insofar as bad questions are put on a path toward either corrective edits or deletion, that's a good thing. But this site closes well over 50% of new questions, which is the highest rate on the network. (Considering _total_ questions closed to questions asked in a time period, the rate is [more like 70%](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last30days).) Paradoxically, I'd like to see the close rate remain steady or decrease.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Reopen rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Reopening questions is one way to mitigate against a high close rate. Since the bar for reopening is now lower, we'd expect more questions will be reopened. Currently the reopen rate is about 2% of closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Edit rate on closed questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  In general, the only path to reopening a question is editing. It's also the most effective way to prevent questions from being closed in the first place. Since it's easier to reopen questions, there's even more reason for askers to fix their own closed questions. In the last 30 days 9% of closed questions were subsequently edited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Deletion rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  About 65% of questions that get at least one close vote on Programmers are deleted. We aren't exactly looking at the cream of the crop here, but that's noticeably more than other sites. (Again, this only counts questions asked and deleted within the last 30 days.) We can't force people to ask questions that don't deserve deletion, but hopefully more questions can be salvaged with edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, I'm curious if this change helps people enjoy the site more overall. At the end of the experiment, I'll post my results and ask for any followup thoughts you as a community have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# How you can help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relatively few people are active in closing, reopening and deleting questions. Even fewer are [active in editing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Editors&amp;filter=month). In order for this experiment to improve the quality of content on this site, more people need to be involved in identifying questions with potential to be unlocked with a judicious edit. Fixing tags and removing signatures are good first steps. But title and (occasionally heroic) body edits might be needed to pull some questions out of mediocrity. Remember: once the question is posted, it belongs to the community as much as it does the original author.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, please use the answers below to let me know how the experiment is going.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EHxvb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ESxAD.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22083" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7782" RevisionGUID="538a5d92-b2fd-4826-96d1-7542b46f554b" CreationDate="2015-12-10T20:18:00.070" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="One of those topics occasionally bantered about in chat, and with a bit more frequency lately is about how we close with duplicates and what these questions should be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idealized flow with closing for a duplicate is one of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;a1. Vote to close as a duplicate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and then either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;b2. Poster rewords question to address the &quot;not a duplicate nature&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;b3. Revised question is a good one, reopened, and life continues  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;c2. Poster says &quot;yep, that is it&quot; (or sufficient other voters agree)  &#xD;&#xA;c3. Remaining question is either good (as a sign post for future) or poor (and eventually deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The post is correctly closed as a duplicate path (c)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no problem with the 'c' path other than the possibility of eventually cluttering up the linked questions with duplicates that aren't good sign posts.  For an example of this see the [2,200 posts linked to Stack Overflow's NullPointerException question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/linked/218384?lq=1) - that really doesn't help anyone. And while we don't have 2k NPE questions here, having 20 or so questions linked to a post diminishes its value ***unless*** those are good questions to begin with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## When the close vote is a stretch (a)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One problem occurs when a1 is a stretch - that it is an &quot;this post addresses the question.&quot;  This is contentious because if the &quot;this addresses the question&quot; is the threshold for an answer on a question, then posting an answer from the other question as is would be a viable answer... which is one of the criteria for determining if one would vote to close the question as a duplicate.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the other criteria for a close vote as a duplicate is that it asks the exact same question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And thus, one of the two sets of statements here should be considered proper&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* An answer should answer the question, not just address the question&#xD;&#xA;* A duplicate post must be an exact duplicate, so that the answers on the duplicate target exactly answer the question here.  A duplicate question should be a strong candidate for merging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* An answer should address the question, but does not need to answer it fully&#xD;&#xA;* A duplicate post must lead the asker of the question in the proper direction to solve their problem. A duplicate question is a sign post on the road to understanding the entire picture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## When the (revised) question isn't good (b')&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Not a good question in the first place (b2')&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other problem with this is when the question itself is really unclear, too broad, or primarily opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've effectively done that with writing a specific off topic reason with &quot;we won't debug your code&quot; rather than writing a canonical duplicate that such questions get (unhelpfully?) duplicated to.  The off topic *clearly* indicates that we will not answer those questions here. The duplicate... not so clearly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we might find that duplicating the question to another one that was asked that is the correct duplicate, it leaves poor questions in its place... and it also makes the duplicate target that much harder to remove in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Not a not so good, but clearly not duplicate (b3')&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also the situation where a question is modified to be clearly not a duplicate, but still isn't a good question. With the number of close voters that are active on the site, this poses a special problem for trying to close questions and keep poorly written ones closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the question isn't a duplicate, they do get reopened - even if they aren't good questions. And as the duplicate took five votes to close, it takes *another* five votes to close again from *other* users. This may mean the question never gets closed a second time, leaving poorly asked and written questions open on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, this situation is often the case on Programmers.SE - a question is closed as a duplicate of another opinion or too broad question, addresses the &quot;this is not a duplicate&quot; but remains a question that is primarily opinion, too broad, or is still unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The resulting situation isn't good - the original post (if it remains closed) is no longer a duplicate of the target dup (bad for future readers). Alternatively, if it is reopened, it remains a not-good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so, the best case for this is possibly pretend the other question *doesn't* exist when closing a question that isn't a good fit in the first place, especially in situations where one would be casting a down or delete vote on the question anyways - it isn't a good sign post and will ultimately be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Close with the 'real' reason: opinion, too broad, or unclear&#xD;&#xA;* Make mention of the related question in comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While this may hinder our SEO, it presents a better appearance to the random person coming from google.  It also means that more questions (and answers) that are not good fits for the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A format are likely to end up deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The guidelines for this would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Don't duplicate to a question that should be deleted&#xD;&#xA;* Don't duplicate a question that should be deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This should *also* include a critical look at the questions that we are closing as a duplicate of and consider if these are things that we want on the site and delete them too.  I will also point out that historical locking them makes it harder to justify *not* closing these questions as a duplicate of the historical lock as the historical lock contains the text that this is not a good question for the site and they are difficult to search otherwise that duplicate votes to historically locked questions are less likely to be spurious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's another wrinkle into this.  While Programmers.SE doesn't have any *yet*, gold tag badge holders can close as a duplicate with a single vote. This is very useful on other sites as it reduces the necessary votes to close a question.  However, this is sometimes used as a &quot;I can either close as a spurious duplicate now or I can cast a too broad, wait two hours and hope that it gets closed before anyone gives an answer.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That hope for the &quot;no one answers&quot; is often in vain. This results in ultimately deleting the question, reputation loss for people who answered, and an increased unease with the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A platform.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, that is the tool and in the face of &quot;close it fast or create worse experiences for *more* users&quot; the close it fast may be the *right* answer, however wrong it is.  At least under the current system." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22084" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7782" RevisionGUID="538a5d92-b2fd-4826-96d1-7542b46f554b" CreationDate="2015-12-10T20:18:00.070" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="On duplicates and other close reasons" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22085" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7782" RevisionGUID="538a5d92-b2fd-4826-96d1-7542b46f554b" CreationDate="2015-12-10T20:18:00.070" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|vote-to-close|closing-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22086" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7782" RevisionGUID="dceece9f-b452-4b18-9468-4c1005dec4e8" CreationDate="2015-12-10T20:36:17.297" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 951 characters in body" Text="One of those topics occasionally bantered about in chat, and with a bit more frequency lately is about how we close with duplicates and what these questions should be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idealized flow with closing for a duplicate is one of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;a1. Vote to close as a duplicate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and then either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;b2. Poster rewords question to address the &quot;not a duplicate nature&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;b3. Revised question is a good one, reopened, and life continues  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;c2. Poster says &quot;yep, that is it&quot; (or sufficient other voters agree)  &#xD;&#xA;c3. Remaining question is either good (as a sign post for future) or poor (and eventually deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The post is correctly closed as a duplicate path (c)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no problem with the 'c' path other than the possibility of eventually cluttering up the linked questions with duplicates that aren't good sign posts.  For an example of this see the [2,200 posts linked to Stack Overflow's NullPointerException question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/linked/218384?lq=1) - that really doesn't help anyone. And while we don't have 2k NPE questions here, having 20 or so questions linked to a post diminishes its value ***unless*** those are good questions to begin with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One can see the most linked questions with [this data.se query](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/407064/most-duplicated-questions) along with some other statistics.  Our most duplicated questions often have long discussions and lots of views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing as a duplicate of these locked or closed questions says &quot;we once accepted this, but we don't any more&quot; which indirectly leads to further confusion of scope (that these discussions, debates, holy wars, polls are appropriate here), too broad, etc... and misplaced nostalgia back to earlier times.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;i&gt;My opinion: A duplicate vote implies that this is **also** a discussion and... well, my take is that aren't good posts in the first place (especially if one looks at sorting by AnswerCount).  Interesting, yes... but these are blog posts and reddit threads instead. Maintaining these massive answer collections makes it harder to say 'this isn't a good question.' and provide appealing targets for discussion targets that are tangentially related.&lt;/I&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## When the close vote is a stretch (a)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One problem occurs when a1 is a stretch - that it is an &quot;this post addresses the question.&quot;  This is contentious because if the &quot;this addresses the question&quot; is the threshold for an answer on a question, then posting an answer from the other question as is would be a viable answer... which is one of the criteria for determining if one would vote to close the question as a duplicate.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the other criteria for a close vote as a duplicate is that it asks the exact same question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And thus, one of the two sets of statements here should be considered proper&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* An answer should answer the question, not just address the question&#xD;&#xA;* A duplicate post must be an exact duplicate, so that the answers on the duplicate target exactly answer the question here.  A duplicate question should be a strong candidate for merging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* An answer should address the question, but does not need to answer it fully&#xD;&#xA;* A duplicate post must lead the asker of the question in the proper direction to solve their problem. A duplicate question is a sign post on the road to understanding the entire picture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## When the (revised) question isn't good (b')&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Not a good question in the first place (b2')&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other problem with this is when the question itself is really unclear, too broad, or primarily opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've effectively done that with writing a specific off topic reason with &quot;we won't debug your code&quot; rather than writing a canonical duplicate that such questions get (unhelpfully?) duplicated to.  The off topic *clearly* indicates that we will not answer those questions here. The duplicate... not so clearly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we might find that duplicating the question to another one that was asked that is the correct duplicate, it leaves poor questions in its place... and it also makes the duplicate target that much harder to remove in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Not a not so good, but clearly not duplicate (b3')&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also the situation where a question is modified to be clearly not a duplicate, but still isn't a good question. With the number of close voters that are active on the site, this poses a special problem for trying to close questions and keep poorly written ones closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the question isn't a duplicate, they do get reopened - even if they aren't good questions. And as the duplicate took five votes to close, it takes *another* five votes to close again from *other* users. This may mean the question never gets closed a second time, leaving poorly asked and written questions open on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, this situation is often the case on Programmers.SE - a question is closed as a duplicate of another opinion or too broad question, addresses the &quot;this is not a duplicate&quot; but remains a question that is primarily opinion, too broad, or is still unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The resulting situation isn't good - the original post (if it remains closed) is no longer a duplicate of the target dup (bad for future readers). Alternatively, if it is reopened, it remains a not-good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so, the best case for this is possibly pretend the other question *doesn't* exist when closing a question that isn't a good fit in the first place, especially in situations where one would be casting a down or delete vote on the question anyways - it isn't a good sign post and will ultimately be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Close with the 'real' reason: opinion, too broad, or unclear&#xD;&#xA;* Make mention of the related question in comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While this may hinder our SEO, it presents a better appearance to the random person coming from google.  It also means that more questions (and answers) that are not good fits for the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A format are likely to end up deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The guidelines for this would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Don't duplicate to a question that should be deleted&#xD;&#xA;* Don't duplicate a question that should be deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This should *also* include a critical look at the questions that we are closing as a duplicate of and consider if these are things that we want on the site and delete them too.  I will also point out that historical locking them makes it harder to justify *not* closing these questions as a duplicate of the historical lock as the historical lock contains the text that this is not a good question for the site and they are difficult to search otherwise that duplicate votes to historically locked questions are less likely to be spurious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's another wrinkle into this.  While Programmers.SE doesn't have any *yet*, gold tag badge holders can close as a duplicate with a single vote. This is very useful on other sites as it reduces the necessary votes to close a question.  However, this is sometimes used as a &quot;I can either close as a spurious duplicate now or I can cast a too broad, wait two hours and hope that it gets closed before anyone gives an answer.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That hope for the &quot;no one answers&quot; is often in vain. This results in ultimately deleting the question, reputation loss for people who answered, and an increased unease with the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A platform.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, that is the tool and in the face of &quot;close it fast or create worse experiences for *more* users&quot; the close it fast may be the *right* answer, however wrong it is.  At least under the current system." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22087" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7783" RevisionGUID="c7a5b405-24b3-44af-bb66-4d83c11034e4" CreationDate="2015-12-10T20:51:06.403" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Some of our older questions are about hardware recommendations.  Well, Hardware Recommendations.SE is now live - lets clear up some confusion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, I'm not suggesting migrating these questions there, but properly and finally removing them from here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, I am looking at [What are good keyboards for programming](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2254/what-are-good-keyboards-for-programming).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers tend to type a lot of code, bashing a lot of shortcuts and a lot of other things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What keyboards are good for programming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a broadly unfocused question with 33 answers.  Many not more than a picture, others just saying they wished they had a keyboard that cost several thousand dollars.  This post is no more valuable (and out of date, that wonderfully expensive keyboard hasn't been in production for years) than going to [amazon](http://www.amazon.com/s/?keywords=keyboards) and browsing the reviews there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it has merit, reask the question on HardwareRec.SE with the appropriate constraints to scope - but it is not now nor has ever been a good question on Programmers.SE and its historical significance is very much in doubt." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22088" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7783" RevisionGUID="c7a5b405-24b3-44af-bb66-4d83c11034e4" CreationDate="2015-12-10T20:51:06.403" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Reconsider historical lock on hardware recommendations" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22089" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7783" RevisionGUID="c7a5b405-24b3-44af-bb66-4d83c11034e4" CreationDate="2015-12-10T20:51:06.403" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|specific-question|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22090" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7784" RevisionGUID="e6d3345d-8b81-4dc7-82c6-32ae0cfe2388" CreationDate="2015-12-10T22:03:55.333" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Looking at the big picture, I think there are two ways to address your concerns:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. If a question should be closed for a reason other than duplicate, close it for that reason. Only close as a duplicate if it is a good-quality question that would not otherwise be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Clean up the rat's nest of old, poor-quality, and off-topic duplicate targets. This may require deleting bad questions that point to them first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You brought up a few examples in your comments. Maybe start another meta-question with some specific examples of old questions to nuke from orbit. It could be a third cleanup attempt. Keep it narrowly-focused on the worst offenders so we can make measurable progress and resolve it quickly, which is important for some of these old questions with a lot of dupe targets and upvotes which in turn requires a _lot_ of delete votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22091" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7785" RevisionGUID="77632d48-6ec3-4d02-8029-b1fe125d5152" CreationDate="2015-12-11T02:35:36.197" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="gnat is a mechanical being who monitors several sites on the SE network: as soon as a question is posted, gnat's AI kicks in and figures out the proper comment to post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a combination of the [SE-AutoReviewComments][1] plugin plus superior AI. Good luck outsmarting gnat: you cannot win this battle unless your name is [Skynet][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://github.com/Benjol/SE-AutoReviewComments&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_%28Terminator%29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22092" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7783" RevisionGUID="5c3cf3c7-025c-408f-9d0f-534e4c9416da" CreationDate="2015-12-11T08:58:42.757" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|specific-question|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22093" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7716" RevisionGUID="68ae4216-26e4-42ea-b2ec-a070eeba1044" CreationDate="2015-12-12T00:19:52.370" UserId="1204" Comment="edited title" Text="Sync the [async] tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22094" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7770" RevisionGUID="5fbf060d-18b2-432d-b469-83af9cd1e4a1" CreationDate="2015-12-12T12:00:02.100" UserId="17853" Comment="There's no need to call people names, gnat." Text="**TL;DR** Can the system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently I've seen notes from Stack Exchange staff about how it would be nice if site would allow for broader, softer kind questions. This was [said by Robert Cartaino here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7650/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The idea that there are hordes of people just waiting flood the site for want of a single precedent was one of those things we worried about before we had anything to back it up. But if you haven't noticed, Stack Exchange has moved on from a lot of those old adages foretelling of widespread doom in ways that simply never materialized in actual use... _every_ question must have exactly one absolutely factual answer. ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and [by Jon Ericson here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7761/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Given quality of users on this site, there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, the system makes it difficult (I would say, unnecessarily difficult) to produce and maintain quality content in questions with many answers. It doesn't provide any means to make it easier and some features even tend to incentivize low quality content in questions of this kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current UI doesn't offer any means to help answerers and readers find / avoid repeating what was stated before. Combined with being very easy to post an answer, this leads to useless answers that don't add anything over what was posted before. This is noticeable even in questions with brief answers which are easy to check ([example](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/271158/839601)) and when answers are lengthy, things become even worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This penalizes web search visitors, forcing them to read same points over and over and over again. Letting repetitive answers proliferate is a step toward old-fashioned &quot;forums&quot;, and quite a substantial one I think.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particular feature that essentially encourages low quality content is Hot Network Questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To set the record straight for readers not familiar with its purpose - it is established pretty firmly and it has nothing to do with content quality. The feature is there only to show network wide audience entertaining / interesting questions. If you're interested, refer MSE for more details on that: [What is the Goal of “Hot Network Questions”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per se, entertainment aspect of HNQ looks pretty acceptable and I don't think it should necessarily be that it makes a critical obstacle in maintaining quality content. Thing is though, as implemented currently... it really does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;HNQ, the way it is now, make maintaining quality content cumbersome and painful. Problems with content quality in hot questions are well known for a long time ([1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;), [2](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;'Answers quality in hot questions'&quot;)), and it keeps happening here and now, see for example http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over years, Stack Exchange tried various ways to handle questions with multiple answers but none of these seemed to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Jeff Atwood's warning](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/86895/165773) was probably the first one,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Did you read through all the existing answers first to make sure your answer will be contributing something new?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All I can say about it is that it doesn't work, has never worked and is unlikely to ever work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another thing they tried was automatic conversion to community wiki when there are many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This worked... sorta, in the sense that it made it easier to downvote low quality answers (without incurring rep penalty) and removed incentive to flood popular questions with answers in a (frankly, quite realistic) hope to gain a bit of rep with a random upvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this trick is, it had some _very_ ugly side effects due to involved rep denial from users providing quality content and in the end it was [deservedly discarded](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228940/165773). Thing is though, nothing was done to compensate loss of features used to counter issues in questions with many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, there's standard rhetoric about voting down low quality answers but tell me, how many users can afford rep loss of voting this way, say, 5-10 of total 20 non-CW answers in a question? how many of them can afford doing this every month? every week? And if you additionally consider [&quot;sympathy upvotes&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/311408/839601 &quot;what's this&quot;) frequently happening to such answers in popular questions (each worth more than 4 votes down rep wise), this starts looking like a wishful thinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another approach that was tried about two years ago is randomizing hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seemed to work at first but as time passed by it revealed signs of inability to scale. Shuffling 100 hot questions to 100K site visitors works, shuffling same amount to 1 million will break and essentially return us back to old known issues with &quot;snowball effect&quot; when questions stick in the list solely because they were advertised there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Somewhere along the way they implemented special adjustment for Stack Overflow questions, which strongly pushes these from hot list after 7 hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to work, in the sense that there aren't very loud complaints about hot questions at MSO anymore (like it was in the past with [&quot;croissants&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/190106/165773)). Still, this doesn't resolve problems at other sites. And still, even SO is having garbage answers problem in questions that acquire popularity and high views organically, not via hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Yet another feature intended to help control answers quality is question protection, which makes it impossible to answer for users having less than 10 on-site reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By design, protection is intended to handle only cases of extreme abuse. It doesn't provide any means against low quality answers posted by users with over 10 rep. Also, due to some implementation specifics, even very limited functionality it offers frequently turns out useless in hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Can the system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22095" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7783" RevisionGUID="24d43f7e-6ce5-40d7-a0c9-a7cb93d4b6eb" CreationDate="2015-12-13T06:19:19.190" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/675922929432076288" />
  <row Id="22096" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7786" RevisionGUID="263c2771-31aa-4cc0-a105-fcf2427f8ce6" CreationDate="2015-12-13T19:21:03.173" UserId="31260" Text="Please merge tag [tag:ux] (13 questions) into [tag:user-experience] (68), and make them synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither of the tags has wiki, but questions in both are about [user experience (UX)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Preference for master tag is because it has much more questions.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22097" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7786" RevisionGUID="263c2771-31aa-4cc0-a105-fcf2427f8ce6" CreationDate="2015-12-13T19:21:03.173" UserId="31260" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [ux] → [user-experience]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22098" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7786" RevisionGUID="263c2771-31aa-4cc0-a105-fcf2427f8ce6" CreationDate="2015-12-13T19:21:03.173" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22099" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7787" RevisionGUID="ba876e3b-d7ad-4210-94f0-2b982e33aa5a" CreationDate="2015-12-13T23:57:49.060" UserId="4" Text="Just so there's an answer...I did this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, for the record, even if [tag:ux] had more questions, I'd make the master [tag:user-experience] since it's more descriptive." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22100" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6583" RevisionGUID="91814ace-b902-4828-91c9-04024e3ade90" CreationDate="2015-12-14T03:27:28.840" UserId="1204" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="Much of the past guidance (from 2011, 2012 and 2014 linked above in the question) has suggested that these questions are off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3856/question-about-naming-conventions-not-constructive/3859#3859&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on StackExchange sites need to be presented in such a way that there can be an answer that is &quot;the answer&quot;. As I read the question, every possible answer to it would be equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question asks:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; how should I represent the separate words in the filename?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't see how this can be answered where there aren't 15 different answers, giving 15 different opinions, all equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for other naming convention questions being valid, thanks for bringing them up, we'll go through them and clean up those that slipped through the cracks. The fact that they exist on the site, doesn't make this one or any future questions more constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic/2382#2382&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think there's a difference between questions that ask for a proper term for a concept and questions that ask for naming suggestions for a class or a method.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The former would be fine, in my opinion, but the latter do not belong on Stack Exchange for reasons of being both too localized and entirely discussion-oriented.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are *two* types of name questions that are fairly consistently asked, though one can blend into the other.  And we *continue* to get both types of questions - the &quot;what should I name&quot; and &quot;what is the name of&quot;. This makes it difficult to provide *the* answer and easily risk getting too many poor quality answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;**Context:** When this question was written, many naming questions were getting closed with a custom off topic message referencing [Let's Play the Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/).  Prior to that questions were often being closed as &quot;Not Constructive.&quot;  This is saying that these questions are on topic, though frequently have other problems (getting closed as primary opinion or too broad when there isn't any help given to answers to say what a *good* answer to the question is nor inspiring answers that meet the ideals of Good Subjective, Bad Subjective. Furthermore, the questions often get down voted for lack of research. It is my hope that by following these points below that the questions can overcome these difficulties and have a chance at remaining open.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are **marginally** on topic.  However, these questions are often poor and without additional information they should be closed as too broad or primarily opinion.  Much of the historical guidance points to this being the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In an effort to try to make these questions better fit the Q&amp;A format rather than being a poll of answers where &quot;I think it is an XYZ&quot; and &quot;Have you considered XWZ?&quot; we need to help the questions be better asked so that they don't generate one sentence answers and stay away from the [questions not to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) so that they have the &quot;long, not short, answers&quot;.  From the blog post [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers.** The best subjective questions inspire your peers to share their actual experiences, not just post a mindless one-liner or cartoon in hopes of being rewarded with upvotes for being merely “first.” Sharing an experience takes at least one paragraph; ideally several paragraphs. If I’m asking about how to bake cookies, don’t give me a list of grocery items: milk. butter. vanilla. eggs. There is virtually nothing I can learn from a short, static list of grocery items that make up a recipe. Instead, tell me what happened the last time you made cookies from that recipe! Share your detailed experiences, so that we all might learn from them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this end, we need to provide some guidance that will help people avoid asking the questions that will be nothing more than a poll of word ideas, pattern names, and guessing at what was intended (and would get closed as either primarily opinion or too broad). Secondly, we should try to help people ask questions that won't be down voted for &quot;this question does not show any research effort&quot; (from the mouseover text on the down vote triangle).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have exactly the same problem that English.SE does with their own single word requests - lots of them, low quality, uninteresting, attract poor answers from users, and they get complained about in chat, they attract less active users and repel more active users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Drawing from [English.SE tag: single-word-requests](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/single-word-requests) and [Against single word requests](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/1654/against-single-word-requests) there is a set of questions that are necessary to make these questions better:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Describe exactly the context that the name or terminology is used**&#xD;&#xA;    * Programming language - the same concept can be used in multiple ways.  As I point out in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6296/why-is-this-question-wrong-asking-for-the-name-of-a-specific-practice/6297#6297 and ultimately http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218986/how-is-it-called-when-you-define-constants-that-simply-refer-to-a-large-namespac/219323#219323 there is sometimes no standard way to handle this across *all* programming languages.&#xD;&#xA;    * Code example - without a demonstration of what the code is to do, multiple terms can be used for the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;* **Describe the criteria for acceptance**&#xD;&#xA;    * Without some criteria for acceptance of the term, there is no way to say which one is better than another and the question is simply a poll for people to toss out suggestions for a name.&#xD;&#xA;* **Which names/terms have you thought of and discarded as inappropriate?**&#xD;&#xA;    * Just asking for a name doesn't let us know which direction you have thought and as described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important we need to know what you have already thought of and discarded.&#xD;&#xA;* **Does the question show that you searched for a suitable word before asking the question?**&#xD;&#xA;    * Without the information to show that you *have* tried, such questions reek of intellectual laziness.  The use of Google is not hard.  Sometimes these words are right there if you just enter the language of choice and the code construct you are working with.  Stack exchange is not and should never be a &quot;I don't know, I'll ask what its called on P.SE and see if anyone answers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the above pieces of information being provided in the question, it *might* be acceptable to keep the question open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also *strongly* want people to look at the English.SE tags: http://english.stackexchange.com/tags and note that Single-word-requests on that site make up an average of 30/week or about 1/5&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; of all of their questions on a day to day basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we, P.SE, want to have a similar bit of 1/5th of our questions be questions about what to name some 'pattern' or what a particular structure is called within some code?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22101" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7788" RevisionGUID="cb786609-c09b-4d56-90f2-489d8aa87ff2" CreationDate="2015-12-14T22:08:46.767" UserId="207626" Text="[tag:server-client] has a wiki and 63 questions, [tag:client-server] has no wiki and 21 questions. I think that there is no real difference between them one should be merged into the other (probably the latter into the first)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22102" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7788" RevisionGUID="cb786609-c09b-4d56-90f2-489d8aa87ff2" CreationDate="2015-12-14T22:08:46.767" UserId="207626" Text="server-client-server-client-server-... Let's avoid infinite recursions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22103" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7788" RevisionGUID="cb786609-c09b-4d56-90f2-489d8aa87ff2" CreationDate="2015-12-14T22:08:46.767" UserId="207626" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22104" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7788" RevisionGUID="bc4bdb79-c7d8-4b58-9502-6bf0b484b5a7" CreationDate="2015-12-15T01:17:10.523" UserId="207626" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="[tag:server-client] has a wiki and 63 questions, [tag:client-server] has no wiki and 21 questions. I think that there is no real difference between them and one should be merged into the other (probably the latter into the first)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22105" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7788" RevisionGUID="d777ed14-cc68-4d35-9c26-92b2fe306cde" CreationDate="2015-12-15T09:52:38.470" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22106" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7789" RevisionGUID="1109ed16-4e82-4762-acf6-bd65658206a5" CreationDate="2015-12-15T09:55:03.950" UserId="25936" Text="Done. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I kept [tag:client-server] as the master tag, since it's the [more common term][1]. Also, Stack Overflow has the [same mapping][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks for bringing this to our attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7788/server-client-server-client-server-lets-avoid-infinite-recursions#comment23609_7788&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/tags/client-server/synonyms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22107" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7786" RevisionGUID="0537a96a-d276-468c-9d73-7b3e008f7a08" CreationDate="2015-12-15T11:14:58.247" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22108" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7790" RevisionGUID="46d6f36a-1e88-416d-98e7-5b6600342ead" CreationDate="2015-12-15T21:28:27.587" UserId="89959" Text="I flagged [this SO question](http://stackoverflow.com/q/33444814/1858225) as off-topic with the comment &quot;I think this would be a better fit for Programmers.SE, but that's not one of the migration options.&quot; This flag was declined with the message &quot;a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm fairly certain that this topic isn't a good fit for SO simply because it's largely opinion-based (as essentially any discussion of coding style must be), so I'm wondering if perhaps the reason for the declined flag is that it wouldn't be welcome here, either. Is that the case? If so, why is that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22109" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7790" RevisionGUID="46d6f36a-1e88-416d-98e7-5b6600342ead" CreationDate="2015-12-15T21:28:27.587" UserId="89959" Text="Are questions about good coding style on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22110" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7790" RevisionGUID="46d6f36a-1e88-416d-98e7-5b6600342ead" CreationDate="2015-12-15T21:28:27.587" UserId="89959" Text="|discussion|migration|stackoverflow|declined-flags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22111" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7791" RevisionGUID="e247f874-b47b-4059-bfde-0b5c0eb8cabe" CreationDate="2015-12-15T22:17:24.517" UserId="1204" Text="When you consider a question on Stack Overflow for migration, the first thing you should ask yourself is *&quot;Is this a good question?&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Good questions:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are clear and understandable.&#xD;&#xA; - Have *a specific problem statement,* tailored to Programmers' scope.&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *lists of things.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *product or service recommendations.* &#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask questions that require *extended discussions or lengthy explanations.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask *&quot;which is better&quot;* without explaining what &quot;better&quot; specifically means to you, in a way that isn't a tautology ([**&quot;best practice&quot;**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937) is not any better than &quot;better.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, if it's Too Broad or Unclear What You Are Asking on Stack Overflow, then that is likely to be the case  on Programmers as well.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are still on-topic for Stack Overflow, even though they look like Programmers questions.  Questions about software algorithms, for example, are still on topic on Stack Overflow, and shouldn't be migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In summary, migration is only for high-quality questions that are on-topic on programmers, but specifically off-topic for Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22112" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7791" RevisionGUID="c2e1aa99-fe3a-4013-b954-88329bf8db1f" CreationDate="2015-12-15T22:26:17.270" UserId="1204" Comment="added 28 characters in body" Text="When you consider a question on Stack Overflow for migration, the first thing you should ask yourself is *&quot;Is this a good question?&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Good questions:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are clear and understandable.&#xD;&#xA; - Have *a specific problem statement,* tailored to Programmers' scope.&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *lists of things.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *product or service recommendations.* &#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask questions that require *extended discussions or lengthy explanations.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask *&quot;which is better&quot;* or *&quot;is this a good idea&quot;* without explaining what &quot;good&quot; or &quot;better&quot; specifically means, in a way that isn't a tautology ([**&quot;best practice&quot;**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937) is not any better than &quot;better.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, if it's Too Broad or Unclear What You Are Asking on Stack Overflow, then that is likely to be the case  on Programmers as well.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are still on-topic for Stack Overflow, even though they look like Programmers questions.  Questions about software algorithms, for example, are still on topic on Stack Overflow, and shouldn't be migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In summary, migration is only for high-quality questions that are on-topic on programmers, but specifically off-topic for Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22113" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7705" RevisionGUID="31e8c7f2-0fc7-43f7-86a9-27e185537b30" CreationDate="2015-12-16T17:51:40.037" UserId="35276" Comment="added 163 characters in body" Text="Site Participation&#xD;&#xA;==================&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries detailing over all site usage, number of users, number of user votes, number of questions and answers and closures and whatever else insofar as it's an aggregate of data over the whole site's user-generated-content (ergo participation).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Sites questions and answer count per day](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/84695/questions-and-answers-per-day#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per 7 day period](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102122/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per day of the week](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381897/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per hour of the day](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381898/questions-and-answers-per-hour-of-the-day#graph)&#xD;&#xA;* [User count by location](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381810/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA; * [...with location search](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381818/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA;* [Post count by tag](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/78004/post-count-by-tag)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post score by location by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381878/total-post-score-by-location-by-post-type)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post count by location by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381882/total-post-count-by-location-by-post-type)&#xD;&#xA;* [Ranking of community acceptance of tags](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/410172/community-tag-acceptance-ranking?TagQuestionCountThreshold=50)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22114" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7792" RevisionGUID="70b7d710-bc3e-4c3b-879f-3d894a2651b4" CreationDate="2015-12-16T18:00:56.490" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="[tag:project-management] needs some garbage cleaning (not the &quot;this tag is really not appropriate for the site&quot; many other tags in this post fall into).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally, one should be able to click on the tag and find good examples of project management questions as they relate to software development and architecture. Currently, this is hit or miss (with a better chance of a miss with someone asking for a logo for a project or a list of all the possible risks in project management).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People familiar with this topic please:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* down vote poor questions and answers&#xD;&#xA;* detag good questions that aren't about project management&#xD;&#xA;* close vote (or flag) questions that are opinion or too broad to be properly answered on the site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, try to make it so that if someone clicks on a random question within the tag, they've likely got a good question with good answers that is about project management." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22115" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="7792" RevisionGUID="526127e4-122d-430f-b3a8-125b6927cc02" CreationDate="2015-12-16T18:00:56.490" UserDisplayName="user40980" />
  <row Id="22116" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7705" RevisionGUID="4dd6e4d8-91af-4752-b809-5fd7bee1288b" CreationDate="2015-12-16T18:04:30.360" UserId="35276" Comment="added 158 characters in body" Text="Site Participation&#xD;&#xA;==================&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries detailing over all site usage, number of users, number of user votes, number of questions and answers and closures and whatever else insofar as it's an aggregate of data over the whole site's user-generated-content (ergo participation).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Sites questions and answer count per day](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/84695/questions-and-answers-per-day#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per 7 day period](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102122/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per day of the week](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381897/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per hour of the day](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381898/questions-and-answers-per-hour-of-the-day#graph)&#xD;&#xA;* [User count by location](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381810/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA; * [...with location search](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381818/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA;* [Post count by tag](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/78004/post-count-by-tag)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post score by location by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381878/total-post-score-by-location-by-post-type)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post count by location by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381882/total-post-count-by-location-by-post-type)&#xD;&#xA;* [Ranking of community acceptance of tags](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/410394/community-tag-acceptance-ranking-with-threshold?TagQuestionCountThreshold=50)&#xD;&#xA; * [.. with tag search](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/410172/community-tag-acceptance-ranking?TagQuestionCountThreshold=50)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22117" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7793" RevisionGUID="68474e0b-8e8c-4f11-aed5-add8b89f845c" CreationDate="2015-12-16T20:50:24.110" UserId="9302" Text="I noticed a trend in a couple recent questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Identifying plagiarized jokes? \[closed\]][1] (Two jokes with different proper nouns or slightly different word order may actually be the same joke.)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to calculate/determine similarity between two English Sentences? \[on hold\]][2] (Determine common meaning between two sentences.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both questions were closed as &quot;too broad&quot;. I imagine this is because they touch on a big subject: Natural Language Processing. The thing is, they're not asking for a full explanation of NLP. Both questions describe a fairly discrete scenario (especially joke plagiarism). So why &quot;too broad&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My hunch is that at first glance it seems impossible to write a rich answer in the space SO provides. After all, it would require the equivalent of several academic papers. But is that true? When we think about expertise, it's easy to forget about the layers and layers of abstraction. Experts don't talk to each other in gory detail. They communicate using convenient abstractions. When I provide an answer about straight-up programming, I leave out many, many details. My answer uses abstract concepts that I assume you know or will look up in your own time. For example, I don't describe Dependency Injection from first principles, when I say &quot;functional programming&quot; I assume there's a shared history between us, I casually mention a [Facade][3] without explaining exactly what I mean, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I imagine that NLP (and many other specialties) have their own abstractions. I can't say for sure, but I imagine an expert might be able to competently answer the questions above in a few paragraphs. The answer wouldn't be step-by-step instructions from first principles; it would be a bunch of abstraction that I don't (initially) understand. If I'm right, then we're losing interesting questions because reviewers are uncomfortable with topics in which they lack expertise. Is this something we can improve?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully, it's not too obnoxious to anticipate questions/concerns:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **The OP isn't going to understand the answer anyway.** -- That may be true initially, but remember back to your huge leaps in knowledge. They always start with confusion and misunderstanding. Selfishly, I'd love to learn something new regardless of what happens to the OP. Others may enjoy these answers as well.&#xD;&#xA;- **Specialties don't belong on Programmers.** -- I agree that we don't want to become a Q&amp;A for academic papers. Still, it seems there are opportunities to explore interesting algorithms and practices. I may not be able to answer the specialty questions, but exposure to the topic makes me a better developer. If a specialty is big enough, maybe it will break off to its own site and we can direct people there. Until then, let's tackle the on-topic questions here.&#xD;&#xA;- **No one is going to answer these questions.** -- This one is tricky. As of today, it seems that the majority of up-voted answers come from a small handful of users. These users may not be equipped to answer specialty questions. On the other hand, if we exclude specialty questions we're not likely to attract new and interesting contributors. It's a chicken and egg problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; The trend has been growing restrictions on the types of questions that can be asked. This is good for keeping out the riff-raff. But there's also a cost. As the pool of questions shrink, there are fewer opportunities to attract participants. Seems there could be a win-win compromise. Toss the homework questions because they don't add lasting value for anyone involved, but open up some of the specialty questions in an attempt to lure a few fascinating experts with fascinating answers.&#xD;&#xA;- **We'll receive too many answers from unqualified respondents.** -- Sure. That's always the case. Too often, we kill off whole categories of questions because they attract bad answers, even if there's a possibility for an excellent one. I prefer an approach that allows for greatness while acknowledging you may have to sift through some garbage versus an approach that prevents all garbage _and_ greatness as collateral damage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304368/identifying-plagiarized-jokes&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/305183/how-to-calculate-determine-similarity-between-two-english-sentences&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facade_pattern" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22118" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7793" RevisionGUID="68474e0b-8e8c-4f11-aed5-add8b89f845c" CreationDate="2015-12-16T20:50:24.110" UserId="9302" Text="Are our judgments of &quot;too broad&quot; too broad?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22119" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7793" RevisionGUID="68474e0b-8e8c-4f11-aed5-add8b89f845c" CreationDate="2015-12-16T20:50:24.110" UserId="9302" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22120" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7794" RevisionGUID="c578d30f-d64d-457b-b2ac-9e717f18464e" CreationDate="2015-12-16T21:53:16.837" UserId="35276" Text="Seeing as our dupe-closure practices are something I've complained about ad nauseum; I suppose I should pipe in here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be sure, a bit of your question is not super clear to me after reading it through... It appears there's a couple things you advocate for and a couple things you're questioning and trying to lay out choices for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm basically going to ignore all of that (Who's surprised?) except for the one point which I think we all have broad agreement on - and is just something that perhaps people needs to be more cognizant of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Don't duplicate to a question that should be deleted&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Don't duplicate a question that should be deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would say if a question should be *closed* for any reason other than duplicate, it should neither be a duplicate target, nor a duplicate closure. **Deleted** isn't the relevant discriminator here; just acceptability as an open question is what matters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said I would like to lay out what I believe is reasonable usage of the duplicate vote, and discern my reasoning for and against certain practices.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The basis for my entire perspective on dupe votes is: **What makes the site the highest quality and most useful catalog of content to future consumers possible?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I grant that my opinion of what does this is just mine and would be happy to find evidence or hear arguments that refute it so that I may be corrected in this. That said, my opinion of the experience for a duplicate goes about like this from a user perspective:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Google problem or question you have&#xD;&#xA; 2. Find question asking about the exact same thing you are wondering- your exact scenario playing out for someone else previously, sweet surrender you've found it!&#xD;&#xA; 3. This question has been closed as a duplicate without a good answer- so you follow the duplicate link.&#xD;&#xA; 4. The question linked is not the exact same problem, similar perhaps, related even, but not the same. It had 3 answers and none of them fit to your specific scenario like the first one did.&#xD;&#xA; 5. You feel betrayed by coming so close to a solution to your problem, only for it to have been cut-short and replaced by non-solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would say, the *majority* of people who run into a duplicate closure are getting exactly this experience. This is true largely because there have been so many duplicate closures done just because it's easier / &quot;nicer&quot; than a real closure, or because the question is on-the-fence topically/quality wise so none of the normal closure reasons fit- but people *feel* it should be closed and thus abuse the duplicate reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are variations on this scenario that occur, occasionally the duplicate question is different but *still* answers the question they had, and more rarely the duplicate question is *the exact same question* and answers the question. I would say that exact duplicates are in my experience rather uncommon as google tends to be people's *first* tool, and if we have their exact scenario it's usually found easily and quickly. Color me wrong on that note if that's what I am; this is just based on my anecdotal experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you put it all together and think about what we're providing to users experience wise - what can we do to improve it? Step one is as mentioned previously, obviously close questions that should be closed - and regard dupe as something different than closing (because that's how visitors will regard it). In simple terms, don't dupe to junk and don't dupe from junk.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After we've tackled that, the next thing to look at is duplicating things to questions that aren't exactly the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a similar question has an answer which you think answers this question&#xD;&#xA;===========================================================================&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some people say if the question has an answer which is correct for the not-quite-the-same-question, then you should dupe vote it. I tend to disagree here because with enough dupe votes, you're effectively having community agreement as to what is the questions answer rather than allowing the user to accept an answer. This is not the site's intended functionality, only the asker can truly claim whether an answer solves their problem. In this case I would suggest that users post comments suggesting the answer they think solves it; if the asker declares it does answer their question then a dupe vote makes sense perhaps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, when a group of community members get together and decide what the answer to someone's question is, when they're wrong it both stops the user from getting the *correct* answer to their question, and gives them and future visitors a terrible experience. This is why it's most important that askers decide the correct answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that may not be the same, but are related&#xD;&#xA;===================================================&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another reason people suggest duplicates for not-exactly-the-same-question is because they feel the fact that they're related means they should be linked to provide as much useful information to visitors as possible. I don't disagree that relating other content helps build context and aids the site's consumers. However you have to realize by using dupe closure you're halting the progression of the question by disallowing answers to be posted. If someone has an exact answer to the exact question being asked, it would be incorrect for them to post it to the similar-but-not-the-same question which has been used as a dupe target, and it cannot be posted to the question which is now been closed as dupe.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want content to be related to build a larger picture for consumers of the context and concept at play, use comments to note the related content. Don't halt the questions ability to garner specific and correct content for the site just because it's similar to but not the same as another question which you feel is valuable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm happy to hear criticism of my positions here, but overall as I said at the beginning, my perspective is based on the idea of future users experience utilizing our content catalog. I believe dupe closure can improve their experience, but the majority of ways it's used causes the exact opposite effect.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22121" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7795" RevisionGUID="6410e0bd-37ae-4f74-b79d-0b7a2544d517" CreationDate="2015-12-17T01:42:01.853" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="I was involved in both of these questions... so where we go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both of these questions delve quite far into natural language programming.  I had a college class that touched on this for a week (as part of a general survey of AI) and this is the type of thing that really is the subject of semester long classes, heavy books, and research papers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This brings us to the first point you have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The OP isn't going to understand the answer anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Elsewhere I wrote](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important) on the importance of including what you know.  Neither of the questions included shows that if we were to go to the NLP level of trying to answer the question - word taxonomies, part of speech identification, we'd find ourselves [writing a tutorial for one of the libraries out there](http://nlp.stanford.edu/software/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Writing one of these from scratch, you would need to show that you have at least a handle of the scope of the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the question with joke similarity said that edit distance *wasn't* a valid solution (though it *did* work for the material provided in the question) it leaves the door wide open for &quot;how do you solve two jokes being similar?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The similarity between two sentences question doesn't even show that the OP is familiar with the domain, and again, is either asking someone to write a tutorial for a python NLP library or is looking to write this from scratch.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Putting the entirety of [Natural language processing: an introduction](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3168328/) into an answer isn't helpful to people (and it doesn't fit) - this is something that can be found by searching.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers that we give will either be too high level to be useful to the OP, ***way*** too technical (until the OP clarifies the question to show that they *are* capable of handling that technical level), repeating tutorials that can be trivially found by searching, or don't even fit in the space allotted for an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that the following answer would 'answer' both questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You will need to:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; *  do sentence boundary detection which also identifies abbreviations and titles (so that &quot;I watched Dr. Who last night.&quot; isn't two sentences).  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * do tokenization of words and ideas (so that &quot;5 miles/day&quot; is one token as is &quot;2,6-diaminohexanoic&quot;)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Identify the part of speech of the word including homographs and gerunds  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * decompose compound words, possibly doing lemmatization to reduce a word to its root by removing its suffix  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * chunk the text into phrases&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Once this is complete, you will need to identify if there are any grammatical or spelling errors.  For jokes this is especially problematic as they may depend on puns and the error recovery will either mangle the sentence or render it unable to be parsed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Following that, you will need to do named entity recognition which identifies the various people, places, locations, and other categories of nouns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless you are familiar with linguistics and some computation, thats really not a useful answer for anyone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key decider for me when looking at something that is too broad it has the following two points:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The high level answer isn't useful&#xD;&#xA; * The low level answer isn't specified&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its clear what the general problem is, but the focus of the problem needs to be narrowed. Are you having trouble with the sentence boundary recognition? With the part of speech tagging? Chunking phrases? Identifying the name in the syntax tree?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions, given that the OP knows what they are asking about, are really easy to fix. The OP goes in and modifies the question to say &quot;I am having a problem recognizing if this noun phrase is similar to that noun phrase.&quot;  But the question of &quot;explain NLP to me&quot; which is at this time, the current written core question to both posts is something that falls into the &quot;high level not useful&quot; area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without the specification, these questions morph from one form to another as the OP gets a slightly better idea of what they are asking about and then refines the question again, and again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I hope I am never asked to try to figure out if one telling of The Aristocrats is the same as another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm also going to point out that the Jokes question is a also literature request:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can anyone point me in the direction of useful literature?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A [google scholar search for plagiarism detection](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;q=plagiarism+detection&amp;btnG=&amp;as_sdt=1%2C50&amp;as_sdtp=) comes back with 26,000 results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And while this is easily edited out, it again points to the unfocused and too broad nature of the question. I have no idea if any of those are what the OP wants, or are at the level that the OP is able to understand. Providing that material for me to be able to properly answer the question is something that the OP needs to do in each case - I can't guess about that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22122" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7795" RevisionGUID="76a67697-bfd7-459d-af02-c7ea956c6765" CreationDate="2015-12-17T02:41:42.130" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="here is where we were not." Text="I was involved in both of these questions... so here we go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both of these questions delve quite far into natural language programming.  I had a college class that touched on this for a week (as part of a general survey of AI) and this is the type of thing that really is the subject of semester long classes, heavy books, and research papers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This brings us to the first point you have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The OP isn't going to understand the answer anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Elsewhere I wrote](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important) on the importance of including what you know.  Neither of the questions included shows that if we were to go to the NLP level of trying to answer the question - word taxonomies, part of speech identification, we'd find ourselves [writing a tutorial for one of the libraries out there](http://nlp.stanford.edu/software/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Writing one of these from scratch, you would need to show that you have at least a handle of the scope of the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the question with joke similarity said that edit distance *wasn't* a valid solution (though it *did* work for the material provided in the question) it leaves the door wide open for &quot;how do you solve two jokes being similar?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The similarity between two sentences question doesn't even show that the OP is familiar with the domain, and again, is either asking someone to write a tutorial for a python NLP library or is looking to write this from scratch.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Putting the entirety of [Natural language processing: an introduction](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3168328/) into an answer isn't helpful to people (and it doesn't fit) - this is something that can be found by searching.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers that we give will either be too high level to be useful to the OP, ***way*** too technical (until the OP clarifies the question to show that they *are* capable of handling that technical level), repeating tutorials that can be trivially found by searching, or don't even fit in the space allotted for an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that the following answer would 'answer' both questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You will need to:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; *  do sentence boundary detection which also identifies abbreviations and titles (so that &quot;I watched Dr. Who last night.&quot; isn't two sentences).  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * do tokenization of words and ideas (so that &quot;5 miles/day&quot; is one token as is &quot;2,6-diaminohexanoic&quot;)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Identify the part of speech of the word including homographs and gerunds  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * decompose compound words, possibly doing lemmatization to reduce a word to its root by removing its suffix  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * chunk the text into phrases&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Once this is complete, you will need to identify if there are any grammatical or spelling errors.  For jokes this is especially problematic as they may depend on puns and the error recovery will either mangle the sentence or render it unable to be parsed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Following that, you will need to do named entity recognition which identifies the various people, places, locations, and other categories of nouns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless you are familiar with linguistics and some computation, thats really not a useful answer for anyone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key decider for me when looking at something that is too broad it has the following two points:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The high level answer isn't useful&#xD;&#xA; * The low level answer isn't specified&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its clear what the general problem is, but the focus of the problem needs to be narrowed. Are you having trouble with the sentence boundary recognition? With the part of speech tagging? Chunking phrases? Identifying the name in the syntax tree?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions, given that the OP knows what they are asking about, are really easy to fix. The OP goes in and modifies the question to say &quot;I am having a problem recognizing if this noun phrase is similar to that noun phrase.&quot;  But the question of &quot;explain NLP to me&quot; which is at this time, the current written core question to both posts is something that falls into the &quot;high level not useful&quot; area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without the specification, these questions morph from one form to another as the OP gets a slightly better idea of what they are asking about and then refines the question again, and again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I hope I am never asked to try to figure out if one telling of The Aristocrats is the same as another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm also going to point out that the Jokes question is a also literature request:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can anyone point me in the direction of useful literature?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A [google scholar search for plagiarism detection](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;q=plagiarism+detection&amp;btnG=&amp;as_sdt=1%2C50&amp;as_sdtp=) comes back with 26,000 results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And while this is easily edited out, it again points to the unfocused and too broad nature of the question. I have no idea if any of those are what the OP wants, or are at the level that the OP is able to understand. Providing that material for me to be able to properly answer the question is something that the OP needs to do in each case - I can't guess about that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22123" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7796" RevisionGUID="c61c0842-7a8e-4d84-bc0c-0f0df90bf65f" CreationDate="2015-12-17T23:51:25.307" UserId="81495" Text="As we all know, hats are a very important part of this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, the only reason I tolerate other people on the internet is so that once a year I can spend some time earning these glorious avatar noggin covers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently a few children have been added to my family.  They're were totally awesome until recently.  To be exact, they were totally awesome until hat season began.  Now they eat up all my precious hat hunting hours!  So my question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I tell a 3 year old girl and a 5 year old boy that I like internet hats more than them and that they should just leave me alone?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Merry xmas" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22124" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7796" RevisionGUID="c61c0842-7a8e-4d84-bc0c-0f0df90bf65f" CreationDate="2015-12-17T23:51:25.307" UserId="81495" Text="How do I tell my family they need to give me more free time to get hats?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22125" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7796" RevisionGUID="c61c0842-7a8e-4d84-bc0c-0f0df90bf65f" CreationDate="2015-12-17T23:51:25.307" UserId="81495" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22126" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7797" RevisionGUID="3d4dec5c-a6ee-4dcd-816a-3b0c326ceed9" CreationDate="2015-12-18T01:06:37.850" UserId="96050" Text="I'm sure you remember [this experiment](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7723/96050), which changed the required number of close/reopen votes from 5 to 3. Before getting to the meat of the analysis, I should point out that the change worked almost exactly as intended. Close votes [clustered around 3](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7734/96050) and the median time to close dropped noticably:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Median time to close by week][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the statistics I said I'd be looking at:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Month posted Qs   Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion&#xD;&#xA;    ------------ ---- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- ---------&#xD;&#xA;    2014-11-07   1378    621      45.1%          12.1%     1.9%       9.3%     30.2%&#xD;&#xA;    2014-12-07   1228    730      59.4%          13.4%     1.5%       7.1%     31.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-01-07   1484    788      53.1%          11.3%     1.6%      10.1%     32.0%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-02-07   1532    816      53.3%          11.0%     1.6%      10.0%     31.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-03-07   1480    883      59.7%           9.7%     1.1%       8.1%     35.2%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-04-07   1410    814      57.7%          12.5%     1.1%       4.9%     35.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-05-07   1370    725      52.9%          10.2%     2.1%       9.5%     41.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-06-07   1444    764      52.9%           9.2%     2.1%      14.3%     35.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-07-07   1561    839      53.7%          10.8%     1.2%       5.5%     36.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-08-07   1358    785      57.8%          11.6%     0.9%       3.3%     52.0%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-09-07   1368    816      59.6%          11.4%     3.3%      18.3%     47.5%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-07   1492    869      58.2%           8.9%     2.2%       6.5%     43.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-07   1294    951      73.5%          15.2%     4.8%      16.6%     45.7%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rates remained steady for the most part in the months leading up to the experiment. For the month of the experiment (November 7 to December 7) closing, editing of closed questions, and reopening spiked noticeably. (Deletion has a longer [lag time](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/262077/1438) so we don't have the final tally.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The big number that sticks out is the 73.5% closure rate. We've already gone round and round about what that number _should be_, so there's no point in rehashing that argument. I think too many questions closed here are salvageable and other people (who have firsthand experience in the close queue) believe that the lines are clear and most closed questions would be bad for the site. If [Jeff couldn't grok this site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2260/we-cant-pronounce-anything), I don't see why I would either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I don't understand the goals of this site is, in fact, _because_ I'm not part of this community. Closing is part of how this community, as [Clay Shirky puts it](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html), &quot;defends itself so that it can stay on its sophisticated goals and away from its basic instincts.&quot; Bikeshed questions represent a considerable portion of those instincts, I suspect. Closing questions that verge toward [bad subjective](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) protects the group from junk answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shirky also points out in &quot;A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You have to find some way to protect your own users from scale. This doesn't mean the scale of the whole system can't grow. But you can't try to make the system large by taking individual conversations and blowing them up like a balloon; human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon. It either dissipates, or turns into broadcast, or collapses. So plan for dealing with scale in advance, because it's going to happen anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our solution to scaling historically has been to encourage users to [**trust fellow programmers**](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/251175/1438). While it's not without problems, the philosophy does allow one community to handle [8k questions a day](http://stackexchange.com/sites#questionsperday). It's been ages since anyone could read all the questions on the site, but the system works well enough to produce an enormous (and growing) store of knowledge about coding. [Most of the questions are crap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law), but that's more than balanced by the quality of the content that rises to the top of searches. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's clear that changing the number of votes required to close questions will allow this site to scale without changing the criteria for closing questions. I completely understand why this would be desirable. But I think it would be a short-term hack. It will not fix the root of the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You might as well know what I think the core problem is: **distrust**. Over and over since I started this experiment, I've heard (whether this is what was intended or not, I don't know) concern that outsiders will take advantage of this community the moment its guard is dropped. And it's not just outsiders: there is a deep division among high-reputation users and former users of the site that is marked by distrust. I have some suggestions about how to work toward a compromise, but I haven't earned any trust here myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the off chance that it could still be useful, I'm going to toss out my ideas anyway:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Assume that only the sign and not the magnitude of question scores matter.** Voting volume tends to follow the number of views. Views are driven largely by how interested the general public is in the question and it's answers. The second most-upvoted question on SO is: [How do you undo the last commit?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/927358/1438) It didn't [start off](http://stackoverflow.com/revisions/927358/1) as a particularly good question, but it represents an _extremely common problem_ and so it gets a lot of views. I suppose in a just world, those views would not turn into votes. But in the real world, not everything is tied to merit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Assume that only the first few answers are ever read.** Almost a corollary to the previous point: popular questions will get more answers. If you dig through those answers, it's pretty likely some of them are low-quality. Gallingly, they are likely to have more votes than brilliant answers to obscure questions. But within a question, voting does a good job of surfacing quality. Studies consistently find that people [rarely finish reading pages they land on](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/page-fold-manifesto/). Either they find the information they are looking for and leave or they give up on the page. Downvote bad answers and trust your fellows to do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. **There will always be people who misunderstand the nature of this site.** Several people pointed me to a comment (on a now-deleted question) that cited [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/77479/96050) as a reason for asking something similar. The example has been closed for over a year. _Closing questions does not make them less tempting to copy._ Don't confuse _post hoc_ justification for motivation. People will ask dumb questions whether there are similar questions around or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. **Be proud of your past.** I know this site has gone through a lot of pain. It's also produced some amazing answers. I've seen the accepted answer to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60544/why-do-game-developers-prefer-windows cited several times by people who aren't active on Stack Exchange. The answers to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29109/is-there-any-reason-to-use-c-instead-of-c-perl-python-etc make me wonder if I gave up on C++ templates too soon. While poking around the codebase here at Stack Overflow, I found the answers to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127624/what-is-mvc-really useful. These bikeshed questions manage to produce exceptional answers in spite of themselves. Or rather, there are some amazing contributors here who have turned leaden questions into answer gold. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. **The single best defense against worthless opinions is voter diversity.** Studies have consistently found that [&quot;diverse minds do better, when their decisions are averaged, than expert minds.&quot;](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140708-when-crowd-wisdom-goes-wrong) New users should not be treated as threats, but as potential contributors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The increase in closure rate makes reducing the number of votes required to close questions impractical. Other effects (particularly reopen rate and median time to close) were encouraging, but did not counter-balance the cost in terms of new questions closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/VzQIF.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22127" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7797" RevisionGUID="3d4dec5c-a6ee-4dcd-816a-3b0c326ceed9" CreationDate="2015-12-18T01:06:37.850" UserId="96050" Text="3 votes for closing/reopening experiment: the results" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22128" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7797" RevisionGUID="3d4dec5c-a6ee-4dcd-816a-3b0c326ceed9" CreationDate="2015-12-18T01:06:37.850" UserId="96050" Text="|discussion|vote-to-close|experiment|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22129" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7798" RevisionGUID="f971be1d-694f-4e0b-82d6-4e0b31dd5970" CreationDate="2015-12-18T02:27:03.803" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Yes, we closed 951 questions in that period of time.  The question is: is that the right number that we should have closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be interesting to take a sampling... 10% randomly. 95 questions. Or you could make it an even 100 questions. And then do a Stack Overflow Triage style review of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Print them out, get five programmers from the office and ask them to do a triage on them.  Fifteen to thirty seconds each question (thats triage) - about 45 minutes per person or so. Mark with a green, yellow, or red pen on each for looks ok, should be improved (enough information for a P.SE community member to edit it into shape), or unsalvageable (it should be closed). And then tally up the ones where the majority of the reviews were green pen marks. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are we looking at &quot;we're closing things where 1% of it should have been open? 10%? 50%?&quot;  If one could then do a *further* analysis of the information and see if these are ones that are considered off topic by the community, or too broad, or opinion, or unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then one can look again at the &quot;if P.SE is getting bad closes on 3 out of every 100 too broad questions&quot; or &quot;if P.SE is getting bad closes on 50 out of 100 opinion questions&quot; then we can look at how those close reasons are used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, if on the other hand, we're looking at 1 out of 100 questions that gets a bad close while properly handling 99 out of 100 in a more expedited way... then the discussion needs to turn to how we can cut down on the poorly asked questions *before* they are asked rather than making it take longer (and give a worse experience for everyone involved) for questions that really should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But until we've got this idea of what you want and what you don't want beyond the &quot;don't close everything&quot; it is rather hard to make any measurable change in what the site is doing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, the queue went from about 20 review tasks to over 100 review tasks in a week.  And two hours after vote reset, I've got two close votes left after going through the queue and the questions that have remained open.  I would be willing to contend that the activity of people actually casting close votes is a larger on the close percentage than the close vote count. I also went from often having several left over at vote reset for a month to running out early for the past few days.  Model the question of what happens if one or two core close voters goes on vacation for a week or two." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22130" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7798" RevisionGUID="be573ebd-6087-47a5-ace0-54d646bdff83" CreationDate="2015-12-18T02:41:20.360" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 605 characters in body" Text="Yes, we closed 951 questions in that period of time.  The question is: is that the right number that we should have closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be interesting to take a sampling... 10% randomly. 95 questions. Or you could make it an even 100 questions. And then do a Stack Overflow Triage style review of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Print them out, get five programmers from the office and ask them to do a triage on them.  Fifteen to thirty seconds each question (thats triage) - about 45 minutes per person or so. Mark with a green, yellow, or red pen on each for looks ok, should be improved (enough information for a P.SE community member to edit it into shape), or unsalvageable (it should be closed). And then tally up the ones where the majority of the reviews were green pen marks. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are we looking at &quot;we're closing things where 1% of it should have been open? 10%? 50%?&quot;  If one could then do a *further* analysis of the information and see if these are ones that are considered off topic by the community, or too broad, or opinion, or unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then one can look again at the &quot;if P.SE is getting bad closes on 3 out of every 100 too broad questions&quot; or &quot;if P.SE is getting bad closes on 50 out of 100 opinion questions&quot; then we can look at how those close reasons are used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, if on the other hand, we're looking at 1 out of 100 questions that gets a bad close while properly handling 99 out of 100 in a more expedited way... then the discussion needs to turn to how we can cut down on the poorly asked questions *before* they are asked rather than making it take longer (and give a worse experience for everyone involved) for questions that really should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But until we've got this idea of what you want and what you don't want beyond the &quot;don't close everything&quot; it is rather hard to make any measurable change in what the site is doing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, the queue went from about 20 review tasks to over 100 review tasks in a week.  And two hours after vote reset, I've got two close votes left after going through the queue and the questions that have remained open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would be willing to contend that the activity of people actually casting close votes is a larger on the close percentage than the close vote count. I also went from often having several left over at vote reset for a month to running out early for the past few days.  Model the question of what happens if one or two core close voters goes on vacation for a week or two.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Phrased another way - is the number of questions closed constrained by the number of people who have used 75% of their close votes in a day - and as this pool fluctuates over time.  Over the experiment time, was that constraint removed (and those people who were before and since the change) leaving excess close votes for those who typically cast all of them?  There's another quality centric (and willing to cast close votes) person who just shy of 3k - will this lead to more questions being closed - getting closer again to that 70% mark where we were finding ourselves with surplus close votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22131" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7796" RevisionGUID="82baefd6-fb1b-4aba-b6be-a91490fc3053" CreationDate="2015-12-18T03:33:22.543" UserId="81495" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="As we all know, hats are a very important part of this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, the only reason I tolerate other people on the internet is so that once a year I can spend some time earning these glorious avatar noggin covers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently a few children have been added to my family.  They were totally awesome until recently.  To be exact, they were totally awesome until hat season began.  Now they eat up all my precious hat hunting hours!  So my question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I tell a 3 year old girl and a 5 year old boy that I like internet hats more than them and that they should just leave me alone?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Merry xmas" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22132" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7796" RevisionGUID="5d7b3e65-9ce0-4a1c-82ab-688822fd3dae" CreationDate="2015-12-18T08:08:46.860" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|winterbash|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22133" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7799" RevisionGUID="6c7071f3-5e25-4fe6-926e-419b1fd7f43a" CreationDate="2015-12-18T08:21:18.193" UserId="1204" Text="Not to put too fine a point on all this, but **were you really expect a different result?**  This is simple mathematics; you reduce the number of votes to close, and the number of questions that get closed is going to increase. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not what this is about anyway.  It's about whether or not the *right* questions are getting closed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've already weighed in previously about this.  To summarize my point of view: I do think that some salvageable questions get incorrectly closed, but I also think it's a relatively small percentage of closed questions.  I've worked with the community to get some of these questions reopened, and to relax their standards a bit.  I've prevailed in some cases.  But that's not the real problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The real problem is that most questions that get asked here suck.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to address some things you've stated in your post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If Jeff couldn't grok this site, I don't see why I would either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just not a defensible position.  Programmers is the easiest site on the entire network to understand.  What is it about?  Wait for it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###software design and development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it.  Simple, isn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what Programmers is about.  The **only** exception to this categorical statement of topicality is *writing and troubleshooting code,* which we're very specific about because we don't want to be another Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our solution to scaling historically has been to encourage users to trust fellow programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*That's just not true.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of years ago, Stack Overflow nearly collapsed under the weight of a hundred thousand monkeys bashing away at a hundred thousand typewriters.  Your response was to *put in an automated system* that blocks a significant percentage of all questions asked at Stack Overflow before the community ever sees them.  It further blocks those users who manage to get through those quality filters and persistently ask bad questions.  That's not trusting the community; it's trusting a machine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't need that at our scale.  All we've ever asked for here on Programmers is a way to close crap questions easier, so that we can get them off the front page faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leaving it up to the community at Stack Overflow, by and large, has produced a site scope which basically amounts to &quot;how do I fix my broken code?&quot;  A lot of these questions are far too specific to ever be useful to anyone else, though I am consistently surprised by Stack Overflow's ability to answer a programming question I have through the result of a Google Search, a quality I attribute to the sheer number of questions that have been asked and answered there.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because Programmers only attracts a tiny percentage of Stack Overflow's volume, I doubt that it will ever reach the same critical mass, which means that the quality of the questions we decide to keep here becomes far more important.  Stack Overflow can be content with housing millions of questions and having perhaps a hundred thousand of them receive a significant audience; Programmers doesn't have that same luxury, nor can it have the same tolerance for chaff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What kinds of questions are acceptable here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's easy: *good questions.*  Assuming they are on-topic; that is, they are about Software Design and Development (excluding specific coding questions), good questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are clear and understandable.&#xD;&#xA; - Have *a specific problem statement.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *lists of things.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *product or service recommendations.* &#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask questions that require *extended discussions or lengthy explanations.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask *&quot;which is better&quot;* without explaining what &quot;better&quot; specifically means to you, in a way that isn't a tautology ([**&quot;best practice&quot;**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937) is not any better than &quot;better.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These should already look familiar to you; they are all the same metrics that will cause a question to get closed at Stack Overflow if they are not respected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Within a question, voting does a good job of surfacing quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only if the question asked is a good, on-topic one that has the qualities described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There will always be people who misunderstand the nature of this site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody disagrees with this, but there are reasons why this happens more often than it should: old, highly-voted but off-topic questions that serve as bad examples, tags that don't belong here, an extremely vague site title.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing questions does not make them less tempting to copy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why *deletion,* not just closing, is required for those questions that do not adequately represent the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Be proud of your past...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This whole paragraph basically asks us to accept mounds of chaff on the off-chance that one of those ill-advised questions might produce a golden nugget.  The vast majority of them won't, leaving us with inadequate shovels to clean up the leftover piles of manure.  Stack Overflow doesn't put up with this, nor should we.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; New users should not be treated as threats, but as potential contributors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, nobody disagrees with this.  We give people every opportunity to reform their crappy questions.  Most of them do not oblige, else they wouldn't have posted their lazy question to begin with.  This is nothing new; you've dealt with it for years on Stack Overflow, but with bigger guns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22134" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7799" RevisionGUID="b032ce3f-5726-4ecc-9cbf-72f36a2e8c05" CreationDate="2015-12-18T08:26:55.573" UserId="1204" Comment="added 84 characters in body" Text="Not to put too fine a point on all this, but **were you really expect a different result?**  This is simple mathematics; you reduce the number of votes to close, and the number of questions that get closed is going to increase. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not what this is about anyway.  It's about whether or not the *right* questions are getting closed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do think that some salvageable questions get incorrectly closed, but I also think it's a relatively small percentage of closed questions.  I've worked with the community to get some of these questions reopened, and to relax their standards a bit.  I've prevailed in some cases.  But that's not the real problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The real problem is that most questions that get asked here suck.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to address some things you've stated in your post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If Jeff couldn't grok this site, I don't see why I would either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just not a defensible position.  Programmers is the easiest site on the entire network to understand.  What is it about?  Wait for it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###software design and development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it.  Simple, isn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what Programmers is about.  The **only** exception to this categorical statement of topicality is *writing and troubleshooting code,* which we're very specific about because we don't want to be another Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our solution to scaling historically has been to encourage users to trust fellow programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*That's just not true.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of years ago, Stack Overflow nearly collapsed under the weight of a hundred thousand monkeys bashing away at a hundred thousand typewriters.  Your response was to *put in an automated system* that blocks a significant percentage of all questions asked at Stack Overflow before the community ever sees them.  It further blocks those users who manage to get through those quality filters and persistently ask bad questions.  That's not trusting the community; it's trusting a machine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't need that at our scale.  All we've ever asked for here on Programmers is a way to close crap questions easier, so that we can get them off the front page faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leaving it up to the community at Stack Overflow, by and large, has produced a site scope which basically amounts to &quot;how do I fix my broken code?&quot;  A lot of these questions are far too specific to ever be useful to anyone else, though I am consistently surprised by Stack Overflow's ability to answer a programming question I have through the result of a Google Search, a quality I attribute to the sheer number of questions that have been asked and answered there.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because Programmers only attracts a tiny percentage of Stack Overflow's volume, I doubt that it will ever reach the same critical mass, which means that the quality of the questions we decide to keep here becomes far more important.  Stack Overflow can be content with housing millions of questions and having perhaps a hundred thousand of them receive a significant audience; Programmers doesn't have that same luxury, nor can it have the same tolerance for chaff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What kinds of questions are acceptable here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's easy: *good questions.*  Assuming they are on-topic; that is, they are about Software Design and Development (excluding specific coding questions), good questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are clear and understandable.&#xD;&#xA; - Have *a specific problem statement.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *lists of things.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *product or service recommendations.* &#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask questions that require *extended discussions or lengthy explanations.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask *&quot;which is better&quot;* without explaining what &quot;better&quot; specifically means to you, in a way that isn't a tautology ([**&quot;best practice&quot;**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937) is not any better than &quot;better.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These should already look familiar to you; they are all the same metrics that will cause a question to get closed at Stack Overflow if they are not respected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Within a question, voting does a good job of surfacing quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only if the question asked is a good, on-topic one that has the qualities described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There will always be people who misunderstand the nature of this site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody disagrees with this, but there are reasons why this happens more often than it should: old, highly-voted but off-topic questions that serve as bad examples, tags that don't belong here, an extremely vague site title, our checkered past.  And there is still a contingent of people who strongly believe that programmers should be what it once was: a water cooler for Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing questions does not make them less tempting to copy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why *deletion,* not just closing, is required for those questions that do not adequately represent the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Be proud of your past...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This whole paragraph basically asks us to accept mounds of chaff on the off-chance that one of those ill-advised questions might produce a golden nugget.  The vast majority of them will falter, leaving us with inadequate shovels to clean up the resulting piles of shit.  Stack Overflow doesn't put up with this, nor should we.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; New users should not be treated as threats, but as potential contributors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, nobody disagrees with this.  We give people every opportunity to reform their crappy questions.  Most of them do not oblige, else they wouldn't have posted their lazy question to begin with.  This is nothing new; you've dealt with it for years on Stack Overflow, but with bigger guns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22135" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7799" RevisionGUID="bf3b103e-f694-49db-b550-6353f40619e4" CreationDate="2015-12-18T08:36:52.503" UserId="1204" Comment="added 549 characters in body" Text="Not to put too fine a point on all this, but **were you really expect a different result?**  This is simple mathematics; you reduce the number of votes to close, and the number of questions that get closed is going to increase. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not what this is about anyway.  It's about whether or not the *right* questions are getting closed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do think that some salvageable questions get incorrectly closed, but I also think it's a relatively small percentage of closed questions.  I've worked with the community to get some of these questions reopened, and to relax their standards a bit.  I've prevailed in some cases.  But that's not the real problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The real problem is that most questions that get asked here suck.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to address some things you've stated in your post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If Jeff couldn't grok this site, I don't see why I would either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just not a defensible position.  Programmers is the easiest site on the entire network to understand.  What is it about?  Wait for it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###software design and development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it.  Simple, isn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what Programmers is about.  The **only** exception to this categorical statement of topicality is *writing and troubleshooting code,* which we're very specific about because we don't want to be another Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our solution to scaling historically has been to encourage users to trust fellow programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*That's just not true.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of years ago, Stack Overflow nearly collapsed under the weight of a hundred thousand monkeys bashing away at a hundred thousand typewriters.  Your response was to *put in an automated system* that blocks a significant percentage of all questions asked at Stack Overflow before the community ever sees them.  It further blocks those users who manage to get through those quality filters and persistently ask bad questions.  That's not trusting the community; it's trusting a machine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't need that at our scale.  All we've ever asked for here on Programmers is a way to close crap questions easier, so that we can get them off the front page faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leaving it up to the community at Stack Overflow, by and large, has produced a site scope which basically amounts to &quot;how do I fix my broken code?&quot;  A lot of these questions are far too specific to ever be useful to anyone else, though I am consistently surprised by Stack Overflow's ability to answer a programming question I have through the result of a Google Search, a quality I attribute to the sheer number of questions that have been asked and answered there.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because Programmers only attracts a tiny percentage of Stack Overflow's volume, I doubt that it will ever reach the same critical mass, which means that the quality of the questions we decide to keep here becomes far more important.  Stack Overflow can be content with housing millions of questions and having perhaps a hundred thousand of them receive a significant audience; Programmers doesn't have that same luxury, nor can it have the same tolerance for chaff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What kinds of questions are acceptable here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's easy: *good questions.*  Assuming they are on-topic; that is, they are about Software Design and Development (excluding specific coding questions), good questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are clear and understandable.&#xD;&#xA; - Have *a specific problem statement.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *lists of things.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *product or service recommendations.* &#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask questions that require *extended discussions or lengthy explanations.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask *&quot;which is better&quot;* without explaining what &quot;better&quot; specifically means to you, in a way that isn't a tautology ([**&quot;best practice&quot;**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937) is not any better than &quot;better.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These should already look familiar to you; they are all the same metrics that will cause a question to get closed at Stack Overflow if they are not respected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Within a question, voting does a good job of surfacing quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only if the question asked is a good, on-topic one that has the qualities described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There will always be people who misunderstand the nature of this site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody disagrees with this, but there are reasons why this happens more often than it should: old, highly-voted but off-topic questions that serve as bad examples, tags that don't belong here, an extremely vague site title, our checkered past.  And there is still a contingent of people who strongly believe that programmers should be what it once was: a water cooler for Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing questions does not make them less tempting to copy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why *deletion,* not just closing, is required for those questions that do not adequately represent the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Be proud of your past...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This whole paragraph basically asks us to accept mounds of chaff on the off-chance that one of those ill-advised questions might produce a golden nugget.  The vast majority of them will falter, leaving us with inadequate shovels to clean up the resulting piles of shit.  Stack Overflow doesn't put up with this, nor should we.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; New users should not be treated as threats, but as potential contributors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, nobody disagrees with this.  We give people every opportunity to reform their crappy questions.  Most of them do not oblige, else they wouldn't have posted their lazy question to begin with.  This is nothing new; you've dealt with it for years on Stack Overflow, but with bigger guns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sad that the experiment failed, not because it was not a success, but because our goals seem to differ.  Your goal seems to be to save the rare ugly ducklings that lay golden eggs (it seems inconceivable to me how you thought reducing the number of votes would achieve that, unless you were relying on the three votes to reopen to balance the equation). Our goal was to make closing a bit easier so that we could sweep the questions that nobody really wants (except the ones asking them into the dust bin) with a bit more grace and less fuss.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22136" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7799" RevisionGUID="0c04dbc1-6e67-4004-abe0-8f643b1c17f5" CreationDate="2015-12-18T08:43:45.900" UserId="1204" Comment="added 132 characters in body" Text="Not to put too fine a point on all this, but **were you really expect a different result?**  This is simple mathematics; you reduce the number of votes to close, and the number of questions that get closed is going to increase. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not what this is about anyway.  It's about whether or not the *right* questions are getting closed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do think that some salvageable questions get incorrectly closed, but I also think it's a relatively small percentage of closed questions.  I've worked with the community to get some of these questions reopened, and to relax their standards a bit.  I've prevailed in some cases.  But that's not the real problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The real problem is that most questions that get asked here suck.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to address some things you've stated in your post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If Jeff couldn't grok this site, I don't see why I would either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just not a defensible position.  Programmers is the easiest site on the entire network to understand.  What is it about?  Wait for it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###software design and development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it.  Simple, isn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what Programmers is about.  The **only** exception to this categorical statement of topicality is *writing and troubleshooting code,* which we're very specific about because we don't want to be another Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our solution to scaling historically has been to encourage users to trust fellow programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*That's just not true.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of years ago, Stack Overflow nearly collapsed under the weight of a hundred thousand monkeys bashing away at a hundred thousand typewriters.  Your response was to *put in an automated system* that blocks a significant percentage of all questions asked at Stack Overflow before the community ever sees them.  It further blocks those users who manage to get through those quality filters and persistently ask bad questions.  That's not trusting the community; it's trusting a machine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't need that at our scale.  All we've ever asked for here on Programmers is a way to close crap questions easier, so that we can get them off the front page faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leaving it up to the community at Stack Overflow, by and large, has produced a site scope which basically amounts to &quot;how do I fix my broken code?&quot;  A lot of these questions are far too specific to ever be useful to anyone else, though I am consistently surprised by Stack Overflow's ability to answer a programming question I have through the result of a Google Search, a quality I attribute to the sheer number of questions that have been asked and answered there.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because Programmers only attracts a tiny percentage of Stack Overflow's volume, I doubt that it will ever reach the same critical mass, which means that the quality of the questions we decide to keep here becomes far more important.  Stack Overflow can be content with housing millions of questions and having perhaps a hundred thousand of them receive a significant audience; Programmers doesn't have that same luxury, nor can it have the same tolerance for chaff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What kinds of questions are acceptable here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's easy: *good questions.*  Assuming they are on-topic; that is, they are about Software Design and Development (excluding specific coding questions), good questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are clear and understandable.&#xD;&#xA; - Have *a specific problem statement.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *lists of things.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *product or service recommendations.* &#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask questions that require *extended discussions or lengthy explanations.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask *&quot;which is better&quot;* without explaining what &quot;better&quot; specifically means to you, in a way that isn't a tautology ([**&quot;best practice&quot;**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937) is not any better than &quot;better.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These should already look familiar to you; they are all the same metrics that will cause a question to get closed at Stack Overflow if they are not respected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Within a question, voting does a good job of surfacing quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only if the question asked is a good, on-topic one that has the qualities described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There will always be people who misunderstand the nature of this site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody disagrees with this, but there are reasons why this happens more often than it should: old, highly-voted but off-topic questions that serve as bad examples, tags that don't belong here, an extremely vague site title, our checkered past.  And there is still a contingent of people who strongly believe that programmers should be what it once was: a water cooler for Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing questions does not make them less tempting to copy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why *deletion,* not just closing, is required for those questions that do not adequately represent the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Be proud of your past...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This whole paragraph basically asks us to accept mounds of chaff on the off-chance that one of those ill-advised questions might produce a golden nugget.  The vast majority of them will falter, leaving us with inadequate shovels to clean up the resulting piles of shit.  Stack Overflow doesn't put up with this, nor should we.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; New users should not be treated as threats, but as potential contributors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, nobody disagrees with this.  We give people every opportunity to reform their crappy questions.  Most of them do not oblige, else they wouldn't have posted their lazy question to begin with.  This is nothing new; you've dealt with it for years on Stack Overflow, but with bigger guns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sad that the experiment failed, not because it was not a success, but because our goals seem to differ.  Your goal seems to be to save the rare ugly ducklings that lay golden eggs (it seems inconceivable to me how you thought reducing the number of close votes would achieve that, unless you were relying on the three votes to reopen to balance the equation). Our goal was to make closing a bit easier so that we could sweep the questions that nobody really wants (except the ones asking them into the dust bin) with a bit more grace and less fuss.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Optimizing for Pearls, not Sand](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22137" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7799" RevisionGUID="36b013f6-0e47-4bbf-b9cc-f6071471f05e" CreationDate="2015-12-18T08:51:04.700" UserId="1204" Comment="added 340 characters in body" Text="##Were you really expect a different result?&#xD;&#xA;  This is simple mathematics; you reduce the number of votes to close, and the number of questions that get closed is going to increase. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not what this is about anyway.  It's about whether or not the *right* questions are getting closed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do think that some salvageable questions get incorrectly closed, but I also think it's a relatively small percentage of closed questions.  I've worked with the community to get some of these questions reopened, and to relax their standards a bit.  I've prevailed in some cases.  But that's not the real problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The real problem is that most questions that get asked here suck.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to address some things you've stated in your post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If Jeff couldn't grok this site, I don't see why I would either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just not a defensible position.  Programmers is the easiest site on the entire network to understand.  What is it about?  Wait for it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###software design and development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it.  Simple, isn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what Programmers is about.  The **only** exception to this categorical statement of topicality is *writing and troubleshooting code,* which we're very specific about because we don't want to be another Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our solution to scaling historically has been to encourage users to trust fellow programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*That's just not true.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of years ago, Stack Overflow nearly collapsed under the weight of a hundred thousand monkeys bashing away at a hundred thousand typewriters.  Your response was to *put in an automated system* that blocks a significant percentage of all questions asked at Stack Overflow before the community ever sees them.  It further blocks those users who manage to get through those quality filters and persistently ask bad questions.  That's not trusting the community; it's trusting a machine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't need that at our scale.  All we've ever asked for here on Programmers is a way to close crap questions easier, so that we can get them off the front page faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leaving it up to the community at Stack Overflow, by and large, has produced a site scope which basically amounts to &quot;how do I fix my broken code?&quot;  A lot of these questions are far too specific to ever be useful to anyone else, though I am consistently surprised by Stack Overflow's ability to answer a programming question I have through the result of a Google Search, a quality I attribute to the sheer number of questions that have been asked and answered there.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because Programmers only attracts a tiny percentage of Stack Overflow's volume, I doubt that it will ever reach the same critical mass, which means that the quality of the questions we decide to keep here becomes far more important.  Stack Overflow can be content with housing millions of questions and having perhaps a hundred thousand of them receive a significant audience; Programmers doesn't have that same luxury, nor can it have the same tolerance for chaff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What kinds of questions are acceptable here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's easy: *good questions.*  Assuming they are on-topic; that is, they are about Software Design and Development (excluding specific coding questions), good questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are clear and understandable.&#xD;&#xA; - Have *a specific problem statement.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *lists of things.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *product or service recommendations.* &#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask questions that require *extended discussions or lengthy explanations.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask *&quot;which is better&quot;* without explaining what &quot;better&quot; specifically means to you, in a way that isn't a tautology ([**&quot;best practice&quot;**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937) is not any better than &quot;better.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These should already look familiar to you; they are all the same metrics that will cause a question to get closed at Stack Overflow if they are not respected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Within a question, voting does a good job of surfacing quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only if the question asked is a good, on-topic one that has the qualities described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There will always be people who misunderstand the nature of this site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody disagrees with this, but there are reasons why this happens more often than it should: old, highly-voted but off-topic questions that serve as bad examples, tags that don't belong here, an extremely vague site title, our checkered past.  And there is still a contingent of people who strongly believe that programmers should be what it once was: a water cooler for Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing questions does not make them less tempting to copy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why *deletion,* not just closing, is required for those questions that do not adequately represent the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Be proud of your past...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This whole paragraph basically asks us to accept mounds of chaff on the off-chance that one of those ill-advised questions might produce a golden nugget.  The vast majority of them will falter, leaving us with inadequate shovels to clean up the resulting piles of shit.  Stack Overflow doesn't put up with this, nor should we.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; New users should not be treated as threats, but as potential contributors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, nobody disagrees with this.  We give people every opportunity to reform their crappy questions.  Most of them do not oblige, else they wouldn't have posted their lazy question to begin with.  This is nothing new; you've dealt with it for years on Stack Overflow, but with bigger guns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###I'm sad that the experiment failed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not because it was not a success, but because our goals seem to differ.  Your goal seems to be to save the rare ugly ducklings that lay golden eggs (it seems inconceivable to me how you thought reducing the number of close votes would achieve that, unless you were relying on the three votes to reopen to balance the equation). Our goal is to make closing a bit easier so that we could sweep the questions that nobody really wants (except the ones asking them) off the front page a bit faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *When I go to a Stack Exchange home page, I see a list of questions. If most of those are terrible questions with little to no indication that I'd [not] be wasting my time by reading them, the value proposition of visiting and participating is diminished: I have better things to do.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -- Mark Trapp, former Programmers Moderator&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Optimizing for Pearls, not Sand](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22138" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7799" RevisionGUID="fd01e104-1315-4d9f-a011-2fe39466a881" CreationDate="2015-12-18T09:05:25.743" UserId="1204" Comment="added 888 characters in body" Text="##Were you really expecting a different result?&#xD;&#xA;  This is simple mathematics; you reduce the number of votes to close, and the number of questions that get closed is going to increase. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not what this is about anyway.  It's about whether or not the *right* questions are getting closed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do think that some salvageable questions get incorrectly closed, but I also think it's a relatively small percentage of closed questions.  I've worked with the community to get some of these questions reopened, and to relax their standards a bit.  I've prevailed in some cases.  But that's not the real problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The real problem is that most questions that get asked here suck.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to address some things you've stated in your post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If Jeff couldn't grok this site, I don't see why I would either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just not a defensible position.  Programmers is the easiest site on the entire network to understand.  What is it about?  Wait for it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###software design and development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it.  Simple, isn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what Programmers is about.  The **only** exception to this categorical statement of topicality is *writing and troubleshooting code,* which we're very specific about because we don't want to be another Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our solution to scaling historically has been to encourage users to trust fellow programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*That's just not true.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of years ago, Stack Overflow nearly collapsed under the weight of a hundred thousand monkeys bashing away at a hundred thousand typewriters.  Your response was to *put in an automated system* that blocks a significant percentage of all questions asked at Stack Overflow before the community ever sees them.  It further blocks those users who manage to get through those quality filters and persistently ask bad questions.  That's not trusting the community; it's trusting a machine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't need that at our scale.  All we've ever asked for here on Programmers is a way to close crap questions easier, so that we can get them off the front page faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leaving it up to the community at Stack Overflow, by and large, has produced a site scope which basically amounts to &quot;how do I fix my broken code?&quot;  A lot of these questions are far too specific to ever be useful to anyone else, though I am consistently surprised by Stack Overflow's ability to answer a programming question I have through the result of a Google Search, a quality I attribute to the sheer number of questions that have been asked and answered there.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because Programmers only attracts a tiny percentage of Stack Overflow's volume, I doubt that it will ever reach the same critical mass, which means that the quality of the questions we decide to keep here becomes far more important.  Stack Overflow can be content with housing millions of questions and having perhaps a hundred thousand of them receive a significant audience; Programmers doesn't have that same luxury, nor can it have the same tolerance for chaff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What kinds of questions are acceptable here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's easy: *good questions.*  Assuming they are on-topic; that is, they are about Software Design and Development (excluding specific coding questions), good questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are clear and understandable.&#xD;&#xA; - Have *a specific problem statement.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *lists of things.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *product or service recommendations.* &#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask questions that require *extended discussions or lengthy explanations.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask *&quot;which is better&quot;* without explaining what &quot;better&quot; specifically means to you, in a way that isn't a tautology ([**&quot;best practice&quot;**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937) is not any better than &quot;better.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These should already look familiar to you; they are all the same metrics that will cause a question to get closed at Stack Overflow if they are not respected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Within a question, voting does a good job of surfacing quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only if the question asked is a good, on-topic one that has the qualities described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There will always be people who misunderstand the nature of this site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody disagrees with this, but there are reasons why this happens more often than it should: old, highly-voted but off-topic questions that serve as bad examples, tags that don't belong here, an extremely vague site title, our checkered past.  And there is still a contingent of people who strongly believe that programmers should be what it once was: a water cooler for Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing questions does not make them less tempting to copy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why *deletion,* not just closing, is required for those questions that do not adequately represent the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Be proud of your past...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This whole paragraph basically asks us to accept mounds of chaff on the off-chance that one of those ill-advised questions might produce a golden nugget.  The vast majority of them will falter, leaving us with inadequate shovels to clean up the resulting piles of shit.  Stack Overflow doesn't put up with this, nor should we.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; New users should not be treated as threats, but as potential contributors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, nobody disagrees with this.  We give people every opportunity to reform their crappy questions.  Most of them do not oblige, else they wouldn't have posted their lazy question to begin with.  This is nothing new; you've dealt with it for years on Stack Overflow, but with bigger guns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###I'm sad that the experiment failed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not because it was not a success, but because our goals seem to differ.  Your goal seems to be to save the rare ugly ducklings that lay golden eggs (it seems inconceivable to me how you thought reducing the number of close votes would achieve that, unless you were relying on the three votes to reopen to balance the equation). Our goal is to make closing a bit easier so that we can sweep the questions that nobody really wants (except the ones asking them) off the front page a bit faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *When I go to a Stack Exchange home page, I see a list of questions. If most of those are terrible questions with little to no indication that I'd [not] be wasting my time by reading them, the value proposition of visiting and participating is diminished: I have better things to do.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Compare that to answers on a specific question: I've made a conscious choice to look into what I think is an interesting question. I already made the decision that the question is worth my time. If I find the answers to be useless, I have a few different options to register my displeasure, including writing my own answer. Being able to write your own answer is key: if your answer is good enough, it'll rise above the junk answers and everyone will be better off for it.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *There is no such action for question lists. I can't say &quot;these questions suck, show me this question I just thought up instead&quot;: that'd be silly. So, it's imperative the question list have a high signal-to-noise ratio, removing the penalty for those users who do take the time to read a question and later find it to be useless.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -- Mark Trapp, former Programmers Moderator&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Optimizing for Pearls, not Sand](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22139" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7799" RevisionGUID="e4c4b196-1b99-4ea0-8538-3e78a40ef398" CreationDate="2015-12-18T09:11:35.630" UserId="1204" Comment="added 31 characters in body" Text="##Were you really expecting a different result?&#xD;&#xA;  This is simple mathematics; you reduce the number of votes to close, and the number of questions that get closed is going to increase. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not what this is about anyway.  It's about whether or not the *right* questions are getting closed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do think that some salvageable questions get incorrectly closed, but I also think it's a relatively small percentage of closed questions.  I've worked with the community to get some of these questions reopened, and to relax their standards a bit.  I've prevailed in some cases.  But that's not the real problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The real problem is that most questions that get asked here suck.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to address some things you've stated in your post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If Jeff couldn't grok this site, I don't see why I would either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just not a defensible position.  Programmers is the easiest site on the entire network to understand.  What is it about?  Wait for it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###software design and development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it.  Simple, isn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what Programmers is about.  The **only** exception to this categorical statement of topicality is *writing and troubleshooting code,* which we're very specific about because we don't want to be another Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our solution to scaling historically has been to encourage users to trust fellow programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*That's just not true.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of years ago, Stack Overflow nearly collapsed under the weight of a hundred thousand monkeys bashing away at a hundred thousand typewriters.  Your response was to *put in an automated system* that blocks a significant percentage of all questions asked at Stack Overflow before the community ever sees them.  It further blocks those users who manage to get through those quality filters and persistently ask bad questions.  That's not trusting the community; it's trusting a machine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't need that at our scale.  All we've ever asked for here on Programmers is a way to close crap questions easier, so that we can get them off the front page faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leaving it up to the community at Stack Overflow, by and large, has produced a site scope which basically amounts to &quot;how do I fix my broken code?&quot;  A lot of these questions are far too specific to ever be useful to anyone else, though I am consistently surprised by Stack Overflow's ability to answer a programming question I have through the result of a Google Search, a quality I attribute to the sheer number of questions that have been asked and answered there.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because Programmers only attracts a tiny percentage of Stack Overflow's volume, I doubt that it will ever reach the same critical mass, which means that the quality of the questions we decide to keep here becomes far more important.  Stack Overflow can be content with housing millions of questions and having perhaps a hundred thousand of them receive a significant audience; Programmers doesn't have that same luxury, nor can it have the same tolerance for chaff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What kinds of questions are acceptable here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's easy: *good questions.*  Assuming they are on-topic; that is, they are about Software Design and Development (excluding specific coding questions), good questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are clear and understandable.&#xD;&#xA; - Have *a specific problem statement.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *lists of things.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *product or service recommendations.* &#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask questions that require *extended discussions or lengthy explanations.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask *&quot;which is better&quot;* without explaining what &quot;better&quot; specifically means to you, in a way that isn't a tautology ([**&quot;best practice&quot;**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937) is not any better than &quot;better.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These should already look familiar to you; they are all the same metrics that will cause a question to get closed at Stack Overflow if they are not respected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Within a question, voting does a good job of surfacing quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only if the question asked is a good, on-topic one that has the qualities described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There will always be people who misunderstand the nature of this site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody disagrees with this, but there are reasons why this happens more often than it should: old, highly-voted but off-topic questions that serve as bad examples, tags that don't belong here, an extremely vague site title, our checkered past.  And there is still a contingent of people who strongly believe that programmers should be what it once was: a water cooler for Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing questions does not make them less tempting to copy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why *deletion,* not just closing, is required for those questions that do not adequately represent the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Be proud of your past...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This whole paragraph basically asks us to accept mounds of chaff on the off-chance that one of those ill-advised questions might produce a golden nugget.  The vast majority of them will falter, leaving us with inadequate shovels to clean up the resulting piles of shit.  Stack Overflow doesn't put up with this, nor should we.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; New users should not be treated as threats, but as potential contributors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, nobody disagrees with this.  We give people every opportunity to reform their crappy questions.  Most of them do not oblige, else they wouldn't have posted their lazy question to begin with.  This is nothing new; you've dealt with it for years on Stack Overflow, but with bigger guns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###I'm sad that the experiment failed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not because it was not a success, but because our goals seem to differ.  Your goal seems to be to save the rare ugly ducklings that lay golden eggs (it seems inconceivable to me how you thought reducing the number of close votes would achieve that, unless you were relying on the three votes to reopen to balance the equation). Our goal is to make closing a bit easier so that we can sweep the questions that nobody really wants (except the ones asking them) off the front page so that visitors can see the good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *When I go to a Stack Exchange home page, I see a list of questions. If most of those are terrible questions with little to no indication that I'd [not] be wasting my time by reading them, the value proposition of visiting and participating is diminished: I have better things to do.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Compare that to answers on a specific question: I've made a conscious choice to look into what I think is an interesting question. I already made the decision that the question is worth my time. If I find the answers to be useless, I have a few different options to register my displeasure, including writing my own answer. Being able to write your own answer is key: if your answer is good enough, it'll rise above the junk answers and everyone will be better off for it.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *There is no such action for question lists. I can't say &quot;these questions suck, show me this question I just thought up instead&quot;: that'd be silly. So, it's imperative the question list have a high signal-to-noise ratio, removing the penalty for those users who do take the time to read a question and later find it to be useless.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -- Mark Trapp, former Programmers Moderator&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Optimizing for Pearls, not Sand](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22140" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7799" RevisionGUID="570c9cb0-dbaf-4815-9661-09775c2d607c" CreationDate="2015-12-18T09:18:43.373" UserId="1204" Comment="added 18 characters in body" Text="##Were you really expecting a different result?&#xD;&#xA;  This is simple mathematics; you reduce the number of votes to close, and the number of questions that get closed is going to increase. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not what this is about anyway.  It's about whether or not the *right* questions are getting closed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do think that some salvageable questions get incorrectly closed, but I also think it's a relatively small percentage of closed questions.  I've worked with the community to get some of these questions reopened, and to relax their standards a bit.  I've prevailed in some cases.  But that's not the real problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The real problem is that most questions that get asked here suck.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to address some things you've stated in your post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If Jeff couldn't grok this site, I don't see why I would either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just not a defensible position.  Programmers is the easiest site on the entire network to understand.  What is it about?  Wait for it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###software design and development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it.  Simple, isn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what Programmers is about.  The **only** exception to this categorical statement of topicality is *writing and troubleshooting code,* which we're very specific about because we don't want to be another Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our solution to scaling historically has been to encourage users to trust fellow programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*That's just not true.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of years ago, Stack Overflow nearly collapsed under the weight of a hundred thousand monkeys bashing away at a hundred thousand typewriters.  Your response was to *put in an automated system* that blocks a significant percentage of all questions asked at Stack Overflow before the community ever sees them.  It further blocks those users who manage to get through those quality filters and persistently ask bad questions.  That's not trusting the community; it's trusting a machine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't need that at our scale.  All we've ever asked for here on Programmers is a way to close crap questions easier, so that we can get them off the front page faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leaving it up to the community at Stack Overflow, by and large, has produced a site scope which basically amounts to &quot;how do I fix my broken code?&quot;  A lot of these questions are far too specific to ever be useful to anyone else, though I am consistently surprised by Stack Overflow's ability to answer a programming question I have through the result of a Google Search, a quality I attribute to the sheer number of questions that have been asked and answered there.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because Programmers only attracts a tiny percentage of Stack Overflow's volume, I doubt that it will ever reach the same critical mass, which means that the quality of the questions we decide to keep here becomes far more important.  Stack Overflow can be content with housing millions of questions and having perhaps a hundred thousand of them receive a significant audience; Programmers doesn't have that same luxury, nor can it have the same tolerance for chaff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What kinds of questions are acceptable here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's easy: *good questions.*  Assuming they are on-topic; that is, they are about Software Design and Development (excluding specific coding questions), good questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are clear and understandable.&#xD;&#xA; - Have *a specific problem statement.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *lists of things.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *product or service recommendations.* &#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask questions that require *extended discussions or lengthy explanations.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask *&quot;which is better&quot;* without explaining what &quot;better&quot; specifically means to them, in a way that isn't a tautology ([**&quot;best practice&quot;**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937) is not any better than &quot;better.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These should already look familiar to you; they are all the same metrics that will cause a question to get closed at Stack Overflow if they are not respected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Within a question, voting does a good job of surfacing quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only if the question asked is a good, on-topic one that follows the rules described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There will always be people who misunderstand the nature of this site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody disagrees with this, but there are reasons why this happens more often than it should: old, highly-voted but off-topic questions that serve as bad examples, tags that don't belong here, an extremely vague site title, our checkered past.  And there is still a contingent of people who strongly believe that programmers should be what it once was: a water cooler for Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing questions does not make them less tempting to copy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why *deletion,* not just closing, is required for those questions that do not adequately represent the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Be proud of your past...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This whole paragraph basically asks us to accept mounds of chaff on the off-chance that one of those ill-advised questions might produce a golden nugget.  The vast majority of them will falter, leaving us with inadequate shovels to clean up the resulting piles of shit.  Stack Overflow doesn't put up with this, nor should we.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; New users should not be treated as threats, but as potential contributors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, nobody disagrees with this.  We give people every opportunity to reform their unsuitable questions.  Most of them do not oblige, else they wouldn't have posted their question in its original form to begin with.  This is nothing new; you've dealt with it for years on Stack Overflow, but with bigger guns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###I'm sad that the experiment failed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not because it was not a success, but because our goals seem to differ.  Your goal seems to be to save the rare ugly ducklings that lay golden eggs (it seems inconceivable to me how you thought reducing the number of close votes would achieve that, unless you were relying on the three votes to reopen to balance the equation). Our goal is to make closing a bit easier so that we can sweep the questions that nobody really wants (except the ones asking them) off the front page so that visitors can see the good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *When I go to a Stack Exchange home page, I see a list of questions. If most of those are terrible questions with little to no indication that I'd [not] be wasting my time by reading them, the value proposition of visiting and participating is diminished: I have better things to do.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Compare that to answers on a specific question: I've made a conscious choice to look into what I think is an interesting question. I already made the decision that the question is worth my time. If I find the answers to be useless, I have a few different options to register my displeasure, including writing my own answer. Being able to write your own answer is key: if your answer is good enough, it'll rise above the junk answers and everyone will be better off for it.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *There is no such action for question lists. I can't say &quot;these questions suck, show me this question I just thought up instead&quot;: that'd be silly. So, it's imperative the question list have a high signal-to-noise ratio, removing the penalty for those users who do take the time to read a question and later find it to be useless.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -- Mark Trapp, former Programmers Moderator&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Optimizing for Pearls, not Sand](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22141" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7796" RevisionGUID="e57d6b84-2e4b-4be1-8ed1-398e637264b5" CreationDate="2015-12-18T09:22:35.630" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/677780991012945920" />
  <row Id="22142" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7799" RevisionGUID="688b4d3f-450d-4972-9604-4b79dce8b056" CreationDate="2015-12-18T09:30:51.770" UserId="1204" Comment="added 19 characters in body" Text="##Were you really expecting a different result?&#xD;&#xA;  This is simple mathematics; you reduce the number of votes to close, and the number of questions that get closed is going to increase. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not what this is about anyway.  It's about whether or not the *right* questions are getting closed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do think that some salvageable questions get incorrectly closed, but I also think it's a relatively small percentage of closed questions.  I've worked with the community to get some of these questions reopened, and to relax their standards a bit.  I've prevailed in some cases.  But that's not the real problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The real problem is that most questions that get asked here suck.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to address some things you've stated in your post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If Jeff couldn't grok this site, I don't see why I would either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just not a defensible position.  Programmers is the easiest site on the entire network to understand.  What is it about?  Wait for it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###software design and development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it.  Simple, isn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what Programmers is about.  The **only** exception to this categorical statement of topicality is *writing and troubleshooting code,* which we're very specific about because we don't want to be another Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our solution to scaling historically has been to encourage users to trust fellow programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*That's just not true.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of years ago, Stack Overflow nearly collapsed under the weight of a hundred thousand monkeys bashing away at a hundred thousand typewriters.  Your response was to *put in an automated system* that blocks a significant percentage of all questions asked at Stack Overflow before the community ever sees them.  It further blocks those users who manage to get through those quality filters and persistently ask bad questions.  That's not trusting the community; it's trusting a machine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't need that at our scale.  All we've ever asked for here on Programmers is a way to close crap questions easier, so that we can get them off the front page faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leaving it up to the community at Stack Overflow, by and large, has produced a site scope which basically amounts to &quot;how do I fix my broken code?&quot;  A lot of these questions are far too specific to ever be useful to anyone else, though I am consistently surprised by Stack Overflow's ability to answer a programming question I have through the result of a Google Search, a quality I attribute to the sheer number of questions that have been asked and answered there.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because Programmers only attracts a tiny percentage of Stack Overflow's volume, I doubt that it will ever reach the same critical mass, which means that the quality of the questions we decide to keep here becomes far more important.  Stack Overflow can be content with housing millions of questions and having perhaps a hundred thousand of them receive a significant audience; Programmers doesn't have that same luxury, nor can it have the same tolerance for chaff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What kinds of questions are acceptable here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's easy: *good questions.*  Assuming they are on-topic; that is, they are about Software Design and Development (excluding specific coding questions), good questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are clear and understandable.&#xD;&#xA; - Have *a specific problem statement.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *lists of things.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *product or service recommendations.* &#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask questions that require *extended discussions or lengthy explanations.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask *&quot;which is better&quot;* without explaining what &quot;better&quot; specifically means to them, in a way that isn't a tautology ([**&quot;best practice&quot;**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937) is not any better than &quot;better.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These should already look familiar to you; they are all the same metrics that will cause a question to get closed at Stack Overflow if they are not respected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Within a question, voting does a good job of surfacing quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only if the question asked is a good, on-topic one that follows the rules described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There will always be people who misunderstand the nature of this site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody disagrees with this, but there are reasons why this happens more often than it should: old, highly-voted but off-topic questions that serve as bad examples, tags that don't belong here, an extremely vague site title, our checkered past.  And there is still a contingent of people who strongly believe that programmers should be what it once was: a water cooler for Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing questions does not make them less tempting to copy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why *deletion,* not just closing, is required for those questions that do not adequately represent the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Be proud of your past...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This whole paragraph basically asks us to accept mounds of chaff on the off-chance that one of those ill-advised questions might produce a golden nugget.  The vast majority of them will falter, leaving us with inadequate shovels to clean up the resulting piles of shit.  Stack Overflow doesn't put up with this, nor should we.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; New users should not be treated as threats, but as potential contributors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, nobody disagrees with this.  We give people every opportunity to reform their unsuitable questions.  Most of them do not oblige, else they wouldn't have posted their question in its original form to begin with.  This is nothing new; you've dealt with it for years on Stack Overflow, but with bigger guns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###I'm sad that the experiment failed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not because it was not a success (I believe it was), but because our goals seem to differ.  Your goal seems to be to save the rare ugly ducklings that lay golden eggs (it seems inconceivable to me how you thought reducing the number of close votes would achieve that, unless you were relying on the three votes to reopen to balance the equation). Our goal is to make closing a bit easier so that we can sweep the questions that nobody really wants (except the ones asking them) off the front page so that visitors to the site can see the good questions that accurately represent who we are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *When I go to a Stack Exchange home page, I see a list of questions. If most of those are terrible questions with little to no indication that I'd [not] be wasting my time by reading them, the value proposition of visiting and participating is diminished: I have better things to do.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Compare that to answers on a specific question: I've made a conscious choice to look into what I think is an interesting question. I already made the decision that the question is worth my time. If I find the answers to be useless, I have a few different options to register my displeasure, including writing my own answer. Being able to write your own answer is key: if your answer is good enough, it'll rise above the junk answers and everyone will be better off for it.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *There is no such action for question lists. I can't say &quot;these questions suck, show me this question I just thought up instead&quot;: that'd be silly. So, it's imperative the question list have a high signal-to-noise ratio, removing the penalty for those users who do take the time to read a question and later find it to be useless.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -- Mark Trapp, former Programmers Moderator&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Optimizing for Pearls, not Sand](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22143" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7800" RevisionGUID="e743b72a-821a-4832-bc96-fd8d647ec08f" CreationDate="2015-12-18T13:04:56.773" UserId="4" Text="[Robert Harvey's answer][1] is almost perfect. He touches on one point at several points, but I do think it needs more emphasis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**On Programmers, we close questions ruthlessly and viciously. And that's a good thing.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing questions quickly is a very good thing. It stops them from getting low-quality answers and lets the asker and the community work to fix them. If they are totally unsalvagable, quick deletion is also a tool that we use here. And this approach works very well for us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I noticed that more people were involved in question closures. I saw names that I didn't see often. Also, during peak hours, these questions were closed without people mentioning them in The Whiteboard or flagging them to get a mod on it faster. It made voting actually work by letting the community better self-police. My work as a diamond mod was significantly lessened during this time period.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, when I look at your data...I just see an experiment that worked. The number of closed questions went up. I'd be curious to see the average time to close a question - I suspect it went down, perhaps even significantly. The edit and reopen rate also went up. By closing questions quicker, we could engage users faster and get their questions in good shape for reopening or migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Admittedly, there are some barriers that should be looked at. Systematically, the reputation requirements to post on Meta and chat. These are where we want to direct people to go to help. I think many times, users have sufficient reputation, but I know I've vented in The Whiteboard and TL about these limits preventing people from getting to resources to help them improve their question. Culturally, I think we need to improve how we comment on posts, especially posts from first time users, to provide better guidance on get them to helpful resources so that the people who want to participate and learn can.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7799/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22144" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7801" RevisionGUID="dc516eba-d0b3-4409-8c1c-bed1e158f118" CreationDate="2015-12-18T15:43:00.610" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="I'd like to focus on an aspect that hasn't been addressed yet.  Namely, the edit and reopen rate.  During the experiment, the site had an atypically high Close-&gt;Edit-&gt;Reopen rate.  I don't believe that was by chance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Several of us within The Whiteboard noted during the experiment that we had more time available to edit marginal questions so that they could be re-opened.  I even made a comment to the effect that one of the major benefits of three votes-to-close was that it freed active community members up to focus on higher order aspects of the site.  That's a very, very good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of us share a common goal of creating high quality content for the site.  [Robert's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7799/53019) very eloquently addresses why it is imperative for us to get rid of the crap questions quickly.  This site simply doesn't have the volume of quality questions to drown out the crap questions, so we need to be diligent in cleaning the site.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we treat active users' time as a zero-sum game, then it's fair to explore _how_ we want them investing their time.  Personally, I would much rather they focus on editing the salvageable questions in order to foster higher quality content.  I think the experiment created the right conditions to allow active users to focus on more valuable contributions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All that said, I understand there is disagreement in how to interpret these results.  I believe that the true results of the experiment may be masked by the relatively short duration of the experiment and natural fluctuations in the various rates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd suggest re-running the experiment but for an extended period of time.  At a minimum, let's see what happens after 3 months.  Or more preferably, let's run the next experiment for 6 months and then analyze the results.  Arguably the only risk is that we'll close more questions than perhaps ought to be closed.  On the other hand, we should see higher quality questions resulting from the additional editing that can be provided." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22145" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7802" RevisionGUID="51122896-776d-4e0f-8efa-0c6f4c4b200d" CreationDate="2015-12-18T21:15:22.000" UserId="35276" Text="With my extensive knowledge of xenodevelopmentology I can say with impugnity that child creatures do not commit to aural communication during such a larval stage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think you will be forced to communicate your grievance with them through a more kinetic medium. I can think of few things more kinetically energetic than a pendulum - of sufficient size and mass I believe attachment to the kinetic output of a pendulum will appropriately communicate your concerns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe a member of the Mother species may be your most useful aid in these matters, notice how without conciousness it commits effective kinetic energy to the child creature? If you can find one of these, I would suggest you make great use of it to complete the necessary feats of hatting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![child creature concomitator deviceoid][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/1IHoN.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22146" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7802" RevisionGUID="7f3f5ae1-0524-4eb9-ae4c-09bb8e59dab2" CreationDate="2015-12-18T21:17:20.863" UserId="17853" Comment="Fixed comma splice." Text="With my extensive knowledge of xenodevelopmentology I can say with impugnity that child creatures do not commit to aural communication during such a larval stage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think you will be forced to communicate your grievance with them through a more kinetic medium. I can think of few things more kinetically energetic than a pendulum - of sufficient size and mass I believe attachment to the kinetic output of a pendulum will appropriately communicate your concerns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe a member of the Mother species may be your most useful aid in these matters. Notice how, without consciousness, it commits effective kinetic energy to the child creature? If you can find one of these, I would suggest you make great use of it to complete the necessary feats of hatting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![child creature concomitator deviceoid][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/1IHoN.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22147" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7803" RevisionGUID="4a75f389-8951-42a3-a6ba-032bd8ea303b" CreationDate="2015-12-19T01:00:12.727" UserId="52929" Text="###tl;dr:&#xD;&#xA;Most question closures, when questions in aggregate are analyzed, are valid. This suggests the experiment was successful - not a failure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This meta post won't be for the faint of heart.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Abstract&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have heard/seen often the &quot;p.se closes too much!&quot; and _rarely_ see this supported by a random selection of questions which are closed and an analysis as to whether this is appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is important when trying to call the closure rate on Programmers &quot;good?&quot; or &quot;bad?&quot; by understanding what the characteristics of the questions are. If 70% of all questions here are &quot;hi give me a book plz&quot; then a close rate above 70% is _ok_ - likewise, if 70% of questions are good, solid, appropriate questions then a close rate of 70% is unacceptable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The objective of this book of a post is to provide one perspective regarding closed questions the community has already deemed somewhat valuable (see Methods).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This post is a comprehensive attempt to analyze the _aggregate_ (not focusing on the individual exceptions, which are discussed per-question below) to find meaningful trends. Isolating individual questions and finding fault with their closure is pointless, if the overwhelming majority disagrees. In other words: focusing on outliers may miss what the data indicates. Don't bikeshed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The objective is to answer: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are too many questions unfairly closed on Programmers.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Methods&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I looked at at the questions which satisfied the [following criteria](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/412111/open-programmers-questions?site=http%3A%2F%2Fprogrammers.stackexchange.com%2F):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Closed&#xD;&#xA; - Undeleted&#xD;&#xA; - Upvoted at least once (regardless of score)&#xD;&#xA; - Not closed as duplicate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a enderland designed heuristic to try to indicate questions that _might not be_ good to be closed. It's not perfect nor all inclusive. It won't include deleted questions (regardless of the number of upvotes). But it's a good chunk of the remaining questions which were closed that have the highest likelihood of being &quot;maybe should be reopened closures.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are, as of writing this meta post, only 127 questions fitting this criteria (of the 951 questions closed during the period). Note that some of these have actually been since deleted but since SEDE is not live data the total will be incorrect (20 total). A few didn't show as dups in SEDE either for various reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Enderland's on/off topic philosophy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am generally a bit less strict when it comes to off-topicness than many others here. For example, of this entire list, I only cast close votes on two of them (despite being active in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) far too much).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am generally a bit more accepting of borderline questions, such as indicated by how infrequently I had voted on these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When reviewing, I took care to write &quot;deleted&quot;, &quot;marginal&quot;, and &quot;reopened&quot; in my descriptions in order to do a better search/count to quickly summarize totals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I include this section is it perspective on how I generally vote for close and reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Results&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the 107 non-deleted (of 127) questions, I case reopen on 15 questions. Assuming my heuristic is reasonable, and my interpretation of &quot;on topic ness&quot; is right, it means that a very small percentage of questions are being wrongly closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also labeled 24 questions as &quot;marginal&quot; - in some cases I voted to reopen these and some I did not. Most marginal reopen votes were erring on the side of generosity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That means, of the 107 non-deleted questions, over 80% I (even with a fairly generous review attitude) would leave closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on the appropriateness of closure, there were a handful of missed questions. I expect a few on this list to be reopened as a result. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I didn't expect was how _few_ questions on the list are well scoped for a Q/A site. [Robert's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7799/52929) provides considerable insight into why this might be, so I will not elaborate. Given the strong language in the original results, I expect to find considerably more marginal questions or to run out of reopen votes. Again, I only found 24 questions I considered marginal - I only found 1 in 4 questions meeting my heuristic were considered marginally on topic. And these are the ones that survived and are good! _And_ I expect many people will disagree they are even good enough to be marginal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, regarding the closure rates, focusing purely on the number of questions put on hold is misleading. The entire purpose of &quot;on hold&quot; vs &quot;closed&quot; is to allow users to clarify their question (or have them edited) and have them opened by the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this in mind, analyzing not just closure rate but the characteristics of the data, we notice some interesting trends. In _spite_ of the significant increase in question closure, the percentage of questions edited after closure was only 15.2% (vs an average of 11% the year before). This suggests that most questions here are either abandoned by the poster or community at a fairly high rate regardless of how quickly they get closed (85% vs 89%). A single month is not really significant enough to determine the implications of this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I do not see this experiment as a &quot;failure.&quot;**  I see this as a pretty _good_ result to be honest. Let's say I'm wrong and 2x as many questions from this list should be reopened, which makes 30. Let's also say there were another 30 deleted questions which are accidentally deleted. That means that about a 6% false-closure rate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on finding ways to benefit the community in dealing with the 94% of questions which _should_ have been closed seems preferable than handicapping them over the generous 6% which were incorrectly closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------- &#xD;&#xA;#Future Work&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Ideally, a random sampling of all questions asked during this period would be used in order to arrive at a better understanding of the correctness of closing&#xD;&#xA; - It would be interesting to characterize the votes on closed questions, such as % closed with zero total upvotes, % at -4 or lower, for the trial period vs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the list of all the specific questions I reviewed individually and my evaluation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My perspective is clearly not going to be perfect. You may disagree (or agree) with my reasoning. Be aware the goal here is not the individual questions isolated from each other but the aggregate result.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that there were two questions that were way too long for me to review in a meaningful fashion, indicated by tl;dr.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Ubuntu vs Tails](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303752) - Score:-4&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [How would you create this UML class diagram?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303827) - Score:-4&#xD;&#xA; - needs to be answered by their professor&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is automated testing used in game development?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304302) - Score:-3&#xD;&#xA; -  deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [HTML/PHP - Wordpress](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303072) - Score:-3&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [For loop valid usage?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303154) - Score:-3&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Designing a programming language, seeking simple and logical parameter behavior](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302519) - Score:-3&#xD;&#xA; - more of a rant than question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Use free functions or inheritance for serialization](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304260) - Score:-2&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [I am looking for a clear explanation of java method labels and when to use them.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303915) - Score:-2&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Avoid copy and paste programming, what pattern to use?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303716) - Score:-2&#xD;&#xA; - this is marginal at best, considering it's an XY question but the real question is &quot;how to make good code&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [When &gt; apply a performance and memory profiler?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304344) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - far too broad (answer is basically link to offsite resource)&#xD;&#xA;1. [What is better to design or discover interface](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303051) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - nearly the definition of opinion - &quot;I think this, coworker thinks other, what do you think?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [what is () called?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302449) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;my professor is wrong right?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Strategy for mobile apps sharing a core code base](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303341) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - only answer is basically &quot;it depends talk to your users&quot; - marginal at best&#xD;&#xA;1. [Maximization algorithm wrt external dataset](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303235) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - lacks information&#xD;&#xA;1. [Looking for a proper Algorithm to my problem](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304314) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is it safe to execute the &quot;regedit&quot; command on Windows?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303301) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - XY at best, accepted an answer that doesn't answer any question about &quot;safety&quot; but rather &quot;how to avoid confirmations&quot; but real question is &quot;what is the registry and why is it important&quot; which _might_ be scoped for Superuser?&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to abbreviate &quot;Local&quot; for a time variable, like UTC](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302535) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - I think this is ok (voted to reopen), but it's a &quot;name that thing&quot; which is a hotly debated subject here&#xD;&#xA;1. [How did the gets function ever make into the standard?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303620) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - discussion. user was very hostile to those helping too..&#xD;&#xA;1. [eradicating the array = loop mindset](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302830) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - rant against dumb coworkers&#xD;&#xA;1. [Design of simple disassembler](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303723) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - pretty much exact definition of too broad. _May_ be editable&#xD;&#xA;1. [Can a linkedlist be created without using dynamic allocation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303298) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Can a business application be developed / enhanced with more than one language?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303056) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - no problem described&#xD;&#xA;1. [Best way to control serialisation of posted form data](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304044) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - this seems ok, I voted to reopen (but those familiar with C# voted to close it and I'm unfamiliar with C#)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Approaches to Concurrency](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303383) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;let's make lists and pros and cons of each item!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Why is there a leading `for (;;);` in all of Facebook XHR, JSON-like requests?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304398) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Why don't style-guides include longer explanations why something should be done in a particular way?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302584) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - resource request (and discussion)&#xD;&#xA;1. [What is the name for &quot;the set of all versions of something&quot;?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304449) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [What are the differences between these ways to hide sections in an HTML document?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302810) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted migrated stub &#xD;&#xA;1. [What are my options for keeping user state through SPA?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303108) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [What are good ways to measure project size? How do I compare the size of my project to other projects?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303333) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - this is marginal, it needs some editing to focus it but _could_ be?&#xD;&#xA;1. [Use a hash character or a dot when referring to methods and fields in software documentation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304400) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - needs more info&#xD;&#xA;1. [Tips for working with badly designed software](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304518) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, _could_ be edited, maybe?  it's a strong XY problem&#xD;&#xA;1. [Super classes that represent a wordly hierarchy: naming conventions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303190) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - comments there clarify why off topic&#xD;&#xA;1. [Should we check for duplicated record?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304072) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - very marginal, but I voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Shopping cart in PHP : Sessions or Database?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302099) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - needs more info from asker&#xD;&#xA;1. [Scala: Partition range into subranges](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303654) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - belongs on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;1. [Optimization: How much time saved is considered worth it?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303339) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;how to be good at programming?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [New Kind of VM Type](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304408) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Micro libraries and angularjs](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304592) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - self declared opinion based&#xD;&#xA;1. [Low cost exceptions implementation using metaprogramming](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303210) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - 20 comments, tl;dr (might be ok?)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is there a way for me to use regex to distinguish this set of input?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303318) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted stack overflow stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is it always better to use __construct() in CodeIgniter's Models and Views, even if it's not needed?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303408) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, needs more clarity for the actual question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Inheritance hierarchy design approach - Javascript](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304444) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - pros/cons&#xD;&#xA;1. [How two objects of the same class communicate?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303536) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - only 4 &lt;0 answers that are not deleted... and it's a discussion pros/cons&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to map entity class (ClassA) in two different table (Table1 and Table2) in Entity Framework Code First?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302946) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal quality overall. Probably could be edited&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to document **kwargs in python?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303677) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, but I voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [How much of computer internals should I know to be an application programmer?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302303) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - way too broad, lacking info&#xD;&#xA;1. [How can I use a framework like Bootstrap when I already have designs from a design team](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303566) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - pretty broad, could be easily clarified by asker but..&#xD;&#xA;1. [How can I handle errors in functions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303388) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - dup closed incorrectly&#xD;&#xA;1. [How big should be an input array to unit test a method with a loop?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302367) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - lacking info&#xD;&#xA;1. [Fanout vs point to point on AWS](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303327) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Does testing the characteristics of a runtime have a generally accepted name?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302234) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - name that thing (marginal)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Docstring convention for Python __str__, __unicode__, and __repr__ class methods](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303380) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - really poor quality but still on topic, voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Do you have to use an in-memory db for integration testing?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303793) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - not enough info&#xD;&#xA;1. [Data structure for effects animation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303305) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;It's hard to say, given what you've put into your question (no mention of language or performance requirements).&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Could this class be considered as a Factory class?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304438) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, but kind of an XY question and &quot;am I right?&quot; without a problem to be solved&#xD;&#xA;1. [Confusion about data types, compilers, hardware data representation and static vs dynamic typing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303783) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - resource request (or way too broad, whichever)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Best way to represent multiple JSON response in a REST service?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304514) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal&#xD;&#xA;1. [Best way to design chess game](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302495) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - kind of a mess, asking an interview question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Architecture/technology for implementing Management console](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303537) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - pretty broad but perhaps marginal&#xD;&#xA;1. [API: Benefits of having root_node followed by object_id vs. object_id](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304519) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [windows users vs. custom](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303602) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - answer is basically &quot;you didn't give enough info&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [When do you need precision with thread execution timing and how do you do it with Java?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303694) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - too broad (_slightly_ marginal)&#xD;&#xA;1. [What is a good way to make estimates clear to the customer?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304068) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, but I voted to reopen as I think after the many edits it's better&#xD;&#xA;1. [What does `Resolving` mean in programing?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302404) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;why did they name things this way&quot; which isn't really great&#xD;&#xA;1. [What are the advantages of a 'traditional' 'backend' architecture for a standard CRUD app?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302567) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - pros/cons discussion&#xD;&#xA;1. [Trying to Simplify a Java Method](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302364) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted migrated stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [Syntax warnings](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302520) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - this is the **first** I've voted to reopen that looks like a non-marginal question &#xD;&#xA;1. [Strategies for creating a mobile site?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303121) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;I want to design a mobile site&quot; too broad&#xD;&#xA;1. [Soap vs. rest - a hybrid approach?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302937) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;name my project&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Should I use a jump table or a switch case statement for similar functions but may have some parameters that are not relevant](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304601) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - Seems ok, voted to reopen non-marginal&#xD;&#xA;1. [Running simulations in parallel, managing each separately](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303626) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - XY that isn't really resolved by OP&#xD;&#xA;1. [Resistance to abstraction](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302926) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;why do my coworkers thing like this?&quot; is unanswerable&#xD;&#xA;1. [Refusing to define 2 or more classes in one .cpp file](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303972) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - basically duped on SO, and a &quot;why does my company do this&quot; otherwise&#xD;&#xA;1. [Reading from Memory vs Performing an Operation](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304099) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - this is pretty marginal, but I'm not voting to open again&#xD;&#xA;1. [Push instead of pull on a list that might change due to a command in addition to events?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303668) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - not clear given comments&#xD;&#xA;1. [Possible design patterns for a service that synchronizes two third party services](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303362) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - asking for a design pattern but no problem&#xD;&#xA;1. [Number of parallel lines in a given set of lines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304352) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - needs more info&#xD;&#xA;1. [microservices: How to model related domain objects?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303888) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - answer says &quot;in my opinion&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;1. [Java Threads vs AMQP for Async tasks](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302539) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - needs a lot more info&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is there an advantage to defining a metasyntactic variable type?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302713) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - unclear&#xD;&#xA;1. [is boost::random::uniform_real_distritbution supposed to be the same across processors?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302913) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [Internal API to public API - versioning](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303168) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - really basic, but I guess it's on topic, so I voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [I'm graduating as a CS major from a bad CS program. How can I catch up? How can I get over it?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302617) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;how can I learn and catch up&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [I have one app on one server - is there a critical reason to use a web server like IIS or NGINX?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303411) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - pretty marginal&#xD;&#xA;1. [I had modulus problems. When I input two integers the values doesn't display when I run my program](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303095) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to write highly changeable, highly complex software?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303737) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - too broad, &quot;how do I develop large applications?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to make git automatically merge increased build numbers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304423) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - more of a git question for SO that wasn't migrated&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to design a meta model for configuration?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304028) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - pretty much definition of a discussion&#xD;&#xA;1. [How do Symbol Tables, Lexers and Parsers work together in a modern design?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303233) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - maybe on topic, tl;dr right now though&#xD;&#xA;1. [How can I organise a better deployment process?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302323) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - no problem, more of a &quot;what do you guys think about...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Hide, obfuscate or otherwise prevent the harvesting of email addresses](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303634) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - I edited this and voted to reopen, it's kind of marginal, but ok I guess&#xD;&#xA;1. [Heavy Compute, &quot;Medium Data&quot; application Architecture and design patterns?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304499) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Handling authentication for API](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303985) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - feels marginal, was edited after closed and not reopened though&#xD;&#xA;1. [Getting a Candidate to do a Pull Request Review in an Interview](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304599) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - all about interviewing&#xD;&#xA;1. [Factory of factories?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303706) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - self identified lack of problem..&#xD;&#xA;1. [Code attribution to a post quoting an original source](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304245) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - needs more info/context to be answerable (or is too broad)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Best way to structure a complicated web-based quiz](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303860) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - needs clarity on the specific problem, not &quot;help me design a web page&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Architecture supporting digitally signing of tons of soap requests](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302889) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - way too broad&#xD;&#xA;1. [Angular on Linux server -- what backend services to use](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303720) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - tool request&#xD;&#xA;1. [Why do Android programmers use Hungarian notation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302513) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - duplicate&#xD;&#xA;1. [Who does what in a Single Page Application?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303663) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - five broad questions all at once&#xD;&#xA;1. [Webservices vs Microservices](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304312) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, I'm not voting though&#xD;&#xA;1. [Private variables and the old FORTRAN common blocks](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303245) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - also marginal but leaving closed&#xD;&#xA;1. [Passing fields (instance variables) by arguments (parameters) inside an object - does it make sense?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302723) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - dup&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is node.js a safe bet for writting a new CMS that aims to be easily installable/deployable?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304507) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - needs a crystal ball&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is it ok to use service locator for ubiquitously used dependencies?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303830) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - really needs clarity on the specifics of the problem in my opinion&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to set up Visual Studio 2013 projects for building nuget packages targeting multiple .Net versions?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304285) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - deleted stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [Enterprise Architecture: Where to put persistence/dbContext management?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303435) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - too broad design review question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Dealing with big data](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303515) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - a (bad) XY problem, sort-of-answered in comments, but the question isn't really a real question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Architecture on OpenStack with Docker](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304137) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - will require someone with deep Docker knowledge, but this feels on topic (voted to reopen)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Architect in our company is against DTO](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303898) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;I would love to hear your opinion on how much this is true&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Will ECMAScript add classes to JavaScript? What does this mean?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304345) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - needs edits from OP&#xD;&#xA;1. [Rationale of IEEE754 direct rounding behavior near infinity](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303848) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - this is marginal, would require VERY expert knowledge that I'm not sure is reasonable&#xD;&#xA;1. [Passing MVVM objects to other classes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304595) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;I hope you understand that there is no objective answer to your question, and as such it is liable to be closed as primarily opinion base&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How do I model a sortable resource in sql database?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303209) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - I had a hard time understanding this. That might be because I've read 100+ mostly bad questions...&#xD;&#xA;1. [Design review of a small configuration framework](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302686) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - this is pretty broad and a &quot;please fully design review this&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Combinatorial Optimization: Filling a Bag with Sand](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304361) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - I think this is on topic, voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Can this be considered an API?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303864) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;is this an API&quot; isn't a good fit&#xD;&#xA;1. [Sorting algorithm that can handle some error](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302737) - Score:4&#xD;&#xA; - I already had argued for this question, voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Identifying plagiarized jokes?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304368) - Score:4&#xD;&#xA; - this seems ok at first glance, but that... covers a _large_ field and as a &quot;just for fun&quot; question its way too broad ([here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7795/52929) is more info)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Strategies to increasing the maintainability of assertions in code](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303806) - Score:5&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;am I over asserting?&quot; --&gt; maybe? but then &quot;If you have more tips on using assertions and similar tests in code please mention them in your answer.&quot; is pretty much definition of opinion&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is it an overkill to write unit tests for a small code base?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304228) - Score:5&#xD;&#xA; - dup&#xD;&#xA;1. [Refactoring byzantine payment processing code on a limited budget](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303879) - Score:8&#xD;&#xA; - this is pretty marginal, it is well written but pretty broad still&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to deal with a bug which seems to have fixed itself?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303997) - Score:15&#xD;&#xA; - this already had a reopen vote and I cast one - seems _reasonably_ on topic?&#xD;&#xA;1. [Using compound statements (&quot;{&quot; ... &quot;}&quot; blocks) to enforce variable locality](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302217) - Score:37&#xD;&#xA; - dup&#xD;&#xA;1. [Almost every reported bug is a high-priority bug](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302763) - Score:45&#xD;&#xA; - feels more workplacey " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22148" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7804" RevisionGUID="7c04b2ad-a8c1-4645-bb71-2a58561ea149" CreationDate="2015-12-19T04:05:27.033" UserId="169832" Text="#Why not internet hat with them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of spending time apart, eagerly hunting hats by yourself, hunt together! Sit them up on your lap, and they can help you out!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Say: &quot;Look little Sarah, there's a new hat called _Edward Edwards_. What do _you_ think is the trigger?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, little Sarah can help you solve it!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You'll be on your way to a bathtub in no time! Even your partner(?) will think highly of you!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're even training your kids for future Winterbashes! You can start a long family heritage of hat collecting!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22149" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7805" RevisionGUID="d25d3993-c47a-48eb-be09-888b19bd37fc" CreationDate="2015-12-19T04:14:54.920" UserId="96050" Text="In response to some of the answers so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Print them out, get five programmers from the office and ask them to do a triage on them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a fine idea. I reported my results internally and asked for volunteers to do this experiment. I haven't heard back from anyone yet, but it is a Friday and there's some movie premiering today, I believe. I'll see about following up in the next few weeks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Were you really expecting a different result?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not really. I was, however, hoping for one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Not understanding the site] is just not a defensible position. Programmers is the easiest site on the entire network to understand. What is it about? Wait for it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; **software design and development**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I can take this one of three ways:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I don't understand this site because I'm not a programmer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   As it happens, I've been writing and maintaining software most of my life. But maybe my previous jobs don't count as &quot;design and development&quot;? I've done a lot more work on other people's code than building new systems, so it's possible I don't get the topic after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. I don't understand this site because I don't understand the Stack Exchange model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I was a beta user of Stack Overflow and have asked questions on dozens of sites with minimal closure. I'm also working as a Community Manager here. On the other hand, I've historically been [soft on question closing](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/286407/1438), so maybe this is my problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. I don't understand this site because it's a community more complex than the cross section of software design and development and Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I feel this is the most likely explanation because I don't think #1 or #2 apply to me. I certainly don't think either #1 or #2 apply to Jeff Atwood. Therefore, I'm fairly confident that this site can be difficult to understand for reasons entirely separate from the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A couple of years ago, Stack Overflow nearly collapsed under the weight of a hundred thousand monkeys bashing away at a hundred thousand typewriters. Your response was to _put in an automated system_ that blocks a significant percentage of all questions asked at Stack Overflow before the community ever sees them. It further blocks those users who manage to get through those quality filters and persistently ask bad questions. That's not trusting the community; it's trusting a machine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Correct. I don't think any of us is happy about that outcome. But what do you think we use for input? Other than the [annoying title filter](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/115480/1438) all of the automated systems use community feedback as a primary source of input. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As the review system has improved, we've significantly softened the [question block system](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans). In addition, we have added [speed bumps](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/asking-rate-limited) to slow down users who have show a pattern of asking poorly-recieved questions. (Rolling rate limits are now [enabled network-wide](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/243460/1438), by the way.) We used to get _many_ false positives (meaning people were banned who probably shouldn't have been). After making those changes, we see far fewer false positives. We think that the reason for this is that the system is doing a better job of amplifying other users' feedback to people who have a difficult time understanding it for whatever reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow can be content with housing millions of questions and having perhaps a hundred thousand of them receive a significant audience; Programmers doesn't have that same luxury, nor can it have the same tolerance for chaff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't follow this logic. Remember there are almost 150 sites of all shapes and sizes. Stack Overflow has a unique scaling problem. As it turns out, the systems we built to scale our flagship site work fairly well for a wide variety of topics and at the full range of question rate. I would phrase the final sentence in reverse: &quot;Programmers has the luxury to be intolerant of chaff.&quot; Having a small volume of questions means this community can ignore the systems that allow Stack Overflow to scale. It's a lot of unnecessary work but you can do it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **On Programmers, we close questions ruthlessly and viciously. And that's a good thing.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't help but notice this is an excellent example of the [Sanctity moral foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Foundations_Theory). The only other site that has anything like Programmers emphasis on purity of questions is Skeptics. I'd suggest that this community's unique set of values, and not topic confusion, make this site difficult for outsiders.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Several of us within The Whiteboard noted during the experiment that we had more time available to edit marginal questions so that they could be re-opened. I even made a comment to the effect that one of the major benefits of three votes-to-close was that it freed active community members up to focus on higher order aspects of the site. That's a very, very good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree. If we could keep that without dramatically increasing question closing (which is already a deep outlier on the network), than I would be advocating for this change to be kept.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(It's drifting too far from the topic at hand, but I don't think treating user time as a zero-sum is a reasonable estimate. People tend to spend more time on sites they enjoy. It's one of the reasons we [encourage people to have fun](http://stackoverflow.com/help/be-nice). Why would anyone keep participating in a hobby that makes them miserable?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This meta post won't be for the faint of heart.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No it is not. ;-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll need to take more time going over it in the future, but my initial sampling of those questions is that I wouldn't vote to close most of them. But that shouldn't surprise you, I guess. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22150" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7799" RevisionGUID="6bb6fd43-4e90-4392-8db5-56b02e95ba1d" CreationDate="2015-12-19T05:12:58.163" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 19 characters in body" Text="##Were you really expecting a different result?&#xD;&#xA;  This is simple mathematics; you reduce the number of votes to close, and the number of questions that get closed is going to increase. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not what this is about anyway.  It's about whether or not the *right* questions are getting closed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do think that some salvageable questions get incorrectly closed, but I also think it's a relatively small percentage of closed questions.  I've worked with the community to get some of these questions reopened, and to relax their standards a bit.  I've prevailed in some cases.  But that's not the real problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The real problem is that most questions that get asked here suck.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to address some things you've stated in your post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If Jeff couldn't grok this site, I don't see why I would either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just not a defensible position.  Programmers is the easiest site on the entire network to understand.  What is it about?  Wait for it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###software design and development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it.  Simple, isn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what Programmers is about.  The **only** exception to this categorical statement of topicality is *writing and troubleshooting code,* which we're very specific about because we don't want to be another Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our solution to scaling historically has been to encourage users to trust fellow programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*That's just not true.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of years ago, Stack Overflow nearly collapsed under the weight of a hundred thousand monkeys bashing away at a hundred thousand typewriters.  Your response was to *put in an automated system* that blocks a significant percentage of all questions asked at Stack Overflow before the community ever sees them.  It further blocks those users who manage to get through those quality filters and persistently ask bad questions.  That's not trusting the community; it's trusting a machine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't need that at our scale.  All we've ever asked for here on Programmers is a way to close crap questions easier, so that we can get them off the front page faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leaving it up to the community at Stack Overflow, by and large, has produced a site scope which basically amounts to &quot;how do I fix my broken code?&quot;  A lot of these questions are far too specific to ever be useful to anyone else, though I am consistently surprised by Stack Overflow's ability to answer a programming question I have through the result of a Google Search, a quality I attribute to the sheer number of questions that have been asked and answered there.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because Programmers only attracts a tiny percentage of Stack Overflow's volume, I doubt that it will ever reach the same critical mass, which means that the quality of the questions we decide to keep here becomes far more important.  Stack Overflow can be content with housing millions of questions and having perhaps a hundred thousand of them receive a significant audience; Programmers doesn't have that same luxury, nor can it have the same tolerance for chaff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What kinds of questions are acceptable here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's easy: *good questions.*  Assuming they are on-topic; that is, they are about Software Design and Development (excluding specific coding questions), good questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are clear and understandable.&#xD;&#xA; - Have *a specific problem statement.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *lists of things.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *product or service recommendations.* &#xD;&#xA; - Don't require *extended discussions or lengthy explanations.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask *&quot;which is better&quot;* without explaining what &quot;better&quot; specifically means to them, in a way that isn't a tautology ([**&quot;best practice&quot;**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937) is not any better than &quot;better.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These should already look familiar to you; they are all the same metrics that will cause a question to get closed at Stack Overflow if they are not respected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Within a question, voting does a good job of surfacing quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only if the question asked is a good, on-topic one that follows the rules described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There will always be people who misunderstand the nature of this site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody disagrees with this, but there are reasons why this happens more often than it should: old, highly-voted but off-topic questions that serve as bad examples, tags that don't belong here, an extremely vague site title, our checkered past.  And there is still a contingent of people who strongly believe that Programmers should be what it once was: a water cooler for programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing questions does not make them less tempting to copy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why *deletion,* not just closing, is required for those questions that do not adequately represent the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Be proud of your past...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This whole paragraph basically asks us to accept mounds of chaff on the off-chance that one of those ill-advised questions might produce a golden nugget.  The vast majority of them will falter, leaving us with inadequate shovels to clean up the resulting piles of shit.  Stack Overflow doesn't put up with this, nor should we.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; New users should not be treated as threats, but as potential contributors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, nobody disagrees with this.  We give people every opportunity to reform their unsuitable questions.  Most of them do not oblige, else they wouldn't have posted their question in its original form to begin with.  This is nothing new; you've dealt with it for years on Stack Overflow, but with bigger guns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###I'm sad that the experiment failed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not because it was not a success (I believe it was), but because our goals seem to differ.  Your goal seems to be to save the rare ugly ducklings that lay golden eggs (it seems inconceivable to me how you thought reducing the number of close votes would achieve that, unless you were relying on the three votes to reopen to balance the equation). Our goal is to make closing a bit easier so that we can sweep the questions that nobody really wants (except the ones asking them) off the front page so that visitors to the site can see the good questions that accurately represent who we are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *When I go to a Stack Exchange home page, I see a list of questions. If most of those are terrible questions with little to no indication that I'd [not] be wasting my time by reading them, the value proposition of visiting and participating is diminished: I have better things to do.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Compare that to answers on a specific question: I've made a conscious choice to look into what I think is an interesting question. I already made the decision that the question is worth my time. If I find the answers to be useless, I have a few different options to register my displeasure, including writing my own answer. Being able to write your own answer is key: if your answer is good enough, it'll rise above the junk answers and everyone will be better off for it.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *There is no such action for question lists. I can't say &quot;these questions suck, show me this question I just thought up instead&quot;: that'd be silly. So, it's imperative the question list have a high signal-to-noise ratio, removing the penalty for those users who do take the time to read a question and later find it to be useless.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -- Mark Trapp, former Programmers Moderator&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Optimizing for Pearls, not Sand](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22151" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7803" RevisionGUID="49b3fe5b-afbe-4481-a4c2-cc9d0bdfdd23" CreationDate="2015-12-19T10:31:04.387" UserId="60357" Comment="minor fixes, but major thanks!" Text="###tl;dr:&#xD;&#xA;Most question closures, when questions in aggregate are analyzed, are valid. This suggests the experiment was successful - not a failure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This meta post won't be for the faint of heart.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Abstract&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have often heard/seen the &quot;p.se closes too much!&quot; cry but _rarely_ see this supported by a random selection of questions which are closed and an analysis as to whether this is appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is important when trying to call the closure rate on Programmers &quot;good?&quot; or &quot;bad?&quot; by understanding what the characteristics of the questions are. If 70% of all questions here are &quot;hi give me a book plz&quot; then a close rate above 70% is _ok_ - likewise, if 70% of questions are good, solid, appropriate questions then a close rate of 70% is unacceptable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The objective of this book of a post is to provide one perspective regarding closed questions the community has already deemed somewhat valuable (see Methods).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This post is a comprehensive attempt to analyze the _aggregate_ (not focusing on the individual exceptions, which are discussed per-question below) to find meaningful trends. Isolating individual questions and finding fault with their closure is pointless, if the overwhelming majority disagrees. In other words: focusing on outliers may miss what the data indicates. Don't bikeshed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The objective is to answer: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are too many questions unfairly closed on Programmers.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Methods&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I looked at at the questions which satisfied the [following criteria](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/412111/open-programmers-questions?site=http%3A%2F%2Fprogrammers.stackexchange.com%2F):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Closed&#xD;&#xA; - Undeleted&#xD;&#xA; - Upvoted at least once (regardless of score)&#xD;&#xA; - Not closed as duplicate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a enderland designed heuristic to try to indicate questions that _might not be_ good to be closed. It's not perfect nor all inclusive. It won't include deleted questions (regardless of the number of upvotes). But it's a good chunk of the remaining questions which were closed that have the highest likelihood of being &quot;maybe should be reopened closures.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are, as of writing this meta post, only 127 questions fitting this criteria (of the 951 questions closed during the period). Note that some of these have actually been since deleted but since SEDE is not live data the total will be incorrect (20 total). A few didn't show as dups in SEDE either for various reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Enderland's on/off topic philosophy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am generally a bit less strict when it comes to off-topicness than many others here. For example, of this entire list, I only cast close votes on two of them (despite being active in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) far too much).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am generally a bit more accepting of borderline questions, such as indicated by how infrequently I had voted on these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When reviewing, I took care to write &quot;deleted&quot;, &quot;marginal&quot;, and &quot;reopened&quot; in my descriptions in order to do a better search/count to quickly summarize totals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I include this section is it perspective on how I generally vote for close and reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Results&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the 107 non-deleted (of 127) questions, I cast reopen on 15 questions. Assuming my heuristic is reasonable, and my interpretation of on-topic-ness is right, it means that a very small percentage of questions are being wrongly closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also labeled 24 questions as &quot;marginal&quot; - in some cases I voted to reopen these and some I did not. Most marginal reopen votes were erring on the side of generosity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That means, of the 107 non-deleted questions, over 80% I (even with a fairly generous review attitude) would leave closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on the appropriateness of closure, there were a handful of missed questions. I expect a few on this list to be reopened as a result. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I didn't expect was how _few_ questions on the list are well scoped for a Q/A site. [Robert's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7799/52929) provides considerable insight into why this might be, so I will not elaborate. Given the strong language in the original results, I expect to find considerably more marginal questions or to run out of reopen votes. Again, I only found 24 questions I considered marginal - I only found 1 in 4 questions meeting my heuristic were considered marginally on topic. And these are the ones that survived and are good! _And_ I expect many people will disagree they are even good enough to be marginal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, regarding the closure rates, focusing purely on the number of questions put on hold is misleading. The entire purpose of &quot;on hold&quot; vs &quot;closed&quot; is to allow users to clarify their question (or have them edited) and have them opened by the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this in mind, analyzing not just closure rate but the characteristics of the data, we notice some interesting trends. In _spite_ of the significant increase in question closure, the percentage of questions edited after closure was only 15.2% (vs an average of 11% the year before). This suggests that most questions here are either abandoned by the poster or community at a fairly high rate regardless of how quickly they get closed (85% vs 89%). A single month is not really significant enough to determine the implications of this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I do not see this experiment as a &quot;failure.&quot;**  I see this as a pretty _good_ result to be honest. Let's say I'm wrong and 2x as many questions from this list should be reopened, which makes 30. Let's also say there were another 30 deleted questions which are accidentally deleted. That means that about a 6% false-closure rate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on finding ways to benefit the community in dealing with the 94% of questions which _should_ have been closed seems preferable than handicapping them over the generous 6% which were incorrectly closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------- &#xD;&#xA;#Future Work&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Ideally, a random sampling of all questions asked during this period would be used in order to arrive at a better understanding of the correctness of closing&#xD;&#xA; - It would be interesting to characterize the votes on closed questions, such as % closed with zero total upvotes, % at -4 or lower, for the trial period vs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the list of all the specific questions I reviewed individually and my evaluation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My perspective is clearly not going to be perfect. You may disagree (or agree) with my reasoning. Be aware the goal here is not the individual questions isolated from each other but the aggregate result.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that there were two questions that were way too long for me to review in a meaningful fashion, indicated by tl;dr.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Ubuntu vs Tails](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303752) - Score:-4&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [How would you create this UML class diagram?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303827) - Score:-4&#xD;&#xA; - needs to be answered by their professor&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is automated testing used in game development?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304302) - Score:-3&#xD;&#xA; -  deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [HTML/PHP - Wordpress](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303072) - Score:-3&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [For loop valid usage?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303154) - Score:-3&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Designing a programming language, seeking simple and logical parameter behavior](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302519) - Score:-3&#xD;&#xA; - more of a rant than question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Use free functions or inheritance for serialization](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304260) - Score:-2&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [I am looking for a clear explanation of java method labels and when to use them.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303915) - Score:-2&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Avoid copy and paste programming, what pattern to use?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303716) - Score:-2&#xD;&#xA; - this is marginal at best, considering it's an XY question but the real question is &quot;how to make good code&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [When &gt; apply a performance and memory profiler?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304344) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - far too broad (answer is basically link to offsite resource)&#xD;&#xA;1. [What is better to design or discover interface](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303051) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - nearly the definition of opinion - &quot;I think this, coworker thinks other, what do you think?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [what is () called?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302449) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;my professor is wrong right?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Strategy for mobile apps sharing a core code base](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303341) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - only answer is basically &quot;it depends talk to your users&quot; - marginal at best&#xD;&#xA;1. [Maximization algorithm wrt external dataset](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303235) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - lacks information&#xD;&#xA;1. [Looking for a proper Algorithm to my problem](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304314) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is it safe to execute the &quot;regedit&quot; command on Windows?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303301) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - XY at best, accepted an answer that doesn't answer any question about &quot;safety&quot; but rather &quot;how to avoid confirmations&quot; but real question is &quot;what is the registry and why is it important&quot; which _might_ be scoped for Superuser?&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to abbreviate &quot;Local&quot; for a time variable, like UTC](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302535) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - I think this is ok (voted to reopen), but it's a &quot;name that thing&quot; which is a hotly debated subject here&#xD;&#xA;1. [How did the gets function ever make into the standard?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303620) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - discussion. user was very hostile to those helping too..&#xD;&#xA;1. [eradicating the array = loop mindset](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302830) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - rant against dumb coworkers&#xD;&#xA;1. [Design of simple disassembler](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303723) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - pretty much exact definition of too broad. _May_ be editable&#xD;&#xA;1. [Can a linkedlist be created without using dynamic allocation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303298) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Can a business application be developed / enhanced with more than one language?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303056) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - no problem described&#xD;&#xA;1. [Best way to control serialisation of posted form data](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304044) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - this seems ok, I voted to reopen (but those familiar with C# voted to close it and I'm unfamiliar with C#)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Approaches to Concurrency](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303383) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;let's make lists and pros and cons of each item!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Why is there a leading `for (;;);` in all of Facebook XHR, JSON-like requests?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304398) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Why don't style-guides include longer explanations why something should be done in a particular way?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302584) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - resource request (and discussion)&#xD;&#xA;1. [What is the name for &quot;the set of all versions of something&quot;?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304449) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [What are the differences between these ways to hide sections in an HTML document?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302810) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted migrated stub &#xD;&#xA;1. [What are my options for keeping user state through SPA?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303108) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [What are good ways to measure project size? How do I compare the size of my project to other projects?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303333) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - this is marginal, it needs some editing to focus it but _could_ be?&#xD;&#xA;1. [Use a hash character or a dot when referring to methods and fields in software documentation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304400) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - needs more info&#xD;&#xA;1. [Tips for working with badly designed software](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304518) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, _could_ be edited, maybe?  it's a strong XY problem&#xD;&#xA;1. [Super classes that represent a wordly hierarchy: naming conventions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303190) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - comments there clarify why off topic&#xD;&#xA;1. [Should we check for duplicated record?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304072) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - very marginal, but I voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Shopping cart in PHP : Sessions or Database?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302099) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - needs more info from asker&#xD;&#xA;1. [Scala: Partition range into subranges](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303654) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - belongs on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;1. [Optimization: How much time saved is considered worth it?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303339) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;how to be good at programming?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [New Kind of VM Type](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304408) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Micro libraries and angularjs](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304592) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - self declared opinion based&#xD;&#xA;1. [Low cost exceptions implementation using metaprogramming](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303210) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - 20 comments, tl;dr (might be ok?)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is there a way for me to use regex to distinguish this set of input?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303318) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted stack overflow stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is it always better to use __construct() in CodeIgniter's Models and Views, even if it's not needed?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303408) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, needs more clarity for the actual question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Inheritance hierarchy design approach - Javascript](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304444) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - pros/cons&#xD;&#xA;1. [How two objects of the same class communicate?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303536) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - only 4 &lt;0 answers that are not deleted... and it's a discussion pros/cons&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to map entity class (ClassA) in two different table (Table1 and Table2) in Entity Framework Code First?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302946) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal quality overall. Probably could be edited&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to document **kwargs in python?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303677) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, but I voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [How much of computer internals should I know to be an application programmer?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302303) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - way too broad, lacking info&#xD;&#xA;1. [How can I use a framework like Bootstrap when I already have designs from a design team](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303566) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - pretty broad, could be easily clarified by asker but..&#xD;&#xA;1. [How can I handle errors in functions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303388) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - dup closed incorrectly&#xD;&#xA;1. [How big should be an input array to unit test a method with a loop?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302367) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - lacking info&#xD;&#xA;1. [Fanout vs point to point on AWS](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303327) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Does testing the characteristics of a runtime have a generally accepted name?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302234) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - name that thing (marginal)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Docstring convention for Python `__str__`, `__unicode__`, and `__repr__` class methods](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303380) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - really poor quality but still on topic, voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Do you have to use an in-memory db for integration testing?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303793) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - not enough info&#xD;&#xA;1. [Data structure for effects animation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303305) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;It's hard to say, given what you've put into your question (no mention of language or performance requirements).&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Could this class be considered as a Factory class?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304438) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, but kind of an XY question and &quot;am I right?&quot; without a problem to be solved&#xD;&#xA;1. [Confusion about data types, compilers, hardware data representation and static vs dynamic typing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303783) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - resource request (or way too broad, whichever)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Best way to represent multiple JSON response in a REST service?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304514) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal&#xD;&#xA;1. [Best way to design chess game](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302495) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - kind of a mess, asking an interview question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Architecture/technology for implementing Management console](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303537) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - pretty broad but perhaps marginal&#xD;&#xA;1. [API: Benefits of having root_node followed by object_id vs. object_id](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304519) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [windows users vs. custom](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303602) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - answer is basically &quot;you didn't give enough info&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [When do you need precision with thread execution timing and how do you do it with Java?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303694) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - too broad (_slightly_ marginal)&#xD;&#xA;1. [What is a good way to make estimates clear to the customer?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304068) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, but I voted to reopen as I think after the many edits it's better&#xD;&#xA;1. [What does `Resolving` mean in programing?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302404) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;why did they name things this way&quot; which isn't really great&#xD;&#xA;1. [What are the advantages of a 'traditional' 'backend' architecture for a standard CRUD app?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302567) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - pros/cons discussion&#xD;&#xA;1. [Trying to Simplify a Java Method](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302364) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted migrated stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [Syntax warnings](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302520) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - this is the **first** I've voted to reopen that looks like a non-marginal question &#xD;&#xA;1. [Strategies for creating a mobile site?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303121) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;I want to design a mobile site&quot; too broad&#xD;&#xA;1. [Soap vs. rest - a hybrid approach?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302937) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;name my project&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Should I use a jump table or a switch case statement for similar functions but may have some parameters that are not relevant](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304601) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - Seems ok, voted to reopen non-marginal&#xD;&#xA;1. [Running simulations in parallel, managing each separately](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303626) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - XY that isn't really resolved by OP&#xD;&#xA;1. [Resistance to abstraction](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302926) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;why do my coworkers thing like this?&quot; is unanswerable&#xD;&#xA;1. [Refusing to define 2 or more classes in one .cpp file](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303972) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - basically duped on SO, and a &quot;why does my company do this&quot; otherwise&#xD;&#xA;1. [Reading from Memory vs Performing an Operation](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304099) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - this is pretty marginal, but I'm not voting to open again&#xD;&#xA;1. [Push instead of pull on a list that might change due to a command in addition to events?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303668) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - not clear given comments&#xD;&#xA;1. [Possible design patterns for a service that synchronizes two third party services](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303362) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - asking for a design pattern but no problem&#xD;&#xA;1. [Number of parallel lines in a given set of lines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304352) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - needs more info&#xD;&#xA;1. [microservices: How to model related domain objects?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303888) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - answer says &quot;in my opinion&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;1. [Java Threads vs AMQP for Async tasks](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302539) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - needs a lot more info&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is there an advantage to defining a metasyntactic variable type?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302713) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - unclear&#xD;&#xA;1. [is boost::random::uniform_real_distritbution supposed to be the same across processors?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302913) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [Internal API to public API - versioning](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303168) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - really basic, but I guess it's on topic, so I voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [I'm graduating as a CS major from a bad CS program. How can I catch up? How can I get over it?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302617) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;how can I learn and catch up&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [I have one app on one server - is there a critical reason to use a web server like IIS or NGINX?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303411) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - pretty marginal&#xD;&#xA;1. [I had modulus problems. When I input two integers the values doesn't display when I run my program](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303095) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to write highly changeable, highly complex software?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303737) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - too broad, &quot;how do I develop large applications?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to make git automatically merge increased build numbers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304423) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - more of a git question for SO that wasn't migrated&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to design a meta model for configuration?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304028) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - pretty much definition of a discussion&#xD;&#xA;1. [How do Symbol Tables, Lexers and Parsers work together in a modern design?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303233) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - maybe on topic, tl;dr right now though&#xD;&#xA;1. [How can I organise a better deployment process?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302323) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - no problem, more of a &quot;what do you guys think about...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Hide, obfuscate or otherwise prevent the harvesting of email addresses](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303634) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - I edited this and voted to reopen, it's kind of marginal, but ok I guess&#xD;&#xA;1. [Heavy Compute, &quot;Medium Data&quot; application Architecture and design patterns?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304499) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Handling authentication for API](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303985) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - feels marginal, was edited after closed and not reopened though&#xD;&#xA;1. [Getting a Candidate to do a Pull Request Review in an Interview](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304599) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - all about interviewing&#xD;&#xA;1. [Factory of factories?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303706) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - self identified lack of problem..&#xD;&#xA;1. [Code attribution to a post quoting an original source](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304245) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - needs more info/context to be answerable (or is too broad)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Best way to structure a complicated web-based quiz](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303860) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - needs clarity on the specific problem, not &quot;help me design a web page&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Architecture supporting digitally signing of tons of soap requests](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302889) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - way too broad&#xD;&#xA;1. [Angular on Linux server -- what backend services to use](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303720) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - tool request&#xD;&#xA;1. [Why do Android programmers use Hungarian notation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302513) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - duplicate&#xD;&#xA;1. [Who does what in a Single Page Application?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303663) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - five broad questions all at once&#xD;&#xA;1. [Webservices vs Microservices](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304312) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, I'm not voting though&#xD;&#xA;1. [Private variables and the old FORTRAN common blocks](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303245) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - also marginal but leaving closed&#xD;&#xA;1. [Passing fields (instance variables) by arguments (parameters) inside an object - does it make sense?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302723) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - dup&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is node.js a safe bet for writting a new CMS that aims to be easily installable/deployable?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304507) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - needs a crystal ball&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is it ok to use service locator for ubiquitously used dependencies?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303830) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - really needs clarity on the specifics of the problem in my opinion&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to set up Visual Studio 2013 projects for building nuget packages targeting multiple .Net versions?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304285) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - deleted stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [Enterprise Architecture: Where to put persistence/dbContext management?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303435) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - too broad design review question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Dealing with big data](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303515) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - a (bad) XY problem, sort-of-answered in comments, but the question isn't really a real question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Architecture on OpenStack with Docker](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304137) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - will require someone with deep Docker knowledge, but this feels on topic (voted to reopen)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Architect in our company is against DTO](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303898) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;I would love to hear your opinion on how much this is true&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Will ECMAScript add classes to JavaScript? What does this mean?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304345) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - needs edits from OP&#xD;&#xA;1. [Rationale of IEEE754 direct rounding behavior near infinity](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303848) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - this is marginal, would require VERY expert knowledge that I'm not sure is reasonable&#xD;&#xA;1. [Passing MVVM objects to other classes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304595) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;I hope you understand that there is no objective answer to your question, and as such it is liable to be closed as primarily opinion base&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How do I model a sortable resource in sql database?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303209) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - I had a hard time understanding this. That might be because I've read 100+ mostly bad questions...&#xD;&#xA;1. [Design review of a small configuration framework](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302686) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - this is pretty broad and a &quot;please fully design review this&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Combinatorial Optimization: Filling a Bag with Sand](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304361) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - I think this is on topic, voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Can this be considered an API?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303864) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;is this an API&quot; isn't a good fit&#xD;&#xA;1. [Sorting algorithm that can handle some error](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302737) - Score:4&#xD;&#xA; - I already had argued for this question, voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Identifying plagiarized jokes?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304368) - Score:4&#xD;&#xA; - this seems ok at first glance, but that... covers a _large_ field and as a &quot;just for fun&quot; question its way too broad ([here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7795/52929) is more info)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Strategies to increasing the maintainability of assertions in code](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303806) - Score:5&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;am I over asserting?&quot; --&gt; maybe? but then &quot;If you have more tips on using assertions and similar tests in code please mention them in your answer.&quot; is pretty much definition of opinion&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is it an overkill to write unit tests for a small code base?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304228) - Score:5&#xD;&#xA; - dup&#xD;&#xA;1. [Refactoring byzantine payment processing code on a limited budget](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303879) - Score:8&#xD;&#xA; - this is pretty marginal, it is well written but pretty broad still&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to deal with a bug which seems to have fixed itself?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303997) - Score:15&#xD;&#xA; - this already had a reopen vote and I cast one - seems _reasonably_ on topic?&#xD;&#xA;1. [Using compound statements (&quot;{&quot; ... &quot;}&quot; blocks) to enforce variable locality](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302217) - Score:37&#xD;&#xA; - dup&#xD;&#xA;1. [Almost every reported bug is a high-priority bug](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302763) - Score:45&#xD;&#xA; - feels more workplacey " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22152" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7799" RevisionGUID="4c439143-3751-4960-aa2e-657fa9201db4" CreationDate="2015-12-19T14:32:38.647" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 35 characters in body" Text="##Were you really expecting a different result?&#xD;&#xA;  This is simple mathematics; you reduce the number of votes to close, and the number of questions that get closed is going to increase. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not what this is about anyway.  It's about whether or not the *right* questions are getting closed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do think that some salvageable questions get incorrectly closed, but I also think it's a relatively small percentage of closed questions.  I've worked with the community to get some of these questions reopened, and to relax their standards a bit.  I've prevailed in some cases.  But that's not the real problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The real problem is that most questions that get asked here suck.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to address some things you've stated in your post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If Jeff couldn't grok this site, I don't see why I would either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just not a defensible position.  Programmers is the easiest site on the entire network to understand.  What is it about?  Wait for it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###software design and development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it.  Simple, isn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The **only** exception to this categorical statement of topicality is *writing and troubleshooting code,* which we're very specific about because we don't want to be another Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our solution to scaling historically has been to encourage users to trust fellow programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*That's just not true.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of years ago, Stack Overflow nearly collapsed under the weight of a hundred thousand monkeys bashing away at a hundred thousand typewriters.  Your response was to *put in an automated system* that blocks a significant percentage of all questions asked at Stack Overflow before the community ever sees them.  It further blocks those users who manage to get through those quality filters and persistently ask bad questions.  That's not trusting the community; it's trusting a machine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't need that at our scale.  All we've ever asked for here on Programmers is a way to close crap questions easier, so that we can get them off the front page faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leaving it up to the community at Stack Overflow, by and large, has produced a site scope which basically amounts to &quot;how do I fix my broken code?&quot;  A lot of these questions are far too specific to ever be useful to anyone else, though I am consistently surprised by Stack Overflow's ability to answer a programming question I have through the result of a Google Search, a quality I attribute to the sheer number of questions that have been asked and answered there.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because Programmers only attracts a tiny percentage of Stack Overflow's volume, I doubt that it will ever reach the same critical mass, which means that the quality of the questions we decide to keep here becomes far more important.  Stack Overflow can be content with housing millions of questions and having perhaps a hundred thousand of them receive a significant audience; Programmers doesn't have that same luxury, nor can it have the same tolerance for chaff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What kinds of questions are acceptable here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's easy: *good questions.*  Assuming they are on-topic; that is, they are about Software Design and Development (excluding specific coding questions), good questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are clear and understandable.&#xD;&#xA; - Have *a specific problem statement.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *lists of things.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *product or service recommendations.* &#xD;&#xA; - Don't require *extended discussions or lengthy explanations.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask *&quot;which is better&quot;* without explaining what &quot;better&quot; specifically means to them, in a way that isn't a tautology ([**&quot;best practice&quot;**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937) is not any better than &quot;better.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These should already look familiar to you; they are all the same metrics that will cause a question to get closed at Stack Overflow if they are not respected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Within a question, voting does a good job of surfacing quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only if the question asked is a good, on-topic one that follows the rules described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There will always be people who misunderstand the nature of this site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody disagrees with this, but there are reasons why this happens more often than it should: old, highly-voted but off-topic questions that serve as bad examples, tags that don't belong here, an extremely vague site title, our checkered past.  And there is still a contingent of people who strongly believe that Programmers should be what it once was: a water cooler for programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing questions does not make them less tempting to copy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why *deletion,* not just closing, is required for those questions that do not adequately represent the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Be proud of your past...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This whole paragraph basically asks us to accept mounds of chaff on the off-chance that one of those ill-advised questions might produce a golden nugget.  The vast majority of them will falter, leaving us with inadequate shovels to clean up the resulting piles of shit.  Stack Overflow doesn't put up with this, nor should we.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; New users should not be treated as threats, but as potential contributors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, nobody disagrees with this.  We give people every opportunity to reform their unsuitable questions.  Most of them do not oblige, else they wouldn't have posted their question in its original form to begin with.  This is nothing new; you've dealt with it for years on Stack Overflow, but with bigger guns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###I'm sad that the experiment failed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not because it was not a success (I believe it was), but because our goals seem to differ.  Your goal seems to be to save the rare ugly ducklings that lay golden eggs (it seems inconceivable to me how you thought reducing the number of close votes would achieve that, unless you were relying on the three votes to reopen to balance the equation). Our goal is to make closing a bit easier so that we can sweep the questions that nobody really wants (except the ones asking them) off the front page so that visitors to the site can see the good questions that accurately represent who we are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *When I go to a Stack Exchange home page, I see a list of questions. If most of those are terrible questions with little to no indication that I'd [not] be wasting my time by reading them, the value proposition of visiting and participating is diminished: I have better things to do.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Compare that to answers on a specific question: I've made a conscious choice to look into what I think is an interesting question. I already made the decision that the question is worth my time. If I find the answers to be useless, I have a few different options to register my displeasure, including writing my own answer. Being able to write your own answer is key: if your answer is good enough, it'll rise above the junk answers and everyone will be better off for it.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *There is no such action for question lists. I can't say &quot;these questions suck, show me this question I just thought up instead&quot;: that'd be silly. So, it's imperative the question list have a high signal-to-noise ratio, removing the penalty for those users who do take the time to read a question and later find it to be useless.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -- Mark Trapp, former Programmers Moderator&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Optimizing for Pearls, not Sand](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22153" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7806" RevisionGUID="f7a91a68-ac8a-4078-8638-f5cb81266534" CreationDate="2015-12-19T18:21:52.580" UserId="161917" Text="**I think a significant part of the disagreement here might be as simple as conflicting uses of terms like &quot;off-topic&quot;.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some people use &quot;off-topic&quot; in a far broader sense than I do, encompassing what I personally refer to as &quot;unanswerable&quot; questions in addition to questions which are objectively off-topic. I fear these distinct uses of the word are clouding this discussion somewhat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way I use the word:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. A poll about the &quot;best&quot; implementation of the factory pattern is **on-topic but unanswerable**.&#xD;&#xA;2. A poll about the &quot;best&quot; C++ compiler would be **off-topic and unanswerable**.&#xD;&#xA;3. A question about whether a specific implementation of the factory pattern fits a specific use case would hopefully be **on-topic and answerable**.&#xD;&#xA;4. A question about whether a specific C++ compiler will perform RVO is **off-topic but answerable**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding of StackExchange is that the correct response to these questions is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Vote to close as &quot;too broad&quot; or &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;2. Vote to close as &quot;off-topic&quot;, without voting to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;3. Edit, upvote, write an answer, or do nothing.&#xD;&#xA;4. Vote to close as &quot;off-topic&quot;, possibly also voting for migration (let's not get into that debate).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, what makes a question &quot;unanswerable&quot; applies equally to all StackExchange sites. If a question is unanswerable on StackOverflow, that means it's unanswerable here, and it's unanswerable on CodeReview, etc, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, what makes a question on- or off-topic is completely different for all StackExchange sites. If a question is on- or off-topic here, that doesn't tell us whether it's on- or off-topic on any of the other sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Robert's and Jon's existing answers to this meta question only make sense to me if Robert is using the narrow definition of &quot;off-topic&quot; while Jon is using the broad definition**. This is also the only reason I can come up with for Jon's apparent failure to understand Robert's answer (other than the three highly improbable reasons that Jon suggested in his own answer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I think it's an overstatement to claim that we're the *easiest* site to understand, our scope really is as simple as &quot;software design and development&quot; with the exception of &quot;writing and troubleshooting code&quot;. The questions that we close as off-topic (not broad/unclear/POB, but actually off-topic) are most often tool recommendations and code debugging questions. I can't imagine anyone seriously having difficulty understanding those closures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I can understand is disagreement over when a question is sufficiently broad, unclear or POB to justify a close vote rather than an edit or some other response. That issue is far more contentious, and it does need to be discussed. But, and this is the whole reason I'm writing this answer: **We need to stop confusing the issues of what's too broad/unclear/POB with the largely uncontroversial issue of what is on-topic**." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22154" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7797" RevisionGUID="6a0e3467-92b8-4cb0-b78a-fc858e32547e" CreationDate="2015-12-19T18:23:29.270" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/678279499113476096" />
  <row Id="22155" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7807" RevisionGUID="7e43dc98-d130-45c2-af7a-5dcb9eb74f29" CreationDate="2015-12-19T18:36:29.090" UserId="161917" Text="It should come as a surprise to no one that I am disappointed about [the 3 close vote experiment being deemed a failure by the powers that be](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7797/3-votes-for-closing-reopening-experiment-the-results). Whether or not we did &quot;fail&quot; (and what that even means) is a big issue, which is already being hashed out in the answers to that question. But there's another equally large question that I don't think is getting discussed over there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming for the sake of argument that we did &quot;fail&quot; somehow, **I have absolutely no idea what SE wants us to do about it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing Jon tells us to do in that meta question is to not distrust users so much. I didn't think any of my actions on the site were based on distrust, but simply voting to close poor content based on how poor it is. If anything, I seem to habitually give first-time askers significantly more hand-written advice than they are willing to or capable of acting on. So, I really don't know what we're supposed to do with this instruction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I don't understand this suggestion, I currently *feel* like SE will do one of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Give up and completely ignore this site for the forseeable future because they simply don't understand what's going on here.&#xD;&#xA;2. Assume they are correct in their belief that we close too many questions, and change the site mechanics to make it *harder* to close questions.&#xD;&#xA;3. Assume Jon's claim that &quot;distrust&quot; is the core problem is entirely accurate, and start taking disciplinary action against the most &quot;distrustful&quot; users, presumably for violating &quot;Be Nice&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe #1 is most likely, but part of me is genuinely concerned that #2, #3 or something equally misguided will happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My hope in asking this meta question is that Jon or someone else from SE can alleviate this uncertainty, ideally with a specific policy statement or some genuinely actionable advice.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some random questions/prompts to help demonstrate what I mean by &quot;actionable advice&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Should we be downvoting questions more often?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we be downvoting answers more often?&#xD;&#xA;- Are there any close reasons we should be using more often?&#xD;&#xA;- Are there any close reasons we should be using less often?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we be having frequent meta threads about whether a specific question is reopen-worthy, or can be edited to become reopen-worthy?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we encourage people to leave comments when donvoting or voting to close because of unclear/broad/POB? (as opposed to off-topic, which is much more self-explanatory)&#xD;&#xA;- Should we encourage people to stop leaving generic comments that simply link to a meta post without any specific advice about that particular question?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we stop trying to clean up &quot;broken windows&quot;, and just ignore any Qs/As beyond a certain age?&#xD;&#xA;- When a question is too unclear/broad to answer, and the OP never adds the missing details, are we supposed to make up details to edit in ourselves until the question becomes answerable?&#xD;&#xA;- When a bikesheddable question (let's say &quot;Should I use ++i or i += 1?&quot;) gets asked, should we close it as too broad/POB? Try to ruthlessly downvote the &quot;merely okay&quot; answers and hope only great ones survive? Just let people upvote everything into the stratosphere no matter how useless? Or something else entirely?&#xD;&#xA;- When a question asks for &quot;best practices&quot; without any explanation of what &quot;best&quot; means for them, should we not close that as unclear/broad/POB?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we try to come up with a clear set of guidelines that might help first-time askers avoid the unclear/broad/POB tarpit, better than the current FAQ does? For instance: describe what your application does, specify your language, specify whether you're after flexibility/intuitiveness/reliability/etc, explain why you want to do this, if there is a blindingly obvious solution explain why it doesn't apply, etc." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22156" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7807" RevisionGUID="7e43dc98-d130-45c2-af7a-5dcb9eb74f29" CreationDate="2015-12-19T18:36:29.090" UserId="161917" Text="The CV experiment has officially failed...but what are we supposed to do about it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22157" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7807" RevisionGUID="7e43dc98-d130-45c2-af7a-5dcb9eb74f29" CreationDate="2015-12-19T18:36:29.090" UserId="161917" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22158" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7807" RevisionGUID="2ca3cc08-d95d-4c9b-bf94-41282f780298" CreationDate="2015-12-19T18:49:32.810" UserId="31260" Comment="minor spelling cleanup" Text="It should come as a surprise to no one that I am disappointed about [the 3 close vote experiment being deemed a failure by the powers that be](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7797/3-votes-for-closing-reopening-experiment-the-results). Whether or not we did &quot;fail&quot; (and what that even means) is a big issue, which is already being hashed out in the answers to that question. But there's another equally large question that I don't think is getting discussed over there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming for the sake of argument that we did &quot;fail&quot; somehow, **I have absolutely no idea what SE wants us to do about it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing Jon tells us to do in that meta question is to not distrust users so much. I didn't think any of my actions on the site were based on distrust, but simply voting to close poor content based on how poor it is. If anything, I seem to habitually give first-time askers significantly more hand-written advice than they are willing to or capable of acting on. So, I really don't know what we're supposed to do with this instruction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I don't understand this suggestion, I currently *feel* like SE will do one of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Give up and completely ignore this site for the foreseeable future because they simply don't understand what's going on here.&#xD;&#xA;2. Assume they are correct in their belief that we close too many questions, and change the site mechanics to make it *harder* to close questions.&#xD;&#xA;3. Assume Jon's claim that &quot;distrust&quot; is the core problem is entirely accurate, and start taking disciplinary action against the most &quot;distrustful&quot; users, presumably for violating &quot;Be Nice&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe #1 is most likely, but part of me is genuinely concerned that #2, #3 or something equally misguided will happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My hope in asking this meta question is that Jon or someone else from SE can alleviate this uncertainty, ideally with a specific policy statement or some genuinely actionable advice.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some random questions/prompts to help demonstrate what I mean by &quot;actionable advice&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Should we be downvoting questions more often?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we be downvoting answers more often?&#xD;&#xA;- Are there any close reasons we should be using more often?&#xD;&#xA;- Are there any close reasons we should be using less often?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we be having frequent meta threads about whether a specific question is reopen-worthy, or can be edited to become reopen-worthy?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we encourage people to leave comments when downvoting or voting to close because of unclear/broad/POB? (as opposed to off-topic, which is much more self-explanatory)&#xD;&#xA;- Should we encourage people to stop leaving generic comments that simply link to a meta post without any specific advice about that particular question?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we stop trying to clean up &quot;broken windows&quot;, and just ignore any Qs/As beyond a certain age?&#xD;&#xA;- When a question is too unclear/broad to answer, and the OP never adds the missing details, are we supposed to make up details to edit in ourselves until the question becomes answerable?&#xD;&#xA;- When a bikesheddable question (let's say &quot;Should I use ++i or i += 1?&quot;) gets asked, should we close it as too broad/POB? Try to ruthlessly downvote the &quot;merely okay&quot; answers and hope only great ones survive? Just let people upvote everything into the stratosphere no matter how useless? Or something else entirely?&#xD;&#xA;- When a question asks for &quot;best practices&quot; without any explanation of what &quot;best&quot; means for them, should we not close that as unclear/broad/POB?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we try to come up with a clear set of guidelines that might help first-time askers avoid the unclear/broad/POB tarpit, better than the current FAQ does? For instance: describe what your application does, specify your language, specify whether you're after flexibility/intuitiveness/reliability/etc, explain why you want to do this, if there is a blindingly obvious solution explain why it doesn't apply, etc." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22159" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7807" RevisionGUID="4467da30-c589-4a24-bd0a-1d1163d233b1" CreationDate="2015-12-19T21:25:38.177" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/678325338473160705" />
  <row Id="22160" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7808" RevisionGUID="74b75784-cfd1-4eb6-9a8f-b3f20a722ba0" CreationDate="2015-12-19T22:15:20.247" UserId="31260" Text="I can not read their minds but from what I see, the only problem this site really has is a terrible flood of debugging / blatantly off-topic questions dumped by users who are banned or warned or simply scared off of Stack Overflow (_my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level_, [remember?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7610/31260))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given above, it is only natural to assume that SE team looks for a cheap way to handle this, to make getting rid of this spam easier - and what can be cheaper than simply tuning close limit setting (to a value that was already tried and tested in the past, which makes it even easier).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing to worry about in there was if it could have some undesired side effects... and, well, there _were_ side effects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These talks about trust / distrust and dreams on how meta visitors would suddenly reform from reading that post about experiment, I honestly can't take them seriously. Balance between tightening and broadening site scope is maintained by core community, not by management slogans.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And thing is, community over here _could_ maintain the balance if site wasn't flooded by debugging spam. There are at least 8-10 members of core community who would be happy to vote reopen stuff &quot;unfairly&quot; closed by folks like you and me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the scale of our site, this would be more than enough to maintain a healthy balance without any management intervention. The only reason why this doesn't happen is flood of blatant garbage that buries questions worthy of wider community attention, like this bunch dropped at us today:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;How to overcome the stack overflow problem?&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Help: not able to compile C++ code&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Injecting a java script to an iframe&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Multiple viewpagers in one fragment&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;How do I increment a variable each time a program runs in C++?&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Rewrite code snippet using ternary operators&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Open cv help i m learnig open cv using youtube i get error when i try to run my frist program pls help&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Android 6.0.1 couldn't enable wifi hotspot programmatically&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the experiment they were probably hoping that lowering bar for reopening will make it easier for the other part of core community to keep the prior balance. This didn't happen, and I think the reason is just the same. Folks who could do this simply can't find questions they would vote on because these are buried under heaps of spam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note it's the third time I use the word _spam_, and it's intentional. I've seen Wikipedia defining spam as &quot;unsolicited electronic message&quot;, and this fits here. It's easy even to a total outsider to see how much of the questions are blatantly off-topic (no matter how broadly one understands site topics).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If my understanding is correct, then there's nothing for SE to expect of us, because spam is not something we, as community, can control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is also unlikely that ignoring what's going on here is an option for them. As of now, site front page says it loud and clear: &quot;hey, SE team can't control spam&quot; - that's sort of damaging their reputation of top Q&amp;A system in the world.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Few years ago, they could probably attempt to close the site, under the cover that it has failed to grow. But their current official position changed, and now they claim that smaller sites can be okay without exploding to SO scale (why wouldn't they, given that smaller sites combined started bringing more views than Stack Overflow). As a result, closing would look solely like giving up to spam.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22161" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7809" RevisionGUID="26fd824a-5e77-4dfc-82c7-8f3b4029efc7" CreationDate="2015-12-20T03:09:40.500" UserId="25476" Text="In my opinion this &quot;spam&quot; problem that gnat speaks to is one of those problems that is so deceptively simple, so completely obvious in hindsight, and something brought up before hiding in plain sight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here it is guys, the solution to the vast majority of bad content that I speak of is...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Our Domain Name ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is as simple as that. Change the domain name of the site from Programmers to Software Engineering and Architecture or something akin to this and I will personally step down as a moderator if spam on the site doesn't cut by half.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you walk down the streets of your city past the homeless beggars and they all harass you asking for some change, don't act surprised when you are wearing a shirt that says, &quot;I got lots of change to give...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They don't care enough to research their problems, they certainly aren't going to study our Help Center to figure out what we are about.  The name of the site deceives them as a quick fix for a problem that they are getting whipped to fix by their micromanaging boss." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22162" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="7810" RevisionGUID="9a61ccde-2a69-4b59-ac1d-f83ec30d19a9" CreationDate="2015-12-20T07:29:46.653" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/305473/where-to-ask-scientific-programming-education-questions" />
  <row Id="22163" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7810" RevisionGUID="ffb55c41-ca57-46a3-9ff6-1d5bbda9581f" CreationDate="2015-12-20T04:55:55.287" UserId="129914" Text="I note several Programmers questions have been closed as off-topic for `seeking career or education advice` (e.g., [here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/149970/i-can-write-code-but-cant-design-well-any-suggestions), [there](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/195548/what-skills-are-essential-for-professional-programming-that-are-not-commonly-tau)). I'd like to ask a question about what academic schools/departments have {good reputations for teaching, award recognized credentials for} scientific computing (esp Fortran for large-scale Earth-system modeling), but suspect that question would goto `/dev/closed`. Am I missing something? If not, I'd appreciate recommendations for online resources (lists, websites, etc) to ask such questions; moreover I'd defend *this* question as on-topic precisely because it *would* `generate lasting value for the broader programming community`, and particularly for this site (by allowing the question police to *redirect* questions rather than merely shutting them down)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22164" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7810" RevisionGUID="ffb55c41-ca57-46a3-9ff6-1d5bbda9581f" CreationDate="2015-12-20T04:55:55.287" UserId="129914" Text="where to ask scientific-programming-education questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22165" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7810" RevisionGUID="ffb55c41-ca57-46a3-9ff6-1d5bbda9581f" CreationDate="2015-12-20T04:55:55.287" UserId="129914" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22166" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7811" RevisionGUID="5330525c-86ed-4d7c-87cc-ba38494da2af" CreationDate="2015-12-20T13:26:34.570" UserId="161917" Text="In our experience, resource recommendation questions and career/education advice questions like the one you're suggesting do not &quot;generate lasting value&quot; because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The answers are guaranteed to change over time. A question about design patterns or algorithms is likely to remain useful for a very long time, but which schools are good at what or what websites are good at what is *definitely* going to change every few years, maybe even every few months. StackExchange is simply not designed to handle questions whose answers are constantly changing, so it's best to ask those questions elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Many of these questions depend so heavily on individual circumstances that answering them correctly requires not research into the issue, but a lengthy discussion with the asker. This is what I call &quot;professional advice&quot;. It's also something that StackExchange simply isn't designed for. It's essentially the same reason we don't offer legal advice (aside from the fact that we aren't lawyers), why Mi Yodeya doesn't answer rabbinical advice, and why Christianity.SE doesn't offer pastoral advice; when you want those things, what you really need to sit down and talk to the right kind of professional face-to-face. In this case, some kind of career advisor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, there are StackExchange sites that do successfully cater to some of the subsets of career advice questions and education advice questions that actually are answerable in ways that provide lasting value. Namely, [The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/) and [Academia.SE](http://academia.stackexchange.com/). But I don't think either of them accept questions about recommending careers/education institutions to specific individuals for precisely the same reasons I just gave. You may wish to browse their meta sites to see if they have any similar explanations." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22167" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7811" RevisionGUID="d53118ed-d00b-427a-a7ce-9e7229a0049b" CreationDate="2015-12-20T14:06:19.137" UserId="31260" Comment="links to TWP and Academia += help/on-topic" Text="In our experience, resource recommendation questions and career/education advice questions like the one you're suggesting do not &quot;generate lasting value&quot; because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The answers are guaranteed to change over time. A question about design patterns or algorithms is likely to remain useful for a very long time, but which schools are good at what or what websites are good at what is *definitely* going to change every few years, maybe even every few months. Stack Exchange is simply not designed to handle questions whose answers are constantly changing, so it's best to ask those questions elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Many of these questions depend so heavily on individual circumstances that answering them correctly requires not research into the issue, but a lengthy discussion with the asker. This is what I call &quot;professional advice&quot;. It's also something that Stack Exchange simply isn't designed for. It's essentially the same reason we don't offer legal advice (aside from the fact that we aren't lawyers), why Mi Yodeya doesn't answer rabbinical advice, and why Christianity.SE doesn't offer pastoral advice; when you want those things, what you really need to sit down and talk to the right kind of professional face-to-face. In this case, some kind of career advisor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, there are Stack Exchange sites that do successfully cater to some of the subsets of career advice questions and education advice questions that actually are answerable in ways that provide lasting value. Namely, [The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [Academia.SE](http://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). But I don't think either of them accept questions about recommending careers/education institutions to specific individuals for precisely the same reasons I just gave. You may wish to browse their meta sites to see if they have any similar explanations." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22168" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7812" RevisionGUID="809898e6-238d-4c04-8bc3-1748859fa9ff" CreationDate="2015-12-20T15:32:34.457" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="&gt; What academic schools/departments have {good reputations for teaching, award recognized credentials for} scientific computing (esp. Fortran for large-scale Earth-system modeling)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to consider with this hypothetical question is that the universities that the professors teaching these classes change.  The university I went to was at one time databases and networking. The two professors that were there that really lead these areas have since retired and now the department seems to be a bit more focused on high performance and massively distributed computing.  A few of the other professors that were paticuarlly noteworthy (when I went there) have since either gone to the industry or gotten hired away to other universities (those are names that ***I*** recognize - I'm sure there are other ones there now).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point I'm trying to make there is that this information is transient. You'll have certain departments that focus on something while there is leadership in that area, and then as they either retire or go somewhere else, or a new professor is able to take leadership in a different direction for focus, the information will change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The constantly changing nature of the answers to this type of question doesn't really make for a good question in the Q&amp;A framework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another point to consider is that Programmers.SE *tends* to be industry programmers. While many (certainly not all) of us were in academia at one time, for many of us it was a decade or two ago. The &quot;what school has this&quot; isn't that interesting of a question to the people providing answers (and we really haven't kept up on this - we got our degree, used it to get the first interview and haven't looked back). This isn't to say that it's not interesting to you, but in general I feel that I can say it's not interesting to much of the people answering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is an important point - it is keeping the questions on track so that there are interesting questions for people to click on and answer needs to be a focus for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last point that I wish to make is that you have the exact same resources that we do to answer your question. Search &quot;earth modeling fortran&quot; on google scholar ([earth modeling computing](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=earth+modeling+computing&amp;btnG=&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=0%2C50)) and find the associations of the different people and where they are now.  Any *other* answers would be rumor and guessing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That I could come up with a reasonable answer for this without having touched fortran since it was taught to me (f90 was still in its infancy - I learned f77 and such large scale system computing was the work of government agencies) means that the skill needed to come up with an answer isn't one that draws from my experience as a programmer, but rather my skill with knowing how to use google." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22169" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7810" RevisionGUID="918a359f-ac9a-443b-b44c-51d1c447555b" CreationDate="2015-12-20T16:35:02.543" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22170" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7807" RevisionGUID="21eaf8cd-1f56-40bb-9bc2-3a257b4dfd88" CreationDate="2015-12-20T16:35:19.123" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|experiment|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22171" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7705" RevisionGUID="5db2df8b-eecd-4367-a7f2-a2f99b05d9d6" CreationDate="2015-12-21T16:56:29.160" UserId="35276" Comment="added 170 characters in body" Text="Site Participation&#xD;&#xA;==================&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries detailing over all site usage, number of users, number of user votes, number of questions and answers and closures and whatever else insofar as it's an aggregate of data over the whole site's user-generated-content (ergo participation).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Sites questions and answer count per day](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/84695/questions-and-answers-per-day#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per 7 day period](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102122/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per day of the week](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381897/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per hour of the day](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381898/questions-and-answers-per-hour-of-the-day#graph)&#xD;&#xA;* [User count by location](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381810/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA; * [...with location search](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381818/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA;* [Post count by tag](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/78004/post-count-by-tag)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post score by location by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381878/total-post-score-by-location-by-post-type)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post count by location by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381882/total-post-count-by-location-by-post-type)&#xD;&#xA;* [Ranking of community acceptance of tags](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/410394/community-tag-acceptance-ranking-with-threshold?TagQuestionCountThreshold=50)&#xD;&#xA; * [.. with tag search](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/410172/community-tag-acceptance-ranking?TagQuestionCountThreshold=50)&#xD;&#xA;* [Daily acceptable question counts, with DayCount parameter](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/413535/daily-acceptable-question-count?DayCount=600#graph)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22172" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7705" RevisionGUID="b0f91937-1faf-448b-a53a-76f41f1b67a1" CreationDate="2015-12-21T18:04:12.973" UserId="35276" Comment="added 159 characters in body" Text="Site Participation&#xD;&#xA;==================&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries detailing over all site usage, number of users, number of user votes, number of questions and answers and closures and whatever else insofar as it's an aggregate of data over the whole site's user-generated-content (ergo participation).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Sites questions and answer count per day](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/84695/questions-and-answers-per-day#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per 7 day period](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102122/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per day of the week](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381897/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per hour of the day](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381898/questions-and-answers-per-hour-of-the-day#graph)&#xD;&#xA;* [User count by location](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381810/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA; * [...with location search](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381818/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA;* [Post count by tag](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/78004/post-count-by-tag)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post score by location by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381878/total-post-score-by-location-by-post-type)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post count by location by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381882/total-post-count-by-location-by-post-type)&#xD;&#xA;* [Ranking of community acceptance of tags](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/410394/community-tag-acceptance-ranking-with-threshold?TagQuestionCountThreshold=50)&#xD;&#xA; * [.. with tag search](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/410172/community-tag-acceptance-ranking?TagQuestionCountThreshold=50)&#xD;&#xA;* [Daily acceptable question counts, with DayCount parameter](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/413535/daily-acceptable-question-count?DayCount=600#graph)&#xD;&#xA;* [Base acceptable question data query for further aggregation and analysis](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/413565/acceptable-question-data)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22173" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7813" RevisionGUID="c654602b-e611-47e4-bbe2-0c1c1a7037b9" CreationDate="2015-12-21T19:02:04.267" UserId="63202" Text="I just earned a Flip Flop on programmers!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does anyone know what that might be, and more generally what secret hats are?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22174" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7813" RevisionGUID="c654602b-e611-47e4-bbe2-0c1c1a7037b9" CreationDate="2015-12-21T19:02:04.267" UserId="63202" Text="What are secret hats?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22175" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7813" RevisionGUID="c654602b-e611-47e4-bbe2-0c1c1a7037b9" CreationDate="2015-12-21T19:02:04.267" UserId="63202" Text="|support|winterbash|hats|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22176" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7797" RevisionGUID="0b53bba7-670e-44eb-b68e-577dfd2753b4" CreationDate="2015-12-21T21:02:11.593" UserId="96050" Comment="Hmmm... It's kinda important to use the _actual_ dates of an experiment. " Text="I'm sure you remember [this experiment](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7723/96050), which changed the required number of close/reopen votes from 5 to 3. Before getting to the meat of the analysis, I should point out that the change worked almost exactly as intended. Close votes [clustered around 3](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7734/96050) and the median time to close dropped noticably from November 9 to December 9, 2015:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Median time to close by week][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the statistics I said I'd be looking at:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Month posted Qs   Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion&#xD;&#xA;    ------------ ---- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- ---------&#xD;&#xA;    2014-11-09   1379    572      41.5%          12.1%     2.1%      10.1%     29.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2014-12-09   1251    730      58.4%          13.4%     1.5%       7.1%     32.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-01-09   1490    788      52.9%          11.3%     1.6%      10.1%     32.6%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-02-09   1507    816      54.1%          11.0%     1.6%      10.0%     31.7%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-03-09   1493    883      59.1%           9.7%     1.1%       8.1%     35.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-04-09   1391    814      58.5%          12.5%     1.1%       4.9%     34.2%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-05-09   1394    726      52.1%          10.2%     2.1%       9.5%     41.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-06-09   1472    764      51.9%           9.2%     2.1%      14.3%     37.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-07-09   1496    839      56.1%          10.8%     1.2%       5.5%     36.7%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-08-09   1392    785      56.4%          11.6%     0.9%       3.3%     52.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-09-09   1376    816      59.3%          11.4%     3.3%      18.3%     47.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-09   1463    869      59.4%           8.9%     2.2%       6.5%     43.5%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09   1308    955      73.0%          15.4%     4.9%      17.0%     47.0%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rates remained steady for the most part in the months leading up to the experiment. For the month of the experiment closing, editing of closed questions, and reopening spiked noticeably. (Deletion has a longer [lag time](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/262077/1438) so we don't have the final tally.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The big number that sticks out is the 73% closure rate. We've already gone round and round about what that number _should be_, so there's no point in rehashing that argument. I think too many questions closed here are salvageable and other people (who have firsthand experience in the close queue) believe that the lines are clear and most closed questions would be bad for the site. If [Jeff couldn't grok this site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2260/we-cant-pronounce-anything), I don't see why I would either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I don't understand the goals of this site is, in fact, _because_ I'm not part of this community. Closing is part of how this community, as [Clay Shirky puts it](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html), &quot;defends itself so that it can stay on its sophisticated goals and away from its basic instincts.&quot; Bikeshed questions represent a considerable portion of those instincts, I suspect. Closing questions that verge toward [bad subjective](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) protects the group from junk answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shirky also points out in &quot;A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You have to find some way to protect your own users from scale. This doesn't mean the scale of the whole system can't grow. But you can't try to make the system large by taking individual conversations and blowing them up like a balloon; human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon. It either dissipates, or turns into broadcast, or collapses. So plan for dealing with scale in advance, because it's going to happen anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our solution to scaling historically has been to encourage users to [**trust fellow programmers**](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/251175/1438). While it's not without problems, the philosophy does allow one community to handle [8k questions a day](http://stackexchange.com/sites#questionsperday). It's been ages since anyone could read all the questions on the site, but the system works well enough to produce an enormous (and growing) store of knowledge about coding. [Most of the questions are crap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law), but that's more than balanced by the quality of the content that rises to the top of searches. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's clear that changing the number of votes required to close questions will allow this site to scale without changing the criteria for closing questions. I completely understand why this would be desirable. But I think it would be a short-term hack. It will not fix the root of the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You might as well know what I think the core problem is: **distrust**. Over and over since I started this experiment, I've heard (whether this is what was intended or not, I don't know) concern that outsiders will take advantage of this community the moment its guard is dropped. And it's not just outsiders: there is a deep division among high-reputation users and former users of the site that is marked by distrust. I have some suggestions about how to work toward a compromise, but I haven't earned any trust here myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the off chance that it could still be useful, I'm going to toss out my ideas anyway:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Assume that only the sign and not the magnitude of question scores matter.** Voting volume tends to follow the number of views. Views are driven largely by how interested the general public is in the question and it's answers. The second most-upvoted question on SO is: [How do you undo the last commit?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/927358/1438) It didn't [start off](http://stackoverflow.com/revisions/927358/1) as a particularly good question, but it represents an _extremely common problem_ and so it gets a lot of views. I suppose in a just world, those views would not turn into votes. But in the real world, not everything is tied to merit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Assume that only the first few answers are ever read.** Almost a corollary to the previous point: popular questions will get more answers. If you dig through those answers, it's pretty likely some of them are low-quality. Gallingly, they are likely to have more votes than brilliant answers to obscure questions. But within a question, voting does a good job of surfacing quality. Studies consistently find that people [rarely finish reading pages they land on](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/page-fold-manifesto/). Either they find the information they are looking for and leave or they give up on the page. Downvote bad answers and trust your fellows to do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. **There will always be people who misunderstand the nature of this site.** Several people pointed me to a comment (on a now-deleted question) that cited [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/77479/96050) as a reason for asking something similar. The example has been closed for over a year. _Closing questions does not make them less tempting to copy._ Don't confuse _post hoc_ justification for motivation. People will ask dumb questions whether there are similar questions around or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. **Be proud of your past.** I know this site has gone through a lot of pain. It's also produced some amazing answers. I've seen the accepted answer to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60544/why-do-game-developers-prefer-windows cited several times by people who aren't active on Stack Exchange. The answers to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29109/is-there-any-reason-to-use-c-instead-of-c-perl-python-etc make me wonder if I gave up on C++ templates too soon. While poking around the codebase here at Stack Overflow, I found the answers to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127624/what-is-mvc-really useful. These bikeshed questions manage to produce exceptional answers in spite of themselves. Or rather, there are some amazing contributors here who have turned leaden questions into answer gold. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. **The single best defense against worthless opinions is voter diversity.** Studies have consistently found that [&quot;diverse minds do better, when their decisions are averaged, than expert minds.&quot;](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140708-when-crowd-wisdom-goes-wrong) New users should not be treated as threats, but as potential contributors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The increase in closure rate makes reducing the number of votes required to close questions impractical. Other effects (particularly reopen rate and median time to close) were encouraging, but did not counter-balance the cost in terms of new questions closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/NOUb5.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22177" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7814" RevisionGUID="79784098-c0bc-44fe-8e9e-7d8e2d800701" CreationDate="2015-12-21T21:18:04.257" UserId="32353" Text="You can't tell them because they won't understand and will just try to stop you from getting hats.  Make sure that before you vanish from their lives you pack up all their hats." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22178" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7257" RevisionGUID="82998eb6-261c-42be-a821-b099742cfec9" CreationDate="2015-12-21T22:08:38.030" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1589/what-to-do-about-the-proliferation-of-bad-questions-from-generic-accounts" Text="Propose to detect troublesome questions using Stack Overflow quality scoring data and put them to [Triage queue](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage) for an hour or two. If the timeout expires before decision is made, let questions go to homepage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the questions that fail the Triage, one option to handle these is to keep them invisible for a day or two (if not edited), then automatically [bump](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/bump/info) them for a broader community review. This way would keep them away from the top of [newest tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest). (Attentive readers may notice that bumps imply certain pollution of [active tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active) but this looks less of an issue to me, as this tab is rather heavily dominated by better questions being bumped by answers and edits. Not to mention that Triage would spare active page from questions deserving flagging for speedy deletion - spam, [homework dumps](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3837/31260), [&quot;cubicle fart&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6677/31260) kind stuff...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reasons why I consider above approach feasible are [laid out here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7251/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  goal, about [&quot;wall of crap&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so) at homepage, also looks relevant to us, as indicated by multiple recurring discussions about [too many bad questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7130?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...site topics substantially overlap and... many troublesome questions over here appear to be posted by users who are simply [trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260). Using same scoring data that is supposed to detect and block them at Stack Overflow would make sense, wouldn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...there is just no way to ensure that questions in Triage queue would be reviewed within reasonable timeframe... automatically kick questions off this queue and let them go to homepage after some timeout (say, 1-2 hours) if these haven't got sufficient attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7614/why-are-we-getting-so-many-off-topic-debug-this-for-me-questions-what-can-we&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7593/is-there-any-point-in-this-site-still-existing  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note this one even suggests Stack Overflow (protected by Triage!) as an example of how a site should look like.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7130/so-many-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7239/there-are-way-more-negative-votes-in-the-top-50-questions-than-positive-time-to&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7221/problem-titles-in-off-topic-questions-of-new-users-coming-from-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7020/lets-help-askers-who-are-trying-to-circumvent-question-block-at-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6990/why-cant-we-raise-up-questions-quality&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6850/how-effective-is-the-quality-filter-against-this-question-with-all-caps-brief-ti&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6788/a-lot-of-front-page-down-votes&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6371/how-can-we-encourage-people-to-read-the-faq-before-asking-their-first-question&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5618/better-selection-title-for-top-questions-list&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5377/requiring-registration-to-ask-questions-did-it-made-a-difference&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4029/why-are-there-so-many-minus-points-on-questions-in-this-site&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4009/programmers-stack-exchange-question-downvoting-what-to-do&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3947/what-can-we-do-about-extremely-low-quality-questions-from-unregistered-users&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3778/can-we-have-some-way-to-not-show-closed-questions-on-the-front-page&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2744/how-can-i-create-a-custom-filtered-view-of-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2727/are-we-scaring-off-new-users&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Nov 17 '11)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4097/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Oct 8 '12)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1589/what-to-do-about-the-proliferation-of-bad-questions-from-generic-accounts&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/841/why-are-almost-half-the-questions-on-the-front-page-marked-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/784/are-we-closing-too-many-good-questions-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22179" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7705" RevisionGUID="150db190-9d79-4ea0-89d9-ca451a53f15d" CreationDate="2015-12-22T03:56:20.317" UserId="35276" Comment="added 151 characters in body" Text="Site Participation&#xD;&#xA;==================&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries detailing over all site usage, number of users, number of user votes, number of questions and answers and closures and whatever else insofar as it's an aggregate of data over the whole site's user-generated-content (ergo participation).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Sites questions and answer count per day](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/84695/questions-and-answers-per-day#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per 7 day period](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102122/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per day of the week](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381897/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per hour of the day](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381898/questions-and-answers-per-hour-of-the-day#graph)&#xD;&#xA;* [User count by location](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381810/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA; * [...with location search](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381818/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA;* [Post count by tag](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/78004/post-count-by-tag)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post score by location by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381878/total-post-score-by-location-by-post-type)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post count by location by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381882/total-post-count-by-location-by-post-type)&#xD;&#xA;* [Ranking of community acceptance of tags](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/410394/community-tag-acceptance-ranking-with-threshold?TagQuestionCountThreshold=50)&#xD;&#xA; * [.. with tag search](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/410172/community-tag-acceptance-ranking?TagQuestionCountThreshold=50)&#xD;&#xA;* [Daily acceptable question counts, with DayCount parameter](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/413535/daily-acceptable-question-count?DayCount=600#graph)&#xD;&#xA;* [Base acceptable question data query for further aggregation and analysis](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/413565/acceptable-question-data)&#xD;&#xA;* [Close counts per month by close reason](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/413769/close-reasons-over-time-for-further-analysis#graph)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22180" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7815" RevisionGUID="7ee19edd-258a-4bff-8b5a-e6dee4c7718a" CreationDate="2015-12-22T05:47:30.397" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I recommend you uninstall the &quot;family&quot; upgrade. This will free up the kernel scheduler for more important tasks:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Acquiring hats&#xD;&#xA;* Drinking whiskey&#xD;&#xA;* Watching reruns of your favorite nerd shows: Star Trek, Dr. Who, Buffy, et al.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22181" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7816" RevisionGUID="d43b9251-4557-455d-b82f-6558d97991c3" CreationDate="2015-12-22T10:03:29.097" UserId="105684" Text="If one reads the description of this site, one finds that it's purpose is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on *conceptual questions about software development*.&#xD;&#xA;(emphasis mine).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To my mind, conceptual questions are ones that will almost always require opinion-based answers. Yet, reading further down the site description, there are the statements:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Focus on questions about an actual problem you have faced. Include details about what you have tried and exactly what you are trying to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Not all questions work well in our format. Avoid questions that are primarily opinion-based, or that are likely to generate discussion rather than answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These two statements appear to be directly copied from Stack Overflow, which isn't a place for conceptual questions; it's focused on specific questions about specific issues. These two statements also seem to run counter to the stated purpose of the Programmers site itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently, I answered [Why is it inappropriate to use UML diagrams to plan how your code will be organized?][1], which seemed an almost perfect fit question for this site. Yet this question was closed as &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot;. Whilst it has subsequently been re-opened, it's worth looking here at the words behind this close reason (taken from Stack Overflow, but I assume they are the same for this site):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **primarily opinion-based** Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It clearly states that &quot;Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience&quot;, which I believe was the case with this question. This raises the obvious question: why did those that voted to close it feel it was too opinion-based? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly a question such as &quot;Should I use spaces or tabs for whitespace in my code&quot; will be purely opinion-based and such edge-case questions deserve to be closed. However, as mentioned earlier, I feel answers to conceptual questions will almost always be opinion-based. Thus my question, should this site even be using this close reason, except for these rare occasions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/305093/why-is-it-inappropriate-to-use-uml-diagrams-to-plan-how-your-code-will-be-organi/305116#305116" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22182" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7816" RevisionGUID="d43b9251-4557-455d-b82f-6558d97991c3" CreationDate="2015-12-22T10:03:29.097" UserId="105684" Text="Should the &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot; close-reason ever be used on Programmers, except on extreme occasions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22183" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7816" RevisionGUID="d43b9251-4557-455d-b82f-6558d97991c3" CreationDate="2015-12-22T10:03:29.097" UserId="105684" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22184" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7817" RevisionGUID="7f08cae5-0103-4657-9a7e-f2069e010df5" CreationDate="2015-12-22T12:37:04.393" UserId="161917" Text="Prompted by the recent-ish question [How to scramble a word, keeping first and last characters the same? (JS)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304833/how-to-scramble-a-word-keeping-first-and-last-characters-the-same-js), and today's MSE post about it: [Question closed as off-topic after following suggestion in Meta](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/271620/question-closed-as-off-topic-after-following-suggestion-in-meta).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I assume we closed this question because it was focused on why a specific piece of code did not run fast enough, which is normally a StackOverflow question. Based on this user's meta post, it is now retroactively obvious that the user was more interested in improving the algorithm than in JS-specific optimizations, and had reason to believe his question would be accepted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it's probably too late to undo the damage ([judging by the user's displeasure with us](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/271620/question-closed-as-off-topic-after-following-suggestion-in-meta#comment881300_271621)), it does seem like it wouldn't have been terribly difficult to edit the question into one focusing on the algorithm rather than the code. I was honestly a bit surprised to see my name on the list of close voters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you can see, the question got good answers, and the answers were about the algorithm rather than the specific code. In other words, the apparent off-topicness of the question did not encourage any off-topic answers (as so often happens with unclear/broad/POB questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While the question as written is a better fit for StackOverflow, it's so easy to edit it into a good fit for Programmers that I think we messed up on this one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;tl;dr:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Whenever we see a question about fixing/improving code that can easily be interpreted as asking us to suggest a better algorithm, should we edit it to focus on the algorithm instead of closing it as off-topic?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22185" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7817" RevisionGUID="7f08cae5-0103-4657-9a7e-f2069e010df5" CreationDate="2015-12-22T12:37:04.393" UserId="161917" Text="When someone asks a &quot;code improvement&quot; question, should we edit it to an &quot;algorithm improvement&quot; question instead of closing as off-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22186" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7817" RevisionGUID="7f08cae5-0103-4657-9a7e-f2069e010df5" CreationDate="2015-12-22T12:37:04.393" UserId="161917" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22187" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7818" RevisionGUID="e92ab484-91f1-4347-b704-1c0a4ab601da" CreationDate="2015-12-22T14:19:26.573" UserId="9113" Text="&gt; Whenever we see a question about fixing/improving code that can easily be interpreted as asking us to suggest a better algorithm, should we edit it to focus on the algorithm instead of closing it as off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, I think so, but only if &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- it can **easily** be interpreted as asking us to suggest a better algorithm (which is, I guess, not the case for the majority of fix-my-code requests here om Programmers)&#xD;&#xA;- the problem solved by the algorithm is not too trivial or specific to the asker, so it has at least a slight potential to be useful for someone else (IMHO that is debatable for the word scrambling question)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22188" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7819" RevisionGUID="abc8036c-77c8-49d9-a0ba-b9006d8a867f" CreationDate="2015-12-22T15:10:26.673" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="While the answers in the question were in reasonable P.SE style, I had trouble with this particular question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At its core, its asking for someone to read it and profile it, and yes, debug it too (for a minor bug).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer that the OP edited into the question was pure code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Algorithm questions are ok.  But I believe that once you start asking for 'make ***this*** code faster' the balance of the scale tips to one of the sites that focus on code rather than algorithms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As written, the question appears to be one that would have accepted code only answers.  Thus a key part (I believe) in getting it to be a good P.SE question is to rewrite it so that it describes the algorithm used (fortunately neither of the answers are too picky about the code)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22189" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7820" RevisionGUID="eedb2522-b149-4cf0-92f2-a50c07553717" CreationDate="2015-12-22T17:24:58.980" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Subjective questions are allowed, in fact there is a meta questions somewhere about &quot;good subjective&quot; v. &quot;bad subjective&quot; (I can't find it, could someone please edit it in here?). Good questions will often involve some measure of opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions that are completely objective with zero wiggle room for opinion tend to be uninteresting and bland, and answerable via searching for facts on Google. If there is only one correct answer to a question, it takes little effort to answer it and it provides little value _in the Stack Exchange format_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions that have some room for opinion tend to invite the depth and breadth of experience of software development professionals. These are the whiteboard questions that we like: &quot;given this set of constraints and these specific goals, how do I design the system?&quot; or &quot;does UML provide a benefit given how this software project is run, its goals, timelines, etc.&quot; could be a &quot;good subjective&quot; as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions that are immediately recognizable as pure opinion with no correct answer (e.g. &quot;spaces or tabs?&quot;) are &quot;bad subjective.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first category should be closed as off-topic because a quick web search will answer them: we expect that an asker performs at least minimal research, which should have answered that type of question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second category should remain open. An on-topic question might attract up or down votes, may or may not be answered, and may be put on hold as &quot;unclear&quot; or &quot;too broad&quot; and edited into shape to reopen. But it should not be closed as off-topic or primarily opinion-based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The third category should be closed as primarily opinion-based and deleted. Not even voted as duplicate, these are bad questions and we do not want the signposts hanging around." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22190" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7821" RevisionGUID="35520d09-dad0-4be2-bc5e-ce6bd27dc6b5" CreationDate="2015-12-22T18:43:16.770" UserId="25476" Text="I made an edit attempt to focus the question to being one of the best algorithm approach that would result in the least amount of operations worse case.  I also reopened it, it was close to being reopened anyway by the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP did provide code which is allowed for context, as long as the question and answers address the algorithm and pseudo code instead of the code itself.  The accepted answer approaches this as an algorithm question and not a code question so the edit I feel is a good one.  I also notified the user on Meta.SE about this change for input.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Pseudo code is preferred on questions like this, but merely the existence of code in a question or answer does not mean it is unsalvageable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22191" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7822" RevisionGUID="d4be10b5-e27f-4ab2-a436-a2e1f4270eb4" CreationDate="2015-12-22T20:46:32.083" UserId="4" Text="Stating that a question about code performance being off-topic here / belonging on Stack Overflow is inherently wrong. Those types of questions should be posted here (&quot;software architecture and design&quot;, &quot;algorithm and data structure concepts&quot;) or Code Review (&quot;Performance&quot;). My philosophy on migration is that we should assume that the person posted it on the correct Stack Exchange. As such, we should provide answers within the context of our community, focusing on design and algorithm improvements. I do think that it's very much OK for language-specific questions, as detailed design decisions are driven by the language - some things that make sense in C don't make sense in Java and things that make sense in either don't make sense in JavaScript.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that we (all of us, especially those power users and everyone with edit rights - myself included) need to be better at reading between the lines and err on the side of caution. If we see a new post that may be construed as off-topic here, we should edit (or leave clear and specific comments) to bring out the aspects that are on-topic for us before answers are posted. This will provide better guidance to new users as to the type of questions we accept and hints to potential answerers as to the kinds of answers we want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My tl;dr: Yes, edit questions to better fit things that are on-topic for us. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't also vote to close to prevent answers, especially if a discussion is needed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22192" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7705" RevisionGUID="6fbb28aa-a400-4f80-9f91-3174a869511f" CreationDate="2015-12-22T20:51:30.980" UserId="35276" Comment="added 187 characters in body" Text="Site Participation&#xD;&#xA;==================&#xD;&#xA;List here any queries detailing over all site usage, number of users, number of user votes, number of questions and answers and closures and whatever else insofar as it's an aggregate of data over the whole site's user-generated-content (ergo participation).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Sites questions and answer count per day](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/84695/questions-and-answers-per-day#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per 7 day period](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102122/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per day of the week](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381897/questions-and-answers-per-7-day-period-going-backward-from-now#graph)&#xD;&#xA; * [...per hour of the day](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381898/questions-and-answers-per-hour-of-the-day#graph)&#xD;&#xA;* [User count by location](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381810/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA; * [...with location search](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381818/users-count-by-location)&#xD;&#xA;* [Post count by tag](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/78004/post-count-by-tag)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post score by location by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381878/total-post-score-by-location-by-post-type)&#xD;&#xA;* [Total post count by location by post type](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/381882/total-post-count-by-location-by-post-type)&#xD;&#xA;* [Ranking of community acceptance of tags](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/410394/community-tag-acceptance-ranking-with-threshold?TagQuestionCountThreshold=50)&#xD;&#xA; * [.. with tag search](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/410172/community-tag-acceptance-ranking?TagQuestionCountThreshold=50)&#xD;&#xA;* [Daily acceptable question counts, with DayCount parameter](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/413535/daily-acceptable-question-count?DayCount=600#graph)&#xD;&#xA;* [Base acceptable question data query for further aggregation and analysis](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/413565/acceptable-question-data)&#xD;&#xA;* [Close counts per month by close reason](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/413769/close-reasons-over-time-for-further-analysis#graph)&#xD;&#xA;* [Large unaggregated body of question data regarding closures for further aggregation](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/414489/questions-with-close-and-deletion-reasons)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22193" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7818" RevisionGUID="d9d72ba8-c3af-45bc-9a91-9573ab5534af" CreationDate="2015-12-23T08:42:58.853" UserId="9113" Comment="added 30 characters in body" Text="&gt; Whenever we see a question about fixing/improving code that can easily be interpreted as asking us to suggest a better algorithm, should we edit it to focus on the algorithm instead of closing it as off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, I think so, but only if &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- it can **easily** be interpreted as asking us to suggest a better algorithm (which is, I guess, not the case for the majority of fix-my-code requests here om Programmers)&#xD;&#xA;- the problem solved by the algorithm is not too trivial or specific to the asker, so it has at least a slight potential to be useful for someone else &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO the second point is debatable for the word scrambling question you linked to. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22194" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7817" RevisionGUID="5b9d9a2d-ead5-4012-bd94-c054ec67be24" CreationDate="2015-12-23T15:35:01.177" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/679686654270009344" />
  <row Id="22195" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7751" RevisionGUID="578ab391-6d9a-494f-a269-e5551d42923c" CreationDate="2015-12-26T00:22:08.883" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|polling|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22196" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7816" RevisionGUID="1324199d-0d1c-412c-96ee-300180036e4b" CreationDate="2015-12-26T09:45:19.057" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/680685812766392321" />
  <row Id="22197" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7823" RevisionGUID="a4684b06-6929-457f-aba7-d3b6d75126e4" CreationDate="2015-12-28T00:11:40.930" UserId="1204" Text="I'd like to rebut some of your responses, if I may.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't understand this site because...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me clarify. Software Design and Development means those things that are directly involved with producing software.  I could go into great detail about this, but since it has been discussed exhaustively, I'll give just two examples:  scrum is on-topic; licensing questions, by and large, are not,* and it shouldn't be difficult to see why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your three possible reasons, number two seems to fit the most.  Stack Exchange seems to have forgotten how problematic poll questions, best of questions and Big List questions can be and, because a site now exists that has been able to make them work (albeit with *special rules*), that suddenly these questions are suitable everywhere. They are not.  Moreover, unlike Software Recommendations, this community has no interest in encouraging, cultivating or curating such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't follow this logic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's say you have a bin of 100 marbles, 70 of which are white, 20 of which are gray, and 10 of which are black,  The black marbles are the ones that are not only well-written, on-topic questions but also have answers that are useful to others.  The gray ones are borderline questions that may or may not have useful answers.  The white ones are off-topic, too broad, unclear or primarily opinion-based.  A tiny portion of these, for whatever reason, survive and produce gem answers, but the vast majority produce nothing but a time sink.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now take those numbers, and multiply all of them by 100.  Given the same relative proportion of users, one might assume that the chances of finding something useful should be the same on each site.  But you'd be wrong, for the simple reason that there are 100x more black marbles on the larger site, and those marbles rise to the top of a Google search.  This is why scale matters, and why optimizing for black marbles takes on much greater importance on the smaller site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's probably worth noting here that the rash of shoddy questions constantly appearing on the front page is not at all the same problem as the occasional borderline but popular question getting trapped in the closure net, nor should the two problems be conflated.  Stack Exchange seems more interested in solving the latter problem then they are of understanding the former, and I find that more than a little frustrating.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22198" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7823" RevisionGUID="22508bce-2004-4d7c-a002-ce5d93e03918" CreationDate="2015-12-28T00:17:43.443" UserId="1204" Comment="added 408 characters in body" Text="I'd like to rebut some of your responses, if I may.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't understand this site because...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me clarify. Software Design and Development means those things that are directly involved with producing software.  I could go into great detail about this, but since it has been discussed exhaustively, I'll give just two examples:  scrum is on-topic; licensing questions, by and large, are not,* and it shouldn't be difficult to see why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your three possible reasons, number two seems to fit the most.  Stack Exchange seems to have forgotten how problematic poll questions, best of questions and Big List questions can be and, because a site now exists that has been able to make them work (albeit with *special rules*), that suddenly these questions are suitable everywhere. They are not.  Moreover, unlike Software Recommendations, this community has no interest in encouraging, cultivating or curating such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't follow this logic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's say you have a bin of 100 marbles, 70 of which are white, 20 of which are gray, and 10 of which are black,  The black marbles are the ones that are not only well-written, on-topic questions but also have answers that are useful to others.  The gray ones are borderline questions that may or may not have useful answers.  The white ones are off-topic, too broad, unclear or primarily opinion-based.  A tiny portion of these, for whatever reason, survive and produce gem answers, but the vast majority produce nothing but a time sink.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now take those numbers, and multiply all of them by 100.  Given the same relative proportion of users, one might assume that the chances of finding something useful should be the same on each site.  But you'd be wrong, for the simple reason that there are 100x more black marbles on the larger site, and those marbles rise to the top of a Google search.  This is why scale matters, and why optimizing for black marbles takes on much greater importance on the smaller site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's probably worth noting here that the rash of shoddy questions constantly appearing on the front page is not at all the same problem as the occasional borderline but popular question getting trapped in the closure net, nor should the two problems be conflated.  Stack Exchange seems more interested in solving the latter problem then they are of understanding the former, and I find that more than a little frustrating.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&lt;sub&gt;Yes, I know licensing questions are listed as on-topic in our help center.  They are restricted to a very narrow (and frankly uninteresting) subset of all licensing questions, but ultimately they don't really have much to do with core software development.  The difficulties inherent in these questions are already adequately chronicled on Meta, so I won't repeat those arguments here.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22199" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7823" RevisionGUID="b70d40f0-b39b-4eeb-8461-b536e70771a9" CreationDate="2015-12-28T04:59:42.300" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo corrected" Text="I'd like to rebut some of your responses, if I may.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't understand this site because...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me clarify. Software Design and Development means those things that are directly involved with producing software.  I could go into great detail about this, but since it has been discussed exhaustively, I'll give just two examples:  scrum is on-topic; licensing questions, by and large, are not,* and it shouldn't be difficult to see why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your three possible reasons, number two seems to fit the most.  Stack Exchange seems to have forgotten how problematic poll questions, best of questions and Big List questions can be and, because a site now exists that has been able to make them work (albeit with *special rules*), that suddenly these questions are suitable everywhere. They are not.  Moreover, unlike Software Recommendations, this community has no interest in encouraging, cultivating or curating such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't follow this logic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's say you have a bin of 100 marbles, 70 of which are white, 20 of which are gray, and 10 of which are black,  The black marbles are the ones that are not only well-written, on-topic questions but also have answers that are useful to others.  The gray ones are borderline questions that may or may not have useful answers.  The white ones are off-topic, too broad, unclear or primarily opinion-based.  A tiny portion of these, for whatever reason, survive and produce gem answers, but the vast majority produce nothing but a time sink.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now take those numbers, and multiply all of them by 100.  Given the same relative proportion of users, one might assume that the chances of finding something useful should be the same on each site.  But you'd be wrong, for the simple reason that there are 100x more black marbles on the larger site, and those marbles rise to the top of a Google search.  This is why scale matters, and why optimizing for black marbles takes on much greater importance on the smaller site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's probably worth noting here that the rash of shoddy questions constantly appearing on the front page is not at all the same problem as the occasional borderline but popular question getting trapped in the closure net, nor should the two problems be conflated.  Stack Exchange seems more interested in solving the latter problem than they are of understanding the former, and I find that more than a little frustrating.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&lt;sub&gt;Yes, I know licensing questions are listed as on-topic in our help center.  They are restricted to a very narrow (and frankly uninteresting) subset of all licensing questions, but ultimately they don't really have much to do with core software development.  The difficulties inherent in these questions are already adequately chronicled on Meta, so I won't repeat those arguments here.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22200" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7823" RevisionGUID="3f41da7c-be15-47dd-a250-0393fb0438d2" CreationDate="2015-12-28T10:50:20.360" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 16 characters in body" Text="I'd like to rebut some of your responses, if I may.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't understand this site because...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Design and Development means those things that are directly involved with producing software.  I could go into great detail about this, but since it has been discussed exhaustively, I'll give just two examples:  scrum is on-topic; licensing questions, by and large, are not,* and it shouldn't be difficult to see why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your three possible reasons, number two seems to fit the most.  Stack Exchange seems to have forgotten how problematic poll questions, best of questions and Big List questions can be and, because a site now exists that has been able to make them work (albeit with *special rules*), that suddenly these questions are suitable everywhere. They are not.  Moreover, unlike Software Recommendations, this community has no interest in encouraging, cultivating or curating such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't follow this logic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's say you have a bin of 100 marbles, 70 of which are white, 20 of which are gray, and 10 of which are black,  The black marbles are the ones that are not only well-written, on-topic questions but also have answers that are useful to others.  The gray ones are borderline questions that may or may not have useful answers.  The white ones are off-topic, too broad, unclear or primarily opinion-based.  A tiny portion of these, for whatever reason, survive and produce gem answers, but the vast majority produce nothing but a time sink.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now take those numbers, and multiply all of them by 100.  Given the same relative proportion of users, one might assume that the chances of finding something useful should be the same on each site.  But you'd be wrong, for the simple reason that there are 100x more black marbles on the larger site, and those marbles rise to the top of a Google search.  This is why scale matters, and why optimizing for black marbles takes on much greater importance on the smaller site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's probably worth noting here that the rash of shoddy questions constantly appearing on the front page is not at all the same problem as the occasional borderline but popular question getting trapped in the closure net, nor should the two problems be conflated.  Stack Exchange seems more interested in solving the latter problem than they are of understanding the former, and I find that more than a little frustrating.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&lt;sub&gt;Yes, I know licensing questions are listed as on-topic in our help center.  They are restricted to a very narrow (and frankly uninteresting) subset of all licensing questions, but ultimately they don't really have much to do with core software development.  The difficulties inherent in these questions are already adequately chronicled on Meta, so I won't repeat those arguments here.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22201" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7823" RevisionGUID="bee81480-08b6-44bb-b5c6-2be59704f437" CreationDate="2015-12-28T19:33:53.547" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="I'd like to rebut some of your responses, if I may.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't understand this site because...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Design and Development means those things that are directly involved with producing software.  I could go into great detail about this, but since it has been discussed exhaustively, I'll give just two examples:  scrum is on-topic; licensing questions, by and large, are not,* and it shouldn't be difficult to see why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your three possible reasons, number two seems to fit the most.  Stack Exchange seems to have forgotten how problematic poll questions, &quot;best of&quot; questions and Big List questions can be and, because a site now exists that has been able to make them work (albeit with *special rules*), that suddenly these questions are suitable everywhere. They are not.  Moreover, unlike Software Recommendations, this community has no interest in encouraging, cultivating or curating such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't follow this logic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's say you have a bin of 100 marbles, 70 of which are white, 20 of which are gray, and 10 of which are black,  The black marbles are the ones that are not only well-written, on-topic questions but also have answers that are useful to others.  The gray ones are borderline questions that may or may not have useful answers.  The white ones are off-topic, too broad, unclear or primarily opinion-based.  A tiny portion of these, for whatever reason, survive and produce gem answers, but the vast majority produce nothing but a time sink.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now take those numbers, and multiply all of them by 100.  Given the same relative proportion of users, one might assume that the chances of finding something useful should be the same on each site.  But you'd be wrong, for the simple reason that there are 100x more black marbles on the larger site, and those marbles rise to the top of a Google search.  This is why scale matters, and why optimizing for black marbles takes on much greater importance on the smaller site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's probably worth noting here that the rash of shoddy questions constantly appearing on the front page is not at all the same problem as the occasional borderline but popular question getting trapped in the closure net, nor should the two problems be conflated.  Stack Exchange seems more interested in solving the latter problem than they are of understanding the former, and I find that more than a little frustrating.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&lt;sub&gt;Yes, I know licensing questions are listed as on-topic in our help center.  They are restricted to a very narrow (and frankly uninteresting) subset of all licensing questions, but ultimately they don't really have much to do with core software development.  The difficulties inherent in these questions are already adequately chronicled on Meta, so I won't repeat those arguments here.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22202" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7824" RevisionGUID="38581859-3310-4483-a0f3-2c0e3f0a6d24" CreationDate="2015-12-29T13:03:31.010" UserId="209144" Text="I wrote a quite long, specific question about my experiences about programming, is it acceptable here? I'm searching for the appropriate forum for a long time now. Is there any of them fitting my text linked below?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[link to my question][1] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://people.inf.elte.hu/dafqaai/question/index.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22203" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7824" RevisionGUID="38581859-3310-4483-a0f3-2c0e3f0a6d24" CreationDate="2015-12-29T13:03:31.010" UserId="209144" Text="Asking about the programming insdustry, and does it fit my personality is acceptable?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22204" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7824" RevisionGUID="38581859-3310-4483-a0f3-2c0e3f0a6d24" CreationDate="2015-12-29T13:03:31.010" UserId="209144" Text="|support|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22205" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7825" RevisionGUID="f29c63ab-26b8-4d48-ae4c-439d3f042912" CreationDate="2015-12-29T13:17:14.853" UserId="4" Text="No - career advice is not on-topic here and it will get closed. This kind of question is very unique to you and not generally helpful to the broader community of software developers. I'm not sure how active it is now, but perhaps you could jump into the [Programmers chat room, The Whiteboard][1]. It's usually active during the weekdays in the US, but it is a holiday week this week.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22206" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7824" RevisionGUID="711bf757-a66c-42f2-8ab0-610d14e751a6" CreationDate="2015-12-30T09:20:15.403" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="Asking about the programming industry, and does it fit my personality is acceptable?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22207" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7826" RevisionGUID="66f5730b-7a79-4688-a599-0f921bd620a4" CreationDate="2015-12-30T09:49:03.967" UserId="31260" Text="&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;**deletion explanation:** to let 10K users review, edit if needed and decide whether it's worth publishing&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;(special edition for folks coming from Math.SE, [reposted from math meta](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/21680/hint-programmers-se-doesnt-do-coding-help-and-expect-research-before-asking &quot;10K link&quot;))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Hint: Programmers.SE doesn't do coding help and expect research before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Last months we at Programmers are getting rather steady stream of troublesome questions from folks with linked accounts at Math.SE. One of them was kind enough to [explain why they get there](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7610/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another user, familiar with many other sites, even figured what could lead to such a [misconception](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi#comment22868_7610):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;This &quot;exchange&quot; is the undergraduate while &quot;overflow&quot; is the graduate level may because of the idea for Math vs MathOverflow and Physics vs PhysicsOverflow (not SE related) leaking into other domains. While I don't believe that that naming distinction needs to be fixed (nor can we do anything about it), being able to more promptly close (and delete) the debugging and blatantly off topic questions with a minimum of additional community moderation needed.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is sad to observe how many of them have fallen victims of this misunderstanding, getting their questions heavily voted down, closed and deleted. This includes even established users having over 1K rep at Math.SE ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/299572/given-a-integer-n-compute-nth-non-repeating-number &quot;10K link - user with 1.4K rep at Math asks very low quality question at Progs&quot;), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/304765/31260 &quot;10K link - 1K Math rep user asks outright off-topic at Progs&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things many Math.SE folks seem to miss when they try their luck at Programmers.SE are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **coding and debugging help is off-topic** at Programmers&#xD;&#xA;* it is generally expected of askers to **demonstrate research** they did before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading for those interested to learn more about Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is research important?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6559/31260)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overview of CS and programming related sites at SE network:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22208" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="7826" RevisionGUID="e839670d-efc1-4fcf-9484-3f84114ebd40" CreationDate="2015-12-30T09:49:07.960" UserId="31260" Comment="via Vote" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="22209" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7826" RevisionGUID="1fc5932e-7e91-4b9f-8347-d531d22f3424" CreationDate="2015-12-30T10:00:22.643" UserId="31260" Comment="edit += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/7826/edit" Text="&lt;sup&gt;**deletion explanation:** to let 10K users review, [edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/7826/edit) if needed and decide whether it's worth publishing&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;(special edition for folks coming from Math.SE, [reposted from math meta](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/21680/hint-programmers-se-doesnt-do-coding-help-and-expect-research-before-asking &quot;10K link&quot;))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Hint: Programmers.SE doesn't do coding help and expect research before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Last months we at Programmers are getting rather steady stream of troublesome questions from folks with linked accounts at Math.SE. One of them was kind enough to [explain why they get there](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7610/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another user, familiar with many other sites, even figured what could lead to such a [misconception](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi#comment22868_7610):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;This &quot;exchange&quot; is the undergraduate while &quot;overflow&quot; is the graduate level may because of the idea for Math vs MathOverflow and Physics vs PhysicsOverflow (not SE related) leaking into other domains. While I don't believe that that naming distinction needs to be fixed (nor can we do anything about it), being able to more promptly close (and delete) the debugging and blatantly off topic questions with a minimum of additional community moderation needed.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is sad to observe how many of them have fallen victims of this misunderstanding, getting their questions heavily voted down, closed and deleted. This includes even established users having over 1K rep at Math.SE ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/299572/given-a-integer-n-compute-nth-non-repeating-number &quot;10K link - user with 1.4K rep at Math asks very low quality question at Progs&quot;), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/304765/31260 &quot;10K link - 1K Math rep user asks outright off-topic at Progs&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things many Math.SE folks seem to miss when they try their luck at Programmers.SE are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **coding and debugging help is off-topic** at Programmers&#xD;&#xA;* it is generally expected of askers to **demonstrate research** they did before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading for those interested to learn more about Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is research important?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6559/31260)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overview of CS and programming related sites at SE network:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22210" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7824" RevisionGUID="a40149c8-e244-46d8-a568-aeee07e9aedf" CreationDate="2015-12-30T10:08:39.120" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|specific-question|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22211" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7827" RevisionGUID="f7a64fba-5ecf-454f-9702-22ebaa37a407" CreationDate="2015-12-31T16:16:09.210" UserId="192625" Text="Not every question on certification exams are about answers to sample questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I googled &quot;certification exams&quot; on StackOverflow and was ultimately led to meta.programmers.Stackex where it seems a good number of certification exams- related questions were in fact moved. If these sites are simply for questions that generate a whole lot of content, then maybe that ought to be included in the bylaws somewhere. By knowing that, I would know to maybe test my question on some other none StackOverflow-related forum, before making my decision on whether it does or does not generate enough content for StackOverflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22212" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7826" RevisionGUID="373096c1-a8fc-4a5a-827a-e6c57b93abca" CreationDate="2016-01-02T09:48:11.327" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="&lt;sup&gt;**deletion explanation:** to let 10K users review, [edit](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/7826/edit) if needed and decide whether it's worth publishing&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;(_special edition_ for folks coming from Math.SE, [reposted from math meta](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/21680/hint-programmers-se-doesnt-do-coding-help-and-expect-research-before-asking &quot;10K link&quot;))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Hint: Programmers.SE doesn't do coding help and expect research before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Last months we at Programmers are getting rather steady stream of troublesome questions from folks with linked accounts at Math.SE. One of them was kind enough to [explain why they get there](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7610/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another user, familiar with many other sites, even figured what could lead to such a [misconception](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi#comment22868_7610):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;This &quot;exchange&quot; is the undergraduate while &quot;overflow&quot; is the graduate level may because of the idea for Math vs MathOverflow and Physics vs PhysicsOverflow (not SE related) leaking into other domains. While I don't believe that that naming distinction needs to be fixed (nor can we do anything about it), being able to more promptly close (and delete) the debugging and blatantly off topic questions with a minimum of additional community moderation needed.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is sad to observe how many of them have fallen victims of this misunderstanding, getting their questions heavily voted down, closed and deleted. This includes even established users having over 1K rep at Math.SE ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/299572/given-a-integer-n-compute-nth-non-repeating-number &quot;10K link - user with 1.4K rep at Math asks very low quality question at Progs&quot;), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/304765/31260 &quot;10K link - 1K Math rep user asks outright off-topic at Progs&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things many Math.SE folks seem to miss when they try their luck at Programmers.SE are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **coding and debugging help is off-topic** at Programmers&#xD;&#xA;* it is generally expected of askers to **demonstrate research** they did before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading for those interested to learn more about Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is research important?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6559/31260)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overview of CS and programming related sites at SE network:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22213" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6443" RevisionGUID="58942295-7d39-4f17-bf30-883e3d5b27f6" CreationDate="2016-01-02T09:53:27.397" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="Questions about certifications have a number of issues facing them.  It *is* possible to ask a good question about certifications, but there are quite a few questions that don't generate good content for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Timeliness&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One certification question I recall seeing was one about what certification for Java 1.5 replaced one that was out there for Java 1.4.  As of this writing Java 1.7 is the target and 1.8 is just around the corner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the [wild, weird, fast changing variety of tools and technologies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_engineering_topics &quot;see eg Outline of software engineering at Wikipedia&quot;), the companies offering the certificates, the prerequisites to the certificates, and the certificates themselves are constantly being changed.  Something that is valid today may be completely gone with the next release of the software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This leads to a nearly endless stream of &quot;what certificate replaces ${previous certificate}?&quot; questions with constantly changing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Spam&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the companies that do certificates do so for the money (not all, just most).      Likewise, there are countless companies that offer training and materials for the certificates.  When someone asks [How do you study for MCPD?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/108875/how-do-you-study-for-mcpd) it attracts spam from people advertising their own materials - be it a website with advertisements peppering the page or &quot;buy this book for ${lots}&quot;. Those with [10k rep](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;allowing to view deleted posts&quot;), you can see exactly that in the linked question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;kbd&gt;![https://i.stack.imgur.com/XlouH.png][1]&lt;/kbd&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Value&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Outside from a *few* big name certifications the general consensus of the community is they're worthless (see [Are certifications worth it?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44/are-certifications-worth-it)).  To this extent, one could argue that by not helping you get a certification, you are being helped... in some sort of twisted logic.  The essence is still there though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career / Education Advice&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the questions are also of the &quot;what do I need to learn or study for ${cert}&quot; or &quot;what certification will help me get my next job?&quot;.  These questions are exactly the type of question that the career and education advice close reason means to cover.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this is that besides the &quot;certificates are not helpful&quot; belief, the one that may help you is very particular to your own situation that doesn't translate well to other people. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Googlable results&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is left tends to be things of the nature that are trivially googlable.  A recent question: [Is it necessary to pass the MTA certification to get MCSD?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/227937/is-it-necessary-to-pass-the-mta-certification-to-get-mcsd) when searching [google](https://www.google.com/#q=MTA%20a%20required%20prerequisite%20for%20MCSA%20or%20MCSD &quot;search phrase 'MTA a required prerequisite for MCSA or MCSD'&quot;) gives the top result the material that is in the answer - from Microsoft.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;kbd&gt;![google results][2]&lt;/kbd&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many questions are similar to this, asking about current requirements for a certification or information about it.  The information provided through Google that links to the current information on the certificate site will be more up to date than a question on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless someone familiar with the question stumbles across it (they likely won't be searching for it) and provides a new answer to the question with the up to date information, these questions rapidly become wrong and useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/XlouH.png &quot;screen shot for those having less than 10k rep&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pQE7H.png &quot;google results&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22214" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7826" RevisionGUID="3966d8e3-69ec-43c1-a6cd-0c69baddab39" CreationDate="2016-01-03T15:50:53.183" UserId="31260" Comment="polishing prior to undeletion" Text="&lt;sup&gt;(_special edition_ for folks coming from Math.SE, reposted from [Math meta](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/21680/hint-programmers-se-doesnt-do-coding-help-and-expect-research-before-asking &quot;10K link&quot;))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Hint: Programmers.SE doesn't do coding help and expect research before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Last months we at Programmers are getting rather steady stream of troublesome questions from folks with linked accounts at Math.SE. One of them was kind enough to [explain why they get there](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7610/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another user, familiar with many other sites, even figured what could lead to such a [misconception](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi#comment22868_7610):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;This &quot;exchange&quot; is the undergraduate while &quot;overflow&quot; is the graduate level may because of the idea for Math vs MathOverflow and Physics vs PhysicsOverflow (not SE related) leaking into other domains. While I don't believe that that naming distinction needs to be fixed (nor can we do anything about it), being able to more promptly close (and delete) the debugging and blatantly off topic questions with a minimum of additional community moderation needed.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is sad to observe how many of them have fallen victims of this misunderstanding, getting their questions heavily voted down, closed and deleted. This includes even established users having over 1K rep at Math.SE ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/299572/given-a-integer-n-compute-nth-non-repeating-number &quot;10K link - user with 1.4K rep at Math asks very low quality question at Progs&quot;), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/304765/31260 &quot;10K link - 1K Math rep user asks outright off-topic at Progs&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things many Math.SE folks seem to miss when they try their luck at Programmers.SE are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **coding and debugging help is off-topic** at Programmers&#xD;&#xA;* it is generally expected of askers to **demonstrate research** they did before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading for those interested to learn more about Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is research important?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6559/31260)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overview of CS and programming related sites at SE network:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22215" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="7826" RevisionGUID="321e7dbe-5986-4643-a46a-0083c1e66565" CreationDate="2016-01-03T15:50:57.240" UserId="31260" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="22216" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="bf2b5e3e-f782-4e30-998a-a82df4a12294" CreationDate="2016-01-03T15:52:34.293" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo corrected" Text="## What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Programmers.SE would be a good question on Stack Overflow.  This isn't to say that if it is on topic on Stack Overflow then it is on topic here.  Rather that it's not too broad, not opinion, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Programmers.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggesting to someone to repost a question that is too broad or primary opinion would get it closed on Programmers.SE too and that's really something we'd rather avoid.  It is no fun to get a question bounced from one site to another and being told repeatedly we don't want it here.  If it needs to be fixed, it needs to be fixed before it is reposted or telling the OP *exactly* what needs to be fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Some commonly referred *poor* questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, we *don't* want these, though it seems like people keep suggesting them to be reposted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I don't understand...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). [There is an expectation](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773) that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here's my problem. Anyone have a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of commonly (incorrectly) referred questions are those of &quot;come up with a design or solution for me.&quot;  Similar to how Stack Overflow has issues with people doing problem statement questions (&quot;write a program that takes the average of three values&quot;), Programmers.SE has similar issues with similar questions (&quot;here is what I want the outcome to be, anyone have a solution?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Stack Overflow nor Programmers.SE is a code/solution writing service. Just because the question lacks code but has a problem statement doesn't mean it belongs here as is. The question needs to be fixed up significantly before it is reposted on the proper site and suggesting to do so with the question in its current state does a disservice to the person asking the question. For a more detailed outline of what is generally expected at Programmers, see http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A blog I read said...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our custom off topic reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What tool, library, language, project, resource to take up or use](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* [What career to take or what to study](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;* [Assistance in writing or debugging code](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7742/40980)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programming related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* software requirements&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I'll point out a caveat with that &quot;software licensing&quot; thing.  It's about how to license *your* software and try to stay in proper compliance when pulling a MIT licensed library into a GPL project.  It is *not* about the &quot;can I let a friend use IntelliJ personal license if I'm not using it?&quot;, &quot;can I use facebook's API to do something legally?&quot; and the interpretation of other third party licenses.  If the word 'legal' shows up in that question at all, it will likely get closed as legal advice (that's in the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) too - under &quot;and it's not about&quot;) Further reading: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about software design concepts.  Remember that algorithm questions are on topic on Stack Overflow (so you don't need to migrate those).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the Perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the Delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Programmers.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Programmers.SE was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with [&quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260 &quot;we even had to introduce a chat bot for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow&quot;) and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) it's problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - it's exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so comments a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, it's like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if it's a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22218" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7828" RevisionGUID="29f8e7c3-49a0-44a6-ab79-0fccef06b321" CreationDate="2016-01-04T09:27:45.580" UserId="31260" Text="Related: [Tags that only exist on locked questions, should we treat these the same as tags that don't exist at all?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/259740/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; philosophically Historical Lock questions are **deleted**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Visual difference between historically locked and legitimate questions looks quite subtle to me, even though I have few years experience on the site. It can be even harder for inexperienced readers to tell the difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that historical lock is applied mostly to (inappropriate) questions having large amount of views and ranked highly in web search engines, this creates wide open broken windows. Inexperienced site visitors coming from web searches at h/l questions think that these are legitimate and try to ask similar ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to help newcomers see the difference, suggest to use pink background when rendering historically locked posts - same that is currently used to render deleted posts displayed to 10K users." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22219" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7828" RevisionGUID="29f8e7c3-49a0-44a6-ab79-0fccef06b321" CreationDate="2016-01-04T09:27:45.580" UserId="31260" Text="Use pink background when rendering historically locked posts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22220" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7828" RevisionGUID="29f8e7c3-49a0-44a6-ab79-0fccef06b321" CreationDate="2016-01-04T09:27:45.580" UserId="31260" Text="|feature-request|design|locked-question|quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22221" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7828" RevisionGUID="0782bc63-12ca-4f6e-921c-973cd1018a94" CreationDate="2016-01-04T10:19:44.817" UserId="31260" Comment="having large amount of views += http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A20000 &quot;currently, search shows 132 locked questions having 20K views or more&quot;" Text="Related: [Tags that only exist on locked questions, should we treat these the same as tags that don't exist at all?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/259740/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; philosophically Historical Lock questions are **deleted**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Visual difference between historically locked and legitimate questions looks quite subtle to me, even though I have few years experience on the site. It can be even harder for inexperienced readers to tell the difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that historical lock is applied mostly to (inappropriate) questions [having large amount of views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A20000 &quot;currently, search shows 132 locked questions having 20K views or more&quot;) and ranked highly in web search engines, this creates wide open broken windows. Inexperienced site visitors coming from web searches at h/l questions think that these are legitimate and try to ask similar ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to help newcomers see the difference, suggest to use pink background when rendering historically locked posts - same that is currently used to render deleted posts displayed to 10K users." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22222" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7829" RevisionGUID="a7cff874-b2fd-4bcf-8cef-eb30d9860ef3" CreationDate="2016-01-05T14:30:29.440" UserId="198652" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/306557/critical-embedded-software-for-nuclear-reactors/306562#306562&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't career or educational advice. I just wanted to ask a qestion that I think is very interesting, and then it went on hold. Why?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22223" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7829" RevisionGUID="a7cff874-b2fd-4bcf-8cef-eb30d9860ef3" CreationDate="2016-01-05T14:30:29.440" UserId="198652" Text="Why is question about critical embedded software for nuclear reactors on hold?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22224" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7829" RevisionGUID="a7cff874-b2fd-4bcf-8cef-eb30d9860ef3" CreationDate="2016-01-05T14:30:29.440" UserId="198652" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22225" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7830" RevisionGUID="fbc5047c-d4c7-4b1d-9ff7-978917fe017a" CreationDate="2016-01-05T14:45:36.747" UserId="4" Text="It's not career or education advice, but it is too broad. Learning about developing software in life-critical applications is something that some people make a career out of. There are a number of practices, standards, processes, methods, and tools that people working in this environment would use. These would also vary by country and organization. These generic questions aren't really a good fit for the Stack Exchange format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you'd like, I can change the close reason so it better reflects why the question isn't a good fit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22226" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7829" RevisionGUID="9ab45b84-0a66-476b-b456-a77d3d84d138" CreationDate="2016-01-05T23:55:17.093" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Fixed link to point to the question, not one of its answers, since this meta question is about the question itself." Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/306557&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't career or educational advice. I just wanted to ask a qestion that I think is very interesting, and then it went on hold. Why?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22227" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7831" RevisionGUID="7f924ace-1047-43ab-b2b6-5c8b02aff35b" CreationDate="2016-01-06T00:01:08.260" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="A better solution would be to change the lock notification to be between the subject line and the question body, similar to where the duplicate box shows up. Since that location is already used, it too should be relatively easy to implement." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22228" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7829" RevisionGUID="64649be4-ec21-413e-88d0-afda8be49a48" CreationDate="2016-01-07T15:54:32.887" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|specific-question|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22229" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7832" RevisionGUID="c4e90cbb-1e03-462c-856e-6077254d47a1" CreationDate="2016-01-07T16:11:21.443" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="&gt; well, can it be reopened, because I think that there can be great answers? Now it's not off-topic. What do I need to do to be less to-broad, but still on topic? --[Josip Ivic](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7829/why-is-question-about-critical-embedded-software-for-nuclear-reactors-on-hold#comment23756_7830)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to make it so that the question isn't a poll. There is no one answer to this. Siemens may have written code in C, and then C++, and looked at using Java but stuck with C++.  The Navy may have mandated that Bechtel used Ada while Westinghouse write it in assembly for a custom microprocessor for which Ada wasn't an option, and who knows about Combustion Engineering or General Election which *also* made reactors for the US Navy (and that is just one navy - there are other nuclear powered naval vessels run by other countries).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The certification requirements for a civilian reactor in one country may differ from that in another and those may either mandate specific languages, or it is the case that specific languages make it easier to meet the requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This goes to the core of the 'too broad' - there are too many possible answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tangential part to all of this is that unless someone has specific in house knowledge (and that is not restricted by an NDA or other security clearance aspect), you won't get an answer beyond what is specified in the various certification requirements (which you can find with google). Your best course of action is to do the leg work and find out who makes the various reactors and ask their public spokesperson for information - that will get you a better answer than anyone here can give you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22230" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7742" RevisionGUID="fdaaf3cf-f602-456b-bdd8-818cfcc802c0" CreationDate="2016-01-08T00:11:18.227" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 362 characters in body" Text="# Off topic #&#xD;&#xA;### Assistance in writing or debugging existing code ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in writing or debugging existing code** are off-topic on Programmers. These questions can be asked on Stack Overflow if they include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. See [How To Create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for debugging help or “how do I write this specific code” type questions are off topic on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions have a site that is completely focused on them – Stack Overflow. Trying to answer them here reduces the usefulness of Stack Overflow (now you have to search two sites for the same information), and makes it harder to find the software architecture and design questions that Programmers.SE focuses on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are having trouble posting a question on Stack Overflow, and have come to Programmers.SE as a way to get around that, look ***very*** closely at the quality of the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Make sure the words are all spelled correctly, and punctuation is properly used (see [Spell Check plus.com](http://spellcheckplus.com) as one of many online grammar checkers).&#xD;&#xA; * Make sure that the code is formatted correctly (see [Markdown help](http://stackoverflow.com/editing-help) if you are having trouble with this).&#xD;&#xA; * Make sure that the *title* of the question is a good title that describes the actual problem: “Why can't I use `==` to compare strings” is a better title than “Help, I have a question about compilers”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is reluctant to migrate questions to Stack Overflow that would result in the question being closed there too.  The reasons on SO are covered in [What topics can I ask about here?](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) in the SO help center.  In particular, a “why isn't this code working” question about debugging existing code needs to throughly and completely describe the problem – nobody can *guess* what you're trying to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Programmers.SE nor Stack Overflow is a code writing service. Questions asking someone to write code from scratch (or from some requirements provided) will be closed on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are blocked from asking questions on Stack Overflow, please do not ask them here in an attempt to get around the block.  Both Programmers.SE and Stack Overflow have automatic question bans in place.  Asking off topic questions here will get them closed. Even if it's a good question that might be migrated to Stack Overflow because it wouldn't get closed – the system prevents us from migrating those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: `[Why was my question closed as off topic – assistance in writing or debugging existing code?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7742)`" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22242" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7833" RevisionGUID="96a25571-fe03-466c-91f8-249970d6806e" CreationDate="2016-01-09T14:14:49.667" UserId="161917" Text="[Can Software Engineers become certified Professional Engineers (PE)?](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39541/can-software-engineers-become-certified-professional-engineers-pe)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was closed by the community as off-topic career advice back in June 2014. It has not received any edits aside from retagging, but now it's suddenly one vote away from being reopened and one vote away from being deleted at the same time. To me, that screams &quot;we need to sit down and talk about this.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I assume the motivation for the delete votes is the obvious one: Most certification questions are not valuable content for the same reasons as other career advice questions, and leaving them around creates broken windows.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the motivation for the reopen votes comes from what Thomas Owens said in chat the other day. [Here's the full conversation](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/certification-cleanup). Here are the relevant sound bytes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm not sure if the [Professional Engineers] one can even be justified&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as being closed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The problem with many of the certification questions was that they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; were either primarily opinion based (should I get certification X?) or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; time-sensitive (about a particular test that changes).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I suppose they could decide to stop offering [the certification]. But&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that doesn't happen often.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; And it probably won't, since in Texas and Florida, you need to pass&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that exam to call yourself an engineer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since I know absolutely nothing about ceritifications of any type, aside from the folk wisdom that they seem to be a waste of time for most software developers, I am unable to meaningfully agree or disagree with this argument, so I haven't voted on the question either way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does everyone else think?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22243" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7833" RevisionGUID="96a25571-fe03-466c-91f8-249970d6806e" CreationDate="2016-01-09T14:14:49.667" UserId="161917" Text="The &quot;Professional Engineers&quot; question has 2/3 reopen votes AND 3/4 delete votes; what's going on here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22244" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7833" RevisionGUID="96a25571-fe03-466c-91f8-249970d6806e" CreationDate="2016-01-09T14:14:49.667" UserId="161917" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22245" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7834" RevisionGUID="3b50180d-a58b-47fd-b1cc-3a3fc80f7608" CreationDate="2016-01-09T15:21:28.587" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Yes, other sites have them and have fun with them. Programmers.SE community tends to have a bit of drama around these questions with them getting a bunch of answers, closed and reopened at least once, and some lingering delete votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why is this and why are these questions so contentious?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22246" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7834" RevisionGUID="3b50180d-a58b-47fd-b1cc-3a3fc80f7608" CreationDate="2016-01-09T15:21:28.587" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Clickbait titles and what to do with them" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22247" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7834" RevisionGUID="3b50180d-a58b-47fd-b1cc-3a3fc80f7608" CreationDate="2016-01-09T15:21:28.587" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|specific-question|fun|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22248" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7835" RevisionGUID="55c1dfb6-eabf-40ec-a201-221f4abf71a4" CreationDate="2016-01-09T15:21:28.587" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Metaphors work poorly for design questions. Asking about aliens when you are *really* asking about the size of unicode, or asking about unicorns and horses when you are really asking about a property on the base type that some elements of the collection may have and others not... these nice stories confuse the core question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- no, I am *not* going to link those questions here - if people want to they can look up those crap questions on their own --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whats more, when people try to write too much in the metaphor, they obscure the actual question they are really trying to find out more about and start getting people speculating about alien languages (could be a fun world building question - has nothing to do with programming) or the nature of a unicorn (is it a horse? is the base type MyLittlePony?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so, we get poor answers to questions because the real question is hidden in metaphor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We get poor questions because as the question isn't tacked down with any rigidity, it morphs adding little bits of the story to disqualify certain answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And we get crap that isn't searchable and isn't useful to other people.  No one is going to think to search for aliens on Programmers.SE if they are interested on the size of the unicode space.  No one is going to search for unicorns when trying to deal with polymorphic objects in a functional manner.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And even assuming that someone *does* find these questions, the question and answers are too wrapped up in metaphor for them to be able to generalize the solution or apply it to their problem and will have to ask it again (hopefully this time with programming terms).  And even if question *is* essentially a duplicate of the other question no one should reasonably cast a duplicate vote for &quot;What is the size of the largest unallocated unicode block?&quot; to &quot;Can unicode support an alien language with millions of glyphs?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The clickbait titles are a knowledge black hole. Some have dismayed that [knowledge is locked up in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/25549359#25549359) because it is hard to search for. However, I contend that it is *easier* to find knowledge in chat and reference it again than it is to find a useful pattern or other information that can be applied to an answer in another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The clickbait questions themselves are very draining on community moderation and curating of the material.  On a site with as little community moderation and curation as we experience here, having a new user post another (poor) answer to the question... from my personal preference I would probably down vote, shake my head and walk away. I don't want to have anything to do with those questions or their answers - they have already taken up too much of my time as I write this. I do not have the energy to explain to another user why this is not a good question and why other poor answers have gotten up votes that they are expecting too.  Unfortunately, as I write this, it is rare for other people to try themselves, and even rarer for the advocates of having the question be there and open to help in explaining how to write a good answer to the question to other users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, in my opinion, clickbait questions should be closed promptly until the user can format the question in such a way that it doesn't depend on metaphor and allegory to ask a sensible programming question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22249" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7835" RevisionGUID="5b07c27d-938f-45e3-8e42-4f6ce74bc57b" CreationDate="2016-01-09T20:15:23.517" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo corrected" Text="Metaphors work poorly for design questions. Asking about aliens when you are *really* asking about the size of Unicode, or asking about unicorns and horses when you are really asking about a property on the base type that some elements of the collection may have and others not... these nice stories confuse the core question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- no, I am *not* going to link those questions here - if people want to they can look up those crap questions on their own --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's more, when people try to write too much in the metaphor, they obscure the actual question they are really trying to find out more about and start getting people speculating about alien languages (could be a fun world building question - has nothing to do with programming) or the nature of a unicorn (is it a horse? is the base type MyLittlePony?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so, we get poor answers to questions because the real question is hidden in metaphor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We get poor questions because as the question isn't tacked down with any rigidity, it morphs adding little bits of the story to disqualify certain answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And we get crap that isn't searchable and isn't useful to other people.  No one is going to think to search for aliens on Programmers.SE if they are interested on the size of the Unicode space.  No one is going to search for unicorns when trying to deal with polymorphic objects in a functional manner.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And even assuming that someone *does* find these questions, the question and answers are too wrapped up in metaphor for them to be able to generalize the solution or apply it to their problem and will have to ask it again (hopefully this time with programming terms).  And even if question *is* essentially a duplicate of the other question no one should reasonably cast a duplicate vote for &quot;What is the size of the largest unallocated unicode block?&quot; to &quot;Can unicode support an alien language with millions of glyphs?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The clickbait titles are a knowledge black hole. Some have dismayed that [knowledge is locked up in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/25549359#25549359) because it is hard to search for. However, I contend that it is *easier* to find knowledge in chat and reference it again than it is to find a useful pattern or other information that can be applied to an answer in another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The clickbait questions themselves are very draining on community moderation and curating of the material.  On a site with as little community moderation and curation as we experience here, having a new user post another (poor) answer to the question... from my personal preference I would probably down vote, shake my head and walk away. I don't want to have anything to do with those questions or their answers - they have already taken up too much of my time as I write this. I do not have the energy to explain to another user why this is not a good question and why other poor answers have gotten up votes that they are expecting too.  Unfortunately, as I write this, it is rare for other people to try themselves, and even rarer for the advocates of having the question be there and open to help in explaining how to write a good answer to the question to other users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, in my opinion, clickbait questions should be closed promptly until the user can format the question in such a way that it doesn't depend on metaphor and allegory to ask a sensible programming question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22250" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7834" RevisionGUID="a4d77da4-f6b0-4846-8bbd-a5206eb43c83" CreationDate="2016-01-10T02:40:00.113" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Change the title to mention the posts also." Text="Clickbait titles, their metaphor posts and what to do with them" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22251" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7836" RevisionGUID="3d6235ab-20f6-44c9-b31f-ebd1e00f80a9" CreationDate="2016-01-10T18:10:56.420" UserId="9302" Text="Let's say I want to draw a picture of an alien and I'm given only two &quot;colors&quot;: black and white. I could probably do an okay job of it. Black and white are enough to clearly delimit boundaries and shape. With a little creative shading, I can show how light falls on the alien. The simplicity of black and white is attractive. I'd be particularly successful if the alien was somehow familiar. If the alien looked like, say, an otter, the viewer could look at my drawing, access what they know about otters, and draw sensible conclusions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what if the alien isn't at all familiar? Since we're talking about aliens, it might be there are no clear-cut boundaries. The alien may have fewer reference points, like an abstract painting. In that case, adding the rest of the colors from my palette might be useful. Additional color adds higher-order meaning. They call all of the machinery in our eyes into service. Even if our eyes can't see something natively, the creative use of color sometimes makes things understandable. Take the [Crab Nebula][1]. Much of what we see in pictures isn't truly visible to the naked eye, but with a little color shifting it leaps vividly into our imagination.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, there are some downsides to using color. Object recognition algorithms tend to ignore color in favor of saturation/brightness. (Computers aren't good with &quot;color&quot; in my metaphor.) Some people don't experience all of the colors. Even if they do, [phenomenology][2] argues that it's possible different people have entirely different subjective color experiences so there's no objective &quot;truth&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even with the meager strikes against it, a fully colored picture is no *less* effective than black and white. A red/green colorblind person gracefully falls back to black and white where appropriate. An algorithm simply ignores what it doesn't need. If phenomenology is correct, black and white pictures are equally doomed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Related: [Bulletpoints EVERYWHERE][3] (Community pressure to edit to a creative norm.)]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=crab%20nebula&amp;source=lnms&amp;tbm=isch&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjl7rLU3p_KAhWMkh4KHdD5BX8Q_AUIBygB&amp;biw=1409&amp;bih=778&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/307540/7625" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22252" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="7837" RevisionGUID="de328cfd-e181-4ed2-b3c5-0e8cc059bfaa" CreationDate="2016-01-11T11:26:58.193" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/307075/is-programmers-blogoverflow-com-closed" />
  <row Id="22253" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7837" RevisionGUID="41aa259c-a1c9-4333-939e-a2f51b0f0ff3" CreationDate="2016-01-11T11:13:08.037" UserId="210607" Text="The last blog was 8/11/2013 and http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/about/ links to a blog chat room that has been frozen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am interested in contributing to a programming blog, the first article would be about a visual studio extension that I have just finished.  I would be describing aspects of Visual Studio extensibility including Roslyn in the context of my extension." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22254" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7837" RevisionGUID="41aa259c-a1c9-4333-939e-a2f51b0f0ff3" CreationDate="2016-01-11T11:13:08.037" UserId="210607" Text="Is programmers.blogoverflow.com closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22255" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7837" RevisionGUID="41aa259c-a1c9-4333-939e-a2f51b0f0ff3" CreationDate="2016-01-11T11:13:08.037" UserId="210607" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22256" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7834" RevisionGUID="4a240aae-dbe3-4aee-bac7-744bf6a1dfb4" CreationDate="2016-01-11T16:54:17.003" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/686591971352276992" />
  <row Id="22257" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7838" RevisionGUID="9d2e83da-0017-4940-bca8-d4934fb18801" CreationDate="2016-01-11T18:04:45.433" UserId="9302" Text="Let's handle this case-by-case using existing tools versus establishing another informal meta-rule. Things I've considered:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Deciding what's clickbait or not is a subjective call best handled case-by-case.&#xD;&#xA;- Deciding which metaphors are productive or not is subjective.&#xD;&#xA;- This meta-rule would be easily misinterpreted as a &quot;no metaphors&quot; rule.&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;No metaphors&quot; then spreads to answers.&#xD;&#xA;- Metaphor is an incredible tool.&#xD;&#xA;- Some ideas can only be expressed through metaphor.&#xD;&#xA;- Metaphor offers unique insights into new and difficult ideas.&#xD;&#xA;- The assertion that there's plenty of room for creativity without metaphor is kind of strange. Creative acts in communication can only be a few things: unusual word choice, unusual structure, abstraction (simile, metaphor, allegory, puns, humor...)&#xD;&#xA;- If our criteria for strong content is &quot;easily indexed by machines&quot;, we're going to end up sounding like machines.&#xD;&#xA;- If metaphor is out-of-bounds, this suggests other abstractions and unusual word choice are candidates for elimination.&#xD;&#xA;- If someone goes over-the-top with their metaphor, &quot;unclear what you're asking&quot; is a legitimate response that doesn't require a new rule." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22258" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7839" RevisionGUID="1a3fbd3c-3fd0-4bcb-a430-9ffbff76746f" CreationDate="2016-01-11T19:07:46.520" UserId="32353" Text="Most certification questions are either individual career advice or the answer is &quot;go ask them&quot; (and changes yearly).  This is closer to being a question about the legal status of software engineering  - except unlike most legal questions it's reasonably answerable by a site of software experts.  Sort of like the rare good licensing question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course it's possible to bring out the broken windows argument, but the slippery slope argument is itself a slippery slope, and taken to its extreme would become &quot;if we leave any questions open we must leave all questions open&quot;.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22259" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7840" RevisionGUID="6118b5ed-448f-4848-83be-d1c58abb0de0" CreationDate="2016-01-11T19:36:45.713" UserId="52929" Text="I think blogs in Stack Exchange are barely supported at best right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are not letting sites create additional blogs, as we have had this discussion recently on a different site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't forget if you want and write a good question you can self-answer, which in many cases can be a good way to showcase a &quot;mini-blog.&quot; Not sure what you had in mind, though, as it sounds a bit &quot;product sales-y.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22260" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7841" RevisionGUID="4333da8d-4605-47fa-a255-b664b4125362" CreationDate="2016-01-11T22:32:14.970" UserId="154794" Text="I have 7 questions, 2 are downvoted (don't know why) and 5 are upvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last question was closed for being too broad (which is not, it asks how I can do a particular thing with MongoDB that just didn't got answered).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My rep is 226.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When would be a good time for the site's administration to rethink banning to actually ban people that deserve to get banned?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the people I know ask in google groups or Quora just because normal answers get downvoted and getting banned while being professionals." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22261" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7841" RevisionGUID="4333da8d-4605-47fa-a255-b664b4125362" CreationDate="2016-01-11T22:32:14.970" UserId="154794" Text="Question ban too easy" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22262" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7841" RevisionGUID="4333da8d-4605-47fa-a255-b664b4125362" CreationDate="2016-01-11T22:32:14.970" UserId="154794" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22263" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7842" RevisionGUID="05bc8e35-f8ed-4482-82fb-38401022d84c" CreationDate="2016-01-11T23:07:39.950" UserId="102438" Text="&gt;The last question was closed for being too broad (which is not, it asks how I can do a particular thing with MongoDB that just didn't got answered).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe you have a marginal question there that can be improved. Questions are closed so that they can be either improved or deleted, not necessarily just deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That question's title says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Best way to intersect a big set with another big set from a database &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it was closed as &quot;too broad.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe you should edit the title to be more clear that you're specifically asking about 2 arrays in MongoDB. Using bullets to note your expected options might help as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're likely not banned permanently, they just want you to fix your initial question, if you can. I'm sure if you fix it, you'll be able to ask more questions very soon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;When would be a good time for the site's administration to rethink?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I don't intend to speak for Stackoverflow or the Programmer's community (I'm fairly new to Programmers) I believe we're trying to get to where we reopen more questions and get more questions answered without sacrificing quality. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So let's focus on getting your question improved so it can be reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22264" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7837" RevisionGUID="dea5e5a1-d75f-427c-bbfb-5d080a882cd7" CreationDate="2016-01-12T00:35:56.047" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22265" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7841" RevisionGUID="3146a309-77ee-4d29-a299-c546223ba3ad" CreationDate="2016-01-12T00:36:09.687" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22266" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7843" RevisionGUID="bfd8c198-3dc2-428f-9030-9a12cc8d3138" CreationDate="2016-01-12T17:34:20.673" UserId="6294" Text="This question IS answerable, but it seems to me that it's awfully broad - within the US alone there are 50 states + DC and protectorates that all have their own legal codes on the subject, and that's just one nation among many. A better question might be 'How does one become a certified software engineer in &lt;my location&gt;', and perhaps we ought to dump this one in favor more localized questions that can be answered with references to specific legal codes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22267" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7844" RevisionGUID="68c53270-9a27-495c-90b8-2b7773178ff0" CreationDate="2016-01-13T04:22:55.670" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="As the effective runner of the blog, I can, perhaps better than many, address this issue. The blog was always a challenge, you need people to write content that is interesting and relevant. You need editors to proof and correct entries. Getting quality participants with the time and motivation to do these things proved difficult over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of the blame lies with me, I was finishing university while working 30 hours a week and vice chairing and program chairing the local student chapters of IEEE and ACM respectively. Being elected moderator did not help things in terms of my workload.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without Dynamic, this endeavor would have been impossible, if I was the brains, he was the heart. Unfortunately, he also ran into school commitments that proved intractable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could have been more organized in our approach and more aggressive in our recruitment of personnel but in the end, everyone was a volunteer and it was always an uphill battle to maintain momentum. A more topdown approach might have benefitted us but I felt that allowing people to pick individual topics was fairer. I could have written far more content I did but I did not want the blog to be &quot;World Engineer opines about stuff&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The platform, as Enderland alluded, is not terribly good. It's basically stock WordPress with all the issues inherent there. Visibility was never the best and I'm both amazed and grateful that we did well as we did. An article every two weeks for a year is no small thing when community sourced. My special thanks to Morons for providing so much content even as things fell apart and to MichaelT and others for expressing continued interest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, I do not consider the blog dead, only deeply comatose. Smae thing perhaps but some part of me refuses to admit true defeat." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22268" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7844" RevisionGUID="59090bd0-8eae-43f3-9298-687ba7cb6d38" CreationDate="2016-01-13T04:28:00.500" UserId="31260" Comment="minor typo corrected" Text="As the effective runner of the blog, I can, perhaps better than many, address this issue. The blog was always a challenge, you need people to write content that is interesting and relevant. You need editors to proof and correct entries. Getting quality participants with the time and motivation to do these things proved difficult over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of the blame lies with me, I was finishing university while working 30 hours a week and vice chairing and program chairing the local student chapters of IEEE and ACM respectively. Being elected moderator did not help things in terms of my workload.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without Dynamic, this endeavor would have been impossible, if I was the brains, he was the heart. Unfortunately, he also ran into school commitments that proved intractable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could have been more organized in our approach and more aggressive in our recruitment of personnel but in the end, everyone was a volunteer and it was always an uphill battle to maintain momentum. A more topdown approach might have benefited us but I felt that allowing people to pick individual topics was fairer. I could have written far more content I did but I did not want the blog to be &quot;World Engineer opines about stuff&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The platform, as Enderland alluded, is not terribly good. It's basically stock WordPress with all the issues inherent there. Visibility was never the best and I'm both amazed and grateful that we did well as we did. An article every two weeks for a year is no small thing when community sourced. My special thanks to Morons for providing so much content even as things fell apart and to MichaelT and others for expressing continued interest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, I do not consider the blog dead, only deeply comatose. Same thing perhaps but some part of me refuses to admit true defeat." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22273" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="7846" RevisionGUID="2499d045-bbdd-4b68-b399-e08fb3269692" CreationDate="2016-01-14T13:48:01.680" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/307377/where-is-a-good-place-i-can-discuss-the-details-about-web-development" />
  <row Id="22274" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7846" RevisionGUID="09379112-60a7-44f3-b635-8190a1d330b1" CreationDate="2016-01-14T09:13:25.043" UserId="48061" Text="I'm getting back into web development and a lot has changed. I was redirected here. Is this the place I can ask about web development processes, tools, problems and solutions? Thanks" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22275" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7846" RevisionGUID="09379112-60a7-44f3-b635-8190a1d330b1" CreationDate="2016-01-14T09:13:25.043" UserId="48061" Text="Where is a good place I can discuss the details about web development?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22276" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7846" RevisionGUID="09379112-60a7-44f3-b635-8190a1d330b1" CreationDate="2016-01-14T09:13:25.043" UserId="48061" Text="|discussion|websites|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22277" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7846" RevisionGUID="4a2563e8-30ab-426e-8c0a-743f7b3035d1" CreationDate="2016-01-14T13:56:54.593" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22278" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7847" RevisionGUID="51b83e0f-5cc5-47e8-950c-563d1598cfa0" CreationDate="2016-01-15T09:37:14.247" UserId="80833" Text="Without the OP referencing the definition of *Professional Engineer* the question should be closed as *unclear what you're asking*. Does this refer to the *Professional Engineer exam* mentioned in the top answer? We have no idea and can only assume. With IT job definitions being vague, volatile and localized it is unclear what the OP is talking about. (The same can be said for the other term *Software engineer*). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMO this is a prerequisite to be met *before* all the other arguments here can be considered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[And the question should get a region/country tag if it is a localized definition. I get the impression it's a 'US thing']." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22280" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="68269edf-f06e-4178-a411-4bd1e8345ec1" CreationDate="2016-01-16T21:40:24.923" UserId="31260" Comment="university has gone" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:teaching] [tag:self-teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employment] [tag:co-workers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-satisfaction] [tag:job-title] [tag:jobs] [tag:new-job] [tag:job-definition] [tag:job-advancement] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:mobile-payment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22284" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7306" RevisionGUID="93c37101-df1b-411d-aa14-faced3538d68" CreationDate="2016-01-16T21:55:55.467" UserId="31260" Comment="no more inspiration" Text="[tag:burnout] [tag:motivation]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Appear to be more meta tags or about working and careers. These particular topics are likely to be out of scope." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22287" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7848" RevisionGUID="a34c9834-d39c-4b0c-90ef-3afb4e283ed7" CreationDate="2016-01-18T12:19:24.497" UserId="9113" Text="Look at the topmost answer of [this question][1], I wondered if the inclusion of that Dilbert comic might be a copyright violation, and what is the proper way to handle it. More general: how should we act when we see a posting which includes material which might be copyrighted? Edit out the material ASAP and inform the author about the edit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/307672/how-to-define-fixed-priced-software-projects-and-how-to-argue-what-is-inside-sco/307675#comment645893_307675" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22288" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7848" RevisionGUID="a34c9834-d39c-4b0c-90ef-3afb4e283ed7" CreationDate="2016-01-18T12:19:24.497" UserId="9113" Text="How to handle postings with possible copyright violations" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22289" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7848" RevisionGUID="a34c9834-d39c-4b0c-90ef-3afb4e283ed7" CreationDate="2016-01-18T12:19:24.497" UserId="9113" Text="|discussion|copyright|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22293" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7849" RevisionGUID="8bba4044-d8de-4269-a5d3-4d49659d9baf" CreationDate="2016-01-18T13:15:33.853" UserId="4" Text="I don't think anything needs to be done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those of [us with diamonds are not required to do anything][1] - there's a DCMA process in place for copyright holders to use to contact the employee team and have action taken and it doesn't involve moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before you do anything, though, consider [fair use][2]. It's OK to include copyrighted material for some purposes, and it does maintain attribution (there's a clear statement of the owner and copyright on the image itself). If it was unclear as to the ownership (the poster passed it off as his own work), there may be more of an issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/114919/what-should-i-do-when-i-see-copyright-violations-posted-on-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22296" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7850" RevisionGUID="a4162159-7c63-4a4b-8e88-2e76778889e2" CreationDate="2016-01-18T15:48:15.497" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I think the key here is differentiating between _metaphors_ and _examples_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I am describing object composition in [OOAD][1], I may use a car analogy. A car contains many components which I identify as classes in the OO design. However, I am describing the car problem in terms of object design. Anyone familiar with OO can easily follow along and understand the problem. The car analogy is an _example_: the vast majority of people who understand software development will be familiar with cars, and it can be a useful abstraction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I start by talking about cars, and maybe pulling in programming concepts later on, this is a domain-first approach that may not be as easy to follow. _Why is this &lt;strike&gt;jerk&lt;/strike&gt; nice person wasting our time talking about cars instead of computers_? The asker is caught up in the metaphor and losing sight of the important end goal of _writing software_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider the following examples (seewhatididthere?):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* An alien civilization uses glyphs instead of words, similar to some Asian languages: however, they have billions of glyphs instead of millions. Aliens love croissants, for example, and have glyphs for each type of food (especially croissants, they have thousands of types of pastry). Now I am going to give a few other boring examples that have nothing to do with the problem. Finally, these aliens want to merge their glyphs into our Unicode: is there an unused Unicode plane large enough to hold all of their glyphs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is the size of the largest unused Unicode plane? For example, assume we made contact with a yet-unknown alien civilization with three billion glyphs, and we want to communicate with them using Unicode. Would their glyphs fit in Unicode?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of these examples goes off on a tangent so long I would just close vote it as off-topic and move on. The other focuses on technology, and pulls in a (brief) example to illustrate _why_ the question is important to the person asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;even the second version of the question is off-topic at Programmers, but at least it is _clear_ and _concise_.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_analysis_and_design" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22300" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="ec917621-a010-4e2a-aac1-e8a82ad8070f" CreationDate="2016-01-19T07:01:05.313" UserId="31260" Comment="self-teaching is gone" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employment] [tag:co-workers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-satisfaction] [tag:job-title] [tag:jobs] [tag:new-job] [tag:job-definition] [tag:job-advancement] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:mobile-payment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22305" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7848" RevisionGUID="9439bf6f-ae1c-4928-9f30-aca1c9bd91d8" CreationDate="2016-01-19T13:38:38.123" UserId="9113" Comment="added 9 characters in body" Text="Looking at the topmost answer of [this question][1], I wondered if the inclusion of that Dilbert comic might be a copyright violation, and what might be the proper way to handle it. More general: how should we act when we see a posting which includes material which might be copyrighted? Edit out the material ASAP and inform the author about the edit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/307672/how-to-define-fixed-priced-software-projects-and-how-to-argue-what-is-inside-sco/307675#comment645893_307675" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22306" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7837" RevisionGUID="fa25e5cf-02d0-4f64-b4ac-2e28679e2fe3" CreationDate="2016-01-19T17:23:49.603" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/689498508613685249" />
  <row Id="22309" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6502" RevisionGUID="126a0ebd-a2aa-45bd-b834-b8d8eb80f2b0" CreationDate="2016-01-20T15:40:00.530" UserId="1204" Comment="edited title" Text="Are Design Review questions on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22310" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7851" RevisionGUID="14e7db92-54c9-45be-96cc-c253f78aac3c" CreationDate="2016-01-20T17:27:29.207" UserId="53014" Text="I posted a question that has since been flagged as a duplicate of an already existing question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The panel at the top of the question is as you'd expect, apart from the 'edit' link which hasn't rendered properly:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I inspect the surrounding div it's obvious the issue is due to the use of entities such as `&amp;lt;`:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`&amp;lt;a id=&quot;edit-instead&quot; href=&quot;/posts/307773/edit&quot;&amp;gt;I will edit to explain how.&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/d8S8o.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22311" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7851" RevisionGUID="14e7db92-54c9-45be-96cc-c253f78aac3c" CreationDate="2016-01-20T17:27:29.207" UserId="53014" Text="When your question is flagged as a duplicate, the edit link appears to not render correctly" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22312" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7851" RevisionGUID="14e7db92-54c9-45be-96cc-c253f78aac3c" CreationDate="2016-01-20T17:27:29.207" UserId="53014" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22313" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7851" RevisionGUID="8ff75579-7bbf-4af0-a5cb-2db366717480" CreationDate="2016-01-20T18:03:02.187" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|design|css|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22315" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="88866418-a4c7-43fc-83ac-9dd47af2fe02" CreationDate="2016-01-21T05:56:48.047" UserId="31260" Comment="job-advancement is gone" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employment] [tag:co-workers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-satisfaction] [tag:job-title] [tag:jobs] [tag:new-job] [tag:job-definition] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:mobile-payment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22318" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6504" RevisionGUID="516ebe6c-10a7-4c7f-bddc-9548ca601bbd" CreationDate="2016-01-21T17:33:44.390" UserId="4" Comment="added 1408 characters in body" Text="I think that, generally, design review type questions are on-topic. However, the problem is how broad they are. My concern for this type of question is that most of them may be more suited to a discussion environment. I do think that there are good design review questions, but they need to be clear and specific and not soliciting general feedback. Specifically, in the question you linked to, this section has me most concerned over it's viability:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm looking for a general review of my OO design, use of UML, and use&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of C++ features. I especially just want to know if I'm doing anything&#xD;&#xA;&gt; considerably wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Any sort of feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would expect a good design review question to focus on a particular aspect of the design (or the representation of the design, which would also be valid). I'm not sure this particular question does that well. But it's not off-topic, just too broad or unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Borrowing from [gnat's answer][1] (which borrows from [the guidelines used at Code Review][2]):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does your question contain design? Design should be embedded in the body of the post and not linked to. Design notation should be explained to ensure that it is well understood, especially if non-standard notations are used. Design should contain text, images and diagrams, and perhaps some examples of code if necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do you want the design to be good design, (i.e. not design-golfing, obfuscation, or similar)? We are practical people on Programmers, and many of us are professional software developers. We answer questions in the context of building production-ready systems that are understandable, maintainable, and meet other functional and quality requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To the best of your knowledge, does the design work? Your design should at least be functional. You may be seeking input on improving your design, or perhaps correcting issues that are preventing you from achieving your quality requirements (such as performance or testability). However, your design should work and achieve the functional requirements of what you are building.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you  answered yes to all the above questions, your question is on-topic for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; design review at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6505/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22319" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7853" RevisionGUID="eeef64e4-d88b-42d1-8a68-a205f1276629" CreationDate="2016-01-21T17:59:03.590" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="### If the material can be replaced with an equivalent&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do it.  It may take a little bit of work to create an equivalent drawing or graph, but if it's out there - do it.  An example of this being done can be found on SO with a [graph of big O growth](http://stackoverflow.com/posts/487278/revisions) were an image that was copyrighted was replaced with one that was CC licensed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### If the material is irrelevant&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remove it. Someone pasting an image of a croissant as something that was purely cosmetic and had no relevancy to the actual problem - delete it.  It will probably make for a better question too and allow people reading it to focus more on the textual material rather than an irrelevant image.  This has nothing to do with copyrighted material - just that the material is irrelevant. It should be done for public domain, Wikimedia images, and anything else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Check the licensing on it and make it comply&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, [xkcd](https://xkcd.com/license.html) is under a CC BY-NC license (non commercial). This is further elaborated that books, blogs, and newsletters are ok for reprinting individual comics and we likely fall into that category. Though we need to link back to the original material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Consider fair use&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a *lot* of copyrighted material that we have on the site. Dilbert cartoons (as mentioned), images of book covers, excerpts from books, excerpts from papers, excerpts from documentation, blocks of third party code that doesn't have a compatible license with CC BY-SA, and the list goes on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of these *probably* fall under fair use.  If one sees something that is copyrighted and doesn't identify its source and the license that the source is under, it should probably get fixed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The relevant bit from [CC FAQ](https://wiki.creativecommons.org/index.php/Frequently_Asked_Questions#May_I_apply_a_CC_license_to_my_work_if_it_incorporates_material_used_under_fair_use_or_another_exception_or_limitation_to_copyright.3F) (under CC BY-SA 4.0 - see what I did there?) is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **May I apply a CC license to my work if it incorporates material used under fair use or another exception or limitation to copyright?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Yes, but it is important to prominently mark any third party material you incorporate into your work so reusers do not think the CC license applies to that material. The CC license only applies to the rights you have in the work. For example, if your CC-licensed slide deck includes a Flickr image you are using pursuant to fair use, make sure to identify that image as not being subject to the CC license. For more information about incorporating work owned by others, see our page about [marking third party content](https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Marking/Creators/Marking_third_party_content). Read more considerations for licensors [here](https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Before_Licensing#Considerations_for_licensors).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### If you feel that it is an egregious violation that you can't handle with the tools available...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notify the copyright holder. Provide them the appropriate information for issuing a DMCA takedown of the material. Do note that unless you are the copyright holder, you cannot submit that material - only the copyright holder has the ability to do so (it gets into slander of tile and the like - you don't know, maybe the copyright holder *did* license the material - ask about that on Law.SE).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### This is all about being a good janitor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key takeaway from all of this is that one should be a janitor and curator of the material whenever possible and time permits (we are all volunteers afterall). There are ways that we can use copyrighted material when presented correctly. It is our job (yes, volunteer) to make the site the best it can be and that involves the occasional legwork of fixing up old posts so that the material in it becomes more useful - and that in part means making sure that we are as good netizens as possible with respect to the copyrights that are out there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22320" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6504" RevisionGUID="6637e655-1751-4eec-9a6f-2266b108ad35" CreationDate="2016-01-21T18:07:09.963" UserId="4" Comment="added 493 characters in body" Text="I think that, generally, design review type questions are on-topic. However, the problem is how broad they are. My concern for this type of question is that most of them may be more suited to a discussion environment. I do think that there are good design review questions, but they need to be clear and specific and not soliciting general feedback. Specifically, in the question you linked to, this section has me most concerned over it's viability:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm looking for a general review of my OO design, use of UML, and use&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of C++ features. I especially just want to know if I'm doing anything&#xD;&#xA;&gt; considerably wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Any sort of feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would expect a good design review question to focus on a particular aspect of the design (or the representation of the design, which would also be valid). I'm not sure this particular question does that well. But it's not off-topic, just too broad or unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Borrowing from [gnat's answer][1] (which borrows from [the guidelines used at Code Review][2]):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does your question contain design? Design should be embedded in the body of the post and not linked to. Design notation should be explained to ensure that it is well understood, especially if non-standard notations are used. Design should contain text, images and diagrams, and perhaps some examples of code if necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do you want the design to be good design, (i.e. not design-golfing, obfuscation, or similar)? We are practical people on Programmers, and many of us are professional software developers. We answer questions in the context of building production-ready systems that are understandable, maintainable, and meet other functional and quality requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To the best of your knowledge, does the design work? Your design should at least be functional. You may be seeking input on improving your design, or perhaps correcting issues that are preventing you from achieving your quality requirements (such as performance or testability). However, your design should work and achieve the functional requirements of what you are building.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have you identified specific areas of concern in your design? Simply dropping in a functional design with details isn't sufficient. What aspects of your design need improving? Are you having trouble testing your design (at any level of testing)? Is your design not performing as well as it should or needs to (and in what ways is it under performing)? Are you having trouble scaling your design? You should come with a small number of specific problems that you are trying to get resolved.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you  answered yes to all the above questions, your question is on-topic for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; design review at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6505/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22321" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7849" RevisionGUID="cc8d2cd4-cdda-4447-a721-8360380df360" CreationDate="2016-01-21T18:38:16.127" UserDisplayName="user53019" Comment="it's DMCA not DCMA" Text="I don't think anything needs to be done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those of [us with diamonds are not required to do anything][1] - there's a [DMCA][dmca] process in place for copyright holders to use to contact the employee team and have action taken and it doesn't involve moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before you do anything, though, consider [fair use][2]. It's OK to include copyrighted material for some purposes, and it does maintain attribution (there's a clear statement of the owner and copyright on the image itself). If it was unclear as to the ownership (the poster passed it off as his own work), there may be more of an issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/114919/what-should-i-do-when-i-see-copyright-violations-posted-on-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&#xD;&#xA;[dmca]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22322" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7851" RevisionGUID="a18342d0-f314-461f-a90a-fca0bb2272de" CreationDate="2016-01-22T09:49:33.297" UserId="4767" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|css|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22335" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="e6e843c8-8a3b-4a1b-a682-5471dd88bb19" CreationDate="2016-01-25T15:18:20.113" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|questions|homework-dump|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22336" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7856" RevisionGUID="c7ce6364-52e4-45c0-85c0-287465cdf56b" CreationDate="2016-01-26T10:48:32.507" UserId="164574" Text="I have a question [When testing is it OK to use a method of the subject to test another method of the subject?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't a duplicate of *[Is there any value in writing a unit test that is a subset of another test?]* and I have taken the necessary steps to make the people that marked it as a duplicate aware of this. Including selecting the correct answer, commenting suggesting why it isn't, adding a description to the bottom on my question and flagging the question. Still it remains a &quot;duplicate&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should I do next? (I have even contacted stack exchange directly asking them to allow me to explain to the people that marked it as a duplicate why it isn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/270520/when-testing-is-it-ok-to-use-a-method-of-the-subject-to-test-another-method-of-t" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22337" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7856" RevisionGUID="c7ce6364-52e4-45c0-85c0-287465cdf56b" CreationDate="2016-01-26T10:48:32.507" UserId="164574" Text="Get people that have marked a question as a duplicate to review it since changes have been made" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22338" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7856" RevisionGUID="c7ce6364-52e4-45c0-85c0-287465cdf56b" CreationDate="2016-01-26T10:48:32.507" UserId="164574" Text="|support|flagging|duplicate-questions|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22342" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7857" RevisionGUID="d339daaa-fd2c-4e4a-a76a-83e25fbac74c" CreationDate="2016-01-26T17:53:59.620" UserId="25476" Text="If you see something that doesn't agree with you on this site with regards to content or user actions, then please flag for a community moderator.  That is why we are here so that you don't have to go to StackExchange directly with questions like this.  If something we see needs to be addressed that is outside of our control then we will contact StackExchange if it is needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't believe this is a duplicate after looking at both questions and decided to reopen it.  The community may yet still decide to close it again if they feel I made a wrong decision here but lets give it another try.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also in the future, try not to edit questions or answers with meta-commentary about the question or answer.  This kind of information is for the comments area or for a greater discussion you can go to Meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22343" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7848" RevisionGUID="42193e16-396c-4cc2-8d71-ab9ae73db242" CreationDate="2016-01-26T20:44:31.067" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/692085729338527744" />
  <row Id="22344" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7858" RevisionGUID="618bf9b4-8388-47a8-bd24-3a28488fa19c" CreationDate="2016-01-26T21:55:19.840" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="A simple and clear edit of the question is enough to bounce it back to the front page or active questions. Clear and professional writing will get people to read past the first lines that show up in the summary for the question. If it is clear that the question is not a duplicate through the wording of the question (rather than argumentative text at the top), the question will likely get a reopen vote which will put it back in the reopen review queue.  A revision that clearly shows that the question is not a duplicate (rather than arguments that it is not) is much more likely to garner the necessary reopen reviews.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When an edit to a question is made, it goes into the reopen review. If previous revisions were made and reopen review said no, it would take a reopen vote to kick it into the queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reviewers will see something like http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/129650 that shows the most recent revision to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The revision for yours that would have made it into the reopen queue would look like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The February 12th 2015 revision is the one that should have kicked it into the queue. I don't see it in there currently (as of this writing, 10k tools revision history [page 75](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/history?page=75) would have it)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, the key question that I have when I look at a reopen review is &quot;is this post one that should be open ***in its current state***?&quot;  And looking at that post, the answer is quite simply &quot;no&quot;.  It would take a bit of editing with someone who appears to be angry and likes to use all caps bold. That isn't a situation that I want to engage in - I've gotten my ear chewed off far too many times in the past for me to want to get into fixing the question based on that revision.  Such content makes it one that I am much more likely to cast a delete vote on because I don't have the time to moderate it than to cast a reopen vote.  I am much more likely to work with a calm professional than someone who is going to yell.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, I did go back in after it was reopened (and accidently overwrote Maple's edit - rollbacks do that) and rolled it back to the latest version that didn't have any meta bits in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally, when one wants to say &quot;this isn't a duplicate&quot; - the process isn't to write **IT IS NOT THE SAME QUESTION** at the top, but rather to seamlessly write the question so that it clearly isn't a duplicate. This should be done without writing 'edit:' in the middle of the body - the post is one comprehensive whole that shouldn't need to be bounced up and down from comment to question and back again.  Write the question clearly and as professionally as one would expect to find on MSDN or similar documentation - that is how to get a question reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/FKSPU.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22345" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="2c9dca6c-5921-454b-86c9-6feb4bd1eba0" CreationDate="2016-01-27T16:21:53.367" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Fix typos." Text="It is September once again (today is the [7316](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+days+since+September+1%2C+1993)&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; day of [September](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)), and once again students are asking their homework problems on Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We start seeing questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A car dealer has 10 salespersons. Each salesperson keeps track of the number of cars sold each month and reports it to the management at the end of the month. The management keeps the data in a file and assigns a number, 1 to 10, to each salesperson....&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Write the code to store the number of cars sold by each salesperson in the array cars, output the total numbers of cars sold at the end each month, and output the salesperson number selling the maximum number of cars. (Assume that data is in the file cars.dat, and that this file has been opened using the ifstream variable inFile.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to understand is that Stack Overflow, and especially Programmers.SE are not code writing services.  You don't just throw a question in there with something of the form &quot;give me the codez&quot; into the text area and hope that someone will &lt;s&gt;answer the question&lt;/s&gt; do your homework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several things to consider as to why this is bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The typical class builds upon previous experiences. The compiler class has machine language and data structures as prerequisites because if you don't understand those, you will be hopelessly lost in the class and not even able to understand the lectures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets assume you do understand the code (the person answering the question did a good job explaining it)... the curriculum is designed to take you from `A` to `Z` with 24 steps between.  As industry programmers we often take shortcuts and don't need say, steps `ijkl` to do something.  Learning from us, you'll never get these steps. *However* you may find in your next assignment or class that understanding `jk` is assumed and critical to the understanding of some other concepts.  Just because we don't need `ijkl` to do it doesn't mean it isn't understood.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is an anecdote of the machine programming class I took years ago which used [SPIM](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html) - a MIPS simulator.  One of the students when stuck with a program discovered a little used [DECStation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECstation) off on the side of the lab that had gcc on it.  Instead of writing the assignment (factorial) by hand with the concepts we had access to (we were supposed to write a recursive function to learn about the stack and frame pointer), he wrote it in C, compiled it with gcc -S and got out a some MIPS assembly source that he then handed in.  However, the compiler, recognizing an optimization converted the entire code from recursive subroutine into a for loop and used other things we wouldn't hear mentioned until a few weeks later.  He got a '0' on that homework and had trouble with the next one (that assumed you already understood the frame pointer and stack pointer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It cheats *you* of the education you are paying to get.  Copy and paste takes **no** skill. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It cheats *us* of good interview candidates.  It is often lamented the quality of college graduates by technical interviewers.  You may be enthusiastic, but unless you can write code and explain concepts better than the other guy, we're going to hire the other guy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your first resource to look at should be your instructor.  They are there for you and want to have you follow a specific path to get to the end point of understanding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, you've exhausted the resources.  You've tried asking your instructor. You've searched google.  You've gone over your lecture notes and even knocked on the TA's door during office hours.  And you've come here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The urgency of your question is not something we are concerned with.  Good questions and answers are timeless - not something that needs to be done by 5pm today or 8am on Monday (you may find the rate of answers to drop substantially on the weekends and evenings of various timezones). **Don't expect an answer in any given time frame**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As just mentioned, good questions are timeless.  Answering your homework problem is likely not timeless and not a good question.  **Describe the problem you are having, what your understanding of the problem is and where you are confused**. For a question from a student, the best questions are often the ones that are asking how to take a single step in understanding rather than trying to leap all the way to the solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize also that the answer we give may be **completely wrong** for the path that your instructor is trying to get you to follow.  Having previously fought through the problem ourselves, we know and understand when one can jump directly from `il` and when one needs to go through each step of `ijkl` in a process. Our answers may skip over steps that aren't needed *for this particular problem*, but may be critical for understanding the next assignment or some problem years down the road where skipping `jk` is the wrong answer. In many cases, it is important to follow the curriculum as best as you are able.  Going above and beyond is good where one gains a deeper understanding of a problem domain, but one *must* have the foundation upon which to build.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We want you to do your homework to the best of your ability. Getting points off on an assignment and learning something from that produces a better interview candidate than one who can copy and paste code that got As in school but can't solve a simple problem they've never seen before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question on Programmers.SE is just a copy paste of homework problem, expect it to be downvoted, closed, and deleted - potentially in quite short order." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22346" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7859" RevisionGUID="c4ae7df5-9773-46a5-bb94-a92bf2afd00c" CreationDate="2016-01-30T21:25:36.190" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="This meta-question is about the following question on the main site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why should I use a factory class instead of direct object construction? \[closed\]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, it has a lone delete vote. The only reason I noticed is because another user pinged me in a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was closed as primarily opinion-based. However, I believe the question does have value. This is the type of question that new developers are prone to asking, and the accepted answer provides a very good explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I edited the question to clean up the wording a bit and to phrase it better. Given that at least one person believes it should be deleted, what else should be done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Does it need additional editing and reopened?&#xD;&#xA;* Should it stay closed, but not deleted?&#xD;&#xA;* Should it be deleted?&#xD;&#xA;* Should it be locked in some way? (I can never remember all the lock types we have now)&#xD;&#xA;* Something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/253254" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22347" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7859" RevisionGUID="c4ae7df5-9773-46a5-bb94-a92bf2afd00c" CreationDate="2016-01-30T21:25:36.190" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Why should we not delete a question about using a factory class instead of direct object construction?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22348" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7859" RevisionGUID="c4ae7df5-9773-46a5-bb94-a92bf2afd00c" CreationDate="2016-01-30T21:25:36.190" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22349" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7860" RevisionGUID="e189dd5f-8806-4b64-b002-e91eeaee1cc9" CreationDate="2016-02-02T09:01:46.230" UserId="31260" Text="Please merge tag [tag:life-cycle] (22 questions) into [tag:sdlc] (35), and make them synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only [tag:sdlc] tag has wiki, but questions in both appear to be about [software development lifecycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Preference for master tag is because it is less ambiguous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5946/what-is-sdlc-tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22350" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7860" RevisionGUID="e189dd5f-8806-4b64-b002-e91eeaee1cc9" CreationDate="2016-02-02T09:01:46.230" UserId="31260" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [life-cycle] → [sdlc]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22351" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7860" RevisionGUID="e189dd5f-8806-4b64-b002-e91eeaee1cc9" CreationDate="2016-02-02T09:01:46.230" UserId="31260" Text="|support|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22352" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7860" RevisionGUID="ccb97cd5-e1e1-4604-825d-9ad723755495" CreationDate="2016-02-02T09:25:48.923" UserId="31260" Comment="life-cycle appears to be sometimes (mis)used for questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything" Text="Please merge tag [tag:life-cycle] (22 questions) into [tag:sdlc] (35), and make them synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only [tag:sdlc] tag has wiki, but questions in both appear to be about [software development lifecycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Preference for master tag is because it is less ambiguous (life-cycle appears to be sometimes (mis)used for questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5946/what-is-sdlc-tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22353" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7860" RevisionGUID="ba10a665-876d-4416-84f6-7c4896177321" CreationDate="2016-02-02T12:20:27.047" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22354" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="3ede8cfd-1e4d-4935-9808-cc28461b79dc" CreationDate="2016-02-02T19:55:46.847" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Mention off topic, tour, and help center. Add bit about MCVE being needed for SO." Text="It is September once again (today is the [7316](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+days+since+September+1%2C+1993)&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; day of [September](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)), and once again students are asking their homework problems on Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We start seeing questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A car dealer has 10 salespersons. Each salesperson keeps track of the number of cars sold each month and reports it to the management at the end of the month. The management keeps the data in a file and assigns a number, 1 to 10, to each salesperson....&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Write the code to store the number of cars sold by each salesperson in the array cars, output the total numbers of cars sold at the end each month, and output the salesperson number selling the maximum number of cars. (Assume that data is in the file cars.dat, and that this file has been opened using the ifstream variable inFile.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to understand is that Stack Overflow, and especially Programmers.SE are not code writing services.  You don't just throw a question in there with something of the form &quot;give me the codez&quot; into the text area and hope that someone will &lt;s&gt;answer the question&lt;/s&gt; do your homework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several things to consider as to why this is bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The typical class builds upon previous experiences. The compiler class has machine language and data structures as prerequisites because if you don't understand those, you will be hopelessly lost in the class and not even able to understand the lectures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets assume you do understand the code (the person answering the question did a good job explaining it)... the curriculum is designed to take you from `A` to `Z` with 24 steps between.  As industry programmers we often take shortcuts and don't need say, steps `ijkl` to do something.  Learning from us, you'll never get these steps. *However* you may find in your next assignment or class that understanding `jk` is assumed and critical to the understanding of some other concepts.  Just because we don't need `ijkl` to do it doesn't mean it isn't understood.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is an anecdote of the machine programming class I took years ago which used [SPIM](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html) - a MIPS simulator.  One of the students when stuck with a program discovered a little used [DECStation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECstation) off on the side of the lab that had gcc on it.  Instead of writing the assignment (factorial) by hand with the concepts we had access to (we were supposed to write a recursive function to learn about the stack and frame pointer), he wrote it in C, compiled it with gcc -S and got out a some MIPS assembly source that he then handed in.  However, the compiler, recognizing an optimization converted the entire code from recursive subroutine into a for loop and used other things we wouldn't hear mentioned until a few weeks later.  He got a '0' on that homework and had trouble with the next one (that assumed you already understood the frame pointer and stack pointer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It cheats *you* of the education you are paying to get.  Copy and paste takes **no** skill. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It cheats *us* of good interview candidates.  It is often lamented the quality of college graduates by technical interviewers.  You may be enthusiastic, but unless you can write code and explain concepts better than the other guy, we're going to hire the other guy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your first resource to look at should be your instructor.  They are there for you and want to have you follow a specific path to get to the end point of understanding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, you've exhausted the resources.  You've tried asking your instructor. You've searched google.  You've gone over your lecture notes and even knocked on the TA's door during office hours.  And you've come here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The urgency of your question is not something we are concerned with.  Good questions and answers are timeless - not something that needs to be done by 5pm today or 8am on Monday (you may find the rate of answers to drop substantially on the weekends and evenings of various timezones). **Don't expect an answer in any given time frame**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As just mentioned, good questions are timeless.  Answering your homework problem is likely not timeless and not a good question.  **Describe the problem you are having, what your understanding of the problem is and where you are confused**. For a question from a student, the best questions are often the ones that are asking how to take a single step in understanding rather than trying to leap all the way to the solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure you read the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) and [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). Refining the question to a particular step doesn't necessarily make the question on topic on Programmers.SE - this site focuses on software design and architecture. Questions of &quot;how to write some code&quot; or &quot;help me debug this code&quot; are both off topic on Programmers.SE as they are issues with implementation rather than design.  They *may* be on topic on Stack Overflow, but just posting the requirements or code and saying what amounts to &quot;help me&quot; is rarely enough for a good question - make sure you read [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) before posting a question on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize also that the answer we give may be **completely wrong** for the path that your instructor is trying to get you to follow.  Having previously fought through the problem ourselves, we know and understand when one can jump directly from `il` and when one needs to go through each step of `ijkl` in a process. Our answers may skip over steps that aren't needed *for this particular problem*, but may be critical for understanding the next assignment or some problem years down the road where skipping `jk` is the wrong answer. In many cases, it is important to follow the curriculum as best as you are able.  Going above and beyond is good where one gains a deeper understanding of a problem domain, but one *must* have the foundation upon which to build.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We want you to do your homework to the best of your ability. Getting points off on an assignment and learning something from that produces a better interview candidate than one who can copy and paste code that got As in school but can't solve a simple problem they've never seen before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question on Programmers.SE is just a copy paste of homework problem, expect it to be downvoted, closed, and deleted - potentially in quite short order." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22355" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="dab5bdd2-069d-4bf5-be53-2075678f8e63" CreationDate="2016-02-02T20:41:05.127" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 499 characters in body" Text="It is September once again (today is the [7316](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+days+since+September+1%2C+1993)&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; day of [September](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)), and once again students are asking their homework problems on Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We start seeing questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A car dealer has 10 salespersons. Each salesperson keeps track of the number of cars sold each month and reports it to the management at the end of the month. The management keeps the data in a file and assigns a number, 1 to 10, to each salesperson....&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Write the code to store the number of cars sold by each salesperson in the array cars, output the total numbers of cars sold at the end each month, and output the salesperson number selling the maximum number of cars. (Assume that data is in the file cars.dat, and that this file has been opened using the ifstream variable inFile.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to understand is that **we are not a code writing service.**  You can't just copy/paste a homework into the text area and expect someone to do your homework for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmer education builds upon previous experiences. The compiler class has machine language and data structures as prerequisites because if you don't understand those, you will be hopelessly lost in the class and not even able to understand the lectures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets assume you do understand the code (the person answering the question did a good job explaining it)... the curriculum is designed to take you from `A` to `Z` with 24 steps between.  As industry programmers we often take shortcuts and don't need say, steps `ijkl` to do something.  Learning from us, you'll never get these steps. *However* you may find in your next assignment or class that understanding `jk` is assumed and critical to the understanding of some other concepts.  Just because we don't need `ijkl` to do it doesn't mean it isn't understood.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A programming class I took years ago used [SPIM](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html) - a MIPS simulator.  One of the students discovered a little-used [DECStation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECstation) in the lab that had gcc on it.  Instead of writing the assignment (factorial) by hand with the concepts we had access to (we were supposed to write a recursive function to learn about the stack and frame pointer), he wrote it in C, compiled it with `gcc -S` and handed in the resulting MIPS assembler code.  However, the compiler, recognizing an optimization, converted the entire code from a recursive subroutine into a `for` loop and used other things we wouldn't hear mentioned until a few weeks later.  He got a '0' on that homework and had trouble with the next one (which assumed you already understood the frame pointer and stack pointer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Copy and paste takes no skill. It cheats you out of the education you are paying to get.**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It cheats *us* of good interview candidates.  Technical interviewers often complain about the quality of college graduates.  You may be enthusiastic, but unless you can write code and explain concepts better than the other guy, we're going to hire the other guy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your first resource to look at should be your instructor.  They are there for you and want to have you follow a specific path to get to the end point of understanding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, you've exhausted the resources.  You've tried asking your instructor. You've searched google.  You've gone over your lecture notes and even knocked on the TA's door during office hours.  And you've come here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Don't expect an answer in any given time frame.** The urgency of your question is not something we are concerned with.  Good questions and answers are timeless - not something that needs to be done by 5pm today or 8am on Monday (you may find the rate of answers drops substantially on the weekends and evenings of various timezones).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Describe the problem you are having, what your understanding of the problem is and where you are confused**. For a question from a student, the best questions are often the ones that are asking how to take a single step in understanding rather than trying to leap all the way to the solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure you **read the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) and [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).** Programmers focuses on software design and architecture. Questions about &quot;how to write some code&quot; or &quot;help me debug this code&quot; are off topic on Programmers.SE as they are issues with implementation rather than design.  They *may* be on topic on Stack Overflow, but just posting the requirements or code and saying what amounts to &quot;help me&quot; is rarely enough for a good question - make sure you read [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) before posting a question on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize also that **the answer we give you may be completely wrong** for the path that your instructor is trying to get you to follow.  Having previously fought through the problem ourselves, we know and understand when one can jump directly from `il` and when one needs to go through each step of `ijkl` in a process. Our answers may skip over steps that aren't needed *for this particular problem*, but may be critical for understanding the next assignment or some problem years down the road where skipping `jk` is the wrong answer. In many cases, it is important to follow the curriculum as best as you are able.  Going above and beyond is good where one gains a deeper understanding of a problem domain, but one *must* have the foundation upon which to build.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We want you to do your homework to the best of your ability. Getting points off on an assignment and learning something from that produces a better interview candidate than one who can copy and paste code that got As in school but can't solve a simple problem they've never seen before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question on Programmers.SE is just a copy paste of homework problem, expect it to be downvoted, closed, and deleted - potentially in quite short order." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22356" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="165c341f-2812-43b4-aaea-921c0d19d3b5" CreationDate="2016-02-02T20:46:08.503" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 499 characters in body" Text="It is September once again (today is the [7316](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+days+since+September+1%2C+1993)&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; day of [September](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)), and once again students are asking their homework problems on Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We start seeing questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A car dealer has 10 salespersons. Each salesperson keeps track of the number of cars sold each month and reports it to the management at the end of the month. The management keeps the data in a file and assigns a number, 1 to 10, to each salesperson....&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Write the code to store the number of cars sold by each salesperson in the array cars, output the total numbers of cars sold at the end each month, and output the salesperson number selling the maximum number of cars. (Assume that data is in the file cars.dat, and that this file has been opened using the ifstream variable inFile.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to understand is that **we are not a code writing service.**  You can't just copy/paste a homework into the text area and expect someone to do your homework for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmer education builds upon previous experiences.** The compiler class has machine language and data structures as prerequisites because if you don't understand those, you will be hopelessly lost in the class and not even able to understand the lectures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets assume you do understand the code (the person answering the question did a good job explaining it)... the curriculum is designed to take you from `A` to `Z` with 24 steps between.  As industry programmers we often take shortcuts and don't need say, steps `ijkl` to do something.  Learning from us, you'll never get these steps. *However* you may find in your next assignment or class that understanding `jk` is assumed and critical to the understanding of some other concepts.  Just because we don't need `ijkl` to do it doesn't mean it isn't understood.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A programming class I took years ago used [SPIM](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html) - a MIPS simulator.  One of the students discovered a little-used [DECStation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECstation) in the lab that had gcc on it.  Instead of writing the assignment (factorial) by hand with the concepts we had access to (we were supposed to write a recursive function to learn about the stack and frame pointer), he wrote it in C, compiled it with `gcc -S` and handed in the resulting MIPS assembler code.  However, the compiler, recognizing an optimization, converted the entire code from a recursive subroutine into a `for` loop and used other things we wouldn't hear mentioned until a few weeks later.  He got a '0' on that homework and had trouble with the next one (which assumed you already understood the frame pointer and stack pointer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Copy and paste takes no skill. It cheats you out of the education you are paying to get.**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It cheats *us* of good interview candidates.  Technical interviewers often complain about the quality of college graduates.  You may be enthusiastic, but unless you can write code and explain concepts better than the other guy, we're going to hire the other guy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your first resource to look at should be your instructor.  They are there for you and want to have you follow a specific path to get to the end point of understanding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, you've exhausted the resources.  You've tried asking your instructor. You've searched google.  You've gone over your lecture notes and even knocked on the TA's door during office hours.  And you've come here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Don't expect an answer in any given time frame.** The urgency of your question is not something we are concerned with.  Good questions and answers are timeless - not something that needs to be done by 5pm today or 8am on Monday (you may find the rate of answers drops substantially on the weekends and evenings of various timezones).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Describe the problem you are having, what your understanding of the problem is and where you are confused**. For a question from a student, the best questions are often the ones that are asking how to take a single step in understanding rather than trying to leap all the way to the solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize also that **the answer we give you may be completely wrong** for the path that your instructor is trying to get you to follow.  Having previously fought through the problem ourselves, we know and understand when one can jump directly from `il` and when one needs to go through each step of `ijkl` in a process. Our answers may skip over steps that aren't needed *for this particular problem*, but may be critical for understanding the next assignment or some problem years down the road where skipping `jk` is the wrong answer. In many cases, it is important to follow the curriculum as best as you are able.  Going above and beyond is good where one gains a deeper understanding of a problem domain, but one *must* have the foundation upon which to build.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We want you to do your homework to the best of your ability. Getting points off on an assignment and learning something from that produces a better interview candidate than one who can copy and paste code that got As in school but can't solve a simple problem they've never seen before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;###If you decide to post your question anyway&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure you **read the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) and [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).** Programmers focuses on software design and architecture. Questions about &quot;how to write some code&quot; or &quot;help me debug this code&quot; are off topic on Programmers.SE as they are issues with implementation rather than design.  They *may* be on topic on Stack Overflow, but just posting the requirements or code and saying what amounts to &quot;help me&quot; is rarely enough for a good question - make sure you read [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) before posting a question on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question on Programmers.SE is just a copy paste of homework problem, expect it to be downvoted, closed, and deleted - potentially in quite short order." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22357" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="551f50f2-28a7-43c6-87a9-467c11ef1377" CreationDate="2016-02-02T20:55:08.570" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 73 characters in body" Text="It is September once again (today is the [7316](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+days+since+September+1%2C+1993)&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; day of [September](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)), and once again students are asking their homework problems on Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We start seeing questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A car dealer has 10 salespersons. Each salesperson keeps track of the number of cars sold each month and reports it to the management at the end of the month. The management keeps the data in a file and assigns a number, 1 to 10, to each salesperson....&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Write the code to store the number of cars sold by each salesperson in the array cars, output the total numbers of cars sold at the end each month, and output the salesperson number selling the maximum number of cars. (Assume that data is in the file cars.dat, and that this file has been opened using the ifstream variable inFile.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to understand is that **we are not a code writing service.**  You can't just copy/paste a homework into the text area and expect someone to do your homework for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmer education builds upon previous experiences.** The compiler class has machine language and data structures as prerequisites because if you don't understand those, you will be hopelessly lost in the class and not even able to understand the lectures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets assume you do understand the code (the person answering the question did a good job explaining it)... the curriculum is designed to take you from `A` to `Z` with 24 steps between.  As industry programmers we often take shortcuts and don't need say, steps `ijkl` to do something.  Learning from us, you'll never get these steps. *However* you may find in your next assignment or class that understanding `jk` is assumed and critical to the understanding of some other concepts.  Just because we don't need `ijkl` to do it doesn't mean it isn't understood.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A programming class I took years ago used [SPIM](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html) - a MIPS simulator.  One of the students discovered a little-used [DECStation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECstation) in the lab that had gcc on it.  Instead of writing the assignment (factorial) by hand with the concepts we had access to (we were supposed to write a recursive function to learn about the stack and frame pointer), he wrote it in C, compiled it with `gcc -S` and handed in the resulting MIPS assembler code.  However, the compiler, recognizing an optimization, converted the entire code from a recursive subroutine into a `for` loop.  He got a '0' on that homework and had trouble with the next one (which assumed you already understood the frame pointer and stack pointer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Copy and paste takes no skill. It cheats you out of the education you are paying to get.**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It cheats *us* of good interview candidates.  Technical interviewers often complain about the quality of college graduates.  You may be enthusiastic, but unless you can write code and explain concepts better than the other guy, we're going to hire the other guy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your first resource to look at should be your instructor.  They are there for you and want to have you follow a specific path to get to the end point of understanding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, you've exhausted the resources.  You've tried asking your instructor. You've searched google.  You've gone over your lecture notes and even knocked on the TA's door during office hours.  And you've come here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Don't expect an answer in any given time frame.** The urgency of your question is not something we are concerned with.  Good questions and answers are timeless - not something that needs to be done by 5pm today or 8am on Monday (you may find the rate of answers drops substantially on the weekends and evenings of various timezones).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Describe the problem you are having, what your understanding of the problem is and where you are confused**. For a question from a student, the best questions are often the ones that are asking how to take a single step in understanding rather than trying to leap all the way to the solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize also that **the answer we give you may be completely wrong** for the path that your instructor is trying to get you to follow.  Having previously fought through the problem ourselves, we know and understand when one can jump directly from `il` and when one needs to go through each step of `ijkl` in a process. Our answers may skip over steps that aren't needed *for this particular problem*, but may be critical for understanding the next assignment or some problem years down the road where skipping `jk` is the wrong answer. In many cases, it is important to follow the curriculum as best as you are able.  Going above and beyond is good where one gains a deeper understanding of a problem domain, but one *must* have the foundation upon which to build.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We want you to do your homework to the best of your ability. Getting points off on an assignment and learning something from that produces a better interview candidate than one who can copy and paste code that got As in school but can't solve a simple problem they've never seen before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;###If you decide to post your question anyway&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure you **read the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) and [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).** Programmers focuses on software design and architecture. Questions about &quot;how to write some code&quot; or &quot;help me debug this code&quot; are off topic on Programmers.SE as they are issues with implementation rather than design.  They *may* be on topic on Stack Overflow, but just posting the requirements or code and saying what amounts to &quot;help me&quot; is rarely enough for a good question - make sure you read [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) before posting a question on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question on Programmers.SE is just a copy paste of homework problem, expect it to be downvoted, closed, and deleted - potentially in quite short order." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22358" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7861" RevisionGUID="1b1185fc-d210-49e4-b888-415f2d4711b5" CreationDate="2016-02-03T00:51:36.473" UserId="128432" Text="The 90-minute policy at Stack Overflow combined with the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses has already caused problems for users behind network address translation (NAT). When you have the same IPv4 address as another user of Stack Exchange, it can be tough to squeeze in your question when others are waiting for the same 90-minute window to reopen so that they can squeeze in their own questions. See, for example, the question &quot;[Error — 'you can only post once every 90 minutes' but I haven't posted in days](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/259941/2738262)&quot; by Bryan on Meta Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Some people's only Internet access is at a school, office, or public library, which typically has one Internet access subscription with one IP address.&#xD;&#xA;* Some countries have so few IPv4 addresses that home ISPs put several subscribers on a carrier-grade NAT.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments to that question's answer recommend subscribing to cellular Internet access and asking the question through that connection. This ignores two realities:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I do not own a smartphone. I or anyone else in a situation like mine would have to subscribe to Internet access twice, which costs more money every single month. Now you have to pay more just to use Stack Exchange on top of what you already had to pay to access the Internet. I thought getting around having to pay for ExpertS-exChange was why the Stack Exchange network was created in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;* Cellular ISPs almost always use carrier-grade NAT, and this celluar ISP may already have Stack Exchange users on it, leading to the same problem as before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus without the ability to ask or answer questions before 125 reputation, a new user would have to farm rep by suggesting edits and have 62 accepted just to be able to use the service as intended." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22359" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7861" RevisionGUID="db775426-324b-4eee-ba0d-8c71dc0c0bba" CreationDate="2016-02-03T00:59:36.173" UserId="128432" Comment="link to what carrier-grade NAT means" Text="The 90-minute policy at Stack Overflow combined with the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses has already caused problems for users behind network address translation (NAT). When you have the same IPv4 address as another user of Stack Exchange, it can be tough to squeeze in your question when others are waiting for the same 90-minute window to reopen so that they can squeeze in their own questions. See, for example, the question &quot;[Error — 'you can only post once every 90 minutes' but I haven't posted in days](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/259941/2738262)&quot; by Bryan on Meta Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Some people's only Internet access is at a school, office, or public library, which typically has one Internet access subscription with one IP address.&#xD;&#xA;* Some countries have so few IPv4 addresses that home ISPs put several subscribers on a [carrier-grade NAT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier-grade_NAT).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments to that question's answer recommend subscribing to cellular Internet access and asking the question through that connection. This ignores two realities:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I do not own a smartphone. I or anyone else in a situation like mine would have to subscribe to Internet access twice, which costs more money every single month. Now you have to pay more just to use Stack Exchange on top of what you already had to pay to access the Internet. I thought getting around having to pay for ExpertS-exChange was why the Stack Exchange network was created in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;* Cellular ISPs almost always use carrier-grade NAT, and this cellular ISP may already have Stack Exchange users on it, leading to the same problem as before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus without the ability to ask or answer questions before 125 reputation, a new user would have to farm rep by suggesting edits and have 62 accepted just to be able to use the service as intended." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22360" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7861" RevisionGUID="ffff80d4-de88-4c9e-9c1e-2d2d02da3853" CreationDate="2016-02-03T18:06:22.370" UserId="128432" Comment="Given per-site clarification, I change my !vote to support" Text="It has been clarified through comments that this would be applied per-site, so someone posting on [Seasoned Advice](https://cooking.stackexchange.com/) wouldn't interfere with someone else posting on Programmers. With this clarification, I __support__ the proposal, at least on a trial basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if traffic on Programmers increases anywhere near Stack Overflow levels, this would begin to interfere with on-topic use of the site. The 90-minute policy at Stack Overflow combined with the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses has already caused problems for users behind network address translation (NAT). When you have the same IPv4 address as another user of the same Stack Exchange site, it can be tough to squeeze in your question when others are waiting for the same 90-minute window to reopen so that they can squeeze in their own questions. See, for example, the question &quot;[Error — 'you can only post once every 90 minutes' but I haven't posted in days](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/259941/2738262)&quot; by Bryan on Meta Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why might people be behind NAT? Some people access the Internet at a school, office, or public library, which typically has one Internet access subscription with one IP address. Others use an ISP that puts multiple subscribers behind one IPv4 address using [carrier-grade NAT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier-grade_NAT). CGNAT is common in countries with smaller IPv4 allocations and on cellular Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments to the answer to Bryan's question recommend subscribing to cellular Internet access and asking the question through that connection. This ignores cellular CGNAT as well as the added cost of a subscription to cellular Internet access. I thought not having to pay for ExpertS-exChange was why the Stack Exchange network was created in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus without the ability to ask or answer questions before 125 reputation, a new user would have to farm rep by suggesting edits and have 62 accepted just to be able to use the service as intended." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22361" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7862" RevisionGUID="0d403e91-f6fd-49d3-ad4e-a0a031c72f14" CreationDate="2016-02-03T19:17:32.543" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="One of the things that we occasionally see on P.SE (and more often at the start of a new college semester) is new users posting their homework. With single posts, we are often able to comment and close before the user goes too far down the &quot;this isn't what the site is about.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it isn't rare (or at least as I perceive it) for these homework problems to be in rapid succession from the same user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, the stats I'm wondering about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For users with less than 125 reputation at the time of posting the questions (the rate limit threshold), who post their first two questions within 90 minutes of each other:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is the eventual outcome of these posts?&#xD;&#xA;* What percentage of the users end up question banned? or severely rate limited?&#xD;&#xA;* Just curious: how many of them read the tour page (getting the [informed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/129/informed) badge) *before* posting a question?&#xD;&#xA;* How does this compare to users with less than 125 reputation who post their first two questions separated by a day or more?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The driving force on this is that these posts take up much more community moderation time (another set of down votes, additional comments explaining) and end up being a poor experience for the new user on the site.  Getting an idea of how often this happens would aide in letting us create better proposals for how to address this and maybe help raise the awareness of the new user experience on the site at various levels." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22362" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7862" RevisionGUID="0d403e91-f6fd-49d3-ad4e-a0a031c72f14" CreationDate="2016-02-03T19:17:32.543" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Some stats on first and second posts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22363" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7862" RevisionGUID="0d403e91-f6fd-49d3-ad4e-a0a031c72f14" CreationDate="2016-02-03T19:17:32.543" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|support|new-users|statistics|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22364" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7862" RevisionGUID="8759bfbe-6a18-493d-b663-45b8713b37ff" CreationDate="2016-02-03T20:36:43.363" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="One of the things that we occasionally see on P.SE (and more often at the start of a new college semester) is new users posting their homework. With single posts, we are often able to comment and close before the user goes too far down the &quot;this isn't what the site is about.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it isn't rare (or at least as I perceive it) for these homework problems to be in rapid succession from the same user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, the stats I'm wondering about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For users with less than 125 reputation at the time of posting the questions (the rate limit threshold), who post their first two questions within 90 minutes of each other:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is the eventual outcome of these posts?&#xD;&#xA;* What percentage of the users end up question banned? or severely rate limited?&#xD;&#xA;* Just curious: how many of them read the tour page (getting the [informed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/129/informed) badge) *before* posting a question?&#xD;&#xA;* How does this compare to users with less than 125 reputation who post their first two questions separated by a day or more?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The driving force on this is that these posts take up much more community moderation time (another set of close votes, additional comments explaining) and end up being a poor experience for the new user on the site.  Getting an idea of how often this happens would aide in letting us create better proposals for how to address this and maybe help raise the awareness of the new user experience on the site at various levels." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22365" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7862" RevisionGUID="d1fa2368-6e01-4413-a97c-3a30d3749791" CreationDate="2016-02-04T16:37:26.397" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Add specific examples of data expected." Text="One of the things that we occasionally see on P.SE (and more often at the start of a new college semester) is new users posting their homework. With single posts, we are often able to comment and close before the user goes too far down the &quot;this isn't what the site is about.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it isn't rare (or at least as I perceive it) for these homework problems to be in rapid succession from the same user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, the stats I'm wondering about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For users with less than 125 reputation at the time of posting the questions (the rate limit threshold), who post their first two questions within 90 minutes of each other:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is the eventual outcome of these posts?&#xD;&#xA;* What percentage of the users end up question banned? or severely rate limited?&#xD;&#xA;* Just curious: how many of them read the tour page (getting the [informed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/129/informed) badge) *before* posting a question?&#xD;&#xA;* How does this compare to users with less than 125 reputation who post their first two questions separated by a day or more?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The driving force on this is that these posts take up much more community moderation time (another set of close votes, additional comments explaining) and end up being a poor experience for the new user on the site.  Getting an idea of how often this happens would aide in letting us create better proposals for how to address this and maybe help raise the awareness of the new user experience on the site at various levels.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Queries should identify the following pairs of posts (all 10k links):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [4:27](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254641/), [4:38](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254642/)&#xD;&#xA;* [10:13](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254567/), [10:22](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254568/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22373" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7306" RevisionGUID="a5d4c844-de42-404c-850c-900a326a6444" CreationDate="2016-02-09T13:40:43.307" UserId="31260" Comment="bunout is burninated" Text="[tag:motivation]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Appear to be more meta tag or about working and careers. These particular topics are likely to be out of scope." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22376" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7294" RevisionGUID="49f2e737-34e3-4b59-a17b-24a271bd29e6" CreationDate="2016-02-09T13:43:29.877" UserId="31260" Comment="self-employment has gone" Text="[tag:freelancing] [tag:client-relations]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Workplace and Freelancing exist and cover these topics. They appears to be beyond scope based on the Help Center." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22377" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="d2b07432-2c56-46e2-bce4-98e4a5858fcd" CreationDate="2016-02-09T13:45:13.573" UserId="31260" Comment="jobs, job-satisfaction, new-job are burninated" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employment] [tag:co-workers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-title] [tag:job-definition] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:mobile-payment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22378" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7864" RevisionGUID="18eec64f-ede0-4d3e-b319-6cd1a49abf48" CreationDate="2016-02-09T21:58:42.993" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Questions that are asking for debugging (&quot;help me find this error&quot;) or implementation (&quot;how do I write...&quot;) have tended to be closed and down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why is this? And where should I ask these questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22379" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7864" RevisionGUID="18eec64f-ede0-4d3e-b319-6cd1a49abf48" CreationDate="2016-02-09T21:58:42.993" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Why are implementation and debugging questions unwelcome on Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22380" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7864" RevisionGUID="18eec64f-ede0-4d3e-b319-6cd1a49abf48" CreationDate="2016-02-09T21:58:42.993" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|site-rec|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22381" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7865" RevisionGUID="790a0c53-8186-429e-a9a0-acb632ca549e" CreationDate="2016-02-09T21:58:42.993" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="# The Stack philosophy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A key principle in the design guiding Stack Overflow and the rest of the Stack Exchange network is that there is *one* right place to ask the question. While we acknowledge that there are often gray lines where something is appropriate for two different sites, there is likely a *best* site to ask the question on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This helps make sure that questions about a topic are asked on the proper site, and that people *looking* for an answer to a question they may have but haven't asked yet can be properly directed to one site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Stack Overflow is the place for code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking coding questions on Programmers.SE when it belongs on Stack Overflow instead means that it will take longer for the person asking the question to get an answer - we don't have as much traffic and the community is fairly dead set on coding questions are off topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is a *good* one, it can take a few hours for it to get migrated to Stack Overflow. Its better to ask the how do I write and debugging questions there.  Furthermore, in the case that its a duplicate, the question frequently gets closed here with only minor hints at the duplicate nature. Asking the duplicate question (you searched first and didn't find it - right?) on Stack Overflow allows a much more rapid response to properly pointing the question to the one that has the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On debugging itself&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A fairly consistent comment that a person asking for debugging help will find is &quot;have you debugged it?&quot;  There are numerous debuggers out there for all the different languages.  A [favorite post of mine](https://web.archive.org/web/20150221071347/http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html) &lt;!-- get it? mine? mines.edu --&gt; lists debugging as the first and most important skill for a programmer. You will likely find that spending 5-10 minutes learning how to use a debugger for your language choice and putting a break point in at the proper spot will be faster than asking on StackOverflow - and will let you *answer* questions there instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Don't look for more exposure here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cross posting is frowned upon.  Posting on multiple sites will often result in the question getting closed and down voted.  Programmer also has automatic question bans enabled. Posting off topic questions here that should have been there and *are* there (so we won't migrate it) will bring the person asking the question a step closer to a question ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While this sounds scary, it shouldn't be. If you ask a properly researched question that isn't an opinion poll or too broad it is not likely to have the question closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# On the Overflow vs. Exchange&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On some occasions people familiar with other sites on and off the network are under the impression that ${something}Overflow is for the graduate level questions and ${something}.StackExchange is for the easier ones.  This may be the case for Math and Physics, but it cannot be further from the truth for StackOverflow and Programmers.StackExchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The distinction between Programmers.SE and StackOverflow is rather one of how far you are in the software development process.  A rule of thumb is that if you are sketching out a design then Programmers.SE is probably the better choice; while if you are trying to figure out some code in the editor Stack Overflow is better choice.  And if you are looking for &quot;write some code for me,&quot; neither site is a good choice and you should instead be looking for freelance coders to write it for you (no one will do it for free)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22382" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7865" RevisionGUID="30069168-6c63-4c73-8bf2-e47250c05c0c" CreationDate="2016-02-09T22:10:05.197" UserId="31260" Comment="minor spelling cleanup" Text="# The Stack philosophy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A key principle in the design guiding Stack Overflow and the rest of the Stack Exchange network is that there is *one* right place to ask the question. While we acknowledge that there are often gray lines where something is appropriate for two different sites, there is likely a *best* site to ask the question on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This helps make sure that questions about a topic are asked on the proper site, and that people *looking* for an answer to a question they may have but haven't asked yet can be properly directed to one site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Stack Overflow is the place for code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking coding questions on Programmers.SE when it belongs on Stack Overflow instead means that it will take longer for the person asking the question to get an answer - we don't have as much traffic and the community is fairly dead set on coding questions being off topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is a *good* one, it can take a few hours for it to get migrated to Stack Overflow. It's better to ask the how do I write and debugging questions there.  Furthermore, in the case that it's a duplicate, the question frequently gets closed here with only minor hints at the duplicate nature. Asking the duplicate question (you searched first and didn't find it - right?) on Stack Overflow allows a much more rapid response to properly pointing the question to the one that has the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On debugging itself&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A fairly consistent comment that a person asking for debugging help will find is &quot;have you debugged it?&quot;  There are numerous debuggers out there for all the different languages.  A [favorite post of mine](https://web.archive.org/web/20150221071347/http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html) &lt;!-- get it? mine? mines.edu --&gt; lists debugging as the first and most important skill for a programmer. You will likely find that spending 5-10 minutes learning how to use a debugger for your language choice and putting a break point in at the proper spot will be faster than asking on Stack Overflow - and will let you *answer* questions there instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Don't look for more exposure here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cross posting is frowned upon.  Posting on multiple sites will often result in the question getting closed and down voted.  Programmers also has automatic question bans enabled. Posting off topic questions here that should have been there and *are* there (so we won't migrate it) will bring the person asking the question a step closer to a question ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While this sounds scary, it shouldn't be. If you ask a properly researched question that isn't an opinion poll or too broad it is not likely to have the question closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# On the Overflow vs. Exchange&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On some occasions people familiar with other sites on and off the network are under the impression that ${something}Overflow is for the graduate level questions and ${something}.StackExchange is for the easier ones.  This may be the case for Math and Physics, but it cannot be further from the truth for StackOverflow and Programmers.StackExchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The distinction between Programmers.SE and Stack Overflow is rather one of how far you are in the software development process.  A rule of thumb is that if you are sketching out a design then Programmers.SE is probably the better choice; while if you are trying to figure out some code in the editor Stack Overflow is better choice.  And if you are looking for &quot;write some code for me,&quot; neither site is a good choice and you should instead be looking for freelance coders to write it for you (no one will do it for free)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22383" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7866" RevisionGUID="a6ec37d8-03f1-431e-aab1-e054931edb9a" CreationDate="2016-02-10T02:15:29.373" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38299/do-computer-glasses-work?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does the above provide any reason why I should not delete it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22384" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7866" RevisionGUID="a6ec37d8-03f1-431e-aab1-e054931edb9a" CreationDate="2016-02-10T02:15:29.373" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Does this question about glasses serve any historically significant function?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22385" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7866" RevisionGUID="a6ec37d8-03f1-431e-aab1-e054931edb9a" CreationDate="2016-02-10T02:15:29.373" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22386" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7867" RevisionGUID="475de3f9-f5ce-46df-b2e2-d44ff2e0fded" CreationDate="2016-02-10T02:47:20.340" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The links are broken. If you dig hard enough you can find the proper link on think geek to &quot;Gunnar MLG Phantom Gaming Glasses&quot; and while Steelseries doesn't list it anymore if you search for Steelseries scope you will find... &quot;Gunnar Optiks&quot; on amazon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer boils down to product review and health claims. We do the former poorly and are not properly trained to be able to *expertly* (sure, anecdotally - but people come here for answers from experts on the subject) answer questions about [eystrain when looking at computers](http://health.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/computers)... which has a tag over on Health.SE for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is far too old to migrate (not that Health would want answers from a bunch of techies that know nothing about actual optometry and if there is any veracity to the claims). It is full of conflicting anecdotes on a topic that isn't on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that the *question* has some merit on the network, rework it into a new question on Health.SE so that the network as a whole can benefit from answers from experts on the subject." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22387" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7868" RevisionGUID="36774e55-f728-4979-b94b-cff4ce582478" CreationDate="2016-02-10T14:53:44.220" UserId="73508" Text="Do users who ask questions that are favourited a lot (by other users) get any sort of credit e.g. badge etc or is this just a convenience for those reading the question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22388" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7868" RevisionGUID="36774e55-f728-4979-b94b-cff4ce582478" CreationDate="2016-02-10T14:53:44.220" UserId="73508" Text="Favourited questions credit" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22389" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7868" RevisionGUID="36774e55-f728-4979-b94b-cff4ce582478" CreationDate="2016-02-10T14:53:44.220" UserId="73508" Text="|support|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22390" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7869" RevisionGUID="531e2dea-feee-4833-8642-357f79fac83b" CreationDate="2016-02-10T15:17:22.793" UserId="4" Text="There are two badges for having your question favorited. You get a [bronze &quot;Favorite Question&quot; badge][1] if 25 people favorite your question and a [gold &quot;Stellar Question&quot; badge][2] if 100 people favorite your question. Both badges can be awarded multiple times.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/38/favorite-question&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/51/stellar-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22391" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7869" RevisionGUID="c05c99a7-0c54-4e3e-b7d4-160e34b243f8" CreationDate="2016-02-10T15:18:01.390" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body" Text="There are two badges for having your question favorited. You get a [silver &quot;Favorite Question&quot; badge][1] if 25 people favorite your question and a [gold &quot;Stellar Question&quot; badge][2] if 100 people favorite your question. Both badges can be awarded multiple times.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/38/favorite-question&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/51/stellar-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22392" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7517" RevisionGUID="f6da9109-d227-4637-8aef-fcf110f4f579" CreationDate="2016-02-10T17:15:40.880" UserId="4091" Comment="cleaned up language some" Text="It's strange that there are tags for [Cucumber][1] based .NET and Java test runners but there is no tag for the test definition/documentation language Cucumber uses, [Gherkin][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://cucumber.io/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/gherkin" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22393" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7870" RevisionGUID="fbbd4c06-a29f-453a-8cc6-6a1374ad5c0e" CreationDate="2016-02-10T17:16:19.110" UserId="89959" Text="[This question][1], about whether Erlang is viable on embedded systems, seems like a valuable *type* of question for professional programmers to ask. Knowing the pitfalls of particular technologies for particular use-cases in advance can help developers plan their approach and make a more educated decision, potentially leading to better outcomes (e.g. shorter development time, a higher probability of success, a better final product, etc).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, it's not easily google-able, as indicated in the question itself. For less popular languages like Erlang, there's simply not much there to find; more popular languages/technologies like C++, there's likely to be more noise than signal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the question itself (at least in its final form after several edits) is pretty clear and specific about what the actual use-case is and what concerns there are about using Erlang.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's clearly not a good fit for StackOverflow, since it's necessarily somewhat opinion-based and isn't *quite* a &quot;programming problem,&quot; so it's been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it fit here? Are there other SE sites where it might fit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/14618922/1858225" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22394" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7870" RevisionGUID="fbbd4c06-a29f-453a-8cc6-6a1374ad5c0e" CreationDate="2016-02-10T17:16:19.110" UserId="89959" Text="Could a question about the appropriatenss of a tool for a particular use-case fit in here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22395" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7870" RevisionGUID="fbbd4c06-a29f-453a-8cc6-6a1374ad5c0e" CreationDate="2016-02-10T17:16:19.110" UserId="89959" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22396" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7871" RevisionGUID="f6496dfc-8f9a-4122-8a29-5c3525c9e905" CreationDate="2016-02-10T17:17:01.810" UserId="4091" Text="The tag has since been created/now exists. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more details on how tags are created, see the answers to http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/146949/can-we-please-have-the-foo-tag-on-our-site" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22397" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7870" RevisionGUID="e3fdc135-5c8f-44c2-a1af-814dd80d8ba7" CreationDate="2016-02-10T17:23:19.573" UserId="89959" Comment="added 77 characters in body" Text="[This question][1], about whether Erlang is viable on embedded systems, seems like a valuable *type* of question for professional programmers to ask. Knowing the pitfalls of particular technologies for particular use-cases in advance can help developers plan their approach and make a more educated decision, potentially leading to better outcomes (e.g. shorter development time, a higher probability of success, a better final product, etc).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, it's not easily google-able, as indicated in the question itself. For less popular languages like Erlang, there's simply not much there to find; more popular languages/technologies like C++, there's likely to be more noise than signal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the question itself (at least in its final form after several edits) is pretty clear and specific about what the actual use-case is and what concerns there are about using Erlang.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's clearly not a good fit for StackOverflow, since it's necessarily somewhat opinion-based and isn't *quite* a &quot;programming problem,&quot; so it's been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it fit here? Are there other SE sites where it might fit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** The new Software Recommendations site is one other possibility.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/14618922/1858225" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22398" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7870" RevisionGUID="165c157b-acd3-4f79-b0e5-4f71d9ef2418" CreationDate="2016-02-10T19:03:39.400" UserId="5099" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22399" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7872" RevisionGUID="e89907be-7110-4ee9-9065-b7889739f528" CreationDate="2016-02-10T19:06:00.033" UserId="5099" Text="Yes, I think that kind of questions can be on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the specific question that the link refers to would *not* be a good fit, as it seems to be too broad.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22400" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7514" RevisionGUID="fee7323e-bd68-4225-a22a-3adf6ab65704" CreationDate="2016-02-10T19:29:13.500" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="web.archive links." Text="Often these questions are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In days of old they would have been closed as &quot;not a real question&quot; or &quot;too localized.&quot;  The reasoning behind this is that there isn't really anything that one can answer definitively and draws upon our expert knowledge as a programmer. Furthermore, there are an endless stream of these small programs or snippets of code to be explained. The way the question is asked and its difficulty being findable and useful to *other* people made it too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today, these questions often are closed as &quot;unclear&quot; or &quot;too broad.&quot;  It is unclear exactly what the person is trying to get out of the question and how our answer can actually be helpful to them (it may be at too low a level, or too high a level, we don't know what the user knows (do they understand arrays? are they trying to understand [variadic functions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variadic_function)? standard lib IO call? etc...)  To properly explain *all* of this at all levels is at the level of a semester long class at the college level or a number of chapters in a &quot;teach yourself C in 21 minutes&quot; book.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of my favorite essays on programming is that of [How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary](https://web.archive.org/web/20150221071347/http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html) by Robert L Read.  The first item under the skills for a beginner is [Learn to Debug](https://web.archive.org/web/20150221071347/http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html#id2790282) which starts out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Debugging is the cornerstone of being a programmer. The first meaning of the verb to debug is to remove errors, but the meaning that really matters is to see into the execution of a program by examining it. A programmer that cannot debug effectively is blind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Idealists that think design, or analysis, or complexity theory, or whatnot, are more fundamental are not working programmers. The working programmer does not live in an ideal world. Even if you are perfect, your are surrounded by and must interact with code written by major software companies, organizations like GNU, and your colleagues. Most of this code is imperfect and imperfectly documented. Without the ability to gain visibility into the execution of this code the slightest bump will throw you permanently. Often this visibility can only be gained by experimentation, that is, debugging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions of &quot;explain this code to me&quot; is very much akin to someone coming up to you, handing you a picture&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![a picture of something][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Image from [draw an elephant](http://www.wikihow.com/Draw-an-Elephant#/Image:Draw-an-Elephant-Step-16.jpg)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and saying &quot;I don't understand this. Could you describe what you see here?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are so many possible options for someone to describe. We could describe the process of drawing (and you can see the sketch marks from previous revisions).  We could describe the elephant itself and its form. We could describe the technique (and if we think its good or bad). The possibilities are endless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in doing this - *you* aren't seeing it. You are listening to what we are saying (one would hope), but not actually going through the process of figuring it out yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is that process of learning how to see the code that is critically important for a programmer.  For us to describe it to you deprives you of an opportunity to learn how to use debugging tools. It deprives you of attempting to get that process in your own mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the things to realize is that walking through rudimentary code and explaining it line by line is kind of boring. Its something that you can do with a [debugger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debugger) - often available and integrated with the IDE you are likely using.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Show what your understanding of the code is. Are you confused about how `printf()` takes one argument in one example and five in another? About why some people write `for(;;)`?   Demonstrate that you have used the tools that are available to you to the best of your ability (and if necessary, read the tutorials for the debugger).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, for some reason, you don't have access to a debugger, learn how to print debugging statements and trace them out.  If necessary write a program that does the minimal number of lines and be sure to read the documentation for the function call you are about to ask about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are much more able to help you do the equivalent of spell out a word and understand its meaning rather than respond to a child coming up to us and saying &quot;read me a story&quot; and handing us a book.  To the student coming up to us now and asking us to &quot;read me a story&quot; we are responding, &quot;try to figure it out as much yourself on your own and ask about specific comprehension and vocabulary problems.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[How to debug small programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/iR5kum.jpg &quot;A picture of something. It might be a pot, a winnowing basket, a plowshare, a plow, a granary, a pillar, a mortar, a pestle or a brush.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22401" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7866" RevisionGUID="29c31fd4-e6a5-473a-b63a-327d8b35e743" CreationDate="2016-02-10T21:25:33.247" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22402" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7873" RevisionGUID="93377939-3a16-4c2a-96db-cec542de79b3" CreationDate="2016-02-11T10:34:22.647" UserId="22685" Text="Looking at [this &quot;why is it? &quot;question][1] I see it has 1 close vote and a bounty. I think its too vague to be a good question so I thought I'd give it a close vote - but when I attempted to do so, it was refused with the response &quot;this question has an open bounty and cannot be closed&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firstly, I'm sure questions could be closed even with bounty - [this][2] suggests that the bounty would be refunded. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, its already got a close vote - did this occur before the bounty was placed, in which case - bounties can be used as a way to keep rubbish questions open past the initial time that they usually get closing attention and thus end up staying open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is this a new thing, or should bounties not prevent closure?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/309607/why-arent-there-more-multi-natural-language-programming-languages&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5580/what-happens-to-a-bounty-when-a-question-is-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22403" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7873" RevisionGUID="93377939-3a16-4c2a-96db-cec542de79b3" CreationDate="2016-02-11T10:34:22.647" UserId="22685" Text="Open bounty prevents closure" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22404" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7873" RevisionGUID="93377939-3a16-4c2a-96db-cec542de79b3" CreationDate="2016-02-11T10:34:22.647" UserId="22685" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22405" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7873" RevisionGUID="d480a377-3293-4fd0-bdd3-e56badb3e308" CreationDate="2016-02-11T17:32:03.677" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|vote-to-close|bounty|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22406" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7874" RevisionGUID="96300e30-4aac-436c-9cf6-4db791095468" CreationDate="2016-02-11T17:46:48.350" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="From [Close votes shouldn't expire on bountied questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/120675/213963) on MSE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Remember: closing is a nomination for deletion. Saying, &quot;Oh, no need&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to involve a moderator; if close votes don't expire, I'll just sit on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; my hands until the bounty is done and *then* close -&gt; delete it&quot; is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; effectively saying, &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; **&quot;I'm fine with someone putting serious effort into answering this question out of hope for a bounty reward, because I plan to delete the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question and their answer, thus erasing both their effort and the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reputation involved.&quot;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't do that. Contact a moderator - if the question *must* be closed&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or migrated, they can *refund* the bounty and do so immediately,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; removing the question from the Featured list. The longer you wait, the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more potential for grief exists for everyone involved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that while my close vote on the round 1 was reopened, there appears to be at least a reasonable number of people looking at closing it on round 2 (once the bounty expires).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is not improved (and there doesn't seem to be any attempt by the OP to do so) to one that *is* answerable, once it is closed, I intend to cast a delete vote on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, ***hey &lt;s&gt;you guys&lt;/s&gt; mods***:  &quot;Before someone puts in some serious effort into answering this question out of hope for a bounty, you should look at letting this question get closed so that it can get fixed to not be vague so that I don't feel the need to delete vote it once the bounty expires and it gets closed again.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22407" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7875" RevisionGUID="abeab000-e9e8-48c3-b0b4-fae11bf5abe2" CreationDate="2016-02-11T23:36:47.190" UserId="1204" Text="&lt;p&gt;We’d love to help you. To &lt;b&gt;improve your chances&lt;/b&gt; of getting an answer, here are some tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;###STOP!&#xD;&#xA;This site is primarily about *software design.* We don't do code troubleshooting here, so if your question is about how to fix your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&quot;&gt;Search&lt;/a&gt;, and research&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and keep track of what you find. Even if you don't find a useful answer elsewhere on the site, including links to related questions that *haven't* helped can help others in understanding how your question is different from the rest. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Write a title that summarizes the specific problem &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The title is the first thing potential answerers will see, and if your title isn't interesting, they won't read the rest. So *make it count:*&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;- **Pretend you're talking to a busy colleague** and have to sum up your entire question in one sentence: what details can you include that will help someone identify and solve your problem? Include any error messages, key APIs, or unusual circumstances that make your question different from similar questions already on the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Spelling, grammar and punctuation are important!** Remember, this is the first part of your question others will see - you want to make a good impression. If you're not comfortable writing in English, ask a friend to proof-read it for you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you're having trouble summarizing the problem, **write the title *last*** - sometimes writing the rest of the question first can make it easier to describe the problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Bad:** C# Math Confusion&#xD;&#xA;- **Good:** Why does using float instead of int give me different results when all of my inputs are integers?&#xD;&#xA;- **Bad:** [php] session doubt&#xD;&#xA;- **Good:** How can I redirect users to different pages based on session data in PHP?&#xD;&#xA;- **Bad:** android if else problems&#xD;&#xA;- **Good:** Why does str == &quot;value&quot; evaluate to false when str is set to &quot;value&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Introduce the problem before you post any code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the body of your question, start by expanding on the summary you put in the title. Explain how you encountered the problem you're trying to solve, and any difficulties that have prevented you from solving it yourself. The first paragraph in your question is the second thing most readers will see, so make it as engaging and informative as possible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Help others reproduce the problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all questions benefit from including code. But if your problem is *with* code you've written, you should include some. But **don't just copy in your entire program!** Not only is this likely to get you in trouble if you're posting your employer's code, it likely includes a lot of irrelevant details that readers will need to ignore when trying to reproduce the problem. Here are some guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;- Include just enough code to allow others to reproduce the problem. For help with this, read [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;- If it is possible to create a live example of the problem that you can *link* to (for example, on http://sqlfiddle.com/ or http://jsbin.com/) then do so - but also include the code in your question itself. Not everyone can access external sites, and the links may break over time. &#xD;&#xA;- Remember, ***we don't fix broken code here.***  Questions should be focused on design, not implementation.  If your question is about your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Include all relevant tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to include a tag for the language, library, and specific API your question relates to. If you start typing in the tags field, the system will suggest tags that match what you've typed - be sure and read the descriptions given for them to make sure they're relevant to the question you're asking! See also: [What are tags, and how should I use them?](/help/tagging)&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;###Proof-read before posting!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that you're ready to ask your question, take a deep breath and read through it from start to finish. Pretend you're seeing it for the first time: *does it make sense?* Try reproducing the problem yourself, in a fresh environment and make sure you can do so using only the information included in your question. Add any details you missed and read through it again. Now is a good time to make sure that your title still describes the problem!&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;###Post the question and respond to feedback&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you post, leave the question open in your browser for a bit, and see if anyone comments. If you missed an obvious piece of information, be ready to respond by editing your question to include it. If someone posts an answer, be ready to try it out and provide feedback!&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;###Look for help asking for help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In spite of all your efforts, you may find your questions poorly-received. Don't despair! Learning to ask a good question is a worthy pursuit, and not one you'll master overnight. Here are some additional resources that you may find useful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Writing the perfect question](http://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question/)&#xD;&#xA;- [How do I ask and answer homework questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10811/how-do-i-ask-and-answer-homework-questions)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to debug small programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Meta discussions on asking questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/asking-questions)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to ask questions the smart way](http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) &amp;mdash; long but good advice." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22408" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7875" RevisionGUID="abeab000-e9e8-48c3-b0b4-fae11bf5abe2" CreationDate="2016-02-11T23:36:47.190" UserId="1204" Text="How do I ask a good question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22409" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7875" RevisionGUID="abeab000-e9e8-48c3-b0b4-fae11bf5abe2" CreationDate="2016-02-11T23:36:47.190" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22410" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7875" RevisionGUID="84d5dbeb-7a64-444f-979d-a9d4f66b247e" CreationDate="2016-02-11T23:44:16.853" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="&lt;p&gt;We’d love to help you. To &lt;b&gt;improve your chances&lt;/b&gt; of getting an answer, here are some tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;###STOP!&#xD;&#xA;This site is primarily about *software design.* We don't do code troubleshooting here, so if your question is about how to fix your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&quot;&gt;Search&lt;/a&gt;, and research&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and keep track of what you find. Even if you don't find a useful answer elsewhere on the site, including links to related questions that *haven't* helped can help others in understanding how your question is different from the rest. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Write a title that summarizes the specific problem &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The title is the first thing potential answerers will see, and if your title isn't interesting, they won't read the rest. So *make it count:*&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;- **Pretend you're talking to a busy colleague** and have to sum up your entire question in one sentence: what details can you include that will help someone identify and solve your problem? Include any error messages, key APIs, or unusual circumstances that make your question different from similar questions already on the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Spelling, grammar and punctuation are important!** Remember, this is the first part of your question others will see - you want to make a good impression. If you're not comfortable writing in English, ask a friend to proof-read it for you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you're having trouble summarizing the problem, **write the title *last*** - sometimes writing the rest of the question first can make it easier to describe the problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Bad:** C# Math Confusion&#xD;&#xA;- **Good:** Why does using float instead of int give me different results when all of my inputs are integers?&#xD;&#xA;- **Bad:** [php] session doubt&#xD;&#xA;- **Good:** How can I redirect users to different pages based on session data in PHP?&#xD;&#xA;- **Bad:** android if else problems&#xD;&#xA;- **Good:** Why does str == &quot;value&quot; evaluate to false when str is set to &quot;value&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Introduce the problem before you post any code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the body of your question, start by expanding on the summary you put in the title. Explain how you encountered the problem you're trying to solve, and any difficulties that have prevented you from solving it yourself. The first paragraph in your question is the second thing most readers will see, so make it as engaging and informative as possible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Help others reproduce the problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all questions benefit from including code. But if your problem is *with* code you've written, you should include some. But **don't just copy in your entire program!** Not only is this likely to get you in trouble if you're posting your employer's code, it likely includes a lot of irrelevant details that readers will need to ignore when trying to reproduce the problem. Here are some guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;- Include just enough code to allow others to reproduce the problem. For help with this, read [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;- If it is possible to create a live example of the problem that you can *link* to (for example, on http://sqlfiddle.com/ or http://jsbin.com/) then do so - but also include the code in your question itself. Not everyone can access external sites, and the links may break over time. &#xD;&#xA;- Remember, ***we don't fix broken code here.***  Questions should be focused on design, not implementation.  If your question is about your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Include all relevant tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to include a tag for the language, library, and specific API your question relates to. If you start typing in the tags field, the system will suggest tags that match what you've typed - be sure and read the descriptions given for them to make sure they're relevant to the question you're asking! See also: [What are tags, and how should I use them?](/help/tagging)&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;###Proof-read before posting!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that you're ready to ask your question, take a deep breath and read through it from start to finish. Pretend you're seeing it for the first time: *does it make sense?* Try reproducing the problem yourself, in a fresh environment and make sure you can do so using only the information included in your question. Add any details you missed and read through it again. Now is a good time to make sure that your title still describes the problem!&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;###Post the question and respond to feedback&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you post, leave the question open in your browser for a bit, and see if anyone comments. If you missed an obvious piece of information, be ready to respond by editing your question to include it. If someone posts an answer, be ready to try it out and provide feedback!&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;###Look for help asking for help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In spite of all your efforts, you may find your questions poorly-received. Don't despair! Learning to ask a good question is a worthy pursuit, and not one you'll master overnight. Here are some additional resources that you may find useful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Writing the perfect question](http://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Open letter to students with homework problems](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to debug small programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Meta discussions on asking questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/faq)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to ask questions the smart way](http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) &amp;mdash; long but good advice." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22411" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7875" RevisionGUID="91dbf9e9-4b62-4424-a572-920f83526fbe" CreationDate="2016-02-11T23:49:45.903" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="&lt;p&gt;We’d love to help you. To &lt;b&gt;improve your chances&lt;/b&gt; of getting an answer, here are some tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;###STOP!&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is primarily about *software design.* We don't do code troubleshooting here, so if your question is about how to fix your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&quot;&gt;Search&lt;/a&gt;, and research&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and keep track of what you find. Even if you don't find a useful answer elsewhere on the site, including links to related questions that *haven't* helped can help others in understanding how your question is different from the rest. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Write a title that summarizes the specific problem &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The title is the first thing potential answerers will see, and if your title isn't interesting, they won't read the rest. So *make it count:*&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;- **Pretend you're talking to a busy colleague** and have to sum up your entire question in one sentence: what details can you include that will help someone identify and solve your problem? Include any error messages, key APIs, or unusual circumstances that make your question different from similar questions already on the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Spelling, grammar and punctuation are important!** Remember, this is the first part of your question others will see - you want to make a good impression. If you're not comfortable writing in English, ask a friend to proof-read it for you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you're having trouble summarizing the problem, **write the title *last*** - sometimes writing the rest of the question first can make it easier to describe the problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Bad:** C# Math Confusion&#xD;&#xA;- **Good:** Why does using float instead of int give me different results when all of my inputs are integers?&#xD;&#xA;- **Bad:** [php] session doubt&#xD;&#xA;- **Good:** How can I redirect users to different pages based on session data in PHP?&#xD;&#xA;- **Bad:** android if else problems&#xD;&#xA;- **Good:** Why does str == &quot;value&quot; evaluate to false when str is set to &quot;value&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Introduce the problem before you post any code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the body of your question, start by expanding on the summary you put in the title. Explain how you encountered the problem you're trying to solve, and any difficulties that have prevented you from solving it yourself. The first paragraph in your question is the second thing most readers will see, so make it as engaging and informative as possible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Help others reproduce the problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all questions benefit from including code. But if your problem is *with* code you've written, you should include some. But **don't just copy in your entire program!** Not only is this likely to get you in trouble if you're posting your employer's code, it likely includes a lot of irrelevant details that readers will need to ignore when trying to reproduce the problem. Here are some guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;- Include just enough code to allow others to reproduce the problem. For help with this, read [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;- If it is possible to create a live example of the problem that you can *link* to (for example, on http://sqlfiddle.com/ or http://jsbin.com/) then do so - but also include the code in your question itself. Not everyone can access external sites, and the links may break over time. &#xD;&#xA;- Remember, ***we don't fix broken code here.***  Questions should be focused on design, not implementation.  If your question is about your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Include all relevant tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to include a tag for the language, library, and specific API your question relates to. If you start typing in the tags field, the system will suggest tags that match what you've typed - be sure and read the descriptions given for them to make sure they're relevant to the question you're asking! See also: [What are tags, and how should I use them?](/help/tagging)&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;###Proof-read before posting!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that you're ready to ask your question, take a deep breath and read through it from start to finish. Pretend you're seeing it for the first time: *does it make sense?* Try reproducing the problem yourself, in a fresh environment and make sure you can do so using only the information included in your question. Add any details you missed and read through it again. Now is a good time to make sure that your title still describes the problem!&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;###Post the question and respond to feedback&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you post, leave the question open in your browser for a bit, and see if anyone comments. If you missed an obvious piece of information, be ready to respond by editing your question to include it. If someone posts an answer, be ready to try it out and provide feedback!&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;###Look for help asking for help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In spite of all your efforts, you may find your questions poorly-received. Don't despair! Learning to ask a good question is a worthy pursuit, and not one you'll master overnight. Here are some additional resources that you may find useful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Writing the perfect question](http://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Open letter to students with homework problems](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to debug small programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Meta discussions on asking questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/faq)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to ask questions the smart way](http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) &amp;mdash; long but good advice." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22412" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7875" RevisionGUID="a4a9d3f5-c7d7-45ae-a637-d4f041145c75" CreationDate="2016-02-11T23:55:35.373" UserId="52929" Comment="added 207 characters in body" Text="&lt;p&gt;We’d love to help you. To &lt;b&gt;improve your chances&lt;/b&gt; of getting an answer, here are some tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;###STOP!&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is primarily about *software design.* We don't do code troubleshooting here, so if your question is about how to fix your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&quot;&gt;Search&lt;/a&gt;, and research&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and keep track of what you find. Even if you don't find a useful answer elsewhere on the site, including links to related questions that *haven't* helped can help others in understanding how your question is different from the rest. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind readers (other than you) _have_ to be able to understand your situation. They don't know what you've researched, tried, or the details driving your problem. No one here can read your mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Write a title that summarizes the specific problem &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The title is the first thing potential answerers will see, and if your title isn't interesting, they won't read the rest. So *make it count:*&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;- **Pretend you're talking to a busy colleague** and have to sum up your entire question in one sentence: what details can you include that will help someone identify and solve your problem? Include any error messages, key APIs, or unusual circumstances that make your question different from similar questions already on the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Spelling, grammar and punctuation are important!** Remember, this is the first part of your question others will see - you want to make a good impression. If you're not comfortable writing in English, ask a friend to proof-read it for you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you're having trouble summarizing the problem, **write the title *last*** - sometimes writing the rest of the question first can make it easier to describe the problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Bad:** C# Math Confusion&#xD;&#xA;- **Good:** Why does using float instead of int give me different results when all of my inputs are integers?&#xD;&#xA;- **Bad:** [php] session doubt&#xD;&#xA;- **Good:** How can I redirect users to different pages based on session data in PHP?&#xD;&#xA;- **Bad:** android if else problems&#xD;&#xA;- **Good:** Why does str == &quot;value&quot; evaluate to false when str is set to &quot;value&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Introduce the problem before you post any code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the body of your question, start by expanding on the summary you put in the title. Explain how you encountered the problem you're trying to solve, and any difficulties that have prevented you from solving it yourself. The first paragraph in your question is the second thing most readers will see, so make it as engaging and informative as possible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Help others reproduce the problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all questions benefit from including code. But if your problem is *with* code you've written, you should include some. But **don't just copy in your entire program!** Not only is this likely to get you in trouble if you're posting your employer's code, it likely includes a lot of irrelevant details that readers will need to ignore when trying to reproduce the problem. Here are some guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;- Include just enough code to allow others to reproduce the problem. For help with this, read [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;- If it is possible to create a live example of the problem that you can *link* to (for example, on http://sqlfiddle.com/ or http://jsbin.com/) then do so - but also include the code in your question itself. Not everyone can access external sites, and the links may break over time. &#xD;&#xA;- Remember, ***we don't fix broken code here.***  Questions should be focused on design, not implementation.  If your question is about your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Include all relevant tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to include a tag for the language, library, and specific API your question relates to. If you start typing in the tags field, the system will suggest tags that match what you've typed - be sure and read the descriptions given for them to make sure they're relevant to the question you're asking! See also: [What are tags, and how should I use them?](/help/tagging)&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;###Proof-read before posting!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that you're ready to ask your question, take a deep breath and read through it from start to finish. Pretend you're seeing it for the first time: *does it make sense?* Try reproducing the problem yourself, in a fresh environment and make sure you can do so using only the information included in your question. Add any details you missed and read through it again. Now is a good time to make sure that your title still describes the problem!&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;###Post the question and respond to feedback&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you post, leave the question open in your browser for a bit, and see if anyone comments. If you missed an obvious piece of information, be ready to respond by editing your question to include it. If someone posts an answer, be ready to try it out and provide feedback!&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;###Look for help asking for help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In spite of all your efforts, you may find your questions poorly-received. Don't despair! Learning to ask a good question is a worthy pursuit, and not one you'll master overnight. Here are some additional resources that you may find useful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Writing the perfect question](http://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Open letter to students with homework problems](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to debug small programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Meta discussions on asking questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/faq)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to ask questions the smart way](http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) &amp;mdash; long but good advice." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22413" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7875" RevisionGUID="a514c90c-0179-4630-b15b-69a49147878c" CreationDate="2016-02-12T14:09:12.313" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq-proposed|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22414" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7875" RevisionGUID="a416757b-92a0-4421-8c59-ba5878eab5cc" CreationDate="2016-02-12T14:19:42.373" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags; h2 so I can h3. Grouping examples. Link to mcve. Title relevance section." Text="&lt;p&gt;We’d love to help you. To &lt;b&gt;improve your chances&lt;/b&gt; of getting an answer, here are some tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;###STOP!&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is primarily about *software design.* We don't do code troubleshooting here, so if your question is about how to fix your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&quot;&gt;Search&lt;/a&gt;, and research&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and keep track of what you find. Even if you don't find a useful answer elsewhere on the site, including links to related questions that *haven't* helped can help others in understanding how your question is different from the rest. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind readers (other than you) _have_ to be able to understand your situation. They don't know what you've researched, tried, or the details driving your problem. No one here can read your mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Write a title that summarizes the specific problem &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The title is the first thing potential answerers will see, and if your title isn't interesting, they won't read the rest. So *make it count:*&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;- **Pretend you're talking to a busy colleague** and have to sum up your entire question in one sentence: what details can you include that will help someone identify and solve your problem? Include any error messages, key APIs, or unusual circumstances that make your question different from similar questions already on the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Spelling, grammar and punctuation are important!** Remember, this is the first part of your question others will see - you want to make a good impression. If you're not comfortable writing in English, ask a friend to proof-read it for you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you're having trouble summarizing the problem, **write the title *last*** - sometimes writing the rest of the question first can make it easier to describe the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Make sure it is **relevant to the actual problem** you are having. Many times people will read the title and answer that question without reading the rest of the body of the question. If the title and body of the question don't match, it is likely that the answers that you get will be confused and go off on tangents that aren't ultimately helpful to solving the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- On floating point errors...&#xD;&#xA;  - **Bad:** C# Math Confusion&#xD;&#xA;  - **Good:** Why does using float instead of int give me different results when all of my inputs are integers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- On redirecting in php&#xD;&#xA;  - **Bad:** [php] session doubt&#xD;&#xA;  - **Good:** How can I redirect users to different pages based on session data in PHP?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- On flow control and equality&#xD;&#xA;  - **Bad:** android if else problems&#xD;&#xA;  - **Good:** Why does str == &quot;value&quot; evaluate to false when str is set to &quot;value&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Introduce the problem before you post any code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the body of your question, start by expanding on the summary you put in the title. Explain how you encountered the problem you're trying to solve, and any difficulties that have prevented you from solving it yourself. The first paragraph in your question is the second thing most readers will see, so make it as engaging and informative as possible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Help others reproduce the problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many Programmers.SE questions don't significantly benefit from including code. But if your problem is *with* code you've written, you should include some. But **don't just copy in your entire program!** Not only is this likely to get you in trouble if you're posting your employer's code, it likely includes a lot of irrelevant details that readers will need to ignore when trying to reproduce the problem. Here are some guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;- Include just enough code to allow others to describe the design. For help with this, read [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;- If it is possible to create a live example of the problem that you can *link* to (for example, on http://sqlfiddle.com/ or http://jsbin.com/) then do so - but also include the code in your question itself. Not everyone can access external sites, and the links may break over time. &#xD;&#xA;- Remember, ***we don't fix broken code here.***  Questions should be focused on design, not implementation.  If your question is about your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Include all relevant tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to include a tag for the language, library, and specific API your question relates to. If you start typing in the tags field, the system will suggest tags that match what you've typed - be sure and read the descriptions given for them to make sure they're relevant to the question you're asking! See also: [What are tags, and how should I use them?](/help/tagging)&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;##Proof-read before posting!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that you're ready to ask your question, take a deep breath and read through it from start to finish. Pretend you're seeing it for the first time: *does it make sense?* Try reproducing the problem yourself, in a fresh environment and make sure you can do so using only the information included in your question. Add any details you missed and read through it again. Now is a good time to make sure that your title still describes the problem!&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;##Post the question and respond to feedback&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you post, leave the question open in your browser for a bit, and see if anyone comments. If you missed an obvious piece of information, be ready to respond by editing your question to include it. If someone posts an answer, be ready to try it out and provide feedback!&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;##Look for help asking for help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In spite of all your efforts, you may find your questions poorly-received. Don't despair! Learning to ask a good question is a worthy pursuit, and not one you'll master overnight. Here are some additional resources that you may find useful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Writing the perfect question](http://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Open letter to students with homework problems](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to debug small programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Meta discussions on asking questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/faq)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to ask questions the smart way](http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) &amp;mdash; long but good advice." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22415" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1624" RevisionGUID="a16e6cc4-a858-472f-846a-7bc1e24321f1" CreationDate="2016-02-12T14:53:40.373" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Question now deleted. Give appopriate context to users without 10k rep." Text="The question [Is there something else like SquareSpace out there?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78253/is-there-something-else-like-squarespace-out-there-closed) (10k link) reminded me that there is nothing explicit in our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) about shopping recommendation questions. The question starts out with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've been looking at SquareSpace to host my business and customer-support website, but I really require a forum, and SquareSpace's equivalent, a Discussion widget, frankly sucks for the purpose. Are there any other SquareSpace-like outfits that do have a good UI-designer as well as a good Forum? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should there be? Should we take an approach similar to Super User and Gaming where recommendations are off-topic? And if so, do we exclude only questions like &quot;I'm looking for a service that does what I need&quot; or also things like &quot;is there a library in language X that has feature Y&quot;? (Here's an [example](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78379/need-advice-on-php-search-functionality) of the latter kind of questions.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22416" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7875" RevisionGUID="9859714f-ae3e-4d1a-9bb2-9cb1b6140d15" CreationDate="2016-02-13T12:38:20.007" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/698486358835392513" />
  <row Id="22417" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7876" RevisionGUID="7409b799-3d58-4e25-9bff-5c42e47f1573" CreationDate="2016-02-16T21:13:44.437" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Regarding this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Where did the notion of “one return only” come from?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should be done with it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Nothing&#xD;&#xA;* Close&#xD;&#xA;* Delete&#xD;&#xA;* Wiki lock&#xD;&#xA;* Something else&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/118703" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22418" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7876" RevisionGUID="7409b799-3d58-4e25-9bff-5c42e47f1573" CreationDate="2016-02-16T21:13:44.437" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Regarding the &quot;one return only&quot; question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22419" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7876" RevisionGUID="7409b799-3d58-4e25-9bff-5c42e47f1573" CreationDate="2016-02-16T21:13:44.437" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22420" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7877" RevisionGUID="085ae057-9ebc-4dbe-a6a4-270a39ca074e" CreationDate="2016-02-16T21:13:44.437" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I suggest a wiki lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question and its top answer dig into historical details that may not be commonly known. Specifically, there is a programming mantra still around that has its roots in a type of programming that many modern programmers are not familiar with. The top answer provides very clear and useful information to explain the origins of this mantra and why it _used_ to be a good idea but anymore is not necessary. This is specifically the type of resource one could link to for concrete evidence to prove one's point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As the question is already a community wiki, a wiki lock's only effect would be to ensure the question is neither closed nor deleted. As I believe it has value to the community, but others have [suggested closing or deleting it][1], I vote in favor of keeping this one around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/27625897#27625897" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22421" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7878" RevisionGUID="c690a02f-d00b-4e06-95d2-c63d80bd504e" CreationDate="2016-02-16T21:20:46.760" UserId="93290" Text="I suggest closing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is unlikely to be deleted, and impossible for the roomba to delete. This would serve as [one less question for users to use as an example of an off topic but still open question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/118703?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that there is value in this question - but it is rather large and has many, many answers, some of which are in need of pruning off. A close would serve to preserve it as it sits today, while preventing people from piling additional answers onto the already thoroughly explained question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22422" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7879" RevisionGUID="784bbf04-537b-4086-b76f-bc90456c8f88" CreationDate="2016-02-17T09:32:05.443" UserId="25936" Text="I see no reason to do anything about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22423" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7875" RevisionGUID="ad89b62d-6bea-4417-babb-417cc15adfff" CreationDate="2016-02-18T02:06:22.923" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="&lt;p&gt;We’d love to help you. To &lt;b&gt;improve your chances&lt;/b&gt; of getting an answer, here are some tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;###STOP!&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is primarily about *software design.* We don't do code troubleshooting here, so if your question is about how to fix your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&quot;&gt;Search&lt;/a&gt;, and research&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and keep track of what you find. Even if you don't find a useful answer elsewhere on the site, including links to related questions that *haven't* helped can help others in understanding how your question is different from the rest. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind readers (other than you) _have_ to be able to understand your situation. They don't know what you've researched, tried, or the details driving your problem. No one here can read your mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Write a title that summarizes the specific problem &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The title is the first thing potential answerers will see, and if your title isn't interesting, they won't read the rest. So *make it count:*&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;- **Pretend you're talking to a busy colleague** and have to sum up your entire question in one sentence: what details can you include that will help someone identify and solve your problem? Include any error messages, key APIs, or unusual circumstances that make your question different from similar questions already on the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Spelling, grammar and punctuation are important!** Remember, this is the first part of your question others will see - you want to make a good impression. If you're not comfortable writing in English, ask a friend to proof-read it for you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you're having trouble summarizing the problem, **write the title *last*** - sometimes writing the rest of the question first can make it easier to describe the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Make sure it is **relevant to the actual problem** you are having. Many times people will read the title and answer that question without reading the rest of the body of the question. If the title and body of the question don't match, it is likely that the answers that you get will be confused and go off on tangents that aren't ultimately helpful to solving the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- On floating point errors...&#xD;&#xA;  - **Bad:** C# Math Confusion&#xD;&#xA;  - **Good:** Why does using float instead of int give me different results when all of my inputs are integers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- On redirecting in php&#xD;&#xA;  - **Bad:** [php] session doubt&#xD;&#xA;  - **Good:** How can I redirect users to different pages based on session data in PHP?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- On flow control and equality&#xD;&#xA;  - **Bad:** android if else problems&#xD;&#xA;  - **Good:** Why does str == &quot;value&quot; evaluate to false when str is set to &quot;value&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Introduce the problem before you post any code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the body of your question, start by expanding on the summary you put in the title. Explain how you encountered the problem you're trying to solve, and any difficulties that have prevented you from solving it yourself. The first paragraph in your question is the second thing most readers will see, so make it as engaging and informative as possible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Help others reproduce the problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many Programmers.SE questions don't significantly benefit from including code. But if your problem is *with* code you've written, you should include some. But **don't just copy in your entire program!** Not only is this likely to get you in trouble if you're posting your employer's code, it likely includes a lot of irrelevant details that readers will need to ignore when trying to reproduce the problem. Here are some guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;- Include just enough code to allow others to describe the design. For help with this, read [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;- If it is possible to create a live example of the problem that you can *link* to (for example, on http://sqlfiddle.com/ or http://jsbin.com/) then do so - but also include the code in your question itself. Not everyone can access external sites, and the links may break over time. &#xD;&#xA;- Remember, ***we don't fix broken code here.***  Questions should be focused on design, not implementation.  If your question is about your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Include all relevant tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to include a tag for the language, library, and specific API your question relates to. If you start typing in the tags field, the system will suggest tags that match what you've typed - be sure and read the descriptions given for them to make sure they're relevant to the question you're asking! See also: [What are tags, and how should I use them?](/help/tagging)&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;##Proof-read before posting!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that you're ready to ask your question, take a deep breath and read through it from start to finish. Pretend you're seeing it for the first time: *does it make sense?* Try reproducing the problem yourself, in a fresh environment and make sure you can do so using only the information included in your question. Add any details you missed and read through it again. Now is a good time to make sure that your title still describes the problem!&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;##Post the question and respond to feedback&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you post, leave the question open in your browser for a bit, and see if anyone comments. If you missed an obvious piece of information, be ready to respond by editing your question to include it. If someone posts an answer, be ready to try it out and provide feedback!&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;##Look for help asking for help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In spite of all your efforts, you may find your questions poorly-received. Don't despair! Learning to ask a good question is a worthy pursuit, and not one you'll master overnight. Here are some additional resources that you may find useful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Writing the perfect question](http://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Open letter to students with homework problems](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to debug small programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Meta discussions on asking questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/faq)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to ask questions the smart way](http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) &amp;mdash; long but good advice." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22424" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7880" RevisionGUID="f61eb8db-4374-4bd5-89a2-e5d1bb9afc05" CreationDate="2016-02-18T15:32:51.313" UserId="31260" Text="The question looks generally good to me, it appears to be reasonably clear and focused and rather difficult to misinterpret.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though some answerers managed to &quot;leak through&quot; minor slippery points in wording. Granted, some of them dumped their stuff in first several hours prior to [revision 4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/118703/revisions &quot;'Nov 9 '11 at 23:19'&quot;), while text (and especially title) of the question were leaving bit more room for misinterpretation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior editors did pretty good job but there still seem to be some corrections worth considering, especially now that question apparently gained [huge popularity](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/103053/165773 &quot;see 'How aggressively should we maintain and improve very popular questions?'&quot;) and has got to our [all time top 50 open questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A85000+closed%3Ano) with over 85K views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would particularly recommend the following changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Add [tag:history] tag. After revision 4 main focus of the question has been very prominently shifted to this and lack of the respective tag looks really confusing, not to mention that this makes it harder to search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Note about ternary operator that &quot;gets even less love among Java programmers etc&quot;. It probably fit well into trollish / ranty mood of the original revision of the question but in current form, it looks rather poor fit to the rest of the question. I would replace it with more neutral explanation, about like this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;But that's only because code snippet was made as simple as possible to clearer show the idea, the question is about more realistic cases where ternary operator is not an option.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Closing words &quot;why do people adhere to it rigidly?&quot; are worth removing. These are just a leftover of original rant and really have no place in the question. Actually, words like this are usually enough for me to vote close as [opinion based / too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6742/31260 &quot;see 'On discussions and why they don't make good questions'&quot;) but prior editors made a really good job of making it clear that it's tangential to the question (except for maybe the [most _rigidly_ careless answerers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118703/where-did-the-notion-of-one-return-only-come-from/119117#comment654398_212495 &quot;example: 'the question was twofold and I answered to the latter aspect of it... rigidly blah blah' OMFG&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cleaning up the question may be good, but we would better take care of tangential answers as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118705  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118748  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118771  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118795  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118813  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118939  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/119041  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/119117  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/119260  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/160909  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/212495  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/213355  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/221352  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/261146&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even now, visitors probably find these confusing and wonder how these are related to the question. But very attentive readers can at least re-check the question text and say, _&quot;ah, this answer exploits &amp;lt;such and such minor point&amp;gt; of the question, I understand&quot;_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if the question is cleaned as suggested above, these answers will become really harmful, telling tens thousands visitors, _&quot;hey, it's okay to totally ignore what is asked about and just drop into answer box whatever comes to your mind&quot;_." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22425" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7880" RevisionGUID="d5888ecc-69fe-45c8-b893-101fc616ece0" CreationDate="2016-02-18T15:38:59.497" UserId="31260" Comment="minor wordsmithing" Text="The question looks generally good to me, it appears to be reasonably clear and focused and rather difficult to misinterpret.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though some answerers managed to &quot;leak through&quot; minor slippery points in wording. Granted, some of them dumped their stuff in first several hours prior to [revision 4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/118703/revisions &quot;'Nov 9 '11 at 23:19'&quot;), while text (and especially title) of the question were leaving bit more room for misinterpretation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior editors did pretty good job but there still seem to be some corrections worth considering, especially now that question apparently gained [huge popularity](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/103053/165773 &quot;see 'How aggressively should we maintain and improve very popular questions?'&quot;) and has got to our [all time top 50 open questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A85000+closed%3Ano) with over 85K views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would particularly recommend the following changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Add [tag:history] tag. After revision 4 main focus of the question has been very prominently shifted to this and lack of the respective tag looks really confusing. Not to mention that this makes it harder to search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Note about ternary operator that &quot;gets even less love among Java programmers etc&quot;. It probably fit well into trollish / ranty mood of the original text but in current form, it looks rather poor fit to the rest of the question. I would replace it with more neutral explanation, about like this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;But that's only because code snippet was made as simple as possible to clearer show the idea, the question is about more realistic cases where ternary operator is not an option.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Closing words &quot;why do people adhere to it rigidly?&quot; are worth removing. These are just a leftover of original rant and really have no place in the question. Actually, words like this are usually enough for me to vote close as [opinion based / too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6742/31260 &quot;see 'On discussions and why they don't make good questions'&quot;) but prior editors made a really good job of making it clear that it's tangential to the question (except for maybe the [most _rigidly_ careless answerers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118703/where-did-the-notion-of-one-return-only-come-from/119117#comment654398_212495 &quot;example: 'the question was twofold and I answered to the latter aspect of it... rigidly blah blah' OMFG&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cleaning up the question may be good, but we would better take care of tangential answers as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118705  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118748  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118771  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118795  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118813  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118939  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/119041  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/119117  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/119260  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/160909  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/212495  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/213355  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/221352  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/261146&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even now, visitors probably find these confusing and wonder how these are related to the question. But very attentive readers can at least re-check the question text and say, _&quot;ah, this answer exploits &amp;lt;such and such minor point of the question&amp;gt;, I understand&quot;_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if the question is cleaned as suggested above, these answers will become really harmful, telling tens thousands visitors, _&quot;hey, it's okay to totally ignore what is asked about and just drop into answer box whatever comes to your mind&quot;_." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22426" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7876" RevisionGUID="cfc2218a-663e-43fc-b4ff-a91880ad63a8" CreationDate="2016-02-18T18:02:10.873" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|quality|popular-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22427" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7880" RevisionGUID="bc270fad-89de-4cfe-b551-9e5c80d07632" CreationDate="2016-02-18T18:27:54.287" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="The question looks generally good to me, it appears to be reasonably clear and focused and rather difficult to misinterpret.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though some answerers managed to &quot;leak through&quot; minor slippery points in wording. Granted, some of them dumped their stuff in first several hours prior to [revision 4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/118703/revisions &quot;'Nov 9 '11 at 23:19'&quot;), while text (and especially title) of the question were leaving bit more room for misinterpretation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior editors did pretty good job but there still seem to be some corrections worth considering, especially now that question apparently gained [huge popularity](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/103053/165773 &quot;see 'How aggressively should we maintain and improve very popular questions?'&quot;) and has got to our [all time top 50 open questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A85000+closed%3Ano) with over 85K views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would particularly recommend the following changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Add [tag:history] tag. After revision 4 main focus of the question has been very prominently shifted to this and lack of the respective tag looks really confusing. Not to mention that this makes it harder to search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Note about ternary operator that &quot;gets even less love among Java programmers etc&quot;. It probably fit well into trollish / ranty mood of the original text but in current form, it looks rather poor fit to the rest of the question. I would replace it with more neutral explanation, about like this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;But that's only because code snippet was made as simple as possible to clearer show the idea, the question is about more realistic cases where ternary operator is not an option.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Closing words &quot;why do people adhere to it rigidly?&quot; are worth removing. These are just a leftover of original rant and really have no place in the question. Actually, words like this are usually enough for me to vote close as [opinion based / too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6742/31260 &quot;see 'On discussions and why they don't make good questions'&quot;) but prior editors did a really good job of making it clear that it's tangential to the question (except for maybe the [most _rigidly_ careless answerers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118703/where-did-the-notion-of-one-return-only-come-from/119117#comment654398_212495 &quot;example: 'the question was twofold and I answered to the latter aspect of it... rigidly blah blah' OMFG&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cleaning up the question may be good, but we would better take care of tangential answers as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118705  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118748  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118771  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118795  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118813  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/118939  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/119041  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/119117  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/119260  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/160909  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/212495  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/213355  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/221352  &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/261146&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even now, visitors probably find these confusing and wonder how these are related to the question. But very attentive readers can at least re-check the question text and say, _&quot;ah, this answer exploits &amp;lt;such and such minor point of the question&amp;gt;, I understand&quot;_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if the question is cleaned as suggested above, these answers will become really harmful, telling tens thousands visitors, _&quot;hey, it's okay to totally ignore what is asked about and just drop into answer box whatever comes to your mind&quot;_." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22428" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7154" RevisionGUID="c3f7e968-52d6-4967-8da9-a2e81e78b9cf" CreationDate="2016-02-21T13:46:17.647" UserId="52929" Comment="deleted 19 characters in body" Text="There are some very creative SE users and contributors to [Code Review](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/) that have used the Stack API to build an open source SE Chat bot that is currently being used for many things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://github.com/Zomis/Duga&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The top contributors of this project have graciously offered to include the Programmers chat site, [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) to their list of targets for a job that they have already written.  This job will now look on Stack Overflow for comments where users are suggesting a question be a better fit on Programmers.  When it finds such comments the chat bot will link them in our chat room so that we can respond more quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The chat bot user will be the following user:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Duga](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/125580)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The benefit is clear, this will allow us to jump in and provide better guidance about cross posting before a cross post occurs, especially an off topic cross post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that you like this feature is useful and you like it but would suggest improvements then please do so here.  Conversely if you think this is annoying and stupid or a bad idea then I would like to hear from you too.  We are trying this on a trial basis at this point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh and a very special thank you to user SimonAndréForsberg for making this happen! :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22429" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7881" RevisionGUID="692d6909-33fe-4c58-b6e2-6d83b5ada17c" CreationDate="2016-02-21T19:48:04.947" UserId="109112" Text="[I just posted a question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/310716/increase-code-duplication-to-simplify-business-rules-in-views-mvc) about business rules in MVC views; when going to tag the question I was looking for *business-something* and found the [`business-logic`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/business-logic/info) and [`business-rules`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/business-rules/info) tags, neither of which have a tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`business-logic` seems to be more used with 80 questions tagged vs `business-rules` at 37.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a difference between the two? Should they be merged?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22430" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7881" RevisionGUID="692d6909-33fe-4c58-b6e2-6d83b5ada17c" CreationDate="2016-02-21T19:48:04.947" UserId="109112" Text="Tags: business logic vs business rules" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22431" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7881" RevisionGUID="692d6909-33fe-4c58-b6e2-6d83b5ada17c" CreationDate="2016-02-21T19:48:04.947" UserId="109112" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22432" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7882" RevisionGUID="ad823c86-3d25-401d-9579-5e27a4acc7f2" CreationDate="2016-02-21T22:22:52.370" UserId="4" Text="[Wikipedia says][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In computer software, business logic or domain logic is the part of the program that encodes the real-world business rules that determine how data can be created, displayed, stored, and changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't be opposed to merging the two into the more popular [tag:business-logic], I almost wonder if the tag shouldn't be changed to [tag:domain-logic] (which doesn't exist right now). I think &quot;domain logic&quot; is more general and would be preferable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_logic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22433" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7883" RevisionGUID="886634cc-2539-4d47-aaa0-c679617f5d51" CreationDate="2016-02-22T11:19:57.703" UserId="153221" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/310733/how-to-learn-and-be-productive-in-a-language-which-you-resent&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to [guidelines for subjective quesiton](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Clearly asks to explain how.&#xD;&#xA;2. Constructive, given that all widely used languages have bad parts.&#xD;&#xA;3. Invites to share experiences rather then opinion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22434" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7883" RevisionGUID="886634cc-2539-4d47-aaa0-c679617f5d51" CreationDate="2016-02-22T11:19:57.703" UserId="153221" Text="Why too opinion based?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22435" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7883" RevisionGUID="886634cc-2539-4d47-aaa0-c679617f5d51" CreationDate="2016-02-22T11:19:57.703" UserId="153221" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22437" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7883" RevisionGUID="4f52c899-c32b-45a9-99f8-b473b4a6f480" CreationDate="2016-02-22T11:33:00.860" UserId="25936" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6483],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="22438" PostHistoryTypeId="11" PostId="7883" RevisionGUID="38225516-d690-4e6b-a7e1-7fc429ed942c" CreationDate="2016-02-22T11:33:04.923" UserId="25936" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="22439" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7883" RevisionGUID="b9e88745-482c-487a-bedb-6cfe3a265e8e" CreationDate="2016-02-22T11:33:53.970" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22440" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7883" RevisionGUID="b9e88745-482c-487a-bedb-6cfe3a265e8e" CreationDate="2016-02-22T11:33:53.970" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/310733/how-to-learn-and-be-productive-in-a-language-which-you-resent&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to [guidelines for subjectives questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Clearly asks to explain how.&#xD;&#xA;2. Constructive, given that all widely used languages have bad parts.&#xD;&#xA;3. Invites to share experiences rather than opinion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22442" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7885" RevisionGUID="b25eaffe-8b19-452b-b614-b1ee2adf2fb7" CreationDate="2016-02-22T12:41:15.690" UserId="25936" Text="This site is focused on questions that can be answered (preferably definitively), and not just discussed. This, I'm afraid, is not the case with your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We simply don't know you well enough to comment on how _you_ can get over your resentment and be productive with the language in question (or anything, really). We don't even know if generic advice like &quot;there probably is another language that's equally appropriate for the task at hand&quot; is applicable in your situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see a way to re-open this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6742/25936&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6961/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22443" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7886" RevisionGUID="3210459f-f7f1-444d-a99d-50cd7aa4f82a" CreationDate="2016-02-22T14:08:41.947" UserId="175626" Text="I would say these tags are different. Business logic is the domain-specific logic of a business application, while business rules are usually relatively small isolated pieces of the business logic that can be encapsulated in a rules engine." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22444" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7880" RevisionGUID="c68c80f1-39c2-4662-8969-398f5f633d80" CreationDate="2016-02-22T20:27:46.257" UserId="31260" Comment="follow-up: question was further cleaned up and 14 answers that didn't attempt to address the question and/or were repeating prior ones were removed by moderator" Text="Sort of a follow-up: question was further cleaned up and 14 answers that didn't attempt to address the question and/or were repeating prior ones were removed by moderator (one or two answers were deleted by their authors per discussion in comments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question looks generally good to me, it appears to be reasonably clear and focused and rather difficult to misinterpret.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though some answerers managed to &quot;leak through&quot; minor slippery points in wording. Granted, some of them dumped their stuff in first several hours prior to [revision 4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/118703/revisions &quot;'Nov 9 '11 at 23:19'&quot;), while text (and especially title) of the question were leaving bit more room for misinterpretation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior editors did pretty good job of cleaning it up but there still seem to be some corrections worth considering, especially now that question apparently gained [huge popularity](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/103053/165773 &quot;see 'How aggressively should we maintain and improve very popular questions?'&quot;) and has got to our [all time top 50 open questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A85000+closed%3Ano) with over 85K views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would particularly recommend the following changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Add [tag:history] tag. After revision 4 main focus of the question has been very prominently shifted to this and lack of the respective tag looks really confusing. Not to mention that this makes it harder to search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Note about ternary operator that &quot;gets even less love among Java programmers etc&quot;. It probably fit well into trollish / ranty mood of the original text but in current form, it looks rather poor fit to the rest of the question. I would replace it with more neutral explanation, about like this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;But that's only because code snippet was made as simple as possible to clearer show the idea, the question is about more realistic cases where ternary operator is not an option.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Closing words &quot;why do people adhere to it rigidly?&quot; are worth removing. These are just a leftover of original rant and really have no place in the question. Actually, words like this are usually enough for me to vote close as [opinion based / too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6742/31260 &quot;see 'On discussions and why they don't make good questions'&quot;) but prior editors did a really good job of making it clear that it's tangential to the question (except for maybe the [most _rigidly_ careless answerers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118703/where-did-the-notion-of-one-return-only-come-from/119117#comment654398_212495 &quot;example: 'the question was twofold and I answered to the latter aspect of it... rigidly blah blah' OMFG&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cleaning up the question may be good, but we would better take care of tangential answers as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even now, visitors probably find these confusing and wonder how these are related to the question. But very attentive readers can at least re-check the question text and say, _&quot;ah, this answer exploits &amp;lt;such and such minor point of the question&amp;gt;, I understand&quot;_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if the question is cleaned as suggested above, these answers will become really harmful, telling tens thousands visitors, _&quot;hey, it's okay to totally ignore what is asked about and just drop into answer box whatever comes to your mind&quot;_." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22445" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7742" RevisionGUID="7ddfc4ef-a196-4841-8b9d-bcda544d51ba" CreationDate="2016-02-22T21:13:39.003" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Link to additional material." Text="# Off topic #&#xD;&#xA;### Assistance in writing or debugging existing code ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in writing or debugging existing code** are off-topic on Programmers. These questions can be asked on Stack Overflow if they include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. See [How To Create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for debugging help or “how do I write this specific code” type questions are off topic on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions have a site that is completely focused on them – Stack Overflow. Trying to answer them here reduces the usefulness of Stack Overflow (now you have to search two sites for the same information), and makes it harder to find the software architecture and design questions that Programmers.SE focuses on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are having trouble posting a question on Stack Overflow, and have come to Programmers.SE as a way to get around that, look ***very*** closely at the quality of the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Make sure the words are all spelled correctly, and punctuation is properly used (see [Spell Check plus.com](http://spellcheckplus.com) as one of many online grammar checkers).&#xD;&#xA; * Make sure that the code is formatted correctly (see [Markdown help](http://stackoverflow.com/editing-help) if you are having trouble with this).&#xD;&#xA; * Make sure that the *title* of the question is a good title that describes the actual problem: “Why can't I use `==` to compare strings” is a better title than “Help, I have a question about compilers”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is reluctant to migrate questions to Stack Overflow that would result in the question being closed there too.  The reasons on SO are covered in [What topics can I ask about here?](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) in the SO help center.  In particular, a “why isn't this code working” question about debugging existing code needs to throughly and completely describe the problem – nobody can *guess* what you're trying to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Programmers.SE nor Stack Overflow is a code writing service. Questions asking someone to write code from scratch (or from some requirements provided) will be closed on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are blocked from asking questions on Stack Overflow, please do not ask them here in an attempt to get around the block.  Both Programmers.SE and Stack Overflow have automatic question bans in place.  Asking off topic questions here will get them closed. Even if it's a good question that might be migrated to Stack Overflow because it wouldn't get closed – the system prevents us from migrating those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7864/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: `[Why was my question closed as off topic – assistance in writing or debugging existing code?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7742)`" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22446" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="46e1f18f-1b0d-4ba9-9430-43f8e70d7b36" CreationDate="2016-02-22T22:15:25.873" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 16 characters in body" Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are just polls for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the accepted answer is based on &quot;which answer I like best,&quot; rather than &quot;which answer solves my problem,&quot; the question is probably a poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While some other Stack Exchanges allow it, Programmers.SE frowns upon ['big list' type questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;see also: list-questions tag wiki at MSO&quot;) that seem to want to compile a list of things.  Questions that fall into this category typically have the form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What are all the problems I will encounter with XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * What are the pros and cons of XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * How can XYZ be used?&#xD;&#xA; * Any ideas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like these don't pose a problem that can be solved by an answer.  There is no definitive *right* answer that someone can go to, see the accepted answer and say &quot;yep, thats the answer.&quot;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6629/how-do-i-explain-something-to-someone&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6961/&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7537/why-do-some-examples-and-list-of-things-questions-get-closed&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Is a question that specifically asks for a summary of a broad topic valuable to Stack Exchange?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234642/is-a-question-that-specifically-asks-for-a-summary-of-a-broad-topic-valuable-to)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help Center &gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Too Broad?&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22447" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="e3122e61-5004-4451-8da8-6aeae5d268e2" CreationDate="2016-02-22T22:22:30.550" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### We do book review and suggestions poorly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the classic recommendation questions is that of a book.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do book reviews very poorly. All the answers that one gets are opinions and this is fundamentally a poll of opinions. This is to say nothing of that the technology behind them changes too.  There are indeed timeless books (and [many have written on the subject](https://www.google.com/search?q=timeless+computer+books)), though their value is a [matter of debate](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2uBpc.jpg). &lt;!-- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14298/is-analysis-patterns-reusable-object-models-still-a-good-book-to-use-for-its --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Between the polling nature of the question, the opinions people have on certain books, the constantly changing target, and the site's history of producing poor quality answers to these questions (and not moderating them), asking for a book suggestion is very likely to get closed and down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for a link to something or statistics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason.  Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to things suffer from link rot.  Statistics become out of date over time.  Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is someone asking in 2012 &quot;What is the market share of Android vs iPhone?&quot;  This information would be out of date in a few months as new numbers come out and someone else would ask in 2013 &quot;The question [link] asks about the stats, but they are all for 2012.  What is the market share for android vs iPhone in 2013?&quot;  And again, this information would be out of date and prompt another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for information about statistics, or more generally, asking us to search for some data for you is off topic because of these problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No actual problem to solve&#xD;&#xA;* Not drawing from expert knowledge of the community&#xD;&#xA;* Will suffer from link rot or become out of date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Link Rot&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, external resources may move or be deleted for a variety of reasons. Perhaps a particular site reorganizes its links without setting up redirects. Perhaps an organization goes out of business or discontinues product X or library Y.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to the reasons stated above, external resources tend to be _transient_. Whatever tool, library, or other resource who requested might not exist in five years or be otherwise readily available. This has the effect of making an answer utterly useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one asks for a library to perform function X, and the answer links to web site Y, and either function X or web site Y cease to exist as defined in the answer, that answer is now useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one more reason why questions like this tend to be of low value and are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [What exactly is a recommendation question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254393/what-exactly-is-a-recommendation-question)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why are “shopping list” questions bad?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic? - Requests for Recommendations?&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22448" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6488" RevisionGUID="8f3ff236-f27c-4902-9da4-7dfea01babf3" CreationDate="2016-02-22T22:23:26.680" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Career or education advice###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice questions are only applicable to the person asking the question.  No two people are looking at the same set of classes, or the same job.  Every question that is asked is either only for one person or the answers will always be hopelessly incomplete because of the lack of the nuanced information and context that the person asking the question is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career questions are often **very important** questions to the person asking them.  Although assistance can be provided, the answer is one that *you* need to find yourself, and not from random strangers on the Internet.  If you are in academia, ask a career counselor at the school, or one of the instructors - they know you better than we do.  Similar resources can be found for people in the job market already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the biggest difficulties with Q&amp;A for career questions is that to get the nuances of your situation and getting to know you better requires a dense two way communication - lots of clarification back and forth.  To this end, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is a resource where (the current) denizens can have that conversation.  We still won't get to know you as well as people who know you know you, but on the whole we are familiar with the various parts of the software industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please also note that we are notoriously bad at predicting the future.  If you had asked someone ten years ago if Objective C was going to be a popular language they would have looked at you funny (&quot;[Apple has less than a 2% market share](http://www.macworld.com/article/1043741/marketshare.html) - who would use it?&quot;).  Or if you asked about running JavaScript outside of the web browser they would have laughed at you.  Technology is changing at an incredible rate and to ask about what it will be in another decade? Your guess is as good as mine... maybe better (its less hampered by a few decades of industry preconceptions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking questions to predict the future job market and what skills are best is completely speculation and cannot have any right answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Reddit) [/r/cscareersquestions FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6594/are-now-all-questions-about-teaching-programming-to-be-considered-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Where to ask for general advice for young programmers?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/216589/where-to-ask-for-general-advice-for-young-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* Workplace.SE -&gt; [topics guidance](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)  &#xD;&#xA;  Workplace.SE -&gt; [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - Career or Educational Advice?&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22449" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6489" RevisionGUID="c5b4c123-857b-4d7b-b96e-0efb80f5b243" CreationDate="2016-02-22T22:23:55.557" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="#Unclear what you are asking#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are looking for, in the [context of Programmers.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This close reason can also be a bit unclear as to what the issue is.  Please be sure to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Give enough context that someone reading the question can understand it&#xD;&#xA;* Explain what you are looking for&#xD;&#xA;* Check to make sure you are not using jargon that is particular to one specific branch of computing (and if you are, either change the jargon or link to a site that explains it)&#xD;&#xA;* Check that there are no hidden assumption or &quot;leaps of thought&quot; in your question. They might be obvious to you, but they won't be to the wider community. It is often better to spell it all out explicitly, even if you think it is blindingly obvious.&#xD;&#xA;* Make sure you are on the proper site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last point is important too.  This close reason is often used as a proxy for &quot;we don't think that this question is a good question for Programmers.SE (it might be on Stack Overflow), but would get closed there too.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explain your design.  Explain what you have done.  Explain where you are having difficulty.  Explain what you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear what help you need](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260) (see also [linked MSE post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/215806/165773))&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7513/how-to-ask-how-to-understand-some-code-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Unclear?&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6489/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22450" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6486" RevisionGUID="e7e857fd-73ba-4ad3-9659-40c75bb9e321" CreationDate="2016-02-22T22:25:16.907" UserId="1204" Comment="added 36 characters in body" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###What technology to take up next###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a constant stream of new projects out there.  Github [claims 4,500 new projects a day](https://github.com/blog/841-those-are-some-big-numbers) back in 2011.  On December 23, 2013, Github had [10 million repositories](https://github.com/blog/1724-10-million-repositories).  Quite frankly, there are far too many projects for anyone to suggest a good answer.  What's more, the projects of yesteryear may well be inactive now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same problem exists for suggesting languages and technologies - they are constantly changing.  Further, many questions of this type often just ask &quot;which one is best&quot; without specifying any requirements, making them essentially a popularity poll.  If you really *do* want a popularity poll, consider reading [The Top Programming Languages: IEEE Spectrum’s 2014 Ranking](http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/interactive-the-top-programming-languages) which takes into account such things as Github active projects, Stack Overflow questions, Reddit questions, Hacker News, and job postings (see the 'custom' ranking for working with weightings).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A goal for Stack Exchange is to create a lasting repository of information.  Asking questions about which technology to chose runs counter to that.  In part because everyone's needs are different and also that everyone has their own favorites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56848/how-does-one-keep-up-with-all-the-new-tools-languages-framework (also look at the [linked questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/56848?lq=1))&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you really want some projects:&#xD;&#xA;    * [/r/dailyprogrammer](http://www.reddit.com/r/dailyprogrammer)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Mega Project List](https://github.com/karan/Projects)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - What Technology to Take Up Next?&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6486/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22451" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6491" RevisionGUID="baf43a3a-6902-4092-8971-247de3d2629b" CreationDate="2016-02-22T22:25:37.847" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="#Primarily opinion-based#&#xD;&#xA;Good questions ask for expertise, not opinions. Examples of questions that are primarily opinion-based:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What did this person mean when he said...&quot; (We're not mind-readers)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Which of these two designs is the better one?&quot; (what do you mean by &quot;better?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;How should I arrange the folders in my project?&quot; (really?)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Is this the best practice?&quot; (what do you mean by &quot;best?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What is the name of this thing so I can go look it up?&quot; (Ask us your specific question about the thing)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinguishing factor is that there is no way to get an authoritative answer for the question - the answers are all based on opinion rather than the knowledge of the person answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that if the answers to the question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design A} for these reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- break --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design B} for these other reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both of these answers are valid then the question is likely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6758/what-is-the-problem-with-pros-and-cons&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **tl;dr** We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/142353/why-is-asking-a-question-on-best-practice-a-bad-thing/142354#142354)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Primarily Opinion-Based?&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22452" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7742" RevisionGUID="a91a44dd-1b99-4346-8a93-6bb8a940629e" CreationDate="2016-02-22T22:27:20.387" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="# Off topic #&#xD;&#xA;### Assistance in writing or debugging existing code ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in writing or debugging existing code** are off-topic on Programmers. These questions can be asked on Stack Overflow if they include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. See [How To Create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for debugging help or “how do I write this specific code” type questions are off topic on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions have a site that is completely focused on them – Stack Overflow. Trying to answer them here reduces the usefulness of Stack Overflow (now you have to search two sites for the same information), and makes it harder to find the software architecture and design questions that Programmers.SE focuses on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are having trouble posting a question on Stack Overflow, and have come to Programmers.SE as a way to get around that, look ***very*** closely at the quality of the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Make sure the words are all spelled correctly, and punctuation is properly used (see [Spell Check plus.com](http://spellcheckplus.com) as one of many online grammar checkers).&#xD;&#xA; * Make sure that the code is formatted correctly (see [Markdown help](http://stackoverflow.com/editing-help) if you are having trouble with this).&#xD;&#xA; * Make sure that the *title* of the question is a good title that describes the actual problem: “Why can't I use `==` to compare strings” is a better title than “Help, I have a question about compilers”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is reluctant to migrate questions to Stack Overflow that would result in the question being closed there too.  The reasons on SO are covered in [What topics can I ask about here?](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) in the SO help center.  In particular, a “why isn't this code working” question about debugging existing code needs to throughly and completely describe the problem – nobody can *guess* what you're trying to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Programmers.SE nor Stack Overflow is a code writing service. Questions asking someone to write code from scratch (or from some requirements provided) will be closed on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are blocked from asking questions on Stack Overflow, please do not ask them here in an attempt to get around the block.  Both Programmers.SE and Stack Overflow have automatic question bans in place.  Asking off topic questions here will get them closed. Even if it's a good question that might be migrated to Stack Overflow because it wouldn't get closed – the system prevents us from migrating those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7864/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: `[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic – Assistance in Writing or Debugging Existing Code?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7742)`" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22453" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="01d22715-e095-4677-bb0c-a108f1d0774a" CreationDate="2016-02-22T22:28:14.453" UserId="1204" Comment="added 21 characters in body" Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling / Big List of Things###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are just polls for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the accepted answer is based on &quot;which answer I like best,&quot; rather than &quot;which answer solves my problem,&quot; the question is probably a poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While some other Stack Exchanges allow it, Programmers.SE frowns upon ['big list' type questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;see also: list-questions tag wiki at MSO&quot;) that seem to want to compile a list of things.  Questions that fall into this category typically have the form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What are all the problems I will encounter with XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * What are the pros and cons of XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * How can XYZ be used?&#xD;&#xA; * Any ideas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like these don't pose a problem that can be solved by an answer.  There is no definitive *right* answer that someone can go to, see the accepted answer and say &quot;yep, thats the answer.&quot;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6629/how-do-i-explain-something-to-someone&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6961/&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7537/why-do-some-examples-and-list-of-things-questions-get-closed&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Is a question that specifically asks for a summary of a broad topic valuable to Stack Exchange?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234642/is-a-question-that-specifically-asks-for-a-summary-of-a-broad-topic-valuable-to)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help Center &gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Too Broad?&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22454" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7881" RevisionGUID="95796d2d-351e-4e88-94c8-859af28f75db" CreationDate="2016-02-23T14:11:46.807" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Remove tag from title.  Add relevant tags to tags. Some markdown magic for inline tags." Text="[I just posted a question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/310716/increase-code-duplication-to-simplify-business-rules-in-views-mvc) about business rules in MVC views; when going to tag the question I was looking for *business-something* and found the [tag:business-logic] and [tag:business-rules] tags, neither of which have a tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`business-logic` seems to be more used with 80 questions tagged vs `business-rules` at 37.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a difference between the two? Should they be merged?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22455" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7881" RevisionGUID="95796d2d-351e-4e88-94c8-859af28f75db" CreationDate="2016-02-23T14:11:46.807" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Remove tag from title.  Add relevant tags to tags. Some markdown magic for inline tags." Text="business logic vs business rules" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22456" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7881" RevisionGUID="95796d2d-351e-4e88-94c8-859af28f75db" CreationDate="2016-02-23T14:11:46.807" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Remove tag from title.  Add relevant tags to tags. Some markdown magic for inline tags." Text="|discussion|tags|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22457" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7887" RevisionGUID="dfa3b974-460b-46fe-b481-32220782e548" CreationDate="2016-02-24T10:07:44.870" UserId="171495" Text="(I am adapting and copying my question here from [Software Recommendations](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/2451/are-questions-about-software-technologies-acceptable).)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would a question about which software technology to choose for a given scenario be on topic ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question I need to ask somewhere is along the lines of &quot;I'm going to write a program to communicate with another process in a scenario X with requirements Y; which Inter Process Communication technologies fit best, Sockets or DCOM or Named Pipes or Shared Memory or etc.&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would that be off-topic at Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My first thought was asking on Stack Overflow but [it seems](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10190156/ipc-suggestion-for-lots-of-small-data) to me that these questions are off-topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I [know](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/2451/are-questions-about-software-technologies-acceptable) that they are off-topic at Software Recommendations too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22458" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7887" RevisionGUID="dfa3b974-460b-46fe-b481-32220782e548" CreationDate="2016-02-24T10:07:44.870" UserId="171495" Text="Are questions about software technologies' &quot;fitness to scenarios&quot; acceptable?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22459" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7887" RevisionGUID="dfa3b974-460b-46fe-b481-32220782e548" CreationDate="2016-02-24T10:07:44.870" UserId="171495" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22460" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7888" RevisionGUID="06eae65d-eea5-43b9-a4a8-a8812fd84bda" CreationDate="2016-02-24T12:02:42.167" UserId="4" Text="If you sufficiently describe your scenario and requirements (functional and quality attributes) and can demonstrate that you have done some background research into your options, I don't see why it wouldn't be on-topic. However, if your constraints aren't enough, it could stray into primarily opinion based (if we can't say for sure that one option is empirically better than another) or too broad (if there are too many viable options)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22461" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7889" RevisionGUID="bcc9d975-2bcc-4470-9e89-8eb96d0b0bb2" CreationDate="2016-02-24T12:56:17.540" UserId="181655" Text="References: &quot;How drivers work?&quot; ([Question][1]) ([My Answer][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP asked about drivers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As far as I know a driver is a piece of software responsible for controlling some piece of hardware.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the set up I envisaged as the motivating background to the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- In embedded systems, hardware such as printers are operated from traditional PCs.  &#xD;&#xA;- This hardware is physically separate from the PC (they would typically have their own microcontrollers or even CPUs)  &#xD;&#xA;- The hardware communicates with the PC over wired or wireless links.  &#xD;&#xA;- A piece of software (called a **driver**) is needed on the PC's side of the communication.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the time I answered, there was a long answer which currently has 2 upvotes that spoke about layered operating systems and interrupts. That answer didn't address the question of **how** the drivers, being software that sits on the CPU of the PC, causes things to happen on the other piece of hardware.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I therefore wrote an answer that (in retrospect) pointed out the obvious - it doesn't. It simply communicates with the other device's operating software, which in turn controls its hardware.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My answer currently has 3 downvotes. I'd like to know whether it's because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- I didn't state my assumption as I did in this meta question;  &#xD;&#xA;- it pitched at too high a level (the OP requested this: &quot;at a high level ... how does such a thing work?&quot;);  &#xD;&#xA;- there were no links to external references (neither does the upvoted answer);  or&#xD;&#xA;- the OP's question was downvoted and is now on hold (but then why penalise answers?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or is it something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm looking for some idea of how to improve my answer. If that's not practical to do or if I've totally missed the point, I'm also prepared to delete my answer altogether.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/310937/181655&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/310948/181655" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22462" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7889" RevisionGUID="bcc9d975-2bcc-4470-9e89-8eb96d0b0bb2" CreationDate="2016-02-24T12:56:17.540" UserId="181655" Text="Why was my answer about drivers downvoted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22463" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7889" RevisionGUID="bcc9d975-2bcc-4470-9e89-8eb96d0b0bb2" CreationDate="2016-02-24T12:56:17.540" UserId="181655" Text="|discussion|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22464" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7887" RevisionGUID="61a5058e-2bc5-4540-9b9d-6d3c5b9477ec" CreationDate="2016-02-24T14:29:29.270" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|recommendations|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22465" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7890" RevisionGUID="ee6e7023-f446-48e1-af79-d67091840dc8" CreationDate="2016-02-24T17:59:08.857" UserId="64132" Text="I didn't down vote your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some people do down vote answers to low value questions as a form of &quot;don't encourage bad questions&quot;, but I don't think that's the case here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you ignore the other two answers, the question can be boiled down to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's a device driver and what makes it special or different from normal code so it can control hardware?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and your answer is more or less&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The device driver software sends messages to the device.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not an overly helpful answer.  At the time you wrote it, it would have helped to include information about memory mapping and perhaps a condensed discussion on permissions &amp; why application programs are not allowed to control hardware directly.  A couple of links to external resources tend to help as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I'm not sure about your assumption `It simply communicates with the other device's operating software`.  I'm old enough to remember dumb peripherals that didn't have microcontrollers, CPUs or operating systems.  We still had device drivers though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22466" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7890" RevisionGUID="2cedff10-2ce1-497e-ba07-33c1ba427837" CreationDate="2016-02-24T20:59:55.703" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="I didn't down vote your answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some people do down vote answers to low value questions as a form of &quot;don't encourage bad questions&quot;, but I don't think that's the case here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you ignore the other two answers, the question can be boiled down to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's a device driver and what makes it special or different from normal code so it can control hardware?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and your answer is more or less&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The device driver software sends messages to the device.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not an overly helpful answer.  At the time you wrote it, it would have helped to include information about memory mapping and perhaps a condensed discussion on permissions &amp; why application programs are not allowed to control hardware directly.  A couple of links to external resources tend to help as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I'm not sure about your assumption `It simply communicates with the other device's operating software`.  I'm old enough to remember dumb peripherals that didn't have microcontrollers, CPUs or operating systems.  We still had device drivers though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22467" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7891" RevisionGUID="635668b2-3175-419f-b412-e4b44459c85d" CreationDate="2016-02-25T17:22:13.230" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="As long as you focus on the design and not &quot;which tool is best for me?&quot; you should be fine. However, I recommend reading the following meta-posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###[Are Design Review questions on-topic?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Talks about the standards to meet for questions like this. [TL;DR][2]: keep it highly focused on one specific aspect of your program, with clear success criteria (a successful design must do X but not Y, as opposed to &quot;what is better?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Design review&quot; perhaps is more commonly associated with e.g. &quot;review my class diagram or description of what these classes do&quot; but also covers &quot;what technology should I leverage in this part of my program&quot; which often involves design aspects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic? - Requests for Recommendations?&quot;][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Resource requests, including &quot;what library or protocol should I use&quot; are off-topic. But libraries and protocols are fairly core to a discipline that pushes for code reuse and common interfaces. So if you focus on &quot;I need my program to communicate, with X and Y as design goals&quot; instead of &quot;recommend a library for me&quot; you should be fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Also, thank you for asking in meta first so we can help you ask a good question instead of going through a potentially frustrating experience with asking, downvoting, closing, editing, reopening, hopefully reversing downvotes, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6502&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tl%3Bdr&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22468" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7892" RevisionGUID="142602f0-cd3d-42dc-ae96-82f0fc8f2ab8" CreationDate="2016-02-25T19:00:34.870" UserId="63202" Text="I consider that Business Rules are the business's rules, that is, policies determined by the business, i.e. specifically by business experts and those in charge of the business, who are likely non-programmers. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_rule)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I consider that logic is programming and thus associated more with IT than business leaders and domain experts, and therefore, Business Logic is the embodiment of (some of) Business Rules in IT systems and applications. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_logic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Being rather different things, it would be a mistake to merge the terms Business Rules and Business Logic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(A rules engine, combined with a set of rules for it (in whatever specific and limited form the engine takes) is an embodiment of business logic (but there will have to be other business logic as rules engines broadly can't accommodate all of a business's rules).  It is often the case that IT takes over common terms and gives them more limited meaning, such as thinking of Business Rules as the actual rules (i.e. programming) that you'd feed to a rules engine!  Rules engines execute rules-engine rules (programming), not Business Rules.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22470" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="c1275475-8b37-485b-82a1-b5416fe9606e" CreationDate="2016-02-27T00:30:58.870" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|questions|homework-dump|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22471" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7893" RevisionGUID="77d7fe9d-f725-4106-a337-5a7d3416aef8" CreationDate="2016-02-28T08:59:23.363" UserId="31260" Text="I wonder about this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/308245/should-we-avoid-language-features-that-c-has-but-java-doesnt-to-increase-main&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It stuck in hot list for 4-5 days, got about 14K views, 16 answers, over 100 upvotes (plus few hundreds more upvotes were cast on answers). That's quite expected in cases like this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strange things happened after it dropped off the list, it was like immediately forgotten and ignored. In a month that passed since it has got only 4 votes and about 300 views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(You can check votes in the [question timeline](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/308245/timeline). As for views, I started checking these after I got curious about how fast it has lost popularity - Feb 7: 14,435 views, Feb 14: 14,569, Feb 21: 14,663, Feb 28: 14,736.)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that [usefulness isn't the goal](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/165773 &quot;as discussed here&quot;) of hot questions but it's hard to believe that 14K views and few hundreds votes went to content that isn't even _interesting_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does it at least have positive [anonymous feedback](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/post-feedback/info &quot;what's this&quot;)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22472" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7893" RevisionGUID="77d7fe9d-f725-4106-a337-5a7d3416aef8" CreationDate="2016-02-28T08:59:23.363" UserId="31260" Text="What's up with this 10K+ views question, is it useful or interesting?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22473" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7893" RevisionGUID="77d7fe9d-f725-4106-a337-5a7d3416aef8" CreationDate="2016-02-28T08:59:23.363" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|specific-question|hot-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22474" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7894" RevisionGUID="e9a9a3ac-212c-492d-9695-69764b54e827" CreationDate="2016-02-28T10:16:11.987" UserId="25936" Text="The terribly flawed premise of the question is something that I've heard numerous times (in one form or another) from newer developers. The content may not be interesting to a seasoned developer, but I think it's a very valuable Q&amp;A pair for noobs. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If nothing else, it's a quick &amp; accessible reference next time an overeager noob proposes excessive future-proofing by even more excessive over-engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. [Telastyn's answer][1] is also t-shirt worthy: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Solve your actual problem today, not the ghost of some future problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/308247/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22475" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7894" RevisionGUID="7e97626e-1ab5-42d3-bdb4-5c73dabafe7a" CreationDate="2016-02-28T10:21:26.300" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 7 characters in body" Text="The terribly flawed premise of the question is something that I've heard numerous times (in one form or another) from newer developers. The content may not be interesting to a seasoned developer, but I think it's a valuable thread for noobs. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If nothing else, it's a quick &amp; accessible reference next time an overeager noob proposes excessive future-proofing by even more excessive over-engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. [Telastyn's answer][1] is also t-shirt worthy: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Solve your actual problem today, not the ghost of some future problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/308247/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22476" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7881" RevisionGUID="cb4110d0-307f-47da-8850-ea5fda061321" CreationDate="2016-02-28T10:44:38.260" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/703893564422561792" />
  <row Id="22477" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7893" RevisionGUID="c54200cc-8472-4455-8f65-d9673da8f666" CreationDate="2016-02-28T20:03:59.943" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7893/whats-up-with-this-10k-views-question-is-it-useful-or-interesting/7894?noredirect=1#comment24007_7894" Text="I wonder about this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/308245/should-we-avoid-language-features-that-c-has-but-java-doesnt-to-increase-main&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It stuck in hot list for 4-5 days, got about 14K views, 16 answers, over 100 upvotes (plus few hundreds more upvotes were cast on answers). That's quite expected in cases like this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strange things happened after it dropped off the list, it was like immediately forgotten and ignored. In a month that passed since it has got only 4 votes and about 300 views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(You can check votes in the [question timeline](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/308245/timeline). As for views, I started checking these after I got curious about how fast it has lost popularity - Feb 7: 14,435 views, Feb 14: 14,569, Feb 21: 14,663, Feb 28: 14,736.)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that [usefulness isn't the goal](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/165773 &quot;as discussed here&quot;) of hot questions but it's hard to believe that 14K views and few hundreds upvotes went to content that isn't even _interesting_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also used [this query](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/95383/anonymous-feedback-for-a-certain-question-and-its-answers) (hat tip to Yannis) to learn about [anonymous feedback](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/post-feedback/info &quot;what's this&quot;) and it doesn't look impressive: votes on top answer were +29/-5, on question +12/-20, other answers got less than 10.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At 14K views this means only one of 400-500 visitors bothered to click the voting arrows. Granted, this seems to be typical, I used same query to compare against two other recent questions with similar score and views and numbers look pretty similar (post ids 307467 and 307292)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22478" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7895" RevisionGUID="b7990b98-fe79-4826-9971-a1c46e90381d" CreationDate="2016-02-28T20:48:12.247" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="After five years, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2815/ still has only 5.5k views. It has 57 &quot;answers&quot; which amount to a poll of feature requests and ideas for a rather old version of C#.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of these are outdated and wrong now.  There are numerous other, better written (and updated) &quot;what don't I like about C#&quot; blog posts out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The long term value of the post and its negligible at best on this site in this format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please delete it (or unlock it so that others can delete it)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22479" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7895" RevisionGUID="b7990b98-fe79-4826-9971-a1c46e90381d" CreationDate="2016-02-28T20:48:12.247" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Reevaluate historical lock on &quot;What would you change about C# if you could?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22480" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7895" RevisionGUID="b7990b98-fe79-4826-9971-a1c46e90381d" CreationDate="2016-02-28T20:48:12.247" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|specific-question|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22481" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7895" RevisionGUID="b2fd2edf-e1bd-4e36-a679-832fc5e21a86" CreationDate="2016-02-29T18:43:07.567" UserDisplayName="user28988" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|specific-question|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22482" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7896" RevisionGUID="a6d80d47-20a5-4a4d-abe1-269da9183381" CreationDate="2016-02-29T18:43:42.600" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="I saw no reason at all for this to still exist and now it doesn't&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22483" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7828" RevisionGUID="c2e6e5bc-18a6-45fc-a9f0-0874523a5b31" CreationDate="2016-02-29T20:02:07.683" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/300687/i-think-this-old-deleted-question-should-be-undeleted-and-historically-locked-i/300727?noredirect=1#comment315138_300727" Text="Related: [Tags that only exist on locked questions, should we treat these the same as tags that don't exist at all?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/259740/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; philosophically Historical Lock questions are **deleted**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Visual difference between historically locked and legitimate questions looks quite subtle to me, even though I have few years experience on the site. It can be even harder for inexperienced readers to tell the difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that historical lock is applied mostly to (inappropriate) questions [having large amount of views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A20000 &quot;currently, search shows 132 locked questions having 20K views or more&quot;) and ranked highly in web search engines, this creates wide open broken windows. Inexperienced site visitors coming from web searches at h/l questions think that these are legitimate and try to ask similar ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to help newcomers see the difference, suggest to use pink background when rendering historically locked posts - same that is currently used to render deleted posts displayed to 10K users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related feature request at MSE (hat tip to [durron597](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/300687/i-think-this-old-deleted-question-should-be-undeleted-and-historically-locked-i/300727?noredirect=1#comment315138_300727)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Automatic visual indication of old questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/98589/165773)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22484" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7897" RevisionGUID="73f3105b-a875-49bb-921c-ce6f7e8fe4a8" CreationDate="2016-03-01T07:04:04.383" UserId="34520" Text="I have a web communications protocol I'd like to get comment about. Is this SE an appropriate place for that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22485" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7897" RevisionGUID="73f3105b-a875-49bb-921c-ce6f7e8fe4a8" CreationDate="2016-03-01T07:04:04.383" UserId="34520" Text="Is the programmers SE an appropriate place to ask for comment about a communications protocol draft?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22486" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7897" RevisionGUID="73f3105b-a875-49bb-921c-ce6f7e8fe4a8" CreationDate="2016-03-01T07:04:04.383" UserId="34520" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22487" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7897" RevisionGUID="74dfc4c9-1924-4fd1-8ae7-676b69353db7" CreationDate="2016-03-01T08:22:44.430" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6502],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="22488" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7898" RevisionGUID="3e3dea88-080e-4f2f-aa16-c17837dd76a9" CreationDate="2016-03-01T19:56:28.067" UserId="35276" Text="**This was previously declined as CR.SE was in beta and migrations to beta sites are not allowed. CR is no longer in beta! Congratulations to CR!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know we don't want too many migration paths, and we definitely don't want ones that are likely to leech away our *good* questions, but I think of all the technology related websites, the scope of Code Review actually has likely the least overlap with us of any others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No part of our site scope is reviewing written completed *code*, architecture sure but not *code*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no part of code reviews site is *doing anything else at all*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't get questions for this migration often, but I've seen ones migrated to SO with totally working code, just because we have a migration path to SO but not CR." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22489" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7898" RevisionGUID="3e3dea88-080e-4f2f-aa16-c17837dd76a9" CreationDate="2016-03-01T19:56:28.067" UserId="35276" Text="CR isn't in beta - migration path to them now?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22490" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7898" RevisionGUID="3e3dea88-080e-4f2f-aa16-c17837dd76a9" CreationDate="2016-03-01T19:56:28.067" UserId="35276" Text="|feature-request|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22491" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7899" RevisionGUID="eab49443-24f3-49c4-a745-9b00aff494d5" CreationDate="2016-03-01T19:57:48.710" UserId="52929" Text="I'm somewhat familiar with CR, with close to 1k rep there now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there are a very small minority of questions here asking for code review which would be suited for CR.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of them are not functioning, fully working code that is a &quot;please help me improve this&quot; type of thing - most of them are, &quot;here's code that sorta works, plz help me fix/add to it.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22492" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7898" RevisionGUID="925923ae-ebb0-4434-ab63-e24c6c17d3de" CreationDate="2016-03-01T19:58:01.200" UserId="35276" Comment="added 70 characters in body" Text="**This was previously declined as CR.SE was in beta and migrations to beta sites are not allowed. CR is no longer in beta! Congratulations to CR!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know we don't want too many migration paths, and we definitely don't want ones that are likely to leech away our *good* questions, but I think of all the technology related websites, the scope of Code Review actually has likely the least overlap with us of any others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No part of our site scope is reviewing written completed *code*, architecture sure but not *code*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no part of code reviews site is *doing anything else at all*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't get questions for this migration often, but I've seen ones migrated to SO with totally working code, just because we have a migration path to SO but not CR.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Migration path to Code Review please?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5901/35276" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22493" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7900" RevisionGUID="32dcc8f3-7741-430a-bf99-66024c05be8b" CreationDate="2016-03-01T20:10:29.350" UserId="140090" Text="I would like to present this chart from [Checklist for how to write a good Code Review question](http://meta.codereview.stackexchange.com/a/1957/42632) first:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![chart][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you can see, the metaphorical _distance_ in scope between Programmers and Code Review is significant. From a CR regular standpoint, I can say for myself that we do get, _on occasion_, a question which is off-topic at CR but could be on-topic at Programmers _(most off-topic Qs we get are broken code/&quot;give-me-the-code&quot;)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When this happens, normally one of us will hop over to The Whiteboard to ask if it would be a good migration candidate, and if it is the case, mods move forward with manual migration. This happens... once a week at the most, I'd say. I'm not a regular at Programmers so I cannot speak on your behalf, but I think the important question is: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; __Does the volume of off-topic on Programmers, on-topic on Code Review questions justify a migration path?__&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully the regulars &amp; mods at Programmers can put some metrics to help answer this question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Td6Ev.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22494" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7901" RevisionGUID="ee5dfbee-ad7f-46c7-aa70-a68176bda15e" CreationDate="2016-03-02T21:52:36.270" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="For reference, as of this writing migrations to CodeReview in the past 90 days shows 5 sent, of which 2 were rejected (40%).  Which also happens to be CodeReview's rate with us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Away (all 10k links - Roomba deletes successful migrations after 30 days):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [P.SE Function to return a string - Which is cleaner?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/307311/function-to-return-a-string-which-is-cleaner?noredirect=1) ([CR](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/116696/choosing-a-css-class-based-on-an-http-status-code))&#xD;&#xA;* [P.SE Better way to build SQL query from form input?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/307307/better-way-to-build-sql-query-from-form-input?noredirect=1) ([CR](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/116694/build-sql-query-criteria-from-form-input))&#xD;&#xA;* [P.SE I wrote a sleep() function! Is it harmless and cross-platform?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/305939/40980) ([rejected](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/115192/sleep-function)) (10ks deleted)&#xD;&#xA;* [P.SE How can I make the Sieve of Eratosthenes algorithm more efficient?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/305454/how-can-i-make-the-sieve-of-eratosthenes-algorithm-more-efficient?noredirect=1) ([CR](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/114485/extending-sieve-of-eratosthenes-beyond-a-billion))&#xD;&#xA;* [P.SE Jumping into C++, TIC TAC TOE. How is my code?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304911/jumping-into-c-tic-tac-toe-how-is-my-code?noredirect=1) ([rejected](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/113723/jumping-into-c-tic-tac-toe-how-is-my-code)) (op deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And since I'm in the tools, the CR to P.SE migrations in the last 90 days:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/309160/does-my-code-still-break-encapsulation-and-uses-getters-setters-instead-of-the-t&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/306289/generating-dual-xlsx-files-and-htm-pages-of-the-same-data&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/306277/testing-using-mocking-must-i-mock-all-dependencies-too&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304643/how-much-implementation-should-i-provide-in-an-abstract-class (rejected)&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304470/factoryclass-versus-factorymethod-in-pojo (rejected)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22495" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7902" RevisionGUID="1b8a7275-a5bc-4df0-9a4a-40ed487e5187" CreationDate="2016-03-02T22:30:42.420" UserId="31260" Text="What purpose does tag [tag:app] serve?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has almost 40 questions. Few of them I looked at made me feel like it's the same as [tag:applications] tag. Does it make sense to make them synonyms?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22496" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7902" RevisionGUID="1b8a7275-a5bc-4df0-9a4a-40ed487e5187" CreationDate="2016-03-02T22:30:42.420" UserId="31260" Text="What's [app]? Application?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22497" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7902" RevisionGUID="1b8a7275-a5bc-4df0-9a4a-40ed487e5187" CreationDate="2016-03-02T22:30:42.420" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|tags|tag-synonyms|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22498" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7900" RevisionGUID="b8b5c8c7-d442-4e80-9a84-9cc4b68d16d3" CreationDate="2016-03-02T23:03:34.077" UserId="140090" Comment="add like to stats answer" Text="I would like to present this chart from [Checklist for how to write a good Code Review question](http://meta.codereview.stackexchange.com/a/1957/42632) first:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![chart][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you can see, the metaphorical _distance_ in scope between Programmers and Code Review is significant. From a CR regular standpoint, I can say for myself that we do get, _on occasion_, a question which is off-topic at CR but could be on-topic at Programmers _(most off-topic Qs we get are broken code/&quot;give-me-the-code&quot;)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When this happens, normally one of us will hop over to The Whiteboard to ask if it would be a good migration candidate, and if it is the case, mods move forward with manual migration. This happens... once a week at the most, I'd say. I'm not a regular at Programmers so I cannot speak on your behalf, but I think the important question is: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; __Does the volume of off-topic on Programmers, on-topic on Code Review questions justify a migration path?__&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please reference [MichaelT's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7901/140090) for migration stats between Programmers and Code Review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Td6Ev.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22499" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7898" RevisionGUID="b0205018-e5d4-4759-9ffc-a71c2784a26d" CreationDate="2016-03-03T07:56:55.800" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/705300911225229316" />
  <row Id="22500" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7903" RevisionGUID="0b3dc940-0494-4ea6-a27d-2b5331b37c31" CreationDate="2016-03-03T13:18:42.590" UserId="176069" Text="rules are rules and logic is the logic, if you know meanings of these than you see that it is different :) Assume you are in army where lots of rules are. you may not do that, you may do that bla bla bla. These are the rules of the business, which is summed up for you to stay in live. When we come to logic, you have to make decisions on the situation. So if you are going into an action with some badguys you make decisions, these decisions are the logic.. but you know that you make these decisoins in circumstances of the learned rules. Then is the logic itself the rule or is it the different sums of some rules for different situations? Yes we can talk about that, it is the sum of some rules that apply for the situation, I liked it :)) no, no, no do not merge rule with logic..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22501" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="59196bf3-8287-41c8-bf8f-83603bd19f27" CreationDate="2016-03-03T19:08:22.620" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Make question marks consistent." Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### We do book review and suggestions poorly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the classic recommendation questions is that of a book.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do book reviews very poorly. All the answers that one gets are opinions and this is fundamentally a poll of opinions. This is to say nothing of that the technology behind them changes too.  There are indeed timeless books (and [many have written on the subject](https://www.google.com/search?q=timeless+computer+books)), though their value is a [matter of debate](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2uBpc.jpg). &lt;!-- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14298/is-analysis-patterns-reusable-object-models-still-a-good-book-to-use-for-its --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Between the polling nature of the question, the opinions people have on certain books, the constantly changing target, and the site's history of producing poor quality answers to these questions (and not moderating them), asking for a book suggestion is very likely to get closed and down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for a link to something or statistics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason.  Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to things suffer from link rot.  Statistics become out of date over time.  Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is someone asking in 2012 &quot;What is the market share of Android vs iPhone?&quot;  This information would be out of date in a few months as new numbers come out and someone else would ask in 2013 &quot;The question [link] asks about the stats, but they are all for 2012.  What is the market share for android vs iPhone in 2013?&quot;  And again, this information would be out of date and prompt another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for information about statistics, or more generally, asking us to search for some data for you is off topic because of these problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No actual problem to solve&#xD;&#xA;* Not drawing from expert knowledge of the community&#xD;&#xA;* Will suffer from link rot or become out of date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Link Rot&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, external resources may move or be deleted for a variety of reasons. Perhaps a particular site reorganizes its links without setting up redirects. Perhaps an organization goes out of business or discontinues product X or library Y.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to the reasons stated above, external resources tend to be _transient_. Whatever tool, library, or other resource who requested might not exist in five years or be otherwise readily available. This has the effect of making an answer utterly useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one asks for a library to perform function X, and the answer links to web site Y, and either function X or web site Y cease to exist as defined in the answer, that answer is now useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one more reason why questions like this tend to be of low value and are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [What exactly is a recommendation question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254393/what-exactly-is-a-recommendation-question)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why are “shopping list” questions bad?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - Requests for Recommendations?&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22502" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6492" RevisionGUID="c38271b0-a302-4cce-b6bc-4931dc407318" CreationDate="2016-03-03T19:08:53.950" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Make question marks consistent." Text="#Other#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions can be closed with a custom reason.  These are found in the comments for the question.  To that extent it is difficult to enumerate all the possible reasons people may try to close a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The essence of Programmers.SE was summed up in chat by Thomas Owens:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Picture Programmers like a small conference room with a whiteboard. No computer, no books, no papers. You write your question on the whiteboard and experts walk by. Someone sees one that they can answer, they stop in and help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read the explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6251/how-can-i-write-a-good-custom-close-message&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/why-do-certification-questions-keep-getting-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6283/current-events-questions-and-answers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [cross-posting (posting the same question over multiple Stack Exchange sites)](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed - other reasons?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6492/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22503" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7904" RevisionGUID="42066bc8-87c2-4d42-a79d-721c1dca2196" CreationDate="2016-03-05T04:47:32.393" UserId="198110" Text="I want to know, How to do the following in program ?&#xD;&#xA;I am looking for logic/algorithm so that, I can implement it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to split the joined &amp; wrongly spelled words to give a correct result ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Wrongly spelled &amp; joined word&#xD;&#xA;    fasewash ==&gt; face wash&#xD;&#xA;    charginglight =&gt; charging light&#xD;&#xA;    andraidphones =&gt; android phones&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have set of words (dictionary) and perfectly working spell suggestion when there is a spelling mistake.&#xD;&#xA;for example, when you input &quot;wach&quot;, spell suggestion will give &quot;wash&quot; correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can I do it grammatically ? &#xD;&#xA;I am not able to get any idea about implementing the same&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22504" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7904" RevisionGUID="42066bc8-87c2-4d42-a79d-721c1dca2196" CreationDate="2016-03-05T04:47:32.393" UserId="198110" Text="can I ask my question in programmers.stackexchange.com?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22505" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7904" RevisionGUID="42066bc8-87c2-4d42-a79d-721c1dca2196" CreationDate="2016-03-05T04:47:32.393" UserId="198110" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22506" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7905" RevisionGUID="cde9f47a-a071-4846-9de7-6c9d0c98376c" CreationDate="2016-03-06T01:06:30.053" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="The current version of the question you have posed would probably be closed as too broad. If you search for [How to write a spelling corrector](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&amp;rls=en&amp;q=how+to+write+a+spelling+corrector&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;oe=UTF-8) you will find numerous tutorials and approaches based on this including a rather complete coverage of the topic at [How to Write a Spelling Corrector](http://www.norvig.com/spell-correct.html).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are numerous bits out there about the [edit distance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edit_distance) and similar concepts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to try to explain your algorithm and what isn't working. In the question show that you are familiar enough with the terms and concepts of a spelling corrector so that people are not repeating what you already know and also not going much deeper in the topic than your understanding of the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, it can be on topic - but you need to make sure that you not going to ask a question where there are 50 possible answers, or the answer that you really want is 50 pages long." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22507" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7904" RevisionGUID="e211fa55-a295-4bec-95fa-44d7cdd57965" CreationDate="2016-03-06T02:58:47.863" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|on-topic-definition|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22508" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7906" RevisionGUID="87d885d0-c723-431a-b106-888f8ac7f92a" CreationDate="2016-03-06T21:18:08.097" UserId="189132" Text="&lt;h3&gt;Fact 1&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;At the time I write this, 12 out of the 15 questions on the questions front page have net downvotes. That is an extreme statistical outlier on stackexchange. Other sites tend to have between 1 and 3 net downvoted questions on the front page. This community has the highest netatively downvoted ratio of any of the other 20 or so communities with which I am familiar. By far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Fact 2&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;I have a stack exchange rep of 8k, I have posted questions in 16 groups and I have a positive question rating in all those groups; except this one. In this one, not only do I have a negative rating, but I'm scared to post a question because I get a notice that says I'm about to be banned for posting bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;The evidence is in. This site is clearly a statistical outlier when it comes to the negative reception received by people trying to get their questions answered here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it time to do something about that? If so, what can be done?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22509" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7906" RevisionGUID="87d885d0-c723-431a-b106-888f8ac7f92a" CreationDate="2016-03-06T21:18:08.097" UserId="189132" Text="Is there something wrong with this site's rules for posting questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22510" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7906" RevisionGUID="87d885d0-c723-431a-b106-888f8ac7f92a" CreationDate="2016-03-06T21:18:08.097" UserId="189132" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22511" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7257" RevisionGUID="11f70b7a-8ba9-43c7-9cf4-5a084e8e8585" CreationDate="2016-03-06T21:48:59.540" UserId="31260" Comment="related += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-there-something-wrong-with-this-sites-rules-for-posting-questions" Text="Propose to detect troublesome questions using Stack Overflow quality scoring data and put them to [Triage queue](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage) for an hour or two. If the timeout expires before decision is made, let questions go to homepage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the questions that fail the Triage, one option to handle these is to keep them invisible for a day or two (if not edited), then automatically [bump](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/bump/info) them for a broader community review. This way would keep them away from the top of [newest tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest). (Attentive readers may notice that bumps imply certain pollution of [active tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active) but this looks less of an issue to me, as this tab is rather heavily dominated by better questions being bumped by answers and edits. Not to mention that Triage would spare active page from questions deserving flagging for speedy deletion - spam, [homework dumps](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3837/31260), [&quot;cubicle fart&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6677/31260) kind stuff...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reasons why I consider above approach feasible are [laid out here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7251/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  goal, about [&quot;wall of crap&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so) at homepage, also looks relevant to us, as indicated by multiple recurring discussions about [too many bad questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7130?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...site topics substantially overlap and... many troublesome questions over here appear to be posted by users who are simply [trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260). Using same scoring data that is supposed to detect and block them at Stack Overflow would make sense, wouldn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...there is just no way to ensure that questions in Triage queue would be reviewed within reasonable timeframe... automatically kick questions off this queue and let them go to homepage after some timeout (say, 1-2 hours) if these haven't got sufficient attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-there-something-wrong-with-this-sites-rules-for-posting-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7614/why-are-we-getting-so-many-off-topic-debug-this-for-me-questions-what-can-we&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7593/is-there-any-point-in-this-site-still-existing  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note this one even suggests Stack Overflow (protected by Triage!) as an example of how a site should look like.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7130/so-many-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7239/there-are-way-more-negative-votes-in-the-top-50-questions-than-positive-time-to&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7221/problem-titles-in-off-topic-questions-of-new-users-coming-from-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7020/lets-help-askers-who-are-trying-to-circumvent-question-block-at-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6990/why-cant-we-raise-up-questions-quality&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6850/how-effective-is-the-quality-filter-against-this-question-with-all-caps-brief-ti&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6788/a-lot-of-front-page-down-votes&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6371/how-can-we-encourage-people-to-read-the-faq-before-asking-their-first-question&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5618/better-selection-title-for-top-questions-list&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5377/requiring-registration-to-ask-questions-did-it-made-a-difference&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4029/why-are-there-so-many-minus-points-on-questions-in-this-site&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4009/programmers-stack-exchange-question-downvoting-what-to-do&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3947/what-can-we-do-about-extremely-low-quality-questions-from-unregistered-users&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3778/can-we-have-some-way-to-not-show-closed-questions-on-the-front-page&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2744/how-can-i-create-a-custom-filtered-view-of-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2727/are-we-scaring-off-new-users&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Nov 17 '11)&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4097/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Oct 8 '12)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1589/what-to-do-about-the-proliferation-of-bad-questions-from-generic-accounts&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/841/why-are-almost-half-the-questions-on-the-front-page-marked-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/784/are-we-closing-too-many-good-questions-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22512" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7907" RevisionGUID="332a25c5-b24a-4542-b575-3eb9022e7140" CreationDate="2016-03-06T23:08:26.860" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Ok, I've done this before... lets look at the most recent closed and down voted questions and look to examine if they are being closed because of overly strict rules, aggressive enforcement or if they just aren't properly answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311935/running-net-desktop-application-on-linux (-2, 1 close vote)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question is a software recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311931/need-help-to-make-advance-search-in-php-website-project (-2, 1 close vote)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A bit hard to determine (the close vote is for unclear). It looks like this might be too broad too. Its a student trying &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311930/pointers-and-hexadecimal (-5, 2 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is an implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311928/how-do-i-implement-material-style-account-switcher (-3, 2 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   This is a far too broad &quot;how do I do this&quot; type question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311925/structure-of-an-abstract-for-a-conference-talk-or-workshop (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question has nothing to do with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311923/extraordinary-software-written-in-javascript (-8, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a too broad question asking for a list of all the ways that Javascript can be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311921/accepting-express-js-post-requests-in-a-chrome-app (-4, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for issues with writing something in Chrome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311918/how-to-display-a-non-interactive-message-on-a-jframe (-2, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for how to do something in Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311914/running-ruby-commands-does-nothing (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a problem running some third party ruby software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311913/how-to-break-infinite-loop-in-turtle-graphics-python (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for python.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311910/index-exceeds-matrix-dimension-matlab-hog-features (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for matlab (which was already posted on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311907/wdk-10-and-visual-studio-2015-acting-funny (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This (now deleted between then and now) was closed as unclear. It was an issue with some software installation for a C library.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311904/learning-linux-kernel-in-todays-world-would-i-be-better-off-hacking-with-android (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a &quot;what should I learn&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311902/why-do-i-get-an-error-in-the-cpp-file-if-i-make-a-class-template-before-the-cla (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311901/class-as-a-variable-of-another-class (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is another C++ implementation/debugging question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311899/find-availability-software-architecture (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a no effort homework dump.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311897/error-code-c4700-uninitialized-local-variable (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311896/android-file-retriever-application (-4, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted green field question that is asking how to use the IDE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311894/how-do-i-create-a-driver-for-extra-buttons (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rather vague &quot;how do I program buttons on a drawing tablet.&quot;  Aside from being off topic, no information about what drawing tablet it is is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311892/deleting-dynamically-allocated-memory (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311891/simplest-way-to-build-an-interactive-website-to-visualize-a-table (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a unclear / too broad &quot;how do I render a table&quot; (there are far too many possible ways to do it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311890/where-and-how-i-can-find-explanations-of-abstractions-and-fancy-stuff-used-in-bu (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rant about large software projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311888/adobe-illustrator-data-driven-graphics-via-php (-2, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a question about how to implement an AI that Photoshop has in php. I'm not kidding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311886/why-software-releases-must-be-self-regulated (-3, duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a poorly asked duplicate of a question that searching for &quot;Lehman&quot; would have found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311883/sending-computer-screen-video-through-lightning-connector-to-a-iphone (-3, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a &quot;is it possible&quot; feasibility study question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311874/importing-my-class-to-a-given-tester-class (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is an unclear question that might be &quot;how do I debug my code?&quot; but not enough information about it is given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311873/choose-an-application-development-environment-for-the-displaying-monitoring-da (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted too broad question (with a bit of unclear too).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311871/web-design-templates-for-backend-developing (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a tool recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311866/connected-city-problem (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a cross posted (CS) what appears to be homework dump.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311862/logic-of-ap-to-return-number-set-to-bit1-as-an-input-binary (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a block of code without any question asked (a comment of &quot;how does this work?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311860/can-you-please-explain-what-this-php-code-below-does (-7, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Someone asking what a given function in php does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311857/ways-to-send-a-message-to-a-users-phone (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A service request / too broad (how can you send a message to a device)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311856/periodicity-detection-for-gapped-data (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    An algorithm question that *might* be answerable if sufficient information is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311855/what-is-more-lower-level-click-or-urwid (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &quot;I make web apps using flask so I am tempted to start using click since it's made by the same person but I've seen more info around for urwid? Which one is more lower level?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;    I don't even know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311854/scripting-productivity-and-speed (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     How do you improve your productivity?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311853/automating-scripting-and-building (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A question about automating the IDE. It is a bit unclear and if it was made clear, would be off topic here (its a tooling problem)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311850/python-functions-and-parameters (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How to type the parameters for python calls (implementation question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, out of these 37 questions (which are all the ones with close votes on them in the 50 most recent), which ones are questions that we should examine and consider adjusting the rules for the site so that they are on topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also want to stress that many of these questions are poorly written and the topicality isn't at issue - but rather that I can't understand what is being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are we looking at 3% being improperly closed? 10%? 50%? Until we understand what the problem is - as a community, we can't fix it beyond closing and down voting the questions that don't meet the standards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There has been a suggestion in the comments that software recommendation questions should be on topic here. There is an entire site dedicated to that domain and they are off topic here just as they are off topic on Stack Overflow - because with the curation and community of this site, they rarely generate good answers and tend to be targets of spam and &quot;try my favorite library&quot; type answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22513" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7908" RevisionGUID="a1229afa-3285-4eed-8981-65e2bbc10b8a" CreationDate="2016-03-06T23:33:49.693" UserDisplayName="user174739" Text="## Redirecting the Question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The sites rules for posting questions support and direct the site towards its [stated aims][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think don't there can be disagreement that the current posting rules accurately direct questions towards this site's intent; so the question ceases to be *'are the posting rules incorrect or excessively restrictive'* but rather becomes *'Is the site's stated aims useful?'*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Is Programmers.SE Useful?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes. I'm quite new here, but I can say that I have found my experience so far very helpful. SO is very much focused on 'help me do this'. Programmers.SE allows me to talk to programmers who actively want to discuss workflows, design patterns, code efficiency, testing methods, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have never known many people that are programmers and most of what I know is self-taught; I have found the ability to engage in a higher-level discussion with programmers very helpful. I would have survived without it; but it has allowed me to benefit from others' experience, reducing my learning curve and introducing me to solutions I would not have otherwise thought of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311080/package-interfaces-coupling-re-usability&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Heresy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Maybe this site is not a good fit for the stack exchange family of sites?*... ...Or is this heresy to even suggest?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not heresy, just very unhelpful and (if I may be so bold) rather closed-minded; even if you don't find it useful, others undoubtedly do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22514" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7906" RevisionGUID="6b3b63c2-606c-42c9-9368-efb55dbd237b" CreationDate="2016-03-06T23:42:54.887" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22515" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7906" RevisionGUID="f599c375-84d3-4d8f-b533-726223f24682" CreationDate="2016-03-07T00:34:30.690" UserId="189132" Comment="deleted 39 characters in body" Text="&lt;h3&gt;Fact 1&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;At the time I write this, 12 out of the 15 questions on the questions front page have net downvotes. That is an extreme statistical outlier on stackexchange. Other sites tend to have between 1 and 3 net downvoted questions on the front page. This community has the highest netatively downvoted ratio of any of the other 20 or so communities with which I am familiar. By far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Fact 2&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;I have a stack exchange rep of 8k. I have posted questions in 16 groups. I have a positive question rating in all those other groups. But not this one. In this group, not only do I have a negative question rating, but I am also under notice I am about to be banned for posting bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;The evidence is in. This site is clearly a statistical outlier when it comes to the negative reception received by people trying to get their questions answered here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it time to do something about that? If so, what can be done?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22516" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7908" RevisionGUID="f562a1c3-7ed1-4eaf-9653-9e9e1a7962a3" CreationDate="2016-03-07T00:47:25.403" UserDisplayName="user174739" Comment="edited body" Text="## Redirecting the Question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The sites rules for posting questions support and direct the site towards its [stated aims][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think there can be disagreement that the current posting rules accurately direct questions towards this site's intent; so the question ceases to be *'are the posting rules incorrect or excessively restrictive'* but rather becomes *'Is the site's stated aims useful?'*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Is Programmers.SE Useful?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes. I'm quite new here, but I can say that I have found my experience so far very helpful. SO is very much focused on 'help me do this'. Programmers.SE allows me to talk to programmers who actively want to discuss workflows, design patterns, code efficiency, testing methods, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have never known many people that are programmers and most of what I know is self-taught; I have found the ability to engage in a higher-level discussion with programmers very helpful. I would have survived without it; but it has allowed me to benefit from others' experience, reducing my learning curve and introducing me to solutions I would not have otherwise thought of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311080/package-interfaces-coupling-re-usability&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Heresy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Maybe this site is not a good fit for the stack exchange family of sites?*... ...Or is this heresy to even suggest?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not heresy, just very unhelpful and (if I may be so bold) rather closed-minded; even if you don't find it useful, others undoubtedly do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22517" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7906" RevisionGUID="91bbf724-5cd4-4f20-abde-911c8cf7eb4d" CreationDate="2016-03-07T00:49:13.847" UserId="189132" Comment="edited title" Text="Is this site failing? And should it go away?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22518" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7906" RevisionGUID="cb21854d-6042-42e4-b4ee-b9d2a498d83e" CreationDate="2016-03-07T00:51:34.440" UserId="189132" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="&lt;h3&gt;Fact 1&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;At the time I write this, 12 of the 15 questions on the questions front page have net downvotes. That is an extreme statistical outlier on stackexchange. Other sites tend to have between 1 and 3 net downvoted questions on the front page. This community has the highest netatively downvoted ratio of any of the other 20 or so communities with which I am familiar. By far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Fact 2&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;I have a stack exchange rep of 8k. I have posted questions in 16 groups. I have a positive question rating in all those other groups. But not this one. In this group, not only do I have a negative question rating, but I am also under notice I am about to be banned for posting bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;The evidence is in. This site is clearly a statistical outlier when it comes to the negative reception users receive when trying to get their questions answered here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it time to do something about that? If so, what can be done?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22519" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7909" RevisionGUID="a68754a3-852e-4416-90e0-7c330af95256" CreationDate="2016-03-07T01:22:39.727" UserId="81495" Text="&gt; Is this site failing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**No**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And should it go away?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**No**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now my questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that this site *does* have a [small] community that finds it extremely valuable,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* should this site be closed simply because it isn't what you expected it to be?&#xD;&#xA;* should this site be closed simply because it isn't what you want it to be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And since you're statistically minded:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Can you quantify the negative impact this site has on the rest of the SE network?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect the answers to my questions are all **No** as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22520" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7910" RevisionGUID="217b7fc2-1259-4a15-9146-42326c9b3cb0" CreationDate="2016-03-08T09:42:15.763" UserId="100972" Text="As weird as the scope for this site is, I try to follow it with the occasional question I ask here. I'm also generally a positive person. But again and again i come here and get a negative response. When every question that is borderline on/off topic on a site that has such an awkward &quot;area of topic&quot; to pinpoint, gets a downvote and no comment suggesting improvement, from multiple people, consistently, it results in a site where people dont want to be. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The leader of the problem, and I know from over a year of experience with this site, is Gnat, followed by various others. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comments I recently posted after asking what I think to be a fairly good question for this site pretty much sum up my complaints about him, and the generally more active voting community (a select few active users that have a big effect on the way questions are received due to sheer activity):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I figured I'd get a -1 from gnat as usual, he's, as usual, being a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gnat, down voting posts without suggesting any reason or improvement.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; He basically has the contribution to the SE network of a bot, except&#xD;&#xA;&gt; spends less time focusing on each question than a script would, so he&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can zoom to edit and downvote the next question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gnat is the reason I avoid asking questions in this community.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I were to have an issue with my question's scope and someone&#xD;&#xA;&gt; downvoted and said &quot;Hey there's a problem here&quot; that's fine, I'd fix&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it and thank the person for the advise. But on this site, the people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; all just downvote without explaining, every question I decide to ask&#xD;&#xA;&gt; here, and I understand the scope of the site fairly well. The people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; here are just very negative and make the site a bad place, and the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; pack leader of the negativity here is gnat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know you don't like the post, go ahead and down-vote it, all of you whom I'm talking about. I'm posting this opinion because I think there's a problem with negativity in this community, compared to many of the other SE communities that I enjoy being part of. Other sites downvote only a fraction of the amount that this site does, and in comparison up-vote much more. The site stats will confirm this if just looking at the front question pages of various networks isn't enough for you. And more importantly, other sites suggest improvements to questions, where as this one rushes to downvote and close. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22521" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7910" RevisionGUID="217b7fc2-1259-4a15-9146-42326c9b3cb0" CreationDate="2016-03-08T09:42:15.763" UserId="100972" Text="Programmers SE has become a site to avoid" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22522" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7910" RevisionGUID="217b7fc2-1259-4a15-9146-42326c9b3cb0" CreationDate="2016-03-08T09:42:15.763" UserId="100972" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22523" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7910" RevisionGUID="20e55b52-f777-44e6-b4a6-d129faaf7416" CreationDate="2016-03-08T11:11:44.483" UserId="100972" Comment="added 162 characters in body" Text="As weird as the scope for this site is, I try to follow it with the occasional question I ask here. I'm also generally a positive person. But again and again i come here and get a negative response. When every question that is borderline on/off topic on a site that has such an awkward &quot;area of topic&quot; to pinpoint, gets a downvote and no comment suggesting improvement, from multiple people, consistently, it results in a site where people dont want to be. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The leader of the problem, and I know from over a year of experience with this site, is Gnat, followed by various others. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comments I recently posted after asking what I think to be a fairly good question for this site pretty much sum up my complaints about him, and the generally more active voting community (a select few active users that have a big effect on the way questions are received due to sheer activity):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I figured I'd get a -1 from gnat as usual, he's, as usual, being a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gnat, down voting posts without suggesting any reason or improvement.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; He basically has the contribution to the SE network of a bot, except&#xD;&#xA;&gt; spends less time focusing on each question than a script would, so he&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can zoom to edit and downvote the next question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, in frustration my opinion is expressed in an unkind manner, but accurate nonetheless. I think what I'm saying in not without merit, nor should it be offensive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gnat is the reason I avoid asking questions in this community.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I were to have an issue with my question's scope and someone&#xD;&#xA;&gt; downvoted and said &quot;Hey there's a problem here&quot; that's fine, I'd fix&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it and thank the person for the advise. But on this site, the people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; all just downvote without explaining, every question I decide to ask&#xD;&#xA;&gt; here, and I understand the scope of the site fairly well. The people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; here are just very negative and make the site a bad place, and the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; pack leader of the negativity here is gnat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know you don't like the post, go ahead and down-vote it, all of you whom I'm talking about. I'm posting this opinion because I think there's a problem with negativity in this community, compared to many of the other SE communities that I enjoy being part of. Other sites downvote only a fraction of the amount that this site does, and in comparison up-vote much more. The site stats will confirm this if just looking at the front question pages of various networks isn't enough for you. And more importantly, other sites suggest improvements to questions, where as this one rushes to downvote and close. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22524" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7911" RevisionGUID="6d42c17a-2196-4aab-9d47-4e3848a0470e" CreationDate="2016-03-08T11:29:06.817" UserDisplayName="user174739" Text="Well I just saw a [second Meta question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7910/programmers-se-has-become-a-site-to-avoid?noredirect=1#comment24081_7910) expressing strong ill-will for this site after [first witnessing](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away) this, seemingly well-trodden, battlefield. Given that I am already weary of it, I can only assume that others are much more so, but bear with me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Breaking this down into as simple a a description as possible:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*A substantial number of users are arriving here with a different/false understanding of what this site is for; this results in a lot of closed questions and consequent animosity.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two parts to this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. People wanting this site to be something it's not; i.e disagreeing with / not understanding the site's objective&#xD;&#xA; 2. People disagree with the site' enforcement; i.e. thinking that valid questions are being downvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to discount the second option as a valid grounds for debate since it seems to have been quite categorically answered by [MichaelT's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7907/174739) to a previous Meta question. Even if there is the odd question that is within scope that is getting voted down, this is a smaller problem compared to item 1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been comments about poor communication when down-voting and some quite bitter words about specific users; I don't care about any of that because I think that it is all a symptom, not the cause of this phenomenon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## How can we better communicate the site's purpose?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below are my current thoughts as to every possible solution, along with my thoughts as to why they are good/bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Change Name&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**BAD** because it was [already rejected by SE top brass][1] and for seemingly valid reasons; namely, there isn't an alternative name that narrows the definition whilst staying true to this site's purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Add Sub-title&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**GOOD** providing that the right wording could be found. Sub-titles are less restrictive than the main name so they can be a little longer and they can be very effective at refining the definition of the site to a perspective user; they are more likely to read a sub-title than a specific page that defines what is/is-not on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Add Blurb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**NEUTRAL** because I don't know how viable it is or if it would be read. The idea would be to add a small blurb that is actively displayed to the user before they post a question. Ideally with a greyed-out background and a 'let's begin' button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Change Scope&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**BAD** because the site's scope appears to have been modified to its current form for valid reasons; namely to ensure that the site remains useful to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Change enforcement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**NEUTRAL** because I think it is separate to the current topic. To my eyes, fixing the problem of lots of off-topic questions being posted here would naturally result in people being less trigger-happy with the border-line on-topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So... thoughts, ideas, scathing indictments... let the games begin.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3718/change-the-name-of-programmers-to-something-that-more-accurately-reflects-the-si/3733#3733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22525" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7911" RevisionGUID="6d42c17a-2196-4aab-9d47-4e3848a0470e" CreationDate="2016-03-08T11:29:06.817" UserDisplayName="user174739" Text="Great Expectations... or, at least, user expectations" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22526" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7911" RevisionGUID="6d42c17a-2196-4aab-9d47-4e3848a0470e" CreationDate="2016-03-08T11:29:06.817" UserDisplayName="user174739" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22527" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7912" RevisionGUID="69d990af-c80f-4a1d-86c9-02478e828f58" CreationDate="2016-03-08T12:40:29.457" UserId="100972" Text="Alright I'll bite. I have a few general points, but first off, it was my question referenced by OP, and I'd like to point out that *while I used questionable / bad wording (&quot;Is it possible?&quot;)*, there was more to my question than that, taking it beyond the yes/no answer format, and of the scope, it certainly seems to meet at least one point, if not a few other vaguely:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- software requirements&#xD;&#xA;- software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;- algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;- quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;- **development methodologies and processes**&#xD;&#xA;- software configuration management&#xD;&#xA;- software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;- software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it certainly had the potential, with a few edits, to become a good question. Instead it immediately, within a few hours, got 3 negative votes, 3 votes to close, and ***zero*** suggestions for improvement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the major trend for questions in need of improvement on this site, and my whole point is that a large portion of the self-moderating activity on this site is making the problem of poor questions worse by choosing to down-vote and close rather than suggest ways of improving the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Stack Exchange communities improve their user base's question output quality by actively and continuously suggesting improvement to salvageable questions. By immediately pulling the trigger on 3 down-votes, 3 close votes, you skip this step completely.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I pointed out a specific user who I've noticed over a wide range of cases, and a long span of time, has been the &quot;first-responder&quot;, and potentially the catalyst for this trend, because psychology and common sense show that after the first vote is made, it will encourage further votes in the same direction. This goes for close votes, positive votes, and negative votes. People follow suit, suddenly one extremely active user is causing alot of damage when his behavior is followed by others systematically over a long period of time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just think of how many people you could have ***trained*** to ask better questions in the past year with a few moments spent suggesting improvements to questions rather than just cutting them down, closing, and offering at ***most*** a link to a related meta post with no explanation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thousands. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Side-note regarding your improvement suggestion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to make more clear what your awkwardly strict and confusing scope is, how about making it more accessible?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now, the scope accessibility is horrible in terms of UX. It requires 2 page changes just to find the full scope definition, and that's after having to read through all sorts of meta information to find the right link. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How about placing the scope definition as an expandable module right there on the question asking interface, and perhaps even use some form of subtle animation to bring it to the attention of new users?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or even just make it one click away? If you're trying to educate users on your scope the *last* thing you want is to hide the information behind two links. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22528" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7911" RevisionGUID="7504cf32-feaf-4a45-b0ec-cc666fa03a12" CreationDate="2016-03-08T12:59:52.450" UserDisplayName="user174739" Comment="Made the suggestions express a neutral opinion and moved my opinion into an answer." Text="Well I just saw a [second Meta question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7910/programmers-se-has-become-a-site-to-avoid?noredirect=1#comment24081_7910) expressing strong ill-will for this site after [first witnessing](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away) this, seemingly well-trodden, battlefield. Given that I am already weary of it, I can only assume that others are much more so, but bear with me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Breaking this down into as simple a a description as possible:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*A substantial number of users are arriving here with a different/false understanding of what this site is for; this results in a lot of closed questions and consequent animosity.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two parts to this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. People wanting this site to be something it's not; i.e disagreeing with / not understanding the site's objective&#xD;&#xA; 2. People disagree with the site' enforcement; i.e. thinking that valid questions are being downvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to discount the second option as a valid grounds for debate since it seems to have been quite categorically answered by [MichaelT's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7907/174739) to a previous Meta question. Even if there is the odd question that is within scope that is getting voted down, this is a smaller problem compared to item 1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been comments about poor communication when down-voting and some quite bitter words about specific users; I don't care about any of that because I think that it is all a symptom, not the cause of this phenomenon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## How can we better communicate the site's purpose?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below are all current ideas as to what could be done. If you have any other ideas either edit this question or post them in an answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Change Name&#xD;&#xA;Self-explanatory, *Pogrammers.SE* become *OtherName.SE*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Add Sub-title&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add a sub-title to the website's header to better describe the site's purpose (e.g. *Programmers: Architecture, Planning, &amp; Concepts*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Make Scope More Accessible&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Display the scope in a simply-worded form next to the 'ask a question' interface; this makes it more likely users will read it before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Add Blurb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add a descriptive blurb that is displayed to users before they are able to post their first question. Make this focus-stealing; i.e. background is greyed-out and the user must take an action to continue (e.g. click 'got it').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Change Scope&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change the scope to include some of the areas that are currently being down-voted as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Change Enforcement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically, be less strict about close--votes, give users more time to improve their question before down-voting etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So... votes, thoughts, ideas, scathing indictments... let the games begin.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3718/change-the-name-of-programmers-to-something-that-more-accurately-reflects-the-si/3733#3733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22529" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7913" RevisionGUID="cc99e22b-23bc-4310-b615-2aa4a81d4930" CreationDate="2016-03-08T13:03:47.983" UserDisplayName="user174739" Text="Here are my thoughts on the solutions currently listed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Change Name** is *BAD* because it was [already rejected by SE top brass][1] and for seemingly valid reasons; namely, there isn't an alternative name that narrows the definition whilst staying true to this site's purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Add Sub-title** is *GOOD* providing that the right wording could be found. Sub-titles are less restrictive than the main name so they can be a little longer and they can be very effective at refining the definition of the site to a perspective user; they are more likely to read a sub-title than a specific page that defines what is/is-not on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Make Scope More Accessible** is *GOOD* because I agree that finding an authoritative description of the scope can be tricky and putting this front-and-center will at least reduce some of the confusion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Add Blurb** is *NEUTRAL* because I don't know how viable it is or if it would be read. The idea would be to add a small blurb that is actively displayed to the user before they post a question. Ideally with a greyed-out background and a 'let's begin' button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Change Scope** is *BAD* because the site's scope appears to have been modified to its current form for valid reasons; namely to ensure that the site remains useful to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Change Enforcement** is *NEUTRAL* because I think it is separate to the current topic. To my eyes, fixing the problem of lots of off-topic questions being posted here would naturally result in people being less trigger-happy with the border-line on-topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22530" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5900" RevisionGUID="be7bd217-c3ea-49df-9bb2-76b7dd61a46e" CreationDate="2016-03-08T13:05:31.343" UserId="25936" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[7898],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="22531" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7913" RevisionGUID="22d11974-08f9-41b2-a83a-f74ddec1b4cd" CreationDate="2016-03-08T13:12:51.893" UserDisplayName="user174739" Comment="added 16 characters in body" Text="Here are my thoughts on the solutions currently listed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Change Name** is *BAD* because it was [already rejected by SE top brass][1] and for seemingly valid reasons; namely, there isn't an alternative name that narrows the definition whilst staying true to this site's purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Add Sub-title** is *GOOD* providing that the right wording could be found. Sub-titles are less restrictive than the main name so they can be a little longer and they can be very effective at refining the definition of the site to a perspective user; they are more likely to read a sub-title than a specific page that defines what is/is-not on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Make Scope More Accessible** is *GOOD* because I agree that finding an authoritative description of the scope can be tricky and putting this front-and-center will at least reduce some of the confusion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Add Blurb** is *NEUTRAL* because I don't know how viable it is or if it would be read. If anything I would lean towards *GOOD* because, if it is worded correctly and is sufficiently brief, the fact that it is specifically targeted at new users could be a great improvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Change Scope** is *BAD* because the site's scope appears to have been modified to its current form for valid reasons; namely to ensure that the site remains useful to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Change Enforcement** is *NEUTRAL* because I think it is separate to the current topic. To my eyes, fixing the problem of lots of off-topic questions being posted here would naturally result in people being less trigger-happy with the border-line on-topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22532" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7911" RevisionGUID="9e6d2d78-d9ab-42e7-8afe-1513fcdb8ee8" CreationDate="2016-03-08T13:27:33.543" UserDisplayName="user174739" Comment="My original question was heading towards the polling for a solution anyway, so let's just make it official." Text="|discussion|close-reasons|on-topic-definition|polling|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22533" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7912" RevisionGUID="f1210aec-e3a0-4ade-9b77-6b5075fef0bb" CreationDate="2016-03-08T13:31:41.550" UserId="100972" Comment="added 207 characters in body" Text="Alright I'll bite. I have a few general points, but first off, it was my question referenced by OP, and I'd like to point out that *while I used questionable / bad wording (&quot;Is it possible?&quot;)*, there was more to my question than that, taking it beyond the yes/no answer format, and of the scope, it certainly seems to meet at least one point, if not a few other vaguely:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- software requirements&#xD;&#xA;- software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;- algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;- quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;- **development methodologies and processes**&#xD;&#xA;- software configuration management&#xD;&#xA;- software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;- software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it certainly had the potential, with a few edits, to become a good question. Instead it immediately, within a few hours, got 3 negative votes, 3 votes to close, and ***zero*** suggestions for improvement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the major trend for questions in need of improvement on this site, and my whole point is that a large portion of the self-moderating activity on this site is making the problem of poor questions worse by choosing to down-vote and close rather than suggest ways of improving the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Stack Exchange communities improve their user base's question output quality by actively and continuously suggesting improvement to salvageable questions. By immediately pulling the trigger on 3 down-votes, 3 close votes, you skip this step completely.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I pointed out a specific user who I've noticed over a wide range of cases, and a long span of time, has been the &quot;first-responder&quot;, and potentially the catalyst for this trend, because psychology and common sense show that after the first vote is made, it will encourage further votes in the same direction. This goes for close votes, positive votes, and negative votes. People follow suit, suddenly one extremely active user is causing alot of damage when his behavior is followed by others systematically over a long period of time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just think of how many people you could have ***trained*** to ask better questions in the past year with a few moments spent suggesting improvements to questions rather than just cutting them down, closing, and offering at ***most*** a link to a related meta post with no explanation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thousands. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I made a [suggestion on Meta.SE][1] based on my thoughts here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Side-note regarding your improvement suggestion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to make more clear what your awkwardly strict and confusing scope is, how about making it more accessible?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now, the scope accessibility is horrible in terms of UX. It requires 2 page changes just to find the full scope definition, and that's after having to read through all sorts of meta information to find the right link. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How about placing the scope definition as an expandable module right there on the question asking interface, and perhaps even use some form of subtle animation to bring it to the attention of new users?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or even just make it one click away? If you're trying to educate users on your scope the *last* thing you want is to hide the information behind two links. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/276621/i-suggest-a-mechanic-to-improve-quality-of-life-for-questions-that-could-be-impr" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22534" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7911" RevisionGUID="9e99a361-4cf9-4b2c-bb9f-e70f982b6d49" CreationDate="2016-03-08T13:46:24.507" UserDisplayName="user174739" Comment="deleted 160 characters in body" Text="Well I just saw a [second Meta question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7910/programmers-se-has-become-a-site-to-avoid?noredirect=1#comment24081_7910) expressing strong ill-will for this site after [first witnessing](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away) this, seemingly well-trodden, battlefield. Given that I am already weary of it, I can only assume that others are much more so, but bear with me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Breaking this down into as simple a a description as possible:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*A substantial number of users are arriving here with a different/false understanding of what this site is for; this results in a lot of closed questions and consequent animosity.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two parts to this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. People wanting this site to be something it's not; i.e disagreeing with / not understanding the site's objective&#xD;&#xA; 2. People disagree with the site' enforcement; i.e. thinking that valid questions are being downvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to discount the second option as a valid grounds for debate since it seems to have been quite categorically answered by [MichaelT's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7907/174739) to a previous Meta question. Even if there is the odd question that is within scope that is getting voted down, this is a smaller problem compared to item 1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been comments about poor communication when down-voting and some quite bitter words about specific users; I don't care about any of that because I think that it is all a symptom, not the cause of this phenomenon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## How can we better communicate the site's purpose?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below are all current ideas as to what could be done. If you have any other ideas either edit this question or post them in an answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Change Name&#xD;&#xA;Self-explanatory, *Pogrammers.SE* become *OtherName.SE*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Add Sub-title&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add a sub-title to the website's header to better describe the site's purpose (e.g. *Programmers: Architecture, Planning, &amp; Concepts*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Make Scope More Accessible&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Display the scope in a simply-worded form next to the 'ask a question' interface; this makes it more likely users will read it before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Add Blurb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add a descriptive blurb that is displayed to users before they are able to post their first question. Make this focus-stealing; i.e. background is greyed-out and the user must take an action to continue (e.g. click 'got it').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Change Scope&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change the scope to include some of the areas that are currently being down-voted as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Change Enforcement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically, be less strict about close--votes, give users more time to improve their question before down-voting etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So... votes, thoughts, ideas, scathing indictments... let the games begin." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22535" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7913" RevisionGUID="663effda-6ca0-4db0-b205-40db192459ff" CreationDate="2016-03-08T13:46:33.150" UserDisplayName="user174739" Comment="added 156 characters in body" Text="Here are my thoughts on the solutions currently listed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Change Name** is *BAD* because it was [already rejected by SE top brass][1] and for seemingly valid reasons; namely, there isn't an alternative name that narrows the definition whilst staying true to this site's purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Add Sub-title** is *GOOD* providing that the right wording could be found. Sub-titles are less restrictive than the main name so they can be a little longer and they can be very effective at refining the definition of the site to a perspective user; they are more likely to read a sub-title than a specific page that defines what is/is-not on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Make Scope More Accessible** is *GOOD* because I agree that finding an authoritative description of the scope can be tricky and putting this front-and-center will at least reduce some of the confusion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Add Blurb** is *NEUTRAL* because I don't know how viable it is or if it would be read. If anything I would lean towards *GOOD* because, if it is worded correctly and is sufficiently brief, the fact that it is specifically targeted at new users could be a great improvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Change Scope** is *BAD* because the site's scope appears to have been modified to its current form for valid reasons; namely to ensure that the site remains useful to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Change Enforcement** is *NEUTRAL* because I think it is separate to the current topic. To my eyes, fixing the problem of lots of off-topic questions being posted here would naturally result in people being less trigger-happy with the border-line on-topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3718/change-the-name-of-programmers-to-something-that-more-accurately-reflects-the-si/3733#3733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22536" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7914" RevisionGUID="aec429e0-c074-47ea-9535-f61183ceca6c" CreationDate="2016-03-08T14:19:52.500" UserId="27736" Text="It's the unfortunate fate of software which interfaces with different facets of the collective human behavior. These reactions from the users are inevitable; but can be managed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A **tagline** (or **subtitle**) would go a long way. This tagline should serve as a reminder on all events: questions, comments, votes, and so on. It would serve as a means to return the user's mindset to the original principle which birthed the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A **blurb** would also work on first post. I suggest there should be a series of blurbs which gets less in the face of the user when the site &quot;learns&quot; the user complies more with its principles.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22537" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7915" RevisionGUID="6c4b3567-9332-496c-b13a-333f85fe41dd" CreationDate="2016-03-08T14:49:04.280" UserId="27736" Text="Hmm...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An [tag:app] is definitely an [tag:applications]. It may present questions spanning many platforms like [tag:web-applications], [tag:desktop-applications], [tag:mobile-app], and so on. And on the grounds of my first sentence, yes: the *app* and the *applications* tags should be synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if one considers semantics, this may not be the right course of action. [tag:applications] may refer to the the *applying* of different principles like things from [tag:design-patterns], [tag:architecture], or [tag:algorithms]. In this case, making them synonyms may be counterproductive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If Programmers.SE could survey the questions under [tag:applications] and see what categories the majority fall into, a better informed decision can be taken" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22538" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7916" RevisionGUID="70b66bfe-3dad-4a07-95c4-fa162d11ca85" CreationDate="2016-03-08T16:19:07.587" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Some time back Doc asked http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6371/how-can-we-encourage-people-to-read-the-faq-before-asking-their-first-question which is a really good question and a fairly consistent challenge to get people to ask questions on the site they should be (we get a significant number of debugging questions for example).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's the suggestion (that Robert Harvey had) put into a post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That &quot;Welcome (back) to the site&quot; banner that shows up when you join a new site? That one that you can dismiss with a click.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have a link to help/on-topic if the user visits the site and has all of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* less than two up voted questions&#xD;&#xA;* less than 100 reputation on site (akin to how protection does it with 10 rep)&#xD;&#xA;* lacks the &quot;informed&quot; badge (the one you get by reading the tour)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, a link at the top of the page. Point them clearly and succinctly to the help center. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have no illusions that this will prevent all the off topic questions. However, even a slight reduction in the &quot;this is the completely wrong site for this question&quot; influx of new questions that we get can help reduce the initial perception of going into a new question of &quot;this question is probably off topic.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22539" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7916" RevisionGUID="70b66bfe-3dad-4a07-95c4-fa162d11ca85" CreationDate="2016-03-08T16:19:07.587" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Show a banner to new users linking them to the help center" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22540" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7916" RevisionGUID="70b66bfe-3dad-4a07-95c4-fa162d11ca85" CreationDate="2016-03-08T16:19:07.587" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|feature-request|on-topic-definition|new-users|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22542" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7918" RevisionGUID="42bc2e10-85b3-4b8a-aecf-bb6808267f22" CreationDate="2016-03-08T16:22:47.233" UserId="17853" Text="I dunno - I think we've shown on SE time and time again that showing this sort of information to people who didn't see fit to look it up in the first place is completely ineffectual. Meanwhile, I can imagine it being fairly annoying for the rest of us. I wish I had data, but [forgot the word] observations suggest that this kind of approach never has any effect and that, in general, we've site-wide given up on it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22544" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7918" RevisionGUID="b5f6b63b-ea12-4b6f-861a-94252137b5a5" CreationDate="2016-03-08T16:25:04.450" UserId="17853" Comment="added 87 characters in body" Text="I dunno - I think we've shown on SE time and time again that showing this sort of information to people who didn't see fit to look it up in the first place is completely ineffectual. Meanwhile, I can imagine it being fairly annoying for the rest of us. I wish I had data, but anecdotal evidence suggest that this kind of approach never has any effect and that, in general, we've site-wide given up on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I expect Shog can help me out here as (again purely anecdotally) IIRC he's said the same thing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22545" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7916" RevisionGUID="5d67ea2f-a562-407f-a941-d0add00c010a" CreationDate="2016-03-08T16:27:34.760" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="Some time back Doc asked http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6371/how-can-we-encourage-people-to-read-the-faq-before-asking-their-first-question which is a really good question and a fairly consistent challenge to get people to ask questions on the site they should be (we get a significant number of debugging questions for example).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's the suggestion (that Robert Harvey inspired) put into a post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That &quot;Welcome (back) to the site&quot; banner that shows up when you join a new site? That one that you can dismiss with a click.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have a link to help/on-topic if the user visits the site and has all of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* less than two up voted questions&#xD;&#xA;* less than 100 reputation on site (akin to how protection does it with 10 rep)&#xD;&#xA;* lacks the &quot;informed&quot; badge (the one you get by reading the tour)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, a link at the top of the page. Point them clearly and succinctly to the help center. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have no illusions that this will prevent all the off topic questions. However, even a slight reduction in the &quot;this is the completely wrong site for this question&quot; influx of new questions that we get can help reduce the initial perception of going into a new question of &quot;this question is probably off topic.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22546" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7918" RevisionGUID="8e324ce2-9403-4048-ad21-f249ba86736d" CreationDate="2016-03-08T16:28:11.497" UserId="17853" Comment="whoops duh" Text="I dunno - I think we've shown on SE time and time again that showing this sort of information to people who didn't see fit to look it up in the first place is completely ineffectual. &lt;strike&gt;Meanwhile, I can imagine it being fairly annoying for the rest of us.&lt;/strike&gt; I wish I had data, but anecdotal evidence suggest that this kind of approach never has any effect and that, in general, we've site-wide given up on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I expect Shog can help me out here as (again purely anecdotally) IIRC he's said the same thing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22547" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7911" RevisionGUID="0dfae314-9c5b-466b-a93f-8cbdaa111d41" CreationDate="2016-03-08T17:23:49.157" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/707255512807710720" />
  <row Id="22548" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7919" RevisionGUID="2359865c-3319-4939-a9f0-ffd897f9f00f" CreationDate="2016-03-08T20:12:19.027" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I think part of the problem is it is _too easy_ to ask questions. Not that it should be difficult, but perhaps require taking the tour first even for established users (+100 association bonus). While this is a low bar, I doubt it would work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is difficult to force users to read and understand the help center, for example. I am reminded of every time I have had to take sexual harassment training on the computer for work. Play on my phone until the required time passed for a &quot;lesson&quot; then check the checkboxes and hope for the best. Asking on a Stack Exchange site is no different.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I ask or answer on a Stack Exchange site where I do not already regularly contribute, I am careful to read the help center and some of the meta posts first. I look at recent questions that received both positive and negative attention. I ask myself &quot;why did this question get upvoted, and another downvoted or closed?&quot; In general, this has served me well (also, never post when drunk).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Certain sites go above and beyond the general scope and quality requirements. [Code Review][1] (6 &quot;yeses&quot;), [Skeptics][2] (citations), [Programming Puzzles &amp; Code Golf][3] (challenge type, scoring), and a couple others come to mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not one of those. We just want a reasonably-scoped, clear, objectively-answerable, on-topic question and answers that actually answer the question as asked. We have a help center and many meta posts describing our standards, which do not require an excessive amount of effort to meet: they are simply unclear to some people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not believe there is anything more we can do to help the situation except for token gestures that in the end, users will ignore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;On another note, I know several of us do try to post meta-links in response to questions that fall into one of several common traps:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or down voted?][4]&#xD;&#xA;* [Green fields, blue skies, and the white board - what is too broad?][5]&#xD;&#xA;* [On discussions and why they don't make good questions][6]&#xD;&#xA;* [Where to start?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no point in rehashing the same points over and over: post a link, then if the asker is interested in working _with_ us, we are generally willing to help. If the asker is genuinely concerned in learning and has enough reputation, we have even invited them to [The Whiteboard][8] to hash things out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Finally, you make a point about possibly changing scope to match what users want. We tried this, it did not work. I recommend reading up on this site's history if you have not done so already:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is the history behind the site scope change from NPR to “conceptual questions about software development”?][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6961/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6742/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6366/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/22815" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22550" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7921" RevisionGUID="00079327-1d17-4715-a533-366de11d5942" CreationDate="2016-03-08T20:28:29.687" UserId="122960" Text="I wish to ask what are the good resources to understand Python source code written in C language. Like there a book for Ruby i.e. Ruby under a microscope. It deals with low level implementation of Ruby.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wish to ask same resource for Python. Can I ask this kind of programming language related questions here? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not what community would fit well for these questions? (Surely not Stackoverflow)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22551" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7921" RevisionGUID="00079327-1d17-4715-a533-366de11d5942" CreationDate="2016-03-08T20:28:29.687" UserId="122960" Text="can I ask for resource recommendations here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22552" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7921" RevisionGUID="00079327-1d17-4715-a533-366de11d5942" CreationDate="2016-03-08T20:28:29.687" UserId="122960" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22553" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7922" RevisionGUID="36d88fc3-71a3-4c3d-86e8-1e9632358b7f" CreationDate="2016-03-08T20:30:56.710" UserId="4" Text="No, these questions are off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Very few communities take requests for resources. Two notable exceptions are Hardware Recommendations and Software Recommendations, both of which have strict rules about formulating the requirements for the recommendation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22554" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7921" RevisionGUID="b8298d8c-d7d5-49fa-97a3-6038c61956ff" CreationDate="2016-03-08T20:35:16.543" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|site-rec|resource-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22555" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7923" RevisionGUID="938ad7c5-7bd2-46cd-a8c9-5bac24042e18" CreationDate="2016-03-08T21:32:12.907" UserId="217210" Text="I just noticed a recent change on this old question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79041/how-to-apologize-when-you-have-broken-the-nightly-build&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some &quot;senior&quot; member of Programmers added [tag:xkcd-1305], while (to me) the question has nothing to do with http://www.xkcd.com/1305/.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, what to do? Can someone please explain the relation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22556" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7923" RevisionGUID="938ad7c5-7bd2-46cd-a8c9-5bac24042e18" CreationDate="2016-03-08T21:32:12.907" UserId="217210" Text="New, perhaps improper tag to old question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22557" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7923" RevisionGUID="938ad7c5-7bd2-46cd-a8c9-5bac24042e18" CreationDate="2016-03-08T21:32:12.907" UserId="217210" Text="|discussion|tags|retagging|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22558" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7924" RevisionGUID="89217e56-427e-4871-8eee-012c87d5dce1" CreationDate="2016-03-08T21:41:12.133" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Resource requests are explicitly [off-topic per the help center][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * where to find a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading: [Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - Requests for Recommendations?&quot;][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;The meta post goes into more detail explaining _why_ this is the case. Some of the important points summarized below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Stack Exchange is _timeless_. A question should be mostly valid years from now. In the context of Programmers, fundamental design and programming concepts change at a glacial pace. Sure, specific technology comes and goes, but those of us in the computer science and software engineering fields for a decade or longer know that some hot new technology comes up every day, but by and large, the fundamentals that underpin our career field really do not change day to day. The lessons in [Working Effectively with Legacy Code][3] are as applicable today as they were in 2004 when [Michael Feathers][4] wrote the book because he focuses on techniques and high-level concepts. Only the details about specific libraries and tools have changed over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This puts the following points into the proper context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Resource requests are asking for specific resources that are relevant to the broader concepts. Links to tutorials and blogs can stagnate: if you want a Python tutorial for the particular concept you are trying to learn, it can grow out of date. Could you imagine stumbling across your question years later when Python 6 is all the rage, and ye olde Python 3 code is considered legacy technology that programmers grumble about maintaining just like we do with COBOL today? This is the core reason why this site focuses on _conceptual_ problems that age well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Stack Exchange is designed to be a place where people can get answers for their questions, not as a thinly-veiled search engine where questions are answered with links to outside resources. We have Google for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Answers are encouraged to link to outside resources, but an answer must stand on its own. Links can vanish or move. Then a link-only answer is useless, even if it is voted up to +100. Note that I opened this answer with two links, but provided a bit of explanation. This is regardless of the fact those links should never vanish unless this answer does as well (i.e. someone made Programmers.SE go away).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    From the [help center][5]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Links to external resources are encouraged, but please add context&#xD;&#xA;&gt; around the link so your fellow users will have some idea what it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and why it’s there. Always quote the most relevant part of an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; important link, in case the target site is unreachable or goes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; permanently offline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thomas mentioned Stack Exchange's two resource recommendation sites, for software and hardware. Those are special: such questions are on-topic there. However, requesting links to blogs, tutorials, etc. are off-topic at both. Both sites have _very_ strict requirements for what constitutes an on-topic question. As always, view a site's help center and poke around its meta (like you did here) for a bit before asking just to be sure. It makes for a better experience for everyone involved, and helps keep the signal to noise ratio high.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.amazon.com/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Michael-Feathers/dp/0131177052&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://michaelfeathers.silvrback.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22559" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7925" RevisionGUID="dbb8b280-fcaf-4ffd-a044-48f628c92db3" CreationDate="2016-03-08T21:46:55.457" UserId="52929" Text="That is part of the attempt in [Chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) to make the [tag:xkcd-1305] link to the actual XKCD instead of a non-existing tag on the main site...&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22560" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7925" RevisionGUID="369e00c8-64ed-45b9-ad0d-5b7a036f3119" CreationDate="2016-03-08T22:01:06.143" UserId="60357" Comment="added more info." Text="That is part of the attempt in our chat room *[The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard)* to make the [tag:xkcd-1305] link to the actual XKCD instead of a non-existing tag on the main site. Unfortunately, the tag gets deleted when no question is tagged with it, so for unknown reasons that question was chosen to carry the tag.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22561" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7926" RevisionGUID="3058aa3b-a913-4032-9fd2-9cef548a7f33" CreationDate="2016-03-08T22:01:42.257" UserId="47" Text="I'm not at all happy about that tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What purpose does it serve?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It may be a &quot;fun&quot; tag, but does it help anyone find questions more easily? Does it tell you anything about that question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm happy to be cast as the villain in this, but I don't that that tag should exist." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22562" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7927" RevisionGUID="531a4b6a-736c-4591-b3af-6fbee04ded02" CreationDate="2016-03-08T22:09:17.110" UserId="17853" Text="I've removed the tag. That was vandalism, plain and simple.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see it edited in again, flag for moderator attention." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22563" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7926" RevisionGUID="b7b3371b-a4fe-453d-accc-d9d32ff1e982" CreationDate="2016-03-08T22:30:59.957" UserId="60357" Comment="accidentally a word → detypofied" Text="I'm not at all happy about that tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What purpose does it serve?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It may be a “fun” tag, but does it help anyone find questions more easily? Does it tell you anything about that question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm happy to be cast as the villain in this, but I don't think that tag should exist." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22564" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7924" RevisionGUID="5e176fce-efc5-4e64-9d46-ec9fdcaf7285" CreationDate="2016-03-09T00:39:36.923" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Indent quote block." Text="Resource requests are explicitly [off-topic per the help center][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * where to find a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading: [Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - Requests for Recommendations?&quot;][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;The meta post goes into more detail explaining _why_ this is the case. Some of the important points summarized below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Stack Exchange is _timeless_. A question should be mostly valid years from now. In the context of Programmers, fundamental design and programming concepts change at a glacial pace. Sure, specific technology comes and goes, but those of us in the computer science and software engineering fields for a decade or longer know that some hot new technology comes up every day, but by and large, the fundamentals that underpin our career field really do not change day to day. The lessons in [Working Effectively with Legacy Code][3] are as applicable today as they were in 2004 when [Michael Feathers][4] wrote the book because he focuses on techniques and high-level concepts. Only the details about specific libraries and tools have changed over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This puts the following points into the proper context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Resource requests are asking for specific resources that are relevant to the broader concepts. Links to tutorials and blogs can stagnate: if you want a Python tutorial for the particular concept you are trying to learn, it can grow out of date. Could you imagine stumbling across your question years later when Python 6 is all the rage, and ye olde Python 3 code is considered legacy technology that programmers grumble about maintaining just like we do with COBOL today? This is the core reason why this site focuses on _conceptual_ problems that age well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Stack Exchange is designed to be a place where people can get answers for their questions, not as a thinly-veiled search engine where questions are answered with links to outside resources. We have Google for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Answers are encouraged to link to outside resources, but an answer must stand on its own. Links can vanish or move. Then a link-only answer is useless, even if it is voted up to +100. Note that I opened this answer with two links, but provided a bit of explanation. This is regardless of the fact those links should never vanish unless this answer does as well (i.e. someone made Programmers.SE go away).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    From the [help center][5]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Links to external resources are encouraged, but please add context&#xD;&#xA;&gt; around the link so your fellow users will have some idea what it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and why it’s there. Always quote the most relevant part of an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; important link, in case the target site is unreachable or goes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; permanently offline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thomas mentioned Stack Exchange's two resource recommendation sites, for software and hardware. Those are special: such questions are on-topic there. However, requesting links to blogs, tutorials, etc. are off-topic at both. Both sites have _very_ strict requirements for what constitutes an on-topic question. As always, view a site's help center and poke around its meta (like you did here) for a bit before asking just to be sure. It makes for a better experience for everyone involved, and helps keep the signal to noise ratio high.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.amazon.com/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Michael-Feathers/dp/0131177052&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://michaelfeathers.silvrback.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22565" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7921" RevisionGUID="3b83413f-2a0d-43af-9854-ebd2c157662e" CreationDate="2016-03-09T00:40:06.600" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Minor tweaks to title and body." Text="I wish to ask what are the good resources to understand Python source code written in C language. Like there a book for Ruby i.e. Ruby under a microscope. It deals with low level implementation of Ruby.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wish to ask same resource for Python. Can I ask this kind of programming language related questions here? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not what community would fit well for these questions? (Surely not StackOverflow)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22566" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7921" RevisionGUID="3b83413f-2a0d-43af-9854-ebd2c157662e" CreationDate="2016-03-09T00:40:06.600" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Minor tweaks to title and body." Text="Can I ask for resource recommendations here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22567" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7928" RevisionGUID="e9134361-a23c-4ac0-b3eb-da12a67d36a1" CreationDate="2016-03-09T03:12:09.837" UserId="51654" Text="Frankly, I think that you are off base. Or at least your &quot;change enforcement&quot; is too thinly scoped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No amount of name changing or scope massaging or helpful blurbs will fix the _community_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As it stands, we have a fairly insular group of regulars who view questions as something to vet - things to protect the site from. We reliably have purges where old, popular questions are closed. And the regulars do a great job at enforcing the rules to the letter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is a huge problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE sites are here to help people. The rules exist to aid all of us in that goal. But I fear that many people have lost that perspective. The rules have become sport; the questions our game. The regulars fight over who can be the quickest to close, who the most rules-lawyery - rather than who can be the most *helpful*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, this site gets a lot of crap questions. And I'm not arguing that crap questions shouldn't be promptly and thoroughly razed. But there are a lot of useful, interesting questions that are closed because they're too close to an existing question, or a bit broad in their scope, or heaven forbid have differing valid expert opinion answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We spent too much time and effort pruning and not enough time and effort cultivating. Is it any surprise that things aren't growing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is entirely a people problem this site is facing, and things will not change without the people involved changing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22568" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7929" RevisionGUID="f4e863f3-68af-4d49-8e27-e558631be96b" CreationDate="2016-03-09T07:00:14.850" UserId="217210" Text="To sum up my mind about this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The affair has a smell of [a broken window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory) to me. It's been called *fun*, but IMO that's the kind of &quot;fun&quot; juveniles have when snapping car antennas; it doesn't match the otherwise (ultra-)professional expectation and attitude of the main site, that's usually demanded from questioners and respondents.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope it has been a single event. I think @BarryTheHatchet did the right thing about it. Thank you for listening." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22569" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7929" RevisionGUID="fb92a797-d550-4706-9c8b-498a442588af" CreationDate="2016-03-09T07:08:25.233" UserId="217210" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="To sum up my mind about this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The affair has the smell of [a broken window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory) to me. It's been called *fun*, but IMO that's the kind of &quot;fun&quot; juveniles have when snapping car antennas; it doesn't match the otherwise (ultra-)professional expectation and attitude of the main site, that's usually demanded from questioners and respondents.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope it has been a single event. I think @BarryTheHatchet did the right thing about it. Thank you for listening." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22570" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7929" RevisionGUID="37a937b9-400f-48ed-ad1e-823e5dd76f60" CreationDate="2016-03-09T07:13:38.443" UserId="217210" Comment="Added hint to archival claim." Text="To sum up my mind about this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The affair has the smell of [a broken window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory) to me. It's been called *fun*, but IMO that's the kind of &quot;fun&quot; juveniles have when snapping car antennas; it doesn't match the otherwise (ultra-)professional expectation and attitude of the main site, that's usually demanded from questioners and respondents. And it doesn't match the claim to be an archive of questions and answers of interest for programmers, having been closed years after the original event for new reasons or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope it has been a single event. I think @BarryTheHatchet did the right thing about it. Thank you for listening." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22571" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7910" RevisionGUID="af417440-9a94-4270-ae73-a5a44d793ce2" CreationDate="2016-03-09T09:40:41.963" UserId="25936" Comment="103" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="22572" PostHistoryTypeId="14" PostId="7912" RevisionGUID="3b1fc59a-d642-4626-927c-6e9f0dad7ff6" CreationDate="2016-03-09T09:44:34.417" UserId="25936" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="22573" PostHistoryTypeId="33" PostId="7912" RevisionGUID="3f5dbf8f-00b3-49ff-91b8-fe2c45c8f67a" CreationDate="2016-03-09T09:44:34.417" UserId="25936" Comment="4" />
  <row Id="22574" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7911" RevisionGUID="cbd3dd0c-de93-49cb-95fe-022a9f5f1d6c" CreationDate="2016-03-09T10:34:57.963" UserDisplayName="user174739" Comment="Added conclusion" Text="Well I just saw a [second Meta question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7910/programmers-se-has-become-a-site-to-avoid?noredirect=1#comment24081_7910) expressing strong ill-will for this site after [first witnessing](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away) this, seemingly well-trodden, battlefield. Given that I am already weary of it, I can only assume that others are much more so, but bear with me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Breaking this down into as simple a a description as possible:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*A substantial number of users are arriving here with a different/false understanding of what this site is for; this results in a lot of closed questions and consequent animosity.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two parts to this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. People wanting this site to be something it's not; i.e disagreeing with / not understanding the site's objective&#xD;&#xA; 2. People disagree with the site' enforcement; i.e. thinking that valid questions are being downvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to discount the second option as a valid grounds for debate since it seems to have been quite categorically answered by [MichaelT's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7907/174739) to a previous Meta question. Even if there is the odd question that is within scope that is getting voted down, this is a smaller problem compared to item 1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been comments about poor communication when down-voting and some quite bitter words about specific users; I don't care about any of that because I think that it is all a symptom, not the cause of this phenomenon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## How can we better communicate the site's purpose?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below are all current ideas as to what could be done. If you have any other ideas either edit this question or post them in an answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CN | Change Name&#xD;&#xA;Self-explanatory, *Pogrammers.SE* become *OtherName.SE*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### ST | Add Sub-title&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add a sub-title to the website's header to better describe the site's purpose (e.g. *Programmers: Architecture, Planning, &amp; Concepts*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### SA | Make Scope More Accessible&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Display the scope in a simply-worded form next to the 'ask a question' interface; this makes it more likely users will read it before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### BL | Add Blurb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add a descriptive blurb that is displayed to users before they are able to post their first question. Make this focus-stealing; i.e. background is greyed-out and the user must take an action to continue (e.g. click 'got it').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CS | Change Scope&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change the scope to include some of the areas that are currently being down-voted as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CE | Change Enforcement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actively cultivate questions to improve them; narrow their focus if they are too broad, make them more abstract of they are too narrow (i.e. they are debugging specific code instead of asking about architecture/concepts), etc. This would mean slower closing of questions and the encouragement of users to learn about what is/is-not suitable for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CH | Change Help Center&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Create a series of Meta Q&amp;As that are designed to help user improve their answers. This way people can post links to those discussions rather than forever trying to discuss the same things over and over&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So... votes, thoughts, ideas, scathing indictments... let the games begin.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_____________&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is now clear to me that there are two problems with two camps; these are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Improper questions being asked on P.SE; this pertains to users not understanding the site's scope and purpose.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Improper moderation/closing; this pertains to questions being closed too abruptly and with too little communication.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I expect that any solution that looks to resolve one of these and not the other would simply fragment the community. So, I suggest that we move to address both problems simultaneously, with one or more people from each *faction* leading-up a solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Solution 1. Improve communication of the site's purpose.** &#xD;&#xA;From the results, this can involve creating a site tagline, creating a blurb that is displayed to new users before they can post, or by displaying the site scope next to the ask-question interface. These all require SE involvement so must begin with feature requests for our preferred solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Solution 2. Change the self-moderating style**&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest that this is best addressed by those advocating change being given the opportunity to moderate how they wish for a certain period of time once a week. There can then be discussion about improvements that are seen and lessons that can be drawn by the rest of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Results So Far&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've tried to faithfully represent the opinions shown so far. It is by no means a proper survey, but I think the conclusions do make a fair representation of the opinions in the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Counting the opinions posted in answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;                        +&#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +&#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +   +&#xD;&#xA;    CN  ST  SA  BL  CS  CE  CH&#xD;&#xA;    -           -   -   -&#xD;&#xA;    -               -&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Counting the opinions in answers multiplied by their upvotes+1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        +       +              &#xD;&#xA;        +       +       +      &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +       &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +       &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +       &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +       &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +       &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +       &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +   +    &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +   +    &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +   +&#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +   +&#xD;&#xA;    CN  ST  SA  BL  CS  CE  CH&#xD;&#xA;    -           -   -       &#xD;&#xA;    -           -   -   &#xD;&#xA;    -           -   -&#xD;&#xA;    -           -   -&#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Note: some comments did express support for name change, but this was not advocated in any of the answers and it would take too long for me to summarise views expressed in comments as well.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22575" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7911" RevisionGUID="0c79fc32-7f2f-41eb-a9e0-37e44cd852ed" CreationDate="2016-03-09T10:43:37.617" UserDisplayName="user174739" Comment="added 271 characters in body" Text="Well I just saw a [second Meta question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7910/programmers-se-has-become-a-site-to-avoid?noredirect=1#comment24081_7910) expressing strong ill-will for this site after [first witnessing](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away) this, seemingly well-trodden, battlefield. Given that I am already weary of it, I can only assume that others are much more so, but bear with me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Breaking this down into as simple a a description as possible:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*A substantial number of users are arriving here with a different/false understanding of what this site is for; this results in a lot of closed questions and consequent animosity.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two parts to this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. People wanting this site to be something it's not; i.e disagreeing with / not understanding the site's objective&#xD;&#xA; 2. People disagree with the site' enforcement; i.e. thinking that valid questions are being downvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to discount the second option as a valid grounds for debate since it seems to have been quite categorically answered by [MichaelT's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7907/174739) to a previous Meta question. Even if there is the odd question that is within scope that is getting voted down, this is a smaller problem compared to item 1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been comments about poor communication when down-voting and some quite bitter words about specific users; I don't care about any of that because I think that it is all a symptom, not the cause of this phenomenon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## How can we better communicate the site's purpose?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below are all current ideas as to what could be done. If you have any other ideas either edit this question or post them in an answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CN | Change Name&#xD;&#xA;Self-explanatory, *Pogrammers.SE* become *OtherName.SE*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### ST | Add Sub-title&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add a sub-title to the website's header to better describe the site's purpose (e.g. *Programmers: Architecture, Planning, &amp; Concepts*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### SA | Make Scope More Accessible&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Display the scope in a simply-worded form next to the 'ask a question' interface; this makes it more likely users will read it before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### BL | Add Blurb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add a descriptive blurb that is displayed to users before they are able to post their first question. Make this focus-stealing; i.e. background is greyed-out and the user must take an action to continue (e.g. click 'got it').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CS | Change Scope&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change the scope to include some of the areas that are currently being down-voted as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CE | Change Enforcement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actively cultivate questions to improve them; narrow their focus if they are too broad, make them more abstract of they are too narrow (i.e. they are debugging specific code instead of asking about architecture/concepts), etc. This would mean slower closing of questions and the encouragement of users to learn about what is/is-not suitable for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CH | Change Help Center&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Create a series of Meta Q&amp;As that are designed to help user improve their answers. This way people can post links to those discussions rather than forever trying to discuss the same things over and over&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So... votes, thoughts, ideas, scathing indictments... let the games begin.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_____________&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is now clear to me that there are two problems with two camps; these are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Improper questions being asked on P.SE; this pertains to users not understanding the site's scope and purpose.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Improper moderation/closing; this pertains to questions being closed too abruptly and with too little communication.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I expect that any solution that looks to resolve one of these and not the other would simply fragment the community. So, I suggest that we move to address both problems simultaneously, with one or more people from each *faction* leading-up a solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Solution 1. Improve communication of the site's purpose.** &#xD;&#xA;From the results, this can involve creating a site tagline, creating a blurb that is displayed to new users before they can post, or by displaying the site scope next to the ask-question interface. These all require SE involvement so must begin with feature requests for our preferred solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More immediately, *Snowman's* suggestion for a series of Meta Q&amp;As about common question phrasing issues could be implemented. This would be advantageous because the community can do it without SE involvement. It also has the benefit of actively assisting Solution 2.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Solution 2. Change the self-moderating style**&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest that this is best addressed by those advocating change being given the opportunity to moderate how they wish for a certain period of time once a week. There can then be discussion about improvements that are seen and lessons that can be drawn by the rest of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Results So Far&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've tried to faithfully represent the opinions shown so far. It is by no means a proper survey, but I think the conclusions do make a fair representation of the opinions in the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Counting the opinions posted in answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;                        +&#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +&#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +   +&#xD;&#xA;    CN  ST  SA  BL  CS  CE  CH&#xD;&#xA;    -           -   -   -&#xD;&#xA;    -               -&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Counting the opinions in answers multiplied by their upvotes+1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        +       +              &#xD;&#xA;        +       +       +      &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +       &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +       &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +       &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +       &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +       &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +       &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +   +    &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +   +    &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +   +&#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +   +&#xD;&#xA;    CN  ST  SA  BL  CS  CE  CH&#xD;&#xA;    -           -   -       &#xD;&#xA;    -           -   -   &#xD;&#xA;    -           -   -&#xD;&#xA;    -           -   -&#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Note: some comments did express support for name change, but this was not advocated in any of the answers and it would take too long for me to summarise views expressed in comments as well.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22576" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7930" RevisionGUID="ba59ee72-b6e9-49d9-9e70-83a7f3990023" CreationDate="2016-03-09T11:15:40.560" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="Over in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away/7907#7907 I posted this list and haven't gotten a satisfactory response yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the site's scope is at issue, then some percentage of these questions should instead be open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these are just poorly asked questions that need some moderate editing, then there is an army of people who say they should be open that can help cultivate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without identifying which questions we need to consider how the scope is wrong rather than the question doesn't fit we are simply talking in circles around each other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's the list.  Where the post has been deleted, the *entire* text of the question is here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311935/running-net-desktop-application-on-linux (-3, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question is a software recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; We need to develop a desktop application that would run on both Windows and Linux machines, preferably with the same code base or minimal code changes. I know Mono is an option, but I read that Mono Win Forms implementation is suitable only for very simple applications. I guess I cannot make the app using the newly announced cross-platform &quot;.NET Core&quot; either, as apparently it does not support client/desktop apps. So apart from Mono, is there any other option to create a cross-platform desktop application for Windows and Linux?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311931/need-help-to-make-advance-search-in-php-website-project (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A bit hard to determine (the close vote is for unclear). It looks like this might be too broad too. Its a student trying to do some project that isn't well articulated.  The answers to it are all over the place. The OP hasn't been back since the original post of the question to help clarify.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311930/pointers-and-hexadecimal (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is an implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; So I want to make a pointer of chars. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; char *ptr = 0x239038F2  &lt;---- this is my attempt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; where I can iterate through each char.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; So ptr would give me 0x23&#xD;&#xA;ptr++ would give me 0x90&#xD;&#xA;ptr++ would give me 0x38&#xD;&#xA;and finally ptr++ would give me 0xF2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311928/how-do-i-implement-material-style-account-switcher (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   This is a far too broad &quot;how do I do this&quot; type question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311925/structure-of-an-abstract-for-a-conference-talk-or-workshop (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question has nothing to do with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311923/extraordinary-software-written-in-javascript (-8, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a too broad question asking for a list of all the ways that Javascript can be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; JavaScript is usually used for either web frontends or backends (JavaScript). What other extraordinay things can be done with JavaScript?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311921/accepting-express-js-post-requests-in-a-chrome-app (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for issues with writing something in Chrome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311918/how-to-display-a-non-interactive-message-on-a-jframe (-2, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for how to do something in Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311914/running-ruby-commands-does-nothing (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a problem running some third party ruby software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311913/how-to-break-infinite-loop-in-turtle-graphics-python (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for python.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311910/index-exceeds-matrix-dimension-matlab-hog-features (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for matlab (which was already posted on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311907/wdk-10-and-visual-studio-2015-acting-funny (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This (now deleted between then and now) was closed as unclear. It was an issue with some software installation for a C library.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I installed WDK 10 on my computer, and I tried to build a si and I got the error: An SDK corresponding to WDK version '8.1' was not found. Please install the SDK before building.. I downloaded and installed the Windows 10 SDK, and then tried build again, this time I was getting multiple syntax errors, the following code:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Shows the following errors: fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'ntddk.h': No such file or directory, and multiple intellisense errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        extern &quot;C&quot; {&#xD;&#xA;        #include &lt;ntddk.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        #include &lt;ntdddisk.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        #include &lt;wdf.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        NTSTATUS DriverEntry(IN PDRIVER_OBJECT DriverObject, IN PUNICODE_STRING RegistryPath) {}&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Shows the following errors:&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; `fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'ntddk.h': No such file or directory`, and multiple intellisense errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; How do I fix this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311904/learning-linux-kernel-in-todays-world-would-i-be-better-off-hacking-with-android (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a &quot;what should I learn&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311902/why-do-i-get-an-error-in-the-cpp-file-if-i-make-a-class-template-before-the-cla (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311901/class-as-a-variable-of-another-class (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is another C++ implementation/debugging question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311899/find-availability-software-architecture (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a no effort homework dump.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311897/error-code-c4700-uninitialized-local-variable (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311896/android-file-retriever-application (-4, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted green field question that is asking how to use the IDE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311894/how-do-i-create-a-driver-for-extra-buttons (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rather vague &quot;how do I program buttons on a drawing tablet.&quot;  Aside from being off topic, no information about what drawing tablet it is is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311892/deleting-dynamically-allocated-memory (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        void RemoveDuplicates(Node *head, int size)&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;        Node *tmp = head;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;        while(tmp-&gt;next != NULL)&#xD;&#xA;            {&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            for(int i=0; i&lt;size; i++)&#xD;&#xA;            {&#xD;&#xA;            if(tmp-&gt;data == tmp-&gt;next-&gt;data)&#xD;&#xA;                {&#xD;&#xA;                Node *remove = tmp-&gt;next;&#xD;&#xA;                tmp-&gt;next = remove-&gt;next;&#xD;&#xA;                ***//delete remove;***&#xD;&#xA;                }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            tmp = tmp-&gt;next;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; ok, i wrote this piece of code to remove duplicated nodes in my data structure course, the commented delete operator supposed to keep freeing the memory which the remove pointer is pointed to every loop cycle. it doesn't work, IDE keep segmentation faulting me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; any help?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311891/simplest-way-to-build-an-interactive-website-to-visualize-a-table (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a unclear / too broad &quot;how do I render a table&quot; (there are far too many possible ways to do it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311890/where-and-how-i-can-find-explanations-of-abstractions-and-fancy-stuff-used-in-bu (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rant about large software projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; This question is broad, but I'll try to be concise and to restrict the wideness of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I'm full of hate toward these business hipster programmers, so I won't be formal this time. Sorry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Don't get me wrong, I really want to sort this out, I need to understand how it works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Let's put this in .NET framework only. It's already a good cut down of the range.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    (another 3000 characters)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311888/adobe-illustrator-data-driven-graphics-via-php (-2, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a question about how to implement an AI that Photoshop has in php. I'm not kidding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311886/why-software-releases-must-be-self-regulated (-3, duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a poorly asked duplicate of a question that searching for &quot;Lehman&quot; would have found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311883/sending-computer-screen-video-through-lightning-connector-to-a-iphone (-3, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a &quot;is it possible&quot; feasibility study question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311874/importing-my-class-to-a-given-tester-class (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is an unclear question that might be &quot;how do I debug my code?&quot; but not enough information about it is given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     &gt; In Java I have created a class with a HashMap where I put 13 values. With it's own main it will display the RGB values of the Color Object. The problem is trying to import it to use with a given ColorTest class (which has the MAIN main and cannot be changed); which I can tell from the &quot;NullPointerException&quot; it gives me when trying to create a new instance from my class. I'm still very noob at coding so any help is appreciated!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I have all the code but don't know what/where/how to change it to be used by the tester, and I just don't want to dump all that text unless someone wants to see it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311873/choose-an-application-development-environment-for-the-displaying-monitoring-da (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted too broad question (with a bit of unclear too).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311871/web-design-templates-for-backend-developing (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a tool recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311866/connected-city-problem (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a cross posted (CS) what appears to be homework dump.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311862/logic-of-ap-to-return-number-set-to-bit1-as-an-input-binary (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a block of code without any question asked (a comment of &quot;how does this work?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        public class BitSet1&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;        	public static void main(String[] args)&#xD;&#xA;        	{&#xD;&#xA;        		double num=(Math.pow(2.0,31.0))-1;&#xD;&#xA;    	    	int num1=(int)num;&#xD;&#xA;        		double outnum=num1;&#xD;&#xA;        		int count=0;&#xD;&#xA;        		while(num1&gt;0)&#xD;&#xA;        		{&#xD;&#xA;        			if((num1&amp;1)==1)&#xD;&#xA;    	    		count++;&#xD;&#xA;    	    		num1=num1&gt;&gt;1;&#xD;&#xA;        			}&#xD;&#xA;        		System.out.println(count+&quot; bits sets to 1 in number &quot;+ outnum);&#xD;&#xA;        		}&#xD;&#xA;        	}&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311860/can-you-please-explain-what-this-php-code-below-does (-7, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Someone asking what a given function in php does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I just need the logic behind the statement because the idea of escaping strings doesn't seem to make sense to me. What does this code do ? and why is it escaping strings ?What does this code do ? and why is it escaping strings ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            $BackupRegister=mysqli_real_escape_string($Count,monitorEntry($anticipatedDate,'created'));&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311857/ways-to-send-a-message-to-a-users-phone (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A service request / too broad (how can you send a message to a device)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; What are some ways to send a private message to a user's phone from a separate computer over the internet? Is there any preferred or standard way to do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Some methods I could think of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; - Email: May get buried under other emails. Requires the phone to have internet connectivity. Advantage is that its free and works regardless of device operating system.&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; - SMS: Either costs money (does it?) or you need an SMS gateway, which can not be figured out programmatically (can you?) Advantage is that it works without internet and works regardless of device operating system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311856/periodicity-detection-for-gapped-data (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    An algorithm question that *might* be answerable if sufficient information is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311855/what-is-more-lower-level-click-or-urwid (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &quot;I make web apps using flask so I am tempted to start using click since it's made by the same person but I've seen more info around for urwid? Which one is more lower level?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;    I don't even know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311854/scripting-productivity-and-speed (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     How do you improve your productivity?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I would like to ask what kind of scripts that a software engineer writes to increase his/her productivity. I know some of them could really save time so please share with me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311853/automating-scripting-and-building (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A question about automating the IDE. It is a bit unclear and if it was made clear, would be off topic here (its a tooling problem)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I am working on a project on Visual Studio with C++. So I need to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1) build the solution  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2) click on debug/attach to process  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 3) click on 3 - 4 buttons in the programs to create and load stuff  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 4) type &quot;Run master&quot; in a textfield(in the my program)  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 5) press Enter button.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; After all this steps, then I can start testing my program. My program is desktop application on Windows 10. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I would like to automate the whole process of clicking build right up to before I start testing. &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; And also, I need this script to monitor the status of the build in cases of build failures to stop. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I also need to this script to able to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1) monitor that I click on the correct buttons so that it does not mess up other running programs.  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2) Is there someway of monitoring the changes in UI or the commands are executed or the maybe just the status/state of the program? This is to check that the script does the correct action at the right time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311850/python-functions-and-parameters (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How to type the parameters for python calls (implementation question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Can Python only accept parameters passed to a function that meet a certain criteria  for example,&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;  Accepts as the first parameter a string specifying the data structure to be used &quot;list&quot;, &quot;set&quot; or &quot;dictionary&quot;  only&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, that is the list from the other day. The questions that were being closed or were closed from the 50 most recent questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which questions would ideally be on topic for the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For those questions, what part of the help center is identifying that they are off topic, or is this part of a too zealous closing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I would ***really*** like community managers to chime in on this too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22577" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7930" RevisionGUID="ba59ee72-b6e9-49d9-9e70-83a7f3990023" CreationDate="2016-03-09T11:15:40.560" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="If the scope is wrong, which of these questions belong here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22578" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7930" RevisionGUID="ba59ee72-b6e9-49d9-9e70-83a7f3990023" CreationDate="2016-03-09T11:15:40.560" UserDisplayName="user40980" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22579" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7916" RevisionGUID="b4565f2c-946f-49a2-abd9-4ac32df2cdfd" CreationDate="2016-03-09T11:25:54.427" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/707527829177638912" />
  <row Id="22580" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7931" RevisionGUID="d3d28a7e-cd99-43a6-89e0-232c35f48b13" CreationDate="2016-03-09T12:39:32.483" UserId="4" Text="The following questions should not be closed or deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311899/find-availability-software-architecture - Although it appears to be a homework question, but the asker did show the work. The answer is also reasonably well explained. Perhaps there should be some edits to the question (specifically the title) and the tags, but there's not really a problem here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311866/connected-city-problem - This question should probably be closed, but not deleted. There is some cross-posting, but if the asker better explains the algorithm that is being used, I don't see how it's not on-topic. It should remain closed as unclear, but there are no comments prompting for what is truly needed to help this person work through their problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rest don't appear to be good. I don't agree with the close reason on all of them. For example, [this question][1] should probably be closed as a recommendation question and not unclear. But they should all be closed and on some path to deletion, either roomba or VtD.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A theme that I'm seeing is that &quot;unclear what you're asking&quot; is used for questions that seem to be &quot;do my work for me&quot; questions. There's really no better close option that fits, but it's something to keep in mind. It's not that the question isn't clear. We fully understand that you want us to give you answers, but that isn't how it works here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311891/simplest-way-to-build-an-interactive-website-to-visualize-a-table" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22581" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7932" RevisionGUID="5caf9db8-a0e9-44c3-9d4f-0281afd26741" CreationDate="2016-03-09T17:29:27.657" UserId="52929" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/312197/52929&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I made a significant edit to make this question more appropriately scoped here and less &quot;tell me why my coworker is wrong.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reopen votes?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22582" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7932" RevisionGUID="5caf9db8-a0e9-44c3-9d4f-0281afd26741" CreationDate="2016-03-09T17:29:27.657" UserId="52929" Text="Reopen 'Benefits of Structured Logging vs basic logging'" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22583" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7932" RevisionGUID="5caf9db8-a0e9-44c3-9d4f-0281afd26741" CreationDate="2016-03-09T17:29:27.657" UserId="52929" Text="|discussion|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22584" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7932" RevisionGUID="e5cd5839-ad89-4a8e-b64c-3eb4b5b2ce55" CreationDate="2016-03-09T17:38:00.083" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22585" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7933" RevisionGUID="a3395f4c-93ae-40bf-a755-de601b34e53e" CreationDate="2016-03-09T17:38:11.647" UserId="4" Text="It had 3 reopen votes. I finished up the process." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22586" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7911" RevisionGUID="78ef9835-7784-436e-9774-40c4c880a155" CreationDate="2016-03-09T20:14:14.293" UserDisplayName="user174739" Comment="deleted 3089 characters in body" Text="Well I just saw a [second Meta question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7910/programmers-se-has-become-a-site-to-avoid?noredirect=1#comment24081_7910) expressing strong ill-will for this site after [first witnessing](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away) this, seemingly well-trodden, battlefield. Given that I am already weary of it, I can only assume that others are much more so, but bear with me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Breaking this down into as simple a a description as possible:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*A substantial number of users are arriving here with a different/false understanding of what this site is for; this results in a lot of closed questions and consequent animosity.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two parts to this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. People wanting this site to be something it's not; i.e disagreeing with / not understanding the site's objective&#xD;&#xA; 2. People disagree with the site' enforcement; i.e. thinking that valid questions are being downvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to discount the second option as a valid grounds for debate since it seems to have been quite categorically answered by [MichaelT's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7907/174739) to a previous Meta question. Even if there is the odd question that is within scope that is getting voted down, this is a smaller problem compared to item 1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been comments about poor communication when down-voting and some quite bitter words about specific users; I don't care about any of that because I think that it is all a symptom, not the cause of this phenomenon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## How can we better communicate the site's purpose?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below are all current ideas as to what could be done. If you have any other ideas either edit this question or post them in an answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CN | Change Name&#xD;&#xA;Self-explanatory, *Pogrammers.SE* become *OtherName.SE*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### ST | Add Sub-title&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add a sub-title to the website's header to better describe the site's purpose (e.g. *Programmers: Architecture, Planning, &amp; Concepts*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### SA | Make Scope More Accessible&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Display the scope in a simply-worded form next to the 'ask a question' interface; this makes it more likely users will read it before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### BL | Add Blurb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add a descriptive blurb that is displayed to users before they are able to post their first question. Make this focus-stealing; i.e. background is greyed-out and the user must take an action to continue (e.g. click 'got it').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CS | Change Scope&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change the scope to include some of the areas that are currently being down-voted as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CE | Change Enforcement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actively cultivate questions to improve them; narrow their focus if they are too broad, make them more abstract of they are too narrow (i.e. they are debugging specific code instead of asking about architecture/concepts), etc. This would mean slower closing of questions and the encouragement of users to learn about what is/is-not suitable for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CH | Change Help Center&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Create a series of Meta Q&amp;As that are designed to help user improve their answers. This way people can post links to those discussions rather than forever trying to discuss the same things over and over&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So... votes, thoughts, ideas, scathing indictments... let the games begin.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22587" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7934" RevisionGUID="fa44fe45-7a1a-4b48-8a76-29cf2ef42f56" CreationDate="2016-03-09T20:15:04.160" UserDisplayName="user174739" Text="## Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is now clear to me that there are two problems with two camps; these are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Improper questions being asked on P.SE; this pertains to users not understanding the site's scope and purpose.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Improper moderation/closing; this pertains to questions being closed too abruptly and with too little communication.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I expect that any solution that looks to resolve one of these and not the other would simply fragment the community. So, I suggest that we move to address both problems simultaneously, with one or more people from each *faction* leading-up a solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion 1. Improve communication of the site's purpose.** &#xD;&#xA;From the results, this can involve creating a site tagline, creating a blurb that is displayed to new users before they can post, or by displaying the site scope next to the ask-question interface. These all require SE involvement so must begin with feature requests for our preferred solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More immediately, *Snowman's* suggestion for a series of Meta Q&amp;As about common question phrasing issues could be implemented. This would be advantageous because the community can do it without SE involvement. It also has the benefit of actively assisting Solution 2.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion 2. Change the self-moderating style**&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest that this is best addressed by those advocating change being given the opportunity to moderate how they wish for a certain period of time once a week. There can then be discussion about improvements that are seen and lessons that can be drawn by the rest of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Results So Far&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've tried to faithfully represent the opinions shown so far. It is by no means a proper survey, but I think the conclusions do make a fair representation of the opinions in the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Counting the opinions posted in answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;                        +&#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +&#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +   +&#xD;&#xA;    CN  ST  SA  BL  CS  CE  CH&#xD;&#xA;    -           -   -   -&#xD;&#xA;    -               -&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Counting the opinions in answers multiplied by their upvotes+1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        +       +              &#xD;&#xA;        +       +       +      &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +       &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +       &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +       &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +       &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +       &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +       &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +   +    &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +   +    &#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +   +&#xD;&#xA;        +   +   +       +   +&#xD;&#xA;    CN  ST  SA  BL  CS  CE  CH&#xD;&#xA;    -           -   -       &#xD;&#xA;    -           -   -   &#xD;&#xA;    -           -   -&#xD;&#xA;    -           -   -&#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;    -               -            &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Note: some comments did express support for name change, but this was not advocated in any of the answers and it would take too long for me to summarise views expressed in comments as well.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22588" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="6f1d537d-ac9c-4291-b2d4-915d0f60a2be" CreationDate="2016-03-10T12:10:55.400" UserId="31260" Comment="up-to-date wording (copied from close dialog)" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **find or recommend tools, libraries, programming languages, resources (including books, blogs, tutorials, and examples)** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### We do book review and suggestions poorly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the classic recommendation questions is that of a book.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do book reviews very poorly. All the answers that one gets are opinions and this is fundamentally a poll of opinions. This is to say nothing of that the technology behind them changes too.  There are indeed timeless books (and [many have written on the subject](https://www.google.com/search?q=timeless+computer+books)), though their value is a [matter of debate](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2uBpc.jpg). &lt;!-- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14298/is-analysis-patterns-reusable-object-models-still-a-good-book-to-use-for-its --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Between the polling nature of the question, the opinions people have on certain books, the constantly changing target, and the site's history of producing poor quality answers to these questions (and not moderating them), asking for a book suggestion is very likely to get closed and down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for a link to something or statistics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason.  Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to things suffer from link rot.  Statistics become out of date over time.  Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is someone asking in 2012 &quot;What is the market share of Android vs iPhone?&quot;  This information would be out of date in a few months as new numbers come out and someone else would ask in 2013 &quot;The question [link] asks about the stats, but they are all for 2012.  What is the market share for android vs iPhone in 2013?&quot;  And again, this information would be out of date and prompt another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for information about statistics, or more generally, asking us to search for some data for you is off topic because of these problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No actual problem to solve&#xD;&#xA;* Not drawing from expert knowledge of the community&#xD;&#xA;* Will suffer from link rot or become out of date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Link Rot&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, external resources may move or be deleted for a variety of reasons. Perhaps a particular site reorganizes its links without setting up redirects. Perhaps an organization goes out of business or discontinues product X or library Y.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to the reasons stated above, external resources tend to be _transient_. Whatever tool, library, or other resource who requested might not exist in five years or be otherwise readily available. This has the effect of making an answer utterly useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one asks for a library to perform function X, and the answer links to web site Y, and either function X or web site Y cease to exist as defined in the answer, that answer is now useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one more reason why questions like this tend to be of low value and are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [What exactly is a recommendation question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254393/what-exactly-is-a-recommendation-question)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why are “shopping list” questions bad?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - Requests for Recommendations?&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22589" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7930" RevisionGUID="780c6410-7771-4671-869a-219371fd8fbe" CreationDate="2016-03-10T15:13:23.337" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Update to link to CS.SE... and realize there are a bunch more deleted now." Text="Over in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away/7907#7907 I posted this list and haven't gotten a satisfactory response yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the site's scope is at issue, then some percentage of these questions should instead be open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these are just poorly asked questions that need some moderate editing, then there is an army of people who say they should be open that can help cultivate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without identifying which questions we need to consider how the scope is wrong rather than the question doesn't fit we are simply talking in circles around each other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's the list.  Where the post has been deleted, the *entire* text of the question is here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311935/running-net-desktop-application-on-linux (-3, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question is a software recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; We need to develop a desktop application that would run on both Windows and Linux machines, preferably with the same code base or minimal code changes. I know Mono is an option, but I read that Mono Win Forms implementation is suitable only for very simple applications. I guess I cannot make the app using the newly announced cross-platform &quot;.NET Core&quot; either, as apparently it does not support client/desktop apps. So apart from Mono, is there any other option to create a cross-platform desktop application for Windows and Linux?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311931/need-help-to-make-advance-search-in-php-website-project (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A bit hard to determine (the close vote is for unclear). It looks like this might be too broad too. Its a student trying to do some project that isn't well articulated.  The answers to it are all over the place. The OP hasn't been back since the original post of the question to help clarify.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311930/pointers-and-hexadecimal (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is an implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; So I want to make a pointer of chars. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; char *ptr = 0x239038F2  &lt;---- this is my attempt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; where I can iterate through each char.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; So ptr would give me 0x23&#xD;&#xA;ptr++ would give me 0x90&#xD;&#xA;ptr++ would give me 0x38&#xD;&#xA;and finally ptr++ would give me 0xF2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311928/how-do-i-implement-material-style-account-switcher (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   This is a far too broad &quot;how do I do this&quot; type question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311925/structure-of-an-abstract-for-a-conference-talk-or-workshop (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question has nothing to do with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311923/extraordinary-software-written-in-javascript (-8, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a too broad question asking for a list of all the ways that Javascript can be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; JavaScript is usually used for either web frontends or backends (JavaScript). What other extraordinay things can be done with JavaScript?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311921/accepting-express-js-post-requests-in-a-chrome-app (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for issues with writing something in Chrome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311918/how-to-display-a-non-interactive-message-on-a-jframe (-2, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for how to do something in Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311914/running-ruby-commands-does-nothing (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a problem running some third party ruby software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311913/how-to-break-infinite-loop-in-turtle-graphics-python (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for python.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311910/index-exceeds-matrix-dimension-matlab-hog-features (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for matlab (which was already posted on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311907/wdk-10-and-visual-studio-2015-acting-funny (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This (now deleted between then and now) was closed as unclear. It was an issue with some software installation for a C library.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I installed WDK 10 on my computer, and I tried to build a si and I got the error: An SDK corresponding to WDK version '8.1' was not found. Please install the SDK before building.. I downloaded and installed the Windows 10 SDK, and then tried build again, this time I was getting multiple syntax errors, the following code:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Shows the following errors: fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'ntddk.h': No such file or directory, and multiple intellisense errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        extern &quot;C&quot; {&#xD;&#xA;        #include &lt;ntddk.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        #include &lt;ntdddisk.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        #include &lt;wdf.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        NTSTATUS DriverEntry(IN PDRIVER_OBJECT DriverObject, IN PUNICODE_STRING RegistryPath) {}&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Shows the following errors:&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; `fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'ntddk.h': No such file or directory`, and multiple intellisense errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; How do I fix this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311904/learning-linux-kernel-in-todays-world-would-i-be-better-off-hacking-with-android (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a &quot;what should I learn&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311902/why-do-i-get-an-error-in-the-cpp-file-if-i-make-a-class-template-before-the-cla (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311901/class-as-a-variable-of-another-class (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is another C++ implementation/debugging question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311899/find-availability-software-architecture (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a no effort homework dump.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311897/error-code-c4700-uninitialized-local-variable (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311896/android-file-retriever-application (-4, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted green field question that is asking how to use the IDE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311894/how-do-i-create-a-driver-for-extra-buttons (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rather vague &quot;how do I program buttons on a drawing tablet.&quot;  Aside from being off topic, no information about what drawing tablet it is is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311892/deleting-dynamically-allocated-memory (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        void RemoveDuplicates(Node *head, int size)&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;        Node *tmp = head;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;        while(tmp-&gt;next != NULL)&#xD;&#xA;            {&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            for(int i=0; i&lt;size; i++)&#xD;&#xA;            {&#xD;&#xA;            if(tmp-&gt;data == tmp-&gt;next-&gt;data)&#xD;&#xA;                {&#xD;&#xA;                Node *remove = tmp-&gt;next;&#xD;&#xA;                tmp-&gt;next = remove-&gt;next;&#xD;&#xA;                ***//delete remove;***&#xD;&#xA;                }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            tmp = tmp-&gt;next;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; ok, i wrote this piece of code to remove duplicated nodes in my data structure course, the commented delete operator supposed to keep freeing the memory which the remove pointer is pointed to every loop cycle. it doesn't work, IDE keep segmentation faulting me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; any help?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311891/simplest-way-to-build-an-interactive-website-to-visualize-a-table (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a unclear / too broad &quot;how do I render a table&quot; (there are far too many possible ways to do it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311890/where-and-how-i-can-find-explanations-of-abstractions-and-fancy-stuff-used-in-bu (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rant about large software projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; This question is broad, but I'll try to be concise and to restrict the wideness of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I'm full of hate toward these business hipster programmers, so I won't be formal this time. Sorry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Don't get me wrong, I really want to sort this out, I need to understand how it works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Let's put this in .NET framework only. It's already a good cut down of the range.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    (another 3000 characters)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311888/adobe-illustrator-data-driven-graphics-via-php (-2, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a question about how to implement an AI that Photoshop has in php. I'm not kidding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311886/why-software-releases-must-be-self-regulated (-3, duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a poorly asked duplicate of a question that searching for &quot;Lehman&quot; would have found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311883/sending-computer-screen-video-through-lightning-connector-to-a-iphone (-3, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a &quot;is it possible&quot; feasibility study question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311874/importing-my-class-to-a-given-tester-class (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is an unclear question that might be &quot;how do I debug my code?&quot; but not enough information about it is given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     &gt; In Java I have created a class with a HashMap where I put 13 values. With it's own main it will display the RGB values of the Color Object. The problem is trying to import it to use with a given ColorTest class (which has the MAIN main and cannot be changed); which I can tell from the &quot;NullPointerException&quot; it gives me when trying to create a new instance from my class. I'm still very noob at coding so any help is appreciated!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I have all the code but don't know what/where/how to change it to be used by the tester, and I just don't want to dump all that text unless someone wants to see it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311873/choose-an-application-development-environment-for-the-displaying-monitoring-da (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted too broad question (with a bit of unclear too).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311871/web-design-templates-for-backend-developing (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a tool recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311866/connected-city-problem (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a cross posted (CS) what appears to be homework dump.  It has since been deleted here and a bit large to include - see the [CS.SE version](http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/54031/10159) for its text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311862/logic-of-ap-to-return-number-set-to-bit1-as-an-input-binary (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a block of code without any question asked (a comment of &quot;how does this work?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        public class BitSet1&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;        	public static void main(String[] args)&#xD;&#xA;        	{&#xD;&#xA;        		double num=(Math.pow(2.0,31.0))-1;&#xD;&#xA;    	    	int num1=(int)num;&#xD;&#xA;        		double outnum=num1;&#xD;&#xA;        		int count=0;&#xD;&#xA;        		while(num1&gt;0)&#xD;&#xA;        		{&#xD;&#xA;        			if((num1&amp;1)==1)&#xD;&#xA;    	    		count++;&#xD;&#xA;    	    		num1=num1&gt;&gt;1;&#xD;&#xA;        			}&#xD;&#xA;        		System.out.println(count+&quot; bits sets to 1 in number &quot;+ outnum);&#xD;&#xA;        		}&#xD;&#xA;        	}&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311860/can-you-please-explain-what-this-php-code-below-does (-7, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Someone asking what a given function in php does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I just need the logic behind the statement because the idea of escaping strings doesn't seem to make sense to me. What does this code do ? and why is it escaping strings ?What does this code do ? and why is it escaping strings ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            $BackupRegister=mysqli_real_escape_string($Count,monitorEntry($anticipatedDate,'created'));&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311857/ways-to-send-a-message-to-a-users-phone (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A service request / too broad (how can you send a message to a device)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; What are some ways to send a private message to a user's phone from a separate computer over the internet? Is there any preferred or standard way to do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Some methods I could think of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; - Email: May get buried under other emails. Requires the phone to have internet connectivity. Advantage is that its free and works regardless of device operating system.&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; - SMS: Either costs money (does it?) or you need an SMS gateway, which can not be figured out programmatically (can you?) Advantage is that it works without internet and works regardless of device operating system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311856/periodicity-detection-for-gapped-data (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    An algorithm question that *might* be answerable if sufficient information is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311855/what-is-more-lower-level-click-or-urwid (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &quot;I make web apps using flask so I am tempted to start using click since it's made by the same person but I've seen more info around for urwid? Which one is more lower level?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;    I don't even know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311854/scripting-productivity-and-speed (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     How do you improve your productivity?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I would like to ask what kind of scripts that a software engineer writes to increase his/her productivity. I know some of them could really save time so please share with me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311853/automating-scripting-and-building (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A question about automating the IDE. It is a bit unclear and if it was made clear, would be off topic here (its a tooling problem)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I am working on a project on Visual Studio with C++. So I need to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1) build the solution  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2) click on debug/attach to process  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 3) click on 3 - 4 buttons in the programs to create and load stuff  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 4) type &quot;Run master&quot; in a textfield(in the my program)  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 5) press Enter button.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; After all this steps, then I can start testing my program. My program is desktop application on Windows 10. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I would like to automate the whole process of clicking build right up to before I start testing. &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; And also, I need this script to monitor the status of the build in cases of build failures to stop. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I also need to this script to able to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1) monitor that I click on the correct buttons so that it does not mess up other running programs.  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2) Is there someway of monitoring the changes in UI or the commands are executed or the maybe just the status/state of the program? This is to check that the script does the correct action at the right time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311850/python-functions-and-parameters (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How to type the parameters for python calls (implementation question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Can Python only accept parameters passed to a function that meet a certain criteria  for example,&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;  Accepts as the first parameter a string specifying the data structure to be used &quot;list&quot;, &quot;set&quot; or &quot;dictionary&quot;  only&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, that is the list from the other day. The questions that were being closed or were closed from the 50 most recent questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which questions would ideally be on topic for the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For those questions, what part of the help center is identifying that they are off topic, or is this part of a too zealous closing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I would ***really*** like community managers to chime in on this too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22590" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7935" RevisionGUID="2bfc7d87-f487-4a8b-b924-3b744df302f9" CreationDate="2016-03-10T16:46:04.483" UserId="1130" Text="4 years ago [we asked for a name change][1], which was [rejected by SE][2] because there was no evidence to support the claim it was causing user confusion, and there were other things the site should focus on first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now 4 years later, users have done all that they can and things are not improving in relation to off-topic posts and user confusion. We still have a very high percentage of closed questions here, [and][3] [repeatedly][4] [get][5] [negative][6] [feedback][7] [on][8] [meta][9] [about][10] [this][11]. (As a lurker of P.SE Meta, I can tell you there are many more links too - these are just the ones found with a quick search of recent questions.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Steps taken to improve site since 4 years ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The site scope and FAQ has been clarified so it is very clear what is on or off topic now&#xD;&#xA;* Users have worked hard to generate a set of meta posts to help guide new users with common misconceptions&#xD;&#xA;* There is an active group of users who are very aggressive about maintaining questions according to the current site scope and standards&#xD;&#xA;* More focus is placed on guiding and educating new users&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The subject of the site's name still keeps coming up time and again from both new and veteran users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [maple_shaft][12] (mod)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The solution to the vast majority of bad content that I speak of is Our Domain Name. It is as simple as that. Change the domain name of the site from Programmers to Software Engineering and Architecture or something akin to this and I will personally step down as a moderator if spam on the site doesn't cut by half.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [enderland][13]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't think anyone -- other than SE itself -- disagrees that the site is poorly named. However... that is well outside our ability to influence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Carson2000][14]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this site poorly named? Are people coming to &quot;programmers.stackexchange.com&quot; and immediately thinking &quot;aha, the place for my programming questions! they will help me debug my code!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Mage xy][15]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've never really understood why the site was called &quot;Programmers.SE&quot;... we're all programmers, aren't we? Pretty much the same over at SO... so from a newb's perspective, what's the difference?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [AndresF][16]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; For example, the name change was rejected in 2012! Sites, people and rules evolve. Maybe it's time to re-evaluate those decisions? I happen to think the name programmers.SE is part of the problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Alexei Averchenko][17]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software architecture is a viable topic, but if it's the main one on this site, it's better to rename it. the name &quot;Programmers&quot; connotes that it's a site about people, not code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt;  .. turning away people who seek advice from seasoned programmers on a site called &quot;Programmers&quot; is downright criminal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could keep going if you want, but those are just some comments from recent posts. There are many more of them if you keep looking further back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So please StackExchange, can we get your permission to change the name of our site? It doesn't need to be a complete re-design, just a domain name change and a title. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3718/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3733/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7361/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7910/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7906/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6815/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6788/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6233/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/4009/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7130/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7593/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7809/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away#comment24097_7907&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away#comment24077_7907&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations/7934#comment24129_7911&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations/7934#comment24179_7913&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7316/putting-soft-questions-on-hold-unproductive#comment21909_7316" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22591" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7935" RevisionGUID="2bfc7d87-f487-4a8b-b924-3b744df302f9" CreationDate="2016-03-10T16:46:04.483" UserId="1130" Text="4 years later - Can we change our site name?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22592" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7935" RevisionGUID="2bfc7d87-f487-4a8b-b924-3b744df302f9" CreationDate="2016-03-10T16:46:04.483" UserId="1130" Text="|feature-request|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22593" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7936" RevisionGUID="18678479-26ad-4a70-8894-b83c18ed3808" CreationDate="2016-03-10T17:04:00.203" UserDisplayName="user53019" Text="I think it's a valid to request to find out if this option is even feasible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been a number of conversations lately, including with SE Community Managers, that have revolved around the site's scope and focus.  I think it's safely stated that the current site name does not give a correct first impression for the site's scope." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22594" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7935" RevisionGUID="c6d01b34-7b0a-4c66-b54c-ca594e0f815a" CreationDate="2016-03-10T17:22:41.267" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Adjust sentence to start with word rather than number ( http://english.stackexchange.com/q/57894/40348 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/979/40348)" Text="Four years ago [we asked for a name change][1], which was [rejected by SE][2] because there was no evidence to support the claim it was causing user confusion, and there were other things the site should focus on first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now four years later, users have done all that they can and things are not improving in relation to off-topic posts and user confusion. We still have a very high percentage of closed questions here, [and][3] [repeatedly][4] [get][5] [negative][6] [feedback][7] [on][8] [meta][9] [about][10] [this][11]. (As a lurker of P.SE Meta, I can tell you there are many more links too - these are just the ones found with a quick search of recent questions.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Steps taken to improve site since four years ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The site scope and FAQ has been clarified so it is very clear what is on or off topic now&#xD;&#xA;* Users have worked hard to generate a set of meta posts to help guide new users with common misconceptions&#xD;&#xA;* There is an active group of users who are very aggressive about maintaining questions according to the current site scope and standards&#xD;&#xA;* More focus is placed on guiding and educating new users&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The subject of the site's name still keeps coming up time and again from both new and veteran users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [maple_shaft][12] (mod)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The solution to the vast majority of bad content that I speak of is Our Domain Name. It is as simple as that. Change the domain name of the site from Programmers to Software Engineering and Architecture or something akin to this and I will personally step down as a moderator if spam on the site doesn't cut by half.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [enderland][13]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't think anyone -- other than SE itself -- disagrees that the site is poorly named. However... that is well outside our ability to influence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Carson2000][14]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this site poorly named? Are people coming to &quot;programmers.stackexchange.com&quot; and immediately thinking &quot;aha, the place for my programming questions! they will help me debug my code!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Mage xy][15]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've never really understood why the site was called &quot;Programmers.SE&quot;... we're all programmers, aren't we? Pretty much the same over at SO... so from a newb's perspective, what's the difference?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [AndresF][16]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; For example, the name change was rejected in 2012! Sites, people and rules evolve. Maybe it's time to re-evaluate those decisions? I happen to think the name programmers.SE is part of the problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Alexei Averchenko][17]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software architecture is a viable topic, but if it's the main one on this site, it's better to rename it. the name &quot;Programmers&quot; connotes that it's a site about people, not code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt;  .. turning away people who seek advice from seasoned programmers on a site called &quot;Programmers&quot; is downright criminal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could keep going if you want, but those are just some comments from recent posts. There are many more of them if you keep looking further back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So please StackExchange, can we get your permission to change the name of our site? It doesn't need to be a complete re-design, just a domain name change and a title. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3718/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3733/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7361/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7910/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7906/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6815/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6788/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6233/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/4009/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7130/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7593/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7809/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away#comment24097_7907&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away#comment24077_7907&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations/7934#comment24129_7911&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations/7934#comment24179_7913&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7316/putting-soft-questions-on-hold-unproductive#comment21909_7316" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22595" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7935" RevisionGUID="c6d01b34-7b0a-4c66-b54c-ca594e0f815a" CreationDate="2016-03-10T17:22:41.267" UserDisplayName="user40980" Comment="Adjust sentence to start with word rather than number ( http://english.stackexchange.com/q/57894/40348 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/979/40348)" Text="Four years later - Can we change our site name?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22596" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7935" RevisionGUID="869fe874-7797-4fd5-9be5-d87f61447301" CreationDate="2016-03-10T17:33:14.167" UserId="31260" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="Four years ago [we asked for a name change][1], which was [rejected by SE][2] because there was no evidence to support the claim it was causing user confusion, and there were other things the site should focus on first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now four years later, users have done all that they can and things are not improving in relation to off-topic posts and user confusion. We still have a very high percentage of closed questions here, [and][3] [repeatedly][4] [get][5] [negative][6] [feedback][7] [on][8] [meta][9] [about][10] [this][11]. (As a lurker of P.SE Meta, I can tell you there are many more links too - these are just the ones found with a quick search of recent questions.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Steps taken to improve site since four years ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The site scope and FAQ has been clarified so it is very clear what is on or off topic now&#xD;&#xA;* Users have worked hard to generate a set of meta posts to help guide new users with common misconceptions&#xD;&#xA;* There is an active group of users who are very aggressive about maintaining questions according to the current site scope and standards&#xD;&#xA;* More focus is placed on guiding and educating new users&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The subject of the site's name still keeps coming up time and again from both new and veteran users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [maple_shaft][12] (mod)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The solution to the vast majority of bad content that I speak of is Our Domain Name. It is as simple as that. Change the domain name of the site from Programmers to Software Engineering and Architecture or something akin to this and I will personally step down as a moderator if spam on the site doesn't cut by half.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [enderland][13]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't think anyone -- other than SE itself -- disagrees that the site is poorly named. However... that is well outside our ability to influence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Carson2000][14]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this site poorly named? Are people coming to &quot;programmers.stackexchange.com&quot; and immediately thinking &quot;aha, the place for my programming questions! they will help me debug my code!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Mage xy][15]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've never really understood why the site was called &quot;Programmers.SE&quot;... we're all programmers, aren't we? Pretty much the same over at SO... so from a newb's perspective, what's the difference?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [AndresF][16]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; For example, the name change was rejected in 2012! Sites, people and rules evolve. Maybe it's time to re-evaluate those decisions? I happen to think the name programmers.SE is part of the problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Alexei Averchenko][17]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software architecture is a viable topic, but if it's the main one on this site, it's better to rename it. the name &quot;Programmers&quot; connotes that it's a site about people, not code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt;  .. turning away people who seek advice from seasoned programmers on a site called &quot;Programmers&quot; is downright criminal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could keep going if you want, but those are just some comments from recent posts. There are many more of them if you keep looking further back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So please Stack Exchange, can we get your permission to change the name of our site? It doesn't need to be a complete re-design, just a domain name change and a title. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3718/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3733/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7361/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7910/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7906/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6815/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6788/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6233/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/4009/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7130/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7593/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7809/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away#comment24097_7907&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away#comment24077_7907&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations/7934#comment24129_7911&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations/7934#comment24179_7913&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7316/putting-soft-questions-on-hold-unproductive#comment21909_7316" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22601" PostHistoryTypeId="11" PostId="7910" RevisionGUID="1d463794-913a-4510-a465-2467f3deb8fd" CreationDate="2016-03-11T06:32:23.163" UserId="-1" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:935,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Mason Wheeler&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:16247,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Andres F.&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:122584,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Ben Aaronson&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:1130,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Rachel&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:9113,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Doc Brown&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="22602" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7939" RevisionGUID="091440b3-6c50-4edb-ab1d-5057d5093126" CreationDate="2016-03-11T09:20:32.207" UserId="9113" Text="It is a valid request, but I see two problems here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- to find a name which really describes the sites scope **better**, and not just **different** or **equally bad** (or **worse**). I guess you did not made a proposal for a new name in your question intentionally, because you do not have a solution to that problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- once the name is changed, there is probably no easy way back for the next few years. A site name change is something I do not expect the SE team to make every two weeks. So if the change does not bring the benefits we expect from it, what then?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22603" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7939" RevisionGUID="95383d73-ff5c-4023-b10d-9cd3a008b848" CreationDate="2016-03-11T10:52:18.853" UserId="9113" Comment="deleted 133 characters in body" Text="It is a valid request, but I see two problems here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- to find a name which really describes the sites scope **better**, and not just **different** or **equally bad** (or **worse**). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- once the name is changed, there is probably no easy way back for the next few years. A site name change is something I do not expect the SE team to make every two weeks. So if the change does not bring the benefits we expect from it, what then?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22604" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7939" RevisionGUID="56979af1-4dae-4f69-932f-b0be01ba3937" CreationDate="2016-03-11T11:00:19.820" UserId="9113" Comment="deleted 133 characters in body" Text="It is a valid request, but I see some problems here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- to find a name which really describes the sites scope **better**, and not just **different** or **equally bad** (or **worse**). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- once the name is changed, there is probably no easy way back for the next few years. A site name change is something I do not expect the SE team to make every two weeks. So if the change does not bring the benefits we expect from it, what then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we could just try out if a name like &quot;SoftwareDesign.SE&quot; would increase the ration of &quot;good vs. bad posts&quot;, I think noone here would hesitate to do this. But such a change has a high risk of collateral damage - one has to be very sure about that it is worth the hassle." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22605" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7939" RevisionGUID="1c1d5df7-7c54-4632-a94c-94d7ea831730" CreationDate="2016-03-11T11:06:11.430" UserId="9113" Comment="deleted 133 characters in body" Text="It is a valid request, but I see some problems here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- to find a name which really describes the sites scope **better**, and not just **different** or **equally bad** (or **worse**). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- once the name is changed, there is probably no easy way back for the next few years. A site name change is something I do not expect the SE team to make every two weeks. So if the change does not bring the benefits we expect from it, what then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we could just try out if a name like &quot;SoftwareDesign.SE&quot; would increase the ration of &quot;good vs. bad posts&quot;, I think noone here would hesitate to do this. But such a change has a high risk of collateral damage - one has to be very sure about that it is worth the hassle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me, it looks your proposal for a name change is trying to solve a problem which might be better addressed differently. [This post two days][1] ago and its topmost answer reveals where the real problem is - not the site's name has to change, but the way how some people (and I don't exclude myself from this) behave in the process of closing, replying to bad questions and commenting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22606" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7940" RevisionGUID="ed45abdf-c3a1-44f5-badd-a73627bdab77" CreationDate="2016-03-11T15:07:03.877" UserId="25476" Text="It would be a good idea but if I remember correctly the primary reason against this happening is that this would significantly hurt SEO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## [Search Engine Optimization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization) ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This however can be a PITA, but it is not the insurmountable challenge that the StackExchange folks make it seem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How to Change Domain Names and not Lose SEO](http://savvypanda.com/blog/intermediate-level/how-to-change-domain-names-not-lose-seo.html)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Essentially:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Acquire new domain names and certificates&#xD;&#xA; - Create 301 redirects from old to new&#xD;&#xA; - Update titles, themes&#xD;&#xA; - Notify Google, Bing et al.&#xD;&#xA; - Request a new crawl&#xD;&#xA; - evaluate site scans for broken links&#xD;&#xA; - monitor for page rank changes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22607" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7939" RevisionGUID="a5559527-444f-49a9-a8be-06d1a2b153ae" CreationDate="2016-03-11T15:59:55.740" UserId="9113" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="It is a valid request, but I see some problems here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- to find a name which really describes the sites scope **better**, and not just **different** or **equally bad** (or **worse**). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- once the name is changed, there is probably no easy way back for the next few years. A site name change is something I do not expect the SE team to make every two weeks. So if the change does not bring the benefits we expect from it, what then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we could just try out if a name like &quot;SoftwareDesign.SE&quot; would increase the ratio of &quot;good vs. bad posts&quot;, I think noone here would hesitate to do this. But such a change has a high risk of collateral damage - one has to be very sure about that it is worth the hassle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me, it looks your proposal for a name change is trying to solve a problem which might be better addressed differently. [This post two days][1] ago and its topmost answer reveals where the real problem is - not the site's name has to change, but the way how some people (and I don't exclude myself from this) behave in the process of closing, replying to bad questions and commenting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22608" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7941" RevisionGUID="47c24f08-956a-4270-a322-993c456ccfbc" CreationDate="2016-03-11T16:24:16.610" UserId="1130" Text="It's not the scope that is wrong, it's the name. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I took your exercise [again][1] to demonstrate, and came up with these results: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Programmers.SE : 37/37&#xD;&#xA;* SoftwareDesign.SE : 13/33, with 4 being a Maybe&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While doing this, I noticed there are a lot more implementation questions than there once was. Here are new programmers looking for answers online. They see two major programming Q&amp;A sites, one titled **&quot;StackOverflow&quot;** and another titled **&quot;Programmers&quot;**. Guess which one they are going to click on first every time?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But here's the details about my opinion on the same questions, and if I'd post each question to a site titled `Programmers` vs a site with a title that strongly emphasizes conceptual software design, like `SoftwareDesign`. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am doing this from the point of view of a user whose *only* knowledge of this site is it is a StackExchange Q&amp;A site titled &quot;Programmers&quot; or &quot;SoftwareDesign&quot;, and who doesn't have a strong grasp of what makes a good/bad question for SE or want to make any significant effort in learning the meta for the site since it is not worthwhile time investment to them at the time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311935/running-net-desktop-application-on-linux - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Maybe;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311931/need-help-to-make-advance-search-in-php-website-project (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A bit hard to determine (the close vote is for unclear). It looks like this might be too broad too. Its a student trying to do some project that isn't well articulated.  The answers to it are all over the place. The OP hasn't been back since the original post of the question to help clarify.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Maybe;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311930/pointers-and-hexadecimal (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is an implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311928/how-do-i-implement-material-style-account-switcher (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   This is a far too broad &quot;how do I do this&quot; type question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311925/structure-of-an-abstract-for-a-conference-talk-or-workshop (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question has nothing to do with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311923/extraordinary-software-written-in-javascript (-8, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a too broad question asking for a list of all the ways that Javascript can be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311921/accepting-express-js-post-requests-in-a-chrome-app (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for issues with writing something in Chrome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Maybe;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311918/how-to-display-a-non-interactive-message-on-a-jframe (-2, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for how to do something in Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Maybe;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311914/running-ruby-commands-does-nothing (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a problem running some third party ruby software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311913/how-to-break-infinite-loop-in-turtle-graphics-python (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for python.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311910/index-exceeds-matrix-dimension-matlab-hog-features (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for matlab (which was already posted on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311907/wdk-10-and-visual-studio-2015-acting-funny (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This (now deleted between then and now) was closed as unclear. It was an issue with some software installation for a C library.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311904/learning-linux-kernel-in-todays-world-would-i-be-better-off-hacking-with-android (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a &quot;what should I learn&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311902/why-do-i-get-an-error-in-the-cpp-file-if-i-make-a-class-template-before-the-cla (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311901/class-as-a-variable-of-another-class (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is another C++ implementation/debugging question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311899/find-availability-software-architecture (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a no effort homework dump.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Question cleaned up to ask about equation for finding availbity in software architecture and has been reopened. Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311897/error-code-c4700-uninitialized-local-variable (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311896/android-file-retriever-application (-4, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted green field question that is asking how to use the IDE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311894/how-do-i-create-a-driver-for-extra-buttons (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rather vague &quot;how do I program buttons on a drawing tablet.&quot;  Aside from being off topic, no information about what drawing tablet it is is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311892/deleting-dynamically-allocated-memory (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311891/simplest-way-to-build-an-interactive-website-to-visualize-a-table (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a unclear / too broad &quot;how do I render a table&quot; (there are far too many possible ways to do it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311890/where-and-how-i-can-find-explanations-of-abstractions-and-fancy-stuff-used-in-bu (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rant about large software projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311888/adobe-illustrator-data-driven-graphics-via-php (-2, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a question about how to implement an AI that Photoshop has in php. I'm not kidding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311886/why-software-releases-must-be-self-regulated (-3, duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a poorly asked duplicate of a question that searching for &quot;Lehman&quot; would have found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311883/sending-computer-screen-video-through-lightning-connector-to-a-iphone (-3, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a &quot;is it possible&quot; feasibility study question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311874/importing-my-class-to-a-given-tester-class (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is an unclear question that might be &quot;how do I debug my code?&quot; but not enough information about it is given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311873/choose-an-application-development-environment-for-the-displaying-monitoring-da (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted too broad question (with a bit of unclear too).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311871/web-design-templates-for-backend-developing (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a tool recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311866/connected-city-problem (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a cross posted (CS) what appears to be homework dump.  It has since been deleted here and a bit large to include - see the [CS.SE version](http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/54031/10159) for its text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311862/logic-of-ap-to-return-number-set-to-bit1-as-an-input-binary (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a block of code without any question asked (a comment of &quot;how does this work?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311860/can-you-please-explain-what-this-php-code-below-does (-7, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Someone asking what a given function in php does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311857/ways-to-send-a-message-to-a-users-phone (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A service request / too broad (how can you send a message to a device)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311856/periodicity-detection-for-gapped-data (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    An algorithm question that *might* be answerable if sufficient information is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311855/what-is-more-lower-level-click-or-urwid (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &quot;I make web apps using flask so I am tempted to start using click since it's made by the same person but I've seen more info around for urwid? Which one is more lower level?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;    I don't even know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311854/scripting-productivity-and-speed (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     How do you improve your productivity?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311853/automating-scripting-and-building (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A question about automating the IDE. It is a bit unclear and if it was made clear, would be off topic here (its a tooling problem)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311850/python-functions-and-parameters (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How to type the parameters for python calls (implementation question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And to copy/paste from before :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Keep in mind, this is *my perspective*. Everyone's different. We can't say definitely &quot;yes this would be asked&quot; or &quot;no this wouldn't be asked&quot;. It depends on the question asker.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The point is, a user who only knows *&quot;this is a SE Q&amp;A site titled Programmers&quot;* will most likely have a very different assumption than a user who only knows *&quot;this is a SE Q&amp;A site titled The Whiteboard&quot;* (or Software Concepts, or Software Design Theory, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The term &quot;**Programmers**&quot; is an extremely broad term that could bring to mind a person writing code, a person designing software, a person gathering requirements, a person seeking a new job, etc. But in all cases, it brings to mind *a person*.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; However a term like &quot;**The Whiteboard**&quot; (or SoftwareDesign) gives a first impression of &quot;conceptual software design&quot;, which is more likely to bring to mind designing software, considering architecture, evaluating approaches, etc. It's much more inline with what this site actually is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And as a footnote, I've worked many years now in user-interface design and development. I speak to end-users on a regular basis, and translate their &quot;user-speak&quot; to application designs, taking special care that everything is clear and makes sense *from their point of view*. The discrepancy between the site name and scope and subsequential confusion it causes is extremely clear to me as a major cause of this site's problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know it won't fix everything, but it *will* significantly cut down on the number of off-topic questions that get asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7147/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22609" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7939" RevisionGUID="001b0f80-e282-4d12-8e37-f2cb4f175cff" CreationDate="2016-03-11T19:08:42.893" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="It is a valid request, but I see some problems here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- to find a name which really describes the sites scope **better**, and not just **different** or **equally bad** (or **worse**). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- once the name is changed, there is probably no easy way back for the next few years. A site name change is something I do not expect the SE team to make every two weeks. So if the change does not bring the benefits we expect from it, what then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we could just try out if a name like &quot;SoftwareDesign.SE&quot; would increase the ratio of &quot;good vs. bad posts&quot;, I think no one here would hesitate to do this. But such a change has a high risk of collateral damage - one has to be very sure about that it is worth the hassle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me, it looks your proposal for a name change is trying to solve a problem which might be better addressed differently. [This post two days][1] ago and its topmost answer reveals where the real problem is - not the site's name has to change, but the way how some people (and I don't exclude myself from this) behave in the process of closing, replying to bad questions and commenting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22610" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7935" RevisionGUID="88ff4bbd-8149-4b23-8407-e60553de4011" CreationDate="2016-03-11T20:29:02.620" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/708389289009217538" />
  <row Id="22611" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7942" RevisionGUID="f4db8e1c-e173-4f85-83f2-a70f002b4c8f" CreationDate="2016-03-12T07:47:52.960" UserId="9113" Text="Though I agree with you that &quot;down voting posts without suggesting any reason or improvement&quot; happens too often on this site, pointing with the finger at a single person to blame is IMHO very unprofessional.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You seem to frustrated for the last question of yours which got closed, but actually, I remember vaguely that question, I think I gave it a close-vote, too, and also a comment what was IMHO wrong. That question (which you &quot;forgot&quot; to mention in your rant above), was definitely too broad. Moreover, it was very clear there was no actual problem of yours involved in that question, so in closing it there was definitely no refusal to &quot;give you help for something you needed urgently&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nevertheless, how unprofessional your rant above may be, your reaction shows to me we should make a better job here to explain people *why* their question will be closed soon, and try to be more polite in that process.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22612" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7942" RevisionGUID="1897468a-3cc6-41e7-8d4f-9c89ccfc5c7a" CreationDate="2016-03-12T07:55:34.173" UserId="9113" Comment="added 421 characters in body" Text="Though I agree with you that &quot;down voting posts without suggesting any reason or improvement&quot; happens too often on this site, pointing with the finger at a single person to blame is IMHO very unprofessional.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You seem to frustrated for the last question of yours which got closed, but actually, I remember vaguely that question, I think I gave it a close-vote, too, and also a comment what was IMHO wrong (maybe that comment did not satisfy you, but that is a different topic). That question (which you &quot;forgot&quot; to mention in your rant above), was definitely too broad. Moreover, it was very clear there was no actual problem of yours involved in that question, so in closing it there was definitely no refusal to &quot;give you help for something you needed urgently&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How unprofessional your rant above may be (t least in my eyes), your reaction shows to me we should make a better job here to explain people *why* their question will be closed soon, and try to be more polite in that process. A little bit more &quot;political correctness&quot; would help to give this site a better perception. Nevertheless we should not lower our quality standards. And if a question is &quot;too broad&quot;, giving the asker a hint why it is too broad plus a close vote should be enough. Downvoting a without a comment should be only a measure for questions which are not understandable, badly written, spam, rants, or something like that.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22613" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7943" RevisionGUID="0c5205f9-e456-4f59-a8f4-dbfafa9a59dc" CreationDate="2016-03-12T09:08:33.837" UserId="9113" Text="The last week we had seen (again) some discussions here what is &quot;wrong&quot; with this site, why are here so many closed and downvoted questions and why people are perceiving this as &quot;hostility&quot; and &quot;unhelpfulness&quot;. Peter Tòmas Scott [made some kind of survey][1], and his final suggestions were&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Improve communication of the site's purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Change the self-moderating style&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first topic was already adressed [here][2] by an attempt of Rachel to get permission for changing the site's name. My question is: how can we address the second point (which is IMHO the more important one)? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will it improve out sites perception if we try to improve our means of communication, beeing more polite, less terse, using the &quot;downvote&quot; button less often against newbies (even when we suggest to close a question), and so on? Let us discuss 10 examples for question which were closed and/or downvoted in the last 24 hours:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [I add dynamically dropdown and input fields rows using Jquery][3]&#xD;&#xA;2. [reading line from text files in java (netbeans)][4]&#xD;&#xA;3. [What's wrong about thos code][5]&#xD;&#xA;4. [While loops in C# for Windows Forms. I'm trying to loop certain coefficients so that they can keep displaying on certain labels][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we not have a more **polite** comment template for these kind of &quot;fix-my-code&quot; requests?  Like &quot;Hi &lt;OP&gt;, are you aware that these kind of questions are off-topic on Programmers? ...&quot;.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, these are a new users, can't we just close those questions instead of giving them a ton of additional downvotes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. [Should filenames be relative to their directory name?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, this is primarily opinion-based. But a downvote, and those precanned links? What about enclosing the link into somethink like &quot;Hi XYZ, are you aware that your question is probably too oppionated to let someone give you a good answer, see &lt;link-to-meta&gt; for more information&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. [What should I know to create applications in Phoenix Webframework?][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is IMHO a much better example of how the closing should happen, a comment which was detailed enough to get a &quot;thanks&quot; respond from the OP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. [Registration form with email verification][9]&#xD;&#xA;8. [Integrate between PHP and C program][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comments below those question are fine, and the questions are not yet closed. But the downvotes? The questions are not badly written or expect the reader to have a glass-bowl. And what about a friendly comment like &quot;Hi OP, are you aware that questions of this type are often downvoted or closed on this site if they do not show that the asker did some research effort before&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9. [Rejected by recruitment process on bad code review][11] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed after it got a long-winded answer with 4 upvotes? Sorry, just because for some of us the questions seemed to be unanswerable, other seemed to have a different opinion. There must be a better way to deal with such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10. [If condition vs variable assignment performance wise][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as a dupe (that is debatable, my close vote would have been for a different reason), but 5 downvotes? The question was clearly written and from a newbie. There must be a better way to handle this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you think about this? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/four-years-later-can-we-change-our-site-name&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312536/i-add-dynamically-dropdown-and-input-fields-rows-using-jquery-php-but-how-to-sub&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312534/reading-line-from-text-files-in-java-netbeans&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312531/whats-wrong-about-thos-code&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312525/while-loops-in-c-for-windows-forms-im-trying-to-loop-certain-coefficients-so&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312533/should-filenames-be-relative-to-their-directory-name&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312530/what-should-i-know-to-create-applications-in-phoenix-webframework&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312522/registration-form-with-email-verification&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312513/integrate-between-php-and-c-program&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312488/rejected-by-recruitment-process-on-bad-code-review&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312472/if-condition-vs-variable-assignment-performance-wise" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22614" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7943" RevisionGUID="0c5205f9-e456-4f59-a8f4-dbfafa9a59dc" CreationDate="2016-03-12T09:08:33.837" UserId="9113" Text="How to improve our style for reacting on &quot;low quality questions&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22615" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7943" RevisionGUID="0c5205f9-e456-4f59-a8f4-dbfafa9a59dc" CreationDate="2016-03-12T09:08:33.837" UserId="9113" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22616" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7942" RevisionGUID="141a85c0-bf51-4b60-95d4-1be3dc31a4d9" CreationDate="2016-03-12T09:14:39.007" UserId="9113" Comment="added 19 characters in body" Text="Though I agree with you that &quot;down voting posts without suggesting any reason or improvement&quot; happens too often on this site, pointing with the finger at a single person to blame is IMHO very unprofessional.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You seem to frustrated for the last question of yours which got closed, but actually, I remember vaguely that question, I think I gave it a close-vote, too, and also a comment what was IMHO wrong (maybe that comment did not satisfy you, but that is a different topic). That question (which you &quot;forgot&quot; to mention in your rant above), was definitely too broad. Moreover, it was very clear there was no actual problem of yours involved in that question, so in closing it there was definitely no refusal to &quot;give you help for something you needed urgently&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How unprofessional your rant above may be (t least in my eyes), your reaction shows to me we should make a better job here to explain people *why* their question had been closed or will be closed soon, and try to be more polite in that process. A little bit more &quot;political correctness&quot; would help to give this site a better perception. Nevertheless we should not lower our quality standards. And if a question is &quot;too broad&quot;, giving the asker a hint why it is too broad plus a close vote should be enough. Downvoting a without a comment should be only a measure for questions which are not understandable, badly written, spam, rants, or something like that.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22617" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7943" RevisionGUID="81dfea34-4b5e-4622-a857-f11612422586" CreationDate="2016-03-12T09:24:11.887" UserId="9113" Comment="added 512 characters in body" Text="The last week we had seen (again) some discussions here what is &quot;wrong&quot; with this site, why are here so many closed and downvoted questions and why people are perceiving this as &quot;hostility&quot; and &quot;unhelpfulness&quot;. Peter Tòmas Scott [made some kind of survey][1], and his final suggestions were&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Improve communication of the site's purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Change the self-moderating style&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first topic was already adressed [here][2] by an attempt of Rachel to get permission for changing the site's name. My question is: how can we address the second point (which is IMHO the more important one)? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will it improve out sites perception if we try to improve our means of communication, beeing more polite, less terse, using the &quot;downvote&quot; button less often against newbies (even when we suggest to close a question), and so on? Let me show you some examples for questions which were closed and/or downvoted in the last 12 hours:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [I add dynamically dropdown and input fields rows using Jquery][3]&#xD;&#xA;2. [reading line from text files in java (netbeans)][4]&#xD;&#xA;3. [What's wrong about thos code][5]&#xD;&#xA;4. [While loops in C# for Windows Forms. I'm trying to loop certain coefficients so that they can keep displaying on certain labels][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we not have a more **polite** comment template for these kind of &quot;fix-my-code&quot; requests?  Like &quot;Hi OP, are you aware that these kind of questions are off-topic on Programmers? ...&quot;.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, these are a new users, can't we just close those questions instead of giving them a ton of additional downvotes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. [Should filenames be relative to their directory name?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, this is primarily opinion-based. But a downvote, and those precanned links? What about enclosing the link into somethink like &quot;Hi XYZ, are you aware that your question is probably too oppionated to let someone give you a good answer, see &lt;link-to-meta&gt; for more information&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. [What should I know to create applications in Phoenix Webframework?][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is IMHO a much better example of how the closing should happen, a comment which was detailed enough to get a &quot;thanks&quot; respond from the OP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. [Registration form with email verification][9]&#xD;&#xA;8. [Integrate between PHP and C program][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comments below those question are fine, and the questions are not yet closed. But the downvotes? The questions are not badly written or expect the reader to have a glass-bowl. And what about a friendly comment like &quot;Hi OP, are you aware that questions of this type are often downvoted or closed on this site if they do not show that the asker did some research effort before&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9. [Rejected by recruitment process on bad code review][11] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as &quot;unclear&quot; **after** it got a long-winded answer with 4 upvotes? Sorry, just because for some of us the question seemed to be unanswerable, others seemed to have a different opinion - and that was obvious at the time of closing. There must be a better way to deal with such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10. [If condition vs variable assignment performance wise][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as a dupe (that is debatable, my close vote would have been for a different reason), but 5 downvotes? The question was clearly written and from a newbie. There must be a better way to handle this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And finally, a more positive one: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;11. [Is it ok if I can't solve a problem when sitting in front of a computer?][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Correctly closed, because this was not programming specific, and surely too opinionated. But it got lots of comments and upvotes before (still those 3 IMHO unneccessary downvotes). So that is IMHO a much more constructive way of closing a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you think about this? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/four-years-later-can-we-change-our-site-name&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312536/i-add-dynamically-dropdown-and-input-fields-rows-using-jquery-php-but-how-to-sub&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312534/reading-line-from-text-files-in-java-netbeans&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312531/whats-wrong-about-thos-code&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312525/while-loops-in-c-for-windows-forms-im-trying-to-loop-certain-coefficients-so&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312533/should-filenames-be-relative-to-their-directory-name&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312530/what-should-i-know-to-create-applications-in-phoenix-webframework&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312522/registration-form-with-email-verification&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312513/integrate-between-php-and-c-program&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312488/rejected-by-recruitment-process-on-bad-code-review&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312472/if-condition-vs-variable-assignment-performance-wise&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312511/is-it-ok-if-i-cant-solve-a-problem-when-sitting-in-front-of-a-computer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22618" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7942" RevisionGUID="e263383c-1dd2-4190-baef-517390e2a1e5" CreationDate="2016-03-12T09:54:28.693" UserId="9113" Comment="added 45 characters in body" Text="Though I agree with you that &quot;down voting posts without suggesting any reason or improvement&quot; happens too often on this site, pointing with the finger at a single person to blame in a public space is IMHO *extremly* unprofessional.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You seem to be unhappy because (and how) the last question of yours got closed, but actually, I remember vaguely that question, I think I gave it a close-vote, too, and also a comment what was IMHO wrong (maybe that comment did not satisfy you, but that is a different topic). That question (which you &quot;forgot&quot; to mention in your rant above), was definitely too broad (at least, for my taste). Moreover, it was very clear there was no actual problem of yours involved in that question, so in closing it there was definitely no refusal to give you help for something you needed urgently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How unprofessional your rant above may be (t least in my eyes), your reaction shows to me we should make a better job here to explain people *why* their question had been closed or will be closed soon, and try to be more polite in that process. A little bit more &quot;political correctness&quot; would help to give this site a better perception. Nevertheless we should not lower our quality standards. And if a question is &quot;too broad&quot;, giving the asker a hint why it is too broad plus a close vote should be enough. Downvoting a without a comment should be only a measure for questions which are not understandable, badly written, spam, rants, or something like that.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22619" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7906" RevisionGUID="fe8bf9e4-8764-4653-8d60-ea740a9b2b3a" CreationDate="2016-03-12T10:38:05.900" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[7593],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:53019,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;GlenH7&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:22815,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Snowman&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:7519,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Jarrod Roberson&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:9113,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Doc Brown&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="22620" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7943" RevisionGUID="9d468af5-24f6-4b89-9429-eec4f6f86b74" CreationDate="2016-03-12T10:41:13.133" UserId="9113" Comment="wording improved" Text="The last week we had seen (again) some discussions here what is &quot;wrong&quot; with this site, why are here so many closed and downvoted questions and why people are interpreting this as &quot;hostility&quot; and &quot;unhelpfulness&quot;. Peter Tòmas Scott [made some kind of survey][1], and his final suggestions were&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Improve communication of the site's purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Change the self-moderating style&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first topic was already adressed [here][2] by an attempt of Rachel to get permission for changing the site's name. My question is: how can we address the second point (which is IMHO the more important one)? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will it improve the sites' perception if we try to improve our means of communication, beeing more polite, less terse, using the &quot;downvote&quot; button less often against newbies (even when we suggest to close a question), and so on? Let me show you some examples for questions which were closed and/or downvoted in the last 12 hours:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [I add dynamically dropdown and input fields rows using Jquery][3]&#xD;&#xA;2. [reading line from text files in java (netbeans)][4]&#xD;&#xA;3. [What's wrong about thos code][5]&#xD;&#xA;4. [While loops in C# for Windows Forms. I'm trying to loop certain coefficients so that they can keep displaying on certain labels][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we not have a more **polite** comment template for these kind of &quot;fix-my-code&quot; requests?  Like &quot;Hi OP, are you aware that these kind of questions are off-topic on Programmers? ...&quot;.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, these are a new users, can't we just close those questions instead of giving them a ton of additional downvotes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. [Should filenames be relative to their directory name?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, this is primarily opinion-based. But a downvote, and those precanned links? What about enclosing the link into somethink like &quot;Hi XYZ, are you aware that your question is probably too oppionated to let someone give you a good answer, see &lt;link-to-meta&gt; for more information&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. [What should I know to create applications in Phoenix Webframework?][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is IMHO a much better example of how the closing should happen, a comment which was detailed enough to get a &quot;thanks&quot; respond from the OP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. [Registration form with email verification][9]&#xD;&#xA;8. [Integrate between PHP and C program][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comments below those question are fine, and the questions are not yet closed. But the downvotes? The questions are not badly written or expect the reader to have a glass-bowl. And what about a friendly comment like &quot;Hi OP, are you aware that questions of this type are often downvoted or closed on this site if they do not show that the asker did some research effort before&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9. [Rejected by recruitment process on bad code review][11] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as &quot;unclear&quot; **after** it got a long-winded answer with 4 upvotes? Sorry, just because for some of us the question seemed to be unanswerable, others seemed to have a different opinion - and that was obvious at the time of closing. There must be a better way to deal with such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10. [If condition vs variable assignment performance wise][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as a dupe (that is debatable, my close vote would have been for a different reason), but 5 downvotes? The question was clearly written and from a newbie. There must be a better way to handle this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And finally, a more positive one: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;11. [Is it ok if I can't solve a problem when sitting in front of a computer?][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Correctly closed, because this was not programming specific, and surely too opinionated. But it got lots of comments and upvotes before (still those 3 IMHO unneccessary downvotes). So that is IMHO a much more constructive way of closing a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you think about this? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/four-years-later-can-we-change-our-site-name&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312536/i-add-dynamically-dropdown-and-input-fields-rows-using-jquery-php-but-how-to-sub&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312534/reading-line-from-text-files-in-java-netbeans&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312531/whats-wrong-about-thos-code&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312525/while-loops-in-c-for-windows-forms-im-trying-to-loop-certain-coefficients-so&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312533/should-filenames-be-relative-to-their-directory-name&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312530/what-should-i-know-to-create-applications-in-phoenix-webframework&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312522/registration-form-with-email-verification&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312513/integrate-between-php-and-c-program&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312488/rejected-by-recruitment-process-on-bad-code-review&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312472/if-condition-vs-variable-assignment-performance-wise&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312511/is-it-ok-if-i-cant-solve-a-problem-when-sitting-in-front-of-a-computer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22621" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7944" RevisionGUID="412b39fa-0ac6-441c-ac23-0a4711665716" CreationDate="2016-03-12T13:17:55.053" UserId="161917" Text="There's a million angles one could look at this issue from, so here's how I'm interpreting the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Assuming our scope and our quality standards do not and should not change, how can we minimize negativity when enforcing that scope and those standards?** That includes negative reactions from the asker, and from anyone who views the question before, during or after the &quot;enforcement&quot; takes place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The big question here is what parts of our &quot;enforcement&quot; elicit negative reactions. It could be downvotes. It could be close votes. It could be the lack of an answer. It could be the canned comments. It could be the non-canned comments explaining why the question can't/shouldn't be answered. It may be unwillingness to nominate some other site as the next place to go when doing these things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the most part, the only evidence we have to go on is what people complain about in the comments on these questions, and occasionally in rants here on meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###In my experience, these are the things I have seen people directly complain about, and what (if anything) I think could be improved there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Downvoting without an explanation.** These comments seem to happen mostly on questions which are on-topic but judged to be too broad or opinion-based. Personally, when I down or close vote, I will usually write a comment explaining the problem if such a comment does not already exist (unless it's exceptionally lazy or just blatantly off-topic). I can understand others not doing this, as these are usually things we've explained a million times before and very few OPs even attempt to fix the question, much less fix it successfully. But despite that, **I believe it's worth encouraging more people to write these comments more often, and avoid down or close voting on questions which do not have such a comment if they are unwilling to write one themselves.** It's also worth noting most of my downvotes are intended solely to get poor questions off the front page before they get poor answers, which is a behavior I think many people share, and I'm open to rethinking it since poor questions getting poor answers no longer seems to be our biggest problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Voting to close a question.** This is relatively uncommon simply because most OPs lack the ability to see close votes. But it does happen, and when it does it's usually for too broad/POB votes. As I recently said in chat, I believe those are the most controversial close reasons, and the most abused (where &quot;abuse&quot; means closing questions that do not need to be closed at all), so I have personally decided to not use those close reasons on any question I believe *could* get a useful answer, unless it has already gotten multiple bad answers to prove otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Refusing to answer a question the OP believes is answerable.** This happens on all types of close-worthy questions, from recommendations to broad/POB to debugging. I haven't noticed these comments being more or less common depending on whether the question is getting downvotes, close votes or canned comments. I take this to mean many askers are here solely to get their question answered, and don't care about any other form of response they get. There's not much we can do in these cases, since answering these questions (even in the form of a comment) is equivalent to changing the scope of the site, and that's a discussion for another meta thread.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Canned comments.** While I've never seen an OP specifically accuse these comments of being unhelpful, these seem to increase the probability of a follow-up comment complaining about unexplained downvotes or our refusal to answer the question. I have never used canned comments, and in my experience, every time an asker reacted non-negatively after an &quot;enforcement comment&quot; was posted (either by quietly self-deleting or by writing a positive/neutral reply) it was a non-canned comment that did it. The meta posts we like to link to are definitely useful (as evidenced by other sites starting to use them), but I believe our comments must contain some handwritten content before the recommended reading link to ensure a positive outcome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Accusatory or rude comments.** Although I hate making ad hominem attacks, and don't want to imply any of this site's problems can be blamed entirely on a single user, we can't talk about negativity on this site without addressing the elephant in the room. gnat is the only P.SE user who very frequently posts comments questions which directly accuse the asker of &quot;spamming&quot;, &quot;dumping&quot;, evading a question ban, ignoring previous warnings or otherwise being deliberately malicious. He is also one of only two users I've ever seen referred to *by name* multiple times on multiple sites by disgruntled users as a major source of negativity and frustration. While I agree with the majority of his downvotes and close votes, and his targets are almost always legitimately bad posts, the rudeness simply has to stop. It's not encouraging newbies to follow the rules; it's encouraging them to hate the rules and the &quot;cabal&quot; that enforces them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### In my experience, these are things I have almost never seen people directly complain about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Handwritten non-accusatory comments.** These sometimes prompt the OP to seek loopholes in our policies or argue about what our scope should be rather than address the problem directly, but they never seem to increase the amount of negativity in the thread unless other factors such as speedy downvotes and rude/canned comments are already in play. The exception is when the OP responds, but doesn't really &quot;get it&quot; and a lengthy but unproductive comment discussion ensues. This is why I normally stick to one explanatory comment per question, even when the OP does respond to me, and it seems like most of the people who write these comments already tend to do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Anything we do to a &quot;code dump&quot; question.** Most of these are &quot;drive-by&quot; OPs who we never hear from again, so the fact that they're usually getting quickly closed and downvoted off the front page is probably a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Suggesting other sites the OP could ask on.** There is a &quot;your princess is in another castle&quot; argument to be made here, and it's been suggested that even providing this level of help encourages repeat offenders (which I personally doubt), but I've never seen OPs complain about us redirecting a question instead of answering it ourselves." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22622" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7942" RevisionGUID="6f48f5e4-810f-4ae2-b148-968ee6047be9" CreationDate="2016-03-12T13:30:35.860" UserId="9113" Comment="typos fixed" Text="Though I agree with you that &quot;down voting posts without suggesting any reason or improvement&quot; happens too often on this site, pointing with the finger at a single person to blame in a public space is IMHO *extremly* unprofessional.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You seem to be unhappy because (and how) the last question of yours got closed, but actually, I remember vaguely that question, I think I gave it a close-vote, too, and also a comment what was IMHO wrong (maybe that comment did not satisfy you, but that is a different topic). That question (which you &quot;forgot&quot; to mention in your rant above), was definitely too broad (at least, for my taste). Moreover, it was very clear there was no actual problem of yours involved in that question, so in closing it there was definitely no refusal to give you help for something you needed urgently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How unprofessional your rant above may be (at least in my eyes), your reaction shows to me we should make a better job here to explain people *why* their question had been closed or will be closed soon, and try to be more polite in that process. A little bit more &quot;political correctness&quot; would help to give this site a better perception. Nevertheless we should not lower our quality standards. And if a question is &quot;too broad&quot;, giving the asker a hint why it is too broad plus a close vote should be enough. Downvoting a without a comment should be only a measure for questions which are not understandable, badly written, spam, rants, or something like that.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22623" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7945" RevisionGUID="b153d0f9-d4a1-42d9-97c9-02a69ac41b3f" CreationDate="2016-03-12T13:56:48.160" UserId="52929" Text="Specifically regarding downvoting, one important observation is that when viewing the [homepage](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/) questions that are -4 or lower are not visible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not know how many people view this link, but given how often bumped content of mine receives upvotes across the SE network, I suspect quite a few do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, questions that are -3 or lower can be deleted immediately by [20,000 trusted users](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/trusted-user):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Voting to delete questions with a score of -3 or lower immediately after they are closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22624" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7946" RevisionGUID="01864cf1-e980-433e-81e1-7fed67e5fd9e" CreationDate="2016-03-12T14:19:28.393" UserId="52929" Text="My experience on other Stack Exchange sites with similar levels of subjectivity (namely The Workplace) is that people generally _want_ to ask questions that are on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People generally respond well to significant rewrites that capture the essence of the question. I have done this many times on Workplace and occasionally here, and when you leave a comment like, &quot;I've made a large edit to your question to clarify it, if that changed your intent too much feel free to [edit] to clarify!&quot; almost never receive a negative reaction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem(s) are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I'm demoralized from making edits here, because it feels like no one really wants to reopen questions (this includes people who want to make the site more friendly - in fact people in this category are precisely the people who I think _need_ to participate more in site moderation!)&#xD;&#xA; - Many questions here cannot be rewritten this way given lack of information from OP&#xD;&#xA;  - Or are blatantly off topic, like the implementation questions&#xD;&#xA;  - Some level of &quot;what are you trying to do and why&quot; is required to rewrite a question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally canned comments containing links are not useful at all, especially since nearly all close reasons contain links to the _same_ pages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And last:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - People here seem to prefer telling _others_ what to do about how to make the site better than making edits, placing constructive comments, voting (reopen/upvote/etc) themselves, flagging comments which are &quot;not constructive&quot; or too direct towards new users (use the custom flag if it's a marginal one, trust me as a mod elsewhere that helps immensely)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any person here who wants to improve the site culture can do so. The problem is that it certainly feels like many (most?) people do not seem to want to do things themselves, but instead tell the _others_ what to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's hard to spend time finding the diamonds when you are shoveling the... crap." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22625" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7947" RevisionGUID="ccb0852a-48ca-4ae7-8b34-bf3d7631e7f8" CreationDate="2016-03-12T14:28:47.910" UserId="102438" Text="# Noobs everywhere&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, so we have people new to programming, poor English speakers, and sometimes their intersection asking questions here. Their questions aren't always the best, but sometimes there is an opportunity to throw their question on our back and carry it over from no-man's land into a place where it can get help and contribute to the value of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# My model of question quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I view question quality on a continuum. Some place between marginal and closable, I think, &quot;man, this one's not worth it,&quot; and vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;------------|---------------&gt;---------------&gt;----------------&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    closable          marginal         better          high-quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if we can get questions from close-worthy to marginal, we can sometimes then continue improving them in terms of quality. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've seen this myself, where I'm not sure what the overall question is, but I'm able to fix utterly atrocious spelling and grammar, and then someone else realizes exactly what they're asking and straightens the question out into that. But I don't think the second edit would happen without the first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Upsides&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once we get questions over the revulsion hump, we can write good answers that are solidly on-topic for the site. If the question is still marginal, but has strong on-topic answers, that's a sign that we should improve the question to eliminate the problematic part.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# My approach to editing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I sometimes find such an opportunity to salvage the impossible, and this week I was able to do it again. Here's my approach to fixing the apparently unfixable:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Redact meta-info like:&#xD;&#xA;  - My English not so good. I'm from a non-English-speaking country. (Don't forget to fix the spelling and grammar problems if you can.)&#xD;&#xA;  - I'm a noob to the programming language, computers in general, or some particular aspect of OOP or software architecture.&#xD;&#xA;  - Other hand-wringing, mitigating personal details.&#xD;&#xA;  - thanks, and Here's my name (We already know to delete this, right?!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Redact or modify parts that will get the question closed:&#xD;&#xA;  - Requests for resources.&#xD;&#xA;  - Requests for a finished product, debugging, or opinions.&#xD;&#xA;  - Requests for aspects that make the question off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;  - Turn a &quot;do this for me&quot; into a &quot;how do I&quot; ?&#xD;&#xA;  - Turn a request for thoughts into a &quot;what's important about X?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  - Cut down questions that ask too much into a manageable amount.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Edit mercilessly &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bottom line is that the asker doesn't *own* the content they provide, the site does. If they are uncooperative with a post-saving mega-revision, (i.e. rolling back your edits) then absolutely let them have their way and close/delete the question. But they are noobs to the site, and chances are they're afraid to click anything, and don't have the slightest clue that you have an edit pending or how to approve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Reviewers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can ask them to try to figure out how to approve a post-saving revision, but reviewers of such a revision should *fast-track it* - not protest that it changes too much and force the noob asker to approve their own rescue. After all, the asker can always roll it back to close-worthy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Celebrate, mission accomplished.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was a little stoked at my recent success, and made a Success Kid meme pic to celebrate. I think it would be cool to see more of these:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Success Kid][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was the question that was at +2, if I recall correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/1cdUn.jpg&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22626" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7947" RevisionGUID="ccb0852a-48ca-4ae7-8b34-bf3d7631e7f8" CreationDate="2016-03-12T14:28:47.910" UserId="102438" Text="Can we resuscitate more content?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22627" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7947" RevisionGUID="ccb0852a-48ca-4ae7-8b34-bf3d7631e7f8" CreationDate="2016-03-12T14:28:47.910" UserId="102438" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22628" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7946" RevisionGUID="0dc9ced4-ac3a-4fab-b287-ae9db3b6db02" CreationDate="2016-03-12T14:41:14.737" UserId="17853" Comment="Fixed comma splices." Text="My experience on other Stack Exchange sites with similar levels of subjectivity (namely The Workplace) is that people generally _want_ to ask questions that are on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People generally respond well to significant rewrites that capture the essence of the question. I have done this many times on Workplace and occasionally here, and when you leave a comment like, &quot;I've made a large edit to your question to clarify it; if that changed your intent too much feel free to [edit] to clarify!&quot; almost never receive a negative reaction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem(s) are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I'm demoralized from making edits here, because it feels like no one really wants to reopen questions (this includes people who want to make the site more friendly - in fact people in this category are precisely the people who I think _need_ to participate more in site moderation!)&#xD;&#xA; - Many questions here cannot be rewritten this way given lack of information from OP&#xD;&#xA;  - Or are blatantly off topic, like the implementation questions&#xD;&#xA;  - Some level of &quot;what are you trying to do and why&quot; is required to rewrite a question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, canned comments containing links are not useful at all, especially since nearly all close reasons contain links to the _same_ pages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And last:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - People here seem to prefer telling _others_ what to do about how to make the site better than making edits, placing constructive comments, voting (reopen/upvote/etc) themselves, flagging comments which are &quot;not constructive&quot; or too direct towards new users (use the custom flag if it's a marginal one; trust me as a mod elsewhere: that helps immensely)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any person here who wants to improve the site culture can do so. The problem is that it certainly feels like many (most?) people do not seem to want to do things themselves, but instead tell the _others_ what to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's hard to spend time finding the diamonds when you are shovelling the... crap." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22629" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7946" RevisionGUID="d05c3ea0-32c1-4723-87d6-ffa0b95878d9" CreationDate="2016-03-12T15:11:40.007" UserId="52929" Comment="added 503 characters in body" Text="My experience on other Stack Exchange sites with similar levels of subjectivity (namely The Workplace) is that people generally _want_ to ask questions that are on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People generally respond well to significant rewrites that capture the essence of the question. I have done this many times on Workplace and occasionally here, and when you leave a comment like, &quot;I've made a large edit to your question to clarify it, if that changed your intent too much feel free to [edit] to clarify!&quot; almost never receive a negative reaction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem(s) are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I'm demoralized from making edits here, because it feels like no one really wants to reopen questions (this includes people who want to make the site more friendly - in fact people in this category are precisely the people who I think _need_ to participate more in site moderation!)&#xD;&#xA; - Many questions here cannot be rewritten this way given lack of information from OP&#xD;&#xA;  - Or are blatantly off topic, like the implementation questions&#xD;&#xA;  - Some level of &quot;what are you trying to do and why&quot; is required to rewrite a question&#xD;&#xA; - It's a _ton_ of work to make a comprehensive edit compared to VtC&#xD;&#xA;  - When you have limited time for community moderation, VtC &gt;&gt; comprehensive edits&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, canned comments containing links are really not useful at all, especially since nearly all close reasons contain links to the _same_ pages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And last, related to overall morale:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - People here seem to prefer telling _others_ what to do about how to make the site better than making edits, placing constructive comments, voting (reopen/upvote/etc) themselves, flagging comments which are &quot;not constructive&quot; or too direct towards new users (use the custom flag if it's a marginal one - trust me as a mod elsewhere, that helps immensely)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any person here who wants to improve the site culture can do so. The problem is that it certainly feels like many (most?) people do not seem to want to do things themselves, but instead tell the _others_ what to do. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's hard to spend time finding the diamonds when you are shoveling the... crap. There are a lot of people who have the ability to vote to close/delete questions which are clearly offtopic. If everyone was actively doing this (such as all the implementation questions), I think the overall site community would improve as _everyone_ would have more bandwidth to help edit broken questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22630" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7934" RevisionGUID="3c3efc1f-38cd-4d56-b86e-72c01d1ad25a" CreationDate="2016-03-12T21:23:58.823" UserDisplayName="user174739" Comment="Added links to the next steps" Text="## Actions Taken&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion 1** is being advanced by a renewed request for name change, this is being advanced by @Rachel in [Four years later - Can we change our site name?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/four-years-later-can-we-change-our-site-name).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion 2** is being advanced by active community discussion about change in moderation style. This is being advanced by @DocBrown in [How to improve our style for reacting on “low quality questions”?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7943/how-to-improve-our-style-for-reacting-on-low-quality-questions). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also see Arron Hall's discussion about [Can we resuscitate more content?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7947/can-we-resuscitate-more-content).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;___&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is now clear to me that there are two problems with two camps; these are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Improper questions being asked on P.SE; this pertains to users not understanding the site's scope and purpose.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Improper moderation/closing; this pertains to questions being closed too abruptly and with too little communication.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I expect that any solution that looks to resolve one of these and not the other would simply fragment the community. So, I suggest that we move to address both problems simultaneously, with one or more people from each *faction* leading-up a solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion 1. Improve communication of the site's purpose.** &#xD;&#xA;From the results, this can involve creating a site tagline, creating a blurb that is displayed to new users before they can post, or by displaying the site scope next to the ask-question interface. These all require SE involvement so must begin with feature requests for our preferred solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More immediately, *Snowman's* suggestion for a series of Meta Q&amp;As about common question phrasing issues could be implemented. This would be advantageous because the community can do it without SE involvement. It also has the benefit of actively assisting Solution 2.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion 2. Change the self-moderating style**&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest that this is best addressed by those advocating change being given the opportunity to moderate how they wish for a certain period of time once a week. There can then be discussion about improvements that are seen and lessons that can be drawn by the rest of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Survey Results&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Broad support** was expressed in one form or another for all of the **'improve communication' type solutions**; the general conclusion is that all of the options presented would be helpful and the question becomes how much support we will receive from SE regarding feature requests. In fact, the only negative comments on some solutions (such as name change) were more related to the expectation that SE would not be supportive of the measure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was also **extensive support** for **changing enforcement / moderation style**. Related to this was the suggestion to update the *'how to write on-topic questions'* related Meta posts to make them more helpful for newcomers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any suggestion of **scope change** was **universally condemned**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;___&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We now have two clearly defined areas for development and active community participation in both areas. Moreover, the two solutions being developed accurately reflect the **entire community**, which greatly improves the likelihood of success. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As such, this question has served its purpose and the poll is now closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22631" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7934" RevisionGUID="52b4c243-604d-442f-ac33-25c838072dd3" CreationDate="2016-03-12T21:38:57.927" UserDisplayName="user174739" Comment="added 45 characters in body" Text="## Actions Taken&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion 1** is being advanced by a renewed request for name change, this is being advanced by @Rachel in [Four years later - Can we change our site name?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/four-years-later-can-we-change-our-site-name).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion 2** is being advanced by active community discussion about change in moderation style. This is being advanced by @DocBrown in [How to improve our style for reacting on “low quality questions”?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7943/how-to-improve-our-style-for-reacting-on-low-quality-questions). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also see Arron Hall's discussion about [Can we resuscitate more content?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7947/can-we-resuscitate-more-content).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;___&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is now clear to me that there are two problems with two camps; these are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Improper questions being asked on P.SE; this pertains to users not understanding the site's scope and purpose.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Improper moderation/closing; this pertains to questions being closed too abruptly and with too little communication.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I expect that any solution that looks to resolve one of these and not the other would simply fragment the community. So, I suggest that we move to address both problems simultaneously, with one or more people from each *faction* leading-up a solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion 1. Improve communication of the site's purpose.** &#xD;&#xA;From the results, this can involve creating a site tagline, creating a blurb that is displayed to new users before they can post, or by displaying the site scope next to the ask-question interface. These all require SE involvement so must begin with feature requests for our preferred solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More immediately, *Snowman's* suggestion for a series of Meta Q&amp;As about common question phrasing issues could be implemented. This would be advantageous because the community can do it without SE involvement. It also has the benefit of actively assisting Solution 2.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion 2. Change the self-moderating style**&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest that this is best addressed by those advocating change being given the opportunity to moderate how they wish for a certain period of time once a week. There can then be discussion about improvements that are seen and lessons that can be drawn by the rest of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Survey Results&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Broad support** was expressed in one form or another for all of the **'improve communication' type solutions**; the general conclusion is that all of the options presented would be helpful and the question becomes how much support we will receive from SE regarding feature requests. In fact, the only negative comments on some solutions (such as name change) were motivated by the expectation that SE would not be supportive of the measure rather than by a dislike for the measure itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was also **extensive support** for **changing enforcement / moderation style**. Related to this was the suggestion to update the *'how to write on-topic questions'* related Meta posts to make them more helpful for newcomers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any suggestion of **scope change** was **universally condemned**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;___&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We now have two clearly defined areas for development and active community participation in both areas. Moreover, the two solutions being developed accurately reflect the **entire community**, which greatly improves the likelihood of success. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As such, this question has served its purpose and the poll is now closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22632" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7946" RevisionGUID="f6fb75ea-46fc-4335-a4e5-17471b96be75" CreationDate="2016-03-12T23:33:13.533" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 19 characters in body" Text="My experience on other Stack Exchange sites with similar levels of subjectivity (namely The Workplace) is that people generally _want_ to ask questions that are on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People generally respond well to significant rewrites that capture the essence of the question. I have done this many times on Workplace and occasionally here, and when you leave a comment like, &quot;I've made a large edit to your question to clarify it, if that changed your intent too much feel free to [edit] to clarify!&quot; almost never receive a negative reaction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm demoralized from making edits here, because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It feels like no one really wants to reopen questions (this includes people who want to make the site more friendly - in fact people in this category are precisely the people who I think _need_ to participate more in site moderation!)&#xD;&#xA; - Many questions here cannot be rewritten this way given lack of information from OP&#xD;&#xA;  - Or are blatantly off topic, like the implementation questions&#xD;&#xA;  - Some level of &quot;what are you trying to do and why&quot; is required to rewrite a question&#xD;&#xA; - It's a _ton_ of work to make a comprehensive edit compared to VtC&#xD;&#xA;  - When you have limited time for community moderation, VtC &gt;&gt; comprehensive edits&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, canned comments containing links are really not useful at all, especially since nearly all close reasons contain links to the _same_ pages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And last, related to overall morale:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - People here seem to prefer telling _others_ what to do about how to make the site better than making edits, placing constructive comments, voting (reopen/upvote/etc) themselves, flagging comments which are &quot;not constructive&quot; or too direct towards new users (use the custom flag if it's a marginal one - trust me as a mod elsewhere, that helps immensely)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any person here who wants to improve the site culture can do so. The problem is that it certainly feels like many (most?) people do not seem to want to do things themselves, but instead tell the _others_ what to do. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's hard to spend time finding the diamonds when you are shoveling the... crap. There are a lot of people who have the ability to vote to close/delete questions which are clearly offtopic. If everyone was actively doing this (such as all the implementation questions), I think the overall site community would improve as _everyone_ would have more bandwidth to help edit broken questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22633" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7948" RevisionGUID="b906e7d4-6c39-45fe-8ebf-9a7de372d179" CreationDate="2016-03-13T06:40:47.227" UserId="53141" Text="I think what gets forgotten is that while long-time users have seen thousands of &quot;do my homework&quot; requests and hundreds of rants disguised as questions, people coming to the site for the first site haven't.  For them, their introduction to the site is the first few questions they see.  If they response to questions seems impolite, flippant or rude in the first five questions they see, those will probably be the last five questions they see.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And some of those people are potentially valuable contributors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you act on a question, you are not speaking to the OP. You are speaking to everyone who visits the site.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yes, it is hard to keep a polite view after the fifteenth conceived, poorly spelled garbage question, but if we really want to make the sit welcoming to new users, that's exactly what people will have to do.  No, it isn't easy, and speaking personally I often don't have the time or inclination to put that much work in myself.  So in a real sense, I am speaking to the contributors who have more time, and more energy for this site than I do, and saying:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't have the energy to close and describe the reason...you don't have the energy to close.  It is better to make fewer &quot;high quality&quot; close votes than many &quot;drive by&quot; closes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously no one's going to care if two line, ungrammatical piece of garbage gets closed immediately.  But every question deserves as much care in close votes as went in to the asking.   If someone obviously spent a lot of time putting together a question, then it deserves real attention when closed even if it is clearly wrong for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a concrete suggestion, I suggest adding new canned &quot;close vote&quot; reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Rant disguised as a question&#xD;&#xA;* Do my homework request&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, not wanting to point to any particular users, but you should be very careful of saying &quot;possible duplicate&quot; in comments.  It smacks of looking for reasons to downvote.  We should not be looking for reasons to downvote.  Instead, it should be either downvoted as a duplicate (if it is) or phrased as a helpful comment, like &quot;Hey, you might want to check out this other question, which may help you&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We want people to think we're trying to help them rather than looking for an excuse to boot them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22634" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7943" RevisionGUID="4296597d-7488-4cdc-bed9-66e98897d6d4" CreationDate="2016-03-13T07:43:02.100" UserId="9113" Comment="added 532 characters in body" Text="The last week we had seen (again) some discussions here what is &quot;wrong&quot; with this site, why are here so many closed and downvoted questions and why people are interpreting this as &quot;hostility&quot; and &quot;unhelpfulness&quot;. Peter Tòmas Scott [made some kind of survey][1], and his final suggestions were&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Improve communication of the site's purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Change the self-moderating style&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first topic was already adressed [here][2] by an attempt of Rachel to get permission for changing the site's name. My question is: how can we address the second point (which is IMHO the more important one)? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will it improve the sites' perception if we try to improve our means of communication, beeing more polite, less terse, using the &quot;downvote&quot; button less often against newbies (even when we suggest to close a question), and so on? Let me show you some examples for questions which were closed and/or downvoted in the last 12 hours:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [I add dynamically dropdown and input fields rows using Jquery][3]&#xD;&#xA;2. [reading line from text files in java (netbeans)][4]&#xD;&#xA;3. [What's wrong about thos code][5]&#xD;&#xA;4. [While loops in C# for Windows Forms. I'm trying to loop certain coefficients so that they can keep displaying on certain labels][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we not have a more **polite** comment template for these kind of &quot;fix-my-code&quot; requests?  Like &quot;Hi OP, are you aware that these kind of questions are off-topic on Programmers? ...&quot;.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, these are a new users, can't we just close those questions instead of giving them a ton of additional downvotes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. [Should filenames be relative to their directory name?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, this is primarily opinion-based. But a downvote, and those precanned links? What about enclosing the link into somethink like &quot;Hi XYZ, are you aware that your question is probably too oppionated to let someone give you a good answer, see &lt;link-to-meta&gt; for more information&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. [What should I know to create applications in Phoenix Webframework?][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is IMHO a much better example of how the closing should happen, a comment which was detailed enough to get a &quot;thanks&quot; respond from the OP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. [Registration form with email verification][9]&#xD;&#xA;8. [Integrate between PHP and C program][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comments below those question are fine, and the questions are not yet closed. But the downvotes? The questions are not badly written or expect the reader to have a glass-bowl. And what about a friendly comment like &quot;Hi OP, are you aware that questions of this type are often downvoted or closed on this site if they do not show that the asker did some research effort before&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9. [Rejected by recruitment process on bad code review][11] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as &quot;unclear&quot; **after** it got a long-winded answer with 4 upvotes? Sorry, just because for some of us the question seemed to be unanswerable, others seemed to have a different opinion - and that was obvious at the time of closing. There must be a better way to deal with such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10. [If condition vs variable assignment performance wise][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as a dupe (that is debatable, my close vote would have been for a different reason), but 5 downvotes? The question was clearly written and from a newbie. There must be a better way to handle this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And finally, a more positive one: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;11. [Is it ok if I can't solve a problem when sitting in front of a computer?][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Correctly closed, because this was not programming specific, and surely too opinionated. But it got lots of comments and upvotes before (still those 3 IMHO unneccessary downvotes). So that is IMHO a much more constructive way of closing a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you think about this? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: Here is another one I would like to add for demonstration purposes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  12. [Quartz .net does not work when I inject dependency][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why not use a more friendly comment like &quot;Hi SlashMet, are you aware that we have a strict no-crosspost policy here in the stackexchange network? Please delete one of your doubles, or expect the community to downvote and close both of your questions.&quot; Of course, that question would be closed either because it fix-my-code request, and it would surely make sense to tell the OP that, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/four-years-later-can-we-change-our-site-name&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312536/i-add-dynamically-dropdown-and-input-fields-rows-using-jquery-php-but-how-to-sub&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312534/reading-line-from-text-files-in-java-netbeans&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312531/whats-wrong-about-thos-code&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312525/while-loops-in-c-for-windows-forms-im-trying-to-loop-certain-coefficients-so&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312533/should-filenames-be-relative-to-their-directory-name&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312530/what-should-i-know-to-create-applications-in-phoenix-webframework&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312522/registration-form-with-email-verification&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312513/integrate-between-php-and-c-program&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312488/rejected-by-recruitment-process-on-bad-code-review&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312472/if-condition-vs-variable-assignment-performance-wise&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312511/is-it-ok-if-i-cant-solve-a-problem-when-sitting-in-front-of-a-computer&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312591/quartz-net-does-not-work-when-i-inject-dependency#comment660099_312591" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22635" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7939" RevisionGUID="a9e15847-edf5-4b56-bc81-1d924645cd08" CreationDate="2016-03-13T08:31:51.330" UserId="9113" Comment="added 95 characters in body" Text="It is a valid request, but I see some problems here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- to find a name which really describes the sites scope **better**, and not just **different** or **equally bad** (or **worse**). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- once the name is changed, there is probably no easy way back for the next few years. A site name change is something I do not expect the SE team to make every two weeks. So if the change does not bring the benefits we expect from it, what then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we could just try out if a name like &quot;SoftwareDesign.SE&quot; (or &quot;Programmer's Whiteboard&quot;, a older suggestion of Robert Harvey which would be my favorite) would increase the ratio of &quot;good vs. bad posts&quot;, I think no one here would hesitate to do this. But such a change has a high risk of collateral damage - one has to be very sure about that it is worth the hassle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me, it looks your proposal for a name change is trying to solve a problem which might be better addressed differently. [This post two days][1] ago and its topmost answer reveals where the real problem is - not the site's name has to change, but the way how some people (and I don't exclude myself from this) behave in the process of closing, replying to bad questions and commenting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22636" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7949" RevisionGUID="bf51178a-308f-460a-9d55-772b800885ed" CreationDate="2016-03-13T10:06:55.170" UserId="6605" Text="Having worked as a freelancer for years, I hope I can bring a useful comparison between working with customers and answering questions on Stack Exchange. This may eventually be redundant with other answers, but I'll try to make my view more illustrative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any company, including freelancers, are faced with bad customers—the ones who will spend time jerking about the product you delivered, behaving unprofessionally and trying to screw you and get your work for free. With experience, it becomes easy to spot some of those customers from the beginning of the project, and so you start looking at ways to get rid of those people. Those ways vary from a simple “Sorry, you're a jerk and I won't work for you” to screwing the project to lawsuits to extremely diplomatic ways to explain them that *you* may not be the best freelancer/company for their project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When things go bad and you know that it will go even worse, it's easy to throw the customer away by shouting at him by phone or by sending him an e-mail telling that you're fed up with his unprofessional crap. It's much more difficult to remain perfectly diplomatic and professional yourself and *lead the customer decide that he should develop the current/next project by somebody else*, not because *you* suck, but for any reason which preferably seem unrelated with your relations between the customer and you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why would it matter to be diplomatic? It's not for the customer. You *know* that this customer won't bring you any money. Actually, he costs you money and make you miserable, and it won't change. But you do it for the image of your company—a disgruntled customer can do a lot of harm, such as posting publicly the e-mail you sent him where you told him that his project sucks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is different: here, all we do, we do it publicly. Comments are public. This discussion is public. It's like if all e-mails and all phone conversations with customers were public, so any potential customer could read and listen those and make an opinion about the company.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The quality of questions like [I add dynamically dropdown and input fields rows using Jquery][1] or [What's wrong about thos code][2] is a good indicator that we don't want those people on Programmers.SE. If they leave angry at our community and never come back, it's not that had. Many of them won't learn how to ask questions correctly, because they simply don't care. They don't care either about the fact that they are also talking to real people, and *plz send teh codez* and do my homework for me style questions are not particularly polite in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem, instead, is that other potentially valuable users may come to our site, see those questions and the way they are treated here, and make a negative opinion about the community of Programmers.SE. This is where the actual problem lies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can suggest two solutions to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Be welcome and polite to everyone, including the authors of *plz send teh codez* questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The issue I can see with this solution is that when this happens, it usually ends up with a discussion. You explain to the person that this is not a good place for such questions, and the OP answers something like: “I don't care about all this meta stuff. Just answer my question.” This could easily lead to not so kind comments and more downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Make the question disappear from the home page. What if the rules which make the question appearing on the home page were different? Such as two close votes and one moderator flag from high rep users make the question immediately vanish for users with low reputation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I think it would not only solve the public image of unfriendliness problem, but also make the content more attractive to newcomers (and Google). Meanwhile, high rep users will still see those partially-closed questions and decide whether they are worth being edited/improved/commented, or downvoted/closed/flagged/deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/312536/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/312531/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22637" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7943" RevisionGUID="57455a82-5217-4338-81ff-cba3cfef5d27" CreationDate="2016-03-13T10:37:33.263" UserId="9113" Comment="typo fixed" Text="The last week we had seen (again) some discussions here what is &quot;wrong&quot; with this site, why are here so many closed and downvoted questions and why people are interpreting this as &quot;hostility&quot; and &quot;unhelpfulness&quot;. Peter Tòmas Scott [made some kind of survey][1], and his final suggestions were&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Improve communication of the site's purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Change the self-moderating style&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first topic was already adressed [here][2] by an attempt of Rachel to get permission for changing the site's name. My question is: how can we address the second point (which is IMHO the more important one)? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will it improve the sites' perception if we try to improve our means of communication, being more polite, less terse, using the &quot;downvote&quot; button less often against newbies (even when we suggest to close a question), and so on? Let me show you some examples for questions which were closed and/or downvoted in the last 12 hours:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [I add dynamically dropdown and input fields rows using Jquery][3]&#xD;&#xA;2. [reading line from text files in java (netbeans)][4]&#xD;&#xA;3. [What's wrong about thos code][5]&#xD;&#xA;4. [While loops in C# for Windows Forms. I'm trying to loop certain coefficients so that they can keep displaying on certain labels][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we not have a more **polite** comment template for these kind of &quot;fix-my-code&quot; requests?  Like &quot;Hi OP, are you aware that these kind of questions are off-topic on Programmers? ...&quot;.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, these are a new users, can't we just close those questions instead of giving them a ton of additional downvotes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. [Should filenames be relative to their directory name?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, this is primarily opinion-based. But a downvote, and those precanned links? What about enclosing the link into somethink like &quot;Hi XYZ, are you aware that your question is probably too oppionated to let someone give you a good answer, see &lt;link-to-meta&gt; for more information&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. [What should I know to create applications in Phoenix Webframework?][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is IMHO a much better example of how the closing should happen, a comment which was detailed enough to get a &quot;thanks&quot; respond from the OP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. [Registration form with email verification][9]&#xD;&#xA;8. [Integrate between PHP and C program][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comments below those question are fine, and the questions are not yet closed. But the downvotes? The questions are not badly written or expect the reader to have a glass-bowl. And what about a friendly comment like &quot;Hi OP, are you aware that questions of this type are often downvoted or closed on this site if they do not show that the asker did some research effort before&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9. [Rejected by recruitment process on bad code review][11] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as &quot;unclear&quot; **after** it got a long-winded answer with 4 upvotes? Sorry, just because for some of us the question seemed to be unanswerable, others seemed to have a different opinion - and that was obvious at the time of closing. There must be a better way to deal with such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10. [If condition vs variable assignment performance wise][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as a dupe (that is debatable, my close vote would have been for a different reason), but 5 downvotes? The question was clearly written and from a newbie. There must be a better way to handle this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And finally, a more positive one: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;11. [Is it ok if I can't solve a problem when sitting in front of a computer?][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Correctly closed, because this was not programming specific, and surely too opinionated. But it got lots of comments and upvotes before (still those 3 IMHO unneccessary downvotes). So that is IMHO a much more constructive way of closing a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you think about this? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: Here is another one I would like to add for demonstration purposes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  12. [Quartz .net does not work when I inject dependency][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why not use a more friendly comment like &quot;Hi SlashMet, are you aware that we have a strict no-crosspost policy here in the stackexchange network? Please delete one of your doubles, or expect the community to downvote and close both of your questions.&quot; Of course, that question would be closed either because it is a &quot;fix-my-code&quot; request, and it would surely make sense to tell the OP that, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/four-years-later-can-we-change-our-site-name&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312536/i-add-dynamically-dropdown-and-input-fields-rows-using-jquery-php-but-how-to-sub&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312534/reading-line-from-text-files-in-java-netbeans&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312531/whats-wrong-about-thos-code&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312525/while-loops-in-c-for-windows-forms-im-trying-to-loop-certain-coefficients-so&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312533/should-filenames-be-relative-to-their-directory-name&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312530/what-should-i-know-to-create-applications-in-phoenix-webframework&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312522/registration-form-with-email-verification&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312513/integrate-between-php-and-c-program&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312488/rejected-by-recruitment-process-on-bad-code-review&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312472/if-condition-vs-variable-assignment-performance-wise&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312511/is-it-ok-if-i-cant-solve-a-problem-when-sitting-in-front-of-a-computer&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312591/quartz-net-does-not-work-when-i-inject-dependency#comment660099_312591" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22638" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7947" RevisionGUID="b04fd274-1b6d-4825-9872-94975e9021c6" CreationDate="2016-03-13T11:33:27.103" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/708979279179153408" />
  <row Id="22639" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7950" RevisionGUID="b1ffb311-9406-47a9-bb81-9f0fd6b2ae98" CreationDate="2016-03-13T20:06:52.880" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I absolutely agree that we need to be more welcoming. This is something that all of us who actively curate and moderate the site need to be more cognizant about. I am going to quote from our own help center.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Be nice][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. **Rudeness and belittling language are not okay.** Your tone should match the way you'd talk in person with someone you respect and whom&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you want to respect you. _If you don't have time to say something&#xD;&#xA;&gt; politely, just leave it for someone who does._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe our weakness is we can be too terse when dealing with new users. Commenting with a canned link with no other explanation is one example. We may not use rude _language_ per se, but some users are clearly interpreting our terseness as being rude. Suck up your pride buttercup, **we** the [3k+ regular users][2] are the ones that need to change our attitude, not the &quot;omg lolz gimme teh codez&quot; newbie posters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a military NCO, as a civilian manager, as a person who has had to deal with angry customers, I have had _many_ people in my face and angry for a variety of reasons. Being rude, terse, or belittling is not a solution to the problem. We need to be calm, professional, and to move the situation to a positive result even when others are not interested in working with us toward that goal. If a new user is confused, upset at a comment, does not understand how to edit their question, _someone_ needs to make an effort to help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This dovetails nicely into the next point:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. **Be welcoming, be patient, and assume good intentions.** Don't expect new users to know all the rules — they don't. And be patient&#xD;&#xA;&gt; while they learn. If you're here for help, make it as easy as possible&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for others to help you. Everyone here is volunteering, and no one&#xD;&#xA;&gt; responds well to _demands_ for help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a key there: do not expect new users to know all the rules. While _we_ have seen a thousand off-topic, too broad, POB questions, _new users_ have not. We already know that while the help center and tour are good resources, expecting every new user to read and understand those resources is a pipe dream. We need to help guide them in the right direction, rather than assume the worst. The guidance above says to assume good intentions. Rather than assume anything, let the new user prove whether they are here to make positive contributions or to troll or spam. There is an old saying about giving someone rope to hang themselves: let the user choose what to do with the rope and let us assume the best until proven otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3. **Don't be a jerk.** These are just a few examples. If you see them, [flag][3] them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I omitted the list of obvious stuff. I do not believe we have an issue with being jerks to new users, other than the terseness mentioned above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [What topics can I ask about here?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before showing the list of what is on-topic, the first thing we encounter on that page is our intended audience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of us regulars fall into the _professionals in software development_. We have graduated college, worked in our profession for several years to several decades, and know quite a bit. There is a reason we are the ones with high rep: we have the knowledge and experience to make many positive contributions to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the flip side, _students_ are also included. While our profession is unique in that we have many brilliant, self-taught individuals, not everyone is like that. We need to expect that there will be students who fall at both ends of two spectrums: skill level and educational coursework. We may receive questions from people who are in semester one of freshman year, or who are at the graduate level. We may receive question from people who are really good or really bad at software development. We need to welcome everyone and be patient with those who need a little extra handholding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On Canned Comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The canned comments and links have come up a few times. I wanted to focus on this specific aspect a little bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We see a lot of the same problems over and over again. Rather than typing the same guidance over and over, it makes sense to collect it in a meta post and link to that meta post. We get consistency that way, and questions and answers can be much, much longer than a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not advocate for stopping the canned comments and meta links. But I do agree with the point several people brought up that we need to personalize them more. [One of the examples Doc Brown brought up in this meta question was mine][5]: I linked to a meta post with all the details about why the question was off-topic, then I explained what the user needs to do. While answering questions in comments is not what Stack Exchange wants us to do, I felt that saying &quot;nope, sorry, can't ask that here&quot; was too jerkish. I will break down what I feel any comment explaining an off-topic or broad/POB/unclear question must do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Provide a link to a meta post that goes into more detail about why the question is not appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Provide a brief explanation of the deficiency in _this specific question_. If I ask a question that is going to be closed, I want to know how I can improve it. While the meta link may wax poetic about various problems, I might not know how it applies to _my specific question_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. For off-topic questions, end with a note saying &quot;while this question is off-topic, if you later encounter conceptual or design issues, those may be on-topic questions for this site.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I strongly advocate against suggesting that a user may be trying to circumvent a question block on Stack Overflow, or stating that a user has recently asked multiple poor-quality questions, even if there is evidence for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only exception would be one from a few days ago. MichaelT told a user that he had asked several poor-quality questions and may receive a temporary question ban. He offered guidance about how to improve the questions and avoid a question ban. I cannot find the link to his comment right now but the point is he was being positive and constructive, trying to help the user avoid an unpleasant situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main takeaway from all of this is that we need to do a better job of guiding new users toward making positive contributions to this community. This will require stepping up our professionalism to the next level and investing more time curating questions beyond close/down votes and canned comments. If we show new users that we care, those new users are more likely to return the sentiment and be positive contributors to Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/be-nice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/flagging&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312530/what-should-i-know-to-create-applications-in-phoenix-webframework#comment659956_312530" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22640" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7943" RevisionGUID="3a884d1a-866d-474f-b4b9-205dd02fc8f0" CreationDate="2016-03-13T20:36:59.273" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/709116064551067648" />
  <row Id="22641" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7951" RevisionGUID="8c3cacd6-f782-4e95-b7e5-46e9b2de66a0" CreationDate="2016-03-14T13:35:44.953" UserId="22685" Text="Apart from the politeness aspect which is covered already (and I would assume to be a standard for all users here), I would like to say that helping users who have posted here against the site's purpose is probably of paramount importance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a new user comes across Programmers and thinks &quot;a site for programmers, I'm a programmer, I have a question about my code that's not working&quot; and posts a question that should be on SO, we should simply help them along by migrating it to SO. No need for a downvote, no need for comments, just pass it on and leave link saying &quot;this should have been posted over here, we've moved it for you. Please read the site's FAQ&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This doesn't necessarily apply to SO though, there are many questions that should be moved to Workplace or Security or DBAs. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we need better tools to manage this kind of process. Maybe a &quot;should be moved to a different SE site&quot; is all that's needed, and a a mod can manually decide which and move it on (if direct options are not available).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would be efficient, and helpful to the new users without telling them they did wrong - just put them right and let them continue. I think people would respond happily to that, particularly if the question they asked then started to get answers from a more appropriate home." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22642" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7952" RevisionGUID="b1ae0e2b-f110-4db2-82f6-e7d91d81ee00" CreationDate="2016-03-14T13:45:01.240" UserId="52929" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/312680/52929&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I made a fairly significant edit to remove the &quot;which language should I pick?&quot; part of this question and focus on the core question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Understanding how to decide when to move away from bash scripts is a question I think most programmers face and one where I believe there is a good, systematic approach towards understanding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This got mod-clobbered right around when I edited it, for good reason, but this did not reflect the substantial edit I made." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22643" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7952" RevisionGUID="b1ae0e2b-f110-4db2-82f6-e7d91d81ee00" CreationDate="2016-03-14T13:45:01.240" UserId="52929" Text="Reopen &quot;What is the next step up from shell scripts?&quot; question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22644" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7952" RevisionGUID="b1ae0e2b-f110-4db2-82f6-e7d91d81ee00" CreationDate="2016-03-14T13:45:01.240" UserId="52929" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|vote-to-reopen|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22645" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7953" RevisionGUID="ccd2f5a0-a3cb-41ee-a15a-bf036ef08c2a" CreationDate="2016-03-14T13:53:55.133" UserId="60357" Text="Yes, this looks reopenable. Good edit, 10/10." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22646" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7954" RevisionGUID="db4b7b6d-8ef7-4f31-91c4-ae3d705a0f90" CreationDate="2016-03-14T13:53:55.763" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I think you changed it from a &quot;what language should I learn next&quot; question into a &quot;what project should I undertake next&quot; question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am trying to understand better what I can do as a next step instead&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of creating a huge bash script program.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the context of this question, &quot;next step&quot; is &quot;what project should I work on next?&quot; which is still off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question needs a bit more work to focus on the conceptual idea of &quot;what is the gap between shell scripting and 'real' programs filled by?&quot; Even then, I am not sure it would be a good question anyway. I can do the same things a shell script does in a compiled language such as Java or C#, even if some tasks are more tedious to program in them (there is a tradeoff involved). The answer is basically &quot;use Java or C# or a language like them.&quot; Or, for people who enjoy inflicting pain, use Perl.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No matter how I try to refactor the question in my head, this still ends up being off-topic or a &quot;list of things&quot; type question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22647" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7955" RevisionGUID="526cf6ad-d111-4708-a5ba-ff8cfc335ec8" CreationDate="2016-03-14T14:31:26.507" UserId="18448" Text="I was about to post a question asking what to call something, when I noticed that other people had already asked a number of questions starting with &quot;What do I call a...&quot;, which were closed as opinion-based. Where is the correct place to ask these questions then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My specific question, which I have not posted, was what word would best be used to describe an application without a web-interface, to differentiate it from the online SAAS programs that are now what is commonly referred to by the terms application or program." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22648" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7955" RevisionGUID="526cf6ad-d111-4708-a5ba-ff8cfc335ec8" CreationDate="2016-03-14T14:31:26.507" UserId="18448" Text="Where can I ask for word suggestions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22649" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7955" RevisionGUID="526cf6ad-d111-4708-a5ba-ff8cfc335ec8" CreationDate="2016-03-14T14:31:26.507" UserId="18448" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22650" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7956" RevisionGUID="b4565899-e7f5-48ee-a28d-6d014fccb62d" CreationDate="2016-03-14T14:32:17.043" UserId="52929" Text="[Chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is probably a good place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will find a ton of opinions and perspectives there and perhaps quickly see why they are not great fits for the main site :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22651" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7947" RevisionGUID="2cb06303-d6c4-488e-8bcf-3e3cbdb06862" CreationDate="2016-03-14T15:11:30.530" UserId="102438" Comment="added 373 characters in body" Text="# Noobs everywhere&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, so we have people new to programming, poor English speakers, and sometimes their intersection asking questions here. Their questions aren't always the best, but sometimes there is an opportunity to throw their question on our back and carry it over from no-man's land into a place where it can get help and contribute to the value of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# My model of question quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I view question quality on a continuum. Some place between marginal and closable, I think, &quot;man, this one's not worth it,&quot; and vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;------------|---------------&gt;---------------&gt;----------------&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    closable          marginal         better          high-quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if we can get questions from close-worthy to marginal, we can sometimes then continue improving them in terms of quality. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've seen this myself, where I'm not sure what the overall question is, but I'm able to fix utterly atrocious spelling and grammar, and then someone else realizes exactly what they're asking and straightens the question out into that. But I don't think the second edit would happen without the first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Upsides&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once we get questions over the revulsion hump, we can write good answers that are solidly on-topic for the site. If the question is still marginal, but has strong on-topic answers, that's a sign that we should improve the question to eliminate the problematic part.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# My approach to editing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I sometimes find such an opportunity to salvage the impossible, and this week I was able to do it again. Here's my approach to fixing the apparently unfixable:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Redact meta-info like:&#xD;&#xA;  - My English not so good. I'm from a non-English-speaking country. (Don't forget to fix the spelling and grammar problems if you can.)&#xD;&#xA;  - I'm a noob to the programming language, computers in general, or some particular aspect of OOP or software architecture.&#xD;&#xA;  - Other hand-wringing, mitigating personal details.&#xD;&#xA;  - thanks, and Here's my name (We already know to delete this, right?!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Redact or modify parts that will get the question closed:&#xD;&#xA;  - Requests for resources.&#xD;&#xA;  - Requests for a finished product, debugging, or opinions.&#xD;&#xA;  - Requests for aspects that make the question off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;  - Turn a &quot;do this for me&quot; into a &quot;how do I&quot; ?&#xD;&#xA;  - Turn a request for thoughts into a &quot;what's important about X?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  - Cut down questions that ask too much into a manageable amount.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Edit mercilessly &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bottom line is that the asker doesn't *own* the site's presented state of the content they provide, the site does*. If they are uncooperative with a post-saving mega-revision, (i.e. rolling back your edits) then absolutely let them have their way and vote to close/delete the question. But they are noobs to the site, and chances are they're afraid to click anything, and don't have the slightest clue that you have an edit pending or how to approve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Reviewers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can ask them to try to figure out how to approve a post-saving revision, but reviewers of such a revision should *fast-track it* - not protest that it changes too much and force the noob asker to approve their own rescue. After all, the asker can always roll it back to close-worthy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Celebrate, mission accomplished.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was a little stoked at my recent success, and made a Success Kid meme pic to celebrate. I think it would be cool to see more of these:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Success Kid][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was the question that was at +2, if I recall correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;* As content is under [CC-BY-SA][2], they *do* own their content, but the site owns the presentation, and has the irrevocable right to post and adapt the content so long as it follows the terms of CC-BY-SA - such as attribution, notice of edits, same license...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/1cdUn.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22652" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7957" RevisionGUID="279b3c07-2188-45f4-b32a-e5e37518e3c3" CreationDate="2016-03-14T18:37:45.543" UserId="52929" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/312687/52929&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe this question is now on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comments make the following objections:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm thinking it's the job of the person who asked you to &quot;write a health check&quot; to define what they mean by &quot;health&quot;. Otherwise, it's just guesswork. – Jörg W Mittag 4 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I agree with @JörgWMittag comment, but I'd even take it a step further. You should get your requirements not only from the person who told you that you need to design a &quot;health check&quot;, but also figure out who the people or systems are who use the data that is part of a health check and figure out what they need or how they need it. These are your requirements that will drive your design. – Thomas Owens♦ 2 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that those perspectives are in fact valuable answers to this question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many programmers will have to add healthchecks to applications at some point. Understanding that there are multiple factors to consider, such as the above comments, is in my opinion _the answer_ to this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this reason I believe this question is a valuable and answerable question for both the asker as well as the broader programmer community.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22653" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7957" RevisionGUID="279b3c07-2188-45f4-b32a-e5e37518e3c3" CreationDate="2016-03-14T18:37:45.543" UserId="52929" Text="Reopen &quot;How to identify the responsibilities for a health check?&quot; after edit?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22654" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7957" RevisionGUID="279b3c07-2188-45f4-b32a-e5e37518e3c3" CreationDate="2016-03-14T18:37:45.543" UserId="52929" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|reopen-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22655" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7958" RevisionGUID="6328512d-8e65-4e2c-84ab-719583a45c99" CreationDate="2016-03-14T18:45:43.457" UserId="60357" Text="## Leave Closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think the question should be reopened even after its edit. The answers along the line “get more requirements” might be correct, but they are in no way specific to app health monitoring systems. Maybe we should create a canonical dupe target for “I have to design a program with unclear requirements, what should I do?” where we can explain how to arrive at requirements, but that sounds pretty broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Incidentally, the current answers listing ideas for health metrics that could be checked are a classic example of a “list of things” question that should be closed as too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is irrelevant within certain limits whether a question is *valuable* or *interesting*. It matters whether a question is on-topic, objective, and reasonably scoped. I don't quite see the scope as sufficiently tight in this case. Sorry." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22656" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7959" RevisionGUID="2cb1d8f7-8c39-4683-8a2c-12bfb80d422c" CreationDate="2016-03-14T18:51:25.103" UserId="4" Text="I still don't think the question should be reopened. I think the edit changes the close reason from &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; to &quot;too broad&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question, in it's new form, can be answered. The answer is &quot;go get better requirements&quot;. However, there [are][1] [entire][2] [books][3] [on][4] [software][5] [requirements][6] [engineering][7]. Just telling someone that they need to go get better requirements in order to solve their problem doesn't actually solve their problem. It should be extremely obvious to &quot;professionals and students in software development and related fields&quot; that, when you are given such a vague task, you should get more information from the appropriate stakeholders.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the asker has specific questions about eliciting requirements, they should go check out some existing resources - read a book (I linked to 7 above), search the Internet, [read existing questions about requirements engineering here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/requirements), or do some other basic research. I'm sure that if they are having problems with eliciting or managing requirements, we could help with those specific problems. But that is an entirely different question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I wouldn't want to delete this question. It should just remain closed, as is. The answers that exist are generally useful for other people who are searching for information about writing a health status monitor for software. Leaving it open, though, indicates that this is the kind of question that we want. I don't think that it is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.amazon.com/Software-Requirements-Developer-Best-Practices/dp/0735679665/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1457980910&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=software%20requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Requirements-Process-Getting-Right/dp/0321815742/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1457980910&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=software%20requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Software-Requirements-Enterprise-Development/dp/0321635841/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1457980910&amp;sr=8-4&amp;keywords=software%20requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Requirements-Analysis-Software-Development/dp/0321834550/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1457980910&amp;sr=8-7&amp;keywords=software%20requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://www.amazon.com/Software-Requirements-Specifications-Principles-Prejudices/dp/0201877120/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1457980910&amp;sr=8-12&amp;keywords=software%20requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Effective-Cases-Alistair-Cockburn/dp/0201702258/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1457980910&amp;sr=8-13&amp;keywords=software%20requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://www.amazon.com/User-Stories-Applied-Software-Development/dp/0321205685/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1457980910&amp;sr=8-14&amp;keywords=software%20requirements" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22659" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7961" RevisionGUID="a3473b38-37d5-42dd-ac17-10cdaae700a9" CreationDate="2016-03-15T14:25:56.610" UserId="1130" Text="Based on the feedback here that the question was too broad, I narrowed the scope to the OP's original case only, and voted to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So definition of question changed from &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *&quot;How should one determine what a health check should actually do when writing one?&quot;* with a single specific example&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *&quot;What should be the scope of a health check for a system which deploys a webapp?&quot;* with additional specific questions about items to include or not include in this type of health check." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22660" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7935" RevisionGUID="ffee4497-bda4-40a6-9b4b-18867d57c2b4" CreationDate="2016-03-15T17:26:55.950" UserId="1130" Comment="edited title" Text="4 years later - Can we change our site name?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22663" PostHistoryTypeId="34" PostId="7912" RevisionGUID="ec3d0039-3b91-4257-abac-8918bbc5090c" CreationDate="2016-03-16T09:46:31.463" UserId="-1" Comment="4" />
  <row Id="22664" PostHistoryTypeId="15" PostId="7912" RevisionGUID="9f03d392-00ef-4fb1-ae67-0ffa24a437c7" CreationDate="2016-03-16T09:46:31.463" UserId="-1" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="22666" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7962" RevisionGUID="e2ea556d-77b1-4cfc-9fe8-7de7d42603aa" CreationDate="2016-03-16T13:20:57.867" UserId="22685" Text=" - SoftwareEngineering.SE : hmm, probably we'd end up with more implementation questions, and get confused with some official Engineering qualification or certification stuff, and chances are we'd still get &quot;fix my codez&quot; questions anyway!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - SoftwareDesign.SE : more likely to start getting a load of graphic design issues. And still, even if its pointed out to be software design, then implementation questions along the lines of &quot;what's wrong with this design&quot; rather than &quot;what's wrong with this code&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - SoftwareArchitecture.SE : This is more obvious its about figuring out how software should be structured. My concern is that this would be too constrictive, getting overly broad architectural questions that could still be better answers on SO. It might also discourage questions about software development practices or algorithms (which I'd say fall into this 'Programmers' bucket).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - DevOps.SE : maybe too focussed on tools and not design, but getting away from the word &quot;software&quot; or &quot;programmers&quot; might be what we need to start thinking of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I feel the choice of name makes a huge difference. Until we have a good name that has a wide consensus, any talk of changing it is pointless. (and chances are, once we have a great name, changing the site name will be a no-brainer)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22667" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7935" RevisionGUID="4c16777c-b974-4d1a-ab79-f87c79cf9f21" CreationDate="2016-03-16T14:47:32.757" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|featured|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22668" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7963" RevisionGUID="08b61b0d-8c66-467c-ae0a-eadad27f2ade" CreationDate="2016-03-16T21:20:42.267" UserId="14529" Text="Of the list of suggested solutions, the only one that could plausibly fix the problem is a change of scope. The core of the problem is that given the scope, the set of strictly permitted questions is, if not quite empty, something you would have to search through a thousand off-topic questions to find a valid example of. Certainly it is rare for the front page to contain a single one. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Virtually all questions of software are either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- matters of implementation (Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;- matters of computational mathematics (Computer Science/Theoretical Computer Science) &#xD;&#xA;- sufficiently well-defined to be implemented by a tool or framework (Software Recommendations)&#xD;&#xA;- opinion-based, or have multiple valid answers (Reddit or whatever)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you accept that is the case, clearly no level of moderation is going to fix that. And if those who attempt an impossible task sometimes become less than perfectly polite, then that's hardly surprising..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22669" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7964" RevisionGUID="527d3295-f210-44ec-b49f-26de8979c5eb" CreationDate="2016-03-17T08:04:27.357" UserId="855" Text="In the [How To Ask][1] it says, &quot;Is your question about software development?&quot; That seems like a pretty good name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The Tour][2], has a list of questions not to ask. New posters are not reading this list. Many items are straight-forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't ask about...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, career advice, job hunting, salary, or compensation  -- The name Programmers contributes to this problem.&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues and coding tools -- A name change, at least the ones suggested, isn't going to fix this one especially coding tools. &#xD;&#xA; - what you should learn next  -- The name Programmers contributes to this one.&#xD;&#xA; - what projects to do or books to read  -- Name change won't fix this either. &#xD;&#xA; - where to find libraries, tools, resources, or other product/service recommendations  -- Read the Instructions, name change won't help.&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle or non-programming activities  -- Changing the name could help this one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last two are problems many Stackexchange sites have and are probably the most subjective:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - questions that are primarily opinion-based&#xD;&#xA; - questions with too many possible answers or that would require an&#xD;&#xA;   extremely long answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Maybe we should change the name to &quot;Read the Instructions&quot;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22670" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7965" RevisionGUID="0899878c-ffe5-4885-85ae-b62315791a3a" CreationDate="2016-03-17T18:33:29.840" UserId="855" Text="How about when a users posts a question and gets a list of **Questions that may already have your answer** and a high percentage of those are closed, post a notice with the common reason(s).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I entered the question, &quot;recommend a book on python&quot; and 4 of the top 6 matches were closed. I wouldn't expect a new user to know why. More information should be given on why they were closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22671" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7930" RevisionGUID="4a817f3b-0388-435f-a803-53163e87c901" CreationDate="2016-03-17T20:53:50.250" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/710569856396103680" />
  <row Id="22672" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7935" RevisionGUID="07d6fad8-b852-4ca7-87e1-432c57e0aafa" CreationDate="2016-03-17T21:06:43.213" UserId="1130" Comment="want to be clear looking for an answer from SE... we've already discussed this to death on meta" Text="(4 years later) Dear Stack Exchange: Can we change our site name?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22673" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7966" RevisionGUID="621909b6-5118-419e-94e8-7e1d6df92b70" CreationDate="2016-03-17T22:04:56.433" UserId="855" Text="It's not that I disagree with you about some of the problems on this site (I haven't notice the individual problem you listed.), but you're also not looking at it from a moderator's standpoint either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you've closed a question about books, resources, what languages to learn, etc. on a daily basis for the 20th time, it gets frustrating. These are obvious and rarely need interpretation which is a rare thing in this industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The level of hostility you describe may limit the usage, but is it limiting acceptable usage? I remember when this site first started. I may miss questions about programming jokes, but I accept the current rules or I wouldn't use the site. Putting my questions and answers under scrutiny by other professionals makes me better regardless of how many of my questions have been closed (I've had a few.).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think my attempt to address this question shows I'm willing to give your point of view some thought.Your focus on a member is uncalled for IMHO, but I recognize your frustration and hope you're able to see the other side of the story." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22674" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7939" RevisionGUID="e1bdd110-1df1-4150-acb2-d2315febcb56" CreationDate="2016-03-18T10:20:23.583" UserId="9113" Comment="added a clarifying statement" Text="It is a valid request, but I see some problems here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- to find a name which really describes the sites scope **better**, and not just **different** or **equally bad** (or **worse**). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- once the name is changed, there is probably no easy way back for the next few years. A site name change is something I do not expect the SE team to make every two weeks. So if the change does not bring the benefits we expect from it, what then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we could just try out if a name like &quot;SoftwareDesign.SE&quot; (or &quot;Programmer's Whiteboard&quot;, a older suggestion of Robert Harvey which would be my favorite) would increase the ratio of &quot;good vs. bad posts&quot;, I think no one here would hesitate to do this. But such a change has a high risk of collateral damage - one has to be very sure about that it is worth the hassle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me, it looks your proposal for a name change is trying to solve a problem which might be better addressed differently. [This post two days][1] ago and its topmost answer reveals where the real problem is - not the site's name has to change, but the way how some people (and I don't exclude myself from this) behave in the process of closing, replying to bad questions and commenting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, I am not per se against a name change, but if you do, do it with care. And do not be too astonished if the number of low quality question does not drop significantly after the change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22675" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7930" RevisionGUID="c5c13c43-a37b-4b28-9bda-929982fc05c9" CreationDate="2016-03-18T19:34:18.797" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|asking-questions|quality|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22676" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7967" RevisionGUID="93ac2a5c-35a3-4971-873f-57d6773e4ecd" CreationDate="2016-03-18T21:42:47.900" UserId="3965" Text="This site used to be a good, safe place to get help on algorithms.  Indeed, I would consider it one of the primary purposes of the site.  It is prominently listed in our help center and tour.  It's probably our biggest differentiator from StackOverflow or Code Review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet, more and more, I see questions asking for help on algorithms being closed or migrated.  Like http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/131067/3965, which asked for help with an image classification algorithm, or http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/313167/pizza-hut-math-problem-1-in-haskell, which was asking for help finding a more efficient algorithm on a puzzle problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Did people just forget that algorithms is what this site is largely about?  Are people assuming if a question includes a bit of code, or mentions difficulty with a specific language, it can't possibly be asking about an algorithm?  What's going on here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22677" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7967" RevisionGUID="93ac2a5c-35a3-4971-873f-57d6773e4ecd" CreationDate="2016-03-18T21:42:47.900" UserId="3965" Text="Why did we start closing and migrating algorithm questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22678" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7967" RevisionGUID="93ac2a5c-35a3-4971-873f-57d6773e4ecd" CreationDate="2016-03-18T21:42:47.900" UserId="3965" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22679" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7968" RevisionGUID="aff2f5fc-3b36-4469-8453-29a21c6864a2" CreationDate="2016-03-18T21:58:00.157" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Algorithm questions are on-topic both on Programmers and Stack Overflow. I have seen users on both sites comment that a question should be closed or migrated, but my own observation is that this does not happen a lot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Image color/grayscale classification][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was closed as &quot;unclear,&quot; which may have nothing to do with its topicality. I say &quot;may&quot; because &quot;unclear&quot; is often used as a cop-out &quot;I am too lazy to type why I believe this question is off-topic&quot; close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I did not vote on this specific question, I think it could use more details to provide a better answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Pizza Hut math problem #1 in Haskell][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was migrated to [Code Review][3] because it is asking for help improving **working code**. It is not asking for algorithm help, or help with broken code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Two questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Why does this take so long?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. I really feel like all those extra conditions I wrote should be able to be abstracted into one condition, but I couldn't figure it out&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on my own. Any ideas on how to condense that into one, more abstract&#xD;&#xA;&gt; condition?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is exactly what Code Review is for: how can I take this functioning code and improve it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/131067&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/313167&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22680" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7968" RevisionGUID="0ef68de8-382a-45cd-81b9-7244ff0a2d71" CreationDate="2016-03-18T22:03:45.590" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 279 characters in body" Text="Algorithm questions are on-topic both on Programmers and Stack Overflow. I have seen users on both sites comment that a question should be closed or migrated, but my own observation is that this does not happen a lot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Image color/grayscale classification][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was closed as &quot;unclear,&quot; which may have nothing to do with its topicality. I say &quot;may&quot; because &quot;unclear&quot; is often used as a cop-out &quot;I am too lazy to type why I believe this question is off-topic&quot; close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I did not vote on this specific question, I think it could use more details to provide a better answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Pizza Hut math problem #1 in Haskell][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was migrated to [Code Review][3]&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; because it is asking for help improving **working code**. It is not asking for algorithm help, or help with broken code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Two questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Why does this take so long?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. I really feel like all those extra conditions I wrote should be able to be abstracted into one condition, but I couldn't figure it out&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on my own. Any ideas on how to condense that into one, more abstract&#xD;&#xA;&gt; condition?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is exactly what Code Review is for: how can I take this functioning code and improve it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Note that it was migrated to Meta.CR first, then again to CR main. Because its most recent migration was from meta, there is no migration banner on the question. But check the link URL in this answer: it points to Programmers, and ends up on CR main.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/131067&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/313167&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22681" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7968" RevisionGUID="92f684d9-93e2-410a-94ba-bc8b3e0900e6" CreationDate="2016-03-18T22:19:29.690" UserId="1204" Comment="added 11 characters in body" Text="Algorithm questions are on-topic both on Programmers and Stack Overflow. I have seen users on both sites comment that a question should be closed or migrated, but my own observation is that this does not happen a lot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Image color/grayscale classification][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was closed as &quot;unclear,&quot; which may have nothing to do with its topicality. I say &quot;may&quot; because &quot;unclear&quot; is often used as a cop-out &quot;I am too lazy to type why I believe this question is off-topic&quot; close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I did not vote on this specific question, I think it could use more details to provide a better answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Pizza Hut math problem #1 in Haskell][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was migrated to [Code Review][3]&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; because it is asking for help improving **working code**. It is not asking for algorithm help, or help with broken code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Two questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Why does this take so long?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. I really feel like all those extra conditions I wrote should be able to be abstracted into one condition, but I couldn't figure it out&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on my own. Any ideas on how to condense that into one, more abstract&#xD;&#xA;&gt; condition?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is exactly what Code Review is for: how can I take this functioning code and improve it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;Note that it was migrated to Meta.CR first, then again to CR main. Because its most recent migration was from meta, there is no migration banner on the question. But check the link URL in this answer: it points to Programmers, and ends up on CR main.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/131067&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/313167&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22683" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7968" RevisionGUID="59c459d2-4741-4803-acf3-0fa81baf9e5a" CreationDate="2016-03-19T09:13:46.907" UserId="31260" Comment="migrated to Meta.CR first += http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/277122" Text="Algorithm questions are on-topic both on Programmers and Stack Overflow. I have seen users on both sites comment that a question should be closed or migrated, but my own observation is that this does not happen a lot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Image color/grayscale classification][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was closed as &quot;unclear,&quot; which may have nothing to do with its topicality. I say &quot;may&quot; because &quot;unclear&quot; is often used as a cop-out &quot;I am too lazy to type why I believe this question is off-topic&quot; close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I did not vote on this specific question, I think it could use more details to provide a better answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Pizza Hut math problem #1 in Haskell][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was migrated to [Code Review][3]&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; because it is asking for help improving **working code**. It is not asking for algorithm help, or help with broken code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Two questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Why does this take so long?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. I really feel like all those extra conditions I wrote should be able to be abstracted into one condition, but I couldn't figure it out&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on my own. Any ideas on how to condense that into one, more abstract&#xD;&#xA;&gt; condition?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is exactly what Code Review is for: how can I take this functioning code and improve it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;Note that it was [migrated to Meta.CR first][4], then again to CR main. Because its most recent migration was from meta, there is no migration banner on the question. But check the link URL in this answer: it points to Programmers, and ends up on CR main.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/131067&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/313167&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/277122 &quot;see 'Bug when mod migrating - very easy to migrate to a site's Meta instead of main site'&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22684" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7939" RevisionGUID="20ee7206-040e-4095-9215-f9208e201966" CreationDate="2016-03-19T11:59:20.910" UserId="9113" Comment="added 18 characters in body" Text="It is a valid request, but I see some problems here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- to find a name which really describes the sites scope **better**, and not just **different** or **equally bad** (or **worse**). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- once the name is changed, there is probably no easy way back for the next few years. A site name change is something I do not expect the SE team to make every two weeks. So if the change does not bring the benefits we expect from it, what then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we could just try out if a name like &quot;SoftwareDesign.SE&quot; (or &quot;Programmer's Whiteboard&quot;, a older suggestion of Robert Harvey which would be my favorite) would increase the ratio of &quot;good vs. bad posts&quot;, I think no one here would hesitate to do this. But such a change has a high risk of collateral damage - one has to be very sure about that it is worth the hassle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me, it looks your proposal for a name change is trying to solve a problem which might be better addressed differently. [This post two days][1] ago and its topmost answer reveals where the real problem is - not the site's name has to change, but the way how some people (and I don't exclude myself from this) behave in the process of closing, replying to bad questions and commenting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, I am not per se against a name change, but whoever will do this, please do it with care. And do not be too astonished if the number of low quality question does not drop significantly after the change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22685" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7969" RevisionGUID="9f48fc68-a79a-4764-ad3a-3388b53724ec" CreationDate="2016-03-19T15:36:27.740" UserId="220546" Text="This is the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/313233/in-my-situation-how-could-i-learn-to-program-without-a-mentor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears to be off-topic here, I've made a mistake assuming this site is about all things programming. Is there a site in the roster that this quesiton fits?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22686" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7969" RevisionGUID="9f48fc68-a79a-4764-ad3a-3388b53724ec" CreationDate="2016-03-19T15:36:27.740" UserId="220546" Text="Where do you think this question might go on stackexchange?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22687" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7969" RevisionGUID="9f48fc68-a79a-4764-ad3a-3388b53724ec" CreationDate="2016-03-19T15:36:27.740" UserId="220546" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22688" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7970" RevisionGUID="5acab38f-e7c3-4b04-809a-1a7ef168a475" CreationDate="2016-03-19T15:52:07.427" UserId="52929" Text="Try [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), the sites chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That sort of question really doesn't fit a Q/A site, but more of a discussion type of format - chat is a great place for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can say from personal experience that The Whiteboard has greatly benefited me as a programmer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22689" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7969" RevisionGUID="949a8532-19c2-4a27-a9b7-19c1d4ff9272" CreationDate="2016-03-19T16:05:14.350" UserId="52929" Comment="added 7 characters in body" Text="This is the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/313233/in-my-situation-how-could-i-learn-to-program-without-a-mentor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears to be off-topic here, I've made a mistake assuming this site is about all things programming. Is there a site in the roster that this quesiton fits?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22690" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7969" RevisionGUID="4db048d0-a36d-4e84-a2b5-6d89c664602c" CreationDate="2016-03-20T10:23:02.963" UserId="5099" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22691" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7880" RevisionGUID="1d057622-d2bf-4808-94c2-97e6814039a9" CreationDate="2016-03-20T15:55:29.407" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Sort of a later follow-up: question was further cleaned up and 14 answers that didn't attempt to address the question and/or were repeating prior ones were removed by moderator (one or two answers were deleted by their authors per discussion in comments).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question looks generally good to me, it appears to be reasonably clear and focused and rather difficult to misinterpret.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though some answerers managed to &quot;leak through&quot; minor slippery points in wording. Granted, some of them dumped their stuff in first several hours prior to [revision 4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/118703/revisions &quot;'Nov 9 '11 at 23:19'&quot;), while text (and especially title) of the question were leaving bit more room for misinterpretation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior editors did pretty good job of cleaning it up but there still seem to be some corrections worth considering, especially now that question apparently gained [huge popularity](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/103053/165773 &quot;see 'How aggressively should we maintain and improve very popular questions?'&quot;) and has got to our [all time top 50 open questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A85000+closed%3Ano) with over 85K views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would particularly recommend the following changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Add [tag:history] tag. After revision 4 main focus of the question has been very prominently shifted to this and lack of the respective tag looks really confusing. Not to mention that this makes it harder to search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Note about ternary operator that &quot;gets even less love among Java programmers etc&quot;. It probably fit well into trollish / ranty mood of the original text but in current form, it looks rather poor fit to the rest of the question. I would replace it with more neutral explanation, about like this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;But that's only because code snippet was made as simple as possible to clearer show the idea, the question is about more realistic cases where ternary operator is not an option.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Closing words &quot;why do people adhere to it rigidly?&quot; are worth removing. These are just a leftover of original rant and really have no place in the question. Actually, words like this are usually enough for me to vote close as [opinion based / too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6742/31260 &quot;see 'On discussions and why they don't make good questions'&quot;) but prior editors did a really good job of making it clear that it's tangential to the question (except for maybe the [most _rigidly_ careless answerers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118703/where-did-the-notion-of-one-return-only-come-from/119117#comment654398_212495 &quot;example: 'the question was twofold and I answered to the latter aspect of it... rigidly blah blah' OMFG&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cleaning up the question may be good, but we would better take care of tangential answers as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even now, visitors probably find these confusing and wonder how these are related to the question. But very attentive readers can at least re-check the question text and say, _&quot;ah, this answer exploits &amp;lt;such and such minor point of the question&amp;gt;, I understand&quot;_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if the question is cleaned as suggested above, these answers will become really harmful, telling tens thousands visitors, _&quot;hey, it's okay to totally ignore what is asked about and just drop into answer box whatever comes to your mind&quot;_." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22692" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7967" RevisionGUID="ceb96580-09e2-4557-abca-6b6ba99b691b" CreationDate="2016-03-20T21:13:32.937" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/711661980814286848" />
  <row Id="22693" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7971" RevisionGUID="d3510fc3-36bd-4e00-943d-203c7c56903f" CreationDate="2016-03-21T20:31:51.960" UserDisplayName="user217150" Text="I have to agree with your overall assessment.  It seems that you're guaranteed 1 downvote/vote to close from a certain mod, almost regardless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I lurk, and don't contribute for the simple reason that I don't want to take the rep hit from the aggressive down-voters in here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22695" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7971" RevisionGUID="c2f7c2ab-c73e-47c9-8b37-ff585d9a3d4b" CreationDate="2016-03-22T18:29:29.743" UserDisplayName="user217150" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="I have to agree with your overall assessment.  It seems that you're guaranteed 1 downvote/vote to close from certain mods, almost regardless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I lurk, and don't contribute for the simple reason that I don't want to take the rep hit from the aggressive down-voters in here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22696" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7973" RevisionGUID="1f6a2c35-9c11-4f13-8976-44f64fb50c58" CreationDate="2016-03-22T19:30:05.997" UserId="216835" Text="I've noticed a lot of discussion on this issue, and as a new user I feel I can shed some light as I have previously had difficulty when trying to decide whether a question I have, does in fact fit the sites scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before a user joins programmers.se they are welcomed with what I feel is a fairly clear definition of the sites scope:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![loggedout][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is a well known fact that when *most* people 'Sign Up' for things on the internet, they don't feel like reading the basics until they're *in*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When they're *in*, they are presented with this tidy, but empty header:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![loggedin][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be too much to add a reminder here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even more critically, when a user who hasn't read the blurb on the 'Sign Up' page, rushes to click the 'Ask Question' button. They are presented with this ridiculously broad definition of what a good question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![question][3]][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I missing something, or do others share my view that if, to the right of my 'Ask Question' form is a message which asks, 'Is your question about software development?' then I can ask debugging questions, library recommendations, conceptual questions, database questions, and pretty much everything else which we as 'Software Developers' deal with on a day to day basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why can't the more clear description of the sites scope on the 'Sign Up' page be repeated in at least the 'Ask Question' page?** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMO a name change is way overkill.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z5uce.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MMqKM.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0YYRP.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22697" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7939" RevisionGUID="bd88bd12-b455-48bf-a3cb-efe7850dafe9" CreationDate="2016-03-23T09:46:11.583" UserId="9113" Comment="deleted 7 characters in body" Text="It is a valid request, but I see some problems here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- to find a name which really describes the sites scope **better**, and not just **different** or **equally bad** (or **worse**). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- once the name is changed, there is probably no easy way back for the next few years. A site name change is something I do not expect the SE team to make every two weeks. So if the change does not bring the benefits we expect from it, what then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we could just try out if a name like &quot;SoftwareDesign.SE&quot; (or &quot;Programmer's Whiteboard&quot;, a older suggestion of Robert Harvey which would be my favorite) would increase the ratio of &quot;good vs. bad posts&quot;, I think no one here would hesitate to do this. But such a change has a high risk of collateral damage - one has to be very sure about that it is worth the hassle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me, it looks your proposal for a name change is trying to solve a problem which might be better addressed differently. [This post two days][1] ago and its topmost answer reveals where the real problem is - not the site's name has to change, but the way how some people (and I don't exclude myself from this) behave in the process of closing, replying to bad questions and commenting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, I am not against a name change, but whoever will do this, please do it with care. And do not be too astonished if the number of low quality question does not drop significantly after the change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22700" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="4e094530-eb4a-419d-9cba-7cd0817d9b29" CreationDate="2016-03-23T11:56:35.487" UserId="31260" Comment="mobile-payment is over" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employment] [tag:co-workers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-transition] [tag:career-development] (career*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-title] [tag:job-definition] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22701" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7971" RevisionGUID="87f355a0-5238-4045-9a11-30789a39bcaa" CreationDate="2016-03-23T14:52:31.213" UserDisplayName="user217150" Comment="added 532 characters in body" Text="I have to agree with your overall assessment.  It seems that you're guaranteed 1 downvote/vote to close from certain mods, almost regardless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I lurk, and don't contribute for the simple reason that I don't want to take the rep hit from the aggressive down-voters in here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, for some suggestions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Don't down-vote without a constructive comment   &#xD;&#xA; - When someone&#xD;&#xA;   brings up a criticism, let them know they are being heard.&#xD;&#xA; - If&#xD;&#xA;   someone is already being hit with a flood of down votes, resist the&#xD;&#xA;   temptation to join in, the point has been made  &#xD;&#xA; - Acknowledge frustration&#xD;&#xA; - Take criticism as an opportunity to engage, not a&#xD;&#xA;   reason to be defensive.  &#xD;&#xA; - If there is a recurring theme to&#xD;&#xA;   complaints/criticism, then there's likely some legitimacy to it,&#xD;&#xA;   investigate" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22702" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7971" RevisionGUID="ca997f38-fc59-4342-bcc3-4c3d983a55c9" CreationDate="2016-03-23T15:19:36.193" UserDisplayName="user217150" Comment="added 532 characters in body" Text="I have to agree with your overall assessment.  It seems that you're guaranteed 1 downvote/vote to close from certain mods, almost regardless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I lurk, and don't contribute for the simple reason that I don't want to take the rep hit from the aggressive down-voters in here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, for some suggestions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Don't down-vote without a constructive comment   &#xD;&#xA; - When someone&#xD;&#xA;   brings up a criticism, let them know they are being heard.&#xD;&#xA; - If&#xD;&#xA;   someone is already being hit with a flood of down votes, resist the&#xD;&#xA;   temptation to join in, the point has been made  &#xD;&#xA; - Acknowledge frustration&#xD;&#xA; - Take criticism as an opportunity to engage, not a&#xD;&#xA;   reason to be defensive.  &#xD;&#xA; - If there is a recurring theme to&#xD;&#xA;   complaints/criticism, then there's likely some legitimacy to it,&#xD;&#xA;   investigate&#xD;&#xA; - Remember, there is a real person reading your comments.  While you're not responsible for how a user interprets your comments, you should respond in a professional manner&#xD;&#xA; - While you may have seen &quot;the same stupid question 20 times today&quot; don't take out your frustrations on the 20th person as if they asked the question 20 times themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, if you don't want to chase people off, be more professional" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22703" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7952" RevisionGUID="84f876e2-8954-471e-9e25-8b346d5ec70b" CreationDate="2016-03-23T18:26:52.353" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/712707198460276736" />
  <row Id="22704" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7930" RevisionGUID="3e6f1177-c1ea-4a3f-ab13-d0fa0ab6f44c" CreationDate="2016-03-24T08:43:28.347" UserId="31260" Comment="wordsmithing" Text="Over in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away/7907#7907 I posted this list and haven't gotten a satisfactory response yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the site's scope is at issue, then some percentage of these questions should instead be open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these are just poorly asked questions that need some moderate editing, then there is an army of people who say they should be open that can help cultivate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without identifying which questions we need to consider how the scope is wrong rather than the question doesn't fit we are simply talking in circles around each other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's the list.  Where the post has been deleted (at the moment of posting this question), the *entire* text of the question is here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311935/running-net-desktop-application-on-linux (-3, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question is a software recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; We need to develop a desktop application that would run on both Windows and Linux machines, preferably with the same code base or minimal code changes. I know Mono is an option, but I read that Mono Win Forms implementation is suitable only for very simple applications. I guess I cannot make the app using the newly announced cross-platform &quot;.NET Core&quot; either, as apparently it does not support client/desktop apps. So apart from Mono, is there any other option to create a cross-platform desktop application for Windows and Linux?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311931/need-help-to-make-advance-search-in-php-website-project (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A bit hard to determine (the close vote is for unclear). It looks like this might be too broad too. Its a student trying to do some project that isn't well articulated.  The answers to it are all over the place. The OP hasn't been back since the original post of the question to help clarify.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311930/pointers-and-hexadecimal (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is an implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; So I want to make a pointer of chars. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; char *ptr = 0x239038F2  &lt;---- this is my attempt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; where I can iterate through each char.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; So ptr would give me 0x23&#xD;&#xA;ptr++ would give me 0x90&#xD;&#xA;ptr++ would give me 0x38&#xD;&#xA;and finally ptr++ would give me 0xF2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311928/how-do-i-implement-material-style-account-switcher (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   This is a far too broad &quot;how do I do this&quot; type question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311925/structure-of-an-abstract-for-a-conference-talk-or-workshop (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question has nothing to do with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311923/extraordinary-software-written-in-javascript (-8, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a too broad question asking for a list of all the ways that Javascript can be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; JavaScript is usually used for either web frontends or backends (JavaScript). What other extraordinay things can be done with JavaScript?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311921/accepting-express-js-post-requests-in-a-chrome-app (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for issues with writing something in Chrome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311918/how-to-display-a-non-interactive-message-on-a-jframe (-2, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for how to do something in Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311914/running-ruby-commands-does-nothing (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a problem running some third party ruby software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311913/how-to-break-infinite-loop-in-turtle-graphics-python (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for python.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311910/index-exceeds-matrix-dimension-matlab-hog-features (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for matlab (which was already posted on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311907/wdk-10-and-visual-studio-2015-acting-funny (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This (now deleted between then and now) was closed as unclear. It was an issue with some software installation for a C library.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I installed WDK 10 on my computer, and I tried to build a si and I got the error: An SDK corresponding to WDK version '8.1' was not found. Please install the SDK before building.. I downloaded and installed the Windows 10 SDK, and then tried build again, this time I was getting multiple syntax errors, the following code:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Shows the following errors: fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'ntddk.h': No such file or directory, and multiple intellisense errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        extern &quot;C&quot; {&#xD;&#xA;        #include &lt;ntddk.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        #include &lt;ntdddisk.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        #include &lt;wdf.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        NTSTATUS DriverEntry(IN PDRIVER_OBJECT DriverObject, IN PUNICODE_STRING RegistryPath) {}&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Shows the following errors:&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; `fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'ntddk.h': No such file or directory`, and multiple intellisense errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; How do I fix this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311904/learning-linux-kernel-in-todays-world-would-i-be-better-off-hacking-with-android (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a &quot;what should I learn&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311902/why-do-i-get-an-error-in-the-cpp-file-if-i-make-a-class-template-before-the-cla (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311901/class-as-a-variable-of-another-class (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is another C++ implementation/debugging question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311899/find-availability-software-architecture (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a no effort homework dump.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311897/error-code-c4700-uninitialized-local-variable (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311896/android-file-retriever-application (-4, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted green field question that is asking how to use the IDE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311894/how-do-i-create-a-driver-for-extra-buttons (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rather vague &quot;how do I program buttons on a drawing tablet.&quot;  Aside from being off topic, no information about what drawing tablet it is is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311892/deleting-dynamically-allocated-memory (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        void RemoveDuplicates(Node *head, int size)&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;        Node *tmp = head;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;        while(tmp-&gt;next != NULL)&#xD;&#xA;            {&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            for(int i=0; i&lt;size; i++)&#xD;&#xA;            {&#xD;&#xA;            if(tmp-&gt;data == tmp-&gt;next-&gt;data)&#xD;&#xA;                {&#xD;&#xA;                Node *remove = tmp-&gt;next;&#xD;&#xA;                tmp-&gt;next = remove-&gt;next;&#xD;&#xA;                ***//delete remove;***&#xD;&#xA;                }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            tmp = tmp-&gt;next;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; ok, i wrote this piece of code to remove duplicated nodes in my data structure course, the commented delete operator supposed to keep freeing the memory which the remove pointer is pointed to every loop cycle. it doesn't work, IDE keep segmentation faulting me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; any help?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311891/simplest-way-to-build-an-interactive-website-to-visualize-a-table (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a unclear / too broad &quot;how do I render a table&quot; (there are far too many possible ways to do it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311890/where-and-how-i-can-find-explanations-of-abstractions-and-fancy-stuff-used-in-bu (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rant about large software projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; This question is broad, but I'll try to be concise and to restrict the wideness of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I'm full of hate toward these business hipster programmers, so I won't be formal this time. Sorry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Don't get me wrong, I really want to sort this out, I need to understand how it works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Let's put this in .NET framework only. It's already a good cut down of the range.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    (another 3000 characters)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311888/adobe-illustrator-data-driven-graphics-via-php (-2, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a question about how to implement an AI that Photoshop has in php. I'm not kidding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311886/why-software-releases-must-be-self-regulated (-3, duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a poorly asked duplicate of a question that searching for &quot;Lehman&quot; would have found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311883/sending-computer-screen-video-through-lightning-connector-to-a-iphone (-3, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a &quot;is it possible&quot; feasibility study question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311874/importing-my-class-to-a-given-tester-class (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is an unclear question that might be &quot;how do I debug my code?&quot; but not enough information about it is given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     &gt; In Java I have created a class with a HashMap where I put 13 values. With it's own main it will display the RGB values of the Color Object. The problem is trying to import it to use with a given ColorTest class (which has the MAIN main and cannot be changed); which I can tell from the &quot;NullPointerException&quot; it gives me when trying to create a new instance from my class. I'm still very noob at coding so any help is appreciated!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I have all the code but don't know what/where/how to change it to be used by the tester, and I just don't want to dump all that text unless someone wants to see it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311873/choose-an-application-development-environment-for-the-displaying-monitoring-da (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted too broad question (with a bit of unclear too).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311871/web-design-templates-for-backend-developing (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a tool recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311866/connected-city-problem (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a cross posted (CS) what appears to be homework dump.  It has since been deleted here and a bit large to include - see the [CS.SE version](http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/54031/10159) for its text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311862/logic-of-ap-to-return-number-set-to-bit1-as-an-input-binary (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a block of code without any question asked (a comment of &quot;how does this work?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        public class BitSet1&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;        	public static void main(String[] args)&#xD;&#xA;        	{&#xD;&#xA;        		double num=(Math.pow(2.0,31.0))-1;&#xD;&#xA;    	    	int num1=(int)num;&#xD;&#xA;        		double outnum=num1;&#xD;&#xA;        		int count=0;&#xD;&#xA;        		while(num1&gt;0)&#xD;&#xA;        		{&#xD;&#xA;        			if((num1&amp;1)==1)&#xD;&#xA;    	    		count++;&#xD;&#xA;    	    		num1=num1&gt;&gt;1;&#xD;&#xA;        			}&#xD;&#xA;        		System.out.println(count+&quot; bits sets to 1 in number &quot;+ outnum);&#xD;&#xA;        		}&#xD;&#xA;        	}&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311860/can-you-please-explain-what-this-php-code-below-does (-7, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Someone asking what a given function in php does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I just need the logic behind the statement because the idea of escaping strings doesn't seem to make sense to me. What does this code do ? and why is it escaping strings ?What does this code do ? and why is it escaping strings ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            $BackupRegister=mysqli_real_escape_string($Count,monitorEntry($anticipatedDate,'created'));&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311857/ways-to-send-a-message-to-a-users-phone (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A service request / too broad (how can you send a message to a device)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; What are some ways to send a private message to a user's phone from a separate computer over the internet? Is there any preferred or standard way to do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Some methods I could think of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; - Email: May get buried under other emails. Requires the phone to have internet connectivity. Advantage is that its free and works regardless of device operating system.&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; - SMS: Either costs money (does it?) or you need an SMS gateway, which can not be figured out programmatically (can you?) Advantage is that it works without internet and works regardless of device operating system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311856/periodicity-detection-for-gapped-data (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    An algorithm question that *might* be answerable if sufficient information is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311855/what-is-more-lower-level-click-or-urwid (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &quot;I make web apps using flask so I am tempted to start using click since it's made by the same person but I've seen more info around for urwid? Which one is more lower level?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;    I don't even know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311854/scripting-productivity-and-speed (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     How do you improve your productivity?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I would like to ask what kind of scripts that a software engineer writes to increase his/her productivity. I know some of them could really save time so please share with me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311853/automating-scripting-and-building (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A question about automating the IDE. It is a bit unclear and if it was made clear, would be off topic here (its a tooling problem)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I am working on a project on Visual Studio with C++. So I need to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1) build the solution  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2) click on debug/attach to process  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 3) click on 3 - 4 buttons in the programs to create and load stuff  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 4) type &quot;Run master&quot; in a textfield(in the my program)  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 5) press Enter button.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; After all this steps, then I can start testing my program. My program is desktop application on Windows 10. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I would like to automate the whole process of clicking build right up to before I start testing. &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; And also, I need this script to monitor the status of the build in cases of build failures to stop. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I also need to this script to able to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1) monitor that I click on the correct buttons so that it does not mess up other running programs.  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2) Is there someway of monitoring the changes in UI or the commands are executed or the maybe just the status/state of the program? This is to check that the script does the correct action at the right time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311850/python-functions-and-parameters (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How to type the parameters for python calls (implementation question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Can Python only accept parameters passed to a function that meet a certain criteria  for example,&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;  Accepts as the first parameter a string specifying the data structure to be used &quot;list&quot;, &quot;set&quot; or &quot;dictionary&quot;  only&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, that is the list from the other day. The questions that were being closed or were closed from the 50 most recent questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which questions would ideally be on topic for the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For those questions, what part of the help center is identifying that they are off topic, or is this part of a too zealous closing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I would ***really*** like community managers to chime in on this too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22705" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7971" RevisionGUID="4d0f33a2-d9ef-4cd9-ab68-55560d62f27c" CreationDate="2016-03-24T21:06:11.613" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="I have to agree with your overall assessment.  It seems that you're guaranteed 1 downvote/vote to close from certain users, almost regardless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I lurk, and don't contribute for the simple reason that I don't want to take the rep hit from the aggressive down-voters in here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, for some suggestions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Don't down-vote without a constructive comment   &#xD;&#xA; - When someone&#xD;&#xA;   brings up a criticism, let them know they are being heard.&#xD;&#xA; - If&#xD;&#xA;   someone is already being hit with a flood of down votes, resist the&#xD;&#xA;   temptation to join in, the point has been made  &#xD;&#xA; - Acknowledge frustration&#xD;&#xA; - Take criticism as an opportunity to engage, not a&#xD;&#xA;   reason to be defensive.  &#xD;&#xA; - If there is a recurring theme to&#xD;&#xA;   complaints/criticism, then there's likely some legitimacy to it,&#xD;&#xA;   investigate&#xD;&#xA; - Remember, there is a real person reading your comments.  While you're not responsible for how a user interprets your comments, you should respond in a professional manner&#xD;&#xA; - While you may have seen &quot;the same stupid question 20 times today&quot; don't take out your frustrations on the 20th person as if they asked the question 20 times themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, if you don't want to chase people off, be more professional" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22706" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7974" RevisionGUID="bf626f45-fa98-4e70-87fe-60f2ab7ab0ff" CreationDate="2016-03-24T21:44:03.753" UserId="130510" Text="Most questions about design and coding patterns are on-topic here, I know, but...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What about questions regarding a funny approach to anti-patterns? In my case I would like to know existent currently in-use funny names for anti-patterns, so it helps students to know and remember what *not* to do in this case (yes, there are cases like the *Diaper Pattern* which still makes me laugh).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are funny -on purpose- questions -based on a usually accepted topic- on-topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22707" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7974" RevisionGUID="bf626f45-fa98-4e70-87fe-60f2ab7ab0ff" CreationDate="2016-03-24T21:44:03.753" UserId="130510" Text="Is asking about funny related topics on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22708" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7974" RevisionGUID="bf626f45-fa98-4e70-87fe-60f2ab7ab0ff" CreationDate="2016-03-24T21:44:03.753" UserId="130510" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22709" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7975" RevisionGUID="89fefe4e-3a28-4791-8bdd-3b8c9d5f78ab" CreationDate="2016-03-24T22:27:18.167" UserId="52929" Text="Questions like that are probably going to be bad fits anywhere on Stack Exchange, which in general is for serious questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest reddit as that is nearly the exact medium you will find the &quot;best&quot; answers you are looking for." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22710" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7976" RevisionGUID="eae3df5a-17c5-4572-b5e8-54a834fcccef" CreationDate="2016-03-24T22:41:03.377" UserId="52929" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/313493/52929&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I made an edit to the original question which was basically, &quot;what programming languages exist to do X?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the site close reasons is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Questions asking us to find or recommend tools, libraries, programming languages, resources (including books, blogs, tutorials, and examples), or projects to undertake are off-topic on Programmers as they attract opinionated answers that won't have lasting value to others. You may be able to get help in The Whiteboard, our chat room. 2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems this original question fits this criteria exactly as the question as worded was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a programming language that supports this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers are pretty much exactly the problem with such questions as it is a large number of &quot;this language does this!&quot; types of answers, as I write this post there are 15 different answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However it seems the community support is in favor of leaving the question as it originally was worded given several of followup comments and their respective upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should be done with this question? It seems like what might be best is to just rollback my edit and closing the question. The original is obviously off topic and has picked up a lot of answers already." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22711" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7976" RevisionGUID="eae3df5a-17c5-4572-b5e8-54a834fcccef" CreationDate="2016-03-24T22:41:03.377" UserId="52929" Text="How to address the &quot;Why do so few languages with a variable-type 'operator' exist?&quot; question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22712" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7976" RevisionGUID="eae3df5a-17c5-4572-b5e8-54a834fcccef" CreationDate="2016-03-24T22:41:03.377" UserId="52929" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22713" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7977" RevisionGUID="6a2fc04c-dcdc-43e7-8e12-2eff58b6279e" CreationDate="2016-03-24T23:28:10.923" UserId="161917" Text="After having similar doubts myself and mulling it over for a few days, here's how I currently feel about that question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) It's clearly possible to write an answer to this question that's interesting and informative to many programmers and unlikely to go out of date quickly. Therefore, **we should not close it** unless we become convinced it's *impossible* to prevent an endless stream of poor answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1b) The fact that the question is *currently* getting an endless stream of poor answers does not necessarily mean it should be closed. If this is preventable, what it actually means is that we're failing to prevent it (see #3a).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) The question should emphasize the interesting &quot;Why is this so uncommon?&quot; aspect rather than the &quot;What are all the languages that have this?&quot; aspect. enderland's edit largely accomplishes this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) The answers should at least attempt to answer the interesting &quot;Why is this so uncommon?&quot; aspect rather than merely listing an additional language. Many of the existing answers do, and for the most part those are getting more upvotes than the ones that just mention a random language, which is a good sign.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3a) Any answer that does nothing but mention &quot;yet another language&quot; **should be downvoted, not upvoted**. In particular, [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/313527/161917) should never have gotten 24 upvotes. It's probably too late to correct this trend on this question without making ourselves look like a bunch of jerks, but if we start doing this on future open-ended HNQs maybe we can make a difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3b) Any answer that brings up another language but cites some sources explaining why the creators of that particular language did or did not include this feature potentially deserves upvotes. I don't see any answers like this at the moment." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22714" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7978" RevisionGUID="7769c581-431e-48b3-a8a7-d946a3abff39" CreationDate="2016-03-24T23:59:45.273" UserId="32353" Text="We should roll back the edit and close the question as mentioned in the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22715" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7979" RevisionGUID="8196964c-7fcb-48e1-be7d-ddc5a23ba7f3" CreationDate="2016-03-25T00:46:38.923" UserId="201219" Text="[I know](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7930/if-the-scope-is-wrong-which-of-these-questions-belong-here) [about](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7974/is-asking-about-funny-related-topics-on-topic) [all](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7947/can-we-resuscitate-more-content) [of](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7904/can-i-ask-my-question-in-programmers-stackexchange-com) the [meta-tag:discussion] [about](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7876/regarding-the-one-return-only-question) what's [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), but I wanted to ask this question about [a specific question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/308503/201219), to satisfy my [wonder](http://codereview.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question in question: [Handling exceptions I don't know about](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/308503/201219).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a pretty Python-specific question, because Python is almost unusual among programming languages in its use of [Exception Handling](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_handling) for control flow where most other languages use it as a last resort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is asking, essentially:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's the best / most Pythonic way to structure this exception-driven control flow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some example code is provided, and an (apparently) objective answer or two was supplied.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My confusion arises from the fact that this question, if augmented with a little more Real Implementation Code,&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; would be *perfectly* on-topic on [Code Review](http://codereview.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that Programmers deals in the immaterialistic theories and misty, pure methodologies of programming, while CR deals in the application of the stated theories and methods against real code in real problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also seems to me that these two intents are inherently at odds for content; something posted on one site must not be a good fit for the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question in question is arguably more about the actual specific code than the methodologies and theories behind it, so:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**TL;DR**: Why's this question on-topic and accepted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1: Good, on-topic CR questions have real, tangible, working code that can be reviewed in an objective manner, not just *examples*, which is the cause for the note.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22716" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7979" RevisionGUID="8196964c-7fcb-48e1-be7d-ddc5a23ba7f3" CreationDate="2016-03-25T00:46:38.923" UserId="201219" Text="Why's this question on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22717" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7979" RevisionGUID="8196964c-7fcb-48e1-be7d-ddc5a23ba7f3" CreationDate="2016-03-25T00:46:38.923" UserId="201219" Text="|support|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22718" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7980" RevisionGUID="91b331f0-6956-48ef-8baf-bfe32c4541d8" CreationDate="2016-03-25T01:07:15.270" UserId="52929" Text="There is no rule that a question cannot be on topic in two places. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That being said, the question you linked was not really asking for a review of existing code but rather a design _decision_ about how to write future code -- code review requires working code to review. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Trivial examples are not really reviewable in a meaningful way." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22726" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7983" RevisionGUID="fd315d08-e677-4d10-89f2-63e3a7cf8d8d" CreationDate="2016-03-28T06:42:35.943" UserId="26633" Text="The site asks about **software development** in many places. It's one of the first thing one sees when signing up as a new member:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development. It's 100% free.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's the right there in the title box when someone asks a question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's your software development question? Be specific.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it's over to the side in bold print:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is your question about software development?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what's wrong with Software Development Stack Exchange?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22727" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7614" RevisionGUID="61fe94de-b17c-4dc6-86e4-bd230ada66fb" CreationDate="2016-03-28T09:37:38.783" UserId="31260" Comment="no, we aren't going to migrate crap to Stack Overflow += http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6878/31260 &quot;as was already complained about particular mistaken migration&quot;" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Yes, this is a duplicate of http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/ intended to re-ask the question more clearly and without the tangents of trying to explain it in the comments that have distracted from the core question.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For some reason, Programmers.SE is seeing an increase in the rate of new users asking pure code and debugging questions.  These questions are, and have always been, off topic on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qf04b.png&quot; /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of the time, these questions are down voted quite severely, closed, and often deleted very promptly. This is quite simply, again, that these questions are off topic here and asking such a question suggests that the user didn't even *attempt* to read the tour or any of the help center before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For 10k users, poke at the [question close stats for the last 30 days](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last30days).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To those who don't have access to this, the second and third highest custom close reasons are the all too familiar:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be a [fix-my-code-dump request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/258685/839601), an outright off-topic, totally ignoring what Programmers is **[about](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour)**: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or a variation on it. The top one is a custom 'unclear' which also often acts as a proxy for the &quot;I have no idea why you are asking this question here.&quot;  There is also a smattering of other close reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We don't troubleshoot code here, sorry. No, we don't know where else you can ask.&#xD;&#xA;* We don't debug code here, sorry. No, we don't know where else you can ask. See also [How to Debug Small Programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/).&#xD;&#xA;* Voting to close as this is a debugging question, but I'm not sure it belongs on StackOverflow since this is a classic example of a bug that can be found simply through proper use of a debugger.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because we don't do fix-my-code requests here.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because Programmers is not a fix-my-code site.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's a &quot;fix my code&quot; request.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is asking us to debug the code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also a fair amount of &quot;I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is an implementation question, but not of sufficient quality to migrate to [so]&quot; and variations on *that* reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing is realizing that [no, we aren't going to migrate crap to Stack Overflow](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6878/31260 &quot;as was already complained about particular mistaken migration&quot;). Migrating an awful debugging question to Stack Overflow isn't going to do anyone any favors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this fairly consistent stream of completely off topic debugging questions is draining the community moderation on the site and discouraging to many people who are either active or casual users of the site. It is very discouraging to see &quot;1 new active question&quot; and then look to see it is another poor quality &quot;debug this for me&quot; question. It is also discouraging to for the casual user to look at new questions and see half of them down voted and/or closed. This can be seen in some of the [recent](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7606/40980) meta [questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7593/40980) (and many who are active and read meta know that there are quite a few more of this type of question that are older).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, there are a *lot* of questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what can we do to help reduce the rate of off topic 'fix this for me' questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some have suggested that changes to Stack Overflow's question visibility for low quality questions have caused people who are asking these low quality questions to try posting on other sites (ours in particular). How accurate is this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there things that Stack Exchange devs might be able to implement that would help new users recognize the scope of the site more rapidly (before they hit a question ban? or get discouraged with posting on Stack* (its just a bunch of jerks who close everything))?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can the existing community more promptly handle these questions? Do we need to try to hire Oded 7/24 to close these questions promptly&lt;/joke&gt;? Or is there a valid mandate for the diamond mods to close vote (and delete) the clear cut debugging things that show up in new questions more promptly than the community does?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for any Stack Exchange community managers - do ***you*** have any suggestions for us? How important is it that we provide a good user experience for these users? Could we get another close vote reason for 'fix my code is off topic here' so that it is something that is more official and less curt than the plethora of custom close vote reasons that we currently employ? And while we have anecdotal suggestions of this, is there any change to the &quot;questions asked and closed within 48 hours&quot; rate recently compared to historical trends?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22728" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7984" RevisionGUID="2338e453-5acf-42ed-928f-17b7f45555cd" CreationDate="2016-03-29T12:15:58.053" UserId="108811" Text="**Why are we getting so many off topic 'debug this for me' questions?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that most of the questioners asking debugging questions here are indeed expecting to get an answer here, i.e. they think that these questions are on-topic while they are not. It's a big misunderstanding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What can we do about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make it as clear as possible that these questions won't get an answer here. Indeed from the [start page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/) it's rather difficult to understand the topic of this stackexchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have two ideas to discourage people more actively.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Idea 1: An explicit warning notice when asking a question that questions asking debugging help are offtopic and will be closed without an answer. This warning notice should only appear to every new user asking the first X (=1?) questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Idea 2: Since a name change is outside of what we can do and also seems unlikely, change the remaining layout (subtitle, logo, other notices) to make clear what this community is focused on and what it is not focused on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just a primitive visualization with a terrible logo:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/l7Kx0.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22729" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7985" RevisionGUID="2d3b448c-b33a-4f17-b594-a91ae7551ab9" CreationDate="2016-03-30T12:39:23.557" UserId="30643" Text="Looks pretty valid to me. Knowing the history of [NPR-to-Programmers][1], programmers is quite a candidate-for-worst-name at the moment. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe a NotProgrammingButConceptRelated name could be fine. Of course, it should not be switched back to NotProgrammingRelated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22730" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7976" RevisionGUID="746d503d-8d75-45fe-b38b-0e0b1aa447b7" CreationDate="2016-03-30T12:52:51.817" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/715159856731303936" />
  <row Id="22731" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7986" RevisionGUID="3e963aaa-b0b0-409c-a071-31df710d4068" CreationDate="2016-03-30T14:37:41.280" UserId="73508" Text="My query covers 2 related scenarios:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) The original question is language specific&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) The original question is language agnostic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the first case, some responders introduce a 2nd language into the post by way of an answer. While I appreciate they're trying to help, I believe that it should be possible to flag this as off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the second case, some responders introduce a specific language into the post by way of an answer. Again, I believe they're trying to help, but again, it should be possible to flag this as off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm more than happy to be corrected on this but I haven't seen a single question ever where the scenarios outlined above resulted in an accepted answer or even a well received one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any mileage in adding a feature to handle this is or should we just let the usual voting process take its course?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps as a half way house we allow something in between a comment and answer which could gain credit but not clutter up the question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22732" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7986" RevisionGUID="3e963aaa-b0b0-409c-a071-31df710d4068" CreationDate="2016-03-30T14:37:41.280" UserId="73508" Text="Introducing unrelated languages into a language specific (or agnostic) question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22733" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7986" RevisionGUID="3e963aaa-b0b0-409c-a071-31df710d4068" CreationDate="2016-03-30T14:37:41.280" UserId="73508" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22734" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7987" RevisionGUID="2bfbab75-781c-4011-b4a9-c485dd61f903" CreationDate="2016-03-30T14:44:53.150" UserId="17853" Text="&gt; In the first case, some responders introduce a 2nd language into the post by way of an answer. While I appreciate they're trying to help, I believe that it should be possible to flag this as off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A Java answer to a C++ question is not &quot;off topic&quot;. It is, however, useless, so you should downvote. That's it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In the second case, some responders introduce a specific language into the post by way of an answer. Again, I believe they're trying to help, but again, it should be possible to flag this as off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one's a little more difficult but, again, if an answer is wrong then it is wrong and should be downvoted. An answer specific to Python that attempts to answer a language-agnostic question is wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if your question is language agnostic then answerers have to choose _some_ way of communicating their knowledge to you; be sure that they're not just picking an arbitrary language with which to make their point. After all, if your question is language-agnostic, then by definition it doesn't matter in which language the answer is illustrated&amp;hellip; as long as it _is_ just an illustration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm more than happy to be corrected on this but I haven't seen a single question ever where the scenarios outlined above resulted in an accepted answer or even a well received one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, so go ahead and downvote those answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there any mileage in adding a feature to handle this is or should we just let the usual voting process take its course?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is literally what the voting process exists for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Perhaps as a half way house we allow something in between a comment and answer which could gain credit but not clutter up the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are forums, message boards and chat rooms for that. Stack Exchange prospers because it has a clean Q&amp;A model, with no chit-chat. You shouldn't gain credit for something that does not answer a question, because such a thing does not belong on this network." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22735" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7988" RevisionGUID="503e7d4b-d2d4-488d-b417-aa88e6f408b0" CreationDate="2016-03-30T16:06:11.807" UserId="114829" Text="Why tools for developer are simpler than tools for 3D Graphs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have a look to the interface of 3D Studio Max, Revit, Photoshop, Autocad or ZBrush. They are able to handle a huge complexity in a modular way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Visual Studio or Eclipse are text editors.. in the last years everything became interfaces, OOP, WCF, Castle, WPF, DTO, mapping, Frameworks. Development nowaday has a strong overhead. The standardization is pushing it to become modular and software understandable (a HTML / WPF code is strongly understandable by an editor. So they made editor like Blend. While making a visual editor for c, c#, java, php, javascript code is more hard (see refactoring for resharper).. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The stricter are the conventions, the more modular and standardized is a code, the easier is to make an editor for that language).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why to choose freedom? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22736" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7988" RevisionGUID="503e7d4b-d2d4-488d-b417-aa88e6f408b0" CreationDate="2016-03-30T16:06:11.807" UserId="114829" Text="May I ask this question? Would it be well received?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22737" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7988" RevisionGUID="503e7d4b-d2d4-488d-b417-aa88e6f408b0" CreationDate="2016-03-30T16:06:11.807" UserId="114829" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22738" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7989" RevisionGUID="cbba9f7a-a8bc-4fb7-bd43-578ac1f42933" CreationDate="2016-03-30T16:22:01.713" UserId="26633" Text="I'm having a hard time understanding what you are asking. In particular, what's that last line doing there? And why the comparison between editors and various 3D graphics tools? (BTW, there's a big difference between photoshop and autocad.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like you are asking for people's opinions. Opinion-based questions are strictly off-topic all across the stackexchange network. This question falls into the editor flamewar category. This topic has been debated with no resolution from well before the days of vi vs emacs vs nano. Opinion-based questions that invite a flamewar are extremely off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't ask this question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22739" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7990" RevisionGUID="6169d59c-7704-4559-bc69-4ff7fdf243a9" CreationDate="2016-03-31T04:23:58.553" UserId="217325" Text="###What's a good, well-moderated site that would allow these kinds of discussions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reddit  &#xD;&#xA;https://www.reddit.com/r/programming  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quora  &#xD;&#xA;Computer Programming topic: https://www.quora.com/pinned/Computer-Programming  &#xD;&#xA;Search &quot;programming&quot; topics: https://www.quora.com/search?q=programming&amp;type=topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Stack site (shutdown)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*defunct* Stack Exchange site [Not Programming Related](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In 2010, a Stack Exchange site called Not Programming Related came out of Area51, the Stack Exchange staging zone. NPR was supposed to be a site where questions that were too subjective / broad for Stack Overflow would find a new home.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#### Why did it fail?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;[...] Turns out that while everyone loves those questions, very few are actually willing to spend any time to answer them (seriously), and maintain and moderate them. [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I can understand that when you allow opinion based questions you allow any answer to be correct which may encourage new non-programming users, or lower the knowledge threshold that is expected for users. This may cause these less experienced users to creep into other forums and lower the quality of Stack sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't think shutting down that site should have been the answer. Subjectively and naively, as I wasn't around for the site and don't know about issues it faced, I would think that eventually those issues would be dealt with by voting, editing existing answers, or wiki answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with Jeff's [comment](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6409/open-ended-questions-not-suited-to-this-site#comment17386_6409):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's strange. To me, a programmers life revolves around open ended thoughts. I know all of the code that I write is open ended. I can always find a way to go back and make it better, or think of an entirely new way to reach my objective." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22740" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7935" RevisionGUID="ea98a9b8-31f6-46f2-a9d9-d53f245e4787" CreationDate="2016-03-31T10:23:29.787" UserId="31260" Comment="minor polishing" Text="(4 years later) Dear Stack Exchange: can we change our site name?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22741" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7988" RevisionGUID="2fbe0c46-d5cb-4d3e-9153-dc3e0293e438" CreationDate="2016-03-31T19:11:55.963" UserId="114829" Comment="deleted 27 characters in body" Text="Why tools for developer are simpler than tools for 3D Graphs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have a look to the interface of 3D Studio Max, Revit, Photoshop, Autocad or ZBrush. They are able to handle a huge complexity in a modular way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Visual Studio or Eclipse are text editors.. in the last years everything became interfaces, OOP, WCF, Castle, WPF, DTO, mapping, Frameworks. Development nowaday has a strong overhead. The standardization is pushing it to become modular and software understandable (a HTML / WPF code is strongly understandable by an editor. So they made editor like Blend. While making a visual editor for c, c#, java, php, javascript code is more hard (see refactoring for resharper).. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The stricter are the conventions, the more modular and standardized is a code, the easier is to make an editor for that language)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22742" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="7991" RevisionGUID="78a77393-e81d-4dbe-af9d-d9247d3544af" CreationDate="2016-04-01T13:43:03.103" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/277805/refined-question-that-was-closed-as-unclear" />
  <row Id="22743" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7991" RevisionGUID="3c63268d-3886-4ae5-89eb-aa787f7a1ffd" CreationDate="2016-04-01T13:18:24.170" UserId="136718" Text="My [Question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/313790/which-languages-allow-to-mix-its-source-code-with-c-source-code) was closed as unclear. It was not really bad from the beginning but some people still did not understand what I meant. Maybe because they were not familar with the example I made. But I still got two (from three) answers from people who understood my question. Then the question was put on hold and I tried to refine it more. To my astonishment it was closed. Still I have refined it even more to make it as precise as possible.  And I have also flagged it two times with the notice that there is no reason for keeping it closed. The moderators didn't care for it. I feel there is nothing more that I can do except asking here about help." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22744" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7991" RevisionGUID="3c63268d-3886-4ae5-89eb-aa787f7a1ffd" CreationDate="2016-04-01T13:18:24.170" UserId="136718" Text="Refined question that was closed as unclear" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22745" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7991" RevisionGUID="3c63268d-3886-4ae5-89eb-aa787f7a1ffd" CreationDate="2016-04-01T13:18:24.170" UserId="136718" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22746" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7991" RevisionGUID="912de68d-a3fc-4be5-9d30-20db050a9f0f" CreationDate="2016-04-01T14:55:40.113" UserId="136718" Comment="added 282 characters in body" Text="My [Question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/313790/which-languages-allow-to-mix-its-source-code-with-c-source-code) was closed as unclear. It was not really bad from the beginning but some people still did not understand what I meant. Maybe because they were not familar with the example I made. But I still got two (from three) answers from people who understood my question. Then the question was put on hold and I tried to refine it more. To my astonishment it was closed. Still I have refined it even more to make it as precise as possible.  And I have also flagged it two times with the notice that there is no reason for keeping it closed. The moderators didn't care for it. I feel there is nothing more that I can do except asking here about help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is not a duplicate of http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7537/why-do-some-examples-and-list-of-things-questions-get-closed as this a absolutely different topic. Also my question is not too broad because hybrid compilation is a very uncommon topic. My question is only about hybrid compilation regarding standard C++ on Windows/Mac OS. It is a question about if it is possible and how it is possible." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22750" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7991" RevisionGUID="a0812e2a-684a-4b5c-8e83-4b707866a1c1" CreationDate="2016-04-01T15:15:00.047" UserId="136718" Comment="deleted 22 characters in body" Text="My [Question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/313790/which-languages-allow-to-mix-its-source-code-with-c-source-code) was closed as unclear. It was not really bad from the beginning but some people still did not understand what I meant. Maybe because they were not familar with the example I made. But I still got two (from three) answers from people who understood my question. Then the question was put on hold and I tried to refine it more. To my astonishment it was closed. Still I have refined it even more to make it as precise as possible.  And I have also flagged it two times with the notice that there is no reason for keeping it closed. The moderators didn't care for it. I feel there is nothing more that I can do except asking here about help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is not a duplicate of http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7537/why-do-some-examples-and-list-of-things-questions-get-closed as this a absolutely different topic. Also my question is not too broad because hybrid compilation is a very uncommon topic. My question is only about hybrid compilation regarding standard C++ on Windows/Mac OS. It is a question about how it is possible." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22754" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7992" RevisionGUID="8ad56b30-cdca-486c-9630-561b378d226c" CreationDate="2016-04-02T11:08:35.437" UserId="216835" Text="Plenty of discussion on the issue of the site's scope, here's my suggestion in [this Q&amp;A][1] as an official feature request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before a user joins programmers.se they are welcomed with what I feel is a fairly clear definition of the sites scope:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![loggedout][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is a well known fact that when *most* people 'Sign Up' for things on the internet, they don't feel like reading the basics until they're *in*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When they're *in*, they are presented with this tidy, but empty header:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![loggedin][3]][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be too much to add a reminder here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even more critically, when a user who hasn't read the blurb on the 'Sign Up' page, rushes to click the 'Ask Question' button. They are presented with this ridiculously broad definition of what a good question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![question][4]][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I missing something, or do others share my view that if, to the right of my 'Ask Question' form is a message which asks, 'Is your question about software development?' then I can ask debugging questions, library recommendations, conceptual questions, database questions, and pretty much everything else which we as 'Software Developers' deal with on a day to day basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why can't the more clear description of the sites scope on the 'Sign Up' page be repeated in at least the 'Ask Question' page?** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMO a name change is way overkill, especially when it'd be tough to find a name which won't make the problem better, or potentially make it worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/4-years-later-dear-stack-exchange-can-we-change-our-site-name&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z5uce.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MMqKM.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0YYRP.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22755" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7992" RevisionGUID="8ad56b30-cdca-486c-9630-561b378d226c" CreationDate="2016-04-02T11:08:35.437" UserId="216835" Text="Can the more clear description of the sites scope on the 'Sign Up' page be repeated in at least the 'Ask Question' page?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22756" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7992" RevisionGUID="8ad56b30-cdca-486c-9630-561b378d226c" CreationDate="2016-04-02T11:08:35.437" UserId="216835" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22757" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="4d3e9a03-d34d-4bd5-9359-70327f06e3e3" CreationDate="2016-04-02T11:20:28.500" UserId="31260" Comment="Yannis burninated career-transition]" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employment] [tag:co-workers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-title] [tag:job-definition] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22758" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7993" RevisionGUID="f5d88eb0-242a-4e84-bf63-548fc156fa79" CreationDate="2016-04-02T13:53:11.877" UserId="161917" Text="I'm one of the users who originally voted to close it, and I also voted to leave it closed in the reopen queue after the edit. I also posted the longest and most upvoted comment on that question which attempted to explain the problem, so I suppose I should be the one to defend my decisions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;! And...I just voted to reopen it, so that's another thing to explain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 1. Why did I vote to close the original question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because it's too broad/unclear what was meant by &quot;mixing&quot; languages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since this is one of many questions where it's easy to imagine someone disagreeing with the closure, as Azure is currently doing (thank you for trying to keep the discussion constructive by the way, far too many users take closure personally), I left [one of my usual overly long comments](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/313790/which-languages-allow-to-mix-its-source-code-with-c-source-code#comment663111_313790) on it when I voted to close:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The direct answer to your question is &quot;all of them, but some are harder than others&quot;. So when you say &quot;mix with C++ code&quot;, are you talking about languages that provide some built-in support for calling C++ functions, or languages where it's possible to call C++ functions given some effort, or languages that can be freely intermixed with C++ the way C can be mixed with C++ or Objective-C? (unfortunately open-ended list questions like this are off-topic here but we can maybe give you a hint if we know what you're after) – Ixrec Mar 25 at 7:59&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it matters, I did not upvote, downvote, or edit the question at any point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not remember which close reason I personally selected. I suspect it was &quot;unclear&quot; but it may have been &quot;too broad&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 2. Why did I click &quot;Leave Closed&quot; in the reopen queue?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those edit(s) essentially added the term &quot;source code&quot; to the title and body of the question. I simply didn't see how that made the question any more clear, since all languages and all forms of compilation and linking involve at least some pieces of source code at some point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 3) But it has upvoted answers! Doesn't that automatically mean it must've been a good question!?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As is often the case with questions that are too broad or unclear, **a large portion of the most-upvoted answer is explaining why the question cannot be answered** with any degree of certainty. The bullet point list of languages may give the initial impression that it's directly answering the question, but the text immediately under that list is pretty similar to my comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It should be noted that some of these languages are interpreted languages (like R) or a complete platform (like CUDA), and just because it supports you using C++ code does not mean that it will support the C++ standard library (or even strictly adhere to the C++ standard itself), so more investigation would need to be done for those instances.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Depending on what you're trying to provide, using the external C linkage in your C++ might yield a wider array of other langauges to interact with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 4) What about the other &gt;15 edits its had since then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly, I was completely unaware of them until I started writing this answer. In fact...the explicit contrast between &quot;hybrid compilation&quot; and &quot;scripting and DLL calling solutions&quot; in edit 19 is *really* good at clarifying the intended scope , so...**I just voted to reopen it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good call posting a meta thread. I probably never would've seen this edit otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a slight tangent: I believe there is an open question as to whether &quot;language identification&quot; questions are categorically off-topic or not, since (as far as I know) we never actually decided as a community that they should be off-topic, but many of us seem to have simply assumed they all fall under the usual &quot;list question&quot; or &quot;nothing to do with software development&quot; reasons. But list questions are fine if reasonably scoped to ensure they're not infinite, and we already allow many topics like licensing that seem to have even less to do with software development than language id questions do. That is why I left those arguments out of the above discussion; I simply don't believe they can be applied to this question in good faith to this particular question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22759" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7993" RevisionGUID="6b009f7e-4b7a-41a5-aee5-c10f3b759e74" CreationDate="2016-04-02T14:01:25.070" UserId="161917" Comment="added 195 characters in body" Text="I'm one of the users who originally voted to close it, and I also voted to leave it closed in the reopen queue after the edit. I also posted the longest and most upvoted comment on that question which attempted to explain the problem, so I suppose I should be the one to defend my decisions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;! And...I just voted to reopen it, so that's another thing to explain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 1. Why did I vote to close the original question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because it's too broad/unclear what was meant by &quot;mixing&quot; languages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since this is one of many questions where it's easy to imagine someone disagreeing with the closure, as Azure is currently doing (thank you for trying to keep the discussion constructive by the way, far too many users take closure personally), I left [one of my usual overly long comments](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/313790/which-languages-allow-to-mix-its-source-code-with-c-source-code#comment663111_313790) on it when I voted to close:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The direct answer to your question is &quot;all of them, but some are harder than others&quot;. So when you say &quot;mix with C++ code&quot;, are you talking about languages that provide some built-in support for calling C++ functions, or languages where it's possible to call C++ functions given some effort, or languages that can be freely intermixed with C++ the way C can be mixed with C++ or Objective-C? (unfortunately open-ended list questions like this are off-topic here but we can maybe give you a hint if we know what you're after) – Ixrec Mar 25 at 7:59&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it matters, I did not upvote, downvote, or edit the question at any point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not remember which close reason I personally selected. I suspect it was &quot;unclear&quot; but it may have been &quot;too broad&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 2. Why did I click &quot;Leave Closed&quot; in the reopen queue?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those edit(s) essentially added the term &quot;source code&quot; to the title and body of the question. I simply didn't see how that made the question any more clear, since all languages and all forms of compilation and linking involve at least some pieces of source code at some point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 3) But it has upvoted answers! Doesn't that automatically mean it must've been a good question!?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As is often the case with questions that are too broad or unclear, **a large portion of the most-upvoted answer is explaining why the question cannot be answered** with any degree of certainty. The bullet point list of languages may give the initial impression that it's directly answering the question, but the text immediately under that list is pretty similar to my comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It should be noted that some of these languages are interpreted languages (like R) or a complete platform (like CUDA), and just because it supports you using C++ code does not mean that it will support the C++ standard library (or even strictly adhere to the C++ standard itself), so more investigation would need to be done for those instances.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Depending on what you're trying to provide, using the external C linkage in your C++ might yield a wider array of other langauges to interact with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 4) What about the other &gt;15 edits its had since then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly, I was completely unaware of them until I started writing this answer. In fact...the explicit contrast between &quot;hybrid compilation&quot; and &quot;scripting and DLL calling solutions&quot; in edit 19 is *really* good at clarifying the intended scope , so...**I just voted to reopen it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good call posting a meta thread. I probably never would've seen this edit otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a slight tangent: I believe there is an open question as to whether &quot;language identification&quot; questions are categorically off-topic or not, since (as far as I know) we never actually decided as a community that they should be off-topic, but many of us seem to have simply assumed they all fall under the usual &quot;list question&quot; or &quot;nothing to do with software development&quot; or &quot;language recommendation&quot; reasons. But list questions are fine if reasonably scoped to ensure they're not infinite, and we already allow many topics like licensing that seem to have even less to do with software development than language id questions do, and this is not a *recommendation* question but an *identification* one. That is why I left those arguments out of the above discussion; I simply don't believe they can be applied to this question in good faith to this particular question (at least not without an explicit meta thread showing that one of my interpretations is off)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22763" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7973" RevisionGUID="230aacd3-9386-4741-aae7-f2a4267360b7" CreationDate="2016-04-04T08:27:43.520" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="I've noticed a lot of discussion on this issue, and as a new user I feel I can shed some light as I have previously had difficulty when trying to decide whether a question I have, does in fact fit the sites scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before a user joins programmers.se they are welcomed with what I feel is a fairly clear definition of the sites scope:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;kbd&gt;[![loggedout][1]][1]&lt;/kbd&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is a well known fact that when *most* people 'Sign Up' for things on the internet, they don't feel like reading the basics until they're *in*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When they're *in*, they are presented with this tidy, but empty header:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;kbd&gt;[![loggedin][2]][2]&lt;/kbd&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be too much to add a reminder here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even more critically, when a user who hasn't read the blurb on the 'Sign Up' page, rushes to click the 'Ask Question' button. They are presented with this ridiculously broad definition of what a good question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;kbd&gt;[![question][3]][3]&lt;/kbd&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I missing something, or do others share my view that if, to the right of my 'Ask Question' form is a message which asks, 'Is your question about software development?' then I can ask debugging questions, library recommendations, conceptual questions, database questions, and pretty much everything else which we as 'Software Developers' deal with on a day to day basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why can't the more clear description of the sites scope on the 'Sign Up' page be repeated in at least the 'Ask Question' page?** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMO a name change is way overkill.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z5uce.jpg &quot;loggedout&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MMqKM.jpg &quot;loggedin&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0YYRP.jpg &quot;question&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22764" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7995" RevisionGUID="bd86dcab-6a0f-495f-ad62-7789f88ae7d7" CreationDate="2016-04-05T07:53:42.673" UserId="23355" Text="This was the question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/314767/what-do-i-need-to-know-to-ensure-that-me-and-other-people-in-the-team-are-writin?noredirect=1#comment665520_314767&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have been told to ensure that me and everyone else in the team is   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; writing a quality software, and is following a proper process of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; creating a  software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have been told to ensure that our software does follow CMMI level 3 to some  extent.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to know what I need to know and do about all this.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Many years back I did read about the Waterfall model etc. where it is ? said    that we have to follow a sequence i.e. requirement&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gathering, making design,    then writing code, and then testing. Here&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to know what excatly am I   supposed to do w.r.t same?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Making SRS is of course necessary at the start of the project, but I want to    know when (at which point of the project) should I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; enforce class diagrams,    data flow diagrams, and flow charts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Are all these diagrams absolutely necessary all the time or are there some    factors on the basis of which I should decide whether I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should force them to   draw data flow diagrams and not flow charts, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; vice versa?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We usually program in Qml and C++. We use Qml to build GUIs and it does not    have classes like C++. How should I ensure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; everyone is following some    design pattern rather then dumping all&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the code in one file in QML? Is it    really practical for me to do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it? I guess that will require that I read    everyone's code,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; understand what they are doing and ponder upon it for a    long &#xD;&#xA;&gt; time(?) Can I ensure that they do it someway?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have been told to checkout codes of different people working on different    projects from GIT and then verify using some tools as&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Lint whether they are    writing proper code or not. What options&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other than Lint are available for    the same?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What method should I follow to tell other people that you haven't followed    this and that so you should correct it, and how do I keep&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a tract of what    they have done or not done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Documentation: Ours is a culture where finishing work is important and    documenting that work is not considered that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; important. Many senior people of    our company left without any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; considerable documentation. I want to change    this. What should be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; included in the average level documentation that I can force    every&#xD;&#xA;&gt; team member to write? I cannot expect them to write extensive&#xD;&#xA;&gt; documentation,    they won't do it, and    manager is simply not going&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to force them.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please consider answering keeping QML and C++ in mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will remove the sentence asking fr software recommendation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been told:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Too many questions is the main reason here, but several of these subquestions are themselves too broad or unspecified to be usefully answerable (and one is a tool recommendation which is off-topic). I'm not sure what part of this would be best to focus on since there's just so much stuff here,...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which questions should I separate in independent threads, and how should I improve the questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22765" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7995" RevisionGUID="bd86dcab-6a0f-495f-ad62-7789f88ae7d7" CreationDate="2016-04-05T07:53:42.673" UserId="23355" Text="How to improve my question: &quot;What do I need to know to ensure that me and other people in the team are writing a quality software?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22766" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7995" RevisionGUID="bd86dcab-6a0f-495f-ad62-7789f88ae7d7" CreationDate="2016-04-05T07:53:42.673" UserId="23355" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22767" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7996" RevisionGUID="4d7c87a6-2e9c-4a83-989a-c3592f0c55c8" CreationDate="2016-04-05T19:00:30.670" UserId="81367" Text="Sometimes, when I ask an honest question, putting effort in pre-research and phrasing, I still manage to trigger eyebrows-lift from users (carelessly skimming through the text, ill-willingly assuming a bunch of wrong stuff)* so this time I'll make sure to ask if my question is appropriate in this forum, well formulated and clearly stating the issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;\**Yes, it **is** a joke.  And no, that's **not** how I trigger the said eyebrowse-lift.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've got talking about branching and forking in Git and a teammate asked if there's something like that in TFS. I explained that there is, although it's managed differently (shelfsets, branching, cloning, workspacing). In the end, we couldn't figure out the exact relation between these terms, though, and, despite googling the definitions and guides, we couldn't establish it reliably. I can admit that my competence within Git is limited and I'd guess that their isn't so hot neither.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've never felt limited managing a project while working with TFS, so I'm assuming that Git's things have their equivalents in it. However, it possible that Git introduces a new trick that I'm not aware of. Please note that I don't mean Git introducing the same concept as already possible in TFS only delivered in an easier or more reliable manner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does TFS have the capacity equivalent of branching/forking in Git?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22768" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="7996" RevisionGUID="4d7c87a6-2e9c-4a83-989a-c3592f0c55c8" CreationDate="2016-04-05T19:00:30.670" UserId="81367" Text="Is this the right forum for asking about term difference between Git and TFS?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22769" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="7996" RevisionGUID="4d7c87a6-2e9c-4a83-989a-c3592f0c55c8" CreationDate="2016-04-05T19:00:30.670" UserId="81367" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22771" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7997" RevisionGUID="594538ec-5028-4fb6-9fce-a83335166b35" CreationDate="2016-04-06T15:33:11.587" UserId="73508" Text="Giving your post a quick once over again (I voted to close it first time round), I can see that there are at least 4 areas here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Development paradigm&#xD;&#xA; - Tooling&#xD;&#xA; - Checkout/code review policies&#xD;&#xA; - Documentation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if you asked a question about each of these they would still be far too broad to be answered in a concise and readable way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You do give some specifics (QML, C++) etc but this aside, it boils down to another &quot;how should I program&quot; type question which will (99 times out of a 100) get closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22772" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7998" RevisionGUID="31b2afa3-83e4-49ee-8acc-4a00dd857e14" CreationDate="2016-04-06T15:38:41.830" UserId="73508" Text="It a nutshell, what is &quot;funny&quot; is primarily opinion-based by its nature and so would very likely be closed - even if that type of question were to be permitted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22773" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="7999" RevisionGUID="c494b6c3-c908-46ad-a160-ebe34655ee0c" CreationDate="2016-04-06T16:07:45.673" UserId="73508" Text="The elephant in the room is that the possibility of a negative score is itself the problem. We are in the main, technical people but I do try to make a point of researching soft skills to make myself a more rounded professional (doughnuts help).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A tome written long ago by Dale Carnegie has this to say about people:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - They liked to be praised&#xD;&#xA; - They hate being criticised&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note this is about people *in general* - not just IT professionals who are sometimes dubbed as lacking inter-personal skills (as if!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So - my suggestion: Do away with negative scores. They serve no purpose whatsoever and are a constant source of ill feeling and bickering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you enter an exam room and totally mess it up - your net result is zero. It has served us well for centuries - let's bring zero back!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather than a negative score, convert the downvotes into flags underneath the score that has a tally of people who think this question could be improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Problem. Solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will this happen? I seriously doubt it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22774" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7997" RevisionGUID="c7e5592a-9561-45cc-a788-0517bee0688f" CreationDate="2016-04-06T19:10:32.370" UserId="73508" Comment="added 444 characters in body" Text="Giving your post a quick once over again (I voted to close it first time round), I can see that there are at least 4 areas here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Development paradigm&#xD;&#xA; - Tooling&#xD;&#xA; - Checkout/code review policies&#xD;&#xA; - Documentation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if you asked a question about each of these they would still be far too broad to be answered in a concise and readable way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You do give some specifics (QML, C++) etc but this aside, it boils down to another &quot;how should I program&quot; type question which will (99 times out of a 100) get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Development paradigm**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Waterfall&#xD;&#xA; - Mini waterfall&#xD;&#xA; - Agile&#xD;&#xA; - Others&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Tooling**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - C++ best practices&#xD;&#xA; - QML best practices&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Checkout/code review policies**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - VCS&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Static analysis tools&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Development standards&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Code review format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - CI&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Documentation**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Use of a methodology&#xD;&#xA; - Generated/outsourced documentation&#xD;&#xA; - Agile documentation (minimum required)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22783" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7864" RevisionGUID="b76ba5a4-39da-454d-9d44-95924bcd29c6" CreationDate="2016-04-08T14:50:18.177" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|site-rec|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22784" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8002" RevisionGUID="6ddbbea0-74a7-4935-b76f-c699ba25edab" CreationDate="2016-04-08T14:51:56.820" UserId="90036" Text="There is already CodeReview.SE for questions about already written code so perhaps there could be CodeGuide.SE for questions about how to write a piece of good one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22785" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8003" RevisionGUID="b4bf229e-ba2e-47c9-b3ad-f42b0a072737" CreationDate="2016-04-10T21:00:26.920" UserId="100777" Text="[![Check out the Area 51 Remote Sensing Proposal][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/ads/proposal/90327.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/90327/geomatics-and-remote-sensing?referrer=8G2asYAyI_To9RoVf1VtPg2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22786" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="8003" RevisionGUID="23262c45-baf6-4bc1-a72e-3f4ab55f66a6" CreationDate="2016-04-10T21:00:26.920" UserId="100777" />
  <row Id="22791" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5868" RevisionGUID="94f1afae-8bfc-4f29-84a3-4a8da0bf0899" CreationDate="2016-04-11T12:21:18.020" UserId="78230" Comment="deleted 6 characters in body" Text="Even my answer is more helpful, users upvote an answer which is written by a user who has the maximum reputation and owner of the question accepts that answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, a downvoted answer is downvoted again by the users; and I am sure, they don't read the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Isn't it absurd? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22792" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="3295d8c6-3fcd-459a-afca-681191ea765d" CreationDate="2016-04-12T21:31:00.563" UserId="1204" Text="This post is a supplement to the [Help Center Article](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) of the same name.  That article, in a nutshell, describes questions that are either too broad, too opinionated, or too discussion-oriented to make good questions for Programmers.  This article describes the *specific categories of questions* that you should not ask here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **IMPORTANT!**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers is a *Software Design, question and answer* site.  If you're not asking a specific question about Software Design, *you're probably in the wrong place.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Coding Help&#xD;&#xA;If you need help writing or troubleshooting code (or using the tools), the place to ask your question is on Stack Overflow, not here.   Read [&quot;What topics can I ask about&quot;](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) before you ask your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Review My Design&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not a Design Review site.  If you have a specific question about your design, ask that. We don't review entire designs; that's a *discussion,* not a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Name That Thing&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask &quot;Is there a name for this thing&quot; are just requests for Google help, which we don't provide here.  They make poor questions because you can't prove a negative, and not everything has a name.  Ask about the actual software design problem you're trying to solve instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Which way is best?&#xD;&#xA;Because you understand the detailed specifications for your software project,  you're the one that's in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here.  Otherwise, you're just [trotting after a herd](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Convince my boss/coworker&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to help you win an argument with your boss or coworker.  We're here to help you with your Software Design-related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Customer Service&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about how a company's commercial product is licensed, priced, serviced, released, etc., the place to ask that question is the company itself, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Where do I find...?&#xD;&#xA;We don't help people find things here.  We don't know where you can find that highly obscure paper/product/whatever. You have access to the same tool we do, which is Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What do you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;We don't make product or service recommendations of any kind here.  Try http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com or http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com, but *read their Help Center first.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22793" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="3295d8c6-3fcd-459a-afca-681191ea765d" CreationDate="2016-04-12T21:31:00.563" UserId="1204" Text="What kinds of questions should I avoid asking here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22794" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="3295d8c6-3fcd-459a-afca-681191ea765d" CreationDate="2016-04-12T21:31:00.563" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22795" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="53d4c535-4bed-42ca-8f9c-da6c2cc44f50" CreationDate="2016-04-12T21:36:36.593" UserId="1204" Comment="added 11 characters in body" Text="This post is a supplement to the [Help Center Article](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) of the same name.  That article, in a nutshell, describes questions that are either too broad, too opinionated, or too discussion-oriented to make good questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This article describes the *specific categories of questions* that you should not ask here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **IMPORTANT!**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers is a *Software Design* site.  If you're not asking a specific question about Software Design, *you're probably in the wrong place.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Coding Help&#xD;&#xA;If you need help writing or troubleshooting code (or using the tools), ask your question on Stack Overflow, not here.   Read [&quot;What topics can I ask about&quot;](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) before you ask your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Review My Design&#xD;&#xA;We don't review entire software designs; that's a *discussion,* not a question.  If you have a *specific question* about your design, ask that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Name That Thing&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask &quot;Is there a name for this thing&quot; are just requests for Google help, which we don't provide here.  They make poor questions because you can't prove a negative, and not everything has a name.  Ask about the actual software design problem you're trying to solve instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Which way is best?&#xD;&#xA;*We don't know that.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because *you* understand the detailed specifications for your software project,  *you* are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here.  Otherwise, you're just [trotting after a herd](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Convince my boss/coworker&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to help you win an argument with your boss or coworker.  We're here to help you with your Software Design-related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Customer Service&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about how a company's commercial product is licensed, priced, serviced, released, etc., the place to ask that question is the company itself, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Where do I find...?&#xD;&#xA;We don't help people find things here.  We don't know where you can find that highly obscure paper/product/whatever. You have access to the same tool we do, which is Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What do you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;We don't make product or service recommendations of any kind here.  Try http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com or http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com, but *read their Help Center first.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22796" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="80cba330-39db-4c87-9354-5832926f4c90" CreationDate="2016-04-12T21:43:20.063" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 93 characters in body" Text="This post is a supplement to the [Help Center Article](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) of the same name.  That article, in a nutshell, describes questions that are either too broad, too opinionated, or too discussion-oriented to make good questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This article describes the *specific categories of questions* that you should not ask here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **IMPORTANT!**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers is a *Software Design* site.  If you're not asking a specific question about Software Design, *you're probably in the wrong place.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Coding Help&#xD;&#xA;If you need help writing or troubleshooting code (or using the tools), ask your question on Stack Overflow, not here.   Read [&quot;What topics can I ask about&quot;](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) before you ask your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Review My Design&#xD;&#xA;We don't review entire software designs; that's a *discussion,* not a question.  If you have a *specific question* about your design, ask that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Name That Thing&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask &quot;Is there a name for this thing&quot; are just requests for Google help, which we don't provide here.  Ask about the actual software design problem you're trying to solve instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Which way is best?&#xD;&#xA;Because *you* already understand the detailed specifications for your software project,  *you* are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here.  Otherwise, you're just [trotting after a herd](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Convince my boss/coworker&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to help you win an argument.  We're here to help you with your Software Design-related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Customer Service&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about how a company's commercial product is licensed, priced, serviced, released, etc., the place to ask that question is the company itself, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Where do I find...?&#xD;&#xA;We don't help people find things here.  We don't know where you can find that highly obscure paper/product/whatever. You have access to the same tool we do, which is Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What do you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;We don't make product or service recommendations of any kind.  Try [here](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com) or [here](http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com), but *read their Help Center first.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22797" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="a75c5d1c-7a84-466f-b736-2b1f304c3113" CreationDate="2016-04-12T21:48:25.823" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 93 characters in body" Text="This post is a supplement to the [Help Center Article](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) of the same name.  That article, in a nutshell, describes questions that are either too broad, too opinionated, or too discussion-oriented to make good questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This article describes the *specific categories of questions* that you should not ask here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **IMPORTANT!**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers is a *Software Design* site.  If you're not asking a specific question about Software Design, *you're probably in the wrong place.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Coding Help&#xD;&#xA;If you need help writing or troubleshooting code (or using the tools), ask your question on Stack Overflow, not here.   Read [&quot;What topics can I ask about&quot;](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) before you ask your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Review My Design&#xD;&#xA;We don't review entire software designs; that's a *discussion,* not a question.  If you have a *specific question* about your design, ask that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Name That Thing&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask &quot;Is there a name for this thing&quot; are just requests for Google help, which we don't provide here.  Ask about the actual software design problem you're trying to solve instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Which way is best?&#xD;&#xA;*The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because *you* already understand the detailed specifications for your software project,  *you* are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here.  Otherwise, you're just [trotting after a herd](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Convince my boss/coworker&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to help you win your argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Customer Service&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about how a company's commercial product is licensed, priced, serviced, released, etc., *ask the company.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Where do I find...?&#xD;&#xA;We don't help people find things here.  We don't know where you can find that highly obscure paper/product/whatever. You have access to the same tool we do, which is Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What do you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;We don't make product or service recommendations of any kind.  Try [here](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com) or [here](http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com), but *read their Help Center first.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22798" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="e782b363-1cb6-42b4-bfad-9188121256e2" CreationDate="2016-04-12T21:55:38.313" UserId="1204" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="This post is a supplement to the [Help Center Article](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) of the same name.  That article, in a nutshell, describes questions that are either too broad, too opinionated, or too discussion-oriented to make good questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This article describes the *specific categories of questions* that you should avoid asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **IMPORTANT!**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers is a *Software Design* site.  If you're not asking a specific question about Software Design, *you're probably in the wrong place.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Coding Help&#xD;&#xA;If you need help writing or troubleshooting code (or using the tools), ask your question on Stack Overflow, not here.   Read [&quot;What topics can I ask about&quot;](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) before you ask your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Review My Design&#xD;&#xA;We don't review entire software designs; that's a *discussion,* not a question.  If you have a *specific question* about your design, ask that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Name That Thing&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask &quot;Is there a name for this thing&quot; are just requests for Google help, which we don't provide here.  Ask about the actual software design problem you're trying to solve instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Which way is best?&#xD;&#xA;*The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because *you* already understand the detailed specifications for your software project,  *you* are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here.  Otherwise, you're just [trotting after a herd](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Convince my boss/coworker&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to help you win your argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Customer Service&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about how a company's commercial product is licensed, priced, serviced, released, etc., *ask the company.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Where do I find...?&#xD;&#xA;We don't help people find things here.  We don't know where you can find that highly obscure paper/product/whatever. You have access to the same tool we do, which is Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What do you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;We don't make product or service recommendations of any kind.  Try [here](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com) or [here](http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com), but *read their Help Center first.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22799" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="9c8848da-bff4-4370-98d3-5503ebaf413e" CreationDate="2016-04-12T22:02:36.690" UserId="1204" Comment="added 141 characters in body" Text="This post is a supplement to the [Help Center Article](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) of the same name.  That article, in a nutshell, describes questions that are either too broad, too opinionated, or too discussion-oriented to make good questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This article describes the *specific categories of questions* that you should avoid asking.  Where can you ask them instead?  Try [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), if you have 20 reputation or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **IMPORTANT!**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers is a *Software Design* site.  If you're not asking a specific question about Software Design, *you're probably in the wrong place.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Coding help&#xD;&#xA;If you need help writing or troubleshooting code (or using the tools), ask your question on Stack Overflow, not here.   Read [&quot;What topics can I ask about&quot;](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) before you ask your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Review my design&#xD;&#xA;We don't review entire software designs; that's a *discussion,* not a question.  If you have a *specific question* about your design, ask that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Name that thing&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask &quot;Is there a name for this thing&quot; are just requests for Google help, which we don't provide here.  Ask about the actual software design problem you're trying to solve instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Which way is best?&#xD;&#xA;*The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because *you* already understand the detailed specifications for your software project,  *you* are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here.  Otherwise, you're just [trotting after a herd](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Convince my boss/coworker&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to help you win your argument.  If you have a specific software design question to ask, and you haven't already made up your mind about it, ask that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Customer service&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about how a company or organization's product is licensed, priced, serviced, released, etc., *ask the company.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Where do I find...?&#xD;&#xA;We don't help people find things here.  We don't know where you can find that highly obscure paper/product/whatever. You have access to the same tool we do, which is Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What do you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;We don't make product or service recommendations of any kind.  Try [here](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com) or [here](http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com), but *read their Help Center first.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22800" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="25338994-4edd-4aa9-8615-7f0defe18a87" CreationDate="2016-04-13T14:40:51.807" UserId="1204" Comment="added 48 characters in body" Text="This post is a supplement to the [Help Center Article](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) of the same name.  That article, in a nutshell, describes questions that are either too broad, too opinionated, or too discussion-oriented to make good questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This article describes the *specific categories of questions* that you should avoid asking.  Where can you ask them instead?  Try [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), if you have 20 reputation or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **IMPORTANT!**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers is a *Software Design and Methodology* site.  If your question isn't about Software Design or Methodology, or you don't know what that means, *you're probably in the wrong place.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Coding help&#xD;&#xA;If you need help writing or troubleshooting code (or using the tools), ask your question on Stack Overflow, not here.   Read [&quot;What topics can I ask about&quot;](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) before you ask your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Review my design&#xD;&#xA;We don't review entire software designs; that's a *discussion,* not a question.  If you have a *specific question* about your design, ask that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Name that thing&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask &quot;Is there a name for this thing&quot; are just requests for Google help, which we don't provide here.  Ask about the actual software design problem you're trying to solve instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Which way is best?&#xD;&#xA;*The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because *you* already understand the detailed specifications for your software project,  *you* are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here.  Otherwise, you're just [trotting after a herd](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Convince my boss/coworker&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to help you win your argument.  If you have a specific software design question to ask, and you haven't already made up your mind about it, ask that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Customer service&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about how a company or organization's product is licensed, priced, serviced, released, etc., *ask the company.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Where do I find...?&#xD;&#xA;We don't help people find things here.  We don't know where you can find that highly obscure paper/product/whatever. You have access to the same tool we do, which is Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What do you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;We don't make product or service recommendations of any kind.  Try [here](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com) or [here](http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com), but *read their Help Center first.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22804" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="5e061820-4c5a-4e74-9dbb-39f50810a6f2" CreationDate="2016-04-13T15:19:17.763" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 218 characters in body" Text="This post is a supplement to the [Help Center Article](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) of the same name.  That article, in a nutshell, describes questions that are either too broad, too opinionated, or too discussion-oriented to make good questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This article describes the *specific categories of questions* that you should avoid asking.  Where can you ask them instead?  Try [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), if you have 20 reputation or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Coding help&#xD;&#xA;If you need help writing or troubleshooting code (or using the tools), ask your question on Stack Overflow, not here.   Read [&quot;What topics can I ask about&quot;](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) before you ask your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Review my design&#xD;&#xA;We don't review entire software designs; that's a *discussion,* not a question.  If you have a *specific question* about your software design, ask that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Name that thing&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask &quot;Is there a name for this thing&quot; are just requests for Google help, which we don't provide here.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Which way is best?&#xD;&#xA;*The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because *you* already understand the detailed specifications for your software project,  *you* are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here.  Otherwise, you're just [trotting after a herd](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Convince my boss/coworker&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to help you win your argument.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Customer service&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about how a company or organization's product is licensed, priced, serviced, released, etc., *ask the company.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Where do I find...?&#xD;&#xA;We don't help people find things here.  We don't know where you can find that highly obscure paper/product/whatever. You have access to the same tool we do, which is Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What do you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;We don't make product or service recommendations of any kind.  Try [here](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com) or [here](http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com), but *read their Help Center first.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22805" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="cb78133e-ad5b-408c-a6ed-518a92604583" CreationDate="2016-04-13T15:42:27.230" UserId="1204" Comment="added 191 characters in body" Text="This post is a supplement to the [Help Center Article](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) of the same name.  That article, in a nutshell, describes questions that are either too broad, too opinionated, or too discussion-oriented to make good questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This article describes the *specific categories of questions* that you should avoid asking.  Where can you ask them instead?  Try [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), if you have 20 reputation or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Coding help&#xD;&#xA;If you need help writing or troubleshooting code (or using the tools), ask your question on Stack Overflow, not here.   Read [&quot;What topics can I ask about&quot;](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) before you ask your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Review my design&#xD;&#xA;We don't review entire software designs; that's a *discussion,* not a question.  If you have a *specific question* about your software design, ask that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Name that thing&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask &quot;Is there a name for this thing&quot; are just requests for Google help, which we don't provide here.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Which way is best?&#xD;&#xA;*The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because *you* already understand the detailed specifications for your software project,  *you* are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here.  Otherwise, you're just [trotting after a herd](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Convince my boss/coworker&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to help you win your argument.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Customer service&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about how a company or organization's product is licensed, priced, serviced, released, etc., *ask the company.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Where do I find...?&#xD;&#xA;We don't help people find things here.  We don't know where you can find that highly obscure paper/product/whatever. You have access to the same tool we do, which is Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What do you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;We don't make product, service or technology recommendations of any kind.  Try [here](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com) or [here](http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com), but *read their Help Center first.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What should I learn? &#xD;&#xA;We don't know that.  We can't predict the future, and your personal circumstances are too specific to make a good question that can benefit everyone." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22806" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="eaa4c54a-5e1d-4eb3-a778-f705763e8c2b" CreationDate="2016-04-13T16:58:54.157" UserId="31260" Comment="*recs.stackexchange.com += help/on-topic" Text="This post is a supplement to the [Help Center Article](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) of the same name.  That article, in a nutshell, describes questions that are either too broad, too opinionated, or too discussion-oriented to make good questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This article describes the *specific categories of questions* that you should avoid asking.  Where can you ask them instead?  Try [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), if you have 20 reputation or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Coding help&#xD;&#xA;If you need help writing or troubleshooting code (or using the tools), ask your question on Stack Overflow, not here.   Read [&quot;What topics can I ask about&quot;](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) before you ask your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Review my design&#xD;&#xA;We don't review entire software designs; that's a *discussion,* not a question.  If you have a *specific question* about your software design, ask that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Name that thing&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask &quot;Is there a name for this thing&quot; are just requests for Google help, which we don't provide here.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Which way is best?&#xD;&#xA;*The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because *you* already understand the detailed specifications for your software project,  *you* are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here.  Otherwise, you're just [trotting after a herd](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Convince my boss/coworker&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to help you win your argument.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Customer service&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about how a company or organization's product is licensed, priced, serviced, released, etc., *ask the company.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Where do I find...?&#xD;&#xA;We don't help people find things here.  We don't know where you can find that highly obscure paper/product/whatever. You have access to the same tool we do, which is Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What do you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;We don't make product, service or technology recommendations of any kind.  Try [here](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) or [here](http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), but *read their Help Center first.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What should I learn? &#xD;&#xA;We don't know that.  We can't predict the future, and your personal circumstances are too specific to make a good question that can benefit everyone." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22807" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="c5390969-aaa6-4a19-9d1c-14c6686a2f43" CreationDate="2016-04-13T18:36:17.463" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22808" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8007" RevisionGUID="e68ffed9-3f1a-4da2-8af6-874326d77a53" CreationDate="2016-04-13T21:28:15.380" UserId="131624" Text="The question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/315555/131624 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;has been placed on hold as primarily opinion based.  I'll have to admit the name you give something is opinion based.  However, this has a name that can be cited from authoritative sources and knowing the name actually would help someone find useful resources.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't mind, I would like to answer this question, please.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22809" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8007" RevisionGUID="e68ffed9-3f1a-4da2-8af6-874326d77a53" CreationDate="2016-04-13T21:28:15.380" UserId="131624" Text="Yet another, &quot;please remove hold&quot; meta question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22810" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8007" RevisionGUID="e68ffed9-3f1a-4da2-8af6-874326d77a53" CreationDate="2016-04-13T21:28:15.380" UserId="131624" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22811" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8007" RevisionGUID="ab58a30f-2eee-4d1c-a4e2-827b370a8b08" CreationDate="2016-04-13T21:36:37.463" UserId="131624" Comment="added 61 characters in body" Text="The question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/315555/131624 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;has been placed on hold as primarily opinion based.  I'll have to admit the name you give something is opinion based.  However, this has a name that can be cited from authoritative sources and knowing the name actually would help someone find useful resources.  It has not been mentioned in the lone answer or the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't mind, I would like to answer this question, please.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22812" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8007" RevisionGUID="1e7539d5-a127-4a5e-a268-c124fd950571" CreationDate="2016-04-13T22:27:24.820" UserId="131624" Comment="added 199 characters in body" Text="The question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/315555/131624 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;has been placed on hold as primarily opinion based.  I'll have to admit the name you give something is opinion based.  However, this has a name that can be cited from authoritative sources and knowing the name actually would help someone find useful resources.  It has not been mentioned in the lone answer or the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't mind, I would like to answer this question, please.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question and my proposed answer are on topic as explicitly allowed in the help as part of: [development methodologies and processes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22813" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8007" RevisionGUID="60a2051a-d553-4bfc-9cae-42e8f77c5d4e" CreationDate="2016-04-13T22:37:45.217" UserId="131624" Comment="added 187 characters in body" Text="The question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/315555/131624 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;has been placed on hold as primarily opinion based.  I'll have to admit the name you give something is opinion based.  However, this has a name that can be cited from authoritative sources and knowing the name actually would help someone find useful resources.  It has not been mentioned in the lone answer or the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to answer this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question and my proposed answer are on topic as explicitly allowed in the help as part of: [development methodologies and processes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further, without knowing the right words it's not something easily found by doing a google search.  I know it because I read about it years ago.  So no, I'm not just googling for the OP." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22814" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8008" RevisionGUID="ca73ab67-9b0a-4688-a497-3a669d39ac49" CreationDate="2016-04-14T00:25:17.563" UserId="1204" Text="We don't provide Google help on Programmers.  Sorry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of asking for word definitions so that he can go find his answer someone else, the OP should be doing us the courtesy of asking about the actual problem he's trying to solve.    We're here to help people with their conceptual programming problems, not their Google searches.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're still keen on sharing your information, just post a comment to the original question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22815" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8007" RevisionGUID="9f0c48de-345f-4d79-8654-214ee4751ec0" CreationDate="2016-04-14T08:19:53.723" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|specific-question|reopen-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22816" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="ab541672-4d77-4efc-bb0d-a9fc50c473f8" CreationDate="2016-04-14T08:26:50.047" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/720528726891630592" />
  <row Id="22819" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8010" RevisionGUID="1d615fa7-1b76-465b-868d-3d58ed9e940d" CreationDate="2016-04-14T15:33:04.947" UserId="1130" Text="Upon skimming your headers to see if they would apply to my questions, my first instinct was to think *wait some of those are actually on-topic!* until I read your detailed notes. Perhaps we could clarify some of the header areas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Review my design**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't review entire software designs; that's a discussion, not a question. If you have a specific question about your software design, ask that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Gut response was *&quot;Wait we do offer opinions on software design!&quot;* but the final line does cover that. Perhaps we could make the header specific to generic design reviews, like **Generic feedback on my entire software design?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Which way is best?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Because you already understand the detailed specifications for your software project, you are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here. Otherwise, you're just trotting after a herd.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once again, my gut response on reading the header was *&quot;Asking which way is better in regards to performance/memory use/readability/etc is on-topic!&quot;*, but see that is covered in the final line of the description. Perhaps header can be changed to something like **Which way is best (with no clarification of what &quot;best&quot; means to you)?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What do you recommend?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't make product, service or technology recommendations of any kind. Try here or here, but read their Help Center first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of questions here ask &quot;What do you recommend&quot; without being about a specific product/service/technology/etc. We should specify that in the header line, like **What Product|Service|Technology|etc do you recommend?&quot;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea is that most people won't read the entire post line-by-line, but will rather scan the headers to see if each section would apply to their question. If they think it does, perhaps they'll read the detailed part. Clarifying the headers would help prevent the whole *&quot;this is stupid, why am I even bothering&quot;* response when something is taking too long online, and would probably increase the success rate with users that actually read and retain the information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And last of all on this section &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Name that thing**&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that ask &quot;Is there a name for this thing&quot; are just requests for Google help, which we don't provide here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought based on the [last meta post I saw about this, &quot;Name that thing&quot; is on-topic](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6582/1130) providing it was not a &quot;What should I name this thing/class/object/etc&quot; type of question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know from experience, that often being a new programmer there are a great number of terms we just don't know, and it is very hard to find the &quot;proper&quot; term with Google. Once we do find the right term though, it's very easy to google what you need to know, so find this category very useful as a new programmer, or even as an experienced programmer learning a new area.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22820" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="ccb230a8-be5d-49f2-9645-90280f34b270" CreationDate="2016-04-14T17:30:23.870" UserId="1204" Comment="added 64 characters in body" Text="This post is a supplement to the [Help Center Article](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) of the same name.  That article, in a nutshell, describes questions that are either too broad, too opinionated, or too discussion-oriented to make good questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This article describes the *specific categories of questions* that you should avoid asking.  Where can you ask them instead?  Try [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), if you have 20 reputation or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Coding help&#xD;&#xA;If you need help writing or troubleshooting code (or using the tools), ask your question on Stack Overflow, not here.   Read [&quot;What topics can I ask about&quot;](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) before you ask your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Review my design&#xD;&#xA;We don't review entire software designs; that's a *discussion,* not a question.  If you have a *specific question* about your software design, ask that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Name that thing&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask &quot;Is there a name for this thing&quot; are just requests for Google help, which we don't provide here.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Which way is best?&#xD;&#xA;*The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because *you* already understand the detailed specifications for your software project,  *you* are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here.  Otherwise, you're just [trotting after a herd](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Convince my boss/coworker&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to help you win your argument.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Customer service&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about how a company or organization's product is licensed, priced, serviced, released, etc., *ask the company.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Where do I find...?&#xD;&#xA;We don't help people find things here.  We don't know where you can find that highly obscure paper/product/whatever. You have access to the same tool we do, which is Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What do you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;We don't make product, service or technology recommendations of any kind.  Try [here](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) or [here](http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), but *read their Help Center first.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What should I learn? &#xD;&#xA;We don't know that.  We can't predict the future, and your personal circumstances are too specific to make a good question that can benefit everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is [technology] popular/dead?&#xD;&#xA;We don't know that either." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22822" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8011" RevisionGUID="ee0ccb66-a703-4080-aa0a-32ad7fa37980" CreationDate="2016-04-14T18:35:21.390" UserId="28602" Text="While running a test on [Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/319131/1-2-3-test-let-s-increase-the-number-of-reviews-close-votes-for-science), there were some questions about whether we were driving traffic to Programmers, so I decided to rerun some of the numbers in [Shog’s original answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7332/28602) and compare the 30 days prior to the test to the testing period. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Prior to the Stack Overflow Test&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, let's look at the 30 days of activity here on Programmers prior to the start of the test, the time period was **February 15, 2016 to March 16, 2016**.  During this time there were:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **1452** questions asked here, from &#xD;&#xA;- **1283** distinct account, of which&#xD;&#xA;- **1143** have/has account on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;- **298** of these users hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow in the 30 days. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From those 298 users:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **354** questions were posted &#xD;&#xA;- **200** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **244** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **233** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **124** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **74** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For comparison:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **701** questions were closed in total &#xD;&#xA;- **843** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **801** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **596** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **434** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking into the details, I also checked the IP addresses associated with these posts to see how many came from blocked address on Stack Overflow. Of the IP Addresses, 288 hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow. From those addresses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **339** questions were posted here&#xD;&#xA;- **185** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **216** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **208** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **128** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **81** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##During the Test Period (March 16, 2016 - April 13, 2016)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The numbers over the test were:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **1388** questions asked, from &#xD;&#xA;- **1202** distinct account, of which&#xD;&#xA;- **1087** have/has account on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;- **248** of these users hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From those 248 users:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **307** questions were posted&#xD;&#xA;- **151** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **158** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **193** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **119** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **63** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By comparison for the rest of the questions asked during this time:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **543** questions were closed in total&#xD;&#xA;- **578** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **729** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **607** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **418** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the total IP Addresses, 298 hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow. From those addresses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **355** questions were posted here&#xD;&#xA;- **164** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **172** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **211** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **135** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **81** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the 30 days prior to the test, approximately 23% of the users asking question on Programmers had hit a block on SO, but during the test this dropped to 20%.  Blocked users asked approximately 24% of questions prior to the test, and 22% of questions during it. While there was a slight increase in the number of questions from blocked IP Addresses, it went from 23% to 25%, I'm not seeing a huge indication that the test on Stack Overflow drove traffic to Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22823" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8011" RevisionGUID="dbf5a85c-9fa9-4efe-908b-1c07bc03c61c" CreationDate="2016-04-14T19:37:34.353" UserId="28602" Comment="added 92 characters in body" Text="While running a test on [Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/319131/1-2-3-test-let-s-increase-the-number-of-reviews-close-votes-for-science), there were some questions about whether we were driving traffic to Programmers, so I decided to rerun some of the numbers in [Shog’s original answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7332/28602) and compare the 30 days prior to the test to the testing period. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Prior to the Stack Overflow Test&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, let's look at the 30 days of activity here on Programmers prior to the start of the test, the time period was **February 15, 2016 to March 16, 2016**.  During this time there were:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!---14320, 14321, 14322, 14323, 14324---&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **1452** questions asked here, from &#xD;&#xA;- **1283** distinct account, of which&#xD;&#xA;- **1143** have/has account on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;- **298** of these users hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow in the 30 days. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From those 298 users:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **354** questions were posted &#xD;&#xA;- **200** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **244** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **233** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **124** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **74** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For comparison:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **701** questions were closed in total &#xD;&#xA;- **843** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **801** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **596** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **434** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking into the details, I also checked the IP addresses associated with these posts to see how many came from blocked address on Stack Overflow. Of the IP Addresses, 288 hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow. From those addresses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **339** questions were posted here&#xD;&#xA;- **185** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **216** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **208** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **128** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **81** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##During the Test Period (March 16, 2016 - April 13, 2016)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!---14311, 14313, 14315, 14318, 14319---&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The numbers over the test were:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **1388** questions asked, from &#xD;&#xA;- **1202** distinct account, of which&#xD;&#xA;- **1087** have/has account on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;- **248** of these users hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From those 248 users:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **307** questions were posted&#xD;&#xA;- **151** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **158** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **193** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **119** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **63** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By comparison for the rest of the questions asked during this time:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **543** questions were closed in total&#xD;&#xA;- **578** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **729** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **607** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **418** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the total IP Addresses, 298 hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow. From those addresses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **355** questions were posted here&#xD;&#xA;- **164** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **172** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **211** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **135** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **81** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the 30 days prior to the test, approximately 23% of the users asking question on Programmers had hit a block on SO, but during the test this dropped to 20%.  Blocked users asked approximately 24% of questions prior to the test, and 22% of questions during it. While there was a slight increase in the number of questions from blocked IP Addresses, it went from 23% to 25%, I'm not seeing a huge indication that the test on Stack Overflow drove traffic to Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22824" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8012" RevisionGUID="69da81ae-2f78-450a-9388-38f7bf90fb21" CreationDate="2016-04-14T20:35:22.027" UserId="108811" Text="&gt; Does TFS have the capacity equivalent of branching/forking in Git?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to achieve in TFS branching/forking as in Git?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about Software configuration management are marked as on-topic in the Help Center but in this answer of [Where does my tool question go?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7253/where-does-my-tool-question-go) there is a restriction:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Question is about using a Tool in a Software Development Workflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question involves how to integrate a tool or type of tool into&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your workflow or process, then it is likely to be on-topic on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers. Generally, if you aren't asking about how to use a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific feature of a tool, but trying to determine how to use the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tool to achieve a well-defined goal, start here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you just want to know how to use TFS, StackOverflow would probably be better suited." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22825" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8012" RevisionGUID="bec3944b-19e0-4330-9602-69df0f2e1302" CreationDate="2016-04-14T20:41:20.720" UserId="108811" Comment="added 59 characters in body" Text="&gt; Does TFS have the capacity equivalent of branching/forking in Git?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to achieve in TFS branching/forking as in Git?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about Software configuration management are marked as on-topic in the Help Center but in this answer of [Where does my tool question go?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7253/where-does-my-tool-question-go) there is a restriction:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Question is about using a Tool in a Software Development Workflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question involves how to integrate a tool or type of tool into&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your workflow or process, then it is likely to be on-topic on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers. **Generally, if you aren't asking about how to use a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific feature of a tool, but trying to determine how to use the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tool to achieve a well-defined goal, start here.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you just want to know how to use TFS, StackOverflow would probably be better suited. I think you should ask that question on StackOverflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22826" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8007" RevisionGUID="1d4a6359-5fb2-49e8-85ad-60ff04e4f4cd" CreationDate="2016-04-14T22:19:31.887" UserId="131624" Comment="added 2840 characters in body" Text="The question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/315555/131624 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;has been placed on hold as primarily opinion based.  I'll have to admit the name you give something is opinion based.  However, this has a name that can be cited from authoritative sources and knowing the name actually would help someone find useful resources.  It has not been mentioned in the lone answer or the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to answer this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question and my proposed answer are on topic as explicitly allowed in the help as part of: [development methodologies and processes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further, without knowing the right words it's not something easily found by doing a google search.  I know it because I read about it years ago.  So no, I'm not just googling for the OP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit to preview answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Picking just one term for this and writing only about it could easily be taken an opinion based.  What I would prefer to do is discuss the singular situation the OP describes.  You want change.  Change will break things.  This needs to be described positively and accurately to all stakeholders.  Not simply the users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Users don't care about refactoring&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Users don't care about transformations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Users care about working features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your boss cares about working features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your boss cares about transformations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your boss doesn't care about refactoring&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A refactoring is NOT a change in code behavior.  If you're adding a feature you're not refactoring.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A refactoring is changing code without changing behavior.  Refactoring will not make failing tests pass.  It's what you do to clean up to get ready for change.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not everyone lives in the rigorous world of test driven development.  Indeed we are not all Uncle Bob (or Martin Fowler, or Kent Beck, or...) but if you throw around the word refactoring at least use the term correctly.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A change in behavior is called a [transformation](http://blog.8thlight.com/uncle-bob/2013/05/27/TheTransformationPriorityPremise.html) in the rigorous world of test driven development.  When you write a failing test the next step is to make it pass.  That is a change in code behavior.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Outside the world of TDD making a behavior change in an integrated system that will require changes in multiple locations is called a [breaking change](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/breaking_change).  It is a transformation whether you do it rigorously or not but that term is not well known outside of TDD.  At least it doesn't sound so negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But even if the word transformation gives you a warm fuzzy feeling this is still not something users care about.  Infact, by even asking the users to think about it you're pissing them off.  They don't care about your problems.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why when you ask for a term that fits here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;The webpage is _____ right now because I had to make it generic for all products&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd have to agree that '[under construction](http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/26669/62047)' fit's nicely.  What I disagree with is the very idea of users seeing the message.  Even if it wasn't that term users simply do not want to be told about what they can't have.  Rout them to what they can have.  Don't show them tumbleweeds that remind them of what could have been.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A website should always be under construction.  Heck this answer is under construction.  Would an animated gif make you feel better about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is why developing on the live system is a bad idea.  Use a deployment plan so you can send the whole change all at once when it's ready.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why the best user friendly term for this is: nothing at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22827" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8007" RevisionGUID="1fca7152-596e-487a-8d46-68684295d6c1" CreationDate="2016-04-14T22:28:29.010" UserId="131624" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="The question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/315555/131624 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;has been placed on hold as primarily opinion based.  I'll have to admit the name you give something is opinion based.  However, this has a name that can be cited from authoritative sources and knowing the name actually would help someone find useful resources.  It has not been mentioned in the lone answer or the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to answer this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question and my proposed answer are on topic as explicitly allowed in the help as part of: [development methodologies and processes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further, without knowing the right words it's not something easily found by doing a google search.  I know it because I read about it years ago.  So no, I'm not just googling for the OP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit to preview answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Picking just one term for this and writing only about it could easily be taken an opinion based.  What I would prefer to do is discuss the singular situation the OP describes.  You want change.  Change will break things.  This needs to be described positively and accurately to all stakeholders.  Not simply the users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Users don't care about refactoring&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Users don't care about transformations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Users care about working features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your boss cares about working features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your boss cares about transformations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your boss doesn't care about refactoring&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A refactoring is NOT a change in code behavior.  If you're adding a feature, you're not refactoring.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A refactoring is changing code without changing behavior.  Refactoring will not make failing tests pass.  It's what you do to clean up to get ready for change.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not everyone lives in the rigorous world of test driven development.  Indeed we are not all Uncle Bob (or Martin Fowler, or Kent Beck, or...) but if you throw around the word refactoring at least use the term correctly.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A change in behavior is called a [transformation](http://blog.8thlight.com/uncle-bob/2013/05/27/TheTransformationPriorityPremise.html) in the rigorous world of test driven development.  When you write a failing test the next step is to make it pass.  That is a change in code behavior.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Outside the world of TDD making a behavior change in an integrated system that will require changes in multiple locations is called a [breaking change](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/breaking_change).  It is a transformation whether you do it rigorously or not but that term is not well known outside of TDD.  At least it doesn't sound so negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But even if the word transformation gives you a warm fuzzy feeling this is still not something users care about.  Infact, by even asking the users to think about it you're pissing them off.  They don't care about your problems.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why when you ask for a term that fits here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;The webpage is _____ right now because I had to make it generic for all products&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd have to agree that '[under construction](http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/26669/62047)' fit's nicely.  What I disagree with is the very idea of users seeing the message.  Even if it wasn't that term users simply do not want to be told about what they can't have.  Rout them to what they can have.  Don't show them tumbleweeds that remind them of what could have been.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A website should always be under construction.  Heck this answer is under construction.  Would an animated gif make you feel better about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is why developing on the live system is a bad idea.  Use a deployment plan so you can send the whole change, all at once, when it's ready.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why the best user friendly term for this is: nothing at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22828" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8007" RevisionGUID="ff085d4b-16f1-487e-a689-34f94b221cb3" CreationDate="2016-04-15T06:05:51.903" UserId="131624" Comment="added 36 characters in body" Text="The question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/315555/131624 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;has been placed on hold as primarily opinion based.  I'll have to admit the name you give something is opinion based.  However, this has a name that can be cited from authoritative sources and knowing the name actually would help someone find useful resources.  It has not been mentioned in the lone answer or the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to answer this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question and my proposed answer are on topic as explicitly allowed in the help as part of: [development methodologies and processes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further, without knowing the right words it's not something easily found by doing a google search.  I know it because I read about it years ago.  So no, I'm not just googling for the OP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit to preview answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Picking just one term for this and writing only about it could easily be taken an opinion based.  What I would prefer to do is discuss the singular situation the OP describes.  You want change.  Change will break things.  This needs to be described positively and accurately to all stakeholders.  Not simply the users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Users don't care about refactoring&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Users don't care about transformations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Users care about working features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your boss cares about working features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your boss cares about transformations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your boss doesn't care about refactoring&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A refactoring is NOT a change in code behavior.  If you're adding a feature, you're not refactoring.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A refactoring is changing code without changing behavior.  Refactoring will not make failing tests pass.  It's what you do to clean up to get ready for change.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not everyone lives in the rigorous world of test driven development.  Indeed we are not all Uncle Bob (or Martin Fowler, or Kent Beck, or...) but if you throw around the word refactoring at least use the term correctly.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A change in behavior is called a [transformation](http://blog.8thlight.com/uncle-bob/2013/05/27/TheTransformationPriorityPremise.html) in the rigorous world of test driven development.  When you write a failing test the next step is to make it pass.  That is a change in code behavior.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Outside the world of TDD making a behavior change in an integrated system that will require changes in multiple locations is called a [breaking change](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/breaking_change).  It is a transformation whether you do it rigorously or not but that term is not well known outside of TDD.  At least it doesn't sound so negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But even if the word transformation gives you a warm fuzzy feeling this is still not something users care about.  Infact, by even asking the users to think about it you're pissing them off.  They don't care about your problems.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why when you ask for a term that fits here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;The webpage is _____ right now because I had to make it generic for all products&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd have to agree that '[under construction](http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/26669/62047)' fit's nicely.  What I disagree with is the very idea of users seeing the message.  Even if it wasn't that term users simply do not want to be told about what they can't have.  Rout them to what they can have.  Don't show them tumbleweeds that remind them of what could have been.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A website should always be under construction.  Heck this answer is under construction.  Would an animated gif make you feel better about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is why developing on the live system is a bad idea.  Develop on a development system.  Use a deployment plan so you can send the whole change, all at once, when it's ready.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why the best user friendly term for this is: nothing at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22829" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8013" RevisionGUID="6cf6f85f-1086-4671-905f-1d96fbd5b95f" CreationDate="2016-04-15T11:25:09.643" UserId="73508" Text="Surely a poor question is a poor question whether the OP believes that or not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or do we just expect the normal voting process to have taken care of this before a bounty is even offered?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22830" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8013" RevisionGUID="6cf6f85f-1086-4671-905f-1d96fbd5b95f" CreationDate="2016-04-15T11:25:09.643" UserId="73508" Text="What can't I vote to close a question with a bounty?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22831" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8013" RevisionGUID="6cf6f85f-1086-4671-905f-1d96fbd5b95f" CreationDate="2016-04-15T11:25:09.643" UserId="73508" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22832" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8013" RevisionGUID="0b246d62-bc08-4dfe-a5df-e188ff43f4bb" CreationDate="2016-04-15T11:39:13.380" UserId="9113" Comment="edited title" Text="Why can't I vote to close a question with a bounty?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22833" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8014" RevisionGUID="cf50f8de-9211-4295-a4e7-7f0ea6334416" CreationDate="2016-04-15T11:42:38.717" UserId="25936" Text="Yes, the expectation is indeed that the normal voting process should take care of most - if not all - problematic questions within the first 48 hours they were asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question survives that long, and thus becomes eligible for a bounty, the assumption is that there probably isn't a very good reason to close it. Or, that even if it's close worthy it isn't that bad that people can't wait for the bounty to be awarded (or expire) to vote to close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the rare case that a featured question _must be closed asap_, a moderator can step in, refund the bounty and close it. If you think that's the case, then you should cast a custom moderator flag, and very cleary explain why the question _must be closed asap_. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22834" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8013" RevisionGUID="e1458229-3f79-47c5-bc3c-26f7d4445f25" CreationDate="2016-04-15T11:44:01.943" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|bounty|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22835" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="3391953e-b365-4159-af38-c305e50cf799" CreationDate="2016-04-15T15:00:45.043" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 15 characters in body" Text="This post is a supplement to the [Help Center Article](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) of the same name.  That article, in a nutshell, describes questions that are either too broad, too opinionated, or too discussion-oriented to make good questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This article describes the *specific categories of questions* that you should avoid asking.  Where can you ask them instead?  Try [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), if you have 20 reputation or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Coding help&#xD;&#xA;If you need help writing or troubleshooting code (or using the tools), ask your question on Stack Overflow, not here.   Read [&quot;What topics can I ask about&quot;](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) before you ask your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Review my design&#xD;&#xA;We don't review entire software designs; that's a *discussion,* not a question.  If you have a *specific question* about your software design, ask that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Name that thing&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask us to name things are just requests for Google help, which we don't provide here.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Which way is best?&#xD;&#xA;*The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because *you* already understand the detailed specifications for your software project,  *you* are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here.  Otherwise, you're just [trotting after a herd](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Convince my boss/coworker&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to help you win your argument.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Customer service&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about how a company or organization's product is licensed, priced, serviced, released, etc., *ask the company.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Where do I find...?&#xD;&#xA;We don't help people find things here.  We don't know where you can find that highly obscure paper/product/whatever. You have access to the same tool we do, which is Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What do you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;We don't make product, service or technology recommendations of any kind.  Try [here](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) or [here](http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), but *read their Help Center first.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What should I learn? &#xD;&#xA;We don't know that.  We can't predict the future, and your personal circumstances are too specific to make a good question that can benefit everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is [technology] popular/dead?&#xD;&#xA;We don't know that either." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22836" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7295" RevisionGUID="041fdd3c-1f40-446b-90de-36717016cba2" CreationDate="2016-04-15T15:14:01.877" UserId="31260" Comment="revenue and mobile-payment tags are burninated" Text="[tag:payment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag appears to have two uses. One is with regards to implementation of payment systems and transactions and the other is with respect to getting paid as a contractor, freelancer, or employee. The second type of question is off-topic. This tag could be removed from the off-topic questions and a clear tag wiki provided. Alternatively, it could be renamed (example: [tag:payment-system] to make it clear that it's about software systems and not getting paid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: [tag:pricing] [tag:cost-estimation] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce] [tag:sales] [tag:pci]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22838" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="7992" RevisionGUID="04b4cbcd-61b0-43e4-929c-d0e9507eb233" CreationDate="2016-04-15T23:28:18.103" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/721117976582352896" />
  <row Id="22839" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7935" RevisionGUID="4ae13bed-4c93-4f21-a561-a1ee4a26ef4f" CreationDate="2016-04-16T00:33:23.547" UserId="-1" Text="|feature-request|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22840" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8011" RevisionGUID="2953b5bb-1556-424b-a028-39f29aefb3b8" CreationDate="2016-04-16T10:00:32.940" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="While running a [test on Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/319131/1-2-3-test-let-s-increase-the-number-of-reviews-close-votes-for-science), there were some questions about whether we were driving traffic to Programmers, so I decided to rerun some of the numbers in [Shog’s original answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7332/28602) and compare the 30 days prior to the test to the testing period. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Prior to the Stack Overflow Test&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, let's look at the 30 days of activity here on Programmers prior to the start of the test, the time period was **February 15, 2016 to March 16, 2016**.  During this time there were:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!---14320, 14321, 14322, 14323, 14324---&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **1452** questions asked here, from &#xD;&#xA;- **1283** distinct account, of which&#xD;&#xA;- **1143** have/has account on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;- **298** of these users hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow in the 30 days. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From those 298 users:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **354** questions were posted &#xD;&#xA;- **200** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **244** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **233** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **124** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **74** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For comparison:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **701** questions were closed in total &#xD;&#xA;- **843** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **801** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **596** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **434** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking into the details, I also checked the IP addresses associated with these posts to see how many came from blocked address on Stack Overflow. Of the IP Addresses, 288 hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow. From those addresses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **339** questions were posted here&#xD;&#xA;- **185** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **216** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **208** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **128** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **81** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##During the Test Period (March 16, 2016 - April 13, 2016)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!---14311, 14313, 14315, 14318, 14319---&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The numbers over the test were:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **1388** questions asked, from &#xD;&#xA;- **1202** distinct account, of which&#xD;&#xA;- **1087** have/has account on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;- **248** of these users hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From those 248 users:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **307** questions were posted&#xD;&#xA;- **151** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **158** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **193** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **119** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **63** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By comparison for the rest of the questions asked during this time:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **543** questions were closed in total&#xD;&#xA;- **578** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **729** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **607** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **418** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the total IP Addresses, 298 hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow. From those addresses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **355** questions were posted here&#xD;&#xA;- **164** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **172** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **211** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **135** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **81** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the 30 days prior to the test, approximately 23% of the users asking question on Programmers had hit a block on SO, but during the test this dropped to 20%.  Blocked users asked approximately 24% of questions prior to the test, and 22% of questions during it. While there was a slight increase in the number of questions from blocked IP Addresses, it went from 23% to 25%, I'm not seeing a huge indication that the test on Stack Overflow drove traffic to Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22841" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6592" RevisionGUID="b1ef1554-815d-45ae-b047-9fd03b164e0d" CreationDate="2016-04-16T10:08:26.097" UserId="31260" Comment="formatting kaizen" Text="Recent efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is [long known &quot;tradition&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112598/165773 &quot;see 'Annotate user accounts network-wide when they get rate-limited or banned' at MSE&quot;) of attempts to circumvent such bans by posting at inappropriate sites:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The core issue here seems to be the abusive &quot;I can't ask any more, so I'll ask my question on a similar site, in the hope it is migrated&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder how much impact could this have on Programmers. To understand this, I would like to find out how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be also helpful to learn similar statistics for questions from users who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* aren't _yet_ banned, but are already [warned about approaching a ban](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773 &quot;recently introduced feature&quot;) at SO&#xD;&#xA;* are rate-limited to ask questions at SO by [anti-recidivism system](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234518/165773 &quot;'If the user was blocked from posting questions at the time of deletion, then the recreated account will be restricted to posting only one question per week until the quality of their contributions is demonstrated'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically I am trying to figure whether it's something that can be dealt with in our regular ways, or it is worth looking for a dedicated approach to address (like, say, system triggering automated flag for mod attention when post from such a user gets close vote / flag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Let's burn down the close queue!](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [Block migration if user is suspended/question-blocked at destination](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/102293/block-migration-if-user-is-suspended-question-blocked-at-destination)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [Warn new users when they ask a question after a previous question is closed, downvoted, or deleted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [What is the reasoning behind limiting &quot;recidivists&quot; to post one question per week?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/234609/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSO) [Why won't the system allow me to ask questions for several days?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/271543/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Stats on how attempts to circumvent SO question blocks impact other sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Meta P.SE) http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22842" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8007" RevisionGUID="005607b8-b904-4480-8386-64a4b2ccb090" CreationDate="2016-04-16T18:45:27.190" UserId="131624" Comment="added 12 characters in body" Text="The question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/315555/131624 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;has been placed on hold as primarily opinion based.  I'll have to admit the name you give something is opinion based.  However, this has a name that can be cited from authoritative sources and knowing the name actually would help someone find useful resources.  It has not been mentioned in the lone answer or the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to answer this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question and my proposed answer are on topic as explicitly allowed in the help as part of: [development methodologies and processes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further, without knowing the right words it's not something easily found by doing a google search.  I know it because I read about it years ago.  So no, I'm not just googling for the OP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit to preview answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Picking just one term for this and writing only about it could easily be taken an opinion based.  What I would prefer to do is discuss the singular situation the OP describes.  You want change.  Change will break things.  This needs to be described positively and accurately to all stakeholders.  Not simply the users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Users don't care about refactoring&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Users don't care about transformations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Users care about working features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Your boss cares about working features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Your boss cares about transformations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Your boss doesn't care about refactoring&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A refactoring is NOT a change in code behavior.  If you're adding a feature, you're not refactoring.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A refactoring is changing code without changing behavior.  Refactoring will not make failing tests pass.  It's what you do to clean up to get ready for change.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not everyone lives in the rigorous world of test driven development.  Indeed we are not all Uncle Bob (or Martin Fowler, or Kent Beck, or...) but if you throw around the word refactoring at least use the term correctly.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A change in behavior is called a [transformation](http://blog.8thlight.com/uncle-bob/2013/05/27/TheTransformationPriorityPremise.html) in the rigorous world of test driven development.  When you write a failing test the next step is to make it pass.  That is a change in code behavior.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Outside the world of TDD making a behavior change in an integrated system that will require changes in multiple locations is called a [breaking change](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/breaking_change).  It is a transformation whether you do it rigorously or not but that term is not well known outside of TDD.  At least it doesn't sound so negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But even if the word transformation gives you a warm fuzzy feeling this is still not something users care about.  Infact, by even asking the users to think about it you're pissing them off.  They don't care about your problems.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why when you ask for a term that fits here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;The webpage is _____ right now because I had to make it generic for all products&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd have to agree that '[under construction](http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/26669/62047)' fit's nicely.  What I disagree with is the very idea of users seeing the message.  Even if it wasn't that term users simply do not want to be told about what they can't have.  Rout them to what they can have.  Don't show them tumbleweeds that remind them of what could have been.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A website should always be under construction.  Heck this answer is under construction.  Would an animated gif make you feel better about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is why developing on the live system is a bad idea.  Develop on a development system.  Use a deployment plan so you can send the whole change, all at once, when it's ready.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why the best user friendly term for this is: nothing at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22844" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="baeb1735-1cd3-4d38-8e6c-6e160dc9d13a" CreationDate="2016-04-17T16:39:19.353" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body" Text="This post is a supplement to the [Help Center Article](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) of the same name.  That article, in a nutshell, describes questions that are either too broad, too opinionated, or too discussion-oriented to make good questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This article describes the *specific categories of questions* that you should avoid asking.  Where can you ask them instead?  Try [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), if you have 20 reputation or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Coding help&#xD;&#xA;If you need help writing or troubleshooting code (or using the tools), ask your question on Stack Overflow, not here.   Read [&quot;What topics can I ask about&quot;](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) before you ask your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Review my design&#xD;&#xA;We don't review entire software designs; that's a *discussion,* not a question.  If you have a *specific question* about your software design, ask that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Google Help&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask us to name things or provide word definitions are just requests for Google help, which we don't provide here.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Which way is best?&#xD;&#xA;*The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because *you* already understand the detailed specifications for your software project,  *you* are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here.  Otherwise, you're just [trotting after a herd](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Convince my boss/coworker&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to help you win your argument.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Customer service&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about how a company or organization's product is licensed, priced, serviced, released, etc., *ask the company.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Where do I find...?&#xD;&#xA;We don't help people find things here.  We don't know where you can find that highly obscure paper/product/whatever. You have access to the same tool we do, which is Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What do you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;We don't make product, service or technology recommendations of any kind.  Try [here](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) or [here](http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), but *read their Help Center first.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What should I learn? &#xD;&#xA;We don't know that.  We can't predict the future, and your personal circumstances are too specific to make a good question that can benefit everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is [technology] popular/dead?&#xD;&#xA;We don't know that either." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22853" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5519" RevisionGUID="eface0b7-a602-423f-96f5-fe00e1c2e6a7" CreationDate="2016-04-18T22:51:59.097" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[7253],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="22857" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="0bf91acb-26b3-447d-b058-68bd37645906" CreationDate="2016-04-20T14:25:45.307" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="This post is a supplement to the [Help Center Article](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) of the same name.  That article, in a nutshell, describes questions that are either too broad, too opinionated, or too discussion-oriented to make good questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This article describes the *specific categories of questions* that you should avoid asking.  Where can you ask them instead?  Try [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), if you have 20 reputation or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Coding help&#xD;&#xA;If you need help writing or troubleshooting code (or using the tools), ask your question on Stack Overflow, not here.   Read [&quot;What topics can I ask about&quot;](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) before you ask your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Review my design&#xD;&#xA;We don't review entire software designs; that's a *discussion,* not a question.  If you have a *specific question* about your software design, ask that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Search Terms&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask us to name things or provide word definitions are just requests for search engine help, which we don't provide here.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Which way is best?&#xD;&#xA;*The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because *you* already understand the detailed specifications for your software project,  *you* are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here.  Otherwise, you're just [trotting after a herd](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Convince my boss/coworker&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to help you win your argument.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Customer service&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about how a company or organization's product is licensed, priced, serviced, released, etc., *ask the company.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Where do I find...?&#xD;&#xA;We don't help people find things here.  We don't know where you can find that highly obscure paper/product/whatever. You have access to the same tool we do, which is Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What do you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;We don't make product, service or technology recommendations of any kind.  Try [here](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) or [here](http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), but *read their Help Center first.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What should I learn? &#xD;&#xA;We don't know that.  We can't predict the future, and your personal circumstances are too specific to make a good question that can benefit everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is [technology] popular/dead?&#xD;&#xA;We don't know that either." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22865" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7935" RevisionGUID="9a397625-7d6a-4577-bb98-16c0fed6236b" CreationDate="2016-04-20T16:08:20.110" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|featured|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22866" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="78f2b0a7-aa54-4b33-bbc8-3bf8f113de89" CreationDate="2016-04-20T16:41:45.360" UserId="1204" Comment="added 57 characters in body" Text="This post is a supplement to the [Help Center Article](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) of the same name.  That article, in a nutshell, describes questions that are either too broad, too opinionated, or too discussion-oriented to make good questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This article describes the *specific categories of questions* that you should avoid asking.  Where can you ask them instead?  Try [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), if you have 20 reputation or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Coding help&#xD;&#xA;If you need help writing or troubleshooting code (or using the tools), ask your question on Stack Overflow, not here.   Read [&quot;What topics can I ask about&quot;](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) before you ask your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Review my design&#xD;&#xA;We don't review entire software designs; that's a *discussion,* not a question.  If you have a *specific question* about your software design, ask that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Search Terms&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask us to name things or provide word definitions are just requests for search engine help, which we don't provide here.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Which way is best?&#xD;&#xA;*The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because *you* already understand the detailed specifications for your software project,  *you* are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here.  Otherwise, you're just [trotting after a herd](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Convince my boss/coworker&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to help you win your argument.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Customer service&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about how a company or organization's product is licensed, priced, serviced, released, etc., *ask the company.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Where do I find...?&#xD;&#xA;We don't help people find things here.  We don't know where you can find that highly obscure paper/product/whatever. You have access to the same tool we do, which is Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What do you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;We don't make product, service or technology recommendations of any kind.  Try [here](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) or [here](http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), but *read their Help Center first.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What should I learn? &#xD;&#xA;We don't know that.  We can't predict the future, and your personal circumstances are too specific to make a good question that can benefit everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is [technology] popular/dead?&#xD;&#xA;We don't know that either.  Even if we did, any answer we provide would become useless a week from now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22867" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8018" RevisionGUID="0dbb7386-53f6-410d-80f0-75de221cf384" CreationDate="2016-04-20T18:26:24.643" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22868" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8019" RevisionGUID="2de9011b-1f26-494d-87aa-cf67c4594c5b" CreationDate="2016-04-20T18:26:24.643" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22870" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="8517bcb6-2d40-48c1-8d2d-228359208e47" CreationDate="2016-04-22T11:55:46.807" UserId="31260" Comment="co-workers are burninated" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume] [tag:portfolio]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-title] [tag:job-definition] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22871" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8020" RevisionGUID="24253c01-8d3a-4b47-8be8-76d96db073f5" CreationDate="2016-04-23T11:48:16.123" UserId="81367" Text="I've been met with the message *You have reached your question limit* and clicking the link explain that the site won't accept questions from my account anymore. This was a shock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've checked the reputation and I've been gaining (although at a very low pace, since I don't come here very often). I also asked my latest question on meta to make sure that it wouldn't be negatively received.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not sure what or even if I've done something inappropriate. Pretty sure it doesn't feel good nor expected..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22872" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8020" RevisionGUID="24253c01-8d3a-4b47-8be8-76d96db073f5" CreationDate="2016-04-23T11:48:16.123" UserId="81367" Text="Is it insufficient to get upvoted to keep asking?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22873" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8020" RevisionGUID="24253c01-8d3a-4b47-8be8-76d96db073f5" CreationDate="2016-04-23T11:48:16.123" UserId="81367" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22874" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8021" RevisionGUID="ae52eb2f-f129-42fe-8e13-85b234d07897" CreationDate="2016-04-23T13:48:26.160" UserId="4" Text="The blocking system is automated, but it doesn't look odd to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [the Help Center][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The exact formula for the bans is not disclosed, but users are only&#xD;&#xA;&gt; banned if they have a significant number of heavily down-voted,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; zero-voted, or deleted posts. One or two bad posts will not cause you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to be blocked from using the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have asked a total of 10 questions on Programmers. Of those 10 questions, 5 have a net negative score, 1 has a net 0 score, 4 are closed, and 5 are deleted. It seems like that's enough to trigger the block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22875" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8020" RevisionGUID="e7df71dc-2246-47cd-bc17-c8ec627fa66b" CreationDate="2016-04-23T16:02:08.507" UserId="81367" Comment="added 90 characters in body" Text="I've been met with the message *You have reached your question limit* and clicking the link explain that the site won't accept questions from my account anymore. This was a shock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've checked the reputation and I've been gaining (although at a very low pace, since I don't come here very often). I also asked my latest question on meta to make sure that it wouldn't be negatively received.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not sure what or even if I've done something inappropriate. Pretty sure it doesn't feel good nor expected...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/frZwT.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22876" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8021" RevisionGUID="3831f646-aa6e-40f9-a179-a1d70bea4e9f" CreationDate="2016-04-23T16:08:19.403" UserId="4" Comment="added 903 characters in body" Text="The blocking system is automated, but it doesn't look odd to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [the Help Center][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The exact formula for the bans is not disclosed, but users are only&#xD;&#xA;&gt; banned if they have a significant number of heavily down-voted,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; zero-voted, or deleted posts. One or two bad posts will not cause you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to be blocked from using the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[According to your profile][2], you have asked a total of 10 questions on Programmers. Of those 10 questions, 5 have a net negative score ([1][3], [2][4], [3][5], [4][6], [5][7]), 1 has a net 0 score ([1][8]), 4 are closed ([1][8], [2][5], [3][4], [4][3]), and 5 are deleted ([1][3], [2][4], [3][5], [4][6], [5][7]). It seems like that's enough to trigger the block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/81367/konrad-viltersten&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/313651/is-it-wise-to-invest-in-angular-2&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/310681/how-common-is-it-to-get-unpaid-but-skilled-labor&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/309821/explaning-to-newbies-that-sometimes-it-works-isnt-it-works-well&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/306324/what-does-the-operator-mean-c-and-ef-context-for-strings&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/203020/using-vs12-to-create-and-manage-an-azure-sql-db-simple-tasks&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/204871/automatic-code-snippets-in-vs-12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22877" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="e81ed95b-2f68-4b32-a016-a3c3c716c77c" CreationDate="2016-04-26T16:51:58.203" UserId="31260" Comment="portfolio is over" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-title] [tag:job-definition] (*job*)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22878" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8022" RevisionGUID="bc95a2ab-41e2-466c-baf4-84bdb9368740" CreationDate="2016-04-27T11:25:59.380" UserId="120322" Text="Create a new site (softwareengineering.se), let on topic migrate, losen restrictions on programmers.se to be open for programmer/programming questions.&#xD;&#xA;SE could be moderated to become a professional environment while programming could be moderated for beginners." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22884" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8024" RevisionGUID="b0ec0764-8317-4d4e-91b0-6dd30b0c8913" CreationDate="2016-04-28T01:22:55.173" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="ThomasOwens addressed the reason for the temporary question ban. I would like to address the reason for the reason, that is, _why_ your previous questions led to the current situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that deleted questions are only visible to moderators, 10k users, or the user who asked them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Is it wise to invest in Angular 2?][1] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rightly closed as primarily opinion-based _and_ deleted. This is speculation that cannot be answered objectively.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [How common is it to get unpaid but skilled labor?][2] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Invites discussion (not answers), essentially asks for career advice which is off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Explaning to newbies that sometimes “it works” isn't “it works well”][3] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asks for advice on how to deal with coworker situations. Off-topic and subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [What does the $-operator mean (C# and EF context) for strings?][4] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asked on the wrong site, self-deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Using VS12 to create and manage an Azure-SQL DB (simple tasks)][5] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asks for a software tool which is explicitly off-topic per our help center.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Does TFS have the capacity equivalent of branching/forking in Git?][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay question about source control. Probably better-suited for Stack Overflow because it is asking about source control software, not strategy, but I wouldn't close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [How to motivate adaptive an shifting class access modifiers][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On-topic, but probably a duplicate. It is also a bit verbose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [How to store sensitive information (e.g. clients' credentials) accessibly for everybody inside?][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On-topic question about software process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Relation between projects and solutions in VS][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On-topic, but on the verge of being too broad. Still, it is about software organization and development processes so definitely on-topic and rightly does not have any downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Automatic code snippets in VS 12][10] (closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asks for help configuring a software tool. With more details it might be acceptable at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now for the important part: constructive feedback. Once you are able to ask questions again, I would focus on these items:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I see a few &quot;soft&quot; questions asking about opinion or how to convince a teammate about something. These questions are off-topic, unsalvageable, and unfortunately for you are simply not a good fit here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions that belong at Stack Overflow. Some people have a difficult time understanding just where the line is between the two sites. I agree it can be a bit blurry at times, and it is fine if you post incorrectly but in the gray area. We can fix that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [What are the differences between Stack Overflow, Programmers, and Code Review?][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A small number of off-topic questions that simply fall into one of the off-topic categories in the [help center][13].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [Why was my question closed or down voted?][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Several of your questions are very verbose. Try to focus on one thing, choose your words carefully, and describe the problem fully but in less space. This will help encourage us to read the question more fully, understand what it is asking, and hopefully upvote it. If the question needs improvement, it makes it easier for us to edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/313651&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/310681&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/309821&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/306324&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/203020&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/315885&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/314460&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/274265&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/250825&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/204871&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/266341&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22885" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8022" RevisionGUID="69046111-4f85-4311-80e8-4a3f57d03234" CreationDate="2016-04-28T09:25:48.277" UserId="120322" Comment="Clarifications" Text="Create a new site (softwareengineering.se), let on topic migrate, losen restrictions on programmers.se to be open for programmer/programming questions.&#xD;&#xA;SE could be moderated to fit software engineering while programming could be moderated to fit programming programming topics." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22890" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8026" RevisionGUID="693123d4-a7ea-4399-bff2-6f65631a14e3" CreationDate="2016-04-28T21:19:29.927" UserId="1130" Text="I came across this question when it was at 3/5 close votes for being unclear : &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/316818/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I didn't think it was unclear at the time, however I could see how people unfamiliar with this kind of concept might not understand it, so edited it to clarify the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It got closed anyways, and now I am looking to get it reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This kind of image manipulation is happening a lot more online, and is especially common in shopping websites, even [Amazon][1]. As online shopping becomes more popular, this kind of question will keep coming up with new programmers, so it doesn't make sense to me that we would close it here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is not unclear, and is even a slightly more advanced version of dynamic image generator. Typically there is only a hue/color shift involved with a basic stock photo, but the question is specifically asking about a site that uses a combination of images, each with their own hue/color shift applied.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not unclear, and I don't think it's off-topic, too broad, primarily opinion based, or any of the other close reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So can we get it reopened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/3ay7q.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22891" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8026" RevisionGUID="693123d4-a7ea-4399-bff2-6f65631a14e3" CreationDate="2016-04-28T21:19:29.927" UserId="1130" Text="Reopening the question about dynamic image generation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22892" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8026" RevisionGUID="693123d4-a7ea-4399-bff2-6f65631a14e3" CreationDate="2016-04-28T21:19:29.927" UserId="1130" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|reopen-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22893" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8027" RevisionGUID="746a4332-f138-4805-b77f-40bdca204165" CreationDate="2016-04-29T00:31:19.213" UserId="78905" Text="I can think of at least 3 variations on how to process these types of images (i.e., image stacking, image replacement, on the fly image masking, etc.).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can only guess at how this was implemented. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is well worded, with a great example site. That doesn't stop it from being too broad.  Just explaining the method you did (image stacking, although there may be a better name for it), your answer is fairly long. **It is a good answer**. There are some very detailed aspects that you could have delved into further." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22894" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8028" RevisionGUID="f31d2629-6c5a-45bf-91f8-972d7b476f9f" CreationDate="2016-04-29T14:26:34.863" UserId="124658" Text="I did read the [Six Subjective Questions post][1] and its [Enforcement Notice][2], as well as some of the following discussions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is about questions that asks users to share their experience and/or offer creative suggestions in solving/approaching a particular problem.  Obviously everybody's experience differs, so answers could be deemed *subjective*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We, obviously, do not want to reinvent the wheel over and over again. So, how to ask such questions, that by definition cannot have the right answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Foe example, it could be a question about heuristic rules employed in the application monitoring process with enough specifics to narrow it down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22895" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8028" RevisionGUID="f31d2629-6c5a-45bf-91f8-972d7b476f9f" CreationDate="2016-04-29T14:26:34.863" UserId="124658" Text="What are the guidelines for &quot;How would you... ?&quot; questions here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22896" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8028" RevisionGUID="f31d2629-6c5a-45bf-91f8-972d7b476f9f" CreationDate="2016-04-29T14:26:34.863" UserId="124658" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|questions|subjective|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22898" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8028" RevisionGUID="ae8d9c81-aef4-4f02-ae8c-5d94bba7cf37" CreationDate="2016-04-29T15:55:42.587" UserId="124658" Comment="Explained that it's not about discussions" Text="I did read the [Six Subjective Questions post][1] and its [Enforcement Notice][2], as well as some of the following discussions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is about questions that asks users to share their experience and/or offer creative suggestions in solving/approaching a particular problem.  Obviously everybody's experience differs, so answers could be deemed *subjective*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We, obviously, do not want to reinvent the wheel over and over again. So, how to ask such questions, that by definition cannot have the right answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everybody's experience differs, so different folks would suggest different remedies.  I am not starting a discussion about what is better, merely looking for an advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, it could be a question about heuristic rules employed in the application monitoring process with enough specifics to narrow it down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22899" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8029" RevisionGUID="29f0b766-b41a-44a5-81b0-04351211ed44" CreationDate="2016-04-29T17:33:43.487" UserId="167734" Text="You can ask questions that lend themselves to answers based on subjective experiences: subjectivity does not necessarily mean opinion-based or discussion-based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most types of questions on Programmers may not have an objectively correct answer that works for all situations, but they are still okay here because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Some answers are better than others, and that means voting can still work as it was intended. Even though they are based on subjective experiences, people can evaluate two answers and determine one is better than the other for the situation presented in the question.&#xD;&#xA;- To the first point, *good* answers have something backing them up. A convincing story, some data, an argument, etc. Bad answers just state an opinion or what you should do with no reasons for believing it to be the right course of action.&#xD;&#xA;- The question asker can evaluate all of the answers and decide that one answer best solves the problem they have presented in their question, allowing them to mark one answer as &quot;accepted&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In your case, you're looking for advice and not necessarily the &quot;one true way&quot;, but you can still tell good advice from bad and evaluate answers based on that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One major problem we have here on this site is that certain people focus too much on how the question was asked instead of what the question is asking. To avoid your question getting closed by those people, try to avoid asking your question in a &quot;soft&quot; or &quot;welcoming&quot; way and instead ask it in an authoritative way:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Bad: &quot;What are your experiences with X problem?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* Bad: &quot;How would you approach X problem?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* Okay: &quot;How can I solve X problem?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* Better: &quot;What's the correct approach to solving X problem?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You'll get exactly the same types of answers: answers based on the subjective experience and expertise of the answerers, and you've essentially asked the same thing, but you won't attract the ire of the people who reach for the close button before they reach for the edit button." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22900" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8030" RevisionGUID="0e6a7873-b919-45e8-9878-560190b93847" CreationDate="2016-04-29T22:41:40.790" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="&gt; We, obviously, do not want to reinvent the wheel over and over again.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So, how to ask such questions, that by definition cannot have the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; right answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are talking about is not a &quot;question,&quot; it is a &quot;discussion point.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question has no right answer there are three possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It is impossible to know (e.g. what is on the other side of an event horizon?)&#xD;&#xA;1. It is possible to know, but we do not have an answer yet (e.g. P == NP?)&#xD;&#xA;1. It is soliciting opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first two _can_ work as questions. History is littered with research papers that explore topics with the result &quot;nope, that doesn't work -- yet.&quot; But you asked about &quot;by definition&quot; not having a right answer, which fits squarely into condition three, which would be &quot;[primarily opinion-based][1],&quot; a close reason everywhere on Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My question is about questions that asks users to share their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; experience and/or offer creative suggestions in solving/approaching a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; particular problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sharing experiences works in a forum ([this is _not_ a forum][2]) or in [chat][3]. Not in the Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the &quot;particular problem&quot; part is probably on-topic if asked right. Questions should be about programming problems and soliciting creative solutions to solve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Presenting a design and asking for feedback is fine][4], as long as it is properly-scoped and not [too broad][5]. That is not really what you were getting at, but it is a better focus for those types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/92110/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6502/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6961/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22901" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8031" RevisionGUID="ad97760c-78ca-4af0-ac16-845838014edc" CreationDate="2016-05-01T15:23:09.533" UserId="51654" Text="Simply put - if I submit a close vote on a question, and that question is then significantly improved, I should retract my close vote (or possibly help reopen it if it did eventually get closed before improvements). But right now, I don't have a lot of visibility into when a question is edited. So could people get messages (akin to answers to our questions or comment replies) if someone edits a message we voted to close?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that this might help us away from the &quot;close with prejudice&quot; style moderation and a little more towards &quot;prune and cultivate&quot;. Thoughts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Sorry if this has been brought up before. A quick search only found a question about retracting close votes before close votes could be retracted.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22902" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8031" RevisionGUID="ad97760c-78ca-4af0-ac16-845838014edc" CreationDate="2016-05-01T15:23:09.533" UserId="51654" Text="Can close voters get messaged when a question is edited?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22903" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8031" RevisionGUID="ad97760c-78ca-4af0-ac16-845838014edc" CreationDate="2016-05-01T15:23:09.533" UserId="51654" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22904" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8032" RevisionGUID="136bd327-3510-43fc-9705-e8b7e7e01d82" CreationDate="2016-05-02T20:31:44.780" UserId="3" Text="I don't have an *official* position on this (as a community manager), but I should mention that you don't need to contact the same people who closed a question to reopen it. If it deserves to be reopened, there's an entire site of users here who can carry that out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have to be very cautious about piling into that 'inbox' every possible piece of minutia someone might be involved in. We have some very avid curators on this site, so if I had to come in every morning to sift through potentially dozens-to-hundreds of *&quot;did you know that&amp;hellip;&quot;* notices in my inbox, **it might actually push me to *discontinue* that activity.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not saying that an edit isn't worthy of broader notice, but you have to consider that there is a large contingent of user on this site, and sometime you have to **spread out some of the responsibility so everything doesn't fall on the most avid few.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the way I see it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22905" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8032" RevisionGUID="fd310992-f143-4c7b-b372-0b873dbd8c3d" CreationDate="2016-05-02T20:43:27.370" UserId="3" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="I don't have an *official* position on this (as a community manager), but I should mention that you don't need to contact the same people who closed a question to reopen it. If it deserves to be reopened, there's an entire site of users here who can carry that out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have to be very cautious about piling into that 'inbox' every possible piece of minutia someone might be involved in. We have some very avid curators on this site, so if I had to come in every morning to sift through potentially dozens-to-hundreds of *&quot;did you know that&amp;hellip;&quot;* notices in my inbox, **it might actually push me to *discontinue* that activity.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not saying that an edit isn't worthy of broader notice, but you have to consider that there is a large contingent of user on this site, so sometimes you have to **spread out some of the responsibility so everything doesn't fall on the most avid few.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is just my opinion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22909" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6119" RevisionGUID="1d37b2d0-ccdb-4198-beac-d98b9c80d5df" CreationDate="2016-05-03T16:16:01.550" UserId="39089" Comment="added 368 characters in body" Text="Hovering the mouse pointer over a link having a title attribute should display the title, but currently this works only when you are looking at an editing preview of the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is something wrong with the translation from link markdown to HTML. The optional title field is normally translated to an HTML title attribute. The title attribute is missing when *viewing* a post, but is present when *editing* a post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is [an example] [id] reference-style link.&#xD;&#xA;    [id]: http://example.com/  &quot;Optional Title Here&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is translated to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com/&quot; title=&quot;Optional Title Here&quot;&gt;an example&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    reference-style link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;in the editor preview, but to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com/&quot;&gt;an example&lt;/a&gt; reference-style link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;after editing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: I cannot reproduce this problem on another site ([english.se]), which is why I am reporting it here and not on [meta.se].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: A post which illustrates the problem in the wild is: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/186318/39089&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: The problem was not reproducible after saving an edit to the post – even though the edit has nothing to do with the link. The problem was still not reproducible even after rolling the edit back. HOWEVER, between 2013 and 2016 the bug resurfaced. The post does exhibit the problem again, and presumably will continue to do so as long as nobody edits the post." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22910" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8034" RevisionGUID="62a1f770-d67c-4b63-9090-228f09905233" CreationDate="2016-05-04T05:40:12.507" UserId="31260" Text="For a couple of reasons ([discussed in this post at MSO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/322265/839601)) rate limit for new users asking questions is now set to 40 minutes at Stack Overflow, Programmers and network wide. More precisely,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. The new-user ask limit is now one question every **40** minutes, *network-wide.* That means only 1 question every 40 minutes on Stack Overflow, but also means you'd need to wait 40 minutes after asking a question on, say, Woodworking to ask a related question on Crafting or Home Improvement. ...it also means you'd need to wait 40 minutes after asking a question on Stack Overflow before asking a question on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;2. [Rolling rate-limits](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/243460/165773 &quot;what's this&quot;) kick in faster. Like, *immediately*. If your first question is downvoted and you try to ask another one 40 minutes later, you'll be forced to wait at least a day. That's potentially very harsh... But probably also better than penalizing *everyone* for the behavior of a few. We'd always intended rolling rate-limits to supplant the new-user rate-limits, and this will hopefully allow them to do so...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though not precisely 90 minutes as requested originally, to me above seems to be good enough to qualify as [meta-tag:status-completed]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22911" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8035" RevisionGUID="62208d90-62c4-45d4-83ae-714636ad30da" CreationDate="2016-05-04T09:56:33.720" UserId="174505" Text="I would suggest that we add an option 'Other' when flagging a question as off-topic that belongs on a different SE. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have just flagged one question that was about software license / disclaimers that really was about law and what you can do in a disclaimer and if placing a tool which could be illegal in the public domain as in github or bitbucket.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had to mark it as blatantly off-topic, but that is not really nice neither to the asker nor to the flagger, feeling not being that polite to someone looking for help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think it is needed to actually be able to write which SE site it should be moved to, as that can be done in a comment on the question in a polite way." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22912" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8036" RevisionGUID="dddc27fc-794a-4a3a-97d1-718d9eec288c" CreationDate="2016-05-04T19:43:23.810" UserId="1204" Text="In [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/317571/1204), the author wrote (in the [original revision](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/317571/1)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Please note:** This site specifically calls out questions about *software requirements* as being on-topic. **Escrow** is specifically listed as a [non-functional/qualitative&#xD;&#xA;&gt; requirement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-functional_requirement)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on Wikipedia, and I argue that makes it a valid requirements-based&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clever.  But is it true?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can the Wikipedia definition of &quot;Non-Functional Requirements&quot; be used as a guiding principle for asking on-topic questions on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that Licensing is also listed in the Wikipedia article as a non-functional requirement.  But so is Network Topology, Privacy, Environmental Protection, Pricing, and even &quot;Emotional Factors.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22913" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8036" RevisionGUID="dddc27fc-794a-4a3a-97d1-718d9eec288c" CreationDate="2016-05-04T19:43:23.810" UserId="1204" Text="Does &quot;software escrow&quot; count as on-topic because it is a &quot;non-functional software requirement?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22914" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8036" RevisionGUID="dddc27fc-794a-4a3a-97d1-718d9eec288c" CreationDate="2016-05-04T19:43:23.810" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22915" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8036" RevisionGUID="2c6d9c49-c808-4eef-8767-091c818e67fe" CreationDate="2016-05-04T19:50:55.737" UserId="1204" Comment="added 20 characters in body" Text="In [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/317571/1204), the author wrote (in the [original revision](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/317571/1)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Please note:** This site specifically calls out questions about *software requirements* as being on-topic. **Escrow** is specifically listed as a [non-functional/qualitative&#xD;&#xA;&gt; requirement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-functional_requirement)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on Wikipedia, and I argue that makes it a valid requirements-based&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clever.  But is it true?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can the Wikipedia definition of &quot;Non-Functional Requirements&quot; be used as a guiding principle for asking on-topic questions on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that Licensing, which is on-topic, is also listed in the Wikipedia article as a non-functional requirement.  But so is Network Topology, Privacy, Environmental Protection, Pricing, and even &quot;Emotional Factors.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22916" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8037" RevisionGUID="5a0de95e-a91b-43eb-9db1-c5309f7b399a" CreationDate="2016-05-04T21:42:10.030" UserId="4" Text="If you click through to the &quot;Escrow&quot; link on the page you link to, you are brought to the [&quot;Source code escrow&quot; page][1]. Source code escrow is not what is described in the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code_escrow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22917" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8031" RevisionGUID="b3a3bdbe-36b3-44df-81b2-9301ddf59093" CreationDate="2016-05-05T03:45:48.117" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/728068147534700544" />
  <row Id="22918" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8037" RevisionGUID="2822ca34-d694-4700-8a95-5b99b2527928" CreationDate="2016-05-05T12:16:51.047" UserId="4" Comment="added 648 characters in body" Text="If you click through to the &quot;Escrow&quot; link on the page you link to, you are brought to the [&quot;Source code escrow&quot; page][1]. Source code escrow is not what is described in the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is being described in the question is indeed escrow. However, the type of escrow that deals with money for payments is off-topic here. Source code escrow, as it relates to software requirements, is how a customer can get access to the source code and necessary build tools should the creator fail to meet contractual obligations or cease to exist as a business entity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Source code escrow does fall into the categories of &quot;software requirements&quot; and &quot;software design&quot;. Requirements (and external design constraints) to allow the customer to be able to build the software will affect the design decisions made later in the project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code_escrow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22923" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="8039" RevisionGUID="1b22b266-1deb-4a51-abfc-ce2c529a495e" CreationDate="2016-05-07T13:38:46.130" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/317798/how-to-find-good-quality-questions-on-stack-exchange-sites" />
  <row Id="22924" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8039" RevisionGUID="38681e3b-a7e4-47b7-9893-00b94a86c185" CreationDate="2016-05-07T13:26:21.743" UserId="88759" Text="I love this site for the opportunity it gives for learning and asking questions, but sometimes I find it hard to find something interesting to read and think about or solve. There's so much noise. By browsing the questions page I rarely find the stuff that interests me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I usually do is go to the users tab, then find users with high reputations scores and then go read questions and answers they gave.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you have some other strategies for finding interesting reading on this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22925" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8039" RevisionGUID="38681e3b-a7e4-47b7-9893-00b94a86c185" CreationDate="2016-05-07T13:26:21.743" UserId="88759" Text="How to find good quality questions on Stack Exchange sites?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22926" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8039" RevisionGUID="38681e3b-a7e4-47b7-9893-00b94a86c185" CreationDate="2016-05-07T13:26:21.743" UserId="88759" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22927" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8040" RevisionGUID="16be89d9-5f93-4157-8f06-1644ac96f9f7" CreationDate="2016-05-07T13:57:09.850" UserId="174505" Text="My suggestion would be to use tags. You can set the tags that you are specifically interested in. Questions with those tags will then be highlighted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also search for questions on a specific tag. As an example if you are normally using C# you could step out of the box by looking at Haskell questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have my personal interests, but I also like to read questions outside my interests, as it can challenge your view of the programming world.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't be afraid of learning something new and especially reading opinions of users that you disagree with. The really good thing about SE is that people actually argue their case and do so without being offensive." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22928" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8041" RevisionGUID="afc3d419-da36-42be-ade3-e03590fe4108" CreationDate="2016-05-07T18:14:54.577" UserId="44110" Text="I have am writing my first Windows Store Application.  I have some question not about the software itself but the process of submitting an application to the Windows Store.  Would that be an appropriate question on this site?   " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22929" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8041" RevisionGUID="afc3d419-da36-42be-ade3-e03590fe4108" CreationDate="2016-05-07T18:14:54.577" UserId="44110" Text="First Windows Store Application" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22930" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8041" RevisionGUID="afc3d419-da36-42be-ade3-e03590fe4108" CreationDate="2016-05-07T18:14:54.577" UserId="44110" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22931" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8042" RevisionGUID="728407d3-a274-42cd-8b71-8cf31cfcaa45" CreationDate="2016-05-07T18:17:30.637" UserId="74200" Text="Contact the FSF or SFLC for help on GPL enforcement. Or http://gpl-violations.org" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22932" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8043" RevisionGUID="9c81abc6-21fe-4950-b96a-1fae450ca2eb" CreationDate="2016-05-07T18:21:16.980" UserId="4" Text="No. Questions about specific products and services (such as the Windows Store) should go toward whatever support channels that product or service has." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22933" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8041" RevisionGUID="87215484-6025-492f-a506-86304ed46b70" CreationDate="2016-05-07T18:39:05.850" UserId="44110" Comment="added 10 characters in body" Text="I have am writing my first Windows Store Application.  I have some questions / advice not about the software itself but the process of submitting an application to the Windows Store.  Would that be an appropriate question on this site?   " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22934" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8044" RevisionGUID="b2fb084a-3d4d-46bf-bfc7-27789cbbb66d" CreationDate="2016-05-09T11:18:00.817" UserId="125157" Text="Well if you are going to change the stack name to reflect a conceptual or theoretical basis for questions that would surely invite questions which are conceptual or theoretical. Conceptual or theoretical questions are half a step away from open-ended or opinion based answers, which are unpalatable to any stack.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;software design would be a more accurate stack description (as opposed to &quot;programmers&quot; which is a poor choice of title in multiple ways). But software design would tend towards answers that are best guesses, predictions, and hypotheses. Sure, these things can be backed up by evidence, but they are not definitive answers, surely, and must be frowned upon?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides which, insofar that software development can be answered here, it can equally be answered in StackOverflow, which has a far greater volume of users (can't guess why).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22935" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8045" RevisionGUID="bb47ffa9-36d4-46eb-a95b-9bbf0ad2c8d7" CreationDate="2016-05-13T00:17:31.950" UserId="12893" Text="I have two similar and short questions about C programming:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is there a shorthand for `argv[*index]` ?&#xD;&#xA;2. Is `my_struct[index].my_member` the same as `my_struct-&gt;my_member` or is the later referred to as `my_struct.my_member` and they are different?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should the above be one question, two questions, or no question at all for some reason?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22936" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8045" RevisionGUID="bb47ffa9-36d4-46eb-a95b-9bbf0ad2c8d7" CreationDate="2016-05-13T00:17:31.950" UserId="12893" Text="Should these be one, two or no questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22937" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8045" RevisionGUID="bb47ffa9-36d4-46eb-a95b-9bbf0ad2c8d7" CreationDate="2016-05-13T00:17:31.950" UserId="12893" Text="|support|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22938" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8045" RevisionGUID="dff3d5be-4a2c-4dbc-8776-c90fe0217186" CreationDate="2016-05-13T00:33:51.973" UserId="12893" Comment="added 59 characters in body; edited title" Text="I have three similar and short questions about C programming:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is there a shorthand for `argv[*index]` ?&#xD;&#xA;2. Is `my_struct[index].my_member` the same as `my_struct-&gt;my_member` or is the later referred to as `my_struct.my_member` and they are different?&#xD;&#xA;3. Is there a shorthand for `(*i)++` ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should the above be one question, two questions, three questions, or no question at all for some reason?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22939" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8045" RevisionGUID="dff3d5be-4a2c-4dbc-8776-c90fe0217186" CreationDate="2016-05-13T00:33:51.973" UserId="12893" Comment="added 59 characters in body; edited title" Text="Should these be one, two, three or no questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22940" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8046" RevisionGUID="a642e63d-19a2-4e4c-bbcb-3f20fb49f54f" CreationDate="2016-05-13T00:38:09.307" UserId="161917" Text="All of these are off-topic on this site, as this site focuses on *conceptual* questions about design and architecture issues rather than technical details about language syntax and semantics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While these would be on-topic at StackOverflow, I have no idea how well received they would be. #2 in particular should be thoroughly covered by any introductory C or C++ tutorial, so I would not be surprised if that got downvoted for lack of research." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22941" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7032" RevisionGUID="99f33c16-4039-422f-ac65-30ea00634a3a" CreationDate="2016-05-13T13:56:52.813" UserId="125157" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body" Text="Got to laugh at the questions that have been upvoted a thousand times, favourited a few hundred, have a really popular and upvoted answer... and the mods have locked the thing because it doesn't conform to their view of what the Stack should be. They probably downvoted it too, a couple of times, out of spite. :P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So to answer **your** question, it is a mindset; not anything to do with software limitations. The entire concept of deliberately blocking others from answering questions is one without merit in the first place, of course. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22942" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8047" RevisionGUID="f34bc788-5558-45ab-91a1-0f627d81b442" CreationDate="2016-05-15T14:31:10.140" UserId="25849" Text="The question:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35898/how-and-where-do-you-store-your-private-work-sourcecode/&#xD;&#xA;is currently locked, but not deleted, as it is being kept for historical reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It does have a lot of views: 24,601, and 19 upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;It is off-topic as it is asking for everyone's personal opinions.&#xD;&#xA;Which is too discussy for our format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If asked today, it would probably be closed.&#xD;&#xA;Then downvoted to the point that it is deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now, having it locked,&#xD;&#xA;means that you can not down-vote, nor correct  what are now, terribly incorrect/nonoptimal answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the historical lock is damning us to be having blatently poor advise on the site, without the power to correct it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think this question has enough historical note, to keep it, and let it be wrong for ever.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22943" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8047" RevisionGUID="f34bc788-5558-45ab-91a1-0f627d81b442" CreationDate="2016-05-15T14:31:10.140" UserId="25849" Text="Delete/Unlock the &quot;Historically Locked&quot; How and where do you store your private work/sourcecode?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22944" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8047" RevisionGUID="f34bc788-5558-45ab-91a1-0f627d81b442" CreationDate="2016-05-15T14:31:10.140" UserId="25849" Text="|discussion|specific-question|locked-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22945" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8048" RevisionGUID="e53d0f67-7165-48d6-8f02-eade415206f2" CreationDate="2016-05-17T00:15:11.677" UserId="4" Text="The answers were...abysmal. Yes, it had a lot of views, but I don't see how it can serve as a useful reference based on the answers there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22946" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8047" RevisionGUID="96bb5439-0be9-4b8f-8845-5dccbcb9f57a" CreationDate="2016-05-17T01:36:40.597" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/732384307000561666" />
  <row Id="22947" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8049" RevisionGUID="891c36c1-5675-4d09-95fa-eb13e6008f7c" CreationDate="2016-05-20T20:29:24.870" UserId="12893" Text="In Sweden the authorities have run out of social security numbers because so many immigrants are &quot;born&quot; on 1st of january or 1st of july because those are important dates (so they are booked as being born those days even though they were not). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So social security numbers for example 1991-01-01-xxxx have run out. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I wonder if it would be an idea to switch to hexadecimal digits at the end? Then there can be more combinations. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder if this question can fit somewhere in a programming / science context?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22948" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8049" RevisionGUID="891c36c1-5675-4d09-95fa-eb13e6008f7c" CreationDate="2016-05-20T20:29:24.870" UserId="12893" Text="Where can I ask this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22949" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8049" RevisionGUID="891c36c1-5675-4d09-95fa-eb13e6008f7c" CreationDate="2016-05-20T20:29:24.870" UserId="12893" Text="|support|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22950" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7935" RevisionGUID="bd11fb33-1c96-478e-b126-56b382723a7d" CreationDate="2016-05-21T00:34:03.230" UserId="-1" Text="|feature-request|site-attributes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22951" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8050" RevisionGUID="a9e1c0fb-a1a0-4bc4-99e1-3f704676a4aa" CreationDate="2016-05-21T08:32:33.840" UserId="47" Text="This wouldn't be on topic here. As Nathan pointed out in his comment it *might* be on topic on the UX site, but to honest I'd probably vote to close there too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the first instance have you verified that the claim is true. To me this sounds like something an anti-immigration group would put out to stir up trouble.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22952" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8051" RevisionGUID="ab743357-6c79-464b-b943-39abc45f3766" CreationDate="2016-05-21T15:55:31.440" UserId="131624" Text="Should http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/319117/how-to-generate-random-negative-biginteger-in-java/319119#319119 be migrated to stackoverflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It shows a clear goal and a failed attempt at a solution.  While I don't feel it's on topic here it seems a good fit for stackoverflow.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has been closed as a debugging question.  If there is a reason not to move it to stackoverflow I'd like to know what it is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also wondering if I should have done more than point out that it was a stackoverflow style question in the comments.  Do we flag questions in need of migration?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22953" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8051" RevisionGUID="ab743357-6c79-464b-b943-39abc45f3766" CreationDate="2016-05-21T15:55:31.440" UserId="131624" Text="Should this debugging question be migrated to StackOverflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22954" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8051" RevisionGUID="ab743357-6c79-464b-b943-39abc45f3766" CreationDate="2016-05-21T15:55:31.440" UserId="131624" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22955" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8052" RevisionGUID="c2cee633-a45f-4316-8502-60ba4f1d402a" CreationDate="2016-05-21T17:06:28.090" UserId="47" Text="In this case I probably wouldn't have migrated because it's not a particularly good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Users with more than 3,000 reputation can vote to migrate (close -&gt; off topic -&gt; belongs on another site -&gt; Stack Overflow). If a majority flag to migrate it gets migrated unless:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The OP is question blocked on Stack Overflow. Not even a moderator can migrate in these circumstances.&#xD;&#xA;2. The OP hasn't used any flags that also exist on Stack Overflow. A moderator can migrate in these circumstances.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Users with less than 3,000 reputation can flag to migrate (flag -&gt; off topic -&gt; belongs on another site -&gt; Stack Overflow). This puts the question onto the close review queue for 3,000+ rep users to handle." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22956" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8052" RevisionGUID="56a43799-145b-41f0-a6ef-027dc850bcb3" CreationDate="2016-05-21T17:38:13.360" UserId="47" Comment="typo" Text="In this case I probably wouldn't have migrated because it's not a particularly good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Users with more than 3,000 reputation can vote to migrate (close -&gt; off topic -&gt; belongs on another site -&gt; Stack Overflow). If a majority flag to migrate it gets migrated unless:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The OP is question blocked on Stack Overflow. Not even a moderator can migrate in these circumstances.&#xD;&#xA;2. The OP hasn't used any tags that also exist on Stack Overflow. A moderator can migrate in these circumstances.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Users with less than 3,000 reputation can flag to migrate (flag -&gt; off topic -&gt; belongs on another site -&gt; Stack Overflow). This puts the question onto the close review queue for 3,000+ rep users to handle." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22957" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8053" RevisionGUID="fda86f05-9147-46a1-aab3-f60a4604ee5c" CreationDate="2016-05-22T10:28:30.773" UserId="161917" Text="Pretty much everything in this tag needs deletion, but there are two old &quot;merges&quot; that make some of the questions impossible for the community to delete, namely:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9944/what-is-the-difference-between-software-engineer-and-software-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; merged by Yannis♦ Nov 6 '12 at 15:26  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question was merged with What are the key differences between software engineers and programmers? [closed] because it is an exact duplicate of that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165625/what-is-the-difference-between-web-designers-and-developers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; merged by maple_shaft♦ Oct 29 '12 at 18:33  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question was merged with What are the boundaries between the responsibilities of a web designer and a web developer? [closed] because it is an exact duplicate of that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I assume there's no need to reiterate why job definition questions are off-topic and delete-worthy, so could a moderator please nuke these for the rest of us?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22958" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8053" RevisionGUID="fda86f05-9147-46a1-aab3-f60a4604ee5c" CreationDate="2016-05-22T10:28:30.773" UserId="161917" Text="Delete/unlock the [job-definition] questions locked by merges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22959" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8053" RevisionGUID="fda86f05-9147-46a1-aab3-f60a4604ee5c" CreationDate="2016-05-22T10:28:30.773" UserId="161917" Text="|discussion|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22960" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8049" RevisionGUID="f002653f-ebce-46b6-90a1-68be25b64098" CreationDate="2016-05-23T14:08:31.340" UserId="1204" Comment="edited title" Text="Where can I ask this question about Social Security Numbers in Sweden?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22961" PostHistoryTypeId="50" PostId="7770" RevisionGUID="2a191bb3-a6d4-4326-83f4-fa04d2efa984" CreationDate="2016-05-23T20:41:10.610" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="22962" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8054" RevisionGUID="c285c838-6c88-4939-a0e3-ecbddaaa32f7" CreationDate="2016-05-23T21:29:36.613" UserId="106878" Text="&#xD;&#xA;It took us a good while, but the Community Team has circled up and here's where we stand on your request to change Programmers.SE's name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###We agree that renaming this site is a good idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Programmers&quot; is an affinity group, whereas &quot;Software Architecture&quot; (for example) is an action and a discipline. It is entirely possible that changing the site's name will send clearer signals and prime new users to ask questions more consistently in line with what y'all would be proud to see and answer, particularly given where this site’s scope has solidified over the past few years.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_So yes, we're open to proceeding with a name change._ That said, we'll need to make sure the change makes the kind of difference you want it to, because we can't repeat this process again several years down the line. We gotta get it right _this_ time. Last time the site was renamed, the scope was very much still in flux; by now, hopefully you can identify much more precisely _what this site is about_ and commit to both a name _and_ description _and_ introductory materials that communicate this body of knowledge clearly and succinctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Here's what the Community Team needs before we can move forward:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Tell us what you're proposing as the new site name.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &quot;Software Engineering&quot; and &quot;Software Architecture&quot; both look like good options from where I stand. Let’s not turn this into a bikeshed discussion; we need well-considered options here, not a popularity contest - Coffee McWhiskeyface is right out. The ideal name will suggest _at a glance_ what this site is about, without suggesting that it might be “fix my code” even a little bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Lay out what the [new site scope](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) will be.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Above all else, **the scope needs to be simple**. Seriously. No more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no gerrymandering - **it needs to be easy for any new visitor who bothers to read** and even mildly pays attention to what they're reading to know what they can and cannot ask about here. Eliminate ambiguity for a first time poster once and for all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's talk again in a month." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22963" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8055" RevisionGUID="f204aac2-bd3c-41d7-8323-15090326fb5f" CreationDate="2016-05-24T14:33:18.863" UserId="25476" Text="I deleted both of these merge sources for you.  Hopefully this allows you to cast delete votes on the merge targets if you so wish. I am not touching those for right now but if you are still blocked from casting a delete vote then let me know." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22964" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8056" RevisionGUID="951c49bb-f3c6-438a-92c5-97452fee8ccc" CreationDate="2016-05-24T15:57:48.517" UserId="4" Text="From [Ana, a Stack Exchange Community Manager][1] in [the previous question about changing the site name][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It took us a good while, but the Community Team has circled up and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; here's where we stand on your request to change Programmers.SE's name.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###We agree that renaming this site is a good idea.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Programmers&quot; is an affinity group, whereas &quot;Software Architecture&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (for example) is an action and a discipline. It is entirely possible&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that changing the site's name will send clearer signals and prime new&#xD;&#xA;&gt; users to ask questions more consistently in line with what y'all would&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be proud to see and answer, particularly given where this site’s scope&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has solidified over the past few years.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; _So yes, we're open to proceeding with a name change._ That said, we'll need to make sure the change makes the kind of difference you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; want it to, because we can't repeat this process again several years&#xD;&#xA;&gt; down the line. We gotta get it right _this_ time. Last time the site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was renamed, the scope was very much still in flux; by now, hopefully&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you can identify much more precisely _what this site is about_ and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; commit to both a name _and_ description _and_ introductory materials&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that communicate this body of knowledge clearly and succinctly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Here's what the Community Team needs before we can move forward:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. **Tell us what you're proposing as the new site name.**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    &quot;Software Engineering&quot; and &quot;Software Architecture&quot; both look like&#xD;&#xA;&gt; good options from where I stand. Let’s not turn this into a bikeshed&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion; we need well-considered options here, not a popularity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; contest - Coffee McWhiskeyface is right out. The ideal name will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest _at a glance_ what this site is about, without suggesting that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it might be “fix my code” even a little bit.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. **Lay out what the [new site scope](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) will be.**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    Above all else, **the scope needs to be simple**. Seriously. No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gerrymandering - **it needs to be easy for any new visitor who bothers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to read** and even mildly pays attention to what they're reading to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; know what they can and cannot ask about here. Eliminate ambiguity for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a first time poster once and for all.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Let's talk again in a month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start answering the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What should our site name be?&#xD;&#xA;* What should [our tour][3] say? Specifically, the first paragraph below the site title that begins with &quot;Programmers Stack Exchange is a question and answer site...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* What should our [Help Center's on-topic page][4] say about what is on and off-topic? Note that what this site is about and not about also does appear on the tour.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/106878/ana?tab=profile&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7935/4&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22965" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8056" RevisionGUID="951c49bb-f3c6-438a-92c5-97452fee8ccc" CreationDate="2016-05-24T15:57:48.517" UserId="4" Text="New Site Name and Scope Proposals" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22966" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8056" RevisionGUID="951c49bb-f3c6-438a-92c5-97452fee8ccc" CreationDate="2016-05-24T15:57:48.517" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|featured|on-topic-definition|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22967" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8057" RevisionGUID="8566422c-16b6-4a84-8600-4632cf31d747" CreationDate="2016-05-24T16:46:46.343" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I believe our scope is mostly fine already. I think the issues this site has are not related to scope, but a desire to devolve from Q&amp;A to an open-ended, discussion-friendly forum-like site. In other words, a partial or total revert to the [NPR days][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I fully support our current scope and focusing on questions that are narrowly-scoped and invite objective answers, or at least good subjective answers. We need to buck the trend of being known as &quot;that place where you can ask about your [green field or blue sky][2] projects. These may be the types of questions that people need answered, but they are difficult to address in the Q&amp;A format and are not interesting to the high-reputation users who provide the bulk of the useful answers on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly, our name does not help. It does not accurately reflect what this site is about. It invites questions that are not appropriate here. Furthermore, our [on-topic list][3] is on the longer side compared to other Stack Exchange sites. It may not be the longest, but it is not very concise nor does it accurately convey the overall theme of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To address these concerns, I advocate for the following three changes (two requested in Ana's meta answer plus one more):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Change our name to Software Engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is in a name? &quot;First impressions.&quot; _We are not about programming, nor are we a catch-all bucket for Programmers' issues_. Look at our on-topic list: we are about software engineering. &quot;Programmers&quot; evokes NPR-style questions in my mind. &quot;Oh, I am a programmer and I have a question about some random topic. This site is called Programmers. I should load up the crap cannon and ask my question here.&quot; Nope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Refactor the on-topic list&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember earlier, I said our scope is fine but the list is verbose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Software lifecycle: requirements, design, architecture, development methodologies, unit testing.&#xD;&#xA;1. Software configuration management strategies (the way it is now, but make it clear that SCM _tool_ questions are off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;1. Algorithm and data structure concepts.&#xD;&#xA;1. Software engineering and team management and processes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is primarily a restructuring of the current list into fewer bullet points that are more closely related, but there are two important changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. No more software licensing questions. These tend to be problematic, resulting in a zillion comments about whether a particular question is on-topic or not, or whether a programmer rather than a lawyer can answer it. We should avoid the whole debate and make them categorically off-topic. [Open Source SE][4] is in beta but doing well, and covers the majority of licensing questions that are currently on-topic here. Closed-source licensing questions typically end with &quot;ask the vendor&quot; anyway.&#xD;&#xA;1. QA is no longer on-topic. We have a [QA.SE][5] site, and we do not get QA questions anyway. Questions about _unit testing_ are very valid to software engineering and covered in the first item in the on-topic list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Site UI Redesign&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change the site design to something that &quot;looks&quot; more like software engineering, not a programmer's desk. I am awful with graphics design so I cannot recommend much, but we need a change here. Something that looks unfriendly to someone who wants to post a code dump, or ask a broad blue sky question with zero useful information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this site is pretty much set up to be a good, useful site. We just need some guardrails to help guide people away from the broad, opinion-based questions and more toward the interesting design and software engineering questions that are already on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6961/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22968" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8058" RevisionGUID="f0cd0abd-de29-491a-8aca-0a12faffc9e4" CreationDate="2016-05-24T17:59:26.163" UserId="25476" Text="How happy I am that this day has finally come!  These are my suggestions, some similarities to Snowman's answer with certain omissions and value-adds.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Site Name ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I favor the new site name, **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I dislike the name, **Software Architecture** however as this can be considered a distinct subtype discipline of Software Engineering in general.  The site is far more than just Software Architecture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Opening Statement ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software engineering and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software engineering, software architecture and software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Scope ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relatively the same with a few tweaks I would mildly suggest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I am open to removing Software Licensing from on-topic.  Snowman makes good points that these questions are problematic most of the time and often in that fuzzy legal area.&#xD;&#xA; - I am supportive of adding the following on topic scope statements like below&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Continuous Integration, Deployment and Dev Ops Strategies&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Release Management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These kinds of questions I think most people would agree if well formed would be a welcome addition to the site, however it would be nice to more explicitly state that this is a friendly area for such questions as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Questions I would like Answered ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think Project Management questions are a fuzzy area in the sites scope right now.  Clearly if I were managing the build out of a data center this would not fall in the site scope.  If I were a tech lead on an Agile Scrum team then that is well established as on topic currently.  Agile and Project Management for software development projects in general are on topic at Project Management site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should questions about Agile, Scrum and other Project Management methodologies continue to be on topic or is this a distraction?  If they should be on topic then were is the definitive line drawn in the sand?  How do we accurately reflect this in our On Topic statement?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22969" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8058" RevisionGUID="71930560-1d9c-47ab-95dd-f950ddce1712" CreationDate="2016-05-24T18:04:30.040" UserId="25476" Comment="added 49 characters in body" Text="How happy I am that this day has finally come!  These are my suggestions, some similarities to Snowman's answer with certain omissions and value-adds.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Site Name ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I favor the new site name, **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I dislike the name, **Software Architecture** however as this can be considered a distinct subtype discipline of Software Engineering in general.  The site is far more than just Software Architecture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Opening Statement ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software engineering and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software engineering, software architecture and software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Scope ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relatively the same with a few tweaks I would mildly suggest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I am open to removing Software Licensing from on-topic.  Snowman makes good points that these questions are problematic most of the time and often in that fuzzy legal area.&#xD;&#xA; - I am supportive of adding the following on topic scope statements like below&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Continuous Integration, Deployment and Dev Ops Strategies&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Release Management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Engineering Accreditation and Certification&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These kinds of questions I think most people would agree if well formed would be a welcome addition to the site, however it would be nice to more explicitly state that this is a friendly area for such questions as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Questions I would like Answered ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think Project Management questions are a fuzzy area in the sites scope right now.  Clearly if I were managing the build out of a data center this would not fall in the site scope.  If I were a tech lead on an Agile Scrum team then that is well established as on topic currently.  Agile and Project Management for software development projects in general are on topic at Project Management site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should questions about Agile, Scrum and other Project Management methodologies continue to be on topic or is this a distraction?  If they should be on topic then were is the definitive line drawn in the sand?  How do we accurately reflect this in our On Topic statement?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22970" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8058" RevisionGUID="1b72baed-882b-4e0e-8b88-9debed38d780" CreationDate="2016-05-24T18:14:38.890" UserId="25476" Comment="deleted 49 characters in body" Text="How happy I am that this day has finally come!  These are my suggestions, some similarities to Snowman's answer with certain omissions and value-adds.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Site Name ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I favor the new site name, **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I dislike the name, **Software Architecture** however as this can be considered a distinct subtype discipline of Software Engineering in general.  The site is far more than just Software Architecture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Opening Statement ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software engineering and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software engineering, software architecture and software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Scope ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relatively the same with a few tweaks I would mildly suggest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I am open to removing Software Licensing from on-topic.  Snowman makes good points that these questions are problematic most of the time and often in that fuzzy legal area.&#xD;&#xA; - I am supportive of adding the following on topic scope statements like below&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Continuous Integration, Deployment and Dev Ops Strategies&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Release Management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These kinds of questions I think most people would agree if well formed would be a welcome addition to the site, however it would be nice to more explicitly state that this is a friendly area for such questions as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Questions I would like Answered ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think Project Management questions are a fuzzy area in the sites scope right now.  Clearly if I were managing the build out of a data center this would not fall in the site scope.  If I were a tech lead on an Agile Scrum team then that is well established as on topic currently.  Agile and Project Management for software development projects in general are on topic at Project Management site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should questions about Agile, Scrum and other Project Management methodologies continue to be on topic or is this a distraction?  If they should be on topic then were is the definitive line drawn in the sand?  How do we accurately reflect this in our On Topic statement?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22973" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8058" RevisionGUID="60d2f2c8-4d2b-4dea-8b26-58a60eafd8ec" CreationDate="2016-05-24T19:40:14.963" UserId="25476" Comment="added 63 characters in body" Text="How happy I am that this day has finally come!  These are my suggestions, some similarities to Snowman's answer with certain omissions and value-adds.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Site Name ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I favor the new site name, **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am neutral to the new site name, **Software Development**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I dislike the name, **Software Architecture** however as this can be considered a distinct subtype discipline of Software Engineering in general.  The site is far more than just Software Architecture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Opening Statement ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software engineering and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software engineering, software architecture and software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Scope ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relatively the same with a few tweaks I would mildly suggest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I am open to removing Software Licensing from on-topic.  Snowman makes good points that these questions are problematic most of the time and often in that fuzzy legal area.&#xD;&#xA; - I am supportive of adding the following on topic scope statements like below&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Continuous Integration, Deployment and Dev Ops Strategies&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Release Management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These kinds of questions I think most people would agree if well formed would be a welcome addition to the site, however it would be nice to more explicitly state that this is a friendly area for such questions as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Questions I would like Answered ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think Project Management questions are a fuzzy area in the sites scope right now.  Clearly if I were managing the build out of a data center this would not fall in the site scope.  If I were a tech lead on an Agile Scrum team then that is well established as on topic currently.  Agile and Project Management for software development projects in general are on topic at Project Management site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should questions about Agile, Scrum and other Project Management methodologies continue to be on topic or is this a distraction?  If they should be on topic then were is the definitive line drawn in the sand?  How do we accurately reflect this in our On Topic statement?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22974" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8057" RevisionGUID="c544cbf8-06cb-4d6b-81a6-d4b2f494bc9c" CreationDate="2016-05-24T20:13:29.853" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Removed bit about QA." Text="I believe our scope is mostly fine already. I think the issues this site has are not related to scope, but a desire to devolve from Q&amp;A to an open-ended, discussion-friendly forum-like site. In other words, a partial or total revert to the [NPR days][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I fully support our current scope and focusing on questions that are narrowly-scoped and invite objective answers, or at least good subjective answers. We need to buck the trend of being known as &quot;that place where you can ask about your [green field or blue sky][2] projects. These may be the types of questions that people need answered, but they are difficult to address in the Q&amp;A format and are not interesting to the high-reputation users who provide the bulk of the useful answers on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly, our name does not help. It does not accurately reflect what this site is about. It invites questions that are not appropriate here. Furthermore, our [on-topic list][3] is on the longer side compared to other Stack Exchange sites. It may not be the longest, but it is not very concise nor does it accurately convey the overall theme of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To address these concerns, I advocate for the following three changes (two requested in Ana's meta answer plus one more):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Change our name to Software Engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is in a name? &quot;First impressions.&quot; _We are not about programming, nor are we a catch-all bucket for Programmers' issues_. Look at our on-topic list: we are about software engineering. &quot;Programmers&quot; evokes NPR-style questions in my mind. &quot;Oh, I am a programmer and I have a question about some random topic. This site is called Programmers. I should load up the crap cannon and ask my question here.&quot; Nope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Refactor the on-topic list&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember earlier, I said our scope is fine but the list is verbose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Software lifecycle: requirements, design, architecture, development methodologies, unit testing.&#xD;&#xA;1. Software configuration management strategies (the way it is now, but make it clear that SCM _tool_ questions are off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;1. Algorithm and data structure concepts.&#xD;&#xA;1. Software engineering and team management and processes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is primarily a restructuring of the current list into fewer bullet points that are more closely related, but there is one important change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No more software licensing questions. These tend to be problematic, resulting in a zillion comments about whether a particular question is on-topic or not, or whether a programmer rather than a lawyer can answer it. We should avoid the whole debate and make them categorically off-topic. [Open Source SE][4] is in beta but doing well, and covers the majority of licensing questions that are currently on-topic here. Closed-source licensing questions typically end with &quot;ask the vendor&quot; anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Site UI Redesign&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change the site design to something that &quot;looks&quot; more like software engineering, not a programmer's desk. I am awful with graphics design so I cannot recommend much, but we need a change here. Something that looks unfriendly to someone who wants to post a code dump, or ask a broad blue sky question with zero useful information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this site is pretty much set up to be a good, useful site. We just need some guardrails to help guide people away from the broad, opinion-based questions and more toward the interesting design and software engineering questions that are already on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3412/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6961/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22975" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8060" RevisionGUID="8e0b073f-e1f9-4a42-91f7-6687938f44f2" CreationDate="2016-05-24T20:22:06.333" UserId="1130" Text="I like [maple_shaft's answer][1], however wanted to write my own for reducing the [on-topic page's wall-of-text][2] since it's far too long for a comment on his answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software engineering and related fields&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software engineering, software architecture, and software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm or data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software release management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance or testing strategies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * understanding, writing, or debugging code (check out [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career, workplace, education, or lifestyle advice&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [legal advice or aid][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For more details, please see [our curated FAQ on Meta Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize changes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Replaced initial paragraph with tag line from maple_shaft's answer&#xD;&#xA;* Reduced on-topic list. Its not to say those other items are not on-topic, but they can be generally lumped together with a different bullet point or are a part of the broader common definition of &quot;software engineering&quot;. I am tempted to remove the QA&amp;Testing bullet point as well, but I'll leave that up to someone else.&#xD;&#xA;* Reduced the off-topic list. This is not to say those items are now on-topic, but I think they no longer will need to be explicitly mentioned in the On-Topic page as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;* Removed or reduced a lot of the remaining text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Scope should not change. Even licensing questions can sit in a gray area where if the specific question falls under the general umbrella of software engineering, it's OK, but if it's too close to &quot;legal aid&quot;, it's off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8058/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7248/how-do-you-get-20-rep-to-get-into-chat&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/faq/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22976" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8056" RevisionGUID="0d087d57-7ad5-4722-b3f4-1a675a88b276" CreationDate="2016-05-24T22:51:15.223" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/735241779700764675" />
  <row Id="22977" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8061" RevisionGUID="b1d476de-4e33-4e50-8d14-1740da18a758" CreationDate="2016-05-24T23:31:44.023" UserId="1204" Text="##Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's as good a title as you're going to get.  Here's why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  It's *not* &quot;Programmers,&quot; which smacks of &quot;people who write teh codez.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Electrical Engineering's name change (from Electronics) was very good for them.  It raised the quality bar on that site significantly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The On-Topic page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frankly, after watching this site for as long as I have, I strongly believe that we should lead with a brief summary of *what we're not.*  We can caution people right up front while still keeping it light and friendly.  Something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###IMPORTANT STUFF:&#xD;&#xA;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions related to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - Software Requirements&#xD;&#xA; - Software Architecture and Design&#xD;&#xA; - Algorithms and Data Structures&#xD;&#xA; - Quality Assurance and Resting&#xD;&#xA; - Development Methodologies and Processes&#xD;&#xA; - Software Configuration Management&#xD;&#xA; - Software Engineering Management&#xD;&#xA; - Software Licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, this needs to be an *interstitial page,* something that is put right in front of people before they ask their first question.  ServerFault did something similar; we can do the same." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22978" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8061" RevisionGUID="bed15c6e-a4b7-43d6-b5cb-a129842a70e5" CreationDate="2016-05-24T23:38:34.167" UserId="1204" Comment="added 45 characters in body" Text="##Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's as good a title as you're going to get.  Here's why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  It's *not* &quot;Programmers,&quot; which smacks of &quot;people who write teh codez.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Electrical Engineering's name change (from Electronics) was very good for them.  It raised the quality bar on that site significantly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The On-Topic page, Tour Page, or Whatever New Users See First™&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frankly, after watching this site for as long as I have, I strongly believe that we should lead with a brief summary of *what we're not.*  We can caution people right up front while still keeping it light and friendly.  Something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###IMPORTANT STUFF:&#xD;&#xA;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions related to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - Software Requirements&#xD;&#xA; - Software Architecture and Design&#xD;&#xA; - Algorithms and Data Structures&#xD;&#xA; - Quality Assurance and Testing&#xD;&#xA; - Development Methodologies and Processes&#xD;&#xA; - Software Configuration Management&#xD;&#xA; - Software Engineering Management&#xD;&#xA; - Software Licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, this needs to be an *interstitial page,* something that is put right in front of people before they ask their first question, with a checkbox at the bottom that says &quot;I have read and understand this page.  No, really.  I have.&quot; ServerFault did something similar; we can do the same." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22979" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8061" RevisionGUID="5e285c52-b95e-44bc-a70e-95c1fed163f7" CreationDate="2016-05-24T23:44:05.087" UserId="1204" Comment="added 45 characters in body" Text="##Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's as good a title as you're going to get.  Here's why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  It's *not* &quot;Programmers,&quot; which smacks of &quot;people who write teh codez.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Electrical Engineering's name change (from Electronics) was very good for them.  It raised the quality bar on that site significantly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The On-Topic page, Tour Page, or Whatever New Users See First™&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frankly, after watching this site for as long as I have, I strongly believe that we should lead with a brief summary of *what we're not.*  We can caution people right up front while still keeping it light and friendly.  Something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###IMPORTANT STUFF:&#xD;&#xA;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions related to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - Software Requirements&#xD;&#xA; - Software Architecture and Design&#xD;&#xA; - Algorithms and Data Structures&#xD;&#xA; - Quality Assurance and Testing&#xD;&#xA; - Development Methodologies and Processes&#xD;&#xA; - Software Configuration Management&#xD;&#xA; - Software Engineering Management&#xD;&#xA; - &lt;s&gt;Software Licensing&lt;/s&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, this needs to be an *interstitial page,* something that is put right in front of people before they ask their first question, with a checkbox at the bottom that says &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page.  No, really.  I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ServerFault did something similar; we can do the same." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22980" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8061" RevisionGUID="ab7bdaaf-3950-4e76-ad6e-5a542ba045a8" CreationDate="2016-05-24T23:50:57.983" UserId="1204" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="##Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's as good a site title as you're going to get.  Here's why:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  It's *not* &quot;Programmers,&quot; which smacks of `people who write teh codez.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Electrical Engineering's name change (from Electronics) was very good for them.  It raised the quality bar on that site significantly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The On-Topic page, Tour Page, or Whatever New Users See First™&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frankly, after watching this site for as long as I have, I strongly believe that we should lead with a brief summary of *what we're not.*  We can caution people right up front while still keeping it light and friendly.  Something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###IMPORTANT STUFF:&#xD;&#xA;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions related to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - Software Requirements&#xD;&#xA; - Software Architecture and Design&#xD;&#xA; - Algorithms and Data Structures&#xD;&#xA; - Quality Assurance and Testing&#xD;&#xA; - Development Methodologies and Processes&#xD;&#xA; - Software Configuration Management&#xD;&#xA; - Software Engineering Management&#xD;&#xA; - &lt;s&gt;Software Licensing&lt;/s&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, this needs to be an *interstitial page,* something that is put right in front of people before they ask their first question, with a checkbox at the bottom that says &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page.  No, really.  I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ServerFault did something similar; we can do the same." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22981" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8061" RevisionGUID="e01d1f82-f2f8-46b1-ae2e-6e9944dde867" CreationDate="2016-05-24T23:57:06.327" UserId="1204" Comment="added 47 characters in body" Text="##Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's as good a site title as you're going to get.  Here's why:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  It's *not* &quot;Programmers,&quot; which smacks of `people who write teh codez.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Electrical Engineering's name change (from Electronics) was very good for them.  It raised the quality bar on that site significantly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The On-Topic page, Tour Page, or Whatever New Users See First™&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frankly, after watching this site for as long as I have, I strongly believe that we should lead with a brief summary of *what we're not.*  We can caution people right up front while still keeping it light and friendly.  Something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###IMPORTANT STUFF:&#xD;&#xA;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions related to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - Software Requirements&#xD;&#xA; - Software Architecture and Design&#xD;&#xA; - Algorithms and Data Structures&#xD;&#xA; - Quality Assurance and Testing&#xD;&#xA; - Development Methodologies and Processes&#xD;&#xA; - [Software Configuration Management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management)&#xD;&#xA; - [Engineering Management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, this needs to be an *interstitial page,* something that is put right in front of people before they ask their first question, with a checkbox at the bottom that says &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page.  No, really.  I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ServerFault did something similar; we can do the same." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22982" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8061" RevisionGUID="876b1419-ec45-4265-90fc-5b9516895938" CreationDate="2016-05-25T00:14:01.617" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="##Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's as good a site title as you're going to get.  Here's why:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  It's *not* &quot;Programmers,&quot; which smacks of `people who write teh codez.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Electrical Engineering's name change (from Electronics) was very good for them.  It raised the quality bar on that site significantly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The On-Topic page, Tour Page, or Whatever New Users See First™&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frankly, after watching this site for as long as I have, I strongly believe that we should lead with a brief summary of *what we're not.*  We can caution people right up front while still keeping it light and friendly.  Something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###IMPORTANT STUFF:&#xD;&#xA;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions related to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - Software Requirements&#xD;&#xA; - Software Architecture and Design&#xD;&#xA; - Algorithms and Data Structures&#xD;&#xA; - Quality Assurance and Testing&#xD;&#xA; - Development Methodologies and Processes&#xD;&#xA; - [Software Configuration Management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management)&#xD;&#xA; - [Engineering Management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, this needs to be an *interstitial page,* something that is put right in front of people before they ask their first question, with a checkbox at the bottom that says &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page. No, really. I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ServerFault did something similar; we can do the same." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22985" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8061" RevisionGUID="3b0cd826-361d-4679-8650-3cf40ba1e65d" CreationDate="2016-05-25T01:15:19.813" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 60 characters in body" Text="##Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's as good a site title as you're going to get.  Here's why:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  It's *not* &quot;Programmers,&quot; which smacks of `people who write teh codez.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Electrical Engineering's name change (from Electronics) was very good for them.  It raised the quality bar on that site significantly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The On-Topic page, Tour Page, or Whatever New Users See First™&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frankly, after watching this site for as long as I have, I strongly believe that we should lead with a brief summary of *what we're not.*  We can caution people right up front while still keeping it light and friendly.  Something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###IMPORTANT STUFF:&#xD;&#xA;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions related to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - Software Requirements&#xD;&#xA; - Software Architecture and Design&#xD;&#xA; - Algorithms and Data Structures&#xD;&#xA; - Quality Assurance and Testing&#xD;&#xA; - Development Methodologies and Processes&#xD;&#xA; - [Software Configuration Management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management)&#xD;&#xA; - Project Management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, this needs to be an *interstitial page,* something that is put right in front of people before they ask their first question, with a checkbox at the bottom that says &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page. No, really. I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ServerFault did something similar; we can do the same." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22986" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8062" RevisionGUID="4d6b245f-9e07-42b0-a815-7fc50d36edbb" CreationDate="2016-05-25T11:18:22.557" UserId="31260" Text="Just like most if not all prior answerers I like the current scope of the site as it is. To me, primary reason to participate here is pretty much covered in two bullets in [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First bullet is probably also on-topic at Stack Overflow (hat tip to Robert Harvey) but it doesn't help me over there, because these topics are difficult to find and follow at SO. Given that I am not interested in asking and answering code troubleshooting questions and that my interest in reading these is quite specific and limited, I essentially have no other option but Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the second bullet, it is probably also somehow covered at Project Management but, again, this doesn't help. I am primarily interested in these topics from perspective of a developer, not a manager, that makes it so much more comfortable to have them here, on a site where development and architecture concerns are firmly within site scope. Besides, my interest in &quot;pure management&quot; topics is rather limited and I am not fond of participating in the site which has these as primary focus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other bullet points (except for licensing, more on it below), I would be comfortable if these aren't mentioned explicitly but instead assumed to be okay in the context of &quot;my&quot; bullet points: requirements, algorithm and data structures, quality assurance and testing, configuration management, software engineering management.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that such implicit inclusion may make Programmers less of a welcoming home for some &quot;pure forms&quot; of QA and algorithms questions but such questions don't seem to be going particularly well here anyway, which makes it more of a theoretical concern. And, which is probably most important, such questions seem to have solid coverage at other SE sites which have them as primary focus (SQA, CS, TCS).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Licensing questions seem a bit tricky. I haven't yet seen compelling explanation of their fundamental relevance to &quot;my&quot; bullet points. But on the other hand I haven't yet seen compelling explanation for opposite either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of that I am not going to change my voting habits if licensing isn't listed explicitly. I just won't vote close these questions - or more precisely will handle them per [current guidance](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7265/31260). I may change this approach later if I find that some other SE site holds these questions really well (like it happened to career topics at Workplace) but as of now this doesn't seem to be the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness - since this question asks about site name - I don't care about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had some reservations on this in the past when I saw people expecting this to help us against floods of debugging garbage and I wasn't sure that this would help and it looked like in case if this fails, this could damage site image. &quot;Look, these suckers changed name of the site they had for 5 years only because they were scared by debugging spammers. And, you know, this didn't help them, bwa ha ha.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what I observe for past few weeks made me feel much safer about that. It looks like recently introduced [network wide rate limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/322265/839601) cut the flow of debugging off-topic garbage and do this fairly efficiently and that site name just doesn't matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the light of above, whatever name site community picks I will be fine with it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22987" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8063" RevisionGUID="7a33d2f2-bc95-49c1-a615-2e9997ac32fc" CreationDate="2016-05-26T00:28:57.413" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="###On behalf of emeritus member MichaelT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;There's nothing wrong with the scope. The essence of it could be condensed to fewer bullet points, but such is of realtivly minor consequence. The bullet points are more of an issue for moderators of other sites that check the help/on-topic before migrating... and the rare individual who read it before posting a comment of &quot;belongs on Programmers.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name, as desmonstrated in the comments of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/319375/ (10k link) is of some confusion to some people who post with the &quot;but I'm trying to ask programmers this question.&quot;  A name such as software-engineering or software-architecture may have give them second thought about where to post the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it should also be pointed out with the above question that this demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the Q&amp;A model that SE uses - to the point that changing the name alone will not do it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned in http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/279661/ the thing that new users (and lets be honest - a signficant chunk of the 70% closed questions are from new users) look at is other questions without regard for the &quot;on hold&quot; status of the question. There was a podcast awhile back by Joel and David about the intent of [Closed] - and part of that was as a head on a pike. I'm sure SE employees would more eaisly dig it out than I can. The mini-meta survey demonstrates that this is completely failing. One can refine the scope and change the name till the end of time - questions will be asked like the ones that show up when you go to the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This brings up an akward realization - the way to make the questions go away from immediate view is to down vote them heavily. This leads to the &quot;why are you all so negative&quot; posts which are not at all fun to deal with, especially without moderator and community manager support.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one wants to cut down on the off topic questions - close and delete the unsalvagable posts quickly. Gnat likes to point out that triage on Stack Oveflow helps with this. Failing the ability to prevent questions from showing up on the front page with triage, down votes, close votes, and 20k delete votes are the thing necessary to cut down on the off topic questions that reinforce the perception that this is where one is to ask such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This brings up another akward realiziation - the active pool of close votes and 20k delete votes is on the decline. And to this, no amount of UI, name change, fiddling with the help/on-topic, or trying to make a one sentence thing to put in the tour will accomplish signifcant amounts. Moderators will likely need to step up and more than just close and ignore the off topic questions - close and delete them - perferably quickly. Instead of 70% of the front page showing questions that one shouldn't ask, 70% of the front page should be showing questions that one should ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One might want to consider adjusting the privledge levels for a few months after the redesign, giving 10k or 15k users the ability to cast delete votes on questions that are less than a few days old... and reviving the 3 vote expirement again. The front page needs to reflect the scope and the both the moderators and the community at large needs to step up and make the site match the vision of what they want to see.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there isn't any change to how (and who) people cast close votes; or the duration that an unsalvagable question remains visible on the front page, serving as a model for how to ask another question - the results from this excersie in scope, name, and design will not likely have the intended effect of consistently reducing the number of off topic questions asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is another problem with the 'scope' though. It isn't about the scope itself, but rather the question of where does one draw the line with primarly opinion and too broad questions. Even with a more concise scope of Software lifecycle, Software configuration management, Algorithm and data structures and Software engineering and team management as described by Snowman, there are still questions that are primarly opinion or too broad that fit within this area of topicality.  This seems to be one of the more difficult and overlooked parts in this process of a name change - and these are the questions that have given the people who actively curate and moerate the site the most headaches.  Without any guidance (and I'm not going to offer any here), questions along the lines of &quot;how should I lay out my Git repo&quot; or &quot;what patterns/algorithims should I use to solve some problem&quot; will still be asked and still consume too much community moderation and curation time and still be a point of contentious debate on meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22989" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8064" RevisionGUID="510d7ac4-16d5-4d37-a3f8-35dc3e1f1dbf" CreationDate="2016-05-26T13:11:39.243" UserId="4" Text="## Site Name&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've started to come around to the name &quot;Software Engineering&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I still have some lingering objections regarding the overuse of the term &quot;engineering&quot; in software development, I think that the benefits would outweigh my personal objections. It does bring to mind a professional-oriented site that caters to people that work throughout the software development life cycle, from business analysts to developers to managers to leads. It also pairs nicely with Computer Science, especially since both correspond to the underlying academic disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Tour and Tagline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&amp;A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ripped this from sites like Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. I removed the portion about &quot;expert answers on conceptual questions about software development&quot; since that can be confusing and I don't see how it's necessary. I tended toward the wording used on Computer Science.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first line of the /help/on-topic page is just the first sentence of the /tour description, word-for-word.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## On-Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm shamelessly stealing this idea from Robert Harvey, but I think that we should do some minor refactoring and link to appropriate Wikipedia articles that define terms. Unfortunately, I don't think that we can get this down to &quot;no more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no gerrymandering&quot;. I think we can avoid multi-line comma-separated lists and gerrymandering, but the discipline of Software Engineering is broad. Being clear about what is on-topic and what is off-topic (and what sites support questions about things that are off-topic) is essential and helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that the shortest reasonable on-topic list would be something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;- software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;- software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;- software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;- software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I removed &quot;algorithm and data structure concepts&quot;, since I would consider that part of &quot;software architecture and design&quot;. Evaluating and choosing various data structures and algorithms is inherently a design activity. I also removed &quot;and testing&quot; from &quot;quality assurance and testing&quot; since testing is one aspect of quality assurance, but we don't take all testing questions (such as, for example, writing or debugging unit test code). I also merged &quot;software engineering management&quot; and &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; into &quot;software process, methods, and management&quot; since these three things are very tightly related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Like maple_shaft][10], I'd like to talk about software licensing. I recognize how important the topic is, but when it was added and clarified, neither the Law nor the Open Source Stack Exchange existed. It is something that software engineers operating in a professional environment should be aware of and do need to work in, and the IEEE does bury a small section on &quot;Legal Issues&quot; (referring to trademarks, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, professional liability, trade compliance, cybercrime) under &quot;Software Engineering Professional Practice&quot;. At the same time, the IEEE also puts things like &quot;Employment Contracts&quot;, team dynamics, working in multicultural environments, reading, writing, and presenting under &quot;Software Engineering Professional Practice&quot; and these are definitely off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, writing, or debugging code (check out Stack Overflow instead) how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (ask on The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - where to find a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resource&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career or education advice&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Slight reordering of the things that are off-topic. No major changes. I think it's pretty clear. We may want to check through the Meta questions that are currently linked and make sure they are correct. The biggest change is the removal of &quot;personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&quot; - I'd hope that a distinct change to the site name would make this very explicit to visitors as your personal life is not Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We may want to also identify some other sites to point people to. We could link to Software Recommendations and Hardware Recommendations next to &quot;product or service recommendations&quot;, as an example. There are also other sites that are related to software engineering that we don't identify as being off-topic (because it should be obvious) - Mathematics, Cross Validated/Statistics, User Experience, Information Security, Writers, Database Administrators, Code Review, Project Management (beta), Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing (beta), Computer Science, Engineering (beta), Law (beta), and Open Source (beta).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to see a theme change on the site. Something that is more professional. I like the general idea of diagrams and models, but parts of the site do seem cartooney. I'd like to be crisper, more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to look at methods for linking to related sites. Adding them to a Help Center page, like /help/on-topic, may work, but it would make that page much longer. I'd like to try to make Help Center pages smaller and less dense. It makes sense to point people to sites that they may not otherwise know about. Perhaps a Meta question that is part of the [tag:faq] would work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8058/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22990" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8064" RevisionGUID="a2617260-c0df-41ac-b2f9-9706cab2a275" CreationDate="2016-05-26T13:44:43.290" UserId="4" Comment="added 1145 characters in body" Text="## Site Name&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've started to come around to the name &quot;Software Engineering&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I still have some lingering objections regarding the overuse of the term &quot;engineering&quot; in software development, I think that the benefits would outweigh my personal objections. It does bring to mind a professional-oriented site that caters to people that work throughout the software development life cycle, from business analysts to developers to managers to leads. It also pairs nicely with Computer Science, especially since both correspond to the underlying academic disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Tour and Tagline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&amp;A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ripped this from sites like Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. I removed the portion about &quot;expert answers on conceptual questions about software development&quot; since that can be confusing and I don't see how it's necessary. I tended toward the wording used on Computer Science.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first line of the /help/on-topic page is just the first sentence of the /tour description, word-for-word.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## On-Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm shamelessly stealing this idea from Robert Harvey, but I think that we should do some minor refactoring and link to appropriate Wikipedia articles that define terms. Unfortunately, I don't think that we can get this down to &quot;no more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no gerrymandering&quot;. I think we can avoid multi-line comma-separated lists and gerrymandering, but the discipline of Software Engineering is broad. Being clear about what is on-topic and what is off-topic (and what sites support questions about things that are off-topic) is essential and helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that the shortest reasonable on-topic list would be something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I removed &quot;algorithm and data structure concepts&quot;, since I would consider that part of &quot;software architecture and design&quot;. Evaluating and choosing various data structures and algorithms is inherently a design activity. I also removed &quot;and testing&quot; from &quot;quality assurance and testing&quot; since testing is one aspect of quality assurance, but we don't take all testing questions (such as, for example, writing or debugging unit test code). I also merged &quot;software engineering management&quot; and &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; into &quot;software process, methods, and management&quot; since these three things are very tightly related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Like maple_shaft][10], I'd like to talk about software licensing. I recognize how important the topic is, but when it was added and clarified, neither the Law nor the Open Source Stack Exchange existed. It is something that software engineers operating in a professional environment should be aware of and do need to work in, and the IEEE does bury a small section on &quot;Legal Issues&quot; (referring to trademarks, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, professional liability, trade compliance, cybercrime) under &quot;Software Engineering Professional Practice&quot;. At the same time, the IEEE also puts things like &quot;Employment Contracts&quot;, team dynamics, working in multicultural environments, reading, writing, and presenting under &quot;Software Engineering Professional Practice&quot; and these are definitely off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recommend removing the &quot;software licensing&quot; line. The [Law Stack Exchange is graduating][11] and the [new rules for the graduation process][12] will likely mean that Open Source won't end up closing in the foreseeable future. These sites can do a much better job of handling licensing questions (along with other types of questions) than we can.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, writing, or debugging code (check out Stack Overflow instead) how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (ask on The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - open source philosophy, licenses, and open source communities (visit Open Source instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - legal concepts, theory, and terms (check out Law instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - where to find a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resource&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career or education advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest change is that we start linking to Open Source and Law. Before we actually do this, we do need to consult with their communities and make sure it's OK. But since there are better sites, I think it's safe to punt these questions to the experts anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Slight reordering of the things that are off-topic. We may want to check through the Meta questions that are currently linked and make sure they are correct. The biggest change is the removal of &quot;personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&quot; - I'd hope that a distinct change to the site name would make this very explicit to visitors as your personal life is not Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We may want to also identify some other sites to point people to. We could link to Software Recommendations and Hardware Recommendations next to &quot;product or service recommendations&quot;, as an example. There are also other sites that are related to software engineering that we don't identify as being off-topic (because it should be obvious) - Mathematics, Cross Validated/Statistics, User Experience, Information Security, Writers, Database Administrators, Code Review, Project Management (beta), Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing (beta), Computer Science, Engineering (beta), Law (beta), and Open Source (beta).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to see a theme change on the site. Something that is more professional. I like the general idea of diagrams and models, but parts of the site do seem cartooney. I'd like to be crisper, more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to look at methods for linking to related sites. Adding them to a Help Center page, like /help/on-topic, may work, but it would make that page much longer. I'd like to try to make Help Center pages smaller and less dense. It makes sense to point people to sites that they may not otherwise know about. Perhaps a Meta question that is part of the [tag:faq] would work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box, similar to how the Law and Health sites do, but to talk about the changes? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, so just a brief overview and link to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8058/4&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.law.stackexchange.com/questions/425/congrats-law-se-will-be-graduating-soon?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/257614/graduation-site-closure-and-a-clearer-outlook-on-the-health-of-se-sites" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22991" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8063" RevisionGUID="8bac8a12-9f37-49be-93bb-1809553296ed" CreationDate="2016-05-26T14:15:55.723" UserId="31260" Comment="MichaelT - spelling as usual" Text="###On behalf of emeritus member MichaelT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;There's nothing wrong with the scope. The essence of it could be condensed to fewer bullet points, but such is of relatively minor consequence. The bullet points are more of an issue for moderators of other sites that check the help/on-topic before migrating... and the rare individual who read it before posting a comment of &quot;belongs on Programmers.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name, as demonstrated in the comments of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/319375/ (10k link) is of some confusion to some people who post with the &quot;but I'm trying to ask programmers this question.&quot;  A name such as software-engineering or software-architecture may have give them second thought about where to post the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it should also be pointed out with the above question that this demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the Q&amp;A model that SE uses - to the point that changing the name alone will not do it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned in http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/279661/ the thing that new users (and lets be honest - a significant chunk of the 70% closed questions are from new users) look at is other questions without regard for the &quot;on hold&quot; status of the question. There was a podcast awhile back by Joel and David about the intent of [Closed] - and part of that was as a head on a pike. I'm sure SE employees would more easily dig it out than I can. The mini-meta survey demonstrates that this is completely failing. One can refine the scope and change the name till the end of time - questions will be asked like the ones that show up when you go to the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This brings up an awkward realization - the way to make the questions go away from immediate view is to down vote them heavily. This leads to the &quot;why are you all so negative&quot; posts which are not at all fun to deal with, especially without moderator and community manager support.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one wants to cut down on the off topic questions - close and delete the unsalvageable posts quickly. Gnat likes to point out that triage on Stack Overflow helps with this. Failing the ability to prevent questions from showing up on the front page with triage, down votes, close votes, and 20k delete votes are the thing necessary to cut down on the off topic questions that reinforce the perception that this is where one is to ask such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This brings up another awkward realization - the active pool of close votes and 20k delete votes is on the decline. And to this, no amount of UI, name change, fiddling with the help/on-topic, or trying to make a one sentence thing to put in the tour will accomplish significant amounts. Moderators will likely need to step up and more than just close and ignore the off topic questions - close and delete them - preferably quickly. Instead of 70% of the front page showing questions that one shouldn't ask, 70% of the front page should be showing questions that one should ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One might want to consider adjusting the privilege levels for a few months after the redesign, giving 10k or 15k users the ability to cast delete votes on questions that are less than a few days old... and reviving the 3 vote experiment again. The front page needs to reflect the scope and the both the moderators and the community at large needs to step up and make the site match the vision of what they want to see.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there isn't any change to how (and who) people cast close votes; or the duration that an unsalvageable question remains visible on the front page, serving as a model for how to ask another question - the results from this exercise in scope, name, and design will not likely have the intended effect of consistently reducing the number of off topic questions asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is another problem with the 'scope' though. It isn't about the scope itself, but rather the question of where does one draw the line with primarily opinion and too broad questions. Even with a more concise scope of Software lifecycle, Software configuration management, Algorithm and data structures and Software engineering and team management as described by Snowman, there are still questions that are primarily opinion or too broad that fit within this area of topicality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to be one of the more difficult and overlooked parts in this process of a name change - and these are the questions that have given the people who actively curate and moderate the site the most headaches. Without any guidance (and I'm not going to offer any here), questions along the lines of &quot;how should I lay out my Git repo&quot; or &quot;what patterns/algorithms should I use to solve some problem&quot; will still be asked and still consume too much community moderation and curation time and still be a point of contentious debate on meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22992" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="03f90e3f-a9a0-4f74-8eca-8995edcd41c9" CreationDate="2016-05-27T14:40:40.500" UserId="31260" Comment="you don't need to migrate those += https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/ &quot;'Be a bit jealous of your site - don't blithely turn askers away simply because their question could be asked somewhere else...'&quot;" Text="## What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Programmers.SE would be a good question on Stack Overflow.  This isn't to say that if it is on topic on Stack Overflow then it is on topic here.  Rather that it's not too broad, not opinion polling, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Programmers.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggesting to someone to repost a question that is too broad or primary opinion would get it closed on Programmers.SE too and that's really something we'd rather avoid.  It is no fun to get a question bounced from one site to another and being told repeatedly we don't want it here.  If it needs to be fixed, it needs to be fixed before it is reposted or telling the OP *exactly* what needs to be fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Some commonly referred *poor* questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, we *don't* want these, though it seems like people keep suggesting them to be reposted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I don't understand...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). [There is an expectation](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773) that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here's my problem. Anyone have a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of commonly (incorrectly) referred questions are those of &quot;come up with a design or solution for me.&quot;  Similar to how Stack Overflow has issues with people doing problem statement questions (&quot;write a program that takes the average of three values&quot;), Programmers.SE has similar issues with similar questions (&quot;here is what I want the outcome to be, anyone have a solution?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Stack Overflow nor Programmers.SE is a code/solution writing service. Just because the question lacks code but has a problem statement doesn't mean it belongs here as is. The question needs to be fixed up significantly before it is reposted on the proper site and suggesting to do so with the question in its current state does a disservice to the person asking the question. For a more detailed outline of what is generally expected at Programmers, see http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A blog I read said...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our custom off topic reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What tool, library, language, project, resource to take up or use](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* [What career to take or what to study](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;* [Assistance in writing or debugging code](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7742/40980)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programming related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* software requirements&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I'll point out a caveat with that &quot;software licensing&quot; thing.  It's about how to license *your* software and try to stay in proper compliance when pulling a MIT licensed library into a GPL project.  It is *not* about the &quot;can I let a friend use IntelliJ personal license if I'm not using it?&quot;, &quot;can I use facebook's API to do something legally?&quot; and the interpretation of other third party licenses.  If the word 'legal' shows up in that question at all, it will likely get closed as legal advice (that's in the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) too - under &quot;and it's not about&quot;) Further reading: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about software design concepts.  Remember that algorithm questions are also on topic on Stack Overflow (so [you don't need to migrate those](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/ &quot;'Be a bit jealous of your site - don't blithely turn askers away simply because their question could be asked somewhere else...'&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the Perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the Delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Programmers.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Programmers.SE was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with [&quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260 &quot;we even had to introduce a chat bot for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow&quot;) and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) it's problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - it's exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so comments a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, it's like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if it's a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="22996" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="171" RevisionGUID="11278780-18cf-44cd-ae13-e8a9c2878d49" CreationDate="2016-05-27T14:59:24.617" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22997" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="3c8f9f8e-6eef-4acd-988c-b17f48863d3f" CreationDate="2016-05-27T17:48:58.063" UserId="1130" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software engineering, software architecture, and software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * understanding, writing, or debugging code (check out [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career, workplace, education, or lifestyle advice&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [legal advice or aid][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For more details, please see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page &#xD;&#xA;A new interstitial page should be added for new users that are asking questions, very similar to the [version on ServerFault](http://serverfault.com/questions/ask/advice?). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###IMPORTANT STUFF:&#xD;&#xA;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions related to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page. No, really. I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this cannot be done or is denied, we would like to add the text to the **[How to Ask][10]** page instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22998" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="ee34ae70-6bed-44bd-b2a1-fee707b6532d" CreationDate="2016-05-27T17:48:58.063" UserId="1130" />
  <row Id="22999" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="fccaf8e3-8ceb-4967-b130-a3bdaf99d4eb" CreationDate="2016-05-27T17:58:47.847" UserId="1130" Comment="added algorithms and data structures back in since we think they do need their own dedicated line" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software engineering, software architecture, and software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [algorithms][10] and [data structures][11]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * understanding, writing, or debugging code (check out [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career, workplace, education, or lifestyle advice&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [legal advice or aid][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For more details, please see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page &#xD;&#xA;A new interstitial page should be added for new users that are asking questions, very similar to the [version on ServerFault](http://serverfault.com/questions/ask/advice?). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###IMPORTANT STUFF:&#xD;&#xA;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions related to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [algorithms][10] and [data structures][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page. No, really. I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this cannot be done or is denied, we would like to add the text to the **[How to Ask][12]** page instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23000" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="531d1d9c-7215-4a43-8bc1-f4a2101a2743" CreationDate="2016-05-27T18:02:56.767" UserId="4" Comment="added 487 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * understanding, writing, or debugging code (see [Stack Overflow][3])&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * seeking peer review of working code (see [Code Review][10])&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * workplace, employment, and careers (see [The Workplace][11])&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * legal concepts, including copyright, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets (see [Law][12])&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * open source philosophy (see [Open Source][13])&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * where to find a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resource&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * language, technology, product, or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For more details, please see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page &#xD;&#xA;A new interstitial page should be added for new users that are asking questions, very similar to the [version on ServerFault](http://serverfault.com/questions/ask/advice?). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things. We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions related to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page. No, really. I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this cannot be done or is denied, we would like to add the text to the **[How to Ask][14]** page instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23001" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="96b16de3-273f-49a6-8bde-36541f96d773" CreationDate="2016-05-27T18:19:52.580" UserId="4" Comment="added 14 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * understanding, writing, or debugging code (see [Stack Overflow][3])&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * seeking peer review of working code (see [Code Review][10])&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * workplace, employment, and careers (see [The Workplace][11])&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * legal concepts, including copyright, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets (see [Law][12])&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * open source licensing and philosophy (see [Open Source][13])&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * where to find a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resource&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * language, technology, product, or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For more details, please see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page &#xD;&#xA;A new interstitial page should be added for new users that are asking questions, very similar to the [version on ServerFault](http://serverfault.com/questions/ask/advice?). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things. We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions related to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page. No, really. I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this cannot be done or is denied, we would like to add the text to the **[How to Ask][14]** page instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23002" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8066" RevisionGUID="3bff5bc9-bea0-4879-88fa-a396a20b5a98" CreationDate="2016-05-27T18:47:43.783" UserId="4" Text="What other sites are there that may be able to answer my questions about developing software?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23003" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8066" RevisionGUID="3bff5bc9-bea0-4879-88fa-a396a20b5a98" CreationDate="2016-05-27T18:47:43.783" UserId="4" Text="I have a question, but it may not fit best on Programmers. Where else can I ask it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23004" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8066" RevisionGUID="3bff5bc9-bea0-4879-88fa-a396a20b5a98" CreationDate="2016-05-27T18:47:43.783" UserId="4" Text="|support|faq-proposed|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23005" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8067" RevisionGUID="32b610a5-399d-4046-8915-285054a7eb70" CreationDate="2016-05-27T18:47:43.783" UserId="4" Text="The following sites may be of interest to users on Programmers. Before posting, be sure to read their Help Centers to fully understand what these communities expect from high quality questions and any specific rules they may have. As always, if you aren't sure if your question is a good fit, post on a Meta site and you can be directed to an appropriate site on the Stack Exchange network, if one exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Code Review Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; peer review of your code. We're working together to improve the skills&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of programmers worldwide by taking working code and making it better.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from your project in the following areas…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Best practices and design pattern usage&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Security issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Correctness in unanticipated cases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then you are in the right place!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Computational Science&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computational Science Stack Exchange is for questions and answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about computational methods used in technical disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First-time posters are strongly advised to read Eric Raymond's How to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask Questions the Smart Way for advice on how to ask good questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (not for technical answers). Although written for an audience asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions about open source software, the same advice applies when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking questions about any subject area.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is run by volunteers; the best way to get an answer to your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is to ask it in a way that makes it easy for someone with a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broad computational science background to answer it with 15 minutes of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; effort or less.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Topics that are usually a good fit for this site:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about software packages or languages used broadly in computational science (e.g., PETSc, MATLAB, Trilinos, LAPACK, SLEPc,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; R, NumPy, SciPy, Julia, Maple, Octave) except Mathematica (which has&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its own site now). In general, high-level questions (e.g., about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/package features) are best. Questions that are essentially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about debugging a code sample, or about low-level language syntax are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a poor fit for this site, and are usually closed; such questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be asked on language-/package-specific forums. Package&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developers interested in using this site as a resource should look at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this meta question. Package developers answering questions should look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at this meta question for guidelines on disclosing project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; affiliations.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about algorithms or methods used to solve problems in applied mathematics (e.g., finding roots of a polynomial, finding the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; eigenvalues/eigenvectors of a matrix, solving an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elliptic/parabolic/hyperbolic PDE)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions that ask about appropriate methods for a given application area (e.g., what numerical methods would I use when modeling shock&#xD;&#xA;&gt; waves, what numerical methods would I use when modeling combustion,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what graph algorithms would I use if I wanted to understand social&#xD;&#xA;&gt; networks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Computer Science&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer Science Stack Exchange is for students, researchers and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practitioners of computer science.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer science, also sometimes called computing science, is the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; science of computation and its applications. This site covers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; theoretical and applied computer science at any level, including but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms, models of computation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming language semantics, formal methods&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - computer architecture, networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, natural language processing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - vision, graphics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# CrossValidated&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CrossValidated is for statisticians, data miners, and anyone else&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doing data analysis or interested in it as a discipline. If you have a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical analysis, applied or theoretical&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - designing experiments&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - collecting data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - data mining&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - visualizing data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - probability theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - mathematical statistics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical and data-driven computing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Cryptography&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Crypto Stack Exchange is for software developers, mathematicians and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others interested in cryptography.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cryptography Stack Exchange is for asking questions about the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mathematics and properties of cryptographic systems, their analysis&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (&quot;cryptanalysis&quot;) and subsidiary topics that generally make up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cryptology, such as random number generation. As such, we welcome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions on topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Asymmetric and symmetric cryptographic algorithms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographic protocols&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptanalysis techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Hash functions, hashing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Entropy and information theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographically Secure (Pseudo-)Random Number Generation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Database Administrators][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dba.se is for those needing expert answers to advanced&#xD;&#xA;&gt; database-related questions concerning traditional SQL RDBMS and NoSQL&#xD;&#xA;&gt; alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Database Administration including configuration and backup / restore&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Querying including window-functions, dynamic-sql, and query-performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Modelling and database-design, including referential-integrity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Programming in built-in server-side languages including stored-procedures and triggers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence including etl, reporting, and olap&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Data Science&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Examples of questions that are likely to be on-topic for Data Science&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given process monitoring data arriving every 10ms, what statistical tool should I use to best characterize a change in the process - mean?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a distribution?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When is it suitable to apply L1 regularization for feature selection?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I would like to produce a infographic on the 'Brexit' referendum. Given public opinion data across the UK, what are some meaningful&#xD;&#xA;&gt; techniques to visaualize it in a dashboard?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When executing an ARIMA model in Spark, what are the pros and cons of using Python instead of R?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given Facebook Likes, is there an ML technique to predict age and gender?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Electrical Engineering][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for electronics and electrical engineering professionals,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; students, and enthusiasts. We ask and answer questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electrical and electronics engineering topics, which include&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electronics, physical computing, and those working with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; microcontrollers, Arduinos and embedded systems. We feel the best&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Electronics Design questions have a schematic, links to pertinent&#xD;&#xA;&gt; datasheets or some source code in them, but if your question generally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific electronics design problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the theory and simulation of electromagnetic forces&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a communication scheme&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Engineering Stack Exchange are usually well-received when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Identify a specific engineering problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Require expert engineering knowledge to solve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Include any relevant drawings, images or references that may be necessary to understand the problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Excite or challenge experienced professionals in the field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Game Development][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Game Development Stack Exchange is for professional and amateur&#xD;&#xA;&gt; video/computer game developers. If you have a question relating to ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asset pipelines (creation, storage, editing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game-specific programming issues (engine architecture, game-related APIs, networking, tools, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - project management (testing, team management, scheduling, publishing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game industry (careers, trends, technology, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Information Security][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; IT Security Stack Exchange is for Information Security professionals&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to discuss protecting assets from threats and vulnerabilities. Topics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; include, but are not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - web app hardening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - network security&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - social engineering, including phishing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - risk management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - policies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - penetration testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - security tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - using cryptography&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - incident response&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physically securing the office, datacentre, information assets etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Law&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Law Stack Exchange is for legal professionals, students, and others&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with experience or interest in law.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The best questions are those that have specific answers; Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange is not a general discussion forum. In general, ask here if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question which covers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Statutes or court decisions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal terms and language, doctrines and theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal process and procedure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Historical legal applications&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Dealing with legal professionals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Mathematics][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mathematics Stack Exchange is for people studying mathematics at any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; level and professionals in related fields. We welcome questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Understanding mathematical concepts and theorems.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Mathematical problems such as one might come across in a course or textbook. (First read our how to ask a good question page.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Solving mathematical puzzles.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software that mathematicians use (except Mathematica, which has its own Stack Exchange site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Network Engineering][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Network Engineering Stack Exchange is for asking questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professionally managed networks in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - operating, maintaining, purchasing or managing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - planning or designing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - model or product line features and differences;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - lab scenarios involving on-topic equipment;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used by network professionals;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - servers operating as a router/switch/firewall;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design or theory of protocols used to operate a network (e.g. IP, TCP, routing protocols, STP, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - content delivery networks;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - production troubleshooting or problem resolution;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physical infrastructure (e.g. standard color coding of cables, types of fiber, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementing and enforcing network security or policies;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and meets the following requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - under your direct control (if the network is not under your control you will not likely be able to provide the information required to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer your question);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware that has a paid support option (enterprise/provider class products, some small business class devices);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then this is likely the correct place to ask unless it meets any of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the off-topic conditions detailed below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Open Source][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Open Source Stack Exchange is a question &amp; answer site about a group&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of related movements which encourage people to give up some of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rights given to them by copyright law, by using licenses which give&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others the freedom to use and transform their creative works, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which optionally (by using copyleft/share-alike licenses) ensure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; these works will always be made available with the same rights. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site is not limited to software, but also covers art, literature,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hardware, databases and more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; These movements have been spearheaded by a group of organisations:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FSF, OSI, Creative Commons, Free Culture. These organisations prefer a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; variety of different terms (free, open source, libre) and sometimes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; define them with slight differences. But on this site these terms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should in general be considered to be synonymous, except for questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which ask directly about their differences.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You've come to the right place if you have questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the history and philosophies of the FSF, OSI, CC etc&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, applying, and complying with Free &amp; Open licenses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how communities collaborate together to produce, distribute, market and sometime monetize these projects&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what license to use for a specific situation - but please read How do I ask for a license recommendation? first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Project Management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The site is for project management practitioners, academics and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; amateur theorists. This is a site about the field of project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; management for people who love the subject. Our site includes the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following topics:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Management Practices and Theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Agile&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Scrum&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - PRINCE2&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Tool Usage in Project Management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Manager Career Advancement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Reverse Engineering][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reverse Engineering Stack Exchange is for researchers and developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who explore the principles of a system through analysis of its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structure, function, and operation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software analysis (static or dynamic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - disassembly or decompilation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware analysis and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools commonly used for reverse engineering hardware or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deterring reverse engineering efforts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Server Fault][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Server Fault is for questions about managing information technology&#xD;&#xA;&gt; systems in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - managing the hardware or software of servers, workstations, storage or networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used for administering, monitoring, or automating these&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deployment to and management of third-party provided information technology platforms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing Stack Exchange is for software quality control experts, automation engineers, and software testers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Software Recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for questions asking for recommendations of software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ready-to-use to accomplish a particular task, that is, “what software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can I use to do …?”. While this includes software libraries for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development use, note that recommendations of tutorials, data sources,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; media libraries (e.g. icon collections) etc. are off-topic – as are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions like “what technology to use for …?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good software recommendation requests have two components:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A purpose — a task to accomplish, a user story&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Some objective requirements — a minimum set of features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Stack Overflow][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; a specific programming problem, or a software algorithm, or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tools commonly used by programmers; and is a practical, answerable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem that is unique to software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [User Experience][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; User Experience Stack Exchange is for User Experience Designers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Information Architects, and Human Computer Interaction researchers. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Specific UX design problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UX issues that can be solved with expert advice or existing research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about HCI and user research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# The Workplace&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Workplace Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site about the workplace and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other career-related topics. With your help we're working to build a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; library to every question about the workplace related to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Finding employment (resumes/cv/cover letters, recruiters, hiring-managers, interviews, negotiations, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Maintaining employment (promotions, pay increases, harassment, bullying, poor working conditions, communication problems, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Leadership in the workplace (motivating people, encouraging people, making decisions, holding hard conversations, intervening in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unproductive situations, asking for and giving help, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Terminating employment (notice period, breaking the news, handing over work, reference letters, relieving letters, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://security.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://math.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://serverfault.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23006" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8067" RevisionGUID="b30939fa-edbc-448f-b74e-43da369707ce" CreationDate="2016-05-27T18:53:55.017" UserId="4" Comment="added 561 characters in body" Text="The following sites may be of interest to users on Programmers. Before posting, be sure to read their Help Centers to fully understand what these communities expect from high quality questions and any specific rules they may have. As always, if you aren't sure if your question is a good fit, post on a Meta site and you can be directed to an appropriate site on the Stack Exchange network, if one exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Code Review Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; peer review of your code. We're working together to improve the skills&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of programmers worldwide by taking working code and making it better.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from your project in the following areas…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Best practices and design pattern usage&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Security issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Correctness in unanticipated cases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then you are in the right place!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computational Science Stack Exchange is for questions and answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about computational methods used in technical disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First-time posters are strongly advised to read Eric Raymond's How to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask Questions the Smart Way for advice on how to ask good questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (not for technical answers). Although written for an audience asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions about open source software, the same advice applies when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking questions about any subject area.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is run by volunteers; the best way to get an answer to your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is to ask it in a way that makes it easy for someone with a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broad computational science background to answer it with 15 minutes of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; effort or less.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Topics that are usually a good fit for this site:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about software packages or languages used broadly in computational science (e.g., PETSc, MATLAB, Trilinos, LAPACK, SLEPc,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; R, NumPy, SciPy, Julia, Maple, Octave) except Mathematica (which has&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its own site now). In general, high-level questions (e.g., about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/package features) are best. Questions that are essentially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about debugging a code sample, or about low-level language syntax are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a poor fit for this site, and are usually closed; such questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be asked on language-/package-specific forums. Package&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developers interested in using this site as a resource should look at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this meta question. Package developers answering questions should look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at this meta question for guidelines on disclosing project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; affiliations.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about algorithms or methods used to solve problems in applied mathematics (e.g., finding roots of a polynomial, finding the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; eigenvalues/eigenvectors of a matrix, solving an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elliptic/parabolic/hyperbolic PDE)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions that ask about appropriate methods for a given application area (e.g., what numerical methods would I use when modeling shock&#xD;&#xA;&gt; waves, what numerical methods would I use when modeling combustion,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what graph algorithms would I use if I wanted to understand social&#xD;&#xA;&gt; networks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer Science Stack Exchange is for students, researchers and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practitioners of computer science.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer science, also sometimes called computing science, is the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; science of computation and its applications. This site covers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; theoretical and applied computer science at any level, including but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms, models of computation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming language semantics, formal methods&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - computer architecture, networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, natural language processing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - vision, graphics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [CrossValidated][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CrossValidated is for statisticians, data miners, and anyone else&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doing data analysis or interested in it as a discipline. If you have a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical analysis, applied or theoretical&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - designing experiments&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - collecting data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - data mining&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - visualizing data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - probability theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - mathematical statistics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical and data-driven computing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Crypto Stack Exchange is for software developers, mathematicians and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others interested in cryptography.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cryptography Stack Exchange is for asking questions about the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mathematics and properties of cryptographic systems, their analysis&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (&quot;cryptanalysis&quot;) and subsidiary topics that generally make up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cryptology, such as random number generation. As such, we welcome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions on topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Asymmetric and symmetric cryptographic algorithms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographic protocols&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptanalysis techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Hash functions, hashing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Entropy and information theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographically Secure (Pseudo-)Random Number Generation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dba.se is for those needing expert answers to advanced&#xD;&#xA;&gt; database-related questions concerning traditional SQL RDBMS and NoSQL&#xD;&#xA;&gt; alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Database Administration including configuration and backup / restore&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Querying including window-functions, dynamic-sql, and query-performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Modelling and database-design, including referential-integrity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Programming in built-in server-side languages including stored-procedures and triggers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence including etl, reporting, and olap&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Examples of questions that are likely to be on-topic for Data Science&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given process monitoring data arriving every 10ms, what statistical tool should I use to best characterize a change in the process - mean?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a distribution?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When is it suitable to apply L1 regularization for feature selection?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I would like to produce a infographic on the 'Brexit' referendum. Given public opinion data across the UK, what are some meaningful&#xD;&#xA;&gt; techniques to visaualize it in a dashboard?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When executing an ARIMA model in Spark, what are the pros and cons of using Python instead of R?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given Facebook Likes, is there an ML technique to predict age and gender?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for electronics and electrical engineering professionals,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; students, and enthusiasts. We ask and answer questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electrical and electronics engineering topics, which include&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electronics, physical computing, and those working with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; microcontrollers, Arduinos and embedded systems. We feel the best&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Electronics Design questions have a schematic, links to pertinent&#xD;&#xA;&gt; datasheets or some source code in them, but if your question generally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific electronics design problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the theory and simulation of electromagnetic forces&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a communication scheme&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Engineering Stack Exchange are usually well-received when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Identify a specific engineering problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Require expert engineering knowledge to solve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Include any relevant drawings, images or references that may be necessary to understand the problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Excite or challenge experienced professionals in the field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Game Development Stack Exchange is for professional and amateur&#xD;&#xA;&gt; video/computer game developers. If you have a question relating to ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asset pipelines (creation, storage, editing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game-specific programming issues (engine architecture, game-related APIs, networking, tools, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - project management (testing, team management, scheduling, publishing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game industry (careers, trends, technology, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Information Security][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; IT Security Stack Exchange is for Information Security professionals&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to discuss protecting assets from threats and vulnerabilities. Topics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; include, but are not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - web app hardening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - network security&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - social engineering, including phishing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - risk management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - policies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - penetration testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - security tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - using cryptography&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - incident response&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physically securing the office, datacentre, information assets etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Law][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Law Stack Exchange is for legal professionals, students, and others&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with experience or interest in law.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The best questions are those that have specific answers; Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange is not a general discussion forum. In general, ask here if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question which covers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Statutes or court decisions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal terms and language, doctrines and theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal process and procedure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Historical legal applications&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Dealing with legal professionals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Mathematics][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mathematics Stack Exchange is for people studying mathematics at any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; level and professionals in related fields. We welcome questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Understanding mathematical concepts and theorems.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Mathematical problems such as one might come across in a course or textbook. (First read our how to ask a good question page.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Solving mathematical puzzles.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software that mathematicians use (except Mathematica, which has its own Stack Exchange site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Network Engineering][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Network Engineering Stack Exchange is for asking questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professionally managed networks in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - operating, maintaining, purchasing or managing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - planning or designing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - model or product line features and differences;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - lab scenarios involving on-topic equipment;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used by network professionals;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - servers operating as a router/switch/firewall;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design or theory of protocols used to operate a network (e.g. IP, TCP, routing protocols, STP, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - content delivery networks;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - production troubleshooting or problem resolution;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physical infrastructure (e.g. standard color coding of cables, types of fiber, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementing and enforcing network security or policies;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and meets the following requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - under your direct control (if the network is not under your control you will not likely be able to provide the information required to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer your question);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware that has a paid support option (enterprise/provider class products, some small business class devices);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then this is likely the correct place to ask unless it meets any of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the off-topic conditions detailed below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Open Source][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Open Source Stack Exchange is a question &amp; answer site about a group&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of related movements which encourage people to give up some of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rights given to them by copyright law, by using licenses which give&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others the freedom to use and transform their creative works, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which optionally (by using copyleft/share-alike licenses) ensure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; these works will always be made available with the same rights. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site is not limited to software, but also covers art, literature,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hardware, databases and more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; These movements have been spearheaded by a group of organisations:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FSF, OSI, Creative Commons, Free Culture. These organisations prefer a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; variety of different terms (free, open source, libre) and sometimes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; define them with slight differences. But on this site these terms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should in general be considered to be synonymous, except for questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which ask directly about their differences.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You've come to the right place if you have questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the history and philosophies of the FSF, OSI, CC etc&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, applying, and complying with Free &amp; Open licenses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how communities collaborate together to produce, distribute, market and sometime monetize these projects&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what license to use for a specific situation - but please read How do I ask for a license recommendation? first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Project Management][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The site is for project management practitioners, academics and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; amateur theorists. This is a site about the field of project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; management for people who love the subject. Our site includes the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following topics:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Management Practices and Theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Agile&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Scrum&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - PRINCE2&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Tool Usage in Project Management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Manager Career Advancement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Reverse Engineering][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reverse Engineering Stack Exchange is for researchers and developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who explore the principles of a system through analysis of its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structure, function, and operation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software analysis (static or dynamic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - disassembly or decompilation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware analysis and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools commonly used for reverse engineering hardware or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deterring reverse engineering efforts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Server Fault][18]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Server Fault is for questions about managing information technology&#xD;&#xA;&gt; systems in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - managing the hardware or software of servers, workstations, storage or networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used for administering, monitoring, or automating these&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deployment to and management of third-party provided information technology platforms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][19]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing Stack Exchange is for software quality control experts, automation engineers, and software testers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Recommendations][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for questions asking for recommendations of software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ready-to-use to accomplish a particular task, that is, “what software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can I use to do …?”. While this includes software libraries for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development use, note that recommendations of tutorials, data sources,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; media libraries (e.g. icon collections) etc. are off-topic – as are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions like “what technology to use for …?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good software recommendation requests have two components:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A purpose — a task to accomplish, a user story&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Some objective requirements — a minimum set of features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Stack Overflow][21]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; a specific programming problem, or a software algorithm, or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tools commonly used by programmers; and is a practical, answerable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem that is unique to software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [User Experience][22]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; User Experience Stack Exchange is for User Experience Designers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Information Architects, and Human Computer Interaction researchers. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Specific UX design problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UX issues that can be solved with expert advice or existing research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about HCI and user research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [The Workplace][23]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Workplace Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site about the workplace and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other career-related topics. With your help we're working to build a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; library to every question about the workplace related to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Finding employment (resumes/cv/cover letters, recruiters, hiring-managers, interviews, negotiations, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Maintaining employment (promotions, pay increases, harassment, bullying, poor working conditions, communication problems, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Leadership in the workplace (motivating people, encouraging people, making decisions, holding hard conversations, intervening in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unproductive situations, asking for and giving help, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Terminating employment (notice period, breaking the news, handing over work, reference letters, relieving letters, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://datascience.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://security.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://math.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://serverfault.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23007" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8066" RevisionGUID="e050745f-89f7-4a26-8711-d866341f82ff" CreationDate="2016-05-27T18:56:50.983" UserId="4" Comment="added 40 characters in body" Text="What other Stack Exchange sites are there that may be able to answer my questions about software engineering or software development?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23008" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8067" RevisionGUID="ea036936-c5eb-41ec-8e7f-82944885b7c9" CreationDate="2016-05-27T19:03:06.157" UserId="1130" Comment="added 901 characters in body" Text="The following sites may be of interest to users on Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [CrossValidated][4] - Q&amp;A for statistics, data analysis, data mining, etc&#xD;&#xA;* [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;* [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;* [Data Science][7] - Q&amp;A for data science &amp; machine learning&#xD;&#xA;* [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;* [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;* [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;* [Information Security][11]&#xD;&#xA;* [Law][12] - Q&amp;A includes Licensing Questions&#xD;&#xA;* [Mathematics][13]&#xD;&#xA;* [Network Engineering][14]&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source][15]&#xD;&#xA;* [Project Management][16]&#xD;&#xA;* [Reverse Engineering][17]&#xD;&#xA;* [Server Fault][18] - Q&amp;A for Network Admins&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][19]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Recommendations][20]&#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow][21] - Q&amp;A for Code Debugging&#xD;&#xA;* [User Experience][22]&#xD;&#xA;* [The Workplace][23] - Q&amp;A about the workplace, jobs, and careers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before posting, be sure to read their Help Centers to fully understand what these communities expect from high quality questions and any specific rules they may have. As always, if you aren't sure if your question is a good fit, post on a Meta site and you can be directed to an appropriate site on the Stack Exchange network, if one exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Continue reading if you want a more detailed description of each site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Code Review Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; peer review of your code. We're working together to improve the skills&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of programmers worldwide by taking working code and making it better.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from your project in the following areas…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Best practices and design pattern usage&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Security issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Correctness in unanticipated cases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then you are in the right place!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computational Science Stack Exchange is for questions and answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about computational methods used in technical disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First-time posters are strongly advised to read Eric Raymond's How to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask Questions the Smart Way for advice on how to ask good questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (not for technical answers). Although written for an audience asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions about open source software, the same advice applies when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking questions about any subject area.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is run by volunteers; the best way to get an answer to your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is to ask it in a way that makes it easy for someone with a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broad computational science background to answer it with 15 minutes of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; effort or less.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Topics that are usually a good fit for this site:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about software packages or languages used broadly in computational science (e.g., PETSc, MATLAB, Trilinos, LAPACK, SLEPc,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; R, NumPy, SciPy, Julia, Maple, Octave) except Mathematica (which has&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its own site now). In general, high-level questions (e.g., about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/package features) are best. Questions that are essentially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about debugging a code sample, or about low-level language syntax are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a poor fit for this site, and are usually closed; such questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be asked on language-/package-specific forums. Package&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developers interested in using this site as a resource should look at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this meta question. Package developers answering questions should look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at this meta question for guidelines on disclosing project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; affiliations.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about algorithms or methods used to solve problems in applied mathematics (e.g., finding roots of a polynomial, finding the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; eigenvalues/eigenvectors of a matrix, solving an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elliptic/parabolic/hyperbolic PDE)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions that ask about appropriate methods for a given application area (e.g., what numerical methods would I use when modeling shock&#xD;&#xA;&gt; waves, what numerical methods would I use when modeling combustion,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what graph algorithms would I use if I wanted to understand social&#xD;&#xA;&gt; networks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer Science Stack Exchange is for students, researchers and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practitioners of computer science.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer science, also sometimes called computing science, is the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; science of computation and its applications. This site covers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; theoretical and applied computer science at any level, including but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms, models of computation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming language semantics, formal methods&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - computer architecture, networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, natural language processing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - vision, graphics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [CrossValidated][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CrossValidated is for statisticians, data miners, and anyone else&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doing data analysis or interested in it as a discipline. If you have a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical analysis, applied or theoretical&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - designing experiments&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - collecting data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - data mining&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - visualizing data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - probability theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - mathematical statistics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical and data-driven computing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Crypto Stack Exchange is for software developers, mathematicians and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others interested in cryptography.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cryptography Stack Exchange is for asking questions about the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mathematics and properties of cryptographic systems, their analysis&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (&quot;cryptanalysis&quot;) and subsidiary topics that generally make up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cryptology, such as random number generation. As such, we welcome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions on topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Asymmetric and symmetric cryptographic algorithms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographic protocols&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptanalysis techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Hash functions, hashing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Entropy and information theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographically Secure (Pseudo-)Random Number Generation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dba.se is for those needing expert answers to advanced&#xD;&#xA;&gt; database-related questions concerning traditional SQL RDBMS and NoSQL&#xD;&#xA;&gt; alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Database Administration including configuration and backup / restore&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Querying including window-functions, dynamic-sql, and query-performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Modelling and database-design, including referential-integrity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Programming in built-in server-side languages including stored-procedures and triggers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence including etl, reporting, and olap&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Examples of questions that are likely to be on-topic for Data Science&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given process monitoring data arriving every 10ms, what statistical tool should I use to best characterize a change in the process - mean?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a distribution?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When is it suitable to apply L1 regularization for feature selection?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I would like to produce a infographic on the 'Brexit' referendum. Given public opinion data across the UK, what are some meaningful&#xD;&#xA;&gt; techniques to visaualize it in a dashboard?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When executing an ARIMA model in Spark, what are the pros and cons of using Python instead of R?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given Facebook Likes, is there an ML technique to predict age and gender?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for electronics and electrical engineering professionals,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; students, and enthusiasts. We ask and answer questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electrical and electronics engineering topics, which include&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electronics, physical computing, and those working with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; microcontrollers, Arduinos and embedded systems. We feel the best&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Electronics Design questions have a schematic, links to pertinent&#xD;&#xA;&gt; datasheets or some source code in them, but if your question generally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific electronics design problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the theory and simulation of electromagnetic forces&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a communication scheme&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Engineering Stack Exchange are usually well-received when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Identify a specific engineering problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Require expert engineering knowledge to solve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Include any relevant drawings, images or references that may be necessary to understand the problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Excite or challenge experienced professionals in the field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Game Development Stack Exchange is for professional and amateur&#xD;&#xA;&gt; video/computer game developers. If you have a question relating to ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asset pipelines (creation, storage, editing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game-specific programming issues (engine architecture, game-related APIs, networking, tools, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - project management (testing, team management, scheduling, publishing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game industry (careers, trends, technology, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Information Security][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; IT Security Stack Exchange is for Information Security professionals&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to discuss protecting assets from threats and vulnerabilities. Topics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; include, but are not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - web app hardening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - network security&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - social engineering, including phishing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - risk management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - policies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - penetration testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - security tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - using cryptography&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - incident response&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physically securing the office, datacentre, information assets etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Law][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Law Stack Exchange is for legal professionals, students, and others&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with experience or interest in law.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The best questions are those that have specific answers; Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange is not a general discussion forum. In general, ask here if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question which covers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Statutes or court decisions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal terms and language, doctrines and theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal process and procedure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Historical legal applications&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Dealing with legal professionals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Mathematics][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mathematics Stack Exchange is for people studying mathematics at any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; level and professionals in related fields. We welcome questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Understanding mathematical concepts and theorems.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Mathematical problems such as one might come across in a course or textbook. (First read our how to ask a good question page.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Solving mathematical puzzles.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software that mathematicians use (except Mathematica, which has its own Stack Exchange site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Network Engineering][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Network Engineering Stack Exchange is for asking questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professionally managed networks in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - operating, maintaining, purchasing or managing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - planning or designing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - model or product line features and differences;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - lab scenarios involving on-topic equipment;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used by network professionals;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - servers operating as a router/switch/firewall;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design or theory of protocols used to operate a network (e.g. IP, TCP, routing protocols, STP, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - content delivery networks;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - production troubleshooting or problem resolution;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physical infrastructure (e.g. standard color coding of cables, types of fiber, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementing and enforcing network security or policies;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and meets the following requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - under your direct control (if the network is not under your control you will not likely be able to provide the information required to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer your question);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware that has a paid support option (enterprise/provider class products, some small business class devices);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then this is likely the correct place to ask unless it meets any of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the off-topic conditions detailed below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Open Source][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Open Source Stack Exchange is a question &amp; answer site about a group&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of related movements which encourage people to give up some of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rights given to them by copyright law, by using licenses which give&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others the freedom to use and transform their creative works, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which optionally (by using copyleft/share-alike licenses) ensure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; these works will always be made available with the same rights. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site is not limited to software, but also covers art, literature,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hardware, databases and more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; These movements have been spearheaded by a group of organisations:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FSF, OSI, Creative Commons, Free Culture. These organisations prefer a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; variety of different terms (free, open source, libre) and sometimes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; define them with slight differences. But on this site these terms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should in general be considered to be synonymous, except for questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which ask directly about their differences.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You've come to the right place if you have questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the history and philosophies of the FSF, OSI, CC etc&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, applying, and complying with Free &amp; Open licenses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how communities collaborate together to produce, distribute, market and sometime monetize these projects&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what license to use for a specific situation - but please read How do I ask for a license recommendation? first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Project Management][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The site is for project management practitioners, academics and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; amateur theorists. This is a site about the field of project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; management for people who love the subject. Our site includes the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following topics:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Management Practices and Theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Agile&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Scrum&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - PRINCE2&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Tool Usage in Project Management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Manager Career Advancement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Reverse Engineering][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reverse Engineering Stack Exchange is for researchers and developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who explore the principles of a system through analysis of its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structure, function, and operation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software analysis (static or dynamic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - disassembly or decompilation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware analysis and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools commonly used for reverse engineering hardware or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deterring reverse engineering efforts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Server Fault][18]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Server Fault is for questions about managing information technology&#xD;&#xA;&gt; systems in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - managing the hardware or software of servers, workstations, storage or networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used for administering, monitoring, or automating these&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deployment to and management of third-party provided information technology platforms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][19]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing Stack Exchange is for software quality control experts, automation engineers, and software testers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Recommendations][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for questions asking for recommendations of software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ready-to-use to accomplish a particular task, that is, “what software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can I use to do …?”. While this includes software libraries for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development use, note that recommendations of tutorials, data sources,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; media libraries (e.g. icon collections) etc. are off-topic – as are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions like “what technology to use for …?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good software recommendation requests have two components:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A purpose — a task to accomplish, a user story&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Some objective requirements — a minimum set of features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Stack Overflow][21]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; a specific programming problem, or a software algorithm, or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tools commonly used by programmers; and is a practical, answerable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem that is unique to software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [User Experience][22]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; User Experience Stack Exchange is for User Experience Designers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Information Architects, and Human Computer Interaction researchers. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Specific UX design problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UX issues that can be solved with expert advice or existing research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about HCI and user research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [The Workplace][23]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Workplace Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site about the workplace and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other career-related topics. With your help we're working to build a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; library to every question about the workplace related to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Finding employment (resumes/cv/cover letters, recruiters, hiring-managers, interviews, negotiations, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Maintaining employment (promotions, pay increases, harassment, bullying, poor working conditions, communication problems, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Leadership in the workplace (motivating people, encouraging people, making decisions, holding hard conversations, intervening in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unproductive situations, asking for and giving help, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Terminating employment (notice period, breaking the news, handing over work, reference letters, relieving letters, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://datascience.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://security.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://math.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://serverfault.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23009" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="f2163292-a1d2-4a64-8bc6-9c1c459c8a32" CreationDate="2016-05-27T19:09:47.330" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 441 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...then you're probably in the right place to ask your question! If you aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites on the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For more details, please see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page &#xD;&#xA;A new interstitial page should be added for new users that are asking questions, very similar to the [version on ServerFault](http://serverfault.com/questions/ask/advice?). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things. We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions related to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page. No, really. I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this cannot be done or is denied, we would like to add the text to the **[How to Ask][12]** page instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23010" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8067" RevisionGUID="b5b826d8-a8df-49b1-a534-68c227f07cc3" CreationDate="2016-05-27T19:16:58.720" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 245 characters in body" Text="The following sites may be of interest to users on Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [CrossValidated][4] &#xD;&#xA;* [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;* [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;* [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;* [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;* [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;* [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;* [Information Security][11]&#xD;&#xA;* [Law][12]&#xD;&#xA;* [Mathematics][13]&#xD;&#xA;* [Network Engineering][14]&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source][15]&#xD;&#xA;* [Project Management][16]&#xD;&#xA;* [Reverse Engineering][17]&#xD;&#xA;* [Server Fault][18]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][19]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Recommendations][20]&#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow][21]&#xD;&#xA;* [User Experience][22]&#xD;&#xA;* [The Workplace][23]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before posting, be sure to read their Help Centers to fully understand what these communities expect from high quality questions and any specific rules they may have. As always, if you aren't sure if your question is a good fit, post on a Meta site and you can be directed to an appropriate site on the Stack Exchange network, if one exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More detailed information about each site follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Code Review Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; peer review of your code. We're working together to improve the skills&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of programmers worldwide by taking working code and making it better.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from your project in the following areas…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Best practices and design pattern usage&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Security issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Correctness in unanticipated cases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then you are in the right place!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computational Science Stack Exchange is for questions and answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about computational methods used in technical disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First-time posters are strongly advised to read Eric Raymond's How to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask Questions the Smart Way for advice on how to ask good questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (not for technical answers). Although written for an audience asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions about open source software, the same advice applies when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking questions about any subject area.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is run by volunteers; the best way to get an answer to your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is to ask it in a way that makes it easy for someone with a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broad computational science background to answer it with 15 minutes of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; effort or less.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Topics that are usually a good fit for this site:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about software packages or languages used broadly in computational science (e.g., PETSc, MATLAB, Trilinos, LAPACK, SLEPc,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; R, NumPy, SciPy, Julia, Maple, Octave) except Mathematica (which has&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its own site now). In general, high-level questions (e.g., about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/package features) are best. Questions that are essentially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about debugging a code sample, or about low-level language syntax are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a poor fit for this site, and are usually closed; such questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be asked on language-/package-specific forums. Package&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developers interested in using this site as a resource should look at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this meta question. Package developers answering questions should look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at this meta question for guidelines on disclosing project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; affiliations.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about algorithms or methods used to solve problems in applied mathematics (e.g., finding roots of a polynomial, finding the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; eigenvalues/eigenvectors of a matrix, solving an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elliptic/parabolic/hyperbolic PDE)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions that ask about appropriate methods for a given application area (e.g., what numerical methods would I use when modeling shock&#xD;&#xA;&gt; waves, what numerical methods would I use when modeling combustion,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what graph algorithms would I use if I wanted to understand social&#xD;&#xA;&gt; networks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer Science Stack Exchange is for students, researchers and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practitioners of computer science.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer science, also sometimes called computing science, is the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; science of computation and its applications. This site covers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; theoretical and applied computer science at any level, including but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms, models of computation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming language semantics, formal methods&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - computer architecture, networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, natural language processing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - vision, graphics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [CrossValidated][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CrossValidated is for statisticians, data miners, and anyone else&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doing data analysis or interested in it as a discipline. If you have a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical analysis, applied or theoretical&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - designing experiments&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - collecting data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - data mining&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - visualizing data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - probability theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - mathematical statistics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical and data-driven computing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Crypto Stack Exchange is for software developers, mathematicians and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others interested in cryptography.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cryptography Stack Exchange is for asking questions about the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mathematics and properties of cryptographic systems, their analysis&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (&quot;cryptanalysis&quot;) and subsidiary topics that generally make up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cryptology, such as random number generation. As such, we welcome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions on topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Asymmetric and symmetric cryptographic algorithms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographic protocols&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptanalysis techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Hash functions, hashing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Entropy and information theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographically Secure (Pseudo-)Random Number Generation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dba.se is for those needing expert answers to advanced&#xD;&#xA;&gt; database-related questions concerning traditional SQL RDBMS and NoSQL&#xD;&#xA;&gt; alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Database Administration including configuration and backup / restore&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Querying including window-functions, dynamic-sql, and query-performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Modelling and database-design, including referential-integrity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Programming in built-in server-side languages including stored-procedures and triggers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence including etl, reporting, and olap&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Examples of questions that are likely to be on-topic for Data Science&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given process monitoring data arriving every 10ms, what statistical tool should I use to best characterize a change in the process - mean?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a distribution?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When is it suitable to apply L1 regularization for feature selection?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I would like to produce a infographic on the 'Brexit' referendum. Given public opinion data across the UK, what are some meaningful&#xD;&#xA;&gt; techniques to visaualize it in a dashboard?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When executing an ARIMA model in Spark, what are the pros and cons of using Python instead of R?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given Facebook Likes, is there an ML technique to predict age and gender?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for electronics and electrical engineering professionals,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; students, and enthusiasts. We ask and answer questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electrical and electronics engineering topics, which include&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electronics, physical computing, and those working with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; microcontrollers, Arduinos and embedded systems. We feel the best&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Electronics Design questions have a schematic, links to pertinent&#xD;&#xA;&gt; datasheets or some source code in them, but if your question generally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific electronics design problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the theory and simulation of electromagnetic forces&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a communication scheme&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Engineering Stack Exchange are usually well-received when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Identify a specific engineering problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Require expert engineering knowledge to solve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Include any relevant drawings, images or references that may be necessary to understand the problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Excite or challenge experienced professionals in the field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Game Development Stack Exchange is for professional and amateur&#xD;&#xA;&gt; video/computer game developers. If you have a question relating to ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asset pipelines (creation, storage, editing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game-specific programming issues (engine architecture, game-related APIs, networking, tools, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - project management (testing, team management, scheduling, publishing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game industry (careers, trends, technology, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Information Security][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; IT Security Stack Exchange is for Information Security professionals&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to discuss protecting assets from threats and vulnerabilities. Topics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; include, but are not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - web app hardening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - network security&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - social engineering, including phishing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - risk management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - policies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - penetration testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - security tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - using cryptography&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - incident response&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physically securing the office, datacentre, information assets etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Law][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Law Stack Exchange is for legal professionals, students, and others&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with experience or interest in law.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The best questions are those that have specific answers; Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange is not a general discussion forum. In general, ask here if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question which covers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Statutes or court decisions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal terms and language, doctrines and theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal process and procedure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Historical legal applications&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Dealing with legal professionals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Mathematics][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mathematics Stack Exchange is for people studying mathematics at any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; level and professionals in related fields. We welcome questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Understanding mathematical concepts and theorems.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Mathematical problems such as one might come across in a course or textbook. (First read our how to ask a good question page.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Solving mathematical puzzles.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software that mathematicians use (except Mathematica, which has its own Stack Exchange site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Network Engineering][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Network Engineering Stack Exchange is for asking questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professionally managed networks in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - operating, maintaining, purchasing or managing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - planning or designing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - model or product line features and differences;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - lab scenarios involving on-topic equipment;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used by network professionals;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - servers operating as a router/switch/firewall;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design or theory of protocols used to operate a network (e.g. IP, TCP, routing protocols, STP, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - content delivery networks;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - production troubleshooting or problem resolution;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physical infrastructure (e.g. standard color coding of cables, types of fiber, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementing and enforcing network security or policies;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and meets the following requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - under your direct control (if the network is not under your control you will not likely be able to provide the information required to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer your question);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware that has a paid support option (enterprise/provider class products, some small business class devices);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then this is likely the correct place to ask unless it meets any of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the off-topic conditions detailed below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Open Source][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Open Source Stack Exchange is a question &amp; answer site about a group&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of related movements which encourage people to give up some of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rights given to them by copyright law, by using licenses which give&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others the freedom to use and transform their creative works, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which optionally (by using copyleft/share-alike licenses) ensure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; these works will always be made available with the same rights. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site is not limited to software, but also covers art, literature,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hardware, databases and more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; These movements have been spearheaded by a group of organisations:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FSF, OSI, Creative Commons, Free Culture. These organisations prefer a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; variety of different terms (free, open source, libre) and sometimes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; define them with slight differences. But on this site these terms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should in general be considered to be synonymous, except for questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which ask directly about their differences.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You've come to the right place if you have questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the history and philosophies of the FSF, OSI, CC etc&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, applying, and complying with Free &amp; Open licenses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how communities collaborate together to produce, distribute, market and sometime monetize these projects&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what license to use for a specific situation - but please read How do I ask for a license recommendation? first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Project Management][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The site is for project management practitioners, academics and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; amateur theorists. This is a site about the field of project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; management for people who love the subject. Our site includes the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following topics:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Management Practices and Theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Agile&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Scrum&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - PRINCE2&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Tool Usage in Project Management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Manager Career Advancement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Reverse Engineering][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reverse Engineering Stack Exchange is for researchers and developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who explore the principles of a system through analysis of its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structure, function, and operation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software analysis (static or dynamic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - disassembly or decompilation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware analysis and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools commonly used for reverse engineering hardware or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deterring reverse engineering efforts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Server Fault][18]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Server Fault is for questions about managing information technology&#xD;&#xA;&gt; systems in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - managing the hardware or software of servers, workstations, storage or networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used for administering, monitoring, or automating these&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deployment to and management of third-party provided information technology platforms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][19]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing Stack Exchange is for software quality control experts, automation engineers, and software testers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Recommendations][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for questions asking for recommendations of software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ready-to-use to accomplish a particular task, that is, “what software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can I use to do …?”. While this includes software libraries for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development use, note that recommendations of tutorials, data sources,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; media libraries (e.g. icon collections) etc. are off-topic – as are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions like “what technology to use for …?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good software recommendation requests have two components:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A purpose — a task to accomplish, a user story&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Some objective requirements — a minimum set of features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Stack Overflow][21]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; a specific programming problem, or a software algorithm, or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tools commonly used by programmers; and is a practical, answerable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem that is unique to software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [User Experience][22]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; User Experience Stack Exchange is for User Experience Designers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Information Architects, and Human Computer Interaction researchers. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Specific UX design problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UX issues that can be solved with expert advice or existing research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about HCI and user research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [The Workplace][23]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Workplace Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site about the workplace and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other career-related topics. With your help we're working to build a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; library to every question about the workplace related to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Finding employment (resumes/cv/cover letters, recruiters, hiring-managers, interviews, negotiations, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Maintaining employment (promotions, pay increases, harassment, bullying, poor working conditions, communication problems, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Leadership in the workplace (motivating people, encouraging people, making decisions, holding hard conversations, intervening in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unproductive situations, asking for and giving help, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Terminating employment (notice period, breaking the news, handing over work, reference letters, relieving letters, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://datascience.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://security.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://math.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://serverfault.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23011" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="14b85b12-47b8-4f9c-a37a-6a59faf65ced" CreationDate="2016-05-27T19:23:24.070" UserId="1130" Comment="added 226 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, please see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page &#xD;&#xA;A new interstitial page should be added for new users that are asking questions, very similar to the [version on ServerFault](http://serverfault.com/questions/ask/advice?). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things. We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions related to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page. No, really. I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this cannot be done or is denied, we would like to add the text to the **[How to Ask][12]** page instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23012" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="d8e76930-5a8a-4665-aba1-75ae2541e73f" CreationDate="2016-05-27T19:28:37.603" UserId="1130" Comment="deleted 7 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page &#xD;&#xA;A new interstitial page should be added for new users that are asking questions, very similar to the [version on ServerFault](http://serverfault.com/questions/ask/advice?). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things. We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions related to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page. No, really. I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this cannot be done or is denied, we would like to add the text to the **[How to Ask][12]** page instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23013" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8061" RevisionGUID="f6257a2e-3dc7-4a0e-9d65-c6193a3b9845" CreationDate="2016-05-27T19:29:44.250" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 22 characters in body" Text="##Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's as good a site title as you're going to get.  Here's why:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  It's *not* &quot;Programmers,&quot; which smacks of `people who write teh codez.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Electrical Engineering's name change (from Electronics) was very good for them.  It raised the quality bar on that site significantly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The On-Topic page, Tour Page, or Whatever New Users See First™&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frankly, after watching this site for as long as I have, I strongly believe that we should lead with a brief summary of *what we're not.*  We can caution people right up front while still keeping it light and friendly.  Something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions related to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - Software Requirements&#xD;&#xA; - Software Architecture and Design&#xD;&#xA; - Algorithms and Data Structures&#xD;&#xA; - Quality Assurance and Testing&#xD;&#xA; - Development Methodologies and Processes&#xD;&#xA; - [Software Configuration Management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management)&#xD;&#xA; - Project Management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, this needs to be an *interstitial page,* something that is put right in front of people before they ask their first question, with a checkbox at the bottom that says &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page. No, really. I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ServerFault did something similar; we can do the same." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23014" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8067" RevisionGUID="f9b389a9-c5c7-4ae6-a588-663af7e9c984" CreationDate="2016-05-27T19:32:45.003" UserId="4" Comment="added 683 characters in body" Text="The following sites may be of interest to users on Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [CrossValidated][4] &#xD;&#xA;* [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;* [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;* [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;* [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;* [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;* [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;* [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;* [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;* [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;* [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;* [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;* [Project Management][17]&#xD;&#xA;* [Reverse Engineering][18]&#xD;&#xA;* [Server Fault][19]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][20]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Recommendations][21]&#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow][22]&#xD;&#xA;* [User Experience][23]&#xD;&#xA;* [The Workplace][24]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before posting, be sure to read their Help Centers to fully understand what these communities expect from high quality questions and any specific rules they may have. As always, if you aren't sure if your question is a good fit, post on a Meta site and you can be directed to an appropriate site on the Stack Exchange network, if one exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More detailed information about each site follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Code Review Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; peer review of your code. We're working together to improve the skills&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of programmers worldwide by taking working code and making it better.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from your project in the following areas…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Best practices and design pattern usage&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Security issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Correctness in unanticipated cases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then you are in the right place!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computational Science Stack Exchange is for questions and answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about computational methods used in technical disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First-time posters are strongly advised to read Eric Raymond's How to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask Questions the Smart Way for advice on how to ask good questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (not for technical answers). Although written for an audience asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions about open source software, the same advice applies when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking questions about any subject area.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is run by volunteers; the best way to get an answer to your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is to ask it in a way that makes it easy for someone with a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broad computational science background to answer it with 15 minutes of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; effort or less.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Topics that are usually a good fit for this site:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about software packages or languages used broadly in computational science (e.g., PETSc, MATLAB, Trilinos, LAPACK, SLEPc,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; R, NumPy, SciPy, Julia, Maple, Octave) except Mathematica (which has&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its own site now). In general, high-level questions (e.g., about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/package features) are best. Questions that are essentially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about debugging a code sample, or about low-level language syntax are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a poor fit for this site, and are usually closed; such questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be asked on language-/package-specific forums. Package&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developers interested in using this site as a resource should look at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this meta question. Package developers answering questions should look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at this meta question for guidelines on disclosing project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; affiliations.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about algorithms or methods used to solve problems in applied mathematics (e.g., finding roots of a polynomial, finding the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; eigenvalues/eigenvectors of a matrix, solving an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elliptic/parabolic/hyperbolic PDE)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions that ask about appropriate methods for a given application area (e.g., what numerical methods would I use when modeling shock&#xD;&#xA;&gt; waves, what numerical methods would I use when modeling combustion,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what graph algorithms would I use if I wanted to understand social&#xD;&#xA;&gt; networks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer Science Stack Exchange is for students, researchers and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practitioners of computer science.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer science, also sometimes called computing science, is the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; science of computation and its applications. This site covers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; theoretical and applied computer science at any level, including but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms, models of computation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming language semantics, formal methods&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - computer architecture, networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, natural language processing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - vision, graphics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [CrossValidated][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CrossValidated is for statisticians, data miners, and anyone else&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doing data analysis or interested in it as a discipline. If you have a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical analysis, applied or theoretical&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - designing experiments&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - collecting data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - data mining&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - visualizing data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - probability theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - mathematical statistics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical and data-driven computing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Crypto Stack Exchange is for software developers, mathematicians and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others interested in cryptography.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cryptography Stack Exchange is for asking questions about the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mathematics and properties of cryptographic systems, their analysis&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (&quot;cryptanalysis&quot;) and subsidiary topics that generally make up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cryptology, such as random number generation. As such, we welcome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions on topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Asymmetric and symmetric cryptographic algorithms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographic protocols&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptanalysis techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Hash functions, hashing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Entropy and information theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographically Secure (Pseudo-)Random Number Generation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dba.se is for those needing expert answers to advanced&#xD;&#xA;&gt; database-related questions concerning traditional SQL RDBMS and NoSQL&#xD;&#xA;&gt; alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Database Administration including configuration and backup / restore&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Querying including window-functions, dynamic-sql, and query-performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Modelling and database-design, including referential-integrity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Programming in built-in server-side languages including stored-procedures and triggers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence including etl, reporting, and olap&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Examples of questions that are likely to be on-topic for Data Science&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given process monitoring data arriving every 10ms, what statistical tool should I use to best characterize a change in the process - mean?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a distribution?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When is it suitable to apply L1 regularization for feature selection?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I would like to produce a infographic on the 'Brexit' referendum. Given public opinion data across the UK, what are some meaningful&#xD;&#xA;&gt; techniques to visaualize it in a dashboard?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When executing an ARIMA model in Spark, what are the pros and cons of using Python instead of R?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given Facebook Likes, is there an ML technique to predict age and gender?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for electronics and electrical engineering professionals,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; students, and enthusiasts. We ask and answer questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electrical and electronics engineering topics, which include&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electronics, physical computing, and those working with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; microcontrollers, Arduinos and embedded systems. We feel the best&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Electronics Design questions have a schematic, links to pertinent&#xD;&#xA;&gt; datasheets or some source code in them, but if your question generally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific electronics design problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the theory and simulation of electromagnetic forces&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a communication scheme&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Engineering Stack Exchange are usually well-received when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Identify a specific engineering problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Require expert engineering knowledge to solve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Include any relevant drawings, images or references that may be necessary to understand the problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Excite or challenge experienced professionals in the field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Game Development Stack Exchange is for professional and amateur&#xD;&#xA;&gt; video/computer game developers. If you have a question relating to ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asset pipelines (creation, storage, editing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game-specific programming issues (engine architecture, game-related APIs, networking, tools, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - project management (testing, team management, scheduling, publishing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game industry (careers, trends, technology, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware Recommendations is a community-run website to help you find a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific product for your needs. That means you can ask for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware to perform a specific task. However, you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be aware that &quot;hardware&quot; is not an all-encompassing term — for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; details of what hardware is accepted on this site, please see What is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware?. In essence, we can help you if you're looking for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware that is &quot;an electronic item that is,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interfaces with, or connects to a computer to operate&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; IT Security Stack Exchange is for Information Security professionals&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to discuss protecting assets from threats and vulnerabilities. Topics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; include, but are not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - web app hardening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - network security&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - social engineering, including phishing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - risk management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - policies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - penetration testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - security tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - using cryptography&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - incident response&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physically securing the office, datacentre, information assets etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Law Stack Exchange is for legal professionals, students, and others&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with experience or interest in law.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The best questions are those that have specific answers; Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange is not a general discussion forum. In general, ask here if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question which covers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Statutes or court decisions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal terms and language, doctrines and theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal process and procedure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Historical legal applications&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Dealing with legal professionals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mathematics Stack Exchange is for people studying mathematics at any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; level and professionals in related fields. We welcome questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Understanding mathematical concepts and theorems.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Mathematical problems such as one might come across in a course or textbook. (First read our how to ask a good question page.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Solving mathematical puzzles.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software that mathematicians use (except Mathematica, which has its own Stack Exchange site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Network Engineering Stack Exchange is for asking questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professionally managed networks in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - operating, maintaining, purchasing or managing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - planning or designing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - model or product line features and differences;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - lab scenarios involving on-topic equipment;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used by network professionals;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - servers operating as a router/switch/firewall;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design or theory of protocols used to operate a network (e.g. IP, TCP, routing protocols, STP, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - content delivery networks;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - production troubleshooting or problem resolution;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physical infrastructure (e.g. standard color coding of cables, types of fiber, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementing and enforcing network security or policies;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and meets the following requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - under your direct control (if the network is not under your control you will not likely be able to provide the information required to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer your question);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware that has a paid support option (enterprise/provider class products, some small business class devices);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then this is likely the correct place to ask unless it meets any of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the off-topic conditions detailed below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Open Source Stack Exchange is a question &amp; answer site about a group&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of related movements which encourage people to give up some of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rights given to them by copyright law, by using licenses which give&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others the freedom to use and transform their creative works, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which optionally (by using copyleft/share-alike licenses) ensure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; these works will always be made available with the same rights. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site is not limited to software, but also covers art, literature,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hardware, databases and more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; These movements have been spearheaded by a group of organisations:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FSF, OSI, Creative Commons, Free Culture. These organisations prefer a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; variety of different terms (free, open source, libre) and sometimes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; define them with slight differences. But on this site these terms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should in general be considered to be synonymous, except for questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which ask directly about their differences.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You've come to the right place if you have questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the history and philosophies of the FSF, OSI, CC etc&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, applying, and complying with Free &amp; Open licenses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how communities collaborate together to produce, distribute, market and sometime monetize these projects&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what license to use for a specific situation - but please read How do I ask for a license recommendation? first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Project Management][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The site is for project management practitioners, academics and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; amateur theorists. This is a site about the field of project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; management for people who love the subject. Our site includes the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following topics:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Management Practices and Theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Agile&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Scrum&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - PRINCE2&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Tool Usage in Project Management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Manager Career Advancement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Reverse Engineering][18]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reverse Engineering Stack Exchange is for researchers and developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who explore the principles of a system through analysis of its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structure, function, and operation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software analysis (static or dynamic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - disassembly or decompilation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware analysis and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools commonly used for reverse engineering hardware or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deterring reverse engineering efforts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Server Fault][19]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Server Fault is for questions about managing information technology&#xD;&#xA;&gt; systems in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - managing the hardware or software of servers, workstations, storage or networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used for administering, monitoring, or automating these&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deployment to and management of third-party provided information technology platforms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing Stack Exchange is for software quality control experts, automation engineers, and software testers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Recommendations][21]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for questions asking for recommendations of software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ready-to-use to accomplish a particular task, that is, “what software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can I use to do …?”. While this includes software libraries for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development use, note that recommendations of tutorials, data sources,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; media libraries (e.g. icon collections) etc. are off-topic – as are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions like “what technology to use for …?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good software recommendation requests have two components:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A purpose — a task to accomplish, a user story&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Some objective requirements — a minimum set of features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Stack Overflow][22]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; a specific programming problem, or a software algorithm, or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tools commonly used by programmers; and is a practical, answerable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem that is unique to software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [User Experience][23]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; User Experience Stack Exchange is for User Experience Designers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Information Architects, and Human Computer Interaction researchers. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Specific UX design problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UX issues that can be solved with expert advice or existing research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about HCI and user research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [The Workplace][24]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Workplace Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site about the workplace and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other career-related topics. With your help we're working to build a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; library to every question about the workplace related to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Finding employment (resumes/cv/cover letters, recruiters, hiring-managers, interviews, negotiations, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Maintaining employment (promotions, pay increases, harassment, bullying, poor working conditions, communication problems, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Leadership in the workplace (motivating people, encouraging people, making decisions, holding hard conversations, intervening in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unproductive situations, asking for and giving help, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Terminating employment (notice period, breaking the news, handing over work, reference letters, relieving letters, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://datascience.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://security.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://math.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://serverfault.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23015" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="c194de62-d165-438c-9e1a-ed2fb785ec91" CreationDate="2016-05-27T19:35:06.997" UserId="4" Comment="added 174 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields. Questions asked here are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [requirements][1], [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page &#xD;&#xA;A new interstitial page should be added for new users that are asking questions, very similar to the [version on ServerFault](http://serverfault.com/questions/ask/advice?). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things. We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions related to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page. No, really. I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this cannot be done or is denied, we would like to add the text to the **[How to Ask][12]** page instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23016" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="72b3e6c9-6710-46bc-8bed-40388eea62ba" CreationDate="2016-05-27T19:46:16.157" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 13 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields. Questions asked here are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [requirements][1], [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page &#xD;&#xA;A new interstitial page should be added for new users that are asking questions, very similar to the [version on ServerFault](http://serverfault.com/questions/ask/advice?). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things. We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions related to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [requirements][1], [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page. No, really. I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this cannot be done or is denied, we would like to add the text to the **[How to Ask][12]** page instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23017" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8061" RevisionGUID="b1600040-e009-48db-82ad-4d214f15a10a" CreationDate="2016-05-27T20:02:21.060" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 91 characters in body" Text="##Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's as good a site title as you're going to get.  Here's why:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  It's *not* &quot;Programmers,&quot; which smacks of `people who write teh codez.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Electrical Engineering's name change (from Electronics) was very good for them.  It raised the quality bar on that site significantly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The On-Topic page, Tour Page, or Whatever New Users See First™&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frankly, after watching this site for as long as I have, I strongly believe that we should lead with a brief summary of *what we're not.*  We can caution people right up front while still keeping it light and friendly.  Something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions *directly related to the Software Development Life Cycle,* including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - Software Requirements Engineering&#xD;&#xA; - Software Architecture and Design&#xD;&#xA; - Algorithms and Data Structures&#xD;&#xA; - Configuration, Build and Release Management&#xD;&#xA; - Software Development Methods and Practices, such as Scrum and TDD&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, this needs to be an *interstitial page,* something that is put right in front of people before they ask their first question, with a checkbox at the bottom that says &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page. No, really. I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ServerFault did something similar; we can do the same." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23018" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8061" RevisionGUID="e6b3aae1-01ed-42f6-9836-2fe6e53f748c" CreationDate="2016-05-27T22:30:17.763" UserId="1204" Comment="edited body" Text="##Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's as good a site title as you're going to get.  Here's why:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  It's *not* &quot;Programmers,&quot; which smacks of `people who write teh codez.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Electrical Engineering's name change (from Electronics) was very good for them.  It raised the quality bar on that site significantly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The On-Topic page, Tour Page, or Whatever New Users See First™&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frankly, after watching this site for as long as I have, I strongly believe that we should lead with a brief summary of *what we're not.*  We can caution people right up front while still keeping it light and friendly.  Something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, or questions asking for a big list of things.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions *directly related to the Software Development Life Cycle,* including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - Software Development Methods and Practices, such as Scrum and TDD&#xD;&#xA; - Software Requirements Engineering&#xD;&#xA; - Software Architecture and Design&#xD;&#xA; - Algorithms and Data Structures&#xD;&#xA; - Configuration, Build and Release Management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, this needs to be an *interstitial page,* something that is put right in front of people before they ask their first question, with a checkbox at the bottom that says &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page. No, really. I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ServerFault did something similar; we can do the same." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23022" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7221" RevisionGUID="1004eaa8-3002-4f20-9251-570ecb547dde" CreationDate="2016-05-28T15:36:17.590" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[7564],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="23024" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="c9f2e98e-6951-4e49-8fac-cdc209bf4058" CreationDate="2016-05-28T17:17:42.757" UserId="1130" Comment="deleted 1536 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields. Questions asked here are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [requirements][1], [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page &#xD;&#xA;If things do *not* improve as anticipated when we change our name, we'd like to keep the option open of potentially adding a new interstitial page for new users that are asking questions, very similar to the [version on ServerFault](http://serverfault.com/questions/ask/advice?). See [Robert Harvey's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/1130) for more details on specific verbiage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23025" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8061" RevisionGUID="d7cad2bc-28f4-4219-9c49-c2d731eeb680" CreationDate="2016-05-30T15:10:17.393" UserId="1204" Comment="added 15 characters in body" Text="##Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's as good a site title as you're going to get.  Here's why:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  It's *not* &quot;Programmers,&quot; which smacks of `people who write teh codez.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Electrical Engineering's name change (from Electronics) was very good for them.  It raised the quality bar on that site significantly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The On-Topic page, Tour Page, or Whatever New Users See First™&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frankly, after watching this site for as long as I have, I strongly believe that we should lead with a brief summary of *what we're not.*  We can caution people right up front while still keeping it light and friendly.  Something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, make lists of things, or engage in extended discussion here.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions *directly related to the Software Development Life Cycle,* including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - Software Development Methods and Practices, such as Scrum and TDD&#xD;&#xA; - Software Requirements Engineering&#xD;&#xA; - Software Architecture and Design&#xD;&#xA; - Algorithms and Data Structures&#xD;&#xA; - Configuration, Build and Release Management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, this needs to be an *interstitial page,* something that is put right in front of people before they ask their first question, with a checkbox at the bottom that says &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page. No, really. I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ServerFault did something similar; we can do the same." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23026" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="038d3308-185d-4321-a269-1581f8ca41da" CreationDate="2016-05-30T20:35:04.607" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8068/looking-for-help-in-job-hunting?noredirect=1#comment24917_8068" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] [tag:job-title] [tag:job-definition] (*job*) - **[burnination request](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/8068/31260)**&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23027" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7254" RevisionGUID="db45199f-6ab9-45c5-83fc-afb5faaafb96" CreationDate="2016-05-31T08:11:31.593" UserId="31260" Comment="copied from http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6487 // per http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/319882/static-analysis-criteria-different-for-various-parts-of-solution?noredirect=1#comment678991_319882" Text="### Question is About How to Use a Development Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool that you are using is a tool that is used to design and develop software and is used primarily in a software development environment, you should check out [Stack Overflow][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A number of development tools already have questions and answers on Stack Overflow, ranging from requirements management tools ([DOORS][2]) to architecture and design tools ([Dia][3], [Rhapsody][4], [Enterprise Architect][5]) to editors ([Visual Studio][6], [Eclipse][7], [Notepad++][8]) to mathematical packages ([MATLAB][9], [Sage][10]) to version control ([git][11], [ClearCase][12]) to peer review tools ([Collaborator][13]) to test tools ([TestComplete][14], [Selenium][15]) to project management tools ([Jira][16], [FogBugz][17]), and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about How to Use a General Purpose Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool is general purpose software, check out [Super User][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all of the tools that we use during the course of software development are unique to software developers. Tools such as office suites ([Microsoft Office][19], [OpenOffice.org][20]), web browsers ([Internet Explorer][21], [Chrome][22]) file transfer tools ([Filezilla][23], [WinSCP][24]), virtualization software ([VirtualBox][25], [VMWare][26]), and analysis software ([MATLAB][27], [Mathematica][28]) are used by many types of people in different environments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about a Tool in a Context Specific to an Operating System&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several Stack Exchange sites devoted to particular operating systems and associated software packages or applications: [Android][29], [Apple][30], [Unix and Linux][31], and [Ubuntu][32]. Be sure to read their Help Center, Meta site, and search for similar questions before asking to make sure that your specific question is on-topic for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about using a Tool in a Software Development Workflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question involves how to integrate a tool or type of tool into your workflow or process, then it is likely to be on-topic on Programmers. Generally, if you aren't asking about how to use a specific feature of a tool, but trying to determine how to use the tool to achieve a well-defined goal, start here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Other Considerations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some tools have their own Stack Exchange sites as well. For example, there are sites for [Drupal][33], [Expression Engine][34], [Mathematica][35], [Salesforce][36], [SharePoint][37], and [Wordpress][38]. There are even more sites for both particular environments and specific tools in beta - check out [the complete list of Stack Exchange sites][39].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  However, if you decide to post the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions may be on-topic on multiple sites. If you see your favorite tool on a site, check out some of the questions and answers to see if your question fits and which site is most likely to provide the answers that you are looking for. Do not cross-post questions - if you feel that your question should be moved to a different site, flag it and let the site's moderation team know. If you aren't sure, every site has a Meta site and many sites have a chat room, so you can always ask before asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators can, and do, migrate questions. If you do ask in the wrong place, there's a site that is more appropriate, and it's a well-written question, it will likely be migrated. Low quality questions that don't meet the quality guidelines of the other site won't be moved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are site-specific [automatic question blocks][40] - posting on the wrong site will not help you get answers and will likely lead to being blocked on other sites. It's also not possible to migrate questions if you are blocked on the target site. If you are blocked somewhere, do not post questions that are off-topic somewhere else. Instead, work to improve your existing questions and answers to have the block lifted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6701/are-questions-asking-for-help-using-a-tool-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5519/are-there-a-subset-of-tool-questions-that-are-appropriate-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6311/where-does-my-git-question-go&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/doors&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/dia&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/rhapsody&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/enterprise-architect&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/visual-studio&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/eclipse&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/notepad%2B%2B&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/sage&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/git&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/clearcase&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/code-collaborator&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/testcomplete&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/selenium&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/jira&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/fogbugz&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://superuser.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/microsoft-office&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/openoffice.org&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/internet-explorer&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/google-chrome&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/filezilla&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/winscp&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/virtualbox&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/vmware&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/mathematica&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://android.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [32]: http://askubuntu.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [33]: http://drupal.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [34]: http://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [35]: http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [36]: http://salesforce.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [37]: http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [38]: http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [39]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [40]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23028" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8069" RevisionGUID="744c1c4b-bb2e-48c3-92df-124dffdc9688" CreationDate="2016-05-31T17:11:55.880" UserId="6605" Text="I always believed that there is an important distinction between off-topic questions which are... well, “plain off-topic”, and the ones which are off-topic because they simply belong on a different SE site, which in case of Programmers.SE is StackOverflow, by lack of other migration paths.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Those which are off-topic without having a chance to be migrated to StackOverflow (either because their quality is too low or because they are off-topic on SO too for any other reason) should be closed. Answering them would be a sort of positive reinforcement for those questions, so... [don't answer them][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Those which are off-topic simply because they belong on StackOverflow are a very different beast. They can be good, valid, well formulated questions, which have no reason for being downvoted or unanswered of they were posted on StackOverflow in the first place. They also have a good chance being migrated instead of simply closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When encountering this second type of questions on Programmers.SE, I find it natural to vote for migration, as well as to write an answer (when I know the answer) even *before* the question is actually migrated. As I [explained previously][2], this seems like a good and harmless thing for Programmers.SE. The positive/negative reinforcement thing doesn't really apply here: the original poster made a small and understandable mistake, the community migrated the question where it belongs, no harm done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently, I received [a comment][3] from a well-respected member of our community, suggesting that I shouldn't do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...] It makes no sense to answer an off-topic question, on the off-chance that it might actually get migrated to the correct one. Most off-topic questions on Programmers get closed, not migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think one should do in such situation? If a question is about to be closed as off-topic (and *eventually* migrated to Stack Overflow), should I, while being *personally convinced that it is a good candidate for migration*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Avoid answering it, given that I won't probably bother tracking the question until it is closed/migrated in order to answer/upvote it after that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answer it, hoping that community will be of the same opinion as me that the question should be migrated, instead of simply being closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Do something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2823/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/2849/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37550012/serializing-net-object-into-a-json-string-produces-unreadable-output/37550013?noredirect=1#comment62589231_37550013" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23029" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8069" RevisionGUID="744c1c4b-bb2e-48c3-92df-124dffdc9688" CreationDate="2016-05-31T17:11:55.880" UserId="6605" Text="Should I answer a question which belongs on Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23030" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8069" RevisionGUID="744c1c4b-bb2e-48c3-92df-124dffdc9688" CreationDate="2016-05-31T17:11:55.880" UserId="6605" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23031" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8070" RevisionGUID="3fa19f37-95eb-48a9-bacd-d680a6310b46" CreationDate="2016-05-31T17:27:08.367" UserId="1204" Text="Ultimately, the goal is to get off-topic questions off the front page *as quickly as possible,* so that they don't provide encouragement for other people to ask their off-topic questions.  Migration is not the best mechanism to do this; most off-topic questions asked here will not qualify for migration, and it's not uncommon for it to take hours for a question to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A long period of watching how these sites work has yielded some useful observations about how new users decide if they're going to ask their question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  They look at the title of the site.&#xD;&#xA;2.  They look at the tags (a terrible way to determine topicality, but they do it anyway),&#xD;&#xA;3.  They look at other questions to see if they are similar to the one they're about to ask, *without regard for downvotes, close banners, etc.*&#xD;&#xA;4.  If they do manage to find the Help Center/on-topic article, they try to shoehorn their question in some way into the on-topic list (&quot;My recommendation question is about design.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with #3 is especially egregious *if people are actually answering these off-topic questions.*  It sends the message &quot;We don't really mean what we say about site scope.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My advice?  If you feel compelled to answer such questions, either do it in a second-class comment, or wait until the question gets migrated to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23032" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8070" RevisionGUID="74e3fa03-0522-42c0-a5a5-93292a56f708" CreationDate="2016-05-31T17:33:41.290" UserId="1204" Comment="added 309 characters in body" Text="Ultimately, the goal is to get off-topic questions off the front page *as quickly as possible,* so that they don't provide encouragement for other people to ask their off-topic questions.  Migration is not the best mechanism to do this; most off-topic questions asked here will not qualify for migration, and it's not uncommon for it to take hours for a question to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A long period of watching how these sites work has yielded some useful observations about how new users decide if they're going to ask their question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  They look at the title of the site.&#xD;&#xA;2.  They look at the tags (a terrible way to determine topicality, but they do it anyway),&#xD;&#xA;3.  They look at other questions to see if they are similar to the one they're about to ask, *without regard for downvotes, close banners, etc.*&#xD;&#xA;4.  If they do manage to find the Help Center/on-topic article, they try to shoehorn their question in some way into the on-topic list (&quot;My recommendation question is about design.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with #3 is especially egregious *if people are actually answering these off-topic questions.*  It sends the message &quot;We don't really mean what we say about site scope.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My advice?  If you feel compelled to answer such questions, either do it in a second-class comment, or wait until the question gets migrated to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Usability issues for first-time Stack Exchange users - a micro-study](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/279661/usability-issues-for-first-time-stack-exchange-users-a-micro-study)  &#xD;&#xA;[New Site Name and Scope Proposals](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8056)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23033" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="7de3497b-0556-4e7c-b4b5-9dd582b8692f" CreationDate="2016-06-01T10:07:51.210" UserId="4" Comment="added 607 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields. Questions asked here are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [requirements][1], [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page &#xD;&#xA;If things do *not* improve as anticipated when we change our name, we'd like to keep the option open of potentially adding a new interstitial page for new users that are asking questions, very similar to the [version on ServerFault](http://serverfault.com/questions/ask/advice?). See [Robert Harvey's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/1130) for more details on specific verbiage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [/questions/ask/advice page does exist on Programmers now][12], but it's not an interstitial that I'm aware of. The content is good, but not so much the order. For example, &quot;search&quot; should be last - if you don't understand the scope of the site, you can get old, legacy questions in search. Searching should be done after you understand who the members of this community are (software engineers and other professionals in the field of software development), what our scope is (/help/on-topic), and what kinds of questions we accept (be specific, make it relevant to others, keep an open mind).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask/advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23034" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8067" RevisionGUID="7a4cbbd2-8326-4de3-b07c-db85493e191d" CreationDate="2016-06-01T10:13:32.710" UserId="4" Comment="added 549 characters in body" Text="The following sites may be of interest to users on Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [CrossValidated][4] &#xD;&#xA;* [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;* [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;* [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;* [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;* [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;* [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;* [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;* [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;* [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;* [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;* [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;* [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;* [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;* [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;* [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][21]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Recommendations][22]&#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow][23]&#xD;&#xA;* [User Experience][24]&#xD;&#xA;* [The Workplace][25]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before posting, be sure to read their Help Centers to fully understand what these communities expect from high quality questions and any specific rules they may have. As always, if you aren't sure if your question is a good fit, post on a Meta site and you can be directed to an appropriate site on the Stack Exchange network, if one exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More detailed information about each site follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Code Review Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; peer review of your code. We're working together to improve the skills&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of programmers worldwide by taking working code and making it better.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from your project in the following areas…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Best practices and design pattern usage&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Security issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Correctness in unanticipated cases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then you are in the right place!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computational Science Stack Exchange is for questions and answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about computational methods used in technical disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First-time posters are strongly advised to read Eric Raymond's How to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask Questions the Smart Way for advice on how to ask good questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (not for technical answers). Although written for an audience asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions about open source software, the same advice applies when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking questions about any subject area.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is run by volunteers; the best way to get an answer to your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is to ask it in a way that makes it easy for someone with a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broad computational science background to answer it with 15 minutes of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; effort or less.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Topics that are usually a good fit for this site:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about software packages or languages used broadly in computational science (e.g., PETSc, MATLAB, Trilinos, LAPACK, SLEPc,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; R, NumPy, SciPy, Julia, Maple, Octave) except Mathematica (which has&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its own site now). In general, high-level questions (e.g., about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/package features) are best. Questions that are essentially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about debugging a code sample, or about low-level language syntax are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a poor fit for this site, and are usually closed; such questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be asked on language-/package-specific forums. Package&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developers interested in using this site as a resource should look at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this meta question. Package developers answering questions should look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at this meta question for guidelines on disclosing project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; affiliations.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about algorithms or methods used to solve problems in applied mathematics (e.g., finding roots of a polynomial, finding the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; eigenvalues/eigenvectors of a matrix, solving an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elliptic/parabolic/hyperbolic PDE)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions that ask about appropriate methods for a given application area (e.g., what numerical methods would I use when modeling shock&#xD;&#xA;&gt; waves, what numerical methods would I use when modeling combustion,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what graph algorithms would I use if I wanted to understand social&#xD;&#xA;&gt; networks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer Science Stack Exchange is for students, researchers and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practitioners of computer science.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer science, also sometimes called computing science, is the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; science of computation and its applications. This site covers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; theoretical and applied computer science at any level, including but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms, models of computation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming language semantics, formal methods&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - computer architecture, networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, natural language processing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - vision, graphics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [CrossValidated][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CrossValidated is for statisticians, data miners, and anyone else&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doing data analysis or interested in it as a discipline. If you have a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical analysis, applied or theoretical&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - designing experiments&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - collecting data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - data mining&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - visualizing data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - probability theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - mathematical statistics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical and data-driven computing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Crypto Stack Exchange is for software developers, mathematicians and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others interested in cryptography.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cryptography Stack Exchange is for asking questions about the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mathematics and properties of cryptographic systems, their analysis&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (&quot;cryptanalysis&quot;) and subsidiary topics that generally make up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cryptology, such as random number generation. As such, we welcome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions on topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Asymmetric and symmetric cryptographic algorithms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographic protocols&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptanalysis techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Hash functions, hashing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Entropy and information theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographically Secure (Pseudo-)Random Number Generation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dba.se is for those needing expert answers to advanced&#xD;&#xA;&gt; database-related questions concerning traditional SQL RDBMS and NoSQL&#xD;&#xA;&gt; alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Database Administration including configuration and backup / restore&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Querying including window-functions, dynamic-sql, and query-performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Modelling and database-design, including referential-integrity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Programming in built-in server-side languages including stored-procedures and triggers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence including etl, reporting, and olap&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Examples of questions that are likely to be on-topic for Data Science&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given process monitoring data arriving every 10ms, what statistical tool should I use to best characterize a change in the process - mean?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a distribution?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When is it suitable to apply L1 regularization for feature selection?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I would like to produce a infographic on the 'Brexit' referendum. Given public opinion data across the UK, what are some meaningful&#xD;&#xA;&gt; techniques to visaualize it in a dashboard?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When executing an ARIMA model in Spark, what are the pros and cons of using Python instead of R?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given Facebook Likes, is there an ML technique to predict age and gender?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for electronics and electrical engineering professionals,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; students, and enthusiasts. We ask and answer questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electrical and electronics engineering topics, which include&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electronics, physical computing, and those working with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; microcontrollers, Arduinos and embedded systems. We feel the best&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Electronics Design questions have a schematic, links to pertinent&#xD;&#xA;&gt; datasheets or some source code in them, but if your question generally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific electronics design problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the theory and simulation of electromagnetic forces&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a communication scheme&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Engineering Stack Exchange are usually well-received when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Identify a specific engineering problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Require expert engineering knowledge to solve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Include any relevant drawings, images or references that may be necessary to understand the problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Excite or challenge experienced professionals in the field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Game Development Stack Exchange is for professional and amateur&#xD;&#xA;&gt; video/computer game developers. If you have a question relating to ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asset pipelines (creation, storage, editing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game-specific programming issues (engine architecture, game-related APIs, networking, tools, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - project management (testing, team management, scheduling, publishing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game industry (careers, trends, technology, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware Recommendations is a community-run website to help you find a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific product for your needs. That means you can ask for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware to perform a specific task. However, you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be aware that &quot;hardware&quot; is not an all-encompassing term — for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; details of what hardware is accepted on this site, please see What is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware?. In essence, we can help you if you're looking for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware that is &quot;an electronic item that is,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interfaces with, or connects to a computer to operate&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; IT Security Stack Exchange is for Information Security professionals&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to discuss protecting assets from threats and vulnerabilities. Topics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; include, but are not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - web app hardening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - network security&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - social engineering, including phishing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - risk management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - policies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - penetration testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - security tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - using cryptography&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - incident response&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physically securing the office, datacentre, information assets etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Law Stack Exchange is for legal professionals, students, and others&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with experience or interest in law.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The best questions are those that have specific answers; Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange is not a general discussion forum. In general, ask here if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question which covers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Statutes or court decisions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal terms and language, doctrines and theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal process and procedure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Historical legal applications&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Dealing with legal professionals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mathematics Stack Exchange is for people studying mathematics at any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; level and professionals in related fields. We welcome questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Understanding mathematical concepts and theorems.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Mathematical problems such as one might come across in a course or textbook. (First read our how to ask a good question page.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Solving mathematical puzzles.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software that mathematicians use (except Mathematica, which has its own Stack Exchange site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Network Engineering Stack Exchange is for asking questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professionally managed networks in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - operating, maintaining, purchasing or managing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - planning or designing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - model or product line features and differences;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - lab scenarios involving on-topic equipment;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used by network professionals;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - servers operating as a router/switch/firewall;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design or theory of protocols used to operate a network (e.g. IP, TCP, routing protocols, STP, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - content delivery networks;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - production troubleshooting or problem resolution;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physical infrastructure (e.g. standard color coding of cables, types of fiber, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementing and enforcing network security or policies;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and meets the following requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - under your direct control (if the network is not under your control you will not likely be able to provide the information required to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer your question);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware that has a paid support option (enterprise/provider class products, some small business class devices);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then this is likely the correct place to ask unless it meets any of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the off-topic conditions detailed below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Open Source Stack Exchange is a question &amp; answer site about a group&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of related movements which encourage people to give up some of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rights given to them by copyright law, by using licenses which give&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others the freedom to use and transform their creative works, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which optionally (by using copyleft/share-alike licenses) ensure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; these works will always be made available with the same rights. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site is not limited to software, but also covers art, literature,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hardware, databases and more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; These movements have been spearheaded by a group of organisations:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FSF, OSI, Creative Commons, Free Culture. These organisations prefer a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; variety of different terms (free, open source, libre) and sometimes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; define them with slight differences. But on this site these terms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should in general be considered to be synonymous, except for questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which ask directly about their differences.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You've come to the right place if you have questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the history and philosophies of the FSF, OSI, CC etc&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, applying, and complying with Free &amp; Open licenses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how communities collaborate together to produce, distribute, market and sometime monetize these projects&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what license to use for a specific situation - but please read How do I ask for a license recommendation? first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Personal Productivity Stack Exchange is for people wanting to improve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their personal productivity. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - achieving a productivity workflow, using techniques like GTD, Covey, Pomodoro, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - fighting procrastination by getting energetic and motivated workflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - ergonomics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - effective sleep habits and the entire sleep-wake transition&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - learning, memory and creativity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The site is for project management practitioners, academics and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; amateur theorists. This is a site about the field of project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; management for people who love the subject. Our site includes the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following topics:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Management Practices and Theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Agile&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Scrum&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - PRINCE2&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Tool Usage in Project Management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Manager Career Advancement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reverse Engineering Stack Exchange is for researchers and developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who explore the principles of a system through analysis of its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structure, function, and operation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software analysis (static or dynamic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - disassembly or decompilation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware analysis and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools commonly used for reverse engineering hardware or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deterring reverse engineering efforts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Server Fault is for questions about managing information technology&#xD;&#xA;&gt; systems in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - managing the hardware or software of servers, workstations, storage or networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used for administering, monitoring, or automating these&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deployment to and management of third-party provided information technology platforms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][21]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing Stack Exchange is for software quality control experts, automation engineers, and software testers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Recommendations][22]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for questions asking for recommendations of software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ready-to-use to accomplish a particular task, that is, “what software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can I use to do …?”. While this includes software libraries for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development use, note that recommendations of tutorials, data sources,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; media libraries (e.g. icon collections) etc. are off-topic – as are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions like “what technology to use for …?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good software recommendation requests have two components:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A purpose — a task to accomplish, a user story&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Some objective requirements — a minimum set of features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Stack Overflow][23]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; a specific programming problem, or a software algorithm, or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tools commonly used by programmers; and is a practical, answerable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem that is unique to software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [User Experience][24]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; User Experience Stack Exchange is for User Experience Designers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Information Architects, and Human Computer Interaction researchers. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Specific UX design problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UX issues that can be solved with expert advice or existing research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about HCI and user research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [The Workplace][25]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Workplace Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site about the workplace and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other career-related topics. With your help we're working to build a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; library to every question about the workplace related to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Finding employment (resumes/cv/cover letters, recruiters, hiring-managers, interviews, negotiations, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Maintaining employment (promotions, pay increases, harassment, bullying, poor working conditions, communication problems, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Leadership in the workplace (motivating people, encouraging people, making decisions, holding hard conversations, intervening in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unproductive situations, asking for and giving help, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Terminating employment (notice period, breaking the news, handing over work, reference letters, relieving letters, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://datascience.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://security.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://math.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://serverfault.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23037" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="979e99d7-403f-4eb1-9553-b47925539487" CreationDate="2016-06-01T18:27:11.517" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 440 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields. Questions asked here are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [requirements][1], [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An interstital page using the [/questions/ask/advice page][12] should be added. My biggest problem with this page is the ordering. For example, &quot;search&quot; should be last - if you don't understand the scope of the site, you can get old, legacy questions in search. Searching should be done after you understand who the members of this community are (software engineers and other professionals in the field of software development), what our scope is (/help/on-topic), and what kinds of questions we accept (be specific, make it relevant to others, keep an open mind).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask/advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23038" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="8a82b33a-ff06-49b6-84f3-6c56ace87491" CreationDate="2016-06-01T18:52:48.557" UserId="4" Comment="added 2350 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields. Questions asked here are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [requirements][1], [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Harvey proposed [an interstital page][12]. I made a few minor edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your questions about software engineering, but before you ask your question, please read the important information below:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting or debugging here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve). We also don't explain what code snippets are doing or answer questions about how to use your software development tools.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, make lists, search for resources or references, or engage in extended discussion here. We don't predict the future, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what classes you should take, what technologies you should learn, or what job you should apply for. We also don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask questions *related to the Software Development Life Cycle,* such as requirements engineering, architecture and design, configuration management, software processes and methods, and software project management. See our [Help Center article about our scope](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) for more information.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Still have questions? Be sure to check our our [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) and our [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help). If you still have questions, check out [our Meta site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/), including to ask us about our community.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this doesn't work, something like the [/questions/ask/advice page][13] should be added. However, I'd like to be able to clarify the &quot;be on-topic&quot; section to be more explicit about what is on and off topic for us, especially given our history. This should help combat people who are directed here in error. Ideally, I'd also like to reorder this page For example, &quot;search&quot; should be last - if you don't understand the scope of the site, you can get old, legacy questions in search. Searching should be done after you understand who the members of this community are (software engineers and other professionals in the field of software development), what our scope is (/help/on-topic), and what kinds of questions we accept (be specific, make it relevant to others, keep an open mind).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask/advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23039" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="0fa807f8-7574-408b-bab7-a9244300401c" CreationDate="2016-06-01T18:59:11.763" UserId="4" Comment="added 2350 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields. Questions asked here are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [requirements][1], [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Harvey proposed [an interstital page][12]. I made a few minor edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question. Before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, make lists of things, or engage in extended discussion here.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here. We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for. We also don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions *directly related to the Software Development Life Cycle,* including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - Software Development Methods and Practices, such as Scrum and TDD&#xD;&#xA; - Software Requirements Engineering&#xD;&#xA; - Software Architecture and Design&#xD;&#xA; - Algorithms and Data Structures&#xD;&#xA; - Configuration, Build and Release Management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic. See [our Help Center's page about what you can ask about](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this doesn't work, something like the [/questions/ask/advice page][13] should be added. However, I'd like to be able to clarify the &quot;be on-topic&quot; section to be more explicit about what is on and off topic for us, especially given our history. This should help combat people who are directed here in error. Ideally, I'd also like to reorder this page For example, &quot;search&quot; should be last - if you don't understand the scope of the site, you can get old, legacy questions in search. Searching should be done after you understand who the members of this community are (software engineers and other professionals in the field of software development), what our scope is (/help/on-topic), and what kinds of questions we accept (be specific, make it relevant to others, keep an open mind).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask/advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23040" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="2b804d09-2666-454f-bcd0-11d5edfaedff" CreationDate="2016-06-01T19:19:19.010" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields. Questions asked here are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [requirements][1], [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Harvey proposed [an interstital page][12]. I made a few minor edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question. Before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, make lists of things, or engage in extended discussion here.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here. We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for. We also don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions *directly related to the Software Development Life Cycle,* including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - Software Development Methods and Practices&#xD;&#xA; - Requirements Engineering&#xD;&#xA; - Software Architecture and Design&#xD;&#xA; - Algorithms and Data Structures&#xD;&#xA; - Quality Assurance and Testing&#xD;&#xA; - Configuration, Build and Release Management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic. See [our Help Center's page about what you can ask about](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this doesn't work, something like the [/questions/ask/advice page][13] should be added. However, I'd like to be able to clarify the &quot;be on-topic&quot; section to be more explicit about what is on and off topic for us, especially given our history. This should help combat people who are directed here in error. Ideally, I'd also like to reorder this page For example, &quot;search&quot; should be last - if you don't understand the scope of the site, you can get old, legacy questions in search. Searching should be done after you understand who the members of this community are (software engineers and other professionals in the field of software development), what our scope is (/help/on-topic), and what kinds of questions we accept (be specific, make it relevant to others, keep an open mind).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask/advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23041" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8061" RevisionGUID="e3aaf3d0-dc96-47d0-9c62-1f7f8653dd78" CreationDate="2016-06-01T19:19:30.167" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="##Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's as good a site title as you're going to get.  Here's why:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  It's *not* &quot;Programmers,&quot; which smacks of `people who write teh codez.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Electrical Engineering's name change (from Electronics) was very good for them.  It raised the quality bar on that site significantly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The On-Topic page, Tour Page, or Whatever New Users See First™&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frankly, after watching this site for as long as I have, I strongly believe that we should lead with a brief summary of *what we're not.*  We can caution people right up front while still keeping it light and friendly.  Something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question.  But before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, make lists of things, or engage in extended discussion here.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Phew.  *That was close!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions *directly related to the Software Development Life Cycle,* including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - Software Development Methods and Practices&#xD;&#xA; - Requirements Engineering&#xD;&#xA; - Software Architecture and Design&#xD;&#xA; - Algorithms and Data Structures&#xD;&#xA; - Quality Assurance and Testing&#xD;&#xA; - Configuration, Build and Release Management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, this needs to be an *interstitial page,* something that is put right in front of people before they ask their first question, with a checkbox at the bottom that says &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ☑  I have read and understand this page. No, really. I have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ServerFault did something similar; we can do the same." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23042" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="cd4b4088-6d3f-4423-980b-93bd569f6bb9" CreationDate="2016-06-01T19:19:31.097" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields. Questions asked here are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software development methods][8] and practices&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [requirements][1], [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Harvey proposed [an interstital page][12]. I made a few minor edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question. Before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, make lists of things, or engage in extended discussion here.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here. We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for. We also don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions *directly related to the Software Development Life Cycle,* including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA; - software requirements, architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA; - software quality assurance&#xD;&#xA; - software configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic. See [our Help Center's page about what you can ask about](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this doesn't work, something like the [/questions/ask/advice page][13] should be added. However, I'd like to be able to clarify the &quot;be on-topic&quot; section to be more explicit about what is on and off topic for us, especially given our history. This should help combat people who are directed here in error. Ideally, I'd also like to reorder this page For example, &quot;search&quot; should be last - if you don't understand the scope of the site, you can get old, legacy questions in search. Searching should be done after you understand who the members of this community are (software engineers and other professionals in the field of software development), what our scope is (/help/on-topic), and what kinds of questions we accept (be specific, make it relevant to others, keep an open mind).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask/advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23043" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="37efba24-374f-4614-ad14-50c7444006c9" CreationDate="2016-06-01T19:25:25.450" UserId="1204" Comment="added 238 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields. Questions asked here are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [Software Development Methods and Practices][8]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [Requirements Engineering][1], &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [Algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm) and [Data Structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [Quality Assurance and Testing][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [Configuration][5], [Build][6] and [Release][7] Management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Development Methods and Practices&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Requirements Engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Architecture and Design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Algorithms and Data Structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Quality Assurance and Testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Configuration, Build and Release Management&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Harvey proposed [an interstital page][12]. I made a few minor edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question. Before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, make lists of things, or engage in extended discussion here.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here. We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for. We also don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions *directly related to the Software Development Life Cycle,* including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA; - software requirements, architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA; - software quality assurance&#xD;&#xA; - software configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic. See [our Help Center's page about what you can ask about](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this doesn't work, something like the [/questions/ask/advice page][13] should be added. However, I'd like to be able to clarify the &quot;be on-topic&quot; section to be more explicit about what is on and off topic for us, especially given our history. This should help combat people who are directed here in error. Ideally, I'd also like to reorder this page For example, &quot;search&quot; should be last - if you don't understand the scope of the site, you can get old, legacy questions in search. Searching should be done after you understand who the members of this community are (software engineers and other professionals in the field of software development), what our scope is (/help/on-topic), and what kinds of questions we accept (be specific, make it relevant to others, keep an open mind).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask/advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23044" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="7ad1434b-b088-4fc9-aa36-230f6968e907" CreationDate="2016-06-01T19:29:22.487" UserId="1204" Comment="added 238 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields. Questions asked here are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software development [methods and practices][8]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [requirements engineering][1], &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm) and [data structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [quality assurance and testing][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Harvey proposed [an interstital page][12]. I made a few minor edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question. Before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, make lists of things, or engage in extended discussion here.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here. We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for. We also don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions *directly related to the Software Development Life Cycle,* including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA; - software requirements, architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA; - software quality assurance&#xD;&#xA; - software configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic. See [What topics can I ask about here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this doesn't work, something like the [/questions/ask/advice page][13] should be added. However, I'd like to be able to clarify the &quot;be on-topic&quot; section to be more explicit about what is on and off topic for us, especially given our history. This should help combat people who are directed here in error. Ideally, I'd also like to reorder this page For example, &quot;search&quot; should be last - if you don't understand the scope of the site, you can get old, legacy questions in search. Searching should be done after you understand who the members of this community are (software engineers and other professionals in the field of software development), what our scope is (/help/on-topic), and what kinds of questions we accept (be specific, make it relevant to others, keep an open mind).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask/advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23045" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="d1ccf0df-89a2-47f5-95f9-a15bea693442" CreationDate="2016-06-01T19:37:08.943" UserId="4" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields. Questions asked here are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software development [methods and practices][8]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [requirements engineering][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm) and [data structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [quality assurance and testing][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Harvey proposed [an interstital page][12]. I made a few minor edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question. Before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, make lists of things, or engage in extended discussion here.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here. We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for. We also don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions *directly related to the Software Development Life Cycle,* including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA; - requirements engineering&#xD;&#xA; - architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA; - software quality assurance&#xD;&#xA; - software configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic. See [What topics can I ask about here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this doesn't work, something like the [/questions/ask/advice page][13] should be added. However, I'd like to be able to clarify the &quot;be on-topic&quot; section to be more explicit about what is on and off topic for us, especially given our history. This should help combat people who are directed here in error. Ideally, I'd also like to reorder this page For example, &quot;search&quot; should be last - if you don't understand the scope of the site, you can get old, legacy questions in search. Searching should be done after you understand who the members of this community are (software engineers and other professionals in the field of software development), what our scope is (/help/on-topic), and what kinds of questions we accept (be specific, make it relevant to others, keep an open mind).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask/advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23046" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="d7994c73-fb9b-4314-bbe0-063054ad6ca0" CreationDate="2016-06-01T19:44:27.457" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 9 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields. Questions asked here are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software development [methods and practices][8]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [requirements engineering][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm) and [data structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [quality assurance and testing][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Harvey proposed [an interstital page][12]. I made a few minor edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question. Before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, make lists of things, or engage in extended discussion here.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here. We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for. We also don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions *directly related to the Software Development Life Cycle,* including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA; - requirements engineering&#xD;&#xA; - architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA; - software quality assurance&#xD;&#xA; - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic. See [What topics can I ask about here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this doesn't work, something like the [/questions/ask/advice page][13] should be added. However, I'd like to be able to clarify the &quot;be on-topic&quot; section to be more explicit about what is on and off topic for us, especially given our history. This should help combat people who are directed here in error. Ideally, I'd also like to reorder this page For example, &quot;search&quot; should be last - if you don't understand the scope of the site, you can get old, legacy questions in search. Searching should be done after you understand who the members of this community are (software engineers and other professionals in the field of software development), what our scope is (/help/on-topic), and what kinds of questions we accept (be specific, make it relevant to others, keep an open mind).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask/advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23047" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="92331ffa-4e92-4eaf-a5b2-19b7a39c7c19" CreationDate="2016-06-01T22:03:01.773" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields. Questions asked here are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software development [methods and practices][8]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [requirements engineering][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm) and [data structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [quality assurance and testing][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Harvey proposed [an interstital page][12]. I made a few minor edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question. Before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, make lists of things, or engage in extended discussion here.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here. We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for. We also don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###OK, So what ***can*** I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions *directly related to the Software Development Life Cycle,* including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA; - requirements engineering&#xD;&#xA; - architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic. See [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this doesn't work, something like the [/questions/ask/advice page][13] should be added. However, I'd like to be able to clarify the &quot;be on-topic&quot; section to be more explicit about what is on and off topic for us, especially given our history. This should help combat people who are directed here in error. Ideally, I'd also like to reorder this page For example, &quot;search&quot; should be last - if you don't understand the scope of the site, you can get old, legacy questions in search. Searching should be done after you understand who the members of this community are (software engineers and other professionals in the field of software development), what our scope is (/help/on-topic), and what kinds of questions we accept (be specific, make it relevant to others, keep an open mind).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask/advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23048" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="03510eb7-ee33-403f-99ec-4167e4279fa8" CreationDate="2016-06-02T11:52:52.800" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields. Questions asked here are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software development [methods and practices][8]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [requirements engineering][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm) and [data structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [quality assurance and testing][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Harvey proposed [an interstital page][12]. I made a few minor edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question. Before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, make lists of things, or engage in extended discussion here.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here. We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for. We also don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **OK, So what *can* I ask?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions *directly related to the Software Development Life Cycle,* including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA; - requirements engineering&#xD;&#xA; - architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic. See [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this doesn't work, something like the [/questions/ask/advice page][13] should be added. However, I'd like to be able to clarify the &quot;be on-topic&quot; section to be more explicit about what is on and off topic for us, especially given our history. This should help combat people who are directed here in error. Ideally, I'd also like to reorder this page For example, &quot;search&quot; should be last - if you don't understand the scope of the site, you can get old, legacy questions in search. Searching should be done after you understand who the members of this community are (software engineers and other professionals in the field of software development), what our scope is (/help/on-topic), and what kinds of questions we accept (be specific, make it relevant to others, keep an open mind).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask/advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23049" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8071" RevisionGUID="70e1e326-12c9-48fd-88cf-6447f7e10a71" CreationDate="2016-06-02T14:58:20.227" UserId="230003" Text="Tags &quot;angular&quot; and &quot;angularjs&quot; should be merged or synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23050" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="8071" RevisionGUID="4fc807b1-be33-4405-9417-da9afdb364b6" CreationDate="2016-06-02T14:58:20.227" UserId="230003" />
  <row Id="23051" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8069" RevisionGUID="d839cfe6-72c1-485b-8b85-77059db7644b" CreationDate="2016-06-02T17:22:38.777" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/738420573877985280" />
  <row Id="23052" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="cb34ef25-5b03-4335-a6aa-98d7ac5564e0" CreationDate="2016-06-02T23:30:25.807" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering and related fields. Questions asked here are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software development [methods and practices][8]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [requirements engineering][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm) and [data structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [quality assurance and testing][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Harvey proposed [an interstital page][12]. I made a few minor edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question. Before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, make lists of things, or engage in extended discussion here.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here. We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for. We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **OK, So what *can* I ask?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions *directly related to the Software Development Life Cycle,* including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA; - requirements engineering&#xD;&#xA; - architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic. See [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this doesn't work, something like the [/questions/ask/advice page][13] should be added. However, I'd like to be able to clarify the &quot;be on-topic&quot; section to be more explicit about what is on and off topic for us, especially given our history. This should help combat people who are directed here in error. Ideally, I'd also like to reorder this page For example, &quot;search&quot; should be last - if you don't understand the scope of the site, you can get old, legacy questions in search. Searching should be done after you understand who the members of this community are (software engineers and other professionals in the field of software development), what our scope is (/help/on-topic), and what kinds of questions we accept (be specific, make it relevant to others, keep an open mind).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask/advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23053" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8072" RevisionGUID="e1e08f24-d873-4c79-9fe3-73e6d44d23b7" CreationDate="2016-06-04T06:34:56.790" UserId="131624" Text="I'm looking for advice to improve this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/320247/has-anyone-challenged-uncle-bob-on-his-love-of-removing-useless-braces&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's been well received with up votes but seems to be in danger of being put on hold.  Rather than wait I thought I'd provide a little more room here for you to instruct me. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm attempting to gather answers that will make clear when this behavior should and should not be imitated backed up with cited arguments.  In my fear of it being closed as opinion based I seem to have bumped into other close reasons (unclear, asking for a book/resource recommendation, asking a yes no question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm here.  I'm willing to make adjustments.  Any guidance much appreciated.   &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23054" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8072" RevisionGUID="e1e08f24-d873-4c79-9fe3-73e6d44d23b7" CreationDate="2016-06-04T06:34:56.790" UserId="131624" Text="Salvaging: Has anyone challenged Uncle Bob on his love of removing &quot;useless braces&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23055" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8072" RevisionGUID="e1e08f24-d873-4c79-9fe3-73e6d44d23b7" CreationDate="2016-06-04T06:34:56.790" UserId="131624" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23056" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8072" RevisionGUID="1370ba52-96d7-4294-a3c5-f56f4e50dd3b" CreationDate="2016-06-04T15:52:58.757" UserId="131624" Comment="added 111 characters in body" Text="I'm looking for advice to improve this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/320247/has-anyone-challenged-uncle-bob-on-his-love-of-removing-useless-braces&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's been well received with up votes but seems to be in danger of being put on hold.  Rather than wait I thought I'd provide a little more room here for you to instruct me. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm attempting to gather answers that will make clear when this behavior should and should not be imitated backed up with cited arguments. Particularly if Uncle Bob's style creates an environment where making an exception to the rule is justifiable.  In my fear of it being closed as opinion based I seem to have bumped into other close reasons (unclear, asking for a book/resource recommendation, asking a yes no question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm here.  I'm willing to make adjustments.  Any guidance much appreciated.   &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23057" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8073" RevisionGUID="45675dc8-7ad0-465f-8576-0572af44a7db" CreationDate="2016-06-05T15:59:23.093" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="This question has been reopened since you asked this meta question but should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Parkinson's law of triviality is C. Northcote Parkinson's 1957&#xD;&#xA;&gt; argument that members of an organisation give disproportionate weight&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to trivial issues. He observed that a committee whose job was to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; approve the plans for a nuclear power plant spent the majority of its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; time on discussions about relatively minor but easy-to-grasp issues,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; such as what materials to use for the staff bike-shed, while&#xD;&#xA;&gt; neglecting the proposed design of the plant itself, which is far more&#xD;&#xA;&gt; important but also a far more difficult and complex task.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Source: [Wikipedia][1]&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is focusing on trivial aspects of software development. Sure, when developing a nuclear power plant it is worth allocating five minutes to discuss the bikeshed. But when the bikeshed discussion dominates more important tasks, it has gone too far. That is exactly what this question is doing. The question of curly braces for a single line has already been beaten to death on this site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Single statement if block - braces or no?][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Should curly braces appear on their own line?][3] (read the question, not just the title)&#xD;&#xA;* [Maintenance wise, is `else while` without intervening braces considered safe?][4]&#xD;&#xA;* [Ambiguous If-else nested block in C without braces][5] (one vote away from deletion, may become a 10k link soon)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It took me more time to copy and paste the links than it did to search and find those questions. While they do not ask the exact same thing, they provide the same _value_. And they are already asked and answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why do we need to keep beating a dead horse on a bikeshed issue?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, the question is also off-topic. The title of revision 2, the most recent revision before anyone except the author edited the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Has anyone published a challenge to Uncle Bob on his love of removing &quot;useless braces&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the current version of the question body:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm wondering if that is supposed to validate removing the braces. I'm&#xD;&#xA;&gt; already familure with the best practice. Can anyone challenge Uncle&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Bob on this point? Has Uncle Bob defended the idea?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a resource request, no matter how much hot sauce you put on it to hide the fact. The core of the question is this, my paraphrasing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can anyone point me to a resource where someone provided a rebuttal to the specific argument Uncle Bob is making?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In summary, the question should be closed for one of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Resource request, because it is asking for someone else's rebuttal.&#xD;&#xA;* If edited not to be a resource request and to ask about the braces issue on its own merits, it would be a duplicate of one of several questions already asked on this site.&#xD;&#xA;* If somehow it were _not_ a duplicate, it is a &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot; bikeshed question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see no reason why this question should not be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/16528/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2715/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/180125/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/255714/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23058" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8074" RevisionGUID="beae3f22-ca5a-4b80-8782-b5ff343dbfed" CreationDate="2016-06-08T05:24:14.383" UserId="9113" Text="Maybe the question can be saved by changing the title to something like &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Is the best practice of always using curly braces still valid when following Bob Martin's 'Clean Code' coding style&quot;?** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That would remove the resource request evidence from the title (you should look through the question body and remove other resource request terms in a similar manner). Moreover, you could add all those four links given by Snowman to your question and explicitly add a note that those questions don't provide an answer in this different context.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, this might invalidate Paul Draper's answer to some degree, and make Karl Bielefeldt's answer more valid, but I guess that this might be your intention anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nevertheless, even with those changes, for lots of people here this will undoubtly still be a too trivial and/or too opinionated issue, but it might be worth a try." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23059" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8072" RevisionGUID="12f75cc6-6485-4112-bc31-50471f211c7d" CreationDate="2016-06-08T12:15:34.737" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/740517625210507265" />
  <row Id="23060" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6962" RevisionGUID="2501de07-e12c-47e4-99d2-b82f20b421d2" CreationDate="2016-06-08T17:18:58.897" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 11 characters in body" Text="A [greenfield project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_project) is one without restrictions on prior systems or protocols.  Blue sky projects are ones that are completely wide open (&quot;develop a knowledge base.&quot;).  In the context of a question on Programmers.SE, a greenfield or blue sky question is one along the lines of &quot;How do I write this?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything about &quot;how do I write this?&quot; it is on the table - no design has been thought of, no problems have been encountered.  In effect, the question is asking the community to design the entire system.  This is similarly problematic as asking someone to write all the code for a set of requirements on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest problem with such a question is it is very broad.  One could design the system at a high level and another person could do the same solution from a low level.  Alternatively, there can be *many* designs for the same system.  This leads to the question being [very broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490) and in danger of being closed for such a reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With a design question, it is expected that the person asking the question has taken some time to sketch out the design that they have come up with and identify the problem they are encountering with the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is a difficulty even getting started, as described in [where to start?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6366/40980) one should sit down and spend some time coming up with a design that is something that they are capable of coding to.  That last point should not be overlooked - it is quite possible for an [architecture astronaut](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html) to come up with a design from scratch that is impossible for anyone to code to or implement with any hope of getting it right (&quot;its an n-tier design that makes use of MVVC that is controlled by a dispatcher that has been configured with dependency injection and....&quot; -- just say 'no').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are interested in hiring an architect that has this experience and can make such decisions for you on where to start, that is indeed a path to look down - but asking the community to be the architect is irresponsible and ultimately unmaintainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, sit down and [sketch out](http://asciiflow.com) the design that you have and what problems you are encountering when thinking through the design.  Draw something up on the white board, draw a circle around it and say &quot;I don't know how to get this piece and that piece to talk together correctly - I thought of using a message queue, but that has some problems in our architecture because...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned in another post ([10k link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260209/an-algorithm-based-content-ranking-crawler)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This isn't so much &quot;white-boardy&quot; as it is &quot;blue-sky-y&quot;. There are entire careers built on trying to solve this problem - you're gonna have to narrow it down a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key to writing a good question is to properly scope the question so that it is one that addresses a problem in the design, rather than completely wide open &quot;pie in the sky&quot; with its options.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [An algorithm-based content ranking crawler](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260209/an-algorithm-based-content-ranking-crawler) (10k link)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I need to implement a web crawler to crawl websites and rank visited pages based on content. For example, a website can be ranked as 80% political content or 70% sport content. There is no problem by implementing crawler. The only point would be an algorithm to set an approximate rank to content of crawled website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there any algorithm to reach this goal?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [Grails app providing REST services, with Angular frontend in SPA configuration… Feasible?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260976/grails-app-providing-rest-services-with-angular-frontend-in-spa-configuration) (10k link)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Could you just begin an Angular project with Bower/Grunt/NPM give it its own directory and the whole nine yards ... and then just throw it in your Grails directory somewhere with the index.html page to be rendered as a static HTML file by a Grails controller?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So basically all the Grails app does is provide RESTful resources and literally redirects you to a static html file - which happens to be your Angular Single Page Application.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note the first example question here is one that leaves the described whiteboard completely untouched.  There is nothing about the design, just a few vague requirements and the request to identify or design the algorithm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question draws a picture of sorts.  Its still quite vague in places, but there's a design put forth that is being considered.  There is something on the whiteboard that is being described.  &quot;You've got this thing over here that provides this service that redirects over to this other thing...&quot; (you could picture a co-worker saying that with a marker in hand).  And thus, the question is one that is whiteboardy.  I'll certainly agree that the question is broad and may have other issues, but it *isn't* ***too*** broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whats more, the first question is one that could possibly be answered with &quot;you are looking for ${algo_XYZ}&quot;. While the second question wouldn't encourage simplistic or poor answers.  That is the key behind the ideas of [optimizing for pearls, not sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23065" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8076" RevisionGUID="b8a18078-0a46-4093-8e02-b7024baae018" CreationDate="2016-06-14T07:51:01.550" UserId="208954" Text="I have a question regarding productivity, and it goes like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**Time difference between developing with unit tests vs no tests**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;I'm a solo developer with a pretty time-constrained work environment where development time ranges usually from 1-4 weeks per project, depending on either requirements, urgency, or both. At any given time I handle around 3-4 projects, some having timelines that overlap with each other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Expectedly, code quality suffers. A considerable amount of bugs escape to production, which I have to fix and in turn sets back my other projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;This is where unit testing comes in. When done right, it should keep bugs, let alone those that escape to production, to a minimum. On the other hand, writing tests can take a considerable amount of time, which doesn't sound good with time-constrained projects such as mine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Question is, how much of a time difference would writing unit-tested code over untested code, and if possible, how does that time difference scale as project scope widens?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As it is now, I suspect that this would be put off as subjective because it differs from person to person - someone can write unit-tested code as quick as someone else can do the same code but without tests. How can I improve this question so that it doesn't read as such? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23066" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8076" RevisionGUID="b8a18078-0a46-4093-8e02-b7024baae018" CreationDate="2016-06-14T07:51:01.550" UserId="208954" Text="How do I improve this productivity question to become less subjective?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23067" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8076" RevisionGUID="b8a18078-0a46-4093-8e02-b7024baae018" CreationDate="2016-06-14T07:51:01.550" UserId="208954" Text="|discussion|specific-question|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23069" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8077" RevisionGUID="fa7cdd6c-c45f-4bc5-a011-d4acb0349ee7" CreationDate="2016-06-14T08:15:25.960" UserId="5099" Text="I don't believe this question is &quot;primarily opinion based&quot;. Yes, the amount of time it takes to write X lines of code differs from person to person, but you aren't asking us to make such estimates.  &#xD;&#xA;Also, it is possible to give an indication of the value of (unit-)tests without going into a specific number of hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if posted in its current form, I would ask for additional details in another aspect: How are you currently making sure that your code does what it is supposed to be doing. Is the code completely untested, or are you testing the code on a different level than unit tests." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23070" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8076" RevisionGUID="d2edeb4b-ac10-4aae-85bd-96f7e4fdde83" CreationDate="2016-06-15T02:39:53.247" UserId="208954" Comment="Added link to question on P.SE" Text="I have a question regarding productivity, and it goes like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**Time difference between developing with unit tests vs no tests**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;I'm a solo developer with a pretty time-constrained work environment where development time ranges usually from 1-4 weeks per project, depending on either requirements, urgency, or both. At any given time I handle around 3-4 projects, some having timelines that overlap with each other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Expectedly, code quality suffers. A considerable amount of bugs escape to production, which I have to fix and in turn sets back my other projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;This is where unit testing comes in. When done right, it should keep bugs, let alone those that escape to production, to a minimum. On the other hand, writing tests can take a considerable amount of time, which doesn't sound good with time-constrained projects such as mine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Question is, how much of a time difference would writing unit-tested code over untested code, and if possible, how does that time difference scale as project scope widens?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As it is now, I suspect that this would be put off as subjective because it differs from person to person - someone can write unit-tested code as quick as someone else can do the same code but without tests. How can I improve this question so that it doesn't read as such?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:** [Question is now posted at the main site.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/322256/time-difference-between-developing-with-unit-tests-vs-no-tests)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23071" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8078" RevisionGUID="b2bcc57e-78b2-4076-8702-3719f50935b7" CreationDate="2016-06-15T22:59:00.047" UserId="122571" Text="**I am a software engineer.** I use StackOverflow to solve my daily problems. I am surprised so many are in favor of renaming to Software Engineering, as I can only see it leading to confusion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I come here to learn software design, but taking a glance at the questions I can see there is more: workplace issues, software best practices, coding techniques, licensing, and some more&amp;mdash;mostly software or system requirements from what I can tell. Eliminating the workplace issues as off-topic or historical, I think Software Design or Software Architecture covers the site's core while permitting the fringe topics like licensing. I believe the site leans more towards theory, so I prefer design as I think it's more closely related than architecture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; **Name: Software Design**&#xD;&#xA;=======================&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to note that there are a number of questions about workplace practices for software engineers which may be why many favor the Software Engineering name. Some of those questions belong here, but a number belong on Workplace, and I'd rather a questioner had to research which site was the best place for her question than inviting the good *and the bad* here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel a bit out of place declaring the scope of the site when I myself am an infrequent visitor, but if I may be so bold I would declare it as such:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Software theory, design, best practices, and techniques&#xD;&#xA; - Software architecture including software requirements and licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ergo, off-topic questions would include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Help debugging code (try [StackOverflow][1])&#xD;&#xA; - What tool, product, service, language, thing (these don't work well with our Q&amp;A format)&#xD;&#xA; - Questions with a social aspect (consider asking on [Workplace][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as what the tour should say, I can't think of any changes other than the name:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Design Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&amp;A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/ &quot;StackOverflow&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/ &quot;Workplace StackExchange&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23076" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8080" RevisionGUID="96e2eab0-1f7a-44d6-afa7-f1e340cda375" CreationDate="2016-06-16T12:24:08.913" UserId="132033" Text="I have a question specific to some programming language (Python), possibly a bug. But I am not sure as to where should I post the question. How do I decide that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should I post my question here so that I can get help in deciding on an answer to my query?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:&#xD;&#xA;Let me post the question anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    import numpy as np&#xD;&#xA;    g = [1.1,1.2,1.3]&#xD;&#xA;    for j in np.arange(len(g)):&#xD;&#xA;        c = 0&#xD;&#xA;        for k in np.arange(len(g)-1,j,-1):&#xD;&#xA;            if (g[j]-g[k])**2 &lt; 0.01:&#xD;&#xA;                c += 1&#xD;&#xA;                h.append(g[k])&#xD;&#xA;                print 0.01-(g[j]-g[k])**2      # line 9&#xD;&#xA;                g.pop(k)&#xD;&#xA;                &#xD;&#xA;    #            print 'g=', g,',length=',len(g),'\n'&#xD;&#xA;    #    length = len(g)&#xD;&#xA;        print 'g[j],c=',g[j],c&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem I am facing here is that the difference I asked to print at line 9 should be zero. But I am getting **2.60208521397e-17**. I have been scratching my head over this for long.&#xD;&#xA;&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23077" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8080" RevisionGUID="96e2eab0-1f7a-44d6-afa7-f1e340cda375" CreationDate="2016-06-16T12:24:08.913" UserId="132033" Text="How do I decide where to post a question, in stackoverflow or programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23078" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8080" RevisionGUID="96e2eab0-1f7a-44d6-afa7-f1e340cda375" CreationDate="2016-06-16T12:24:08.913" UserId="132033" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23079" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8080" RevisionGUID="87dfd2d5-13af-4b76-a63e-e35b420bb41a" CreationDate="2016-06-16T12:31:20.670" UserId="132033" Comment="added 123 characters in body" Text="I saw a question at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5793/132033. Still I could not get my head around that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a question specific to some programming language (Python), possibly a bug. But I am not sure as to where should I post the question. How do I decide that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should I post my question here so that I can get help in deciding on an answer to my query?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:&#xD;&#xA;Let me post the question anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    import numpy as np&#xD;&#xA;    g = [1.1,1.2,1.3]&#xD;&#xA;    for j in np.arange(len(g)):&#xD;&#xA;        c = 0&#xD;&#xA;        for k in np.arange(len(g)-1,j,-1):&#xD;&#xA;            if (g[j]-g[k])**2 &lt; 0.01:&#xD;&#xA;                c += 1&#xD;&#xA;                h.append(g[k])&#xD;&#xA;                print 0.01-(g[j]-g[k])**2      # line 9&#xD;&#xA;                g.pop(k)&#xD;&#xA;                &#xD;&#xA;    #            print 'g=', g,',length=',len(g),'\n'&#xD;&#xA;    #    length = len(g)&#xD;&#xA;        print 'g[j],c=',g[j],c&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem I am facing here is that the difference I asked to print at line 9 should be zero. But I am getting **2.60208521397e-17**. I have been scratching my head over this for long.&#xD;&#xA;&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23082" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8081" RevisionGUID="59c01c7b-3f31-4f05-9768-bbb96d58dce3" CreationDate="2016-06-16T14:47:37.873" UserId="1204" Text="If your question is about writing code in your favorite editor, ask it on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is about designing software while you're standing in front of a white board, ask it on Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23083" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8080" RevisionGUID="88cf3ac7-c6de-4a5c-899f-0f861d611ddf" CreationDate="2016-06-16T14:47:51.890" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 6 characters in body" Text="I saw a question at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5793/132033. Still I could not get my head around that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a question specific to some programming language (Python), possibly a bug. But I am not sure as to where should I post the question. How do I decide that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should I post my question here so that I can get help in deciding on an answer to my query?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me post the question anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    import numpy as np&#xD;&#xA;    g = [1.1,1.2,1.3]&#xD;&#xA;    for j in np.arange(len(g)):&#xD;&#xA;        c = 0&#xD;&#xA;        for k in np.arange(len(g)-1,j,-1):&#xD;&#xA;            if (g[j]-g[k])**2 &lt; 0.01:&#xD;&#xA;                c += 1&#xD;&#xA;                h.append(g[k])&#xD;&#xA;                print 0.01-(g[j]-g[k])**2      # line 9&#xD;&#xA;                g.pop(k)&#xD;&#xA;                &#xD;&#xA;    #            print 'g=', g,',length=',len(g),'\n'&#xD;&#xA;    #    length = len(g)&#xD;&#xA;        print 'g[j],c=',g[j],c&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem I am facing here is that the difference I asked to print at line 9 should be zero. But I am getting **2.60208521397e-17**. I have been scratching my head over this for long.&#xD;&#xA;&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23084" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="5793" RevisionGUID="92224043-5bd0-42ea-8dc9-810ec111bab8" CreationDate="2016-06-16T15:39:50.913" UserId="4" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[7182],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:1204,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Robert Harvey&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:22815,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Snowman&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;GoldTagBadge&quot;:&quot;discussion&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="23090" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8083" RevisionGUID="6d36ae3c-7501-4321-b63b-b8fe62e75774" CreationDate="2016-06-16T22:54:16.133" UserId="184113" Text="I was scrolling back up to the top of a page when I noticed this weird red text floating above the viewport in the &quot;rubber-band-scroll&quot; region. It says &quot;Stack Exchange Inbox&quot; and &quot;Reputation and Badges.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[\[Link to video\]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This doesn't occur on any other sites within the Stack Exchange network. The out-of-viewport &quot;hidden text&quot; only shows up on Programmers. So what's up with that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This probably isn't for screen readers because there're already buttons on the top bar for those actions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxRMbmixnUEocUZ1Q1ZFTDQ5M0E" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23091" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8083" RevisionGUID="6d36ae3c-7501-4321-b63b-b8fe62e75774" CreationDate="2016-06-16T22:54:16.133" UserId="184113" Text="What's that text above the viewport?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23092" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8083" RevisionGUID="6d36ae3c-7501-4321-b63b-b8fe62e75774" CreationDate="2016-06-16T22:54:16.133" UserId="184113" Text="|discussion|support|bug|design|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23093" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="b6eba778-4735-4965-9da0-6cf62f514d84" CreationDate="2016-06-20T15:53:43.990" UserId="31260" Comment="job-title and job-definition are over" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] (*job*) - **[burnination request](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/8068/31260)**&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23095" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8084" RevisionGUID="8fd08620-9f97-4c03-b072-fda5b89b8137" CreationDate="2016-06-20T21:25:29.500" UserId="30396" Text="#Site Name&#xD;&#xA;##Software Development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is not really all about Software Engineering. Naming it so would only attract legions of buzzword-mouthing, non-programmers, wannabe-managers, and unexperienced-college-students.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**It would kill all intelligent communication under a heavy layer of babbling about pigs and chickens. Please do not kill this useful site.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is opinionated, yes, but I come here to read opinions and use it to a certain extent to form my own ones. It needs this degree of freedom that may now feel weird in the SE galaxy. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Development is a proposal that ''maple_shaft'' made, but he's not really backing it. I do, and I wish more would. It keeps the same spirit as the &quot;Programmers&quot; moniker did. **Not precisely techical, but meta-tecnhical discussions about the craft of programming, designing, developing software.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23097" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8085" RevisionGUID="f7057355-15b3-4f77-bf67-b4381124f69d" CreationDate="2016-06-22T10:59:46.430" UserId="142319" Text="I'm not complaining, but I think the Motarboard badge is broken. I hit the rep cap yesterday and the day before, but didn't get the badge either time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is something busted or am I just being harebrained?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23098" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8085" RevisionGUID="f7057355-15b3-4f77-bf67-b4381124f69d" CreationDate="2016-06-22T10:59:46.430" UserId="142319" Text="Is the Motarboard badge broken?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23099" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8085" RevisionGUID="f7057355-15b3-4f77-bf67-b4381124f69d" CreationDate="2016-06-22T10:59:46.430" UserId="142319" Text="|support|bug|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23100" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8085" RevisionGUID="c99f288b-da1d-47bd-8f4a-abbfb80b234d" CreationDate="2016-06-22T11:26:57.427" UserId="81495" Comment="added 87 characters in body" Text="I'm not complaining, but I think the [Mortarboard][1] badge is broken. I hit the rep cap yesterday and the day before, but didn't get the badge either time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is something busted or am I just being harebrained?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/25/mortarboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23101" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8086" RevisionGUID="e7a422db-fcf3-4c8f-9e70-f88f6481c798" CreationDate="2016-06-22T14:28:36.413" UserId="183551" Text="I was just looking at [This question][1] and I hovered over the voting buttons, and then a title showed &quot;This answer is useful&quot; (or whatever that sentence be), and the mouse cursor was a pointer, so I just clicked and the voting counter increased&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a bug? or what? the buttons are completely transparent but they are clickable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25564/when-should-you-call-yourself-a-senior-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23102" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8086" RevisionGUID="e7a422db-fcf3-4c8f-9e70-f88f6481c798" CreationDate="2016-06-22T14:28:36.413" UserId="183551" Text="Is being able to vote on Community wiki posts a bug?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23103" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8086" RevisionGUID="e7a422db-fcf3-4c8f-9e70-f88f6481c798" CreationDate="2016-06-22T14:28:36.413" UserId="183551" Text="|discussion|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23104" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="86f94596-a311-4f65-83a3-1ad507862e6a" CreationDate="2016-06-22T14:29:40.503" UserId="1130" Comment="edited body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for practitioners, researchers and students of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for practitioners, researchers and students of software engineering and related fields. Questions asked here are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software development [methods and practices][8]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [requirements engineering][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm) and [data structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [quality assurance and testing][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Harvey proposed [an interstital page][12]. I made a few minor edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question. Before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, make lists of things, or engage in extended discussion here.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here. We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for. We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **OK, So what *can* I ask?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions *directly related to the Software Development Life Cycle,* including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA; - requirements engineering&#xD;&#xA; - architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic. See [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this doesn't work, something like the [/questions/ask/advice page][13] should be added. However, I'd like to be able to clarify the &quot;be on-topic&quot; section to be more explicit about what is on and off topic for us, especially given our history. This should help combat people who are directed here in error. Ideally, we'd also like to reorder this page. For example, &quot;search&quot; should be last - if you don't understand the scope of the site, you can get old, legacy questions in search. Searching should be done after you understand who the members of this community are (software engineers and other professionals in the field of software development), what our scope is (/help/on-topic), and what kinds of questions we accept (be specific, make it relevant to others, keep an open mind).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask/advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23105" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8087" RevisionGUID="eaaf10ec-af7e-43ca-a904-8474e529b7c8" CreationDate="2016-06-22T14:31:48.947" UserId="183551" Text="StackExchange uses voting system to make good answers go all way up and bad ones all way down, not to give rewards and reputations to people. (And a reputation system is perhaps a way to rate users as well as give them permissions based on their reps)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Upvoting/Downvoting means this vote is useful/not useful" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23108" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8078" RevisionGUID="3d5871c5-4f49-429b-a7ec-4a3496c72a35" CreationDate="2016-06-22T18:37:53.277" UserId="122571" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body" Text="**I am a software engineer.** I use StackOverflow to solve my daily problems. I am surprised so many are in favor of renaming to Software Engineering, as I can only see it leading to confusion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I come here to learn software design, but taking a glance at the questions I can see there is more: workplace issues, software best practices, coding techniques, licensing, and some more&amp;mdash;mostly software or system requirements from what I can tell. Eliminating the workplace issues as off-topic or historical, I think Software Design or Software Architecture covers the site's core while permitting the fringe topics like licensing. I believe the site leans more towards theory, so I prefer design as I think it's more closely related than architecture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; **Name: Software Design**&#xD;&#xA;=======================&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to note that there are a number of questions about workplace practices for software engineers which may be why many favor the Software Engineering name. Some of those questions belong here, but a number belong on Workplace, and I'd rather a questioner had to research which site was the best place for her question than inviting the good *and the bad* here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel a bit out of place declaring the scope of the site when I myself am an infrequent visitor, but if I may be so bold I would declare it as such:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Software theory, design, best practices, and techniques&#xD;&#xA; - Software architecture including software requirements and licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ergo, off-topic questions would include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Help debugging code (try [StackOverflow][1])&#xD;&#xA; - What tool, product, service, language, thing (these don't work well with our Q&amp;A format)&#xD;&#xA; - Questions with a social aspect (consider asking on [Workplace][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as what the tour should say, I can't think of any changes other than the name:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Design Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&amp;A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about software design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/ &quot;StackOverflow&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/ &quot;Workplace StackExchange&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23109" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8085" RevisionGUID="1c8b506b-924d-45c8-9e7c-f5f622d95a0c" CreationDate="2016-06-22T20:10:54.283" UserId="31260" Comment="edited title" Text="Is the Mortarboard badge broken?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23110" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8089" RevisionGUID="4a9383b1-456b-42ef-98b3-2957936751cd" CreationDate="2016-06-22T20:21:17.317" UserId="102" Text="Hmm, I'm showing that you [already have the badge][1], earned March 4, 2015.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/25/mortarboard?userid=142319&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, nice answer about events :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23111" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8085" RevisionGUID="3389a132-0353-443e-917f-6932da9a3971" CreationDate="2016-06-22T20:58:59.457" UserId="102" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23112" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8089" RevisionGUID="7e2ab397-0c93-4975-b43d-3843ebc7e7d4" CreationDate="2016-06-22T21:00:50.160" UserId="102" Comment="added 179 characters in body" Text="Hmm, I'm showing that you [already have the badge][1], earned March 4, 2015.  Mortarboard, along with its successors, Epic and Legendary, are single-award badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To see your progress towards Epic and Legendary, you can track them in your user profile!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/25/mortarboard?userid=142319&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, nice answer about events :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23113" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8086" RevisionGUID="888882f6-681c-4142-b36d-49fdf1f1eb06" CreationDate="2016-06-23T09:58:43.000" UserId="4767" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23114" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8086" RevisionGUID="c99b4799-7e11-4446-b1c3-9e171aae7054" CreationDate="2016-06-23T11:26:27.030" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|community-wiki|voting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23115" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8056" RevisionGUID="ac82fb7e-e0dd-4eb1-93bd-df97e8fe7889" CreationDate="2016-06-25T00:41:54.290" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23116" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8056" RevisionGUID="7feffacc-4c6c-49c2-93ee-f060adca6528" CreationDate="2016-06-25T12:58:04.970" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|on-topic-definition|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23119" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="e6ac2c2a-9b18-4994-a944-98afa2a84413" CreationDate="2016-06-25T14:37:04.580" UserId="31260" Comment="job-market tag has been burninated" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:resume]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employment]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23120" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8090" RevisionGUID="f6b736f0-aa6b-42aa-a418-02dc53260a56" CreationDate="2016-06-25T17:28:33.753" UserId="192731" Text="I think it's on-topic, since the [tag:negotiation] tag exists, and one of its question ([How do I negotiate with a company to develop software?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/89960/192731)) is similar to the question of mine. However, that question was asked in 2011, and looking up in the [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), I'm not sure if my question is on-topic or not. Further more, I'm aware of the proposal of changing the name of the site, and I don't feel like the proposed name best suit for me. After all, I just someone who code, not a qualified professional programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My draft question: I'm a solo &quot;programmer&quot;, and I need to buy data for my program. All of the vendors both ask me what is my budget to buy it, and the prediction of the number of users will use my program. How should I negotiate with them?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23121" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8090" RevisionGUID="f6b736f0-aa6b-42aa-a418-02dc53260a56" CreationDate="2016-06-25T17:28:33.753" UserId="192731" Text="Is question about negotiating method on buying data on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23122" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8090" RevisionGUID="f6b736f0-aa6b-42aa-a418-02dc53260a56" CreationDate="2016-06-25T17:28:33.753" UserId="192731" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23123" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8090" RevisionGUID="9ec276c8-d237-40ac-be8a-f69ac26dfc38" CreationDate="2016-06-26T05:41:39.693" UserId="192731" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="I think it's on-topic, since the [tag:negotiation] tag exists, and one of its question ([How do I negotiate with a company to develop software?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/89960/192731)) is similar to the question of mine. However, that question was asked in 2011, and looking up in the [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), I'm not sure if my question is on-topic or not. Further more, I'm aware of the proposal of changing the name of the site, and I don't feel like the proposed name best suit for me. After all, I just someone who code, not a qualified professional programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My draft question**: I'm a solo &quot;programmer&quot;, and I need to buy data for my program. All of the vendors both ask me what is my budget to buy it, and the prediction of the number of users will use my program. How should I negotiate with them?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23124" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8091" RevisionGUID="39c8987e-afc8-4b56-908c-e8b035a4a7d7" CreationDate="2016-06-26T05:51:18.773" UserId="9113" Text="Short answer: most probably not (I would expect the community on Programmer's to close it). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact an old question from 2011 was not closed so far should not bring you to the conclusion that the same question would be still on-topic today. The site and it's scope has changed since then. Today, general questions (like questions about service contracts, or how to negotiate them) which are not specficially about conceptual software developement are typically closed quickly by the community here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, the site will probably be renamed in future, and its scope description be more focussed, read [this meta post][1] to inform yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8090/is-question-about-negotiating-method-on-buying-data-on-topic#8090" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23125" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8091" RevisionGUID="f4f74b5f-1e67-411c-bc7f-4c07fe896e94" CreationDate="2016-06-26T06:34:50.170" UserId="9113" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="Short answer: most probably not (I would expect the community on Programmer's to close it). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact an old question from 2011 was not closed so far should not bring you to the conclusion that the same question would be still on-topic today. The site and it's scope has changed since then. Today, general questions (like questions about service contracts, or how to negotiate them) which are not specificially about conceptual software developement are typically closed quickly by the community here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, the site will probably be renamed in future, and its scope description be more focussed, read [this meta post][1] to inform yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8090/is-question-about-negotiating-method-on-buying-data-on-topic#8090" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23126" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8091" RevisionGUID="0a8e9cf4-c83f-47f5-bde3-2591595e56c9" CreationDate="2016-06-26T14:53:19.140" UserId="31260" Comment="link to name / scope change corrected" Text="Short answer: most probably not (I would expect the community on Programmer's to close it). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact an old question from 2011 was not closed so far should not bring you to the conclusion that the same question would be still on-topic today. The site and it's scope has changed since then. Today, general questions (like questions about service contracts, or how to negotiate them) which are not specifically about conceptual software development are typically closed quickly by the community here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, the site will probably be renamed in future, and its scope description be more focused, read [this meta post][1] to inform yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8056/new-site-name-and-scope-proposals" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23127" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8092" RevisionGUID="0d5f19aa-1235-4500-92d3-3896563bf856" CreationDate="2016-06-30T16:02:38.710" UserId="1204" Text="Programmers could benefit from a few more regular visitors who close questions on the front page and the Unanswered page that are clearly off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the moment, many such questions get four close votes, and then languish on the Unanswered page, sometimes for several days.  Ideally, the goal would be to get questions like &quot;Best Library&quot; and &quot;Coding Help&quot; closed within the hour.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It just takes a few minutes a day.  Usually, all you have to do is scan the Unanswered page for downvoted questions, and add your close vote where you agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an added benefit, you would be inaugurated into the [White Board Curmudgeon club](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), where we hang out, talk about tequila, wax philosophic about a diverse array of subjects, and watch in amusement while new users can't figure out what the site is all about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any volunteers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23128" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8092" RevisionGUID="0d5f19aa-1235-4500-92d3-3896563bf856" CreationDate="2016-06-30T16:02:38.710" UserId="1204" Text="Call for volunteers: close voters" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23129" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8092" RevisionGUID="0d5f19aa-1235-4500-92d3-3896563bf856" CreationDate="2016-06-30T16:02:38.710" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23130" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8092" RevisionGUID="dff60c7c-4641-451c-8ce2-72c2d7b65592" CreationDate="2016-06-30T16:07:41.140" UserId="1204" Comment="edited body" Text="Programmers could benefit from a few more regular visitors who close questions on the front page and the Unanswered page that are clearly off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the moment, many such questions get three or four close votes, and then languish on the Unanswered page, sometimes for several days.  Ideally, the goal would be to get questions like &quot;Best Library&quot; and &quot;Coding Help&quot; closed within the hour.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It just takes a few minutes a day.  Usually, all you have to do is scan the Unanswered page for downvoted questions, and add your close vote where you agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an added benefit, you would be inaugurated into the [White Board Curmudgeon Club](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), where we hang out, talk about tequila, wax philosophic about a diverse array of subjects, and watch in amusement while new users can't figure out what the site is all about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any volunteers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23131" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8092" RevisionGUID="65ef4e9c-4b48-4f1d-ba0c-1168aa29c2c0" CreationDate="2016-06-30T22:47:05.843" UserId="31260" Comment="languish on the Unanswered page += http://programmers.stackexchange.com/unanswered/tagged/?tab=newest" Text="Programmers could benefit from a few more regular visitors who close questions on the front page and the Unanswered page that are clearly off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the moment, many such questions get three or four close votes, and then [languish on the Unanswered page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/unanswered/tagged/?tab=newest), sometimes for several days.  Ideally, the goal would be to get questions like &quot;Best Library&quot; and &quot;Coding Help&quot; closed within the hour.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It just takes a few minutes a day.  Usually, all you have to do is scan the Unanswered page for downvoted questions, and add your close vote where you agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an added benefit, you would be inaugurated into the [White Board Curmudgeon Club](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), where we hang out, talk about tequila, wax philosophic about a diverse array of subjects, and watch in amusement while new users can't figure out what the site is all about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any volunteers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23132" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8092" RevisionGUID="5e972dce-626f-427b-b18c-76bb6b347094" CreationDate="2016-07-01T06:39:51.690" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23133" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8092" RevisionGUID="aac5a32c-f231-4ea2-b36c-653114523199" CreationDate="2016-07-01T07:46:59.817" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/748784955031826432" />
  <row Id="23134" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8092" RevisionGUID="ce2ea07d-f653-4511-8bd5-ad582c67ec46" CreationDate="2016-07-01T19:22:47.107" UserId="1204" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="Programmers could benefit from a few more regular visitors who close questions on the front page and the Unanswered page that are **clearly off-topic.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the moment, many such questions get three or four close votes, and then [languish on the Unanswered page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/unanswered/tagged/?tab=newest), sometimes for several days.  Ideally, the goal would be to get questions like &quot;Best Library&quot; and &quot;Coding Help&quot; closed within the hour.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It just takes a few minutes a day.  Usually, all you have to do is scan the Unanswered page for downvoted questions, and add your close vote where you agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an added benefit, you would be inaugurated into the [White Board Curmudgeon Club](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), where we hang out, talk about tequila, wax philosophic about a diverse array of subjects, and watch in amusement while new users can't figure out what the site is all about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any volunteers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23135" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7266" RevisionGUID="b79905c6-a71d-491e-9ade-0d31bb9949fd" CreationDate="2016-07-01T19:23:02.720" UserId="88986" Comment="Since the SO question is off topic and will probably be deleted again, I changed the link to the Open Source question." Text="As a rule of thumb, questions are on topic if they are answerable by expert **programmers**, as opposed to expert **lawyers**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, here are some questions you can ask yourself to determine if your question is on topic or not:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question about the **spirit** of the license, or the **detailed terms** of the license?&#xD;&#xA;    - Programmers can easily understand things like &quot;GPLv3 is meant to protect against tivoization&quot; without going to law school. &#xD;&#xA;    - We are more concerned about violating the library author's wishes then we are about exposing ourselves to some legal action from the author's lawyers.&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question about **licensing** or **copyright**?&#xD;&#xA;    - If it's about copyright, in most cases the question is off topic. Copyright laws vary by jurisdiction and can be subject to some seemingly obscure rules despite the efforts of the Berne convention.&#xD;&#xA; - Does the question pertain to an open or commonly known license, or is it about a proprietary or commercial license?&#xD;&#xA;    - The former could be on-topic, but the latter is likely not to be, because it's: &#xD;&#xA;       - Unlikely we can read the full license, so answers will be speculative&#xD;&#xA;       - Unlikely to be of value to future visitors&#xD;&#xA;       - Likely to need an attorney to interpret what the terms actually mean&#xD;&#xA; - Does the question really require an attorney to answer? Some questions are so specific, narrowly focused, or the potential consequences are significant enough that consulting an attorney is really the only viable option to consider.&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question purely hypothetical and / or contrived?&#xD;&#xA;    - If so, off-topic.&#xD;&#xA; - Is the question about applying an open source license to their application?&#xD;&#xA;    - Likely on-topic as others have done this as well.&#xD;&#xA; - Is there a related question and answer in the [FSF GNU FAQ][gnufaq] or in the FSF's commentary about open source license compatibility with the GPL?&#xD;&#xA;    - Likely on-topic, although in some rare edge cases the question is off-topic and you should contact the Free Software Foundation directly.&#xD;&#xA; - Is this a &quot;Pick a license for me&quot; question?&#xD;&#xA;    - This is the most difficult topic to have good guidelines about.&#xD;&#xA;    - In general:&#xD;&#xA;         1. Are you looking for an open source (or related) license?&#xD;&#xA;         2. Have you provided enough details about how you want to license your application?&#xD;&#xA;    - If you answered &quot;yes&quot; to *both* of those questions, it's probably on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some example scenarios for further guidance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Question:** Can I legally sell a closed-source program that dynamically links to a GPL'd library?&#xD;&#xA;    - **ON TOPIC**&#xD;&#xA;    - Most programmers know the answer to this without having to consult a lawyer.&#xD;&#xA;    - For reference, [the answer is yes](http://opensource.stackexchange.com/q/4106/5488)&#xD;&#xA; - **Question:** Is the WTFPL a risky license?&#xD;&#xA;    - **OFF TOPIC**&#xD;&#xA;    - *Most* programmers could only give a vague claim that MIT/Apache/etc are &quot;probably safer&quot;, but would have no legal expertise to back up that opinion&#xD;&#xA;    - This sort of issue has never been tested in court so the honest lawyer answer may simply be &quot;nobody knows yet&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - If you ask a question, and most people seem confident to answer it *without* saying IANAL (I am not a lawyer)&#xD;&#xA;    - Probably on-topic&#xD;&#xA;    - This is the &quot;reverse IANAL&quot; test&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Main contributors: @durron597, @Ixrec, @GlenH7, @gnat&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[gnufaq]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23136" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8092" RevisionGUID="799d6629-801e-4afa-90f4-85c98af58edc" CreationDate="2016-07-01T19:43:02.330" UserId="1204" Comment="added 689 characters in body" Text="Programmers could benefit from a few more regular visitors who close questions on the front page and the Unanswered page that are **clearly off-topic.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Clearly off-topic&quot; means:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, make lists of things, or engage in extended discussion here.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the moment, many such questions get three or four close votes, and then [languish on the Unanswered page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/unanswered/tagged/?tab=newest), sometimes for several days.  Ideally, the goal would be to get questions like &quot;Best Library&quot; and &quot;Coding Help&quot; closed within the hour.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It just takes a few minutes a day.  Usually, all you have to do is scan the Unanswered page for downvoted questions, and add your close vote where you agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an added benefit, you would be inaugurated into the [White Board Curmudgeon Club](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), where we hang out, talk about tequila, wax philosophic about a diverse array of subjects, and watch in amusement while new users can't figure out what the site is all about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any volunteers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23137" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8092" RevisionGUID="17610000-c605-464e-96ea-bede6f0cc032" CreationDate="2016-07-01T19:52:02.247" UserId="63" Comment="Add filtered link" Text="Programmers could benefit from a few more regular visitors who close questions on the front page and the Unanswered page that are **clearly off-topic.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Clearly off-topic&quot; means:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, make lists of things, or engage in extended discussion here.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the moment, many such questions get three or four close votes, and then [languish on the Unanswered page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/unanswered/tagged/?tab=newest), sometimes for several days.  Ideally, the goal would be to get questions like &quot;Best Library&quot; and &quot;Coding Help&quot; closed within the hour.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It just takes a few minutes a day.  Usually, all you have to do is scan the Unanswered page for downvoted questions, and add your close vote where you agree. Alternately, [review questions flagged as off-topic in the close queue](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close?filter-closereason=offtopic) directly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an added benefit, you would be inaugurated into the [White Board Curmudgeon Club](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), where we hang out, talk about tequila, wax philosophic about a diverse array of subjects, and watch in amusement while new users can't figure out what the site is all about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any volunteers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23138" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8093" RevisionGUID="e8edc41f-0922-43b7-b335-21ed564fa157" CreationDate="2016-07-07T18:25:26.410" UserId="33171" Text="This... should've gone up about six months ago. But let's not let it turn into another six months! Today, your 2016 community promotion ads starts with the new format! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What are Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA; - cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA; - anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we reset the ads every year?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be **300 x 250 pixels**, or double that if high DPI.&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of **150 KB**&#xD;&#xA; - **If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently **6**) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ads/display/8093" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23139" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8093" RevisionGUID="e8edc41f-0922-43b7-b335-21ed564fa157" CreationDate="2016-07-07T18:25:26.410" UserId="33171" Text="Community Promotion Ads - 2016" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23140" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8093" RevisionGUID="e8edc41f-0922-43b7-b335-21ed564fa157" CreationDate="2016-07-07T18:25:26.410" UserId="33171" Text="|discussion|community-ads|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23141" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="7070" RevisionGUID="ded43188-fa89-4cdf-8e45-e4609ea4db56" CreationDate="2016-07-07T18:26:54.347" UserId="33171" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[8093],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:33171,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Grace Note&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="23142" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8094" RevisionGUID="fd3dc624-495f-4bfc-ba1f-9940e7ceb599" CreationDate="2016-07-07T18:27:38.257" UserId="33171" Text="[![Follow us on Twitter!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xNvkW.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://twitter.com/stackprogrammer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23143" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8095" RevisionGUID="279fb025-0839-4625-85f2-170f1bc8baa1" CreationDate="2016-07-07T19:43:00.323" UserId="196988" Text="I have a question about optimizing the creation of objects (by using a pool to recycle objects instead of actual creation) in a game that I intend to run on Android. I use LibGDX for the game but I don't think that my question is dependent on that framework. Should I ask here (Programmers) or on Game Development?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23144" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8095" RevisionGUID="279fb025-0839-4625-85f2-170f1bc8baa1" CreationDate="2016-07-07T19:43:00.323" UserId="196988" Text="Appropriate site for game-dev question about object-oriented optimization?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23145" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8095" RevisionGUID="279fb025-0839-4625-85f2-170f1bc8baa1" CreationDate="2016-07-07T19:43:00.323" UserId="196988" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23146" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8096" RevisionGUID="6ad106ba-6faa-496a-a3cc-8c33b0ec80c5" CreationDate="2016-07-07T19:45:09.070" UserId="4" Text="On the surface, it seems like it's perfectly on-topic here on Programmers. It's ultimately a design question to optimize your design for performance." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23147" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8097" RevisionGUID="da1597dd-10e1-4931-8baf-d047de751f02" CreationDate="2016-07-10T05:44:24.850" UserId="12893" Text="&quot;What are some current buzzwords when you go to a job interview nowadays?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of these were my buzzwords, where I had to know the concepts rather than show actual code:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- LDAP  &#xD;&#xA;- book &quot;Clean code&quot; (Bob Martin) &#xD;&#xA;- failovers&#xD;&#xA;-  spring boot LWJGL ähs&#xD;&#xA;   websockets pusha annoteringsdrivet patterns validering med google&#xD;&#xA;   programvara CORS (cross-origin resource sharing) metor.js löser&#xD;&#xA;   synkproble, frontend test framework: phantom, karma, jasmin JMeter&#xD;&#xA;   Sonar jenkins fluentenium S.O.L.I.D. JPA, hibernate CQRS&#xD;&#xA;   feature-toggling DDD - domain-driven design Immutable interfaces&#xD;&#xA;   event sourcing JDBC template JREbel ehcache transactions dependency&#xD;&#xA;   injection" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23148" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8097" RevisionGUID="da1597dd-10e1-4931-8baf-d047de751f02" CreationDate="2016-07-10T05:44:24.850" UserId="12893" Text="Is this question ok?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23149" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8097" RevisionGUID="da1597dd-10e1-4931-8baf-d047de751f02" CreationDate="2016-07-10T05:44:24.850" UserId="12893" Text="|support|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23150" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8098" RevisionGUID="485a1c5f-e75a-4567-9fb5-382b0455d058" CreationDate="2016-07-11T17:56:45.110" UserId="121251" Text="I have a problem I'm trying to solve and I'm looking for an algorithm to solve it. I'm sure a solution exists I just don't know what it's called to search for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I describe the nature of the problem and the desired results, and ask for an approach / algorithm, is that an appropriate question for this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23151" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8098" RevisionGUID="485a1c5f-e75a-4567-9fb5-382b0455d058" CreationDate="2016-07-11T17:56:45.110" UserId="121251" Text="Looking for algorithms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23152" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8098" RevisionGUID="485a1c5f-e75a-4567-9fb5-382b0455d058" CreationDate="2016-07-11T17:56:45.110" UserId="121251" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23153" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8099" RevisionGUID="15e69348-da47-414a-a2e4-7f41cbf9e08b" CreationDate="2016-07-11T19:31:02.953" UserId="35693" Text="When I type tokens into search, I get something like 1094 entries.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't we have a separate tag for tokens? (I don't have enough rep to create one independently.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23154" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8099" RevisionGUID="15e69348-da47-414a-a2e4-7f41cbf9e08b" CreationDate="2016-07-11T19:31:02.953" UserId="35693" Text="Should we have a separate tag for tokens?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23155" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8099" RevisionGUID="15e69348-da47-414a-a2e4-7f41cbf9e08b" CreationDate="2016-07-11T19:31:02.953" UserId="35693" Text="|discussion|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23156" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8099" RevisionGUID="b18c6540-2311-4f67-884b-d44a3c8461fd" CreationDate="2016-07-12T01:14:36.537" UserId="35693" Comment="added 247 characters in body" Text="When I type tokens into search, I get something like 1094 entries.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't we have a separate tag for tokens? (I don't have enough rep to create one independently.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tokens have many potential uses (perhaps too many) in such areas as payment systems, identification and keys. They can also work in concert with plug ins. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even so, are there commonalities to the different type of token so that it would make sense have tokens as a separate tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23157" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8084" RevisionGUID="d13bd9ab-aae6-46c9-9fb5-541b9b504cbd" CreationDate="2016-07-12T03:27:00.620" UserId="30396" Comment="added 108 characters in body" Text="#Site Name&#xD;&#xA;##Software Development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is not really about Software Engineering. Naming it so would only attract legions of buzzword-mouthing, non-programmers, wannabe-managers, and unexperienced-college-students.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the worst case scenario **it would kill all intelligent communication under a heavy layer of babbling about pigs and chickens**, this could mushroom to the extreme point of making the site useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is opinionated, *per se*, and I come here to read those 3rd party opinions and use them, to a certain extent, to form my own ones. It needs this degree of freedom that may (now, but it didn't use to) feel weird in the SE galaxy. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Development is a proposal that ''maple_shaft'' made, but he's not really backing it. I do, and I wish more would. **It keeps the same spirit as the &quot;Programmers&quot; moniker did.** Not precisely technical, but... meta-tecnhical discussions about the craft of programming, designing, developing software." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23158" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8100" RevisionGUID="5b4fa6e1-469f-4749-97a7-2b3424ec2e91" CreationDate="2016-07-12T09:15:01.720" UserId="102537" Text="Years ago I had a question, obviously a sarcastic joke, that would explode. But then it got closed and deleted, when it reached 60 points and 15 favorites. Folks still ask for where they find it after 3 years (that's why it came to my mind).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is (apart from not understanding why occasional humor devaluates a site, and apart from some of the most famous &quot;historical&quot; stackoverflow questions and answers are humorous) if a question or answer is clearly loved by the community why can moderators close/delete them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are this site for the moderators or for the community?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean if a question has no place, like *&quot;I need write app in Ionic. It have screen on front. How do I that?&quot;* the community downvotes it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An other example is the famous &quot;Suggest a cool regex trick&quot; question, that was clearly violating rules of stackoverflow, but still a source of good value for many-many people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if you want to keep a site 100% clean, you should consider an &quot;outcast&quot; site, for those who broke the rules in a community-liked way, like *dropouts.stackexchange.com* where you can move these questions to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'd like to have a debate about these: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Either we&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close but not delete questions with significant upvotes (or &gt;0?)&#xD;&#xA;2. or delete only questions with significant downvotes&#xD;&#xA;3. or move popular questions to an &quot;outcast&quot; site" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23159" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8100" RevisionGUID="5b4fa6e1-469f-4749-97a7-2b3424ec2e91" CreationDate="2016-07-12T09:15:01.720" UserId="102537" Text="Why do you value the opinion of moderators more than community upvotes?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23160" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8100" RevisionGUID="5b4fa6e1-469f-4749-97a7-2b3424ec2e91" CreationDate="2016-07-12T09:15:01.720" UserId="102537" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23161" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8100" RevisionGUID="c6a957b5-a9f8-4c37-b85a-1bc3f901e869" CreationDate="2016-07-12T10:57:01.717" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="Years ago I had a question, obviously a sarcastic joke, that would explode. But then it got closed and deleted, when it reached 60 points and 15 favorites. Folks still ask for where they find it after 3 years (that's why it came to my mind).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is (apart from not understanding why occasional humor devaluates a site, and apart from some of the most famous &quot;historical&quot; stackoverflow questions and answers are humorous) if a question or answer is clearly loved by the community why can moderators close/delete them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this site for the moderators or for the community?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean if a question has no place, like *&quot;I need write app in Ionic. It have screen on front. How do I that?&quot;* the community downvotes it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An other example is the famous &quot;Suggest a cool regex trick&quot; question, that was clearly violating rules of stackoverflow, but still a source of good value for many-many people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if you want to keep a site 100% clean, you should consider an &quot;outcast&quot; site, for those who broke the rules in a community-liked way, like *dropouts.stackexchange.com* where you can move these questions to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'd like to have a debate about these: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Either we&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close but not delete questions with significant upvotes (or &gt;0?)&#xD;&#xA;2. or delete only questions with significant downvotes&#xD;&#xA;3. or move popular questions to an &quot;outcast&quot; site" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23162" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8101" RevisionGUID="cacf38e8-06da-4e67-bfc6-fbe03970a2f6" CreationDate="2016-07-13T18:45:04.803" UserDisplayName="user186205" Text="I have asked 3 questions, with votes of 16, 5 and 0, one Answer, vote 0. No deleted Questions. What have I done to cause a Question Ban? I didn't see anything by looking at the provided Help." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23163" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8101" RevisionGUID="cacf38e8-06da-4e67-bfc6-fbe03970a2f6" CreationDate="2016-07-13T18:45:04.803" UserDisplayName="user186205" Text="Please explain why I have a Question Ban?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23164" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8101" RevisionGUID="cacf38e8-06da-4e67-bfc6-fbe03970a2f6" CreationDate="2016-07-13T18:45:04.803" UserDisplayName="user186205" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23165" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8101" RevisionGUID="42d3de1b-7ef3-4b06-bc5f-b428d3b8527c" CreationDate="2016-07-13T19:02:07.247" UserDisplayName="user186205" Comment="added some findings" Text="I have asked 3 questions, with votes of 16, 5 and 0, one Answer, vote 0. No deleted Questions. What have I done to cause a Question Ban? I didn't see anything by looking at the provided Help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: It looks like I have one &quot;removed&quot; question. Seems a bit severe, don't you think? In Baseball, you get 3 strikes. You guys play rough!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23166" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8102" RevisionGUID="d341fdfa-38d6-4df3-8bd7-5238d728314e" CreationDate="2016-07-13T19:04:06.017" UserId="4" Text="You've asked 10 questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Please give some references for examples of class hierarchies][1] (score of -5, closed and deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- [Demonstrate Polymorphism with Tic Tac Toe where students submit player code?][2] (score of 0, closed and deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- [Why is 12-based indexing not more common?][3] (score of -3, closed and deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to explain the mystery of programming][4] (score of -4, closed and deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to decide what instance variables to have in a class?][5] (score of 1)&#xD;&#xA;- [I think fan-in fan-out is backward, please explain][6] (score of -3, closed and deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- [Should “default constructor” mean the compiler-generated one and “no-argument constructor” mean one you create?][7] (score of 0)&#xD;&#xA;- [I need a real-world example of a class to demonstrate consistent state][8] (score of -6, closed and deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- [Should &lt;= and &gt;= be avoided when using integers, such as in a For loop?][9] (score of 16, closed)&#xD;&#xA;- [Why are Update statements in SQL called Queries?][10] (score of 0, closed and deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your net score on questions is negative and you have more closed and deleted questions than open questions. You've had a lot more than 3 strikes to learn about what is considered a good question for this community. It seems like a question block is in order, to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/292122/please-give-some-references-for-examples-of-class-hierarchies&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/292152/demonstrate-polymorphism-with-tic-tac-toe-where-students-submit-player-code&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302527/why-is-12-based-indexing-not-more-common&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/307200/how-to-explain-the-mystery-of-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/309181/how-to-decide-what-instance-variables-to-have-in-a-class&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/308079/i-think-fan-in-fan-out-is-backward-please-explain&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/310359/should-default-constructor-mean-the-compiler-generated-one-and-no-argument-co&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/310789/i-need-a-real-world-example-of-a-class-to-demonstrate-consistent-state&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/313143/should-and-be-avoided-when-using-integers-such-as-in-a-for-loop&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/314946/why-are-update-statements-in-sql-called-queries" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23167" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8101" RevisionGUID="76183bb9-1478-4a20-b28b-23c798677889" CreationDate="2016-07-13T20:51:01.950" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|post-ban|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23168" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8067" RevisionGUID="42d26606-ad8c-4e9c-bd82-c6d22d22c1c4" CreationDate="2016-07-13T23:35:13.990" UserId="4" Comment="added 303 characters in body" Text="The following sites may be of interest to users on Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [CrossValidated][4] &#xD;&#xA;* [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;* [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;* [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;* [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;* [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;* [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;* [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;* [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;* [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;* [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;* [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;* [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;* [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;* [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;* [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][21]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Recommendations][22]&#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow][23]&#xD;&#xA;* [User Experience][24]&#xD;&#xA;* [The Workplace][25]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before posting, be sure to read their Help Centers to fully understand what these communities expect from high quality questions and any specific rules they may have. As always, if you aren't sure if your question is a good fit, post on a Meta site and you can be directed to an appropriate site on the Stack Exchange network, if one exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a site doesn't exist yet, check out [Area 51][26], where users can collaborate to define and launch new Stack Exchange sites. If there's a proposal for your idea, you can follow it and contribute to it's definition. If not, you can create a new proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More detailed information about each site follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Code Review Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; peer review of your code. We're working together to improve the skills&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of programmers worldwide by taking working code and making it better.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from your project in the following areas…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Best practices and design pattern usage&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Security issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Correctness in unanticipated cases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then you are in the right place!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computational Science Stack Exchange is for questions and answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about computational methods used in technical disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First-time posters are strongly advised to read Eric Raymond's How to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask Questions the Smart Way for advice on how to ask good questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (not for technical answers). Although written for an audience asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions about open source software, the same advice applies when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking questions about any subject area.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is run by volunteers; the best way to get an answer to your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is to ask it in a way that makes it easy for someone with a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broad computational science background to answer it with 15 minutes of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; effort or less.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Topics that are usually a good fit for this site:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about software packages or languages used broadly in computational science (e.g., PETSc, MATLAB, Trilinos, LAPACK, SLEPc,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; R, NumPy, SciPy, Julia, Maple, Octave) except Mathematica (which has&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its own site now). In general, high-level questions (e.g., about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/package features) are best. Questions that are essentially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about debugging a code sample, or about low-level language syntax are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a poor fit for this site, and are usually closed; such questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be asked on language-/package-specific forums. Package&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developers interested in using this site as a resource should look at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this meta question. Package developers answering questions should look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at this meta question for guidelines on disclosing project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; affiliations.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about algorithms or methods used to solve problems in applied mathematics (e.g., finding roots of a polynomial, finding the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; eigenvalues/eigenvectors of a matrix, solving an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elliptic/parabolic/hyperbolic PDE)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions that ask about appropriate methods for a given application area (e.g., what numerical methods would I use when modeling shock&#xD;&#xA;&gt; waves, what numerical methods would I use when modeling combustion,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what graph algorithms would I use if I wanted to understand social&#xD;&#xA;&gt; networks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer Science Stack Exchange is for students, researchers and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practitioners of computer science.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer science, also sometimes called computing science, is the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; science of computation and its applications. This site covers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; theoretical and applied computer science at any level, including but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms, models of computation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming language semantics, formal methods&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - computer architecture, networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, natural language processing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - vision, graphics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [CrossValidated][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CrossValidated is for statisticians, data miners, and anyone else&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doing data analysis or interested in it as a discipline. If you have a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical analysis, applied or theoretical&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - designing experiments&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - collecting data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - data mining&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - visualizing data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - probability theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - mathematical statistics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical and data-driven computing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Crypto Stack Exchange is for software developers, mathematicians and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others interested in cryptography.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cryptography Stack Exchange is for asking questions about the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mathematics and properties of cryptographic systems, their analysis&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (&quot;cryptanalysis&quot;) and subsidiary topics that generally make up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cryptology, such as random number generation. As such, we welcome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions on topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Asymmetric and symmetric cryptographic algorithms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographic protocols&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptanalysis techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Hash functions, hashing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Entropy and information theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographically Secure (Pseudo-)Random Number Generation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dba.se is for those needing expert answers to advanced&#xD;&#xA;&gt; database-related questions concerning traditional SQL RDBMS and NoSQL&#xD;&#xA;&gt; alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Database Administration including configuration and backup / restore&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Querying including window-functions, dynamic-sql, and query-performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Modelling and database-design, including referential-integrity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Programming in built-in server-side languages including stored-procedures and triggers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence including etl, reporting, and olap&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Examples of questions that are likely to be on-topic for Data Science&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given process monitoring data arriving every 10ms, what statistical tool should I use to best characterize a change in the process - mean?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a distribution?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When is it suitable to apply L1 regularization for feature selection?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I would like to produce a infographic on the 'Brexit' referendum. Given public opinion data across the UK, what are some meaningful&#xD;&#xA;&gt; techniques to visaualize it in a dashboard?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When executing an ARIMA model in Spark, what are the pros and cons of using Python instead of R?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given Facebook Likes, is there an ML technique to predict age and gender?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for electronics and electrical engineering professionals,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; students, and enthusiasts. We ask and answer questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electrical and electronics engineering topics, which include&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electronics, physical computing, and those working with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; microcontrollers, Arduinos and embedded systems. We feel the best&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Electronics Design questions have a schematic, links to pertinent&#xD;&#xA;&gt; datasheets or some source code in them, but if your question generally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific electronics design problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the theory and simulation of electromagnetic forces&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a communication scheme&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Engineering Stack Exchange are usually well-received when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Identify a specific engineering problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Require expert engineering knowledge to solve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Include any relevant drawings, images or references that may be necessary to understand the problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Excite or challenge experienced professionals in the field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Game Development Stack Exchange is for professional and amateur&#xD;&#xA;&gt; video/computer game developers. If you have a question relating to ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asset pipelines (creation, storage, editing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game-specific programming issues (engine architecture, game-related APIs, networking, tools, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - project management (testing, team management, scheduling, publishing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game industry (careers, trends, technology, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware Recommendations is a community-run website to help you find a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific product for your needs. That means you can ask for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware to perform a specific task. However, you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be aware that &quot;hardware&quot; is not an all-encompassing term — for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; details of what hardware is accepted on this site, please see What is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware?. In essence, we can help you if you're looking for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware that is &quot;an electronic item that is,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interfaces with, or connects to a computer to operate&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; IT Security Stack Exchange is for Information Security professionals&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to discuss protecting assets from threats and vulnerabilities. Topics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; include, but are not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - web app hardening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - network security&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - social engineering, including phishing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - risk management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - policies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - penetration testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - security tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - using cryptography&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - incident response&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physically securing the office, datacentre, information assets etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Law Stack Exchange is for legal professionals, students, and others&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with experience or interest in law.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The best questions are those that have specific answers; Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange is not a general discussion forum. In general, ask here if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question which covers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Statutes or court decisions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal terms and language, doctrines and theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal process and procedure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Historical legal applications&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Dealing with legal professionals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mathematics Stack Exchange is for people studying mathematics at any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; level and professionals in related fields. We welcome questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Understanding mathematical concepts and theorems.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Mathematical problems such as one might come across in a course or textbook. (First read our how to ask a good question page.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Solving mathematical puzzles.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software that mathematicians use (except Mathematica, which has its own Stack Exchange site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Network Engineering Stack Exchange is for asking questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professionally managed networks in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - operating, maintaining, purchasing or managing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - planning or designing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - model or product line features and differences;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - lab scenarios involving on-topic equipment;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used by network professionals;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - servers operating as a router/switch/firewall;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design or theory of protocols used to operate a network (e.g. IP, TCP, routing protocols, STP, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - content delivery networks;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - production troubleshooting or problem resolution;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physical infrastructure (e.g. standard color coding of cables, types of fiber, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementing and enforcing network security or policies;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and meets the following requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - under your direct control (if the network is not under your control you will not likely be able to provide the information required to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer your question);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware that has a paid support option (enterprise/provider class products, some small business class devices);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then this is likely the correct place to ask unless it meets any of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the off-topic conditions detailed below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Open Source Stack Exchange is a question &amp; answer site about a group&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of related movements which encourage people to give up some of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rights given to them by copyright law, by using licenses which give&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others the freedom to use and transform their creative works, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which optionally (by using copyleft/share-alike licenses) ensure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; these works will always be made available with the same rights. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site is not limited to software, but also covers art, literature,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hardware, databases and more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; These movements have been spearheaded by a group of organisations:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FSF, OSI, Creative Commons, Free Culture. These organisations prefer a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; variety of different terms (free, open source, libre) and sometimes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; define them with slight differences. But on this site these terms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should in general be considered to be synonymous, except for questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which ask directly about their differences.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You've come to the right place if you have questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the history and philosophies of the FSF, OSI, CC etc&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, applying, and complying with Free &amp; Open licenses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how communities collaborate together to produce, distribute, market and sometime monetize these projects&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what license to use for a specific situation - but please read How do I ask for a license recommendation? first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Personal Productivity Stack Exchange is for people wanting to improve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their personal productivity. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - achieving a productivity workflow, using techniques like GTD, Covey, Pomodoro, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - fighting procrastination by getting energetic and motivated workflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - ergonomics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - effective sleep habits and the entire sleep-wake transition&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - learning, memory and creativity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The site is for project management practitioners, academics and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; amateur theorists. This is a site about the field of project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; management for people who love the subject. Our site includes the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following topics:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Management Practices and Theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Agile&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Scrum&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - PRINCE2&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Tool Usage in Project Management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Manager Career Advancement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reverse Engineering Stack Exchange is for researchers and developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who explore the principles of a system through analysis of its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structure, function, and operation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software analysis (static or dynamic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - disassembly or decompilation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware analysis and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools commonly used for reverse engineering hardware or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deterring reverse engineering efforts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Server Fault is for questions about managing information technology&#xD;&#xA;&gt; systems in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - managing the hardware or software of servers, workstations, storage or networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used for administering, monitoring, or automating these&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deployment to and management of third-party provided information technology platforms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][21]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing Stack Exchange is for software quality control experts, automation engineers, and software testers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Recommendations][22]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for questions asking for recommendations of software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ready-to-use to accomplish a particular task, that is, “what software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can I use to do …?”. While this includes software libraries for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development use, note that recommendations of tutorials, data sources,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; media libraries (e.g. icon collections) etc. are off-topic – as are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions like “what technology to use for …?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good software recommendation requests have two components:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A purpose — a task to accomplish, a user story&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Some objective requirements — a minimum set of features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Stack Overflow][23]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; a specific programming problem, or a software algorithm, or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tools commonly used by programmers; and is a practical, answerable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem that is unique to software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [User Experience][24]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; User Experience Stack Exchange is for User Experience Designers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Information Architects, and Human Computer Interaction researchers. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Specific UX design problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UX issues that can be solved with expert advice or existing research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about HCI and user research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [The Workplace][25]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Workplace Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site about the workplace and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other career-related topics. With your help we're working to build a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; library to every question about the workplace related to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Finding employment (resumes/cv/cover letters, recruiters, hiring-managers, interviews, negotiations, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Maintaining employment (promotions, pay increases, harassment, bullying, poor working conditions, communication problems, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Leadership in the workplace (motivating people, encouraging people, making decisions, holding hard conversations, intervening in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unproductive situations, asking for and giving help, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Terminating employment (notice period, breaking the news, handing over work, reference letters, relieving letters, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://datascience.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://security.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://math.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://serverfault.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23169" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8101" RevisionGUID="26864fe0-d6b0-4bd5-a258-530adfa3e7ad" CreationDate="2016-07-13T23:47:23.100" UserDisplayName="user186205" Comment="second edit" Text="I have asked 3 questions, with votes of 16, 5 and 0, one Answer, vote 0. No deleted Questions. What have I done to cause a Question Ban? I didn't see anything by looking at the provided Help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: It looks like I have one &quot;removed&quot; question. Seems a bit severe, don't you think? In Baseball, you get 3 strikes. You guys play rough!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another edit: **Why don't you let me see more of my own history of closed and deleted questions?** Apparently other people can see them, so show this data to me as well! I don't memorize my activity here over the last year." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23170" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8103" RevisionGUID="61d5d82e-9176-404d-af72-f7aa478d50fb" CreationDate="2016-07-14T00:04:02.997" UserId="31260" Text="&gt; Folks still ask for where they find it after 3 years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think above is generally a [valid concern](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/123386/165773 &quot;for the reasons discussed in details here&quot;). However some system limitations make it rather slippery to use popularity and historical interest as an _ultimate_ criteria on deciding whether to keep such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is, visual difference between &quot;normal&quot; and [historically locked](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;) questions is not really as prominent as it may seem to experienced SO users. I recall seeing at meta references to examples when inexperienced users didn't notice the differences and thought that these are normal, legitimate questions, [&quot;Why can't I ask X when Y exists?&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/broken-windows)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are essentially forced to decide whether &quot;harm to the Internet&quot; - link rot caused by deletion of particular question - outweighs the harm of it hanging in here and making a broken window for inexperienced users (who sometimes simply can't see / understand what historical lock means).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why historical interest alone doesn't determine whether question gets a historical lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that so far suggestions to create and maintain some kind of an &quot;outcast&quot; / &quot;museum&quot; site for questions of historical interest were declined by Stack Exchange team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More generally, all suggestions to help community maintain historical questions known to me were either declined or ignored by SE team. Even when such suggestions require almost no effort and are apparently no risk / no harm, these are ignored (for example setting pink background when rendering historically locked posts [proposed here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7828/31260)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Set up an archive for legendary deleted questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73226/165773) (at MSE)&#xD;&#xA;* [Recent Trouble With Popularity](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23173" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8103" RevisionGUID="d72fc150-b2e6-4893-b1bf-fca8de840160" CreationDate="2016-07-14T01:18:17.197" UserId="31260" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="&gt; Folks still ask for where they find it after 3 years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think above is generally a [valid concern](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/123386/165773 &quot;for the reasons discussed in details here&quot;). However some system limitations make it rather slippery to use popularity and historical interest as an _ultimate_ criteria on deciding whether to keep such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is, visual difference between &quot;normal&quot; and [historically locked](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;) questions is not really as prominent as it may seem to experienced users. I recall seeing at meta references to examples when inexperienced users didn't notice the differences and thought that these are normal, legitimate questions, [&quot;Why can't I ask X when Y exists?&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/broken-windows)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are essentially forced to decide whether &quot;harm to the Internet&quot; - link rot caused by deletion of particular question - outweighs the harm of it hanging in here and making a broken window for inexperienced users (who sometimes simply can't see / understand what historical lock means).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why historical interest alone doesn't determine whether question gets a historical lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that so far suggestions to create and maintain some kind of an &quot;outcast&quot; / &quot;museum&quot; site for questions of historical interest were declined by Stack Exchange team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More generally, all suggestions to help community maintain historical questions known to me were either declined or ignored by SE team. Even when such suggestions require almost no effort and are apparently no risk / no harm, these are ignored (for example setting pink background when rendering historically locked posts [proposed here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7828/31260)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Set up an archive for legendary deleted questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73226/165773) (at MSE)&#xD;&#xA;* [Recent Trouble With Popularity](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23174" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8103" RevisionGUID="a8296585-48f9-4514-a482-184ad6aacb5c" CreationDate="2016-07-14T14:01:14.770" UserId="1204" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="&gt; Folks still ask for where they find it after 3 years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think above is generally a [valid concern](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/123386/165773 &quot;for the reasons discussed in details here&quot;). However some system limitations make it rather slippery to use popularity and historical interest as an _ultimate_ criteria on deciding whether to keep such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is, visual difference between &quot;normal&quot; and [historically locked](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;) questions is not really as prominent as it may seem to experienced users. I recall seeing at meta references to examples when inexperienced users didn't notice the differences and thought that these are normal, legitimate questions, [&quot;Why can't I ask X when Y exists?&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/broken-windows)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are essentially forced to decide whether &quot;harm to the Internet&quot; - link rot caused by deletion of particular question - outweighs the harm of it hanging in here and making a broken window for inexperienced users (who sometimes simply can't see / understand what historical lock means).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why historical interest alone doesn't determine whether question gets a historical lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's worth noting that so far suggestions to create and maintain some kind of an &quot;outcast&quot; / &quot;museum&quot; site for questions of historical interest were declined by Stack Exchange team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More generally, all suggestions to help community maintain historical questions known to me were either declined or ignored by SE team. Even when such suggestions require almost no effort and are apparently no risk / no harm, these are ignored (for example setting pink background when rendering historically locked posts [proposed here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7828/31260)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Set up an archive for legendary deleted questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73226/165773) (at MSE)&#xD;&#xA;* [Recent Trouble With Popularity](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23175" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8098" RevisionGUID="a3e3ddee-5b15-46a2-a703-e2717d4aca1e" CreationDate="2016-07-14T17:23:56.080" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/753641188029333504" />
  <row Id="23176" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8103" RevisionGUID="02eda3e6-a36e-4971-a68b-776b0b4b3e24" CreationDate="2016-07-14T17:31:49.373" UserId="31260" Comment="these posts become so popular over time that they truly start to drown out everything else on the site..." Text="&gt; Folks still ask for where they find it after 3 years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think above is generally a [valid concern](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/123386/165773 &quot;for the reasons discussed in details here&quot;). However some system limitations make it rather slippery to use popularity and historical interest as an _ultimate_ criteria on deciding whether to keep such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is, visual difference between &quot;normal&quot; and [historically locked](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;) questions is not really as prominent as it may seem to experienced users. I recall seeing at meta references to examples when inexperienced users didn't notice the differences and thought that these are normal, legitimate questions, [&quot;Why can't I ask X when Y exists?&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/broken-windows)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are essentially forced to decide whether &quot;harm to the Internet&quot; - link rot caused by deletion of particular question - outweighs the harm of it hanging in here and making a broken window for inexperienced users (who sometimes simply can't see / understand what historical lock means).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why historical interest alone doesn't determine whether question gets a historical lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's worth noting that so far suggestions to create and maintain some kind of an &quot;outcast&quot; / &quot;museum&quot; site for questions of historical interest were declined by Stack Exchange team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More generally, all suggestions to help community maintain historical questions known to me were either declined or ignored by SE team. Even when such suggestions require almost no effort and are apparently no risk / no harm, these are ignored (for example setting pink background when rendering historically locked posts [proposed here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7828/31260)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Set up an archive for legendary deleted questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73226/165773) (at MSE)&#xD;&#xA;* [Recent Trouble With Popularity](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(sort of a follow up) [Your comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8100/why-do-you-value-the-opinion-of-moderators-more-than-community-upvotes/8103#comment25141_8103) indicate a belief that inappropriate questions are harmless:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;need proof that suppressing these questions actually make the site rot, i.e. humorous questions starting to make a trend, because those questions exist in the first place. Without that maybe it's the case of suppressing a harmless thing because of valuing &quot;fear&quot; instead of &quot;evidence&quot;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a closer look at this site history [described here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/102937) you may find out that it is most likely not so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is, first few years such questions were allowed at Stack Overflow where they coexisted with &quot;boring&quot; programming questions. Fun questions were popular, entertaining, brought a lot of views and site visits. Now ask yourself a question, **if these were indeed harmless, why would they want to &quot;outsource&quot; them to a separate site (NPR)?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody in their sane mind would get rid of content that brings views and visits if it is harmless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I bet Stack Overflow creators would be happy to keep these questions on-site if (**if**) these weren't causing harm. The very fact that they moved it to a separate site (NPR) makes a very strong indication that these were indeed considered harmful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In case if you wonder about what specifically could make SO creators believe that there is harm consider taking a look at the canonical article explaining these matters - [The Trouble With Popularity](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we discovered that these posts become so popular over time that they truly start to drown out everything else on the site...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. **Broken windows.** Every 'fun' post users see is an open invitation for them to participate in the fun by adding *their own* fun question or answer. The stuff spreads like [kudzu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu)! Pretty soon the entire site is overrun with nothing but that kind of fun. And even if you grandfather a few in, you'll enjoy neverending requests asking why *their* fun question or answer has to be removed, while *this one over here* is allowed to remain.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;2. **Opportunity cost.** Every minute spent participating in an entertaining 'fun' post is time that someone could have spent asking or answering a substantive question, something practical that solves an *actual problem* for hundreds or thousands of people. Entertainment, within reason, is by no means a bad thing -- but I experience almost physical pain when I think about a brilliant topic expert spending 10 minutes on one of our sites deciding which hilarious cartoon is their favorite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is quite a solid evidence that Stack Exchange Q&amp;A model turned out poor in supporting &quot;pure fun&quot; kind of questions. They tried to keep these along with serious questions, they also tried to keep them at separate site... &quot;Sadly, it didn't work out.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23177" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="2fb3b174-0683-4bbd-bc7b-2380b123c4db" CreationDate="2016-07-18T05:02:12.493" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 65 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for practitioners, researchers and students of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a Q&amp;A site for practitioners, researchers and students of Software Engineering and related fields. Questions asked here are ideally those which are *directly related to the Software Development Life Cycle.* &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software development [methods and practices][8]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [requirements engineering][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm) and [data structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [quality assurance and testing][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Interstitial Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Harvey proposed [an interstital page][12]. I made a few minor edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;##Welcome to Software Engineering!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We'd love to help you out with your Software Engineering question. Before you ask your question, please read the important stuff below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, make lists of things, or engage in extended discussion here.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here. We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for. We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **OK, So what *can* I ask?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can ask Software Engineering questions *directly related to the Software Development Life Cycle,* including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - software development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA; - requirements engineering&#xD;&#xA; - architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If it's not in that list, it's probably off-topic. See [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's always a good idea to survey the landscape of a new site before participating.  Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the site and its participants.  **We're not a forum;** don't expect things to work the same way as other forums do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Good luck, and **welcome to Software Engineering!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this doesn't work, something like the [/questions/ask/advice page][13] should be added. However, I'd like to be able to clarify the &quot;be on-topic&quot; section to be more explicit about what is on and off topic for us, especially given our history. This should help combat people who are directed here in error. Ideally, we'd also like to reorder this page. For example, &quot;search&quot; should be last - if you don't understand the scope of the site, you can get old, legacy questions in search. Searching should be done after you understand who the members of this community are (software engineers and other professionals in the field of software development), what our scope is (/help/on-topic), and what kinds of questions we accept (be specific, make it relevant to others, keep an open mind).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;# Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box or banner to mention the changes, similar to how the Law and Health sites do? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, would just want a one-line overview that links to the meta post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask/advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23178" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8104" RevisionGUID="18c03b79-90c7-4513-877d-8140c27b98f0" CreationDate="2016-07-19T22:13:25.247" UserId="8939" Text="I asked this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/321462/8939&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do agree that my initial question (before edits) was outside of programmers.stackexchange, and after I received a comment from a moderator, I edited my question to make it more objective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason given for closing does not seem to line up with the question.  The reason claims that I asked for anecdotal experience, when really I'm asking for objective give and take between one methodology and another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to the FAQ, I can ask questions about development processes and methodologies (which is why I asked on Programmers, and not on SO)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect that what really happened here is that there was a vote to close before my initial edit, and then it was eventually closed by &quot;me too&quot; close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I'm wrong about that and my edits did not bring the question into alignment with the site, I would like to know what more I might have done to have made the question suitable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23179" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8104" RevisionGUID="18c03b79-90c7-4513-877d-8140c27b98f0" CreationDate="2016-07-19T22:13:25.247" UserId="8939" Text="How should I have changed my question to avoid a close?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23180" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8104" RevisionGUID="18c03b79-90c7-4513-877d-8140c27b98f0" CreationDate="2016-07-19T22:13:25.247" UserId="8939" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23181" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8105" RevisionGUID="d3d75587-a8c5-453d-8f14-f0c300afeab3" CreationDate="2016-07-21T01:48:23.810" UserId="63" Text="I've been pondering [these proposed changes to the site's name and scope](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8056/new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8065#8065) for the past few weeks. This was, you'll recall, instigated by Ana's response to Rachel's proposal for [a new name for this site.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/4-years-later-dear-stack-exchange-can-we-change-our-site-name). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Why are we changing anything again?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The purpose of that name-change request was explicitly to *end the confusion over what this site is about*. Ana's request was that y'all do a thorough review of your scope at the same time, for exactly the same reason. Because, let's face it: when you gotta have [a chatbot](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/125580/duga) running to catch all the folks who erroneously recommend your site, there's some pretty widespread misunderstandings as to what your site is about... To put a stop to that, [we need a clear, succinct definition](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/4-years-later-dear-stack-exchange-can-we-change-our-site-name/8054#8054):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Above all else, the scope needs to be simple. Seriously. No more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no gerrymandering - it needs to be easy for any new visitor who bothers to read and even mildly pays attention to what they're reading to know what they can and cannot ask about here. Eliminate ambiguity for a first time poster once and for all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...because, remember, *that was the whole point of doing anything at all*. If we can't do it right, there's no point in doing it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The proposed changes are not exactly succinct](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8056/new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8065#8065). They're... the sort of [laundry-lists](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/164778/what-should-we-put-on-our-about-page/164779#164779) that make folks who already know what the site is about feel good, but don't do anything to help or hinder the folks coming here confused. You want to establish a path of least resistance that *isn't* asking a sketchy question and seeing if it sticks - if I make it past the home page, through the signup process, past the tour, and get to the Ask page, I'm *probably* going to ask a question regardless of what text you throw at me... Folks tend to build up momentum as they make decisions; you don't want to wait until the last possible moment to tell 'em they're in the wrong place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##What I *think* you're asking for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, there's a lot of good stuff mixed into that proposal, if you take the time to dig a bit. After [talking to folks in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/30760512#30760512) a couple of weeks ago (and then another two hours talking with Ana today while she patiently guided me through it), I came away with this as the *structure* of the proposal:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Name&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Description / tour tagline&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question and answer site for people directly involved in the Software Development Lifecycle who care about writing, shipping, and maintaining code responsibly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###On-topic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Off-topic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - troubleshooting or debugging code &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - requests for code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what to read, learn, buy or use.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - legal advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's short. I could theoretically paste that entire quote into a comment, and still have room to reply to someone by name and properly cite [its source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_Trump).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More importantly, it's short enough that it might actually get *read* by the hundreds of folks who clearly aren't reading anything here today. Which was, again, the entire point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I dropped a few things. That's ok; you don't need to exhaustively document every possible topic that falls under the umbrella &quot;Software Engineering&quot; - the ultimate source of truth is what's actually *on the site*. If someone comes in from Google because there's a question about Agile they're interested in, it won't matter that it's not explicitly called out in the docs. On the other hand, eliminating requirements and methodologies from that list also lets you avoid having to qualify those topics with a paragraph about where to stick broad, opinionated discussion questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##What this site is really about&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I love the idea of a site about software engineering, especially one created as the evolution of *this* site: it fits the spirit of what y'all are doing, gives you a name and a topic you can communicate with pride, and even [resolves an old, old dispute](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se) in a less depressing fashion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But none of that matters. **What's important here is whether y'all actually believe this reflects what you're doing.** Remember, the goal was to clear up all those cringe-worthy misconceptions... Not to create a whole pile of new ones. So I ask of you,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Does *anything* in the quote above strike you as *incorrect?***&#xD;&#xA;2. Does the quote above reflect the site you know and love?&#xD;&#xA;3. Is the quote above something you'd feel comfortable giving to someone unfamiliar with the site, by way of an introduction?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you for your time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23182" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8105" RevisionGUID="d3d75587-a8c5-453d-8f14-f0c300afeab3" CreationDate="2016-07-21T01:48:23.810" UserId="63" Text="Is this site about Software Engineering, or what?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23183" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8105" RevisionGUID="d3d75587-a8c5-453d-8f14-f0c300afeab3" CreationDate="2016-07-21T01:48:23.810" UserId="63" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23185" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8105" RevisionGUID="1a86489e-d963-47d2-bc64-001c534b21eb" CreationDate="2016-07-21T05:37:18.633" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/756000075843796992" />
  <row Id="23186" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8106" RevisionGUID="02cc5db5-bc22-4ff9-ad8f-92e0ff9ab233" CreationDate="2016-07-21T11:37:13.580" UserId="25476" Text="# I Love It #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, our scope does in fact have a few small edge cases that are well established but relatively uncommon (Eg. software license questions from the perspective of a software engineer, some overlap with Project Management) however is it terribly important that we complicate and confuse?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the problem when the community is a group of Experts and Engineers at the same time.  The Engineer in us is over analyzing the living hell out of our scope statement and making it far more complicated than it needs to be.  The Expert in us is building a tool that is designed as a reference guide **for experts**, at the expense of intuitiveness and usability for newcomers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The scope statement is not primarily supposed to be a definitive reference guide so that we can drop hyperlinks on content from new users as proof that they screwed up.**  Let us put the human touch on content moderation and explain, coach and teach.  Let us reference Meta discussions for long established standards and traditions where we need to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seriously guys... this site has been around for years now, do we really think that years of precedent and Meta discussion can be culminated in a single easily digestible page?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*All in all, not a very welcome invitation any of the proposals thus far.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think Ana kind of freaked people out saying that we had to get this perfect the first time because we wouldn't get a second chance.  That is what set us into analysis paralysis and grid lock in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose we go with Shog9's succinct scope statement and just see how it goes.  We can always make small adjustments at a later time.  The only thing I can see we should get right first chance is the site name and I think we are all in agreement with at least that much." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23187" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8107" RevisionGUID="a46d0936-2908-4259-a0ba-68eca8a3ac72" CreationDate="2016-07-21T11:47:37.577" UserId="4" Text="Overall, I like it. The name is 100% spot-on. I think the scope statement is 90% there. I don't like dropping the two topics that are on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The proposed changes are not exactly succinct. They're... the sort of laundry-lists that make folks who already know what the site is about feel good, but don't do anything to help or hinder the folks coming here confused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know what you mean by this. The changes themselves are exhaustive: a new name, a new tag line, a much shorter /help/on-topic page that only lists the 6 core things that we are about, a request for an interstitial page that mirrors the proposed new /help/on-topic page, and a request for a new UI design that's more in line with sites like Computer Science and Electrical Engineering - cleaner, crisper, and more professional (in terms of the feelings invoked, not saying that the current design looks like it was done by amateurs).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you really want a 4 bullet list of things on-topic, that's not going to happen. Depending on how you slice it, there are easily over a dozen subdisciplines (see [Wikipedia][1] or the [IEEE Computer Society][2]) to software engineering. If you removing the parts about coding, you still easily have 9 or 10. We got these down to 6 bullet points with links to Wikipedia pages (that at least some of us have read and agree are in line with our expectations). Between the name and 6 bullet points (as opposed to the 8 &quot;about&quot; and 10 &quot;not about&quot; now), it's much more succinct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding your proposed description/tagline and on-topic/off-topic, it's not right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the tagline, we aren't just for people directly involved in the SDLC. We're also for students studying the SDLC and researchers who study or write about the SDLC. We want to take a page from CS and EE and explicitly include these people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want a third take on your proposed description/tagline, I'd say it's this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question and answer site for people participating in, researching, and learning about the Software Development Lifecycle who care about writing, shipping, and maintaining software responsibly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the on-topic list, don't like how things were dropped. We aren't being comprehensive about what is on-topic. If we were being comprehensive, we would have over a dozen bullet points. We picked the most important things. I think that leaving out &quot;methods and practices&quot; and &quot;requirements engineering&quot; is doing ourselves a disservice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If someone comes in from Google because there's a question about Agile they're interested in, it won't matter that it's not explicitly called out in the docs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's true. On the other hand, there are other sites where Agile questions get posted and accepted. There are still plenty of people who post methodology questions on Stack Overflow because of legacy questions there that aren't closed. These same topics are posted about on Project Management.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; On the other hand, eliminating requirements and methodologies from that list also lets you avoid having to qualify those topics with a paragraph about where to stick broad, opinionated discussion questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're just as likely to have these broad, opinionated discussion questions in architecture and design. And to some extent, build and release management. But that's not a reason to eliminate those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the end, I'd rather have &quot;methods and practices&quot; and &quot;requirements engineering&quot; back since it clearly defines our scope in 6 bullet points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the off-topic list, I think that's generally right. I think changing our name will make it clear that many of the things that we call out as off-topic now are actually off-topic. We may want to add &quot;tool usage&quot; (it's hit or miss - some sites allow tool questions, we decided we didn't want to) and &quot;education and career advice&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to be able to edit the /help/dont-ask page to include the off-topic things there, instead of making the /help/on-topic page too verbose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Name&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Description / tour tagline&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question and answer site for people participating in, researching, and learning about the Software Development Lifecycle who care about writing, shipping, and maintaining software responsibly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###On-topic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - methods and practices&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Off-topic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - troubleshooting or debugging code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - requests for code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what to read, learn, buy or use&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - education and career advice&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - legal advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Plus, it still fits into a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people participating in, researching, or learning about the SDLC who care about writing, shipping, and maintaining software responsibly. Questions about methods and practices, requirements, architecture, design, algorithms and data structures, quality assurance, and configuration, build, and release management are on-topic. We don't accept questions about debugging code, using specific tools, things to read, learn, or use, education or career advice, or legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are 59 characters left. I also added &quot;.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&quot; to the box and still had 26 characters left. As long as we don't have a stupid long domain name, we can link to our site's help/on-topic page in any comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering#Subdisciplines&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://www.computer.org/web/swebok/v3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23188" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8107" RevisionGUID="038028eb-8d0d-4892-b9d1-3170b9926799" CreationDate="2016-07-21T13:07:14.690" UserId="4" Comment="added 430 characters in body" Text="Overall, I like it. The name is 100% spot-on. I think the scope statement is 90% there. I don't like dropping the two topics that are on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the most important thing is the site name (and, along with it, the domain name) as this is something that we need SE to do. The tour and help/on-topic page (with the tagline and description) can be refined by the community since they are mod editable, but what we have is pretty solid and very close to what we want. We are all in nearly full agreement for the site name, so I think it's time to get that ball rolling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The proposed changes are not exactly succinct. They're... the sort of laundry-lists that make folks who already know what the site is about feel good, but don't do anything to help or hinder the folks coming here confused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know what you mean by this. The changes themselves are exhaustive: a new name, a new tag line, a much shorter /help/on-topic page that only lists the 6 core things that we are about, a request for an interstitial page that mirrors the proposed new /help/on-topic page, and a request for a new UI design that's more in line with sites like Computer Science and Electrical Engineering - cleaner, crisper, and more professional (in terms of the feelings invoked, not saying that the current design looks like it was done by amateurs).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you really want a 4 bullet list of things on-topic, that's not going to happen. Depending on how you slice it, there are easily over a dozen subdisciplines (see [Wikipedia][1] or the [IEEE Computer Society][2]) to software engineering. If you removing the parts about coding, you still easily have 9 or 10. We got these down to 6 bullet points with links to Wikipedia pages (that at least some of us have read and agree are in line with our expectations). Between the name and 6 bullet points (as opposed to the 8 &quot;about&quot; and 10 &quot;not about&quot; now), it's much more succinct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding your proposed description/tagline and on-topic/off-topic, it's not right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the tagline, we aren't just for people directly involved in the SDLC. We're also for students studying the SDLC and researchers who study or write about the SDLC. We want to take a page from CS and EE and explicitly include these people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want a third take on your proposed description/tagline, I'd say it's this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question and answer site for people participating in, researching, and learning about the Software Development Lifecycle who care about writing, shipping, and maintaining software responsibly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the on-topic list, don't like how things were dropped. We aren't being comprehensive about what is on-topic. If we were being comprehensive, we would have over a dozen bullet points. We picked the most important things. I think that leaving out &quot;methods and practices&quot; and &quot;requirements engineering&quot; is doing ourselves a disservice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If someone comes in from Google because there's a question about Agile they're interested in, it won't matter that it's not explicitly called out in the docs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's true. On the other hand, there are other sites where Agile questions get posted and accepted. There are still plenty of people who post methodology questions on Stack Overflow because of legacy questions there that aren't closed. These same topics are posted about on Project Management.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; On the other hand, eliminating requirements and methodologies from that list also lets you avoid having to qualify those topics with a paragraph about where to stick broad, opinionated discussion questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're just as likely to have these broad, opinionated discussion questions in architecture and design. And to some extent, build and release management. But that's not a reason to eliminate those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the end, I'd rather have &quot;methods and practices&quot; and &quot;requirements engineering&quot; back since it clearly defines our scope in 6 bullet points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the off-topic list, I think that's generally right. I think changing our name will make it clear that many of the things that we call out as off-topic now are actually off-topic. We may want to add &quot;tool usage&quot; (it's hit or miss - some sites allow tool questions, we decided we didn't want to) and &quot;education and career advice&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to be able to edit the /help/dont-ask page to include the off-topic things there, instead of making the /help/on-topic page too verbose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Name&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Description / tour tagline&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question and answer site for people participating in, researching, and learning about the Software Development Lifecycle who care about writing, shipping, and maintaining software responsibly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###On-topic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - methods and practices&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Off-topic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - troubleshooting or debugging code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - requests for code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what to read, learn, buy or use&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - education and career advice&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - legal advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Plus, it still fits into a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people participating in, researching, or learning about the SDLC who care about writing, shipping, and maintaining software responsibly. Questions about methods and practices, requirements, architecture, design, algorithms and data structures, quality assurance, and configuration, build, and release management are on-topic. We don't accept questions about debugging code, using specific tools, things to read, learn, or use, education or career advice, or legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are 59 characters left. I also added &quot;.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&quot; to the box and still had 26 characters left. As long as we don't have a stupid long domain name, we can link to our site's help/on-topic page in any comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering#Subdisciplines&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://www.computer.org/web/swebok/v3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23189" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8108" RevisionGUID="dffae5d2-16b4-4af5-97e9-1304a40f205f" CreationDate="2016-07-21T15:29:40.507" UserId="22685" Text="Seeing as there's been a glut of 1-rep users asking some truly obvious test questions today for some reason, I'd like to offer a new solution:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add phrasing &quot;including exam/test/homework questions&quot; to the close option for &quot;assistance in writing or debugging existing code&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think some people don't vote to close as they're a little unsure/not confident about selecting the right option. When its laid out for you - this is not acceptable for the site, it makes it easier to place that close vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Help with coding questions falls right under that close category, so I'd like to see the words expanded to explicitly cover it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23190" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8105" RevisionGUID="524576e8-b755-4d29-a541-e740cc476377" CreationDate="2016-07-21T15:57:26.593" UserId="1204" Comment="edited title" Text="Follow-Up: New Site Name and Scope Proposals" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23191" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8105" RevisionGUID="7ce25021-4613-47ad-b6f2-414631c8343e" CreationDate="2016-07-21T16:59:00.500" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|on-topic-definition|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23192" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8109" RevisionGUID="9d30562a-46c1-4d5b-aa76-20f03ef3c0a7" CreationDate="2016-07-21T17:12:43.023" UserId="1204" Text="Seriously, this is a non-problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For every homework dump on this site, we get:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Ten fix my code requests&#xD;&#xA; - Four product recommendations&#xD;&#xA; - Six unanswerable questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and a partridge in a pear tree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We need to focus on those things that are actual problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23193" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8107" RevisionGUID="1745c66b-df80-45e2-b64b-bb65c5c40151" CreationDate="2016-07-21T17:20:10.707" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 33 characters in body" Text="Overall, I like it. The name is 100% spot-on. I think the scope statement is 90% there. I don't like dropping the two topics that are on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the most important thing is the site name (and, along with it, the domain name) as this is something that we need SE to do. The tour and help/on-topic page (with the tagline and description) can be refined by the community since they are mod editable, but what we have is pretty solid and very close to what we want. We are all in nearly full agreement for the site name, so I think it's time to get that ball rolling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The proposed changes are not exactly succinct. They're... the sort of laundry-lists that make folks who already know what the site is about feel good, but don't do anything to help or hinder the folks coming here confused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know what you mean by this. The changes themselves are exhaustive: a new name, a new tag line, a much shorter /help/on-topic page that only lists the 6 core things that we are about, a request for an interstitial page that mirrors the proposed new /help/on-topic page, and a request for a new UI design that's more in line with sites like Computer Science and Electrical Engineering - cleaner, crisper, and more professional (in terms of the feelings invoked, not saying that the current design looks like it was done by amateurs).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you really want a 4 bullet list of things on-topic, that's not going to happen. Depending on how you slice it, there are easily over a dozen subdisciplines (see [Wikipedia][1] or the [IEEE Computer Society][2]) to software engineering. If you removing the parts about coding, you still easily have 9 or 10. We got these down to 6 bullet points with links to Wikipedia pages (that at least some of us have read and agree are in line with our expectations). Between the name and 6 bullet points (as opposed to the 8 &quot;about&quot; and 10 &quot;not about&quot; now), it's much more succinct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding your proposed description/tagline and on-topic/off-topic, it's not right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the tagline, we aren't just for people directly involved in the SDLC. We're also for students studying the SDLC and researchers who study or write about the SDLC. We want to take a page from CS and EE and explicitly include these people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want a third take on your proposed description/tagline, I'd say it's this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question and answer site for people participating in, researching, and learning about the Software Development Lifecycle who care about writing, shipping, and maintaining software responsibly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the on-topic list, don't like how things were dropped. We aren't being comprehensive about what is on-topic. If we were being comprehensive, we would have over a dozen bullet points. We picked the most important things. I think that leaving out &quot;methods and practices&quot; and &quot;requirements engineering&quot; is doing ourselves a disservice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If someone comes in from Google because there's a question about Agile they're interested in, it won't matter that it's not explicitly called out in the docs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's true. On the other hand, there are other sites where Agile questions get posted and accepted. There are still plenty of people who post methodology questions on Stack Overflow because of legacy questions there that aren't closed. These same topics are posted about on Project Management.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; On the other hand, eliminating requirements and methodologies from that list also lets you avoid having to qualify those topics with a paragraph about where to stick broad, opinionated discussion questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're just as likely to have these broad, opinionated discussion questions in architecture and design. And to some extent, build and release management. But that's not a reason to eliminate those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the end, I'd rather have &quot;methods and practices&quot; and &quot;requirements engineering&quot; back since it clearly defines our scope in 6 bullet points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the off-topic list, I think that's generally right. I think changing our name will make it clear that many of the things that we call out as off-topic now are actually off-topic. We may want to add &quot;tool usage&quot; (it's hit or miss - some sites allow tool questions, we decided we didn't want to) and &quot;education and career advice&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to be able to edit the /help/dont-ask page to include the off-topic things there, instead of making the /help/on-topic page too verbose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Name&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Description / tour tagline&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question and answer site for people participating in, researching, and learning about the Software Development Lifecycle who care about writing, shipping, and maintaining software responsibly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###On-topic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - methods and practices&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Off-topic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - troubleshooting or debugging code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - requests for code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what to read, learn, buy or use&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - legal advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Plus, it still fits into a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people participating in, researching, or learning about the SDLC who care about writing, shipping, and maintaining software responsibly. Questions about methods and practices, requirements, architecture, design, algorithms and data structures, quality assurance, and configuration, build, and release management are on-topic. We don't accept questions about debugging code, using specific tools, things to read, learn, or use, education or career advice, or legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are 59 characters left. I also added &quot;.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&quot; to the box and still had 26 characters left. As long as we don't have a stupid long domain name, we can link to our site's help/on-topic page in any comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering#Subdisciplines&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://www.computer.org/web/swebok/v3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23194" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8056" RevisionGUID="3f1b9db2-f778-4626-897b-b52deb44d2e2" CreationDate="2016-07-21T17:36:38.930" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23195" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8092" RevisionGUID="f3b1c12d-f213-4287-9727-110eb55f3009" CreationDate="2016-07-21T17:36:56.290" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|on-topic-definition|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23196" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="326de922-4542-4957-b97e-b7cc533d1cbb" CreationDate="2016-07-21T19:13:50.043" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 2834 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering is a question and answer site for people directly involved in the software development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly. We do not address writing or debugging code or tools here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a question and answer site for people directly involved in the software development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly. We do not address writing or debugging code or tools here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software development [methods and practices][8]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [requirements engineering][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm) and [data structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [quality assurance and testing][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask/advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23197" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8110" RevisionGUID="aaf6869d-83f6-4c9e-a85d-af9d0905af98" CreationDate="2016-07-21T19:41:38.557" UserId="1204" Text="The model for Stack Exchange is &quot;ask a specific question, get a specific answer.&quot;  Pros and cons questions fail this model, regardless of their scope.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask the answerer to weigh the pros and cons about a particular subject are not about any specific problem; rather, they ask the answerer to provide a treatise on his expertise in the problem domain.  This is fundamentally at odds with the Q&amp;A model, which seeks to build a repository of useful questions and answers that target specific, real-life problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Product recommendation questions fail the model for essentially the same reason: there can be too many possible answers, and the answers so provided tend to be opinion-based and not fact-based.  That a &quot;pros and cons&quot; question asks for &quot;criteria to decide,&quot; or limits it decision to only two things instead of many, doesn't make it any less of a product recommendation.  If anything, such an approach only underscores the fundamental problem with such questions, which is that (even if such questions were on-topic) the person asking the question should *already have a fair idea what their selection criteria is.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, such a question not only asks &quot;what decision should I make,&quot; but also &quot;how should I go about making my decision?&quot;  In my opinion, such questions are premature for a Q&amp;A site, what I would colloquially call &quot;not fully baked.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23198" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="e5421341-b768-49fb-93f1-35b41cc0f857" CreationDate="2016-07-21T19:46:03.473" UserId="4" Comment="added 673 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Welcome&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Software Engineering** is a question and answer site for people directly involved in the software development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly. We don't address questions about debugging code or how to use specific tools in software development. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&amp;A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ask About&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the software development life cycle&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Don't Ask About&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- writing or debugging code&#xD;&#xA;- support for software tools or packages&#xD;&#xA;- what to read, learn, buy or use&#xD;&#xA;- legal advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a question and answer site for people involved in the software development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software development [methods and practices][8]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [requirements engineering][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm) and [data structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [quality assurance and testing][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10], or check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any other questions or details, see [our curated FAQ on our Meta site][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask/advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23199" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8110" RevisionGUID="76218ca3-3975-4253-8d40-e4b82eda68b0" CreationDate="2016-07-21T19:46:42.337" UserId="1204" Comment="added 48 characters in body" Text="The model for Stack Exchange is &quot;ask a specific question, get a specific answer.&quot;  Pros and cons questions fail this model, regardless of their scope.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like yours are not about any specific problem; rather, they ask the answerer to provide a treatise on his expertise in the problem domain.  This is fundamentally at odds with the Q&amp;A model, which seeks to build a repository of useful questions and answers that target specific, real-life problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Product recommendation questions fail the model for essentially the same reasons: there can be too many possible answers, and the answers so provided tend to be opinion-based and not fact-based.  That a &quot;pros and cons&quot; question asks for &quot;criteria to decide,&quot; or limits it decision to only two things instead of many, doesn't make it any less of a product recommendation.  If anything, such an approach only underscores the fundamental problem with such questions, which is that (even if such questions were on-topic) the person asking the question should *already have a fair idea what their selection criteria is.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, these are questions that not only ask &quot;what decision should I make,&quot; but also &quot;how should I go about making it?&quot;  In my opinion, such questions are premature for a Q&amp;A site, what I would colloquially call &quot;not fully baked.&quot;  They are the very definition of &quot;Too Broad.&quot;  At the end of the day decisions like these are going to depend greatly on factors that we know nothing about, such as your team's relative experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23200" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8110" RevisionGUID="728e3a7e-65dc-4a04-8231-2448c3577467" CreationDate="2016-07-21T19:51:58.473" UserId="1204" Comment="added 48 characters in body" Text="The model for Stack Exchange is &quot;ask a specific question, get a specific answer.&quot;  Pros and cons questions fail this model, regardless of their scope.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like yours are not about any specific problem; rather, they ask the answerer to provide a treatise on his expertise in the problem domain.  This is fundamentally at odds with the Q&amp;A model, which seeks to build a repository of useful questions and answers that target specific, real-life problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Product recommendation questions fail the model for essentially the same reasons: there can be too many possible answers, and the answers so provided tend to be opinion-based and not fact-based.  That a &quot;pros and cons&quot; question asks for &quot;criteria to decide,&quot; or limits it decision to only two things instead of many, doesn't make it any less of a product recommendation.  If anything, such an approach only underscores the fundamental problem with such questions, which is that (even if such questions were on-topic) the person asking the question should *already have a fair idea what their selection criteria is.*  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, these are questions that not only ask &quot;what decision should I make,&quot; but also &quot;how should I go about making it?&quot;  In my opinion, such questions are premature for a Q&amp;A site, what I would colloquially call &quot;not fully baked.&quot;  They are the very definition of &quot;Too Broad.&quot;  At the end of the day decisions like these are going to depend greatly on factors that you haven't told us anything about, such as your team's relative experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23201" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8111" RevisionGUID="ddbf37cd-ef52-43b3-b278-8a60b2a174aa" CreationDate="2016-07-21T20:12:14.037" UserId="47" Text="I can (and do) certainly back this solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I particularly like the idea of getting the site scope over in as few words as possible so that we actually stand a chance of getting people to read them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that the scope is basically a definition of the new name also helps a great deal. The current name *does* cause the problem that visitors think it's about the people not the process. Explaining that it's not about the people is hard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have tweaked the current help pages quite considerably over the years, adding and removing explanations and bullet points etc. as we attempted to get it right so I don't see it as a problem at all that we go with what Shog proposes and gauge feedback later." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23202" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="be6314db-df00-4323-ab8a-0b338619e2fb" CreationDate="2016-07-21T20:29:27.063" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 28 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Welcome&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Software Engineering** is a question and answer site for people directly involved in the software development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly. We don't address questions about debugging code or how to use specific tools in software development. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&amp;A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ask About&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the software development life cycle&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Don't Ask About&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- writing or debugging code&#xD;&#xA;- support for software tools or packages&#xD;&#xA;- what to read, learn, buy or use&#xD;&#xA;- legal advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a question and answer site for people involved in the software development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software development [methods and practices][8]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [requirements engineering][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm) and [data structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [quality assurance and testing][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10]. We have [a curated FAQ on our Meta site][9]. You can also check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][11].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;## UI Design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to something that is more professional. Keep the general idea of diagrams and models that we have now, but make the site less cartooney. Would like to be crisper, and more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8061/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask/advice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23203" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8112" RevisionGUID="e37a3dcb-e670-4343-9840-19276e959060" CreationDate="2016-07-22T14:21:05.530" UserId="1204" Text="Those of us who are left on Programmers who still care about these things have one singular goal: to **get bad questions off the front page.**  Bad questions take time away from the participants that could otherwise be used to answer real questions, and they turn away the professionals, which are the people we really want here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name change is something that we can apparently all agree on, and we should do that.  I have concerns about the rest, especially if Stack Exchange is going to make the name change conditional on the other changes they have proposed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Removing bad questions from the front page is onerous: it requires 5 close votes and 3 delete votes over several hours.  That's too much time and too many people.  If the question is clearly off-topic and cannot be salvaged, rapid removal should be the prevailing policy, and I'm open to better ways to make that happen.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the best bad question is the one that is never asked.  Therefore, educating new users is paramount, and the way that I think you do that is to tell new users what they *cannot* do on the site.  Which do you supposed is more frustrating for everyone: being told you can't ask your question here *before* or *after* you ask it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are three kinds of people who visit Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Neophytes who want help fixing their broken code&#xD;&#xA;2. People looking for general advice on a wide range of subjects having little to do with software development&#xD;&#xA;3.  People with legitimate questions who don't understand the site scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only hope for groups 1 and 2 is to get a statement in front of those people about **what kinds of questions they cannot ask,** as closely as possible to the act of asking it.  I believe that should happen either in an interstitial page with an &quot;I agree&quot; checkbox, or prominently on the Ask Question page.  It doesn't have to be a huge wall of text; it can be as simple as this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question **directly pertains to the [Systems Development Life Cycle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle#/media/File:Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**  Avoid peripheral issues such as product recommendations, career or education advice, customer support or legal issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For group 3, we believe that the scope statement should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Clear,&#xD;&#xA;2.  Concise, and &#xD;&#xA;3.  **Complete.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange wants us to limit our description to four bullets.  Since an adequate description of the SDLC cannot be adequately described in four bullets, I suggest a single bullet:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle#/media/File:Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my impression that SE is trying to make the bullets as simple as possible in order to not confuse new users.  If a new user can't figure out what we mean by &quot;Questions directly related to the Systems Development Life Cycle,&quot; we probably don't want them on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23204" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8112" RevisionGUID="26616803-db6d-4f34-9160-f58d3f1d1aae" CreationDate="2016-07-22T14:30:15.550" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="Those of us who are left on Programmers who still care about these things have one singular goal: to **get bad questions off the front page.**  Bad questions take time away from the participants that could otherwise be used to answer real questions, and they turn away the professionals, which are the people we really want here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name change is something that we can apparently all agree on, and we should do that.  I have concerns about the rest, especially if Stack Exchange is going to make the name change conditional on the other changes they have proposed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Removing bad questions from the front page is onerous: it requires 5 close votes and 3 delete votes over several hours.  That's too much time and too many people.  If the question is clearly off-topic and cannot be salvaged, rapid removal should be the prevailing policy, and I'm open to better ways to make that happen.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the best bad question is the one that is never asked.  Therefore, educating new users is paramount, and the way that I think you do that is to tell new users what they *cannot* do on the site.  Which do you supposed is more frustrating for everyone: being told you can't ask your question here *before* or *after* you ask it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are three kinds of people who visit Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Neophytes who want help fixing their broken code&#xD;&#xA;2. People looking for general advice on a wide range of subjects having little to do with software development&#xD;&#xA;3.  People with legitimate questions who don't understand the site scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only hope for groups 1 and 2 is to get a statement in front of those people about **what kinds of questions they cannot ask,** as closely as possible to the act of asking it.  I believe that should happen either in an interstitial page with an &quot;I agree&quot; checkbox, or prominently on the Ask Question page.  It doesn't have to be a huge wall of text; it can be as simple as this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question **directly pertains to the [Systems Development Life Cycle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle#/media/File:Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**  Avoid peripheral issues such as product recommendations, career or education advice, customer support or legal matters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For group 3, we believe that the scope statement should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Clear,&#xD;&#xA;2.  Concise, and &#xD;&#xA;3.  **Complete.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange wants us to limit our scope description to four bullets.  Since an adequate description of the SDLC cannot be adequately described in four bullets, I suggest a single bullet:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle#/media/File:Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my impression that SE is trying to make the bullets as simple as possible in order to not confuse new users.  If a new user can't figure out what we mean by &quot;Questions directly related to the Systems Development Life Cycle,&quot; we probably don't want them on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23205" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8112" RevisionGUID="fcd0c36e-3a04-4146-a49f-e25a1f300d5c" CreationDate="2016-07-22T14:37:44.857" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="Those of us who are left on Programmers who still care about these things have one singular goal: to **get bad questions off the front page.**  Bad questions take time away from the participants that could otherwise be used to answer real questions, and they turn away the professionals, which are the people we really want here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name change is something that we can apparently all agree on, and we should do that.  I have concerns about the rest, especially if Stack Exchange is going to make the name change conditional on the other changes they have proposed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Removing bad questions from the front page is onerous: it requires 5 close votes and 3 delete votes over several hours.  That's too much time and too many people.  If the question is clearly off-topic and cannot be salvaged, rapid removal should be the prevailing policy, and I'm open to better ways to make that happen.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the best bad question is the one that is never asked.  Therefore, educating new users is paramount, and the way that I think you do that is to tell new users what they *cannot* do on the site.  Which do you supposed is more frustrating for everyone: being told you can't ask your question here *before* or *after* you ask it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are three kinds of people who visit Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Neophytes who want help fixing their broken code&#xD;&#xA;2. People looking for general advice on a wide range of subjects having little to do with software development&#xD;&#xA;3.  People with legitimate questions who don't understand the site scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only hope for groups 1 and 2 is to get a statement in front of those people about **what kinds of questions they cannot ask,** as closely as possible to the act of asking it.  I believe that should happen either in an interstitial page with an &quot;I agree&quot; checkbox, or prominently on the Ask Question page.  It doesn't have to be a huge wall of text; it can be as simple as this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question **directly pertains to the [Systems Development Life Cycle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle#/media/File:Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**  Avoid peripheral issues such as product recommendations, career or education advice, customer support or legal matters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For group 3, we believe that the site's scope description should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Clear,&#xD;&#xA;2.  Concise, and &#xD;&#xA;3.  **Complete.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Scope Description appears in the [Tour Page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) and the Help Center's [&quot;What kinds of questions can I ask here&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) page.  Stack Exchange wants us to limit our scope description to four bullets.  Since an adequate description of the SDLC cannot be adequately described in four bullets, I suggest a single bullet:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle#/media/File:Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my impression that SE is trying to make the bullets as simple as possible in order to not confuse new users.  If a new user can't figure out what we mean by &quot;Questions directly related to the Systems Development Life Cycle,&quot; we probably don't want them on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23206" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8112" RevisionGUID="a97df531-08c7-454b-9f00-f6025a76a966" CreationDate="2016-07-22T14:45:01.307" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="Those of us who are left on Programmers who still care about these things have one singular goal: to **get bad questions off the front page.**  Bad questions take time away from the participants that could otherwise be used to answer real questions, and they turn away the professionals who are the people we really want here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name change is something that we can apparently all agree on, and we should do that.  I have concerns about the rest, especially if Stack Exchange is going to make the name change conditional on the other changes they have proposed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Removing bad questions from the front page is onerous: it requires 5 close votes and 3 delete votes over several hours.  That's too much time and too many people.  If the question is clearly off-topic and cannot be salvaged, rapid removal should be the prevailing policy, and I'm open to better ways to make that happen.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the best bad question is the one that is never asked.  Therefore, educating new users is paramount, and the way that I think you do that is to tell new users what they *cannot* do on the site.  Which do you supposed is more frustrating for everyone: being told you can't ask your question here *before* or *after* you ask it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are three kinds of people who visit Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Neophytes who want help fixing their broken code&#xD;&#xA;2. People looking for general advice on a wide range of subjects having little to do with software development&#xD;&#xA;3.  People with legitimate questions who don't understand the site scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only hope for groups 1 and 2 is to get a statement in front of those people about **what kinds of questions they cannot ask,** as closely as possible to the act of asking it.  I believe that should happen either in an interstitial page with an &quot;I agree&quot; checkbox, or prominently on the Ask Question page.  It doesn't have to be a huge wall of text; it can be as simple as this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question **directly pertains to the [Systems Development Life Cycle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle#/media/File:Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**  Avoid peripheral issues such as product recommendations, career or education advice, customer support or legal matters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For group 3, we believe that the site's scope description should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Clear,&#xD;&#xA;2.  Concise, and &#xD;&#xA;3.  **Complete.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Scope Description appears in the [Tour Page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) and the Help Center's [&quot;What kinds of questions can I ask here&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) page.  Stack Exchange wants us to limit our scope description to four bullets.  Since an adequate description of the SDLC cannot be adequately described in four bullets, I suggest a single bullet:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle#/media/File:Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my impression that SE is trying to make the bullets as simple as possible in order to not confuse new users.  If a new user can't figure out what we mean by &quot;Questions directly related to the Systems Development Life Cycle,&quot; we probably don't want them on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23207" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8112" RevisionGUID="fd620a84-ae2e-426d-9d6a-172dee2e9826" CreationDate="2016-07-22T15:02:33.780" UserId="1204" Comment="added 14 characters in body" Text="Those of us who are left on Programmers who still care about these things have one singular goal: to **get bad questions off the front page.**  Bad questions take time away from the participants that could otherwise be used to answer real questions, and they turn away the professionals who are the people we really want here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name change is something that we can apparently all agree on, and we should do that.  I have concerns about the rest, especially if Stack Exchange is going to make the name change conditional on the other changes they have proposed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Removing bad questions from the front page is onerous: it requires 5 close votes and 3 delete votes over several hours.  That's too much time and too many people.  If the question is clearly off-topic and cannot be salvaged, rapid removal should be the prevailing policy, and I'm open to better ways to make that happen.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the best bad question is the one that is never asked.  Therefore, educating new users is paramount, and the way that I think you do that is to tell new users what they *cannot* do on the site.  Which do you supposed is more frustrating for everyone: being told you can't ask your question here *before* or *after* you ask it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are three kinds of people who visit Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Neophytes who want help fixing their broken code&#xD;&#xA;2. People looking for general advice on a wide range of subjects having little to do with software development&#xD;&#xA;3.  People with legitimate questions who don't understand the site scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only hope for groups 1 and 2 is to get a statement in front of those people about **what kinds of questions they cannot ask,** as closely as possible to the act of asking it.  I believe that should happen either in an interstitial page with an &quot;I agree&quot; checkbox, or prominently on the Ask Question page.  It doesn't have to be a huge wall of text; it can be as simple as this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question **directly pertains to the [Systems Development Life Cycle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle#/media/File:Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**  Avoid peripheral issues such as product recommendations, career or education advice, customer support or legal matters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For group 3, we believe that the site's scope description should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Clear,&#xD;&#xA;2.  Concise, and &#xD;&#xA;3.  **Complete.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Scope Description appears in the [Tour Page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) and the Help Center's [&quot;What kinds of questions can I ask here&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) page.  Stack Exchange wants us to limit our scope description to four bullets.  Since a clear, concise and complete summary of the SDLC cannot be adequately described in four bullets, I suggest a single bullet:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle#/media/File:Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my impression that SE is trying to make the bullets as simple as possible in order to not confuse new users.  If a new user can't figure out what we mean by &quot;Questions directly related to the Systems Development Life Cycle,&quot; we probably don't want them on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23208" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8112" RevisionGUID="a94cb4f6-5a41-4c98-832c-a8603a2666fb" CreationDate="2016-07-22T15:16:43.790" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="Those of us who are left on Programmers who still care about these things have one singular goal: to **get bad questions off the front page.**  Bad questions take time away from the participants that could otherwise be used to answer real questions, and they turn away the professionals who are the people we really want here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name change is something that we can apparently all agree on, and we should do that.  I have concerns about the rest, especially if Stack Exchange is going to make the name change conditional on the other changes they have proposed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Removing bad questions from the front page is onerous: it requires 5 close votes and 3 delete votes over several hours.  That's too much time and too many people.  If the question is clearly off-topic and cannot be salvaged, rapid removal should be the prevailing policy, and I'm open to better ways to make that happen.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the best bad question is the one that is never asked.  Therefore, educating new users is paramount, and the way that I think you do that is to tell new users what they *cannot* do on the site.  Which do you supposed is more frustrating for everyone: being told you can't ask your question here *before* or *after* you ask it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are three groups of people who visit Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Neophytes who want help fixing their broken code&#xD;&#xA;2. People looking for general advice on a wide range of subjects having little to do with software engineering&#xD;&#xA;3.  People with legitimate questions who don't understand the site scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only hope for groups 1 and 2 is to get a statement in front of those people about **what kinds of questions they cannot ask,** as closely as possible to the act of asking it.  I believe that should happen either in an interstitial page with an &quot;I agree&quot; checkbox, or prominently on the Ask Question page.  It doesn't have to be a huge wall of text; it can be as simple as this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question **directly pertains to the [Systems Development Life Cycle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle#/media/File:Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**  Avoid peripheral issues such as product recommendations, career or education advice, customer support or legal matters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For group 3, we believe that the site's scope description should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Clear,&#xD;&#xA;2.  Concise, and &#xD;&#xA;3.  **Complete.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Scope Description appears in the [Tour Page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) and the Help Center's [&quot;What kinds of questions can I ask here&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) page.  Stack Exchange wants us to limit our scope description to four bullets.  Since a clear, concise and complete summary of the SDLC cannot be adequately described in four bullets, I suggest a single bullet:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle#/media/File:Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my impression that SE is trying to make the bullets as simple as possible in order to not confuse new users.  But if a new user can't figure out what we mean by &quot;Questions directly related to the Systems Development Life Cycle,&quot; we probably don't want them on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23209" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8112" RevisionGUID="257d7c0f-1cdf-4819-8f61-535fc419ffc7" CreationDate="2016-07-22T15:22:37.963" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 42 characters in body" Text="Those of us who are left on Programmers who still care about these things have one singular goal: to **get bad questions off the front page.**  Bad questions take time away from the participants that could otherwise be used to answer real questions, and they turn away the professionals who are the people we really want here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name change is something that we can apparently all agree on, and we should do that.  I have concerns about the rest, especially if Stack Exchange is going to make the name change conditional on the other changes they have proposed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Removing bad questions from the front page is onerous: it requires 5 close votes and 3 delete votes over several hours.  That's too much time and too many people.  If the question is clearly off-topic and cannot be salvaged, rapid removal should be the prevailing policy, and I'm open to better ways to make that happen.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the best bad question is the one that is never asked.  Therefore, educating new users is paramount, and the way that I think you do that is to tell new users what they *cannot* do on the site.  Which do you supposed is more frustrating for everyone: being told you can't ask your question here *before* or *after* you ask it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are three groups of people who visit Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Neophytes who want help fixing their broken code&#xD;&#xA;2. People looking for general advice on a wide range of subjects having little to do with software engineering&#xD;&#xA;3.  People with legitimate questions who don't understand the site scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only hope for groups 1 and 2 is to get a statement in front of those people about **what kinds of questions they cannot ask,** as closely as possible to the act of asking it.  I believe that should happen either in an interstitial page with an &quot;I agree&quot; checkbox, or prominently on the Ask Question page.  It doesn't have to be a huge wall of text; it can be as simple as this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question **is directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**  Avoid peripheral issues such as product recommendations, career or education advice, product support or legal matters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For group 3, we believe that the site's scope description should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Clear,&#xD;&#xA;2.  Concise, and &#xD;&#xA;3.  **Complete.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Scope Description appears in the [Tour Page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) and the Help Center's [&quot;What kinds of questions can I ask here&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) page.  Stack Exchange wants us to limit our scope description to four bullets.  Since a clear, concise and complete summary of the SDLC cannot be adequately described in four bullets, I suggest a single bullet:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my impression that SE is trying to make the bullets as simple as possible in order to not confuse new users.  But if a new user can't figure out what we mean by &quot;Questions directly related to the Systems Development Life Cycle,&quot; we probably don't want them on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23210" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8113" RevisionGUID="3b40b672-7be1-45be-bf09-026719f28ce4" CreationDate="2016-07-22T16:57:28.310" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="I think Robert and Thomas both make excellent points and we should heed their advice, but I would like to focus on something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On March 10, 2016, Rachel asked the question that set this whole thing off: [(4 years later) Dear Stack Exchange: can we change our site name?][1] On May 23, [Ana answered the question][2]. _Two and a half months later, a CM finally responded_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The day after Ana answered the question, Thomas asked [New Site Name and Scope Proposals][3] (May 24). I think it was actually more like hours later, but I am going off of the date stamps on the posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had four weeks to discuss this topic before a promised CM response, but it took until July 21. That is almost two months to receive any meaningful feedback from the CM team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actions speak louder than words. We have already discussed this topic to death. We already have community consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I propose making the changes outlined in Thomas' answer (preferably with Robert's interstitial page) without additional months or years of bickering, arguing, and delays from the CM team.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community at large already has a negative opinion of the tangible effects that the CM team provides: for reference, just take a stroll through [Meta.SE][4] at all the ignored and abandoned proposals. Or our own meta. We have some vocal users who [just want some simple changes to increase quality][5]. Be the CM that changes this perception _and get this change moving_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7935&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8054&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/8056&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8103" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23211" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8113" RevisionGUID="c388735b-a8b3-441f-8d5f-3503a85bd166" CreationDate="2016-07-22T17:14:37.333" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 359 characters in body" Text="I think Robert and Thomas both make excellent points and we should heed their advice, but I would like to focus on something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On March 10, 2016, Rachel asked the question that set this whole thing off: [(4 years later) Dear Stack Exchange: can we change our site name?][1] On May 23, [Ana answered the question][2]. _Two and a half months later, a CM finally responded_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The day after Ana answered the question, Thomas asked [New Site Name and Scope Proposals][3] (May 24). I think it was actually more like hours later, but I am going off of the date stamps on the posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had four weeks to discuss this topic before a promised CM response, but it took until July 21. That is almost two months to receive any meaningful feedback from the CM team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actions speak louder than words. We have already discussed this topic to death. We already have community consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I propose making the changes outlined in Thomas' answer (preferably with Robert's interstitial page) without additional months or years of bickering, arguing, and delays from the CM team.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community at large already has a negative opinion of the tangible effects that the CM team provides: for reference, just take a stroll through [Meta.SE][4] at all the ignored and abandoned proposals. Or our own meta. We have some vocal users who [just want some simple changes to increase quality][5]. Be the CM that changes this perception _and get this change moving_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;N.B. as Durron mentions in the comments, this slow pace and the perception of poor communication has directly lead to the exodus of multiple active users who brought a lot of value to the site via community moderation and answering questions. This community needs change and quickly if it will stop the exodus and possibly even bring some users back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7935&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8054&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/8056&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8103" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23212" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8112" RevisionGUID="02f4367a-27b2-4593-9d40-9f4edd04aa2d" CreationDate="2016-07-22T17:19:16.340" UserId="1204" Comment="added 328 characters in body" Text="The goal of the participants on Programmers has always been the same: to have a high-quality Q&amp;A.  I *think* we all agree on what that means; we want to attract *professionals* to the site, help people with their software design questions, and promote a high level of discourse.  I believe that the way to do that is to present a site that embodies that level of discourse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those of us who are left on Programmers who still care about these things have one singular objective: to **get bad questions off the front page.**  Bad questions take time away from the participants that could otherwise be used to answer real questions, and they turn away the professionals who are the people we really want here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name change is something that we can apparently all agree on, and we should do that.  I have concerns about the rest, especially if Stack Exchange is going to make the name change conditional on the other changes they have proposed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Removing bad questions from the front page is onerous: it requires 5 close votes and 3 delete votes over several hours.  That's too much time and too many people.  If the question is clearly off-topic and cannot be salvaged, rapid removal should be the prevailing policy, and I'm open to better ways to make that happen.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the best bad question is the one that is never asked.  Therefore, educating new users is paramount, and the way that I think you do that is to tell new users what they *cannot* do on the site.  Which do you supposed is more frustrating for everyone: being told you can't ask your question here *before* or *after* you ask it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are three groups of people who visit Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Neophytes who want help fixing their broken code&#xD;&#xA;2. People looking for general advice on a wide range of subjects having little to do with software engineering&#xD;&#xA;3.  People with legitimate questions who don't understand the site scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only hope for groups 1 and 2 is to get a statement in front of those people about **what kinds of questions they cannot ask,** as closely as possible to the act of asking it.  I believe that should happen either in an interstitial page with an &quot;I agree&quot; checkbox, or prominently on the Ask Question page.  It doesn't have to be a huge wall of text; it can be as simple as this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question **is directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**  Avoid peripheral issues such as product recommendations, career or education advice, product support or legal matters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For group 3, we believe that the site's scope description should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Clear,&#xD;&#xA;2.  Concise, and &#xD;&#xA;3.  **Complete.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Scope Description appears in the [Tour Page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) and the Help Center's [&quot;What kinds of questions can I ask here&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) page.  Stack Exchange wants us to limit our scope description to four bullets.  Since a clear, concise and complete summary of the SDLC cannot be adequately described in four bullets, I suggest a single bullet:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my impression that SE is trying to make the bullets as simple as possible in order to not confuse new users.  But if a new user can't figure out what we mean by &quot;Questions directly related to the Systems Development Life Cycle,&quot; we probably don't want them on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23213" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8112" RevisionGUID="9e284c69-ecda-4c04-8c50-e99e62c54dfb" CreationDate="2016-07-22T17:24:50.870" UserId="1204" Comment="added 14 characters in body" Text="The goal of the participants on Programmers has always been the same: to have a high-quality Q&amp;A.  I *think* we all agree on what that means; we want to attract *professionals* to the site, help people with their software design questions, and promote a high level of discourse.  I believe that the way to do that is to present a site to the public that embodies that level of discourse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those of us who are left on Programmers who still care about these things believe that the single most important thing that will achieve those goals is to **get bad questions off the front page.**  Bad questions take time away from the participants that could otherwise be used to answer real questions, and they turn away the professionals who are the people we really want here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name change is something that we can apparently all agree on, and we should do that.  I have concerns about the rest, especially if Stack Exchange is going to make the name change conditional on the other changes they have proposed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Removing bad questions from the front page is onerous: it requires 5 close votes and 3 delete votes over several hours.  That's too much time and too many people.  If the question is clearly off-topic and cannot be salvaged, rapid removal should be the prevailing policy, and I'm open to better ways to make that happen.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the best bad question is the one that is never asked.  Therefore, educating new users is paramount, and the way that I think you do that is to tell new users what they *cannot* do on the site.  Which do you supposed is more frustrating for everyone: being told you can't ask your question here *before* or *after* you ask it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are three groups of people who visit Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Neophytes who want help fixing their broken code&#xD;&#xA;2. People looking for general advice on a wide range of subjects having little to do with software engineering&#xD;&#xA;3.  People with legitimate questions who don't understand the site scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only hope for groups 1 and 2 is to get a statement in front of those people about **what kinds of questions they cannot ask,** as closely as possible to the act of asking it.  I believe that should happen either in an interstitial page with an &quot;I agree&quot; checkbox, or prominently on the Ask Question page.  It doesn't have to be a huge wall of text; it can be as simple as this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question **is directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**  Avoid peripheral issues such as product recommendations, career or education advice, product support or legal matters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For group 3, we believe that the site's scope description should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Clear,&#xD;&#xA;2.  Concise, and &#xD;&#xA;3.  **Complete.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Scope Description appears in the [Tour Page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) and the Help Center's [&quot;What kinds of questions can I ask here&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) page.  Stack Exchange wants us to limit our scope description to four bullets.  Since a clear, concise and complete summary of the SDLC cannot be adequately described in four bullets, I suggest a single bullet:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my impression that SE is trying to make the bullets as simple as possible in order to not confuse new users.  But if a new user can't figure out what we mean by &quot;Questions directly related to the Systems Development Life Cycle,&quot; we probably don't want them on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23214" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8105" RevisionGUID="f9f79270-c0ed-49f3-a3b8-b5cb3add4d7c" CreationDate="2016-07-22T19:55:33.287" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23215" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8114" RevisionGUID="80cc3b8c-44bb-4c6e-a86a-40245c2e8e38" CreationDate="2016-07-22T20:13:05.387" UserId="4" Text="After [a discussion today (July 22nd) with Ana and Shog9][1], we've made some more progress toward a new site name and scope. You can check out the transcript for the full details, but we talked about the purpose for rebranding the site, what we hope to get out of it, a high level scope of the site, and the new name and tagline:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The CM team wants to make sure this works. Rebranding is a dangerous thing to do, and it takes a large investment of resources on their side. They want to make 100% sure that everyone agrees that what we are doing is the right thing to do, everyone is going to make it work, and we're all working in the same direction.&#xD;&#xA;* Looking at closed question history, nearly 1/3 of the closed questions are likely closed due to not understanding what the scope of our site is. In the last 90 days, nearly half of questions asked here were closed or migrated. Of the closed questions, 27% were closed because they were seeking help debugging or troubleshooting code. Another 5% were migrated to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;* Rebranding isn't a tool to beat users up with. It's a way to provide a clear, rich scope to visitors that explains we want this and not that.&#xD;&#xA;* [This is a good pictoral representation of how everyone sees the scope.](https://i.stack.imgur.com/po2PZ.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After all of that, we talked about a specific site name and tagline. The name and tagline are mostly used outside the site (elsewhere on the SE network), with pieces of it in different places. Below you can see an image of what Shog whipped up, based on everything from Meta and chat so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![proposed intro image][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anyone has any comments or thoughts on the name and tagline, please post them here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shog and Ana will be stopping by again next week to review this discussion and move onto the next steps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/31223837#31223837&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vkfDr.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23216" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8114" RevisionGUID="80cc3b8c-44bb-4c6e-a86a-40245c2e8e38" CreationDate="2016-07-22T20:13:05.387" UserId="4" Text="Follow-Up 2: New Site Name and Scope Proposals" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23217" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8114" RevisionGUID="80cc3b8c-44bb-4c6e-a86a-40245c2e8e38" CreationDate="2016-07-22T20:13:05.387" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|featured|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23218" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8114" RevisionGUID="aadc4708-f673-4f64-bf86-ba6dcee37659" CreationDate="2016-07-22T20:39:47.457" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/756589580112060416" />
  <row Id="23219" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3718" RevisionGUID="b32456f9-9d30-444c-8321-16722362df6e" CreationDate="2016-07-22T22:01:42.060" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-declined|site-attributes|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23220" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8115" RevisionGUID="814c3e18-ab88-4bde-b733-af671a8943e0" CreationDate="2016-07-22T22:02:23.543" UserId="31260" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23221" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8116" RevisionGUID="68482ed8-f9fe-4b6b-a3bc-aef09b1e2e1e" CreationDate="2016-07-22T22:02:23.543" UserId="31260" Text="For questions about changing site name from Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23222" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7935" RevisionGUID="e530dc12-50a9-47e5-96af-228c89d9e036" CreationDate="2016-07-22T22:02:39.760" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|site-attributes|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23223" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8056" RevisionGUID="82cb1a34-3e6f-47fe-8f4f-a6ec6b6f0335" CreationDate="2016-07-22T22:02:53.747" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|site-definition|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23224" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8105" RevisionGUID="bad92956-dc42-4e40-a9b1-ed5c0a918010" CreationDate="2016-07-22T22:03:10.183" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|site-definition|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23225" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8114" RevisionGUID="90637eb0-53d7-48e4-befe-c21d8d2af1fb" CreationDate="2016-07-22T22:03:22.683" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|site-definition|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23226" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8115" RevisionGUID="da6f26ba-f4c4-4468-8bbd-9b00d5c5883e" CreationDate="2016-07-22T22:07:24.467" UserId="31260" Comment="added 262 characters in body" Text="&gt; ##Why are we changing anything again?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The purpose of that name-change request was explicitly to *end the confusion over what this site is about*...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;([Follow-Up: New Site Name and Scope Proposals](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/8105/31260))" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23227" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8067" RevisionGUID="74d0cc87-b252-40be-8b17-df8a5cb388c0" CreationDate="2016-07-24T04:36:20.267" UserId="131624" Comment="added 1339 characters in body" Text="The following sites may be of interest to users on Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [CrossValidated][4] &#xD;&#xA;* [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;* [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;* [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;* [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;* [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;* [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;* [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;* [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;* [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;* [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;* [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;* [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;* [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;* [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;* [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][21]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Recommendations][22]&#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow][23]&#xD;&#xA;* [User Experience][24]&#xD;&#xA;* [Unix Linux][25]&#xD;&#xA;* [The Workplace][26]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before posting, be sure to read their Help Centers to fully understand what these communities expect from high quality questions and any specific rules they may have. As always, if you aren't sure if your question is a good fit, post on a Meta site and you can be directed to an appropriate site on the Stack Exchange network, if one exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a site doesn't exist yet, check out [Area 51][27], where users can collaborate to define and launch new Stack Exchange sites. If there's a proposal for your idea, you can follow it and contribute to it's definition. If not, you can create a new proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More detailed information about each site follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Code Review Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; peer review of your code. We're working together to improve the skills&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of programmers worldwide by taking working code and making it better.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from your project in the following areas…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Best practices and design pattern usage&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Security issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Correctness in unanticipated cases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then you are in the right place!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computational Science Stack Exchange is for questions and answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about computational methods used in technical disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First-time posters are strongly advised to read Eric Raymond's How to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask Questions the Smart Way for advice on how to ask good questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (not for technical answers). Although written for an audience asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions about open source software, the same advice applies when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking questions about any subject area.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is run by volunteers; the best way to get an answer to your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is to ask it in a way that makes it easy for someone with a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broad computational science background to answer it with 15 minutes of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; effort or less.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Topics that are usually a good fit for this site:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about software packages or languages used broadly in computational science (e.g., PETSc, MATLAB, Trilinos, LAPACK, SLEPc,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; R, NumPy, SciPy, Julia, Maple, Octave) except Mathematica (which has&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its own site now). In general, high-level questions (e.g., about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/package features) are best. Questions that are essentially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about debugging a code sample, or about low-level language syntax are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a poor fit for this site, and are usually closed; such questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be asked on language-/package-specific forums. Package&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developers interested in using this site as a resource should look at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this meta question. Package developers answering questions should look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at this meta question for guidelines on disclosing project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; affiliations.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about algorithms or methods used to solve problems in applied mathematics (e.g., finding roots of a polynomial, finding the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; eigenvalues/eigenvectors of a matrix, solving an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elliptic/parabolic/hyperbolic PDE)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions that ask about appropriate methods for a given application area (e.g., what numerical methods would I use when modeling shock&#xD;&#xA;&gt; waves, what numerical methods would I use when modeling combustion,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what graph algorithms would I use if I wanted to understand social&#xD;&#xA;&gt; networks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer Science Stack Exchange is for students, researchers and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practitioners of computer science.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer science, also sometimes called computing science, is the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; science of computation and its applications. This site covers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; theoretical and applied computer science at any level, including but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms, models of computation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming language semantics, formal methods&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - computer architecture, networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, natural language processing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - vision, graphics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [CrossValidated][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CrossValidated is for statisticians, data miners, and anyone else&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doing data analysis or interested in it as a discipline. If you have a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical analysis, applied or theoretical&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - designing experiments&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - collecting data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - data mining&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - visualizing data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - probability theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - mathematical statistics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical and data-driven computing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Crypto Stack Exchange is for software developers, mathematicians and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others interested in cryptography.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cryptography Stack Exchange is for asking questions about the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mathematics and properties of cryptographic systems, their analysis&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (&quot;cryptanalysis&quot;) and subsidiary topics that generally make up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cryptology, such as random number generation. As such, we welcome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions on topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Asymmetric and symmetric cryptographic algorithms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographic protocols&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptanalysis techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Hash functions, hashing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Entropy and information theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographically Secure (Pseudo-)Random Number Generation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dba.se is for those needing expert answers to advanced&#xD;&#xA;&gt; database-related questions concerning traditional SQL RDBMS and NoSQL&#xD;&#xA;&gt; alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Database Administration including configuration and backup / restore&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Querying including window-functions, dynamic-sql, and query-performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Modelling and database-design, including referential-integrity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Programming in built-in server-side languages including stored-procedures and triggers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence including etl, reporting, and olap&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Examples of questions that are likely to be on-topic for Data Science&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given process monitoring data arriving every 10ms, what statistical tool should I use to best characterize a change in the process - mean?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a distribution?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When is it suitable to apply L1 regularization for feature selection?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I would like to produce a infographic on the 'Brexit' referendum. Given public opinion data across the UK, what are some meaningful&#xD;&#xA;&gt; techniques to visaualize it in a dashboard?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When executing an ARIMA model in Spark, what are the pros and cons of using Python instead of R?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given Facebook Likes, is there an ML technique to predict age and gender?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for electronics and electrical engineering professionals,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; students, and enthusiasts. We ask and answer questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electrical and electronics engineering topics, which include&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electronics, physical computing, and those working with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; microcontrollers, Arduinos and embedded systems. We feel the best&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Electronics Design questions have a schematic, links to pertinent&#xD;&#xA;&gt; datasheets or some source code in them, but if your question generally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific electronics design problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the theory and simulation of electromagnetic forces&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a communication scheme&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Engineering Stack Exchange are usually well-received when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Identify a specific engineering problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Require expert engineering knowledge to solve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Include any relevant drawings, images or references that may be necessary to understand the problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Excite or challenge experienced professionals in the field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Game Development Stack Exchange is for professional and amateur&#xD;&#xA;&gt; video/computer game developers. If you have a question relating to ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asset pipelines (creation, storage, editing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game-specific programming issues (engine architecture, game-related APIs, networking, tools, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - project management (testing, team management, scheduling, publishing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game industry (careers, trends, technology, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware Recommendations is a community-run website to help you find a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific product for your needs. That means you can ask for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware to perform a specific task. However, you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be aware that &quot;hardware&quot; is not an all-encompassing term — for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; details of what hardware is accepted on this site, please see What is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware?. In essence, we can help you if you're looking for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware that is &quot;an electronic item that is,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interfaces with, or connects to a computer to operate&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; IT Security Stack Exchange is for Information Security professionals&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to discuss protecting assets from threats and vulnerabilities. Topics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; include, but are not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - web app hardening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - network security&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - social engineering, including phishing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - risk management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - policies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - penetration testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - security tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - using cryptography&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - incident response&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physically securing the office, datacentre, information assets etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Law Stack Exchange is for legal professionals, students, and others&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with experience or interest in law.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The best questions are those that have specific answers; Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange is not a general discussion forum. In general, ask here if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question which covers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Statutes or court decisions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal terms and language, doctrines and theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal process and procedure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Historical legal applications&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Dealing with legal professionals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mathematics Stack Exchange is for people studying mathematics at any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; level and professionals in related fields. We welcome questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Understanding mathematical concepts and theorems.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Mathematical problems such as one might come across in a course or textbook. (First read our how to ask a good question page.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Solving mathematical puzzles.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software that mathematicians use (except Mathematica, which has its own Stack Exchange site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Network Engineering Stack Exchange is for asking questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professionally managed networks in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - operating, maintaining, purchasing or managing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - planning or designing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - model or product line features and differences;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - lab scenarios involving on-topic equipment;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used by network professionals;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - servers operating as a router/switch/firewall;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design or theory of protocols used to operate a network (e.g. IP, TCP, routing protocols, STP, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - content delivery networks;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - production troubleshooting or problem resolution;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physical infrastructure (e.g. standard color coding of cables, types of fiber, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementing and enforcing network security or policies;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and meets the following requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - under your direct control (if the network is not under your control you will not likely be able to provide the information required to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer your question);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware that has a paid support option (enterprise/provider class products, some small business class devices);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then this is likely the correct place to ask unless it meets any of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the off-topic conditions detailed below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Open Source Stack Exchange is a question &amp; answer site about a group&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of related movements which encourage people to give up some of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rights given to them by copyright law, by using licenses which give&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others the freedom to use and transform their creative works, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which optionally (by using copyleft/share-alike licenses) ensure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; these works will always be made available with the same rights. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site is not limited to software, but also covers art, literature,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hardware, databases and more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; These movements have been spearheaded by a group of organisations:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FSF, OSI, Creative Commons, Free Culture. These organisations prefer a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; variety of different terms (free, open source, libre) and sometimes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; define them with slight differences. But on this site these terms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should in general be considered to be synonymous, except for questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which ask directly about their differences.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You've come to the right place if you have questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the history and philosophies of the FSF, OSI, CC etc&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, applying, and complying with Free &amp; Open licenses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how communities collaborate together to produce, distribute, market and sometime monetize these projects&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what license to use for a specific situation - but please read How do I ask for a license recommendation? first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Personal Productivity Stack Exchange is for people wanting to improve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their personal productivity. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - achieving a productivity workflow, using techniques like GTD, Covey, Pomodoro, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - fighting procrastination by getting energetic and motivated workflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - ergonomics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - effective sleep habits and the entire sleep-wake transition&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - learning, memory and creativity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The site is for project management practitioners, academics and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; amateur theorists. This is a site about the field of project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; management for people who love the subject. Our site includes the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following topics:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Management Practices and Theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Agile&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Scrum&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - PRINCE2&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Tool Usage in Project Management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Manager Career Advancement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reverse Engineering Stack Exchange is for researchers and developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who explore the principles of a system through analysis of its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structure, function, and operation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software analysis (static or dynamic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - disassembly or decompilation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware analysis and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools commonly used for reverse engineering hardware or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deterring reverse engineering efforts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Server Fault is for questions about managing information technology&#xD;&#xA;&gt; systems in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - managing the hardware or software of servers, workstations, storage or networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used for administering, monitoring, or automating these&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deployment to and management of third-party provided information technology platforms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][21]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing Stack Exchange is for software quality control experts, automation engineers, and software testers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Recommendations][22]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for questions asking for recommendations of software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ready-to-use to accomplish a particular task, that is, “what software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can I use to do …?”. While this includes software libraries for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development use, note that recommendations of tutorials, data sources,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; media libraries (e.g. icon collections) etc. are off-topic – as are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions like “what technology to use for …?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good software recommendation requests have two components:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A purpose — a task to accomplish, a user story&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Some objective requirements — a minimum set of features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Stack Overflow][23]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; a specific programming problem, or a software algorithm, or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tools commonly used by programmers; and is a practical, answerable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem that is unique to software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Unix Linux][25]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Unix and Linux Stack Exchange is for users of Linux, FreeBSD and other Un*x-like operating systems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Using or administering a *nix desktop or server&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The Unix foundation underlying OS X (but generally not frontend application questions)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The underlying *nix OS on an embedded system or handheld device (e.g. an Android phone)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Shell scripting&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Applications packaged in *nix distributions (note: being cross-platform does not disqualify)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UNIX C API and System Interfaces ( within reason )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;then you're in the right place. Note that Ubuntu posts are a special case. If your question applies to Ubuntu only, or you're looking for answers that are Ubuntu-specific, you should post it on the Ask Ubuntu Stack Exchange site. If your question applies to other distros or you welcome more generic solutions, you're in the right place here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If your question is a programming question, requiring knowledge of programming languages other than unix shell scripting languages, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Please note that requests for learning materials (tutorials, how-tos etc.) are off topic. The only exception is questions about where to find official documentation (e.g. POSIX specifications).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [User Experience][24]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; User Experience Stack Exchange is for User Experience Designers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Information Architects, and Human Computer Interaction researchers. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Specific UX design problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UX issues that can be solved with expert advice or existing research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about HCI and user research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [The Workplace][26]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Workplace Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site about the workplace and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other career-related topics. With your help we're working to build a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; library to every question about the workplace related to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Finding employment (resumes/cv/cover letters, recruiters, hiring-managers, interviews, negotiations, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Maintaining employment (promotions, pay increases, harassment, bullying, poor working conditions, communication problems, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Leadership in the workplace (motivating people, encouraging people, making decisions, holding hard conversations, intervening in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unproductive situations, asking for and giving help, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Terminating employment (notice period, breaking the news, handing over work, reference letters, relieving letters, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://datascience.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://security.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://math.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://serverfault.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23228" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8067" RevisionGUID="18c70d41-7b35-4e45-b457-034fbb83afaa" CreationDate="2016-07-24T10:12:55.313" UserId="31260" Comment="links to SE sites += help/on-topic" Text="The following sites may be of interest to users on Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [CrossValidated][4] &#xD;&#xA;* [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;* [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;* [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;* [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;* [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;* [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;* [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;* [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;* [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;* [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;* [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;* [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;* [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;* [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;* [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][21]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Recommendations][22]&#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow][23]&#xD;&#xA;* [User Experience][24]&#xD;&#xA;* [Unix Linux][25]&#xD;&#xA;* [The Workplace][26]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before posting, be sure to read their Help Centers to fully understand what these communities expect from high quality questions and any specific rules they may have. As always, if you aren't sure if your question is a good fit, post on a Meta site and you can be directed to an appropriate site on the Stack Exchange network, if one exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a site doesn't exist yet, check out [Area 51][27], where users can collaborate to define and launch new Stack Exchange sites. If there's a proposal for your idea, you can follow it and contribute to it's definition. If not, you can create a new proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More detailed information about each site follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Code Review Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; peer review of your code. We're working together to improve the skills&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of programmers worldwide by taking working code and making it better.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from your project in the following areas…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Best practices and design pattern usage&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Security issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Correctness in unanticipated cases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then you are in the right place!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computational Science Stack Exchange is for questions and answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about computational methods used in technical disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First-time posters are strongly advised to read Eric Raymond's How to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask Questions the Smart Way for advice on how to ask good questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (not for technical answers). Although written for an audience asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions about open source software, the same advice applies when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking questions about any subject area.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is run by volunteers; the best way to get an answer to your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is to ask it in a way that makes it easy for someone with a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broad computational science background to answer it with 15 minutes of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; effort or less.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Topics that are usually a good fit for this site:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about software packages or languages used broadly in computational science (e.g., PETSc, MATLAB, Trilinos, LAPACK, SLEPc,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; R, NumPy, SciPy, Julia, Maple, Octave) except Mathematica (which has&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its own site now). In general, high-level questions (e.g., about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/package features) are best. Questions that are essentially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about debugging a code sample, or about low-level language syntax are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a poor fit for this site, and are usually closed; such questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be asked on language-/package-specific forums. Package&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developers interested in using this site as a resource should look at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this meta question. Package developers answering questions should look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at this meta question for guidelines on disclosing project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; affiliations.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about algorithms or methods used to solve problems in applied mathematics (e.g., finding roots of a polynomial, finding the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; eigenvalues/eigenvectors of a matrix, solving an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elliptic/parabolic/hyperbolic PDE)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions that ask about appropriate methods for a given application area (e.g., what numerical methods would I use when modeling shock&#xD;&#xA;&gt; waves, what numerical methods would I use when modeling combustion,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what graph algorithms would I use if I wanted to understand social&#xD;&#xA;&gt; networks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer Science Stack Exchange is for students, researchers and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practitioners of computer science.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer science, also sometimes called computing science, is the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; science of computation and its applications. This site covers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; theoretical and applied computer science at any level, including but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms, models of computation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming language semantics, formal methods&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - computer architecture, networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, natural language processing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - vision, graphics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [CrossValidated][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CrossValidated is for statisticians, data miners, and anyone else&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doing data analysis or interested in it as a discipline. If you have a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical analysis, applied or theoretical&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - designing experiments&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - collecting data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - data mining&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - visualizing data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - probability theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - mathematical statistics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical and data-driven computing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Crypto Stack Exchange is for software developers, mathematicians and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others interested in cryptography.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cryptography Stack Exchange is for asking questions about the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mathematics and properties of cryptographic systems, their analysis&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (&quot;cryptanalysis&quot;) and subsidiary topics that generally make up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cryptology, such as random number generation. As such, we welcome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions on topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Asymmetric and symmetric cryptographic algorithms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographic protocols&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptanalysis techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Hash functions, hashing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Entropy and information theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographically Secure (Pseudo-)Random Number Generation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dba.se is for those needing expert answers to advanced&#xD;&#xA;&gt; database-related questions concerning traditional SQL RDBMS and NoSQL&#xD;&#xA;&gt; alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Database Administration including configuration and backup / restore&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Querying including window-functions, dynamic-sql, and query-performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Modelling and database-design, including referential-integrity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Programming in built-in server-side languages including stored-procedures and triggers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence including etl, reporting, and olap&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Examples of questions that are likely to be on-topic for Data Science&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given process monitoring data arriving every 10ms, what statistical tool should I use to best characterize a change in the process - mean?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a distribution?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When is it suitable to apply L1 regularization for feature selection?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I would like to produce a infographic on the 'Brexit' referendum. Given public opinion data across the UK, what are some meaningful&#xD;&#xA;&gt; techniques to visaualize it in a dashboard?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When executing an ARIMA model in Spark, what are the pros and cons of using Python instead of R?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given Facebook Likes, is there an ML technique to predict age and gender?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for electronics and electrical engineering professionals,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; students, and enthusiasts. We ask and answer questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electrical and electronics engineering topics, which include&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electronics, physical computing, and those working with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; microcontrollers, Arduinos and embedded systems. We feel the best&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Electronics Design questions have a schematic, links to pertinent&#xD;&#xA;&gt; datasheets or some source code in them, but if your question generally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific electronics design problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the theory and simulation of electromagnetic forces&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a communication scheme&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Engineering Stack Exchange are usually well-received when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Identify a specific engineering problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Require expert engineering knowledge to solve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Include any relevant drawings, images or references that may be necessary to understand the problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Excite or challenge experienced professionals in the field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Game Development Stack Exchange is for professional and amateur&#xD;&#xA;&gt; video/computer game developers. If you have a question relating to ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asset pipelines (creation, storage, editing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game-specific programming issues (engine architecture, game-related APIs, networking, tools, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - project management (testing, team management, scheduling, publishing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game industry (careers, trends, technology, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware Recommendations is a community-run website to help you find a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific product for your needs. That means you can ask for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware to perform a specific task. However, you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be aware that &quot;hardware&quot; is not an all-encompassing term — for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; details of what hardware is accepted on this site, please see What is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware?. In essence, we can help you if you're looking for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware that is &quot;an electronic item that is,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interfaces with, or connects to a computer to operate&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; IT Security Stack Exchange is for Information Security professionals&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to discuss protecting assets from threats and vulnerabilities. Topics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; include, but are not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - web app hardening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - network security&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - social engineering, including phishing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - risk management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - policies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - penetration testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - security tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - using cryptography&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - incident response&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physically securing the office, datacentre, information assets etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Law Stack Exchange is for legal professionals, students, and others&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with experience or interest in law.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The best questions are those that have specific answers; Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange is not a general discussion forum. In general, ask here if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question which covers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Statutes or court decisions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal terms and language, doctrines and theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal process and procedure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Historical legal applications&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Dealing with legal professionals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mathematics Stack Exchange is for people studying mathematics at any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; level and professionals in related fields. We welcome questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Understanding mathematical concepts and theorems.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Mathematical problems such as one might come across in a course or textbook. (First read our how to ask a good question page.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Solving mathematical puzzles.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software that mathematicians use (except Mathematica, which has its own Stack Exchange site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Network Engineering Stack Exchange is for asking questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professionally managed networks in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - operating, maintaining, purchasing or managing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - planning or designing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - model or product line features and differences;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - lab scenarios involving on-topic equipment;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used by network professionals;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - servers operating as a router/switch/firewall;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design or theory of protocols used to operate a network (e.g. IP, TCP, routing protocols, STP, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - content delivery networks;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - production troubleshooting or problem resolution;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physical infrastructure (e.g. standard color coding of cables, types of fiber, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementing and enforcing network security or policies;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and meets the following requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - under your direct control (if the network is not under your control you will not likely be able to provide the information required to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer your question);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware that has a paid support option (enterprise/provider class products, some small business class devices);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then this is likely the correct place to ask unless it meets any of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the off-topic conditions detailed below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Open Source Stack Exchange is a question &amp; answer site about a group&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of related movements which encourage people to give up some of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rights given to them by copyright law, by using licenses which give&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others the freedom to use and transform their creative works, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which optionally (by using copyleft/share-alike licenses) ensure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; these works will always be made available with the same rights. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site is not limited to software, but also covers art, literature,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hardware, databases and more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; These movements have been spearheaded by a group of organisations:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FSF, OSI, Creative Commons, Free Culture. These organisations prefer a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; variety of different terms (free, open source, libre) and sometimes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; define them with slight differences. But on this site these terms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should in general be considered to be synonymous, except for questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which ask directly about their differences.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You've come to the right place if you have questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the history and philosophies of the FSF, OSI, CC etc&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, applying, and complying with Free &amp; Open licenses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how communities collaborate together to produce, distribute, market and sometime monetize these projects&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what license to use for a specific situation - but please read How do I ask for a license recommendation? first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Personal Productivity Stack Exchange is for people wanting to improve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their personal productivity. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - achieving a productivity workflow, using techniques like GTD, Covey, Pomodoro, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - fighting procrastination by getting energetic and motivated workflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - ergonomics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - effective sleep habits and the entire sleep-wake transition&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - learning, memory and creativity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The site is for project management practitioners, academics and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; amateur theorists. This is a site about the field of project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; management for people who love the subject. Our site includes the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following topics:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Management Practices and Theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Agile&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Scrum&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - PRINCE2&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Tool Usage in Project Management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Manager Career Advancement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reverse Engineering Stack Exchange is for researchers and developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who explore the principles of a system through analysis of its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structure, function, and operation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software analysis (static or dynamic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - disassembly or decompilation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware analysis and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools commonly used for reverse engineering hardware or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deterring reverse engineering efforts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Server Fault is for questions about managing information technology&#xD;&#xA;&gt; systems in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - managing the hardware or software of servers, workstations, storage or networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used for administering, monitoring, or automating these&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deployment to and management of third-party provided information technology platforms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][21]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing Stack Exchange is for software quality control experts, automation engineers, and software testers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Recommendations][22]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for questions asking for recommendations of software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ready-to-use to accomplish a particular task, that is, “what software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can I use to do …?”. While this includes software libraries for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development use, note that recommendations of tutorials, data sources,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; media libraries (e.g. icon collections) etc. are off-topic – as are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions like “what technology to use for …?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good software recommendation requests have two components:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A purpose — a task to accomplish, a user story&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Some objective requirements — a minimum set of features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Stack Overflow][23]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; a specific programming problem, or a software algorithm, or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tools commonly used by programmers; and is a practical, answerable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem that is unique to software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Unix Linux][25]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Unix and Linux Stack Exchange is for users of Linux, FreeBSD and other Un*x-like operating systems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Using or administering a *nix desktop or server&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The Unix foundation underlying OS X (but generally not frontend application questions)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The underlying *nix OS on an embedded system or handheld device (e.g. an Android phone)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Shell scripting&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Applications packaged in *nix distributions (note: being cross-platform does not disqualify)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UNIX C API and System Interfaces ( within reason )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;then you're in the right place. Note that Ubuntu posts are a special case. If your question applies to Ubuntu only, or you're looking for answers that are Ubuntu-specific, you should post it on the Ask Ubuntu Stack Exchange site. If your question applies to other distros or you welcome more generic solutions, you're in the right place here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If your question is a programming question, requiring knowledge of programming languages other than unix shell scripting languages, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Please note that requests for learning materials (tutorials, how-tos etc.) are off topic. The only exception is questions about where to find official documentation (e.g. POSIX specifications).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [User Experience][24]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; User Experience Stack Exchange is for User Experience Designers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Information Architects, and Human Computer Interaction researchers. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Specific UX design problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UX issues that can be solved with expert advice or existing research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about HCI and user research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [The Workplace][26]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Workplace Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site about the workplace and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other career-related topics. With your help we're working to build a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; library to every question about the workplace related to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Finding employment (resumes/cv/cover letters, recruiters, hiring-managers, interviews, negotiations, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Maintaining employment (promotions, pay increases, harassment, bullying, poor working conditions, communication problems, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Leadership in the workplace (motivating people, encouraging people, making decisions, holding hard conversations, intervening in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unproductive situations, asking for and giving help, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Terminating employment (notice period, breaking the news, handing over work, reference letters, relieving letters, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://datascience.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://security.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://math.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://serverfault.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23232" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8067" RevisionGUID="c27f45dd-8de3-4fd5-ad20-a4903e5d5881" CreationDate="2016-07-25T12:31:41.210" UserId="4" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="The following sites may be of interest to users on Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [CrossValidated][4] &#xD;&#xA;* [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;* [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;* [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;* [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;* [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;* [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;* [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;* [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;* [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;* [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;* [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;* [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;* [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;* [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;* [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][21]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Recommendations][22]&#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow][23]&#xD;&#xA;* [User Experience][24]&#xD;&#xA;* [Unix &amp; Linux][25]&#xD;&#xA;* [The Workplace][26]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before posting, be sure to read their Help Centers to fully understand what these communities expect from high quality questions and any specific rules they may have. As always, if you aren't sure if your question is a good fit, post on a Meta site and you can be directed to an appropriate site on the Stack Exchange network, if one exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a site doesn't exist yet, check out [Area 51][27], where users can collaborate to define and launch new Stack Exchange sites. If there's a proposal for your idea, you can follow it and contribute to it's definition. If not, you can create a new proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More detailed information about each site follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Code Review Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; peer review of your code. We're working together to improve the skills&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of programmers worldwide by taking working code and making it better.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from your project in the following areas…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Best practices and design pattern usage&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Security issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Correctness in unanticipated cases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then you are in the right place!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computational Science Stack Exchange is for questions and answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about computational methods used in technical disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First-time posters are strongly advised to read Eric Raymond's How to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask Questions the Smart Way for advice on how to ask good questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (not for technical answers). Although written for an audience asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions about open source software, the same advice applies when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking questions about any subject area.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is run by volunteers; the best way to get an answer to your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is to ask it in a way that makes it easy for someone with a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broad computational science background to answer it with 15 minutes of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; effort or less.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Topics that are usually a good fit for this site:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about software packages or languages used broadly in computational science (e.g., PETSc, MATLAB, Trilinos, LAPACK, SLEPc,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; R, NumPy, SciPy, Julia, Maple, Octave) except Mathematica (which has&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its own site now). In general, high-level questions (e.g., about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/package features) are best. Questions that are essentially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about debugging a code sample, or about low-level language syntax are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a poor fit for this site, and are usually closed; such questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be asked on language-/package-specific forums. Package&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developers interested in using this site as a resource should look at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this meta question. Package developers answering questions should look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at this meta question for guidelines on disclosing project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; affiliations.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about algorithms or methods used to solve problems in applied mathematics (e.g., finding roots of a polynomial, finding the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; eigenvalues/eigenvectors of a matrix, solving an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elliptic/parabolic/hyperbolic PDE)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions that ask about appropriate methods for a given application area (e.g., what numerical methods would I use when modeling shock&#xD;&#xA;&gt; waves, what numerical methods would I use when modeling combustion,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what graph algorithms would I use if I wanted to understand social&#xD;&#xA;&gt; networks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer Science Stack Exchange is for students, researchers and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practitioners of computer science.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer science, also sometimes called computing science, is the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; science of computation and its applications. This site covers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; theoretical and applied computer science at any level, including but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms, models of computation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming language semantics, formal methods&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - computer architecture, networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, natural language processing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - vision, graphics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [CrossValidated][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CrossValidated is for statisticians, data miners, and anyone else&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doing data analysis or interested in it as a discipline. If you have a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical analysis, applied or theoretical&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - designing experiments&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - collecting data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - data mining&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - visualizing data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - probability theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - mathematical statistics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical and data-driven computing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Crypto Stack Exchange is for software developers, mathematicians and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others interested in cryptography.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cryptography Stack Exchange is for asking questions about the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mathematics and properties of cryptographic systems, their analysis&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (&quot;cryptanalysis&quot;) and subsidiary topics that generally make up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cryptology, such as random number generation. As such, we welcome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions on topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Asymmetric and symmetric cryptographic algorithms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographic protocols&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptanalysis techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Hash functions, hashing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Entropy and information theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographically Secure (Pseudo-)Random Number Generation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dba.se is for those needing expert answers to advanced&#xD;&#xA;&gt; database-related questions concerning traditional SQL RDBMS and NoSQL&#xD;&#xA;&gt; alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Database Administration including configuration and backup / restore&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Querying including window-functions, dynamic-sql, and query-performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Modelling and database-design, including referential-integrity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Programming in built-in server-side languages including stored-procedures and triggers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence including etl, reporting, and olap&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Examples of questions that are likely to be on-topic for Data Science&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given process monitoring data arriving every 10ms, what statistical tool should I use to best characterize a change in the process - mean?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a distribution?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When is it suitable to apply L1 regularization for feature selection?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I would like to produce a infographic on the 'Brexit' referendum. Given public opinion data across the UK, what are some meaningful&#xD;&#xA;&gt; techniques to visaualize it in a dashboard?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When executing an ARIMA model in Spark, what are the pros and cons of using Python instead of R?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given Facebook Likes, is there an ML technique to predict age and gender?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for electronics and electrical engineering professionals,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; students, and enthusiasts. We ask and answer questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electrical and electronics engineering topics, which include&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electronics, physical computing, and those working with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; microcontrollers, Arduinos and embedded systems. We feel the best&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Electronics Design questions have a schematic, links to pertinent&#xD;&#xA;&gt; datasheets or some source code in them, but if your question generally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific electronics design problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the theory and simulation of electromagnetic forces&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a communication scheme&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Engineering Stack Exchange are usually well-received when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Identify a specific engineering problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Require expert engineering knowledge to solve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Include any relevant drawings, images or references that may be necessary to understand the problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Excite or challenge experienced professionals in the field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Game Development Stack Exchange is for professional and amateur&#xD;&#xA;&gt; video/computer game developers. If you have a question relating to ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asset pipelines (creation, storage, editing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game-specific programming issues (engine architecture, game-related APIs, networking, tools, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - project management (testing, team management, scheduling, publishing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game industry (careers, trends, technology, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware Recommendations is a community-run website to help you find a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific product for your needs. That means you can ask for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware to perform a specific task. However, you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be aware that &quot;hardware&quot; is not an all-encompassing term — for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; details of what hardware is accepted on this site, please see What is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware?. In essence, we can help you if you're looking for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware that is &quot;an electronic item that is,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interfaces with, or connects to a computer to operate&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; IT Security Stack Exchange is for Information Security professionals&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to discuss protecting assets from threats and vulnerabilities. Topics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; include, but are not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - web app hardening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - network security&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - social engineering, including phishing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - risk management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - policies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - penetration testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - security tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - using cryptography&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - incident response&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physically securing the office, datacentre, information assets etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Law Stack Exchange is for legal professionals, students, and others&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with experience or interest in law.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The best questions are those that have specific answers; Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange is not a general discussion forum. In general, ask here if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question which covers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Statutes or court decisions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal terms and language, doctrines and theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal process and procedure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Historical legal applications&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Dealing with legal professionals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mathematics Stack Exchange is for people studying mathematics at any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; level and professionals in related fields. We welcome questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Understanding mathematical concepts and theorems.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Mathematical problems such as one might come across in a course or textbook. (First read our how to ask a good question page.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Solving mathematical puzzles.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software that mathematicians use (except Mathematica, which has its own Stack Exchange site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Network Engineering Stack Exchange is for asking questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professionally managed networks in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - operating, maintaining, purchasing or managing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - planning or designing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - model or product line features and differences;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - lab scenarios involving on-topic equipment;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used by network professionals;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - servers operating as a router/switch/firewall;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design or theory of protocols used to operate a network (e.g. IP, TCP, routing protocols, STP, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - content delivery networks;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - production troubleshooting or problem resolution;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physical infrastructure (e.g. standard color coding of cables, types of fiber, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementing and enforcing network security or policies;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and meets the following requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - under your direct control (if the network is not under your control you will not likely be able to provide the information required to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer your question);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware that has a paid support option (enterprise/provider class products, some small business class devices);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then this is likely the correct place to ask unless it meets any of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the off-topic conditions detailed below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Open Source Stack Exchange is a question &amp; answer site about a group&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of related movements which encourage people to give up some of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rights given to them by copyright law, by using licenses which give&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others the freedom to use and transform their creative works, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which optionally (by using copyleft/share-alike licenses) ensure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; these works will always be made available with the same rights. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site is not limited to software, but also covers art, literature,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hardware, databases and more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; These movements have been spearheaded by a group of organisations:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FSF, OSI, Creative Commons, Free Culture. These organisations prefer a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; variety of different terms (free, open source, libre) and sometimes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; define them with slight differences. But on this site these terms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should in general be considered to be synonymous, except for questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which ask directly about their differences.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You've come to the right place if you have questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the history and philosophies of the FSF, OSI, CC etc&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, applying, and complying with Free &amp; Open licenses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how communities collaborate together to produce, distribute, market and sometime monetize these projects&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what license to use for a specific situation - but please read How do I ask for a license recommendation? first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Personal Productivity Stack Exchange is for people wanting to improve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their personal productivity. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - achieving a productivity workflow, using techniques like GTD, Covey, Pomodoro, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - fighting procrastination by getting energetic and motivated workflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - ergonomics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - effective sleep habits and the entire sleep-wake transition&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - learning, memory and creativity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The site is for project management practitioners, academics and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; amateur theorists. This is a site about the field of project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; management for people who love the subject. Our site includes the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following topics:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Management Practices and Theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Agile&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Scrum&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - PRINCE2&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Tool Usage in Project Management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Manager Career Advancement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reverse Engineering Stack Exchange is for researchers and developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who explore the principles of a system through analysis of its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structure, function, and operation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software analysis (static or dynamic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - disassembly or decompilation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware analysis and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools commonly used for reverse engineering hardware or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deterring reverse engineering efforts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Server Fault is for questions about managing information technology&#xD;&#xA;&gt; systems in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - managing the hardware or software of servers, workstations, storage or networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used for administering, monitoring, or automating these&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deployment to and management of third-party provided information technology platforms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][21]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing Stack Exchange is for software quality control experts, automation engineers, and software testers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Recommendations][22]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for questions asking for recommendations of software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ready-to-use to accomplish a particular task, that is, “what software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can I use to do …?”. While this includes software libraries for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development use, note that recommendations of tutorials, data sources,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; media libraries (e.g. icon collections) etc. are off-topic – as are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions like “what technology to use for …?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good software recommendation requests have two components:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A purpose — a task to accomplish, a user story&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Some objective requirements — a minimum set of features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Stack Overflow][23]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; a specific programming problem, or a software algorithm, or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tools commonly used by programmers; and is a practical, answerable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem that is unique to software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Unix &amp; Linux][25]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Unix and Linux Stack Exchange is for users of Linux, FreeBSD and other Un*x-like operating systems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Using or administering a *nix desktop or server&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The Unix foundation underlying OS X (but generally not frontend application questions)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The underlying *nix OS on an embedded system or handheld device (e.g. an Android phone)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Shell scripting&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Applications packaged in *nix distributions (note: being cross-platform does not disqualify)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UNIX C API and System Interfaces ( within reason )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;then you're in the right place. Note that Ubuntu posts are a special case. If your question applies to Ubuntu only, or you're looking for answers that are Ubuntu-specific, you should post it on the Ask Ubuntu Stack Exchange site. If your question applies to other distros or you welcome more generic solutions, you're in the right place here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If your question is a programming question, requiring knowledge of programming languages other than unix shell scripting languages, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Please note that requests for learning materials (tutorials, how-tos etc.) are off topic. The only exception is questions about where to find official documentation (e.g. POSIX specifications).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [User Experience][24]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; User Experience Stack Exchange is for User Experience Designers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Information Architects, and Human Computer Interaction researchers. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Specific UX design problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UX issues that can be solved with expert advice or existing research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about HCI and user research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [The Workplace][26]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Workplace Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site about the workplace and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other career-related topics. With your help we're working to build a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; library to every question about the workplace related to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Finding employment (resumes/cv/cover letters, recruiters, hiring-managers, interviews, negotiations, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Maintaining employment (promotions, pay increases, harassment, bullying, poor working conditions, communication problems, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Leadership in the workplace (motivating people, encouraging people, making decisions, holding hard conversations, intervening in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unproductive situations, asking for and giving help, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Terminating employment (notice period, breaking the news, handing over work, reference letters, relieving letters, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://datascience.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://security.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://math.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://serverfault.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23237" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8119" RevisionGUID="cdd97065-2d32-44d5-89ec-5ed878f8bcec" CreationDate="2016-07-26T23:03:20.727" UserDisplayName="user238375" Text="I'm relatively new to StackExchange (including this community), but I've noticed in the unanswered questions on this community, there are a **ton** of on-hold questions. I would prefer if it was easier to simply filter out these on-hold questions altogether until they're fixed. It's a lot to wade through, and the questions aren't really answerable as well, they're on-hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible that a tag could be created for questions that are on-hold, to serve as a way to filter them out? It could also help people who want to help others fix their on-hold questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alternatively, is it possible for me to filter out the questions another way?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23238" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8119" RevisionGUID="cdd97065-2d32-44d5-89ec-5ed878f8bcec" CreationDate="2016-07-26T23:03:20.727" UserDisplayName="user238375" Text="A possible tag for on-hold questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23239" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8119" RevisionGUID="cdd97065-2d32-44d5-89ec-5ed878f8bcec" CreationDate="2016-07-26T23:03:20.727" UserDisplayName="user238375" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23240" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8120" RevisionGUID="f23cd2e0-179a-4e99-9725-98210490574d" CreationDate="2016-07-26T23:28:47.397" UserId="4" Text="Using a tag for this purpose isn't appropriate. It a [meta tag][1]: a tag which describes something other than the content of the question (examples being a skill level or motivation) or an ill-defined concept. Tags are meant to describe the content of the question, not the current state of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally, it would be nice if the thresholds for questions that appear on the homepage are adjusted to make the homepage more friendly. However, this is something that Stack Exchange staff would need to review. I believe questions are removed from the homepage at a score of -4, regardless of their on-hold status. There may be one or more suggestions on [Meta Stack Exchange][2] regarding this, but I'm not aware of any.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/meta-tags&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23241" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8121" RevisionGUID="5b43013e-22a5-45a2-98a6-ba1c948cfeca" CreationDate="2016-07-27T07:30:54.343" UserId="22685" Text="Has there been any thought given to the &quot;overlapping&quot; sites? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean that we will still get some questions that are off-topic and better answered on other sites. Eg Workplace and possibly DBA, Security or Webmasters. Will we have the same set of migration closure codes, or should we update them to reflect the questions that are more likely to be easily moved, and consider the areas that are off-topic for here that would be best migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have seen a lot of DB questions that would have attracted a lot better answers on the specialist site, similarly many architectural security questions might be better placed on Security too (for example).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23242" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8122" RevisionGUID="61b5cb18-598e-4795-985a-53e79386cb51" CreationDate="2016-07-27T13:51:21.460" UserId="6605" Text="I'm following more or less all the current buzz about changing the site name. I entirely agree with the proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I haven't seen mentioned (maybe it was, but, well, there are *a lot* of answers and comments) anything about one particular technical aspect involved in the change of the site name: hyperlinks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Imagine I have [a link][1] in my blog, pointing to a very popular, highly upvoted question with an excellent answer. What would happen after the site is renamed and—I imagine—moved to a different third-level domain name?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Would it be automatically redirected to the corresponding question on the new site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Would it show a page telling that the website moved, inviting the user to figure out by herself how to find the new question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Or would it simply result in [a generic HTTP 404][2]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, only the first solution is a valid approach. Anything else would be disastrous both for the overall internet community (there are enough dead links already on the internet), and specifically for the newly renamed website: an important number of new users come here from Google, and it would take some time for Google to reindex all the content on the new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/46716/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://example.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23243" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8122" RevisionGUID="61b5cb18-598e-4795-985a-53e79386cb51" CreationDate="2016-07-27T13:51:21.460" UserId="6605" Text="New Site Name and Scope Proposals: what happens to the hyperlinks?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23244" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8122" RevisionGUID="61b5cb18-598e-4795-985a-53e79386cb51" CreationDate="2016-07-27T13:51:21.460" UserId="6605" Text="|discussion|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23245" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8123" RevisionGUID="da1c12b9-55b5-4695-a3d0-eaf6e4c050a9" CreationDate="2016-07-27T14:24:45.317" UserDisplayName="user154639" Text="&quot;Automatically redirected to the corresponding question on the new site&quot; is correct. This is what happened in the past when sites were renamed: for example, http://beer.stackexchange.com/q/1 redirects to [What is a citra hop, and how does it differ from other hops?](http://alcohol.stackexchange.com/q/1)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23246" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8124" RevisionGUID="b733848d-d80f-4b59-a6be-97226d844522" CreationDate="2016-07-28T09:50:12.320" UserId="13154" Text="Why not:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://architecture.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://archoverflow.net&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ArchOverflow is a question and answer site for people interested in software architecture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alternatively:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://softwaredesign.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; SoftwareDesign is a question and answer site for people interested in the software design." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23247" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8122" RevisionGUID="2b43b072-4faf-4b7a-b4e4-d2da43676039" CreationDate="2016-07-28T18:19:09.417" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/758728515986526208" />
  <row Id="23248" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8125" RevisionGUID="88acc836-a407-4739-9e38-0b936d4b939f" CreationDate="2016-07-30T04:32:06.173" UserId="49710" Text="I think our name now is 100% accurate to what type of questions belong here. Our &quot;problem&quot; is that most people new to programming do not understand how the stack Exchange works. However I do agree that something needs to be done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow takes questions that would be better in other specific places. As a consequence those stacks do not get the attention that they need and Stack Overflow gets way to over crowded. It is having trouble with proper moderation (in my opinion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe what we really need is a smother migration method and tighter account integration. This could allow thing to end up in the right place even when they start off in some obscure location. At the same time keeping the fact that something has changed seamless to the question poster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some thoughts I have had would be to have &quot;Cross Stack Questions&quot; and &quot;Multi Question Pages&quot; meant to handle duplicate questions without having to remove questions that have the same answer but are asked in different ways. Even questions that have been asked the in the same way but already have different answers that could be useful to someone looking for an answer. Most of these answers are specific to the examples in the &quot;Duplicate&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If our &quot;Stack Exchange&quot; accounts page could be used to facilitate this and coordinate connections between the stacks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23249" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8126" RevisionGUID="97a2f9b0-1551-478b-99cc-d4f3462cad91" CreationDate="2016-07-30T12:53:54.000" UserId="31260" Text="&lt;sup&gt;(summary of yesterday [discussion at Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/new-site-name-discussion-jul-29-2016))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At [help/on-topic page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...bullets in about list look OK to keep as is:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* software requirements&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;* software configuration management&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note in past discussions there were some doubts whether licensing belongs. Current plan is to consider this a minor issue that can be clarified later per separate meta discussion. (since this part of Help Center is mod editable, adding and removing bullets is a lightweight change)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...not-about list is to be made smaller, with bullets as proposed by Robert Harvey:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;* Please make sure that your question is **directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**. Avoid peripheral issues such as product recommendations, career or education advice, product support or legal matters&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With regards to overlapping sites, [current stats](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8114/follow-up-2-new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8121#comment25265_8121 &quot;In the last 90 days, we've migrated 89 questions away from Programmers. Of those, 70 to Stack Overflow, 4 to Workplace, 3 to Programmers Meta, 2 to Unix &amp; Linux, 2 to Open Source, and 1 each to Programming Puzzles &amp; Code Golf, Computer Science, Code Review, Law, Webmasters, Startups, Cross Validated, and Software Recommendations. In order for a migration to be available to users, there needs to be sufficient need and agreement by both communities.&quot;) suggest that we better keep migration options as is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Later though [this may be reconsidered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31378331#31378331):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the name change is successful and the number of questions migrated to SO and/or the number of code debugging questions drops, I think it's something to revisit for sure.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23250" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="8126" RevisionGUID="4b47670e-8368-4d4f-b470-208c6afb1111" CreationDate="2016-07-30T12:53:54.000" UserId="31260" />
  <row Id="23251" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8122" RevisionGUID="5df31066-09ba-43cd-ab93-e92c3fcb9c26" CreationDate="2016-07-30T15:52:56.327" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Added link to HTTP 302." Text="I'm following more or less all the current buzz about changing the site name. I entirely agree with the proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I haven't seen mentioned (maybe it was, but, well, there are *a lot* of answers and comments) anything about one particular technical aspect involved in the change of the site name: hyperlinks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Imagine I have [a link][1] in my blog, pointing to a very popular, highly upvoted question with an excellent answer. What would happen after the site is renamed and—I imagine—moved to a different third-level domain name?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Would it be [automatically redirected][2] to the corresponding question on the new site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Would it show a page telling that the website moved, inviting the user to figure out by herself how to find the new question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Or would it simply result in [a generic HTTP 404][3]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, only the first solution is a valid approach. Anything else would be disastrous both for the overall internet community (there are enough dead links already on the internet), and specifically for the newly renamed website: an important number of new users come here from Google, and it would take some time for Google to reindex all the content on the new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/46716/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_302&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://example.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23257" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8126" RevisionGUID="e3b83d9f-8d9d-4849-9c4f-363fc0bae185" CreationDate="2016-08-01T13:25:03.493" UserId="31260" Comment="July 29th is not a yesterday anymore" Text="&lt;sup&gt;(summary of July 29th [discussion at Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/new-site-name-discussion-jul-29-2016 &quot;'New Site Name discussion Jul 29, 2016'&quot;))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At [help/on-topic page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...bullets in about list look OK to keep as is:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* software requirements&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;* software configuration management&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note in past discussions there were some doubts whether licensing belongs. Current plan is to consider this a minor issue that can be clarified later per separate meta discussion. (since this part of Help Center is mod editable, adding and removing bullets is a lightweight change)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...not-about list is to be made smaller, with bullets as proposed by Robert Harvey:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;* Please make sure that your question is **directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**. Avoid peripheral issues such as product recommendations, career or education advice, product support or legal matters&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With regards to overlapping sites, [current stats](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8114/follow-up-2-new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8121#comment25265_8121 &quot;In the last 90 days, we've migrated 89 questions away from Programmers. Of those, 70 to Stack Overflow, 4 to Workplace, 3 to Programmers Meta, 2 to Unix &amp; Linux, 2 to Open Source, and 1 each to Programming Puzzles &amp; Code Golf, Computer Science, Code Review, Law, Webmasters, Startups, Cross Validated, and Software Recommendations. In order for a migration to be available to users, there needs to be sufficient need and agreement by both communities.&quot;) suggest that we better keep migration options as is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Later though [this may be reconsidered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31378331#31378331):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the name change is successful and the number of questions migrated to SO and/or the number of code debugging questions drops, I think it's something to revisit for sure.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23259" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8128" RevisionGUID="e4872a63-acc0-4539-be23-7c3c81f81e07" CreationDate="2016-08-02T05:53:55.830" UserId="16375" Text="I just received the moderation privilege and reviewed [this new answer][1] to an old thread as not adding anything to the accepted answer, hence, not worth the resurrection.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What stumbles me though is the comment I got from @jules, stating that it is worthwhile to keep such an answer, since it provides a summary of the lengthy and detailled original answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this view shared by the community? I always had the impression that thorough, backed and deeply insightful answers are what we are after - even (or especially) if that means you have to read a page of text. The accepted answer in particular is well structured and making use of section headers even. It certainly isn't on the too long list for me either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I do understand the value of a TL;DR in the accepted answer and I would welcome that. I am just not convinced, that having another answer, which is merely a summary of an existing answer, is worthwhile - or is it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/326285/16375" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23260" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8128" RevisionGUID="e4872a63-acc0-4539-be23-7c3c81f81e07" CreationDate="2016-08-02T05:53:55.830" UserId="16375" Text="Are second TL;DR answers acceptable?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23261" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8128" RevisionGUID="e4872a63-acc0-4539-be23-7c3c81f81e07" CreationDate="2016-08-02T05:53:55.830" UserId="16375" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23262" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8126" RevisionGUID="2b0c3d2e-f7ef-445a-b411-3efeeb6d3982" CreationDate="2016-08-02T08:23:08.953" UserId="31260" Comment="minor issue += http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/31224602#31224602 &quot;'it's a super inside-baseball kinda discussion; licensing and law just aren't a big part of this site on a day to day basis'&quot;" Text="&lt;sup&gt;(summary of July 29th [discussion at Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/new-site-name-discussion-jul-29-2016 &quot;'New Site Name discussion Jul 29, 2016'&quot;))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At [help/on-topic page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...bullets in about list look OK to keep as is:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* software requirements&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;* software configuration management&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note in past discussions there were some doubts whether licensing belongs. Current plan is to consider this a [minor issue](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/31224602#31224602 &quot;'it's a super inside-baseball kinda discussion; licensing and law just aren't a big part of this site on a day to day basis'&quot;) that can be clarified later per separate meta discussion. (since this part of Help Center is mod editable, adding and removing bullets is a lightweight change)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...not-about list is to be made smaller, with bullets as proposed by Robert Harvey:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;* Please make sure that your question is **directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**. Avoid peripheral issues such as product recommendations, career or education advice, product support or legal matters&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With regards to overlapping sites, [current stats](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8114/follow-up-2-new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8121#comment25265_8121 &quot;In the last 90 days, we've migrated 89 questions away from Programmers. Of those, 70 to Stack Overflow, 4 to Workplace, 3 to Programmers Meta, 2 to Unix &amp; Linux, 2 to Open Source, and 1 each to Programming Puzzles &amp; Code Golf, Computer Science, Code Review, Law, Webmasters, Startups, Cross Validated, and Software Recommendations. In order for a migration to be available to users, there needs to be sufficient need and agreement by both communities.&quot;) suggest that we better keep migration options as is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Later though [this may be reconsidered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31378331#31378331):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the name change is successful and the number of questions migrated to SO and/or the number of code debugging questions drops, I think it's something to revisit for sure.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23263" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8129" RevisionGUID="a87a8320-7886-40eb-be3e-7ce31f0f77f6" CreationDate="2016-08-02T12:35:19.257" UserId="4" Text="I didn't read the existing answers, so I'm going to speak generally.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a new answer to an old, answered question doesn't add anything new, it's not a good answer. There are times when, after the passage of time, a new answer can be relevant and useful, though. Minimally, each answer should add value to the question, either through a new perspective or by adding (or clarifying) information. Simply rehashing existing answers is not appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as detail, more detail is better. The rule here is that an answer should stand on its own, without requiring the reader to visit links to other places." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23264" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8130" RevisionGUID="64c0a18c-bedf-49f9-b15f-c8e3f56c16eb" CreationDate="2016-08-02T15:27:12.430" UserId="1204" Text="OK, I *did* read the answers, and I concur with Thomas.  If all you're doing is summarizing an existing answer but not adding any new information, I don't consider that added value.  Such answers will fall to the bottom of the stack, and nobody will see them anyway.  If an answer really needs to be summarized, the place to put that is *in the answer itself.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Frankly, I don't have much sympathy for folks who ask for an answer to be clarified, get detailed clarification in the answer, but who then can't be bothered to read the answer because it's longer than a tweet." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23265" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8131" RevisionGUID="19d859b5-6310-4515-a9c7-00aa9669c5a6" CreationDate="2016-08-03T06:55:18.803" UserId="62330" Text="I note that the proposed widened scope explicitly includes [Software] Quality Assurance &amp; Testing... which is already a [standalone SE (over five years in beta) site][1] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As such, perhaps it is worth re-considering [my four year old Meta post][2] on here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After five+ years, surely SQA is either mature enough to &quot;graduate&quot; or should be killed off.  By explicitly expanding the scope of Programming, it makes the existence of SQA questionable!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5203/scope-software-quality-assurance-and-testing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23266" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="2b62b212-eebd-4e9d-8dbd-e3b392817a65" CreationDate="2016-08-03T15:53:21.967" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 311 characters in body" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Welcome&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Software Engineering** is a question and answer site for people involved in the [Systems Development Life Cycle][1] who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly. We don't address questions about debugging code or how to use specific tools in software development. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&amp;A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ask About&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the systems development life cycle&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Don't Ask About&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- writing or debugging code&#xD;&#xA;- support for software tools or packages&#xD;&#xA;- what to read, learn, buy or use&#xD;&#xA;- legal advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a question and answer site for people involved in the [Systems Development Life Cycle][1] who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software development [methods and practices][2]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [requirements engineering][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][4] and [design][5]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm) and [data structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [quality assurance and testing][6]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [configuration][7], [build][8] and [release][9] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][7] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][8]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][9].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][2] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10]. We have [a curated FAQ on our Meta site][11]. You can also check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][12].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23267" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8132" RevisionGUID="30cbf15e-b682-48b1-9534-ee131dc493cc" CreationDate="2016-08-03T19:17:13.583" UserId="23787" Text="This question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/326504/how-to-code-review-obviously-plagiarized-code  was recently closed as being not-in-scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I read the scope rules, &quot;software engineering management&quot; is in scope, and my reading of the question is that it's a management issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where am I mistaken?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23268" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8132" RevisionGUID="30cbf15e-b682-48b1-9534-ee131dc493cc" CreationDate="2016-08-03T19:17:13.583" UserId="23787" Text="Scope issue: closed question is arguably in-scope" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23269" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8132" RevisionGUID="30cbf15e-b682-48b1-9534-ee131dc493cc" CreationDate="2016-08-03T19:17:13.583" UserId="23787" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23270" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8133" RevisionGUID="6c0cb3c2-6f9c-4df7-ae9f-6f025cc60723" CreationDate="2016-08-03T19:27:04.667" UserId="4" Text="It's not on-topic. If you read the comments, the asker is in an academic setting. The primary tool used to make a decision here would be the university's academic honesty policies and the asker's relationship with the student. That's not within our scope. The things that we would be concerned with, such as licensing, would take a backseat to the university's policies." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23271" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8134" RevisionGUID="fc65e702-8f64-4374-8fe0-4593b9ddfabd" CreationDate="2016-08-04T06:49:12.317" UserId="102240" Text="I think that this would be good.  &quot;Programmers&quot; has always confused me.  &quot;Software engineering&quot; is much clearer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23272" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8083" RevisionGUID="a1f2e491-7826-4ffe-8339-239aceacad9c" CreationDate="2016-08-04T20:14:54.983" UserId="184113" Comment="added 29 characters in body" Text="I was scrolling back up to the top of a page when I noticed this weird red text floating above the viewport in the &quot;rubber-band-scroll&quot; region. It says &quot;Stack Exchange Inbox&quot; and &quot;Reputation and Badges.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[\[Link to video\]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This doesn't occur on any other sites within the Stack Exchange network. The out-of-viewport &quot;hidden text&quot; only shows up on Programmers. So what's up with that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This probably *isn't* for screen readers because there're already buttons on the top bar for those actions, and those have `alt` text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxRMbmixnUEocUZ1Q1ZFTDQ5M0E" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23273" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8114" RevisionGUID="4e23eb41-f933-4e39-9b26-c6121b83d785" CreationDate="2016-08-05T13:31:56.377" UserId="31260" Comment="link to start message replaced with reference to full discussion" Text="After [a discussion today (July 22nd) with Ana and Shog9][1], we've made some more progress toward a new site name and scope. You can check out the transcript for the full details, but we talked about the purpose for rebranding the site, what we hope to get out of it, a high level scope of the site, and the new name and tagline:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The CM team wants to make sure this works. Rebranding is a dangerous thing to do, and it takes a large investment of resources on their side. They want to make 100% sure that everyone agrees that what we are doing is the right thing to do, everyone is going to make it work, and we're all working in the same direction.&#xD;&#xA;* Looking at closed question history, nearly 1/3 of the closed questions are likely closed due to not understanding what the scope of our site is. In the last 90 days, nearly half of questions asked here were closed or migrated. Of the closed questions, 27% were closed because they were seeking help debugging or troubleshooting code. Another 5% were migrated to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;* Rebranding isn't a tool to beat users up with. It's a way to provide a clear, rich scope to visitors that explains we want this and not that.&#xD;&#xA;* [This is a good pictoral representation of how everyone sees the scope.](https://i.stack.imgur.com/po2PZ.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After all of that, we talked about a specific site name and tagline. The name and tagline are mostly used outside the site (elsewhere on the SE network), with pieces of it in different places. Below you can see an image of what Shog whipped up, based on everything from Meta and chat so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![proposed intro image][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anyone has any comments or thoughts on the name and tagline, please post them here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shog and Ana will be stopping by again next week to review this discussion and move onto the next steps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/new-site-name-discussion-jul-22-2016&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vkfDr.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23274" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8135" RevisionGUID="85a804a1-33c7-4ba0-94a2-aa0bb3cddb5c" CreationDate="2016-08-08T22:42:16.690" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does &quot;token&quot; mean on its own? Essentially, a small, normally fixed-size object that acts as a proxy for another object.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A token does not really do anything on its own. It is simply one small piece of a larger puzzle. If I were asking a question involving tokens, it would be in the context of a larger problem: I should use the tag associated with that larger problem instead. Stack Exchange in general has had problems with tags where there are simply too many. Users create tags that are too-specific or similar to one another. By having broader tags (but still specific enough, there is a middle-ground here) it is possible for one tag to take the place of several other tags. If you search through our meta here, you will see many questions discussing tag merges or deletions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While tokens _are_ essentially the same thing in different contexts, they are used differently. A token in a payment system and a token in a web application session may appear similar, but serve very different goals. One tag for both would make searching more difficult. In this case, it would be better to have one tag for payment systems and another for web applications. Note: this is a contrived example, I am not actually suggesting we need those tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tokens have many potential uses (perhaps too many) in such areas as&#xD;&#xA;&gt; payment systems, identification and keys. They can also work in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; concert with plug ins.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You said it yourself: &quot;perhaps too many&quot; uses.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23275" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8067" RevisionGUID="a020a27f-6079-4a1d-aad2-b9716f373e1f" CreationDate="2016-08-11T03:16:30.673" UserId="131624" Comment="added 679 characters in body" Text="The following sites may be of interest to users on Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [CrossValidated][4] &#xD;&#xA;* [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;* [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;* [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;* [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;* [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;* [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;* [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;* [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;* [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;* [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;* [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;* [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;* [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;* [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;* [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][21]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Recommendations][22]&#xD;&#xA;* [Super User][28]&#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow][23]&#xD;&#xA;* [User Experience][24]&#xD;&#xA;* [Unix &amp; Linux][25]&#xD;&#xA;* [The Workplace][26]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before posting, be sure to read their Help Centers to fully understand what these communities expect from high quality questions and any specific rules they may have. As always, if you aren't sure if your question is a good fit, post on a Meta site and you can be directed to an appropriate site on the Stack Exchange network, if one exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a site doesn't exist yet, check out [Area 51][27], where users can collaborate to define and launch new Stack Exchange sites. If there's a proposal for your idea, you can follow it and contribute to it's definition. If not, you can create a new proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More detailed information about each site follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Code Review Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; peer review of your code. We're working together to improve the skills&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of programmers worldwide by taking working code and making it better.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from your project in the following areas…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Best practices and design pattern usage&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Security issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Correctness in unanticipated cases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then you are in the right place!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computational Science Stack Exchange is for questions and answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about computational methods used in technical disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First-time posters are strongly advised to read Eric Raymond's How to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask Questions the Smart Way for advice on how to ask good questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (not for technical answers). Although written for an audience asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions about open source software, the same advice applies when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking questions about any subject area.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is run by volunteers; the best way to get an answer to your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is to ask it in a way that makes it easy for someone with a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broad computational science background to answer it with 15 minutes of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; effort or less.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Topics that are usually a good fit for this site:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about software packages or languages used broadly in computational science (e.g., PETSc, MATLAB, Trilinos, LAPACK, SLEPc,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; R, NumPy, SciPy, Julia, Maple, Octave) except Mathematica (which has&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its own site now). In general, high-level questions (e.g., about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/package features) are best. Questions that are essentially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about debugging a code sample, or about low-level language syntax are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a poor fit for this site, and are usually closed; such questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be asked on language-/package-specific forums. Package&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developers interested in using this site as a resource should look at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this meta question. Package developers answering questions should look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at this meta question for guidelines on disclosing project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; affiliations.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about algorithms or methods used to solve problems in applied mathematics (e.g., finding roots of a polynomial, finding the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; eigenvalues/eigenvectors of a matrix, solving an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elliptic/parabolic/hyperbolic PDE)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions that ask about appropriate methods for a given application area (e.g., what numerical methods would I use when modeling shock&#xD;&#xA;&gt; waves, what numerical methods would I use when modeling combustion,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what graph algorithms would I use if I wanted to understand social&#xD;&#xA;&gt; networks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer Science Stack Exchange is for students, researchers and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practitioners of computer science.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer science, also sometimes called computing science, is the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; science of computation and its applications. This site covers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; theoretical and applied computer science at any level, including but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms, models of computation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming language semantics, formal methods&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - computer architecture, networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, natural language processing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - vision, graphics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [CrossValidated][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CrossValidated is for statisticians, data miners, and anyone else&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doing data analysis or interested in it as a discipline. If you have a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical analysis, applied or theoretical&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - designing experiments&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - collecting data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - data mining&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - visualizing data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - probability theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - mathematical statistics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical and data-driven computing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Crypto Stack Exchange is for software developers, mathematicians and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others interested in cryptography.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cryptography Stack Exchange is for asking questions about the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mathematics and properties of cryptographic systems, their analysis&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (&quot;cryptanalysis&quot;) and subsidiary topics that generally make up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cryptology, such as random number generation. As such, we welcome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions on topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Asymmetric and symmetric cryptographic algorithms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographic protocols&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptanalysis techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Hash functions, hashing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Entropy and information theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographically Secure (Pseudo-)Random Number Generation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dba.se is for those needing expert answers to advanced&#xD;&#xA;&gt; database-related questions concerning traditional SQL RDBMS and NoSQL&#xD;&#xA;&gt; alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Database Administration including configuration and backup / restore&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Querying including window-functions, dynamic-sql, and query-performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Modelling and database-design, including referential-integrity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Programming in built-in server-side languages including stored-procedures and triggers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence including etl, reporting, and olap&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Examples of questions that are likely to be on-topic for Data Science&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given process monitoring data arriving every 10ms, what statistical tool should I use to best characterize a change in the process - mean?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a distribution?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When is it suitable to apply L1 regularization for feature selection?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I would like to produce a infographic on the 'Brexit' referendum. Given public opinion data across the UK, what are some meaningful&#xD;&#xA;&gt; techniques to visaualize it in a dashboard?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When executing an ARIMA model in Spark, what are the pros and cons of using Python instead of R?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given Facebook Likes, is there an ML technique to predict age and gender?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for electronics and electrical engineering professionals,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; students, and enthusiasts. We ask and answer questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electrical and electronics engineering topics, which include&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electronics, physical computing, and those working with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; microcontrollers, Arduinos and embedded systems. We feel the best&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Electronics Design questions have a schematic, links to pertinent&#xD;&#xA;&gt; datasheets or some source code in them, but if your question generally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific electronics design problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the theory and simulation of electromagnetic forces&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a communication scheme&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Engineering Stack Exchange are usually well-received when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Identify a specific engineering problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Require expert engineering knowledge to solve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Include any relevant drawings, images or references that may be necessary to understand the problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Excite or challenge experienced professionals in the field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Game Development Stack Exchange is for professional and amateur&#xD;&#xA;&gt; video/computer game developers. If you have a question relating to ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asset pipelines (creation, storage, editing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game-specific programming issues (engine architecture, game-related APIs, networking, tools, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - project management (testing, team management, scheduling, publishing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game industry (careers, trends, technology, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware Recommendations is a community-run website to help you find a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific product for your needs. That means you can ask for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware to perform a specific task. However, you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be aware that &quot;hardware&quot; is not an all-encompassing term — for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; details of what hardware is accepted on this site, please see What is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware?. In essence, we can help you if you're looking for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware that is &quot;an electronic item that is,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interfaces with, or connects to a computer to operate&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; IT Security Stack Exchange is for Information Security professionals&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to discuss protecting assets from threats and vulnerabilities. Topics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; include, but are not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - web app hardening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - network security&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - social engineering, including phishing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - risk management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - policies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - penetration testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - security tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - using cryptography&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - incident response&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physically securing the office, datacentre, information assets etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Law Stack Exchange is for legal professionals, students, and others&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with experience or interest in law.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The best questions are those that have specific answers; Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange is not a general discussion forum. In general, ask here if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question which covers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Statutes or court decisions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal terms and language, doctrines and theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal process and procedure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Historical legal applications&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Dealing with legal professionals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mathematics Stack Exchange is for people studying mathematics at any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; level and professionals in related fields. We welcome questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Understanding mathematical concepts and theorems.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Mathematical problems such as one might come across in a course or textbook. (First read our how to ask a good question page.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Solving mathematical puzzles.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software that mathematicians use (except Mathematica, which has its own Stack Exchange site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Network Engineering Stack Exchange is for asking questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professionally managed networks in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - operating, maintaining, purchasing or managing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - planning or designing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - model or product line features and differences;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - lab scenarios involving on-topic equipment;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used by network professionals;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - servers operating as a router/switch/firewall;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design or theory of protocols used to operate a network (e.g. IP, TCP, routing protocols, STP, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - content delivery networks;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - production troubleshooting or problem resolution;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physical infrastructure (e.g. standard color coding of cables, types of fiber, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementing and enforcing network security or policies;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and meets the following requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - under your direct control (if the network is not under your control you will not likely be able to provide the information required to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer your question);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware that has a paid support option (enterprise/provider class products, some small business class devices);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then this is likely the correct place to ask unless it meets any of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the off-topic conditions detailed below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Open Source Stack Exchange is a question &amp; answer site about a group&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of related movements which encourage people to give up some of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rights given to them by copyright law, by using licenses which give&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others the freedom to use and transform their creative works, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which optionally (by using copyleft/share-alike licenses) ensure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; these works will always be made available with the same rights. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site is not limited to software, but also covers art, literature,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hardware, databases and more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; These movements have been spearheaded by a group of organisations:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FSF, OSI, Creative Commons, Free Culture. These organisations prefer a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; variety of different terms (free, open source, libre) and sometimes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; define them with slight differences. But on this site these terms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should in general be considered to be synonymous, except for questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which ask directly about their differences.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You've come to the right place if you have questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the history and philosophies of the FSF, OSI, CC etc&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, applying, and complying with Free &amp; Open licenses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how communities collaborate together to produce, distribute, market and sometime monetize these projects&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what license to use for a specific situation - but please read How do I ask for a license recommendation? first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Personal Productivity Stack Exchange is for people wanting to improve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their personal productivity. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - achieving a productivity workflow, using techniques like GTD, Covey, Pomodoro, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - fighting procrastination by getting energetic and motivated workflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - ergonomics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - effective sleep habits and the entire sleep-wake transition&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - learning, memory and creativity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The site is for project management practitioners, academics and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; amateur theorists. This is a site about the field of project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; management for people who love the subject. Our site includes the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following topics:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Management Practices and Theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Agile&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Scrum&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - PRINCE2&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Tool Usage in Project Management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Manager Career Advancement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reverse Engineering Stack Exchange is for researchers and developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who explore the principles of a system through analysis of its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structure, function, and operation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software analysis (static or dynamic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - disassembly or decompilation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware analysis and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools commonly used for reverse engineering hardware or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deterring reverse engineering efforts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Server Fault is for questions about managing information technology&#xD;&#xA;&gt; systems in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - managing the hardware or software of servers, workstations, storage or networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used for administering, monitoring, or automating these&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deployment to and management of third-party provided information technology platforms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][21]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing Stack Exchange is for software quality control experts, automation engineers, and software testers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Recommendations][22]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for questions asking for recommendations of software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ready-to-use to accomplish a particular task, that is, “what software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can I use to do …?”. While this includes software libraries for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development use, note that recommendations of tutorials, data sources,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; media libraries (e.g. icon collections) etc. are off-topic – as are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions like “what technology to use for …?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good software recommendation requests have two components:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A purpose — a task to accomplish, a user story&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Some objective requirements — a minimum set of features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Stack Overflow][23]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; a specific programming problem, or a software algorithm, or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tools commonly used by programmers; and is a practical, answerable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem that is unique to software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#[Super User][28]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users. If you have a question about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * computer hardware,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * computer software, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal and home computer networking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming and software development,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * video games or consoles,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * websites or web services like Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * electronic devices, media players, cell phones or smart phones, except insofar as they interface with your computer,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * issues specific to corporate IT support and networks,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * asking for a product, service or learning material recommendation,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Unix &amp; Linux][25]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Unix and Linux Stack Exchange is for users of Linux, FreeBSD and other Un*x-like operating systems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Using or administering a *nix desktop or server&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The Unix foundation underlying OS X (but generally not frontend application questions)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The underlying *nix OS on an embedded system or handheld device (e.g. an Android phone)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Shell scripting&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Applications packaged in *nix distributions (note: being cross-platform does not disqualify)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UNIX C API and System Interfaces ( within reason )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;then you're in the right place. Note that Ubuntu posts are a special case. If your question applies to Ubuntu only, or you're looking for answers that are Ubuntu-specific, you should post it on the Ask Ubuntu Stack Exchange site. If your question applies to other distros or you welcome more generic solutions, you're in the right place here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If your question is a programming question, requiring knowledge of programming languages other than unix shell scripting languages, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Please note that requests for learning materials (tutorials, how-tos etc.) are off topic. The only exception is questions about where to find official documentation (e.g. POSIX specifications).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [User Experience][24]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; User Experience Stack Exchange is for User Experience Designers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Information Architects, and Human Computer Interaction researchers. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Specific UX design problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UX issues that can be solved with expert advice or existing research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about HCI and user research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [The Workplace][26]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Workplace Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site about the workplace and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other career-related topics. With your help we're working to build a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; library to every question about the workplace related to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Finding employment (resumes/cv/cover letters, recruiters, hiring-managers, interviews, negotiations, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Maintaining employment (promotions, pay increases, harassment, bullying, poor working conditions, communication problems, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Leadership in the workplace (motivating people, encouraging people, making decisions, holding hard conversations, intervening in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unproductive situations, asking for and giving help, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Terminating employment (notice period, breaking the news, handing over work, reference letters, relieving letters, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://datascience.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://security.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://math.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://serverfault.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://superuser.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23276" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8128" RevisionGUID="e5fa895f-7f8c-4ce7-911c-68273372f4fe" CreationDate="2016-08-11T10:33:54.123" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/763684860737224704" />
  <row Id="23277" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8136" RevisionGUID="1cd38b79-e755-4796-8743-a6c77e8b1238" CreationDate="2016-08-11T13:28:44.347" UserId="31260" Text="&lt;!-- let's talk about elephant in the room --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading of [July 22nd discussion](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/new-site-name-discussion-jul-22-2016) primary focus of the coming changes is to prevent the flood of debugging questions. Both SE Community Manager and our moderators appear to be in agreement about that:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; \-  There are a crazy number of things that should be closed or downvoted or edited or just discouraged, but only a tiny handful reach the sort of volume that you need to _announce them to all visitors_.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;\- And the code troubleshooting types are, by far, the worst.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;\- I'm pretty sure just about every site on the network gets coding questions now and then, but only a few bother mentioning that they're off-topic explicitly anywhere. &#xD;&#xA;here, they're a problem, so you focus on that &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explicit mentioning of **&quot;not code troubleshooting&quot;** in the [suggested site tagline](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vkfDr.png) also appears to support this vision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given above I wonder if we need to somehow change the way how blatant debugging questions are handled, maybe have more active involvement of diamond moderators or something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding of the current approach is, it assumes primarily involvement of regular community members which leads to cumbersome and lengthy process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;First, a question needs to collect five close votes from 3K users. Per my observations this tends to take few hours or even days. After closure, question hangs on the site for 9 days before it gets [auto-deleted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/177675/165773). If it manages to get an upvoted or accepted answer prior to closure things get even more complicated because such questions aren't eligible for automatic deletion and can in theory hang in here indefinitely.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that planned changes are so much focused on preventing debugging questions our current way looks somewhat worrying.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope that the changes will help to educate newcomers against asking for code troubleshooting over here. But [statistics](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6592/31260) seems to suggest that ~20% questions here come from users who simply don't have an option to ask for debugging help at more appropriate site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes me wonder how to handle it when such questions are posted here despite all the effort and guidance." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23278" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8136" RevisionGUID="1cd38b79-e755-4796-8743-a6c77e8b1238" CreationDate="2016-08-11T13:28:44.347" UserId="31260" Text="New Site Name and Scope: how to handle blatant debugging questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23279" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8136" RevisionGUID="1cd38b79-e755-4796-8743-a6c77e8b1238" CreationDate="2016-08-11T13:28:44.347" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|moderation|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23280" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8137" RevisionGUID="8cf4b42a-7ac0-462f-97e2-5d7c6d7c9e08" CreationDate="2016-08-11T18:14:26.103" UserId="1973" Text="So programmers.se is going to become software-engineering.se?  This means I still can't ask the burning questions about proper potted plants for programmers....&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**AND THAT IS OK BY ME**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, I do have one little nitpick: Although my job title is &quot;Software Engineer&quot;. I'm really just a hacker guy. I write scripts in php, python, perl, bash, tsch, hack on C and Java when the need arises. I know lots of SQL tricks in sqlite, postgres, mysql and tsql.  Right now I'm spending most of my time &quot;ansibilizing&quot; things. But I'll spend an evening or so a week trying to learn some newfangled thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe I represent a minority, but the site I want is called &quot;programmers&quot; and it's for people who don't really know what they're doing and blindly trudge forth into the abyss hoping, because of experience, wisdom, hubris whatever, that things will work out in the end.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So... is that still gonna be here in a month or two the next time I happen to get pinged on an old post? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess I don't care either way since I can't ask &quot;whatever I want&quot; and haven't been able to since Beta, but what about &quot;softwareengineering.se&quot; will cater to pro-sumers, enthusiasts and cobknobbers like myself?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23281" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8137" RevisionGUID="8cf4b42a-7ac0-462f-97e2-5d7c6d7c9e08" CreationDate="2016-08-11T18:14:26.103" UserId="1973" Text="I'm not a software engineer, right?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23282" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8137" RevisionGUID="8cf4b42a-7ac0-462f-97e2-5d7c6d7c9e08" CreationDate="2016-08-11T18:14:26.103" UserId="1973" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|software-engineering|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23283" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8137" RevisionGUID="9d2fc0c6-8c39-4808-aa4c-d93e343b34af" CreationDate="2016-08-11T18:58:19.360" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|new-site-name|software-engineering|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23284" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8138" RevisionGUID="b3e27369-77fb-4416-87e7-7d731c85fdc3" CreationDate="2016-08-11T19:29:13.163" UserId="4" Text="Do you care about applying craftsmanship or engineering to the planning, design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance of software? Are you concerned with all aspects of software development (and not just writing/debugging/testing code)? Are you concerned with the practice (as opposed to the theory) of software development?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can answer &quot;yes&quot; to any or all of those questions, then you're probably good here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't matter if you are a self-taught hobbyist working on an open source project in your spare time, a student, a professional, or an academic. We are a community of craftsman and engineers who are concerned with all aspects of software development. We just don't want to see questions about writing/debugging/testing code, since those questions already have a good home on Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23285" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8139" RevisionGUID="3400a8ce-1053-4c3d-b3a6-73fd639e17a3" CreationDate="2016-08-11T19:35:54.480" UserId="63202" Text="I like Software Engineering as a title over Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I'm not really ok with tagline containing only a reference to 60's-era-introduced, waterfall-type methodology, and also in particular, I'm not really ok *not* calling out any notion of the critical thinking that leads to good programming practices that lead to good programs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no reference to architecture and design as a skill of critical and organized thinking and programming, by which I am attempting to evoke reference to notions of **design patterns** (e.g. builder, factory), to **design principles** (e.g. single responsibility), **architectural principles** (e.g. abstraction, generalization, premature optimization).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the terms &quot;architecture&quot; and &quot;design&quot; and perhaps even &quot;principles&quot; and &quot;patterns&quot; ought to be in the tagline.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23286" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8138" RevisionGUID="3bde0681-ec92-4ed8-bd44-ccaba7113633" CreationDate="2016-08-11T19:51:26.680" UserId="4" Comment="added 309 characters in body" Text="Do you care about applying craftsmanship&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; or engineering to the planning, design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance of software? Are you concerned with all aspects of software development (and not just writing/debugging/testing code)? Are you concerned with the practice (as opposed to the theory) of software development?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can answer &quot;yes&quot; to any or all of those questions, then you're probably good here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't matter if you are a self-taught hobbyist working on an open source project in your spare time, a student, a professional, or an academic. We are a community of craftsman and engineers who are concerned with all aspects of software development. We just don't want to see questions about writing/debugging/testing code, since those questions already have a good home on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; So why isn't the site called &quot;Software Craftsmanship&quot;? Because Software Engineering is both a job title and an academic field of study at the undergraduate and undergraduate level. Plus, there are at least a few common definitions, even if there isn't 1 fully accepted definition." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23287" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8139" RevisionGUID="8bc276be-b6d9-465f-a81c-3c0ac9e7b22d" CreationDate="2016-08-11T21:15:03.580" UserId="63202" Comment="added 560 characters in body" Text="I like Software Engineering as a title over Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I'm not really ok with tagline containing only a reference to 60's-era-introduced, waterfall-type methodology, and also in particular, I'm not really ok *not* calling out any notion of the critical thinking that leads to good programming practices that lead to good programs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no reference to architecture and design as a skill of critical and organized thinking and programming, by which I am attempting to evoke reference to notions of **design patterns** (e.g. builder, factory), to **design principles** (e.g. single responsibility), **architectural principles** (e.g. abstraction, generalization, premature optimization).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the terms &quot;architecture&quot; and &quot;design&quot; and perhaps even &quot;principles&quot; and &quot;patterns&quot; ought to be in the tagline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Engineering &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Q&amp;A site where you can ask and answer questions related to software development and the systems/software development life cycle, including but not necessarily limited to: project management; development methodology; algorithms &amp; data structures; architecture and design principles and patterns; and testing principles and methodology.  Please note that this site considers debugging (or writing) specific code snippets, as well as specific tooling &amp; library recommendations, to be off topic.  See our FAQ for more information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah, probably too long or off the mark..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23288" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8066" RevisionGUID="356555f0-1f32-4959-a6e9-7aa10c829f6e" CreationDate="2016-08-12T00:48:10.603" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|faq|faq-proposed|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23293" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8141" RevisionGUID="4176c5ad-a803-42d5-bb60-f8093c7c1623" CreationDate="2016-08-12T11:14:45.340" UserId="9113" Text="The motivation behind the rebranding is not to change the focus of the site and express this through the title. It is to make the title match the **actual focus** more closer, as it is understood by the experts of this community during the last 2-4 years. So if you had a question valid for &quot;Programmers&quot; in that time period, it will most probably still be valid on &quot;Software Engineering&quot; after the rebranding." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23298" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8137" RevisionGUID="2706df09-7a32-4594-8a21-fd04d4fec7d1" CreationDate="2016-08-12T22:35:36.817" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/764228873211015168" />
  <row Id="23299" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8143" RevisionGUID="3fc42cdb-d84b-45b9-851b-ceae95702d05" CreationDate="2016-08-13T02:55:50.980" UserId="131624" Text="I see software engineering as a bigger tent that any one software creation methodology.  If you can show people are making really good software using the beer pong on the keyboard methodology than those discussions are welcome here. I may be a software engineer by title but I'm a code monkey at heart.  What we want is what works. Sometimes what works isn't what sounds fancy.  A big thing we do here is figure out when fancy isn't needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23300" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8143" RevisionGUID="411ef443-33ed-4dbe-a571-55a38b8fbd9e" CreationDate="2016-08-13T03:27:37.970" UserId="131624" Comment="edited body" Text="I see software engineering as a bigger tent than any one software creation methodology.  If you can show people are making really good software using the beer pong on the keyboard methodology than those discussions are welcome here. I may be a software engineer by title but I'm a code monkey at heart.  What we want is what works. Sometimes what works isn't what sounds fancy.  A big thing we do here is figure out when fancy isn't needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23301" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8144" RevisionGUID="b7cc6944-34cb-4009-8635-8bc960081d15" CreationDate="2016-08-13T05:35:03.160" UserId="122484" Text="Are you interested in applying principles to aid programming, like modularity? About fixing a program that runs very slowly because someone wrote an O(*n*&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;) loop when *n* gets large?&#xA;&#xA;Are you interested in applying principles to aid debugging, like hypothesis testing and wolf fencing?&#xA;&#xA;Are you concerned about writing programs that are maintainable? Portable? Testable? Usable? Reliable? Secure?&#xA;&#xA;Do you think about prioritizing what to build next? About shipping and iterating? About reducing risk of failure? Do you balk when managers think they can dictate schedule, content, and quality all at once?&#xA;&#xA;These are engineering topics. The new site name tells me these topics belong here, unlike many other programming topics that being on SO. Or potted plants for your cubicle." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23302" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8143" RevisionGUID="65cecdc4-bf0a-483a-a259-b7adfb183c9c" CreationDate="2016-08-13T16:44:22.677" UserId="131624" Comment="edited body" Text="I see software engineering as a bigger tent than any one software creation methodology.  If you can show people are making really good software using the beer pong on the keyboard methodology then those discussions are welcome here. I may be a software engineer by title but I'm a code monkey at heart.  What we want is what works. Sometimes what works isn't what sounds fancy.  A big thing we do here is figure out when fancy isn't needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23303" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8136" RevisionGUID="7b745bf7-9230-4bb2-96f7-29c589fbcec3" CreationDate="2016-08-13T16:57:40.293" UserId="31260" Comment="the way += maybe ask for system features" Text="&lt;!-- let's talk about elephant in the room --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading of [July 22nd discussion](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/new-site-name-discussion-jul-22-2016) primary focus of the coming changes is to prevent the flood of debugging questions. Both SE Community Manager and our moderators appear to be in agreement about that:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; \-  There are a crazy number of things that should be closed or downvoted or edited or just discouraged, but only a tiny handful reach the sort of volume that you need to _announce them to all visitors_.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;\- And the code troubleshooting types are, by far, the worst.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;\- I'm pretty sure just about every site on the network gets coding questions now and then, but only a few bother mentioning that they're off-topic explicitly anywhere. &#xD;&#xA;here, they're a problem, so you focus on that &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explicit mentioning of **&quot;not code troubleshooting&quot;** in the [suggested site tagline](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vkfDr.png) also appears to support this vision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given above I wonder if we need to somehow change the way how blatant debugging questions are handled, maybe have more active involvement of diamond moderators or maybe ask for system features &lt;sup&gt;[1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6795/31260 &quot;example&quot;), [2](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260 &quot;example&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt; or something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding of the current approach is, it assumes primarily involvement of regular community members which leads to cumbersome and lengthy process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;First, a question needs to collect five close votes from 3K users. Per my observations this tends to take few hours or even days. After closure, question hangs on the site for 9 days before it gets [auto-deleted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/177675/165773). If it manages to get an upvoted or accepted answer prior to closure things get even more complicated because such questions aren't eligible for automatic deletion and can in theory hang in here indefinitely.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that planned changes are so much focused on preventing debugging questions our current way looks somewhat worrying.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope that the changes will help to educate newcomers against asking for code troubleshooting over here. But [statistics](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6592/31260) seems to suggest that ~20% questions here come from users who simply don't have an option to ask for debugging help at more appropriate site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes me wonder how to handle it when such questions are posted here despite all the effort and guidance." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23304" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8145" RevisionGUID="12b397e4-f87d-439f-b723-1a13d539265c" CreationDate="2016-08-13T16:58:25.293" UserId="31260" Text="This was discussed quite thoroughly in the comments. For readers not inclined to dive into details below are key takeaways:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently there seem to be no need to do anything because it is expected that coming changes (particularly tagline) will suffice to prevent enough of debugging questions (including those from users blocked at SO) to let them be handled well enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may be reconsidered later if (**if**) it turns that even after changes we still get too many questions asking for debugging help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for diamond moderators more actively deleting debugging questions, this is possibly not even related to site rename because SE Community Manager [already recommended them doing this](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31225279#31225279 &quot;'delete everything that's blatantly off-topic as soon as it appears'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;\- will the diamond moderators take a more active role in sweeping up the code troubleshooting questions...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;\- Personally, I have been. Ever since Shog strongly suggested faster deletions in The Whiteboard. Previously, I was hesitant to delete questions that would otherwise be [Roomba](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/177675/165773 &quot;what's this&quot;)'d, but I am now. I guess I don't see that as a change that is related to the rebranding at all.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23305" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8145" RevisionGUID="8e56e474-6f45-4565-b033-6eba5846e159" CreationDate="2016-08-13T19:51:33.903" UserId="31260" Comment="wordsmithing" Text="This was discussed quite thoroughly in the comments. For readers not inclined to dive into details below are key takeaways:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently there seem to be no need to do anything because it is expected that coming changes (particularly tagline) will suffice to prevent enough of debugging questions (including those from users blocked at SO) to let the rest to be handled efficiently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may be reconsidered later if (**if**) it turns that even after changes we still get too many questions asking for debugging help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for diamond moderators more actively deleting debugging questions, this is possibly not even related to site rename because SE Community Manager [already recommended them doing this](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31225279#31225279 &quot;'delete everything that's blatantly off-topic as soon as it appears'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;\- will the diamond moderators take a more active role in sweeping up the code troubleshooting questions...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;\- Personally, I have been. Ever since Shog strongly suggested faster deletions in The Whiteboard. Previously, I was hesitant to delete questions that would otherwise be [Roomba](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/177675/165773 &quot;what's this&quot;)'d, but I am now. I guess I don't see that as a change that is related to the rebranding at all.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23306" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8146" RevisionGUID="8468a861-cba3-48fd-ba3f-8589dedb690d" CreationDate="2016-08-14T05:55:25.573" UserId="160511" Text="dunno who the moderators are but the deletion of my comments in [this thread](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/328001/is-power-of-two-bits-per-word-convenient-if-it-is-why-is-that) coupled with the retention of similarly disrespectful comments from *gnasher729* appears to show favoritism, or at least, insufficient reading/consideration or awareness of the comments as a whole in that thread.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;i'm not particularly put-out, but i think the admins or moderators of this forum should be aware of the disparate scrutiny applied to contentious comments in this particular case." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23307" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8146" RevisionGUID="8468a861-cba3-48fd-ba3f-8589dedb690d" CreationDate="2016-08-14T05:55:25.573" UserId="160511" Text="inconsistent application of deletion of &quot;uncivil&quot; comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23308" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8146" RevisionGUID="8468a861-cba3-48fd-ba3f-8589dedb690d" CreationDate="2016-08-14T05:55:25.573" UserId="160511" Text="|discussion|moderation|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23309" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8144" RevisionGUID="24dc250a-d5f9-4156-ae1a-90c00591e3d1" CreationDate="2016-08-14T07:00:30.410" UserId="122484" Comment="fix a swypeo" Text="Are you interested in applying principles to aid programming, like modularity? About fixing a program that runs very slowly because someone wrote an O(*n*&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;) loop when *n* gets large?&#xA;&#xA;Are you interested in applying principles to aid debugging, like hypothesis testing and wolf fencing?&#xA;&#xA;Are you concerned about writing programs that are maintainable? Portable? Testable? Usable? Reliable? Secure?&#xA;&#xA;Do you think about prioritizing what to build next? About shipping and iterating? About reducing risk of failure? Do you balk when managers think they can dictate schedule, content, and quality all at once?&#xA;&#xA;These are engineering topics. The new site name tells me these topics belong here, unlike many other programming topics that belong on SO. Or potted plants for your cubicle." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23310" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8147" RevisionGUID="4fb37dfa-68fe-40e5-87c6-34f9695a8502" CreationDate="2016-08-14T09:00:56.330" UserId="47" Text="If there are certain keywords in comments then a single flag is all that's needed to delete that comment, so it could be that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your comments showed up in the flag queue a diamond moderator would have deleted them, but perhaps didn't check the other comments. If that's the case I apologise on behalf of us all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you think that a comment is inappropriate, don't respond, just flag it for one of us to deal with." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23311" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8148" RevisionGUID="7102ea89-b2fb-43b5-9ae7-28f0d57de861" CreationDate="2016-08-14T11:38:12.547" UserId="25936" Text="&gt; for someone with 8801 rep, this answer is quite ignorant.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @gnasher729, you are totally ignorant of both the history and the hardware involved in the history. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are the couple of comments that were flagged and deleted. When I removed them, I took a (quick) look for other comments that were mere personal attacks devoid of any actual (technical) argument or other useful information. I didn't find any. If there were - or appeared later - feel free to flag them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23312" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8147" RevisionGUID="ade41715-cd48-46a7-ada6-b904bdf2ddf5" CreationDate="2016-08-14T15:25:41.850" UserId="47" Comment="more info" Text="If there are certain keywords in comments then a single flag is all that's needed to delete that comment, so it could be that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your comments showed up in the flag queue a diamond moderator would have deleted them, but perhaps didn't check the other comments. If that's the case I apologise on behalf of us all. However, if there are a number of flags that indicate an argument in comments we usually do check the rest of the comments as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you think that a comment is inappropriate, don't respond, just flag it for one of us to deal with." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23313" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8149" RevisionGUID="2ea31023-35fe-469e-a98e-20af2adf123b" CreationDate="2016-08-15T02:18:12.107" UserId="1204" Text="Comments only have two sanctioned purposes: *clarification,* and *asking for clarification*.  Any other use subjects them to removal. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, a good moderator will refrain from taking any action at all unless the community shows some interest with their flags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this particular case, I see several comments that are either unnecessary, obsolete or just plain noise, and I plan on flagging several of them.  In particular, the debate over whether the question is a duplicate or not.  The remainder of the comments continue to be too lengthy because certain people would rather get into a debate instead of accepting some facts that were presented in the comments that are not only factual but obvious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even then, content like that more properly belongs in an answer and not a comment.  I tried posting such an answer, but it wasn't received well and the participants seem more interested in engaging in pedantry than accepting the obvious.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23314" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8149" RevisionGUID="5db6b219-33c4-4bcd-b114-66c62e5dd772" CreationDate="2016-08-15T02:25:25.233" UserId="1204" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="Comments only have two sanctioned purposes: *clarification of the on-topic material of a post,* and *asking for such clarification*.  Any other use subjects them to removal. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, a good moderator will refrain from taking any action at all unless the community shows some interest with their flags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this particular case, I see several comments that are either unnecessary, obsolete or just plain noise, and I plan on flagging several of them.  In particular, the debate over whether the question is a duplicate or not.  The remainder of the comments continue to be too lengthy because certain people would rather get into a debate instead of accepting some facts that were presented in the comments that are not only factual but obvious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even then, content like that more properly belongs in an answer and not a comment.  I tried posting such an answer, but it wasn't received well and the participants seem more interested in engaging in pedantry than accepting the obvious.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23315" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8138" RevisionGUID="e90ccad0-a52d-44f1-83c4-60f5e494cead" CreationDate="2016-08-15T16:18:40.637" UserId="32353" Comment="fixed typing boo boo" Text="Do you care about applying craftsmanship&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; or engineering to the planning, design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance of software? Are you concerned with all aspects of software development (and not just writing/debugging/testing code)? Are you concerned with the practice (as opposed to the theory) of software development?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can answer &quot;yes&quot; to any or all of those questions, then you're probably good here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't matter if you are a self-taught hobbyist working on an open source project in your spare time, a student, a professional, or an academic. We are a community of craftsman and engineers who are concerned with all aspects of software development. We just don't want to see questions about writing/debugging/testing code, since those questions already have a good home on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; So why isn't the site called &quot;Software Craftsmanship&quot;? Because Software Engineering is both a job title and an academic field of study at the graduate and undergraduate level. Plus, there are at least a few common definitions, even if there isn't 1 fully accepted definition." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23323" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8151" RevisionGUID="964693a6-3adb-44d4-a4a8-e7c509906b74" CreationDate="2016-08-16T21:25:59.900" UserId="120272" Text="I am currently reading [the codeless code](http://thecodelesscode.com/), and have trouble understanding a particular [case](http://thecodelesscode.com/case/178). In particular which bad practice is pointed out in the last paragraph.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the fables and koans are all about good practice, corporate software dev culture, and other topics directly tied to software devellopment, I was tempted to ask help understanding what bad practice is pointed at in that fable.  &#xD;&#xA;But at the same time, if that particular question was asked in such a manner to be answerable and on topic, it could make a really bad precedent and bring up a lot of people asking help understanding a blog post [(or worse - twitter) post](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7182/what-goes-on-programmers-se-a-guide-for-stack-overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the [help about on topic question](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), it would be (arguably) in one or more of the &quot;do ask&quot;, and not in any &quot;don't ask&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    software requirements  &#xD;&#xA;    [x]    software architecture and design  &#xD;&#xA;    [x]    algorithm and data structure concepts  &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    quality assurance and testing  &#xD;&#xA;    [x]    development methodologies and processes  &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    software configuration management  &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    software engineering management  &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    software licensing  &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (ask on The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    understanding, writing, or debugging code (check out Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    where to find a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    career or education advice, salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*As a side note, if the answer is &quot;it is off topic&quot;, which I think it will be, I ll just ask for help in the chat*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23324" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8151" RevisionGUID="964693a6-3adb-44d4-a4a8-e7c509906b74" CreationDate="2016-08-16T21:25:59.900" UserId="120272" Text="Would it be on topic to ask question about the codeless code case interpretation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23325" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8151" RevisionGUID="964693a6-3adb-44d4-a4a8-e7c509906b74" CreationDate="2016-08-16T21:25:59.900" UserId="120272" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23326" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8152" RevisionGUID="069ca5fa-f17a-43cd-9351-e258d728ae2d" CreationDate="2016-08-16T21:59:20.410" UserId="1204" Text="Let's start with Common Mistakes Stack Exchange Users Make, **Invalid Assumption #256:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If a question can somehow be made to relate to one of the subject matter bullets in the Help Center/On-Topic, it is automatically on-topic, even if that relation is of the most tenuous nature.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the more accurate assumption that replaces it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Topic areas are more about *excluding categories of questions* than they are about including them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By way of illustration:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1.  What data structure should I use for this programming problem?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is on-topic, because it relates directly to software design,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2.  What keyboard should I use for this programming problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is off-topic because, even though programmers do use keyboards to program, it is a peripheral concern with respect to software design, and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3.  What pickles should I eat/music should I listen to while solving this programming problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is off-topic because it doesn't have anything whatsoever to do with Software Design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would say that questions of the &quot;What does this Codeless Code case mean&quot; variety fall into the second category above, of programming concerns that might have something to do with design, but not directly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Verdict:** Off-Topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23327" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8152" RevisionGUID="3a8cd965-d03e-4211-9413-27175bd8f553" CreationDate="2016-08-16T22:08:23.583" UserId="1204" Comment="added 270 characters in body" Text="Let's start with Common Mistakes Stack Exchange Users Make, **Invalid Assumption #256:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If a question can somehow be made to relate to one of the subject matter bullets in the Help Center/On-Topic, it is automatically on-topic, even if that relation is of the most tenuous nature.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the more accurate assumption that replaces it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Topic areas are more about *excluding categories of questions* than they are about including them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By way of illustration:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1.  What data structure should I use for this programming problem?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is on-topic, because it relates directly to software design,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2.  What keyboard should I use for this programming problem?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is off-topic because, even though programmers do use keyboards to program, it is a peripheral concern with respect to software design (unless you're using APL), and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3.  What pickles should I eat/music should I listen to while solving this programming problem?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is off-topic because it doesn't have anything whatsoever to do with Software Design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would say that questions of the &quot;What does this Codeless Code case mean&quot; variety fall into the second category above, of programming concerns that might have something vaguely to do with design, but not really.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The specific Codeless Code that you cited has less to do with software design than it does with *demonstrating absurdity by being absurd* (along the lines of &quot;I see what you did there&quot;), with software design as the absurdity vehicle, rather than the principal topic.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it another way, if you have to explain a joke, it's not really funny anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Verdict:** Off-Topic on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23328" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="8151" RevisionGUID="7f441a40-3c5f-4fc1-a679-f95426166bec" CreationDate="2016-08-17T12:04:06.337" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6417],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:60357,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;amon&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="23329" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8152" RevisionGUID="efa55ae5-cdd4-4286-9551-2b8ceb1caa6e" CreationDate="2016-08-18T14:50:28.423" UserId="1204" Comment="added 6 characters in body" Text="Let's start with Common Mistakes Stack Exchange Users Make, **Invalid Assumption #256:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If a question can somehow be made to relate to one of the subject matter bullets in the Help Center/On-Topic article, even if that relation is of the most tenuous nature, then it is automatically on-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the more accurate assumption that replaces it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Topic areas are more about *excluding categories of questions* than they are about including them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By way of illustration:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1.  What data structure should I use for this programming problem?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is on-topic, because it relates directly to software design,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2.  What keyboard should I use for this programming problem?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is off-topic because, even though programmers do use keyboards to program, it is a peripheral concern with respect to software design (unless you're using APL), and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3.  What pickles should I eat/music should I listen to while solving this programming problem?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is off-topic because it doesn't have anything whatsoever to do with Software Design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would say that questions of the &quot;What does this Codeless Code case mean&quot; variety fall into the second category above, of programming concerns that might have something vaguely to do with design, but not really.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The specific Codeless Code that you cited has less to do with software design than it does with *demonstrating absurdity by being absurd* (along the lines of &quot;I see what you did there&quot;), with software design as the absurdity vehicle, rather than the principal topic.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it another way, if you have to explain a joke, it's not really funny anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Verdict:** Off-Topic on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23333" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8154" RevisionGUID="d2e375d5-2184-405f-9026-c84f87b7cf5e" CreationDate="2016-08-25T12:23:35.517" UserId="51367" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/329253/how-do-i-protect-my-code-if-i-hire-a-freelancer-overseas&#xD;&#xA;was closed as duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The duplicate url: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10340/how-do-you-prevent-the-piracy-of-your-software &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Has no reason at all being there. The question is clearly not a duplicate of the one linked as a duplicate and wastes the time of people clicking on it for information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can I change the url to the right duplicate url: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/170246/how-to-prevent-code-from-leaking-outside-work ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23334" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8154" RevisionGUID="d2e375d5-2184-405f-9026-c84f87b7cf5e" CreationDate="2016-08-25T12:23:35.517" UserId="51367" Text="Question marked as duplicate, fair, but the links is wrong" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23335" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8154" RevisionGUID="d2e375d5-2184-405f-9026-c84f87b7cf5e" CreationDate="2016-08-25T12:23:35.517" UserId="51367" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23336" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8154" RevisionGUID="b168aa17-934a-4b30-ad06-8e09c3de5d7b" CreationDate="2016-08-25T13:46:03.610" UserId="51367" Comment="edited title" Text="Question marked as duplicate, fair, but the link is wrong" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23337" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8126" RevisionGUID="aa3c2ace-42d0-4892-a526-9d683528a027" CreationDate="2016-08-26T14:18:02.333" UserId="31260" Comment="http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/31762989#31762989" Text="&lt;sup&gt;(summary of July 29th [discussion at Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/new-site-name-discussion-jul-29-2016 &quot;'New Site Name discussion Jul 29, 2016'&quot;))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At [help/on-topic page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...bullets in about list look OK to keep as is:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* software requirements&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;* software configuration management&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note in past discussions there were some doubts whether licensing belongs. Current plan is to consider this a [minor issue](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/31224602#31224602 &quot;'it's a super inside-baseball kinda discussion; licensing and law just aren't a big part of this site on a day to day basis'&quot;) that can be clarified later per separate meta discussion. (since this part of Help Center is mod editable, adding and removing bullets is a lightweight change)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...not-about list is to be made smaller, with bullets as proposed by Robert Harvey:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;* Please make sure that your question is **directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**. Avoid peripheral issues such as product recommendations, career or education advice, product support or legal matters&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note above phrasing is tailored for using at [help/dont-ask] page where [we would like it to move](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/31762989#31762989), and such a move would require CM to agree and do the page edit. In case if it is going to get to &quot;not about&quot; part at [help/on-topic] page we will tweak the phrasing to make it read smoother over there, that is when followed by words &quot;not about...&quot;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With regards to overlapping sites, [current stats](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8114/follow-up-2-new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8121#comment25265_8121 &quot;In the last 90 days, we've migrated 89 questions away from Programmers. Of those, 70 to Stack Overflow, 4 to Workplace, 3 to Programmers Meta, 2 to Unix &amp; Linux, 2 to Open Source, and 1 each to Programming Puzzles &amp; Code Golf, Computer Science, Code Review, Law, Webmasters, Startups, Cross Validated, and Software Recommendations. In order for a migration to be available to users, there needs to be sufficient need and agreement by both communities.&quot;) suggest that we better keep migration options as is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Later though [this may be reconsidered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31378331#31378331):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the name change is successful and the number of questions migrated to SO and/or the number of code debugging questions drops, I think it's something to revisit for sure.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23338" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8155" RevisionGUID="9734de26-e534-46db-b7f7-9f0b13676738" CreationDate="2016-08-26T16:43:18.287" UserId="209331" Text="I have an review in my queue where the only change was to add a block of code as an example.  My initial reaction was to reject it but none of the rejection reasons seemed appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, is this something that is considered allowable?  If not what reason should be used to reject it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23339" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8155" RevisionGUID="9734de26-e534-46db-b7f7-9f0b13676738" CreationDate="2016-08-26T16:43:18.287" UserId="209331" Text="Is it OK to add code samples in an edit" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23340" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8155" RevisionGUID="9734de26-e534-46db-b7f7-9f0b13676738" CreationDate="2016-08-26T16:43:18.287" UserId="209331" Text="|support|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23341" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8155" RevisionGUID="32f0100a-aa2a-466b-a5eb-dde923a30e69" CreationDate="2016-08-26T18:13:03.390" UserId="209331" Comment="added more detail to the question" Text="I have an review in my queue where the only change was to add a block of code as an example.  My initial reaction was to reject it but none of the rejection reasons seemed appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, is this something that is considered allowable?  If not what reason should be used to reject it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Gnat pointed to the specific question in the comments but I kind of want to talk about a more general case.  The reason I considered choosing is &quot;This edit deviates from the original intent of the post. Even edits that must make drastic changes should strive to preserve the goals of the post's owner.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What made me stop is that that reason suggests that it's OK to make drastic changes (such as adding code examples) as long as they are consistent with the author's intent.  I didn't yet take the time to evaluate whether that code is consistent but assume for a second that they are.  If, hypothetically, the additional code was a perfect example of what the author suggested, would it be OK?  In other words is there line where a change is can be considered too drastic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23342" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8156" RevisionGUID="14fc102d-f17a-49b7-ad97-8d3c39719877" CreationDate="2016-08-26T19:39:47.173" UserId="122484" Text="This proposed tagline and [pictorial representation][1] *miss the mark* in conveying the (current/new) site scope and the new name, &quot;Software Engineering.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's not:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* broaden the scope to Systems development&#xD;&#xA;* narrow the scope to discussions about the Development Lifecycle itself&#xD;&#xA;* suggest that the Waterfall lifecycle is desirable&#xD;&#xA;* imply that the scope includes the details of testing, operations, and everything but debugging that's within the development lifecycle&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The referenced SDLC picture is a Waterfall diagram except the sequential steps are drawn ascending rather than descending. Waterfall is the simplest complete model but it maximizes risk of failure by delaying empirical feedback until release. It's responsible for many big project failures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [The road to Agile][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In 1970, the first article on the Waterfall model was published by Winston W. Royce. Royce did not use the term Waterfall in that article, but he presented the model as an example of a flawed, nonworking model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is software engineering about? Let's look at the [ACM professional organization][3] [my italics]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering Notes** (**SEN**) is an informal publication of the **ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering** (**SIGSOFT**) *concerned with the cost-effective, timely development and maintenance of high-quality software.* Relevant topics include requirements, specification, design and implementation methods, software maintenance, reuse and re-engineering, quality assurance, measurement and evaluation, software processes, automated tools, practical experience, and related issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Engineering** is about achieving *quality attributes* like performance, security, modifiability, reliability, usability, maintainability, safety, timeliness, cost-effectiveness, portability, and testability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Engineering** is about *applying principles* when building things. Many principles are known, in categories such as mathematics, empirical evidence, scientific knowledge, and practical know-how.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus the **site's tagline** should go something along the lines of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Q&amp;A site where you can ask and answer questions about applying principles to building software; about achieving software quality attributes like performance, safety, reliability, usability, maintainability, and testability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/po2PZ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2016/july/in-pursuit-of-continuous-integration-delivery-and&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.sigsoft.org/SEN/about.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23343" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8156" RevisionGUID="3fd3ac96-9a7d-43de-8d91-d64ab0695b36" CreationDate="2016-08-26T22:24:45.790" UserId="122484" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body" Text="This proposed tagline and [pictorial representation][1] *miss the mark* in conveying the (current/new) site scope and the new name, &quot;Software Engineering.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's not:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* broaden the scope to Systems development&#xD;&#xA;* narrow the scope to discussions about software development lifecycles themselves&#xD;&#xA;* suggest that the Waterfall lifecycle is desirable&#xD;&#xA;* imply that the scope includes the details of testing, operations, and everything but debugging that's within the development lifecycle&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The referenced SDLC picture is a Waterfall diagram except the sequential steps are drawn ascending rather than descending. Waterfall is the simplest complete model but it maximizes risk of failure by delaying empirical feedback. It's responsible for many big project failures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [The road to Agile][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In 1970, the first article on the Waterfall model was published by Winston W. Royce. Royce did not use the term Waterfall in that article, but he presented the model as an example of a flawed, nonworking model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is software engineering about? Let's look at the [ACM professional organization][3] [my italics]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering Notes** (**SEN**) is an informal publication of the **ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering** (**SIGSOFT**) *concerned with the cost-effective, timely development and maintenance of high-quality software.* Relevant topics include requirements, specification, design and implementation methods, software maintenance, reuse and re-engineering, quality assurance, measurement and evaluation, software processes, automated tools, practical experience, and related issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Engineering** is about achieving *quality attributes* like performance, security, modifiability, reliability, usability, maintainability, safety, timeliness, cost-effectiveness, portability, and testability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Engineering** is about *applying principles* when building things. Many principles are known, in categories such as mathematics, empirical evidence, scientific knowledge, and practical know-how.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus the **site's tagline** should go something along the lines of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Q&amp;A site where you can ask and answer questions about applying principles to building software; about achieving software quality attributes like performance, safety, reliability, usability, maintainability, and testability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/po2PZ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2016/july/in-pursuit-of-continuous-integration-delivery-and&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.sigsoft.org/SEN/about.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23344" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8114" RevisionGUID="7f16a6a1-219f-462a-8d4d-88d72a900abf" CreationDate="2016-08-27T00:50:59.333" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|site-definition|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23345" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8156" RevisionGUID="bcf26560-055a-49b0-9e34-e36419ac1e93" CreationDate="2016-08-27T22:57:53.463" UserId="122484" Comment="adopt @ThomasOwen's reformatted tagline; added pgfs 2-4 to answer @gnat's comments" Text="This proposed tagline and [pictorial representation][1] *miss the mark* in conveying the (current/new) site scope and the new name, &quot;Software Engineering.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I agree that the site scope should include software development lifecycles and more generally software development processes, methods, and methodology, **I propose that we not use the terms** *&quot;System Development Life Cycle&quot;* or *&quot;SDLC&quot;* **nor link to** [Wikipedia's SDLC page][2] to help explain SE.SE. That part of the Question is what goes off the mark for me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Systems development&quot; implies projects where software is one component along with hardware, courseware, wetware, etc. E.g. space systems. (The phrase &quot;software systems development&quot; doesn't add anything over &quot;software development&quot;, and shortening it to &quot;systems development&quot; makes it ambiguous between systems *of* vs. *including* software components vs. &quot;systems software&quot;.) **I propose that systems development topics be out of scope for SE.SE.** Topics like program management and robot (ME+EE+SE) architecture are not in the site's current scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;SDLC&quot; may be construed as a broad term for &quot;any kind of development lifecycle&quot; *or* as a subcategory of lifecycles which contrast with incremental approaches. Wikipedia's SDLC page is inconsistent about that, as are other sources. First it says Waterfall and Agile are among the SDLC models, then it contrasts SDLC where documentation is &quot;Vital&quot; (each phase needs a work product and may end with a team handoff) vs. Agile. The page focuses on stages of work, like building components then integrating them, never mentioning continuous integration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's not:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* broaden the scope to Systems development [as in the SDLC references]&#xD;&#xA;* narrow the scope to discussions about software development lifecycles themselves [as in the tag line phrase &quot;questions directly related to the SDLC&quot;]&#xD;&#xA;* suggest that the Waterfall lifecycle is desirable&#xD;&#xA;* imply that the scope includes the details of testing, operations, and everything that's within the development lifecycle except coding and debugging [as in the SDLC Waterfall diagram with those parts crossed out]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The referenced SDLC picture is a Waterfall diagram except the sequential steps are drawn ascending rather than descending. Waterfall is the simplest complete model but it maximizes risk of failure by delaying empirical feedback. It's responsible for many big project failures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [The road to Agile][3]:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In 1970, the first article on the Waterfall model was published by Winston W. Royce. Royce did not use the term Waterfall in that article, but he presented the model as an example of a flawed, nonworking model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is software engineering about? Let's look at the [ACM professional organization][4] [my italics]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering Notes** (**SEN**) is an informal publication of the **ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering** (**SIGSOFT**) *concerned with the cost-effective, timely development and maintenance of high-quality software.* Relevant topics include requirements, specification, design and implementation methods, software maintenance, reuse and re-engineering, quality assurance, measurement and evaluation, software processes, automated tools, practical experience, and related issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Engineering** is about achieving *quality attributes* like performance, security, modifiability, reliability, usability, maintainability, safety, timeliness, cost-effectiveness, portability, and testability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Engineering** is about *applying principles* when building things. Many principles are known, in categories such as mathematics, empirical evidence, scientific knowledge, and practical know-how.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The **site's tagline** (draft 2) would then go something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site for professionals, academics, and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers about applying principles to building software systems and achieving quality attributes such as performance, safety, reliability, usability, maintainability, and testability. It is not a site for code troubleshooting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It might be better to use the word &quot;methodology,&quot; both in the sense of &quot;a system of methods&quot; and &quot;the study of methods.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/po2PZ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2016/july/in-pursuit-of-continuous-integration-delivery-and&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.sigsoft.org/SEN/about.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23346" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8156" RevisionGUID="c98f300c-2d75-470b-8286-667e5fab5c5a" CreationDate="2016-08-27T23:03:50.660" UserId="122484" Comment="added 114 characters in body" Text="This proposed tagline and [pictorial representation][1] *miss the mark* in conveying the (current/new) site scope and the new name, &quot;Software Engineering.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I agree that the site scope should include software development lifecycles and more generally software development processes, methods, and methodology, **I propose that we not use the terms** *&quot;System Development Life Cycle&quot;* or *&quot;SDLC&quot;* **nor link to** [Wikipedia's SDLC page][2] to help explain SE.SE. That part of the Question is what goes off the mark for me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Systems development&quot; implies projects where software is one component along with hardware, courseware, wetware, etc. E.g. space systems. (The phrase &quot;software systems development&quot; doesn't add anything over &quot;software development&quot;, and shortening it to &quot;systems development&quot; makes it ambiguous between systems *of* vs. *including* software components vs. &quot;systems software&quot;.) **I propose that systems development topics be out of scope for SE.SE.** Topics like program management and robot (ME+EE+SE) architecture are not in the site's current scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;SDLC&quot; may be construed as a broad term for &quot;any kind of development lifecycle&quot; *or* as a subcategory of lifecycles which contrast with incremental approaches. Wikipedia's SDLC page is inconsistent about that, as are other sources. First it says Waterfall and Agile are among the SDLC models, then it contrasts SDLC where documentation is &quot;Vital&quot; (each phase needs a work product and may end with a team handoff) vs. Agile. The page focuses on stages of work, like building components then integrating them, never mentioning continuous integration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's not:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* broaden the scope to Systems development [as in the SDLC references]&#xD;&#xA;* narrow the scope to discussions about software development lifecycles themselves [as in the tag line phrase &quot;questions directly related to the SDLC&quot; and the proposal &quot;Please make sure that your question is directly related to the Systems Development Life Cycle.&quot;]&#xD;&#xA;* suggest that the Waterfall lifecycle is desirable&#xD;&#xA;* imply that the scope includes the details of testing, operations, and everything that's within the development lifecycle except coding and debugging [as in the SDLC Waterfall diagram with those parts crossed out]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The referenced SDLC picture is a Waterfall diagram except the sequential steps are drawn ascending rather than descending. Waterfall is the simplest complete model but it maximizes risk of failure by delaying empirical feedback. It's responsible for many big project failures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [The road to Agile][3]:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In 1970, the first article on the Waterfall model was published by Winston W. Royce. Royce did not use the term Waterfall in that article, but he presented the model as an example of a flawed, nonworking model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is software engineering about? Let's look at the [ACM professional organization][4] [my italics]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering Notes** (**SEN**) is an informal publication of the **ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering** (**SIGSOFT**) *concerned with the cost-effective, timely development and maintenance of high-quality software.* Relevant topics include requirements, specification, design and implementation methods, software maintenance, reuse and re-engineering, quality assurance, measurement and evaluation, software processes, automated tools, practical experience, and related issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Engineering** is about achieving *quality attributes* like performance, security, modifiability, reliability, usability, maintainability, safety, timeliness, cost-effectiveness, portability, and testability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Engineering** is about *applying principles* when building things. Many principles are known, in categories such as mathematics, empirical evidence, scientific knowledge, and practical know-how.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The **site's tagline** (draft 2) would then go something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site for professionals, academics, and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers about applying principles to building software systems and achieving quality attributes such as performance, safety, reliability, usability, maintainability, and testability. It is not a site for code troubleshooting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It might be better to use the word &quot;methodology,&quot; both in the sense of &quot;a system of methods&quot; and &quot;the study of methods.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/po2PZ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2016/july/in-pursuit-of-continuous-integration-delivery-and&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.sigsoft.org/SEN/about.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23347" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8156" RevisionGUID="678f9740-b75d-4a90-8c8b-9fc4345497a1" CreationDate="2016-08-28T01:03:52.633" UserId="122484" Comment="added 296 characters in body" Text="This proposed tagline and [pictorial representation][1] *miss the mark* in conveying the (current/new) site scope and the new name, &quot;Software Engineering.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I agree that the site scope should include software development lifecycles and more generally software development processes, methods, and methodology, **I propose that we not use the terms** *&quot;System Development Life Cycle&quot;* or *&quot;SDLC&quot;* **nor link to** [Wikipedia's SDLC page][2] to help explain SE.SE. That part of the Question is what goes off the mark for me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Systems development&quot; implies projects where software is one component along with hardware, courseware, wetware, etc. E.g. space systems and robots (ME+EE+SE). (The phrase &quot;software systems development&quot; doesn't add anything over &quot;software development&quot;, and shortening it to &quot;systems development&quot; makes it ambiguous between systems *of* vs. *including* software components vs. &quot;systems software&quot;.) **I propose that systems development topics not become in scope for SE.SE.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;SDLC&quot; may be construed as a broad term for &quot;any kind of development lifecycle&quot; *or* as a subcategory of lifecycles which contrast with incremental approaches. Wikipedia's SDLC page is inconsistent about that, as are other sources. First it says Waterfall and Agile are among the SDLC models, then it contrasts SDLC where documentation is &quot;Vital&quot; (each phase needs a work product and may end with a team handoff) vs. Agile. The page focuses on stages of work, like building components then integrating them, never mentioning continuous integration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's not:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* broaden the scope to Systems development [as in the SDLC references]&#xD;&#xA;* narrow the scope to discussions about software development lifecycles themselves [as in the tag line phrase &quot;questions directly related to the SDLC&quot; and the proposal &quot;Please make sure that your question is directly related to the Systems Development Life Cycle.&quot;]&#xD;&#xA;* suggest that the Waterfall lifecycle is desirable&#xD;&#xA;* imply that the scope includes the details of testing, operations, and everything that's within the development lifecycle except coding and debugging [as in the SDLC Waterfall diagram with those parts crossed out]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The referenced SDLC picture is a Waterfall diagram except the sequential steps are drawn ascending rather than descending. Waterfall is the simplest complete model but it maximizes risk of failure by delaying empirical feedback. It's responsible for many big project failures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [The road to Agile][3]:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In 1970, the first article on the Waterfall model was published by Winston W. Royce. Royce did not use the term Waterfall in that article, but he presented the model as an example of a flawed, nonworking model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is software engineering about? Let's look at the [ACM professional organization][4] [my italics]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering Notes** (**SEN**) is an informal publication of the **ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering** (**SIGSOFT**) *concerned with the cost-effective, timely development and maintenance of high-quality software.* Relevant topics include requirements, specification, design and implementation methods, software maintenance, reuse and re-engineering, quality assurance, measurement and evaluation, software processes, automated tools, practical experience, and related issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Engineering** is about achieving *quality attributes* like performance, security, modifiability, reliability, usability, maintainability, safety, timeliness, cost-effectiveness, portability, and testability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Engineering** is about *applying principles* when building things. Many principles are known, in categories such as mathematics, empirical evidence, scientific knowledge, and practical know-how.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The **site's tagline** (draft 2) would then go something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site for professionals, academics, and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers about applying principles to building software systems and achieving quality attributes such as performance, safety, reliability, usability, maintainability, and testability. It is not a site for code troubleshooting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or a shorter version using the word &quot;methodology&quot; both in the sense of &quot;a system of methods&quot; and &quot;the study of methods&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site for professionals, academics, and students in software development who are interested in getting expert answers about software development processes, methodology, and achieving qualities such as performance, safety, reliability, usability, maintainability, and testability. It is not a site for code troubleshooting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/po2PZ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2016/july/in-pursuit-of-continuous-integration-delivery-and&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.sigsoft.org/SEN/about.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23348" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8157" RevisionGUID="14c1331e-72c4-4ee0-94af-bc9eb6277b9e" CreationDate="2016-08-29T00:20:33.660" UserId="184113" Text="Stack Overflow recently launched their Documentation beta. I propose we make Documentation for Programmers.SE, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Jeff Atwood said in his [blog post,][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for when you're front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you're in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if we use the same reasoning for Documentation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow Documentation teaches you how to use `malloc()`, while Programmers Documentation teaches you memory management concepts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow Documentation teaches you how to create a database entity in PHP, while programmers Documentation teaches you about data structures and their usage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should there be Documentation for Programmers too?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23349" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8157" RevisionGUID="14c1331e-72c4-4ee0-94af-bc9eb6277b9e" CreationDate="2016-08-29T00:20:33.660" UserId="184113" Text="Proposal for Documentation on Programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23350" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8157" RevisionGUID="14c1331e-72c4-4ee0-94af-bc9eb6277b9e" CreationDate="2016-08-29T00:20:33.660" UserId="184113" Text="|discussion|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23351" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="36162eb5-b064-44a7-b713-05046d6d1e79" CreationDate="2016-08-29T06:24:01.437" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|questions|homework-dump|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23352" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8114" RevisionGUID="92f84f69-708a-4050-9ee0-27749bdc4834" CreationDate="2016-08-29T06:24:24.640" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|site-definition|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23353" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8158" RevisionGUID="e97077e6-11ed-4c00-b39c-8f02dd7fa5d9" CreationDate="2016-08-29T14:06:05.353" UserId="31260" Text="This was asked and [answered by Community Manager](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/281690/165773) at MSE:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the product isn't quite ready to go elsewhere... Once it is [known to work](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/328405/documentation-has-entered-public-beta#comment369176_328405), then we can discuss the possibility of adding it to other sites but that won't be for [6-8 weeks](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19478/the-many-memes-of-meta/19514#19514)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23355" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8160" RevisionGUID="69005b91-48a5-4dd4-b9a1-491ed3350bc7" CreationDate="2016-08-30T21:22:10.337" UserId="122571" Text="I will say it [again][1]: **I am a software engineer. I write code.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can only see confusion and overlap with the other StackExchange sites (StackOverflow, Workplace, ServerFault, etc). I remember when I tried going to CodeReview for debugging a problem (because obviously code reviews find problems with code, right?) and learning the hard way that CodeReview was not the right place. I can see people like me thinking: *I'm a software engineer. Let's try the Software Engineering site.* We are going to slap people in the face, and it won't be their fault.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would prefer layman's terms over the use of SDLC in the tagline. I didn't know what that was for a long time; we might be taking that term for granted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be very interested to learn if our closed question history looks any better post-rebranding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8078/122571" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23356" PostHistoryTypeId="50" PostId="8093" RevisionGUID="b6dd9e03-dc99-4b00-9a39-f9d2ec6c8f23" CreationDate="2016-08-31T00:10:12.573" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="23358" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8161" RevisionGUID="100a964b-d268-4a9c-8c85-aa8dd6f9599e" CreationDate="2016-08-31T21:05:35.783" UserId="3170" Text="The question is http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/329657/how-to-model-a-simple-economic-market&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems that the first version was seemingly too broad so I'm doing my best to make it more focused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is about making a domain model and I don't usually have a problem analysing a situation but economics is not obvious to me and I'd probably miss the most important factors at play.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I shouldn't have used to word simulation as that probably implied to those reading that I wanted to make something complex and realistic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That isn't the case andn the aim is a simple educational tool with parameters to toy around with that can be built upon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So open to all suggestions to get this back on the rails. TIA :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23359" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8161" RevisionGUID="100a964b-d268-4a9c-8c85-aa8dd6f9599e" CreationDate="2016-08-31T21:05:35.783" UserId="3170" Text="Could someone help get this question on track please?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23360" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8161" RevisionGUID="100a964b-d268-4a9c-8c85-aa8dd6f9599e" CreationDate="2016-08-31T21:05:35.783" UserId="3170" Text="|discussion|support|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23361" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8161" RevisionGUID="bc21f2cd-097f-427a-a64f-dfc46c46a477" CreationDate="2016-08-31T21:11:41.613" UserId="3170" Comment="added 15 characters in body" Text="The question is http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/329657/how-to-model-a-simple-economic-market&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems that the first version was seemingly too broad so I'm doing my best to make it more focused and answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is about making a domain model and I don't usually have a problem analysing a situation but economics is not obvious to me and I'd probably miss the most important factors at play.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I shouldn't have used to word simulation as that probably implied to those reading that I wanted to make something complex and realistic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That isn't the case andn the aim is a simple educational tool with parameters to toy around with that can be built upon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So open to all suggestions to get this back on the rails. TIA :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23362" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8161" RevisionGUID="3a748398-f8bf-4b7b-b424-921b1ececaa2" CreationDate="2016-09-01T05:30:17.567" UserId="3170" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="The question is http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/329657/how-to-model-a-simple-economic-market&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems that the first version was seemingly too broad so I'm doing my best to make it more focused and answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is about making a domain model and I don't usually have a problem analysing a situation but economics is not obvious to me and I'd probably miss the most important factors at play.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I shouldn't have used to word simulation as that probably implied to those reading that I wanted to make something complex and realistic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That isn't the case and the aim is a simple educational tool with parameters to toy around with that can be built upon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So open to all suggestions to get this back on the rails. TIA :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23363" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8162" RevisionGUID="ef2db287-5a4c-48a8-b41e-371fb7cf236e" CreationDate="2016-09-01T10:02:34.080" UserId="4" Text="It seems like your question is more about economics and economic systems rather than software development. It seems like to answer your questions, the person would need some level of detailed knowledge on the domain. There may be someone here with that knowledge, but this is a community of software developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may want to take a step back and think about what questions you need answered to understand your domain. The first step would be to search common sources - visit Wikipedia or use your favorite search engine. There are also some economics-related Stack Exchange sites, like [Economics][1], [Quantitative Finance][2], and [Cross Validated (Statistics)][3]. Be sure to read their Help Centers and/or Meta before posting, to understand what kinds of questions they find acceptable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once you understand your domain, you can come with specific questions about turning a domain concept into something that can be represented in software. But we can't explain your domain to you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://economics.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://quant.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23364" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8161" RevisionGUID="ee3e3685-4709-4e68-bb61-494ca44a2fad" CreationDate="2016-09-01T10:08:39.707" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|specific-question|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23365" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8163" RevisionGUID="80e74f7e-424c-4fb8-b2ef-e72d2997b47f" CreationDate="2016-09-01T14:56:06.203" UserId="193292" Text="As a teen I had no interest in going to university and getting a degree as I did not know what I wanted in life.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am now a few years in to what I could happily see grow into a life-long career as a software developer (or, at least, a life long career in software development as a whole).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am looking in to taking a degree level course which offers multiple &quot;specialisations&quot; and I am torn up between the options (namely computer science or software development). I want to ask for other programmers opinions of what they feel are more valuable to the field to help guide me in making an educated decision on what specialisation to take; would such a question be considered on-topic to this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23366" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8163" RevisionGUID="80e74f7e-424c-4fb8-b2ef-e72d2997b47f" CreationDate="2016-09-01T14:56:06.203" UserId="193292" Text="Are questions related to programming-related qualifications on-topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23367" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8163" RevisionGUID="80e74f7e-424c-4fb8-b2ef-e72d2997b47f" CreationDate="2016-09-01T14:56:06.203" UserId="193292" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23368" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8164" RevisionGUID="22372f28-e1e8-44c4-90c4-9f9d0fa2c8fc" CreationDate="2016-09-01T15:08:23.260" UserDisplayName="user174739" Text="I believe this topic would be too subjective for Q&amp;A; a course that is of interest and relevance to you will not be so to others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You would be better served by finding someone with experience of several degree courses in the [Whiteboard chat][1]; there you can discuss your interests in more detail and get suggestions and recommendations relevant to you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Be advised that this is very much a personal choice; people may be able to offer hints and suggestions, but they cannot choose your course for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23369" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8165" RevisionGUID="3b87c576-5ad7-41a0-91c3-4688ab72057d" CreationDate="2016-09-01T15:22:29.310" UserId="4" Text="No, educational and career advice is explicitly off-topic here. It's too localized to your particular needs and situations, tends to attract options, and can be too broad. Do feel free to bring such things up [in chat][1], though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23370" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8165" RevisionGUID="7f056015-df7c-48ce-897a-5b8af42c1e8d" CreationDate="2016-09-01T19:42:02.203" UserId="47" Comment="typo" Text="No, educational and career advice is explicitly off-topic here. It's too localized to your particular needs and situations, tends to attract opinions, and can be too broad. Do feel free to bring such things up [in chat][1], though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23373" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8166" RevisionGUID="db0be889-2e5a-46b4-9caf-09734fb7fa0a" CreationDate="2016-09-03T05:00:20.063" UserId="243450" Text="Here is the answer at hand: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/329219/243450" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23374" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8166" RevisionGUID="db0be889-2e5a-46b4-9caf-09734fb7fa0a" CreationDate="2016-09-03T05:00:20.063" UserId="243450" Text="Why did this answer get down- and delete-voted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23375" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8166" RevisionGUID="db0be889-2e5a-46b4-9caf-09734fb7fa0a" CreationDate="2016-09-03T05:00:20.063" UserId="243450" Text="|discussion|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23376" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8167" RevisionGUID="0ae2a483-0d39-42e9-8856-ee29ba397cb9" CreationDate="2016-09-03T13:06:15.913" UserId="4" Text="Stack Exchange is not a traditional forum. We expect that questions contain a question and answers contain answers to that question. If you need to add more information to a question, the post should be edited. If you have a different question, then it shouldn't be asked as an answer, but a new question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23377" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8166" RevisionGUID="67f0ad01-afeb-4315-9827-a133ee41d59a" CreationDate="2016-09-03T18:51:22.403" UserId="136413" Comment="not a bug" Text="|discussion|answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23378" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8168" RevisionGUID="b75e0b6c-5008-4658-bfb4-935ca59728df" CreationDate="2016-09-04T09:05:01.073" UserId="209665" Text="There is a dinosauric component to this eruption of frustration. In the pre-ubiquitous-internet-age, the solution for an assignment would be in the student's notes or in a book the teacher told him to read. We would &quot;copy and paste&quot; that solution, either from memory or textbook, and get a good grade in return. And somehow some geezers find that more worthy than finding answers on the internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We were mindless time managing copy-monkeys just like the target audience of this post, the only difference is that the books did not smack us in the face to tell us we were not thinking as we were doing it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is all in the game. It isn't easy to get effortless pan-ready answers here. Of course some students will try and if they do it in a smart way they may even succeed. It is up to the experienced lot to turn those fishing practices into learning experiences. After all, that is what we are here for, are we not?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23379" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8169" RevisionGUID="9896904a-38ce-4c7d-be5f-2325dd2f43cf" CreationDate="2016-09-04T17:14:33.717" UserId="131624" Text="People come to programmers with their questions for a great many reasons. One apparently is that they've been question banned on stackoverflow.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we are supposed to treat questions from such people differently then we need some way to detect the ban.  Is there such a way?  Do we just look at their history on stackoverflow and guess?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23380" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8169" RevisionGUID="9896904a-38ce-4c7d-be5f-2325dd2f43cf" CreationDate="2016-09-04T17:14:33.717" UserId="131624" Text="How to detect if a user is question banned on StackOverflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23381" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8169" RevisionGUID="9896904a-38ce-4c7d-be5f-2325dd2f43cf" CreationDate="2016-09-04T17:14:33.717" UserId="131624" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23382" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8170" RevisionGUID="ab448353-870e-4699-8951-38ca44e4176f" CreationDate="2016-09-04T20:30:46.493" UserId="1204" Text="Information on whether or not a user is question-banned is considered privileged, moderator-only information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a number of reasons for this, the most notable being that, if this information were publicly available, folks could potentially use it to game the banning system.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23383" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8097" RevisionGUID="09a0a81d-7027-4181-979e-1ad072584eb1" CreationDate="2016-09-04T20:33:20.473" UserId="1204" Comment="edited title" Text="Is &quot;What are some current buzzwords when you go to a job interview nowadays&quot; considered an on-topic question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23384" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8171" RevisionGUID="ee20c301-169e-47be-865b-a8026ee05b86" CreationDate="2016-09-04T20:35:28.280" UserId="1204" Text="No, for several reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  It is career advice, which is specifically off-topic. &#xD;&#xA;2.  It asks for a list of things, which makes the question too broad.&#xD;&#xA;3.  It doesn't have anything to do with software design." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23385" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8170" RevisionGUID="9cef7a64-980c-4a28-92d4-4d53d36dfa45" CreationDate="2016-09-04T21:32:59.267" UserId="1204" Comment="added 74 characters in body" Text="Information on whether or not a user is question-banned is considered privileged, moderator-only information, and even then, only on sites where you have diamond moderator privileges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a number of reasons for this, the most notable being that, if this information were publicly available, folks could potentially use it to game the banning system.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23386" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8172" RevisionGUID="48e9734e-c97a-4227-9c38-317f9bd9427e" CreationDate="2016-09-05T00:04:58.493" UserId="4" Text="No, there's absolutely no reason to treat a question differently if a user has been blocked from asking questions on a particular SE site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question isn't a good fit here on Programmers, here's a good workflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to look for is questions that aren't a good fit anywhere. If it's primarily opinion based, too broad, or unclear, it's highly likely to be those anywhere in the network. Some communities may be a little more lenient than others, but they are generally applicable. Use one of these reasons if it applies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is off-topic here, but on-topic on a site that we have a migration path to (currently only Stack Overflow), you should vote to migrate that question. If the user is question banned, the migration will be automatically rejected and the question will be closed here anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question isn't on-topic here and isn't suitable for migration, use one of the custom off-topic reasons. We currently have three - career or education advice, writing/debugging code (that doesn't meet the SO minimum guidelines and isn't suitable for migration), or recommendation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's anything else wrong with the question, use a custom close reason. Most of the questions should fall into an existing reason, though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23387" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8173" RevisionGUID="66c62b3c-477a-4248-acb8-a6f8c0d4116b" CreationDate="2016-09-05T04:41:16.023" UserId="131624" Text="I'm a bit reluctant when voting to close. I remember how tough it was figuring out how to craft a good question. I also know I need to get over it.  One thing that helps me get over it is providing the asker the info I wish I had taken seriously sooner in a comment. When you see your question closed it's so easy to focus on the close message. Which is sad because all the editing effort focuses on 1 of what is likely 5 or so problems.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course not every close voter needs to do this. And it won't be appropriate for every case. But when it is, I like do more than just vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question here is, what should that info be? Trying to keep it generic enough to use in most cases but not at the cost of actually being useful to the asker.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23388" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8173" RevisionGUID="66c62b3c-477a-4248-acb8-a6f8c0d4116b" CreationDate="2016-09-05T04:41:16.023" UserId="131624" Text="A welcome to programmers comment for questionable questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23389" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8173" RevisionGUID="66c62b3c-477a-4248-acb8-a6f8c0d4116b" CreationDate="2016-09-05T04:41:16.023" UserId="131624" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23390" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8174" RevisionGUID="d64d1db9-dc32-49c5-a188-2c5a4f5c099e" CreationDate="2016-09-05T04:49:25.670" UserId="131624" Text="I've been using this message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Welcome to programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [Many sites](http://stackexchange.com/sites) have [different rules](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask/8067#8067). Feel free to take your issue to an appropriate site. Search existing answers first. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Welcome to programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [Our sites](http://stackexchange.com/sites) have [different rules](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask/8067#8067). Feel free to take your issue to an appropriate site. Search existing answers first. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.&#xD;&#xA;`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's been successful in getting a few askers to clean up on their own. I might even suggest that with this, fewer bitter arguments start after the close.  Bit hard to tell yet but I think it's helped.  Use it if you like. Maybe you can do better. I'd like to see your answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23391" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8173" RevisionGUID="da423386-a342-431d-97fc-99256a27d092" CreationDate="2016-09-05T04:51:09.680" UserId="131624" Comment="edited title" Text="A &quot;welcome to programmers&quot; comment for questionable questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23392" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8174" RevisionGUID="f0436ebd-0c58-48a4-9c1d-fda9c88b6842" CreationDate="2016-09-05T04:55:41.053" UserId="131624" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="I've been using this message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Welcome to programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [Many sites](http://stackexchange.com/sites) have [different rules](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask/8067#8067). Feel free to take your issue to an appropriate site. Search existing answers first. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Welcome to programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [Many sites](http://stackexchange.com/sites) have [different rules](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask/8067#8067). Feel free to take your issue to an appropriate site. Search existing answers first. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.&#xD;&#xA;`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's been successful in getting a few askers to clean up on their own. I might even suggest that with this, fewer bitter arguments start after the close.  Bit hard to tell yet but I think it's helped.  Use it if you like. Maybe you can do better. I'd like to see your answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23393" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8173" RevisionGUID="725679c4-c4e9-4a0c-895e-000e5e4bad94" CreationDate="2016-09-05T05:12:39.740" UserId="131624" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="I'm a bit reluctant when voting to close. I remember how tough it was figuring out how to craft a good question. I also know I need to get over it.  One thing that helps me get over it is adding a comment with the info I wish I had taken seriously sooner. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you see your question closed it's so easy to focus on the close message. Which is sad because all the editing effort focuses on 1 of what is likely 5 or so problems.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course not every close voter needs to do this. And it won't be appropriate for every case. But when it is, I like do more than just vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question here is, what should that info be? Trying to keep it generic enough to use in most cases but not at the cost of actually being useful to the asker.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23394" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8173" RevisionGUID="c880df19-c627-4bdb-bfad-7ba975ef7472" CreationDate="2016-09-05T06:58:45.803" UserId="131624" Comment="added 10 characters in body" Text="I'm a bit reluctant when voting to close. I remember how tough it was figuring out how to craft a good question. I also know I need to get over it.  One thing that helps me get over it is adding a comment with the info I wish I had taken seriously sooner. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you see your question closed it's so easy to focus on the close message. Which is sad because all the editing effort focuses on 1 of what is likely 5 or so problems.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course not every close voter needs to do this. And it won't be appropriate for every case. But when it is, I like do more than just vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question here is, what should that info be? Trying to keep it generic enough to use in most cases but not at the cost of actually no longer being useful to the asker.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23395" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8175" RevisionGUID="b232f3d0-45e2-4106-906d-e1ba8a4735f3" CreationDate="2016-09-05T07:45:08.210" UserId="31260" Text="Comments suggesting asker to [try their luck at Stack Overflow](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qOLzH.png &quot;'example'&quot;) tend to read as assumption that they are unaware of this site. This may feel awkward to asker if they are indeed an active user over there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For such comments to be helpful, it makes sense to first check if a user you want to address them to really needs to be educated that Stack Overflow exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not really about looking for cryptic signs of a question ban, this is generally not even about Stack Overflow, it can be any other site at Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are going to teach someone about existence of some SE site (Stack Overflow or any other) it is a matter of simple courtesy to check whether they really need to be told about that site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23400" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8157" RevisionGUID="f75bd938-3c25-4889-b07b-3c9ceeb8b77f" CreationDate="2016-09-05T15:09:22.113" UserId="184113" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="Stack Overflow recently launched their Documentation beta. I propose we make Documentation for Programmers.SE, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Jeff Atwood said in his [blog post,][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for when you're front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you're in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if we use the same reasoning for Documentation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow Documentation teaches you how to use `malloc()`, while Programmers Documentation teaches you memory management concepts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow Documentation teaches you how to create a SQL database entity in PHP, while programmers Documentation teaches you about data structures and their usage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should there be Documentation for Programmers too?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23401" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8177" RevisionGUID="47c1800d-1a9f-4c95-87ab-2c4ffabf35fe" CreationDate="2016-09-07T03:52:59.487" UserId="131624" Text="Comments can be invaluable in improving questions and answers.  They can also lock them down as one becomes reluctant to edit it ways that make them meaningless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a comment, or a long chain of comments, brings up a good point, inspires an edit, and becomes meaningless to the current post is it appropriate to flag it? Say after soliciting, and allowing time for, a response to the edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23402" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8177" RevisionGUID="47c1800d-1a9f-4c95-87ab-2c4ffabf35fe" CreationDate="2016-09-07T03:52:59.487" UserId="131624" Text="Flag resolved comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23403" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8177" RevisionGUID="47c1800d-1a9f-4c95-87ab-2c4ffabf35fe" CreationDate="2016-09-07T03:52:59.487" UserId="131624" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23404" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8177" RevisionGUID="b39fd4be-daf6-4dac-bf7f-a5d4fcb7107c" CreationDate="2016-09-07T05:15:51.463" UserId="131624" Comment="added 17 characters in body" Text="Comments can be invaluable in improving questions and answers.  They can also lock them down as one becomes reluctant to edit in it ways that would make the comments meaningless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a comment, or a long chain of comments, brings up a good point, inspires an edit, and becomes meaningless to the current post is it appropriate to flag it? Say after soliciting, and allowing time for, a response to the edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23405" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8174" RevisionGUID="262f3851-cfa9-4556-93ae-ed8d368d8862" CreationDate="2016-09-08T03:40:51.027" UserId="131624" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body" Text="I've been using this message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Welcome to programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [Many sites](http://stackexchange.com/sites) have [different rules](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask/8067#8067). Feel free to take your issue to an appropriate site. Search existing answers first. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Welcome to programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [Many sites](http://stackexchange.com/sites) have [different rules](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask/8067#8067). Feel free to take your issue to an appropriate site. Search existing answers first. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.&#xD;&#xA;`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's been successful in getting a few askers to clean up on their own. I might even suggest that with this, fewer bitter arguments start after the close.  Bit hard to tell yet but I think it's helped.  Use it if you like. Maybe you can do better. If you can, please share.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23406" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8169" RevisionGUID="aad55d81-7196-4957-b4a9-f68e13a68bd9" CreationDate="2016-09-08T07:40:13.223" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8169/how-to-detect-if-a-user-is-question-banned-on-stackoverflow/8175#comment25475_8169" Text="People come to Programmers with their questions for a great many reasons. One apparently is that they've been question banned on Stack Overflow.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we are supposed to treat questions from such people differently then we need some way to detect the ban.  Is there such a way?  Do we just look at their history on Stack Overflow and guess?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23407" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8169" RevisionGUID="aad55d81-7196-4957-b4a9-f68e13a68bd9" CreationDate="2016-09-08T07:40:13.223" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8169/how-to-detect-if-a-user-is-question-banned-on-stackoverflow/8175#comment25475_8169" Text="How to detect if a user is question banned on Stack Overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23408" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8169" RevisionGUID="aad55d81-7196-4957-b4a9-f68e13a68bd9" CreationDate="2016-09-08T07:40:13.223" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8169/how-to-detect-if-a-user-is-question-banned-on-stackoverflow/8175#comment25475_8169" Text="|discussion|stackoverflow|post-ban|user-accounts|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23409" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8178" RevisionGUID="cd5e6aba-f66b-4730-971d-486f6b6f63eb" CreationDate="2016-09-08T17:20:47.713" UserId="1204" Text="Comments of the kind you describe can be flagged as **obsolete.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Use this when the comment chain is completely incorporated in the change made to the post.  Consider refraining from flagging when there are other insights in the comment chain (not incorporated into the post) that might be valuable to someone else." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23410" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8179" RevisionGUID="00ad42db-0eff-4a0a-8472-3d4c466c6b5e" CreationDate="2016-09-08T17:23:51.377" UserId="1204" Text="In general, moderation should not require technical knowledge of the subject matter.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A code change is almost always a change in the poster's intent, and reviewers shouldn't have to know anything about what the code does (or whether it works or not) to make that evaluation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, code examples added to someone else's answer are usually considered a radical change, and can be summarily rejected on that basis." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23411" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8169" RevisionGUID="f6f794ad-c488-401b-8424-079c3c6a21ad" CreationDate="2016-09-09T04:20:09.317" UserId="131624" Comment="edited title" Text="Are we supposed to treat questions differently from Stack Overflow users suspected of being question banned?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23419" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8181" RevisionGUID="989777ff-4b27-4320-bcac-cd4eb006be7c" CreationDate="2016-09-09T11:29:28.923" UserId="9113" Text="Having read [this][1] question about a very reasonable feature request and seen that it was closed as a dupe of a question from 2013 (and 2011 by another user), I wonder what is the best way &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - to leave a note to the SE team that I would also like to see such a feature added. &#xD;&#xA; - to advertise certain feature requests after some years again to get some feedback if there are more users now which think the feature would be beneficial for the site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just upvoting those old feature requests seems to have no impact, since chances are high noone just notice about the upvote to such an old question. Asking about the feature again seems to be the wrong way, too (will get closed as a dupe, see above). So what can I do increase the chance a good suggestion which was probably just forgotten over the years won't vanish completely?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8176/please-add-mathjax" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23420" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8181" RevisionGUID="989777ff-4b27-4320-bcac-cd4eb006be7c" CreationDate="2016-09-09T11:29:28.923" UserId="9113" Text="Priorizing of feature requests" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23421" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8181" RevisionGUID="989777ff-4b27-4320-bcac-cd4eb006be7c" CreationDate="2016-09-09T11:29:28.923" UserId="9113" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23422" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="6795" RevisionGUID="b90ed624-fe28-4cec-869c-29dd1aef2e35" CreationDate="2016-09-09T12:04:51.823" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[2475],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="23423" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8169" RevisionGUID="666a6ae0-d476-49ee-ad7c-95aab9c01035" CreationDate="2016-09-09T13:12:28.117" UserId="131624" Comment="edited title" Text="How to treat questions from users question banned on Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23424" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8169" RevisionGUID="666a6ae0-d476-49ee-ad7c-95aab9c01035" CreationDate="2016-09-09T13:12:28.117" UserId="131624" Comment="edited title" Text="People come to Programmers with their questions for a great many reasons. One apparently is that they've been question banned on Stack Overflow.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we are supposed to treat questions from such people differently, say by how we instruct them in the comments, then we need some way to detect the ban.  Is there such a way?  Do we just look at their history on Stack Overflow and guess?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23425" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8182" RevisionGUID="ac2ddf16-bdcf-4658-865c-64d72afb3313" CreationDate="2016-09-09T14:31:46.783" UserId="82480" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/10/scholar?userid=82480&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Scholar: Ask a question and accept an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I literally just asked my first question &lt;strike&gt;2&lt;/strike&gt; 40&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; minutes ago. There are no answers to accept at the time of this post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;You can only post once every 40 minutes.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23426" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8182" RevisionGUID="ac2ddf16-bdcf-4658-865c-64d72afb3313" CreationDate="2016-09-09T14:31:46.783" UserId="82480" Text="How did I get the Scholar badge when I have only just asked my first question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23427" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8182" RevisionGUID="ac2ddf16-bdcf-4658-865c-64d72afb3313" CreationDate="2016-09-09T14:31:46.783" UserId="82480" Text="|bug|badges|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23428" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8181" RevisionGUID="955fa143-e39b-409b-9600-ca504bd68918" CreationDate="2016-09-09T16:16:58.183" UserId="9113" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body" Text="Having read [this][1] question about a reasonable feature request and seen that it was closed as a dupe of a question from 2013 (and 2011 by another user), I wonder what is the best way &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - to leave a note to the SE team that I would also like to see such a feature added. &#xD;&#xA; - to advertise certain feature requests after some years again to get some feedback if there are more users now which think the feature would be beneficial for the site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just upvoting those old feature requests seems to have no impact, since chances are high noone just notice about the upvote to such an old question. Asking about the feature again seems to be the wrong way, too (will get closed as a dupe, see above). Adding a bounty, as suggested [here][2], simply does not work on Programmer's meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what can I do increase the chance a good suggestion which was probably just forgotten over the years won't vanish completely?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8176/please-add-mathjax&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/106860/what-is-meta-protocol-for-re-requesting-ignored-feature-requests" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23429" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8183" RevisionGUID="902b68f7-e9dd-422a-9e9d-287ce1342ef9" CreationDate="2016-09-09T16:23:50.013" UserId="31260" Text="For many thorough discussion on this matter, refer [What is Meta protocol for re-requesting ignored feature requests?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/106860/165773) and questions linked to it at at MSE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that bounties, being one of most popular ideas expressed in these discussions, apply only at MSE. At per site metas there is no way to set bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over here your options are narrower: edit, answer, discuss in chat, maybe ask non-duplicate question or do something like was done in famous [(4 years later)...](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7935/31260) request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23430" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8114" RevisionGUID="3b2f2f62-c05f-4bf6-b5a8-08230558b964" CreationDate="2016-09-09T19:23:28.647" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-definition|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23431" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8184" RevisionGUID="0baeaf36-f186-4f84-95c3-faf0eb67f428" CreationDate="2016-09-09T19:23:41.940" UserId="4" Text="Chat Transcript: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/32212512#32212512&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previous Discussion: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8114/follow-up-2-new-site-name-and-scope-proposals?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ana stopped by (Shog was not available today), and maple_shaft was around. Here's a summary of what we talked about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ana looked at [the only up-voted proposal last week that didn't include the term &quot;SDLC&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8156/4). Although it was a good proposal, the use of the term &quot;SDLC&quot; was the thing that got everyone involved in this discussion onto the same page in terms of what this community truly represents in terms of who we are and what we offer. We'll be sticking with the taglines that we came up with last time going forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We then took a good, hard look at the bullets that describe what is on-topic. It seems 4 is the go-to number, and we managed to get it down to four:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - requirements, architecture, and design &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance and testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The word &quot;software&quot; was dropped. On a site named Software Engineering, it should be pretty clear that questions should be about software development. It just added a little extra verbosity that should be apparent to users who are reading the page - it will be in the URL and the logo.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We brought in the &quot;development methods and practices&quot; to better advertise that these topics are on-topic. The first tag that falls into this category is [tag:agile], which is our 22nd most popular tag. Since there isn't a whole lot of visibility into this category of questions when you hit up the homepage or at the top of the list of tags, we felt that it was important to include.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also combined &quot;requirements&quot; into &quot;architecture and design&quot; to form &quot;requirements, architecture, and design&quot;. These are closely related topics. There are many architectural and design questions, but it's important to recognize and advertise other topics, like [tag:requirements], [tag:requirements-management], [tag:user-story], [tag:use-case], and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest change is that we eliminated the line item for &quot;algorithms and data structures&quot;. But this doesn't mean that these questions are off-topic, because they aren't. [I had a little back-and-forth discussion with maple_shaft][1], and since the SE folks really wanted 4 items, we felt that the type of questions that we want here are sufficiently captured under the &quot;design&quot; portion that we call out in the Help Center, but also the existing questions that can be used as a good example.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please leave any further comments in here. They will be reviewed and discussed when Ana (and maybe Shog) come back next week.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/32213588#32213588" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23432" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8184" RevisionGUID="0baeaf36-f186-4f84-95c3-faf0eb67f428" CreationDate="2016-09-09T19:23:41.940" UserId="4" Text="Follow-Up 3: New Site Name and Help Center Discussions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23433" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8184" RevisionGUID="0baeaf36-f186-4f84-95c3-faf0eb67f428" CreationDate="2016-09-09T19:23:41.940" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|featured|site-definition|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23434" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8185" RevisionGUID="09d6da1d-c815-453e-ba13-171c1b605687" CreationDate="2016-09-09T20:42:20.887" UserId="9113" Text="I think for such cases it is a good idea to ask the original author if the code example matches his intent and let **him** make the decision. For the particular case, it seems the editor actually did that, but the edit was so quickly rejected by @gnat that the OP did not even have a chance for this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, when the OP does not show up here on SE within a reasonable time, or does not react at all, (to me, 72 hours looks quite reasonable), such an edit should probably be rollbacked. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23435" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8156" RevisionGUID="ffe158f2-d5bc-4d6d-bb3e-243b7f705568" CreationDate="2016-09-09T20:46:36.467" UserId="122484" Comment="Added draft 3 tag line and site name, responding to feedback" Text="This proposed tagline and [pictorial representation][1] *miss the mark* in conveying the (current/new) site scope and the new name, &quot;Software Engineering.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I agree that the site scope should include software development lifecycles and more generally software development processes, methods, and methodology, **I propose that we not use the terms** *&quot;System Development Life Cycle&quot;* or *&quot;SDLC&quot;* **nor link to** [Wikipedia's SDLC page][2] to help explain SE.SE. That part of the Question is what goes off the mark for me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Systems development&quot; implies projects where software is one component along with hardware, courseware, wetware, etc. E.g. space systems and robots (ME+EE+SE). (The phrase &quot;software systems development&quot; doesn't add anything over &quot;software development&quot;, and shortening it to &quot;systems development&quot; makes it ambiguous between systems *of* vs. *including* software components vs. &quot;systems software&quot;.) **I propose that systems development topics not become in scope for SE.SE.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;SDLC&quot; may be construed as a broad term for &quot;any kind of development lifecycle&quot; *or* as a subcategory of lifecycles which contrast with incremental approaches. Wikipedia's SDLC page is inconsistent about that, as are other sources. First it says Waterfall and Agile are among the SDLC models, then it contrasts SDLC where documentation is &quot;Vital&quot; (each phase needs a work product and may end with a team handoff) vs. Agile. The page focuses on stages of work, like building components then integrating them, never mentioning continuous integration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's not:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* broaden the scope to Systems development [as in the SDLC references]&#xD;&#xA;* narrow the scope to discussions about software development lifecycles themselves [as in the tag line phrase &quot;questions directly related to the SDLC&quot; and the proposal &quot;Please make sure that your question is directly related to the Systems Development Life Cycle.&quot;]&#xD;&#xA;* suggest that the Waterfall lifecycle is desirable&#xD;&#xA;* imply that the scope includes the details of testing, operations, and everything that's within the development lifecycle except coding and debugging [as in the SDLC Waterfall diagram with those parts crossed out]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The referenced SDLC picture is a Waterfall diagram except the sequential steps are drawn ascending rather than descending. Waterfall is the simplest complete model but it maximizes risk of failure by delaying empirical feedback. It's responsible for many big project failures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [The road to Agile][3]:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In 1970, the first article on the Waterfall model was published by Winston W. Royce. Royce did not use the term Waterfall in that article, but he presented the model as an example of a flawed, nonworking model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is software engineering about? Let's look at the [ACM professional organization][4] [my italics]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering Notes** (**SEN**) is an informal publication of the **ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering** (**SIGSOFT**) *concerned with the cost-effective, timely development and maintenance of high-quality software.* Relevant topics include requirements, specification, design and implementation methods, software maintenance, reuse and re-engineering, quality assurance, measurement and evaluation, software processes, automated tools, practical experience, and related issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Engineering** is about achieving *quality attributes* like performance, security, modifiability, reliability, usability, maintainability, safety, timeliness, cost-effectiveness, portability, and testability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Engineering** is about *applying principles* when building things. Many principles are known, in categories such as mathematics, empirical evidence, scientific knowledge, and practical know-how.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The **site's tagline** (draft 2) would then go something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site for professionals, academics, and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers about applying principles to building software systems and achieving quality attributes such as performance, safety, reliability, usability, maintainability, and testability. It is not a site for code troubleshooting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or a shorter version using the word &quot;methodology&quot; both in the sense of &quot;a system of methods&quot; and &quot;the study of methods&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site for professionals, academics, and students in software development who are interested in getting expert answers about software development processes, methodology, and achieving qualities such as performance, safety, reliability, usability, maintainability, and testability. It is not a site for code troubleshooting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Draft 3, aiming to address @ricksmt's central issue about getting the point across to people currently asking off-topic questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Development In-the-large Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site about software development &quot;in the large&quot; including development processes and methodologies for teams, reliably meeting requirements, and achieving quality goals such as safety, reliability, usability, and testability. It is not a site for code troubleshooting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/po2PZ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2016/july/in-pursuit-of-continuous-integration-delivery-and&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.sigsoft.org/SEN/about.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23436" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8184" RevisionGUID="083821d9-cdf4-4542-98c0-fc0a32cc7131" CreationDate="2016-09-09T21:08:19.367" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/774353765994487808" />
  <row Id="23437" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8184" RevisionGUID="d5d0dfdb-d13f-4642-bd73-4ffa349b52f6" CreationDate="2016-09-10T04:43:12.820" UserId="31260" Comment="discussion extracted to conversation" Text="Chat Transcript: [New Site Name discussion Sep 9, 2016](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/new-site-name-discussion-sep-9-2016)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previous Discussion: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8114/follow-up-2-new-site-name-and-scope-proposals?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ana stopped by (Shog was not available today), and maple_shaft was around. Here's a summary of what we talked about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ana looked at [the only up-voted proposal last week that didn't include the term &quot;SDLC&quot;](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8156/4). Although it was a good proposal, the use of the term &quot;SDLC&quot; was the thing that got everyone involved in this discussion onto the same page in terms of what this community truly represents in terms of who we are and what we offer. We'll be sticking with the taglines that we came up with last time going forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We then took a good, hard look at the bullets that describe what is on-topic. It seems 4 is the go-to number, and we managed to get it down to four:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - requirements, architecture, and design &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance and testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The word &quot;software&quot; was dropped. On a site named Software Engineering, it should be pretty clear that questions should be about software development. It just added a little extra verbosity that should be apparent to users who are reading the page - it will be in the URL and the logo.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We brought in the &quot;development methods and practices&quot; to better advertise that these topics are on-topic. The first tag that falls into this category is [tag:agile], which is our 22nd most popular tag. Since there isn't a whole lot of visibility into this category of questions when you hit up the homepage or at the top of the list of tags, we felt that it was important to include.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also combined &quot;requirements&quot; into &quot;architecture and design&quot; to form &quot;requirements, architecture, and design&quot;. These are closely related topics. There are many architectural and design questions, but it's important to recognize and advertise other topics, like [tag:requirements], [tag:requirements-management], [tag:user-story], [tag:use-case], and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest change is that we eliminated the line item for &quot;algorithms and data structures&quot;. But this doesn't mean that these questions are off-topic, because they aren't. [I had a little back-and-forth discussion with maple_shaft][1], and since the SE folks really wanted 4 items, we felt that the type of questions that we want here are sufficiently captured under the &quot;design&quot; portion that we call out in the Help Center, but also the existing questions that can be used as a good example.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please leave any further comments in here. They will be reviewed and discussed when Ana (and maybe Shog) come back next week.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/32213588#32213588" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23438" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8186" RevisionGUID="dc755d8d-6529-4c9f-ac6e-7ecb8e8c79e7" CreationDate="2016-09-10T22:59:28.190" UserId="122484" Text="Let's **state the goal** (requirements), say, *&quot;steer programming-in-the-small questions off to Stack Overflow&quot;* and **test which proposals accomplish the goal.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are we engineers? We should measure rather than debate about guesses (hypotheses). Deploying without testing is risky. There's no evidence it would accomplish the goal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A usability test is not hard. E.g.:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* find a wide variety of people who've asked fitting and non-fitting questions on this site,&#xD;&#xA;* show them the proposed site name, tagline, and 4-bullet description,&#xD;&#xA;* ask them which of various sample questions seem *in scope* vs. *out of scope*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name &quot;Software Engineering&quot; fits for me but maybe the people asking SO-like questions consider it just a synonym for &quot;building software&quot; (as @ricksmt noted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The proposed 4 bullets make sense to me although they don't mention the deeper points of using principles to engineer a success and evaluating success (like safety and reliability).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It helps to test more than one proposal. There's a [&quot;draft 3&quot; alternative at the end of this answer][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8156/122484" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23439" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8186" RevisionGUID="9d4c90c0-e7c9-49e9-b4d7-8fd748687734" CreationDate="2016-09-11T07:02:20.937" UserId="122484" Comment="make the suggested goal more precise" Text="Let's **state the goal** (requirements such as *&quot;90% fewer programming-in-the-small off-topic questions&quot;*) and **test which proposals accomplish the goal.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are we engineers? Then measure rather than debate guesses (hypotheses). Deploying without testing is risky. It has a high cost to the community with no evidence it would accomplish the goal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A usability test is not hard. E.g.:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* find a wide variety of people who've asked fitting and non-fitting questions on this site,&#xD;&#xA;* show them the proposed site name, tagline, and 4-bullet description,&#xD;&#xA;* ask them which of various sample questions seem *in scope* vs. *out of scope*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name &quot;Software Engineering&quot; fits for me but maybe the people asking SO-like questions consider it just a synonym for &quot;building software&quot; (as @ricksmt noted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The proposed 4 bullets make sense although they don't mention the deeper points of using principles to engineer a success and evaluating success (qualities like safety and reliability).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It helps to test more than one proposal. There's a [&quot;draft 3&quot; alternative at the end of a previous answer][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8156/122484" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23440" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8187" RevisionGUID="24a7c41d-68fe-4800-b810-ab404069d64c" CreationDate="2016-09-11T12:37:53.500" UserId="74584" Text="When I read this post, my initial thought was, &quot;If I upvote this, will it be interpreted as either (a) 'I approve this on-topic list' or (b) 'I approve further discussions of details'.&quot; And honestly, I don't like any further discussions until the main point (changing the name) is implemented.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You see, *&quot;If we're gonna do this... Let's do it right.&quot;* argument would apply if we were going to engrave this list into a titan plate to send it in the depths of outer space, right to the dark stars, where Elder Gods would read them and decide whether we get to live or not. I wonder if Cthulhu would approve including &quot;algorithms and data structures&quot;. I bet he doesn't like any kind of structures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But we are talking about a text which can be edited within 1 minute, right?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, **can you just ship the changed name first**, without wasting weeks on discussing details? We can always spend more time later, once the main problem is fixed, which is the constant flow of new users posting off-topic question because they are being misguided by the name. (They haven't checked the help center anyway, obviously.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I approve of any list. The current one is good, the new one is great. Four bullets or five, it's fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;plox &lt;(_ _)&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![JUST DO IT][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/HRqrA.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23441" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8188" RevisionGUID="f8a7ba42-f5c4-48af-985b-3416e4e2cd81" CreationDate="2016-09-11T22:40:11.383" UserId="242537" Text="I posted the question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/330802/what-are-the-best-vba-libraries-and-tools which, I learned violated the site rules:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to find or recommend tools, libraries,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programming languages, resources (including books, blogs, tutorials,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and examples), or projects to undertake are off-topic on Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as they attract opinionated answers that won't have lasting value to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others. You may be able to get help in The Whiteboard, our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand why questions that ask for recommended tools could lead to opinionated answers that won't have lasting value to others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in 2016 most VBA resources online are from a different era and often point to broken links. Clearly this question could have lasting value to others: someone puts &quot;best VBA tools&quot; into their search engine, it pops up and just by clicking on my question they can already learn about a very useful tool called Rubber Duck, that they may not have found otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers might be opinionated/spam, but that can be addressed by the up/downvote buttons, or by flagging them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I'm not saying that this is a bad rule in general, just asking why discretion can't be exercised for this particular question I asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23442" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8188" RevisionGUID="f8a7ba42-f5c4-48af-985b-3416e4e2cd81" CreationDate="2016-09-11T22:40:11.383" UserId="242537" Text="Is it possible to exercise discretion when a question violates site rules?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23443" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8188" RevisionGUID="f8a7ba42-f5c4-48af-985b-3416e4e2cd81" CreationDate="2016-09-11T22:40:11.383" UserId="242537" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23444" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8189" RevisionGUID="5e1fa42d-38c5-4a16-85b7-59e9df5ef88a" CreationDate="2016-09-12T00:00:32.233" UserId="4" Text="A question is either a question that belongs or a question that doesn't belong. We, as a community, have decided that some types of questions aren't a good fit for this format. Resource requests are one such type of question that is not a good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guiding principle can be found in the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][1] and [Real Questions Have Answers][2] blog posts. Questions that generate lists aren't the kind of questions we want because they don't generate the answers that we want. This is a good platform for sharing human knowledge and applying experiences, not aggregating large numbers of links to resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've also had specific discussions on resource requests on Meta [here][3] and [here][4] and [here][5] and [here][6] where you can get several reasons why this type of question doesn't work. Each time the top voted posts have been opposed to questions about resource requests. That continues to be the perspective of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4002/resource-questions-automatic-close&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5299/why-are-reference-request-questions-off-topic?rq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23445" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8190" RevisionGUID="0546e5bd-7e88-4917-86e1-b2c5b21e3f09" CreationDate="2016-09-12T12:52:44.360" UserId="9113" Text="&gt; But in 2016 most VBA resources online are from a different era and often point to broken links&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cannot confirm this. Lots of VBA resources online are indeed from a different era, but others are newer and even lots of the old ones are still active. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it seems you missed what I wrote in a comment below your deleted question: the main problem with a &quot;list of best VBA libraries and tools&quot; is, that there are too many tools and libraries (often in form of COM components) available to put them into a useful list which would fit here on Programmers.SE. Moreover, &quot;best&quot; is often in the eye of the beholder: lots of tools have special use cases, very useful for person X, totally useless for person Y.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One can fill whole books with this topic, and the site FAQ states clearly: if an answer to a question could fill a whole book, the question is too broad. Actually, there **are** books filled with component descriptions, you simply have to search for &quot;VB Scripting&quot; instead of &quot;best VBA tools&quot; to find some." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23446" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8191" RevisionGUID="724a6a47-4354-41fd-ba18-20aa3e0c4ca8" CreationDate="2016-09-12T18:42:07.313" UserId="204960" Text="&lt;!-- Do not remove or edit --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- Note: Questions not about your post will be deleted --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a question about my Programmers Stack Exchange post: [If mutual exclusion is not implemented, how would we detect a race condition?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/222184/if-mutual-exclusion-is-not-implemented-how-would-we-detect-a-race-condition/330087#330087)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- Your question below: --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Hi,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am looking for a reply (preferably by Gnat, who removed the answer) about the reason this answer was removed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/330087/204960&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the background:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(1) Even though my answer speaks of a solution developed by our company, the Disclaimer was provided;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(2) The information in the answer provided is going to be very helpful to the audience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All one needed to do is to follow the links and to see for himself/herself that this work is solid and useful for the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please be so kind to answer why my answer was removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; Below is my answer that was removed: &gt;&gt;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is about how to detect race conditions, perhaps the most state of the art solution today, which works with small overhead, and with no false positives, is Race Catcher from Thinking Software, Inc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Small overhead here implies most often being under 10%, however the overhead is target process algorithm dependent. Race Catcher can, therefore, be used not only at the stages of debug and test, bun also in most production cases - in the field, where the most costly races, that slip the test phase, are happening (see ARM-CM described below).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Race Catcher is a dynamic code analyzer that works directly on bytecode and can be seen as an addition to a JVM. That also means that is applicable not only to Java code, but to applications written in any of ~60 languages compiled to bytecode.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An original service called ARM-CM, Application Reliability Monitoring via Collaborating Machines is based on an obvious fact that 100 agents are less expensive and more reliable than 100 human testers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;DISCLAIMER: I am involved with Thinking Software, Inc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;(http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/330087/204960)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23447" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8191" RevisionGUID="724a6a47-4354-41fd-ba18-20aa3e0c4ca8" CreationDate="2016-09-12T18:42:07.313" UserId="204960" Text="Why was my answer removed even though I have provided disclaimer speaking about my involvement in this work?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23448" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8191" RevisionGUID="724a6a47-4354-41fd-ba18-20aa3e0c4ca8" CreationDate="2016-09-12T18:42:07.313" UserId="204960" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23449" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8191" RevisionGUID="631a8103-209e-4457-8684-840ca5a03a88" CreationDate="2016-09-12T18:59:28.173" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 87 characters in body" Text="&lt;!-- Do not remove or edit --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- Note: Questions not about your post will be deleted --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a question about my Programmers Stack Exchange post: [If mutual exclusion is not implemented, how would we detect a race condition?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/222184/if-mutual-exclusion-is-not-implemented-how-would-we-detect-a-race-condition/330087#330087)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- Your question below: --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am looking for a reply (preferably by Gnat, who removed the answer) about the reason this answer was removed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/330087/204960&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the background:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(1) Even though my answer speaks of a solution developed by our company, the Disclaimer was provided;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(2) The information in the answer provided is going to be very helpful to the audience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All one needed to do is to follow the links and to see for himself/herself that this work is solid and useful for the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please be so kind to answer why my answer was removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below is my answer that was removed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about how to detect race conditions, perhaps the most state of the art solution today, which works with small overhead, and with no false positives, is Race Catcher from Thinking Software, Inc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Small overhead here implies most often being under 10%, however the overhead is target process algorithm dependent. Race Catcher can, therefore, be used not only at the stages of debug and test, bun also in most production cases - in the field, where the most costly races, that slip the test phase, are happening (see ARM-CM described below).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Race Catcher is a dynamic code analyzer that works directly on bytecode and can be seen as an addition to a JVM. That also means that is applicable not only to Java code, but to applications written in any of ~60 languages compiled to bytecode.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An original service called ARM-CM, Application Reliability Monitoring via Collaborating Machines is based on an obvious fact that 100 agents are less expensive and more reliable than 100 human testers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; DISCLAIMER: I am involved with Thinking Software, Inc." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23450" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8192" RevisionGUID="d715f4b3-791d-4f3b-a1e3-fb05c9c7d105" CreationDate="2016-09-12T19:32:51.973" UserId="4" Text="I just took a look. It looks like gnat voted to delete, but the post was also flagged as spam and, after receiving sufficient number of flags, was deleted. I would agree with this deletion, based on the contents of [this Help Center page about how not to be a spammer][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer doesn't appear to meet the criteria that was laid out in that Help Center article.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your answer doesn't give any information that can be used by anyone who isn't interested in buying the tool. The Help Center specifically says that the &quot;best way to avoid being seen as a snake-oil salesman is to demonstrate a solution rather than simply asserting the problem an be solved&quot;. You state that your tool solves the problem, but doesn't do much other than asserting a third-party solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer also doesn't provide an &quot;answer for the ages&quot;. What happens if you stop making your tool, or your company goes out of business? There's now nothing left that is useful to anyone, except a reference to a dead tool.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/promotion" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23451" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8186" RevisionGUID="5e31f7ee-31b1-4aff-ba5b-fca3b2780158" CreationDate="2016-09-12T22:21:32.443" UserId="122484" Comment="Add a big section with hypotheses about why this process is stalled" Text="**What's taking so long?** Why is this process stalled? Let's do some software engineering here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Hypothesis 1:** The development tools, methods, and processes are ill-fitting. I'm not into SE's back-end community tools so I may be missing key parts, but I see occasional promoted &quot;New Site Name&quot; questions and mentions of someone stopping by somewhere. This is not an effective way to form a team, clarify the problem, collect design ideas and ways to test if they work, do the tests, run it by the community, and decide.  &#xD;&#xA;    How many community members have contributed ideas or feedback on the proposal, or even seen the proposed SDLC tagline (that brings to mind Waterfall-model big project failures)?  &#xD;&#xA;    People are now so frustrated with the stall that they just want to launch a name change and hope it works (Waterfall style) and maybe measure the impact later.&#xD;&#xA;* **Hypothesis 2:** There's no evidence that the proposal will help, some risk that it will hurt, and it entails a large rebranding impact on the community that can't be done often without losing people. There's no need for a long discussion. Opinions are not evidence. A little evidence goes a long way and testing can be quick and cheap. [Suggestion below.]  &#xD;&#xA;    The last time I did a usability test for an open-source project, we developers had brainstormed icons for a heavily used part of a web site so people could drag a web link icon to their home screen for fast access. I did the test in one afternoon, showing the designs to ~8 people. The results were stark: None of the designs got the idea across and nobody thought of that part of the web site as a separate thing. [If y'all ever get into a UI design debate, a usability test does wonders.]  &#xD;&#xA;    The Stack Exchange folks ought to have usability testers and ways to gather test subjects. If not, then we're really pushing uphill here. If they do, then it's surprising that each site's &quot;what's in scope&quot; bullet items are buried behind many steps and an animation.&#xD;&#xA;* **Hypothesis 3:** The responsibilities are unclear. @ThomasOwens and others are pushing but action requires SE. Are @Ana and @Shog9 from SE? What does SE need to move forwards? Confidence in a proposed solution? I can see why it's important to do a single rebranding with site name, tagline, and in-scope bullets since you can't get broad attention often, but is it really necessary to continue tuning the bullets before launching the new name? Do you have evidence that 4 bullets is the most that people will read? Does that change if you put the bullets at the top of the page rather than within an animation halfway down the page?&#xD;&#xA;* **Hypothesis 4:** Maybe nobody has yet come up with an adequate proposal. Maybe there isn't one within the constraints, that is, without fixing SE design problems like how hidden the site description is. Maybe off-topic questions can be avoided only by coordinated moderator action. Maybe people asking questions look instead at high-voted questions to judge if this is a good place to ask their question. That would require a different solution like, say, reviewing high-voted questions, attaching fitting tags from the proposed 4 bullet points, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion: State the goal** (requirements, such as *&quot;50% fewer programming-in-the-small off-topic questions&quot;*) and **test which proposals accomplish the goal.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Measure rather than debate guesses (hypotheses).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A usability test needn't be difficult, expensive, or slow. E.g.:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* find a wide variety of people who've asked fitting and non-fitting questions on this site,&#xD;&#xA;* show them the proposed site name, tagline, and 4-bullet description,&#xD;&#xA;* ask them which of various sample questions seem *in scope* vs. *out of scope*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name &quot;Software Engineering&quot; fits for me but maybe the people asking SO-like questions consider it just a synonym for &quot;building software&quot; (as @ricksmt noted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The proposed bullets make sense although they don't mention the deeper points of using principles to engineer a success and evaluating success (qualities like safety and reliability).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It helps to test more than one proposal. There's a [&quot;draft 3&quot; alternative at the end of a previous answer][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8156/122484" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23452" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8169" RevisionGUID="98a0a3b2-c846-4194-919a-a14be0c7bdd6" CreationDate="2016-09-13T06:19:40.793" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/775579682783764484" />
  <row Id="23453" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8193" RevisionGUID="27abf3f2-60ea-4676-9597-121d3a32754c" CreationDate="2016-09-13T19:05:09.283" UserId="1114" Text="Personally I think any user that is question banned on StackOverflow, should get an automatic question ban on Programmers and Database Admin.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think a ban on one side should ban a user on **all** sites, as some sites have very different rules on how a question is asked.   But a case can be made that a user who is unwilling or unable to learn what a site expects is best removed from all sites..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23454" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8194" RevisionGUID="b1f064a1-516c-4949-89a3-06944b07994d" CreationDate="2016-09-13T21:49:47.940" UserId="177827" Text="Just one thing here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   - development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   - requirements, architecture, and design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   -  configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Isn't **testing** a **development method** and some kind of **practice**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My overly brief summaries of the points would be along the lines of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - what to do and how to do it&#xD;&#xA; - from client to code&#xD;&#xA; - how to make sure stuff is good&#xD;&#xA; - from code to client&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where point 2 appears to be distinctly about &quot;whiteboard&quot; concepts and point 4 about the management of the overall toolchain, points 1 and 3 appear to be both about the &quot;programming&quot; of things. *quality assurance and testing* seems to be just a specialised case or subset of *development methods and practices*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this because the whole aspect of &quot;how to make sure stuff is good&quot; is so important that it should be pointed out in its own bullet point? What if point 1 and 3 are merged, for example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   - development practices, quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   - requirements, architecture, and design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now the category of each bullet point appears to be much more clearly distinct from the other ones. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would that be better? I have to admit I did not follow the discussion, but if you originally wanted to have more bullet points, this might free one up if you want to cover something else." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23457" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6582" RevisionGUID="4a20ea4a-6939-488d-9950-db84d4262cb9" CreationDate="2016-09-14T11:34:13.273" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|faq-proposed|name-that-thing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23458" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8196" RevisionGUID="e43e5087-5cd7-4463-a172-eacfd5ea96e7" CreationDate="2016-09-16T01:18:13.603" UserId="4" Text="Previous Discussion: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8184/follow-up-3-new-site-name-and-help-center-discussions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After approval from [Ana][1], I published the discussed updates to the [Help Center's /help/on-topic page][2] and the [site's /tour][3]. In the near future, we should be hearing from her about the timeline of the technical implementation for changing our site's name and domain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please leave any feedback here about these changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/106878/ana&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23459" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8196" RevisionGUID="e43e5087-5cd7-4463-a172-eacfd5ea96e7" CreationDate="2016-09-16T01:18:13.603" UserId="4" Text="New Site Name and Help Center: Phase I Complete" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23460" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8196" RevisionGUID="e43e5087-5cd7-4463-a172-eacfd5ea96e7" CreationDate="2016-09-16T01:18:13.603" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|featured|help-center|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23461" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8184" RevisionGUID="4b21df14-489c-4fa7-a849-a67b2d839aea" CreationDate="2016-09-16T01:18:25.627" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|site-definition|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23462" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8196" RevisionGUID="9f3fabfe-3e60-4bd7-bb30-2e40fa899393" CreationDate="2016-09-16T03:26:27.783" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/776623255008448512" />
  <row Id="23463" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7864" RevisionGUID="6d1d46f3-0dc6-45e6-bff6-a554ffd1d835" CreationDate="2016-09-16T09:59:06.593" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|on-topic-definition|site-rec|site-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23464" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8197" RevisionGUID="ffee8a2b-ad52-4713-82fc-8ec66cd38c0a" CreationDate="2016-09-16T14:58:47.820" UserId="4" Text="I have questions about how I go about using various tools or products. Can I ask these questions here? If not, why? Where can I ask them?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23465" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8197" RevisionGUID="ffee8a2b-ad52-4713-82fc-8ec66cd38c0a" CreationDate="2016-09-16T14:58:47.820" UserId="4" Text="Why can't I ask customer service-related questions here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23466" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8197" RevisionGUID="ffee8a2b-ad52-4713-82fc-8ec66cd38c0a" CreationDate="2016-09-16T14:58:47.820" UserId="4" Text="|support|faq|on-topic-definition|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23467" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8198" RevisionGUID="92ea9bde-0682-4bcf-95c7-c6aa6a7f8279" CreationDate="2016-09-16T14:58:47.820" UserId="4" Text="Some questions about specific products or services, especially about how to use them, should be directed toward the appropriate support channels for that product or service simply because we don't know the answer. There may be some people here who have encountered your issues before that can answer your question. Maybe there's even an employee of the company that provides the product here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But...we aren't the company's customer service. We don't set policy, track how policies change over time, or have good insights into how policies are set. We don't have any authority to make decisions. As policies change, our answers and experiences will also quickly become out-of-date and irrelevant.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to act as customer support on any company's behalf.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our mission here is to help you with problems and challenges that you face while creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly. If you are using or have access to various tools, that information may be helpful as we may be able to point you in the right direction. But we may not have our tools configured in the same manner as you, or have the same add-ons, or how to get enhancement/change requests to the company the creates the software." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23468" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="8197" RevisionGUID="ffee8a2b-ad52-4713-82fc-8ec66cd38c0a" CreationDate="2016-09-16T14:58:47.820" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="23469" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="8198" RevisionGUID="92ea9bde-0682-4bcf-95c7-c6aa6a7f8279" CreationDate="2016-09-16T14:58:47.820" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="23470" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8136" RevisionGUID="e48421ff-0538-49c1-8d40-66bdc0f21eef" CreationDate="2016-09-16T15:27:37.587" UserId="31260" Comment="system features += [3](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8056/new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8061#comment24925_8065 &quot;example - interstitial page&quot;)" Text="&lt;!-- let's talk about elephant in the room --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading of [July 22nd discussion](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/new-site-name-discussion-jul-22-2016) primary focus of the coming changes is to prevent the flood of debugging questions. Both SE Community Manager and our moderators appear to be in agreement about that:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; \-  There are a crazy number of things that should be closed or downvoted or edited or just discouraged, but only a tiny handful reach the sort of volume that you need to _announce them to all visitors_.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;\- And the code troubleshooting types are, by far, the worst.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;\- I'm pretty sure just about every site on the network gets coding questions now and then, but only a few bother mentioning that they're off-topic explicitly anywhere. &#xD;&#xA;here, they're a problem, so you focus on that &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explicit mentioning of **&quot;not code troubleshooting&quot;** in the [suggested site tagline](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vkfDr.png) also appears to support this vision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given above I wonder if we need to somehow change the way how blatant debugging questions are handled, maybe have more active involvement of diamond moderators or maybe ask for system features &lt;sup&gt;[1](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6795/31260 &quot;example - automatic checks for cross-posting and question block at SO&quot;), [2](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260 &quot;example - showing a warning&quot;), [3](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8056/new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8061#comment24925_8065 &quot;example - interstitial page&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt; or something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding of the current approach is, it assumes primarily involvement of regular community members which leads to cumbersome and lengthy process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;First, a question needs to collect five close votes from 3K users. Per my observations this tends to take few hours or even days. After closure, question hangs on the site for 9 days before it gets [auto-deleted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/177675/165773). If it manages to get an upvoted or accepted answer prior to closure things get even more complicated because such questions aren't eligible for automatic deletion and can in theory hang in here indefinitely.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that planned changes are so much focused on preventing debugging questions our current way looks somewhat worrying.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope that the changes will help to educate newcomers against asking for code troubleshooting over here. But [statistics](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6592/31260) seems to suggest that ~20% questions here come from users who simply don't have an option to ask for debugging help at more appropriate site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes me wonder how to handle it when such questions are posted here despite all the effort and guidance." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23471" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8173" RevisionGUID="7e78c5c6-9b48-4699-8f48-0434545756fd" CreationDate="2016-09-16T15:40:46.197" UserId="131624" Comment="deleted 33 characters in body" Text="I'm a bit reluctant when voting to close. I remember how tough it was figuring out how to craft a good question. I also know I need to get over it.  One thing that helps me get over it is adding a comment with the info I wish I had taken seriously sooner. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you see your question closed it's so easy to focus on the close message. Which is sad because all the editing effort focuses on 1 of what is likely 5 or so problems.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course not every close voter needs to do this. And it won't be appropriate for every case. But when it is, I like do more than just vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question here is, what should that info be? Trying to keep it generic enough to use in most cases while keeping it useful to the asker.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23472" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8199" RevisionGUID="c2b39b89-d936-4e43-8cc0-889f75fad95d" CreationDate="2016-09-16T16:45:46.040" UserId="31260" Text="In [&quot;follow up 2&quot; discussion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/8114/31260) the plan seemed to be that we are going to have words&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## not code troubleshooting&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;in the site tagline, looking about like that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![proposed intro image][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this still the plan?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vkfDr.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23476" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8201" RevisionGUID="6a856ebc-b748-43ce-816d-adeba785209a" CreationDate="2016-09-17T09:15:25.730" UserId="9113" Text="When I just tried to use a similar comment, first thing I noted is: this fits only to some kind of low-quality questions. For example, if someone blatantly asks for a website or book or other 3rd party resource, it is pretty pointless to tell him he might try it on another SE site. For these kind of questions, I think a downvote, a close vote, and just no comment is probably appropriate. The precanned text the asker can read after his question is closed is IMHO selfexplanatory enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nevertheless, I think the general idea is fine: having some precanned, polite text template or maybe templates for different issues, where we just need to fill out the name of the asker, can help to keep a better balance between removing the crap from the site as quickly as possible on one hand, but also staying professional and friendly to newcomers on the other hand. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like yours, but I would try to improve the wording in some details slightly, and I think adding a personal &quot;Hi User&quot; gives a much better impression to the asker. So here is my attempt to improve your text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi XYZ, welcome to Programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [This site list](http://stackexchange.com/sites) may help you to find out where [your question fits best](http://goo.gl/YoQVd0). Please search existing answers first. If you do not find one which matches your issue, feel free to take it to an appropriate site. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Hi XYZ, welcome to Programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [This site list](http://stackexchange.com/sites) may help you to find out where [your question fits best](http://goo.gl/YoQVd0). Please search existing answers first. If you do not find one which matches your issue, feel free to take it to an appropriate site. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Unfortunately, I needed to use an URL shortener to come around the maximum text size limit of comments, I hop that does not break any site rules)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23478" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8201" RevisionGUID="38d0bb20-4561-4c40-a083-92c0174c9a80" CreationDate="2016-09-17T12:37:04.620" UserId="9113" Comment="added 684 characters in body" Text="I think your message is fine, it is polite and and contains useful information, especially for new users. IMHO it is a much better reaction than just downvoting and closing without any comment, or these rude or terse comments we saw in the past and [discussed here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I just tried to use a similar comment, first thing I noted is: this fits only to a certain kind of low-quality questions. For example, if someone blatantly asks for a website or book or other 3rd party resource, it is pretty pointless to tell him he should try it on another SE site. For these kind of questions, I think a downvote, a close vote, and just no comment is probably appropriate. The automatically displayer text the asker will be shown after his question is closed is IMHO self-explanatory enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nevertheless, I think the general idea is fine: having some precanned, polite text template or maybe templates for different issues, where we just need to fill out the name of the asker, can help to keep a better balance between removing the crap from the site as quickly as possible on one hand, but also staying professional and friendly to newcomers on the other hand. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like yours, but I would try to improve the wording in some details slightly, and I think adding a personal &quot;Hi User&quot; gives a much better impression to the asker. So here is my attempt to improve your text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi XYZ, welcome to Programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [This site list](http://stackexchange.com/sites) may help you to find out where [your question fits best](http://goo.gl/YoQVd0). Please search existing answers first. If you do not find one which matches your issue, feel free to take it to an appropriate site. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Hi XYZ, welcome to Programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [This site list](http://stackexchange.com/sites) may help you to find out where [your question fits best](http://goo.gl/YoQVd0). Please search existing answers first. If you do not find one which matches your issue, feel free to take it to an appropriate site. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Unfortunately, I needed to use an URL shortener to come around the maximum text size limit of comments, I hope that does not break any site rules).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, I am aware filling out the user name will slow down the process of making the comment a little bit, since you cannot just copy-paste the text blindly into the comment form. But it will (hopefully) give the reader a better impression that you treat him like a real person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7943/how-to-improve-our-style-for-reacting-on-low-quality-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23479" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="0f8b38cb-8285-4ecc-90be-e8a148b0496f" CreationDate="2016-09-17T12:50:18.977" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|questions|faq-proposed|homework-dump|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23480" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8174" RevisionGUID="83064ecc-6dde-46cd-abd9-115b4b816973" CreationDate="2016-09-17T13:49:19.513" UserId="131624" Comment="Shortening 'different rules' URL" Text="I've been using this message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Welcome to programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [Many sites](http://stackexchange.com/sites) have [different rules](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8067/131624). Feel free to take your issue to an appropriate site. Search existing answers first. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Welcome to programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [Many sites](http://stackexchange.com/sites) have [different rules](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8067/131624). Feel free to take your issue to an appropriate site. Search existing answers first. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's been successful in getting a few askers to clean up on their own. I might even suggest that with this, fewer bitter arguments start after the close.  Bit hard to tell yet but I think it's helped.  Use it if you like. Maybe you can do better. If you can, please share.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23481" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8201" RevisionGUID="78acaafb-71a3-4d67-8819-3a3e5bd906bd" CreationDate="2016-09-17T13:53:54.587" UserId="9113" Comment="exchanged &quot;question&quot; by &quot;topic&quot;" Text="I think your message is fine, it is polite and and contains useful information, especially for new users. IMHO it is a much better reaction than just downvoting and closing without any comment, or these rude or terse comments we saw in the past and [discussed here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I just tried to use a similar comment, first thing I noted is: this fits only to a certain kind of low-quality questions. For example, if someone blatantly asks for a website or book or other 3rd party resource, it is pretty pointless to tell him he should try it on another SE site. For these kind of questions, I think a downvote, a close vote, and just no comment is probably appropriate. The automatically displayer text the asker will be shown after his question is closed is IMHO self-explanatory enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nevertheless, I think the general idea is fine: having some precanned, polite text template or maybe templates for different issues, where we just need to fill out the name of the asker, can help to keep a better balance between removing the crap from the site as quickly as possible on one hand, but also staying professional and friendly to newcomers on the other hand. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like yours, but I would try to improve the wording in some details slightly, and I think adding a personal &quot;Hi User&quot; gives a much better impression to the asker. So here is my attempt to improve your text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi XYZ, welcome to Programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [This site list](http://stackexchange.com/sites) may help you to find out where [your topic fits best](http://goo.gl/YoQVd0). Please search existing answers first. If you do not find one which matches your issue, feel free to take it to an appropriate site. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Hi XYZ, welcome to Programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [This site list](http://stackexchange.com/sites) may help you to find out where [your topic fits best](http://goo.gl/YoQVd0). Please search existing answers first. If you do not find one which matches your issue, feel free to take it to an appropriate site. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Unfortunately, I needed to use an URL shortener to come around the maximum text size limit of comments, I hope that does not break any site rules).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, I am aware filling out the user name will slow down the process of making the comment a little bit, since you cannot just copy-paste the text blindly into the comment form. But it will (hopefully) give the reader a better impression that you treat him like a real person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7943/how-to-improve-our-style-for-reacting-on-low-quality-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23486" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8173" RevisionGUID="2d53e399-f0ad-4726-8c00-50fc82faff4d" CreationDate="2016-09-19T03:32:38.230" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/777711972406136832" />
  <row Id="23487" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="318714b5-cdae-4396-89da-2e2c8f3c9d4b" CreationDate="2016-09-19T05:53:00.047" UserId="1204" Comment="added 35 characters in body" Text="This post is a supplement to the [Help Center Article](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) of the same name.  That article, in a nutshell, describes questions that are either too broad, too opinionated, or too discussion-oriented to make good questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This article describes the *specific categories of questions* that you should avoid asking.  Where can you ask them instead?  Try [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), if you have 20 reputation or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Coding help&#xD;&#xA;If you need help writing or troubleshooting code (or using the tools), ask your question on Stack Overflow, not here.   Read [&quot;What topics can I ask about&quot;](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) before you ask your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Review my design&#xD;&#xA;We don't review entire software designs; that's a *discussion,* not a question.  If you have a *specific question* about your software design, ask that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What is the name of this thing?&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask us to name things or provide word definitions are just requests for search engine help, which we don't provide here.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Which way is best?&#xD;&#xA;*The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because *you* already understand the detailed specifications for your software project,  *you* are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here.  Otherwise, you're just [trotting after a herd](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Convince my boss/coworker&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to help you win your argument.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Customer service&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about how a company or organization's product is licensed, priced, serviced, released, etc., *ask the company.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Legal Advice or Licensing&#xD;&#xA;Ask a lawyer, or one of our sister sites like Law or Open Source.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Where do I find...?&#xD;&#xA;We don't help people find things here.  We don't know where you can find that highly obscure paper/product/whatever. You have access to the same tool we do, which is Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What do you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;We don't make product, service or technology recommendations of any kind.  Try [here](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) or [here](http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), but *read their Help Center first.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What should I learn? &#xD;&#xA;We don't know that.  We can't predict the future, and your personal circumstances are too specific to make a good question that can benefit everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is [technology] popular/dead?&#xD;&#xA;We don't know that either.  Even if we did, any answer we provide would become useless a week from now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23488" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8204" RevisionGUID="d492256d-be99-4bf0-80de-4d166689b516" CreationDate="2016-09-19T06:14:09.440" UserId="1204" Text="Programmers is undergoing a name change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Why is this name change occurring?&#xD;&#xA; - Has anything else changed?&#xD;&#xA; - What kinds of questions will I be able to ask on the new site?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23489" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8204" RevisionGUID="d492256d-be99-4bf0-80de-4d166689b516" CreationDate="2016-09-19T06:14:09.440" UserId="1204" Text="What is this &quot;Software Engineering&quot; site you speak of, and what kinds of questions can I ask there?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23490" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8204" RevisionGUID="d492256d-be99-4bf0-80de-4d166689b516" CreationDate="2016-09-19T06:14:09.440" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23491" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8205" RevisionGUID="107a4726-1e5b-491f-9e83-8f640283aac2" CreationDate="2016-09-19T06:14:09.440" UserId="1204" Text="##Why is this name change occurring?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because the name &quot;Programmers&quot; invites all sorts of questions that are only vaguely related to software engineering, questions that we don't want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Has anything else changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes.  The Tour and the Help Center have a new tag line, the public description of the site which is seen by everyone. The Help Center/Ask page includes four new bullets that describe the new sites scope. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###If the Help Center describes the scope, then what is the purpose of this post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To better describe the site scope in a way that makes it very clear what kinds of questions are acceptable to ask here.  Over the years there has been a lot of confusion over what the site is all about, and we think we can now describe it in a way that is very clear and unambiguous&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##OK, so what kinds of questions can I ask, then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The new scope of Software Engineering is &quot;Questions related *directly*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to the Systems Development Life Cycle, *except for code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; troubleshooting and requests for written code.&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What does &quot;Questions related *directly* to the Systems Development Life Cycle&quot; mean?&#xD;&#xA;This is what it means:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the topic of your question is in that picture, it's probably on-topic at Software Engineering.  If the topic of your question is not in that picture, or is only tangentially related to one of those topics, then it is probably not on-topic at Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Why can't I ask questions about writing or troubleshooting specific bits of code here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because that role is already well-served at Stack Overflow.  This site, in part, is a refuge for those folks who have no interest in fixing other people's broken code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###But Legal, Licensing and History questions are not in the picture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's right, they're not.  Over time, we've found that these categories of questions are a poor fit for the site, for various reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OA9UR.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23492" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8205" RevisionGUID="9a59f24b-7a3e-497f-af03-497531f0c7ef" CreationDate="2016-09-19T06:19:42.617" UserId="1204" Comment="added 31 characters in body" Text="##Why is this name change occurring?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because the name &quot;Programmers&quot; invites all sorts of questions that are only vaguely related to software engineering, questions that we don't want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Has anything else changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes.  The Tour and the Help Center have a new tag line, the public description of the site which is seen by everyone. The Help Center/Ask page includes four new bullets that describe the new sites scope. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###If the Help Center describes the scope, then what is the purpose of this post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To better describe the site scope in a way that makes it very clear what kinds of questions are acceptable to ask here.  Over the years there has been a lot of confusion over what the site is all about, and we think we can now describe it in a way that is very clear and unambiguous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##OK, so what kinds of questions can I ask, then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The new scope of Software Engineering is &quot;Questions related *directly*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to the Systems Development Life Cycle, *except for code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; troubleshooting and requests for written code.&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What does &quot;Questions related *directly* to the Systems Development Life Cycle&quot; mean?&#xD;&#xA;This is what it means:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the topic of your question is in that picture, it's probably on-topic at Software Engineering.  If the topic of your question is not in that picture, or is only tangentially related to one of those topics, then it is probably not on-topic at Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Why can't I ask questions about writing or troubleshooting specific bits of code here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because that role is already well-served at Stack Overflow.  This site, in part, is a refuge for those folks who have no interest in fixing other people's broken code or writing their code for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###But Legal, Licensing and History questions are not in the picture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's right, they're not.  Over time, we've found that these categories of questions are a poor fit for the site, for various reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OA9UR.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23494" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8204" RevisionGUID="ebb79d4f-b0db-48cc-ba2e-7f5580779f4f" CreationDate="2016-09-19T12:57:24.223" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23495" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8205" RevisionGUID="7eb7bcda-abed-4042-a4fb-3fb99131e36f" CreationDate="2016-09-19T14:29:04.857" UserId="1204" Comment="added 50 characters in body" Text="##Why is this name change occurring?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because the name &quot;Programmers&quot; invites all sorts of questions that are only vaguely related to software engineering, questions that we don't want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Has anything else changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes.  The Tour and the Help Center have a new tag line, the public description of the site which is seen by everyone. The Help Center/Ask page includes four new bullets that describe the new site's &quot;scope:&quot; the kinds of questions that are suitable to ask here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###If the Help Center describes the scope, then what is the purpose of this post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To better describe the site scope in a way that makes it very clear what kinds of questions are acceptable to ask here.  Over the years there has been a lot of confusion over what the site is all about, and we think we can now describe it in a way that is very clear and unambiguous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##OK, so what kinds of questions can I ask, then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The new scope of Software Engineering is &quot;Questions related *directly*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to the Systems Development Life Cycle, *except for code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; troubleshooting and requests for written code.&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What does &quot;Questions related *directly* to the Systems Development Life Cycle&quot; mean?&#xD;&#xA;This is what it means:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the topic of your question is in that picture, it's probably on-topic at Software Engineering.  If the topic of your question is not in that picture, or is only tangentially related to one of those topics, then it is probably not on-topic at Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Why can't I ask questions about writing or troubleshooting specific bits of code here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because that role is already well-served at Stack Overflow.  This site, in part, is a refuge for those folks who have no interest in fixing other people's broken code or writing their code for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###But Legal, Licensing and History questions are not in the picture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's right, they're not.  Over time, we've found that these categories of questions are a poor fit for the site, for various reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OA9UR.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23496" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8204" RevisionGUID="718d189e-2149-4e98-8643-d190636d0511" CreationDate="2016-09-19T18:33:18.313" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/777938632787238912" />
  <row Id="23497" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6582" RevisionGUID="138538c3-f645-4d01-acbe-485e6bb9b323" CreationDate="2016-09-20T09:36:55.587" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|faq|closed-questions|name-that-thing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23499" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8204" RevisionGUID="8f8df517-a352-4a9c-bcbb-12f7f9622f63" CreationDate="2016-09-22T11:04:43.707" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23500" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8206" RevisionGUID="78aefb64-dbd9-4e91-a4b1-b6d9d5b4ce9f" CreationDate="2016-09-22T16:53:37.220" UserId="1204" Text="I have a question about &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Education, &#xD;&#xA; - Finding a job, &#xD;&#xA; - Interviews, &#xD;&#xA; - Training materials, &#xD;&#xA; - Classes, &#xD;&#xA; - Certifications, &#xD;&#xA; - Skill sets, &#xD;&#xA; - Marketing, &#xD;&#xA; - Job stress, &#xD;&#xA; - Workplace interaction,&#xD;&#xA; - Skills assessment,&#xD;&#xA; - Business development,&#xD;&#xA; - General management,&#xD;&#xA; - Attitude adjustment, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are any of these subjects on-topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23501" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8206" RevisionGUID="78aefb64-dbd9-4e91-a4b1-b6d9d5b4ce9f" CreationDate="2016-09-22T16:53:37.220" UserId="1204" Text="Are Career-Advice Questions On-Topic Here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23502" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8206" RevisionGUID="78aefb64-dbd9-4e91-a4b1-b6d9d5b4ce9f" CreationDate="2016-09-22T16:53:37.220" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23503" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8207" RevisionGUID="35f1d7e3-d766-4590-a5d7-5935601fcd8f" CreationDate="2016-09-22T16:53:37.220" UserId="1204" Text="##No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Engineering is a site for asking questions directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OA9UR.jpg) (but not code troubleshooting or crowd-sourcing code writing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23504" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8206" RevisionGUID="5da3317e-7a97-4b67-b195-512adc3087c8" CreationDate="2016-09-22T17:22:54.970" UserId="1204" Comment="added 28 characters in body" Text="I have a question about &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Education, &#xD;&#xA; - Finding a job, &#xD;&#xA; - Hiring,&#xD;&#xA; - Interviews, &#xD;&#xA; - Training materials, &#xD;&#xA; - Classes, &#xD;&#xA; - Certifications, &#xD;&#xA; - Skill sets, &#xD;&#xA; - Marketing, &#xD;&#xA; - Job stress, &#xD;&#xA; - Workplace interaction,&#xD;&#xA; - Skills assessment,&#xD;&#xA; - Business development,&#xD;&#xA; - General management,&#xD;&#xA; - Attitude adjustment, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are any of these subjects on-topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23505" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8207" RevisionGUID="5df1aa26-fdf6-4aa8-b560-1384550c454d" CreationDate="2016-09-22T17:29:49.450" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="##No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Engineering is a site for asking questions *directly related* to the [Systems Development Life Cycle](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OA9UR.jpg) (but not code troubleshooting or crowd-sourcing code writing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23506" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8206" RevisionGUID="4ddebfaa-b0a4-45d6-80c6-b277890c86d7" CreationDate="2016-09-22T17:32:29.533" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 23 characters in body" Text="I have a question about &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Education, &#xD;&#xA; - Finding a job, &#xD;&#xA; - Hiring,&#xD;&#xA; - Interviews, &#xD;&#xA; - Training materials, &#xD;&#xA; - Classes, &#xD;&#xA; - Certifications, &#xD;&#xA; - Skill sets, &#xD;&#xA; - Marketing, &#xD;&#xA; - Job stress, &#xD;&#xA; - Workplace interaction,&#xD;&#xA; - Business development,&#xD;&#xA; - General management,&#xD;&#xA; - Attitude adjustment, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are any of these subjects on-topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23507" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8205" RevisionGUID="5a3bad26-460a-4d30-bd00-1416b9a2480b" CreationDate="2016-09-22T17:35:01.470" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 42 characters in body" Text="##Why is this name change occurring?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because the name &quot;Programmers&quot; invites all sorts of questions that are only vaguely related to software engineering, questions that we don't want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Has anything else changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes.  The Tour and the Help Center have a new tag line, the public description of the site which is seen by everyone. The Help Center/Ask page includes four new bullets that describe the new site's &quot;scope:&quot; the kinds of questions that are suitable to ask here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###If the Help Center describes the scope, then what is the purpose of this post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To better describe the site in a way that makes it very clear what kinds of questions are acceptable to ask here.  Over the years there has been a lot of confusion over what the site is all about, and we think we can now describe it in a way that is very clear and unambiguous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##OK, so what kinds of questions can I ask, then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions related *directly*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to the Systems Development Life Cycle, *except for code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; troubleshooting and requests for written code.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What does &quot;Questions related *directly* to the Systems Development Life Cycle&quot; mean?&#xD;&#xA;This is what it means (click on the picture to expand it):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the topic of your question is in that picture, it's probably on-topic at Software Engineering.  If the topic of your question is not in that picture, or is only tangentially related to one of those topics, then it is probably not on-topic at Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Why can't I ask questions about writing or troubleshooting specific bits of code here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because that role is already well-served at Stack Overflow.  This site, in part, is a refuge for those folks who have no interest in fixing other people's broken code or writing their code for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###But Legal, Licensing and History questions are not in the picture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's right, they're not.  Over time, we've found that these categories of questions are a poor fit for the site, for various reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OA9UR.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23508" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8206" RevisionGUID="ae164d2d-a95f-462f-b255-7196c9c5a60c" CreationDate="2016-09-22T17:37:46.987" UserId="1204" Comment="added 14 characters in body" Text="I have a question about &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Education, &#xD;&#xA; - Finding a job, &#xD;&#xA; - Hiring,&#xD;&#xA; - Interviews, &#xD;&#xA; - Training materials, &#xD;&#xA; - Classes, &#xD;&#xA; - Certifications, &#xD;&#xA; - Skill sets, &#xD;&#xA; - Marketing, &#xD;&#xA; - Job stress, &#xD;&#xA; - Workplace interaction,&#xD;&#xA; - Business development,&#xD;&#xA; - General management,&#xD;&#xA; - Coaching,&#xD;&#xA; - Attitude adjustment, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are any of these subjects on-topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23509" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8205" RevisionGUID="c04dac9e-fa59-42e9-9d25-90e1cdc27dcb" CreationDate="2016-09-22T17:38:05.017" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8204/what-is-this-software-engineering-site-you-speak-of-and-what-kinds-of-questio/8205#comment25653_8204" Text="##Why is this name change occurring?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because the name &quot;Programmers&quot; invites all sorts of questions that are only vaguely related to software engineering, questions that we don't want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Has anything else changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes.  The Tour and the Help Center have a new tag line, the public description of the site which is seen by everyone. The Help Center/Ask page includes four new bullets that describe the site's &quot;scope:&quot; the kinds of questions that are suitable to ask here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###If the Help Center describes the scope, then what is the purpose of this post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To better describe the site in a way that makes it very clear what kinds of questions are acceptable to ask here.  Over the years there has been a lot of confusion over what the site is all about, and we think we can now describe it in a way that is very clear and unambiguous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##OK, so what kinds of questions can I ask, then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions related *directly*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to the Systems Development Life Cycle, *except for code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; troubleshooting and requests for written code.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What does &quot;Questions related *directly* to the Systems Development Life Cycle&quot; mean?&#xD;&#xA;This is what it means (click on the picture to expand it):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the topic of your question is in that picture, it's probably on-topic at Software Engineering.  If the topic of your question is not in that picture, or is only tangentially related to one of those topics, then it is probably not on-topic at Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Why can't I ask questions about writing or troubleshooting specific bits of code here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because that role is already well-served at Stack Overflow.  This site, in part, is a refuge for those folks who have no interest in fixing other people's broken code or writing their code for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###But Legal, Licensing and History questions are not in the picture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's right, they're not.  Over time, we've found that these categories of questions are a poor fit for the site, for various reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OA9UR.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23510" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8207" RevisionGUID="6eb816ce-bbe7-4703-a0ac-33543ddff334" CreationDate="2016-09-22T17:38:40.343" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 6 characters in body" Text="##No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Engineering is a site for asking questions *directly related* to the [Systems Development Life Cycle](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OA9UR.jpg) (but not code troubleshooting or writing specific code).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23511" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8208" RevisionGUID="261862ae-0ade-4b9b-a8f2-b87e8d3ef9a2" CreationDate="2016-09-22T19:50:11.460" UserId="145" Text="**NO**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [Thomas Owens says](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8207/145)&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering is a site for asking questions directly related&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to the Systems Development Life Cycle (but not code troubleshooting or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; writing specific code).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic. They are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23512" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="588" RevisionGUID="8ce0548e-e5fc-44d3-9fb5-56f4b372659d" CreationDate="2016-09-22T19:50:58.370" UserId="145" Comment="Title" Text="Are Career Advice questions On Topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23513" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="590" RevisionGUID="451feed5-fad4-443a-90df-cf83816ca26e" CreationDate="2016-09-22T19:53:13.673" UserId="145" Comment="updated to current meta groupthink." Text="*Note:  The current Meta thinking is &quot;No&quot;, they are never on topic.*  &#xD;&#xA;Some may be appropriate on [The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com), see [their guidance](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate directly to software development; general career advice questions with no relation to software development or where software development is a minor facet of the question are off-topic. A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as *off-topic*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(This aspect is discussed in [Dealing with “What are some good types of pickles for programmers?” type questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/288/8).)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, the general rule of thumb should be whether the question can help others in a similar situation. If the circumstances surrounding the question are too specific to the question asker such that there is no way to generalize and answer the question, they should be closed as *too localized*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Applying that rule should put a theoretical limit on the amount of ways the question &quot;My job is X, what should I do?&quot; can be asked. Questions that have similar set of circumstances to already-asked questions should be closed as *exact duplicates*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, if there isn't something pointed being asked in the question, and the asker is merely using Programmers.SE as a means to vent about whatever annoyed them at their job that day, it should be closed as *not constructive*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, and only if, a career-advice question passes those three tests, should it stay open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of career guidance questions that should be closed: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Mid level IT lead](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20289/mid-level-it-lead)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the best qualification route for me to get back into programming? (UK)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22350/what-is-the-best-qualification-route-for-me-to-get-back-into-programming-uk)&#xD;&#xA;* [On programmers, INTJ personality, human interactions, and large companies.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18227/on-programmers-intj-personality-human-interactions-and-large-companies-close) (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should also be noted that most, if not all, of the other Stack Exchanges have elected to consider their versions of &quot;help my exact situation&quot;-type questions (gaming recommendations, code reviews, proofreading, etc.) to be off-topic on the basis that a Q&amp;A system does not lend well to the necessary discussion to tease out all the details to fully answer the question. I don't see why Programmers.SE should be any different." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23514" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8209" RevisionGUID="73e7eac9-9fde-412c-b2e9-e9f5d7d0a518" CreationDate="2016-09-22T22:29:13.570" UserId="47136" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/331388/why-was-the-caret-used-for-xor-instead-of-exponentization?noredirect=1#comment706998_331388&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seriously though, this question asks for a specific reasoning - it doesn't encourage (nor would I accept) subjectivity or conjecture. It has 4 re-open votes, but I'm a little surprised it was closed to begin with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There seems to be a bit of a pandemic for closing questions that aren't black and white on Programmers - which is strange since this is the place to ask them (versus SO) so long as they are on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Requirements, architecture, and design&quot; seems to apply well here. Further, the example off-topic reasons don't remotely apply to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What gives?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23515" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8209" RevisionGUID="73e7eac9-9fde-412c-b2e9-e9f5d7d0a518" CreationDate="2016-09-22T22:29:13.570" UserId="47136" Text="This question isn't remotely subjective" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23516" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8209" RevisionGUID="73e7eac9-9fde-412c-b2e9-e9f5d7d0a518" CreationDate="2016-09-22T22:29:13.570" UserId="47136" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|opinion-based|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23517" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8210" RevisionGUID="153ac880-932f-4e0e-9386-aab5e1af6868" CreationDate="2016-09-22T23:14:18.567" UserId="1204" Text="Programmers (soon to be Software Engineering) is primarily about questions *directly related* to the Systems Development Life Cycle (but not code troubleshooting or requests for specific code):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you cited squarely into the category of &quot;computing history&quot; questions, and the subcategory &quot;curiosity questions.&quot;  Knowing why the caret was chosen will have absolutely no positive impact on anyone's ability to successfully navigate the Systems Development Life Cycle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nor is Programmers the place where you go to ask your questions that are too subjective for other sites.  It hasn't been *that* site for quite some time now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OA9UR.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23518" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8210" RevisionGUID="e45e9117-e851-4514-b84c-f7c6ca22d78f" CreationDate="2016-09-22T23:16:00.137" UserId="1204" Comment="added 121 characters in body" Text="Programmers (soon to be Software Engineering) is primarily about questions *directly related* to the Systems Development Life Cycle (but not code troubleshooting or requests for specific code):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you cited squarely into the category of &quot;computing history&quot; questions, and the subcategory &quot;curiosity questions.&quot;  Knowing why the caret was chosen will have absolutely no positive impact on anyone's ability to successfully navigate the Systems Development Life Cycle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nor is Programmers the place where you go to ask your questions that are too subjective for other sites.  It hasn't been *that* site for quite some time now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Decorating your question with a &quot;please keep answers objective&quot; moniker does not make the question any more suitable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OA9UR.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23519" PostHistoryTypeId="8" PostId="8210" RevisionGUID="dd3322b3-ec5d-4751-a435-677cd80bfec4" CreationDate="2016-09-22T23:17:53.000" UserId="1204" Comment="Rollback to [153ac880-932f-4e0e-9386-aab5e1af6868]" Text="Programmers (soon to be Software Engineering) is primarily about questions *directly related* to the Systems Development Life Cycle (but not code troubleshooting or requests for specific code):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you cited squarely into the category of &quot;computing history&quot; questions, and the subcategory &quot;curiosity questions.&quot;  Knowing why the caret was chosen will have absolutely no positive impact on anyone's ability to successfully navigate the Systems Development Life Cycle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nor is Programmers the place where you go to ask your questions that are too subjective for other sites.  It hasn't been *that* site for quite some time now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OA9UR.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23520" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8210" RevisionGUID="0a69cedf-0c62-4ef0-ae1a-3f9736e4f740" CreationDate="2016-09-22T23:25:21.560" UserId="1204" Comment="added 5 characters in body" Text="Programmers (soon to be Software Engineering) is primarily about questions *directly related* to the Systems Development Life Cycle (but not code troubleshooting or requests for specific code):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you cited fits squarely into the category of &quot;computing history&quot; questions, and the subcategory &quot;curiosity questions.&quot;  Knowing why the caret was chosen will have absolutely no positive impact on anyone's ability to successfully navigate the Systems Development Life Cycle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nor is Programmers the place where you go to ask your questions that are too subjective for other sites.  It hasn't been *that* site for quite some time now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OA9UR.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23521" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8209" RevisionGUID="cd0f9497-0568-41d3-85ed-ec4e429b7550" CreationDate="2016-09-22T23:41:15.520" UserId="47136" Comment="deleted 21 characters in body" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/331388/why-was-the-caret-used-for-xor-instead-of-exponentization?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seriously though, this question asks for a specific reasoning - it doesn't encourage (nor would I accept) subjectivity or conjecture. It has 4 re-open votes, but I'm a little surprised it was closed to begin with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There seems to be a bit of a pandemic for closing questions that aren't black and white on Programmers - which is strange since this is the place to ask them (versus SO) so long as they are on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Requirements, architecture, and design&quot; seems to apply well here. Further, the example off-topic reasons don't remotely apply to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What gives?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23522" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8211" RevisionGUID="48c52692-a3de-44b1-9e47-0602fe3108db" CreationDate="2016-09-23T02:53:25.730" UserId="4" Text="I read [your original question][1], [your question here on Meta][2], and the comment chain on [Robert Harvey's answer][3]. After reading everything, I casted a reopen vote on your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's been a while since we've visited a discussion of history questions and their topicality, but I still agree with the [answers presented in the last discussion][4], and I really don't see a reason to reopen the topicality discussion, since we've had plenty of luck with history questions - they tend to produce well researched answers that bring together individual knowledge and information from multiple sources in a way that is very searchable. All of those are positives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, this isn't the only site to have a solid set of questions about the history of their field. [Computer Science][5], [Electrical Engineering][6], [Mathematics][7], and [Statistics][8] all do it well, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, that doesn't mean that there aren't improvements that can't be made to the question. My biggest problem after reading everything is that it doesn't actually answer the question you are interested in. But that still doesn't mean that it's not a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You [left a comment on Robert's answer][9] that states you are interested in language design. This information is not presented in your original question at all. It may not be intuitive, but Stack Exchange is not about you getting an answer to your question, but about providing a repository of questions and answers for other people (I think there is some discussion on Meta Stack Exchange about this, but I'm not able to find it right now). This question isn't that useful for someone else who is designing a language and wondering if they should use a caret for XOR or exponentiation - they would have to interpret the history in their own way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also don't think that this is the best community to ask language design questions on.  We do have some people with this background here - [Eric Lippert][10] comes to mind. However, consider the intended audience of this community: [professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly][11] (or, in simpler terms, practitioners of [software engineering][12] or [software craftsmanship][13]). Considering that they also accept history questions, [the community at Computer Science][14] may be better suited to answering questions about programming language design - traditionally, [programming language theory is a branch of computer science][15]. However, just because it's on-topic there doesn't mean it is off-topic here. I do think that wording it more about your design of a programming language rather than a history question may have been better here, since as people who care about creating and maintaining software, we do have a stake in languages that are easy to use and maintainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, I've reopened the question. I don't see any reason to keep it closed. There's also no discussion regarding removing history from this site's scope, as long as it's related to the history of software engineering or software craftsmanship.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/331388/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/8209/4&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8210/4&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5633/is-programming-history-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/history&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/history&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/math-history&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/history&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8209/this-question-isnt-remotely-subjective#comment25693_8210&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6505/eric-lippert&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_craftsmanship&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language_theory" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23523" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8212" RevisionGUID="7bb885e7-65c1-410c-929c-75ffe5306c6e" CreationDate="2016-09-23T03:17:11.330" UserId="52929" Text="It would be beneficial to aggregate in one location **everything** that is actually on topic here, particularly when topics are exceptions to &quot;is it part of the SDLC?&quot; as a rule of thumb.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had thought that the purpose of defining the scope and the repeated iterations through the infamous four-bullet point exercise was to refine and codify scope, but given discussion on [this](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8211/52929) answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @enderland I'd have to dig around to find it, but it was stated several times that the scope was being clarified, but not changed (at least without further meta discussion). We were OK with removing licensing from the list of things that were on-topic because Law and Open Source do it better. We last discussed history in 2013 and decided it was on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems I somehow misunderstood the point of all the meta activity (?). Which leads me to be even more confused about scope than I was before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we please clarify what types of questions about topics that are **not** directly addressable by the otherwise simple question, &quot;part of SDLC? or not?&quot; that are also on topic on this site? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23524" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8212" RevisionGUID="7bb885e7-65c1-410c-929c-75ffe5306c6e" CreationDate="2016-09-23T03:17:11.330" UserId="52929" Text="What actually is the scope here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23525" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8212" RevisionGUID="7bb885e7-65c1-410c-929c-75ffe5306c6e" CreationDate="2016-09-23T03:17:11.330" UserId="52929" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23526" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8205" RevisionGUID="c5eaa74e-c81a-4e7b-9438-7fed5c5f0841" CreationDate="2016-09-23T03:48:06.623" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 9 characters in body" Text="##Why is this name change occurring?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because the name &quot;Programmers&quot; invites all sorts of questions that are only vaguely related to software engineering, questions that we don't want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Has anything else changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes.  The Tour and the Help Center have a new tag line, the public description of the site which is seen by everyone. The Help Center/Ask page includes four new bullets that describe the site's &quot;scope:&quot; the kinds of questions that are suitable to ask here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###If the Help Center describes the scope, then what is the purpose of this post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To better describe the site in a way that makes it very clear what kinds of questions are acceptable to ask here.  Over the years there has been a lot of confusion over what the site is all about, and we think we can now describe it in a way that is very clear and unambiguous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##OK, so what kinds of questions can I ask, then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions related *directly*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to the Systems Development Life Cycle, *except for code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; troubleshooting and requests for written code.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What does &quot;Questions related *directly* to the Systems Development Life Cycle&quot; mean?&#xD;&#xA;This is what it means (click on the picture to expand it):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the topic of your question is in that picture, it's probably on-topic at Software Engineering.  If the topic of your question is not in that picture, or is only tangentially related to one of those topics, then it is probably not on-topic at Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Why can't I ask questions about writing or troubleshooting specific bits of code here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because that role is already well-served at Stack Overflow.  This site, in part, is a refuge for those folks who have no interest in fixing other people's broken code or writing their code for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###But Legal and Licensing questions are not in the picture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's right, they're not.  Over time, we've found that these categories of questions are a poor fit for the site, for various reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OA9UR.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23527" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8212" RevisionGUID="02851081-8c52-4faf-90d5-8247a9225581" CreationDate="2016-09-23T03:58:49.167" UserId="1204" Comment="edited title" Text="What topics are not &quot;part of the SDLC&quot; but are nevertheless still on topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23528" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8213" RevisionGUID="1b7c34b0-5248-49c5-9c92-58183742360d" CreationDate="2016-09-23T09:29:48.663" UserDisplayName="user82096" Text="[This question][1] asks what kind of algorithm could be used to solve a particular problem.  It has received a close vote as a resource request.  That was my first instict, too, but actually asking about algorithms is not covered in the close vote reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to find or recommend **tools, libraries, programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; languages, resources (including books, blogs, tutorials, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; examples), or projects** to undertake are off-topic on Programmers as&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they attract opinionated answers that won't have lasting value to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An algorithm is arguably not a tool, library, language, resource, or project.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also the difference could be seen as significant.  &quot;What algorithm could solve my problem&quot; could be seen as &quot;How can I approach/solve this problem?&quot; rather than merely a shopping request.  I could easily see such a question being rewritten so that it did not attract close votes (yet received substantively the same kind of answers).  The same is not true of a question like &quot;What programming language should I use?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Note: I'm not arguing the linked question is good; it also seems quite vague and broad, so it should probably be closed or improved regardless.  But I'm still interested in this question from a theoretical standpoint.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/331804/machine-learning-and-deeplearning" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23529" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8213" RevisionGUID="1b7c34b0-5248-49c5-9c92-58183742360d" CreationDate="2016-09-23T09:29:48.663" UserDisplayName="user82096" Text="Is &quot;what algorithm could solve my problem?&quot; off topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23530" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8213" RevisionGUID="1b7c34b0-5248-49c5-9c92-58183742360d" CreationDate="2016-09-23T09:29:48.663" UserDisplayName="user82096" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23531" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8214" RevisionGUID="1d4dfeae-11fb-4332-af0e-357d89d42fb8" CreationDate="2016-09-23T09:47:22.603" UserId="4" Text="On one hand, when you're asking for an algorithm, you're also asking for the information to implement it - either a library, a book or paper, an example. On the other hand, choosing an algorithm is clearly part of software design, which [is on-topic][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I closed the question as being too broad, since I think that fits the best. The primary reason why we don't allow resource requests is that finding documents is the job for a search engine and rarely requires human expertise. We're best at writing answers that not only draw on published material, but also personal knowledge and experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question scope was narrowed to describe the problem and intended outcome in more detail, I think the question would be OK. If you take the core of the question now (&quot;machine learning algorithm for Stock Market Prediction model using Deep Neural Networks&quot;), you end up with several posts on different sites with techniques. However, if the problem is described more, it becomes something that's not really searchable, but would require human expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the asker does what we ask in the [how to ask a good question article in the Help Center][2], then some burden also goes to the answerer to not just name algorithms and throw out links, but to [write a good answer][3] that stands on its own and gives future readers sufficient information to have a solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23532" PostHistoryTypeId="7" PostId="588" RevisionGUID="55f15ce7-925a-46cd-b8fe-c3d58f6e92be" CreationDate="2016-09-23T14:13:41.193" UserId="1204" Comment="Rollback to [9aa4bb46-3561-431a-a113-bba5202283f2]" Text="Are Career Advice questions useful to anyone except the poster?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23533" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8206" RevisionGUID="fb318385-a011-4e6a-adc9-4195f88adab3" CreationDate="2016-09-23T14:16:15.960" UserId="1204" Comment="added 29 characters in body" Text="I have a question about &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Education, &#xD;&#xA; - Finding a job, &#xD;&#xA; - Hiring,&#xD;&#xA; - Interviews, &#xD;&#xA; - Training materials, &#xD;&#xA; - Classes, &#xD;&#xA; - Certifications, &#xD;&#xA; - Skill sets, &#xD;&#xA; - Marketing, &#xD;&#xA; - Job stress, &#xD;&#xA; - Workplace interaction,&#xD;&#xA; - Business development,&#xD;&#xA; - General management,&#xD;&#xA; - Coaching,&#xD;&#xA; - Attitude adjustment, convincing my boss/coworker, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are any of these subjects on-topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23534" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8212" RevisionGUID="8799a46f-474a-4eb9-9233-e1da63cd4416" CreationDate="2016-09-23T15:03:23.047" UserId="9113" Comment="link added" Text="It would be beneficial to aggregate in one location **everything** that is actually on topic here, particularly when topics are exceptions to &quot;is it part of the [SDLC][1]?&quot; as a rule of thumb.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had thought that the purpose of defining the scope and the repeated iterations through the infamous four-bullet point exercise was to refine and codify scope, but given discussion on [this](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8211/52929) answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @enderland I'd have to dig around to find it, but it was stated several times that the scope was being clarified, but not changed (at least without further meta discussion). We were OK with removing licensing from the list of things that were on-topic because Law and Open Source do it better. We last discussed history in 2013 and decided it was on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems I somehow misunderstood the point of all the meta activity (?). Which leads me to be even more confused about scope than I was before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we please clarify what types of questions about topics that are **not** directly addressable by the otherwise simple question, &quot;part of SDLC? or not?&quot; that are also on topic on this site? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23535" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8205" RevisionGUID="2b8435da-a505-4fab-874b-5a98b115dbdd" CreationDate="2016-09-23T17:28:13.783" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 203 characters in body" Text="##Why is &quot;Programmers&quot; changing to &quot;Software Engineering?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because the name &quot;Programmers&quot; invites all sorts of questions that are only vaguely related to software engineering, questions that we don't want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Has anything else changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes.  The Tour and the Help Center have a new tag line, the public description of the site which is seen by everyone. The Help Center/Ask page includes four new bullets that describe the site's &quot;scope:&quot; the kinds of questions that are suitable to ask here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###If the Help Center describes the scope, then what is the purpose of this post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To better describe the site in a way that makes it very clear what kinds of questions are acceptable to ask here.  Over the years there has been a lot of confusion over what the site is all about, and we think we can now describe it in a way that is very clear and unambiguous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##OK, so what kinds of questions can I ask, then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions related *directly*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to the Systems Development Life Cycle, *except for code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; troubleshooting and requests for written code.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What does &quot;Questions related *directly* to the Systems Development Life Cycle&quot; mean?&#xD;&#xA;This is what it means (click on the picture to expand it):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the subject area of your question is in that picture, it's probably an acceptable question.  If the subject area of your question is not in that picture, or is only tangentially related to one of those topics, then it is probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Why can't I ask questions about writing or troubleshooting specific bits of code here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because that role is already well-served at Stack Overflow.  This site, in part, is a refuge for those folks who have no interest in fixing other people's broken code or writing their code for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OA9UR.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23536" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="588" RevisionGUID="9cc65c75-5f26-4141-8ab7-f00db046efff" CreationDate="2016-09-24T07:32:59.587" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[8206,6483],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:1204,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Robert Harvey&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:22815,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Snowman&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:5099,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Bart van Ingen Schenau&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:9113,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Doc Brown&quot;}]}" />
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  <row Id="23543" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2156" RevisionGUID="17adeb1e-ced2-443f-82e8-cf728cdac74c" CreationDate="2016-09-24T16:57:06.993" UserId="25936" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[8206],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="23544" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2298" RevisionGUID="6a3d0ca9-fa5f-4f84-bb6b-5e519d049352" CreationDate="2016-09-24T16:59:43.413" UserId="25936" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[3279],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="23545" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="2308" RevisionGUID="2a668c59-3a65-4e70-958a-ef49668d168d" CreationDate="2016-09-24T17:01:56.090" UserId="25936" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[8206],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25936,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Yannis&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="23546" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8205" RevisionGUID="6bcbe0f8-1032-4571-b2f7-c6a83c8ba35b" CreationDate="2016-09-24T17:18:08.313" UserId="1204" Comment="edited body" Text="##Why is &quot;Programmers&quot; changing to &quot;Software Engineering?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because the name &quot;Programmers&quot; invites all sorts of questions that are only vaguely related to software engineering, questions that we don't want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Has anything else changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes.  The Tour and the Help Center have a new tag line, the public description of the site which is seen by everyone. The Help Center/Ask page includes four new bullets that describe the site's &quot;scope:&quot; the kinds of questions that are suitable to ask here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###If the Help Center describes the scope, then what is the purpose of this post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To better describe the site in a way that makes it very clear what kinds of questions are acceptable to ask here.  Over the years there has been a lot of confusion over what the site is all about, and we think we can now describe it in a way that is very clear and unambiguous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##OK, so what kinds of questions can I ask, then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions *directly related*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to the Systems Development Life Cycle, *except for code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; troubleshooting and requests for written code.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What does &quot;Questions related *directly* to the Systems Development Life Cycle&quot; mean?&#xD;&#xA;This is what it means (click on the picture to expand it):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the subject area of your question is in that picture, it's probably an acceptable question.  If the subject area of your question is not in that picture, or is only tangentially related to one of those topics, then it is probably off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Why can't I ask questions about writing or troubleshooting specific bits of code here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because that role is already well-served at Stack Overflow.  This site, in part, is a refuge for those folks who have no interest in fixing other people's broken code or writing their code for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OA9UR.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23547" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8215" RevisionGUID="0e2fd1f1-8fe7-4b33-8628-7f607d60b8b9" CreationDate="2016-09-24T17:39:46.280" UserId="1204" Text="##History Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;History questions are still on-topic, provided the op can demonstrate some relevance with an ongoing concern related to the SDLC.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Candied Orange [provided some great insights](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8209/this-question-isnt-remotely-subjective#comment25712_8210):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; History can be thought of as everything that isn't happening right now. That isn't what is off topic. What's off-topic is anything that ONLY has value from a historian's perspective. Simply having value from a historian's perspective doesn't make it off topic. Doesn't make it on topic either. So it would need another reason to be on topic. Doesn't matter if the OP frames it for a historian or not. So the ugly history of waterfall that led to agile is on topic. The reasoning behind Java being named after an island that exports coffee is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Historically (no pun intended), history questions have fared well here, provided they are interesting and not merely curiosity questions about some very obscure and random thing that can only be answered by someone that was actually there.  Questions about the design of the Babbage engine are probably on-topic; questions about the color Babbage painted his engine are probably not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Licensing Questions&#xD;&#xA;Licensing questions are not part of the SDLC; they are entirely a legal concern.  Law and Open-source have demonstrated a willingness to accept such questions, and can answer them better than we can.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I've been told that, in some cases, the Software Engineer is the one making these decisions, and so it's still a relevant concern on a Software Engineering site. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23548" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8216" RevisionGUID="d8672191-9484-4777-8b1b-1f0fcc85f0aa" CreationDate="2016-09-24T18:13:37.103" UserId="131624" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/331919/131624&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reminds me of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/331878/deploying-multiple-wars-on-one-server-instance-vs-each-on-a-server&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/331878/deploying-multiple-wars-on-one-server-instance-vs-each-on-a-server&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/99553/deploying-multiple-wars-small-websites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't see the deleted questions but this seems awfully familiar.  How do I flag in a case like this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23549" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8216" RevisionGUID="d8672191-9484-4777-8b1b-1f0fcc85f0aa" CreationDate="2016-09-24T18:13:37.103" UserId="131624" Text="I can't see deletes but this looks familure" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23550" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8216" RevisionGUID="d8672191-9484-4777-8b1b-1f0fcc85f0aa" CreationDate="2016-09-24T18:13:37.103" UserId="131624" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23551" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8216" RevisionGUID="83425e95-f9b6-4317-b32f-1228c67d29a8" CreationDate="2016-09-24T18:28:12.593" UserId="131624" Comment="deleted 126 characters in body" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/331919/131624&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reminds me of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/331878/deploying-multiple-wars-on-one-server-instance-vs-each-on-a-server&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/99553/deploying-multiple-wars-small-websites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't see the deleted question but this seems awfully familiar.  How do I flag in a case like this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23552" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8215" RevisionGUID="5af8a960-5a9e-495c-90c3-379268e56572" CreationDate="2016-09-24T18:58:32.017" UserId="1204" Comment="added 17 characters in body" Text="##History Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;History questions are still on-topic, provided the op can demonstrate some relevance with an ongoing concern related to the SDLC.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Candied Orange [provided some great insights](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8209/this-question-isnt-remotely-subjective#comment25712_8210):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; History can be thought of as everything that isn't happening right now. That isn't what is off topic. What's off-topic is anything that ONLY has value from a historian's perspective. Simply having value from a historian's perspective doesn't make it off topic. Doesn't make it on topic either. So it would need another reason to be on topic. Doesn't matter if the OP frames it for a historian or not. So the ugly history of waterfall that led to agile is on topic. The reasoning behind Java being named after an island that exports coffee is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Historically (no pun intended), history questions have fared well here, provided they are interesting and not merely curiosity questions about some very obscure and random thing that can only be answered by someone that was actually there when it happened.  Questions about the design of the Babbage engine are probably on-topic; questions about the color Babbage painted his engine are probably not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Licensing Questions&#xD;&#xA;Licensing questions are not part of the SDLC; they are entirely a legal concern.  Law and Open-source have demonstrated a willingness to accept such questions, and can answer them better than we can.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I've been told that, in some cases, the Software Engineer is the one making these decisions, and so it's still a relevant concern on a Software Engineering site. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23553" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8217" RevisionGUID="ad857692-453c-4f08-8949-cc4a85b067fb" CreationDate="2016-09-24T19:18:05.587" UserId="25936" Text="There's no reason to flag here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you feel the question is off topic, vote to close it.   &#xD;&#xA;- If you feel it's on topic but a poor question, downvote it.  &#xD;&#xA;- If you wish to help the OP understand what they are doing wrong, comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the OP continues ignoring the signs that their question isn't quite welcome here, the automated question ban will kick in and resolve the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the ProWebmasters question, Programmers mods aren't able to do more about it than you. Again, no reason to flag.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23554" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8217" RevisionGUID="1de5ac55-bc3f-41d1-bb17-7c96a5acdb9d" CreationDate="2016-09-24T20:08:40.607" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 13 characters in body" Text="There's no reason to flag here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you feel the question is off topic, vote to close it.   &#xD;&#xA;- If you feel it's a poor question, downvote it.  &#xD;&#xA;- If you wish to help the OP understand what they are doing wrong, comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the OP continues ignoring the signs that their question isn't quite welcome here, the automated question ban will kick in and resolve the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the ProWebmasters question, Programmers mods aren't able to do more about it than you. Again, no reason to flag.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23555" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8218" RevisionGUID="e42e1296-2b7d-476a-b1e8-08564d141132" CreationDate="2016-09-24T21:28:30.000" UserId="1403" Text="Virtually every question from this site that I see on the 'hot questions' list strikes me as a pure exercise in eliciting conflicting opinions. They may be expert opinions, or they may not, but they are do not come close to some sort of objective standard. The most recent example I've seen: [&quot;Is readability a reason not to use const parameters.&quot;][1]. If the standards of this site are going to continue to encourage this sort of thing, I'll continue to give it a miss. If you are aiming to squeeze this stuff out in favor of questions that are less opinionated, I might start showing up and answering some things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/331678/is-readability-a-valid-reason-to-not-use-const-in-parameters" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23556" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8218" RevisionGUID="e42e1296-2b7d-476a-b1e8-08564d141132" CreationDate="2016-09-24T21:28:30.000" UserId="1403" Text="Is the rebranding of this site intended to change the acceptability of pure opinion questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23557" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8218" RevisionGUID="e42e1296-2b7d-476a-b1e8-08564d141132" CreationDate="2016-09-24T21:28:30.000" UserId="1403" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23558" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8206" RevisionGUID="a240efee-839d-48de-8802-42347f870653" CreationDate="2016-09-24T22:09:42.083" UserId="1204" Comment="added 15 characters in body" Text="I have a question about &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Education, &#xD;&#xA; - Finding a job, &#xD;&#xA; - Hiring,&#xD;&#xA; - Interviews,&#xD;&#xA; - Job Titles &#xD;&#xA; - Training Materials, &#xD;&#xA; - Classes, &#xD;&#xA; - Certifications, &#xD;&#xA; - Skill sets, &#xD;&#xA; - Marketing, &#xD;&#xA; - Job Stress, &#xD;&#xA; - Workplace Interaction,&#xD;&#xA; - Business Development,&#xD;&#xA; - General Management,&#xD;&#xA; - Coaching,&#xD;&#xA; - Attitude Adjustment, Convincing My Boss/Coworker, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are any of these subjects on-topic here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23559" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8216" RevisionGUID="5fce84f5-117f-4403-8aea-c418659aa536" CreationDate="2016-09-24T22:18:22.183" UserId="131624" Comment="edited title" Text="I can't see deletes but this looks familiar" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23560" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8219" RevisionGUID="cd7ebde7-542e-449f-b310-dfea2e360c09" CreationDate="2016-09-24T22:39:56.020" UserId="1204" Text="In a word, no.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjectivity hasn't been an &quot;on-topic&quot; decider since the &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; days.  We're not a haven for &quot;the subjective questions that Stack Overflow doesn't want.&quot;  Since the first site rebranding, questions asked here are subject to the same standards for clarity and depth that Stack Overflow questions are measured against, irrespective of their subject matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be fair, the question you cited is not fundamentally subjective; it's fundamentally misguided, and the answer is clear and unambiguous: nobody expects readability to trump functionality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23561" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8218" RevisionGUID="b6c642eb-7484-49cb-ac0a-42f5472c6e6a" CreationDate="2016-09-24T23:04:28.477" UserId="1403" Comment="added 220 characters in body" Text="Virtually every question from this site that I see on the 'hot questions' list strikes me as a pure exercise in eliciting conflicting opinions. They may be expert opinions, or they may not, but they are do not come close to some sort of objective standard. The most recent example I've seen: [&quot;Is readability a reason not to use const parameters.&quot;][1]. If the standards of this site are going to continue to encourage this sort of thing, I'll continue to give it a miss. If you are aiming to squeeze this stuff out in favor of questions that are less opinionated, I might start showing up and answering some things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of interest to me: [Let's Debate Two Buzzwords][2]. This one is currently protected, but open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/331678/is-readability-a-valid-reason-to-not-use-const-in-parameters&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/331864/does-tdd-make-defensive-programming-redundant" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23562" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8219" RevisionGUID="a64d2644-1cea-4d8e-a6e4-9d41d10d568a" CreationDate="2016-09-24T23:49:34.100" UserId="1204" Comment="added 86 characters in body" Text="Nothing has changed. Purely &quot;subjective&quot; questions are still off-topic here as &quot;Primarily Opinion-Based,&quot; and always have been.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjectivity hasn't been an &quot;on-topic&quot; decider since the &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; days.  We're not a haven for &quot;the subjective questions that Stack Overflow doesn't want.&quot;  Since the first site rebranding, questions asked here are subject to the *same standards for clarity and depth* that Stack Overflow questions are measured against, irrespective of their subject matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be fair, the question you cited is not fundamentally subjective; it's fundamentally misguided, and the answer is clear and unambiguous: nobody expects readability to trump functionality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23563" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8219" RevisionGUID="7670bf4c-8369-4385-9b79-e6bbed53b5f8" CreationDate="2016-09-25T00:08:28.790" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="Nothing has changed. Purely &quot;subjective&quot; questions are still closed here as &quot;Primarily Opinion-Based,&quot; and always have been.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjectivity hasn't defined our subject-matter scope since the &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; days.  We're no longer a haven for &quot;the subjective questions that Stack Overflow doesn't want.&quot;  Since the first site rebranding, questions asked here are subject to the **same standards for clarity and depth** that Stack Overflow questions are measured against, irrespective of their subject matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be fair, the question you cited is not fundamentally subjective; it's fundamentally misguided, and the answer is clear and unambiguous: nobody expects readability to trump functionality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23564" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8220" RevisionGUID="e07c3dce-865a-4f63-86a4-d16a189e1b04" CreationDate="2016-09-25T06:51:49.397" UserId="9113" Text="Software Design is not mathematics - for lots of questions in this area, there is not objective &quot;right&quot; or &quot;wrong&quot;, only opinions about &quot;better&quot; or &quot;worse&quot; based on certain experience. So I would not expect questions which are opinionated to a certain degree to vanish completely. However, the community here did close purely opinionated question very quickly in the past, and will do this most probably in the future. I try to explain why your two linked examples are not falling into that category:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the first one makes the wrong assumption that the use of &quot;const&quot; in C++ is only a matter of readability. It is **objectively** true that this assumption is wrong (see second answer). And it is **objectively** true that readability increases by the tabular parameter formatting presented in the topmost answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the second question asks if the usage of TDD makes Defensive Programming redundant. The answers explain well that this is **objectively** not the case, because they address different types of failures&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what I see in your question above are at least **3 wrong assumptions**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- purely opinionated questions are welcome here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- only because a question has the word &quot;readability&quot; in its title, it is opinionated&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;TDD vs. Defensive Programming&quot; is just a discussion of buzzwords&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So this leads me to the conclusion your question is misguided, too. But the community will probably not close it (I give you an upvote, too), since it is at least a good occasion to explain the difference between &quot;good&quot; and &quot;bad&quot; subjective questions.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23565" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8221" RevisionGUID="d64551bc-abe6-4497-8f0b-c659e83a18ba" CreationDate="2016-09-25T17:36:47.437" UserId="1204" Text="Questions containing the words:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - What is the &quot;best practice,&quot; or &#xD;&#xA; - What is the &quot;right way,&quot; or&#xD;&#xA; - Which technique is &quot;most popular&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;are often received poorly here.  Why is this?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can I get a good answer to questions like this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23566" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8221" RevisionGUID="d64551bc-abe6-4497-8f0b-c659e83a18ba" CreationDate="2016-09-25T17:36:47.437" UserId="1204" Text="How do I ask a &quot;Best Practices&quot; question here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23567" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8221" RevisionGUID="d64551bc-abe6-4497-8f0b-c659e83a18ba" CreationDate="2016-09-25T17:36:47.437" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23568" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8222" RevisionGUID="a849bbe7-cd73-4f6c-a7ce-441f39360db8" CreationDate="2016-09-25T17:36:47.437" UserId="1204" Text="Questions asking &quot;What is the best way&quot; are not answerable.  There are always many different, feasible ways to solve a specific problem in computing. **There is no &quot;best&quot; way; there is only the way that most effectively solves your specific problem.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So instead of asking what is the best way, tell us what &quot;best&quot; means to you.  Do you want it to be the fastest code?  The least amount of code?  The most flexible or modular code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't respond with &quot;I want it to be all of these things.  I want it to be the 'best'.&quot;  Code characteristics can often be conflicting; to get the fastest possible code, you sometimes have to sacrifice readability and maintainability.  So tell us which characteristics are the most important to you.  Tell us, for example, that you're willing to sacrifice readability for speed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't respond with a tautology.  &quot;I want it to be the kind of code most software developers regard as industry standard&quot; doesn't tell us anything more about what &quot;best&quot; means to you, unless you can point to an actual formal standard like an ISO standard that objectively defines &quot;best&quot; in your specific situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/142353/102937)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23569" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8222" RevisionGUID="ddc2de4a-04b9-467c-b8c5-1eab91b7ef86" CreationDate="2016-09-25T17:42:41.823" UserId="1204" Comment="added 16 characters in body" Text="Questions that merely ask &quot;What is the best way to do something&quot; are not answerable.  There are always many different, feasible ways to solve a specific problem in computing. **There is no &quot;best&quot; way; there is only the way that most effectively solves your specific problem.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So instead of asking what is the best way, tell us what &quot;best&quot; means to you.  Do you want it to be the fastest code?  The least amount of code?  The most flexible or modular code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't respond with &quot;I want it to be all of these things.  I want it to be the 'best'.&quot;  Code characteristics can often be conflicting; to get the fastest possible code, you sometimes have to sacrifice readability and maintainability.  So tell us which characteristics are the most important to you.  Tell us, for example, that you're willing to sacrifice readability for speed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't respond with a tautology.  &quot;I want it to be the kind of code most software developers regard as industry standard&quot; doesn't tell us anything more about what &quot;best&quot; means to you, unless you can point to an actual formal standard like an ISO standard that objectively defines &quot;best&quot; in your specific situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/142353/102937)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23570" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8221" RevisionGUID="b078b425-dc46-4e39-8d92-d380910bb86c" CreationDate="2016-09-25T17:43:00.373" UserId="1204" Comment="edited title" Text="How do I ask a &quot;Best Practices&quot; question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23571" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8223" RevisionGUID="dcd28523-eabb-4e82-80f7-36caf2116445" CreationDate="2016-09-25T18:32:40.063" UserId="102438" Text="&gt; # How do I ask a “Best Practices” question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best Practice can be defined as a method or process that is generally recognized to get better results. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Businesses love to follow them because it demonstrates that they have done their due diligence on the matter, and determined the most superior way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ambitious managers and software engineers love them for much the same reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there are frequently competing solutions and methodologies that are mutually exclusive, and that reasonable and mature software engineers would disagree about which is best, leading to the following [principle of Unix programming][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Rule of Diversity: Distrust all claims for “one true way”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To return to the question, then, &quot;How do I ask a “Best Practices” question?&quot; this is something of a Schrödinger's Question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would think that it is difficult to know in advance that given a specific question whether or not there is a best practice without knowing &#xD;&#xA;what that best practice is. Perhaps this is an opportunity for a self Q&amp;A if you have thoroughly researched the matter and have the answer prepared (and a thorough check determines the question to not be a duplicate). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do you know you have a best practice, then? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest that, even before asking this question, you thoroughly research your options, and present what you think reasonable mature software engineers would agree is indisputable &quot;best practice&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, answers go in the answers, so after doing this prep work, you should have an ideal self-Q&amp;A. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the matter is determined to be truly a question of opinion, we will likely put the question on hold and give you a chance to salvage it - and if it does not have the problems with it fixed, we will delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an alternative to thorough research and to prevent avoidable closure of your question, you might raise the matter in [Software Engineers chat][2] for advice on asking it - as the people who would be likely to vote to close it would be there to either help you fix obvious problems or advise you not to ask if it's completely unfixable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23572" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8223" RevisionGUID="a936e4f4-44e7-4d89-a778-4e63c3f36c6a" CreationDate="2016-09-25T18:42:07.500" UserId="102438" Comment="added 223 characters in body" Text="&gt; # How do I ask a “Best Practices” question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best Practice can be defined as a method or process that is generally recognized to get better results. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples that occur to me might be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- In Python, prefer to use context managers when given the option.&#xD;&#xA;- Store text data in utf-8 format in most cases.&#xD;&#xA;- Avoid storing data in ad-hoc csv or tsv formats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Businesses love to follow Best Practices because it demonstrates that they have done their due diligence on the matter, and determined the most superior way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ambitious managers and software engineers love them for much the same reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there are frequently competing solutions and methodologies that are mutually exclusive, and that reasonable and mature software engineers would disagree about which is best, leading to the following [principle of Unix programming][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Rule of Diversity: Distrust all claims for “one true way”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To return to the question, then, &quot;How do I ask a “Best Practices” question?&quot; this is something of a Schrödinger's Question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would think that it is difficult to know in advance that given a specific question whether or not there is a best practice without knowing &#xD;&#xA;what that best practice is. Perhaps this is an opportunity for a self Q&amp;A if you have thoroughly researched the matter and have the answer prepared (and a thorough check determines the question to not be a duplicate). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do you know you have a best practice, then? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest that, even before asking this question, you thoroughly research your options, and present what you think reasonable mature software engineers would agree is indisputable &quot;best practice&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, answers go in the answers, so after doing this prep work, you should have an ideal self-Q&amp;A. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the matter is determined to be truly a question of opinion, we will likely put the question on hold and give you a chance to salvage it - and if it does not have the problems with it fixed, we will delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an alternative to thorough research and to prevent avoidable closure of your question, you might raise the matter in [Software Engineers chat][2] for advice on asking it - as the people who would be likely to vote to close it would be there to either help you fix obvious problems or advise you not to ask if it's completely unfixable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23573" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8224" RevisionGUID="69c392a5-fe8d-4368-9e6f-f60494553228" CreationDate="2016-09-25T21:01:31.650" UserId="131624" Text="A best practice is not a silver bullet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Doing X is the best way to get Y in situation Z&quot; is how most respectable best practices read to me.  Usually followed with a hedge: &quot;Well it's better than W here anyway&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;X will always do what you want in every situation&quot; is how most respectable advertisements read to me. No, these are not silver bullets no matter what the advertising department told you. :P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We aren't here to advertise or advocate X.  If we do anything with X it's to understand how X might fit in a development process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you want to ask a best practice question we need X, Y, and Z.  Likely W as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is agile better than waterfall?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left out the situation and what you want out of it.  Waterfall is alive and well in many circles. How could we possibly answer that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will agile let me communicate with my customers better than waterfall while I develop this scrapbooking website?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah, I think it will.  Your scrap booking customers likely won't want to read many specification documents.  They will look at a mockup of the web site and quickly tell you that the red and yellow color scheme makes their head hurt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A best practice question ideally should include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The practice&#xD;&#xA;* The objective&#xD;&#xA;* The situation&#xD;&#xA;* The alternative practice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23574" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8224" RevisionGUID="2b492ee7-4c85-4a67-8d06-eea385fba48f" CreationDate="2016-09-25T21:28:14.757" UserId="131624" Comment="added 78 characters in body" Text="**A best practice is not a silver bullet.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Doing X is the best way to get Y in situation Z&quot; is how most respectable best practices read to me.  Usually followed with a hedge: &quot;Well it's better than W here anyway&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;X will always do what you want in every situation&quot; is how most respectable advertisements read to me. No, these are not silver bullets no matter what the advertising department told you. :P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We aren't here to advertise or advocate X.  If we do anything with X it's to understand how X might fit in a development process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you want to ask a best practice question we need X, Y, and Z.  Likely W as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is agile better than waterfall?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left out the situation and what you want out of it.  Waterfall is alive and well in many circles. How could we possibly answer that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will agile let me communicate with my customers better than waterfall while I develop this scrapbooking website?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah, I think it will.  Your scrap booking customers likely won't want to read many specification documents.  They will look at a mockup of the web site and quickly tell you that the red and yellow color scheme makes their head hurt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A best practice question ideally should include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The practice&#xD;&#xA;* The objective&#xD;&#xA;* The situation&#xD;&#xA;* The alternative practice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Include these and there might be an objective way to answer your question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23575" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8222" RevisionGUID="aa614fcb-df83-4c37-a1aa-72a957f780a8" CreationDate="2016-09-25T22:08:30.323" UserId="1204" Comment="edited body" Text="Questions that merely ask &quot;What is the best way to do something&quot; are not answerable.  There are always many different, feasible ways to solve a specific problem in computing. **There is no &quot;best&quot; way; there is only the way that most effectively solves your specific problem.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So instead of asking what is the best way, **tell us what &quot;best&quot; means to you.**  Do you want it to be the fastest code?  The least amount of code?  The most flexible or modular code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't respond with &quot;I want it to be all of these things.  I want it to be the 'best'.&quot;  **Design goals can often conflict:** to get the fastest possible code, you sometimes have to sacrifice readability and maintainability.  So tell us which characteristics are the most important to you.  Tell us, for example, that you're willing to sacrifice readability for speed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Don't respond with a tautology.**  &quot;I want it to be the kind of code most software developers regard as industry standard&quot; doesn't tell us anything more about what &quot;best&quot; means to you, unless you can point to an actual formal standard like an ISO standard that objectively defines &quot;best&quot; in your specific situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/142353/102937)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23576" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8222" RevisionGUID="c1b52afc-1043-48cb-bb2f-02c20d894a28" CreationDate="2016-09-25T22:15:02.757" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 7 characters in body" Text="Questions that merely ask &quot;What is the best way to do something&quot; are not answerable.  There are always many different, feasible ways to solve a specific problem in computing. **There is no &quot;best&quot; way; there is only the way that most effectively solves your specific problem.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So instead of asking what is the best way, **tell us what &quot;best&quot; means to you.**  Do you want it to be the fastest code?  The least amount of code?  The most flexible or modular code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't respond with &quot;I want it to be all of these things.  I want it to be the 'best'.&quot;  **Design goals can often conflict:** to get the fastest possible code, you sometimes have to sacrifice readability and maintainability.  So tell us which characteristics are the most important to you.  Tell us, for example, that you're willing to sacrifice readability for speed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Don't respond with a tautology.**  &quot;I want it to be the kind of code most software developers regard as industry standard&quot; doesn't tell us anything more about what &quot;best&quot; means to you, unless you can point to an actual formal standard like an ISO standard that objectively defines &quot;best&quot; in your specific situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23577" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8224" RevisionGUID="4bb2abe6-b8aa-4b11-aa66-39516a6632fa" CreationDate="2016-09-25T22:16:29.797" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="**A best practice is not a silver bullet.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Doing X is the best way to get Y in situation Z&quot; is how most respectable best practices read to me.  Usually followed with a hedge: &quot;Well it's better than W here anyway&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;X will always do what you want in every situation&quot; is how most respectable advertisements read to me. No, these are not silver bullets no matter what the advertising department told you. :P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We aren't here to advertise or advocate X.  If we do anything with X it's to understand how X might fit in a development process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you want to ask a best practice question we need X, Y, and Z.  Likely W as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is agile better than waterfall?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left out the situation and what you want out of it.  Waterfall is alive and well in many circles. How could we possibly answer that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Will agile let me communicate with my customers better than waterfall while I develop this scrapbooking website?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah, I think it will.  Your scrap booking customers likely won't want to read many specification documents.  They will look at a mockup of the web site and quickly tell you that the red and yellow color scheme makes their head hurt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A best practice question ideally should include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The practice&#xD;&#xA;* The objective&#xD;&#xA;* The situation&#xD;&#xA;* The alternative practice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Include these and there might be an objective way to answer your question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23578" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8224" RevisionGUID="5642b0e8-40bd-4c73-9e10-e77a91d7594a" CreationDate="2016-09-25T22:25:04.080" UserId="1204" Comment="added 2 characters in body" Text="**A best practice is not a silver bullet.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Doing X is the best way to get Y in situation Z&quot; is how most respectable best practices read to me.  Usually followed with a hedge: &quot;Well it's better than W here anyway&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;X will always do what you want in every situation&quot; is how most respectable advertisements read to me. No, these are not silver bullets no matter what the advertising department told you. :P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We aren't here to advertise or advocate X.  If we do anything with X it's to understand how X might fit in a development process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you want to ask a best practice question we need X, Y, and Z.  Likely W as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is agile better than waterfall?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This leaves out the situation and what you want out of it.  Waterfall is alive and well in many circles. How could we possibly answer that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Will agile let me communicate with my customers better than waterfall while I develop this scrapbooking website?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah, I think it will.  Your scrap booking customers likely won't want to read many specification documents.  They will look at a mockup of the web site and quickly tell you that the red and yellow color scheme makes their head hurt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A best practice question ideally should include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The practice&#xD;&#xA;* The objective&#xD;&#xA;* The situation&#xD;&#xA;* The alternative practice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Include these and there might be an objective way to answer your question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23579" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8222" RevisionGUID="4aff8cd3-37f6-495a-ac7e-72944e2936ec" CreationDate="2016-09-26T06:17:55.107" UserId="1204" Comment="added 21 characters in body" Text="Questions that merely ask &quot;What is the best way to do something&quot; are not answerable.  Because there are always several ways to solve a problem in computing, **there is no &quot;best&quot; way; there is only the way that most effectively solves your specific problem,** in whatever way you define &quot;effective.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So instead of asking what is the best way, **tell us what &quot;best&quot; means to you.**  Do you want it to be the fastest code?  The least amount of code?  The most flexible or modular code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't respond with &quot;I want it to be all of these things.  I want it to be the 'best'.&quot;  **Design goals can often conflict:** to get the fastest possible code, you sometimes have to sacrifice readability and maintainability.  So tell us which characteristics are the most important to you.  Tell us, for example, that you're willing to sacrifice readability for speed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Don't respond with a tautology.**  &quot;I want it to be the kind of code most software developers regard as industry standard&quot; doesn't tell us anything more about what &quot;best&quot; means to you, unless you can point to an actual formal standard like an ISO standard that objectively defines &quot;best&quot; in your specific situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23580" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8220" RevisionGUID="7be93bb0-59ed-4cc6-b967-c56d7f00a2b0" CreationDate="2016-09-26T08:05:22.413" UserId="9113" Comment="wording improved" Text="Software Design is not mathematics - for lots of questions in this area, there is not objective &quot;right&quot; or &quot;wrong&quot;, only opinions about &quot;better&quot; or &quot;worse&quot; based on certain experience. So I would not expect questions which are opinionated to a certain degree to vanish completely. However, the community here did close purely opinionated question very quickly in the past, and will do this most probably in the future. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the two linked examples your question mentions will probably not be closed as too opinionated. That is because do IMHO **not** encourage opionated answers, quite the opposite:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the first one makes the wrong assumption that the use of &quot;const&quot; in C++ is only a matter of readability. It is **objectively** true that this assumption is wrong (see second answer). And it is **objectively** true that readability increases by the tabular parameter formatting presented in the topmost answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the second question asks if the usage of TDD makes Defensive Programming redundant. The answers explain well that this is **objectively** not the case, because they address different types of failures&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what I see in your question above are at least **3 wrong assumptions**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;purely opinionated questions seem to be welcome here&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- when a question is about &quot;readability&quot;, it will cause opinionated answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;TDD&quot; and &quot;Defensive Programming&quot; are just buzzwords, and a comparison of them will be purely subjective&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though all of these assumptions are plain wrong, I gave your question an upvote, either, since it is at least a good occasion to explain the difference between &quot;good&quot; and &quot;bad&quot; subjective questions.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23581" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8220" RevisionGUID="86946f2d-871d-4c81-a7ce-8cd9b0e260b2" CreationDate="2016-09-26T08:15:37.930" UserId="9113" Comment="added 36 characters in body" Text="Software Design is not mathematics - for lots of questions in this area, there is not objective &quot;right&quot; or &quot;wrong&quot;, only opinions about &quot;better&quot; or &quot;worse&quot; based on certain experience. So I would not expect questions which are opinionated *to a certain degree* to vanish completely. Purely opinionated questions were closed very quickly by the community in the past, and I expect this to happen the same way in the future, with or without the name change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the two linked examples your question mentions will probably not be closed as too opinionated. That is because do IMHO **not** encourage opionated answers, quite the opposite:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the first one makes the wrong assumption that the use of &quot;const&quot; in C++ is only a matter of readability. It is **objectively** true that this assumption is wrong (see second answer). And it is **objectively** true that readability increases by the tabular parameter formatting presented in the topmost answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the second question asks if the usage of TDD makes Defensive Programming redundant. The answers explain well that this is **objectively** not the case, because they address different types of failures&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what I see in your question above are at least **3 wrong assumptions**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;purely opinionated questions seem to be welcome here&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- when a question is about &quot;readability&quot;, it will cause opinionated answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;TDD&quot; and &quot;Defensive Programming&quot; are just buzzwords, and a comparison of them will be purely subjective&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though all of these assumptions are plain wrong, I gave your question an upvote, either, since it is at least a good occasion to explain the difference between &quot;good&quot; and &quot;bad&quot; subjective questions.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23582" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8220" RevisionGUID="71bd367e-1b21-465f-bd53-764a133ab5d5" CreationDate="2016-09-26T08:23:37.293" UserId="9113" Comment="added 36 characters in body" Text="Software Design is not mathematics - for lots of questions in this area, there is not objective &quot;right&quot; or &quot;wrong&quot;, only opinions about &quot;better&quot; or &quot;worse&quot; based on certain experience. So I would not expect questions which are opinionated *to a certain degree* to vanish completely. Purely opinionated questions were closed very quickly by the community in the past, and I expect this to happen the same way in the future, with or without the name change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the two linked examples your question mentions will probably not be closed as too opinionated. That is because do IMHO **not** encourage opionated answers, quite the opposite:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the first one makes the wrong assumption that the use of &quot;const&quot; in C++ is only a matter of readability. It is **objectively** true that this assumption is wrong (see second answer). And it is **objectively** true that readability increases by the tabular parameter formatting presented in the topmost answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the second question asks if the usage of TDD makes Defensive Programming redundant. The answers explain well that this is **objectively** not the case, because they address different types of failures&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what I see in your question above are at least **3 wrong assumptions**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;purely opinionated questions seem to be welcome here&quot; (they are not, and I have a lot of people complaining about the opposite in the past - that their opinionated question was closed overhastily)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;when a question is about readability, it will cause opinionated answers&quot; (readability can surely be based on personal opinion, but a question like &quot;is XYZ just a matter of readability, or is there more behind it&quot; can typically be answered by facts)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;TDD and Defensive Programming are just buzzwords, and a comparison of them will be purely subjective&quot; (see above why this is wrong)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though all of these assumptions are plain wrong, I gave your question an upvote, either, since it is at least a good occasion to explain the difference between &quot;good&quot; and &quot;bad&quot; subjective questions.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23583" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8225" RevisionGUID="9bc88d2d-609b-4dfb-bed0-936c1ddcc7f9" CreationDate="2016-09-26T10:31:19.653" UserId="167763" Text="I am currently trying to figure out how it is possible that nearly all of our 2D software vector graphics engines exhibit a flaw. This flaw is known and we know how to circumvent it, there is even a mathematical proof for this. Most 3D Rendering engines be they real time or not, GPU accelerated or not, do not generally exhibit this problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what i would like to know is: *what the cause of this is?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a suitable question or is the answer too subjective and open for speculation? (and how can i know before asking) And is it within scope?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I my mind this is about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* software development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And how they differ in these disciplines. But maybe this is about how we teach this stuff?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23584" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8225" RevisionGUID="9bc88d2d-609b-4dfb-bed0-936c1ddcc7f9" CreationDate="2016-09-26T10:31:19.653" UserId="167763" Text="I have made an observation, can i ask about the cause?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23585" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8225" RevisionGUID="9bc88d2d-609b-4dfb-bed0-936c1ddcc7f9" CreationDate="2016-09-26T10:31:19.653" UserId="167763" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23586" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8067" RevisionGUID="537d5178-6c22-4967-9bc5-be5ee716f789" CreationDate="2016-09-26T11:19:27.850" UserId="4" Comment="added 229 characters in body" Text="The following sites may be of interest to users on Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [CrossValidated][4] &#xD;&#xA;* [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;* [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;* [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;* [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;* [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;* [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;* [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;* [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;* [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;* [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;* [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;* [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;* [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;* [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;* [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;* [Signal Processing][21]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][22]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Recommendations][23]&#xD;&#xA;* [Super User][24]&#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow][25]&#xD;&#xA;* [User Experience][26]&#xD;&#xA;* [Unix &amp; Linux][27]&#xD;&#xA;* [The Workplace][28]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before posting, be sure to read their Help Centers to fully understand what these communities expect from high quality questions and any specific rules they may have. As always, if you aren't sure if your question is a good fit, post on a Meta site and you can be directed to an appropriate site on the Stack Exchange network, if one exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a site doesn't exist yet, check out [Area 51][29], where users can collaborate to define and launch new Stack Exchange sites. If there's a proposal for your idea, you can follow it and contribute to it's definition. If not, you can create a new proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More detailed information about each site follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Code Review Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; peer review of your code. We're working together to improve the skills&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of programmers worldwide by taking working code and making it better.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from your project in the following areas…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Best practices and design pattern usage&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Security issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Correctness in unanticipated cases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then you are in the right place!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computational Science Stack Exchange is for questions and answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about computational methods used in technical disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First-time posters are strongly advised to read Eric Raymond's How to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask Questions the Smart Way for advice on how to ask good questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (not for technical answers). Although written for an audience asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions about open source software, the same advice applies when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking questions about any subject area.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is run by volunteers; the best way to get an answer to your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is to ask it in a way that makes it easy for someone with a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broad computational science background to answer it with 15 minutes of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; effort or less.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Topics that are usually a good fit for this site:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about software packages or languages used broadly in computational science (e.g., PETSc, MATLAB, Trilinos, LAPACK, SLEPc,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; R, NumPy, SciPy, Julia, Maple, Octave) except Mathematica (which has&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its own site now). In general, high-level questions (e.g., about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/package features) are best. Questions that are essentially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about debugging a code sample, or about low-level language syntax are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a poor fit for this site, and are usually closed; such questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be asked on language-/package-specific forums. Package&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developers interested in using this site as a resource should look at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this meta question. Package developers answering questions should look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at this meta question for guidelines on disclosing project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; affiliations.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about algorithms or methods used to solve problems in applied mathematics (e.g., finding roots of a polynomial, finding the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; eigenvalues/eigenvectors of a matrix, solving an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elliptic/parabolic/hyperbolic PDE)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions that ask about appropriate methods for a given application area (e.g., what numerical methods would I use when modeling shock&#xD;&#xA;&gt; waves, what numerical methods would I use when modeling combustion,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what graph algorithms would I use if I wanted to understand social&#xD;&#xA;&gt; networks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer Science Stack Exchange is for students, researchers and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practitioners of computer science.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer science, also sometimes called computing science, is the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; science of computation and its applications. This site covers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; theoretical and applied computer science at any level, including but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms, models of computation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming language semantics, formal methods&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - computer architecture, networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, natural language processing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - vision, graphics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [CrossValidated][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CrossValidated is for statisticians, data miners, and anyone else&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doing data analysis or interested in it as a discipline. If you have a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical analysis, applied or theoretical&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - designing experiments&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - collecting data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - data mining&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - visualizing data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - probability theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - mathematical statistics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical and data-driven computing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Crypto Stack Exchange is for software developers, mathematicians and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others interested in cryptography.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cryptography Stack Exchange is for asking questions about the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mathematics and properties of cryptographic systems, their analysis&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (&quot;cryptanalysis&quot;) and subsidiary topics that generally make up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cryptology, such as random number generation. As such, we welcome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions on topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Asymmetric and symmetric cryptographic algorithms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographic protocols&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptanalysis techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Hash functions, hashing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Entropy and information theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographically Secure (Pseudo-)Random Number Generation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dba.se is for those needing expert answers to advanced&#xD;&#xA;&gt; database-related questions concerning traditional SQL RDBMS and NoSQL&#xD;&#xA;&gt; alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Database Administration including configuration and backup / restore&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Querying including window-functions, dynamic-sql, and query-performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Modelling and database-design, including referential-integrity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Programming in built-in server-side languages including stored-procedures and triggers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence including etl, reporting, and olap&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Examples of questions that are likely to be on-topic for Data Science&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given process monitoring data arriving every 10ms, what statistical tool should I use to best characterize a change in the process - mean?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a distribution?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When is it suitable to apply L1 regularization for feature selection?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I would like to produce a infographic on the 'Brexit' referendum. Given public opinion data across the UK, what are some meaningful&#xD;&#xA;&gt; techniques to visaualize it in a dashboard?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When executing an ARIMA model in Spark, what are the pros and cons of using Python instead of R?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given Facebook Likes, is there an ML technique to predict age and gender?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for electronics and electrical engineering professionals,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; students, and enthusiasts. We ask and answer questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electrical and electronics engineering topics, which include&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electronics, physical computing, and those working with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; microcontrollers, Arduinos and embedded systems. We feel the best&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Electronics Design questions have a schematic, links to pertinent&#xD;&#xA;&gt; datasheets or some source code in them, but if your question generally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific electronics design problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the theory and simulation of electromagnetic forces&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a communication scheme&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Engineering Stack Exchange are usually well-received when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Identify a specific engineering problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Require expert engineering knowledge to solve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Include any relevant drawings, images or references that may be necessary to understand the problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Excite or challenge experienced professionals in the field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Game Development Stack Exchange is for professional and amateur&#xD;&#xA;&gt; video/computer game developers. If you have a question relating to ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asset pipelines (creation, storage, editing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game-specific programming issues (engine architecture, game-related APIs, networking, tools, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - project management (testing, team management, scheduling, publishing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game industry (careers, trends, technology, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware Recommendations is a community-run website to help you find a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific product for your needs. That means you can ask for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware to perform a specific task. However, you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be aware that &quot;hardware&quot; is not an all-encompassing term — for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; details of what hardware is accepted on this site, please see What is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware?. In essence, we can help you if you're looking for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware that is &quot;an electronic item that is,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interfaces with, or connects to a computer to operate&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; IT Security Stack Exchange is for Information Security professionals&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to discuss protecting assets from threats and vulnerabilities. Topics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; include, but are not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - web app hardening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - network security&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - social engineering, including phishing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - risk management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - policies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - penetration testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - security tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - using cryptography&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - incident response&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physically securing the office, datacentre, information assets etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Law Stack Exchange is for legal professionals, students, and others&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with experience or interest in law.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The best questions are those that have specific answers; Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange is not a general discussion forum. In general, ask here if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question which covers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Statutes or court decisions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal terms and language, doctrines and theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal process and procedure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Historical legal applications&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Dealing with legal professionals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mathematics Stack Exchange is for people studying mathematics at any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; level and professionals in related fields. We welcome questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Understanding mathematical concepts and theorems.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Mathematical problems such as one might come across in a course or textbook. (First read our how to ask a good question page.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Solving mathematical puzzles.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software that mathematicians use (except Mathematica, which has its own Stack Exchange site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Network Engineering Stack Exchange is for asking questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professionally managed networks in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - operating, maintaining, purchasing or managing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - planning or designing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - model or product line features and differences;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - lab scenarios involving on-topic equipment;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used by network professionals;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - servers operating as a router/switch/firewall;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design or theory of protocols used to operate a network (e.g. IP, TCP, routing protocols, STP, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - content delivery networks;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - production troubleshooting or problem resolution;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physical infrastructure (e.g. standard color coding of cables, types of fiber, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementing and enforcing network security or policies;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and meets the following requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - under your direct control (if the network is not under your control you will not likely be able to provide the information required to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer your question);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware that has a paid support option (enterprise/provider class products, some small business class devices);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then this is likely the correct place to ask unless it meets any of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the off-topic conditions detailed below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Open Source Stack Exchange is a question &amp; answer site about a group&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of related movements which encourage people to give up some of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rights given to them by copyright law, by using licenses which give&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others the freedom to use and transform their creative works, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which optionally (by using copyleft/share-alike licenses) ensure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; these works will always be made available with the same rights. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site is not limited to software, but also covers art, literature,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hardware, databases and more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; These movements have been spearheaded by a group of organisations:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FSF, OSI, Creative Commons, Free Culture. These organisations prefer a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; variety of different terms (free, open source, libre) and sometimes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; define them with slight differences. But on this site these terms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should in general be considered to be synonymous, except for questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which ask directly about their differences.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You've come to the right place if you have questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the history and philosophies of the FSF, OSI, CC etc&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, applying, and complying with Free &amp; Open licenses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how communities collaborate together to produce, distribute, market and sometime monetize these projects&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what license to use for a specific situation - but please read How do I ask for a license recommendation? first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Personal Productivity Stack Exchange is for people wanting to improve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their personal productivity. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - achieving a productivity workflow, using techniques like GTD, Covey, Pomodoro, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - fighting procrastination by getting energetic and motivated workflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - ergonomics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - effective sleep habits and the entire sleep-wake transition&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - learning, memory and creativity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The site is for project management practitioners, academics and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; amateur theorists. This is a site about the field of project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; management for people who love the subject. Our site includes the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following topics:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Management Practices and Theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Agile&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Scrum&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - PRINCE2&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Tool Usage in Project Management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Manager Career Advancement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reverse Engineering Stack Exchange is for researchers and developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who explore the principles of a system through analysis of its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structure, function, and operation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software analysis (static or dynamic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - disassembly or decompilation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware analysis and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools commonly used for reverse engineering hardware or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deterring reverse engineering efforts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Server Fault is for questions about managing information technology&#xD;&#xA;&gt; systems in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - managing the hardware or software of servers, workstations, storage or networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used for administering, monitoring, or automating these&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deployment to and management of third-party provided information technology platforms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Signal Processing][21]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Signal Processing Stack Exchange is for practitioners of the art and science of signal, image and video processing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][22]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing Stack Exchange is for software quality control experts, automation engineers, and software testers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Recommendations][23]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for questions asking for recommendations of software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ready-to-use to accomplish a particular task, that is, “what software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can I use to do …?”. While this includes software libraries for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development use, note that recommendations of tutorials, data sources,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; media libraries (e.g. icon collections) etc. are off-topic – as are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions like “what technology to use for …?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good software recommendation requests have two components:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A purpose — a task to accomplish, a user story&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Some objective requirements — a minimum set of features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Stack Overflow][25]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; a specific programming problem, or a software algorithm, or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tools commonly used by programmers; and is a practical, answerable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem that is unique to software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#[Super User][24]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users. If you have a question about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * computer hardware,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * computer software, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal and home computer networking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming and software development,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * video games or consoles,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * websites or web services like Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * electronic devices, media players, cell phones or smart phones, except insofar as they interface with your computer,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * issues specific to corporate IT support and networks,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * asking for a product, service or learning material recommendation,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Unix &amp; Linux][27]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Unix and Linux Stack Exchange is for users of Linux, FreeBSD and other Un*x-like operating systems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Using or administering a *nix desktop or server&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The Unix foundation underlying OS X (but generally not frontend application questions)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The underlying *nix OS on an embedded system or handheld device (e.g. an Android phone)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Shell scripting&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Applications packaged in *nix distributions (note: being cross-platform does not disqualify)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UNIX C API and System Interfaces ( within reason )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;then you're in the right place. Note that Ubuntu posts are a special case. If your question applies to Ubuntu only, or you're looking for answers that are Ubuntu-specific, you should post it on the Ask Ubuntu Stack Exchange site. If your question applies to other distros or you welcome more generic solutions, you're in the right place here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If your question is a programming question, requiring knowledge of programming languages other than unix shell scripting languages, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Please note that requests for learning materials (tutorials, how-tos etc.) are off topic. The only exception is questions about where to find official documentation (e.g. POSIX specifications).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [User Experience][26]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; User Experience Stack Exchange is for User Experience Designers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Information Architects, and Human Computer Interaction researchers. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Specific UX design problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UX issues that can be solved with expert advice or existing research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about HCI and user research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [The Workplace][28]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Workplace Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site about the workplace and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other career-related topics. With your help we're working to build a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; library to every question about the workplace related to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Finding employment (resumes/cv/cover letters, recruiters, hiring-managers, interviews, negotiations, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Maintaining employment (promotions, pay increases, harassment, bullying, poor working conditions, communication problems, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Leadership in the workplace (motivating people, encouraging people, making decisions, holding hard conversations, intervening in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unproductive situations, asking for and giving help, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Terminating employment (notice period, breaking the news, handing over work, reference letters, relieving letters, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://datascience.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://security.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://math.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://serverfault.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://dsp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://superuser.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23587" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8226" RevisionGUID="bf240a1f-2b39-4951-8963-547085144d64" CreationDate="2016-09-26T11:22:01.757" UserId="4" Text="This question may be on-topic as a software design question, not a software development methods and practices question. The [Help Center's on-topic page][1] provides links to Wikipedia to define these terms - methods and practices refers to methods like sequential development, the agile methods, Lean, and CMMI and practices refers to things like Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design. Software design includes identifying and selecting data structures and algorithms, along with a number of other topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although it's likely to be on-topic, I'm not sure you'll get a good answer here because of the core audience of this community. We are &quot;professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;. We may not have the depth of experience in graphics engines or mathematics to provide a suitable answer to your question. We maintain [a list of other Stack Exchange sites that cover topics related to software development][2], some of which may be on-topic here but they provide a different set of experiences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should read their Help Center and search before asking a question, but it looks like [Computer Science][3], [Computational Science][4], and [Signal Processing][5] may be good fits for your question. Don't forget that cross-posting is not acceptable on the Stack Exchange network, so be sure to tailor your question for the specific audience to receive the best answers from that given community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/8066/4&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://dsp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23588" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8220" RevisionGUID="5b13cac8-8a45-4525-813f-8fd8676b51b8" CreationDate="2016-09-26T11:22:52.333" UserId="9113" Comment="added 124 characters in body" Text="Software Design is not mathematics - for lots of questions in this area, there is not objective &quot;right&quot; or &quot;wrong&quot;, only opinions about &quot;better&quot; or &quot;worse&quot; based on certain experience. So I would not expect any change for questions which are opinionated *to a certain degree*. On the other hand, *purely* opinionated questions were closed very quickly by the community in the past, and I expect this to happen the same way in the future, with or without the name change. Note the goal of the site's rebranding is not to change the current scope, only to make it more transparent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the two linked examples your question mentions will probably not be closed as too opinionated. That is because do IMHO **not** encourage opionated answers, quite the opposite:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the first one makes the wrong assumption that the use of &quot;const&quot; in C++ is only a matter of readability. It is **objectively** true that this assumption is wrong (see second answer). And it is **objectively** true that readability increases by the tabular parameter formatting presented in the topmost answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the second question asks if the usage of TDD makes Defensive Programming redundant. The answers explain well that this is **objectively** not the case, because they address different types of failures&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what I see in your question above are at least **3 wrong assumptions**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;purely opinionated questions seem to be welcome here&quot; (they are not, and I have a lot of people complaining about the opposite in the past - that their opinionated question was closed overhastily)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;when a question is about readability, it will cause opinionated answers&quot; (readability can surely be based on personal opinion, but a question like &quot;is XYZ just a matter of readability, or is there more behind it&quot; can typically be answered by facts)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;TDD and Defensive Programming are just buzzwords, and a comparison of them will be purely subjective&quot; (see above why this is wrong)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though all of these assumptions are plain wrong, I gave your question an upvote, either, since it is at least a good occasion to explain the difference between &quot;good&quot; and &quot;bad&quot; subjective questions.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23589" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8227" RevisionGUID="8ea13d6c-2445-4eb7-bc45-c30e7d635fe8" CreationDate="2016-09-26T11:46:29.420" UserId="9113" Text="This might depend on the nature of the flaw. If you expect the reason to be in the specific implementation of a specific 2D vector graphics engine, you should better ask in the support forum of the engine. If you have no clue if this is caused by the specific implementation of that engine, or if there is a more general reason behind it, caused by the typical 2D algorithms used in those engines (indicated by the fact you observed the same flaw in different engines), you can ask exactly that here on &quot;Programmers&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just make sure readers won't interpret your question as a tool specific, or implementation dependend question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23590" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8227" RevisionGUID="a37e49fa-62c8-46bd-a2ad-dbc99d1e333a" CreationDate="2016-09-26T11:50:13.790" UserId="9113" Comment="added 49 characters in body" Text="This might depend on the nature of the flaw. If you expect the reason to be in the specific implementation of a specific 2D vector graphics engine, you should better ask in the support forum of the engine. If you have no clue if this is caused by the specific implementation of that engine, or if there is a more general reason behind it, caused by the typical 2D algorithms used in those engines (indicated by the fact you observed the same flaw in different engines), you can ask exactly that here on &quot;Programmers&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just make sure readers won't interpret your question as a tool specific, or implementation dependend question, or as a question which leads to &quot;wild guessing&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23594" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8229" RevisionGUID="1a497226-dc4d-41d7-94bb-e082291d5fe0" CreationDate="2016-09-26T15:35:24.200" UserId="44110" Text="Would question about a [standard][1] be in scope on this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://docs.oasis-open.org/cmis/CMIS/v1.1/CMIS-v1.1.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23595" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8229" RevisionGUID="1a497226-dc4d-41d7-94bb-e082291d5fe0" CreationDate="2016-09-26T15:35:24.200" UserId="44110" Text="Question about standards" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23596" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8229" RevisionGUID="1a497226-dc4d-41d7-94bb-e082291d5fe0" CreationDate="2016-09-26T15:35:24.200" UserId="44110" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23597" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8230" RevisionGUID="3dfa96ef-893b-4f03-8b2f-30f9a2cbcd3f" CreationDate="2016-09-26T15:54:55.073" UserId="4" Text="It depends on exactly what your question is, but I would say it is most likely to be on topic here if it aligns with what is on topic (process and methods, requirements, architecture, design, quality assurance, configuration management). If you are implementing a standard and have questions about writing or debugging code to do so, those kinds of questions would be off-topic and would be best asked on Stack Overflow. If you want additional resources or information, those would also be off-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23598" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8231" RevisionGUID="13ef35ac-e5f0-487a-823f-c6a9b57e6207" CreationDate="2016-09-27T14:55:24.327" UserId="71972" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/332180/linux-vs-code-vs-windows-visual-studio-tradeoffs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm guessing Quora? If my questions aren't welcome here I'm more than happy to move away from StackExchange as it's becoming more and more frustrating to discern what questions are valid where." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23599" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8231" RevisionGUID="13ef35ac-e5f0-487a-823f-c6a9b57e6207" CreationDate="2016-09-27T14:55:24.327" UserId="71972" Text="How should I phrase this / where can I ask this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23600" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8231" RevisionGUID="13ef35ac-e5f0-487a-823f-c6a9b57e6207" CreationDate="2016-09-27T14:55:24.327" UserId="71972" Text="|discussion|opinion-based|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23601" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8232" RevisionGUID="16639cf7-4eb8-4145-85d7-1233ad326d1a" CreationDate="2016-09-27T15:16:04.910" UserId="4" Text="That particular question isn't a good fit anywhere in the Q&amp;A portion of any Stack Exchange site, but there may be a good chat room to ask it in. Every site on the SE network has a Help Center page about [what not to ask][1] that (almost?) &quot;you should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&quot;. There are a few problems with questions about trade-offs: it's hard for an individual to write a comprehensive and complete answer, many answers could be valid (each presenting a different subset of trade-offs), and there's no problem to solve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, your question is still salvageable (since it does not have any answers that would be invalidated by an edit), perhaps even in a way that doesn't need the question to be migrated. If you can focus your question on something that is on-topic here (such as [methods and processes][2], or [build management][3], or [deployment][4]), you can make the changes and then flag it for review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_deployment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23602" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8233" RevisionGUID="3ca9ee2b-6f6c-4923-b3e0-29617ef679a5" CreationDate="2016-09-28T02:29:06.113" UserId="166373" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/87765/166373&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm trying to look at the discussions that were moved to chat but it gives me a &quot;Page Not Found&quot; error.  Is it because it was too old?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23603" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8233" RevisionGUID="3ca9ee2b-6f6c-4923-b3e0-29617ef679a5" CreationDate="2016-09-28T02:29:06.113" UserId="166373" Text="Do old chat messages get deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23604" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8233" RevisionGUID="3ca9ee2b-6f6c-4923-b3e0-29617ef679a5" CreationDate="2016-09-28T02:29:06.113" UserId="166373" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23605" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8234" RevisionGUID="0c418f89-b56a-49ae-84a1-060cc8038d69" CreationDate="2016-09-28T03:21:31.553" UserDisplayName="user28988" Text="Chatrooms for comments get auto-deleted after a week of inactivity. This fits with the ephemeral nature of comments on the whole." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23606" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8235" RevisionGUID="a24a0067-acea-4a5c-ab29-01a43cd76d98" CreationDate="2016-09-28T13:18:49.897" UserId="31260" Text="Since you seem to be mostly active at Stack Overflow, the main (and essentially the only) difference you will probably observe at Programmers is absence of debugging help questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators at this site were given a [guidance](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31225279#31225279 &quot;delete everything that's blatantly off-topic as soon as it appears&quot;) to quickly delete such questions and as far as I can tell they happily follow this recommendation. Also, community over here is quite [unwelcoming](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7864/31260) towards debugging questions so you may notice many of them quickly closed at score -3 and lower and deleted by 20K users even before moderators intervene.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for bikeshedding / [beat the strawman](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/314341/mvc-as-a-subset-of-client-server-architecture#comment664445_314341 &quot;'Someone dumps a question with a simple but terribly misguided / flawed assumption and answerers pile on it competing who would be the best in trashing it. This genre will definitely be popular (as it's essentially a sub-genre of bikeshedding). And it will be widespread because it is dead easy to construct such strawmans to beat'&quot;) kind questions, there is not really much difference. I spend quite a bit of time in SO close queue and it looks like such questions are posted to SO at about the same rate as here and standards of both sites have nothing to do with this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What looks to you like more encouragement here is misleading impression.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only reason why more of Programmers questions of this kind get and stick in hot questions is that system has special adjustment &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; that pushes Stack Overflow questions out of HNQ list after few hours while Programmers questions, just like all other sites, stick in the list for days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness you may also notice that Programmers get a bit more of project management questions than Stack Overflow. But as far as I can tell there is not much of a difference really, probably because these questions tend to be better handled at other site (PM.SE).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7182/31260&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;If you're interested, special adjustment mentioned above is [explained in more details here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/250154/165773). Official reason for this adjustment is to prevent SO questions dominating hot list but this is nonsense, ignore it. If they wanted just to avoid SO domination, they would implement the adjustment differently.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;There is a parameter in hotness formula that controls just how to limit amount of questions from single site and tweaking this parameter would guarantee desired limit for questions that can enter the list. Instead of simply changing this parameter they picked an indirect way that makes SO questions leave hot list faster which apparently was the main purpose of this adjustment. The reason they wanted that was to avoid too loud meta complaints when SO questions stick in the list ([&quot;croissants&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/190106/165773) probably scared them).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Programmers also complain about HNQ and we even [delete worst of such questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7525/31260) but this site is too small and SE management doesn't give a damn. About 2-3 months ago Shog told me that they are perfectly happy with the way how hot questions work and they don't plan for any changes in that (indeed why would they now that they shut down complaints from the only site that was big enough to force them change).&lt;/sub&gt; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23607" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8235" RevisionGUID="0a65d461-d22b-4afb-8811-2efb3ed32ae0" CreationDate="2016-09-29T15:33:25.943" UserId="31260" Comment="purpose of hot questions is only to show network wide audience entertaining / interesting questions" Text="Since you seem to be mostly active at Stack Overflow, the main (and essentially the only) difference you will probably observe at Programmers is absence of debugging help questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators at this site were given a [guidance](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31225279#31225279 &quot;delete everything that's blatantly off-topic as soon as it appears&quot;) to quickly delete such questions and as far as I can tell they happily follow this recommendation. Also, community over here is quite [unwelcoming](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7864/31260) towards debugging questions so you may notice many of them quickly closed at score -3 and lower and deleted by 20K users even before moderators intervene.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for bikeshedding / [beat the strawman](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/314341/mvc-as-a-subset-of-client-server-architecture#comment664445_314341 &quot;'Someone dumps a question with a simple but terribly misguided / flawed assumption and answerers pile on it competing who would be the best in trashing it. This genre will definitely be popular (as it's essentially a sub-genre of bikeshedding). And it will be widespread because it is dead easy to construct such strawmans to beat'&quot;) kind questions, there is not really much difference. I spend quite a bit of time in SO close queue and it looks like such questions are posted to SO at about the same rate as here and standards of both sites have nothing to do with this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What looks to you like more encouragement here is misleading impression.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only reason why more of Programmers questions of this kind get and stick in hot questions is that system has special adjustment &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; that pushes Stack Overflow questions out of HNQ list after few hours while Programmers questions, just like all other sites, stick in the list for days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;For readers who may be not aware of that, purpose of [hot questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/hot-questions/info) is established pretty firmly: this feature is there only to show network wide audience entertaining / interesting questions. Those interested can refer MSE for more details on that: [What is the Goal of “Hot Network Questions”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/165773)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness you may also notice that Programmers get a bit more of project management questions than Stack Overflow. But as far as I can tell there is not much of a difference really, probably because these questions tend to be better handled at other site (PM.SE).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7182/31260&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;If you're interested, special adjustment mentioned above is [explained in more details here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/250154/165773). Official reason for this adjustment is to prevent SO questions dominating hot list but this is nonsense, ignore it. If they wanted just to avoid SO domination, they would implement the adjustment differently.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;There is a parameter in hotness formula that controls just how to limit amount of questions from single site and tweaking this parameter would guarantee desired limit for questions that can enter the list. Instead of simply changing this parameter they picked an indirect way that makes SO questions leave hot list faster which apparently was the main purpose of this adjustment. The reason they wanted that was to avoid too loud meta complaints when SO questions stick in the list ([&quot;croissants&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/190106/165773) probably scared them).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Programmers also complain about HNQ and we even [delete worst of such questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7525/31260) but this site is too small and SE management doesn't give a damn. About 2-3 months ago Shog told me that they are perfectly happy with the way how hot questions work and they don't plan for any changes in that (indeed why would they now that they shut down complaints from the only site that was big enough to force them change).&lt;/sub&gt; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23608" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8221" RevisionGUID="ca59e294-e51a-4817-a588-b5e6cf7bcaef" CreationDate="2016-09-29T22:44:13.133" UserId="1204" Comment="added 37 characters in body" Text="Questions containing the words:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - What is the &quot;best practice,&quot; or &#xD;&#xA; - What is the &quot;right way,&quot; or&#xD;&#xA; - Which technique is &quot;most popular,&quot; &quot;most sensible,&quot; or &quot;most reasonable&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;are often received poorly here.  Why is this?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can I get a good answer to questions like this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23609" PostHistoryTypeId="50" PostId="8093" RevisionGUID="e5c2b560-b3ca-4b56-bef6-21106147418f" CreationDate="2016-09-30T00:47:10.827" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="23610" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8236" RevisionGUID="1c4db692-1127-4b2f-b6aa-4e48906c0383" CreationDate="2016-09-30T13:46:42.500" UserId="192894" Text="I've gathered some bug tracker stats for Qt, and since I don't have extensive experience with other development frameworks, I'd like to get some input on what to make out of those numbers from programmers with more experience. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would programmers be the right place to ask, if not, where?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23611" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8236" RevisionGUID="1c4db692-1127-4b2f-b6aa-4e48906c0383" CreationDate="2016-09-30T13:46:42.500" UserId="192894" Text="Quality question based on bug stats" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23612" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8236" RevisionGUID="1c4db692-1127-4b2f-b6aa-4e48906c0383" CreationDate="2016-09-30T13:46:42.500" UserId="192894" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23613" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8237" RevisionGUID="ccaa37c7-f74d-4903-9fe6-cf7677a33b84" CreationDate="2016-09-30T17:12:59.227" UserId="2406" Text="I can still see [the chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/34522/discussion-on-answer-by-jarrod-roberson-how-to-convince-my-boss-that-quality-is) (this may possibly be a function of reputation). Anyway, here it is. Click to embiggen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Screenshot of chat window][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing missing off the bottom of the screen is the &quot;This chat room has been deleted for inactivity&quot; message.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/mFNtQ.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23614" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8221" RevisionGUID="7fdf7f41-4f93-46be-9913-80192f589529" CreationDate="2016-10-01T00:42:10.090" UserId="1204" Comment="added 49 characters in body" Text="Questions containing the words:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - What is the &quot;best practice,&quot; or &#xD;&#xA; - What is the &quot;right way,&quot; or&#xD;&#xA; - Which technique is &quot;most popular,&quot; &quot;most sensible,&quot; &quot;most reasonable,&quot; &quot;okay,&quot; &quot;wise,&quot; &quot;acceptable,&quot; &quot;most stylish,&quot; etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;are often received poorly here.  Why is this?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can I get a good answer to questions like this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23615" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8238" RevisionGUID="2189640e-5da5-4d26-a954-74e4b114d868" CreationDate="2016-10-01T08:45:31.643" UserId="9113" Text="&gt; The problem is that I personally find the stats alarming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That gives me the impression your question could easily be read as a rant against Qt. If that is true, this question will not be appropriate for Programmers. Moreover, questions specifically related to one tool are always on the edge of getting closed as either a request for tool recommendations, or a question which actually belongs on Stackoverflow, not Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you manage it to write a general question on how to read bug tracker stats for certain kind of programs or software, and you manage it to make it a question which can be really answered based on facts, not just personal opionions, then it could be on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My recommendation: if you have a question concerning Qt bug tracker stats, ask [in chat][1] first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23616" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8238" RevisionGUID="d6115f68-0ea8-4f7d-88d5-0b66ced4098a" CreationDate="2016-10-01T10:37:38.570" UserId="9113" Comment="Added ref to Qt's Forum" Text="&gt; The problem is that I personally find the stats alarming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That gives me the impression your question could easily be read as a rant against Qt. If that is true, this question will not be appropriate for Programmers. Moreover, questions specifically related to one tool are always on the edge of getting closed as either a request for tool recommendations, or a question which actually belongs on Stackoverflow, not Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you manage it to write a general question on how to read bug tracker stats for certain kind of programs or software, and you manage it to make it a question which can be really answered based on facts, not just personal opionions, then it could be on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My recommendation: if you have a question concerning Qt bug tracker stats, ask in their [Forums][1] first (you can ask here [in chat][2], too, but I guess people there will send you to the Forum, too).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://forum.qt.io/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23617" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8238" RevisionGUID="f7382165-8629-4d15-86c1-bcd06336e38b" CreationDate="2016-10-01T11:08:31.150" UserId="9113" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="&gt; The problem is that I personally find the stats alarming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That gives me the impression your question could easily be read as a rant against Qt. If that is true, this question will not be appropriate for Programmers. Moreover, questions specifically related to one tool are always on the edge of getting closed as either a request for tool recommendations, or a question which actually belongs on Stackoverflow, not Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you manage it to write a general question on how to read bug tracker stats for certain kind of programs or software, and you manage it to make it a question which can be really answered based on facts, not just personal opinions, then it could be on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My recommendation: if you have a question concerning Qt bug tracker stats, ask in their [Forums][1] first (you can ask here [in chat][2], too, but I guess people there will send you to the Forum, too).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://forum.qt.io/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23618" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8239" RevisionGUID="8b009c85-a4db-48ea-8c4a-5037f88f90d4" CreationDate="2016-10-01T12:25:47.997" UserId="9113" Text="A question about a specific standard has a high risk of getting closed for the same reasons mentioned in [this older SO meta post][1]. However, for Oasis standards like CMIS, as it was mentioned in your question, there is a much better place where you can ask: the related [Oasis mailing lists][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/255745/why-were-not-customer-support-for-your-favorite-company&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23619" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8239" RevisionGUID="d5e28edc-a7ac-4664-ae0e-f09a700958b9" CreationDate="2016-10-01T21:09:43.177" UserId="9113" Comment="added 18 characters in body" Text="A question like yours about a specific OASIS standard has IMHO a certain risk of getting closed for the same reasons mentioned in [this older SO meta post][1]. However, for standards like CMIS, as it was mentioned in your question, there is a much better place where you can ask: the related [Oasis mailing list][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/255745/why-were-not-customer-support-for-your-favorite-company&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23626" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8220" RevisionGUID="f560f039-d805-4894-b16a-cbf0640b6b9a" CreationDate="2016-10-02T21:16:16.090" UserId="9113" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="Software Design is not mathematics - for lots of questions in this area, there is not objective &quot;right&quot; or &quot;wrong&quot;, only opinions about &quot;better&quot; or &quot;worse&quot; based on certain experience. So I would not expect any change for questions which are opinionated *to a certain degree*. On the other hand, *purely* opinionated questions were closed very quickly by the community in the past, and I expect this to happen the same way in the future, with or without the name change. Note the goal of the site's rebranding is not to change the current scope, only to make it more transparent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the two linked examples your question mentions will probably not be closed as too opinionated. That is because do IMHO **not** encourage opionated answers, quite the opposite:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the first one makes the wrong assumption that the use of &quot;const&quot; in C++ is only a matter of readability. It is **objectively** true that this assumption is wrong (see second answer). And it is **objectively** true that readability increases by the tabular parameter formatting presented in the topmost answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the second question asks if the usage of TDD makes Defensive Programming redundant. The answers explain well that this is **objectively** not the case, because they address different types of failures&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what I see in your question above are at least **3 wrong assumptions**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;purely opinionated questions seem to be welcome here&quot; (they are not, and I saw a lot of people complaining about the opposite in the past - that their opinionated question was closed overhastily)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;when a question is about readability, it will cause opinionated answers&quot; (readability can surely be based on personal opinion, but a question like &quot;is XYZ just a matter of readability, or is there more behind it&quot; can typically be answered by facts)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;TDD and Defensive Programming are just buzzwords, and a comparison of them will be purely subjective&quot; (see above why this is wrong)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though all of these assumptions are plain wrong, I gave your question an upvote, either, since it is at least a good occasion to explain the difference between &quot;good&quot; and &quot;bad&quot; subjective questions.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23627" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8220" RevisionGUID="7a427ece-36c7-48b4-996c-ffcc32460a7c" CreationDate="2016-10-03T08:39:19.183" UserId="9113" Comment="added 24 characters in body" Text="Software Design is not mathematics - for lots of questions in this area, there is not objective &quot;right&quot; or &quot;wrong&quot;, only opinions about &quot;better&quot; or &quot;worse&quot; based on certain experience. So I would not expect any change for questions which are opinionated *to a certain degree*. On the other hand, *purely* opinionated questions were closed very quickly by the community in the past, and I expect this to happen the same way in the future, with or without the name change. Note the goal of the site's rebranding is not to change the current scope, only to make it more transparent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the two linked examples your question mentions will probably not be closed as too opinionated. That is because they do - as far as I can see - **not** encourage opionated answers, quite the opposite:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the first one makes the wrong assumption that the use of &quot;const&quot; in C++ is only a matter of readability. It is **objectively** true that this assumption is wrong (see second answer). And it is **objectively** true that readability increases by the tabular parameter formatting presented in the topmost answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the second question asks if the usage of TDD makes Defensive Programming redundant. The answers explain well that this is **objectively** not the case, because they address different types of failures&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what I see in your question above are at least **3 wrong assumptions**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;purely opinionated questions seem to be welcome here&quot; (they are not, and I saw a lot of people complaining about the opposite in the past - that their opinionated question was closed overhastily)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;when a question is about readability, it will cause opinionated answers&quot; (readability can surely be based on personal opinion, but a question like &quot;is XYZ just a matter of readability, or is there more behind it&quot; can typically be answered by facts)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;TDD and Defensive Programming are just buzzwords, and a comparison of them will be purely subjective&quot; (see above why this is wrong)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though all of these assumptions are plain wrong, I gave your question an upvote, either, since it is at least a good occasion to explain the difference between &quot;good&quot; and &quot;bad&quot; subjective questions.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23628" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8241" RevisionGUID="c7850686-fc96-49aa-b1ff-03f260eeb363" CreationDate="2016-10-03T15:09:31.383" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23629" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8242" RevisionGUID="c43cbd3c-5fe7-40e0-975c-7253c7a334cb" CreationDate="2016-10-03T15:09:31.383" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23630" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8243" RevisionGUID="937257ad-5ddf-46df-a741-4f842e9f0db5" CreationDate="2016-10-03T23:22:34.400" UserId="3965" Text="Lately, I've seen a number of questions closed as duplicates with only gnat's vote, such as http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/332688/3965 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![marked as duplicate by gnat, Community][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I know, the only legitimate way to do this is by having a gold badge in one of the associated tags.  As gnat's one and only tag badge is a bronze badge in [tag:java], I can only assume this is a bug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OxUw9.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23631" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8243" RevisionGUID="937257ad-5ddf-46df-a741-4f842e9f0db5" CreationDate="2016-10-03T23:22:34.400" UserId="3965" Text="How is gnat closing questions with no other votes?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23632" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8243" RevisionGUID="937257ad-5ddf-46df-a741-4f842e9f0db5" CreationDate="2016-10-03T23:22:34.400" UserId="3965" Text="|bug|closed-questions|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23633" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8244" RevisionGUID="ad7eb04d-084b-40cb-b0ca-a4d306746ff1" CreationDate="2016-10-03T23:52:52.397" UserId="4" Text="It's not a bug. There's a feature where, when a question is voted as a duplicate, the asker is presented with the other question and prompted to either confirm that it's a duplicate or to review the other question(s) and edit to explain what makes their problem different. This is a relatively new feature, but you can probably find more details on Meta Stack Exchange." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23634" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8245" RevisionGUID="981565a1-3234-488f-9109-0339778caeee" CreationDate="2016-10-03T23:52:59.887" UserId="97259" Text="It's not single-handed: notice the presence of Community in the close voter list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Last year a feature was introduced to Stack Exchange to [allow question askers to single-handedly close][single] their questions as duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When someone else proposes a possible duplicate, [the original poster (and only that person) sees a banner at the top of the post][newUI]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![&quot;May already have an answer&quot; banner](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BtT34.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the poster clicks the &quot;That solved my problem!&quot; button, the question is closed as a duplicate. The Community &quot;user&quot; is given the responsibility of being the final close voter, but any other voters are listed in the close banner as usual.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what's happening here is that gnat has proposed a duplicate, and the question asker agreed that the proposal solved the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[single]:http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10363/allow-question-askers-to-close-their-own-questions-unilaterally&#xD;&#xA;[newUI]:http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/250981/159251" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23635" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8243" RevisionGUID="ccfca373-52e0-4080-92b0-9ac7a79b6243" CreationDate="2016-10-04T06:30:29.533" UserId="31260" Comment="generified title for similar cases (http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/325475 / http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/329058 / http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/329915 / http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/330826)" Text="Lately, I've seen a number of questions closed as duplicates with only gnat's vote, such as http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/332688/3965 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![marked as duplicate by gnat, Community][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I know, the only legitimate way to do this is by having a [gold badge](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/dupehammer/info &quot;'dupehammer' feature&quot;) in one of the associated tags.  As gnat's one and only tag badge is a bronze badge in [tag:java], I can only assume this is a bug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OxUw9.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23636" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8243" RevisionGUID="ccfca373-52e0-4080-92b0-9ac7a79b6243" CreationDate="2016-10-04T06:30:29.533" UserId="31260" Comment="generified title for similar cases (http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/325475 / http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/329058 / http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/329915 / http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/330826)" Text="How is user without gold tag badge closing questions as duplicates with no other votes?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23637" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8243" RevisionGUID="4c1b4aca-1d4a-4079-b049-e80b414dc262" CreationDate="2016-10-04T15:35:07.223" UserId="4767" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|closed-questions|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23638" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8218" RevisionGUID="1278b45b-8f22-45e7-a4c4-e22f8cf2c7f0" CreationDate="2016-10-04T15:55:57.073" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body" Text="Virtually every question from this site that I see on the 'hot questions' list strikes me as a pure exercise in eliciting conflicting opinions. They may be expert opinions, or they may not, but they do not come close to some sort of objective standard. The most recent example I've seen: [&quot;Is readability a reason not to use const parameters.&quot;][1]. If the standards of this site are going to continue to encourage this sort of thing, I'll continue to give it a miss. If you are aiming to squeeze this stuff out in favor of questions that are less opinionated, I might start showing up and answering some things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of interest to me: [Let's Debate Two Buzzwords][2]. This one is currently protected, but open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/331678/is-readability-a-valid-reason-to-not-use-const-in-parameters&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/331864/does-tdd-make-defensive-programming-redundant" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23639" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8246" RevisionGUID="31993c7a-c632-4120-a0de-1feb4a5bb637" CreationDate="2016-10-04T16:09:19.487" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="If you mouse over the &quot;Community&quot; user on that post, you will see the following text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question's author approved a pending duplicate vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also note that gold tag &quot;dupe hammers&quot; look different (this is from SO, not sure if we even have any gold tag badges here):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you linked has &quot;Community&quot; as the final vote, not a regular user with the gold tag listed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/jc5oq.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23640" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8247" RevisionGUID="8f326304-e590-434c-9c8d-75bd4fe85767" CreationDate="2016-10-06T16:09:48.100" UserId="87985" Text="Could someone know where to go and chat about that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks!!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23641" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8247" RevisionGUID="8f326304-e590-434c-9c8d-75bd4fe85767" CreationDate="2016-10-06T16:09:48.100" UserId="87985" Text="I would like to enrich myself talking about pseudo code in now a days, where i should go?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23642" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8247" RevisionGUID="8f326304-e590-434c-9c8d-75bd4fe85767" CreationDate="2016-10-06T16:09:48.100" UserId="87985" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23643" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8248" RevisionGUID="392226dd-9fd3-47c6-9c81-0ce0a0f42e62" CreationDate="2016-10-06T16:37:42.677" UserId="4" Text="Exactly what do you want to ask about pseudocode?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to ask specific questions about algorithms and data structures, those are on-topic here. We consider those as software design questions. However, you should know that we are most interested in building robust and high quality software. Intense mathematical or scientific discussion of algorithms and data structures would be more suited to Computer Science.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to ask specific questions about how to fit pseudocoding into your design process, that's on-topic here. We deal with design and methodology questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want someone to help debug your pseudocode and make sure it's right, you should probably turn it into your programming language and use a debugger and test tools. If you can't get it, then you can go to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you just want to chat, why not....[come to chat][1]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23644" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8249" RevisionGUID="5ed19f83-0ce8-4d59-aff3-0a376f0a031d" CreationDate="2016-10-07T04:20:23.940" UserId="2618" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/23276/2618) was closed in favor of a question that was asked some three years later, and was itself closed as being not on topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can it be a duplicate if it is actually the original? Words either mean something or they don't." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23645" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8249" RevisionGUID="5ed19f83-0ce8-4d59-aff3-0a376f0a031d" CreationDate="2016-10-07T04:20:23.940" UserId="2618" Text="Why was the team leader question closed in favor of a much later question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23646" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8249" RevisionGUID="5ed19f83-0ce8-4d59-aff3-0a376f0a031d" CreationDate="2016-10-07T04:20:23.940" UserId="2618" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23647" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8250" RevisionGUID="f83e649f-3958-494f-ac10-e1d53d032140" CreationDate="2016-10-07T04:48:34.380" UserId="1204" Text="Questions are sometimes closed as duplicates of later questions because the later question is clearly of higher quality, and/or it has better answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading:**  &#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/147643&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23648" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8251" RevisionGUID="1640aa4b-e108-4084-9006-4ad6e7c07653" CreationDate="2016-10-07T22:21:09.373" UserId="52871" Text="This revision was approved:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/201726/6&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do I protest a revision?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am still indicated as the author of the question, but it has been rewritten to remove all my words. I am no longer the author of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are **3 years** old should be locked to prevent such a large rewrite." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23649" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8251" RevisionGUID="1640aa4b-e108-4084-9006-4ad6e7c07653" CreationDate="2016-10-07T22:21:09.373" UserId="52871" Text="Excessive editing of a post" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23650" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8251" RevisionGUID="1640aa4b-e108-4084-9006-4ad6e7c07653" CreationDate="2016-10-07T22:21:09.373" UserId="52871" Text="|support|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23653" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8252" RevisionGUID="125a4864-7fc7-482c-a0a4-afa2bd701462" CreationDate="2016-10-08T10:46:44.873" UserId="4" Text="[Editing and collaboration][1] are fundamental parts of Stack Exchange. Except for rare cases of content disputes (a large number of edits and rollbacks or Meta discussion on a particular post's quality) or historical protection of posts that would otherwise be deleted, all posts can be edited. However, we do have guidance for editing - edits should fix grammar or spelling, clarifying the meaning, incorporate information from comments, add updates as the post ages, or add related links.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I reviewed the edit and saw that it didn't meet the criteria. It changed the words without accomplishing any of the objectives for edits - it didn't become more clear or incorporate new information or add anything of value. Because of this, I [rolled the edit back][2]. Anyone with edit rights to a post can also use this rollback function.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the future, if you see anything wrong, here are things that you can do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Fix it. At 2,000 reputation, you have the ability to edit questions and answers without review. Prior to this, you can make edits and put them into a review queue for people with sufficient reputation to review. By this point, you've also gained other editing capabilities - creating new tags (300), editing community wiki (100), and commenting (50).&#xD;&#xA;* [Flag it for moderator review][3]. If you suspect that something bad is happening, please flag it. We review our flags very regularly and handle things. We have lots of good tools to help us.&#xD;&#xA;* Bring it up on Meta, like you did here. If you don't need a moderator to handle it or something needs broader discussion by the community, open a discussion. Moderators are also notified of all new Meta posts, so if it requires our input or review, we'll see it and should be able to look into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/editing&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/17038/what-is-a-rollback&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/flagging" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23654" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8251" RevisionGUID="0992b11f-6791-425f-9bae-993b8e0def03" CreationDate="2016-10-08T10:46:58.123" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|specific-question|editing|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23655" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8253" RevisionGUID="affc0118-b1b9-4710-b157-cdffc744bbac" CreationDate="2016-10-13T15:10:57.503" UserId="4" Text="First: We have a fourth custom close reason added.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the most common close reasons that isn't accounted for by one of the current custom close reasons is for questions seeking legal advice or aid. In the last 90 days, we closed 11 questions with a comment that such questions are off-topic here, and we migrated several others to either Law or Open Source. The CM staff turned on a 4th custom close reason to give us a standard message to close the questions that are not suitable for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that a custom close reason is limited to 400 characters and must be at least 25 characters. The standard first line is &quot;Questions asking **{X}** are off-topic on Programmers.&quot; We should link to appropriate information/guidance, which can be Meta posts or Help Center pages (here or on another site). Examples are the writing-code reason links to a page on the Stack Overflow Help Center and the find or recommend tools links to The Whiteboard (our chat room).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm proposing the following custom close text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **legal advice** are off-topic on Programmers. You may be able to get help with understanding, applying, and complying with free and open licenses on [Open Source](http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). You may be able to get help with legal terms, language, processes, and procedures on [Law](http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second: I'd like to make a tiny revision to the &quot;writing or debugging code&quot; off-topic reason to include understanding code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in understanding, writing or debugging code** are off-topic on Programmers. These questions can be asked on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) if they include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question. See [How To Create a MCVE](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in understanding, writing or debugging code** are off-topic on Programmers. These questions can be asked on Stack Overflow if they include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question. See [How To Create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first proposal links to the Stack Overflow /help/on-topic page while the second only links to the /help/mcve page. It's not possible (as far as I can see, without using a URL shortener) to link to both pages and spell out &quot;Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, we're limited to a minimum of 25 characters and a maximum of 400 characters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, there is a possibility that we may get a 5th close reason. Based on current stats, this would likely be for tool support questions. However, The CM team would like to get the name change done and see how that impacts our question closure rates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23656" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8253" RevisionGUID="affc0118-b1b9-4710-b157-cdffc744bbac" CreationDate="2016-10-13T15:10:57.503" UserId="4" Text="Custom Close Reason Updates" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23657" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8253" RevisionGUID="affc0118-b1b9-4710-b157-cdffc744bbac" CreationDate="2016-10-13T15:10:57.503" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|featured|close-reasons|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23658" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8253" RevisionGUID="983eb28a-f7e8-434c-9a7b-83283b234285" CreationDate="2016-10-13T15:47:28.787" UserId="4" Comment="added 123 characters in body" Text="First: We have a fourth custom close reason added.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the most common close reasons that isn't accounted for by one of the current custom close reasons is for questions seeking legal advice or aid. In the last 90 days, we closed 11 questions with a comment that such questions are off-topic here, and we migrated several others to either Law or Open Source. The CM staff turned on a 4th custom close reason to give us a standard message to close the questions that are not suitable for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that a custom close reason is limited to 400 characters and must be at least 25 characters. The standard first line is &quot;Questions asking **{X}** are off-topic on Programmers.&quot; We should link to appropriate information/guidance, which can be Meta posts or Help Center pages (here or on another site). Examples are the writing-code reason links to a page on the Stack Overflow Help Center and the find or recommend tools links to The Whiteboard (our chat room).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm proposing the following custom close text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **legal advice** are off-topic on Programmers. You may be able to get help with understanding, applying, and complying with free and open licenses on [Open Source](http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). You may be able to get help with legal terms, language, processes, and procedures on [Law](http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second: I'd like to make a tiny revision to the &quot;writing or debugging code&quot; off-topic reason to include understanding code. This is something that we call out in the Help Center's on-topic page, but don't call out in the off-topic closure reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in understanding, writing or debugging code** are off-topic on Programmers. These questions can be asked on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) if they include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question. See [How To Create a MCVE](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in understanding, writing or debugging code** are off-topic on Programmers. These questions can be asked on Stack Overflow if they include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question. See [How To Create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first proposal links to the Stack Overflow /help/on-topic page while the second only links to the /help/mcve page. It's not possible (as far as I can see, without using a URL shortener) to link to both pages and spell out &quot;Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, we're limited to a minimum of 25 characters and a maximum of 400 characters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, there is a possibility that we may get a 5th close reason. Based on current stats, this would likely be for tool support questions. However, The CM team would like to get the name change done and see how that impacts our question closure rates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23659" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8253" RevisionGUID="90ff9049-c7d7-4c64-a5bb-d8f44ac09aa7" CreationDate="2016-10-13T16:29:10.230" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|close-reasons|vote-to-close|legal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23660" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8253" RevisionGUID="39363f51-4175-44e9-b910-47c54aee7148" CreationDate="2016-10-13T16:35:38.917" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|close-reasons|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23661" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8253" RevisionGUID="491e6ec4-04f2-4c95-9a61-43a5814fd771" CreationDate="2016-10-13T16:37:18.523" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/786606750057267201" />
  <row Id="23662" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8253" RevisionGUID="47c741c1-2414-4a94-b3d9-18e4e4543958" CreationDate="2016-10-13T19:40:07.207" UserId="4" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="First: We have a fourth custom close reason added.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the most common close reasons that isn't accounted for by one of the current custom close reasons is for questions seeking legal advice or aid. In the last 90 days, we closed 11 questions with a comment that such questions are off-topic here, and we migrated several others to either Law or Open Source. The CM staff turned on a 4th custom close reason to give us a standard message to close the questions that are not suitable for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that a custom close reason is limited to 400 characters and must be at least 25 characters. The standard first line is &quot;Questions asking **{X}** are off-topic on Programmers.&quot; We should link to appropriate information/guidance, which can be Meta posts or Help Center pages (here or on another site). Examples are the writing-code reason links to a page on the Stack Overflow Help Center and the find or recommend tools links to The Whiteboard (our chat room).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm proposing the following custom close text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **legal advice** are off-topic on Programmers. You may be able to get help with understanding, applying, and complying with free and open licenses on [Open Source](http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). You may be able to get help with legal terms, language, processes, and procedures on [Law](http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second: I'd like to make a tiny revision to the &quot;writing or debugging code&quot; off-topic reason to include understanding code. This is something that we call out in the Help Center's on-topic page, but don't call out in the off-topic closure reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in understanding, writing or debugging code** are off-topic on Programmers. These questions can be asked on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) if they include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question (see [How To Create a MCVE](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in understanding, writing or debugging code** are off-topic on Programmers. These questions can be asked on Stack Overflow if they include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question. See [How To Create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first proposal links to the Stack Overflow /help/on-topic page while the second only links to the /help/mcve page. It's not possible (as far as I can see, without using a URL shortener) to link to both pages and spell out &quot;Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, we're limited to a minimum of 25 characters and a maximum of 400 characters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, there is a possibility that we may get a 5th close reason. Based on current stats, this would likely be for tool support questions. However, The CM team would like to get the name change done and see how that impacts our question closure rates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23663" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8253" RevisionGUID="7bbc50bd-9936-4a7c-bc6a-b37d3e9c9b58" CreationDate="2016-10-13T22:44:54.693" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 3 characters in body" Text="First: We have a fourth custom close reason added.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the most common close reasons that isn't accounted for by one of the current custom close reasons is for questions seeking legal advice or aid. In the last 90 days, we closed 11 questions with a comment that such questions are off-topic here, and we migrated several others to either Law or Open Source. The CM staff turned on a 4th custom close reason to give us a standard message to close the questions that are not suitable for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that a custom close reason is limited to 400 characters and must be at least 25 characters. The standard first line is &quot;Questions asking **{X}** are off-topic on Programmers.&quot; We should link to appropriate information/guidance, which can be Meta posts or Help Center pages (here or on another site). Examples are the writing-code reason links to a page on the Stack Overflow Help Center and the find or recommend tools links to The Whiteboard (our chat room).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm proposing the following custom close text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **legal advice** are off-topic on Programmers. You may be able to get help with understanding, applying, and complying with free and open licenses on [Open Source](http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). You may be able to get help with legal terms, language, processes, and procedures on [Law](http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second: I'd like to make a tiny revision to the &quot;writing or debugging code&quot; off-topic reason to include understanding code. This is something that we call out in the Help Center's on-topic page, but don't call out in the off-topic closure reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in explaining, writing or debugging code** are off-topic on Programmers. These questions can be asked on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) if they include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question (see [How To Create a MCVE](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in understanding, writing or debugging code** are off-topic on Programmers. These questions can be asked on Stack Overflow if they include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question. See [How To Create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first proposal links to the Stack Overflow /help/on-topic page while the second only links to the /help/mcve page. It's not possible (as far as I can see, without using a URL shortener) to link to both pages and spell out &quot;Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, we're limited to a minimum of 25 characters and a maximum of 400 characters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, there is a possibility that we may get a 5th close reason. Based on current stats, this would likely be for tool support questions. However, The CM team would like to get the name change done and see how that impacts our question closure rates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23664" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8253" RevisionGUID="c18d3c57-1d96-446d-b0b7-66624bc82373" CreationDate="2016-10-14T12:45:44.823" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|featured|close-reasons|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23665" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8196" RevisionGUID="6af4940c-5942-407e-ae31-cc05ffd9e216" CreationDate="2016-10-14T14:13:48.930" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|help-center|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23666" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8254" RevisionGUID="0f8159f0-4345-4a46-ba2d-78d9c4e84027" CreationDate="2016-10-14T18:47:21.160" UserId="63" Text="Changing this site from the increasingly anachronistic &quot;Programmers&quot; to the more fitting &quot;Software Engineering&quot; has been... A long road. So far, we've discussed...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- ...the name itself&#xD;&#xA;- ...the audience / tagline&#xD;&#xA;- ...the topic&#xD;&#xA;- ...the scope (or, boundaries of the topic)&#xD;&#xA;- ...the scope and topic again, maybe a half-dozen times, going around and around like a top until everyone fell over.&#xD;&#xA;- ...the tour and help center guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That leaves us with one last step: **change the name, logo, and domain**. That all has to happen together; it'd be confusing to have only part of it done... So watch out, that last step's a doozy...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The new logo&#xD;&#xA;Our chronically-overworked design team has put together a new logo for the site: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Software Engineering title logo][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Software Engineering swag logo][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The design is recognizably similar to the current logo, but moves away from the &quot;whiteboard scrawl&quot; style toward something a bit more... clean, precise, *disciplined*. It's not a radical overhaul; rather, it reflects the tone of the other changes being made: small, critical adjustments to bring the site's perception in line with reality. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Next steps&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next week, we'll find a block of time and make the following changes over the span of about an hour:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The name for the site will change to **Software Engineering Stack Exchange**.&#xD;&#xA;- The logo for the site will change to the one shown above.&#xD;&#xA;- The default domain for the site will change to **softwareegineering.stackexchange.com**.&#xD;&#xA;- The *topic* string for the site will change to **software engineering**. This is used in a half-dozen or so places, including the title prompt and sidebar on /questions/ask where it currently reads &quot;software development&quot; - *if y'all have any other changes to make to those, please list them below!*&#xD;&#xA;- The *audience* string for the site will change to **professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly**. This is used in a couple of places here (help center and new user &quot;hero&quot; banner) and a whole bunch of places where the site is referenced elsewhere on the network. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then the whole system gets rebuilt and... **We're done.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###But I hate the new logo / I wanted to spend a few more weeks talking about scope again!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then we're done with this for the year. No, seriously: as much as I know we'd all enjoy talking about this for another month, this is either gonna happen next week as described above, or it's not going to happen at all for a very long time. Little tweaks (like removing those stupid oxford commas in the audience string) are possible; anything more involved than that, including anything involving the logo, and... we're probably not going to have time until 2017. So... Hopefully we got everything important hashed out over the past 8 months.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##In closing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you all for your patience; I know this has been kind of an overwrought process, but... Naming is hard, and there are some caches involved as well. Let's just all hope we don't have to ever do this again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/nWovL.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/TOrQf.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23667" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8254" RevisionGUID="0f8159f0-4345-4a46-ba2d-78d9c4e84027" CreationDate="2016-10-14T18:47:21.160" UserId="63" Text="New logo for Software Engineering Stack Exchange" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23668" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8254" RevisionGUID="0f8159f0-4345-4a46-ba2d-78d9c4e84027" CreationDate="2016-10-14T18:47:21.160" UserId="63" Text="|discussion|featured|design|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23669" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8254" RevisionGUID="840d3c26-e7eb-4c2b-b4bc-a926b41f6083" CreationDate="2016-10-14T19:17:42.563" UserId="63" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="Changing this site from the increasingly anachronistic &quot;Programmers&quot; to the more fitting &quot;Software Engineering&quot; has been... A long road. So far, we've discussed...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- ...the name itself&#xD;&#xA;- ...the audience / tagline&#xD;&#xA;- ...the topic&#xD;&#xA;- ...the scope (or, boundaries of the topic)&#xD;&#xA;- ...the scope and topic again, maybe a half-dozen times, going around and around like a top until everyone fell over.&#xD;&#xA;- ...the tour and help center guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That leaves us with one last step: **change the name, logo, and domain**. That all has to happen together; it'd be confusing to have only part of it done... So watch out, that last step's a doozy...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The new logo&#xD;&#xA;Our chronically-overworked design team has put together a new logo for the site: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Software Engineering title logo][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Software Engineering swag logo][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The design is recognizably similar to the current logo, but moves away from the &quot;whiteboard scrawl&quot; style toward something a bit more... clean, precise, *disciplined*. It's not a radical overhaul; rather, it reflects the tone of the other changes being made: small, critical adjustments to bring the site's perception in line with reality. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Next steps&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next week, we'll find a block of time and make the following changes over the span of about an hour:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The name for the site will change to **Software Engineering Stack Exchange**.&#xD;&#xA;- The logo for the site will change to the one shown above.&#xD;&#xA;- The default domain for the site will change to **softwareengineering.stackexchange.com**.&#xD;&#xA;- The *topic* string for the site will change to **software engineering**. This is used in a half-dozen or so places, including the title prompt and sidebar on /questions/ask where it currently reads &quot;software development&quot; - *if y'all have any other changes to make to those, please list them below!*&#xD;&#xA;- The *audience* string for the site will change to **professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly**. This is used in a couple of places here (help center and new user &quot;hero&quot; banner) and a whole bunch of places where the site is referenced elsewhere on the network. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then the whole system gets rebuilt and... **We're done.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###But I hate the new logo / I wanted to spend a few more weeks talking about scope again!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then we're done with this for the year. No, seriously: as much as I know we'd all enjoy talking about this for another month, this is either gonna happen next week as described above, or it's not going to happen at all for a very long time. Little tweaks (like removing those stupid oxford commas in the audience string) are possible; anything more involved than that, including anything involving the logo, and... we're probably not going to have time until 2017. So... Hopefully we got everything important hashed out over the past 8 months.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##In closing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you all for your patience; I know this has been kind of an overwrought process, but... Naming is hard, and there are some caches involved as well. Let's just all hope we don't have to ever do this again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/nWovL.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/TOrQf.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23670" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8255" RevisionGUID="fe4cc662-482c-4478-9a07-a12d910efdd0" CreationDate="2016-10-14T19:19:35.103" UserId="102438" Text="&gt;# New logo for Software Engineering Stack Exchange&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- You have consulted with stakeholders. &#xD;&#xA;- You have cooperated with them as much as naturally possible.&#xD;&#xA;- I declare you to have done an excellent job in balancing the needs of everyone in this process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, the logo is just fine. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, I'm not just posting this to get a t-shirt (I think you have my address.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23671" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8256" RevisionGUID="466407d1-46c0-4585-af03-cca1243f25e8" CreationDate="2016-10-14T19:45:48.313" UserId="47" Text="I like this, I like this a lot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The design is just the right amount different from the current one to show continuity and yet show that we've changed, matured and grown up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One small thing - is there any change whatsoever we can get `se.stackexchange.com` as a short form of the url? `softwareengineering.stackexchange.com` is a doozy to type out when you're in a rush ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh, and T-shirts, did someone mention T-shirts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23672" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8255" RevisionGUID="a132c7d6-f2e9-4ca0-943e-c71f8e4a612b" CreationDate="2016-10-14T19:55:29.613" UserId="102438" Comment="added 652 characters in body" Text="&gt;# New logo for Software Engineering Stack Exchange&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Agile principle][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we'd like the new stuff sooner rather than later.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Analysis&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- You have consulted with stakeholders. &#xD;&#xA;- You have cooperated with them as much as naturally possible.&#xD;&#xA;- I declare you to have done an excellent job in balancing the needs of everyone in this process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, the logo is just fine. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, I'm not just posting this to get a t-shirt (I think you have my address.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Suggestions &amp; Ideas for followup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do like the idea of a shorter url. Could be easy to mistype the long one. &#xD;&#xA;[`se.stackexchange`][2] seems quite good. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the old domain should [301 (Moved Permanently)][3] to the new.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could use `SESE` for shorthand, I think, as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/32924434#32924434&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23673" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="7451e464-1f44-4a9c-889e-a5ecf45b0786" CreationDate="2016-10-14T23:08:31.753" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|questions|faq-proposed|homework-dump|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23674" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8204" RevisionGUID="18290242-d43c-4f88-a306-1af9a93ac9b7" CreationDate="2016-10-14T23:08:45.797" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|faq-proposed|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23675" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8254" RevisionGUID="f0bb37b3-85a9-40c1-8355-725b7f3fadd0" CreationDate="2016-10-15T01:41:17.640" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackProgrammer/status/787106036419325953" />
  <row Id="23676" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8257" RevisionGUID="5b0c7dfb-3aeb-4e9d-b370-b4cc92765f2b" CreationDate="2016-10-15T02:14:21.187" UserId="131624" Text="Well, it has a coffee cup.  So I'm already ecstatic. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With all due respect to our chronically-overworked design team, let me show you what an hour playing with windows paint let me do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why? Well, in addition to a healthy respect for symmetry, I like whitespace.  And the title logo, meta, and menu (Question, Tags, etc) are starting to eat up all of the eye pleasing whitespace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0Vhk7.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23677" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8257" RevisionGUID="f14f3f5c-6db7-4cd3-b22e-4c639e401a90" CreationDate="2016-10-15T02:23:09.467" UserId="131624" Comment="added 7 characters in body" Text="Well, it has a coffee cup.  So I'm already ecstatic. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With all due respect to our chronically-overworked design team, let me show you what an hour playing with windows paint let me do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why? Well, in addition to having a healthy respect for symmetry, I like whitespace.  And the title logo, meta, and menu (Question, Tags, etc) are starting to eat up all of the eye pleasing whitespace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, props for the updated impressionist monitors.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0Vhk7.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23678" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7182" RevisionGUID="7bf15658-bb69-42b8-9390-d043992e7ed4" CreationDate="2016-10-15T14:19:29.507" UserId="31260" Comment="keeping the context that is likely to go away soon // http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8254/new-logo-for-software-engineering-stack-exchange" Text="You're on Stack Overflow and you've found a question that isn't about coding. It's about design or something squishy like that. You are trying to be helpful, and you put a comment in the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should try asking on Programmers.SE instead. --YourName 2 minutes ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... and suddenly, out of nowhere Programmer.SE users sweep in and saying:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No, this isn't a good question for Programmers.SE --AnotherName 5 seconds ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are they saying that this isn't a good question for Programmers.SE? What is in scope on that squishy site with the [out of focus whiteboard background and a coffee thing as its favico](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b5ig6.png)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should I look for when determining if a question *should* go on Programmers?  And while you're at it answering these questions, why do they get so annoyed at these suggestions? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23679" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8258" RevisionGUID="f7495f08-ad6c-45b1-8cda-ce2dc96f0622" CreationDate="2016-10-15T15:24:29.857" UserId="177827" Text="The logo looks great. I appreciate the pragmatism in getting this rolled out, but can we have the **name as regular text and not commented out**? This always bothered me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is not only about writing code. Why should the title look like it's code? Removing `/*` and `*/` would make the logo look cleaner, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments are also language specific. Sure, many languages use that comment style, but not all of them. I'd prefer a logo that does not use elements of a specific programming language." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23681" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8260" RevisionGUID="a4249438-5638-4776-90b6-7d0708057ed1" CreationDate="2016-10-15T17:56:38.290" UserId="131624" Text="A more composed and balanced meta version.  Blame @null for making me obses on symmetry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/nBX1E.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23682" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8260" RevisionGUID="da115075-99c5-46ef-b957-24507919f5f9" CreationDate="2016-10-15T18:03:58.037" UserId="131624" Comment="edited body" Text="A more composed and balanced meta version.  Blame @null for making me obses on symmetry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/oJFRQ.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23683" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8260" RevisionGUID="06d1a30c-e002-4782-9279-5eb06a661119" CreationDate="2016-10-15T18:14:02.773" UserId="131624" Comment="added 46 characters in body" Text="A more composed and balanced meta version.  Blame @null for making me obses on symmetry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also properly grayed out the title for meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vinfw.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23685" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8260" RevisionGUID="509e042b-ab3b-4837-b6bb-a069ff163de1" CreationDate="2016-10-15T18:43:12.827" UserId="131624" Comment="edited body" Text="A more composed and balanced meta version.  Blame @null for making me obses on symmetry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;Also properly grayed out the title for meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Zbqji.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23687" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8260" RevisionGUID="bbbc4155-fee0-488c-ab8f-80b50b3f8c1d" CreationDate="2016-10-16T00:03:40.773" UserId="131624" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="A more composed and balanced meta version.  Blame @null for making me obses on symmetry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;Also properly grayed out the title and mug for meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/fTLaX.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23689" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8260" RevisionGUID="e0d13712-bea4-475a-b157-9e1416cbc3a0" CreationDate="2016-10-16T01:21:08.877" UserId="131624" Comment="deleted 70 characters in body" Text="The meta version. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;Also properly grayed out the title and mug for meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/fTLaX.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23690" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8260" RevisionGUID="5e564399-0af8-4564-8dba-398bebda6fbc" CreationDate="2016-10-16T02:10:43.747" UserId="131624" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="Double line meta version. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;Also properly grayed out the title and mug for meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/fTLaX.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23691" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8261" RevisionGUID="8032c80d-8a39-4816-92bf-a61ec69fd1ba" CreationDate="2016-10-16T02:16:23.100" UserId="131624" Text="If you prefer the single line version to the double line version I've proposed in two other answers please upvote this one.  I'd like what we prefer to be clear before anyone has to make any decisions on this.  Not that we intend to express any problems that would delay the name change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Single line version as it may look in meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/mfaej.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23692" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8261" RevisionGUID="b2eb9c54-4f4a-4adf-bca1-98135bfae046" CreationDate="2016-10-16T05:17:51.210" UserId="131624" Comment="edited body" Text="If you prefer the single line version to the double line version I've proposed in two other answers please upvote this one.  I'd like what we prefer to be clear before anyone has to make any decisions on this.  Not that we intend to express any problems that would delay the name change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Single line version as it may look in meta:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/mfaej.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23693" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8257" RevisionGUID="1d839248-545a-4f5b-bdd3-e488e1bcf0b8" CreationDate="2016-10-16T07:18:39.983" UserId="131624" Comment="added 99 characters in body" Text="**Please disregard this post if there is any danger of it causing a delay in the name change.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, it has a coffee cup.  So I'm already ecstatic. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With all due respect to our chronically-overworked design team, let me show you what an hour playing with windows paint let me do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why? Well, in addition to having a healthy respect for symmetry, I like whitespace.  And the title logo, meta, and menu (Question, Tags, etc) are starting to eat up all of the eye pleasing whitespace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, props for the updated impressionist monitors.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0Vhk7.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23694" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8261" RevisionGUID="af215ee0-1c99-40fb-b834-7fba61b12aa9" CreationDate="2016-10-16T07:18:55.050" UserId="131624" Comment="added 99 characters in body" Text="**Please disregard this post if there is any danger of it causing a delay in the name change.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you prefer the single line version to the double line version I've proposed in two other answers please upvote this one.  I'd like what we prefer to be clear before anyone has to make any decisions on this.  Not that we intend to express any problems that would delay the name change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Single line version as it may look in meta:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/mfaej.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23695" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8260" RevisionGUID="d2f34cd8-4745-4d4a-a732-89457ce127e4" CreationDate="2016-10-16T07:19:03.590" UserId="131624" Comment="added 99 characters in body" Text="**Please disregard this post if there is any danger of it causing a delay in the name change.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Double line meta version. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;Also properly grayed out the title and mug for meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/fTLaX.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23700" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8258" RevisionGUID="39a73779-dfaa-4387-b44e-1ed5067eb741" CreationDate="2016-10-16T17:23:32.930" UserId="177827" Comment="added 90 characters in body" Text="The logo looks great. I appreciate the pragmatism in getting this rolled out, but can we have the **name as regular text and not commented out**? This always bothered me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is not only about writing code. Why should the title look like it's code? Removing `/*` and `*/` would make the logo look cleaner, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments are also language specific. Sure, many languages use that comment style, but not all of them. I'd prefer a logo that does not use elements of a specific programming language.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously, this is a minor change and should not delay the rollout of the name change." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23701" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8263" RevisionGUID="ce03c6ef-aa0e-4c81-98fe-f912baa29756" CreationDate="2016-10-16T20:34:17.463" UserId="131624" Text="**Please disregard this post if there is any danger of it causing a delay in the name change.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alternate single line logo &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/eiR4I.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23702" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8264" RevisionGUID="c368b661-59b7-4e37-96c5-29a559040f93" CreationDate="2016-10-18T06:51:01.313" UserId="131624" Text="Minimalism, polymorphism, and a coffee mug.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Awgy.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/g0QN7.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23703" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8264" RevisionGUID="402de0ea-4e21-405c-9453-907779c6c99d" CreationDate="2016-10-18T07:25:32.990" UserId="131624" Comment="added 101 characters in body" Text="**Please disregard this post if there is any danger of it causing a delay in the name change.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Minimalism, polymorphism, and a coffee mug.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Awgy.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/g0QN7.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23704" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8265" RevisionGUID="8d4f1069-f4e4-481f-9dcd-b2ecb8031901" CreationDate="2016-10-19T00:39:54.383" UserId="131624" Text="**Please disregard this post if there is any danger of it causing a delay in the name change.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At [null](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/177827/null)'s prompting I posted a question about our situation on [Graphic Design](http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com).  It produced [this answer](http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/a/78857/32767).  I'm reproducing it here so we can rank it among the other suggestions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to thank [rafael](http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/users/36888/rafael) for his work on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7xXZr.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23705" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8265" RevisionGUID="9dd8c1f5-afa7-4f7a-9f64-475168b426bb" CreationDate="2016-10-19T03:20:31.127" UserId="131624" Comment="added 127 characters in body" Text="**Please disregard this post if there is any danger of it causing a delay in the name change.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At [null](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/177827/null)'s [prompting](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8254/new-logo-for-software-engineering-stack-exchange#comment25866_8260) I posted a [question](http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/q/78796/32767) about our situation on [Graphic Design](http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com).  It produced [this answer](http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/a/78857/32767).  I'm reproducing it here so we can rank it among the other suggestions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to thank [rafael](http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/users/36888/rafael) for his work on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7xXZr.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23707" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8266" RevisionGUID="f58847fb-14d3-453d-af6f-35ae6978b17e" CreationDate="2016-10-20T19:43:30.177" UserId="52929" Text="PARTY-TIME. Check out that domain name and logo!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks Stack Exchange :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/zL8vH.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23708" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8266" RevisionGUID="f58847fb-14d3-453d-af6f-35ae6978b17e" CreationDate="2016-10-20T19:43:30.177" UserId="52929" Text="Awww yeah. WOoooooooOOOOoooOOOOOoooT!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23709" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8266" RevisionGUID="f58847fb-14d3-453d-af6f-35ae6978b17e" CreationDate="2016-10-20T19:43:30.177" UserId="52929" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23710" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8266" RevisionGUID="d8a7809c-101e-4bbd-9901-3110bd771fbd" CreationDate="2016-10-20T19:50:40.427" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23711" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8254" RevisionGUID="1db9d112-3844-4d4e-9ba0-4a8b5d02a5be" CreationDate="2016-10-20T20:13:17.427" UserId="47" Comment="It's done" Text="|discussion|status-completed|featured|design|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23712" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8266" RevisionGUID="67fa8b3b-8702-4b90-b7e0-e6f6e771ba97" CreationDate="2016-10-20T20:50:06.410" UserId="106878" Comment="updating title so the average passerby knows what exactly we're so excited about" Text="Awww yeah. WOoooooooOOOOoooOOOOOoooT!PARTY-TIME. Check out that domain name and logo!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks Stack Exchange :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/zL8vH.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23713" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8266" RevisionGUID="67fa8b3b-8702-4b90-b7e0-e6f6e771ba97" CreationDate="2016-10-20T20:50:06.410" UserId="106878" Comment="updating title so the average passerby knows what exactly we're so excited about" Text="It's official! This site is now Software Engineering Stack Exchange" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23714" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8266" RevisionGUID="ba78b2ac-ba26-43c0-b1fe-ee23538fe9ed" CreationDate="2016-10-20T20:52:12.210" UserId="4" Comment="added 87 characters in body" Text="Awww yeah. WOoooooooOOOOoooOOOOOoooT! PARTY TIME. Check out that domain name and logo!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see any problems anywhere, please leave an answer to this question so we can track them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks Stack Exchange :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![free as in beer][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/zL8vH.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23715" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8266" RevisionGUID="f20dd0e0-b629-41e7-ac96-bca0e58bcd4c" CreationDate="2016-10-20T20:55:43.697" UserId="52929" Comment="added 12 characters in body" Text="Awww yeah. WOoooooooOOOOoooOOOOOoooT! PARTY TIME. Check out that domain name and logo!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks Stack Exchange :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![free as in beer][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt; If you see any problems anywhere, please leave an answer to this question so we can track them.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/zL8vH.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23716" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8267" RevisionGUID="4d524885-aabf-4c1a-aa41-2d795f15fd13" CreationDate="2016-10-20T21:22:43.620" UserId="106878" Text="We made it, y'all! We just pushed the changes and now, after 8 long months...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The name for the site has changed to Software Engineering Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;- The logo for the site has been updated to the one shown in the top left of the page.&#xD;&#xA;- The default domain for the site has changed to softwareengineering.stackexchange.com.&#xD;&#xA;- The site scope has been simplified. &#xD;&#xA;- The topic string for the site changed to &quot;software engineering&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;- The audience string for the site has been changed to &quot;professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've tried to catch everything but...you know how software goes, so if you see any spots where site copy no longer makes sense or we're otherwise using the old, incorrect name let us know, preferably in a separate meta question. *Oh, and one more thing*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Congratulations!&#xD;&#xA;----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community took the initiative to identify a critical, long overdue change, brought it to us, and remained (*mostly*) patient while we hashed out the implications and details together in endlessly drawn out stakeholder discussions. Yet everyone remained dedicated and resolute throughout, and at long last, we've shipped. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well played, everybody. :) " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23717" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="3718" RevisionGUID="128cc41a-fdec-4a1a-ba4b-df7b9d09793d" CreationDate="2016-10-20T21:47:34.913" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|site-attributes|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23718" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="3718" RevisionGUID="54edc1e7-5875-48cd-8c68-2b562891426a" CreationDate="2016-10-20T21:47:38.967" UserId="63" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[8266],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:63,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Shog9&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="23719" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="7935" RevisionGUID="d7f7bf0a-9b1b-4f9a-b0e6-a34d0a9e7ed0" CreationDate="2016-10-20T21:47:59.877" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|status-completed|site-attributes|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23720" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8054" RevisionGUID="0764bee7-b1d8-439d-9c76-6834d81f9506" CreationDate="2016-10-20T21:48:38.797" UserId="63" Comment="added 178 characters in body" Text="##Oct. 20th, 2016 - This is done! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8266/its-official-this-site-is-now-software-engineering-stack-exchange&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It took us a good while, but the Community Team has circled up and here's where we stand on your request to change Programmers.SE's name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###We agree that renaming this site is a good idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Programmers&quot; is an affinity group, whereas &quot;Software Architecture&quot; (for example) is an action and a discipline. It is entirely possible that changing the site's name will send clearer signals and prime new users to ask questions more consistently in line with what y'all would be proud to see and answer, particularly given where this site’s scope has solidified over the past few years.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_So yes, we're open to proceeding with a name change._ That said, we'll need to make sure the change makes the kind of difference you want it to, because we can't repeat this process again several years down the line. We gotta get it right _this_ time. Last time the site was renamed, the scope was very much still in flux; by now, hopefully you can identify much more precisely _what this site is about_ and commit to both a name _and_ description _and_ introductory materials that communicate this body of knowledge clearly and succinctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Here's what the Community Team needs before we can move forward:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Tell us what you're proposing as the new site name.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &quot;Software Engineering&quot; and &quot;Software Architecture&quot; both look like good options from where I stand. Let’s not turn this into a bikeshed discussion; we need well-considered options here, not a popularity contest - Coffee McWhiskeyface is right out. The ideal name will suggest _at a glance_ what this site is about, without suggesting that it might be “fix my code” even a little bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Lay out what the [new site scope](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) will be.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Above all else, **the scope needs to be simple**. Seriously. No more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no gerrymandering - **it needs to be easy for any new visitor who bothers to read** and even mildly pays attention to what they're reading to know what they can and cannot ask about here. Eliminate ambiguity for a first time poster once and for all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's talk again in a month." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23721" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8266" RevisionGUID="76591d6f-b296-40f0-ab88-5b8291c81461" CreationDate="2016-10-20T21:49:53.450" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23722" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8254" RevisionGUID="94c7497d-7aba-4026-957c-2682331b29c8" CreationDate="2016-10-20T21:50:16.490" UserId="63" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|design|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23723" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8266" RevisionGUID="88310f89-bfaf-4ecd-a1c7-440644b5ac8e" CreationDate="2016-10-20T22:52:47.700" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/789237959522418688" />
  <row Id="23724" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8268" RevisionGUID="f690761b-d0be-49bc-9675-6d04a8dfad8f" CreationDate="2016-10-21T02:37:25.700" UserId="23355" Text="Quite pleased to see the change but I would still insist to get a more serious font for the title **SOFTWARE ENGINEERING** like they have on [Chemistry][1] and [Physics][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The current font of the title still gives a comical(non-serious) feel**, IMO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://physics.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23725" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8268" RevisionGUID="e7eeb13b-7446-44ec-9c6d-746b961d1548" CreationDate="2016-10-21T03:33:04.400" UserId="23355" Comment="added 123 characters in body" Text="Quite pleased to see the change but I would still insist to get a more serious font for the title **SOFTWARE ENGINEERING** like they have on [Chemistry][1] and [Physics][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The current font of the title still gives a comical(non-serious) feel**, IMO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also feel that it will look more professional to have the title like:&#xD;&#xA;**`Software Engineering`** rather than all caps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://physics.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23726" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8269" RevisionGUID="2db7cfd5-e95b-4c29-b3ab-c8181c834d79" CreationDate="2016-10-21T04:59:31.013" UserId="145596" Text="While I only have one badge, it is appearing incorrectly on meta:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Badge][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Badge 2][3]][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Badge 3][5]][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I was reporting this bug, I noticed that the &quot;X&quot; button that appears in the tag field is misplaced as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Tags][7]][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tJf1wm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tJf1w.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/SO5dem.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/SO5de.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/2UR7um.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/2UR7u.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8Dvya.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23727" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8269" RevisionGUID="2db7cfd5-e95b-4c29-b3ab-c8181c834d79" CreationDate="2016-10-21T04:59:31.013" UserId="145596" Text="Badges and tag clear buttons misplaced" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23728" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8269" RevisionGUID="2db7cfd5-e95b-4c29-b3ab-c8181c834d79" CreationDate="2016-10-21T04:59:31.013" UserId="145596" Text="|bug|tags|badges|meta|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23729" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8218" RevisionGUID="b236a24c-bebf-454d-a120-106ca34432ad" CreationDate="2016-10-21T05:00:15.527" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23730" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8269" RevisionGUID="0d072e35-02d6-498c-ae2d-04905e977231" CreationDate="2016-10-21T05:26:04.843" UserId="145596" Comment="edited body" Text="While I only have one badge, it is appearing incorrectly on meta:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Badge][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Badge 2][3]][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Badge 3][5]][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I was reporting this bug, I noticed that the &quot;X&quot; button that appears in the tag field is misplaced as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Tags][7]][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tJf1wm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tJf1w.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/SO5dem.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/SO5de.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/2UR7um.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/2UR7u.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8Dvya.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23731" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8269" RevisionGUID="0d072e35-02d6-498c-ae2d-04905e977231" CreationDate="2016-10-21T05:26:04.843" UserId="145596" Comment="edited body" Text="Badges and tag &quot;X&quot; buttons misplaced" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23732" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8270" RevisionGUID="67883455-0658-483f-9447-a11851405247" CreationDate="2016-10-21T07:43:07.153" UserId="200593" Text="&gt; If you see any problems anywhere, please leave an answer to this question so we can track them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comment &quot;upvote&quot; arrow icons and also the comment flag icons are truncated at the top.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Also: Yay, new site name and scope!)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23733" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8269" RevisionGUID="6a1fd70c-cb84-4506-bd85-942ebea0f376" CreationDate="2016-10-21T08:45:10.853" UserId="23622" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|tags|design|badges|meta|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23734" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8269" RevisionGUID="c35aaf73-ff5a-457c-aef7-63426524febf" CreationDate="2016-10-21T09:27:55.530" UserId="250879" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-planned|design|meta|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23735" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8271" RevisionGUID="3a325639-1f4f-4a07-87c3-d6911ace481c" CreationDate="2016-10-21T09:29:27.730" UserId="250879" Text="Thanks for reporting it. There was some issue with our SVG sprite file for icons. For some reason it was off by few pixels - probably there was some issue with file export.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, fix for this is now in repo waiting for build. Should be up in few hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(fyi: I'm one of designers working in Stack Overflow sory if that wasn't clear)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23737" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8271" RevisionGUID="5d329a33-0a46-4d6d-b2f7-173283a9ff22" CreationDate="2016-10-21T15:38:26.067" UserId="47" Comment="typo" Text="Thanks for reporting it. There was some issue with our SVG sprite file for icons. For some reason it was off by few pixels - probably there was some issue with file export.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, fix for this is now in repo waiting for build. Should be up in few hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(fyi: I'm one of designers working in Stack Overflow sorry if that wasn't clear)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23738" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8273" RevisionGUID="1a28b46e-a4c7-4e6f-9080-33390617d8df" CreationDate="2016-10-21T16:21:37.367" UserId="177827" Text="The point of [magic links](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/94000) is to link to a site quickly in comments.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;`[softwareengineering.se]` is quite a mouthful. It looks like `[se.se]` is not a valid link to our site and it's questionable if it ever will be as a two letter abbreviation might cause naming conflicts in the future and/or might be reserved for bigger sites like `[so]` and `[su]`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a compromise, `[programmers.se]` still works for backwards compatibility (I guess) and is not quite as long as `[softwareengineering.se]`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will this backwards compatibility ever cease to exist?&#xD;&#xA;**Is it save to keep using `[programmers.se]`?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23739" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8273" RevisionGUID="1a28b46e-a4c7-4e6f-9080-33390617d8df" CreationDate="2016-10-21T16:21:37.367" UserId="177827" Text="Is it save to contiue using [programmers.se] as a magic link?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23740" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8273" RevisionGUID="1a28b46e-a4c7-4e6f-9080-33390617d8df" CreationDate="2016-10-21T16:21:37.367" UserId="177827" Text="|support|hyperlinks|markdown|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23743" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8273" RevisionGUID="3a6170c6-2092-4f0a-bf03-b47d1b520000" CreationDate="2016-10-21T17:06:47.113" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body; edited title; edited tags" Text="The point of [magic links](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/94000) is to link to a site quickly in comments.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;`[softwareengineering.se]` is quite a mouthful. It looks like `[se.se]` is not a valid link to our site and it's questionable if it ever will be as a two letter abbreviation might cause naming conflicts in the future and/or might be reserved for bigger sites like `[so]` and `[su]`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a compromise, `[programmers.se]` still works for backwards compatibility (I guess) and is not quite as long as `[softwareengineering.se]`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will this backwards compatibility ever cease to exist?&#xD;&#xA;**Is it safe to keep using `[programmers.se]`?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23744" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8273" RevisionGUID="3a6170c6-2092-4f0a-bf03-b47d1b520000" CreationDate="2016-10-21T17:06:47.113" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body; edited title; edited tags" Text="Is it safe to contiue using [programmers.se] as a magic link?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23745" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8273" RevisionGUID="3a6170c6-2092-4f0a-bf03-b47d1b520000" CreationDate="2016-10-21T17:06:47.113" UserId="25936" Comment="edited body; edited title; edited tags" Text="|support|new-site-name|hyperlinks|markdown|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23750" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8273" RevisionGUID="004647f6-3f57-430c-ab65-88268a55adc2" CreationDate="2016-10-21T19:11:19.337" UserId="1204" Comment="edited title" Text="Is it safe to continue using [programmers.se] as a magic link?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23753" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8276" RevisionGUID="3fb4acb2-6952-4a11-957c-0794958c519f" CreationDate="2016-10-21T21:21:48.237" UserId="96050" Text="[Please note: most of this post was written before the [name change](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8266/96050) and I haven't changed to Software Engineering. I think that's appropriate, since I'm looking backward to when this site _was_ Programmers.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wrote [a proposed philosophy of question migration](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/285467/1438). My thesis is that migration ought to be thought of as a convenience for the OP when they ask on the wrong site rather than a tool to manage content. Given there exists a [chatbot to detect _mentions_ of programmers.SE](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/96050) in order to deflect potential migration/crossposting, it seems to me that this site is particularly concerned about migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a baseline, here are some statistics for the entire history of the site going back to the very [first question asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/122955/96050):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Total Questions &#xD;&#xA;    --------------- &#xD;&#xA;    98768           &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Migrated Direction &#xD;&#xA;    -------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;     8900    out       &#xD;&#xA;    14484    in       &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Exported to:                      count  good &#xD;&#xA;    ------------                      -----  ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                  6482  6030 &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com         297   273  &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com        264   228  &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                       216   203  &#xD;&#xA;    security.stackexchange.com          173   171  &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                165   162  &#xD;&#xA;    meta.programmers.stackexchange.com  125   111  &#xD;&#xA;    dba.stackexchange.com               118   115  &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                103    97   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                 87    81   &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Imported from:                    count  good  &#xD;&#xA;    --------------                    ----- ----- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                 13828 11630 &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com        300   272   &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                        45    34    &#xD;&#xA;    serverfault.com                      40    32    &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                 31    28    &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                 31    19    &#xD;&#xA;    webmasters.stackexchange.com         27    16    &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com          26    22    &#xD;&#xA;    english.stackexchange.com            14    12    &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                 14    12    &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm just including at the top ten sites as there's a noticeable drop off in quantity after the top slot. As you can see, Programmers has received 5584 more questions from other sites (mostly Stack Overflow) than it has migrated away. A full 14% of the questions that have ever existed on this site began life on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But those all-time numbers hide an important story. Almost all of the migrations occurred before 2012: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Question migrations by year][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In recent years, Programmers has been a _net exporter_ of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Total Questions since         &#xD;&#xA;    --------------- ------------- &#xD;&#xA;    76426           2012-01-01 00:14:59&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Migrated Direction &#xD;&#xA;    -------- ---------&#xD;&#xA;    6629     out       &#xD;&#xA;    2307     in        &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Exported to:                       count good &#xD;&#xA;    ------------                       ----- ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                   3547 3116 &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com         151  118  &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com          128  104&#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                         68   59   &#xD;&#xA;    meta.programmers.stackexchange.com    63   51   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                  56   50   &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                  53   52   &#xD;&#xA;    dba.stackexchange.com                 48   45   &#xD;&#xA;    security.stackexchange.com            41   39   &#xD;&#xA;    unix.stackexchange.com                32   28   &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Imported from:                     count good &#xD;&#xA;    --------------                     ----- ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                    870  584  &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com         179  158  &#xD;&#xA;    serverfault.com                       23   16   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                  22   10   &#xD;&#xA;    webmasters.stackexchange.com           8    5    &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com            8    4    &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                   7    6    &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                   6    6    &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                          6    4    &#xD;&#xA;    webapps.stackexchange.com              4    3  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I picked January 1, 2012 because it's a handy cut off, not because of any particular event on the site. The quality of incoming questions has been respectable:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Migrated here Avg score Avg answers Avg comments Closure % Deletion % Avg age (days)&#xD;&#xA;    ------------- --------- ----------- ------------ --------- ---------- --------------&#xD;&#xA;             2307       6.0         2.6          3.5      14.3       16.0           32.3   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do remember votes from the source site are [reflected in the score](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/87031/1438). For instance, questions migrated from Stack Overflow to this site had an average score of 5.8 and 1.1 answers. So score might be less useful a measure of quality than the fact that these questions got new answers after migration and are [relatively](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/7797/96050) less likely to get closed than organic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, fully a third of the questions migrated from Stack Overflow have been closed or deleted. We don't have an easy way to quantify _crossposted_ questions or questions asked at the prompting of misinformed commenters on another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Pp7bf.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23754" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8276" RevisionGUID="3fb4acb2-6952-4a11-957c-0794958c519f" CreationDate="2016-10-21T21:21:48.237" UserId="96050" Text="A history of question migration in tables and a graph" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23755" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8276" RevisionGUID="3fb4acb2-6952-4a11-957c-0794958c519f" CreationDate="2016-10-21T21:21:48.237" UserId="96050" Text="|discussion|migration|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23756" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8277" RevisionGUID="fdac8447-bc94-40fc-a521-77ef916c7c69" CreationDate="2016-10-21T21:55:37.950" UserId="226" Text="I don't think we'll ever break it, but you know what they say about saying &quot;never&quot;... :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If that shortcut ever intentionally ceases to exist, we'll fix the comments to avoid breaking links. In the meantime, feel free to keep using it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23759" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8204" RevisionGUID="dad88042-ac69-4263-98f5-3223fc9a7445" CreationDate="2016-10-21T22:30:59.510" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 18 characters in body" Text="Programmers has changed its name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Why has this name change occurred?&#xD;&#xA; - Has anything else changed?&#xD;&#xA; - What kinds of questions will I be able to ask, now that the name has changed?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23760" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="0d0a1bf2-800d-4ac4-81ef-a0c9f609a366" CreationDate="2016-10-22T00:19:47.063" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 642 characters in body" Text="## What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Programmers.SE would be a good question on Stack Overflow.  This isn't to say that if it is on topic on Stack Overflow then it is on topic here.  Rather that it's not too broad, not opinion polling, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Programmers.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggesting to someone to repost a question that is too broad or primary opinion would get it closed on Programmers.SE too and that's really something we'd rather avoid.  It is no fun to get a question bounced from one site to another and being told repeatedly we don't want it here.  If it needs to be fixed, it needs to be fixed before it is reposted or telling the OP *exactly* what needs to be fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Some commonly referred *poor* questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, we *don't* want these, though it seems like people keep suggesting them to be reposted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I don't understand...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). [There is an expectation](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773) that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here's my problem. Anyone have a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of commonly (incorrectly) referred questions are those of &quot;come up with a design or solution for me.&quot;  Similar to how Stack Overflow has issues with people doing problem statement questions (&quot;write a program that takes the average of three values&quot;), Programmers.SE has similar issues with similar questions (&quot;here is what I want the outcome to be, anyone have a solution?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Stack Overflow nor Programmers.SE is a code/solution writing service. Just because the question lacks code but has a problem statement doesn't mean it belongs here as is. The question needs to be fixed up significantly before it is reposted on the proper site and suggesting to do so with the question in its current state does a disservice to the person asking the question. For a more detailed outline of what is generally expected at Programmers, see http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A blog I read said...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our custom off topic reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What tool, library, language, project, resource to take up or use](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* [What career to take or what to study](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;* [Assistance in writing or debugging code](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7742/40980)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programming related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - software development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA; - requirements, architecture, and design&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - configuration management, build, release, and deployment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about the [Software Development Life Cycle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg) that aren't code troubleshooting questions.  Remember that algorithm questions are also on topic on Stack Overflow (so [you don't need to migrate those](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/ &quot;'Be a bit jealous of your site - don't blithely turn askers away simply because their question could be asked somewhere else...'&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the Perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the Delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Programmers.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Programmers.SE was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with [&quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260 &quot;we even had to introduce a chat bot for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow&quot;) and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) it's problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - it's exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so comments a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, it's like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if it's a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23761" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7182" RevisionGUID="61669627-9f6c-4cc0-8f45-afc4f3e3ecc3" CreationDate="2016-10-22T00:22:15.140" UserId="1204" Comment="added 201 characters in body; edited title" Text="&gt; **Moderator Note:** Programmers changed its name recently to Software Engineering.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;This post has been updated to reflect the new scope, but it still refers to Programmers for historical reasons.  Wherever you see *Programmers* in this post, you can now mentally substitute &quot;Software Engineering.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're on Stack Overflow and you've found a question that isn't about coding. It's about design or something squishy like that. You are trying to be helpful, and you put a comment in the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should try asking on Programmers.SE instead. --YourName 2 minutes ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... and suddenly, out of nowhere Programmer.SE users sweep in and saying:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No, this isn't a good question for Programmers.SE --AnotherName 5 seconds ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are they saying that this isn't a good question for Programmers.SE? What is in scope on that squishy site with the [out of focus whiteboard background and a coffee thing as its favico](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b5ig6.png)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should I look for when determining if a question *should* go on Programmers?  And while you're at it answering these questions, why do they get so annoyed at these suggestions? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23762" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7182" RevisionGUID="61669627-9f6c-4cc0-8f45-afc4f3e3ecc3" CreationDate="2016-10-22T00:22:15.140" UserId="1204" Comment="added 201 characters in body; edited title" Text="What goes on Software Engineering (previously known as Programmers)? A guide for Stack Overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23763" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8066" RevisionGUID="948379ae-6988-4dca-89e4-e7da9d1b25c5" CreationDate="2016-10-22T00:25:50.833" UserId="1204" Comment="edited title" Text="I have a question, but it may not fit best on Software Engineering. Where else can I ask it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23764" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7864" RevisionGUID="36e1b243-870d-47e8-816b-349c25a704e7" CreationDate="2016-10-22T00:26:18.330" UserId="1204" Comment="edited title" Text="Why are implementation and debugging questions unwelcome on Software Engineering?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23765" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7865" RevisionGUID="26a4f00b-3291-4c22-851b-070e2822eef5" CreationDate="2016-10-22T00:27:29.210" UserId="1204" Comment="added 18 characters in body" Text="# The Stack philosophy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A key principle in the design guiding Stack Overflow and the rest of the Stack Exchange network is that there is *one* right place to ask the question. While we acknowledge that there are often gray lines where something is appropriate for two different sites, there is likely a *best* site to ask the question on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This helps make sure that questions about a topic are asked on the proper site, and that people *looking* for an answer to a question they may have but haven't asked yet can be properly directed to one site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Stack Overflow is the place for code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking coding questions on Software Engineering when it belongs on Stack Overflow instead means that it will take longer for the person asking the question to get an answer - we don't have as much traffic and the community is fairly dead set on coding questions being off topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is a *good* one, it can take a few hours for it to get migrated to Stack Overflow. It's better to ask the how do I write and debugging questions there.  Furthermore, in the case that it's a duplicate, the question frequently gets closed here with only minor hints at the duplicate nature. Asking the duplicate question (you searched first and didn't find it - right?) on Stack Overflow allows a much more rapid response to properly pointing the question to the one that has the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On debugging itself&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A fairly consistent comment that a person asking for debugging help will find is &quot;have you debugged it?&quot;  There are numerous debuggers out there for all the different languages.  A [favorite post of mine](https://web.archive.org/web/20150221071347/http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html) &lt;!-- get it? mine? mines.edu --&gt; lists debugging as the first and most important skill for a programmer. You will likely find that spending 5-10 minutes learning how to use a debugger for your language choice and putting a break point in at the proper spot will be faster than asking on Stack Overflow - and will let you *answer* questions there instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Don't look for more exposure here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cross posting is frowned upon.  Posting on multiple sites will often result in the question getting closed and down voted.  Programmers also has automatic question bans enabled. Posting off topic questions here that should have been there and *are* there (so we won't migrate it) will bring the person asking the question a step closer to a question ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While this sounds scary, it shouldn't be. If you ask a properly researched question that isn't an opinion poll or too broad it is not likely to have the question closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# On the Overflow vs. Exchange&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On some occasions people familiar with other sites on and off the network are under the impression that ${something}Overflow is for the graduate level questions and ${something}.StackExchange is for the easier ones.  This may be the case for Math and Physics, but it cannot be further from the truth for Stack Overflow and Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The distinction between Software Engineering and Stack Overflow is rather one of how far you are in the software development process.  A rule of thumb is that if you are sketching out a design then Software Engineering is probably the better choice; while if you are trying to figure out some code in the editor Stack Overflow is better choice.  And if you are looking for &quot;write some code for me,&quot; neither site is a good choice and you should instead be looking for freelance coders to write it for you (no one will do it for free)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23766" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7254" RevisionGUID="40f139f2-4d64-4265-b4a6-a7575c6b0567" CreationDate="2016-10-22T00:34:33.887" UserId="1204" Comment="added 9 characters in body" Text="### Question is About How to Use a Development Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool that you are using is a tool that is used to design and develop software and is used primarily in a software development environment, you should check out [Stack Overflow][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A number of development tools already have questions and answers on Stack Overflow, ranging from requirements management tools ([DOORS][2]) to architecture and design tools ([Dia][3], [Rhapsody][4], [Enterprise Architect][5]) to editors ([Visual Studio][6], [Eclipse][7], [Notepad++][8]) to mathematical packages ([MATLAB][9], [Sage][10]) to version control ([git][11], [ClearCase][12]) to peer review tools ([Collaborator][13]) to test tools ([TestComplete][14], [Selenium][15]) to project management tools ([Jira][16], [FogBugz][17]), and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about How to Use a General Purpose Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool is general purpose software, check out [Super User][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all of the tools that we use during the course of software development are unique to software developers. Tools such as office suites ([Microsoft Office][19], [OpenOffice.org][20]), web browsers ([Internet Explorer][21], [Chrome][22]) file transfer tools ([Filezilla][23], [WinSCP][24]), virtualization software ([VirtualBox][25], [VMWare][26]), and analysis software ([MATLAB][27], [Mathematica][28]) are used by many types of people in different environments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about a Tool in a Context Specific to an Operating System&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several Stack Exchange sites devoted to particular operating systems and associated software packages or applications: [Android][29], [Apple][30], [Unix and Linux][31], and [Ubuntu][32]. Be sure to read their Help Center, Meta site, and search for similar questions before asking to make sure that your specific question is on-topic for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about using a Tool in a Software Development Workflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question involves how to integrate a tool or type of tool into your workflow or process, then it is likely to be on-topic on Software Engineering. Generally, if you aren't asking about how to use a specific feature of a tool, but trying to determine how to use the tool to achieve a well-defined goal, start here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Other Considerations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some tools have their own Stack Exchange sites as well. For example, there are sites for [Drupal][33], [Expression Engine][34], [Mathematica][35], [Salesforce][36], [SharePoint][37], and [Wordpress][38]. There are even more sites for both particular environments and specific tools in beta - check out [the complete list of Stack Exchange sites][39].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  However, if you decide to post the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions may be on-topic on multiple sites. If you see your favorite tool on a site, check out some of the questions and answers to see if your question fits and which site is most likely to provide the answers that you are looking for. Do not cross-post questions - if you feel that your question should be moved to a different site, flag it and let the site's moderation team know. If you aren't sure, every site has a Meta site and many sites have a chat room, so you can always ask before asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators can, and do, migrate questions. If you do ask in the wrong place, there's a site that is more appropriate, and it's a well-written question, it will likely be migrated. Low quality questions that don't meet the quality guidelines of the other site won't be moved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are site-specific [automatic question blocks][40] - posting on the wrong site will not help you get answers and will likely lead to being blocked on other sites. It's also not possible to migrate questions if you are blocked on the target site. If you are blocked somewhere, do not post questions that are off-topic somewhere else. Instead, work to improve your existing questions and answers to have the block lifted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or downvoted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are Questions Asking for Help Using a Tool Off-Topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6701/are-questions-asking-for-help-using-a-tool-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are there a subset of tool questions that are appropriate for Software Engineering?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5519/are-there-a-subset-of-tool-questions-that-are-appropriate-for-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* [Where does my GIT question go?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6311/where-does-my-git-question-go)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/doors&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/dia&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/rhapsody&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/enterprise-architect&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/visual-studio&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/eclipse&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/notepad%2B%2B&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/sage&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/git&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/clearcase&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/code-collaborator&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/testcomplete&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/selenium&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/jira&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/fogbugz&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://superuser.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/microsoft-office&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/openoffice.org&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/internet-explorer&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/google-chrome&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/filezilla&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/winscp&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/virtualbox&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/vmware&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/mathematica&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://android.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [32]: http://askubuntu.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [33]: http://drupal.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [34]: http://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [35]: http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [36]: http://salesforce.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [37]: http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [38]: http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [39]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [40]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23767" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5519" RevisionGUID="a121aef1-1db8-4d6b-a909-0c588c5088bb" CreationDate="2016-10-22T00:37:28.563" UserId="1204" Comment="edited title" Text="Are there a subset of tool questions that are appropriate for Software Engineering?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23768" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5521" RevisionGUID="1899ce06-6516-491e-ad1a-96d11daa2fc2" CreationDate="2016-10-22T00:37:47.120" UserId="1204" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="I see Software Engineering's role in tool questions of organizing redmine, approaches to integrate perforce with bugzilla, workflow for a git user in an svn shop... Assuming that these question realms are properly asked so as not to be subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I didn't think the CLOC question was on topic for SO either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reasoning is that this is a support issue with the tool.  There is a documented limitation and the tool itself is not behaving properly according to the follow up comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have difficulty finding it at the moment, though I seem to recall a meta post from somewhere that was asking if using the SE network as a replacement for the company's own forums on support questions.  I believe the SE response was mixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, this question is essentially equivalent to &quot;My eclipse keeps running out of memory&quot; and &quot;Why does game XYZ lag with graphics card ABC?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am of the opinion that Stack Exchange is not a bug tracking system for the world, nor is it the support forums for the world.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifiably, for the question on CLOC support: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cloc/support and http://sourceforge.net/p/cloc/bugs/ -- this is where the question should be addressed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23769" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8276" RevisionGUID="92959f02-3445-47a9-8f7c-c724d34724c1" CreationDate="2016-10-22T02:08:34.420" UserId="4" Comment="added 335 characters in body" Text="[Note: Most of this post was written before the [name change](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8266/96050) and I haven't changed to Software Engineering. I think that's appropriate, since I'm looking backward to when this site _was_ Programmers.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Note: This in response to [a comment by gnat on Meta Stack Exchange][1] asking for information regarding migrations to and from this site. It's being shared here since it may be of interest to the community.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wrote [a proposed philosophy of question migration](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/285467/1438). My thesis is that migration ought to be thought of as a convenience for the OP when they ask on the wrong site rather than a tool to manage content. Given there exists a [chatbot to detect _mentions_ of programmers.SE](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/96050) in order to deflect potential migration/crossposting, it seems to me that this site is particularly concerned about migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a baseline, here are some statistics for the entire history of the site going back to the very [first question asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/122955/96050):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Total Questions &#xD;&#xA;    --------------- &#xD;&#xA;    98768           &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Migrated Direction &#xD;&#xA;    -------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;     8900    out       &#xD;&#xA;    14484    in       &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Exported to:                      count  good &#xD;&#xA;    ------------                      -----  ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                  6482  6030 &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com         297   273  &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com        264   228  &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                       216   203  &#xD;&#xA;    security.stackexchange.com          173   171  &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                165   162  &#xD;&#xA;    meta.programmers.stackexchange.com  125   111  &#xD;&#xA;    dba.stackexchange.com               118   115  &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                103    97   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                 87    81   &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Imported from:                    count  good  &#xD;&#xA;    --------------                    ----- ----- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                 13828 11630 &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com        300   272   &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                        45    34    &#xD;&#xA;    serverfault.com                      40    32    &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                 31    28    &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                 31    19    &#xD;&#xA;    webmasters.stackexchange.com         27    16    &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com          26    22    &#xD;&#xA;    english.stackexchange.com            14    12    &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                 14    12    &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm just including at the top ten sites as there's a noticeable drop off in quantity after the top slot. As you can see, Programmers has received 5584 more questions from other sites (mostly Stack Overflow) than it has migrated away. A full 14% of the questions that have ever existed on this site began life on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But those all-time numbers hide an important story. Almost all of the migrations occurred before 2012: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Question migrations by year][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In recent years, Programmers has been a _net exporter_ of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Total Questions since         &#xD;&#xA;    --------------- ------------- &#xD;&#xA;    76426           2012-01-01 00:14:59&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Migrated Direction &#xD;&#xA;    -------- ---------&#xD;&#xA;    6629     out       &#xD;&#xA;    2307     in        &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Exported to:                       count good &#xD;&#xA;    ------------                       ----- ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                   3547 3116 &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com         151  118  &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com          128  104&#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                         68   59   &#xD;&#xA;    meta.programmers.stackexchange.com    63   51   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                  56   50   &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                  53   52   &#xD;&#xA;    dba.stackexchange.com                 48   45   &#xD;&#xA;    security.stackexchange.com            41   39   &#xD;&#xA;    unix.stackexchange.com                32   28   &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Imported from:                     count good &#xD;&#xA;    --------------                     ----- ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                    870  584  &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com         179  158  &#xD;&#xA;    serverfault.com                       23   16   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                  22   10   &#xD;&#xA;    webmasters.stackexchange.com           8    5    &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com            8    4    &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                   7    6    &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                   6    6    &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                          6    4    &#xD;&#xA;    webapps.stackexchange.com              4    3  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I picked January 1, 2012 because it's a handy cut off, not because of any particular event on the site. The quality of incoming questions has been respectable:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Migrated here Avg score Avg answers Avg comments Closure % Deletion % Avg age (days)&#xD;&#xA;    ------------- --------- ----------- ------------ --------- ---------- --------------&#xD;&#xA;             2307       6.0         2.6          3.5      14.3       16.0           32.3   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do remember votes from the source site are [reflected in the score](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/87031/1438). For instance, questions migrated from Stack Overflow to this site had an average score of 5.8 and 1.1 answers. So score might be less useful a measure of quality than the fact that these questions got new answers after migration and are [relatively](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/7797/96050) less likely to get closed than organic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, fully a third of the questions migrated from Stack Overflow have been closed or deleted. We don't have an easy way to quantify _crossposted_ questions or questions asked at the prompting of misinformed commenters on another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/285467/a-proposed-philosophy-of-question-migration/285742#comment926949_285742&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Pp7bf.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23770" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8278" RevisionGUID="8d28f2fe-9254-4afb-b09d-0ed20a78bc21" CreationDate="2016-10-22T02:09:39.653" UserId="4" Text="[Note: I've moved my original three comments on the question to an answer. I hope to edit them into a more logical and coherent commentary in the next few days.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the statement that Programmers is a net exporter of questions is true. Many early users of The Workplace came from Programmers because of the change in focus away from anything programmer related to more of a software development and software engineering focus. Likewise, Open Source and Law became very good at questions we accepted because they were important to us as software engineers, but didn't have another home - now, they have a home with better experts. Code debugging that people asked here for some reason or another, of course, went to SO. And so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not surprised at all by the migrations to UX, Security, and DBA. These are all technically something a software engineer is familiar with, learns about as part of education, and likely works with, and seems like it would be good to ask here (even with the name change), but they may not realize that there is a better site with experts in these areas. When these sites were pointed out, people have actually asked for migration there. I'm actually surprised we don't have more migrations to Server Fault, especially with the more recent rise of DevOps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overall, there's nothing really surprising. When we were created, Stack Overflow exported all of the soft questions to us. We refined our scope and improved our definition of good questions, which led to an increase in rejections or a hesitation to migrate here. We are better at exporting since the other sites have always had a clearer definition of scope. We use migration as a tool to help askers get answers to their questions from the best possible people, but also to give the right impression of our site by the content that is here (or not here)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23771" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8279" RevisionGUID="7f6c588e-9c3a-43d1-9558-4302092ac7e9" CreationDate="2016-10-22T02:14:23.553" UserId="66554" Text="Sorry, landed here from an announcement on programmers. First time I encounter this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is it different from all other programming-related sites? SO, Programmers, CS, Code Review etc?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/, I see questions like &quot;Can a function be pure if it depends on an immutable class-level field?&quot; (programmers), &quot;How to use git when project files are on different drives?&quot; (SO, U&amp;L), &quot;ASP.net Application - wait for sproc response from service broker&quot; (SO), &quot;Cyclomatic complexity vs performance&quot; (CS)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23772" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="a87b34bc-0261-4265-b5ac-14f914862b20" CreationDate="2016-10-22T09:06:32.347" UserId="60357" Comment="updated site name" Text="It is September once again (today is the [7316](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+days+since+September+1%2C+1993)&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; day of [September](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)), and once again students are asking their homework problems on Stack Overflow and SoftwareEngineering.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We start seeing questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A car dealer has 10 salespersons. Each salesperson keeps track of the number of cars sold each month and reports it to the management at the end of the month. The management keeps the data in a file and assigns a number, 1 to 10, to each salesperson....&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Write the code to store the number of cars sold by each salesperson in the array cars, output the total numbers of cars sold at the end each month, and output the salesperson number selling the maximum number of cars. (Assume that data is in the file cars.dat, and that this file has been opened using the ifstream variable inFile.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to understand is that **we are not a code writing service.**  You can't just copy/paste a homework into the text area and expect someone to do your homework for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmer education builds upon previous experiences.** The compiler class has machine language and data structures as prerequisites because if you don't understand those, you will be hopelessly lost in the class and not even able to understand the lectures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets assume you do understand the code (the person answering the question did a good job explaining it)... the curriculum is designed to take you from `A` to `Z` with 24 steps between.  As industry programmers we often take shortcuts and don't need say, steps `ijkl` to do something.  Learning from us, you'll never get these steps. *However* you may find in your next assignment or class that understanding `jk` is assumed and critical to the understanding of some other concepts.  Just because we don't need `ijkl` to do it doesn't mean it isn't understood.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A programming class I took years ago used [SPIM](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html) - a MIPS simulator.  One of the students discovered a little-used [DECStation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECstation) in the lab that had gcc on it.  Instead of writing the assignment (factorial) by hand with the concepts we had access to (we were supposed to write a recursive function to learn about the stack and frame pointer), he wrote it in C, compiled it with `gcc -S` and handed in the resulting MIPS assembler code.  However, the compiler, recognizing an optimization, converted the entire code from a recursive subroutine into a `for` loop.  He got a '0' on that homework and had trouble with the next one (which assumed you already understood the frame pointer and stack pointer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Copy and paste takes no skill. It cheats you out of the education you are paying to get.**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It cheats *us* of good interview candidates.  Technical interviewers often complain about the quality of college graduates.  You may be enthusiastic, but unless you can write code and explain concepts better than the other guy, we're going to hire the other guy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your first resource to look at should be your instructor.  They are there for you and want to have you follow a specific path to get to the end point of understanding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, you've exhausted the resources.  You've tried asking your instructor. You've searched google.  You've gone over your lecture notes and even knocked on the TA's door during office hours.  And you've come here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Don't expect an answer in any given time frame.** The urgency of your question is not something we are concerned with.  Good questions and answers are timeless - not something that needs to be done by 5pm today or 8am on Monday (you may find the rate of answers drops substantially on the weekends and evenings of various timezones).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Describe the problem you are having, what your understanding of the problem is and where you are confused**. For a question from a student, the best questions are often the ones that are asking how to take a single step in understanding rather than trying to leap all the way to the solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize also that **the answer we give you may be completely wrong** for the path that your instructor is trying to get you to follow.  Having previously fought through the problem ourselves, we know and understand when one can jump directly from `il` and when one needs to go through each step of `ijkl` in a process. Our answers may skip over steps that aren't needed *for this particular problem*, but may be critical for understanding the next assignment or some problem years down the road where skipping `jk` is the wrong answer. In many cases, it is important to follow the curriculum as best as you are able.  Going above and beyond is good where one gains a deeper understanding of a problem domain, but one *must* have the foundation upon which to build.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We want you to do your homework to the best of your ability. Getting points off on an assignment and learning something from that produces a better interview candidate than one who can copy and paste code that got As in school but can't solve a simple problem they've never seen before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;###If you decide to post your question anyway&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure you **read the [tour](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tour) and [help center](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).** Software Engineering focuses on software design and architecture. Questions about &quot;how to write some code&quot; or &quot;help me debug this code&quot; are off topic on SoftwareEngineering.SE as they are issues with implementation rather than design.  They *may* be on topic on Stack Overflow, but just posting the requirements or code and saying what amounts to &quot;help me&quot; is rarely enough for a good question - make sure you read [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) before posting a question on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question on SoftwareEngineering.SE is just a copy paste of homework problem, expect it to be downvoted, closed, and deleted - potentially in quite short order." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23773" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8278" RevisionGUID="3b5c4ea2-09d9-4963-8419-ea57ed32002b" CreationDate="2016-10-22T12:31:20.827" UserId="4" Comment="added 7198 characters in body" Text="I don't think that there's anything surprising in this data.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The Importing of Questions from Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The high number of imported questions from Stack Overflow makes sense. Software Engineering was originally Programmers, which was originally proposed as Not Programming Related. The proposal for Not Programming Related was for a safe place to ask the questions that were too centered on opinions or too broad for Stack Overflow. That didn't last very long, and the quality of questions led to [a blog post on the Stack Overflow blog][1]. This site was one of the main reasons for the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][1] and [Real Questions Have Answers][2] posts, and numerous Meta discussions about question quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This transition from Not Programming Related to something pretty close to what we are today spanned from the proposal on 3 June 2010 through the private beta that started on 1 September 2010 through a lot of the public beta which began on 8 September 2010. However, by our full launch in early December 2010, we had changed our scope to something closer to what it is today. This turmoil in definition was about 6 months, but wasn't clear to anyone who didn't participate on the Meta site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One big problem with all of this turmoil was that, until a few days ago, we continued to have the same name and branding. To anyone outside of active participants on our community, they may not have been aware of the drastic change in expected question quality or scope. This is why Duga exists - to help us find people (primarily on Stack Overflow) who are blindly suggesting our site without understanding our scope. The things that should have made our scope change blindingly obvious to anyone - new subdomain, new logo - [were flat-out rejected in June 2012][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Until June 2012, Stack Overflow users could vote to migrate questions here][4]. When that Meta post was written, we had a 26% rejection rate for migration. The history of migration from Stack Overflow to Programmers was so bad that, [in December 2010, we had to ask Stack Overflow users to stop using Programmers as their toilet bowl][5]. Even with us seeing the influx of garbage sent from Stack Overflow, it still took a year and a half to stop individual users from migrating questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also in October 2012, [migrations for questions older than 60 days were disabled][6].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2012 was a big year for stopping incoming migrations. It stopped users from sending old (and likely low quality) SO questions to us by taking away their ability to migrate to us and even stopped SO mods (who may not have understood our site) from migrating old questions to us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The Exporting of Questions to Other Sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The high number of exported questions also makes sense. A general trend in increase of migrations also makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since 2010, our scope has been stable, for the most part. When we went live in December 2010 and [were introduced to the world in a blog post][7], the things that were on topic here included software engineering, developer testing, algorithms and data structures, design patterns, architecture, development methodologies, quality assurance, software law, and business concerns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Really, what has always been on-scope here is software engineering. Most of the things in the original list of things on-topic are [part of software engineering][8]. Today, we have a more succinct list of things that are on-topic, but it's still essentially all of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, some aspects of software engineering are better covered on other sites. Information Security, Database Administrators, Writers, Project Management, Computer Science, The Workplace, Law, and Open Source were all started after Programmers was, and these are all things that someone working in software engineering would learn, either as part of a curriculum or on-the-job. It's not that database design questions or data structure and algorithm questions or licensing questions are off-topic here, it's just that there are communities who can give better answers to these types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that part of this exporting culture may have been on us, as a community. When we shifted from the original Not Programming Related concept to Programmers, I think that we kind of normalized around the idea that we were actually a community of software engineers. Being primarily professionals, we wanted a site where the questions we had as professionals would be accepted without being lost in a sea of &quot;fix my code plz&quot; questions on Stack Overflow. There were already sites for writing and debugging code, professional-level system administration, using various computer software tools, mathematics, statistics, user experience, and a few other things that we cared about. So we include a variety of our professional concerns in the list of things that were on-topic. Until The Workplace came around, we had more tolerance of education and career questions. Before Computer Science, we took in some of the more theoretical/mathematical algorithmic questions. Before Law and Open Source, we took in a lot of law and licensing questions (but began to constrain that since we realized we weren't lawyers and couldn't answer all of these questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two good examples for migrations. First, we did a little experiment with Computer Science where the same question was asked on both sites (I can't find a link at the moment, but we had checked with the folks at CS to make sure it was OK). The answers were dramatically different. Here, they were very practical, focused on the quality attributes of the software (testability, readability, performance), and written in more plain English. On CS, they were more mathematical and focused on the theoretical behavior of the algorithm. Another example is Open Source and Law - the people there have learned more about and worked with copyright and licensing and the quality in answer is so much higher - just look at the answers here vs there in software license questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally, we should be seeing this trend downwards. It may rise slightly if a new related site goes into a public beta or launches, but shouldn't really spike. At this point, we have a well-defined scope that focuses on the core aspects of software engineering without the tangential things. The main reason for this is that a lot of these tangential things now have their own communities in various states of development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The Purpose of Migration&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree with the thesis that &quot;migration ought to be thought of as a convenience for the OP when they ask on the wrong site rather than a tool to manage content&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Migration is a tool to manage content, just like deletion. However, unlike closure or deletion, it preserves the content and signals to the user &quot;yes, you asked a good question, but although we can't give you a great answer here, you can get a great answer over there&quot;. By moving the good question, we help the asker get a solution to their problem and introduce them to a community of experts if they have a similar problem in the future. We help people who have the same question in the future have access to higher quality answers. We also add one more good question to another site that will help boost its discoverability by searching.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As long as we continue to uphold [the rule of &quot;don't migrate crap&quot;][9], we will probably be an exporter of questions. Our new name gives people a good impression of what we are about, but they may not be aware of niche communities that would be better for very specific questions. They may also not be aware of nuances between some communities, such as Software Engineering and Computer Science and the differences in answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing migration go away. A question is either on-topic or not and it doesn't need to be our concern if they get the best answers or not. We can use comments and other tools to let people know about other communities that exist. However, as it stands now, I have a tool that helps me ensure that the user gets the best possible answers for their questions, so I use it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3718/change-the-name-of-programmers-to-something-that-more-accurately-reflects-the-si&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/134636/update-migration-path-list-for-non-moderators/134642&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/151890/disable-migration-for-questions-older-than-60-days&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering#Subdisciplines&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10249/what-is-migration-and-how-does-it-work" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23774" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8278" RevisionGUID="28bf4d10-024b-4fdd-8989-196f81e83534" CreationDate="2016-10-22T14:37:00.173" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 44 characters in body" Text="I don't think that there's anything surprising in this data.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The Importing of Questions from Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The high number of imported questions from Stack Overflow makes sense. Software Engineering was originally Programmers, which was originally proposed as Not Programming Related. The proposal for Not Programming Related was for a safe place to ask the questions that were too centered on opinions or too broad for Stack Overflow. That didn't last very long, and the quality of questions led to [a blog post on the Stack Overflow blog][1]. This site was one of the main reasons for the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][1] and [Real Questions Have Answers][2] posts, and numerous Meta discussions about question quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This transition from Not Programming Related to something pretty close to what we are today spanned from the proposal on 3 June 2010 through the private beta that started on 1 September 2010 through a lot of the public beta which began on 8 September 2010. However, by our full launch in early December 2010, we had changed our scope to something closer to what it is today. This turmoil in definition was about 6 months, but wasn't clear to anyone who didn't participate on the Meta site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One big problem with all of this turmoil was that, until a few days ago, we continued to have the same name and branding. To anyone outside of active participants on our community, they may not have been aware of the drastic change in expected question quality or scope. This is why Duga exists - to help us find people (primarily on Stack Overflow) who are blindly suggesting our site without understanding our scope. The things that should have made our scope change blindingly obvious to anyone - new subdomain, new logo - [were flat-out rejected in June 2012][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Until June 2012, Stack Overflow users could vote to migrate questions here][4]. When that Meta post was written, we had a 26% rejection rate for migration. The history of migration from Stack Overflow to Programmers was so bad that, [in December 2010, we had to ask Stack Overflow users to stop using Programmers as their toilet bowl][5]. Even with us seeing the influx of garbage sent from Stack Overflow, it still took a year and a half to stop individual users from migrating questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also in October 2012, [migrations for questions older than 60 days were disabled][6].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2012 was a big year for stopping incoming migrations. It stopped users from sending old (and likely low quality) SO questions to us by taking away their ability to migrate to us and even stopped SO mods (who may not have understood our site) from migrating old questions to us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The Exporting of Questions to Other Sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The high number of exported questions also makes sense. A general trend in increase of migrations also makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since 2010, our scope has been stable, for the most part. When we went live in December 2010 and [were introduced to the world in a blog post][7], the things that were on topic here included software engineering, developer testing, algorithms and data structures, design patterns, architecture, development methodologies, quality assurance, software law, and business concerns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Really, what has always been on-scope here is software engineering. Most of the things in the original list of things on-topic are [part of software engineering][8]. Today, we have a more succinct list of things that are on-topic, but it's still essentially all of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, some aspects of software engineering are better covered on other sites. Information Security, Database Administrators, Writers, Project Management, Computer Science, The Workplace, Law, and Open Source were all started after Programmers was, and these are all things that someone working in software engineering would learn, either as part of a curriculum or on-the-job. It's not that database design questions or data structure and algorithm questions or licensing questions are off-topic here, it's just that there are communities who can give better answers to these types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that part of this exporting culture may have been on us, as a community. When we shifted from the original Not Programming Related concept to Programmers, I think that we kind of normalized around the idea that we were actually a community of software engineers. Being primarily professionals, we wanted a site where the questions we had as professionals would be accepted without being lost in a sea of &quot;fix my code plz&quot; questions on Stack Overflow. There were already sites for writing and debugging code, professional-level system administration, using various computer software tools, mathematics, statistics, user experience, and a few other things that we cared about. So we include a variety of our professional concerns in the list of things that were on-topic. Until The Workplace came around, we had more tolerance of education and career questions. Before Computer Science, we took in some of the more theoretical/mathematical algorithmic questions. Before Law and Open Source, we took in a lot of law and licensing questions (but began to constrain that since we realized we weren't lawyers and couldn't answer all of these questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two good examples for migrations. First, [we did a little experiment where the same question was asked on multiple sites][9]. The answers were dramatically different. Here, they were very practical, focused on the quality attributes of the software (testability, readability, performance), and written in more plain English. On CS, they were more mathematical and focused on the theoretical behavior of the algorithm. Another example is Open Source and Law - the people there have learned more about and worked with copyright and licensing and the quality in answer is so much higher - just look at the answers here vs there in software license questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally, we should be seeing this trend downwards. It may rise slightly if a new related site goes into a public beta or launches, but shouldn't really spike. At this point, we have a well-defined scope that focuses on the core aspects of software engineering without the tangential things. The main reason for this is that a lot of these tangential things now have their own communities in various states of development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The Purpose of Migration&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree with the thesis that &quot;migration ought to be thought of as a convenience for the OP when they ask on the wrong site rather than a tool to manage content&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Migration is a tool to manage content, just like deletion. However, unlike closure or deletion, it preserves the content and signals to the user &quot;yes, you asked a good question, but although we can't give you a great answer here, you can get a great answer over there&quot;. By moving the good question, we help the asker get a solution to their problem and introduce them to a community of experts if they have a similar problem in the future. We help people who have the same question in the future have access to higher quality answers. We also add one more good question to another site that will help boost its discoverability by searching.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As long as we continue to uphold [the rule of &quot;don't migrate crap&quot;][10], we will probably be an exporter of questions. Our new name gives people a good impression of what we are about, but they may not be aware of niche communities that would be better for very specific questions. They may also not be aware of nuances between some communities, such as Software Engineering and Computer Science and the differences in answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing migration go away. A question is either on-topic or not and it doesn't need to be our concern if they get the best answers or not. We can use comments and other tools to let people know about other communities that exist. However, as it stands now, I have a tool that helps me ensure that the user gets the best possible answers for their questions, so I use it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3718/change-the-name-of-programmers-to-something-that-more-accurately-reflects-the-si&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/134636/update-migration-path-list-for-non-moderators/134642&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/151890/disable-migration-for-questions-older-than-60-days&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering#Subdisciplines&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6293/4&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10249/what-is-migration-and-how-does-it-work" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23775" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7253" RevisionGUID="89b738bd-c905-4084-a125-79af8522f7a6" CreationDate="2016-10-22T22:09:33.353" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 9 characters in body" Text="I have a question about tools. According to the [on-topic page][1], tool questions are off-topic on Software Engineering Stack Exchange. Is there a site for me to go to ask specific tool questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23776" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8280" RevisionGUID="6fcec61f-fab2-417d-a5ab-1e828a4d3f88" CreationDate="2016-10-23T14:22:40.293" UserId="64132" Text="I looked at a couple of questions this morning and noticed we have a few extra commas in the text below the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xlefw.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="23779" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8280" RevisionGUID="0dd4caf3-117d-45de-ba15-7f2505933098" CreationDate="2016-10-24T08:07:57.603" UserId="4767" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-declined|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23780" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8067" RevisionGUID="3e9e2820-0a98-4fed-a4f9-bdbfe4a9ee25" CreationDate="2016-10-24T10:52:38.377" UserId="4" Comment="added 1467 characters in body" Text="The following sites may be of interest to members of the Software Engineering community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [CrossValidated][4] &#xD;&#xA;* [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;* [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;* [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;* [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;* [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;* [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;* [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;* [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;* [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;* [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;* [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;* [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;* [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;* [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;* [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;* [Signal Processing][21]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][22]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Recommendations][23]&#xD;&#xA;* [Super User][24]&#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow][25]&#xD;&#xA;* [User Experience][26]&#xD;&#xA;* [Unix &amp; Linux][27]&#xD;&#xA;* [The Workplace][28]&#xD;&#xA;* [Writers][29]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before posting, be sure to read their Help Centers to fully understand what these communities expect from high quality questions and any specific rules they may have. As always, if you aren't sure if your question is a good fit, post on a Meta site and you can be directed to an appropriate site on the Stack Exchange network, if one exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a site doesn't exist yet, check out [Area 51][30], where users can collaborate to define and launch new Stack Exchange sites. If there's a proposal for your idea, you can follow it and contribute to it's definition. If not, you can create a new proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More detailed information about each site follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Code Review Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; peer review of your code. We're working together to improve the skills&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of programmers worldwide by taking working code and making it better.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from your project in the following areas…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Best practices and design pattern usage&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Security issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Correctness in unanticipated cases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then you are in the right place!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computational Science Stack Exchange is for questions and answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about computational methods used in technical disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First-time posters are strongly advised to read Eric Raymond's How to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask Questions the Smart Way for advice on how to ask good questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (not for technical answers). Although written for an audience asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions about open source software, the same advice applies when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking questions about any subject area.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is run by volunteers; the best way to get an answer to your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is to ask it in a way that makes it easy for someone with a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broad computational science background to answer it with 15 minutes of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; effort or less.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Topics that are usually a good fit for this site:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about software packages or languages used broadly in computational science (e.g., PETSc, MATLAB, Trilinos, LAPACK, SLEPc,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; R, NumPy, SciPy, Julia, Maple, Octave) except Mathematica (which has&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its own site now). In general, high-level questions (e.g., about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/package features) are best. Questions that are essentially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about debugging a code sample, or about low-level language syntax are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a poor fit for this site, and are usually closed; such questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be asked on language-/package-specific forums. Package&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developers interested in using this site as a resource should look at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this meta question. Package developers answering questions should look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at this meta question for guidelines on disclosing project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; affiliations.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about algorithms or methods used to solve problems in applied mathematics (e.g., finding roots of a polynomial, finding the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; eigenvalues/eigenvectors of a matrix, solving an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elliptic/parabolic/hyperbolic PDE)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions that ask about appropriate methods for a given application area (e.g., what numerical methods would I use when modeling shock&#xD;&#xA;&gt; waves, what numerical methods would I use when modeling combustion,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what graph algorithms would I use if I wanted to understand social&#xD;&#xA;&gt; networks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer Science Stack Exchange is for students, researchers and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practitioners of computer science.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer science, also sometimes called computing science, is the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; science of computation and its applications. This site covers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; theoretical and applied computer science at any level, including but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms, models of computation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming language semantics, formal methods&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - computer architecture, networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, natural language processing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - vision, graphics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [CrossValidated][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CrossValidated is for statisticians, data miners, and anyone else&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doing data analysis or interested in it as a discipline. If you have a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical analysis, applied or theoretical&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - designing experiments&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - collecting data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - data mining&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - visualizing data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - probability theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - mathematical statistics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical and data-driven computing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Crypto Stack Exchange is for software developers, mathematicians and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others interested in cryptography.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cryptography Stack Exchange is for asking questions about the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mathematics and properties of cryptographic systems, their analysis&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (&quot;cryptanalysis&quot;) and subsidiary topics that generally make up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cryptology, such as random number generation. As such, we welcome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions on topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Asymmetric and symmetric cryptographic algorithms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographic protocols&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptanalysis techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Hash functions, hashing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Entropy and information theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographically Secure (Pseudo-)Random Number Generation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dba.se is for those needing expert answers to advanced&#xD;&#xA;&gt; database-related questions concerning traditional SQL RDBMS and NoSQL&#xD;&#xA;&gt; alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Database Administration including configuration and backup / restore&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Querying including window-functions, dynamic-sql, and query-performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Modelling and database-design, including referential-integrity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Programming in built-in server-side languages including stored-procedures and triggers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence including etl, reporting, and olap&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Examples of questions that are likely to be on-topic for Data Science&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given process monitoring data arriving every 10ms, what statistical tool should I use to best characterize a change in the process - mean?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a distribution?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When is it suitable to apply L1 regularization for feature selection?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I would like to produce a infographic on the 'Brexit' referendum. Given public opinion data across the UK, what are some meaningful&#xD;&#xA;&gt; techniques to visaualize it in a dashboard?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When executing an ARIMA model in Spark, what are the pros and cons of using Python instead of R?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given Facebook Likes, is there an ML technique to predict age and gender?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for electronics and electrical engineering professionals,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; students, and enthusiasts. We ask and answer questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electrical and electronics engineering topics, which include&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electronics, physical computing, and those working with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; microcontrollers, Arduinos and embedded systems. We feel the best&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Electronics Design questions have a schematic, links to pertinent&#xD;&#xA;&gt; datasheets or some source code in them, but if your question generally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific electronics design problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the theory and simulation of electromagnetic forces&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a communication scheme&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Engineering Stack Exchange are usually well-received when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Identify a specific engineering problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Require expert engineering knowledge to solve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Include any relevant drawings, images or references that may be necessary to understand the problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Excite or challenge experienced professionals in the field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Game Development Stack Exchange is for professional and amateur&#xD;&#xA;&gt; video/computer game developers. If you have a question relating to ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asset pipelines (creation, storage, editing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game-specific programming issues (engine architecture, game-related APIs, networking, tools, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - project management (testing, team management, scheduling, publishing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game industry (careers, trends, technology, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware Recommendations is a community-run website to help you find a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific product for your needs. That means you can ask for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware to perform a specific task. However, you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be aware that &quot;hardware&quot; is not an all-encompassing term — for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; details of what hardware is accepted on this site, please see What is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware?. In essence, we can help you if you're looking for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware that is &quot;an electronic item that is,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interfaces with, or connects to a computer to operate&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; IT Security Stack Exchange is for Information Security professionals&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to discuss protecting assets from threats and vulnerabilities. Topics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; include, but are not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - web app hardening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - network security&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - social engineering, including phishing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - risk management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - policies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - penetration testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - security tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - using cryptography&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - incident response&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physically securing the office, datacentre, information assets etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Law Stack Exchange is for legal professionals, students, and others&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with experience or interest in law.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The best questions are those that have specific answers; Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange is not a general discussion forum. In general, ask here if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question which covers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Statutes or court decisions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal terms and language, doctrines and theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal process and procedure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Historical legal applications&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Dealing with legal professionals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mathematics Stack Exchange is for people studying mathematics at any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; level and professionals in related fields. We welcome questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Understanding mathematical concepts and theorems.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Mathematical problems such as one might come across in a course or textbook. (First read our how to ask a good question page.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Solving mathematical puzzles.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software that mathematicians use (except Mathematica, which has its own Stack Exchange site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Network Engineering Stack Exchange is for asking questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professionally managed networks in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - operating, maintaining, purchasing or managing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - planning or designing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - model or product line features and differences;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - lab scenarios involving on-topic equipment;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used by network professionals;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - servers operating as a router/switch/firewall;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design or theory of protocols used to operate a network (e.g. IP, TCP, routing protocols, STP, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - content delivery networks;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - production troubleshooting or problem resolution;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physical infrastructure (e.g. standard color coding of cables, types of fiber, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementing and enforcing network security or policies;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and meets the following requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - under your direct control (if the network is not under your control you will not likely be able to provide the information required to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer your question);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware that has a paid support option (enterprise/provider class products, some small business class devices);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then this is likely the correct place to ask unless it meets any of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the off-topic conditions detailed below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Open Source Stack Exchange is a question &amp; answer site about a group&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of related movements which encourage people to give up some of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rights given to them by copyright law, by using licenses which give&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others the freedom to use and transform their creative works, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which optionally (by using copyleft/share-alike licenses) ensure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; these works will always be made available with the same rights. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site is not limited to software, but also covers art, literature,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hardware, databases and more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; These movements have been spearheaded by a group of organisations:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FSF, OSI, Creative Commons, Free Culture. These organisations prefer a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; variety of different terms (free, open source, libre) and sometimes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; define them with slight differences. But on this site these terms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should in general be considered to be synonymous, except for questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which ask directly about their differences.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You've come to the right place if you have questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the history and philosophies of the FSF, OSI, CC etc&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, applying, and complying with Free &amp; Open licenses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how communities collaborate together to produce, distribute, market and sometime monetize these projects&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what license to use for a specific situation - but please read How do I ask for a license recommendation? first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Personal Productivity Stack Exchange is for people wanting to improve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their personal productivity. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - achieving a productivity workflow, using techniques like GTD, Covey, Pomodoro, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - fighting procrastination by getting energetic and motivated workflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - ergonomics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - effective sleep habits and the entire sleep-wake transition&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - learning, memory and creativity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The site is for project management practitioners, academics and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; amateur theorists. This is a site about the field of project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; management for people who love the subject. Our site includes the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following topics:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Management Practices and Theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Agile&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Scrum&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - PRINCE2&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Tool Usage in Project Management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Manager Career Advancement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reverse Engineering Stack Exchange is for researchers and developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who explore the principles of a system through analysis of its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structure, function, and operation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software analysis (static or dynamic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - disassembly or decompilation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware analysis and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools commonly used for reverse engineering hardware or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deterring reverse engineering efforts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Server Fault is for questions about managing information technology&#xD;&#xA;&gt; systems in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - managing the hardware or software of servers, workstations, storage or networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used for administering, monitoring, or automating these&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deployment to and management of third-party provided information technology platforms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Signal Processing][21]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Signal Processing Stack Exchange is for practitioners of the art and science of signal, image and video processing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][22]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing Stack Exchange is for software quality control experts, automation engineers, and software testers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Recommendations][23]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for questions asking for recommendations of software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ready-to-use to accomplish a particular task, that is, “what software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can I use to do …?”. While this includes software libraries for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development use, note that recommendations of tutorials, data sources,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; media libraries (e.g. icon collections) etc. are off-topic – as are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions like “what technology to use for …?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good software recommendation requests have two components:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A purpose — a task to accomplish, a user story&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Some objective requirements — a minimum set of features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Stack Overflow][25]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; a specific programming problem, or a software algorithm, or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tools commonly used by programmers; and is a practical, answerable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem that is unique to software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#[Super User][24]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users. If you have a question about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * computer hardware,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * computer software, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal and home computer networking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming and software development,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * video games or consoles,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * websites or web services like Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * electronic devices, media players, cell phones or smart phones, except insofar as they interface with your computer,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * issues specific to corporate IT support and networks,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * asking for a product, service or learning material recommendation,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Unix &amp; Linux][27]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Unix and Linux Stack Exchange is for users of Linux, FreeBSD and other Un*x-like operating systems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Using or administering a *nix desktop or server&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The Unix foundation underlying OS X (but generally not frontend application questions)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The underlying *nix OS on an embedded system or handheld device (e.g. an Android phone)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Shell scripting&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Applications packaged in *nix distributions (note: being cross-platform does not disqualify)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UNIX C API and System Interfaces ( within reason )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;then you're in the right place. Note that Ubuntu posts are a special case. If your question applies to Ubuntu only, or you're looking for answers that are Ubuntu-specific, you should post it on the Ask Ubuntu Stack Exchange site. If your question applies to other distros or you welcome more generic solutions, you're in the right place here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If your question is a programming question, requiring knowledge of programming languages other than unix shell scripting languages, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Please note that requests for learning materials (tutorials, how-tos etc.) are off topic. The only exception is questions about where to find official documentation (e.g. POSIX specifications).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [User Experience][26]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; User Experience Stack Exchange is for User Experience Designers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Information Architects, and Human Computer Interaction researchers. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Specific UX design problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UX issues that can be solved with expert advice or existing research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about HCI and user research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [The Workplace][28]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Workplace Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site about the workplace and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other career-related topics. With your help we're working to build a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; library to every question about the workplace related to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Finding employment (resumes/cv/cover letters, recruiters, hiring-managers, interviews, negotiations, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Maintaining employment (promotions, pay increases, harassment, bullying, poor working conditions, communication problems, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Leadership in the workplace (motivating people, encouraging people, making decisions, holding hard conversations, intervening in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unproductive situations, asking for and giving help, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Terminating employment (notice period, breaking the news, handing over work, reference letters, relieving letters, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Writers][29]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Writers Stack Exchange is for authors, editors, reviewers, bloggers, copywriters, professional and aspiring writers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on these topics are welcome here:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Non-fiction, technical, or scholarly writing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Writing fiction, poetry, song lyrics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - General copywriting, style, and organization&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Professional-level blogging&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The publishing and editing process itself&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about specialized writing tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; On the other hand, these kinds of questions aren't allowed here:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions seeking to interpret or analyze an existing work, although there are exceptions if is being applied to a real-world writing project.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Proofreading requests.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Requests to critique your work. However, please do feel free to use your own writing as examples in on-topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The strictly interpreted correctness of English grammar or syntax rules (please ask those on English Stack Exchange, instead).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Finding a professional to write for you, be your agent, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A specific, localized shopping recommendation as described here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Asking how to write a particular kind of email, letter, memo, or other correspondence -- or, more generally. asking &quot;what should I write about&quot; (more about this here).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Requests to rephrase something - a few sentences, or even a single sentence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://datascience.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://security.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://math.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://serverfault.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://dsp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://superuser.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://writers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23781" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8281" RevisionGUID="e48c7200-4596-468d-93c2-43cc6c74122c" CreationDate="2016-10-24T14:54:07.943" UserId="14413" Text="Mobile app broke with the change.  The menu Item became 'Unknown Site Programmers' and clicking it crashed the app. Already filed a crash report through google." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23782" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8282" RevisionGUID="b46f260a-25dc-4f60-8c18-a55ab3d8840c" CreationDate="2016-10-24T15:08:36.813" UserId="30396" Text="Great. But where do we (and by &quot;we&quot; I mean the vast majority who follows and uses &quot;programmers&quot; and doesn't usually go meta) vote to express our disappointment with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. the whole renaming ordeal, (*If it ain't broke, don't fix it*)&#xD;&#xA;2. the logo? (that font is *pure pain*, but the drawing is awful too: **the pedestals, the keyboard, the mouse, they're all wrong**. How about getting someone who can *actually* draw to do it?)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (Personally I think the only thing worth saving, there, is the geometric smoke out of the coffee cup, but that too, could use some more work)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23783" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8266" RevisionGUID="ea4a2597-42a7-4ea7-818e-72c48f830a70" CreationDate="2016-10-24T15:49:02.310" UserId="17853" Comment="Edited in some useful context - there has already been a confused answer down below" Text="It's official! Programmers is now Software Engineering Stack Exchange" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23784" PostHistoryTypeId="50" PostId="8216" RevisionGUID="96ab79e4-fcd5-477f-b4f7-c90853f4a40a" CreationDate="2016-10-24T22:44:21.860" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="23785" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="dbe3885e-1e07-4825-a732-37481af01529" CreationDate="2016-10-25T09:06:19.970" UserId="31260" Comment="URLs updated for new site name" Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted).  Why? And what can I do about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What technology to take up next](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6486/)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resource](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Assistance in writing or debugging existing code](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7742/) &#xD;&#xA;        * (MSE) [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](//meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in/129632#129632)&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)  &#xD;&#xA;  certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three of categories listed under _Off topic_ match site-specific close reasons, see: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5992/what-should-our-predefined-off-topic-reasons-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links are from particular points in the history of Programmers.SE and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a [serial vote](//meta.stackexchange.com/tags/serial-voting/info &quot;what's this&quot;) reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For pasting into chat or comments there is a &quot;Quick link&quot; at the end of each answer.  The quick link for the question is `[Why was my question closed or down voted?](http:////meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/6483/)` - pasting this into chat or a comment will link to the question.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23786" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="782028b7-8214-4280-8e3e-b7ec6ee07438" CreationDate="2016-10-25T09:12:53.800" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/new-site-name" Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted).  Why? And what can I do about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What technology to take up next](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6486/)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resource](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Assistance in writing or debugging existing code](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7742/) &#xD;&#xA;        * (MSE) [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](//meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in/129632#129632)&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)  &#xD;&#xA;  certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three of categories listed under _Off topic_ match site-specific close reasons, see: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5992/what-should-our-predefined-off-topic-reasons-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links are from particular points in the history of Software Engineering (previously known as Programmers.SE) and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a [serial vote](//meta.stackexchange.com/tags/serial-voting/info &quot;what's this&quot;) reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For pasting into chat or comments there is a &quot;Quick link&quot; at the end of each answer.  The quick link for the question is `[Why was my question closed or down voted?](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/6483/)` - pasting this into chat or a comment will link to the question.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23790" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8276" RevisionGUID="5c01a41d-6b29-4b58-9547-c72814caad47" CreationDate="2016-10-25T20:16:31.163" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/791010570829004800" />
  <row Id="23791" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8284" RevisionGUID="f2c427b9-33a9-4564-a4d7-5e3243878f6e" CreationDate="2016-10-25T20:42:18.593" UserId="4" Text="Our current guidance regarding software licensing can be found [here](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic). The current guidance says that a general rule of thumb is that questions answerable by experts in software development are on-topic, while questions that need the expertise of a lawyer are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As we practice the craft of software development, we need to understand (at least at a high level) common licenses, especially open-source licenses. Our current guidance specifies that questions should be about the spirit of the license and not the legal nuances or specifics of the license. Questions should also be about the license itself, and not the broader copyright laws that allow for licensing. Finally, the question should be about commonly known licenses that we, as experts in software development, are likely to be exposed to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In previous discussions of software licensing, we wanted to include it in our scope simply because it was an important topic to us, as software developers. We frequently interact with software and source code generally available on the Internet under a multitude of licenses. Understanding how these licenses work is part of our day-to-day job as we design and build software. At the time, these questions were often a good fit for the Stack Exchange format, and there was no better place to get expert answers to them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The argument that there is no better place to ask and get answers to software licensing questions is no longer true. [Law is a launched site][1], out of beta. [Open Source][2] is still in beta, but is doing OK on many metrics - it's weakest points are in questions per day and visits per day. After browsing both sites, the quality of answers in the realm of software licensing (and in the case of Law, other topics such as intellectual property law, copyright, patents, trade secrets, trademarks, and contracts) on Law and Open Source tends to be of equal, and often greater, than here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given this, should we continue to support questions about software licenses here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://law.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23792" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8284" RevisionGUID="f2c427b9-33a9-4564-a4d7-5e3243878f6e" CreationDate="2016-10-25T20:42:18.593" UserId="4" Text="Should we continue to accept software licensing questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23793" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8284" RevisionGUID="f2c427b9-33a9-4564-a4d7-5e3243878f6e" CreationDate="2016-10-25T20:42:18.593" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|questions|on-topic-definition|legal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23794" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8285" RevisionGUID="ae0a3f3d-da31-4c1c-817f-b295e5972d81" CreationDate="2016-10-25T20:42:18.593" UserId="4" Text="No, questions about software licenses should be migrated to the appropriate site of Law or Open Source if they are high quality questions or closed if they are low quality questions. We should ensure that our scope is more focused on the key aspects of software engineering that [we call out in the Help Center][1] - requirements, architecture, design, quality assurance, configuration management, builds / releases / deployment, and methodologies and processes. This makes our scope less confusing to new users and puts questions and answers in places where they get much higher quality answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23795" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8284" RevisionGUID="f5540237-27a0-46b7-8347-7df5859ffb56" CreationDate="2016-10-25T20:54:01.790" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|on-topic-definition|legal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23796" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8286" RevisionGUID="cf5add0c-81f2-45d5-a897-985d6bc1e3d3" CreationDate="2016-10-25T20:59:26.727" UserId="102438" Text="Yes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about software licences are well within the purview of the Software Development Life-Cycle. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We should not be [gerrymandering][1] our site's scope to specifically exclude them just because Law.SE exists. Instead, we should be jealous of our questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If an aspect of a question includes licensing considerations, that should not be an excuse to put the question on hold or to migrate it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23797" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="8286" RevisionGUID="cf5add0c-81f2-45d5-a897-985d6bc1e3d3" CreationDate="2016-10-25T20:59:26.727" UserId="102438" />
  <row Id="23798" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8286" RevisionGUID="734ff5c4-45d1-4d2a-8f8d-ec33a441b00a" CreationDate="2016-10-25T21:49:52.513" UserId="102438" Comment="added 187 characters in body" Text="## Yes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We currently have [lots of great Q&amp;A's that specifically address licensing][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about software licences are well within the purview of the Software Development Life-Cycle. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We should not be [gerrymandering][2] our site's scope to specifically exclude them just because Law.SE exists. Instead, we should be jealous of our questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If an aspect of a question includes licensing considerations, that should not be an excuse to put the question on hold or to migrate it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/licensing?sort=votes&amp;pageSize=50&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23799" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="8285" RevisionGUID="3e02f7e1-0e85-4cce-bb8d-99f62278c020" CreationDate="2016-10-25T23:28:31.273" UserId="4" />
  <row Id="23800" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8287" RevisionGUID="0409ed99-c816-4655-9c04-2cf65517da87" CreationDate="2016-10-25T23:31:19.513" UserId="92517" Text="I tend to agree, but I think my reasoning is more focused on pragmatism. In my eyes, this isn't so much about having a &quot;clear and concise&quot; scope (as you note [in a comment](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8284/should-we-continue-to-accept-software-licensing-questions?cb=1#comment26034_8286)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The motivation of an SE site is to provide useful information to askers and readers. Expert participants on Law and Open Source are likely to have more knowledge and experience in licensing; it is more closely tied to their specialties. As a result, an asker is likely to get a more complete, more thorough answer on those sites than one where the experts primarily specialize in software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do have one concern, though: are there questions about software licensing that would be on topic here currently but would not be on topic at the other sites? If banning these questions from Programmers.SE could result in useful questions losing a home on the SE network, I would rather err on the side of caution." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23801" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8287" RevisionGUID="01966d97-6aab-468b-b2b5-b4286edfba40" CreationDate="2016-10-26T00:02:08.980" UserId="92517" Comment="added 309 characters in body" Text="I tend to agree, but I think my reasoning is more focused on pragmatism. In my eyes, this isn't so much about having a &quot;clear and concise&quot; scope (as you note [in a comment](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8284/should-we-continue-to-accept-software-licensing-questions?cb=1#comment26034_8286)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The motivation of an SE site is to provide useful information to askers and readers. Expert participants on Law and Open Source are likely to have more knowledge and experience in licensing; it is more closely tied to their specialties. This isn't like the difference between Movies.SE and SciFi.SE, where overlap between the two subject matters is so broad that experts at each site are roughly equally capable of answering questions that could be on topic for either. The target experts of Law and Open Source by definition gives them an edge. As a result, an asker is likely to get a more complete, more thorough, and therefore more useful, answer on those sites than one where the experts primarily specialize in software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do have one concern, though: are there questions about software licensing that would be on topic here currently but would not be on topic at the other sites? If banning these questions from Programmers.SE could result in useful questions losing a home on the SE network, I would rather err on the side of caution." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23802" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8285" RevisionGUID="df3c8f51-7c6c-4a1a-8be3-ea5f00c0c37a" CreationDate="2016-10-26T00:45:45.483" UserId="4" Comment="added 8007 characters in body" Text="## No&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The concept of licensing questions being on-topic has a long history. When the topicality of this site was first discussed, [&quot;software law&quot; was originally on-topic][1]. But this definition of [legal questions needed clarification][2]. Eventually, [we even updated the help documentation to better reflect scope][3]. And [then had to make more changes to the FAQ][4] (which pre-dated the current Help Center). And even then there were [many][5], [many][6], [many][7], [many][8], [many][9], [many][10] questions to clarify this particular point of the scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today, the [accepted stance is that software licensing questions are on-topic][11]. However, it's incredibly nuanced. The answer requires 24 bullets (3 deep in some cases) to describe how to determine if your software licensing question is on or off-topic. In addition, there need to be three other examples and guidance. [The post describing the set of on-topic software licensing questions][12] rivals the length of the entire [Help Center article for what is on-topic][13].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At one point, [I even advocated for us making sure that licensing questions were on-topic here][14]. I don't dispute that [we have many great questions and some great and many really good answers about software licenses][15]. I also don't dispute that this topic is incredibly important to software engineers - creating, extending, and incorporating third-party software packages is essential and open source software is pervasive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, when I advocated for licensing questions to be on-topic here, that was before the [Law][16] and [Open Source][17] communities were launched. We were a community of software engineers who cared, among other things, about software licenses. There was no site where these questions fit well and we had sufficient expertise to at least try to help people who came to us with at least a subset of licensing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe one of our first responsibilities should be to the person who is asking the question and to people who may find that question when they do a search using their favorite search engine. They should ideally end up on a site where the community can provide expert answers and review (and vote on) those answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [&quot;Respect the community - your own, and others'&quot; blog post][18] provides some guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, it cites a previous blog post, [Why Can't You Have Just One Site?][19] to figure out the definition of your community:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it really so hard to figure out which community you belong to, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; thus, where your question belongs? Ask yourself this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - what is your job title?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - which community do you consider yourself a part of?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - what are you trying to accomplish?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can use the same mountain to go downhill really fast on snow --&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but it's plainly evident to the participant which culture they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; consider themselves a part of, &quot;skiers&quot; or &quot;snowboarders&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Following all of the recent discussions regarding our name, we came up with the definition (which is now in our Help Center and [Tour][20]) that we are a community of &quot;professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle&quot; - we are software engineers (and some people don't like that term, so I'll also say that we are also [software craftsman][21]). We are trying to accomplish &quot;creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For completeness sake, I frequently cite it for the scope of the discipline of software engineering, so I do need to point out that one subsection of Software Engineering Professional Practice in the [IEEE Guide to the Software Body of Knowledge v3][22] is indeed legal issues and includes &quot;matters related to standards, trademarks, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, professional liability, legal requirements, trade compliance, and cybercrime&quot;. However, it also goes on to say that &quot;software engineers must consult attorneys who specialize in the type and jurisdiction of any identified legal issues.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Scope Gerrymandering: attempting to micromanage what’s on-topic in order to avoid overlap with other sites or simply drive away users seen as undesirable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Respect the Community blog post says to avoid gerrymandering. I agree that there is going to be overlap. I accept that - we even had [the croissants experiment][23] where we demonstrated the overlap and differences with sites like Computer Science, Stack Overflow, and Code Golf. I believe when we took on the whole realm of software law, and then even after we narrowed that down to software licensing, we were doing the opposite of gerrymandering (I also learned that there is no antonym of gerrymander).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are all practitioners of software engineering. Many of us have formal and structured training, either from a college, a university, or a bootcamp. However, the amount of education in the topic of legal issues tends to be very small for many of us. I don't see this as attempting to avoid overlap or drive users away, but guide users to a more appropriate place to ask their questions, get answers, and have those answers peer reviewed by many other people with the needed knowledge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don’t migrate poorly-asked or non-constructive questions. Just close them. If you want to help the asker out by recommending a site where their question would be on-topic, go ahead - but also recommend they read that site’s FAQ first!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we do this. For low quality questions, we have a custom &quot;legal advice&quot; close reason that calls out the Help Centers of Open Source and Law. However, this only addresses those poorly asked questions. Many of the software licensing questions asked here are actually good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do leave comments on questions that might get better answers somewhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree with this advice. [We have had significant problems with users on Stack Overflow telling people to ask their questions on our site][24]. It leads to cross-posting. As a moderator, I'd rather have a flag and a reviewing a possible migration than having people leave comments and dealing with cleaning up low-quality answers left by people who aren't knowledgable on the topic or cleaning up after cross-posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the day, I want to do what is best for the people with the problem. I think that is moving questions to where the experts are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/882/software-law-definition&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3131/can-we-put-software-licensing-questions-are-off-topic-in-the-faq/3132&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/would-a-how-to-choose-the-best-oss-license-type-question-be-appropriate-for-ps?s=95%7C0.0000&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3921/why-was-my-question-on-free-open-software-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5456/discussion-on-if-questions-about-eulas-are-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6497/what-is-the-difference-between-software-licensing-and-copyright&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6186/question-regarding-license-violation&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7748/why-do-we-have-a-legal-tag-if-legal-questions-are-not-welcome/7749#7749&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/7266/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/3135/4&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/licensing?sort=votes&amp;pageSize=50&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://law.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/07/why-cant-you-have-just-one-site/&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tour&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_craftsmanship&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: https://www.computer.org/web/swebok/v3&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6293/4&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23803" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8285" RevisionGUID="5265afaf-5543-4543-83cf-7023e5fd589e" CreationDate="2016-10-26T00:53:42.787" UserId="4" Comment="added 67 characters in body" Text="## No&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The concept of licensing questions being on-topic has a long history. When the topicality of this site was first discussed, [&quot;software law&quot; was originally on-topic][1]. But this definition of [legal questions needed clarification][2]. Eventually, [we even updated the help documentation to better reflect scope][3]. And [then had to make more changes to the FAQ][4] (which pre-dated the current Help Center). And even then there were [many][5], [many][6], [many][7], [many][8], [many][9], [many][10] questions to clarify this particular point of the scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today, the [accepted stance is that software licensing questions are on-topic][11]. However, it's incredibly nuanced. The answer requires 24 bullets (3 deep in some cases) to describe how to determine if your software licensing question is on or off-topic. In addition, there need to be three other examples and guidance. [The post describing the set of on-topic software licensing questions][12] is over twice length of the entire [Help Center article for what is on-topic][13] (520 words to 260 words / 2,987 characters to 1,580 characters).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At one point, [I even advocated for us making sure that licensing questions were on-topic here][14]. I don't dispute that [we have many great questions and some great and many really good answers about software licenses][15]. I also don't dispute that this topic is incredibly important to software engineers - creating, extending, and incorporating third-party software packages is essential and open source software is pervasive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, when I advocated for licensing questions to be on-topic here, that was before the [Law][16] and [Open Source][17] communities were launched. We were a community of software engineers who cared, among other things, about software licenses. There was no site where these questions fit well and we had sufficient expertise to at least try to help people who came to us with at least a subset of licensing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe one of our first responsibilities should be to the person who is asking the question and to people who may find that question when they do a search using their favorite search engine. They should ideally end up on a site where the community can provide expert answers and review (and vote on) those answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [&quot;Respect the community - your own, and others'&quot; blog post][18] provides some guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, it cites a previous blog post, [Why Can't You Have Just One Site?][19] to figure out the definition of your community:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it really so hard to figure out which community you belong to, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; thus, where your question belongs? Ask yourself this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - what is your job title?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - which community do you consider yourself a part of?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - what are you trying to accomplish?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can use the same mountain to go downhill really fast on snow --&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but it's plainly evident to the participant which culture they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; consider themselves a part of, &quot;skiers&quot; or &quot;snowboarders&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Following all of the recent discussions regarding our name, we came up with the definition (which is now in our Help Center and [Tour][20]) that we are a community of &quot;professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle&quot; - we are software engineers (and some people don't like that term, so I'll also say that we are also [software craftsman][21]). We are trying to accomplish &quot;creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For completeness sake, I frequently cite it for the scope of the discipline of software engineering, so I do need to point out that one subsection of Software Engineering Professional Practice in the [IEEE Guide to the Software Body of Knowledge v3][22] is indeed legal issues and includes &quot;matters related to standards, trademarks, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, professional liability, legal requirements, trade compliance, and cybercrime&quot;. However, it also goes on to say that &quot;software engineers must consult attorneys who specialize in the type and jurisdiction of any identified legal issues.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Scope Gerrymandering: attempting to micromanage what’s on-topic in order to avoid overlap with other sites or simply drive away users seen as undesirable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Respect the Community blog post says to avoid gerrymandering. I agree that there is going to be overlap. I accept that - we even had [the croissants experiment][23] where we demonstrated the overlap and differences with sites like Computer Science, Stack Overflow, and Code Golf. I believe when we took on the whole realm of software law, and then even after we narrowed that down to software licensing, we were doing the opposite of gerrymandering (I also learned that there is no antonym of gerrymander).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are all practitioners of software engineering. Many of us have formal and structured training, either from a college, a university, or a bootcamp. However, the amount of education in the topic of legal issues tends to be very small for many of us. I don't see this as attempting to avoid overlap or drive users away, but guide users to a more appropriate place to ask their questions, get answers, and have those answers peer reviewed by many other people with the needed knowledge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don’t migrate poorly-asked or non-constructive questions. Just close them. If you want to help the asker out by recommending a site where their question would be on-topic, go ahead - but also recommend they read that site’s FAQ first!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we do this. For low quality questions, we have a custom &quot;legal advice&quot; close reason that calls out the Help Centers of Open Source and Law. However, this only addresses those poorly asked questions. Many of the software licensing questions asked here are actually good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do leave comments on questions that might get better answers somewhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree with this advice. [We have had significant problems with users on Stack Overflow telling people to ask their questions on our site][24]. It leads to cross-posting. As a moderator, I'd rather have a flag and a reviewing a possible migration than having people leave comments and dealing with cleaning up low-quality answers left by people who aren't knowledgable on the topic or cleaning up after cross-posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the day, I want to do what is best for the people with the problem. I think that is moving questions to where the experts are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/882/software-law-definition&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3131/can-we-put-software-licensing-questions-are-off-topic-in-the-faq/3132&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/would-a-how-to-choose-the-best-oss-license-type-question-be-appropriate-for-ps?s=95%7C0.0000&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3921/why-was-my-question-on-free-open-software-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5456/discussion-on-if-questions-about-eulas-are-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6497/what-is-the-difference-between-software-licensing-and-copyright&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6186/question-regarding-license-violation&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7748/why-do-we-have-a-legal-tag-if-legal-questions-are-not-welcome/7749#7749&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/7266/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/3135/4&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/licensing?sort=votes&amp;pageSize=50&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://law.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/07/why-cant-you-have-just-one-site/&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tour&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_craftsmanship&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: https://www.computer.org/web/swebok/v3&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6293/4&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23804" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8285" RevisionGUID="90b79e1d-6e77-4f0c-a267-465ce5ef9c15" CreationDate="2016-10-26T01:18:11.073" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="## No&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The concept of licensing questions being on-topic has a long history. When the topicality of this site was first discussed, [&quot;software law&quot; was originally on-topic][1]. But this definition of [legal questions needed clarification][2]. Eventually, [we even updated the help documentation to better reflect scope][3]. And [then had to make more changes to the FAQ][4] (which pre-dated the current Help Center). And even then there were [many][5], [many][6], [many][7], [many][8], [many][9], [many][10] questions to clarify this particular point of the scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today, the [accepted stance is that software licensing questions are on-topic][11]. However, it's incredibly nuanced. The answer requires 24 bullets (3 deep in some cases) to describe how to determine if your software licensing question is on or off-topic. In addition, there need to be three other examples and guidance. [The post describing the set of on-topic software licensing questions][12] is over twice length of the entire [Help Center article for what is on-topic][13] (520 words to 260 words / 2,987 characters to 1,580 characters).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At one point, [I even advocated for us making sure that licensing questions were on-topic here][14]. I don't dispute that [we have many great questions and some great and many really good answers about software licenses][15]. I also don't dispute that this topic is incredibly important to software engineers - creating, extending, and incorporating third-party software packages is essential and open source software is pervasive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, when I advocated for licensing questions to be on-topic here, that was before the [Law][16] and [Open Source][17] communities were launched. We were a community of software engineers who cared, among other things, about software licenses. There was no site where these questions fit well and we had sufficient expertise to at least try to help people who came to us with at least a subset of licensing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe one of our first responsibilities should be to the person who is asking the question and to people who may find that question when they do a search using their favorite search engine. They should ideally end up on a site where the community can provide expert answers and review (and vote on) those answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [&quot;Respect the community - your own, and others'&quot; blog post][18] provides some guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, it cites a previous blog post, [Why Can't You Have Just One Site?][19] to figure out the definition of your community:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it really so hard to figure out which community you belong to, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; thus, where your question belongs? Ask yourself this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - what is your job title?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - which community do you consider yourself a part of?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - what are you trying to accomplish?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can use the same mountain to go downhill really fast on snow --&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but it's plainly evident to the participant which culture they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; consider themselves a part of, &quot;skiers&quot; or &quot;snowboarders&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Following all of the recent discussions regarding our name, we came up with the definition (which is now in our Help Center and [Tour][20]) that we are a community of &quot;professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle&quot; - we are software engineers (and some people don't like that term, so I'll also say that we are also [software craftsman][21]). We are trying to accomplish &quot;creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For completeness sake, I frequently cite it for the scope of the discipline of software engineering, so I do need to point out that one subsection of Software Engineering Professional Practice in the [IEEE Guide to the Software Body of Knowledge v3][22] is indeed legal issues and includes &quot;matters related to standards, trademarks, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, professional liability, legal requirements, trade compliance, and cybercrime&quot;. However, it also goes on to say that &quot;software engineers must consult attorneys who specialize in the type and jurisdiction of any identified legal issues.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Scope Gerrymandering: attempting to micromanage what’s on-topic in order to avoid overlap with other sites or simply drive away users seen as undesirable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Respect the Community blog post says to avoid gerrymandering. I agree that there is going to be overlap. I accept that - we even had [the croissants experiment][23] where we demonstrated the overlap and differences with sites like Computer Science, Stack Overflow, and Code Golf. I believe when we took on the whole realm of software law, and then even after we narrowed that down to software licensing, we were doing the opposite of gerrymandering (I also learned that there is no antonym of gerrymander).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are all practitioners of software engineering. Many of us have formal and structured training, either from a college, a university, or a bootcamp. However, the amount of education in the topic of legal issues tends to be very small for many of us. I don't see this as attempting to avoid overlap or drive users away, but guide users to a more appropriate place to ask their questions, get answers, and have those answers peer reviewed by many other people with the needed knowledge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don’t migrate poorly-asked or non-constructive questions. Just close them. If you want to help the asker out by recommending a site where their question would be on-topic, go ahead - but also recommend they read that site’s FAQ first!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we do this. For low quality questions, we have a custom &quot;legal advice&quot; close reason that calls out the Help Centers of Open Source and Law. However, this only addresses those poorly asked questions. Many of the software licensing questions asked here are actually good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do leave comments on questions that might get better answers somewhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree with this advice. [We have had significant problems with users on Stack Overflow telling people to ask their questions on our site][24]. It leads to cross-posting. As a moderator, I'd rather have a flag and a reviewing a possible migration than having people leave comments and dealing with cleaning up low-quality answers left by people who aren't knowledgable on the topic or cleaning up after cross-posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the day, I want to do what is best for the people with the problem. I think that is moving questions to where the experts are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/882/software-law-definition&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3131/can-we-put-software-licensing-questions-are-off-topic-in-the-faq/3132&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/would-a-how-to-choose-the-best-oss-license-type-question-be-appropriate-for-ps?s=95%7C0.0000&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3921/why-was-my-question-on-free-open-software-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5456/discussion-on-if-questions-about-eulas-are-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6497/what-is-the-difference-between-software-licensing-and-copyright&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6186/question-regarding-license-violation&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7748/why-do-we-have-a-legal-tag-if-legal-questions-are-not-welcome/7749#7749&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/7266/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/3135/4&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/licensing?sort=votes&amp;pageSize=50&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://law.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/07/why-cant-you-have-just-one-site/&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tour&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_craftsmanship&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: https://www.computer.org/web/swebok/v3&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6293/4&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23805" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8287" RevisionGUID="efe06eb0-59bd-4c6a-83aa-8a587ed83f59" CreationDate="2016-10-26T01:22:30.280" UserId="4" Comment="added 9 characters in body" Text="I tend to agree, but I think my reasoning is more focused on pragmatism. In my eyes, this isn't so much about having a &quot;clear and concise&quot; scope (as you note [in a comment](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8284/should-we-continue-to-accept-software-licensing-questions?cb=1#comment26034_8286)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The motivation of an SE site is to provide useful information to askers and readers. Expert participants on Law and Open Source are likely to have more knowledge and experience in licensing; it is more closely tied to their specialties. This isn't like the difference between Movies.SE and SciFi.SE, where overlap between the two subject matters is so broad that experts at each site are roughly equally capable of answering questions that could be on topic for either. The target experts of Law and Open Source by definition gives them an edge. As a result, an asker is likely to get a more complete, more thorough, and therefore more useful, answer on those sites than one where the experts primarily specialize in software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do have one concern, though: are there questions about software licensing that would be on topic here currently but would not be on topic at the other sites? If banning these questions from Software Engineering.SE could result in useful questions losing a home on the SE network, I would rather err on the side of caution." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23806" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8287" RevisionGUID="29c41cd5-77a7-4ff0-bbe5-52f6a59e6e73" CreationDate="2016-10-26T01:33:33.440" UserId="92517" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="I tend to agree, but I think my reasoning is more focused on pragmatism. In my eyes, this isn't so much about having a &quot;clear and concise&quot; scope (as you note [in a comment](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8284/should-we-continue-to-accept-software-licensing-questions?cb=1#comment26034_8286)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The motivation of an SE site is to provide useful information to askers and readers. Expert participants on Law and Open Source are likely to have more knowledge and experience in licensing; it is more closely tied to their specialties. This isn't like the difference between Movies.SE and SciFi.SE, where overlap between the two subject matters is so broad that experts at each site are roughly equally capable of answering questions that could be on topic for either. The target experts of Law and Open Source by definition gives them an edge. As a result, an asker is likely to get a more complete, more thorough, and therefore more useful, answer on those sites than one where the experts primarily specialize in software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do have one concern, though: are there questions about software licensing that would be on topic here currently but would not be on topic at the other sites? If banning these questions from SoftwareEngineering.SE could result in useful questions losing a home on the SE network, I would rather err on the side of caution. What does a look at the existing questions about the topic tell us in this regard?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23807" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8284" RevisionGUID="96a5023e-c873-45e5-928e-58017c332bd1" CreationDate="2016-10-26T02:16:31.953" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/791101169728909312" />
  <row Id="23808" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8288" RevisionGUID="bcf2cfb4-8bb5-421d-9ca8-4e1260bb7b09" CreationDate="2016-10-27T02:26:49.323" UserId="219030" Text="Stack Exchange recently started a collaboration project with the University of Melbourne, in an attempt to improve the automatic detection of duplicate questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More information on the project and a call for help from the community can be found here: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/286329/project-reduplication-of-deduplication-has-begun&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In it, Tim Post mentions that Doris Hoogeveen (me) will post a message on the different meta sites to let you know that we're ready for help. This is it!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a brief summary, the project is about finding ways to automatically determine if two questions are duplicates, and also to detect the opposite: falsely tagged duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;To validate our methods, we need manual judgements from people who really know the data. This is where we need your help.&#xD;&#xA;It is impossible to manually annotate all the data from Stack Exchange, and so we have applied several filters to make sure we only show you questions pairs with a high likelihood of being duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Participation is completely optional, and there's no minimum time requirement.&#xD;&#xA;If you are interested in participating in the project, please head over to the annotation interface, which can be found here: http://hum.csse.unimelb.edu.au/se-annotate/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can log in with your Stack Exchange account, so no sign up is required.&#xD;&#xA;The site also contains some more information on the project, which might answer some questions you may have. And I'm also happy to answer them here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23809" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8288" RevisionGUID="bcf2cfb4-8bb5-421d-9ca8-4e1260bb7b09" CreationDate="2016-10-27T02:26:49.323" UserId="219030" Text="Project Reduplication of Deduplication - Software Engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23810" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8288" RevisionGUID="bcf2cfb4-8bb5-421d-9ca8-4e1260bb7b09" CreationDate="2016-10-27T02:26:49.323" UserId="219030" Text="|discussion|support|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23811" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7020" RevisionGUID="b9f2238a-180f-4180-a237-49537498214f" CreationDate="2016-10-27T07:28:37.137" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/new-site-name" Text="If a first time asker has an SO account that was recently (say, within a week) [question blocked](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/252645/165773 &quot;for more details on this, see 'When does the question ban get applied?' at MSE&quot;) over there, how about showing them a warning like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** You've recently been blocked at Stack Overflow. Consider that quality requirements at Software Engineering are similar. Note that Stack Overflow topics are _not_ covered here and that your questions [can't even be migrated to Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;) because of the block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This hopefully would help them avoid further frustration if they get down and close votes, angry comments, blocked migrations and question block over here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why can't we raise up questions quality?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6990/31260)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Per stats, Programmers appear to be [most popular of SE sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773) among this category of askers. After being blocked or scared by warnings at Stack Overflow they simply try to dump their low quality stuff over here...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;SE might want to think about how to improve their UX in order to educate during question composition...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there... how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23813" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8289" RevisionGUID="b357c58c-48e1-4185-bba1-ba8caab78f9d" CreationDate="2016-10-27T17:07:48.193" UserId="4" Text="I've been working on reviewing these and I've noticed that I've picked the &quot;related, but not a dupe&quot; option far more than saying that questions are duplicates. I think part of that is the nature of what we consider a good question here. In order to have a question that is answerable, one needs to fully describe the environment in which one is working. Because of some difference, the answers would be interesting, and perhaps relevant, but don't meet the Stack Exchange definition of duplicate. This may be particular to the nature of this site and topic, but I'm not sure what impact it will have on your data." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23814" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8066" RevisionGUID="3482a704-f25b-4521-9d85-2692060221f4" CreationDate="2016-10-28T00:16:34.307" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|support|faq|site-rec|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23815" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8288" RevisionGUID="d42e456d-29bd-4fbd-bb4f-9a9c7afe8060" CreationDate="2016-10-28T09:53:01.853" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|support|featured|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23816" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8266" RevisionGUID="d5ee6558-9000-4be1-adc2-605119a01c22" CreationDate="2016-10-28T09:53:21.133" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23817" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8286" RevisionGUID="0121be55-6a49-4728-a6a0-d4177b987b18" CreationDate="2016-10-28T12:59:46.890" UserDisplayName="user82096" Comment="added 1815 characters in body" Text="## Yes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We currently have [lots of great Q&amp;A's that specifically address licensing][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about software licences are well within the purview of the Software Development Life-Cycle. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We should not be [gerrymandering][2] our site's scope to specifically exclude them just because Law.SE exists. Instead, we should be jealous of our questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If an aspect of a question includes licensing considerations, that should not be an excuse to put the question on hold or to migrate it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some questions may have a licensing component, yet still need software development expertise.  A general judgment that license questions are  off topic will stop good questions.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, questions related to what sort of license one *should* use for your code, or questions about the ramifications of incorporating a library that has a certain license, have not only a legal component but a software engineering component (about the practical consequences).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If we accept that licencing questions are on topic on Open Source SE, then why not here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One *could* argue that Open Source should not allow licensing questions either, since law.se exists.  But I don't think anyone would agree with that; there is a particular community with expertise in open source software, that can provide useful answers (even if they aren't legal experts).  Given that argument, where is there a similar community of experts who can answer licensing questions that aren't necessarily about open source software, from a software development perspective?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**There is no perfect definition of off-topic licensing questions, but that doesn't differ from other reasons for questions being off topic.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Much has been made of [the complexity of the on-topic judgment.][3]  However, I think the first sentence is a pretty good guideline:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As a rule of thumb, questions are on topic if they are answerable by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; expert programmers, as opposed to expert lawyers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Isn't that enough to go on?  Yes, it requires a judgement call, but so do things like what is an allowable &quot;subjective&quot; question.  The difficulty of drawing a hard line should not prevent good questions from being allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/licensing?sort=votes&amp;pageSize=50&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23818" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="6166" RevisionGUID="7b9755c3-12e2-45ba-b873-5e31152ff9e6" CreationDate="2016-10-28T13:22:17.250" UserId="25476" Comment="Promotion to FAQ" Text="|discussion|faq|questions|homework-dump|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23819" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8289" RevisionGUID="9fe85680-506d-4cbf-922b-b2409cccb3d8" CreationDate="2016-10-28T14:52:14.697" UserId="4" Comment="added 666 characters in body" Text="I've been working on reviewing these and I've noticed that I've picked the &quot;related, but not a dupe&quot; option far more than saying that questions are duplicates. I think part of that is the nature of what we consider a good question here. In order to have a question that is answerable, one needs to fully describe the environment in which one is working. Because of some difference, the answers would be interesting, and perhaps relevant, but don't meet the Stack Exchange definition of duplicate. This may be particular to the nature of this site and topic, but I'm not sure what impact it will have on your data.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thinking about it some more, I think some of this has to do with audience. When I'm looking at these question examples, I'm thinking to myself: &quot;Would I give the same answer to both of these questions, and would that answer be helpful to the asker?&quot; In some cases, on the surface, the answer is &quot;yes&quot;. However, when I look at the details of the question, I can see a difference in education level, experience, or specific role of the asker. As such, they may be asking the same thing, but the answers would not be duplicates - they would need to be appropriately tailored to the asker. And I'm not sure that is something that should be called a duplicate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23820" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8290" RevisionGUID="6d72d718-51f4-4928-9291-9df7097c09db" CreationDate="2016-10-28T16:26:41.343" UserId="20011" Text="The question [*What is best practice when running code reviews*](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/113593/20011) (formerly *How can I tactfully suggest improvements to review others' badly designed code during review?*) seems to have been closed about a year ago for being off topic. The question was originally asked in 2011 and has a number of useful answers (including one from yours truly), and has been viewed over 8000 times. It's somewhat subjective, but also pretty well focused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question relates to how to criticize code when reviewing it, presumably without ruffling too many of the author's feathers or looking like a prima donna. Critiquing other people's work isn't unique to software engineering, but it's certainly an essential part of any serious software engineering process, and the answers already given are fairly specific to software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I wrong to think this question is on topic and should be reopened? If so, a more definite statement about *why* it's off topic would be very helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS: I think the previous title was more descriptive and I'm not crazy about the recent title change, but I think the editor was trying to get the question back on-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23821" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8290" RevisionGUID="6d72d718-51f4-4928-9291-9df7097c09db" CreationDate="2016-10-28T16:26:41.343" UserId="20011" Text="Is this question about code reviews on topic? If not, why?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23822" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8290" RevisionGUID="6d72d718-51f4-4928-9291-9df7097c09db" CreationDate="2016-10-28T16:26:41.343" UserId="20011" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23823" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8291" RevisionGUID="3bcfc752-9680-4e6f-951c-10c5103dbece" CreationDate="2016-10-28T19:46:16.443" UserId="4" Text="I reverted the title to a more appropriate title, deleted all negatively scored answers, and reopened the question. It's on the edge of being too broad / primarily opinion based, but there's also some good content." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23824" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8290" RevisionGUID="7a9776ba-6a06-4f69-bf5d-28b7b1a47e14" CreationDate="2016-10-29T01:38:35.563" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23826" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8292" RevisionGUID="1865ca7d-839d-4d88-9ba6-7681a16a8d3e" CreationDate="2016-10-29T20:04:19.680" UserId="20949" Text="Why do I see a pencil on comments of other people's comments that I can not edit? Clicking on the pencil does nothing! And a more strange fact is that it appears on ONLY SOME comments of the same question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it a bug?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of it hapenning:&#xD;&#xA;http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/239225/coding-conciseness-efficiency-vs-readability" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23827" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8292" RevisionGUID="1865ca7d-839d-4d88-9ba6-7681a16a8d3e" CreationDate="2016-10-29T20:04:19.680" UserId="20949" Text="Why a pencil on non editable comnments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23828" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8292" RevisionGUID="1865ca7d-839d-4d88-9ba6-7681a16a8d3e" CreationDate="2016-10-29T20:04:19.680" UserId="20949" Text="|bug|editing|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23829" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8292" RevisionGUID="f77ba1e6-2b83-4cac-b200-2c6a704ecad7" CreationDate="2016-10-29T20:13:57.093" UserId="20949" Comment="added 242 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="There is a pencil after edited comments. It made me even to ask a non-sense question, as I thought it would permit me to edit the comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I only noticed it was a way to indicate the comment had been edited when I leaved the mouse over it enough time to display its tooltip.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me it does not a great value to the reader about knowing whether the comment was edited or not; and even serves to confuse him/her. My suggestion is to remove it, or to draw a different icon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;May be orienting the pencil tip towards top would not make users think it is a edit button. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23830" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8292" RevisionGUID="f77ba1e6-2b83-4cac-b200-2c6a704ecad7" CreationDate="2016-10-29T20:13:57.093" UserId="20949" Comment="added 242 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Should there be a pencil in edited comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23831" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8292" RevisionGUID="f77ba1e6-2b83-4cac-b200-2c6a704ecad7" CreationDate="2016-10-29T20:13:57.093" UserId="20949" Comment="added 242 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|editing|comments|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23832" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8293" RevisionGUID="9d148164-ab07-4480-bd38-6ca409262f77" CreationDate="2016-10-29T23:00:57.657" UserId="52929" Text="I've gone through a bunch of these questions (about the first hundred or so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think I marked only a handful as actual duplicates (maybe 5?). A handful were related but it felt like a large percentage of them were just straight up not even close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of the questions that were included seemed like _bad_ questions for SESE to begin with, too. At least one (the &quot;what would you like to see as part of PHP in the future&quot;) showed up a ton too and is a pretty bad question to begin with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23833" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8293" RevisionGUID="759f6bf2-eef8-4532-a7b8-0167067e099a" CreationDate="2016-10-29T23:15:31.387" UserId="52929" Comment="added 192 characters in body" Text="I've gone through a bunch of these questions (about the first hundred or so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think I marked only a handful as actual duplicates (maybe 5?). A handful were related but it felt like a large percentage of them were just straight up not even close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of the questions that were included seemed like _bad_ questions for SESE to begin with, too. At least one (the &quot;what would you like to see as part of PHP in the future&quot;) showed up a ton too and is a pretty bad question to begin with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I got a bit demotivated after this, stuff like [this question](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-quote-about-programming) is just a bad question.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23834" PostHistoryTypeId="50" PostId="8093" RevisionGUID="b4fd55e0-3bb5-4890-a6e0-94429ab68dca" CreationDate="2016-10-30T01:38:41.807" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="23835" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8294" RevisionGUID="c99e7596-8b9a-4fdf-a5ad-450cc0988995" CreationDate="2016-10-30T08:20:59.810" UserId="47" Text="The pencil shows that the comment has been edited, not that it is editable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can edit a comment there will be an &quot;edit&quot; link visible at the end after the time stamp." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23836" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8289" RevisionGUID="17b821c8-8022-48d7-81bb-cf8e5c832606" CreationDate="2016-10-30T23:17:54.840" UserId="4" Comment="added 817 characters in body" Text="I've been working on reviewing these and I've noticed that I've picked the &quot;related, but not a dupe&quot; option far more than saying that questions are duplicates. I think part of that is the nature of what we consider a good question here. In order to have a question that is answerable, one needs to fully describe the environment in which one is working. Because of some difference, the answers would be interesting, and perhaps relevant, but don't meet the Stack Exchange definition of duplicate. This may be particular to the nature of this site and topic, but I'm not sure what impact it will have on your data.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thinking about it some more, I think some of this has to do with audience. When I'm looking at these question examples, I'm thinking to myself: &quot;Would I give the same answer to both of these questions, and would that answer be helpful to the asker?&quot; In some cases, on the surface, the answer is &quot;yes&quot;. However, when I look at the details of the question, I can see a difference in education level, experience, or specific role of the asker. As such, they may be asking the same thing, but the answers would not be duplicates - they would need to be appropriately tailored to the asker. And I'm not sure that is something that should be called a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm almost done annotating. I have less than 75 left for this site. This is how I've been using my options, based on my understanding:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Yes - The answers to both questions would be the same.&#xD;&#xA;- No - The answers to both questions would not be the same, and seeing one question and its answers would not be helpful to someone asking the other question.&#xD;&#xA;- Related, but not duplicate - The answers to both questions would be different, but seeing one question and its answers would be helpful to someone asking the other question.&#xD;&#xA;- Really can't tell - I'm not sure what the case is, based on the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When annotating, I didn't pay attention to determining if the question was a good fit or not. I only looked at the question and its answers, along with the equivalence between those two things." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23837" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7826" RevisionGUID="edfa3668-126d-4b57-ae4a-6ef99ef4ccd4" CreationDate="2016-11-01T09:05:56.920" UserId="4" Comment="added 172 characters in body" Text="&lt;sup&gt;(_special edition_ for folks coming from Math.SE, reposted from [Math meta](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/21680/hint-programmers-se-doesnt-do-coding-help-and-expect-research-before-asking &quot;10K link&quot;))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Hint: Software Engineering Stack Exchange doesn't do coding help and expect research before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, we at Software Engineeering get a stream of troublesome questions from folks with linked accounts at Math.SE. One of them was kind enough to [explain why they get there](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7610/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another user, familiar with many other sites, even figured what could lead to such a [misconception](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi#comment22868_7610):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;This &quot;exchange&quot; is the undergraduate while &quot;overflow&quot; is the graduate level may because of the idea for Math vs MathOverflow and Physics vs PhysicsOverflow (not SE related) leaking into other domains. While I don't believe that that naming distinction needs to be fixed (nor can we do anything about it), being able to more promptly close (and delete) the debugging and blatantly off topic questions with a minimum of additional community moderation needed.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is sad to observe how many of them have fallen victims of this misunderstanding, getting their questions heavily voted down, closed and deleted. This includes even established users having over 1K rep at Math.SE ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/299572/given-a-integer-n-compute-nth-non-repeating-number &quot;10K link - user with 1.4K rep at Math asks very low quality question at Progs&quot;), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/304765/31260 &quot;10K link - 1K Math rep user asks outright off-topic at Progs&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things many Math.SE folks seem to miss when they try their luck at Software Engineering are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **coding and debugging help is off-topic** at Programmers&#xD;&#xA;* it is generally expected of askers to **demonstrate research** they did before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading for those interested to learn more about Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Engineering Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is research important?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6559/31260)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overview of CS and programming related sites at SE network:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-software-engineering-where-else-c&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23838" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7826" RevisionGUID="c068913e-75fc-45e2-8dea-ef3ce5d42601" CreationDate="2016-11-01T09:08:43.160" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/new-site-name" Text="&lt;sup&gt;(_special edition_ for folks coming from Math.SE, reposted from [Math meta](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/21680/hint-programmers-se-doesnt-do-coding-help-and-expect-research-before-asking &quot;10K link&quot;))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Hint: Software Engineering Stack Exchange doesn't do coding help and expect research before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, we at Software Engineering get a stream of troublesome questions from folks with linked accounts at Math.SE. One of them was kind enough to [explain why they get there](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7610/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another user, familiar with many other sites, even figured what could lead to such a [misconception](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi#comment22868_7610):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;This &quot;exchange&quot; is the undergraduate while &quot;overflow&quot; is the graduate level may because of the idea for Math vs MathOverflow and Physics vs PhysicsOverflow (not SE related) leaking into other domains. While I don't believe that that naming distinction needs to be fixed (nor can we do anything about it), being able to more promptly close (and delete) the debugging and blatantly off topic questions with a minimum of additional community moderation needed.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is sad to observe how many of them have fallen victims of this misunderstanding, getting their questions heavily voted down, closed and deleted. This includes even established users having over 1K rep at Math.SE ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/299572/given-a-integer-n-compute-nth-non-repeating-number &quot;10K link - user with 1.4K rep at Math asks very low quality question at Software Engineering&quot;), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/304765/31260 &quot;10K link - 1K Math rep user asks outright off-topic at Software Engineering&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things many Math.SE folks seem to miss when they try their luck at Software Engineering are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **coding and debugging help is off-topic** at Software Engineering.SE&#xD;&#xA;* it is generally expected of askers to **demonstrate research** they did before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading for those interested to learn more about Software Engineering.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Engineering Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is research important?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6559/31260)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overview of CS and programming related sites at SE network:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-software-engineering-where-else-c&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23839" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="02824c86-e90d-45f6-b81b-607bafe8a480" CreationDate="2016-11-01T09:14:16.890" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/new-site-name" Text="## What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Software Engineering Stack Exchange (previously known as Programmers) would be a good question on Stack Overflow.  This isn't to say that if it is on topic on Stack Overflow then it is on topic here.  Rather that it's not too broad, not opinion polling, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Software Engineering.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggesting to someone to repost a question that is too broad or primary opinion would get it closed on Software Engineering.SE too and that's really something we'd rather avoid.  It is no fun to get a question bounced from one site to another and being told repeatedly we don't want it here.  If it needs to be fixed, it needs to be fixed before it is reposted or telling the OP *exactly* what needs to be fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Some commonly referred *poor* questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, we *don't* want these, though it seems like people keep suggesting them to be reposted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I don't understand...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). [There is an expectation](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773) that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here's my problem. Anyone have a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of commonly (incorrectly) referred questions are those of &quot;come up with a design or solution for me.&quot;  Similar to how Stack Overflow has issues with people doing problem statement questions (&quot;write a program that takes the average of three values&quot;), Programmers.SE has similar issues with similar questions (&quot;here is what I want the outcome to be, anyone have a solution?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Stack Overflow nor Software Engineering.SE is a code/solution writing service. Just because the question lacks code but has a problem statement doesn't mean it belongs here as is. The question needs to be fixed up significantly before it is reposted on the proper site and suggesting to do so with the question in its current state does a disservice to the person asking the question. For a more detailed outline of what is generally expected at Programmers, see http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A blog I read said...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our custom off topic reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What tool, library, language, project, resource to take up or use](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* [What career to take or what to study](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;* [Assistance in writing or debugging code](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/7742/40980)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programming related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - software development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA; - requirements, architecture, and design&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - configuration management, build, release, and deployment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about the [Software Development Life Cycle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg) that aren't code troubleshooting questions.  Remember that algorithm questions are also on topic on Stack Overflow (so [you don't need to migrate those](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/ &quot;'Be a bit jealous of your site - don't blithely turn askers away simply because their question could be asked somewhere else...'&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Engineering.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the Perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the Delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Software Engineering.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Software Engineering (Programmers.SE) was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with [&quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260 &quot;we even had to introduce a chat bot for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow&quot;) and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) it's problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - it's exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so comments a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, it's like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if it's a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23840" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8295" RevisionGUID="c264f04f-1c8d-4fb8-acb4-9e4886357d44" CreationDate="2016-11-01T17:21:10.117" UserId="247611" Text="Since the name changed to Software Engineering, i am not able to see it on My Communities. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are you guys experiencing the same issue? Or maybe i did something wrong?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have to look it on More Stack Exchange Communities:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking forward to an answer, thanks in advance, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yl2Yl.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23841" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8295" RevisionGUID="c264f04f-1c8d-4fb8-acb4-9e4886357d44" CreationDate="2016-11-01T17:21:10.117" UserId="247611" Text="Software Engineering not appearing on My Communities" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23842" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8295" RevisionGUID="c264f04f-1c8d-4fb8-acb4-9e4886357d44" CreationDate="2016-11-01T17:21:10.117" UserId="247611" Text="|bug|community|software-engineering|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23843" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8296" RevisionGUID="e630658d-5cd2-4318-87f2-344b6d374795" CreationDate="2016-11-01T19:33:29.843" UserId="209331" Text="I get a lot of changes in my review queue that are simply updates to links in posts.  While most of them are likely legitimate, I suppose I should be checking that the changes are needed and actually point to the right thing.  I noticed that I was getting a little blase about this when I approved one change without checking it.  I've since been trying to skip these as they are a bit tedious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've got mixed feelings about this because I think this is in large part a good thing when someone updates a bad link but I reviewing them to be a pain in the ass.  I skipped one today and it came back to me.  So I looked at the link where someone was updating a sourceforge link to a github link.  Based on what's happened to soruceforge lately, I'm guessing that this is probably the right thing to do but both links work and present the same content.  What is the standard here and how much time am I, as a reviewer, expected to put into figuring out if this change is kosher?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23844" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8296" RevisionGUID="e630658d-5cd2-4318-87f2-344b6d374795" CreationDate="2016-11-01T19:33:29.843" UserId="209331" Text="Standard for link updates" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23845" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8296" RevisionGUID="e630658d-5cd2-4318-87f2-344b6d374795" CreationDate="2016-11-01T19:33:29.843" UserId="209331" Text="|discussion|review|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23846" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8297" RevisionGUID="14b19caf-b4f0-4b08-b856-2f7e6245e9ee" CreationDate="2016-11-02T01:42:03.900" UserId="4" Text="You should spend as much time as you feel comfortable reviewing to review. No one is watching the time you spend or making sure you spend enough time or do enough reviews. If you're going to review and either accept or reject a post, you should look at the edits and make sure they are worthy. If you can't make a decision for any reason, feel free to skip - it's why it's there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as standards go, editing to update links is a common reason to edit. Changing a link to point at the most up-to-date repository, or switching to an archived URL if a site goes offline, or even editing in a comment that a link is dead and there may not be a replacement are all valid edits and should (after reviewing to ensure that it makes sense in context) be approved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I actually jumped into the review queues after reading this and I think I saw an example of a Python for .NET link that was changed from SourceForge to GitHub. I spent about 1 minute looking at it - it appeared that the GitHub repository was actually actively maintained and used and the SourceForge repository wasn't, so I went ahead and approved the change." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23847" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8298" RevisionGUID="b2c4173d-8241-4272-89e6-1752124a69e2" CreationDate="2016-11-03T00:09:17.283" UserId="209774" Text="There are currently several &lt;kbd&gt;analysis&lt;/kbd&gt; tags which significantly overlap, but some having relatively few questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;kbd&gt;Analysis&lt;/kbd&gt;:  80 questions - 8 this year&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;kbd&gt;Business-analysis&lt;/kbd&gt;: 26 questions - 2 this year&#xD;&#xA;  * 17 were related to a requirement tag or had requirement in the title &#xD;&#xA;  * 4 more had another analysis or system-analysis tag or referred to SA in the title&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;kbd&gt;Systems-analysis&lt;/kbd&gt;: 5 questions - 1 this year&#xD;&#xA;  * 4 had another-analysis or business-analysis tag&#xD;&#xA;  * the last refereed in the title to &quot;software analysis&quot; and in its content to analysis and modeling techniques &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be possible to group all the 3 tags under the single more general &quot;analysis&quot; ? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Additional remarks**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The OOAD tag (object oriented analysis and design) is sufficiently specific and distinguishable from the general analysis tag &#xD;&#xA;* Other &quot;-analysis&quot; tags are more specific to code, algorithms and performance: algorithm-analysis (96), static-analysis (53),  code-analysis (30), and 	dependency-analysis(13) and do not require action in my opinion.  &#xD;&#xA;* &quot;System analysis&quot; is, despite the word &quot;system&quot; which sounds technical, a discipline that analysis business and business organization as well. &#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Business analysis&quot; seems frequently used for questions more related to functional requirements or requirement gathering from users. On the other hand, a &quot;requirement&quot; tag is already used very consistently.  In this perspective, after the grouping, the combination &quot;analysis&quot; and &quot;requirement&quot;, would seem almost equivalent to &quot;business-analysis&quot; and &quot;requirement&quot; IMO. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23848" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8298" RevisionGUID="b2c4173d-8241-4272-89e6-1752124a69e2" CreationDate="2016-11-03T00:09:17.283" UserId="209774" Text="Possible grouping of &quot;Analysis&quot;, &quot;System analysis&quot; and &quot;Business analysis&quot; tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23849" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8298" RevisionGUID="b2c4173d-8241-4272-89e6-1752124a69e2" CreationDate="2016-11-03T00:09:17.283" UserId="209774" Text="|discussion|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23850" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8299" RevisionGUID="87a7a118-f444-4e10-b52e-a4084a8749f0" CreationDate="2016-11-03T10:41:30.150" UserId="4" Text="There are only 7 tags about analysis. As you pointed out, [tag:algorithm-analysis], [tag:static-analysis], and [tag:dependency-analysis] are already well-defined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at [tag:code-analysis], this could use a little work, too. Some of the questions are really about static analysis. Others are about code quality. Others are about managing source code. There are likely to be better tags than code-analysis. I'm guessing this tag probably isn't even necessary and everything can be retagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to do something with [tag:business-analysis] and [tag:systems-analysis]. Looking at the Wikipedia pages for [business analysis][1] and [systems analysis][2], I would favor getting a definition into the systems analysis tag and moving business analysis into it. Based on our scope, I think we're closer to the definition of systems analysis. I don't think we're in a position to help people &quot;determe solutions to business problems&quot; (with the exception of problems related to the processes and methods used to build software), but as software engineers, we do create the systems and procedures that solve business problems. I'd like to hear more feedback from the community before doing this, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once we sort out code-analysis, business-analysis, and systems-analysis, I'd like to take a final pass at [tag:analysis] since there will probably be better tags at that point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_analysis&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_analysis" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23851" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8300" RevisionGUID="2e87a5d3-2a8b-4ca7-9b89-5b79f5eeda4c" CreationDate="2016-11-03T16:15:49.837" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="&gt; It seems to me it does not a great value to the reader about knowing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; whether the comment was edited or not&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree: while there is a short (five minute) window to edit comments, I have seen a chain of comments show up quickly with edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example: user A leaves a comment, user B replies to the first comment, then user A edits the first comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now the second comment might be replying to something completely different due to the edit. It helps the reader to understand if the record of the conversation changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anything, I would leave the current functionality as-is and add a thin separator in between comments where there are deleted comments (maybe the same pink background for deleted posts but as thin as an HTML separator). This would provide even more context for comment chains that edited or deleted comments.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23852" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8301" RevisionGUID="d8cbdf81-4026-48ab-863b-9f9f22904ab7" CreationDate="2016-11-04T06:11:54.420" UserId="252534" Text="I am writing a completely vanilla Javascript report writer. In brief, it allows for the creation of completely customizable reports, pageable output, and query interface to a php backend. It allows for binding to queries (result sets), calculated fields, grouping, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The project is fairly extensive and I am at proof of concept stage where core functionality works. Is this the site to get feedback on the project? I am likely to release the code under an MPL 2.0 license. I am hoping for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A high level look at the architecture: interface, class structure, code, etc.&#xD;&#xA; - Feedback on its potential usefulness. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would give a link to a site with the app fully functional using a test MySql database with sample reports.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Code could be available on GitHub.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this is not the site, where would you recommend?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23853" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8301" RevisionGUID="d8cbdf81-4026-48ab-863b-9f9f22904ab7" CreationDate="2016-11-04T06:11:54.420" UserId="252534" Text="Is this site the proper SE site to ask for an app review?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23854" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8301" RevisionGUID="d8cbdf81-4026-48ab-863b-9f9f22904ab7" CreationDate="2016-11-04T06:11:54.420" UserId="252534" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23855" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8302" RevisionGUID="8e4c3d97-ab36-459d-9535-ac39a528c8f4" CreationDate="2016-11-04T07:06:04.090" UserId="47" Text="Asking for a review of a whole project will result in a question that's way too broad for any Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The system works when you have a specific or fairly narrow question that can be answered in a few paragraphs. If you can write a chapter of a book or even a whole book in response to the question then it's not the sort of question we want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have specific concerns about aspects of your design then those questions would be welcome here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23856" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8303" RevisionGUID="8a0ec34f-49e8-482e-ad2b-3f95eaf6e95a" CreationDate="2016-11-04T13:11:26.920" UserId="4" Text="It looks like the default list under &quot;Your Communities&quot; is your top 5 sites, ordered by reputation. You only have 101 reputation here on Software Engineering. It appears that alphabetical was the next sorting. If you're saying that it used to appear, I'm not sure why - it should have always been after Mathematics. If you edited the list to manually add it, maybe the name change bumped it away." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23857" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8304" RevisionGUID="2e6d3311-e802-41d0-83e0-0c9ce7248cea" CreationDate="2016-11-04T13:51:38.063" UserId="13899" Text="To get the best out of the stack* sites you will have to narrow down.  In your application I'm sure there are aspects about which you feel would need more attention or dont feel just right.  Expose your objective, explain your implementation and expose your theory as to what is wrong.  Does require more work than a simpler &quot;is this good (link to source code)&quot; but will get you immensly more constructive feedback too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will hold true pretty much regardless of the stack site you are posting to.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23858" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="8301" RevisionGUID="377816ef-d83d-425a-8845-9532805629ea" CreationDate="2016-11-05T03:33:14.513" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6502],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="23860" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8305" RevisionGUID="42b92845-31dc-4306-b3df-04c683e925b8" CreationDate="2016-11-06T10:18:28.507" UserId="160171" Text="This is my deleted [question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/335466/is-there-any-kind-of-book-course-about-hacking-as-opposed-to-proper-software-e).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this meta question I conclude that it's acceptable to ask for course/book recommendations on specialized topics: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, can I do anything for my question to be reopened? Is there other SE site where this question would be more appropriate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23861" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8305" RevisionGUID="42b92845-31dc-4306-b3df-04c683e925b8" CreationDate="2016-11-06T10:18:28.507" UserId="160171" Text="My book-recommendation question on very specific topic was deleted" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23862" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8305" RevisionGUID="42b92845-31dc-4306-b3df-04c683e925b8" CreationDate="2016-11-06T10:18:28.507" UserId="160171" Text="|discussion|deleted-questions|recommendations|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23863" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8306" RevisionGUID="087e3757-cf4d-4055-9191-eb6a32e4ab9c" CreationDate="2016-11-06T11:35:23.903" UserId="4" Text="The [Help Center's page about what can be asked here][1] has a list of types questions that are not allowed, even if they fall into one of the things that are considered on-topic here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Some questions, even if they appear to fit into one of the above&#xD;&#xA;&gt; categories, may still be off-topic or a poor fit for this format:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - explaining, writing or debugging code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - providing support for tools or products&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - finding or recommending products or services, including tools, libraries or packages, programming languages, books, scholarly papers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tutorials, articles, or blogs&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career or education advice&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That links to [a Meta post that explains in great detail why recommendation or list questions don't fit into the Q&amp;A format well][2]. The [Meta question that you link to][3] is listed as related reading in that post. Both answers in the question you found indicate that book recommendation questions are not a good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was deleted [on the advice of Shog9, one of the Stack Exchange CMs, in The Whiteboard, our site's chatroom][4]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Same way we do it on MSE every day: delete everything that's blatantly off-topic as soon as it appears.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although this was specifically in response to code dumps, we have had specific problems with five particular types of questions: explaining/debugging code, support for products/tools, recommendations, career or education advice, and legal advice or aid. These are the five off-topic questions specifically called out in the Help Center as not belonging here. If I cannot migrate questions in these types to a more appropriate site, I close using the appropriate off-topic reason and immediately delete. By deleting them, they don't show up in searches and people generally can't browse to them and think that they belong here. Many people don't understand that questions that are on-hold or closed mean that they shouldn't be asked here, so getting rid of them entirely helps present a better picture of what's acceptable to ask in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31225279#31225279" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23864" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8307" RevisionGUID="c896340b-80ef-488e-8f47-c33eb0f9d041" CreationDate="2016-11-06T21:25:05.073" UserId="32523" Text="[![See all questions with active bounties][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: //stack-exchange-dynamic-ads.herokuapp.com/softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/bounty.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: //softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/?tab=featured&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23865" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2004" RevisionGUID="ecd2b979-c3b0-459a-8440-c21b08272886" CreationDate="2016-11-06T21:49:53.207" UserId="9113" Comment="added 65 characters in body" Text="Book requests fall into the &quot;outside resources&quot; close reason and should be closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you are asking for a critique of a book or other resource then that *might* be on topic, but would probably fall into the &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; close reason unless you were *very* specific as to what you were looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;**Original answer:** *(from 2011, not valid under the current scope rules any more!)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would say that like &quot;what language should I learn&quot; questions, questions that effectively ask for a list of books on X should be closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, like programming language questions, if you have *specialised* requirements (you want to go into LINQ, or networking, or.. in great depth) then *perhaps* those should be allowed. They should inspire answers that explain why a book is good for this topic and shouldn't just produce a list of everyone's favourite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So - in short - if your question will produce a list of everyone's favourite book - don't post, but if it will elicit the title of *the* book on a topic then go for it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23866" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="5992" RevisionGUID="3a2c9df2-0aaf-4c6e-87bb-794fdac737b2" CreationDate="2016-11-07T08:35:24.640" UserId="31260" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23867" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8308" RevisionGUID="b2838700-d199-484b-9db6-24b4623ba3db" CreationDate="2016-11-07T08:46:49.623" UserId="239652" Text="There is [a user][1] on this site, who participates in chat, and posts answers and participates in discussions, but based on the speed, frequency, and consistent low quality of the user's comments, I believe the user is using a script to rapidly detect and down-vote &quot;poor&quot; questions, and has affected the site negatively on a wide scale every day for years now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, I just posted a question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When trying to learn about proper comment practices, I found a lot of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; conflicting opinions, and it's obviously a very subjective topic. So&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm not going to ask &quot;Should I comment, or should I not?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question I'd like to pose is, for me, as a self taught developer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interested in applying for programming jobs in the future, a vital&#xD;&#xA;&gt; one: Of the two strategies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &quot;Comment the *right* code in the *right* way.&quot; - (comments where needed)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  and &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &quot;Instead of writing comments, write more readable code.&quot; - (if you need comments, your code is bad)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; are both valid strategies in programming? &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I submit an application with code samples including masterfully&#xD;&#xA;&gt; written code and no comments, are experienced programmers likely to be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; familiar with that approach? &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm not asking &quot;Will the specific guy reading my application like my&#xD;&#xA;&gt; coding style&quot;, obviously no one can guess that, I'm just looking for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general answer as to whether both practices are common, or if my code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; will be seen as terrible across the board.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And in *less than 30 seconds of posting the question* I received a down vote and this seemingly automated comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Possible duplicate of [&quot;Comments are a code smell&quot;][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Is my question a duplicate of that question? The answer is *very* clearly **no**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Is it valid to mark a question as a duplicate of a closed question rather than voting to close? Probably not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've experienced this behavior (instant down-vote and either close vote with no explaining comment or improvement suggestion, or poor duplicate claim) from this user consistently across my rare visits to this site over the past few years, and this user's wide scale and poor contribution is the reason I avoid visiting this site, unless I have a question I feel is important and can't find the answer somewhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1/comments-are-a-code-smell" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23868" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8308" RevisionGUID="b2838700-d199-484b-9db6-24b4623ba3db" CreationDate="2016-11-07T08:46:49.623" UserId="239652" Text="Can bots that consistently act poorly be acted against?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23869" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8308" RevisionGUID="b2838700-d199-484b-9db6-24b4623ba3db" CreationDate="2016-11-07T08:46:49.623" UserId="239652" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23870" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8308" RevisionGUID="f57f2daa-83d9-4afa-9669-a19fdd38c0c7" CreationDate="2016-11-07T08:55:36.780" UserId="239652" Comment="[Edit removed during grace period]; added 27 characters in body" Text="Can bots that consistently act poorly be acted against?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23871" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8308" RevisionGUID="f57f2daa-83d9-4afa-9669-a19fdd38c0c7" CreationDate="2016-11-07T08:55:36.780" UserId="239652" Comment="[Edit removed during grace period]; added 27 characters in body" Text="There is [a user][1] on this site, who participates in chat, and posts answers and participates in discussions, but based on the speed, frequency, and consistent low quality of the user's comments, I believe the user is using a script to rapidly detect, close, and / or down-vote &quot;poor&quot; questions or duplicates, and has affected the site negatively on a wide scale every day for years now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, I just posted a question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When trying to learn about proper comment practices, I found a lot of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; conflicting opinions, and it's obviously a very subjective topic. So&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm not going to ask &quot;Should I comment, or should I not?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question I'd like to pose is, for me, as a self taught developer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interested in applying for programming jobs in the future, a vital&#xD;&#xA;&gt; one: Of the two strategies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &quot;Comment the *right* code in the *right* way.&quot; - (comments where needed)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  and &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &quot;Instead of writing comments, write more readable code.&quot; - (if you need comments, your code is bad)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; are both valid strategies in programming? &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I submit an application with code samples including masterfully&#xD;&#xA;&gt; written code and no comments, are experienced programmers likely to be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; familiar with that approach? &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm not asking &quot;Will the specific guy reading my application like my&#xD;&#xA;&gt; coding style&quot;, obviously no one can guess that, I'm just looking for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general answer as to whether both practices are common, or if my code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; will be seen as terrible across the board.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And in *less than 30 seconds of posting the question* I received a down vote and this seemingly automated comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Possible duplicate of [&quot;Comments are a code smell&quot;][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Is my question a duplicate of that question? The answer is *very* clearly **no**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Is it valid to mark a question as a duplicate of a closed question rather than voting to close? Probably not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've experienced this behavior (instant down-vote and either close vote with no explaining comment or improvement suggestion, or poor duplicate claim) from this user consistently across my rare visits to this site over the past few years, and this user's wide scale and poor contribution is the reason I avoid visiting this site, unless I have a question I feel is important and can't find the answer somewhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1/comments-are-a-code-smell" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23872" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8308" RevisionGUID="7efb2974-69d2-4a12-9a0f-97683588491b" CreationDate="2016-11-07T13:21:34.617" UserId="239652" Comment="edited title" Text="Noticing wide scale and consistently poor use of a bot to comment, down-vote, and close" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23873" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8309" RevisionGUID="851b7dee-b1e8-42ec-a745-99646949a737" CreationDate="2016-11-08T17:30:58.893" UserId="63" Text="A check that's been enabled for years on Stack Overflow attempts to identify unformatted code in posts (questions and answers) from new users, and blocks posting until it has been corrected. A related feature checks the ratio of formatted lines of code to non-code characters in questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of right now, **both of these checks are enabled here too**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Rationale&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The recently-revised scope for this site makes it abundantly clear that debugging code-dumps is *not* on-topic here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![don't ask about explaining, writing or debugging code][1]](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tour)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, I think it's reasonable to expect folks who *are* posting code in their questions to include ample explanation along with it - ideally, code would be illustrative of some concept, not a literal dump from some program they're working on. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In practice, this shouldn't affect very many questions; my spot-checks indicate only a few recent instances where either of these would've blocked someone from posting, and all of them are already deleted because they were blatantly off-topic anyway. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But please let me know if these checks cause any issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/hGZpH.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23874" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8309" RevisionGUID="851b7dee-b1e8-42ec-a745-99646949a737" CreationDate="2016-11-08T17:30:58.893" UserId="63" Text="Code formatting, ratio checks enabled" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23875" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8309" RevisionGUID="851b7dee-b1e8-42ec-a745-99646949a737" CreationDate="2016-11-08T17:30:58.893" UserId="63" Text="|discussion|asking-questions|quality-filter|formatting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23876" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8309" RevisionGUID="809d6a3a-62d9-496c-82ff-27309fb1ff74" CreationDate="2016-11-08T18:02:26.520" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/796050259248082944" />
  <row Id="23877" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8309" RevisionGUID="aa579c5a-12a8-4376-bd06-d065776eb3df" CreationDate="2016-11-08T19:52:46.487" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|asking-questions|quality-filter|formatting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23878" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8310" RevisionGUID="00a48fa5-b619-41d7-8d7e-84c7377f5a9f" CreationDate="2016-11-10T11:43:57.490" UserId="6605" Text="A request [question][1] is asking to enumerate all JavaScript functions that return `null` or `undefined`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought that questions which ask to make a list of things are off-topic here; however, I can't find anything in the rules which tells that it is the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a popular variant of questions which lead to answers containing only one or few elements from a list, such as [What non programming books should a programmer read?][2] Those *are* off-topic, but this case is different.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here, the answer won't limit itself to one or few elements from a list. Instead, it can:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Either produce the full list of all functions returning `null` and a list of those which return `undefined`, eventually providing also a link to the documentation which contains those lists in the first place,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Or explain how to generate such list by parsing documentation such as MDN,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Or provide a piece of code which creates the list from JavaScript itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is also different from [questions asking for a list of examples][3]. Here, there *is* the right answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In all cases, the question is absolutely not “I'm lazy, do my job for me”-style question. I find it well written and constructive, and among the close reasons, no seem to match.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is this question off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If yes, what should be the close reason?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/335746/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/101/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/7537/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23879" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8310" RevisionGUID="00a48fa5-b619-41d7-8d7e-84c7377f5a9f" CreationDate="2016-11-10T11:43:57.490" UserId="6605" Text="Is it on-topic to ask for an objective list of something?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23880" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8310" RevisionGUID="00a48fa5-b619-41d7-8d7e-84c7377f5a9f" CreationDate="2016-11-10T11:43:57.490" UserId="6605" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|list-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23881" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8311" RevisionGUID="6f65d327-e2a1-4310-b4df-516358962758" CreationDate="2016-11-10T13:46:24.223" UserId="4" Text="No. A list is a list and [the same rules apply](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7537/why-do-some-examples-and-list-of-things-questions-get-closed). We don't do lists here and we also don't do basic research that can be solved by simply reading a document page. We solve problems." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23882" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8312" RevisionGUID="3405169f-7521-41a2-8719-3bc5d2da1753" CreationDate="2016-11-10T19:24:35.227" UserId="25936" Text="An interesting discussion about duplicate closures happened in [this question's](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/335783/25936) comments section: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I'm in the &quot;duplicate means _duplicate question_&quot; camp. However, since it appears two veteran users are of a different opinion, I thought it would be best to put the question to the wider community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think? When is it appropriate to vote to close a question as a duplicate? Should the two questions be asking the same, or is it enough if the one's answers answer the other?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tFDlD.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23883" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8312" RevisionGUID="3405169f-7521-41a2-8719-3bc5d2da1753" CreationDate="2016-11-10T19:24:35.227" UserId="25936" Text="When is it appropriate to vote to close as a duplicate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23884" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8312" RevisionGUID="3405169f-7521-41a2-8719-3bc5d2da1753" CreationDate="2016-11-10T19:24:35.227" UserId="25936" Text="|discussion|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23887" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8314" RevisionGUID="b8a2e953-8c2d-4859-96dc-27a280fc7c87" CreationDate="2016-11-10T20:36:08.303" UserId="4" Text="My understanding is the same as the one that Servy presents in the comments captured above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question A is a duplicate of Question B if the answers to Question B answer Question A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, there are some other considerations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, Question B may answer parts of, but not the entirety of, Question A. In that case, Question B should be linked to in the comments of Question A. This also causes it to show up in the sidebar of Question B. If necessary, answers can also link to one or more answers of Question A as supporting information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, if both questions have answers, the quality of those answers should be used when considering duplication. Question A may be older, but if Question B attracted sufficiently high quality answers, then Question A should be marked as a duplicate of Question B.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to generally speak about voting to close as a duplicate, as well. One person's vote to close is a single opinion, one that just happens to leave an autogenerated comment that includes a link to the question they picked as a duplicate. That autogenerated comment does not need to be flagged as non-constructive, rude, or offensive. However, you can flag if  Also, you do not need to engage with people over a single close vote. I'd ask that no one votes blindly - if someone has suggested a question as a duplicate, read both questions and, if you feel they are duplicates, vote with them. If you don't feel that way, then don't vote to close as a duplicate. If the question has several close votes that you feel are inappropriate, then you should open a [meta-tag:specific-question] [meta-tag:discussion] here on Meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23888" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8314" RevisionGUID="5e4f26e6-1f32-471b-869e-5d40a21e8157" CreationDate="2016-11-10T20:45:58.610" UserId="4" Comment="added 854 characters in body" Text="My understanding is the same as the one that Servy presents in the comments captured above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question A is a duplicate of Question B if the answers to Question B answer Question A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, there are some other considerations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, Question B may answer parts of, but not the entirety of, Question A. In that case, Question B should be linked to in the comments of Question A. This also causes it to show up in the sidebar of Question B. If necessary, answers can also link to one or more answers of Question A as supporting information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, if both questions have answers, the quality of those answers should be used when considering duplication. Question A may be older, but if Question B attracted sufficiently high quality answers, then Question A should be marked as a duplicate of Question B.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions](https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you're going to close a user's question as a duplicate, it has to be a real duplicate. For example, if a user asks, &quot;What does the IP address 128.0.1.1/24 mean?&quot; it's OK to close that as a duplicate of a more general question like &quot;What do IP addresses of the form a.b.c.d/e mean?&quot; But it's not OK to close it as a duplicate of a twenty-seven page guide to netmasks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Handling Duplicate Questions](https://stackoverflow.blog/2009/04/handling-duplicate-questions/) discusses three kinds of duplicates. Two are easily closable as duplicates (the &quot;cut-and-paste duplicate questions&quot; and &quot;accidental duplicates&quot;). The third, the &quot;borderline duplicate&quot; covers the case that I describe above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to generally speak about voting to close as a duplicate, as well. One person's vote to close is a single opinion, one that just happens to leave an autogenerated comment that includes a link to the question they picked as a duplicate. That autogenerated comment does not need to be flagged as non-constructive, rude, or offensive. However, you can flag if  Also, you do not need to engage with people over a single close vote. I'd ask that no one votes blindly - if someone has suggested a question as a duplicate, read both questions and, if you feel they are duplicates, vote with them. If you don't feel that way, then don't vote to close as a duplicate. If the question has several close votes that you feel are inappropriate, then you should open a [meta-tag:specific-question] [meta-tag:discussion] here on Meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23889" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8315" RevisionGUID="735f4287-5c84-461d-b60b-dc1dd0540b89" CreationDate="2016-11-10T20:47:26.647" UserId="1204" Text="The guidance for duplicate questions is [very clear and specific](https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/).  In a nutshell:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you're going to close a user's question as a duplicate, it has to be a real duplicate.** For example, if a user asks, &quot;What does the IP address 128.0.1.1/24 mean?&quot; it's OK to close that as a duplicate of a more general question like &quot;What do IP addresses of the form a.b.c.d/e mean?&quot; But it's not OK to close it as a duplicate of a twenty-seven page guide to netmasks. That's the moral equivalent of saying [&quot;RTFM.&quot;](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=RTFM)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nor is it OK to close a question as a duplicate of a seemingly unrelated question that happens to provide an answer that fits the new question.  ***That's not a duplicate.***  It's just coincidence.  It's not helpful to point people at some random post and say &quot;You're answer is over here somewhere.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23890" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8314" RevisionGUID="ac6f8e68-03f8-47be-8125-aa9747ec6ec1" CreationDate="2016-11-10T21:02:59.667" UserId="4" Comment="added 289 characters in body" Text="My understanding is the same as the one that Servy presents in the comments captured above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question A is a duplicate of Question B if the answers to Question B answer Question A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, there are some other considerations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, Question B may answer parts of, but not the entirety of, Question A. In that case, Question B should be linked to in the comments of Question A. This also causes it to show up in the sidebar of Question B. If necessary, answers can also link to one or more answers of Question A as supporting information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, the answer to Question B cannot be hidden in one or more answers to Question A. The answer should be clearly obvious by reading the answers to Question B. If the answer is hidden away in a link to an external resource or a small aside, then Question B is not a duplicate at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Third, if both questions have answers, the quality of those answers should be used when considering duplication. Question A may be older, but if Question B attracted sufficiently high quality answers, then Question A should be marked as a duplicate of Question B.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions](https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you're going to close a user's question as a duplicate, it has to be a real duplicate. For example, if a user asks, &quot;What does the IP address 128.0.1.1/24 mean?&quot; it's OK to close that as a duplicate of a more general question like &quot;What do IP addresses of the form a.b.c.d/e mean?&quot; But it's not OK to close it as a duplicate of a twenty-seven page guide to netmasks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Handling Duplicate Questions](https://stackoverflow.blog/2009/04/handling-duplicate-questions/) discusses three kinds of duplicates. Two are easily closable as duplicates (the &quot;cut-and-paste duplicate questions&quot; and &quot;accidental duplicates&quot;). The third, the &quot;borderline duplicate&quot; covers the case that I describe above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to generally speak about voting to close as a duplicate, as well. One person's vote to close is a single opinion, one that just happens to leave an autogenerated comment that includes a link to the question they picked as a duplicate. That autogenerated comment does not need to be flagged as non-constructive, rude, or offensive. However, you can flag if  Also, you do not need to engage with people over a single close vote. I'd ask that no one votes blindly - if someone has suggested a question as a duplicate, read both questions and, if you feel they are duplicates, vote with them. If you don't feel that way, then don't vote to close as a duplicate. If the question has several close votes that you feel are inappropriate, then you should open a [meta-tag:specific-question] [meta-tag:discussion] here on Meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23891" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8316" RevisionGUID="21a65d63-69fb-48da-824b-a866aba6a270" CreationDate="2016-11-12T12:11:24.260" UserId="31673" Text="I wanted to ask a question about the objective benefits of a masters degree, but I couldn't decide if it would be appropriate. In short, the question would ask about the benefits (and negatives) of a masters degree after a number of years in industry, having worked on projects covering part of the space covered by the degree course.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My gut feeling is it would be too subjective, but I thought I'd ask in meta first." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23892" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8316" RevisionGUID="21a65d63-69fb-48da-824b-a866aba6a270" CreationDate="2016-11-12T12:11:24.260" UserId="31673" Text="Would a question about the benefits of a masters degree be appropriate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23893" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8316" RevisionGUID="21a65d63-69fb-48da-824b-a866aba6a270" CreationDate="2016-11-12T12:11:24.260" UserId="31673" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23894" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8317" RevisionGUID="cc4183ff-a8d9-484e-9faf-cc2d4533ce44" CreationDate="2016-11-12T14:38:54.250" UserId="4" Text="No - as mentioned in [the Help Center's on-topic page][1], questions about career and education are off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23898" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5654" RevisionGUID="368487e7-25ed-4b74-a059-bc92a2ac1150" CreationDate="2016-11-14T08:45:45.893" UserId="9113" Comment="edited title" Text="Are you still confused about what Programmers (which is now called Software Engineering) is for?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23899" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="8316" RevisionGUID="02841078-47b2-45af-88ee-a5529b110b85" CreationDate="2016-11-14T09:20:30.723" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[5992],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="23900" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="5654" RevisionGUID="793475e1-00eb-45f5-95f9-f5af46ae6565" CreationDate="2016-11-14T09:27:24.937" UserId="9113" Comment="edited title" Text="Are you still confused about what Programmers (now called Software Engineering) is for?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23903" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8320" RevisionGUID="3aaa3106-dc51-4913-b784-f6aac73d298d" CreationDate="2016-11-14T17:56:26.953" UserId="63" Text="6 days later, five different users have hit the code formatting check (including the author of [this deleted question](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/335707/missing-code-in-this-program), who tried to post it 12 times before finally getting the formatting *almost* right). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, two questions have been caught by the code ratio check:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. This one was later posted as later posted as: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/335931/question-about-security-of-php-login-page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [![][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The other was never posted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [![][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/5v295.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ELCWB.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23904" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8321" RevisionGUID="8f682f78-0135-4e5b-8c31-fca44e37d85a" CreationDate="2016-11-15T03:00:25.607" UserId="63" Text="Update - these questions are now considered wholly off-topic here, so I've simplified the guidance further:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** [Job / Career questions are off-topic here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). Yes, there are still a few around; it's a long story.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can try [The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/tour) for career development questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; See also: [Why was my career or education advice question closed or down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...also these tags are blacklisted and can no longer be used on new questions. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23905" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="87930f72-9b1e-49df-9a00-46fa3e8b81e0" CreationDate="2016-11-15T10:41:21.963" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/8321/31260" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;del&gt;[tag:resume]&lt;/del&gt; ([blacklisted](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/8321/31260))&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employment]&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;del&gt;[tag:career-development]&lt;/del&gt; ([blacklisted](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/8321/31260))&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23907" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8322" RevisionGUID="b5510986-08eb-42b8-83d1-23225204d8c3" CreationDate="2016-11-15T21:42:38.217" UserId="154764" Text="[![Proposed Q&amp;A site for everyday objects embedded with electronics to be sensed, monitored, and controlled remotely][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/94224/internet-of-things?referrer=c6SXNFchPAkRxGMuCsy-JA2&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/BiXB6.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23908" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8323" RevisionGUID="4e921cba-cce8-49f3-acc2-265a460b9811" CreationDate="2016-11-16T19:46:12.437" UserId="4" Text="We currently have [a Blog Overflow blog](http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/), but it hasn't been active recently. Some of our current and former community members created [The Whiteboard blog on GitHub](http://the-whiteboard.github.io/) and it is more currently active.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have choices:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We can get a data dump of the data from the CM team to move elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;* We can convert the current blog static pages.&#xD;&#xA;* We can link to the new blog. This is probably done in conjunction with the conversion to static pages.&#xD;&#xA;* We can have the entire blog deleted entirely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should we do?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23909" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8323" RevisionGUID="4e921cba-cce8-49f3-acc2-265a460b9811" CreationDate="2016-11-16T19:46:12.437" UserId="4" Text="Blog Overflow is ending. What should we do with the existing blog posts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23910" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8323" RevisionGUID="4e921cba-cce8-49f3-acc2-265a460b9811" CreationDate="2016-11-16T19:46:12.437" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|featured|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23911" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8323" RevisionGUID="aefe45b8-95c0-429c-b7c4-0eac4dcfc916" CreationDate="2016-11-16T21:34:45.010" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/799002791545044992" />
  <row Id="23912" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8324" RevisionGUID="45b4b42e-9b8d-410b-a502-3d572b956fed" CreationDate="2016-11-17T08:14:05.270" UserId="60357" Text=" While [The Whiteboard blog][TWB-blog] shares the name and its early history with our Software Engineering chat room [The Whiteboard][TOWB], it is in spirit and in practice completely separate from this site. Most discussion about it happens in a non-public chat room. It is a community blog only in the sense that it grew out of this community. It should not and cannot be used as an “official” blog for our Software Engineering community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For that reason, it would also be wrong to transfer old Blog Overflow posts to The Whiteboard blog. But since our Blog Overflow blog has seen little interest over the last years, I don't think we really _need_ a community blog, and should look into other ways to preserve that content. Converting the Programmers Blog Overflow site to static pages seems the most sensible way to go forward, provided our SE overlords are willing to keep the servers running.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, The Whiteboard blog would be glad to publish interesting software-development related articles. If you have an interesting topic, [open an issue][TWB-issues] with a draft and I'll see what we can make of it&amp;nbsp;:)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[TWB-blog]: https://the-whiteboard.github.io/&#xD;&#xA;[TWB-issues]: https://github.com/the-whiteboard/the-whiteboard.github.io/issues&#xD;&#xA;[TOWB]: https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23913" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8325" RevisionGUID="efcfd356-0dca-429b-b4a3-d76dd4aecafe" CreationDate="2016-11-17T14:42:04.797" UserId="222996" Text="I have been asked to prepare the whole performance test plan for the current project I'm working on. This is the first time I have to take forward such task by my own and ,honestly, I don't even know where to start by.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to know if such subject is off-topic in SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know asking for tools, guides, resources is off-topic and I'm afraid my question might cause that sort of answers. I'm not so interested on the tooling as I'm on the understanding the steps to follow, and the sort of test I should run on my system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overview or roadmap that could use as starting point." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23914" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8325" RevisionGUID="efcfd356-0dca-429b-b4a3-d76dd4aecafe" CreationDate="2016-11-17T14:42:04.797" UserId="222996" Text="Are questions regarding to Software performance testing off-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23915" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8325" RevisionGUID="efcfd356-0dca-429b-b4a3-d76dd4aecafe" CreationDate="2016-11-17T14:42:04.797" UserId="222996" Text="|support|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23916" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8326" RevisionGUID="774742b3-4782-43d3-b655-0ada90a52f23" CreationDate="2016-11-17T14:44:56.573" UserId="4" Text="The topic of software performance testing is on-topic - it's part of &quot;quality assurance and testing&quot;. However, please consult our guidance on [questions about where to start](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start) to avoid your question being unclear or too broad. You should do some initial research on your own, and then come back with one or more specific questions or concerns." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23921" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8253" RevisionGUID="573a6ede-2557-40fb-848a-be1c016788e9" CreationDate="2016-11-19T00:01:13.180" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|status-completed|close-reasons|vote-to-close|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23923" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8328" RevisionGUID="3ee637bd-17fd-41a6-a02f-ff159fb96473" CreationDate="2016-11-19T14:13:13.157" UserId="226868" Text="So, since as a programmer I use many different stackexchange sites, like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA; - Software Engineering&#xD;&#xA; - Game Development&#xD;&#xA; - Theoretical Computer Science&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to see all questions that I have favorited to come back to, rather than having to go to my profile on all of those sites and checking, wheter the specific thread that I am looking for, is on there. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that possible?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23924" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8328" RevisionGUID="3ee637bd-17fd-41a6-a02f-ff159fb96473" CreationDate="2016-11-19T14:13:13.157" UserId="226868" Text="Is there a way to see all favorite questions of all my communities?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23925" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8328" RevisionGUID="3ee637bd-17fd-41a6-a02f-ff159fb96473" CreationDate="2016-11-19T14:13:13.157" UserId="226868" Text="|support|stackexchange|community|bookmarks|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23926" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8329" RevisionGUID="d10391fe-3db6-4d29-967a-81bcc56a0235" CreationDate="2016-11-19T16:35:35.757" UserId="4" Text="Yes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can log in at [the Stack Exchange website][1]. If you visit your profile there, you'll see activities across the network. There's a &quot;favorites&quot; tab that shows you your favorite questions from across the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23927" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8299" RevisionGUID="a146126e-caa4-4592-9276-b2f2e508347f" CreationDate="2016-11-20T01:40:07.770" UserId="4" Comment="added 1105 characters in body" Text="There are only 7 tags about analysis. As you pointed out, [tag:algorithm-analysis], [tag:static-analysis], and [tag:dependency-analysis] are already well-defined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at [tag:code-analysis], this could use a little work, too. Some of the questions are really about static analysis. Others are about code quality. Others are about managing source code. There are likely to be better tags than code-analysis. I'm guessing this tag probably isn't even necessary and everything can be retagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to do something with [tag:business-analysis] and [tag:systems-analysis]. Looking at the Wikipedia pages for [business analysis][1] and [systems analysis][2], I would favor getting a definition into the systems analysis tag and moving business analysis into it. Based on our scope, I think we're closer to the definition of systems analysis. I don't think we're in a position to help people &quot;determe solutions to business problems&quot; (with the exception of problems related to the processes and methods used to build software), but as software engineers, we do create the systems and procedures that solve business problems. I'd like to hear more feedback from the community before doing this, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once we sort out code-analysis, business-analysis, and systems-analysis, I'd like to take a final pass at [tag:analysis] since there will probably be better tags at that point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Status updates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;19 Nov 16: I wrote a tag description for [tag:algorithm-analysis] and linked to some resources in the body of the tag wiki. I then went through the 90+ questions and did a cleanup to remove the tag where it wasn't appropriate and do any other cleanup (adding other tags, removing other tags, editing). I also merged business-analysis into systems-analysis. Next steps: (1) review [systems-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/systems-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (2) review [static-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/static-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (3) review [dependency analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/dependency-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (4) review [code analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/code-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (5) review [analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_analysis&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_analysis" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23928" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8323" RevisionGUID="4e9cb243-ac6f-4d5c-8574-4823989393cc" CreationDate="2016-11-21T18:11:32.360" UserId="4" Comment="added 128 characters in body" Text="Stack Exchange is no longer supporting blogs and will be terminating all instances of Blog Overflow that are currently running. We currently have [a Blog Overflow blog](http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/), but it hasn't been active recently. Some of our current and former community members created [The Whiteboard blog on GitHub](http://the-whiteboard.github.io/) and it is more currently active.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have choices:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We can get a data dump of the data from the CM team to move elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;* We can convert the current blog static pages.&#xD;&#xA;* We can link to the new blog. This is probably done in conjunction with the conversion to static pages.&#xD;&#xA;* We can have the entire blog deleted entirely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should we do?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23929" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="8330" RevisionGUID="41430892-eff8-4485-85dc-fedaaff342f1" CreationDate="2016-11-22T21:15:58.783" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/336631/is-this-the-correct-forum-community-in-which-to-ask-questions-on-style-and-proce" />
  <row Id="23930" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8330" RevisionGUID="412c4417-fe17-4cdc-ba48-7900f844acc6" CreationDate="2016-11-22T20:55:27.020" UserId="272535" UserDisplayName="user236752" Text="I would like to gather opinions on matters of style, organization, and procedure related to software development.  As an example, I'm looking for the right place to ask something like the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are best practices for organizing code inside a Visual Studio web application?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a /js folder in which I keep various .js modules (startupCode.js, ajaxCalls.js, etc), and I link them in the header of my index.html.  But if I gather all js scripts into one large .js file, I end up linking in a lot of code that isn't going to be pertinent to some given task.  But if I split them out into separate modules, I may end up having dozens and dozens of modules.  Where's the common ground on organizing js code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've learned (the hard way ;-) not to ask something like that on StackOverflow, so I'm looking for the right place." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23931" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8330" RevisionGUID="412c4417-fe17-4cdc-ba48-7900f844acc6" CreationDate="2016-11-22T20:55:27.020" UserId="272535" UserDisplayName="user236752" Text="Is this the correct forum/community in which to ask questions on style and procedure, rather then specific questions begging as specific answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23932" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8330" RevisionGUID="412c4417-fe17-4cdc-ba48-7900f844acc6" CreationDate="2016-11-22T20:55:27.020" UserId="272535" UserDisplayName="user236752" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23933" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8330" RevisionGUID="4fdfdf9f-ad4c-454c-9b75-1682c42a8862" CreationDate="2016-11-22T21:53:53.513" UserId="31260" Comment="added 5 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="I would like to gather opinions on matters of style, organization, and procedure related to software development.  As an example, I'm looking for the right place to ask something like the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are best practices for organizing code inside a Visual Studio web application?  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I have a /js folder in which I keep various .js modules (startupCode.js, ajaxCalls.js, etc), and I link them in the header of my index.html.  But if I gather all js scripts into one large .js file, I end up linking in a lot of code that isn't going to be pertinent to some given task.  But if I split them out into separate modules, I may end up having dozens and dozens of modules.  Where's the common ground on organizing js code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've learned (the hard way ;-) not to ask something like that on Stack Overflow, so I'm looking for the right place." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23934" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8330" RevisionGUID="4fdfdf9f-ad4c-454c-9b75-1682c42a8862" CreationDate="2016-11-22T21:53:53.513" UserId="31260" Comment="added 5 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="Is this the correct community to ask questions on style and procedure, rather than specific questions begging as specific answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23935" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8330" RevisionGUID="4fdfdf9f-ad4c-454c-9b75-1682c42a8862" CreationDate="2016-11-22T21:53:53.513" UserId="31260" Comment="added 5 characters in body; edited tags; edited title" Text="|discussion|questions|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23936" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8331" RevisionGUID="18e12ebc-f7d0-480b-83b5-4be566ab65e7" CreationDate="2016-11-22T23:39:36.393" UserId="4" Text="We have the same rules as Stack Overflow as to [the types of questions that we don't allow here][1] - no chatty, open-ended questions; no questions that require a book to answer; no discussions; no poll questions where every answer is equally valid; no questions without an actual problem; no rants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also have some guidance as to [how to ask a good question][2] - [be on-topic][3]; search (the broader Internet and previously asked questions here); be specific with details and contexts, but make it relevant to the broader community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Going to your specific case - I'm sure we have other questions here about organizing code. We probably even have questions about organizing web application code. Maybe even in Visual Studio. Search those and read them. If, for some reason, those don't answer your question, feel free to describe your problem. Demonstrate that you've done your research (link to things that you've read, for example). And say why the things that you've found aren't helpful to you. If you do those, then you probably have a good question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One note - we tend [not to like &quot;best practice&quot; questions][4]. A [&quot;best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to any alternatives because it produces results that are superior to those achieved by other means or because it has become a standard way of doing things&quot;][5]. That simply means that it works for most people most of the time. We'd rather tell you about the right practice for your case. Chances are, you aren't the only one in a similar situation that the so-called &quot;best practice&quot; doesn't work for. Your question may help people understand options and why things may or may not be the right thing to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7091/making-best-practices-questions-more-palatable-how-to-ask-a-best-practice-q&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_practice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23937" PostHistoryTypeId="50" PostId="8216" RevisionGUID="30a1a427-2d85-458a-b37c-16468990abf4" CreationDate="2016-11-23T23:39:13.507" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="23938" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8268" RevisionGUID="2c190eef-8b3d-4e02-9c33-0e9a856f7539" CreationDate="2016-11-24T04:58:40.193" UserId="23355" Comment="added 22 characters in body" Text="Quite pleased to see the change but I would still insist to get a more serious font for the title **SOFTWARE ENGINEERING** like they have on [Electrical Engineering][1], and [Chemistry][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The current font of the title still gives a comical(non-serious) feel**, IMO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also feel that it will look more professional to have the title like:&#xD;&#xA;**`Software Engineering`** rather than all caps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23939" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8332" RevisionGUID="6793536c-5b07-43ef-9895-f3758438c431" CreationDate="2016-11-24T16:03:49.817" UserId="131624" Text="I've added a new paragraph (3rd) defining a friend, to [my year old answer ](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/284146/131624) to a question about The Principle of least knowledge or the Law of Demeter.  The answer is already reasonably well received. I'd just like to be sure the added paragraph receives some scrutiny.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feel free to provide it here.  Not looking for rep so much as wanting the answer to improve as my understanding does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer is a sentimental favorite of mine. My first big hit here. So I'd like to be sure I'm not pulling a George Lucas.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23940" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8332" RevisionGUID="6793536c-5b07-43ef-9895-f3758438c431" CreationDate="2016-11-24T16:03:49.817" UserId="131624" Text="Would like a late edit reviewed: Law of Demeater" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23941" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8332" RevisionGUID="6793536c-5b07-43ef-9895-f3758438c431" CreationDate="2016-11-24T16:03:49.817" UserId="131624" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23942" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8333" RevisionGUID="0711cfec-e1d8-4dca-bd98-347ea60cab4c" CreationDate="2016-11-25T04:00:09.797" UserId="144967" Text="Yes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Engineering as a discipline is concerned with designing and assembling systems that are fit for their intended purposes. In the world of software, licensing in part determines how components fit together, how systems integrate, and the range of available maintenance strategies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a sense in which selection of a software license is as much an engineering decision as compliance with a consensus standard or implementing an existing protocol. Knowledge and expertise about relevant legal issues is part of professional engineering (e.g. compliance with building codes, implementing the specifications of a contract, complying with regulations for security clearance, etc.).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Engineers are not lawyers. But engineers are not the lay public, either. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23943" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8299" RevisionGUID="79569ca2-5ded-482f-ae00-2754ad9505a4" CreationDate="2016-11-25T19:06:03.760" UserId="4" Comment="added 727 characters in body" Text="There are only 7 tags about analysis. As you pointed out, [tag:algorithm-analysis], [tag:static-analysis], and [tag:dependency-analysis] are already well-defined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at [tag:code-analysis], this could use a little work, too. Some of the questions are really about static analysis. Others are about code quality. Others are about managing source code. There are likely to be better tags than code-analysis. I'm guessing this tag probably isn't even necessary and everything can be retagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to do something with [tag:business-analysis] and [tag:systems-analysis]. Looking at the Wikipedia pages for [business analysis][1] and [systems analysis][2], I would favor getting a definition into the systems analysis tag and moving business analysis into it. Based on our scope, I think we're closer to the definition of systems analysis. I don't think we're in a position to help people &quot;determe solutions to business problems&quot; (with the exception of problems related to the processes and methods used to build software), but as software engineers, we do create the systems and procedures that solve business problems. I'd like to hear more feedback from the community before doing this, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once we sort out code-analysis, business-analysis, and systems-analysis, I'd like to take a final pass at [tag:analysis] since there will probably be better tags at that point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Status updates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;19 Nov 16: I wrote a tag description for [tag:algorithm-analysis] and linked to some resources in the body of the tag wiki. I then went through the 90+ questions and did a cleanup to remove the tag where it wasn't appropriate and do any other cleanup (adding other tags, removing other tags, editing). I also merged business-analysis into systems-analysis. Next steps: (1) review [systems-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/systems-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (2) review [static-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/static-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (3) review [dependency analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/dependency-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (4) review [code analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/code-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (5) review [analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;25-Nov-16: I went through the [tag:dependency-analysis] questions. They looked good, but I did some minor edits to a couple of questions for other reasons. Next steps: (1) review [systems-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/systems-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (2) review [static-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/static-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (3) review [code analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/code-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (4) review [analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_analysis&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_analysis" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23944" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8299" RevisionGUID="adf4095d-762e-4097-acc8-66f1337d9d53" CreationDate="2016-11-25T19:14:00.410" UserId="4" Comment="added 36 characters in body" Text="There are only 7 tags about analysis. As you pointed out, [tag:algorithm-analysis], [tag:static-analysis], and [tag:dependency-analysis] are already well-defined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at [tag:code-analysis], this could use a little work, too. Some of the questions are really about static analysis. Others are about code quality. Others are about managing source code. There are likely to be better tags than code-analysis. I'm guessing this tag probably isn't even necessary and everything can be retagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to do something with [tag:business-analysis] and [tag:systems-analysis]. Looking at the Wikipedia pages for [business analysis][1] and [systems analysis][2], I would favor getting a definition into the systems analysis tag and moving business analysis into it. Based on our scope, I think we're closer to the definition of systems analysis. I don't think we're in a position to help people &quot;determe solutions to business problems&quot; (with the exception of problems related to the processes and methods used to build software), but as software engineers, we do create the systems and procedures that solve business problems. I'd like to hear more feedback from the community before doing this, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once we sort out code-analysis, business-analysis, and systems-analysis, I'd like to take a final pass at [tag:analysis] since there will probably be better tags at that point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Status updates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;19 Nov 16: I wrote a tag description for [tag:algorithm-analysis] and linked to some resources in the body of the tag wiki. I then went through the 90+ questions and did a cleanup to remove the tag where it wasn't appropriate and do any other cleanup (adding other tags, removing other tags, editing). I also merged business-analysis into systems-analysis. Next steps: (1) review [systems-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/systems-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (2) review [static-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/static-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (3) review [dependency analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/dependency-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (4) review [code analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/code-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (5) review [analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;25-Nov-16: I went through the [tag:dependency-analysis] questions. They looked good, but I did some minor edits to a couple of questions for other reasons. I also merged code-analysis into static-analysis as most of the questions were actually about static analysis. This will be the next clean up to make sure it's 100% accurate. Next steps: (1) review [systems-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/systems-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (2) review [static-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/static-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (3) review [analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_analysis&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_analysis" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23947" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8299" RevisionGUID="88c9f036-e85f-4cb0-b786-fdde57fa91bb" CreationDate="2016-11-25T19:59:04.697" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 84 characters in body" Text="There are only 7 tags about analysis. As you pointed out, [tag:algorithm-analysis], [tag:static-analysis], and [tag:dependency-analysis] are already well-defined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at [tag:code-analysis], this could use a little work, too. Some of the questions are really about static analysis. Others are about code quality. Others are about managing source code. There are likely to be better tags than code-analysis. I'm guessing this tag probably isn't even necessary and everything can be retagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to do something with [tag:business-analysis] and [tag:systems-analysis]. Looking at the Wikipedia pages for [business analysis][1] and [systems analysis][2], I would favor getting a definition into the systems analysis tag and moving business analysis into it. Based on our scope, I think we're closer to the definition of systems analysis. I don't think we're in a position to help people &quot;determe solutions to business problems&quot; (with the exception of problems related to the processes and methods used to build software), but as software engineers, we do create the systems and procedures that solve business problems. I'd like to hear more feedback from the community before doing this, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once we sort out code-analysis, business-analysis, and systems-analysis, I'd like to take a final pass at [tag:analysis] since there will probably be better tags at that point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Status updates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;19 Nov 16: I wrote a tag description for [tag:algorithm-analysis] and linked to some resources in the body of the tag wiki. I then went through the 90+ questions and did a cleanup to remove the tag where it wasn't appropriate and do any other cleanup (adding other tags, removing other tags, editing). I also merged business-analysis into systems-analysis. Next steps: (1) review [systems-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/systems-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (2) review [static-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/static-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (3) review [dependency analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/dependency-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (4) review [code analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/code-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (5) review [analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;25-Nov-16: I went through the [tag:dependency-analysis] questions. They looked good, but I did some minor edits to a couple of questions for other reasons. I also merged code-analysis into static-analysis as most of the questions were actually about static analysis. This will be the next clean up to make sure it's 100% accurate. I also cleaned up the systems-analysis questions post-merge. Next steps: (1) review [static-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/static-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (2) review [analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_analysis&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_analysis" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23948" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8284" RevisionGUID="d6168698-ce26-4724-8a6c-08dc22c4fa81" CreationDate="2016-11-26T00:01:12.047" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|legal|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23949" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8334" RevisionGUID="c0f78e61-2930-410f-ad7e-fb2eb33cc1fb" CreationDate="2016-11-28T00:35:50.580" UserId="248621" Text="There's no need to &quot;close things aggressively&quot;.  In evolution, genes aren't just deleted that seem bad -- because they actually may be highly specialized and simply do not apply in 99.9% of the cases.  You need to think in terms of memetic evolution.  It's silly to have heavy-handed moderation when you can just fix your voting model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know many sites deteriorate because they don't know how to do it, but SE/SO is halfway there.  This is real value to the net because every community site has to solve this problem and develop the ideas to do it well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE/SO could solve this by having too more buttons on their voting model.  Besides up/down, they could have &quot;move to top&quot;/&quot;drop to the bottom&quot;.  Consider up and down double-chevrons for the symbol, like a tape recorder uses for fast-forward and rewind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, you'll have to figure out how to rank these votes from users so that quality questions don't sink because some newbie hits &quot;drop to the bottom&quot;.  You have to incorporate reputation.  This is a solvable problem.  I know because I've done it, on paper.  I don't have a website to try it and I'm glad there a place like quora and SE that are implementing the net's solution to this problem.  You just need to take it further.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a crime to admit that you don't know how.  It's more of a crime to censor the community." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23950" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8334" RevisionGUID="fa840174-cdc1-4168-8bd4-ebc546226811" CreationDate="2016-11-28T00:45:12.847" UserId="248621" Comment="added 155 characters in body" Text="There's no need to &quot;close things aggressively&quot;.  In evolution, genes aren't just deleted that seem bad -- because they actually may be highly specialized and simply do not apply in 99.9% of the cases.  You need to think in terms of memetic evolution.  It's silly to have heavy-handed moderation when you can just fix your voting model -- because it may be that 1/1000 question or answer that ACTUALLLY gives insight.  99.99999% of answers on SE/SO are irrelevant to 99.99999% of it's users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know many sites deteriorate because they don't know how to do it, but SE/SO is halfway there.  This is real value to the net because every community site has to solve this problem and develop the ideas to do it well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE/SO could solve this by having too more buttons on their voting model.  Besides up/down, they could have &quot;move to top&quot;/&quot;drop to the bottom&quot;.  Consider up and down double-chevrons for the symbol, like a tape recorder uses for fast-forward and rewind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, you'll have to figure out how to rank these votes from users so that quality questions don't sink because some newbie hits &quot;drop to the bottom&quot;.  You have to incorporate reputation.  This is a solvable problem.  I know because I've done it, on paper.  I don't have a website to try it and I'm glad there a place like quora and SE that are implementing the net's solution to this problem.  You just need to take it further.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a crime to admit that you don't know how.  It's more of a crime to censor the community." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23951" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8242" RevisionGUID="c4077f1f-67ec-4b12-940a-5a6675f46bb6" CreationDate="2016-11-28T16:17:20.027" UserId="247375" Comment="added 78 characters in body" Text="Questions about how to promote Programmers SE, in order to attract more users." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23952" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="8242" RevisionGUID="c4077f1f-67ec-4b12-940a-5a6675f46bb6" CreationDate="2016-11-28T16:17:20.027" Comment="Proposed by 247375 approved by 5099, -1 edit id of 22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23953" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8242" RevisionGUID="116c41d8-8777-44f8-9faf-ab8d7a189644" CreationDate="2016-11-28T16:17:20.027" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Updated with new site name." Text="Questions about how to promote Software Engineering SE, in order to attract more users." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23954" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7742" RevisionGUID="db66bbed-1f41-4fe4-b890-7febedaf4847" CreationDate="2016-11-28T21:38:46.070" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 61 characters in body" Text="# Off topic #&#xD;&#xA;### Assistance in writing or debugging existing code ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in writing or debugging existing code** are off-topic here. These questions can be asked on Stack Overflow if they include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. See [How To Create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for debugging help or “how do I write this specific code” type questions are off topic on Software Engineering SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions have a site that is completely focused on them – Stack Overflow. Trying to answer them here reduces the usefulness of Stack Overflow (now you have to search two sites for the same information), and makes it harder to find the software architecture and design questions that Software Engineering SE focuses on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are having trouble posting a question on Stack Overflow, and have come to Software Engineering SE as a way to get around that, look ***very*** closely at the quality of the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Make sure the words are all spelled correctly, and punctuation is properly used (see [Spell Check plus.com](http://spellcheckplus.com) as one of many online grammar checkers).&#xD;&#xA; * Make sure that the code is formatted correctly (see [Markdown help](http://stackoverflow.com/editing-help) if you are having trouble with this).&#xD;&#xA; * Make sure that the *title* of the question is a good title that describes the actual problem: “Why can't I use `==` to compare strings” is a better title than “Help, I have a question about compilers”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Engineering SE is reluctant to migrate questions to Stack Overflow that would result in the question being closed there too.  The reasons on SO are covered in [What topics can I ask about here?](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) in the SO help center.  In particular, a “why isn't this code working” question about debugging existing code needs to thoroughly and completely describe the problem – nobody can *guess* what you're trying to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Software Engineering SE nor Stack Overflow is a code writing service. Questions asking someone to write code from scratch (or from some requirements provided) will be closed on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are blocked from asking questions on Stack Overflow, please do not ask them here in an attempt to get around the block.  Both Software Engineering SE and Stack Overflow have automatic question bans in place.  Asking off topic questions here will get them closed. Even if it's a good question that might be migrated to Stack Overflow because it wouldn't get closed – the system prevents us from migrating those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/7864/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: `[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic – Assistance in Writing or Debugging Existing Code?](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/7742)`" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23955" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="17fcde33-8caf-4e98-bbdf-40402ff07a05" CreationDate="2016-11-28T21:43:34.157" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="deleted 76 characters in body" Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling / Big List of Things###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are just polls for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the accepted answer is based on &quot;which answer I like best,&quot; rather than &quot;which answer solves my problem,&quot; the question is probably a poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While some other Stack Exchanges allow it, Software Engineering SE frowns upon ['big list' type questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;see also: list-questions tag wiki at MSO&quot;) that seem to want to compile a list of things.  Questions that fall into this category typically have the form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What are all the problems I will encounter with XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * What are the pros and cons of XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * How can XYZ be used?&#xD;&#xA; * Any ideas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like these don't pose a problem that can be solved by an answer.  There is no definitive *right* answer that someone can go to, see the accepted answer and say &quot;yep, that is the answer.&quot;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/6366/&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/6629/&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/6961/&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/7537/&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Is a question that specifically asks for a summary of a broad topic valuable to Stack Exchange?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234642/is-a-question-that-specifically-asks-for-a-summary-of-a-broad-topic-valuable-to)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help Center &gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Too Broad?&quot;](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6490/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23956" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6484" RevisionGUID="35509c72-efb4-4e3e-8d33-365701be4fae" CreationDate="2016-11-28T22:22:28.703" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 35 characters in body" Text="# Downvoted #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to look at is the mouseover for the down vote button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that this is a completely subjective grading and people may down vote because they were late to work or don't like unicorns.  However one's feeling of unicorns, this *is* information for you to look at and consider how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Make sure that the question is not just asking for something that can be easily searched with google.###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking other people to do your searching for you is considered poor form.  Everyone answering questions is doing so on a volunteer basis (even the SE employees that sometimes answer questions - they aren't paid to do so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also extends to things that you should have been able to find when searching on Software Engineering SE.  As you enter the information be sure to tag the question appropriately.  The combination of tags and title *may* help you find something right away that answers the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Explain your current understanding of the issue###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just saying &quot;Could someone explain ${concept} to me&quot; doesn't show what you *do* understand.  It lacks research.  Often the answer to this is spent repeating what is already available in Wikipedia.  If you had read this already and don't understand a part of it, explain that part and what you do understand.  Correcting a misconception is easier (and a better question) than trying to explain the entire topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Blatantly off topic###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the help center on [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) questions. Questions that are asking for a discussion, or polling or one of the reasons specified in the help center are often down voted.  Especially note that questions *should* have been posted on Stack Overflow (implementation) or questions that should have been posted on Stack Overflow, but would be off topic there too (do this work for me) are similarly often down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [How much research effort is expected of Stack Overflow users?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/182266/how-much-research-effort-is-expected-of-stack-overflow-users/182380#182380)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Encouraging people to explain downvotes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/2373/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;`[Why was my question down voted?](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23957" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6492" RevisionGUID="547e356d-7179-431e-ad70-ed407c163aed" CreationDate="2016-11-28T22:23:34.933" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 82 characters in body" Text="#Other#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions can be closed with a custom reason.  These are found in the comments for the question.  To that extent it is difficult to enumerate all the possible reasons people may try to close a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The essence of Software Engineering SE was summed up in chat by Thomas Owens:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Picture Software Engineering like a small conference room with a whiteboard. No computer, no books, no papers. You write your question on the whiteboard and experts walk by. Someone sees one that they can answer, they stop in and help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read the explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6251/how-can-i-write-a-good-custom-close-message&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/why-do-certification-questions-keep-getting-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6283/current-events-questions-and-answers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [cross-posting (posting the same question over multiple Stack Exchange sites)](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed - other reasons?](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6492/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23958" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6485" RevisionGUID="7b0f6051-721a-438d-b4fc-fefff4af6503" CreationDate="2016-11-28T22:24:18.260" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 12 characters in body" Text="# Duplicate questions#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A duplicate question in and of itself [isn't a bad thing](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/ &quot;see 'Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication'&quot;).  Often it means that the people who have suggested it as such think that the answer to your question is already in the original question.  Questions are closed as duplicates because we want future readers to be able to go to one place to find the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read *all* of the answers on the original question and consider the implications behind the answers too - not just the first reading.  An example of this can be seen on Stack Overflow when debugging questions trying to track down a `NullPointerException` in Java are linked to a question that explains about `NullPointerExceptions` rather than trying to resolve that particular instance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that something is closed as a duplicate incorrectly, edit your question to explain specifically how it differs from the other question and the answers in the duplicate question do not apply to your situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE FAQ) [How should duplicate questions be handled?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10841/how-should-duplicate-questions-be-handled)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Does the new guidance on duplicate questions suggest closing a question as duplicate, if the original answers the OP's question?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/217401/does-the-new-guidance-on-duplicate-questions-suggest-closing-a-question-as-dupli)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Someone flagged my question as already answered, but it's not](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/194476/someone-flagged-my-question-as-already-answered-but-its-not)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as a duplicate?](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6485/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23959" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6491" RevisionGUID="16b97123-fb6c-4f4c-91e1-e6719f222098" CreationDate="2016-11-28T22:24:55.293" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 48 characters in body" Text="#Primarily opinion-based#&#xD;&#xA;Good questions ask for expertise, not opinions. Examples of questions that are primarily opinion-based:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What did this person mean when he said...&quot; (We're not mind-readers)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Which of these two designs is the better one?&quot; (what do you mean by &quot;better?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;How should I arrange the folders in my project?&quot; (really?)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Is this the best practice?&quot; (what do you mean by &quot;best?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What is the name of this thing so I can go look it up?&quot; (Ask us your specific question about the thing)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinguishing factor is that there is no way to get an authoritative answer for the question - the answers are all based on opinion rather than the knowledge of the person answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that if the answers to the question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design A} for these reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- break --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design B} for these other reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both of these answers are valid then the question is likely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6758/what-is-the-problem-with-pros-and-cons&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **tl;dr** We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/142353/why-is-asking-a-question-on-best-practice-a-bad-thing/142354#142354)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Primarily Opinion-Based?&quot;](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6491/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23960" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="274516f6-06af-4511-96fc-970ffc2eaeb3" CreationDate="2016-11-28T22:27:35.307" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 185 characters in body" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend tools, libraries, programming languages, resources (including books, blogs, tutorials, and examples), or projects to undertake###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **find or recommend tools, libraries, programming languages, resources (including books, blogs, tutorials, and examples), or projects to undertake** are off-topic here as they attract opinionated answers that won't have lasting value to others. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard][1], our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### We do book review and suggestions poorly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the classic recommendation questions is that of a book.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do book reviews very poorly. All the answers that one gets are opinions and this is fundamentally a poll of opinions. This is to say nothing of that the technology behind them changes too.  There are indeed timeless books (and [many have written on the subject](https://www.google.com/search?q=timeless+computer+books)), though their value is a [matter of debate](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2uBpc.jpg). &lt;!-- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14298/is-analysis-patterns-reusable-object-models-still-a-good-book-to-use-for-its --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Between the polling nature of the question, the opinions people have on certain books, the constantly changing target, and the site's history of producing poor quality answers to these questions (and not moderating them), asking for a book suggestion is very likely to get closed and down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for a link to something or statistics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason.  Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to things suffer from link rot.  Statistics become out of date over time.  Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is someone asking in 2012 &quot;What is the market share of Android vs iPhone?&quot;  This information would be out of date in a few months as new numbers come out and someone else would ask in 2013 &quot;The question [link] asks about the stats, but they are all for 2012.  What is the market share for android vs iPhone in 2013?&quot;  And again, this information would be out of date and prompt another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for information about statistics, or more generally, asking us to search for some data for you is off topic because of these problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No actual problem to solve&#xD;&#xA;* Not drawing from expert knowledge of the community&#xD;&#xA;* Will suffer from link rot or become out of date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Link Rot&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, external resources may move or be deleted for a variety of reasons. Perhaps a particular site reorganizes its links without setting up redirects. Perhaps an organization goes out of business or discontinues product X or library Y.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to the reasons stated above, external resources tend to be _transient_. Whatever tool, library, or other resource who requested might not exist in five years or be otherwise readily available. This has the effect of making an answer utterly useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one asks for a library to perform function X, and the answer links to web site Y, and either function X or web site Y cease to exist as defined in the answer, that answer is now useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one more reason why questions like this tend to be of low value and are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [What exactly is a recommendation question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254393/what-exactly-is-a-recommendation-question)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why are “shopping list” questions bad?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - Requests for Recommendations?&quot;](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23961" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6486" RevisionGUID="a3e56819-f586-4f9b-90cb-664250ad2f33" CreationDate="2016-11-28T22:28:19.760" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###What technology to take up next###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a constant stream of new projects out there.  Github [claims 4,500 new projects a day](https://github.com/blog/841-those-are-some-big-numbers) back in 2011.  On December 23, 2013, Github had [10 million repositories](https://github.com/blog/1724-10-million-repositories).  Quite frankly, there are far too many projects for anyone to suggest a good answer.  What's more, the projects of yesteryear may well be inactive now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same problem exists for suggesting languages and technologies - they are constantly changing.  Further, many questions of this type often just ask &quot;which one is best&quot; without specifying any requirements, making them essentially a popularity poll.  If you really *do* want a popularity poll, consider reading [The Top Programming Languages: IEEE Spectrum’s 2014 Ranking](http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/interactive-the-top-programming-languages) which takes into account such things as Github active projects, Stack Overflow questions, Reddit questions, Hacker News, and job postings (see the 'custom' ranking for working with weightings).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A goal for Stack Exchange is to create a lasting repository of information.  Asking questions about which technology to chose runs counter to that.  In part because everyone's needs are different and also that everyone has their own favorites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56848/how-does-one-keep-up-with-all-the-new-tools-languages-framework (also look at the [linked questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/56848?lq=1))&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you really want some projects:&#xD;&#xA;    * [/r/dailyprogrammer](http://www.reddit.com/r/dailyprogrammer)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Mega Project List](https://github.com/karan/Projects)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - What Technology to Take Up Next?&quot;](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6486/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23962" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6489" RevisionGUID="0a6fe7ae-ebc6-46e3-b7b0-155592b0d348" CreationDate="2016-11-28T22:29:27.423" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 66 characters in body" Text="#Unclear what you are asking#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are looking for, in the [context of Software Engineering SE](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This close reason can also be a bit unclear as to what the issue is.  Please be sure to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Give enough context that someone reading the question can understand it&#xD;&#xA;* Explain what you are looking for&#xD;&#xA;* Check to make sure you are not using jargon that is particular to one specific branch of computing (and if you are, either change the jargon or link to a site that explains it)&#xD;&#xA;* Check that there are no hidden assumption or &quot;leaps of thought&quot; in your question. They might be obvious to you, but they won't be to the wider community. It is often better to spell it all out explicitly, even if you think it is blindingly obvious.&#xD;&#xA;* Make sure you are on the proper site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last point is important too.  This close reason is often used as a proxy for &quot;we don't think that this question is a good question for Software Engineering SE (it might be on Stack Overflow), but would get closed there too.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explain your design.  Explain what you have done.  Explain where you are having difficulty.  Explain what you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear what help you need](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260) (see also [linked MSE post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/215806/165773))&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7513/how-to-ask-how-to-understand-some-code-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Unclear?&quot;](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6489/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23963" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6488" RevisionGUID="ee22b09b-1664-4739-853b-686f6227d64d" CreationDate="2016-11-28T22:32:01.670" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 136 characters in body" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Career or education advice###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic here. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice questions are only applicable to the person asking the question.  No two people are looking at the same set of classes, or the same job.  Every question that is asked is either only for one person or the answers will always be hopelessly incomplete because of the lack of the nuanced information and context that the person asking the question is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career questions are often **very important** questions to the person asking them.  Although assistance can be provided, the answer is one that *you* need to find yourself, and not from random strangers on the Internet.  If you are in academia, ask a career counselor at the school, or one of the instructors - they know you better than we do.  Similar resources can be found for people in the job market already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the biggest difficulties with Q&amp;A for career questions is that to get the nuances of your situation and getting to know you better requires a dense two way communication - lots of clarification back and forth.  To this end, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is a resource where (the current) denizens can have that conversation.  We still won't get to know you as well as people who know you know you, but on the whole we are familiar with the various parts of the software industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please also note that we are notoriously bad at predicting the future.  If you had asked someone if Objective C was going to be a popular language (prior to the iPhone) they would have looked at you funny (&quot;[Apple has less than a 2% market share](http://www.macworld.com/article/1043741/marketshare.html) - who would use it?&quot;) - yet it became a _very_ popular language and subsequently fell out of favor once Apple switched to Swift.  Or if you asked about running JavaScript outside of the web browser they would have laughed at you.  Technology is changing at an incredible rate and to ask about what it will be in another decade? Your guess is as good as mine... maybe better (its less hampered by a few decades of industry preconceptions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking questions to predict the future job market and what skills are best is completely speculation and cannot have any right answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Reddit) [/r/cscareersquestions FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6594/are-now-all-questions-about-teaching-programming-to-be-considered-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Where to ask for general advice for young programmers?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/216589/where-to-ask-for-general-advice-for-young-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* Workplace.SE -&gt; [topics guidance](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)  &#xD;&#xA;  Workplace.SE -&gt; [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - Career or Educational Advice?&quot;](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23964" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8335" RevisionGUID="af4e960f-c3aa-4f6d-bf5c-92887154dcc1" CreationDate="2016-11-28T22:42:02.643" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="# Off topic&#xD;&#xA;### Legal Advice or Aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **legal advice or aid** are off-topic here. You may be able to get help with understanding, applying, and complying with free and open licenses on [Open Source][1]. You may be able to get help with legal terms, concepts, language, and procedures on [Law][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software is generally covered by copyright: even the lack of copyright (e.g. public domain) is important. When software is covered by copyright, it is often licensed to end users or other developers when it is distributed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a very important topic: as software professionals, it is incumbent on us to ensure that we comply with the legal requirements of copyright law and software licenses. We may also be interested in our own rights under copyright law as well as finding a license for our own software that meets our needs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Engineering SE is primarily concerned with the _software lifecycle_, not legal issues. Furthermore, many people are simply not qualified to dispense advice that borders on or falls into the legal realm: nor would any sane person do so on a web site even if qualified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further compounding the lack of legal expertise is the fact that the internet is a global entity, with developers in numerous legal jurisdictions. Much like with career and education advice, there are simply too many variables to give an answer to a question in a way that works for the Q&amp;A format in the majority of cases. Even if we could dispense quality legal advice or aid, it would be far too localized to be suitable for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Engineering SE _can_ give advice on licensing questions that requires the expert knowledge of a _programmer_ as opposed to a _lawyer_. However, [Open Source][1] is generally a much better resource for licensing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question seeks information about copyright law but is not seeking legal advice, [Law][2] may be an appropriate site on which to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/2099/&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/7265/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: `[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic – Legal Advice or Aid](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/8335)`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23965" PostHistoryTypeId="16" PostId="8335" RevisionGUID="5bfb8af5-c153-47cc-8543-e4e35b798a45" CreationDate="2016-11-28T22:42:02.643" UserDisplayName="user22815" />
  <row Id="23966" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="47142e31-a8fe-4b3c-941d-4f59e9180a9b" CreationDate="2016-11-28T22:43:46.600" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 88 characters in body" Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted).  Why? And what can I do about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What technology to take up next](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6486/)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resource](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Legal Advice or Aid](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/8335/)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Assistance in writing or debugging existing code](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7742/) &#xD;&#xA;        * (MSE) [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](//meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in/129632#129632)&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)  &#xD;&#xA;  certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three of categories listed under _Off topic_ match site-specific close reasons, see: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5992/what-should-our-predefined-off-topic-reasons-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links are from particular points in the history of Software Engineering (previously known as Programmers.SE) and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a [serial vote](//meta.stackexchange.com/tags/serial-voting/info &quot;what's this&quot;) reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For pasting into chat or comments there is a &quot;Quick link&quot; at the end of each answer.  The quick link for the question is `[Why was my question closed or down voted?](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/6483/)` - pasting this into chat or a comment will link to the question.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23967" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8336" RevisionGUID="379bac00-7b83-44ac-9046-36d627248654" CreationDate="2016-11-30T01:14:13.897" UserId="4" Text="[The Winter Bash is back!][1] From 19 December 2016 - 8 January 2017, Stack Exchange will be running Winter Bash 2016. Like in the past, participating in Winter Bash will mean that users here can earn &quot;hats&quot; for their gravatars by doing certain stuff, and there'll be a leaderboard to see who is getting the most hats across the network. Individual users, of course, will be able to opt out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we want to participate in hats this year? This year, it's an opt-out program. I must confirm with the CM team by 13 December if we don't want hats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions? Comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://winterbash2016.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23968" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8336" RevisionGUID="379bac00-7b83-44ac-9046-36d627248654" CreationDate="2016-11-30T01:14:13.897" UserId="4" Text="Do we want hats?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23969" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8336" RevisionGUID="379bac00-7b83-44ac-9046-36d627248654" CreationDate="2016-11-30T01:14:13.897" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|winterbash|hats|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23970" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8337" RevisionGUID="9e36e9f4-8711-4548-af85-a18d08a19965" CreationDate="2016-11-30T01:16:01.303" UserId="4" Text="No questions. Give us our hats." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23971" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8338" RevisionGUID="b653d02d-c54f-4a98-a791-c2d8f1e0dd6b" CreationDate="2016-11-30T14:13:38.940" UserId="25768" Text="I don't care as long as individual opt-out is available." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23972" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8269" RevisionGUID="52bc325a-7e6f-48a4-ad6d-7b3911625d2c" CreationDate="2016-12-02T10:52:02.013" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|bug|status-completed|design|meta|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23973" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6360" RevisionGUID="c17e43f4-f54b-45f6-88a8-00eed63c1e8d" CreationDate="2016-12-02T15:14:40.330" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body; edited title" Text="Occasionally a question that is asked at an interview comes up - &quot;how would you design Amazon Web Services&quot; or &quot;how would you write Google&quot; or some such question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions find their way to SoftwareEngineering.StackExchange in hopes of getting an answer for the next time they are asked on an interview.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often, these questions are closed - why is it that they are considered poor questions here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23974" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="6360" RevisionGUID="c17e43f4-f54b-45f6-88a8-00eed63c1e8d" CreationDate="2016-12-02T15:14:40.330" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body; edited title" Text="Why do interview questions make poor Software Engineering.SE questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23975" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6361" RevisionGUID="d955304d-aaaa-429d-86af-95b781dcfa43" CreationDate="2016-12-02T15:15:28.800" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 27 characters in body" Text="There are several aspects to this question that make it a poor question to ask on Software Engineering.SE, and some that also make it counter productive to have planned out for an interview.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too broad&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first aspect is that the question is too broad.  The &quot;How do you build Amazon&quot; being asked here is akin to going to [Home Improvement.SE](http://diy.stackexchange.com) and asking &quot;How do you build a house?&quot;  There is no way the totality of that question can be answered in a meaningful way in this text box - the topic is *far* too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To an extent, it is exactly that broadness that the interviewing is asking.  This question isn't one like &quot;how many ways can you use `static` in Java&quot; - which has an answer.  The interviewer is coming to you like a business person would with some question that you need to drill down into to ask - and clarify the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, as a question on a Q&amp;A site, with you asking the question you don't know all the questions and the scope of the question the interviewer has in mind.  One interviewer may want you to drill down into the shopping cart side of Amazon, another may want to want to drill into the virtualization of AWS, another may want things about product recommendation or customer purchase prediction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Amusingly stated in a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your &quot;friend&quot; should have closed the interviewer's question as &quot;too broad.&quot; In other news, &quot;design a big distributed system&quot; is not a requirements specification. –  Robert Harvey&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No clearly defined problem&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Q&amp;A format that Stack Exchange uses works best when there is a clearly defined problem.  With the Amazon question, asking &quot;how do I build and collect data for [A/B testing](https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/ab-testing/reference/ab-math.html) - I've done XYZ, but I have trouble with this design for dealing with...&quot; could be a reasonable question - it is one problem that can be asked and answered, and not to be overlooked *found* when someone else is searching for the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The asked, answered and found steps are key parts to how Stack Exchange works - remember that the question isn't just for you, its also for the next person asking the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interviewing by rote&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next, it's counter productive.  Lets say you get asked a question on how to implement Monopoly and you had no idea didn't get the job and went home to study Monopoly implementations.  A week later, another interview, and you are asked how to implement Monopoly again and you rattle off the implementation that you've memorized (just like the how many ways can you use `static` in Java question asked just before). It is clear that rattling off Monopoly from [rote](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rote_learning) doesn't mean you understand it, so the interviewer asks how you would implement Risk...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key to this example with why its counter productive to try to have a pre-constructed answer for this question is that the interviewer is trying to find your boundaries.  By going with a pre-thought out answer that boundary hasn't been determined.  It's the **process** of thinking through these questions as part of the interview that the interviewer wants to see - and will ask you question and question again until that process is clear about *how* you think of design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so, while there may be an answer that can fit in the space (you talk about the circular array for the board, the stacks for the cards, the rules engine for implementing how the different cards behave, the rules for the game, etc...) that *might* fit here, by having a thought out answer you're going to be asked them again and again until you are asked one you don't know - you've only wasted your time and that of the interviewers up until that point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;I will point out that studying [BSD Games/monop](https://github.com/vattam/BSDGames/tree/master/monop) which is written in classic C will likely have difficulty when the interviewer says &quot;let's try that again in C#&quot; or &quot;let's change that design to [anti-monopoly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Monopoly)&quot;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where to ask about broad questions&#xD;&#xA;------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the best places to ask such broad questions is Chat.  The wide range of the question and understanding that it's an interview question can be better addressed in an interactive way rather than a question and answer format.  The dialog between the person asking the question and the person answering it is an important part of the process of this type of question and understanding the design aspects of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## &quot;The interviewer didn't like my answer&quot; question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some interviewers ask questions with specific answers in mind.  All other answers are unsatisfactory to them other than the one they want.  [Even if its wrong](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/208067/interviewer-gives-wrong-answers-to-their-own-questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The difficulty with such questions is that the only person who knows the answer the interviewer was looking for is the interviewer.  They may not have liked your design because of some opinionated blog post they read a year ago, or that its not cutting edge enough, or that you didn't implement their favorite Pattern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking such a question here results in answers that are just speculation.  We weren't the interviewer and we can only guess at what issues the person had with your design or solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6244/is-how-would-you-architect-existing-web-site-application-an-appropriate-ques" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23976" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8336" RevisionGUID="69090d8a-64e9-4680-b878-7cf062207676" CreationDate="2016-12-02T19:29:32.863" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/804769489044828160" />
  <row Id="23977" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8339" RevisionGUID="c4460300-378b-4946-82f3-a91319aaee09" CreationDate="2016-12-02T20:41:39.850" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23978" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8339" RevisionGUID="c4460300-378b-4946-82f3-a91319aaee09" CreationDate="2016-12-02T20:41:39.850" UserId="-1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23979" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8340" RevisionGUID="ec0ba585-b79c-402a-99c0-5e6b8c852b17" CreationDate="2016-12-02T20:41:39.850" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23980" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8340" RevisionGUID="ec0ba585-b79c-402a-99c0-5e6b8c852b17" CreationDate="2016-12-02T20:41:39.850" UserId="-1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23981" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8288" RevisionGUID="1f7b202d-17e1-4121-b5e4-e72f807f94c4" CreationDate="2016-12-03T00:01:22.590" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|support|duplicate-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23989" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8332" RevisionGUID="403f85b4-c234-4e95-8d00-cf5a223f6b53" CreationDate="2016-12-05T10:01:22.697" UserId="9113" Comment="typo fixed" Text="Would like a late edit reviewed: Law of Demeter" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23990" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8342" RevisionGUID="9a991e66-250e-4fc3-9375-c47c8441e2ed" CreationDate="2016-12-05T12:43:50.297" UserId="6605" Text="The site was successfully renamed to SoftwareEngineering. Great. The primary goal of the name change was to make it clear what this site is about, and what is off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm very positive about the idea itself of changing the old name, as well as the new name selected by the community. I find that, indeed, it makes it more obvious that some questions are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I noticed no decrease whatsoever in the number of questions [which are obviously off-topic][1]. But this is only my personal impression, which may be wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do statistics say? Was there a clear drop in questions closed as off-topic since the name change? Is it too early to ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/337534/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23991" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8342" RevisionGUID="9a991e66-250e-4fc3-9375-c47c8441e2ed" CreationDate="2016-12-05T12:43:50.297" UserId="6605" Text="So the site was renamed. Was it helpful?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23992" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8342" RevisionGUID="9a991e66-250e-4fc3-9375-c47c8441e2ed" CreationDate="2016-12-05T12:43:50.297" UserId="6605" Text="|discussion|new-site-name|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23993" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8343" RevisionGUID="66ecf238-cab7-4d1b-b1f3-28d263b3ce33" CreationDate="2016-12-05T15:11:43.600" UserId="4" Text="The [close questions statistics][1] don't allow you to see windows that you can adjust, but I wonder if you can use SEDE to explore more. I'll also see if a CM can run some queries and do some data analytics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the statistics for percentage of total questions closed, by reason, in the last 30 days:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Assistance in explaining, writing, or debugging code: 18.71%&#xD;&#xA;- Find or recommend stuff: 19.01%&#xD;&#xA;- Legal advice or aid: 1.17%&#xD;&#xA;- Career or education advice: 9.36%&#xD;&#xA;- Other off-topic: 4.09%&#xD;&#xA;- Customer support: 6 questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I took a look at [a 90 day window][2], which starts before our name change, but includes the period after the name change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Assistance in explaining, writing, or debugging code: 29.55% (split across two reasons due to a wording change)&#xD;&#xA;- Find or recommend stuff: 15.58%&#xD;&#xA;- Legal advice or aid: 0.44%&#xD;&#xA;- Career or education advice: 7.61%&#xD;&#xA;- Other off-topic: 4.61%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're trending downward in the explaining, writing, and debugging code questions. This is a very good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a slight up-tick in finding and recommending, career/education advice, and legal advice/aid. I'm willing to discount the uptick in legal questions. We've been slightly more discerning in what goes here vs what goes to Open Source or Law. However, the fact the find/recommend and career/education is something that we should take a look at.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll ping a CM, though, and see if they can't do any cooler data analysis with pretty charts and such. I'd be interested to know what we've fixed and what needs work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last90days" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23994" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8342" RevisionGUID="17e57deb-f692-4c93-b745-dca40ca5c755" CreationDate="2016-12-05T16:40:00.247" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/805813985467658241" />
  <row Id="23995" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8344" RevisionGUID="bc3882a1-81d6-4b6e-92c0-81852c5b2422" CreationDate="2016-12-05T17:16:40.100" UserId="60357" Text="I asked myself the same question during the renaming. I didn't want to make the data we have now fit my interpretation, so a few days after the change I came up with an hypothesis:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Oct 22:*&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hypothesis: Over the period of one month, the name change will result in a 20% reduction in the use of the “no debugging” close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Current data for the last 30 days: 517/1241 closed for any reason, of that 177 as debugging. That's 14.26% of all questions. The hypothesis would predict 11.41%. (Data taken from https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last30days) &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;— starting at https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=33068748#33068748, here with fixed typo&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, I'm not interested in the ratio of different close vote reasons to each other, or the total close rate, or the number of questions closed. I am only interested in the percentage of *all* asked questions that were closed as code/debugging requests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One month later, I revisited this hypothesis – and it held:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Nov 22:*&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  So one month back, I hypothesized that in the wake of the name change, we would see a 20% reduction in questions closed as debugging.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The numbers are in. Debugging questions have been reduced from 14.26% (177/1241) down to 9.04% (86/951). That means the prediction has held, yay :)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, total question volume has also sunk by 23%. Are these changes caused by the name change? Or are there simply less off-topic questions due to seasonal reasons? I don't know.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But for this one arbitrarily picked metric, the name change seems to have been a success, or at least not have a negative influence.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;— starting at https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/33659633#33659633, here with fixed typos&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(For reference, we are currently at 64/897 = 7.13% debugging questions.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are still a lot of off topic questions. But so far, it seems that the name change has helped to get the number of debugging questions down dramatically – my 20% prediction was far too conservative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The debugging questions are no longer the uncontested #1 problem of this site. Debugging questions are now on par with too broad, unclear, or tool-recommendation questions. Of course every closed question is bad, but they are now on more healthy, more manageable levels. And for that I am thankful." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23996" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8345" RevisionGUID="92f8bbf0-3e3e-4f43-ad01-fcc676e625d8" CreationDate="2016-12-05T20:32:41.073" UserId="1204" Text="On those things that cannot necessarily be measured with statistics...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The good&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The number of Off-topic questions has decreased significantly.&#xD;&#xA; - People seem to understand the scope of the site better and refrain from asking questions that clearly don't belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The bad&#xD;&#xA; - People will still point to obsolete tags and bad but popular questions from the past as evidence they can ask their marginal questions here. &#xD;&#xA; - There is still a tendency for people who are site-shopping to ask their off topic questions here when our site is &quot;the closest match.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The ugly&#xD;&#xA; - Question quality has not increased significantly.  If anything, it has decreased as folks with &quot;name this thing,&quot; &quot;review my design,&quot; and &quot;am I doing this correctly&quot; questions now ask them with greater fervor." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23997" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8345" RevisionGUID="59f30ec6-883a-4e31-a828-db29b6aa4551" CreationDate="2016-12-05T21:37:07.077" UserId="1204" Comment="added 42 characters in body" Text="On those things that cannot necessarily be measured with statistics...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The good&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The number of Off-topic questions has decreased significantly.&#xD;&#xA; - People seem to understand the scope of the site better and refrain from asking questions that clearly don't belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The bad&#xD;&#xA; - People will still point to obsolete tags and bad but popular questions from the past as evidence they can ask their marginal questions here. &#xD;&#xA; - There is still a tendency for people who are site-shopping to ask their off topic questions here when our site is &quot;the closest match.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The ugly&#xD;&#xA; - Question quality has not increased significantly.  If anything, it has decreased as folks with &quot;name this thing,&quot; &quot;identify this pattern,&quot; &quot;review my design,&quot; and &quot;am I doing this correctly&quot; questions now ask them with greater fervor than ever before." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23998" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8346" RevisionGUID="dfcc5cc9-b7a6-40fb-83a3-3863e20b7264" CreationDate="2016-12-06T01:00:12.483" UserId="131624" Text="I have no data to back it up but I've noticed fewer contensious arguments when a question is closed.  I don't think it's that our name is Software Engneering so much as it isn't simply Programmers, a title to which anyone who has ever programmed a speed dial can rightfully lay claim.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just wish the name change hadn't made Duga so chaty." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23999" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8345" RevisionGUID="946fad01-1ff7-4f0b-b913-088ee6ba51b1" CreationDate="2016-12-06T18:11:52.660" UserId="1204" Comment="deleted 5 characters in body" Text="On those things that cannot necessarily be measured with statistics...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The good&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The number of Off-topic questions has decreased significantly.&#xD;&#xA; - People seem to understand the scope of the site better and refrain from asking questions that clearly don't belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The bad&#xD;&#xA; - People still point to obsolete tags and bad but popular questions from the past as evidence they can ask their marginal questions here. &#xD;&#xA; - There is still a tendency for people who are site-shopping to ask their off topic questions here when our site is &quot;the closest match.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The ugly&#xD;&#xA; - Question quality has not increased significantly.  If anything, it has decreased as folks with &quot;name this thing,&quot; &quot;identify this pattern,&quot; &quot;review my design,&quot; and &quot;am I doing this correctly&quot; questions now ask them with greater fervor than ever before." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24000" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8345" RevisionGUID="2a51a2ab-2738-41de-9b5b-6a29d07738ff" CreationDate="2016-12-06T21:40:30.083" UserId="1204" Comment="edited body" Text="On those things that cannot necessarily be measured with statistics...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The good&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The number of off-topic questions has decreased significantly.&#xD;&#xA; - People seem to understand the scope of the site better and refrain from asking questions that clearly don't belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The bad&#xD;&#xA; - People still point to obsolete tags and bad but popular questions from the past as evidence they can ask their marginal questions here. &#xD;&#xA; - There is still a tendency for people who are site-shopping to ask their off topic questions here when our site is &quot;the closest match.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The ugly&#xD;&#xA; - Question quality has not increased significantly.  If anything, it has *decreased,* as folks with &quot;name this thing,&quot; &quot;which pattern should I use,&quot; &quot;review my design,&quot; and &quot;am I doing this correctly&quot; questions now ask them with greater fervor than ever before." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24001" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8347" RevisionGUID="abf944fc-41f7-4ae1-b156-59d7f6ecd30c" CreationDate="2016-12-07T00:06:25.693" UserId="242544" Text="After discovering Software Engineering(Previously called Programmers), I've been using it to aid me in finishing a hobby project of mine; building an interpreter, for a language I've been designing. However, I'm begining to think I've been a bit selfish over these past few months.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What prompted this question was me planning to ask another question some time before the holidays. While in the process of researching, I decied to take a quick look over my previous questions. I currently have eight questions that are posted. And while they all seem to be well received and generally on-topic, they all have the same thing in common; they're in a very _specfic_ genere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I say these questions are specfic, because I really don't think anyone else would find most of them useful. It seems that most everyone I've seen trying to design a language, has a background in computer science or they've been doing it for years. As for me however, I was comming at this from zero knowledge on the subject. I don't think many language designers are wondering [What datatype should a lexer return](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/328636/what-should-be-the-datatype-of-the-tokens-a-lexer-returns-to-its-parser), or [How an abstract syntax tree is used to execute source code](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/331253/how-is-a-abstract-syntax-tree-used-to-execute-source-code).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question boils down to: **Am I being selfish by asking very specfic questions, that are on-topic but un-likley to help future vistors?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24002" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8347" RevisionGUID="abf944fc-41f7-4ae1-b156-59d7f6ecd30c" CreationDate="2016-12-07T00:06:25.693" UserId="242544" Text="Am I being selfish by asking on-topic, yet very specfic questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24003" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8347" RevisionGUID="abf944fc-41f7-4ae1-b156-59d7f6ecd30c" CreationDate="2016-12-07T00:06:25.693" UserId="242544" Text="|discussion|specific-question|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24004" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8348" RevisionGUID="82713a74-efda-4917-91f5-991298c9146e" CreationDate="2016-12-07T09:55:07.980" UserId="4" Text="Of your 9 non-deleted questions, all of them have a net positive score and none of them are closed. Two of them are also marked as a favorite question by at least 1 person, with one being marked as a favorite by 3 people. Most of the questions have a solid view count - the lowest one (and also the most recent) has 50 views, and several have over 150 views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question was too specific to be interesting or helpful to other people, I would expect that they would not be up voted, be getting answers, or would remain open." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24005" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8323" RevisionGUID="1734fb5b-9cec-4aa8-b33b-c5995f6f9d31" CreationDate="2016-12-07T09:55:42.297" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24006" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8343" RevisionGUID="a9d6bfca-5d06-4bfc-a665-ea34cbf71a43" CreationDate="2016-12-07T10:11:05.797" UserId="4" Comment="added 307 characters in body" Text="The [close questions statistics][1] don't allow you to see windows that you can adjust, but I wonder if you can use SEDE to explore more. I'll also see if a CM can run some queries and do some data analytics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the statistics for percentage of total questions closed, by reason, in the last 30 days:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Assistance in explaining, writing, or debugging code: 18.71%&#xD;&#xA;- Find or recommend stuff: 19.01%&#xD;&#xA;- Legal advice or aid: 1.17%&#xD;&#xA;- Career or education advice: 9.36%&#xD;&#xA;- Other off-topic: 4.09%&#xD;&#xA;- Customer support: 6 questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I took a look at [a 90 day window][2], which starts before our name change, but includes the period after the name change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Assistance in explaining, writing, or debugging code: 29.55% (split across two reasons due to a wording change)&#xD;&#xA;- Find or recommend stuff: 15.58%&#xD;&#xA;- Legal advice or aid: 0.44%&#xD;&#xA;- Career or education advice: 7.61%&#xD;&#xA;- Other off-topic: 4.61%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're trending downward in the explaining, writing, and debugging code questions. This is a very good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a slight up-tick in finding and recommending, career/education advice, and legal advice/aid. I'm willing to discount the uptick in legal questions. We've been slightly more discerning in what goes here vs what goes to Open Source or Law. However, the fact the find/recommend and career/education is something that we should take a look at.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shog was able to share one chart and gave permission to post it here. He didn't have any more time to do more queries or analysis, but notice the downward trend in October/November 2016?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Software Engineering Question Closed Stats][3]][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll ping a CM, though, and see if they can't do any cooler data analysis with pretty charts and such. I'd be interested to know what we've fixed and what needs work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last90days&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/A97eg.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24007" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8347" RevisionGUID="b972face-c5d9-448d-af6f-8b7aac2e40db" CreationDate="2016-12-07T11:46:20.243" UserId="25936" Comment="added 2 characters in body; edited title" Text="After discovering Software Engineering(Previously called Programmers), I've been using it to aid me in finishing a hobby project of mine; building an interpreter, for a language I've been designing. However, I'm beginning to think I've been a bit selfish over these past few months.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What prompted this question was me planning to ask another question some time before the holidays. While in the process of researching, I decide to take a quick look over my previous questions. I currently have eight questions that are posted. And while they all seem to be well received and generally on-topic, they all have the same thing in common; they're in a very _specific_ genre.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I say these questions are specific, because I really don't think anyone else would find most of them useful. It seems that most everyone I've seen trying to design a language, has a background in computer science or they've been doing it for years. As for me however, I was coming at this from zero knowledge on the subject. I don't think many language designers are wondering [What datatype should a lexer return](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/328636/what-should-be-the-datatype-of-the-tokens-a-lexer-returns-to-its-parser), or [How an abstract syntax tree is used to execute source code](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/331253/how-is-a-abstract-syntax-tree-used-to-execute-source-code).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question boils down to: **Am I being selfish by asking very specific questions, that are on-topic but unlikely to help future visitors?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24008" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8347" RevisionGUID="b972face-c5d9-448d-af6f-8b7aac2e40db" CreationDate="2016-12-07T11:46:20.243" UserId="25936" Comment="added 2 characters in body; edited title" Text="Am I being selfish by asking on-topic, yet very specific questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24009" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8349" RevisionGUID="b4e64b84-11cb-4f1d-a4dc-464c76fb003e" CreationDate="2016-12-07T12:38:27.570" UserId="9113" Text="The questions which are most welcome here are those which come from real software projects, related to real problems which arise inside the project (and it does not matter if is a commercial project or a hobby project). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions asked by people just &quot;for curiosity&quot; or &quot;I have seen this [vague description] two or three time, is there a name for it&quot;, or &quot;I have the idea for a project X, can someone give me a concept for this&quot;, are regularly closed as either beeing too broad or too opinionated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So don't feel bad about your questions because their lack of generality - this site suffers much more from questions which are too general for the Q&amp;A format of this site. And who knows, just because you think a topic is unlikely for future visitors, some future visitors may think differently about it.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24010" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8349" RevisionGUID="fba9d1fb-a937-4cd3-a2cd-32ce547e7836" CreationDate="2016-12-07T13:38:20.577" UserId="9113" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="The questions which are most welcome here are those which come from real software projects, related to real problems which arise inside the project (and it does not matter if it is a commercial project or a hobby project). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions asked by people just &quot;for curiosity&quot; or &quot;I have seen this [vague description] two or three time, is there a name for it&quot;, or &quot;I have the idea for a project X, can someone give me a concept for this&quot;, are regularly closed as either beeing too broad or too opinionated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So don't feel bad about your questions because their lack of generality - this site suffers much more from questions which are too general for it's Q&amp;A format. And who knows, just because you think a topic is unlikely for future visitors, some of those future visitors may think differently about it.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24011" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8349" RevisionGUID="733bf561-fc6f-4a97-85f5-4603a23214fd" CreationDate="2016-12-07T14:38:11.977" UserId="9113" Comment="added 118 characters in body" Text="The questions which are most welcome here are those which come from real software projects, related to real problems which arise inside the project. It does not matter if it is a commercial project, or a hobby project, or if the topic of the project is very specialized, as long as it is an answerable, on-topic question with a reasonable focus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Opposed to these kind of questions, questions asked by people just &quot;for curiosity&quot; or &quot;I have seen this [vague description] two or three times, is there a name for it&quot;, or &quot;I have this [vague idea] for a project X, can someone give me a concept for this&quot;, are regularly closed as either beeing too broad or too opinionated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So don't feel bad about your questions because their lack of generality - this site suffers much more from questions which are too general for it's Q&amp;A format than from questions which are too specific. And who knows, just because you think a topic is unlikely for helping future visitors, some of those future visitors may think differently about it.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24012" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="8350" RevisionGUID="8925aff9-0b8a-4eca-ad60-4248ea8c764c" CreationDate="2016-12-07T14:51:51.230" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/337702/php-micro-framework-advice" />
  <row Id="24013" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8350" RevisionGUID="2f2194cc-5928-4eb7-aeb8-ddcff5e18eb1" CreationDate="2016-12-07T14:37:19.217" UserId="256083" Text="&#xD;&#xA;I ask a question and it was deleted WITHOUT any polite explanation, by &lt;a href=&quot;http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens&quot;&gt;Thomas Owens&lt;/a&gt;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In StackOverflow my question is not considered a good one, but I understand the reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In programmers.stackexchange.com (now renamed), I don't understand what was my FAULT. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you please explain me how can I get an answer for my question, let me HAVE TIME to read the answer and then delete my question if you want?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24014" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8350" RevisionGUID="2f2194cc-5928-4eb7-aeb8-ddcff5e18eb1" CreationDate="2016-12-07T14:37:19.217" UserId="256083" Text="PHP micro-framework advice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24015" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8350" RevisionGUID="2f2194cc-5928-4eb7-aeb8-ddcff5e18eb1" CreationDate="2016-12-07T14:37:19.217" UserId="256083" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24016" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8350" RevisionGUID="aa0924b9-9a38-4620-9cc8-aabc2be972a3" CreationDate="2016-12-07T14:52:30.487" UserId="31260" Comment="added 110 characters in body; edited tags" Text="I [asked a question](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/337699/first-php-framework-before-studying-symfony) and it was deleted WITHOUT any polite explanation, by &lt;a href=&quot;http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens&quot;&gt;Thomas Owens&lt;/a&gt;:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to learn Symfony but I think, learning Symfony as a first framework is a TITANIC task for someone who knows nothing about web frameworks.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;So, I want to learn a simple framework to make a smooth transition to Symfony.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;What is the best framework to study with the aim to jump to Symfony?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Silex? CodeIgniter? Other?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Any suggestions are welcome. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In Stack Overflow my question is not considered a good one, but I understand the reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In programmers.stackexchange.com (now renamed), I don't understand what was my FAULT. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you please explain me how can I get an answer for my question, let me HAVE TIME to read the answer and then delete my question if you want?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24017" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8350" RevisionGUID="aa0924b9-9a38-4620-9cc8-aabc2be972a3" CreationDate="2016-12-07T14:52:30.487" UserId="31260" Comment="added 110 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|specific-question|deleted-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24018" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8351" RevisionGUID="707d4936-3ff5-46b7-b1bc-dc970117e5e2" CreationDate="2016-12-07T16:12:06.330" UserId="4" Text="If you read [the Help Center's page about what you can ask about here][1] prior to posting, you would see that some questions aren't a good fit for this environment, specifically questions about &quot;finding or recommending products or services, including tools, libraries or packages, programming languages, books, scholarly papers, tutorials, articles, or blogs&quot; or &quot;career or education advice&quot;. Both are linked to more detailed Meta posts about why [finding/recommendation][2] or [career/education][3] advice questions don't fit here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also have advice from Shog9, one of the Stack Exchange Community Managers that [it is perfectly acceptable to delete everything that is blatently off-topic on-sight][4]. Because your question fell into one of the topics that was specifically deemed by our community to be off-topic and documented as such in the Help Center, I deleted it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have no obligation to keep your question around if it doesn't meet our community's standards. That's how it works here. Next time, you should read a site's rules and standards before posting your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31225279#31225279" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24019" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8351" RevisionGUID="f5ce5e2f-a3c2-428e-b1c5-87b018dbabf4" CreationDate="2016-12-07T16:17:18.477" UserId="31260" Comment="typo corrected" Text="If you read [the Help Center's page about what you can ask about here][1] prior to posting, you would see that some questions aren't a good fit for this environment, specifically questions about &quot;finding or recommending products or services, including tools, libraries or packages, programming languages, books, scholarly papers, tutorials, articles, or blogs&quot; or &quot;career or education advice&quot;. Both are linked to more detailed Meta posts about why [finding/recommendation][2] or [career/education][3] advice questions don't fit here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also have advice from Shog9, one of the Stack Exchange Community Managers that [it is perfectly acceptable to delete everything that is blatantly off-topic on-sight][4]. Because your question fell into one of the topics that was specifically deemed by our community to be off-topic and documented as such in the Help Center, I deleted it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have no obligation to keep your question around if it doesn't meet our community's standards. That's how it works here. Next time, you should read a site's rules and standards before posting your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31225279#31225279" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24020" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8350" RevisionGUID="84eeb9d7-22fd-4cdf-80d8-871199489490" CreationDate="2016-12-07T23:10:02.130" UserId="31260" Comment="title changed to better fit question text" Text="Why was my question so quickly deleted by a moderator?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24021" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8349" RevisionGUID="3d9a8a3a-360c-4611-8fdc-90fef22b2ff9" CreationDate="2016-12-08T07:39:35.203" UserId="9113" Comment="added 56 characters in body" Text="The questions which are most welcome here are those which come from real software projects, related to real problems which arise inside the project. It does not matter if it is a commercial project, or a hobby project, or if the topic of the project is very specialized, as long as it is an answerable, on-topic question with a reasonable focus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Opposed to these kind of questions, questions which tell &quot; I just asked for curiosity&quot; or &quot;I have seen this [vague description] two or three times, is there a name for it&quot;, or &quot;I have this [vague idea] for a project X, can someone give me a concept for this&quot;, which do not address real world problems of the OP, are regularly closed as either beeing too broad or too opinionated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So don't feel bad about your questions because their lack of generality - this site suffers much more from questions which are too general for it's Q&amp;A format than from questions which are too specific. And who knows, just because you think a topic is unlikely for helping future visitors, some of those future visitors may think differently about it.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24022" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8347" RevisionGUID="f2a40d50-d159-43b7-a5ff-4b4b32866c2c" CreationDate="2016-12-09T01:46:17.993" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/807038628987801604" />
  <row Id="24023" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8352" RevisionGUID="92d2e3be-e94e-4b8d-990e-048fd260820d" CreationDate="2016-12-09T09:09:56.143" UserId="131624" Text="[![enter image description here][1]](https://xkcd.com/979/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/i5YGn.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24024" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8309" RevisionGUID="330b3026-89a7-45c3-9597-37ae336b68da" CreationDate="2016-12-10T00:01:13.130" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|asking-questions|quality-filter|formatting|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24025" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8299" RevisionGUID="4420bc9e-76d1-475e-9725-22283fae56da" CreationDate="2016-12-10T23:49:41.517" UserId="4" Comment="added 232 characters in body" Text="There are only 7 tags about analysis. As you pointed out, [tag:algorithm-analysis], [tag:static-analysis], and [tag:dependency-analysis] are already well-defined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at [tag:code-analysis], this could use a little work, too. Some of the questions are really about static analysis. Others are about code quality. Others are about managing source code. There are likely to be better tags than code-analysis. I'm guessing this tag probably isn't even necessary and everything can be retagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to do something with [tag:business-analysis] and [tag:systems-analysis]. Looking at the Wikipedia pages for [business analysis][1] and [systems analysis][2], I would favor getting a definition into the systems analysis tag and moving business analysis into it. Based on our scope, I think we're closer to the definition of systems analysis. I don't think we're in a position to help people &quot;determe solutions to business problems&quot; (with the exception of problems related to the processes and methods used to build software), but as software engineers, we do create the systems and procedures that solve business problems. I'd like to hear more feedback from the community before doing this, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once we sort out code-analysis, business-analysis, and systems-analysis, I'd like to take a final pass at [tag:analysis] since there will probably be better tags at that point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Status updates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;19 Nov 16: I wrote a tag description for [tag:algorithm-analysis] and linked to some resources in the body of the tag wiki. I then went through the 90+ questions and did a cleanup to remove the tag where it wasn't appropriate and do any other cleanup (adding other tags, removing other tags, editing). I also merged business-analysis into systems-analysis. Next steps: (1) review [systems-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/systems-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (2) review [static-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/static-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (3) review [dependency analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/dependency-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (4) review [code analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/code-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (5) review [analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;25-Nov-16: I went through the [tag:dependency-analysis] questions. They looked good, but I did some minor edits to a couple of questions for other reasons. I also merged code-analysis into static-analysis as most of the questions were actually about static analysis. This will be the next clean up to make sure it's 100% accurate. I also cleaned up the systems-analysis questions post-merge. Next steps: (1) review [static-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/static-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (2) review [analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10-Dec-16: I finished the static-analysis tags. I only have to review [analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions next - there are 66 questions to review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_analysis&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_analysis" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24026" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8340" RevisionGUID="33fb608f-33cd-4a7a-a08e-fca61dec6411" CreationDate="2016-12-12T04:39:41.183" UserId="247375" Comment="added 80 characters in body" Text="Questions related to a specific question on Software Engineering Stack Exchange." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24027" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="8340" RevisionGUID="33fb608f-33cd-4a7a-a08e-fca61dec6411" CreationDate="2016-12-12T04:39:41.183" Comment="Proposed by 247375 approved by 22815, 97122 edit id of 23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24028" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8299" RevisionGUID="73737f79-c24e-4a23-8301-f52eb7d4e557" CreationDate="2016-12-13T01:17:31.810" UserId="4" Comment="added 74 characters in body" Text="There are only 7 tags about analysis. As you pointed out, [tag:algorithm-analysis], [tag:static-analysis], and [tag:dependency-analysis] are already well-defined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at [tag:code-analysis], this could use a little work, too. Some of the questions are really about static analysis. Others are about code quality. Others are about managing source code. There are likely to be better tags than code-analysis. I'm guessing this tag probably isn't even necessary and everything can be retagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to do something with [tag:business-analysis] and [tag:systems-analysis]. Looking at the Wikipedia pages for [business analysis][1] and [systems analysis][2], I would favor getting a definition into the systems analysis tag and moving business analysis into it. Based on our scope, I think we're closer to the definition of systems analysis. I don't think we're in a position to help people &quot;determe solutions to business problems&quot; (with the exception of problems related to the processes and methods used to build software), but as software engineers, we do create the systems and procedures that solve business problems. I'd like to hear more feedback from the community before doing this, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once we sort out code-analysis, business-analysis, and systems-analysis, I'd like to take a final pass at [tag:analysis] since there will probably be better tags at that point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Status updates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;19 Nov 16: I wrote a tag description for [tag:algorithm-analysis] and linked to some resources in the body of the tag wiki. I then went through the 90+ questions and did a cleanup to remove the tag where it wasn't appropriate and do any other cleanup (adding other tags, removing other tags, editing). I also merged business-analysis into systems-analysis. Next steps: (1) review [systems-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/systems-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (2) review [static-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/static-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (3) review [dependency analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/dependency-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (4) review [code analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/code-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (5) review [analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;25-Nov-16: I went through the [tag:dependency-analysis] questions. They looked good, but I did some minor edits to a couple of questions for other reasons. I also merged code-analysis into static-analysis as most of the questions were actually about static analysis. This will be the next clean up to make sure it's 100% accurate. I also cleaned up the systems-analysis questions post-merge. Next steps: (1) review [static-analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/static-analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions (2) review [analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10-Dec-16: I finished the static-analysis tags. I only have to review [analysis](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/analysis?sort=newest&amp;pageSize=50) questions next - there are 66 questions to review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;12-Dec-16: We're down to less than 20 questions with the analysis tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_analysis&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_analysis" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24029" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8353" RevisionGUID="0b9a7427-b883-4cf4-977a-569532613cef" CreationDate="2016-12-13T08:46:35.573" UserId="9113" Text="Yesterday I supported to close [this question on wrapping third-party code][1] as a &quot;tool&quot; question. However, reading it again I think it is more a question about &quot;state of the art in software engineering techniques to wrap third-party code&quot;. The OP and me made some changes to make it look less like a tool recommendation question. So someone else here supporting my request to reopen it now? Or are there some other reasons why it should still kept close?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/338001/is-manually-wrapping-a-third-party-code-still-the-only-way-to-unit-test-its-cons" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24030" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8353" RevisionGUID="0b9a7427-b883-4cf4-977a-569532613cef" CreationDate="2016-12-13T08:46:35.573" UserId="9113" Text="Can this edited question be reopened?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24031" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8353" RevisionGUID="0b9a7427-b883-4cf4-977a-569532613cef" CreationDate="2016-12-13T08:46:35.573" UserId="9113" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24032" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8354" RevisionGUID="6abbfcda-a333-4dfa-b1f5-cfd55c7e16c4" CreationDate="2016-12-13T08:47:15.790" UserId="198652" Text="http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/337749/198652&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I don't think that this question is too broad, and it got closed. I'm wondering why is that so, and what should I do to get this question reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24033" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8354" RevisionGUID="6abbfcda-a333-4dfa-b1f5-cfd55c7e16c4" CreationDate="2016-12-13T08:47:15.790" UserId="198652" Text="Why is this on hold?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24034" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8354" RevisionGUID="6abbfcda-a333-4dfa-b1f5-cfd55c7e16c4" CreationDate="2016-12-13T08:47:15.790" UserId="198652" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24035" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8355" RevisionGUID="d6af3437-9172-4d85-832e-1fbec58271f3" CreationDate="2016-12-13T09:36:25.047" UserId="4" Text="Your question has been reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24036" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8356" RevisionGUID="e2a3e526-dc0a-40c7-84c6-ed93b6bedb13" CreationDate="2016-12-13T09:44:47.663" UserId="4" Text="I'm not going to say that it definitely shouldn't be reopened, but it looks like a duplicate to me. In theory, the system is supposed to work as people add new answers to questions so that way, answers to a particular problem are in one place. If this weren't the case, I could go through and reask any question at any point in time just to see if the answers were the same. I'm not sure how well this works in practice, though, with questions not getting visibility by people who can provide new answers - once a question has an up voted answer, it doesn't show up on the Unanswered tab or get bumped to the homepage unless a bounty is added.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My initial thought is that the new question that you link to shouldn't be a tool question, but a duplicate of [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/174733/is-wrapping-a-third-party-code-the-only-solution-to-unit-test-its-consumers) and a bounty for &quot;Current answers are outdated&quot; should be applied. I don't know if that will actually get the visibility that is needed or actually attract new and more current answers. It also requires reputation, which I don't think the person who asked the latest question has enough of to start a bounty." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24037" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8357" RevisionGUID="bca903ea-33f0-47c2-8e2a-c8d716c3798f" CreationDate="2016-12-14T16:20:49.173" UserId="182225" Text="The other day, I came across this question: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/337857/name-for-a-list-whose-structure-is-only-defined-by-the-structure-of-the-elements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I saw that the question was on hold for being unclear. However, I felt like I clearly understood the question being asked, so I submitted an [edit suggestion](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/155842) to make the question clearer. I was hoping that the edit would be accepted, the question would be reopened, and then I could post an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My suggestion was rejected, and I don't understand why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One reviewer selected this reason for rejecting the suggestion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This edit was intended to address the author of the post and makes no sense as an edit. It should have been written as a comment or an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My edit was, in fact, an attempt at improving the question, not an attempt at communicating with the author of the question. I don't understand why the reviewer would have thought I was intending to address the author.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another reviewer selected this reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This edit does not make the post even a little bit easier to read, easier to find, more accurate or more accessible. Changes are either completely superfluous or actively harm readability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, my edit makes the question a lot clearer. Am I wrong about this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why was my edit rejected? I'd still like to salvage the original author's question somehow; is there a way I can do that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24038" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8357" RevisionGUID="bca903ea-33f0-47c2-8e2a-c8d716c3798f" CreationDate="2016-12-14T16:20:49.173" UserId="182225" Text="I suggested an edit to clarify a question. Why was my edit rejected?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24039" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8357" RevisionGUID="bca903ea-33f0-47c2-8e2a-c8d716c3798f" CreationDate="2016-12-14T16:20:49.173" UserId="182225" Text="|discussion|suggested-edits|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24040" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8358" RevisionGUID="755de9a4-f739-4a5d-9bee-3ba86299ed06" CreationDate="2016-12-15T10:04:01.823" UserId="4" Text="The close reason of unclear isn't really accurate. This question is [primarily opinion based, since it's a name this thing question][1]. The edit does not resolve the reasons for closing the question and make it into a question that would be reopened, so rejecting the edits is appropriate to prevent the question from being bumped back to the homepage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/6582/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24041" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8298" RevisionGUID="22a359f2-9774-4a32-a2eb-09fe649e23cd" CreationDate="2016-12-17T22:54:09.267" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tag-synonyms|tag-merge|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24042" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6486" RevisionGUID="e15b128f-35d2-40c4-ba9e-9f5413251bde" CreationDate="2016-12-18T22:43:30.730" UserId="31260" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###What technology to take up next###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Software Engineering.SE, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a constant stream of new projects out there.  Github [claims 4,500 new projects a day](https://github.com/blog/841-those-are-some-big-numbers) back in 2011.  On December 23, 2013, Github had [10 million repositories](https://github.com/blog/1724-10-million-repositories).  Quite frankly, there are far too many projects for anyone to suggest a good answer.  What's more, the projects of yesteryear may well be inactive now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same problem exists for suggesting languages and technologies - they are constantly changing.  Further, many questions of this type often just ask &quot;which one is best&quot; without specifying any requirements, making them essentially a popularity poll.  If you really *do* want a popularity poll, consider reading [The Top Programming Languages: IEEE Spectrum’s 2014 Ranking](http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/interactive-the-top-programming-languages) which takes into account such things as Github active projects, Stack Overflow questions, Reddit questions, Hacker News, and job postings (see the 'custom' ranking for working with weightings).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A goal for Stack Exchange is to create a lasting repository of information.  Asking questions about which technology to chose runs counter to that.  In part because everyone's needs are different and also that everyone has their own favorites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/56848/how-does-one-keep-up-with-all-the-new-tools-languages-framework (also look at the [linked questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/56848?lq=1))&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you really want some projects:&#xD;&#xA;    * [/r/dailyprogrammer](http://www.reddit.com/r/dailyprogrammer)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Mega Project List](https://github.com/karan/Projects)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - What Technology to Take Up Next?&quot;](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6486/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24043" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8332" RevisionGUID="f7832585-4c33-4f3a-ab0c-8267fba24fbe" CreationDate="2016-12-19T05:29:45.110" UserId="131624" Comment="edited body" Text="I've added a new paragraph (3rd) defining a friend, to [my year old answer ](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/284146/131624) to a question about The Principle of Least Knowledge or the Law of Demeter.  The answer is already reasonably well received. I'd just like to be sure the added paragraph receives some scrutiny.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feel free to provide it here.  Not looking for rep so much as wanting the answer to improve as my understanding does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer is a sentimental favorite of mine. My first big hit here. So I'd like to be sure I'm not pulling a George Lucas.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24044" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8359" RevisionGUID="c3a39973-2ff6-4896-81a5-de07381c9cd1" CreationDate="2016-12-19T17:57:16.423" UserId="1204" Text="I think we should highlight a question each week that represents the best of what we would consider the *gestalt* of our site, Software Engineering.  Questions that are well-written, interesting, reasonably-scoped, and illustrate the kind of subject matter we'd like to see on the website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this would serve several purposes (increasing question quality is one), but mostly I'd like to be able to point newcomers to such a list as clear examples of what our site is all about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here is my first nomination:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/338436&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24045" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8359" RevisionGUID="c3a39973-2ff6-4896-81a5-de07381c9cd1" CreationDate="2016-12-19T17:57:16.423" UserId="1204" Text="Question of the Week" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24046" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8359" RevisionGUID="c3a39973-2ff6-4896-81a5-de07381c9cd1" CreationDate="2016-12-19T17:57:16.423" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24047" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8359" RevisionGUID="7f59af40-1ee1-49a8-9600-16df503f5530" CreationDate="2016-12-19T18:19:52.010" UserId="1204" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|question-of-the-week|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24048" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8359" RevisionGUID="635a50eb-e36a-49e3-a6bf-ac3479d93d53" CreationDate="2016-12-20T02:10:10.877" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/811030905607299072" />
  <row Id="24049" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8360" RevisionGUID="70860982-5b34-458a-8db8-0314afff0598" CreationDate="2016-12-20T13:55:01.753" UserId="31260" Text="We're getting rather steady stream of blatantly off-topic questions in [tag:software-developer] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few recent examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/338512/hired-as-developer-and-thrown-into-support-after-1-month&#xD;&#xA;- http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/337736/is-it-better-to-focus-on-mastering-one-language-framework-or-just-learn-multiple&#xD;&#xA;- http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/337494/confused-about-software-engineering-career&#xD;&#xA;- http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/336838/understanding-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/336733/need-career-advice&#xD;&#xA;- http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/336038/job-ad-senior-frontend-developer-in-berlin-startup-company&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10K users can follow the links to see how bad these are and for those who can't see deleted questions, first five are outright [career / education advice](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6488/) and the last one is a spammy job ad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now this tag has 37 closed and 10 open questions and a handful [historically locked ones](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsoftware-developer%5D+locked%3Ayes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't yet seen on-topic questions where this tag was useful which makes me wonder could we maybe burninate it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24050" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8360" RevisionGUID="70860982-5b34-458a-8db8-0314afff0598" CreationDate="2016-12-20T13:55:01.753" UserId="31260" Text="What is a position of [software-developer]?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24051" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8360" RevisionGUID="70860982-5b34-458a-8db8-0314afff0598" CreationDate="2016-12-20T13:55:01.753" UserId="31260" Text="|discussion|tags|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24052" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8360" RevisionGUID="8dd1280a-e6a6-470c-b4a6-725fbf681ca0" CreationDate="2016-12-20T19:34:26.787" UserId="1204" Comment="added 14 characters in body" Text="We're getting rather steady stream of blatantly off-topic questions in [tag:software-developer] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few recent examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;s&gt;http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/338512/hired-as-developer-and-thrown-into-support-after-1-month&lt;/s&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;s&gt;http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/337736/is-it-better-to-focus-on-mastering-one-language-framework-or-just-learn-multiple&#xD;&#xA;- http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/337494/confused-about-software-engineering-career&#xD;&#xA;- http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/336838/understanding-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/336733/need-career-advice&#xD;&#xA;- http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/336038/job-ad-senior-frontend-developer-in-berlin-startup-company&lt;/s&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10K users can follow the links to see how bad these are and for those who can't see deleted questions, first five are outright [career / education advice](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6488/) and the last one is a spammy job ad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now this tag has 37 closed and 10 open questions and a handful [historically locked ones](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsoftware-developer%5D+locked%3Ayes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't yet seen on-topic questions where this tag was useful which makes me wonder could we maybe burninate it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24053" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8361" RevisionGUID="c4f17662-157e-4025-9c6e-2d86fdee2a3d" CreationDate="2016-12-20T19:36:30.410" UserId="1204" Text="[tag:software-developer] is a blatant [meta-tag](https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/); everyone on this site should already be a software developer, so the tag does not add anything.  If you see it, feel free to edit, vote to close and/or cast a delete vote as appropriate, and then remove the tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24054" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8362" RevisionGUID="c319da36-baa7-4b4c-981a-3d6c9a9fc665" CreationDate="2016-12-21T02:28:32.920" UserId="4" Text="I've already removed the tag from the historically locked questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do ask that people take a few minutes before casting delete votes on closed questions, especially questions that are marked duplicates. For example, [this recently closed question had a net score of -3 and 2 delete votes, but was already closed as a duplicate](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/257240/question-about-requirements). This question was rightfully closed as a duplicate, but was a well-written question with a well-written answer. It's a useful sign post to the question/answer set that it is a duplicate of. This question should be edited to remove the bad tag (and to do any other cleanup of questions and answers), but still has value as a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When editing, you are bumping a question to the homepage. Please try to look at the title, body, and answers to see if any edits are necessary. Of course, please flag anything you can't do on your own for moderator attention." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24055" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8360" RevisionGUID="d3b1df1c-0433-41ed-b2a0-e7824ff31fde" CreationDate="2016-12-21T13:10:55.773" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|tags|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24056" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8360" RevisionGUID="11fbf9b7-b0e6-4633-ac69-557ed4b78f5f" CreationDate="2016-12-21T20:12:46.497" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/811665736775176193" />
  <row Id="24057" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6629" RevisionGUID="1fa31a5e-3afa-4d74-bcc4-811344955d44" CreationDate="2016-12-22T06:58:59.800" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/new-site-name" Text="One of the not infrequently asked questions that shows up on Software Engineering.SE is along the lines of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am trying to explain the differences between a NoSQL database and a relational database to a manager.  How do I do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions generally take the form of &quot;How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}&quot; where something is a programming topic and someone is not a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is particularly relevant with the oft said &quot;If you can't explain it to a five year old, you don't really understand it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why do these questions keep getting closed?  What can I do to ask them in a way that doesn't get closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24058" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8363" RevisionGUID="ba41068b-ab9f-43da-a3d9-825361a17e92" CreationDate="2016-12-22T12:21:42.933" UserDisplayName="user188153" Text="I just had this scenario: a question where an impulse answer came to mind. Posted that but for sure it was not good enough. However, there's a 5-minute grace period where edits can be done without having a revision. But obviously the `There is a new answer` has popped up already and someone read and down-voted. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now my question: should that message only appear after the grace period? That would as well mean that answers will pop up earliest 5 minutes after a question has been asked. For me as an answerer that would be ok since often I proof read only after submitting (and I've seen many `An edit as been made` while watching)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24059" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8363" RevisionGUID="ba41068b-ab9f-43da-a3d9-825361a17e92" CreationDate="2016-12-22T12:21:42.933" UserDisplayName="user188153" Text="Does &quot;There is a new answer&quot; pop up too early?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24060" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8363" RevisionGUID="ba41068b-ab9f-43da-a3d9-825361a17e92" CreationDate="2016-12-22T12:21:42.933" UserDisplayName="user188153" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24067" PostHistoryTypeId="50" PostId="8216" RevisionGUID="67460515-a246-4f78-bf97-991fe60ed695" CreationDate="2016-12-24T00:23:06.067" UserId="-1" />
  <row Id="24070" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8366" RevisionGUID="dfd80829-d683-48a9-a087-7b5482f25772" CreationDate="2016-12-26T21:55:59.363" UserId="6605" Text="While the idea is good, the realization is problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is already highlighted by Doc Brown in comments: the major question is *how* should the questions of the week be selected, given that there is already a system of upvotes. I'd consider a few alternatives:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Most upvoted question gets “question of the week” status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   The obvious problem with that is that it is not unusual for questions which are not particularly useful or on-topic to get a lot of upvotes, so this won't work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The question which gets most upvotes from the high reputation members becomes the “question of the week”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   The problem, here again, is that while high reputation indicates that the person is probably aware of site rules, it doesn't mean the person will upvote only useful and on-topic questions. For instance, I sometimes upvote questions which I personally find well-written and/or interesting, even when I know they are off-topic or don't “illustrate the kind of subject matter we'd like to see on the website”. In other words, simply because I have &gt;10k rep doesn't mean I agree with all the rules of this community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The question of the week is selected by moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   I'm sure we'll get questions which are indeed much more representative of the *site*, since the moderators are the ones who are expected to know the site rules the best, but maybe those questions would be less representative of the *community*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The question of the week is selected by a single person, such as Robert Harvey, since he has the highest reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   This has a benefit of being easy to do. A single person could simply create a Twitter feed with the questions she/he considers good, and eventually double-post them on Meta for peer review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   However, I'm not sure this would be *considered* representative of both the site and the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - On [Photo.SE][1], they have an interesting concept of [Hall of Fame][2] where anyone can post a photo in Meta, and every week, the photo with the highest upvotes gets displayed in the header of the website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   I think this solution is closer to what we need here. However, if the Hall of Fame idea concept is copied here, we shouldn't simply clone it. The idea on Photo.SE is that a photo posted on Meta as a candidate gets upvotes and is never downvoted. If the same system is used on SE.SE, I would prefer one where the given candidate for the question of the week could be upvoted *and* downvoted, and also, which is much more important, *discussed*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://photo.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.photo.stackexchange.com/questions/2657/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24071" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8367" RevisionGUID="ee72769e-8a45-4843-8d81-20f23040238b" CreationDate="2016-12-27T20:06:23.960" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24072" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8367" RevisionGUID="ee72769e-8a45-4843-8d81-20f23040238b" CreationDate="2016-12-27T20:06:23.960" UserId="-1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24073" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8368" RevisionGUID="a0d9bbd1-d2ca-4dbe-91d9-b365f527d928" CreationDate="2016-12-27T20:06:23.960" UserId="-1" Text="" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24074" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8368" RevisionGUID="a0d9bbd1-d2ca-4dbe-91d9-b365f527d928" CreationDate="2016-12-27T20:06:23.960" UserId="-1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24075" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8369" RevisionGUID="88579c01-3015-40c7-9175-cd89cba4a1e1" CreationDate="2016-12-30T16:52:24.013" UserId="7748" Text="Any one have interest in getting our blog back up? We haven't published anything in over 3 years. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No need to retype all this - See: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6558/programmers-community-blog-2-0 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We still have our Trello board loaded with post ideas....  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24076" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8369" RevisionGUID="88579c01-3015-40c7-9175-cd89cba4a1e1" CreationDate="2016-12-30T16:52:24.013" UserId="7748" Text="Programmers Community Blog 3.0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24077" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8369" RevisionGUID="88579c01-3015-40c7-9175-cd89cba4a1e1" CreationDate="2016-12-30T16:52:24.013" UserId="7748" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24078" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8370" RevisionGUID="6cf4043d-7184-4974-808b-f85498ec4cf2" CreationDate="2016-12-31T16:09:43.373" UserId="60357" Text="I think a question of the week (QotW) is a great idea.&#xD;&#xA;A couple of problems with a QotW have been mentioned, but I think they can be avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My goal for a QotW is to **showcase exemplary on-topic questions**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Aren't we already honouring great questions with our votes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No. People vote for a variety of reasons, e.g. if a question is interesting, or if it helps the voter. There are no real restrictions or guidelines on how people should vote. Consequently, votes do not indicate that the question is a good fit for this site (see our [questions sorted by score](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A QotW would try to disregard popularity. The QotW should be a question that people think represents the scope of this site well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Does this mean the QotW must be picked by an anti-democratic committee that decides what is on topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No. I think the QotW should be chosen by the community. However, the selection criteria for the QotW should not be “would you upvote this?”. Instead, we should ask, in that order:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What are the advantages of having a QotW?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can see a number of advantages:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Community involvement**, for whatever that's worth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Scope refinement.** There will be questions that some consider on topic, and some less so. Selecting a QotW could lead to discussion that clarifies our scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Site promotion.** Since the name change, there has been a noticeable drop in traffic &amp; question volume. That's not inherently good or bad. A QotW would be a nice community-driven way to fill the new “Software Engineering” brand with meaning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    In particular, I find the questions selected by the [automated official Twitter channel](https://twitter.com/StackSoftEng) a bit erratic, and not very representative of this site. I'd love to see a better alternative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Scope communication.** Once we have a corpus of vetted on-scope, high quality questions, we can point new users to that list. Also great for people that recommend this site without understanding its scope. A couple of good examples may communicate our scope better than the common-law-esque tangle of partially outdated meta questions that discuss finer points of our scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How should the QotW be selected?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since we've established that question votes are not a measure of quality, and since we want the larger community to participate in choosing, the best solution I see is to use a meta question to handle QotW suggestion and selection. In particular, votes on meta are free (don't give or cost reputation), and allows discussion on each suggested question. Similar models are used for the *Hall of Fame* on Photography as noted by Arseni Mourzenko in his answer, and by the *Best of {Year}* awards on Code Review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Every week, the community member responsible for managing the QotW posts a meta question, which might look like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; ### Question of the Week ({Jan 2017 #1})&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; It's time to choose a Question of the Week again! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like. Last week, we picked:&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; \[{*Question Title*} by {User Name}]({url})&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; **Suggest the next Question of the Week** by answering here with a link to the question, and a short explanation why it's an exemplary on topic question. You may suggest any question that was posted between {Start Date} and {End Date} and is not closed.&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; **Select the next Question of the Week** by upvoting and downvoting suggestions. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;  1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;  2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;  3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next week. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Tagged: fun, discussion, qotw&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. (Optional:) The meta question is featured so that it is visible to users that don't usually visit meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. We suggest and select questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 4. After a week, the old suggestion question is edited to declare the winner, and the next suggestion thread is opened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 5. (Optional:) Close the old suggestion thread as a duplicate of the new suggestion thread.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd prefer to have the selection period range from Sunday to Sunday or something like that, so that suggestions can be voted on during the week. I'd like to start this on 2017-01-08, if this approach emerges as a community consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think a weekly cadence involves a manageable amount of work. If not, we can drop to a monthly rhythm. Let's see how this goes and adapt as appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notably, this suggestion mechanism involves little to no effort for moderators, and can be done by any community member. The only important part is that exactly one QotW suggestion thread exists at a time… To that end, I have this silly QotW hat:  (U+1F3A9 TOP HAT). Whoever wears the hat will do the busy work like posting the QotW meta question. I am very interested in passing it along. @RobertHarvey do you want it since the QotW was your idea?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24079" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8369" RevisionGUID="84231b81-3129-43b5-a11d-12674967e7db" CreationDate="2017-01-04T06:08:29.930" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/816526698602754048" />
  <row Id="24080" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8371" RevisionGUID="1c97dff4-6cd5-4b30-b15b-db9014bade22" CreationDate="2017-01-05T18:45:49.700" UserId="6605" Text="Occasionally, beginner programmers ask questions here which show that they slightly misunderstood the whole subject. This leads to the questions which are both funny and difficult to read, since they don't make too much sense in their current form. The questions cannot be simply answered by RTFM, since there is an actual underlying misunderstanding of a concept.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The recent [Does nginx support ajax?][1] is a good illustration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The natural reaction is to downvote the question and/or vote to close it—honestly, that's what I did before later retracting my vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I think it gives a very bad image of an elitist community. I imagine the same situation in real life, where another programmer asks you a similar question and you'll just laugh at him and tell him that what he asks makes no sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another possibility is to actually explain the concepts to the OP, so that the person could understand why the question made little sense in its current form, while also learning the concepts the OP was missing originally.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that a good thing to do, or it leads to some negative consequences I maybe missed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/339503/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24081" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8371" RevisionGUID="1c97dff4-6cd5-4b30-b15b-db9014bade22" CreationDate="2017-01-05T18:45:49.700" UserId="6605" Text="Should we kindly explain the basic stuff, or rudely close the question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24082" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8371" RevisionGUID="1c97dff4-6cd5-4b30-b15b-db9014bade22" CreationDate="2017-01-05T18:45:49.700" UserId="6605" Text="|discussion|down-votes|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24083" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8372" RevisionGUID="41e6e6e3-771f-4b48-a74b-9cf3a9813a84" CreationDate="2017-01-05T22:13:20.047" UserId="9113" Text="Honestly, don't feed the help vampires - that will only attract more of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to explain something to him, explain him kindly the principles of this site and the SE network (in a comment), so he understands the downvotes are nothing personal, they are just enabling us to delete the question quicker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24084" PostHistoryTypeId="12" PostId="8372" RevisionGUID="009ca28a-fcee-492b-afac-ffdb57e4ac94" CreationDate="2017-01-05T22:15:03.057" UserId="9113" Comment="via Vote" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:9113,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Doc Brown&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="24085" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8372" RevisionGUID="548e9d49-a3e7-422e-80b7-a46d2b952177" CreationDate="2017-01-05T22:28:19.000" UserId="9113" Comment="added 460 characters in body" Text="IMHO a question which is not off-topic per se, but based on a wrong understanding, false assumption or premise, deserves a comment to give the OP a chance to edit it, or at least an explanation for the downvotes he gets. In the given case, there were already some comments revealing the misunderstanding, however there could have been an additional warning like *&quot;better edit your question if you don't want the community to close it&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lots of those questions can be saved be changing the wording slightly, avoiding the wrong assumption without changing the intent of the OP. For example, I am pretty sure the question you linked to could have been saved by writing something like *&quot;if I want to implement AJAX on the client side, does it make a difference which web server I use&quot;* instead of making the wrong assumption the choice of web server has a significant influence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if neither the OP nor someone with enough rep edits the question in a reasonable amount of time, it should be closed as &quot;unclear&quot;, as it happened here. Otherwise it gives later readers the wrong message that the false assumption might be true.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24086" PostHistoryTypeId="13" PostId="8372" RevisionGUID="56fea261-f7f6-4cb0-8834-1e3f64474eb9" CreationDate="2017-01-05T22:28:21.970" UserId="9113" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:9113,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Doc Brown&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="24087" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8372" RevisionGUID="34cb88e8-6712-4be2-afd0-3123a7843b7d" CreationDate="2017-01-05T22:34:50.677" UserId="9113" Comment="added 132 characters in body" Text="IMHO a question which is not off-topic per se, but based on a wrong understanding, false assumption or premise, deserves a comment to give the OP a chance to edit it, or at least an explanation for the downvotes he gets. In the given case, there were already some comments revealing the misunderstanding, however there could have been an additional warning like *&quot;better edit your question if you don't want the community to close it&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lots of those questions can be saved be changing the wording slightly, avoiding the wrong assumption without changing the intent of the OP. For example, I am pretty sure the question you linked to could have been saved by writing something like *&quot;if I want to implement AJAX on the client side, does it make a difference which web server I use&quot;* instead of making the wrong assumption the choice of web server has a significant influence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if neither the OP nor someone with enough rep edits the question in a reasonable amount of time, it should be closed as &quot;unclear&quot;, as it happened here. Otherwise it gives later readers the wrong message that the false assumption might be true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you like to save the question, maybe because you think you wrote a good answer to it, I suggest you do the edit by yourself. It is not unlikely you can revive it that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24088" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8372" RevisionGUID="35efb8fd-ad4e-4e85-b96b-86a8010b1a4e" CreationDate="2017-01-05T22:50:26.930" UserId="9113" Comment="added 20 characters in body" Text="IMHO a question which is not off-topic per se, but based on a wrong understanding, false assumption or premise, deserves a comment to give the OP a chance to edit it, or at least an explanation for the downvotes he gets. In the given case, there were already some comments revealing the misunderstanding, however there could have been an additional warning like *&quot;better edit your question if you don't want the community to close it&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lots of those questions can be saved be changing the wording slightly, avoiding the wrong assumption without changing the intent of the OP. For example, I am pretty sure the question you linked to could have been saved by writing something like *&quot;if I want to implement AJAX on the client side, does it make a difference which web server I use&quot;* instead of imposing the the choice of web server has a significant influence (especially in the question title).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if neither the OP nor someone with enough rep edits the question in a reasonable amount of time, it should be closed as &quot;unclear&quot;, as it happened here. Otherwise it gives later readers the wrong message that the false assumption might be true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you like to save the question, maybe because you think you wrote a good answer to it, I suggest you do the edit by yourself. It is not unlikely you can revive it that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24089" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8372" RevisionGUID="5ead8841-a6f6-4e63-965d-0cfb0c81e1d7" CreationDate="2017-01-05T22:57:07.933" UserId="9113" Comment="deleted 100 characters in body" Text="IMHO a question which is not off-topic per se, but based on a wrong understanding, false assumption or premise, deserves a comment to give the OP a chance to edit it, or at least an explanation for the downvotes he gets. In the given case, there were already some comments revealing the misunderstanding, however there could have been an additional warning like *&quot;better edit your question if you don't want the community to close it&quot;*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lots of those questions can be saved be changing the wording slightly, avoiding the wrong assumption without changing the intent of the OP. For example, I am pretty sure the question you linked to could have been saved by writing something like *&quot;if I want to implement AJAX on the client side, does it make a difference which web server I use&quot;* instead of already imposing the choice of web server has undoubtly a significant influence (especially in the question title).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if neither the OP nor someone with enough rep edits the question in a reasonable amount of time, it should be closed as &quot;unclear&quot;, as it happened here. Otherwise it gives later readers the wrong message that the false assumption might be true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Addendum: right now I edited the question by myself, maybe it is better now and might be reopened?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24090" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8373" RevisionGUID="f7b63d8a-a521-4586-bed5-89bdfae18b07" CreationDate="2017-01-06T05:42:41.080" UserId="9202" Text="I'm one of the original writers on board. Personally I think it's a good and generous idea to build the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm ready to help again, so count me in." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24091" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8372" RevisionGUID="be4305b1-5757-4469-8a6e-865ddfa43943" CreationDate="2017-01-06T09:02:41.243" UserId="9113" Comment="added 252 characters in body" Text="IMHO a question which is not off-topic per se, but based on a wrong understanding, false assumption or premise, deserves a comment to give the OP a chance to edit it, or at least an explanation for the downvotes he gets. In the given case, there were already some comments revealing the misunderstanding, however there could have been an additional warning like *&quot;better edit your question if you don't want the community to close it&quot;*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lots of those questions can be saved by changing the wording slightly, avoiding the wrong assumption without changing the intent of the OP. For example, I am pretty sure the question you linked to could have been saved by writing something like *&quot;if I want to implement AJAX on the client side, does it make a difference which web server I use&quot;* instead of already imposing the choice of web server has undoubtly a significant influence (especially in the question title).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if neither the OP nor someone with enough rep edits the question in a reasonable amount of time, it should be closed as &quot;unclear&quot;, as it happened here. Otherwise it gives later readers the wrong message that the false assumption might be true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a user likes to write an answer to such a question, he should probably first improve the question before he answers (or ask the author for improving it, if he hasn't got enough rep by himself).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Addendum: right now I edited the question by myself, if you think it is better now and might be undeleted and reopened, feel free to vote accordingly.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24092" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7847" RevisionGUID="3248c5f7-b34b-4be4-bfac-3cab8272a6bc" CreationDate="2017-01-06T12:21:13.953" UserId="80833" Comment="Editing my own answer to test http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/289422/suggested-next-badge-editor-but-no-editing-rights-yet?noredirect=1#comment939418_289422" Text="Without the OP referencing the definition of *Professional Engineer* the question should be closed as *unclear what you're asking*. Does this refer to the *Professional Engineer exam* mentioned in the top answer? We have no idea and can only assume. With IT job definitions being vague, volatile and localized it is unclear what the OP is talking about.&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;(The same can be said for the other term *Software engineer*). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMO this is a prerequisite to be met *before* all the other arguments here can be considered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[And the question should get a region/country tag if it is a localized definition. I get the impression it's a 'US thing']." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24093" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8374" RevisionGUID="2621c126-d83c-4878-89ab-d677e419cc67" CreationDate="2017-01-06T13:29:10.380" UserId="25476" Text="Questions that are based on a false premise or understanding to where the correct understanding not only invalidates the question, but makes the answer something completely different than what was asked, should be put on hold as Unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An answer teaching the OP on a subject different than what they asked about, or addressing the false premise, while helpful to the OP, will only serve to confuse users who may be searching for similar questions and find confusing answers that are indirect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are not a free tutor service.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that being said, lets not be jerks about it if we can.  Remember, we were all confused beginners asking unclear questions at one point.  Don't act like you have never been there.  We can help direct people into what they need to study on and possibly to other questions on the site that will help them learn something important.  Comments can be a good place for such help to be given, but again we are not a tutor service.  If you feel like babying people through a subject, that is your choice, we just ask that you do so in a private chat room and not flood the comments section." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24094" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8375" RevisionGUID="19f43518-b40f-4fa6-8dbb-9638922df17e" CreationDate="2017-01-06T13:32:08.223" UserId="60357" Text="I agree that being kind is nicer than being rude, but this does not mean that I should abstain from voting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is put “on hold”, that is not necessarily rude. It is an opportunity to improve and then reopen the question. Comments can be used to help OP clarify the question. Our close reasons try to explain why the question (in its current form) isn't a good fit for this site or the Stack Exchange model. As such, votes are a great low-effort way to keep the site focussed and give feedback to the OP. Of course adding comments is great when the close reasons are not sufficient.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question cannot be improved into an on-topic question that might be reopened, trying to explain anything in the comments is a fruitless endeavour. That would just be encouraging discussion about a topic that is apparently not on-topic for the site. Supporting this might lead to even more bad questions in the long term. There are alternatives:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If the discussion is about “why isn't this question on topic?”, then use or point to Meta. Bonus: the site scope discussion can easily be referenced in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If you want to help OP understand some topic, create a chatroom. Chat makes discussion easier than a long comment thread. It is easier to ask clarifying questions. If it turns out to be some misunderstanding, you can edit the question and lobby for it to be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These approaches also allow you to continue the discussion if the question is deleted in the meanwhile.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, editing questions, engaging in a discussion with OP, and trying to come up with good explanations requires substantial effort. I am not required to expend that effort, and am not responsible for OP's feelings or success. So I personally tend to vote and move along. I love it though when people take the time to help OP understand why their question isn't a good fit here, in the hope that they will post a better question next time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24095" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8376" RevisionGUID="d9323558-cd99-4994-9520-161f894b4a19" CreationDate="2017-01-06T16:37:31.970" UserId="30005" Text="As far as these types of questions go, I find that the people who ask them fall into one or both of the following (and many times that one leads to another):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. **They are in over their head.**  This happens when someone with little to no experience gets thrust into a large project outside of their realm of expertise.  Like when Bill from accounting who wrote an Excel macro once gets tapped by management to be the development team on the company's new N-tier, high availability, mission-critical, SaaS flagship application.  These kind of people need to be able to tell management or someone that they don't know what they are doing.  Then they need to get help appropriate for that, whether it be training, doing more research, etc.  And providing that level of help is not what this site is for.&#xD;&#xA; 2. **They haven't done their research.**  If someone has such a basic misunderstanding, they probably haven't spent enough time learning about what they are doing.  For the example question above, googling &quot;what is ajax&quot; gives plenty of results, many explicitly stating that AJAX is really an HTTP request.  If a server can handle HTTP requests, it should be able to handle AJAX.  If someone falls into this category, they need to go do their research and not push that on to us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No matter which category you are in, that kind of question isn't appropriate here.  I've heard the comparison made (more so on SO, but I believe it still applies) to asking a busy colleague a question.  If one of my colleagues came and asked me if nginx supported AJAX while I was really busy I'd probably look up at them, blink a few times, make a mental note about this, and then spend no more than 2 minutes trying to figure out what the hell they were really asking and then send them on their way with a few topics to go google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, yeah, I might not laugh at them, but I would start to wonder what they think I'm here for.  If they see me as a replacement for them doing their own thinking / work, then there is a problem.  And spoon feeding them answers would confirm this assumption.  Pointing them in the right direction and asking that they come back next time after they've done some research sends a message that I am not a replacement for google.  I will happily help when someone has done their homework first, but I'm not doing their homework for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE.SE is the same.  We are here to help when people have done their homework and are stuck.  We aren't here to be a teaching service.  We aren't a replacement for google.  We aren't here to hold someone's hand.  If individuals want to do that in chat, fine.  If they want to help a user edit a question to be a good, on-topic question, great.  But don't leave the bad questions here.  Doing so sends the message that we accept such things.  And that leads to a false image of the community being something it isn't (a tutoring service, free-coders, google help, etc.)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24096" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8371" RevisionGUID="d6af8f33-b2eb-428b-b17b-432701fc8e65" CreationDate="2017-01-06T18:19:30.950" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/817435439846006785" />
  <row Id="24097" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8377" RevisionGUID="d86ae612-0dd7-4963-9001-a0ca3a1a6012" CreationDate="2017-01-08T04:28:42.073" UserId="187609" Text="I tried creating a question asking what work is involved in creating a facial recognition app and got recommendations on my life and how to spend my free time... What the fuck?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to talk about what kind of libraries are available to do a certain thing within Android and what kind of difficulty a task is and I get mundane irrelevant answers ending in my thread being closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess here's another Exchange group that should be forgotten. Out of 5 answers, not a single one was relevant to my question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24098" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8377" RevisionGUID="d86ae612-0dd7-4963-9001-a0ca3a1a6012" CreationDate="2017-01-08T04:28:42.073" UserId="187609" Text="So apparently it's illegal to talk about technology difficulty here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24099" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8377" RevisionGUID="d86ae612-0dd7-4963-9001-a0ca3a1a6012" CreationDate="2017-01-08T04:28:42.073" UserId="187609" Text="|bug|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24100" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8378" RevisionGUID="c50255a7-d96a-47e0-ab60-a026c84bcfe5" CreationDate="2017-01-08T05:16:17.140" UserId="1204" Text="Q &amp; A, of the type that we practice here at Stack Exchange, rests on a few fundamental principles and assumptions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Each site has a specific subject matter area.  Questions asked on Stack Exchange must fit the subject matter of the site you post them on.&#xD;&#xA;2.  The questions must have a well-defined scope; that is, they must be specific enough to be answerable.  What that means in practice is that you can't ask questions that solicit opinions, ask for a list of things, make product recommendations, or are too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are very good reasons why we follow these principles.  If you've ever tried to get an answer to one of your questions in a forum environment, you already know why we have these conditions: it's very nearly impossible to get a decent answer on a forum.  In short, forum suck.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we do everything we can to avoid those forum behaviors that prevent people from getting good answers to their questions.  This reduces the noise and is more attractive to those subject matter experts who are here to provide answers to your specific questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are not aware of these principles, or fail to follow them for whatever reason, you're going to have a very hard time participating anywhere on Stack Exchange.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24101" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8378" RevisionGUID="149b591f-35d0-4cd0-8bb2-599fa93651d1" CreationDate="2017-01-08T05:51:24.450" UserId="1204" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="Q &amp; A, of the type that we practice here at Stack Exchange, rests on a few fundamental principles and assumptions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Each site has [a specific subject matter area](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tour).  Questions asked on Stack Exchange must fit the subject matter of the site you post them on.&#xD;&#xA;2.  The questions you ask must have [a well-defined scope][1]; that is, they must be specific enough to be answerable.  What that means in practice is that you can't ask questions that solicit opinions, ask for a list of things, make product recommendations, or are too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are very good reasons why we follow these principles.  If you've ever tried to get an answer to one of your questions in a forum environment, you already know why we have these conditions: it's very nearly impossible to get a decent answer on a forum.  In short, forum suck.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we do everything we can to avoid those forum behaviors that prevent people from getting good answers to their questions.  This reduces the noise and is more attractive to those subject matter experts who are here to provide answers to your specific questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are not aware of these principles, or fail to follow them for whatever reason, you're going to have a very hard time participating anywhere on Stack Exchange.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24102" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8378" RevisionGUID="e9aa58ae-9cb7-4a9a-a3eb-f1f7cb697ef3" CreationDate="2017-01-08T05:57:58.147" UserId="1204" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="Q &amp; A, of the type that we practice here at Stack Exchange, rests on a few fundamental principles and assumptions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Each site has [a specific subject matter area](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tour).  Questions asked on Stack Exchange must fit the subject matter of the site you post them on.&#xD;&#xA;2.  The questions you ask must have [a well-defined scope][1]; that is, they must be specific enough to be answerable.  What that means in practice is that you can't ask questions that solicit opinions, ask for a list of things, make product recommendations, or are too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are very good reasons why we follow these principles.  If you've ever tried to get an answer to one of your questions in a forum environment, you already know why we have these conditions: it's very nearly impossible to get a decent answer on a forum.  In short, [forums suck](http://www.aneclecticmind.com/2008/04/11/why-forums-suck/).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we do everything we can to avoid those forum behaviors that prevent people from getting good answers to their questions.  This reduces the noise and is more attractive to those subject matter experts who are here to provide [answers to your specific questions](https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are not [aware of these principles](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7931/faq-for-stack-exchange-sites), or fail to follow them for whatever reason, you're going to have a very hard time participating anywhere on Stack Exchange.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24103" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8379" RevisionGUID="fa3a02a1-a035-4a0e-b5c7-6972b3b0be40" CreationDate="2017-01-08T10:06:33.060" UserId="9113" Text="Well, since you did not gave a link to your closed question (which would me enable to read it, even it is deleted), it is hard to say if or how you violated the site rules. But what you are describing sounds like you are asking for a topic where a useful answer could fill a whole book. Such questions are usually considered as too broad for the Q&amp;A format of this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, it is not &quot;illegal&quot; to talk about technology here, but we do not give any technology recommendations, and questions asking for such a recommendation are typically closed quickly by the community, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24104" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8377" RevisionGUID="c5221f1a-242a-4cab-ba11-dfd41ba492d7" CreationDate="2017-01-08T10:36:08.967" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 14 characters in body; edited tags" Text="I tried creating a question asking what work is involved in creating a facial recognition app and got recommendations on my life and how to spend my free time... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to talk about what kind of libraries are available to do a certain thing within Android and what kind of difficulty a task is and I get mundane irrelevant answers ending in my thread being closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess here's another Exchange group that should be forgotten. Out of 5 answers, not a single one was relevant to my question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24105" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8377" RevisionGUID="c5221f1a-242a-4cab-ba11-dfd41ba492d7" CreationDate="2017-01-08T10:36:08.967" UserId="25936" Comment="deleted 14 characters in body; edited tags" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24106" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8379" RevisionGUID="c745449f-7157-4148-ace3-700f159d5841" CreationDate="2017-01-08T10:47:20.633" UserId="9113" Comment="added 444 characters in body" Text="What you were asking for is a topic where a useful answer could fill a whole book. Such questions are usually considered as too broad for the Q&amp;A format of this site. Note that facial recognition is still a topic of scientific research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You argued it is not too broad, since you only want to know how much work is involved. However, that is nothing strangers on the internet can tell you, because we do not know you, your background, what exactly the features are you imagine for your program, or the quality of the facial regcognition you expect. Each of these details can easily make a difference factor of 20 or more in the resulting effort. So even if your question would not have been closed as &quot;too broad&quot;, it should have been closed as &quot;primarily opionated&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, it is not &quot;illegal&quot; to talk about technology here. Almost any question on this site has a specific technological context. However, we do not give any technology or library or tool recommendations, and questions asking for such a recommendation are typically closed quickly by the community, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24107" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8380" RevisionGUID="770dca1e-df70-4780-82ae-e464bb53fe49" CreationDate="2017-01-08T17:29:11.553" UserId="60357" Text="It's time to choose a [Question of the Week][qotw-original]! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggest the next Question of the Week by answering here with a link to the question, and a short explanation why it's an exemplary on topic question. You may suggest [any question that was posted between 2017-01-01 and 2017-01-07 and is not closed][eligible-search].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Select the next Question of the Week by upvoting and downvoting suggestions. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next week. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[qotw-original]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8359&#xD;&#xA;[eligible-search]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017-01-01..2017-01-07%20closed%3ano%20score%3a1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24108" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8380" RevisionGUID="770dca1e-df70-4780-82ae-e464bb53fe49" CreationDate="2017-01-08T17:29:11.553" UserId="60357" Text="Question of the Week (Jan 2017 #1)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24109" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8380" RevisionGUID="770dca1e-df70-4780-82ae-e464bb53fe49" CreationDate="2017-01-08T17:29:11.553" UserId="60357" Text="|discussion|fun|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24110" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8381" RevisionGUID="d007aee5-bc25-4074-a6ea-1ef5ad9176f3" CreationDate="2017-01-08T17:44:51.807" UserId="60357" Text="## [Agile stabilization and release management](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/339244/60357)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this question, a rather waterfally organization is trying to go Agile. How do we structure our team? How do we deal with technical debt and maintenance work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions [about][help/on-topic] the software-development life cycle (and ways to master it) are at the core of Software Engineering, and I think this question is a nice example of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[help/on-topic]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24111" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8382" RevisionGUID="a6d8a0b3-61d0-426b-a461-8219c0f51a52" CreationDate="2017-01-08T18:06:12.757" UserId="60357" Text="## [Which should be done first: use cases or user stories?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/339568/60357)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here, the asker is trying to find a good way to capture their requirements, for the special case of a solo developer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't do recommendations. But explaining how a technique can fit into a development process is perfectly on topic. In particular, I'd like to see more questions on requirements engineering around here :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24112" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8383" RevisionGUID="92c7febe-b6bd-43a4-8b11-16e1dd80aaa6" CreationDate="2017-01-08T18:44:10.640" UserId="9113" Text="[Strategies for merging 1 year of development in Visual Studio][1]&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is about a real-world problem the OP faces, and it is clearly located in the domain of software engineering. Though some tools are mentioned, it is mostly independent from the specific version control system, so it is really a conceptual and organizational question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://Strategies%20for%20merging%201%20year%20of%20development%20in%20Visual%20Studio" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24113" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8383" RevisionGUID="49f06acc-a4d6-45e4-ae30-d6dff36fa22d" CreationDate="2017-01-08T18:48:05.140" UserId="60357" Comment="added working link :)" Text="[Strategies for merging 1 year of development in Visual Studio][1]&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is about a real-world problem the OP faces, and it is clearly located in the domain of software engineering. Though some tools are mentioned, it is mostly independent from the specific version control system, so it is really a conceptual and organizational question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/339358" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24114" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8383" RevisionGUID="35114f88-0519-4cc6-ba51-3fdc9853e212" CreationDate="2017-01-09T10:44:08.500" UserId="9113" Comment="added 54 characters in body" Text="[Strategies for merging 1 year of development in Visual Studio][1]&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is about a real-world problem the OP faces, not a question for a hypothetical or upcoming scenario, and it is clearly located in the domain of software engineering. Though some tools are mentioned, the question is mostly independent from the specific version control system, so it is really a conceptual and organizational question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/339358" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24115" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8384" RevisionGUID="cee62711-628b-42aa-934b-bdf3ed98725d" CreationDate="2017-01-10T11:53:43.940" UserId="174505" Text="Though you should never be rude, it is very easy to not bother. The reason for this is that quite a few people asking strange questions really believe that their misunderstood position is correct and will not even consider that they are wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A recent example of this is this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/339743/why-are-interfaces-in-java-called-that-way&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you read the comments to the question it is clear that he has determined that the name interface is wrong. No way is he going to change his mind." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24116" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8385" RevisionGUID="b5b07ebb-c9a9-4f73-8b66-20e5ff036f1d" CreationDate="2017-01-12T00:41:39.540" UserId="219030" Text="The project is drawing to a close, and I am planning to take down the annotation interface this weekend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you very much to everyone who helped out, and thank you for all the valuable feedback and suggestions. Hopefully the collected annotations will lead to the development of better duplicate question detection systems, especially for StackExchange." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24117" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8386" RevisionGUID="f1e5cf35-bc13-47be-913d-4bf33d599475" CreationDate="2017-01-12T05:00:10.933" UserId="1204" Text="Instead of creating an external blog to replace the Stack Exchange blog, why don't we just leverage the normal Q&amp;A to do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Here's how it would work:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Write your blog post in any ordinary editor.&#xD;&#xA;2.  Split your post into a question &amp; answer pair or title/abstract/body combination (Abstract goes into question, body goes into answer).&#xD;&#xA;3.  [Answer your own question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/132886/what-is-this-answer-your-own-question-jazz).&#xD;&#xA;4.  Flag the post and ask a moderator to add a &quot;Wiki Lock&quot; to it (not Community Wiki).  The Wiki Lock allows anyone to collaboratively edit the post (if they have editing privileges), but prevents other answers from being posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know what you're thinking: &quot;This won't work, because reasons.&quot;  Here's why I think it will work, and why it will work better than a blog:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  The community owns it (with first-authorship preserved).&#xD;&#xA;2.  There is already some precedent: it's [called *Canonical Q&amp;A.*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/291992/what-is-a-canonical-question-answer-and-what-is-their-purpose)  We've already done that here [at least once](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before), with great effect.&#xD;&#xA;3.  Canonical posts benefit from all of the facilities that are already provided by the Q&amp;A machinery, such as full visibility, voting, collaborative editing and the ability to comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###But what about closing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to prevent closure, your blog post has to be good enough to overcome objections like &quot;Too Broad.&quot;  Not everyone is going to rise to this level of quality, but that's why it's a Canonical post and not ordinary Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Overflow, canonical questions have allowed people on many occasions to post useful, blog-like material that extends well beyond the usual parade of code troubleshooting questions.  Similarly, we could use this mechanism to provide a those folks who have an itch with an outlet to create better content than the usual parade of pattern matching, name that thing and &quot;am I doing it right&quot; questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[List of Canonical Questions on Stack Overflow](https://www.google.com/search?q=&quot;This%20question%27s%20answers%20are%20a%20collaborative%20effort&quot;%20site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fstackoverflow.com)  &#xD;&#xA;[Encyclopedia Stack Exchange](https://stackoverflow.blog/2012/05/encyclopedia-stack-exchange/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24118" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8386" RevisionGUID="f1e5cf35-bc13-47be-913d-4bf33d599475" CreationDate="2017-01-12T05:00:10.933" UserId="1204" Text="Proposal for Leveraging the Main Site for Blog Posts and Other Extended Content" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24119" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8386" RevisionGUID="f1e5cf35-bc13-47be-913d-4bf33d599475" CreationDate="2017-01-12T05:00:10.933" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|blog|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24120" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8386" RevisionGUID="6da2a0e8-4b18-446b-954a-1c5b1dedfb26" CreationDate="2017-01-12T05:06:02.840" UserId="1204" Comment="added 15 characters in body" Text="Instead of creating an external blog to replace the Stack Exchange blog, why don't we just leverage the normal Q&amp;A to do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Here's how it would work:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Write your blog post in any ordinary editor.&#xD;&#xA;2.  Split your post into a question &amp; answer pair or title/abstract/body combination (Abstract goes into question, body goes into answer).&#xD;&#xA;3.  [Answer your own question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/132886/what-is-this-answer-your-own-question-jazz).&#xD;&#xA;4.  Flag the post and ask a moderator to add a &quot;Wiki Lock&quot; to it (not Community Wiki).  The Wiki Lock allows anyone to collaboratively edit the post (if they have editing privileges), but prevents other answers from being posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know what you're thinking: &quot;This won't work, because reasons.&quot;  Here's why I think it will work, and why it will work better than a blog:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  The community owns it (with first-authorship preserved).&#xD;&#xA;2.  There is already some precedent: it's [called *Canonical Q&amp;A.*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/291992/what-is-a-canonical-question-answer-and-what-is-their-purpose)  We've already done that here [at least once](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before), with great effect.&#xD;&#xA;3.  Canonical posts benefit from all of the facilities that are already provided by the Q&amp;A machinery, such as full visibility, voting, collaborative editing and the ability to comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###But what about closing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to prevent closure, your blog post would have to be high enough quality to overcome objections like &quot;Too Broad.&quot;  Not everyone is going to rise to this level of quality, but that's why it's a Canonical post and not ordinary Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The usual &quot;on-topic&quot; rules would have to be relaxed a little bit.  Obviously they would still have to pertain in some way to Software Engineering.  But let's be honest: most questions are not closed because they are off-topic; they're closed because they're just not all that interesting, and &quot;off-topic&quot; provides a good excuse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Overflow, canonical questions have allowed people on many occasions to post useful, blog-like material that extends well beyond the usual parade of code troubleshooting questions.  Similarly, we could use this mechanism to provide those folks who have an itch with an outlet to create better content than the usual parade of pattern matching, name that thing and &quot;am I doing it right&quot; questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[List of Canonical Questions on Stack Overflow](https://www.google.com/search?q=&quot;This%20question%27s%20answers%20are%20a%20collaborative%20effort&quot;%20site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fstackoverflow.com)  &#xD;&#xA;[Encyclopedia Stack Exchange](https://stackoverflow.blog/2012/05/encyclopedia-stack-exchange/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24121" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8386" RevisionGUID="6da2a0e8-4b18-446b-954a-1c5b1dedfb26" CreationDate="2017-01-12T05:06:02.840" UserId="1204" Comment="added 15 characters in body" Text="Proposal for Leveraging the Main Site for &quot;Blog Posts&quot; and Other Extended Content" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24122" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8386" RevisionGUID="292f3ddd-e5ad-46de-8801-79e8c16bba78" CreationDate="2017-01-12T05:20:20.823" UserId="1204" Comment="added 29 characters in body" Text="Instead of creating an external blog to replace the Stack Exchange blog, why don't we just leverage the normal Q&amp;A to do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Here's how it would work:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Write your blog post in any ordinary editor.&#xD;&#xA;2.  Split your post into a question &amp; answer pair or title/abstract/body combination (Abstract goes into question, body goes into answer).&#xD;&#xA;3.  [Answer your own question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/132886/what-is-this-answer-your-own-question-jazz).&#xD;&#xA;4.  Flag the post and ask a moderator to add a &quot;Wiki Lock&quot; to it (not Community Wiki).  The Wiki Lock allows anyone to collaboratively edit the post (if they have editing privileges), but prevents other answers from being posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know what you're thinking: &quot;This won't work, because reasons.&quot;  Here's why I think it will work, and why it will work better than a blog:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  The community owns it (with first-authorship preserved).&#xD;&#xA;2.  There is already some precedent: it's [called *Canonical Q&amp;A.*](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/291992/what-is-a-canonical-question-answer-and-what-is-their-purpose)  We've already done that here [at least once](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before), with great effect.&#xD;&#xA;3.  Canonical posts benefit from all of the facilities that are already provided by the Q&amp;A machinery, such as full visibility, voting, collaborative editing and the ability to comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###But what about closing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to prevent closure, your blog post would have to be high enough quality to overcome objections like &quot;Too Broad.&quot;  Not everyone is going to rise to this level of quality, but that's why it's a Canonical post and not ordinary Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The usual &quot;on-topic&quot; rules would have to be relaxed a little bit.  Obviously they would still have to pertain in some way to Software Engineering.  But let's be honest: most questions are not closed because they are off-topic; they're closed because they're just not all that interesting, and &quot;off-topic&quot; provides a good excuse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Overflow, canonical questions have allowed people on many occasions to post useful, blog-like material that extends well beyond the usual parade of code troubleshooting questions.  Similarly, we could use this mechanism to provide those folks who have an itch with an outlet to create better content than the usual parade of pattern matching, name that thing and &quot;am I doing it right&quot; questions and answers that frequent our front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[List of Canonical Questions on Stack Overflow](https://www.google.com/search?q=&quot;This%20question%27s%20answers%20are%20a%20collaborative%20effort&quot;%20site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fstackoverflow.com)  &#xD;&#xA;[Encyclopedia Stack Exchange](https://stackoverflow.blog/2012/05/encyclopedia-stack-exchange/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24123" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8387" RevisionGUID="04b71727-f544-41ea-8499-07c1d0d1a9ee" CreationDate="2017-01-12T10:37:20.413" UserId="50424" Text="I answered a longer question for which there turns out to be a relatively simple answer in a relatively simple way. A moderator complained that my answer was just an opinion and anyone could oppose it. I disagreed citing support for my answer and challenging the mod to post an opposing opinion if that's the way we roll here. The moderator claimed my answer didn't follow the rules (and also that answers here aren't opinions--which, if you really think about it, is a tad absurd). Except it does. It directly answers the question but (as admitted) doesn't do much more. The comment chain digressed. Then my answer got deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![deleted answer][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Was the deletion performed in order to punish me for my comments? If the comment is the concern, why not just delete the comment? Or is there some rule the answer violated that makes it unfit? I've read the rules plenty of times (a certain someone has made sure of that). It's a real answer, I promise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted the answer again, but it was again deleted with similar claims that it does not meet the criteria for a good answer. Can someone please tell me what it is violating?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/AdKJB.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24124" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8387" RevisionGUID="04b71727-f544-41ea-8499-07c1d0d1a9ee" CreationDate="2017-01-12T10:37:20.413" UserId="50424" Text="Why is my correct answer deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24125" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8387" RevisionGUID="04b71727-f544-41ea-8499-07c1d0d1a9ee" CreationDate="2017-01-12T10:37:20.413" UserId="50424" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24126" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8387" RevisionGUID="05dc6d88-81be-42f4-98e1-79b5e74dca5c" CreationDate="2017-01-12T10:57:52.380" UserId="25936" Comment="added links to the answer &amp; question, and a better screenshot." Text="I answered a longer question for which there turns out to be a relatively simple answer in a relatively simple way. A moderator complained that my answer was just an opinion and anyone could oppose it. I disagreed citing support for my answer and challenging the mod to post an opposing opinion if that's the way we roll here. The moderator claimed my answer didn't follow the rules (and also that answers here aren't opinions--which, if you really think about it, is a tad absurd). Except it does. It directly answers the question but (as admitted) doesn't do much more. The comment chain digressed. Then my answer got deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![deleted answer][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Was the deletion performed in order to punish me for my comments? If the comment is the concern, why not just delete the comment? Or is there some rule the answer violated that makes it unfit? I've read the rules plenty of times (a certain someone has made sure of that). It's a real answer, I promise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted the answer again, but it was again deleted with similar claims that it does not meet the criteria for a good answer. Can someone please tell me what it is violating?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xh4Ve.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24127" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8387" RevisionGUID="05dc6d88-81be-42f4-98e1-79b5e74dca5c" CreationDate="2017-01-12T10:57:52.380" UserId="25936" Comment="added links to the answer &amp; question, and a better screenshot." Text="|support|deleted-answers|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24128" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8387" RevisionGUID="3db70eac-c046-4cd8-b368-70849d8a02c0" CreationDate="2017-01-12T11:01:57.220" UserId="50424" Comment="deleted 9 characters in body" Text="I answered a longer question for which there turns out to be a relatively simple answer in a relatively simple way. A user complained that my answer was just an opinion and anyone could oppose it. I disagreed citing support for my answer and challenging the user to post an opposing opinion if that's the way we roll here. The user claimed my answer didn't follow the rules (and also that answers here aren't opinions--which, if you really think about it, is a tad absurd). Except it does. It directly answers the question but (as admitted) doesn't do much more. The comment chain digressed. Then my answer got deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![deleted answer][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Was the deletion performed in order to punish me for my comments? If the comment is the concern, why not just delete the comment? Or is there some rule the answer violated that makes it unfit? I've read the rules plenty of times (a certain someone has made sure of that). It's a real answer, I promise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted the answer again, but it was again deleted with similar claims that it does not meet the criteria for a good answer. Can someone please tell me what it is violating?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xh4Ve.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24129" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8388" RevisionGUID="8197c999-5c17-4458-8292-e229bab333d1" CreationDate="2017-01-12T13:32:49.553" UserId="4" Text="I don't have much to add over Doc Brown's comments on this question. We have guidance on [what makes a good answer][1]. We also expect that questions explain how and why it helps the asker. I don't see how it answers the questions asked of how to safely work with namespaces.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24130" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8389" RevisionGUID="544237df-ec39-450a-964f-b6c58f23327e" CreationDate="2017-01-12T14:52:57.520" UserId="9113" Text="Maybe gnat's comment did not make it clear to your what was wrong, but Thomas Owens (who deleted your question) was IMHO right. Let me explain why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since I have trouble to understand what you are trying to say with this short statement, and how it answers the OPs question, I guess other readers may probably have the same problem. That is why I guess why you got those downvotes.  If you write an answer, you better try to be constructive. A good answer would either contain an explanation *how* the OP can solve his problem, or *why* you think it does not need a solution, or *why* you think there is no good solution in Javascript.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh, and the picture was surely intendend to be funny, but I don't think it is really clarifying." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24131" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8389" RevisionGUID="0c8cd8df-00e5-4630-80c8-3c19dd4ad056" CreationDate="2017-01-12T14:58:15.183" UserId="9113" Comment="added 183 characters in body" Text="Maybe gnat's comment did not explain well to you what was wrong (in your attempt to answer [this question][1]), but Thomas Owens (who deleted your question) was IMHO right. Let me explain why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since I have trouble to understand what you are trying to say with this short statement, and how it answers the OPs question, I guess other readers probably had the same problem. That is why I guess why you got those downvotes.  If you write an answer, you better try to be constructive. A good answer would either contain an explanation *how* the OP can solve his problem, or *why* you think it does not need a solution, or *why* you think there is no good solution in Javascript.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh, and the picture was surely intendend to be funny, but I don't think it is really clarifying.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/340034/how-to-create-a-safe-namespace-for-my-application-in-javascript" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24132" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8390" RevisionGUID="84894e34-4880-463e-9dfb-0e751f4fb749" CreationDate="2017-01-12T15:03:57.100" UserId="60357" Text="Absolutely not. This is neither good for the site, nor are Stack Exchange questions a very suitable medium for a blog. I would prefer us to use an external blog and to find other mechanisms to integrate it with this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The primary reason why I think blog-answers are not a good fit here is that on-topic questions could just be posted as ordinary questions, no blog mechanism needed. But a blog would be great for stuff that doesn't fit the question-and-answer format: opinions, essays, and the like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your suggested mechanism for Q&amp;A-blog posts muddies our site scope. We have historically had some difficulty communicating the scope of the site. Adding an escape hatch to our site scope like “everything is OK if you call it a blog post and get at least 5 upvotes” will be confusing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It sets a precedent for content on the site that we don't want to see as ordinary questions. On a fairly regular basis new users ask “Why was my question closed? There are similar questions like this!” – which usually refers to a locked or closed question from the Not-Programming-Related era. Fresh blog posts would worsen this, especially as they would appear on the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Please tell me wiki-locked questions *don't* appear in the hot network questions list. If they did, this would damage perception of our site scope considerably.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your suggested mechanism also adds work for moderators. In particular, applying the lock requires prompt action by mods to prevent additional answers from being posted. That's probably manageable when coordinated in a chatroom.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this also puts the final decision what should and shouldn't be blog-protected into the hands of our moderation team. How should they decide? Should they only accept submissions by a select few? That won't go over well. Or should they apply their own judgement? When submissions are declined, how long do you guess we'll have to wait for the first “Mod Abuse!” meta questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned above, I think SE isn't a good blogging engine, any community considerations aside.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - No full-text RSS feeds of blog posts/answers. The next best thing is a feed for questions of a tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Fewer and less visible sharing widgets (although that's good from a privacy perspective).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - SE isn't very accessible. While I don't use assistive technologies, I do sometimes use text-extraction or read-later services like Pocket or Instapaper. On SE, they currently interpret only the question as main content; any comments and answers hidden as clutter (and the SE pages have *a lot* of navigation clutter). For a Q&amp;A that's OK since participation like voting and answering are integral parts, for a lengthy blog post it is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Fairly restricted markdown only. No tables, definition lists, or figures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Embedding content (tweets, slides, videos, pdfs, gists) isn't possible (although that's good from a privacy perspective).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Extremely restricted commenting. 500 chars isn't sufficient to tell someone on the internet they are wrong. Well, it's enough to tell them *that* they are wrong but not for an in-depth explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even though you may not consider these points an issue, I do not see how any of this makes SE a good choice for blog posts when compared with something like GitHub pages or a simple Wordpress site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24133" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8388" RevisionGUID="2ed4c35d-57b0-409d-828c-0687221934cb" CreationDate="2017-01-12T16:11:46.043" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="I don't have much to add over Doc Brown's comments on this question. We have guidance on [what makes a good answer][1]. We also expect that answers explain how and why it helps the asker. I don't see how it answers the questions asked of how to safely work with namespaces.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24135" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8391" RevisionGUID="c041df77-72a8-4946-a633-bf9ca0edfa75" CreationDate="2017-01-12T17:08:57.217" UserId="12893" Text="I want to know if the OCAJP 8 (1Z0-808) real exam gives the number of correct answers to the multiple choice questions when the test is taken in the near future or recently. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm studying for the OCAJP 8 exam where there are 80 questions and passing score is 65 % according to [education.oracle.com][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also says that the questions are multiple choice. I'm practicing mostly by answering questions from mock exams which aim to replicate the real exam question as close as possible. Now the mock exams differ where some mock exams have the multiple choice question and information how many answers are correct. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, &quot;select 2 answers&quot; from typically 5 answers. That makes the test much easier if I know how many answers are correct. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After speaking with two local test centers where I can take the test, they confirm that I can book a test date and that it is the right test (1Z0-808) but they couldn't answer about the test itself when I was wondering if the actual real test now in January or in February will have questions with additional information how many answers are correct. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder if there is a way to find out. Maybe somebody took the test recently and knows or might know by some other means if the mock exams make me overconfident by giving my the number of correct answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this question appropriate for this site or somewhere else in the SE network (maybe software recommendations) ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq-dad/db_pages.getpage?page_id=5001&amp;get_params=p_exam_id:1Z0-808" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24136" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8391" RevisionGUID="c041df77-72a8-4946-a633-bf9ca0edfa75" CreationDate="2017-01-12T17:08:57.217" UserId="12893" Text="Is it appropriate to ask about OCAJP 8 test specification?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24137" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8391" RevisionGUID="c041df77-72a8-4946-a633-bf9ca0edfa75" CreationDate="2017-01-12T17:08:57.217" UserId="12893" Text="|feature-request|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24138" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8392" RevisionGUID="311b2713-385a-46e0-ab1b-dba3a80f2ad4" CreationDate="2017-01-12T17:37:28.380" UserId="4" Text="This question is off-topic here. We do not provide support for products and services from other companies. Questions like this should be directed to the creators and maintainers of the test, since they are the only ones who can provide a correct, up-to-date and authoritative answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24139" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="8391" RevisionGUID="1681f2a5-a5a4-4964-bc68-20500b07544e" CreationDate="2017-01-12T17:42:07.910" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[6442],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="24140" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8393" RevisionGUID="38f2e7a4-bb37-4fc8-b616-a3e66084d6e7" CreationDate="2017-01-12T17:49:36.033" UserId="1204" Text="Visitors to our site are taking the words &quot;who care about delivering software responsibly&quot; in our tagline as evidence of question topicality.  Witness:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/340081/how-can-i-effectively-interview-someone-remotely-for-a-programming-job#comment729715_340081&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Well technically it is about software engineering... just not coding. According to the description on the Tour page, this site is not just about coding, &quot;Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly.&quot; I'm a professional that cares about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly. This may not be a typical question here but I would argue that it's not &quot;obviously&quot; off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the second time I've seen this happen, which means it's already happened more than twice." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24141" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8393" RevisionGUID="38f2e7a4-bb37-4fc8-b616-a3e66084d6e7" CreationDate="2017-01-12T17:49:36.033" UserId="1204" Text="We have a scope problem with Software Engineering's tagline" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24142" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8393" RevisionGUID="38f2e7a4-bb37-4fc8-b616-a3e66084d6e7" CreationDate="2017-01-12T17:49:36.033" UserId="1204" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24143" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8394" RevisionGUID="adc947bf-a8e7-4ba0-a991-cb5f282386ac" CreationDate="2017-01-12T18:16:14.203" UserId="4" Text="I don't think there's much we can do or anything that we need to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are taking one phrase out of a larger document and twisting it. Interviewing and hiring is clearly off-topic - interviewing and hiring is not part of the systems development life cycle, it's not part of any of the four bullets that are on-topic, and we make it clear that career and education related questions are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone who reads the full one-sentence tagline (&quot;Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly.&quot;) should not be confused that questions need to be about working in the systems development life cycle. If there is anyone who doesn't know what that means, we link to Wikipedia's page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24144" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8395" RevisionGUID="314d9be0-32fa-4136-bb1f-7120aa693113" CreationDate="2017-01-12T20:19:53.467" UserId="9113" Text="Well, I am here with you Robert, but not just for the reason you gave. The whole description is **damn too long**, it is not surprising people read only the first half of it and forget about the second half.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The part saying the site is *&quot;professionals, academics, and students working ...&quot;* is IMHO 100% superfluous - if someone is not actually working in the SDLC, does that mean he cannot ask or answer questions here as long as they are on topic? Same for the part *&quot;who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;* - this is superfluous for the same reason. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24145" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8395" RevisionGUID="46e58acd-3ca2-4af0-a6f2-5e3ac87f600d" CreationDate="2017-01-12T20:30:36.820" UserId="9113" Comment="added 520 characters in body" Text="Well, I am here with you Robert, but not just for the reason you gave. The whole description is **damn too long**, it is not surprising people read only the first half of it and forget about the second half.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The part saying the site is *&quot;professionals, academics, and students working ...&quot;* is IMHO 100% superfluous - if someone is not actually working in the SDLC, does that mean he cannot ask or answer questions here as long as they are on topic? Same for the part *&quot;who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;* - this is superfluous for the same reason. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What remains is a text which should be essentially what you suggested initially:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   Q&amp;A site where you can ask and answer questions directly related to the SDLC&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and now something like &quot;except actual coding&quot; needs to be added, to make a clear distinction from Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, remembering how long it took and how hard it was to convince the SE team to bring the site-name-and-topic-description change online the last time we did it, I can understand why we don't make everyone happy with such a change request again." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24146" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8395" RevisionGUID="e13c0457-c0a5-47f4-8a64-1def965b7498" CreationDate="2017-01-12T21:35:13.440" UserId="9113" Comment="added 21 characters in body" Text="Well, I am here with you Robert, but not just for the reason you gave. The whole description is &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;damn too long&#xD;&#xA;-----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;it is not surprising people read only the first half of it and forget about the second half.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The part saying the site is for *&quot;professionals, academics, and students working ...&quot;* is IMHO 100% superfluous - if someone is not actually working in the SDLC, does that mean he cannot ask or answer questions here as long as they are on topic? Same for the part *&quot;who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;* - this is superfluous for the same reason. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What remains is a text which should be essentially what you suggested initially:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   Q&amp;A site where you can ask and answer questions directly related to the SDLC&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and now something like &quot;except actual coding&quot; needs to be added, to make a clear distinction from Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, remembering how long it took and how hard it was to convince the SE team to bring the site-name-and-topic-description change online the last time we did it, I can understand why we don't make everyone happy with such a change request again." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24147" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8395" RevisionGUID="f46fdd24-ac4b-458c-9867-d0f0f22d83c2" CreationDate="2017-01-12T21:41:20.747" UserId="9113" Comment="added 21 characters in body" Text="Well, I am here with you Robert, but not just for the reason you gave. The whole description is &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;damn too long&#xD;&#xA;-----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;it is not surprising people read only the first half of it and forget about the second half.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The part saying the site is for *&quot;professionals, academics, and students working ...&quot;* is IMHO 100% superfluous - if someone is not actually working in the SDLC, does that mean he cannot ask or answer questions here as long as they are on topic? Same for the part *&quot;who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;* - this is superfluous for the same reason. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What remains is a text which should be essentially what you suggested initially:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   Q&amp;A site where you can ask and answer questions directly related to the SDLC&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and now something like &quot;except actual coding&quot; needs to be added, to make a clear distinction from Stack Overflow. And that is it, no distracting noise, nothing which makes twisting or misinterpretation so easy as the current tagline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, remembering how long it took and how hard it was to convince the SE team to bring the site-name-and-topic-description change online the last time we did it, I can understand why we don't make everyone happy with such a change request again." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24149" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8395" RevisionGUID="4bc51a17-a937-43ad-8336-7383bbbb252f" CreationDate="2017-01-13T12:45:08.837" UserId="9113" Comment="added 301 characters in body" Text="Well, I am here with you Robert, but not just for the reason you gave. The whole description is &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;damn too long&#xD;&#xA;-----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;it is not surprising people read only the first half of it and forget about the second half.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The part saying the site is for *&quot;professionals, academics, and students working ...&quot;* is IMHO 100% superfluous - if someone is not actually working in the SDLC, does that mean he cannot ask or answer questions here as long as they are on topic? Same for the part *&quot;who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;* - this is superfluous for the same reason. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What remains is a text which should express that we expect questions and answers to fit to the [SDLC][1], except the coding part. And this leads to almost exactly what you suggested initially:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   Q&amp;A site where you can ask and answer questions directly related to the SDLC, except actual coding&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The part about coding is important to make a clear distinction from Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So no distracting noise, nothing which makes twisting or misinterpretation so easy as the current tagline, and nothing which is so long that people probably have forgotten the initial words when they reach the end of the sentence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, remembering how long it took and how hard it was to convince the SE team to bring the site-name-and-topic-description change online the last time we did it, I can understand why we don't make everyone happy with such a change request again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24150" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8380" RevisionGUID="81aaabbc-34a9-46a2-892a-4d7c8cae49b1" CreationDate="2017-01-13T21:52:31.790" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/820025762854109184" />
  <row Id="24151" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8395" RevisionGUID="da4c776c-7608-4d4e-b753-5a1e0689f24c" CreationDate="2017-01-14T08:59:20.727" UserId="9113" Comment="added 139 characters in body" Text="Well, I am here with you Robert, but not just for the reason you gave. The whole description is &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;damn too long&#xD;&#xA;-----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;it is not surprising people read only the first half of it and forget about the second half.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The part saying the site is for *&quot;professionals, academics, and students working ...&quot;* is IMHO 100% superfluous - if someone is not actually working in the SDLC, does that mean he cannot ask or answer questions here as long as they are on topic? Same for the part *&quot;who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;* - this is superfluous for the same reason. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What remains is a text which should express that we expect questions and answers to fit to the [SDLC][1], except the coding part. And this leads to almost exactly what you suggested initially:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   Q&amp;A site where you can ask and answer questions directly related to the SDLC, except actual coding&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The part about coding is important to make a clear distinction from Stack Overflow.  Of course, you initially suggested &quot;no code troubleshooting&quot;, and that would IMHO fine, too, however a little bit longer and less general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So no distracting noise, nothing which makes twisting or misinterpretation so easy as the current tagline, and nothing which is so long that people probably have forgotten the initial words when they reach the end of the sentence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, remembering how long it took and how hard it was to convince the SE team to bring the site-name-and-topic-description change online the last time we did it, I can understand why we don't make everyone happy with such a change request again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24152" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8368" RevisionGUID="1d5379d2-7b76-407b-8996-b081f14efe87" CreationDate="2017-01-14T14:49:56.950" UserId="247375" Comment="added 152 characters in body" Text="Community Wiki is a flag that can be applied to answers (and questions) which lowers the barrier for editing and prevents any rep gain/loss from voting." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24153" PostHistoryTypeId="24" PostId="8368" RevisionGUID="1d5379d2-7b76-407b-8996-b081f14efe87" CreationDate="2017-01-14T14:49:56.950" Comment="Proposed by 247375 approved by 5099, 60357 edit id of 24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24154" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8396" RevisionGUID="c59be4e4-9bd6-460c-af83-f144dd66df49" CreationDate="2017-01-14T18:16:56.430" UserId="12893" Text="I would like to ask how I should proceed if I want to commit to an open source (e.g. Java, maybe Spring framework) project. I'm not sure if that question is OT. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've previously used both Java and Spring in several projects. I've also done my own boilerplate code that perhaps code be of use for other developers. The goal for my boilerplate project was to create code that you can clone if you quickly want to create a new spring project. I have also other ideas how to contribute. Is it best if I try and approach the issue tracker of the project and see if I can find an issue I can help with?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have previously contributed as a tester, a user and small change to a BSD-licenced open source project that have many users. That project is less relevant for my current specialization and I wish to commit to a relevant Java project. It's usually Spring framework that I work with, I could use my change myself and hope that other developers also can use it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I have not looked at their issue tracker and not found it. Is [this link][1] right? I think it is maybe best and easiest to help with an open issue and not open a new issue that I solve myself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://jira.spring.io/browse/spr/?selectedTab=com.atlassian.jira.jira-projects-plugin:summary-panel" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24155" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8396" RevisionGUID="c59be4e4-9bd6-460c-af83-f144dd66df49" CreationDate="2017-01-14T18:16:56.430" UserId="12893" Text="OT to ask how to contribute to open source projects?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24156" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8396" RevisionGUID="c59be4e4-9bd6-460c-af83-f144dd66df49" CreationDate="2017-01-14T18:16:56.430" UserId="12893" Text="|support|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24157" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8396" RevisionGUID="9669459e-13b5-46fd-babb-a1201c6fde25" CreationDate="2017-01-14T18:33:46.140" UserId="12893" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="I would like to ask how I should proceed if I want to commit to an open source (e.g. Java, maybe Spring framework) project. I'm not sure if that question is OT. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've previously used both Java and Spring in several projects. I've also done my own boilerplate code that perhaps could be useful for other developers. The goal for my boilerplate project was to create code that you can clone if you quickly want to create a new spring project. I have also other ideas how to contribute. Is it best if I try and approach the issue tracker of the project and see if I can find an issue I can help with?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have previously contributed as a tester, a user and small change to a BSD-licenced open source project that have many users. That project is less relevant for my current specialization and I wish to commit to a relevant Java project. It's usually Spring framework that I use, I could use my change myself and hope that other developers also can use it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is [this link][1] right? I think it is maybe best and easiest to help with an open issue and not open a new issue that I solve myself. I created an account and try to take an issue now. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://jira.spring.io/browse/spr/?selectedTab=com.atlassian.jira.jira-projects-plugin:summary-panel" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24158" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8397" RevisionGUID="1d3aad58-7ecd-4e7c-b8e1-a59990be69ef" CreationDate="2017-01-14T20:57:11.460" UserId="60357" Text="Such a question would likely be **not on topic** here on Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every project has its own culture, so it is best to ask the maintainers how you could help them. Some projects also have a document that explains how one can get involved, and where help is wanted. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24159" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8395" RevisionGUID="5c37a2fc-d2d6-4772-b53e-120983277fe8" CreationDate="2017-01-15T07:51:04.917" UserId="9113" Comment="added 218 characters in body" Text="Well, I am here with you Robert, but not just for the reason you gave. The whole description is &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;damn too long&#xD;&#xA;-----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;it is not surprising people read only the first half of it and forget about the second half.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the full text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Q&amp;A for professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The part saying the site is for *&quot;professionals, academics, and students working ...&quot;* is IMHO 100% superfluous - honestly, if someone is not actually working in the SDLC, does that mean he cannot ask or answer questions here as long as they are on topic? Same for the part *&quot;who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;* - this is superfluous for the same reason. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What remains is a text which should express that we expect questions and answers to fit to the [SDLC][1], except the coding part. And this leads to almost exactly what you suggested initially:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   Q&amp;A site where you can ask and answer questions directly related to the SDLC, except actual coding&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The part about coding is important to make a clear distinction from Stack Overflow.  Of course, you initially suggested &quot;no code troubleshooting&quot;, and that would IMHO be fine as well, only a little bit longer and less general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So no distracting noise, nothing which makes twisting or misinterpretation so easy as the current tagline, and nothing which is so long that people probably have forgotten the initial words when they reach the end of the sentence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(However, remembering how long it took and how hard it was to convince the SE team to bring the site-name-and-topic-description change online the last time we did it, I can understand why we don't make everyone happy with such a change request again.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24160" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8380" RevisionGUID="5a259235-5f05-4272-bd66-88c973c7bb7e" CreationDate="2017-01-15T09:51:28.567" UserId="60357" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|fun|question-of-the-week|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24161" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8398" RevisionGUID="e5b1a818-7106-4a5a-a9ee-61763cae8bb1" CreationDate="2017-01-15T09:52:14.107" UserId="60357" Text="It's time to choose a [Question of the Week][qotw-original]! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like. [Last week][prev], we picked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[*Which should be done first: use cases or user stories?* by user1620696](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/339568/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggest the next Question of the Week** by answering here with a link to the question, and a short explanation why it's an exemplary on topic question. You may suggest [any question that was posted between 2017-01-08 and 2017-01-14 and is not closed][eligible-search].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Select the next Question of the Week** by upvoting and downvoting suggestions. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next week. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[qotw-original]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8359&#xD;&#xA;[eligible-search]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017-01-08..2017-01-14%20closed%3ano%20score%3a1&#xD;&#xA;[prev]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8380/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24162" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8398" RevisionGUID="e5b1a818-7106-4a5a-a9ee-61763cae8bb1" CreationDate="2017-01-15T09:52:14.107" UserId="60357" Text="Vote for the Question of the Week! (Jan 2017 #2)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24163" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8398" RevisionGUID="e5b1a818-7106-4a5a-a9ee-61763cae8bb1" CreationDate="2017-01-15T09:52:14.107" UserId="60357" Text="|discussion|fun|question-of-the-week|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24164" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="8380" RevisionGUID="77b40ec3-dc86-44f8-bcfe-eb8d81fe3cbb" CreationDate="2017-01-15T09:56:56.363" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[8398],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:60357,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;amon&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="24165" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8399" RevisionGUID="7668335b-7f75-4ff7-ac1b-569e537889c5" CreationDate="2017-01-15T10:19:37.190" UserId="60357" Text="## [How do you deal with dependencies that require the object you inject into?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/340125/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A wonderful design-level question that gets to the point: how does dependency injection work with circular references?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24166" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8400" RevisionGUID="2742d7a7-3bb0-4629-bd68-9de72e221b60" CreationDate="2017-01-15T10:26:45.273" UserId="60357" Text="## [What is the importance of the vision document and how it helps development?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/340019/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of our process-level questions are about “how do I agile?”. This question instead asks about *vision documents*, and how they assist in software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like that OP seems to have done some prior research before asking here, and articulates what they do and don't understand so far – thus making it easier to provide a focussed answer.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24167" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8395" RevisionGUID="e9130811-1ec0-4bf0-b0e0-62d1374133d6" CreationDate="2017-01-15T16:38:52.983" UserId="1204" Comment="edited body" Text="Well, I am here with you Robert, but not just for the reason you gave. The whole description is &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;too damn long&#xD;&#xA;-----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;it is not surprising people read only the first half of it and forget about the second half.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the full text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Q&amp;A for professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The part saying the site is for *&quot;professionals, academics, and students working ...&quot;* is IMHO 100% superfluous - honestly, if someone is not actually working in the SDLC, does that mean he cannot ask or answer questions here as long as they are on topic? Same for the part *&quot;who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;* - this is superfluous for the same reason. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What remains is a text which should express that we expect questions and answers to fit to the [SDLC][1], except the coding part. And this leads to almost exactly what you suggested initially:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   Q&amp;A site where you can ask and answer questions directly related to the SDLC, except actual coding&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The part about coding is important to make a clear distinction from Stack Overflow.  Of course, you initially suggested &quot;no code troubleshooting&quot;, and that would IMHO be fine as well, only a little bit longer and less general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So no distracting noise, nothing which makes twisting or misinterpretation so easy as the current tagline, and nothing which is so long that people probably have forgotten the initial words when they reach the end of the sentence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(However, remembering how long it took and how hard it was to convince the SE team to bring the site-name-and-topic-description change online the last time we did it, I can understand why we don't make everyone happy with such a change request again.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24168" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8401" RevisionGUID="47646a6f-6367-495e-b683-99cb59e76faf" CreationDate="2017-01-15T20:19:34.210" UserId="211168" Text="[![Come support our proposal!][2]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/92460/computer-science-educators?referrer=27roqQHWr2p7JWcMHelYkQ2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/ads/proposal/92460.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24169" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8402" RevisionGUID="030d3196-1d01-4a4a-ba26-809fe86b6c87" CreationDate="2017-01-15T21:58:59.617" UserId="9113" Text="## [How do you develop software without acceptance criteria?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, it is arguable if this is a dupe (but since it was not closed after one week, I guess it is not &quot;dupe enough&quot;. Nevertheless how to gather requirements, especially when your organization does not provide you with a useful spec, seems to be a topic in which our community is heavily interested here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/339807/how-do-you-develop-software-without-acceptance-criteria" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24170" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8403" RevisionGUID="2deb8f17-88a8-43f8-aa4d-22d5c253d984" CreationDate="2017-01-16T18:32:04.203" UserId="63202" Text="The issue that I see in this question is that the tagline identifies a class of users by attribute (mostly by profession, some by attitude).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel we shouldn't be defining the appropriate class of users at all; but rather, it is the class of questions that we should be calling out, i.e. a Q &amp; A site for issues related to the engineering of software...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Removing the &quot;who care...responsibly&quot; would not necessarily have eliminated the exchange being cited, as the response could have easily then simply omitted the part about &quot;...responsibly&quot; as follows: &quot;I'm a professional working within the SDLC, so I'm in the class of users you have identified for this site.  Therefore my question(s) is(are) on topic.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24171" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8395" RevisionGUID="f7a9adf8-69fa-43e4-971e-0a07c1a8dfc9" CreationDate="2017-01-16T20:39:51.127" UserId="1204" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="Well, I am with you here, Robert, but not just for the reason you gave. The whole description is &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;too damn long&#xD;&#xA;-----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;it is not surprising people read only the first half of it and forget about the second half.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the full text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Q&amp;A for professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The part saying the site is for *&quot;professionals, academics, and students working ...&quot;* is IMHO 100% superfluous - honestly, if someone is not actually working in the SDLC, does that mean he cannot ask or answer questions here as long as they are on topic? Same for the part *&quot;who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;* - this is superfluous for the same reason. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What remains is a text which should express that we expect questions and answers to fit to the [SDLC][1], except the coding part. And this leads to almost exactly what you suggested initially:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   Q&amp;A site where you can ask and answer questions directly related to the SDLC, except actual coding&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The part about coding is important to make a clear distinction from Stack Overflow.  Of course, you initially suggested &quot;no code troubleshooting&quot;, and that would IMHO be fine as well, only a little bit longer and less general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So no distracting noise, nothing which makes twisting or misinterpretation so easy as the current tagline, and nothing which is so long that people probably have forgotten the initial words when they reach the end of the sentence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(However, remembering how long it took and how hard it was to convince the SE team to bring the site-name-and-topic-description change online the last time we did it, I can understand why we don't make everyone happy with such a change request again.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24172" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8395" RevisionGUID="a562723c-ad1d-497d-99b4-f8072c907303" CreationDate="2017-01-17T08:43:29.733" UserId="9113" Comment="added 121 characters in body" Text="Well, I am with you here, Robert, but not just for the reason you gave. The whole description is &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;too damn long&#xD;&#xA;-----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;it is not surprising people read only the first half of it and forget about the second half.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the full text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Q&amp;A for professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The part saying the site is for *&quot;professionals, academics, and students working ...&quot;* is IMHO 100% superfluous - honestly, if someone is not actually working in the SDLC, does that mean he cannot ask or answer questions here as long as they are on topic? I am sure all of you agree we don't want to exclude anyone here who does not fit into this narrow scope. Same for the part *&quot;who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;* - this is superfluous for the same reason. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What remains is a text which should express that we expect questions and answers to fit to the [SDLC][1], except the coding part. Gnat reminded us that all SE sites tag line start with the word &quot;Q&amp;A site **for** &amp;lt;some folks&amp;gt;&quot;, I missed this initially. So this leads to a **short** tagline which is very similar what you originally suggested:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   Q&amp;A site for those who are interested in questions directly related to the SDLC (except coding issues).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The part about coding is important to make a clear distinction from Stack Overflow.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So no distracting noise, nothing which makes twisting or misinterpretation so easy as the current tagline, and nothing which is so long that people probably have forgotten the initial words when they reach the end of the sentence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(However, remembering how long it took and how hard it was to convince the SE team to bring the site-name-and-topic-description change online the last time we did it, I can understand why we don't make everyone happy with such a change request again.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24173" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8404" RevisionGUID="c2396b7e-955d-42d0-8bf5-c9f5a9b3ecf0" CreationDate="2017-01-17T10:28:09.660" UserId="26120" Text="I don't really want have to micro manage my tag subscriptions. Is is possible to have some kind of tag family where I can subscribe to the family tag and then get all of the related tags? I don't really mean synonyms, but more topics which are closely related and can be considered variations on a theme. I know that there's already tags at these levels, but they don't seem to include questions with related, more specific tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example: TFS and Maven both are build systems and as such, part of the software development life cycle. There's tags for both of them. Some day there might be a new system. I'd like to be able to get notifications on both with a subscription to a higher level tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24174" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8404" RevisionGUID="c2396b7e-955d-42d0-8bf5-c9f5a9b3ecf0" CreationDate="2017-01-17T10:28:09.660" UserId="26120" Text="Tag family feature?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24175" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8404" RevisionGUID="c2396b7e-955d-42d0-8bf5-c9f5a9b3ecf0" CreationDate="2017-01-17T10:28:09.660" UserId="26120" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24176" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8404" RevisionGUID="e3390e2f-f697-425d-8d15-5cfd9c68f781" CreationDate="2017-01-17T11:09:40.457" UserId="25936" Comment="edited tags" Text="|feature-request|tags|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24177" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8405" RevisionGUID="0ce6e5c2-e458-4a07-b14c-77421a97ddc6" CreationDate="2017-01-17T13:35:45.287" UserId="60357" Text="## [How to describe the architecture of a software product?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/339864)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A great question. API-level documentation is easy, but how can I communicate an architecture?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While the question may seem basic, it is fiercely on-topic for Software Engineering. OP has (literally) done their homework before coming here. In its original form the question was a bit rambly, but I tried to edit that out." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24179" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="8332" RevisionGUID="20d006cc-cc23-46a7-90bb-e39b36fa14e5" CreationDate="2017-01-17T15:14:56.393" UserId="25476" Comment="102" Text="{&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:25476,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;maple_shaft&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="24180" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8406" RevisionGUID="222abb2c-35a0-4542-8ffa-5a3e0c33f48f" CreationDate="2017-01-18T04:18:42.197" UserId="164670" Text="I have [answered][1] to [this][2] question. However it's voted to delete by 2 users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][3]][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no explanation why it's a sub standard answer. How do I suppose to update the answer to acceptable level?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/340314/164670&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/340135/find-nearest-best-fit-for-circle/340314#340314&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/YH3mC.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24181" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8406" RevisionGUID="222abb2c-35a0-4542-8ffa-5a3e0c33f48f" CreationDate="2017-01-18T04:18:42.197" UserId="164670" Text="Valid answer, but voted to delete" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24182" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8406" RevisionGUID="222abb2c-35a0-4542-8ffa-5a3e0c33f48f" CreationDate="2017-01-18T04:18:42.197" UserId="164670" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24183" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8398" RevisionGUID="3e788c26-46bc-4392-aac7-ddedcb4e1afd" CreationDate="2017-01-18T16:28:50.730" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/821756244012728322" />
  <row Id="24184" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8393" RevisionGUID="cd306aba-c82b-4666-b06b-e25ca9663ef5" CreationDate="2017-01-19T13:32:04.080" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/822074144699416576" />
  <row Id="24185" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8407" RevisionGUID="d2ee1719-c9f5-4a8a-8d87-308f7535a9bf" CreationDate="2017-01-20T04:55:07.980" UserId="24410" Text="Yesterday I asked this Qn:  &#xD;&#xA;http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/340510/24410&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But some fellow members felt that, it belongs to below category:  &#xD;&#xA;[Why we're not customer support for [your favorite company]](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/255745/why-were-not-customer-support-for-your-favorite-company)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However I am unable to understand that how is it a customer support request? Or how can it be an opinion based Qn?  &#xD;&#xA;On the contrary, I assumed that it will give way to many interesting analysis such as,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If an organization like Android has decided to follow the footsteps of Apple, by favouring Clang, then there has to be legitimate reasons for it.&#xD;&#xA; - Is there something really wrong with GCC as such?&#xD;&#xA; - Android, Clang &amp; GCC all are free &amp; possibly open source softwares. How do they make choices?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The sense of my Qn is well crafted by a fellow member [@JonathanEunice](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/55314/jonathan-eunice) in below comment:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;Why a major software project would make such a historic shift of toolsets is a legitimate and pertinent question for a software engineering Q&amp;A site. **Shifts of this magnitude are rarely driven merely by fickle preference or opinions**. There are undoubtedly technical and ecosystem justifications for the shift that would benefit many to understand.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why this Qn has generated so much heat that it has been downvoted, closed &amp; now being attempted for deletion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24186" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8407" RevisionGUID="d2ee1719-c9f5-4a8a-8d87-308f7535a9bf" CreationDate="2017-01-20T04:55:07.980" UserId="24410" Text="Question got closed citing that it requests for &quot;customer support&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24187" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8407" RevisionGUID="d2ee1719-c9f5-4a8a-8d87-308f7535a9bf" CreationDate="2017-01-20T04:55:07.980" UserId="24410" Text="|discussion|closed-questions|deleted-questions|down-votes|reopen-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24188" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8408" RevisionGUID="c9c8abcc-5cc7-44b3-9afc-f5c634840cd5" CreationDate="2017-01-20T06:47:42.933" UserId="9113" Text="You are asking the SE community why a specific vendor (in this case Google) made a decision to favor tool X over tool Y. Honestly, the community here is the wrong audience for such a question. If the Android NDK team at Goole  wrote something like &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*GCC in the NDK is now deprecated in favor of Clang.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and you want to know their reasoning behind that, you need to ask **them**, not us. A vendor like Google has typically a support channel for such questions, and the SE sites are no replacement for these channels. The community here could only make wild guesses about the NDK team's motivation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24189" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8408" RevisionGUID="4ad4a803-b993-4d25-a0e4-b07d61db3359" CreationDate="2017-01-20T07:11:02.760" UserId="9113" Comment="added 568 characters in body" Text="You are asking the SE community why a specific vendor (in this case Google) made a decision to favor tool X over tool Y. Honestly, the community here is the wrong audience for such a question. If the Android NDK team at Goole  wrote something like &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*GCC in the NDK is now deprecated in favor of Clang.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and you want to know their reasoning behind that, you need to ask **them**, not us. A vendor like Google has typically a support channel for such questions, and the SE sites are no replacement for these channels. The community here could only make wild guesses about the NDK team's motivation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, a quick google search reveals there are dozens of opinions around about &quot;GCC vs Clang - which one is better&quot;. You will find every kind of people saying something like &quot;GCC is better because its more mature&quot;, or &quot;Clang is better because it does not carry so much legacy code in it&quot;. So this is a 100% opinionated question. Obviously the Android NDK team seems to favor Clang *for their environment*. If they made extensive tests before they made this decision, or if they just throw a dice - we cannot tell you, if you want to know this, ask them, not us." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24190" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8408" RevisionGUID="2223a360-1345-4075-b46a-07d3f7a34e04" CreationDate="2017-01-20T07:32:38.707" UserId="9113" Comment="link to android ndk forum added" Text="You are asking the SE community why a specific vendor (in this case Google) made a decision to favor tool X over tool Y. Honestly, the community here is the wrong audience for such a question. If the Android NDK team at Goole  wrote something like &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*GCC in the NDK is now deprecated in favor of Clang.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and you want to know their reasoning behind that, you need to ask **them**, not us. A vendor like Google has typically a support channel [or forum][1] for such questions, and the SE sites are no replacement for these channels. The community here could only make wild guesses about the NDK team's motivation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, a quick google search reveals there are dozens of opinions around about &quot;GCC vs Clang - which one is better&quot;. You will find every kind of people saying something like &quot;GCC is better because its more mature&quot;, or &quot;Clang is better because it does not carry so much legacy code in it&quot;. So the whole topic is 100% opinionated. Obviously the Android NDK team seems to favor Clang *for their environment*. If they made extensive tests before they made this decision, or if they just throw a dice - we cannot tell you, if you want to know this, ask them, not us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/android-ndk" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24191" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8409" RevisionGUID="9a7f9537-571f-42aa-a350-b0782793cedf" CreationDate="2017-01-20T16:03:50.670" UserId="130078" Text="I recently asked [this question][1] about a specific term (JTNU) that I saw in a job posting. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After seeing the downvotes, I read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7182/what-goes-on-software-engineering-previously-known-as-programmers-a-guide-for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/faq/info&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I didn't find it to be off topic since it was related a term in a job posting and searching for [non-jtnu][2] didn't yield good things on google. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [info][3] for the terminology tag reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Questions about the objective meaning or common understanding of words and concepts that programmers encounter&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are in a field where a new acronym pops up each week. So, I thought I was behind and it would be reasonable to ask such question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know now that it is an Indian University whose degrees doesn't seem to be great. But when I first searched and saw the university I didn't think it was related. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Isn't it a valid terminology question since it appears in job posts?** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/340606/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;q=meaning%20Non%2DJNTU&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/terminology/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24192" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8409" RevisionGUID="9a7f9537-571f-42aa-a350-b0782793cedf" CreationDate="2017-01-20T16:03:50.670" UserId="130078" Text="Understanding the guidelines" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24193" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8409" RevisionGUID="9a7f9537-571f-42aa-a350-b0782793cedf" CreationDate="2017-01-20T16:03:50.670" UserId="130078" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24194" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8410" RevisionGUID="8c22d877-3996-465f-9428-c72c2a97caf6" CreationDate="2017-01-20T16:53:03.400" UserId="9113" Text="You are correct, the tag info could have have been interpreted that way when taking it literally. However, I am very sure the community here does not want an interpretation like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Questions about the objective meaning or common understanding of **arbitrary** words and concepts that programmers encounter &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site's scope today is about the [systems development life cycle][1] - one action to make this more clear was the site name change last year. Abbreviations in job offers, especially when it turns out they are just an abbreviation for a university somewhere in the world, are - to my understanding - too localized and not related to the SDLC. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I took your question as a chance for improvement, and changed the tag description to make it better fit to the actual site's scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24195" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8411" RevisionGUID="a7c9899e-ee3c-43b0-b7ba-fa0931791986" CreationDate="2017-01-20T21:57:12.073" UserId="12893" Text="I compared 2 different malloc versions and asked about malloc and free where a test first resulted in that one malloc was faster than the other and then a comment or answer was that if you allocate or free in a random order or similar change then the basic malloc was not faster than the regular malloc if you deallocate in reverse order. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wrote a loop that disproved a test result because of the answer. The commit is [online][1] and available but I have forgotten why I added the test to [deallocate in reverse order][1]. I don't remember why I would do it. There was a comment or answer that made me do it and that disproved earlier tests that a basic malloc would be faster than the builtin malloc, according to expectation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The background was that tests showed that a custom malloc was faster than the builtin malloc but that seemed unlikely. When deallocating in reverse order the builtin malloc was faster. But why would I deallocate in reverse order? I already asked about it but I can't find the question I asked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you help me find the question so that I can understand why the test with reverse order deallocation disproved the earlier tests?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://github.com/montao/openmalloc/commit/11d390a649d1202eba43c36ce20e4155bddc2812" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24196" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8411" RevisionGUID="a7c9899e-ee3c-43b0-b7ba-fa0931791986" CreationDate="2017-01-20T21:57:12.073" UserId="12893" Text="Find specific question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24197" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8411" RevisionGUID="a7c9899e-ee3c-43b0-b7ba-fa0931791986" CreationDate="2017-01-20T21:57:12.073" UserId="12893" Text="|support|specific-question|specific-answer|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24198" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8393" RevisionGUID="28d146f4-9fd6-481b-8d8c-7e578fc12c24" CreationDate="2017-01-21T18:56:50.147" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|status-completed|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24199" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8412" RevisionGUID="ed098a88-09e9-4381-b233-ea343380ed1e" CreationDate="2017-01-22T12:07:03.107" UserId="60357" Text="It's time to choose a [Question of the Week][qotw-original]! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like. [Last week][prev], we picked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[*What is the importance of the vision document and how it helps development?* by user1620696](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/340019)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggest the next Question of the Week** by answering here with a link to the question, and a short explanation why it's an exemplary on topic question. You may suggest [any question that was posted between 2017-01-15 and 2017-01-21 and is not closed][eligible-search].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Select the next Question of the Week** by upvoting and downvoting suggestions. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next sunday. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote for this meta question** if you like the Question of the Week idea, and want to see more community involvement. Most users don't visit meta, but perhaps see the “hot meta posts” in the community bulletin on the right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[qotw-original]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8359&#xD;&#xA;[eligible-search]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017-01-15..2017-01-21%20closed%3ano%20score%3a1&#xD;&#xA;[prev]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8398/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24200" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8412" RevisionGUID="ed098a88-09e9-4381-b233-ea343380ed1e" CreationDate="2017-01-22T12:07:03.107" UserId="60357" Text="Vote for the Question of the Week (Jan 2017 #3)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24201" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8412" RevisionGUID="ed098a88-09e9-4381-b233-ea343380ed1e" CreationDate="2017-01-22T12:07:03.107" UserId="60357" Text="|discussion|fun|question-of-the-week|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24202" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="8398" RevisionGUID="5469b89a-8075-4670-ab59-7fe0958958ec" CreationDate="2017-01-22T12:07:51.837" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[8412],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:60357,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;amon&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="24203" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8413" RevisionGUID="c486cbe5-3b08-419f-891f-5f6d8a8640fb" CreationDate="2017-01-22T12:26:11.913" UserId="60357" Text="## [How to specify a precondition (LSP) in an interface in C#?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/340316/60357)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A nice design-level question. OP is trying to map some constraints into the C# type system (though the same problem arises in Java, C++, …). They have tried various solutions and explain their thoughts in the question. Instead of weighing down the helpful code examples with unnecessary implementation details, everything stays on the design level that is on topic here – a great example how such questions should be asked." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24204" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8414" RevisionGUID="ac2d0de2-3d80-4524-81a4-13020c7e94f1" CreationDate="2017-01-22T12:40:04.593" UserId="60357" Text="## [RESTful API and i18n: how to design the response?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/340469/60357)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A design level question on designing a RESTful API. Normally, content negotiation is done to decide on a *single* representation of some resource, but here OP needs a mechanism to request *all* representations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As in any good design question, OP has thought of possible solutions before asking here and explains them. This avoids answers with something OP already knows, and helps to reveal possible misunderstanding of underlying concepts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While the question happens to ask “which is best?”, it is clearly not an opinion poll as it provides enough context for an objective answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24205" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8412" RevisionGUID="28e5050e-0e97-4add-8012-af3b02ee7622" CreationDate="2017-01-22T14:45:06.327" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|fun|question-of-the-week|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24206" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8415" RevisionGUID="796cc474-d032-4400-84f0-66b09beffc57" CreationDate="2017-01-22T15:43:00.907" UserId="218283" Text="Are questions about flowcharts appropriate on Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/290129/269617" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24207" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8415" RevisionGUID="796cc474-d032-4400-84f0-66b09beffc57" CreationDate="2017-01-22T15:43:00.907" UserId="218283" Text="Are questions about flowcharts appropriate on Software Engineering?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24208" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8415" RevisionGUID="796cc474-d032-4400-84f0-66b09beffc57" CreationDate="2017-01-22T15:43:00.907" UserId="218283" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24209" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8416" RevisionGUID="84bb5401-d05c-43a4-8307-a4e2b1936894" CreationDate="2017-01-22T16:16:34.420" UserId="60357" Text="Questions about flow charts in general are **not on topic** here. We can't tell you whether your flow chart is correct, and we won't review or rate your flow chart. We can't help with using any drawing tool.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, flow charts or activity diagrams are used as a documentation tool. Process-level questions on how diagrams fit into the system development life cycle (SDLC) are perfectly [on topic](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and are welcome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To a certain degree, concrete questions regarding problems with drawing a flow chart might be accepted by the community, e.g. if you are trying to express a flow as an activity diagram conforming to the UML 2.0 standard and are unsure how a certain scenario involving parallelism should be expressed. Precedent for such questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How do I represent nested actions in a UML activity diagram?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/331641/60357)&#xD;&#xA; - [UML - may a uml diagram contain different types of uml models?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/316434/60357)&#xD;&#xA; - [Send- Receive-Signal in UML Diagrams](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/335675/60357)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24210" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8412" RevisionGUID="6ffda838-ab42-4e8a-a485-5a3520b9da09" CreationDate="2017-01-22T16:45:59.253" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/823210108842868736" />
  <row Id="24211" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8417" RevisionGUID="5e2f1b3d-b796-4ab4-9716-79116e25d404" CreationDate="2017-01-22T17:32:00.530" UserId="9113" Text="Assumed your flowchart is showing a high-level design of a piece of software, asking for [reviewing the design can be on topic][1], as long as the question is clearly focussed on some aspects of the design, and not just asking for a broad discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6502/are-design-review-questions-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24212" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8417" RevisionGUID="23a831fe-c879-4004-89c6-dcce984cc478" CreationDate="2017-01-22T22:00:55.110" UserId="9113" Comment="added 8 characters in body" Text="Assumed your flowchart is showing a high-level design of a piece of software, asking for [reviewing the design **can be on topic**][1], as long as the question is **clearly focussed** on some aspects of the design, and not just asking for a broad discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6502/are-design-review-questions-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24213" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8418" RevisionGUID="6a9bae8e-07c9-4a5b-ab0b-842563b952bd" CreationDate="2017-01-23T17:45:39.737" UserId="1204" Text="## [Is there a programming paradigm that promotes making dependencies extremely obvious to other programmers?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/340356)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question rescues itself from being yet another &quot;Name that Thing&quot; question, because it touches on a topic that I consider extremely important, an issue that we've all been affected by, but which is seldom talked about: **how do you make sure that your system can be understood by others, and what provides the incentives for making that happen?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It eloquently articulates the OP's frustrations without being a rant, provides a practical example of the problem, and leaves the door open for solutions beyond &quot;name that paradigm.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24214" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="7864" RevisionGUID="6ec1305a-17bc-4590-91f2-7e142e8f5648" CreationDate="2017-01-23T19:49:49.917" UserId="1204" Comment="edited title" Text="Why are implementation and debugging questions off-topic on Software Engineering?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24215" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8419" RevisionGUID="322371e6-a717-4bc5-8b43-9489aed33272" CreationDate="2017-01-25T11:20:04.463" UserId="979" Text="[Is this comment acceptable under *your* C coding standards?][1] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As my comment states&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am not asking if they think it acceptable, but, rather if their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; organization permits it. Which, while arguably opinion-based at second&#xD;&#xA;&gt; remove, is factual within the context of this site and this question.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You may consider this analogous to asking if it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; legal to drink beer at age 18 where you live. You may have a personal&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinion, but I asking about the law.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/340879/is-this-comment-acceptable-under-your-c-coding-standards" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24216" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8419" RevisionGUID="322371e6-a717-4bc5-8b43-9489aed33272" CreationDate="2017-01-25T11:20:04.463" UserId="979" Text="Is this questoin opinion based?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24217" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8419" RevisionGUID="322371e6-a717-4bc5-8b43-9489aed33272" CreationDate="2017-01-25T11:20:04.463" UserId="979" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24218" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8420" RevisionGUID="42a54953-7b94-4d10-89e8-3103f1b4dbdd" CreationDate="2017-01-25T11:30:07.390" UserId="4" Text="Personally, I'd close it as too broad. But I think that primarily opinion based works just as well. You're conducting a poll. We expect that questions [meet our guidelines][1], and many of those guidelines preclude poll questions. In a poll, all answers are equally valid and there is no actual problem to be solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24219" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8419" RevisionGUID="8f41d3b3-62b7-4a3c-9c81-a0ed533c19d6" CreationDate="2017-01-25T13:04:52.223" UserId="31260" Comment="typo in title corrected" Text="Is this question opinion based?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24220" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8419" RevisionGUID="8f41d3b3-62b7-4a3c-9c81-a0ed533c19d6" CreationDate="2017-01-25T13:04:52.223" UserId="31260" Comment="typo in title corrected" Text="|discussion|specific-question|close-reasons|opinion-based|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24221" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8421" RevisionGUID="609c7851-3cf4-4245-a5a2-b8f5a4f2d530" CreationDate="2017-01-26T10:20:30.857" UserId="75084" Text="This question essentially has a yes/no answer. From responses so far it seems like the answer is 'no', and the only way it could be 'yes' is if someone has  specific knowledge about NuGet processes that I do not have, which would be objective and verifiable information. I can't see where opinion comes into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/340715/can-i-be-sure-that-an-unofficially-uploaded-nuget-package-is-genuine][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/340715/can-i-be-sure-that-an-unofficially-uploaded-nuget-package-is-genuine" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24222" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8421" RevisionGUID="609c7851-3cf4-4245-a5a2-b8f5a4f2d530" CreationDate="2017-01-26T10:20:30.857" UserId="75084" Text="Why is this question considered opinion based?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24223" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8421" RevisionGUID="609c7851-3cf4-4245-a5a2-b8f5a4f2d530" CreationDate="2017-01-26T10:20:30.857" UserId="75084" Text="|discussion|close-reasons|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24224" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8422" RevisionGUID="303c9daa-4702-4ea9-a43b-1ebef1ed2f30" CreationDate="2017-01-26T11:21:41.757" UserId="4" Text="All it took was a few minor edits to make the question into something that could be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, I changed the yes/no to an explicit how/why question. It may not seem like it's important, but it is. A question that is clearly asking how/why tends to attract better answers. Questions that ask yes/no questions tend to attract drive-by answers that don't explain how or why. Having a title that is a yes/no question attracts low quality answers and it's easier to put a question on hold than to monitor answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, I removed a question inside the body that asks about what NuGet does. We aren't technical or customer support for someone else's product, so we can't answer what they do or don't do. Also, their policies may change at any moment in time, so it helps to ensure that answers stay more relevant if we don't get into organizational policies and rules." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24226" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8423" RevisionGUID="40996e69-44f4-49e1-84a4-9ac5602c7d4f" CreationDate="2017-01-29T12:01:21.703" UserId="60357" Text="It's time to choose a [Question of the Week][qotw-original]! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like. [Last week][prev], we picked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [*Is there a programming paradigm that promotes making dependencies extremely obvious to other programmers?* by Christs_Chin](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/340356)&#xD;&#xA; - [*How to specify a precondition (LSP) in an interface in C#?* by Achilles](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/340316)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggest the next Question of the Week** by answering here with a link to the question, and a short explanation why it's an exemplary on topic question. You may suggest any question that was posted between 2017-01-22 and 2017-01-28 and is not closed. You can use this [search query][eligible-search] to quickly find good candidates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote on suggestions** to select the next Question of the Week. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next sunday. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote for this meta question** if you like the Question of the Week contest. This makes the contest more visible in the community bulletin on the right. It also indicates whether this contest should be continued. After this week, I'll open up a discussion on whether we want these contests to continue, and what could be improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[qotw-original]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8359&#xD;&#xA;[eligible-search]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017-01-22..2017-01-28%20closed%3ano%20score%3a1&#xD;&#xA;[prev]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8412" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24227" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8423" RevisionGUID="40996e69-44f4-49e1-84a4-9ac5602c7d4f" CreationDate="2017-01-29T12:01:21.703" UserId="60357" Text="Vote for the Question of the Week! (Jan 2017 #4)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24228" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8423" RevisionGUID="40996e69-44f4-49e1-84a4-9ac5602c7d4f" CreationDate="2017-01-29T12:01:21.703" UserId="60357" Text="|discussion|fun|question-of-the-week|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24229" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="8412" RevisionGUID="661ebeb4-daf3-4d3d-8da2-90783998e71a" CreationDate="2017-01-29T12:02:00.127" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[8423],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:60357,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;amon&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="24230" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8424" RevisionGUID="9b62c37b-e764-4d81-89ad-eb539860e083" CreationDate="2017-01-29T12:11:12.927" UserId="60357" Text="## [What are the actors in a backend server use case?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/341055/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A short, simple question about creating good use cases. And that makes it perfectly on topic. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24231" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8412" RevisionGUID="af2d0bc7-9572-4517-be25-f01775ee2ae7" CreationDate="2017-01-29T12:19:29.147" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|fun|question-of-the-week|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24232" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8425" RevisionGUID="72fcab92-4a86-4548-934d-8c34fd83727a" CreationDate="2017-01-29T12:29:20.793" UserId="60357" Text="## [Large class with single responsibility](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/341093)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Aka. “I have a god object, how can I cope with the complexity?” [Design reviews are considered on topic](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/6502/60357), so this kind of question is absolutely acceptable. Luckily for us, OP didn't show us the whole 2500 line class but only a representative sample, and has focussed the question on a single topic: how such a class can be made to obey the single-responsibility principle." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24233" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8423" RevisionGUID="52d41b0b-8d32-44dd-ab10-9c7ec7508504" CreationDate="2017-01-29T20:07:03.413" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/825797425675767817" />
  <row Id="24234" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8425" RevisionGUID="1d008f0c-c187-49e3-8ce2-fdc9316ae931" CreationDate="2017-01-29T20:49:06.887" UserId="52929" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="## [Large class with single responsibility](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/341093)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Aka. “I have a god object, how can I cope with the complexity?” [Design reviews are considered on topic](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/6502/60357), so this kind of question is absolutely acceptable. Luckily for us, OP didn't show us the whole 2500 line class but only a representative sample, and has focused the question on a single topic: how such a class can be made to obey the single-responsibility principle." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24235" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8426" RevisionGUID="749507b4-1f4c-47b2-96f4-6d083d958f60" CreationDate="2017-01-30T06:52:31.887" UserId="9113" Text="## [Professional way to produce a large problem without filling up huge arrays: C++, free memory from part of an array](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/340803/professional-way-to-produce-a-large-problem-without-filling-up-huge-arrays-c)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though worded in terms of &quot;C++&quot;, this is clearly an conceptual problem for a real problem the OP faces, and the topmost answer shows there is a non-trivial, but canonical solution for it. This is the kind of question this site is ideal for." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24236" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8427" RevisionGUID="ba890b7b-b33e-4603-8834-536f864e5de1" CreationDate="2017-01-30T07:00:31.350" UserId="9113" Text="## [When should dependencies be updated?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/340705/when-should-dependencies-be-updated)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Configuration management is one of the central topics in the SDLC, and this question is about a burning issue for many development teams. Moreover, this is nothing you can easily read in a text book, a good answer needs some real world experience. Though the topic seems to be broad and to some degree opinionated at a first glance, the question can be answered in a very sensible manner in a few paragraphs." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24237" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8426" RevisionGUID="ba4aa546-0357-48c7-b3dd-b80241d69bb2" CreationDate="2017-01-30T07:02:10.053" UserId="9113" Comment="added 45 characters in body" Text="## [Professional way to produce a large problem without filling up huge arrays: C++, free memory from part of an array](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/340803/professional-way-to-produce-a-large-problem-without-filling-up-huge-arrays-c)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though worded in terms of &quot;C++&quot;, this is clearly an conceptual problem for a real problem the OP faces, mostly independent from the programming language.The topmost answer shows there is a non-trivial, but canonical solution for it. This is the kind of question this site is ideal for." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24238" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8428" RevisionGUID="5d1aefc4-ae35-4f6a-8c1b-65e7dc043956" CreationDate="2017-01-30T12:58:46.923" UserId="1352" Text="##http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/341138/1352&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An interesting question about how to “recover” from when the ideal TDD cycle goes wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usually, TDD is only presented in terms of “best-case examples”. Maybe, there will be a mention of what not to test, or when to skip the green-refactor bit when it is really obvious how the fully-refactored feature-complete implementation should look like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, most books and tutorials are very light on what to do when the TDD cycle goes awry. What if a test doesn't test what you think it does? Or, as is the case in this question: the test is simply *wrong*?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only is this question a good question, it is also a question whose answers expand the sum total knowledge about software engineering in an area where not much (if any) knowledge was previously recorded." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24239" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8426" RevisionGUID="46124c34-7d39-4b7e-9e9f-b331ebcbdd28" CreationDate="2017-01-30T13:01:36.473" UserId="9113" Comment="added 3 characters in body" Text="## [Professional way to produce a large problem without filling up huge arrays: C++, free memory from part of an array](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/340803/professional-way-to-produce-a-large-problem-without-filling-up-huge-arrays-c)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though worded in terms of &quot;C++&quot;, this is clearly an conceptual question about a real problem the OP faces, mostly independent from the programming language.The topmost answer shows there is a non-trivial, but canonical solution for it. This is the kind of question this site is ideal for." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24240" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8429" RevisionGUID="ff88896b-e3ff-4d54-9f86-b1148a5cadea" CreationDate="2017-02-02T13:54:50.083" UserId="33171" Text="It is a bit late into this new year, being that we're already in the second month, but we are now cycling the Community Promotion Ads for 2017!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What are Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA; - cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA; - anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we reset the ads every year?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that if high DPI.&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB&#xD;&#xA; - If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently **6**) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ads/display/8429" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24241" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8429" RevisionGUID="ff88896b-e3ff-4d54-9f86-b1148a5cadea" CreationDate="2017-02-02T13:54:50.083" UserId="33171" Text="Community Promotion Ads - 2017" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="24243" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8430" RevisionGUID="df429b9f-b534-4a79-92cf-97304d3cc22a" CreationDate="2017-02-02T13:54:50.083" UserId="33171" Text="[![Follow us on Twitter!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/va0cF.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://twitter.com/stackprogrammer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24244" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8431" RevisionGUID="a43d65e9-1c1b-463c-9414-e156ade6456a" CreationDate="2017-02-02T20:29:22.477" UserId="154764" Text="[![Proposed Q&amp;A site for everyday objects embedded with electronics to be sensed, monitored, and controlled remotely][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/94224/internet-of-things?referrer=c6SXNFchPAkRxGMuCsy-JA2&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/L3cny.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24245" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8431" RevisionGUID="8f89df58-8a6f-4b34-8e0d-61dd8828568a" CreationDate="2017-02-03T19:00:36.863" UserId="154764" Comment="edited body" Text="[![Proposed Q&amp;A site for everyday objects embedded with electronics to be sensed, monitored, and controlled remotely][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/94224/internet-of-things?referrer=c6SXNFchPAkRxGMuCsy-JA2&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CzkJ2.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24250" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8431" RevisionGUID="cb977807-5369-4b62-b33b-9a6392c5c15e" CreationDate="2017-02-04T09:01:00.397" UserId="154764" Comment="deleted 70 characters in body" Text="[![Proposed Q&amp;A site for everyday objects embedded with electronics to be sensed, monitored, and controlled remotely][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://iot.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CzkJ2.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24252" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8433" RevisionGUID="f5c90c59-ed66-4265-945e-6572a30c20a9" CreationDate="2017-02-05T07:27:49.690" UserId="100777" Text="[![Check out the Area 51 Remote Sensing Proposal][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/ads/proposal/90327.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/90327/geomatics-and-remote-sensing?referrer=8G2asYAyI_To9RoVf1VtPg2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24253" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8434" RevisionGUID="cf1f35f9-c0a4-4555-ba09-6c66b4441766" CreationDate="2017-02-05T09:07:32.410" UserId="60357" Text="There have now been four instalments of the Question of the Week, and it's time to review that. Going forward, we should decide:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Do we want to continue with a Question of the Week?&#xD;&#xA;     If so:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     - What can we improve?&#xD;&#xA;     - Should we switch from a weekly rhythm to another cadence, e.g. monthly or bi-weekly?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Background is that the community participation has been … spotty. Some weeks seem to have been fairly popular, but other weeks saw little participation outside of a core group. Understandably, there have been repeated calls to terminate the QotW.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My personal opinion is that the QotW is doing OK but not great. Participation seems to be highly dependent on the [phase of the moon][potm], but has consistently been at acceptable levels for this to continue. I'd just wish more people would post *suggestions*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [potm]: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/P/phase-of-the-moon.html&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Aggregated Data for Discussion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links and notes on influencing events:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 1: [question][q1], [timeline][t1].&#xD;&#xA;- 2: [question][q2], [timeline][t2]. Significant other meta discussion during this week, didn't become hot meta post until mid-week.&#xD;&#xA;- 3: [question][q3], [timeline][t3]. Was made a featured question.&#xD;&#xA;- 4: [question][q4], [timeline][t4]. Featured call to action to vote for the question itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[q1]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8380/&#xD;&#xA;[t1]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/8380/timeline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[q2]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8398/&#xD;&#xA;[t2]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/8398/timeline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[q3]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8412/&#xD;&#xA;[t3]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/8412/timeline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[q4]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8423/&#xD;&#xA;[t4]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/8423/timeline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question votes over the week:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Q | S M T W T F S S | Total | Views&#xD;&#xA;    1 | 3 2 0 0 0 1 1 0 |     7 |   210&#xD;&#xA;    2 | 1 1 3 3 0 1 1 0 |    10 |   195&#xD;&#xA;    3 | 4 1 0 0 0 0 1 2 |     8 |   219&#xD;&#xA;    4 | 8 1 0 3 0 0 1 0 |    13 |   174&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Votes taken from the question timeline, views read from the sidebar.&#xD;&#xA;Votes after the end of the week were not considered.&#xD;&#xA;Note that views are not shown over time, and therefore also include views after the end of the week.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Final vote distribution on answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Q | #A | Answers&#xD;&#xA;    1 |  3 | 6, 5, 4&#xD;&#xA;    2 |  4 | 5, 3, 3, 2&#xD;&#xA;    3 |  3 | 6, 6, 3&#xD;&#xA;    4 |  5 | 8, 4, 4, 3, 3&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggestion count per user:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    9, 4, 1, 1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24254" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8434" RevisionGUID="cf1f35f9-c0a4-4555-ba09-6c66b4441766" CreationDate="2017-02-05T09:07:32.410" UserId="60357" Text="Evaluating the Question of the Week" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24255" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8434" RevisionGUID="cf1f35f9-c0a4-4555-ba09-6c66b4441766" CreationDate="2017-02-05T09:07:32.410" UserId="60357" Text="|discussion|question-of-the-week|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24256" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8435" RevisionGUID="03666619-24a6-4b88-bfb4-f74f60fe5be5" CreationDate="2017-02-05T09:10:44.997" UserId="60357" Text="It's time to choose a [Question of the Week][qotw-original]! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like. [Last week][prev], we picked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [*How to correct a mistake in the test, after writing implementation* by Attilio](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/341138)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggest the next Question of the Week** by answering here with a link to the question, and a short explanation why it's an exemplary on topic question. You may suggest any question that was posted between 2017-01-22 and 2017-01-28 and is not closed. You can use this [search query][eligible-search] to quickly find good candidates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote on suggestions** to select the next Question of the Week. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next sunday. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote for this meta question** if you like the Question of the Week contest. This makes the contest more visible in the community bulletin on the right. Please also look at the [Question of the Week Evaluation](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8434) where we discuss whether this contest should be continued, and what could be improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[qotw-original]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8359&#xD;&#xA;[eligible-search]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017-01-29..2017-02-04%20closed%3ano%20score%3a1&#xD;&#xA;[prev]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8423" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24257" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8435" RevisionGUID="03666619-24a6-4b88-bfb4-f74f60fe5be5" CreationDate="2017-02-05T09:10:44.997" UserId="60357" Text="Vote for the Question of the Week! (Feb 2017 #1)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24258" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8435" RevisionGUID="03666619-24a6-4b88-bfb4-f74f60fe5be5" CreationDate="2017-02-05T09:10:44.997" UserId="60357" Text="|discussion|fun|question-of-the-week|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24259" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="8423" RevisionGUID="6df4e147-b24a-4abd-ac25-1fff1041cfd5" CreationDate="2017-02-05T09:11:17.410" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[8435],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:60357,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;amon&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="24260" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8436" RevisionGUID="e0de7f02-1557-4e54-a421-fc7bdf3a128c" CreationDate="2017-02-05T15:24:38.960" UserId="60357" Text="## [When to use a static method instead of a constructor?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/341545/60357)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A very good design-level question with regard to single-method objects: If an object is essentially just a function, when should I pass any arguments as arguments to the function (`new F().call(args)`), and when should I store the arguments as fields through the constructor (`new F(args).call()`)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24264" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8438" RevisionGUID="84b8da98-6320-4685-9b78-e130b69b3d48" CreationDate="2017-02-05T18:08:21.013" UserId="124448" Text="[![Technical-writing questions on Writers.SE][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/DORI2.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/technical-writing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24265" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8439" RevisionGUID="37bee39d-b499-4660-bb5a-85213598305c" CreationDate="2017-02-05T21:04:15.090" UserId="60357" Text="## [Python - Architecture for related instance attributes](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/341260/60357)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A design level question. It's a bit long to summarize here, but OP does a superb job of showing possible solutions which they tried, and how these are unsatisfactory solutions to the problem. I wish every question here was as well thought out!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24266" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8435" RevisionGUID="748b078f-f4fc-4519-9809-a883152ef210" CreationDate="2017-02-05T21:40:07.803" UserId="60357" Comment="oops, updated the date" Text="It's time to choose a [Question of the Week][qotw-original]! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like. [Last week][prev], we picked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [*How to correct a mistake in the test, after writing implementation* by Attilio](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/341138)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggest the next Question of the Week** by answering here with a link to the question, and a short explanation why it's an exemplary on topic question. You may suggest any question that was posted between 2017-01-29 and 2017-02-04 and is not closed. You can use this [search query][eligible-search] to quickly find good candidates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote on suggestions** to select the next Question of the Week. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next sunday. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote for this meta question** if you like the Question of the Week contest. This makes the contest more visible in the community bulletin on the right. Please also look at the [Question of the Week Evaluation](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8434) where we discuss whether this contest should be continued, and what could be improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[qotw-original]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8359&#xD;&#xA;[eligible-search]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017-01-29..2017-02-04%20closed%3ano%20score%3a1&#xD;&#xA;[prev]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8423" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24267" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8429" RevisionGUID="af508fd0-9170-4ca1-8ef2-80d46f19b1c8" CreationDate="2017-02-06T23:30:45.197" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/828747789626703872" />
  <row Id="24268" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8440" RevisionGUID="ebb8252a-f277-4214-bbeb-90dfbe916229" CreationDate="2017-02-07T18:42:14.853" UserId="187812" Text="[![Check out the Area 51 DevOps Proposal!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/ads/proposal/97295.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/97295/devops?referrer=cZS_mCq3NdL7h376hrOevQ2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24269" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8417" RevisionGUID="6ae22aa6-2aaf-49ea-be5c-e50c1942df62" CreationDate="2017-02-08T01:37:40.943" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="Assumed your flowchart is showing a high-level design of a piece of software, asking for [reviewing the design **can be on topic**][1], as long as the question is **clearly focused** on some aspects of the design, and not just asking for a broad discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6502/are-design-review-questions-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24270" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8441" RevisionGUID="563b083b-b4f9-4b1e-9acc-dfc8b2719c2f" CreationDate="2017-02-10T11:07:34.453" UserId="31260" Text="I think it is worth running this initiative for a month or two more (and then re-check again).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lately site community does pretty well on quick removal of inappropriate questions and as a result site front page shows mostly on-topic, reasonably solid, interesting questions. (Those less familiar with site history can [take a look here](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7257) to compare how it was different in not so distant past.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This naturally gives us more opportunity and time to [reflect on good questions](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8359/31260), what makes them good, what makes some of them better than others:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are well-written, interesting, reasonably-scoped, and illustrate the kind of subject matter we'd like to see on the website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So far it looks interesting and useful, at least to me. Studying [meta-tag:question-of-the-week] suggestions and explanations given for these helps me better understand what makes a good question at this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Not to mention how much better it feels compared to the past when we were breaking our minds on why site is so polluted with coding help and career advice mess.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't made up my mind on whether it is desirable to keep this activity for really long term but for next month or two I would really appreciate seeing it going on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Speaking of too few suggestions, while your concern looks reasonable it is also worth taking into account that making these takes non-trivial effort. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, one needs to carefully check quite a lot of questions prior to suggesting one. For example search shows 40+ &quot;candidate questions&quot; for this week, and it hasn't yet even ended. Next, one need to write a compelling explanation for why they believe the question is good, it is also not easy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One thing that can maybe make it a bit easier to suggest is to provide readers with search parameters and URL to look through potentially worthy questions posted during the particular week, for example like this: [created:2017-02-05..2017-02-11 closed:no locked:no score:1](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=created%3a2017-02-05..2017-02-11%20closed%3ano%20locked%3ano%20score%3a1)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24271" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7571" RevisionGUID="e8863861-89ce-4ed2-8ab5-5f155b14e25f" CreationDate="2017-02-10T18:44:41.207" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Programmers -&gt; Software Engineering" Text="The general guidance is simple: don't. Never recommend to another user that they should take their question somewhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Never use a comment to suggest other sites - it simply leads to cross-posting. And if the question isn't a high quality question or isn't appropriate for the community that you suggest, and it ends up getting down votes and close votes on the other site, the asker could end up in a situation where they encounter an automatic question ban. That's not a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a user asks a question on Software Engineering, first see if it's on-topic here. Some subjects may be on-topic on multiple sites. For example, questions about data structures and algorithms may be on-topic on both Software Engineering and [Computer Science][1], questions about Scrum may be on-topic on both Software Engineering and [Project Management][2], and questions about using an open-source project in your project may be on-topic on both Software Engineering and [Open Source][3]. This is OK and to be expected. Each site is a community of experts, and experts in different fields may have overlapping knowledge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you've asked the question and you think it should be migrated to another site, do flag it for moderator attention. You can do this right away, if you feel that you've posted here in error, or you can wait a while.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you aren't the asker of the question, then you have a few options...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is off-topic on Software Engineering and you can vote to migrate it to the appropriate site, please do so. Software Engineering has a migration target to Stack Overflow that is open to everyone to use. If you think it is off-topic here and needs to go somewhere else, flag it for moderator review. Moderators can migrate questions to any site on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is not off-topic on Software Engineering, simply do nothing... at least right away. If it's been a while and it's not getting answers or you think that it would get better answers somewhere else, flag it for moderator attention. Explain why you think it would get better answers somewhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you know of similar questions on other sites, do link to those as comments. They may be helpful to the asker. If you feel like it, it's OK to reference answers on other sites, remembering the proper attribution required by [CC BY-SA license][4] that applies to all content on Stack Exchange. You could build a summary answer of knowledge on one or more sites. If you feel that it's appropriate, you can also make answers Community Wiki to lower the barrier to entry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I made a little flowchart to go through how I think when I open any question. I first read it, and then go through this process:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![question flow][5]][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/QfTKg.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24272" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7570" RevisionGUID="3f5f8560-e866-42bc-8ba8-ffca56dedc39" CreationDate="2017-02-10T18:46:07.307" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Programmers -&gt; Software Engineering" Text="The general rule is to not recommend other sites in comments.  It's more effective to flag the question for moderator attention and explain why the question would be a good fit on the other site.  Recommending other sites frequently leads to cross-posts and split content across sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if you really need to recommend another site in a comment, there are several things to keep in mind when making the recommendation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Each site has a help center with a list of on-topic topics: here is the one for [Software Engineering][1]. Before recommending that a user post on another site, please be familiar with what is on-topic there. That page will typically have links to meta questions that go into more detail. _If you are not sure if a question is appropriate for another site, the answer is &quot;no&quot;_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If a question is more appropriate for another site, it may still need editing to meet quality guidelines. _We do not migrate questions that will be immediately closed because of quality_. Nor do we encourage users to cross-post questions that will be immediately closed because of quality. _Fix the question first_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * It may be more appropriate to let the question close. The user can then ask in the other site's chat or meta for help _before_ reposting the question, with a link to the closed question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * We can edit the closed question and either reopen it and migrate it if there is a migration path, or flag it for a moderator to migrate it if there is not a migration path (moderators can migrate to any site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you are not sure where a question belongs _and_ you feel it is a good-quality question, the right thing to do is join [The Whiteboard chat][2] and ask what to do. If you have enough reputation to leave a comment, you also have enough reputation to [join chat][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Finally, you can always just do nothing. Stack Exchange uses community moderation: there are enough active members in the community that not everyone needs to speak up about every issue. Someone else who has a better feel for the situation will come along and take care of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24273" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7579" RevisionGUID="22bccfed-f934-46ce-ae78-431850f64e4f" CreationDate="2017-02-10T18:47:01.927" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Programmers -&gt; Software Engineering" Text="In general, do not suggest posting between sites. What generally happens is the asker goes ahead and asks again without heeding the advice &quot;...but check the help center&quot; or &quot;...but delete this one first.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only acceptable time to propose posting on another site is when the following three conditions are met:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The question is closed on Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Portions of the question are applicable on _different_ sites. For example: a question that asks about software design _and_ licensing. It would then be appropriate to say &quot;now that it is closed, split this into two questions. Keep the first half here, ask the second half at [Open Source][1].&quot; Once the edits are done, we reopen the on-topic half here at Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The person making the recommendation is intimately familiar with the scope of both sites. He would be comfortable with [the moderators at both sites being violent psychopaths who knows where he lives][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/876089" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24274" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7569" RevisionGUID="dec6b4d3-6d3d-4ca7-ad6e-bd36b4c877a1" CreationDate="2017-02-10T18:48:48.397" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Programmers -&gt; Software Engineering" Text="We have all seen it: a user asks a question on Software Engineering that belongs on a different site. There are many technology sites on Stack Exchange, and sometimes navigating the lot of them to find the right site for a question can be daunting for new users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, another user will respond to an off-topic question by saying &quot;post at site XYZ!&quot; The user who asked the question may then post a cross-site duplicate, which has its own set of problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The site recommendation might not be appropriate to begin with.&#xD;&#xA;* The question might be on-topic at the other site, but require editing to avoid being closed at that site.&#xD;&#xA;* Asking on multiple sites may result in _two_ messes to clean up.&#xD;&#xA;* The user asking the question gets bounced between sites, which is almost as bad as calling a cable company for customer support and being bounced between departments. _I just want an answer to my question and nobody here knows where I belong_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have guidance for specific instances of this issue ([What goes on Software Engineering (previously known as Programmers)? A guide for Stack Overflow][1] and [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?][2]), what is the general guidance for dealing with users who recommend asking on another site when the question is off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/7182/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/129598/&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24275" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6502" RevisionGUID="779a8b13-171a-47f9-82f2-e1ba08b92e40" CreationDate="2017-02-10T18:57:06.373" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Programmers -&gt; Software Engineering, updated help center text copied here." Text="There is a gray area between Software Engineering &amp; Code Review regarding design reviews.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Code Review's on-topic page][1] explicitly calls out design reviews as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, if your question is not about a particular piece of code and instead is a generally applicable question about …  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Higher-level architecture and design of software systems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From our [on-topic page][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * requirements, architecture, and design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would appear that a design review is on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it fails the applicability to programmers in general test, as a design review is essentially too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Note: this verbiage was removed since this question was asked&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why do I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Is this proper OO design for C++?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Was recently asked, and in the body of the question it was stated: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; From what I've read, design review is on-topic for this site (and off-topic for the Code Review site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'm opening it up here in Meta so we can hash out whether or not design review questions are on-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/230998/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24276" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6504" RevisionGUID="d5a347ac-bba0-47d8-b197-e769404105af" CreationDate="2017-02-10T18:59:06.840" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Grammarification" Text="I think that, generally, design review type questions are on-topic. However, the problem is how broad they are. My concern for this type of question is that most of them may be more suited to a discussion environment. I do think that there are good design review questions, but they need to be clear and specific and not soliciting general feedback. Specifically, in the question you linked to, this section has me most concerned over its viability:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm looking for a general review of my OO design, use of UML, and use&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of C++ features. I especially just want to know if I'm doing anything&#xD;&#xA;&gt; considerably wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Any sort of feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would expect a good design review question to focus on a particular aspect of the design (or the representation of the design, which would also be valid). I'm not sure this particular question does that well. But it's not off-topic, just too broad or unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Borrowing from [gnat's answer][1] (which borrows from [the guidelines used at Code Review][2]):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does your question contain design? Design should be embedded in the body of the post and not linked to. Design notation should be explained to ensure that it is well understood, especially if non-standard notations are used. Design should contain text, images and diagrams, and perhaps some examples of code if necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do you want the design to be good design, (i.e. not design-golfing, obfuscation, or similar)? We are practical people on Programmers, and many of us are professional software developers. We answer questions in the context of building production-ready systems that are understandable, maintainable, and meet other functional and quality requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To the best of your knowledge, does the design work? Your design should at least be functional. You may be seeking input on improving your design, or perhaps correcting issues that are preventing you from achieving your quality requirements (such as performance or testability). However, your design should work and achieve the functional requirements of what you are building.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have you identified specific areas of concern in your design? Simply dropping in a functional design with details isn't sufficient. What aspects of your design need improving? Are you having trouble testing your design (at any level of testing)? Is your design not performing as well as it should or needs to (and in what ways is it under performing)? Are you having trouble scaling your design? You should come with a small number of specific problems that you are trying to get resolved.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you  answered yes to all the above questions, your question is on-topic for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; design review at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6505/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24277" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8435" RevisionGUID="a8d5176e-d98b-4679-a35e-8164eac23814" CreationDate="2017-02-10T21:52:47.653" UserId="31260" Comment="http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8434/evaluating-the-question-of-the-week?cb=1#comment26575_8441" Text="It's time to choose a [Question of the Week][qotw-original]! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like. [Last week][prev], we picked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [*How to correct a mistake in the test, after writing implementation* by Attilio](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/341138)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggest the next Question of the Week** by answering here with a link to the question, and a short explanation why it's an exemplary on topic question. You may suggest any question that was posted between 2017-01-29 and 2017-02-04 and is not closed. You can **[use this search query][eligible-search]** to quickly find promising candidates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote on suggestions** to select the next Question of the Week. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next Sunday. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote for this meta question** if you like the Question of the Week contest. This makes the contest more visible in the community bulletin on the right. Please also look at the [Question of the Week Evaluation](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8434) where we discuss whether this contest should be continued, and what could be improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[qotw-original]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8359&#xD;&#xA;[eligible-search]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017-01-29..2017-02-04%20closed%3ano%20score%3a1&#xD;&#xA;[prev]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8423" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24278" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8442" RevisionGUID="82640551-e6ef-4a38-99a5-fe8c13edf496" CreationDate="2017-02-12T07:57:38.733" UserId="60357" Text="It's time to choose a [Question of the Week][qotw-original]! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like. [Last week][prev], we picked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [*Python - Architecture for related instance attributes* by John T](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/341260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggest the next Question of the Week**: just [pick a good question from this search query][eligible-search] and post the link as an answer. If you want to, add a short explanation why the suggested question is great. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote on suggestions** to select the next Question of the Week. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next Sunday. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote for this meta question** if you like the Question of the Week contest. This makes the contest more visible in the community bulletin on the right. Please also look at the [Question of the Week Evaluation](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8434) where we discuss whether this contest should be continued, and what could be improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[qotw-original]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8359&#xD;&#xA;[eligible-search]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017-02-05..2017-02-11%20closed%3ano%20score%3a1&#xD;&#xA;[prev]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8435" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24279" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8442" RevisionGUID="82640551-e6ef-4a38-99a5-fe8c13edf496" CreationDate="2017-02-12T07:57:38.733" UserId="60357" Text="Vote for the Question of the Week! (Feb 2017 #2)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24280" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8442" RevisionGUID="82640551-e6ef-4a38-99a5-fe8c13edf496" CreationDate="2017-02-12T07:57:38.733" UserId="60357" Text="|discussion|fun|question-of-the-week|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24281" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="8435" RevisionGUID="c40ea255-d938-4e70-93c2-647af874830c" CreationDate="2017-02-12T07:58:10.640" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[8442],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:60357,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;amon&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="24282" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8443" RevisionGUID="9c9465a5-a3d8-44c7-9c34-ee58bf5e9420" CreationDate="2017-02-12T11:35:39.473" UserId="217863" Text="I am wanting to write a little math training game that can run in the browser where users can do exercises with, addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, in a range from 0 - 100.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The exercises are in this form. 12 - __ = 8, or 5 x   6 = __ or __ / 4  = 3,&#xD;&#xA;where basically the result can be filled into the equation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I am looking for advice what language/framework and set up could be used and not really sure where to ask this. SO or Software Engineering or somewhere else?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24283" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8443" RevisionGUID="9c9465a5-a3d8-44c7-9c34-ee58bf5e9420" CreationDate="2017-02-12T11:35:39.473" UserId="217863" Text="Where to ask a question about what language/framework to best use for coding a math game?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24284" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8443" RevisionGUID="9c9465a5-a3d8-44c7-9c34-ee58bf5e9420" CreationDate="2017-02-12T11:35:39.473" UserId="217863" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24285" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8443" RevisionGUID="f0876c21-e230-427c-8e41-db565c54f73a" CreationDate="2017-02-12T11:46:35.233" UserId="217863" Comment="edited title" Text="Where to ask a question about what language/framework to use for coding a math game?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24286" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8444" RevisionGUID="f6553007-66b0-42b2-96b6-da7440fea857" CreationDate="2017-02-12T13:05:36.107" UserId="4" Text="The question wouldn't fit on either Stack Overflow or Software Engineering. It may fit on [Software Recommendations][1], but [they have very strict guidelines for what a question should look like][2]. In general, it's very difficult to make a question like this fit in the Q&amp;A format - it tends to attract opinions rather than facts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24287" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="8443" RevisionGUID="16c3b86d-73e4-437a-a441-49498cc72e06" CreationDate="2017-02-12T13:05:41.140" UserId="4" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[8066],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:4,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Thomas Owens&quot;}]}" />
  <row Id="24288" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8445" RevisionGUID="6558220e-43ca-4d54-b7f0-2a942d856ef6" CreationDate="2017-02-12T18:31:56.957" UserId="60357" Text="## [Anemic REST and DDD](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/341782/60357)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A design-level question. How fine-grained should our URL structure be when designing a REST API?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24289" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8446" RevisionGUID="f625c4ec-e4cf-4dd7-ad09-26cad89698fb" CreationDate="2017-02-12T18:33:32.790" UserId="60357" Text="## [WHEN is it most appropriate for a Development Team to create/update their definition of “Done”?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/341977/60357)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A process-level question. Very simple but also very important. I think this kind of question is a perfect example of the “Wiki” aspect in the original Stack Exchange concept." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24290" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8430" RevisionGUID="535307b3-faa0-4b76-b2be-8c82c9fd577b" CreationDate="2017-02-12T20:30:11.500" UserId="60357" Comment="updated link to use actual twitter handle – it was changed during the site rename :)" Text="[![Follow us on Twitter!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/va0cF.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://twitter.com/StackSoftEng" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24291" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8447" RevisionGUID="7a4a0721-9204-41b1-b844-994aef5245a9" CreationDate="2017-02-13T00:23:30.310" UserId="620" Text="(This question is a feature-request on the site infrastructure, i.e. interaction mechanics, not on the edit/review policy.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue of minor edits often crop up in various ways:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2852/when-can-i-reject-a-suggested-edit-for-being-minor&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6017/why-reject-as-too-minor&#xD;&#xA; * http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2588/are-micro-edits-on-new-posts-insignificant&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On one hand, many minor edits are well-intentioned, i.e. they improve the question or answer, and these improvements accumulate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, when minor edits and major edits are put into the same review queue, it overburdens reviewers. For this reason, the current practice (for some people) is to summarily reject minor edits, to discourage people from making minor edits in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would argue that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Discouraging people from making minor edits is ineffective, since they were not being told why it was rejected - they only knew it was rejected. To discourage effectively, the message need to be seen by the prospective edit submitter before they begin editing.&#xD;&#xA; * Discouraging people from making minor edits, in general, is a negative user experience (negative emotions), even if well-intentioned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hence, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * I am proposing a technical solution to the reviewer over-burdening problem: to put them into different queues, and to let reviewers choose what kind of edits (minor / major) they want to work on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * In the beginning, we let edit submitters self-indicate whether this edit shall be flagged as being minor. In parallel to this, we can also implement statistical means (in the backend) to classify an edit as being minor or major.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Please migrate, or copy-paste-delete this to the appropriate meta forum. Thanks.)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24292" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8447" RevisionGUID="7a4a0721-9204-41b1-b844-994aef5245a9" CreationDate="2017-02-13T00:23:30.310" UserId="620" Text="Can minor edits and major edits go into different queues?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24293" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8447" RevisionGUID="7a4a0721-9204-41b1-b844-994aef5245a9" CreationDate="2017-02-13T00:23:30.310" UserId="620" Text="|feature-request|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24294" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8442" RevisionGUID="adcb7867-f845-4800-9e29-315ffbe8664f" CreationDate="2017-02-13T09:08:39.360" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/831067550809255937" />
  <row Id="24295" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8448" RevisionGUID="d3535be7-c77a-4e0f-9b09-490f424644b8" CreationDate="2017-02-13T13:33:45.910" UserId="197929" Text="I was hoping to get some feedback on a Turing Machine I designed, but I'm not sure where to ask it appropriately. Code Review's [don't ask][1] page says &quot;We review code, not concepts, diagrams, or outlines. Whiteboard-style questions may be suitable on Software Engineering if they are specific.&quot; I realize that's necessarily vague with what's allowed here because it's a different exchange, but I haven't found any answer as to where Turing Machine diagrams would be on-topic for review, if anywhere. SE's [on-topic guidelines][2] is silent regarding diagrams or outlines. If Turing Machines *are* allowed, would they only be acceptable in image diagram format? Would its [7-tuple][3] be allowed as a list and table? Would an online simulator's code be acceptable if the website and a brief explanation of its code were given?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine#Formal_definition" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24296" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8448" RevisionGUID="d3535be7-c77a-4e0f-9b09-490f424644b8" CreationDate="2017-02-13T13:33:45.910" UserId="197929" Text="Are Turing Machine diagrams on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24297" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8448" RevisionGUID="d3535be7-c77a-4e0f-9b09-490f424644b8" CreationDate="2017-02-13T13:33:45.910" UserId="197929" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24298" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8449" RevisionGUID="04b9bd9a-c1cc-4ed3-a691-211809de132c" CreationDate="2017-02-13T13:42:46.000" UserId="4" Text="We have explicit [guidance for design review questions][1]. However, if you're asking about Turing Machines in the theoretical computer science sense, you may want to ask on [Computer Science][2] (check out their [Help Center][3] and [Meta][4] first, though). We tend to focus on building software systems, while Turing Machines are models of computation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6502/are-design-review-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.cs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24299" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8450" RevisionGUID="b651da2e-4f5c-44f9-8f10-e7924f7cb3e4" CreationDate="2017-02-14T12:09:08.637" UserId="9113" Text="##[How do I handle disagreement in a code review regarding an unlikely edge case?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/341576/9113)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Code reviews and decisions which edge cases to handle in unit tests are clearly within the scope, the question is well written, and it is not a hypothetical case but a problem from a real-world situation. Moreover, the number of votes for the question as well as for the answers show our community likes to see more questions of this kind. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24300" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8408" RevisionGUID="11db4e82-6608-456e-8a75-0958fa32b2e1" CreationDate="2017-02-14T15:01:41.747" UserId="9113" Comment="typo fixed" Text="You are asking the SE community why a specific vendor (in this case Google) made a decision to favor tool X over tool Y. Honestly, the community here is the wrong audience for such a question. If the Android NDK team at Goole  wrote something like &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*GCC in the NDK is now deprecated in favor of Clang.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and you want to know their reasoning behind that, you need to ask **them**, not us. A vendor like Google has typically a support channel [or forum][1] for such questions, and the SE sites are no replacement for these channels. The community here could only make wild guesses about the NDK team's motivation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, a quick google search reveals there are dozens of opinions around about &quot;GCC vs Clang - which one is better&quot;. You will find every kind of people saying something like &quot;GCC is better because its more mature&quot;, or &quot;Clang is better because it does not carry so much legacy code in it&quot;. So the whole topic is 100% opinionated. Obviously the Android NDK team seems to favor Clang *for their environment*. If they made extensive tests before they made this decision, or if they just threw a dice - we cannot tell you, if you want to know this, ask them, not us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/android-ndk" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24301" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8451" RevisionGUID="b14b2cbc-b474-453f-ae45-259d439d1baa" CreationDate="2017-02-15T04:17:01.007" UserId="31290" Text="My [answer][1] has the highest score (79 at time of posting) and has been accepted by the questioner.  (Thanks!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm a little unhappy with it though, and a couple of commenters have made valid points that I'd like to address.  What I don't want to do is breach etiquette.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not proposing a total re-write, just a bit of correction and rewording as well as adding a couple of points suggested by others in comments (with attribution of course).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this acceptable, intended behaviour by an author of an answer or is it distorting seeing as so many people have kindly up-voted me already?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Advice gratefully received.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/342141/estimating-time-costs-in-legacy-codebase/342145#342145" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24302" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8451" RevisionGUID="b14b2cbc-b474-453f-ae45-259d439d1baa" CreationDate="2017-02-15T04:17:01.007" UserId="31290" Text="Is it acceptable to edit an answer that's already accepted" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24303" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8451" RevisionGUID="b14b2cbc-b474-453f-ae45-259d439d1baa" CreationDate="2017-02-15T04:17:01.007" UserId="31290" Text="|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24304" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8452" RevisionGUID="4f9e3bcb-0fb5-4d89-bf8c-7a97f6b13bd3" CreationDate="2017-02-15T06:52:12.763" UserId="9113" Text="Sure it is acceptable, especially if it is just &quot;a bit of correction and rewording&quot;. The goal of this site is to produce excellent questions &amp; answers, and doing improvements to both at any time is part of the process. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the unlikely case someone is not happy with those changes, he/she can write a comment, and you can then decide if you revert the changes or not. And for the hypothetical case you would change the whole meaning of your answer, and the asker does not like your answer any more after the change, he can also accept a different answer at any time" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24305" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8452" RevisionGUID="dfa7f2cf-1724-4a9c-b8f1-c80134b97f89" CreationDate="2017-02-15T06:59:26.233" UserId="9113" Comment="added 160 characters in body" Text="Sure it is acceptable, especially if it is just &quot;a bit of correction and rewording&quot;. The goal of this site is to produce excellent questions &amp; answers, and doing improvements to both at any time is part of the process. And answers for which later readers do not have to scan through the comments to find additional corrections are better than answers for which this is necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the unlikely case someone is not happy with those changes, he/she can write a comment, and you can then decide if you revert the changes or not. For the hypothetical case you change the meaning of your answer in a way the asker does not like your answer any more after the change, he can also accept a different answer at any time (but I would not expect that happen in your case)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24306" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8452" RevisionGUID="5ac17f8c-7e85-4005-9a96-1e30c35b2b16" CreationDate="2017-02-15T18:54:27.203" UserId="9113" Comment="added 65 characters in body" Text="Sure it is acceptable, especially if it is just &quot;a bit of correction and rewording&quot;. The goal of this site is to produce excellent questions &amp; answers, and doing improvements to both at any time is part of the process. If there are comments below an answer mentioning things which should be corrected, is is much easier for later readers if they do not have to scan through the whole comments section to find these additional corrections.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the unlikely case someone is not happy with those changes, he/she can write another comment, and you can then decide if you revert the changes or not. For the hypothetical case you change the meaning of your answer in a way the asker does not like your answer any more after the change, he can also accept a different answer at any time (but I would not expect that happen in your case)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24307" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8452" RevisionGUID="df4f8b02-3972-4d40-a244-62aad982db00" CreationDate="2017-02-16T06:32:37.767" UserId="9113" Comment="edited body" Text="Sure it is acceptable, especially if it is just &quot;a bit of correction and rewording&quot;. The goal of this site is to produce excellent questions &amp; answers, and doing improvements to both at any time is part of the process. If there are comments below an answer mentioning things which should be corrected, it is much easier for later readers if they do not have to scan through the whole comments section to find these additional corrections.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the unlikely case someone is not happy with those changes, he/she can write another comment, and you can then decide if you revert the changes or not. For the hypothetical case you change the meaning of your answer in a way the asker does not like your answer any more after the change, he can also accept a different answer at any time (but I would not expect that happen in your case)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24308" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8434" RevisionGUID="d855588c-ac93-45c2-b0b9-f2867a0bf9bd" CreationDate="2017-02-18T15:18:19.183" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/832972518692618240" />
  <row Id="24309" PostHistoryTypeId="36" PostId="8453" RevisionGUID="a0f3f059-858f-4d92-97c5-9ee1d3dbec88" CreationDate="2017-02-19T09:54:39.730" UserId="-1" Comment="from http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/342539/why-cant-i-ask-a-question-about-a-career" />
  <row Id="24310" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8453" RevisionGUID="800d9b4a-da13-4ee1-a7f6-a7ae6455825b" CreationDate="2017-02-19T09:18:10.633" UserId="263081" Text="Why can't I ask a question about career progression? I posted a question last night and the question has been removed! I am a little shocked as to why I can't ask a question here? Is it because it's an opinion based and not a factual question?? If that's the case can someone please give me a factual answer as to where I can ask a question to someone who works in software development so I can get an actual answer please!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24311" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8453" RevisionGUID="800d9b4a-da13-4ee1-a7f6-a7ae6455825b" CreationDate="2017-02-19T09:18:10.633" UserId="263081" Text="Why can't I ask a question about a career?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24312" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8453" RevisionGUID="800d9b4a-da13-4ee1-a7f6-a7ae6455825b" CreationDate="2017-02-19T09:18:10.633" UserId="263081" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24313" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8208" RevisionGUID="da89fbbb-deac-44b9-8fe5-5d397210cb13" CreationDate="2017-02-19T11:04:36.023" UserId="4" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="**NO**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [Robert Harvey says](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8207/145)&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering is a site for asking questions directly related&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to the Systems Development Life Cycle (but not code troubleshooting or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; writing specific code).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic. They are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24314" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8454" RevisionGUID="e02f842e-217b-4107-bea2-27b0c8711b82" CreationDate="2017-02-19T11:08:13.750" UserId="4" Text="You can't ask such questions here because we, as a community have decided they we don't want them here. You'd probably have to search around Meta for the discussions, but we call this out in [the Help Center's /help/on-topic page][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24315" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8455" RevisionGUID="5865436e-1faf-4dcf-b049-d515cc278fbe" CreationDate="2017-02-19T11:10:30.387" UserId="60357" Text="It's time to choose a [Question of the Week][qotw-original]! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like. [Last week][prev], we picked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [*How do I handle disagreement in a code review regarding an unlikely edge case?* by Klik](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/341576)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggest the next Question of the Week**: just [pick a good question from this search query][eligible-search] and post the link as an answer. If you want to, add a short explanation why the suggested question is great. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote on suggestions** to select the next Question of the Week. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next Sunday. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote for this meta question** if you like the Question of the Week contest. This makes the contest more visible in the community bulletin on the right. Please also look at the [Question of the Week Evaluation](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8434) where we discuss whether this contest should be continued, and what could be improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[qotw-original]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8359&#xD;&#xA;[eligible-search]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017-02-12..2017-02-18%20closed%3ano%20score%3a1&#xD;&#xA;[prev]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8442" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24316" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8455" RevisionGUID="5865436e-1faf-4dcf-b049-d515cc278fbe" CreationDate="2017-02-19T11:10:30.387" UserId="60357" Text="Vote for the Question of the Week! (Feb 2017 #3)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24317" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8455" RevisionGUID="5865436e-1faf-4dcf-b049-d515cc278fbe" CreationDate="2017-02-19T11:10:30.387" UserId="60357" Text="|discussion|fun|question-of-the-week|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24318" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="8442" RevisionGUID="290f38ae-bf53-4fee-8993-870296fa1baf" CreationDate="2017-02-19T11:11:07.537" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[8455],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:60357,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;amon&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="24319" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8456" RevisionGUID="d9fdef92-2baa-40de-84db-e5f4ee3340a7" CreationDate="2017-02-19T11:27:20.743" UserId="60357" Text="## [Should every method return a value for Unit Testing?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/342263/60357)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is about adapting a design for testability. But it turns out to be a bit of an XY-problem. Since OP has provided a couple of code snippets for context and has expressed their *intention*, the answers were able to point out that the “system under test” doesn't just have to be a single method." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24320" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8457" RevisionGUID="bbe1b7ff-cf00-4ea1-92c2-285ef3657e32" CreationDate="2017-02-19T13:16:25.833" UserId="6586" Text="This is a site that is focused on objective answers to questions that are useful to many people over a long period of time. If you ask a question about your career, the answer likely will help only you, will likely only be valid for the time period shortly after you asked it, and will likely be highly opinionated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those factors (the answer is relevant only to you, only for now, and only based on opinion) go against the goals of this site. Because of that, the community has decided that career-related questions are inappropriate.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24321" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8458" RevisionGUID="7dc06925-65fa-40de-8c99-e0d6e2c99dde" CreationDate="2017-02-19T13:56:48.597" UserId="9113" Text="## [Effectively tracking changes to configuration from dev to prod](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/342462/effectively-tracking-changes-to-configuration-from-dev-to-prod)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly a &quot;Systems Lifecycle&quot; question, which needs combined organizational and technical measures, so undoubtly within the site's scope. Also a &quot;real life&quot; situation - I have encountered these kind of questions multiple times in the past, and I guess others, too. So I am a bit astonished the question did not get more attention last week - maybe it will get by my suggestion for the QotW here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24322" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8459" RevisionGUID="85d18ec3-c7bf-49fe-b7ea-286617ae21ae" CreationDate="2017-02-19T14:51:19.527" UserId="9113" Text="As far as I understand this [question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/342553/where-reliably-store-a-million-events-per-second), the OP is not asking *literally* where to store the event data, or which tool or database to use for, but **how** to do this. And that is obviously a conceptual question, which is IMHO within in the site's scope. Ok, the question misses to tell us what the OP already has tried or found so far, and some background about the environment he uses, but I guess this does not make the question so bad it deserves an immediate closing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24323" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8459" RevisionGUID="85d18ec3-c7bf-49fe-b7ea-286617ae21ae" CreationDate="2017-02-19T14:51:19.527" UserId="9113" Text="Why did this question get closed as a &quot;third party resource request&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24324" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8459" RevisionGUID="85d18ec3-c7bf-49fe-b7ea-286617ae21ae" CreationDate="2017-02-19T14:51:19.527" UserId="9113" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24325" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="8453" RevisionGUID="4ae7e7db-1a86-4fe7-b6a0-f2e5f0c20ca1" CreationDate="2017-02-19T16:50:24.310" UserId="47" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[8206],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:31260,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;gnat&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:5099,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Bart van Ingen Schenau&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:9113,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Doc Brown&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:47,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;ChrisF&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;GoldTagBadge&quot;:&quot;discussion&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="24326" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8460" RevisionGUID="c7197388-3c72-427b-927d-17db5a592b32" CreationDate="2017-02-20T14:19:35.100" UserId="60357" Text="I generally agree with the close votes. It is likely many answers would consist of irrelevant tech recommendations that are also quite possibly wrong. “I would use this NoSQL database”, “Google uses $x”, ….&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But we should judge the question, not hypothetical answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That still leads a rather broad, open-ended question. Real questions have answers. What is the correct answer to “What options do I have”? There isn't the one correct architecture for high-throughput event storage. If there are dozens of possible answers and each is “correct”, the question is too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, it seems like OP needs a *discussion* about their requirements. In that case, OP doesn't need a question-and-answer site, they need a colleague or consultant. In particular, they have provided many vague non-functional requirements for their system, but we lack all their context.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this question could perhaps be made suitable if the question would be about a concrete architecture, data structure, or design that OP is using to tackle their problems. But in its current form, I'm not going to vote for reopen." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24327" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8459" RevisionGUID="c12135f3-743f-4ea9-a4c4-482d0e03924a" CreationDate="2017-02-20T17:51:07.860" UserId="9113" Comment="added 20 characters in body" Text="As far as I understand this [question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/342553/where-reliably-store-a-million-events-per-second), the OP is not asking *literally* where to store the event data, or which tool or database to use for, but **how** to do this. And that is obviously a conceptual question, which is IMHO within in the site's scope. Ok, the question misses to tell us what the OP already has tried or found so far, and some background about the environment he uses, but I guess this does not make the question so bad it deserves a closing for an IMHO wrong reason and without any comment." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24328" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8461" RevisionGUID="c52fce46-d7f5-4134-a50e-8373498767eb" CreationDate="2017-02-20T18:01:49.020" UserId="4" Text="For the full details, please see the discussion on Meta Stack Exchange: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/291301/can-a-machine-be-taught-to-flag-spam-automatically&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, a user-created application that historically has much higher accuracy in identifying spam has been turned on for all sites in the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please direct any general discussion of this new application to the above Meta Stack Exchange discussion. Any discussion or questions as it pertains to Software Engineering is appropriate here - if it needs an answer, I can ping the right people." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24329" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8461" RevisionGUID="c52fce46-d7f5-4134-a50e-8373498767eb" CreationDate="2017-02-20T18:01:49.020" UserId="4" Text="A spam-flagging application has been turned on for Software Engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24330" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8461" RevisionGUID="c52fce46-d7f5-4134-a50e-8373498767eb" CreationDate="2017-02-20T18:01:49.020" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|spam|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24331" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8462" RevisionGUID="0e9383c3-17ce-4e94-8663-6b072834975c" CreationDate="2017-02-20T18:13:31.073" UserId="4" Text="I agree with [amon's answer][1]. The closure was valid, but the close reason was wrong. It gives the wrong idea about what needs to happen to fix the question. I fixed the close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/8460/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24332" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8461" RevisionGUID="17c9141d-9970-4d3a-91f5-fe3daa41f920" CreationDate="2017-02-20T18:18:41.930" UserId="4" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|featured|spam|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24333" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8461" RevisionGUID="7d67aa9a-0bbe-4261-aafa-141c795ff9fa" CreationDate="2017-02-20T18:20:40.510" UserId="4" Comment="added 38 characters in body" Text="For the full details, please see the discussion on Meta Stack Exchange: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/291301/can-a-machine-be-taught-to-flag-spam-automatically&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, a group of users have created an application that, historically, has much higher accuracy in identifying spam. This application has been turned on for all sites in the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please direct any general discussion of this new application to the above Meta Stack Exchange discussion. Any discussion or questions as it pertains to Software Engineering is appropriate here - if it needs an answer, I can ping the right people." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24334" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8461" RevisionGUID="7249c0c1-1312-414d-aedb-61a57504f83e" CreationDate="2017-02-20T18:29:05.237" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/833745302033154049" />
  <row Id="24335" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8463" RevisionGUID="a42a1d4a-eaac-49e1-af5a-f74878936475" CreationDate="2017-02-20T18:30:16.217" UserDisplayName="user86771" Text="As a point of reference, we don't detect much spam on Software Engineering: [see the list here](https://metasmoke.erwaysoftware.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&amp;title=&amp;body=&amp;username=&amp;why=&amp;site=330&amp;feedback=&amp;reason=&amp;user_rep_direction=%3E%3D&amp;user_reputation=0&amp;commit=Search). Some sites get more, some get less, and there isn't much rhyme or reason to it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At minimum autoflagging accuracy, we would have flagged only one post, from two months ago - [this one](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/339142) ([link for &lt;10kers](https://metasmoke.erwaysoftware.com/post/51801))." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24336" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8464" RevisionGUID="2a101dc5-442e-4764-8dac-77f3235a9230" CreationDate="2017-02-22T17:37:15.100" UserId="164151" Text="It is not clear to me what you expect to gain from your question, or rather, the possible answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If you have a function or language specification in math or English and designed a Turing machine that ought to implement it, and what you want to know is whether you've completed the task correctly, that sounds a lot like “please check my homework for me” which is not likely to become a well-received question and very likely won't help anybody else. This would be even more so if the question were “Please explain to me how this Turing machine works”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If you want to solve a practical programming task and decided to do it by formally specifying a Turing machine, you've probably picked just about the least appropriate technology for the task at hand. I don't see what a “review” should point out here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If you have designed a Turing machine in order to prove a theoretical lemma about computability or complexity, I'm afraid that this will be the wrong site to ask for comments. *Computer Science* might be an appropriate place but since I'm not active there and therefore not familiar with that site's scope, I'm somewhat hesitant to suggest you post it there just because their name sounds alright.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless I've missed a possibility, I'm afraid that the question seems off-topic either way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *do* post it, feel free to use a representation (diagram, table, natural language) that is most comprehensible. This choice might well depend on the machine itself. I can see no reason why any particular format should be mandated. Beware that graphical representations won't be approachable by people with visual impairments, though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24337" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8464" RevisionGUID="8831739e-1042-49b5-b0f7-34eede0b60b3" CreationDate="2017-02-22T17:47:11.313" UserId="164151" Comment="added 354 characters in body" Text="It is not clear to me what you expect to gain from your question, or rather, the possible answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If you have a function or language specification in math or English and designed a Turing machine that ought to implement it, and what you want to know is whether you've completed the task correctly, that sounds a lot like “please check my homework for me” which is not likely to become a well-received question and very likely won't help anybody else. This would be even more so if the question were “Please explain to me how this Turing machine works”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; You *might* try asking a question about “debugging” a Turing machine on Stack Overflow. If the question is not too localized, it should be appropriate. Personally, I might answer there. (A possibly appropriate question might ask “How can I reverse a word?”, “Is there a more efficient way to compact my tape?” or “Is this addition routine correct?”)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If you want to solve a practical programming task and decided to do it by formally specifying a Turing machine, you've probably picked just about the least appropriate technology for the task at hand. I don't see what a “review” should point out here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If you have designed a Turing machine in order to prove a theoretical lemma about computability or complexity, I'm afraid that this will be the wrong site to ask for comments. *Computer Science* might be an appropriate place but since I'm not active there and therefore not familiar with that site's scope, I'm somewhat hesitant to suggest you post it there just because their name sounds alright.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless I've missed a possibility, I'm afraid that the question seems off-topic either way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *do* post it, feel free to use a representation (diagram, table, natural language) that is most comprehensible. This choice might well depend on the machine itself. I can see no reason why any particular format should be mandated. Beware that graphical representations won't be approachable by people with visual impairments, though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24338" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8448" RevisionGUID="d8d94934-efde-44f0-b4d2-e5c400eb3dc3" CreationDate="2017-02-23T09:33:35.500" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/834697704525725697" />
  <row Id="24339" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8465" RevisionGUID="daf5fe6f-faad-4a29-92c5-f510bb0d9321" CreationDate="2017-02-24T10:16:08.410" UserId="979" Text="&#xD;&#xA;And, if I can’t ask it here, can you suggest a suitable S.O site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back when this site was called Programmers, the rule of thumb was that if you did it at a keyboard, you asked at S.O, and if you did it at a whiteboard, you asked here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is definitely a whiteboard question, but there are a lot of happy downvoters around these days, so I want to clear the question first. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want users to generate a floorplan, which I will display in HTML with (Angular)JS which will react appropriately when they click on a  room on the floorplan (with different behaviour for each room). &#xD;&#xA;Good topic/bad topic? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that I don’t know how to go about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would strongly prefer the users to produce their own floorplan, but, if I must, I am prepared to produce it or, even, to develop some software to let them produce it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tricky part there, I think, is getting the data to recognize what delineated each room. I have a very strong preference that this will work if the browser window is resized, but could just about live with a fixed size image).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see two possibilities: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1)	Find SVG image and some FOSS JS to detect which area was clicked (I ***do not*** want to code that myself ;-) This might affect how the floorplan gets drawn, and whether I can use some free FOSS to do so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2)	Either a kludge or a bright idea, I am not sure which. I knock up a floorplan drawing app; drag &amp; drop rooms, staircases, etc and offer a colo(u)r palette for a dozen or so colo(u)rs ***BUT***, each time the user choses a colo(u), I subtly tweak its RGB by one. I doubt that the human eye can distinguish 255 blue from 254 blur (or even 235 blue) – the software can. So, I would not need to know the outlines of the rooms, or have to worry about resizing the screen – just get the colo(u)r of the clicked pixel and that indicates the room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would prefer to use as much FOSS as possible, so the question seems like a candidate for [Software Recommendations][1], where [I did, indeed, ask it][2], without much luck.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I can’t get FOSS, then I have to design &amp; code it myself, so I am hoping that this question might fit here. What say you?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/39663/gratis-floorplan-drawing-software" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24340" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8465" RevisionGUID="daf5fe6f-faad-4a29-92c5-f510bb0d9321" CreationDate="2017-02-24T10:16:08.410" UserId="979" Text="May I ask this question here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24341" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8465" RevisionGUID="daf5fe6f-faad-4a29-92c5-f510bb0d9321" CreationDate="2017-02-24T10:16:08.410" UserId="979" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24342" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8466" RevisionGUID="c846daf9-4dca-4a56-b6ac-2b1bc5c2ff83" CreationDate="2017-02-24T11:18:18.073" UserId="4" Text="The question, as you've defined it here, seems to be either off-topic or too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are looking for tools and libraries, Software Recommendations is the place to go. [Finding or recommending things are explicitly off-topic here.][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, design questions are on-topic here. We even have [specific guidance for design review questions][2]. However, we also have guidance for [questions about where to start][3] or [&quot;blue sky&quot; / &quot;greenfield&quot; questions][4] - these types of questions tend to be too broad and need to be focused on particular design problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In your particular case, my recommendations would be to look at any options that Software Recommendations turns up and start prototyping software. If you have specific questions about problems with the design, those specific questions will likely be good here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6504/4&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/6366/4&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/6961/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24343" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8465" RevisionGUID="b91387ab-b997-40ed-92d5-d774bbe6c029" CreationDate="2017-02-24T12:27:38.533" UserId="979" Comment="deleted 2 characters in body" Text="And, if I can’t ask it here, can you suggest a suitable S.O site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back when this site was called Programmers, the rule of thumb was that if you did it at a keyboard, you asked at S.O, and if you did it at a whiteboard, you asked here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is definitely a whiteboard question, but there are a lot of happy downvoters around these days, so I want to clear the question first. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want users to generate a floorplan, which I will display in HTML with (Angular)JS which will react appropriately when they click on a  room on the floorplan (with different behaviour for each room). &#xD;&#xA;Good topic/bad topic? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that I don’t know how to go about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would strongly prefer the users to produce their own floorplan, but, if I must, I am prepared to produce it or, even, to develop some software to let them produce it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tricky part there, I think, is getting the data to recognize what delineated each room. I have a very strong preference that this will work if the browser window is resized, but could just about live with a fixed size image).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see two possibilities: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1)	Find SVG image and some FOSS JS to detect which area was clicked (I ***do not*** want to code that myself ;-) This might affect how the floorplan gets drawn, and whether I can use some free FOSS to do so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2)	Either a kludge or a bright idea, I am not sure which. I knock up a floorplan drawing app; drag &amp; drop rooms, staircases, etc and offer a colo(u)r palette for a dozen or so colo(u)rs ***BUT***, each time the user choses a colo(u), I subtly tweak its RGB by one. I doubt that the human eye can distinguish 255 blue from 254 blur (or even 235 blue) – the software can. So, I would not need to know the outlines of the rooms, or have to worry about resizing the screen – just get the colo(u)r of the clicked pixel and that indicates the room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would prefer to use as much FOSS as possible, so the question seems like a candidate for [Software Recommendations][1], where [I did, indeed, ask it][2], without much luck.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I can’t get FOSS, then I have to design &amp; code it myself, so I am hoping that this question might fit here. What say you?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/39663/gratis-floorplan-drawing-software" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24344" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8440" RevisionGUID="e0b7e39b-ed32-4b0b-82cd-6019caa381ca" CreationDate="2017-02-24T16:32:10.550" UserId="187812" Comment="dropped referal" Text="[![Check out the Area 51 DevOps Proposal!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/ads/proposal/97295.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/97295/devops" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24345" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8455" RevisionGUID="0c8848b7-32a3-4724-aea5-ec3ab0c82ff6" CreationDate="2017-02-24T21:47:36.980" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/835244815805624320" />
  <row Id="24346" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8467" RevisionGUID="0a69bf8c-8025-47b6-a251-05e2c89909c3" CreationDate="2017-02-26T09:35:48.567" UserId="60357" Text="It's time to choose a Question of the Week! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like. [Last week][prev], we picked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [*Effectively tracking changes to configuration from dev to prod* by Mathieu Fortin](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/342462)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggest the next Question of the Week**: just [pick a good question from this search query][eligible-search] and post the link as an answer. If you want to, add a short explanation why the suggested question is great. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote on suggestions** to select the next Question of the Week. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next Sunday. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote for this meta question** if you like the Question of the Week contest. This makes the contest more visible in the community bulletin on the right. Please also look at the [Question of the Week Evaluation](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8434) where we discuss whether this contest should be continued, and what could be improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[eligible-search]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017-02-19..2017-02-25%20closed%3ano%20score%3a1&#xD;&#xA;[prev]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/8455" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24347" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8467" RevisionGUID="0a69bf8c-8025-47b6-a251-05e2c89909c3" CreationDate="2017-02-26T09:35:48.567" UserId="60357" Text="Vote for the Question of the Week! (Feb 2017 #4)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24348" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8467" RevisionGUID="0a69bf8c-8025-47b6-a251-05e2c89909c3" CreationDate="2017-02-26T09:35:48.567" UserId="60357" Text="|discussion|fun|question-of-the-week|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24349" PostHistoryTypeId="10" PostId="8455" RevisionGUID="49e8fb9d-2a2d-4ec1-858f-0c5c0ff671fc" CreationDate="2017-02-26T09:36:36.147" UserId="-1" Comment="101" Text="{&quot;OriginalQuestionIds&quot;:[8467],&quot;Voters&quot;:[{&quot;Id&quot;:60357,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;amon&quot;},{&quot;Id&quot;:-1,&quot;DisplayName&quot;:&quot;Community&quot;,&quot;BindingReason&quot;:{&quot;DuplicateApprovedByAsker&quot;:&quot;&quot;}}]}" />
  <row Id="24350" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8468" RevisionGUID="5f616a97-7f47-4496-be62-d7589c969446" CreationDate="2017-02-26T10:06:10.567" UserId="60357" Text="## [How to convert the last rc (or other pre-release) into the production version using semver?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/342808/60357)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A process-level question: Now that I've built and tested v1.2.3-rc.2 of my software, how do I turn that into my v1.2.3 release?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24351" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8469" RevisionGUID="1b467e45-e75a-4dbd-b3b0-c0b7bbc7f27c" CreationDate="2017-02-26T10:08:33.430" UserId="60357" Text="## [Requirement Specification - How to write an “as much as possible” requisite](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/342743/60357)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not everything is a clear functional requirement. So how can I express and track soft design constraints?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24352" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8470" RevisionGUID="21b6fe48-39f5-4ba8-92d4-f6f4c4f5eb69" CreationDate="2017-02-27T15:46:04.290" UserId="9113" Text="## [Writing tests for code whose purpose I don't understand](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/342824/writing-tests-for-code-whose-purpose-i-dont-understand)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO the best questions here are ones which arise from real world software development situations, and this one fits perfectly into this category. Testing and refactoring is clearly within the scope of the site. And the number of votes show I am not the only one who liked this question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24353" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8470" RevisionGUID="08df8a31-957b-4b22-ad48-be2773dc30d0" CreationDate="2017-03-01T06:24:33.570" UserId="9113" Comment="added 15 characters in body" Text="## [Writing tests for code whose purpose I don't understand](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/342824/writing-tests-for-code-whose-purpose-i-dont-understand)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO the best questions here are ones which arise from real world software development situations, and this one fits perfectly into this category. Testing and refactoring is clearly and unambiguously within the scope of the site. And the number of votes shows many people here like questions like this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24358" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8472" RevisionGUID="986cf42d-3b5b-49cb-8437-830f90c32b6e" CreationDate="2017-03-05T12:17:10.437" UserId="263522" Text="I've got [a question regarding template specializations in C++](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/343505/when-one-should-use-template-specialization): I understand what this is, but do not understand when and why it should be used (examples that I have are not great). Quoting the last part:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My question being: when one should use template specialization in C++03/C++11? Alternative wording: what are some good examples of template specialization, like `std::swap` (if it is a good example at all)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A person suggested that this question is off-topic and pointed me to [Why do 'some examples' and 'list of things' questions get closed?](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7537/why-do-some-examples-and-list-of-things-questions-get-closed/7538#7538) question on meta. This Q&amp;A refers to help center and states that these these question are off-topic &quot;because there is no right answer&quot; (not answer**s**).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I agree with the reasoning, I was quite surprised that there is no place to ask about &quot;when to use X&quot; questions. So, I did some research. I started with [Is there a less restrictive Stack Exchange site specially suited for not too specific questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/252777/is-there-a-less-restrictive-stack-exchange-site-specially-suited-for-not-too-spe) question and corresponding [answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/253111/767632):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. Conceptual questions. That is covered on softwareengineering.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that &quot;when do I use X&quot; is a conceptual question. Still, comments suggest that &quot;Programmers&quot; (old name of softwareengineering) has its own rules and questions should not be opinion-based. Ok, let's look at Meta:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is a “best practice” question off topic?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/265928/is-a-best-practice-question-off-topic) on SO Meta. The answer suggests to ask &quot;best practices&quot; questions on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;* [Making “best practices” questions more palatable: how to ask a “best practice” question that is acceptable to the community?](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7091/making-best-practices-questions-more-palatable-how-to-ask-a-best-practice-q) on SE.SE Meta. Answers mainly suggest that one should ask for a solution of a _specific situation_, not about general &quot;best practices&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fair enough: looks like general questions are too board and opinion-based because different situations require different solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I've found several open popular question on both StackOverflow and softwareengineering which are, I think, similar to mine (all of them are of form &quot;when to use X&quot; and do not provide any specify problems that OPs try to solve). From SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Factory Pattern. When to use factory methods?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/69849/factory-pattern-when-to-use-factory-methods), +181.&#xD;&#xA;* [When should I use the Visitor Design Pattern?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/255214/when-should-i-use-the-visitor-design-pattern), +209.&#xD;&#xA;* [When to use a Class vs. Function in PHP](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2122123/when-to-use-a-class-vs-function-in-php), +50.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a bunch of very general questions marked with `c++-faq` (they probably went through some special process which lifts some restrictions), from SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Operator overloading](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4421706/operator-overloading), +1537 - asks about idioms of operator overloading as well.&#xD;&#xA;* [What is a smart pointer and when should I use one?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/106508/what-is-a-smart-pointer-and-when-should-i-use-one), +1046 - note the  &quot;when should I use one&quot;, which is probably &quot;opinion-based&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And some questions closed for being either non-constructive or opinion-based:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is so bad about singletons? [closed]](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/137975/what-is-so-bad-about-singletons), +1427.&#xD;&#xA;* [Naming Classes - How to avoid calling everything a “&lt;WhatEver&gt;Manager”? [closed]](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1866794/naming-classes-how-to-avoid-calling-everything-a-whatevermanager), +670.&#xD;&#xA;* [On Design Patterns: When to use the Singleton? [closed]](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/228164/on-design-patterns-when-to-use-the-singleton), +282.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, finally, questions on SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Does using == in JavaScript ever make sense?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/268124/does-using-in-javascript-ever-make-sense), +255.&#xD;&#xA;* [Are there real-life usage and applications for “do while” loops? [closed]](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/268145/are-there-real-life-usage-and-applications-for-do-while-loops), +4.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it looks like _some_ questions survive, become popular and are not closed. Moreover, there is a special &quot;C++ FAQ&quot; section on StackOverflow which aims at not-situation-specific questions. However, most questions I found were on StackOverflow and they're quite old, so rules and mood could have changed. Two question from softwareengineering were asked almost at the same time, but one lives and other is closed. I don't see what's essentially different between them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Main question being: are questions &quot;when do I use X&quot; on-topic on SoftwareEngineering? Specifically, is my question considered on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24359" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8472" RevisionGUID="986cf42d-3b5b-49cb-8437-830f90c32b6e" CreationDate="2017-03-05T12:17:10.437" UserId="263522" Text="Are &quot;when do I use X&quot; questions on-topic on SoftwareEngineering?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24360" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8472" RevisionGUID="986cf42d-3b5b-49cb-8437-830f90c32b6e" CreationDate="2017-03-05T12:17:10.437" UserId="263522" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24361" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8472" RevisionGUID="069d0747-3d5f-48a6-86a4-f10e6cc6de54" CreationDate="2017-03-05T15:59:16.967" UserId="263522" Comment="Remove question about my specific question; now it's more general discussion" Text="I've got [a question regarding template specializations in C++](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/343505/when-one-should-use-template-specialization): I understand what this is, but do not understand when and why it should be used (examples that I have are not great). Quoting the last part:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My question being: when one should use template specialization in C++03/C++11? Alternative wording: what are some good examples of template specialization, like `std::swap` (if it is a good example at all)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A person suggested that this question is off-topic and pointed me to [Why do 'some examples' and 'list of things' questions get closed?](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7537/why-do-some-examples-and-list-of-things-questions-get-closed/7538#7538) question on meta. This Q&amp;A refers to help center and states that these these question are off-topic &quot;because there is no right answer&quot; (not answer**s**).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I agree with the reasoning and there are things in my question which can be significantly improved, I was quite surprised that there is no place to ask about &quot;when to use X&quot; questions. So, I did some research. I started with [Is there a less restrictive Stack Exchange site specially suited for not too specific questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/252777/is-there-a-less-restrictive-stack-exchange-site-specially-suited-for-not-too-spe) question and corresponding [answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/253111/767632):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. Conceptual questions. That is covered on softwareengineering.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that &quot;when do I use X&quot; is a conceptual question. Still, comments suggest that &quot;Programmers&quot; (old name of softwareengineering) has its own rules and questions should not be opinion-based. Ok, let's look at Meta:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is a “best practice” question off topic?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/265928/is-a-best-practice-question-off-topic) on SO Meta. The answer suggests to ask &quot;best practices&quot; questions on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;* [Making “best practices” questions more palatable: how to ask a “best practice” question that is acceptable to the community?](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7091/making-best-practices-questions-more-palatable-how-to-ask-a-best-practice-q) on SE.SE Meta. Answers mainly suggest that one should ask for a solution of a _specific situation_, not about general &quot;best practices&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fair enough: looks like general questions are too board and opinion-based because different situations require different solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I've found several open popular question on both StackOverflow and softwareengineering which are, I think, similar to mine (all of them are of form &quot;when to use X&quot; and do not provide any specify problems that OPs try to solve). From SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Factory Pattern. When to use factory methods?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/69849/factory-pattern-when-to-use-factory-methods), +181.&#xD;&#xA;* [When should I use the Visitor Design Pattern?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/255214/when-should-i-use-the-visitor-design-pattern), +209.&#xD;&#xA;* [When to use a Class vs. Function in PHP](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2122123/when-to-use-a-class-vs-function-in-php), +50.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a bunch of very general questions marked with `c++-faq` (they probably went through some special process which lifts some restrictions), from SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Operator overloading](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4421706/operator-overloading), +1537 - asks about idioms of operator overloading as well.&#xD;&#xA;* [What is a smart pointer and when should I use one?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/106508/what-is-a-smart-pointer-and-when-should-i-use-one), +1046 - note the  &quot;when should I use one&quot;, which is probably &quot;opinion-based&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And some questions closed for being either non-constructive or opinion-based:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is so bad about singletons? [closed]](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/137975/what-is-so-bad-about-singletons), +1427.&#xD;&#xA;* [Naming Classes - How to avoid calling everything a “&lt;WhatEver&gt;Manager”? [closed]](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1866794/naming-classes-how-to-avoid-calling-everything-a-whatevermanager), +670.&#xD;&#xA;* [On Design Patterns: When to use the Singleton? [closed]](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/228164/on-design-patterns-when-to-use-the-singleton), +282.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, finally, questions on SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Does using == in JavaScript ever make sense?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/268124/does-using-in-javascript-ever-make-sense), +255.&#xD;&#xA;* [Are there real-life usage and applications for “do while” loops? [closed]](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/268145/are-there-real-life-usage-and-applications-for-do-while-loops), +4.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it looks like _some_ questions survive, become popular and are not closed. Moreover, there is a special &quot;C++ FAQ&quot; section on StackOverflow which aims at not-situation-specific questions. However, most questions I found were on StackOverflow and they're quite old, so rules and mood could have changed. Two question from softwareengineering were asked almost at the same time, but one lives and other is closed. I don't see what's essentially different between them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Main question being: are questions &quot;when do I use X&quot; on-topic on SoftwareEngineering? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24362" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8472" RevisionGUID="069d0747-3d5f-48a6-86a4-f10e6cc6de54" CreationDate="2017-03-05T15:59:16.967" UserId="263522" Comment="Remove question about my specific question; now it's more general discussion" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24363" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8472" RevisionGUID="f5643f50-9800-4c28-bda9-0f698e5d69bd" CreationDate="2017-03-05T17:23:57.867" UserId="263522" Comment="added 80 characters in body" Text="I've got [a question regarding template specializations in C++](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/343505/when-one-should-use-template-specialization): I understand what this is, but do not understand when and why it should be used (examples that I have are not great). Quoting the last part (note that the question was significantly edited since then, here is old words):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My question being: when one should use template specialization in C++03/C++11? Alternative wording: what are some good examples of template specialization, like `std::swap` (if it is a good example at all)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A person suggested that this question is off-topic and pointed me to [Why do 'some examples' and 'list of things' questions get closed?](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7537/why-do-some-examples-and-list-of-things-questions-get-closed/7538#7538) question on meta. This Q&amp;A refers to help center and states that these these question are off-topic &quot;because there is no right answer&quot; (not answer**s**).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I agree with the reasoning and there are things in my question which can be significantly improved, I was quite surprised that there is no place to ask about &quot;when to use X&quot; questions. So, I did some research. I started with [Is there a less restrictive Stack Exchange site specially suited for not too specific questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/252777/is-there-a-less-restrictive-stack-exchange-site-specially-suited-for-not-too-spe) question and corresponding [answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/253111/767632):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. Conceptual questions. That is covered on softwareengineering.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that &quot;when do I use X&quot; is a conceptual question. Still, comments suggest that &quot;Programmers&quot; (old name of softwareengineering) has its own rules and questions should not be opinion-based. Ok, let's look at Meta:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is a “best practice” question off topic?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/265928/is-a-best-practice-question-off-topic) on SO Meta. The answer suggests to ask &quot;best practices&quot; questions on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;* [Making “best practices” questions more palatable: how to ask a “best practice” question that is acceptable to the community?](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7091/making-best-practices-questions-more-palatable-how-to-ask-a-best-practice-q) on SE.SE Meta. Answers mainly suggest that one should ask for a solution of a _specific situation_, not about general &quot;best practices&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fair enough: looks like general questions are too board and opinion-based because different situations require different solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I've found several open popular question on both StackOverflow and softwareengineering which are, I think, similar to mine (all of them are of form &quot;when to use X&quot; and do not provide any specify problems that OPs try to solve). From SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Factory Pattern. When to use factory methods?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/69849/factory-pattern-when-to-use-factory-methods), +181.&#xD;&#xA;* [When should I use the Visitor Design Pattern?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/255214/when-should-i-use-the-visitor-design-pattern), +209.&#xD;&#xA;* [When to use a Class vs. Function in PHP](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2122123/when-to-use-a-class-vs-function-in-php), +50.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a bunch of very general questions marked with `c++-faq` (they probably went through some special process which lifts some restrictions), from SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Operator overloading](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4421706/operator-overloading), +1537 - asks about idioms of operator overloading as well.&#xD;&#xA;* [What is a smart pointer and when should I use one?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/106508/what-is-a-smart-pointer-and-when-should-i-use-one), +1046 - note the  &quot;when should I use one&quot;, which is probably &quot;opinion-based&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And some questions closed for being either non-constructive or opinion-based:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is so bad about singletons? [closed]](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/137975/what-is-so-bad-about-singletons), +1427.&#xD;&#xA;* [Naming Classes - How to avoid calling everything a “&lt;WhatEver&gt;Manager”? [closed]](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1866794/naming-classes-how-to-avoid-calling-everything-a-whatevermanager), +670.&#xD;&#xA;* [On Design Patterns: When to use the Singleton? [closed]](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/228164/on-design-patterns-when-to-use-the-singleton), +282.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, finally, questions on SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Does using == in JavaScript ever make sense?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/268124/does-using-in-javascript-ever-make-sense), +255.&#xD;&#xA;* [Are there real-life usage and applications for “do while” loops? [closed]](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/268145/are-there-real-life-usage-and-applications-for-do-while-loops), +4.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it looks like _some_ questions survive, become popular and are not closed. Moreover, there is a special &quot;C++ FAQ&quot; section on StackOverflow which aims at not-situation-specific questions. However, most questions I found were on StackOverflow and they're quite old, so rules and mood could have changed. Two question from softwareengineering were asked almost at the same time, but one lives and other is closed. I don't see what's essentially different between them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Main question being: are questions &quot;when do I use X&quot; on-topic on SoftwareEngineering? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24364" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8472" RevisionGUID="f9258fdb-89de-4e48-ac0b-2a72d8c73662" CreationDate="2017-03-05T18:41:57.053" UserId="263522" Comment="added 1 character in body" Text="I've got [a question regarding template specializations in C++](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/343505/when-one-should-use-template-specialization): I understand what this is, but do not understand when and why it should be used (examples that I have are not great). Quoting the last part (note that the question was significantly edited since then, here are old words):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My question being: when one should use template specialization in C++03/C++11? Alternative wording: what are some good examples of template specialization, like `std::swap` (if it is a good example at all)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A person suggested that this question is off-topic and pointed me to [Why do 'some examples' and 'list of things' questions get closed?](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7537/why-do-some-examples-and-list-of-things-questions-get-closed/7538#7538) question on meta. This Q&amp;A refers to help center and states that these these question are off-topic &quot;because there is no right answer&quot; (not answer**s**).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I agree with the reasoning and there are things in my question which can be significantly improved, I was quite surprised that there is no place to ask about &quot;when to use X&quot; questions. So, I did some research. I started with [Is there a less restrictive Stack Exchange site specially suited for not too specific questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/252777/is-there-a-less-restrictive-stack-exchange-site-specially-suited-for-not-too-spe) question and corresponding [answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/253111/767632):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. Conceptual questions. That is covered on softwareengineering.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that &quot;when do I use X&quot; is a conceptual question. Still, comments suggest that &quot;Programmers&quot; (old name of softwareengineering) has its own rules and questions should not be opinion-based. Ok, let's look at Meta:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is a “best practice” question off topic?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/265928/is-a-best-practice-question-off-topic) on SO Meta. The answer suggests to ask &quot;best practices&quot; questions on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;* [Making “best practices” questions more palatable: how to ask a “best practice” question that is acceptable to the community?](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7091/making-best-practices-questions-more-palatable-how-to-ask-a-best-practice-q) on SE.SE Meta. Answers mainly suggest that one should ask for a solution of a _specific situation_, not about general &quot;best practices&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fair enough: looks like general questions are too board and opinion-based because different situations require different solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I've found several open popular question on both StackOverflow and softwareengineering which are, I think, similar to mine (all of them are of form &quot;when to use X&quot; and do not provide any specify problems that OPs try to solve). From SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Factory Pattern. When to use factory methods?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/69849/factory-pattern-when-to-use-factory-methods), +181.&#xD;&#xA;* [When should I use the Visitor Design Pattern?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/255214/when-should-i-use-the-visitor-design-pattern), +209.&#xD;&#xA;* [When to use a Class vs. Function in PHP](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2122123/when-to-use-a-class-vs-function-in-php), +50.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a bunch of very general questions marked with `c++-faq` (they probably went through some special process which lifts some restrictions), from SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Operator overloading](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4421706/operator-overloading), +1537 - asks about idioms of operator overloading as well.&#xD;&#xA;* [What is a smart pointer and when should I use one?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/106508/what-is-a-smart-pointer-and-when-should-i-use-one), +1046 - note the  &quot;when should I use one&quot;, which is probably &quot;opinion-based&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And some questions closed for being either non-constructive or opinion-based:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is so bad about singletons? [closed]](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/137975/what-is-so-bad-about-singletons), +1427.&#xD;&#xA;* [Naming Classes - How to avoid calling everything a “&lt;WhatEver&gt;Manager”? [closed]](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1866794/naming-classes-how-to-avoid-calling-everything-a-whatevermanager), +670.&#xD;&#xA;* [On Design Patterns: When to use the Singleton? [closed]](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/228164/on-design-patterns-when-to-use-the-singleton), +282.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, finally, questions on SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Does using == in JavaScript ever make sense?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/268124/does-using-in-javascript-ever-make-sense), +255.&#xD;&#xA;* [Are there real-life usage and applications for “do while” loops? [closed]](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/268145/are-there-real-life-usage-and-applications-for-do-while-loops), +4.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it looks like _some_ questions survive, become popular and are not closed. Moreover, there is a special &quot;C++ FAQ&quot; section on StackOverflow which aims at not-situation-specific questions. However, most questions I found were on StackOverflow and they're quite old, so rules and mood could have changed. Two question from softwareengineering were asked almost at the same time, but one lives and other is closed. I don't see what's essentially different between them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Main question being: are questions &quot;when do I use X&quot; on-topic on SoftwareEngineering? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24365" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8473" RevisionGUID="c14c26ed-85f8-4930-870e-192f92264e7c" CreationDate="2017-03-06T08:16:23.643" UserId="131624" Text="&gt;Main question being: are questions &quot;when do I use X&quot; on-topic on SoftwareEngineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whether a question could be categorized as a &quot;When do I use X?&quot; question is irreverent to determining if it should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means claiming that your question is a &quot;when do I use X?&quot; question is not a defense against closing.  It's also not a reason to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, your question is being considered for closing because it is broad. You've received criticism that you're soliciting a list, posting a rant, and need to do more research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've edited the question in a way that shows improvement. Though I worry that it's still a bit unclear.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have received up votes and @immibis has posted the start of an answer as a comment that you've yet to respond to.  I think with a little work and patience your question can be successful. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I don't think claiming to be a &quot;when do I use X&quot; question is helping your case.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24366" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8474" RevisionGUID="f79c9622-08dc-4f5e-8e88-493e3310739c" CreationDate="2017-03-06T08:54:45.997" UserId="216452" Text="When use a specific tools something is the basis of a sane conception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However that type of question might be too broad, because there is probably more than 30k character to explain when to use X.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A best question would be :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I have this problem X to solve, I'm going to use Y patter/method to solve it I think using it like this : [exemple of code/diagram of how you intend to use Y to solve X].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is very likely to be answerable and on-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24367" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8474" RevisionGUID="0d3907ec-9397-4032-9d03-94e58c25ff14" CreationDate="2017-03-06T08:59:51.043" UserId="216452" Comment="added 240 characters in body" Text="When use a specific tools something is the basis of a sane conception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However that type of question might be too broad, because there is probably more than 30k character to explain when to use X.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A best question would be :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I have this problem X to solve, I'm going to use Y patter/method to solve it I think using it like this : [exemple of code/diagram of how you intend to use Y to solve X].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is very likely to be answerable and on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So instead of asking of the whole list of possible usage, come back when you will have a problem to solve and you're wondering if using this tools (and don't forget to say how you intend to use it) fit to solve your problem efficiently." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24368" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8475" RevisionGUID="16404a11-e6d5-4484-ad47-7db65fd17b4f" CreationDate="2017-03-06T17:52:49.037" UserId="255251" Text="I have several questions about the content and requirements of a software engineer portfolio. For example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - What kind of code examples are interesting?&#xD;&#xA; - Which content is expected from a student applying for programming job?&#xD;&#xA; - Is it a good idea to provide (very) long comments to your code?&#xD;&#xA; - How to properly present projects, when the &quot;outcome&quot; is nice, but the code isn't?&#xD;&#xA; - Some more ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it allowed to ask a question containing some of the questions above?&#xD;&#xA;Or will this be off-topic/to broad/primarily opinion based?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24369" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8475" RevisionGUID="16404a11-e6d5-4484-ad47-7db65fd17b4f" CreationDate="2017-03-06T17:52:49.037" UserId="255251" Text="Is it allowed to ask questions about the content of a SE portfolio?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24370" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8475" RevisionGUID="16404a11-e6d5-4484-ad47-7db65fd17b4f" CreationDate="2017-03-06T17:52:49.037" UserId="255251" Text="|discussion|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24371" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8476" RevisionGUID="1fa5c3e7-d406-4440-9b34-2f914d41fb10" CreationDate="2017-03-06T17:57:25.333" UserId="4" Text="These types of questions would be off-topic. They all appear to be primarily opinion based. Building a portfolio is also a career development subject, which is also off-topic here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24372" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8477" RevisionGUID="15afcd5a-0d7f-4a25-98d3-cb53ffcd8eb6" CreationDate="2017-03-06T23:31:23.890" UserId="65767" Text="[Moderator(s): if you think this post fits better elsewhere than meta.softwareengineering, please migrate to said forum]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've had a couple of posts recently that really prompt me to question whether Apple still really cares about Unix users. One of these posts was http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/270509/terminal-has-been-unstable-since-last-upgrade-osx-10-12-2; I wrote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have had repeated Terminal.app crashes while working with the command line, whether on the local computer or shelled into a Linux VPS.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this a known issue? Are there alternative CLI terminal applications that will behave like terminal, only at least being more stable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thanks,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@j.c. answered:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To answer your other question: &quot;Is this a known issue?&quot;, I have been having problems with Terminal.app crashing too, and [this post](https://discussions.apple.com/message/31309932#message31309932) seems to suggest that the issue is known to Apple. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More recently I posted another issue: there's something called Apache installed, and I can't do an ``apachectl start`` twice without getting an error of ``/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist: service already loaded``, but I can't for the life of me connect to port 80 on localhost. I posted on apple.SE at http://superuser.com/questions/1185171/how-do-i-get-apache-to-run-from-osx-sierra-10-12-13 :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've made multiple searches for e.g. &quot;apache Sierra&quot;, but haven't been able to find my issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have a MacBook Pro running OSX Sierra 10.12.13, and it seems to have some version of Apache installed, but I can't connect on port 80 (or 443), either with a browser, or by running ``telnet localhost 80``. If I run ``apachectl restart``, it runs without reported error; if I run ``apachectl stop`` it runs without reported error; if I run ``apachectl start`` when I think Apache is running, it gives an error message, ``/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist: service already loaded``. A ``which apachectl`` gives ``/usr/sbin/apachectl``, so I believe I'm running OSX's native Apache and not a version pulled in from Homebrew.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What can/should I be doing so that Apache is running normally?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thanks,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the question was old enough to be eligible for bounty, *and I had gotten off the phone with Apple technical support*, I flagged it for moderator attention and requested migration to ServerFault.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the technical support call, which lasted a bit short of an hour, I was escalated twice; even the first escalation was with someone who didn't know the command line and didn't know what Apache was. I was told that Apple offers Server which may include Apache, installable from the store, and supported GUI-driven use of Server, but Apple technical support does not offer help for the command line or command-line-driven Apache setup and configuration file editing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those both look like significant red flags. It's mainstream for users who want Macs to offer Unix functionality to want a stable Terminal.app and it's mainstream for web developers to want a working Apache installation on their box even if it's not shared.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I know that MacOS and iOS, with their ``NSString``s, owe a nearly indelibale debt to Unix. And there are workarounds, like [iTerm2](https://www.iterm2.com/) and Homebrew or source builds of Apache, and I'm using iTerm2 and plan on building another Apache. But I see ominous writing on the wall; it seems that Apple is losing its respect for hackerdom.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there other examples or signs that Apple is dropping care for Unix hackers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks," ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24373" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8477" RevisionGUID="15afcd5a-0d7f-4a25-98d3-cb53ffcd8eb6" CreationDate="2017-03-06T23:31:23.890" UserId="65767" Text="Looking for where to post &quot;Is Apple tacitly declaring independence / indifference regarding MacOS's Unix roots?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24374" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8477" RevisionGUID="15afcd5a-0d7f-4a25-98d3-cb53ffcd8eb6" CreationDate="2017-03-06T23:31:23.890" UserId="65767" Text="|discussion|support|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24375" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8477" RevisionGUID="2e58cd9e-4f8f-4471-82d3-e483ad8b34c7" CreationDate="2017-03-07T00:01:12.723" UserId="65767" Comment="deleted 1 character in body" Text="[Moderator(s): if you think this post fits better elsewhere than meta.softwareengineering, please migrate to said forum]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've had a couple of posts recently that really prompt me to question whether Apple still really cares about Unix users. One of these posts was http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/270509/terminal-has-been-unstable-since-last-upgrade-osx-10-12-2; I wrote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have had repeated Terminal.app crashes while working with the command line, whether on the local computer or shelled into a Linux VPS.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this a known issue? Are there alternative CLI terminal applications that will behave like terminal, only at least being more stable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thanks,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@j.c. answered:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To answer your other question: &quot;Is this a known issue?&quot;, I have been having problems with Terminal.app crashing too, and [this post](https://discussions.apple.com/message/31309932#message31309932) seems to suggest that the issue is known to Apple. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More recently I posted another issue: there's something called Apache installed, and I can't do an ``apachectl start`` twice without getting an error of ``/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist: service already loaded``, but I can't for the life of me connect to port 80 on localhost. I posted on apple.SE at http://superuser.com/questions/1185171/how-do-i-get-apache-to-run-from-osx-sierra-10-12-13 :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've made multiple searches for e.g. &quot;apache Sierra&quot;, but haven't been able to find my issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have a MacBook Pro running OSX Sierra 10.12.13, and it seems to have some version of Apache installed, but I can't connect on port 80 (or 443), either with a browser, or by running ``telnet localhost 80``. If I run ``apachectl restart``, it runs without reported error; if I run ``apachectl stop`` it runs without reported error; if I run ``apachectl start`` when I think Apache is running, it gives an error message, ``/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist: service already loaded``. A ``which apachectl`` gives ``/usr/sbin/apachectl``, so I believe I'm running OSX's native Apache and not a version pulled in from Homebrew.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What can/should I be doing so that Apache is running normally?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thanks,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the question was old enough to be eligible for bounty, *and I had gotten off the phone with Apple technical support*, I flagged it for moderator attention and requested migration to ServerFault.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the technical support call, which lasted a bit short of an hour, I was escalated twice; even the first escalation was with someone who didn't know the command line and didn't know what Apache was. I was told that Apple offers Server which may include Apache, installable from the store, and supported GUI-driven use of Server, but Apple technical support does not offer help for the command line or command-line-driven Apache setup and configuration file editing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those both look like significant red flags. It's mainstream for users who want Macs to offer Unix functionality to want a stable Terminal.app and it's mainstream for web developers to want a working Apache installation on their box even if it's not shared.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I know that MacOS and iOS, with their ``NSString``s, owe a nearly indelible debt to Unix. And there are workarounds, like [iTerm2](https://www.iterm2.com/) and Homebrew or source builds of Apache, and I'm using iTerm2 and plan on building another Apache. But I see ominous writing on the wall; it seems that Apple is losing its respect for hackerdom.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there other examples or signs that Apple is dropping care for Unix hackers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks," ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24376" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8477" RevisionGUID="4ae662f9-802a-4f42-be2d-952f1aba3a75" CreationDate="2017-03-07T00:02:35.537" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Removed fluff, inappropriate tag." Text="I've had a couple of posts recently that really prompt me to question whether Apple still really cares about Unix users. One of these posts was http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/270509/terminal-has-been-unstable-since-last-upgrade-osx-10-12-2; I wrote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have had repeated Terminal.app crashes while working with the command line, whether on the local computer or shelled into a Linux VPS.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this a known issue? Are there alternative CLI terminal applications that will behave like terminal, only at least being more stable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thanks,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@j.c. answered:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To answer your other question: &quot;Is this a known issue?&quot;, I have been having problems with Terminal.app crashing too, and [this post](https://discussions.apple.com/message/31309932#message31309932) seems to suggest that the issue is known to Apple. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More recently I posted another issue: there's something called Apache installed, and I can't do an ``apachectl start`` twice without getting an error of ``/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist: service already loaded``, but I can't for the life of me connect to port 80 on localhost. I posted on apple.SE at http://superuser.com/questions/1185171/how-do-i-get-apache-to-run-from-osx-sierra-10-12-13 :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've made multiple searches for e.g. &quot;apache Sierra&quot;, but haven't been able to find my issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have a MacBook Pro running OSX Sierra 10.12.13, and it seems to have some version of Apache installed, but I can't connect on port 80 (or 443), either with a browser, or by running ``telnet localhost 80``. If I run ``apachectl restart``, it runs without reported error; if I run ``apachectl stop`` it runs without reported error; if I run ``apachectl start`` when I think Apache is running, it gives an error message, ``/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist: service already loaded``. A ``which apachectl`` gives ``/usr/sbin/apachectl``, so I believe I'm running OSX's native Apache and not a version pulled in from Homebrew.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What can/should I be doing so that Apache is running normally?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thanks,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the question was old enough to be eligible for bounty, *and I had gotten off the phone with Apple technical support*, I flagged it for moderator attention and requested migration to ServerFault.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the technical support call, which lasted a bit short of an hour, I was escalated twice; even the first escalation was with someone who didn't know the command line and didn't know what Apache was. I was told that Apple offers Server which may include Apache, installable from the store, and supported GUI-driven use of Server, but Apple technical support does not offer help for the command line or command-line-driven Apache setup and configuration file editing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those both look like significant red flags. It's mainstream for users who want Macs to offer Unix functionality to want a stable Terminal.app and it's mainstream for web developers to want a working Apache installation on their box even if it's not shared.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I know that MacOS and iOS, with their ``NSString``s, owe a nearly indelible debt to Unix. And there are workarounds, like [iTerm2](https://www.iterm2.com/) and Homebrew or source builds of Apache, and I'm using iTerm2 and plan on building another Apache. But I see ominous writing on the wall; it seems that Apple is losing its respect for hackerdom.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there other examples or signs that Apple is dropping care for Unix hackers?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24377" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8477" RevisionGUID="4ae662f9-802a-4f42-be2d-952f1aba3a75" CreationDate="2017-03-07T00:02:35.537" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Removed fluff, inappropriate tag." Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24378" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8478" RevisionGUID="670b4785-9af4-48f8-a4e8-2e1a917ba490" CreationDate="2017-03-07T00:18:19.483" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="This question is off-topic on any Stack Exchange site I am aware of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The crux of the issue is question like this are looking for one of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Opinions about a company's strategy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Resources that indicate a company's strategy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Inside information about a company's strategy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the first case, anyone can make a guess. Yours is as good as mine. _There is no objective way to answer the question: all answers are speculation_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, [resource requests are off-topic][1]. That link explains it better than I can here, so please read it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Third, the internet at large is unlikely to have any special knowledge answering why a company is doing whatever they are doing. At most we can give opinions derived from typical business actions (e.g. &quot;doing what is profitable&quot;), or link to blogs or other information from people who work there. Both of those are covered in my previous two paragraphs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you need to do is sharpen your google-fu skills, and perhaps post on an actual discussion forum ([Stack Exchange is _not_ a forum][2]) or [reddit][3] ([1][4], [2][5]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6487/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/92110/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://www.reddit.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://www.reddit.com/r/osx/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24379" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8479" RevisionGUID="099e0d04-a02c-42d7-a399-96dda79bea5a" CreationDate="2017-03-08T17:14:42.530" UserId="94795" Text="I have some concerns about some of the new features in C# 7.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me they seem to encourage bad practices or solve very minor problems.  I'd like to ask people for some practical examples of when certain features would be applicable, best practice and save time or add some other value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would a carefully crafted question on this me valid here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not asking people's opinions exactly, but am asking for definate examples of coding situations where these new features help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cheers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24380" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8479" RevisionGUID="099e0d04-a02c-42d7-a399-96dda79bea5a" CreationDate="2017-03-08T17:14:42.530" UserId="94795" Text="Question about new feature in C#7? Valid for here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24381" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8479" RevisionGUID="099e0d04-a02c-42d7-a399-96dda79bea5a" CreationDate="2017-03-08T17:14:42.530" UserId="94795" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24382" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8479" RevisionGUID="390c481f-46a6-4696-804b-962d9955e9d0" CreationDate="2017-03-08T17:28:06.550" UserId="94795" Comment="edited body" Text="I have some concerns about some of the new features in C# 7.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me they seem to encourage bad practices or solve very minor problems.  I'd like to ask people for some practical examples of when certain features would be applicable, best practice and save time or add some other value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would a carefully crafted question on this be valid here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not asking people's opinions exactly, but am asking for definate examples of coding situations where these new features help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cheers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24383" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8479" RevisionGUID="41166c9e-cbd9-4ba3-90d7-b6af2e5637f1" CreationDate="2017-03-08T17:52:22.327" UserId="94795" Comment="edited title" Text="Question about new features in C# 7? Valid for here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24384" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8480" RevisionGUID="c6ffa433-176a-482e-b177-e6507f5f66a9" CreationDate="2017-03-08T18:56:37.610" UserId="102569" Text="Why questions about naming are considered &quot;opinion-based&quot;?  &#xD;&#xA;If you working in the team you will spend some amount of your &quot;productive&quot; time on the naming.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am pretty sure that every developer have moments when he struggling with names for new functions, variables, classes etc.  &#xD;&#xA;Proper names saves time for other developers who reads your code and even for yourself after few weeks.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you see a class with a name `SomethingBuilder` - you expects that this class will create new objects based on the arguments passed to the `SomethingBuilder.  &#xD;&#xA;When you see method with name `GetItem` you expect that that method will provide some information without changing &quot;state&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In case when you or your team cares about naming, naming become equally important as choosing design patterns.  &#xD;&#xA;Naming not based anymore on the opinion of developer - it based on the logic used in the method/class or data contained int the data structure.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I can logically ground why another name can be more &quot;effective&quot;, &quot;readable&quot; in particular case, than, I think it cannot be, so easily, considered as opinion-based anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24385" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8480" RevisionGUID="c6ffa433-176a-482e-b177-e6507f5f66a9" CreationDate="2017-03-08T18:56:37.610" UserId="102569" Text="Are questions about naming of software development really &quot;opinion-based&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24386" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8480" RevisionGUID="c6ffa433-176a-482e-b177-e6507f5f66a9" CreationDate="2017-03-08T18:56:37.610" UserId="102569" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24387" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8480" RevisionGUID="ef24e9e9-1298-437b-85c6-958f6d823a6c" CreationDate="2017-03-08T19:12:08.253" UserId="102569" Comment="edited body" Text="Why questions about naming are considered &quot;opinion-based&quot;?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you working in the team you will spend some amount of your &quot;productive&quot; time on the naming.  &#xD;&#xA;I am pretty sure that every developer have moments when he struggling with names for new functions, variables, classes etc.  &#xD;&#xA;Proper names saves time for other developers who reads your code and even for yourself after few weeks.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you see a class with a name `SomethingBuilder` - you expects that this class will create new objects based on the arguments passed to the `SomethingBuilder`.  &#xD;&#xA;When you see method with name `GetItem` you expect that that method will return object without changing state of the context.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In case when you or your team cares about naming, naming become equally important as choosing design patterns.  &#xD;&#xA;Naming not based anymore on the opinion of developer - it based on the logic used in the method/class or output data.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I can logically ground why one name can be more &quot;effective&quot;, &quot;readable&quot; in particular case, than another, then, I think, it cannot be, so easily, considered as opinion-based anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24388" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="8480" RevisionGUID="ef24e9e9-1298-437b-85c6-958f6d823a6c" CreationDate="2017-03-08T19:12:08.253" UserId="102569" Comment="edited body" Text="Why questions about naming are considered &quot;opinion-based&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24389" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8480" RevisionGUID="905288ae-f5f4-40c3-8f69-d6cca47083cb" CreationDate="2017-03-08T19:17:27.223" UserId="102569" Comment="edited tags" Text="|discussion|asking-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24390" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8480" RevisionGUID="faaf9ddb-68ec-4f66-b89b-9dccc27d4ab7" CreationDate="2017-03-08T20:50:39.053" UserId="102569" Comment="added 983 characters in body" Text="Why questions about naming are considered &quot;opinion-based&quot;?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you working in the team you will spend some amount of your &quot;productive&quot; time on the naming.  &#xD;&#xA;I am pretty sure that every developer have moments when he struggling with names for new functions, variables, classes etc.  &#xD;&#xA;Proper names saves time for other developers who reads your code and even for yourself after few weeks.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you see a class with a name `SomethingBuilder` - you expects that this class will create new objects based on the arguments passed to the `SomethingBuilder`.  &#xD;&#xA;When you see method with name `GetItem` you expect that that method will return object without changing state of the context.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In case when you or your team cares about naming, naming become equally important as choosing design patterns.  &#xD;&#xA;Naming not based anymore on the opinion of developer - it based on the logic used in the method/class or output data.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I can logically ground why one name can be more &quot;effective&quot;, &quot;readable&quot; in particular case, than another, then, I think, it cannot be, so easily, considered as opinion-based anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this question is not duplicate to the [On the troubles of naming and terminology][1], because my question cover the case from [this answer][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What should I name this thing?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Which is not a &quot;guessing game&quot; question; it is primarily&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinion-based. There are literally an infinite number of such&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions; none of them are at all interesting to experts **unless they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can be answered from a principle-based perspective, in a way that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; could help others improve their naming skills**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my question I tried pointed out, that questions about naming with proper description of the problem can be considered as **not opinion-based**.  &#xD;&#xA;Questioner expects logically proved/explained reason for the suggested name in same way as question about &quot;How/What &lt;some&gt; pattern can be implemented in &lt;this&gt; specific issue.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/6582/102569&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6586/102569" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24391" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8479" RevisionGUID="a08479c2-653b-49f5-93b9-6dd3a9fde214" CreationDate="2017-03-08T20:51:05.980" UserId="94795" Comment="Elaboration to differentiate this from a list question." Text="I have some concerns about some of the new features in C# 7.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me they seem to encourage bad practices or solve very minor problems.  I'd like to ask people for some practical examples of when certain features would be applicable, best practice and save time or add some other value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would a carefully crafted question on this be valid here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not asking people's opinions exactly, but am asking for definate examples of coding situations where these new features help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cheers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks for the hint at the other question.  That's not really what I'm asking (I don't think).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's an example of a question I might ask:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What problem does returning anonymous tuples solve**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One of the new C# 7 features is the ability to return multiple values from a method.  In the past this problem has always been addressed by creating a class\struct encapsulating the result and returning that.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This method means that the returned information is all related and has a semantic meaning described by the class.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What benefit does the tuple give me over this ([from _What's new in C# 7_](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2016/08/24/whats-new-in-csharp-7-0/))?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     (string, string, string) LookupName(long id) // tuple return type&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     {&#xD;&#xA;          ... // retrieve first, middle and last from data storage&#xD;&#xA;          return (first, middle, last); // tuple literal&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there any practical case in a production system where I would prefer a tuple over a class\struct?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24392" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8481" RevisionGUID="d5768529-8659-40a4-ab3c-db0de874cad3" CreationDate="2017-03-09T07:10:18.483" UserId="9113" Text="&gt; If I can logically ground why one name can be more &quot;effective&quot;, &quot;readable&quot; in particular case, than another, then, I think, it cannot be, so easily, considered as opinion-based anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sorry, but I don't buy that. When people agree that one name is more descriptive or readable than another name (for a function or class or variable), this is **never** independent from the group of people in stake, or the technical context, or the cultural context. Even if you have a list of &quot;10 candidate names&quot; for a thing, give that list to 5 different experts and you get at least 6 different opinions which name fits best.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, I agree heavily to Robert Harvey to what he wrote in his answer to [&quot;On the troubles of naming and terminology&quot;][1] - when there is no well-known concept behind the question, and the question is not about general &quot;principles of naming things&quot;, it should be closed as &quot;opinionated&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6586/9113" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24393" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8481" RevisionGUID="17aa0a52-40ca-4435-b87d-3a8a1267047e" CreationDate="2017-03-09T13:28:55.417" UserId="9113" Comment="edited body" Text="&gt; If I can logically ground why one name can be more &quot;effective&quot;, &quot;readable&quot; in particular case, than another, then, I think, it cannot be, so easily, considered as opinion-based anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sorry, but I don't buy that. When people agree that one name is more descriptive or readable than another name (for a function or class or variable), this is **never** independent from the group of people in stake, or the technical context, or the cultural context. Even if you have a list of &quot;10 candidate names&quot; for a thing, give that list to 5 different experts and you get at least 6 different opinions which name fits best.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, I agree clearly to Robert Harvey to what he wrote in his answer to [&quot;On the troubles of naming and terminology&quot;][1] - when there is no well-known concept behind the question, and the question is not about general &quot;principles of naming things&quot;, it should be closed as &quot;opinionated&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6586/9113" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24394" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8473" RevisionGUID="edb8304d-a507-4d71-86ba-e4c2309cc6d8" CreationDate="2017-03-10T17:12:58.180" UserId="1204" Comment="added 4 characters in body" Text="&gt;Main question being: are questions &quot;when do I use X&quot; on-topic on SoftwareEngineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whether a question could be categorized as a &quot;When do I use X?&quot; question is irreverent to determining if it should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means claiming that your question is a &quot;when do I use X?&quot; question is not a defense against closing.  It's also not a reason to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, your question is being considered for closing because it is too broad. You've received criticism that you're soliciting a list, posting a rant, and need to do more research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've edited the question in a way that shows improvement. Though I worry that it's still a bit unclear.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have received up votes and @immibis has posted the start of an answer as a comment that you've yet to respond to.  I think with a little work and patience your question can be successful. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I don't think claiming to be a &quot;when do I use X&quot; question is helping your case.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24395" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8472" RevisionGUID="57d6c9f6-fcfa-4b26-b57a-69cd4a448c44" CreationDate="2017-03-10T17:29:19.587" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/840253244668559361" />
  <row Id="24400" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8483" RevisionGUID="0bc879fb-1f9d-46bd-ace8-62b18d4c2189" CreationDate="2017-03-11T20:37:32.510" UserId="174505" Text="The following question has recently been bumped by community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/258540/do-ios-frameworks-require-the-same-internal-versioning-as-osx-frameworks&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me to be counterproductive to the efforts of adhering our new scope that questions that haven't been closed for whatever reason now turns up as 'examples of how questions are'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there anything that can be done to avoid a 'bad question'-creep like this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though things might have become better, I don't think we really need this extra work in cleaning up scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can community be disabled from bumping?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24401" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8483" RevisionGUID="0bc879fb-1f9d-46bd-ace8-62b18d4c2189" CreationDate="2017-03-11T20:37:32.510" UserId="174505" Text="Off-topic question bumped by community can this be prevented?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24402" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8483" RevisionGUID="0bc879fb-1f9d-46bd-ace8-62b18d4c2189" CreationDate="2017-03-11T20:37:32.510" UserId="174505" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24403" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8484" RevisionGUID="3e9c8c41-f967-4171-849d-5c9227a63b00" CreationDate="2017-03-11T22:44:14.467" UserDisplayName="user154639" Text="The real homepage of a Stack Exchange site is https://google.com because this is where the majority of question views come. So, if a question should be closed but is not, this is a problem that exists regardless of whether the question is bumped. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The official home page is where a relatively small number of active users of the site find questions to answer or to moderate. Bumping a close-worthy question there is likely to draw more close votes, thus rectifying the problem.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24404" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8485" RevisionGUID="79bdf22b-be6f-460e-9176-a0361a547c4a" CreationDate="2017-03-12T01:33:26.030" UserId="4" Text="There are two issues here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, should Community be bumping questions? There are [specific rules as to when Community bumps a question back to the homepage of a site][1]. Community exists to get more eyes on a question and its answers. The goal is to improve the question so it gets answers, get votes on the question to get even more eyes on it, get votes on existing answers so the question enters an &quot;answered&quot; states, or get answers to questions. Although not stated as an explicit goal, if a question should be closed as off-topic, bumping it to the homepage should allow people to cast down and close votes and put the question into the close vote review queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To answer your question, no. Even if the staff could tweak Community on a per-site basis, disabling it would do far more harm than good. It would stop good questions from getting eyes on them, good answers from getting votes, and in some cases, bad questions from getting close/delete votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, there's the specific case. You make the claim that this question is off-topic. I read the question and I don't see it. I see a question about build and release management (which is on-topic) and versioning (also on-topic). It doesn't require Apple customer service to answer (which would make it off-topic). Just because a question is about iOS (or Java or C# or {insert technology here}) doesn't mean it doesn't belong here if it fits our list of things that are on-topic and doesn't go into the things that we exclude.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/48578/what-can-cause-a-question-to-be-bumped" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24405" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8486" RevisionGUID="a94118b5-586d-4288-8201-9b8afe55add2" CreationDate="2017-03-13T04:24:34.127" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Questions about language design can be problematic: it is too easy to fall into one of several close reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Too broad. You would need to scope the question quite tightly. I know from experience looking at blogs and other web sites that discuss new versions of languages that there can be a _ton_ of information: far more than is reasonable to fit in an answer here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Primarily opinion-based. Depending on the feature and how it is used, people may approve or disapprove of a feature. For example: consider if the ternary operator (`expr ? if-true : if-false`) were just now being added to a language. This would invite highly-opinionated arguments similar to tabs-vs-spaces. I would hope that by 2017 new features are more clearly beneficial and less opinionated, but this is not always the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This actually gets at the heart of your question: you have concerns about some of the features, and are likely looking for opinions and discussion, both of which will result in question closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Off-topic: resource recommendation. Do not ask for links to sites that explain new features.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if you craft a great question that avoids these pitfalls, you will likely meet quite a bit of resistance from the community as many of the users who have enough reputation to cast close votes and are active daily have a bias against questions like this. Even if you have a great question, it has been preceded by a line of utter crap that has predisposed the community toward erring on the side of closing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly, you are probably better off asking on [reddit][1]. Maybe there is already a thread about it there?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or down voted?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/csharp/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/6483/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24406" PostHistoryTypeId="4" PostId="2534" RevisionGUID="48cadf6e-7bb7-4474-8195-923631966ee8" CreationDate="2017-03-13T04:29:08.780" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Updated with new site name." Text="Can we get Mathjax on Software Engineering?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24407" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2964" RevisionGUID="437cb5ed-313a-43e8-ace1-429da9ce6af8" CreationDate="2017-03-15T15:13:55.870" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.security.stackexchange.com/ with https://security.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="According to a Community Manager for the Stack Exchange Network, &quot;[**unless a question has some chance to be considered for reopening, it should be deleted**][1].&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on this query for [closed questions][2] (which returns 2,682 questions) and [16,210 questions count here][3], it appears possible that some closed questions are not being deleted, which based on my understanding goes against [SE practices][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Just to be clear, this is not a question about why questions are closed, or if too many are closed** -- but instead why there are so many closed questions that have not been deleted, given it appears to be SE policy to delete closed questions if it's clear they will not be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://security.meta.stackexchange.com/a/683/2742&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed:1&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://security.meta.stackexchange.com/a/683/2742" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24408" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1522" RevisionGUID="05cb1069-911f-4092-8ff6-c25c5143adbe" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:32:26.850" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.webapps.stackexchange.com/ with https://webapps.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="To answer this, I need to provide a little background:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the first Stack Exchange sites went into beta, it was expected all sites would get their own site and domain name. All sites in beta had boilerplate questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What should our domain name be?&#xD;&#xA;* What should our logo be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Web Applications.SE](http://webapps.stackexchange.com), the first non-trilogy Stack Exchange to launch, even launched under the moniker &quot;Nothing to Install&quot; with the domain name *nothingtoinstall.com*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, branding and naming is hard. *Nothing to Install* is an okay name, but certainly not a home run. And nobody had a better name for it; so you had this site, an important milestone in the Stack Exchange network, launching with a forgettable name. To make matters worse, there were several Stack Exchange sites ready to launch, most with equally *eh* names. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So that got the gears turning at the mothership that perhaps rapidly launching sites with mediocre names wasn't the best idea. At that point it was decided that unless a site has an absolutely fantastic name and had traffic levels comparable to Server Fault (i.e. several times more traffic than even the most popular non-trilogy site), the Stack Exchange brand is worth more than any forgettable name that might come up in beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All this (and more) is covered in the Stack Overflow Blog post, [Domain Names: The Wrong Question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/domain-names-the-wrong-question/). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also the discussion on Meta.Webapps.SE: [Webapps.stackexchange.com versus Nothingtoinstall.com](https://webapps.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/624/webapps-stackexchange-com-versus-nothingtoinstall-com)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24409" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7761" RevisionGUID="4d576073-e3e6-419a-8503-c5ac5dc11ee7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:32:26.850" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.webapps.stackexchange.com/ with https://webapps.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I wasn't going to update the experiment this week, but the results this week were so encouraging I can't help myself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Week posted Qs  Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion Rate&#xD;&#xA;    ----------- --- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- -------------&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-12  325    190      58.5%           8.9%     2.6%      11.8%         40.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-19  349    205      58.7%           8.8%     2.4%       5.6%         39.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-26  319    207      64.9%           8.7%     1.4%      11.1%         46.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-02  362    218      60.2%          13.3%     3.7%      10.3%         44.2%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09  286    206      72.0%          20.9%     3.9%       7.0%         41.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-16  340    205      60.3%          17.6%     9.3%      30.6%         35.6%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only has the close rate dropped to something like the pre-experiment rate, the reopen rate has rather dramatically increased. Much of this is due to more edited questions getting reopened than in previous weeks. (It might be too early to tell if it's statistically significant, but more closed questions are being edited since the test began.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also spent some time last week trying to learn what prompted people to close so many questions on Programmers. While there are many detailed reasons, two themes emerged in my mind:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that remain open are signposts that prompt new questions of the same type.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. It's difficult to maintain the quality of answers on certain types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first didn't surprise me. It's a variation of the broken window theory (which is [different than &quot;zero-tolerance policing&quot;](http://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in-policing/research-evidence-review/broken-windows-policing/) by the way.) Since it's often difficult to curate a large corpus of answers, it's a lot more convenient to curate the questions instead. Some sites, however, pull it off. Skeptics, for instance, has [strict rules](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/faq-welcome-to-new-users) about what sort of questions can be asked (notably, notable ones) and what is required of answers (particularly that they be referenced). As a result, Skeptics deletes a large percentage of answers that have a score &gt; 0:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;       7634     35.5     19.64     0.05     0          97.16 Area 51 Discussions&#xD;&#xA;       8288     13.61    55.68     0.1      6.03       28.63 Skeptics&#xD;&#xA;       5782     10.26    46.49     0.09     0.02       48.74 Islam     &#xD;&#xA;     141392      9.38    25.01     0.45     0.02       78.15 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       4810      6.63    52.45     0.12     0.46       27.9  Biblical Hermeneutics&#xD;&#xA;      15660      5.86    45.84     0.03     0.37       48.31 Christianity&#xD;&#xA;      22572      5.08    28.81     0.33     0.02       63    Web Apps&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cut the list off at sites that delete at least 5% of positively-scored answers. Area 51 is interesting because 97% of &quot;good answers&quot; get deleted when their question gets deleted as a result of their [failed proposal being deleted](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/9068/do-not-delete-discussions-about-deleted-proposals). But the next in line is a real site: Skeptics. Their policies encourage deletion not only of entire questions, but individual answers as well. (Skeptics is unique in its extensive use of post notices.) [Islam](http://meta.islam.stackexchange.com/a/610/138), [Christianity](http://meta.christianity.stackexchange.com/a/1446/914) and [Biblical Hermeneutics](http://meta.hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/a/533/68) have fairly strict requirements that answers be well-supported. Those sites also emphasize narrow questions that allow moderators to delete many answers as non-answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm less familiar with Web Apps, but I believe they [had a major change in scope](https://webapps.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/764/proposal-to-clean-up-the-scope-of-the-site-is-your-question-about-using-a-speci) not unlike what happened on Programmers. When you shift the topic of a site, that will leave many now-off-topic questions that need deleting along with all their answers. As a corollary, there's a real need to lock questions and their answers. But look what happens when we limit to answers posted in the last year:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;      10617      4.53    34.44     0.01     0.03       66.53 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       2999      1.93    27.91     0.23     0          48.28 Web Apps  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Web Apps has settled into a fairly normal pattern of deleting relatively few upvoted answers. It's also split fairly evenly between deleting those answers individual and as a result of deleting the question. Programmers has become a little less extreme in terms of positively-scored-answer deletion, but it still ranks near the top of the list with Area 51 (31%), Skeptics (11%), Islam (4.5%) and Christianity (4%). More recent additions include Hinduism (4%) and Health (4%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Ok. What does this all mean?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Truthfully, I'm not sure. My current guess is that people are concerned that forces outside of their control will flood the site with embarrassing or just-plain-wrong answers. (This relates to another theme I heard a lot of: the Hot Network Questions list.) [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) gets [cited a lot here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=url%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.stackoverflow.com%2F2010%2F09%2Fgood-subjective-bad-subjective%2F). However, I wonder if the post gives the false impression that burden falls _solely on the question_. Certainly the way a question is asked increases or decreases the odds it will receive [crowd-pleasing nonanswers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers). But ultimately, we need to [hold answers to that standard too](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1110/96050).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other thing that kinda gets lost when talking about Good Subjective is that it isn't that opinions aren't allowed. Rather **naked opinions are noise**. The post even suggests:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Use your specific experiences to back up your opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that software engineering is one part science and one part craftsmanship, so it should be surprising to see some answers backed by experience rather than data. This is doubly true since the profession is incredibly young. Given quality of [users on this site](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&amp;filter=all), there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, it's a lot easier to delete popular answers if they don't actually answer the question. One technique that [seems to work](http://meta.christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/690/what-makes-a-good-focused-question) is requiring questions focus down on a specific domain. For instance, instead of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125320/do-todo-comments-make-sense maybe it would be better to ask &quot;Should TODO comments be removed when a project is in maintainance mode?&quot; That way the focus of the question isn't a holy war between pro-TODO and anti-TODO, but about the specific utility of those comments. (Obviously the asker should specify the situation they are actually facing.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24410" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2003" RevisionGUID="9c695d65-010f-42c3-9259-98fe65eb520f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:32:35.787" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/ with https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We get [a *lot* of book recommendation questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=book%20recommendation), so much so that it's hard to keep up with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've been closing them as off-topic, not a real question, and not constructive based on a few different points of guidance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The [What questions should I not ask here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) part of our FAQ&#xD;&#xA;* [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are “I'm looking for X” questions on topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* Other consensus built elsewhere on the network like Gaming.SE: [What should be done with questions asking for game recommendations?](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1491/what-should-be-done-with-questions-asking-for-game-recommendations)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, due to the sheer number of these questions we get, I wonder if we should revisit this and see where we as a community stands on book recommendations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are book recommendations on-topic? If so, why? What preconditions need to be met for a good book recommendation question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not, do we need to add a new line under *What about other programming-related questions?* to make it explicitly clear they're not allowed? Something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Book recommendations (e.g. What's the best book to learn Python?)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24411" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2537" RevisionGUID="385d4724-0e0e-4f75-9a25-29192c8361fa" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:32:35.787" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/ with https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Moderators are elected for indefinite terms and serve at the pleasure of Stack Exchange. Elections are held when there is a need for more moderators, either due to increased workload or moderators taking extended or permanent leaves of absence. From [Grace Note on Gaming.SE](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2618/how-often-are-moderator-elections-held/2619#2619):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Normally, we hold elections once shortly after graduation, then roughly look into it once a year afterwards. However, this is further refined based on the needs of the site. For example, if the current set of moderators (after this election) is more than sufficient, then we could probably skip a year of elections. Times change and the important thing is to have people who have the available time to spend on the site and cover it well. As such, a lot of elections is about when the site needs it, more than it is any periodic effect. Periodic checks are more as a good habit to investigate whether there is an unspoken need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, the elections on Stack Overflow are to elect four more moderators to supplement the 10 man team they have currently. The last supplemental election was held on Gaming.SE, where they elected two moderators to replace Grace Note (who became a Stack Exchange, Inc. employee) and offset the increased traffic on the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24412" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2858" RevisionGUID="dc3b0abb-b3d2-42e0-9122-41370f5650ec" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:32:35.787" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/ with https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We're a month behind, but that's no excuse to not celebrate our first birthday. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Following the discussion [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2677/programmers-birthday-celebration), it looks like we have most of a proposal in place that we can go to the community team at Stack Exchange with. I'm going to summarize what we have so far here and pose a couple more questions that need sorting out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Idea**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can do a &quot;topic of the week&quot; contest where users old and new alike ask questions about a topic (TBD). Every question that meets the criteria below grants an entry into a random draw at the end of the week that will determine 3 lucky prize (TBD) winners.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Criteria**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each qualifying question must:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- meet the site guidelines established in [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com);&#xD;&#xA;- be positively scored (&gt; 0);&#xD;&#xA;- be tagged with the pre-determined tags appropriate for the topic;&#xD;&#xA;- be posted while the contest is running. Older questions don't count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Topics**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can propose topics in the answers here. The highest voted one will be chosen. Naturally, topics must also fit the scope of Programmers, so no code golf please. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Prizes**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each good question you post will increase your chances of winning. For the prizes, I'm thinking we can offer a choice of a book (perhaps related to the topic) or a development tool in the, say, $50 ballpark. I haven't pitched this price point to Stack Exchange, but I know similarly priced prizes have done well in the past on other sites so it seems like a reasonable starting point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the topic is chosen, I'd like to come up with 5 books and/or tools to choose from that are related and offer the 3 winners to choose from that list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mark Trapp suggested in comments on the original discussion post, we may also do a bountyathon a la [Gaming's bounty giveaway](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3506/omg-its-the-holiday-bounty-giveaway).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Next Steps**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you agree with this? Anything you'd change? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please let us know what you think and propose ideas for topics and prizes that would fit well with what we do here on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24413" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3662" RevisionGUID="bb6db1f3-0642-454d-ba2c-0eb336da01c2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:32:35.787" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/ with https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Stack Exchange's aggregate traffic is public and available on Quantcast][1], but it may or may not be an accurate or up-to-date picture at any moment in time. It should, however, be accurate enough for the purposes of figuring out if a contest helped: [it was used a lot on Gaming.SE][2] during the [Skyrim vs. Modern Warfare 3 promotion][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Much more detailed analytics are indeed available to SE employees and to moderators, but they're not available mostly for the reasons outlined in the answers to the MSO question, [Why are stats not public information?][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, [cwallenpoole's answer][5]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I might hazard some guesses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. This might have to do with the same reason that SE sites are &quot;not about the rep&quot;. If exact numbers are used, that could lead to someone gaming the system, realizing that x and y conditions lead to condition z. In the context of a blog, this can lead to especially perverse aberrations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. It also could have to do with principles similar to those outlined in Tufte's *Visual Explanations.* The quantifiable, without appropriate contextualization can lead to grossly inaccurate conclusions. (you can see his discussion on pg. 36, if you care. A better example from a different book is the stock-market to sun-spot ratio chart at the beginning of *Visual Display of Quantitative Information*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. One rule to rule them all means both that you don't have to micro-manage what is and is not appropriate and you don't have the complaint, &quot;But *`&lt;pronoun&gt;`* gets to do it *`&lt;possesive-pronoun&gt;`* way...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Of course, these are more guesses as to/justification of the reasoning than they are the rationale themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, [Jeff Atwood's answer][6]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Pretty much what cwallenpoole said in his answer; in my mind, this is like arguing for full disclosure of people's salaries. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And anyway, what's the *problem?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Those who need to know, can get the information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Those who wish to know, can ask those that have it for a summary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Just because you *can* get the information doesn't mean you *need* it. Information porn can be harmful. And having it can cause a distraction from the stuff that matters, just like real porn...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you mentioned, they'll generally provide a 10,000-foot picture of those analytics upon request, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.quantcast.com/programmers.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3205/3389&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://skyrimvsmw3.com&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/106306/why-are-stats-not-public-information&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/106314/149432&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/107437/149432" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24414" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4" RevisionGUID="58c92919-90dd-4f6f-8460-b4ad1d49b348" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:43:44.307" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/ with https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="One of the big 7 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - One suggestion per answer please&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Logo guidance, from Jin](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/982/design-ideas-for-gaming-site-updated-with-screenshot) (resident UI designer for at least some of the Stack Exchange sites):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please note: I prefer gray-scaled logo submissions, that way we can judge the IDEA of the logo more objectively. We can always add colors to the logo later. Also, the logo itself(sans the site title text) should be able to fit in a square dimension nicely. This way we can use it for favicons, mobile touch icons etc." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24415" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3418" RevisionGUID="92c26a84-0adf-4cba-8af5-70c6269b45c8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:43:44.307" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/ with https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think a better way to approach it might be like how [Gaming.SE does their contests][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You start by picking a timeframe and a tag. The tag could be a design pattern, a development methodology, or any broad category you'd like to promote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two winners: One for best question, and one for best answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Best Question** is won by the person who asked a question with the contest tag within the contest timeframe, that has the most Views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Best Answer** is won by the the person who answered a question containing the contest tag within the contest timeframe, that has the most votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Winners get the software development Book or eBook of their choice (within a reasonable price range) from Amazon&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The beauty of this is users don't have to do anything extra to participate in the contest, and very little administrative work is needed to manage the contest. You'll need someone to determine the contest tags and timeframe, and create the announcement for it, and you'll need someone that knows how to get the top question and answer based on the criteria mentioned above (I'm not sure if that can be done with SE's search, or if you'd need the help of an SE employee to query the database)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, it's just regular SE Q&amp;A. The only difference is users are encouraged to post questions and answers within a specific tag to win prizes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an added bonus, you will be promoting tags which are clearly on-topic for the site, such as design-patterns or algorithms, and this will hopefully generate some great on-topic questions and answers for P.SE, which I think we need more of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per discussions in the programmers contest chat room, the final decision was to run a contest for a 4-week period, with one tag being highlighted per week. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tags will be [tag:programming-history], [tag:data-structures], [tag:algorithms], and [tag:documentation]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of each week, two prizes will be awarded:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The **Best Question** prize will be awarded to the user who asked the question with the most **views** in the contest tag during that tag's contest week (so feel free to advertise your question any way you can to get more views!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The **Best Answer** prize will be awarded to the user who posted the answer with the most **votes** that was answered to any question with one the contest tags during that tag's contest week&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prizes will be determined by the SE team, and as of right now it looks like they will be **$50** worth of programming-related stuff from Amazon (winners choice!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prizes will only be awarded to open questions, so be sure what you post is on-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3908/8462" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24416" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3429" RevisionGUID="92706566-f74a-43bb-92d9-04e330de5f55" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:43:44.307" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/ with https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Adapted from [meta.wordpress.stackexchange][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Recommended Reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Blog][2] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [I Move to Close This Question][3] &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;    How and why closing was introduced on Stack Overflow in 2008.&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; It’s important to note here that closing a question is a step on the road to deletion. Closing is effectively “nominate to delete”, as a question that can’t be answered is no longer truly “alive”. That said, some closed questions should be kept around. For example, duplicate questions that have totally different wording are sometimes useful. With the duplicates, people can find either variation with search terms and link through to the original.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions][4]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    About duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; Don’t answer questions that have already been answered elsewhere. Yeah, you might earn a couple of points of reputation, but, because you are duplicating content, you are actually making the internet worse. Why? Because that answer might be true today, but as technology changes, it might not be true tomorrow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Stack Overflow Question Lifecycle][5]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How and when questions are closed or deleted.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers][6], [Gorilla vs. Shark][7] and [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    About the _not constructive_ close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Meta Stack Overflow][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is a “closed” question?][10] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; * 24 votes to close per day (50 on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * 5 votes are required to close or reopen&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * Votes will expire after 4 days if the question does not reach 5 votes&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * Questions containing a bounty cannot be closed&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * You can only vote to close once per question&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * You can only vote to reopen once per question&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How do you reopen a closed question?][11] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; The owner must have 250 rep in order to vote to reopen their own question. Other users can also vote to reopen, but they must have a minimum 3000 reputation points.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Leaving comments about voting to reopen does nothing in and of itself. You can try and [address a specific user](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2035/notify-user-when-their-name-is-mentioned-in-comment-closed) who may have left a comment as to why they voted to close and ask them to help cast reopen votes if you think they voted in error.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  See also: [How do you challenge the closing of one of your questions?][12], [Why was my question closed and how to contact the closer][13] and [My question has been closed. What do I do now?][14] (on meta.crypto.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Closing/Migrating question instructions/guidance][15]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  A long explanation of the close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What can cause my question to be bumped?][16]  &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;  Close/reopen votes on the question do not bump the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Etiquette for closing your own questions][17] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; I don't think you should close your questions lightly. There are very few questions that have a definite answer that will never change, or that cannot be improved upon.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How to handle duplicate questions?][18]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not by tagging or editing, vote to close or flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Please add the ability to filter \[Closed\] questions out of my results][19] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Stick the closed:0 parameter in your search pipe and you're smoking out the closed questions: [closed:0](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A0)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; But if you're in the mood of puffing around the closed: [closed:1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1)&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  See also our [search tips][20]. &#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Allow question askers to close their own questions unilaterally][21]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Once you post a question it is not exactly YOURS in every sense of the word anymore, it belongs to EVERYONE.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  But you can _delete_ your own question as long as there are no upvoted answers.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How useful must a question be to be allowed?][22]  &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;  About the _too localized_ close reason, derived from [this question on Gaming][23]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; What value does this question have to anyone else on the planet, other than the one person who asked? In other words, what internet user is going to be searching for and finding information about a game one person vaguely remembers playing in broad terms?&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;  See also: [What questions should be closed with reason “too localized”?][24]&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Remove/downweight closed questions in “hot” question sort][25]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; I think there's a misconception here -- closing does not mean &quot;get this off my screen ASAP&quot;, closing means, &quot;this question should be re-evaluated by the community&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Can we have the ability to rescind a close vote before it closes?][26]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No. See Jeff’s answer … with a lot of negative votes. :)&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Close Votes expire too soon for low-traffic tags][27]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: Fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Close votes (and probably reopen votes) only expire after all of these conditions are met:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1. 4 days have passed since the last close vote.  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2. The question has more than 100 views.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Auto-deleting old, unanswered zero-score questions after a year?][28]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There is a garbage collector which works as follows:&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; If the question is more than 30 days old, and ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has -1 or lower score&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has no answers&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* is not locked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; If the question is more than 365 days old, and ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has a score of 0 or a score of 1 with a deleted owner&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has no answers&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* is not locked&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has a viewcount &lt;= the age of the question in days times 1.5&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has 1 or 0 comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; This check is run every week across all sites.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  **Each time you misuse the answer field for pseudo-comments you break the garbage collector.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Do “fix my code pleeese!” questions qualify for closure as “too localized”?][29]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Yes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## My own summary after a long reading session&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing is not deleting. A closed question is still visible, it can be improved and reopened. It [doesn’t affect the accept rate][30] but prevents potentially useless answers. Help us to stay [on focus][31], use your close votes.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a moderator (on WordPress Stack Exchange) I don’t like to act unilaterally. Your close votes are helping me and the other moderators to decide and we don’t feel so bad if we close a question. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.wordpress.stackexchange.com/a/1035/73&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10582/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/36415/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/19126/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/119638/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/q/144/1910&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/32490/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/48578/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/5215/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10841/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/7913/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10363/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/70521/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1455&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/4818/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/107153/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/915/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/97556/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/78048/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/82874/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/08/new-question-asker-features/&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24417" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3843" RevisionGUID="493f9c4d-f261-4c69-86b8-14169fbee402" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:43:44.307" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/ with https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Thank you for bring this up on meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am constantly seeing rude, snarky, condescending, and even hostile comments like these all over Programmers, and appreciate you taking the time to bring this issue to everyone's attention. Its not all users, but its enough users to make a noticeable difference in the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I couldn't agree more with this&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. Vote to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; close, flag, down-vote, or leave a polite comment explaining to the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; user where they went wrong and just move on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're actually interested in helping the user understand their problem so they can correct it, that's fine. But if you want to comment just to make a point and never see the question again, refrain from commenting altogether.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, here's another bit of advice stolen from [Arquade's Meta post on rude comments][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; #How should one react to rude comments?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't engage. **Don't upvote the rude comment**.  Remember even if a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rude comment is funny to you it may be irritating to others. Telling&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off the rude user will only make matters worse. If the rude comment&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also says something useful (e.g. &quot;Hey stupid butt, your question is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off topic&quot;) consider adding a *polite* comment that contains&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *constructive* information instead and flag the rude comment for removal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And a [comment][2] below explaining why you don't upvote rude comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&quot;Don't upvote the rude comment.&quot;** I feel this is really important. When we do that, we're pretty much giving tacit approval to whatever&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been posted and sending the message that the community approves of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this type of behavior&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of people I see posting questions on here are asking for help, and I hate seeing them turned away with sarcasm, rudeness, and a condescending or elitist attitude. I don't think SE would succeed if it wasn't for the millions of people that volunteer their time to help others solve their problems, and having these sort of comments all over the site, with frequent upvotes, is a good way to make volunteers think this site is not for them, and to leave the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also stolen from Arqade's post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; #Is there anything I can do to get rid of rude comments?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Just flag them; there's a little flag icon to the left of a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Click it and select &quot;rude or offensive&quot; in the menu that pops up.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The comment will be flagged for moderator attention, a moderator can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; remove the comment if they agree the post is rude/offensive. However&#xD;&#xA;&gt; if 3 or more users total flag the same comment as rude, it will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [automatically be deleted (see this comment for the formula)][4]. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the comment is very high scoring it might take a couple extra flags to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; automatically delete, but **it only takes 3 flags to delete most&#xD;&#xA;&gt; comments**.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that nothing bad can happen to you or even the poster of the rude&#xD;&#xA;&gt; comment when you flag. These flags are anonymous. By flagging a single&#xD;&#xA;&gt; comment you're not getting anyone into trouble, you're just helping&#xD;&#xA;&gt; keep the site a clean, civil place. If you feel someone is being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; persistently and problematically rude, flag one of their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; posts/comments (or one of your own posts) with an &quot;other&quot; flag and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; explain the situation; a moderator can privately contact the user&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about persistent rudeness.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[tl;dr][5]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all&#xD;&#xA; - Don't upvote rude comments&#xD;&#xA; - If you see rude comments, flag them as rude/offensive for removal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5046/8462&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5045/how-should-we-deal-with-rude-comments/5046#comment14552_5046&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CkmHj.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/138168/reduce-the-threshold-for-comment-deletion-with-flags#comment388193_138168&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Too_long;_didn%27t_read" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24418" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5249" RevisionGUID="9b956c49-d8e9-4810-8cfc-6b4480594d47" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:43:44.307" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/ with https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There has been a precedent of a site receiving a redesign, but it had to do with branding rather than any dissatisfaction with the existing design. In fact, the [new design](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4821/introducing-arqade) on Arqade is *mostly* the same as it was on &quot;Gaming&quot; back in the day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Far as redesigning Programmers goes... I'm sorry, but it's at best extremely unlikely. There are certainly issues here and there that could be fixed up, but **a complete redesign isn't going to happen**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[We have one designer](http://stackexchange.com/about/team) (see if you can spot him!) and no shortage of design projects and things that require his attention. Just going purely by priorities, even if we agreed to redesign Programmers, it simply wouldn't happen in the foreseeable future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do our best to come up with a design that represents the community and reflects the scope of the site, but it's impossible to please everyone, so once the design is set... for better or for worse, it is what it is. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've made this argument before and I'll make it again: **other professional questions and expert answers are what attracts more professional questions**, not the font style or the site logo. Granted, a site rendered in, say, Comic Sans wouldn't exactly inspire confidence, but we're not talking a garish Geocities-like eyesore here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My advice is to identify specific issues with the design (like, say, ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME) and make feature requests/bug reports about those. I can't promise that all, or even most, of those will be fixed, but we'll do our best as we get the time. In the meantime, focus on the questions and the answers. That's where the true strength and purpose of the site is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Fun fact: we're hiring a [product designer](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/24481/product-designer-stack-exchange). If you know someone who would fit the bill, please send 'em our way before Jin rebels.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24419" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7368" RevisionGUID="01b2612e-6434-424c-b832-2a1c2063694a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:43:44.307" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/ with https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Ok, I decided to weigh in on this one...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The specific question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The text of the question in question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have a site in wordpress and added menu in sidebar and I have changed the size of some tabs to show them separate, I just want when site loads then 2nd 3rd 4th 5th and 6th tab should be hide and open on when click on foirst tab then hide on clicking first tab,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     $(document).ready(function(){&#xD;&#xA;        $(&quot;#main-menu ul li:nth-child(2)&quot;).click(function(){&#xD;&#xA;            $(&quot;#main-menu ul li:nth-child(n+2):nth-child(-n+6)&quot;).toggle();&#xD;&#xA;        });&#xD;&#xA;    });&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also I don't know where should I put my javascript function in wordpress website,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that this question is off topic and that any answers that it gets here would cause *more* moderator work (migrating it to SO, duping it there, merging it there), closing it promptly *here* would be a good thing and reduce moderator work and the drain on community close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was asked at 1:07 UTC, and closed at 20:17 UTC. A tad bit over 19 hours. That's awkward and could have easily gotten some 'helpful' user posting an answer here. Fortunately it didn't. But if it *did*, it would have meant a flag for moderators to migrate it to the correct site where it *is* on topic (and as of this writing, still open).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this question, I believe the flag should have been acted upon and closed. I personally feel it's a rather clear cut case of an off topic question and a mod close could have prevented other possible answers in the wrong place. We get those often enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We should endeavor to avoid bouncing people and questions around form site to site - thats a bad experience. We should furthermore, endeavor to avoid the situations where we would be deleting questions that are completely inappropriate here (off topic fix my code) but have somehow garnered answers that would end up being deleted here (no one likes having their material deleted). Both of these require prompt action to avoid a poor experience; and sometimes the community isn't and can't be prompt enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The general case&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is on topic on both sites, being cross posted is *not* a reason to close as off topic - its on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I've often found that questions that are posted identically to two or more sites suffer from lack of specificity and are often (not always) too broad or unclear. Those are perfectly acceptable reasons to close a question. This is especially frequent in situations where the OP wants &quot;diverse answers from multiple communities.&quot;  Many times, these questions are seeking discussion rather than solving problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that posting identical questions on multiple sites I consider to be very rude to the communities of those sites - having multiple groups working on solving a problem when its already solved somewhere else is wasting the time of multiple users.  Having questions where it didn't get an answer on one site but did on another leads to fragmentation of knowledge across the network and poor search results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Across the metas&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My take on this can be found on Meta.SE: [Can cross-posts actually be valuable to two communities, with the exception of being worded identically?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/243851/213963).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll also point to [Are cross-site questions acceptable in rare cases?](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5369/177) from Gaming.SE and highlight a bit from there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The reason cross-posting is frowned upon is because it's the hallmark of a vague question. If it's broad enough to be equally applicable to multiple SE sites, you haven't refined the question enough. More thought needs to be invested to see which group would be best able to answer your question. You need to decide which site you think has the best chance of answering the question. If you don't manage to get an answer, feel free to delete and ask on another. That way, there's no duplication of effort, no bickering, and if you get an answer on another site, it will be applicable to those that view it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### In conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it may not be off topic, and posting an identical question on multiple sites  can sometimes be acceptable, it ***will*** be judged with a more critical eye as to how it is applicable ***here***. The question may very well receive borderline votes of too broad or unclear because of how the question applies *here* rather than *there*." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24420" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="530" RevisionGUID="7dfe37cb-5699-45b1-bfe6-85d71f3c8d5c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:43:48.910" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.webmasters.stackexchange.com/ with https://webmasters.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My first reaction when I saw that question was that it should be on webmasters.  I did a little looking, and there are questions about measuring and comparing hosting providers in the [web-hosting][1] and [hosting][2] tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's also been [some discussion][3] on webmasters meta about hosting questions, and the consensus seems to be that they are being handled well (i.e., answered or closed) so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My vote is for directing these questions to webmasters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/web-hosting&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/hosting&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://webmasters.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=hosting" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24421" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1901" RevisionGUID="b7953a56-6771-459b-96d9-4fb616895e0e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:43:48.910" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.webmasters.stackexchange.com/ with https://webmasters.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="See my answer on Pro Webmasters:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://webmasters.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/523/how-do-we-prevent-obviously-low-quality-questions-from-being-migrated-here/524#524&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The first rule of migration is **don't migrate crap**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In general the migration process is working okay but it is possible to see bad outcomes if, say, 3 of the 5 voters incorrectly decide to migrate a question to a site. That's a majority, and enough to make it happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We have some plans to revamp migration a bit to handle this, but it's a few months out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In the meantime, I'll see what we can do to improve the messaging around &quot;don't migrate stuff that is of obviously low quality *anywhere*.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;edit: one change I can make, and I just did, is that we now require 4/5 of the close votes to be matching migration votes before we migrate anyhere. Prior to this it was 3/5." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24423" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2358" RevisionGUID="a1bc9cfe-dbad-44e2-9c2c-9e8214e2b05c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:43:53.210" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.cooking.stackexchange.com/ with https://cooking.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We can’t perform the operation [requested here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2298/blacklist-career-and-jobs), that is, blacklist [tag:career] and [tag:jobs] while still leaving the tags present on the site. We have some suggestions on what could be done as an alternative, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Nuke The Tags&#xD;&#xA;Simply put, obliterate the tag. I’m aware that the previous request was to explicitly not destroy the tag, but it remains a simple, direct, and potent form of action. It’s swift and easy to do - simply need to grab a dev and get it done. It is also instantaneous, taking no time. And it gets the most important aspect of the job done: the prevention of future questions with this tag. The cleanup afterwards is just to remove [tag:untagged] from a much smaller portion of questions remaining. Without a doubt, the fastest option available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not without fault, though, the main issue being that it erases all traces of the tag. There may be several questions which had other tags, yet may have benefited from additional retagging. The ease of finding these questions would be lost.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Plot The Disambiguation&#xD;&#xA;Rather than obliterate the tag as a first step, an alternate route is to work through the existing tag, without performing any retags but instead plotting out how the disambiguation would work out. This would entail collecting links of all the questions, and organizing them into discrete groups of similar properties, so that the consequent retagging job is highly organized. An organized set of links to all the posts would allow for the tag to be safely removed from all instances without inhibiting the ability to revisit them; it would also allow for the merits of any particular retag direction to be discussed and fine-tuned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the minus side, it is an extensive amount of work to perform, perhaps the most time-consuming option available. Assuming it is done merely as a side task rather than a focused effort of hours at a time, merely running through a handful of questions, cataloging their links into appropriate groups, it will take a team of users several days to tackle 1100 questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Use A Dummy Tag&#xD;&#xA;This is [what Seasoned Advice did](https://cooking.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/970/discouraging-the-proliferation-of-bad-tags-proposal) when they had to deal with the likewise horrible [cooking-techniques] and [ingredients] tags that were just easily misunderstood, ambiguous, and waaaay too widespread across their site. They created a new tag, [please-remove-this-tag], which all of the bad tags were renamed to. This gave them the ability to take their time with the retag effort while preventing the bad tags from resurfacing during that time period.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is similar to the previous suggestion, but exchanges the high level of organization for a much faster execution. The immediacy of the renaming will prevent future tag instances much sooner, while still preserving the access to all the questions. It is, however, a bit clunky in appearance, and users may be confused by the presence of a tag which requests its own removal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are the current options on the table. There may be better tools available in the future, but dilly-dallying until those tools are available is just going to let those tags continue to grow, festering like a fetid pile of compost salad." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24424" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8366" RevisionGUID="690da0df-72ef-4e2d-8814-83a94f2af7e7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:44:03.123" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.photo.stackexchange.com/ with https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While the idea is good, the realization is problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is already highlighted by Doc Brown in comments: the major question is *how* should the questions of the week be selected, given that there is already a system of upvotes. I'd consider a few alternatives:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Most upvoted question gets “question of the week” status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   The obvious problem with that is that it is not unusual for questions which are not particularly useful or on-topic to get a lot of upvotes, so this won't work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The question which gets most upvotes from the high reputation members becomes the “question of the week”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   The problem, here again, is that while high reputation indicates that the person is probably aware of site rules, it doesn't mean the person will upvote only useful and on-topic questions. For instance, I sometimes upvote questions which I personally find well-written and/or interesting, even when I know they are off-topic or don't “illustrate the kind of subject matter we'd like to see on the website”. In other words, simply because I have &gt;10k rep doesn't mean I agree with all the rules of this community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The question of the week is selected by moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   I'm sure we'll get questions which are indeed much more representative of the *site*, since the moderators are the ones who are expected to know the site rules the best, but maybe those questions would be less representative of the *community*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The question of the week is selected by a single person, such as Robert Harvey, since he has the highest reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   This has a benefit of being easy to do. A single person could simply create a Twitter feed with the questions she/he considers good, and eventually double-post them on Meta for peer review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   However, I'm not sure this would be *considered* representative of both the site and the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - On [Photo.SE][1], they have an interesting concept of [Hall of Fame][2] where anyone can post a photo in Meta, and every week, the photo with the highest upvotes gets displayed in the header of the website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   I think this solution is closer to what we need here. However, if the Hall of Fame idea concept is copied here, we shouldn't simply clone it. The idea on Photo.SE is that a photo posted on Meta as a candidate gets upvotes and is never downvoted. If the same system is used on SE.SE, I would prefer one where the given candidate for the question of the week could be upvoted *and* downvoted, and also, which is much more important, *discussed*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://photo.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://photo.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2657/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24425" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="263" RevisionGUID="2d6b4aa0-8e1f-4932-8c82-8c66b4a69b67" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:44:21.993" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/ with https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Should we be close duplicates of questions that came from other SE sites?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, we shouldn't.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me quote [Thomas Owens][1] from [Math.SE - Vote to Close as Exact Duplicate][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; From my perspective, the existence of MathOverflow has nothing to do with anything here.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; In fact, life should go on as if it doesn't exist because this is a totally separate site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While MathOverflow is a non-SE site, we should have the same behavior with other SE sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We must see if the question could fit on our site, not if it could fit on other sites...&#xD;&#xA;Which brings us to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should the question be closed?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, it needs improvement...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me quote the [about page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We are a site for expert programmers interested in subjective discussions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sure bad website designs can be learned from and might fit in our domain,  &#xD;&#xA;but the question is stated similar to requesting people for their desktop wallpapers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I see it right to close this question for off-topic reasons, but it's not a duplicate in my eyes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/users/91/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/310/vote-to-close-as-exact-duplicate-should-accept-mathoverflow-question-urls" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24426" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1031" RevisionGUID="c2ef2c94-ad00-4535-8541-3ef180550533" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:44:21.993" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/ with https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Jeff [suggests][1] that we ask questions to nominees on meta with the **Election** tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So far I've seen four ways to ask questions to nominees:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Right in the comments of nominee's introduction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. One question in a meta, every nominee can answer (Jeff's [suggestion][1]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Many questions in a meta post ([used][2] on [Super User][2] by Ivo Flipse).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. One post on meta for many questions. Questions are asked in answers. Nominees edit the answer with their own. ([used][3] on [Math.SE][3]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've [used method 2][4] by grouping two questions with a very similar subjects as per [Anna's suggestion][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What's is your preferred way?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1019/2011-community-moderator-election&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.superuser.com/questions/1950/qa-with-the-candidates-in-2011-moderator-election&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1254/list-of-questions-for-candidates-in-2010-moderator-election&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1030/nominees-2011-could-you-please-tell-more-about-your-future-moderation-style&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1027/i-want-to-ask-few-questions-to-nominees-should-i-ask-them-in-a-single-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24427" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1736" RevisionGUID="eb2a73cf-c597-4c92-ac3f-c71a202231fb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:44:21.993" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/ with https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Generally moderators don't clean up relevant comments. This includes comments with relevant links. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is closed as a duplicate of one of those links, every comment that includes it will be [automatically deleted](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2246/automatic-removal-of-comments-when-a-question-gets-closed-as-exact-duplicate). This does turn out to be problematic on occasion, like when the comment contains more than just the link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do tend to clean up lengthy discussions (especially when they veer off topic) as described [here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1457/how-do-our-moderators-and-community-members-feel-about-cleaning-up-comment-nois), but we do our best to avoid removing useful/relevant information while doing so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With all that said... I'm not really sure what you're asking for. Do you want moderators to validate links in comments and add them to the &quot;Linked questions&quot; sidebar?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24428" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5217" RevisionGUID="11c0eadc-37df-4ee6-bf15-b26c50bcef5f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:44:21.993" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/ with https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While I understand that in the post Wikipedia era it's generally more difficult for professors to come up with homework questions whose answers don't exist on the web, that's a problem for the professors, not us. Adapt or die applies. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My teaching experience is extremely limited, and at a level a tad lower than University, however from that limited experience my conclusions are that cheaters will cheat, and there isn't much you can do about it. I was perhaps extremely lucky in that the majority of my students were interested enough in the subject matter to _not_ cheat, even though I actively _encouraged_ them to use Wikipedia and Stack Overflow (Programmers didn't exist at the time) and I'm very proud that some of them are today colleagues. A couple of the cheaters also made it, but most of them are flipping burgers somewhere. Oh, well, c'est la vie.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, I only taught for three years, let's see what [someone a tiny bit more experienced has to say][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My opinion is that there is nothing wrong at all with posting homework questions here, particularly interesting ones, and I find much of the negative reaction to homework-question posters to be somewhat strange, alien to my way of learning mathematics in a give-and-take exchange of mathematical ideas. Surely posting questions here and studying the answers is not much different than studying hard in the library, talking mathematics with one's colleagues at math tea or talking to one's professor, which are all excellent ways to learn mathematics. In particular, I expect that students who post questions here might learn just as much if not more from the resulting answers as from their professors---we have a number of talented mathematicians, who are very good at explaining things---and that math.SE provides a valuable service to students having unapproachable professors, having professors who do not explain well, or who have few colleagues able to help them. Furthermore, the math.SE community strongly benefits from the questions and the insightful answers that might be posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So my opinion is that there is no homework issue to speak of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In particular, I hereby give all of my own students complete permission to post any and all their homework problems here, and indeed I encourage them to post their questions here and to study the answers well and thereby to learn some mathematics. I will be testing them on their understanding at the exam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would also encourage all mathematics professors to adopt a policy of encouraging collaboration on homework among their students, as talking about mathematics with one's colleagues is assuredly one of the best ways to learn mathematics. Indeed, I recommend that all professors should actively encourage their students to form study groups in order to work on their homework problems together. Learning as a group, they will go very far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers already has very strict policies regarding the quality of questions, perhaps stricter than most other Stack Exchange sites, and there's absolutely no point at all in coming up with a specific policy regarding homework questions or what appears as homework questions. Any question that's within the scope of the site, as defined in our FAQ, and shows sufficient prior research is welcome to the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, and only for completeness sake, while &quot;professionals&quot; is in the description of the site, it does not disqualify amateurs, enthusiasts and students from using the site, provided they conduct themselves in a professional manner. Our goal is to build a high quality canonical resource that will hopefully help current and _future_ professionals, we don't check credentials at the door, and we never will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2894/how-can-programmers-se-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5157/appropriate-questions-on-java-programming-questions&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag &amp; http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3202/blacklist-homework&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Stack Overflow: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [How to ask and answer homework questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions) - FAQ&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we now discourage the use of and burninate the homework tag?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/123758/can-we-now-discourage-the-use-of-and-burninate-the-homework-tag)&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we cut back on the “Is This Homework?” berating?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/130558/can-we-cut-back-on-the-is-this-homework-berating)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1652/what-do-we-do-with-users-who-post-numerous-unlabeled-homework-questions/1661#1661" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24429" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6663" RevisionGUID="4b6cc0d6-f178-4839-90f3-31e3a3c541e3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:44:21.993" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/ with https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm thinking of doing an experiment with a JS program to utilize Japanese Multiplication, and I want to ask whether or not a software math shortcut is actually a shortcut at all. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, I'm contemplating writing a program to get benchmarks for the comparison of normal multiplication and Japanese Multiplication via programming, and I'd like to ask whether or not this makes sense to do before spending time to build the experiment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Remember, this is a question of whether or not this question is appropriate for this site.** Any additional thoughts on the topic should be described either in the comments or answers to the actual question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also asked whether or not this question would be appropriate on Stack Overflow, Mathematics SE, and Computer Science SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13751/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-mathematical-programming-co&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/255301/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-programming-concept&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.cs.stackexchange.com/questions/861/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-mathematical-programming-co&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Theoretically, the question would look like this:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Japanese Multiplication simulation - is a program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On SuperUser, I asked [a (possibly silly) question about processors using mathematical shortcuts][1] and would like to have a look at the possibility at the **software application** of that concept.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to write a JS simulation of Japanese Multiplication to get benchmarks on large calculations utilizing the shortcut vs traditional CPU multiplication. **I'm curious as to whether it makes sense to do this.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My Question:** I'd like to know whether or not a software math shortcut, as described above is actually a shortcut at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a question of programming concept. By utilizing the simulation of Japanese Multiplication, **is my program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My theory** is that since addition is computed faster than multiplication, a simulation of Japanese multiplication may actually allow a program to multiply (large) numbers faster than the CPU arithmetic unit can. I think this would be a very interesting finding, if it proves to be true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://superuser.com/questions/755648/do-processors-utilize-mathematical-shortcuts-and-tricks-like-we-do?noredirect=1#comment976766_755648&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/swF5p.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24430" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6876" RevisionGUID="b9f106b4-c2c9-4882-9fe5-986269ca7ff8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:44:21.993" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/ with https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Homework is especially problematic on a number of STEM related stack exchange sites.   There is a constant deluge of it on StackOverflow, [Math](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16734/are-they-really-learning-something), and Physics... and we get a bit of the spillover from StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fundamental problems with trying to tack homework on to an existing stack exchange site are the combination of (what many see as) arbitrary constraints ('do this without using a for loop') and that the person asking the question isn't going to necessarily understand the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, students seem to have great difficulty searching and finding [existing answers](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11409621/creating-a-triangle-with-for-loops) for their questions that they ask [again](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16477858/nested-for-loop-for-a-triangle) and [again](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14493599/java-creating-a-triangle-with-numbers-using-nested-for-loops) and [again](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20777749/triangle-that-prints-with-numbers-as-rows) and [again](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22430158/i-want-this-program-to-print-the-numbers-in-triangle-shape) and... well.  That question gets asked [a lot](http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=triangle+java+number+is%3Aquestion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This existing knowledge base is the center of the of the Q&amp;A format and it is key that people asking questions use that knowledge base and then ask a good question if its not there.  Many homework problems fall into that category of missing what is there and not asking a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most people in Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE answering questions are not educators.  We're posed with a problem and we look to solve it.  We take shortcuts.  We skip over things.  We don't know what the educators are actually trying to teach.  In many cases, for us (professionals in the work force) trying to help students, they will learn really bad habits that miss the target of what is trying to be taught.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually teaching someone requires a dense two way communication in most cases.  Our answers are (should be) the quality of a good lecture.  Thats not a two way communication.  When a student is having trouble and has missed (the point of) the lecture, us, providing another lecture isn't going to help.  What they need to do is go to some place that provides the means for two way communication.  Office hours are the best option there.  Failing that, a chat or discussion oriented site is probably a better option for working through the understandings and misunderstandings of the material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've helped people work through a number of homework issues ***in chat***.  The back and forth of explaining and re-explaining something when it wasn't understood the first time - and me actually getting the feedback of what is and isn't understood as I type it is key.  Doing such a question as Q&amp;A on the main site would have been tedious or a chameleon question that keeps morphing with the new understanding and gets re-asked again and again with edits and updates that leaves the resulting mess something that is so specific to *that* person asking that it becomes useless for the site as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, I will point out that there are some entire SE sites that are dedicated to specific courses (this appears to be a bit of a trial run to see if it works or not): http://cs50.stackexchange.com and http://edx-cs169-1x.stackexchange.com are two that I've stumbled across.  Note that these are designed for asking for help about specific problems with well known (to the people answering) constraints.  They still don't do the dense communication well though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange format is specially designed to try to avoid, hinder, and prohibit the back and forth and conversations one finds in forums.  It does this to maintain the focus on Q&amp;A, not discussions.  I'd suggest giving [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html) a read.  In particular:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4.) And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale. Scale alone kills conversations, because conversations require dense two-way conversations. In conversational contexts, Metcalfe's law is a drag. The fact that the amount of two-way connections you have to support goes up with the square of the users means that the density of conversation falls off very fast as the system scales even a little bit. You have to have some way to let users hang onto the less is more pattern, in order to keep associated with one another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to an Area 51 proposal for homework, I'd give [Request for a homework Stack Exchange site](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/148595/request-for-a-homework-stack-exchange-site) a read.  The proposal itself appears to have been [deleted](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/44531/stack-overflow-homework). You can get an idea of some bits about it on [with this search](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/search?q=homework+is%3Aquestion). You might poke on [Meta.StackExchange](http://meta.stackexchange.com) for more on why homework and SE's Q&amp;A format don't work well (I'll warn you that you might get a few down votes if you try asking for such without being aware of the history to it on MSE though). " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24431" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7826" RevisionGUID="e05792c9-3eaf-4286-94fd-21899273645b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:44:21.993" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/ with https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;(_special edition_ for folks coming from Math.SE, reposted from [Math meta](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/21680/hint-programmers-se-doesnt-do-coding-help-and-expect-research-before-asking &quot;10K link&quot;))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Hint: Software Engineering Stack Exchange doesn't do coding help and expect research before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, we at Software Engineering get a stream of troublesome questions from folks with linked accounts at Math.SE. One of them was kind enough to [explain why they get there](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7610/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another user, familiar with many other sites, even figured what could lead to such a [misconception](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi#comment22868_7610):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;This &quot;exchange&quot; is the undergraduate while &quot;overflow&quot; is the graduate level may because of the idea for Math vs MathOverflow and Physics vs PhysicsOverflow (not SE related) leaking into other domains. While I don't believe that that naming distinction needs to be fixed (nor can we do anything about it), being able to more promptly close (and delete) the debugging and blatantly off topic questions with a minimum of additional community moderation needed.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is sad to observe how many of them have fallen victims of this misunderstanding, getting their questions heavily voted down, closed and deleted. This includes even established users having over 1K rep at Math.SE ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/299572/given-a-integer-n-compute-nth-non-repeating-number &quot;10K link - user with 1.4K rep at Math asks very low quality question at Software Engineering&quot;), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/304765/31260 &quot;10K link - 1K Math rep user asks outright off-topic at Software Engineering&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things many Math.SE folks seem to miss when they try their luck at Software Engineering are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **coding and debugging help is off-topic** at Software Engineering.SE&#xD;&#xA;* it is generally expected of askers to **demonstrate research** they did before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading for those interested to learn more about Software Engineering.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Engineering Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is research important?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6559/31260)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overview of CS and programming related sites at SE network:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-software-engineering-where-else-c&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24432" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2985" RevisionGUID="d2e8440a-925a-41f8-a904-a2da1fb50ccd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:44:28.393" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.diy.stackexchange.com/ with https://diy.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As a blogger on the DIY site, let me suggest that you build a queue of entries before launch and get your writing schedule down.  http://diy.blogoverflow.com exploded out of the gate and is in a post-holiday lull right now - two users have written all but one of the last two month's worth of posts and it's been difficult to scrape a weekly entry together when people get busy.  If you think you need six regular writers, I would suggest enlisting a number closer to 10 :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm looking forward to reading the blog, and if you have any issues with organizing, I'd suggest checking in at the other SE blog contributor chats, there's usually some good advice to be found.  Along with the StackExchange Community chat, I've found good tips in gaming, scifi, and super user.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This DIY meta [question](https://diy.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/493/how-can-i-contribute-to-the-diy-community-blog) describes a bit about how we use email, wordpress, chat, and trello to organize." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24433" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2436" RevisionGUID="5dee701e-f262-43cb-9b07-194215b1a87c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:44:46.307" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.money.stackexchange.com/ with https://money.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In this specific case, the user who asked the deleted question asked the same duplicate question about 2 dozen times. And the question was exactly the type of question we *don't want here*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;I don't know what language I should learn next, is Java a good choice?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What's the difference between C# and Java: is Java better?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, the question was closed for a month without any activity: nobody tried to save it, make a case for it being the better duplicate, or vote to reopen it. Thus, it was deleted as part of the [ongoing cleaning](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=cleanup) of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closure [sets a question on the path to deletion](https://money.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/415/deleting-closed-question-of-no-value-is-not-happening/418#418). If a question is worth saving because of its answers, let's save it before that happens: make a case for it on meta, edit the question to improve it so it fits on our site, and/or flag it for reopening explaining why the question now (or always) fit the site's guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24434" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2016" RevisionGUID="dbb3c04e-e4b5-4e18-afe1-b560f9431967" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:44:53.010" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/ with https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="*(Taken shamelessly [from English Language &amp; Usage](https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1665/2512).)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Typically, people react poorly to having one of their questions closed. This is understandable but it suggests a misunderstanding of why we close questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Closing your question is _good_ for you##&#xD;&#xA;Something about your question is giving us pause and we feel that it would be best to wait on answering until we get the issue resolved. This does a handful of things that _help_ you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * ... get better answers. A little clarification goes a long way toward getting an answer that helps you. Instead of a handful of, &quot;Well, I think this is blah...&quot; you get &quot;This is the answer look at these awesome references.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * ... potentially mitigate downvotes. If your question is attracting downvotes, a close will typically stop them and give people a chance to resolve their concerns in a more constructive manner. A few edits later, your question will get reopened and those downvoting you will have a chance to change their votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * ... point toward an already existing answer. Closing as a duplicate will give you a link to an answer that the voters feel will answer your question. It may not be a perfect match but it gets you far enough that we feel you can make the rest of the connections on your own (or with a little bit of research).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * ... learn how to ask better questions. After a close-reopen process you have an opportunity to learn more about what the Programmers.SE crowd likes in a question. This is valuable information! The more you learn about asking questions, the better answers to those questions will be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Your question is not yours alone###&#xD;&#xA;You are the primary focus when answering a question you have asked but the Stack Exchange network also considers future visitors when closing. Sometimes we can make a few changes to your question that will still get you your help but also increases the chance of helping people wandering in from a web search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we close a question, sometimes we are explicitly taking these future visitors into account. Something about your question may be accidentally excluding these visitors from getting _their_ questions answered. A few edits and a reopen will help both you _and_ them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it is easy to see this as people walking all over your question, that isn't what they are trying to do. While your name is attached to the question, the question really belongs to everyone who uses Programmers.SE. This includes those future visitors and part of our job is to make sure that we are accurately predicting (and answering) those questions. We can do that by closing your question, making a few edits or changes, and reopening. And we _should_ do that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24435" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3107" RevisionGUID="194cb7ff-cebd-445d-8955-d36ea894bb14" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:44:53.010" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/ with https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You did the correct thing: [expletives are verboten here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/22233/149432), except in a [purely academic context](https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/q/253/2512) (e.g., if you asking about the etymology of one on [English.SE](http://english.stackexchange.com)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Expletives are not acceptable behavior on meta or any other Stack Overflow site. If you can't effectively communicate what you need to say without resorting to lowest common denominator cursing, then keep it to yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you use expletives, you will get a warning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you continue to use expletives, you will be placed on [timed suspension](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/a-day-in-the-penalty-box/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whether or not you agree with the belief you can effectively communicate without cursing, you've identified the practical reason why cursing is more-or-less banned on Stack Exchange: overactive internet filters in people's workplaces, when this site is meant to be used as a professional resource.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see it in a post, always edit it out. If you see it in a comment, flag it so it can be edited or deleted by a moderator." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24436" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3468" RevisionGUID="256e64fc-7acc-4eeb-aceb-a940a79985cc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:44:59.413" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.ux.stackexchange.com/ with https://ux.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Would this be a valid question anywhere at SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What is the most recognisable graphical element spring 2012 that would make you realise that this page exists in XML format too (not rss)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, no version of your question would be suitable for Stack Exchange, the problem wasn't its wording. You are polling for people's opinions and that [doesn't really work with the Q&amp;A format][1]. The main problem with your question is that there is no sane way of validating the answers, as every possible answer is equally valid. For example let's say that I posted this as an answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then I ask 20 of my buddies who are active on various Stack Exchange sites to upvote it. How would you know that this +20 answer is what you are looking for? How would any one else know? There simply aren't any actual parameters in your question to test answers against, other than the extremely vague and unmeasurable &quot;most recognisable&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange sites work when the best answers float at the top, and they fail miserably on questions like yours, as there's simply no way to ensure that the highest voted answer is the best. [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, while we welcome _some_ subjective questions on Programmers, we expect all questions to require the unique expertise of software developers. And choosing an icon has nothing to do with our professional expertise, regardless of the fact that a part of your target audience (may be) programmers. It's a user experience question, but for all the  reasons I explained above and because icon questions tend to be too localized, your question [isn't suitable for User Experience Stack Exchange][4] as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kkO62.gif&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://ux.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/629/is-it-time-to-put-an-end-to-icon-for-x-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24437" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1998" RevisionGUID="5c8c9cd6-8582-419d-99a7-90bd1c676c4e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:03.917" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.unix.stackexchange.com/ with https://unix.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Regarding the general reference close reason: it has been on trial on [Science Fiction &amp; Fantasy Stack Exchange](http://scifi.stackexchange.com/) and [English Language &amp; Usage](http://english.stackexchange.com/) for a few months. You can watch part of the debate that led to it [here](http://meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/197/should-trivially-easy-to-find-be-a-benchmark-for-moderating-the-site) and [here](http://meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/328/how-should-we-handle-questions-that-are-easily-answered-by-wikipedia).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On SF&amp;F, we don't use it often (6 times total, out of about 80 closed or retracted questions since the close reason was introduced). It gives a clear way to close questions where an encyclopedia, database or other general reference is the best answer, so there is no need to involve an answerer in the process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In its absence, you could (ab)use the “too localized” close reason: “this question is unlikely to ever help any future visitors”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One thing to decide if “general reference” becomes a close reason is what constitutes a general reference.  [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/) is an obvious one. Standard English dictionaries are another, for EL&amp;U. On SF&amp;F, bibliographical data from [IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/) and [ISFDB](http://www.ifsdb.org/) (and that last one isn't completely decided: ISFDB isn't that well known). For SO and Programmers, the reference manual of the language or framework that the question is about would be a general reference. (But what about non-official or hard-to-get-at or not-so-well-known references? Is K&amp;R a GR for C? What about the c.l.c FAQ?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that there's a difference between “general reference” questions and “easily googlable” questions. Following [Borror0's diagram](http://meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/328/how-should-we-handle-questions-that-are-easily-answered-by-wikipedia/330#330): a question is only a general reference question if the answer is easy to find (not scattered across many pages or worded in a way that only people who are already experts can understand), and it isn't a general reference question if you feel that the reference is incomplete and you (as an expert) have more to say that would be useful to the asker. [I would add one element](https://unix.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/377/is-it-okay-to-ask-questions-here-when-wikipedia-already-has-the-answer/380#380): if the first Google hit is a page that answers the question, but the asker would have no particular reason to trust that site (e.g. it's some random blog post), then the question is legitimate — GR is really more about “look it up first” than “google it first”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another thing to watch for is the possibility for abuse. “What is X?”, when Wikipedia has an article on X, is a GR question. “I've read the Wikipedia article on X, but it's defined in terms of V and W which I don't know, my background is B, could you explain X to me?” is a valid question. So is “I've read the Wikipedia article on X, but it doesn't discuss context C, how does X relate to C?”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding this question in particular: it's obviously about loops, so the first thing do do — the minimum amount of research that's expected of any asker — is to browse the [Wikipedia article on loops](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_(computing)#Loops).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find the [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Control_flow&amp;oldid=439997913#Loops) more interesting than the answers here, in fact. It doesn't define a term for each “time through the loop”. There are, however, parts of the article that use the expression “iteration of the loop” or “loop iteration”, without defining it explicitly. This suggests to me that the term “iteration” is the accepted term in part of the community, while another part doesn't use the word. I didn't get that vibe from the answers here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a “smell” in the question, by the way. If you need to work around the “quality standards”, this suggests that your question isn't very high quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe I'm being too negative against the question, and we just need to wait a little more to have good answers. Someone suggested the term “pass”, and there is some debate about it. So at least it does show that the community is divided.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24438" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2147" RevisionGUID="94c2a792-c863-45b1-9f8f-23e89ac53076" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:09.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.wordpress.stackexchange.com/ with https://wordpress.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Other sites have been able to get their site name and primary focus blacklisted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [English](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/625/how-about-getting-rid-of-the-english-tag)&#xD;&#xA;* [WordPress](https://wordpress.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/338/why-wordpress-tag-on-wordpress-answers)&#xD;&#xA;* [Drupal](http://meta.drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/128/block-the-cms-tag)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a request to get ours blacklisted as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our entire site could be tagged with [tag:programming] and/or [tag:programmers], and people tend to use it as a tag when they don't have anything better to tag their question. And, like other zero-content tags, it tends to attract a large number of questions that were never good fits for our site anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previous discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58/tag-consolidation-and-blacklist&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/543/do-we-need-a-programming-tag-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24439" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3429" RevisionGUID="4b2ba1c9-03f5-4951-98b6-c5ace43cc829" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:09.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.wordpress.stackexchange.com/ with https://wordpress.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Adapted from [meta.wordpress.stackexchange][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Recommended Reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Blog][2] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [I Move to Close This Question][3] &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;    How and why closing was introduced on Stack Overflow in 2008.&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; It’s important to note here that closing a question is a step on the road to deletion. Closing is effectively “nominate to delete”, as a question that can’t be answered is no longer truly “alive”. That said, some closed questions should be kept around. For example, duplicate questions that have totally different wording are sometimes useful. With the duplicates, people can find either variation with search terms and link through to the original.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions][4]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    About duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; Don’t answer questions that have already been answered elsewhere. Yeah, you might earn a couple of points of reputation, but, because you are duplicating content, you are actually making the internet worse. Why? Because that answer might be true today, but as technology changes, it might not be true tomorrow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Stack Overflow Question Lifecycle][5]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How and when questions are closed or deleted.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers][6], [Gorilla vs. Shark][7] and [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    About the _not constructive_ close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Meta Stack Overflow][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is a “closed” question?][10] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; * 24 votes to close per day (50 on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * 5 votes are required to close or reopen&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * Votes will expire after 4 days if the question does not reach 5 votes&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * Questions containing a bounty cannot be closed&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * You can only vote to close once per question&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * You can only vote to reopen once per question&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How do you reopen a closed question?][11] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; The owner must have 250 rep in order to vote to reopen their own question. Other users can also vote to reopen, but they must have a minimum 3000 reputation points.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Leaving comments about voting to reopen does nothing in and of itself. You can try and [address a specific user](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2035/notify-user-when-their-name-is-mentioned-in-comment-closed) who may have left a comment as to why they voted to close and ask them to help cast reopen votes if you think they voted in error.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  See also: [How do you challenge the closing of one of your questions?][12], [Why was my question closed and how to contact the closer][13] and [My question has been closed. What do I do now?][14] (on meta.crypto.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Closing/Migrating question instructions/guidance][15]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  A long explanation of the close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What can cause my question to be bumped?][16]  &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;  Close/reopen votes on the question do not bump the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Etiquette for closing your own questions][17] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; I don't think you should close your questions lightly. There are very few questions that have a definite answer that will never change, or that cannot be improved upon.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How to handle duplicate questions?][18]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not by tagging or editing, vote to close or flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Please add the ability to filter \[Closed\] questions out of my results][19] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Stick the closed:0 parameter in your search pipe and you're smoking out the closed questions: [closed:0](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A0)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; But if you're in the mood of puffing around the closed: [closed:1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1)&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  See also our [search tips][20]. &#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Allow question askers to close their own questions unilaterally][21]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Once you post a question it is not exactly YOURS in every sense of the word anymore, it belongs to EVERYONE.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  But you can _delete_ your own question as long as there are no upvoted answers.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How useful must a question be to be allowed?][22]  &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;  About the _too localized_ close reason, derived from [this question on Gaming][23]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; What value does this question have to anyone else on the planet, other than the one person who asked? In other words, what internet user is going to be searching for and finding information about a game one person vaguely remembers playing in broad terms?&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;  See also: [What questions should be closed with reason “too localized”?][24]&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Remove/downweight closed questions in “hot” question sort][25]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; I think there's a misconception here -- closing does not mean &quot;get this off my screen ASAP&quot;, closing means, &quot;this question should be re-evaluated by the community&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Can we have the ability to rescind a close vote before it closes?][26]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No. See Jeff’s answer … with a lot of negative votes. :)&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Close Votes expire too soon for low-traffic tags][27]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: Fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Close votes (and probably reopen votes) only expire after all of these conditions are met:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1. 4 days have passed since the last close vote.  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2. The question has more than 100 views.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Auto-deleting old, unanswered zero-score questions after a year?][28]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There is a garbage collector which works as follows:&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; If the question is more than 30 days old, and ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has -1 or lower score&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has no answers&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* is not locked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; If the question is more than 365 days old, and ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has a score of 0 or a score of 1 with a deleted owner&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has no answers&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* is not locked&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has a viewcount &lt;= the age of the question in days times 1.5&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has 1 or 0 comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; This check is run every week across all sites.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  **Each time you misuse the answer field for pseudo-comments you break the garbage collector.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Do “fix my code pleeese!” questions qualify for closure as “too localized”?][29]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Yes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## My own summary after a long reading session&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing is not deleting. A closed question is still visible, it can be improved and reopened. It [doesn’t affect the accept rate][30] but prevents potentially useless answers. Help us to stay [on focus][31], use your close votes.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a moderator (on WordPress Stack Exchange) I don’t like to act unilaterally. Your close votes are helping me and the other moderators to decide and we don’t feel so bad if we close a question. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://wordpress.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1035/73&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10582/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/36415/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/19126/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/119638/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/q/144/1910&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/32490/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/48578/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/5215/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10841/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/7913/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10363/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/70521/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1455&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/4818/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/107153/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/915/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/97556/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/78048/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/82874/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/08/new-question-asker-features/&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24440" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7510" RevisionGUID="d8acc615-243d-4d71-8c90-ce6dd496d822" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:18.983" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.apple.stackexchange.com/ with https://apple.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="One of the [on topic points on Ask Different](http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Apple services including iTunes Connect (selling music, books, apps)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may want to check out the [existing questions with the itunes-connect tag][1] and [their meta site][2] first ([including three meta questions tagged with itunes-connect][3]) before posting there to make sure your question fits into the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would be off-topic here and on Stack Overflow, since [we aren't customer support for other companies][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/itunes-connect&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://apple.meta.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/itunes-connect&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/255745/839601" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24441" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6361" RevisionGUID="fba4500f-1bce-4231-805f-764bb7a4246d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are several aspects to this question that make it a poor question to ask on Software Engineering.SE, and some that also make it counter productive to have planned out for an interview.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too broad&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first aspect is that the question is too broad.  The &quot;How do you build Amazon&quot; being asked here is akin to going to [Home Improvement.SE](http://diy.stackexchange.com) and asking &quot;How do you build a house?&quot;  There is no way the totality of that question can be answered in a meaningful way in this text box - the topic is *far* too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To an extent, it is exactly that broadness that the interviewing is asking.  This question isn't one like &quot;how many ways can you use `static` in Java&quot; - which has an answer.  The interviewer is coming to you like a business person would with some question that you need to drill down into to ask - and clarify the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, as a question on a Q&amp;A site, with you asking the question you don't know all the questions and the scope of the question the interviewer has in mind.  One interviewer may want you to drill down into the shopping cart side of Amazon, another may want to want to drill into the virtualization of AWS, another may want things about product recommendation or customer purchase prediction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Amusingly stated in a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your &quot;friend&quot; should have closed the interviewer's question as &quot;too broad.&quot; In other news, &quot;design a big distributed system&quot; is not a requirements specification. –  Robert Harvey&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No clearly defined problem&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Q&amp;A format that Stack Exchange uses works best when there is a clearly defined problem.  With the Amazon question, asking &quot;how do I build and collect data for [A/B testing](https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/ab-testing/reference/ab-math.html) - I've done XYZ, but I have trouble with this design for dealing with...&quot; could be a reasonable question - it is one problem that can be asked and answered, and not to be overlooked *found* when someone else is searching for the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The asked, answered and found steps are key parts to how Stack Exchange works - remember that the question isn't just for you, its also for the next person asking the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interviewing by rote&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next, it's counter productive.  Lets say you get asked a question on how to implement Monopoly and you had no idea didn't get the job and went home to study Monopoly implementations.  A week later, another interview, and you are asked how to implement Monopoly again and you rattle off the implementation that you've memorized (just like the how many ways can you use `static` in Java question asked just before). It is clear that rattling off Monopoly from [rote](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rote_learning) doesn't mean you understand it, so the interviewer asks how you would implement Risk...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key to this example with why its counter productive to try to have a pre-constructed answer for this question is that the interviewer is trying to find your boundaries.  By going with a pre-thought out answer that boundary hasn't been determined.  It's the **process** of thinking through these questions as part of the interview that the interviewer wants to see - and will ask you question and question again until that process is clear about *how* you think of design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so, while there may be an answer that can fit in the space (you talk about the circular array for the board, the stacks for the cards, the rules engine for implementing how the different cards behave, the rules for the game, etc...) that *might* fit here, by having a thought out answer you're going to be asked them again and again until you are asked one you don't know - you've only wasted your time and that of the interviewers up until that point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;I will point out that studying [BSD Games/monop](https://github.com/vattam/BSDGames/tree/master/monop) which is written in classic C will likely have difficulty when the interviewer says &quot;let's try that again in C#&quot; or &quot;let's change that design to [anti-monopoly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Monopoly)&quot;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where to ask about broad questions&#xD;&#xA;------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the best places to ask such broad questions is Chat.  The wide range of the question and understanding that it's an interview question can be better addressed in an interactive way rather than a question and answer format.  The dialog between the person asking the question and the person answering it is an important part of the process of this type of question and understanding the design aspects of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## &quot;The interviewer didn't like my answer&quot; question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some interviewers ask questions with specific answers in mind.  All other answers are unsatisfactory to them other than the one they want.  [Even if its wrong](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/208067/interviewer-gives-wrong-answers-to-their-own-questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The difficulty with such questions is that the only person who knows the answer the interviewer was looking for is the interviewer.  They may not have liked your design because of some opinionated blog post they read a year ago, or that its not cutting edge enough, or that you didn't implement their favorite Pattern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking such a question here results in answers that are just speculation.  We weren't the interviewer and we can only guess at what issues the person had with your design or solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6244/is-how-would-you-architect-existing-web-site-application-an-appropriate-ques" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24442" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="2373a26e-ea1b-486e-b61a-6a9206ffd6b8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted).  Why? And what can I do about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What technology to take up next](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6486/)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resource](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Legal Advice or Aid](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8335/)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Assistance in writing or debugging existing code](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7742/) &#xD;&#xA;        * (MSE) [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](//meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in/129632#129632)&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)  &#xD;&#xA;  certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three of categories listed under _Off topic_ match site-specific close reasons, see: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5992/what-should-our-predefined-off-topic-reasons-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links are from particular points in the history of Software Engineering (previously known as Programmers.SE) and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a [serial vote](//meta.stackexchange.com/tags/serial-voting/info &quot;what's this&quot;) reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For pasting into chat or comments there is a &quot;Quick link&quot; at the end of each answer.  The quick link for the question is `[Why was my question closed or down voted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483/)` - pasting this into chat or a comment will link to the question.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24443" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6484" RevisionGUID="c7276acc-2ca8-4518-b31a-c7518b0318d6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="# Downvoted #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to look at is the mouseover for the down vote button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that this is a completely subjective grading and people may down vote because they were late to work or don't like unicorns.  However one's feeling of unicorns, this *is* information for you to look at and consider how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Make sure that the question is not just asking for something that can be easily searched with google.###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking other people to do your searching for you is considered poor form.  Everyone answering questions is doing so on a volunteer basis (even the SE employees that sometimes answer questions - they aren't paid to do so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also extends to things that you should have been able to find when searching on Software Engineering SE.  As you enter the information be sure to tag the question appropriately.  The combination of tags and title *may* help you find something right away that answers the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Explain your current understanding of the issue###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just saying &quot;Could someone explain ${concept} to me&quot; doesn't show what you *do* understand.  It lacks research.  Often the answer to this is spent repeating what is already available in Wikipedia.  If you had read this already and don't understand a part of it, explain that part and what you do understand.  Correcting a misconception is easier (and a better question) than trying to explain the entire topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Blatantly off topic###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the help center on [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) questions. Questions that are asking for a discussion, or polling or one of the reasons specified in the help center are often down voted.  Especially note that questions *should* have been posted on Stack Overflow (implementation) or questions that should have been posted on Stack Overflow, but would be off topic there too (do this work for me) are similarly often down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [How much research effort is expected of Stack Overflow users?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/182266/how-much-research-effort-is-expected-of-stack-overflow-users/182380#182380)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Encouraging people to explain downvotes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/2373/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;`[Why was my question down voted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24444" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="e2597cba-b9e8-4e20-93dd-f11d9db5f417" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend tools, libraries, programming languages, resources (including books, blogs, tutorials, and examples), or projects to undertake###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **find or recommend tools, libraries, programming languages, resources (including books, blogs, tutorials, and examples), or projects to undertake** are off-topic here as they attract opinionated answers that won't have lasting value to others. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard][1], our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### We do book review and suggestions poorly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the classic recommendation questions is that of a book.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do book reviews very poorly. All the answers that one gets are opinions and this is fundamentally a poll of opinions. This is to say nothing of that the technology behind them changes too.  There are indeed timeless books (and [many have written on the subject](https://www.google.com/search?q=timeless+computer+books)), though their value is a [matter of debate](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2uBpc.jpg). &lt;!-- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14298/is-analysis-patterns-reusable-object-models-still-a-good-book-to-use-for-its --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Between the polling nature of the question, the opinions people have on certain books, the constantly changing target, and the site's history of producing poor quality answers to these questions (and not moderating them), asking for a book suggestion is very likely to get closed and down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for a link to something or statistics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason.  Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to things suffer from link rot.  Statistics become out of date over time.  Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is someone asking in 2012 &quot;What is the market share of Android vs iPhone?&quot;  This information would be out of date in a few months as new numbers come out and someone else would ask in 2013 &quot;The question [link] asks about the stats, but they are all for 2012.  What is the market share for android vs iPhone in 2013?&quot;  And again, this information would be out of date and prompt another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for information about statistics, or more generally, asking us to search for some data for you is off topic because of these problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No actual problem to solve&#xD;&#xA;* Not drawing from expert knowledge of the community&#xD;&#xA;* Will suffer from link rot or become out of date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Link Rot&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, external resources may move or be deleted for a variety of reasons. Perhaps a particular site reorganizes its links without setting up redirects. Perhaps an organization goes out of business or discontinues product X or library Y.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to the reasons stated above, external resources tend to be _transient_. Whatever tool, library, or other resource who requested might not exist in five years or be otherwise readily available. This has the effect of making an answer utterly useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one asks for a library to perform function X, and the answer links to web site Y, and either function X or web site Y cease to exist as defined in the answer, that answer is now useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one more reason why questions like this tend to be of low value and are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [What exactly is a recommendation question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254393/what-exactly-is-a-recommendation-question)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why are “shopping list” questions bad?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - Requests for Recommendations?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24445" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6488" RevisionGUID="0a81e2ad-cbd3-450e-aa40-2305ea503d25" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Career or education advice###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic here. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice questions are only applicable to the person asking the question.  No two people are looking at the same set of classes, or the same job.  Every question that is asked is either only for one person or the answers will always be hopelessly incomplete because of the lack of the nuanced information and context that the person asking the question is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career questions are often **very important** questions to the person asking them.  Although assistance can be provided, the answer is one that *you* need to find yourself, and not from random strangers on the Internet.  If you are in academia, ask a career counselor at the school, or one of the instructors - they know you better than we do.  Similar resources can be found for people in the job market already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the biggest difficulties with Q&amp;A for career questions is that to get the nuances of your situation and getting to know you better requires a dense two way communication - lots of clarification back and forth.  To this end, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is a resource where (the current) denizens can have that conversation.  We still won't get to know you as well as people who know you know you, but on the whole we are familiar with the various parts of the software industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please also note that we are notoriously bad at predicting the future.  If you had asked someone if Objective C was going to be a popular language (prior to the iPhone) they would have looked at you funny (&quot;[Apple has less than a 2% market share](http://www.macworld.com/article/1043741/marketshare.html) - who would use it?&quot;) - yet it became a _very_ popular language and subsequently fell out of favor once Apple switched to Swift.  Or if you asked about running JavaScript outside of the web browser they would have laughed at you.  Technology is changing at an incredible rate and to ask about what it will be in another decade? Your guess is as good as mine... maybe better (its less hampered by a few decades of industry preconceptions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking questions to predict the future job market and what skills are best is completely speculation and cannot have any right answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Reddit) [/r/cscareersquestions FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6594/are-now-all-questions-about-teaching-programming-to-be-considered-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Where to ask for general advice for young programmers?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/216589/where-to-ask-for-general-advice-for-young-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* Workplace.SE -&gt; [topics guidance](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)  &#xD;&#xA;  Workplace.SE -&gt; [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - Career or Educational Advice?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24446" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6489" RevisionGUID="f6cf292e-cc5e-4999-884d-a824e2f42277" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Unclear what you are asking#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are looking for, in the [context of Software Engineering SE](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This close reason can also be a bit unclear as to what the issue is.  Please be sure to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Give enough context that someone reading the question can understand it&#xD;&#xA;* Explain what you are looking for&#xD;&#xA;* Check to make sure you are not using jargon that is particular to one specific branch of computing (and if you are, either change the jargon or link to a site that explains it)&#xD;&#xA;* Check that there are no hidden assumption or &quot;leaps of thought&quot; in your question. They might be obvious to you, but they won't be to the wider community. It is often better to spell it all out explicitly, even if you think it is blindingly obvious.&#xD;&#xA;* Make sure you are on the proper site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last point is important too.  This close reason is often used as a proxy for &quot;we don't think that this question is a good question for Software Engineering SE (it might be on Stack Overflow), but would get closed there too.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explain your design.  Explain what you have done.  Explain where you are having difficulty.  Explain what you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear what help you need](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260) (see also [linked MSE post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/215806/165773))&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7513/how-to-ask-how-to-understand-some-code-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Unclear?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6489/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24447" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="40682596-34b8-4db0-b436-22373dfd4696" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling / Big List of Things###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are just polls for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the accepted answer is based on &quot;which answer I like best,&quot; rather than &quot;which answer solves my problem,&quot; the question is probably a poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While some other Stack Exchanges allow it, Software Engineering SE frowns upon ['big list' type questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;see also: list-questions tag wiki at MSO&quot;) that seem to want to compile a list of things.  Questions that fall into this category typically have the form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What are all the problems I will encounter with XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * What are the pros and cons of XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * How can XYZ be used?&#xD;&#xA; * Any ideas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like these don't pose a problem that can be solved by an answer.  There is no definitive *right* answer that someone can go to, see the accepted answer and say &quot;yep, that is the answer.&quot;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6366/&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6629/&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6961/&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7537/&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Is a question that specifically asks for a summary of a broad topic valuable to Stack Exchange?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234642/is-a-question-that-specifically-asks-for-a-summary-of-a-broad-topic-valuable-to)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help Center &gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Too Broad?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24448" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6491" RevisionGUID="f2db2f44-8c5c-4532-81c2-8d04a8453492" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Primarily opinion-based#&#xD;&#xA;Good questions ask for expertise, not opinions. Examples of questions that are primarily opinion-based:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What did this person mean when he said...&quot; (We're not mind-readers)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Which of these two designs is the better one?&quot; (what do you mean by &quot;better?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;How should I arrange the folders in my project?&quot; (really?)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Is this the best practice?&quot; (what do you mean by &quot;best?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What is the name of this thing so I can go look it up?&quot; (Ask us your specific question about the thing)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinguishing factor is that there is no way to get an authoritative answer for the question - the answers are all based on opinion rather than the knowledge of the person answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that if the answers to the question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design A} for these reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- break --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design B} for these other reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both of these answers are valid then the question is likely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6758/what-is-the-problem-with-pros-and-cons&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **tl;dr** We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/142353/why-is-asking-a-question-on-best-practice-a-bad-thing/142354#142354)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Primarily Opinion-Based?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6491/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24449" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6492" RevisionGUID="7e2554c9-9759-4c4f-9552-2a87111e24ca" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Other#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions can be closed with a custom reason.  These are found in the comments for the question.  To that extent it is difficult to enumerate all the possible reasons people may try to close a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The essence of Software Engineering SE was summed up in chat by Thomas Owens:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Picture Software Engineering like a small conference room with a whiteboard. No computer, no books, no papers. You write your question on the whiteboard and experts walk by. Someone sees one that they can answer, they stop in and help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read the explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6251/how-can-i-write-a-good-custom-close-message&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/why-do-certification-questions-keep-getting-closed&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6283/current-events-questions-and-answers&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [cross-posting (posting the same question over multiple Stack Exchange sites)](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed - other reasons?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6492/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24450" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="15dacc3e-d73b-4d21-b13f-16110a5e4372" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Software Engineering Stack Exchange (previously known as Programmers) would be a good question on Stack Overflow.  This isn't to say that if it is on topic on Stack Overflow then it is on topic here.  Rather that it's not too broad, not opinion polling, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Software Engineering.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggesting to someone to repost a question that is too broad or primary opinion would get it closed on Software Engineering.SE too and that's really something we'd rather avoid.  It is no fun to get a question bounced from one site to another and being told repeatedly we don't want it here.  If it needs to be fixed, it needs to be fixed before it is reposted or telling the OP *exactly* what needs to be fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Some commonly referred *poor* questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, we *don't* want these, though it seems like people keep suggesting them to be reposted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I don't understand...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). [There is an expectation](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773) that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here's my problem. Anyone have a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of commonly (incorrectly) referred questions are those of &quot;come up with a design or solution for me.&quot;  Similar to how Stack Overflow has issues with people doing problem statement questions (&quot;write a program that takes the average of three values&quot;), Programmers.SE has similar issues with similar questions (&quot;here is what I want the outcome to be, anyone have a solution?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Stack Overflow nor Software Engineering.SE is a code/solution writing service. Just because the question lacks code but has a problem statement doesn't mean it belongs here as is. The question needs to be fixed up significantly before it is reposted on the proper site and suggesting to do so with the question in its current state does a disservice to the person asking the question. For a more detailed outline of what is generally expected at Programmers, see https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A blog I read said...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our custom off topic reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What tool, library, language, project, resource to take up or use](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* [What career to take or what to study](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;* [Assistance in writing or debugging code](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7742/40980)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programming related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - software development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA; - requirements, architecture, and design&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - configuration management, build, release, and deployment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about the [Software Development Life Cycle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg) that aren't code troubleshooting questions.  Remember that algorithm questions are also on topic on Stack Overflow (so [you don't need to migrate those](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/ &quot;'Be a bit jealous of your site - don't blithely turn askers away simply because their question could be asked somewhere else...'&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Engineering.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the Perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the Delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Software Engineering.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Software Engineering (Programmers.SE) was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with [&quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; comments](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260 &quot;we even had to introduce a chat bot for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow&quot;) and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) it's problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - it's exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so comments a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, it's like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if it's a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24451" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7355" RevisionGUID="9fe9721a-f753-4a2f-a9aa-431fafa8410a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="# Tags to Burninate and Blacklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer will be submitted to Stack Exchange staff for destruction and blacklisting. Conduct discussion in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Education related tags&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:education] [tag:learning] [tag:teaching]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:training] [tag:mentor]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Career related tags&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;del&gt;[tag:resume]&lt;/del&gt; ([blacklisted](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8321/31260))&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:employment]&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;del&gt;[tag:career-development]&lt;/del&gt; ([blacklisted](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8321/31260))&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:interview] [tag:hiring] [tag:recruiting]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###E-commerce related tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:payment] [tag:billing] [tag:e-commerce]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:pricing]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:sales]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24452" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7569" RevisionGUID="c90351e8-31d8-486f-b006-f3b124ad2738" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We have all seen it: a user asks a question on Software Engineering that belongs on a different site. There are many technology sites on Stack Exchange, and sometimes navigating the lot of them to find the right site for a question can be daunting for new users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, another user will respond to an off-topic question by saying &quot;post at site XYZ!&quot; The user who asked the question may then post a cross-site duplicate, which has its own set of problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The site recommendation might not be appropriate to begin with.&#xD;&#xA;* The question might be on-topic at the other site, but require editing to avoid being closed at that site.&#xD;&#xA;* Asking on multiple sites may result in _two_ messes to clean up.&#xD;&#xA;* The user asking the question gets bounced between sites, which is almost as bad as calling a cable company for customer support and being bounced between departments. _I just want an answer to my question and nobody here knows where I belong_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have guidance for specific instances of this issue ([What goes on Software Engineering (previously known as Programmers)? A guide for Stack Overflow][1] and [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?][2]), what is the general guidance for dealing with users who recommend asking on another site when the question is off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7182/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/129598/&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24453" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7742" RevisionGUID="a14f3bbc-c309-491e-8228-ecf2d6a62856" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="# Off topic #&#xD;&#xA;### Assistance in writing or debugging existing code ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **assistance in writing or debugging existing code** are off-topic here. These questions can be asked on Stack Overflow if they include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. See [How To Create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for debugging help or “how do I write this specific code” type questions are off topic on Software Engineering SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions have a site that is completely focused on them – Stack Overflow. Trying to answer them here reduces the usefulness of Stack Overflow (now you have to search two sites for the same information), and makes it harder to find the software architecture and design questions that Software Engineering SE focuses on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are having trouble posting a question on Stack Overflow, and have come to Software Engineering SE as a way to get around that, look ***very*** closely at the quality of the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Make sure the words are all spelled correctly, and punctuation is properly used (see [Spell Check plus.com](http://spellcheckplus.com) as one of many online grammar checkers).&#xD;&#xA; * Make sure that the code is formatted correctly (see [Markdown help](http://stackoverflow.com/editing-help) if you are having trouble with this).&#xD;&#xA; * Make sure that the *title* of the question is a good title that describes the actual problem: “Why can't I use `==` to compare strings” is a better title than “Help, I have a question about compilers”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Engineering SE is reluctant to migrate questions to Stack Overflow that would result in the question being closed there too.  The reasons on SO are covered in [What topics can I ask about here?](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) in the SO help center.  In particular, a “why isn't this code working” question about debugging existing code needs to thoroughly and completely describe the problem – nobody can *guess* what you're trying to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Software Engineering SE nor Stack Overflow is a code writing service. Questions asking someone to write code from scratch (or from some requirements provided) will be closed on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are blocked from asking questions on Stack Overflow, please do not ask them here in an attempt to get around the block.  Both Software Engineering SE and Stack Overflow have automatic question bans in place.  Asking off topic questions here will get them closed. Even if it's a good question that might be migrated to Stack Overflow because it wouldn't get closed – the system prevents us from migrating those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7864/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: `[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic – Assistance in Writing or Debugging Existing Code?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7742)`" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24454" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7826" RevisionGUID="fd4389a3-41b8-4c4e-b5ce-4a66472c2211" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;(_special edition_ for folks coming from Math.SE, reposted from [Math meta](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/21680/hint-programmers-se-doesnt-do-coding-help-and-expect-research-before-asking &quot;10K link&quot;))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Hint: Software Engineering Stack Exchange doesn't do coding help and expect research before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, we at Software Engineering get a stream of troublesome questions from folks with linked accounts at Math.SE. One of them was kind enough to [explain why they get there](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7610/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another user, familiar with many other sites, even figured what could lead to such a [misconception](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi#comment22868_7610):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;This &quot;exchange&quot; is the undergraduate while &quot;overflow&quot; is the graduate level may because of the idea for Math vs MathOverflow and Physics vs PhysicsOverflow (not SE related) leaking into other domains. While I don't believe that that naming distinction needs to be fixed (nor can we do anything about it), being able to more promptly close (and delete) the debugging and blatantly off topic questions with a minimum of additional community moderation needed.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is sad to observe how many of them have fallen victims of this misunderstanding, getting their questions heavily voted down, closed and deleted. This includes even established users having over 1K rep at Math.SE ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/299572/given-a-integer-n-compute-nth-non-repeating-number &quot;10K link - user with 1.4K rep at Math asks very low quality question at Software Engineering&quot;), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/304765/31260 &quot;10K link - 1K Math rep user asks outright off-topic at Software Engineering&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things many Math.SE folks seem to miss when they try their luck at Software Engineering are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **coding and debugging help is off-topic** at Software Engineering.SE&#xD;&#xA;* it is generally expected of askers to **demonstrate research** they did before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading for those interested to learn more about Software Engineering.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Engineering Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is research important?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6559/31260)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or down voted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6483/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overview of CS and programming related sites at SE network:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-software-engineering-where-else-c&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24455" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8054" RevisionGUID="45303405-1a5d-4499-ad51-2045e2ef8ecd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="##Oct. 20th, 2016 - This is done! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8266/its-official-this-site-is-now-software-engineering-stack-exchange&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It took us a good while, but the Community Team has circled up and here's where we stand on your request to change Programmers.SE's name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###We agree that renaming this site is a good idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Programmers&quot; is an affinity group, whereas &quot;Software Architecture&quot; (for example) is an action and a discipline. It is entirely possible that changing the site's name will send clearer signals and prime new users to ask questions more consistently in line with what y'all would be proud to see and answer, particularly given where this site’s scope has solidified over the past few years.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_So yes, we're open to proceeding with a name change._ That said, we'll need to make sure the change makes the kind of difference you want it to, because we can't repeat this process again several years down the line. We gotta get it right _this_ time. Last time the site was renamed, the scope was very much still in flux; by now, hopefully you can identify much more precisely _what this site is about_ and commit to both a name _and_ description _and_ introductory materials that communicate this body of knowledge clearly and succinctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Here's what the Community Team needs before we can move forward:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Tell us what you're proposing as the new site name.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &quot;Software Engineering&quot; and &quot;Software Architecture&quot; both look like good options from where I stand. Let’s not turn this into a bikeshed discussion; we need well-considered options here, not a popularity contest - Coffee McWhiskeyface is right out. The ideal name will suggest _at a glance_ what this site is about, without suggesting that it might be “fix my code” even a little bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Lay out what the [new site scope](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) will be.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Above all else, **the scope needs to be simple**. Seriously. No more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no gerrymandering - **it needs to be easy for any new visitor who bothers to read** and even mildly pays attention to what they're reading to know what they can and cannot ask about here. Eliminate ambiguity for a first time poster once and for all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's talk again in a month." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24457" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8276" RevisionGUID="e1090b13-6a87-4718-8e2f-8b5934aada79" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Note: Most of this post was written before the [name change](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8266/96050) and I haven't changed to Software Engineering. I think that's appropriate, since I'm looking backward to when this site _was_ Programmers.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Note: This in response to [a comment by gnat on Meta Stack Exchange][1] asking for information regarding migrations to and from this site. It's being shared here since it may be of interest to the community.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wrote [a proposed philosophy of question migration](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/285467/1438). My thesis is that migration ought to be thought of as a convenience for the OP when they ask on the wrong site rather than a tool to manage content. Given there exists a [chatbot to detect _mentions_ of programmers.SE](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7154/96050) in order to deflect potential migration/crossposting, it seems to me that this site is particularly concerned about migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a baseline, here are some statistics for the entire history of the site going back to the very [first question asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/122955/96050):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Total Questions &#xD;&#xA;    --------------- &#xD;&#xA;    98768           &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Migrated Direction &#xD;&#xA;    -------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;     8900    out       &#xD;&#xA;    14484    in       &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Exported to:                      count  good &#xD;&#xA;    ------------                      -----  ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                  6482  6030 &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com         297   273  &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com        264   228  &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                       216   203  &#xD;&#xA;    security.stackexchange.com          173   171  &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                165   162  &#xD;&#xA;    meta.programmers.stackexchange.com  125   111  &#xD;&#xA;    dba.stackexchange.com               118   115  &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                103    97   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                 87    81   &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Imported from:                    count  good  &#xD;&#xA;    --------------                    ----- ----- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                 13828 11630 &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com        300   272   &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                        45    34    &#xD;&#xA;    serverfault.com                      40    32    &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                 31    28    &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                 31    19    &#xD;&#xA;    webmasters.stackexchange.com         27    16    &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com          26    22    &#xD;&#xA;    english.stackexchange.com            14    12    &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                 14    12    &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm just including at the top ten sites as there's a noticeable drop off in quantity after the top slot. As you can see, Programmers has received 5584 more questions from other sites (mostly Stack Overflow) than it has migrated away. A full 14% of the questions that have ever existed on this site began life on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But those all-time numbers hide an important story. Almost all of the migrations occurred before 2012: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Question migrations by year][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In recent years, Programmers has been a _net exporter_ of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Total Questions since         &#xD;&#xA;    --------------- ------------- &#xD;&#xA;    76426           2012-01-01 00:14:59&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Migrated Direction &#xD;&#xA;    -------- ---------&#xD;&#xA;    6629     out       &#xD;&#xA;    2307     in        &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Exported to:                       count good &#xD;&#xA;    ------------                       ----- ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                   3547 3116 &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com         151  118  &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com          128  104&#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                         68   59   &#xD;&#xA;    meta.programmers.stackexchange.com    63   51   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                  56   50   &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                  53   52   &#xD;&#xA;    dba.stackexchange.com                 48   45   &#xD;&#xA;    security.stackexchange.com            41   39   &#xD;&#xA;    unix.stackexchange.com                32   28   &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Imported from:                     count good &#xD;&#xA;    --------------                     ----- ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                    870  584  &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com         179  158  &#xD;&#xA;    serverfault.com                       23   16   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                  22   10   &#xD;&#xA;    webmasters.stackexchange.com           8    5    &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com            8    4    &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                   7    6    &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                   6    6    &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                          6    4    &#xD;&#xA;    webapps.stackexchange.com              4    3  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I picked January 1, 2012 because it's a handy cut off, not because of any particular event on the site. The quality of incoming questions has been respectable:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Migrated here Avg score Avg answers Avg comments Closure % Deletion % Avg age (days)&#xD;&#xA;    ------------- --------- ----------- ------------ --------- ---------- --------------&#xD;&#xA;             2307       6.0         2.6          3.5      14.3       16.0           32.3   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do remember votes from the source site are [reflected in the score](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/87031/1438). For instance, questions migrated from Stack Overflow to this site had an average score of 5.8 and 1.1 answers. So score might be less useful a measure of quality than the fact that these questions got new answers after migration and are [relatively](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7797/96050) less likely to get closed than organic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, fully a third of the questions migrated from Stack Overflow have been closed or deleted. We don't have an easy way to quantify _crossposted_ questions or questions asked at the prompting of misinformed commenters on another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/285467/a-proposed-philosophy-of-question-migration/285742#comment926949_285742&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Pp7bf.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24458" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8278" RevisionGUID="f6b74543-e6b0-4071-bf99-1c5a8ffa9a5b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't think that there's anything surprising in this data.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The Importing of Questions from Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The high number of imported questions from Stack Overflow makes sense. Software Engineering was originally Programmers, which was originally proposed as Not Programming Related. The proposal for Not Programming Related was for a safe place to ask the questions that were too centered on opinions or too broad for Stack Overflow. That didn't last very long, and the quality of questions led to [a blog post on the Stack Overflow blog][1]. This site was one of the main reasons for the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][1] and [Real Questions Have Answers][2] posts, and numerous Meta discussions about question quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This transition from Not Programming Related to something pretty close to what we are today spanned from the proposal on 3 June 2010 through the private beta that started on 1 September 2010 through a lot of the public beta which began on 8 September 2010. However, by our full launch in early December 2010, we had changed our scope to something closer to what it is today. This turmoil in definition was about 6 months, but wasn't clear to anyone who didn't participate on the Meta site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One big problem with all of this turmoil was that, until a few days ago, we continued to have the same name and branding. To anyone outside of active participants on our community, they may not have been aware of the drastic change in expected question quality or scope. This is why Duga exists - to help us find people (primarily on Stack Overflow) who are blindly suggesting our site without understanding our scope. The things that should have made our scope change blindingly obvious to anyone - new subdomain, new logo - [were flat-out rejected in June 2012][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Until June 2012, Stack Overflow users could vote to migrate questions here][4]. When that Meta post was written, we had a 26% rejection rate for migration. The history of migration from Stack Overflow to Programmers was so bad that, [in December 2010, we had to ask Stack Overflow users to stop using Programmers as their toilet bowl][5]. Even with us seeing the influx of garbage sent from Stack Overflow, it still took a year and a half to stop individual users from migrating questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also in October 2012, [migrations for questions older than 60 days were disabled][6].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2012 was a big year for stopping incoming migrations. It stopped users from sending old (and likely low quality) SO questions to us by taking away their ability to migrate to us and even stopped SO mods (who may not have understood our site) from migrating old questions to us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The Exporting of Questions to Other Sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The high number of exported questions also makes sense. A general trend in increase of migrations also makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since 2010, our scope has been stable, for the most part. When we went live in December 2010 and [were introduced to the world in a blog post][7], the things that were on topic here included software engineering, developer testing, algorithms and data structures, design patterns, architecture, development methodologies, quality assurance, software law, and business concerns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Really, what has always been on-scope here is software engineering. Most of the things in the original list of things on-topic are [part of software engineering][8]. Today, we have a more succinct list of things that are on-topic, but it's still essentially all of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, some aspects of software engineering are better covered on other sites. Information Security, Database Administrators, Writers, Project Management, Computer Science, The Workplace, Law, and Open Source were all started after Programmers was, and these are all things that someone working in software engineering would learn, either as part of a curriculum or on-the-job. It's not that database design questions or data structure and algorithm questions or licensing questions are off-topic here, it's just that there are communities who can give better answers to these types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that part of this exporting culture may have been on us, as a community. When we shifted from the original Not Programming Related concept to Programmers, I think that we kind of normalized around the idea that we were actually a community of software engineers. Being primarily professionals, we wanted a site where the questions we had as professionals would be accepted without being lost in a sea of &quot;fix my code plz&quot; questions on Stack Overflow. There were already sites for writing and debugging code, professional-level system administration, using various computer software tools, mathematics, statistics, user experience, and a few other things that we cared about. So we include a variety of our professional concerns in the list of things that were on-topic. Until The Workplace came around, we had more tolerance of education and career questions. Before Computer Science, we took in some of the more theoretical/mathematical algorithmic questions. Before Law and Open Source, we took in a lot of law and licensing questions (but began to constrain that since we realized we weren't lawyers and couldn't answer all of these questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two good examples for migrations. First, [we did a little experiment where the same question was asked on multiple sites][9]. The answers were dramatically different. Here, they were very practical, focused on the quality attributes of the software (testability, readability, performance), and written in more plain English. On CS, they were more mathematical and focused on the theoretical behavior of the algorithm. Another example is Open Source and Law - the people there have learned more about and worked with copyright and licensing and the quality in answer is so much higher - just look at the answers here vs there in software license questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally, we should be seeing this trend downwards. It may rise slightly if a new related site goes into a public beta or launches, but shouldn't really spike. At this point, we have a well-defined scope that focuses on the core aspects of software engineering without the tangential things. The main reason for this is that a lot of these tangential things now have their own communities in various states of development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The Purpose of Migration&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree with the thesis that &quot;migration ought to be thought of as a convenience for the OP when they ask on the wrong site rather than a tool to manage content&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Migration is a tool to manage content, just like deletion. However, unlike closure or deletion, it preserves the content and signals to the user &quot;yes, you asked a good question, but although we can't give you a great answer here, you can get a great answer over there&quot;. By moving the good question, we help the asker get a solution to their problem and introduce them to a community of experts if they have a similar problem in the future. We help people who have the same question in the future have access to higher quality answers. We also add one more good question to another site that will help boost its discoverability by searching.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As long as we continue to uphold [the rule of &quot;don't migrate crap&quot;][10], we will probably be an exporter of questions. Our new name gives people a good impression of what we are about, but they may not be aware of niche communities that would be better for very specific questions. They may also not be aware of nuances between some communities, such as Software Engineering and Computer Science and the differences in answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing migration go away. A question is either on-topic or not and it doesn't need to be our concern if they get the best answers or not. We can use comments and other tools to let people know about other communities that exist. However, as it stands now, I have a tool that helps me ensure that the user gets the best possible answers for their questions, so I use it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3718/change-the-name-of-programmers-to-something-that-more-accurately-reflects-the-si&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/134636/update-migration-path-list-for-non-moderators/134642&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/151890/disable-migration-for-questions-older-than-60-days&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering#Subdisciplines&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6293/4&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10249/what-is-migration-and-how-does-it-work" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24459" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8284" RevisionGUID="505d2f8f-5174-4c24-a9e3-b1119f1b88ac" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Our current guidance regarding software licensing can be found [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic). The current guidance says that a general rule of thumb is that questions answerable by experts in software development are on-topic, while questions that need the expertise of a lawyer are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As we practice the craft of software development, we need to understand (at least at a high level) common licenses, especially open-source licenses. Our current guidance specifies that questions should be about the spirit of the license and not the legal nuances or specifics of the license. Questions should also be about the license itself, and not the broader copyright laws that allow for licensing. Finally, the question should be about commonly known licenses that we, as experts in software development, are likely to be exposed to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In previous discussions of software licensing, we wanted to include it in our scope simply because it was an important topic to us, as software developers. We frequently interact with software and source code generally available on the Internet under a multitude of licenses. Understanding how these licenses work is part of our day-to-day job as we design and build software. At the time, these questions were often a good fit for the Stack Exchange format, and there was no better place to get expert answers to them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The argument that there is no better place to ask and get answers to software licensing questions is no longer true. [Law is a launched site][1], out of beta. [Open Source][2] is still in beta, but is doing OK on many metrics - it's weakest points are in questions per day and visits per day. After browsing both sites, the quality of answers in the realm of software licensing (and in the case of Law, other topics such as intellectual property law, copyright, patents, trade secrets, trademarks, and contracts) on Law and Open Source tends to be of equal, and often greater, than here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given this, should we continue to support questions about software licenses here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://law.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24460" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8285" RevisionGUID="abe293c7-ecd5-4b3b-915c-a99d2a71c7e2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## No&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The concept of licensing questions being on-topic has a long history. When the topicality of this site was first discussed, [&quot;software law&quot; was originally on-topic][1]. But this definition of [legal questions needed clarification][2]. Eventually, [we even updated the help documentation to better reflect scope][3]. And [then had to make more changes to the FAQ][4] (which pre-dated the current Help Center). And even then there were [many][5], [many][6], [many][7], [many][8], [many][9], [many][10] questions to clarify this particular point of the scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today, the [accepted stance is that software licensing questions are on-topic][11]. However, it's incredibly nuanced. The answer requires 24 bullets (3 deep in some cases) to describe how to determine if your software licensing question is on or off-topic. In addition, there need to be three other examples and guidance. [The post describing the set of on-topic software licensing questions][12] is over twice length of the entire [Help Center article for what is on-topic][13] (520 words to 260 words / 2,987 characters to 1,580 characters).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At one point, [I even advocated for us making sure that licensing questions were on-topic here][14]. I don't dispute that [we have many great questions and some great and many really good answers about software licenses][15]. I also don't dispute that this topic is incredibly important to software engineers - creating, extending, and incorporating third-party software packages is essential and open source software is pervasive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, when I advocated for licensing questions to be on-topic here, that was before the [Law][16] and [Open Source][17] communities were launched. We were a community of software engineers who cared, among other things, about software licenses. There was no site where these questions fit well and we had sufficient expertise to at least try to help people who came to us with at least a subset of licensing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe one of our first responsibilities should be to the person who is asking the question and to people who may find that question when they do a search using their favorite search engine. They should ideally end up on a site where the community can provide expert answers and review (and vote on) those answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [&quot;Respect the community - your own, and others'&quot; blog post][18] provides some guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, it cites a previous blog post, [Why Can't You Have Just One Site?][19] to figure out the definition of your community:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it really so hard to figure out which community you belong to, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; thus, where your question belongs? Ask yourself this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - what is your job title?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - which community do you consider yourself a part of?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - what are you trying to accomplish?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can use the same mountain to go downhill really fast on snow --&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but it's plainly evident to the participant which culture they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; consider themselves a part of, &quot;skiers&quot; or &quot;snowboarders&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Following all of the recent discussions regarding our name, we came up with the definition (which is now in our Help Center and [Tour][20]) that we are a community of &quot;professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle&quot; - we are software engineers (and some people don't like that term, so I'll also say that we are also [software craftsman][21]). We are trying to accomplish &quot;creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For completeness sake, I frequently cite it for the scope of the discipline of software engineering, so I do need to point out that one subsection of Software Engineering Professional Practice in the [IEEE Guide to the Software Body of Knowledge v3][22] is indeed legal issues and includes &quot;matters related to standards, trademarks, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, professional liability, legal requirements, trade compliance, and cybercrime&quot;. However, it also goes on to say that &quot;software engineers must consult attorneys who specialize in the type and jurisdiction of any identified legal issues.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Scope Gerrymandering: attempting to micromanage what’s on-topic in order to avoid overlap with other sites or simply drive away users seen as undesirable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Respect the Community blog post says to avoid gerrymandering. I agree that there is going to be overlap. I accept that - we even had [the croissants experiment][23] where we demonstrated the overlap and differences with sites like Computer Science, Stack Overflow, and Code Golf. I believe when we took on the whole realm of software law, and then even after we narrowed that down to software licensing, we were doing the opposite of gerrymandering (I also learned that there is no antonym of gerrymander).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are all practitioners of software engineering. Many of us have formal and structured training, either from a college, a university, or a bootcamp. However, the amount of education in the topic of legal issues tends to be very small for many of us. I don't see this as attempting to avoid overlap or drive users away, but guide users to a more appropriate place to ask their questions, get answers, and have those answers peer reviewed by many other people with the needed knowledge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don’t migrate poorly-asked or non-constructive questions. Just close them. If you want to help the asker out by recommending a site where their question would be on-topic, go ahead - but also recommend they read that site’s FAQ first!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we do this. For low quality questions, we have a custom &quot;legal advice&quot; close reason that calls out the Help Centers of Open Source and Law. However, this only addresses those poorly asked questions. Many of the software licensing questions asked here are actually good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do leave comments on questions that might get better answers somewhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree with this advice. [We have had significant problems with users on Stack Overflow telling people to ask their questions on our site][24]. It leads to cross-posting. As a moderator, I'd rather have a flag and a reviewing a possible migration than having people leave comments and dealing with cleaning up low-quality answers left by people who aren't knowledgable on the topic or cleaning up after cross-posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the day, I want to do what is best for the people with the problem. I think that is moving questions to where the experts are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/882/software-law-definition&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3131/can-we-put-software-licensing-questions-are-off-topic-in-the-faq/3132&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/would-a-how-to-choose-the-best-oss-license-type-question-be-appropriate-for-ps?s=95%7C0.0000&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3921/why-was-my-question-on-free-open-software-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5456/discussion-on-if-questions-about-eulas-are-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6497/what-is-the-difference-between-software-licensing-and-copyright&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6186/question-regarding-license-violation&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7748/why-do-we-have-a-legal-tag-if-legal-questions-are-not-welcome/7749#7749&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7266/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3135/4&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/licensing?sort=votes&amp;pageSize=50&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://law.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/07/why-cant-you-have-just-one-site/&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tour&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_craftsmanship&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: https://www.computer.org/web/swebok/v3&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6293/4&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24461" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8286" RevisionGUID="a8e46f4d-e357-4099-8bb3-380ff62c8e86" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Yes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We currently have [lots of great Q&amp;A's that specifically address licensing][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about software licences are well within the purview of the Software Development Life-Cycle. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We should not be [gerrymandering][2] our site's scope to specifically exclude them just because Law.SE exists. Instead, we should be jealous of our questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If an aspect of a question includes licensing considerations, that should not be an excuse to put the question on hold or to migrate it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some questions may have a licensing component, yet still need software development expertise.  A general judgment that license questions are  off topic will stop good questions.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, questions related to what sort of license one *should* use for your code, or questions about the ramifications of incorporating a library that has a certain license, have not only a legal component but a software engineering component (about the practical consequences).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If we accept that licencing questions are on topic on Open Source SE, then why not here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One *could* argue that Open Source should not allow licensing questions either, since law.se exists.  But I don't think anyone would agree with that; there is a particular community with expertise in open source software, that can provide useful answers (even if they aren't legal experts).  Given that argument, where is there a similar community of experts who can answer licensing questions that aren't necessarily about open source software, from a software development perspective?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**There is no perfect definition of off-topic licensing questions, but that doesn't differ from other reasons for questions being off topic.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Much has been made of [the complexity of the on-topic judgment.][3]  However, I think the first sentence is a pretty good guideline:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As a rule of thumb, questions are on topic if they are answerable by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; expert programmers, as opposed to expert lawyers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Isn't that enough to go on?  Yes, it requires a judgement call, but so do things like what is an allowable &quot;subjective&quot; question.  The difficulty of drawing a hard line should not prevent good questions from being allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/licensing?sort=votes&amp;pageSize=50&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24462" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8287" RevisionGUID="54b90eaf-21ce-49ca-8e8b-37a88b0b43d4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I tend to agree, but I think my reasoning is more focused on pragmatism. In my eyes, this isn't so much about having a &quot;clear and concise&quot; scope (as you note [in a comment](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8284/should-we-continue-to-accept-software-licensing-questions?cb=1#comment26034_8286)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The motivation of an SE site is to provide useful information to askers and readers. Expert participants on Law and Open Source are likely to have more knowledge and experience in licensing; it is more closely tied to their specialties. This isn't like the difference between Movies.SE and SciFi.SE, where overlap between the two subject matters is so broad that experts at each site are roughly equally capable of answering questions that could be on topic for either. The target experts of Law and Open Source by definition gives them an edge. As a result, an asker is likely to get a more complete, more thorough, and therefore more useful, answer on those sites than one where the experts primarily specialize in software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do have one concern, though: are there questions about software licensing that would be on topic here currently but would not be on topic at the other sites? If banning these questions from SoftwareEngineering.SE could result in useful questions losing a home on the SE network, I would rather err on the side of caution. What does a look at the existing questions about the topic tell us in this regard?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24463" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8305" RevisionGUID="db98ff45-12d8-4dd6-98eb-bc5befcbc4c0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is my deleted [question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/335466/is-there-any-kind-of-book-course-about-hacking-as-opposed-to-proper-software-e).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this meta question I conclude that it's acceptable to ask for course/book recommendations on specialized topics: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, can I do anything for my question to be reopened? Is there other SE site where this question would be more appropriate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24464" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8306" RevisionGUID="d5357cda-31f1-4416-9a68-d1359048cb15" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [Help Center's page about what can be asked here][1] has a list of types questions that are not allowed, even if they fall into one of the things that are considered on-topic here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Some questions, even if they appear to fit into one of the above&#xD;&#xA;&gt; categories, may still be off-topic or a poor fit for this format:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - explaining, writing or debugging code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - providing support for tools or products&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - finding or recommending products or services, including tools, libraries or packages, programming languages, books, scholarly papers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tutorials, articles, or blogs&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career or education advice&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That links to [a Meta post that explains in great detail why recommendation or list questions don't fit into the Q&amp;A format well][2]. The [Meta question that you link to][3] is listed as related reading in that post. Both answers in the question you found indicate that book recommendation questions are not a good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was deleted [on the advice of Shog9, one of the Stack Exchange CMs, in The Whiteboard, our site's chatroom][4]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Same way we do it on MSE every day: delete everything that's blatantly off-topic as soon as it appears.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although this was specifically in response to code dumps, we have had specific problems with five particular types of questions: explaining/debugging code, support for products/tools, recommendations, career or education advice, and legal advice or aid. These are the five off-topic questions specifically called out in the Help Center as not belonging here. If I cannot migrate questions in these types to a more appropriate site, I close using the appropriate off-topic reason and immediately delete. By deleting them, they don't show up in searches and people generally can't browse to them and think that they belong here. Many people don't understand that questions that are on-hold or closed mean that they shouldn't be asked here, so getting rid of them entirely helps present a better picture of what's acceptable to ask in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31225279#31225279" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24465" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8310" RevisionGUID="a380eaa1-79fa-49a8-8674-3e44958b9653" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A request [question][1] is asking to enumerate all JavaScript functions that return `null` or `undefined`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought that questions which ask to make a list of things are off-topic here; however, I can't find anything in the rules which tells that it is the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a popular variant of questions which lead to answers containing only one or few elements from a list, such as [What non programming books should a programmer read?][2] Those *are* off-topic, but this case is different.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here, the answer won't limit itself to one or few elements from a list. Instead, it can:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Either produce the full list of all functions returning `null` and a list of those which return `undefined`, eventually providing also a link to the documentation which contains those lists in the first place,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Or explain how to generate such list by parsing documentation such as MDN,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Or provide a piece of code which creates the list from JavaScript itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is also different from [questions asking for a list of examples][3]. Here, there *is* the right answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In all cases, the question is absolutely not “I'm lazy, do my job for me”-style question. I find it well written and constructive, and among the close reasons, no seem to match.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is this question off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If yes, what should be the close reason?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/335746/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/101/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7537/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24466" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8311" RevisionGUID="78be33f8-bb29-4cab-8c56-a1e4f66fb26f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="No. A list is a list and [the same rules apply](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7537/why-do-some-examples-and-list-of-things-questions-get-closed). We don't do lists here and we also don't do basic research that can be solved by simply reading a document page. We solve problems." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24467" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8326" RevisionGUID="8ac3ce13-a2b3-4af1-84c1-f09e70b4308c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The topic of software performance testing is on-topic - it's part of &quot;quality assurance and testing&quot;. However, please consult our guidance on [questions about where to start](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start) to avoid your question being unclear or too broad. You should do some initial research on your own, and then come back with one or more specific questions or concerns." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24468" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8331" RevisionGUID="d878fe56-8f3d-4504-8f05-419aa79d152c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We have the same rules as Stack Overflow as to [the types of questions that we don't allow here][1] - no chatty, open-ended questions; no questions that require a book to answer; no discussions; no poll questions where every answer is equally valid; no questions without an actual problem; no rants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also have some guidance as to [how to ask a good question][2] - [be on-topic][3]; search (the broader Internet and previously asked questions here); be specific with details and contexts, but make it relevant to the broader community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Going to your specific case - I'm sure we have other questions here about organizing code. We probably even have questions about organizing web application code. Maybe even in Visual Studio. Search those and read them. If, for some reason, those don't answer your question, feel free to describe your problem. Demonstrate that you've done your research (link to things that you've read, for example). And say why the things that you've found aren't helpful to you. If you do those, then you probably have a good question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One note - we tend [not to like &quot;best practice&quot; questions][4]. A [&quot;best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to any alternatives because it produces results that are superior to those achieved by other means or because it has become a standard way of doing things&quot;][5]. That simply means that it works for most people most of the time. We'd rather tell you about the right practice for your case. Chances are, you aren't the only one in a similar situation that the so-called &quot;best practice&quot; doesn't work for. Your question may help people understand options and why things may or may not be the right thing to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7091/making-best-practices-questions-more-palatable-how-to-ask-a-best-practice-q&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_practice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24469" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8335" RevisionGUID="2a6ec2d5-21e6-4d2d-a3fe-c32c95fa890f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="# Off topic&#xD;&#xA;### Legal Advice or Aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **legal advice or aid** are off-topic here. You may be able to get help with understanding, applying, and complying with free and open licenses on [Open Source][1]. You may be able to get help with legal terms, concepts, language, and procedures on [Law][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software is generally covered by copyright: even the lack of copyright (e.g. public domain) is important. When software is covered by copyright, it is often licensed to end users or other developers when it is distributed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a very important topic: as software professionals, it is incumbent on us to ensure that we comply with the legal requirements of copyright law and software licenses. We may also be interested in our own rights under copyright law as well as finding a license for our own software that meets our needs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Engineering SE is primarily concerned with the _software lifecycle_, not legal issues. Furthermore, many people are simply not qualified to dispense advice that borders on or falls into the legal realm: nor would any sane person do so on a web site even if qualified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further compounding the lack of legal expertise is the fact that the internet is a global entity, with developers in numerous legal jurisdictions. Much like with career and education advice, there are simply too many variables to give an answer to a question in a way that works for the Q&amp;A format in the majority of cases. Even if we could dispense quality legal advice or aid, it would be far too localized to be suitable for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Engineering SE _can_ give advice on licensing questions that requires the expert knowledge of a _programmer_ as opposed to a _lawyer_. However, [Open Source][1] is generally a much better resource for licensing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question seeks information about copyright law but is not seeking legal advice, [Law][2] may be an appropriate site on which to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2099/&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7265/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: `[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic – Legal Advice or Aid](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8335)`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24470" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8351" RevisionGUID="f69b334d-2250-4c93-9ee0-1ad8fb3fb132" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If you read [the Help Center's page about what you can ask about here][1] prior to posting, you would see that some questions aren't a good fit for this environment, specifically questions about &quot;finding or recommending products or services, including tools, libraries or packages, programming languages, books, scholarly papers, tutorials, articles, or blogs&quot; or &quot;career or education advice&quot;. Both are linked to more detailed Meta posts about why [finding/recommendation][2] or [career/education][3] advice questions don't fit here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also have advice from Shog9, one of the Stack Exchange Community Managers that [it is perfectly acceptable to delete everything that is blatantly off-topic on-sight][4]. Because your question fell into one of the topics that was specifically deemed by our community to be off-topic and documented as such in the Help Center, I deleted it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have no obligation to keep your question around if it doesn't meet our community's standards. That's how it works here. Next time, you should read a site's rules and standards before posting your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31225279#31225279" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24471" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8358" RevisionGUID="738743f7-f024-4a8b-a5a3-f88ba6ac95cb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The close reason of unclear isn't really accurate. This question is [primarily opinion based, since it's a name this thing question][1]. The edit does not resolve the reasons for closing the question and make it into a question that would be reopened, so rejecting the edits is appropriate to prevent the question from being bumped back to the homepage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6582/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24472" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8360" RevisionGUID="390f6ae7-a0b5-44e8-9809-cdec533cf174" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We're getting rather steady stream of blatantly off-topic questions in [tag:software-developer] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few recent examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;s&gt;http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/338512/hired-as-developer-and-thrown-into-support-after-1-month&lt;/s&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;s&gt;http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/337736/is-it-better-to-focus-on-mastering-one-language-framework-or-just-learn-multiple&#xD;&#xA;- http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/337494/confused-about-software-engineering-career&#xD;&#xA;- http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/336838/understanding-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/336733/need-career-advice&#xD;&#xA;- http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/336038/job-ad-senior-frontend-developer-in-berlin-startup-company&lt;/s&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10K users can follow the links to see how bad these are and for those who can't see deleted questions, first five are outright [career / education advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/) and the last one is a spammy job ad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now this tag has 37 closed and 10 open questions and a handful [historically locked ones](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsoftware-developer%5D+locked%3Ayes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't yet seen on-topic questions where this tag was useful which makes me wonder could we maybe burninate it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24473" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8369" RevisionGUID="58436914-05a4-411a-a8a4-e3ef3c99f1a9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Any one have interest in getting our blog back up? We haven't published anything in over 3 years. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No need to retype all this - See: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6558/programmers-community-blog-2-0 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We still have our Trello board loaded with post ideas....  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24474" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8379" RevisionGUID="71a56603-b5b8-4842-b04b-32af5c866c7f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="What you were asking for is a topic where a useful answer could fill a whole book. Such questions are usually considered as too broad for the Q&amp;A format of this site. Note that facial recognition is still a topic of scientific research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You argued it is not too broad, since you only want to know how much work is involved. However, that is nothing strangers on the internet can tell you, because we do not know you, your background, what exactly the features are you imagine for your program, or the quality of the facial regcognition you expect. Each of these details can easily make a difference factor of 20 or more in the resulting effort. So even if your question would not have been closed as &quot;too broad&quot;, it should have been closed as &quot;primarily opionated&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, it is not &quot;illegal&quot; to talk about technology here. Almost any question on this site has a specific technological context. However, we do not give any technology or library or tool recommendations, and questions asking for such a recommendation are typically closed quickly by the community, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24475" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8380" RevisionGUID="6398333c-3979-4d82-b4b6-7f0d8b74d0ba" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's time to choose a [Question of the Week][qotw-original]! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggest the next Question of the Week by answering here with a link to the question, and a short explanation why it's an exemplary on topic question. You may suggest [any question that was posted between 2017-01-01 and 2017-01-07 and is not closed][eligible-search].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Select the next Question of the Week by upvoting and downvoting suggestions. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next week. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[qotw-original]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8359&#xD;&#xA;[eligible-search]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017-01-01..2017-01-07%20closed%3ano%20score%3a1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24476" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8398" RevisionGUID="c4773df1-7429-45be-88e9-b5d9ee1b1552" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's time to choose a [Question of the Week][qotw-original]! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like. [Last week][prev], we picked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[*Which should be done first: use cases or user stories?* by user1620696](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/339568/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggest the next Question of the Week** by answering here with a link to the question, and a short explanation why it's an exemplary on topic question. You may suggest [any question that was posted between 2017-01-08 and 2017-01-14 and is not closed][eligible-search].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Select the next Question of the Week** by upvoting and downvoting suggestions. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next week. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[qotw-original]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8359&#xD;&#xA;[eligible-search]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017-01-08..2017-01-14%20closed%3ano%20score%3a1&#xD;&#xA;[prev]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8380/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24477" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8409" RevisionGUID="647adeed-2cd3-4a32-960a-0c8af16825db" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently asked [this question][1] about a specific term (JTNU) that I saw in a job posting. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After seeing the downvotes, I read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7182/what-goes-on-software-engineering-previously-known-as-programmers-a-guide-for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/faq/info&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I didn't find it to be off topic since it was related a term in a job posting and searching for [non-jtnu][2] didn't yield good things on google. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [info][3] for the terminology tag reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Questions about the objective meaning or common understanding of words and concepts that programmers encounter&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are in a field where a new acronym pops up each week. So, I thought I was behind and it would be reasonable to ask such question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know now that it is an Indian University whose degrees doesn't seem to be great. But when I first searched and saw the university I didn't think it was related. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Isn't it a valid terminology question since it appears in job posts?** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/340606/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;q=meaning%20Non%2DJNTU&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/terminology/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24478" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8412" RevisionGUID="6d6410e7-c7cb-4bf9-8a2b-84752b78640b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's time to choose a [Question of the Week][qotw-original]! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like. [Last week][prev], we picked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[*What is the importance of the vision document and how it helps development?* by user1620696](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/340019)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggest the next Question of the Week** by answering here with a link to the question, and a short explanation why it's an exemplary on topic question. You may suggest [any question that was posted between 2017-01-15 and 2017-01-21 and is not closed][eligible-search].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Select the next Question of the Week** by upvoting and downvoting suggestions. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next sunday. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote for this meta question** if you like the Question of the Week idea, and want to see more community involvement. Most users don't visit meta, but perhaps see the “hot meta posts” in the community bulletin on the right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[qotw-original]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8359&#xD;&#xA;[eligible-search]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017-01-15..2017-01-21%20closed%3ano%20score%3a1&#xD;&#xA;[prev]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8398/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24479" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8417" RevisionGUID="953c6c5b-7f98-4970-9baa-caf058018b78" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Assumed your flowchart is showing a high-level design of a piece of software, asking for [reviewing the design **can be on topic**][1], as long as the question is **clearly focused** on some aspects of the design, and not just asking for a broad discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6502/are-design-review-questions-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24480" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8423" RevisionGUID="c42313aa-ad10-4cf9-bd1d-08cad95d7890" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's time to choose a [Question of the Week][qotw-original]! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like. [Last week][prev], we picked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [*Is there a programming paradigm that promotes making dependencies extremely obvious to other programmers?* by Christs_Chin](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/340356)&#xD;&#xA; - [*How to specify a precondition (LSP) in an interface in C#?* by Achilles](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/340316)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggest the next Question of the Week** by answering here with a link to the question, and a short explanation why it's an exemplary on topic question. You may suggest any question that was posted between 2017-01-22 and 2017-01-28 and is not closed. You can use this [search query][eligible-search] to quickly find good candidates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote on suggestions** to select the next Question of the Week. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next sunday. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote for this meta question** if you like the Question of the Week contest. This makes the contest more visible in the community bulletin on the right. It also indicates whether this contest should be continued. After this week, I'll open up a discussion on whether we want these contests to continue, and what could be improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[qotw-original]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8359&#xD;&#xA;[eligible-search]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017-01-22..2017-01-28%20closed%3ano%20score%3a1&#xD;&#xA;[prev]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8412" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24481" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8425" RevisionGUID="fa3e518c-d29a-442d-87e1-6fce224e181a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## [Large class with single responsibility](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/341093)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Aka. “I have a god object, how can I cope with the complexity?” [Design reviews are considered on topic](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6502/60357), so this kind of question is absolutely acceptable. Luckily for us, OP didn't show us the whole 2500 line class but only a representative sample, and has focused the question on a single topic: how such a class can be made to obey the single-responsibility principle." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24482" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8434" RevisionGUID="ad845844-9187-474e-a6f5-7642d4af88a7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There have now been four instalments of the Question of the Week, and it's time to review that. Going forward, we should decide:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Do we want to continue with a Question of the Week?&#xD;&#xA;     If so:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     - What can we improve?&#xD;&#xA;     - Should we switch from a weekly rhythm to another cadence, e.g. monthly or bi-weekly?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Background is that the community participation has been … spotty. Some weeks seem to have been fairly popular, but other weeks saw little participation outside of a core group. Understandably, there have been repeated calls to terminate the QotW.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My personal opinion is that the QotW is doing OK but not great. Participation seems to be highly dependent on the [phase of the moon][potm], but has consistently been at acceptable levels for this to continue. I'd just wish more people would post *suggestions*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [potm]: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/P/phase-of-the-moon.html&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Aggregated Data for Discussion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links and notes on influencing events:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 1: [question][q1], [timeline][t1].&#xD;&#xA;- 2: [question][q2], [timeline][t2]. Significant other meta discussion during this week, didn't become hot meta post until mid-week.&#xD;&#xA;- 3: [question][q3], [timeline][t3]. Was made a featured question.&#xD;&#xA;- 4: [question][q4], [timeline][t4]. Featured call to action to vote for the question itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[q1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8380/&#xD;&#xA;[t1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/8380/timeline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[q2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8398/&#xD;&#xA;[t2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/8398/timeline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[q3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8412/&#xD;&#xA;[t3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/8412/timeline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[q4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8423/&#xD;&#xA;[t4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/8423/timeline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question votes over the week:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Q | S M T W T F S S | Total | Views&#xD;&#xA;    1 | 3 2 0 0 0 1 1 0 |     7 |   210&#xD;&#xA;    2 | 1 1 3 3 0 1 1 0 |    10 |   195&#xD;&#xA;    3 | 4 1 0 0 0 0 1 2 |     8 |   219&#xD;&#xA;    4 | 8 1 0 3 0 0 1 0 |    13 |   174&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Votes taken from the question timeline, views read from the sidebar.&#xD;&#xA;Votes after the end of the week were not considered.&#xD;&#xA;Note that views are not shown over time, and therefore also include views after the end of the week.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Final vote distribution on answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Q | #A | Answers&#xD;&#xA;    1 |  3 | 6, 5, 4&#xD;&#xA;    2 |  4 | 5, 3, 3, 2&#xD;&#xA;    3 |  3 | 6, 6, 3&#xD;&#xA;    4 |  5 | 8, 4, 4, 3, 3&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggestion count per user:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    9, 4, 1, 1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24483" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8435" RevisionGUID="da4e14ef-329f-4e5b-baf4-58ec6f3c4e31" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's time to choose a [Question of the Week][qotw-original]! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like. [Last week][prev], we picked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [*How to correct a mistake in the test, after writing implementation* by Attilio](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/341138)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggest the next Question of the Week** by answering here with a link to the question, and a short explanation why it's an exemplary on topic question. You may suggest any question that was posted between 2017-01-29 and 2017-02-04 and is not closed. You can **[use this search query][eligible-search]** to quickly find promising candidates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote on suggestions** to select the next Question of the Week. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next Sunday. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote for this meta question** if you like the Question of the Week contest. This makes the contest more visible in the community bulletin on the right. Please also look at the [Question of the Week Evaluation](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8434) where we discuss whether this contest should be continued, and what could be improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[qotw-original]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8359&#xD;&#xA;[eligible-search]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017-01-29..2017-02-04%20closed%3ano%20score%3a1&#xD;&#xA;[prev]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8423" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24484" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8441" RevisionGUID="8670a878-3233-485e-840a-a686deac1588" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think it is worth running this initiative for a month or two more (and then re-check again).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lately site community does pretty well on quick removal of inappropriate questions and as a result site front page shows mostly on-topic, reasonably solid, interesting questions. (Those less familiar with site history can [take a look here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7257) to compare how it was different in not so distant past.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This naturally gives us more opportunity and time to [reflect on good questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8359/31260), what makes them good, what makes some of them better than others:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are well-written, interesting, reasonably-scoped, and illustrate the kind of subject matter we'd like to see on the website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So far it looks interesting and useful, at least to me. Studying [meta-tag:question-of-the-week] suggestions and explanations given for these helps me better understand what makes a good question at this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Not to mention how much better it feels compared to the past when we were breaking our minds on why site is so polluted with coding help and career advice mess.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't made up my mind on whether it is desirable to keep this activity for really long term but for next month or two I would really appreciate seeing it going on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Speaking of too few suggestions, while your concern looks reasonable it is also worth taking into account that making these takes non-trivial effort. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, one needs to carefully check quite a lot of questions prior to suggesting one. For example search shows 40+ &quot;candidate questions&quot; for this week, and it hasn't yet even ended. Next, one need to write a compelling explanation for why they believe the question is good, it is also not easy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One thing that can maybe make it a bit easier to suggest is to provide readers with search parameters and URL to look through potentially worthy questions posted during the particular week, for example like this: [created:2017-02-05..2017-02-11 closed:no locked:no score:1](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=created%3a2017-02-05..2017-02-11%20closed%3ano%20locked%3ano%20score%3a1)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24485" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8442" RevisionGUID="250419ba-9027-441a-a074-893e98378ecb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's time to choose a [Question of the Week][qotw-original]! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like. [Last week][prev], we picked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [*Python - Architecture for related instance attributes* by John T](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/341260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggest the next Question of the Week**: just [pick a good question from this search query][eligible-search] and post the link as an answer. If you want to, add a short explanation why the suggested question is great. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote on suggestions** to select the next Question of the Week. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next Sunday. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote for this meta question** if you like the Question of the Week contest. This makes the contest more visible in the community bulletin on the right. Please also look at the [Question of the Week Evaluation](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8434) where we discuss whether this contest should be continued, and what could be improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[qotw-original]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8359&#xD;&#xA;[eligible-search]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017-02-05..2017-02-11%20closed%3ano%20score%3a1&#xD;&#xA;[prev]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8435" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24486" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8447" RevisionGUID="0dbcfcbf-9261-4d91-9033-2268866109b7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="(This question is a feature-request on the site infrastructure, i.e. interaction mechanics, not on the edit/review policy.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue of minor edits often crop up in various ways:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2852/when-can-i-reject-a-suggested-edit-for-being-minor&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6017/why-reject-as-too-minor&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2588/are-micro-edits-on-new-posts-insignificant&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On one hand, many minor edits are well-intentioned, i.e. they improve the question or answer, and these improvements accumulate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, when minor edits and major edits are put into the same review queue, it overburdens reviewers. For this reason, the current practice (for some people) is to summarily reject minor edits, to discourage people from making minor edits in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would argue that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Discouraging people from making minor edits is ineffective, since they were not being told why it was rejected - they only knew it was rejected. To discourage effectively, the message need to be seen by the prospective edit submitter before they begin editing.&#xD;&#xA; * Discouraging people from making minor edits, in general, is a negative user experience (negative emotions), even if well-intentioned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hence, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * I am proposing a technical solution to the reviewer over-burdening problem: to put them into different queues, and to let reviewers choose what kind of edits (minor / major) they want to work on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * In the beginning, we let edit submitters self-indicate whether this edit shall be flagged as being minor. In parallel to this, we can also implement statistical means (in the backend) to classify an edit as being minor or major.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Please migrate, or copy-paste-delete this to the appropriate meta forum. Thanks.)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24487" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8449" RevisionGUID="8454737a-ea5f-4381-af5c-36ad6765e957" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We have explicit [guidance for design review questions][1]. However, if you're asking about Turing Machines in the theoretical computer science sense, you may want to ask on [Computer Science][2] (check out their [Help Center][3] and [Meta][4] first, though). We tend to focus on building software systems, while Turing Machines are models of computation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6502/are-design-review-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.cs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24488" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8455" RevisionGUID="a1ad6002-fba6-498b-a59a-19dbac1d8bc1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's time to choose a [Question of the Week][qotw-original]! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like. [Last week][prev], we picked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [*How do I handle disagreement in a code review regarding an unlikely edge case?* by Klik](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/341576)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggest the next Question of the Week**: just [pick a good question from this search query][eligible-search] and post the link as an answer. If you want to, add a short explanation why the suggested question is great. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote on suggestions** to select the next Question of the Week. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next Sunday. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote for this meta question** if you like the Question of the Week contest. This makes the contest more visible in the community bulletin on the right. Please also look at the [Question of the Week Evaluation](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8434) where we discuss whether this contest should be continued, and what could be improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[qotw-original]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8359&#xD;&#xA;[eligible-search]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017-02-12..2017-02-18%20closed%3ano%20score%3a1&#xD;&#xA;[prev]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8442" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24489" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8462" RevisionGUID="0c12a5ff-6f77-452d-a73a-a4a1d67d6ced" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I agree with [amon's answer][1]. The closure was valid, but the close reason was wrong. It gives the wrong idea about what needs to happen to fix the question. I fixed the close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8460/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24490" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8466" RevisionGUID="3c2276db-75e9-4f03-8183-e9e3f5299ab0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question, as you've defined it here, seems to be either off-topic or too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are looking for tools and libraries, Software Recommendations is the place to go. [Finding or recommending things are explicitly off-topic here.][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, design questions are on-topic here. We even have [specific guidance for design review questions][2]. However, we also have guidance for [questions about where to start][3] or [&quot;blue sky&quot; / &quot;greenfield&quot; questions][4] - these types of questions tend to be too broad and need to be focused on particular design problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In your particular case, my recommendations would be to look at any options that Software Recommendations turns up and start prototyping software. If you have specific questions about problems with the design, those specific questions will likely be good here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6504/4&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6366/4&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6961/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24491" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8467" RevisionGUID="b4f0c2d0-4f01-4ded-a5a5-a307ca2bac19" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's time to choose a Question of the Week! The Question of the Week demonstrates what a good on-topic question looks like. [Last week][prev], we picked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [*Effectively tracking changes to configuration from dev to prod* by Mathieu Fortin](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/342462)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggest the next Question of the Week**: just [pick a good question from this search query][eligible-search] and post the link as an answer. If you want to, add a short explanation why the suggested question is great. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote on suggestions** to select the next Question of the Week. Ask yourself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is this question firmly and unambiguously within the scope of Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is this an interesting and well-written question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Would I like to see more questions like that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next QotW will be the suggestion with the highest score by next Sunday. If you have doubts about a suggestion, you can discuss it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Vote for this meta question** if you like the Question of the Week contest. This makes the contest more visible in the community bulletin on the right. Please also look at the [Question of the Week Evaluation](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8434) where we discuss whether this contest should be continued, and what could be improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[eligible-search]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017-02-19..2017-02-25%20closed%3ano%20score%3a1&#xD;&#xA;[prev]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8455" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24492" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8472" RevisionGUID="fd05c002-c2ef-42d5-aab2-7bfd3202253b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've got [a question regarding template specializations in C++](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/343505/when-one-should-use-template-specialization): I understand what this is, but do not understand when and why it should be used (examples that I have are not great). Quoting the last part (note that the question was significantly edited since then, here are old words):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My question being: when one should use template specialization in C++03/C++11? Alternative wording: what are some good examples of template specialization, like `std::swap` (if it is a good example at all)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A person suggested that this question is off-topic and pointed me to [Why do 'some examples' and 'list of things' questions get closed?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7537/why-do-some-examples-and-list-of-things-questions-get-closed/7538#7538) question on meta. This Q&amp;A refers to help center and states that these these question are off-topic &quot;because there is no right answer&quot; (not answer**s**).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I agree with the reasoning and there are things in my question which can be significantly improved, I was quite surprised that there is no place to ask about &quot;when to use X&quot; questions. So, I did some research. I started with [Is there a less restrictive Stack Exchange site specially suited for not too specific questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/252777/is-there-a-less-restrictive-stack-exchange-site-specially-suited-for-not-too-spe) question and corresponding [answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/253111/767632):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. Conceptual questions. That is covered on softwareengineering.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that &quot;when do I use X&quot; is a conceptual question. Still, comments suggest that &quot;Programmers&quot; (old name of softwareengineering) has its own rules and questions should not be opinion-based. Ok, let's look at Meta:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is a “best practice” question off topic?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/265928/is-a-best-practice-question-off-topic) on SO Meta. The answer suggests to ask &quot;best practices&quot; questions on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;* [Making “best practices” questions more palatable: how to ask a “best practice” question that is acceptable to the community?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7091/making-best-practices-questions-more-palatable-how-to-ask-a-best-practice-q) on SE.SE Meta. Answers mainly suggest that one should ask for a solution of a _specific situation_, not about general &quot;best practices&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fair enough: looks like general questions are too board and opinion-based because different situations require different solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I've found several open popular question on both StackOverflow and softwareengineering which are, I think, similar to mine (all of them are of form &quot;when to use X&quot; and do not provide any specify problems that OPs try to solve). From SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Factory Pattern. When to use factory methods?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/69849/factory-pattern-when-to-use-factory-methods), +181.&#xD;&#xA;* [When should I use the Visitor Design Pattern?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/255214/when-should-i-use-the-visitor-design-pattern), +209.&#xD;&#xA;* [When to use a Class vs. Function in PHP](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2122123/when-to-use-a-class-vs-function-in-php), +50.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a bunch of very general questions marked with `c++-faq` (they probably went through some special process which lifts some restrictions), from SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Operator overloading](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4421706/operator-overloading), +1537 - asks about idioms of operator overloading as well.&#xD;&#xA;* [What is a smart pointer and when should I use one?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/106508/what-is-a-smart-pointer-and-when-should-i-use-one), +1046 - note the  &quot;when should I use one&quot;, which is probably &quot;opinion-based&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And some questions closed for being either non-constructive or opinion-based:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is so bad about singletons? [closed]](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/137975/what-is-so-bad-about-singletons), +1427.&#xD;&#xA;* [Naming Classes - How to avoid calling everything a “&lt;WhatEver&gt;Manager”? [closed]](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1866794/naming-classes-how-to-avoid-calling-everything-a-whatevermanager), +670.&#xD;&#xA;* [On Design Patterns: When to use the Singleton? [closed]](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/228164/on-design-patterns-when-to-use-the-singleton), +282.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, finally, questions on SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Does using == in JavaScript ever make sense?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/268124/does-using-in-javascript-ever-make-sense), +255.&#xD;&#xA;* [Are there real-life usage and applications for “do while” loops? [closed]](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/268145/are-there-real-life-usage-and-applications-for-do-while-loops), +4.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it looks like _some_ questions survive, become popular and are not closed. Moreover, there is a special &quot;C++ FAQ&quot; section on StackOverflow which aims at not-situation-specific questions. However, most questions I found were on StackOverflow and they're quite old, so rules and mood could have changed. Two question from softwareengineering were asked almost at the same time, but one lives and other is closed. I don't see what's essentially different between them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Main question being: are questions &quot;when do I use X&quot; on-topic on SoftwareEngineering? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24493" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8478" RevisionGUID="93d37f58-d9e9-41b3-83d9-e7e45ed59436" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question is off-topic on any Stack Exchange site I am aware of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The crux of the issue is question like this are looking for one of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Opinions about a company's strategy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Resources that indicate a company's strategy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Inside information about a company's strategy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the first case, anyone can make a guess. Yours is as good as mine. _There is no objective way to answer the question: all answers are speculation_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, [resource requests are off-topic][1]. That link explains it better than I can here, so please read it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Third, the internet at large is unlikely to have any special knowledge answering why a company is doing whatever they are doing. At most we can give opinions derived from typical business actions (e.g. &quot;doing what is profitable&quot;), or link to blogs or other information from people who work there. Both of those are covered in my previous two paragraphs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you need to do is sharpen your google-fu skills, and perhaps post on an actual discussion forum ([Stack Exchange is _not_ a forum][2]) or [reddit][3] ([1][4], [2][5]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/92110/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://www.reddit.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://www.reddit.com/r/osx/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24494" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8480" RevisionGUID="70891dad-5bce-45b7-8121-399159545122" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Why questions about naming are considered &quot;opinion-based&quot;?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you working in the team you will spend some amount of your &quot;productive&quot; time on the naming.  &#xD;&#xA;I am pretty sure that every developer have moments when he struggling with names for new functions, variables, classes etc.  &#xD;&#xA;Proper names saves time for other developers who reads your code and even for yourself after few weeks.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you see a class with a name `SomethingBuilder` - you expects that this class will create new objects based on the arguments passed to the `SomethingBuilder`.  &#xD;&#xA;When you see method with name `GetItem` you expect that that method will return object without changing state of the context.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In case when you or your team cares about naming, naming become equally important as choosing design patterns.  &#xD;&#xA;Naming not based anymore on the opinion of developer - it based on the logic used in the method/class or output data.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I can logically ground why one name can be more &quot;effective&quot;, &quot;readable&quot; in particular case, than another, then, I think, it cannot be, so easily, considered as opinion-based anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this question is not duplicate to the [On the troubles of naming and terminology][1], because my question cover the case from [this answer][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What should I name this thing?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Which is not a &quot;guessing game&quot; question; it is primarily&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinion-based. There are literally an infinite number of such&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions; none of them are at all interesting to experts **unless they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can be answered from a principle-based perspective, in a way that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; could help others improve their naming skills**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my question I tried pointed out, that questions about naming with proper description of the problem can be considered as **not opinion-based**.  &#xD;&#xA;Questioner expects logically proved/explained reason for the suggested name in same way as question about &quot;How/What &lt;some&gt; pattern can be implemented in &lt;this&gt; specific issue.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6582/102569&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6586/102569" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24495" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8481" RevisionGUID="f12cb1a8-2d54-40b8-a0bf-4846e1fa1274" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; If I can logically ground why one name can be more &quot;effective&quot;, &quot;readable&quot; in particular case, than another, then, I think, it cannot be, so easily, considered as opinion-based anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sorry, but I don't buy that. When people agree that one name is more descriptive or readable than another name (for a function or class or variable), this is **never** independent from the group of people in stake, or the technical context, or the cultural context. Even if you have a list of &quot;10 candidate names&quot; for a thing, give that list to 5 different experts and you get at least 6 different opinions which name fits best.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, I agree clearly to Robert Harvey to what he wrote in his answer to [&quot;On the troubles of naming and terminology&quot;][1] - when there is no well-known concept behind the question, and the question is not about general &quot;principles of naming things&quot;, it should be closed as &quot;opinionated&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6586/9113" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24496" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8486" RevisionGUID="2548a2b9-cd29-4d8e-b2b3-f9755d36b44a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:33.900" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Questions about language design can be problematic: it is too easy to fall into one of several close reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Too broad. You would need to scope the question quite tightly. I know from experience looking at blogs and other web sites that discuss new versions of languages that there can be a _ton_ of information: far more than is reasonable to fit in an answer here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Primarily opinion-based. Depending on the feature and how it is used, people may approve or disapprove of a feature. For example: consider if the ternary operator (`expr ? if-true : if-false`) were just now being added to a language. This would invite highly-opinionated arguments similar to tabs-vs-spaces. I would hope that by 2017 new features are more clearly beneficial and less opinionated, but this is not always the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This actually gets at the heart of your question: you have concerns about some of the features, and are likely looking for opinions and discussion, both of which will result in question closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Off-topic: resource recommendation. Do not ask for links to sites that explain new features.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if you craft a great question that avoids these pitfalls, you will likely meet quite a bit of resistance from the community as many of the users who have enough reputation to cast close votes and are active daily have a bias against questions like this. Even if you have a great question, it has been preceded by a line of utter crap that has predisposed the community toward erring on the side of closing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly, you are probably better off asking on [reddit][1]. Maybe there is already a thread about it there?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or down voted?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/csharp/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24497" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5276" RevisionGUID="71bf2286-3a4a-419b-a985-5b1e6c64f4dd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:45:47.660" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.boardgames.stackexchange.com/ with https://boardgames.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Manishearth's answer is (basically) the short version. Our core development team is ~7 people strong, and our design team is *literally* a single person. There's *lots* of projects, network-wide, that vie equally for their attention. Eight people handle *all* user feature requests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The longer answer is a bit more complicated. Since I'm talking to people involved in the SDLC, I'm a little astonished that you're not all a bit more sympathetic. After all, the network is 90+ sites, and we serve double-digit millions of users, and getting the project *right* from step one takes time and person-power we don't really have right now. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bugs and errors you point out, while important, aren't going to get top priority because there are other problems that affect the *entire* network that may require immediate attention (e.g. a site blackout) or are concentrating developer resources right now (e.g. the `/review` queue, or our localization efforts). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What explains such passiveness? Is it because Joel Spolsky and his team lost interest in Programmers.SE, like he repeatedly explains in his podcasts?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, let me clear about something: there is more to the Stack Exchange team than Joel or the dev team. For one, there's the team I'm on: your (hopefully beloved) [Community Managers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/99338/who-are-the-community-managers-and-what-do-they-do). And, in fact, we even [hired on one of your moderators](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2875/41785) based on her work here. So, no, the *company* doesn't hate Programmers. Denying your community's complicated history would be foolish and short-sighted, and a great number of really *excellent* lessons were learned over the course of the last two years. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;passiveness&quot; you're referring to is entirely perceived; it's a symptom of the real issue, which is that our development team is overextended. Their time is an extremely precious, scarce resource. Not to put too fine a point on it: they're only human. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Who is (or is there somebody) in charge of implementing new features and fixing bugs on Programmers.SE?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Design bugs are usually handled by our always-wonderful, one-man design team of [Jin Yang](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/1685/jin). Jin is literally *one single person* handling *all site design issues* across the network. Jin *also* does the design for our marketing initiatives, some of our advertising, helps us make fliers and small promo items, [puts together top user swag](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1669/41785) and a whole host of things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is there a better place than Meta to ask for new features and to report bugs?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No. Meta is exactly the correct place for you to be reporting these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look, I'm sympathetic. I really, really am. I've been [working on making features happen](https://boardgames.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/867/we-should-implement-magic-the-gathering-pop-ups-on-hover#comment1635_867) on some of our other sites for months now. The toughest is knowing that [doing a fun, exciting event](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5240/do-we-want-hats) would basically &quot;cost&quot; us a feature for a site. All decisions regarding dev allocations are made with great care and after a *lot* of deliberation. We don't just assign development time to things willy-nilly because ***we cannot do so***. It's *literally* a thing we can't do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're dissatisfied with our ability to meet our users' needs (and it does sound like you are) then you're in luck. Right now, [**we're hiring for a bunch of positions**](http://stackexchange.com/about/hiring), including developers. If you know someone who could/should be working for us, who loves our sites (yes, even Programmers!) and is a talented developer who is looking for a new challenge, ***tell them to apply!***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, for the mean time, I can only advise you sit tight and be patient. It's all on The List&lt;sup&gt;TM&lt;/sup&gt; and I'm confident we'll get to it. It just might take some time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24498" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6136" RevisionGUID="43b82424-4d51-47d6-93a4-6b13ee78bf9c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:46:03.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.writers.stackexchange.com/ with https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For writing critiques and questions on technical writing, the closer fit within the Stack Exchange universe is [Writers Stack Exchange][1]. From the [site's help center][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What topics can I ask about here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on these topics are welcome here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A writing critique, [properly scoped and framed][3] (If you find those guidelines unclear, or need a quick summary, [this chart][4] will help)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I should warn you that I'm not intimately familiar with the site and I may be completely wrong when I'm saying that your questions would be welcomed there. You should read the rest of the article and the scope guidelines thoroughly, and decide on your own if the site is what you are looking for. Additionally, it wouldn't hurt if you stopped by the [site's main chat room][5] and ask its regulars for further guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, on the other hand, what you are looking for is feedback and general discussion for your _programming_ blog post ideas, then the more appropriate place would be our own chat room, [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://writers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://writers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166/what-are-the-guidelines-for-asking-for-a-critique-of-my-work&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/488/clarification-of-critique-guidelines/489#489&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/168/the-overlook-hotel" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24499" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1998" RevisionGUID="a598cb65-3b14-4f9f-8b1b-a4153f8d7b3e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:46:23.320" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/ with https://scifi.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Regarding the general reference close reason: it has been on trial on [Science Fiction &amp; Fantasy Stack Exchange](http://scifi.stackexchange.com/) and [English Language &amp; Usage](http://english.stackexchange.com/) for a few months. You can watch part of the debate that led to it [here](https://scifi.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/197/should-trivially-easy-to-find-be-a-benchmark-for-moderating-the-site) and [here](https://scifi.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/328/how-should-we-handle-questions-that-are-easily-answered-by-wikipedia).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On SF&amp;F, we don't use it often (6 times total, out of about 80 closed or retracted questions since the close reason was introduced). It gives a clear way to close questions where an encyclopedia, database or other general reference is the best answer, so there is no need to involve an answerer in the process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In its absence, you could (ab)use the “too localized” close reason: “this question is unlikely to ever help any future visitors”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One thing to decide if “general reference” becomes a close reason is what constitutes a general reference.  [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/) is an obvious one. Standard English dictionaries are another, for EL&amp;U. On SF&amp;F, bibliographical data from [IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/) and [ISFDB](http://www.ifsdb.org/) (and that last one isn't completely decided: ISFDB isn't that well known). For SO and Programmers, the reference manual of the language or framework that the question is about would be a general reference. (But what about non-official or hard-to-get-at or not-so-well-known references? Is K&amp;R a GR for C? What about the c.l.c FAQ?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that there's a difference between “general reference” questions and “easily googlable” questions. Following [Borror0's diagram](https://scifi.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/328/how-should-we-handle-questions-that-are-easily-answered-by-wikipedia/330#330): a question is only a general reference question if the answer is easy to find (not scattered across many pages or worded in a way that only people who are already experts can understand), and it isn't a general reference question if you feel that the reference is incomplete and you (as an expert) have more to say that would be useful to the asker. [I would add one element](https://unix.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/377/is-it-okay-to-ask-questions-here-when-wikipedia-already-has-the-answer/380#380): if the first Google hit is a page that answers the question, but the asker would have no particular reason to trust that site (e.g. it's some random blog post), then the question is legitimate — GR is really more about “look it up first” than “google it first”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another thing to watch for is the possibility for abuse. “What is X?”, when Wikipedia has an article on X, is a GR question. “I've read the Wikipedia article on X, but it's defined in terms of V and W which I don't know, my background is B, could you explain X to me?” is a valid question. So is “I've read the Wikipedia article on X, but it doesn't discuss context C, how does X relate to C?”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding this question in particular: it's obviously about loops, so the first thing do do — the minimum amount of research that's expected of any asker — is to browse the [Wikipedia article on loops](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_(computing)#Loops).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find the [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Control_flow&amp;oldid=439997913#Loops) more interesting than the answers here, in fact. It doesn't define a term for each “time through the loop”. There are, however, parts of the article that use the expression “iteration of the loop” or “loop iteration”, without defining it explicitly. This suggests to me that the term “iteration” is the accepted term in part of the community, while another part doesn't use the word. I didn't get that vibe from the answers here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a “smell” in the question, by the way. If you need to work around the “quality standards”, this suggests that your question isn't very high quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe I'm being too negative against the question, and we just need to wait a little more to have good answers. Someone suggested the term “pass”, and there is some debate about it. So at least it does show that the community is divided.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24500" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2693" RevisionGUID="2aa10bcc-e96c-4d61-b92e-a54375b697fe" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:46:32.923" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.codereview.stackexchange.com/ with https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Are questions on simple class hierarchies, like this [recent one][1], on topic? I think they are perfectly on topic here, but also that they might find a much better home at [Code Review SE][2]. As @YamMarcovic notes in a comment to the question, a class diagram is essentially code. Initially I agreed, but now I'm a little bit undecided. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Code Review SE is still in it's early days, and unfortunately they still haven't decided if class hierarchies are on topic there, as the [relevant meta discussion][3] is still open. Their faq [specifically disqualifies questions][4] on &quot;Higher-level architecture and design of software systems&quot;, and a [meta question on those][5] points to Programmers as the appropriate site. But can we really classify a simple class hierarchy question as a &quot;Higher-level architecture and design of software systems&quot; question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we decide that they are off topic here, should we care that they might not find a better home at Code Review? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125726/review-my-class-hierarchy&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/74/should-design-questions-be-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/faq#questions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/where-do-high-level-architecture-and-design-questions-go" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24501" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7117" RevisionGUID="da0ec5b7-53bc-4e7f-8eb2-06b2f56475af" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:46:32.923" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.codereview.stackexchange.com/ with https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm looking to come up with a **standard for how to implement a system that will automatically update software**. As such, there is no actual programming per se, but I still want to make sure my standard is robust before moving on to the stage where I build a proof-of-concept prototype.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a good outline of the idea, which is what I would want to be critiqued, but no actual code as of yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Can I ask for a review of my idea for a standard here?** If so, what do I use as tags (I'm thinking [architecture], [design], andor [networking])? If not, where would be the best place to go for this ([I was told that this SE would at least fit better than Code Review](https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4973/can-i-ask-for-feedback-on-an-idea-for-a-standard))?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For reference, the idea which I would be posing is [The BARC on GitHub](https://github.com/BlueHuskyStudios/The-BARC/blob/Refine/Refine.txt)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24502" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7738" RevisionGUID="3126bf44-21f3-4099-87c7-b2a358ff2ae2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:46:32.923" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.codereview.stackexchange.com/ with https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Should we have a \[design-review\] tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, I know I have sufficient reputation to create one. That is the easy part.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, we have have several thousand questions in [tag:design] which appears to be a mix of design reviews, questions about &quot;why was C designed this way?&quot; and other design-related questions. **Should we move design review questions to their own tag?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue I see is the cost in time to recategorize design review questions and the benefit returned. This is not a quick tag merge, this would be an ongoing effort as we peruse questions. One side benefit would be as we find old questions of poor quality we can close them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could also have information about design reviews and a [link to our canonical meta question][1] in the tag wiki, if anyone bothers to read it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question [Migration paths to other sites][2] on Code Review Meta prompted me to think about this. Would it not be great to point them to a single \[design review\] tag and say &quot;look at the highly voted questions for great examples of migration candidates?&quot; Then reality set it when I started going through the tag trying to find good examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6502&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6141" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24503" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7900" RevisionGUID="bec24a13-4cee-49e0-b3b3-7c13ca4f60f8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:46:32.923" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.codereview.stackexchange.com/ with https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would like to present this chart from [Checklist for how to write a good Code Review question](https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1957/42632) first:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![chart][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you can see, the metaphorical _distance_ in scope between Programmers and Code Review is significant. From a CR regular standpoint, I can say for myself that we do get, _on occasion_, a question which is off-topic at CR but could be on-topic at Programmers _(most off-topic Qs we get are broken code/&quot;give-me-the-code&quot;)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When this happens, normally one of us will hop over to The Whiteboard to ask if it would be a good migration candidate, and if it is the case, mods move forward with manual migration. This happens... once a week at the most, I'd say. I'm not a regular at Programmers so I cannot speak on your behalf, but I think the important question is: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; __Does the volume of off-topic on Programmers, on-topic on Code Review questions justify a migration path?__&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please reference [MichaelT's answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7901/140090) for migration stats between Programmers and Code Review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Td6Ev.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24504" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7059" RevisionGUID="e1823c86-8067-4df5-b4c3-8fe21ab7bf4d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:46:44.780" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/ with https://codegolf.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think the problem here mainly arises from the fact that there is so much disagreement. For example, even within this one question we have several viewpoints:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Establish a chat room&#xD;&#xA;- Post on meta&#xD;&#xA;- Don't post on meta&#xD;&#xA;- Use an existing chat room&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My two cents is this: Over on [Worldbuilding.SE][1] we've just established a [Sandbox][2] exactly for this purpose, taking our lead from [PPCG.SE's sandbox][3]. I think a Sandbox is a pretty good way to do this: people who don't want to see questions for improvement don't even have to look at the sandbox, but people who do can help out, and it's easy to find help when you want it. We're also looking at a separate answer sandbox on [Worldbuilding][1], but this is a separate discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://meta.worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/635/sandbox-for-proposed-questions&#xD;&#xA;[3]: https://codegolf.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2140/sandbox-for-proposed-challenges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24505" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1500" RevisionGUID="3c787ed4-f014-428f-9c2b-9484dd85b3cd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:46:53.307" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.pm.stackexchange.com/ with https://pm.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Cross-posting on behalf of [Eric Willeke](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/users/21994/eric-willeke) from Rally Software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Original post is [here on Meta.PM.SE](https://pm.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/205/sponsoring-a-community-member-to-attend-the-2011-rallyon-conference/209#209).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;A request from Rally, and some background on how we see our event interacting with PMSE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our Requests&#xD;&#xA;First, I'd like the community's perspective on us adding a tag &quot;RallyOn11&quot; to PMSE that our attendees can use to easily identify and browse topics arising from the conference. After some period (90 days? 180 days?) we'd be happy to delete the tag as it would no longer contribute to the meaningful taxonomy of the content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, I suspect (hope!) we'll be driving an influx of new members during that period, who will all be practicing members of project leadership. I know you'll continue as a group to be your awesome, supportive selves, and I wanted you to know we at Rally strongly appreciate the PMSE community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've attached a draft of what we've shared internally about PMSE for you to see in addition to what @Alex shared above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here’s our thinking...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The customers attending RallyOn are among our most energetic agile champions, and the questions they are willing to voice will be ones held in silence by many others. Equally valuable, posting the questions in an open, online forum allows our many users that are not attending RallyOn to share in and contribute to the experience by providing their perspectives and knowledge. We desire that the important and interesting questions raised by our attendees live on as questions in Stack Exchange, and for our entire team to provide answers, seeding the community in both directions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The leadership of Stack Exchange is providing support by sending two community champions to join RallyOn and guide us as we try and share the knowledge we are creating during the conference. As such, please welcome Anna Lear (@aalear) and TBD (@TBD) to RallyOn!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We will rely on our participants in the roles of scribes, room facilitators, speakers, and members of the audience to keep an ear open for interesting and appropriate questions during the sessions. We need to help these questions find their way on to the appropriate Stack Exchange, likely either http://pm.stackexchange.com/ or http://programmers.stackexchange.com/. It’s our responsibility to ensure that attendees have as little friction as possible in the process. However, it is very important that we strive to help our customers join the site rather than posting the questions ourselves." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24506" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5786" RevisionGUID="64abcc95-2c8a-4131-a233-0a215d7581d2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:46:53.307" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.pm.stackexchange.com/ with https://pm.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As mentioned in Tim Post's answer, beta sites are never targets for migration. So this is (going to be) declined until after PM comes out of Beta. Given [a recent discussion on the PM Meta site](https://pm.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/587/any-update-on-graduation), that's still a ways out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I do not think that this site should have a migration path to PM.SE, even after PM is out of beta. As someone who has formal education and work experience managing software teams, projects, and processes, I can tell you that running software-intensive projects is inherently different than running other project types, such as hardware-oriented or construction projects. I'm not going to get into the specifics now (I suppose I could, if you really wanted me to, but just taking a look at the wealth of resources specifically devoted to executing software projects by McConnell, Kan, Humphrey, Boehm, Turner, and Weigers should be sufficient). I don't see that many questions here that aren't about running software-intensive projects. Even if the material is not unique to software projects (and to know that, one would have to understand managing software projects, but non-software and multi-disciplinary projects as well), the answers here will likely take on a software-slant.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you were thinking about removing software project management questions - which would remove questions about agile, RUP, CMMI, TSP, PSP, the rest of the development methodologies and process models, scheduling, budgeting, estimation, engineering economy applied to software (1/5 of the topics that comprise the definition of software engineering) - I know that I probably wouldn't visit this site as much since my whole area of expertise would no longer be on-topic here. Sure, requirements engineering, architecture, and design would remain on-topic (and I'm interested in and have to work in those areas), but my primary interests and professional background would be elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps a better question might be how to attract software team leaders, project managers, and people with experience in these areas to this site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24507" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1595" RevisionGUID="27a7b3b7-e712-434d-89f9-046afc1d25ed" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:46:58.120" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/ with https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Right now we have just 8 [meta-tag:faq] posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not *terrible*, but they are in various states, various formats, and one of them is even closed. &#xD;&#xA;I think it would be great to clean up these posts, decide on a format and figure out a process for bringing in new FAQ questions (and apply the tag now to the best ones we have here on Meta).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Motivations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Provide a great place for new users to start learning about the best ways to use this site.&#xD;&#xA;2. Provide links for experienced users to use in comments on questions or answers that need attention.&#xD;&#xA;3. Take a big step in [fixing this site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1400/2314)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have **three main proposals** and a couple questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 1. Make the FAQ tagged questions more FAQ-y&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my understanding, the [meta-tag:faq] tag should be used for **the most frequently asked and answered questions on Meta.** (That's what the tag wiki says, at least.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I propose we review which questions are tagged **faq**, and fix any that are out of place (such as those about the **site-faq** which I propose as the replacement tag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. I believe that these questions should be in **Question and Answer** form, so that users can see quickly that it's a question they actually have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now, these are the questions we have in the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is “what language should I learn” considered off-topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic) - Good question.  Should be community wiki, and I'm not sure the answers are quite there yet.&#xD;&#xA;* [Proposed FAQ change regarding career advice questions](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1165/2314) - Since it's about the *actual FAQ page* I'm not sure if the tag was correctly applied, but it's a good question (deserves it anyway).  It just needs to be edited to question-answer form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [I've updated our FAQ.](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/ive-updated-our-faq) - Honestly I'm not sure I understand the inclusion of this one (why is it closed as too localize?)&#xD;&#xA;* [How does Programmers site work?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/516/how-does-programmers-site-work) - Perfect.  Shining example of what a **faq** question can be.  Oh - except for maybe fixing the grammar in the title :)&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) - Great topic, but needs Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu) - Good&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow) - Great question. Need to turn Mark's whole answer into an updated answer, and I wish we could accept it somehow.&#xD;&#xA;* [What should our FAQ contain?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain) - Kind of meta. I think it's more **site-faq** than **faq**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 2. A FAQ index&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The FAQ for Stack Exchange Sites at Meta.SO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7931/faq-for-stack-exchange-sites) is great.  Would be cool to see one like that here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 3. Figure out a process for bringing in new FAQ posts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, where do we propose a good posts, discuss its merits, or decide on the &quot;right&quot; answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My first nomination is &quot;Real Questions have Answers&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;[This is the post](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/991/real-questions-have-answers) announcing the addition of the section to the FAQ page, but I think it would be great to have a **&quot;Are polls ok?&quot;** question with a bit longer answer (community wiki) comprising the [best](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) [writing](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179) on this topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally this answer would also talk about how we should avoid &quot;you/your&quot; in questions, so we can use it in comments on [questions like this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76710/would-you-rather-work-in-a-small-company-or-a-large-one) &amp;mdash; the question that got me thinking about all of this in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this process, maybe we could use the [meta-tag:meta-faq] tag I created for this question (no others fit).&#xD;&#xA;### Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is the **Q&amp;A format** (a la Meta.SO) correct for this site?  I believe it is, but I'm open to opposing viewpoints.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. If we *do* go with Q&amp;A format for FAQ questions, how do we arrive at the *right* answer but still allow voting, discussion (comments), and editing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    The [Skeptics site is working on solution for this](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/413/on-adding-the-faq-tag-to-questions) that involves turning the original into a discussion/staging area and posting a new question with the best/correct answer.  However, I'm not a big fan of this.  I [posted an answer](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/519/discussion-about-requiring-references-for-all-claims/343#343) that became [the &quot;official&quot; one](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5/must-all-claims-be-referenced/522#522) but all that served to do was branch the conversation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. How do we push the right answer to the top on FAQ questions? Votes? Accept it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24508" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7761" RevisionGUID="ebedf084-0891-41b1-9881-353f0669bf45" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:46:58.120" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/ with https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I wasn't going to update the experiment this week, but the results this week were so encouraging I can't help myself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Week posted Qs  Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion Rate&#xD;&#xA;    ----------- --- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- -------------&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-12  325    190      58.5%           8.9%     2.6%      11.8%         40.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-19  349    205      58.7%           8.8%     2.4%       5.6%         39.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-26  319    207      64.9%           8.7%     1.4%      11.1%         46.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-02  362    218      60.2%          13.3%     3.7%      10.3%         44.2%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09  286    206      72.0%          20.9%     3.9%       7.0%         41.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-16  340    205      60.3%          17.6%     9.3%      30.6%         35.6%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only has the close rate dropped to something like the pre-experiment rate, the reopen rate has rather dramatically increased. Much of this is due to more edited questions getting reopened than in previous weeks. (It might be too early to tell if it's statistically significant, but more closed questions are being edited since the test began.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also spent some time last week trying to learn what prompted people to close so many questions on Programmers. While there are many detailed reasons, two themes emerged in my mind:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that remain open are signposts that prompt new questions of the same type.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. It's difficult to maintain the quality of answers on certain types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first didn't surprise me. It's a variation of the broken window theory (which is [different than &quot;zero-tolerance policing&quot;](http://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in-policing/research-evidence-review/broken-windows-policing/) by the way.) Since it's often difficult to curate a large corpus of answers, it's a lot more convenient to curate the questions instead. Some sites, however, pull it off. Skeptics, for instance, has [strict rules](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/faq-welcome-to-new-users) about what sort of questions can be asked (notably, notable ones) and what is required of answers (particularly that they be referenced). As a result, Skeptics deletes a large percentage of answers that have a score &gt; 0:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;       7634     35.5     19.64     0.05     0          97.16 Area 51 Discussions&#xD;&#xA;       8288     13.61    55.68     0.1      6.03       28.63 Skeptics&#xD;&#xA;       5782     10.26    46.49     0.09     0.02       48.74 Islam     &#xD;&#xA;     141392      9.38    25.01     0.45     0.02       78.15 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       4810      6.63    52.45     0.12     0.46       27.9  Biblical Hermeneutics&#xD;&#xA;      15660      5.86    45.84     0.03     0.37       48.31 Christianity&#xD;&#xA;      22572      5.08    28.81     0.33     0.02       63    Web Apps&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cut the list off at sites that delete at least 5% of positively-scored answers. Area 51 is interesting because 97% of &quot;good answers&quot; get deleted when their question gets deleted as a result of their [failed proposal being deleted](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/9068/do-not-delete-discussions-about-deleted-proposals). But the next in line is a real site: Skeptics. Their policies encourage deletion not only of entire questions, but individual answers as well. (Skeptics is unique in its extensive use of post notices.) [Islam](http://meta.islam.stackexchange.com/a/610/138), [Christianity](http://meta.christianity.stackexchange.com/a/1446/914) and [Biblical Hermeneutics](http://meta.hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/a/533/68) have fairly strict requirements that answers be well-supported. Those sites also emphasize narrow questions that allow moderators to delete many answers as non-answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm less familiar with Web Apps, but I believe they [had a major change in scope](https://webapps.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/764/proposal-to-clean-up-the-scope-of-the-site-is-your-question-about-using-a-speci) not unlike what happened on Programmers. When you shift the topic of a site, that will leave many now-off-topic questions that need deleting along with all their answers. As a corollary, there's a real need to lock questions and their answers. But look what happens when we limit to answers posted in the last year:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;      10617      4.53    34.44     0.01     0.03       66.53 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       2999      1.93    27.91     0.23     0          48.28 Web Apps  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Web Apps has settled into a fairly normal pattern of deleting relatively few upvoted answers. It's also split fairly evenly between deleting those answers individual and as a result of deleting the question. Programmers has become a little less extreme in terms of positively-scored-answer deletion, but it still ranks near the top of the list with Area 51 (31%), Skeptics (11%), Islam (4.5%) and Christianity (4%). More recent additions include Hinduism (4%) and Health (4%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Ok. What does this all mean?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Truthfully, I'm not sure. My current guess is that people are concerned that forces outside of their control will flood the site with embarrassing or just-plain-wrong answers. (This relates to another theme I heard a lot of: the Hot Network Questions list.) [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) gets [cited a lot here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=url%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.stackoverflow.com%2F2010%2F09%2Fgood-subjective-bad-subjective%2F). However, I wonder if the post gives the false impression that burden falls _solely on the question_. Certainly the way a question is asked increases or decreases the odds it will receive [crowd-pleasing nonanswers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers). But ultimately, we need to [hold answers to that standard too](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1110/96050).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other thing that kinda gets lost when talking about Good Subjective is that it isn't that opinions aren't allowed. Rather **naked opinions are noise**. The post even suggests:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Use your specific experiences to back up your opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that software engineering is one part science and one part craftsmanship, so it should be surprising to see some answers backed by experience rather than data. This is doubly true since the profession is incredibly young. Given quality of [users on this site](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&amp;filter=all), there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, it's a lot easier to delete popular answers if they don't actually answer the question. One technique that [seems to work](http://meta.christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/690/what-makes-a-good-focused-question) is requiring questions focus down on a specific domain. For instance, instead of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125320/do-todo-comments-make-sense maybe it would be better to ask &quot;Should TODO comments be removed when a project is in maintainance mode?&quot; That way the focus of the question isn't a holy war between pro-TODO and anti-TODO, but about the specific utility of those comments. (Obviously the asker should specify the situation they are actually facing.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24509" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2147" RevisionGUID="85646ab7-95c0-4b69-8a3c-35695918bbaa" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:47:06.720" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.drupal.stackexchange.com/ with https://drupal.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Other sites have been able to get their site name and primary focus blacklisted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [English](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/625/how-about-getting-rid-of-the-english-tag)&#xD;&#xA;* [WordPress](https://wordpress.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/338/why-wordpress-tag-on-wordpress-answers)&#xD;&#xA;* [Drupal](https://drupal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128/block-the-cms-tag)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a request to get ours blacklisted as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our entire site could be tagged with [tag:programming] and/or [tag:programmers], and people tend to use it as a tag when they don't have anything better to tag their question. And, like other zero-content tags, it tends to attract a large number of questions that were never good fits for our site anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previous discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58/tag-consolidation-and-blacklist&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/543/do-we-need-a-programming-tag-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24510" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2046" RevisionGUID="4aaa506c-71ef-4510-a29f-043175ca4a1f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:48:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.gardening.stackexchange.com/ with https://gardening.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think addressing the recourse people have when an answer doesn't get improved the way they like is a good idea. To that end, perhaps we can revise it to say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are useful for getting clarifications, but extended discussions detract from the question and its answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you'd like to discuss anything related to programming with other expert programmers, please use our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * This site is &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#editing&quot;&gt;collaborative&lt;/a&gt;: if a question or answer can be improved without changing the author's intent, please edit it or suggest an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you like a post, show your appreciation by voting it up.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you disagree with an answer or a question remains unclear, feel free to down-vote it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you have a better answer to a question, please leave your own answer instead of writing a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yoda over on Gardening.SE [provided a great guide](https://gardening.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/201/when-should-i-post-an-answer-and-when-should-i-post-a-comment/202#202) on when to use comments, and created this awesome chart:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![How to use comments: a flow chart][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue of [how to improve the purpose of comments in the FAQ](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/104981/is-the-official-comment-policy-obsolete-and-should-we-change-it) is being discussed on Meta Stack Overflow, as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/JS6Z8.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24511" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2047" RevisionGUID="b664cc3b-8c64-4f21-a364-5f6ab2d402ed" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:48:47.860" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.productivity.stackexchange.com/ with https://productivity.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think this is a good idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like they're still [defining what their FAQ is going to look like](https://productivity.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/38/help-design-our-first-draft-faq). It might be something we want to hold off on until they have a working FAQ so we mitigate any potential problems with their definition process." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24512" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3059" RevisionGUID="a31c64de-9ec9-436c-9b6c-2b6a5a5a6ff2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:48:50.707" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/ with https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="One thing that keeps coming up is the number of questions that are closed solely by moderator action on this site. We've already been over some of the issues, but I'm going to take this opportunity to &lt;s&gt;write up a guide here on meta&lt;/s&gt; blatantly rip off a guide to closing from [Ninefingers' post on Cryptography meta](https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129/a-guide-to-moderating-crypto-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24513" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3060" RevisionGUID="14cfb54d-e405-4a93-a399-8cc6b6f45beb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:48:50.707" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/ with https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sub&gt;Adapted from [Cryptography meta](https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/a/130), originally posted by [Ninefingers](https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/users/46/ninefingers)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Rationale: why do we close questions?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are really two ways to do moderation. If you've been on any of the `.moderated` newsgroups you'll be well aware that to get a post on there, it needs to undergo a review process first and be accepted. The aim is to keep problem discussions from arising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE is slightly different - it works the other way. *Anyone* can ask a question on SE and closing a question is the equivalent of putting that question *back into review/improve mode*. It's a feedback mechanism designed to react to problem cases only, so the usual business of asking and answering good questions can just... *happen*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why do we close a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The philosophy of SE is that each site handles questions on *problems you face* or things you are trying to understand. The [don't ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section of the FAQ gives you a good overview of things that don't work - to summarise:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions invite arguments or extended debate that suck up time when members could be helping other people.&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions are too broad, too narrow or have other content problems.&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions belong elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These have been worked out over time and with a lot of experience from Stack Overflow and are, *broadly speaking* true. Sometimes, exceptions are made - it is always a case-by-case thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is closing like deletion?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, and this is an important distinction, deletion is a different concept on SE. Closed questions are put &quot;into improve mode&quot; if you like, and are still visible for *anyone* to improve. That's the idea. Deleted questions are different - they have a red background and are invisible to all but high reputation users. So deletion is different and solves a slightly different problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What are the requirements for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have 3000 reputation on the site you can vote to close any question for the reasons above. More on that in a moment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you do not have this level of reputation, you will find that under the flag menu, you have an option &quot;this question does not belong here&quot;. That will raise a flag for users who can vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why can anyone vote to close/reopen**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firstly, anyone can vote to close or reopen (or flag as such) because it is *your site*. This is really important - it's about expressing what you feel works and doesn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How are moderators different?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderator close votes complete the required vote count immediately, no matter how many people have voted. This applies for both close/reopen votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially, as the reputation requirement rules out many users, you will see moderators doing most of the closing to guide the site and look after the content. As you gain in reputation, you get to join in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Ok, so how does it work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Example close button][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, the important piece. Voting to close works like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Underneath the question, there will be a close link. When you click on this, you will be presented with a list of options from which you can pick a close reason most appropriate to the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Close vote reasons dialog][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * If other people have voted, you will see red numbers against the reason they chose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Other votes][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The exact duplicate page takes you to a page that allows you to specify a question to close as an exact duplicate against.&#xD;&#xA; * The &quot;off topic&quot; page will present you with [five options][5] - three standard reasons why a post is off topic, one to specify your own custom reason and one to migrate the question to a different site. Users can migrate question here and to [so]. Moderators can send questions elsewhere, so feel free to flag if you have a target in mind.&#xD;&#xA; * The other options are straight out closes.&#xD;&#xA; * Once you pick your option and click &quot;close&quot;, your vote is registered. &#xD;&#xA; * If five people agree that the question needs closing, the question will be closed, even if they don't agree on the reason. You've seen the effect of these before.&#xD;&#xA; * The majority vote is chosen as the published close reason. This is a simple 3/2 split. In the case of a 2/2/1 split the the last voted reason wins.&#xD;&#xA; * Your name, and the name of other closers, will appear on the bottom of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Close banner][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How does vote to re-open work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A closed question has a &quot;reopen&quot; link underneath it. If you click this, a dialog box will ask you if you are sure - click yes and your vote will be registered to re-open the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below, you can see an example of the re-open link with two votes registered for re-opening (out of five).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Re-open link][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What happens if I make a mistake?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't worry! Unless five people agree, or a moderator agrees, the question won't be closed.  &#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, you have the possibility to retract your close vote. This possibility is provided if you try to cast a second close vote on a question. After retracting your vote, you can not cast it again, so you can't use vote retraction to change the close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I've seen a closed question and I disagree. What can I do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, one option is to use your re-open vote! You can also always raise a discussion here on meta to seek clarification on why a question is closed and hopefully either a resolution will be reached, or you will get an explanation for the closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My name appears on the bottom - isn't this going to cause problems with other users?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually, surprisingly few closed questions generate any response at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you experience difficulties as a result of closing a question, you can and should contact a moderator via the flag mechanism (which is anonymous). We can then take any necessary action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I find questions I might need to close? What about re-opens?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually there are two tools for this. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Review][8]. Here, there are a number of options for seeing things that might need say editing. One of these is a tab for all questions with close votes. You are then free to look at the question and decide if you agree.&#xD;&#xA; * [Tools][9]. Commonly referred to as the &quot;10k tools&quot;, this page let's you see even more information - certain anonymous flags, re-open votes, delete votes etc. The important one for this is the re-open page. Here, you can see questions that might have been closed incorrectly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qogGL.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/duT0S.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/26heN.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5992/what-should-our-predefined-off-topic-reasons-be&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/K3F4V.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/syw4O.png&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24514" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3429" RevisionGUID="2d161bd6-e7df-4db9-bb83-708f640d5469" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:48:50.707" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/ with https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Adapted from [meta.wordpress.stackexchange][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Recommended Reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Blog][2] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [I Move to Close This Question][3] &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;    How and why closing was introduced on Stack Overflow in 2008.&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; It’s important to note here that closing a question is a step on the road to deletion. Closing is effectively “nominate to delete”, as a question that can’t be answered is no longer truly “alive”. That said, some closed questions should be kept around. For example, duplicate questions that have totally different wording are sometimes useful. With the duplicates, people can find either variation with search terms and link through to the original.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions][4]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    About duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; Don’t answer questions that have already been answered elsewhere. Yeah, you might earn a couple of points of reputation, but, because you are duplicating content, you are actually making the internet worse. Why? Because that answer might be true today, but as technology changes, it might not be true tomorrow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Stack Overflow Question Lifecycle][5]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How and when questions are closed or deleted.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers][6], [Gorilla vs. Shark][7] and [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    About the _not constructive_ close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Meta Stack Overflow][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is a “closed” question?][10] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; * 24 votes to close per day (50 on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * 5 votes are required to close or reopen&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * Votes will expire after 4 days if the question does not reach 5 votes&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * Questions containing a bounty cannot be closed&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * You can only vote to close once per question&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * You can only vote to reopen once per question&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How do you reopen a closed question?][11] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; The owner must have 250 rep in order to vote to reopen their own question. Other users can also vote to reopen, but they must have a minimum 3000 reputation points.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Leaving comments about voting to reopen does nothing in and of itself. You can try and [address a specific user](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2035/notify-user-when-their-name-is-mentioned-in-comment-closed) who may have left a comment as to why they voted to close and ask them to help cast reopen votes if you think they voted in error.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  See also: [How do you challenge the closing of one of your questions?][12], [Why was my question closed and how to contact the closer][13] and [My question has been closed. What do I do now?][14] (on meta.crypto.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Closing/Migrating question instructions/guidance][15]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  A long explanation of the close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What can cause my question to be bumped?][16]  &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;  Close/reopen votes on the question do not bump the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Etiquette for closing your own questions][17] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; I don't think you should close your questions lightly. There are very few questions that have a definite answer that will never change, or that cannot be improved upon.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How to handle duplicate questions?][18]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not by tagging or editing, vote to close or flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Please add the ability to filter \[Closed\] questions out of my results][19] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Stick the closed:0 parameter in your search pipe and you're smoking out the closed questions: [closed:0](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A0)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; But if you're in the mood of puffing around the closed: [closed:1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1)&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  See also our [search tips][20]. &#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Allow question askers to close their own questions unilaterally][21]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Once you post a question it is not exactly YOURS in every sense of the word anymore, it belongs to EVERYONE.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  But you can _delete_ your own question as long as there are no upvoted answers.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How useful must a question be to be allowed?][22]  &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;  About the _too localized_ close reason, derived from [this question on Gaming][23]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; What value does this question have to anyone else on the planet, other than the one person who asked? In other words, what internet user is going to be searching for and finding information about a game one person vaguely remembers playing in broad terms?&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;  See also: [What questions should be closed with reason “too localized”?][24]&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Remove/downweight closed questions in “hot” question sort][25]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; I think there's a misconception here -- closing does not mean &quot;get this off my screen ASAP&quot;, closing means, &quot;this question should be re-evaluated by the community&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Can we have the ability to rescind a close vote before it closes?][26]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No. See Jeff’s answer … with a lot of negative votes. :)&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Close Votes expire too soon for low-traffic tags][27]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: Fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Close votes (and probably reopen votes) only expire after all of these conditions are met:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1. 4 days have passed since the last close vote.  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2. The question has more than 100 views.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Auto-deleting old, unanswered zero-score questions after a year?][28]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There is a garbage collector which works as follows:&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; If the question is more than 30 days old, and ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has -1 or lower score&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has no answers&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* is not locked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; If the question is more than 365 days old, and ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has a score of 0 or a score of 1 with a deleted owner&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has no answers&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* is not locked&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has a viewcount &lt;= the age of the question in days times 1.5&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has 1 or 0 comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; This check is run every week across all sites.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  **Each time you misuse the answer field for pseudo-comments you break the garbage collector.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Do “fix my code pleeese!” questions qualify for closure as “too localized”?][29]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Yes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## My own summary after a long reading session&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing is not deleting. A closed question is still visible, it can be improved and reopened. It [doesn’t affect the accept rate][30] but prevents potentially useless answers. Help us to stay [on focus][31], use your close votes.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a moderator (on WordPress Stack Exchange) I don’t like to act unilaterally. Your close votes are helping me and the other moderators to decide and we don’t feel so bad if we close a question. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://wordpress.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1035/73&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10582/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/36415/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/19126/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/119638/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/q/144/1910&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/32490/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/48578/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/5215/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10841/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/7913/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10363/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/70521/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1455&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/4818/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/107153/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/915/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/97556/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/78048/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/82874/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/08/new-question-asker-features/&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24515" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7761" RevisionGUID="e771b676-64b1-493c-bfce-66fa3178b753" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:49:03.190" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.christianity.stackexchange.com/ with https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I wasn't going to update the experiment this week, but the results this week were so encouraging I can't help myself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Week posted Qs  Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion Rate&#xD;&#xA;    ----------- --- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- -------------&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-12  325    190      58.5%           8.9%     2.6%      11.8%         40.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-19  349    205      58.7%           8.8%     2.4%       5.6%         39.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-26  319    207      64.9%           8.7%     1.4%      11.1%         46.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-02  362    218      60.2%          13.3%     3.7%      10.3%         44.2%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09  286    206      72.0%          20.9%     3.9%       7.0%         41.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-16  340    205      60.3%          17.6%     9.3%      30.6%         35.6%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only has the close rate dropped to something like the pre-experiment rate, the reopen rate has rather dramatically increased. Much of this is due to more edited questions getting reopened than in previous weeks. (It might be too early to tell if it's statistically significant, but more closed questions are being edited since the test began.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also spent some time last week trying to learn what prompted people to close so many questions on Programmers. While there are many detailed reasons, two themes emerged in my mind:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that remain open are signposts that prompt new questions of the same type.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. It's difficult to maintain the quality of answers on certain types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first didn't surprise me. It's a variation of the broken window theory (which is [different than &quot;zero-tolerance policing&quot;](http://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in-policing/research-evidence-review/broken-windows-policing/) by the way.) Since it's often difficult to curate a large corpus of answers, it's a lot more convenient to curate the questions instead. Some sites, however, pull it off. Skeptics, for instance, has [strict rules](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/faq-welcome-to-new-users) about what sort of questions can be asked (notably, notable ones) and what is required of answers (particularly that they be referenced). As a result, Skeptics deletes a large percentage of answers that have a score &gt; 0:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;       7634     35.5     19.64     0.05     0          97.16 Area 51 Discussions&#xD;&#xA;       8288     13.61    55.68     0.1      6.03       28.63 Skeptics&#xD;&#xA;       5782     10.26    46.49     0.09     0.02       48.74 Islam     &#xD;&#xA;     141392      9.38    25.01     0.45     0.02       78.15 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       4810      6.63    52.45     0.12     0.46       27.9  Biblical Hermeneutics&#xD;&#xA;      15660      5.86    45.84     0.03     0.37       48.31 Christianity&#xD;&#xA;      22572      5.08    28.81     0.33     0.02       63    Web Apps&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cut the list off at sites that delete at least 5% of positively-scored answers. Area 51 is interesting because 97% of &quot;good answers&quot; get deleted when their question gets deleted as a result of their [failed proposal being deleted](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/9068/do-not-delete-discussions-about-deleted-proposals). But the next in line is a real site: Skeptics. Their policies encourage deletion not only of entire questions, but individual answers as well. (Skeptics is unique in its extensive use of post notices.) [Islam](http://meta.islam.stackexchange.com/a/610/138), [Christianity](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1446/914) and [Biblical Hermeneutics](http://meta.hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/a/533/68) have fairly strict requirements that answers be well-supported. Those sites also emphasize narrow questions that allow moderators to delete many answers as non-answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm less familiar with Web Apps, but I believe they [had a major change in scope](https://webapps.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/764/proposal-to-clean-up-the-scope-of-the-site-is-your-question-about-using-a-speci) not unlike what happened on Programmers. When you shift the topic of a site, that will leave many now-off-topic questions that need deleting along with all their answers. As a corollary, there's a real need to lock questions and their answers. But look what happens when we limit to answers posted in the last year:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;      10617      4.53    34.44     0.01     0.03       66.53 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       2999      1.93    27.91     0.23     0          48.28 Web Apps  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Web Apps has settled into a fairly normal pattern of deleting relatively few upvoted answers. It's also split fairly evenly between deleting those answers individual and as a result of deleting the question. Programmers has become a little less extreme in terms of positively-scored-answer deletion, but it still ranks near the top of the list with Area 51 (31%), Skeptics (11%), Islam (4.5%) and Christianity (4%). More recent additions include Hinduism (4%) and Health (4%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Ok. What does this all mean?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Truthfully, I'm not sure. My current guess is that people are concerned that forces outside of their control will flood the site with embarrassing or just-plain-wrong answers. (This relates to another theme I heard a lot of: the Hot Network Questions list.) [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) gets [cited a lot here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=url%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.stackoverflow.com%2F2010%2F09%2Fgood-subjective-bad-subjective%2F). However, I wonder if the post gives the false impression that burden falls _solely on the question_. Certainly the way a question is asked increases or decreases the odds it will receive [crowd-pleasing nonanswers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers). But ultimately, we need to [hold answers to that standard too](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1110/96050).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other thing that kinda gets lost when talking about Good Subjective is that it isn't that opinions aren't allowed. Rather **naked opinions are noise**. The post even suggests:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Use your specific experiences to back up your opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that software engineering is one part science and one part craftsmanship, so it should be surprising to see some answers backed by experience rather than data. This is doubly true since the profession is incredibly young. Given quality of [users on this site](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&amp;filter=all), there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, it's a lot easier to delete popular answers if they don't actually answer the question. One technique that [seems to work](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/690/what-makes-a-good-focused-question) is requiring questions focus down on a specific domain. For instance, instead of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125320/do-todo-comments-make-sense maybe it would be better to ask &quot;Should TODO comments be removed when a project is in maintainance mode?&quot; That way the focus of the question isn't a holy war between pro-TODO and anti-TODO, but about the specific utility of those comments. (Obviously the asker should specify the situation they are actually facing.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24516" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7761" RevisionGUID="4ffc6da4-12f8-426a-a93a-f3adfe8ca2d6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:49:15.563" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/ with https://hermeneutics.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I wasn't going to update the experiment this week, but the results this week were so encouraging I can't help myself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Week posted Qs  Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion Rate&#xD;&#xA;    ----------- --- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- -------------&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-12  325    190      58.5%           8.9%     2.6%      11.8%         40.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-19  349    205      58.7%           8.8%     2.4%       5.6%         39.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-26  319    207      64.9%           8.7%     1.4%      11.1%         46.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-02  362    218      60.2%          13.3%     3.7%      10.3%         44.2%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09  286    206      72.0%          20.9%     3.9%       7.0%         41.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-16  340    205      60.3%          17.6%     9.3%      30.6%         35.6%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only has the close rate dropped to something like the pre-experiment rate, the reopen rate has rather dramatically increased. Much of this is due to more edited questions getting reopened than in previous weeks. (It might be too early to tell if it's statistically significant, but more closed questions are being edited since the test began.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also spent some time last week trying to learn what prompted people to close so many questions on Programmers. While there are many detailed reasons, two themes emerged in my mind:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that remain open are signposts that prompt new questions of the same type.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. It's difficult to maintain the quality of answers on certain types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first didn't surprise me. It's a variation of the broken window theory (which is [different than &quot;zero-tolerance policing&quot;](http://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in-policing/research-evidence-review/broken-windows-policing/) by the way.) Since it's often difficult to curate a large corpus of answers, it's a lot more convenient to curate the questions instead. Some sites, however, pull it off. Skeptics, for instance, has [strict rules](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/faq-welcome-to-new-users) about what sort of questions can be asked (notably, notable ones) and what is required of answers (particularly that they be referenced). As a result, Skeptics deletes a large percentage of answers that have a score &gt; 0:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;       7634     35.5     19.64     0.05     0          97.16 Area 51 Discussions&#xD;&#xA;       8288     13.61    55.68     0.1      6.03       28.63 Skeptics&#xD;&#xA;       5782     10.26    46.49     0.09     0.02       48.74 Islam     &#xD;&#xA;     141392      9.38    25.01     0.45     0.02       78.15 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       4810      6.63    52.45     0.12     0.46       27.9  Biblical Hermeneutics&#xD;&#xA;      15660      5.86    45.84     0.03     0.37       48.31 Christianity&#xD;&#xA;      22572      5.08    28.81     0.33     0.02       63    Web Apps&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cut the list off at sites that delete at least 5% of positively-scored answers. Area 51 is interesting because 97% of &quot;good answers&quot; get deleted when their question gets deleted as a result of their [failed proposal being deleted](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/9068/do-not-delete-discussions-about-deleted-proposals). But the next in line is a real site: Skeptics. Their policies encourage deletion not only of entire questions, but individual answers as well. (Skeptics is unique in its extensive use of post notices.) [Islam](http://meta.islam.stackexchange.com/a/610/138), [Christianity](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1446/914) and [Biblical Hermeneutics](https://hermeneutics.meta.stackexchange.com/a/533/68) have fairly strict requirements that answers be well-supported. Those sites also emphasize narrow questions that allow moderators to delete many answers as non-answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm less familiar with Web Apps, but I believe they [had a major change in scope](https://webapps.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/764/proposal-to-clean-up-the-scope-of-the-site-is-your-question-about-using-a-speci) not unlike what happened on Programmers. When you shift the topic of a site, that will leave many now-off-topic questions that need deleting along with all their answers. As a corollary, there's a real need to lock questions and their answers. But look what happens when we limit to answers posted in the last year:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;      10617      4.53    34.44     0.01     0.03       66.53 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       2999      1.93    27.91     0.23     0          48.28 Web Apps  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Web Apps has settled into a fairly normal pattern of deleting relatively few upvoted answers. It's also split fairly evenly between deleting those answers individual and as a result of deleting the question. Programmers has become a little less extreme in terms of positively-scored-answer deletion, but it still ranks near the top of the list with Area 51 (31%), Skeptics (11%), Islam (4.5%) and Christianity (4%). More recent additions include Hinduism (4%) and Health (4%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Ok. What does this all mean?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Truthfully, I'm not sure. My current guess is that people are concerned that forces outside of their control will flood the site with embarrassing or just-plain-wrong answers. (This relates to another theme I heard a lot of: the Hot Network Questions list.) [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) gets [cited a lot here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=url%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.stackoverflow.com%2F2010%2F09%2Fgood-subjective-bad-subjective%2F). However, I wonder if the post gives the false impression that burden falls _solely on the question_. Certainly the way a question is asked increases or decreases the odds it will receive [crowd-pleasing nonanswers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers). But ultimately, we need to [hold answers to that standard too](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1110/96050).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other thing that kinda gets lost when talking about Good Subjective is that it isn't that opinions aren't allowed. Rather **naked opinions are noise**. The post even suggests:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Use your specific experiences to back up your opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that software engineering is one part science and one part craftsmanship, so it should be surprising to see some answers backed by experience rather than data. This is doubly true since the profession is incredibly young. Given quality of [users on this site](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&amp;filter=all), there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, it's a lot easier to delete popular answers if they don't actually answer the question. One technique that [seems to work](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/690/what-makes-a-good-focused-question) is requiring questions focus down on a specific domain. For instance, instead of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125320/do-todo-comments-make-sense maybe it would be better to ask &quot;Should TODO comments be removed when a project is in maintainance mode?&quot; That way the focus of the question isn't a holy war between pro-TODO and anti-TODO, but about the specific utility of those comments. (Obviously the asker should specify the situation they are actually facing.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24517" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6663" RevisionGUID="78210d3c-d1a0-4bfa-ae82-5cd74ba7b9e0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:50:23.000" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.cs.stackexchange.com/ with https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm thinking of doing an experiment with a JS program to utilize Japanese Multiplication, and I want to ask whether or not a software math shortcut is actually a shortcut at all. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, I'm contemplating writing a program to get benchmarks for the comparison of normal multiplication and Japanese Multiplication via programming, and I'd like to ask whether or not this makes sense to do before spending time to build the experiment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Remember, this is a question of whether or not this question is appropriate for this site.** Any additional thoughts on the topic should be described either in the comments or answers to the actual question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also asked whether or not this question would be appropriate on Stack Overflow, Mathematics SE, and Computer Science SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13751/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-mathematical-programming-co&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/255301/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-programming-concept&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/861/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-mathematical-programming-co&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Theoretically, the question would look like this:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Japanese Multiplication simulation - is a program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On SuperUser, I asked [a (possibly silly) question about processors using mathematical shortcuts][1] and would like to have a look at the possibility at the **software application** of that concept.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to write a JS simulation of Japanese Multiplication to get benchmarks on large calculations utilizing the shortcut vs traditional CPU multiplication. **I'm curious as to whether it makes sense to do this.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My Question:** I'd like to know whether or not a software math shortcut, as described above is actually a shortcut at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a question of programming concept. By utilizing the simulation of Japanese Multiplication, **is my program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My theory** is that since addition is computed faster than multiplication, a simulation of Japanese multiplication may actually allow a program to multiply (large) numbers faster than the CPU arithmetic unit can. I think this would be a very interesting finding, if it proves to be true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://superuser.com/questions/755648/do-processors-utilize-mathematical-shortcuts-and-tricks-like-we-do?noredirect=1#comment976766_755648&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/swF5p.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24518" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8449" RevisionGUID="fa6ce958-d81c-4082-b9f5-b857ba4151a7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:50:23.000" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.cs.stackexchange.com/ with https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We have explicit [guidance for design review questions][1]. However, if you're asking about Turing Machines in the theoretical computer science sense, you may want to ask on [Computer Science][2] (check out their [Help Center][3] and [Meta][4] first, though). We tend to focus on building software systems, while Turing Machines are models of computation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6502/are-design-review-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24519" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3632" RevisionGUID="f5260261-2cc2-4eb3-a7ed-1fe137fcbb66" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:50:29.547" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/ with https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Sort of following up on http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3432/how-should-we-guide-questions-toward-the-workplace I was thinking our FAQ's bit that says we're NOT about &quot;career advice, including general workplace issues&quot; to explicitly reference The Workplace, where those questions, when constructive, *are* on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Workplace currently gets a substantial amount of traffic from Programmers (directly), so while I'm a bit concerned that some of the &quot;off topic anywhere on SE&quot; questions will spill over into workplace, it seems people have behaved themselves reasonable well so far. I also think this is a great time to *try* this arrangement right now as question volume is low on Workplace so, as a pro temp moderator on Workplace, it's pretty easy to manage if a few problems slip over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a good idea? How can we word it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also started a receiving discussion on [Workplace Meta][1]; I want the blessing of both sites before we continue with this of course.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/274/would-we-want-to-be-mentioned-in-the-programmers-faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24520" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3635" RevisionGUID="a895bf42-5c76-4257-833a-d940a8123b98" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:50:29.547" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/ with https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After discussing with The Workplace moderators, and given the positive feedback both this and the [Meta Workplace discussion][1] received, I went ahead and updated our [off topic list][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is **not about**...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check out [The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/) instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementation issues or programming tools (ask on [Stack Overflow](http://www.stackoverflow.com/) instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including [which technology is better](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [career advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590), salary or compensation&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; For answers to common programming career advice questions, please see &quot;[Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/)&quot; by Patrick McKenzie.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt; If you are still seeing the old FAQ, it's caching. It's always caching...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now our off topic list is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the topics from the list that the Workplace welcomes are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - office politics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which I think should be combined in one item:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, career advice, office politics, résumé help (check out The Workplace instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including which technology is better,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've re-ordered the items, putting the two we have alternative suggestions for at the top, and the rest in order of occurrence. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/274/would-we-want-to-be-mentioned-in-the-programmers-faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24522" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3875" RevisionGUID="8c708d14-060e-42b5-bc83-967ba009223e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:50:29.547" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/ with https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Is there some sort of bias for certs around here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kind of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The relevance of certs must be applied to a certain point in time, for which the question can be closed as 'Too Localized'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To my knowledge, @bethlakshmi has supplied [the best definition of 'Too Localized' for time reasons][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/354/437" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24523" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3962" RevisionGUID="61a5456d-f786-4e4f-9e13-6f5cea476a0c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:50:29.547" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/ with https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; I see that both the OP and I have good points...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Correct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can completely relate to @user115232 's experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked a **great** question about the nature of the Penn State scandal on Workplace.SE. In spite of its &quot;greatness&quot;, as originally stated/phrased, it may not have been a perfect fit for Workplace.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather than give the question any chance to breathe, a diamond-mod unilaterally closed it, less than 10 minutes after I posted it, and marked it as 'Too Localized'. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every other user on the site (including the other moderators) agreed - There's no way &quot;On God's Green Earth&quot; that a question about the Penn State scandal could possibly be construed as 'Too Localized'. [i.e. The ramifications could not have been larger, People will be discussing it for hundreds of years after we're all in the ground, etc.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334/too-localized-are-you-kidding-me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, rather than rehabilitate the question and follow @Mark Trapp 's 'Summer of Love' advice, the moderators decided to &quot;Circle the Wagons&quot; and keep it closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So eventually, after @Anna Lear intervened, I agreed and yielded. As stated/phrased, it wasn't a great fit for Workplace.SE. But similar to @user115232 's experience, the unnecessarily abrupt close action of the original mod really left a sour taste in my mouth. It was a **borderline** bad fit for Workplace.SE. There was just no need for the abrupt close and snarky 'Hi! Welcome to Workplace.SE! Please read the FAQ.' comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But then again, I'll remind Programmers.SE users: This is exactly what separates Programmers.SE from some other stackexchange sites. Programmers.SE moderators actually care!! We can all cite instances where @YannisRizos had doubts about a question, but waited for the Community to weigh in **before** wielding his unilateral close vote. [Emphasis: This is so refreshing, it's scary!]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in conclusion, @user115232: I understand your complaint and hope that you're able to work with the Programmers.SE mods and the community to get your question answered. [We have it good over here. :)]&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24524" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5756" RevisionGUID="b6dada48-ce1c-4175-8f91-909f410d3779" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:50:29.547" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/ with https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This bug has been reported, confirmed, and status-completed few hours ago at Workplace meta:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Accepted answer from SE team member (Mark Gravell) says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thanks; this will be fixed in the next deploy. It looks like we changed the display from `(3)` to `(3/5)`, but the javascript / regex at the client wasn't updated accordingly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Meta WP reference: [Total amount of close votes displayed twice](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1731/total-amount-of-close-votes-displayed-twice)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Double Vote][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/9CWyC.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24525" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6240" RevisionGUID="db5afc05-86b9-4be2-8aaa-1995e8ecd92c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:50:29.547" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/ with https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Site scope and question quality expectations seem to be set, stabilized and well understood by majority of _regulars_ long time ago, as discussed eg here: [Are you still confused about what Programmers is for?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my observations, most troublesome questions are either asked by newcomers or are old ones [bump](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info)ed by answers from newcomers which makes me feel that somehow, site &quot;image&quot; for those newcomers is blurred.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on several months of observations on questions that are exposed / promoted to SE network users via [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info) I firmly believe that to large extent, misguiding newcomers about Programmers is caused by **[the way how questions are selected for exposure at collider](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/202962/165773 &quot;issue details and change request officially submitted here: 'Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign'&quot;)**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how I see collider damage to Programmers is described in more details in this answer: [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I think this is likely related to issues with answers quality in hot questions ([discussed here in more details](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;Answers quality in hot questions&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Hot garbage waves&quot; in the answers once or twice a week&#xD;&#xA;* poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making interesting and well presented problems look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/)  &#xD;&#xA;* regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;An &quot;outsider&quot; reading low quality answers in hot questions, could naturally think,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;hey here I can _chit-chat about how git is fantastic_ and get my portion of cheap upvotes, c00l&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a **steady source of misguided contributors**.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...the way how users can be confused about what Programmers are about is probably best explained in a [comment made by Ben Brocka](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13830_5482 &quot;here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;Often hot questions have lots of bad or meh answers that are bad enough to drag down quality of the content and general discourse (encouraging similarly bad new answers)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Side note. For the sake of completeness, I don't think that collider damage is contained within Programmers (and [Workplace](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1967/168 &quot;another site suffering from brain-damaging hotness formula: 'victims of the Stack Exchange(TM MultiCollider SuperDropdown(TM)'&quot;) for that matter).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As discussed eg [here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10706837#10706837), it looks like damage is spread over whole SE network, even though indirectly:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...really, say guys at SO are protected from _direct_ impact. Meaning when they see _meh_, they can flag _no-code_ and get crap deleted. But thing is, it's SO users who look at collider and who visit &quot;sticky&quot; questions and who pick the crappy attitude and they get back to SO and get posting _meh_ answers there  &#xD;&#xA;and, well, there are hundreds and thousands of them. And _meh_ attitude gets spread over multiple questions and SO mods only can delete minor part of crap that has been influenced through collider&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;they start thinking it's the norm. That's what low quality answers in hot questions teach readers. That's what &quot;educated&quot; readers spread further, to their answers to other questions. That lowers overall quality of answers in multiple other questions, that is the site-wide damage  &#xD;&#xA;This makes it look like good questions are those having many meh answers, the effect that is amplified by these questions being highly visible to collider audience - hundreds and thousands of SE users. Misguided users spread acquired attitude further into other questions and answers, posting stuff that follows what they saw at the &quot;cool&quot; (&quot;hot&quot;) questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;**nobody is really protected, collider spreads it across all the SE network**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24526" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6466" RevisionGUID="591947a7-3617-4c41-b26d-e7448b40213d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:50:29.547" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/ with https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Workplace has been officially graduated: [new site design](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2364/168) has no &quot;beta&quot; anymore, and [privileges](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/privileges) are set to the level of graduated sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes it possible to add this site to our migration path, does it make sense to do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To better understand this, I would like to learn stats / rates of [successful and rejected migrations](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/202188/165773 &quot;preferably accounting for known inconsistency of these at source and target sites&quot;) to Workplace. I also would like to compare these against successful and rejected migrations to our long established target site - Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For your convenience, below is a list of some prior meta discussions related to Workplace migrations:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3699/closing-questions-that-should-go-to-workplace&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3632/should-we-mention-the-workplace-in-our-faq&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3432/how-should-we-guide-questions-toward-the-workplace&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3204/should-a-list-be-assembled-for-migration-to-the-workplace-once-it-opens&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2439/the-workplace-is-now-in-the-commitment-phase" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24528" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6897" RevisionGUID="ab256e00-b722-4353-acfd-02fb444a3794" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:50:29.547" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/ with https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed this in a [question from today](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/256636/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I remember there was another question on this site regarding this, but it was less focused, and the answers haven't satisfied me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was eventually closed as duplicate but I can't tell if the dupe target is the one mentioned above; the wording is quite similar but doesn't look identical, and the asker didn't link to the older question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How okay is this? My concern is that keeping answerers oblivious of older question puts them at risk of repeating points that were already made and explained there as well as depriving future site visitors of learning about related issues that may have been discussed there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Related: [Copying a question that had a misfortune of being widely exposed in the hot list](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2445/168)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24529" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7018" RevisionGUID="85fc97ed-040f-4db1-8254-e6b82cb04d1f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:50:29.547" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/ with https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Update: [this chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/26942/programmers-cv-please)** has been established with primary focus on question closes, reopens etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that chat appears to work more or less fine, I think it makes sense to continue using it. Additional benefit is that chat messages can't be voted down, this addresses concerns mentioned in [another answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7015/31260 &quot;'stop downvoting people who post on meta trying to get questions fixed...'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;A limitation of chat worth keeping in mind is that users with rep under 20 can only read it. But meta has this limitation too, it is lower (5 rep) but still. I don't know a good solution for that, so to keep things simple I will simply assume users having sufficient rep to participate. For users with insufficient reputation, the only reliable approach to communicate seems to be in comments under their posts, optionally [moved to dedicated chat room](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237976/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A drawback of current approach that I am particularly uncomfortable with is that Whiteboard room [scrolls too fast](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions/7018#comment20061_7014 &quot;as been discussed in comments&quot;). Few hours out of chat and I will most likely miss mention of the post I could be interested to improve. Chat pings that take me a while to reply are inconvenient because my reply to these lands in a totally changed context. That's not good. In fact, that's very bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparent solution for this appears to establish a **dedicated chat room** focusing strictly on question improvements. This is just the way I would want to have it, except that [there is a risk](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions/7018#comment20062_7014 &quot;as (again) been discussed in comments&quot;) that room gets frozen due to inactivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way I can think of to deal with room freezes is by using moderator flags: if one finds that room is frozen, they simply flag the post they want to discuss and ask moderator to unlock. *Unless moderators indicate that they would decline such flags* I am going to assume below that this way will work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we pick dedicated chat room approach, it would be worth to check the way how [SO close reviewers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251955/so-close-vote-reviewers) approach this. In brief, they have a room and a cross-linked meta post. As far as I can tell, most activity goes within room, but they also sometimes update / bump the meta post when needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that their gig runs fine for almost a year, we may probably learn something from their experience. (Some might find it ironic to learn from guys that seem to act in somewhat _opposite direction_ but I honestly don't care:).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, I think the dedicated chat room is the way to go (coupled with dedicated meta post, like of SO close reviewers). This doesn't mean though that meta is to be avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Technically, meta provides much richer platform to support complicated improvements and in-depth discussion, it can offer better visibility and powerful [meta effect](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204311/165773). Meta is less likely to be [blocked by corporate firewalls](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/114297/165773 &quot;see 'Provide an alternate URL for chat rooms' at MSE&quot;) etc. Lower barrier to participate (5 rep instead of 20 for chat) is also a benefit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As demonstrated by [broken-windows-review at TWP](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/broken-windows-review &quot;tag dedicated to Workplace questions improvement&quot;), meta can be successfully used to improve questions if done right. This experience also looks worth studying, especially because purpose of review at TWP is very much like one we discuss here: their primary focus is on salvaging and improving the questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24530" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7202" RevisionGUID="c05e5d89-6ad2-4d27-830e-98c050830ac5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:50:29.547" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/ with https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question got closed as off-topic with the reason that it's &quot;asking for advice on what to do&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/274551/what-are-the-possible-repercussions-of-developing-an-application-for-a-customer?noredirect=1#comment562488_274551&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am trying to understand why, and if there is anything more I can do to salvage the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The link of the close comment links to this meta post on **The Workplace**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2693/custom-off-topic-close-reasons-change/2695#2695&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not even sure why a Workplace meta post counts as a reason to close on Programmers, but I followed the advice there anyway:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Another alternative is to edit your post to ask about why and how you should make the decision, rather than just what decision to make. For instance, instead of asking &quot;Should I take the job in the big multi-national company or the up-and-coming startup?&quot; you could ask a question that will help you make that decision, like &quot;How can I figure out the financial health of a startup I am applying to by asking questions in an interview?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I edited the question to not ask for what I should do, but for information that helps me make the decision myself. The question got closed anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also I am not sure that the reason for closure in the meta post even applies to me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our goal here at The Workplace is to help out people in the future who are facing the same problem. When people ask us for personalized advice, a lot of the specific details will not apply to other people who come across the question since their details may be slightly different and they can't determine whether or not the answer is appropriate for their situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem in the question is pretty generic and I tried to keep it general enough so that it will be helpful to people with a similar problem (customers asking for something that violates someone else's TOS).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone mentioned that it is a matter of legal advice, but that's only a part of the problem really. Also, there are many other questions with a similar direction that weren't closed for that reason, for example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86754/is-it-illegal-to-rewrite-every-line-of-an-open-source-project-in-a-slightly-diff&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49067/what-to-do-if-you-find-a-vulnerability-in-a-competitors-site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both of those questions handle legal topics as well, but are deemed on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Can someone explain to me why my question is off-topic?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Is there a chance to edit it so it could be reopened? If yes, in what way should I change the question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To make my point, this question is both about a legal topic and asking what to do (and in relation to a client asking for something risky as well on top!), and still is on-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118136/should-i-accept-to-write-unsecure-code-if-my-employer-requests-me-to-do-so&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really have a hard time to see where the line is between on- and off-topic questions here to be honest." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24531" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7440" RevisionGUID="571c2ff3-a8bc-45b7-9e0d-bc722aa0e534" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:50:29.547" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/ with https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**TL;DR** Suggest to [undelete the question](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/7438/31260) since it was edited to a better shape and made match the top answer. After that, remove &quot;poll item&quot; answers invalidated by the question edit and reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that in its current shape the question staying visible is not okay, even as historically locked. Low quality &quot;historical context&quot; seems to totally obscure worthy content in there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, it looks like a blatant poll, followed by multiple useless poll item &quot;answers&quot; (including even a [different question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/11110 &quot;blatant not-an-answer: 'Is there any software company in the US besides Microsoft and FogCreek Software which provides private offices for software engineers?'&quot;) posted as an answer) so that most readers could only wonder what was the reason to keep it at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that it looks like an exceptional case for question to be so much overwhelmed with bad content. All other historical questions I recall _do_ have bad stuff (otherwise there'd be no lock), but good parts in these are prominent enough and readers don't have to guess why these were decided to keep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With above in mind, our options seem to be as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1\.** Delete. Easy way out, the one I wanted before I stumbled over this meta question, but now, upon closer studying of the [top answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8203/31260) I am not quite comfortable about it anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2\. Unlock the question, retag to [tag:productivity] (to clear all issues related to ongoing tag cleanups), then pick one of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.1\.** Add a moderator comment referring to [this meta discussion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7437/31260), so that readers interested in historical context could discover it without having to stare at all 20+ low quality answers over there. After that, remove all answers except the top one, then lock it back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.2\.** [Aggressively edit](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1820/168) the question to bring it to better shape, worrying only about keeping consistency with top answer, about like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;So I know everyone here is all about private offices, how many developers actually have them. I am sort of half skeptical. I can believe that lead developers have them, but that's normally just one person in your average office.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;That makes me wonder, how many developers have private offices. Which leads to the actual question: why should they have them?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question [edit summary](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/edit-summary/info &quot;what's this&quot;) would better refer this meta discussion to help readers of edit history find out what led to the radical change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the edit, remove all answers that fail to match the revised question (as far as I can tell, these would be all except for the top answer), then reopen. Side note an edit drafted above would also &quot;trigger&quot; removal of the opening sentence from the top answer (&quot;I think the question should be...&quot;) but that's rather minor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Advantage of #2.1 is that it guarantees that worthy content is preserved. In comparison, 2.2 carries a (rather minor) risk that edited question will be eventually closed again and deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Advantage of #2.2 is that it doesn't introduce deviation of our usual practice to avoid cleanup prior to locking - since it doesn't involve locking at all. (that practice is in turn based on common sense - if you do cleanup anyway, it's only reasonable to improve content up to the point when it doesn't need locking at all)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for #1 (delete), it looks really inferior in comparison. It only doesn't deviate from our locking practices, but so does #2.2, which additionally offers a solid chance of preserving worthy content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that risk involved in #2.2 is minor, it looks like most appealing option." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24532" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7525" RevisionGUID="f3a10165-cd22-4d33-9dc1-46fea2b3a5b5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:50:29.547" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/ with https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A few recent questions seem to exhibit issues explained in [The Trouble With Popularity](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/) article:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we discovered that these posts... truly start to drown out everything else on the site... it's too addictive and too easy, and in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While these questions were open, they were widely advertised on the Hot Network List and gained relatively high scores [despite piling on of close votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773 &quot;feature request to account for these&quot;). All of them are now closed, but due to their high scores they present appealing examples for newer site visitors to try their luck asking similar questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;High scores send a fairly strong signal that those sorts of questions are welcome here. I think this _signal_ is much stronger than the subtle hint  of a close banner, especially for inexperienced users ([&quot;it's okay to ask about roses here...&quot;](http://communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/a/1247/516 &quot;if needed, refer here for more elaborate discussion of having off-topic questions in the hot list&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The crux of my question is: what can we do to make these closed questions less like [broken windows](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_Recent examples for review:_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the issues with this question are best covered in a custom close reason borrowed from the Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Topicality wise, it appears to be in overlap between our site and Workplace, probably closer to Programmers. Our close reason ([opinion based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)) looks like a fit.  As for better matching Workplace close reason, it is likely because they (Workplace) are getting more troublesome questions of that kind and have acquired more experience at efficiently handling these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;...How would you explain a statement... to a beginner?&quot;_ - We have a dedicated meta post explaining exactly what the issues are with these kinds of questions: [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6630/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, hot list visitors who voted it up likely have no idea about our meta guidance.  And even if they knew, they likely don't care. (And even if they would care, [system simply wouldn't let them tell](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/238514/165773).)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;I personally prefer 4 spaces for each indentation level, but there are colleagues that prefer 2 and even 5 spaces... I decided to post a question see if there are tools/method to settle the problem without calling a meeting.&quot;_ - If that doesn't make it a [shopping list question](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) then I don't know what it makes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/290941/revisions) suggests that even some moderators have tried to figure out a way to protect and salvage the question. But, honestly, I am not surprised to see that this failed. Asker clearly indicated that they were _just shopping_ and there's nothing else on their mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone tried to &quot;derive&quot; a better, more substantial question from this one, they would end up with their own, and _different_ question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet another case when Workplace folks seem to be better prepared to recognize and handle troublesome questions of that kind with their custom close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **advice on what to do are not [practical answerable questions](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)** (e.g. *&quot;what job should I take?&quot;*, or *&quot;what skills should I learn?&quot;*). Questions should get answers explaining *why* and *how* to make a decision, not advice on what to do. For more information, click [here](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2695)...&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;Granted, I think that our own [education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/31260) close reason also makes a good fit, but the majority of close voters picked another reason ([too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260)) which suggests that the match with the education close reason is not as clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yet again, issues with this question seem to be best covered in already quoted custom close reason from the Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although still somewhat workplace-y, this question looks much closer to Programmers than previous example covered by the this close reason (&quot;mentor's concern&quot;). Still, their close reason looks like a really good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm often conflicted when creating a project that requires manipulation of data in files... &amp;lt;example how JSON looks like&amp;gt; &amp;lt;example how CSV looks like&amp;gt; ...is it better to use larger, more readable formats, like JSON, or smaller, harder to read formats, like CSV, for data storage?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[If memory serves](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234894/165773 &quot;no, system won't help me recall&quot;), the close reason I picked was [too broad](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260). The majority of voters have chosen [opinion based](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6491/31260) which also looks like a reasonable match ([Gorilla vs. Shark](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these questions were old, or if their score and views were acquired _organically_ due to great content, I'd probably ask for a [historical lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info). But that doesn't seem applicable due to the recency of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For what it's worth, I considered an option to edit them into better shape. Unfortunately, it looks like the answers that piled in prior to closing [&quot;lock the question&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773) from any substantial changes I could think of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One possible exception (which would involve removing most of the answers though) is the [question about indentation width](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width). It looks possible to convert it to a [collaborative effort question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before &quot;example&quot;). If we pick this option though, we had better do some substantial edits to the question text, to make it look like less of a wide open broken window for inexperienced site visitors. _&quot;Hey, folks do shopping over here, lemme try my own.&quot;_" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24533" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7766" RevisionGUID="ab225a35-c595-46fb-bb81-db377e47e3bd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:50:29.547" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/ with https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The comment in your example is not quite typical. It is copied from [Workplace meta](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2696/168). They get this particular kind of troublesome questions much more often than Programmers, that's why they invested extra effort into writing detailed description of what's specifically wrong with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the nice tone of this comment, this is, again, kind of a brand mark of Workplace. Moderators and active regulars over there are fond of expressing the critique in very polite way and as far as I can tell, they do it really well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can bookmark and refer appropriate sections (answers) in [their meta post](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2693/168) when you see workplace-y questions that don't look OK, although as I already mentioned Programmers get these quite infrequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more typical issues in the questions, I refer respective posts at our meta, conveniently listed in FAQ: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One thing I'd want to warn against is referring that _whole FAQ_ instead of meta posts specifically targeted to address concrete issues in the post you comment on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, I haven't seen our regulars (mis)using FAQ like that but I believe it's important enough to explicitly warn against this. Askers are unlikely to pay attention to your meta references unless they can easily see how it directly applies to specific issues with their question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for technical means to make it easier, as pointed in comments, StackApps have special &quot;pro-forma&quot; script for that ([discussed in details at MSE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/136609/165773)). Note that if you switch browsers or machine you'd lose data for this script, so you may prefer to simply keep comments in some file and copy from there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24534" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7771" RevisionGUID="b5858b61-2f89-4071-9b00-00e63550477b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:50:29.547" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/ with https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As an example, here are some ideas of what can be considered:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* When there are many answers already, [let users compare draft of their post against prior answers](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2562/168). This would make it naturally harder to add yet another answer as their amount increases (note how this isn't limited to low rep users, as opposed to protection). This would also help responsible users ensure that their answer doesn't repeat what was stated already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Get rid of first day voting](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237661/165773). This would help taming careless upvotes from passers by armed with association bonus. &quot;Wanna vote? stick with us! (for at least a day or two)&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Introduce more scalable randomisation of hot questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/247195/165773) by picking more than 100 &quot;candidate&quot; questions for hot list. This would ensure that audience attention is spread more evenly and help tame &quot;snowball effect&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Give elevated protection privileges to 30K users in questions with 3 or more answers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/268729/165773) and [don't count reputation gained within checked question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/242942/165773) to trigger automatic protection. This would make protection of hot and organically popular questions more usable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24535" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7761" RevisionGUID="c63edaf0-bc90-4663-9236-4fc2c069511a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:50:57.000" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.islam.stackexchange.com/ with https://islam.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I wasn't going to update the experiment this week, but the results this week were so encouraging I can't help myself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Week posted Qs  Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion Rate&#xD;&#xA;    ----------- --- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- -------------&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-12  325    190      58.5%           8.9%     2.6%      11.8%         40.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-19  349    205      58.7%           8.8%     2.4%       5.6%         39.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-26  319    207      64.9%           8.7%     1.4%      11.1%         46.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-02  362    218      60.2%          13.3%     3.7%      10.3%         44.2%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09  286    206      72.0%          20.9%     3.9%       7.0%         41.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-16  340    205      60.3%          17.6%     9.3%      30.6%         35.6%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only has the close rate dropped to something like the pre-experiment rate, the reopen rate has rather dramatically increased. Much of this is due to more edited questions getting reopened than in previous weeks. (It might be too early to tell if it's statistically significant, but more closed questions are being edited since the test began.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also spent some time last week trying to learn what prompted people to close so many questions on Programmers. While there are many detailed reasons, two themes emerged in my mind:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that remain open are signposts that prompt new questions of the same type.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. It's difficult to maintain the quality of answers on certain types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first didn't surprise me. It's a variation of the broken window theory (which is [different than &quot;zero-tolerance policing&quot;](http://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in-policing/research-evidence-review/broken-windows-policing/) by the way.) Since it's often difficult to curate a large corpus of answers, it's a lot more convenient to curate the questions instead. Some sites, however, pull it off. Skeptics, for instance, has [strict rules](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/faq-welcome-to-new-users) about what sort of questions can be asked (notably, notable ones) and what is required of answers (particularly that they be referenced). As a result, Skeptics deletes a large percentage of answers that have a score &gt; 0:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;       7634     35.5     19.64     0.05     0          97.16 Area 51 Discussions&#xD;&#xA;       8288     13.61    55.68     0.1      6.03       28.63 Skeptics&#xD;&#xA;       5782     10.26    46.49     0.09     0.02       48.74 Islam     &#xD;&#xA;     141392      9.38    25.01     0.45     0.02       78.15 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       4810      6.63    52.45     0.12     0.46       27.9  Biblical Hermeneutics&#xD;&#xA;      15660      5.86    45.84     0.03     0.37       48.31 Christianity&#xD;&#xA;      22572      5.08    28.81     0.33     0.02       63    Web Apps&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cut the list off at sites that delete at least 5% of positively-scored answers. Area 51 is interesting because 97% of &quot;good answers&quot; get deleted when their question gets deleted as a result of their [failed proposal being deleted](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/9068/do-not-delete-discussions-about-deleted-proposals). But the next in line is a real site: Skeptics. Their policies encourage deletion not only of entire questions, but individual answers as well. (Skeptics is unique in its extensive use of post notices.) [Islam](https://islam.meta.stackexchange.com/a/610/138), [Christianity](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1446/914) and [Biblical Hermeneutics](https://hermeneutics.meta.stackexchange.com/a/533/68) have fairly strict requirements that answers be well-supported. Those sites also emphasize narrow questions that allow moderators to delete many answers as non-answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm less familiar with Web Apps, but I believe they [had a major change in scope](https://webapps.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/764/proposal-to-clean-up-the-scope-of-the-site-is-your-question-about-using-a-speci) not unlike what happened on Programmers. When you shift the topic of a site, that will leave many now-off-topic questions that need deleting along with all their answers. As a corollary, there's a real need to lock questions and their answers. But look what happens when we limit to answers posted in the last year:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;      10617      4.53    34.44     0.01     0.03       66.53 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       2999      1.93    27.91     0.23     0          48.28 Web Apps  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Web Apps has settled into a fairly normal pattern of deleting relatively few upvoted answers. It's also split fairly evenly between deleting those answers individual and as a result of deleting the question. Programmers has become a little less extreme in terms of positively-scored-answer deletion, but it still ranks near the top of the list with Area 51 (31%), Skeptics (11%), Islam (4.5%) and Christianity (4%). More recent additions include Hinduism (4%) and Health (4%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Ok. What does this all mean?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Truthfully, I'm not sure. My current guess is that people are concerned that forces outside of their control will flood the site with embarrassing or just-plain-wrong answers. (This relates to another theme I heard a lot of: the Hot Network Questions list.) [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) gets [cited a lot here](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=url%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.stackoverflow.com%2F2010%2F09%2Fgood-subjective-bad-subjective%2F). However, I wonder if the post gives the false impression that burden falls _solely on the question_. Certainly the way a question is asked increases or decreases the odds it will receive [crowd-pleasing nonanswers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers). But ultimately, we need to [hold answers to that standard too](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/1110/96050).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other thing that kinda gets lost when talking about Good Subjective is that it isn't that opinions aren't allowed. Rather **naked opinions are noise**. The post even suggests:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Use your specific experiences to back up your opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that software engineering is one part science and one part craftsmanship, so it should be surprising to see some answers backed by experience rather than data. This is doubly true since the profession is incredibly young. Given quality of [users on this site](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&amp;filter=all), there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, it's a lot easier to delete popular answers if they don't actually answer the question. One technique that [seems to work](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/690/what-makes-a-good-focused-question) is requiring questions focus down on a specific domain. For instance, instead of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125320/do-todo-comments-make-sense maybe it would be better to ask &quot;Should TODO comments be removed when a project is in maintainance mode?&quot; That way the focus of the question isn't a holy war between pro-TODO and anti-TODO, but about the specific utility of those comments. (Obviously the asker should specify the situation they are actually facing.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24536" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6953" RevisionGUID="89b9e988-1970-4c00-890f-72014e7bebfb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:51:26.330" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.anime.stackexchange.com/ with https://anime.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Update** - follow-up feature request to establish popup as discussed here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6983/improve-question-quality-by-informing-askers-of-expectations-in-some-career-rela&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As explained in [another answer](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6951/31260), tag specific [popup](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvXIT.png &quot;like this&quot;) can be used to guide askers and editors willing to use it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an [example](https://anime.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1083/improve-question-quality-by-informing-users-of-reverse-image-search-sites) of tag popup request. Process to create such a popup is described [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/242252/automatic-warnings-of-dangerous-tags/242355#comment792260_242355):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Post a [feature-request] for each tag, with specific guidance (ideally linking to a meta post if non-trivial so I don't have to edit these all the time) and justification for needing something more than the tag excerpt. Let folks discuss it, then ping me ([Community Manager]) if there's support... This is really something that should be discussed within each community, as these might become annoying if over-used (ideally you don't want multiple tags on a single question to produce warnings) and the guidance should reflect the lessons learned from handling these questions.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Suggestion to create a popup for this tag ([tag:job-market]) and other particularly troublesome career related tags:  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market], [tag:resume], [tag:career-transition], [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag popup content is derived from [career-development tag wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/career-development/info):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** Career advice is off-topic per the [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  Please note that most career advice questions end up being closed for being too broad or impractical; try to make yours a [good subjective question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they require the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;* Please make sure your question has the proper scope.  It needs to apply to other programmers besides yourself.  &#xD;&#xA;* If your question can also be applied to other job fields, then it does not uniquely apply to software development and is not on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;* _Before_ asking, review this meta guidance: [Why was my question closed or down voted? -&gt; Career or education advice](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488).  Make sure your question avoids the problems listed in the guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;This post is made community wiki in order to simplify editing.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24537" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6312" RevisionGUID="2595865b-dbd2-4fee-9a9e-897546520138" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:52:38.627" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Question is about `git` the tool&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are asking how specific invocations of git such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How do I edit an incorrect commit message in Git?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/179123/how-do-i-edit-an-incorrect-commit-message-in-git)&#xD;&#xA;* [How to undo the last Git commit?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/927358/how-to-undo-the-last-git-commit)&#xD;&#xA;* [How do I delete a Git branch both locally and remote?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2003505/how-do-i-delete-a-git-branch-both-locally-and-remote)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are questions for **[Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic)**.  The key point here is you are asking for something to type into the *command line* to do something.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question is about `git` the workflow&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are trying to figure out how to use git to do something, understanding the conceptual foundations of git, or how to identify and overcome a problem that you have with the workflow... Questions such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69308/git-for-personal-one-man-projects-overkill&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/205411/why-does-git-use-hashes-instead-of-revision-numbers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212192/what-are-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-cryptographically-signing-commits-a&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96915/using-git-in-enterprise-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are questions for **[Programmers.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)**.  The key point here is the use of the tool in a bigger picture.  It is not one task that the question asks about but the entire workflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question is about `github` the site&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are also questions that are tangentially about git, but are really about github, the website.  Questions such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Strikethrough with GitHub Markdown](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/14986/strikethrough-with-github-markdown)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can I delete my public GitHub repository?](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/9787/can-i-delete-my-public-github-repository)&#xD;&#xA;* [Reference tag from comment](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/52578/reference-tag-from-comment)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are questions for **[Webapps.SE](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)**.  The key point here is if you are trying to figure out how to get something to work with *github*.  This is about *specifically* github and not about setting up your own git server (thats most likely a Stack Overflow question in the [git-daemon tag](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/git-daemon)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question is looking for a git client&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are trying to find a git client that fits some set of features &lt;!-- no prototype questions yet --&gt; look at the [Software Recommendations.SE](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information) site.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of this writing, this site is still quite young.  There are very specific requirements to what you need for asking a good question on the site.  However, if you are trying to decide which tool to use and neither [GUI clients](http://git-scm.com/downloads/guis) from git nor your current IDE's git integration work, this would likely be the best choice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have questions about any of the above, feel free to drop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com) and ask the question about which Stack Exchange site a question best belongs on." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24538" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="de1d56f0-41e4-46db-99ee-676bf0c61981" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:52:38.627" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend tools, libraries, programming languages, resources (including books, blogs, tutorials, and examples), or projects to undertake###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **find or recommend tools, libraries, programming languages, resources (including books, blogs, tutorials, and examples), or projects to undertake** are off-topic here as they attract opinionated answers that won't have lasting value to others. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard][1], our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### We do book review and suggestions poorly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the classic recommendation questions is that of a book.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do book reviews very poorly. All the answers that one gets are opinions and this is fundamentally a poll of opinions. This is to say nothing of that the technology behind them changes too.  There are indeed timeless books (and [many have written on the subject](https://www.google.com/search?q=timeless+computer+books)), though their value is a [matter of debate](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2uBpc.jpg). &lt;!-- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14298/is-analysis-patterns-reusable-object-models-still-a-good-book-to-use-for-its --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Between the polling nature of the question, the opinions people have on certain books, the constantly changing target, and the site's history of producing poor quality answers to these questions (and not moderating them), asking for a book suggestion is very likely to get closed and down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for a link to something or statistics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason.  Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to things suffer from link rot.  Statistics become out of date over time.  Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is someone asking in 2012 &quot;What is the market share of Android vs iPhone?&quot;  This information would be out of date in a few months as new numbers come out and someone else would ask in 2013 &quot;The question [link] asks about the stats, but they are all for 2012.  What is the market share for android vs iPhone in 2013?&quot;  And again, this information would be out of date and prompt another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for information about statistics, or more generally, asking us to search for some data for you is off topic because of these problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No actual problem to solve&#xD;&#xA;* Not drawing from expert knowledge of the community&#xD;&#xA;* Will suffer from link rot or become out of date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Link Rot&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, external resources may move or be deleted for a variety of reasons. Perhaps a particular site reorganizes its links without setting up redirects. Perhaps an organization goes out of business or discontinues product X or library Y.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to the reasons stated above, external resources tend to be _transient_. Whatever tool, library, or other resource who requested might not exist in five years or be otherwise readily available. This has the effect of making an answer utterly useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one asks for a library to perform function X, and the answer links to web site Y, and either function X or web site Y cease to exist as defined in the answer, that answer is now useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one more reason why questions like this tend to be of low value and are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [What exactly is a recommendation question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254393/what-exactly-is-a-recommendation-question)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why are “shopping list” questions bad?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - Requests for Recommendations?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24539" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7254" RevisionGUID="30bb0131-1fa7-4c4e-9cef-2af054128eeb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:52:38.627" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Question is About How to Use a Development Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool that you are using is a tool that is used to design and develop software and is used primarily in a software development environment, you should check out [Stack Overflow][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A number of development tools already have questions and answers on Stack Overflow, ranging from requirements management tools ([DOORS][2]) to architecture and design tools ([Dia][3], [Rhapsody][4], [Enterprise Architect][5]) to editors ([Visual Studio][6], [Eclipse][7], [Notepad++][8]) to mathematical packages ([MATLAB][9], [Sage][10]) to version control ([git][11], [ClearCase][12]) to peer review tools ([Collaborator][13]) to test tools ([TestComplete][14], [Selenium][15]) to project management tools ([Jira][16], [FogBugz][17]), and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about How to Use a General Purpose Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool is general purpose software, check out [Super User][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all of the tools that we use during the course of software development are unique to software developers. Tools such as office suites ([Microsoft Office][19], [OpenOffice.org][20]), web browsers ([Internet Explorer][21], [Chrome][22]) file transfer tools ([Filezilla][23], [WinSCP][24]), virtualization software ([VirtualBox][25], [VMWare][26]), and analysis software ([MATLAB][27], [Mathematica][28]) are used by many types of people in different environments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about a Tool in a Context Specific to an Operating System&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several Stack Exchange sites devoted to particular operating systems and associated software packages or applications: [Android][29], [Apple][30], [Unix and Linux][31], and [Ubuntu][32]. Be sure to read their Help Center, Meta site, and search for similar questions before asking to make sure that your specific question is on-topic for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about using a Tool in a Software Development Workflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question involves how to integrate a tool or type of tool into your workflow or process, then it is likely to be on-topic on Software Engineering. Generally, if you aren't asking about how to use a specific feature of a tool, but trying to determine how to use the tool to achieve a well-defined goal, start here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Other Considerations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some tools have their own Stack Exchange sites as well. For example, there are sites for [Drupal][33], [Expression Engine][34], [Mathematica][35], [Salesforce][36], [SharePoint][37], and [Wordpress][38]. There are even more sites for both particular environments and specific tools in beta - check out [the complete list of Stack Exchange sites][39].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  However, if you decide to post the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions may be on-topic on multiple sites. If you see your favorite tool on a site, check out some of the questions and answers to see if your question fits and which site is most likely to provide the answers that you are looking for. Do not cross-post questions - if you feel that your question should be moved to a different site, flag it and let the site's moderation team know. If you aren't sure, every site has a Meta site and many sites have a chat room, so you can always ask before asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators can, and do, migrate questions. If you do ask in the wrong place, there's a site that is more appropriate, and it's a well-written question, it will likely be migrated. Low quality questions that don't meet the quality guidelines of the other site won't be moved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are site-specific [automatic question blocks][40] - posting on the wrong site will not help you get answers and will likely lead to being blocked on other sites. It's also not possible to migrate questions if you are blocked on the target site. If you are blocked somewhere, do not post questions that are off-topic somewhere else. Instead, work to improve your existing questions and answers to have the block lifted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or downvoted?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are Questions Asking for Help Using a Tool Off-Topic?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6701/are-questions-asking-for-help-using-a-tool-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are there a subset of tool questions that are appropriate for Software Engineering?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5519/are-there-a-subset-of-tool-questions-that-are-appropriate-for-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* [Where does my GIT question go?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6311/where-does-my-git-question-go)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/doors&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/dia&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/rhapsody&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/enterprise-architect&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/visual-studio&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/eclipse&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/notepad%2B%2B&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/sage&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/git&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/clearcase&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/code-collaborator&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/testcomplete&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/selenium&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/jira&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/fogbugz&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://superuser.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/microsoft-office&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/openoffice.org&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/internet-explorer&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/google-chrome&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/filezilla&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/winscp&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/virtualbox&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/vmware&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/mathematica&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://android.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [32]: http://askubuntu.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [33]: http://drupal.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [34]: http://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [35]: http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [36]: http://salesforce.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [37]: http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [38]: http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [39]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [40]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24540" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7679" RevisionGUID="321d7da2-50a5-4c51-a8be-d479d09e3885" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:52:38.627" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Software Recommendations is graduating][1] and will soon be a non-beta site!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[There is a question on their meta][2] about being a migration target: they are asking about other sites such as [Super User][3] having a migration path to [Software Recommendations][4]. [Programmers][5] did not come up there: while I would expect some other sites to have more recommendation questions, we do see some of these questions on Programmers and we have a few open slots for migration targets.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once Software Recommendations is fully graduated to a regular site, should Programmers have a migration path to it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Software recommendations stackexchange][6] - asked and answered before the graduation announcement.&#xD;&#xA;* [Revisiting what is on topic, with respect to new sites: Open Source, Law, and Software Recommendations][7] - software recommendations are _still_ off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2298&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2307&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://superuser.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6464&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7539" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24541" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7682" RevisionGUID="9567dfc4-c999-4693-801c-92c55754fee6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:52:38.627" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Software Recommendations moderator here. We're [technically a non-beta site *now*](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2298/46) - which means moderators aren't discouraged from migrating questions to us any more. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would be against adding SR to Programmers' migration target list. Not that I don't trust y'all, but we have [some *really strict* requirements](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/336/46) for questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, if you take the time to read those requirements, and you happen to see a question come through here (or any other site where software recommendation questions are off topic), feel free to throw an 'other' flag on it, asking your moderators to throw it over. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's much easier for us (SR) to train a few dozen moderators in what is on-topic than a whole community... that isn't even our own. If we start getting a large number of (good) migrations coming from a site, I would absolutely be in favor of being a target on their list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'd like a site to prove that its *moderators* can give us good content before we open it up to its *users*. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24542" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7740" RevisionGUID="5af4462a-cbff-44cb-a60e-c659addf999b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:52:38.627" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I really don't see what the problem is with this question or it's answers. I'd argue that the question would have been fine to ask on Stack Overflow if people had not developed a broken model of what does and does not work on Q&amp;A. We have an [entire site](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/) dedicated to software recommendations and it works well enough. A good deal of the success of that site stems from [solid ground rules](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/13031/laying-some-ground-rules-for-software-recommendations) that have been [refined by the community](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information). But mostly it was the dedication of many users who really care about helping others make good choices when picking out software. It's not for everybody (which is why most sites reject recommendation questions) but this type of question doesn't cause anything like the problems many veteran users assume they will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, this isn't really a tool request question at all. It's a question about refactoring C# classes. Like any programmer worth their salt, the OP noticed that the job they were facing might very well be automatable. This is a _point in the question's favor_ not a demerit. I spent _years_ doing dumb repeatable tasks until a co-worker pointed me to the `exec` shell command. I kick myself for not asking earlier for help. I don't see why a programmer who is looking for how to [refactor C# classes](https://www.google.com/#q=refactor+C%23+classes) should not find this answer on Programmers&amp;mdash;especially since it seems to be the right way to tackle the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mentally removed the offending paragraphs and I don't see how removing them makes the answer any less valid. If there's an automated way to do a repetitive task, that's often the best answer. If, for some reason, it isn't, the best thing to do is to leave the question open so that someone more knowledgeable can provide a better answer. Closing the question because it includes some hints that the author was hoping to avoid doing drudgy by hand seems, well, cynical and paranoid. Maybe not a stellar question, I suppose. But I hope there is a place on this site for useful questions that get helpful answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24543" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7887" RevisionGUID="73daf9b6-ee25-4cfc-bf8d-4d409efdbd7e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:52:38.627" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="(I am adapting and copying my question here from [Software Recommendations](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2451/are-questions-about-software-technologies-acceptable).)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would a question about which software technology to choose for a given scenario be on topic ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question I need to ask somewhere is along the lines of &quot;I'm going to write a program to communicate with another process in a scenario X with requirements Y; which Inter Process Communication technologies fit best, Sockets or DCOM or Named Pipes or Shared Memory or etc.&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would that be off-topic at Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My first thought was asking on Stack Overflow but [it seems](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10190156/ipc-suggestion-for-lots-of-small-data) to me that these questions are off-topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I [know](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2451/are-questions-about-software-technologies-acceptable) that they are off-topic at Software Recommendations too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24544" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8444" RevisionGUID="e3a128d9-cad7-42bb-b20e-c68c00f8b0e7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T15:52:38.627" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question wouldn't fit on either Stack Overflow or Software Engineering. It may fit on [Software Recommendations][1], but [they have very strict guidelines for what a question should look like][2]. In general, it's very difficult to make a question like this fit in the Q&amp;A format - it tends to attract opinions rather than facts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24545" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2147" RevisionGUID="d0f3f5e8-27a0-4881-bab0-348dfd2505a4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T16:02:41.780" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/ with https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Other sites have been able to get their site name and primary focus blacklisted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [English](https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/625/how-about-getting-rid-of-the-english-tag)&#xD;&#xA;* [WordPress](https://wordpress.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/338/why-wordpress-tag-on-wordpress-answers)&#xD;&#xA;* [Drupal](https://drupal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128/block-the-cms-tag)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a request to get ours blacklisted as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our entire site could be tagged with [tag:programming] and/or [tag:programmers], and people tend to use it as a tag when they don't have anything better to tag their question. And, like other zero-content tags, it tends to attract a large number of questions that were never good fits for our site anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previous discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58/tag-consolidation-and-blacklist&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/543/do-we-need-a-programming-tag-here&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24546" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6583" RevisionGUID="1c8f65ef-07cf-45d6-9d14-0d962bd6f1bb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T16:02:41.780" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/ with https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Much of the past guidance (from 2011, 2012 and 2014 linked above in the question) has suggested that these questions are off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3856/question-about-naming-conventions-not-constructive/3859#3859&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on StackExchange sites need to be presented in such a way that there can be an answer that is &quot;the answer&quot;. As I read the question, every possible answer to it would be equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question asks:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; how should I represent the separate words in the filename?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't see how this can be answered where there aren't 15 different answers, giving 15 different opinions, all equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for other naming convention questions being valid, thanks for bringing them up, we'll go through them and clean up those that slipped through the cracks. The fact that they exist on the site, doesn't make this one or any future questions more constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic/2382#2382&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think there's a difference between questions that ask for a proper term for a concept and questions that ask for naming suggestions for a class or a method.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The former would be fine, in my opinion, but the latter do not belong on Stack Exchange for reasons of being both too localized and entirely discussion-oriented.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are *two* types of name questions that are fairly consistently asked, though one can blend into the other.  And we *continue* to get both types of questions - the &quot;what should I name&quot; and &quot;what is the name of&quot;. This makes it difficult to provide *the* answer and easily risk getting too many poor quality answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;**Context:** When this question was written, many naming questions were getting closed with a custom off topic message referencing [Let's Play the Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/).  Prior to that questions were often being closed as &quot;Not Constructive.&quot;  This is saying that these questions are on topic, though frequently have other problems (getting closed as primary opinion or too broad when there isn't any help given to answers to say what a *good* answer to the question is nor inspiring answers that meet the ideals of Good Subjective, Bad Subjective. Furthermore, the questions often get down voted for lack of research. It is my hope that by following these points below that the questions can overcome these difficulties and have a chance at remaining open.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are **marginally** on topic.  However, these questions are often poor and without additional information they should be closed as too broad or primarily opinion.  Much of the historical guidance points to this being the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In an effort to try to make these questions better fit the Q&amp;A format rather than being a poll of answers where &quot;I think it is an XYZ&quot; and &quot;Have you considered XWZ?&quot; we need to help the questions be better asked so that they don't generate one sentence answers and stay away from the [questions not to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) so that they have the &quot;long, not short, answers&quot;.  From the blog post [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers.** The best subjective questions inspire your peers to share their actual experiences, not just post a mindless one-liner or cartoon in hopes of being rewarded with upvotes for being merely “first.” Sharing an experience takes at least one paragraph; ideally several paragraphs. If I’m asking about how to bake cookies, don’t give me a list of grocery items: milk. butter. vanilla. eggs. There is virtually nothing I can learn from a short, static list of grocery items that make up a recipe. Instead, tell me what happened the last time you made cookies from that recipe! Share your detailed experiences, so that we all might learn from them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this end, we need to provide some guidance that will help people avoid asking the questions that will be nothing more than a poll of word ideas, pattern names, and guessing at what was intended (and would get closed as either primarily opinion or too broad). Secondly, we should try to help people ask questions that won't be down voted for &quot;this question does not show any research effort&quot; (from the mouseover text on the down vote triangle).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have exactly the same problem that English.SE does with their own single word requests - lots of them, low quality, uninteresting, attract poor answers from users, and they get complained about in chat, they attract less active users and repel more active users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Drawing from [English.SE tag: single-word-requests](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/single-word-requests) and [Against single word requests](https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1654/against-single-word-requests) there is a set of questions that are necessary to make these questions better:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Describe exactly the context that the name or terminology is used**&#xD;&#xA;    * Programming language - the same concept can be used in multiple ways.  As I point out in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6296/why-is-this-question-wrong-asking-for-the-name-of-a-specific-practice/6297#6297 and ultimately http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218986/how-is-it-called-when-you-define-constants-that-simply-refer-to-a-large-namespac/219323#219323 there is sometimes no standard way to handle this across *all* programming languages.&#xD;&#xA;    * Code example - without a demonstration of what the code is to do, multiple terms can be used for the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;* **Describe the criteria for acceptance**&#xD;&#xA;    * Without some criteria for acceptance of the term, there is no way to say which one is better than another and the question is simply a poll for people to toss out suggestions for a name.&#xD;&#xA;* **Which names/terms have you thought of and discarded as inappropriate?**&#xD;&#xA;    * Just asking for a name doesn't let us know which direction you have thought and as described in http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important we need to know what you have already thought of and discarded.&#xD;&#xA;* **Does the question show that you searched for a suitable word before asking the question?**&#xD;&#xA;    * Without the information to show that you *have* tried, such questions reek of intellectual laziness.  The use of Google is not hard.  Sometimes these words are right there if you just enter the language of choice and the code construct you are working with.  Stack exchange is not and should never be a &quot;I don't know, I'll ask what its called on P.SE and see if anyone answers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the above pieces of information being provided in the question, it *might* be acceptable to keep the question open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also *strongly* want people to look at the English.SE tags: http://english.stackexchange.com/tags and note that Single-word-requests on that site make up an average of 30/week or about 1/5&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; of all of their questions on a day to day basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we, P.SE, want to have a similar bit of 1/5th of our questions be questions about what to name some 'pattern' or what a particular structure is called within some code?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24547" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7731" RevisionGUID="f1e44e10-4e48-4216-a71d-5ccf3929f649" CreationDate="2017-03-16T16:02:41.780" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/ with https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Name that thing is at least as old as Usenet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of this goes to the curmudgeon aspect. That if one asks a short, answerable question, they are less likely to have the curmudgeons complaining about the use of a Singleton or that C++ isn't C or some other issue of perceived pedantry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also the bit that if you ask a question and show a desire to learn, you can get a better answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This actually worked on Usenet and mailing lists because searching those things in days of old was impossible at best.  Go in, get your answer for what to look up, and then go to your lab's wall of books and poke around in the indexes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Doesn't work well on Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, the search here is less than ideal, but it is orders of magnitude better than what existed before. However, there is a persistence here that isn't as easily discarded as Usenet or mailing lists. This leads to the problems mentioned in [Let's Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/) that people aren't searching for existing material before asking. With that persistence of old material, it has the distinct danger of being a place where people come ask a question and leave. This is what happened to Literature.SE and its what Sci-fi worries about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned over on English.SE (another site with this 'name that thing' type problem) described in [Against single word requests](https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1654/40348). They note that this type of question attracts less active users (its easy to drop a &quot;I think its a Singleton&quot; as an answer and then not show up again) but repels more active users (frankly, if we were to get a similar proportion of unclosed name that thing questions as Sci-fi gets with story identification or English gets with name that word, I'd be looking at contributing elsewhere).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that the people *asking* these questions realize how much those who get these questions constantly realize how annoying and insulting they can be, because they haven't invested more than the time it takes to paste the question in the site. At the time they ask the question, they haven't found the *other* questions and answers on the front page useful or interesting enough to read for the sake of reading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also don't believe that these users realize the difference in the focus of the sites (and that each SE site is distinct), or the difference between SE sites and forums at large.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Pedagogy vs Problems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One additional aspect of this is the way that we (as professionals) focus on problems. If one was to go up to their professor in school and ask a question about the proper way to handle a class such that there is only one instance of it, the professor could very well say &quot;its a Singleton - go look it up in chapter 4 of Design Patterns by Erich Gamma.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While this approach works in college classes (getting the student to learn more), we are expecting to solve problems here rather than provide material for the student to learn from.  It is also noted that many new programmers in the field haven't yet taken this change of world view from student to professional yet and are still expected to be treated like students. Not realizing that the people that they are asking questions of aren't here to primarily teach, but rather solve problems." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24548" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7751" RevisionGUID="bb954bec-eb6b-4cad-9680-1a40b7b664ae" CreationDate="2017-03-16T16:03:41.733" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/ with https://scifi.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think we spend a bit too much time talking about what's *wrong* with Programmers.SE, and who is or is not to blame for it. In particular, it's probably fair to say that some of the &lt;strike&gt;curmudgeons&lt;/strike&gt; active close voters like me have a better understanding of what's off-topic here than we do of what's on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So let's try talking about this site's **good** questions and answers for a change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may include as much or as little commentary on your choices as you wish, and present them in any format you like, but try to stick to constructive, positive commentary. No tangential rants about how terrible other questions are or whatever.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For the record, the specific idea of a &quot;favorites poll&quot; [comes from SFF.SE](https://scifi.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6974/favorite-answers-and-questions-from-second-quarter-of-2015).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24549" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7059" RevisionGUID="0dbdfac2-329f-4e5b-bb69-47200b519432" CreationDate="2017-03-16T16:42:31.850" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/ with https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think the problem here mainly arises from the fact that there is so much disagreement. For example, even within this one question we have several viewpoints:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Establish a chat room&#xD;&#xA;- Post on meta&#xD;&#xA;- Don't post on meta&#xD;&#xA;- Use an existing chat room&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My two cents is this: Over on [Worldbuilding.SE][1] we've just established a [Sandbox][2] exactly for this purpose, taking our lead from [PPCG.SE's sandbox][3]. I think a Sandbox is a pretty good way to do this: people who don't want to see questions for improvement don't even have to look at the sandbox, but people who do can help out, and it's easy to find help when you want it. We're also looking at a separate answer sandbox on [Worldbuilding][1], but this is a separate discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;[2]: https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/635/sandbox-for-proposed-questions&#xD;&#xA;[3]: https://codegolf.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2140/sandbox-for-proposed-challenges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24550" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7554" RevisionGUID="0abf897c-e24a-49c0-8864-67c454271b51" CreationDate="2017-03-16T16:42:59.760" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.coffee.stackexchange.com/ with https://coffee.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't agree with the decision to delete the ad. [Coffee is a fundamental portion of the lives of many programmers](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7547/is-every-day-coffee-day). We discuss it in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) often.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[@RobertCartarino states:](https://coffee.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/97/what-should-a-community-ad-for-coffee-stackexchange-look-like/100#comment1149_100)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @fredley The community-driven advertisements/bulletins have to be at least roughly aligned with the topic of the community. This advertisement is not appropriate for Programmers SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't agree with this statement on both counts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I don't agree that it isn't roughly aligned with with the topic of the community.&#xD;&#xA;   - This community is about issues that directly concern Programmers as idea people and thinkers, and *many* of us would not have ideas nor be able to think without coffee.&#xD;&#xA;2. I don't agree that it should have to be roughly aligned with the topic of the community.&#xD;&#xA;   - Programmers are people in addition being bots that transform coffee and pizza into code. We have lives just like everyone else.&#xD;&#xA;   - If we, as a community, have overwhelming support for an ad to another community, we should be made available to that community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently, [@abbyhairboat](https://coffee.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1156) wrote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why limit the hunt to Seasoned Advice?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sure, they get coffee questions, and that's why you've got a community promotion ad up there. But what if we try thinking beyond &quot;where are the coffee questions and how do we get them here?&quot;, and instead, think: &quot;where are the coffee people and how do we get them here?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of people are coffee Q&amp;A people? Millions of people drink coffee, but what we're looking for here is coffee hobbyists, not just drinkers.** People who like to experiment with brewing methods, spend money on gear, and optimize for various qualities. They aren't just coffee drinkers - they're coffee tinkerers. So people who might be drawn to this site are tinkerers in other fields who dabble in coffee (among many other likely hobbies).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This statement applies just as much here as it does to Seasoned Advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##We should be able to have this Community Ad." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24551" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7563" RevisionGUID="fcf48324-890f-4c21-8177-5e5858ede96d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T16:43:26.203" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.law.stackexchange.com/ with https://law.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm jimsug, a mod from [Law](law.stackexchange.com). You may remember me from the comment on the question above :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I'm fine with migrations from Programmers, and happy to work with you to give questions that would be on-topic for law and otherwise closed here a good home.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firstly, I'm glad that a couple of people have pointed out that legal advice is off-topic for Law SE. At the moment, we have a notice that states this (like the one you may have seen on Health SE):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Law SE disclaimer thingy][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This notice links to our [General Disclaimer](http://law.stackexchange.com/help/disclaimer) page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this is more targeted at readers and consumers of the content, rather than people who are asking questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our help center's on-topic page links to our [policy for questions that seek legal advice][2] meta post. As always, the aim is to preserve questions where possible and I think it's been moderately successful, as we've had a few questions reopened after it was closed for this reason. This meta post might be a good one to link to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Legal terms, language, processes, procedures, or dealing with legal professionals (visit Law instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this is acceptably phrased. If this prevents people from asking questions on Programmers and they instead go to Law, we'll treat them like any new question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Migrations. As noted in the comments above, I think a migration path to law probably isn't necessary; users can just flag if they really think they belong on Law, and Programmers mods can always check in with us if they're unsure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ixkvf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://law.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/221/policy-for-questions-that-clearly-ask-for-specific-legal-advice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24552" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8064" RevisionGUID="81a4fc6b-2ef5-4184-ae53-ba2ec50c78e2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T16:43:26.203" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.law.stackexchange.com/ with https://law.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Site Name&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've started to come around to the name &quot;Software Engineering&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I still have some lingering objections regarding the overuse of the term &quot;engineering&quot; in software development, I think that the benefits would outweigh my personal objections. It does bring to mind a professional-oriented site that caters to people that work throughout the software development life cycle, from business analysts to developers to managers to leads. It also pairs nicely with Computer Science, especially since both correspond to the underlying academic disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Tour and Tagline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&amp;A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ripped this from sites like Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. I removed the portion about &quot;expert answers on conceptual questions about software development&quot; since that can be confusing and I don't see how it's necessary. I tended toward the wording used on Computer Science.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first line of the /help/on-topic page is just the first sentence of the /tour description, word-for-word.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## On-Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm shamelessly stealing this idea from Robert Harvey, but I think that we should do some minor refactoring and link to appropriate Wikipedia articles that define terms. Unfortunately, I don't think that we can get this down to &quot;no more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no gerrymandering&quot;. I think we can avoid multi-line comma-separated lists and gerrymandering, but the discipline of Software Engineering is broad. Being clear about what is on-topic and what is off-topic (and what sites support questions about things that are off-topic) is essential and helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that the shortest reasonable on-topic list would be something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I removed &quot;algorithm and data structure concepts&quot;, since I would consider that part of &quot;software architecture and design&quot;. Evaluating and choosing various data structures and algorithms is inherently a design activity. I also removed &quot;and testing&quot; from &quot;quality assurance and testing&quot; since testing is one aspect of quality assurance, but we don't take all testing questions (such as, for example, writing or debugging unit test code). I also merged &quot;software engineering management&quot; and &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; into &quot;software process, methods, and management&quot; since these three things are very tightly related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Like maple_shaft][10], I'd like to talk about software licensing. I recognize how important the topic is, but when it was added and clarified, neither the Law nor the Open Source Stack Exchange existed. It is something that software engineers operating in a professional environment should be aware of and do need to work in, and the IEEE does bury a small section on &quot;Legal Issues&quot; (referring to trademarks, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, professional liability, trade compliance, cybercrime) under &quot;Software Engineering Professional Practice&quot;. At the same time, the IEEE also puts things like &quot;Employment Contracts&quot;, team dynamics, working in multicultural environments, reading, writing, and presenting under &quot;Software Engineering Professional Practice&quot; and these are definitely off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recommend removing the &quot;software licensing&quot; line. The [Law Stack Exchange is graduating][11] and the [new rules for the graduation process][12] will likely mean that Open Source won't end up closing in the foreseeable future. These sites can do a much better job of handling licensing questions (along with other types of questions) than we can.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, writing, or debugging code (check out Stack Overflow instead) how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (ask on The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - open source philosophy, licenses, and open source communities (visit Open Source instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - legal concepts, theory, and terms (check out Law instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - where to find a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resource&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career or education advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest change is that we start linking to Open Source and Law. Before we actually do this, we do need to consult with their communities and make sure it's OK. But since there are better sites, I think it's safe to punt these questions to the experts anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Slight reordering of the things that are off-topic. We may want to check through the Meta questions that are currently linked and make sure they are correct. The biggest change is the removal of &quot;personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&quot; - I'd hope that a distinct change to the site name would make this very explicit to visitors as your personal life is not Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We may want to also identify some other sites to point people to. We could link to Software Recommendations and Hardware Recommendations next to &quot;product or service recommendations&quot;, as an example. There are also other sites that are related to software engineering that we don't identify as being off-topic (because it should be obvious) - Mathematics, Cross Validated/Statistics, User Experience, Information Security, Writers, Database Administrators, Code Review, Project Management (beta), Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing (beta), Computer Science, Engineering (beta), Law (beta), and Open Source (beta).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to see a theme change on the site. Something that is more professional. I like the general idea of diagrams and models, but parts of the site do seem cartooney. I'd like to be crisper, more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to look at methods for linking to related sites. Adding them to a Help Center page, like /help/on-topic, may work, but it would make that page much longer. I'd like to try to make Help Center pages smaller and less dense. It makes sense to point people to sites that they may not otherwise know about. Perhaps a Meta question that is part of the [tag:faq] would work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box, similar to how the Law and Health sites do, but to talk about the changes? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, so just a brief overview and link to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8058/4&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://law.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/425/congrats-law-se-will-be-graduating-soon?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/257614/graduation-site-closure-and-a-clearer-outlook-on-the-health-of-se-sites" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24553" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7539" RevisionGUID="fd40c389-c056-4572-a7b5-c1cd147c3b2d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T16:43:30.400" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.opensource.stackexchange.com/ with https://opensource.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the past 2 months, two new sites in the Stack Exchange network opened up and are now in Public Beta: [Open Source][1] and [Law][2]. A third, [Software Recommendations][3], has been around for about 1.5 years. These are three topics that [our Help Center's /help/on-topic page][4] explicitly calls out that are well within scope of these sites, assuming the other quality measures for a question hold (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software configuration management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **software licensing**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **where to find a software library, tool**, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career or education advice, salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **legal advice or aid**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These topics appear to be well suited to these other sites, based on the questions that have been asked so far on them. It's likely that someone interested in any kind of intellectual property (copyright, copyleft, patents, trade secrets, infringement, and perhaps even closed-source licenses) or open source (philosophy of open source organizations, using or complying with open source licenses, working within the open source communities, choosing appropriate licenses) are on-topic on one of these sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should Programmers make software licensing questions explicitly off-topic and redirect people to Open Source or Law, as appropriate, to be put in better hands to get answers to their questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;References:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source Help Center][5] (especially: [&quot;What topics can I ask about here?&quot;][1])&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source tags][6] - popular tags include &quot;licensing&quot;, &quot;gpl&quot;, &quot;copyleft&quot;, &quot;license-compatibility&quot;, &quot;derivative-works&quot;, &quot;distribution&quot;, &quot;attribution&quot;, and others that very clearly related to topics asked about on Programmers&#xD;&#xA;* [Law Help Center][7] (especially: [&quot;What topics can I ask about here?&quot;][8])&#xD;&#xA;* [Law tags][9] - popular tags include &quot;copyright&quot;, &quot;intellectual-property&quot;, &quot;software&quot;, &quot;licensing&quot;, &quot;trademark&quot;, &quot;patents&quot;, and &quot;terms-of-service&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* OpenSource.SE: [Discussing scope overhauls with Programmers SE][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/67858/law&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/tags&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://law.stackexchange.com/tags&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://opensource.meta.stackexchange.com/q/576" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24554" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5" RevisionGUID="703128a3-62f9-4b6e-b285-5175ac94dccc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Moderator Pro Tem Announcement](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/311/moderator-pro-tem-announcement)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;In about two weeks, this community will receive some provisional moderators to help get this site started prior to the elections at the end of the beta. Please read this: **[Moderators Pro Tempore](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/moderator-pro-tempore/)**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please suggest some members of this community you feel would make excellent moderators *(self nominations are okay).***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some basic guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Each nomination should be a separate answer. Link the name to the user’s profile (parent and meta) so we can see their activity.&#xD;&#xA; - The nominee should indicate their acceptance by editing the answer, adding that they accept the nomination. Optionally they can write something about themselves.&#xD;&#xA; - Self nominations are okay, and even encouraged. Most sites have not had sufficient time for many users to stand out. Self nomination is simply a way to say, “I’m interested. Let my record speak for itself.” Links to other activities may be helpful: Area 51 participation, participation in other sites, blog posts reviewing or announcing the site, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is what we are looking for in a Moderator...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are seeking out members who are deeply engaged in the community’s development; members who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Have a reasonably high reputation score to indicate active, consistent participation.&#xD;&#xA; - Show an interest in their meta’s community-building activities.&#xD;&#xA; - Lead by example, showing patience and respect for their fellow community members in everything they write.&#xD;&#xA; - Exhibit those intangible traits discussed in A Theory of Moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bonus points for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Members with participation in both meta and the parent site (i.e. interest in both community building and expertise in the field).&#xD;&#xA; - Area 51 participation, social network referrals, or blogging about the site.&#xD;&#xA; - Members who have already shown an interest or ability to promote their community." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24555" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3" RevisionGUID="2b385ebd-ea25-4412-906a-513711ae6076" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Write an Elevator Pitch / Tagline](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Note: &#xD;&#xA;We are closing this domain naming thread. It is asking the *entirely* wrong question. See this blog post for details: [Domain Names: Wrong Question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/domain-names-the-wrong-question/) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're going to keep the name programmers.stackexchange.com. But we WILL be setting up redirects from the more &quot;popular&quot; domains names. (e.g. seasonedadvice.com to cooking.stackexchange.com, basicallymoney.com to money.stackexchange.com, and others as we go through the list).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;New question: &quot;**Write an Elevator Pitch / Tagline!**&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[**Click here to contribute ideas and vote.**](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*[original message text below]*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the big 7 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - One answer per answer please&#xD;&#xA; - Only .com domain names please&#xD;&#xA; - Only untaken domain names please (use whois)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please use **lowercase characters only** in domain name!  &#xD;&#xA;DomainName.com is more readable, but we have to register domainname.com!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24557" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="153" RevisionGUID="db16ea32-5483-4042-a6df-f240d1c174a7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Request for comment: structured tag cleanups](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;[[language]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/language)  &#xD;&#xA;[[languages]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/languages)  &#xD;&#xA;[[programming-languages]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming-languages)  &#xD;&#xA;[[spoken-languages]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/spoken-languages)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24558" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="23" RevisionGUID="d463e31d-b3b1-4b42-a3c6-cdc76d109076" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Can we get a &amp;quot;Belongs on StackOverflow&amp;quot; as a closing reason?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/441/can-we-get-a-belongs-on-stackoverflow-as-a-closing-reason)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;When the beta will be over, should the subjective question of StackOverflow be migrated here ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example question : &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/76364/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skill  &#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/84556/whats-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24559" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="164" RevisionGUID="26057fe0-fdce-4205-bf6a-0f0b9d81dc9f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; ### Note&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer was posted before the Great Disciplining of Programmers.SE and is rendered obsolete by the following resources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Programmers.SE FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is a separate site from Stack Overflow: the questions are on topic and not duplicates of questions on Programmers, so they should not be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;strike&gt;The site was proposed and set up specifically to *hold* all the popular but nevertheless off-topic questions on Stack Overflow: there will be overlap on some popular questions because they are important seeding questions. If the site makes it out of beta, there [will be a migration path](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/23/should-we-migrate-subjective-question-from-stackoverflow) to move and merge questions from Stack Overflow to here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also my answer on [How should we handle questions currently closed on SO?&#xD;&#xA;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/44/how-should-we-handle-questions-currently-closed-on-so/45#45)&lt;/strike&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24560" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="27" RevisionGUID="4ee115bd-3767-434a-9605-2b64fa229621" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Too localized: by population size instead of geographical area](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1057/too-localized-by-population-size-instead-of-geographical-area)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Should questions that depend on a specific location (continent, country, city) or time (anything that changes rapidly over time) be allowed? I'm specifically referring to questions about how much to charge or what a job market looks like." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24561" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="173" RevisionGUID="ae48abfc-b49c-49aa-998e-d47ece6e99c1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="From [Introducing Programmers.StackExchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In a nutshell, **Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor** working through code issues. **Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard** working through higher level conceptual programming issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have **actual source code in the questions or answers**. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additional Resources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers.SE FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow FAQ](http://stackoverflow.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24562" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="32" RevisionGUID="ff131f39-0928-45ef-a9d0-93a038011563" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Can we get a &amp;quot;Belongs on StackOverflow&amp;quot; as a closing reason?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/441/can-we-get-a-belongs-on-stackoverflow-as-a-closing-reason)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;suggestions, please!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24564" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="27" RevisionGUID="4dfc0d56-a090-42de-8b6b-1d14cf384f4d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Too localized: by population size instead of geographical area](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1057/too-localized-by-population-size-instead-of-geographical-area)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Should questions that depend on a specific location (continent, country, city) or time (anything that changes rapidly over time) be allowed? I'm specifically referring to questions about how much to charge or what a job market looks like." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24565" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="45" RevisionGUID="7e8a6656-1e15-41d0-8c31-c58918b472b1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; ### Note&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer was posted before the Great Disciplining of Programmers.SE and is rendered obsolete by the following resources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Programmers.SE FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think asking them now before a migration path is important as it sets the tone for the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;strike&gt;This site is a little different than previous SE sites in that it's meant as *the place you put all the off-topic and subjective but still programming-related questions that get closed on Stack Overflow*. It's important that we can show that demonstrably by seeding the site with quality questions that would normally get closed on Stack Overflow.&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we limit ourselves to questions that haven't already been asked on Stack Overflow when this site is meant as a place for all those questions that don't belong on Stack Overflow, the amount of questions available to seed the site becomes very limited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although, I should say the examples you pointed out are pretty low quality to begin with, and I hope they aren't going to be used as exemplars for what Programmers.SE will become. [On another question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/community-wiki-on-programmers/33#33), I suggested those types of questions that are of the ilk *What's your favorite cartoon?* or *What's your favorite quotation?* might be better off closed as *off-topic* even on Programmers.SE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24566" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="23" RevisionGUID="c43ad56b-7363-421a-a7c2-7aa0d701cef2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Can we get a &amp;quot;Belongs on StackOverflow&amp;quot; as a closing reason?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/441/can-we-get-a-belongs-on-stackoverflow-as-a-closing-reason)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;When the beta will be over, should the subjective question of StackOverflow be migrated here ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example question : &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/76364/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skill  &#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/84556/whats-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24568" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="32" RevisionGUID="02e2d012-c1df-47b0-ba94-c25fa401b9a2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Can we get a &amp;quot;Belongs on StackOverflow&amp;quot; as a closing reason?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/441/can-we-get-a-belongs-on-stackoverflow-as-a-closing-reason)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;suggestions, please!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24569" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="49" RevisionGUID="60e3f118-875a-4614-a671-6a2c283461b7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="heapunderflow.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the same vein as [this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3/what-should-our-domain-name-be/34#34).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24570" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="108" RevisionGUID="bb4b2be5-ea12-49dc-a4c8-6c4fa7f7ade7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Relating to &quot;[why should anyone accept an answer][1]&quot;, why not alter the point allocation system in a way that encourages discussion, thought provoking questions, or something along those lines?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It could eliminate {some of} the whining about not getting their answer accepted, since this is a different kind of community.  To support that train of thought here is an alternative point distribution we could use: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answer is voted up.....	 +15      	&#xD;&#xA;    question is voted up...	 +5	 &#xD;&#xA;    answer is accepted.....	 +10	 (+2 to acceptor) &#xD;&#xA;    post is voted down.....	 -2	 (-1 to voter)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It encourages people to *actually read* existing answers and rate the best answer.  On the flip side, it encourages good answers.  For times that a Q &amp; A is needed, it is welcome but de-emphasized when compared to StackOverflow and the other sites that value closed-ended discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For comparison purposes, here is the current (as of 9/7/10) point distribution:&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answer is voted up....	 +10	&#xD;&#xA;    question is voted up..	 +5	&#xD;&#xA;    answer is accepted....	 +15	 (+2 to acceptor)&#xD;&#xA;    post is voted down...	 -2	 (-1 to voter)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Updated calculus&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24572" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="115" RevisionGUID="5632c2d5-af54-4ce8-8a61-504ba019410e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just to consolidate the thoughts in the comments on [one of the other answers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki/33#33):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [Lord Torgamus](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/94/lord-torgamus) said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CW questions are about collaboration; if you are sure of one part of an answer, but think the community can fill in some information, you can transfer ownership of the answer to the community. The effect on rep is a side effect, not the true purpose. Examples: FAQs, the MSO list of sites that steal SE content, Gaming SE questions about locations of special items. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And as I mentioned:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If there are questions that should not receive reputation (because they are of low quality/value) they should be closed as off-topic. Every thing on Programmers is going to be subjective, so every answer is going to be some formulation of &quot;This is my favorite X&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24573" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="45" RevisionGUID="ca23d811-de9f-48b2-84ae-5e325bd6c5c2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; ### Note&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer was posted before the Great Disciplining of Programmers.SE and is rendered obsolete by the following resources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Programmers.SE FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think asking them now before a migration path is important as it sets the tone for the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;strike&gt;This site is a little different than previous SE sites in that it's meant as *the place you put all the off-topic and subjective but still programming-related questions that get closed on Stack Overflow*. It's important that we can show that demonstrably by seeding the site with quality questions that would normally get closed on Stack Overflow.&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we limit ourselves to questions that haven't already been asked on Stack Overflow when this site is meant as a place for all those questions that don't belong on Stack Overflow, the amount of questions available to seed the site becomes very limited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although, I should say the examples you pointed out are pretty low quality to begin with, and I hope they aren't going to be used as exemplars for what Programmers.SE will become. [On another question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/community-wiki-on-programmers/33#33), I suggested those types of questions that are of the ilk *What's your favorite cartoon?* or *What's your favorite quotation?* might be better off closed as *off-topic* even on Programmers.SE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24574" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="122" RevisionGUID="ace0b395-d54b-4e6b-8fea-af87ee2816bf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yes they should be allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They'll automatically get converted to wiki questions after 30 answers, and they will get there IMMEDIATELY so no need to worry about serious rep farming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Longer term the mods may want to close and lock them, as a &quot;favorite programming joke&quot; question with 1,000 answers isn't really helping anyone, is it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;edit:  &#xD;&#xA;[The Six Subjective Question guidelines -- enforcement notice][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24575" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="49" RevisionGUID="9a6abdcf-6f6f-4c0e-bf9a-8964aa8b47ba" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="heapunderflow.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the same vein as [this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3/what-should-our-domain-name-be/34#34).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24576" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="333" RevisionGUID="6c95004e-7dfa-4e5a-9702-a210176db347" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###Edit: Problem solved.  As Mark Trapp points out, [normal users can no longer mark CW](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67039/what-can-we-do-to-make-community-wiki-better/67192#67192).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [consensus](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki) seems to be that community wiki is useless here, and we've been pointing this out in various question comment threads.  The problem is that new user keep coming in with the old expectations of how CW should work, and marking their questions CW just because they're subjective.  I see a few options for dealing with this that I'll post in separate answers- of course, post your own if you can think of a better solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we get a clear consensus, the mods, in their capacity of liaisons, can take it to SOIS." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24577" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="133" RevisionGUID="15520cf8-355b-4409-870b-7951c73fc513" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###[Thomas Owens][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be interested in helping this community out. Of all the current Stack Exchanges, this is one of my favorites (the other being Stack Overflow, where [I'm a 20k+ user][3] and have been involved since the early beta). In terms of Area 51 participation (see [my profile][4]), I currently have one proposal for a Software Engineering Stack Exchange (currently in the committal phase). In the current public betas, I usually lurk around SEs such as (links go to my profile page) [Theoretical Computer Science][5], [Mathematics][6], [Statistical Analysis][7], and [User Interface][8], since these are areas that I'm somewhat interested in (although don't usually have enough of a background to contribute that much).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/572/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/users/2531/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/users/403/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://math.stackexchange.com/users/91/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/110/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://ui.stackexchange.com/users/343/thomas-owens" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24578" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="58" RevisionGUID="98f4f9ff-2c7f-49c7-b257-f6351cd9b9ae" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Request for comment: structured tag cleanups](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I think we're starting to already get some duplication and unnecessary tagging; we should use this post as a means to figure out what should be combined and what should be blacklisted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Questions to consider&#xD;&#xA;* Are meta-tags allowed? (e.g. *poll*, *discussion*, [*quotes*](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/quotes), [*humor*](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/humor), etc.)&#xD;&#xA;* Given this site is called **Programmers**, should the word *programming* and its synonyms be avoided in tags? (e.g. [*programming languages*](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming-languages), [*programming tool*](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming-tool), [*programmers*](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programmers), etc.)&#xD;&#xA;* What tags should be merged as synonyms?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24579" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="351" RevisionGUID="686524ad-b9de-4803-a1af-e10c1ccd77f9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Will these rules be applied to existing questions, or just to new ones? Specifically with regards to old, popular questions ([Favorite Joke](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35/whats-your-favorite-programming-joke),[What music do you code to](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/344/what-music-do-you-code-to), or [Favorite Cartoon](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon))?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Ok, a few of these were addressed [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable), but what about existing question in general that don't meet the new guidelines?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24580" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="153" RevisionGUID="7ea24a89-e129-46d6-8382-8a7c69842b4d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Request for comment: structured tag cleanups](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;[[language]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/language)  &#xD;&#xA;[[languages]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/languages)  &#xD;&#xA;[[programming-languages]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming-languages)  &#xD;&#xA;[[spoken-languages]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/spoken-languages)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24582" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="382" RevisionGUID="fc0f0b05-67ed-49d1-be2f-99261590176b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Peter Turner][1] is retagging a hole lot of questions and adding the tag [`[bestestes]`][2]. I can't understand the meaning of the tag or how it is useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's the point of the tag `[bestestes]`? and is it useful?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1973/peter-turner&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/bestestes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24583" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="74" RevisionGUID="9e9f4131-107f-4071-a326-ca2e6109e3a2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### What kinds of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE** is for professional and enthusiast programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development and programmer-related issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What kinds of questions should I *not* ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Avoid asking questions that are objective or technical in nature and can have a definitive answer. Ask technical questions about programming on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should also avoid asking questions that are not tangentially related to programming or programmers in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the site itself, please don't do it here. [Visit our meta-discussion site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com) where you can talk about things like what questions are appropriate, what tags we should use, suggest a feature, or generally discuss how Programmers.SE works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the family of Stack Exchange sites, including problems using the site or your account, [visit the meta-discussion site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Sources:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Lots of subjective questions here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/176/lots-of-subjective-questions-here)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can I ask a Subject Question about Stackoverflow?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/179/can-i-ask-a-subject-question-about-stackoverflow)&#xD;&#xA;* [Is this question about users and their computer on-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/138/is-this-question-about-users-and-their-computer-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the difference between Programmers and SO](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24584" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="177" RevisionGUID="8aa13561-a0e5-421b-8f1e-125794da6d3d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You know all those questions on Stack Overflow that get (or should get) closed as &quot;subjective and argumentative&quot;, you know one's like: &quot;what's your favourite programmer cartoon&quot;, &quot;what language/framework should I learn next&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well this is the place to ask them without fear of them being closed (except perhaps as a duplicate).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Important note&#xD;&#xA;This question was posted and my answer written before the &quot;constructive subjective&quot; policy was introduced - [Six Subjective Guidelines](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice). So the example questions I quote should be regarded as theoretical questions only." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24585" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="74" RevisionGUID="01f354a3-1744-47b7-a606-30a3bf3fdd7e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### What kinds of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE** is for professional and enthusiast programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development and programmer-related issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What kinds of questions should I *not* ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Avoid asking questions that are objective or technical in nature and can have a definitive answer. Ask technical questions about programming on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should also avoid asking questions that are not tangentially related to programming or programmers in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the site itself, please don't do it here. [Visit our meta-discussion site](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com) where you can talk about things like what questions are appropriate, what tags we should use, suggest a feature, or generally discuss how Programmers.SE works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to talk about the family of Stack Exchange sites, including problems using the site or your account, [visit the meta-discussion site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Sources:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Lots of subjective questions here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/176/lots-of-subjective-questions-here)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can I ask a Subject Question about Stackoverflow?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/179/can-i-ask-a-subject-question-about-stackoverflow)&#xD;&#xA;* [Is this question about users and their computer on-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/138/is-this-question-about-users-and-their-computer-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the difference between Programmers and SO](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24586" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="412" RevisionGUID="cdf46858-df58-4eac-800b-fd4e9f36f098" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="*We closed the [domain naming thread (click for details)](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3/what-should-our-domain-name-be).* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, **let's start with a killer &quot;elevator pitch!&quot;** Joel will be blogging about the elevator pitch approach to naming, but to get you started: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Elevator Pitch &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't as easy as it sounds. Imagine the user who will never read your FAQ and you have two seconds to grab their attention. It should be catchy but descriptive. It should be thoroughly clear but painfully concise. **Make every... word... count.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some creative examples: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Gawker](http://gawker.com/): Daily Manhattan media news and gossip. Reporting live from the center of the universe. &#xD;&#xA;- [Gizmodo](http://gizmodo.com/): The gadget guide. So much in love with shiny new toys, it’s unnatural. &#xD;&#xA;- [Autoblog](http://www.autoblog.com/): We obsessively cover the auto industry. &#xD;&#xA;- [DumbLittleMan](http://www.dumblittleman.com/): So what do we do here? Well, it’s simple. 15 to 20 times per week we provide tips that will save you money, increase your productivity, or simply keep you sane. &#xD;&#xA;- [Needcoffee.com](http://www.needcoffee.com/): We are the Internet equivalent of a triple espresso with whipped cream. Mmmm…whipped cream. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Use it as a Tagline &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A shorter elevator pitch *can* be used as a tagline&amp;thinsp;&amp;mdash;&amp;thinsp;something you can display in the header at the top of the page. If it doesn't fit, consider shortening it or creating a separate tagline. Here are some great examples: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Slashdot](http://slashdot.org/): News for nerds. Stuff that matters. &#xD;&#xA;- [Lifehacker](http://www.lifehacker.com/): Don’t live to geek, geek to live! &#xD;&#xA;- [The Simple Dollar](http://www.thesimpledollar.com/): Financial talk for the rest of us. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Motto (don't forget your logo) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A logo begs for it own little, short tagline&amp;thinsp;&amp;mdash;&amp;thinsp;like a motto. Maybe the tagline inspires the logo; Maybe it's the other way around. Mottos make good t-shirt, bumper stickers, and other marketing material. Either way, you'll recognize a good motto when you see it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Just do it. &#xD;&#xA;- Think Different. &#xD;&#xA;- The Uncola. &#xD;&#xA;- Intel inside. &#xD;&#xA;- Like a rock. &#xD;&#xA;- The king of beers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;hellip;and perhaps all this leads to a proper name and domain for your site&amp;hellip; *eventually*. So let's start from the basics. **Come up with a killer elevator pitch, tagline, and/or motto!** " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24588" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="131" RevisionGUID="2f9cfa27-25a4-4563-8336-34c814c1df8f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Shouldn't all &quot;list&quot; questions be Community Wiki to prevent rep farming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No. The *community wiki*  flag should be used for questions which would benefit from a collaborative answer; it is not for allowing questions that might be of too low value to gather reputation. If a question is too poor or might attract low quality answers, it should be flagged for moderator attention and/or voted to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, some list questions might only have a finite amount of correct answers and could benefit from more than one person editing an answer to provide the most comprehensive point of view. In this case, *community wiki*  is appropriate. Answerers can flag a question as *community wiki*  on their own answers, and all questions will convert to *community wiki*  automatically after receiving 30 answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Purpose of Community Wiki](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable/122#122)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24589" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="131" RevisionGUID="ff6a777e-b526-4409-ae9d-e327c604d5ce" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Shouldn't all &quot;list&quot; questions be Community Wiki to prevent rep farming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No. The *community wiki*  flag should be used for questions which would benefit from a collaborative answer; it is not for allowing questions that might be of too low value to gather reputation. If a question is too poor or might attract low quality answers, it should be flagged for moderator attention and/or voted to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, some list questions might only have a finite amount of correct answers and could benefit from more than one person editing an answer to provide the most comprehensive point of view. In this case, *community wiki*  is appropriate. Answerers can flag a question as *community wiki*  on their own answers, and all questions will convert to *community wiki*  automatically after receiving 30 answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Purpose of Community Wiki](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable/122#122)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24590" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="423" RevisionGUID="1f52b39d-775e-4c48-b988-0a6707ba8798" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and SO](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;This StackExchange Programmers Beta site seems very redundant to me. How is it intended to differ from StackOverflow?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24592" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="472" RevisionGUID="4ac4edb1-07bf-4d5c-902d-d596f293c73b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="_(I like different parts from different responses, so I'm submitting this combined version.)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Elevator Pitch: **A place for programmers to discuss problems that require wisdom, not clever code.**  &#xD;&#xA;OR  &#xD;&#xA;**Programmers is a site to share wisdom about the programming profession and subculture**  &#xD;&#xA;OR  &#xD;&#xA;[third option] _(see comments)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Tagline: ***&quot;Advice for programmers, by programmers&quot;***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Motto: **Think outside the brackets.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Logo Idea: ([see this answer][2])  &#xD;&#xA;![Think outside the brackets][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;_(I haven't included the Short Description because I think the existing FAQ description is mostly ok - personally I'd drop the &quot;subjective&quot; in the first line, and not mention code golf - but otherwise don't think it needs replacing.)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/QqIdm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like/473#473" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24593" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="173" RevisionGUID="7c1f2c1a-fb65-4fb7-9ea1-0a9c1ac27efe" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="From [Introducing Programmers.StackExchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In a nutshell, **Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor** working through code issues. **Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard** working through higher level conceptual programming issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have **actual source code in the questions or answers**. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additional Resources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers.SE FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow FAQ](http://stackoverflow.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24594" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="243" RevisionGUID="b23ff847-f2fe-4eaa-8237-c7e1492acc9f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Code Golf &amp; Programming Puzzles Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for code golfers and for those who interested in code golfing (from beginners to experts), and programming puzzles.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Seven Segments](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1407422/code-golf-seven-segments)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Code 39 Bar Code](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2800073/code-golf-code-39-bar-code)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Morse code](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1352587/code-golf-morse-code)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf New Year Edition - Integer to Roman Numeral](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/394574/code-golf-new-year-edition-integer-to-roman-numeral)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Factorials](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/237496/code-golf-factorials)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related Discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Where do Code Golf/Code Challenge questions belong?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/38/where-do-code-golf-code-challenge-questions-belong)&#xD;&#xA;* [We have puzzle, code-golf, and now code-chess tags. Can we migrate them all somewhere else?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64511/we-have-puzzle-code-golf-and-now-code-chess-tags-can-we-migrate-them-all-somew)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4570/code-golf-programming-puzzles" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24597" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="609" RevisionGUID="e059159c-b300-42e2-8f7b-31d4446957ea" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [New Design Launched](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/687/new-design-launched)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Hi all. I'm [Jin][1], and I'll be working on the designs for the Stack Exchange sites as they graduate from the beta phase. Each site will have its own unique theme that will reflect its topic. However, all sites will share quite a bit of common elements so they feel like they're part of the Stack Exchange family.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since most user of the base on this site is familiar with Stackoverflow.com, I decided to go with a clean and simple design similar to SO, but with slightly more visual elements. The focus is still on readability and keeping the familiarity you have with SO.com. Layout structure-wise, I'm not changing much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also read the suggestions from the [logo thread][2]. I like the idea of using symbols as part of the logo. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(click image to view full resolution version)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/m0xSo.png&quot;&gt;![alt text][3]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;update&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you for your feedback. I have revise the initial mockup per your suggestions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RoM17.png&quot;&gt;![alt text][4]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;some changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Green in the header is changed to cyan, I think it contrasts well against the darker background. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Updated the logo treatment to &quot;} Programmers {&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Added &amp;lt;!- --&amp;gt; around the tag line.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Removed monospace font in top nav&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Question link color is now in blue instead of green.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Redid the tag treatment, so they're less boxy. I feel simpler () treament makes the home/question pages airier. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll be hanging out in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&quot;&gt;chatroom&lt;/a&gt;, feel free to drop by.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;UPDATE 2&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you for the feedback! I've decided to go with a different approach with the design which I think will work better for the Programmers site. I'm locking this thread so no additional feedback will be posted about the old mockup. I'll start a new post for the next design. Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/our-designer-in-residence-jin-yang/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/m0xSo.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RoM17.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24598" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="243" RevisionGUID="36ee0ce2-e2fe-4e9c-a526-548b40b77fbc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Code Golf &amp; Programming Puzzles Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for code golfers and for those who interested in code golfing (from beginners to experts), and programming puzzles.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Seven Segments](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1407422/code-golf-seven-segments)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Code 39 Bar Code](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2800073/code-golf-code-39-bar-code)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Morse code](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1352587/code-golf-morse-code)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf New Year Edition - Integer to Roman Numeral](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/394574/code-golf-new-year-edition-integer-to-roman-numeral)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Factorials](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/237496/code-golf-factorials)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related Discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Where do Code Golf/Code Challenge questions belong?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/38/where-do-code-golf-code-challenge-questions-belong)&#xD;&#xA;* [We have puzzle, code-golf, and now code-chess tags. Can we migrate them all somewhere else?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64511/we-have-puzzle-code-golf-and-now-code-chess-tags-can-we-migrate-them-all-somew)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4570/code-golf-programming-puzzles" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24599" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="269" RevisionGUID="ee543b95-7b46-49d7-b28b-0e1af481701f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Closing questions because they belong on another site is only one reason to close: one can vote to close because the question doesn't make any sense, only applies to the individual asking the question, or is off-topic even though there is no Stack Exchange for which the question is on-topic: &quot;Is Justin Bieber Dreamy?&quot; *is* an off-topic question and *should* be closed even though there is no Justin Bieber Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the whole point of the &quot;5 votes to close&quot; functionality is so one person can't dictate whether a question should be closed: it requires four other people to agree with them. Five people independently arriving at the conclusion that a question should be closed is about the same amount of consensus that would achieved if we discussed each and every close candidate on meta first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Just like a down-vote](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/159/should-we-force-adding-a-comment-with-every-down-vote), regular users should be free to vote for close based on their interpretation of the rules of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only people who should otherwise be restricted—at least in principle—are diamond moderators because they can override any voting on a question. To diamond moderators, clear community consensus *will* be essential in guiding their actions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, there *is* a lot of consensus on what does and does not belong on the site, and we're currently hashing through the parts that don't. But we don't actually have any diamond moderators at this point, so it's not really an issue." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24600" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="683" RevisionGUID="9b0d5d69-9245-48aa-8acd-2bd3fe277c6b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm going to make a different argument why I highly dislike the fonts than [OscarRyz][1] did: Its too hard to read. I know giving each site a personal touch is nice, but readability stands above all. I'm in the group that hates the [webapps][2] font: Just too blocky and weird. Every single title for the rest of this sites life will take a second glance just to see if they translated it correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm all for changing the design. Just not the fonts. The original 3 sites have been widely successful on just the same general font style. Why change it now?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/655/site-design-round-2/674#674&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24601" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="269" RevisionGUID="1b405dd9-c1a1-47f9-a408-c592aab4f174" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Closing questions because they belong on another site is only one reason to close: one can vote to close because the question doesn't make any sense, only applies to the individual asking the question, or is off-topic even though there is no Stack Exchange for which the question is on-topic: &quot;Is Justin Bieber Dreamy?&quot; *is* an off-topic question and *should* be closed even though there is no Justin Bieber Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the whole point of the &quot;5 votes to close&quot; functionality is so one person can't dictate whether a question should be closed: it requires four other people to agree with them. Five people independently arriving at the conclusion that a question should be closed is about the same amount of consensus that would achieved if we discussed each and every close candidate on meta first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Just like a down-vote](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/159/should-we-force-adding-a-comment-with-every-down-vote), regular users should be free to vote for close based on their interpretation of the rules of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only people who should otherwise be restricted—at least in principle—are diamond moderators because they can override any voting on a question. To diamond moderators, clear community consensus *will* be essential in guiding their actions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, there *is* a lot of consensus on what does and does not belong on the site, and we're currently hashing through the parts that don't. But we don't actually have any diamond moderators at this point, so it's not really an issue." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24602" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="737" RevisionGUID="626061aa-6ad7-4550-ab28-013d7427aecf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [The Ask Question link is wrapped](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/715/the-ask-question-link-is-wrapped)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;The new design has a bug in my Firefox 3.6.13 - the &quot;Ask Question&quot; link is under &quot;Questions&quot; not on the right where it should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PSgsN.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Screen resolution is 1440x900." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24603" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="285" RevisionGUID="466ca194-af6a-4028-afbe-d7935ff79d05" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In connection to [this][1], and the closing of [Why are so many programmers arrogant?][2]. The question was closed (unjustifiably, IMHO), then reopened by those of us who disagreed. The question has now been locked, preventing others from participating. I have a feeling this is going to happen to the [Do programmers have higher tendency to be atheists than non programmers?][3] as well (_**EDIT:** this has happened, as predicted_), which has been closed and reopened as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, even though both questions _could_ potentially lead to flamewars, I think it is a credit to this community that there was not a single answer (apart from one joke answer that was subsequently deleted) that was potentially inflammatory. I fail to see why such questions should be locked, as long as the community wants it open. If the question turns into a close-reopen war, and is closed and reopened more than _x_ times (say thrice), then perhaps it might be worth locking. Even then, it should be done on a case-by-case basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as far as the &quot;Why are so many programmers&quot; arrogant question goes, it has only been closed and reopened once, and at least one of the high-rep users has said that he voted to close by accident. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone please tell me why this decision was taken? Both questions are perfectly valid  for programmers.se, and while such questions _should_ be closed, locked (and probably deleted) on SO, doing so here merely amounts to censorship.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;[3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/do-programmers-have-higher-tendency-to-be-atheists-than-non-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** OK, the unilateral closing of the atheist question has really pissed me off. If this happens a few more times, I see myself leaving the community for good. People were being respectful and the community at large had no problem with the question. It was closed once, and reopened once and had no close votes the last time I looked. That means that only 5 people felt strongly enough about it to vote to close it, and the rest were happy to let it be. This makes the &quot;community-run&quot; aspect of the website look like simply lip-service. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 2:** I should clarify that I have absolutely nothing against vote-based closing. I may or may not agree with the closers, but at least everyone (at least those who have enough rep) is on an equal footing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 3:** Jeff has been talking about [removing the &quot;worst&quot; 15-20% of questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com). If this happens, I'm going to ask for my account on p.se to be deleted in protest. That's what voting and flagging are for. Remember, a closed question can be deleted if enough high-rep users cast delete votes. If I'd known that this site wasn't going to be strictly community-run, I would have approached participation _very_ differently. Why should I be active on meta, cast close/delete votes or view flagged posts if every so often, the community's verdict is going to be overridden unilaterally?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24604" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="298" RevisionGUID="21324203-a3ce-448b-9986-2c377bdbecfc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are some crucial questions begin asked which will afect who participates on P.SE in the future and to what extent. The key one seems to be https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/288/dealing-with-what-are-some-good-types-of-pickles-for-programmers-type-question . I can well imaging people not visiting if those questions continue to be allowed, and vice versa. We could do with more people who use the site expressing their views." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24605" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="285" RevisionGUID="b537d021-4304-473b-abc3-190a36a04d3c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In connection to [this][1], and the closing of [Why are so many programmers arrogant?][2]. The question was closed (unjustifiably, IMHO), then reopened by those of us who disagreed. The question has now been locked, preventing others from participating. I have a feeling this is going to happen to the [Do programmers have higher tendency to be atheists than non programmers?][3] as well (_**EDIT:** this has happened, as predicted_), which has been closed and reopened as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, even though both questions _could_ potentially lead to flamewars, I think it is a credit to this community that there was not a single answer (apart from one joke answer that was subsequently deleted) that was potentially inflammatory. I fail to see why such questions should be locked, as long as the community wants it open. If the question turns into a close-reopen war, and is closed and reopened more than _x_ times (say thrice), then perhaps it might be worth locking. Even then, it should be done on a case-by-case basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as far as the &quot;Why are so many programmers&quot; arrogant question goes, it has only been closed and reopened once, and at least one of the high-rep users has said that he voted to close by accident. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone please tell me why this decision was taken? Both questions are perfectly valid  for programmers.se, and while such questions _should_ be closed, locked (and probably deleted) on SO, doing so here merely amounts to censorship.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;[3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/do-programmers-have-higher-tendency-to-be-atheists-than-non-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** OK, the unilateral closing of the atheist question has really pissed me off. If this happens a few more times, I see myself leaving the community for good. People were being respectful and the community at large had no problem with the question. It was closed once, and reopened once and had no close votes the last time I looked. That means that only 5 people felt strongly enough about it to vote to close it, and the rest were happy to let it be. This makes the &quot;community-run&quot; aspect of the website look like simply lip-service. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 2:** I should clarify that I have absolutely nothing against vote-based closing. I may or may not agree with the closers, but at least everyone (at least those who have enough rep) is on an equal footing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 3:** Jeff has been talking about [removing the &quot;worst&quot; 15-20% of questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com). If this happens, I'm going to ask for my account on p.se to be deleted in protest. That's what voting and flagging are for. Remember, a closed question can be deleted if enough high-rep users cast delete votes. If I'd known that this site wasn't going to be strictly community-run, I would have approached participation _very_ differently. Why should I be active on meta, cast close/delete votes or view flagged posts if every so often, the community's verdict is going to be overridden unilaterally?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24606" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="894" RevisionGUID="2f1998e3-fc2e-4c4f-8bd6-f8cc73e469f5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="When I tried to post my [last question on etiquette](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/893/whats-the-etiquette-for-reusing-your-answers), I got this warning:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the warning shouldn't appear anywhere, you'd think Meta Programmers.SE would be it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24607" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="359" RevisionGUID="5c6fdb2e-47aa-4dd8-b509-c80c45188548" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Looks like the almighty ubermods have answered this...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24608" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="333" RevisionGUID="d572a216-9fdc-4a7d-abb2-d90cd96febd1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###Edit: Problem solved.  As Mark Trapp points out, [normal users can no longer mark CW](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67039/what-can-we-do-to-make-community-wiki-better/67192#67192).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [consensus](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki) seems to be that community wiki is useless here, and we've been pointing this out in various question comment threads.  The problem is that new user keep coming in with the old expectations of how CW should work, and marking their questions CW just because they're subjective.  I see a few options for dealing with this that I'll post in separate answers- of course, post your own if you can think of a better solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we get a clear consensus, the mods, in their capacity of liaisons, can take it to SOIS." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24609" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="360" RevisionGUID="62861c9d-2389-471a-9eb3-aecff2b93279" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've asked 3 questions so far&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [The programming plant one][1] &#xD;&#xA; 2. [The pronunciation of Delphi one][2]&#xD;&#xA; 3. [The Unnecessary Code One][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and they've all been scoffed at or given joke answers.  I think I've been improving with each iteration.  I've read the FAQ.  I've been on SO and every other site for longer than you, I'd think I'd understand the game by now.  I was under the impression that the stupid stuff I posted on SO that got closed within one hour would at least last a day on this site.  But it doesn't and ya'll are playing popularity control because this site seems to be growing wildly out of proportion to it's actual usefulness.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm in it for myself - not to improve the internet.  My cactus dies, I ask a programmer what kind of a plant they think is a cool plant a programmer might have, the kind of plant they might sell to a programmer on ThinkGeek if ThinkGeek sold plants.  Everyone in the office says Del Fee, everyone in America Says Del Fi, everyone in the rest of the world says Del Fee.  I think this is interesting, so I ask about it on this website.  I write some dumb code, I think it is funny so I want to see what other dumb code people write - at least as good a question as [least useful comment][4]. And asked in the right place, made it community wiki - and people have the discourtesy to try to close it.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. I don't give a hoot about &quot;[Jeff's guidelines][5]&quot;. I'm not sure what he's thinking if he wants to micromanage the kinds of questions we can ask on a community driven site.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6055/awesomest-programming-plant-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8241/how-to-pronounce-delphi&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8384/whats-your-best-unnecessary-code&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/143429/whats-the-least-useful-comment-youve-ever-seen&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24610" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="919" RevisionGUID="0bb1f597-f23d-4ce5-af11-5f608bb3771b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Someone new to our site, or perhaps Stack Exchange might get the idea that our site is for any kind of programming related question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since migration with Stack Overflow is not bi-directional, I suggest that we decide on [an elevator pitch or tagline][1] that lets people know that questions about the programming _industry_ are welcome here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24611" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="375" RevisionGUID="ace8d221-6b42-4f49-9746-6fb303bc2af5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Yes, most questions will be about experience thanks to [the 6-Q enforcement notice][1].**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24612" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="359" RevisionGUID="35a6747d-2f01-4bce-a975-515fb8b143b8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Looks like the almighty ubermods have answered this...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24613" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="423" RevisionGUID="e2f6dd1d-2645-4d92-ae74-7468f97b6c9f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and SO](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;This StackExchange Programmers Beta site seems very redundant to me. How is it intended to differ from StackOverflow?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24614" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="948" RevisionGUID="f5b7d287-c552-45e6-84a7-0414431edf0c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and SO](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Why does this site exist when there is Stack overflow already?!!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24615" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="375" RevisionGUID="bfb40007-e055-4522-a30d-9b00a137b1ee" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Yes, most questions will be about experience thanks to [the 6-Q enforcement notice][1].**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24617" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="bc2c9ff0-e37f-46a3-94b3-40fb8b148360" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are a lot of frustrations all on the front page (Nov 2010, still occuring Jun 2011):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Why is this question closed? It's a good question about a bad idea.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/554/why-is-this-question-closed-its-a-good-question-about-a-bad-idea)&#xD;&#xA; - [I don't think peaple understand Programmers SE.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/485/i-dont-think-people-or-me-understand-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA; - [What's the point of closing a question?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question)&#xD;&#xA; - [How do you delete an account from programmers?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/483/how-do-you-delete-an-account-from-programmers)&#xD;&#xA; - [Why? The high numbers of closed questions are extremely annoying.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/469/why-high-number-of-closed-questions-extremely-annoying)&#xD;&#xA; - [Mods should be stopped from closing reopened stuff automatically the second time.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time)&#xD;&#xA; - [Questions are being closed without community requests.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/396/question-being-closed-without-community-requests-closed)&#xD;&#xA; - [Why should we have to battle to keep questions open?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/339/why-should-we-have-to-battle-to-keep-questions-open-closed)&#xD;&#xA; - [Can the closed questions please be removed from the related section?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/282/can-the-closed-questions-please-be-removed-from-related)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The above questions are a *clear sign*. What could the problem be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too low reputation requirement for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Yes, we are one of the Area 51 sites that got a lot more visitors. And our site allows one to gain reputation more quickly than on other sites, let my account be an example for when you ask a lot of questions and I'm pretty sure that there are top users that just have famous answers in frequently visited questions that are non wiki...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too strong rules on asking questions, or are these rules applied to strong?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions should be constructive, but for some people all rules seem needed.  &#xD;&#xA;   While they stated originally that it's fine that only 3 of the rules apply to your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Users aren't clearly informed about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   If we get these questions on meta, it seems to me that they might have no idea about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **We want to be professional?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   We can be professonal, but if we close content is such way that a lot of people are complaining I think it's a step too far. And it's not just the above, but also comments to meta and closed parent questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; But don't you think that closing on this site has become discouragement, not incentive?  &#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Peter Turner](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question#491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   And another one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Now there is that new generic excuse to close topics: &quot;not constructive&quot;. If you don't like something, you can ban it as &quot;not constructive&quot;. What an improvement!   &#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Lorenzo](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   I have once disagreed with these users in the past, but I now understand their concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Did you know that **25% of the questions are closed** here? Compare that to SO (1%), SU (8%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Now... What do you think**: &#xD;&#xA;How we can improve the community to prevent this?  &#xD;&#xA;Or am I writing non-sense and is the current behavior of the community right?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24618" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="472" RevisionGUID="8e413a40-c2eb-4b66-b4e9-bc00caa034f9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="_(I like different parts from different responses, so I'm submitting this combined version.)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Elevator Pitch: **A place for programmers to discuss problems that require wisdom, not clever code.**  &#xD;&#xA;OR  &#xD;&#xA;**Programmers is a site to share wisdom about the programming profession and subculture**  &#xD;&#xA;OR  &#xD;&#xA;[third option] _(see comments)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Tagline: ***&quot;Advice for programmers, by programmers&quot;***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Motto: **Think outside the brackets.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Logo Idea: ([see this answer][2])  &#xD;&#xA;![Think outside the brackets][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;_(I haven't included the Short Description because I think the existing FAQ description is mostly ok - personally I'd drop the &quot;subjective&quot; in the first line, and not mention code golf - but otherwise don't think it needs replacing.)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/QqIdm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like/473#473" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24620" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="382" RevisionGUID="7739c9dd-efa9-4478-8681-373cfb3b9c7d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Peter Turner][1] is retagging a hole lot of questions and adding the tag [`[bestestes]`][2]. I can't understand the meaning of the tag or how it is useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's the point of the tag `[bestestes]`? and is it useful?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1973/peter-turner&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/bestestes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24623" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="401" RevisionGUID="645e1349-59bf-4de6-bf96-3b29fa8b9f9b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The first thing you should always do if you are confused about what's happening on a Stack Exchange site is to check the FAQ. From [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;.** Please keep it professional at all times. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot;** Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, you should check the tags colored red on the meta-discussion site. If you did, you would've found this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions are being closed in accordance with the guidelines for this site. If you're confused because this is vastly different from the Area 51 proposal which has a lot of fluff questions, this redefinition was discussed on Meta.StackOverflow.com:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Should “Developer Testing” be folded into a more general “Programmers” site?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Adding discipline to programmers.stackexchange.com](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And discussed on this meta-discussion site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* [valid questions being closed.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do I totally not understand the point of Programmers.SE?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/360/do-i-totally-not-understand-the-point-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do we need a definition of subjective?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/324/do-we-need-a-definition-of-subjective)&#xD;&#xA;* [Remove the options to close questions on this site.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/355/remove-the-options-to-close-questions-on-this-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why should we have to battle to keep questions open? [closed]](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/339/why-should-we-have-to-battle-to-keep-questions-open-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [Please let's not lock questions unless as an absolute last resort](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/285/please-lets-not-lock-questions-unless-as-an-absolute-last-resort)&#xD;&#xA;* [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* *and so on...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry you missed all of the discussion we had about the definition of the site, but the decision has already been made to redefine the site as it currently is in the FAQ, and the time for discussion is over. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If Programmers.SE no longer appeals to you or your question does not fit within the guidelines of this site, you might want to try to find a different site, like [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) or [Quora](http://quora.com)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24624" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="513" RevisionGUID="7ffd8638-7fd5-47b0-b43f-c7c9bfcda383" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We all know about the &quot;Six Subjective Question Guidelines&quot; which we were [__ENFORCED__][1] to follow while asking questions in Programmers.SE. For convenience I am quoting them here-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    1. Inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;    2. Tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;    3. Have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;    4. Invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;    5. Insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;    6. Are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And many questions are being closed now because of not following the guideline. I just seen [one][2](and already voted for reopen). But I feel, it was helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please have a look at the [most voted][3] questions of this site. I don't feel all of them meet all of  these criteria mentioned in the guideline. But I think these are the  questions which represents the 'type of questions' should be asked in Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel only two things (other than being `subjective`) should be considered for deciding whether the question is a good one or not-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Is it helpful?   &#xD;&#xA;OR&#xD;&#xA;- Is it fun (harmless definitely)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider the description of Programmers.SE in [area51][4]-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Beta Q&amp;A site for expert programmers interested in discussions that are only indirectly related to programming.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And again there can be a guideline for asking good subjective questions. But then, people will __NOT__ be enforced to follow it. That means, no questions will be closed because of not following the guideline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15856/when-do-you-get-your-best-programming-ideas&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?page=1&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=50&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24625" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="517" RevisionGUID="9394ed09-ce54-4043-9654-66a4ed8825b2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Basics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Go through the tour.][1]&#xD;&#xA;- You can log in with your Google, Yahoo, etc. user by clicking the on icon of the service you have an account on the Login page.&#xD;&#xA;- Unlike forums and mailing lists, this concentrates on highlighting the good answers, and downvoting the incorrect or bad answers.  **It's not a replacement for discussion**, just a more efficient way to get answers.&#xD;&#xA;- *After you get some reputation make sure you are voting good posts up, and bad posts down!*&#xD;&#xA;- A ton of value comes from finding a question and answer via a search engine. We want a good answer to be the top hit for &quot;How do I use the me menu?&quot;  Don't worry if the questions are scrolling by too quickly on the front page, this isn't about tracking discussions.&#xD;&#xA;- What is Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow?  Joel's [announcement for stackoverflow.com][3] mentions the motivation behind this method of Q&amp;A.  More information on Stack Exchange in general can be found in the [Stack Overflow community FAQ][4] (much of it is general, some is specific to Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Asking good questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- People will upvote your question based on its quality, so [put some effort][5] into it.&#xD;&#xA;- Use tags to classify your question. This makes questions easier to read on the front page and brings up related questions on the sidebar.&#xD;&#xA;- There's no need to bump a question &amp;mdash; if your question is unanswered the community user will bump it on occasion.  Consider adding a [bounty](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/bounty) if you want to attract more attention to your question.&#xD;&#xA;- Feel free to continue to work on your question; edit, edit, edit.  This will give it a natural bump, and people will be able to watch your progress in adding more detail. People tend to help/upvote people who are actively trying to investigate their problem.&#xD;&#xA;- As you add to your question, if you end up finding the answer, then answer your own question so that future generations can benefit from it!&#xD;&#xA;- If someone answers your question, accept it as the answer. This is an important [part of the process][6] and rewards the people trying to help you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Giving good answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Don't only link to random sources on the Internet. Any person can type their answer into Google and do that. If the information is good and under an open license, just put it in the answer (don't forget to link to and attribute the author).&#xD;&#xA;- Edit, edit, edit should be your mantra. &amp;mdash; If you've got a good answer and someone adds more detail, integrate it, and remember to always respect an individual's work.&#xD;&#xA;- Comments are like &quot;meta&quot; for the answer. *Don't ping pong back and forth in comments with new data, when someone leaves a comment with more information or something, just add the information to your question directly.* If people post updates to a comment ask them to add it to their question; that's where the power of Stack Exchange comes in: updates on people answering their question happens in the answers and the questions, so that when you are finished people don't have to track the conversation, just the final answer and solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Spread the word&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- We need help getting the word out, [we have some ideas][7] on how you can help, especially in places where users are already asking you for help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/15.html&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/7931/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/5234&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7/how-do-we-promote-our-site&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24626" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="465" RevisionGUID="3603735e-0547-49ab-988d-f373686f1713" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Renaming the site to match it&amp;#39;s FAQ or changing the FAQ to match the site name?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Right now, it's &quot;Programmers&quot;, which was a good name at the beginning. However, the FAQ contains so much more now (and I love the new topics for discussion here, except for code golf): software engineering, testing, tools/techniques, algorithms and data structures, design patterns, architecture, methodologies, QA, law, business concerns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although many people who are interested in these are programmers, I think a name that invokes engineering, craftsmanship, or development would be better. Lots of people interested in these topics are or were programmers, but these topics go far beyond programming and include people who aren't programmers (architects typically aren't programmers, but were at one time, as an example).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24628" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="401" RevisionGUID="43f8b90e-b90e-451b-a283-acd02e373d32" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The first thing you should always do if you are confused about what's happening on a Stack Exchange site is to check the FAQ. From [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;.** Please keep it professional at all times. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot;** Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, you should check the tags colored red on the meta-discussion site. If you did, you would've found this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions are being closed in accordance with the guidelines for this site. If you're confused because this is vastly different from the Area 51 proposal which has a lot of fluff questions, this redefinition was discussed on Meta.StackOverflow.com:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Should “Developer Testing” be folded into a more general “Programmers” site?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Adding discipline to programmers.stackexchange.com](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And discussed on this meta-discussion site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* [valid questions being closed.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do I totally not understand the point of Programmers.SE?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/360/do-i-totally-not-understand-the-point-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do we need a definition of subjective?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/324/do-we-need-a-definition-of-subjective)&#xD;&#xA;* [Remove the options to close questions on this site.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/355/remove-the-options-to-close-questions-on-this-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why should we have to battle to keep questions open? [closed]](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/339/why-should-we-have-to-battle-to-keep-questions-open-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [Please let's not lock questions unless as an absolute last resort](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/285/please-lets-not-lock-questions-unless-as-an-absolute-last-resort)&#xD;&#xA;* [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* *and so on...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry you missed all of the discussion we had about the definition of the site, but the decision has already been made to redefine the site as it currently is in the FAQ, and the time for discussion is over. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If Programmers.SE no longer appeals to you or your question does not fit within the guidelines of this site, you might want to try to find a different site, like [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) or [Quora](http://quora.com)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24629" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="470" RevisionGUID="a713962a-3a75-4444-a5ad-c838a61c2188" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Assuming the site goes live **and** gets &quot;Server Fault levels of traffic&quot; (source to follow) then we'll get a &quot;proper&quot; domain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we've chosen a good tagline, see [Write an Elevator Pitch/Tagline](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline) then the name should come.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things have changed since I wrote this answer. The site has gone live, but the criteria for getting a top level domain have changed. As well as getting Server Fault levels of traffic (which we are probably approaching) we still need to have a good name, and except in rare circumstances sites don't get their own name any more." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24630" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="609" RevisionGUID="e4f2f2cd-37bd-4d81-aa5c-ba20a98bd162" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [New Design Launched](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/687/new-design-launched)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Hi all. I'm [Jin][1], and I'll be working on the designs for the Stack Exchange sites as they graduate from the beta phase. Each site will have its own unique theme that will reflect its topic. However, all sites will share quite a bit of common elements so they feel like they're part of the Stack Exchange family.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since most user of the base on this site is familiar with Stackoverflow.com, I decided to go with a clean and simple design similar to SO, but with slightly more visual elements. The focus is still on readability and keeping the familiarity you have with SO.com. Layout structure-wise, I'm not changing much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also read the suggestions from the [logo thread][2]. I like the idea of using symbols as part of the logo. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(click image to view full resolution version)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/m0xSo.png&quot;&gt;![alt text][3]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;update&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you for your feedback. I have revise the initial mockup per your suggestions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RoM17.png&quot;&gt;![alt text][4]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;some changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Green in the header is changed to cyan, I think it contrasts well against the darker background. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Updated the logo treatment to &quot;} Programmers {&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Added &amp;lt;!- --&amp;gt; around the tag line.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Removed monospace font in top nav&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Question link color is now in blue instead of green.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Redid the tag treatment, so they're less boxy. I feel simpler () treament makes the home/question pages airier. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll be hanging out in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&quot;&gt;chatroom&lt;/a&gt;, feel free to drop by.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;UPDATE 2&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you for the feedback! I've decided to go with a different approach with the design which I think will work better for the Programmers site. I'm locking this thread so no additional feedback will be posted about the old mockup. I'll start a new post for the next design. Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/our-designer-in-residence-jin-yang/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/m0xSo.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RoM17.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24631" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1271" RevisionGUID="7693420a-1d9f-4ea0-a320-61b71d8683e2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the case of Programmers.SE, the [main][1] site is to discuss *anything related to programming* (further defined in the [FAQ][2]). Whereas the [meta site][3] exists to discuss *the main site*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a look at the [recent popular questions in Meta][4], you'll find:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - bug reports&#xD;&#xA; - generic questions regarding to Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA; - suggestions to FAQ modifications&#xD;&#xA; - discussions on which questions are on and off topic (for the main site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of which do not contain anything directly related to programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/?tab=month" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24632" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="603" RevisionGUID="4326e7dc-1339-4f37-ae5b-5be9a380fbe9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Where is my Beta badge?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/527/where-is-my-beta-badge)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;So I know from Mark Trapp's [answer][1] to [this question][2] that &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The private beta for Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lasted for 7 days immediately&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following the conclusion of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; commitment period. It is unattainable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; now. We're currently in the public&#xD;&#xA;&gt; beta period.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So from I gather the Private Beta started on 9/1/2010. [My oldest answer][3] is from 9/3/2010. So I had some activity in the first week. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously I wasn't active enough. Any ideas what more I needed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/527/where-is-my-beta-badge/529#529&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/527/where-is-my-beta-badge&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/775/what-is-the-ideal-mix-of-senior-to-junior-developers-on-a-team/788#788" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24633" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="476" RevisionGUID="e7cd9c24-cd47-4f5f-91e2-0fd5951580e0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked a question(on meta) last night about my reputation, &quot;Why Isn't My Reputation Updating?&quot;, but today I can't find it.  It's not listed with my questions(on meta).  A search doesn't find it.  Was it deleted?  Migrated?  If so, shouldn't I have been notified?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interestingly enough, I had theorized that the server move might have affected my reputation too.  My reputation doesn't show any of the upvotes I've received in the past few days.  And what about votes on meta?  Since the meta rep is from the parent site, do votes on meta have any effect?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*This is sort of two questions.  I'll split it into two if anyone thinks it necessary.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE:** [I decided to ask the question again.][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/480/why-isnt-my-reputation-updating" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24634" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="412" RevisionGUID="42ba2ca3-1525-4179-a3f2-22751153e95f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="*We closed the [domain naming thread (click for details)](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3/what-should-our-domain-name-be).* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, **let's start with a killer &quot;elevator pitch!&quot;** Joel will be blogging about the elevator pitch approach to naming, but to get you started: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Elevator Pitch &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't as easy as it sounds. Imagine the user who will never read your FAQ and you have two seconds to grab their attention. It should be catchy but descriptive. It should be thoroughly clear but painfully concise. **Make every... word... count.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some creative examples: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Gawker](http://gawker.com/): Daily Manhattan media news and gossip. Reporting live from the center of the universe. &#xD;&#xA;- [Gizmodo](http://gizmodo.com/): The gadget guide. So much in love with shiny new toys, it’s unnatural. &#xD;&#xA;- [Autoblog](http://www.autoblog.com/): We obsessively cover the auto industry. &#xD;&#xA;- [DumbLittleMan](http://www.dumblittleman.com/): So what do we do here? Well, it’s simple. 15 to 20 times per week we provide tips that will save you money, increase your productivity, or simply keep you sane. &#xD;&#xA;- [Needcoffee.com](http://www.needcoffee.com/): We are the Internet equivalent of a triple espresso with whipped cream. Mmmm…whipped cream. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Use it as a Tagline &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A shorter elevator pitch *can* be used as a tagline&amp;thinsp;&amp;mdash;&amp;thinsp;something you can display in the header at the top of the page. If it doesn't fit, consider shortening it or creating a separate tagline. Here are some great examples: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Slashdot](http://slashdot.org/): News for nerds. Stuff that matters. &#xD;&#xA;- [Lifehacker](http://www.lifehacker.com/): Don’t live to geek, geek to live! &#xD;&#xA;- [The Simple Dollar](http://www.thesimpledollar.com/): Financial talk for the rest of us. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Motto (don't forget your logo) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A logo begs for it own little, short tagline&amp;thinsp;&amp;mdash;&amp;thinsp;like a motto. Maybe the tagline inspires the logo; Maybe it's the other way around. Mottos make good t-shirt, bumper stickers, and other marketing material. Either way, you'll recognize a good motto when you see it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Just do it. &#xD;&#xA;- Think Different. &#xD;&#xA;- The Uncola. &#xD;&#xA;- Intel inside. &#xD;&#xA;- Like a rock. &#xD;&#xA;- The king of beers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;hellip;and perhaps all this leads to a proper name and domain for your site&amp;hellip; *eventually*. So let's start from the basics. **Come up with a killer elevator pitch, tagline, and/or motto!** " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24635" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1273" RevisionGUID="5d070a05-2d1a-473d-b8dd-e965f4d85538" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recommend reading the /faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    This site is for meta discussion about &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;programmers.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt;. That is, things like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Are questions about _____ on or off topic?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;What should our FAQ contain?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;How should we tag questions about _____?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;What should our &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/stack-exchange-naming-for-dummies/&quot;&gt;elevator pitch be&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;What should our site design look like?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Who should &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/moderator-pro-tempore/&quot;&gt;the moderators be&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;How do we &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/a-recipe-to-promote-your-site/&quot;&gt;promote our site&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/the-7-essential-meta-questions-of-every-beta/&quot;&gt;The 7 Essential Meta Questions&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24636" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="607" RevisionGUID="0e47c139-f8d4-48ad-ad4d-4d45789e9d2e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We have a link at the top of each page titled 'Unanswered'. Clicking it yields a list of questions and how many answers they have. Last time I clicked it, all questions listed had at least 2 answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it's behaving like &quot;All questions without an accepted answer&quot; - but there's an [amount][2] of [discussion][1] around the subjective nature of Programmers' questions meaning that the accepted answer isn't a useful concept - there are plenty of equally-valid answers to many of the questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even for Stack Overflow, isn't it just highlighting that the questioner hasn't accepted an answer yet, even though there's no (technical) forcing function to comply them to do so? On Programmers, this is largely irrelevant.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So.. what's the point of the 'Unanswered' link..? Is it still useful?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/105/should-we-worry-about-accept-rate&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24637" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="485" RevisionGUID="272fc340-9357-4a64-9151-bd261a843f02" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I trully understand when a question is unproper for a site, but this is ridiculous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was ['Do you have a phone on your desk?'][1]. Obviously my intent was to share experiences from fellow programmers. It is not about some error in my code, it is about a programmer's daily work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe my question follows some of [Jeff Atwood' Six Subjective Question Guidelines][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I that wrong? Am I missing something? My question got 17 answers and some up votes in those answers, one of them from a deaf guy, which I believe is pretty interesting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anybody please explain why people closed that question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14226/do-you-have-a-phone-on-your-desk-closed&#xD;&#xA;[2]:https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24638" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1343" RevisionGUID="ebe7fe3d-c08d-4f93-8819-7920291a11f2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I had a &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62916/why-is-there-so-much-hate-for-net-in-the-world&quot;&gt;subjective question&lt;/a&gt; that I was pretty sure would get closed, and it did.  Before I wrote this question I debated with myself for quite a while before asking it for a few reasons.  I highly respect the Stack Exchange network and I didn't want to get my question closed for violating the standards and guidelines of questions.  I also wrote and re-wrote my question several times trying to get the wording right to follow the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;six guidelines of subjective questions&lt;/a&gt;, which I failed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Still things didn't seem right, so I decided to ask the meta site &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1333/where-do-i-ask-a-subjective-question&quot;&gt;where I should ask a subjective question&lt;/a&gt;.  Thank you to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1333/where-do-i-ask-a-subjective-question/1334#1334&quot;&gt;very helpful answer&lt;/a&gt; I was able to understand the reasons why my wording was poor and why my question was closed.  However, in my meta question I also asked &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&quot;if there is not an appropriate stackexchange site, where is a good forum that I can ask that sort of question that has the maturity and popularity of the stackexchange sites so that I can get a quality response?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you to Jeff Atwood's comment, which I agree and kind of thought might be the case before I submitted the question in the first place, that the best place would have been to ask this outside of the stackexchange network.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, my question is, where is a good place to go outside of the stackexchange network where I can ask this very subjective question (probably with better wording as suggested by the answers to my meta question) but still be reaching the maturity and quality of the stackexchange community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24639" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="423" RevisionGUID="0eb14f94-5e2b-4a0b-94e1-7440c6f510cc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and SO](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;This StackExchange Programmers Beta site seems very redundant to me. How is it intended to differ from StackOverflow?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24640" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="652" RevisionGUID="76aa3925-7811-461c-b367-0e67da86ee15" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's hard to even *begin* to answer a question like this because so much of the history of this community is steeped in the &quot;anything goes&quot; philosophy that it originated with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of you may view me as being pro-moderation, but I want to remind those people that I argued against the merging of proposals like testing and architecture and software law into Programmers.SE because it was diametrically opposed to the community's collective mindset, not to mention the proposal's original stated purpose.  I was in favour of it remaining as a free-for-all.  Nevertheless, that merge happened, primarily because the team was not satisfied with this being a water cooler, and so here we are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't want to try to define in this answer what the site's scope *should be*.  My aim here is merely to highlight the identity crisis that this community still hasn't quite put behind itself, which *must* be resolved before it can successfully put anything into policy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start with what's in the FAQ today:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Developer tools and techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Practical algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Software law&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Code golf &amp; programming puzzles&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This reads like the description of a site for professionals.  Indeed, I'm sure that many of us (although certainly not all of us) want it to have a professional, if quirky, tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now let's look at the top 15 questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job?][1]&#xD;&#xA;2. [Does giving a developer a slower development machine result in faster/more efficient code?][2]&#xD;&#xA;3. [What is the good/bad decision you made in your mid 20's about your career][3]&#xD;&#xA;4. [Make a big deal out of == true?][4]&#xD;&#xA;5. [Stuff every programmer needs while working][5]&#xD;&#xA;6. [What's your favourite quote about programming?][6]&#xD;&#xA;7. [What's the most absurd myth about programming issues?][7]&#xD;&#xA;8. [What's your experience with female programmers?][8]&#xD;&#xA;9. [Will programmers be around in a few years?][9]&#xD;&#xA;10. [Why are so many programmers arrogant?][10]&#xD;&#xA;11. [What are the worst false economies in software development?][11]&#xD;&#xA;12. [Do people in non-English-speaking countries code in English?][12]&#xD;&#xA;13. [What is the (craziest, stupidest, silliest) thing a client/boss asked you to do?][13]&#xD;&#xA;14. [I've stopped coding for fun, is this a bad sign?][14]&#xD;&#xA;15. [How can a new programmer impress the software engineer (boss)?][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two of these are closed; if you go further down the list (I won't, in order to keep this long-winded post as short as possible) you'll see that fewer than 1/10 questions are actually closed; #9 and #10 are outliers in that respect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So let's now ask the question: Which of the top 15 (or indeed, top 25 or even top 100) questions actually fit into *any* of the sub-topics outlined in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Could maybe be lumped in under &quot;Freelancing and business concerns&quot;&#xD;&#xA;2. Nope.&#xD;&#xA;3. Definitely not.&#xD;&#xA;4. Nope.&#xD;&#xA;5. Double nope.&#xD;&#xA;6. Nope.&#xD;&#xA;7. No...&#xD;&#xA;8. Eh...&#xD;&#xA;9. Er...&#xD;&#xA;10. Dear lord no.&#xD;&#xA;11. Also maybe &quot;business concerns&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;12. Nope.&#xD;&#xA;13. Triple nope.&#xD;&#xA;14. Nah.&#xD;&#xA;15. No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, **I am not saying that these questions are all off-topic or don't belong here** - only that they don't match any of the topics *listed*, and that is bound to lead to confusion over what's *actually* on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps what's actually needed are a few more topics in the list, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Coding style (#4)&#xD;&#xA;* Software Career Development (#1, #3, possibly #8 and #14, #15)&#xD;&#xA;* Software Project Management (#2, #5 with major edits, possibly #8)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other questions in the list do seem to be &quot;programmer&quot; specific (to varying degrees) but can only really be classified as &quot;general interest&quot;, &quot;poll&quot;, or even &quot;rant&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So there's a definite impedance mismatch here.  Officially, you guys are saying that this site is for the professional working programmer, the senior developers and maybe a few of the juniors, people who are looking to *broaden their software skill set beyond just coding*.  Ostensibly, it's a Q&amp;A site for developers truly committed to creating better software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the questions and votes tell another story.  Even if we rule out the rants and jokes in the questions *and* answers - the ultimate removal of which is an unenviable task that is nowhere near complete - the site appears to cater to the *casual* programmer or even the *aspiring* programmer.  People who are just getting into software and are frustrated or confused.  People who want to reach out and exchange stories and water-cooler chat with other programmers and *maybe* learn a little bit in the process.  It's like the &quot;Programmers' Pub&quot;.  I'll take the [Language Holy War][16] with a side of [Pointless Bitching][17], please.  And do you have [Cartoons][18] on tap?  No matter, a bottle is fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I don't want to be prescriptive here.  If that is to be the scope of the site, *that's okay*.  It's also okay for people to occasionally argue about whether or not a specific question reasonably fits in scope.  However, it's very unhealthy for the community to be split down the middle on *what the site is supposed to be about*.  Programmers.SE is a confused adolescent, just about to graduate with no idea what to do next.  Will it be an exciting but hollow affair with Mrs. Robinson, or an uncertain, awkward bus ride into the horizon with Elaine?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry to be so dramatic, but Programmers.SE seems to have effectively become center stage for the epic and probably never-ending battle between inclusionists and deletionists.  Stack Overflow isn't *about* to dump its problems on you, it already *has* dumped its problems on you.  And because you no longer have the trusty metaphorical lanterns of code and objectivity to help you navigate through the proverbial fog, I don't think you can continue to play both sides the way that Stack Overflow did.  A few migrated questions are not going to make a lick of a difference when most of the frivolous questions are already *originating* here; you guys have to decide what you're going to be when you grow up, and you have to decide fast.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would love to write out a long list of examples of questions that should be closed or redirected to an Area 51 proposal.  But right now, I have no idea which of the Area 51 proposals you've listed are actually supposed to be off topic here.  There are already *so many* questions here about career advice, project management, interviewing, freelancing, brain power, etc., almost *none* of which are closed, that you can't start applying a bunch of arbitrary scope rules to *new* questions and expect them not to end in kicking and screaming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want a broader scope than what's spelled out in the FAQ, then you need to broaden the scope.  You need to come up with a definition that actually encompasses all of the subjects that are being talked about here *today* and currently considered on topic.  You need to revise the FAQ.  Normally this all would have been settled in Area 51, but Programmers.SE did a 180 halfway through, which makes matters more difficult.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if you actually want the scope to be what you currently have prescribed, then you need to start enforcing it on existing questions before you can even talk about what you're going to do with new questions.  Start by closing the most massively-upvoted off-topic questions.  *Then* observe patterns and see if it makes sense to point people to new or existing Area 51 proposals.  Then consider deleting the off-topic questions so that they're not sitting in the top 50, confusing the hell out of everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Either way is fine.  I have no personal axe to grind here, no serious investment in this site one way or the other.  Serious questions, fun questions, professional questions, newbie questions, I don't care.  But I don't think you can do this piecemeal; you need to take a holistic look at what this site is / should be, because otherwise you will have people bickering over every single closure and migration (sort of like... right now).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I admire your efforts to develop a policy here but just don't think that the community is ready for it.  Maybe Tim is right and you should just wait and see how things play out, although, speaking as a relative outsider, it doesn't look like that's been a very effective strategy so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Evidently, based on some of the comments in here, part of the community does not even agree that *there should be rules*.  If you want to talk about restricting the scope, then you've got your work cut out for you; before anything else, you're going to need to address this sub-community directly and come up with some sort of compromise (or just lay down the law, whatever works).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My personal suggestion is to start with the hopelessly vague [elevator pitch][19].  &quot;Sharing wisdom&quot; communicates precisely nothing about who you are.  If somebody's able to come up with a meaningful pitch that gets decent support, then maybe you'll have your answer as to what the scope should be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's my absurdly long-winded two cents.  Take or leave it.  Thanks for reading, if you got this far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/20407/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/13623/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/18120/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/12807/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/11312/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/39/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1745/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3974/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/11153/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/4693/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/19573/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1483/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2051/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3558/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/25432/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2846/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/14706/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/154/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/412/3249" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24641" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="548" RevisionGUID="3b6df7c9-e4b4-4f67-972a-c07555b0b8b8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Purpose of Community Wiki](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I just posted [this][1] question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I saw no options to make it community wiki. I remember that option. Why I don't see it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20363/what-is-the-most-inspiring-speech-from-a-developer-you-ever-watched" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24643" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="465" RevisionGUID="ebd04993-d8de-4311-81f4-2da8a4f80ec4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Renaming the site to match it&amp;#39;s FAQ or changing the FAQ to match the site name?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Right now, it's &quot;Programmers&quot;, which was a good name at the beginning. However, the FAQ contains so much more now (and I love the new topics for discussion here, except for code golf): software engineering, testing, tools/techniques, algorithms and data structures, design patterns, architecture, methodologies, QA, law, business concerns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although many people who are interested in these are programmers, I think a name that invokes engineering, craftsmanship, or development would be better. Lots of people interested in these topics are or were programmers, but these topics go far beyond programming and include people who aren't programmers (architects typically aren't programmers, but were at one time, as an example).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24644" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="643" RevisionGUID="ddc2c180-76ac-455b-9a06-1d41b15c6caa" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Dori is right](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/607/whats-the-point-of-unanswered-link/626#626). It's actually explained on the Unanswered page, but for some reason people tend to miss it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot of the Unanswered tab](http://so.mrozekma.com/unanswered-questions.png)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24645" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="683" RevisionGUID="ab377dc5-d5e0-49e2-9d8a-bbb5789d0dbe" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm going to make a different argument why I highly dislike the fonts than [OscarRyz][1] did: Its too hard to read. I know giving each site a personal touch is nice, but readability stands above all. I'm in the group that hates the [webapps][2] font: Just too blocky and weird. Every single title for the rest of this sites life will take a second glance just to see if they translated it correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm all for changing the design. Just not the fonts. The original 3 sites have been widely successful on just the same general font style. Why change it now?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/655/site-design-round-2/674#674&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24646" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="470" RevisionGUID="9ee905c9-c1f9-4133-ae96-6e1ecd1b87c8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Assuming the site goes live **and** gets &quot;Server Fault levels of traffic&quot; (source to follow) then we'll get a &quot;proper&quot; domain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we've chosen a good tagline, see [Write an Elevator Pitch/Tagline](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline) then the name should come.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things have changed since I wrote this answer. The site has gone live, but the criteria for getting a top level domain have changed. As well as getting Server Fault levels of traffic (which we are probably approaching) we still need to have a good name, and except in rare circumstances sites don't get their own name any more." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24647" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="641" RevisionGUID="95b96fbf-b60e-406f-aab3-b4734827f174" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We are next in line.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jin is working on the design, but has decided on to do a redesign based on the feedback from [the first &amp; second attempts](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed). Once that's been agreed we'll probably go live.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's also a question on Meta Stack Overflow about [identifying questions to migrate from SO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate) that indicates the go live date is imminent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com is *probably* going live this week," ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24648" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="687" RevisionGUID="b185e0f0-3ebd-4b49-bc8d-ace3e893ba76" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Hi all, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The [new design][1] has been deployed just now and I want to congratulate you guys for the official launch!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A few tweaks on the final design from the mockup I posted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - I decided not to use the Yanone font since it is a bit narrow for question titles, especially on the homepage where the titles are repeated. I'm using Tahoma instead, same as the Beta theme.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - I used /* */ for the logo since a lot of people liked it. But I did leave a faint cameo for  } { as well. If the community feels strongly about using } { maybe the mods can open up a poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - CSS3. The final implementation uses some CSS3 elements, such as the button treatment, new user greeting box(same tips box on Ask/Edit pages), multiple background for the body doodles. Our web stats show close to 90% of users use CSS3 capable browsers, so I felt it was OK to do so. IE and older browsers should degrade gracefully.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - The right side doodle didn't make it in, because it'd clash with the content at lower res. However, I may work it in later, using media query.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Error/404/Captcha images. For now I put in some place holders. Feel free to provide more feedback on the [official suggestion thread][2]. Or, if you like what I put in, I can leave them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The new favicons are up, but the old ones may be cached by your browsers. You can always load the following URLs and hard refresh.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  http://sstatic.net/programmers/img/favicon.ico&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  http://sstatic.net/programmersmeta/img/favicon.ico&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see any CSS/Styling issues, please start a new question for the bug report, and tag it with &quot;Design&quot; and &quot;Bug.&quot; It will be a lot easier for me to track new questions than reading the comments replied to this thread.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I typically fix CSS/usability issues asap. As for more subjective styling requests, I tend to let the new design simmer a bit. After having used the Beta Sketchy theme for a few months, it will take a bit of time to get used to the new design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks, and congrats again!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/655/site-design-round-2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/668/404-error-captcha-images" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24649" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1408" RevisionGUID="784dd477-d3b4-42a5-b3ae-7e56adec3c02" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If you catch it early *enough*, I think the answer is easy, I've had success with it myself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Downvote** and **comment**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    I came upon an interesting question ([I made a mistake accepting this job](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63657/i-made-a-mistake-accepting-this-job)) which had about 5 answers already, and the top one, if I remember correctly, in 4 minutes had already gone up to **+5/-0** (sadly the [timeline](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/63657/timeline) doesn't break it down into small enough chunks to actually tell).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    I didn't want to be so harsh, but I felt like the community was going to run away with it if I didn't say something.  Soon the comment had several upvotes and the momentum on the answer had been killed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59606/is-type-safety-worth-the-trade-offs/59608#59608 this is another example where a comment stopped the streak of upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;* If you have time, **answer**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Since I had downvoted, the OP asked me what my problem with it was and what my thoughts were.  I hadn't planned on answering, but I figured if I was going to be a naysayer then I had a responsibility to back up what I'd said if asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some users actually like these short answers; One poster commented this, and said that others (I can only assume mine) were too long-winded.  In response to me, he subsequently posted an [answer here on meta](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers/1365#1365) stating his reasoning.  I disagree with this view, but if it is a conscious opinion, than it is that user's prerogative and I am OK with that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I *don't* think this is a problem of members of the community *wanting* short answers, or valuing them over good ones in a completely fair comparison.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is another manifestation of [Fastest Gun in the West Problem](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem), and it *may be worse here on Programmers*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A short answer by nature has less to disagree with.&#xD;&#xA;* The short answer is more likely to be read by people just scanning the answers.&#xD;&#xA;* The short answer is digested quickly by all readers.&#xD;&#xA;* If the short answer already has votes, it's easy to *assume* that someone else has read the long answers for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the answers to the FGITW problem, [Adam Davis starts out with](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem/9758#9758):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've asked questions that have received an immediate answer with enough information to get me past my block, but not served on a platter as you propose, with all the information I might need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This quick-answer nature is ***very*** specific to StackOverflow.  A *high* percentage of questions on SO are likely to have been a &quot;blocker&quot; for someone, while almost all on Programmers are the thoughtful, non-urgent kind of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [(non-)solution](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73/is-the-fastest-gun-in-the-west-solved#93) to the FGITW problem is to encourage people to vote better.  This solution is much better suited to SO than to Programmers, and I believe needs revisiting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**In conclusion** I disagree with the idea that something is wrong the the &quot;people&quot; here.  It is completely natural to see a highly-upvoted short answer, read it, agree; then scan the rest and see a long-winded answer and assume everyone else must not have agreed and skip it.  Then you add your vote to the stack on the short answer, and voila, the cycle continues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If we want to fix this, the software is going to have to change.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24650" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="696" RevisionGUID="bad1f257-2d64-4cb3-8bbc-ca34bb77c80b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A long time ago we discussed the importance of the accept rate. Here are some examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Should we worry about accept rate?][1] - 16 votes on question, 25 votes + accepted answer on request to remove + 24 combined votes on other answers&#xD;&#xA; - [Can the accept rate be removed?][2] - 16 votes on question + 10 combined votes on answers&#xD;&#xA; - [Why would anyone accept an answer?][3] - Some backbround on why this is an issue&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was a bit disappointed when the new site design didn't hide the accept rates. The general consensus when those questions were asked was that we can't change anything now since were in beta but once we get out of beta, this will change. Which hasn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this something that can be done? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/105/should-we-worry-about-accept-rate&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/495/can-the-accept-rate-be-removed&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24651" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="476" RevisionGUID="48463e22-4540-4850-8fb9-f5380e880e74" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked a question(on meta) last night about my reputation, &quot;Why Isn't My Reputation Updating?&quot;, but today I can't find it.  It's not listed with my questions(on meta).  A search doesn't find it.  Was it deleted?  Migrated?  If so, shouldn't I have been notified?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interestingly enough, I had theorized that the server move might have affected my reputation too.  My reputation doesn't show any of the upvotes I've received in the past few days.  And what about votes on meta?  Since the meta rep is from the parent site, do votes on meta have any effect?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*This is sort of two questions.  I'll split it into two if anyone thinks it necessary.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE:** [I decided to ask the question again.][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/480/why-isnt-my-reputation-updating" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24652" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="654" RevisionGUID="85d88e3a-2829-4236-9944-6d4fac5deddc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**NOTE: This is NOT a complaint question.  I would like to know how I can improve my asking/answering ability.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [this question][1], what was wrong with my answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Again: This is **NOT** a complaint question, I'm not asked for upvotes, I'm not asking for the downvote removed, I just want to learn how I can be a better contributing member of the SE community.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/606/why-cant-i-upvote-comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24653" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="689" RevisionGUID="e5e9a62c-88a4-4e09-b479-9451daba68ad" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="# Love it!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Except the logo. In my opinion the logo [should be what was voted](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like) rather then a few comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also when loading a new page there is a *very* noticeable lag when swapping the fonts out. The nav bar overflows and then re-corrects when the new font drops in. Can this be fixed? (FF 4.b7)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24654" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1455" RevisionGUID="5a9c3416-6261-430f-84e0-8261fb4aaa6f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Born from the earlier question [Inclusion to the question topics section of the faq](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1430/inclusion-to-the-question-topics-section-of-the-faq) which asked whether 'programming psychology and philosophy' be added to the list of topics for questions in the FAQ, should we add *programmer relations* and *programmer development* to the FAQ instead?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(Quoted from [an earlier revision](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/c8bb7de9-1814-423a-86bd-798f09913817/view-source) of the previous question:)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that fall under 'Programmer relations' are those that concern teamwork, programmer to manager to stakeholder (or anyone in the development process?) etc...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Some examples from today are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [How can I get programmers to stop writing code vulnerable to SQL injection?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What is the best advice to give someone in this industry who resists change?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that fall under 'Programmer development' are those that concern self improvement as a programmer, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;[“The pragmatic Programmer” or “Clean Code”. which one would you get, and why?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Suggestions to set goals][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/68258/19799&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/69111/19799&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/69059/19799&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/69176/19799" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24655" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="485" RevisionGUID="14459d4d-7f55-4466-947e-df1e5a3df04b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I trully understand when a question is unproper for a site, but this is ridiculous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was ['Do you have a phone on your desk?'][1]. Obviously my intent was to share experiences from fellow programmers. It is not about some error in my code, it is about a programmer's daily work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe my question follows some of [Jeff Atwood' Six Subjective Question Guidelines][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I that wrong? Am I missing something? My question got 17 answers and some up votes in those answers, one of them from a deaf guy, which I believe is pretty interesting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anybody please explain why people closed that question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14226/do-you-have-a-phone-on-your-desk-closed&#xD;&#xA;[2]:https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24657" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="735" RevisionGUID="e0f8ed40-df51-4ccb-b74c-e0ec7332f356" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="After reviewing the '[Great Redisiplining][1]' and learning that we now *do* accept answers here, I'm not sure how I should handle accepting some of my previous questions. I have only asked a few, but some of them do not have have specific 'right' answer. For example, '[Do you work contract projects in addition to your full-time job?][2]' and '[What features are missing from the languages you use?][3]' are open-ended forum-type questions that have produced valuable discussion, but there is no correct response which should be accepted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a related note, one of my first questions-&#xD;&#xA;[Good furniture for programmers][4], although rather popular, almost certainly does not fit here under the new guidelines; should it be closed? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the questions above and perhaps similar ones like it by other members, what is the correct course of action and are they still permissible here under the new guidelines?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit&#xD;&#xA;--&#xD;&#xA;The chief concern here is that we have chosen not to hide the accept rate from profiles, so I don't really wish to be toting around a badge that says '0% Accept Rate' if it is going to have an adverse affect on my standing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10495/do-you-work-contract-projects-in-addition-to-your-full-time-job&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/634/what-features-are-missing-from-the-languages-you-use&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/742/good-furniture-for-programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24658" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="878" RevisionGUID="dd7da995-a1d6-4d9a-bd8c-749d8ed6ddcc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are *already* policies in place for questions that are too broad: edit them to limit their scope or close them. That's what the *not a real question* close reason is for. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Wiki is a tool for allowing the community to take ownership of a question or answer, it's to say &quot;Hey, I got the ball rolling, can you help me fill out the rest?&quot;, it's not a tool to be used to allow borderline-to-bad questions to exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to the question you're using as an example of something that you feel is just as broad as the one that got a *single close vote*, it was asked before the [Great Redisiplining](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) and hasn't had much activity since. Two wrongs don't make a right: just because a similar question stayed open doesn't mean a bad question gets a free pass. However, it's good to point out questions that slip through the cracks so others can take the appropriate action, like closing, on them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I emphasize *single close vote* because you're taking *one single, solitary* close vote far too personally. It takes 5 regular users with 3,000+ rep or a moderator to close a question. The moderation of this site is done by real people who make real choices and real interpretations of what the policies are. Many times people agree, perhaps just as often they don't. That's why it takes 5 people to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the question, as it stands now, looks to be fine, although borderline with the quality of the answers it's getting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And honestly, Programmers.SE is in no dire straits when it comes to people asking questions. There are tons of questions being asked, beyond the two you're focusing on, that aren't too broad; we don't need to make a special exception for overly broad questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24659" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="513" RevisionGUID="96d7fcde-36f9-4868-bbd0-e9bad66399b6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We all know about the &quot;Six Subjective Question Guidelines&quot; which we were [__ENFORCED__][1] to follow while asking questions in Programmers.SE. For convenience I am quoting them here-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    1. Inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;    2. Tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;    3. Have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;    4. Invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;    5. Insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;    6. Are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And many questions are being closed now because of not following the guideline. I just seen [one][2](and already voted for reopen). But I feel, it was helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please have a look at the [most voted][3] questions of this site. I don't feel all of them meet all of  these criteria mentioned in the guideline. But I think these are the  questions which represents the 'type of questions' should be asked in Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel only two things (other than being `subjective`) should be considered for deciding whether the question is a good one or not-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Is it helpful?   &#xD;&#xA;OR&#xD;&#xA;- Is it fun (harmless definitely)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider the description of Programmers.SE in [area51][4]-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Beta Q&amp;A site for expert programmers interested in discussions that are only indirectly related to programming.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And again there can be a guideline for asking good subjective questions. But then, people will __NOT__ be enforced to follow it. That means, no questions will be closed because of not following the guideline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15856/when-do-you-get-your-best-programming-ideas&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?page=1&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=50&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24660" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1457" RevisionGUID="493e1e97-e138-4220-b45e-1f2e573344d2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **This question has been superseded by the following questions:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [How can we improve our guidance about the purpose of comments?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/how-can-we-improve-our-guidance-about-the-purpose-of-comments)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2228/when-should-comments-be-deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subsequent to a question about technical solutions to cleaning up noise, Jeff Atwood posted [this answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83480/add-possibility-to-remove-comment-noise-fancy-edition/88010#88010):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;I appreciate the *intent*, but this is hellishly complex. I think my solution is even simpler than Shog9's&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Simply flag the first comment in the series for mod attention** with the text&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; irrelevant comment conversation; delete this conversation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A moderator could then blam, blam, blam, blam on each [x] to remove it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with this.  I've often wanted to even clean up my own conversations after resolving something that was productive, but not worth preserving.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, as we all know, with the introduction of [flag weight](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight) our flagging ability and priority gets diminished if no action is taken on our flags.  So, I think it's up to our community and moderators to decide (and therefore send the message to our moderators and 10k users) whether we believe this is an appropriate action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, **I'm all for it** - I'd love to see transient and incidental conversations completely disappear (not just be hidden) so that new visitors have a higher comment signal-to-noise ratio." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24661" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="908" RevisionGUID="056daeda-6174-4032-862f-4f56d2eb952c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The `C` tag on SO becomes an interesting place at the start of every semester. We get hordes of beginner questions that are asked _just_ differently enough to not be duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find myself digging through my old answers to find the example code snippets I used before, then re-cycle them into something that fits the exact problem being described. Then I link to my original answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Still, I've effectively done what Jeff [likes us to avoid][1], duplicating content. My snippet is basically the same, it's showing someone how to operate on a pointer, illustrating precedence or something else very simple. Yet, the question remains open, was re-opened .. and technically 'deserves' an answer, even if it's basically the same darn answer I've given three times. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It makes me think that, if you _could_ recycle an answer with little effort, the question at hand should probably be closed or merged. But then we're also told that a little duplication is a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, ideals are confusingly conflicting :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/893/whats-the-etiquette-for-reusing-your-answers/895#895" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24662" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="737" RevisionGUID="134d3bd0-855f-489d-a36a-b22655465083" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [The Ask Question link is wrapped](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/715/the-ask-question-link-is-wrapped)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;The new design has a bug in my Firefox 3.6.13 - the &quot;Ask Question&quot; link is under &quot;Questions&quot; not on the right where it should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PSgsN.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Screen resolution is 1440x900." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24663" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="971" RevisionGUID="1b0f8a76-bd16-47df-bb5d-bbd5a94be570" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Before the [&quot;Six Subjective Question Guidelines&quot;][1] there were a lot of controversial, useless, funny rants around here. Hilariously angry people telling Dilbert-like stories. I understand that not everyone has the same sense of humour and it's sure nice to keep things in order, like having a platform for every type of topic. The biggest advantage of keeping topics separated is the quality of feedback you get, when people know exactly what they may ask/answer and what they may not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But every 3rd question (that I have seen today) has `Mark Trapp`'s comment in them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Which of the six subjective guidelines&#xD;&#xA;&gt; do you think your question meets? –&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mark Trapp♦ 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do not take this as an offense Mark, you do a great job as a `Moderator` and that's fine. And you're right about the guidelines for Programmers.SE. But the fact that you need to remind many people of these guidelines makes me think that maybe the time has come for a page like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://rants-and-fun.stackexchange.com &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you guys think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT**: Please, before you get angry about this, understand this: I'm fairly new to SE (some 3 months?) and I love every aspect of it. Technology, seriousness, quality, potential of fun. I know I'm questioning some **fundamental** principles of SE, but be aware of these two facts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I think I'm not alone, and SE lives off its community. So let's hear opinions, e.g. on [Area 51][2]&#xD;&#xA;2. Be fair about it. You expect fairness from your users, so be fair to your users as well. Your guidelines have been negotiated over time, they're not written in marble. And they will change again eventually, no matter for what reason. This is exactly, what makes SE so powerful!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/27342/rants-and-fun" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24664" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="548" RevisionGUID="918cbd56-4e88-403e-a350-7189fbaa4c5a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Purpose of Community Wiki](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I just posted [this][1] question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I saw no options to make it community wiki. I remember that option. Why I don't see it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20363/what-is-the-most-inspiring-speech-from-a-developer-you-ever-watched" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24665" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="962" RevisionGUID="430aa83a-9232-4372-97d9-4659e5ea037e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[I asked this question also.][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There's a chance that the post was&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lost during the data-centre migration,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but I'm not on the development team so&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't know what processes were in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; place (if any) to prevent this.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Blog post][2] about migration.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;*ChrisF*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And in the comments to it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;@john this is probably it – Jeff Atwood♦&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I can speak from experience that your answers probably aren't coming back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/476/question-i-asked-dissappeared&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/datacenter-migration-oct-23/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24666" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1488" RevisionGUID="442f423e-2eda-4e05-85ba-16c952b953e5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Silly question?  I don't think so...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Referring to the question [What is the flag option for][1], and the accepted answer provided, I should be contributing by flagging obvious spam as such, which I believe I'm adhering to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three times I've done so, in each case the post was closed and deleted, yet *I now end up with flag weight 90*.  That's counter intuitive to say the least.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Needless to say I'm reluctant to continue as I'm apparently doing something that doesn't meet the approval of the mods - so what's the current correct answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1298/what-is-the-flag-option-for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24667" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="771" RevisionGUID="190fcb2a-571c-413f-9f7b-3528a1b54490" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's built based on &quot;hot&quot; meta question lists, plus the [featured] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Click here to see what it uses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/?tab=week  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/?tab=hot  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... in that order&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [meta-tag:featured] tag is problematic because users tend to leave the featured tag on.. *forever*. Which I disagree with, so we'll be pushing some changes on that soon.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24668" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="641" RevisionGUID="9871be9b-07be-4dc9-ba89-fe316049e972" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We are next in line.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jin is working on the design, but has decided on to do a redesign based on the feedback from [the first &amp; second attempts](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed). Once that's been agreed we'll probably go live.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's also a question on Meta Stack Overflow about [identifying questions to migrate from SO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate) that indicates the go live date is imminent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com is *probably* going live this week," ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24671" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1660" RevisionGUID="f00d52a3-2ad0-4469-ae58-14bb5466f4b5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="To tackle the relatively easy part of your question first, if you see a comment chain devolving into an extended discussion that does nothing to improve the post to which it is attached, flag the post for moderator review. Extended discussion, on any question, is discouraged and [we will actively clean those up](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1457/how-do-our-moderators-and-community-members-feel-about-cleaning-up-comment-nois/1508#1508).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding legal questions, it's really a two parter:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Are *all* legal questions ill-served by being asked here?&#xD;&#xA;* If not, is there a certain *kind* of legal question that's ill-served here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the first question, I don't think so. The Stack Exchange system can provide great answers, and there is a certain amount of community vetting in the form of voting, comments, and counter-answers, but it *requires* common sense. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, for example, I told you that the best practice for implementing scrum in your job was to submit TPS reports daily that contain nothing but 14 pages of the letter 'K', I would hope you wouldn't do that even if my answer was the top-voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the context of legal questions, common sense is *always, always* consult a lawyer. Asking a site devoted to non-lawyers who do not have an attorney-client relationship for definitive legal advice is obviously dangerous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that's not to say you *can't* ask about legal issues: it's akin to asking a colleague or a friend about their experiences in a similar situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take the non-paying customer question, for instance: you might ask that question of a colleague, who might say something like &quot;Obviously get a lawyer, but when that happened to me, this is what worked.&quot; That's the type of answer we want on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the second question, the highly-specific legal question that can *only* be answered by a lawyer, like a question about being sued and asking for a legal interpretation for a defense, would be off-topic. We're not lawyers: we can't answer those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there is always going to be a fine line between what constitutes regular, professional advice (on-topic) and what constitutes personal legal advice (off-topic). The standard should be, &quot;would a reasonable person consider the question to be asking for personal legal advice?&quot; If so, it's a candidate for closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One footnote regarding common sense: there are askers who appear to have the wrong set of expectations when asking legal questions, and both of the questions you listed appear to have this problem. A person who appears to think Programmers.SE substitutes a lawyer **needs** to be educated that he *cannot* use the answers given as a way to circumvent legal council.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this end, it's similar to questions on Stack Overflow where someone asks how to do something insane, and the only correct answer is &quot;**Don't do that.**  Do X instead.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the purpose of the Stack Exchange network is to build up questions and answers that can help others, not just the asker. So a misguided asker isn't reason enough to close a question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24672" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="894" RevisionGUID="6d3ca630-9c88-43c9-885e-0453e5a0ec4d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="When I tried to post my [last question on etiquette](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/893/whats-the-etiquette-for-reusing-your-answers), I got this warning:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the warning shouldn't appear anywhere, you'd think Meta Programmers.SE would be it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24673" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="919" RevisionGUID="3f79fd82-79cf-461a-9f01-f0e4b004913c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Someone new to our site, or perhaps Stack Exchange might get the idea that our site is for any kind of programming related question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since migration with Stack Overflow is not bi-directional, I suggest that we decide on [an elevator pitch or tagline][1] that lets people know that questions about the programming _industry_ are welcome here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24674" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1880" RevisionGUID="08a9f8c5-2c92-4ee5-8ee4-918155f39688" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As ChrisF mentioned, questions need to invite some unique insight from programmers beyond just a simple &quot;I'm asking programmers&quot; clause. In terms of possible scope, we want to hit the blue area of this diagram:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Programmers.SE scope](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, real questions invite *answers*, not *ideas*, *opinions*, or *lists*. From [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `_____`”, then you should not be asking here. (You are more than welcome to have such discussions in our [real time web chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/).) However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged [and possibly removed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion), **avoid** asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite `______`?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I closed it as off-topic per these guidelines: Stack Exchange is not well suited for generating lists of recommendations. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, after looking around, I found we had an earlier round that I thought might be helpful (even if it happened to have been closed), so I changed the close reason to exact duplicate to provide a link back to the earlier question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As others have noted, it's probably a better fit for [Productivity.SE](http://productivity.stackexchange.com) or even [Project Management.SE](http://pm.stackexchange.com), but the guidelines about open-ended questions are a network-wide thing, and lists of recommendations are off-topic everywhere, not just on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Are questions not directly related to programming (but might concern programmers) on-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are “I'm looking for X” questions on topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also check out [Frequently closing popular questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1675/frequently-closing-popular-questions), where the idea that the guidelines in place shouldn't apply to popular questions was discussed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24675" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="948" RevisionGUID="2310e167-edf2-40a2-b68a-bd24cddc673a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and SO](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Why does this site exist when there is Stack overflow already?!!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24676" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1066" RevisionGUID="e2a79da4-adfc-49ec-b5db-1ff8b6450a24" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My moderation style would be to give users time to edit their question before closing, never close based on the quality of the answers and consider the popularity of the question when deciding whether or not it truly requires moderator attention. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some examples of helping a user on Meta to edit a question to get it reopened.  This is how I would guide users to making changes to their questions rather than welcoming them with a closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/923/this-question-should-not-have-been-closed/938#938&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16618/what-will-be-considered-harmful-next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(or not)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/510/is-my-question-that-bad-or-am-i-totally-out-of-it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, in the interest of full disclosure, here's something that got me banned from programmers.SE for a day.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66438/p-se-user-is-creating-bad-tags-for-personal-harassment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I add this to explain that I believe in retagging, the use meta-tags within the paradigm, and until the feature is deprecated using tags to filter out junk you don't want to see.  Also, I am committed to I asking questions on meta before I go it alone and when I make a mistake, apologize. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24677" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1066" RevisionGUID="dd6f39db-e61a-44f6-8301-29e4a7b4e7e7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My moderation style would be to give users time to edit their question before closing, never close based on the quality of the answers and consider the popularity of the question when deciding whether or not it truly requires moderator attention. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some examples of helping a user on Meta to edit a question to get it reopened.  This is how I would guide users to making changes to their questions rather than welcoming them with a closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/923/this-question-should-not-have-been-closed/938#938&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16618/what-will-be-considered-harmful-next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(or not)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/510/is-my-question-that-bad-or-am-i-totally-out-of-it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, in the interest of full disclosure, here's something that got me banned from programmers.SE for a day.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66438/p-se-user-is-creating-bad-tags-for-personal-harassment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I add this to explain that I believe in retagging, the use meta-tags within the paradigm, and until the feature is deprecated using tags to filter out junk you don't want to see.  Also, I am committed to I asking questions on meta before I go it alone and when I make a mistake, apologize. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24679" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1071" RevisionGUID="3c04cd0d-18c8-4fcc-b484-cebe7dfe3ed0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Should moderator nominees have their reputations recalculated?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2913/should-moderator-nominees-have-their-reputations-recalculated)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Well, I just recalced and lost a few hundred points, it might not be a bad idea for everyone else to do the same in the interest of full disclosure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Purely voluntary of course." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24680" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1071" RevisionGUID="22de68d9-3fa5-41b9-ac3d-77114598c524" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Should moderator nominees have their reputations recalculated?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2913/should-moderator-nominees-have-their-reputations-recalculated)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Well, I just recalced and lost a few hundred points, it might not be a bad idea for everyone else to do the same in the interest of full disclosure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Purely voluntary of course." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24682" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="652" RevisionGUID="48d50971-551e-4c36-aa30-f43e4fcefe4d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's hard to even *begin* to answer a question like this because so much of the history of this community is steeped in the &quot;anything goes&quot; philosophy that it originated with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of you may view me as being pro-moderation, but I want to remind those people that I argued against the merging of proposals like testing and architecture and software law into Programmers.SE because it was diametrically opposed to the community's collective mindset, not to mention the proposal's original stated purpose.  I was in favour of it remaining as a free-for-all.  Nevertheless, that merge happened, primarily because the team was not satisfied with this being a water cooler, and so here we are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't want to try to define in this answer what the site's scope *should be*.  My aim here is merely to highlight the identity crisis that this community still hasn't quite put behind itself, which *must* be resolved before it can successfully put anything into policy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start with what's in the FAQ today:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Developer tools and techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Practical algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Software law&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Code golf &amp; programming puzzles&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This reads like the description of a site for professionals.  Indeed, I'm sure that many of us (although certainly not all of us) want it to have a professional, if quirky, tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now let's look at the top 15 questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job?][1]&#xD;&#xA;2. [Does giving a developer a slower development machine result in faster/more efficient code?][2]&#xD;&#xA;3. [What is the good/bad decision you made in your mid 20's about your career][3]&#xD;&#xA;4. [Make a big deal out of == true?][4]&#xD;&#xA;5. [Stuff every programmer needs while working][5]&#xD;&#xA;6. [What's your favourite quote about programming?][6]&#xD;&#xA;7. [What's the most absurd myth about programming issues?][7]&#xD;&#xA;8. [What's your experience with female programmers?][8]&#xD;&#xA;9. [Will programmers be around in a few years?][9]&#xD;&#xA;10. [Why are so many programmers arrogant?][10]&#xD;&#xA;11. [What are the worst false economies in software development?][11]&#xD;&#xA;12. [Do people in non-English-speaking countries code in English?][12]&#xD;&#xA;13. [What is the (craziest, stupidest, silliest) thing a client/boss asked you to do?][13]&#xD;&#xA;14. [I've stopped coding for fun, is this a bad sign?][14]&#xD;&#xA;15. [How can a new programmer impress the software engineer (boss)?][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two of these are closed; if you go further down the list (I won't, in order to keep this long-winded post as short as possible) you'll see that fewer than 1/10 questions are actually closed; #9 and #10 are outliers in that respect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So let's now ask the question: Which of the top 15 (or indeed, top 25 or even top 100) questions actually fit into *any* of the sub-topics outlined in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Could maybe be lumped in under &quot;Freelancing and business concerns&quot;&#xD;&#xA;2. Nope.&#xD;&#xA;3. Definitely not.&#xD;&#xA;4. Nope.&#xD;&#xA;5. Double nope.&#xD;&#xA;6. Nope.&#xD;&#xA;7. No...&#xD;&#xA;8. Eh...&#xD;&#xA;9. Er...&#xD;&#xA;10. Dear lord no.&#xD;&#xA;11. Also maybe &quot;business concerns&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;12. Nope.&#xD;&#xA;13. Triple nope.&#xD;&#xA;14. Nah.&#xD;&#xA;15. No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, **I am not saying that these questions are all off-topic or don't belong here** - only that they don't match any of the topics *listed*, and that is bound to lead to confusion over what's *actually* on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps what's actually needed are a few more topics in the list, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Coding style (#4)&#xD;&#xA;* Software Career Development (#1, #3, possibly #8 and #14, #15)&#xD;&#xA;* Software Project Management (#2, #5 with major edits, possibly #8)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other questions in the list do seem to be &quot;programmer&quot; specific (to varying degrees) but can only really be classified as &quot;general interest&quot;, &quot;poll&quot;, or even &quot;rant&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So there's a definite impedance mismatch here.  Officially, you guys are saying that this site is for the professional working programmer, the senior developers and maybe a few of the juniors, people who are looking to *broaden their software skill set beyond just coding*.  Ostensibly, it's a Q&amp;A site for developers truly committed to creating better software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the questions and votes tell another story.  Even if we rule out the rants and jokes in the questions *and* answers - the ultimate removal of which is an unenviable task that is nowhere near complete - the site appears to cater to the *casual* programmer or even the *aspiring* programmer.  People who are just getting into software and are frustrated or confused.  People who want to reach out and exchange stories and water-cooler chat with other programmers and *maybe* learn a little bit in the process.  It's like the &quot;Programmers' Pub&quot;.  I'll take the [Language Holy War][16] with a side of [Pointless Bitching][17], please.  And do you have [Cartoons][18] on tap?  No matter, a bottle is fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I don't want to be prescriptive here.  If that is to be the scope of the site, *that's okay*.  It's also okay for people to occasionally argue about whether or not a specific question reasonably fits in scope.  However, it's very unhealthy for the community to be split down the middle on *what the site is supposed to be about*.  Programmers.SE is a confused adolescent, just about to graduate with no idea what to do next.  Will it be an exciting but hollow affair with Mrs. Robinson, or an uncertain, awkward bus ride into the horizon with Elaine?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry to be so dramatic, but Programmers.SE seems to have effectively become center stage for the epic and probably never-ending battle between inclusionists and deletionists.  Stack Overflow isn't *about* to dump its problems on you, it already *has* dumped its problems on you.  And because you no longer have the trusty metaphorical lanterns of code and objectivity to help you navigate through the proverbial fog, I don't think you can continue to play both sides the way that Stack Overflow did.  A few migrated questions are not going to make a lick of a difference when most of the frivolous questions are already *originating* here; you guys have to decide what you're going to be when you grow up, and you have to decide fast.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would love to write out a long list of examples of questions that should be closed or redirected to an Area 51 proposal.  But right now, I have no idea which of the Area 51 proposals you've listed are actually supposed to be off topic here.  There are already *so many* questions here about career advice, project management, interviewing, freelancing, brain power, etc., almost *none* of which are closed, that you can't start applying a bunch of arbitrary scope rules to *new* questions and expect them not to end in kicking and screaming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want a broader scope than what's spelled out in the FAQ, then you need to broaden the scope.  You need to come up with a definition that actually encompasses all of the subjects that are being talked about here *today* and currently considered on topic.  You need to revise the FAQ.  Normally this all would have been settled in Area 51, but Programmers.SE did a 180 halfway through, which makes matters more difficult.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if you actually want the scope to be what you currently have prescribed, then you need to start enforcing it on existing questions before you can even talk about what you're going to do with new questions.  Start by closing the most massively-upvoted off-topic questions.  *Then* observe patterns and see if it makes sense to point people to new or existing Area 51 proposals.  Then consider deleting the off-topic questions so that they're not sitting in the top 50, confusing the hell out of everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Either way is fine.  I have no personal axe to grind here, no serious investment in this site one way or the other.  Serious questions, fun questions, professional questions, newbie questions, I don't care.  But I don't think you can do this piecemeal; you need to take a holistic look at what this site is / should be, because otherwise you will have people bickering over every single closure and migration (sort of like... right now).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I admire your efforts to develop a policy here but just don't think that the community is ready for it.  Maybe Tim is right and you should just wait and see how things play out, although, speaking as a relative outsider, it doesn't look like that's been a very effective strategy so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Evidently, based on some of the comments in here, part of the community does not even agree that *there should be rules*.  If you want to talk about restricting the scope, then you've got your work cut out for you; before anything else, you're going to need to address this sub-community directly and come up with some sort of compromise (or just lay down the law, whatever works).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My personal suggestion is to start with the hopelessly vague [elevator pitch][19].  &quot;Sharing wisdom&quot; communicates precisely nothing about who you are.  If somebody's able to come up with a meaningful pitch that gets decent support, then maybe you'll have your answer as to what the scope should be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's my absurdly long-winded two cents.  Take or leave it.  Thanks for reading, if you got this far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/20407/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/13623/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/18120/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/12807/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/11312/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/39/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1745/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3974/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/11153/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/4693/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/19573/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/1483/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2051/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3558/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/25432/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/2846/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/14706/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/154/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/412/3249" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24683" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1075" RevisionGUID="3899391f-e9ba-427d-a9cd-c5e0bc5b24e4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Check out this ['discussion'][1] or lack there-of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's pretty clear that 'favorite' is one of those keywords that doesn't hit the filter (least favorite or most favorite doesn't matter)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My suggestion would be to either take your chances and use the queen's english &quot;favourite&quot; (which according to my Fedora Spin, is in fact the correct spelling) or just replace the word with &quot;Won the most awards&quot; or &quot;Killed the most people&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24684" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1075" RevisionGUID="fbf1c5f3-d8c0-4318-98c2-204444a115ad" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Check out this ['discussion'][1] or lack there-of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's pretty clear that 'favorite' is one of those keywords that doesn't hit the filter (least favorite or most favorite doesn't matter)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My suggestion would be to either take your chances and use the queen's english &quot;favourite&quot; (which according to my Fedora Spin, is in fact the correct spelling) or just replace the word with &quot;Won the most awards&quot; or &quot;Killed the most people&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24685" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="654" RevisionGUID="a0b8ce8f-d489-4802-b746-c58060773e09" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**NOTE: This is NOT a complaint question.  I would like to know how I can improve my asking/answering ability.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [this question][1], what was wrong with my answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Again: This is **NOT** a complaint question, I'm not asked for upvotes, I'm not asking for the downvote removed, I just want to learn how I can be a better contributing member of the SE community.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/606/why-cant-i-upvote-comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24686" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1907" RevisionGUID="c2acc94b-d6db-4c1e-a8e2-ba03004f2ca6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As per Jeff's [request][1] (see comments), I will try to illustrate how I see things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The high number of closed questions and frustrated users complaints is a pretty good indication that our rules and/or guidelines are too complicated to understand by the average developer (and I'm one of them). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the goal is to create an elitistic community of programmers (and attact elites), we should keep them and continue to apply them blindly. It will probably work long term.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However if we really want to make the internet better for programmers, regardless their level, culture, beliefs, *[put any difference here]*, we should either ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- simplify the rules&#xD;&#xA;- be more flexible about them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that that kind of questions should be avoided in the future:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10087/if-you-had-the-power-to-remove-one-thing-in-your-daily-job-what-would-it-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I see a lot of closed questions that should be kept open because of the value they (and will) provide to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90848/is-outsourcing-offshoring-disloyal&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1156/how-do-you-deal-with-bad-coworkers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10916/do-speakers-get-paid-for-their-tech-talks&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72090/want-to-quit-they-want-me-to-stay&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90383/punishment-for-breaking-the-build&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78956/i-no-longer-want-to-be-a-developer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3272/job-hopping-is-it-a-problem&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21782/stagnating-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11440/being-a-good-mentor&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5372/how-do-programmers-stay-healthy&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87155/evolution-of-mainstream-programming-languages-simplicity-versus-complexity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But on the other hand, I see many questions that should be closed according the same rules, but are left open. I selected questions where at least one moderator answered: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89666/promotion-or-de-motivation/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84265/giving-employer-power-of-attorney-to-obtain-your-inventions/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83225/should-a-developer-be-forced-to-memorize-details/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76858/how-important-is-it-to-finish-projects/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72001/so-theyre-trying-to-pull-me-into-management/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4000/how-involved-should-our-employers-be-in-our-education/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80898/how-do-you-ask-or-get-asked-to-speak-at-a-software-conference/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77102/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences/ &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, **all the questions** above deserve to stay opened. With their answers, they are all **very valuable** for the vast majority of programmers and **contribute to a better internet**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should measure how valuable a question would be before closing it, instead of applying rules blindly. That's the role of the moderators. To be effective, this task **must** be collective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that questions which main aim is having fun and/or social interactions should be closed, however, some highly interesting questions should be able to remain on the site. Because they are interesting and useful, and only for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When in doubt, moderator should request opinions like Mark Trapp [did][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That flexibility, that is called [practical wisdom][3], and I strongly believe it's the way to go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta/1896#1896&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1859/whats-constructive-about-being-lazy-and-incompetent&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1675/frequently-closing-popular-questions/1677#1677" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24687" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1343" RevisionGUID="0286d259-f9ca-4c86-9b13-cfffb38a1569" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I had a &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62916/why-is-there-so-much-hate-for-net-in-the-world&quot;&gt;subjective question&lt;/a&gt; that I was pretty sure would get closed, and it did.  Before I wrote this question I debated with myself for quite a while before asking it for a few reasons.  I highly respect the Stack Exchange network and I didn't want to get my question closed for violating the standards and guidelines of questions.  I also wrote and re-wrote my question several times trying to get the wording right to follow the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;six guidelines of subjective questions&lt;/a&gt;, which I failed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Still things didn't seem right, so I decided to ask the meta site &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1333/where-do-i-ask-a-subjective-question&quot;&gt;where I should ask a subjective question&lt;/a&gt;.  Thank you to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1333/where-do-i-ask-a-subjective-question/1334#1334&quot;&gt;very helpful answer&lt;/a&gt; I was able to understand the reasons why my wording was poor and why my question was closed.  However, in my meta question I also asked &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&quot;if there is not an appropriate stackexchange site, where is a good forum that I can ask that sort of question that has the maturity and popularity of the stackexchange sites so that I can get a quality response?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you to Jeff Atwood's comment, which I agree and kind of thought might be the case before I submitted the question in the first place, that the best place would have been to ask this outside of the stackexchange network.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, my question is, where is a good place to go outside of the stackexchange network where I can ask this very subjective question (probably with better wording as suggested by the answers to my meta question) but still be reaching the maturity and quality of the stackexchange community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24688" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1077" RevisionGUID="8f2895e9-3d86-42f1-a716-9bad27a018da" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Further to my [post on the nomination page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election#post-39586), I'd just add that my &quot;moderation style&quot; will be that of a teacher rather than a disciplinarian.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators do have a difficult task given them &amp;mdash; keep a site that is open to community-created content clean and in-line with the site's purpose; at the same time being civil, courteous and helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even users who have posted several questions and have significant reputation may end up posting questions that don't seem in line with established rules or guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* This doesn't mean that those users wish to fill up the site with junk&#xD;&#xA;* It doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't aware of the guidelines&#xD;&#xA;* It doesn't even necessarily mean that they don't understand the guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They may just have a different view of them (I've [been there](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28172/what-does-a-productive-programmer-day-consist-of-closed) myself). I believe this can be a learning experience for all involved. The question may be in fact [in a gray area](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1053/so-programmers-gray-area).  Maybe situation doesn't fall neatly into any category of guidance.  **Very likely, there is a good question in there that just isn't worded in the most productive way**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tools that moderators and even members have should be used very carefully.  An experience I had just a few days ago illustrated this to me.  I was closely watching a question that was interesting. A new answer was posted that I very much disagreed with.  It was well written and a valid opinion, but to me, personally, it was philosophically wrong. So, I downvoted the question. However, I appreciated the perspective it added to the answers, because I felt like it brought up an angle that had not been addressed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few minutes later, I realized it had been deleted.  The user had obviously thought that by getting a downvote so quickly, it was better off to just get rid of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I regretted having downvoted so quickly and wished I had let more members of the community read that opinion and see what they thought. I didn't consider the impact my downvote would have to the poster, and I think that I should have commented prior to downvoting so early.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I take this same view with the close-vote and the tools a moderator has. They are not just a mop and a broom (what Wikipedia administrators refer to their tools as).  Here, I believe, we have a great responsibility to teach &amp;mdash; ask questions first and early, give suggestions, help, etc., and clean up (vote to close/delete) if needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To address Pierre's point about being &quot;firm&quot; - I absolutely understand that no matter how nice or helpful a moderator has been, it doesn't mean that conflict will never arise.  When it does, I don't believe a moderator is out of line to act authoritatively &amp;mdash; I would simply be careful to make sure that I have exhausted my ability to be helpful prior to taking any action that could be viewed as unilateral.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the end, I would simply be asking of my actions &quot;is what I'm doing helping the community reach the potential it has?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24689" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="696" RevisionGUID="edba7530-653a-4d6e-8c9c-c03c56b145fe" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A long time ago we discussed the importance of the accept rate. Here are some examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Should we worry about accept rate?][1] - 16 votes on question, 25 votes + accepted answer on request to remove + 24 combined votes on other answers&#xD;&#xA; - [Can the accept rate be removed?][2] - 16 votes on question + 10 combined votes on answers&#xD;&#xA; - [Why would anyone accept an answer?][3] - Some backbround on why this is an issue&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was a bit disappointed when the new site design didn't hide the accept rates. The general consensus when those questions were asked was that we can't change anything now since were in beta but once we get out of beta, this will change. Which hasn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this something that can be done? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/105/should-we-worry-about-accept-rate&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/495/can-the-accept-rate-be-removed&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24690" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1077" RevisionGUID="f6d75f44-e313-4435-b138-3468f868233c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Further to my [post on the nomination page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election#post-39586), I'd just add that my &quot;moderation style&quot; will be that of a teacher rather than a disciplinarian.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators do have a difficult task given them &amp;mdash; keep a site that is open to community-created content clean and in-line with the site's purpose; at the same time being civil, courteous and helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even users who have posted several questions and have significant reputation may end up posting questions that don't seem in line with established rules or guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* This doesn't mean that those users wish to fill up the site with junk&#xD;&#xA;* It doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't aware of the guidelines&#xD;&#xA;* It doesn't even necessarily mean that they don't understand the guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They may just have a different view of them (I've [been there](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28172/what-does-a-productive-programmer-day-consist-of-closed) myself). I believe this can be a learning experience for all involved. The question may be in fact [in a gray area](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1053/so-programmers-gray-area).  Maybe situation doesn't fall neatly into any category of guidance.  **Very likely, there is a good question in there that just isn't worded in the most productive way**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tools that moderators and even members have should be used very carefully.  An experience I had just a few days ago illustrated this to me.  I was closely watching a question that was interesting. A new answer was posted that I very much disagreed with.  It was well written and a valid opinion, but to me, personally, it was philosophically wrong. So, I downvoted the question. However, I appreciated the perspective it added to the answers, because I felt like it brought up an angle that had not been addressed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few minutes later, I realized it had been deleted.  The user had obviously thought that by getting a downvote so quickly, it was better off to just get rid of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I regretted having downvoted so quickly and wished I had let more members of the community read that opinion and see what they thought. I didn't consider the impact my downvote would have to the poster, and I think that I should have commented prior to downvoting so early.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I take this same view with the close-vote and the tools a moderator has. They are not just a mop and a broom (what Wikipedia administrators refer to their tools as).  Here, I believe, we have a great responsibility to teach &amp;mdash; ask questions first and early, give suggestions, help, etc., and clean up (vote to close/delete) if needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To address Pierre's point about being &quot;firm&quot; - I absolutely understand that no matter how nice or helpful a moderator has been, it doesn't mean that conflict will never arise.  When it does, I don't believe a moderator is out of line to act authoritatively &amp;mdash; I would simply be careful to make sure that I have exhausted my ability to be helpful prior to taking any action that could be viewed as unilateral.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the end, I would simply be asking of my actions &quot;is what I'm doing helping the community reach the potential it has?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24691" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1909" RevisionGUID="ac15023d-7204-4a69-8a63-b011f762a1dc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Jeff responded to the bulk of this, so I'm just going to touch on a couple points that stood out to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;I think we should measure how valuable a question would be before closing it, instead of applying rules blindly. That's the role of the moderators. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe it's better to close a good question too soon (and subsequently reopen it after review, of course) than to let a bad question stay open too long. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't apply rules blindly. We go by prior history of similar questions, existing flags and close votes, the site-specific rules established here (e.g. &quot;'what language should I learn next' questions are off-topic&quot;), and the network-wide guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;When in doubt, moderator should request opinions like Mark Trapp did.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do request opinions. Making a meta post for every case is not feasible, but we look for flags, close/reopen votes, and comments on the post. For most cases, there is no dissenting community opinion -- we see flags telling us a post doesn't belong, we review it, and then leave it open if the flags are wrong, let the community handle it from there, or close it. It is now possible for 10k+ users to disagree with a flag by marking it &quot;invalid&quot;. We definitely take that kind of feedback into account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're always thinking about questions and evaluating their potential. We *want* to keep good content on this site and draw in more content like it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that you see some questions stay open even if blind adherence to the rules would see them closed proves that. There is an obvious correlation open questions and moderator answers on them -- we don't answer questions we know will get closed because [it's poor etiquette](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1006/is-it-appropriate-to-answer-a-question-and-vote-to-close-it-at-the-same-time).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We try to let through a reasonable mix of good quality topics that are useful and can teach a developer something. Jeff covered the emphasis on learning in his answer, so I'm not going to repeat that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In closing, please flag, please vote, please comment. Please make meta posts if you feel a question stayed open or got closed by mistake, regardless of whether a moderator acted on it or not. Guidance from the community is invaluable and we all really appreciate having it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24692" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1132" RevisionGUID="2b591470-ae0e-4c85-ada9-9b34f14208a6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Short version:**  Is this the same as a question &quot;without a definitive answer&quot;?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Long version:**  Personally, I understood &quot;subjective&quot; to mean, &quot;without a definitive answer&quot;, yet I keep seeing questions on this subjective question site closed because they lack definitive answers.  I understand the requirement that not all answers be equally valid to mean that there should be some reasonably obvious criteria for determining if a certain answer is &quot;more valid&quot; than another answer.  This could be &quot;correctness&quot;, but since subjective questions often defy correct / incorrect assessments, I would think it could also be some other reasonable criteria, such as &quot;thought-provoking&quot;, which maybe should be specified in the question.  I think a good litmus test for this is, &quot;Could you downvote something for being less valid, and support your claim based on the question?&quot;  E.g., &quot;Down-voted because this is common sense and not thought-provoking.&quot;  Does this seem like a correct understanding?  Can you provide me with a better interpretation, so I don't run afoul of this rule again?  Should this be clarified in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Commentary:**  I suspect a non-official reason people understand this requirement as &quot;needs a definitive answer&quot; is that it stops threads where everyone has something to contribute that can easily grow very large.  People enjoy these questions, perhaps partly because everyone can contribute meaningfully, so more people read and respond and they get a lot of votes.  While I understand frustration when this is blatant &quot;rep-farming&quot;, I think there is at least one class of questions which are best answered by accumulating a lot of answers and letting the cream rise to the top.  This becomes a sort of process of &quot;community inference&quot;, and lets the community explore topics that maybe aren't yet understood well enough to have a &quot;right answer&quot; yet, or maybe are too complex to ever be fully answered. While I agree that the reputation system has an undesirable result for these questions, I feel like the problem is with the SE system and not with the questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am especially frustrated because I find that many software test questions fall into this category, and right now programmers.se seems to be the best site available for these questions (I've voted for the [QA Area 51 proposal][1], but it's stuck in the &quot;commit&quot; phase).  Lots of the work that testers do requires inferential analysis, and being able to draw from wider ranges of experiences with questions like these is a *big* help!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Disclaimer:**  I did post [a question][2] that falls into this category.  My goal wasn't to farm rep, and I considered if it was appropriate to mark 'community wiki', but decided against it based on [this meta thread on the purpose of 'community wiki'][3].  I was frustrated when it was closed but glad to see discussion over the closure (followed by it being re-opened), and thought the discussion was *really* good and the general topic deserved a full thread on meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2241/software-quality-assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45594/what-have-you-learned-from-the-bugs-you-helped-discover-and-fix&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24693" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1385" RevisionGUID="0908d1fc-bf3c-4d92-b149-fe833a5ba2c7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Sorry about the all the acronyms in the title.  There are many questions here on Meta Programmers that are neither:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* about Programmers.SE at all&#xD;&#xA;* about a general SE problem, but related to a question on Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should these questions be flagged for migration to [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) (where they can often be closed as duplicates)? Examples include the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1383/why-is-it-only-5-reputation-points-for-an-up-vote-on-a-question&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1380/badge-progress-display-like-the-percentage-till-privilages-display&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1358/upvote-in-community-wiki" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24695" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2014" RevisionGUID="d8fdf5f1-ec69-42a1-bd16-71af09e088e9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Mousing over the &quot;What does voting mean here?&quot; section of the [Meta Programmers FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq) displays the correct link: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq#vote-differences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, clicking on it places `faq#dontask` into the address bar instead of `faq#vote-differences`. It does not refresh the page and put the quoted section at the top, but I'm not entirely sure if it's supposed to do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I copy the link and paste it into the browser, it looks like both &quot;dontask&quot; and &quot;vote-differences&quot; sections are quoted at the top of the page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![screenshot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/zdqI3.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24696" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="735" RevisionGUID="fafbc9be-3680-4651-8fc0-bb4c6f8ea7a9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="After reviewing the '[Great Redisiplining][1]' and learning that we now *do* accept answers here, I'm not sure how I should handle accepting some of my previous questions. I have only asked a few, but some of them do not have have specific 'right' answer. For example, '[Do you work contract projects in addition to your full-time job?][2]' and '[What features are missing from the languages you use?][3]' are open-ended forum-type questions that have produced valuable discussion, but there is no correct response which should be accepted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a related note, one of my first questions-&#xD;&#xA;[Good furniture for programmers][4], although rather popular, almost certainly does not fit here under the new guidelines; should it be closed? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the questions above and perhaps similar ones like it by other members, what is the correct course of action and are they still permissible here under the new guidelines?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit&#xD;&#xA;--&#xD;&#xA;The chief concern here is that we have chosen not to hide the accept rate from profiles, so I don't really wish to be toting around a badge that says '0% Accept Rate' if it is going to have an adverse affect on my standing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10495/do-you-work-contract-projects-in-addition-to-your-full-time-job&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/634/what-features-are-missing-from-the-languages-you-use&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/742/good-furniture-for-programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24697" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1136" RevisionGUID="a7cccdb6-2c27-4ee4-b4cc-f9f08f5a62a7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In addition to what Mark and Pemdas have said, I'd like to add that another important distinction (far as belonging on P.SE or not goes) is whether or not reading a question's answers would help one become a better programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In that sense, I liked the twist you put on your question: how did you learn from your bug and how did it help you later vs the other incarnations of the same question that simply asked for a list of &quot;fun&quot; bugs. The former might help someone by exposing a vulnerability they never thought of. The latter is just fun to read, but has little substance behind it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The difference there is subtle and others might disagree, but in my mind placing extra criteria in the question (such as requests to elaborate on the answer or restricting answers to bugs that people were personally involved in fixing) helps guide upvotes/downvotes on good/bad answers. A question like that has a better chance of being useful. That alone isn't always enough to &quot;save&quot; a question from being closed, but it certainly helps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think I summed up the issue with questions that just ask for a &quot;list of X&quot; [here][1]. Directions to restrict answers to one item per answer (to simulate a survey) are almost never followed and the whole thread degenerates pretty quickly more often than not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/927/why-are-questions-about-programs-verboten/928#928" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24698" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1196" RevisionGUID="316ab18a-1ea3-4064-a2ce-e8ceeb58f215" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and SO](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Not sure what kind of questions should post in [programmers][1] and others in [stackoverflow][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24699" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="771" RevisionGUID="5883e1a2-8acb-4a95-b7e3-f5fa13f71ac7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's built based on &quot;hot&quot; meta question lists, plus the [featured] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Click here to see what it uses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/?tab=week  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/?tab=hot  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... in that order&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [meta-tag:featured] tag is problematic because users tend to leave the featured tag on.. *forever*. Which I disagree with, so we'll be pushing some changes on that soon.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24701" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1150" RevisionGUID="071fc73a-5844-48e1-a58f-c45596b8d2c7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is not a duplicate of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1072/the-flag-comment-icon-is-too-harsh because I actually like the image of the flag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather, the problem is when you hover over it. On Meta, if you hover over the flag so it turns from white to black, the heights of the two images are not the same. It results in the control (and anything below it) being shifted up one pixel if the comment's length is short and does not increase the height. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For an example, see https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-list and hover over the flag of a short comment and the flag of a long comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's different on Programmers. On Programmers, the height *and width* are off. See http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23120/does-tweeting-9-to-5-hurt-job-applicants for an example. (Specifically, GrandMasterB's comment on the original question post)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Due to the way browsers render font sizes and line lengths, this may vary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there is an extremely simple way to know something is wrong: the bottom of the hovered &quot;flag&quot; image is cut off." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24702" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="878" RevisionGUID="54b5e45f-3111-4972-9e74-193f27099ee6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are *already* policies in place for questions that are too broad: edit them to limit their scope or close them. That's what the *not a real question* close reason is for. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Wiki is a tool for allowing the community to take ownership of a question or answer, it's to say &quot;Hey, I got the ball rolling, can you help me fill out the rest?&quot;, it's not a tool to be used to allow borderline-to-bad questions to exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to the question you're using as an example of something that you feel is just as broad as the one that got a *single close vote*, it was asked before the [Great Redisiplining](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) and hasn't had much activity since. Two wrongs don't make a right: just because a similar question stayed open doesn't mean a bad question gets a free pass. However, it's good to point out questions that slip through the cracks so others can take the appropriate action, like closing, on them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I emphasize *single close vote* because you're taking *one single, solitary* close vote far too personally. It takes 5 regular users with 3,000+ rep or a moderator to close a question. The moderation of this site is done by real people who make real choices and real interpretations of what the policies are. Many times people agree, perhaps just as often they don't. That's why it takes 5 people to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the question, as it stands now, looks to be fine, although borderline with the quality of the answers it's getting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And honestly, Programmers.SE is in no dire straits when it comes to people asking questions. There are tons of questions being asked, beyond the two you're focusing on, that aren't too broad; we don't need to make a special exception for overly broad questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24703" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1246" RevisionGUID="911c8460-edca-4b35-9a2f-566254fa3ab5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are athletic programmers who work in &quot;adult&quot; industries... The truth is, &quot;life&quot; questions from programmers aren't usually all that different from those of other professions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, the challenges you face in your daily non-work life are considerably different from those of your friend the investment-banking cyclist. Then again, they're probably also considerably different from *mine*. Many different factors influence our lives, and grouping questions by profession isn't necessarily any more effective than grouping them by age, race, location, or favorite food. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not that there's anything inherently wrong in carving out a niche... But if you're going to do so [on Stack Exchange][1], there better be enough people firmly dedicated to that niche to sustain it. Trying to get around that by grouping a bunch of mostly-unrelated niche topics together (programmer-HEALTH, programmer-RELATIONSHIPS, programmer-COMPETITIVE ROSE GROWING) just ends up creating a site about anything and nothing at all... and that won't fly. [We sorta tried that already...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352?phase=definition)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange isn't a social network or a support group. It's about questions, and their answers. If you can ask a health question in a way that makes it sufficiently unique to the software development profession, [it *might* find a home on this site][2]... Otherwise, you'd be better off asking it on a dedicated health site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1242/a-site-for-life-outside-work-issues-dedicated-to-programmers/1243#1243&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38299/do-computer-glasses-work" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24704" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1455" RevisionGUID="4a06acff-aa34-405e-af53-30083514f86f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Born from the earlier question [Inclusion to the question topics section of the faq](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1430/inclusion-to-the-question-topics-section-of-the-faq) which asked whether 'programming psychology and philosophy' be added to the list of topics for questions in the FAQ, should we add *programmer relations* and *programmer development* to the FAQ instead?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(Quoted from [an earlier revision](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/c8bb7de9-1814-423a-86bd-798f09913817/view-source) of the previous question:)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that fall under 'Programmer relations' are those that concern teamwork, programmer to manager to stakeholder (or anyone in the development process?) etc...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Some examples from today are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [How can I get programmers to stop writing code vulnerable to SQL injection?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What is the best advice to give someone in this industry who resists change?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that fall under 'Programmer development' are those that concern self improvement as a programmer, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;[“The pragmatic Programmer” or “Clean Code”. which one would you get, and why?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Suggestions to set goals][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/68258/19799&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/69111/19799&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/69059/19799&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/69176/19799" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24705" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="894" RevisionGUID="67ae14fc-b9e3-4763-be27-8151b1d465e6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="When I tried to post my [last question on etiquette](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/893/whats-the-etiquette-for-reusing-your-answers), I got this warning:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the warning shouldn't appear anywhere, you'd think Meta Programmers.SE would be it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24706" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2236" RevisionGUID="02106051-9569-4ae0-8856-a6b9c013d87a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="To clarify, I'm referring to [statistical surveys][1] and questionnaires that are [well designed][2], ask open-ended questions, are relevant to programmers as per the diagram in the FAQ, aren't rants, and generally add value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, questions more like [this one][3] (although that's a mediocre example, at best) or questions like what a professional or academic study would entail (if anyone has read [The Dark Side of Software Engineering][4], they included a sample of questions they asked to professional software developers and their responses).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that, overall, well-written survey questions could add value to people looking to tap into the total knowledge and experience here on Programmers, as well as add legitimacy to the site by bringing in academics and software engineering researchers to access practitioners and perhaps provide answers to questions based on the latest academic research, where applicable. However, it would have to be monitored and controlled to ensure only high-quality surveys are allowed - ones that don't add value or demonstrate relevance are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions should also be made community-wiki. By nature, they are designed to bring in a large number of answers, typically relating to personal experiences and knowledge gained from them. There's no right or wrong answers, and as such, reputation should not be assigned to the question or any answers provided for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is similar to [another discussion here on Meta][5], but provides a much more narrow definition of what is allowed and what isn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_survey&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questionnaire_construction&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106924/on-average-how-many-times-does-eclipse-crash-during-a-day-for-you&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Software-Engineering-Computing/dp/0470597178&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1621/should-open-ended-poll-questions-be-allowed-just-because-they-say-to-explain-you" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24707" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1271" RevisionGUID="b664649a-3be6-40ef-8ba7-359bbb2eccf2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the case of Programmers.SE, the [main][1] site is to discuss *anything related to programming* (further defined in the [FAQ][2]). Whereas the [meta site][3] exists to discuss *the main site*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a look at the [recent popular questions in Meta][4], you'll find:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - bug reports&#xD;&#xA; - generic questions regarding to Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA; - suggestions to FAQ modifications&#xD;&#xA; - discussions on which questions are on and off topic (for the main site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of which do not contain anything directly related to programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/?tab=month" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24708" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="908" RevisionGUID="464aeeb0-e3ee-4e8a-af77-ade766ea9db0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The `C` tag on SO becomes an interesting place at the start of every semester. We get hordes of beginner questions that are asked _just_ differently enough to not be duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find myself digging through my old answers to find the example code snippets I used before, then re-cycle them into something that fits the exact problem being described. Then I link to my original answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Still, I've effectively done what Jeff [likes us to avoid][1], duplicating content. My snippet is basically the same, it's showing someone how to operate on a pointer, illustrating precedence or something else very simple. Yet, the question remains open, was re-opened .. and technically 'deserves' an answer, even if it's basically the same darn answer I've given three times. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It makes me think that, if you _could_ recycle an answer with little effort, the question at hand should probably be closed or merged. But then we're also told that a little duplication is a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, ideals are confusingly conflicting :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/893/whats-the-etiquette-for-reusing-your-answers/895#895" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24709" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1273" RevisionGUID="3505adf7-6547-40e3-b70c-a6fdf26d8827" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recommend reading the /faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    This site is for meta discussion about &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;programmers.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt;. That is, things like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Are questions about _____ on or off topic?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;What should our FAQ contain?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;How should we tag questions about _____?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;What should our &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/stack-exchange-naming-for-dummies/&quot;&gt;elevator pitch be&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;What should our site design look like?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Who should &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/moderator-pro-tempore/&quot;&gt;the moderators be&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;How do we &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/a-recipe-to-promote-your-site/&quot;&gt;promote our site&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/the-7-essential-meta-questions-of-every-beta/&quot;&gt;The 7 Essential Meta Questions&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24710" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1457" RevisionGUID="5ad656dc-d665-45da-92dd-c8031e66bb73" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **This question has been superseded by the following questions:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [How can we improve our guidance about the purpose of comments?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/how-can-we-improve-our-guidance-about-the-purpose-of-comments)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2228/when-should-comments-be-deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subsequent to a question about technical solutions to cleaning up noise, Jeff Atwood posted [this answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83480/add-possibility-to-remove-comment-noise-fancy-edition/88010#88010):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;I appreciate the *intent*, but this is hellishly complex. I think my solution is even simpler than Shog9's&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Simply flag the first comment in the series for mod attention** with the text&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; irrelevant comment conversation; delete this conversation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A moderator could then blam, blam, blam, blam on each [x] to remove it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with this.  I've often wanted to even clean up my own conversations after resolving something that was productive, but not worth preserving.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, as we all know, with the introduction of [flag weight](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight) our flagging ability and priority gets diminished if no action is taken on our flags.  So, I think it's up to our community and moderators to decide (and therefore send the message to our moderators and 10k users) whether we believe this is an appropriate action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, **I'm all for it** - I'd love to see transient and incidental conversations completely disappear (not just be hidden) so that new visitors have a higher comment signal-to-noise ratio." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24711" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1389" RevisionGUID="49f55f03-443c-4077-9d77-0ee7dcc8aa40" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recently had the pleasure of reading the top 1500 questions/answers on programmers.SE, and noticed an alarming trend. About 100 of these questions, all with a community vote ranging from about +10 to +300, were closed by a select few moderators for being not 'constructive'. Only around 15 questions among these top 1500 were closed collectively by non-moderators for this reason - a large difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point of this post is not to debate the 'constructiveness' of the questions within the set I speak of, or to debate about the '6 guidelines for constructive questions'. There is no doubt in my mind that some of these questions are constructive. It is also clear that these questions, as a whole, are viewed as constructive by the community. As a whole, these questions and answers have probably garnered significantly more than 10,000 community upvotes. They are obviously useful to many. If they really were not at all constructive, I imagine they would be removed from the site, instead of still sitting in their same place with a little [closed] sign stifling further growth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is also not the point to bemoan the power of the moderator to close questions with a click. I believe that this is an important tool for some to possess, and takes much of the burden off of the user base when it comes to regulating spam, duplicates, and non-questions. I am grateful to the moderators that use their bestowed power for these reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I do see a problem here, and the plot thickens. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overwhelming majority of these closed questions were flagged as 'not constructive' by a single user. Yes, a single user. I won't call you out, because I don't need to. It is an easy fact to find, for anyone looking. This flag draws moderator attention, which dispatches those with the mod-hammer. It appears that a few moderators really enjoy swinging it, so the questions get closed. I feel that this is an abuse of both the flagging system and of moderator power.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not really sure how we arrived at a point on programmers where this can happen. I do acknowledge and understand why the subjective question criteria exist, and although I don't feel like they are perfect, nothing really is, and i'm willing to accept them, as open to interpretation as they are. My problem rests in the fact that a moderator can easily spoil a good question, well accepted by the community, with a click of a button and no explanation, because they feel that it doesn't meet enough of the criteria, or doesn't meet the criteria well enough. In all the questions mentioned, the community disagreed with the moderator decision to an overwhelming degree. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Case in 2 points, briefly - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question has been mod-hammered. It has a total of +63 ups, and has been favorited by 36 users. It has been twittered about by Joel, and about this question Jeff says, &quot;the measurement of the worst software bug, and the idea that programmers need to consider the consequences of their professional actions, puts it on the other side of the line to 'acceptable'&quot;. For this question, both founders feel it fits, and so does the community. One moderator disagrees, however, so it is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(quoted from https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1073/some-inconsistency-in-closing-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, this is my question, and yes, it helped sparked this question. It was mod-hammered for not being constructive. I asked this question because I am working in NLP/AI, not because it just popped into my head and thought it would be useless but fun question to post here. The answers people gave helped me further understand the aspects from which a computer is generally considered to be different from a machine, information I can extrapolate from the questions listed. I can ask my robot all the answers (questions) provided by the community. To me, this is very 'constructive'. The included comment regarding the close - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;I was prepared to leave this open, but I think it's run its course.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't get this. At all. I don't feel like this is the moderator's place to judge the 'course' of a question. What is the harm in leaving it open? I hate to see the most awesome community QA site be subverted by a small handful of individuals on some sort of bent that I don't understand. If this question were closed by the community, because the community as a whole did not accept the question, I still wouldn't understand, but I would accept. In these cases, however, I do not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more complete list - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[.. excessively long list of URLs elided, try searching using the `isclosed:` and `votes:` modifiers ..]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I'm not trying to say that all of these mod-closed questions belong here. Some of them don't, in my eyes, and I would cast a vote to close. But even if I were a moderator, I don't think I would exercise my authority on any of these, especially given the overwhelmingly positive community response to them. I do feel that it is better to have borderline questions open than closed, but not even all of these questions are borderline, in my eyes. Some of them are just plain awesome! What is the harm, and has the mod-hammer been taken overboard? Is there any way we can escape the tyranny? To the offenders (no need to call you out either) - Why? Why would you ever do this? I love the SE community, but it is things like this that makes me want to bring my contribution (and questions) elsewhere. This is a community site. I don't enjoy seeing it stifled by a handful of trolling mods. I'm now seeing questions arise on the regular with a 'do not close' plea. Is there anything that can be done? Do you feel that anything needs to be done, or do you disagree in entirety? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: 43% closed unilaterally." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24712" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="919" RevisionGUID="0b9fba20-8bae-4426-ba96-319e3c03b3a2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Someone new to our site, or perhaps Stack Exchange might get the idea that our site is for any kind of programming related question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since migration with Stack Overflow is not bi-directional, I suggest that we decide on [an elevator pitch or tagline][1] that lets people know that questions about the programming _industry_ are welcome here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24713" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2261" RevisionGUID="514b6e55-5810-4ce9-8091-d008536f1a19" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I strongly disagree. They're chatty and irrelevant:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How you pronounce a word isn't a shibboleth: you're not going to get fired for pronouncing SQL as &quot;sequel&quot; or &quot;ess-cue-ehl&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;* It doesn't help you do your job better.&#xD;&#xA;* The correct pronunciation largely depends on who you're speaking with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They're a textbook case of soft, bike-shedding questions. Unable to answer a question about a real problem? Who cares! Tell us your opinions on how to pronounce this word.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the rare cases where there actually is singular correct pronunciation, they're either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* off-topic because this isn't English.SE&#xD;&#xA;* wholly uninteresting because any dictionary will tell you the correct pronunciation. Want to know how to pronounce ASCII? [Look it up](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ascii).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a look at the answers to other questions in the [tag:pronunciation] tag, you'll note the answer received on the hexidemical question is the exception, not the rule: people wildly upvote crap answers like &quot;I always say {insert pronunciation here}.&quot; that have no justification or explanation. They bring down the rest of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Aaronaught, who is always wont to crystalize the problems with a class of posts, gave [a great answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1994/would-the-general-reference-close-reason-be-useful-here-on-programmers/2000#2000) when we were discussing if we should have a &quot;general reference&quot; close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Unless we get a &quot;too easy&quot; close reason, I think we should close these as **off topic**.  The word &quot;expert&quot; is right there in the site's tagline; **if it's not relevant to an *experienced, practicing* programmer, then it's not in our scope.**  I'm sorry if it sounds callous, but we're here to help each other, not educate every single newbie on how to program.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Check this out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Quality Venn][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm pretty sure that the purple area between &quot;Advanced&quot; and &quot;Disciplined&quot; is where we are *supposed* to be.  We focus entirely on the subjective (objective questions go on Stack Overflow), so we have to be on the right side; and since we're nowhere near as disciplined as Skeptics, we have to make up for it by discussing subjects that are more advanced.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If we start allowing questions that are subjective *and* beginner-level, then we end up with [bike shed][3] questions, which almost invariably produce crap answers *and* drag down the rest of the site with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/yzan7.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_Law_of_Triviality" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24714" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1488" RevisionGUID="5731e2b8-6147-40c1-aa49-d14eeb4c3945" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Silly question?  I don't think so...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Referring to the question [What is the flag option for][1], and the accepted answer provided, I should be contributing by flagging obvious spam as such, which I believe I'm adhering to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three times I've done so, in each case the post was closed and deleted, yet *I now end up with flag weight 90*.  That's counter intuitive to say the least.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Needless to say I'm reluctant to continue as I'm apparently doing something that doesn't meet the approval of the mods - so what's the current correct answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1298/what-is-the-flag-option-for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24715" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="948" RevisionGUID="7421702e-5195-47b3-a4a6-b01ad986c130" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and SO](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Why does this site exist when there is Stack overflow already?!!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24716" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2298" RevisionGUID="b03ac434-c24a-4181-b740-056426d2b843" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So pursuant to [the monumental task we have](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup) to clean up the [tag:career] and [tag:jobs] tags, we've taken to putting the following notice in the tag wiki excerpts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do not use this tag. Click &quot;learn more&quot; for better alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This, however, has not stopped people from adding more questions to the tags, which makes an already difficult task more difficult as more questions keep getting added.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was under the assumption that blacklisting not only locked a tag, but blew it away from all existing tags, but after talking to people in Teachers' Lounge, I've found out that blacklisting and burninating are two separate actions: the former locks the tag, the latter kills the tag on all existing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just *locking* the [tag:career] and [tag:jobs] tags would help out a ton: it'd at least let us to freeze their usage while we stort out the 1500 questions already tagged with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So can we get these two tags blacklisted, but not burninated? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/17rb9.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24717" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1389" RevisionGUID="edac8ed7-cc33-4981-822b-a4a740bd3bfb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recently had the pleasure of reading the top 1500 questions/answers on programmers.SE, and noticed an alarming trend. About 100 of these questions, all with a community vote ranging from about +10 to +300, were closed by a select few moderators for being not 'constructive'. Only around 15 questions among these top 1500 were closed collectively by non-moderators for this reason - a large difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point of this post is not to debate the 'constructiveness' of the questions within the set I speak of, or to debate about the '6 guidelines for constructive questions'. There is no doubt in my mind that some of these questions are constructive. It is also clear that these questions, as a whole, are viewed as constructive by the community. As a whole, these questions and answers have probably garnered significantly more than 10,000 community upvotes. They are obviously useful to many. If they really were not at all constructive, I imagine they would be removed from the site, instead of still sitting in their same place with a little [closed] sign stifling further growth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is also not the point to bemoan the power of the moderator to close questions with a click. I believe that this is an important tool for some to possess, and takes much of the burden off of the user base when it comes to regulating spam, duplicates, and non-questions. I am grateful to the moderators that use their bestowed power for these reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I do see a problem here, and the plot thickens. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overwhelming majority of these closed questions were flagged as 'not constructive' by a single user. Yes, a single user. I won't call you out, because I don't need to. It is an easy fact to find, for anyone looking. This flag draws moderator attention, which dispatches those with the mod-hammer. It appears that a few moderators really enjoy swinging it, so the questions get closed. I feel that this is an abuse of both the flagging system and of moderator power.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not really sure how we arrived at a point on programmers where this can happen. I do acknowledge and understand why the subjective question criteria exist, and although I don't feel like they are perfect, nothing really is, and i'm willing to accept them, as open to interpretation as they are. My problem rests in the fact that a moderator can easily spoil a good question, well accepted by the community, with a click of a button and no explanation, because they feel that it doesn't meet enough of the criteria, or doesn't meet the criteria well enough. In all the questions mentioned, the community disagreed with the moderator decision to an overwhelming degree. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Case in 2 points, briefly - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question has been mod-hammered. It has a total of +63 ups, and has been favorited by 36 users. It has been twittered about by Joel, and about this question Jeff says, &quot;the measurement of the worst software bug, and the idea that programmers need to consider the consequences of their professional actions, puts it on the other side of the line to 'acceptable'&quot;. For this question, both founders feel it fits, and so does the community. One moderator disagrees, however, so it is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(quoted from https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1073/some-inconsistency-in-closing-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, this is my question, and yes, it helped sparked this question. It was mod-hammered for not being constructive. I asked this question because I am working in NLP/AI, not because it just popped into my head and thought it would be useless but fun question to post here. The answers people gave helped me further understand the aspects from which a computer is generally considered to be different from a machine, information I can extrapolate from the questions listed. I can ask my robot all the answers (questions) provided by the community. To me, this is very 'constructive'. The included comment regarding the close - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;I was prepared to leave this open, but I think it's run its course.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't get this. At all. I don't feel like this is the moderator's place to judge the 'course' of a question. What is the harm in leaving it open? I hate to see the most awesome community QA site be subverted by a small handful of individuals on some sort of bent that I don't understand. If this question were closed by the community, because the community as a whole did not accept the question, I still wouldn't understand, but I would accept. In these cases, however, I do not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more complete list - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[.. excessively long list of URLs elided, try searching using the `isclosed:` and `votes:` modifiers ..]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I'm not trying to say that all of these mod-closed questions belong here. Some of them don't, in my eyes, and I would cast a vote to close. But even if I were a moderator, I don't think I would exercise my authority on any of these, especially given the overwhelmingly positive community response to them. I do feel that it is better to have borderline questions open than closed, but not even all of these questions are borderline, in my eyes. Some of them are just plain awesome! What is the harm, and has the mod-hammer been taken overboard? Is there any way we can escape the tyranny? To the offenders (no need to call you out either) - Why? Why would you ever do this? I love the SE community, but it is things like this that makes me want to bring my contribution (and questions) elsewhere. This is a community site. I don't enjoy seeing it stifled by a handful of trolling mods. I'm now seeing questions arise on the regular with a 'do not close' plea. Is there anything that can be done? Do you feel that anything needs to be done, or do you disagree in entirety? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: 43% closed unilaterally." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24718" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1503" RevisionGUID="9ff1e7a1-461c-4218-a58d-fa98f6855b86" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I DO think this site is great for questions such as software-development-methologies, programming-eductaion, software-laws, business and many other non-programming related questions.&#xD;&#xA;However I believe that for a few of the topics related in the FAQ, this is not the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have read https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/948/why-programmers-when-stackoverflow-already-exists, https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so and https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/324/do-we-need-a-definition-of-subjective and even a few more related questions here and non of them seems to deal with theses specific overlaps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Quoting StackOverflow's FAQ:&lt;/b&gt; (please notice the * &lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;italic bold&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; list items)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question generally covers …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    a specific programming problem&#xD;&#xA;    * &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;a software algorithm&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    software tools commonly used by programmers&#xD;&#xA;    * &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;matters that are unique to the programming profession&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Quoting Programmer's FAQ:&lt;/b&gt; (please notice the * &lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;italic bold&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; list items)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can include topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;    Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;    * &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;Algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    * &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;Design patterns&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    * &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;Architecture&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;    Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;    Software law&#xD;&#xA;    * &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;Programming puzzles&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Architecture and design patterns&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me it seems like many architecture questions are as objective as many programming questions are. If fact, many programming questions are really to do with architecture and the accepted answer suggests an architectural change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also many programming questions can be solved in many ways (just like architectural problems). Each way has its pros and cons, but the decision of which way to take is subjective since the decider (or asker/voter), being human, thinks in a subjective way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Algorithms and datastructures&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not see how these can be considered subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Programming Puzzles&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asked over and over in StackOverflow, sometimes referred to as &quot;interview questions&quot; or &quot;homework&quot;. Basically no different than any StackOverflow question, except maybe never being technology-specific.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;A bit of statistics:&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow has over 5400 questions tagged [design-patterns].&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow has over 3400 questions tagged [architecture] and more with similar tags.&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow has over 1500 questions tagged [interview-questions] and more with tags such as [code-golf] and [puzzle].&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24719" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="962" RevisionGUID="128450fa-096e-4dff-8033-06b7fd4bfbb0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[I asked this question also.][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There's a chance that the post was&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lost during the data-centre migration,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but I'm not on the development team so&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't know what processes were in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; place (if any) to prevent this.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Blog post][2] about migration.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;*ChrisF*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And in the comments to it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;@john this is probably it – Jeff Atwood♦&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I can speak from experience that your answers probably aren't coming back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/476/question-i-asked-dissappeared&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/datacenter-migration-oct-23/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24720" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1390" RevisionGUID="1e010e8f-8be2-4ffd-9802-2e86de4fff91" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This topic has been discussed on this site at length.  Just a few minutes looking at old posts will get you this list (which is a very small sampling):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/429/&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/431/&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/396/&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/393/&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/360/&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/48/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I cared to spend more time I'm sure the list would grow quite a lot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site went through a major transition from it's original purpose at the end of last year.  There was a very noticable crack down on different types of questions and it caused a lot of growing pains.  For the most part this site has emerged from the transition in the form you see today.  Like it or not, the tightening of the rules around questions being asked probably saved this site from turning into answers.yahoo.com.  Moderators on this site play a difficult role of walking the line between bringing the hammer and letting it ride.  During the transition period that line was distinctly on the bringing the hammer side as it was a huge shift for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question that you asked yesterday that was closed really doesn't meet most of the guidelines in the FAQ.  I would have voted to close it on those grounds as well.  The fact that the question was closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot; doesn't mean that the topic isn't worthy.  If you were to edit that question and expand upon it (keeping in mind that your goal is to satisfy around 4 or more of the 6 guidelines), I doubt you would get much argument from those who closed it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, it's probably not a good idea to use votes (or popularity) as an indicator of what does or does not belong on this site.  &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24721" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2313" RevisionGUID="0aac9aaa-b3f6-4bc3-81f6-240d6a211a90" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Only one of those questions shows a flag from you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I closed a bunch of &quot;what project should I choose&quot; questions in the last week or so, and I agree that generally they are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was also brought up by Hugo in an answer [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-list/2292#2292). Since this keeps coming up, I'm going to update the FAQ to explicitly mention &quot;suggest a project for me&quot; kind of questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24723" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1132" RevisionGUID="dcd43097-1134-4c09-b33a-47a3e390ad4d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Short version:**  Is this the same as a question &quot;without a definitive answer&quot;?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Long version:**  Personally, I understood &quot;subjective&quot; to mean, &quot;without a definitive answer&quot;, yet I keep seeing questions on this subjective question site closed because they lack definitive answers.  I understand the requirement that not all answers be equally valid to mean that there should be some reasonably obvious criteria for determining if a certain answer is &quot;more valid&quot; than another answer.  This could be &quot;correctness&quot;, but since subjective questions often defy correct / incorrect assessments, I would think it could also be some other reasonable criteria, such as &quot;thought-provoking&quot;, which maybe should be specified in the question.  I think a good litmus test for this is, &quot;Could you downvote something for being less valid, and support your claim based on the question?&quot;  E.g., &quot;Down-voted because this is common sense and not thought-provoking.&quot;  Does this seem like a correct understanding?  Can you provide me with a better interpretation, so I don't run afoul of this rule again?  Should this be clarified in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Commentary:**  I suspect a non-official reason people understand this requirement as &quot;needs a definitive answer&quot; is that it stops threads where everyone has something to contribute that can easily grow very large.  People enjoy these questions, perhaps partly because everyone can contribute meaningfully, so more people read and respond and they get a lot of votes.  While I understand frustration when this is blatant &quot;rep-farming&quot;, I think there is at least one class of questions which are best answered by accumulating a lot of answers and letting the cream rise to the top.  This becomes a sort of process of &quot;community inference&quot;, and lets the community explore topics that maybe aren't yet understood well enough to have a &quot;right answer&quot; yet, or maybe are too complex to ever be fully answered. While I agree that the reputation system has an undesirable result for these questions, I feel like the problem is with the SE system and not with the questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am especially frustrated because I find that many software test questions fall into this category, and right now programmers.se seems to be the best site available for these questions (I've voted for the [QA Area 51 proposal][1], but it's stuck in the &quot;commit&quot; phase).  Lots of the work that testers do requires inferential analysis, and being able to draw from wider ranges of experiences with questions like these is a *big* help!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Disclaimer:**  I did post [a question][2] that falls into this category.  My goal wasn't to farm rep, and I considered if it was appropriate to mark 'community wiki', but decided against it based on [this meta thread on the purpose of 'community wiki'][3].  I was frustrated when it was closed but glad to see discussion over the closure (followed by it being re-opened), and thought the discussion was *really* good and the general topic deserved a full thread on meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2241/software-quality-assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45594/what-have-you-learned-from-the-bugs-you-helped-discover-and-fix&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24724" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2317" RevisionGUID="479146e3-2db1-4a9c-8348-efe483c0faef" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You can tell whether a question has been inactive for 6 months by looking at the stats in the sidebar:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Question stats][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But these badges suck: you really shouldn't be looking for old questions to raise from the dead. If you happen to run into one, that's fine, but bumping a ton of long-dead questions to the front page just for the sake of the Archaeologist badge breaks the front page for other visitors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to help out with our cleanups and almost certainly get the Archaeologist badge along the way in due time, get involved in [the career and jobs tag cleanup](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6o1Co.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24725" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1390" RevisionGUID="b855b625-9289-4fce-a87c-1fc8fe8baefe" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This topic has been discussed on this site at length.  Just a few minutes looking at old posts will get you this list (which is a very small sampling):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/429/&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/431/&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/396/&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/393/&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/360/&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/48/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I cared to spend more time I'm sure the list would grow quite a lot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site went through a major transition from it's original purpose at the end of last year.  There was a very noticable crack down on different types of questions and it caused a lot of growing pains.  For the most part this site has emerged from the transition in the form you see today.  Like it or not, the tightening of the rules around questions being asked probably saved this site from turning into answers.yahoo.com.  Moderators on this site play a difficult role of walking the line between bringing the hammer and letting it ride.  During the transition period that line was distinctly on the bringing the hammer side as it was a huge shift for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question that you asked yesterday that was closed really doesn't meet most of the guidelines in the FAQ.  I would have voted to close it on those grounds as well.  The fact that the question was closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot; doesn't mean that the topic isn't worthy.  If you were to edit that question and expand upon it (keeping in mind that your goal is to satisfy around 4 or more of the 6 guidelines), I doubt you would get much argument from those who closed it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, it's probably not a good idea to use votes (or popularity) as an indicator of what does or does not belong on this site.  &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24726" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1660" RevisionGUID="f8fcdd62-797e-4cc3-ae56-fa43d947b9c2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="To tackle the relatively easy part of your question first, if you see a comment chain devolving into an extended discussion that does nothing to improve the post to which it is attached, flag the post for moderator review. Extended discussion, on any question, is discouraged and [we will actively clean those up](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1457/how-do-our-moderators-and-community-members-feel-about-cleaning-up-comment-nois/1508#1508).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding legal questions, it's really a two parter:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Are *all* legal questions ill-served by being asked here?&#xD;&#xA;* If not, is there a certain *kind* of legal question that's ill-served here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the first question, I don't think so. The Stack Exchange system can provide great answers, and there is a certain amount of community vetting in the form of voting, comments, and counter-answers, but it *requires* common sense. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, for example, I told you that the best practice for implementing scrum in your job was to submit TPS reports daily that contain nothing but 14 pages of the letter 'K', I would hope you wouldn't do that even if my answer was the top-voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the context of legal questions, common sense is *always, always* consult a lawyer. Asking a site devoted to non-lawyers who do not have an attorney-client relationship for definitive legal advice is obviously dangerous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that's not to say you *can't* ask about legal issues: it's akin to asking a colleague or a friend about their experiences in a similar situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take the non-paying customer question, for instance: you might ask that question of a colleague, who might say something like &quot;Obviously get a lawyer, but when that happened to me, this is what worked.&quot; That's the type of answer we want on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the second question, the highly-specific legal question that can *only* be answered by a lawyer, like a question about being sued and asking for a legal interpretation for a defense, would be off-topic. We're not lawyers: we can't answer those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there is always going to be a fine line between what constitutes regular, professional advice (on-topic) and what constitutes personal legal advice (off-topic). The standard should be, &quot;would a reasonable person consider the question to be asking for personal legal advice?&quot; If so, it's a candidate for closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One footnote regarding common sense: there are askers who appear to have the wrong set of expectations when asking legal questions, and both of the questions you listed appear to have this problem. A person who appears to think Programmers.SE substitutes a lawyer **needs** to be educated that he *cannot* use the answers given as a way to circumvent legal council.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this end, it's similar to questions on Stack Overflow where someone asks how to do something insane, and the only correct answer is &quot;**Don't do that.**  Do X instead.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the purpose of the Stack Exchange network is to build up questions and answers that can help others, not just the asker. So a misguided asker isn't reason enough to close a question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24727" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1136" RevisionGUID="5e6fbefe-84ed-404c-9129-6167a3939031" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In addition to what Mark and Pemdas have said, I'd like to add that another important distinction (far as belonging on P.SE or not goes) is whether or not reading a question's answers would help one become a better programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In that sense, I liked the twist you put on your question: how did you learn from your bug and how did it help you later vs the other incarnations of the same question that simply asked for a list of &quot;fun&quot; bugs. The former might help someone by exposing a vulnerability they never thought of. The latter is just fun to read, but has little substance behind it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The difference there is subtle and others might disagree, but in my mind placing extra criteria in the question (such as requests to elaborate on the answer or restricting answers to bugs that people were personally involved in fixing) helps guide upvotes/downvotes on good/bad answers. A question like that has a better chance of being useful. That alone isn't always enough to &quot;save&quot; a question from being closed, but it certainly helps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think I summed up the issue with questions that just ask for a &quot;list of X&quot; [here][1]. Directions to restrict answers to one item per answer (to simulate a survey) are almost never followed and the whole thread degenerates pretty quickly more often than not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/927/why-are-questions-about-programs-verboten/928#928" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24728" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1486" RevisionGUID="c243effc-5567-4b4a-a591-ef79fe2713eb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Does this even mean anything when used *correctly*? [Mark notes][1] that since programmers themselves are on-topic for the site it could be used to refer to questions *about* beginners... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...But who is a beginner? The kid typing his [first &quot;Hello world&quot; program][2]? The freshman [about to attend class][3]? The new graduate starting his [first real-world project][4]? The [polyglot programmer][5] trying to make sense of Ruby? Beginner as a description for a person means very different things in different contexts, much more so than a *role* like [tag:team-leader]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A similar tag is [tag:great-programmer], where a disturbing number of the questions tagged are concerned with *[de][6][fi][7][ni][8][ng][9] [wh][10][at][11] [it][12] [me][13][an][14][s][15]*...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Mark argues][1] that beginner could be useful for a person starting their professional life to find questions about other people in the same situation. But Renesis suggests the [tag:junior-programmer] tag for this, which is probably a better choice seeing as I can only find a couple of questions tagged &quot;beginners&quot; that actually fit this criteria. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regardless of how it *could* be used, [tag:beginners] **is** primarily used as a meta-tag. They're not questions *about* beginners, they're questions *from* beginners! For the vast majority of the questions currently tagged `beginners`, [tag:learning], [tag:teaching] and [tag:education] are all better choices.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's get rid of it.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1473/do-we-need-to-ban-the-beginners-tag/1475#1475&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60406/which-programming-language-first-introduced-hello-world&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51669/getting-started-and-learning-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70661/how-big-is-the-gap-between-what-you-learn-in-cs-curriculums-and-what-you-need-in&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46045/why-is-it-always-what-language-should-i-learn-next-instead-of-what-project-sho&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9055/what-are-the-big-contemporary-names-in-the-programming-field&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7749/how-do-you-go-from-a-so-so-programmer-to-a-great-one&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4680/is-it-possible-to-become-a-good-programmer-if-you-dont-like-math&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1106/when-can-you-call-yourself-good-at-language-x&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4711/what-are-the-most-common-schools-of-knowledge-prevalent-in-great-programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3849/when-would-someone-be-considered-a-great-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28/what-personal-qualities-make-for-a-successful-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7439/which-web-site-gives-the-most-accurate-indication-of-a-programmers-capabilities&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14052/is-there-such-a-thing-as-a-super-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50818/is-it-possible-to-measure-if-someone-is-a-good-programmer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24729" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2357" RevisionGUID="77c5b0ad-1010-45c9-b4ff-a0a1e0afca04" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Unfortunately, we cannot simply &quot;lock&quot; the tags from future use without obliterating them. It causes ruckus and befuddlement as a person will see that not only is a tag quite voluminous, but it is also available on the tag suggestion list, and yet if they try to use it, they are barred.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've [followed this up with a new question][1] detailing what we *could* do to tackle this massive tag job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm very much not a dog person, anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24731" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1507" RevisionGUID="dd3c030b-e6c0-4d7d-b9be-0f9934c0887a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Before posting this, I first searched meta, and found that previously people already found the [accept answer checkmark unclear][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The accepted answer indicates that a change was made, but I still find the checkmark the worst from all the SE sites I am on. I actively notice me wondering whether or not I accepted a certain answer. I find an outline to be far more clearer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usually I'm only certain after comparing the color with another answer (if there is one!). An outline vs. filled in shape would solve this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally (this isn't done on any SE site I'm aware of) I feel it would also be an improvement to switch the image to the 'checked' state when hovering over it when it isn't checked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Futhermore, a GUI should be consistent so a user can expect a certain behavior. Therefore I would argue to definitly change the accept answer icons to something similar as the upvote/downvote/favorite icons. They look wonderful, and also use the outline when not selected. I [asked about this on UX.SE][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Following the same argument, I would either implement the hover for all icons, or for none ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/970/15464&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/q/6576/3612" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24732" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1408" RevisionGUID="a6d0bb1e-ab23-4282-8855-a01b93bc1868" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If you catch it early *enough*, I think the answer is easy, I've had success with it myself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Downvote** and **comment**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    I came upon an interesting question ([I made a mistake accepting this job](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63657/i-made-a-mistake-accepting-this-job)) which had about 5 answers already, and the top one, if I remember correctly, in 4 minutes had already gone up to **+5/-0** (sadly the [timeline](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/63657/timeline) doesn't break it down into small enough chunks to actually tell).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    I didn't want to be so harsh, but I felt like the community was going to run away with it if I didn't say something.  Soon the comment had several upvotes and the momentum on the answer had been killed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59606/is-type-safety-worth-the-trade-offs/59608#59608 this is another example where a comment stopped the streak of upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;* If you have time, **answer**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Since I had downvoted, the OP asked me what my problem with it was and what my thoughts were.  I hadn't planned on answering, but I figured if I was going to be a naysayer then I had a responsibility to back up what I'd said if asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some users actually like these short answers; One poster commented this, and said that others (I can only assume mine) were too long-winded.  In response to me, he subsequently posted an [answer here on meta](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers/1365#1365) stating his reasoning.  I disagree with this view, but if it is a conscious opinion, than it is that user's prerogative and I am OK with that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I *don't* think this is a problem of members of the community *wanting* short answers, or valuing them over good ones in a completely fair comparison.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is another manifestation of [Fastest Gun in the West Problem](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem), and it *may be worse here on Programmers*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A short answer by nature has less to disagree with.&#xD;&#xA;* The short answer is more likely to be read by people just scanning the answers.&#xD;&#xA;* The short answer is digested quickly by all readers.&#xD;&#xA;* If the short answer already has votes, it's easy to *assume* that someone else has read the long answers for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the answers to the FGITW problem, [Adam Davis starts out with](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem/9758#9758):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've asked questions that have received an immediate answer with enough information to get me past my block, but not served on a platter as you propose, with all the information I might need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This quick-answer nature is ***very*** specific to StackOverflow.  A *high* percentage of questions on SO are likely to have been a &quot;blocker&quot; for someone, while almost all on Programmers are the thoughtful, non-urgent kind of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [(non-)solution](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73/is-the-fastest-gun-in-the-west-solved#93) to the FGITW problem is to encourage people to vote better.  This solution is much better suited to SO than to Programmers, and I believe needs revisiting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**In conclusion** I disagree with the idea that something is wrong the the &quot;people&quot; here.  It is completely natural to see a highly-upvoted short answer, read it, agree; then scan the rest and see a long-winded answer and assume everyone else must not have agreed and skip it.  Then you add your vote to the stack on the short answer, and voila, the cycle continues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If we want to fix this, the software is going to have to change.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24733" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1150" RevisionGUID="5618e451-2f2a-408b-841e-6c223a21d407" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is not a duplicate of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1072/the-flag-comment-icon-is-too-harsh because I actually like the image of the flag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather, the problem is when you hover over it. On Meta, if you hover over the flag so it turns from white to black, the heights of the two images are not the same. It results in the control (and anything below it) being shifted up one pixel if the comment's length is short and does not increase the height. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For an example, see https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-list and hover over the flag of a short comment and the flag of a long comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's different on Programmers. On Programmers, the height *and width* are off. See http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23120/does-tweeting-9-to-5-hurt-job-applicants for an example. (Specifically, GrandMasterB's comment on the original question post)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Due to the way browsers render font sizes and line lengths, this may vary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there is an extremely simple way to know something is wrong: the bottom of the hovered &quot;flag&quot; image is cut off." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24734" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1747" RevisionGUID="108fc810-b0f5-4d7c-8a9c-b4a56d7959f0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Like the title says; What is the difference between Stackoverflow and this Q&amp;A site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24735" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2380" RevisionGUID="80b48bc8-31c7-4fca-98f7-c8267143f017" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Occasionally, we'll get a question asking for help about naming a concept or symbol, and we've been closing them as &quot;off-topic&quot; and &quot;not constructive&quot; on the basis that naming questions rarely amount to detailed answers beyond &quot;Name it X.&quot; or &quot;What about Y?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previously, there was a discussion in regards to [questions like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95920/what-is-each-time-through-a-loop-called) on whether or not [we needed a &quot;general reference&quot; close reason](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1994/would-the-general-reference-close-reason-be-useful-here-on-programmers). The consensus, as I understood it, was that we don't need a new close reason because such questions are off-topic by the first line in our FAQ (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for **expert programmers** who are interested in conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;What do I call X?&quot; is a question that's generally uninteresting and irrelevant to expert programmers, and thus should not be here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there was some discussion about an [attempted migration from English.SE](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/44295/what-is-the-name-for-the-class-of-computer-programs-that-act-as-a-front-end-for-a#question) on whether this excludes *all* naming questions or if there is a certain subset of naming questions that would be allowed, particularly ones that are not blindingly obvious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Should* all naming questions be considered off-topic and not constructive?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If so, should we add a line to our FAQ about it?&#xD;&#xA;* If not, why not? What types of naming questions could work here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24736" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1628" RevisionGUID="4b55047f-5537-4f65-90a6-bb8bf429a4b0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Try asking, say, &quot;What is best in life?&quot; on Stack Overflow. As soon as you finish entering that title and tab off the entry field, you'll get a little warning: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Pretty much what you're asking for, right? Ah, but that won't appear on Programmers, because [Programmers loves subjectivity](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/53/the-question-youre-asking-appears-subjective-and-is-likely-to-be-closed-yeah)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see a question that doesn't provide enough information to be answered (not just general, but outright *vague*) then close it. Otherwise, edit the title to reflect the actual question, assuming it doesn't already. If you can find a way to eliminate &quot;best&quot; while doing so... Well, shucks, that *would* be best." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24737" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1806" RevisionGUID="2a86cb25-b364-489c-9649-df1382934ae4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So it's summer-time, and while you may be thinking that means warm temperatures and blue skies (sorry, Southern Hemisphere!), the Stack Exchange network has caught the clean-up bug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our sister sites like [OnStartups](http://meta.answers.onstartups.com/questions/526/onstartups-clean-up-getting-started) and [Ask Ubuntu](http://meta.askubuntu.com/questions/1220/clean-up-week-event-planning) have proposed cleaning up old questions to spruce up the place, and we thought it'd be a good idea to explore here on Programmers.SE, as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange has an automatic deletion system in place (see [Jeff's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning/1807#1807) for the details), but we've still amassed 2,690 (and counting) closed questions so far. The idea would be to sweep up the hundreds of questions collecting dust because they weren't great fits for our site and were closed or abandoned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It'd also be a way to get everyone involved in moderating the site, and we moderators would rely heavily on you guys to go through and take a look at what needs to go or what needs to be reviewed. Plus, it's a chance for more flag weight increases than you can possibly imagine!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Criteria for deletion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our thinking right now is to follow the leads of our sister sites and delete questions that have one or more of the following criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Have a vote total of -2 or less *(Edit: mostly complete)*&#xD;&#xA;* Have a very low view count&#xD;&#xA;* Have no answers, or no upvoted answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the additional criterion that the question must've been closed, ideally for a decent amount of time to allow the original poster to revise the question and try to get it reopened (let's say, a month).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, based on Joel Spolsky and Robert Cartaino's suggestions, any questions with have not been answered and haven't had any activity in several months (i.e. the &quot;forgotten&quot; questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Getting involved&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is where you guys come in. If you see a question that's worth saving but exhibits the qualities above, **fight for it.** If a question is sitting around that really doesn't belong here, **tell us.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does that mean? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Identifying questions that could be improved.** Some questions were closed because they were bad fits for the *as written*, but nevertheless had some really great answers. If you think you can get the question into a state that'd make it a fit for our site without invalidating the answers, edit the question or suggest an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Voting on questions.** If you have the ability to vote for deletion or re-open, use your powers for good. If you see a question that's wrongfully closed, vote to re-open it. If you see a question that should be deleted, vote to delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Flagging questions that need moderator's attention.** If you find a closed question that needs one of us to take a look at it, flag it and let us know what your concern is. If you don't have the ability to vote to re-open or delete but feel strongly about it, let us know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Finding candidate questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE search has a few operators to help locate candidate questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [All questions that are closed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1)&#xD;&#xA;* [Closed questions with -2 score or less](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1530/closed-questions-with-2-score-or-less)&#xD;&#xA;* [Closed questions with less than 100 views and more than -2 score](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1531/closed-questions-with-less-than-100-views-and-greater-than-2-score)&#xD;&#xA;* [Questions with no activity and no answers for 6 months](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1532/questions-with-no-answers-and-no-activity-for-6-months)&#xD;&#xA;* Others? Post 'em!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Questions and comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you guys think? Are there any other parts of the site we should be looking at for some clean-up? Do you have any suggestions or ideas about how to handle this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24739" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1761" RevisionGUID="74e292fc-bc3d-4054-8214-a46e47eb0d39" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The FAQ says to use the Edit Room menu, but I didn't see any such menu.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other chat systems, INVITE USER was a big, obvious, and frequently-used button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I blind?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: new feature requested [here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1764/can-we-get-a-simple-way-to-initiate-a-chat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24740" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1895" RevisionGUID="d83eb31f-3b8f-46d8-b7dd-1724692cee6e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Most meta posts are related to closed questions and misunderstanding about what sort of questions is allowed here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that we don't offer any alternative to the user that the become very frustrated. It's clear that many existing community members have expressed numerous times their own frustration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not going to stop anytime soon. We need to provide them with a solution, and SE network can do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I created a [proposal on area51][1] to offer an alternative to those programmers seeking for help &amp; advice by other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I count on your support and if the proposal is a success, I suggest to setup a migration path from P.SE to the new proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**: it has been closed as *P.SE* duplicate :) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE2**: I address a last idea [here][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33531/programmers-life&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1907/is-providing-more-flexibility-what-p-se-needs" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24743" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2423" RevisionGUID="6f333d3d-3d23-43ed-8bbd-19da3ecee528" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**This is the current editable portion of the FAQ (feel free to [use as a template for suggested improvements](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/bfc48337-6214-4363-979e-7b7cc24de3d3/view-source)).**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers - Stack Exchange is for &lt;span class=&quot;revision-comment&quot;&gt;expert programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development&lt;/span&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can include topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;- Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;- Algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;- Design patterns&#xD;&#xA;- Architecture&#xD;&#xA;- Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;- Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;- Software licensing&#xD;&#xA;- Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is about *programming tools*, please ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com) instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While subjective questions are allowed, subjective does not mean &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. **Please keep it professional at all times**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All subjective questions are expected to be _constructive_. How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;- tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;- have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;- invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;- insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;- are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot; Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Can I ask career advice questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, unless your question is specifically about software development and requires the unique insights of a programmer. Most career advice questions [run the risk of being closed][1]: try to make yours a [good subjective question][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure your question has the proper scope. If your question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really something that uniquely applies to software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![proper scope for question](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please also be aware that we will not delete your career advice question after you receive answers if you change your mind about having asked it. Think carefully before you post a question full of personal or otherwise sensitive information. If you don't want something to be publicly revealed, consider not posting it on Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## What about other programming related questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please note that the following subjects are considered *off-topic* here:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What language should I learn next? (Unless you have a _specific_ requirement and don't know which language meets that requirement.)&#xD;&#xA;- What salary/wage should I ask for/expect? (Too localized to your place and time)&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;Which technology is better?&lt;/a&gt; (e.g Java/C#, Eclipse/Netbeans, iPhone/Android)&#xD;&#xA;- Please critique my resum&amp;eacute;. (Unless you have a _specific_ question about a software development part of your resum&amp;eacute;. Questions about resum&amp;eacute; formatting and style are always off-topic.)&#xD;&#xA;- What project should I choose for fun/college/course/thesis/practice? (Too localized, inviting a list of equally valid answers, and usually not meeting the guidelines for good subjective questions.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more discussion on these subject see &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-list&quot;&gt;the question where these topics were discussed&lt;/a&gt; on our Meta site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments are useful for getting clarifications, but extended discussions detract from the question and its answers. If you'd like to discuss anything related to programming with other expert programmers, please use our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24744" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1880" RevisionGUID="afba230c-dd32-410b-af55-fb7f4cea4919" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As ChrisF mentioned, questions need to invite some unique insight from programmers beyond just a simple &quot;I'm asking programmers&quot; clause. In terms of possible scope, we want to hit the blue area of this diagram:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Programmers.SE scope](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, real questions invite *answers*, not *ideas*, *opinions*, or *lists*. From [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `_____`”, then you should not be asking here. (You are more than welcome to have such discussions in our [real time web chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/).) However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged [and possibly removed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion), **avoid** asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite `______`?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I closed it as off-topic per these guidelines: Stack Exchange is not well suited for generating lists of recommendations. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, after looking around, I found we had an earlier round that I thought might be helpful (even if it happened to have been closed), so I changed the close reason to exact duplicate to provide a link back to the earlier question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As others have noted, it's probably a better fit for [Productivity.SE](http://productivity.stackexchange.com) or even [Project Management.SE](http://pm.stackexchange.com), but the guidelines about open-ended questions are a network-wide thing, and lists of recommendations are off-topic everywhere, not just on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Are questions not directly related to programming (but might concern programmers) on-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are “I'm looking for X” questions on topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also check out [Frequently closing popular questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1675/frequently-closing-popular-questions), where the idea that the guidelines in place shouldn't apply to popular questions was discussed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24745" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1343" RevisionGUID="50803b8e-4ca7-40db-a818-33ff91758288" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I had a &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62916/why-is-there-so-much-hate-for-net-in-the-world&quot;&gt;subjective question&lt;/a&gt; that I was pretty sure would get closed, and it did.  Before I wrote this question I debated with myself for quite a while before asking it for a few reasons.  I highly respect the Stack Exchange network and I didn't want to get my question closed for violating the standards and guidelines of questions.  I also wrote and re-wrote my question several times trying to get the wording right to follow the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;six guidelines of subjective questions&lt;/a&gt;, which I failed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Still things didn't seem right, so I decided to ask the meta site &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1333/where-do-i-ask-a-subjective-question&quot;&gt;where I should ask a subjective question&lt;/a&gt;.  Thank you to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1333/where-do-i-ask-a-subjective-question/1334#1334&quot;&gt;very helpful answer&lt;/a&gt; I was able to understand the reasons why my wording was poor and why my question was closed.  However, in my meta question I also asked &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&quot;if there is not an appropriate stackexchange site, where is a good forum that I can ask that sort of question that has the maturity and popularity of the stackexchange sites so that I can get a quality response?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you to Jeff Atwood's comment, which I agree and kind of thought might be the case before I submitted the question in the first place, that the best place would have been to ask this outside of the stackexchange network.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, my question is, where is a good place to go outside of the stackexchange network where I can ask this very subjective question (probably with better wording as suggested by the answers to my meta question) but still be reaching the maturity and quality of the stackexchange community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24747" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1815" RevisionGUID="09448b60-7350-4518-9c58-82b191e3c702" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As you mention, the questions that work on Stack Exchange are ones that have a specific, singular, and solvable problem: that is, you ask a question, you get targeted answers that may or may not help you solve the problem. If they don't, you edit your question to clarify. If the answers are unclear, you ask the answerers to expand on their answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, that's not what happened: you've presented a position, asked several questions, and attempted to carry on a conversation with all the answerers in a now deleted answer complete with your own thoughts and ideas about the subject. That's not really what Stack Exchange is about: we're not a discussion board where free-form conversations can take place about a general topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The blog post [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) talks about this type of problem and provides specific guidance that is codified in our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.** To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* **there is no actual problem to be solved:** “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.** If your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you distilled all the discussion you were trying to have in all the comments, and all the opinions you might have about a topic, what is the *exact nature* of the problem you're trying to solve? Asking about that likely is going to be a good fit for us. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to ask yourself, &quot;what does a *correct* answer to this question look like?&quot; If it's hard to imagine it, the question is likely a discussion topic, and should be revised. That is, if you're not getting the answers you want, your first inclination should be to tighten up the question, not to initiate a discussion about your opinions or thoughts about the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To speak to the specific nature of *this* question, you wanting to know what language you should switch to, that's off-topic here unless it's particularly specific. That is, you have a specific use-case and you need to know if a specific language would be more appropriate: perhaps something like, &quot;Can I interact with an RDBMS using something other than SQL?&quot; or &quot;How can I develop iOS applications without knowing Objective-C?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more information about why the more general &quot;What language should I use?&quot; is off-topic, check out the question, [Why is “what language should I learn” considered off-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The simple answer is that the question as stated &quot;which language should I learn next?&quot; is **unanswerable**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only answer anyone should give is **always** &quot;it depends&quot; - which isn't an answer at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ultimately it's not a real problem. The next language you should learn is largely determined by the project you are working on and unless you are in the rare situation of having complete freedom over what you do this will have been chosen by someone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to other questions, feel free to flag questions you don't believe fit these criteria for moderator review. With over 12,000 questions asked, some slip through the cracks of community moderation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24748" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1907" RevisionGUID="7385a92d-ffb7-4014-bf41-08a6fa4edb5e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As per Jeff's [request][1] (see comments), I will try to illustrate how I see things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The high number of closed questions and frustrated users complaints is a pretty good indication that our rules and/or guidelines are too complicated to understand by the average developer (and I'm one of them). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the goal is to create an elitistic community of programmers (and attact elites), we should keep them and continue to apply them blindly. It will probably work long term.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However if we really want to make the internet better for programmers, regardless their level, culture, beliefs, *[put any difference here]*, we should either ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- simplify the rules&#xD;&#xA;- be more flexible about them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that that kind of questions should be avoided in the future:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10087/if-you-had-the-power-to-remove-one-thing-in-your-daily-job-what-would-it-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I see a lot of closed questions that should be kept open because of the value they (and will) provide to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90848/is-outsourcing-offshoring-disloyal&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1156/how-do-you-deal-with-bad-coworkers&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10916/do-speakers-get-paid-for-their-tech-talks&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72090/want-to-quit-they-want-me-to-stay&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90383/punishment-for-breaking-the-build&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78956/i-no-longer-want-to-be-a-developer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3272/job-hopping-is-it-a-problem&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21782/stagnating-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11440/being-a-good-mentor&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5372/how-do-programmers-stay-healthy&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87155/evolution-of-mainstream-programming-languages-simplicity-versus-complexity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But on the other hand, I see many questions that should be closed according the same rules, but are left open. I selected questions where at least one moderator answered: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89666/promotion-or-de-motivation/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84265/giving-employer-power-of-attorney-to-obtain-your-inventions/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83225/should-a-developer-be-forced-to-memorize-details/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76858/how-important-is-it-to-finish-projects/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72001/so-theyre-trying-to-pull-me-into-management/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4000/how-involved-should-our-employers-be-in-our-education/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80898/how-do-you-ask-or-get-asked-to-speak-at-a-software-conference/&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77102/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences/ &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, **all the questions** above deserve to stay opened. With their answers, they are all **very valuable** for the vast majority of programmers and **contribute to a better internet**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should measure how valuable a question would be before closing it, instead of applying rules blindly. That's the role of the moderators. To be effective, this task **must** be collective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that questions which main aim is having fun and/or social interactions should be closed, however, some highly interesting questions should be able to remain on the site. Because they are interesting and useful, and only for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When in doubt, moderator should request opinions like Mark Trapp [did][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That flexibility, that is called [practical wisdom][3], and I strongly believe it's the way to go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta/1896#1896&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1859/whats-constructive-about-being-lazy-and-incompetent&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1675/frequently-closing-popular-questions/1677#1677" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24749" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2456" RevisionGUID="392f5d5c-0191-47bc-85cc-595705f13118" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Please don't!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag wikis are meant to provide context and guidance for how the tag is supposed to be used on the site: how they relate to other tags, what types of questions work, links to frequently asked questions, etc. Generalized tag wikis don't really help anything or teach people how we want our site to be organized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the reason why there are strict requirements to be able to edit a tag wiki without approval: someone on the site intimately familiar with the tag is going to know what works and what doesn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I approved it because it looked good on its own merits within the context of Programmers. There are going to be *some* tag wikis that could work just as well here as well as Stack Overflow, but there are going to be just as many that won't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because there's not going to be a hard and fast rule on what's going to work and what isn't, I'd hold off on suggesting wikis *en masse*: we've had a long-standing problem with thoughtless tagging and we're just starting to clean that up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, if you can focus on suggesting tag wikis that provide information in the context of Programmers, that'd be preferable. One section of tags we could really use some help with are the career/jobs tags. Kevin Vermeer [pointed out a few tags that could use some love](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2146/blacklist-career-advice/2148#2148). Aaronaught had [some thoughts](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952) about that, too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24750" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1385" RevisionGUID="26da54f6-c441-4e5b-af55-87c6ecbedc2b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Sorry about the all the acronyms in the title.  There are many questions here on Meta Programmers that are neither:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* about Programmers.SE at all&#xD;&#xA;* about a general SE problem, but related to a question on Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should these questions be flagged for migration to [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) (where they can often be closed as duplicates)? Examples include the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1383/why-is-it-only-5-reputation-points-for-an-up-vote-on-a-question&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1380/badge-progress-display-like-the-percentage-till-privilages-display&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1358/upvote-in-community-wiki" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24752" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1909" RevisionGUID="58abbbbe-1e18-4d33-9c21-ad2dd6b74b26" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Jeff responded to the bulk of this, so I'm just going to touch on a couple points that stood out to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;I think we should measure how valuable a question would be before closing it, instead of applying rules blindly. That's the role of the moderators. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe it's better to close a good question too soon (and subsequently reopen it after review, of course) than to let a bad question stay open too long. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't apply rules blindly. We go by prior history of similar questions, existing flags and close votes, the site-specific rules established here (e.g. &quot;'what language should I learn next' questions are off-topic&quot;), and the network-wide guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;When in doubt, moderator should request opinions like Mark Trapp did.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do request opinions. Making a meta post for every case is not feasible, but we look for flags, close/reopen votes, and comments on the post. For most cases, there is no dissenting community opinion -- we see flags telling us a post doesn't belong, we review it, and then leave it open if the flags are wrong, let the community handle it from there, or close it. It is now possible for 10k+ users to disagree with a flag by marking it &quot;invalid&quot;. We definitely take that kind of feedback into account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're always thinking about questions and evaluating their potential. We *want* to keep good content on this site and draw in more content like it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that you see some questions stay open even if blind adherence to the rules would see them closed proves that. There is an obvious correlation open questions and moderator answers on them -- we don't answer questions we know will get closed because [it's poor etiquette](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1006/is-it-appropriate-to-answer-a-question-and-vote-to-close-it-at-the-same-time).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We try to let through a reasonable mix of good quality topics that are useful and can teach a developer something. Jeff covered the emphasis on learning in his answer, so I'm not going to repeat that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In closing, please flag, please vote, please comment. Please make meta posts if you feel a question stayed open or got closed by mistake, regardless of whether a moderator acted on it or not. Guidance from the community is invaluable and we all really appreciate having it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24753" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1817" RevisionGUID="4ebf2cf5-3275-438c-8d4a-ee79bafba6b4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a subtle but pernicious problem with the quoted answer and many like it: *it's impossible to prove a negative.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This kind of answer would never fly on any of the science SE sites because it is incorrect *by definition*.  The best *objective* answer one can give (assuming one agrees with the &quot;no&quot; premise) is to list the reasons that *might* be considered valid and explain why they should be considered invalid.  If no such reasons are known, then the correct answer to the question isn't *&quot;no&quot;*, it's actually *&quot;I don't know&quot;*, which clearly isn't worth posting as an answer.  Maybe a comment, if the question goes [tumbleweed][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know if we should be trying to &quot;moderate away&quot; these answers, but [as I've pleaded for in the past][1], we desperately need people to start downvoting these fact-free &quot;pithy phrase&quot; answers instead of upvoting them.  I think that having answers on top of the heap that look like they took 5 seconds to poop out (maybe less) really hurt our credibility as a community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange wants to [optimize for pearls, not sand][2].  *Part* of this is emphasizing the value of great answers.  The other part is *de-emphasizing the poor ones*.  This is exactly why we have downvotes.  Has anyone *ever* seen a 1-line answer singled out in a positive light on the SE blog, or on any major blog, or really anywhere other than maybe reddit?  *Some* short answers may genuinely be correct and complete, but *most* of them are... sand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop pressing the other arrow when you see this type of pandering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1400/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/21/tumbleweed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24755" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2575" RevisionGUID="38f595fb-e0b2-4d8e-80a4-9053384cd954" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While [I'm sympathetic](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here) to wanting to discuss legal issues here, as legal problems are a large facet of being an independent developer, in *general* questions that are not about licensing (and generally, that means FOSS licenses like the GPL) are [off-topic here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here) for two reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Our expertise is not in IP law, contract law, or any other type of law. We would be giving legal advice as laypeople, which is an opportunity for a bag of hurt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Even putting aside the expertise, questions do not provide enough detail about their specific situations to be able to provide *accurate* legal advice. The ones that do are so specific to the asker's situation, they're *too localized*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, given the diagram:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Scope diagram](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They're hitting the center, &quot;Just You&quot; part, not the blue, &quot;All Programmers&quot; part. There are very few legal questions that are generally applicable to programmers at large: well-known licenses like FOSS licenses are probably the best example of what would be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to speak to this specific question, there is exactly one entity that knows what will be accepted, and that's Apple. From the [App Store Review Guidelines](https://developer.apple.com/appstore/resources/approval/guidelines.html):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, &quot;I'll know it when I see it&quot;. And we think that you will also know it when you cross it.   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * This is a living document, and new apps presenting new questions may result in new rules at any time. Perhaps your app will trigger this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're not going to even begin to provide a definitive answer about this: Apple decides for themselves what's going to work. If there's a concern about what they will and won't allow, *they* need to be asked: not random strangers on the internet who are not in the know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know there's a cost associated with joining the iOS Developer Program: I get it. But just like we're not a substitute for a lawyer when someone can't or won't pay for one, we're not a substitute for Apple when someone can't or won't pay the iOS Developer Program fee." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24756" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1925" RevisionGUID="a050253a-6c80-4d75-8131-5846a4847848" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was wondering if it was possible to create a &quot;pinned&quot; topic that has links to the best all-time questions on P.SE. My query is similar to this thread: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1714/the-best-of-programmers-se-1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the difference is that instead of a weekly thread, I imagine a permanent thread that is rarely updated but has essential links. Sort of a &quot;best of P.SE&quot; thread that users new and old can visit to reference old topics or get answers to the most frequent questions. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24757" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1912" RevisionGUID="ce6463e7-6a9d-4f14-820e-5ddb8b7c160e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The problems Software Quality Assurance has shouldn't have any effect on our site: [Joel Spolsky warned](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/) about the issues of trying to segment the programmer population into progressively smaller camps, and the fact that they can't field enough questions, to me, indicates Spolsky wasn't far off the mark in his original assessment. Many, although perhaps not all, questions related to the topic *are* on-topic here and shouldn't be migrated to a struggling beta site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to the other questions: as Anna points to, [they're not on-topic on Stack Overflow, and are on-topic here](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/). Stack Overflow is for very specific, here-is-my-code-and-I'm-not-sure-where-I-went-wrong-with-it questions; Programmers.SE is for conceptual I'm-planning-on-doing-this-but-need-help-with-the-big-picture questions. The topics you list as being better off on Stack Overflow are are our *best*, most useful questions: the questions that most resemble what Programmers.SE is about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, if *these* questions aren't on-topic here, what *is*? The [junky questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl) that [aren't good enough](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow) for Stack Overflow? We figured out early on in beta that wasn't going to work, and that's why Programmers.SE was launched as the conceptual yang to Stack Overflow's concrete yin." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24758" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2014" RevisionGUID="3616fb8b-eacf-486e-96f2-72d6ac404a4d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Mousing over the &quot;What does voting mean here?&quot; section of the [Meta Programmers FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq) displays the correct link: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq#vote-differences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, clicking on it places `faq#dontask` into the address bar instead of `faq#vote-differences`. It does not refresh the page and put the quoted section at the top, but I'm not entirely sure if it's supposed to do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I copy the link and paste it into the browser, it looks like both &quot;dontask&quot; and &quot;vote-differences&quot; sections are quoted at the top of the page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![screenshot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/zdqI3.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24759" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2647" RevisionGUID="3ba68be9-8a87-4c42-9ff2-74693fd18124" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="They are on-topic, *[provided they meet the six guidelines.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example of a marginal &quot;What does this mean&quot; question, demonstrating no research effort:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What does &quot;Premature optimization is the root of all evil&quot; mean?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of good alternative questions, meeting the six guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33020/when-is-optimization-not-premature-and-therefore-not-evil&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45259/is-premature-optimization-always-bad&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80084/is-premature-optimization-really-the-root-of-all-evil&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79938/what-optimizations-are-premature" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24760" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1486" RevisionGUID="c0e80f8d-1b8a-452f-b673-64b11aa68f7a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Does this even mean anything when used *correctly*? [Mark notes][1] that since programmers themselves are on-topic for the site it could be used to refer to questions *about* beginners... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...But who is a beginner? The kid typing his [first &quot;Hello world&quot; program][2]? The freshman [about to attend class][3]? The new graduate starting his [first real-world project][4]? The [polyglot programmer][5] trying to make sense of Ruby? Beginner as a description for a person means very different things in different contexts, much more so than a *role* like [tag:team-leader]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A similar tag is [tag:great-programmer], where a disturbing number of the questions tagged are concerned with *[de][6][fi][7][ni][8][ng][9] [wh][10][at][11] [it][12] [me][13][an][14][s][15]*...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Mark argues][1] that beginner could be useful for a person starting their professional life to find questions about other people in the same situation. But Renesis suggests the [tag:junior-programmer] tag for this, which is probably a better choice seeing as I can only find a couple of questions tagged &quot;beginners&quot; that actually fit this criteria. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regardless of how it *could* be used, [tag:beginners] **is** primarily used as a meta-tag. They're not questions *about* beginners, they're questions *from* beginners! For the vast majority of the questions currently tagged `beginners`, [tag:learning], [tag:teaching] and [tag:education] are all better choices.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's get rid of it.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1473/do-we-need-to-ban-the-beginners-tag/1475#1475&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60406/which-programming-language-first-introduced-hello-world&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51669/getting-started-and-learning-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70661/how-big-is-the-gap-between-what-you-learn-in-cs-curriculums-and-what-you-need-in&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46045/why-is-it-always-what-language-should-i-learn-next-instead-of-what-project-sho&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9055/what-are-the-big-contemporary-names-in-the-programming-field&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7749/how-do-you-go-from-a-so-so-programmer-to-a-great-one&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4680/is-it-possible-to-become-a-good-programmer-if-you-dont-like-math&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1106/when-can-you-call-yourself-good-at-language-x&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4711/what-are-the-most-common-schools-of-knowledge-prevalent-in-great-programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3849/when-would-someone-be-considered-a-great-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28/what-personal-qualities-make-for-a-successful-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7439/which-web-site-gives-the-most-accurate-indication-of-a-programmers-capabilities&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14052/is-there-such-a-thing-as-a-super-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50818/is-it-possible-to-measure-if-someone-is-a-good-programmer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24761" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1947" RevisionGUID="8469a728-80a9-4801-b697-53a24eca60d5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I haven't had much time to check this recently - what with my PC failing - but this is something I can agree with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, we need some way of ensuring that we&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Get general agreement - even in the cases where we think it's clear cut.&#xD;&#xA;2. Manage the process so two people don't do the same tags.&#xD;&#xA;3. Indicate which have been done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Web Apps each synonym/merger was posted as a separate question. While we might want to group some this would be good as &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. We can see whether people agree with the proposal - from the votes and comments.&#xD;&#xA;2. Indicate which ones each of us is working on - either by posting an answer or editing the question.&#xD;&#xA;3. Indicate which have been done by adding the tag [meta-tag:status-completed]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ah - I see Mark's already started - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24762" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2689" RevisionGUID="5e4ac801-c4cb-42c6-a88b-74753f540fa6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The subject of forcing a comment with all down votes has been [discussed and rejected several times][1]. The conclusion (and rightly so)  is always that we should not force this. But it is almost universally agreed that doing so benefits the community as well as the poster. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*I hereby pledge to never Down Vote any Question or Answer without leaving a comment explaining why.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I will be putting this in my “About me”, linking back to this question, and I urge you to do the same.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/159/should-we-force-adding-a-comment-with-every-down-vote" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24763" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2052" RevisionGUID="dfb7b10c-d739-4301-9cbc-aa29c2c4a883" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Let&amp;#39;s nuke the catch-all tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Every question on this site should be related to [tag:software-engineering] (or something tangentially related to software engineering), and/or [tag:software-development]. These are just the ones on the front page of the &quot;popular&quot; tags, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I get some free time this week or weekend, I would honestly like to go through all (currently 52) pages of tags and come up with a list of tags that add little or no value, and let the community decide. Perhaps as a part of the Summer Cleaning. I would like to see a major effort to clean up tags and write some good tag wiki pages, but I'm not going to ask other people to jump in on this until I get a feel for how much value this would add or what the community thinks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In response to Matt Ellen's answer, the [tag:programming] tag makes sense if it is referring to issues that arise during the construction of software. I would still want to go through the questions tagged with it and make sure that its used appropriately, but I can now see it being a valid tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other two, [tag:software-engineering] and [tag:software-development] I still feel are two general. More specific tags, such as [tag:requirements], [tag:architecture], [tag:programming], [tag:testing], [tag:maintenance], [tag:process], [tag:quality], [tag:tools], and [tag:education], along with a number of others should probably be used instead to get at the root of the topic of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And this brings up another issue: the [tag:design] tag being used to refer to architectural design, component/module design, and UI design. This is kind of blowing up the scope a little bit (well, a ton, but we'll overlook that for a second), but I think it does underscore a need to take a good hard look at tags and how they are used to make it easier to search and sort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the reasons why I don't have favorite tags here is because it's too hard to use them. Cleaning up would make this easier." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24764" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1488" RevisionGUID="9ad3bcf2-e73b-482e-bbf3-22b49c4647ff" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Silly question?  I don't think so...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Referring to the question [What is the flag option for][1], and the accepted answer provided, I should be contributing by flagging obvious spam as such, which I believe I'm adhering to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three times I've done so, in each case the post was closed and deleted, yet *I now end up with flag weight 90*.  That's counter intuitive to say the least.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Needless to say I'm reluctant to continue as I'm apparently doing something that doesn't meet the approval of the mods - so what's the current correct answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1298/what-is-the-flag-option-for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24765" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1952" RevisionGUID="13c42323-58fb-4da8-bebd-bec97be40594" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This [seems to have been proposed a long time ago][1] but never followed through on.  This is what happens when you let them fester...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, to me there are actually several different subcategories of career questions, almost none of which are properly represented by the current tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * **Career development** means advancing one's career, irrespective of their current job.  In other words, topics such as becoming a more attractive/in-demand employee or candidate, advancing up the ranks, or developing interviewing or negotiating skills.  Some well-defined CD questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/54506/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48100/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/35208/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/13892/3249&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * **Career advice** is essentially an umbrella term for aimless &quot;help me, I fail at life&quot; questions which should be terminated with extreme prejudice.  Right now, these tend to share the [tag:career] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/43528/3249 (thanks Stack Overflow!)&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/18502/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/29213/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/21782/3249&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Then there are **job rants**, which I personally don't even think deserve the dignity of being closed (as opposed to flat-out deleted).  The hallmark of these topics is that the essential question - if there actually is one - is almost always some variant of *&quot;should I quit?&quot;*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74913/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/20866/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/22609/3249&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Several questions exist about **finding and acquiring jobs**.  These are similar, on the surface, to career development questions, but tend to be at the tactical rather than strategic level:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/13811/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/14551/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/37915/3249&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * There are also some (admittedly few) from the **employer** or **management** side, many of which are legitimately tagged [tag:project-management] and don't deserve to be saddled with [tag:career]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/348/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/50616/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/46920/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/43409/3249&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Finally there are several - far too many, actually, including a *ridiculous* number of &quot;talking to management&quot; questions - that I would classify as **managing one's own job**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/70765/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/59740/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3383/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/34570/3249&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, this is not just a simple matter of merging a tag.  The [tag:jobs] tag itself is very unfocused and contains a lot of questions about job searching, job management, and I think a few about hiring.  Merging it with the [tag:career] tag will only create more chaos in *that* tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to suggest dispensing entirely with both the [tag:career] and [tag:jobs] tags and propose the following new categories (of course, this is just a suggestion):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [tag:career-development] for questions that are about... uh, career development. This is currently a synonym of [tag:career] - it probably shouldn't be.&#xD;&#xA;  * [tag:job-searching] or [tag:job-market] for questions about getting a [new] job.  I'd suggest [tag:employment] instead, but I think that is prone to misinterpretation.&#xD;&#xA;  * [tag:job-satisfaction] for questions about work/life balance, creating better workspaces, etc.&#xD;&#xA;  * [tag:job-advancement] and also [tag:teamwork] for questions about excelling in one's current position. [tag:job-performance] might be another possibility.&#xD;&#xA;  * [tag:project-management] and/or [tag:employee-relations] and/or [tag:business] for employer-focused questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the type of thing that's only going to be solved by a long, arduous process of community-supported hand-sorting.  Fortunately, I think this site has enough daily activity to support some bulk manual retagging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alternatively, go ahead and merge it all into [tag:career] but then put the [tag:career] tag on notice saying that it needs to be phased out and sorted into subcategories.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/163/3249" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24766" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2823" RevisionGUID="18f7d86f-feae-4c32-84b1-080b1b7e79a9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Check out these two recent questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129497/looking-for-advice-about-my-employment-salary-situation (now deleted)&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129500/java-developer-interview-questions-regarding-sql&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The text of the first question has [been replaced by the OP][1] to &quot;Please delete thanks&quot;. In this instance OP cannot delete the question himself because there is an answer to it. The answer starts by saying: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is off-topic for Programmers, but I'll give you my advice:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question is a wall of text, story of OP's life type of question. It's still open at the time I'm writing this, but if not improved it will be closed. There's also an answer to it that appeared after a comment clearly pointed out the (obvious) problems with the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strictly speaking, we shouldn't try to answer obviously off topic questions, as discussed in [this earlier meta question][2]. For question (1) the answerer even acknowledged the question was off topic, and I fail to see any point to the answer whatsoever, other than rep-farming.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For question (2) it's a little bit more complicated. There's a core question in there that might even be a good question for StackOverflow. I can't blame an answerer for going for it, if (s)he truly believes the answer will be migrated. But there are all sorts of wrong with the question and chances are it will be closed very soon and the answer is NOT one that would fly well on StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I've personally answered [quite][3] [a][4] [few][5] [extremely][6] [low][7] [hanging][8] [fruits][9], I'm no stranger to rep-farming and I don't really have any problem with answerers. But to me, both questions were obviously at the very low end of the quality spectrum, and I'd prefer it if people refrain from answering those, especially with casual answers (i.e. short, without facts and references). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For question (1) the OP lost the ability to delete his post because of the casual answer, and now we have a question that says &quot;please delete&quot; and a judgement call for a moderator/10K users, as deleting the question will also delete a positively voted answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm fully aware that answers can be updated as well, and that several of us opt to answer fast and improve later, and I hope that's the case with these two answers. If not, please don't post answers on obviously off topic / bad questions, especially casual ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts? Arguments? Cookies?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question and one or possibly more answers on the second one were deleted. although that's more of a guess, as the current answers where posted as is (no edits) and wouldn't have sparked that post. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/129497/2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2223/are-useful-answers-to-off-topic-questions-useful-to-the-community&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118212/s-shaped-perl-program/118214#118214&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128376/benefits-pitfalls-of-include/128377#128377&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119357/what-are-silverlight-wcf-ria-services-or-applications/119361#119361&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122270/creating-a-library-that-requires-other-libraries-php/122273#122273&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78183/what-is-the-best-method-for-releasing-free-extension-or-example-code-based-on/79306#79306&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118449/is-php-and-mysql-web-development-4th-ed-an-outdated-book-to-learn-from/118462#118462&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/117289/does-the-session-implicit-objects-are-examples-of-the-model-objects-of-mvc/117306#117306" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24767" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1503" RevisionGUID="888e37d1-0323-41ec-9fc4-b38ec3b7f49d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I DO think this site is great for questions such as software-development-methologies, programming-eductaion, software-laws, business and many other non-programming related questions.&#xD;&#xA;However I believe that for a few of the topics related in the FAQ, this is not the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have read https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/948/why-programmers-when-stackoverflow-already-exists, https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so and https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/324/do-we-need-a-definition-of-subjective and even a few more related questions here and non of them seems to deal with theses specific overlaps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Quoting StackOverflow's FAQ:&lt;/b&gt; (please notice the * &lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;italic bold&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; list items)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question generally covers …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    a specific programming problem&#xD;&#xA;    * &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;a software algorithm&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    software tools commonly used by programmers&#xD;&#xA;    * &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;matters that are unique to the programming profession&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Quoting Programmer's FAQ:&lt;/b&gt; (please notice the * &lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;italic bold&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; list items)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can include topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;    Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;    * &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;Algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    * &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;Design patterns&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    * &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;Architecture&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;    Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;    Software law&#xD;&#xA;    * &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;Programming puzzles&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Architecture and design patterns&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me it seems like many architecture questions are as objective as many programming questions are. If fact, many programming questions are really to do with architecture and the accepted answer suggests an architectural change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also many programming questions can be solved in many ways (just like architectural problems). Each way has its pros and cons, but the decision of which way to take is subjective since the decider (or asker/voter), being human, thinks in a subjective way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Algorithms and datastructures&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not see how these can be considered subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Programming Puzzles&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asked over and over in StackOverflow, sometimes referred to as &quot;interview questions&quot; or &quot;homework&quot;. Basically no different than any StackOverflow question, except maybe never being technology-specific.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;A bit of statistics:&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow has over 5400 questions tagged [design-patterns].&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow has over 3400 questions tagged [architecture] and more with similar tags.&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow has over 1500 questions tagged [interview-questions] and more with tags such as [code-golf] and [puzzle].&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24768" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1963" RevisionGUID="4256d5b0-d25d-473d-92e3-83a5a16508db" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We [discussed](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career) merging [tag:career] and [tag:jobs], but now it's time to put a plan into action. [Aaronut's plan](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952) is great, but we need some help from the *posse*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 1: Clean up the tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are currently several job-related tags that need people to go through and flag or vote to close questions that are no longer (or were never) on-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Jobs: [tag:jobs], [tag:job-market], [tag:new-job], [tag:job-definition], [tag:job-title], [tag:job-hunting], [tag:job-satisfaction], [tag:job-distance], [tag:job-retention], [tag:hpc-jobs], [tag:scientific-computing-jobs]&#xD;&#xA;* Career: [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;* Employment: [tag:employment], [tag:employer], [tag:employers], [tag:self-employment]&#xD;&#xA;* Business: [tag:business], [tag:business-process], [tag:business-logic], [tag:business-rules], [tag:business-analysis], [tag:business-it]&#xD;&#xA;* Other: [tag:interview], [tag:hiring], [tag:project-management], [tag:teamwork]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* When you're done cleaning up a tag, post an answer here that you've finished so others know to prioritize other tags. &#xD;&#xA;* When in doubt about a question, create a new question here on meta instead of flagging so the community can decide if a question is a keeper.&#xD;&#xA;* Start with the oldest questions first: our really old questions have a high likelihood of no longer meeting the site's guidelines, and are what are in most need of cleanup. We have plenty of time to deal with the newer stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 2: Reorganize the survivors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We need to have a set of workable tags and tag synonyms, and any question that survived the purging needs to be edited to include those tags and improved in any way possible. [Aaronut's guidelines](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952) are pretty good, so let's go with them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-development] for questions that are about developing your career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] for questions about the prospects of getting a *new* job.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-satisfaction] for questions about work/life balance, creating better workspaces, etc.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-advancement] and also [tag:teamwork] for questions about excelling in one's current position.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:project-management] and/or [tag:employee-relations] and/or [tag:business] for employer-focused questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you have to deviate from the list above, **favor tag suffixes**: the system allows us to use wildcards in tag preferences, so [tag:jobs-foo] is preferable to [tag:foo-jobs].&#xD;&#xA;* **Spread out the organization.** Every time you edit a long-dead question to retag it, it bumps it back to the front page. Retagging 20+ questions at the same time kills the front-page usability for the rest of the visitors.&#xD;&#xA;* **Start with the oldest questions first.** Our really old questions have a high likelihood of no longer meeting the site's guidelines, and are what are in most need of cleanup. We have plenty of time to deal with the newer stuff.&#xD;&#xA;* **Request tag synonyms** by creating a question here on meta. This is especially important when a tag is organized out of existence (i.e. all the questions that had a tag have had that tag removed in favor of something else).&#xD;&#xA;* **Don't bump questions you don't intend to see reopened.** This is going to be disruptive without bumping a ton of questions that don't belong here anyway. If you can save a question by substantially editing it, by all means do that, but if a question is just bad and already closed, at most just flag it for deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 3: Burnination&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once all the good questions have been properly organized, we can go through the [normal clean-up process](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning) of deleting old, off-topic stuff." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24769" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2087" RevisionGUID="a09ab364-8db8-4914-9665-d8e87ec4ab0e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Putting contentious questions on probation](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1781/putting-contentious-questions-on-probation)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;So at least once every day we have this kind of question where somebody asks to give advice about some technical topic. (I'm not talking about career advice, though that may be handled too). Those questions mostly get closed immediately. Often as to localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I fully understand the reasons behind closing them, mainly for the knowledge base style of StackExchange, I still feel slightly bad for the users who ask those questions. From their subject those questions often fit very well to the community (best way to learn some subject, good tools to do something) and people justifiably expect that they can get good answers here. Often enough, some of the answers given before closing confirm this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Wouldn't it be possible to add a kind of &quot;delayed closing&quot;, that allows users to answer for maybe three days. After this period the question gets closed automatically. This way StackExchange would stay a knowledge base. Or would this still be too much &quot;chatting&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe somebody has a better idea how this can be handled. I just think it would be nice if we at least have a chance to help some people, as long as there are users ready to answer this kind of question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some examples**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure, if every single one would fit for such a solution, so please don't start discussions about the questions as such. Just to give some idea:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[how long to learn c++?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99145/how-long-to-learn-c)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe the worst example, since the questions isn't very good. But this could be enhanced instead of closing it. After all he is mainly asking for some input on C++ and how difficult people with experience think it is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is the single most effective thing you did to improve your programming skills? ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skill)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seems to be a 'historical' question. Obviously with some interesting results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Need a simple example theme for wordpress](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99204/need-a-simple-example-theme-for-wordpress)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously closed for good reasons. Too localized, only interesting to one person. But within a day or two, most likely somebody would have given him a few interesting links and he would be happy. Question than auto closed and never to be seen again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What topics should a university course introducing software engineering cover?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98280/what-topics-should-a-university-course-introducing-software-engineering-cover)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That one I really like as an example. It's too unspecified and can't be answered clearly, but is a interesting question anyway.&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Difficulty here of course, that it's a duplicate of an older question. But maybe that makes it even more interesting by drawing temporary attention to te older one and allowing new users to consider adding new material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How can I follow news from the development community?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98814/how-can-i-follow-news-from-the-development-community)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another one of the 'give him some interesting links and he is happy' type. Everybody interested could follow it for a few days, get some interesting information exchange and then forget it ever was asked (and in six months there would be new information anyway)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Is it easier to start with Ruby on Rails or with ASP.NET MVC?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99132/is-it-easier-to-start-with-ruby-on-rails-or-with-asp-net-mvc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Typical 'technology-advice' question. We have the people here who use those technologies since years and can tell him everything he needs to know. Sure, no clear answer and in a few months the game may have changed toward another technology.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can say that many answers to those questions where interesting to me. I either learned something from experienced people or maybe got a link to some interesting blog. I wouldn't know any other site were I could reliably get serious answers to such questions. So having them around for some days as a kind of 'slowed down chat' wouldn't hurt and increase the flow of information between members.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another one that just came in and will most likely be closed soon:&#xD;&#xA;[What's better right now: IronRuby or IronPython?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99305/whats-better-right-now-ironruby-or-ironpython)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too bad, user used a 'bad' word: better. Question is auto doomed...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me give an example from real life:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few years ago I had to make a decision about how to implement full text search on a website I was writing in Ruby. There were several engines available, all of them had some community. Namely there was Ferret, which was used by many people and Sphinx which was relatively new and didn't have many users yet. But everybody who had worked with them would have told you clear enough, that Ferret had several very annoying bugs while Sphinx worked very good. There was not much discussion about this. Though the answer would have been too localized in time, since of course Ferret could have been improved. If I would ask this question here, it would be closed within minutes, just because I ask to compare two technologies based on practical experience in real world projects." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24770" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1507" RevisionGUID="bce4de3d-f791-4829-8984-7dc4d5d4e7cf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Before posting this, I first searched meta, and found that previously people already found the [accept answer checkmark unclear][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The accepted answer indicates that a change was made, but I still find the checkmark the worst from all the SE sites I am on. I actively notice me wondering whether or not I accepted a certain answer. I find an outline to be far more clearer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usually I'm only certain after comparing the color with another answer (if there is one!). An outline vs. filled in shape would solve this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally (this isn't done on any SE site I'm aware of) I feel it would also be an improvement to switch the image to the 'checked' state when hovering over it when it isn't checked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Futhermore, a GUI should be consistent so a user can expect a certain behavior. Therefore I would argue to definitly change the accept answer icons to something similar as the upvote/downvote/favorite icons. They look wonderful, and also use the outline when not selected. I [asked about this on UX.SE][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Following the same argument, I would either implement the hover for all icons, or for none ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/970/15464&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/q/6576/3612" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24772" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2058" RevisionGUID="9b9b428b-4c47-4764-9418-ae1dfc822e34" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm fine with cleaning up low ranked answers and questions to eliminate cruft. Look at [StackOverflow's top ranked questions](http://stackoverflow.com/questions?sort=votes). Not all of those are really &quot;good&quot; questions, and more then a few would be off topic at todays standard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions&amp;mdash;however off topic&amp;mdash;have earned their place through votes&amp;mdash;however misguided&amp;mdash;and should remain. They should already be closed, protected, or locked. They aren't hurting anything, and they provided an excellent reference for new people who may be looking to ask questions along a similar vein. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I disagree. Questions are are not allowed here should be either cleaned up or removed. In fact, with the exception of duplicates, since they are valid questions that might bring in additional hits when searching from outside, **closed questions should be routinely purged.** If the author (or someone else) isn't willing to spend the time to clean it up and make it an acceptable question, get rid of it. Otherwise, it becomes noise when searching the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Comment by [Thomas Owens](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree! Questions that have been closed for a reasonable amount of time with no activity should be deleted. This applies especially to *low-voted* or *unanswered* questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the community thought they were valuable, **why weren't they voted to be reopened?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Comment by [Thomas Owens](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They weren't reopened because the stabilizing rules would not permit them to. I agree with the rule shift, but don't agree that these questions&amp;mdash;highly voted or active&amp;mdash;should be deleted. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And I do say they are hurting things. There are almost 3000 closed questions, each of which produces noise to not only searches here, but searches coming from the Internet at large. No grandfathering questions in, fix them or delete them all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Comment by [Thomas Owens](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Noise&quot; in what? When I'm searching for something I have no issue wading through pages of bad questions. &quot;Fixing&quot; these questions is incredibly difficult. The answers are matched to the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  There have been times when I've upvoted a question because it's good, but it just doesn't belong here, so I've also voted to close. The idea behind that is when it's moved, the asker will get appropriate reputation on the site that it is moved to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Comment by [Thomas Owens](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That practice is a hypocrisy. Questions that you expect to be migrated should just be closed. Upvote when (if!) it gets migrated, not before while it's still on the site. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24773" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2108" RevisionGUID="0353688f-2154-4cbb-9adb-3b53e1f23284" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some time ago, there was [some interest](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1709/any-chance-of-a-programmers-community-blog) in getting a blog rolling for Programmers.SE as part of the [Blog Overflow project](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/blog-overflow). In the interest of taking the next step, I'd like to discuss what the blog would be about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What guidance can we offer to prospective bloggers about the theme of the Programmers.SE blog? What would a really great post look like? How do we prevent it from being just another blog about programming (or programmers)? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More importantly, how does a Programmers.SE blog make the Internet a better place? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24774" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2070" RevisionGUID="1478f6b3-4cfb-4a3c-9dba-cfd3302fe85c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Mark Trapp's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2068/why-was-this-response-deleted/2069#2069) covered it my reasoning. For what it's worth, your answer was not deleted outright but converted to a comment on the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I apologize for misreading your post and not realizing that you meant that conversion from binary to decimal was a use for octals. I'd undelete the answer now, but it looks like Mark beat me to it. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24775" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1628" RevisionGUID="f4a76df4-612e-4e78-abfe-c9e684b8f886" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Try asking, say, &quot;What is best in life?&quot; on Stack Overflow. As soon as you finish entering that title and tab off the entry field, you'll get a little warning: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Pretty much what you're asking for, right? Ah, but that won't appear on Programmers, because [Programmers loves subjectivity](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/53/the-question-youre-asking-appears-subjective-and-is-likely-to-be-closed-yeah)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see a question that doesn't provide enough information to be answered (not just general, but outright *vague*) then close it. Otherwise, edit the title to reflect the actual question, assuming it doesn't already. If you can find a way to eliminate &quot;best&quot; while doing so... Well, shucks, that *would* be best." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24776" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2146" RevisionGUID="f020ba9d-799b-4fe9-a15a-19c38e8437ce" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This tag is a broken window, and it's causing problems by its continued existence:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* People [see the tag and assume career advice questions are automatically on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102177/ever-wondered-why-i-havent-got-that-job-position-instead-of-him-her)&#xD;&#xA;* It's a Venus Fly Trap for Bad questions&#xD;&#xA;* It's a completely superfluous tag to our *other* bad career tag, [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've [already discussed how bad this tag is](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952), and should it go away, none of the questions still tagged with it would be untagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can [tag:career-advice] please be blacklisted once and for all?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24778" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2838" RevisionGUID="f2518b58-70ef-4898-94a8-4b20b2ae7584" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [main point of Stack Exchange](http://stackexchange.com/about), and why there are 80+ sites, is that when you ask a question on one of the sites, you're going to get expert-level answers about the subject of your question. Uniquely targeted content attracts experts in the field who can then help those seeking expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if you go to [Biology.SE](http://biology.stackexchange.com), and ask a question about biology, you're going to get an answer from an expert biologist vetted by other experts in the field. There's a higher chance the answer is correct—and more importantly, high quality—than if you went to a general purpose site like [Quora](http://quora.com) or [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the other side of this coin is that if you ask about music or the arts on Biology.SE, you're not going to get an expert answer (if you even *get* an answer) because the audience of the site isn't music. For that, you want to go to [Music.SE](http://music.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this framework, our site is for experts in programming. You ask a question *about* programming, you're ostensibly going to get answers from expert programmers vetted by other expert programmers. If you ask a question about anything else, you're going to get low quality answers vetted by people who aren't experts in the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, we programmers tend to be a pretty confident and self-involved bunch. There a lot of things we do, like, or believe that we think are unique; that by virtue of asking about something *as a programmer* it is much different than asking about it *as anything else*. And of course, that because it's in the context of a *programmer* involved, we must be experts and qualified to answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The truth is that this isn't actually the case: we aren't special snowflakes who see the world qualitatively differently from everyone else. Yes, there are a lot of things that are directly about programming, but there are an awful lot of things that really have nothing to do with it and require the expertise of people who aren't programmers, or require expertise outside the scope of programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are off-topic: if you're asking about cryptographic protocols in general, you want to ask [our site for cryptography experts](http://crypto.stackexchange.com), where they will cater to you. If you want to ask about HAL 9000, you want to ask on [our site for experts on science fiction and fantasy](http://scifi.stackexchange.com), not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then there are questions that don't request expertise, or, given the way we're structured, require an expertise that can't be found on Stack Exchange. Things like personal career advice, polls, workplace therapy and the like require the expertise of people who know the asker on a personal level, or at least knows the situation from all sides. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, I can't tell you what's going to be good for your career because I don't know you. I don't know what you like to do, what motivates you, what your current life situation is, how many bridges you've burned, and so on. I *could* get to know you and find all those things out, but that'll take forever. What you *really* need is a mentor. Stack Exchange is not a mentoring service: we're a Q&amp;A service. The &quot;A&quot; stands for answers, not advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Suggestion 1: Rename the site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So given all this background, there's no need for a name change because we really do only allow questions directly to programming. We even have a handy chart in [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Programmers scope](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is, people tend to think their question fits the blue, &quot;All Programmers&quot; area when really it's in the white &quot;Just You&quot;, &quot;All Careers&quot;, or &quot;All People&quot; areas.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Suggestion 2: Allow closures to be peer-reviewed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [Anna noted in the comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2837/should-the-good-question-criteria-be-revised-or-has-flagging-become-over-zea#comment-7096), if you have enough reputation to vote to close ([currently 3,000](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/close-questions)), you also have the ability to vote to reopen any close questions. It takes five community members to reopen any question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alternatively, if you'd like to make your case and try and convince others (including moderators, who can reopen any question unilaterally), create a meta discussion question here and explain why the question is on-topic and how you've revised the question to address the concerns that it's not. This way, we as a community can discuss the closure and come to a consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Suggestion 3: Provide more sites for migration&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We moderators can, and often do, migrate questions anywhere else on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is flagged for closure, we check to see if it might be a better fit elsewhere on the network. If we find a potential match, we contact the moderators on the candidate site and see if they want the question. If they do, it goes; if they don't, we close it here as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally, the reasons sites don't want questions fall into two categories:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **The question is low quality.** There's a network-wide golden rule: [don't migrate crap](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1901/8). If a question isn't a stellar fit for the destination site, it shouldn't get migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **The question is actually off-topic on the destination site.** Tying into the background above, each site is a community of experts. We're not experts in all the subjects that might take off-topic questions that have been asked here. What might look like, to us, a question that's on-topic on one site might actually be out of scope there, for whatever reason. We can't force people to accept questions on other sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, in short, if you think a question's closed but is really, truly about programming (and not about something else asked by a programmer), revise the question to explain what, specifically, is being asked that requires the unique insights of a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see a question that might be a good fit on another site on the network, flag it for moderator attention and we'll contact the appropriate people and make the arrangements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Specifics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130018/book-on-network-cryptographic-protocols   &#xD;&#xA;General question about cryptography asking for book recommendations. General cryptography questions are on-topic on our sister site, [Cryptography.SE](http://crypto.stackexchange.com). However, like us, broad-stroke book recommendation questions are off-topic there because they're open-ended polls for opinions instead of definitively answerable with expertise. I contacted the moderators on Cryptography.SE and they declined the migration.&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130061/how-can-i-branch-out-from-ui-into-other-areas-of-development   &#xD;&#xA;Broad career advice question about a person's specific situation dealing with their team and how they can get into the any-programming-that-isn't-UI-programming business. Beyond the issue of not knowing the person well enough to tell them how they should develop their career or deal with their coworkers, &quot;how do I get better at programming?&quot; is way broad for a site about programming. Asking specific questions about learning a specific subsection of programming would be on-topic, instead.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24780" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1963" RevisionGUID="d75e840f-e3f7-45b0-9853-8d62400b5704" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We [discussed](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career) merging [tag:career] and [tag:jobs], but now it's time to put a plan into action. [Aaronut's plan](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952) is great, but we need some help from the *posse*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 1: Clean up the tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are currently several job-related tags that need people to go through and flag or vote to close questions that are no longer (or were never) on-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Jobs: [tag:jobs], [tag:job-market], [tag:new-job], [tag:job-definition], [tag:job-title], [tag:job-hunting], [tag:job-satisfaction], [tag:job-distance], [tag:job-retention], [tag:hpc-jobs], [tag:scientific-computing-jobs]&#xD;&#xA;* Career: [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;* Employment: [tag:employment], [tag:employer], [tag:employers], [tag:self-employment]&#xD;&#xA;* Business: [tag:business], [tag:business-process], [tag:business-logic], [tag:business-rules], [tag:business-analysis], [tag:business-it]&#xD;&#xA;* Other: [tag:interview], [tag:hiring], [tag:project-management], [tag:teamwork]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* When you're done cleaning up a tag, post an answer here that you've finished so others know to prioritize other tags. &#xD;&#xA;* When in doubt about a question, create a new question here on meta instead of flagging so the community can decide if a question is a keeper.&#xD;&#xA;* Start with the oldest questions first: our really old questions have a high likelihood of no longer meeting the site's guidelines, and are what are in most need of cleanup. We have plenty of time to deal with the newer stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 2: Reorganize the survivors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We need to have a set of workable tags and tag synonyms, and any question that survived the purging needs to be edited to include those tags and improved in any way possible. [Aaronut's guidelines](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952) are pretty good, so let's go with them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:career-development] for questions that are about developing your career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-market] for questions about the prospects of getting a *new* job.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-satisfaction] for questions about work/life balance, creating better workspaces, etc.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:job-advancement] and also [tag:teamwork] for questions about excelling in one's current position.&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:project-management] and/or [tag:employee-relations] and/or [tag:business] for employer-focused questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you have to deviate from the list above, **favor tag suffixes**: the system allows us to use wildcards in tag preferences, so [tag:jobs-foo] is preferable to [tag:foo-jobs].&#xD;&#xA;* **Spread out the organization.** Every time you edit a long-dead question to retag it, it bumps it back to the front page. Retagging 20+ questions at the same time kills the front-page usability for the rest of the visitors.&#xD;&#xA;* **Start with the oldest questions first.** Our really old questions have a high likelihood of no longer meeting the site's guidelines, and are what are in most need of cleanup. We have plenty of time to deal with the newer stuff.&#xD;&#xA;* **Request tag synonyms** by creating a question here on meta. This is especially important when a tag is organized out of existence (i.e. all the questions that had a tag have had that tag removed in favor of something else).&#xD;&#xA;* **Don't bump questions you don't intend to see reopened.** This is going to be disruptive without bumping a ton of questions that don't belong here anyway. If you can save a question by substantially editing it, by all means do that, but if a question is just bad and already closed, at most just flag it for deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 3: Burnination&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once all the good questions have been properly organized, we can go through the [normal clean-up process](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning) of deleting old, off-topic stuff." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24781" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1747" RevisionGUID="b8c2056a-43cf-4b59-9627-91b95c926592" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Like the title says; What is the difference between Stackoverflow and this Q&amp;A site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24782" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2935" RevisionGUID="211e842e-3b8c-41d9-ad95-a9a1da1f57c0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just added a post notice to [a question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124109/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-design-patterns) and saw the font had dropped down a size:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Post notice font problem][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't added a post notice in several days so I don't know when it started doing this, but could it be related to the [change in code block font size](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2130/could-we-get-the-new-coding-font-style)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Kaho2.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24783" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2146" RevisionGUID="bd16bd83-6f41-41a3-84f2-4f83e92a9b5e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This tag is a broken window, and it's causing problems by its continued existence:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* People [see the tag and assume career advice questions are automatically on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102177/ever-wondered-why-i-havent-got-that-job-position-instead-of-him-her)&#xD;&#xA;* It's a Venus Fly Trap for Bad questions&#xD;&#xA;* It's a completely superfluous tag to our *other* bad career tag, [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've [already discussed how bad this tag is](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952), and should it go away, none of the questions still tagged with it would be untagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can [tag:career-advice] please be blacklisted once and for all?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24784" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2173" RevisionGUID="889bec56-b553-4dfe-a3ff-eb822681de7c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Update - October 20th, 2011&#xD;&#xA;Current statistics:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Total Questions: 13,440&#xD;&#xA;* Total Closed but not deleted: 1,321&#xD;&#xA;* Closed Percentage: 9.38% (▼ 7.56% from September 20th, ▼ 10.81% since this post was written)&#xD;&#xA;* SE 2.0 Closed Percentage (no Trilogy): 5.36% (▼ 0.72%)&#xD;&#xA;* Network Closed Percentage (w/Trilogy): 2.56% (▼ 0.04%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point, we have a lower close percentage than Web Applications, Android, English, and Webmasters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was some concern that we're bleeding users: not sure how long they've been tracking it, but [the Stack Exchange site tracks](http://stackexchange.com/sites?sort=newengagedusers&amp;expand=true) new 200+ users over a rolling two weeks period: Programmers has consistently had the second highest number of 200+ users (only Stack Overflow itself has beaten us), and the number has gone up since I've been tracking it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've also updated [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) to be much more straightforward, which will hopefully alleviate some confusion about what is and isn't on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I don't think it's particularly constructive to approach a problem this way, I think it's important, if we do, to work with accurate numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of right now, there are 2,816 closed—but not deleted—questions on Programmers. There are 13,925 questions total on Programmers. This makes the closed, but not deleted ratio of questions 20.2%. In the 10 days since you measured this, it's gone down 3%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on the same metrics you did your post, here are number closed with at least 5 score and number closed with less than or equal to 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 774 (27.5%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 265 (9.4%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This puts the ratio of 5+ score questions closed higher than what you had and the ratio of &lt;= 0 score questions much lower than what you had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand why, we need to include data you didn't have access to when you did this survey: the number of deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of deleted questions on Programmers.SE is 2,975: more than the number of closed questions you see. If we also include these numbers into the mix, we get a different story:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 891. % of closed or deleted: 15.3%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 2,223. % of closed or deleted: 38.3%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This paints a bit of a different picture than measuring just the closed questions and the results presented in your survey. Why? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's because we routinely delete low-scoring questions as they are uncontroversially bad for the site, and the scores on those questions agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we don't delete nearly as many high-scoring answers is because [&quot;closed&quot; doesn't mean &quot;bad&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed). It means the question doesn't meet the site's guidelines in some way, but there's some value, and it could even be improved and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, *deletion*—not closure—is where bad questions go to spend eternity in Hell. Closure, on the other hand, is the purgatory of questions. They're not on-topic, but they're providing *some* value: enough to stick around while we figure out what to do with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A Comparison&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that we're working with accurate numbers, how do they compare to other sites, particularly Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From a purely quantitative standpoint, Stack Overflow's numbers are in a different league:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Publicly viewable questions: 1,997,856&#xD;&#xA;* Closed, but not deleted: ~39,048 (2%)&#xD;&#xA;* Deleted: 194,008 (8.9%)&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~1,964 (5%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~4,142 (1.8%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~26,123 (67%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~199,326 (85.5%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like Programmers, Stack Overflow's ratios skew a lot higher when  deleted low-scoring questions are added, and lower when it deleted high-voted questions are added. This isn't coincidence: the same moderation style is used on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Some context&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's important, from a qualitative standpoint, to put these numbers into context. Stack Overflow is not qualitatively similar to Programmers.SE, and comparing their closed/deleted percentage to ours is about as meaningless as comparing our percentages to [Quora](http://quora.com) or [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com). We just simply don't have the same issues or types of questions they have. If we did, there wouldn't be a separate site: we'd just be part of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also important to put Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE into historical context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was the first, and for a long period of time, the only Stack Exchange site. It did not, for much of its history, have the benefit of knowledge gleaned from the year of trial and error with the Stack Exchange 2.0 project. And notably, it did not have the benefit of 40+ other sites with 40+ other sets of problems to crystalize what makes and doesn't make a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This difference in background and two year head start is [a constant cause of problems](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow): 27% of all questions migrated here from Stack Overflow are closed and/or deleted. Thousands upon thousands of questions that should be off-topic there and on-topic here never get closed or migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of its history as the flagship Stack Exchange site, it also has enormous scaling issues. They have [~10 volunteer moderators for 2 million questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/101431/should-stack-overflow-moderators-have-a-standard-of-duty): one for every 200,000 asked. We have 4 for 16,000: one for every 4,000. We are just better equipped to close bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The history of Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But going into [our history](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) a little bit: Stack Overflow had a serious problem with popular questions that didn't really belong anywhere: &quot;What's your favorite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What do you like about programming?&quot;, etc. When Stack Exchange 2.0 and the Area 51 engine launched, one of the first proposals to gain traction was [*Not Programming Related*](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related), intended to house all of these types of questions. It launched on September 1st, 2010 and for a period of 3 weeks, surged in popularity as all the questions repressed on Stack Overflow were asked on this new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the quality was all over the place: the site had some of the worst questions and some of the best questions. After a few weeks of this, [new guidelines were put into place](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) to try to raise the level of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the rest of the beta period, these guidelines were enforced sporadically as the community tried to come to terms with its original charter and what it would take to make a useful site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On December 16, 2010, [Programmers.SE was launched](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/) under its new mission, having been the test-bed for a number of guidelines about questions that later generations of Stack Exchange sites benefitted from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left 3.5 months of questions asked during a particularly formative point in the Stack Exchange network: more than a quarter of our site's lifespan. Compare this to Stack Overflow, which has had the benefit of 2.5 years of maturity and wasn't originally created to be [the toilet bowl of a different site](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we're slowly resolving those initial growing pains, it's going to take some more time. The ratios will normalize, but they aren't going to normalize in the next month: it going to take several months to a couple of years to stabilize into a site as mature as the currently-three-year-old Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The situation isn't as dire as it might seem from one reading of the numbers. It was dire at one time, but that was last year. Now, we're moving forward: our traffic is increasing and our closed ratio is decreasing. More and more, people are taking ownership of Programmers.SE as something to be proud of, and the quality of questions and answers is noticeably rising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there's a lot we can improve, but it's going to be far more constructive and productive to isolate specific failings and correct those, not to make generalizations about the site as a whole. If we stick to generalizations, we might as well just shut this site down and start over." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24785" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1761" RevisionGUID="5ab95e66-6227-46c4-b82e-fb98979efec5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The FAQ says to use the Edit Room menu, but I didn't see any such menu.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other chat systems, INVITE USER was a big, obvious, and frequently-used button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I blind?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: new feature requested [here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1764/can-we-get-a-simple-way-to-initiate-a-chat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24786" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2179" RevisionGUID="43a33bfe-13a6-4f47-bdd1-69972015958f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed there's no 'edit' option for questions and answers posted at Programmers meta - as opposed to eg Programmers, SO and So meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that intentional? a missing feature? something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* example of 'edit' option as it looks at SO meta:  &#xD;&#xA;  ![screen shot](http://i51.tinypic.com/2afmq9c.jpg)&#xD;&#xA;  **update** _SO meta_ turns out to be a special case, as explained in [answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2179/no-edit-option-for-qa-at-programmers-meta/2180#2180)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* example of how this looks to me at programmers meta:  &#xD;&#xA;  ![screen shot](http://i51.tinypic.com/hwiy6h.jpg)  &#xD;&#xA;  there's _retag_ link placed where I would expect _edit_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note To avoid misunderstanding, I refer to 'edit' option for Q&amp;A posted by other members (for my own posts it appears ok)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24787" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="503a8821-2715-4508-a335-25c8a3056859" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This site is called **programmers**.stackexchange, while the FAQ states that this site is about &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since a large number of people never read the FAQ, or don't read it before posting, this means we have a community of people that think the site is about Programmers, but a team of moderators that try and maintain a site on &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This causes a large number of unhappy people who don't understand why their questions, or other questions they think are good, get closed, downvoted, etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my suggestion is to either rename the site to something that matches it's FAQ, like `softwaredevelopment.SE`, or change the FAQ so that this site is about Programmers, not software development only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I hate the suggestion of renaming the site. I want to participate in a site about programmers, not software development. But as long as the site is called one thing, and the FAQ states another, we're never going to be at peace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit #1**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been told by a few different users to create separate specific requests to try and implement these changes, so&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Here's the proposal to change the FAQ so it matches the site name](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3318/1130)&#xD;&#xA;* [Here's the proposal to change the site name to match the FAQ][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit #2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since posting this, I have learned [the history behind the site scope change][2], and doubt SE will ever allow it to go back to simply being a Q&amp;A site for programmers to get answers from other programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So please, change the name of the site to something that better reflects the site's scope to stop the number of frustrated and confused users we have posting bad and off-topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3718/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24788" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2218" RevisionGUID="5490212a-a8e1-4a28-b4da-5bdf170ed5e8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="One thing to keep in mind is that this isn't Software Engineers.SE or SWEBOK.SE: we shouldn't be trying to morph the tag usage on this site such that all questions fit into one of the predefined &quot;buckets&quot; that SWEBOK defines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest issue with having a tag for the construction phase is that it's pretty meaningless in the context of Programmers: every question can be about writing code in some respect. And we already have the results of that ambiguity: [programming](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2147/blacklist-programming-and-programmers), [tag:coding], and [tag:implementations].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it might make sense to have tags for the phases that regular, non-software engineer programmers don't experience on a day-to-day basis, writing code is the main task of programmers. If you're talking about that, you don't need to tag your question with it: use something more descriptive." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24789" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2212" RevisionGUID="af9e630a-a7e5-4db5-a47d-63213e91056e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per a [previous discussion here on Meta][1], I went through all questions tagged [tag:process]. There were no questions about concurrency or IPC with this tag, so it was irrelevant, but I would recommend something along the lines of [tag:concurrency] or [tag:inter-process-communication] for these questions. I used the tag [tag:development-process] to account for process model and methodology questions and simply removed the tag from &quot;how do I do X&quot; questions that didn't involve a formal process or concurrency issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure how, but this tag is now dead to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2083/tag-merge-discussion-process-development-process" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24790" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1815" RevisionGUID="3d18959e-f749-4987-a4ba-8692ad435470" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As you mention, the questions that work on Stack Exchange are ones that have a specific, singular, and solvable problem: that is, you ask a question, you get targeted answers that may or may not help you solve the problem. If they don't, you edit your question to clarify. If the answers are unclear, you ask the answerers to expand on their answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, that's not what happened: you've presented a position, asked several questions, and attempted to carry on a conversation with all the answerers in a now deleted answer complete with your own thoughts and ideas about the subject. That's not really what Stack Exchange is about: we're not a discussion board where free-form conversations can take place about a general topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The blog post [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) talks about this type of problem and provides specific guidance that is codified in our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.** To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* **there is no actual problem to be solved:** “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.** If your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you distilled all the discussion you were trying to have in all the comments, and all the opinions you might have about a topic, what is the *exact nature* of the problem you're trying to solve? Asking about that likely is going to be a good fit for us. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to ask yourself, &quot;what does a *correct* answer to this question look like?&quot; If it's hard to imagine it, the question is likely a discussion topic, and should be revised. That is, if you're not getting the answers you want, your first inclination should be to tighten up the question, not to initiate a discussion about your opinions or thoughts about the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To speak to the specific nature of *this* question, you wanting to know what language you should switch to, that's off-topic here unless it's particularly specific. That is, you have a specific use-case and you need to know if a specific language would be more appropriate: perhaps something like, &quot;Can I interact with an RDBMS using something other than SQL?&quot; or &quot;How can I develop iOS applications without knowing Objective-C?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more information about why the more general &quot;What language should I use?&quot; is off-topic, check out the question, [Why is “what language should I learn” considered off-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The simple answer is that the question as stated &quot;which language should I learn next?&quot; is **unanswerable**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only answer anyone should give is **always** &quot;it depends&quot; - which isn't an answer at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ultimately it's not a real problem. The next language you should learn is largely determined by the project you are working on and unless you are in the rare situation of having complete freedom over what you do this will have been chosen by someone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to other questions, feel free to flag questions you don't believe fit these criteria for moderator review. With over 12,000 questions asked, some slip through the cracks of community moderation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24791" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2337" RevisionGUID="fdef278a-d4eb-4e13-a319-3a7dc1495cfb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Thank you for bringing this up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the concerns I have with the blog is that it can be used as a soapbox. I want to make sure the posts we put up are solid, well-researched, not just someone spouting off their opinions. The latter is what personal blogs are for. Controversial stances are fine, but in my opinion we cannot allow outright ranting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that in mind, I'm up for writing and editing. My rep can speak for itself, though I'm sure my writing style can use some work. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thomas Owens just [brought up the idea of getting the blog rolling](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2314/software-craftsmanship-north-america-2011-sponsorship-proposal/2316#2316) in light of my upcoming trip to [SCNA](http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.com). I agree that it's a great idea, so I'm keen on getting this going soon. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24792" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2975" RevisionGUID="4eb6c366-26f4-4ef6-920b-4a478146d989" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This site, as it is now, *is* for programmers. Programmers do software development: that's our expertise. Similarly:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Cooking.SE is for *cooks* who have questions about *cooking*&#xD;&#xA;* DIY.SE is for *DIYers* who have questions about *home improvement*&#xD;&#xA;* Bicycles.SE is *cyclists* who have questions about *cycling*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could change &quot;software development&quot; to &quot;programming&quot;, but that minor change doesn't seem to match the level of disagreement presented.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And to clarify, the way the site is now isn't due to a team of moderators constantly enforcing new policies on a site that nobody in the community wants: the site's scope and position statement were adjusted [two weeks after the site went into public beta](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/350/8), now almost 18 months ago. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site scope hasn't changed since then, and the site's been doing fine since:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We're routinely either number one or number two in new 200+ users&#xD;&#xA;* We've been in the top 10 SE sites for traffic, answers, questions, and % answered since launch&#xD;&#xA;* Our closure rates are in line with the rest of the network&#xD;&#xA;* We've handled thousands of flags from hundreds of community members who are interested in maintaining the site's scope as it's written now&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is all to say that the site, as it is now, most people—particularly newer active users—get and understand. There are still a few who choose to ignore the vast majority of Programmers's history and focus on some outdated idea of a much more broader site than what launched, but a site name change isn't going to suddenly change their minds.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not to say tweaks here and there to clarify points in the FAQ aren't welcome: [they are](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2411/8), and [we've adjusted the FAQ accordingly](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2422/8). But the [old version of Programmers](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352?phase=definition) (so-called &quot;Not Programming Related&quot;), where anything a programmer might be interested in is on-topic, died an ignoble death in September of 2010.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is dead. Long live Programmers!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24793" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2173" RevisionGUID="692a6663-dd78-4ad1-8120-fd87db4b32f3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Update - October 20th, 2011&#xD;&#xA;Current statistics:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Total Questions: 13,440&#xD;&#xA;* Total Closed but not deleted: 1,321&#xD;&#xA;* Closed Percentage: 9.38% (▼ 7.56% from September 20th, ▼ 10.81% since this post was written)&#xD;&#xA;* SE 2.0 Closed Percentage (no Trilogy): 5.36% (▼ 0.72%)&#xD;&#xA;* Network Closed Percentage (w/Trilogy): 2.56% (▼ 0.04%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point, we have a lower close percentage than Web Applications, Android, English, and Webmasters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was some concern that we're bleeding users: not sure how long they've been tracking it, but [the Stack Exchange site tracks](http://stackexchange.com/sites?sort=newengagedusers&amp;expand=true) new 200+ users over a rolling two weeks period: Programmers has consistently had the second highest number of 200+ users (only Stack Overflow itself has beaten us), and the number has gone up since I've been tracking it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've also updated [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) to be much more straightforward, which will hopefully alleviate some confusion about what is and isn't on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I don't think it's particularly constructive to approach a problem this way, I think it's important, if we do, to work with accurate numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of right now, there are 2,816 closed—but not deleted—questions on Programmers. There are 13,925 questions total on Programmers. This makes the closed, but not deleted ratio of questions 20.2%. In the 10 days since you measured this, it's gone down 3%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on the same metrics you did your post, here are number closed with at least 5 score and number closed with less than or equal to 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 774 (27.5%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 265 (9.4%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This puts the ratio of 5+ score questions closed higher than what you had and the ratio of &lt;= 0 score questions much lower than what you had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand why, we need to include data you didn't have access to when you did this survey: the number of deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of deleted questions on Programmers.SE is 2,975: more than the number of closed questions you see. If we also include these numbers into the mix, we get a different story:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 891. % of closed or deleted: 15.3%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 2,223. % of closed or deleted: 38.3%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This paints a bit of a different picture than measuring just the closed questions and the results presented in your survey. Why? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's because we routinely delete low-scoring questions as they are uncontroversially bad for the site, and the scores on those questions agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we don't delete nearly as many high-scoring answers is because [&quot;closed&quot; doesn't mean &quot;bad&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed). It means the question doesn't meet the site's guidelines in some way, but there's some value, and it could even be improved and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, *deletion*—not closure—is where bad questions go to spend eternity in Hell. Closure, on the other hand, is the purgatory of questions. They're not on-topic, but they're providing *some* value: enough to stick around while we figure out what to do with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A Comparison&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that we're working with accurate numbers, how do they compare to other sites, particularly Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From a purely quantitative standpoint, Stack Overflow's numbers are in a different league:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Publicly viewable questions: 1,997,856&#xD;&#xA;* Closed, but not deleted: ~39,048 (2%)&#xD;&#xA;* Deleted: 194,008 (8.9%)&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~1,964 (5%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~4,142 (1.8%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~26,123 (67%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~199,326 (85.5%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like Programmers, Stack Overflow's ratios skew a lot higher when  deleted low-scoring questions are added, and lower when it deleted high-voted questions are added. This isn't coincidence: the same moderation style is used on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Some context&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's important, from a qualitative standpoint, to put these numbers into context. Stack Overflow is not qualitatively similar to Programmers.SE, and comparing their closed/deleted percentage to ours is about as meaningless as comparing our percentages to [Quora](http://quora.com) or [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com). We just simply don't have the same issues or types of questions they have. If we did, there wouldn't be a separate site: we'd just be part of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also important to put Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE into historical context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was the first, and for a long period of time, the only Stack Exchange site. It did not, for much of its history, have the benefit of knowledge gleaned from the year of trial and error with the Stack Exchange 2.0 project. And notably, it did not have the benefit of 40+ other sites with 40+ other sets of problems to crystalize what makes and doesn't make a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This difference in background and two year head start is [a constant cause of problems](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow): 27% of all questions migrated here from Stack Overflow are closed and/or deleted. Thousands upon thousands of questions that should be off-topic there and on-topic here never get closed or migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of its history as the flagship Stack Exchange site, it also has enormous scaling issues. They have [~10 volunteer moderators for 2 million questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/101431/should-stack-overflow-moderators-have-a-standard-of-duty): one for every 200,000 asked. We have 4 for 16,000: one for every 4,000. We are just better equipped to close bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The history of Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But going into [our history](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) a little bit: Stack Overflow had a serious problem with popular questions that didn't really belong anywhere: &quot;What's your favorite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What do you like about programming?&quot;, etc. When Stack Exchange 2.0 and the Area 51 engine launched, one of the first proposals to gain traction was [*Not Programming Related*](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related), intended to house all of these types of questions. It launched on September 1st, 2010 and for a period of 3 weeks, surged in popularity as all the questions repressed on Stack Overflow were asked on this new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the quality was all over the place: the site had some of the worst questions and some of the best questions. After a few weeks of this, [new guidelines were put into place](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) to try to raise the level of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the rest of the beta period, these guidelines were enforced sporadically as the community tried to come to terms with its original charter and what it would take to make a useful site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On December 16, 2010, [Programmers.SE was launched](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/) under its new mission, having been the test-bed for a number of guidelines about questions that later generations of Stack Exchange sites benefitted from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left 3.5 months of questions asked during a particularly formative point in the Stack Exchange network: more than a quarter of our site's lifespan. Compare this to Stack Overflow, which has had the benefit of 2.5 years of maturity and wasn't originally created to be [the toilet bowl of a different site](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we're slowly resolving those initial growing pains, it's going to take some more time. The ratios will normalize, but they aren't going to normalize in the next month: it going to take several months to a couple of years to stabilize into a site as mature as the currently-three-year-old Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The situation isn't as dire as it might seem from one reading of the numbers. It was dire at one time, but that was last year. Now, we're moving forward: our traffic is increasing and our closed ratio is decreasing. More and more, people are taking ownership of Programmers.SE as something to be proud of, and the quality of questions and answers is noticeably rising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there's a lot we can improve, but it's going to be far more constructive and productive to isolate specific failings and correct those, not to make generalizations about the site as a whole. If we stick to generalizations, we might as well just shut this site down and start over." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24794" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1817" RevisionGUID="e2503fbe-586f-4ffa-91f6-0b787eca9395" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a subtle but pernicious problem with the quoted answer and many like it: *it's impossible to prove a negative.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This kind of answer would never fly on any of the science SE sites because it is incorrect *by definition*.  The best *objective* answer one can give (assuming one agrees with the &quot;no&quot; premise) is to list the reasons that *might* be considered valid and explain why they should be considered invalid.  If no such reasons are known, then the correct answer to the question isn't *&quot;no&quot;*, it's actually *&quot;I don't know&quot;*, which clearly isn't worth posting as an answer.  Maybe a comment, if the question goes [tumbleweed][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know if we should be trying to &quot;moderate away&quot; these answers, but [as I've pleaded for in the past][1], we desperately need people to start downvoting these fact-free &quot;pithy phrase&quot; answers instead of upvoting them.  I think that having answers on top of the heap that look like they took 5 seconds to poop out (maybe less) really hurt our credibility as a community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange wants to [optimize for pearls, not sand][2].  *Part* of this is emphasizing the value of great answers.  The other part is *de-emphasizing the poor ones*.  This is exactly why we have downvotes.  Has anyone *ever* seen a 1-line answer singled out in a positive light on the SE blog, or on any major blog, or really anywhere other than maybe reddit?  *Some* short answers may genuinely be correct and complete, but *most* of them are... sand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop pressing the other arrow when you see this type of pandering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1400/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/21/tumbleweed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24795" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2386" RevisionGUID="f0b12394-eab2-472f-ad28-9fe4432f6f3d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Programmers.stackexchange.com fractured the programming questions into two places. Users aren't sure where to post certain questions. Users are voting to close a question and the only evident reason for closing seems to be because they want it moved to programmers from SO. Then why isn't there an option to vote to move, or I am seeing it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems StackExchange should be the one named Programmers, it's more logical, and SO is the overflow lot for other programming questions. (YES I KNOW SO came first.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I never visit programmers SE and never thought about searching in it but now I can see there are good questions in it which I always thought SO is the place for them. So now I have to search both sites for certain questions like questions about frameworks, design.. and such. A thumb down for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wish there was a tag called `[programmers]` on SO for questions which are programming related but are not a pure programming/coding question. This way all questions are in one site, abolish the confusion among users and use the tag to filter in or out as you wish." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24796" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3042" RevisionGUID="c90e648b-1433-4858-9a56-8dd85215f57f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [canonical answer to this is on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi), which is where the link in the notice takes you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An automatic filter is in place to ban questions from IP addresses or accounts with a history of extremely poor questions. To avoid bypassing the filter its internal rules are a secret, but it is partly based on downvotes cast by other members of the communities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Once you have posted too many bad quality questions, you will be banned from asking more, and see the error message. You can then still use the site, except for asking questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at [your profile](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/30160/dave), you've asked 6 questions, only one of which has been upvoted, 4 of which were closed, and 3 of which were deleted. You've provided few answers, and only one of which was up-voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you'd like to ask questions in the future, focus on helping others first by providing high-quality answers and taking [the feedback you've received on your past closures](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3029/8) to heart.  While the details of the low-quality ban are purposefully kept secret, creating a trend of high-quality answers generally will help towards getting it removed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24797" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2298" RevisionGUID="aee0add8-ccbb-45a3-9239-5871c7e7eb93" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So pursuant to [the monumental task we have](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup) to clean up the [tag:career] and [tag:jobs] tags, we've taken to putting the following notice in the tag wiki excerpts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do not use this tag. Click &quot;learn more&quot; for better alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This, however, has not stopped people from adding more questions to the tags, which makes an already difficult task more difficult as more questions keep getting added.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was under the assumption that blacklisting not only locked a tag, but blew it away from all existing tags, but after talking to people in Teachers' Lounge, I've found out that blacklisting and burninating are two separate actions: the former locks the tag, the latter kills the tag on all existing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just *locking* the [tag:career] and [tag:jobs] tags would help out a ton: it'd at least let us to freeze their usage while we stort out the 1500 questions already tagged with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So can we get these two tags blacklisted, but not burninated? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/17rb9.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24799" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2236" RevisionGUID="ba5569d3-a006-4d2e-9d78-ed3e6c90f770" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="To clarify, I'm referring to [statistical surveys][1] and questionnaires that are [well designed][2], ask open-ended questions, are relevant to programmers as per the diagram in the FAQ, aren't rants, and generally add value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, questions more like [this one][3] (although that's a mediocre example, at best) or questions like what a professional or academic study would entail (if anyone has read [The Dark Side of Software Engineering][4], they included a sample of questions they asked to professional software developers and their responses).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that, overall, well-written survey questions could add value to people looking to tap into the total knowledge and experience here on Programmers, as well as add legitimacy to the site by bringing in academics and software engineering researchers to access practitioners and perhaps provide answers to questions based on the latest academic research, where applicable. However, it would have to be monitored and controlled to ensure only high-quality surveys are allowed - ones that don't add value or demonstrate relevance are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions should also be made community-wiki. By nature, they are designed to bring in a large number of answers, typically relating to personal experiences and knowledge gained from them. There's no right or wrong answers, and as such, reputation should not be assigned to the question or any answers provided for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is similar to [another discussion here on Meta][5], but provides a much more narrow definition of what is allowed and what isn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_survey&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questionnaire_construction&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106924/on-average-how-many-times-does-eclipse-crash-during-a-day-for-you&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Software-Engineering-Computing/dp/0470597178&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1621/should-open-ended-poll-questions-be-allowed-just-because-they-say-to-explain-you" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24800" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2313" RevisionGUID="c43902ae-b3cf-40c2-b8c8-fc57060084a7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Only one of those questions shows a flag from you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I closed a bunch of &quot;what project should I choose&quot; questions in the last week or so, and I agree that generally they are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was also brought up by Hugo in an answer [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-list/2292#2292). Since this keeps coming up, I'm going to update the FAQ to explicitly mention &quot;suggest a project for me&quot; kind of questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24801" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2414" RevisionGUID="e8ea69f7-b293-42cc-bac1-79603bbd84ba" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think the new version, &quot;P.SE is a site for programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development&quot; could work, but as part of a larger improvement to the FAQ. I've created [a new question about that](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2422/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To remove the focus on experts in our site FAQ is to lose [what's special about Stack Exchange](http://stackexchange.com/about):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What’s special about Stack Exchange?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You wouldn’t shout out a calculus question in a football stadium, right? You’d go to the math department of a university. That’s why instead of allowing questions on any topic, we have brought together separate communities of experts on very specific topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don’t open a site until we’re sure there’s a critical mass of experts ready to participate. If you can’t find a Stack Exchange site on your subject of expertise, we have a place called Area 51 where you can propose one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All questions on Stack Exchange are expected to be objective and have concrete answers; we’re not a place for conversation, opinions, or socializing. We also expect questions to represent real problems, not just imponderables, hypotheticals, or requests for opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange’s focus on professional communities and this “Just the facts, Ma’am” ethos results in over 90% of questions getting great answers, often stunningly quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason Stack Exchange is such a valuable resoure to people learning a field is because it attracts experts: we want them to pay it forward and help others who don't know what they know. [Everyone can ask a question, not everyone can provide an expert answer.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do that by making sure, as much as we possibly can, that experts are not wasting their time by coming here. That the questions would be interesting and substantial to answer. We don't do that by lowering the bar for questions here or asking questions that are low-hanging fruit for novice programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone can ask a question, but they do so keeping in mind the audience for the site—the people waiting in the wings ready to answer questions—are expert programmers. There are other sites on the web, like Quora or Yahoo! Answers, where people can get help from just anyone." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24803" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2357" RevisionGUID="ebf3b1dd-e4c3-43c8-8f91-25fcdb7daa49" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Unfortunately, we cannot simply &quot;lock&quot; the tags from future use without obliterating them. It causes ruckus and befuddlement as a person will see that not only is a tag quite voluminous, but it is also available on the tag suggestion list, and yet if they try to use it, they are barred.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've [followed this up with a new question][1] detailing what we *could* do to tackle this massive tag job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm very much not a dog person, anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24804" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2452" RevisionGUID="e5434d34-a24a-49c2-837d-04ededdbf6f4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is all done: [tag:bad-practice], [tag:good-practices], and [tag:practice] have all been cleared.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:best-practices] is a tag that's been [nominated for the nuclear option](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/should-we-nuke-the-catch-all-tags). I've also added [tag:programming-practices] to the list: I don't see it adding any semantic value to a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because these are just catch-all tags, I'm a little hesitant to merge anything into them, but on the other hand, we're only talking about 37 questions tops.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [tag:bad-practice] isn't adding anything to the questions and can safely be removed. There are only 9 questions, so this can be done manually.&#xD;&#xA;2. I'm comfortable with merging [tag:good-practices] into [tag:best-practices]: from what I can tell, they're used interchangeably (I guess it's a regional thing).&#xD;&#xA;3. [tag:practice] could, in theory, be used in the training sense, but in practice (no pun intended), it's added no semantic content to the questions it's on. These questions should just have the tag manually removed: I'd rather we didn't create a synonym for a tag that can be used in different senses, especially as a synonym for a honeypot tag like [tag:programming-practices]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24805" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1912" RevisionGUID="e73d6103-7398-43bb-beaf-1f334c37b406" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The problems Software Quality Assurance has shouldn't have any effect on our site: [Joel Spolsky warned](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/) about the issues of trying to segment the programmer population into progressively smaller camps, and the fact that they can't field enough questions, to me, indicates Spolsky wasn't far off the mark in his original assessment. Many, although perhaps not all, questions related to the topic *are* on-topic here and shouldn't be migrated to a struggling beta site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to the other questions: as Anna points to, [they're not on-topic on Stack Overflow, and are on-topic here](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/). Stack Overflow is for very specific, here-is-my-code-and-I'm-not-sure-where-I-went-wrong-with-it questions; Programmers.SE is for conceptual I'm-planning-on-doing-this-but-need-help-with-the-big-picture questions. The topics you list as being better off on Stack Overflow are are our *best*, most useful questions: the questions that most resemble what Programmers.SE is about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, if *these* questions aren't on-topic here, what *is*? The [junky questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl) that [aren't good enough](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow) for Stack Overflow? We figured out early on in beta that wasn't going to work, and that's why Programmers.SE was launched as the conceptual yang to Stack Overflow's concrete yin." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24807" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2380" RevisionGUID="8b0de787-56c9-4f0e-bde0-09fe19d377cf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Occasionally, we'll get a question asking for help about naming a concept or symbol, and we've been closing them as &quot;off-topic&quot; and &quot;not constructive&quot; on the basis that naming questions rarely amount to detailed answers beyond &quot;Name it X.&quot; or &quot;What about Y?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previously, there was a discussion in regards to [questions like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95920/what-is-each-time-through-a-loop-called) on whether or not [we needed a &quot;general reference&quot; close reason](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1994/would-the-general-reference-close-reason-be-useful-here-on-programmers). The consensus, as I understood it, was that we don't need a new close reason because such questions are off-topic by the first line in our FAQ (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for **expert programmers** who are interested in conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;What do I call X?&quot; is a question that's generally uninteresting and irrelevant to expert programmers, and thus should not be here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there was some discussion about an [attempted migration from English.SE](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/44295/what-is-the-name-for-the-class-of-computer-programs-that-act-as-a-front-end-for-a#question) on whether this excludes *all* naming questions or if there is a certain subset of naming questions that would be allowed, particularly ones that are not blindingly obvious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Should* all naming questions be considered off-topic and not constructive?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If so, should we add a line to our FAQ about it?&#xD;&#xA;* If not, why not? What types of naming questions could work here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24808" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1925" RevisionGUID="3fb077fc-dac5-4bda-9f5f-6fc6969fd4a2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was wondering if it was possible to create a &quot;pinned&quot; topic that has links to the best all-time questions on P.SE. My query is similar to this thread: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1714/the-best-of-programmers-se-1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the difference is that instead of a weekly thread, I imagine a permanent thread that is rarely updated but has essential links. Sort of a &quot;best of P.SE&quot; thread that users new and old can visit to reference old topics or get answers to the most frequent questions. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24809" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2472" RevisionGUID="210852f2-24cb-412c-9658-051acea79401" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While the six subjective guidelines cover the question...in question, the closure is actually due to the next part of the close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question has 53 had answers, which is a good sign that it's open-ended and unanswerable in its current form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answerable questions—even subjective ones—should be getting 5 or 6 good answers: that signifies the question was a specific enough scope that there were only so many ways it could be answered correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you start getting into 20, or 30, or worse yet 50 answers, it's highly unlikely the question was of a specific enough scope for anyone to learn anything from the answers. Nobody's going to read and test 50+ answers to see which one works for them: it's unreasonable. So instead, what you're left with isn't a Q&amp;A pair that solves a problem, but a discussion or a poll of people's opinions about a topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More info about this, including Jeff's answer from around the same time the question was closed, is found at:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24810" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2386" RevisionGUID="61439a42-c88d-4974-86e1-03eb23a81ca6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Programmers.stackexchange.com fractured the programming questions into two places. Users aren't sure where to post certain questions. Users are voting to close a question and the only evident reason for closing seems to be because they want it moved to programmers from SO. Then why isn't there an option to vote to move, or I am seeing it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems StackExchange should be the one named Programmers, it's more logical, and SO is the overflow lot for other programming questions. (YES I KNOW SO came first.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I never visit programmers SE and never thought about searching in it but now I can see there are good questions in it which I always thought SO is the place for them. So now I have to search both sites for certain questions like questions about frameworks, design.. and such. A thumb down for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wish there was a tag called `[programmers]` on SO for questions which are programming related but are not a pure programming/coding question. This way all questions are in one site, abolish the confusion among users and use the tag to filter in or out as you wish." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24811" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2261" RevisionGUID="dae68827-90b0-4bc1-8cf8-71d4fce3238b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I strongly disagree. They're chatty and irrelevant:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How you pronounce a word isn't a shibboleth: you're not going to get fired for pronouncing SQL as &quot;sequel&quot; or &quot;ess-cue-ehl&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;* It doesn't help you do your job better.&#xD;&#xA;* The correct pronunciation largely depends on who you're speaking with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They're a textbook case of soft, bike-shedding questions. Unable to answer a question about a real problem? Who cares! Tell us your opinions on how to pronounce this word.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the rare cases where there actually is singular correct pronunciation, they're either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* off-topic because this isn't English.SE&#xD;&#xA;* wholly uninteresting because any dictionary will tell you the correct pronunciation. Want to know how to pronounce ASCII? [Look it up](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ascii).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a look at the answers to other questions in the [tag:pronunciation] tag, you'll note the answer received on the hexidemical question is the exception, not the rule: people wildly upvote crap answers like &quot;I always say {insert pronunciation here}.&quot; that have no justification or explanation. They bring down the rest of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Aaronaught, who is always wont to crystalize the problems with a class of posts, gave [a great answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1994/would-the-general-reference-close-reason-be-useful-here-on-programmers/2000#2000) when we were discussing if we should have a &quot;general reference&quot; close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Unless we get a &quot;too easy&quot; close reason, I think we should close these as **off topic**.  The word &quot;expert&quot; is right there in the site's tagline; **if it's not relevant to an *experienced, practicing* programmer, then it's not in our scope.**  I'm sorry if it sounds callous, but we're here to help each other, not educate every single newbie on how to program.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Check this out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Quality Venn][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm pretty sure that the purple area between &quot;Advanced&quot; and &quot;Disciplined&quot; is where we are *supposed* to be.  We focus entirely on the subjective (objective questions go on Stack Overflow), so we have to be on the right side; and since we're nowhere near as disciplined as Skeptics, we have to make up for it by discussing subjects that are more advanced.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If we start allowing questions that are subjective *and* beginner-level, then we end up with [bike shed][3] questions, which almost invariably produce crap answers *and* drag down the rest of the site with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/yzan7.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_Law_of_Triviality" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24812" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1947" RevisionGUID="68e2bd3c-7893-4a4c-807b-1841f3dbf0b8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I haven't had much time to check this recently - what with my PC failing - but this is something I can agree with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, we need some way of ensuring that we&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Get general agreement - even in the cases where we think it's clear cut.&#xD;&#xA;2. Manage the process so two people don't do the same tags.&#xD;&#xA;3. Indicate which have been done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Web Apps each synonym/merger was posted as a separate question. While we might want to group some this would be good as &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. We can see whether people agree with the proposal - from the votes and comments.&#xD;&#xA;2. Indicate which ones each of us is working on - either by posting an answer or editing the question.&#xD;&#xA;3. Indicate which have been done by adding the tag [meta-tag:status-completed]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ah - I see Mark's already started - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24814" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2317" RevisionGUID="57aae416-3c3c-4420-bb16-48c665804ef8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You can tell whether a question has been inactive for 6 months by looking at the stats in the sidebar:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Question stats][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But these badges suck: you really shouldn't be looking for old questions to raise from the dead. If you happen to run into one, that's fine, but bumping a ton of long-dead questions to the front page just for the sake of the Archaeologist badge breaks the front page for other visitors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to help out with our cleanups and almost certainly get the Archaeologist badge along the way in due time, get involved in [the career and jobs tag cleanup](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6o1Co.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24815" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2414" RevisionGUID="960f4836-cece-480d-baaf-e2d9a04819de" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think the new version, &quot;P.SE is a site for programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development&quot; could work, but as part of a larger improvement to the FAQ. I've created [a new question about that](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2422/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To remove the focus on experts in our site FAQ is to lose [what's special about Stack Exchange](http://stackexchange.com/about):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What’s special about Stack Exchange?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You wouldn’t shout out a calculus question in a football stadium, right? You’d go to the math department of a university. That’s why instead of allowing questions on any topic, we have brought together separate communities of experts on very specific topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don’t open a site until we’re sure there’s a critical mass of experts ready to participate. If you can’t find a Stack Exchange site on your subject of expertise, we have a place called Area 51 where you can propose one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All questions on Stack Exchange are expected to be objective and have concrete answers; we’re not a place for conversation, opinions, or socializing. We also expect questions to represent real problems, not just imponderables, hypotheticals, or requests for opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange’s focus on professional communities and this “Just the facts, Ma’am” ethos results in over 90% of questions getting great answers, often stunningly quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason Stack Exchange is such a valuable resoure to people learning a field is because it attracts experts: we want them to pay it forward and help others who don't know what they know. [Everyone can ask a question, not everyone can provide an expert answer.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do that by making sure, as much as we possibly can, that experts are not wasting their time by coming here. That the questions would be interesting and substantial to answer. We don't do that by lowering the bar for questions here or asking questions that are low-hanging fruit for novice programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone can ask a question, but they do so keeping in mind the audience for the site—the people waiting in the wings ready to answer questions—are expert programmers. There are other sites on the web, like Quora or Yahoo! Answers, where people can get help from just anyone." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24816" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2052" RevisionGUID="f8593ff8-f889-45a9-aa3a-52e7092be415" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Let&amp;#39;s nuke the catch-all tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Every question on this site should be related to [tag:software-engineering] (or something tangentially related to software engineering), and/or [tag:software-development]. These are just the ones on the front page of the &quot;popular&quot; tags, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I get some free time this week or weekend, I would honestly like to go through all (currently 52) pages of tags and come up with a list of tags that add little or no value, and let the community decide. Perhaps as a part of the Summer Cleaning. I would like to see a major effort to clean up tags and write some good tag wiki pages, but I'm not going to ask other people to jump in on this until I get a feel for how much value this would add or what the community thinks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In response to Matt Ellen's answer, the [tag:programming] tag makes sense if it is referring to issues that arise during the construction of software. I would still want to go through the questions tagged with it and make sure that its used appropriately, but I can now see it being a valid tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other two, [tag:software-engineering] and [tag:software-development] I still feel are two general. More specific tags, such as [tag:requirements], [tag:architecture], [tag:programming], [tag:testing], [tag:maintenance], [tag:process], [tag:quality], [tag:tools], and [tag:education], along with a number of others should probably be used instead to get at the root of the topic of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And this brings up another issue: the [tag:design] tag being used to refer to architectural design, component/module design, and UI design. This is kind of blowing up the scope a little bit (well, a ton, but we'll overlook that for a second), but I think it does underscore a need to take a good hard look at tags and how they are used to make it easier to search and sort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the reasons why I don't have favorite tags here is because it's too hard to use them. Cleaning up would make this easier." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24817" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2456" RevisionGUID="be2b78b9-d462-4a4f-b794-85e4a5168677" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Please don't!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag wikis are meant to provide context and guidance for how the tag is supposed to be used on the site: how they relate to other tags, what types of questions work, links to frequently asked questions, etc. Generalized tag wikis don't really help anything or teach people how we want our site to be organized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the reason why there are strict requirements to be able to edit a tag wiki without approval: someone on the site intimately familiar with the tag is going to know what works and what doesn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I approved it because it looked good on its own merits within the context of Programmers. There are going to be *some* tag wikis that could work just as well here as well as Stack Overflow, but there are going to be just as many that won't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because there's not going to be a hard and fast rule on what's going to work and what isn't, I'd hold off on suggesting wikis *en masse*: we've had a long-standing problem with thoughtless tagging and we're just starting to clean that up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, if you can focus on suggesting tag wikis that provide information in the context of Programmers, that'd be preferable. One section of tags we could really use some help with are the career/jobs tags. Kevin Vermeer [pointed out a few tags that could use some love](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2146/blacklist-career-advice/2148#2148). Aaronaught had [some thoughts](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952) about that, too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24818" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2496" RevisionGUID="cc98d947-8d4e-44ee-a882-5a05e2e7796b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The answer to both of your questions is the same: make your question not a duplicate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you didn't link to your question, and I'm too lazy to search for it, I'll just give you some general advice:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If the answer to the existing question didn't work for you, mention that. And don't just say, &quot;It didn't work&quot; - tell us *how* it didn't work. Example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; ###How might I frobnicate a widget?&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I have three widgets that need frobnicating. I found [this earlier question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2494/getting-a-question-reopened) on the subject, but the answer there doesn't work for me - you see, my widgets all have flywheel grommets, and the Potrzebie method recommended there results in clogged ducts. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If the answer to the existing question works, but you're interested in finding other solutions, describe the attributes of an alternate solution, and why you might want a solution with such attributes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; ###How could I measure the effectiveness of adding more team members to an already-late project?&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I'm about to hire 30 consultants to slam our doomed re-write into overdrive, but my boss wants us to collect metrics to justify it. [The answer here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2494/getting-a-question-reopened) suggests counting lines of code produced per week; while I have to admit that seems like a simple and effective metric, I'd like to have a fall-back in case the consultants catch wind of this - are there any measurements I could take that would not be so easily gamed? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Be aware, if you end up getting good, general-purpose answers, your question may be merged back into the original...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you simply don't understand the existing answers, then do some research first. Ask specific questions as they come up. Once you have a solid understanding, go back and post your own answer, or edit the existing one for clarity. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you're convinced that the world has changed completely in the 8.5 months since that last answer was posted, and by now we must have better ways of accomplishing the same thing, then leave a comment or post a bounty and ask. Who knows? You *might* be right. But don't ask the same question again; even if you're *lucky*, chances are you'll just get the same answers... Or links to the existing answers. If you're unlucky, you'll get worse answers. And then get closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24819" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2335" RevisionGUID="7c4c784f-beb5-4ce6-a99c-6d97a0cdfea0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some time ago Mark Trapp [asked what a P.SE web site would be about][1] and I posted an answer that received a moderate number of upvotes and a few comments. I've revised it a few times and there hasn't been any commentary in quite awhile so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that its a solid answer for &quot;what our blog is about&quot;. Either way, I haven't seen any other movement on the topic so I'm moving it forward myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based upon an S.E. [blog post][2] about getting a community blog started, our next step is to recruit contributors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Recruit contributors**. Who will write entries for the blog? Starting a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; blog is a bit like going through the buffet line. Be realistic – don’t&#xD;&#xA;&gt; let your eyes be bigger than your stomach. Think seriously about if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and how often you will be able to contribute a blog post, including&#xD;&#xA;&gt; research/prep time.  The more contributors there are, the less&#xD;&#xA;&gt; frequently each contributor needs to post.  One post a month is a much&#xD;&#xA;&gt; easier to stomach than a couple posts every week.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a pretty sound assessment, in my opinion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.SE doesn't appear to get quite the volume of traffic that Stack Overflow or other sites receive but we do have several quality, experienced programmers who are also **excellent writers** that could contribute **quality content**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I'm in favor of a post once a week, appearing every Monday. If we could attract **just six people** willing to write, that would mean just one submission from each individual every six weeks. This may seem like quite awhile between posts but I think that this would fit with the vision of a P.SE blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would favor:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Long, not short posts.&#xD;&#xA; - Well written, thoughtful material.&#xD;&#xA; - A relaxed time frame so nobody gets burned out.&#xD;&#xA; - Time for an editorial process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Allow me to clarify the last point. While most people who write blogs just write write write post! and then call it a day, we should be aspiring for the best. A P.SE blog post should not only represent the intellectual musings of one of the smartest programmers on the planet, it should also represent the highest quality of written English. There are some programmers out there who are truly, truly brilliant but can't write to save their lives. Rather than exclude such people I propose that every submission go through an editorial forge for grammar, punctuation, and formatting consistency.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's what I'd like to see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. At least **six people** respond with something to the effect that you're at least *interested* in helping write - either let your your S.O./P.SE rep speak for itself, or post a few links to previous works (not necessarily written!)&#xD;&#xA; 2. At least **two people** who'd be willing to act as proofreaders.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2108/what-should-a-programmers-se-blog-be-about&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/blog-overflow/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24820" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2588" RevisionGUID="f5e00248-9db1-4dca-b0f6-c2b246da9f2d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The issue of editing *en masse* has been discussed a few times on meta, most recently on @MarkTrapp's [answer][1] on the question on [Amazon Links][2] and I think it's clear that no one likes a messy homepage. I've tried to limit myself to 3-4 substantial edits per day on older posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But how about new questions, let's say questions that are on the first page of the newest tab at any given time (and answers to those questions)? Are micro edits like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- removing &quot;thanks&quot;, &#xD;&#xA;- capitalizing Is, &#xD;&#xA;- removing spaces before punctuation marks,&#xD;&#xA;- putting quotes in blockquotes, etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;a bad practice? I've been doing a lot of those recently, strictly on new questions, thinking that they are on the homepage already, and getting bumped at the top of it doesn't really matter. Is there any side effect I should be aware of?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update: An [example][3] of my micro-edits, where I edited 2 minutes after the question was posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2582/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://%20Amazon%20links%20to%20books%20appropriate?&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/121435/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24821" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2355" RevisionGUID="58cdb883-2594-4870-ae13-62c683bc676f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Should we force adding a comment with every down-vote?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/159/should-we-force-adding-a-comment-with-every-down-vote)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Why not let the site force the user to enter a comment (of min. 20 chars. or so) when demoting an answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24822" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2058" RevisionGUID="a09fcf1f-7f20-4b7f-a1c7-0618ea96f53c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm fine with cleaning up low ranked answers and questions to eliminate cruft. Look at [StackOverflow's top ranked questions](http://stackoverflow.com/questions?sort=votes). Not all of those are really &quot;good&quot; questions, and more then a few would be off topic at todays standard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions&amp;mdash;however off topic&amp;mdash;have earned their place through votes&amp;mdash;however misguided&amp;mdash;and should remain. They should already be closed, protected, or locked. They aren't hurting anything, and they provided an excellent reference for new people who may be looking to ask questions along a similar vein. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I disagree. Questions are are not allowed here should be either cleaned up or removed. In fact, with the exception of duplicates, since they are valid questions that might bring in additional hits when searching from outside, **closed questions should be routinely purged.** If the author (or someone else) isn't willing to spend the time to clean it up and make it an acceptable question, get rid of it. Otherwise, it becomes noise when searching the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Comment by [Thomas Owens](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree! Questions that have been closed for a reasonable amount of time with no activity should be deleted. This applies especially to *low-voted* or *unanswered* questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the community thought they were valuable, **why weren't they voted to be reopened?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Comment by [Thomas Owens](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They weren't reopened because the stabilizing rules would not permit them to. I agree with the rule shift, but don't agree that these questions&amp;mdash;highly voted or active&amp;mdash;should be deleted. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And I do say they are hurting things. There are almost 3000 closed questions, each of which produces noise to not only searches here, but searches coming from the Internet at large. No grandfathering questions in, fix them or delete them all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Comment by [Thomas Owens](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Noise&quot; in what? When I'm searching for something I have no issue wading through pages of bad questions. &quot;Fixing&quot; these questions is incredibly difficult. The answers are matched to the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  There have been times when I've upvoted a question because it's good, but it just doesn't belong here, so I've also voted to close. The idea behind that is when it's moved, the asker will get appropriate reputation on the site that it is moved to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Comment by [Thomas Owens](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That practice is a hypocrisy. Questions that you expect to be migrated should just be closed. Upvote when (if!) it gets migrated, not before while it's still on the site. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24823" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2522" RevisionGUID="47db045b-5ea4-4bc5-9c42-84e94a8389b1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Wow, a kindred spirit! I personally *loathe* editing long-dead questions, especially when the changes are minor. They push new questions off the front page for no good reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that is not a universal belief: a great many people on Stack Exchange believe that *any* edit, no matter how small, is a good edit. That if you see a post that can be improved, you should do it without any regard for how it affects other posts on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And there's a practical reason to edit: we're in the midst of a cleanup of bad tags that are causing problems for new questions. The only way we can get people to stop using those tags is to [remove them from all previous questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags). And to do that, we need to edit them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally, the front page should be a mixture of brand new questions, active questions that have not been solved yet, and old questions that have been improved. Having too much of any of those makes for a front page that looks more dead or artificial than alive and bustling." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24824" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2607" RevisionGUID="d74593e1-fadf-4334-8c26-fe09d8f97bcc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question has caused a bit of an adverse reaction here: within 5 or so minutes of being asked, it was migrated to Stack Overflow before I could short circuit the migration and settle the dispute here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cleared the migration history, which removed the trace of the migration from the question and reopened it. This didn't remove the migrated version on Stack Overflow, which now exists separately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Within a minute or two of doing that, it gained another 3 migrate votes to Stack Overflow, which prompted my lock: there's no point in migrating the question twice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Overflow moderators there have opted not to delete this artifact because they feel it's just barely on-topic for Stack Overflow. So what we're left with is the functional equivalent of a cross-post that you happened to answer on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: I've opened up a [new question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2608/are-why-is-x-code-snippet-done-this-way-questions-on-topic) to discuss the dispute. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24825" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3242" RevisionGUID="99731f4c-b3aa-4cd8-b58c-f6cad2066bac" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[@MarkTrapp][1] I just heard you're stepping down from your position as moderator and have to say, I'm sorry to see you go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We may not always see eye-to-eye, and I hated the fact you used your ability to close questions as much as you did, but I still think you did a great job as a moderator, particularly in your meta responses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good luck to you with whatever you do, and don't leave P.SE entirely :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For those who don't know, the &quot;Chairman Mao reincarnate&quot; was [Mark's description of himself][2] in chat once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8/mark-trapp&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=3547172#3547172" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24826" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2070" RevisionGUID="88d66671-6dc4-4be9-aeb1-e695152d4475" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Mark Trapp's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2068/why-was-this-response-deleted/2069#2069) covered it my reasoning. For what it's worth, your answer was not deleted outright but converted to a comment on the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I apologize for misreading your post and not realizing that you meant that conversion from binary to decimal was a use for octals. I'd undelete the answer now, but it looks like Mark beat me to it. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24827" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2544" RevisionGUID="b0178b3b-189b-4c98-9098-727feb503ab5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think doing periodic election could have a positive effect on the community and would make it healthy. If we still want to call it community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I posted the [question][1] you mention, I really didn't knew elected moderators would be there for indefinitely. Honesly, I was shocked. But while I was thinking about it the last few days, I concluded that it makes sense in the current configuration of the project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But still, there is no easy way for the community to make a vote of no confidence without posting on meta (and being flamed). Many simply leave without complaining. We have no way to evaluate the positive or negative effect of the moderator's behavior if we don't give the opportunity to everyone to express their opinion *anonymously*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Election was a good way to do it and previous one illustrated it: one moderator that previously operated on P.SE did not get re-elected!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2536/when-are-the-next-moderator-elections-for-p-se/2537" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24828" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2634" RevisionGUID="ec56bc38-5868-47df-be08-7867f862194d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just deleted the question: it's way below our quality standards, had a tremendous amount of down-votes, and was never going to be saved. Feel free to [recalculate your reputation](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2627/8) to get your points back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mention that because when you answer a question like that, you're only setting yourself up for pain: the question's going to get closed and deleted, and you're not doing yourself any favors by answering it before it does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, you just open yourself up for something like what happened: bad question, you leave an answer most people don't like it, and now you've got a negative-scored answer on a question that really wasn't worth anyone's time of day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And your answer was nothing more than a link to an external resource: even barring the implications of cheating or what-have-you, it's not an answer. From [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * commentary on the question or other answers&#xD;&#xA;* asking another, different question&#xD;&#xA;* “thanks!” or “me too!” responses&#xD;&#xA;* exact duplicates of other answers&#xD;&#xA;* **barely more than a link to an external site**&#xD;&#xA;* not even a partial answer to the actual question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As others have said, people can vote however they like, but in reality, people should've flagged your answer as &quot;not an answer.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if you left that as a *comment*, it wouldn't have been subject to downvotes or have affected your reputation, and would've been perfectly fine. Keep that in mind in the future: if you just want to link to something that might help the OP, just do it as a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To your final question, about whether it's acceptable to revenge down-vote someone who's done you wrong: no, it's not. It'll almost certainly be caught and reversed, and you'll likely wind up getting a message from one of us moderators about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And in reality, it wasn't *just* the person who said they down-voted that did it: there were 4 people who did. At least one person had the courtesy to tell you why they did it: why retaliate against them when clearly several people felt the same way about your answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24829" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3255" RevisionGUID="7456ed88-a259-44d4-be6b-003c8ed374a3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Unfortunately, [the site name does not match the site FAQ][1]. Questions on programmers.SE should be about software development, not about programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The essence of your question was if you should continue your education in Canada, or get a job in the US. While this might be a decent question if this were a Q&amp;A site about programmers, it doesn't fit in a site about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site was originally designed to be a site about programmers, hence the site name, however it was determined by the powers-that-be that this was not a good fit for the stack exchange system and they changed it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been trying to get them to either change the site name or the site scope, however I feel until they do that, there will always be misunderstandings like this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some quotes from both the FAQ and the linked question that I hope will help clarify the issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[FAQ][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert **answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development**.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **career advice**, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[Question on Career advice questions][3]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; First and foremost, **any career advice questions need to relate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; directly to software development**: general career advice questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with no relation to software development or where software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is a minor facet of the question are off-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, a career-related question needs to be directly related to software development to be on-topic. Career-related questions that only relate to programmers are not on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24830" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2560" RevisionGUID="244720cb-b966-44e3-8363-012aea03e2ce" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Writing better titles is high on the list of worthwhile edits to a question, but there are a few caveats you should keep in mind, especially when you're editing below 2,000 reputation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Editing *en masse* [really messes with the front page](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/110768/on-select-sites-show-the-flag-suggested-edit-count-when-it-is-0-instead-of/110816#110816). It also clogs up the suggested edit queue, where people are tasked with approving edits from users below 2,000 reputation. If you're going to edit, do it in short spurts, not 20 at once.&#xD;&#xA;* Nearly every question has problems other than the title: we have [a huge tag problem](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags), for example. But beyond that, nearly every question will have spelling,  capitalization, formatting, or other copyediting issues. When editing a question, try to improve as much as possible beyond just the title.&#xD;&#xA;* While many titles are terrible and ought to be reworded as actual questions, there are a lot of questions that have *okay* titles or even good ones that aren't actually questions. If you were going into them to edit more than just the title, editing the title is a nice bonus, but otherwise, it's best to just leave them alone. Ask yourself, &quot;does the title change make the question any clearer?&quot; If it doesn't, don't bother just for the sake of making it into a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, thank you for taking the time to make the site a better place!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24831" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2087" RevisionGUID="24318e21-681b-4d1c-8685-672835a15108" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Putting contentious questions on probation](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1781/putting-contentious-questions-on-probation)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;So at least once every day we have this kind of question where somebody asks to give advice about some technical topic. (I'm not talking about career advice, though that may be handled too). Those questions mostly get closed immediately. Often as to localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I fully understand the reasons behind closing them, mainly for the knowledge base style of StackExchange, I still feel slightly bad for the users who ask those questions. From their subject those questions often fit very well to the community (best way to learn some subject, good tools to do something) and people justifiably expect that they can get good answers here. Often enough, some of the answers given before closing confirm this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Wouldn't it be possible to add a kind of &quot;delayed closing&quot;, that allows users to answer for maybe three days. After this period the question gets closed automatically. This way StackExchange would stay a knowledge base. Or would this still be too much &quot;chatting&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe somebody has a better idea how this can be handled. I just think it would be nice if we at least have a chance to help some people, as long as there are users ready to answer this kind of question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some examples**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure, if every single one would fit for such a solution, so please don't start discussions about the questions as such. Just to give some idea:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[how long to learn c++?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99145/how-long-to-learn-c)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe the worst example, since the questions isn't very good. But this could be enhanced instead of closing it. After all he is mainly asking for some input on C++ and how difficult people with experience think it is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is the single most effective thing you did to improve your programming skills? ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skill)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seems to be a 'historical' question. Obviously with some interesting results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Need a simple example theme for wordpress](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99204/need-a-simple-example-theme-for-wordpress)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously closed for good reasons. Too localized, only interesting to one person. But within a day or two, most likely somebody would have given him a few interesting links and he would be happy. Question than auto closed and never to be seen again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What topics should a university course introducing software engineering cover?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98280/what-topics-should-a-university-course-introducing-software-engineering-cover)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That one I really like as an example. It's too unspecified and can't be answered clearly, but is a interesting question anyway.&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Difficulty here of course, that it's a duplicate of an older question. But maybe that makes it even more interesting by drawing temporary attention to te older one and allowing new users to consider adding new material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How can I follow news from the development community?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98814/how-can-i-follow-news-from-the-development-community)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another one of the 'give him some interesting links and he is happy' type. Everybody interested could follow it for a few days, get some interesting information exchange and then forget it ever was asked (and in six months there would be new information anyway)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Is it easier to start with Ruby on Rails or with ASP.NET MVC?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99132/is-it-easier-to-start-with-ruby-on-rails-or-with-asp-net-mvc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Typical 'technology-advice' question. We have the people here who use those technologies since years and can tell him everything he needs to know. Sure, no clear answer and in a few months the game may have changed toward another technology.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can say that many answers to those questions where interesting to me. I either learned something from experienced people or maybe got a link to some interesting blog. I wouldn't know any other site were I could reliably get serious answers to such questions. So having them around for some days as a kind of 'slowed down chat' wouldn't hurt and increase the flow of information between members.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another one that just came in and will most likely be closed soon:&#xD;&#xA;[What's better right now: IronRuby or IronPython?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/99305/whats-better-right-now-ironruby-or-ironpython)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too bad, user used a 'bad' word: better. Question is auto doomed...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me give an example from real life:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few years ago I had to make a decision about how to implement full text search on a website I was writing in Ruby. There were several engines available, all of them had some community. Namely there was Ferret, which was used by many people and Sphinx which was relatively new and didn't have many users yet. But everybody who had worked with them would have told you clear enough, that Ferret had several very annoying bugs while Sphinx worked very good. There was not much discussion about this. Though the answer would have been too localized in time, since of course Ferret could have been improved. If I would ask this question here, it would be closed within minutes, just because I ask to compare two technologies based on practical experience in real world projects." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24832" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2638" RevisionGUID="8a2db591-6390-495b-a4b6-d324d29364f7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have seen [this request][1], but the [tag:holy-war]is still there. Therefore I guess it should be somehow used. My question is in what kind of questions should that tag be used?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1702/blacklist-holy-war" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24833" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2108" RevisionGUID="89cfd307-d615-4310-8ee0-a1cb64ee037e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some time ago, there was [some interest](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1709/any-chance-of-a-programmers-community-blog) in getting a blog rolling for Programmers.SE as part of the [Blog Overflow project](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/blog-overflow). In the interest of taking the next step, I'd like to discuss what the blog would be about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What guidance can we offer to prospective bloggers about the theme of the Programmers.SE blog? What would a really great post look like? How do we prevent it from being just another blog about programming (or programmers)? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More importantly, how does a Programmers.SE blog make the Internet a better place? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24834" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2665" RevisionGUID="18efdc6e-0c00-47ae-8920-0952af10143f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There have been a ton of book recommendation questions, some fairly old with helpful answers, flagged as not constructive today.  According to the [last discussion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic) on this, most of these qualify as specialized enough to remain on topic, in my opinion.  Has that policy changed?  How are people handling those flags?  Is there any explanation for the sudden burst?  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24835" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2656" RevisionGUID="7d0a678d-effe-4c2e-b9b0-6f6d08d6b290" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If you'll bear with me, there are two different answers: the official answer and the realistic answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The official answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no difference between the two questions: the web developer question *should* be closed. We originally had a lock reason for this, but this was removed and [we were told to close as not constructive any question that started to amass too many answers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question). The web developer question [*was* closed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/46716/revisions), but was later reopened by the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it seems pointless to keep closing a question that can easily be reversed—even though that's the official policy—we haven't bothered to re-close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The realistic answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The value in the Stack Exchange engine is that, for every question, there's going to be an answer that floats to the top. That answer has been vetted by the community (through voting) or by the asker (though accepting) as being the correct answer. So, when a visitor comes along in the future and has the same problem, they can just read the top answer and have their problem solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so the major difference between the maintainability question and the web developer question is that in the web developer question, [there is one answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/46760/8) that compiled all the knowledge from every other answer, effectively providing a definitive and comprehensive answer. You don't need to read any of the other answers because the first one covers them all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, despite the question essentially being a poll, one answer is so damn good we overlook the question's other flaws. It's a rarity: an exception to the rule. [One out of every hundred or so similar questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/) has the community actually take the time to meticulously maintain such an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But 99 times out of 100, we just get a poll, where every answer just lists one small piece of the puzzle. If you wanted to even begin to understand the full answer, you have to read all the answers. But since none of the answers actually fully solve the problem, all the things we cherish on Stack Exchange—community vetting and voting—are meaningless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everybody's answer is equally valid and invalid at the same time because there's no way to judge what the correct answer *would* be: if you have an opinion about the subject, you technically provided an answer. [Not really ideal at all](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), and not really [what Stack Exchange is about](http://stackexchange.com/about).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what the maintainability question turned into. Despite deferring early flags and putting up a post notice to help keep the question on point, we still got junky answers we had to delete and nobody stepped up to provide a comprehensive answer. So when 3 members of the community voted to close and we got a flag pointing out what it turned into, we closed it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Moving forward&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thankfully, there's a really easy workaround for getting questions like this to be on-topic and avoid the trappings of being labeled a poll and amassing a bunch of answers that don't quite cover everything: just provide a specific problem the answers can be tested against:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm working on project A, where I'm trying to do B. I want to make sure that when I pass it off to my client or the next developer, that all my bases are covered with respect to C. How can I make sure my project A is maintainable for the next guy?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Straightforward, to the point, and more importantly, testable. Someone can look at the situation, read the answers, and judge whether any specific answer actually helps the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, while this would've been helpful to prevent the state it's in now, what we have now is a ton of answers that don't really fully answer the question. We can fix that, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question automatically gets converted to community wiki (after getting 15 answers), it's *supposed* to be a not-so-subtle hint from the engine to the community that existing answers should be improved and/or consolidated: once a question goes community wiki, nobody gets any reputation anymore and post ownership gets heavily downplayed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So while none of the 18 answers fully solve the problem, if we could create one comprehensive answer from all of them, then we'd be cooking with gas. If someone would like to do this, feel free to flag any answers that have been incorporated into the comprehensive answer and we'll delete them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24836" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2373" RevisionGUID="fa943878-671a-4a53-a43a-0a638390ace0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While we [continue our work on cleaning up the career and jobs tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup), I thought I'd bring up the next tag clean-up project: killing the catch-all tags that could be applied to every question on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through the first two pages of tags, these include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-languages] (710 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:learning] (633 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-development] (335 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-practices] (222 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:recommendations] (129 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:advice] (113 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-engineering] (96 questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I'm bringing these up now instead of waiting for the first project to complete is that I believe we can exercise the first option—[presented earlier for the career and jobs tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags)—on these tags: nuke them from orbit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, these tags can be applied to every single question on the site. Disambiguating these tags would entail replacing them with *anything else*, not simply a set of pre-defined disambiguation targets. With these tags, we're no better off if they're untagged or left tagged: they tell us nothing about the content of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you think? Is this a good idea, or is there a better way to approach killing these tags? Are there tags that should be on the list but aren't? Is there a serious case to be made for taking tags *off* this list?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea/1940#1940&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2152/blacklist-advice&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/421/is-a-recommendations-tag-really-necessary&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24837" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2689" RevisionGUID="029e08ef-7816-45fb-bfe9-fa8c94203ba8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The subject of forcing a comment with all down votes has been [discussed and rejected several times][1]. The conclusion (and rightly so)  is always that we should not force this. But it is almost universally agreed that doing so benefits the community as well as the poster. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*I hereby pledge to never Down Vote any Question or Answer without leaving a comment explaining why.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I will be putting this in my “About me”, linking back to this question, and I urge you to do the same.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/159/should-we-force-adding-a-comment-with-every-down-vote" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24838" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2719" RevisionGUID="8eeb7aeb-f49b-4759-a1a2-05dac2d6b542" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; For example, someone might have asked for a book recommendation on a given topic in 2010, but by 2012, there might be a better one on the market.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that questions on book recommendations that would fit your description are [probably off topic][1]. I don't see how a book question that becomes deprecated in such short time would be a good one, even if it's on topic. Technology may be moving at an extreme pace, but high level concepts don't change that often. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you have any examples of existing open questions that would fit your description, i.e. are in need of &quot;refreshing&quot;? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Perhaps there should be a way of &quot;refreshing&quot; a question to learn whether a fresher answer is available?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You can edit any question at any time, and any answer, if you think you're improving them in any way. &#xD;&#xA; - You can ask a new question with a link to the earlier question and an explanation why it and its answers don't answer the new one.  &#xD;&#xA; - And of course, if you have a more current answer to an outdated question, you can always just answer. A new answer will bump the question at the top of the homepage and if your answer is a good one it will get the attention it deserves. It may even outvote the previously highest voted one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In conclusion: If questions that fit your description exist, they are probably bad ones that slipped through and we should clean them up. I *think* - but I reserve the right to change my opinion if you provide an example of an existing question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've tried to find questions that would fit the general description while still being on-topic, and I think the best example is certifications. It's reasonable that there are going to be a lot of cases where answers on `certification exam x` in 2010 are going to be very different than in 2012. Most reputable certification bodies will slightly change the code or the title of the certification / exam, in which case you should ask a new question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if that's not the case, I don't think that the set of questions that actually need &quot;refreshing&quot; is large enough to require some sort of unique approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, if you manage to find at least one existing question that fits the description and is on topic, all of the above may make less sense. But although I tried, I didn't find any (not even a certification one).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24839" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2676" RevisionGUID="818acb3b-9303-4431-a3ec-2f23463cd03f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question asks three things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have you come across a super programmer? What identifies him or her as such, compared to &quot;normal&quot; experienced/great programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also. how do you deal with a person in your team who believes he is a super programmer? Both in case he actually is or if he isn't?&#xD;&#xA;3. [After everyone responded to your question,] given two competing definitions of what a super programmer is, which do you think is better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question 1&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have you come across a super programmer? What identifies him or her as such, compared to &quot;normal&quot; experienced/great programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a poll. It's asking people to take a word without context and define it however they want. What's the correct answer to this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question 2&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  How do you deal with a person in your team who believes he is a super programmer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question asks how to define a super programmer, but this one wants to know how to deal with them even without a general agreement of terms. This isn't answerable: the question didn't define who is being managed or what the actual problem is. How can an answerer explain how to manage a class of people when there isn't even a working definition of who counts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question 3&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [After everyone responded to your question,] given two competing definitions of what a super programmer is, which do you think is better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having identified the flaw in asking the first question, people were then polled, after they already answered the question, which definition they like better. Supplementing a question with another one that *should* be already accounted for by voting isn't helpful and just adds chaos. Answers should respond to the question, not other answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While the addendum question didn't help, there isn't very much in this question that's constructive. There are no markers or identifiers for being able to answer the first question, the second question assumes the answer to the first question is already answered (which it isn't), and the third question asks people to ignore the first question in favor of now talking about only two of the answers provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The post is not really a question, but a discussion: a jumping off point for talking about a general topic. Once one aspect of the topic was exhausted, the question morphed into something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Real questions have answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), not ideas or opinions. They reference specific problems and don't morph and solicit feedback disparate and broad-stroke items about a topic. Questions are a good fit for Stack Exchange, not discussion topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was asked back in October of last year; back then, these questions were tolerated, even encouraged: over the past year, we've been [enforcing](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) and [clarifying](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) the quality guidelines that were created as a result of the free-for-all discussion-forum nature of the early site. This question slipped through the cracks: a few days ago, someone flagged it, and it was closed after review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Moving forward&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point, there's not much point in trying to save the question: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* every answer tried to address the first, completely not constructive question, many *only* addressing the first question.&#xD;&#xA;* there hasn't been any activity on the question, save for one answer in August, since it was asked last October.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this is still a pressing problem, a new question should probably be asked. It should specify the exact nature of the problem and provide some parameters for determining a correct answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Be warned, though: questions that are just about dealing with other co-workers (even if those co-workers happen to be programmers) aren't on-topic here, either. For questions about dealing with co-workers, the upcoming [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2) site proposal is probably the best option." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24840" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2423" RevisionGUID="7d76f6ec-9747-4214-a6ae-0ab5f56365cc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**This is the current editable portion of the FAQ (feel free to [use as a template for suggested improvements](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/bfc48337-6214-4363-979e-7b7cc24de3d3/view-source)).**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers - Stack Exchange is for &lt;span class=&quot;revision-comment&quot;&gt;expert programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development&lt;/span&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can include topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;- Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;- Algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;- Design patterns&#xD;&#xA;- Architecture&#xD;&#xA;- Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;- Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;- Software licensing&#xD;&#xA;- Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is about *programming tools*, please ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com) instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While subjective questions are allowed, subjective does not mean &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. **Please keep it professional at all times**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All subjective questions are expected to be _constructive_. How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;- tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;- have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;- invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;- insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;- are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot; Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Can I ask career advice questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, unless your question is specifically about software development and requires the unique insights of a programmer. Most career advice questions [run the risk of being closed][1]: try to make yours a [good subjective question][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure your question has the proper scope. If your question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really something that uniquely applies to software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![proper scope for question](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please also be aware that we will not delete your career advice question after you receive answers if you change your mind about having asked it. Think carefully before you post a question full of personal or otherwise sensitive information. If you don't want something to be publicly revealed, consider not posting it on Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## What about other programming related questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please note that the following subjects are considered *off-topic* here:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What language should I learn next? (Unless you have a _specific_ requirement and don't know which language meets that requirement.)&#xD;&#xA;- What salary/wage should I ask for/expect? (Too localized to your place and time)&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;Which technology is better?&lt;/a&gt; (e.g Java/C#, Eclipse/Netbeans, iPhone/Android)&#xD;&#xA;- Please critique my resum&amp;eacute;. (Unless you have a _specific_ question about a software development part of your resum&amp;eacute;. Questions about resum&amp;eacute; formatting and style are always off-topic.)&#xD;&#xA;- What project should I choose for fun/college/course/thesis/practice? (Too localized, inviting a list of equally valid answers, and usually not meeting the guidelines for good subjective questions.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more discussion on these subject see &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-list&quot;&gt;the question where these topics were discussed&lt;/a&gt; on our Meta site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments are useful for getting clarifications, but extended discussions detract from the question and its answers. If you'd like to discuss anything related to programming with other expert programmers, please use our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24841" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3257" RevisionGUID="7fad0b47-032e-4ffc-a4d7-7fbba9d48407" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yes it is a bit concerning, although 15% is not that much. I went through some of the questions and there is a minor pattern there, several of the closed questions that made it to Twitter were incorrectly migrated from Stack Overflow and they carried upvotes and upvoted answers from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is in the &quot;hot questions&quot; algorithm and as [ChrisF mentioned][1] it affects all sites, not just Programmers. Some things we could do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close questions quicker&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   There seems to be a deep rooted perception that closing questions is a bad thing. It's not, and it should happen fast. Closing is just a peer review mechanism, a signal that a question is a bit problematic and in need of improvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Re-open questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Don't dismiss closed questions, they are not dead. If you feel a question can be re-opened, please try to get it re-opened. Bring it up on chat or Meta, find others that can help. Not every closed question will be re-opened, obviously, but some will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote sensibly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Upvote questions that show research effort, are clear and useful. Don't upvote questions that you feel are interesting / fun but blatantly off topic. Similarly with downvotes, they are a comment to the question, not the person asking the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [A guide to moderating programmers.stackexchange yourself - close voting][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [What's all this about heroic edits?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, we prefer to be called [diamond moderators][4] ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the list of questions, there where flags on all questions, including the three questions that where closed by a single moderator vote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136610/version-number-soup-in-ror-is-grails-better-django&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Typical &quot;which technology is better&quot; question, it could have been closed as off topic. Closed by a user and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136736/online-code-editor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Blatantly off topic question, but borderline on Stack Overflow. Closed by a moderator, and I trust that it was never migrated to SO because the SO mods rejected it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137252/is-it-a-good-idea-to-generate-code-with-the-help-of-your-ide&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as a duplicate by a moderator. This shouldn't really be an issue for someone coming to the site from Twitter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137385/what-do-you-do-when-you-cant-seem-to-understand-a-certain-part-of-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Extremely vague and open ended question, gentle reminder to everyone: Programmers Stack Exchange is not a free for all discussion forum. Closed by a user and a moderator, and it makes me sad that it got as many upvotes as it did (question &amp; answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137372/is-object-oriented-stuff-really-that-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Extremely open ended and argumentative question, comment wars on the question and almost every answer (and a particularly nasty &quot;discussion&quot;, that has since been removed). Closed by a user and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137520/why-do-some-job-posts-say-high-pressure-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Blatantly off topic, typical example of a populist question. Closed by five users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137715/a-class-named-class&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I closed this one because it was getting a bit out of hand, and there wasn't any need for further answers. It had three re-open votes, and I've just re-opened it with a notice for longer answers. If it starts gathering poor answers again, I won't hesitate to close it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137794/offshoring-a-software-project-conflict-resolution&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Very open ended. Closed by two users and a moderator. Potentially salvageable, but it requires a lot of work, and OP seems satisfied with the existing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137864/how-long-did-it-take-you-to-get-kernel-programming-down&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Open ended and quite difficult to understand what it's actually about. Closed by five users. I don't understand why this was tweeted, it's a zero scored question with no answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137896/software-engineer-already-in-late-thirties-would-i-have-trouble-finding-a-new&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Duplicate, closed by four users and a moderator. Same as (3).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137994/does-object-oriented-programming-really-model-the-real-world&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I closed this one because it started gathering answers that re-iterated earlier answers. It's not a question that will be deleted soon (if ever). It deserves the community's attention (wink).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138132/list-of-the-really-big-and-really-small-discrepancies-with-js-in-the-big-5-brows&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Vague, overly broad, argumentative and mostly off topic. Closed by five users, I wonder if the fact that the single answer was negatively voted should have prevented tweeting it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138229/python-is-slowly-replacing-c-in-universities-does-this-move-degrade-the-quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Vague, speculative, argumentative, wrong. Close by five users, I suspect it got twitted because of the highly upvoted answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is worth reiterating that there where flags on all questions, including ones closed by a single moderator. I will keep an eye on the one I re-opened, hopefully answerers will not fail to read the notice for yet another time...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3256/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75189/who-are-the-diamond-moderators-and-what-is-their-role" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24842" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2179" RevisionGUID="65924f5e-dd15-47ec-af5b-7803400cd19e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed there's no 'edit' option for questions and answers posted at Programmers meta - as opposed to eg Programmers, SO and So meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that intentional? a missing feature? something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* example of 'edit' option as it looks at SO meta:  &#xD;&#xA;  ![screen shot](http://i51.tinypic.com/2afmq9c.jpg)&#xD;&#xA;  **update** _SO meta_ turns out to be a special case, as explained in [answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2179/no-edit-option-for-qa-at-programmers-meta/2180#2180)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* example of how this looks to me at programmers meta:  &#xD;&#xA;  ![screen shot](http://i51.tinypic.com/hwiy6h.jpg)  &#xD;&#xA;  there's _retag_ link placed where I would expect _edit_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note To avoid misunderstanding, I refer to 'edit' option for Q&amp;A posted by other members (for my own posts it appears ok)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24843" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2724" RevisionGUID="420ea88f-ff4b-4c9b-98ec-0479577a8df1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm looking at http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126513/form-screenshot-for-legal-proof-of-clicking-one-of-the-checkboxes and it feels like a mostly legal problem rather than a software development question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have visited legal questions here on meta before ([here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here) and [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here)) and the general consensus seems to be that questions pertaining to copyright, trademark, and licensing are fine but other legal concerns are best left to lawyers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our FAQ has also been adjusted to only mention software licensing as a suggested on-topic subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So with that in mind and considering that we aren't legal experts, is the question above actually on-topic? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are other problems with it as well, like being phrased as poll and attracting answers that do nothing but address that &quot;yes or no&quot; part of it, which is not really what Stack Exchange is here to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we, as a community, want to keep this question as is? Is it going to be helpful to future visitors? Is there an answer to it or is it more of a discussion topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24844" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2513" RevisionGUID="c3b7196b-8386-481f-8769-84627ab9660d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This comes up a lot for questions that are closed as not being related to software development.  (What triggered the question was [some of the answers for the Are Marketing Questions On Topic question on meta][1].   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that there is a logical problem here - many things *might* be specific to programmers, but probably usually aren't very, but you don't know that without knowing the answer to the question.  For example, questions about specific marketing tactics (in this case swag).  But it's also an issue for most work environment questions (which I'm willing to stipulate mostly aren't good questions) and pretty common for career questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But presumably the person asking doesn't know if this is true, or they wouldn't ask.  And people closing the question might not know of any reason programmers are different than the rest of the world for attribute X, but it's hard to prove a negative, since a single valid example invalidates it.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, what if someone happens to answer a post saying that their recently completed research has found that programmers have a uniquely strong response to swag, but only in blue packaging?  Or that they have ranked all professions by correlation between ambient noise and productivity, and programmers have the highest negative correlation of all occupations, including brain surgeons and orchestra conductors?  (Or, to the probable joy of several recent posters, that a gene has been found that greatly increases programming ability but makes the bearer social awkward and physically repulsive?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In practice, most questions closed as not being specific to programmers probably really aren't specific to programmers, or are only slightly so, but then what should the policy be?  Should they just be closed on the theory that anybody with reasonable evidence that it *is* specific to programmers will be able to get it re-opened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2502/are-marketing-questions-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24845" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2706" RevisionGUID="309eb121-89af-4650-a7f6-f7ebc51605fd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[One of your answers][1], the one with the 2 upvotes, is on a question that was made [community wiki][2] before you answered (or before you got any upvotes). You don't earn or lose rep for those - but you can still earn badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further investigating, the question was made community wiki on [Nov 1 at 23:06][3], and you answered on Nov 2 at 10:21, so it was automatically turned to community wiki, as shown in the [revision history][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But it says &quot;21 answers&quot; and I think the limit is 30.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The limit [here is 15][5]. 30 is the limit at [StackOverflow][6], and can be different at different sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/117440/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117243/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117440/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1596/the-15-answer-cw-conversion-really-sucks&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24846" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2212" RevisionGUID="0c9bd939-33ab-44de-a325-a1136316ef38" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per a [previous discussion here on Meta][1], I went through all questions tagged [tag:process]. There were no questions about concurrency or IPC with this tag, so it was irrelevant, but I would recommend something along the lines of [tag:concurrency] or [tag:inter-process-communication] for these questions. I used the tag [tag:development-process] to account for process model and methodology questions and simply removed the tag from &quot;how do I do X&quot; questions that didn't involve a formal process or concurrency issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure how, but this tag is now dead to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2083/tag-merge-discussion-process-development-process" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24847" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3259" RevisionGUID="a4492009-f3e0-4573-85f5-5d7c9d7c4605" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="you may be familiar with me, but in case you aren't I am maple_shaft and I was asked to be the new community moderator.  I am very excited to take this responsibility and I hope that I do not let anyone down.  I believe in the purpose and scope of Programmers and wish to help guide it in the right direction going forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of you may have noticed that Mark Trapp decided to step down, https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3242/no-more-chairman-mao-reincarnate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wish the circumstances were different, and I want it to be said that I feel that I couldn't ever replace his true role here.  I would be an awful replacement if that were the case, but the wealth of information he provided on Meta is a guiding step so that I can at least benefit from his years of experience in this role.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If any of you have any questions for me, about me, or just want to offer some help or guidance then please do.  I look forward to working closely with the users of the site to make this a better place for all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`&lt;joke&gt;` With that being said, I intend to rule with an iron fist.  All infractions of the FAQ will be met with swift and brutal punishment.  Users will bow before my might.  I have the power!&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;`&lt;/joke&gt;`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kidding aside I am pretty jovial and personable too!  I look forward to getting to know you all better in chat!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/YtkMe.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24849" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3262" RevisionGUID="80f2365a-2c21-4467-8bad-da243f0a0335" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This][1] is my answer to a similar question posted here. the main takeaway point is questions are also judged by the quality of their answers, its unfair but there isn't really a better solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The ability to eloquently phrase a question helps too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3024/41381" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24850" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2726" RevisionGUID="bba4b2cb-4d56-4e7f-afe8-1910889ab4b3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think that the &quot;not obviously on topic&quot; parts of question, fit under the &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; category. I didn't read it as a request for any of kind legal aid, my interpretation was quite close to what the [OP actually meant][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some answers did treat the question as a purely legal one, but most went into legal territory to illustrate that the best way to convince the client would be to propose whatever alternative local law considers reliable, which would be a fine answer to the question, without going into any legal details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are some evidence it's not a very good question (in SE terms): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Although there are some very good answers, I don't think it's clearly evident which one (or two or three) are the &quot;best&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Several answers overlap,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Some of [the][2] [latter][3] [answers][4] don't really add much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the main problem is that the question is actually three (and possibly more) very good questions, and they would have been better answered as individual questions. Currently the answers are either concentrated on parts of the question, or vaguely addressing all distinct issues. But the different questions are somewhat coupled, and individually they might have raised several requests for clarifications.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, several answers comment on the absurdity of the claim, something that's useless in answering the question. I can't really blame any of the answerers, but future visitors may perceive the answers as too noisy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A minor clean up effort could help, for example remove all comments that fail their purpose, or became obsolete. If there's a general feeling that the question asks for legal aid, we could update it to the [more concise and to the point version][6]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the grand scheme of things, I think the question and most answers are (way) above the average, in terms of quality. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In conclusion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do we, as a community, want to keep this question as is? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The question has been visited by several 3k+ users (answerers + commenters), no close votes. (but if there where flags, I wouldn't know)&#xD;&#xA; 2. Although popularity is not a good measurement, the fact that there isn't a single downvote on the question or any answer should be considered. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd say we definitely *want* to keep the question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**update**: Two downvotes on answers appeared after I wrote this. Still, too few, considering the total sum of upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there an answer to it or is it more of a discussion topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the question has been answered, not by a single answer unfortunately, but still answered sufficiently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it going to be helpful to future visitors?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, predicting the future is off topic :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strictly speaking, it should be closed. It's overly broad and I don't think it will generate any more good answers. But far worse questions slip through all the time, and there are all these old ones that still survive. I'd prefer for this one to stay open. We could just add a notification for longer answers instead (seeing how there isn't an accepted answer yet). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it's community wiki already, I guess one approach would be to write an answer that definitively answers the question. Any volunteers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126582/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126598/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126586/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126515/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24851" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2218" RevisionGUID="ff39c739-2f30-45d4-8698-bd05ae3bdaa4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="One thing to keep in mind is that this isn't Software Engineers.SE or SWEBOK.SE: we shouldn't be trying to morph the tag usage on this site such that all questions fit into one of the predefined &quot;buckets&quot; that SWEBOK defines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest issue with having a tag for the construction phase is that it's pretty meaningless in the context of Programmers: every question can be about writing code in some respect. And we already have the results of that ambiguity: [programming](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2147/blacklist-programming-and-programmers), [tag:coding], and [tag:implementations].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it might make sense to have tags for the phases that regular, non-software engineer programmers don't experience on a day-to-day basis, writing code is the main task of programmers. If you're talking about that, you don't need to tag your question with it: use something more descriptive." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24852" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2726" RevisionGUID="a0fba852-7e3b-4a79-86f8-bc03d913a5a6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think that the &quot;not obviously on topic&quot; parts of question, fit under the &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; category. I didn't read it as a request for any of kind legal aid, my interpretation was quite close to what the [OP actually meant][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some answers did treat the question as a purely legal one, but most went into legal territory to illustrate that the best way to convince the client would be to propose whatever alternative local law considers reliable, which would be a fine answer to the question, without going into any legal details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are some evidence it's not a very good question (in SE terms): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Although there are some very good answers, I don't think it's clearly evident which one (or two or three) are the &quot;best&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Several answers overlap,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Some of [the][2] [latter][3] [answers][4] don't really add much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the main problem is that the question is actually three (and possibly more) very good questions, and they would have been better answered as individual questions. Currently the answers are either concentrated on parts of the question, or vaguely addressing all distinct issues. But the different questions are somewhat coupled, and individually they might have raised several requests for clarifications.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, several answers comment on the absurdity of the claim, something that's useless in answering the question. I can't really blame any of the answerers, but future visitors may perceive the answers as too noisy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A minor clean up effort could help, for example remove all comments that fail their purpose, or became obsolete. If there's a general feeling that the question asks for legal aid, we could update it to the [more concise and to the point version][6]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the grand scheme of things, I think the question and most answers are (way) above the average, in terms of quality. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In conclusion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do we, as a community, want to keep this question as is? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The question has been visited by several 3k+ users (answerers + commenters), no close votes. (but if there where flags, I wouldn't know)&#xD;&#xA; 2. Although popularity is not a good measurement, the fact that there isn't a single downvote on the question or any answer should be considered. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd say we definitely *want* to keep the question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**update**: Two downvotes on answers appeared after I wrote this. Still, too few, considering the total sum of upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there an answer to it or is it more of a discussion topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the question has been answered, not by a single answer unfortunately, but still answered sufficiently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it going to be helpful to future visitors?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, predicting the future is off topic :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strictly speaking, it should be closed. It's overly broad and I don't think it will generate any more good answers. But far worse questions slip through all the time, and there are all these old ones that still survive. I'd prefer for this one to stay open. We could just add a notification for longer answers instead (seeing how there isn't an accepted answer yet). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it's community wiki already, I guess one approach would be to write an answer that definitively answers the question. Any volunteers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126582/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126598/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126586/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/126515/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24853" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2768" RevisionGUID="98843350-f495-4389-8ced-eca6f14f198b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Votes on Meta have a different meaning to votes on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As well as the usual meaning (not enough research, unclear or not useful) down-votes on meta mean things like (but not limited to):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I disagree with your proposal&#xD;&#xA;* I don't think this is a good feature request&#xD;&#xA;* It's not a bug&#xD;&#xA;* I don't think there is a problem to be solved&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's even a section in the [meta FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq#vote-differences) about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's one of the reasons why there is no independent reputation on meta sites (apart from Meta Stack Overflow, but that because it's *special*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can only guess why people have down-voted your first meta question, but it likely to be because they don't think there's a problem." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24854" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2823" RevisionGUID="7b83825e-6ba5-4b7c-af10-3654770199ce" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Check out these two recent questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129497/looking-for-advice-about-my-employment-salary-situation (now deleted)&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/129500/java-developer-interview-questions-regarding-sql&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The text of the first question has [been replaced by the OP][1] to &quot;Please delete thanks&quot;. In this instance OP cannot delete the question himself because there is an answer to it. The answer starts by saying: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is off-topic for Programmers, but I'll give you my advice:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question is a wall of text, story of OP's life type of question. It's still open at the time I'm writing this, but if not improved it will be closed. There's also an answer to it that appeared after a comment clearly pointed out the (obvious) problems with the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strictly speaking, we shouldn't try to answer obviously off topic questions, as discussed in [this earlier meta question][2]. For question (1) the answerer even acknowledged the question was off topic, and I fail to see any point to the answer whatsoever, other than rep-farming.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For question (2) it's a little bit more complicated. There's a core question in there that might even be a good question for StackOverflow. I can't blame an answerer for going for it, if (s)he truly believes the answer will be migrated. But there are all sorts of wrong with the question and chances are it will be closed very soon and the answer is NOT one that would fly well on StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I've personally answered [quite][3] [a][4] [few][5] [extremely][6] [low][7] [hanging][8] [fruits][9], I'm no stranger to rep-farming and I don't really have any problem with answerers. But to me, both questions were obviously at the very low end of the quality spectrum, and I'd prefer it if people refrain from answering those, especially with casual answers (i.e. short, without facts and references). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For question (1) the OP lost the ability to delete his post because of the casual answer, and now we have a question that says &quot;please delete&quot; and a judgement call for a moderator/10K users, as deleting the question will also delete a positively voted answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm fully aware that answers can be updated as well, and that several of us opt to answer fast and improve later, and I hope that's the case with these two answers. If not, please don't post answers on obviously off topic / bad questions, especially casual ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts? Arguments? Cookies?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question and one or possibly more answers on the second one were deleted. although that's more of a guess, as the current answers where posted as is (no edits) and wouldn't have sparked that post. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/129497/2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2223/are-useful-answers-to-off-topic-questions-useful-to-the-community&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118212/s-shaped-perl-program/118214#118214&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128376/benefits-pitfalls-of-include/128377#128377&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119357/what-are-silverlight-wcf-ria-services-or-applications/119361#119361&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122270/creating-a-library-that-requires-other-libraries-php/122273#122273&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78183/what-is-the-best-method-for-releasing-free-extension-or-example-code-based-on/79306#79306&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118449/is-php-and-mysql-web-development-4th-ed-an-outdated-book-to-learn-from/118462#118462&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/117289/does-the-session-implicit-objects-are-examples-of-the-model-objects-of-mvc/117306#117306" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24855" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3415" RevisionGUID="7e61abad-de80-4105-b4e2-24c1b90112e6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The timeline of this was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* June 3, 2010 — [NPR proposal][1] created in Area51&#xD;&#xA;* September 1, 2010 — NPR enters private beta as &quot;Programmers&quot; (will continue to call it NPR for the sake of distinguishing it from the current site)&#xD;&#xA;* September 7, 2010 — NPR enters public beta&#xD;&#xA;* September 13, 2010 — MSO starts to grapple with how bad NPR is [when trying to dupe Software Engineering proposals to it](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* September 15, 2010 — We on Meta Programmers.SE [start to deal with that perception](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* September 17, 2010 — SE [makes a blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/) announcing the decision to start merging programming-related proposals to improve NPR&#xD;&#xA;* September 18, 2010 — We begin to [redefine the scope of the site](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* September 23, 2010 — MSO and SE [do the same](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site), with [different results][2]&#xD;&#xA;* September 29, 2010 — &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&quot; is published, new scope and guidelines [begin to be enforced](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice), and the free-for-all NPR proposal dies. It's replaced with Programmers, the site for expert programmers who are interested in subjective questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;* December 16, 2010 — Programmers launches, and the position statement is tweaked from &quot;subjective questions&quot; to &quot;conceptual questions&quot; to [make it easier to explain why it exists compared to Stack Overflow](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/).&#xD;&#xA;* December 17, 2010–Present — Clean-up of the colossal mess left over from beta, including [incorrect UI strings and FAQ wordings](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio/3415#comment9139_3414), [crappy questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning), [awful tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups), [misconceptions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl), and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Within 29 days the site went from programmers hanging out and discussing their lifestyle to programmers discussing software development issues, now over 18 months ago, which is why I'm always surprised people still cling to that old proposal. I would've thought they'd all move on by now: the writing was on the wall almost immediately after the site left private beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/65439/149432" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24857" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3037" RevisionGUID="530a19d0-2938-46bf-b898-4fdae33160a8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm curious as to if the FAQ can ever be amended by some process set forth by the community. This [question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3030/voting-on-questions-that-might-fall-in-the-all-careers-circle-of-faq) got be me thinking. There is a community divide here. Wouldn't the best thing be, to ask the community to vote on whether the FAQ should be updated to make such &quot;All Careers&quot; questions on-topic when it relates to programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead we just go back and forth without any resolve. We have high rep users who would like such questions to be on-topic. If a large portion of the active community doesn't mind such questions shouldn't they stay open and the FAQ be updated (*I don't know if this is true, that's why a vote would help*). If a vote should fail then obviously the majority of the community is OK with the current FAQ and that settles it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just don't think it's very good for the community to see questions where one knows that it probably will be closed (*Not always right away*) because it falls into the &quot;All Careers&quot; category. Then to see someone write a beautiful, helpful answer only to see the question closed. Then a 20 comment argument ensues between the closer, the OP, and the person who wrote the long thought out answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is not already some process, I think that if several high rep users want the FAQ to be updated then they should be able to set forth some motion where the community is able to vote on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24858" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3523" RevisionGUID="8d920b51-c4cb-4e6d-be98-817f742edb52" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [How did this user amass more than 2k worth of reputation?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3457/how-did-this-user-amass-more-than-2k-worth-of-reputation)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I have seen [this user][1] posting _many_ low quality/off-topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of these are getting closed and subsequently deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Out of his 80 questions, about 40 are closed, though there are several that have been highly upvoted (over 5 upvoted). But from the amount of questions asked, it appears to me that it is more by chance that he post some good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have posted a comment on one of his (now closed) [questions][2] asking why he is posting such question, but got no reply.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do about his activity? Should he be post banned? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/26782/goma&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/146296/abstract-comparison-between-three-server-side-languages" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24859" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2777" RevisionGUID="89a236e1-d8d2-4cde-86fa-af980d199f6f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's a junk tag, and it's a honeypot for junk questions and junk tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Closed questions: 21](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsoftware%5D+closed%3A1)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:software-development]: [9 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+software-development)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:career]: [5 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+career)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:development]: [4 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+development)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:best-practices]: [4 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+best-practices)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:experience]: [3 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+experience)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:developer]: [3 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+developer)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:company]: [2 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+company)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kill it with fire. Please [observe normal tag cleanup rules](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24861" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2335" RevisionGUID="302e58b4-c808-4bde-8e6c-33099b3470d2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some time ago Mark Trapp [asked what a P.SE web site would be about][1] and I posted an answer that received a moderate number of upvotes and a few comments. I've revised it a few times and there hasn't been any commentary in quite awhile so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that its a solid answer for &quot;what our blog is about&quot;. Either way, I haven't seen any other movement on the topic so I'm moving it forward myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based upon an S.E. [blog post][2] about getting a community blog started, our next step is to recruit contributors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Recruit contributors**. Who will write entries for the blog? Starting a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; blog is a bit like going through the buffet line. Be realistic – don’t&#xD;&#xA;&gt; let your eyes be bigger than your stomach. Think seriously about if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and how often you will be able to contribute a blog post, including&#xD;&#xA;&gt; research/prep time.  The more contributors there are, the less&#xD;&#xA;&gt; frequently each contributor needs to post.  One post a month is a much&#xD;&#xA;&gt; easier to stomach than a couple posts every week.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a pretty sound assessment, in my opinion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.SE doesn't appear to get quite the volume of traffic that Stack Overflow or other sites receive but we do have several quality, experienced programmers who are also **excellent writers** that could contribute **quality content**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I'm in favor of a post once a week, appearing every Monday. If we could attract **just six people** willing to write, that would mean just one submission from each individual every six weeks. This may seem like quite awhile between posts but I think that this would fit with the vision of a P.SE blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would favor:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Long, not short posts.&#xD;&#xA; - Well written, thoughtful material.&#xD;&#xA; - A relaxed time frame so nobody gets burned out.&#xD;&#xA; - Time for an editorial process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Allow me to clarify the last point. While most people who write blogs just write write write post! and then call it a day, we should be aspiring for the best. A P.SE blog post should not only represent the intellectual musings of one of the smartest programmers on the planet, it should also represent the highest quality of written English. There are some programmers out there who are truly, truly brilliant but can't write to save their lives. Rather than exclude such people I propose that every submission go through an editorial forge for grammar, punctuation, and formatting consistency.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's what I'd like to see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. At least **six people** respond with something to the effect that you're at least *interested* in helping write - either let your your S.O./P.SE rep speak for itself, or post a few links to previous works (not necessarily written!)&#xD;&#xA; 2. At least **two people** who'd be willing to act as proofreaders.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2108/what-should-a-programmers-se-blog-be-about&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/blog-overflow/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24862" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3536" RevisionGUID="4cae2929-12ce-432d-bb1b-442b7e5b33e1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Blame it on [the font used for titles][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The handwritten font in the title, top nav and section header is House Whiteboard. Yes, it is actually Hugh Laurie's handwriting. (&quot;It's Not Lupus!&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh. Well then, blame it on Hugh Laurie. The limey bastard!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/655/site-design-round-2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24863" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2531" RevisionGUID="9a3884dc-42b9-4935-9992-74de3ba6d400" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I did read [a very similar question][1] to the question I'm asking now, but found it confusing, and it was more about when this site was in beta.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just flagged a question that was, arguably, an exact duplicate of a stack overflow question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a question that is an exact duplicate, what are non-moderators expected to do?  The site won't allow it to be given a close vote unless it duplicates a programmers question, which perhaps I should take as a hint.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should such questions be flagged as possible merge candidates (though which direction the merge goes would presumably depend on the questions)?  Should we just let a thousand flowers bloom?  If such duplication is considered fine I don't want to waste moderator's time by flagging them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/162/how-do-you-deal-with-famous-questions-of-stack-overflow-that-are-being-asked-aga" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24864" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3039" RevisionGUID="dd317508-ab20-435b-a545-87d85e5ab202" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="FAQ changes have been propsed by community members, voted on, and incorporated. An example that I have easy access to is [my suggestion to replace &quot;software law&quot; with &quot;software licensing&quot;][1] to eliminate questions about patents, trademarks, and copyrights that vary around the world and often need the expert advice of a lawyer, rather than a software development professional.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However user reputation should have little to do with the process. It needs to be agreed upon by active, participating members of the community, whether their rep is in the hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands. Often, reputation is indicative of participation, but it's possible for a new user who is extremely active to still have a small amount of reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24865" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2809" RevisionGUID="8d47b89a-1c31-4e8b-b402-e6ec46bcf52d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yeah, I agree. I don't think the tag makes any sense in the long term.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We certainly don't want to encourage more general legal questions after [we already reduced the scope in the FAQ from &quot;software law&quot; to &quot;software licensing&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update: I went ahead and removed the tag from the question. The tag will disappear from the site in a day or so." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24866" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2337" RevisionGUID="e9b62def-2413-4a95-987c-f0bf51f1e4cf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Thank you for bringing this up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the concerns I have with the blog is that it can be used as a soapbox. I want to make sure the posts we put up are solid, well-researched, not just someone spouting off their opinions. The latter is what personal blogs are for. Controversial stances are fine, but in my opinion we cannot allow outright ranting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that in mind, I'm up for writing and editing. My rep can speak for itself, though I'm sure my writing style can use some work. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thomas Owens just [brought up the idea of getting the blog rolling](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2314/software-craftsmanship-north-america-2011-sponsorship-proposal/2316#2316) in light of my upcoming trip to [SCNA](http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.com). I agree that it's a great idea, so I'm keen on getting this going soon. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24867" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3044" RevisionGUID="127afb5f-e1ee-491c-a355-771e9b7db545" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Today we had a [productive discussion][1] about the direction in which we will be taking the blog. We also had a fair number of volunteers come forward in addition to the ones who have already submitted [their interest][2]. This post is a summary of our discussion of how you can contribute to the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All blog posts will go through the following process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Submission of idea.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Approval of idea by an editor.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Author will submit article based on that idea.&#xD;&#xA; 4. Article will undergo review and proofreading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### FAQ Index&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Getting Involved](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3055/8)&#xD;&#xA;* [Using Trello](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3054/8)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/2359/2-19&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://trello.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nxp7M.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kMfhC.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ys4cF.png&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EjIPW.png&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/E5r3U.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24868" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2540" RevisionGUID="1b1071df-15e4-4d77-b352-f15c0744b6a4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Building off of @Mark Trapp's answer [here][1], should P.SE moderators have to defend their seat?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, should we keep a limited number of moderators and force them to run for re-election periodically?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think it makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's why:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Imagine that we have eight people who are perfectly capable of performing their duties as P.SE moderator.&#xD;&#xA;- And we agree that we only need four moderators.&#xD;&#xA;- Why should we let four people serve as P.SE moderators indefinitely?&#xD;&#xA;- It seems like we should &lt;strike&gt;rotate and&lt;/strike&gt; infuse some fresh blood into the P.SE group of moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I'm less concerned about rotating.&#xD;&#xA; - Per @Mark Trapp's [answer][2], I'm more concerned about appointing the absolute **best** moderators to the position. [Thanks @Mark Trapp for the suggestion. ;)]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 2:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It's funny how things change in a year.&#xD;&#xA; - As I've said on numerous occasions, I think that the current crop of Programmers.SE mods are doing a fantastic job, and on a specific basis, I don't see any need for them to &quot;defend their seat&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - OTOH, this might be a decent idea for the Stackexchange network as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2536/when-are-the-next-moderator-elections-for-p-se/2537#2537&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2540/should-p-se-moderators-have-to-defend-their-seat/2541#2541" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24869" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2355" RevisionGUID="e3a8eea3-6cab-4991-aeb8-040b040940cf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Should we force adding a comment with every down-vote?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/159/should-we-force-adding-a-comment-with-every-down-vote)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Why not let the site force the user to enter a comment (of min. 20 chars. or so) when demoting an answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24871" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3561" RevisionGUID="f2c32c4e-fcb7-4f56-aff6-c8b2316f2df6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Users not reading the FAQ, and not understanding what this site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am pretty new here, so I might be completely off, but I think that's the main problem. When I first found the site, I read the FAQ, it was pretty easy to find and quite informative (but very long!). I'm not an expert on what is on topic for Programmers, but I still haven't stumbled upon a closed question that would have been asked if the OP had read the FAQ in the first place. I don't know if this is possible but one statistic I would be very interested to see would be the exactly that, how many people actually visited the FAQ before they asked their questions, and how many of the questions asked by people not visiting the FAQ were closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My experience with the site is very limited, and so is my data set, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to familiarize themselves with the guidelines before asking. I haven't asked a question here yet, and do not know if I will soon (most of my questions are already asked and answered) but when I do I will give the FAQ another look to see if my question is ok. I think it's the sensible thing to do, it will only cost me a few seconds and it will help me get better answers, as from what I've seen so far the questions that are disallowed are those that don't generate useful answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site, Meta, is also very useful, there are several past discussions that are applicable to this one and I'm surprised no one mentioned them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Can the migration path from SO be reconsidered?][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [How can we help people who ask “What language should I learn next” ask a better question?][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [How to prevent “Why is my question being closed?” and User Frustration?][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [What can be done about bad questions on Programmers?][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [Questions barely or not related directly to programming. We need handling them.][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also seems to me that people keep answering obviously off topic questions, although that has already been identified as something that we shouldn't do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Should we seek for alternatives to propose to OP when closing their off-topic question?][6] &#xD;&#xA;- [Please don't post answers on obviously off topic / bad questions!][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is not really helpful, although I understand that most people will think to answer first and clean up later, it's very misguiding to the person asking especially when answers are from senior members. It's like saying your question is off topic, but no problem, you got your answers. I've already lost 25 reputation points from answering a very bad question by [this guy][8], and I'm really glad the community and the moderators re-acted and other people didn't waste their time answering his questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm getting a bit off topic, so I will stop here, with [this amazing find][9]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not supposed to be a beginners site, and a lot of closed questions come from beginners. I don't think there is anything we can do here it is only natural that the site will have more closed questions than others. I like the advanced aspect of the site, and the work that is being done in the disciplined aspect of it, questions like [this one][11] should be the norm not the exception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2048/can-the-migration-path-from-so-be-reconsidered&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1580/how-can-we-help-people-who-ask-what-language-should-i-learn-next-ask-a-better&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/492/how-to-prevent-why-is-my-question-being-closed-and-user-frustration&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/642/questions-barely-or-not-related-directly-to-programming-we-need-handling-them&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1722/51770&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2823/please-dont-post-answers-on-obviously-off-topic-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3457/how-did-this-user-amass-more-than-2k-worth-of-reputation&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2000/51770&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Jd0eV.png&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147205/what-were-the-core-api-packages-of-java-1-0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24872" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2575" RevisionGUID="7e75bc1e-d2e4-48c7-96df-a6f08bbdb199" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While [I'm sympathetic](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here) to wanting to discuss legal issues here, as legal problems are a large facet of being an independent developer, in *general* questions that are not about licensing (and generally, that means FOSS licenses like the GPL) are [off-topic here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here) for two reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Our expertise is not in IP law, contract law, or any other type of law. We would be giving legal advice as laypeople, which is an opportunity for a bag of hurt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Even putting aside the expertise, questions do not provide enough detail about their specific situations to be able to provide *accurate* legal advice. The ones that do are so specific to the asker's situation, they're *too localized*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, given the diagram:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Scope diagram](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They're hitting the center, &quot;Just You&quot; part, not the blue, &quot;All Programmers&quot; part. There are very few legal questions that are generally applicable to programmers at large: well-known licenses like FOSS licenses are probably the best example of what would be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to speak to this specific question, there is exactly one entity that knows what will be accepted, and that's Apple. From the [App Store Review Guidelines](https://developer.apple.com/appstore/resources/approval/guidelines.html):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, &quot;I'll know it when I see it&quot;. And we think that you will also know it when you cross it.   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * This is a living document, and new apps presenting new questions may result in new rules at any time. Perhaps your app will trigger this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're not going to even begin to provide a definitive answer about this: Apple decides for themselves what's going to work. If there's a concern about what they will and won't allow, *they* need to be asked: not random strangers on the internet who are not in the know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know there's a cost associated with joining the iOS Developer Program: I get it. But just like we're not a substitute for a lawyer when someone can't or won't pay for one, we're not a substitute for Apple when someone can't or won't pay the iOS Developer Program fee." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24873" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2373" RevisionGUID="70fb1679-4e8b-4ec2-8363-9e89a3262cfb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While we [continue our work on cleaning up the career and jobs tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup), I thought I'd bring up the next tag clean-up project: killing the catch-all tags that could be applied to every question on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through the first two pages of tags, these include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-languages] (710 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:learning] (633 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-development] (335 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-practices] (222 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:recommendations] (129 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:advice] (113 questions)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software-engineering] (96 questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I'm bringing these up now instead of waiting for the first project to complete is that I believe we can exercise the first option—[presented earlier for the career and jobs tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags)—on these tags: nuke them from orbit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, these tags can be applied to every single question on the site. Disambiguating these tags would entail replacing them with *anything else*, not simply a set of pre-defined disambiguation targets. With these tags, we're no better off if they're untagged or left tagged: they tell us nothing about the content of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you think? Is this a good idea, or is there a better way to approach killing these tags? Are there tags that should be on the list but aren't? Is there a serious case to be made for taking tags *off* this list?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea/1940#1940&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2152/blacklist-advice&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/421/is-a-recommendations-tag-really-necessary&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24874" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2854" RevisionGUID="ddd4eba2-2bfa-4655-a862-a4d0c93ed098" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Well, if there is a trend, it might be [my fault][1]!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Insofar I've rejected only two edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. One that only [removed the automated duplicate notification][2],&#xD;&#xA; 2. A weird one that revised *only* two words, that where referenced in a comment to the question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those where too minor, but obviously also otherwise problematic. But I can't really say I happened upon really minor edits. For argument's sake, here's a few examples I'd consider too minor:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Links that don't add anything valuable, an example would be someone adding Amazon links to [this answer][3].&#xD;&#xA; - Spelling &amp; grammar corrections on a post that has a lot more of such errors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question I would ask myself, if I happened upon those is if they where made in good faith. The Amazon links I would probably reject, but the minor spelling &amp; grammar corrections I would improve, or if lacking the time I would simply approve. To my mind, these edits would be from someone not very confident with his/her English but stll eager to contribute in any way (s)he could, and I don't mind that. But I wouldn't mind anyone rejecting them either, and if such a rejection ever made it to Meta, I would defend it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Special cases that I would reject outright, would be minor edits on old posts. If someone is on a badge run for [Strunk &amp; White](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/12/strunk-white) and / or [Archaeologist](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/92/archaeologist) and spamming the front page with minor edits, it wouldn't be very nice. Assuming I noticed repeated such edits from the same user, I would flag one of his posts for moderation attention, and continue my own run towards the elusive [Marshal][4] badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for tags: Retagging is possible at a lower rep threshold. If it's an edit that's mostly retagging I'd assume the user was going to do that originally, but just went ahead and capitalized those I's as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recently found out that suggested edits on StackOverflow [require approval from two users][5]. To be honest I would prefer that would be the case here as well, only if for the process to be peer reviewed, as is (almost) everything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2588/are-micro-edits-on-new-posts-insignificant&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2816/should-we-reject-edits-that-remove-the-automatic-duplicate-notification&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124109/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-design-patterns/124114#124114&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/94/marshal&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119232/why-cant-i-edit-a-question-answer-after-i-voted-approve-in-review-suggested-edi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24875" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3592" RevisionGUID="890b529b-fcdb-476f-a12f-b0817e6bb673" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Change the Programmers.SE tagline**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tagline is usually the first thing users see when they learn about our site. It currently is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is used in our site description on Google&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Tagline in Google][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;in the welcome message displayed to new users&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Tagline in Welcome message][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and in the Migration path for the site from SO ([according to Yannis][5], Stack Overflow is currently our largest referring site, excluding search engines)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Tagline in Migration path from SO][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes it sound like we are a SE site for Professional Programmers [interested in conceptual questions about software development], and not a Q&amp;A site for conceptual questions on software development only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To further the confusion, the site is named and branded with Programmers in mind (whiteboard-look, triple-monitor logo, coffee mugs, comment marks around site name, etc), so by all first impressions, we are a site for programmers to ask questions and get answers from other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea that it is misleading can also be backed up just by looking at our [closed questions][1], where the majority of closed questions seem to come from new users that are looking for an answer from a programmer. I've started leaving comments on closed questions clarifying the site scope, and have received many replies from users not aware of the site scope, including [from some long-term users][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most people won't willingly post or migrate bad questions to a site, so I think changing the tag line to make it clear that this is a site for Q&amp;A on conceptual software development will go a long ways towards reducing the number of bad questions that get asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples I can think of would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **This is a question and answer site for ...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... conceptual questions about professional software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... software professionals to get answers on conceptual software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... conceptual software development questions by professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(These are just examples. If enough people agree that the tag line is misleading and should be modified, we'll discuss what it should be then)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=closed:1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/4567828#4567828&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/K8n2k.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/j590S.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better#comment9662_3552&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/N9VxK.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24876" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3088" RevisionGUID="e5be48f3-ea40-451d-834b-aceb0ceee893" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Proposed tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:career], 626 questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not a general career advice site, but this tag has routinely been a honeypot for low-quality, broad, and general career questions; from career advice to workplace politics. We've attempted to clean this tag up a number of times in the past, and while we've made a significant dent in it (down from a high of 1,400 questions in July 2011), we still have a lot of work to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previous attempts to clean up the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/163/work-job-career-development-employment-career&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Solution&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Many questions in the tag are off-topic here and should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;* There are a number of highly upvoted—but closed—questions in the tag that need a final resolution: heroic edits to be reopened or deletion&#xD;&#xA;* The questions that do belong here need to be disambiguated:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:career-development] for questions about taking steps to improve one's programming career and *requires* the unique insights of a programmer   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:interview] for questions about interviewing for a software development position   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:hiring] for questions about hiring programmers and other software developers   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market] for questions about the prospects or what one needs to do to get a specific job in software development   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-title] for questions about what a specific type of software development job entails   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:project-management] for questions about managing the scope and requirements of a specific project   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:teamwork] for questions about working within a software development team&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and other, more specific tags as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cleanup question: &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24877" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2647" RevisionGUID="a069643e-bbad-47c5-8e94-11f75328bb49" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="They are on-topic, *[provided they meet the six guidelines.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example of a marginal &quot;What does this mean&quot; question, demonstrating no research effort:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What does &quot;Premature optimization is the root of all evil&quot; mean?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of good alternative questions, meeting the six guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33020/when-is-optimization-not-premature-and-therefore-not-evil&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45259/is-premature-optimization-always-bad&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80084/is-premature-optimization-really-the-root-of-all-evil&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79938/what-optimizations-are-premature" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24878" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2452" RevisionGUID="b4eeec2b-786c-4031-b82d-05761dd5d0ab" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is all done: [tag:bad-practice], [tag:good-practices], and [tag:practice] have all been cleared.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:best-practices] is a tag that's been [nominated for the nuclear option](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/should-we-nuke-the-catch-all-tags). I've also added [tag:programming-practices] to the list: I don't see it adding any semantic value to a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because these are just catch-all tags, I'm a little hesitant to merge anything into them, but on the other hand, we're only talking about 37 questions tops.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [tag:bad-practice] isn't adding anything to the questions and can safely be removed. There are only 9 questions, so this can be done manually.&#xD;&#xA;2. I'm comfortable with merging [tag:good-practices] into [tag:best-practices]: from what I can tell, they're used interchangeably (I guess it's a regional thing).&#xD;&#xA;3. [tag:practice] could, in theory, be used in the training sense, but in practice (no pun intended), it's added no semantic content to the questions it's on. These questions should just have the tag manually removed: I'd rather we didn't create a synonym for a tag that can be used in different senses, especially as a synonym for a honeypot tag like [tag:programming-practices]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24879" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2885" RevisionGUID="332e187c-cde0-4f20-be91-76c962f3401c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="After 2.5 weeks of no objections or attempts to salvage the questions, I went ahead and did the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Merged&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What are some handy tools in Windows that makes programmers life easy?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26076/what-are-some-handy-tools-in-windows-that-makes-programmers-life-easy) &amp;rarr; [What are the must have development tools for Windows](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1913/what-are-the-must-have-development-tools-for-windows)&#xD;&#xA;* [What are the symptoms, events or actions of a software death cycle?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25181/what-are-the-symptoms-events-or-actions-of-a-software-death-cycle) &amp;rarr; [What are the warning signs of impending doom to watch out for on a project?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1371/what-are-the-warning-signs-of-impending-doom-to-watch-out-for-on-a-project)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What are .NET's #starlibs?][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [What are must have tools for web development?][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the worst software bug in history?][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [What are some handy tools in Windows that makes programmers life easy?][4]&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the biggest software security vulnerabilty you've personally discovered?][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next step is to work through [Yannis's list of close candidates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2813/8): we will be closing questions that are off-topic, not constructive, or too localized as written. After a month, they will be deleted. So now's the time to save any questions there with heroic edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60303/what-are-nets-starlibs&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19408/what-are-must-have-tools-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26076/what-are-some-handy-tools-in-windows-that-makes-programmers-life-easy&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5168/whats-the-biggest-software-security-vulnerabilty-youve-personally-discovered" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24880" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3596" RevisionGUID="cf6d3625-9727-4649-9324-e5a99cf1d4fc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Should we force adding a comment with every down-vote?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/159/should-we-force-adding-a-comment-with-every-down-vote)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Anonymous down voting is not constructive, and the individuals who choose to hide behind the click, most often never up vote a revised question or answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think if you anonymously down vote a question and it begins to receive up votes, each up vote should cost you rep, because in that case, your down vote is standing against the reputation of your peers. Now that's community moderation!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am requesting this as a StackExchange feature of community moderation. There are (known to me) individuals who's job performance ratings depend on their reputation. The lack of such a feature invites harassment, embarrassment, and defamation of character.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This should not go ignored IMHO. If this isn't something that can be implemented then the act of down voting should pop-up a comment box asking why the question/answer was down voted so that the proper course of action can be taken by the author, and anonymous down voting is rendered as an unacceptable practice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many community members have already taken to the (+1/-1) notation in their comments about voting. I find this to be acceptable, positively constructive, and a feature worth implementing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24881" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3125" RevisionGUID="e9a51430-a55a-4648-a387-5c0675ecef49" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As Thomas [already mentioned][1], there is no policy in keeping around closed questions indefinitely. If a question was closed, it's on a path to deletion, regardless of the specific close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We allow for a fair amount of time for [the community to step up and salvage the question][2], for this specific question a little less than three months. The question was closed on Nov 20 '11 at 17:22 and deleted on Feb 9 at 17:01, and although there were edits in between, none addressed its &quot;non constructive&quot; issues significantly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore the question was one of the highest voted of the [best-practices] tag, one of the more troublesome [meta tags][3] we had, a honey pot for extremely low quality questions. There might have been _some_ useful information in there, but [popularity alone not a good question makes][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3124/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24882" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2472" RevisionGUID="ebc2ca7c-eeb7-434b-afdf-1576e4c53a9d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While the six subjective guidelines cover the question...in question, the closure is actually due to the next part of the close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question has 53 had answers, which is a good sign that it's open-ended and unanswerable in its current form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answerable questions—even subjective ones—should be getting 5 or 6 good answers: that signifies the question was a specific enough scope that there were only so many ways it could be answered correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you start getting into 20, or 30, or worse yet 50 answers, it's highly unlikely the question was of a specific enough scope for anyone to learn anything from the answers. Nobody's going to read and test 50+ answers to see which one works for them: it's unreasonable. So instead, what you're left with isn't a Q&amp;A pair that solves a problem, but a discussion or a poll of people's opinions about a topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More info about this, including Jeff's answer from around the same time the question was closed, is found at:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24883" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2779" RevisionGUID="0958a5b9-aa04-4575-b7c9-c4c737c75906" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As part of a cleanup of the [tag:software] tag [mentioned earlier on meta](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2773/is-there-a-point-to-software), we need to clean up the [closed questions found therein](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsoftware%5D+closed%3A1).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's no point in shuffling around tags on questions that are off-topic or bad to begin with: if we can save these highly-upvoted questions, now's the time to do it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###1.  Merge candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two questions that were closed as being exactly duplicates of earlier questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26076/what-are-some-handy-tools-in-windows-that-makes-programmers-life-easy &amp;rarr; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1913/what-are-the-must-have-development-tools-for-windows&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25181/what-are-the-symptoms-events-or-actions-of-a-software-death-cycle &amp;rarr; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1371/what-are-the-warning-signs-of-impending-doom-to-watch-out-for-on-a-project&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any reason why these questions should not be merged, effectively deleting the [tag:software] tagged versions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not, can these questions be improved so that they can be reopened? Otherwise, flag or vote for deletion so we can clean them up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 2. The rest&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60303/what-are-nets-starlibs&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19408/what-are-must-have-tools-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26076/what-are-some-handy-tools-in-windows-that-makes-programmers-life-easy&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5168/whats-the-biggest-software-security-vulnerabilty-youve-personally-discovered&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can these questions be saved by a heroic edit and community pruning?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If any of these questions can be saved, please be bold and do so: flag bad answers for deletion, combine piecemeal answers into a single canonical one, rewrite the question, flag for reopening.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, the end game for these questions is deletion; so if there's something about these questions that necessitate them being here, let's whip them into shape." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24885" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3600" RevisionGUID="0a3f6623-b29f-46c6-9d93-4af21d0d3032" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yes, that's true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers had a troubled start, fully documented in [this answer][1]. In the beginning the site was called &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; and it was a very relaxed place where questions that didn't belong on Stack Overflow found a home. Inane (but populist) questions were migrated here from Stack Overflow en masse, carrying [ridiculous amounts of upvotes][2] with them, and for a short while NPR was the one place in the Stack Exchange universe where you'd go for mindless fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it soon became evident that people flocked around the [bike shed][3] ones and ignored any serious questions or answers, and the site was quickly filling up with crap. Which led to a somewhat sudden and drastic scope change, the site was essentially rebooted to be what it is today. The redefined scope meant higher quality standards, which for Stack Exchange usually translates to less down votes and more up votes. Combined with the fact that down votes on questions [became free][4] about a year ago, people are down voting a lot more liberally than in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course you should also consider that older questions had obviously more time to gather up votes, they aren't all bad, newer questions will get there in time. But the main reason for the few whales that remain was the undisciplined culture of the early days, people would upvote just about anything. To give you an idea, one of that era's questions was [&quot;What's your most controversial programming opinion?&quot;][5], which had 391 upvotes and 414 answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As time goes by we become even more sharply focused, and we set our standards even higher. Useful and well research questions may not get a lot of up votes, but they do get a lot more visibility and quite more useful answers than a couple of years ago, as they are a lot easier to discover when you don't have to look for hours amongst an ocean of pointless questions like &quot;What's your most controversial programming opinion?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3415/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/ &quot;see SE blog post: The Trouble With Popularity&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/31253/the-bike-shed-problem-and-so&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3557/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24887" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3158" RevisionGUID="552f96ba-31e9-4a2c-b34a-17edbfcd6e53" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So our [first round of proposals](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1) for the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups) is about to close, and it's looking like [tag:career] will be first up to the chopping block. Career questions are tricky in that people, despite the tag wikis and tag wiki excerpts and the constant retags, still use it on a constant basis. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange won't lock (i.e. blacklist) a tag from getting new questions if it has hundreds of questions in it as it provides a bad experience to the user. So instead, what I'd like to propose is renaming [tag:career] to something more jargony—[tag:stci-career]—in order to help dissuade random passersby from using it while we clean it up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag would be temporary, and—should there be any questions left—would be renamed back to [tag:career] once the cleanup is finished. We'd of course have the usual slate of (ineffective) tag wiki warnings saying not to use the tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good idea, bad idea?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24888" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2939" RevisionGUID="f3e78ef1-3300-41d6-8cea-d5acfaf3d0e9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Although I like [ChrisF's][1] and [Yannis Rizos's][2] answers, I'm concerned with reasking questions, unless you actually have the same problem and can provide clarifications or are an expert and can ensure it's sufficiently detailed. If you aren't in a position to respond to comments, to provide more details, or to determine if an answer is at least viable, you probably shouldn't ask the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, there's no way to tell in advance, so it's up to the asker to be sure they can provide anything that the people with the knowledge and experiences need to provide a useful answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2937/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2938/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24889" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2496" RevisionGUID="5e7349c6-2663-42a6-9914-1e420c6f6e6d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The answer to both of your questions is the same: make your question not a duplicate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you didn't link to your question, and I'm too lazy to search for it, I'll just give you some general advice:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If the answer to the existing question didn't work for you, mention that. And don't just say, &quot;It didn't work&quot; - tell us *how* it didn't work. Example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; ###How might I frobnicate a widget?&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I have three widgets that need frobnicating. I found [this earlier question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2494/getting-a-question-reopened) on the subject, but the answer there doesn't work for me - you see, my widgets all have flywheel grommets, and the Potrzebie method recommended there results in clogged ducts. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If the answer to the existing question works, but you're interested in finding other solutions, describe the attributes of an alternate solution, and why you might want a solution with such attributes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; ###How could I measure the effectiveness of adding more team members to an already-late project?&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I'm about to hire 30 consultants to slam our doomed re-write into overdrive, but my boss wants us to collect metrics to justify it. [The answer here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2494/getting-a-question-reopened) suggests counting lines of code produced per week; while I have to admit that seems like a simple and effective metric, I'd like to have a fall-back in case the consultants catch wind of this - are there any measurements I could take that would not be so easily gamed? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Be aware, if you end up getting good, general-purpose answers, your question may be merged back into the original...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you simply don't understand the existing answers, then do some research first. Ask specific questions as they come up. Once you have a solid understanding, go back and post your own answer, or edit the existing one for clarity. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you're convinced that the world has changed completely in the 8.5 months since that last answer was posted, and by now we must have better ways of accomplishing the same thing, then leave a comment or post a bounty and ask. Who knows? You *might* be right. But don't ask the same question again; even if you're *lucky*, chances are you'll just get the same answers... Or links to the existing answers. If you're unlucky, you'll get worse answers. And then get closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24890" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2838" RevisionGUID="e330af4f-9f9c-463e-ad8d-ecb46b4bab3f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [main point of Stack Exchange](http://stackexchange.com/about), and why there are 80+ sites, is that when you ask a question on one of the sites, you're going to get expert-level answers about the subject of your question. Uniquely targeted content attracts experts in the field who can then help those seeking expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if you go to [Biology.SE](http://biology.stackexchange.com), and ask a question about biology, you're going to get an answer from an expert biologist vetted by other experts in the field. There's a higher chance the answer is correct—and more importantly, high quality—than if you went to a general purpose site like [Quora](http://quora.com) or [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the other side of this coin is that if you ask about music or the arts on Biology.SE, you're not going to get an expert answer (if you even *get* an answer) because the audience of the site isn't music. For that, you want to go to [Music.SE](http://music.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this framework, our site is for experts in programming. You ask a question *about* programming, you're ostensibly going to get answers from expert programmers vetted by other expert programmers. If you ask a question about anything else, you're going to get low quality answers vetted by people who aren't experts in the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, we programmers tend to be a pretty confident and self-involved bunch. There a lot of things we do, like, or believe that we think are unique; that by virtue of asking about something *as a programmer* it is much different than asking about it *as anything else*. And of course, that because it's in the context of a *programmer* involved, we must be experts and qualified to answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The truth is that this isn't actually the case: we aren't special snowflakes who see the world qualitatively differently from everyone else. Yes, there are a lot of things that are directly about programming, but there are an awful lot of things that really have nothing to do with it and require the expertise of people who aren't programmers, or require expertise outside the scope of programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are off-topic: if you're asking about cryptographic protocols in general, you want to ask [our site for cryptography experts](http://crypto.stackexchange.com), where they will cater to you. If you want to ask about HAL 9000, you want to ask on [our site for experts on science fiction and fantasy](http://scifi.stackexchange.com), not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then there are questions that don't request expertise, or, given the way we're structured, require an expertise that can't be found on Stack Exchange. Things like personal career advice, polls, workplace therapy and the like require the expertise of people who know the asker on a personal level, or at least knows the situation from all sides. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, I can't tell you what's going to be good for your career because I don't know you. I don't know what you like to do, what motivates you, what your current life situation is, how many bridges you've burned, and so on. I *could* get to know you and find all those things out, but that'll take forever. What you *really* need is a mentor. Stack Exchange is not a mentoring service: we're a Q&amp;A service. The &quot;A&quot; stands for answers, not advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Suggestion 1: Rename the site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So given all this background, there's no need for a name change because we really do only allow questions directly to programming. We even have a handy chart in [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Programmers scope](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is, people tend to think their question fits the blue, &quot;All Programmers&quot; area when really it's in the white &quot;Just You&quot;, &quot;All Careers&quot;, or &quot;All People&quot; areas.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Suggestion 2: Allow closures to be peer-reviewed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [Anna noted in the comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2837/should-the-good-question-criteria-be-revised-or-has-flagging-become-over-zea#comment-7096), if you have enough reputation to vote to close ([currently 3,000](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/close-questions)), you also have the ability to vote to reopen any close questions. It takes five community members to reopen any question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alternatively, if you'd like to make your case and try and convince others (including moderators, who can reopen any question unilaterally), create a meta discussion question here and explain why the question is on-topic and how you've revised the question to address the concerns that it's not. This way, we as a community can discuss the closure and come to a consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Suggestion 3: Provide more sites for migration&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We moderators can, and often do, migrate questions anywhere else on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is flagged for closure, we check to see if it might be a better fit elsewhere on the network. If we find a potential match, we contact the moderators on the candidate site and see if they want the question. If they do, it goes; if they don't, we close it here as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally, the reasons sites don't want questions fall into two categories:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **The question is low quality.** There's a network-wide golden rule: [don't migrate crap](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1901/8). If a question isn't a stellar fit for the destination site, it shouldn't get migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **The question is actually off-topic on the destination site.** Tying into the background above, each site is a community of experts. We're not experts in all the subjects that might take off-topic questions that have been asked here. What might look like, to us, a question that's on-topic on one site might actually be out of scope there, for whatever reason. We can't force people to accept questions on other sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, in short, if you think a question's closed but is really, truly about programming (and not about something else asked by a programmer), revise the question to explain what, specifically, is being asked that requires the unique insights of a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see a question that might be a good fit on another site on the network, flag it for moderator attention and we'll contact the appropriate people and make the arrangements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Specifics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130018/book-on-network-cryptographic-protocols   &#xD;&#xA;General question about cryptography asking for book recommendations. General cryptography questions are on-topic on our sister site, [Cryptography.SE](http://crypto.stackexchange.com). However, like us, broad-stroke book recommendation questions are off-topic there because they're open-ended polls for opinions instead of definitively answerable with expertise. I contacted the moderators on Cryptography.SE and they declined the migration.&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130061/how-can-i-branch-out-from-ui-into-other-areas-of-development   &#xD;&#xA;Broad career advice question about a person's specific situation dealing with their team and how they can get into the any-programming-that-isn't-UI-programming business. Beyond the issue of not knowing the person well enough to tell them how they should develop their career or deal with their coworkers, &quot;how do I get better at programming?&quot; is way broad for a site about programming. Asking specific questions about learning a specific subsection of programming would be on-topic, instead.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24891" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2944" RevisionGUID="1a92f935-5d1a-4abc-b3ff-d209624c2d8d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think the other answers, especially [Mark's][1] and [Yannis's][2] hit most of the points, but I'd just like to weigh in on two things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing a question as such because this question doesn't just apply to programmers but to other creative workers will only restrict unnecessarily the scope of Programmer SE and make it less useful for the programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By allowing questions about things that are relevant to more than just software development professionals, we are creating a major problem. It becomes more difficult for the software development professionals to find answers to questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's take an example of teamwork. If I'm a software project manager or technical lead, I might be interested in how to manage my team in the context of something like Scrum or RUP to maximize quality and improve on-time delivery, or how implementing a specific change to my development process will influence my team's productivity or defect injection rate. If there were lots of questions about generic teamwork, it would become that much harder for me to search this site to find out if my question had been answered and get to those answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Therefore, the question should be reopened and must remain open until at least the Professional Matters SE is on-live.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You don't dump tangentially related questions on a Stack Exchange site because they are &quot;close enough&quot; and then move them later. You let each community focus on its expertise and only its expertise. As the demand for something arises, a new site is proposed, members of existing communities can come together to stand it up, and new experts, practitioners, and curious individuals can be brought in from outside the network to create a new and vibrant community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2943/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2941/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24892" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3169" RevisionGUID="8aa754ad-321f-4022-9ddd-6125064b8ec8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's not a relevant metric, quantitative metrics rarely are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Empirically, questions that have five tags (the upper limit) tend to be better quality wise from questions that have a single or two tags, because the OP put a little bit more effort in categorizing the question. Four/five good tags is a hint that the OP is familiar with the site, but just a hint, the question itself may be crappy. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then again, it's not extremely rare to see questions (good and bad) with three or four useless tags (think: [meta tags][1]). I don't remember seeing a question with five useless tags, let's hope the [tag:career][tag:career-development][tag:software-development][tag:software-engineering][tag:best-practices] beast remains a mythical one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We seem to have a bigger problem with tagging than other sites, at least the sites I frequent. If you take a look at [meta-tag:stci], [meta-tag:tags], [meta-tag:tag-blacklist] and [meta-tag:tag-merge] questions you'll get a better idea of the various tagging issues we've had (and in some cases continue to have). The first [Structured Tag Cleanup][2] starts tomorrow, hopefully we will get rid of some of the most troublesome tags. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, let's see how we can retag this question, because [meta-tag:discussion] alone doesn't say much...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Interesting SEDE queries**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How many tags per question][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [Average tag count per question][4]&#xD;&#xA; - [How many tags per question for top questions?][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [Close count per tag with close rate &gt;= 10%][6] (irrelevant but still interesting!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/61441/how-many-tags-per-question&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/61442/average-tag-count-per-question&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/59225/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/52897/close-count-per-tag-with-close-rate-10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24893" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2513" RevisionGUID="5dc699bb-1b33-4bf7-81fb-511bd20708a4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This comes up a lot for questions that are closed as not being related to software development.  (What triggered the question was [some of the answers for the Are Marketing Questions On Topic question on meta][1].   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that there is a logical problem here - many things *might* be specific to programmers, but probably usually aren't very, but you don't know that without knowing the answer to the question.  For example, questions about specific marketing tactics (in this case swag).  But it's also an issue for most work environment questions (which I'm willing to stipulate mostly aren't good questions) and pretty common for career questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But presumably the person asking doesn't know if this is true, or they wouldn't ask.  And people closing the question might not know of any reason programmers are different than the rest of the world for attribute X, but it's hard to prove a negative, since a single valid example invalidates it.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, what if someone happens to answer a post saying that their recently completed research has found that programmers have a uniquely strong response to swag, but only in blue packaging?  Or that they have ranked all professions by correlation between ambient noise and productivity, and programmers have the highest negative correlation of all occupations, including brain surgeons and orchestra conductors?  (Or, to the probable joy of several recent posters, that a gene has been found that greatly increases programming ability but makes the bearer social awkward and physically repulsive?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In practice, most questions closed as not being specific to programmers probably really aren't specific to programmers, or are only slightly so, but then what should the policy be?  Should they just be closed on the theory that anybody with reasonable evidence that it *is* specific to programmers will be able to get it re-opened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2502/are-marketing-questions-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24894" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3626" RevisionGUID="873a799c-3e5b-4905-9f9f-bf410d09d096" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="From [Chris F's Meta Post](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3540/12611):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can help out. If you see a question or answer that doesn't meet our community standards, use a (polite!) comment to ask the author to fix it, or be bold and edit it yourself, or flag it to bring it to the attention of the sleeping busy moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What constitutes a good, polite, guiding comment? After reading Chris F's post urging the community to step up and help with community moderation, his question, and the [inspirational response by Jerry Coffin](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3612/12611), got me thinking about how and where to  begin. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it may seem like common sense, I believe that all of us could use a refresher or some ideas on how exactly to leave this type of comment. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Communicating over the Internet, where there's no body language or other social cues, is hard! One thing I've personally noticed is that users are more receptive to polite, carefully worded comments, and I feel like the community has more to gain if those users come back a second and third time and put more effort into correcting their question-asking or answer-giving shortcomings, than if they were just left with nothing more than a link, a stern warning, and a bitter, angry feeling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So, here are a few pointers that I've put together that I hope will be helpful:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- When leaving a comment, say &quot;hi&quot; and use the person's name, if provided. Since @username doesn't work anymore, I find that this approach is much more personable and sets the tone for the rest of the comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Welcome the person to the site if he or she is new. This helps disarm the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Use the first sentence to use what the person did or didn't do to describe what it is about StackExchange that's great, but without pointing out the behavior.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you can see that his or her attempt at participating on the site was done in good faith, use that in your suggestion, which you could make in the second sentence. Using a sentence beginning with a dependent-clause followed by an independent clause is a great tool to acknowledge something positive while also pointing out an area that needs improvement.  (While X was very helpful, we really encourage people to do Y)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Next, offer a suggestion for improvement. This is important, and I really think this strategy is *really* helpful for people who are *not* moderators, simply because a person who makes a *suggestion* to another person helps bring the other person *up* to his or her level, with both people on the same level playing field. In other words, suggestions imply choice, and suggestions imply respect and equality. Suggestions imply that you're giving this person helpful, friendly advice that can improve that person's experiences on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Lastly, if there's enough space, consider following up with another welcome message, see you around, good luck, or some other positive closure. This approach also implies that you don't expect nor intend to respond or follow up, which is really helpful, since there isn't much a regular user can do beyond that, other than flagging for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here is an example of a comment that I recently left while using the *review* tab:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi John, welcome to Programmers! The StackExchange sites strive to become a repository of knowledge for years to come. While the links you've posted are helpful, if they ever break, your answer won't quite be as valuable. Consider editing your answer to include a few highlights from the links in the body of your answer such that it's valuable for years to come. Again, welcome to our site! :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of these points were inspired by Chris F and Jerry's responses, but also from the blog post titled, [A Theory of Moderation](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what other suggestions are there for empowering community moderation -- as in moderation by *non-diamond community members* -- through polite, respectful comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24896" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2953" RevisionGUID="df5f7791-bea8-4d23-b45c-409eb97da75d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Putting your specific question aside for a moment, two community close votes doesn't *necessarily* mean your question is off-topic: otherwise it wouldn't take five community close votes or action from a moderator to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see your question attracting close votes and you're pretty sure what you want to know is on-topic for the site, consider modifying your question somewhat to shore up any weak points, or ask [in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21) or even here on the meta-discussion site for help improving your question so it'll stay open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Getting back to your question: in general, questions need to demonstrate the necessity of the unique perspective of programmers to answer. General project management questions [aren't really a fit here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2782/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it wasn't flagged, had it been, I would've checked with [Project Management.SE](http://pm.stackexchange.com) to see if it could be migrated, as I think it'd do quite well there. Even though you deleted the question, consider asking it there anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, this part is a bit bad for the Stack Exchange format:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If so, what would be an example of a successful community managed product backlog, and what are key factors in it's success?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for lists of examples, even if that's just one part of the question, tends to be the part answerers focus on because it's easy. Solid PM question otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24897" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2856" RevisionGUID="f9cf3139-0d6e-4930-9e13-34c3175de45f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As an extension to this previous question - [Should our FAQ contain a list of what's off topic and if so what should that list contain?][1], can we add two categories of questions that are often asked by new users but not on topic :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **&quot;coding homework&quot; questions** - [recent question][2] / [Recent discussion about homework tag][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specific enough questions can be migrated to [StackOverfow][4]. They accept coding homework questions with this politic as the tag description explains :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Homework means the asker is requesting help with school homework. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lets potential answerers know that they should guide the student in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solving the problem, rather than simply showing the complete answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means people shouldn't answer directly a question that looks like homework before migration. But I don't know how to enforce that (in the FAQ ?). Any ideas are welcome on that subject, and may be part of another question if it proves extensive =) (There is an [extensive discussion about how to answer homework questions on Meta-SO][5])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **personalized lesson plan / school guidance** - `What courses should I follow/ What should I start with to learn X with my specific background` - [recent question][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same idea as career questions. If it generalized enough, why not. If it's too localized, it's off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also close to this point :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;[and is not about...] what language you should learn next, including&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which technology is better&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But people seems to miss the point that &quot;part of a language&quot; is about the same as a language itself, and will mostly end up with a generic answer that looks like &quot;You should learn everything about this language&quot;. For example those questions :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What do I need to learn of C# for ASP.NET?][7] &#xD;&#xA;- [What do you need to learn to become professional ASP.NET programmer?][8] &#xD;&#xA;- [Should I be a professional in C# programming in order to build good web applications using ASP.NET?][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ends up with the same generic answer : &quot;Be the best as you can in C#&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-lis&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130468/lottery-program&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/homework&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130454/what-are-some-ways-to-get-started-learning-java-and-where-should-i-go-from-ther&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130080/what-do-i-need-to-learn-of-c-for-asp-net&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44701/what-do-you-need-to-learn-to-become-professional-asp-net-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62170/should-i-be-a-professional-in-c-programming-in-order-to-build-good-web-applicat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24898" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3185" RevisionGUID="535100f7-c908-496c-ab06-9bb3ac57dff7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yesterday I flagged a lot of questions (which are now here https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career) to get closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No doubt, many from this list are actually useful and of good quality. The primary criteria i choose is the misfit as per our definition - which is that questions must *NOT* be belonging to *all careers*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are not closed deleted yet, but they might be closed and/or eventually get heroic edits and or complete deletion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is now generally accepted that most of these questions are good candidates for &quot;The Workplace&quot; so eventually they will all belong there. Earlier there was no such a thing so people posted them here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, the issue is that &quot;The workplace&quot; is still not there yet live. While we may close these questions - even delete these questions, but they all might be of great value. Alternatively we may apply heroic edits that may destroy the real value of the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many are not bad questions, they are just in the wrong place; and while their new home is still under construction, should we shelter them? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically is there a possibility that we can kind of hibernate them, unaffected but not visible or something; but preserve them as is? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, there is one more thing: Area51 has it's own problem. What if &quot;The Workplace&quot; doesn't take off - or more likely take too long to get up. This happens to a lot of sites which are otherwise seems to be quite promising.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We all must realize, that while these questions do help all others - it *will* help programmers in any case. As long as they are better placed it is fine, but destroying them will mean we are doing harm to humanity just due to a definition of on-topic.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24899" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2522" RevisionGUID="45eeabbe-016d-47d4-bfcf-fa4af5a95300" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Wow, a kindred spirit! I personally *loathe* editing long-dead questions, especially when the changes are minor. They push new questions off the front page for no good reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that is not a universal belief: a great many people on Stack Exchange believe that *any* edit, no matter how small, is a good edit. That if you see a post that can be improved, you should do it without any regard for how it affects other posts on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And there's a practical reason to edit: we're in the midst of a cleanup of bad tags that are causing problems for new questions. The only way we can get people to stop using those tags is to [remove them from all previous questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags). And to do that, we need to edit them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally, the front page should be a mixture of brand new questions, active questions that have not been solved yet, and old questions that have been improved. Having too much of any of those makes for a front page that looks more dead or artificial than alive and bustling." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24900" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2892" RevisionGUID="9e0f1d30-c47f-4def-9a72-00af00461ce6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This seems to be something that could very easily be coupled with [Mark Trapp's idea for Structured Tag Clean-Up][1]. In addition to identifying bad tags, we can also identify and prioritize good tags that have a bad tag description and tag wiki entry. There are a few questions about tag wikis, [such as this one about including books][2]. Of course, tag descriptions/wikis would be cleaned up with the tag (if the tag is actually potentially a good tag with bag questions), and good tags with good questions with poor descriptions and wikis might be a lower priority than getting rid of the bad tags, but I think it's something to talk about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is already [some generic advice about tags and tag wiki pages][3] on the Stack Overflow blog. I think that refining that guidance to be specific to this group of experts, along with an assessment of the quality of the tag and its questions would be helpful to maintaining a thriving community of people who are able to provide expert advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So perhaps kick off a discussion about what should (and should not) go into tag excerpts, descriptions, and wiki pages. Thoughts, comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2028/should-we-include-an-introductory-book-list-in-each-topical-tag-wiki&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/03/redesigned-tags-page/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24901" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3046" RevisionGUID="b9722511-90df-4b2c-aa1c-a8205d2ab1a3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question (now deleted) shouldn't have been too localized: as you mentioned, just because it's a niche problem or a subset of the programmer audience in the world, it's not necessarily too localized for Stack Exchange. As [Joel Spolsky wrote](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1916/8) on another question about localized questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stop abusing &quot;Too Localized.&quot; That is meant to close questions that are so specific to a particular place and time that they can only possible benefit the poster, or questions which would be obsolete in a matter of seconds. Just because there is a location in a question doesn't mean it's too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it *should've* been closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;: broad comparisons like that are a [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/) and are prone to too open-ended of a discussion, which isn't a good fit for the Stack Exchange style of Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there was a specific problem being faced—like perhaps moving out to a startup in New York City or Silicon Valley and wanting to better understand the culture in the place you're moving to—that'd likely work out a little better." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24902" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3187" RevisionGUID="deb5676a-171d-44fc-9ab1-c17873a3e11a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Referring to this: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3164/please-blacklist-best-practices&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why is tags [best practices] tag blacklisted anyway? Does it define any ambiguity or does it cater to poor quality answers? Or is there some other reason?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24904" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2894" RevisionGUID="43de7304-b647-4d84-b618-0f46c799e477" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We've had [recent](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2856/addendum-to-off-topic-themes-in-the-faq) [discussions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag) here on meta regarding how to handle homework questions, but I would like to turn the discussion around a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of discussing _how_ to handle these kinds of questions, I'd like to discuss _if_ Programmers.SE can be a viable option for students seeking help. [Robert Harvey](http://stackoverflow.com/users/102937/robert-harvey) brought this question up on [Meta.SO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119976/how-can-stack-overflow-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments) and I'd like to put it in the context of P.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Can Programmers.SE be used by students to get help with their class assignments, and if so, how can it be done in a way that respects the P.SE community? What rules and regulations would the students need to follow?_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_How well would P.SE accomodate the influx of students, each having questions about the same homework assignment?_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: Please feel free to edit the wording or formatting as needed.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24905" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3109" RevisionGUID="9e5266b4-cf03-4cfd-a251-32c3d954d9e3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Asking &quot;what certification should I get?&quot; doesn't really fit with the Stack Exchange model of Q&amp;A: strangers telling people how they should plan their career is always a bad idea and usually too localized to the asker's specific circumstances.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way to make such questions not too localized, or at least more general, is to create a list of certifications, like you suggest, to let people decide on their own which ones seem interesting. Canonical lists do have their uses, but they're an exception to the rule, and generally reserved for [a last-ditch effort](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3096/8) to try and save a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a few problems with trying to use lists as the &quot;go-to&quot; method to solve a question quality problem like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's untenable for us to create a canonical list of every single certification a person can get, and more importantly, provide a reason why it's on the list (instead of just adding a link)&#xD;&#xA;* What criteria are used to generate the list is an open question, making the list dubious in quality or accuracy&#xD;&#xA;* While everybody likes the idea of lists, very few people take the non-trivial amount of effort to actively maintain the list&#xD;&#xA;* Lists are still [outside the Stack Exchange style of Q&amp;A](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of telling people what they should do, or providing a long list of stuff and telling them &quot;have fun!&quot;, it's almost always going to be better to ask questions that informs someone how to find and decide for themselves. Stuff like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How do I go about identifying whether a certification is  useful in my line of work?&#xD;&#xA;* [Are certifications worth it?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/44/8)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24906" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3192" RevisionGUID="6b97ed34-a52a-48e1-832e-278dad72e8c5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question [What is the most productive way to handle development-related failures?][1] is currently [flagged for deletion][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Dealing with project failures or your code being rejected seems like something that comes up a lot as a developer, and I like the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what can I do to the question to salvage it? Should I edit the content of the question and answers completely?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've edited the question to remove examples that are not related to software development, and flagged a lot of the low quality or duplicate answers for deletion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also made an edit to the accepted answer because I felt it was missing a key piece (learning from your failures), and edited a few other answers as well to bring them in line with the edited question. If I have time, I will attempt to go through the remaining answers and clean them up as well, although please feel free to step in and do it yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23075/what-is-the-most-productive-way-to-handle-development-related-failures&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3172/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24907" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2531" RevisionGUID="663ca811-b017-4ebd-81f1-ef3a9088b7db" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I did read [a very similar question][1] to the question I'm asking now, but found it confusing, and it was more about when this site was in beta.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just flagged a question that was, arguably, an exact duplicate of a stack overflow question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a question that is an exact duplicate, what are non-moderators expected to do?  The site won't allow it to be given a close vote unless it duplicates a programmers question, which perhaps I should take as a hint.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should such questions be flagged as possible merge candidates (though which direction the merge goes would presumably depend on the questions)?  Should we just let a thousand flowers bloom?  If such duplication is considered fine I don't want to waste moderator's time by flagging them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/162/how-do-you-deal-with-famous-questions-of-stack-overflow-that-are-being-asked-aga" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24908" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2913" RevisionGUID="7306bf60-8e8a-4d19-9268-67473bf723c5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Last election, there was [a suggestion that nominees should have their reputations recalculated](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1071/8) to accurately reflect their current totals and take into account all activity taken on the site thus far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back then, it wasn't done automatically, but several candidates took it upon themselves to do it anyway by going to the [Reputation page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/reputation) and clicking &quot;Trigger Reputation Recalc&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't remember if the feature existed back then, but moderators *can* recalculate anyone's reputation now: should it be done for nominees? If you're a nominee, would you mind recalculating your reputation yourself?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24909" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3710" RevisionGUID="4d57523a-a5ce-4343-875d-739b5f64df3b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="First of all, thank you for not cross posting on The Workplace. I've written [a rant][1] recently on how to get a question migrated there, the gist of it is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Flag for moderation attention, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Drop the questions in the [Water Cooler][2], the Workplace's main chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the question in question I'd go with option 2, asking in the Water Cooler. It's a bit lonely in there, but _if_ there's a version of your question that fits The Workplace, the regulars will guide you to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for why it's not a good fit for Programmers, well as always, the [FAQ][3] puts it best:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question is about a _people_ problem, not a software development problem, and that the people involved happen to be programmers doesn't make it unique to our profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3701/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8giiE.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24910" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3110" RevisionGUID="3b853846-99bd-4a39-b28f-9dd4f308c93a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="To add to [what Mark said][1], consider writing a tag excerpt and starting a tag wiki for the [certification tag][2]. Both are currently empty. Perhaps organize a list by topic area, write a short description including the name of the certification, who sponsors/offers it, and provide a link to the official website to learn more. That seems like it would add plenty of value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3109/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/certification/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24911" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2540" RevisionGUID="aa9ec630-5235-4bbb-bee3-f44fa6a1e065" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Building off of @Mark Trapp's answer [here][1], should P.SE moderators have to defend their seat?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, should we keep a limited number of moderators and force them to run for re-election periodically?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think it makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's why:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Imagine that we have eight people who are perfectly capable of performing their duties as P.SE moderator.&#xD;&#xA;- And we agree that we only need four moderators.&#xD;&#xA;- Why should we let four people serve as P.SE moderators indefinitely?&#xD;&#xA;- It seems like we should &lt;strike&gt;rotate and&lt;/strike&gt; infuse some fresh blood into the P.SE group of moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I'm less concerned about rotating.&#xD;&#xA; - Per @Mark Trapp's [answer][2], I'm more concerned about appointing the absolute **best** moderators to the position. [Thanks @Mark Trapp for the suggestion. ;)]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 2:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It's funny how things change in a year.&#xD;&#xA; - As I've said on numerous occasions, I think that the current crop of Programmers.SE mods are doing a fantastic job, and on a specific basis, I don't see any need for them to &quot;defend their seat&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - OTOH, this might be a decent idea for the Stackexchange network as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2536/when-are-the-next-moderator-elections-for-p-se/2537#2537&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2540/should-p-se-moderators-have-to-defend-their-seat/2541#2541" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24912" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3718" RevisionGUID="925c31ab-5ffe-49e2-ba7c-17388b23f51f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is a follow-up to the discussion on [renaming the site to match its FAQ, or changing the FAQ to match the site name][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That discussion is one of the highest voted questions on here, so this [meta-tag:feature-request] is to try and get a definitive answer from Stack Exchange about the possibility of getting this implemented. I apologize if sounds like a duplicate, however I was told to make a separate clear proposal for the feature-request, and not edit the existing question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you'd like to discuss the topic itself, please see the linked question &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name &quot;Programmers&quot; was selected for our site back when this was a Q&amp;A site meant for programmers to ask and answer questions that were not related to programming. The [site scope has changed dramatically since then][2] to be for conceptual questions on software development only, and the descriptive name of **Programmers** no longer fits our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&amp;A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best analogy I can think of is creating an `Athletes.SE` which is only for conceptual questions about sports, while questions about athletes themselves, or technical questions about sports, are both off-topic. It's very confusing, especially to new users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't like sifting through so many off-topic questions to find ones that won't get closed, so would like to pick a new name for our site that better matches the site's scope, and change our site's name by doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Change the Title and Logo displayed on our site from Programmers to something else. This would be a cosmetic change only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Register the name as a new SE domain name for the site to use&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Keep the `programmers.stackexchange` domain name active, and simply redirect it to the new site's domain name for SEO and to maintain old links&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for what name to use, I think the name should be something the community decides. If we get the OK to do something like this from SE, we can create a meta thread to determine a new name for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize, we advertise as a Q&amp;A site about programmers, however we are not a site about programmers. We are a site for getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. Lets change our name to clarify that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Thomas' answer][3] also brings up a valid point, that not all software developers consider themselves to be programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Many of the people who are professionals in areas of architecture,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; process, software licenses, and the business side of software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development might not consider themselves programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're limiting our potential by not being clear that this site is for more than just Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3726/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24913" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2922" RevisionGUID="2b56b313-ca1e-4179-a6d7-c7e109293851" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [2012 Moderator Election - Town Hall Chat Digest](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2990/2012-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-digest)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session with the candidates.  This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.  I am working with the candidates to find a time that allows the most participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Town Hall Chat will take place Tuesday the 31st at 22:00 UTC / 5:00pm EST&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[view in other timezones](http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=1&amp;day=31&amp;year=2012&amp;hour=22&amp;min=0&amp;sec=0&amp;p1=0)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[register here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/251/programmers-town-hall-chat?tab=schedule)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the details so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I would like to schedule this towards the beginning of the primary phase.  This means that I am looking at the 30th-1st. As soon as I coordinate with the existing moderators and candidates to find a best fit based on availability, I will edit this post with details on the &quot;when&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;* The Town Hall Chat will be a one-hour event using our [chat platform](http://chat.stackexchange.com/?tab=site&amp;sort=active&amp;host=programmers.stackexchange.com).  I will update this post with a direct link to the chat room once the event is scheduled.&#xD;&#xA;* The format will be an open discussion.  Users are encouraged to pose questions to the candidates regarding their thoughts on moderation.&#xD;&#xA;* After the chat session, a digest of the event will be permanently linked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24915" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3172" RevisionGUID="c8138cdf-2363-43ed-90fe-375f29f649e3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Deletion candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions to see which can be saved through [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) and reopened. If no improvement would make them on topic, vote to delete if you have the reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18120/what-is-the-good-bad-decision-you-made-in-your-mid-20s-about-your-career&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88798/am-i-an-idealist&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63657/i-made-a-mistake-accepting-this-job&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36007/which-are-the-best-investments-you-have-done-for-your-career-as-programmer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18502/who-wants-to-keep-developing&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23075/what-is-the-coolest-way-to-handle-a-failure&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39992/are-there-too-many-qualified-software-development-engineers-chasing-too-few-jobs&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11425/burned-out-on-programming-and-given-up&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14827/typical-hours-week-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20866/the-job-is-stressing-me-out-and-i-am-unable-to-get-enough-sleep-at-night&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69500/dont-make-me-write-bad-code-is-that-all-programmers-really-want&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49105/how-do-you-apply-to-a-company-way-out-of-your-league&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21782/stagnating-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46514/what-to-do-when-youre-the-interviewer-and-you-dont-like-your-job&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22714/what-are-the-telltale-signs-that-the-code-youre-writing-is-already-obsolete&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1006/how-do-you-motivate-yourself-to-program-when-youd-really-rather-be-doing-somet&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63592/how-do-senior-developers-keep-up-to-learning-as-much-as-a-junior&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53168/what-are-some-good-performance-goals-for-a-software-engineer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5920/how-do-you-manage-your-resume-cv&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16222/how-to-remain-calm-in-all-situations&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1360/what-are-the-top-motivators-for-a-programmer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24916" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2933" RevisionGUID="350e8f97-5db2-4fac-ba39-2a091edd8444" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Considering this question :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is the best ORM for .NET?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion it is off topic as it is a [shopping][2] [tool][3] question. On the other hand the [best answer][4] answers what should have been the question &quot;What are the criterias for choosing an ORM for.NET?&quot;, but that would be too much of a change ? Most answers wouldn't fit anymore with the question... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should it be edited ? closed ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related question (but old and in a somewhat different context of migration and different subject) : [Rewording other people's questions][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9498/what-is-the-best-orm-for-net&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/9531/7454&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/987/rewording-other-peoples-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24917" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2544" RevisionGUID="907352d5-a110-4e65-9ba3-8c2bc33ad511" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think doing periodic election could have a positive effect on the community and would make it healthy. If we still want to call it community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I posted the [question][1] you mention, I really didn't knew elected moderators would be there for indefinitely. Honesly, I was shocked. But while I was thinking about it the last few days, I concluded that it makes sense in the current configuration of the project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But still, there is no easy way for the community to make a vote of no confidence without posting on meta (and being flamed). Many simply leave without complaining. We have no way to evaluate the positive or negative effect of the moderator's behavior if we don't give the opportunity to everyone to express their opinion *anonymously*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Election was a good way to do it and previous one illustrated it: one moderator that previously operated on P.SE did not get re-elected!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2536/when-are-the-next-moderator-elections-for-p-se/2537" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24918" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3758" RevisionGUID="15558ed6-d65b-4b81-829e-e003a6cd9b9b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question ban is automatic, and it's not something the moderators control. We don't even know that you are question banned, unless you tell us. To lift the question ban you will need to follow the instructions given in this [link][1], that should have appeared when you tried to ask a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question history is troubling, as maple_shaft [already mentioned][2], from your 16 questions in total:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 9 were closed and deleted,&#xD;&#xA;- from the remaining 7, one is down voted and all but two were edited to fix obvious and not so obvious issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and you have provided no answers. We don't require you to answer questions, provided you ask great ones, but when your questions are not really welcomed by the community, we do expect you to give back by providing some good answers. We are a community of volunteers, and it's only reasonable to expect you to give something back for all the help you have been getting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems that this time the troubling question pattern kicked off both the manual suspension process&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _and_ the automatic question ban. That's a bit harsh, and about a month ago I asked Stack Exchange to let moderators know when a user is question banned, as I feel it's quite annoying to come back from a suspension only to find out that a secondary and silent ban is in place, but my request was ignored. I honestly had no idea that you were question banned when I suspended you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't even know the exact algorithm of the question ban and can't even guess if a user is banned or not, and at this point it's all up to you. If you feel the ban is unfair, you will have to contact Stack Exchange directly, at `team+programmers@stackexchange.com`. &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; There were a lot of user flags on your questions, which brought the pattern to my attention, and I decided to suspend you.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3757/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24919" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3242" RevisionGUID="c6da14b8-8709-4e42-9bf9-4dc0c69e0342" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[@MarkTrapp][1] I just heard you're stepping down from your position as moderator and have to say, I'm sorry to see you go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We may not always see eye-to-eye, and I hated the fact you used your ability to close questions as much as you did, but I still think you did a great job as a moderator, particularly in your meta responses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good luck to you with whatever you do, and don't leave P.SE entirely :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For those who don't know, the &quot;Chairman Mao reincarnate&quot; was [Mark's description of himself][2] in chat once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8/mark-trapp&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=3547172#3547172" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24920" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2935" RevisionGUID="02b8c754-22ee-4204-a7a6-9aa6f30e65d3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just added a post notice to [a question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124109/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-design-patterns) and saw the font had dropped down a size:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Post notice font problem][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't added a post notice in several days so I don't know when it started doing this, but could it be related to the [change in code block font size](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2130/could-we-get-the-new-coding-font-style)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Kaho2.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24921" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2560" RevisionGUID="4f34f5a4-e3c1-4b5e-9b7a-b1968e0ea8e0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Writing better titles is high on the list of worthwhile edits to a question, but there are a few caveats you should keep in mind, especially when you're editing below 2,000 reputation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Editing *en masse* [really messes with the front page](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/110768/on-select-sites-show-the-flag-suggested-edit-count-when-it-is-0-instead-of/110816#110816). It also clogs up the suggested edit queue, where people are tasked with approving edits from users below 2,000 reputation. If you're going to edit, do it in short spurts, not 20 at once.&#xD;&#xA;* Nearly every question has problems other than the title: we have [a huge tag problem](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags), for example. But beyond that, nearly every question will have spelling,  capitalization, formatting, or other copyediting issues. When editing a question, try to improve as much as possible beyond just the title.&#xD;&#xA;* While many titles are terrible and ought to be reworded as actual questions, there are a lot of questions that have *okay* titles or even good ones that aren't actually questions. If you were going into them to edit more than just the title, editing the title is a nice bonus, but otherwise, it's best to just leave them alone. Ask yourself, &quot;does the title change make the question any clearer?&quot; If it doesn't, don't bother just for the sake of making it into a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, thank you for taking the time to make the site a better place!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24922" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3837" RevisionGUID="15a28f47-056c-4979-bd2b-d22108bec3e2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Responding negatively to those folks who copy paste their homework assignments is just a waste of time.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These people don't care how you react; they're looking for the one guy that will actually do their homework for them (some people will).  Consequently, your negative comment will have no effect on the OP, and will only succeed in irritating your fellow community members and alienating new visitors to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A better response is to downvote the question, and cast a moderator flag with a custom explanation, like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Request for speedy deletion: this question is a copy-paste of a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; homework assignment, with no effort on the part of the OP to do the assignment himself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;As an example, I cast a flag with this exact wording on the copy/paste homework assignment originally linked. Yannis deleted it ([see his answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3838)).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24923" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2940" RevisionGUID="113a4806-2418-40db-b38a-98450538c914" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am referring to [this question:What you should do if your junior did not adopt your suggestion? ][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was asked to take this question to [Parenting SE][2] or [Professional Matters SE][3], because the question is a workplace issue. You can read the comments for a debate on whether this question should be closed or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, I can't take the issue to Parenting SE because I am not a parent to those juniors whom I am responsible for. Second, the Professional Matters does not exist yet, so I can't take the issue to a site that hasn't been created yet. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I was asked to refer to this [meta answer][4] for a reasoning as to the closure of the question. I agree with the answer's definition of the Programmer SE's characterization, and I believe that my question applies uniquely to programmers in particular and to creative workers in general. Closing a question as such because this question doesn't just apply to programmers but to other creative workers will only restrict unnecessarily the scope of Programmer SE and make it less useful for the programmers. Not to mention that closing a question because it belongs to a still-not-yet-exist site doesn't sound too good a practice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**AND** if the career-related site didn't get created there would be no place for my question to go to, which makes the SE rather &quot;incomplete&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, the question should be reopened and must remain opened until at least the Professional Matters SE goes onlive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130645/what-you-should-do-if-your-junior-did-not-adopt-your-suggestion&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://parenting.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2483/why-are-all-of-the-good-career-related-threads-closed/2484#2484" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24924" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3956" RevisionGUID="9b5e67d9-a73f-467c-bded-9d4706019bbd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="No, we should not outlaw all interview questions in the FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Career questions are allowed providing they apply to programmers specifically.][1] This includes interview questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mark Trapp phrased this well in [his answer][2] to another post about career questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; directly to software development; general career advice questions with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; no relation to software development or where software development is a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; minor facet of the question are off-topic. A good way to test this is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, our [faq][3] even contains an image to explain this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this particular case, evaluating a candidates ability to read code is not something that applies to &quot;All Careers&quot; or &quot;Just You&quot;, so I don't see a problem with this question being on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1165/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/590/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xEI0s.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24925" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2656" RevisionGUID="65219527-0f4a-4aff-9d1d-969c680b49db" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If you'll bear with me, there are two different answers: the official answer and the realistic answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The official answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no difference between the two questions: the web developer question *should* be closed. We originally had a lock reason for this, but this was removed and [we were told to close as not constructive any question that started to amass too many answers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question). The web developer question [*was* closed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/46716/revisions), but was later reopened by the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it seems pointless to keep closing a question that can easily be reversed—even though that's the official policy—we haven't bothered to re-close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The realistic answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The value in the Stack Exchange engine is that, for every question, there's going to be an answer that floats to the top. That answer has been vetted by the community (through voting) or by the asker (though accepting) as being the correct answer. So, when a visitor comes along in the future and has the same problem, they can just read the top answer and have their problem solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so the major difference between the maintainability question and the web developer question is that in the web developer question, [there is one answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/46760/8) that compiled all the knowledge from every other answer, effectively providing a definitive and comprehensive answer. You don't need to read any of the other answers because the first one covers them all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, despite the question essentially being a poll, one answer is so damn good we overlook the question's other flaws. It's a rarity: an exception to the rule. [One out of every hundred or so similar questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/) has the community actually take the time to meticulously maintain such an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But 99 times out of 100, we just get a poll, where every answer just lists one small piece of the puzzle. If you wanted to even begin to understand the full answer, you have to read all the answers. But since none of the answers actually fully solve the problem, all the things we cherish on Stack Exchange—community vetting and voting—are meaningless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everybody's answer is equally valid and invalid at the same time because there's no way to judge what the correct answer *would* be: if you have an opinion about the subject, you technically provided an answer. [Not really ideal at all](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), and not really [what Stack Exchange is about](http://stackexchange.com/about).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what the maintainability question turned into. Despite deferring early flags and putting up a post notice to help keep the question on point, we still got junky answers we had to delete and nobody stepped up to provide a comprehensive answer. So when 3 members of the community voted to close and we got a flag pointing out what it turned into, we closed it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Moving forward&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thankfully, there's a really easy workaround for getting questions like this to be on-topic and avoid the trappings of being labeled a poll and amassing a bunch of answers that don't quite cover everything: just provide a specific problem the answers can be tested against:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm working on project A, where I'm trying to do B. I want to make sure that when I pass it off to my client or the next developer, that all my bases are covered with respect to C. How can I make sure my project A is maintainable for the next guy?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Straightforward, to the point, and more importantly, testable. Someone can look at the situation, read the answers, and judge whether any specific answer actually helps the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, while this would've been helpful to prevent the state it's in now, what we have now is a ton of answers that don't really fully answer the question. We can fix that, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question automatically gets converted to community wiki (after getting 15 answers), it's *supposed* to be a not-so-subtle hint from the engine to the community that existing answers should be improved and/or consolidated: once a question goes community wiki, nobody gets any reputation anymore and post ownership gets heavily downplayed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So while none of the 18 answers fully solve the problem, if we could create one comprehensive answer from all of them, then we'd be cooking with gas. If someone would like to do this, feel free to flag any answers that have been incorporated into the comprehensive answer and we'll delete them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24926" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2948" RevisionGUID="cda76345-def3-4a13-8cb8-00d998eaa71b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This site is called **programmers**.stackexchange, while the FAQ states that this site is about &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since a large number of people never read the FAQ, or don't read it before posting, this means we have a community of people that think the site is about Programmers, but a team of moderators that try and maintain a site on &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This causes a large number of unhappy people who don't understand why their questions, or other questions they think are good, get closed, downvoted, etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my suggestion is to either rename the site to something that matches it's FAQ, like `softwaredevelopment.SE`, or change the FAQ so that this site is about Programmers, not software development only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I hate the suggestion of renaming the site. I want to participate in a site about programmers, not software development. But as long as the site is called one thing, and the FAQ states another, we're never going to be at peace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit #1**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been told by a few different users to create separate specific requests to try and implement these changes, so&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Here's the proposal to change the FAQ so it matches the site name](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3318/1130)&#xD;&#xA;* [Here's the proposal to change the site name to match the FAQ][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit #2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since posting this, I have learned [the history behind the site scope change][2], and doubt SE will ever allow it to go back to simply being a Q&amp;A site for programmers to get answers from other programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So please, change the name of the site to something that better reflects the site's scope to stop the number of frustrated and confused users we have posting bad and off-topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3718/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24927" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3257" RevisionGUID="9f8f94e0-0d17-4b64-ab14-62f2919d0dc3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yes it is a bit concerning, although 15% is not that much. I went through some of the questions and there is a minor pattern there, several of the closed questions that made it to Twitter were incorrectly migrated from Stack Overflow and they carried upvotes and upvoted answers from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is in the &quot;hot questions&quot; algorithm and as [ChrisF mentioned][1] it affects all sites, not just Programmers. Some things we could do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close questions quicker&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   There seems to be a deep rooted perception that closing questions is a bad thing. It's not, and it should happen fast. Closing is just a peer review mechanism, a signal that a question is a bit problematic and in need of improvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Re-open questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Don't dismiss closed questions, they are not dead. If you feel a question can be re-opened, please try to get it re-opened. Bring it up on chat or Meta, find others that can help. Not every closed question will be re-opened, obviously, but some will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote sensibly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Upvote questions that show research effort, are clear and useful. Don't upvote questions that you feel are interesting / fun but blatantly off topic. Similarly with downvotes, they are a comment to the question, not the person asking the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [A guide to moderating programmers.stackexchange yourself - close voting][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [What's all this about heroic edits?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, we prefer to be called [diamond moderators][4] ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the list of questions, there where flags on all questions, including the three questions that where closed by a single moderator vote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136610/version-number-soup-in-ror-is-grails-better-django&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Typical &quot;which technology is better&quot; question, it could have been closed as off topic. Closed by a user and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136736/online-code-editor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Blatantly off topic question, but borderline on Stack Overflow. Closed by a moderator, and I trust that it was never migrated to SO because the SO mods rejected it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137252/is-it-a-good-idea-to-generate-code-with-the-help-of-your-ide&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as a duplicate by a moderator. This shouldn't really be an issue for someone coming to the site from Twitter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137385/what-do-you-do-when-you-cant-seem-to-understand-a-certain-part-of-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Extremely vague and open ended question, gentle reminder to everyone: Programmers Stack Exchange is not a free for all discussion forum. Closed by a user and a moderator, and it makes me sad that it got as many upvotes as it did (question &amp; answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137372/is-object-oriented-stuff-really-that-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Extremely open ended and argumentative question, comment wars on the question and almost every answer (and a particularly nasty &quot;discussion&quot;, that has since been removed). Closed by a user and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137520/why-do-some-job-posts-say-high-pressure-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Blatantly off topic, typical example of a populist question. Closed by five users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137715/a-class-named-class&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I closed this one because it was getting a bit out of hand, and there wasn't any need for further answers. It had three re-open votes, and I've just re-opened it with a notice for longer answers. If it starts gathering poor answers again, I won't hesitate to close it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137794/offshoring-a-software-project-conflict-resolution&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Very open ended. Closed by two users and a moderator. Potentially salvageable, but it requires a lot of work, and OP seems satisfied with the existing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137864/how-long-did-it-take-you-to-get-kernel-programming-down&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Open ended and quite difficult to understand what it's actually about. Closed by five users. I don't understand why this was tweeted, it's a zero scored question with no answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137896/software-engineer-already-in-late-thirties-would-i-have-trouble-finding-a-new&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Duplicate, closed by four users and a moderator. Same as (3).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137994/does-object-oriented-programming-really-model-the-real-world&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I closed this one because it started gathering answers that re-iterated earlier answers. It's not a question that will be deleted soon (if ever). It deserves the community's attention (wink).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138132/list-of-the-really-big-and-really-small-discrepancies-with-js-in-the-big-5-brows&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Vague, overly broad, argumentative and mostly off topic. Closed by five users, I wonder if the fact that the single answer was negatively voted should have prevented tweeting it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138229/python-is-slowly-replacing-c-in-universities-does-this-move-degrade-the-quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Vague, speculative, argumentative, wrong. Close by five users, I suspect it got twitted because of the highly upvoted answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is worth reiterating that there where flags on all questions, including ones closed by a single moderator. I will keep an eye on the one I re-opened, hopefully answerers will not fail to read the notice for yet another time...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3256/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75189/who-are-the-diamond-moderators-and-what-is-their-role" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24928" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2676" RevisionGUID="4c620ca0-9e42-41d7-b1cb-c9f26277bdc5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question asks three things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have you come across a super programmer? What identifies him or her as such, compared to &quot;normal&quot; experienced/great programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also. how do you deal with a person in your team who believes he is a super programmer? Both in case he actually is or if he isn't?&#xD;&#xA;3. [After everyone responded to your question,] given two competing definitions of what a super programmer is, which do you think is better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question 1&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have you come across a super programmer? What identifies him or her as such, compared to &quot;normal&quot; experienced/great programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a poll. It's asking people to take a word without context and define it however they want. What's the correct answer to this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question 2&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  How do you deal with a person in your team who believes he is a super programmer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question asks how to define a super programmer, but this one wants to know how to deal with them even without a general agreement of terms. This isn't answerable: the question didn't define who is being managed or what the actual problem is. How can an answerer explain how to manage a class of people when there isn't even a working definition of who counts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question 3&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [After everyone responded to your question,] given two competing definitions of what a super programmer is, which do you think is better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having identified the flaw in asking the first question, people were then polled, after they already answered the question, which definition they like better. Supplementing a question with another one that *should* be already accounted for by voting isn't helpful and just adds chaos. Answers should respond to the question, not other answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While the addendum question didn't help, there isn't very much in this question that's constructive. There are no markers or identifiers for being able to answer the first question, the second question assumes the answer to the first question is already answered (which it isn't), and the third question asks people to ignore the first question in favor of now talking about only two of the answers provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The post is not really a question, but a discussion: a jumping off point for talking about a general topic. Once one aspect of the topic was exhausted, the question morphed into something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Real questions have answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), not ideas or opinions. They reference specific problems and don't morph and solicit feedback disparate and broad-stroke items about a topic. Questions are a good fit for Stack Exchange, not discussion topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was asked back in October of last year; back then, these questions were tolerated, even encouraged: over the past year, we've been [enforcing](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) and [clarifying](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) the quality guidelines that were created as a result of the free-for-all discussion-forum nature of the early site. This question slipped through the cracks: a few days ago, someone flagged it, and it was closed after review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Moving forward&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point, there's not much point in trying to save the question: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* every answer tried to address the first, completely not constructive question, many *only* addressing the first question.&#xD;&#xA;* there hasn't been any activity on the question, save for one answer in August, since it was asked last October.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this is still a pressing problem, a new question should probably be asked. It should specify the exact nature of the problem and provide some parameters for determining a correct answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Be warned, though: questions that are just about dealing with other co-workers (even if those co-workers happen to be programmers) aren't on-topic here, either. For questions about dealing with co-workers, the upcoming [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2) site proposal is probably the best option." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24929" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4005" RevisionGUID="9af1dc98-9e2d-4695-aead-e0fbe237ca8f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="No, they should not get automatic close votes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per the meta FAQ question [Are book recommendations on-topic?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would say that like &quot;what language should I learn&quot; questions,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions that effectively ask for a list of books on X should be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, like programming language questions, if you have specialised&#xD;&#xA;&gt; requirements (you want to go into LINQ, or networking, or.. in great&#xD;&#xA;&gt; depth) then perhaps those should be allowed. They should inspire&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers that explain why a book is good for this topic and shouldn't&#xD;&#xA;&gt; just produce a list of everyone's favourite.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; So - in short - if your question will produce a list of everyone's&#xD;&#xA;&gt; favourite book - don't post, but if it will elicit the title of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; book on a topic then go for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So use your brain when downvoting and voting to close. Don't just see the word &quot;book&quot; and take some automatic action. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If SE wanted some kind of automatic system, they'd implement one. But they don't. They want community members to actually evaluate the contents of a question and use their brain to decide if a question is suitable for their site or not, and downvoting or voting to close based on that. Automatic downvotes/closure votes will do more harm than good in the long run if valid questions start getting downvoted and closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2003/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24930" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3262" RevisionGUID="262c6c92-67d2-43ad-8fa4-c6c14a84dffc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This][1] is my answer to a similar question posted here. the main takeaway point is questions are also judged by the quality of their answers, its unfair but there isn't really a better solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The ability to eloquently phrase a question helps too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3024/41381" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24931" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3277" RevisionGUID="c9ff7db6-b4e6-4e5c-b0f9-86e16318059c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I haven't looked through all of them yet, but the majority of closure candidates are not on the list because they are off-topic, but because they are not constructive. For example, this question on [architectural patterns][1] is on-topic, but it's also asking for a list of things. Using a question to generate a list is not constructive. Another example is this question about [what methodologies read up][2] on, which is far too broad and general for a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The purpose of a STCI action is to fully improve the tag - remove the bad tag, retag good questions with appropriate tags, and either fix or remove bad questions from the site so they don't remain as bad examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think that you can make a [heroic edit][3] to anything on the closure list, please do so. It will get reviewed before anything happens. However, keep in mind that many have answers and that it's often better to close/delete and re-ask questions that have answers that will be destroyed/rendered invalid by a heroic edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136425/architectural-patterns-for-software-development&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58006/im-doing-hobby-programming-what-programming-methodologies-e-g-xp-agile&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24932" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2706" RevisionGUID="ca23a068-212a-4453-a598-9295979a8546" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[One of your answers][1], the one with the 2 upvotes, is on a question that was made [community wiki][2] before you answered (or before you got any upvotes). You don't earn or lose rep for those - but you can still earn badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further investigating, the question was made community wiki on [Nov 1 at 23:06][3], and you answered on Nov 2 at 10:21, so it was automatically turned to community wiki, as shown in the [revision history][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But it says &quot;21 answers&quot; and I think the limit is 30.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The limit [here is 15][5]. 30 is the limit at [StackOverflow][6], and can be different at different sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/117440/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117243/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117440/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1596/the-15-answer-cw-conversion-really-sucks&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24933" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2975" RevisionGUID="654212a6-77c2-4a5b-b17c-2b228643feba" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This site, as it is now, *is* for programmers. Programmers do software development: that's our expertise. Similarly:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Cooking.SE is for *cooks* who have questions about *cooking*&#xD;&#xA;* DIY.SE is for *DIYers* who have questions about *home improvement*&#xD;&#xA;* Bicycles.SE is *cyclists* who have questions about *cycling*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could change &quot;software development&quot; to &quot;programming&quot;, but that minor change doesn't seem to match the level of disagreement presented.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And to clarify, the way the site is now isn't due to a team of moderators constantly enforcing new policies on a site that nobody in the community wants: the site's scope and position statement were adjusted [two weeks after the site went into public beta](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/350/8), now almost 18 months ago. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site scope hasn't changed since then, and the site's been doing fine since:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We're routinely either number one or number two in new 200+ users&#xD;&#xA;* We've been in the top 10 SE sites for traffic, answers, questions, and % answered since launch&#xD;&#xA;* Our closure rates are in line with the rest of the network&#xD;&#xA;* We've handled thousands of flags from hundreds of community members who are interested in maintaining the site's scope as it's written now&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is all to say that the site, as it is now, most people—particularly newer active users—get and understand. There are still a few who choose to ignore the vast majority of Programmers's history and focus on some outdated idea of a much more broader site than what launched, but a site name change isn't going to suddenly change their minds.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not to say tweaks here and there to clarify points in the FAQ aren't welcome: [they are](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2411/8), and [we've adjusted the FAQ accordingly](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2422/8). But the [old version of Programmers](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352?phase=definition) (so-called &quot;Not Programming Related&quot;), where anything a programmer might be interested in is on-topic, died an ignoble death in September of 2010.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is dead. Long live Programmers!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24934" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2768" RevisionGUID="cc90a315-a53a-4dfa-ace8-0ac8684a08bf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Votes on Meta have a different meaning to votes on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As well as the usual meaning (not enough research, unclear or not useful) down-votes on meta mean things like (but not limited to):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I disagree with your proposal&#xD;&#xA;* I don't think this is a good feature request&#xD;&#xA;* It's not a bug&#xD;&#xA;* I don't think there is a problem to be solved&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's even a section in the [meta FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq#vote-differences) about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's one of the reasons why there is no independent reputation on meta sites (apart from Meta Stack Overflow, but that because it's *special*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can only guess why people have down-voted your first meta question, but it likely to be because they don't think there's a problem." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24935" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4012" RevisionGUID="aad7537c-fee8-46d5-861b-a82f883d3cda" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The downvote arrow tooltip says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Latest questions with negative score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Where can I get practice questions?][1] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No research effort, tick! Unclear, tick! Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Apple Developer Enterprise Program?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't know what this one is about. Skip!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Relocation to USA or Germany][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone please delete this. Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Is “Application Programming Interface” a bad name?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At first I thought the OP was quoting a reputable source, then I realized he's quoting himself, so there's no actual research effort. There might be, but I'm not going to read his blog to find out. Would have downvoted if this one was at 0 or -1, skipping it now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Agile Unified Process][5] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No research effort, tick! Pointless question, tick! Downvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Which design pattern to use when using ORM?][6] (one of your examples)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Extremely broad, unanswerable, uninteresting. Useful to anyone but the OP? No! Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Learn WinRT or Unity 3d?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What the hell is this I don't even... Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Good practices for large scale development/delivery of software][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meh. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Learning iPhone Development][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Which are the basic steps for learning Iphone development?` Ah, Google must be broken for this guy! Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [CSS/JS frameworks for Android Holo UI][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Android Holo UI _might_ be a specific enough parameters for this one to not be yet another &quot;pick for me, please&quot; question. Meh. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Applying for MS CS with an un-related Bachelor's Degree][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meh. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [How to select li range and move them inside div][12] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flagged for deletion. OP posted an off topic question here by mistake, a moderator explained why it's off topic and had to be closed, OP seems to have understood why his question is off topic. No point in keeping this around anymore. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Can jQuery be used server side?][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Profoundly confused question, OP doesn't seem to have even visited jQuery's website once. No research effort, tick! Unclear, tick! Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Video Lectures for the book “Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective”][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't even... Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Fitting it together, database, reporting, applications in C#][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too long to read. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Finding work as a college student][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too long to read. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't agree with you there's a problem. I'm very new around here, but I can tell you that one of the things that lured me in was [the &quot;promise&quot; that this site is about &quot;professional programmers&quot;][17]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for **professional programmers** who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've even written about this, [on a different but related Meta discussion][18]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers is not supposed to be a beginners site, and a lot of closed questions come from beginners. I don't think there is anything we can do here it is only natural that the site will have more closed questions than others. I like the advanced aspect of the site, and the work that is being done in the disciplined aspect of it, questions like this one should be the norm not the exception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a newer user, representing no one but myself, this is what I have to say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I _rarely_ upvote a negatively scored question. Not because I go with the flow, but because usually I find the negative score justified.&#xD;&#xA; - I like it that Programmers is trying to be a bit more disciplined than other sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am _not_ a professional programmer, bit young for that, but I have learned a lot since the first day I've joined the site. One of the more important lessons: A professional environment is tough, and it takes skills to survive in it. The scrutiny poorly researched questions face has made me a far better researcher, to the point that I now find 99% of the answers I'm looking for on Stack Overflow or Programmers just by searching.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps you want more of a &quot;let's all hold hands and pat ourselves in the back&quot; kind of site. I don't see anything wrong with that, but it wouldn't be *a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll close with [Gilles' conclusion][19], with which I agree 100%:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So my provisional conclusion is that there is no problem with good questions being downvoted. There are mediocre questions that are downvoted, which is as it should be. If you think that's the case, give examples of good questions that have downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164376/where-can-i-get-practice-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164370/apple-developer-enterprise-program&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164368/relocation-to-usa-or-germany&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/164365/51770&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164355/agile-unified-process&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164342/which-design-pattern-to-use-when-using-orm&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164326/learn-winrt-or-unity-3d&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164324/good-practices-for-large-scale-development-delivery-of-software&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164315/learning-iphone-development&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164311/css-js-frameworks-for-android-holo-ui&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164310/applying-for-ms-cs-with-an-un-related-bachelors-degree&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164298/how-to-select-li-range-and-move-them-inside-div&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164292/can-jquery-be-used-server-side&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164288/video-lectures-for-the-book-computer-systems-a-programmers-perspective&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164285/fitting-it-together-database-reporting-applications-in-c&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164274/finding-work-as-a-college-student&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3561/51770&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4010/51770" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24936" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2777" RevisionGUID="e7186069-a205-4a98-9dde-4c6c714cd539" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's a junk tag, and it's a honeypot for junk questions and junk tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Closed questions: 21](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsoftware%5D+closed%3A1)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:software-development]: [9 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+software-development)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:career]: [5 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+career)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:development]: [4 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+development)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:best-practices]: [4 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+best-practices)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:experience]: [3 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+experience)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:developer]: [3 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+developer)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:company]: [2 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+company)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kill it with fire. Please [observe normal tag cleanup rules](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24937" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4018" RevisionGUID="43168689-2932-4768-a05c-b2dc005d2877" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've been talking with him through email, and when I asked him why he left P.SE he said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;I left for the exact same reason you wrote on your P.SE profile.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(He also said it was OK to share his thoughts in an answer here, and that he's not going to bother posting an answer here because he's gone for good, but he's pretty sure everyone knows why he left)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for [my profile][1], well it's not very flattering because I wrote it one day while I was frustrated towards P.SE. My feelings haven't changed, but normally I would have kept them to myself&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If someone makes a Q&amp;A site for Programmers to ask questions and get&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers from other Programmers about any issue related to their career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; choice or self-identity as a programmer, let me know. I'd love to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participate in such a site again, and will help you promote it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; As for this site, I'm done with it unless something changes. I feel&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its changed too far from the original programming resource it once&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was, and the current moderation style is not for me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I dislike that so much valuable information gets deleted for the sake&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of &quot;maintaining a clean site&quot;, dislike the way many users are treated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (particularly new ones), and dislike the way the overall culture of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this site has been changing from a community of programmers out to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; teach and learn from each other, to an insular group of programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elitists (of course this isn't all of you, or probably even most of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you. Its just a large percentage of the more active/vocal users who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; take part in running the site).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anyways, I'm not interested in helping to support this site anymore,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; although I will be happy to take part in any initiatives to changes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope the powers-that-be will take this into account when deciding future policies for a site, as Pierre is not the first one of our top users to quit the site. I can confirm that `DeveloperArt` left for the same reason (been talking to him via email too), and I've seen many other high-rep names quietly disappear over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your 2nd question, yes [it's possible to recover a deleted account][2] although according to MSO it requires &quot;Jeff-Level&quot; access&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/22568/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24938" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2779" RevisionGUID="c468af25-6c00-49c1-b211-b1a6b1ea79c7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As part of a cleanup of the [tag:software] tag [mentioned earlier on meta](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2773/is-there-a-point-to-software), we need to clean up the [closed questions found therein](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsoftware%5D+closed%3A1).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's no point in shuffling around tags on questions that are off-topic or bad to begin with: if we can save these highly-upvoted questions, now's the time to do it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###1.  Merge candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two questions that were closed as being exactly duplicates of earlier questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26076/what-are-some-handy-tools-in-windows-that-makes-programmers-life-easy &amp;rarr; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1913/what-are-the-must-have-development-tools-for-windows&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25181/what-are-the-symptoms-events-or-actions-of-a-software-death-cycle &amp;rarr; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1371/what-are-the-warning-signs-of-impending-doom-to-watch-out-for-on-a-project&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any reason why these questions should not be merged, effectively deleting the [tag:software] tagged versions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not, can these questions be improved so that they can be reopened? Otherwise, flag or vote for deletion so we can clean them up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 2. The rest&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60303/what-are-nets-starlibs&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19408/what-are-must-have-tools-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26076/what-are-some-handy-tools-in-windows-that-makes-programmers-life-easy&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5168/whats-the-biggest-software-security-vulnerabilty-youve-personally-discovered&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can these questions be saved by a heroic edit and community pruning?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If any of these questions can be saved, please be bold and do so: flag bad answers for deletion, combine piecemeal answers into a single canonical one, rewrite the question, flag for reopening.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, the end game for these questions is deletion; so if there's something about these questions that necessitate them being here, let's whip them into shape." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24939" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4100" RevisionGUID="c2efe86b-623a-40f9-8c87-6b4e987abbd1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Right now, we're operating on some community discussions from several years ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Are book recommendations on-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic) (July 2011)&#xD;&#xA;- [What's up with all the book recommendation flags?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2665/whats-up-with-all-the-book-recommendation-flags) (December 2011)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea was that there are some book or resource recommendations that are suitable for this site. If there are specialized requirements or a small number of right answers, then the book question can stay. A key idea was the &quot;canonical resource&quot; - the single, widely accepted, best resource on the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, just this morning, we had two book questions ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168144/books-for-exam-487-developing-windows-azure-and-web-services) and [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168145/books-for-exam-486-asp-net-4-5-mvc)) that were closed with 4 community votes, followed by my vote. These questions also received down votes. At first glance, they seemed like they would fall under the criteria that we have been operating under - a very specialized requirement that I assumed would be covered by a small number of books or web resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I ask the community to consider the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How are we doing right now in handling these types of questions? Are the current policies sufficient or are there more concrete policies that would be best implemented?&#xD;&#xA;- Without expertise in the subject matter, how do people (especially moderators who might have to act on a flag) know if there is a singular &quot;canonical&quot; book on the question?&#xD;&#xA;- What happens to topic areas covered by a small number of resources now (such as the latest language or library) down the road, when it is more popular and prevalent? Might resource requests, perhaps, be too localized since the available (and perhaps even what is considered canonical) change over the course of time?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24940" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2809" RevisionGUID="ab882e0d-75a8-433b-ac5d-c861771d9951" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yeah, I agree. I don't think the tag makes any sense in the long term.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We certainly don't want to encourage more general legal questions after [we already reduced the scope in the FAQ from &quot;software law&quot; to &quot;software licensing&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update: I went ahead and removed the tag from the question. The tag will disappear from the site in a day or so." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24941" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2980" RevisionGUID="209eeb7d-8ab5-45ce-ac28-526502c6e255" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Contributing to the Blog](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;The blog [is moving forward][1]. **The wheels are moving** higher up to get us a Wordpress instance created for a dedicated blog here are Programmers.StackExchange. I'm excited about the prospects and what this can do for our community at large.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of things to note.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. There is now a [chat room][2] for discussions regarding the P.SE blog. There has already been a healthy discussion and if you're interested I would suggest that you peruse the transcripts.&#xD;&#xA;2. I have [been anointed][3] the community &quot;point of contact&quot; for the blog. All this means is that I'll be putting in some dedicated hours to organizing and communicating with people about getting the blog published.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some time ago, I posted [a call for volunteers][4] for the blog - and we received a great response from potential writers and proofreaders. However, it has been some time since those &quot;commitments&quot; were made and situations may have changed. If you're still interested - or have become interested - please refer to that [original post][5] and post a comment to the affirmative if you are still willing to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here's where we're at**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was recommended that we find time for everyone who is interested to sit down and have a discussion about the direction of the blog. We've already had several discussions about this here on Meta but I agree that it probably is a good idea to schedule a chat room session where we can have a meeting and intimately discuss the details of this new project - i.e. definite plans for articles (aka blog posts), proofreading, and publication.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose that we hold this meeting **[Friday, February 3rd at 4 PM GMT][6]** (that's 11 AM for United States East Coast) in the new Programmers Blog chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are intending to be a participant in this project, please give me feedback on whether this date and time works for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2976/lets-get-the-blog-kicked-off/2979#2979&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3214146#3214146&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/2359/programmers-blog?tab=schedule" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24942" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="6b2ee372-ca2a-4ef3-9d69-7779d49fb473" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**There are two proposals here:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original proposal was to change the FAQ and site scope to more accurately reflect the site's name. It was created because of the votes and responses received on [this question][1], however since posting this I've learned of the [history behind the site scope change][2], and am not sure if this is something SE would allow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second alternative proposal is for adding a section to the FAQ to help clarify what makes a good question for Programmers.SE. It was added based on an [answer below][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you post an answer supporting either proposal, be sure to specify which one.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;**First proposal: Change site scope and on-topic definition in the FAQ**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we change the way we define what is on/off topic of the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity, so questions on our site are best defined as on-topic by the type of answer they need, not by the subject of their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, many freelancing or business concerns are off-topic here even though they're listed as on-topic in the FAQ, and some career-development questions are actually on-topic despite being in the off-topic list. The deciding factor is the type of answer the question requires. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see this causing a lot of confusion about what is actually considered on/off topic for our site, so I think it would be better to define what is on topic by the type of answer needed, instead of the subject of the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what about changing the list of on/off topic items to something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h2&gt;[What kind of questions can I ask here?][4]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE is a site for programmers to ask questions and get&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers from other programmers about non-code issues that are related&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to their career choice, or self-identity, as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We welcome questions about conceptual topics in software development,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; such as software architecture and design concepts, algorithms and data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structure design, the software development lifecycle, testing and QA,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and freelancing &amp; business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; yourself][5]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR&#xD;&#xA;&gt; department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in one job too long][6].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][7]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][8]. Don't ask questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What  language/technology should I learn next?][9] or [Is A better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; than B?][10] because we do not want questions that lead to chatty,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; open-ended discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][11] for open-ended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][12]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does that make me a bad developer?][13]. We want a site that we can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][14]** &lt;br /&gt;    &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer?][15] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end&#xD;&#xA;&gt; result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a single answer][16] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Not be a coding problem][17]** &lt;br /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;[Programmers][18] was created to be a site about non-code issues programmers face, while its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; sister site, [Stack Overflow][19], is for coding questions. To put it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; another way, [Programmers][20] is for when you're in front of a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; whiteboard working through higher-level conceptual programming issues,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; while [Stack Overflow][21] is for when you're in front of a compiler&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or editor working through code issues. &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][22]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us&#xD;&#xA;&gt; maintain our site. &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each of those bullet points should be a link that points to a [meta-faq][23] post containing more details on the subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop some of the confusion I see about our site scope, and reduce the number of upset users who asked a question which was in the &quot;on-topic&quot; list of the FAQ, but the question still got closed as off-topic. The scope of this site is really defined by the type of answers required, not the subject of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was a site created for programmers to get answers from other programmers about issues related to their career choice (or self identity) as a programmer. The scope was changed due to the deteriorating quality of questions being asked, however I think it has changed far beyond the original proposal, and the site has [gone downhill][24] since then. I believe we can still be the site this was meant to be, while maintaining SE quality guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE works best with communities, and I think a community called Programmers should be one about Programmers, not be only about one part of what Programmers do&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Second proposal: Add a new section to the FAQ to try and clarify what makes a good question**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[jcmeloni's answer below][25] made the suggestion to make this a new section in the [Programmers.SE FAQ][26] instead of replacing the existing section.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section would be like the [UX.SE's FAQ][27] section titled **What makes a good question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this proposal as well, so instead of changing the existing bullet-point list defining what is an on-topic question, what about simply adding a new section titled &quot;What makes a good question&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h2&gt;[What makes a good question?][28]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should elicit definitive answers or solutions rather than&#xD;&#xA;&gt; prolonged discussions. Remember, [this a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion&#xD;&#xA;&gt; board][29]. To participate in open-ended discussions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programming-related topics, please visit our [chat][30] instead.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; yourself][31]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR&#xD;&#xA;&gt; department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in one job too long][32].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][33]** &lt;br /&gt;    &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer?][34] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end&#xD;&#xA;&gt; result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a single answer][35] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][36]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does that make me a bad developer?][37]. We want a site that we can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][38]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][39]. Don't ask questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What  language/technology should I learn next?][40] or [Is A better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; than B?][41] because we do not want questions that lead to chatty,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][42] for open-ended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Not be a coding problem][43]** &lt;br /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;[Programmers][44] was created to be a site about non-code issues programmers face, while its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; sister site, [Stack Overflow][45], is for coding questions. To put it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; another way, [Programmers][46] is for when you're in front of a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; whiteboard working through higher-level conceptual programming issues,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; while [Stack Overflow][47] is for when you're in front of a compiler&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or editor working through code issues. &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][48]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us&#xD;&#xA;&gt; maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3319/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/171/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1646/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3136/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3319/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [32]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [33]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [34]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [35]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [36]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [37]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [38]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [39]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [40]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [41]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [42]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [43]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/171/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [44]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [45]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [46]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [47]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [48]: http://a.b" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24943" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4102" RevisionGUID="e9481500-7d98-4e52-9a5f-feb90622a34b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="No our current policy on how we handle resource requests is not sufficient because not enough users are aware of it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From my experience with the SE sites, users learn first by the actions of other users, 2nd by the faq, and 3rd by Meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The policy may exist on meta that resource requests are valid if they are looking for a very specific resource, but its not mentioned in the FAQ, and I see resource requests getting closed almost daily on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question comes up which *does* meet those standards, such as the ones you pointed out, its likely to get closed anyways because there are many users who are not aware of the fact there is a meta post outlining specific cases where resource requests are allowed. From their point of view, they see almost all resource requests getting closed, and the FAQ doesn't appear to have anything specific about exceptions. It's only users that have been pointed to the meta post before, or ones that have bothered to take the time to look for a question about resource requests on meta that will actually be aware of the policy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to allow specific resource requests, add something to the FAQ that specifically outlines in what cases resource requests are allowed. Perhaps revisit maple_shaft's suggestion to [Add the definition of a “shopping list/request” to the FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3547/1130).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not, deny all resource requests and make that clear in the meta questions that the answers to those questions are no longer valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But don't hide the rules behind when a resource request is or isn't allowed in a meta post, and expect users to follow it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(PS. Personally I like resource requests and would prefer the keeping the rule and adding something to the FAQ to make it clear which resource requests are or aren't allowed. I find them some of the most valuable content around, and frequently my &quot;practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&quot; is that I need a resource to accomplish a specific task, and know they exist, but don't know how to find them or how to evaluate them.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24945" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3042" RevisionGUID="4385951c-7f9c-42ae-be31-128e6820ef8f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [canonical answer to this is on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi), which is where the link in the notice takes you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An automatic filter is in place to ban questions from IP addresses or accounts with a history of extremely poor questions. To avoid bypassing the filter its internal rules are a secret, but it is partly based on downvotes cast by other members of the communities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Once you have posted too many bad quality questions, you will be banned from asking more, and see the error message. You can then still use the site, except for asking questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at [your profile](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/30160/dave), you've asked 6 questions, only one of which has been upvoted, 4 of which were closed, and 3 of which were deleted. You've provided few answers, and only one of which was up-voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you'd like to ask questions in the future, focus on helping others first by providing high-quality answers and taking [the feedback you've received on your past closures](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3029/8) to heart.  While the details of the low-quality ban are purposefully kept secret, creating a trend of high-quality answers generally will help towards getting it removed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24946" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4108" RevisionGUID="9bb6ea2e-ac6d-45ee-9a18-f6fb3eb75b66" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Believe me, I'd be the first in line to shut down recommendation questions if there was a real problem, or if there was a good reason to, but I'm not seeing either here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How are we doing right now in handling these types of questions? Are the current policies sufficient or are there more concrete policies that would be best implemented?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's hard to tell how we're handling these types of questions without a significant amount of data demonstrating a problem. You've cited two questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168144/books-for-exam-487-developing-windows-azure-and-web-services&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168145/books-for-exam-486-asp-net-4-5-mvc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They were both asked by the same person in rapid succession relatively about the same topic and both are absolutely terrible. If these two questions are demonstrative of an alleged problem with book recommendation questions, then I don't see it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest issue with their closing is that they were closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; instead of what they are: not real questions. The &quot;not constructive&quot; close reason seems to be used more and more as the &quot;I don't care why it's closed, just close it&quot; reason, which dilutes its meaning and causes ambiguity about why questions don't belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with these questions aren't that they are asking for a book, it's that they don't describe anything about the problem the user is having, or rather *why* the user is asking the question, to afford a useful response. They're like asking, &quot;tell me what book will teach me everything and anything about Java.&quot; Where to begin? Questions *must* narrow the scope down to a *specific* problem, otherwise, they don't belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because the two cited questions are incomplete in this respect, they're not real questions. They'd be &quot;not constructive&quot; if they had asked something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What's your favorite way to study for Exam 486?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Exam 487 really sucks, how am I supposed to study for this stupid exam?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;How does Exam 486 make you feel (as a programmer)?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What are some tips and tricks for overcoming my inability to take Exam 487 seriously?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;My co-worker/buddy/priest/cat says *X* book is the best for Exam 486. Help me prove him/her/it wrong.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Without expertise in the subject matter, how do people (especially moderators who might have to act on a flag) know if there is a singular &quot;canonical&quot; book on the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not the guideline for books, and it's not up to anyone (much less moderators) to determine ahead of time (or during the act of moderation) whether there is a single canonical book for a subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, mimicking the guidelines in &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][1]&quot;, and as I described in &quot;[What's up with all the book recommendation flags?][2]&quot;, the important things are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **the topic asked about is *capable* of providing a canonical book on the subject.** The application of this criteria requires common sense. Java doesn't count. PHP doesn't count. NLP for Big Data probably does. F# or any other boutique language probably does. If someone's really in doubt whether something counts, do an [Amazon.com search][3] for the subject. If there's over 10,000 hits, it doesn't count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **the questions sufficiently describes a situation or problem space that invites converging on a small number of correct answers.** &quot;What are some good books on F#?&quot; sucks. &quot;Coming from a purely C# background, I'm trying to add F# to my repertoire. What is the definitive [read: canonical] book for getting up to speed with idiomatic F#?&quot; doesn't, or at least sucks a lot less. If in doubt, wait. If the question attracts dozens of answers, that's a problem. If it settles on 3–5, awesome. If there's a dozen but only a couple of really stand-out answers, cull the herd and protect the question if necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither of these guidelines require domain-specific knowledge of the question; just an understanding of how to ask a good question, which is something anyone moderating (diamond or otherwise) should have a good handle on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What happens to topic areas covered by a small number of resources now (such as the latest language or library) down the road, when it is more popular and prevalent? Might resource requests, perhaps, be too localized since the available (and perhaps even what is considered canonical) change over the course of time?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Irrelevant: [Stack Exchange is designed to handle changing answers][4], even rapidly changing answers, through frictionless editing. Answers for pretty much any subject or problem change over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Problems arise trying to keep questions up to date when there are dozens of posts to maintain, which is why [there are guidelines and technical features][5] that kick in once a question starts getting over 15-30 answers. Per the guidelines for book recommendation questions, this is a non-issue for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So unless there's some other reason, not mentioned, to shut them down now, I don't see anything that's cause for a policy change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2666/8&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://amazon.com&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/87415/149432&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2321/8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24947" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3523" RevisionGUID="b86344d0-a824-4771-8c31-3ed2c27da6f0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [How did this user amass more than 2k worth of reputation?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3457/how-did-this-user-amass-more-than-2k-worth-of-reputation)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I have seen [this user][1] posting _many_ low quality/off-topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of these are getting closed and subsequently deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Out of his 80 questions, about 40 are closed, though there are several that have been highly upvoted (over 5 upvoted). But from the amount of questions asked, it appears to me that it is more by chance that he post some good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have posted a comment on one of his (now closed) [questions][2] asking why he is posting such question, but got no reply.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do about his activity? Should he be post banned? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/26782/goma&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/146296/abstract-comparison-between-three-server-side-languages" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24948" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="0447fe59-88e2-4440-9bde-6d1362d150ad" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing [the \[stci-career\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;1. 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http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39262/what-are-good-personality-types-for-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38661/is-it-fair-to-use-shortened-url-to-mention-and-give-links-of-live-projects-in-my&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40431/finding-time-to-use-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40644/how-similar-are-programming-and-architecture&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41855/what-approaches-can-i-take-to-lower-the-odds-of-introducing-new-bugs-in-a-comple&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41898/when-does-a-programmer-know-when-a-new-job-is-not-right&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43959/is-client-side-html5-javascript-too-lame-after-youve-worked-on-server-side-c&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43133/programming-as-a-minor&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43482/software-development-company-business-plan&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45263/qa-engineer-road-ahead&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46167/how-to-deal-with-learning-a-new-platform-that-is-not-free&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46203/rule-of-thumb-to-estimate-cost-of-a-website&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47033/transitioning-from-internal-to-public-speaking&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49012/what-are-the-best-microsoft-certifications-to-start-with&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47477/why-do-employers-care-so-much-about-gpa&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50311/does-it-really-takes-5-10-years-or-more-to-be-really-good-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50461/advice-for-how-to-handle-company-pride&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51546/how-do-you-handle-developer-that-has-taken-an-early-retirement&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53123/how-important-is-studying-algorithms-and-theory-is-to-becoming-a-great-programme&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently we hit the character limit, [closure candidates continue in another answer][1]. Please don't add anything to this answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3206/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24949" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2854" RevisionGUID="233e9e01-7dfb-4be1-8691-4f6cdf5e6ae2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Well, if there is a trend, it might be [my fault][1]!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Insofar I've rejected only two edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. One that only [removed the automated duplicate notification][2],&#xD;&#xA; 2. A weird one that revised *only* two words, that where referenced in a comment to the question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those where too minor, but obviously also otherwise problematic. But I can't really say I happened upon really minor edits. For argument's sake, here's a few examples I'd consider too minor:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Links that don't add anything valuable, an example would be someone adding Amazon links to [this answer][3].&#xD;&#xA; - Spelling &amp; grammar corrections on a post that has a lot more of such errors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question I would ask myself, if I happened upon those is if they where made in good faith. The Amazon links I would probably reject, but the minor spelling &amp; grammar corrections I would improve, or if lacking the time I would simply approve. To my mind, these edits would be from someone not very confident with his/her English but stll eager to contribute in any way (s)he could, and I don't mind that. But I wouldn't mind anyone rejecting them either, and if such a rejection ever made it to Meta, I would defend it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Special cases that I would reject outright, would be minor edits on old posts. If someone is on a badge run for [Strunk &amp; White](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/12/strunk-white) and / or [Archaeologist](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/92/archaeologist) and spamming the front page with minor edits, it wouldn't be very nice. Assuming I noticed repeated such edits from the same user, I would flag one of his posts for moderation attention, and continue my own run towards the elusive [Marshal][4] badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for tags: Retagging is possible at a lower rep threshold. If it's an edit that's mostly retagging I'd assume the user was going to do that originally, but just went ahead and capitalized those I's as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recently found out that suggested edits on StackOverflow [require approval from two users][5]. To be honest I would prefer that would be the case here as well, only if for the process to be peer reviewed, as is (almost) everything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2588/are-micro-edits-on-new-posts-insignificant&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2816/should-we-reject-edits-that-remove-the-automatic-duplicate-notification&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124109/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-design-patterns/124114#124114&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/94/marshal&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119232/why-cant-i-edit-a-question-answer-after-i-voted-approve-in-review-suggested-edi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24950" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3068" RevisionGUID="2117c4de-53be-4c3e-8a29-9f1e61efc6b7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicates:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Offtopic posts - Can they be moved rather than closed?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2304/offtopic-posts-can-they-be-moved-rather-than-closed)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2508/should-there-be-another-stackexchange-site-for-programmers &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back in the day, the Programmers site was initially created as the Off-Topic site for Stackoverflow. Many of the [most interesting and most favorited questions][1] form early in this site's life have now been closed as subjective or not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand why the questions have been closed. While I may disagree with closing many of them, that is not what I am arguing for. What I am suggesting is that there needs to be a new site in the stackExhange network specifically for interesting programming questions that are subjective. I know that the theory is that the SO engine doesn't work well for subjective questions, but the evidence shows that there is an audience that enjoys them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/60785/top-40-closed-questions-most-favorited" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24951" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4120" RevisionGUID="9a25c4bd-71af-4831-ae3b-25ef212ea2b4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###Welcome!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wasn't a user back when the elections where held, but our [first ever discussion][1] today was certainly pleasant and informative, what I'd expect from a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;This &quot;question&quot; remained &quot;unanswered&quot; for far too long!&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4117/51770" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24952" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3596" RevisionGUID="12bccc3c-db12-461f-b78a-3e94dc9dd78d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Should we force adding a comment with every down-vote?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/159/should-we-force-adding-a-comment-with-every-down-vote)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Anonymous down voting is not constructive, and the individuals who choose to hide behind the click, most often never up vote a revised question or answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think if you anonymously down vote a question and it begins to receive up votes, each up vote should cost you rep, because in that case, your down vote is standing against the reputation of your peers. Now that's community moderation!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am requesting this as a StackExchange feature of community moderation. There are (known to me) individuals who's job performance ratings depend on their reputation. The lack of such a feature invites harassment, embarrassment, and defamation of character.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This should not go ignored IMHO. If this isn't something that can be implemented then the act of down voting should pop-up a comment box asking why the question/answer was down voted so that the proper course of action can be taken by the author, and anonymous down voting is rendered as an unacceptable practice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many community members have already taken to the (+1/-1) notation in their comments about voting. I find this to be acceptable, positively constructive, and a feature worth implementing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24953" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3202" RevisionGUID="3bab9582-7815-497f-b0d9-58a9fe760b5c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[tag:homework] was [recently cleaned up][1], and as meta tags usually do it found it's way back to us, on at least three questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can this tag be blacklisted, so it doesn't keep coming back?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24954" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2856" RevisionGUID="cbc4c3a0-3f93-467f-a2a7-60ce23b3ba69" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As an extension to this previous question - [Should our FAQ contain a list of what's off topic and if so what should that list contain?][1], can we add two categories of questions that are often asked by new users but not on topic :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **&quot;coding homework&quot; questions** - [recent question][2] / [Recent discussion about homework tag][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specific enough questions can be migrated to [StackOverfow][4]. They accept coding homework questions with this politic as the tag description explains :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Homework means the asker is requesting help with school homework. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lets potential answerers know that they should guide the student in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solving the problem, rather than simply showing the complete answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means people shouldn't answer directly a question that looks like homework before migration. But I don't know how to enforce that (in the FAQ ?). Any ideas are welcome on that subject, and may be part of another question if it proves extensive =) (There is an [extensive discussion about how to answer homework questions on Meta-SO][5])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **personalized lesson plan / school guidance** - `What courses should I follow/ What should I start with to learn X with my specific background` - [recent question][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same idea as career questions. If it generalized enough, why not. If it's too localized, it's off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also close to this point :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;[and is not about...] what language you should learn next, including&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which technology is better&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But people seems to miss the point that &quot;part of a language&quot; is about the same as a language itself, and will mostly end up with a generic answer that looks like &quot;You should learn everything about this language&quot;. For example those questions :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What do I need to learn of C# for ASP.NET?][7] &#xD;&#xA;- [What do you need to learn to become professional ASP.NET programmer?][8] &#xD;&#xA;- [Should I be a professional in C# programming in order to build good web applications using ASP.NET?][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ends up with the same generic answer : &quot;Be the best as you can in C#&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-lis&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130468/lottery-program&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/homework&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130454/what-are-some-ways-to-get-started-learning-java-and-where-should-i-go-from-ther&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130080/what-do-i-need-to-learn-of-c-for-asp-net&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44701/what-do-you-need-to-learn-to-become-professional-asp-net-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62170/should-i-be-a-professional-in-c-programming-in-order-to-build-good-web-applicat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24955" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5145" RevisionGUID="eaee44e0-8472-4c7c-9248-8aac86526638" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Appeal to regain the privilege to ask questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5147/appeal-to-regain-the-privilege-to-ask-questions)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I've had my account closed due to one bad question and a lack of input into others questions in the community (did I'm mention that I'm a NEWBIE with not much to give back yet). Is there anything I can do to be allowed to ask questions again?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24956" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3646" RevisionGUID="9f1fccbf-6948-4694-88c8-7ab2ee93dc9e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think the question should have been migrated instead of cross-posted, but that said, cross-posting is discouraged but not against the rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per [this answer by ChrisF](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2105/1130)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There's nothing wrong with posting the same question on multiple sites&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **as long as it's tailored for each site and not a cut and paste repost**.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Each site is unique. It has it's own community and own guidelines for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what is on and off topic. It would be a very rare question indeed that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was on topic on more than one site *if posted without modification for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that site*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer given by one site could be different than the answer given by another site. For example, an English professor might give a different answer to that question than a programmer would. In addition, I wouldn't expect an English professor to know programming terms." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24958" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3778" RevisionGUID="d7c9e233-89d4-4027-9e61-36cc70c67663" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've noticed that Programmers has a whole lot of [Closed] questions hanging around. It's better than it has been in the past (I'm seeing about 25% of the front page, as opposed to more like [40% a while back][1]). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not complaining about the number of closed questions, just the fact that they take up an annoying amount of the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there some way that we can have the front page not show closed items? Or perhaps not allow them to get above the half way point on the page? I often hit programmers &amp; SO during compiles, and it's not useful when 3 of the top 5 items are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/841/why-are-almost-half-the-questions-on-the-front-page-marked-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24959" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2885" RevisionGUID="10cb57a8-030f-404a-a27d-83d76907d898" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="After 2.5 weeks of no objections or attempts to salvage the questions, I went ahead and did the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Merged&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What are some handy tools in Windows that makes programmers life easy?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26076/what-are-some-handy-tools-in-windows-that-makes-programmers-life-easy) &amp;rarr; [What are the must have development tools for Windows](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1913/what-are-the-must-have-development-tools-for-windows)&#xD;&#xA;* [What are the symptoms, events or actions of a software death cycle?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25181/what-are-the-symptoms-events-or-actions-of-a-software-death-cycle) &amp;rarr; [What are the warning signs of impending doom to watch out for on a project?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1371/what-are-the-warning-signs-of-impending-doom-to-watch-out-for-on-a-project)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What are .NET's #starlibs?][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [What are must have tools for web development?][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the worst software bug in history?][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [What are some handy tools in Windows that makes programmers life easy?][4]&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the biggest software security vulnerabilty you've personally discovered?][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next step is to work through [Yannis's list of close candidates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2813/8): we will be closing questions that are off-topic, not constructive, or too localized as written. After a month, they will be deleted. So now's the time to save any questions there with heroic edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60303/what-are-nets-starlibs&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19408/what-are-must-have-tools-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26076/what-are-some-handy-tools-in-windows-that-makes-programmers-life-easy&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5168/whats-the-biggest-software-security-vulnerabilty-youve-personally-discovered" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24960" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3220" RevisionGUID="9336cbdc-76c3-415e-9308-f97f1ec9ea18" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I get upset when I look for a particular question of mine to link to another question, only to find that it's been closed and I probably shouldn't be sending people to it. It's even worse if the question I'm looking for has been deleted and I can't find it at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many questions that were asked back when the site scope allowed questions about programmers, not just software development, and questions were encouraged to [invite sharing experiences over opinions][1], something that is discouraged today because it sounds more like a poll. They got many upvotes because they were on-topic at that time and contained some good information. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that the site scope has changed since then, and these questions are no longer seen as on-topic, however I'd like to request that mods leave a comment on questions they want to close if it was asked back when the question would have been on-topic and has a decent number of upvotes. This would give the OP a few days to try and edit the question to make it on-topic before the question actually gets closed/deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it extremely hard to get questions re-opened here, so would rather try and make a question on-topic to prevent the closure in the first place instead of trying to re-open it after an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/350/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24961" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5163" RevisionGUID="668d6976-ac81-4496-a6c8-6d43039cb6b7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Don't use Programmers to judge other subjective SE sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The history of Programmers is what caused many of the high-profile users to leave, and I think SE learned a lesson from it and is very unlikely to repeat the same process for other SE sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We started out as &quot;[Not-Programming-Related][1]&quot;, a place for programmers to get answers from each other about non-programming subjects that were popular, but not welcome on Stack Overflow. But &quot;not programming related&quot; was a rather broad scope, so SE decided to change it to &quot;Conceptual Questions about Software Development&quot;, and many in the community did not agree with this change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also probably closely related is [this graph](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/83266#graph), where you can see where the change in site direction started getting enforced by moderators. Most users weren't aware that the site scope had changed so much until questions started getting closed, which caused a lot of tension in the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can view the full history [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But anyways, what I'm saying is you shouldn't use Programmers to judge other subjective SE sites because of its history. This site would probably be fine if it wasn't that it started out as something else, and I think other subjective SE sites would do fine as well providing they have a fairly clear definition of their site up-front and don't change direction after the site has launched.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/I7Vqn.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24962" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2892" RevisionGUID="8a044405-b294-4eb7-ae93-168b623de18d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This seems to be something that could very easily be coupled with [Mark Trapp's idea for Structured Tag Clean-Up][1]. In addition to identifying bad tags, we can also identify and prioritize good tags that have a bad tag description and tag wiki entry. There are a few questions about tag wikis, [such as this one about including books][2]. Of course, tag descriptions/wikis would be cleaned up with the tag (if the tag is actually potentially a good tag with bag questions), and good tags with good questions with poor descriptions and wikis might be a lower priority than getting rid of the bad tags, but I think it's something to talk about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is already [some generic advice about tags and tag wiki pages][3] on the Stack Overflow blog. I think that refining that guidance to be specific to this group of experts, along with an assessment of the quality of the tag and its questions would be helpful to maintaining a thriving community of people who are able to provide expert advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So perhaps kick off a discussion about what should (and should not) go into tag excerpts, descriptions, and wiki pages. Thoughts, comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2028/should-we-include-an-introductory-book-list-in-each-topical-tag-wiki&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/03/redesigned-tags-page/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24963" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3792" RevisionGUID="7b0737a1-c43c-4617-8572-3371fe43ad8c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am unsure about the rules pertaining to questions related to education.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially I searched the site for questions related to MS and MSC degrees, and saw many questions from members seeking education advice. However, none of them dealt with the topic of school's ranking &amp; being online programs; therefore, I posted my question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156895/online-msc-from-a-top-school-vs-in-person-from-unranked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was closed within a few minutes as offtopic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not quite sure why it was considered offtopic, and something like this isn't:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37482/having-msc-or-bsc-with-experience-whats-it-worth-in-industrial-environments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also read the FAQ, which brought me here:&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;That post states: `A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot;`&#xD;&#xA;The answer to that question is a yes, as my question specifically asks about the level of challenge in these programs &amp; affects on the rest of the programming career. If I was to post the question in &quot;The Workplace,&quot; I would not get field specific answers there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the proper place to ask a question such as mine?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24965" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2894" RevisionGUID="dd3ceca8-f36f-462a-bf72-fb3297880a76" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We've had [recent](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2856/addendum-to-off-topic-themes-in-the-faq) [discussions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag) here on meta regarding how to handle homework questions, but I would like to turn the discussion around a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of discussing _how_ to handle these kinds of questions, I'd like to discuss _if_ Programmers.SE can be a viable option for students seeking help. [Robert Harvey](http://stackoverflow.com/users/102937/robert-harvey) brought this question up on [Meta.SO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119976/how-can-stack-overflow-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments) and I'd like to put it in the context of P.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Can Programmers.SE be used by students to get help with their class assignments, and if so, how can it be done in a way that respects the P.SE community? What rules and regulations would the students need to follow?_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_How well would P.SE accomodate the influx of students, each having questions about the same homework assignment?_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: Please feel free to edit the wording or formatting as needed.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24966" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4005" RevisionGUID="77da4681-ae50-4fb5-b800-7dfc124a0b63" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="No, they should not get automatic close votes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per the meta FAQ question [Are book recommendations on-topic?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would say that like &quot;what language should I learn&quot; questions,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions that effectively ask for a list of books on X should be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, like programming language questions, if you have specialised&#xD;&#xA;&gt; requirements (you want to go into LINQ, or networking, or.. in great&#xD;&#xA;&gt; depth) then perhaps those should be allowed. They should inspire&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers that explain why a book is good for this topic and shouldn't&#xD;&#xA;&gt; just produce a list of everyone's favourite.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; So - in short - if your question will produce a list of everyone's&#xD;&#xA;&gt; favourite book - don't post, but if it will elicit the title of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; book on a topic then go for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So use your brain when downvoting and voting to close. Don't just see the word &quot;book&quot; and take some automatic action. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If SE wanted some kind of automatic system, they'd implement one. But they don't. They want community members to actually evaluate the contents of a question and use their brain to decide if a question is suitable for their site or not, and downvoting or voting to close based on that. Automatic downvotes/closure votes will do more harm than good in the long run if valid questions start getting downvoted and closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2003/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24967" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5187" RevisionGUID="854141de-8e82-4a9e-a978-be6d26af207e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Footer line floats up too high in the main review page](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4095/footer-line-floats-up-too-high-in-the-main-review-page)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;See the screenshot below. I don't know whether this is because I only have 249 rep, but it's there, all right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/M0CfX.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note: I am currently behind a firewall that blocks Imgur so I can't guarantee the screenshot looks OK for a viewer. All I know is that it has been added to the page successfully. I'll fix it if needed when I can.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Just realized this is a dupe of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4095/footer-line-floats-up-too-high-in-the-main-review-page. Can someone close it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24968" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3255" RevisionGUID="7d89473d-677d-44a9-9751-8166a4ea6183" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Unfortunately, [the site name does not match the site FAQ][1]. Questions on programmers.SE should be about software development, not about programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The essence of your question was if you should continue your education in Canada, or get a job in the US. While this might be a decent question if this were a Q&amp;A site about programmers, it doesn't fit in a site about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site was originally designed to be a site about programmers, hence the site name, however it was determined by the powers-that-be that this was not a good fit for the stack exchange system and they changed it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been trying to get them to either change the site name or the site scope, however I feel until they do that, there will always be misunderstandings like this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some quotes from both the FAQ and the linked question that I hope will help clarify the issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[FAQ][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert **answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development**.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **career advice**, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[Question on Career advice questions][3]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; First and foremost, **any career advice questions need to relate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; directly to software development**: general career advice questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with no relation to software development or where software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is a minor facet of the question are off-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, a career-related question needs to be directly related to software development to be on-topic. Career-related questions that only relate to programmers are not on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24969" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2913" RevisionGUID="94a86376-5f5d-4071-a329-377043718390" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Last election, there was [a suggestion that nominees should have their reputations recalculated](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1071/8) to accurately reflect their current totals and take into account all activity taken on the site thus far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back then, it wasn't done automatically, but several candidates took it upon themselves to do it anyway by going to the [Reputation page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/reputation) and clicking &quot;Trigger Reputation Recalc&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't remember if the feature existed back then, but moderators *can* recalculate anyone's reputation now: should it be done for nominees? If you're a nominee, would you mind recalculating your reputation yourself?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24970" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4100" RevisionGUID="90aedd3c-6049-419b-b585-ed0777ee75f1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Right now, we're operating on some community discussions from several years ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Are book recommendations on-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic) (July 2011)&#xD;&#xA;- [What's up with all the book recommendation flags?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2665/whats-up-with-all-the-book-recommendation-flags) (December 2011)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea was that there are some book or resource recommendations that are suitable for this site. If there are specialized requirements or a small number of right answers, then the book question can stay. A key idea was the &quot;canonical resource&quot; - the single, widely accepted, best resource on the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, just this morning, we had two book questions ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168144/books-for-exam-487-developing-windows-azure-and-web-services) and [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168145/books-for-exam-486-asp-net-4-5-mvc)) that were closed with 4 community votes, followed by my vote. These questions also received down votes. At first glance, they seemed like they would fall under the criteria that we have been operating under - a very specialized requirement that I assumed would be covered by a small number of books or web resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I ask the community to consider the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How are we doing right now in handling these types of questions? Are the current policies sufficient or are there more concrete policies that would be best implemented?&#xD;&#xA;- Without expertise in the subject matter, how do people (especially moderators who might have to act on a flag) know if there is a singular &quot;canonical&quot; book on the question?&#xD;&#xA;- What happens to topic areas covered by a small number of resources now (such as the latest language or library) down the road, when it is more popular and prevalent? Might resource requests, perhaps, be too localized since the available (and perhaps even what is considered canonical) change over the course of time?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24971" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5200" RevisionGUID="970fcf56-a786-4cdc-a400-a2e031dda0c8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Perhaps a duplicate of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2146/blacklist-career-advice (status deferred)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQs state (*inter alia*):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help,&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - career advice, salary or compensation1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, we still get questions, and we maintain tags [tag:career-development], [tag:job-market], [tag:job-searching], [tag:career] etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, we can keep flagging them, but can these tags be consigned to the blackhole?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24972" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3259" RevisionGUID="fce28483-45c5-406e-8b19-bcf0cf3890d4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="you may be familiar with me, but in case you aren't I am maple_shaft and I was asked to be the new community moderator.  I am very excited to take this responsibility and I hope that I do not let anyone down.  I believe in the purpose and scope of Programmers and wish to help guide it in the right direction going forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of you may have noticed that Mark Trapp decided to step down, https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3242/no-more-chairman-mao-reincarnate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wish the circumstances were different, and I want it to be said that I feel that I couldn't ever replace his true role here.  I would be an awful replacement if that were the case, but the wealth of information he provided on Meta is a guiding step so that I can at least benefit from his years of experience in this role.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If any of you have any questions for me, about me, or just want to offer some help or guidance then please do.  I look forward to working closely with the users of the site to make this a better place for all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`&lt;joke&gt;` With that being said, I intend to rule with an iron fist.  All infractions of the FAQ will be met with swift and brutal punishment.  Users will bow before my might.  I have the power!&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;`&lt;/joke&gt;`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kidding aside I am pretty jovial and personable too!  I look forward to getting to know you all better in chat!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/YtkMe.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24973" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2922" RevisionGUID="e9d3a4ae-77ec-470a-9c86-54dc45f8fec6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [2012 Moderator Election - Town Hall Chat Digest](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2990/2012-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-digest)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session with the candidates.  This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.  I am working with the candidates to find a time that allows the most participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Town Hall Chat will take place Tuesday the 31st at 22:00 UTC / 5:00pm EST&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[view in other timezones](http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=1&amp;day=31&amp;year=2012&amp;hour=22&amp;min=0&amp;sec=0&amp;p1=0)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[register here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/251/programmers-town-hall-chat?tab=schedule)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the details so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I would like to schedule this towards the beginning of the primary phase.  This means that I am looking at the 30th-1st. As soon as I coordinate with the existing moderators and candidates to find a best fit based on availability, I will edit this post with details on the &quot;when&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;* The Town Hall Chat will be a one-hour event using our [chat platform](http://chat.stackexchange.com/?tab=site&amp;sort=active&amp;host=programmers.stackexchange.com).  I will update this post with a direct link to the chat room once the event is scheduled.&#xD;&#xA;* The format will be an open discussion.  Users are encouraged to pose questions to the candidates regarding their thoughts on moderation.&#xD;&#xA;* After the chat session, a digest of the event will be permanently linked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24974" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4102" RevisionGUID="132e0e5d-8a0a-4c9f-b38f-c348358b787f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="No our current policy on how we handle resource requests is not sufficient because not enough users are aware of it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From my experience with the SE sites, users learn first by the actions of other users, 2nd by the faq, and 3rd by Meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The policy may exist on meta that resource requests are valid if they are looking for a very specific resource, but its not mentioned in the FAQ, and I see resource requests getting closed almost daily on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question comes up which *does* meet those standards, such as the ones you pointed out, its likely to get closed anyways because there are many users who are not aware of the fact there is a meta post outlining specific cases where resource requests are allowed. From their point of view, they see almost all resource requests getting closed, and the FAQ doesn't appear to have anything specific about exceptions. It's only users that have been pointed to the meta post before, or ones that have bothered to take the time to look for a question about resource requests on meta that will actually be aware of the policy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to allow specific resource requests, add something to the FAQ that specifically outlines in what cases resource requests are allowed. Perhaps revisit maple_shaft's suggestion to [Add the definition of a “shopping list/request” to the FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3547/1130).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not, deny all resource requests and make that clear in the meta questions that the answers to those questions are no longer valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But don't hide the rules behind when a resource request is or isn't allowed in a meta post, and expect users to follow it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(PS. Personally I like resource requests and would prefer the keeping the rule and adding something to the FAQ to make it clear which resource requests are or aren't allowed. I find them some of the most valuable content around, and frequently my &quot;practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&quot; is that I need a resource to accomplish a specific task, and know they exist, but don't know how to find them or how to evaluate them.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24975" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5204" RevisionGUID="59ce2606-6045-443b-9788-1bbdc2bb8eb8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="SQA Stack Exchange is a beta site, which means that there's no guarantee it will stay around, and until the site graduates this is a non issue. We do mention one beta site in our FAQ, The Workplace, but for questions that are extremely off topic on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If SQA graduates, we'll have to examine whether we want software testing questions on Programmers or not, and more importantly if our software testing questions are being expertly answered here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In an earlier Meta discussion, [How to flag off-topic to migrate to SQA][1], corsiKa [chimed in][2]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As a moderator of SQA, obviously I have an interest in seeing it grow. But my first priority is to getting problems people face solved. Migrating for the sake of migration or to bolster SQA would both, in my opinion, be bad. I agree with Chris's perspective of &quot;If there's no quality answers coming in, migrate it.&quot; I would take it further and say that experienced users who know that questions of that nature have been migrated, then migrate those too. The sooner a question is in a spot where it gets properly answered, the better. But if it's already in that spot, it doesn't need to move.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I must say I fully agree. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd love to see SQA graduate to a full site, but they'll have to make it on their own, I'm not convinced that mentioning them in our FAQ would be a good thing for either site, at least not right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5185/how-to-flag-off-topic-to-migrate-to-sqa&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5185/how-to-flag-off-topic-to-migrate-to-sqa#comment12896_5186" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24976" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3271" RevisionGUID="d07caee9-9eea-46a3-a5a4-dbec9a2f588c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Career Development Questions - Moving rather than closing?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3268/career-development-questions-moving-rather-than-closing)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;As I write this post, out of 48 questions on the main page, there are are 27 that are closed.  Is the FAQ is not clear?  Are closing votes too generous?  Is it a blip?  ..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24978" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5226" RevisionGUID="934c2716-19d9-4ac7-ba21-606f85d4cfb7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**[&quot;any suggestions for a good tool/service&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/175268/2 &quot;wording as of revision 2&quot;)** makes question a perfect match for type questions that are strongly discouraged per [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, question looks salvageable using a healthy dose of [Atwood's transform](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/124930/165773 &quot;what's this?&quot;). I would consider editing it into something like _&quot;How do I tell if a product planning tool would suit my needs... etc_ then [flagging to reopen](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1753/31260 &quot;related discussion&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that question has been closed while it had no answers greatly simplifies editing it. Otherwise one would have to take additional care to make sure that changes don't invalidate existing answers - which in some cases can [effectively lock the question from any substantial editing at all](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;an example discussed here: 'Change the question, and you invalidate all of the answers...'&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24979" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2933" RevisionGUID="90fb7fbe-94e2-41db-bde9-8ac0c2890126" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Considering this question :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is the best ORM for .NET?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion it is off topic as it is a [shopping][2] [tool][3] question. On the other hand the [best answer][4] answers what should have been the question &quot;What are the criterias for choosing an ORM for.NET?&quot;, but that would be too much of a change ? Most answers wouldn't fit anymore with the question... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should it be edited ? closed ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related question (but old and in a somewhat different context of migration and different subject) : [Rewording other people's questions][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9498/what-is-the-best-orm-for-net&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/9531/7454&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/987/rewording-other-peoples-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24980" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5231" RevisionGUID="d2527ef2-e192-46e8-af58-e23038f0f2b1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Footer line floats up too high in the main review page](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4095/footer-line-floats-up-too-high-in-the-main-review-page)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Looking the [review page][1], I notice the list of the review queue is covered by the image I normally see at the bottom of other pages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  ![screenshot][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to happen just on that page, while on the front page that image appears in the footer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  ![screenshot][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I inspected the page using Safari 6 Web Inspector, but I didn't see any reference to that image, if not in the .header `&lt;div&gt;`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/524Ne.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/wL2C0.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24981" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4108" RevisionGUID="e059f824-0345-4141-862f-baa801015c55" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Believe me, I'd be the first in line to shut down recommendation questions if there was a real problem, or if there was a good reason to, but I'm not seeing either here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How are we doing right now in handling these types of questions? Are the current policies sufficient or are there more concrete policies that would be best implemented?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's hard to tell how we're handling these types of questions without a significant amount of data demonstrating a problem. You've cited two questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168144/books-for-exam-487-developing-windows-azure-and-web-services&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168145/books-for-exam-486-asp-net-4-5-mvc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They were both asked by the same person in rapid succession relatively about the same topic and both are absolutely terrible. If these two questions are demonstrative of an alleged problem with book recommendation questions, then I don't see it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest issue with their closing is that they were closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; instead of what they are: not real questions. The &quot;not constructive&quot; close reason seems to be used more and more as the &quot;I don't care why it's closed, just close it&quot; reason, which dilutes its meaning and causes ambiguity about why questions don't belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with these questions aren't that they are asking for a book, it's that they don't describe anything about the problem the user is having, or rather *why* the user is asking the question, to afford a useful response. They're like asking, &quot;tell me what book will teach me everything and anything about Java.&quot; Where to begin? Questions *must* narrow the scope down to a *specific* problem, otherwise, they don't belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because the two cited questions are incomplete in this respect, they're not real questions. They'd be &quot;not constructive&quot; if they had asked something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What's your favorite way to study for Exam 486?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Exam 487 really sucks, how am I supposed to study for this stupid exam?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;How does Exam 486 make you feel (as a programmer)?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What are some tips and tricks for overcoming my inability to take Exam 487 seriously?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;My co-worker/buddy/priest/cat says *X* book is the best for Exam 486. Help me prove him/her/it wrong.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Without expertise in the subject matter, how do people (especially moderators who might have to act on a flag) know if there is a singular &quot;canonical&quot; book on the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not the guideline for books, and it's not up to anyone (much less moderators) to determine ahead of time (or during the act of moderation) whether there is a single canonical book for a subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, mimicking the guidelines in &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][1]&quot;, and as I described in &quot;[What's up with all the book recommendation flags?][2]&quot;, the important things are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **the topic asked about is *capable* of providing a canonical book on the subject.** The application of this criteria requires common sense. Java doesn't count. PHP doesn't count. NLP for Big Data probably does. F# or any other boutique language probably does. If someone's really in doubt whether something counts, do an [Amazon.com search][3] for the subject. If there's over 10,000 hits, it doesn't count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **the questions sufficiently describes a situation or problem space that invites converging on a small number of correct answers.** &quot;What are some good books on F#?&quot; sucks. &quot;Coming from a purely C# background, I'm trying to add F# to my repertoire. What is the definitive [read: canonical] book for getting up to speed with idiomatic F#?&quot; doesn't, or at least sucks a lot less. If in doubt, wait. If the question attracts dozens of answers, that's a problem. If it settles on 3–5, awesome. If there's a dozen but only a couple of really stand-out answers, cull the herd and protect the question if necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither of these guidelines require domain-specific knowledge of the question; just an understanding of how to ask a good question, which is something anyone moderating (diamond or otherwise) should have a good handle on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What happens to topic areas covered by a small number of resources now (such as the latest language or library) down the road, when it is more popular and prevalent? Might resource requests, perhaps, be too localized since the available (and perhaps even what is considered canonical) change over the course of time?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Irrelevant: [Stack Exchange is designed to handle changing answers][4], even rapidly changing answers, through frictionless editing. Answers for pretty much any subject or problem change over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Problems arise trying to keep questions up to date when there are dozens of posts to maintain, which is why [there are guidelines and technical features][5] that kick in once a question starts getting over 15-30 answers. Per the guidelines for book recommendation questions, this is a non-issue for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So unless there's some other reason, not mentioned, to shut them down now, I don't see anything that's cause for a policy change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2666/8&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://amazon.com&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/87415/149432&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2321/8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24982" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3279" RevisionGUID="b6dde97e-116e-49eb-92b5-ec59509db528" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[tag:career] was recently cleaned up, through the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a rather troublesome tag that we've been trying to get rid of [for quite some time][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Previous attempts to clean up the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/163/work-job-career-development-employment-career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we please kill it now? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3088/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24983" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2939" RevisionGUID="dbc7a02f-e06a-4f38-9d06-80253ef0b542" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Although I like [ChrisF's][1] and [Yannis Rizos's][2] answers, I'm concerned with reasking questions, unless you actually have the same problem and can provide clarifications or are an expert and can ensure it's sufficiently detailed. If you aren't in a position to respond to comments, to provide more details, or to determine if an answer is at least viable, you probably shouldn't ask the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, there's no way to tell in advance, so it's up to the asker to be sure they can provide anything that the people with the knowledge and experiences need to provide a useful answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2937/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2938/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24984" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5192" RevisionGUID="c5c3e858-189d-4e4e-a8f6-08f2ccd2f80a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So there are two ways to do this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Close as a duplicate here, but instead of being restricted to the current site's questions when choosing a duplicate target, allow Stack Overflow questions to be chosen as well.&#xD;&#xA;* Close as &quot;off-topic, belongs on Stack Overflow&quot; here, but also allow people to optionally specify a dupe target while voting to close. End result is a migration, followed by immediate closure as a duplicate of whatever question was chosen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on [your comments][1], you're looking for the former, but I'll mention both:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Allow cross-site duplicate targets when voting to close as duplicate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There might be something I'm not thinking of, but I don't have any ideological or philosophical objections to this. It seems like something that might cause a lot of strain on the backend, but I'm not a developer so that's their problem to solve or say it can't be done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has come up a few times on Meta Stack Overflow, with no outcome:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The ability to link cross site duplicates][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Close as cross post][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Allow users to migrate a question and close it as a duplicate after migration&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm against this. Each community knows its site best: which questions should be closed, which should be open, etc. They should be the ones to decide if a new question is a duplicate of an existing question, not people on a different site who have no inherent interest in the other site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or to put it another way, let's say I have 10k rep  here on Programmers, allowing me to vote to close, but only 1k rep on Stack Overflow. Allowing dupe closing during migration would allow me to close questions on Stack Overflow even though I'm 1,000 rep short of the privilege.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think a question is a duplicate of something asked on Stack Overflow, there are three options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you can vote to close on Stack Overflow, vote to migrate, and keep an eye on it so you can vote to close when it gets there&#xD;&#xA;* If you can't vote to close on Stack Overflow, vote to migrate and let SO users deal with it when it gets there&#xD;&#xA;* Leave a comment pointing to the duplicate question on Stack Overflow and vote to close as off-topic in place here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm partial to the last option: knowingly closing a question twice—once on each site—is just pointless bureaucracy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5191/belongs-on-stack-overflow-and-is-a-duplicate-on-stack-overflow/5192#comment12904_5192&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16703/the-ability-to-link-cross-site-duplicates&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/94322/close-as-cross-post" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24985" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3301" RevisionGUID="b65b364a-9138-44cd-83b6-900a1e2d0b7d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A while back I made a suggestion to [either rename the site to match the FAQ, or change the FAQ so it matches the site name][1] to help clear up a lot of the confusion I see over what P.SE is for. That question was asked to see if this idea had any support, and I believe it does judging by the 25 upvotes it currently has, and the [other][2] [questions][3] which were pointed out that ask the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site name is the first, and often only, piece of information a user has to judge our site on. Since we can't change the site's name, this question is to ask **what kind of changes can we make to the FAQ to make it accurately reflect the site name, without going back to the mindless fun this site began as?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see a lot of confusion over the scope of P.SE, and I think [this recent MSO comment][20] sums up what I've seen:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; no one recommends Programmers anymore because it's unclear what the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site's scope is and some of its users disagree strongly with what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others of its users think the site's scope entails&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My suggestions are below. I wanted to post them all together in one answer since they I feel the suggestions make the most sense if you read them in order, but ultimately decided to separate them so we can comment, evaluate, and vote on each suggestion individually. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this would go a long ways towards making the site scope match the site name, and clear up the confusion caused by the current differences. In addition, I am hoping this will help reconcile users from both sides of the site scope argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review and vote on the suggestions, or add your own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/124923/where-in-the-stack-exchange-world-can-i-initiate-a-programming-related-discuss/124927#comment336347_124925" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24986" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2940" RevisionGUID="bcff928d-f695-4a6b-a7ab-aacd2adef0fe" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am referring to [this question:What you should do if your junior did not adopt your suggestion? ][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was asked to take this question to [Parenting SE][2] or [Professional Matters SE][3], because the question is a workplace issue. You can read the comments for a debate on whether this question should be closed or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, I can't take the issue to Parenting SE because I am not a parent to those juniors whom I am responsible for. Second, the Professional Matters does not exist yet, so I can't take the issue to a site that hasn't been created yet. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I was asked to refer to this [meta answer][4] for a reasoning as to the closure of the question. I agree with the answer's definition of the Programmer SE's characterization, and I believe that my question applies uniquely to programmers in particular and to creative workers in general. Closing a question as such because this question doesn't just apply to programmers but to other creative workers will only restrict unnecessarily the scope of Programmer SE and make it less useful for the programmers. Not to mention that closing a question because it belongs to a still-not-yet-exist site doesn't sound too good a practice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**AND** if the career-related site didn't get created there would be no place for my question to go to, which makes the SE rather &quot;incomplete&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, the question should be reopened and must remain opened until at least the Professional Matters SE goes onlive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130645/what-you-should-do-if-your-junior-did-not-adopt-your-suggestion&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://parenting.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2483/why-are-all-of-the-good-career-related-threads-closed/2484#2484" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24987" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5248" RevisionGUID="84eb37e2-6e3b-4da5-9f98-f97ecba8071d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**No.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keeping things more central is actually antithetical to Stack Exchange's philosophy of creating laser sharp focused Q&amp;A sites. Additionally if &quot;discussion&quot; and &quot;open topic for general questions&quot; is your description of what Programmers is about, you should really read our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) a bit more carefully. While we welcome _some_ subjective questions, Programmers is definitely _not_ a free for all discussion forum.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, more responsiveness is _not_ necessarily a good thing. We strive to be a canonical resource, answers should be as detailed and complete as possible, being quick is an added bonus but not a goal in itself. From the perspective of the asker, quick answers might be more useful, but Programmers and every other Stack Exchange site (including Stack Overflow) aren't only about the asker. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thirdly, folding Programmers into Stack Overflow right now would be a disaster for everyone involved. Stack Overflow, similarly to Programmers, has created and maintains a community culture that is different, and in many respects conflicting to ours. While the target audience of both sites might more or less be the same, the focus and scope is distinctly different, thus is community culture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, Stack Overflow is gigantic, and that's one of the many reasons, perhaps the main one, I never really participated in the site. To put it very simply, if it takes me more than 5 minutes to find interesting content on a site, that site is not for me. Reducing the conceptual aspects of the [SDLC][1] to a set of Stack Overflow tags would be extremely counter-productive, it would take a certain level of masochism to put yourself in the position of searching for interesting methodology questions (for example) in the vast ocean of crap Stack Overflow is slowly becoming. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you posted this as a feature request and there are tons of earlier discussions both on our Meta and Meta Stack Overflow that explain how the sites are different and what's the purpose of Programmers, I'm afraid I'll have to decline it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Should Programmers.SE exist?][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [Choosing between Stack Overflow and Programmers Stack Exchange][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [Is Stack Exchange becoming too fragmented for programmers?][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why was the Programmers site on Stack Exchange created?][7]&#xD;&#xA;- [When do these questions belong on programmers instead of stackoverflow?][8]&#xD;&#xA;- [Once all the disciplining is done and P.SE is purely professional, will it be merged with stackoverflow?][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/153082/should-programmers-se-exist&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/82988/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/105428/is-stack-exchange-becoming-too-fragmented-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1704/once-all-the-disciplining-is-done-and-p-se-is-purely-professional-will-it-be-me" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24988" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5200" RevisionGUID="cc732c67-a9ae-4e9a-a6c9-47309aa9eef5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Perhaps a duplicate of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2146/blacklist-career-advice (status deferred)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQs state (*inter alia*):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help,&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - career advice, salary or compensation1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, we still get questions, and we maintain tags [tag:career-development], [tag:job-market], [tag:job-searching], [tag:career] etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, we can keep flagging them, but can these tags be consigned to the blackhole?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24989" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2944" RevisionGUID="1f169f14-49d9-4631-8c39-2bbe6cf16cc0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think the other answers, especially [Mark's][1] and [Yannis's][2] hit most of the points, but I'd just like to weigh in on two things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing a question as such because this question doesn't just apply to programmers but to other creative workers will only restrict unnecessarily the scope of Programmer SE and make it less useful for the programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By allowing questions about things that are relevant to more than just software development professionals, we are creating a major problem. It becomes more difficult for the software development professionals to find answers to questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's take an example of teamwork. If I'm a software project manager or technical lead, I might be interested in how to manage my team in the context of something like Scrum or RUP to maximize quality and improve on-time delivery, or how implementing a specific change to my development process will influence my team's productivity or defect injection rate. If there were lots of questions about generic teamwork, it would become that much harder for me to search this site to find out if my question had been answered and get to those answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Therefore, the question should be reopened and must remain open until at least the Professional Matters SE is on-live.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You don't dump tangentially related questions on a Stack Exchange site because they are &quot;close enough&quot; and then move them later. You let each community focus on its expertise and only its expertise. As the demand for something arises, a new site is proposed, members of existing communities can come together to stand it up, and new experts, practitioners, and curious individuals can be brought in from outside the network to create a new and vibrant community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2943/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2941/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24990" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3325" RevisionGUID="0655c460-fcb2-47ce-8a0a-f164b41d6b24" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At Rev 5, there was a major edit to question text, based on discussion in [comments made to this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3348/31260).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of Rev 6, question has been reopened. Reference: [question timeline](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/139482/timeline).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Below applies to question prior to revision 5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After consideration of both the questions and answers and taking into account the [mission statements][1] and [About page for Stack Exchange][2], the [Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions][3], voting and flagging, I have closed the question regarding [why statements are terminated by semicolons in most programming languages][4] pending a further discussion here on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the mission statement of Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We build libraries of high-quality questions and answers, focused on the most important topics in each area of expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the About page of Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We welcome questions that are clear and specific, representing real problems that you face&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm having difficulty seeing how this qualifies as an important topic to professional software developers, nor how it relates to a real problem being faced by any software development professional. Perhaps if it focused more on the aspects of programming language design that led to the use of special characters and why a semicolon might be more appropriate than another character. However, this is not emphasized in the question nor in the majority of the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reviewing the Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions, I scored it a 4 out of 6. I gave it credit for inspiring answers that explain why, generating lengthy and detailed answers, having a constructive tone, and can be (in theory anyway) backed up with facts and references. It is doing very poorly in the category of reliable references being generated. I was not able to find a way how it was inviting the sharing of experiences nor how it was contributing to a problem being solved (or how it was more than mindless fun). To me, a score of 4/6 is only about 67% - the equivalent of a C.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I looked at the answers, the top answer was a mostly discussion of the English language, with a small component discussing parsing and syntax of languages. Other top answers discussed the history of programming languages and other options for terminating statements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts and comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139482/why-are-statements-in-most-programming-languages-terminated-by-semicolons#question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24991" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5277" RevisionGUID="ebc3082e-7653-43a8-a042-13cef32dbf91" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I went over all our open bugs and feature requests and retagged/closed a lot of them. The Meta front page looks like a battlefield because of this, but I figured it would be better to do it in one big sweep to get a better idea of what we are talking about. So, right now we have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [8 open bugs][1], and&#xD;&#xA;- [25 open feature requests][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not _that_ bad. Yes, there are some Meta questions that needed feedback from Stack Exchange and appear to be long forgotten, but we can easily fix that, just ping one of us (mods) in chat and we'll ask a SE employee to have a look. With 90+ sites (and 90+ Metas), it's understandable that they can't keep track of _everything_. Furthermore we haven't really been doing a very good job keeping our Meta clean, there were (and still are) a lot of questions that are mistagged, or no longer relevant. We should clean up Meta at some point, that would make our feature requests and bug reports far more noticeable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back in June we created a mod+SE only chat room, the collection room, and gathered tons of feature requests and bug reports from all per site Metas, in an effort to get feedback from SE. The room was frozen in August, and we're still waiting for feedback on most, if not all, requests. I've nagged Grace Note a couple of times about this, privately and publicly, and although progress has been very slow, I'm confident SE isn't ignoring per site Metas. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for migrations, our [migration stats][3] don't really justify more migration targets:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][4]](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFFqv.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bbug%5D%20-%5Bstatus-declined%5D%20-%5Bstatus-completed%5D%20-%5Bstatus-bydesign%5D%20-%5Bstatus-deferred%5D%20-%5Bstatus-norepro%5D%20-%5Bstatus-planned%5D%20closed:0&amp;submit=search&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?tab=relevance&amp;q=%5Bfeature-request%5D%20-%5Bstatus-declined%5D%20-%5Bstatus-completed%5D%20-%5Bstatus-bydesign%5D%20-%5Bstatus-deferred%5D%20-%5Bstatus-norepro%5D%20closed:0&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFFqv.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24992" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3352" RevisionGUID="726246cc-3b07-42f0-bf2e-dc0f0d92dc1e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[tag:software-engineering] was recently cleaned up, through the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative][1]. Obviously since we [already identified it as a tag that doesn't belong][2] and we went through the trouble of cleaning it up, there is no point in keeping it around anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we please kill it now? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3263/structured-tag-cleanup-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3094/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24993" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5323" RevisionGUID="f22cd486-2d91-43ff-840b-1515b20e0b65" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As it is December 2012, we are now going to reset our Community Promotion Ads for the new year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What are Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA; - cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA; - anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we reset the ads every year?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be **220 x 250 pixels**&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently **6**) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/ads/display/5323" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24994" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5204" RevisionGUID="319c3c06-8ee3-4b73-ba4f-b2d47e58bc61" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="SQA Stack Exchange is a beta site, which means that there's no guarantee it will stay around, and until the site graduates this is a non issue. We do mention one beta site in our FAQ, The Workplace, but for questions that are extremely off topic on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If SQA graduates, we'll have to examine whether we want software testing questions on Programmers or not, and more importantly if our software testing questions are being expertly answered here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In an earlier Meta discussion, [How to flag off-topic to migrate to SQA][1], corsiKa [chimed in][2]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As a moderator of SQA, obviously I have an interest in seeing it grow. But my first priority is to getting problems people face solved. Migrating for the sake of migration or to bolster SQA would both, in my opinion, be bad. I agree with Chris's perspective of &quot;If there's no quality answers coming in, migrate it.&quot; I would take it further and say that experienced users who know that questions of that nature have been migrated, then migrate those too. The sooner a question is in a spot where it gets properly answered, the better. But if it's already in that spot, it doesn't need to move.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I must say I fully agree. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd love to see SQA graduate to a full site, but they'll have to make it on their own, I'm not convinced that mentioning them in our FAQ would be a good thing for either site, at least not right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5185/how-to-flag-off-topic-to-migrate-to-sqa&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5185/how-to-flag-off-topic-to-migrate-to-sqa#comment12896_5186" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24995" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2953" RevisionGUID="549db049-5849-45b2-9962-2fd30082ac75" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Putting your specific question aside for a moment, two community close votes doesn't *necessarily* mean your question is off-topic: otherwise it wouldn't take five community close votes or action from a moderator to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see your question attracting close votes and you're pretty sure what you want to know is on-topic for the site, consider modifying your question somewhat to shore up any weak points, or ask [in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21) or even here on the meta-discussion site for help improving your question so it'll stay open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Getting back to your question: in general, questions need to demonstrate the necessity of the unique perspective of programmers to answer. General project management questions [aren't really a fit here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2782/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it wasn't flagged, had it been, I would've checked with [Project Management.SE](http://pm.stackexchange.com) to see if it could be migrated, as I think it'd do quite well there. Even though you deleted the question, consider asking it there anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, this part is a bit bad for the Stack Exchange format:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If so, what would be an example of a successful community managed product backlog, and what are key factors in it's success?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for lists of examples, even if that's just one part of the question, tends to be the part answerers focus on because it's easy. Solid PM question otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24996" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5226" RevisionGUID="69f45810-9392-47d1-ab43-7d6e8c7dac02" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**[&quot;any suggestions for a good tool/service&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/175268/2 &quot;wording as of revision 2&quot;)** makes question a perfect match for type questions that are strongly discouraged per [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, question looks salvageable using a healthy dose of [Atwood's transform](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/124930/165773 &quot;what's this?&quot;). I would consider editing it into something like _&quot;How do I tell if a product planning tool would suit my needs... etc_ then [flagging to reopen](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1753/31260 &quot;related discussion&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that question has been closed while it had no answers greatly simplifies editing it. Otherwise one would have to take additional care to make sure that changes don't invalidate existing answers - which in some cases can [effectively lock the question from any substantial editing at all](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;an example discussed here: 'Change the question, and you invalidate all of the answers...'&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24997" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5336" RevisionGUID="3455d321-bfc7-4d74-a924-f1c0554b08b4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yes, I think your question should be on-topic here because it falls under &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot;, which is on-topic per our FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key factor that I think makes this &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; question suitable for the site is that it is specifically seeking an answer from a professional programmer. If it were seeking legal advice I would say it's off-topic, but it appears to be seeking an answer from a programmer, not an answer from a lawyer, which I think makes it a valid &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [graphic][1] Thomas references from our FAQ was created to [help define what makes an on-topic career question][2], and was not meant to be applied to all questions. I'm not sure when that got changed in the FAQ, however your question definitely does not apply to &quot;all careers&quot; or even &quot;most careers&quot;. In fact, I doubt it applies to &quot;all programmers&quot; either, however I would say it applies to more than &quot;Just You&quot;, so you're safe from being &quot;too-localized&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2145/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24998" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2980" RevisionGUID="87ee71be-edc6-4a9c-a9e6-7bbe7ed61827" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Contributing to the Blog](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;The blog [is moving forward][1]. **The wheels are moving** higher up to get us a Wordpress instance created for a dedicated blog here are Programmers.StackExchange. I'm excited about the prospects and what this can do for our community at large.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of things to note.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. There is now a [chat room][2] for discussions regarding the P.SE blog. There has already been a healthy discussion and if you're interested I would suggest that you peruse the transcripts.&#xD;&#xA;2. I have [been anointed][3] the community &quot;point of contact&quot; for the blog. All this means is that I'll be putting in some dedicated hours to organizing and communicating with people about getting the blog published.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some time ago, I posted [a call for volunteers][4] for the blog - and we received a great response from potential writers and proofreaders. However, it has been some time since those &quot;commitments&quot; were made and situations may have changed. If you're still interested - or have become interested - please refer to that [original post][5] and post a comment to the affirmative if you are still willing to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here's where we're at**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was recommended that we find time for everyone who is interested to sit down and have a discussion about the direction of the blog. We've already had several discussions about this here on Meta but I agree that it probably is a good idea to schedule a chat room session where we can have a meeting and intimately discuss the details of this new project - i.e. definite plans for articles (aka blog posts), proofreading, and publication.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose that we hold this meeting **[Friday, February 3rd at 4 PM GMT][6]** (that's 11 AM for United States East Coast) in the new Programmers Blog chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are intending to be a participant in this project, please give me feedback on whether this date and time works for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2976/lets-get-the-blog-kicked-off/2979#2979&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3214146#3214146&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/2359/programmers-blog?tab=schedule" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24999" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3354" RevisionGUID="90026099-09e3-4428-b552-4cba09c65908" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Related:**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  [Request for comment: structured tag cleanups](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Structured Tag Cleanup — Call for proposals #1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Welcome to the third structured tag cleanup! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the voting in the [call for proposals](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1), the second round goes to the [tag:software-development] tag, with 282 current questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tag has been renamed to [stci-software-development](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci-software-development), which hopefully should prevent people from adding any more questions to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ground rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of this cleanup is to systematically clean up the software development tag without causing disruption to the rest of the site. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [deletion candidates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3357/25936) below and see if there's a way to save any of the questions before they go gently into that good night through [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits). At the end of the clean up period, any questions not sufficiently improved will be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [merge candidates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3356/25936) to see if can be merged into one question. If they shouldn't be, revise the questions to demonstrate how it's not in any way like the question it's been duplicated to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [closure candidates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3355/25936) list to see if you agree with what others have identified as being out of the site's scope. If you agree, vote to close. If you don't agree, use [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to address the problems the question has and bring it back into scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [currently open questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bstci-software-development%5D+closed%3A0&amp;submit=search) and see which ones do not fit our site scope. Vote to close them and add them to the closure candidates list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Improve the leftover questions by copyediting, fixing spelling, flow, adding clearer titles, etc. while replacing the `stci-software-development` tag with something more meaningful&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:web-development] for questions relating to web development,&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:mobile] for questions relating to mobile development,&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:architecture] for questions relating to system level architecture, documenting architecture, view models, architectural quality, and product line development.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:design] for questions relating to software design.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:documentation] for questions about documentation. &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:requirements] for questions about requirements engineering and documenting requirements.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:testing] for questions about unit, integration, smoke, and system testing using white box or black box techniques.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:maintenance] for questions about maintaining legacy software systems.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:quality] for questions about process quality, product quality, code quality, or measuring the quality of any of these.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:education] for questions about formal education, self-teaching, and self-improvement as a software developer.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:metrics] for questions about software metrics.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:patterns] for questions on design patterns.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:agile] for questions on agile methodologies.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:project-management] for questions on project management.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ...and other, more specific tags as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Finally, and this is perhaps the most important of all the rules: **do not just remove the stci-software-engineering tag without improving the question and its answers.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### End date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This round of cleanups will end on **Sunday, April 8th at 04:00 UTC.** At that time, all the default actions will be done: deletions, merges, closures, and such. If [tag:stci-software-development] is not empty by then, it'll be renamed back to [tag:software-development] and be saved for later rounds of cleanups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is empty, we will move on to getting it blacklisted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; These are (mostly) the same suggestions as for the [software-engineering] cleanup - I felt they make sense for [software-development] and couldn't find any other tags that would be common candidates for [software-development] questions. If you have suggestions, please edit them in.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25000" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5381" RevisionGUID="7bede87c-5cfd-405f-8e44-9e6cb4cdea23" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If I've done my math right based on [Shog's answer][1], no it hasn't made a difference. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**60 days prior to registration:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Registered Users:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;877 bad questions&#xD;&#xA;948 good questions&#xD;&#xA;1825 total questions&#xD;&#xA;48.5% bad questions&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Unregistered Users:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;182 bad questions&#xD;&#xA;57 good questions&#xD;&#xA;239 total questions&#xD;&#xA;76.15% bad questions&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Total:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;1059 bad questions&#xD;&#xA;1005 good questions&#xD;&#xA;2064 total questions&#xD;&#xA;51.3% bad questions&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**60 days prior to now:**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;1314 bad questions&#xD;&#xA;1104 good questions&#xD;&#xA;2419 total questions&#xD;&#xA;54.32% bad questions&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anything, it looks like our percentage of closed, deleted, or downvoted below 0 question rate has gone slightly *up* since we started requiring registration. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason for it going up may be unrelated to requiring registration though, as 2 sets of data isn't really enough to draw any solid conclusions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5379/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25001" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5323" RevisionGUID="b5de7998-1740-421a-9432-5a3dd53937f0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As it is December 2012, we are now going to reset our Community Promotion Ads for the new year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What are Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA; - cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA; - anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we reset the ads every year?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be **220 x 250 pixels**&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently **6**) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/ads/display/5323" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25002" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3046" RevisionGUID="dec2a1b5-384f-4737-937b-d04527423bdf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question (now deleted) shouldn't have been too localized: as you mentioned, just because it's a niche problem or a subset of the programmer audience in the world, it's not necessarily too localized for Stack Exchange. As [Joel Spolsky wrote](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1916/8) on another question about localized questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stop abusing &quot;Too Localized.&quot; That is meant to close questions that are so specific to a particular place and time that they can only possible benefit the poster, or questions which would be obsolete in a matter of seconds. Just because there is a location in a question doesn't mean it's too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it *should've* been closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;: broad comparisons like that are a [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/) and are prone to too open-ended of a discussion, which isn't a good fit for the Stack Exchange style of Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there was a specific problem being faced—like perhaps moving out to a startup in New York City or Silicon Valley and wanting to better understand the culture in the place you're moving to—that'd likely work out a little better." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25003" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3068" RevisionGUID="f7833d9a-04ff-4ce0-9501-2882d3dabdc0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicates:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Offtopic posts - Can they be moved rather than closed?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2304/offtopic-posts-can-they-be-moved-rather-than-closed)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2508/should-there-be-another-stackexchange-site-for-programmers &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back in the day, the Programmers site was initially created as the Off-Topic site for Stackoverflow. Many of the [most interesting and most favorited questions][1] form early in this site's life have now been closed as subjective or not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand why the questions have been closed. While I may disagree with closing many of them, that is not what I am arguing for. What I am suggesting is that there needs to be a new site in the stackExhange network specifically for interesting programming questions that are subjective. I know that the theory is that the SO engine doesn't work well for subjective questions, but the evidence shows that there is an audience that enjoys them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/60785/top-40-closed-questions-most-favorited" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25004" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3383" RevisionGUID="ac1242fd-136b-4a41-964f-fb824362a4bc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've seen a few of these and often up-vote them because I've had the same questions and am interested in the answers, however these questions frequently get closed as not constructive, and one is currently [marked for deletion][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it off-topic to ask if something is normal for programmers, and if a programmer should be concerned about it? If not, what is the criteria used to determine if these sorts of questions are constructive or not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples are&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it normal to think about a design problem for days with no code written?][2] - Closed as Not Constructive and marked for deletion&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it normal for a company to have programmers on such a rigid schedule?][3] - Closed as NC&#xD;&#xA;* [Should I be concerned that I can't program very fast without Google?][4]  - Closed as duplicate, but when I pointed out it wasn't an exact duplicate [on meta][5], a moderator said he thought it should still be closed as off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it “normal” for people to not work?][6] - Was closed as NC, but now [locked][7]&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it normal for programmer to work on multiple projects simultaneously][8] - Open&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the “normal” range for typing speed for developers?][9] - Open&#xD;&#xA;* [Should I be concerned if I have nothing to do during an internship?][10] - Open&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3357/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118962/is-it-normal-to-think-about-a-design-problem-for-days-with-no-code-written&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/88329/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/141860/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3379/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/81929/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3298/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/38647/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26243/whats-the-normal-range-for-typing-speed-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/100725/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25005" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5381" RevisionGUID="23c50533-7835-4e82-8ab5-6416f52782c5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If I've done my math right based on [Shog's answer][1], no it hasn't made a difference. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**60 days prior to registration:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Registered Users:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;877 bad questions&#xD;&#xA;948 good questions&#xD;&#xA;1825 total questions&#xD;&#xA;48.5% bad questions&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Unregistered Users:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;182 bad questions&#xD;&#xA;57 good questions&#xD;&#xA;239 total questions&#xD;&#xA;76.15% bad questions&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Total:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;1059 bad questions&#xD;&#xA;1005 good questions&#xD;&#xA;2064 total questions&#xD;&#xA;51.3% bad questions&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**60 days prior to now:**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;1314 bad questions&#xD;&#xA;1104 good questions&#xD;&#xA;2419 total questions&#xD;&#xA;54.32% bad questions&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anything, it looks like our percentage of closed, deleted, or downvoted below 0 question rate has gone slightly *up* since we started requiring registration. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason for it going up may be unrelated to requiring registration though, as 2 sets of data isn't really enough to draw any solid conclusions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5379/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25006" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3109" RevisionGUID="f4d0f80b-3101-4dd1-9209-ac1a403a6e98" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Asking &quot;what certification should I get?&quot; doesn't really fit with the Stack Exchange model of Q&amp;A: strangers telling people how they should plan their career is always a bad idea and usually too localized to the asker's specific circumstances.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way to make such questions not too localized, or at least more general, is to create a list of certifications, like you suggest, to let people decide on their own which ones seem interesting. Canonical lists do have their uses, but they're an exception to the rule, and generally reserved for [a last-ditch effort](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3096/8) to try and save a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a few problems with trying to use lists as the &quot;go-to&quot; method to solve a question quality problem like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's untenable for us to create a canonical list of every single certification a person can get, and more importantly, provide a reason why it's on the list (instead of just adding a link)&#xD;&#xA;* What criteria are used to generate the list is an open question, making the list dubious in quality or accuracy&#xD;&#xA;* While everybody likes the idea of lists, very few people take the non-trivial amount of effort to actively maintain the list&#xD;&#xA;* Lists are still [outside the Stack Exchange style of Q&amp;A](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of telling people what they should do, or providing a long list of stuff and telling them &quot;have fun!&quot;, it's almost always going to be better to ask questions that informs someone how to find and decide for themselves. Stuff like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How do I go about identifying whether a certification is  useful in my line of work?&#xD;&#xA;* [Are certifications worth it?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/44/8)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25007" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3385" RevisionGUID="a1e6893b-4579-47ed-83a5-943607f54c46" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [I answered my own question and accepted the answer. Why is it not at the top?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3376/i-answered-my-own-question-and-accepted-the-answer-why-is-it-not-at-the-top)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I have posted [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140483/is-it-a-waste-of-time-to-free-resources-before-i-exit-a-process/141014) not long ago. And I got some really interesting answers. One got a lot of up votes, but after some investigation, I asked my instructor at the university, and got [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140483/is-it-a-waste-of-time-to-free-resources-before-i-exit-a-process/141014#141014) which actually proves the most up-voted answer wrong. I don't want to down-vote that guy, because he showed an interesting aspect. But I think that my answer should at least appear a little higher, so people at least see it. Because if we're honest, who reads all the answers through and really thinks about them?!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not concerned about other answers because most of them answered about &quot;good software engineering&quot; and not my theoretical question. But they are worth reading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question is actually: why is the accepted answer so low in the thread?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25008" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5442" RevisionGUID="f20b8920-ccef-463c-bd63-7303f3384de9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My [profile summary page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=summary) currently says 3668 upvotes while votes-&gt;upvotes sub tab ([dev team only link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=votes&amp;sort=upvote)) counts less than that - 3544.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`3668-3544=124` - as far as I understand this difference could be [due to deleted posts](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144757/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;), does that mean more than 100 posts I **upvoted** during last one and half year are **all** deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my past observations deletion indeed decreases the count, I only don't know if there's anything else besides that could also cause the miss (eg like it was with expiration in [this bug report posted at MSO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/162044/profile-page-shows-6-reopen-votes-total-while-i-have-at-least-25-successful-ones)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;For the record, I also tried to check if this could somehow relate to deleted users but it appears to be not the case. My favorite [&quot;good one-liner example&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3477/31260 &quot;advertised here:)&quot;) that was posted by now-deleted user shows my upvote just the way it was cast in April 2012.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25009" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3110" RevisionGUID="ba4e12fa-1d64-4d52-be4d-dd00b0525ac6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="To add to [what Mark said][1], consider writing a tag excerpt and starting a tag wiki for the [certification tag][2]. Both are currently empty. Perhaps organize a list by topic area, write a short description including the name of the certification, who sponsors/offers it, and provide a link to the official website to learn more. That seems like it would add plenty of value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3109/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/certification/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25010" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="c9dfbaf0-cd63-4749-8abb-cc97d9b2c0e5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot;** in the answers appear to happen once or twice a week on average, frequent enough to feel the connection between these and respective questions making their way into [SE collider list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My particular concern is the poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making **interesting and well presented problems** look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;&quot;Oh look: ['my guess is fairly prosaic. Git is brilliant...'](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177890/31260 &quot;example&quot;) - with upvoted answer like that it [can't be a real question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;not-a-real-question - what's this?&quot;)&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to [repel garbage answers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3835/31260 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;), I can easily name a handful of active regulars who [can and do](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;filter=all &quot;our editors gang is pretty strong&quot;) just that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that [invalidates my edit](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;). And answer that exploits another minor ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions: per my observations &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; have been smart enough to pick questions that have reasonably good wording as-is.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how things work now helps to attract new contributors but I would appreciate if achieving this important goal &lt;sup&gt;**[1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/when-is-an-account-abandoned/ &quot;'reduce the friction of... answering to little more than entering an anonymous comment on a blog'&quot;), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/helping-the-experts-get-answers/ &quot;'attract notable experts to your site'&quot;), [3](http://stackexchange.com/about &quot;'free and open to everyone... answer questions without even bothering to register'&quot;)**&lt;/sup&gt; would somehow be less damaging for good, highly visible questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **protect your own users from scale ...human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon...** ([A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy ](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html &quot;quote source&quot;))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some additional observations based on discussions that followed posting this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Low quality answers in hot questions likely contribute to the fact that currently, it is [hard for users to understand site standards](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;), which results in posting many &quot;bad&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a steady source of misguided contributors... There are... [broken windows](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info)... **&quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;**.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Until recently](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228940/165773 &quot;until this change announced 2014-04-09&quot;), low quality answers also threated to [penalize contributors](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13713_5448 &quot;see 'clear that 10k barrier...' and further discussion&quot;) who post good ones because when piled on in hot questions, garbage answers trigger [CW](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info &quot;automatic community wiki when there are more than 15 answers&quot;) which consequently turns all the upvotes given to good answers into zero reputation for their authors.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [more than 1700 answers scored 25+ turned community wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;q=wiki%3ayes%20is%3aanswer%20score%3a25)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of precision, note that number `1700` above is only indicative since search does not exclude answers turned CW for other reasons. Also note some of the answers could be high-voted &quot;unfairly&quot;: per analysis 10+ voted answers in sampled questions (below), this could happen, although rather infrequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through few [sampled](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/181999/31260 &quot;random sampling, stuff like that&quot;) questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, note that besides 199 answers reviewed above, there are also 19 answers deleted in 16 questions listed above. These answers are visible only to moderators and to users with [sufficient privileges](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;Access to Moderator tools -&gt; 'View deleted posts'&quot;). Of these 19, 9 are deleted by moderators, the rest has been deleted by owners. Of 10 answers deleted by owners, I would downvote 7-8.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summing up, I would downvote about **101-118 of 218** answers I reviewed per above research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some data related to [recently added](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/5413/revisions &quot;see changes in rev 13&quot;) observations on community wiki status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 2K+ views - about **25%** are CW, [307](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [1247](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 10K+ views - about **60%** are CW, [62](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [101](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting [self](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13717_5448 &quot;from here&quot;), wow. Just... wow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25011" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3172" RevisionGUID="cf33a381-76cd-458e-b6c2-df02d39f992d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Deletion candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions to see which can be saved through [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) and reopened. If no improvement would make them on topic, vote to delete if you have the reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18120/what-is-the-good-bad-decision-you-made-in-your-mid-20s-about-your-career&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88798/am-i-an-idealist&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63657/i-made-a-mistake-accepting-this-job&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36007/which-are-the-best-investments-you-have-done-for-your-career-as-programmer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18502/who-wants-to-keep-developing&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23075/what-is-the-coolest-way-to-handle-a-failure&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39992/are-there-too-many-qualified-software-development-engineers-chasing-too-few-jobs&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11425/burned-out-on-programming-and-given-up&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14827/typical-hours-week-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20866/the-job-is-stressing-me-out-and-i-am-unable-to-get-enough-sleep-at-night&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/69500/dont-make-me-write-bad-code-is-that-all-programmers-really-want&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49105/how-do-you-apply-to-a-company-way-out-of-your-league&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21782/stagnating-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46514/what-to-do-when-youre-the-interviewer-and-you-dont-like-your-job&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22714/what-are-the-telltale-signs-that-the-code-youre-writing-is-already-obsolete&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1006/how-do-you-motivate-yourself-to-program-when-youd-really-rather-be-doing-somet&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63592/how-do-senior-developers-keep-up-to-learning-as-much-as-a-junior&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53168/what-are-some-good-performance-goals-for-a-software-engineer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5920/how-do-you-manage-your-resume-cv&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16222/how-to-remain-calm-in-all-situations&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1360/what-are-the-top-motivators-for-a-programmer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25012" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5455" RevisionGUID="de9f44a6-6bc9-4ae7-906c-fe3e113e0b74" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In a [more recent discussion of resource request questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient), the majority of support was behind favoring &quot;why&quot; or &quot;how&quot; questions rather than just requesting resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you're looking for a book on data integration topics, you clearly have questions or concerns about data integration (specifically using Hadoop and ETL). If you're having architectural or design questions of a conceptual nature, you should ask those specific questions here. A good set of answers should not only address your concerns, but give links to outside resources of all types (books, blogs, articles) as well as the personal experiences of others who may have solved similar problems in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, once you have a solid design, [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/) is a good place for realizing that design into an implementation. Depending on the nature of the question, [Database Administrators Stack Exchange](http://dba.stackexchange.com/) might also be appropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25013" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3415" RevisionGUID="9400a193-ebfb-4510-93a6-c9fa5b944905" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The timeline of this was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* June 3, 2010 — [NPR proposal][1] created in Area51&#xD;&#xA;* September 1, 2010 — NPR enters private beta as &quot;Programmers&quot; (will continue to call it NPR for the sake of distinguishing it from the current site)&#xD;&#xA;* September 7, 2010 — NPR enters public beta&#xD;&#xA;* September 13, 2010 — MSO starts to grapple with how bad NPR is [when trying to dupe Software Engineering proposals to it](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* September 15, 2010 — We on Meta Programmers.SE [start to deal with that perception](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* September 17, 2010 — SE [makes a blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/) announcing the decision to start merging programming-related proposals to improve NPR&#xD;&#xA;* September 18, 2010 — We begin to [redefine the scope of the site](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* September 23, 2010 — MSO and SE [do the same](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site), with [different results][2]&#xD;&#xA;* September 29, 2010 — &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&quot; is published, new scope and guidelines [begin to be enforced](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice), and the free-for-all NPR proposal dies. It's replaced with Programmers, the site for expert programmers who are interested in subjective questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;* December 16, 2010 — Programmers launches, and the position statement is tweaked from &quot;subjective questions&quot; to &quot;conceptual questions&quot; to [make it easier to explain why it exists compared to Stack Overflow](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/).&#xD;&#xA;* December 17, 2010–Present — Clean-up of the colossal mess left over from beta, including [incorrect UI strings and FAQ wordings](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio/3415#comment9139_3414), [crappy questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning), [awful tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups), [misconceptions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl), and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Within 29 days the site went from programmers hanging out and discussing their lifestyle to programmers discussing software development issues, now over 18 months ago, which is why I'm always surprised people still cling to that old proposal. I would've thought they'd all move on by now: the writing was on the wall almost immediately after the site left private beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/65439/149432" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25014" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5448" RevisionGUID="a1b5e090-8b62-429c-9062-8160348cf197" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt;  the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above issue looks real, as indicated by [54.32% &quot;bad&quot; questions asked](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5379/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this is likely related to issues with answers quality in hot questions ([discussed here in more details](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;Answers quality in hot questions&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Hot garbage waves&quot; in the answers once or twice a week&#xD;&#xA;* poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making interesting and well presented problems look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/)  &#xD;&#xA;* regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An &quot;outsider&quot; reading low quality answers in hot questions, could naturally think,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hey here I can _chit-chat about how git is fantastic_ and get my portion of cheap upvotes, c00l&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a **steady source of misguided contributors**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Above makes me doubt that widespread misunderstanding of site purpose is really caused by either of [name-FAQ mis-match](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name), or misleading [site name](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3718/31260) / [tag line](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3500/31260), or [scope change](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/31260). There are much larger [broken windows](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info) than that: &quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If above reasoning is correct, then ensuring good quality of the answers in hot questions will help users reading these better understand the site and eventually lead to less of a bad posts from misguided users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update: recent feature request intended to address above issues is https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5482/31260&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Connection between mentioned request and the way how users can be confused about what Programmers are about is probably best explained in a [comment made by Ben Brocka](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13830_5482 &quot;here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Often hot questions have lots of bad or meh answers that are bad enough to drag down quality of the content and general discourse (encouraging similarly bad new answers)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25015" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3444" RevisionGUID="2c59bf31-ef2f-485f-b737-e5cf9041586f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed [Why do we need private variables?][1] got closed as a duplicate of [Do ALL your variables need to be declared private?][2], but I thought the first question and its answers were much better than the second one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't the first time I've noticed a question getting closed as a duplicate to what I view as a worse version of the question. This is probably because new questions get more attention, so are more likely to attract close-as-duplicate votes than older questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this something I should be concerned about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I'd rather have the best version of the question left open, and the worse versions closed as duplicates, but I'm not sure if that's something I should flag moderators over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;Question has been [reopened][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143736/why-do-we-need-private-variables&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57491/do-all-your-variables-need-to-be-declared-private&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3444/what-should-i-do-if-i-think-a-good-question-got-closed-as-a-duplicate-to-a-worse#comment9279_3449 &quot;related clarification in comments&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25016" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5529" RevisionGUID="8560b2b4-54d5-4fb7-ae10-b5bea829536b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Karl](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5526/1130) and [Shog](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5527/1130) have both provided good answers about why questions like this can be worthwhile, but I'd also like to point out that [we've had this discussion][1] in the past about history questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was sparked by the question [Why are statements in many programming languages terminated by semicolons?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/139482/1130), and per the top-voted and accepted answer on [that meta discussion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3325/1130), &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question came up in chat yesterday, and a point was made that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programming History is often overlooked on P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; To [quote Mark Trapp][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Save for the accepted answer, I thought the semicolons question was&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; pretty good. Programming history has always been an overlooked aspect&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; of Programmers's scope.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; So although the question is probably not relevant to a programmer job&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in today's world, it does provide some insight into the history of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programming languages, which can possibly be used for future&#xD;&#xA;&gt; decisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have not seen any other discussions on meta since then about changing our policy on history questions, so I would say yes, this question is on-topic and should be left open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3325/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3908862#3908862" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25018" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="40d19021-38d9-40d0-9493-29fd3e4dcc05" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Could we please make a trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Modification details are described in [this MSO post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164712/165773) as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As far as I can tell, substantial part of `Qanswers` in current formula is fake.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;  `(log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascores)`&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;About 1/3 of the answers [studied here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever&quot;) (83 of total 254) have score less than 1/100 of top voted post in respective question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Given that questions checked were ones with tens thousands views, **insultingly low score** indicates that assuming these answers to be popular wouldn't even be in the ballpark. Still, the formula pumps these into `Qanswers` value, as if it is something everyone would be happy to read (hint: it isn't).&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Consider tuning the formula to make it deviate less from voting results. **Ignore answers with non-positive score. Or [better yet](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13857_5485 &quot;preference for cut off at (TopAnswerScore/10-1) explained in comments here&quot;), ignore answers scored less than some reasonable fraction (eg 1/10) of the top one.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that current formula appears to give an unjustified value to crappy answers in highly upvoted questions (`Qscore/5`, no matter how much is answer downvoted), I would like to perform test run to find out if suggested change would make an impact to issues outlined in Programmers meta posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Note: results of the trial run to be analyzed using study analogous to one performed in _Answers quality in hot questions_. Current evaluation shows about **101-118 low quality of 218** answers sampled.  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Upon completion of trial run, similar evaluation is to be done in order to estimate whether there was a substantial impact, positive or negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Complementary information to this request is provided in [comments below](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment16044_5482 &quot;starting from here&quot;), marked with &quot;for the record...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I expect modified formula to be competitive to current one at &quot;moderately hot&quot; questions, following the [reasoning outlined here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773):&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;For questions that are not too hot (likely 2-3 clicks away from top of the list) it's natural to see things working exactly as intended. Answers and comments quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;) brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and cool...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recent hot question about [automated testing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/185819/31620) gives an example of why I would want to try a modified formula. In 17 hours, question collected 17 answers, merely 5-7 of which provide useful original content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overheat of fake hotness impacted question like a [Black Saturday fire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a01_17890753.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the fire settled, what is left for future visitors of the question looks like a wasteland of low quality garbage (note that due to high views, it will score high in web searches).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a04_17906927.jpg][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the light of above, [community wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info) status stamped on the question looks especially despicable. It kind of suggests that **after damage has done**, community members are invited to go over the crap brought in by braindead formula, carefully analyze it and try to tame the pain by downvotes. As if they don't have anything better to do!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Update&#xD;&#xA;Related feature request has been posted at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/192046/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please stop counting proven low score answers in hotness formula. Please roll the dice fairly, let user voting and time decay contribute to hotness score as intended. Please promote to collider audience less brain-damaging content to learn from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vKQvI.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B1hjy.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25019" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3509" RevisionGUID="d493659a-896d-45b1-835b-4aaff69e566a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [A place for the subjective, fun questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/971/a-place-for-the-subjective-fun-questions)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;EDIT: I'm not talking a catch-all site for any Q&amp;A, I mean questions still related to SE. But, perhaps the community option for a question (can't remember what its called) would make this suggestion completely useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was thinking, so many questions are closed on SE it is becoming a finely tuned art to craft a question which isn't abused with downvotes and eventually closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too general, too specific, open-ended, shopping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand maybe SE isn't begging for more traffic, but would a section for semi-policed questions make sense? Each website on SE, or a website in itself, would be for any and all questions, and questions would only be removed if recent duplicates were found (same question can have entirely different answers depending when it was asked)? This would increase content on the site and give the users who, like me, cannot be bothered with thinking about the question to the point where we find the answer from analyzing it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The vote could be something like &quot;Throw to the lions&quot;, and people might be more inclined to click that instead of close. The asker at least has some answers to go from, people can be more casual with their answers, and SE builds more content and likely more users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me guess..you're going to downvote and vote to close?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25020" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3536" RevisionGUID="4937efd1-92d6-463f-8f46-be5f9a5f4319" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Blame it on [the font used for titles][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The handwritten font in the title, top nav and section header is House Whiteboard. Yes, it is actually Hugh Laurie's handwriting. (&quot;It's Not Lupus!&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh. Well then, blame it on Hugh Laurie. The limey bastard!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/655/site-design-round-2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25021" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5572" RevisionGUID="63fcf801-92a3-456f-8ba3-2e5d50ccb46e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There has been some minor stir about a user who apparently rage-quit P.SE.  This isn't exactly common, but it isn't exactly uncommon either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I admit to this being a less than idea question itself - I am asking several things at once and I don't believe that there is a single answer to this.  However, chat while archived is ephemeral in the minds of its denizens.  Blog post on this isn't the answer, and P.SE certainly isn't the right place.  A Meta post seems to be the only reasonable equivalent to the watering hole that has some permanence in the minds of people (at least more than chat).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Related [How to prevent “Why is my question being closed?” and User Frustration?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/492/how-to-prevent-why-is-my-question-being-closed-and-user-frustration) - though this is only one part of it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe there are a number of contributing factors to this - the question is what can we do not only as P.SE but also SO and to an extent, the stack exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This began with a post on Stack Overflow - [How do I take my web dev learning to the next level?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14906948/how-do-i-take-my-web-dev-learning-to-the-next-level).  There were comments in this that I recall (I might be wrong, if there is issue, I believe a mod can clarify the specifics of this) that were in essence:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Career advice should be asked on P.SE -- someone (**1**)&#xD;&#xA;- Ok, but why don't you just answer this? -- OP (**2**)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point the question was closed, and the original poster reasked the question on P.SE.  Someone got in an answer before it was closed here. (**3**)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The poster then asked on meta [Closed as not constructive?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5563/closed-as-not-constructive).  While he got answers to it, they were not the ones he was looking for and (IMHO) was a bit argumentative in the comments to the answers provided - I was less inclined to help him after he responded with what amounts to [&quot;that's what you think.&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5563/closed-as-not-constructive#comment14015_5565)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question meta was downvoted (**4**) which lead to an edit, [asking why it was downvoted](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/5563/revisions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Following this, there appears to have a rage-quit from P.SE (his account is still active on SO).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. What can we do to help clarify the proper migration criteria to the SO community at large so they don't refer off topic questions to P.SE.&#xD;&#xA; 2. I'm not sure what can be done to help this, but it was a point of raising frustration for the OP.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Again, sometimes people get answers in before the close.  This lead to the increased frustration as expressed in the meta question: &quot;The only answer given (likely before it was closed) clearly suggests that the question is constructive.&quot; .The desire to help is there, even when we know its off topic for the site.  Myself, I admit to answering a question and close voting it. &#xD;&#xA; 4. [Meta downvotes are different](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/faq#vote-differences).  However, without going through the various meta faq's, one likely isn't aware of this on their first trip to meta (especially if they haven't lurked).  While those familiar with the site are aware of this, it is another point of raising frustration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On any of these points, what can we do to help people from becoming more frustrated?  Or was this just an unfortunate crash of personality and site philosophy that couldn't be averted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25022" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5543" RevisionGUID="738f69b5-1e6b-4a06-91f6-873ffd414b20" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Most likely reason for the issues with answers quality is a [particular bug](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164712/165773 &quot;described here&quot;) in a hotness formula (&quot;fake popularity&quot;). This bug causes some of the questions with many answers to be placed unreasonably close to the top of the [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Issues caused by this are explained in details in a post about particularly troublesome ([&quot;sticky&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;)) kind of questions affected by the bug in formula:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One problem with hot questions seems to be that there is no way for &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; to differentiate **genuine** popularity from **fake** one, that is from popularity introduced by the algorithm itself... the algorithm simply is incapable to detect cases when popularity is [its own byproduct](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback &quot;due to positive feedback loop&quot;)...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;For questions that are not too hot... quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), collider brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and fair...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;But when question gets closer to the top of collider, things change... it attracts a lot of visitors whose desire to answer is not balanced by local community norms. At this point &quot;intended life-cycle of a hot question&quot; breaks.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Hotness algorithm assumes the question gets bumped mostly by good answers and that infrequent deviations are corrected by local community through voting and comments. Thing is though, this does not work on top of the collider...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Post further explains why community moderation (&quot;quality control&quot; through voting, comments and editing by site regulars) tends to break on questions impacted by unnatural hotness score:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...There are just too many new visitors to keep things under local community control, and there are just too many new voters and commenters to get things going as designed... So comes next and next and next round of garbage answers, bumping the question, bringing mindless upvotes, over and over and over again.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Hotness algorithm calculates this as genuine popularity, keeps it accordingly high at collider, bringing more visitors that are breaking things further and so on and so on. Note it's not limited to newcomers only, everyone is invited to the party. Community regulars can clearly see that usual quality norms are broken... and that they are free to follow the New Order just like anyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;**That's how fake popularity makes shit stick to the ceiling and helps to keep it there.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It also explains why there are so much community wiki (triggered by too-many-answers) among questions affected by hotness formula bug:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; _Regular_ open questions (&quot;appropriate&quot; ones) tend to have much less than 30 answers indeed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;But when we look at &quot;sticky&quot; questions, things seem to be different. These questions aren't &quot;inappropriate&quot;, otherwise these would be closed long time ago. Still, 10 examples of sticky questions have more than 270 answers total, about 27 average per question...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...at least **2/3 answers in sticky questions are just a garbage** that somehow leaked in (probably because &quot;fake hotness&quot; gave question an unnaturally high exposure in collider).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Here are feature requests to address this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5482/31260&#xD;&#xA;* [In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/192046/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please stop counting proven low score answers in hotness formula. Please roll the dice fairly, let user voting and time decay contribute to hotness score as intended. Please promote to collider audience less brain-damaging content to learn from." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25023" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3561" RevisionGUID="cde9ae20-4ccb-4bd0-89b3-3ed45c55225c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Users not reading the FAQ, and not understanding what this site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am pretty new here, so I might be completely off, but I think that's the main problem. When I first found the site, I read the FAQ, it was pretty easy to find and quite informative (but very long!). I'm not an expert on what is on topic for Programmers, but I still haven't stumbled upon a closed question that would have been asked if the OP had read the FAQ in the first place. I don't know if this is possible but one statistic I would be very interested to see would be the exactly that, how many people actually visited the FAQ before they asked their questions, and how many of the questions asked by people not visiting the FAQ were closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My experience with the site is very limited, and so is my data set, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to familiarize themselves with the guidelines before asking. I haven't asked a question here yet, and do not know if I will soon (most of my questions are already asked and answered) but when I do I will give the FAQ another look to see if my question is ok. I think it's the sensible thing to do, it will only cost me a few seconds and it will help me get better answers, as from what I've seen so far the questions that are disallowed are those that don't generate useful answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site, Meta, is also very useful, there are several past discussions that are applicable to this one and I'm surprised no one mentioned them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Can the migration path from SO be reconsidered?][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [How can we help people who ask “What language should I learn next” ask a better question?][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [How to prevent “Why is my question being closed?” and User Frustration?][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [What can be done about bad questions on Programmers?][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [Questions barely or not related directly to programming. We need handling them.][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also seems to me that people keep answering obviously off topic questions, although that has already been identified as something that we shouldn't do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Should we seek for alternatives to propose to OP when closing their off-topic question?][6] &#xD;&#xA;- [Please don't post answers on obviously off topic / bad questions!][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is not really helpful, although I understand that most people will think to answer first and clean up later, it's very misguiding to the person asking especially when answers are from senior members. It's like saying your question is off topic, but no problem, you got your answers. I've already lost 25 reputation points from answering a very bad question by [this guy][8], and I'm really glad the community and the moderators re-acted and other people didn't waste their time answering his questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm getting a bit off topic, so I will stop here, with [this amazing find][9]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not supposed to be a beginners site, and a lot of closed questions come from beginners. I don't think there is anything we can do here it is only natural that the site will have more closed questions than others. I like the advanced aspect of the site, and the work that is being done in the disciplined aspect of it, questions like [this one][11] should be the norm not the exception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2048/can-the-migration-path-from-so-be-reconsidered&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1580/how-can-we-help-people-who-ask-what-language-should-i-learn-next-ask-a-better&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/492/how-to-prevent-why-is-my-question-being-closed-and-user-frustration&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/642/questions-barely-or-not-related-directly-to-programming-we-need-handling-them&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1722/51770&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2823/please-dont-post-answers-on-obviously-off-topic-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3457/how-did-this-user-amass-more-than-2k-worth-of-reputation&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2000/51770&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Jd0eV.png&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147205/what-were-the-core-api-packages-of-java-1-0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25024" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5628" RevisionGUID="0bc3ddab-cc03-473c-9526-04d18be35fea" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188455/why-do-programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-braces-and-not-square-ones&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This post has generated very rapid close/reopen votes along with an extended discussion in the comments. I have cleaned up the comments, but brought some relevant points here, attributing them to the author. Please use this Meta question to discuss the merits and appropriateness of this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have cleaned up the extended discussion as well as the low-quality answers to the post. Please resume discussion here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only person who can answer this is Dennis Ritchie and he's dead. A&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reasonable guess is that [] were already taken for arrays. – [Dirk&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Holsopple][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @SomeKittens: Sorry, but the fact that you are curious about it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doesn't make the question on topic here. As you can see from the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers nobody knows and it's just a discussion of options, what we&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mostly avoid on this site. – [thorsten müller][2]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @thorstenmüller MichaelT makes good observations though, and that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; looks almost like an answer. I'm not experienced enough on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.se to judge what is on topic but it looks like an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interesting question to me. – [dystroy][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Voting to close. See [Are programming-related history/trivia questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; acceptable on P.SE?][4] That, along with the fact that this doesn't&#xD;&#xA;&gt; seem to be related to a real problem, makes this off topic and not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; constructive. – [Caleb][5]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @SomeKittens It's still difficult to see how this is an actual&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem. If you find reaching for the shift key tiring, there's no&#xD;&#xA;&gt; shortage of software on any major platform to help you remap your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; keyboard. Indeed, one has to wonder why you're looking to change what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you type to suit your (archaic) keyboard rather than changing your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; keyboard to suit what you type. But I don't think that's a terribly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; constructive question either -- just do whatever suits you. –&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Caleb][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/60900/dirk-holsopple&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/13866/thorsten-muller&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/52680/dystroy&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2021/are-programming-related-history-trivia-questions-acceptable-on-p-se/2029#2029&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/20011/caleb&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/20011/caleb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25025" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5626" RevisionGUID="9d58028c-ee84-48e9-bf0a-70331a4eee75" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I want to chime in on this with a response as a recent migrant from SO proper who ran into this exact issue.  I'll reference my meta discussion, I think it had a lot of good responses and definitely helped me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5582/how-to-better-fit-the-on-topic-format&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At least after opening a topic on meta to try and clarify what I was doing wrong, I gained some constructive insight in how to word things to better fit PSE and hopefully prevent early closing on my questions.  I think a lot of the problem stems in the perception that SO proper is the &quot;technical&quot; site, where posting code or confronting compiler errors is to be expected, whereas PSE is perceived as the &quot;catch-all&quot; alternative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I think is hard to translate into moderation here is that it's easy for first time users to get this impression *even if they read the FAQ*.  This is because ultimately we must admit that the application of the &quot;on-topic&quot; section of our FAQ is going to be assessed subjectively the first time the user posts.  Unless they read 10-30 previous questions that have been closed, they aren't going to establish a base-use case for how the moderation regarding staying on-topic is applied (the Really-Existing Moderation, to borrow the psychoanalytic term)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no denying that having your first question abruptly closed is a huge buzzkill in terms of entering a new community.  I think it is to be avoided as much as possible... new users should be encouraged to reword their cases into a something less subjective.  There are going to be hopeless questions, of course, but the ones that show a little promise could be worked into the format, especially if they skirt that &quot;specific to programmers&quot; line.  That isn't always possible in the sometimes small frame of time they get hit with the moderator nerfbat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I would propose as a potentially constructive practice would be giving some exception to questions that have been upvoted by other users.  There's no reason a question that has received 3-4 upvotes early that is &quot;arguably&quot; a fit for the meta should be closed within the first 30 minutes before any potential responses or ideas on potential revisions could be given.  Because of the way posts are flagged, there's a pretty quick &quot;pile on&quot; effect once a question is flagged for close.  That does make it feel, qualitatively, that moderation is a bit aggressive here on PSE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just my two cents.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25026" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3567" RevisionGUID="d59f3aad-65a0-40a5-8916-2c336f1ae966" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think this would be off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site's audience is professional programmers, so a question should be targeting them, not people who are unfamiliar with programming. If the question *were* on-topic, the answers would ideally assume you are a practicing programmer. If the basis for the question is founded upon a lack of knowledge due to *not* being a practicing programmer, any in-scope answers would be, at best, unhelpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A contrived example, but consider 2 + 2 = 4. If you were unfamiliar with addition, you might want to ask a mathematician, &quot;Is 2 + 2 = 4 accurate?&quot; Now, if you went to a place that catered to mathematicians and assumed anyone asking a question was a mathematician, asking that question would likely produce a blank, incredulous stare.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't say for sure—not having read the article—that what's discussed is patently obvious for any practicing programmer, but even parts of it aren't, any explanation would presume you were somewhat of an expert, as it were, of programming and would gloss over the parts that most programmers would understand as obvious. If those are the parts you're having trouble with, you're sort of out of luck asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond the issue of audience, our scope is centered around conceptual questions in software development: problems you personally have with a software development project you're working on. This really isn't a software development problem *per se*, it's more of a problem of understanding a court case. And to that point, [software law is off-topic here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2099/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Verifying notable claims, however, is the domain of our sister site, [Skeptics.SE](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com): personally, I'd check with them.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25028" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5633" RevisionGUID="97277988-0944-4eab-b2a3-9a089d1b4caf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="History questions are on topic on Programmers, but have proven to be particularly troublesome:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- It's not uncommon for history questions to get closed (and re-opened, and closed, ...)&#xD;&#xA;- It's not uncommon for history questions to not show any (or very little) prior research.&#xD;&#xA;- It's not uncommon for history questions to generate highly speculative answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had a [history week](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/programmers-se-contest-the-complete-outline/3631#3631) in last year's contest. As an example of how troublesome history questions are, even the [winning question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/149457/25936) didn't escape an early closure&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. Furthermore, almost every answerer in my [request for feedback](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3653/what-did-you-think-of-the-contest) for the contest identified the tag as particularly troublesome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the same time though, the history tag has given us some exceptional questions. A few random examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What software programming languages were used by the Soviet Union's space program?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145669/what-software-programming-languages-were-used-by-the-soviet-unions-space-progra)&#xD;&#xA;- [What were the “core” API packages of Java 1.0?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147205/what-were-the-core-api-packages-of-java-1-0)&#xD;&#xA;- [Where does the term “Red/Black Tree” come from?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/116614/where-does-the-term-red-black-tree-come-from)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that the majority of programming history questions are either exceptional or crap, with very few being somewhere in the middle of the quality spectrum. This makes the whole category a very interesting beast, and one that needs special treatment. My questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Do history questions offer value to the site?&#xD;&#xA;- How do history questions pass the &quot;practical problem&quot; test?&#xD;&#xA;- What should our general guidelines for them be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related past discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Are programming-related history/trivia questions acceptable on P.SE?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2021/are-programming-related-history-trivia-questions-acceptable-on-p-se)&#xD;&#xA;- [Is curiosity allowed on programmers.stackexchange.com?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2526/is-curiosity-allowed-on-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;- [How can historical questions be on topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/363/how-can-historical-questions-be-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;- [Are word origin questions on-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5524/are-word-origin-questions-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;- [Content Dispute for “Why do programming languages, especially C, use curly braces and not square ones?”](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5628/25936)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Don't get me wrong, early closures are good, especially when they lead to the question getting improved and re-opened.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25029" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5628" RevisionGUID="c45cce58-d5c4-46a2-b0c0-58c5c2538e9f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188455/why-do-programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-braces-and-not-square-ones&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This post has generated very rapid close/reopen votes along with an extended discussion in the comments. I have cleaned up the comments, but brought some relevant points here, attributing them to the author. Please use this Meta question to discuss the merits and appropriateness of this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have cleaned up the extended discussion as well as the low-quality answers to the post. Please resume discussion here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only person who can answer this is Dennis Ritchie and he's dead. A&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reasonable guess is that [] were already taken for arrays. – [Dirk&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Holsopple][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @SomeKittens: Sorry, but the fact that you are curious about it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doesn't make the question on topic here. As you can see from the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers nobody knows and it's just a discussion of options, what we&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mostly avoid on this site. – [thorsten müller][2]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @thorstenmüller MichaelT makes good observations though, and that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; looks almost like an answer. I'm not experienced enough on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.se to judge what is on topic but it looks like an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interesting question to me. – [dystroy][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Voting to close. See [Are programming-related history/trivia questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; acceptable on P.SE?][4] That, along with the fact that this doesn't&#xD;&#xA;&gt; seem to be related to a real problem, makes this off topic and not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; constructive. – [Caleb][5]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @SomeKittens It's still difficult to see how this is an actual&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem. If you find reaching for the shift key tiring, there's no&#xD;&#xA;&gt; shortage of software on any major platform to help you remap your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; keyboard. Indeed, one has to wonder why you're looking to change what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you type to suit your (archaic) keyboard rather than changing your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; keyboard to suit what you type. But I don't think that's a terribly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; constructive question either -- just do whatever suits you. –&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Caleb][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/60900/dirk-holsopple&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/13866/thorsten-muller&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/52680/dystroy&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2021/are-programming-related-history-trivia-questions-acceptable-on-p-se/2029#2029&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/20011/caleb&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/20011/caleb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25030" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3592" RevisionGUID="c00c5cfe-f86f-4947-9ab2-4910a0681570" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Change the Programmers.SE tagline**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tagline is usually the first thing users see when they learn about our site. It currently is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is used in our site description on Google&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Tagline in Google][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;in the welcome message displayed to new users&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Tagline in Welcome message][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and in the Migration path for the site from SO ([according to Yannis][5], Stack Overflow is currently our largest referring site, excluding search engines)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Tagline in Migration path from SO][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes it sound like we are a SE site for Professional Programmers [interested in conceptual questions about software development], and not a Q&amp;A site for conceptual questions on software development only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To further the confusion, the site is named and branded with Programmers in mind (whiteboard-look, triple-monitor logo, coffee mugs, comment marks around site name, etc), so by all first impressions, we are a site for programmers to ask questions and get answers from other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea that it is misleading can also be backed up just by looking at our [closed questions][1], where the majority of closed questions seem to come from new users that are looking for an answer from a programmer. I've started leaving comments on closed questions clarifying the site scope, and have received many replies from users not aware of the site scope, including [from some long-term users][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most people won't willingly post or migrate bad questions to a site, so I think changing the tag line to make it clear that this is a site for Q&amp;A on conceptual software development will go a long ways towards reducing the number of bad questions that get asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples I can think of would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **This is a question and answer site for ...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... conceptual questions about professional software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... software professionals to get answers on conceptual software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... conceptual software development questions by professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(These are just examples. If enough people agree that the tag line is misleading and should be modified, we'll discuss what it should be then)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=closed:1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/4567828#4567828&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/K8n2k.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/j590S.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better#comment9662_3552&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/N9VxK.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25031" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3600" RevisionGUID="5b2612e7-fcb4-4e1b-9f94-bcc91f8757c1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yes, that's true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers had a troubled start, fully documented in [this answer][1]. In the beginning the site was called &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; and it was a very relaxed place where questions that didn't belong on Stack Overflow found a home. Inane (but populist) questions were migrated here from Stack Overflow en masse, carrying [ridiculous amounts of upvotes][2] with them, and for a short while NPR was the one place in the Stack Exchange universe where you'd go for mindless fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it soon became evident that people flocked around the [bike shed][3] ones and ignored any serious questions or answers, and the site was quickly filling up with crap. Which led to a somewhat sudden and drastic scope change, the site was essentially rebooted to be what it is today. The redefined scope meant higher quality standards, which for Stack Exchange usually translates to less down votes and more up votes. Combined with the fact that down votes on questions [became free][4] about a year ago, people are down voting a lot more liberally than in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course you should also consider that older questions had obviously more time to gather up votes, they aren't all bad, newer questions will get there in time. But the main reason for the few whales that remain was the undisciplined culture of the early days, people would upvote just about anything. To give you an idea, one of that era's questions was [&quot;What's your most controversial programming opinion?&quot;][5], which had 391 upvotes and 414 answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As time goes by we become even more sharply focused, and we set our standards even higher. Useful and well research questions may not get a lot of up votes, but they do get a lot more visibility and quite more useful answers than a couple of years ago, as they are a lot easier to discover when you don't have to look for hours amongst an ocean of pointless questions like &quot;What's your most controversial programming opinion?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3415/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/ &quot;see SE blog post: The Trouble With Popularity&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/31253/the-bike-shed-problem-and-so&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3557/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25032" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5637" RevisionGUID="0ab53170-fdc5-4304-81e2-dcda623e9379" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This answer is a bit of a straw-man in order to apply what's being proposed and evaluate that against past precedent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Our Example:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188455/why-do-programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-braces-and-not-square-ones&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;was recently asked and is currently closed &amp; locked.  The lock, I presume, is pending the outcome of this Meta discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5628/content-dispute-for-why-do-programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-brace&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Analysis against criteria:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Askers must do their homework&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Somewhat failed as I don't consider a single look-up within Wikipedia as research.  But I certainly reference Wikipedia as convenient, so I'll grant the consideration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Askers must share their research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Passed inasmuch as we're given the Wikipedia reference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions must be answerable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is both a pass and fail.  The answers to that question provide some compelling evidence and / or conjecture.  On the other hand, my initial take on this question was &quot;how would anyone know that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programming history questions should be about programming history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definite pass.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No trivia&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Arguable pass.  If there had been a more clear-cut problem to be solved then this answer would be a cleaner pass.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Past Precedent:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159593/why-was-the-percent-sign-chosen-as-the-format-specifier-for-the-printf-famil  &#xD;&#xA;This one has a bit more research to it, but doesn't necessarily have a problem to be solved.  Overall, I would consider this fairly similar to the braces question.  It fails the trivia test by not having a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/117943/why-is-in-identifier-names-for-so-many-languages  &#xD;&#xA;No research; no problem to be solved; pretty much a curiosity question only.  I'd argue this is a weaker question than the braces question.  This one is still open even though it qualifies as trivia without having a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124570/why-pointer-symbol-and-multiplication-sign-are-same-in-c-c  &#xD;&#xA;No research but does have a problem to be solved.  Interestingly, the answers are actually more valuable than the original question scope because they extend into the more general problem of parsing issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118268/do-any-languages-use-for-the-inequality-operator  &#xD;&#xA;Equivalent research (Wikipedia) but no problem to be solved; mostly an intellectual curiosity question.  Without a problem to solve, this is likely trivia.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some commonalities:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those four questions share minimal to no research as well as being equally difficult to assess on the `answerable` category.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three of the four qualify as trivia, but are currently open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My thoughts / conclusions:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The assessment of the recent braces questions would indicate it should remain closed, but past question precedent contradicts the results of the assessment and that the braces question should be opened back up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The assessment also doesn't take into account the great answers that the braces question has attracted.  I acknowledge though that it's impossible to make an [a priori](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori_) determination like that though.  The answers, though, place the question within the ranks of the more interesting historical questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since this is in meta -  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote up if you agree with my application of the assessments from above and that we need to keep working out the details of the assessment questions to improve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote down if you think I woefully missed something in the application. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25033" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3626" RevisionGUID="3ac54d54-13cf-4561-a17d-13656eeedca9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="From [Chris F's Meta Post](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3540/12611):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can help out. If you see a question or answer that doesn't meet our community standards, use a (polite!) comment to ask the author to fix it, or be bold and edit it yourself, or flag it to bring it to the attention of the sleeping busy moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What constitutes a good, polite, guiding comment? After reading Chris F's post urging the community to step up and help with community moderation, his question, and the [inspirational response by Jerry Coffin](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3612/12611), got me thinking about how and where to  begin. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it may seem like common sense, I believe that all of us could use a refresher or some ideas on how exactly to leave this type of comment. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Communicating over the Internet, where there's no body language or other social cues, is hard! One thing I've personally noticed is that users are more receptive to polite, carefully worded comments, and I feel like the community has more to gain if those users come back a second and third time and put more effort into correcting their question-asking or answer-giving shortcomings, than if they were just left with nothing more than a link, a stern warning, and a bitter, angry feeling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So, here are a few pointers that I've put together that I hope will be helpful:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- When leaving a comment, say &quot;hi&quot; and use the person's name, if provided. Since @username doesn't work anymore, I find that this approach is much more personable and sets the tone for the rest of the comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Welcome the person to the site if he or she is new. This helps disarm the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Use the first sentence to use what the person did or didn't do to describe what it is about StackExchange that's great, but without pointing out the behavior.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you can see that his or her attempt at participating on the site was done in good faith, use that in your suggestion, which you could make in the second sentence. Using a sentence beginning with a dependent-clause followed by an independent clause is a great tool to acknowledge something positive while also pointing out an area that needs improvement.  (While X was very helpful, we really encourage people to do Y)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Next, offer a suggestion for improvement. This is important, and I really think this strategy is *really* helpful for people who are *not* moderators, simply because a person who makes a *suggestion* to another person helps bring the other person *up* to his or her level, with both people on the same level playing field. In other words, suggestions imply choice, and suggestions imply respect and equality. Suggestions imply that you're giving this person helpful, friendly advice that can improve that person's experiences on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Lastly, if there's enough space, consider following up with another welcome message, see you around, good luck, or some other positive closure. This approach also implies that you don't expect nor intend to respond or follow up, which is really helpful, since there isn't much a regular user can do beyond that, other than flagging for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here is an example of a comment that I recently left while using the *review* tab:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi John, welcome to Programmers! The StackExchange sites strive to become a repository of knowledge for years to come. While the links you've posted are helpful, if they ever break, your answer won't quite be as valuable. Consider editing your answer to include a few highlights from the links in the body of your answer such that it's valuable for years to come. Again, welcome to our site! :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of these points were inspired by Chris F and Jerry's responses, but also from the blog post titled, [A Theory of Moderation](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what other suggestions are there for empowering community moderation -- as in moderation by *non-diamond community members* -- through polite, respectful comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25034" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5738" RevisionGUID="da19a791-be2e-4f6f-880b-e502f9c9d7ba" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per [Yannis' suggestion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5727/what-if-any-changes-to-this-sites-scope-would-you-like-to-see#comment14539_5727), I decided to go through the [list of closed questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=closed%3a1), pick out some specific examples, and make a detailed case for why those questions should be welcomed on the site.  The first thing I discovered is that I agree with most of the close decisions.  We close a lot of questions, yes, but most of those really do need closing.  The other thing I found when going through the list one by one is that most of the questions that stand out to me as being unnecessarily closed follow a &quot;getting started&quot; theme.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Example Questions ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To generate a list of questions for discussion, I searched for [closed:1 start](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=closed%3a1%20start) and clicked on the &quot;newest&quot; tab (although that generates some false positives).  I'd like to go through the first several questions as examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/190127/3965 This question is a little chatty, but the gist of the problem is he has heard that self-taught php programmers can pick up bad habits from some resources, and is seeking expert advice to avoid that happening.  Open for 1.5 hours, 1 upvoted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/190095/3965 This question was seeking a general approach to finding third-party libraries and frameworks, a skill that's very important to professional programmers.  This question was possibly too broad, but I think a skilled answerer could have pulled it off had it been left open longer.  It feels like a &quot;teach a man to fish&quot; type of question. Open 3.5 hours, 1 downvoted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/189927/3965 This one could use some editing for English issues, but a question about how much java background is needed to learn a language based on the jvm, does not seem to be an unreasonable question to pose to programming experts.  Open 3.5 hours, 1 answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/189824/3965 Web development has changed a lot since 1996.  It is not unreasonable to seek the advice of someone with more up to date skills.  Also this is a different question from someone who has never programmed before, so the duplicate doesn't really apply.  Open almost a day, 1 upvoted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/189650/3965 This question is a good illustration that even expert programmers are newbies in some domains.  Possibly could have been worded better, like &quot;what characteristics should I use to evaluate a GUI framework,&quot; but mostly a good question to pose to experts in a programming domain.  Open 3.5 hours, 3 answers, 2 upvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Common Opposing Arguments ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some common arguments in opposition to these sorts of questions.  Some from https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1749/3965 and some I've seen in various comments on closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The questions don't show enough research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a chicken and egg problem.  How are you supposed to research something if you don't know where to start with your research?  If you are a beginner to a topic, how are you supposed to evaluate which resources are the best?  Getting started is a natural topic to ask a group of experienced professionals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; They will produce inevitable duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So?  We have a process for closing duplicates that works quite well, and there's little to no evidence to show getting started resource questions are any more likely to generate duplicates than other sorts of questions.  And how is closing a question as a duplicate any more work than closing it as off topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; People will just list their favorites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a process for closing bad answers, and besides that, the favorites of experts is precisely the information we're trying to get at here.  If people don't explain *why* it's their favorite, their answer will get deleted like for any other topic.  If I want a list of 6,000 php books, I can search Amazon.  Narrowing it down to the 5 or 10 favorites of experts is a lot of value to add, for which our site is well-suited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; These kinds of questions will garner too many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not a unique problem to getting started/resource questions, which is why we have a process in place to prevent that.  If you actually look at the questions that have been closed, they are no more likely than other types of questions to garner a large number of answers, even ones that were open for several weeks.  Even if there are multiple answers, the best few will get voted to the top.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The answers will become outdated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, how is this different from any other type of question?  We work in a rapidly changing field.  When an outdated answer is found, people comment on it and it's either corrected or deleted at that time.  Also, getting started topics change much less rapidly than cutting edge topics.  The basics stay relevant for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only way to do it right is to create one heavily-moderated &quot;canonical&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While this approach might be most appropriate on StackOverflow, where questions are expected to be highly specific and objective, &quot;good subjective&quot; questions are our bread and butter here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's too broad if you can imagine an entire book answering your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's all well and good unless your problem is needing help to find the most appropriate book for a subject.  These people aren't asking to have a book copied and pasted into your answer, just to get pointed in the right direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm not interested in answering newbie questions.  This site is supposed to be for professionals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even expert programmers are newbies in some domains.  If you personally don't want to see these types of questions, you can put them in your filtered tags list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Summary ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are by and large good questions garnering good answers.  They are the kind of questions you'd go down the hall to ask an experienced programmer, which are the kind of questions people naturally assume are on topic here.  Welcoming these questions would go a long way toward improving our image with new users, and making it a better reference for experienced programmers learning new domains." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25035" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5693" RevisionGUID="98d96725-b8f2-4709-ad6c-300d87099679" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I posted [this answer][1] to a similar discussion about half a year ago.  Since then, my participation on Programmers has dropped to practically zero.  I tried, but the density of questions interesting enough to be worth participating in here has dropped below the threshold of making it a worthwhile site for me to visit.  Hand-holding, positive-attitude remarks, question editing, it didn't really seem to make much difference, and the gamification system doesn't reinforce that behavior either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words: from my point of view one reason that the experts aren't here anymore might be because there's pretty much nothing interesting left to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4013/where-did-pierre-303-go-he-was-an-all-star/4033#4033" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25036" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3640" RevisionGUID="d6ac8968-e429-4602-b72f-c8520ad565f4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've just found out about flair, here's mine:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/51770/roc-marti&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/flair/51770.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot; title=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/users/1399093&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/users/flair/1399093.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&amp;amp;A sites&quot; title=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&amp;amp;A sites&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like it! But I would like it even more if my Meta badges were shown in there!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that [Meta reputation is derived from the main website][1], but I don't think it would be a problem to show badges in the flair, the site one or the combined one. Of course there is the option of Meta flair, but I don't think anyone would ever use that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25037" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="e5cb32d4-fdc4-4d78-88a8-aab10636fcbb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing [the \[stci-career\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84908/how-can-i-program-effectively-during-an-internet-outage&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84822/overwhelmed-at-internship  &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82055/non-solicitation-clause-in-my-offer-letter-prospective-employer-says-this-is-n    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81712/1st-bachelors-degree-or-2-1-masters-degree    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81644/internships-between-sophomore-and-junior-years    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/79487/quitting-a-small-start-up-where-you-are-a-primary-developer    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77886/how-to-network-effectively-to-get-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77014/doing-a-passive-job-search-while-employed-dealing-with-the-barrage-of-messages    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76254/most-effective-way-to-increase-programmer-salary-besides-just-doing-your-job   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74954/what-does-remote-position-with-possibility-of-re-locating-mean    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/74583/good-questions-to-ask-the-ceo-and-cto-of-a-start-up-during-an-interview    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73838/job-in-other-country-relocation-package    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72874/what-is-better-mba-vs-mis-right-after-grad-or-gap    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72001/so-theyre-trying-to-pull-me-into-management    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/71925/i-want-to-have-a-career-not-a-job    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66794/employee-vs-contractor-mentality-and-career   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64412/how-to-handle-a-workaholic-supervisor-who-is-your-good-friend   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64383/i-quit-my-job-but-took-back-my-resignation-during-the-notice-period-did-i-mad   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62999/what-benefits-should-an-intern-look-for-aside-from-pay    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62399/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go    &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60324/moving-from-a-small-to-a-large-company   &#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58250/what-percentage-should-a-consulting-company-take-off-the-top-of-your-pay&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85978/should-i-be-an-algorithm-developer-or-java-web-frameworks-type-developer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84468/what-defines-a-skill-technology&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83786/career-help-for-an-experienced-professional&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81555/what-should-i-learn-if-im-thinking-of-going-into-networking&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54168/specialized-course-in-web-programming-or-generalized-course-in-computer-science&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45715/educational-qualification-of-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44028/future-direction-for-a-developer-who-is-expert-in-latest-software-technologies&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43739/experienced-keeping-up-with-the-times-or-new-to-the-game-only-using-the-newe&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37968/should-i-stay-in-my-degree-or-take-an-opportunity-for-management-experience&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33488/entity-type-for-freelance-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24277/web-programming-vs-oracle-courses&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24066/project-dotnetnuke-module-selling-website-problem-staying-motivated&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86432/web-security-course&#xD;&#xA;1. 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http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18304/starting-as-a-developer-what-are-the-possible-career-steps&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/17715/career-advice-needed-startups-clients-making-moves-the-whole-ball-of-wax&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19031/written-communication-skills-courses-how-important-are-they-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/19090/do-you-know-of-a-person-that-found-a-job-in-this-industry-without-an-education&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20653/is-it-better-to-specialize-in-a-single-field-i-like-or-expand-into-other-fields&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20800/java-vs-c-what-should-a-junior-programmer-just-finished-degree-consider-when&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21209/functional-programming-does-knowing-it-help-job-prospects&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21398/can-i-contribute-to-a-startup-besides-my-daily-job&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22498/using-stackoverflow-reputation-for-college-applications&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22055/mid-career-job-change-any-suggestions&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22569/masters-program-theory-track-vs-artifical-intelligence-track&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22412/working-with-fubar-refuctored-code&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23270/should-a-programmer-know-linux&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23848/being-a-good-mentee-a-protege&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27656/how-to-find-entry-level-positions-in-a-new-city&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27161/moving-beyond-business-logic-or-am-i-a-programmer-or-a-computer-scientist&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/27757/how-do-you-sell-the-idea-of-sending-developers-to-user-conferences&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29601/first-90-days-of-a-new-hire-searching-for-blog-post&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29682/does-it-make-sense-to-focus-career-around-mainframes&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/31530/obtaining-embedded-linux-experience&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33216/computer-security-and-c&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33436/how-to-decide-if-i-should-take-a-profit-sharing-offer-or-insist-on-hard-cash&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34805/what-to-do-if-youre-burnt-out&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/34084/what-strategies-you-followed-to-keep-your-programming-skills-fresh-during-a-long&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35691/been-doing-net-for-several-years-and-am-thinking-about-a-platform-change-where&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35561/a-good-course-on-html-css-js-ux-worth-it-in-part-time&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35731/is-it-a-bad-idea-to-get-a-masters-and-bachelors-degree-from-the-same-universit&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36288/is-there-such-a-thing-as-too-much-experience&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37051/looking-for-jobs-after-a-project-ending-badly&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38178/what-are-the-best-rural-career-opportunities-for-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39262/what-are-good-personality-types-for-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38661/is-it-fair-to-use-shortened-url-to-mention-and-give-links-of-live-projects-in-my&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40431/finding-time-to-use-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40644/how-similar-are-programming-and-architecture&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41855/what-approaches-can-i-take-to-lower-the-odds-of-introducing-new-bugs-in-a-comple&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41898/when-does-a-programmer-know-when-a-new-job-is-not-right&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43959/is-client-side-html5-javascript-too-lame-after-youve-worked-on-server-side-c&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43133/programming-as-a-minor&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43482/software-development-company-business-plan&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45263/qa-engineer-road-ahead&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46167/how-to-deal-with-learning-a-new-platform-that-is-not-free&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46203/rule-of-thumb-to-estimate-cost-of-a-website&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47033/transitioning-from-internal-to-public-speaking&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49012/what-are-the-best-microsoft-certifications-to-start-with&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47477/why-do-employers-care-so-much-about-gpa&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50311/does-it-really-takes-5-10-years-or-more-to-be-really-good-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50461/advice-for-how-to-handle-company-pride&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51546/how-do-you-handle-developer-that-has-taken-an-early-retirement&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/53123/how-important-is-studying-algorithms-and-theory-is-to-becoming-a-great-programme&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently we hit the character limit, [closure candidates continue in another answer][1]. Please don't add anything to this answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3206/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25038" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5819" RevisionGUID="0a75af8f-d3a0-4313-861c-f00525c37927" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My comment from a recent question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions of online store policies for clarification are best addressed by contacting the support for the online store. At best, we can guess, present our own interpretation, or share anecdotes - none of which are good answers in a Q&amp;A format. The only authoritative answer can come from the store itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key point in my comment is about the authoritative answer.  For this I point to an answer from [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has an (admittedly drastically shorted) summary of:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Real questions&quot; don't necessarily have practical answers, but they do have authoritative ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For every question about app stores that I have seen (not all that exist, but all that I have seen), no one here is able to provide an authoritative answer. They are asking for interpretations of sometimes fuzzy policies written by someone else (that are then interpreted again by that agency).  Any answer that we (people who don't work for the app store and are not reviewers of apps for that store) can be wrong even if it is &quot;right&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A year ago there was a question [Are App Store questions on topic on programmers?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3556/).  All the same points are still valid today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25039" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3675" RevisionGUID="da77f60e-d2a2-4721-a132-bacd5a7ccdf1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Questions about books (or any other thing) that will only generate a list of things are not allowed, as discussed in [a previous Meta post][1]. The posts that you link to are about very specific topics and tend to have books that can be considered canonical references, which limits the available options significantly and makes it more likely that there is one best answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question should have been closed as not constructive and not off topic - that was my mistake (but I'm not going to reopen and close under the right reason).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25040" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5705" RevisionGUID="df0540d0-a444-4b63-9875-36c6e804e3b9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would like to address one point I noticed in quite a few prior answers here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * conceptual question on software development, why wouldn't I ask it on **Stack Overflow**... &lt;sup&gt;[1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5680/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * On **StackOverflow**, many questions that are not in the prohibited categories... &lt;sup&gt;[2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5699/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * there is considerable overlap between **Stack Overflow** and programmers... &lt;sup&gt;[3](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5704/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * those questions are valuable and interesting..., and happily go on using **StackOverflow**... &lt;sup&gt;[4](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5676/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah you guys brag so much about how easier it is to _pass through_ at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you probably don't consider is that [huge backlog in close votes queue](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/151833/165773 &quot;about 50K questions to close&quot;) makes (_currently_ makes) close voting at SO somewhat... _random_, compared to systematic effort you see at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **I hate to be the one to tell you, but don't expect this to last forever...**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yxu4K.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it will be very interesting to see what happens in about [21 months from now](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/163837/165773 &quot;'we should have it cleared in just under 21 months'&quot;), when mentioned backlog is expected to be cleared.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;One can probably get an idea of how it would feel like by observing current effort to [Close all the typo questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167342/close-all-the-typo-questions &quot;refer to MSO for more details on that&quot;). Watching their &quot;live backlog&quot; makes a strong impression: dozens of questions getting closed and deleted daily with ease, and don't forget that only a small percentage of [about 10 thousands SO close-voters](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/167915/165773 &quot;estimate here&quot;) participate!&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When close votes backlog is finally cleared, expect close votes processing to get to the pace at which other SO reviews are dealt with (think about something like **10x faster than at Programmers**).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What would you guys say when it will become only a matter of few minutes between first close vote / flag and question closure at Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If (when) that happens to your favorite &quot;conceptual&quot; questions at SO (as it happens already &lt;sup&gt;[1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/170394/165773 &quot;recent example&quot;), [2](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/157216/165773 &quot;another example&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt; - just not that frequently), please don't forget to get back here and tell us again if it's that easy to pass at SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yxu4K.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/review/close/stats &quot;'can't you see I'm working on it...'&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25041" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5844" RevisionGUID="8538b4ce-3091-41d6-b131-5a350d5d3e0a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;del&gt;Yes, it's worth the effort to tighten whatever quality mechanisms are in place.&lt;/del&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;del&gt;Period.&lt;/del&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;del&gt;Yes, we'll probably filter out some otherwise decent questions that way.  That's a price I'm willing to pay to filter out crap questions like &quot;how do I build my own beginner's linux distro?&quot;  Questions like that make me want to open another meta question to identify the strongest but just-this-side-of-OK-for-Stack-Exchange word to describe it with.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/del&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Removing&quot; my answer as [the research](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5857/53019) doesn't indicate it would provide any benefit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25042" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3710" RevisionGUID="b79f269c-2498-4249-9049-94003204da27" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="First of all, thank you for not cross posting on The Workplace. I've written [a rant][1] recently on how to get a question migrated there, the gist of it is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Flag for moderation attention, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Drop the questions in the [Water Cooler][2], the Workplace's main chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the question in question I'd go with option 2, asking in the Water Cooler. It's a bit lonely in there, but _if_ there's a version of your question that fits The Workplace, the regulars will guide you to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for why it's not a good fit for Programmers, well as always, the [FAQ][3] puts it best:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question is about a _people_ problem, not a software development problem, and that the people involved happen to be programmers doesn't make it unique to our profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3701/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8giiE.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25043" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3202" RevisionGUID="8c9b4067-cc7e-4456-921b-814ca5b1c9bc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[tag:homework] was [recently cleaned up][1], and as meta tags usually do it found it's way back to us, on at least three questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can this tag be blacklisted, so it doesn't keep coming back?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25044" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5992" RevisionGUID="f10fa667-2860-4952-9b65-ac8aab2bdb72" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are some fairly major changes coming soon to how posts are closed, you may want to read up on the details:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Closing changes: [on hold], unclear, too broad, opinion-based, off-topic reasons, bye-bye to Too Localized](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/184154/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [Responding to your “too localized” concerns](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/185102/162704)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We will need to come up with our own list of custom off topic reasons for Programmers. These reasons will be available to close voters after they have picked the generic &quot;off topic&quot; one. Here's a screenshot of Meta Stack Overflow's close dialog, where the new system is already available:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8locR.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;other&quot; option will allow a custom message, when none of the three custom reasons applies:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFP1n.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an &quot;off topic&quot; reason you'd like to nominate, please post it as an answer. Some general guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- One reason per answer, so they can be voted separately.&#xD;&#xA;- A brief comment explaining why the general category is off topic is mandatory. See the examples in the first screenshot for inspiration. If we have a _good_ Meta discussion explaining in detail why the category doesn't work, please link to it in your comment.&#xD;&#xA;- Examples to existing closed questions that would fit your custom reason would be immensely helpful.&#xD;&#xA;- If there's already an answer with a reason similar to what you have in mind, but with a slightly different phrasing, please consider commenting on the existing answer and refining the phrasing instead of posting a new answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The winners: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [&quot;what language, technology, or project one should take up next&quot;][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [&quot;career or education advice&quot;][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [&quot;recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource&quot;][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5994/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5993/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6025/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25045" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5901" RevisionGUID="bd08d453-beef-44b5-b5e6-1e80a3af9c42" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As discussed [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5785/can-we-please-add-project-management-as-a-migration-path-from-programmers/5786#5786), there are never migration paths to Beta sites. This seems like a reasonable idea, assuming that Code Review gets out of Beta, and we should revisit this then. In the mean time, if there's an exceptional post that you feel belongs on Code Review, flag it for moderator attention - we can still migrate to Code Review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25046" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3718" RevisionGUID="6290a48d-b31d-4d17-8c3e-c373376e43bc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is a follow-up to the discussion on [renaming the site to match its FAQ, or changing the FAQ to match the site name][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That discussion is one of the highest voted questions on here, so this [meta-tag:feature-request] is to try and get a definitive answer from Stack Exchange about the possibility of getting this implemented. I apologize if sounds like a duplicate, however I was told to make a separate clear proposal for the feature-request, and not edit the existing question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you'd like to discuss the topic itself, please see the linked question &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name &quot;Programmers&quot; was selected for our site back when this was a Q&amp;A site meant for programmers to ask and answer questions that were not related to programming. The [site scope has changed dramatically since then][2] to be for conceptual questions on software development only, and the descriptive name of **Programmers** no longer fits our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&amp;A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best analogy I can think of is creating an `Athletes.SE` which is only for conceptual questions about sports, while questions about athletes themselves, or technical questions about sports, are both off-topic. It's very confusing, especially to new users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't like sifting through so many off-topic questions to find ones that won't get closed, so would like to pick a new name for our site that better matches the site's scope, and change our site's name by doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Change the Title and Logo displayed on our site from Programmers to something else. This would be a cosmetic change only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Register the name as a new SE domain name for the site to use&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Keep the `programmers.stackexchange` domain name active, and simply redirect it to the new site's domain name for SEO and to maintain old links&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for what name to use, I think the name should be something the community decides. If we get the OK to do something like this from SE, we can create a meta thread to determine a new name for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize, we advertise as a Q&amp;A site about programmers, however we are not a site about programmers. We are a site for getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. Lets change our name to clarify that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Thomas' answer][3] also brings up a valid point, that not all software developers consider themselves to be programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Many of the people who are professionals in areas of architecture,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; process, software licenses, and the business side of software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development might not consider themselves programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're limiting our potential by not being clear that this site is for more than just Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3726/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25048" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5961" RevisionGUID="570f0efe-ac56-4315-adf5-3d7d4095e1f9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [first Programmers.SE contest][1] went pretty well last year, considering how short a time span we put it together. It seemed that those who participated in the contest generally liked it and wanted to do it again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to go into much detail here, I'm simply going to ask the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Do we want to do another Programmers.SE contest?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Note: If there are a positive number of votes on this post on Monday UTC/GMT (8:00 PM EST) then I will make plans to see how we can progress with this. Anybody interested in contributing can comment here or ping me in the The Whiteboard.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[Please, tell us what you think in the contest chat room.][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/programmers-se-contest-the-complete-outline&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2654" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25049" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6010" RevisionGUID="ac42ac09-aa30-49b0-9252-60154b333191" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Related question - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5931/where-to-ask-for-advice-regarding-a-review-audit &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just ran into a review Audit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question for which the first post occured was: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44/are-certifications-worth-it &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I checked the question, but could not find the answer on the page. In the review box, it wasn't possible to either down/up vote, nor flag or comment the post, since the quesiton is marked as wiki.  The only actions available were: share(on the answer), Nothing needs to be done(review), Skip(review). Since the answer wasn't visible on the question page and I couldn't find the user, I clicked &quot;Nothing needs to be done&quot;, assuming that it had already been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In retrospect, &quot;Skip&quot; probably would have been the better choice, but is this really a good review audit scenario? First-posts on wiki questions aren't even possible, are they?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/DMOuH.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25050" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3220" RevisionGUID="b6d43def-2f21-4dd4-acde-b122b0525eb8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I get upset when I look for a particular question of mine to link to another question, only to find that it's been closed and I probably shouldn't be sending people to it. It's even worse if the question I'm looking for has been deleted and I can't find it at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many questions that were asked back when the site scope allowed questions about programmers, not just software development, and questions were encouraged to [invite sharing experiences over opinions][1], something that is discouraged today because it sounds more like a poll. They got many upvotes because they were on-topic at that time and contained some good information. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that the site scope has changed since then, and these questions are no longer seen as on-topic, however I'd like to request that mods leave a comment on questions they want to close if it was asked back when the question would have been on-topic and has a decent number of upvotes. This would give the OP a few days to try and edit the question to make it on-topic before the question actually gets closed/deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it extremely hard to get questions re-opened here, so would rather try and make a question on-topic to prevent the closure in the first place instead of trying to re-open it after an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/350/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25051" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3758" RevisionGUID="374233dd-5169-45b4-8053-ddeef57bd1c5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question ban is automatic, and it's not something the moderators control. We don't even know that you are question banned, unless you tell us. To lift the question ban you will need to follow the instructions given in this [link][1], that should have appeared when you tried to ask a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question history is troubling, as maple_shaft [already mentioned][2], from your 16 questions in total:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 9 were closed and deleted,&#xD;&#xA;- from the remaining 7, one is down voted and all but two were edited to fix obvious and not so obvious issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and you have provided no answers. We don't require you to answer questions, provided you ask great ones, but when your questions are not really welcomed by the community, we do expect you to give back by providing some good answers. We are a community of volunteers, and it's only reasonable to expect you to give something back for all the help you have been getting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems that this time the troubling question pattern kicked off both the manual suspension process&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _and_ the automatic question ban. That's a bit harsh, and about a month ago I asked Stack Exchange to let moderators know when a user is question banned, as I feel it's quite annoying to come back from a suspension only to find out that a secondary and silent ban is in place, but my request was ignored. I honestly had no idea that you were question banned when I suspended you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't even know the exact algorithm of the question ban and can't even guess if a user is banned or not, and at this point it's all up to you. If you feel the ban is unfair, you will have to contact Stack Exchange directly, at `team+programmers@stackexchange.com`. &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; There were a lot of user flags on your questions, which brought the pattern to my attention, and I decided to suspend you.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3757/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25055" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3763" RevisionGUID="ea09d88a-5919-44a1-aae1-21313c312dae" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I seem to have reached this limit while editing my answer to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit frustrating, as the editor didn't warn me, so I typed away and submitted... and it truncated the end of the text AND the links...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So now I'll gladly rewrite this quickly, and make sections more concise to fit everything in, but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What exactly is the limit?&#xD;&#xA; * Maybe the editor should warn and block submission, like the comment section does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Though I agree such long posts probably do not happen too often. Sorry. got interested in this question more and more :)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Update 2012/07/11:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * See [Shog9's answer][1] and comments below it for more details.&#xD;&#xA; * See this [answer from JeffAtwood][2] on another similar Meta.SO thread, where a fix is said to have been implemented, and the discussion we have in comments.&#xD;&#xA; * And finally see my [&quot;test-case answer&quot;][3] below and in particular its [revision log][4]. See steps below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Steps to reproduce:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   * The [&quot;test-case answer&quot;][5] was created by simply identifying where things went wrong in [my answer][6] to the [question linked above][7] and I narrowed it down to between revisions [12][8] and [13][9].&#xD;&#xA;   * So I created a question with content from revision 12 (+disclaimer a the top about testing),&#xD;&#xA;   * then edited it with content from revision 13 (but with the link table of revision 12, to get the untrucated ones in there as well, as the revision 13 was obviously damaged),&#xD;&#xA;   * the submission went through just fine and without warning, and the content was indeed truncated again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Update 2012/07/11 - continued:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Crap, it appears the revision log of my test-case doesn't show all the steps, and doesn't show the messages I had left in the &quot;change logs&quot;. Probably because I did them without a big interval between them, and when that's the case the SE systems seem to merge them in one changeset (probably so we don't hit the `10 edits =&gt; CW` rule when editing answers rapidly while they're new).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, that's annoying here for looking at the test-case (maybe SE gods have a way to see full logs), but the **steps I gave above should be enough to reproduce it** anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Update by Shog9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reproduced, definitely a bug, [written up on MSO][10].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3767/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/26723/151515&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3770/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/3770/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3770/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/155505/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/7b75c2e1-15ac-408d-807a-4cd83a2494bc/view-source&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/596bbe49-17a3-4c25-8175-d6242d796064/view-source&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/139320/post-maximum-length-check-ignores-markdown-results-in-long-formatted-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25056" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6089" RevisionGUID="1e2a0d33-c258-4a7f-87b1-8f609901cecb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am writing a Python script for downloading a website for offline viewing and changing the links in the downloaded webpages for proper links between the downloaded webpages. I don't know the technical term for this so I asked [this question][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - There was some debate in the comments about whether it is on-topic or not before the comments were purged. &#xD;&#xA; - One moderator [wasn't sure whether to close the question][2] while another moderator closed the question. &#xD;&#xA; - There seems to be some consensus on [this meta question][3] that &quot;name that thing&quot; questions should be allowed. Mine isn't about naming a thing but for finding out the proper technical term for a process that I am trying to do. If &quot;name that thing&quot; is allowed then asking &quot;technical term for this thing&quot; should also be allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was also told that my question isn't programming related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to know if the answers to my questions are correct i.e. the process that I am trying to do is `web-crawling` or `archiving` then how is it not programming related? As far as I know search engines do `web-crawling` for their work. Then if the argument is that what I am doing isn't programming related then are search engines not programming related?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does the community define `programming-related`? Are technical terms excluded?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is my question off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206415/whats-the-technical-term-for-downloading-a-website-for-offline-viewing&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10545107#10545107&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25057" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3783" RevisionGUID="871887ab-4b5c-4a32-bcee-1f032387595a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am (marginally) color-blind and have great difficulty distinguishing between hyperlinks and normal text on the SE-Programmers site. I can barely tell when the text is actually a link. To my eyes, there just isn't enough visual contrast. (Unlike on [StackOverflow](http://stackoverflow.com/), for instance, where the blue links stand out vividly to me. For that matter, the orange(?)-colored links on this meta-page are easily distinguishable as well.) Can anyone suggest a workaround for this situation (for example, a browser-hack of some sort)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: I am (unfortunately) obliged to use IE at work, so no non-IE browser-specific workarounds will suffice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:** As Yannis pointed out, my question is very similar in nature to [this question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1487/it-is-possible-to-change-the-colors-of-hypertext-links), but in my case, I'm not asking for a global site-wide change (though that would be nice), but rather just a workaround for my own setup." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25058" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6089" RevisionGUID="cecdce92-c9f5-4f01-9071-9886313a836b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am writing a Python script for downloading a website for offline viewing and changing the links in the downloaded webpages for proper links between the downloaded webpages. I don't know the technical term for this so I asked [this question][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - There was some debate in the comments about whether it is on-topic or not before the comments were purged. &#xD;&#xA; - One moderator [wasn't sure whether to close the question][2] while another moderator closed the question. &#xD;&#xA; - There seems to be some consensus on [this meta question][3] that &quot;name that thing&quot; questions should be allowed. Mine isn't about naming a thing but for finding out the proper technical term for a process that I am trying to do. If &quot;name that thing&quot; is allowed then asking &quot;technical term for this thing&quot; should also be allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was also told that my question isn't programming related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to know if the answers to my questions are correct i.e. the process that I am trying to do is `web-crawling` or `archiving` then how is it not programming related? As far as I know search engines do `web-crawling` for their work. Then if the argument is that what I am doing isn't programming related then are search engines not programming related?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does the community define `programming-related`? Are technical terms excluded?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is my question off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206415/whats-the-technical-term-for-downloading-a-website-for-offline-viewing&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10545107#10545107&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25059" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3264" RevisionGUID="41134c22-2266-4613-a13d-5eccbdbf7be9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-engineering\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136425/architectural-patterns-for-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135709/multi-threaded-applications&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132314/methods-to-prevent-programmers-from-capturing-user-entered-data&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130128/a-java-programmer-shifting-to-c&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127075/what-percentage-of-code-and-runtime-do-you-typically-allow-for-testing&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125903/applying-for-software-engineer-positions-without-being-a-qualified-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/68638/how-do-you-design-your-database&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67298/what-do-you-do-when-there-is-a-last-minute-request-to-exclude-a-feature-from-a-r&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67284/value-of-computer-science-degree-for-non-programmer-software-architect-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65348/design-architecture-patterns-practices-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64944/studies-on-breakdown-of-various-costs-associated-with-a-software-project&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61195/in-a-software-engineering-view-what-are-all-the-steps-in-a-state-of-the-art-sdl&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60648/is-software-better-designed-and-developed-by-people-who-will-use-it&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58030/mom-vs-soa-is-soa-the-latest-mom&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58006/im-doing-hobby-programming-what-programming-methodologies-e-g-xp-agile&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55518/where-i-will-get-petshop-net-4-application&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55408/filling-the-gaps-in-terms-of-software-planning-and-feeling-the-machine&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54231/what-do-you-do-to-get-your-software-design-robust-flexible-and-clear&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51839/how-do-you-keep-cool-when-production-system-goes-down&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49763/how-to-recognize-my-performance-plateau&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49226/green-engineering-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47535/implementation-of-a-rules-engine-in-your-business-applications&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47355/how-can-i-make-a-compiler&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46126/software-engineering-and-independence&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44160/at-what-point-does-constructive-criticism-of-your-code-become-unhelpful&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44066/why-is-implementing-copy-paste-in-a-touch-screen-based-smartphone-such-a-big-dea&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43867/good-book-for-debugging-disassembling-proprietary-software&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37451/telecommuting-with-a-foreign-employer-as-a-permanent-job&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37008/will-people-respect-a-masters-of-science-in-it-w-software-engineering-concentrat&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36491/what-can-programmers-learn-from-the-construction-industry&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30853/relation-between-developers-and-clients&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28978/is-anyone-actively-developing-software-to-be-used-with-the-emotiv-headset&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25233/computer-science-vs-computer-engineering&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28018/what-are-effective-strategies-for-setting-software-project-priorities&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25060" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6171" RevisionGUID="80eca7eb-b05d-41cd-8052-675db5e2e249" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think that strong point of your _question draft_ is description of the situation: it looks clear, detailed and easy to understand. This lays a solid ground for a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you're done with it though, there is a sharp drop in question quality, and the rest essentially spoils the fun:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So, in terms of making it easier for myself what do you think should I do: - try to convenience them to start from scratch? - get on with the current design and try to achieve what they want?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Have you got any experience with similar cases? What should I do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, the only valuable elements in above quote are &quot;try to convince them to start from scratch&quot; and &quot;get on with the current design&quot;. Anything besides that can be stuffed into any imaginary question and would add no value to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think of it, &quot;in terms of making it easier for myself&quot; - no one would be interested in making it harder to themselves. Or, &quot;what do you think&quot; - any asker is sure interested in this. Stuff like that is basic, it is implied in any question at Programmers, stating it explicitly is just noise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the perspective of those who would answer your question it is useless - drop it, wipe it out, get rid of it - and this cleanup will help you find out what is missing in your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, how would it look if you filter out the noise? Something like,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Options I can think of are either _try to convince them to start from scratch_ or _get on with the current design_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above is fairly poor but at least: 1) you can see that it's poor yourself (which opens a door to thinking how to improve) and 2) as small as it is, it's 100% _substantial_ - there's nothing to throw away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, how it can be improved? Improvements I suggested in [comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6168/would-my-question-be-on-topic-for-programmers#comment16661_6168) quickly posted after you asked here may sound like wisdom obtained through some magic glass, but it really isn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, key aspects of SE posts are **substance, presentation and effort** and I simply evaluate everything I read / write through these. Let's see how it will work at your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way you explained the situation tells that your _presentation_ is all-right (and I think you know it yourself).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Substance_ is there, too - what is left after we removed the noise, is substance, and it _is_ there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The feel that it's still poor indicates that it's _effort_ that is missing and if you take a closer look at cleaned up part, you'll see that effort you are expected to put into considering mentioned options just isn't there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What kind effort is expected? well whenever you deal with options, most basic effort to put is to list and evaluate pros and cons of these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Note, since we are at Stack Exchange, this is not something you could expect answerers to do for you: asking for _list_ part won't fly because [list questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info) aren't welcome, and as for _evaluation_ part, without knowing lots of your concrete details and context, doing this would be, as they say in one of [close reasons](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/close-reasons/info), &quot;too broad&quot;.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding this to your question would cover _effort_ part, the only thing left after that would be to, well, just state the very question, explain what would you want to learn / understand. What would it be - no one can tell you beforehand, since this should be based on your analysis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no magic glass nor magic aspects that would predict what would be outcome of your research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you're done with it though, there will be one _magic thing_ you could do prior to posting. Simply put your text into &quot;Ask question&quot; box and study [similar questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/similar-questions) that get loaded to the right. This trick often works better than plain search and it can give you an insight on how to further improve your question or even, if you are lucky, reveal that there is already an answered question like yours.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25061" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3266" RevisionGUID="ce6316c4-549c-456e-8ecd-ba45dbd47703" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Deletion candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions to see which can be saved through [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) and reopened. If no improvement would make them on topic, vote to delete if you have the reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25062" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6195" RevisionGUID="1f4c778c-0799-4c57-8e41-52b2dd824162" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You seem to believe that question locked for content dispute at meta should remain at main site as originally posted (&quot;Lock question as-is&quot;). This approach doesn't make sense to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the purpose of meta discussion, it is insignificant what particular revision is hanging on the main site because [full revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/212517/revisions &quot;example for your post&quot;) and [original version](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/212517/1 &quot;example for your post&quot;) are always available to study content and edits in as much details as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With above in mind, I would expect moderator locking the post to take whatever edits deemed appropriate in order to make it look OK for regular, inexperienced readers of the site - for those who just read what is posted and don't pay attention to obscure, strictly internal notices about _meta_, _content dispute_ etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this perspective, I would expect moderators to err on the safer side, performing pre-dispute cleanup of the content. Given that _final_ version of the content is to be determined by community discussion at meta anyway, I see no point to fixate about what is there on the main site during the dispute (it helps that locked post can not be voted, thus question score can't be influenced until it's unlocked back).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is worth noting that expecting mentioned cleanup to be performed by asker would be a really bad idea, as they are naturally biased.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In your particular case, part cleaned up at main site prior to dispute is: *&quot;Are there any definitive or widely cited sources of best practices literature&quot;*. To me, cleaning it up looks reasonable safety wise, as this part of the question makes a perfect match to one of the [close reasons](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6025/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Oh and please don't tell me that it's safe to keep because this part is hidden deep inside your &quot;main&quot; question. It's there and readers will find it. I remember myself being new at Programmers, carefully studying questions, stumbling upon resource-request parts and posting [low quality answers](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nyfwh.png &quot;example&quot;) _&quot;look here's the resource you asked about: &amp;lt;link&amp;gt;&quot;_.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to also address one of the [comments](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments#comment419290_212517) you made, likely intending to support the question with an authoritative reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that my post specifically implements the tactics referred to in that post to achieve usefulness as a subjective post. It isn't shopping for a source if you insist that an experience or widely-known principle be backed up by references. This is why it says &quot;Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your interpretation of [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) article looks wrong to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reading of the statement _&quot;questions insist that opinion be backed up&quot;_ is that it's a strong prohibition against filling questions with a [**poison** like &quot;what's your opinion?&quot;, &quot;what do you think?&quot;, &quot;what do you prefer?&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/184574/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;)... and yeah, &quot;which resource do you recommend&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question should _never_ have words like &quot;what's your opinion&quot; simply because this makes a wide open door for crappy answers where authors just post their opinion without even attempting to back it up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good question, in addition, is worded in a way that actually _[repels](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5401/31260 &quot;more on that here&quot;)_ garbage answers - allowing readers, guys like you and me, to flag low quality posts for mod attention and request deletion on the ground that these don't answer the question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Note that what's-your-opinion in the question immediately makes such flagging and demanding deletion impossible because, well, such answers _match the questions asked_. Same reasoning applies to resource requests - it is officially legal to post a [low quality](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/8259/165773 &quot;more on link-only answers here&quot;) &quot;I recommend this URL&quot; and pretend that this just answers to what have been asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I would like to expand on what looks fundamentally wrong in your position.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You (and some [other askers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6147/31260)) re-post excerpts from the article, plainly translating these into requirements to answers and pretend that this makes your question compliant. **Don't do that.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above &quot;translation&quot; is purely yours, you have no grounds to state that this can be inferred from the article you refer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing to remember is, this article states requirements for _questions_, not for the _answers_. Re-read it again and pay attention to the sub-title (quoted below, keeping font close to original):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Article is about guidelines for _questions_, plain and simple as in the title quoted above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever requirements for _answers_ you stuff into your questions, you have no ground to link these to the article. These are all yours, and, frankly, from the perspective of those who read your question, these are pure noise, as these add nothing [substantial](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6171/31260 &quot;related discussion here&quot;) to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't pollute the question with requirements to answers - for readers, these are useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, _after reading_ particular answer, you feel like something is not OK there, check whether it fits [answering guidelines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer &quot;here&quot;) and if you believe that it doesn't, feel free to raise your concerns." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25063" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3271" RevisionGUID="bd3c3641-43ab-4cb6-af2c-670d5a363b6d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Career Development Questions - Moving rather than closing?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3268/career-development-questions-moving-rather-than-closing)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;As I write this post, out of 48 questions on the main page, there are are 27 that are closed.  Is the FAQ is not clear?  Are closing votes too generous?  Is it a blip?  ..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25064" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6140" RevisionGUID="e1070dbb-b04e-498e-805f-6adf5bf8f018" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&quot;These articles are in opposition.&quot; + &quot;prove Jeff Atwood&quot; suggest that OP already knows the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Atwood trashed Norvig. If you know the answer, why ask? That means, _unclear what you're asking_, which was my close vote (&quot;opinion-based&quot; [shown to readers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/209295/revisions) is pure fake [indiscriminately attributed to me](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10922461#10922461) due to... shall we say, not too smart user interface - a bit more on that below...).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a &quot;clean room&quot; case, I would shrug, edit this unfortunate phrase into something like &quot;These articles appear at odds with each other, how can I find a way out?&quot; and walk away knowing that _unclear_ doesn't apply anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, at the moment question has been [&quot;locked&quot; from such an edit](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;how's that?&quot;) by already submitted [FGITW](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/fastest-gun/info &quot;what's this&quot;) answer: &quot;You're missing the point...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides above, there are a few issues _induced_ by the phrase &quot;Is there a [friggin'](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2905/31260 &quot;Sprinkling &quot;Science&quot; on top of something does not automatically render it correct&quot;) scientific evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► Is-there part of the phrase shifts it into Yes/No territory with [all its known issues](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/183177/165773 &quot;discussed eg here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is not just a 'get an answer for me' place, it's &quot;Produce quality content that is useful for people who follow&quot;. In the case of your question, the second part is lacking...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;When asking a yes/no question there are one of two possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. You really want a yes/no answer. If this is the case, and you don't need anything else to answer your question then it means the answers will be inherently low quality. An answer that only says &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; (in addition to not meeting the minimum length) would be of very low quality. SO answers expect more.&#xD;&#xA;2. You don't actually want a yes/no answer, in which case your real question is not actually a yes/no question, and you're hoping that people will determine what your real question is. For example, someone might ask, &quot;Can I do [...]?&quot; when what they really meant to ask was, &quot;How can I do [...]?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Almost all yes/no questions I've seen fall into case 2; they should be edited into a question that isn't really asking for just a yes/no, it should be asking to explain something. (Even if it has a yes/no in there somewhere.) Note that just adding &quot;Explain&quot; at the end isn't really a good way to go about this; you should refactor the question on a more fundamental level...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► The part &quot;evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach&quot; sucks, well, because it blatantly misses the opposite: &quot;evidence to prove the Peter Norvig approach&quot;. This is yet another indication of question quality issues (happily ignored by reopeners).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the very least, I would rephrase to symmetric wording &quot;evidence to prove one of these approaches above another&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► Issues with &quot;scientific&quot; part are addressed in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I for one like the way these are presented in [this comment](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question#comment7317_2903 &quot;just discovered it's written by one of my favorite MSO authors&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Slapping a request for scientific literature onto the question... doesn't really make this question any better. It still is enormously vague and unanswerable, there is no objective scientific measure..., it remains a question that should be nuked on sight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above does not fully apply to this particular case because there is an answerable question obscured by scientificevidence garbage there, but it rather makes a point that it would be better to wipe out that scevidence crap outta there at all (if such an edit wouldn't invalidate existing answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last but not the least, even with all imaginary editing cleanup, the question would still remain average.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, resolving false contradictions can be fun, I sometimes enjoy [doing this myself](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/193864/advice-on-rehabilitating-an-unpopular-meta-question-or-not#comment608984_193864 &quot;example&quot;) but it's often way too simple. And this case looks simple to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mysticial [would probably say](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/1262201#1262201), it's not _really advanced question_. Meh.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note, regarding question closure notice, I would rather prefer it to be shown rephrased to something that doesn't put words in my mouth. There is a bunch of [feature requests](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/194593/165773 &quot;listed eg here&quot;) for something like that at MSO, but SE team doesn't give a shit.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25065" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3811" RevisionGUID="45598919-79f6-45a7-9f96-df61c63027c2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**update** question has been edited and reopened and proposed &quot;draft&quot; has been posted as an answer there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/157606/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior answer revision is removed since it no longer applies, it is available in answer history:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Revision 8](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/3811/8)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the question would be reopened, I'd probably write an answer like&#xD;&#xA;&gt; below.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; #TL;DR&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; In Java, the reason of `public static void main(String[] args)` is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [Gosling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling &quot;who's that?&quot;) wanted&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. the code written by someone experienced in C (not in Java)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. to be executed by someone used to running [PostScript](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript &quot;scripts&quot;) on [NeWS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS &quot;Networked Extensible Window System&quot;)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...**[How The JVM Spec Came To Be][2]**...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/gosling-jvm-lang-summit-keynote &quot;key note&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25066" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3279" RevisionGUID="53510bd3-c3c9-4ebc-bcd2-ca9a440427ab" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[tag:career] was recently cleaned up, through the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a rather troublesome tag that we've been trying to get rid of [for quite some time][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Previous attempts to clean up the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/163/work-job-career-development-employment-career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we please kill it now? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3088/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25067" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6362" RevisionGUID="e06c7cbf-46f7-43b0-b626-d7faca38bca3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I modified the original [Building a distributed system on Amazon Web Services][1] after the comments mentioned about [Why do interview questions make poor Programmers.SE questions?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question now is more focused about whether building an application on AWS makes it by default distributed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you please re-open it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/222222/building-a-distributed-system-on-amazon-web-services&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25068" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3837" RevisionGUID="b6b584f1-aa96-4b7a-b741-0127615461a3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Responding negatively to those folks who copy paste their homework assignments is just a waste of time.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These people don't care how you react; they're looking for the one guy that will actually do their homework for them (some people will).  Consequently, your negative comment will have no effect on the OP, and will only succeed in irritating your fellow community members and alienating new visitors to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A better response is to downvote the question, and cast a moderator flag with a custom explanation, like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Request for speedy deletion: this question is a copy-paste of a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; homework assignment, with no effort on the part of the OP to do the assignment himself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;As an example, I cast a flag with this exact wording on the copy/paste homework assignment originally linked. Yannis deleted it ([see his answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3838)).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25069" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3280" RevisionGUID="8658e1a1-948c-4ae5-90ed-7e37c8200400" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I disagree with the merge. Like [SnOrfus pointed out in a comment][1], there are two things to consider: the structure/organization of the team and the relationships between members of the team. However, I think there might be a better tag (or even better tags) than &quot;team&quot; and &quot;teamwork&quot;, but I'm not sure what they are at this point. There is, however, a need for tags to differentiate between structuring and organizing a team and working on/with a team as they are very different concepts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although, there is another side to the argument. This isn't a site about organizational behavior, social psychology, or sociology. Do we really need to differentiate between these concepts on a site that is ultimately about software development? Perhaps not, and the merge should be the other way: [tag:teamwork] into [tag:team].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3071/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25070" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3862" RevisionGUID="7d263b97-e8f2-444d-9ea0-5597ff8f2277" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed the [tag:home-school] tag on a recent question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, there are [three questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/home-schooling) with that tag.  The first is OT for P.SE (belongs on codereview.SE) and the other two are already tagged with [tag:teaching].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suggest we get rid of the [tag:home-school] tag as it doesn't generate any meaningful distinction from the [tag:teaching] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question is to generate a discussion about the future of that tag in line with [jmort253's recent answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3851/53019) about tag discussions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25071" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6407" RevisionGUID="86d91f90-1e66-4e9c-9718-c057753c5c9d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Did you read the [custom close reason](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6276/31260 &quot;taken from here&quot;)?  It describes in detail why we think these kinds of questions are unsuitable, and provides a link to a Stack Exchange blog entry that applies *to the entire network.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;name that thing&quot; question. &quot;Name that thing&quot; are bad questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close reason highlights an important goal of the Stack Exchange network: questions should be useful for everyone that has an interest in the subject matter, not just to the person asking them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25072" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6148" RevisionGUID="b8978fa9-e2d7-4cea-8c87-fdd8bbac8d06" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question I cast the first close vote on was [revision 1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/209867/1) which reads:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do programmers need quiet? If they do why do so many places not have quiet and still seem to get something done?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do programmers get quiet? If no, WHY not.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; PLEASE, references and substantive answers based on notable sources please!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even with references, this can be the domain of opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider the following hypothetical answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer #1:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No programmers do not need quiet.  We run an agile shop and have found that it is necessary that programmers are able to interact with each other at all times as described by many Agile consultants ([1](http://fugelsoitconsulting.com/2013/03/the-agile-workspace/) [2](http://blog.giffordconsulting.com/2006/10/agile-workspaces-microsofts-patterns.html) [3](http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-ideal-agile-workspace)) and can be seen in [this blog post](http://cmegroupideaexchange.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/building-an-agile-work-environment-part-deux/) demonstrating a typical agile work environment.  Pair programing does not work if the pair isn't talking, and the open plan requires that there is a constant level of communication and talk.  Some programmers even prefer to have music going on and we have a community driven local 'radio' station of streaming mp3s over the intercom system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer #2:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The environment of programmers needs to be that of a library.  We expect the workplace to be quiet.  The only way to get the noise level to 'ok' as suggested in peopleware is to have silence as different programmers expect different levels of noise (see Peopleware Chapter 8 - Effects of Workplace Table 8-1).  Those that want noise can use headphones.  Furthermore, we've abolished telephones in the work area so programmers aren't distracted by other phones ringing or people talking on them (see Peopleware Chapter 11 - The Telephone).  If you need to talk to someone on the phone, you go to a sound proof phone cube off in the corner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are countless more possible answers - each right and each fits within the constraint of the first question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question is asking about the multitude of reasons that people don't get quiet.  Why not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Programmers aren't valued where I work, we're on the second floor of a loading dock.&#xD;&#xA;* Programmers are mixed in with support people to encourage interaction, the phones are always going off&#xD;&#xA;* We have too many juniors for each senior and there are always 'tutoring' sessions going in in cubes.&#xD;&#xA;* When doing agile spikes I get distracted by other noises of people working&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, countless why answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers are opinions even if you ask them not to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few other factors to consider in this is that asking for refrences is not something that is on topic for P.SE.  I would suggest reading [Are requests for a specific reference material off-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5176/are-requests-for-a-specific-reference-material-off-topic), [Why are “reference request” questions off topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5299/why-are-reference-request-questions-off-topic), and [“Scientific Evidence” versions of each question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *really* want the studies aspect, it could get closed as a dup of [Studies on how noise affects productivity of programmers [closed]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132952/studies-on-how-noise-affects-productivity-of-programmers) and [Is there any scholarly research on the detrimental effects of a noisy workplace on productivity? [closed]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56220/is-there-any-scholarly-research-on-the-detrimental-effects-of-a-noisy-workplace).  If I need to point out again, the top answer in each of those two questions is essentially &quot;Read Peopleware&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also a question on skeptics.SE - [What study showed that using headphones to drown out office noise is detrimental?](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7517/what-study-showed-that-using-headphones-to-drown-out-office-noise-is-detrimental) which has one answer that starts out:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The study was described in Tom DeMarco's excellent book &quot;Peopleware.&quot; I think it was said to be done at Cornell University." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25073" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3293" RevisionGUID="9dc771d3-b923-4302-aa1f-fc879318b705" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&#xD;&#xA;**Make the meta link more noticeable and inviting in the FAQ.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current description tells you to go there if you're looking for &quot;excruciating detail&quot;, which doesn't sound fun at all.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What if I need more help?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you’re looking for excruciating detail, our meta-discussion site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hosts a section of constantly evolving frequently asked questions that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; document everything about the site. Or, maybe you’d just like to learn&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a little more about us?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps we can change this to something more inviting, like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Have more questions about the site?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Come visit us on our [meta discussion site][2] for more Q&amp;A about how&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.StackExchange works, or to provide us with feedback about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the site. You can even&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participate in community events such as [our blog][4]! View the [meta&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FAQ][3] for more info.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25074" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3866" RevisionGUID="a1d07271-6252-4776-a6da-2956b944a62f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a [tag:work] tag. Looks like it was missed in the https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Burninate/cleanup? Seems like a likely target of off topic questions, so I'd recommend going through them and removing the tag as they're closed/edited. There's &lt;del&gt;80&lt;/del&gt;   **13**. As a mod from Workplace I can already tell you The Workplace won't be accepting any old questions with the tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25075" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3882" RevisionGUID="f444769e-e939-498d-abe8-1f30d081c289" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [How do I properly migrate my question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1681/how-do-i-properly-migrate-my-question)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted a question here on Programmers  which would rather fit into Stack Overflow. An user has pointed this out. Further, this question has also been answered.  How should I migrate this to Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25076" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6456" RevisionGUID="a889851d-bfe7-4893-a70e-a87f4d2a69a3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is a balancing act that is being walked between the &quot;[everything is downvoted and closed](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q)&quot; and the &quot;you delete things too soon&quot;.  The stress between these two philosophies has also gotten a touch more stressed with an interpretation of an answer [elsemeta](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/219922/what-is-the-goal-of-hot-network-questions/220099#220099).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is quite possible that we've been overeager with deleting things quickly.  That said, it may have eventually have gotten [deleted on its own](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/173513/turbocharging-the-roomba-solutions-for-premature-deletion/177675#177675) without intervention (arguably though the faster delete tries to reduce the perception of lost rep if something was upvoted... a bit of thought does go into what to delete or not).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deletion of the question was not about breaking rules (or not) but rather an attempt at hastening the ultimate janitorial actions.  And sometimes we delete fast because we don't want to forget to delete it later (there isn't a &quot;delete queue&quot; like there is for close votes and once it falls from view it becomes more difficult for people to delete what (ultimately) (debatably) should be deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would ultimately be deleted somehow.  If its done a few days after the question was asked or a week, or a month... its (arguably) just a matter of time.  In its current state, it is unlikely to have been reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question itself is really unanswerable by anyone not part of the Dart Team.  It requires one to go and ask them and any of us are equally capable of doing that compared to what you can do (this 'ask them' [has been done before](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/210399/why-is-there-a-new-in-go/216582#216582) and *can* be done as a good question - you may consider flagging the question for reopening if you find the answer to then do a self answer of the question).  Note that the reception of how well the question and interesting the question to the community as a whole is as fickle as the community itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with the question is that it is asking other people to do work for you that you are just as capable as doing yourself.  This applies to questions where people ask them to (basically) search google or quote wikipedia for them too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also with the edit, you've edited in an answer [from the Dart team](https://groups.google.com/a/dartlang.org/forum/#!msg/misc/8Uchi3bW1YQ/LTKIrC4L564J) - though clarifications for the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do I understand correctly that..&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals but they use it.&#xD;&#xA;* This is not an indicator of quality, but just a bug. Becuase they written by a Dart team &#xD;&#xA;member but not by other person.&#xD;&#xA;* There is no &quot;why&quot; here because it is better to remain silent than to say unpleasant things.&#xD;&#xA;* Dart Team can forget to fix this if someone does not file a ticket.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;needs to be asked of the Dart team, not P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that this clarification didn't help the question.  In my reading of it, the third point combined with the main question reads like a rant about a style guide (or inconstant following of it).  To that, I've read a number of unpleasant comment threads in other questions that have a rant-like tone (again *my* reading of the question) that become wholesale delete the entire comments (and sometimes lock the question while the participants simmer down).  To this, quickly deleting the question quickly can help reduce the total amount of janitorial work that needs mod involvement (and thats where my vote came from)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25077" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3301" RevisionGUID="bb12dff3-c954-43d3-950c-5b152597824a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A while back I made a suggestion to [either rename the site to match the FAQ, or change the FAQ so it matches the site name][1] to help clear up a lot of the confusion I see over what P.SE is for. That question was asked to see if this idea had any support, and I believe it does judging by the 25 upvotes it currently has, and the [other][2] [questions][3] which were pointed out that ask the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site name is the first, and often only, piece of information a user has to judge our site on. Since we can't change the site's name, this question is to ask **what kind of changes can we make to the FAQ to make it accurately reflect the site name, without going back to the mindless fun this site began as?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see a lot of confusion over the scope of P.SE, and I think [this recent MSO comment][20] sums up what I've seen:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; no one recommends Programmers anymore because it's unclear what the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site's scope is and some of its users disagree strongly with what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others of its users think the site's scope entails&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My suggestions are below. I wanted to post them all together in one answer since they I feel the suggestions make the most sense if you read them in order, but ultimately decided to separate them so we can comment, evaluate, and vote on each suggestion individually. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this would go a long ways towards making the site scope match the site name, and clear up the confusion caused by the current differences. In addition, I am hoping this will help reconcile users from both sides of the site scope argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review and vote on the suggestions, or add your own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/124923/where-in-the-stack-exchange-world-can-i-initiate-a-programming-related-discuss/124927#comment336347_124925" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25078" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6171" RevisionGUID="14d09f92-901a-43a4-a433-67e463489661" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think that strong point of your _question draft_ is description of the situation: it looks clear, detailed and easy to understand. This lays a solid ground for a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you're done with it though, there is a sharp drop in question quality, and the rest essentially spoils the fun:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So, in terms of making it easier for myself what do you think should I do: - try to convenience them to start from scratch? - get on with the current design and try to achieve what they want?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Have you got any experience with similar cases? What should I do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, the only valuable elements in above quote are &quot;try to convince them to start from scratch&quot; and &quot;get on with the current design&quot;. Anything besides that can be stuffed into any imaginary question and would add no value to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think of it, &quot;in terms of making it easier for myself&quot; - no one would be interested in making it harder to themselves. Or, &quot;what do you think&quot; - any asker is sure interested in this. Stuff like that is basic, it is implied in any question at Programmers, stating it explicitly is just noise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the perspective of those who would answer your question it is useless - drop it, wipe it out, get rid of it - and this cleanup will help you find out what is missing in your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, how would it look if you filter out the noise? Something like,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Options I can think of are either _try to convince them to start from scratch_ or _get on with the current design_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above is fairly poor but at least: 1) you can see that it's poor yourself (which opens a door to thinking how to improve) and 2) as small as it is, it's 100% _substantial_ - there's nothing to throw away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, how it can be improved? Improvements I suggested in [comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6168/would-my-question-be-on-topic-for-programmers#comment16661_6168) quickly posted after you asked here may sound like wisdom obtained through some magic glass, but it really isn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, key aspects of SE posts are **substance, presentation and effort** and I simply evaluate everything I read / write through these. Let's see how it will work at your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way you explained the situation tells that your _presentation_ is all-right (and I think you know it yourself).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Substance_ is there, too - what is left after we removed the noise, is substance, and it _is_ there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The feel that it's still poor indicates that it's _effort_ that is missing and if you take a closer look at cleaned up part, you'll see that effort you are expected to put into considering mentioned options just isn't there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What kind effort is expected? well whenever you deal with options, most basic effort to put is to list and evaluate pros and cons of these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Note, since we are at Stack Exchange, this is not something you could expect answerers to do for you: asking for _list_ part won't fly because [list questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info) aren't welcome, and as for _evaluation_ part, without knowing lots of your concrete details and context, doing this would be, as they say in one of [close reasons](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/close-reasons/info), &quot;too broad&quot;.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding this to your question would cover _effort_ part, the only thing left after that would be to, well, just state the very question, explain what would you want to learn / understand. What would it be - no one can tell you beforehand, since this should be based on your analysis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no magic glass nor magic aspects that would predict what would be outcome of your research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you're done with it though, there will be one _magic thing_ you could do prior to posting. Simply put your text into &quot;Ask question&quot; box and study [similar questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/similar-questions) that get loaded to the right. This trick often works better than plain search and it can give you an insight on how to further improve your question or even, if you are lucky, reveal that there is already an answered question like yours.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25079" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3910" RevisionGUID="015f7380-abf5-480e-b134-a2a58665c73d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question is: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/154794/31260&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...I am not sure if that is a correct way to deal with problem. I think in above mentioned case user is anyway going to change the text, so why not force him while constructing the action?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not quite comfortable with [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/161121/31260). It contains nothing but code and the code does not look self-explanatory to me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     public abstract class Action {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	protected String text = &quot;Default action text&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	protected String toolTip = &quot;Default action tool tip&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	protected String imageURl = &quot;http://myserver.com/images/default.png&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	.... rest of code, I guess setters and getters&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     public class MyAction extends Action {&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction() {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction(String actionText) {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;             setText(actionText);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction(String actionText, String toolTip_) {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;             setText(actionText);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	      setToolTip(toolTip_);	&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction(String actionText, String toolTip_; String imageURL_) {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;             setText(actionText);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	      setToolTip(toolTip_);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	      setImageURL(imageURL_);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I missing something here? Could above be really a valuable answer to the question asked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, answer is removed ([self deleted](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3910/is-this-code-only-answer-ok#comment10991_3910 &quot;according to clarification from moderator&quot;))." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25080" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6458" RevisionGUID="53e4700d-8d26-4163-b07b-ca2297d9a0b0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The Help Center says this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [career advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/590/1204), salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... but it links to an answer that cites this question as being an acceptable [tag:career-development] question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8886/can-someone-find-a-job-as-a-programmer-without-an-education&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [Tag Wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/career-development/info) says this in its body:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; invite the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please note that most career advice questions run the risk of being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed for being too broad or impractical: try to make yours a [good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; subjective&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please also make sure your question has the proper scope. If your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really&#xD;&#xA;&gt; something that uniquely applies to software development and isn't&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![proper scope for question](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; More information about career development questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it says this (not encouraging) in the Tag Wiki Excerpt:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 99% of questions with this tag are off-topic and will be closed. Study&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other questions under this tag closely that aren't closed before&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking your question, if you want any chance of it not being closed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closed questions add up to a possible question-ban disallowing you to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ask further questions. Questions about steps one can take to develop&#xD;&#xA;&gt; one's programming career that require the unique insights of other&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, we have a custom close reason that seems to provide no room for exceptions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.** They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular&#xD;&#xA;&gt; circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how does one identify an on-topic question for this tag?  Do they even exist?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25081" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3925" RevisionGUID="b2f2cb76-5c2f-417c-8a11-1344d194adbc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Last week I posted an [AD][1] for [our Blog][2] and it received the 6 votes needed to run. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was a generic AD, now I am thinking that it would be a good idea to change the AD every time we have a new Blog posting mentioning the Post Name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is it ok to change the AD after it has been voted on?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Would it be better to create a new Template AD and put a comment that the Text will change regularly?** (Creating a new ad for every post seems like abuse even if we could get the votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Lastly, assuming this was allowed, would it work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2635/community-promotion-ads-2012/3905#3905&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25082" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3303" RevisionGUID="e4c55c6f-8a0a-4ac2-9ace-e44da6caac0f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Edit:** Proposal seems to have support, so I've made a [separate meta post][1] to propose this change. The actual proposal put forth has been adjusted a bit based on user feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2) Change the style of how we define site scope**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity. It seems unrealistic to have a comprehensive list of what types of questions are on-topic and what is not, especially since I think our site is best defined by the type of answer needed, not by the question topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So instead of trying to make a list of absolutely everything about programmers and if its on/off topic, I feel we should instead define what makes a question good for this site, which happens to be the type of answer they require.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions can I ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asked should:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; yourself**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to your programming career to stay in one job too long][2].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **They should ask for a single answer, not a list of answers**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    For example, asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer?][3] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list&#xD;&#xA;&gt; will get outdated as time and technology progresses.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a single answer][4] that can only be answered by a programmer. For&#xD;&#xA;&gt; example, asking [What are some good books about development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies?][5] would be closed, however asking for a *specific*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; book with a limited scope, such as [Is there a canonical book on the Agile software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development methodology?][6] is OK.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Should be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    The question should relate to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare&#xD;&#xA;&gt; time. Does that make me a bad developer?][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Has a clear answer can be agreed upon by the majority of programmers**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  [We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][8]. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Don't ask questions about [What &#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/technology should I learn next?][9] or [Is A better than B?][10]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended &#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussions&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Instead, visit our [chat][11] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Should be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  In other words, don't give us your life story with your question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be referenced by any programmer, not just you. Help us maintain our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop the number of &quot;but so and so is on/off topic in the FAQ&quot; comments I see, because the scope of this site is really defined by the answers, not the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some concerns below about this becoming a big wall of text, and I agree. Perhaps we could use [more][12]/[less][13] links like we have in the current FAQ to hide examples unless the user is looking for examples. If we are unable to collapse the text or make this easy to read, we could also just display bullet points that link to meta questions on relevant topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3318/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/12833/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/7859/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://a.b" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25083" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6191" RevisionGUID="152c818a-4a46-4cc7-bad7-0239cbcd5e38" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The recourse for having a post locked is to post on Meta. Now that it's here, all of the mods are notified. The lock is temporary (unfortunately, the options are rather limited, though) and can be lifted early once a resolution is achieved. Continually rolling back valid edits to your post is not constructive, and a lock is the only mechanism available to deal with it, so that an appropriate Meta discussion can happen to reach consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll let other mods and community members weigh in with their thoughts as well, but here are my problems with your edits, even after being warned against them by a long-time and high reputation member of the community and myself, a community moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (the criterion set out in the &quot;Good Subjective vs. Bad Subjective&quot; discussion)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is meta, not relevant to your question. This applies to all questions asked and answers posted on the Stack Exchange network. In essence, it's noise in your question that detracts from what you are trying to ask. It should be edited out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can you provide widely-cited sources to bolster any thoughts on (1) or (2) above, to foster a more thorough discussion of proposed ideas (please do not merely post answers that are purely references to outside sources).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange sites are not suitable for discussions. If you want a discussion, it's best to use a forum, or perhaps a chat room. On Stack Exchange, most sites have their own chat room - the [Programmers chat room is The Whiteboard][1]. You can also make your own once you have sufficient reputation on any site in the network (which you do). Mentioning having a discussion in a question (even if it's not your intent or supported by the rest of the body of the question) tends to attract unwarranted down and close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, answers that are purely links to, citations of, or references to outside resources are already forbidden under our [How to Answer guidelines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer), so there's no need to include the additional &quot;noise&quot; in a post telling people not to do it - it's meta and should be edited out. If questions start attracting bad answers, it can be protected against low reputation users. Down votes and deletion votes can be used to remove any answers that do not meet our expectations and quality guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Are there any definitive or widely cited sources of best practices literature when it comes to these kinds of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Inherently, it is expected that answers leverage a combination of personal experiences and various external references. Asking for sources is not only meta, but makes your question read like a reference request (which are not allowed on Programmers, per [1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5176) [2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5299) [3](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5130) and the other Meta discussions and blog posts they link to. Asking explicitly for resources, even if it's not the full intent of your question, does tend to attract unwarranted down votes and close votes and is inherently part of any question asked on any Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25084" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3307" RevisionGUID="e1e64bc3-0810-4e3b-8eed-aa439189c8a3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Edit**: [Existing proposal][1] for this already exists, so I'm not making a new one. Go vote there to show your support if you'd like to implement this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1.5) Add the difference between Programmers.SE and SO**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The opening sentence should immediately be followed by this, which is one of the most frequently asked questions I have seen from users who participate in the stack exchange network: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[What's the difference between Programmers and StackOverflow?][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are standing at a whiteboard or discussing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; design concepts with your team, come to Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are sitting at a keyboard and writing code, you should go&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to StackOverflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If users do not read any further, they should at least have a general idea of who and what the site is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1838/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/173/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25085" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6463" RevisionGUID="bc0bd717-92fd-4e3f-88d9-5062e8856c47" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While general approach to the tag has been thoroughly addressed in [another answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6459/31260 &quot;here&quot;), I would like to focus on a question used as an &quot;acceptable&quot; example in Help Center. As far as I can see, in its current shape it does more harm than good, by misleading the readers into couple of wrong beliefs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Please answer for your region/city/country only&quot;** - this part of the question makes readers believe that poll / [list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info) questions are acceptable. The very presence of this part makes low quality answers look legitimate and acceptable:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Personally I wouldn't hire someone without a masters degree, unless they could document some relevant experience and had very good references. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* In some minor companies in my country (Brazil) you can get a job, but due to some laws you'll get difficulty to be promoted, because to work in some positions, the laws require some education degrees.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* I would hire that developer if he can show me the his abilities and prove that he is the one that my job needs through interview directly. Of course, it's difficult if his resume does not show any interested information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers quoted above are purely opinionated, brief &quot;polling entries&quot;, lacking an explanation and effort, making very wrong impressions on what kind posts are welcome at Programmers. Advertising posts like these through Help Center looks harmful and misleading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Can someone / Would someone even consider** part of the question shifts it into Yes/No territory with [all its known issues](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/183177/165773 &quot;discussed eg here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is not just a 'get an answer for me' place, it's &quot;Produce quality content that is useful for people who follow&quot;. In the case of your question, the second part is lacking...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;When asking a yes/no question there are one of two possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. You really want a yes/no answer. If this is the case, and you don't need anything else to answer your question then it means the answers will be inherently low quality. An answer that only says &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; (in addition to not meeting the minimum length) would be of very low quality. SO answers expect more.&#xD;&#xA;2. You don't actually want a yes/no answer, in which case your real question is not actually a yes/no question, and you're hoping that people will determine what your real question is. For example, someone might ask, &quot;Can I do [...]?&quot; when what they really meant to ask was, &quot;How can I do [...]?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Almost all yes/no questions I've seen fall into case 2; they should be edited into a question that isn't really asking for just a yes/no, it should be asking to explain something. (Even if it has a yes/no in there somewhere.) Note that just adding &quot;Explain&quot; at the end isn't really a good way to go about this; you should refactor the question on a more fundamental level..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25086" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3950" RevisionGUID="15d03076-d699-4720-9891-93e70c56f97a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The only interview questions I can think of that are unique to our profession are actually technical / conceptual questions (thus on topic on SO / ProgSE) that just happened to be asked during an interview. The rest are either off topic by virtue of not being unique to software development, or very non constructive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I don't think we have a clear stance on interview questions, and the majority of them is open, we currently have [374 open ones][1] and [108 closed ones][2]. Almost 4 out of 5 are open, I think we really need to closely inspect the tag before completely denouncing an entire category of questions. A lot of them might just be mis-tagged [interview] when they are only tangentially related to the interview process, and obviously there might be others that slipped through the cracks and need to be closed. And there might be some that are truly about the process, and are absolutely on topic (although I doubt it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's clean up the tag first, and worry about the FAQ later. Worth noting that cleaning up [interview] was [first (?) mentioned more than a year ago][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Binterview%5D%20closed:0&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Binterview%5D%20closed:1&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25087" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3309" RevisionGUID="de54a37b-072d-4db1-a275-2b8c199ed6c2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="From our [FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions should I not ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is very open ended, doesn't present an actual problem, and the only motivation behind it appears to be a discussion as OP appears to have already made up their mind. There is nothing inherently wrong with the question or questions of similar characteristics, they just don't fit the Q&amp;A philosophy and format of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [Is Programmers.SE a discussion board or a Q&amp;A board?][3] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/433/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25088" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6478" RevisionGUID="b46256e1-c2f9-41b9-b89d-a298cdc0ea71" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I visit PSE once in a full moon, and all I see is closed questions, most marked with down votes and close votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seriously, with this ratio of negative votes towards questions and unpleasant welcome to new users, I had to ask this question. Does the rules of PSE are only well known to its moderators or peoples with high reputations? or they are just bullying here and making life of new visitors miserable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How much does PSE wants people to come over and share their problem? If every question is treated like bullying the questioner then what's the use of having an open question/answer platform?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reading few answers in meta I have decided not to return to PSE until next election.  The scope is confusing, Bully Dictators hold the power, new members are treated as &quot;*you piece of crap came here to ask? lemme give you some treat*&quot;. This place was bully-land few years ago, I found its same still. These answers gives more info about PSE as a whole:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5676/79803&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5681/79803&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5686/79803" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25089" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3956" RevisionGUID="26c517b2-080a-42f3-845e-db8f99340b05" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="No, we should not outlaw all interview questions in the FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Career questions are allowed providing they apply to programmers specifically.][1] This includes interview questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mark Trapp phrased this well in [his answer][2] to another post about career questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; directly to software development; general career advice questions with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; no relation to software development or where software development is a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; minor facet of the question are off-topic. A good way to test this is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, our [faq][3] even contains an image to explain this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this particular case, evaluating a candidates ability to read code is not something that applies to &quot;All Careers&quot; or &quot;Just You&quot;, so I don't see a problem with this question being on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1165/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/590/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xEI0s.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25090" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6193" RevisionGUID="bc04b3f0-4723-4015-82c0-fdb4a0613324" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'll put my cards on the table.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I didn't vote to close your question, but if it was open when I noticed it, I would've voted to close it as 'Unclear What You're Asking' because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I'm not sure which problem you're trying solve.&#xD;&#xA;2. It's difficult to imagine a tool that could do what you're asking for.&#xD;&#xA; 1. And if you're looking for a tool, then we should close it as Off-Topic because resource requests are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But then I read this Meta question, and it seems like you tried to make some edits to rescue the question. That is, before the question got locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I reconsidered my position.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But then I saw [this comment][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Looking at the edit history of your post, it appears that you engaged in a series of repeated rollbacks, including the roll-back of an edit that a moderator made in an attempt to save your question by making it on-topic for the site. Your post getting locked is the risk you take when you engage in rollback wars, and when the mod locks your post, they get to decide which revision gets locked. – Robert Harvey 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And now I'm more convinced than ever that this question should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Also, in the future, I think you should try to be a little less verbose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like you, I graduated from an American school system that asked me to fill up blue books with essay after essay. But in the real world, [less is more][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please try to focus your questions on the core of your problem. Please don't take the scenic route.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hope this helps!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per [@EMS' latest comment][3], I must give him this: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. He has a genuine problem (although it needs to be reworded).&#xD;&#xA;2. [@EMS][4] is exactly the type of user that we need to retain on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;  1. He puts effort into his posts.&#xD;&#xA;  2. And he's genuinely curious about the rules because he'd like to follow them so that he can get answers to his questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@EMS: I regret that I cannot unilaterally unlock your question and rehabilitate it, but I hope that others (particularly moderators) will be able to give you the advice that you need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hope this helps!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6190/what-recourse-is-there-for-a-post-that-is-locked-for-reasons-that-one-does-not-u/6193#comment16728_6190&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://getnashty.com/write-less&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6190/what-recourse-is-there-for-a-post-that-is-locked-for-reasons-that-one-does-not-u/6193#comment16748_6193&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/103181/ems" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25091" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3325" RevisionGUID="04c1a50f-a1d1-4286-99ce-481c0095cf4e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At Rev 5, there was a major edit to question text, based on discussion in [comments made to this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3348/31260).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of Rev 6, question has been reopened. Reference: [question timeline](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/139482/timeline).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Below applies to question prior to revision 5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After consideration of both the questions and answers and taking into account the [mission statements][1] and [About page for Stack Exchange][2], the [Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions][3], voting and flagging, I have closed the question regarding [why statements are terminated by semicolons in most programming languages][4] pending a further discussion here on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the mission statement of Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We build libraries of high-quality questions and answers, focused on the most important topics in each area of expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the About page of Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We welcome questions that are clear and specific, representing real problems that you face&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm having difficulty seeing how this qualifies as an important topic to professional software developers, nor how it relates to a real problem being faced by any software development professional. Perhaps if it focused more on the aspects of programming language design that led to the use of special characters and why a semicolon might be more appropriate than another character. However, this is not emphasized in the question nor in the majority of the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reviewing the Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions, I scored it a 4 out of 6. I gave it credit for inspiring answers that explain why, generating lengthy and detailed answers, having a constructive tone, and can be (in theory anyway) backed up with facts and references. It is doing very poorly in the category of reliable references being generated. I was not able to find a way how it was inviting the sharing of experiences nor how it was contributing to a problem being solved (or how it was more than mindless fun). To me, a score of 4/6 is only about 67% - the equivalent of a C.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I looked at the answers, the top answer was a mostly discussion of the English language, with a small component discussing parsing and syntax of languages. Other top answers discussed the history of programming languages and other options for terminating statements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts and comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139482/why-are-statements-in-most-programming-languages-terminated-by-semicolons#question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25093" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6504" RevisionGUID="bb8fa9c5-46ce-4060-802b-bc754343ecc3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think that, generally, design review type questions are on-topic. However, the problem is how broad they are. My concern for this type of question is that most of them may be more suited to a discussion environment. I do think that there are good design review questions, but they need to be clear and specific and not soliciting general feedback. Specifically, in the question you linked to, this section has me most concerned over its viability:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm looking for a general review of my OO design, use of UML, and use&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of C++ features. I especially just want to know if I'm doing anything&#xD;&#xA;&gt; considerably wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Any sort of feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would expect a good design review question to focus on a particular aspect of the design (or the representation of the design, which would also be valid). I'm not sure this particular question does that well. But it's not off-topic, just too broad or unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Borrowing from [gnat's answer][1] (which borrows from [the guidelines used at Code Review][2]):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does your question contain design? Design should be embedded in the body of the post and not linked to. Design notation should be explained to ensure that it is well understood, especially if non-standard notations are used. Design should contain text, images and diagrams, and perhaps some examples of code if necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do you want the design to be good design, (i.e. not design-golfing, obfuscation, or similar)? We are practical people on Programmers, and many of us are professional software developers. We answer questions in the context of building production-ready systems that are understandable, maintainable, and meet other functional and quality requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To the best of your knowledge, does the design work? Your design should at least be functional. You may be seeking input on improving your design, or perhaps correcting issues that are preventing you from achieving your quality requirements (such as performance or testability). However, your design should work and achieve the functional requirements of what you are building.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have you identified specific areas of concern in your design? Simply dropping in a functional design with details isn't sufficient. What aspects of your design need improving? Are you having trouble testing your design (at any level of testing)? Is your design not performing as well as it should or needs to (and in what ways is it under performing)? Are you having trouble scaling your design? You should come with a small number of specific problems that you are trying to get resolved.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you  answered yes to all the above questions, your question is on-topic for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; design review at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6505/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25094" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3327" RevisionGUID="8a785c1e-a594-48e9-8a6b-5e4a87e651d6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm torn. On one hand it's a clear-cut question which is related to programming and has some interesting answers, but on the other hand, I don't see it as being constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Ryathal][1] made a good point that a few flags is not uncommon with the question having over 4k views and so many votes, particularly with some of the strong opinions over the site's scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think I would rather see the question open, and a meta post made to ask higher-rep users to evaluate the question and vote to close if they think it should be closed. Once it gets a few close votes, then close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really want to try to get away from the stigma this site seems to have that our moderators are our janitors or enforcers, because that really isn't what they're for. They're for handling exceptions that the community itself can't handle. I'd rather train the community to start evaluating questions like this than to have our moderators have to handle every borderline question themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3325/is-the-question-about-statements-being-terminated-by-semicolons-appropriate-for#comment8786_3325" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25095" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6278" RevisionGUID="b83aef60-9526-41d7-a3a8-a3ef19aab74a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="First and foremost, [Stack Exchange is not a forum][1].  There's a really good blog post on this that I can't find right now.  The tl;dr version is that forums have a terrible signal to noise ratio.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange exists [to build a library of high-quality questions and answers][2].  Oddly enough, solving any one user's problem isn't as high a priority as one might expect.  The priority is to collect general / reusable questions and answers that benefit hundreds or thousands of people who have the same issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most (all?) SE sites have [chat][3].  I haven't used it much, but if you need to have a conversation, that's the place to do it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Wiki [isn't always the right answer][4].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/92107/218240&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/333/64132" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25096" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3978" RevisionGUID="bc2026e1-775c-42f4-97d9-3d9bc4049e1c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="From the [FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That part of the FAQ is common for all Stack Exchange sites, unfortunately your question is too open ended to fit the Q&amp;A philosophy and format. We can only guess when it comes to popularity alone, and that simply doesn't work for the site. It might be a great question to ask in [The Whiteboard][2], our chat room. I know most of the times it looks abandoned, but usually not constructive questions are excellent conversation starters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the C question, personally I'm on the fence, it does have somewhat of a technical core, and can be discussed on technical terms (and indeed it has, for the most part), but it's also very broad and has all the signs of a not constructive question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Language comparison elements (and that rarely ends well),&#xD;&#xA; 1. Couple of pointless answers,&#xD;&#xA; 1. Couple of extremely pointless answers (since deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it has survived without a single close vote or flag, and I see little point in mod closing it now that it's run its circle. If it starts attracting pointless answers and / or close votes it might be a whole different story, but for now I'm letting it sleep. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly I'd like to point out that it makes a lot more sense to concentrate on your own question's merits when contesting a closure than pointing us to other similar questions. It might just be the case that the similar questions escaped our attention, and the only thing you'll achieve is getting them closed as well. The community moderates itself vigorously, but some questions simply find their way in through the cracks. [Two wrong posts don't make a right][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3540/two-wrong-posts-dont-make-a-right" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25097" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3352" RevisionGUID="ccc68d40-0f62-4568-b2fa-6782002e3f5f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[tag:software-engineering] was recently cleaned up, through the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative][1]. Obviously since we [already identified it as a tag that doesn't belong][2] and we went through the trouble of cleaning it up, there is no point in keeping it around anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we please kill it now? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3263/structured-tag-cleanup-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3094/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25098" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6557" RevisionGUID="2f463c55-0609-4a1e-b29f-524631ce02fd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I believe I understand the distinction, as covered in this question: (https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is whether this really leads to a practical distinction, or whether they just blend, or whether the division is an unnecessary division of resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an example, I follow the language-lawyer, programming-language and language-design tags on SO, but they sound more like they belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The result is that I have about 2800 reputation points for doing almost exactly the same thing, but split between two sites. It would be nice if they were combined somehow. For me at least the division is unhelpful." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25099" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6559" RevisionGUID="82bed7e3-f702-404f-ac50-dde223e0d4f4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You've probably seen it [somewhere](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136609/repository-of-useful-pro-forma-comments)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sharing your research helps everyone. Tell us what you've tried and why &#xD;&#xA;it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time &#xD;&#xA;to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, &#xD;&#xA;and most of all it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer! &#xD;&#xA;Also see [how to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does this mean? Why do people keep asking for research? Knowing this, how can I ask a better question and avoid [downvotes](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6484/31260)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25100" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6283" RevisionGUID="ecdd986b-b595-4c72-868c-958a2b6f7612" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Related:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3799/the-coding-for-charity-q-any-hope-of-ever-being-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/157022/coding-for-good-or-charity&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47558/how-can-programming-ability-be-used-to-help-people-in-poverty&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How should we deal with questions that are attached to a specific time or event?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The one that is currently in the spotlight is http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218178/are-there-any-practical-ways-people-with-computer-skills-can-contribute-help-to which was originally asked as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Are there any practical ways people with computer skills can contribute help to the relief effort of typhoon Haiyan. Really simple question, is there any answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm putting this on Meta in an attempt to head off the associated comments in the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25101" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3354" RevisionGUID="a51c1e55-fe66-4797-9720-3b4c5512abd1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Related:**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  [Request for comment: structured tag cleanups](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Structured Tag Cleanup — Call for proposals #1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Welcome to the third structured tag cleanup! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the voting in the [call for proposals](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1), the second round goes to the [tag:software-development] tag, with 282 current questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tag has been renamed to [stci-software-development](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci-software-development), which hopefully should prevent people from adding any more questions to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ground rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of this cleanup is to systematically clean up the software development tag without causing disruption to the rest of the site. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [deletion candidates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3357/25936) below and see if there's a way to save any of the questions before they go gently into that good night through [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits). At the end of the clean up period, any questions not sufficiently improved will be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [merge candidates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3356/25936) to see if can be merged into one question. If they shouldn't be, revise the questions to demonstrate how it's not in any way like the question it's been duplicated to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [closure candidates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3355/25936) list to see if you agree with what others have identified as being out of the site's scope. If you agree, vote to close. If you don't agree, use [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to address the problems the question has and bring it back into scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [currently open questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bstci-software-development%5D+closed%3A0&amp;submit=search) and see which ones do not fit our site scope. Vote to close them and add them to the closure candidates list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Improve the leftover questions by copyediting, fixing spelling, flow, adding clearer titles, etc. while replacing the `stci-software-development` tag with something more meaningful&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:web-development] for questions relating to web development,&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:mobile] for questions relating to mobile development,&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:architecture] for questions relating to system level architecture, documenting architecture, view models, architectural quality, and product line development.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:design] for questions relating to software design.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:documentation] for questions about documentation. &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:requirements] for questions about requirements engineering and documenting requirements.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:testing] for questions about unit, integration, smoke, and system testing using white box or black box techniques.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:maintenance] for questions about maintaining legacy software systems.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:quality] for questions about process quality, product quality, code quality, or measuring the quality of any of these.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:education] for questions about formal education, self-teaching, and self-improvement as a software developer.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:metrics] for questions about software metrics.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:patterns] for questions on design patterns.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:agile] for questions on agile methodologies.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:project-management] for questions on project management.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ...and other, more specific tags as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Finally, and this is perhaps the most important of all the rules: **do not just remove the stci-software-engineering tag without improving the question and its answers.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### End date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This round of cleanups will end on **Sunday, April 8th at 04:00 UTC.** At that time, all the default actions will be done: deletions, merges, closures, and such. If [tag:stci-software-development] is not empty by then, it'll be renamed back to [tag:software-development] and be saved for later rounds of cleanups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is empty, we will move on to getting it blacklisted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; These are (mostly) the same suggestions as for the [software-engineering] cleanup - I felt they make sense for [software-development] and couldn't find any other tags that would be common candidates for [software-development] questions. If you have suggestions, please edit them in.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25102" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6564" RevisionGUID="b4bae104-9a6a-4f28-90d0-d1032b7ab054" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm sure there's always going to be overlap - look at the issues around certain Programmers questions that could be on The Workplace. The answer is not to infer that, because some questions are in the grey area between sites, that then all questions must be in the same grey area, and merging sites is required.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do think the &quot;branding&quot; between the sites needs to be more defined - SO for questions about the implementation of technology, Programmers for questions about concepts. It might be easier to define SO better - or market it as such, rather than try to define the rather more vague Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That question [(difference between the two][1]) has a *really* good answer, that should make it clear - and I'd say the old tags you mention should be on here, if they weren't more than a little bit grey.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow?rq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25103" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4012" RevisionGUID="e57eca26-693b-4a7d-9ce6-bfd45bae3e4d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The downvote arrow tooltip says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Latest questions with negative score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Where can I get practice questions?][1] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No research effort, tick! Unclear, tick! Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Apple Developer Enterprise Program?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't know what this one is about. Skip!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Relocation to USA or Germany][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone please delete this. Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Is “Application Programming Interface” a bad name?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At first I thought the OP was quoting a reputable source, then I realized he's quoting himself, so there's no actual research effort. There might be, but I'm not going to read his blog to find out. Would have downvoted if this one was at 0 or -1, skipping it now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Agile Unified Process][5] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No research effort, tick! Pointless question, tick! Downvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Which design pattern to use when using ORM?][6] (one of your examples)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Extremely broad, unanswerable, uninteresting. Useful to anyone but the OP? No! Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Learn WinRT or Unity 3d?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What the hell is this I don't even... Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Good practices for large scale development/delivery of software][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meh. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Learning iPhone Development][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Which are the basic steps for learning Iphone development?` Ah, Google must be broken for this guy! Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [CSS/JS frameworks for Android Holo UI][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Android Holo UI _might_ be a specific enough parameters for this one to not be yet another &quot;pick for me, please&quot; question. Meh. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Applying for MS CS with an un-related Bachelor's Degree][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meh. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [How to select li range and move them inside div][12] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flagged for deletion. OP posted an off topic question here by mistake, a moderator explained why it's off topic and had to be closed, OP seems to have understood why his question is off topic. No point in keeping this around anymore. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Can jQuery be used server side?][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Profoundly confused question, OP doesn't seem to have even visited jQuery's website once. No research effort, tick! Unclear, tick! Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Video Lectures for the book “Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective”][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't even... Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Fitting it together, database, reporting, applications in C#][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too long to read. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Finding work as a college student][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too long to read. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't agree with you there's a problem. I'm very new around here, but I can tell you that one of the things that lured me in was [the &quot;promise&quot; that this site is about &quot;professional programmers&quot;][17]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for **professional programmers** who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've even written about this, [on a different but related Meta discussion][18]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers is not supposed to be a beginners site, and a lot of closed questions come from beginners. I don't think there is anything we can do here it is only natural that the site will have more closed questions than others. I like the advanced aspect of the site, and the work that is being done in the disciplined aspect of it, questions like this one should be the norm not the exception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a newer user, representing no one but myself, this is what I have to say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I _rarely_ upvote a negatively scored question. Not because I go with the flow, but because usually I find the negative score justified.&#xD;&#xA; - I like it that Programmers is trying to be a bit more disciplined than other sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am _not_ a professional programmer, bit young for that, but I have learned a lot since the first day I've joined the site. One of the more important lessons: A professional environment is tough, and it takes skills to survive in it. The scrutiny poorly researched questions face has made me a far better researcher, to the point that I now find 99% of the answers I'm looking for on Stack Overflow or Programmers just by searching.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps you want more of a &quot;let's all hold hands and pat ourselves in the back&quot; kind of site. I don't see anything wrong with that, but it wouldn't be *a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll close with [Gilles' conclusion][19], with which I agree 100%:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So my provisional conclusion is that there is no problem with good questions being downvoted. There are mediocre questions that are downvoted, which is as it should be. If you think that's the case, give examples of good questions that have downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164376/where-can-i-get-practice-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164370/apple-developer-enterprise-program&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164368/relocation-to-usa-or-germany&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/164365/51770&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164355/agile-unified-process&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164342/which-design-pattern-to-use-when-using-orm&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164326/learn-winrt-or-unity-3d&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164324/good-practices-for-large-scale-development-delivery-of-software&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164315/learning-iphone-development&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164311/css-js-frameworks-for-android-holo-ui&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164310/applying-for-ms-cs-with-an-un-related-bachelors-degree&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164298/how-to-select-li-range-and-move-them-inside-div&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164292/can-jquery-be-used-server-side&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164288/video-lectures-for-the-book-computer-systems-a-programmers-perspective&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164285/fitting-it-together-database-reporting-applications-in-c&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/164274/finding-work-as-a-college-student&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3561/51770&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4010/51770" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25104" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6290" RevisionGUID="8d182217-f8c8-46fc-b842-d61702bf2190" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="i understand in stackoverflow, questions are closed as &quot;off topic&quot; &quot;not constructive&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;that is why we come here!! /* programmers */ should be alot more liberal as to the type of questions allowed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;example: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125796/comparison-of-ides-for-c-and-c-development-on-linux-kdevelop-eclipse-netbea?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;this is a perfect question for programmers. this place is to heavily moded. chill&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*******************&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2794/dangers-of-too-eager-moderation?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;even my meta question gets down-voted... no wonder this place is not too popular. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25105" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4018" RevisionGUID="245e3736-761c-4384-b3e4-840cf67946bc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've been talking with him through email, and when I asked him why he left P.SE he said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;I left for the exact same reason you wrote on your P.SE profile.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(He also said it was OK to share his thoughts in an answer here, and that he's not going to bother posting an answer here because he's gone for good, but he's pretty sure everyone knows why he left)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for [my profile][1], well it's not very flattering because I wrote it one day while I was frustrated towards P.SE. My feelings haven't changed, but normally I would have kept them to myself&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If someone makes a Q&amp;A site for Programmers to ask questions and get&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers from other Programmers about any issue related to their career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; choice or self-identity as a programmer, let me know. I'd love to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participate in such a site again, and will help you promote it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; As for this site, I'm done with it unless something changes. I feel&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its changed too far from the original programming resource it once&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was, and the current moderation style is not for me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I dislike that so much valuable information gets deleted for the sake&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of &quot;maintaining a clean site&quot;, dislike the way many users are treated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (particularly new ones), and dislike the way the overall culture of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this site has been changing from a community of programmers out to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; teach and learn from each other, to an insular group of programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elitists (of course this isn't all of you, or probably even most of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you. Its just a large percentage of the more active/vocal users who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; take part in running the site).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anyways, I'm not interested in helping to support this site anymore,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; although I will be happy to take part in any initiatives to changes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope the powers-that-be will take this into account when deciding future policies for a site, as Pierre is not the first one of our top users to quit the site. I can confirm that `DeveloperArt` left for the same reason (been talking to him via email too), and I've seen many other high-rep names quietly disappear over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your 2nd question, yes [it's possible to recover a deleted account][2] although according to MSO it requires &quot;Jeff-Level&quot; access&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/22568/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25106" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6315" RevisionGUID="f2f7cef7-78b4-4fa4-9562-f862f941c7f5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's the time of the year again, namely it is December 2013, and so we shall now refresh our Community Promotion Ads for the new year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What are Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA; - cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA; - anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we reset the ads every year?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be **220 x 250 pixels**&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently **6**) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/ads/display/6315" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25107" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6597" RevisionGUID="ecaa15ba-54ec-4598-9849-bd1436641d1e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per my understanding, for a while there was a sort of informal agreement to protect questions that are going to be featured at Ars Technica. Recently [this approach has been challenged](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/protecting-ars &quot;in Whiteboard chat&quot;), so I would like to have a dedicated meta discussion to sort this out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does it make sense to protect such questions as soon as we learn about coming exposure at Ars Technica or it is better to stick with approach designed in 2010 for Stack Overflow and Super User - that is, protect when there is &quot;a lot of drive-by noise answers&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO - Feb '11) [For 15k+ users: Guidelines on Protecting Questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/78764/165773)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Jeff offered more information on [why post protection was implemented and what he expected it to be used for](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/new-protected-question-status/) in his blog.  This was when only moderators had this power, but the same reasoning applies to 15k users who can now protect posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (SE blog - Jun '10) [New Protected Question Status](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/new-protected-question-status/)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **if you see a question that is attracting a lot of drive-by noise answers, please flag it for moderator attention. We’ll turn on protection.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those interested in more details about questions we discuss can find links to them in [this feed](http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/feed/) or in [edits history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/39006/samthebrand?tab=activity) of [SE community evangelist](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6200/can-we-give-the-community-evangelist-something-more-notable-to-make-suggested-ed). Some details of 40 questions featured so far are provided [in the 1st revision of this question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/6597/1 &quot;find these under 'For your convenience...'&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25108" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4030" RevisionGUID="617f6853-ed13-472d-b963-102991d543b3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Programmers, as well as Stack Overflow have their own areas of concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are details in the different FAQ sections of each site - questions get downvotes in these sites for many different reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Question may be off topic (as detailed in the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq))&#xD;&#xA; - It may be a _bad_ question (that is, very unclear)&#xD;&#xA; - A question could be starting an argument (again, against the FAQ)&#xD;&#xA; - It may be impossible to answer (again, against the FAQ)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People vote to say that they find problems with the question - downvoting is our mechanism to identify questions that do not belong.&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25109" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6353" RevisionGUID="2eb64c76-fee6-4cb7-976b-9bcd23d2d5c8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question is partly inspired by [this question][1].  The difference is that this question doesn't care about &quot;how&quot; to create a good custom close reason.  This question is to identify the good, already-in-use custom close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of the reason to collect these custom close reasons is captured in [this question][2].  That question beseeches our kindly SE overlords for additional off-topic custom close reasons. Regrettably, the more than [reasonable response][3] boiled down to &quot;demonstrate which ones are being commonly used.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But we end up with a chicken-and-egg problem because using variants with similar phrasing makes it difficult to search for them and generate usage metrics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And [this question][4] demonstrates that others in the community see a need for additional custom close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So this question has a two-fold purpose:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Identify and assemble the in-use custom close reasons&#xD;&#xA;2. Provide a repository so others can re-use these close reasons and provide consistency in close reason messages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6251/how-can-i-write-a-good-custom-close-message&#xD;&#xA;[2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6172/can-the-number-of-custom-close-reasons-on-programmers-be-expanded&#xD;&#xA;[3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6187/53019&#xD;&#xA;[4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6270/53019" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25110" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6603" RevisionGUID="3ea79d88-882d-44d5-af8f-4db5650eb43c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding the word &quot;historically&quot; to a question doesn't make the question any more meaningful or on-topic, any more than adding the phrase [&quot;as a programmer&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2971/community-perception-of-programmers-se-the-stackoverflow-landfill/2973#comment7560_2973) makes it more relevant to programmers.  Asking what someone thought about something *in the past* rather than today doesn't make it any less opinion-based.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What matters is whether someone is able to *cite their sources.*  If a person can demonstrate that they had first-hand knowledge of the decision-making process, or can point to an Internet post from an authoritative source that describes the decision making process, *that* is what makes the post less opinion-based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question that merely asks for proof or citations is off-topic, it being primarily a search request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25111" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6371" RevisionGUID="ca3c46bc-b070-4b2c-8a23-fd616f51a3ff" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Every day we still get lots of questions on PSE which are immediately put on hold because of one of the standard closing reasons (asking for career or education advice, asking for an off-site resource and so on...) The posters (which are almost always site newbies, making their first or second post) seem not to be aware of the part of the FAQ stating which questions are not welcome here. I suspect lots of them just don't know the FAQ (well some of them may have read the FAQ and ignored it either, but I assume that's only a small portion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how can we improve that situation and encourage people to read the FAQ first? For example, may it be feasible that whenever one makes a first posting here, he will get a polite  information screen, showing him a link to the FAQ and asking him that (since he is making his first post) he should please double check wether his question fulfills those requirements? Or do you expect that such a site modification would be useless, because lots of people would still ignore the site rules, even when getting a pop-up screen telling them the rules right in from of them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: I guess the link to the &quot;about&quot; page for new users mentioned here in the comments seems not provide the relevant information to new users quickly or clearly enough. For example, have a look at [this post two days ago][1] - the first comment from the OP under the accepted answer was &quot;Where is this FAQ?&quot;. Looks like a &quot;TL;DR&quot; effect to me. Any ideas how to improve that situation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25112" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4089" RevisionGUID="0eb8d91f-621f-4f84-a3c4-7be46230b3b3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's a very interesting question, and I'm a bit disappointed we couldn't find a way to keep it constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Minutes after the question was posted, one of our most senior members (by reputation) detected its [not constructive nature][1] and flagged it, asking for the &quot;insufficient explanation&quot; post notice (that's still visible on the question). I saw the flag seconds later, while examining the question and debating whether I should close it or not. I decided to add the post notice, hoping answerers would take it into consideration and not just answer for the sake of answering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Few hours later I checked back, read the five or six answers that were posted at the time, and again hovered over the close button. There were a couple of answers that completely missed the point of the question, and the whole thread was starting to feel like a typical not constructive one. Again, I didn't close it, as the two technically inaccurate answers were getting downvotes _and_ polite comments explaining what was wrong with them, and I was hoping the answerers would get the point. And they did, and removed their answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I checked back a third time, there were no flags, only one close vote, three good answers and a great one. At the time it seemed that we had salvaged the question, and decided to share it around, as I typically do with all questions I find extremely interesting. And it exploded, 14.4K views, 20 answers (+3 deleted ones). Unfortunately the later answers are quite poor (imho) and repetitive, I have no idea why people kept answering a question that was already sufficiently answered (again, imho), but they did. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps I should have closed the question right when I first saw it (minutes after it was posted), or when the flag asking for the post notice appeared (it was a good hint that someone else thought the question was attractive to poor answers). My spider sense was tingling every time I checked back, but until the last time (when the question was already closed), there seemed to be good reasons to let it open for at least a while more, and since there were no flags and I only spotted a single close vote, I happily reverted to user mode for this one instead of dropping the mod hammer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But right now, the question has more poor answers than good ones, and lots of off topic(ish) discussion in comments. We didn't really manage to pull this one off, and I probably should have protected answerers from wasting their time by closing the question early on. We can theorize for hours on how the question could work, but in practice it didn't and it did generate debate, arguments, polling, and extended discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There might be ways to accommodate and protect such questions, but we haven't found them yet. Yes, the question is extremely interesting, and perhaps on a different day it might have attracted a whole different crowd and a very limited set of amazing answers, but right now it's a typical not constructive thread, with tons of off topic / not constructive elements in answers and in comments. Shame it turned into a crapfest, but it did, and unfortunately I can't think of anything we could do to salvage it now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4088/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25114" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6407" RevisionGUID="36e92a50-5f4c-466d-91e1-26efa853f9b3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Did you read the [custom close reason](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6276/31260 &quot;taken from here&quot;)?  It describes in detail why we think these kinds of questions are unsuitable, and provides a link to a Stack Exchange blog entry that applies *to the entire network.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;name that thing&quot; question. &quot;Name that thing&quot; are bad questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close reason highlights an important goal of the Stack Exchange network: questions should be useful for everyone that has an interest in the subject matter, not just to the person asking them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25115" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6652" RevisionGUID="51b86200-8c30-4f8d-a4b7-f415766008a8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; My first and only question on this site has been closed. I've a fair amount of rep on SO and I know how things work here. Before asking it I have read the FAQ and the What topics can I ask about here? section. I'm fairly sure my question fits the &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; or even &quot;software engineering management&quot; sections.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't agree that your question fits as the site is defined. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, I'm concerned about topicality. It is about a methodology and process, but if you continue reading the [&quot;what topics can I ask about&quot; page][1], there's a diagram that shows that questions asked here must be unique to software developers. Why does this question require the expertise of a professional software developer to answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it doesn't fit that, why not migrate it to The Workplace? The next problem that I have with it is that the question is too broad. You're polling for opinions. The [&quot;don't ask&quot; Help Center page][2] addresses this. Of the questions that you ask, there is no way to measure the rightness or wrongness of how other people use a tool. If you focused on your current process and quantified how you wanted to improve it, you may be able to get a good question out of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the current content is best suited to an extended discussion. Both Programmers and The Workplace have chat rooms - [The Whiteboard][3] for Programmers and [The Water Cooler][4] for The Workplace. The chat rooms are good for either discussing topics with other people or for getting help from site regulars on how to refine your question so that it fits on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So let's look at some of your other &quot;top questions&quot; that you have concerns with and address those, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What technical details should a programmer of a web application consider before making the site public?][5] -- definitely too broad. There is no definite, finite list of things. The answer depends on the language, technology, libraries.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to note is that this question was asked 5 years ago, on Stack Overflow, before Programmers existed. This site has had a long history, with some turmoil in the early days. You can read about it [in more detail here][6], but the short story is that the original definition of Programmers didn't work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second thing to note is that this question is locked. Stack Exchange introduced a new [Collaborative Lock functionality][7] and this was [the first question that it was applied to on Programmers][8]. Before the Collaborative Lock was introduced, the [Historical Lock][9] was applied to the question, which prevented all changes to anything. The reason this was done was because the question wasn't a good fit, but it had a lot of useful information that should not be lost. The question was viewed many times, had many incoming links from outside sites, came up in Google searches frequently - deleting it would have been a disservice to the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report. How can I convince him that it's a bad idea?][10] -- offtopic. Should be in the workplace SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could build an argument about migration to The Workplace, but The Workplace was still in beta. Admittedly, it was a public beta. The norm is to minimize migrations to beta sites so that they can develop their own culture as a community. Unless the question is very much off-topic on the site where it was posted and very much on-topic on the beta site, it shouldn't be migrated to a beta site. If this question was asked today, I highly suspect that it would be migrated since I could argue that it applies to more than just software developers, but anyone designing or building a product.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Where did the notion of “one return only” come from?][11] -- it's not a programming question. It could be asked on history, if anywhere. Don't know how this didn't get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about the history of software development [are on-topic here][12]. I'm not sure how you can argue that it's not related to software development, since it's about a programming construct. Would people outside of the software development community care about this question? Probably not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code — what now?][13] -- could it be any more too broad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're right on this one. It's not a good question, but it does have historical significance. It has a large number of views, and many questions are closed as a duplicate of this one. I put a historical lock on the question so the content isn't lost, but to discourage people from using this as an example of the kind of question that can be asked here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][14] -- opinion based as hell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're right again on this one. This isn't a good question. However, it has a very large number of views. I treated this just as if someone had flagged it and put a Historical Content lock on the question. It's really not a good question and can't be used as an example of what to ask, but given the number of views and the content in the answers, it falls into the same category as the first question you pointed out. Closing and deleting it would be a disservice to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overall, I think you should read through some Meta posts. Maybe jump into The Whiteboard and chat with the regulars to get a better feel for this community. We have a certain culture here and a certain expectation for questions and answers. Coming from other sites, it can be a bit of a shock - many SE sites have their own expectations and standards and nuances as to how they work. One closed question isn't that big of a deal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/182566/this-lock-notice-is-partly-misleading/182572#182572&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5991/new-lock-type-for-truly-collaborative-questions-and-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154733/my-boss-decided-to-add-a-person-to-blame-field-to-every-bug-report-how-can-i&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118703/where-did-the-notion-of-one-return-only-come-from&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5633/is-programming-history-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48698/i-dont-program-in-my-spare-time-does-that-make-me-a-bad-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25116" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3356" RevisionGUID="e0800366-b079-46ca-9ead-dc963fee05dd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Merge candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions closed as duplicates to see if they can be merged. If they shouldn't be merged, please use [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to clarify why the questions aren't duplicates of each other and vote to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83167/is-cowboy-programming-a-senior-approach → http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7217/frankly-do-you-prefer-cowboy-coding&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102348/my-lead-does-not-co-operate-may-be-lack-of-knowledge-or-unwillingness → http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78547/how-do-you-tell-if-advice-from-a-senior-developer-is-bad&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64275/standalone-developers-whats-are-your-methods-of-development → http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63048/design-and-development-methodologies-for-the-single-developer&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/103095/why-there-is-a-testing-team → http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/77146/why-to-let-not-let-developers-test-their-own-work&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101602/can-i-be-too-old-to-be-just-a-programmer → http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/370/how-old-is-too-old&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125435/what-is-a-good-way-to-refactor-a-large-terribly-written-code-base-by-myself → http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66438/techniques-to-re-factor-garbage-and-maintain-sanity&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105862/online-code-reviews → http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/104975/website-for-code-review&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128044/how-to-protect-own-software-from-copying  → http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10340/how-do-you-prevent-the-piracy-of-your-software" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25117" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4115" RevisionGUID="ddc39c25-12a5-446d-a55c-53f6461256c3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You appear to think that your question is about algorithms and/or development methodologies. Let's take care of the obvious first, a [development methodology][1] is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A software development methodology or system development methodology in software engineering is a framework that is used to structure, plan, and control the process of developing an information system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about development methodologies are expected to be about topics like, for example, prototyping, incremental development, agile methodologies, etc. Although as [Mark notes][2] there's a colloquial sense to development methodology, since Programmers is a site for professional developments, let's go with with the formal definition instead. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the algorithms part, although there isn't a formal and strict definition of what an algorithm is, [this one][3] is good enough:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm (originating from al-Khwārizmī, the famous Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī) is a step-by-step procedure for calculations. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that you say you'd love to see an answer as an algorithm, doesn't make it a question _about_ algorithms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original version of the question was also [not constructive][4]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: - “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking for &quot;the best&quot;, without clearly defining what that means for you leads to equally valid answers (and when that happens, the more popular answer wins, but popular doesn't necessarily mean useful - for example: Bieber). You were providing two valid answers in your question and expected more answers, without clearly telling us why the two methods you've already found didn't work. And, as you've mentioned in the comments, this was more of a curiosity question than a question about an actual &amp; practical problem. All of the above, made it extremely open ended. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in the current version of the question you are telling us why the two solutions don't work for you, and you've further defined the problem. You are not simply looking for the incredibly vague &quot;best&quot; and by giving us detailed explanations of why the two methods don't work for you, you've stopped people from proposing other methods that have the same problems, making the question quite less open ended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am still _not_ convinced that your question qualifies as a high level design problem, however since you fixed the more important problems, who cares what I think? Can't promise it won't get closed again, but even if not convinced I'm willing to err in the side of re-opening this one, just for the effort alone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly please _don't_ try to argue for your question by pointing to other questions, the best that can come of it is that the other questions will be closed as well (if they are indeed similar to your own). Instead focus on arguing for your question **on its own merits**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_methodology&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4116/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25118" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6661" RevisionGUID="eb8fc341-6261-4cf9-bbdb-551745078aa0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I see that the [[VBA] tag doesn't yet have a tag wiki on Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/vba/info), whereas [the one on StackOverflow](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/vba/info) is well established.  Since the tag is exactly the same, would it be acceptable to simply copy that tag wiki over (removing SO cross-references of course) or is this taboo? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[**Related**: this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2456/131580), though this doesn't appear to preclude the idea that *some* SO tag wikis might provide appropriate content for Programmers tag wikis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would still be curious to know if it would be acceptable for me to port over the specific tag in my question, [VBA].  Comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25119" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4120" RevisionGUID="ac80309d-5e32-4908-9010-91d5ad67287a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###Welcome!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wasn't a user back when the elections where held, but our [first ever discussion][1] today was certainly pleasant and informative, what I'd expect from a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;This &quot;question&quot; remained &quot;unanswered&quot; for far too long!&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4117/51770" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25120" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6456" RevisionGUID="af170ee0-8aa3-45e6-970d-6372a7385dad" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is a balancing act that is being walked between the &quot;[everything is downvoted and closed](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q)&quot; and the &quot;you delete things too soon&quot;.  The stress between these two philosophies has also gotten a touch more stressed with an interpretation of an answer [elsemeta](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/219922/what-is-the-goal-of-hot-network-questions/220099#220099).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is quite possible that we've been overeager with deleting things quickly.  That said, it may have eventually have gotten [deleted on its own](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/173513/turbocharging-the-roomba-solutions-for-premature-deletion/177675#177675) without intervention (arguably though the faster delete tries to reduce the perception of lost rep if something was upvoted... a bit of thought does go into what to delete or not).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deletion of the question was not about breaking rules (or not) but rather an attempt at hastening the ultimate janitorial actions.  And sometimes we delete fast because we don't want to forget to delete it later (there isn't a &quot;delete queue&quot; like there is for close votes and once it falls from view it becomes more difficult for people to delete what (ultimately) (debatably) should be deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would ultimately be deleted somehow.  If its done a few days after the question was asked or a week, or a month... its (arguably) just a matter of time.  In its current state, it is unlikely to have been reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question itself is really unanswerable by anyone not part of the Dart Team.  It requires one to go and ask them and any of us are equally capable of doing that compared to what you can do (this 'ask them' [has been done before](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/210399/why-is-there-a-new-in-go/216582#216582) and *can* be done as a good question - you may consider flagging the question for reopening if you find the answer to then do a self answer of the question).  Note that the reception of how well the question and interesting the question to the community as a whole is as fickle as the community itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with the question is that it is asking other people to do work for you that you are just as capable as doing yourself.  This applies to questions where people ask them to (basically) search google or quote wikipedia for them too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also with the edit, you've edited in an answer [from the Dart team](https://groups.google.com/a/dartlang.org/forum/#!msg/misc/8Uchi3bW1YQ/LTKIrC4L564J) - though clarifications for the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do I understand correctly that..&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals but they use it.&#xD;&#xA;* This is not an indicator of quality, but just a bug. Becuase they written by a Dart team &#xD;&#xA;member but not by other person.&#xD;&#xA;* There is no &quot;why&quot; here because it is better to remain silent than to say unpleasant things.&#xD;&#xA;* Dart Team can forget to fix this if someone does not file a ticket.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;needs to be asked of the Dart team, not P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that this clarification didn't help the question.  In my reading of it, the third point combined with the main question reads like a rant about a style guide (or inconstant following of it).  To that, I've read a number of unpleasant comment threads in other questions that have a rant-like tone (again *my* reading of the question) that become wholesale delete the entire comments (and sometimes lock the question while the participants simmer down).  To this, quickly deleting the question quickly can help reduce the total amount of janitorial work that needs mod involvement (and thats where my vote came from)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25121" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3383" RevisionGUID="77469b94-a2a6-4fca-8088-c96a3249ca38" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've seen a few of these and often up-vote them because I've had the same questions and am interested in the answers, however these questions frequently get closed as not constructive, and one is currently [marked for deletion][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it off-topic to ask if something is normal for programmers, and if a programmer should be concerned about it? If not, what is the criteria used to determine if these sorts of questions are constructive or not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples are&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it normal to think about a design problem for days with no code written?][2] - Closed as Not Constructive and marked for deletion&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it normal for a company to have programmers on such a rigid schedule?][3] - Closed as NC&#xD;&#xA;* [Should I be concerned that I can't program very fast without Google?][4]  - Closed as duplicate, but when I pointed out it wasn't an exact duplicate [on meta][5], a moderator said he thought it should still be closed as off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it “normal” for people to not work?][6] - Was closed as NC, but now [locked][7]&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it normal for programmer to work on multiple projects simultaneously][8] - Open&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the “normal” range for typing speed for developers?][9] - Open&#xD;&#xA;* [Should I be concerned if I have nothing to do during an internship?][10] - Open&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3357/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118962/is-it-normal-to-think-about-a-design-problem-for-days-with-no-code-written&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/88329/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/141860/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3379/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/81929/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3298/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/38647/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26243/whats-the-normal-range-for-typing-speed-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/100725/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25122" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5132" RevisionGUID="5be9d5f4-8d65-4553-8e3e-f730d91ddee7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Let me know if my question is too close of a duplicate with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow but I really don't think it is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am asking about a very particular section of the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - **algorithm and data structure concepts**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow has directly in there FAQ also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - a specific programming problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - **a software algorithm**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand the question about the difference says Stack Overflow often has code where Programmers often does not. However in the scope of algorithm's, data structures, and design patterns, which are all on-topic in Stack Overflow with associated tags and all, there's frequently no code involved in SO for these particular topics because they address more generalized problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also the aforementioned question about differences says programmers often can have code in the questions, so whether code is there or not seems to be a false indicator of differentiating an answer from SO vs programmers as both sites are on-topic with code or without.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(why is tl;dr always at the end?) so to sum up my question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone delineate the distinction between when an algorithm/data structures/design patterns question belongs on SO vs when it belongs on Programmers? Should a note be made in the FAQ detailing this delineation? If no distinction can be made, should one of the sites have it removed or suggest people go to the other for that matter?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25123" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6672" RevisionGUID="e19b5257-7ea4-438f-93e7-ba2a74af2c21" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are two questions on whether one should lower his coding practices to meet those of the surrounding team:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Simplicity-efficiency tradeoff][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [If my team has low skill, should I lower the skill of my code?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The accepted answer to the first, as it stands now, is &quot;yes, you should prefer communication within the team&quot;, and the answer to the second is &quot;no, you should try to educate them&quot;. (For the record: those are not my questions nor my answers, I do not ask here over a feeling of rejection or anything; I want clarification on the site's policy and purpose in this respect).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was told [in a comment to this other question][3] that &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; SE is built around identifying a &quot;single&quot; answer, and isn't structured to handle multiple equally good examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Searching around in this Meta site, I found that the &quot;[official guideline on duplicates][4]&quot; states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What we want is on the order of 4 or 5 similar-but-not-quite-the-same duplicates to cover all possible search terms and common permutations of the question. It is also OK for these duplicates to have their own answers so people who find them don’t have to click yet again to get to a good answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in this case, the answers to those duplicate questions are different.  Doesn't this imply that there are no objective answers &quot;[that are supportable by objective statements, and aren't purely a matter of taste][5]&quot;, and therefore are questions that are opinion-based? Or do you think it just shows that the answer's authors have not researched enough,  and therefore the community votes do not reflect an objective winner?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241444/simplicity-efficiency-tradeoff&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/203469/if-my-team-has-low-skill-should-i-lower-the-skill-of-my-code&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241116/scenario-to-illustrate-how-unit-testing-leads-to-better-design/241132#241132&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25124" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3385" RevisionGUID="beff5563-1ffb-43b2-8f85-a726dfc4d11b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [I answered my own question and accepted the answer. Why is it not at the top?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3376/i-answered-my-own-question-and-accepted-the-answer-why-is-it-not-at-the-top)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I have posted [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140483/is-it-a-waste-of-time-to-free-resources-before-i-exit-a-process/141014) not long ago. And I got some really interesting answers. One got a lot of up votes, but after some investigation, I asked my instructor at the university, and got [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140483/is-it-a-waste-of-time-to-free-resources-before-i-exit-a-process/141014#141014) which actually proves the most up-voted answer wrong. I don't want to down-vote that guy, because he showed an interesting aspect. But I think that my answer should at least appear a little higher, so people at least see it. Because if we're honest, who reads all the answers through and really thinks about them?!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not concerned about other answers because most of them answered about &quot;good software engineering&quot; and not my theoretical question. But they are worth reading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question is actually: why is the accepted answer so low in the thread?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25125" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6506" RevisionGUID="88b5fbc3-a9e2-4d86-9746-0a97d0032773" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Copyright is ownership of a creation.  Copyright gives you the ability to decide what others can do with your creation (if anything), including control over creating derivative works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A license is a set of permissions to use a creation, and is granted by the copyright owner.  A license can address creating derivative works, modifying the original creation, and distribution rights of the original creation or derivations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of my frequent openings to answers in this domain is `Copyright != License`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Copyright questions are problematic on the site.  Copyright law varies by country, and can sometimes vary even within individual jurisdictions of the country.  Copyright law can frequently be affected by employment law.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;California, USA is a notable example of having differing particulars than other states.  And how each country chooses to follow the Berne convention is another matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a domain (such as Copyright) is difficult for attorneys to figure out and can be highly specific to jurisdiction, then the question isn't a good fit for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;License questions are generally on-topic for the site.  Some of the more well known open-source licenses are fairly clear in how to apply them for mainstream usages.  And in some cases like the GPL, there's a well established FAQ covering a range of scenarios.  Others like BSD and MIT are pretty clear cut.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's easy to get into corner cases where consulting with an attorney is required.  So you'll still see some license related questions closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm certainly biased in this case, but I prefer the suggested phrasing in [this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6354/53019) for closing legal questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about legal matters outside of the community's experience and is best answered by an attorney with expertise in your jurisdiction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it does a good job at explaining why some licensing &amp; copyright questions are allowed, but others are not.  We're not here to be a team of legal experts - we're programmers.  But there are some subjects that we've collectively encountered and can answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that some members of the community dislike _all_ legal related questions.  The fundamental premise is that we potentially create liability for the site by answering those questions and that things are so hopelessly muddled that only attorneys should address those types of questions.  Currently, that's the minority view but we shouldn't be outright dismissive of the concerns.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25126" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5145" RevisionGUID="40087ec9-cf49-4a21-9dcd-7a81edd223ec" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Appeal to regain the privilege to ask questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5147/appeal-to-regain-the-privilege-to-ask-questions)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I've had my account closed due to one bad question and a lack of input into others questions in the community (did I'm mention that I'm a NEWBIE with not much to give back yet). Is there anything I can do to be allowed to ask questions again?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25127" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3428" RevisionGUID="e019230a-d199-4230-994a-aa46e2bb7dbb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[I agree with Yannis on this one][1]. Until CS Stack Exchange actually graduates from beta into a launched site, we shouldn't exclude these questions from what is on-topic here. Once CS launches as a full site and gets out of beta, we can work things out in more detail, I would suggest including one of the Stack Exchange staff members, the moderators of Programmers, and the moderators of Computer Science.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if someone posts an algorithm or data structures question, we might want to consider letting them know that their question is on-topic here, but that there is another group of experts out there that might also be able to provide a unique answer. We shouldn't encourage cross-posting of identical questions on two sites as our expertise varies. I see Programmers addressing more system-level concerns, while Computer Science focuses on more specific details (at least, as far as data structures and algorithms go).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I feel that the relationship between the two sites is going to be very much like the relationship between software engineering and computer science. They are two sides of the same coin.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3419/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25128" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6553" RevisionGUID="ea706109-05de-4c6f-9122-c303a2171b3c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Have a look at the edit I did on your question.  Here's some of the things I did.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Changed the title to a question instead of a noun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Clarified at the top what you were asking about (ie. what's train based development)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Copied in your comment to Robert Harvey about why the google failed you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. Clarified your summary question at the end.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And your question has already been re-opened before I was able to finish this write-up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think you're a bit misguided in what you think went wrong with the question and why it had been remaining on-hold.  [Ratchet Freak pointed out that your edits were reviewed,](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6552/53019) and 3 community members didn't feel that the edits made the question more answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The root problem is that your question remained poor, even after edits, and relied upon the reader to infer too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the future, you have a couple of options to find out how you can improve your questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Post a question here in Meta asking for help and provide a link to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Drop into chat on The Whiteboard and ask for guidance there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that not every &quot;good question&quot; is a good fit for the site.  But the community will let you know whether or not a question can be re-worked into something constructive." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25129" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6678" RevisionGUID="a1acf7c9-36a4-4fa8-b9af-9f7ea4a5e460" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's nothing wrong with distilling great wisdom down into increasingly thicker, condensed concentrate. At some point, you finally lose all of the words that aren't absolutely _essential_ to convey your point effectively and you're left with several powerful sentences that when concatenated, give users _precisely_ what they need to 'get it' and avoid future mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few years ago, [Robert Cartaino](http://stackoverflow.com/users/98786/robert-cartaino) wrote a bunch of stock replies to things that users frequently contact us to ask help for, and stock messages that moderators send to users for the typical reasons that users need to be contacted privately. Over the years, he's tweaked, twiddled, fiddled, folded and polished these relatively tiny bits of text to the point that they've become extremely effective. Adding bold to one or two words can sometimes make a world of difference, breaking down a sentence or moving a comma around can also dramatically change how well the message is understood. This isn't just casual observation, it's easy to see the number of times we need to actually reply to something go down as he's made changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [Robert Harvey indicates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6677/31260) (and I can strongly attest to this after serving with him for over two years as a Stack Overflow moderator) - ***people simply don't read any more than they must.*** That's why it's important to make the first eight or nine words in copy that you show them count as much as possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a great deal of inspiration in what you're talking about, the thing to do in my opinion is to take it, then work on refining _extremely_ sharp paragraphs into tools to help new users learn the ropes. The custom close reasons are a start at that, as is everything in the help center, however there's still plenty of room for tweaking, twiddling, fiddling and folding in order to get that healthy vitamin &quot;P&quot; concentrate that we want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, a community _should_ occasionally declare open season on its custom help center / close reason / meta FAQ copy - I've never ever seen it get _worse_ due to more (and fresher) eyeballs landing on it and editing. You can lead that charge here on meta if you're so inclined. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`tl;dr;` - We need to _reduce_ what we show them, and make it count even more. I know that's a lofty goal and what we have _is_ good copy, it could just be more effective. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25130" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5154" RevisionGUID="c7a8346e-a58f-4a50-a057-20e0013c7f0d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Both [Yannis Rizos][1] and [maple_shaft][2] give good answers as to why your question is not constructive. However, I want to address two other things you mention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Now, why mod would unilaterally reclose something that was validly worked through the system with no funny business (to my knowledge) is beyond me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators are exception handlers. A moderator really exists for two purposes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first is to help correct mistakes. Sometimes, the community gets things wrong. They might reopen a question that was closed with good reason. Or they might not be voting to close a question that clearly doesn't fit. That's not to say that moderators are perfect, because we aren't. But when the community is doing something that in the grand scheme of things is actually detrimental to the community, we deal with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second is to respond quickly to the worst of the worst. To stop people from defacing valuable information and prevent future damage. To remove content that is only vulgar or offensive and detracts from the community. To inform people when they are violating the norms of the community and how to correct their actions to become valuable, contributing members.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was informed in chat that this is still a poll, but fortunately, one mod is not the end all arbiter of reality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;True, we make mistakes. However, there are constructive ways to discuss a moderator's actions that you think might be invalid and there are unconstructive ways to discuss these actions. Saying &quot;yo mods reopen please&quot; in chat isn't really a good way to address a problem. This meta post, asking why the question was closed is. Alternatively, pinging the mods in chat and asking why a question was closed is a good way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Very rarely (at least on this site, based on what I can see) does a moderator take an action without either a flag on the post or after other community members have taken action (for example, as a third or fourth close vote). That means that many of the posts closed by only a moderator have been seen by at least two people - the person who reported the post and the moderator who took action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5152/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5153/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25131" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6557" RevisionGUID="a54524bd-8947-4487-9233-2c016121bb4d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I believe I understand the distinction, as covered in this question: (https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is whether this really leads to a practical distinction, or whether they just blend, or whether the division is an unnecessary division of resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an example, I follow the language-lawyer, programming-language and language-design tags on SO, but they sound more like they belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The result is that I have about 2800 reputation points for doing almost exactly the same thing, but split between two sites. It would be nice if they were combined somehow. For me at least the division is unhelpful." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25132" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3433" RevisionGUID="eb33d11a-ba0c-47f6-b8b0-3fa710c5f9b1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The Workplace is [launching Tuesday or Wednesday](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/4823/what-is-coworking#comment9210_4847), barring any unforeseen problems. During the private beta, there will be no involvement from other Stack Exchange sites (save for active people here who also committed to the proposal): it'll be up to the community there to quickly figure out their scope and how they'll ensure the site will be viable if/when it goes public.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But even sites in public beta are never added as migration paths. The beta period is the time for the site to bootstrap itself without becoming a dumping ground for other sites: normal users generally don't understand what to migrate [even when sites are launched](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The lack of a migration path does not, however, prevent moderators from migrating questions to a beta site. Historically, [we worked with moderators on beta sites](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2782/8) to determine if a question would be a better fit for them. This tended to be a win-win situation for all involved, as it let the destination sites get questions they want and it prevented unnecessary drama when a question gets unceremoniously closed here for being off-topic or sits around with no answers (or worse, bad answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like [the current moderators](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3419/8) are [loath to do this](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3428/8), and it's unlikely very many, if any, questions would be migrated to the Workplace while it's in beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind, however, that The Workplace was [created specifically to house questions that are categorically off-topic here](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/a/1401/16359): there should be very little, if any, overlap between the two sites. Off-topic questions that would be a fit for The Workplace have historically gotten comments from closers directing the asker to support the proposal: perhaps the only real change needed to that workflow is to modify the wording to indicate it's already live.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25133" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5158" RevisionGUID="647bd596-d2ea-4713-9d2f-2ea4b9cae804" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Assuming that your question falls within the guidelines in [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) for what is considered on-topic and that your question makes it clear what you have already tried or already considered, I don't see why a question would not be allowed simply because it's a homework issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also relevant is [a discussion about homework questions on Programmers][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2894/how-can-programmers-se-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25134" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6564" RevisionGUID="0bf0f751-b94d-4288-880b-7e46b2e8946e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm sure there's always going to be overlap - look at the issues around certain Programmers questions that could be on The Workplace. The answer is not to infer that, because some questions are in the grey area between sites, that then all questions must be in the same grey area, and merging sites is required.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do think the &quot;branding&quot; between the sites needs to be more defined - SO for questions about the implementation of technology, Programmers for questions about concepts. It might be easier to define SO better - or market it as such, rather than try to define the rather more vague Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That question [(difference between the two][1]) has a *really* good answer, that should make it clear - and I'd say the old tags you mention should be on here, if they weren't more than a little bit grey.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow?rq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25135" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6687" RevisionGUID="92c6d4b4-599e-400a-bd74-cdce13f363db" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="   Still feeling not very clear about Stack Overflow and Programmers after reading: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5793/rule-for-posting-programmers-vs-stackoverflow, so continue to this post, here goes my questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&quot;... Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;OK, It seems that Programmers is only for a higher concept question about software design and something related to that, compared with this, Stack Overflow more focuses on a detailed, code-based question——**Am I right?** **If yes, what does &quot;higher concept question&quot; mean?** I didn't find anything about that anywhere here, so can anyone be kind to tell me? And this means a lower-level question won't be supported and it will be abandoned? **But how to say which is lower/higher?** Just say if you can search out the result in google/stackoverflow/stackexchange, that's a lower-level question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another thing I'm thinking of is: **If I'm in a white-board of a certain concept about programming but only with some rough ideas** (not sure yet,all are my guesses,probably all are wrong or most of them are wrong...), so can I talk about them to fetch all of my ideas out as a considerate question(to make the question complete). I think we should do that.... **Unfortunately, Karl Bielefeldt** says such questions won't be supported...but if these ideas are part of the white-board question to make the question very complete.... so why and how to do to describe?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25136" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3444" RevisionGUID="1fc6fb5f-b571-49df-9461-06ff8f08d1ba" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed [Why do we need private variables?][1] got closed as a duplicate of [Do ALL your variables need to be declared private?][2], but I thought the first question and its answers were much better than the second one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't the first time I've noticed a question getting closed as a duplicate to what I view as a worse version of the question. This is probably because new questions get more attention, so are more likely to attract close-as-duplicate votes than older questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this something I should be concerned about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I'd rather have the best version of the question left open, and the worse versions closed as duplicates, but I'm not sure if that's something I should flag moderators over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;Question has been [reopened][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143736/why-do-we-need-private-variables&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57491/do-all-your-variables-need-to-be-declared-private&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3444/what-should-i-do-if-i-think-a-good-question-got-closed-as-a-duplicate-to-a-worse#comment9279_3449 &quot;related clarification in comments&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25137" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5161" RevisionGUID="4019edb1-cb70-4d4b-bafa-78c3a934115c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently read: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4013/where-did-pierre-303-go-he-was-an-all-star&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that there are issues/difficulties that I'm ignorant of, and everyone wants programmers to be the best it can be, and a community to be proud of and a lot of people work hard to make it good, but have there been signs that it is a community that isn't compatible with the StackExchange engine?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25138" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6597" RevisionGUID="3b780a9e-773b-4348-be7e-51f0e65a3603" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per my understanding, for a while there was a sort of informal agreement to protect questions that are going to be featured at Ars Technica. Recently [this approach has been challenged](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/protecting-ars &quot;in Whiteboard chat&quot;), so I would like to have a dedicated meta discussion to sort this out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does it make sense to protect such questions as soon as we learn about coming exposure at Ars Technica or it is better to stick with approach designed in 2010 for Stack Overflow and Super User - that is, protect when there is &quot;a lot of drive-by noise answers&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO - Feb '11) [For 15k+ users: Guidelines on Protecting Questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/78764/165773)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Jeff offered more information on [why post protection was implemented and what he expected it to be used for](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/new-protected-question-status/) in his blog.  This was when only moderators had this power, but the same reasoning applies to 15k users who can now protect posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (SE blog - Jun '10) [New Protected Question Status](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/new-protected-question-status/)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **if you see a question that is attracting a lot of drive-by noise answers, please flag it for moderator attention. We’ll turn on protection.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those interested in more details about questions we discuss can find links to them in [this feed](http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/feed/) or in [edits history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/39006/samthebrand?tab=activity) of [SE community evangelist](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6200/can-we-give-the-community-evangelist-something-more-notable-to-make-suggested-ed). Some details of 40 questions featured so far are provided [in the 1st revision of this question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/6597/1 &quot;find these under 'For your convenience...'&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25140" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5163" RevisionGUID="2a19ad5a-499c-4865-a46a-de251e6b679b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Don't use Programmers to judge other subjective SE sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The history of Programmers is what caused many of the high-profile users to leave, and I think SE learned a lesson from it and is very unlikely to repeat the same process for other SE sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We started out as &quot;[Not-Programming-Related][1]&quot;, a place for programmers to get answers from each other about non-programming subjects that were popular, but not welcome on Stack Overflow. But &quot;not programming related&quot; was a rather broad scope, so SE decided to change it to &quot;Conceptual Questions about Software Development&quot;, and many in the community did not agree with this change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also probably closely related is [this graph](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/83266#graph), where you can see where the change in site direction started getting enforced by moderators. Most users weren't aware that the site scope had changed so much until questions started getting closed, which caused a lot of tension in the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can view the full history [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But anyways, what I'm saying is you shouldn't use Programmers to judge other subjective SE sites because of its history. This site would probably be fine if it wasn't that it started out as something else, and I think other subjective SE sites would do fine as well providing they have a fairly clear definition of their site up-front and don't change direction after the site has launched.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/I7Vqn.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25141" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3462" RevisionGUID="ca310873-7156-4c4e-9b79-bf9859659467" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="##The great tag wiki edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How this would work: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Set up a contest time frame and chat room,&#xD;&#xA; 1. discuss and evaluate tag wiki edits submitted during time frame set,  &#xD;&#xA;    &lt;sub&gt;in order to short-list ones to be presented in nominees list at next step,&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA; 1. set up a &quot;voting question&quot; with nominees list (like [elections town hall](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2990/2012-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-digest) or [SCNA wish list](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2473/what-do-you-want-to-see-from-scna)),&#xD;&#xA; 1. whoever edit scores best &lt;strike&gt;gets kissed by Anna Lear and Mark Trapp&lt;/strike&gt; wins.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rules:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; 1. No edits outside the time frame. &#xD;&#xA; 1. Contest period: A month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What we gain:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. tag wiki improvements&#xD;&#xA; 1. more [publicity](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73261/how-to-motivate-users-to-write-tag-wikis &quot;How to motivate users to write tag wikis?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA; 1. better understanding of [Tag Wiki best practices](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/69584/tag-wiki-best-practices&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Background&#xD;&#xA;* definition from page with a _really nice_ title: [&amp;#39;tag-wiki&amp;#39; tag wiki - Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/tag-wiki/info &quot;title is full of meta isn't it&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An editable page that briefly summarizes the topic of the tag and that may provide links to existing questions that are often useful to many people...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tag wikis are made of 2 parts:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The Excerpt - which is displayed on question lists and tag hover menu.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The Body - which contains detailed information about a tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* definition that inspired me, from a [tag homepage/FAQ](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1195/create-a-tag-homepage-faq) request at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a community-wiki editable home page... where we could place essentially the tag-specific FAQ and other tag-specific links" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25142" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6603" RevisionGUID="b573cd09-a526-48a1-a6cc-e2272d035474" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding the word &quot;historically&quot; to a question doesn't make the question any more meaningful or on-topic, any more than adding the phrase [&quot;as a programmer&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2971/community-perception-of-programmers-se-the-stackoverflow-landfill/2973#comment7560_2973) makes it more relevant to programmers.  Asking what someone thought about something *in the past* rather than today doesn't make it any less opinion-based.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What matters is whether someone is able to *cite their sources.*  If a person can demonstrate that they had first-hand knowledge of the decision-making process, or can point to an Internet post from an authoritative source that describes the decision making process, *that* is what makes the post less opinion-based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question that merely asks for proof or citations is off-topic, it being primarily a search request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25143" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5178" RevisionGUID="ed640a20-e4aa-49b0-a265-702b66bc5a3d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Locating an article is _not_ a software development problem, regardless of what the article is about. Questions that are nothing more than a request to an external resource are off topic, not only on Programmers but on Stack Exchange in general, this isn't a link sharing service.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finding an article or a blog post is _not_ a conceptual software development question. We make a small exception for [canonical books][2], but that's the only exception, not the rule. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Let’s Play The Guessing Game][4]&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient&#xD;&#xA;- [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [Real Questions Have Answers][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why is asking for references/sources to study specific topics considered not constructive?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/153220/why-is-asking-for-references-sources-to-study-specific-topics-considered-not-con" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25144" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6759" RevisionGUID="2b882d7e-69ff-4b4c-bc60-b3d3620f5928" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The &quot;what are the pros and cons&quot; style questions are slightly obscured polling questions... though only very slightly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions of this type sometimes have a dozen answers that look like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Pros&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Point 1&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Point 2&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cons&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Counter point 1&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Counter point 2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Something no one mentioned yet is that Foo is really good at doing bar.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers to these questions are a poll asking for people to collect various bits of facts into what they think (opinion - a pro for one person is a con for another) into a post.  As there are often *many* of these factoids that goes into making a decision, there can be scores of them (just think of the [weighted decision matrix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision-matrix_method) that managers so love - I once had to fill out my opinions on some competing products that was over 100 rows - each with a different factoid of some importance (and I feel it *still* left out some important items)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of these questions also makes it so that they are never complete.  One can never have an authoritative answer for the pros and cons, nor can one have an answer that includes *everything* - someone will always find another point that they like or dislike about the design decision.  Questions of this format from three years ago *still* get people adding single pro or con items to it (often just a single sentence).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These types of questions rarely produce good answers and instead seem to have shorter and shorter answers as time goes on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When comparing products, this falls into a further problematic area of shopping questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are the pros and cons of having a Linux dev system rather than a FreeBSD dev system?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Design decisions are slightly better, though they are still problematic.  They are still in the range of 'too broad' and 'primarily opinion'.  A better option than asking for pros and cons is to look at trying to write the question as a design review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize though, that asking for a design review rather than just 'pros and cons' isn't a simple matter of changing the finishing up part of the question to ask for a design review.  The guidance on how to ask a design review question can be found at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6502/design-review-on-topic-or-not&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the questions that have been asked in the 'pros and cons' format in the past can fairly easily be rewritten in a way that isn't a poll and instead identifies the problem and asks for solutions to it rather than polling for tidbits of opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, many of the historical questions have answers that are in the 'pros and cons' format that would make rewriting the question while maintaining the validity of the answers difficult." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25146" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5183" RevisionGUID="5a7e1e6d-d7ad-4df3-b469-7783ff4df272" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You could try to do it as a [community promotion ad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2635/community-promotion-ads-2012). The guidelines for a community ad on programmers are fairly open, you just have to convince enough people that it's a good idea." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25147" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3509" RevisionGUID="b016d8d6-2f29-48f6-b9cc-fbb845b96560" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [A place for the subjective, fun questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/971/a-place-for-the-subjective-fun-questions)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;EDIT: I'm not talking a catch-all site for any Q&amp;A, I mean questions still related to SE. But, perhaps the community option for a question (can't remember what its called) would make this suggestion completely useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was thinking, so many questions are closed on SE it is becoming a finely tuned art to craft a question which isn't abused with downvotes and eventually closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too general, too specific, open-ended, shopping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand maybe SE isn't begging for more traffic, but would a section for semi-policed questions make sense? Each website on SE, or a website in itself, would be for any and all questions, and questions would only be removed if recent duplicates were found (same question can have entirely different answers depending when it was asked)? This would increase content on the site and give the users who, like me, cannot be bothered with thinking about the question to the point where we find the answer from analyzing it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The vote could be something like &quot;Throw to the lions&quot;, and people might be more inclined to click that instead of close. The asker at least has some answers to go from, people can be more casual with their answers, and SE builds more content and likely more users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me guess..you're going to downvote and vote to close?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25148" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6768" RevisionGUID="1cb1adbd-1026-4c43-89bf-e4b6e6c9694e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I flagged a comment by the OP of [this question](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/250418/programming-first-bot-application) (now deleted) as &quot;rude or offensive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have access to the comment any more (and don't know if it was eventually removed), but for the &lt;10K+ users it basically was OP's rant about the response the question got (a link to [Where to Start?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start)) and how asking a bunch of &quot;computer nerds&quot; was a waste of his/her time and how he/she shouldn't have expected a &quot;socially acceptable response&quot; from the users here. I was moderately surprised when I checked back and found the flag was declined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I personally don't think that this was overly rude; I just felt it crossed the line of respectable behavior and could be reasonably construed as rude by another user. Now that I think about it, &quot;rude or offensive&quot; could be a bit of a stretch, as this is probably pretty mild compared to some other stuff people have left...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not particularly worried about the declined flag itself; I would just like to know where I went wrong so I can avoid making the same mistake again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would flagging as &quot;Not constructive&quot; have been a better choice? Should I be saving &quot;Rude or offensive&quot; for the more vile comments some users might leave?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25149" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6652" RevisionGUID="7c3a6bc6-7ed2-4b63-a3af-0e33ddeb0acc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; My first and only question on this site has been closed. I've a fair amount of rep on SO and I know how things work here. Before asking it I have read the FAQ and the What topics can I ask about here? section. I'm fairly sure my question fits the &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; or even &quot;software engineering management&quot; sections.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't agree that your question fits as the site is defined. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, I'm concerned about topicality. It is about a methodology and process, but if you continue reading the [&quot;what topics can I ask about&quot; page][1], there's a diagram that shows that questions asked here must be unique to software developers. Why does this question require the expertise of a professional software developer to answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it doesn't fit that, why not migrate it to The Workplace? The next problem that I have with it is that the question is too broad. You're polling for opinions. The [&quot;don't ask&quot; Help Center page][2] addresses this. Of the questions that you ask, there is no way to measure the rightness or wrongness of how other people use a tool. If you focused on your current process and quantified how you wanted to improve it, you may be able to get a good question out of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the current content is best suited to an extended discussion. Both Programmers and The Workplace have chat rooms - [The Whiteboard][3] for Programmers and [The Water Cooler][4] for The Workplace. The chat rooms are good for either discussing topics with other people or for getting help from site regulars on how to refine your question so that it fits on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So let's look at some of your other &quot;top questions&quot; that you have concerns with and address those, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What technical details should a programmer of a web application consider before making the site public?][5] -- definitely too broad. There is no definite, finite list of things. The answer depends on the language, technology, libraries.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to note is that this question was asked 5 years ago, on Stack Overflow, before Programmers existed. This site has had a long history, with some turmoil in the early days. You can read about it [in more detail here][6], but the short story is that the original definition of Programmers didn't work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second thing to note is that this question is locked. Stack Exchange introduced a new [Collaborative Lock functionality][7] and this was [the first question that it was applied to on Programmers][8]. Before the Collaborative Lock was introduced, the [Historical Lock][9] was applied to the question, which prevented all changes to anything. The reason this was done was because the question wasn't a good fit, but it had a lot of useful information that should not be lost. The question was viewed many times, had many incoming links from outside sites, came up in Google searches frequently - deleting it would have been a disservice to the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report. How can I convince him that it's a bad idea?][10] -- offtopic. Should be in the workplace SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could build an argument about migration to The Workplace, but The Workplace was still in beta. Admittedly, it was a public beta. The norm is to minimize migrations to beta sites so that they can develop their own culture as a community. Unless the question is very much off-topic on the site where it was posted and very much on-topic on the beta site, it shouldn't be migrated to a beta site. If this question was asked today, I highly suspect that it would be migrated since I could argue that it applies to more than just software developers, but anyone designing or building a product.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Where did the notion of “one return only” come from?][11] -- it's not a programming question. It could be asked on history, if anywhere. Don't know how this didn't get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about the history of software development [are on-topic here][12]. I'm not sure how you can argue that it's not related to software development, since it's about a programming construct. Would people outside of the software development community care about this question? Probably not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code — what now?][13] -- could it be any more too broad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're right on this one. It's not a good question, but it does have historical significance. It has a large number of views, and many questions are closed as a duplicate of this one. I put a historical lock on the question so the content isn't lost, but to discourage people from using this as an example of the kind of question that can be asked here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][14] -- opinion based as hell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're right again on this one. This isn't a good question. However, it has a very large number of views. I treated this just as if someone had flagged it and put a Historical Content lock on the question. It's really not a good question and can't be used as an example of what to ask, but given the number of views and the content in the answers, it falls into the same category as the first question you pointed out. Closing and deleting it would be a disservice to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overall, I think you should read through some Meta posts. Maybe jump into The Whiteboard and chat with the regulars to get a better feel for this community. We have a certain culture here and a certain expectation for questions and answers. Coming from other sites, it can be a bit of a shock - many SE sites have their own expectations and standards and nuances as to how they work. One closed question isn't that big of a deal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/182566/this-lock-notice-is-partly-misleading/182572#182572&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5991/new-lock-type-for-truly-collaborative-questions-and-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154733/my-boss-decided-to-add-a-person-to-blame-field-to-every-bug-report-how-can-i&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118703/where-did-the-notion-of-one-return-only-come-from&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5633/is-programming-history-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48698/i-dont-program-in-my-spare-time-does-that-make-me-a-bad-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25150" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5185" RevisionGUID="4f15ec0a-2cec-40ec-8172-151a1a72939e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is a number of questions on Programmers that relate to [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [As per IEEE 12207, who has to perform SW integration testing?][2]&#xD;&#xA; * [How to apply verification and validation on the following example][3]&#xD;&#xA; * [Where should I draw the line between unit tests and integration tests? Should they be separate?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do I flag-off such topics to be migrated there?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: This questions is similar to another [question][5] about migrations between stackexchange questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173165/as-per-ieee-12207-who-has-to-perform-sw-integration-testing&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/172850/how-to-apply-verification-and-validation-on-the-following-example&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171705/where-should-i-draw-the-line-between-unit-tests-and-integration-tests-should-th&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2826/flagging-off-topic-should-allow-you-to-migrate-to-codereview" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25151" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3549" RevisionGUID="a8eab704-4f59-44cf-8a25-8053943742cf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think questions like this tend to fall into &quot;which technology is better&quot; or &quot;programming tools&quot; questions. Additionally you could also point them to the section on subjective questions, and for books specifically [this][1] question and [this][2] one provide further explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2665/whats-up-with-all-the-book-recommendation-flags&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3034/why-are-book-related-questions-being-edited-with-the-text-is-there-a-canonical" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25152" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6661" RevisionGUID="01c8e7f4-d0dc-40f1-a173-88563b8eb046" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I see that the [[VBA] tag doesn't yet have a tag wiki on Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/vba/info), whereas [the one on StackOverflow](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/vba/info) is well established.  Since the tag is exactly the same, would it be acceptable to simply copy that tag wiki over (removing SO cross-references of course) or is this taboo? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[**Related**: this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2456/131580), though this doesn't appear to preclude the idea that *some* SO tag wikis might provide appropriate content for Programmers tag wikis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would still be curious to know if it would be acceptable for me to port over the specific tag in my question, [VBA].  Comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25153" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6780" RevisionGUID="febe31a4-fc23-486c-b5fb-45d086a3660b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I like the answer entitled [&quot;Why We're not a Forum&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6743/31260).  Having said that, I want to call attention to a particular kind of question that is somewhere between objective and subjective.  I'm referring to design questions.  There are numerous design questions that come up, concerning the design of object oriented systems, or the design of software packages, or the design of relational databases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are somewhere in the twilight zone.  At first glance, they seem like the kind of straightforward Q&amp;A that SE seems to handle well.  And the asker usually wants an answer he or she can use, not an extended discussion.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the problem.  For every non trivial design case, there is more than one satisfactory answer.  And which answer is &quot;best&quot; depends on the particular use case, and on what criterion is being used for &quot;goodness&quot;. It's usually some kind of trade-off. So what ought to be a straight up Q&amp;A turns into a discussion.  Or the question gets closed before that can happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But most of us don't want to declare design questions out of bounds, even including those of us who very much want to avoid turning SE into just another forum community.  This is not a simple problem, IMO.&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25154" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3567" RevisionGUID="1a49cec5-5d53-4483-b776-6f72d254bd06" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think this would be off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site's audience is professional programmers, so a question should be targeting them, not people who are unfamiliar with programming. If the question *were* on-topic, the answers would ideally assume you are a practicing programmer. If the basis for the question is founded upon a lack of knowledge due to *not* being a practicing programmer, any in-scope answers would be, at best, unhelpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A contrived example, but consider 2 + 2 = 4. If you were unfamiliar with addition, you might want to ask a mathematician, &quot;Is 2 + 2 = 4 accurate?&quot; Now, if you went to a place that catered to mathematicians and assumed anyone asking a question was a mathematician, asking that question would likely produce a blank, incredulous stare.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't say for sure—not having read the article—that what's discussed is patently obvious for any practicing programmer, but even parts of it aren't, any explanation would presume you were somewhat of an expert, as it were, of programming and would gloss over the parts that most programmers would understand as obvious. If those are the parts you're having trouble with, you're sort of out of luck asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond the issue of audience, our scope is centered around conceptual questions in software development: problems you personally have with a software development project you're working on. This really isn't a software development problem *per se*, it's more of a problem of understanding a court case. And to that point, [software law is off-topic here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2099/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Verifying notable claims, however, is the domain of our sister site, [Skeptics.SE](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com): personally, I'd check with them.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25155" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5187" RevisionGUID="0ee96652-dee5-4df7-82aa-31b62cf6870b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Footer line floats up too high in the main review page](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4095/footer-line-floats-up-too-high-in-the-main-review-page)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;See the screenshot below. I don't know whether this is because I only have 249 rep, but it's there, all right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/M0CfX.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note: I am currently behind a firewall that blocks Imgur so I can't guarantee the screenshot looks OK for a viewer. All I know is that it has been added to the page successfully. I'll fix it if needed when I can.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Just realized this is a dupe of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4095/footer-line-floats-up-too-high-in-the-main-review-page. Can someone close it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25156" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6672" RevisionGUID="b377193c-1cd6-4d60-894b-3091dced3840" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are two questions on whether one should lower his coding practices to meet those of the surrounding team:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Simplicity-efficiency tradeoff][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [If my team has low skill, should I lower the skill of my code?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The accepted answer to the first, as it stands now, is &quot;yes, you should prefer communication within the team&quot;, and the answer to the second is &quot;no, you should try to educate them&quot;. (For the record: those are not my questions nor my answers, I do not ask here over a feeling of rejection or anything; I want clarification on the site's policy and purpose in this respect).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was told [in a comment to this other question][3] that &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; SE is built around identifying a &quot;single&quot; answer, and isn't structured to handle multiple equally good examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Searching around in this Meta site, I found that the &quot;[official guideline on duplicates][4]&quot; states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What we want is on the order of 4 or 5 similar-but-not-quite-the-same duplicates to cover all possible search terms and common permutations of the question. It is also OK for these duplicates to have their own answers so people who find them don’t have to click yet again to get to a good answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in this case, the answers to those duplicate questions are different.  Doesn't this imply that there are no objective answers &quot;[that are supportable by objective statements, and aren't purely a matter of taste][5]&quot;, and therefore are questions that are opinion-based? Or do you think it just shows that the answer's authors have not researched enough,  and therefore the community votes do not reflect an objective winner?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241444/simplicity-efficiency-tradeoff&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/203469/if-my-team-has-low-skill-should-i-lower-the-skill-of-my-code&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241116/scenario-to-illustrate-how-unit-testing-leads-to-better-design/241132#241132&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25157" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3578" RevisionGUID="4c9db8c2-0ebc-4433-9ebb-cf2d9e20b199" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The site is called **Programmers** because it was originally created to be a site for programmers to ask and answer non-programming questions that relate to their career choice or self-identity as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange later decided this wasn't a good use of their framework and changed the site scope to be about conceptual questions on software development, so the scope of the site changed however the name and design did not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site's [faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) contains a current list of what is on/off topic for this site, and you can view the full history behind the scope change [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That specific question was valid when it got asked, so got a lot of attention, however is deemed not suitable for the site now. I do not think there is anywhere on the SE network where a question like that would be welcome because it reads like a poll, asking for many answers each with one piece of the answer, and SE does not like polls.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You would probably have better luck on someplace like [Quora][1] &lt;strike&gt;or [Reddit][2]&lt;/strike&gt; or [Yahoo Answers][3], however I have not used any of those sites enough to tell you much about them. You could also try asking in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), where discussion is encouraged, although your question and its answers probably won't be easily found by others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.quora.com/home/getting_started/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.reddit.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://answers.yahoo.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25158" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6795" RevisionGUID="35a7aee8-b4f9-4265-b0f8-ee23a6372972" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Suggest to perform automatic checks for cross-posting (including deleted SO cross-posts, like [this one](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26059920/what-makes-the-functional-and-logic-programming-paradigms-well-suited-for-progra) for example) and question block / warning at Stack Overflow when post enters close queue, not only when it is attempted to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If check detects a problem, system would raise automatic flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I expect above preemptive checks to help us more efficiently address attempts to abuse the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Annotate user accounts network-wide when they get rate-limited or banned](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112598/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A few of the migration rules are skipped if it is a ♦ moderator clicking the button, however: the &quot;is the user suspended or blocked from asking&quot; is **always** applied.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Stats on how attempts to circumvent SO question blocks impact other sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237534/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; working on a design for enhancing our our recidivism system to discourage this and other sorts of unproductive behavior...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Check to make sure a duplicate does not exist before migrating](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/225679/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A migration will be rejected if...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - ...An *exact*, word-for-word duplicate already exists on the destination site, or...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - ...A question created within a week of the one being migrated exists on the destination site with the same author and *very* similar body text.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Moderators can override this restriction...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [What difficulties could be there in establishing automatic checks for SO cross-posts...](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p#comment17969_6660)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [At smaller sites, penalize hot questions having 3-4 close votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; At smaller sites... closing a question takes hours or even days...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [How many questions do we get from users recently banned at SO, how many of these are closed / deleted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6592/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Provide 10k users more close votes](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6507/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Refund close votes for questions deleted on the same day](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237386/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Recover Close votes if asker deletes their own question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/69166/165773)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25159" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6678" RevisionGUID="8313ec7c-80a5-4290-a10c-cfc0c80e6f3e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's nothing wrong with distilling great wisdom down into increasingly thicker, condensed concentrate. At some point, you finally lose all of the words that aren't absolutely _essential_ to convey your point effectively and you're left with several powerful sentences that when concatenated, give users _precisely_ what they need to 'get it' and avoid future mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few years ago, [Robert Cartaino](http://stackoverflow.com/users/98786/robert-cartaino) wrote a bunch of stock replies to things that users frequently contact us to ask help for, and stock messages that moderators send to users for the typical reasons that users need to be contacted privately. Over the years, he's tweaked, twiddled, fiddled, folded and polished these relatively tiny bits of text to the point that they've become extremely effective. Adding bold to one or two words can sometimes make a world of difference, breaking down a sentence or moving a comma around can also dramatically change how well the message is understood. This isn't just casual observation, it's easy to see the number of times we need to actually reply to something go down as he's made changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [Robert Harvey indicates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6677/31260) (and I can strongly attest to this after serving with him for over two years as a Stack Overflow moderator) - ***people simply don't read any more than they must.*** That's why it's important to make the first eight or nine words in copy that you show them count as much as possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a great deal of inspiration in what you're talking about, the thing to do in my opinion is to take it, then work on refining _extremely_ sharp paragraphs into tools to help new users learn the ropes. The custom close reasons are a start at that, as is everything in the help center, however there's still plenty of room for tweaking, twiddling, fiddling and folding in order to get that healthy vitamin &quot;P&quot; concentrate that we want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, a community _should_ occasionally declare open season on its custom help center / close reason / meta FAQ copy - I've never ever seen it get _worse_ due to more (and fresher) eyeballs landing on it and editing. You can lead that charge here on meta if you're so inclined. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`tl;dr;` - We need to _reduce_ what we show them, and make it count even more. I know that's a lofty goal and what we have _is_ good copy, it could just be more effective. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25160" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5196" RevisionGUID="f93c7936-e40b-4e18-b7e9-495fe5e17030" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I for one am interested in answers that may help my work in **professional** environment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hey if you code just for fun, you are free to forget all this boring stuff from [Joel Test](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html) - version control, issue tracking, code reviews etc. Oh and testing isn't that important as you may read from some elitist professionals here - trust me, none of bat scripts I wrote for my needs has been passed through any formal QA but all three of them work just fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current FAQ wording allows me to downvote garbage like above and even come to meta and complain, [requesting it to be deleted](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3920/31260 &quot;BTDTGTTS&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think dropping the word &quot;professional&quot; would open up doors for it, that's why I am against." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25162" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6816" RevisionGUID="3df5b5b4-6824-4f5b-a9eb-b0c562b65e09" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just looking at the code you didn't need to put in the implementation of the `Logger` class (you did it twice), just a call to `Logger.log(stuffToLog)` would have been clear enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for the name of things is [an edge case on P.SE][1] but in general disallowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also the answerer was correct; you can catch the run-time error simply by a null check when calling `TheDelegate.Inst.TheHook` then it doesn't matter that `TheDelegate` is never implemented because all references to a `TheDelegate` instance will be `null`. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also your pattern prefers a global over a field to hold variable state, this gives way to a whole host of problems starting from thread safety, to unexpected influence from another library that installs its own `TheDelegate`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25163" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5231" RevisionGUID="9a72419b-baa8-4ef5-8ebd-38ea8a11edfa" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Footer line floats up too high in the main review page](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4095/footer-line-floats-up-too-high-in-the-main-review-page)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Looking the [review page][1], I notice the list of the review queue is covered by the image I normally see at the bottom of other pages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  ![screenshot][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to happen just on that page, while on the front page that image appears in the footer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  ![screenshot][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I inspected the page using Safari 6 Web Inspector, but I didn't see any reference to that image, if not in the .header `&lt;div&gt;`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/524Ne.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/wL2C0.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25164" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6687" RevisionGUID="8ebd7920-4f70-4125-904e-a6a23e59ba34" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="   Still feeling not very clear about Stack Overflow and Programmers after reading: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5793/rule-for-posting-programmers-vs-stackoverflow, so continue to this post, here goes my questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&quot;... Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;OK, It seems that Programmers is only for a higher concept question about software design and something related to that, compared with this, Stack Overflow more focuses on a detailed, code-based question——**Am I right?** **If yes, what does &quot;higher concept question&quot; mean?** I didn't find anything about that anywhere here, so can anyone be kind to tell me? And this means a lower-level question won't be supported and it will be abandoned? **But how to say which is lower/higher?** Just say if you can search out the result in google/stackoverflow/stackexchange, that's a lower-level question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another thing I'm thinking of is: **If I'm in a white-board of a certain concept about programming but only with some rough ideas** (not sure yet,all are my guesses,probably all are wrong or most of them are wrong...), so can I talk about them to fetch all of my ideas out as a considerate question(to make the question complete). I think we should do that.... **Unfortunately, Karl Bielefeldt** says such questions won't be supported...but if these ideas are part of the white-board question to make the question very complete.... so why and how to do to describe?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25165" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3640" RevisionGUID="91745029-7d27-4fd3-bb9b-7441bd7952f1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've just found out about flair, here's mine:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/51770/roc-marti&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/flair/51770.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot; title=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/users/1399093&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/users/flair/1399093.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&amp;amp;A sites&quot; title=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&amp;amp;A sites&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like it! But I would like it even more if my Meta badges were shown in there!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that [Meta reputation is derived from the main website][1], but I don't think it would be a problem to show badges in the flair, the site one or the combined one. Of course there is the option of Meta flair, but I don't think anyone would ever use that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25166" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6854" RevisionGUID="9542fe69-ab9a-44b5-97db-f4cd4c9571ac" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The quality score on that post is 75 out of a possible 100. The threshold for sending it straight into review is 70. Yeah, that's pretty useless. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're working on a better one, based on some analysis of the available data. It ain't perfect either, but it would've flagged that one right out of the gate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The new system isn't quite ready to go live yet though, so for now, I threw this in:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![DON'T SHOUT][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[Update](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6850/how-effective-is-the-quality-filter-against-this-question-with-all-caps-brief-ti/6854#comment19783_6854)**: check is back on - for titles _and_ bodies of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tvoQU.png &quot;DON'T SHOUT&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25167" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5248" RevisionGUID="0426e0c0-f8d4-45c5-a0e5-026087a31220" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**No.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keeping things more central is actually antithetical to Stack Exchange's philosophy of creating laser sharp focused Q&amp;A sites. Additionally if &quot;discussion&quot; and &quot;open topic for general questions&quot; is your description of what Programmers is about, you should really read our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) a bit more carefully. While we welcome _some_ subjective questions, Programmers is definitely _not_ a free for all discussion forum.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, more responsiveness is _not_ necessarily a good thing. We strive to be a canonical resource, answers should be as detailed and complete as possible, being quick is an added bonus but not a goal in itself. From the perspective of the asker, quick answers might be more useful, but Programmers and every other Stack Exchange site (including Stack Overflow) aren't only about the asker. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thirdly, folding Programmers into Stack Overflow right now would be a disaster for everyone involved. Stack Overflow, similarly to Programmers, has created and maintains a community culture that is different, and in many respects conflicting to ours. While the target audience of both sites might more or less be the same, the focus and scope is distinctly different, thus is community culture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, Stack Overflow is gigantic, and that's one of the many reasons, perhaps the main one, I never really participated in the site. To put it very simply, if it takes me more than 5 minutes to find interesting content on a site, that site is not for me. Reducing the conceptual aspects of the [SDLC][1] to a set of Stack Overflow tags would be extremely counter-productive, it would take a certain level of masochism to put yourself in the position of searching for interesting methodology questions (for example) in the vast ocean of crap Stack Overflow is slowly becoming. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you posted this as a feature request and there are tons of earlier discussions both on our Meta and Meta Stack Overflow that explain how the sites are different and what's the purpose of Programmers, I'm afraid I'll have to decline it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Should Programmers.SE exist?][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [Choosing between Stack Overflow and Programmers Stack Exchange][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [Is Stack Exchange becoming too fragmented for programmers?][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why was the Programmers site on Stack Exchange created?][7]&#xD;&#xA;- [When do these questions belong on programmers instead of stackoverflow?][8]&#xD;&#xA;- [Once all the disciplining is done and P.SE is purely professional, will it be merged with stackoverflow?][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/153082/should-programmers-se-exist&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/82988/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/105428/is-stack-exchange-becoming-too-fragmented-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1704/once-all-the-disciplining-is-done-and-p-se-is-purely-professional-will-it-be-me" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25169" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6890" RevisionGUID="b7813839-fbae-4866-a843-ac9c1faff355" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The first question *might* survive, but a lot depends on the specific book/technology. The really good books don't become outdated that fast, unless the technology is evolving very fast and/or a much better alternative has become available. On the other hand, if the technology has evolved and some books are available that are more up-to-date, but nothing to clearly replace the original book, then there is a real chance that it comes down to personal opinion if book XYZ is still the best. Such questions tend to be closed as [&quot;primarily opinion based&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6491/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question most likely won't survive. That question is seeking career advise and such questions are explicitly off-topic. See also [&quot;Why was my question closed as off topic?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25170" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3675" RevisionGUID="be9a7612-c06b-4f15-9de7-64e821f29eff" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Questions about books (or any other thing) that will only generate a list of things are not allowed, as discussed in [a previous Meta post][1]. The posts that you link to are about very specific topics and tend to have books that can be considered canonical references, which limits the available options significantly and makes it more likely that there is one best answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question should have been closed as not constructive and not off topic - that was my mistake (but I'm not going to reopen and close under the right reason).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25171" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6744" RevisionGUID="0293bf87-3b99-4889-892d-a426e6efe560" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You've found a poor question that you really think has some merit to it.  What things are needed to successfully do this transformation of making a poor question into a good one?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;The Atwood transform is first mentioned in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3898/should-i-give-more-information-to-this-question-how-to-improve and refers to the changes done to a question to make it a good one in [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25173" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6948" RevisionGUID="55220e48-3b89-4b95-8fab-9b3b35bc44d0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've seen this glitch a few times with Safari (7.1) on the Mac (10.9.5).  It manifests as either no spacing between text and the link in a comment, or irregular location of the hyphen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![safari][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice the space (lack there of) between 'Thismeta'.  Furthermore, the hyphen that is before the signature and time stamp is between the digit of the time stamp and the units.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Chrome this comment renders as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![chrome][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am certainly willing to chalk this up to a bug in Safari (it did update recently), but if it's not, well, there's a bug report for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comment in question is [this one](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6947/how-can-i-reword-this-question-to-better-fit-programmers-se#comment19808_6947) and if it happens, it appears to *always* happen, though it doesn't happen on all comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As this has become more interesting of a problem, I pulled up a laptop I haven't touched in a month and a half (Safari 7.0.5) to look at the comment, and it displays the same problem ([img](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9wGri.png)).  Therefore, the update mentioned previously was *not* the cause of the issue.  It could still be a bug with Safari, however, it is one that was introduced at least some time ago and hasn't been tickled through the CSS until recently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also shows up in iOS 6 safari browser (again, not updated in some time).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tends to point to a change in CSS that is exposing the bug (which might need to be worked around).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Associated MSO post: [“missing space” bug in comments. (on OSX)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/275151/missing-space-bug-in-comments-on-osx)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/GKpjY.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/JvlKw.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25174" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6768" RevisionGUID="32a023aa-d51c-43ae-b5ed-cb969f18d4a1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I flagged a comment by the OP of [this question](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/250418/programming-first-bot-application) (now deleted) as &quot;rude or offensive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have access to the comment any more (and don't know if it was eventually removed), but for the &lt;10K+ users it basically was OP's rant about the response the question got (a link to [Where to Start?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start)) and how asking a bunch of &quot;computer nerds&quot; was a waste of his/her time and how he/she shouldn't have expected a &quot;socially acceptable response&quot; from the users here. I was moderately surprised when I checked back and found the flag was declined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I personally don't think that this was overly rude; I just felt it crossed the line of respectable behavior and could be reasonably construed as rude by another user. Now that I think about it, &quot;rude or offensive&quot; could be a bit of a stretch, as this is probably pretty mild compared to some other stuff people have left...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not particularly worried about the declined flag itself; I would just like to know where I went wrong so I can avoid making the same mistake again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would flagging as &quot;Not constructive&quot; have been a better choice? Should I be saving &quot;Rude or offensive&quot; for the more vile comments some users might leave?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25175" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3763" RevisionGUID="e0d9e3d9-ff54-411f-af14-6bb498f66007" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I seem to have reached this limit while editing my answer to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit frustrating, as the editor didn't warn me, so I typed away and submitted... and it truncated the end of the text AND the links...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So now I'll gladly rewrite this quickly, and make sections more concise to fit everything in, but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What exactly is the limit?&#xD;&#xA; * Maybe the editor should warn and block submission, like the comment section does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Though I agree such long posts probably do not happen too often. Sorry. got interested in this question more and more :)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Update 2012/07/11:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * See [Shog9's answer][1] and comments below it for more details.&#xD;&#xA; * See this [answer from JeffAtwood][2] on another similar Meta.SO thread, where a fix is said to have been implemented, and the discussion we have in comments.&#xD;&#xA; * And finally see my [&quot;test-case answer&quot;][3] below and in particular its [revision log][4]. See steps below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Steps to reproduce:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   * The [&quot;test-case answer&quot;][5] was created by simply identifying where things went wrong in [my answer][6] to the [question linked above][7] and I narrowed it down to between revisions [12][8] and [13][9].&#xD;&#xA;   * So I created a question with content from revision 12 (+disclaimer a the top about testing),&#xD;&#xA;   * then edited it with content from revision 13 (but with the link table of revision 12, to get the untrucated ones in there as well, as the revision 13 was obviously damaged),&#xD;&#xA;   * the submission went through just fine and without warning, and the content was indeed truncated again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Update 2012/07/11 - continued:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Crap, it appears the revision log of my test-case doesn't show all the steps, and doesn't show the messages I had left in the &quot;change logs&quot;. Probably because I did them without a big interval between them, and when that's the case the SE systems seem to merge them in one changeset (probably so we don't hit the `10 edits =&gt; CW` rule when editing answers rapidly while they're new).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, that's annoying here for looking at the test-case (maybe SE gods have a way to see full logs), but the **steps I gave above should be enough to reproduce it** anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Update by Shog9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reproduced, definitely a bug, [written up on MSO][10].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3767/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/26723/151515&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3770/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/3770/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3770/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/155505/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/7b75c2e1-15ac-408d-807a-4cd83a2494bc/view-source&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/596bbe49-17a3-4c25-8175-d6242d796064/view-source&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/139320/post-maximum-length-check-ignores-markdown-results-in-long-formatted-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25176" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5277" RevisionGUID="dc3bdf9d-bede-4f19-9b39-0ba6bb7f0ede" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I went over all our open bugs and feature requests and retagged/closed a lot of them. The Meta front page looks like a battlefield because of this, but I figured it would be better to do it in one big sweep to get a better idea of what we are talking about. So, right now we have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [8 open bugs][1], and&#xD;&#xA;- [25 open feature requests][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not _that_ bad. Yes, there are some Meta questions that needed feedback from Stack Exchange and appear to be long forgotten, but we can easily fix that, just ping one of us (mods) in chat and we'll ask a SE employee to have a look. With 90+ sites (and 90+ Metas), it's understandable that they can't keep track of _everything_. Furthermore we haven't really been doing a very good job keeping our Meta clean, there were (and still are) a lot of questions that are mistagged, or no longer relevant. We should clean up Meta at some point, that would make our feature requests and bug reports far more noticeable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back in June we created a mod+SE only chat room, the collection room, and gathered tons of feature requests and bug reports from all per site Metas, in an effort to get feedback from SE. The room was frozen in August, and we're still waiting for feedback on most, if not all, requests. I've nagged Grace Note a couple of times about this, privately and publicly, and although progress has been very slow, I'm confident SE isn't ignoring per site Metas. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for migrations, our [migration stats][3] don't really justify more migration targets:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][4]](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFFqv.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bbug%5D%20-%5Bstatus-declined%5D%20-%5Bstatus-completed%5D%20-%5Bstatus-bydesign%5D%20-%5Bstatus-deferred%5D%20-%5Bstatus-norepro%5D%20-%5Bstatus-planned%5D%20closed:0&amp;submit=search&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?tab=relevance&amp;q=%5Bfeature-request%5D%20-%5Bstatus-declined%5D%20-%5Bstatus-completed%5D%20-%5Bstatus-bydesign%5D%20-%5Bstatus-deferred%5D%20-%5Bstatus-norepro%5D%20closed:0&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFFqv.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25177" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3783" RevisionGUID="703e4a39-ab5e-41a9-9779-e1528410b403" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am (marginally) color-blind and have great difficulty distinguishing between hyperlinks and normal text on the SE-Programmers site. I can barely tell when the text is actually a link. To my eyes, there just isn't enough visual contrast. (Unlike on [StackOverflow](http://stackoverflow.com/), for instance, where the blue links stand out vividly to me. For that matter, the orange(?)-colored links on this meta-page are easily distinguishable as well.) Can anyone suggest a workaround for this situation (for example, a browser-hack of some sort)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: I am (unfortunately) obliged to use IE at work, so no non-IE browser-specific workarounds will suffice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:** As Yannis pointed out, my question is very similar in nature to [this question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1487/it-is-possible-to-change-the-colors-of-hypertext-links), but in my case, I'm not asking for a global site-wide change (though that would be nice), but rather just a workaround for my own setup." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25178" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5299" RevisionGUID="1a34460c-4de2-4057-b496-475e36a72b38" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[My question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177579/empirical-evidence-regarding-testability) was closed. Robert Harvey says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Questions asking for links to external resources are more or less off-topic throughout the Stack Exchange network. That's what search engines are for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Reference request&quot; is the third most popular tag on cstheory.SE&#xD;&#xA;* It's is one of the 20 most popular tags on math.SE with over 2,000 questions&#xD;&#xA;* 114 questions for &quot;reference&quot; on stats.SE&#xD;&#xA;* Indeed, with the exception of SO itself all of the *.SE I regularly visit have a popular &quot;reference request&quot; tag&#xD;&#xA;* Even on this site itself, 23 questions have been asked with the &quot;reference&quot; tag, only two of which were closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are questions for which answers not backed by empirical data are fine. But if I want to see a peer-reviewed study instead of someone's personal experience, why is that off topic for this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note there are related questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5130/are-literature-requests-inherently-off-topic-or-not-constructive&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It strikes me that those deal with broad things like &quot;give me a book about C&quot; whereas I'm asking for support of a very specific hypothesis (the relationship between testability and stability)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25179" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6795" RevisionGUID="26390859-09f0-4e32-b07a-303b68dfcf02" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Suggest to perform automatic checks for cross-posting (including deleted SO cross-posts, like [this one](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26059920/what-makes-the-functional-and-logic-programming-paradigms-well-suited-for-progra) for example) and question block / warning at Stack Overflow when post enters close queue, not only when it is attempted to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If check detects a problem, system would raise automatic flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I expect above preemptive checks to help us more efficiently address attempts to abuse the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Annotate user accounts network-wide when they get rate-limited or banned](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112598/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A few of the migration rules are skipped if it is a ♦ moderator clicking the button, however: the &quot;is the user suspended or blocked from asking&quot; is **always** applied.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Stats on how attempts to circumvent SO question blocks impact other sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237534/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; working on a design for enhancing our our recidivism system to discourage this and other sorts of unproductive behavior...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Check to make sure a duplicate does not exist before migrating](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/225679/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A migration will be rejected if...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - ...An *exact*, word-for-word duplicate already exists on the destination site, or...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - ...A question created within a week of the one being migrated exists on the destination site with the same author and *very* similar body text.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Moderators can override this restriction...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [What difficulties could be there in establishing automatic checks for SO cross-posts...](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p#comment17969_6660)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [At smaller sites, penalize hot questions having 3-4 close votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; At smaller sites... closing a question takes hours or even days...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [How many questions do we get from users recently banned at SO, how many of these are closed / deleted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6592/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Provide 10k users more close votes](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6507/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Refund close votes for questions deleted on the same day](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237386/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Recover Close votes if asker deletes their own question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/69166/165773)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25180" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6962" RevisionGUID="13eecf6c-7d48-41bd-a9e9-e68855dbd9e1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A [greenfield project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_project) is one without restrictions on prior systems or protocols.  Blue sky projects are ones that are completely wide open (&quot;develop a knowledge base.&quot;).  In the context of a question on Programmers.SE, a greenfield or blue sky question is one along the lines of &quot;How do I write this?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything about &quot;how do I write this?&quot; it is on the table - no design has been thought of, no problems have been encountered.  In effect, the question is asking the community to design the entire system.  This is similarly problematic as asking someone to write all the code for a set of requirements on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest problem with such a question is it is very broad.  One could design the system at a high level and another person could do the same solution from a low level.  Alternatively, there can be *many* designs for the same system.  This leads to the question being [very broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490) and in danger of being closed for such a reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With a design question, it is expected that the person asking the question has taken some time to sketch out the design that they have come up with and identify the problem they are encountering with the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is a difficulty even getting started, as described in [where to start?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6366/40980) one should sit down and spend some time coming up with a design that is something that they are capable of coding to.  That last point should not be overlooked - it is quite possible for an [architecture astronaut](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html) to come up with a design from scratch that is impossible for anyone to code to or implement with any hope of getting it right (&quot;its an n-tier design that makes use of MVVC that is controlled by a dispatcher that has been configured with dependency injection and....&quot; -- just say 'no').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are interested in hiring an architect that has this experience and can make such decisions for you on where to start, that is indeed a path to look down - but asking the community to be the architect is irresponsible and ultimately unmaintainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, sit down and [sketch out](http://asciiflow.com) the design that you have and what problems you are encountering when thinking through the design.  Draw something up on the white board, draw a circle around it and say &quot;I don't know how to get this piece and that piece to talk together correctly - I thought of using a message queue, but that has some problems in our architecture because...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned in another post ([10k link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260209/an-algorithm-based-content-ranking-crawler)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This isn't so much &quot;white-boardy&quot; as it is &quot;blue-sky-y&quot;. There are entire careers built on trying to solve this problem - you're gonna have to narrow it down a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key to writing a good question is to properly scope the question so that it is one that addresses a problem in the design, rather than completely wide open &quot;pie in the sky&quot; with its options.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [An algorithm-based content ranking crawler](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260209/an-algorithm-based-content-ranking-crawler) (10k link)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I need to implement a web crawler to crawl websites and rank visited pages based on content. For example, a website can be ranked as 80% political content or 70% sport content. There is no problem by implementing crawler. The only point would be an algorithm to set an approximate rank to content of crawled website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there any algorithm to reach this goal?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [Grails app providing REST services, with Angular frontend in SPA configuration… Feasible?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260976/grails-app-providing-rest-services-with-angular-frontend-in-spa-configuration) (10k link)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Could you just begin an Angular project with Bower/Grunt/NPM give it its own directory and the whole nine yards ... and then just throw it in your Grails directory somewhere with the index.html page to be rendered as a static HTML file by a Grails controller?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So basically all the Grails app does is provide RESTful resources and literally redirects you to a static html file - which happens to be your Angular Single Page Application.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note the first example question here is one that leaves the described whiteboard completely untouched.  There is nothing about the design, just a few vague requirements and the request to identify or design the algorithm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question draws a picture of sorts.  Its still quite vague in places, but there's a design put forth that is being considered.  There is something on the whiteboard that is being described.  &quot;You've got this thing over here that provides this service that redirects over to this other thing...&quot; (you could picture a co-worker saying that with a marker in hand).  And thus, the question is one that is whiteboardy.  I'll certainly agree that the question is broad and may have other issues, but it *isn't* ***too*** broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whats more, the first question is one that could possibly be answered with &quot;you are looking for ${algo_XYZ}&quot;. While the second question wouldn't encourage simplistic or poor answers.  That is the key behind the ideas of [optimizing for pearls, not sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25181" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3811" RevisionGUID="3f6545c2-999b-4d1d-8443-c243089dd90e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**update** question has been edited and reopened and proposed &quot;draft&quot; has been posted as an answer there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/157606/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior answer revision is removed since it no longer applies, it is available in answer history:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Revision 8](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/3811/8)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the question would be reopened, I'd probably write an answer like&#xD;&#xA;&gt; below.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; #TL;DR&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; In Java, the reason of `public static void main(String[] args)` is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [Gosling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling &quot;who's that?&quot;) wanted&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. the code written by someone experienced in C (not in Java)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. to be executed by someone used to running [PostScript](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript &quot;scripts&quot;) on [NeWS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS &quot;Networked Extensible Window System&quot;)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...**[How The JVM Spec Came To Be][2]**...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/gosling-jvm-lang-summit-keynote &quot;key note&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25182" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5301" RevisionGUID="a8fd42d1-0d52-439d-a4df-8273906563e8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Appeal to regain the privilege to ask questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5147/appeal-to-regain-the-privilege-to-ask-questions)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I asked the following questions in Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1- [Determining an application's dependencies][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2- [Drag and drop feature for a website][2] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I did not get any down-votes, still I am banned from posting more questions in Programmers. Are these questions the enough reason for this ban?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155960/determining-an-applications-dependencies&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156115/drag-and-drop-fearture-for-a-website" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25183" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6810" RevisionGUID="9650db88-f4a4-4c3b-b1a1-88dbc15d979e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The final part of your question was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What I really need is something powerful enough to break through the &quot;This process has worked for 20 years, why should we change it?&quot; argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are trying to win an argument.  This is something that is particular to you and the person you are trying to persuade.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a comment on this question which is key to understanding why this was closed (realizing that &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommended reading: [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6629/how-do-i-explain-something-to-someone/6630#6630) –  gnat 15 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This particular suggestion is one that I am quite familiar with, though one of the things you are trying to do isn't covered in that answer (I'll have to see about updating it).  You are asking for a list of bullet points of ammunition (pun intended) for your argument.  I'll point to [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) which tries to address polling type questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This type of question is a poll that can have dozens of answers, none of which are 'right'.  I'll draw your attention to a comment in the &quot;How do I explain...&quot; meta post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you look at this you'll see an example of &quot;how to win an argument&quot; - and there are numerous ones of these, and we tend to want to avoid this with its 20+ answers with no 'right' answer. &quot;I thought of another example&quot;, &quot;I haven't really thought it out&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original links have been cleaned up by the roomba, so http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/107723/40980 (and thank you for having me find that question, there's a close vote on it now too).  And while this may be what you are looking for, it really works against the Q&amp;A style format that Stack Exchange is trying to promote.  I'll point out that several of the answers have comments that have devolved into discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, why its opinion rather than too broad?  That's just what people clicked on at least three times when closing the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25184" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6984" RevisionGUID="80c59795-9b25-4285-b1bb-f3ff35d5cd56" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [guidance](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) for off-topic questions has this to say about the use of statistics:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Asking for a link to something or statistics**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason. Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Links to things suffer from link rot. Statistics become out of date over time. Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't understand what the issue is with questions that invite answers that involve statistics. To me that guidance is bad for the quality of answers on this site. Allow me to illustrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take for example this question about code reviews:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/261801/how-to-deal-with-no-code-reviews-in-my-new-place-when-i-come-from-that-practice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my view, having to argue in favor of the best practice of code reviews is something programmers are likely to face (hence on-topic) and the best possible answer to this question is to provide provable statistics that demonstrate the value of the practice of code reviews (and possibly statistics that compare the different ways of performing code reviews). This way the asker has better than anecdotal arguments in favor of code reviews as a best practice. In my opinion statistics are a higher quality answer when it comes to best practices answers, because they remove the bias inherent in an answer that is a sample of 1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand forbidding link-based answers, and requiring that the statistics are repeated in the body of the answer (citing the off-site resource where they were obtained), but why is it a good thing for P.SE to automatically close questions about best practices which can best be answered through statistics?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25185" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3855" RevisionGUID="664f7f7e-d848-42cb-86cd-f91d61a9290c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Book suggestions are adequately outlined between the **What about suggestive questions** and the **What kind of questions should I not ask here** sections. The 6 suggested guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Book recommendations don't fit this based on experience of what answers they generate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again book recommendations to to have very short &quot;this book was good&quot; type answers and worse link only answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Book recommendations are generally OK on this point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Book recommendations fail this point as it is mostly opinion based answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Book recommendations fail this as well answers reflect popular opinion not anything that could be cited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Book recommendations are OK here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So 4 out of 6 of the guidelines are a no, furthermore there is [this][1] Stack Exchange blog post that further clarifies these guidelines, which is also linked in the FAQ. [More][3] reading about book recommendations. There are [some ways][2] to post book recommendations though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3034/41381&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2003/41381" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25186" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5327" RevisionGUID="c855ff48-60e3-4121-aacc-135c256ba4d4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is some controversy about [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178787). There have been multiple questions about non-disclosure agreements. A quick look at [the tag](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/non-disclosure-agreement) shows that many of them are open, even though just as many of them are not specific to software development, a requirement [recently clarified and enforced](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3412).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there can be little doubt that non-disclosure agreements are extremely relevant to programmers, and there is currently no other place to ask such questions on StackExchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should P.SE allow, in general, questions about NDA that apply to programmers, even non-exclusively? If not, what should P.SE do to make it clear to people reading grandfathered-in questions about NDAs that the same question, asked today, would be considered off-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25187" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6816" RevisionGUID="80bffd17-b27f-4135-94f3-219c8759eede" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just looking at the code you didn't need to put in the implementation of the `Logger` class (you did it twice), just a call to `Logger.log(stuffToLog)` would have been clear enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for the name of things is [an edge case on P.SE][1] but in general disallowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also the answerer was correct; you can catch the run-time error simply by a null check when calling `TheDelegate.Inst.TheHook` then it doesn't matter that `TheDelegate` is never implemented because all references to a `TheDelegate` instance will be `null`. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also your pattern prefers a global over a field to hold variable state, this gives way to a whole host of problems starting from thread safety, to unexpected influence from another library that installs its own `TheDelegate`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25188" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3862" RevisionGUID="99f4ded7-310a-4c4c-ba66-3e920b4ee62c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed the [tag:home-school] tag on a recent question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, there are [three questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/home-schooling) with that tag.  The first is OT for P.SE (belongs on codereview.SE) and the other two are already tagged with [tag:teaching].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suggest we get rid of the [tag:home-school] tag as it doesn't generate any meaningful distinction from the [tag:teaching] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question is to generate a discussion about the future of that tag in line with [jmort253's recent answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3851/53019) about tag discussions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25189" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5336" RevisionGUID="329d8672-9307-4964-890c-f8f5b6f126d4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yes, I think your question should be on-topic here because it falls under &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot;, which is on-topic per our FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key factor that I think makes this &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; question suitable for the site is that it is specifically seeking an answer from a professional programmer. If it were seeking legal advice I would say it's off-topic, but it appears to be seeking an answer from a programmer, not an answer from a lawyer, which I think makes it a valid &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [graphic][1] Thomas references from our FAQ was created to [help define what makes an on-topic career question][2], and was not meant to be applied to all questions. I'm not sure when that got changed in the FAQ, however your question definitely does not apply to &quot;all careers&quot; or even &quot;most careers&quot;. In fact, I doubt it applies to &quot;all programmers&quot; either, however I would say it applies to more than &quot;Just You&quot;, so you're safe from being &quot;too-localized&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2145/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25190" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6890" RevisionGUID="07a84eab-fa9b-4623-bb88-01317eb2e0dc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The first question *might* survive, but a lot depends on the specific book/technology. The really good books don't become outdated that fast, unless the technology is evolving very fast and/or a much better alternative has become available. On the other hand, if the technology has evolved and some books are available that are more up-to-date, but nothing to clearly replace the original book, then there is a real chance that it comes down to personal opinion if book XYZ is still the best. Such questions tend to be closed as [&quot;primarily opinion based&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6491/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question most likely won't survive. That question is seeking career advise and such questions are explicitly off-topic. See also [&quot;Why was my question closed as off topic?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25191" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6991" RevisionGUID="fa7d668b-aa47-44b2-8346-4dbe41c04f82" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Your data is inaccurate because SEDE doesn't account for [deleted questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/157462/165773) but anyway, there are few factors worth thinking of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, Programmers were getting a reasonable mix of good and bad questions related to careers, software recommendations and code reviews. Even when topicality of these was slippery, well presented questions about interesting, real problems were considered worthy of upvotes by many readers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nowadays, we lost a good part but bad part remains with us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean, users capable of asking good questions in above topics, eventually find their way and stick to specialized sites - [TWP](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [CR](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [SR](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is left to us are askers who _want_ to ask but _can't_ make a good question. They post (or cross-post) their stuff at Programmers, Stack Overflow, Yahoo Answers, anywhere, in a hope to find a [kind soul to feed them](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/276637/839601). This contributes to lowering average quality of questions in these topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another stream of low quality questions are those from users blocked / warned at Stack Overflow. [Per recent stats](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7332/31260), we're getting 4-5 delete-worthy questions a day from these folks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, they could pollute SO with their low quality stuff for months or even years but for last year or two, due to improvements in [burning down SO close queue](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue), they started hitting question blocks and warnings more and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Per stats, Programmers appear to be [most popular of SE sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773) among this category of askers. After being blocked or scared by warnings at Stack Overflow they simply try to dump their low quality stuff over here, thus also lowering average quality level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If honestly, I can't see what we can do to help with the quality of questions like above, nor how we can control these in review queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't realistically expect askers of bad questions to &quot;refocus&quot; to specialized sites because at these sites, such questions seem to be detected and rejected even faster than over here. This is probably because of clearer, narrower specialization regulars at these sites build a better sense of what is good and what is not (at least that's how I feel at TWP).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also can't imagine how it would be possible to make users blocked / warned at SO stop their attempts to leak through Programmers. I can't think of a way to tell someone facing a [block message at SO](http://stackoverflow.com/help/question-bans) that they shouldn't try their luck at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;**Wait!** You've recently been blocked (warned) at Stack Overflow. Consider that quality requirements at Programmers are similar. Note that Stack Overflow topics are _not_ covered here and that your questions [can't even be migrated to Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;) because of the block.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Are you sure that you want to proceed asking question?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Click &lt;kbd&gt;No&lt;/kbd&gt; to cancel asking.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Click &lt;kbd&gt;Back&lt;/kbd&gt; to return to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!--&#xD;&#xA;Note to editors. Choices above are *intentionally* limited to No/Cancel - absence of option &quot;Yes&quot; to proceed asking question is not a simple mistake. If you plan to add such an option, make sure to also remove this comment, otherwise I will rollback your edit for not giving enough attention to edited content.&#xD;&#xA;--&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25192" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3866" RevisionGUID="3561308b-d34d-4830-b485-f30dd108df99" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a [tag:work] tag. Looks like it was missed in the https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Burninate/cleanup? Seems like a likely target of off topic questions, so I'd recommend going through them and removing the tag as they're closed/edited. There's &lt;del&gt;80&lt;/del&gt;   **13**. As a mod from Workplace I can already tell you The Workplace won't be accepting any old questions with the tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25193" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5378" RevisionGUID="6e706406-fba4-45cd-865e-df052222c403" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I really don't see this working.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's think about what has to go in something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Site designers and Stack Exchange management would have to agree that we need something like this. If there is not any community support for the implementation of this, there is no way you would get this considered, or even looked at. Plus, something like this would need general acceptance from about 95% of Stack Exchange site. You can't just make a major change like this on one site.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Let's say this does get general community acceptance (which I doubt it would because nothing is really _wrong_ here). Site designer(s) (I'm fairly positive Jin is the only one) would have to come up with the layout, and the developers would have to test an implement it. Now, this is just the general development process that we all know, but having only one site designer doesn't help your cause.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Finally, SE usually tries out the feature on a few sites at first before totally launching it. Do you honestly think that people are going to write summaries on **every accepted answer and closed question**? We're all volunteering our time and knowledge to the site (unless you're an employee). I would be really hasty about asking and answering questions if I knew I was going to have to write a summary. Plus, moderators are volunteering their time also. They don't get paid, and from what I'm aware of, I doubt they'd want to do this work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not trying to say that anybody is lazy. I'm not trying to say that we don't want to make this community a better place. What I _am_ saying though is that nothing is broken, and if it's not broke, don't fix it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more info on what you can do with the current system in place, see [ChrisF's answer][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5376/34364" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25194" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3882" RevisionGUID="0814c78b-bc02-4478-a156-d418b7b90e26" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [How do I properly migrate my question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1681/how-do-i-properly-migrate-my-question)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted a question here on Programmers  which would rather fit into Stack Overflow. An user has pointed this out. Further, this question has also been answered.  How should I migrate this to Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25195" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6915" RevisionGUID="a1050a58-ad09-436b-bd31-8ffffea3d88a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="When a question is edited it [shows back up](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/48578/165773 &quot;see 'What can cause my question to be bumped?'&quot;) on the recently active questions.  People read it again and it takes time from people.  Deleting a question removes it from view and allows the OP (if he or she should desire) to be able to edit it (you *can* edit deleted posts if you can see them - such as 10k users and the OP can) and flag it for undeletion.  In the meantime, deletion prevents further down votes of the question and can reduce the comment drama that can detract from the rest of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most recently, this happened with the question [Steps for App Development?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/257714/steps-for-app-development) (10k link):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original version:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##App Development minimal knowledge&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to create some mobile and web applications quickly. I am aware of the 'full stack' but I do not know any of its associated technologies. If I were to use 'back-end as a service' what is left for me to do in deploying an app besides simply coding it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The edited version:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Steps for App Development?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to create some mobile and web applications quickly. I am working in 'full stack' environment but I do not know any of its associated technologies. If I were to start there and use 'back-end as a service' what additional steps do I need to take in deploying an app besides simply coding it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the comments on it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/…](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490) –  gnat yesterday&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I made the question &quot;less broad&quot; by asking for &quot;additional steps,&quot; and wonder if it can be re-opened in its current form. –  Tom Au 22 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @TomAu that still doesn't make it not too broad. What technologies are known? What end result is desired? Mobile and web apps are very different. Is this android or iOS or that windows phone thing? Do you even have the right hardware? If we're talking about web apps is this to be on the intranet? or the cloud? There is ***much*** more information that the OP needs to provide to make this an answerable question. –  MichaelT 22 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this question, I can think of dozens of ways to answer it for various combinations of technology.  For ruby, it would be one thing, for a php another, for python another, for the .NET suite another, for Java yet another. And then I'd answer it answer it differently if this was being deployed on the corporate intranet vs putting it out in the intranet... and then there's the mobile bit that is very different from web apps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, the OP doesn't even know where to begin and no amount of tweaking of the question will change it from that unless the OP provides the additional information about the actual problem being encountered and the path they are trying to follow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comment that gnat provided to https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490 exactly details what is wrong with the question and that *all* of those things need to be fixed before it is reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deleting the question prevents people from spending additional, undue time on the question. Questions that don't fix the close reason (and *really* fix it, not just a slight narrowing of scope) don't get reopened.  Transforming it from one close reason to another (for example, unclear to a poll) is also not a useful edit. Consider how the question would be answered and if those answers would be ones that meet the desired quality of Programmers.SE's answers.  If there are too many possible answers or the answers would require pages of tutorials then it is still too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bumping a heavily down voted closed (or on hold) question will draw increased scrutiny of the question which, if it's not a good question, can lead to it getting deleted more rapidly than the [roomba](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/177675/165773 &quot;automatic deletion&quot;) would (and in some cases because the roomba won't).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is an edit to be made, fix *all* of the problems and make it into a good question not just a less bad one.  Alternatively, ask clarifying comments for the OP to respond to (and if the OP puts it in the comments, *then* edit those comments into the question)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25196" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3891" RevisionGUID="05e0a5c8-ca98-4579-bf8e-9da76b36f1bd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The best thing we can do to fix this is to down vote crap when it shows up in addition to closing it. The faster hopelessly off topic questions like [maple_shaft's examples](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3890/31260 &quot;in this answer&quot;) get to -8 and drop off the front page the better." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25197" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6993" RevisionGUID="392c6047-8c3e-407a-a87f-1897b7304b15" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### We are inline with similar sized sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's an interesting chart there... but I draw issue at comparing P.SE to Stack Overflow.  In particular, the size of the voting user base compared to the daily influx of questions can make most of the stuff on Stack Overflow get no votes at all (there's also a significant 'whine about down votes' and 'give sympathy up votes' (examples [1][1], [2][2], [3][3] (entirety of question in mouseover in case they are deleted)) culture on SO).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to see what similar sites to P.SE looked like - similar in terms of questions/day and overall size.  This is what I came up with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Other sites][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will see that we are by no means the most down voting of the 30k or so question sites that I sampled (Gaming, Programmers, Electrical Engineering, Android Enthusiasts).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question really is &quot;what is EE doing right?&quot; along with &quot;what groups Gaming and AE together?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer to this is likely the accessibility of the material to the 'common' person.  The harder/less accessible the material, the more focused the site can be and clearly communicate that focus to people asking questions.  Furthermore, the more difficult the material, the more natural it is for the person to have done the requite study of the problem before asking the question along with asking the question fully.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging from this, I would suggest that if we want to have fewer down voted questions, it is would be necessary to restrict our scope *drastically* such that we're closer to that of Theoretical CS or Server Fault in what is allowed or not and take fewer soft questions; requiring all the questions to be at the professional software architect level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure that would be the right thing to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, there's the conception on other sites (Stack Overflow, I'm looking at you) that Programmers.SE is for questions without code or for getting opinions.  One can reliably go and find [belongs on P.SE](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24972540/how-many-copies-of-instance-method-will-be-created-for-n-number-of-objects-in-c#comment38818793_24972540) type comments on Stack Overflow ([data.SE](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/133379/recent-p-se-comments)) for questions that don't meet the desired quality.  The questions get asked here, and down voted, and, well, that's what you see.  I contend that it is *impossible* for P.SE to stop the problem as there are far too many with this misunderstanding of P.SE's scope on SO and the best we can do is close, down vote, and educate people who post here under those conceptions (and, again, that's a non-negligible portion of the ratio).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Changing the name won't help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One reoccurring theme that has popped up over the years is &quot;maybe if we change the site's name people will post on topic questions?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pulling up the current newest questions page and listing all the questions with a negative score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263077/help-understanding-this (-4) - a block of code with &quot;what does this do?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263075/c-project-design (-3 on hold) - too broad (not off topic) &quot;how do I understand C++?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263048/do-i-need-an-msdn-subscription-now-that-visual-studio-is-open-source (-3 on hold) - primary opinion (not off topic): do I still need MSDN?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263043/when-should-i-use-arraylists-compared-to-hashmaps (-4 on old) - too broad (not off topic): &quot;When should I use ArrayLists compared to HashMaps? Which is more effective, and for what purposes?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263023/how-to-make-triangle-in-nested-loop (-5 on hold) - off topic (failed to migrate to SO): I have a bug in this classic homework problem.&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263014/alphanumeric-addition (-3 on hold) (one vote for unclear): How do you solve [crypto math](http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/cody/problems/621-cryptomath-addition) problems?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263004/what-should-i-describe-myself-in-my-cv-a-business-intelligence-developer-or-wha (-4 on hold) off topic: resume help - can I call myself a Sr. developer without the experience?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263002/pseudo-code-of-3-digits-reversed (-4 on hold) Unclear: &quot;How can I write a pseudo code of an algorithm that displays a given 3 digit number reversed?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262999/how-to-use-slime-indentation-with-editorconfig-in-emacs (-1 migrated) Emacs tool use&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262992/how-can-i-start-writing-a-apps-to-be-build-before-code (-3 on hold) too broad: how do I write an app?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262991/code-snippets-website-app-with-integration-for-windows-mac-linux (-3 on hold) off topic (tool recommendation): &quot;Is there a website where I can save code snippets&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262980/what-is-the-most-minimal-web-app-stack-for-a-server (-3) off topic (tool recommendation): what is a good web stack to use for a severely underpowered machine?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my contention that absolutely *none* of these would have been not asked if the site's name was SoftwareDevelopment.SE or SoftwareEngineering.SE.  Every single question there would still have been asked.  Very few of them had off topic votes.  General topicality is not the problem with the questions (specific bits of 'tool recommendation' and 'career advice' still is).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are long past the days of &quot;what is your favorite comic&quot; or &quot;what should I name my cat&quot; and the like.  Those questions don't show up. Programmers is understood to be a site about software development processes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The off topic questions that we get now are ones that very closely map to the topic of software engineering, but are issues that we are not qualified (as programmers) to answer.  Career advice and legal being the two biggest ones.  We also regularly get polling questions, but that isn't an issue with the site name, that is a misunderstanding of the Q&amp;A format itself (and a failure to read the tour which shows what is on and off topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But there will always be people that suffer from the &quot;herp derp oh look a textbox&quot; syndrome, and no amount of renaming the site or amending the FAQ is going to fix that. -- [Anna Lear](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name/3225#comment7479_2950)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/26758518/289086 &quot;I need to make an error count that will shut down my vb.net programme when the user has made 5 errors&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/26746755/289086 &quot;What are the minimum required deliverables for a NOSql data model?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/7648417/289086 &quot;How to create a media player for Android?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/N04qm.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25198" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6984" RevisionGUID="02174095-7dd9-4cd4-817a-b7b9146cfbfb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [guidance](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) for off-topic questions has this to say about the use of statistics:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Asking for a link to something or statistics**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason. Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Links to things suffer from link rot. Statistics become out of date over time. Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't understand what the issue is with questions that invite answers that involve statistics. To me that guidance is bad for the quality of answers on this site. Allow me to illustrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take for example this question about code reviews:&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/261801/how-to-deal-with-no-code-reviews-in-my-new-place-when-i-come-from-that-practice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my view, having to argue in favor of the best practice of code reviews is something programmers are likely to face (hence on-topic) and the best possible answer to this question is to provide provable statistics that demonstrate the value of the practice of code reviews (and possibly statistics that compare the different ways of performing code reviews). This way the asker has better than anecdotal arguments in favor of code reviews as a best practice. In my opinion statistics are a higher quality answer when it comes to best practices answers, because they remove the bias inherent in an answer that is a sample of 1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand forbidding link-based answers, and requiring that the statistics are repeated in the body of the answer (citing the off-site resource where they were obtained), but why is it a good thing for P.SE to automatically close questions about best practices which can best be answered through statistics?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25199" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3910" RevisionGUID="41146e29-c956-4297-ab83-1940122ca0d9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question is: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/154794/31260&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...I am not sure if that is a correct way to deal with problem. I think in above mentioned case user is anyway going to change the text, so why not force him while constructing the action?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not quite comfortable with [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/161121/31260). It contains nothing but code and the code does not look self-explanatory to me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     public abstract class Action {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	protected String text = &quot;Default action text&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	protected String toolTip = &quot;Default action tool tip&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	protected String imageURl = &quot;http://myserver.com/images/default.png&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	.... rest of code, I guess setters and getters&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     public class MyAction extends Action {&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction() {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction(String actionText) {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;             setText(actionText);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction(String actionText, String toolTip_) {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;             setText(actionText);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	      setToolTip(toolTip_);	&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction(String actionText, String toolTip_; String imageURL_) {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;             setText(actionText);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	      setToolTip(toolTip_);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	      setImageURL(imageURL_);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I missing something here? Could above be really a valuable answer to the question asked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, answer is removed ([self deleted](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3910/is-this-code-only-answer-ok#comment10991_3910 &quot;according to clarification from moderator&quot;))." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25200" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7046" RevisionGUID="9cec90b8-b20c-47b2-8cd4-155bd1a4b822" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Color variation of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6935/11732)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ItowR.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25201" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7002" RevisionGUID="1852ce85-7cd3-4dee-bf96-2824a6da51d3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was very surprised to see that Meta questions can be closed as 'primarily opinion based'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, that doesn't make much sense :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can the close reasons on Meta be different from the ones on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are the chances of this question being closed as 'primarily opinion based'?  (There is a [precedent][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6609/64132" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25202" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3925" RevisionGUID="7e417f6c-ad4c-4f83-bcc4-e91a2950a81f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Last week I posted an [AD][1] for [our Blog][2] and it received the 6 votes needed to run. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was a generic AD, now I am thinking that it would be a good idea to change the AD every time we have a new Blog posting mentioning the Post Name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is it ok to change the AD after it has been voted on?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Would it be better to create a new Template AD and put a comment that the Text will change regularly?** (Creating a new ad for every post seems like abuse even if we could get the votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Lastly, assuming this was allowed, would it work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2635/community-promotion-ads-2012/3905#3905&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25203" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="1fdfa039-5aa5-4c71-bc85-87d5b6f6b934" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot;** in the answers appear to happen once or twice a week on average, frequent enough to feel the connection between these and respective questions making their way into [SE collider list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My particular concern is the poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making **interesting and well presented problems** look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;&quot;Oh look: ['my guess is fairly prosaic. Git is brilliant...'](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177890/31260 &quot;example&quot;) - with upvoted answer like that it [can't be a real question](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;not-a-real-question - what's this?&quot;)&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to [repel garbage answers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3835/31260 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;), I can easily name a handful of active regulars who [can and do](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;filter=all &quot;our editors gang is pretty strong&quot;) just that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that [invalidates my edit](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;). And answer that exploits another minor ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions: per my observations &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; have been smart enough to pick questions that have reasonably good wording as-is.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how things work now helps to attract new contributors but I would appreciate if achieving this important goal &lt;sup&gt;**[1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/when-is-an-account-abandoned/ &quot;'reduce the friction of... answering to little more than entering an anonymous comment on a blog'&quot;), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/helping-the-experts-get-answers/ &quot;'attract notable experts to your site'&quot;), [3](http://stackexchange.com/about &quot;'free and open to everyone... answer questions without even bothering to register'&quot;)**&lt;/sup&gt; would somehow be less damaging for good, highly visible questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **protect your own users from scale ...human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon...** ([A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy ](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html &quot;quote source&quot;))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some additional observations based on discussions that followed posting this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Low quality answers in hot questions likely contribute to the fact that currently, it is [hard for users to understand site standards](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;), which results in posting many &quot;bad&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a steady source of misguided contributors... There are... [broken windows](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info)... **&quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;**.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Until recently](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228940/165773 &quot;until this change announced 2014-04-09&quot;), low quality answers also threated to [penalize contributors](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13713_5448 &quot;see 'clear that 10k barrier...' and further discussion&quot;) who post good ones because when piled on in hot questions, garbage answers trigger [CW](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info &quot;automatic community wiki when there are more than 15 answers&quot;) which consequently turns all the upvotes given to good answers into zero reputation for their authors.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [more than 1700 answers scored 25+ turned community wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;q=wiki%3ayes%20is%3aanswer%20score%3a25)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of precision, note that number `1700` above is only indicative since search does not exclude answers turned CW for other reasons. Also note some of the answers could be high-voted &quot;unfairly&quot;: per analysis 10+ voted answers in sampled questions (below), this could happen, although rather infrequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through few [sampled](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/181999/31260 &quot;random sampling, stuff like that&quot;) questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, note that besides 199 answers reviewed above, there are also 19 answers deleted in 16 questions listed above. These answers are visible only to moderators and to users with [sufficient privileges](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;Access to Moderator tools -&gt; 'View deleted posts'&quot;). Of these 19, 9 are deleted by moderators, the rest has been deleted by owners. Of 10 answers deleted by owners, I would downvote 7-8.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summing up, I would downvote about **101-118 of 218** answers I reviewed per above research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some data related to [recently added](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/5413/revisions &quot;see changes in rev 13&quot;) observations on community wiki status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 2K+ views - about **25%** are CW, [307](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [1247](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 10K+ views - about **60%** are CW, [62](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [101](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting [self](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13717_5448 &quot;from here&quot;), wow. Just... wow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25204" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7024" RevisionGUID="f2e66746-5ecf-4d49-9f1f-fcaf12ac4448" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yes!  [The sidebar has been FAQed](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6910/faq-sidebar-on-programmers-meta)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our [meta-tag:faq] has 18 questions in it while [meta-tag:faq-proposed] has 40 more.  What questions should move there for easier access for people unfamiliar with the workings of meta?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also mention that the [meta-tag:faq] has some rather dated material in it that *could* get a good looking over.... like https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2/ and https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/350/ (which I hope we've largely come to accept) or https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/941/ which is completely out of date.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1646/40980 should likely get a good look and update." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25205" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3950" RevisionGUID="71a0153b-3962-448c-9811-4afb6e5e41ad" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The only interview questions I can think of that are unique to our profession are actually technical / conceptual questions (thus on topic on SO / ProgSE) that just happened to be asked during an interview. The rest are either off topic by virtue of not being unique to software development, or very non constructive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I don't think we have a clear stance on interview questions, and the majority of them is open, we currently have [374 open ones][1] and [108 closed ones][2]. Almost 4 out of 5 are open, I think we really need to closely inspect the tag before completely denouncing an entire category of questions. A lot of them might just be mis-tagged [interview] when they are only tangentially related to the interview process, and obviously there might be others that slipped through the cracks and need to be closed. And there might be some that are truly about the process, and are absolutely on topic (although I doubt it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's clean up the tag first, and worry about the FAQ later. Worth noting that cleaning up [interview] was [first (?) mentioned more than a year ago][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Binterview%5D%20closed:0&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Binterview%5D%20closed:1&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25206" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7048" RevisionGUID="013d19ac-e632-40fb-98ec-0807029bf105" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been asked many times before:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Compare the [Help Center On-Topic page for Programmers][1] to the [Help Center On-Topic page for Stack Overflow][2].&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/423/how-is-this-site-different-than-stack-overflow?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;  - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1747/what-is-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow?rq=1&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2237/what-is-the-difference-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;- [Choosing between Stack Overflow and Programmers Stack Exchange](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254570/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stack-overflow?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25207" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5448" RevisionGUID="14e08649-6c81-45e3-a3b0-a48f49a026ec" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt;  the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above issue looks real, as indicated by [54.32% &quot;bad&quot; questions asked](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5379/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this is likely related to issues with answers quality in hot questions ([discussed here in more details](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;Answers quality in hot questions&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Hot garbage waves&quot; in the answers once or twice a week&#xD;&#xA;* poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making interesting and well presented problems look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/)  &#xD;&#xA;* regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An &quot;outsider&quot; reading low quality answers in hot questions, could naturally think,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hey here I can _chit-chat about how git is fantastic_ and get my portion of cheap upvotes, c00l&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a **steady source of misguided contributors**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Above makes me doubt that widespread misunderstanding of site purpose is really caused by either of [name-FAQ mis-match](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name), or misleading [site name](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3718/31260) / [tag line](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3500/31260), or [scope change](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/31260). There are much larger [broken windows](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info) than that: &quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If above reasoning is correct, then ensuring good quality of the answers in hot questions will help users reading these better understand the site and eventually lead to less of a bad posts from misguided users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update: recent feature request intended to address above issues is https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5482/31260&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Connection between mentioned request and the way how users can be confused about what Programmers are about is probably best explained in a [comment made by Ben Brocka](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13830_5482 &quot;here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Often hot questions have lots of bad or meh answers that are bad enough to drag down quality of the content and general discourse (encouraging similarly bad new answers)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25208" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3978" RevisionGUID="d1820cee-e0b1-4407-8d65-2d4134ef880d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="From the [FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That part of the FAQ is common for all Stack Exchange sites, unfortunately your question is too open ended to fit the Q&amp;A philosophy and format. We can only guess when it comes to popularity alone, and that simply doesn't work for the site. It might be a great question to ask in [The Whiteboard][2], our chat room. I know most of the times it looks abandoned, but usually not constructive questions are excellent conversation starters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the C question, personally I'm on the fence, it does have somewhat of a technical core, and can be discussed on technical terms (and indeed it has, for the most part), but it's also very broad and has all the signs of a not constructive question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Language comparison elements (and that rarely ends well),&#xD;&#xA; 1. Couple of pointless answers,&#xD;&#xA; 1. Couple of extremely pointless answers (since deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it has survived without a single close vote or flag, and I see little point in mod closing it now that it's run its circle. If it starts attracting pointless answers and / or close votes it might be a whole different story, but for now I'm letting it sleep. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly I'd like to point out that it makes a lot more sense to concentrate on your own question's merits when contesting a closure than pointing us to other similar questions. It might just be the case that the similar questions escaped our attention, and the only thing you'll achieve is getting them closed as well. The community moderates itself vigorously, but some questions simply find their way in through the cracks. [Two wrong posts don't make a right][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3540/two-wrong-posts-dont-make-a-right" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25209" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4030" RevisionGUID="c0f61880-a80d-4cf7-b3f8-a4789b3e177b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Programmers, as well as Stack Overflow have their own areas of concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are details in the different FAQ sections of each site - questions get downvotes in these sites for many different reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Question may be off topic (as detailed in the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq))&#xD;&#xA; - It may be a _bad_ question (that is, very unclear)&#xD;&#xA; - A question could be starting an argument (again, against the FAQ)&#xD;&#xA; - It may be impossible to answer (again, against the FAQ)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People vote to say that they find problems with the question - downvoting is our mechanism to identify questions that do not belong.&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25210" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7051" RevisionGUID="e5a9b0ac-fd5e-4e7b-9446-17da55422438" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked [this][1] this question. It was put on hold by [Bart van Ingen Schenau][2], who kindly and patiently explained that he rejected the question because of a community consensus that programmers cannot authoritatively answer questions involving the legal topic at hand (copyright law).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have searched [Programmers Meta][3], and I find no evidence of such a consensus. To the contrary, I find a pronounced lack of consensus. Relevant posts seem to be [What types of legal questions are on-topic here?][4], [Are software law questions off-topic here?][5], and [“consult your lawyer” answers][6]. Among those discussions, there seems to be a contingent arguing that programmers are qualified to answer no legal questions; a contingent arguing that programmers can answer only those legal questions intimately related to programming; a contingent arguing that programmers can answer a wide range of legal topics as long as &quot;common sense&quot; is applied to the interpretation of the answers; and a contingent arguing that programmers may potentially be able to answer any legal question. No contingent clearly dominates the others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a newcomer browsing the documented record, my perception is that the community is very far from a consensus on this matter. Nevertheless, community consensus was cited in Mr. Schenau's explanation for the rejection of my question. The apparent implication is that a non-existent community standard is being used to justify the rejection of questions on Programmers Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I come to Meta (at Mr. Schenau's suggestion) in search of clarity. Does there exist a consensus on programmers' inability to answer questions on copyright law sufficient to justify the rejection of questions on that topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is attracting answers which are not quite on-point, so I think it would help if I elaborate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the help center guidelines are out-of-sync with community standards, especially when it comes to deciding whether or not legal questions are off-topic. I suspect what has happened is that the community has formed a shared opinion over time, but hasn't kept the guidelines up-to-date. That's okay -- We can fix it by establishing what the community standards are, then updating the guidelines to reflect them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start with the one question where I've been told there is a consensus: Does everyone agree that programmers cannot authoritatively answer questions of copyright law? If yes, then let's edit the guidelines to say that copyright questions are off-topic for that reason. If no, then let's tell people to stop citing that as a reason for closing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems likely that follow-up questions will be necessary. Doc Brown says we shouldn't encourage legal advice because it may be illegal to do so, or carry too much responsibility. Maybe we should look for a consensus on that point and, if we find one, write that into the guidelines. Telastyn suggests that copyright questions are too specific to be useful. Perhaps the community agrees with that, and it should be written into the guidelines. Snowman suggests that legal answers carry too big a risk of leading to bad decisions. Etc. Etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But let's take things one step at a time. The question on the table is whether or not we agree that programmers are incapable of giving authoritative answers to copyright questions. Yes or no?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks to everyone who answered or commented on this question. Here is a summary of what I learned:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Some respondents suggest that my question is based on a misconception. I had believed that Programmers Stack Exchange first establishes a consensus on which topics should be allowed, then writes those criteria into the help center guidelines, then instructs its moderators to close only those questions which fail to meet the guidelines. (Let's call this System A.) However, Eric King, Walter Mitty, and Rob Y suggest that Programmers Stack Exchange doesn't work this way. Instead, moderators vote to close and reopen questions at their own discretion, and the balance of votes, not the help center guidelines, determines what is on-topic or off-topic. Consensus doesn't play a formal role in the process, but you can infer consensus by looking at which questions remain closed and which remain open. (Let's call this System B.) I felt this was too big a concept to address properly in the comments here, so I started a [new question][7] to discuss it. Thank you to Eric, Walter, and Rob for opening my eyes to System B. It explains a lot of what I see on PSE, and it helps me to understand the replies to my question. If Stack Exchange does, in fact, work along the lines of System B, then my original question and my earlier edit in which I suggest that we bring the help center guidelines up-to-date with community standards are misguided; the site simply doesn't work the way I expected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Some respondents assert that the help center guidelines prohibit most legal questions through their prohibition on legal assistance. Snowman says that anything which crosses the line beyond &quot;how the license works&quot; is &quot;explicitly off-topic per the help center&quot;. MichaelT says &quot;The help center already has 'legal advice' in there as off topic&quot; and suggests that this implicitly extends to &quot;interpretations&quot;. Robert Harvey says &quot;Legal interpretation, advice, and assistance are all the same thing.&quot; My conclusion is that some moderators believe the help center contains a broad prohibition on legal questions, and may use it to justify the closure of any question with a legal aspect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) Several respondents went beyond answering whether or not there is a consensus on whether programmers can authoritatively answer questions of copyright law, and tried to explain why programmers cannot or should not answer legal questions in general. The diversity of these replies convinces me that there is no doctrine on the subject, but rather a bunch of individual theories.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/266445/is-early-binding-legally-constrained-while-late-binding-is-not#&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/5099/bart-van-ingen-schenau&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=legal/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/89961/consult-your-lawyer-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7056/is-the-vote-to-close-process-how-pse-finds-consensus-on-appropriate-topics" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25211" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="c955115b-aa2d-4144-98f8-df911a0d844c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Could we please make a trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Modification details are described in [this MSO post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164712/165773) as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As far as I can tell, substantial part of `Qanswers` in current formula is fake.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;  `(log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascores)`&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;About 1/3 of the answers [studied here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever&quot;) (83 of total 254) have score less than 1/100 of top voted post in respective question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Given that questions checked were ones with tens thousands views, **insultingly low score** indicates that assuming these answers to be popular wouldn't even be in the ballpark. Still, the formula pumps these into `Qanswers` value, as if it is something everyone would be happy to read (hint: it isn't).&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Consider tuning the formula to make it deviate less from voting results. **Ignore answers with non-positive score. Or [better yet](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13857_5485 &quot;preference for cut off at (TopAnswerScore/10-1) explained in comments here&quot;), ignore answers scored less than some reasonable fraction (eg 1/10) of the top one.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that current formula appears to give an unjustified value to crappy answers in highly upvoted questions (`Qscore/5`, no matter how much is answer downvoted), I would like to perform test run to find out if suggested change would make an impact to issues outlined in Programmers meta posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Note: results of the trial run to be analyzed using study analogous to one performed in _Answers quality in hot questions_. Current evaluation shows about **101-118 low quality of 218** answers sampled.  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Upon completion of trial run, similar evaluation is to be done in order to estimate whether there was a substantial impact, positive or negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Complementary information to this request is provided in [comments below](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment16044_5482 &quot;starting from here&quot;), marked with &quot;for the record...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I expect modified formula to be competitive to current one at &quot;moderately hot&quot; questions, following the [reasoning outlined here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773):&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;For questions that are not too hot (likely 2-3 clicks away from top of the list) it's natural to see things working exactly as intended. Answers and comments quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;) brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and cool...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recent hot question about [automated testing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/185819/31620) gives an example of why I would want to try a modified formula. In 17 hours, question collected 17 answers, merely 5-7 of which provide useful original content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overheat of fake hotness impacted question like a [Black Saturday fire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a01_17890753.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the fire settled, what is left for future visitors of the question looks like a wasteland of low quality garbage (note that due to high views, it will score high in web searches).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a04_17906927.jpg][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the light of above, [community wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info) status stamped on the question looks especially despicable. It kind of suggests that **after damage has done**, community members are invited to go over the crap brought in by braindead formula, carefully analyze it and try to tame the pain by downvotes. As if they don't have anything better to do!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Update&#xD;&#xA;Related feature request has been posted at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/192046/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please stop counting proven low score answers in hotness formula. Please roll the dice fairly, let user voting and time decay contribute to hotness score as intended. Please promote to collider audience less brain-damaging content to learn from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vKQvI.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B1hjy.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25212" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4089" RevisionGUID="a36eb610-5db3-4ea0-b217-2ff4b6c6c608" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's a very interesting question, and I'm a bit disappointed we couldn't find a way to keep it constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Minutes after the question was posted, one of our most senior members (by reputation) detected its [not constructive nature][1] and flagged it, asking for the &quot;insufficient explanation&quot; post notice (that's still visible on the question). I saw the flag seconds later, while examining the question and debating whether I should close it or not. I decided to add the post notice, hoping answerers would take it into consideration and not just answer for the sake of answering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Few hours later I checked back, read the five or six answers that were posted at the time, and again hovered over the close button. There were a couple of answers that completely missed the point of the question, and the whole thread was starting to feel like a typical not constructive one. Again, I didn't close it, as the two technically inaccurate answers were getting downvotes _and_ polite comments explaining what was wrong with them, and I was hoping the answerers would get the point. And they did, and removed their answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I checked back a third time, there were no flags, only one close vote, three good answers and a great one. At the time it seemed that we had salvaged the question, and decided to share it around, as I typically do with all questions I find extremely interesting. And it exploded, 14.4K views, 20 answers (+3 deleted ones). Unfortunately the later answers are quite poor (imho) and repetitive, I have no idea why people kept answering a question that was already sufficiently answered (again, imho), but they did. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps I should have closed the question right when I first saw it (minutes after it was posted), or when the flag asking for the post notice appeared (it was a good hint that someone else thought the question was attractive to poor answers). My spider sense was tingling every time I checked back, but until the last time (when the question was already closed), there seemed to be good reasons to let it open for at least a while more, and since there were no flags and I only spotted a single close vote, I happily reverted to user mode for this one instead of dropping the mod hammer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But right now, the question has more poor answers than good ones, and lots of off topic(ish) discussion in comments. We didn't really manage to pull this one off, and I probably should have protected answerers from wasting their time by closing the question early on. We can theorize for hours on how the question could work, but in practice it didn't and it did generate debate, arguments, polling, and extended discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There might be ways to accommodate and protect such questions, but we haven't found them yet. Yes, the question is extremely interesting, and perhaps on a different day it might have attracted a whole different crowd and a very limited set of amazing answers, but right now it's a typical not constructive thread, with tons of off topic / not constructive elements in answers and in comments. Shame it turned into a crapfest, but it did, and unfortunately I can't think of anything we could do to salvage it now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4088/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25213" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7088" RevisionGUID="dbf55b9e-4349-41e3-8b3a-24682ae532eb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The text description of the tables, while rather thorough is something that can be difficult for someone who can't actually type `describe Users` to see what the structure is and how it relates to each other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this, I like using http://asciiflow.com because it allows for an ascii art representation of the structure making it easier for others to copy and modify as necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;       +-----------+  +--------------+      +--------------+&#xD;&#xA;       | Users     |  | UserAccount  |      | Account      |&#xD;&#xA;       +-----------+  +--------------+      +--------------+&#xD;&#xA;    +--+ userId pk +--+ userId (uniq)|   +--&gt; accountId pk |&#xD;&#xA;    |  |           |  | accountId    +---+  |              |&#xD;&#xA;    |  +-----------+  +--------------+      +--------------+&#xD;&#xA;    |                                                       &#xD;&#xA;    |                                                       &#xD;&#xA;    |  +-----------+                                        &#xD;&#xA;    |  | Sales     |                                        &#xD;&#xA;    |  +-----------+  (and se^eral other tables like this)  &#xD;&#xA;    |  | saleId pk |                                        &#xD;&#xA;    +--+ userId fk |                                        &#xD;&#xA;       |           |                                        &#xD;&#xA;       +-----------+                                        &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no *policy* mandating the DDL, but yes, having the DDL or a ER diagram, but they do help in clearly and rapidly conveying the information in well understood means that doesn't have ambiguity of text associated with it.  That diagram covers the all the bullet points of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, the question can be boiled down to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I can't modify the `Users` table for various reasons.  When doing a query against a Sales table that needs to include the Account information, I need to write a query such as:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     select A.*, U.*&#xD;&#xA;    from Sales S&#xD;&#xA;        join Users U on U.userId = S.userId&#xD;&#xA;        join UserAccount UA on U.userId = UA.userId&#xD;&#xA;        left join Account A on UA.accountId = A.accountId&#xD;&#xA;    where&#xD;&#xA;       S.something = somethingElse&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This query has a lot of joins in it that that is slightly troubling to me.  One approach to this would be to denormalize the Sales table so it also includes the `accountId` in it.  This is also slightly troubling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the cleaner approach to writing this so that I don't keep having all of those joins in the queries?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could have some other information there, but this really condenses down the question into something that is more clear.  It describes the table structure, the problem you are having, and what solution you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Noting that it can be difficult to get at the source of a meta answer if you don't have 2k rep to be able to edit, it: [the raw revision text](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/9daac070-2551-4fef-a6f6-e7c1f3dab813/view-source)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25214" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7091" RevisionGUID="a4510f4c-f957-41c1-8cfa-38a3305597a5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We all know what the problems with most &quot;best practices&quot; questions is.  Quite Often, it is [spotting a herd in the distance and going trotting off after it.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354)  The other problem is that they can often be too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what, after all, is a site like Programmers all about, if it's not about best practices?  Surely that's what we're all here for: *writing better code.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This morning, we had someone stumble over the [Why is asking a question about best practices a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/142353)  So instead of asking a question about bad practices, he asked one about statistical usage of techniques.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Uh, oh.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6984)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, rather than discuss more legalistic ways to screen out &quot;best practices&quot; questions, I am now asking: what elements need to be present in a &quot;best practices&quot; question to make it suitable for Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, I'd like to see more question and answer pairs of the form: *&quot;This practice is preferred because [well-thought out reasons here], and this practice is discouraged because [sensible rationale here].&quot;*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25215" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4115" RevisionGUID="53443bce-d7d9-4f65-b190-53bc87f7833f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You appear to think that your question is about algorithms and/or development methodologies. Let's take care of the obvious first, a [development methodology][1] is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A software development methodology or system development methodology in software engineering is a framework that is used to structure, plan, and control the process of developing an information system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about development methodologies are expected to be about topics like, for example, prototyping, incremental development, agile methodologies, etc. Although as [Mark notes][2] there's a colloquial sense to development methodology, since Programmers is a site for professional developments, let's go with with the formal definition instead. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the algorithms part, although there isn't a formal and strict definition of what an algorithm is, [this one][3] is good enough:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm (originating from al-Khwārizmī, the famous Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī) is a step-by-step procedure for calculations. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that you say you'd love to see an answer as an algorithm, doesn't make it a question _about_ algorithms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original version of the question was also [not constructive][4]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: - “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking for &quot;the best&quot;, without clearly defining what that means for you leads to equally valid answers (and when that happens, the more popular answer wins, but popular doesn't necessarily mean useful - for example: Bieber). You were providing two valid answers in your question and expected more answers, without clearly telling us why the two methods you've already found didn't work. And, as you've mentioned in the comments, this was more of a curiosity question than a question about an actual &amp; practical problem. All of the above, made it extremely open ended. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in the current version of the question you are telling us why the two solutions don't work for you, and you've further defined the problem. You are not simply looking for the incredibly vague &quot;best&quot; and by giving us detailed explanations of why the two methods don't work for you, you've stopped people from proposing other methods that have the same problems, making the question quite less open ended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am still _not_ convinced that your question qualifies as a high level design problem, however since you fixed the more important problems, who cares what I think? Can't promise it won't get closed again, but even if not convinced I'm willing to err in the side of re-opening this one, just for the effort alone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly please _don't_ try to argue for your question by pointing to other questions, the best that can come of it is that the other questions will be closed as well (if they are indeed similar to your own). Instead focus on arguing for your question **on its own merits**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_methodology&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4116/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25216" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5543" RevisionGUID="a23acf4d-7ff3-4cbc-9c48-c161095a3a82" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Most likely reason for the issues with answers quality is a [particular bug](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164712/165773 &quot;described here&quot;) in a hotness formula (&quot;fake popularity&quot;). This bug causes some of the questions with many answers to be placed unreasonably close to the top of the [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Issues caused by this are explained in details in a post about particularly troublesome ([&quot;sticky&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;)) kind of questions affected by the bug in formula:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One problem with hot questions seems to be that there is no way for &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; to differentiate **genuine** popularity from **fake** one, that is from popularity introduced by the algorithm itself... the algorithm simply is incapable to detect cases when popularity is [its own byproduct](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback &quot;due to positive feedback loop&quot;)...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;For questions that are not too hot... quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), collider brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and fair...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;But when question gets closer to the top of collider, things change... it attracts a lot of visitors whose desire to answer is not balanced by local community norms. At this point &quot;intended life-cycle of a hot question&quot; breaks.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Hotness algorithm assumes the question gets bumped mostly by good answers and that infrequent deviations are corrected by local community through voting and comments. Thing is though, this does not work on top of the collider...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Post further explains why community moderation (&quot;quality control&quot; through voting, comments and editing by site regulars) tends to break on questions impacted by unnatural hotness score:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...There are just too many new visitors to keep things under local community control, and there are just too many new voters and commenters to get things going as designed... So comes next and next and next round of garbage answers, bumping the question, bringing mindless upvotes, over and over and over again.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Hotness algorithm calculates this as genuine popularity, keeps it accordingly high at collider, bringing more visitors that are breaking things further and so on and so on. Note it's not limited to newcomers only, everyone is invited to the party. Community regulars can clearly see that usual quality norms are broken... and that they are free to follow the New Order just like anyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;**That's how fake popularity makes shit stick to the ceiling and helps to keep it there.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It also explains why there are so much community wiki (triggered by too-many-answers) among questions affected by hotness formula bug:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; _Regular_ open questions (&quot;appropriate&quot; ones) tend to have much less than 30 answers indeed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;But when we look at &quot;sticky&quot; questions, things seem to be different. These questions aren't &quot;inappropriate&quot;, otherwise these would be closed long time ago. Still, 10 examples of sticky questions have more than 270 answers total, about 27 average per question...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...at least **2/3 answers in sticky questions are just a garbage** that somehow leaked in (probably because &quot;fake hotness&quot; gave question an unnaturally high exposure in collider).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Here are feature requests to address this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5482/31260&#xD;&#xA;* [In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/192046/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please stop counting proven low score answers in hotness formula. Please roll the dice fairly, let user voting and time decay contribute to hotness score as intended. Please promote to collider audience less brain-damaging content to learn from." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25217" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7112" RevisionGUID="287ba07b-046a-4ae4-bd84-f825d0d01216" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Nice idea, but that guidance was *waaaay* too long to fit in a pop-up. I trimmed it down a bit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Wait!&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&quot;&gt;Personal advice is off-topic here&lt;/a&gt;. Please ensure that your question…&lt;/p&gt;    &lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;…is &lt;b&gt;specific to &lt;i&gt;programming careers&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;/b&gt; Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/tour&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt; for other career development questions.&lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;…can apply to &lt;b&gt;other programmers&lt;/b&gt; besides yourself. &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&quot;&gt;Avoid asking for open-ended advice&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;br&gt;  &lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488&quot;&gt;Why was my career or education advice question closed or down voted?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Check it out:][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![][2]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;FWIW, I find that meta answer fairly unhelpful in this context, given most folks aren't likely to click through in the first place. So I tried hard to pack some specific advice into the pop-up itself, leaving the meta link as sort of a veiled threat at the end.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask?tags=career-development&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/80bXi.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25218" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5132" RevisionGUID="89beba24-381d-4436-8200-e915e8923bec" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Let me know if my question is too close of a duplicate with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow but I really don't think it is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am asking about a very particular section of the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - **algorithm and data structure concepts**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow has directly in there FAQ also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - a specific programming problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - **a software algorithm**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand the question about the difference says Stack Overflow often has code where Programmers often does not. However in the scope of algorithm's, data structures, and design patterns, which are all on-topic in Stack Overflow with associated tags and all, there's frequently no code involved in SO for these particular topics because they address more generalized problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also the aforementioned question about differences says programmers often can have code in the questions, so whether code is there or not seems to be a false indicator of differentiating an answer from SO vs programmers as both sites are on-topic with code or without.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(why is tl;dr always at the end?) so to sum up my question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone delineate the distinction between when an algorithm/data structures/design patterns question belongs on SO vs when it belongs on Programmers? Should a note be made in the FAQ detailing this delineation? If no distinction can be made, should one of the sites have it removed or suggest people go to the other for that matter?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25219" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5633" RevisionGUID="37f36c33-cf03-4678-833e-948a3c51840b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="History questions are on topic on Programmers, but have proven to be particularly troublesome:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- It's not uncommon for history questions to get closed (and re-opened, and closed, ...)&#xD;&#xA;- It's not uncommon for history questions to not show any (or very little) prior research.&#xD;&#xA;- It's not uncommon for history questions to generate highly speculative answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had a [history week](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/programmers-se-contest-the-complete-outline/3631#3631) in last year's contest. As an example of how troublesome history questions are, even the [winning question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/149457/25936) didn't escape an early closure&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. Furthermore, almost every answerer in my [request for feedback](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3653/what-did-you-think-of-the-contest) for the contest identified the tag as particularly troublesome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the same time though, the history tag has given us some exceptional questions. A few random examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What software programming languages were used by the Soviet Union's space program?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145669/what-software-programming-languages-were-used-by-the-soviet-unions-space-progra)&#xD;&#xA;- [What were the “core” API packages of Java 1.0?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147205/what-were-the-core-api-packages-of-java-1-0)&#xD;&#xA;- [Where does the term “Red/Black Tree” come from?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/116614/where-does-the-term-red-black-tree-come-from)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that the majority of programming history questions are either exceptional or crap, with very few being somewhere in the middle of the quality spectrum. This makes the whole category a very interesting beast, and one that needs special treatment. My questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Do history questions offer value to the site?&#xD;&#xA;- How do history questions pass the &quot;practical problem&quot; test?&#xD;&#xA;- What should our general guidelines for them be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related past discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Are programming-related history/trivia questions acceptable on P.SE?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2021/are-programming-related-history-trivia-questions-acceptable-on-p-se)&#xD;&#xA;- [Is curiosity allowed on programmers.stackexchange.com?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2526/is-curiosity-allowed-on-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;- [How can historical questions be on topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/363/how-can-historical-questions-be-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;- [Are word origin questions on-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5524/are-word-origin-questions-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;- [Content Dispute for “Why do programming languages, especially C, use curly braces and not square ones?”](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5628/25936)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Don't get me wrong, early closures are good, especially when they lead to the question getting improved and re-opened.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25220" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5154" RevisionGUID="bf19f7e7-3b70-47e4-be2b-2039a6f901c6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Both [Yannis Rizos][1] and [maple_shaft][2] give good answers as to why your question is not constructive. However, I want to address two other things you mention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Now, why mod would unilaterally reclose something that was validly worked through the system with no funny business (to my knowledge) is beyond me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators are exception handlers. A moderator really exists for two purposes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first is to help correct mistakes. Sometimes, the community gets things wrong. They might reopen a question that was closed with good reason. Or they might not be voting to close a question that clearly doesn't fit. That's not to say that moderators are perfect, because we aren't. But when the community is doing something that in the grand scheme of things is actually detrimental to the community, we deal with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second is to respond quickly to the worst of the worst. To stop people from defacing valuable information and prevent future damage. To remove content that is only vulgar or offensive and detracts from the community. To inform people when they are violating the norms of the community and how to correct their actions to become valuable, contributing members.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was informed in chat that this is still a poll, but fortunately, one mod is not the end all arbiter of reality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;True, we make mistakes. However, there are constructive ways to discuss a moderator's actions that you think might be invalid and there are unconstructive ways to discuss these actions. Saying &quot;yo mods reopen please&quot; in chat isn't really a good way to address a problem. This meta post, asking why the question was closed is. Alternatively, pinging the mods in chat and asking why a question was closed is a good way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Very rarely (at least on this site, based on what I can see) does a moderator take an action without either a flag on the post or after other community members have taken action (for example, as a third or fourth close vote). That means that many of the posts closed by only a moderator have been seen by at least two people - the person who reported the post and the moderator who took action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5152/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5153/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25221" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7129" RevisionGUID="3568723e-0a3c-4697-917c-97188bc79a6f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Referring to: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically for duplicates it states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When should I vote to close a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should be closed by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; casting close votes if:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * they are sufficiently similar to existing questions and *would be answered identically to them*. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * they are unclear, too broad, or otherwise problematic to identifying the problem in a way that can be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * properly addressed by answerers they are sufficiently off-topic, as outlined in the help center.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(emphasis mine)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was in a discussion this morning on this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/255148/should-i-throw-guard-exceptions-that-will-be-thrown-by-internal-methods-anyway?noredirect=1#comment552707_255148&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whereby it was marked as a duplicate to a question that was several months newer, I expressed confusion and was directed to this meta post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6160/closing-a-two-year-old-question-as-a-duplicate-of-a-one-year-old-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regardless of whether or not it was a correct move, I believe the information on the help page does not cover this policy and should be updated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current use of *would be* in the help text implies that a question, as it currently stands, has not yet been answered, or is likely to receive newer answers and implies that perhaps this close reason is best suited to new questions. I don't believe that is the case in my situation, and so the help text should be updated to cover closing as duplicate older questions in line with the meta post I linked above to avoid confusion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you agree?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25222" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5158" RevisionGUID="8b1516af-4c5a-4470-917c-7e5ffc4e33c0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Assuming that your question falls within the guidelines in [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) for what is considered on-topic and that your question makes it clear what you have already tried or already considered, I don't see why a question would not be allowed simply because it's a homework issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also relevant is [a discussion about homework questions on Programmers][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2894/how-can-programmers-se-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25223" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7145" RevisionGUID="b8ab41fd-33e7-4936-8983-f21dbf0ad791" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="An often reoccurring idea that is mentioned is that maybe, if the site name was changed from &quot;Programmers&quot; to something else (SoftwareEngineering?) then *maybe*, people would stop asking off topic, too broad, or down voted questions here. ([1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7142/40980), [2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6990/why-cant-we-raise-up-questions-quality/6993#comment20015_6990), [3](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3225/40980), and more).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, people rarely try backing this up with actual questions that are asked and looking at why they are closed or down voted and if their idea actually stands up to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's what you do.  You take the newest 50 questions and list all the ones that are down voted or closed and say why your idea for a name would have prevented the user from asking that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is non-binding and just an attempt to get people to think about what they are proposing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25224" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5637" RevisionGUID="7fd6bf88-d4b8-4db9-91a9-8d125e9e374c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This answer is a bit of a straw-man in order to apply what's being proposed and evaluate that against past precedent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Our Example:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188455/why-do-programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-braces-and-not-square-ones&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;was recently asked and is currently closed &amp; locked.  The lock, I presume, is pending the outcome of this Meta discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5628/content-dispute-for-why-do-programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-brace&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Analysis against criteria:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Askers must do their homework&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Somewhat failed as I don't consider a single look-up within Wikipedia as research.  But I certainly reference Wikipedia as convenient, so I'll grant the consideration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Askers must share their research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Passed inasmuch as we're given the Wikipedia reference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions must be answerable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is both a pass and fail.  The answers to that question provide some compelling evidence and / or conjecture.  On the other hand, my initial take on this question was &quot;how would anyone know that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programming history questions should be about programming history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definite pass.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No trivia&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Arguable pass.  If there had been a more clear-cut problem to be solved then this answer would be a cleaner pass.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Past Precedent:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159593/why-was-the-percent-sign-chosen-as-the-format-specifier-for-the-printf-famil  &#xD;&#xA;This one has a bit more research to it, but doesn't necessarily have a problem to be solved.  Overall, I would consider this fairly similar to the braces question.  It fails the trivia test by not having a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/117943/why-is-in-identifier-names-for-so-many-languages  &#xD;&#xA;No research; no problem to be solved; pretty much a curiosity question only.  I'd argue this is a weaker question than the braces question.  This one is still open even though it qualifies as trivia without having a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124570/why-pointer-symbol-and-multiplication-sign-are-same-in-c-c  &#xD;&#xA;No research but does have a problem to be solved.  Interestingly, the answers are actually more valuable than the original question scope because they extend into the more general problem of parsing issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118268/do-any-languages-use-for-the-inequality-operator  &#xD;&#xA;Equivalent research (Wikipedia) but no problem to be solved; mostly an intellectual curiosity question.  Without a problem to solve, this is likely trivia.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some commonalities:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those four questions share minimal to no research as well as being equally difficult to assess on the `answerable` category.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three of the four qualify as trivia, but are currently open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My thoughts / conclusions:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The assessment of the recent braces questions would indicate it should remain closed, but past question precedent contradicts the results of the assessment and that the braces question should be opened back up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The assessment also doesn't take into account the great answers that the braces question has attracted.  I acknowledge though that it's impossible to make an [a priori](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori_) determination like that though.  The answers, though, place the question within the ranks of the more interesting historical questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since this is in meta -  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote up if you agree with my application of the assessments from above and that we need to keep working out the details of the assessment questions to improve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote down if you think I woefully missed something in the application. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25225" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5161" RevisionGUID="48de0d7c-28db-487d-994e-dfda2be0d6e1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently read: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4013/where-did-pierre-303-go-he-was-an-all-star&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that there are issues/difficulties that I'm ignorant of, and everyone wants programmers to be the best it can be, and a community to be proud of and a lot of people work hard to make it good, but have there been signs that it is a community that isn't compatible with the StackExchange engine?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25226" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5693" RevisionGUID="627395ea-0efa-4cfe-9ca1-02542f8de880" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I posted [this answer][1] to a similar discussion about half a year ago.  Since then, my participation on Programmers has dropped to practically zero.  I tried, but the density of questions interesting enough to be worth participating in here has dropped below the threshold of making it a worthwhile site for me to visit.  Hand-holding, positive-attitude remarks, question editing, it didn't really seem to make much difference, and the gamification system doesn't reinforce that behavior either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words: from my point of view one reason that the experts aren't here anymore might be because there's pretty much nothing interesting left to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4013/where-did-pierre-303-go-he-was-an-all-star/4033#4033" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25227" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5178" RevisionGUID="d5c05020-ee3e-4edf-b9d9-10182c294fa4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Locating an article is _not_ a software development problem, regardless of what the article is about. Questions that are nothing more than a request to an external resource are off topic, not only on Programmers but on Stack Exchange in general, this isn't a link sharing service.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finding an article or a blog post is _not_ a conceptual software development question. We make a small exception for [canonical books][2], but that's the only exception, not the rule. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Let’s Play The Guessing Game][4]&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient&#xD;&#xA;- [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [Real Questions Have Answers][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why is asking for references/sources to study specific topics considered not constructive?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/153220/why-is-asking-for-references-sources-to-study-specific-topics-considered-not-con" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25228" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7147" RevisionGUID="1f6f6c13-552e-4479-95db-12fdb5f9809b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here's my opinion on the same question list as [MichaelT][1] with a name that strongly emphasizes conceptual software design, such as **&quot;The Whiteboard&quot;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am writing my answers from the point of view of a user whose only knowledge of this site is it is a StackExchange Q&amp;A site titled &quot;Programmers&quot; or &quot;The Whiteboard&quot;, and who doesn't have a strong grasp of what makes a good/bad question for SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271586/what-examples-are-there-for-mean-js&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271584/what-cms-to-use-for-mean-js&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would ask both of a Q&amp;A site titled &quot;Programmers&quot;. I would only ask the second of a Q&amp;A site labeled &quot;The Whiteboard&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271573/how-to-speed-up-the-following-matlab-code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271545/clarification-on-migrating-to-visual-studio-2010&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271544/is-there-any-harm-in-using-amazon-aws-as-a-development-environment&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271541/what-do-you-do-while-youre-waiting-for-your-tests-to-run&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271537/how-to-choose-a-framework&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271535/compare-values-from-two-spinner-and-display-the-result-accordingly-in-android-st&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271532/best-way-to-get-data-from-database-inside-thread-class-in-spring,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271515/can-i-use-qtcreator-with-pyqt5&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271531/c-malloc-error&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271530/univerisity-iphone-assignment-without-an-apple-mac&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271510/code-blocks-not-opening-new-console-why-is-this-happening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271507/git-hangs-when-pushing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271497/difficulty-finding-a-recursive-starting-point-for-an-algorithm&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Maybe.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271491/i-want-to-build-a-software-with-c-book-list-is-needed&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271487/installment-of-python-2-7-9-and-3-4-2-recommended-learning-source&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes to the first, No to the second&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271490/how-to-learn-backend-development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271473/best-way-to-implement-in-app-purchases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [PHP Ajax error, get 404 when type first char][2] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For 10ks there are also:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [Does php can solve this][3] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [For Windows developers who would like to get into the Mac OS X software development industry, what's a great way to get started?][4] &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [how to solve the problem of fault face detection in image processing][5] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [Generous budget: what's your ideal setup?][6] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Maybe&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [recommend a British based programmer / small company that also does design, a language and requirements definition document][7]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [What books helped you to become a better programmer][8] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Total: Programmers 26; Whiteboard: 7-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind, this is *my perspective*. Everyone's different. We can't say definitely &quot;yes this would be asked&quot; or &quot;no this wouldn't be asked&quot;. It depends on the question asker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point is, a user who only knows *&quot;this is a SE Q&amp;A site titled Programmers&quot;* will most likely have a very different assumption than a user who only knows *&quot;this is a SE Q&amp;A site titled The Whiteboard&quot;* (or Software Concepts, or Software Design Theory, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The term &quot;**Programmers**&quot; is an extremely broad term that could bring to mind a person writing code, a person designing software, a person gathering requirements, a person seeking a new job, etc. But in all cases, it brings to mind *a person*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However a term like &quot;**The Whiteboard**&quot; gives a first impression of &quot;conceptual software design&quot;, which is more likely to bring to mind designing software, considering architecture, evaluating approaches, etc. It's much more inline with what this site actually is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7146/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271472/php-ajax-error-get-404-when-type-first-char&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271529/does-php-can-solve-this&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/360/for-windows-developers-who-would-like-to-get-into-the-mac-os-x-software-developm&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271560/how-to-solve-the-problem-of-fault-face-detection-in-image-processing&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1763/generous-budget-whats-your-ideal-setup&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271517/recommend-a-british-based-programmer-small-company-that-also-does-design-a-la&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271480/what-books-helped-you-to-become-a-better-programmer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25229" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5705" RevisionGUID="c604f193-74f2-41b5-8cd5-34e9f42580f9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would like to address one point I noticed in quite a few prior answers here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * conceptual question on software development, why wouldn't I ask it on **Stack Overflow**... &lt;sup&gt;[1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5680/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * On **StackOverflow**, many questions that are not in the prohibited categories... &lt;sup&gt;[2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5699/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * there is considerable overlap between **Stack Overflow** and programmers... &lt;sup&gt;[3](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5704/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * those questions are valuable and interesting..., and happily go on using **StackOverflow**... &lt;sup&gt;[4](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5676/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah you guys brag so much about how easier it is to _pass through_ at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you probably don't consider is that [huge backlog in close votes queue](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/151833/165773 &quot;about 50K questions to close&quot;) makes (_currently_ makes) close voting at SO somewhat... _random_, compared to systematic effort you see at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **I hate to be the one to tell you, but don't expect this to last forever...**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yxu4K.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it will be very interesting to see what happens in about [21 months from now](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/163837/165773 &quot;'we should have it cleared in just under 21 months'&quot;), when mentioned backlog is expected to be cleared.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;One can probably get an idea of how it would feel like by observing current effort to [Close all the typo questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167342/close-all-the-typo-questions &quot;refer to MSO for more details on that&quot;). Watching their &quot;live backlog&quot; makes a strong impression: dozens of questions getting closed and deleted daily with ease, and don't forget that only a small percentage of [about 10 thousands SO close-voters](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/167915/165773 &quot;estimate here&quot;) participate!&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When close votes backlog is finally cleared, expect close votes processing to get to the pace at which other SO reviews are dealt with (think about something like **10x faster than at Programmers**).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What would you guys say when it will become only a matter of few minutes between first close vote / flag and question closure at Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If (when) that happens to your favorite &quot;conceptual&quot; questions at SO (as it happens already &lt;sup&gt;[1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/170394/165773 &quot;recent example&quot;), [2](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/157216/165773 &quot;another example&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt; - just not that frequently), please don't forget to get back here and tell us again if it's that easy to pass at SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yxu4K.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/review/close/stats &quot;'can't you see I'm working on it...'&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25230" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5183" RevisionGUID="1750da15-30f2-4214-b2df-5010df2c82b8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You could try to do it as a [community promotion ad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2635/community-promotion-ads-2012). The guidelines for a community ad on programmers are fairly open, you just have to convince enough people that it's a good idea." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25231" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7163" RevisionGUID="55cfa7fb-7a95-471d-a1f7-d0738119eb40" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As of a few minutes ago, an [additional filter](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7155/60171) is applied to the comments to reduce false positives in The Whiteboard. This filter checks for `for/on/to/at/try` + `programmers`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to see *all* comments mentioning &quot;programmers&quot; you can do so in [Duga's Playground](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/20298/dugas-playground).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Filtered comments goes to The Whiteboard, unfiltered to Duga's Playground." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25233" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5185" RevisionGUID="79cb517d-3971-4cb3-a1dd-1856d6a2f349" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is a number of questions on Programmers that relate to [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [As per IEEE 12207, who has to perform SW integration testing?][2]&#xD;&#xA; * [How to apply verification and validation on the following example][3]&#xD;&#xA; * [Where should I draw the line between unit tests and integration tests? Should they be separate?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do I flag-off such topics to be migrated there?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: This questions is similar to another [question][5] about migrations between stackexchange questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173165/as-per-ieee-12207-who-has-to-perform-sw-integration-testing&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/172850/how-to-apply-verification-and-validation-on-the-following-example&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171705/where-should-i-draw-the-line-between-unit-tests-and-integration-tests-should-th&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2826/flagging-off-topic-should-allow-you-to-migrate-to-codereview" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25234" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7190" RevisionGUID="66a4587a-c949-4959-96b4-484a5e704fca" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Coming up on this discussion - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/271585/53263&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I'm trying to avoid this problem - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1127/are-answers-being-posted-as-comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My answer is reproduced here, less the OP's original quote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Wow! We do not work on the same code bases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Inversion of Control frameworks - like Guice or Spring - essentially strive to make this half of your problem, a pillar of design. Many arguments in constructors is totally fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Seriously, a typical constructor in my code base might have 20+ arguments. No apologies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have delete votes for this. I feel this is wrong because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * people should be allowed to answer questions...&#xD;&#xA; * incompletely because they have something substantive to say but don't&#xD;&#xA;   have the desire for whatever reason to write something extensive...&#xD;&#xA; * letting others write better answers to flesh out the response if&#xD;&#xA;   possible...&#xD;&#xA; * because an incomplete answer such as mine may be&#xD;&#xA;   extremely helpful to the OP and future visitors...&#xD;&#xA; * and answer *as* an answer since the comment muck is not appropriate for what is, in fact, an answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm disappointed I have delete votes and downvotes for what seems to be incompleteness alone, and want to see what meta thinks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25235" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5749" RevisionGUID="937f3f02-4caa-4d66-9570-d5e22b038610" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In a comment in one of our [Meta discussions][1] Aarthi [announced][2] a set of changes to the closing procedure:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is currently in spec-stage so I don't have lots of details available, but suffice it to say: how we handle closures/question rehab is going to be revisited in the next year, and the methodology of communicating this to the end user is expected to receive a complete makeover. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What changes have already been announced and how can I be part of the discussion for future changes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5572/reducing-user-frustration&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5572/reducing-user-frustration#comment14036_5572" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25236" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5196" RevisionGUID="8bf0e778-adc4-4879-a93c-3ac8d12d5dbb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I for one am interested in answers that may help my work in **professional** environment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hey if you code just for fun, you are free to forget all this boring stuff from [Joel Test](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html) - version control, issue tracking, code reviews etc. Oh and testing isn't that important as you may read from some elitist professionals here - trust me, none of bat scripts I wrote for my needs has been passed through any formal QA but all three of them work just fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current FAQ wording allows me to downvote garbage like above and even come to meta and complain, [requesting it to be deleted](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3920/31260 &quot;BTDTGTTS&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think dropping the word &quot;professional&quot; would open up doors for it, that's why I am against." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25237" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7220" RevisionGUID="159fe4b0-1998-49bc-88ee-8e72fabaf013" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Only a moderator can migrate a question to any beta site. In fact the only two sites we can vote to migrate are Programmers Meta (this site) and Stack Overflow. Whichever moderator moved that question is the only person who can explain the &quot;why&quot; behind the move.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that is a problematic question _as written_ for both sites. If I had more time today when you asked it I would have tried to help improve it, but I was unclear about your intent and had other work to do at that time. By the time I came back around to check it out, it was already migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It is written _almost_ like a product request, as if you are looking for a library you can leverage and extend. If you are looking for a piece of software, SR.SE would be the appropriate site. In fact the title reads that way: &quot;is there a library or tutorial...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* While it does ask for advice about how to code something in a report, that is [too broad][1] for Programmers.SE. The title also sounds like a [resource request][2] which is off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think you should ask the question here on Programmers after editing it to be clear that it is not a product recommendation. Do not simply say &quot;I am not looking for a recommendation&quot; but change the wording and tone of the question. Next, make it laser-focused. You will likely need to experiment with your code and figure out what works and does not work. Simply asking [where to start][3] will not end well, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can always drop into [chat][4] for help wording your question, or open another meta question here if you have more specific concerns about how to ask your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only remaining housekeeping is whether to edit the question on SR.SE and migrate it back, or self-delete that question and ask here again. I would lean toward deleting and asking over simply because the logistics may be easier, but others may prefer to migrate it back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6366/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25238" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5828" RevisionGUID="53285bad-9a4b-4676-9ce9-25db5f1891e8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/194414/what-psychological-factors-account-for-readability was asked after a [related question][1] was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;gnat posted a comment that detailed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**[resource requests are not quite welcome at Programmers][2]**. As far as I understand, one would rather present an **underlying problem** instead - a problem that was intended to be solved with particular resource requested&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've had a look at the faq for what's on-topic, but this doesn't seem to match any of the criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is receiving upvotes, so wondered whether it's been edited to a state where it's on-topic?  &#xD;&#xA;I've given it a few comments, but not answered it to avoid encouraging it if it is off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/194348/where-can-i-find-scientific-papers-about-code-readability&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/resource-questions/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25240" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5833" RevisionGUID="7196a610-f903-4239-bbf3-a32103a8aaa9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Chris gave the right answer for this particular circumstance, but I just wanted to point out that promotion of an Area 51 site on an existing site's meta is not unprecedented, and can be acceptable under certain specific conditions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, [Workplace SE](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/) was [promoted here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2439/the-workplace-is-now-in-the-commitment-phase) without objection.  The difference was, trying to attract support for the new site wasn't the primary purpose for mentioning it here.  There was a separate *germane* reason, which was the fact that we were dealing with a lot of off topic workplace-related questions at the time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So by all means, feel free to bring up the proposed site in suitable contexts.  It's the &quot;hey, come vote!&quot; posts that are disallowed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25241" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7224" RevisionGUID="820fe5e7-fc0f-405d-8e2d-b1cdeeda34e8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Assuming that this doesn't happen frequent enough to warrant changes to the system, one approach that comes to mind is to flag these cases for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flag message explaining the issue could refer this very question, in order to make it easier for moderator to find more details, eg like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`please take a look - this off-topic question appears to be posted with sole purpose to circumvent 'problem' title block at Stack Overflow (related meta discussion: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7221)`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Because, really, what's the point of wasting [precious close votes](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6507/31260) on an issue essentially caused by some kind of a system &quot;leak&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note, per discussion in later related question, some moderators are *not* positive about flags like that: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7328/31260&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On another note, you may also stumble upon [an earlier post](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6508/31260) that recommends this approach...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; if you see someone that is very likely unable to ask questions on one site bringing the same poor quality here - flag it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...but you better keep in mind that above guidance is *not* universally accepted. At least not currently." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25242" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5275" RevisionGUID="21173c3d-71e3-474f-94d9-74f52ca99be0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are countless design &quot;bugs&quot; that may or may not get fixed in any reasonable amount of time because *they don't actually matter very much*. Everyone has their pet peeves, but when and how those actually amount to problems worth fixing is subjective. Easy to fix when related changes are being made, but not a high priority otherwise. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may change *somewhat* as we continue to expand the dev and design teams.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't find a recent suggestion to change migration targets either, but [if you look at the stats](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats) there's no real point - [as ChrisF notes][1], we don't add beta sites to these lists, and with only 3 questions migrated in the last 90 days, SU isn't exactly *crying out* to be more easily migrated to. Choice for the heck of it just wastes time and increases the chance of mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5272/why-many-features-and-bug-reports-are-pending-for-years-without-being-implemente/5273#5273" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25243" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5992" RevisionGUID="9815712c-ce14-409a-b0ed-a3d57436f00c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are some fairly major changes coming soon to how posts are closed, you may want to read up on the details:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Closing changes: [on hold], unclear, too broad, opinion-based, off-topic reasons, bye-bye to Too Localized](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/184154/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [Responding to your “too localized” concerns](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/185102/162704)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We will need to come up with our own list of custom off topic reasons for Programmers. These reasons will be available to close voters after they have picked the generic &quot;off topic&quot; one. Here's a screenshot of Meta Stack Overflow's close dialog, where the new system is already available:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8locR.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;other&quot; option will allow a custom message, when none of the three custom reasons applies:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFP1n.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an &quot;off topic&quot; reason you'd like to nominate, please post it as an answer. Some general guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- One reason per answer, so they can be voted separately.&#xD;&#xA;- A brief comment explaining why the general category is off topic is mandatory. See the examples in the first screenshot for inspiration. If we have a _good_ Meta discussion explaining in detail why the category doesn't work, please link to it in your comment.&#xD;&#xA;- Examples to existing closed questions that would fit your custom reason would be immensely helpful.&#xD;&#xA;- If there's already an answer with a reason similar to what you have in mind, but with a slightly different phrasing, please consider commenting on the existing answer and refining the phrasing instead of posting a new answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The winners: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [&quot;what language, technology, or project one should take up next&quot;][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [&quot;career or education advice&quot;][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [&quot;recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource&quot;][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5994/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5993/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6025/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25244" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5299" RevisionGUID="cab68b83-b493-47f0-9293-7f998341d147" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[My question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177579/empirical-evidence-regarding-testability) was closed. Robert Harvey says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Questions asking for links to external resources are more or less off-topic throughout the Stack Exchange network. That's what search engines are for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Reference request&quot; is the third most popular tag on cstheory.SE&#xD;&#xA;* It's is one of the 20 most popular tags on math.SE with over 2,000 questions&#xD;&#xA;* 114 questions for &quot;reference&quot; on stats.SE&#xD;&#xA;* Indeed, with the exception of SO itself all of the *.SE I regularly visit have a popular &quot;reference request&quot; tag&#xD;&#xA;* Even on this site itself, 23 questions have been asked with the &quot;reference&quot; tag, only two of which were closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are questions for which answers not backed by empirical data are fine. But if I want to see a peer-reviewed study instead of someone's personal experience, why is that off topic for this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note there are related questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5130/are-literature-requests-inherently-off-topic-or-not-constructive&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It strikes me that those deal with broad things like &quot;give me a book about C&quot; whereas I'm asking for support of a very specific hypothesis (the relationship between testability and stability)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25245" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6010" RevisionGUID="6dd63104-bbd9-421a-9435-2c0e5ae95b7e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Related question - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5931/where-to-ask-for-advice-regarding-a-review-audit &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just ran into a review Audit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question for which the first post occured was: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44/are-certifications-worth-it &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I checked the question, but could not find the answer on the page. In the review box, it wasn't possible to either down/up vote, nor flag or comment the post, since the quesiton is marked as wiki.  The only actions available were: share(on the answer), Nothing needs to be done(review), Skip(review). Since the answer wasn't visible on the question page and I couldn't find the user, I clicked &quot;Nothing needs to be done&quot;, assuming that it had already been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In retrospect, &quot;Skip&quot; probably would have been the better choice, but is this really a good review audit scenario? First-posts on wiki questions aren't even possible, are they?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/DMOuH.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25246" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5301" RevisionGUID="9d0f72fd-10b4-4774-8543-c83b3323c3ad" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Appeal to regain the privilege to ask questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5147/appeal-to-regain-the-privilege-to-ask-questions)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I asked the following questions in Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1- [Determining an application's dependencies][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2- [Drag and drop feature for a website][2] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I did not get any down-votes, still I am banned from posting more questions in Programmers. Are these questions the enough reason for this ban?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155960/determining-an-applications-dependencies&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156115/drag-and-drop-fearture-for-a-website" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25247" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7237" RevisionGUID="14a792e3-4a74-4ca2-944f-090674ede2ad" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA; - software configuration management&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [how to use specific tools][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career or education advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - [legal advice or aid][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;. **Please keep it professional**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see [the Help Center page about what not to ask][11] as well as the [*Good Subjective, Bad Subjective*][12] and [*Real Questions Have Answers*][13] blog posts for details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][14] or [strongly rooted in opinions][15]. We should be able to answer your questions in the equivalent of a few pages of text and graphics and provide references to support claims. If you have questions that warrant an extended discussion, feel free to [come to chat][16].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before asking, [look around][17] to see if your question has been asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions. It’s also OK to [ask and answer your own question][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for [another Stack Exchange site][19]. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may [commit to][20] or [propose][21] a new side at [Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are created][22].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more details, please see [our curated FAQ on Meta Programmers Stack Exchange][23].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7253/where-does-my-tool-question-go?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1655&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7248/how-do-you-get-20-rep-to-get-into-chat&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/faq/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25248" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5327" RevisionGUID="e751bc58-1508-4986-9d3b-99a1fa0a36aa" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is some controversy about [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178787). There have been multiple questions about non-disclosure agreements. A quick look at [the tag](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/non-disclosure-agreement) shows that many of them are open, even though just as many of them are not specific to software development, a requirement [recently clarified and enforced](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3412).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there can be little doubt that non-disclosure agreements are extremely relevant to programmers, and there is currently no other place to ask such questions on StackExchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should P.SE allow, in general, questions about NDA that apply to programmers, even non-exclusively? If not, what should P.SE do to make it clear to people reading grandfathered-in questions about NDAs that the same question, asked today, would be considered off-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25249" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6195" RevisionGUID="414cb66e-b9fa-4091-b0e0-3610ef6b706d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You seem to believe that question locked for content dispute at meta should remain at main site as originally posted (&quot;Lock question as-is&quot;). This approach doesn't make sense to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the purpose of meta discussion, it is insignificant what particular revision is hanging on the main site because [full revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/212517/revisions &quot;example for your post&quot;) and [original version](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/212517/1 &quot;example for your post&quot;) are always available to study content and edits in as much details as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With above in mind, I would expect moderator locking the post to take whatever edits deemed appropriate in order to make it look OK for regular, inexperienced readers of the site - for those who just read what is posted and don't pay attention to obscure, strictly internal notices about _meta_, _content dispute_ etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this perspective, I would expect moderators to err on the safer side, performing pre-dispute cleanup of the content. Given that _final_ version of the content is to be determined by community discussion at meta anyway, I see no point to fixate about what is there on the main site during the dispute (it helps that locked post can not be voted, thus question score can't be influenced until it's unlocked back).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is worth noting that expecting mentioned cleanup to be performed by asker would be a really bad idea, as they are naturally biased.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In your particular case, part cleaned up at main site prior to dispute is: *&quot;Are there any definitive or widely cited sources of best practices literature&quot;*. To me, cleaning it up looks reasonable safety wise, as this part of the question makes a perfect match to one of the [close reasons](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6025/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Oh and please don't tell me that it's safe to keep because this part is hidden deep inside your &quot;main&quot; question. It's there and readers will find it. I remember myself being new at Programmers, carefully studying questions, stumbling upon resource-request parts and posting [low quality answers](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nyfwh.png &quot;example&quot;) _&quot;look here's the resource you asked about: &amp;lt;link&amp;gt;&quot;_.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to also address one of the [comments](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments#comment419290_212517) you made, likely intending to support the question with an authoritative reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that my post specifically implements the tactics referred to in that post to achieve usefulness as a subjective post. It isn't shopping for a source if you insist that an experience or widely-known principle be backed up by references. This is why it says &quot;Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your interpretation of [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) article looks wrong to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reading of the statement _&quot;questions insist that opinion be backed up&quot;_ is that it's a strong prohibition against filling questions with a [**poison** like &quot;what's your opinion?&quot;, &quot;what do you think?&quot;, &quot;what do you prefer?&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/184574/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;)... and yeah, &quot;which resource do you recommend&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question should _never_ have words like &quot;what's your opinion&quot; simply because this makes a wide open door for crappy answers where authors just post their opinion without even attempting to back it up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good question, in addition, is worded in a way that actually _[repels](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5401/31260 &quot;more on that here&quot;)_ garbage answers - allowing readers, guys like you and me, to flag low quality posts for mod attention and request deletion on the ground that these don't answer the question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Note that what's-your-opinion in the question immediately makes such flagging and demanding deletion impossible because, well, such answers _match the questions asked_. Same reasoning applies to resource requests - it is officially legal to post a [low quality](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/8259/165773 &quot;more on link-only answers here&quot;) &quot;I recommend this URL&quot; and pretend that this just answers to what have been asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I would like to expand on what looks fundamentally wrong in your position.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You (and some [other askers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6147/31260)) re-post excerpts from the article, plainly translating these into requirements to answers and pretend that this makes your question compliant. **Don't do that.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above &quot;translation&quot; is purely yours, you have no grounds to state that this can be inferred from the article you refer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing to remember is, this article states requirements for _questions_, not for the _answers_. Re-read it again and pay attention to the sub-title (quoted below, keeping font close to original):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Article is about guidelines for _questions_, plain and simple as in the title quoted above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever requirements for _answers_ you stuff into your questions, you have no ground to link these to the article. These are all yours, and, frankly, from the perspective of those who read your question, these are pure noise, as these add nothing [substantial](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6171/31260 &quot;related discussion here&quot;) to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't pollute the question with requirements to answers - for readers, these are useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, _after reading_ particular answer, you feel like something is not OK there, check whether it fits [answering guidelines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer &quot;here&quot;) and if you believe that it doesn't, feel free to raise your concerns." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25250" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5378" RevisionGUID="f53988c6-d3e1-4725-8f42-4257f0141f98" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I really don't see this working.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's think about what has to go in something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Site designers and Stack Exchange management would have to agree that we need something like this. If there is not any community support for the implementation of this, there is no way you would get this considered, or even looked at. Plus, something like this would need general acceptance from about 95% of Stack Exchange site. You can't just make a major change like this on one site.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Let's say this does get general community acceptance (which I doubt it would because nothing is really _wrong_ here). Site designer(s) (I'm fairly positive Jin is the only one) would have to come up with the layout, and the developers would have to test an implement it. Now, this is just the general development process that we all know, but having only one site designer doesn't help your cause.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Finally, SE usually tries out the feature on a few sites at first before totally launching it. Do you honestly think that people are going to write summaries on **every accepted answer and closed question**? We're all volunteering our time and knowledge to the site (unless you're an employee). I would be really hasty about asking and answering questions if I knew I was going to have to write a summary. Plus, moderators are volunteering their time also. They don't get paid, and from what I'm aware of, I doubt they'd want to do this work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not trying to say that anybody is lazy. I'm not trying to say that we don't want to make this community a better place. What I _am_ saying though is that nothing is broken, and if it's not broke, don't fix it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more info on what you can do with the current system in place, see [ChrisF's answer][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5376/34364" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25251" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7242" RevisionGUID="361a3ae4-443e-415c-8ced-84670fdc4e45" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Real Questions Have Answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following is an excerpt from The Whiteboard chat room; a user asking for career advice.  You can decide for yourself whether or not I was being too elitist/perfectionist.  But ask yourself, as you are reading this: &quot;is this a reasonably answerable question?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** Hey guys quick career based question - I am more interested now in web development as opposed to software development. The only problem now is that the place I want to work at is using totally different technologies than I am using right now. My plan is to self-educate and start working on projects to internalize those technologies/new programming language syntaxes and then give it a shot but it would still be cool to find out what you guys think about switching in between the two?&#xD;&#xA;If you had any experience with it or if you think it is a good/bad idea in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** Hey guys quick transportation based question - I am more interested now in trucks as opposed to cars. The only problem now is that the place I want to work at is using cars. My plan is to self-educate and start working on projects to internalize those technologies/new truck beds and then give it a shot but it would still be cool to find out what you guys think about switching in between the two?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** I have heard some people say that it is better to stick with one stack of tech if you have been using it for a while but I disagree with that and wanted to see what you guys thoght. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** Depends on what you mean by &quot;better.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** By better I mean mastering one stack and then moving on to others. My opinion is that some if not most of the things are trasnferrable but I am not sure 100% hence my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** Some of it is transferable, some of it is new skills.&#xD;&#xA;That's about the best answer I can give you, without a more specific question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** At the very bottom of my explanation I asked if anybody had experience with this directly - that is moving from software dev to web dev and the challenges that came along with it. Obviously for each person it will be a bit different but since the situation is generally the same I can pick out some of the similarities to help me with my decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** I did my first ASP.NET MVC application about 7 years ago. I had to learn about REST, web services, the stateless nature of web applications, ORM, HTML, CSS and a bit of Javascript.&#xD;&#xA;The rest I already knew from having learned C#. Well, except for the intricacies of ASP.NET and MVC.&#xD;&#xA;Nowadays, having knowledge of front end Javascript frameworks like jQuery and Angular helps a lot. There's also caching, cookies, authentication, etc. So I'd say the transition is non-trivial.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So after a lengthy clarifying discussion, we finally got to something that is answerable in some way.  But notice that it's still not a real question. Rather than asking a question that has an answer, he was asking &quot;Everyone, share your experiences, and let me pick out the common elements.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not what we do here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What he really wanted to do was [solicit a discussion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6742/31260 &quot;see 'On discussions and why they don't make good questions'&quot;), which is fine in the chat room, as that is what it is designed for.  But notice that the conversation never evolved into a real question that could be answered definitively.  This is why we have such strict requirements for  questions; they all originate from hard-won experience with topics that are subjective by nature, and the desire for newcomers to bend the site to their will and their existing forum skills.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a million and one other places on the internet where folks can have a discussion.  This isn't one of them.  And before you say &quot;but this is where all the experts are,&quot; the experts are here in part so that they don't have to put up with the mindless discussion that forums encourage." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25252" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6302" RevisionGUID="6c3b131a-7aed-457b-b6f1-ade36decfb7a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was reading here at meta and came across https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2524/closing-questions which is closed as a duplicate. Ok, What question is it a duplicate of?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a more general case shouldn't the duplicate warning always have a link to the other question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25254" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7035" RevisionGUID="653da737-a9ec-4bfb-8cf6-c13ca4df21e0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Lets go through [meta-tag:faq-proposed].  Note that a few of these are ones that I wrote.  I'll avoid making recommendations on them.  Many of these were issues that were FAQ issues back in earlier times when things were in more flux (scope and the help center about scope).  Many of these questions are now of historical oddity and while can serve as a record of where we've been, they aren't as useful for providing guidance to people *today*.  All of this is my take on the topic meant to start some activity on clear cut ones and considerations of the non-clear cut ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions - Mine.&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6665/should-cross-posting-be-allowed-sometimes-on-programmers - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6625/i-just-failed-an-audit-but-i-was-right-and-it-was-wrong-what-now - **FAQ it**&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6458/there-seems-to-be-some-contradictory-guidance-with-respect-to-asking-career-deve - This is another career question and I'm of the opinion that we should have only one career question in the FAQ, and this isn't the one that fits the FAQ the best.&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/why-do-certification-questions-keep-getting-closed - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6327/how-to-ask-a-batch-of-related-questions - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6311/where-does-my-git-question-go - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6283/current-events-questions-and-answers - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5633/is-programming-history-on-topic - **FAQ it**&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3547/adding-the-definition-of-a-shopping-list-request-to-the-faq - **Obsolete** (detag it)&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3301/changing-the-faq-to-reflect-the-sites-name - **Obsolete** (detag it).  See above&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3096/40980 - **FAQ it**  Consider a name change.&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2959/40980 - **Obsolete** (detag it)&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2912/should-legal-advice-or-copyright-trademark-and-patent-law-be-added-to-the - **Obsolete** (detag it)&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2894/40980 - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2856/addendum-to-off-topic-themes-in-the-faq - **Obsolete** (detag it)&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2699/basic-guidelines-for-discussing-business-logic-and-programming - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2645/are-what-did-person-mean-questions-on-topic - I think that https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6417/40980 is a better analysis of the issue, but thats my post too.&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2608/are-why-is-x-code-snippet-done-this-way-questions-on-topic - **Obsolete**ish&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2599/are-i-need-data-on-x-phenomenon-questions-on-topic - **Obsolete** (part of a cleanup form '11)&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2590/legal-disclaimer-in-the-faq - **Obsolete**&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2502/are-marketing-questions-on-topic - **Obsolete**&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2228/when-should-comments-be-deleted - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2133/faq-should-include-examples-of-good-questions - **Obsolete** (see the tour again)&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation - **Obsolete**&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2114/are-new-users-allowed-to-advise-without-mini-modding - Consider redoing as a new Q&amp;A to address community moderation&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/how-can-we-improve-our-guidance-about-the-purpose-of-comments - **Obsolete** as written it isn't that FAQy.&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed - I think https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted does a better job of answering this, but thats my post.&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1838/can-something-highlighting-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so-be-added-to - **Obsolete** as written it isn't that FAQy.&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1556/when-are-career-questions-too-localized-should-this-be-more-strict - Another career question question.&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/40/should-each-point-be-posted-in-a-separate-answer - This is already partly in the help center in [What does it mean if a question is &quot;closed&quot; or &quot;on hold&quot;?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25255" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6324" RevisionGUID="9df2e1f1-c0a4-4fc4-a0ce-7b63f07cd224" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In [this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5910/32347), Thomas Owens says &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If 5 users vote, I believe it's majority vote gets the reason. However, if a moderator closes, it's always the moderator's reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I cast the last close vote on [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/220694/need-advice-about-a-specialized-ecommerce-system?noredirect=1) and did not observe that behavior - The vote was 2-2 between &quot;asking us to recommend&quot; and &quot;too narrow&quot;, and I voted for &quot;too narrow&quot;.  However, the &quot;asking us to recommend&quot; is the reason that showed up in the close box.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No moderators were involved in the vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, two part question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Why was the wrong reason displayed?&#xD;&#xA;2. Why not show both?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25256" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5589" RevisionGUID="59632ddc-c092-4375-a835-f67d3ac53dd8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a discussion in the comments on [this question about empirical support for commenting code](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187722/are-there-any-empirical-studies-about-the-effects-of-commenting-source-code-on-s) to the effect that &quot;resource request&quot; questions are off-topic. It refers to [Why did a question about programming books get closed on Programmers.SE?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5454/why-did-a-question-about-programming-books-get-closed-on-programmers-se) here on meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've asked on programmers before for [empirical evidence in favour of paradigm selection](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162789/empirical-evidence-for-choice-of-programming-paradigm-to-address-a-problem), a question which didn't attract the same response about requesting resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a difference between asking for a book/books and for research literature? Should some of these questions be considered on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25257" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6362" RevisionGUID="125e0913-5613-4cdd-aa20-9de11d00e68a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I modified the original [Building a distributed system on Amazon Web Services][1] after the comments mentioned about [Why do interview questions make poor Programmers.SE questions?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question now is more focused about whether building an application on AWS makes it by default distributed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you please re-open it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/222222/building-a-distributed-system-on-amazon-web-services&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25258" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7048" RevisionGUID="f969fd0d-47f9-41b9-8152-248ef662f78a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been asked many times before:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Compare the [Help Center On-Topic page for Programmers][1] to the [Help Center On-Topic page for Stack Overflow][2].&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/423/how-is-this-site-different-than-stack-overflow?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;  - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1747/what-is-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow?rq=1&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2237/what-is-the-difference-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;- [Choosing between Stack Overflow and Programmers Stack Exchange](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254570/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stack-overflow?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25260" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6458" RevisionGUID="ffc5f2fd-283b-47d0-bd55-001b0b52b564" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The Help Center says this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [career advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/590/1204), salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... but it links to an answer that cites this question as being an acceptable [tag:career-development] question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8886/can-someone-find-a-job-as-a-programmer-without-an-education&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [Tag Wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/career-development/info) says this in its body:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; invite the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please note that most career advice questions run the risk of being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed for being too broad or impractical: try to make yours a [good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; subjective&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please also make sure your question has the proper scope. If your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really&#xD;&#xA;&gt; something that uniquely applies to software development and isn't&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![proper scope for question](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; More information about career development questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it says this (not encouraging) in the Tag Wiki Excerpt:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 99% of questions with this tag are off-topic and will be closed. Study&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other questions under this tag closely that aren't closed before&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking your question, if you want any chance of it not being closed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closed questions add up to a possible question-ban disallowing you to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ask further questions. Questions about steps one can take to develop&#xD;&#xA;&gt; one's programming career that require the unique insights of other&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, we have a custom close reason that seems to provide no room for exceptions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.** They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular&#xD;&#xA;&gt; circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how does one identify an on-topic question for this tag?  Do they even exist?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25261" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5749" RevisionGUID="f57937fd-5b05-44c4-a22d-9efe6474e715" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In a comment in one of our [Meta discussions][1] Aarthi [announced][2] a set of changes to the closing procedure:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is currently in spec-stage so I don't have lots of details available, but suffice it to say: how we handle closures/question rehab is going to be revisited in the next year, and the methodology of communicating this to the end user is expected to receive a complete makeover. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What changes have already been announced and how can I be part of the discussion for future changes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5572/reducing-user-frustration&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5572/reducing-user-frustration#comment14036_5572" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25262" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7051" RevisionGUID="f565a057-ecc2-40d9-8ff3-d4a67aa6a652" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked [this][1] this question. It was put on hold by [Bart van Ingen Schenau][2], who kindly and patiently explained that he rejected the question because of a community consensus that programmers cannot authoritatively answer questions involving the legal topic at hand (copyright law).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have searched [Programmers Meta][3], and I find no evidence of such a consensus. To the contrary, I find a pronounced lack of consensus. Relevant posts seem to be [What types of legal questions are on-topic here?][4], [Are software law questions off-topic here?][5], and [“consult your lawyer” answers][6]. Among those discussions, there seems to be a contingent arguing that programmers are qualified to answer no legal questions; a contingent arguing that programmers can answer only those legal questions intimately related to programming; a contingent arguing that programmers can answer a wide range of legal topics as long as &quot;common sense&quot; is applied to the interpretation of the answers; and a contingent arguing that programmers may potentially be able to answer any legal question. No contingent clearly dominates the others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a newcomer browsing the documented record, my perception is that the community is very far from a consensus on this matter. Nevertheless, community consensus was cited in Mr. Schenau's explanation for the rejection of my question. The apparent implication is that a non-existent community standard is being used to justify the rejection of questions on Programmers Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I come to Meta (at Mr. Schenau's suggestion) in search of clarity. Does there exist a consensus on programmers' inability to answer questions on copyright law sufficient to justify the rejection of questions on that topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is attracting answers which are not quite on-point, so I think it would help if I elaborate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the help center guidelines are out-of-sync with community standards, especially when it comes to deciding whether or not legal questions are off-topic. I suspect what has happened is that the community has formed a shared opinion over time, but hasn't kept the guidelines up-to-date. That's okay -- We can fix it by establishing what the community standards are, then updating the guidelines to reflect them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start with the one question where I've been told there is a consensus: Does everyone agree that programmers cannot authoritatively answer questions of copyright law? If yes, then let's edit the guidelines to say that copyright questions are off-topic for that reason. If no, then let's tell people to stop citing that as a reason for closing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems likely that follow-up questions will be necessary. Doc Brown says we shouldn't encourage legal advice because it may be illegal to do so, or carry too much responsibility. Maybe we should look for a consensus on that point and, if we find one, write that into the guidelines. Telastyn suggests that copyright questions are too specific to be useful. Perhaps the community agrees with that, and it should be written into the guidelines. Snowman suggests that legal answers carry too big a risk of leading to bad decisions. Etc. Etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But let's take things one step at a time. The question on the table is whether or not we agree that programmers are incapable of giving authoritative answers to copyright questions. Yes or no?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks to everyone who answered or commented on this question. Here is a summary of what I learned:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Some respondents suggest that my question is based on a misconception. I had believed that Programmers Stack Exchange first establishes a consensus on which topics should be allowed, then writes those criteria into the help center guidelines, then instructs its moderators to close only those questions which fail to meet the guidelines. (Let's call this System A.) However, Eric King, Walter Mitty, and Rob Y suggest that Programmers Stack Exchange doesn't work this way. Instead, moderators vote to close and reopen questions at their own discretion, and the balance of votes, not the help center guidelines, determines what is on-topic or off-topic. Consensus doesn't play a formal role in the process, but you can infer consensus by looking at which questions remain closed and which remain open. (Let's call this System B.) I felt this was too big a concept to address properly in the comments here, so I started a [new question][7] to discuss it. Thank you to Eric, Walter, and Rob for opening my eyes to System B. It explains a lot of what I see on PSE, and it helps me to understand the replies to my question. If Stack Exchange does, in fact, work along the lines of System B, then my original question and my earlier edit in which I suggest that we bring the help center guidelines up-to-date with community standards are misguided; the site simply doesn't work the way I expected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Some respondents assert that the help center guidelines prohibit most legal questions through their prohibition on legal assistance. Snowman says that anything which crosses the line beyond &quot;how the license works&quot; is &quot;explicitly off-topic per the help center&quot;. MichaelT says &quot;The help center already has 'legal advice' in there as off topic&quot; and suggests that this implicitly extends to &quot;interpretations&quot;. Robert Harvey says &quot;Legal interpretation, advice, and assistance are all the same thing.&quot; My conclusion is that some moderators believe the help center contains a broad prohibition on legal questions, and may use it to justify the closure of any question with a legal aspect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) Several respondents went beyond answering whether or not there is a consensus on whether programmers can authoritatively answer questions of copyright law, and tried to explain why programmers cannot or should not answer legal questions in general. The diversity of these replies convinces me that there is no doctrine on the subject, but rather a bunch of individual theories.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/266445/is-early-binding-legally-constrained-while-late-binding-is-not#&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/5099/bart-van-ingen-schenau&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=legal/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/89961/consult-your-lawyer-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7056/is-the-vote-to-close-process-how-pse-finds-consensus-on-appropriate-topics" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25263" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7257" RevisionGUID="5887e780-2b95-447c-9694-1d8627f79d91" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Propose to detect troublesome questions using Stack Overflow quality scoring data and put them to [Triage queue](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage) for an hour or two. If the timeout expires before decision is made, let questions go to homepage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the questions that fail the Triage, one option to handle these is to keep them invisible for a day or two (if not edited), then automatically [bump](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/bump/info) them for a broader community review. This way would keep them away from the top of [newest tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest). (Attentive readers may notice that bumps imply certain pollution of [active tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active) but this looks less of an issue to me, as this tab is rather heavily dominated by better questions being bumped by answers and edits. Not to mention that Triage would spare active page from questions deserving flagging for speedy deletion - spam, [homework dumps](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3837/31260), [&quot;cubicle fart&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6677/31260) kind stuff...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reasons why I consider above approach feasible are [laid out here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7251/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  goal, about [&quot;wall of crap&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so) at homepage, also looks relevant to us, as indicated by multiple recurring discussions about [too many bad questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7130?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...site topics substantially overlap and... many troublesome questions over here appear to be posted by users who are simply [trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260). Using same scoring data that is supposed to detect and block them at Stack Overflow would make sense, wouldn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...there is just no way to ensure that questions in Triage queue would be reviewed within reasonable timeframe... automatically kick questions off this queue and let them go to homepage after some timeout (say, 1-2 hours) if these haven't got sufficient attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-there-something-wrong-with-this-sites-rules-for-posting-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7614/why-are-we-getting-so-many-off-topic-debug-this-for-me-questions-what-can-we&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7593/is-there-any-point-in-this-site-still-existing  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note this one even suggests Stack Overflow (protected by Triage!) as an example of how a site should look like.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7130/so-many-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7239/there-are-way-more-negative-votes-in-the-top-50-questions-than-positive-time-to&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7221/problem-titles-in-off-topic-questions-of-new-users-coming-from-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7020/lets-help-askers-who-are-trying-to-circumvent-question-block-at-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6990/why-cant-we-raise-up-questions-quality&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6850/how-effective-is-the-quality-filter-against-this-question-with-all-caps-brief-ti&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6788/a-lot-of-front-page-down-votes&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6371/how-can-we-encourage-people-to-read-the-faq-before-asking-their-first-question&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5618/better-selection-title-for-top-questions-list&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5377/requiring-registration-to-ask-questions-did-it-made-a-difference&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4029/why-are-there-so-many-minus-points-on-questions-in-this-site&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4009/programmers-stack-exchange-question-downvoting-what-to-do&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3947/what-can-we-do-about-extremely-low-quality-questions-from-unregistered-users&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3778/can-we-have-some-way-to-not-show-closed-questions-on-the-front-page&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2744/how-can-i-create-a-custom-filtered-view-of-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2727/are-we-scaring-off-new-users&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Nov 17 '11)&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4097/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Oct 8 '12)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1589/what-to-do-about-the-proliferation-of-bad-questions-from-generic-accounts&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/841/why-are-almost-half-the-questions-on-the-front-page-marked-closed&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/784/are-we-closing-too-many-good-questions-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25264" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6463" RevisionGUID="d8dbbf72-984d-462a-8394-665b60d044f6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While general approach to the tag has been thoroughly addressed in [another answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6459/31260 &quot;here&quot;), I would like to focus on a question used as an &quot;acceptable&quot; example in Help Center. As far as I can see, in its current shape it does more harm than good, by misleading the readers into couple of wrong beliefs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Please answer for your region/city/country only&quot;** - this part of the question makes readers believe that poll / [list](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info) questions are acceptable. The very presence of this part makes low quality answers look legitimate and acceptable:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Personally I wouldn't hire someone without a masters degree, unless they could document some relevant experience and had very good references. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* In some minor companies in my country (Brazil) you can get a job, but due to some laws you'll get difficulty to be promoted, because to work in some positions, the laws require some education degrees.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* I would hire that developer if he can show me the his abilities and prove that he is the one that my job needs through interview directly. Of course, it's difficult if his resume does not show any interested information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers quoted above are purely opinionated, brief &quot;polling entries&quot;, lacking an explanation and effort, making very wrong impressions on what kind posts are welcome at Programmers. Advertising posts like these through Help Center looks harmful and misleading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Can someone / Would someone even consider** part of the question shifts it into Yes/No territory with [all its known issues](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/183177/165773 &quot;discussed eg here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is not just a 'get an answer for me' place, it's &quot;Produce quality content that is useful for people who follow&quot;. In the case of your question, the second part is lacking...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;When asking a yes/no question there are one of two possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. You really want a yes/no answer. If this is the case, and you don't need anything else to answer your question then it means the answers will be inherently low quality. An answer that only says &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; (in addition to not meeting the minimum length) would be of very low quality. SO answers expect more.&#xD;&#xA;2. You don't actually want a yes/no answer, in which case your real question is not actually a yes/no question, and you're hoping that people will determine what your real question is. For example, someone might ask, &quot;Can I do [...]?&quot; when what they really meant to ask was, &quot;How can I do [...]?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Almost all yes/no questions I've seen fall into case 2; they should be edited into a question that isn't really asking for just a yes/no, it should be asking to explain something. (Even if it has a yes/no in there somewhere.) Note that just adding &quot;Explain&quot; at the end isn't really a good way to go about this; you should refactor the question on a more fundamental level..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25265" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5763" RevisionGUID="39f4f202-fb11-4d13-8e14-830e4897b4ba" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The deleted question is actually closed as a duplicate to [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51591/sites-for-getting-freelancer-jobs), which contains a more complete list of freelance sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best solution in this case would be to probably edit the existing answer to point to this non-deleted post instead of the deleted post, although in other cases where there isn't a good non-deleted duplicate, we'd probably want to edit the answer to remove the dead link (or remove the answer itself it the only content it contained was the dead link).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the rare event that the deleted post contains valuable information that is linked to from many places, it may qualify to be undeleted and a [historical lock][1] placed on it. That type of action usually depends on the content, how many views/votes the post has, and how many links go to it, and the deleted post you mention probably would not qualify because of it's low number of views (770).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also to answer your question about what you can do to see a deleted post when you don't have 10K+ reputation, you can try to find the post on [the Wayback Machine][2] or [StackPrinter][3], or you could try asking in [chat][4] or perhaps even here on [Meta][5] to see if a user with 10K+ rep or a moderator would be nice enough to get you a copy of the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/126587/158605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://archive.org/web/web.php&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.stackprinter.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25266" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6478" RevisionGUID="de5c0216-1c41-4013-96d0-2c9cdd199957" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I visit PSE once in a full moon, and all I see is closed questions, most marked with down votes and close votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seriously, with this ratio of negative votes towards questions and unpleasant welcome to new users, I had to ask this question. Does the rules of PSE are only well known to its moderators or peoples with high reputations? or they are just bullying here and making life of new visitors miserable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How much does PSE wants people to come over and share their problem? If every question is treated like bullying the questioner then what's the use of having an open question/answer platform?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reading few answers in meta I have decided not to return to PSE until next election.  The scope is confusing, Bully Dictators hold the power, new members are treated as &quot;*you piece of crap came here to ask? lemme give you some treat*&quot;. This place was bully-land few years ago, I found its same still. These answers gives more info about PSE as a whole:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5676/79803&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5681/79803&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5686/79803" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25267" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7268" RevisionGUID="0ddc5e4b-e7c7-4286-b388-21a970a35dc1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Lets admit it, we've got lots of old things hanging around on meta.  Much of it helps explain where we are today - and thats good.  But it also confuses people.  They may look at meta, search for some topic and find something from 2011 when the scope was still trying to be found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets take a recent example of this. https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7267/why-was-my-career-related-question-considered-off-topic has some related questions on the side bar... the top couple: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![related questions][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, lets look at those that are actually here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1556/when-are-career-questions-too-localized-should-this-be-more-strict&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2483/why-are-all-of-the-good-career-related-threads-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the first one has something from '11 the apparent consensus is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Yes, but only questions that will be relevant to a large number of professional software developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, well, is not at all the current consensus four years later.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second one is also from '11 which include user8's blue bulls eye (which was recently removed from the help center because it was misunderstood) and states right up front:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers is for questions about software development and being a programmer: career advice questions are off-topic here unless they uniquely apply to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, this is not the current understanding or consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, mods, I beseech you to create a new lock message that indicates that a given question was a part of the changing scope of the site and may not reflect the current understanding of what the site's topics are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One possible wording:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance about the development of the scope of Programmers.SE. However, this scope has changed over time and the reader is urged to seek more recent posts on this topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, as we find things on meta that are out of date and have the likelihood of being misunderstood or used to justify posts based on standards of half a decade ago it would be possible to say, &quot;You know, that really isn't applicable anymore.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could also be done as a custom close reason if you want to go that way instead, though that could put a bit too much power in our hands (locked questions can only be done by diamond mods, can't be deleted, can't be voted on).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/gsYqv.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25268" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5789" RevisionGUID="29baa731-0b9d-48b7-b1f6-11b2b08bbfb4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As pointed in the [comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5788/is-tagresource-questions-a-good-idea-for-the-main-site#comment14683_5788 &quot;here&quot;), this is not quite a good idea because having such a tag could have an opposite effect: users may think it's OK to use it, even if you write in its wiki and excerpt that it's forbidden - &quot;if there's a tag, why can't I ask about it?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you refer to my comment - for the sake of precision, this was only second time (I wish it would also be the last but unfortunately it wouldn't) when I referred asker to tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior to that, my similar comments were pointing to particular meta discussion (the one that is currently set in the tag wiki as the guidance point). It was when my comment has been (quite legitimately imNSho) [challenged](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190911/code-network-metrics-with-ui-events#comment370863_190911) by asker who pointed to another meta discussion to back up somewhat different approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, I suggested [tag wiki](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/186) and [excerpt](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/187) and switched to using these in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a more general note, I believe tag wiki like that are to be established any time when there is a confusion among meta readers caused by differing &quot;canonical&quot; / &quot;authoritative&quot; posts and comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's not a new idea, explained eg in [flagger's guide to link-only answers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/154922/165773) at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;In some meta posts or comments you may see moderators suggesting / requiring particular kind flag to be used (or to avoid) for link-only answers. Convenient _[litmus test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litmus_test_%28politics%29)_ in cases like that is to ask author whether this is their personal opinion or a statement that can be quoted in [tag wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/tag-wiki/info &quot;what's this&quot;) (wiki for respective flag or for [link-only  answers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/link-only-answers/info)). **Tag wiki are quite authoritative reference; anything else, read: _use at your own risk_.**&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a more recent example you can refer to MSO [profanity tag wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/172893/revisions &quot;tag wiki history&quot;) that have been established because of similar [confusion](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/172734/copying-profanities-and-obscene-words-on-meta/172747#comment513141_172747 &quot;discussed here&quot;) caused by having differing &quot;authoritative&quot; posts on the subject." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25269" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6504" RevisionGUID="bcc1b904-9e43-4111-9dae-0bc47ef7702e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think that, generally, design review type questions are on-topic. However, the problem is how broad they are. My concern for this type of question is that most of them may be more suited to a discussion environment. I do think that there are good design review questions, but they need to be clear and specific and not soliciting general feedback. Specifically, in the question you linked to, this section has me most concerned over its viability:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm looking for a general review of my OO design, use of UML, and use&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of C++ features. I especially just want to know if I'm doing anything&#xD;&#xA;&gt; considerably wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Any sort of feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would expect a good design review question to focus on a particular aspect of the design (or the representation of the design, which would also be valid). I'm not sure this particular question does that well. But it's not off-topic, just too broad or unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Borrowing from [gnat's answer][1] (which borrows from [the guidelines used at Code Review][2]):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does your question contain design? Design should be embedded in the body of the post and not linked to. Design notation should be explained to ensure that it is well understood, especially if non-standard notations are used. Design should contain text, images and diagrams, and perhaps some examples of code if necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do you want the design to be good design, (i.e. not design-golfing, obfuscation, or similar)? We are practical people on Programmers, and many of us are professional software developers. We answer questions in the context of building production-ready systems that are understandable, maintainable, and meet other functional and quality requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To the best of your knowledge, does the design work? Your design should at least be functional. You may be seeking input on improving your design, or perhaps correcting issues that are preventing you from achieving your quality requirements (such as performance or testability). However, your design should work and achieve the functional requirements of what you are building.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have you identified specific areas of concern in your design? Simply dropping in a functional design with details isn't sufficient. What aspects of your design need improving? Are you having trouble testing your design (at any level of testing)? Is your design not performing as well as it should or needs to (and in what ways is it under performing)? Are you having trouble scaling your design? You should come with a small number of specific problems that you are trying to get resolved.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you  answered yes to all the above questions, your question is on-topic for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; design review at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6505/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25270" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7282" RevisionGUID="2cea0c53-6fa6-4e0c-bd56-5e68589a861b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="One important bit to realize about the Stack Exchange format, is that it is Q&amp;A. Questions and answers. Provocation and 'get[ing] people to think' is not what the Q&amp;A format is geared to. Rather, the &quot;you have this problem, this is the solution.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange format is *not* that of a forum and has a number if differences. To that, I would suggest that you read https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6742/40980 and its related reading section which goes more into that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The python question was protected because another user posted [a rather low quality answer on it that really didn't add anything](https://i.stack.imgur.com/urawh.png). It has since been deleted.  We have often found that when an old post that should be closed because it is too broad is bumped back up to the front page of activity, that other people will often post answers to it that are similarly low quality (yours was reasonable, but there are problems with the question that would entice other people to add their two bits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Protecting the question prevents people who aren't familiar with the Q&amp;A model from posting other responses as if this was a forum post, and also gives pause to higher rep users to remind them to post good answers.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25271" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5828" RevisionGUID="b871d9a9-8a9a-46cf-a430-3362a5e3d616" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/194414/what-psychological-factors-account-for-readability was asked after a [related question][1] was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;gnat posted a comment that detailed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**[resource requests are not quite welcome at Programmers][2]**. As far as I understand, one would rather present an **underlying problem** instead - a problem that was intended to be solved with particular resource requested&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've had a look at the faq for what's on-topic, but this doesn't seem to match any of the criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is receiving upvotes, so wondered whether it's been edited to a state where it's on-topic?  &#xD;&#xA;I've given it a few comments, but not answered it to avoid encouraging it if it is off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/194348/where-can-i-find-scientific-papers-about-code-readability&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/resource-questions/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25272" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6559" RevisionGUID="10ad0e89-2056-4cf4-941c-a77875d1ecc7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You've probably seen it [somewhere](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136609/repository-of-useful-pro-forma-comments)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sharing your research helps everyone. Tell us what you've tried and why &#xD;&#xA;it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time &#xD;&#xA;to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, &#xD;&#xA;and most of all it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer! &#xD;&#xA;Also see [how to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does this mean? Why do people keep asking for research? Knowing this, how can I ask a better question and avoid [downvotes](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6484/31260)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25273" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6719" RevisionGUID="7dfebff2-3952-4e74-907e-00336167af59" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Can some of the moderators revive (undelete) [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/245703/57759) (my own) and it's answers? I was more than sure that it is completely useless and voted to close or delete it. But, other users suggests in comments, that even this kind of questions should bring some value to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, I was too slow and read these comments after question was deleted by moderator. As per [this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5938/57759), I can see that questions and answer deleted by moderators can be revived only by them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25274" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5833" RevisionGUID="5316445f-ab04-4608-842c-c003a448bf14" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Chris gave the right answer for this particular circumstance, but I just wanted to point out that promotion of an Area 51 site on an existing site's meta is not unprecedented, and can be acceptable under certain specific conditions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, [Workplace SE](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/) was [promoted here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2439/the-workplace-is-now-in-the-commitment-phase) without objection.  The difference was, trying to attract support for the new site wasn't the primary purpose for mentioning it here.  There was a separate *germane* reason, which was the fact that we were dealing with a lot of off topic workplace-related questions at the time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So by all means, feel free to bring up the proposed site in suitable contexts.  It's the &quot;hey, come vote!&quot; posts that are disallowed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25275" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7411" RevisionGUID="a9221848-08c6-4f44-a104-876953dd0ca2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The direct answer to your title question is what [Yannis said](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7409/why-arent-stackoverflow-and-programmers-se-reputations-combined/7411#comment22208_7409): If you don't participate on site X, you don't know enough about it to have all of the same privileges as you do on your favorite site. An especially common problem is people from site X misunderstanding the scope of site Y and voting to migrate things which Yers would instantly recognize as off-topic. There's a reason we have a [chatbot to warn us](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260) about any SO comments that mention Programmers (&quot;this is subjective, so it should be on PSE&quot; is a surprisingly common comment on bad SO questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there is a toned-down version of what you're asking for in the form of the **association bonus**. If you have at least 200 reputation on any Stack Exchange site, then you automatically get a bonus 100 reputation on every new Stack Exchange site that you join. So once you reach 200 rep somewhere, you essentially gain the power to comment and upvote *everywhere*, but if you want to downvote, close vote or delete vote you still have to earn it. In my opinion this is a very reasonable compromise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, there *is* a combined network reputation, but as far as I know it's only used by the chat system, so it doesn't really matter for your question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25276" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6746" RevisionGUID="ccdddb86-5d81-4b41-8960-bc307288532a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Comment [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6735/how-important-is-it-for-new-users-to-be-able-to-ask-question-at-programmers-imme#comment18232_6735 &quot;'yet another step that would push new users away from this site, and as I pointed out here, new users are needed to keep any online community healthy...'&quot;) expressed concern on whether site is attractive for new users. I would like some statistics to learn more about that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per user ids it looks like site has got 5,000 new users this month, I would like to find more about their activity, how many of them are registered, how many asked, answered, commented, suggested an edit, voted etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the purpose of comparison, I would like to also have similar stats on how it was half year ago, one, two and three years ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is how I would want to measure trends in user &quot;stickiness&quot;: by comparing how many of users registered in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 visited site for 5, 10, 30, 100 days. [SEDE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/data-explorer/info) query for this would be a piece of cake if [visited days](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/visited-days) were in schema... but these aren't." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25277" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5925" RevisionGUID="1207b458-4a65-4249-bd99-ca7685878451" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Thank you for the concern however that's a fairly old comment that I added a year ago or so when I realized the site had changed dramatically from it's original scope and purpose ([site history here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130)), and stopped participating in the main site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The change caused a number of users to leave the site or delete their accounts, however I didn't want to delete my account since I still use some of the content I posted here, and value being able to see some of the other great deleted content on this site. I also thought that having over 10k rep would be a benefit if things started to change, as I could view deleted content, edit, and vote to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I also didn't want to be seen as endorsing the changes SE made to the site (I was on the top page of users at the time), so I just added my opinion to my profile page instead to make it clear I didn't agree with the change in the site's direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I guess what I'm trying to say is that's an old comment regarding some old changes done to the site, and the mods are quite aware of my opinion (and other user's opinions) on the changes that were made, however Stack Exchange decided to proceed with those changes anyways as they thought the benefits it provided outweighed the negatives." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25278" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7088" RevisionGUID="7d5c5ad8-9fb3-4c23-ae0d-9a2af17ab177" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The text description of the tables, while rather thorough is something that can be difficult for someone who can't actually type `describe Users` to see what the structure is and how it relates to each other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this, I like using http://asciiflow.com because it allows for an ascii art representation of the structure making it easier for others to copy and modify as necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;       +-----------+  +--------------+      +--------------+&#xD;&#xA;       | Users     |  | UserAccount  |      | Account      |&#xD;&#xA;       +-----------+  +--------------+      +--------------+&#xD;&#xA;    +--+ userId pk +--+ userId (uniq)|   +--&gt; accountId pk |&#xD;&#xA;    |  |           |  | accountId    +---+  |              |&#xD;&#xA;    |  +-----------+  +--------------+      +--------------+&#xD;&#xA;    |                                                       &#xD;&#xA;    |                                                       &#xD;&#xA;    |  +-----------+                                        &#xD;&#xA;    |  | Sales     |                                        &#xD;&#xA;    |  +-----------+  (and se^eral other tables like this)  &#xD;&#xA;    |  | saleId pk |                                        &#xD;&#xA;    +--+ userId fk |                                        &#xD;&#xA;       |           |                                        &#xD;&#xA;       +-----------+                                        &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no *policy* mandating the DDL, but yes, having the DDL or a ER diagram, but they do help in clearly and rapidly conveying the information in well understood means that doesn't have ambiguity of text associated with it.  That diagram covers the all the bullet points of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, the question can be boiled down to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I can't modify the `Users` table for various reasons.  When doing a query against a Sales table that needs to include the Account information, I need to write a query such as:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     select A.*, U.*&#xD;&#xA;    from Sales S&#xD;&#xA;        join Users U on U.userId = S.userId&#xD;&#xA;        join UserAccount UA on U.userId = UA.userId&#xD;&#xA;        left join Account A on UA.accountId = A.accountId&#xD;&#xA;    where&#xD;&#xA;       S.something = somethingElse&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This query has a lot of joins in it that that is slightly troubling to me.  One approach to this would be to denormalize the Sales table so it also includes the `accountId` in it.  This is also slightly troubling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the cleaner approach to writing this so that I don't keep having all of those joins in the queries?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could have some other information there, but this really condenses down the question into something that is more clear.  It describes the table structure, the problem you are having, and what solution you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Noting that it can be difficult to get at the source of a meta answer if you don't have 2k rep to be able to edit, it: [the raw revision text](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/9daac070-2551-4fef-a6f6-e7c1f3dab813/view-source)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25279" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7422" RevisionGUID="0789fb29-9fd9-4dd7-9ec2-752d9210dec4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would like to have the custom close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic because it is a people question, not a programming question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would cover questions like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6629/how-do-i-explain-something-to-someone&#xD;&#xA;- How to interact with one's boss or coworker or junior programmer&#xD;&#xA;- People who are struggling to learn concepts in a class but they can't understand the teacher" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25280" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6302" RevisionGUID="46c55efc-5675-41ee-93a3-2e7211e5972f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was reading here at meta and came across https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2524/closing-questions which is closed as a duplicate. Ok, What question is it a duplicate of?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a more general case shouldn't the duplicate warning always have a link to the other question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25281" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6759" RevisionGUID="623824d1-16a6-4e86-83c2-e73064097c4a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The &quot;what are the pros and cons&quot; style questions are slightly obscured polling questions... though only very slightly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions of this type sometimes have a dozen answers that look like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Pros&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Point 1&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Point 2&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cons&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Counter point 1&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Counter point 2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Something no one mentioned yet is that Foo is really good at doing bar.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers to these questions are a poll asking for people to collect various bits of facts into what they think (opinion - a pro for one person is a con for another) into a post.  As there are often *many* of these factoids that goes into making a decision, there can be scores of them (just think of the [weighted decision matrix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision-matrix_method) that managers so love - I once had to fill out my opinions on some competing products that was over 100 rows - each with a different factoid of some importance (and I feel it *still* left out some important items)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of these questions also makes it so that they are never complete.  One can never have an authoritative answer for the pros and cons, nor can one have an answer that includes *everything* - someone will always find another point that they like or dislike about the design decision.  Questions of this format from three years ago *still* get people adding single pro or con items to it (often just a single sentence).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These types of questions rarely produce good answers and instead seem to have shorter and shorter answers as time goes on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When comparing products, this falls into a further problematic area of shopping questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are the pros and cons of having a Linux dev system rather than a FreeBSD dev system?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Design decisions are slightly better, though they are still problematic.  They are still in the range of 'too broad' and 'primarily opinion'.  A better option than asking for pros and cons is to look at trying to write the question as a design review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize though, that asking for a design review rather than just 'pros and cons' isn't a simple matter of changing the finishing up part of the question to ask for a design review.  The guidance on how to ask a design review question can be found at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6502/design-review-on-topic-or-not&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the questions that have been asked in the 'pros and cons' format in the past can fairly easily be rewritten in a way that isn't a poll and instead identifies the problem and asks for solutions to it rather than polling for tidbits of opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, many of the historical questions have answers that are in the 'pros and cons' format that would make rewriting the question while maintaining the validity of the answers difficult." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25282" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7091" RevisionGUID="9d9b5a06-fde7-4d0c-a60b-ed4bfb28c3e0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We all know what the problems with most &quot;best practices&quot; questions is.  Quite Often, it is [spotting a herd in the distance and going trotting off after it.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354)  The other problem is that they can often be too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what, after all, is a site like Programmers all about, if it's not about best practices?  Surely that's what we're all here for: *writing better code.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This morning, we had someone stumble over the [Why is asking a question about best practices a bad thing?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/142353)  So instead of asking a question about bad practices, he asked one about statistical usage of techniques.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Uh, oh.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6984)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, rather than discuss more legalistic ways to screen out &quot;best practices&quot; questions, I am now asking: what elements need to be present in a &quot;best practices&quot; question to make it suitable for Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, I'd like to see more question and answer pairs of the form: *&quot;This practice is preferred because [well-thought out reasons here], and this practice is discouraged because [sensible rationale here].&quot;*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25283" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6324" RevisionGUID="e19302fd-bf1c-48d5-aed8-bab9b2436c34" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In [this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5910/32347), Thomas Owens says &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If 5 users vote, I believe it's majority vote gets the reason. However, if a moderator closes, it's always the moderator's reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I cast the last close vote on [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/220694/need-advice-about-a-specialized-ecommerce-system?noredirect=1) and did not observe that behavior - The vote was 2-2 between &quot;asking us to recommend&quot; and &quot;too narrow&quot;, and I voted for &quot;too narrow&quot;.  However, the &quot;asking us to recommend&quot; is the reason that showed up in the close box.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No moderators were involved in the vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, two part question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Why was the wrong reason displayed?&#xD;&#xA;2. Why not show both?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25284" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7426" RevisionGUID="57a86e3b-f657-43e6-baf1-9e34fc287a9b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would like to see some more close reasons added. Rather than blindly stabbing in the dark, I want to cite the [on-topic page in the help center][1] with a slight formatting change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. career or education advice, salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Items 2 and 3 have a close reason for Stack Overflow migration (with the caveat that 3 needs to be more specific than the wording here implies).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Items 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 all fall under existing off-topic close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item 9 does not have an existing reason but probably does not need one. This item really is the catch-all for &quot;none of the other off-topic reasons we get a lot of so they need their own reasons.&quot; It is served well with the custom close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This leaves items 1 and 10. I propose two changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Add a migration path to The Workplace**. We do not get a _ton_ of questions that belong there, but we do get them. Nixing beta sites and the two existing migration paths, this would likely be near the top of paths for which there is a legitimate need. The only issue here is _some_ of the questions are on-topic here, but they really need to focus on the non-workplace aspects of the question _and_ require the [unique perspective of a programmer compared to other professionals][2]. They also cannot devolve into [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?][3] which covers the &quot;my boss says to do X, but I think we need to do Y. How do I persuade him?&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Add an off-topic close reason for legal advice**. We tend to add custom reasons such as &quot;...because it is about legal advice&quot; or &quot;...because we are not lawyers&quot; et al. I propose writing up a friendly, well-written close reason that enumerates [precisely where the line is][4] when it comes to licensing/copyright/legal questions. I think we need some consistency here, because there tends to be some confusion not only among question authors but also close voters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1697/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6629/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7265/22815" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25285" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6780" RevisionGUID="f04417c1-b987-4d7d-ba9c-45fa29abb75c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I like the answer entitled [&quot;Why We're not a Forum&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6743/31260).  Having said that, I want to call attention to a particular kind of question that is somewhere between objective and subjective.  I'm referring to design questions.  There are numerous design questions that come up, concerning the design of object oriented systems, or the design of software packages, or the design of relational databases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are somewhere in the twilight zone.  At first glance, they seem like the kind of straightforward Q&amp;A that SE seems to handle well.  And the asker usually wants an answer he or she can use, not an extended discussion.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the problem.  For every non trivial design case, there is more than one satisfactory answer.  And which answer is &quot;best&quot; depends on the particular use case, and on what criterion is being used for &quot;goodness&quot;. It's usually some kind of trade-off. So what ought to be a straight up Q&amp;A turns into a discussion.  Or the question gets closed before that can happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But most of us don't want to declare design questions out of bounds, even including those of us who very much want to avoid turning SE into just another forum community.  This is not a simple problem, IMO.&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25286" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6388" RevisionGUID="509e9891-493c-4c15-a108-4a486a43593c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Claims of harassment are beyond the scope of moderator authority. If you feel that you are being harassed, please contact the [Community Team][1] either through the link I have provided or the &quot;Contact Us&quot; link at the bottom of every page. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/contact" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25287" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7471" RevisionGUID="26f46d81-8c93-4cc6-a668-15024209ac70" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a question [what is the meaning of manage c++?][1] that is pretty clearly not a good fit for this site.  There's a duplicate on SO, and the question was more or less answered in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm OK with closing this one (and was about to vote to close), when I saw it had 4 &quot;your question is unclear&quot; votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears to me that we're starting to use **&quot;unclear what you are asking&quot;** as a synonym for **&quot;we don't like your question&quot;** or **&quot;your question doesn't fit the site&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a way, this is a duplicate of [Is it really unclear what is being asked?][2], except I'd like to focus on the reason for closing, not the merits of a single question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/288618/64132&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6217/64132" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25291" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7479" RevisionGUID="83f7afd9-3ca4-4753-a6b0-c949f5b252e4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We recently had a [very poor quality question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/288861/53019) seemingly bypass the [filter for all caps in a title](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6854/53019).  And about a month ago, there was [another poor quality question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/285515/53019) that made it through the quality filter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. _Bug report:_ Can we have someone please check and see if the quality filter is still enabled to prevent those all caps questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. _Feature request:_ Can a regression test be generated so that the next time the filter breaks it's detected earlier in the development cycle?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25292" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6854" RevisionGUID="8cddb5b1-4519-484a-90c1-6699bcd95c93" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The quality score on that post is 75 out of a possible 100. The threshold for sending it straight into review is 70. Yeah, that's pretty useless. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're working on a better one, based on some analysis of the available data. It ain't perfect either, but it would've flagged that one right out of the gate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The new system isn't quite ready to go live yet though, so for now, I threw this in:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![DON'T SHOUT][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[Update](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6850/how-effective-is-the-quality-filter-against-this-question-with-all-caps-brief-ti/6854#comment19783_6854)**: check is back on - for titles _and_ bodies of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tvoQU.png &quot;DON'T SHOUT&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25293" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6649" RevisionGUID="cad9b1c4-b3d0-4208-9a6d-88511634c8fe" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Such a question is likely to be closed for being [primarily opinion based][1].  &#xD;&#xA;Although subjective questons are welcome here to a certain degree, there are limits. See also [**Good subjective, Bad subjective**][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with your question, as I interpret it from the characterisation that you gave, is that it calls for speculation and not for expertise in the subject matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6491/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25294" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7163" RevisionGUID="f10b74d8-cb9c-4d3b-a967-e38b2e4c861d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As of a few minutes ago, an [additional filter](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7155/60171) is applied to the comments to reduce false positives in The Whiteboard. This filter checks for `for/on/to/at/try` + `programmers`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to see *all* comments mentioning &quot;programmers&quot; you can do so in [Duga's Playground](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/20298/dugas-playground).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Filtered comments goes to The Whiteboard, unfiltered to Duga's Playground." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25295" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6948" RevisionGUID="7a85d2c3-e205-4d7b-bef8-6e3ca4aaa31d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've seen this glitch a few times with Safari (7.1) on the Mac (10.9.5).  It manifests as either no spacing between text and the link in a comment, or irregular location of the hyphen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![safari][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice the space (lack there of) between 'Thismeta'.  Furthermore, the hyphen that is before the signature and time stamp is between the digit of the time stamp and the units.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Chrome this comment renders as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![chrome][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am certainly willing to chalk this up to a bug in Safari (it did update recently), but if it's not, well, there's a bug report for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comment in question is [this one](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6947/how-can-i-reword-this-question-to-better-fit-programmers-se#comment19808_6947) and if it happens, it appears to *always* happen, though it doesn't happen on all comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As this has become more interesting of a problem, I pulled up a laptop I haven't touched in a month and a half (Safari 7.0.5) to look at the comment, and it displays the same problem ([img](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9wGri.png)).  Therefore, the update mentioned previously was *not* the cause of the issue.  It could still be a bug with Safari, however, it is one that was introduced at least some time ago and hasn't been tickled through the CSS until recently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also shows up in iOS 6 safari browser (again, not updated in some time).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tends to point to a change in CSS that is exposing the bug (which might need to be worked around).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Associated MSO post: [“missing space” bug in comments. (on OSX)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/275151/missing-space-bug-in-comments-on-osx)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/GKpjY.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/JvlKw.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25296" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7493" RevisionGUID="c79cf155-4e31-476a-95b7-91376a0edd18" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For the non-10k users, a screen capture of the entire post: [jpeg](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fo04d.jpg) (I had to switch from png to jpeg and reduce the image quality to get it to fit into the upload constraints - it started out as a 4.4 megabyte file)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that we've got that out of the way and we can look at it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have difficulty identifying the actual problem. The question gives a bit of history, and then starts going into &quot;I'm right&quot; and &quot;why does everyone (other than delphi programmers) not to notice this?&quot;  Beyond that point, it goes to some odd tangent of personal experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't find the question that can be solved. It reads like a giant blog post. The [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) specifically calls out the types of questions that don't work in the Stack Exchange format:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;2. your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;3. there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;4. you are asking an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;5. your question is just a rant in disguise: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This feels like a some degree of fit for #2, #3, and #5. The bit for #2 is that first part of &quot;your answer is provided along with the question&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why conflicts due to join are not a problem whereas Diamond, which I hopefully explanied very well is a solution, is a problem for you instead of Join? Why solution is considered a problem whereas the problem itself is totally ignored?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've provided a solution to something, but I'm not exactly sure what that something is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I had close votes, I would have cast them as [unclear](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489) too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this question didn't end there. The comments immediately start out with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As I expected, they will downvote and close the question. This is a taboo question. They silence the question to silence it. It would be stupid to let it come to the surface and discussed. –  Recognize Evil as Waste 6 hours ago &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and eventually gets to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @RecognizeEvilasWaste good grief; give it a rest, would you? This isn't a place to rant (if you want to do that, open your own blog), it's to ask and answer (answerable, on-topic) questions. Also, bear in mind that the probability that you're a misunderstood genius is somewhat lower than the probability that you've misunderstood something. –  jonrsharpe 4 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; jonrsharpe expands unjustified smearing of my question (it is clearly a question, I wounder how you bend your brain to read it otherwise) with personal attacks. It seems that so far there was not enough dirt for me. –  Recognize Evil as Waste 4 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The resulting post and comments are no longer suitable for a question and answer site and any hope of civil discourse (note that discussions shouldn't the focus of a question) are lost when Thomas Owens locks it down to try to cool things off and then decides that its really beyond repair.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow has their [Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) which goes to trying to clearly identify the problem in a way that is understandable by all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question fails at that minimal aspect with significant amounts of other material that I don't understand why its there. It gets into half adders and... well... there isn't an answerable problem there. As I read it, there is instead a manifesto of multiple inheritance and asking why the rest of the world is ignoring this solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This type of question really isn't a good fit for the Q&amp;A format. Maybe you want to instead post such on other sites. It might work there. However, I would encourage you to not come out swinging and looking for a fight about taboo subjects (there not, we're just bored of them) immediately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For Stack Exchange, please try to concentrate on answerable questions that don't take more than a few paragraphs to answer. Questions like the one you ask would take significantly more to refute (possibly into the 'needs to be a white paper' size) and if you're going to attack anyone who answers or tries to gain a better understanding of what you are asking you may get a similar reception there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25297" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6719" RevisionGUID="102fa7c1-1b41-4a24-a9f1-7a886c6a322e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Can some of the moderators revive (undelete) [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/245703/57759) (my own) and it's answers? I was more than sure that it is completely useless and voted to close or delete it. But, other users suggests in comments, that even this kind of questions should bring some value to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, I was too slow and read these comments after question was deleted by moderator. As per [this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5938/57759), I can see that questions and answer deleted by moderators can be revived only by them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25298" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7532" RevisionGUID="4df8223d-c359-4fc2-a3dd-86370e46bdb5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is a resource request and is [off-topic][1] on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more information, please see [Why was my question closed or down voted?][2] The short version is any such recommendations are one-off to a specific time and person, while the site is trying to be a repository of knowledge useful to _many_ people and for the future as well. No question can truly be 100% future-proof. However, development environment tools and versions change constantly, making them an especially poor fit for the Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487/&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25299" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6746" RevisionGUID="03ede7dc-64f6-4ae1-a31c-728a57f9fa72" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Comment [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6735/how-important-is-it-for-new-users-to-be-able-to-ask-question-at-programmers-imme#comment18232_6735 &quot;'yet another step that would push new users away from this site, and as I pointed out here, new users are needed to keep any online community healthy...'&quot;) expressed concern on whether site is attractive for new users. I would like some statistics to learn more about that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per user ids it looks like site has got 5,000 new users this month, I would like to find more about their activity, how many of them are registered, how many asked, answered, commented, suggested an edit, voted etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the purpose of comparison, I would like to also have similar stats on how it was half year ago, one, two and three years ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is how I would want to measure trends in user &quot;stickiness&quot;: by comparing how many of users registered in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 visited site for 5, 10, 30, 100 days. [SEDE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/data-explorer/info) query for this would be a piece of cake if [visited days](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/visited-days) were in schema... but these aren't." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25300" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7190" RevisionGUID="fff51b24-900d-4b94-b4ba-ce0a7b9ba979" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Coming up on this discussion - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/271585/53263&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I'm trying to avoid this problem - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1127/are-answers-being-posted-as-comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My answer is reproduced here, less the OP's original quote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Wow! We do not work on the same code bases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Inversion of Control frameworks - like Guice or Spring - essentially strive to make this half of your problem, a pillar of design. Many arguments in constructors is totally fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Seriously, a typical constructor in my code base might have 20+ arguments. No apologies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have delete votes for this. I feel this is wrong because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * people should be allowed to answer questions...&#xD;&#xA; * incompletely because they have something substantive to say but don't&#xD;&#xA;   have the desire for whatever reason to write something extensive...&#xD;&#xA; * letting others write better answers to flesh out the response if&#xD;&#xA;   possible...&#xD;&#xA; * because an incomplete answer such as mine may be&#xD;&#xA;   extremely helpful to the OP and future visitors...&#xD;&#xA; * and answer *as* an answer since the comment muck is not appropriate for what is, in fact, an answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm disappointed I have delete votes and downvotes for what seems to be incompleteness alone, and want to see what meta thinks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25301" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6962" RevisionGUID="932a8c70-a4bb-4c3d-9208-7cafa23f1762" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A [greenfield project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_project) is one without restrictions on prior systems or protocols.  Blue sky projects are ones that are completely wide open (&quot;develop a knowledge base.&quot;).  In the context of a question on Programmers.SE, a greenfield or blue sky question is one along the lines of &quot;How do I write this?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything about &quot;how do I write this?&quot; it is on the table - no design has been thought of, no problems have been encountered.  In effect, the question is asking the community to design the entire system.  This is similarly problematic as asking someone to write all the code for a set of requirements on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest problem with such a question is it is very broad.  One could design the system at a high level and another person could do the same solution from a low level.  Alternatively, there can be *many* designs for the same system.  This leads to the question being [very broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490) and in danger of being closed for such a reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With a design question, it is expected that the person asking the question has taken some time to sketch out the design that they have come up with and identify the problem they are encountering with the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is a difficulty even getting started, as described in [where to start?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6366/40980) one should sit down and spend some time coming up with a design that is something that they are capable of coding to.  That last point should not be overlooked - it is quite possible for an [architecture astronaut](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html) to come up with a design from scratch that is impossible for anyone to code to or implement with any hope of getting it right (&quot;its an n-tier design that makes use of MVVC that is controlled by a dispatcher that has been configured with dependency injection and....&quot; -- just say 'no').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are interested in hiring an architect that has this experience and can make such decisions for you on where to start, that is indeed a path to look down - but asking the community to be the architect is irresponsible and ultimately unmaintainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, sit down and [sketch out](http://asciiflow.com) the design that you have and what problems you are encountering when thinking through the design.  Draw something up on the white board, draw a circle around it and say &quot;I don't know how to get this piece and that piece to talk together correctly - I thought of using a message queue, but that has some problems in our architecture because...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned in another post ([10k link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260209/an-algorithm-based-content-ranking-crawler)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This isn't so much &quot;white-boardy&quot; as it is &quot;blue-sky-y&quot;. There are entire careers built on trying to solve this problem - you're gonna have to narrow it down a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key to writing a good question is to properly scope the question so that it is one that addresses a problem in the design, rather than completely wide open &quot;pie in the sky&quot; with its options.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [An algorithm-based content ranking crawler](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260209/an-algorithm-based-content-ranking-crawler) (10k link)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I need to implement a web crawler to crawl websites and rank visited pages based on content. For example, a website can be ranked as 80% political content or 70% sport content. There is no problem by implementing crawler. The only point would be an algorithm to set an approximate rank to content of crawled website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there any algorithm to reach this goal?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [Grails app providing REST services, with Angular frontend in SPA configuration… Feasible?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/260976/grails-app-providing-rest-services-with-angular-frontend-in-spa-configuration) (10k link)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Could you just begin an Angular project with Bower/Grunt/NPM give it its own directory and the whole nine yards ... and then just throw it in your Grails directory somewhere with the index.html page to be rendered as a static HTML file by a Grails controller?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So basically all the Grails app does is provide RESTful resources and literally redirects you to a static html file - which happens to be your Angular Single Page Application.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note the first example question here is one that leaves the described whiteboard completely untouched.  There is nothing about the design, just a few vague requirements and the request to identify or design the algorithm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question draws a picture of sorts.  Its still quite vague in places, but there's a design put forth that is being considered.  There is something on the whiteboard that is being described.  &quot;You've got this thing over here that provides this service that redirects over to this other thing...&quot; (you could picture a co-worker saying that with a marker in hand).  And thus, the question is one that is whiteboardy.  I'll certainly agree that the question is broad and may have other issues, but it *isn't* ***too*** broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whats more, the first question is one that could possibly be answered with &quot;you are looking for ${algo_XYZ}&quot;. While the second question wouldn't encourage simplistic or poor answers.  That is the key behind the ideas of [optimizing for pearls, not sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25304" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7545" RevisionGUID="d86b25b8-e1e0-48d8-b78f-d929f78cbc3c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Based upon a [recent answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7534/53019)&lt;sup&gt;1, 2&lt;/sup&gt; to a [previous question of mine](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6507/53019), I'd like to re-visit an older request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Please give all close voters&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; on Programmers 50 votes instead of the standard 24&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_Why?_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All of the [original reasons](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6507/53019) that were laid out before still hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. New users to the site end up with a poor impression regarding what is on-topic for the site when off-topic questions are not cleared out quickly.  The more quickly we can patch up the broken windows, the more favorable Programmers and StackExchange appear to new visitors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. The [stats show](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7534/53019) that our active close voters regularly run out of votes and this is impacting their ability to help provide community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. The influx of low quality questions from {bans at SO | ignorance of SO} continues to increase.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. Items like the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7285/53019) put a strain on the community when they are trying to balance closing off incoming low quality questions as well as cleaning up old NPR-style low quality questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. This version of the request is much easier to implement as it's already part of the per-site configuration setting and doesn't require a code change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. More close votes means being able to migrate questions more quickly.  That in turn cuts down on extra work created for mods when they have to merge cross-posted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;`Finally, if we were going to increase the limit, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to just raise it for 10k users. From a very practical standpoint, changing it for everyone is a site setting, but changing it for users over 10k would require a code change. For another, the setting has already been raised to 50 for 3k+ users on SO, Math, Super User, Ubuntu, and Server Fault without any particular problems. I'd suggest removing that portion of the feature request that needlessly confuses matters`&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;[Gratuitous footnotes are because I heard someone likes them](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/166518/194162)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;By &quot;Close Voters&quot;, I mean anyone who has earned [at least 3k rep](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions) on the site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;My assumption is that the number of allowed votes in the close review queue increases proportionately, but if not, I'll make a separate request.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25305" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7109" RevisionGUID="90cdddb6-e219-4e7d-8c0a-d15557bb85b8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="After recieving good answers to [this question][0] I have realised that some of my questions here are too language-specific to recieve the attention I want on here on &quot;programmers&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I decided to copy them to Stackoverflow (with some rewriting to fit that site better).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now when I am starting to recieve the answers I wanted Stackoverflow I think that it is time to delete the questions that are here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [using macros to implement a generic vector][1]&#xD;&#xA; - [using macros to protect assignment to global variables][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [0]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7104/i-get-more-and-better-attention-on-stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/267657/using-macros-to-implement-a-generic-vector-dynamic-array-in-c-is-this-a-good&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/268194/using-macros-to-protect-assignment-to-global-variables&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just wanted to let you know before I do it. To me it seems like the right thing to do but I want to know what you think first." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25306" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6991" RevisionGUID="84bfda7f-97b9-4e31-84db-df6fade8425c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Your data is inaccurate because SEDE doesn't account for [deleted questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/157462/165773) but anyway, there are few factors worth thinking of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, Programmers were getting a reasonable mix of good and bad questions related to careers, software recommendations and code reviews. Even when topicality of these was slippery, well presented questions about interesting, real problems were considered worthy of upvotes by many readers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nowadays, we lost a good part but bad part remains with us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean, users capable of asking good questions in above topics, eventually find their way and stick to specialized sites - [TWP](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [CR](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [SR](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is left to us are askers who _want_ to ask but _can't_ make a good question. They post (or cross-post) their stuff at Programmers, Stack Overflow, Yahoo Answers, anywhere, in a hope to find a [kind soul to feed them](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/276637/839601). This contributes to lowering average quality of questions in these topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another stream of low quality questions are those from users blocked / warned at Stack Overflow. [Per recent stats](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7332/31260), we're getting 4-5 delete-worthy questions a day from these folks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, they could pollute SO with their low quality stuff for months or even years but for last year or two, due to improvements in [burning down SO close queue](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue), they started hitting question blocks and warnings more and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Per stats, Programmers appear to be [most popular of SE sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773) among this category of askers. After being blocked or scared by warnings at Stack Overflow they simply try to dump their low quality stuff over here, thus also lowering average quality level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If honestly, I can't see what we can do to help with the quality of questions like above, nor how we can control these in review queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't realistically expect askers of bad questions to &quot;refocus&quot; to specialized sites because at these sites, such questions seem to be detected and rejected even faster than over here. This is probably because of clearer, narrower specialization regulars at these sites build a better sense of what is good and what is not (at least that's how I feel at TWP).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also can't imagine how it would be possible to make users blocked / warned at SO stop their attempts to leak through Programmers. I can't think of a way to tell someone facing a [block message at SO](http://stackoverflow.com/help/question-bans) that they shouldn't try their luck at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;**Wait!** You've recently been blocked (warned) at Stack Overflow. Consider that quality requirements at Programmers are similar. Note that Stack Overflow topics are _not_ covered here and that your questions [can't even be migrated to Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;) because of the block.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Are you sure that you want to proceed asking question?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Click &lt;kbd&gt;No&lt;/kbd&gt; to cancel asking.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Click &lt;kbd&gt;Back&lt;/kbd&gt; to return to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!--&#xD;&#xA;Note to editors. Choices above are *intentionally* limited to No/Cancel - absence of option &quot;Yes&quot; to proceed asking question is not a simple mistake. If you plan to add such an option, make sure to also remove this comment, otherwise I will rollback your edit for not giving enough attention to edited content.&#xD;&#xA;--&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25307" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7572" RevisionGUID="9dc7a083-abd4-4f31-9d86-a7b8b83e3605" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked [a question about whether an oft-quoted piece of programmer wisdom has empirical evidence to back it up](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294820/is-there-any-evidence-based-examination-or-modification-of-brooks-law). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was closed within seconds using the close reason normally used for lazy questions asking for laundry lists of libraries and other resources. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the comments, it's not clear what the reasoning is - a comment says &quot;It looks like you're asking for a paper or book&quot;, but I'm not, I'm asking about the currently available evidence on a topic, the results of research testing a claim.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are questions about empirical evidence off topic here? I see a lot of answers that are just one line, &quot;Someone said '[some witticism]'&quot; which get a surprising number of upvotes. Does this site favour anecdotes over evidence?&#xD;&#xA; - If not, how do I need to rephrase my question to allow someone to post an objective, factual answer like &quot;This has been investigated by researchers in [discipline], the evidence points towards [X] with [Y] caveat, the most recent peer-reviewed literature review / the largest study to date is [citation]&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This [meta thread][1] appears to suggest that questions about empirical evidence are on topic so long as they are about the state of the evidence, not &quot;What's the best book on X&quot;. That is absolutely 100% the intention of my question. Is this still the policy? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If so, how do I need to re-phrase my question to stop people misreading it as &quot;pleez can I has teh books&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Incidentally, this is the first time in 4+ years on stack exchange that I've run into problems for a question being *too* evidence based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the discussion I've seen so far, I'm starting to get the impression that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **What does real empirical research say regarding Brook's law?** would be of topic because when evidence is peer reviewed, it becomes an &quot;off site resource&quot; rather than a user's opinion&#xD;&#xA; - **Do you guys think Brook's law is true?** would somehow be more on topic because it relies on experience of users of the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Experienced programmers use research relevant to their field and are in a better position than anyone to see through methodological problems and see what is practical research and what is flawed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5589/is-a-question-about-research-material-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25308" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7464" RevisionGUID="171cf53c-6383-428e-9714-deb74a6fb809" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question would be closed as off-topic because it is asking for career advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular&#xD;&#xA;&gt; circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no way to rephrase this question to be on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hypothetically speaking: even if this question were on-topic, it would certainly be too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading: [Why was my question closed as off topic?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25309" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7220" RevisionGUID="393a5965-8932-429c-a06c-94ee5e68640f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Only a moderator can migrate a question to any beta site. In fact the only two sites we can vote to migrate are Programmers Meta (this site) and Stack Overflow. Whichever moderator moved that question is the only person who can explain the &quot;why&quot; behind the move.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that is a problematic question _as written_ for both sites. If I had more time today when you asked it I would have tried to help improve it, but I was unclear about your intent and had other work to do at that time. By the time I came back around to check it out, it was already migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It is written _almost_ like a product request, as if you are looking for a library you can leverage and extend. If you are looking for a piece of software, SR.SE would be the appropriate site. In fact the title reads that way: &quot;is there a library or tutorial...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* While it does ask for advice about how to code something in a report, that is [too broad][1] for Programmers.SE. The title also sounds like a [resource request][2] which is off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think you should ask the question here on Programmers after editing it to be clear that it is not a product recommendation. Do not simply say &quot;I am not looking for a recommendation&quot; but change the wording and tone of the question. Next, make it laser-focused. You will likely need to experiment with your code and figure out what works and does not work. Simply asking [where to start][3] will not end well, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can always drop into [chat][4] for help wording your question, or open another meta question here if you have more specific concerns about how to ask your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only remaining housekeeping is whether to edit the question on SR.SE and migrate it back, or self-delete that question and ask here again. I would lean toward deleting and asking over simply because the logistics may be easier, but others may prefer to migrate it back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6366/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25310" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7590" RevisionGUID="9ac993de-f626-4b4e-8929-0181514c02a2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think this would help significantly:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could be shown, let say, for the first 3 posts by a user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is also very similar to [Michel's idea](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7144/25529).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/dWiAt.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25311" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7468" RevisionGUID="b2aa57e4-c61c-44a1-bd3b-cd6024a5563c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.530" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Instead of asking &quot;How should I tag interview related questions?&quot; You should probably be asking &quot;Should I ask interview related questions?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The general answer to _that_ question is &quot;No, you shouldn't be asking interview questions.&quot;  They're just a poor fit for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Gnat linked a good reference question that goes into further detail.  [Why do interview questions make poor Programmers.SE questions?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6361/31260)  The TL;DR is we've tried them and they just don't work well on the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25312" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6993" RevisionGUID="d6763189-f071-4c77-ac00-abf05758b3cb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### We are inline with similar sized sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's an interesting chart there... but I draw issue at comparing P.SE to Stack Overflow.  In particular, the size of the voting user base compared to the daily influx of questions can make most of the stuff on Stack Overflow get no votes at all (there's also a significant 'whine about down votes' and 'give sympathy up votes' (examples [1][1], [2][2], [3][3] (entirety of question in mouseover in case they are deleted)) culture on SO).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to see what similar sites to P.SE looked like - similar in terms of questions/day and overall size.  This is what I came up with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Other sites][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will see that we are by no means the most down voting of the 30k or so question sites that I sampled (Gaming, Programmers, Electrical Engineering, Android Enthusiasts).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question really is &quot;what is EE doing right?&quot; along with &quot;what groups Gaming and AE together?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer to this is likely the accessibility of the material to the 'common' person.  The harder/less accessible the material, the more focused the site can be and clearly communicate that focus to people asking questions.  Furthermore, the more difficult the material, the more natural it is for the person to have done the requite study of the problem before asking the question along with asking the question fully.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging from this, I would suggest that if we want to have fewer down voted questions, it is would be necessary to restrict our scope *drastically* such that we're closer to that of Theoretical CS or Server Fault in what is allowed or not and take fewer soft questions; requiring all the questions to be at the professional software architect level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure that would be the right thing to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, there's the conception on other sites (Stack Overflow, I'm looking at you) that Programmers.SE is for questions without code or for getting opinions.  One can reliably go and find [belongs on P.SE](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24972540/how-many-copies-of-instance-method-will-be-created-for-n-number-of-objects-in-c#comment38818793_24972540) type comments on Stack Overflow ([data.SE](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/133379/recent-p-se-comments)) for questions that don't meet the desired quality.  The questions get asked here, and down voted, and, well, that's what you see.  I contend that it is *impossible* for P.SE to stop the problem as there are far too many with this misunderstanding of P.SE's scope on SO and the best we can do is close, down vote, and educate people who post here under those conceptions (and, again, that's a non-negligible portion of the ratio).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Changing the name won't help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One reoccurring theme that has popped up over the years is &quot;maybe if we change the site's name people will post on topic questions?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pulling up the current newest questions page and listing all the questions with a negative score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263077/help-understanding-this (-4) - a block of code with &quot;what does this do?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263075/c-project-design (-3 on hold) - too broad (not off topic) &quot;how do I understand C++?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263048/do-i-need-an-msdn-subscription-now-that-visual-studio-is-open-source (-3 on hold) - primary opinion (not off topic): do I still need MSDN?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263043/when-should-i-use-arraylists-compared-to-hashmaps (-4 on old) - too broad (not off topic): &quot;When should I use ArrayLists compared to HashMaps? Which is more effective, and for what purposes?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263023/how-to-make-triangle-in-nested-loop (-5 on hold) - off topic (failed to migrate to SO): I have a bug in this classic homework problem.&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263014/alphanumeric-addition (-3 on hold) (one vote for unclear): How do you solve [crypto math](http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/cody/problems/621-cryptomath-addition) problems?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263004/what-should-i-describe-myself-in-my-cv-a-business-intelligence-developer-or-wha (-4 on hold) off topic: resume help - can I call myself a Sr. developer without the experience?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/263002/pseudo-code-of-3-digits-reversed (-4 on hold) Unclear: &quot;How can I write a pseudo code of an algorithm that displays a given 3 digit number reversed?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262999/how-to-use-slime-indentation-with-editorconfig-in-emacs (-1 migrated) Emacs tool use&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262992/how-can-i-start-writing-a-apps-to-be-build-before-code (-3 on hold) too broad: how do I write an app?&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262991/code-snippets-website-app-with-integration-for-windows-mac-linux (-3 on hold) off topic (tool recommendation): &quot;Is there a website where I can save code snippets&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/262980/what-is-the-most-minimal-web-app-stack-for-a-server (-3) off topic (tool recommendation): what is a good web stack to use for a severely underpowered machine?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my contention that absolutely *none* of these would have been not asked if the site's name was SoftwareDevelopment.SE or SoftwareEngineering.SE.  Every single question there would still have been asked.  Very few of them had off topic votes.  General topicality is not the problem with the questions (specific bits of 'tool recommendation' and 'career advice' still is).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are long past the days of &quot;what is your favorite comic&quot; or &quot;what should I name my cat&quot; and the like.  Those questions don't show up. Programmers is understood to be a site about software development processes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The off topic questions that we get now are ones that very closely map to the topic of software engineering, but are issues that we are not qualified (as programmers) to answer.  Career advice and legal being the two biggest ones.  We also regularly get polling questions, but that isn't an issue with the site name, that is a misunderstanding of the Q&amp;A format itself (and a failure to read the tour which shows what is on and off topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But there will always be people that suffer from the &quot;herp derp oh look a textbox&quot; syndrome, and no amount of renaming the site or amending the FAQ is going to fix that. -- [Anna Lear](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name/3225#comment7479_2950)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/26758518/289086 &quot;I need to make an error count that will shut down my vb.net programme when the user has made 5 errors&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/26746755/289086 &quot;What are the minimum required deliverables for a NOSql data model?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/7648417/289086 &quot;How to create a media player for Android?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/N04qm.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25313" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7594" RevisionGUID="b53e73c6-1de4-4a03-9c76-caac2391edb0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The questions worthy of migration to Stack Overflow *do* get migrated. **When a question gets migrated, its downvotes are cleared.** See: [**What is migration? How does it work?**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/10250/200235). It's entirely appropriate to downvote an off topic question, *especially if you expect the question to be migrated and the downvotes cleared*. Off topic is off topic, even if the question is a &quot;good&quot; one for another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These 6 questions have all been migrated in the last two days:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [I want to make an inventory system for my game in Python V 3.4.3](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32486754/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [K&amp;R qsort understanding](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32467724/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [Simple recursive series in matlab](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32448566/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [In ruby, should I use instance variables or direct method calls](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32444305/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [Using Sed to Append Lines to File During Vagrant Provisioning](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32437006/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [Atmel Studio installing library is empty](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32431232/1768232)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it absolutely does happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as the questions that are not appropriate for migration goes, we get many of them because people don't understand that we have a very narrow scope here. We tried allowing a much broader range of questions here and it failed. See: **https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since then, we have attempted to very tightly moderate what's acceptable here in an attempt to teach people what this site is about, but people *still don't read the guidance.* This has resulted in many well written meta questions about site scope, capped with IMO the two most important: **https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7182/88986** and **https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483/88986**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, we downvote the bad questions, to take them *off the front page* (a question disappears from the front page when it his -4 or below) in an attempt to have a front page full of decent-to-good questions. The hope is that this user training will teach current and future users what's actually good and appropriate here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Addendum: @Ixrec correctly points out that it's currently September, which means a lot of young students are posting homework questions all over the internet, which are almost always off topic here, so the front page is worse than normal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People *also* have a tendency to post questions about career advice here, even though it's *explicitly off topic* and all the related tags about it say &quot;do not use&quot;. These questions get downvoted to oblivion as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25314" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7046" RevisionGUID="2238223f-b053-4c13-b3b9-030ef353383d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Color variation of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6935/11732)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ItowR.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25315" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7237" RevisionGUID="dd1ce8d4-1324-4c7f-8bc2-1e435106d269" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA; - software configuration management&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [how to use specific tools][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career or education advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - [legal advice or aid][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;. **Please keep it professional**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see [the Help Center page about what not to ask][11] as well as the [*Good Subjective, Bad Subjective*][12] and [*Real Questions Have Answers*][13] blog posts for details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][14] or [strongly rooted in opinions][15]. We should be able to answer your questions in the equivalent of a few pages of text and graphics and provide references to support claims. If you have questions that warrant an extended discussion, feel free to [come to chat][16].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before asking, [look around][17] to see if your question has been asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions. It’s also OK to [ask and answer your own question][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for [another Stack Exchange site][19]. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may [commit to][20] or [propose][21] a new side at [Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are created][22].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more details, please see [our curated FAQ on Meta Programmers Stack Exchange][23].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7253/where-does-my-tool-question-go?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1655&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7248/how-do-you-get-20-rep-to-get-into-chat&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/faq/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25316" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7608" RevisionGUID="fadff579-f94a-4827-b3c7-46f133534b79" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="terminology tag (as defined by you guys): &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   Questions about the objective meaning or &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    common understanding of words and &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    concepts that programmers encounter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well I need to develop something which reads audio data to be played, and [I asked what one calls the term for the &quot;rate&quot; at which audio is interpreted / played by software](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297720/term-for-frame-rate-when-reading-audio-data/297723#297723). Similar to how one uses a video's frame-rate to know how fast to present the frames.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to meet the criteria, but a user downvoted my question and linked to a meta discussion: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I read that meta question and its accepted answer, and it clarifies that questions asking &quot;what should I name this&quot; are off topic, but &quot;what is the name of this well known concept?&quot; Is on-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question, being &quot;What is the term for the rate at which audio data should be read?&quot; isn't really a code problem, it's a matter of well known terminology, and seems to fit the criteria set by the community through the &quot;terminology&quot; tag and meta duscussions. So why has this user downvoted and linked to meta on my question? It also recieved close votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subsequently, my question recieved a perfect answer quickly, it was &quot;Sampling Rate&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25317" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7112" RevisionGUID="16063ea8-4e19-4e08-8cda-ec83e05ca1f2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Nice idea, but that guidance was *waaaay* too long to fit in a pop-up. I trimmed it down a bit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Wait!&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&quot;&gt;Personal advice is off-topic here&lt;/a&gt;. Please ensure that your question…&lt;/p&gt;    &lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;…is &lt;b&gt;specific to &lt;i&gt;programming careers&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;/b&gt; Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/tour&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt; for other career development questions.&lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;…can apply to &lt;b&gt;other programmers&lt;/b&gt; besides yourself. &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&quot;&gt;Avoid asking for open-ended advice&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;br&gt;  &lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488&quot;&gt;Why was my career or education advice question closed or down voted?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Check it out:][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![][2]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;FWIW, I find that meta answer fairly unhelpful in this context, given most folks aren't likely to click through in the first place. So I tried hard to pack some specific advice into the pop-up itself, leaving the meta link as sort of a veiled threat at the end.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/ask?tags=career-development&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/80bXi.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25318" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7619" RevisionGUID="5d670772-9868-460c-857e-651d25c089bf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Take a look at this screenshot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then if you scroll at the bottom most part of the page you can see this. I think the text from the side overlaps to the footer of the page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It says [here][3] that it is status-complete, but I still see them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xdRmnm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qMAvnm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2118/the-similar-question-sections-overlaps-the-footer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25319" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7129" RevisionGUID="ec666720-4fde-45e9-911a-757940b77e3b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Referring to: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically for duplicates it states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When should I vote to close a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should be closed by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; casting close votes if:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * they are sufficiently similar to existing questions and *would be answered identically to them*. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * they are unclear, too broad, or otherwise problematic to identifying the problem in a way that can be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * properly addressed by answerers they are sufficiently off-topic, as outlined in the help center.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(emphasis mine)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was in a discussion this morning on this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/255148/should-i-throw-guard-exceptions-that-will-be-thrown-by-internal-methods-anyway?noredirect=1#comment552707_255148&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whereby it was marked as a duplicate to a question that was several months newer, I expressed confusion and was directed to this meta post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6160/closing-a-two-year-old-question-as-a-duplicate-of-a-one-year-old-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regardless of whether or not it was a correct move, I believe the information on the help page does not cover this policy and should be updated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current use of *would be* in the help text implies that a question, as it currently stands, has not yet been answered, or is likely to receive newer answers and implies that perhaps this close reason is best suited to new questions. I don't believe that is the case in my situation, and so the help text should be updated to cover closing as duplicate older questions in line with the meta post I linked above to avoid confusion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you agree?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25320" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7145" RevisionGUID="3b35ff15-3880-42b9-b3d7-ddd0df4a072e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="An often reoccurring idea that is mentioned is that maybe, if the site name was changed from &quot;Programmers&quot; to something else (SoftwareEngineering?) then *maybe*, people would stop asking off topic, too broad, or down voted questions here. ([1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7142/40980), [2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6990/why-cant-we-raise-up-questions-quality/6993#comment20015_6990), [3](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3225/40980), and more).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, people rarely try backing this up with actual questions that are asked and looking at why they are closed or down voted and if their idea actually stands up to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's what you do.  You take the newest 50 questions and list all the ones that are down voted or closed and say why your idea for a name would have prevented the user from asking that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is non-binding and just an attempt to get people to think about what they are proposing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25321" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7624" RevisionGUID="fb6717c7-bfaf-4954-a84e-48cae18fadce" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here's the approach I am currently using when I stumble upon this kind of questions. (Those interested in what else I tried before coming at it, can find details below.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Add comment referring to MSE guidance [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;2. Vote down.&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote close as unclear.&#xD;&#xA;4. Vote delete (when question becomes eligible for that).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned MSE guidance is sufficient to help asker figure another, more appropriate site to focus their efforts on. Worth noting that in the past, I've been referring it rather judiciously for the fear that it may lead to reposting very low quality debugging questions at SO. Nowadays, I am not concerned about this, because SO (finally) found an efficient way to handle garbage questions by burying them in Triage queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote down is because it's off-topic. Additionally, it makes it easier for the system to trigger blocking, rate limiting and [anti-recidivism protection](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/anti-recidivism-system/info &quot;what's this&quot;) in case if asker intends to persist in asking inappropriate questions like that, for example in order to use Programmers as a proxy for Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Close reason picked (unclear) is because I abstain of wasting effort on checking whether the question is good enough to migrate to SO or not, or maybe it needs some improvements to become good enough to migrate. Another facet of this reason is, it's _unclear_ to me why asker picked Programmers instead of more appropriate and much better known site (Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote delete serves same purpose as vote down, to help system act in case if there's intended and persistent misuse. FWIW when voting this way, I expect that for occasional mistakes it doesn't harm, ie that question blocks work as [explained by SE team here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/236568/165773): &quot;first question doesn't count&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As promised, here is a brief overview of what else I tried before coming to above approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1\. &quot;Classical&quot; review.** You know, it's when you start with checking whether question is good enough for Stack Overflow and if it is, vote migrate. If not, you additionally study the question to either figure how to edit it to improve, or pick close reason that would help the asker find how to improve, maybe also comment with more explanations, stuff like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This way used to work pretty well until amount of debugging questions increased so that studying them started taking too much time. When I noticed this, I dropped it. Quoting self, &quot;I come here to learn and contribute to Programmers topics&quot; - I invest extra effort into studying off-topic questions only if it doesn't take much time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\. Trying to use system capabilities.** You know, system can tell many cases when debugging question is posted here to abuse it. It can tell whether asker was recently blocked at SO and likely tries to circumvent that, or if the question has been cross-posted here, possibly in hope to gather more feedback if it needs to improve. It can tell if the question is of such a troublesome quality that Stack Overflow would hide it (or maybe already did that) in Triage queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tried to figure how above can be used to simplify handling these questions and posted various feature requests. So far, all of them have been ignored... and likely will stay that way, given that even _very_ easy to implement and reasonable request to block same titles as are blocked at SO (with words 'problem' and 'help') stays ignored.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**3\. Flagging.** For readers unfamiliar with how it works, you explain in the flag message what specifically is wrong with the flagged post and why moderator involvement is required (as opposed to regular means like community voting, comments, edits, canned flags etc).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly to &quot;classical&quot; reviewing, this used to work like a charm in the past, and just like it, this way broke when amount of debugging questions increased so that flagging them started taking too much time. One can't just type in flag message &quot;hey, this is debugging&quot; and expect moderator to take it from there. To make a compelling flag message, you have to study the post quite thoroughly, that's why I dropped it when site started getting too many debugging questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6795/perform-automatic-checks-for-cross-posting-and-question-block-at-so-when-post-en&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7257/could-we-please-detect-troublesome-questions-using-stack-overflow-data-and-offlo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7564/if-problem-and-help-are-to-be-blocked-on-stack-overflow-question-titles-blo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Should one advise on off-topic questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/276637/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't ever answer a question, not via chat, comments, or any other way. It is even dangerous to say: go here, Google for that, because next time, they will do the exact same and eventually get what they want." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25322" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7660" RevisionGUID="045d4282-e8b0-4924-8bfd-fa8ef3c88943" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question is heavily (but not primarily) opinion-based and certainly too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers are rambling, outdated, and many are low-quality. Several provide examples of individual projects that use Java, which is a bit too specific to be of much use. Q: &quot;What are cars used for these days?&quot; A: &quot;Well my cousin is a cab driver.&quot; Sure, that technically answers the question, but is useless information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bigger issue is &quot;what value does this question and its answers provide?&quot; As far as I can tell it serves one of several purposes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Fuel for the language flame wars.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Answers the questions &quot;what language or technology should I take up next&quot; and &quot;recommend an off-site resource such as a language&quot; (Java, in this case).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Pros and cons][1] of Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In no way does this question bring measurable benefit to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is any useful content in any of the answers, it belongs in the [Java tag wiki][2] which probably has enough useful information as-is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6758/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/java/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25323" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7147" RevisionGUID="293c6de0-1836-463b-92e8-70bd7c8678fd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here's my opinion on the same question list as [MichaelT][1] with a name that strongly emphasizes conceptual software design, such as **&quot;The Whiteboard&quot;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am writing my answers from the point of view of a user whose only knowledge of this site is it is a StackExchange Q&amp;A site titled &quot;Programmers&quot; or &quot;The Whiteboard&quot;, and who doesn't have a strong grasp of what makes a good/bad question for SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271586/what-examples-are-there-for-mean-js&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271584/what-cms-to-use-for-mean-js&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would ask both of a Q&amp;A site titled &quot;Programmers&quot;. I would only ask the second of a Q&amp;A site labeled &quot;The Whiteboard&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271573/how-to-speed-up-the-following-matlab-code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271545/clarification-on-migrating-to-visual-studio-2010&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271544/is-there-any-harm-in-using-amazon-aws-as-a-development-environment&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271541/what-do-you-do-while-youre-waiting-for-your-tests-to-run&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271537/how-to-choose-a-framework&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271535/compare-values-from-two-spinner-and-display-the-result-accordingly-in-android-st&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271532/best-way-to-get-data-from-database-inside-thread-class-in-spring,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271515/can-i-use-qtcreator-with-pyqt5&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271531/c-malloc-error&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271530/univerisity-iphone-assignment-without-an-apple-mac&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271510/code-blocks-not-opening-new-console-why-is-this-happening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271507/git-hangs-when-pushing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271497/difficulty-finding-a-recursive-starting-point-for-an-algorithm&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Maybe.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271491/i-want-to-build-a-software-with-c-book-list-is-needed&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271487/installment-of-python-2-7-9-and-3-4-2-recommended-learning-source&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes to the first, No to the second&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271490/how-to-learn-backend-development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271473/best-way-to-implement-in-app-purchases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [PHP Ajax error, get 404 when type first char][2] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For 10ks there are also:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [Does php can solve this][3] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [For Windows developers who would like to get into the Mac OS X software development industry, what's a great way to get started?][4] &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [how to solve the problem of fault face detection in image processing][5] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [Generous budget: what's your ideal setup?][6] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Maybe&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [recommend a British based programmer / small company that also does design, a language and requirements definition document][7]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [What books helped you to become a better programmer][8] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Total: Programmers 26; Whiteboard: 7-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind, this is *my perspective*. Everyone's different. We can't say definitely &quot;yes this would be asked&quot; or &quot;no this wouldn't be asked&quot;. It depends on the question asker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point is, a user who only knows *&quot;this is a SE Q&amp;A site titled Programmers&quot;* will most likely have a very different assumption than a user who only knows *&quot;this is a SE Q&amp;A site titled The Whiteboard&quot;* (or Software Concepts, or Software Design Theory, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The term &quot;**Programmers**&quot; is an extremely broad term that could bring to mind a person writing code, a person designing software, a person gathering requirements, a person seeking a new job, etc. But in all cases, it brings to mind *a person*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However a term like &quot;**The Whiteboard**&quot; gives a first impression of &quot;conceptual software design&quot;, which is more likely to bring to mind designing software, considering architecture, evaluating approaches, etc. It's much more inline with what this site actually is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7146/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271472/php-ajax-error-get-404-when-type-first-char&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271529/does-php-can-solve-this&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/360/for-windows-developers-who-would-like-to-get-into-the-mac-os-x-software-developm&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271560/how-to-solve-the-problem-of-fault-face-detection-in-image-processing&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1763/generous-budget-whats-your-ideal-setup&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271517/recommend-a-british-based-programmer-small-company-that-also-does-design-a-la&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271480/what-books-helped-you-to-become-a-better-programmer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25324" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7725" RevisionGUID="32f23ee7-fbde-4dfd-9399-3ed2d5aa9651" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm mainly an Stack Overflow user. I'm used to moderate there voting and flagging and I believe that I know their rules quite well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I'm new here and I'm still getting used. One thing that I've noted is, as this site has more subjective terms than SO, it keeps getting a huge amount of opinion-based and forum-like questions (that are properly closed). Before writing [my question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302226/what-javascript-has-that-is-so-special-that-could-make-asynchronous-programming), I've tried my best to avoid this behaviour, but in the end it was closed with the same reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main question was: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are the specific characteristics of JavaScript that makes Node.js&#xD;&#xA;&gt; so special and why other languages can't build similar frameworks to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rise in popularity in their own community?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My objective was to attract answers like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - JavaScript has an unique way to handle threads that is X and no other language have it.&#xD;&#xA; - libuv was the key of Node's success. As it would be very hard to port it to Python for reason X or as it would be so slow in Ruby for reason Y, these two languages don't have successful event-driven frameworks.&#xD;&#xA; - Async is already becoming standard and successful for other languages. E.g: RxJava. The code just don't need to be fully async because those languages are more structured than JavaScript regarding X.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in the end, it attracted some answers/comments like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - JavaScript is a terrible language but is used because is the only language available for front-end.&#xD;&#xA; - JavaScript is so poorly designed and demands so many workarounds its gotcha minefield that stuff like Node.js seems glorious by comparison.&#xD;&#xA; - Your answer really is &quot;A language to rule them all&quot; because JavaScript is ubiquitous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Its my fault** but where I did it wrong? I'll create another question soon and I hope to learn with this mistake to avoid another closed one. So, **how could my question be reworded to fit in this site?** If its not possible, why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt; I've [already](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions) [read](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7182/what-goes-on-programmers-se-a-guide-for-stack-overflow) [some](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) [meta](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers) [questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) before posting this meta question. &lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25325" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7224" RevisionGUID="c74b15d9-1820-43a6-afc5-881b2cce1b1a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Assuming that this doesn't happen frequent enough to warrant changes to the system, one approach that comes to mind is to flag these cases for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flag message explaining the issue could refer this very question, in order to make it easier for moderator to find more details, eg like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`please take a look - this off-topic question appears to be posted with sole purpose to circumvent 'problem' title block at Stack Overflow (related meta discussion: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7221)`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Because, really, what's the point of wasting [precious close votes](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6507/31260) on an issue essentially caused by some kind of a system &quot;leak&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note, per discussion in later related question, some moderators are *not* positive about flags like that: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7328/31260&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On another note, you may also stumble upon [an earlier post](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6508/31260) that recommends this approach...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; if you see someone that is very likely unable to ask questions on one site bringing the same poor quality here - flag it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...but you better keep in mind that above guidance is *not* universally accepted. At least not currently." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25326" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7242" RevisionGUID="cae0be93-98a2-45af-acde-f177cfd6dc92" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Real Questions Have Answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following is an excerpt from The Whiteboard chat room; a user asking for career advice.  You can decide for yourself whether or not I was being too elitist/perfectionist.  But ask yourself, as you are reading this: &quot;is this a reasonably answerable question?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** Hey guys quick career based question - I am more interested now in web development as opposed to software development. The only problem now is that the place I want to work at is using totally different technologies than I am using right now. My plan is to self-educate and start working on projects to internalize those technologies/new programming language syntaxes and then give it a shot but it would still be cool to find out what you guys think about switching in between the two?&#xD;&#xA;If you had any experience with it or if you think it is a good/bad idea in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** Hey guys quick transportation based question - I am more interested now in trucks as opposed to cars. The only problem now is that the place I want to work at is using cars. My plan is to self-educate and start working on projects to internalize those technologies/new truck beds and then give it a shot but it would still be cool to find out what you guys think about switching in between the two?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** I have heard some people say that it is better to stick with one stack of tech if you have been using it for a while but I disagree with that and wanted to see what you guys thoght. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** Depends on what you mean by &quot;better.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** By better I mean mastering one stack and then moving on to others. My opinion is that some if not most of the things are trasnferrable but I am not sure 100% hence my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** Some of it is transferable, some of it is new skills.&#xD;&#xA;That's about the best answer I can give you, without a more specific question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **USER:** At the very bottom of my explanation I asked if anybody had experience with this directly - that is moving from software dev to web dev and the challenges that came along with it. Obviously for each person it will be a bit different but since the situation is generally the same I can pick out some of the similarities to help me with my decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **ME:** I did my first ASP.NET MVC application about 7 years ago. I had to learn about REST, web services, the stateless nature of web applications, ORM, HTML, CSS and a bit of Javascript.&#xD;&#xA;The rest I already knew from having learned C#. Well, except for the intricacies of ASP.NET and MVC.&#xD;&#xA;Nowadays, having knowledge of front end Javascript frameworks like jQuery and Angular helps a lot. There's also caching, cookies, authentication, etc. So I'd say the transition is non-trivial.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So after a lengthy clarifying discussion, we finally got to something that is answerable in some way.  But notice that it's still not a real question. Rather than asking a question that has an answer, he was asking &quot;Everyone, share your experiences, and let me pick out the common elements.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not what we do here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What he really wanted to do was [solicit a discussion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6742/31260 &quot;see 'On discussions and why they don't make good questions'&quot;), which is fine in the chat room, as that is what it is designed for.  But notice that the conversation never evolved into a real question that could be answered definitively.  This is why we have such strict requirements for  questions; they all originate from hard-won experience with topics that are subjective by nature, and the desire for newcomers to bend the site to their will and their existing forum skills.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a million and one other places on the internet where folks can have a discussion.  This isn't one of them.  And before you say &quot;but this is where all the experts are,&quot; the experts are here in part so that they don't have to put up with the mindless discussion that forums encourage." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25327" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7770" RevisionGUID="9210ea5f-e4bb-42a9-83f0-abd7cd130514" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**TL;DR** Can the system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently I've seen notes from Stack Exchange staff about how it would be nice if site would allow for broader, softer kind questions. This was [said by Robert Cartaino here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7650/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The idea that there are hordes of people just waiting flood the site for want of a single precedent was one of those things we worried about before we had anything to back it up. But if you haven't noticed, Stack Exchange has moved on from a lot of those old adages foretelling of widespread doom in ways that simply never materialized in actual use... _every_ question must have exactly one absolutely factual answer. ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and [by Jon Ericson here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7761/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Given quality of users on this site, there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, the system makes it difficult (I would say, unnecessarily difficult) to produce and maintain quality content in questions with many answers. It doesn't provide any means to make it easier and some features even tend to incentivize low quality content in questions of this kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current UI doesn't offer any means to help answerers and readers find / avoid repeating what was stated before. Combined with being very easy to post an answer, this leads to useless answers that don't add anything over what was posted before. This is noticeable even in questions with brief answers which are easy to check ([example](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/271158/839601)) and when answers are lengthy, things become even worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This penalizes web search visitors, forcing them to read same points over and over and over again. Letting repetitive answers proliferate is a step toward old-fashioned &quot;forums&quot;, and quite a substantial one I think.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particular feature that essentially encourages low quality content is Hot Network Questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To set the record straight for readers not familiar with its purpose - it is established pretty firmly and it has nothing to do with content quality. The feature is there only to show network wide audience entertaining / interesting questions. If you're interested, refer MSE for more details on that: [What is the Goal of “Hot Network Questions”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per se, entertainment aspect of HNQ looks pretty acceptable and I don't think it should necessarily be that it makes a critical obstacle in maintaining quality content. Thing is though, as implemented currently... it really does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;HNQ, the way it is now, make maintaining quality content cumbersome and painful. Problems with content quality in hot questions are well known for a long time ([1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;), [2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;'Answers quality in hot questions'&quot;)), and it keeps happening here and now, see for example https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over years, Stack Exchange tried various ways to handle questions with multiple answers but none of these seemed to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Jeff Atwood's warning](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/86895/165773) was probably the first one,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Did you read through all the existing answers first to make sure your answer will be contributing something new?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All I can say about it is that it doesn't work, has never worked and is unlikely to ever work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another thing they tried was automatic conversion to community wiki when there are many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This worked... sorta, in the sense that it made it easier to downvote low quality answers (without incurring rep penalty) and removed incentive to flood popular questions with answers in a (frankly, quite realistic) hope to gain a bit of rep with a random upvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this trick is, it had some _very_ ugly side effects due to involved rep denial from users providing quality content and in the end it was [deservedly discarded](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228940/165773). Thing is though, nothing was done to compensate loss of features used to counter issues in questions with many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, there's standard rhetoric about voting down low quality answers but tell me, how many users can afford rep loss of voting this way, say, 5-10 of total 20 non-CW answers in a question? how many of them can afford doing this every month? every week? And if you additionally consider [&quot;sympathy upvotes&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/311408/839601 &quot;what's this&quot;) frequently happening to such answers in popular questions (each worth more than 4 votes down rep wise), this starts looking like a wishful thinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another approach that was tried about two years ago is randomizing hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seemed to work at first but as time passed by it revealed signs of inability to scale. Shuffling 100 hot questions to 100K site visitors works, shuffling same amount to 1 million will break and essentially return us back to old known issues with &quot;snowball effect&quot; when questions stick in the list solely because they were advertised there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Somewhere along the way they implemented special adjustment for Stack Overflow questions, which strongly pushes these from hot list after 7 hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to work, in the sense that there aren't very loud complaints about hot questions at MSO anymore (like it was in the past with [&quot;croissants&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/190106/165773)). Still, this doesn't resolve problems at other sites. And still, even SO is having garbage answers problem in questions that acquire popularity and high views organically, not via hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Yet another feature intended to help control answers quality is question protection, which makes it impossible to answer for users having less than 10 on-site reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By design, protection is intended to handle only cases of extreme abuse. It doesn't provide any means against low quality answers posted by users with over 10 rep. Also, due to some implementation specifics, even very limited functionality it offers frequently turns out useless in hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Can the system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25328" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7789" RevisionGUID="2db08b79-cf8c-4893-a99c-81116067be99" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Done. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I kept [tag:client-server] as the master tag, since it's the [more common term][1]. Also, Stack Overflow has the [same mapping][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks for bringing this to our attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7788/server-client-server-client-server-lets-avoid-infinite-recursions#comment23609_7788&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/tags/client-server/synonyms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25329" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7268" RevisionGUID="13b76f82-c8d3-449b-bc04-41caf261c86c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Lets admit it, we've got lots of old things hanging around on meta.  Much of it helps explain where we are today - and thats good.  But it also confuses people.  They may look at meta, search for some topic and find something from 2011 when the scope was still trying to be found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets take a recent example of this. https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7267/why-was-my-career-related-question-considered-off-topic has some related questions on the side bar... the top couple: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![related questions][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, lets look at those that are actually here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1556/when-are-career-questions-too-localized-should-this-be-more-strict&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2483/why-are-all-of-the-good-career-related-threads-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the first one has something from '11 the apparent consensus is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Yes, but only questions that will be relevant to a large number of professional software developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, well, is not at all the current consensus four years later.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second one is also from '11 which include user8's blue bulls eye (which was recently removed from the help center because it was misunderstood) and states right up front:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers is for questions about software development and being a programmer: career advice questions are off-topic here unless they uniquely apply to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, this is not the current understanding or consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, mods, I beseech you to create a new lock message that indicates that a given question was a part of the changing scope of the site and may not reflect the current understanding of what the site's topics are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One possible wording:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance about the development of the scope of Programmers.SE. However, this scope has changed over time and the reader is urged to seek more recent posts on this topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, as we find things on meta that are out of date and have the likelihood of being misunderstood or used to justify posts based on standards of half a decade ago it would be possible to say, &quot;You know, that really isn't applicable anymore.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could also be done as a custom close reason if you want to go that way instead, though that could put a bit too much power in our hands (locked questions can only be done by diamond mods, can't be deleted, can't be voted on).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/gsYqv.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25330" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7800" RevisionGUID="eb16ea79-65b4-4d98-a7c2-a9ba027be69f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Robert Harvey's answer][1] is almost perfect. He touches on one point at several points, but I do think it needs more emphasis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**On Programmers, we close questions ruthlessly and viciously. And that's a good thing.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing questions quickly is a very good thing. It stops them from getting low-quality answers and lets the asker and the community work to fix them. If they are totally unsalvagable, quick deletion is also a tool that we use here. And this approach works very well for us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I noticed that more people were involved in question closures. I saw names that I didn't see often. Also, during peak hours, these questions were closed without people mentioning them in The Whiteboard or flagging them to get a mod on it faster. It made voting actually work by letting the community better self-police. My work as a diamond mod was significantly lessened during this time period.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, when I look at your data...I just see an experiment that worked. The number of closed questions went up. I'd be curious to see the average time to close a question - I suspect it went down, perhaps even significantly. The edit and reopen rate also went up. By closing questions quicker, we could engage users faster and get their questions in good shape for reopening or migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Admittedly, there are some barriers that should be looked at. Systematically, the reputation requirements to post on Meta and chat. These are where we want to direct people to go to help. I think many times, users have sufficient reputation, but I know I've vented in The Whiteboard and TL about these limits preventing people from getting to resources to help them improve their question. Culturally, I think we need to improve how we comment on posts, especially posts from first time users, to provide better guidance on get them to helpful resources so that the people who want to participate and learn can.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7799/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25331" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7282" RevisionGUID="edf6fbdc-b176-4f89-9cba-98628f7dd34e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="One important bit to realize about the Stack Exchange format, is that it is Q&amp;A. Questions and answers. Provocation and 'get[ing] people to think' is not what the Q&amp;A format is geared to. Rather, the &quot;you have this problem, this is the solution.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange format is *not* that of a forum and has a number if differences. To that, I would suggest that you read https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6742/40980 and its related reading section which goes more into that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The python question was protected because another user posted [a rather low quality answer on it that really didn't add anything](https://i.stack.imgur.com/urawh.png). It has since been deleted.  We have often found that when an old post that should be closed because it is too broad is bumped back up to the front page of activity, that other people will often post answers to it that are similarly low quality (yours was reasonable, but there are problems with the question that would entice other people to add their two bits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Protecting the question prevents people who aren't familiar with the Q&amp;A model from posting other responses as if this was a forum post, and also gives pause to higher rep users to remind them to post good answers.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25332" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7479" RevisionGUID="c7650dd8-262e-4f44-9a7c-ef4902d93d95" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We recently had a [very poor quality question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/288861/53019) seemingly bypass the [filter for all caps in a title](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6854/53019).  And about a month ago, there was [another poor quality question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/285515/53019) that made it through the quality filter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. _Bug report:_ Can we have someone please check and see if the quality filter is still enabled to prevent those all caps questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. _Feature request:_ Can a regression test be generated so that the next time the filter breaks it's detected earlier in the development cycle?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25333" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7808" RevisionGUID="e703318f-98ad-4e55-9ee3-6599bf420873" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I can not read their minds but from what I see, the only problem this site really has is a terrible flood of debugging / blatantly off-topic questions dumped by users who are banned or warned or simply scared off of Stack Overflow (_my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level_, [remember?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7610/31260))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given above, it is only natural to assume that SE team looks for a cheap way to handle this, to make getting rid of this spam easier - and what can be cheaper than simply tuning close limit setting (to a value that was already tried and tested in the past, which makes it even easier).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing to worry about in there was if it could have some undesired side effects... and, well, there _were_ side effects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These talks about trust / distrust and dreams on how meta visitors would suddenly reform from reading that post about experiment, I honestly can't take them seriously. Balance between tightening and broadening site scope is maintained by core community, not by management slogans.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And thing is, community over here _could_ maintain the balance if site wasn't flooded by debugging spam. There are at least 8-10 members of core community who would be happy to vote reopen stuff &quot;unfairly&quot; closed by folks like you and me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the scale of our site, this would be more than enough to maintain a healthy balance without any management intervention. The only reason why this doesn't happen is flood of blatant garbage that buries questions worthy of wider community attention, like this bunch dropped at us today:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;How to overcome the stack overflow problem?&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Help: not able to compile C++ code&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Injecting a java script to an iframe&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Multiple viewpagers in one fragment&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;How do I increment a variable each time a program runs in C++?&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Rewrite code snippet using ternary operators&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Open cv help i m learnig open cv using youtube i get error when i try to run my frist program pls help&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Android 6.0.1 couldn't enable wifi hotspot programmatically&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the experiment they were probably hoping that lowering bar for reopening will make it easier for the other part of core community to keep the prior balance. This didn't happen, and I think the reason is just the same. Folks who could do this simply can't find questions they would vote on because these are buried under heaps of spam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note it's the third time I use the word _spam_, and it's intentional. I've seen Wikipedia defining spam as &quot;unsolicited electronic message&quot;, and this fits here. It's easy even to a total outsider to see how much of the questions are blatantly off-topic (no matter how broadly one understands site topics).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If my understanding is correct, then there's nothing for SE to expect of us, because spam is not something we, as community, can control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is also unlikely that ignoring what's going on here is an option for them. As of now, site front page says it loud and clear: &quot;hey, SE team can't control spam&quot; - that's sort of damaging their reputation of top Q&amp;A system in the world.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Few years ago, they could probably attempt to close the site, under the cover that it has failed to grow. But their current official position changed, and now they claim that smaller sites can be okay without exploding to SO scale (why wouldn't they, given that smaller sites combined started bringing more views than Stack Overflow). As a result, closing would look solely like giving up to spam.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25334" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7493" RevisionGUID="b978a91a-f2d9-4d97-b185-4af387e5145d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For the non-10k users, a screen capture of the entire post: [jpeg](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fo04d.jpg) (I had to switch from png to jpeg and reduce the image quality to get it to fit into the upload constraints - it started out as a 4.4 megabyte file)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that we've got that out of the way and we can look at it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have difficulty identifying the actual problem. The question gives a bit of history, and then starts going into &quot;I'm right&quot; and &quot;why does everyone (other than delphi programmers) not to notice this?&quot;  Beyond that point, it goes to some odd tangent of personal experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't find the question that can be solved. It reads like a giant blog post. The [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) specifically calls out the types of questions that don't work in the Stack Exchange format:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;2. your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;3. there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;4. you are asking an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;5. your question is just a rant in disguise: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This feels like a some degree of fit for #2, #3, and #5. The bit for #2 is that first part of &quot;your answer is provided along with the question&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why conflicts due to join are not a problem whereas Diamond, which I hopefully explanied very well is a solution, is a problem for you instead of Join? Why solution is considered a problem whereas the problem itself is totally ignored?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've provided a solution to something, but I'm not exactly sure what that something is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I had close votes, I would have cast them as [unclear](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489) too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this question didn't end there. The comments immediately start out with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As I expected, they will downvote and close the question. This is a taboo question. They silence the question to silence it. It would be stupid to let it come to the surface and discussed. –  Recognize Evil as Waste 6 hours ago &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and eventually gets to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @RecognizeEvilasWaste good grief; give it a rest, would you? This isn't a place to rant (if you want to do that, open your own blog), it's to ask and answer (answerable, on-topic) questions. Also, bear in mind that the probability that you're a misunderstood genius is somewhat lower than the probability that you've misunderstood something. –  jonrsharpe 4 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; jonrsharpe expands unjustified smearing of my question (it is clearly a question, I wounder how you bend your brain to read it otherwise) with personal attacks. It seems that so far there was not enough dirt for me. –  Recognize Evil as Waste 4 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The resulting post and comments are no longer suitable for a question and answer site and any hope of civil discourse (note that discussions shouldn't the focus of a question) are lost when Thomas Owens locks it down to try to cool things off and then decides that its really beyond repair.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow has their [Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) which goes to trying to clearly identify the problem in a way that is understandable by all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question fails at that minimal aspect with significant amounts of other material that I don't understand why its there. It gets into half adders and... well... there isn't an answerable problem there. As I read it, there is instead a manifesto of multiple inheritance and asking why the rest of the world is ignoring this solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This type of question really isn't a good fit for the Q&amp;A format. Maybe you want to instead post such on other sites. It might work there. However, I would encourage you to not come out swinging and looking for a fight about taboo subjects (there not, we're just bored of them) immediately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For Stack Exchange, please try to concentrate on answerable questions that don't take more than a few paragraphs to answer. Questions like the one you ask would take significantly more to refute (possibly into the 'needs to be a white paper' size) and if you're going to attack anyone who answers or tries to gain a better understanding of what you are asking you may get a similar reception there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25335" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7590" RevisionGUID="4f97978b-bb5f-4ea5-9594-de8009fc5c3f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think this would help significantly:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could be shown, let say, for the first 3 posts by a user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is also very similar to [Michel's idea](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7144/25529).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/dWiAt.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25336" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7875" RevisionGUID="ec8658fe-b757-422e-885a-18c151b1259d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;p&gt;We’d love to help you. To &lt;b&gt;improve your chances&lt;/b&gt; of getting an answer, here are some tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;###STOP!&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is primarily about *software design.* We don't do code troubleshooting here, so if your question is about how to fix your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&quot;&gt;Search&lt;/a&gt;, and research&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and keep track of what you find. Even if you don't find a useful answer elsewhere on the site, including links to related questions that *haven't* helped can help others in understanding how your question is different from the rest. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind readers (other than you) _have_ to be able to understand your situation. They don't know what you've researched, tried, or the details driving your problem. No one here can read your mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Write a title that summarizes the specific problem &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The title is the first thing potential answerers will see, and if your title isn't interesting, they won't read the rest. So *make it count:*&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;- **Pretend you're talking to a busy colleague** and have to sum up your entire question in one sentence: what details can you include that will help someone identify and solve your problem? Include any error messages, key APIs, or unusual circumstances that make your question different from similar questions already on the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Spelling, grammar and punctuation are important!** Remember, this is the first part of your question others will see - you want to make a good impression. If you're not comfortable writing in English, ask a friend to proof-read it for you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you're having trouble summarizing the problem, **write the title *last*** - sometimes writing the rest of the question first can make it easier to describe the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Make sure it is **relevant to the actual problem** you are having. Many times people will read the title and answer that question without reading the rest of the body of the question. If the title and body of the question don't match, it is likely that the answers that you get will be confused and go off on tangents that aren't ultimately helpful to solving the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- On floating point errors...&#xD;&#xA;  - **Bad:** C# Math Confusion&#xD;&#xA;  - **Good:** Why does using float instead of int give me different results when all of my inputs are integers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- On redirecting in php&#xD;&#xA;  - **Bad:** [php] session doubt&#xD;&#xA;  - **Good:** How can I redirect users to different pages based on session data in PHP?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- On flow control and equality&#xD;&#xA;  - **Bad:** android if else problems&#xD;&#xA;  - **Good:** Why does str == &quot;value&quot; evaluate to false when str is set to &quot;value&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Introduce the problem before you post any code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the body of your question, start by expanding on the summary you put in the title. Explain how you encountered the problem you're trying to solve, and any difficulties that have prevented you from solving it yourself. The first paragraph in your question is the second thing most readers will see, so make it as engaging and informative as possible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Help others reproduce the problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many Programmers.SE questions don't significantly benefit from including code. But if your problem is *with* code you've written, you should include some. But **don't just copy in your entire program!** Not only is this likely to get you in trouble if you're posting your employer's code, it likely includes a lot of irrelevant details that readers will need to ignore when trying to reproduce the problem. Here are some guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;- Include just enough code to allow others to describe the design. For help with this, read [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;- If it is possible to create a live example of the problem that you can *link* to (for example, on http://sqlfiddle.com/ or http://jsbin.com/) then do so - but also include the code in your question itself. Not everyone can access external sites, and the links may break over time. &#xD;&#xA;- Remember, ***we don't fix broken code here.***  Questions should be focused on design, not implementation.  If your question is about your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Include all relevant tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to include a tag for the language, library, and specific API your question relates to. If you start typing in the tags field, the system will suggest tags that match what you've typed - be sure and read the descriptions given for them to make sure they're relevant to the question you're asking! See also: [What are tags, and how should I use them?](/help/tagging)&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;##Proof-read before posting!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that you're ready to ask your question, take a deep breath and read through it from start to finish. Pretend you're seeing it for the first time: *does it make sense?* Try reproducing the problem yourself, in a fresh environment and make sure you can do so using only the information included in your question. Add any details you missed and read through it again. Now is a good time to make sure that your title still describes the problem!&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;##Post the question and respond to feedback&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you post, leave the question open in your browser for a bit, and see if anyone comments. If you missed an obvious piece of information, be ready to respond by editing your question to include it. If someone posts an answer, be ready to try it out and provide feedback!&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;##Look for help asking for help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In spite of all your efforts, you may find your questions poorly-received. Don't despair! Learning to ask a good question is a worthy pursuit, and not one you'll master overnight. Here are some additional resources that you may find useful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Writing the perfect question](http://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Open letter to students with homework problems](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to debug small programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Meta discussions on asking questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/faq)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to ask questions the smart way](http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) &amp;mdash; long but good advice." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25337" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7619" RevisionGUID="10057a08-a7be-483c-b33c-eef74a493e2a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Take a look at this screenshot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then if you scroll at the bottom most part of the page you can see this. I think the text from the side overlaps to the footer of the page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It says [here][3] that it is status-complete, but I still see them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xdRmnm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qMAvnm.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2118/the-similar-question-sections-overlaps-the-footer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25338" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7251" RevisionGUID="98cda228-a2df-4d47-be2f-aa25f5923ccd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As explained in [this answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/251744/165773) to related question at MSE, there is no such plan.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More specifically, Triage review was not intended to be applicable network wide; it was designed based on assumptions that apply at Stack Overflow but not necessarily hold at other network sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, per what I additionally learned at MSE ([1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251737/triage-and-help-improvement-review-queues-at-sites-other-than-stack-overflow#comment822246_251744), [2](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251737/triage-and-help-improvement-review-queues-at-sites-other-than-stack-overflow#comment822318_251744)), site needs to cover following points for Triage to make sense:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. Set the goals (for SO, goals are said to be &quot;de-emphasize questions from folks who haven't yet learned... but don't immediately nuke them&quot; and protect home page from [&quot;wall of crap&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so))&#xD;&#xA;2. Enough content to keep scoring algorithm relevant - 100 troublesome questions a month won't do, nor probably 1000 would.&#xD;&#xA;3. Timely escape - we don't want automatic scoring nor user flags to hide question for hours solely because there's nobody around to review.&#xD;&#xA;4. It must be clear to many that the existing tools are insufficient: in particular, if the &quot;home page as work area&quot; strategy is working well for a given community, there's little need for anything more elaborate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does above match to what we've got at Programmers? Let's see...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding point **#1** about _goals_, first thing that comes to mind is that those stated for SO apply here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given meta discussions, we are interested in helping folks to learn (https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions) - though I am not completely certain that existing tools are proven as insufficient as implied by point **#4**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another goal, about &quot;wall of crap&quot; at homepage, also looks relevant to us, as indicated by multiple recurring discussions about [too many bad questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7130?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Point **#2**, at first sight, doesn't match. Being 100-200 times smaller than Stack Overflow, Programmers hardly can serve sufficiently reliable data feed into question scoring. One option worth considering to address this is to simply &quot;borrow&quot; Stack Overflow data feed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may work because site topics substantially overlap and, especially, because many troublesome questions over here appear to be posted by users who are simply [trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260). Using same scoring data that is supposed to detect and block them at Stack Overflow would make sense, wouldn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Point **#3**, about timely escape, also doesn't seem to match at first sight. Per my observations, it rather frequently happens that _for several hours_ there's just not enough 3K/diamond regulars around to make decisions supposed to drive Triage. [Not that I complain](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14524409#14524409 &quot;moderation is just not supposed to be 24x7 watch, this is not how system is expected to work&quot;), but there is just no way to ensure that questions in Triage queue would be reviewed within reasonable timeframe.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Probably the only way to overcome this would be to automatically kick questions off this queue and let them go to homepage after some timeout (say, 1-2 hours) if these haven't got sufficient attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;FWIW it is quite likely that &quot;kick off by timeout&quot; will be eventually implemented (if it is not there already) in Stack Overflow Triage. Thing is, given their scale, as soon as this queue gets into &quot;mass production&quot;, there will be a solid chance that all reviewers press Skip on particular post, making it stuck in there, while as pointed in **#3**, &quot;we don't want automatic scoring nor user flags to hide question for hours solely because there's nobody around to review&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25339" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7880" RevisionGUID="39beafd1-0faf-498b-9e49-1be1821ba2ca" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Sort of a later follow-up: question was further cleaned up and 14 answers that didn't attempt to address the question and/or were repeating prior ones were removed by moderator (one or two answers were deleted by their authors per discussion in comments).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question looks generally good to me, it appears to be reasonably clear and focused and rather difficult to misinterpret.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though some answerers managed to &quot;leak through&quot; minor slippery points in wording. Granted, some of them dumped their stuff in first several hours prior to [revision 4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/118703/revisions &quot;'Nov 9 '11 at 23:19'&quot;), while text (and especially title) of the question were leaving bit more room for misinterpretation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior editors did pretty good job of cleaning it up but there still seem to be some corrections worth considering, especially now that question apparently gained [huge popularity](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/103053/165773 &quot;see 'How aggressively should we maintain and improve very popular questions?'&quot;) and has got to our [all time top 50 open questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A85000+closed%3Ano) with over 85K views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would particularly recommend the following changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Add [tag:history] tag. After revision 4 main focus of the question has been very prominently shifted to this and lack of the respective tag looks really confusing. Not to mention that this makes it harder to search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Note about ternary operator that &quot;gets even less love among Java programmers etc&quot;. It probably fit well into trollish / ranty mood of the original text but in current form, it looks rather poor fit to the rest of the question. I would replace it with more neutral explanation, about like this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;But that's only because code snippet was made as simple as possible to clearer show the idea, the question is about more realistic cases where ternary operator is not an option.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Closing words &quot;why do people adhere to it rigidly?&quot; are worth removing. These are just a leftover of original rant and really have no place in the question. Actually, words like this are usually enough for me to vote close as [opinion based / too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6742/31260 &quot;see 'On discussions and why they don't make good questions'&quot;) but prior editors did a really good job of making it clear that it's tangential to the question (except for maybe the [most _rigidly_ careless answerers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118703/where-did-the-notion-of-one-return-only-come-from/119117#comment654398_212495 &quot;example: 'the question was twofold and I answered to the latter aspect of it... rigidly blah blah' OMFG&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cleaning up the question may be good, but we would better take care of tangential answers as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even now, visitors probably find these confusing and wonder how these are related to the question. But very attentive readers can at least re-check the question text and say, _&quot;ah, this answer exploits &amp;lt;such and such minor point of the question&amp;gt;, I understand&quot;_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if the question is cleaned as suggested above, these answers will become really harmful, telling tens thousands visitors, _&quot;hey, it's okay to totally ignore what is asked about and just drop into answer box whatever comes to your mind&quot;_." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25340" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7624" RevisionGUID="d34bd1d7-b129-402f-a474-9fd2547d9bda" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here's the approach I am currently using when I stumble upon this kind of questions. (Those interested in what else I tried before coming at it, can find details below.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Add comment referring to MSE guidance [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;2. Vote down.&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote close as unclear.&#xD;&#xA;4. Vote delete (when question becomes eligible for that).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned MSE guidance is sufficient to help asker figure another, more appropriate site to focus their efforts on. Worth noting that in the past, I've been referring it rather judiciously for the fear that it may lead to reposting very low quality debugging questions at SO. Nowadays, I am not concerned about this, because SO (finally) found an efficient way to handle garbage questions by burying them in Triage queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote down is because it's off-topic. Additionally, it makes it easier for the system to trigger blocking, rate limiting and [anti-recidivism protection](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/anti-recidivism-system/info &quot;what's this&quot;) in case if asker intends to persist in asking inappropriate questions like that, for example in order to use Programmers as a proxy for Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Close reason picked (unclear) is because I abstain of wasting effort on checking whether the question is good enough to migrate to SO or not, or maybe it needs some improvements to become good enough to migrate. Another facet of this reason is, it's _unclear_ to me why asker picked Programmers instead of more appropriate and much better known site (Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote delete serves same purpose as vote down, to help system act in case if there's intended and persistent misuse. FWIW when voting this way, I expect that for occasional mistakes it doesn't harm, ie that question blocks work as [explained by SE team here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/236568/165773): &quot;first question doesn't count&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As promised, here is a brief overview of what else I tried before coming to above approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1\. &quot;Classical&quot; review.** You know, it's when you start with checking whether question is good enough for Stack Overflow and if it is, vote migrate. If not, you additionally study the question to either figure how to edit it to improve, or pick close reason that would help the asker find how to improve, maybe also comment with more explanations, stuff like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This way used to work pretty well until amount of debugging questions increased so that studying them started taking too much time. When I noticed this, I dropped it. Quoting self, &quot;I come here to learn and contribute to Programmers topics&quot; - I invest extra effort into studying off-topic questions only if it doesn't take much time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\. Trying to use system capabilities.** You know, system can tell many cases when debugging question is posted here to abuse it. It can tell whether asker was recently blocked at SO and likely tries to circumvent that, or if the question has been cross-posted here, possibly in hope to gather more feedback if it needs to improve. It can tell if the question is of such a troublesome quality that Stack Overflow would hide it (or maybe already did that) in Triage queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tried to figure how above can be used to simplify handling these questions and posted various feature requests. So far, all of them have been ignored... and likely will stay that way, given that even _very_ easy to implement and reasonable request to block same titles as are blocked at SO (with words 'problem' and 'help') stays ignored.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**3\. Flagging.** For readers unfamiliar with how it works, you explain in the flag message what specifically is wrong with the flagged post and why moderator involvement is required (as opposed to regular means like community voting, comments, edits, canned flags etc).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly to &quot;classical&quot; reviewing, this used to work like a charm in the past, and just like it, this way broke when amount of debugging questions increased so that flagging them started taking too much time. One can't just type in flag message &quot;hey, this is debugging&quot; and expect moderator to take it from there. To make a compelling flag message, you have to study the post quite thoroughly, that's why I dropped it when site started getting too many debugging questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6795/perform-automatic-checks-for-cross-posting-and-question-block-at-so-when-post-en&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7257/could-we-please-detect-troublesome-questions-using-stack-overflow-data-and-offlo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7564/if-problem-and-help-are-to-be-blocked-on-stack-overflow-question-titles-blo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Should one advise on off-topic questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/276637/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't ever answer a question, not via chat, comments, or any other way. It is even dangerous to say: go here, Google for that, because next time, they will do the exact same and eventually get what they want." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25341" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7916" RevisionGUID="77aa7944-545a-4f32-97cd-ee30accc74fb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some time back Doc asked https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6371/how-can-we-encourage-people-to-read-the-faq-before-asking-their-first-question which is a really good question and a fairly consistent challenge to get people to ask questions on the site they should be (we get a significant number of debugging questions for example).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's the suggestion (that Robert Harvey inspired) put into a post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That &quot;Welcome (back) to the site&quot; banner that shows up when you join a new site? That one that you can dismiss with a click.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have a link to help/on-topic if the user visits the site and has all of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* less than two up voted questions&#xD;&#xA;* less than 100 reputation on site (akin to how protection does it with 10 rep)&#xD;&#xA;* lacks the &quot;informed&quot; badge (the one you get by reading the tour)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, a link at the top of the page. Point them clearly and succinctly to the help center. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have no illusions that this will prevent all the off topic questions. However, even a slight reduction in the &quot;this is the completely wrong site for this question&quot; influx of new questions that we get can help reduce the initial perception of going into a new question of &quot;this question is probably off topic.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25342" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7800" RevisionGUID="dc5dcad3-cc58-4537-9793-91fbbc3a670b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Robert Harvey's answer][1] is almost perfect. He touches on one point at several points, but I do think it needs more emphasis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**On Programmers, we close questions ruthlessly and viciously. And that's a good thing.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing questions quickly is a very good thing. It stops them from getting low-quality answers and lets the asker and the community work to fix them. If they are totally unsalvagable, quick deletion is also a tool that we use here. And this approach works very well for us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I noticed that more people were involved in question closures. I saw names that I didn't see often. Also, during peak hours, these questions were closed without people mentioning them in The Whiteboard or flagging them to get a mod on it faster. It made voting actually work by letting the community better self-police. My work as a diamond mod was significantly lessened during this time period.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, when I look at your data...I just see an experiment that worked. The number of closed questions went up. I'd be curious to see the average time to close a question - I suspect it went down, perhaps even significantly. The edit and reopen rate also went up. By closing questions quicker, we could engage users faster and get their questions in good shape for reopening or migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Admittedly, there are some barriers that should be looked at. Systematically, the reputation requirements to post on Meta and chat. These are where we want to direct people to go to help. I think many times, users have sufficient reputation, but I know I've vented in The Whiteboard and TL about these limits preventing people from getting to resources to help them improve their question. Culturally, I think we need to improve how we comment on posts, especially posts from first time users, to provide better guidance on get them to helpful resources so that the people who want to participate and learn can.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7799/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25343" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7880" RevisionGUID="eb3d9035-eb9a-49fc-9dba-15ef57513179" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Sort of a later follow-up: question was further cleaned up and 14 answers that didn't attempt to address the question and/or were repeating prior ones were removed by moderator (one or two answers were deleted by their authors per discussion in comments).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question looks generally good to me, it appears to be reasonably clear and focused and rather difficult to misinterpret.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though some answerers managed to &quot;leak through&quot; minor slippery points in wording. Granted, some of them dumped their stuff in first several hours prior to [revision 4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/118703/revisions &quot;'Nov 9 '11 at 23:19'&quot;), while text (and especially title) of the question were leaving bit more room for misinterpretation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior editors did pretty good job of cleaning it up but there still seem to be some corrections worth considering, especially now that question apparently gained [huge popularity](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/103053/165773 &quot;see 'How aggressively should we maintain and improve very popular questions?'&quot;) and has got to our [all time top 50 open questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A85000+closed%3Ano) with over 85K views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would particularly recommend the following changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Add [tag:history] tag. After revision 4 main focus of the question has been very prominently shifted to this and lack of the respective tag looks really confusing. Not to mention that this makes it harder to search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Note about ternary operator that &quot;gets even less love among Java programmers etc&quot;. It probably fit well into trollish / ranty mood of the original text but in current form, it looks rather poor fit to the rest of the question. I would replace it with more neutral explanation, about like this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;But that's only because code snippet was made as simple as possible to clearer show the idea, the question is about more realistic cases where ternary operator is not an option.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Closing words &quot;why do people adhere to it rigidly?&quot; are worth removing. These are just a leftover of original rant and really have no place in the question. Actually, words like this are usually enough for me to vote close as [opinion based / too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6742/31260 &quot;see 'On discussions and why they don't make good questions'&quot;) but prior editors did a really good job of making it clear that it's tangential to the question (except for maybe the [most _rigidly_ careless answerers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118703/where-did-the-notion-of-one-return-only-come-from/119117#comment654398_212495 &quot;example: 'the question was twofold and I answered to the latter aspect of it... rigidly blah blah' OMFG&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cleaning up the question may be good, but we would better take care of tangential answers as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even now, visitors probably find these confusing and wonder how these are related to the question. But very attentive readers can at least re-check the question text and say, _&quot;ah, this answer exploits &amp;lt;such and such minor point of the question&amp;gt;, I understand&quot;_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if the question is cleaned as suggested above, these answers will become really harmful, telling tens thousands visitors, _&quot;hey, it's okay to totally ignore what is asked about and just drop into answer box whatever comes to your mind&quot;_." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25344" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7992" RevisionGUID="98166641-981d-4f4a-91fc-b26294d76acd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Plenty of discussion on the issue of the site's scope, here's my suggestion in [this Q&amp;A][1] as an official feature request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before a user joins programmers.se they are welcomed with what I feel is a fairly clear definition of the sites scope:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![loggedout][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is a well known fact that when *most* people 'Sign Up' for things on the internet, they don't feel like reading the basics until they're *in*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When they're *in*, they are presented with this tidy, but empty header:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![loggedin][3]][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be too much to add a reminder here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even more critically, when a user who hasn't read the blurb on the 'Sign Up' page, rushes to click the 'Ask Question' button. They are presented with this ridiculously broad definition of what a good question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![question][4]][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I missing something, or do others share my view that if, to the right of my 'Ask Question' form is a message which asks, 'Is your question about software development?' then I can ask debugging questions, library recommendations, conceptual questions, database questions, and pretty much everything else which we as 'Software Developers' deal with on a day to day basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why can't the more clear description of the sites scope on the 'Sign Up' page be repeated in at least the 'Ask Question' page?** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMO a name change is way overkill, especially when it'd be tough to find a name which won't make the problem better, or potentially make it worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/4-years-later-dear-stack-exchange-can-we-change-our-site-name&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z5uce.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MMqKM.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0YYRP.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25345" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7259" RevisionGUID="8f8f757b-327f-4132-a20e-8fc0676f892b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Because software licensing is explicitly mentioned in the help center. I think we should have a Meta tag for questions about this issue. Here are some questions that I think would benefit from such a tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6186/question-regarding-license-violation&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/915/are-software-license-questions-acceptable&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/882/software-law-definition&#xD;&#xA; - &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2220/what-is-the-difference-between-the-mit-and-mit-license-tags&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/would-a-how-to-choose-the-best-oss-license-type-question-be-appropriate-for-ps&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3131/can-we-put-software-licensing-questions-are-off-topic-in-the-faq/5964#5964&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would be happy to go ahead and edit such a tag into all of these meta questions (and others I have yet to find), but I thought I'd run it by the community first." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25346" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8126" RevisionGUID="32c94672-f31a-4873-9426-29bf81fe8c15" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;(summary of July 29th [discussion at Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/new-site-name-discussion-jul-29-2016 &quot;'New Site Name discussion Jul 29, 2016'&quot;))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At [help/on-topic page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...bullets in about list look OK to keep as is:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* software requirements&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;* software configuration management&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note in past discussions there were some doubts whether licensing belongs. Current plan is to consider this a [minor issue](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/31224602#31224602 &quot;'it's a super inside-baseball kinda discussion; licensing and law just aren't a big part of this site on a day to day basis'&quot;) that can be clarified later per separate meta discussion. (since this part of Help Center is mod editable, adding and removing bullets is a lightweight change)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...not-about list is to be made smaller, with bullets as proposed by Robert Harvey:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;* Please make sure that your question is **directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**. Avoid peripheral issues such as product recommendations, career or education advice, product support or legal matters&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note above phrasing is tailored for using at [help/dont-ask] page where [we would like it to move](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/31762989#31762989), and such a move would require CM to agree and do the page edit. In case if it is going to get to &quot;not about&quot; part at [help/on-topic] page we will tweak the phrasing to make it read smoother over there, that is when followed by words &quot;not about...&quot;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With regards to overlapping sites, [current stats](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8114/follow-up-2-new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8121#comment25265_8121 &quot;In the last 90 days, we've migrated 89 questions away from Programmers. Of those, 70 to Stack Overflow, 4 to Workplace, 3 to Programmers Meta, 2 to Unix &amp; Linux, 2 to Open Source, and 1 each to Programming Puzzles &amp; Code Golf, Computer Science, Code Review, Law, Webmasters, Startups, Cross Validated, and Software Recommendations. In order for a migration to be available to users, there needs to be sufficient need and agreement by both communities.&quot;) suggest that we better keep migration options as is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Later though [this may be reconsidered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31378331#31378331):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the name change is successful and the number of questions migrated to SO and/or the number of code debugging questions drops, I think it's something to revisit for sure.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25347" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7309" RevisionGUID="417c5fe2-c7b6-4be1-9be6-45020c9a9a16" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/159369/67524 is marked as a duplicate, however the duplicate [link][1] returns 404.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the appropriate action going forward here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Should the question be closed?&#xD;&#xA; - Should the question be removed in its entirety?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel like this creates a bad impression of members and visitors looking for this information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I did see https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3969/67524 which seems to address a larger issue, but I would like to focus on this question in particular here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159294/is-entity-framework-reliable-enough-to-use-in-a-corporate-project-should-i-use" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25348" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7352" RevisionGUID="fc33e5cc-8ffc-444a-a2a0-90992eb4835f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's an old joke among economists that it's safe to recycle test questions year after year because while the questions themselves don't change, the answers do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is an exact duplicate of [Links in comments][1].  I'm re-asking it because a lot may have changed since October 28, 2011 and what was impossible then may be less impossible now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, **can links to questions &amp; answers be converted to their titles?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2478/64132" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25349" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8131" RevisionGUID="aaccdcc5-e698-4b92-b8a2-5d673e55134e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I note that the proposed widened scope explicitly includes [Software] Quality Assurance &amp; Testing... which is already a [standalone SE (over five years in beta) site][1] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As such, perhaps it is worth re-considering [my four year old Meta post][2] on here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After five+ years, surely SQA is either mature enough to &quot;graduate&quot; or should be killed off.  By explicitly expanding the scope of Programming, it makes the existence of SQA questionable!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5203/scope-software-quality-assurance-and-testing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25351" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8160" RevisionGUID="82c750d7-4b8c-4b3c-af84-5c4b84aaf4e7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I will say it [again][1]: **I am a software engineer. I write code.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can only see confusion and overlap with the other StackExchange sites (StackOverflow, Workplace, ServerFault, etc). I remember when I tried going to CodeReview for debugging a problem (because obviously code reviews find problems with code, right?) and learning the hard way that CodeReview was not the right place. I can see people like me thinking: *I'm a software engineer. Let's try the Software Engineering site.* We are going to slap people in the face, and it won't be their fault.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would prefer layman's terms over the use of SDLC in the tagline. I didn't know what that was for a long time; we might be taking that term for granted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be very interested to learn if our closed question history looks any better post-rebranding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8078/122571" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25352" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8199" RevisionGUID="e749a9fb-3495-43f0-bfa9-7e0087762cd6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In [&quot;follow up 2&quot; discussion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8114/31260) the plan seemed to be that we are going to have words&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## not code troubleshooting&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;in the site tagline, looking about like that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![proposed intro image][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this still the plan?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vkfDr.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25353" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7576" RevisionGUID="f1706488-afdb-48a2-8067-4f8083fe1537" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="That's a very good question but I think every user having a privilege to delete may answer it a bit differently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Amount of delete votes is limited and one better takes care to use them efficiently. From this perspective, questions that are to be auto-deleted are lower priority indeed. When voting on these, one needs to decide whether it is worth it to &quot;help&quot; system to have a question deleted sooner than it would happen automatically, or it makes better sense to vote something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One kind of &quot;doomed&quot; questions I prefer to vote delete (YMMV) is those with titles looking like [broken windows](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info). &quot;Help with career as programmer&quot;, &quot;recommend me tutorials&quot;, &quot;problem: syntax error when adding 2 and 2&quot;, stuff like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;This is especially so when question title contains words that are blocked at Stack Overflow - [&quot;problem&quot; and &quot;help&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7567/31260). Very presence of such questions sends a signal to folks blocked by quality filter over there that they can try their luck here. If it additionally happens that such question gets migrated to SO (losing negative score along the way), this is not just a signal, a royal road for one willing to use Programmers as **drafting area** for off-topic implementation questions (that's by the way why I _never_ vote to migrate such questions - at the very least, I'd edit blocked words out of the title before doing so).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another kind of &quot;doomed&quot; questions I tend to vote delete is ones that already have two delete votes. It sometimes happens mind you that I find it harmless and prefer to leave it hanging around until auto-deleted, but this happens very _very_ rarely. Overwhelming majority looks like a terrible content deserving speedy deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not surprising, if you think of it. Single delete vote may be emotional, but for two high-rep users to fall into a blind rage is really unlikely. (I sometimes even wonder why moderators don't use this simple heuristics to check for questions worthy of a fast removal).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only thing I would recommend against is to be emotional when voting to delete. As you can see from above, this will most likely lead to your vote being wasted without making a difference. Try sticking with carefully calculated decisions, re-check delete votes tab in your profile to learn whether these work as you wanted to or not, adjust your criteria if needed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25354" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8212" RevisionGUID="5faebdfc-10a6-4a90-9254-547c6c97cd4a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It would be beneficial to aggregate in one location **everything** that is actually on topic here, particularly when topics are exceptions to &quot;is it part of the [SDLC][1]?&quot; as a rule of thumb.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had thought that the purpose of defining the scope and the repeated iterations through the infamous four-bullet point exercise was to refine and codify scope, but given discussion on [this](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8211/52929) answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @enderland I'd have to dig around to find it, but it was stated several times that the scope was being clarified, but not changed (at least without further meta discussion). We were OK with removing licensing from the list of things that were on-topic because Law and Open Source do it better. We last discussed history in 2013 and decided it was on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems I somehow misunderstood the point of all the meta activity (?). Which leads me to be even more confused about scope than I was before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we please clarify what types of questions about topics that are **not** directly addressable by the otherwise simple question, &quot;part of SDLC? or not?&quot; that are also on topic on this site? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25355" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7620" RevisionGUID="a8496acd-3061-4f85-ace1-5b689d299614" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; you can only see 2 question &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off, do you have any deleted questions? These don't show on the profile, and if the question was asked recently you should be able to go to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/recently-deleted-questions/144875 to see this.  Otherwise, you would need to get a mod to pull out a link to any other deleted posts that you have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with so much down vote that nobody cares to explain to me why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298097/difference-between-admin-and-super-admin is a rather boring and uninteresting terminology question. No, there is no standard for 95% of any of the words we use in programming. Even 'bug' has no standard definition.  The name of a role has no standard definition either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The mouseover for a down vote reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question does not show any research effort.  It is not useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Likewise, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297056/is-commenting-of-code-part-of-system-documentation is a question of definitions again. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When my boss says that I need to have a proper documentation of the project does it include proper commenting of codes in my project?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I pointed out in the comments, &quot;Ask your manager.&quot;  The question is either to be closed as a duplicate (of something that many people are tired of having questions and attempts at debates on), or primary opinion. The question does not show any attempt at searching for our well known answers, and again attempts to stir up a useless debate. Thus, the question was down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would encourage you to read [Why was my question down voted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)  The [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is also a good read about the types of questions that are in scope. Make sure you completely read the text paragraphs at the end and not just the bullet points." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25356" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8265" RevisionGUID="91df3711-f978-4eaa-acfb-73d33fc19824" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.580" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Please disregard this post if there is any danger of it causing a delay in the name change.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At [null](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/177827/null)'s [prompting](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8254/new-logo-for-software-engineering-stack-exchange#comment25866_8260) I posted a [question](http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/q/78796/32767) about our situation on [Graphic Design](http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com).  It produced [this answer](http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/a/78857/32767).  I'm reproducing it here so we can rank it among the other suggestions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to thank [rafael](http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/users/36888/rafael) for his work on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7xXZr.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25357" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7693" RevisionGUID="d228cc2a-6fb9-4359-93bd-50de64f8f4c3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="What you are asking is covered by this related meta question: [where to start?][1] which explains why your question would be off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may get useful feedback from [The Whiteboard][2] if any of our resident FP experts are in chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6366/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25358" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7709" RevisionGUID="f0794eca-85dc-4fbd-b206-959d77abe7e1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## First Posts Closed compared to Second Posts Closed ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/307939/first-posts-closed-compared-to-second-posts-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*NOTE* For some context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7335/does-closing-a-question-before-an-answer-is-received-change-the-behavior-of-a-us/7336#7336" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25359" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7721" RevisionGUID="99d76348-ff1e-4ef7-adc1-39a778d63435" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We've been fairly consistently getting poor quality implementation and debugging questions.  A [previous suggestion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6106/close-reason-and-associated-expand-the-close-reason-count-request) (related: [1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6172/can-the-number-of-custom-close-reasons-on-programmers-be-expanded) [2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7394/add-a-new-close-reason-for-implementation-and-troubleshooting-questions)) to increase the count hasn't been acted upon and the suggestion for us was to merge the close reasons that we have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The two that are likely the best to merge are the &quot;suggest a project&quot; and &quot;suggest a tool&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The existing tool wording is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The recommendation one is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25360" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7257" RevisionGUID="c854ac1c-0d04-4861-b8cc-91ee38824ad5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Propose to detect troublesome questions using Stack Overflow quality scoring data and put them to [Triage queue](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage) for an hour or two. If the timeout expires before decision is made, let questions go to homepage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the questions that fail the Triage, one option to handle these is to keep them invisible for a day or two (if not edited), then automatically [bump](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/bump/info) them for a broader community review. This way would keep them away from the top of [newest tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest). (Attentive readers may notice that bumps imply certain pollution of [active tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active) but this looks less of an issue to me, as this tab is rather heavily dominated by better questions being bumped by answers and edits. Not to mention that Triage would spare active page from questions deserving flagging for speedy deletion - spam, [homework dumps](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3837/31260), [&quot;cubicle fart&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6677/31260) kind stuff...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reasons why I consider above approach feasible are [laid out here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7251/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  goal, about [&quot;wall of crap&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so) at homepage, also looks relevant to us, as indicated by multiple recurring discussions about [too many bad questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7130?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...site topics substantially overlap and... many troublesome questions over here appear to be posted by users who are simply [trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260). Using same scoring data that is supposed to detect and block them at Stack Overflow would make sense, wouldn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...there is just no way to ensure that questions in Triage queue would be reviewed within reasonable timeframe... automatically kick questions off this queue and let them go to homepage after some timeout (say, 1-2 hours) if these haven't got sufficient attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-there-something-wrong-with-this-sites-rules-for-posting-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7614/why-are-we-getting-so-many-off-topic-debug-this-for-me-questions-what-can-we&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7593/is-there-any-point-in-this-site-still-existing  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note this one even suggests Stack Overflow (protected by Triage!) as an example of how a site should look like.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7130/so-many-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7239/there-are-way-more-negative-votes-in-the-top-50-questions-than-positive-time-to&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7221/problem-titles-in-off-topic-questions-of-new-users-coming-from-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7020/lets-help-askers-who-are-trying-to-circumvent-question-block-at-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6990/why-cant-we-raise-up-questions-quality&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6850/how-effective-is-the-quality-filter-against-this-question-with-all-caps-brief-ti&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6788/a-lot-of-front-page-down-votes&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6371/how-can-we-encourage-people-to-read-the-faq-before-asking-their-first-question&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5618/better-selection-title-for-top-questions-list&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5377/requiring-registration-to-ask-questions-did-it-made-a-difference&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4029/why-are-there-so-many-minus-points-on-questions-in-this-site&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4009/programmers-stack-exchange-question-downvoting-what-to-do&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3947/what-can-we-do-about-extremely-low-quality-questions-from-unregistered-users&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3778/can-we-have-some-way-to-not-show-closed-questions-on-the-front-page&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2744/how-can-i-create-a-custom-filtered-view-of-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2727/are-we-scaring-off-new-users&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Nov 17 '11)&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4097/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Oct 8 '12)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1589/what-to-do-about-the-proliferation-of-bad-questions-from-generic-accounts&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/841/why-are-almost-half-the-questions-on-the-front-page-marked-closed&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/784/are-we-closing-too-many-good-questions-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25361" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7729" RevisionGUID="3025096e-4f04-4dcc-b642-2953aa0b87ff" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I glanced at the question while trying to figure out if I can answer, but didn't look too deeply into the question itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The final paragraph of the question is the one that would have been decisive for me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How might the app reliably and securely persist information about each Main page instance, regardless of which browser instance, window or tab, so that the the server accurately recognizes the correct user/group session participant for that Main Page? Hidden field? localStorage? Something else? Pros and cons of different techniques?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It really feels like one that is asking us to design it all for you. You haven't addressed a problem that you are having. And while you may have some information about the backend design that is already firm, you haven't communicated this in the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that I've written here that seek to try to help people formulate a better question when trying to ask this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6961/green-fields-blue-skies-and-the-white-board-what-is-too-broad&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6758/what-is-the-problem-with-pros-and-cons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The blue sky nature of the question - that we don't know what the problem that you are having with your design is. And thats where the comment that is on the question is addressing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The pros and cons is one that we often see and is very difficult to answer. In part, because everyone regards the advantages and disadvantages of a given design (and the different designs is indeed far too wide open to be able to even have a chance at narrowing it down) will add their opinion. This often leads to rather short and unhelpful answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hypothetically,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hidden field pro: its simple&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; local storage con: you've got to use local storage and it's inconsistent across browsers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; something else pro: Its something you haven't considered&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; yet something else con: Its something you haven't considered either&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are all &quot;valid&quot; answers to the question. And they aren't really helpful to you, or to the next person who comes along trying to ask a question about a similar design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've given us a requirement. Tell us about your design and specifically where you are having problems.  If you are just asking for us to do a design, there are far too many ways for that to be done, and most will be incompatible with some part of your system." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25362" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7259" RevisionGUID="7b797a6a-853c-457b-80c8-467f98bd4ad1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Because software licensing is explicitly mentioned in the help center. I think we should have a Meta tag for questions about this issue. Here are some questions that I think would benefit from such a tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6186/question-regarding-license-violation&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/915/are-software-license-questions-acceptable&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/882/software-law-definition&#xD;&#xA; - &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2220/what-is-the-difference-between-the-mit-and-mit-license-tags&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/would-a-how-to-choose-the-best-oss-license-type-question-be-appropriate-for-ps&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3131/can-we-put-software-licensing-questions-are-off-topic-in-the-faq/5964#5964&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would be happy to go ahead and edit such a tag into all of these meta questions (and others I have yet to find), but I thought I'd run it by the community first." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25363" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7749" RevisionGUID="0a9e6fbc-c999-439a-9d01-7c109dcba4c7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a big fuzzy gray line between the software licensing questions that we find to be on topic, and the rest of the legal questions.  Many software licensing questions *are* legal questions, that are ones that a programmer is at least somewhat competent to answer as a programmer.  Most legal questions, however as the [more info](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/legal/info) in the [tag:legal] says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The law is a minefield and the best advice anyone can give when asked about legal matters is often:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; ask a lawyer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Asking legal questions on Stack Exchange is not a substitute for taking proper local legal advice. What we can do is advise whether asking a lawyer is essential or just highly recommended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can competently answer some questions. Most often, when the answer is &quot;you need to talk to a lawyer.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With your question, this is something that you need to ask a lawyer. You've gone into the realm of encryption and munitions.  If you are in the US, this gets into [ITAR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations) and the like. It is not something that as programmers we are even able to properly give you any correct answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to talk to a lawyer. This goes ***far*** beyond the legal questions of &quot;can I remove the header from a BSD licensed file?&quot; that are (marginally) on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7265/40980&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25364" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7860" RevisionGUID="17f59570-28cc-4c11-a263-a7069a1c055d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Please merge tag [tag:life-cycle] (22 questions) into [tag:sdlc] (35), and make them synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only [tag:sdlc] tag has wiki, but questions in both appear to be about [software development lifecycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Preference for master tag is because it is less ambiguous (life-cycle appears to be sometimes (mis)used for questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5946/what-is-sdlc-tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25365" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7309" RevisionGUID="fb55d8ca-97aa-414c-8c70-55a4159e3eae" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/159369/67524 is marked as a duplicate, however the duplicate [link][1] returns 404.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the appropriate action going forward here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Should the question be closed?&#xD;&#xA; - Should the question be removed in its entirety?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel like this creates a bad impression of members and visitors looking for this information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I did see https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3969/67524 which seems to address a larger issue, but I would like to focus on this question in particular here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159294/is-entity-framework-reliable-enough-to-use-in-a-corporate-project-should-i-use" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25366" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7873" RevisionGUID="42aa0619-eb24-41bf-abb6-811a6685b2fb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Looking at [this &quot;why is it? &quot;question][1] I see it has 1 close vote and a bounty. I think its too vague to be a good question so I thought I'd give it a close vote - but when I attempted to do so, it was refused with the response &quot;this question has an open bounty and cannot be closed&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firstly, I'm sure questions could be closed even with bounty - [this][2] suggests that the bounty would be refunded. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, its already got a close vote - did this occur before the bounty was placed, in which case - bounties can be used as a way to keep rubbish questions open past the initial time that they usually get closing attention and thus end up staying open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is this a new thing, or should bounties not prevent closure?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/309607/why-arent-there-more-multi-natural-language-programming-languages&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5580/what-happens-to-a-bounty-when-a-question-is-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25367" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7352" RevisionGUID="610e9fc7-c275-4656-b1e8-09894633d9bf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's an old joke among economists that it's safe to recycle test questions year after year because while the questions themselves don't change, the answers do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is an exact duplicate of [Links in comments][1].  I'm re-asking it because a lot may have changed since October 28, 2011 and what was impossible then may be less impossible now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, **can links to questions &amp; answers be converted to their titles?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2478/64132" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25369" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7411" RevisionGUID="0ebd6c20-f9d4-4d8a-a316-9bbd9132c58a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The direct answer to your title question is what [Yannis said](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7409/why-arent-stackoverflow-and-programmers-se-reputations-combined/7411#comment22208_7409): If you don't participate on site X, you don't know enough about it to have all of the same privileges as you do on your favorite site. An especially common problem is people from site X misunderstanding the scope of site Y and voting to migrate things which Yers would instantly recognize as off-topic. There's a reason we have a [chatbot to warn us](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260) about any SO comments that mention Programmers (&quot;this is subjective, so it should be on PSE&quot; is a surprisingly common comment on bad SO questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there is a toned-down version of what you're asking for in the form of the **association bonus**. If you have at least 200 reputation on any Stack Exchange site, then you automatically get a bonus 100 reputation on every new Stack Exchange site that you join. So once you reach 200 rep somewhere, you essentially gain the power to comment and upvote *everywhere*, but if you want to downvote, close vote or delete vote you still have to earn it. In my opinion this is a very reasonable compromise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, there *is* a combined network reputation, but as far as I know it's only used by the chat system, so it doesn't really matter for your question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25370" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7422" RevisionGUID="e5da1130-a45b-4ba7-9693-e7753ea869a3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would like to have the custom close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic because it is a people question, not a programming question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would cover questions like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6629/how-do-i-explain-something-to-someone&#xD;&#xA;- How to interact with one's boss or coworker or junior programmer&#xD;&#xA;- People who are struggling to learn concepts in a class but they can't understand the teacher" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25371" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7426" RevisionGUID="5f8fabce-bb17-4ef4-b987-f0fabc5ed8a1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would like to see some more close reasons added. Rather than blindly stabbing in the dark, I want to cite the [on-topic page in the help center][1] with a slight formatting change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. career or education advice, salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Items 2 and 3 have a close reason for Stack Overflow migration (with the caveat that 3 needs to be more specific than the wording here implies).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Items 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 all fall under existing off-topic close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item 9 does not have an existing reason but probably does not need one. This item really is the catch-all for &quot;none of the other off-topic reasons we get a lot of so they need their own reasons.&quot; It is served well with the custom close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This leaves items 1 and 10. I propose two changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Add a migration path to The Workplace**. We do not get a _ton_ of questions that belong there, but we do get them. Nixing beta sites and the two existing migration paths, this would likely be near the top of paths for which there is a legitimate need. The only issue here is _some_ of the questions are on-topic here, but they really need to focus on the non-workplace aspects of the question _and_ require the [unique perspective of a programmer compared to other professionals][2]. They also cannot devolve into [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?][3] which covers the &quot;my boss says to do X, but I think we need to do Y. How do I persuade him?&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Add an off-topic close reason for legal advice**. We tend to add custom reasons such as &quot;...because it is about legal advice&quot; or &quot;...because we are not lawyers&quot; et al. I propose writing up a friendly, well-written close reason that enumerates [precisely where the line is][4] when it comes to licensing/copyright/legal questions. I think we need some consistency here, because there tends to be some confusion not only among question authors but also close voters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1697/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6629/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7265/22815" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25372" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7471" RevisionGUID="e9f41245-f270-45cb-abfe-c750a6bc46ee" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a question [what is the meaning of manage c++?][1] that is pretty clearly not a good fit for this site.  There's a duplicate on SO, and the question was more or less answered in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm OK with closing this one (and was about to vote to close), when I saw it had 4 &quot;your question is unclear&quot; votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears to me that we're starting to use **&quot;unclear what you are asking&quot;** as a synonym for **&quot;we don't like your question&quot;** or **&quot;your question doesn't fit the site&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a way, this is a duplicate of [Is it really unclear what is being asked?][2], except I'd like to focus on the reason for closing, not the merits of a single question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/288618/64132&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6217/64132" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25373" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7532" RevisionGUID="0c3f6c38-0e8b-4f23-9aac-a630f4cf2e6d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is a resource request and is [off-topic][1] on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more information, please see [Why was my question closed or down voted?][2] The short version is any such recommendations are one-off to a specific time and person, while the site is trying to be a repository of knowledge useful to _many_ people and for the future as well. No question can truly be 100% future-proof. However, development environment tools and versions change constantly, making them an especially poor fit for the Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487/&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25374" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7545" RevisionGUID="cfd676eb-8925-4522-bbf7-025cecc00c85" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Based upon a [recent answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7534/53019)&lt;sup&gt;1, 2&lt;/sup&gt; to a [previous question of mine](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6507/53019), I'd like to re-visit an older request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Please give all close voters&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; on Programmers 50 votes instead of the standard 24&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_Why?_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All of the [original reasons](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6507/53019) that were laid out before still hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. New users to the site end up with a poor impression regarding what is on-topic for the site when off-topic questions are not cleared out quickly.  The more quickly we can patch up the broken windows, the more favorable Programmers and StackExchange appear to new visitors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. The [stats show](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7534/53019) that our active close voters regularly run out of votes and this is impacting their ability to help provide community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. The influx of low quality questions from {bans at SO | ignorance of SO} continues to increase.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. Items like the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7285/53019) put a strain on the community when they are trying to balance closing off incoming low quality questions as well as cleaning up old NPR-style low quality questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. This version of the request is much easier to implement as it's already part of the per-site configuration setting and doesn't require a code change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. More close votes means being able to migrate questions more quickly.  That in turn cuts down on extra work created for mods when they have to merge cross-posted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;`Finally, if we were going to increase the limit, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to just raise it for 10k users. From a very practical standpoint, changing it for everyone is a site setting, but changing it for users over 10k would require a code change. For another, the setting has already been raised to 50 for 3k+ users on SO, Math, Super User, Ubuntu, and Server Fault without any particular problems. I'd suggest removing that portion of the feature request that needlessly confuses matters`&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;[Gratuitous footnotes are because I heard someone likes them](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/166518/194162)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;By &quot;Close Voters&quot;, I mean anyone who has earned [at least 3k rep](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions) on the site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;My assumption is that the number of allowed votes in the close review queue increases proportionately, but if not, I'll make a separate request.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25375" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7572" RevisionGUID="6298846d-99a9-4950-8e25-9be93b197443" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked [a question about whether an oft-quoted piece of programmer wisdom has empirical evidence to back it up](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294820/is-there-any-evidence-based-examination-or-modification-of-brooks-law). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was closed within seconds using the close reason normally used for lazy questions asking for laundry lists of libraries and other resources. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the comments, it's not clear what the reasoning is - a comment says &quot;It looks like you're asking for a paper or book&quot;, but I'm not, I'm asking about the currently available evidence on a topic, the results of research testing a claim.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are questions about empirical evidence off topic here? I see a lot of answers that are just one line, &quot;Someone said '[some witticism]'&quot; which get a surprising number of upvotes. Does this site favour anecdotes over evidence?&#xD;&#xA; - If not, how do I need to rephrase my question to allow someone to post an objective, factual answer like &quot;This has been investigated by researchers in [discipline], the evidence points towards [X] with [Y] caveat, the most recent peer-reviewed literature review / the largest study to date is [citation]&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This [meta thread][1] appears to suggest that questions about empirical evidence are on topic so long as they are about the state of the evidence, not &quot;What's the best book on X&quot;. That is absolutely 100% the intention of my question. Is this still the policy? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If so, how do I need to re-phrase my question to stop people misreading it as &quot;pleez can I has teh books&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Incidentally, this is the first time in 4+ years on stack exchange that I've run into problems for a question being *too* evidence based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the discussion I've seen so far, I'm starting to get the impression that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **What does real empirical research say regarding Brook's law?** would be of topic because when evidence is peer reviewed, it becomes an &quot;off site resource&quot; rather than a user's opinion&#xD;&#xA; - **Do you guys think Brook's law is true?** would somehow be more on topic because it relies on experience of users of the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Experienced programmers use research relevant to their field and are in a better position than anyone to see through methodological problems and see what is practical research and what is flawed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5589/is-a-question-about-research-material-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25376" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7576" RevisionGUID="48ef0d8f-6245-47bb-bd6a-29d688b1cb80" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="That's a very good question but I think every user having a privilege to delete may answer it a bit differently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Amount of delete votes is limited and one better takes care to use them efficiently. From this perspective, questions that are to be auto-deleted are lower priority indeed. When voting on these, one needs to decide whether it is worth it to &quot;help&quot; system to have a question deleted sooner than it would happen automatically, or it makes better sense to vote something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One kind of &quot;doomed&quot; questions I prefer to vote delete (YMMV) is those with titles looking like [broken windows](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info). &quot;Help with career as programmer&quot;, &quot;recommend me tutorials&quot;, &quot;problem: syntax error when adding 2 and 2&quot;, stuff like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;This is especially so when question title contains words that are blocked at Stack Overflow - [&quot;problem&quot; and &quot;help&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7567/31260). Very presence of such questions sends a signal to folks blocked by quality filter over there that they can try their luck here. If it additionally happens that such question gets migrated to SO (losing negative score along the way), this is not just a signal, a royal road for one willing to use Programmers as **drafting area** for off-topic implementation questions (that's by the way why I _never_ vote to migrate such questions - at the very least, I'd edit blocked words out of the title before doing so).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another kind of &quot;doomed&quot; questions I tend to vote delete is ones that already have two delete votes. It sometimes happens mind you that I find it harmless and prefer to leave it hanging around until auto-deleted, but this happens very _very_ rarely. Overwhelming majority looks like a terrible content deserving speedy deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not surprising, if you think of it. Single delete vote may be emotional, but for two high-rep users to fall into a blind rage is really unlikely. (I sometimes even wonder why moderators don't use this simple heuristics to check for questions worthy of a fast removal).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only thing I would recommend against is to be emotional when voting to delete. As you can see from above, this will most likely lead to your vote being wasted without making a difference. Try sticking with carefully calculated decisions, re-check delete votes tab in your profile to learn whether these work as you wanted to or not, adjust your criteria if needed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25377" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7930" RevisionGUID="b50b7253-be45-4c31-a074-ea1e5abd7d92" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Over in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away/7907#7907 I posted this list and haven't gotten a satisfactory response yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the site's scope is at issue, then some percentage of these questions should instead be open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these are just poorly asked questions that need some moderate editing, then there is an army of people who say they should be open that can help cultivate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without identifying which questions we need to consider how the scope is wrong rather than the question doesn't fit we are simply talking in circles around each other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's the list.  Where the post has been deleted (at the moment of posting this question), the *entire* text of the question is here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311935/running-net-desktop-application-on-linux (-3, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question is a software recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; We need to develop a desktop application that would run on both Windows and Linux machines, preferably with the same code base or minimal code changes. I know Mono is an option, but I read that Mono Win Forms implementation is suitable only for very simple applications. I guess I cannot make the app using the newly announced cross-platform &quot;.NET Core&quot; either, as apparently it does not support client/desktop apps. So apart from Mono, is there any other option to create a cross-platform desktop application for Windows and Linux?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311931/need-help-to-make-advance-search-in-php-website-project (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A bit hard to determine (the close vote is for unclear). It looks like this might be too broad too. Its a student trying to do some project that isn't well articulated.  The answers to it are all over the place. The OP hasn't been back since the original post of the question to help clarify.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311930/pointers-and-hexadecimal (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is an implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; So I want to make a pointer of chars. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; char *ptr = 0x239038F2  &lt;---- this is my attempt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; where I can iterate through each char.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; So ptr would give me 0x23&#xD;&#xA;ptr++ would give me 0x90&#xD;&#xA;ptr++ would give me 0x38&#xD;&#xA;and finally ptr++ would give me 0xF2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311928/how-do-i-implement-material-style-account-switcher (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   This is a far too broad &quot;how do I do this&quot; type question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311925/structure-of-an-abstract-for-a-conference-talk-or-workshop (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question has nothing to do with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311923/extraordinary-software-written-in-javascript (-8, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a too broad question asking for a list of all the ways that Javascript can be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; JavaScript is usually used for either web frontends or backends (JavaScript). What other extraordinay things can be done with JavaScript?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311921/accepting-express-js-post-requests-in-a-chrome-app (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for issues with writing something in Chrome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311918/how-to-display-a-non-interactive-message-on-a-jframe (-2, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for how to do something in Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311914/running-ruby-commands-does-nothing (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a problem running some third party ruby software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311913/how-to-break-infinite-loop-in-turtle-graphics-python (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for python.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311910/index-exceeds-matrix-dimension-matlab-hog-features (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for matlab (which was already posted on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311907/wdk-10-and-visual-studio-2015-acting-funny (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This (now deleted between then and now) was closed as unclear. It was an issue with some software installation for a C library.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I installed WDK 10 on my computer, and I tried to build a si and I got the error: An SDK corresponding to WDK version '8.1' was not found. Please install the SDK before building.. I downloaded and installed the Windows 10 SDK, and then tried build again, this time I was getting multiple syntax errors, the following code:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Shows the following errors: fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'ntddk.h': No such file or directory, and multiple intellisense errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        extern &quot;C&quot; {&#xD;&#xA;        #include &lt;ntddk.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        #include &lt;ntdddisk.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        #include &lt;wdf.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        NTSTATUS DriverEntry(IN PDRIVER_OBJECT DriverObject, IN PUNICODE_STRING RegistryPath) {}&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Shows the following errors:&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; `fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'ntddk.h': No such file or directory`, and multiple intellisense errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; How do I fix this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311904/learning-linux-kernel-in-todays-world-would-i-be-better-off-hacking-with-android (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a &quot;what should I learn&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311902/why-do-i-get-an-error-in-the-cpp-file-if-i-make-a-class-template-before-the-cla (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311901/class-as-a-variable-of-another-class (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is another C++ implementation/debugging question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311899/find-availability-software-architecture (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a no effort homework dump.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311897/error-code-c4700-uninitialized-local-variable (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311896/android-file-retriever-application (-4, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted green field question that is asking how to use the IDE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311894/how-do-i-create-a-driver-for-extra-buttons (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rather vague &quot;how do I program buttons on a drawing tablet.&quot;  Aside from being off topic, no information about what drawing tablet it is is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311892/deleting-dynamically-allocated-memory (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        void RemoveDuplicates(Node *head, int size)&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;        Node *tmp = head;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;        while(tmp-&gt;next != NULL)&#xD;&#xA;            {&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            for(int i=0; i&lt;size; i++)&#xD;&#xA;            {&#xD;&#xA;            if(tmp-&gt;data == tmp-&gt;next-&gt;data)&#xD;&#xA;                {&#xD;&#xA;                Node *remove = tmp-&gt;next;&#xD;&#xA;                tmp-&gt;next = remove-&gt;next;&#xD;&#xA;                ***//delete remove;***&#xD;&#xA;                }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            tmp = tmp-&gt;next;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; ok, i wrote this piece of code to remove duplicated nodes in my data structure course, the commented delete operator supposed to keep freeing the memory which the remove pointer is pointed to every loop cycle. it doesn't work, IDE keep segmentation faulting me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; any help?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311891/simplest-way-to-build-an-interactive-website-to-visualize-a-table (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a unclear / too broad &quot;how do I render a table&quot; (there are far too many possible ways to do it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311890/where-and-how-i-can-find-explanations-of-abstractions-and-fancy-stuff-used-in-bu (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rant about large software projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; This question is broad, but I'll try to be concise and to restrict the wideness of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I'm full of hate toward these business hipster programmers, so I won't be formal this time. Sorry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Don't get me wrong, I really want to sort this out, I need to understand how it works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Let's put this in .NET framework only. It's already a good cut down of the range.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    (another 3000 characters)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311888/adobe-illustrator-data-driven-graphics-via-php (-2, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a question about how to implement an AI that Photoshop has in php. I'm not kidding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311886/why-software-releases-must-be-self-regulated (-3, duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a poorly asked duplicate of a question that searching for &quot;Lehman&quot; would have found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311883/sending-computer-screen-video-through-lightning-connector-to-a-iphone (-3, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a &quot;is it possible&quot; feasibility study question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311874/importing-my-class-to-a-given-tester-class (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is an unclear question that might be &quot;how do I debug my code?&quot; but not enough information about it is given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     &gt; In Java I have created a class with a HashMap where I put 13 values. With it's own main it will display the RGB values of the Color Object. The problem is trying to import it to use with a given ColorTest class (which has the MAIN main and cannot be changed); which I can tell from the &quot;NullPointerException&quot; it gives me when trying to create a new instance from my class. I'm still very noob at coding so any help is appreciated!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I have all the code but don't know what/where/how to change it to be used by the tester, and I just don't want to dump all that text unless someone wants to see it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311873/choose-an-application-development-environment-for-the-displaying-monitoring-da (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted too broad question (with a bit of unclear too).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311871/web-design-templates-for-backend-developing (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a tool recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311866/connected-city-problem (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a cross posted (CS) what appears to be homework dump.  It has since been deleted here and a bit large to include - see the [CS.SE version](http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/54031/10159) for its text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311862/logic-of-ap-to-return-number-set-to-bit1-as-an-input-binary (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a block of code without any question asked (a comment of &quot;how does this work?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        public class BitSet1&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;        	public static void main(String[] args)&#xD;&#xA;        	{&#xD;&#xA;        		double num=(Math.pow(2.0,31.0))-1;&#xD;&#xA;    	    	int num1=(int)num;&#xD;&#xA;        		double outnum=num1;&#xD;&#xA;        		int count=0;&#xD;&#xA;        		while(num1&gt;0)&#xD;&#xA;        		{&#xD;&#xA;        			if((num1&amp;1)==1)&#xD;&#xA;    	    		count++;&#xD;&#xA;    	    		num1=num1&gt;&gt;1;&#xD;&#xA;        			}&#xD;&#xA;        		System.out.println(count+&quot; bits sets to 1 in number &quot;+ outnum);&#xD;&#xA;        		}&#xD;&#xA;        	}&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311860/can-you-please-explain-what-this-php-code-below-does (-7, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Someone asking what a given function in php does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I just need the logic behind the statement because the idea of escaping strings doesn't seem to make sense to me. What does this code do ? and why is it escaping strings ?What does this code do ? and why is it escaping strings ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            $BackupRegister=mysqli_real_escape_string($Count,monitorEntry($anticipatedDate,'created'));&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311857/ways-to-send-a-message-to-a-users-phone (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A service request / too broad (how can you send a message to a device)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; What are some ways to send a private message to a user's phone from a separate computer over the internet? Is there any preferred or standard way to do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Some methods I could think of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; - Email: May get buried under other emails. Requires the phone to have internet connectivity. Advantage is that its free and works regardless of device operating system.&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; - SMS: Either costs money (does it?) or you need an SMS gateway, which can not be figured out programmatically (can you?) Advantage is that it works without internet and works regardless of device operating system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311856/periodicity-detection-for-gapped-data (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    An algorithm question that *might* be answerable if sufficient information is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311855/what-is-more-lower-level-click-or-urwid (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &quot;I make web apps using flask so I am tempted to start using click since it's made by the same person but I've seen more info around for urwid? Which one is more lower level?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;    I don't even know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311854/scripting-productivity-and-speed (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     How do you improve your productivity?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I would like to ask what kind of scripts that a software engineer writes to increase his/her productivity. I know some of them could really save time so please share with me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311853/automating-scripting-and-building (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A question about automating the IDE. It is a bit unclear and if it was made clear, would be off topic here (its a tooling problem)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I am working on a project on Visual Studio with C++. So I need to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1) build the solution  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2) click on debug/attach to process  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 3) click on 3 - 4 buttons in the programs to create and load stuff  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 4) type &quot;Run master&quot; in a textfield(in the my program)  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 5) press Enter button.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; After all this steps, then I can start testing my program. My program is desktop application on Windows 10. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I would like to automate the whole process of clicking build right up to before I start testing. &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; And also, I need this script to monitor the status of the build in cases of build failures to stop. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I also need to this script to able to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1) monitor that I click on the correct buttons so that it does not mess up other running programs.  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2) Is there someway of monitoring the changes in UI or the commands are executed or the maybe just the status/state of the program? This is to check that the script does the correct action at the right time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311850/python-functions-and-parameters (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How to type the parameters for python calls (implementation question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Can Python only accept parameters passed to a function that meet a certain criteria  for example,&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;  Accepts as the first parameter a string specifying the data structure to be used &quot;list&quot;, &quot;set&quot; or &quot;dictionary&quot;  only&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, that is the list from the other day. The questions that were being closed or were closed from the 50 most recent questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which questions would ideally be on topic for the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For those questions, what part of the help center is identifying that they are off topic, or is this part of a too zealous closing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I would ***really*** like community managers to chime in on this too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25378" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7934" RevisionGUID="aecf8bc4-c328-4105-a654-fdd82bd917f7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Actions Taken&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion 1** is being advanced by a renewed request for name change, this is being advanced by @Rachel in [Four years later - Can we change our site name?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/four-years-later-can-we-change-our-site-name).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion 2** is being advanced by active community discussion about change in moderation style. This is being advanced by @DocBrown in [How to improve our style for reacting on “low quality questions”?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7943/how-to-improve-our-style-for-reacting-on-low-quality-questions). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also see Arron Hall's discussion about [Can we resuscitate more content?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7947/can-we-resuscitate-more-content).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;___&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is now clear to me that there are two problems with two camps; these are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Improper questions being asked on P.SE; this pertains to users not understanding the site's scope and purpose.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Improper moderation/closing; this pertains to questions being closed too abruptly and with too little communication.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I expect that any solution that looks to resolve one of these and not the other would simply fragment the community. So, I suggest that we move to address both problems simultaneously, with one or more people from each *faction* leading-up a solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion 1. Improve communication of the site's purpose.** &#xD;&#xA;From the results, this can involve creating a site tagline, creating a blurb that is displayed to new users before they can post, or by displaying the site scope next to the ask-question interface. These all require SE involvement so must begin with feature requests for our preferred solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More immediately, *Snowman's* suggestion for a series of Meta Q&amp;As about common question phrasing issues could be implemented. This would be advantageous because the community can do it without SE involvement. It also has the benefit of actively assisting Solution 2.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion 2. Change the self-moderating style**&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest that this is best addressed by those advocating change being given the opportunity to moderate how they wish for a certain period of time once a week. There can then be discussion about improvements that are seen and lessons that can be drawn by the rest of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Survey Results&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Broad support** was expressed in one form or another for all of the **'improve communication' type solutions**; the general conclusion is that all of the options presented would be helpful and the question becomes how much support we will receive from SE regarding feature requests. In fact, the only negative comments on some solutions (such as name change) were motivated by the expectation that SE would not be supportive of the measure rather than by a dislike for the measure itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was also **extensive support** for **changing enforcement / moderation style**. Related to this was the suggestion to update the *'how to write on-topic questions'* related Meta posts to make them more helpful for newcomers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any suggestion of **scope change** was **universally condemned**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;___&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We now have two clearly defined areas for development and active community participation in both areas. Moreover, the two solutions being developed accurately reflect the **entire community**, which greatly improves the likelihood of success. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As such, this question has served its purpose and the poll is now closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25379" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7594" RevisionGUID="ede83f1b-df43-4b15-99b2-50c0b503a4d5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The questions worthy of migration to Stack Overflow *do* get migrated. **When a question gets migrated, its downvotes are cleared.** See: [**What is migration? How does it work?**](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/10250/200235). It's entirely appropriate to downvote an off topic question, *especially if you expect the question to be migrated and the downvotes cleared*. Off topic is off topic, even if the question is a &quot;good&quot; one for another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These 6 questions have all been migrated in the last two days:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [I want to make an inventory system for my game in Python V 3.4.3](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32486754/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [K&amp;R qsort understanding](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32467724/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [Simple recursive series in matlab](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32448566/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [In ruby, should I use instance variables or direct method calls](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32444305/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [Using Sed to Append Lines to File During Vagrant Provisioning](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32437006/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [Atmel Studio installing library is empty](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32431232/1768232)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it absolutely does happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as the questions that are not appropriate for migration goes, we get many of them because people don't understand that we have a very narrow scope here. We tried allowing a much broader range of questions here and it failed. See: **https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since then, we have attempted to very tightly moderate what's acceptable here in an attempt to teach people what this site is about, but people *still don't read the guidance.* This has resulted in many well written meta questions about site scope, capped with IMO the two most important: **https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7182/88986** and **https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483/88986**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, we downvote the bad questions, to take them *off the front page* (a question disappears from the front page when it his -4 or below) in an attempt to have a front page full of decent-to-good questions. The hope is that this user training will teach current and future users what's actually good and appropriate here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Addendum: @Ixrec correctly points out that it's currently September, which means a lot of young students are posting homework questions all over the internet, which are almost always off topic here, so the front page is worse than normal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People *also* have a tendency to post questions about career advice here, even though it's *explicitly off topic* and all the related tags about it say &quot;do not use&quot;. These questions get downvoted to oblivion as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25380" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7608" RevisionGUID="39147a2c-2185-4882-9ded-dc3bbf8fd8e0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="terminology tag (as defined by you guys): &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   Questions about the objective meaning or &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    common understanding of words and &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    concepts that programmers encounter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well I need to develop something which reads audio data to be played, and [I asked what one calls the term for the &quot;rate&quot; at which audio is interpreted / played by software](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297720/term-for-frame-rate-when-reading-audio-data/297723#297723). Similar to how one uses a video's frame-rate to know how fast to present the frames.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to meet the criteria, but a user downvoted my question and linked to a meta discussion: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I read that meta question and its accepted answer, and it clarifies that questions asking &quot;what should I name this&quot; are off topic, but &quot;what is the name of this well known concept?&quot; Is on-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question, being &quot;What is the term for the rate at which audio data should be read?&quot; isn't really a code problem, it's a matter of well known terminology, and seems to fit the criteria set by the community through the &quot;terminology&quot; tag and meta duscussions. So why has this user downvoted and linked to meta on my question? It also recieved close votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subsequently, my question recieved a perfect answer quickly, it was &quot;Sampling Rate&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25381" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7620" RevisionGUID="317660cf-fceb-46be-9009-0ee5d3c94840" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; you can only see 2 question &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off, do you have any deleted questions? These don't show on the profile, and if the question was asked recently you should be able to go to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/recently-deleted-questions/144875 to see this.  Otherwise, you would need to get a mod to pull out a link to any other deleted posts that you have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with so much down vote that nobody cares to explain to me why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298097/difference-between-admin-and-super-admin is a rather boring and uninteresting terminology question. No, there is no standard for 95% of any of the words we use in programming. Even 'bug' has no standard definition.  The name of a role has no standard definition either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The mouseover for a down vote reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question does not show any research effort.  It is not useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Likewise, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297056/is-commenting-of-code-part-of-system-documentation is a question of definitions again. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When my boss says that I need to have a proper documentation of the project does it include proper commenting of codes in my project?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I pointed out in the comments, &quot;Ask your manager.&quot;  The question is either to be closed as a duplicate (of something that many people are tired of having questions and attempts at debates on), or primary opinion. The question does not show any attempt at searching for our well known answers, and again attempts to stir up a useless debate. Thus, the question was down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would encourage you to read [Why was my question down voted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)  The [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is also a good read about the types of questions that are in scope. Make sure you completely read the text paragraphs at the end and not just the bullet points." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25382" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7941" RevisionGUID="c6967ca7-3d5e-4009-abb3-082ca9ef3aa3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's not the scope that is wrong, it's the name. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I took your exercise [again][1] to demonstrate, and came up with these results: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Programmers.SE : 37/37&#xD;&#xA;* SoftwareDesign.SE : 13/33, with 4 being a Maybe&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While doing this, I noticed there are a lot more implementation questions than there once was. Here are new programmers looking for answers online. They see two major programming Q&amp;A sites, one titled **&quot;StackOverflow&quot;** and another titled **&quot;Programmers&quot;**. Guess which one they are going to click on first every time?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But here's the details about my opinion on the same questions, and if I'd post each question to a site titled `Programmers` vs a site with a title that strongly emphasizes conceptual software design, like `SoftwareDesign`. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am doing this from the point of view of a user whose *only* knowledge of this site is it is a StackExchange Q&amp;A site titled &quot;Programmers&quot; or &quot;SoftwareDesign&quot;, and who doesn't have a strong grasp of what makes a good/bad question for SE or want to make any significant effort in learning the meta for the site since it is not worthwhile time investment to them at the time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311935/running-net-desktop-application-on-linux - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Maybe;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311931/need-help-to-make-advance-search-in-php-website-project (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A bit hard to determine (the close vote is for unclear). It looks like this might be too broad too. Its a student trying to do some project that isn't well articulated.  The answers to it are all over the place. The OP hasn't been back since the original post of the question to help clarify.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Maybe;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311930/pointers-and-hexadecimal (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is an implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311928/how-do-i-implement-material-style-account-switcher (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   This is a far too broad &quot;how do I do this&quot; type question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311925/structure-of-an-abstract-for-a-conference-talk-or-workshop (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question has nothing to do with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311923/extraordinary-software-written-in-javascript (-8, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a too broad question asking for a list of all the ways that Javascript can be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311921/accepting-express-js-post-requests-in-a-chrome-app (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for issues with writing something in Chrome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Maybe;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311918/how-to-display-a-non-interactive-message-on-a-jframe (-2, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for how to do something in Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Maybe;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311914/running-ruby-commands-does-nothing (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a problem running some third party ruby software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311913/how-to-break-infinite-loop-in-turtle-graphics-python (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for python.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311910/index-exceeds-matrix-dimension-matlab-hog-features (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for matlab (which was already posted on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311907/wdk-10-and-visual-studio-2015-acting-funny (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This (now deleted between then and now) was closed as unclear. It was an issue with some software installation for a C library.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311904/learning-linux-kernel-in-todays-world-would-i-be-better-off-hacking-with-android (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a &quot;what should I learn&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311902/why-do-i-get-an-error-in-the-cpp-file-if-i-make-a-class-template-before-the-cla (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311901/class-as-a-variable-of-another-class (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is another C++ implementation/debugging question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311899/find-availability-software-architecture (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a no effort homework dump.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Question cleaned up to ask about equation for finding availbity in software architecture and has been reopened. Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311897/error-code-c4700-uninitialized-local-variable (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311896/android-file-retriever-application (-4, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted green field question that is asking how to use the IDE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311894/how-do-i-create-a-driver-for-extra-buttons (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rather vague &quot;how do I program buttons on a drawing tablet.&quot;  Aside from being off topic, no information about what drawing tablet it is is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311892/deleting-dynamically-allocated-memory (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311891/simplest-way-to-build-an-interactive-website-to-visualize-a-table (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a unclear / too broad &quot;how do I render a table&quot; (there are far too many possible ways to do it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311890/where-and-how-i-can-find-explanations-of-abstractions-and-fancy-stuff-used-in-bu (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rant about large software projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311888/adobe-illustrator-data-driven-graphics-via-php (-2, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a question about how to implement an AI that Photoshop has in php. I'm not kidding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311886/why-software-releases-must-be-self-regulated (-3, duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a poorly asked duplicate of a question that searching for &quot;Lehman&quot; would have found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311883/sending-computer-screen-video-through-lightning-connector-to-a-iphone (-3, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a &quot;is it possible&quot; feasibility study question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311874/importing-my-class-to-a-given-tester-class (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is an unclear question that might be &quot;how do I debug my code?&quot; but not enough information about it is given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311873/choose-an-application-development-environment-for-the-displaying-monitoring-da (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted too broad question (with a bit of unclear too).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311871/web-design-templates-for-backend-developing (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a tool recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311866/connected-city-problem (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a cross posted (CS) what appears to be homework dump.  It has since been deleted here and a bit large to include - see the [CS.SE version](http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/54031/10159) for its text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311862/logic-of-ap-to-return-number-set-to-bit1-as-an-input-binary (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a block of code without any question asked (a comment of &quot;how does this work?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311860/can-you-please-explain-what-this-php-code-below-does (-7, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Someone asking what a given function in php does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311857/ways-to-send-a-message-to-a-users-phone (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A service request / too broad (how can you send a message to a device)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311856/periodicity-detection-for-gapped-data (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    An algorithm question that *might* be answerable if sufficient information is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311855/what-is-more-lower-level-click-or-urwid (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &quot;I make web apps using flask so I am tempted to start using click since it's made by the same person but I've seen more info around for urwid? Which one is more lower level?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;    I don't even know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311854/scripting-productivity-and-speed (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     How do you improve your productivity?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311853/automating-scripting-and-building (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A question about automating the IDE. It is a bit unclear and if it was made clear, would be off topic here (its a tooling problem)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311850/python-functions-and-parameters (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How to type the parameters for python calls (implementation question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And to copy/paste from before :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Keep in mind, this is *my perspective*. Everyone's different. We can't say definitely &quot;yes this would be asked&quot; or &quot;no this wouldn't be asked&quot;. It depends on the question asker.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The point is, a user who only knows *&quot;this is a SE Q&amp;A site titled Programmers&quot;* will most likely have a very different assumption than a user who only knows *&quot;this is a SE Q&amp;A site titled The Whiteboard&quot;* (or Software Concepts, or Software Design Theory, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The term &quot;**Programmers**&quot; is an extremely broad term that could bring to mind a person writing code, a person designing software, a person gathering requirements, a person seeking a new job, etc. But in all cases, it brings to mind *a person*.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; However a term like &quot;**The Whiteboard**&quot; (or SoftwareDesign) gives a first impression of &quot;conceptual software design&quot;, which is more likely to bring to mind designing software, considering architecture, evaluating approaches, etc. It's much more inline with what this site actually is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And as a footnote, I've worked many years now in user-interface design and development. I speak to end-users on a regular basis, and translate their &quot;user-speak&quot; to application designs, taking special care that everything is clear and makes sense *from their point of view*. The discrepancy between the site name and scope and subsequential confusion it causes is extremely clear to me as a major cause of this site's problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know it won't fix everything, but it *will* significantly cut down on the number of off-topic questions that get asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7147/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25383" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7660" RevisionGUID="1a4c9f18-e02b-4beb-ae02-88318ffd7ac9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question is heavily (but not primarily) opinion-based and certainly too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers are rambling, outdated, and many are low-quality. Several provide examples of individual projects that use Java, which is a bit too specific to be of much use. Q: &quot;What are cars used for these days?&quot; A: &quot;Well my cousin is a cab driver.&quot; Sure, that technically answers the question, but is useless information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bigger issue is &quot;what value does this question and its answers provide?&quot; As far as I can tell it serves one of several purposes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Fuel for the language flame wars.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Answers the questions &quot;what language or technology should I take up next&quot; and &quot;recommend an off-site resource such as a language&quot; (Java, in this case).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Pros and cons][1] of Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In no way does this question bring measurable benefit to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is any useful content in any of the answers, it belongs in the [Java tag wiki][2] which probably has enough useful information as-is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6758/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/java/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25384" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7693" RevisionGUID="0c400a50-5481-4d06-8c6f-d8eafcbbc4bd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="What you are asking is covered by this related meta question: [where to start?][1] which explains why your question would be off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may get useful feedback from [The Whiteboard][2] if any of our resident FP experts are in chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6366/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25385" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7943" RevisionGUID="588a8fb6-1f1e-4379-82be-831089913978" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The last week we had seen (again) some discussions here what is &quot;wrong&quot; with this site, why are here so many closed and downvoted questions and why people are interpreting this as &quot;hostility&quot; and &quot;unhelpfulness&quot;. Peter Tòmas Scott [made some kind of survey][1], and his final suggestions were&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Improve communication of the site's purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Change the self-moderating style&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first topic was already adressed [here][2] by an attempt of Rachel to get permission for changing the site's name. My question is: how can we address the second point (which is IMHO the more important one)? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will it improve the sites' perception if we try to improve our means of communication, being more polite, less terse, using the &quot;downvote&quot; button less often against newbies (even when we suggest to close a question), and so on? Let me show you some examples for questions which were closed and/or downvoted in the last 12 hours:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [I add dynamically dropdown and input fields rows using Jquery][3]&#xD;&#xA;2. [reading line from text files in java (netbeans)][4]&#xD;&#xA;3. [What's wrong about thos code][5]&#xD;&#xA;4. [While loops in C# for Windows Forms. I'm trying to loop certain coefficients so that they can keep displaying on certain labels][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we not have a more **polite** comment template for these kind of &quot;fix-my-code&quot; requests?  Like &quot;Hi OP, are you aware that these kind of questions are off-topic on Programmers? ...&quot;.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, these are a new users, can't we just close those questions instead of giving them a ton of additional downvotes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. [Should filenames be relative to their directory name?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, this is primarily opinion-based. But a downvote, and those precanned links? What about enclosing the link into somethink like &quot;Hi XYZ, are you aware that your question is probably too oppionated to let someone give you a good answer, see &lt;link-to-meta&gt; for more information&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. [What should I know to create applications in Phoenix Webframework?][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is IMHO a much better example of how the closing should happen, a comment which was detailed enough to get a &quot;thanks&quot; respond from the OP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. [Registration form with email verification][9]&#xD;&#xA;8. [Integrate between PHP and C program][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comments below those question are fine, and the questions are not yet closed. But the downvotes? The questions are not badly written or expect the reader to have a glass-bowl. And what about a friendly comment like &quot;Hi OP, are you aware that questions of this type are often downvoted or closed on this site if they do not show that the asker did some research effort before&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9. [Rejected by recruitment process on bad code review][11] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as &quot;unclear&quot; **after** it got a long-winded answer with 4 upvotes? Sorry, just because for some of us the question seemed to be unanswerable, others seemed to have a different opinion - and that was obvious at the time of closing. There must be a better way to deal with such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10. [If condition vs variable assignment performance wise][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as a dupe (that is debatable, my close vote would have been for a different reason), but 5 downvotes? The question was clearly written and from a newbie. There must be a better way to handle this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And finally, a more positive one: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;11. [Is it ok if I can't solve a problem when sitting in front of a computer?][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Correctly closed, because this was not programming specific, and surely too opinionated. But it got lots of comments and upvotes before (still those 3 IMHO unneccessary downvotes). So that is IMHO a much more constructive way of closing a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you think about this? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: Here is another one I would like to add for demonstration purposes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  12. [Quartz .net does not work when I inject dependency][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why not use a more friendly comment like &quot;Hi SlashMet, are you aware that we have a strict no-crosspost policy here in the stackexchange network? Please delete one of your doubles, or expect the community to downvote and close both of your questions.&quot; Of course, that question would be closed either because it is a &quot;fix-my-code&quot; request, and it would surely make sense to tell the OP that, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/four-years-later-can-we-change-our-site-name&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312536/i-add-dynamically-dropdown-and-input-fields-rows-using-jquery-php-but-how-to-sub&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312534/reading-line-from-text-files-in-java-netbeans&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312531/whats-wrong-about-thos-code&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312525/while-loops-in-c-for-windows-forms-im-trying-to-loop-certain-coefficients-so&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312533/should-filenames-be-relative-to-their-directory-name&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312530/what-should-i-know-to-create-applications-in-phoenix-webframework&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312522/registration-form-with-email-verification&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312513/integrate-between-php-and-c-program&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312488/rejected-by-recruitment-process-on-bad-code-review&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312472/if-condition-vs-variable-assignment-performance-wise&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312511/is-it-ok-if-i-cant-solve-a-problem-when-sitting-in-front-of-a-computer&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312591/quartz-net-does-not-work-when-i-inject-dependency#comment660099_312591" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25386" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7990" RevisionGUID="7d29a51c-f40c-4fc2-8746-57298b007d37" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:08.427" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###What's a good, well-moderated site that would allow these kinds of discussions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reddit  &#xD;&#xA;https://www.reddit.com/r/programming  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quora  &#xD;&#xA;Computer Programming topic: https://www.quora.com/pinned/Computer-Programming  &#xD;&#xA;Search &quot;programming&quot; topics: https://www.quora.com/search?q=programming&amp;type=topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Stack site (shutdown)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*defunct* Stack Exchange site [Not Programming Related](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In 2010, a Stack Exchange site called Not Programming Related came out of Area51, the Stack Exchange staging zone. NPR was supposed to be a site where questions that were too subjective / broad for Stack Overflow would find a new home.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#### Why did it fail?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;[...] Turns out that while everyone loves those questions, very few are actually willing to spend any time to answer them (seriously), and maintain and moderate them. [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I can understand that when you allow opinion based questions you allow any answer to be correct which may encourage new non-programming users, or lower the knowledge threshold that is expected for users. This may cause these less experienced users to creep into other forums and lower the quality of Stack sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't think shutting down that site should have been the answer. Subjectively and naively, as I wasn't around for the site and don't know about issues it faced, I would think that eventually those issues would be dealt with by voting, editing existing answers, or wiki answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with Jeff's [comment](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6409/open-ended-questions-not-suited-to-this-site#comment17386_6409):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's strange. To me, a programmers life revolves around open ended thoughts. I know all of the code that I write is open ended. I can always find a way to go back and make it better, or think of an entirely new way to reach my objective." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25387" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7709" RevisionGUID="a60abf94-cd02-4e82-a565-201641250566" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## First Posts Closed compared to Second Posts Closed ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/307939/first-posts-closed-compared-to-second-posts-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*NOTE* For some context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7335/does-closing-a-question-before-an-answer-is-received-change-the-behavior-of-a-us/7336#7336" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25388" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7990" RevisionGUID="5452c6b8-2831-4a2a-a7fb-8498f522421a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###What's a good, well-moderated site that would allow these kinds of discussions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reddit  &#xD;&#xA;https://www.reddit.com/r/programming  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quora  &#xD;&#xA;Computer Programming topic: https://www.quora.com/pinned/Computer-Programming  &#xD;&#xA;Search &quot;programming&quot; topics: https://www.quora.com/search?q=programming&amp;type=topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Stack site (shutdown)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*defunct* Stack Exchange site [Not Programming Related](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In 2010, a Stack Exchange site called Not Programming Related came out of Area51, the Stack Exchange staging zone. NPR was supposed to be a site where questions that were too subjective / broad for Stack Overflow would find a new home.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#### Why did it fail?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;[...] Turns out that while everyone loves those questions, very few are actually willing to spend any time to answer them (seriously), and maintain and moderate them. [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I can understand that when you allow opinion based questions you allow any answer to be correct which may encourage new non-programming users, or lower the knowledge threshold that is expected for users. This may cause these less experienced users to creep into other forums and lower the quality of Stack sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't think shutting down that site should have been the answer. Subjectively and naively, as I wasn't around for the site and don't know about issues it faced, I would think that eventually those issues would be dealt with by voting, editing existing answers, or wiki answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with Jeff's [comment](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6409/open-ended-questions-not-suited-to-this-site#comment17386_6409):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's strange. To me, a programmers life revolves around open ended thoughts. I know all of the code that I write is open ended. I can always find a way to go back and make it better, or think of an entirely new way to reach my objective." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25389" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8010" RevisionGUID="2b9aa7ef-d5eb-452a-8915-bc0ed8cd7294" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:08.427" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Upon skimming your headers to see if they would apply to my questions, my first instinct was to think *wait some of those are actually on-topic!* until I read your detailed notes. Perhaps we could clarify some of the header areas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Review my design**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't review entire software designs; that's a discussion, not a question. If you have a specific question about your software design, ask that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Gut response was *&quot;Wait we do offer opinions on software design!&quot;* but the final line does cover that. Perhaps we could make the header specific to generic design reviews, like **Generic feedback on my entire software design?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Which way is best?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Because you already understand the detailed specifications for your software project, you are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here. Otherwise, you're just trotting after a herd.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once again, my gut response on reading the header was *&quot;Asking which way is better in regards to performance/memory use/readability/etc is on-topic!&quot;*, but see that is covered in the final line of the description. Perhaps header can be changed to something like **Which way is best (with no clarification of what &quot;best&quot; means to you)?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What do you recommend?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't make product, service or technology recommendations of any kind. Try here or here, but read their Help Center first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of questions here ask &quot;What do you recommend&quot; without being about a specific product/service/technology/etc. We should specify that in the header line, like **What Product|Service|Technology|etc do you recommend?&quot;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea is that most people won't read the entire post line-by-line, but will rather scan the headers to see if each section would apply to their question. If they think it does, perhaps they'll read the detailed part. Clarifying the headers would help prevent the whole *&quot;this is stupid, why am I even bothering&quot;* response when something is taking too long online, and would probably increase the success rate with users that actually read and retain the information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And last of all on this section &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Name that thing**&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that ask &quot;Is there a name for this thing&quot; are just requests for Google help, which we don't provide here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought based on the [last meta post I saw about this, &quot;Name that thing&quot; is on-topic](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6582/1130) providing it was not a &quot;What should I name this thing/class/object/etc&quot; type of question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know from experience, that often being a new programmer there are a great number of terms we just don't know, and it is very hard to find the &quot;proper&quot; term with Google. Once we do find the right term though, it's very easy to google what you need to know, so find this category very useful as a new programmer, or even as an experienced programmer learning a new area.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25390" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8010" RevisionGUID="70992864-0b28-469f-9935-205130cf54da" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Upon skimming your headers to see if they would apply to my questions, my first instinct was to think *wait some of those are actually on-topic!* until I read your detailed notes. Perhaps we could clarify some of the header areas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Review my design**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't review entire software designs; that's a discussion, not a question. If you have a specific question about your software design, ask that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Gut response was *&quot;Wait we do offer opinions on software design!&quot;* but the final line does cover that. Perhaps we could make the header specific to generic design reviews, like **Generic feedback on my entire software design?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Which way is best?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Because you already understand the detailed specifications for your software project, you are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here. Otherwise, you're just trotting after a herd.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once again, my gut response on reading the header was *&quot;Asking which way is better in regards to performance/memory use/readability/etc is on-topic!&quot;*, but see that is covered in the final line of the description. Perhaps header can be changed to something like **Which way is best (with no clarification of what &quot;best&quot; means to you)?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What do you recommend?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't make product, service or technology recommendations of any kind. Try here or here, but read their Help Center first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of questions here ask &quot;What do you recommend&quot; without being about a specific product/service/technology/etc. We should specify that in the header line, like **What Product|Service|Technology|etc do you recommend?&quot;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea is that most people won't read the entire post line-by-line, but will rather scan the headers to see if each section would apply to their question. If they think it does, perhaps they'll read the detailed part. Clarifying the headers would help prevent the whole *&quot;this is stupid, why am I even bothering&quot;* response when something is taking too long online, and would probably increase the success rate with users that actually read and retain the information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And last of all on this section &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Name that thing**&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that ask &quot;Is there a name for this thing&quot; are just requests for Google help, which we don't provide here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought based on the [last meta post I saw about this, &quot;Name that thing&quot; is on-topic](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6582/1130) providing it was not a &quot;What should I name this thing/class/object/etc&quot; type of question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know from experience, that often being a new programmer there are a great number of terms we just don't know, and it is very hard to find the &quot;proper&quot; term with Google. Once we do find the right term though, it's very easy to google what you need to know, so find this category very useful as a new programmer, or even as an experienced programmer learning a new area.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25391" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7721" RevisionGUID="0c61f989-9d37-446c-a87b-47c7bec5c867" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We've been fairly consistently getting poor quality implementation and debugging questions.  A [previous suggestion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6106/close-reason-and-associated-expand-the-close-reason-count-request) (related: [1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6172/can-the-number-of-custom-close-reasons-on-programmers-be-expanded) [2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7394/add-a-new-close-reason-for-implementation-and-troubleshooting-questions)) to increase the count hasn't been acted upon and the suggestion for us was to merge the close reasons that we have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The two that are likely the best to merge are the &quot;suggest a project&quot; and &quot;suggest a tool&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The existing tool wording is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The recommendation one is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25392" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8012" RevisionGUID="abedc61c-9631-4a02-951d-6124896c63e1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:08.427" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Does TFS have the capacity equivalent of branching/forking in Git?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to achieve in TFS branching/forking as in Git?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about Software configuration management are marked as on-topic in the Help Center but in this answer of [Where does my tool question go?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7253/where-does-my-tool-question-go) there is a restriction:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Question is about using a Tool in a Software Development Workflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question involves how to integrate a tool or type of tool into&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your workflow or process, then it is likely to be on-topic on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers. **Generally, if you aren't asking about how to use a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific feature of a tool, but trying to determine how to use the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tool to achieve a well-defined goal, start here.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you just want to know how to use TFS, StackOverflow would probably be better suited. I think you should ask that question on StackOverflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25393" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8012" RevisionGUID="b8fb72b1-1299-4d08-8c6c-f544ab5731a0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Does TFS have the capacity equivalent of branching/forking in Git?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to achieve in TFS branching/forking as in Git?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about Software configuration management are marked as on-topic in the Help Center but in this answer of [Where does my tool question go?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7253/where-does-my-tool-question-go) there is a restriction:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Question is about using a Tool in a Software Development Workflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question involves how to integrate a tool or type of tool into&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your workflow or process, then it is likely to be on-topic on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers. **Generally, if you aren't asking about how to use a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific feature of a tool, but trying to determine how to use the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tool to achieve a well-defined goal, start here.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you just want to know how to use TFS, StackOverflow would probably be better suited. I think you should ask that question on StackOverflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25395" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7725" RevisionGUID="a7e1677c-45e0-40c6-be86-a0e195749d54" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm mainly an Stack Overflow user. I'm used to moderate there voting and flagging and I believe that I know their rules quite well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I'm new here and I'm still getting used. One thing that I've noted is, as this site has more subjective terms than SO, it keeps getting a huge amount of opinion-based and forum-like questions (that are properly closed). Before writing [my question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302226/what-javascript-has-that-is-so-special-that-could-make-asynchronous-programming), I've tried my best to avoid this behaviour, but in the end it was closed with the same reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main question was: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are the specific characteristics of JavaScript that makes Node.js&#xD;&#xA;&gt; so special and why other languages can't build similar frameworks to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rise in popularity in their own community?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My objective was to attract answers like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - JavaScript has an unique way to handle threads that is X and no other language have it.&#xD;&#xA; - libuv was the key of Node's success. As it would be very hard to port it to Python for reason X or as it would be so slow in Ruby for reason Y, these two languages don't have successful event-driven frameworks.&#xD;&#xA; - Async is already becoming standard and successful for other languages. E.g: RxJava. The code just don't need to be fully async because those languages are more structured than JavaScript regarding X.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in the end, it attracted some answers/comments like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - JavaScript is a terrible language but is used because is the only language available for front-end.&#xD;&#xA; - JavaScript is so poorly designed and demands so many workarounds its gotcha minefield that stuff like Node.js seems glorious by comparison.&#xD;&#xA; - Your answer really is &quot;A language to rule them all&quot; because JavaScript is ubiquitous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Its my fault** but where I did it wrong? I'll create another question soon and I hope to learn with this mistake to avoid another closed one. So, **how could my question be reworded to fit in this site?** If its not possible, why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt; I've [already](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions) [read](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7182/what-goes-on-programmers-se-a-guide-for-stack-overflow) [some](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) [meta](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers) [questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) before posting this meta question. &lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25397" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8030" RevisionGUID="aabc9bad-3275-4899-90c2-78daf14680a8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:08.427" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; We, obviously, do not want to reinvent the wheel over and over again.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So, how to ask such questions, that by definition cannot have the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; right answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are talking about is not a &quot;question,&quot; it is a &quot;discussion point.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question has no right answer there are three possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It is impossible to know (e.g. what is on the other side of an event horizon?)&#xD;&#xA;1. It is possible to know, but we do not have an answer yet (e.g. P == NP?)&#xD;&#xA;1. It is soliciting opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first two _can_ work as questions. History is littered with research papers that explore topics with the result &quot;nope, that doesn't work -- yet.&quot; But you asked about &quot;by definition&quot; not having a right answer, which fits squarely into condition three, which would be &quot;[primarily opinion-based][1],&quot; a close reason everywhere on Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My question is about questions that asks users to share their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; experience and/or offer creative suggestions in solving/approaching a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; particular problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sharing experiences works in a forum ([this is _not_ a forum][2]) or in [chat][3]. Not in the Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the &quot;particular problem&quot; part is probably on-topic if asked right. Questions should be about programming problems and soliciting creative solutions to solve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Presenting a design and asking for feedback is fine][4], as long as it is properly-scoped and not [too broad][5]. That is not really what you were getting at, but it is a better focus for those types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6491/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/92110/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6502/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6961/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25398" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8030" RevisionGUID="87e78606-ab41-41f2-8340-e5d1a10dc770" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; We, obviously, do not want to reinvent the wheel over and over again.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So, how to ask such questions, that by definition cannot have the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; right answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are talking about is not a &quot;question,&quot; it is a &quot;discussion point.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question has no right answer there are three possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It is impossible to know (e.g. what is on the other side of an event horizon?)&#xD;&#xA;1. It is possible to know, but we do not have an answer yet (e.g. P == NP?)&#xD;&#xA;1. It is soliciting opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first two _can_ work as questions. History is littered with research papers that explore topics with the result &quot;nope, that doesn't work -- yet.&quot; But you asked about &quot;by definition&quot; not having a right answer, which fits squarely into condition three, which would be &quot;[primarily opinion-based][1],&quot; a close reason everywhere on Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My question is about questions that asks users to share their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; experience and/or offer creative suggestions in solving/approaching a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; particular problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sharing experiences works in a forum ([this is _not_ a forum][2]) or in [chat][3]. Not in the Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the &quot;particular problem&quot; part is probably on-topic if asked right. Questions should be about programming problems and soliciting creative solutions to solve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Presenting a design and asking for feedback is fine][4], as long as it is properly-scoped and not [too broad][5]. That is not really what you were getting at, but it is a better focus for those types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6491/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/92110/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6502/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6961/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25399" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7729" RevisionGUID="de17e55c-dc36-4ef7-9db8-31d57f3e84d1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I glanced at the question while trying to figure out if I can answer, but didn't look too deeply into the question itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The final paragraph of the question is the one that would have been decisive for me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How might the app reliably and securely persist information about each Main page instance, regardless of which browser instance, window or tab, so that the the server accurately recognizes the correct user/group session participant for that Main Page? Hidden field? localStorage? Something else? Pros and cons of different techniques?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It really feels like one that is asking us to design it all for you. You haven't addressed a problem that you are having. And while you may have some information about the backend design that is already firm, you haven't communicated this in the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two things that I've written here that seek to try to help people formulate a better question when trying to ask this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6961/green-fields-blue-skies-and-the-white-board-what-is-too-broad&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6758/what-is-the-problem-with-pros-and-cons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The blue sky nature of the question - that we don't know what the problem that you are having with your design is. And thats where the comment that is on the question is addressing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The pros and cons is one that we often see and is very difficult to answer. In part, because everyone regards the advantages and disadvantages of a given design (and the different designs is indeed far too wide open to be able to even have a chance at narrowing it down) will add their opinion. This often leads to rather short and unhelpful answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hypothetically,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hidden field pro: its simple&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; local storage con: you've got to use local storage and it's inconsistent across browsers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; something else pro: Its something you haven't considered&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; yet something else con: Its something you haven't considered either&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are all &quot;valid&quot; answers to the question. And they aren't really helpful to you, or to the next person who comes along trying to ask a question about a similar design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've given us a requirement. Tell us about your design and specifically where you are having problems.  If you are just asking for us to do a design, there are far too many ways for that to be done, and most will be incompatible with some part of your system." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25400" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8069" RevisionGUID="bf54395e-e13b-4eca-9793-9c6e9b341703" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:08.427" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I always believed that there is an important distinction between off-topic questions which are... well, “plain off-topic”, and the ones which are off-topic because they simply belong on a different SE site, which in case of Programmers.SE is StackOverflow, by lack of other migration paths.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Those which are off-topic without having a chance to be migrated to StackOverflow (either because their quality is too low or because they are off-topic on SO too for any other reason) should be closed. Answering them would be a sort of positive reinforcement for those questions, so... [don't answer them][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Those which are off-topic simply because they belong on StackOverflow are a very different beast. They can be good, valid, well formulated questions, which have no reason for being downvoted or unanswered of they were posted on StackOverflow in the first place. They also have a good chance being migrated instead of simply closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When encountering this second type of questions on Programmers.SE, I find it natural to vote for migration, as well as to write an answer (when I know the answer) even *before* the question is actually migrated. As I [explained previously][2], this seems like a good and harmless thing for Programmers.SE. The positive/negative reinforcement thing doesn't really apply here: the original poster made a small and understandable mistake, the community migrated the question where it belongs, no harm done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently, I received [a comment][3] from a well-respected member of our community, suggesting that I shouldn't do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...] It makes no sense to answer an off-topic question, on the off-chance that it might actually get migrated to the correct one. Most off-topic questions on Programmers get closed, not migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think one should do in such situation? If a question is about to be closed as off-topic (and *eventually* migrated to Stack Overflow), should I, while being *personally convinced that it is a good candidate for migration*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Avoid answering it, given that I won't probably bother tracking the question until it is closed/migrated in order to answer/upvote it after that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answer it, hoping that community will be of the same opinion as me that the question should be migrated, instead of simply being closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Do something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2823/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2849/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37550012/serializing-net-object-into-a-json-string-produces-unreadable-output/37550013?noredirect=1#comment62589231_37550013" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25401" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8069" RevisionGUID="06d1fa03-cd9a-4b84-bbcc-3d445801ceeb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I always believed that there is an important distinction between off-topic questions which are... well, “plain off-topic”, and the ones which are off-topic because they simply belong on a different SE site, which in case of Programmers.SE is StackOverflow, by lack of other migration paths.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Those which are off-topic without having a chance to be migrated to StackOverflow (either because their quality is too low or because they are off-topic on SO too for any other reason) should be closed. Answering them would be a sort of positive reinforcement for those questions, so... [don't answer them][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Those which are off-topic simply because they belong on StackOverflow are a very different beast. They can be good, valid, well formulated questions, which have no reason for being downvoted or unanswered of they were posted on StackOverflow in the first place. They also have a good chance being migrated instead of simply closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When encountering this second type of questions on Programmers.SE, I find it natural to vote for migration, as well as to write an answer (when I know the answer) even *before* the question is actually migrated. As I [explained previously][2], this seems like a good and harmless thing for Programmers.SE. The positive/negative reinforcement thing doesn't really apply here: the original poster made a small and understandable mistake, the community migrated the question where it belongs, no harm done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently, I received [a comment][3] from a well-respected member of our community, suggesting that I shouldn't do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...] It makes no sense to answer an off-topic question, on the off-chance that it might actually get migrated to the correct one. Most off-topic questions on Programmers get closed, not migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think one should do in such situation? If a question is about to be closed as off-topic (and *eventually* migrated to Stack Overflow), should I, while being *personally convinced that it is a good candidate for migration*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Avoid answering it, given that I won't probably bother tracking the question until it is closed/migrated in order to answer/upvote it after that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answer it, hoping that community will be of the same opinion as me that the question should be migrated, instead of simply being closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Do something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2823/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2849/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37550012/serializing-net-object-into-a-json-string-produces-unreadable-output/37550013?noredirect=1#comment62589231_37550013" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25402" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8070" RevisionGUID="0d9dea96-2619-4128-8b3b-1c86f81671ff" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:08.427" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Ultimately, the goal is to get off-topic questions off the front page *as quickly as possible,* so that they don't provide encouragement for other people to ask their off-topic questions.  Migration is not the best mechanism to do this; most off-topic questions asked here will not qualify for migration, and it's not uncommon for it to take hours for a question to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A long period of watching how these sites work has yielded some useful observations about how new users decide if they're going to ask their question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  They look at the title of the site.&#xD;&#xA;2.  They look at the tags (a terrible way to determine topicality, but they do it anyway),&#xD;&#xA;3.  They look at other questions to see if they are similar to the one they're about to ask, *without regard for downvotes, close banners, etc.*&#xD;&#xA;4.  If they do manage to find the Help Center/on-topic article, they try to shoehorn their question in some way into the on-topic list (&quot;My recommendation question is about design.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with #3 is especially egregious *if people are actually answering these off-topic questions.*  It sends the message &quot;We don't really mean what we say about site scope.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My advice?  If you feel compelled to answer such questions, either do it in a second-class comment, or wait until the question gets migrated to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Usability issues for first-time Stack Exchange users - a micro-study](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/279661/usability-issues-for-first-time-stack-exchange-users-a-micro-study)  &#xD;&#xA;[New Site Name and Scope Proposals](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8056)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25403" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7749" RevisionGUID="172a9414-e6bc-4bff-a969-a5b28d23ba99" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a big fuzzy gray line between the software licensing questions that we find to be on topic, and the rest of the legal questions.  Many software licensing questions *are* legal questions, that are ones that a programmer is at least somewhat competent to answer as a programmer.  Most legal questions, however as the [more info](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/legal/info) in the [tag:legal] says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The law is a minefield and the best advice anyone can give when asked about legal matters is often:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; ask a lawyer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Asking legal questions on Stack Exchange is not a substitute for taking proper local legal advice. What we can do is advise whether asking a lawyer is essential or just highly recommended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can competently answer some questions. Most often, when the answer is &quot;you need to talk to a lawyer.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With your question, this is something that you need to ask a lawyer. You've gone into the realm of encryption and munitions.  If you are in the US, this gets into [ITAR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations) and the like. It is not something that as programmers we are even able to properly give you any correct answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to talk to a lawyer. This goes ***far*** beyond the legal questions of &quot;can I remove the header from a BSD licensed file?&quot; that are (marginally) on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7265/40980&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25404" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8070" RevisionGUID="2006ef66-5af8-454a-9cf6-c1c6197a6cd7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Ultimately, the goal is to get off-topic questions off the front page *as quickly as possible,* so that they don't provide encouragement for other people to ask their off-topic questions.  Migration is not the best mechanism to do this; most off-topic questions asked here will not qualify for migration, and it's not uncommon for it to take hours for a question to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A long period of watching how these sites work has yielded some useful observations about how new users decide if they're going to ask their question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  They look at the title of the site.&#xD;&#xA;2.  They look at the tags (a terrible way to determine topicality, but they do it anyway),&#xD;&#xA;3.  They look at other questions to see if they are similar to the one they're about to ask, *without regard for downvotes, close banners, etc.*&#xD;&#xA;4.  If they do manage to find the Help Center/on-topic article, they try to shoehorn their question in some way into the on-topic list (&quot;My recommendation question is about design.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with #3 is especially egregious *if people are actually answering these off-topic questions.*  It sends the message &quot;We don't really mean what we say about site scope.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My advice?  If you feel compelled to answer such questions, either do it in a second-class comment, or wait until the question gets migrated to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Usability issues for first-time Stack Exchange users - a micro-study](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/279661/usability-issues-for-first-time-stack-exchange-users-a-micro-study)  &#xD;&#xA;[New Site Name and Scope Proposals](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8056)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25405" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8113" RevisionGUID="3994a790-b0d1-4b97-a889-595d594d0381" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:08.427" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think Robert and Thomas both make excellent points and we should heed their advice, but I would like to focus on something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On March 10, 2016, Rachel asked the question that set this whole thing off: [(4 years later) Dear Stack Exchange: can we change our site name?][1] On May 23, [Ana answered the question][2]. _Two and a half months later, a CM finally responded_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The day after Ana answered the question, Thomas asked [New Site Name and Scope Proposals][3] (May 24). I think it was actually more like hours later, but I am going off of the date stamps on the posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had four weeks to discuss this topic before a promised CM response, but it took until July 21. That is almost two months to receive any meaningful feedback from the CM team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actions speak louder than words. We have already discussed this topic to death. We already have community consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I propose making the changes outlined in Thomas' answer (preferably with Robert's interstitial page) without additional months or years of bickering, arguing, and delays from the CM team.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community at large already has a negative opinion of the tangible effects that the CM team provides: for reference, just take a stroll through [Meta.SE][4] at all the ignored and abandoned proposals. Or our own meta. We have some vocal users who [just want some simple changes to increase quality][5]. Be the CM that changes this perception _and get this change moving_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;N.B. as Durron mentions in the comments, this slow pace and the perception of poor communication has directly lead to the exodus of multiple active users who brought a lot of value to the site via community moderation and answering questions. This community needs change and quickly if it will stop the exodus and possibly even bring some users back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7935&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8054&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8056&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8103" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25406" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8113" RevisionGUID="540922dc-79cd-4365-8158-a74db4dbc2b0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think Robert and Thomas both make excellent points and we should heed their advice, but I would like to focus on something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On March 10, 2016, Rachel asked the question that set this whole thing off: [(4 years later) Dear Stack Exchange: can we change our site name?][1] On May 23, [Ana answered the question][2]. _Two and a half months later, a CM finally responded_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The day after Ana answered the question, Thomas asked [New Site Name and Scope Proposals][3] (May 24). I think it was actually more like hours later, but I am going off of the date stamps on the posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had four weeks to discuss this topic before a promised CM response, but it took until July 21. That is almost two months to receive any meaningful feedback from the CM team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actions speak louder than words. We have already discussed this topic to death. We already have community consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I propose making the changes outlined in Thomas' answer (preferably with Robert's interstitial page) without additional months or years of bickering, arguing, and delays from the CM team.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community at large already has a negative opinion of the tangible effects that the CM team provides: for reference, just take a stroll through [Meta.SE][4] at all the ignored and abandoned proposals. Or our own meta. We have some vocal users who [just want some simple changes to increase quality][5]. Be the CM that changes this perception _and get this change moving_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;N.B. as Durron mentions in the comments, this slow pace and the perception of poor communication has directly lead to the exodus of multiple active users who brought a lot of value to the site via community moderation and answering questions. This community needs change and quickly if it will stop the exodus and possibly even bring some users back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7935&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8054&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8056&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8103" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25407" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8151" RevisionGUID="e8d1ccad-0208-4956-a53a-dcc6e1990ba2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:08.427" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am currently reading [the codeless code](http://thecodelesscode.com/), and have trouble understanding a particular [case](http://thecodelesscode.com/case/178). In particular which bad practice is pointed out in the last paragraph.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the fables and koans are all about good practice, corporate software dev culture, and other topics directly tied to software devellopment, I was tempted to ask help understanding what bad practice is pointed at in that fable.  &#xD;&#xA;But at the same time, if that particular question was asked in such a manner to be answerable and on topic, it could make a really bad precedent and bring up a lot of people asking help understanding a blog post [(or worse - twitter) post](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7182/what-goes-on-programmers-se-a-guide-for-stack-overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the [help about on topic question](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), it would be (arguably) in one or more of the &quot;do ask&quot;, and not in any &quot;don't ask&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    software requirements  &#xD;&#xA;    [x]    software architecture and design  &#xD;&#xA;    [x]    algorithm and data structure concepts  &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    quality assurance and testing  &#xD;&#xA;    [x]    development methodologies and processes  &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    software configuration management  &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    software engineering management  &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    software licensing  &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (ask on The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    understanding, writing, or debugging code (check out Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    where to find a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    career or education advice, salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*As a side note, if the answer is &quot;it is off topic&quot;, which I think it will be, I ll just ask for help in the chat*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25408" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8151" RevisionGUID="f537edeb-bc13-4a63-a250-eec18d4fc462" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am currently reading [the codeless code](http://thecodelesscode.com/), and have trouble understanding a particular [case](http://thecodelesscode.com/case/178). In particular which bad practice is pointed out in the last paragraph.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the fables and koans are all about good practice, corporate software dev culture, and other topics directly tied to software devellopment, I was tempted to ask help understanding what bad practice is pointed at in that fable.  &#xD;&#xA;But at the same time, if that particular question was asked in such a manner to be answerable and on topic, it could make a really bad precedent and bring up a lot of people asking help understanding a blog post [(or worse - twitter) post](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7182/what-goes-on-programmers-se-a-guide-for-stack-overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the [help about on topic question](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), it would be (arguably) in one or more of the &quot;do ask&quot;, and not in any &quot;don't ask&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    software requirements  &#xD;&#xA;    [x]    software architecture and design  &#xD;&#xA;    [x]    algorithm and data structure concepts  &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    quality assurance and testing  &#xD;&#xA;    [x]    development methodologies and processes  &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    software configuration management  &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    software engineering management  &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    software licensing  &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (ask on The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    understanding, writing, or debugging code (check out Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    where to find a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    career or education advice, salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*As a side note, if the answer is &quot;it is off topic&quot;, which I think it will be, I ll just ask for help in the chat*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25409" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7770" RevisionGUID="3c632d4a-d805-41db-86c4-80dc2c049d83" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**TL;DR** Can the system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently I've seen notes from Stack Exchange staff about how it would be nice if site would allow for broader, softer kind questions. This was [said by Robert Cartaino here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7650/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The idea that there are hordes of people just waiting flood the site for want of a single precedent was one of those things we worried about before we had anything to back it up. But if you haven't noticed, Stack Exchange has moved on from a lot of those old adages foretelling of widespread doom in ways that simply never materialized in actual use... _every_ question must have exactly one absolutely factual answer. ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and [by Jon Ericson here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7761/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Given quality of users on this site, there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, the system makes it difficult (I would say, unnecessarily difficult) to produce and maintain quality content in questions with many answers. It doesn't provide any means to make it easier and some features even tend to incentivize low quality content in questions of this kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current UI doesn't offer any means to help answerers and readers find / avoid repeating what was stated before. Combined with being very easy to post an answer, this leads to useless answers that don't add anything over what was posted before. This is noticeable even in questions with brief answers which are easy to check ([example](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/271158/839601)) and when answers are lengthy, things become even worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This penalizes web search visitors, forcing them to read same points over and over and over again. Letting repetitive answers proliferate is a step toward old-fashioned &quot;forums&quot;, and quite a substantial one I think.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particular feature that essentially encourages low quality content is Hot Network Questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To set the record straight for readers not familiar with its purpose - it is established pretty firmly and it has nothing to do with content quality. The feature is there only to show network wide audience entertaining / interesting questions. If you're interested, refer MSE for more details on that: [What is the Goal of “Hot Network Questions”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per se, entertainment aspect of HNQ looks pretty acceptable and I don't think it should necessarily be that it makes a critical obstacle in maintaining quality content. Thing is though, as implemented currently... it really does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;HNQ, the way it is now, make maintaining quality content cumbersome and painful. Problems with content quality in hot questions are well known for a long time ([1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;), [2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;'Answers quality in hot questions'&quot;)), and it keeps happening here and now, see for example https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over years, Stack Exchange tried various ways to handle questions with multiple answers but none of these seemed to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Jeff Atwood's warning](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/86895/165773) was probably the first one,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Did you read through all the existing answers first to make sure your answer will be contributing something new?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All I can say about it is that it doesn't work, has never worked and is unlikely to ever work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another thing they tried was automatic conversion to community wiki when there are many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This worked... sorta, in the sense that it made it easier to downvote low quality answers (without incurring rep penalty) and removed incentive to flood popular questions with answers in a (frankly, quite realistic) hope to gain a bit of rep with a random upvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this trick is, it had some _very_ ugly side effects due to involved rep denial from users providing quality content and in the end it was [deservedly discarded](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228940/165773). Thing is though, nothing was done to compensate loss of features used to counter issues in questions with many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, there's standard rhetoric about voting down low quality answers but tell me, how many users can afford rep loss of voting this way, say, 5-10 of total 20 non-CW answers in a question? how many of them can afford doing this every month? every week? And if you additionally consider [&quot;sympathy upvotes&quot;](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/311408/839601 &quot;what's this&quot;) frequently happening to such answers in popular questions (each worth more than 4 votes down rep wise), this starts looking like a wishful thinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another approach that was tried about two years ago is randomizing hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seemed to work at first but as time passed by it revealed signs of inability to scale. Shuffling 100 hot questions to 100K site visitors works, shuffling same amount to 1 million will break and essentially return us back to old known issues with &quot;snowball effect&quot; when questions stick in the list solely because they were advertised there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Somewhere along the way they implemented special adjustment for Stack Overflow questions, which strongly pushes these from hot list after 7 hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to work, in the sense that there aren't very loud complaints about hot questions at MSO anymore (like it was in the past with [&quot;croissants&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/190106/165773)). Still, this doesn't resolve problems at other sites. And still, even SO is having garbage answers problem in questions that acquire popularity and high views organically, not via hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Yet another feature intended to help control answers quality is question protection, which makes it impossible to answer for users having less than 10 on-site reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By design, protection is intended to handle only cases of extreme abuse. It doesn't provide any means against low quality answers posted by users with over 10 rep. Also, due to some implementation specifics, even very limited functionality it offers frequently turns out useless in hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Can the system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25410" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8184" RevisionGUID="69770e1f-5a68-44e6-9d7d-f1c21abccdd5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:08.427" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Chat Transcript: [New Site Name discussion Sep 9, 2016](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/new-site-name-discussion-sep-9-2016)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previous Discussion: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8114/follow-up-2-new-site-name-and-scope-proposals?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ana stopped by (Shog was not available today), and maple_shaft was around. Here's a summary of what we talked about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ana looked at [the only up-voted proposal last week that didn't include the term &quot;SDLC&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8156/4). Although it was a good proposal, the use of the term &quot;SDLC&quot; was the thing that got everyone involved in this discussion onto the same page in terms of what this community truly represents in terms of who we are and what we offer. We'll be sticking with the taglines that we came up with last time going forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We then took a good, hard look at the bullets that describe what is on-topic. It seems 4 is the go-to number, and we managed to get it down to four:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - requirements, architecture, and design &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance and testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The word &quot;software&quot; was dropped. On a site named Software Engineering, it should be pretty clear that questions should be about software development. It just added a little extra verbosity that should be apparent to users who are reading the page - it will be in the URL and the logo.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We brought in the &quot;development methods and practices&quot; to better advertise that these topics are on-topic. The first tag that falls into this category is [tag:agile], which is our 22nd most popular tag. Since there isn't a whole lot of visibility into this category of questions when you hit up the homepage or at the top of the list of tags, we felt that it was important to include.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also combined &quot;requirements&quot; into &quot;architecture and design&quot; to form &quot;requirements, architecture, and design&quot;. These are closely related topics. There are many architectural and design questions, but it's important to recognize and advertise other topics, like [tag:requirements], [tag:requirements-management], [tag:user-story], [tag:use-case], and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest change is that we eliminated the line item for &quot;algorithms and data structures&quot;. But this doesn't mean that these questions are off-topic, because they aren't. [I had a little back-and-forth discussion with maple_shaft][1], and since the SE folks really wanted 4 items, we felt that the type of questions that we want here are sufficiently captured under the &quot;design&quot; portion that we call out in the Help Center, but also the existing questions that can be used as a good example.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please leave any further comments in here. They will be reviewed and discussed when Ana (and maybe Shog) come back next week.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/32213588#32213588" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25411" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8184" RevisionGUID="236a56b8-979b-4c26-9d05-0761ea24dac3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Chat Transcript: [New Site Name discussion Sep 9, 2016](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/new-site-name-discussion-sep-9-2016)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previous Discussion: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8114/follow-up-2-new-site-name-and-scope-proposals?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ana stopped by (Shog was not available today), and maple_shaft was around. Here's a summary of what we talked about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ana looked at [the only up-voted proposal last week that didn't include the term &quot;SDLC&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8156/4). Although it was a good proposal, the use of the term &quot;SDLC&quot; was the thing that got everyone involved in this discussion onto the same page in terms of what this community truly represents in terms of who we are and what we offer. We'll be sticking with the taglines that we came up with last time going forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We then took a good, hard look at the bullets that describe what is on-topic. It seems 4 is the go-to number, and we managed to get it down to four:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - requirements, architecture, and design &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance and testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The word &quot;software&quot; was dropped. On a site named Software Engineering, it should be pretty clear that questions should be about software development. It just added a little extra verbosity that should be apparent to users who are reading the page - it will be in the URL and the logo.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We brought in the &quot;development methods and practices&quot; to better advertise that these topics are on-topic. The first tag that falls into this category is [tag:agile], which is our 22nd most popular tag. Since there isn't a whole lot of visibility into this category of questions when you hit up the homepage or at the top of the list of tags, we felt that it was important to include.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also combined &quot;requirements&quot; into &quot;architecture and design&quot; to form &quot;requirements, architecture, and design&quot;. These are closely related topics. There are many architectural and design questions, but it's important to recognize and advertise other topics, like [tag:requirements], [tag:requirements-management], [tag:user-story], [tag:use-case], and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest change is that we eliminated the line item for &quot;algorithms and data structures&quot;. But this doesn't mean that these questions are off-topic, because they aren't. [I had a little back-and-forth discussion with maple_shaft][1], and since the SE folks really wanted 4 items, we felt that the type of questions that we want here are sufficiently captured under the &quot;design&quot; portion that we call out in the Help Center, but also the existing questions that can be used as a good example.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please leave any further comments in here. They will be reviewed and discussed when Ana (and maybe Shog) come back next week.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/32213588#32213588" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25412" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7789" RevisionGUID="fe1fc7ae-4c69-4682-a2bf-ae36ab2b14f3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Done. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I kept [tag:client-server] as the master tag, since it's the [more common term][1]. Also, Stack Overflow has the [same mapping][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks for bringing this to our attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7788/server-client-server-client-server-lets-avoid-infinite-recursions#comment23609_7788&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/tags/client-server/synonyms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25413" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8186" RevisionGUID="e4e16761-6b60-4c5d-b06c-51a924a5c6bf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:08.427" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**What's taking so long?** Why is this process stalled? Let's do some software engineering here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Hypothesis 1:** The development tools, methods, and processes are ill-fitting. I'm not into SE's back-end community tools so I may be missing key parts, but I see occasional promoted &quot;New Site Name&quot; questions and mentions of someone stopping by somewhere. This is not an effective way to form a team, clarify the problem, collect design ideas and ways to test if they work, do the tests, run it by the community, and decide.  &#xD;&#xA;    How many community members have contributed ideas or feedback on the proposal, or even seen the proposed SDLC tagline (that brings to mind Waterfall-model big project failures)?  &#xD;&#xA;    People are now so frustrated with the stall that they just want to launch a name change and hope it works (Waterfall style) and maybe measure the impact later.&#xD;&#xA;* **Hypothesis 2:** There's no evidence that the proposal will help, some risk that it will hurt, and it entails a large rebranding impact on the community that can't be done often without losing people. There's no need for a long discussion. Opinions are not evidence. A little evidence goes a long way and testing can be quick and cheap. [Suggestion below.]  &#xD;&#xA;    The last time I did a usability test for an open-source project, we developers had brainstormed icons for a heavily used part of a web site so people could drag a web link icon to their home screen for fast access. I did the test in one afternoon, showing the designs to ~8 people. The results were stark: None of the designs got the idea across and nobody thought of that part of the web site as a separate thing. [If y'all ever get into a UI design debate, a usability test does wonders.]  &#xD;&#xA;    The Stack Exchange folks ought to have usability testers and ways to gather test subjects. If not, then we're really pushing uphill here. If they do, then it's surprising that each site's &quot;what's in scope&quot; bullet items are buried behind many steps and an animation.&#xD;&#xA;* **Hypothesis 3:** The responsibilities are unclear. @ThomasOwens and others are pushing but action requires SE. Are @Ana and @Shog9 from SE? What does SE need to move forwards? Confidence in a proposed solution? I can see why it's important to do a single rebranding with site name, tagline, and in-scope bullets since you can't get broad attention often, but is it really necessary to continue tuning the bullets before launching the new name? Do you have evidence that 4 bullets is the most that people will read? Does that change if you put the bullets at the top of the page rather than within an animation halfway down the page?&#xD;&#xA;* **Hypothesis 4:** Maybe nobody has yet come up with an adequate proposal. Maybe there isn't one within the constraints, that is, without fixing SE design problems like how hidden the site description is. Maybe off-topic questions can be avoided only by coordinated moderator action. Maybe people asking questions look instead at high-voted questions to judge if this is a good place to ask their question. That would require a different solution like, say, reviewing high-voted questions, attaching fitting tags from the proposed 4 bullet points, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion: State the goal** (requirements, such as *&quot;50% fewer programming-in-the-small off-topic questions&quot;*) and **test which proposals accomplish the goal.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Measure rather than debate guesses (hypotheses).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A usability test needn't be difficult, expensive, or slow. E.g.:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* find a wide variety of people who've asked fitting and non-fitting questions on this site,&#xD;&#xA;* show them the proposed site name, tagline, and 4-bullet description,&#xD;&#xA;* ask them which of various sample questions seem *in scope* vs. *out of scope*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name &quot;Software Engineering&quot; fits for me but maybe the people asking SO-like questions consider it just a synonym for &quot;building software&quot; (as @ricksmt noted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The proposed bullets make sense although they don't mention the deeper points of using principles to engineer a success and evaluating success (qualities like safety and reliability).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It helps to test more than one proposal. There's a [&quot;draft 3&quot; alternative at the end of a previous answer][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8156/122484" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25414" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8186" RevisionGUID="73ff248f-4042-4c26-b0ff-0998bb249b92" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**What's taking so long?** Why is this process stalled? Let's do some software engineering here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Hypothesis 1:** The development tools, methods, and processes are ill-fitting. I'm not into SE's back-end community tools so I may be missing key parts, but I see occasional promoted &quot;New Site Name&quot; questions and mentions of someone stopping by somewhere. This is not an effective way to form a team, clarify the problem, collect design ideas and ways to test if they work, do the tests, run it by the community, and decide.  &#xD;&#xA;    How many community members have contributed ideas or feedback on the proposal, or even seen the proposed SDLC tagline (that brings to mind Waterfall-model big project failures)?  &#xD;&#xA;    People are now so frustrated with the stall that they just want to launch a name change and hope it works (Waterfall style) and maybe measure the impact later.&#xD;&#xA;* **Hypothesis 2:** There's no evidence that the proposal will help, some risk that it will hurt, and it entails a large rebranding impact on the community that can't be done often without losing people. There's no need for a long discussion. Opinions are not evidence. A little evidence goes a long way and testing can be quick and cheap. [Suggestion below.]  &#xD;&#xA;    The last time I did a usability test for an open-source project, we developers had brainstormed icons for a heavily used part of a web site so people could drag a web link icon to their home screen for fast access. I did the test in one afternoon, showing the designs to ~8 people. The results were stark: None of the designs got the idea across and nobody thought of that part of the web site as a separate thing. [If y'all ever get into a UI design debate, a usability test does wonders.]  &#xD;&#xA;    The Stack Exchange folks ought to have usability testers and ways to gather test subjects. If not, then we're really pushing uphill here. If they do, then it's surprising that each site's &quot;what's in scope&quot; bullet items are buried behind many steps and an animation.&#xD;&#xA;* **Hypothesis 3:** The responsibilities are unclear. @ThomasOwens and others are pushing but action requires SE. Are @Ana and @Shog9 from SE? What does SE need to move forwards? Confidence in a proposed solution? I can see why it's important to do a single rebranding with site name, tagline, and in-scope bullets since you can't get broad attention often, but is it really necessary to continue tuning the bullets before launching the new name? Do you have evidence that 4 bullets is the most that people will read? Does that change if you put the bullets at the top of the page rather than within an animation halfway down the page?&#xD;&#xA;* **Hypothesis 4:** Maybe nobody has yet come up with an adequate proposal. Maybe there isn't one within the constraints, that is, without fixing SE design problems like how hidden the site description is. Maybe off-topic questions can be avoided only by coordinated moderator action. Maybe people asking questions look instead at high-voted questions to judge if this is a good place to ask their question. That would require a different solution like, say, reviewing high-voted questions, attaching fitting tags from the proposed 4 bullet points, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion: State the goal** (requirements, such as *&quot;50% fewer programming-in-the-small off-topic questions&quot;*) and **test which proposals accomplish the goal.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Measure rather than debate guesses (hypotheses).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A usability test needn't be difficult, expensive, or slow. E.g.:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* find a wide variety of people who've asked fitting and non-fitting questions on this site,&#xD;&#xA;* show them the proposed site name, tagline, and 4-bullet description,&#xD;&#xA;* ask them which of various sample questions seem *in scope* vs. *out of scope*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name &quot;Software Engineering&quot; fits for me but maybe the people asking SO-like questions consider it just a synonym for &quot;building software&quot; (as @ricksmt noted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The proposed bullets make sense although they don't mention the deeper points of using principles to engineer a success and evaluating success (qualities like safety and reliability).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It helps to test more than one proposal. There's a [&quot;draft 3&quot; alternative at the end of a previous answer][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8156/122484" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25415" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7808" RevisionGUID="077006a0-41f3-49c8-ae43-1fe0512b60d7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I can not read their minds but from what I see, the only problem this site really has is a terrible flood of debugging / blatantly off-topic questions dumped by users who are banned or warned or simply scared off of Stack Overflow (_my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level_, [remember?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7610/31260))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given above, it is only natural to assume that SE team looks for a cheap way to handle this, to make getting rid of this spam easier - and what can be cheaper than simply tuning close limit setting (to a value that was already tried and tested in the past, which makes it even easier).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing to worry about in there was if it could have some undesired side effects... and, well, there _were_ side effects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These talks about trust / distrust and dreams on how meta visitors would suddenly reform from reading that post about experiment, I honestly can't take them seriously. Balance between tightening and broadening site scope is maintained by core community, not by management slogans.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And thing is, community over here _could_ maintain the balance if site wasn't flooded by debugging spam. There are at least 8-10 members of core community who would be happy to vote reopen stuff &quot;unfairly&quot; closed by folks like you and me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the scale of our site, this would be more than enough to maintain a healthy balance without any management intervention. The only reason why this doesn't happen is flood of blatant garbage that buries questions worthy of wider community attention, like this bunch dropped at us today:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;How to overcome the stack overflow problem?&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Help: not able to compile C++ code&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Injecting a java script to an iframe&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Multiple viewpagers in one fragment&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;How do I increment a variable each time a program runs in C++?&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Rewrite code snippet using ternary operators&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Open cv help i m learnig open cv using youtube i get error when i try to run my frist program pls help&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Android 6.0.1 couldn't enable wifi hotspot programmatically&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the experiment they were probably hoping that lowering bar for reopening will make it easier for the other part of core community to keep the prior balance. This didn't happen, and I think the reason is just the same. Folks who could do this simply can't find questions they would vote on because these are buried under heaps of spam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note it's the third time I use the word _spam_, and it's intentional. I've seen Wikipedia defining spam as &quot;unsolicited electronic message&quot;, and this fits here. It's easy even to a total outsider to see how much of the questions are blatantly off-topic (no matter how broadly one understands site topics).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If my understanding is correct, then there's nothing for SE to expect of us, because spam is not something we, as community, can control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is also unlikely that ignoring what's going on here is an option for them. As of now, site front page says it loud and clear: &quot;hey, SE team can't control spam&quot; - that's sort of damaging their reputation of top Q&amp;A system in the world.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Few years ago, they could probably attempt to close the site, under the cover that it has failed to grow. But their current official position changed, and now they claim that smaller sites can be okay without exploding to SO scale (why wouldn't they, given that smaller sites combined started bringing more views than Stack Overflow). As a result, closing would look solely like giving up to spam.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25416" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8201" RevisionGUID="af6025fd-008d-447b-8512-c34a8e4baf9c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:08.427" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think your message is fine, it is polite and and contains useful information, especially for new users. IMHO it is a much better reaction than just downvoting and closing without any comment, or these rude or terse comments we saw in the past and [discussed here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I just tried to use a similar comment, first thing I noted is: this fits only to a certain kind of low-quality questions. For example, if someone blatantly asks for a website or book or other 3rd party resource, it is pretty pointless to tell him he should try it on another SE site. For these kind of questions, I think a downvote, a close vote, and just no comment is probably appropriate. The automatically displayer text the asker will be shown after his question is closed is IMHO self-explanatory enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nevertheless, I think the general idea is fine: having some precanned, polite text template or maybe templates for different issues, where we just need to fill out the name of the asker, can help to keep a better balance between removing the crap from the site as quickly as possible on one hand, but also staying professional and friendly to newcomers on the other hand. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like yours, but I would try to improve the wording in some details slightly, and I think adding a personal &quot;Hi User&quot; gives a much better impression to the asker. So here is my attempt to improve your text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi XYZ, welcome to Programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [This site list](http://stackexchange.com/sites) may help you to find out where [your topic fits best](http://goo.gl/YoQVd0). Please search existing answers first. If you do not find one which matches your issue, feel free to take it to an appropriate site. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Hi XYZ, welcome to Programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [This site list](http://stackexchange.com/sites) may help you to find out where [your topic fits best](http://goo.gl/YoQVd0). Please search existing answers first. If you do not find one which matches your issue, feel free to take it to an appropriate site. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Unfortunately, I needed to use an URL shortener to come around the maximum text size limit of comments, I hope that does not break any site rules).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, I am aware filling out the user name will slow down the process of making the comment a little bit, since you cannot just copy-paste the text blindly into the comment form. But it will (hopefully) give the reader a better impression that you treat him like a real person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7943/how-to-improve-our-style-for-reacting-on-low-quality-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25417" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8201" RevisionGUID="5bc898a4-f66a-4958-a27c-d40bcb352847" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.613" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think your message is fine, it is polite and and contains useful information, especially for new users. IMHO it is a much better reaction than just downvoting and closing without any comment, or these rude or terse comments we saw in the past and [discussed here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I just tried to use a similar comment, first thing I noted is: this fits only to a certain kind of low-quality questions. For example, if someone blatantly asks for a website or book or other 3rd party resource, it is pretty pointless to tell him he should try it on another SE site. For these kind of questions, I think a downvote, a close vote, and just no comment is probably appropriate. The automatically displayer text the asker will be shown after his question is closed is IMHO self-explanatory enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nevertheless, I think the general idea is fine: having some precanned, polite text template or maybe templates for different issues, where we just need to fill out the name of the asker, can help to keep a better balance between removing the crap from the site as quickly as possible on one hand, but also staying professional and friendly to newcomers on the other hand. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like yours, but I would try to improve the wording in some details slightly, and I think adding a personal &quot;Hi User&quot; gives a much better impression to the asker. So here is my attempt to improve your text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi XYZ, welcome to Programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [This site list](http://stackexchange.com/sites) may help you to find out where [your topic fits best](http://goo.gl/YoQVd0). Please search existing answers first. If you do not find one which matches your issue, feel free to take it to an appropriate site. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Hi XYZ, welcome to Programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [This site list](http://stackexchange.com/sites) may help you to find out where [your topic fits best](http://goo.gl/YoQVd0). Please search existing answers first. If you do not find one which matches your issue, feel free to take it to an appropriate site. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Unfortunately, I needed to use an URL shortener to come around the maximum text size limit of comments, I hope that does not break any site rules).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, I am aware filling out the user name will slow down the process of making the comment a little bit, since you cannot just copy-paste the text blindly into the comment form. But it will (hopefully) give the reader a better impression that you treat him like a real person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7943/how-to-improve-our-style-for-reacting-on-low-quality-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25418" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7860" RevisionGUID="3a4cfac2-7e19-4bcd-b1c6-c9442dced4c8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Please merge tag [tag:life-cycle] (22 questions) into [tag:sdlc] (35), and make them synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only [tag:sdlc] tag has wiki, but questions in both appear to be about [software development lifecycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Preference for master tag is because it is less ambiguous (life-cycle appears to be sometimes (mis)used for questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5946/what-is-sdlc-tag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25421" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7873" RevisionGUID="9f69eccc-4a79-417d-b753-f1d66745f6df" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Looking at [this &quot;why is it? &quot;question][1] I see it has 1 close vote and a bounty. I think its too vague to be a good question so I thought I'd give it a close vote - but when I attempted to do so, it was refused with the response &quot;this question has an open bounty and cannot be closed&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firstly, I'm sure questions could be closed even with bounty - [this][2] suggests that the bounty would be refunded. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, its already got a close vote - did this occur before the bounty was placed, in which case - bounties can be used as a way to keep rubbish questions open past the initial time that they usually get closing attention and thus end up staying open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is this a new thing, or should bounties not prevent closure?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/309607/why-arent-there-more-multi-natural-language-programming-languages&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5580/what-happens-to-a-bounty-when-a-question-is-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25422" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7875" RevisionGUID="35316ff6-7744-4982-8c10-cfdcaddb5111" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;p&gt;We’d love to help you. To &lt;b&gt;improve your chances&lt;/b&gt; of getting an answer, here are some tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;###STOP!&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is primarily about *software design.* We don't do code troubleshooting here, so if your question is about how to fix your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&quot;&gt;Search&lt;/a&gt;, and research&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and keep track of what you find. Even if you don't find a useful answer elsewhere on the site, including links to related questions that *haven't* helped can help others in understanding how your question is different from the rest. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind readers (other than you) _have_ to be able to understand your situation. They don't know what you've researched, tried, or the details driving your problem. No one here can read your mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Write a title that summarizes the specific problem &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The title is the first thing potential answerers will see, and if your title isn't interesting, they won't read the rest. So *make it count:*&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;- **Pretend you're talking to a busy colleague** and have to sum up your entire question in one sentence: what details can you include that will help someone identify and solve your problem? Include any error messages, key APIs, or unusual circumstances that make your question different from similar questions already on the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Spelling, grammar and punctuation are important!** Remember, this is the first part of your question others will see - you want to make a good impression. If you're not comfortable writing in English, ask a friend to proof-read it for you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you're having trouble summarizing the problem, **write the title *last*** - sometimes writing the rest of the question first can make it easier to describe the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Make sure it is **relevant to the actual problem** you are having. Many times people will read the title and answer that question without reading the rest of the body of the question. If the title and body of the question don't match, it is likely that the answers that you get will be confused and go off on tangents that aren't ultimately helpful to solving the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- On floating point errors...&#xD;&#xA;  - **Bad:** C# Math Confusion&#xD;&#xA;  - **Good:** Why does using float instead of int give me different results when all of my inputs are integers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- On redirecting in php&#xD;&#xA;  - **Bad:** [php] session doubt&#xD;&#xA;  - **Good:** How can I redirect users to different pages based on session data in PHP?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- On flow control and equality&#xD;&#xA;  - **Bad:** android if else problems&#xD;&#xA;  - **Good:** Why does str == &quot;value&quot; evaluate to false when str is set to &quot;value&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Introduce the problem before you post any code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the body of your question, start by expanding on the summary you put in the title. Explain how you encountered the problem you're trying to solve, and any difficulties that have prevented you from solving it yourself. The first paragraph in your question is the second thing most readers will see, so make it as engaging and informative as possible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Help others reproduce the problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many Programmers.SE questions don't significantly benefit from including code. But if your problem is *with* code you've written, you should include some. But **don't just copy in your entire program!** Not only is this likely to get you in trouble if you're posting your employer's code, it likely includes a lot of irrelevant details that readers will need to ignore when trying to reproduce the problem. Here are some guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;- Include just enough code to allow others to describe the design. For help with this, read [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;- If it is possible to create a live example of the problem that you can *link* to (for example, on http://sqlfiddle.com/ or http://jsbin.com/) then do so - but also include the code in your question itself. Not everyone can access external sites, and the links may break over time. &#xD;&#xA;- Remember, ***we don't fix broken code here.***  Questions should be focused on design, not implementation.  If your question is about your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Include all relevant tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to include a tag for the language, library, and specific API your question relates to. If you start typing in the tags field, the system will suggest tags that match what you've typed - be sure and read the descriptions given for them to make sure they're relevant to the question you're asking! See also: [What are tags, and how should I use them?](/help/tagging)&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;##Proof-read before posting!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that you're ready to ask your question, take a deep breath and read through it from start to finish. Pretend you're seeing it for the first time: *does it make sense?* Try reproducing the problem yourself, in a fresh environment and make sure you can do so using only the information included in your question. Add any details you missed and read through it again. Now is a good time to make sure that your title still describes the problem!&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;##Post the question and respond to feedback&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you post, leave the question open in your browser for a bit, and see if anyone comments. If you missed an obvious piece of information, be ready to respond by editing your question to include it. If someone posts an answer, be ready to try it out and provide feedback!&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;##Look for help asking for help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In spite of all your efforts, you may find your questions poorly-received. Don't despair! Learning to ask a good question is a worthy pursuit, and not one you'll master overnight. Here are some additional resources that you may find useful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Writing the perfect question](http://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Open letter to students with homework problems](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to debug small programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Meta discussions on asking questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/faq)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to ask questions the smart way](http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) &amp;mdash; long but good advice." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25423" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7916" RevisionGUID="9f752011-acfa-436d-b5b0-64ff999c67e1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some time back Doc asked https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6371/how-can-we-encourage-people-to-read-the-faq-before-asking-their-first-question which is a really good question and a fairly consistent challenge to get people to ask questions on the site they should be (we get a significant number of debugging questions for example).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's the suggestion (that Robert Harvey inspired) put into a post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That &quot;Welcome (back) to the site&quot; banner that shows up when you join a new site? That one that you can dismiss with a click.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have a link to help/on-topic if the user visits the site and has all of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* less than two up voted questions&#xD;&#xA;* less than 100 reputation on site (akin to how protection does it with 10 rep)&#xD;&#xA;* lacks the &quot;informed&quot; badge (the one you get by reading the tour)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, a link at the top of the page. Point them clearly and succinctly to the help center. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have no illusions that this will prevent all the off topic questions. However, even a slight reduction in the &quot;this is the completely wrong site for this question&quot; influx of new questions that we get can help reduce the initial perception of going into a new question of &quot;this question is probably off topic.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25424" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7930" RevisionGUID="e53bf656-7105-4be5-bcd4-0f3c51da3e6b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Over in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away/7907#7907 I posted this list and haven't gotten a satisfactory response yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the site's scope is at issue, then some percentage of these questions should instead be open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these are just poorly asked questions that need some moderate editing, then there is an army of people who say they should be open that can help cultivate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without identifying which questions we need to consider how the scope is wrong rather than the question doesn't fit we are simply talking in circles around each other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's the list.  Where the post has been deleted (at the moment of posting this question), the *entire* text of the question is here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311935/running-net-desktop-application-on-linux (-3, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question is a software recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; We need to develop a desktop application that would run on both Windows and Linux machines, preferably with the same code base or minimal code changes. I know Mono is an option, but I read that Mono Win Forms implementation is suitable only for very simple applications. I guess I cannot make the app using the newly announced cross-platform &quot;.NET Core&quot; either, as apparently it does not support client/desktop apps. So apart from Mono, is there any other option to create a cross-platform desktop application for Windows and Linux?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311931/need-help-to-make-advance-search-in-php-website-project (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A bit hard to determine (the close vote is for unclear). It looks like this might be too broad too. Its a student trying to do some project that isn't well articulated.  The answers to it are all over the place. The OP hasn't been back since the original post of the question to help clarify.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311930/pointers-and-hexadecimal (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is an implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; So I want to make a pointer of chars. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; char *ptr = 0x239038F2  &lt;---- this is my attempt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; where I can iterate through each char.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; So ptr would give me 0x23&#xD;&#xA;ptr++ would give me 0x90&#xD;&#xA;ptr++ would give me 0x38&#xD;&#xA;and finally ptr++ would give me 0xF2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311928/how-do-i-implement-material-style-account-switcher (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   This is a far too broad &quot;how do I do this&quot; type question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311925/structure-of-an-abstract-for-a-conference-talk-or-workshop (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question has nothing to do with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311923/extraordinary-software-written-in-javascript (-8, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a too broad question asking for a list of all the ways that Javascript can be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; JavaScript is usually used for either web frontends or backends (JavaScript). What other extraordinay things can be done with JavaScript?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311921/accepting-express-js-post-requests-in-a-chrome-app (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for issues with writing something in Chrome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311918/how-to-display-a-non-interactive-message-on-a-jframe (-2, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for how to do something in Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311914/running-ruby-commands-does-nothing (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a problem running some third party ruby software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311913/how-to-break-infinite-loop-in-turtle-graphics-python (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for python.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311910/index-exceeds-matrix-dimension-matlab-hog-features (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for matlab (which was already posted on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311907/wdk-10-and-visual-studio-2015-acting-funny (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This (now deleted between then and now) was closed as unclear. It was an issue with some software installation for a C library.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I installed WDK 10 on my computer, and I tried to build a si and I got the error: An SDK corresponding to WDK version '8.1' was not found. Please install the SDK before building.. I downloaded and installed the Windows 10 SDK, and then tried build again, this time I was getting multiple syntax errors, the following code:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Shows the following errors: fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'ntddk.h': No such file or directory, and multiple intellisense errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        extern &quot;C&quot; {&#xD;&#xA;        #include &lt;ntddk.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        #include &lt;ntdddisk.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        #include &lt;wdf.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        NTSTATUS DriverEntry(IN PDRIVER_OBJECT DriverObject, IN PUNICODE_STRING RegistryPath) {}&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Shows the following errors:&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; `fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'ntddk.h': No such file or directory`, and multiple intellisense errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; How do I fix this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311904/learning-linux-kernel-in-todays-world-would-i-be-better-off-hacking-with-android (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a &quot;what should I learn&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311902/why-do-i-get-an-error-in-the-cpp-file-if-i-make-a-class-template-before-the-cla (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311901/class-as-a-variable-of-another-class (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is another C++ implementation/debugging question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311899/find-availability-software-architecture (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a no effort homework dump.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311897/error-code-c4700-uninitialized-local-variable (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311896/android-file-retriever-application (-4, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted green field question that is asking how to use the IDE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311894/how-do-i-create-a-driver-for-extra-buttons (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rather vague &quot;how do I program buttons on a drawing tablet.&quot;  Aside from being off topic, no information about what drawing tablet it is is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311892/deleting-dynamically-allocated-memory (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        void RemoveDuplicates(Node *head, int size)&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;        Node *tmp = head;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;        while(tmp-&gt;next != NULL)&#xD;&#xA;            {&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            for(int i=0; i&lt;size; i++)&#xD;&#xA;            {&#xD;&#xA;            if(tmp-&gt;data == tmp-&gt;next-&gt;data)&#xD;&#xA;                {&#xD;&#xA;                Node *remove = tmp-&gt;next;&#xD;&#xA;                tmp-&gt;next = remove-&gt;next;&#xD;&#xA;                ***//delete remove;***&#xD;&#xA;                }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            tmp = tmp-&gt;next;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; ok, i wrote this piece of code to remove duplicated nodes in my data structure course, the commented delete operator supposed to keep freeing the memory which the remove pointer is pointed to every loop cycle. it doesn't work, IDE keep segmentation faulting me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; any help?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311891/simplest-way-to-build-an-interactive-website-to-visualize-a-table (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a unclear / too broad &quot;how do I render a table&quot; (there are far too many possible ways to do it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311890/where-and-how-i-can-find-explanations-of-abstractions-and-fancy-stuff-used-in-bu (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rant about large software projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; This question is broad, but I'll try to be concise and to restrict the wideness of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I'm full of hate toward these business hipster programmers, so I won't be formal this time. Sorry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Don't get me wrong, I really want to sort this out, I need to understand how it works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Let's put this in .NET framework only. It's already a good cut down of the range.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    (another 3000 characters)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311888/adobe-illustrator-data-driven-graphics-via-php (-2, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a question about how to implement an AI that Photoshop has in php. I'm not kidding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311886/why-software-releases-must-be-self-regulated (-3, duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a poorly asked duplicate of a question that searching for &quot;Lehman&quot; would have found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311883/sending-computer-screen-video-through-lightning-connector-to-a-iphone (-3, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a &quot;is it possible&quot; feasibility study question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311874/importing-my-class-to-a-given-tester-class (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is an unclear question that might be &quot;how do I debug my code?&quot; but not enough information about it is given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     &gt; In Java I have created a class with a HashMap where I put 13 values. With it's own main it will display the RGB values of the Color Object. The problem is trying to import it to use with a given ColorTest class (which has the MAIN main and cannot be changed); which I can tell from the &quot;NullPointerException&quot; it gives me when trying to create a new instance from my class. I'm still very noob at coding so any help is appreciated!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I have all the code but don't know what/where/how to change it to be used by the tester, and I just don't want to dump all that text unless someone wants to see it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311873/choose-an-application-development-environment-for-the-displaying-monitoring-da (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted too broad question (with a bit of unclear too).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311871/web-design-templates-for-backend-developing (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a tool recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311866/connected-city-problem (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a cross posted (CS) what appears to be homework dump.  It has since been deleted here and a bit large to include - see the [CS.SE version](http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/54031/10159) for its text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311862/logic-of-ap-to-return-number-set-to-bit1-as-an-input-binary (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a block of code without any question asked (a comment of &quot;how does this work?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        public class BitSet1&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;        	public static void main(String[] args)&#xD;&#xA;        	{&#xD;&#xA;        		double num=(Math.pow(2.0,31.0))-1;&#xD;&#xA;    	    	int num1=(int)num;&#xD;&#xA;        		double outnum=num1;&#xD;&#xA;        		int count=0;&#xD;&#xA;        		while(num1&gt;0)&#xD;&#xA;        		{&#xD;&#xA;        			if((num1&amp;1)==1)&#xD;&#xA;    	    		count++;&#xD;&#xA;    	    		num1=num1&gt;&gt;1;&#xD;&#xA;        			}&#xD;&#xA;        		System.out.println(count+&quot; bits sets to 1 in number &quot;+ outnum);&#xD;&#xA;        		}&#xD;&#xA;        	}&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311860/can-you-please-explain-what-this-php-code-below-does (-7, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Someone asking what a given function in php does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I just need the logic behind the statement because the idea of escaping strings doesn't seem to make sense to me. What does this code do ? and why is it escaping strings ?What does this code do ? and why is it escaping strings ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            $BackupRegister=mysqli_real_escape_string($Count,monitorEntry($anticipatedDate,'created'));&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311857/ways-to-send-a-message-to-a-users-phone (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A service request / too broad (how can you send a message to a device)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; What are some ways to send a private message to a user's phone from a separate computer over the internet? Is there any preferred or standard way to do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Some methods I could think of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; - Email: May get buried under other emails. Requires the phone to have internet connectivity. Advantage is that its free and works regardless of device operating system.&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; - SMS: Either costs money (does it?) or you need an SMS gateway, which can not be figured out programmatically (can you?) Advantage is that it works without internet and works regardless of device operating system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311856/periodicity-detection-for-gapped-data (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    An algorithm question that *might* be answerable if sufficient information is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311855/what-is-more-lower-level-click-or-urwid (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &quot;I make web apps using flask so I am tempted to start using click since it's made by the same person but I've seen more info around for urwid? Which one is more lower level?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;    I don't even know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311854/scripting-productivity-and-speed (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     How do you improve your productivity?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I would like to ask what kind of scripts that a software engineer writes to increase his/her productivity. I know some of them could really save time so please share with me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311853/automating-scripting-and-building (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A question about automating the IDE. It is a bit unclear and if it was made clear, would be off topic here (its a tooling problem)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I am working on a project on Visual Studio with C++. So I need to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1) build the solution  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2) click on debug/attach to process  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 3) click on 3 - 4 buttons in the programs to create and load stuff  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 4) type &quot;Run master&quot; in a textfield(in the my program)  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 5) press Enter button.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; After all this steps, then I can start testing my program. My program is desktop application on Windows 10. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I would like to automate the whole process of clicking build right up to before I start testing. &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; And also, I need this script to monitor the status of the build in cases of build failures to stop. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I also need to this script to able to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1) monitor that I click on the correct buttons so that it does not mess up other running programs.  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2) Is there someway of monitoring the changes in UI or the commands are executed or the maybe just the status/state of the program? This is to check that the script does the correct action at the right time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311850/python-functions-and-parameters (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How to type the parameters for python calls (implementation question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Can Python only accept parameters passed to a function that meet a certain criteria  for example,&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;  Accepts as the first parameter a string specifying the data structure to be used &quot;list&quot;, &quot;set&quot; or &quot;dictionary&quot;  only&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, that is the list from the other day. The questions that were being closed or were closed from the 50 most recent questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which questions would ideally be on topic for the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For those questions, what part of the help center is identifying that they are off topic, or is this part of a too zealous closing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I would ***really*** like community managers to chime in on this too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25425" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7934" RevisionGUID="214205e4-4064-4033-a334-c7c6c541abd0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Actions Taken&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion 1** is being advanced by a renewed request for name change, this is being advanced by @Rachel in [Four years later - Can we change our site name?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/four-years-later-can-we-change-our-site-name).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion 2** is being advanced by active community discussion about change in moderation style. This is being advanced by @DocBrown in [How to improve our style for reacting on “low quality questions”?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7943/how-to-improve-our-style-for-reacting-on-low-quality-questions). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also see Arron Hall's discussion about [Can we resuscitate more content?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7947/can-we-resuscitate-more-content).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;___&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is now clear to me that there are two problems with two camps; these are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Improper questions being asked on P.SE; this pertains to users not understanding the site's scope and purpose.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Improper moderation/closing; this pertains to questions being closed too abruptly and with too little communication.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I expect that any solution that looks to resolve one of these and not the other would simply fragment the community. So, I suggest that we move to address both problems simultaneously, with one or more people from each *faction* leading-up a solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion 1. Improve communication of the site's purpose.** &#xD;&#xA;From the results, this can involve creating a site tagline, creating a blurb that is displayed to new users before they can post, or by displaying the site scope next to the ask-question interface. These all require SE involvement so must begin with feature requests for our preferred solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More immediately, *Snowman's* suggestion for a series of Meta Q&amp;As about common question phrasing issues could be implemented. This would be advantageous because the community can do it without SE involvement. It also has the benefit of actively assisting Solution 2.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion 2. Change the self-moderating style**&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest that this is best addressed by those advocating change being given the opportunity to moderate how they wish for a certain period of time once a week. There can then be discussion about improvements that are seen and lessons that can be drawn by the rest of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Survey Results&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Broad support** was expressed in one form or another for all of the **'improve communication' type solutions**; the general conclusion is that all of the options presented would be helpful and the question becomes how much support we will receive from SE regarding feature requests. In fact, the only negative comments on some solutions (such as name change) were motivated by the expectation that SE would not be supportive of the measure rather than by a dislike for the measure itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was also **extensive support** for **changing enforcement / moderation style**. Related to this was the suggestion to update the *'how to write on-topic questions'* related Meta posts to make them more helpful for newcomers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any suggestion of **scope change** was **universally condemned**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;___&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We now have two clearly defined areas for development and active community participation in both areas. Moreover, the two solutions being developed accurately reflect the **entire community**, which greatly improves the likelihood of success. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As such, this question has served its purpose and the poll is now closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25426" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7941" RevisionGUID="6fc82ade-7f7b-4295-8276-fc4f86399d08" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's not the scope that is wrong, it's the name. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I took your exercise [again][1] to demonstrate, and came up with these results: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Programmers.SE : 37/37&#xD;&#xA;* SoftwareDesign.SE : 13/33, with 4 being a Maybe&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While doing this, I noticed there are a lot more implementation questions than there once was. Here are new programmers looking for answers online. They see two major programming Q&amp;A sites, one titled **&quot;StackOverflow&quot;** and another titled **&quot;Programmers&quot;**. Guess which one they are going to click on first every time?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But here's the details about my opinion on the same questions, and if I'd post each question to a site titled `Programmers` vs a site with a title that strongly emphasizes conceptual software design, like `SoftwareDesign`. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am doing this from the point of view of a user whose *only* knowledge of this site is it is a StackExchange Q&amp;A site titled &quot;Programmers&quot; or &quot;SoftwareDesign&quot;, and who doesn't have a strong grasp of what makes a good/bad question for SE or want to make any significant effort in learning the meta for the site since it is not worthwhile time investment to them at the time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311935/running-net-desktop-application-on-linux - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Maybe;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311931/need-help-to-make-advance-search-in-php-website-project (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A bit hard to determine (the close vote is for unclear). It looks like this might be too broad too. Its a student trying to do some project that isn't well articulated.  The answers to it are all over the place. The OP hasn't been back since the original post of the question to help clarify.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Maybe;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311930/pointers-and-hexadecimal (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is an implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311928/how-do-i-implement-material-style-account-switcher (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   This is a far too broad &quot;how do I do this&quot; type question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311925/structure-of-an-abstract-for-a-conference-talk-or-workshop (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question has nothing to do with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311923/extraordinary-software-written-in-javascript (-8, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a too broad question asking for a list of all the ways that Javascript can be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311921/accepting-express-js-post-requests-in-a-chrome-app (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for issues with writing something in Chrome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Maybe;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311918/how-to-display-a-non-interactive-message-on-a-jframe (-2, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for how to do something in Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Maybe;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311914/running-ruby-commands-does-nothing (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a problem running some third party ruby software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311913/how-to-break-infinite-loop-in-turtle-graphics-python (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for python.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311910/index-exceeds-matrix-dimension-matlab-hog-features (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for matlab (which was already posted on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311907/wdk-10-and-visual-studio-2015-acting-funny (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This (now deleted between then and now) was closed as unclear. It was an issue with some software installation for a C library.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311904/learning-linux-kernel-in-todays-world-would-i-be-better-off-hacking-with-android (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a &quot;what should I learn&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311902/why-do-i-get-an-error-in-the-cpp-file-if-i-make-a-class-template-before-the-cla (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311901/class-as-a-variable-of-another-class (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is another C++ implementation/debugging question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311899/find-availability-software-architecture (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a no effort homework dump.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Question cleaned up to ask about equation for finding availbity in software architecture and has been reopened. Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311897/error-code-c4700-uninitialized-local-variable (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311896/android-file-retriever-application (-4, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted green field question that is asking how to use the IDE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311894/how-do-i-create-a-driver-for-extra-buttons (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rather vague &quot;how do I program buttons on a drawing tablet.&quot;  Aside from being off topic, no information about what drawing tablet it is is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311892/deleting-dynamically-allocated-memory (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311891/simplest-way-to-build-an-interactive-website-to-visualize-a-table (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a unclear / too broad &quot;how do I render a table&quot; (there are far too many possible ways to do it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311890/where-and-how-i-can-find-explanations-of-abstractions-and-fancy-stuff-used-in-bu (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rant about large software projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311888/adobe-illustrator-data-driven-graphics-via-php (-2, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a question about how to implement an AI that Photoshop has in php. I'm not kidding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311886/why-software-releases-must-be-self-regulated (-3, duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a poorly asked duplicate of a question that searching for &quot;Lehman&quot; would have found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311883/sending-computer-screen-video-through-lightning-connector-to-a-iphone (-3, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a &quot;is it possible&quot; feasibility study question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311874/importing-my-class-to-a-given-tester-class (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is an unclear question that might be &quot;how do I debug my code?&quot; but not enough information about it is given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311873/choose-an-application-development-environment-for-the-displaying-monitoring-da (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted too broad question (with a bit of unclear too).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311871/web-design-templates-for-backend-developing (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a tool recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311866/connected-city-problem (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a cross posted (CS) what appears to be homework dump.  It has since been deleted here and a bit large to include - see the [CS.SE version](http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/54031/10159) for its text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311862/logic-of-ap-to-return-number-set-to-bit1-as-an-input-binary (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a block of code without any question asked (a comment of &quot;how does this work?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311860/can-you-please-explain-what-this-php-code-below-does (-7, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Someone asking what a given function in php does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311857/ways-to-send-a-message-to-a-users-phone (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A service request / too broad (how can you send a message to a device)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311856/periodicity-detection-for-gapped-data (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    An algorithm question that *might* be answerable if sufficient information is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311855/what-is-more-lower-level-click-or-urwid (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &quot;I make web apps using flask so I am tempted to start using click since it's made by the same person but I've seen more info around for urwid? Which one is more lower level?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;    I don't even know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311854/scripting-productivity-and-speed (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     How do you improve your productivity?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311853/automating-scripting-and-building (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A question about automating the IDE. It is a bit unclear and if it was made clear, would be off topic here (its a tooling problem)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311850/python-functions-and-parameters (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How to type the parameters for python calls (implementation question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And to copy/paste from before :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Keep in mind, this is *my perspective*. Everyone's different. We can't say definitely &quot;yes this would be asked&quot; or &quot;no this wouldn't be asked&quot;. It depends on the question asker.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The point is, a user who only knows *&quot;this is a SE Q&amp;A site titled Programmers&quot;* will most likely have a very different assumption than a user who only knows *&quot;this is a SE Q&amp;A site titled The Whiteboard&quot;* (or Software Concepts, or Software Design Theory, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The term &quot;**Programmers**&quot; is an extremely broad term that could bring to mind a person writing code, a person designing software, a person gathering requirements, a person seeking a new job, etc. But in all cases, it brings to mind *a person*.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; However a term like &quot;**The Whiteboard**&quot; (or SoftwareDesign) gives a first impression of &quot;conceptual software design&quot;, which is more likely to bring to mind designing software, considering architecture, evaluating approaches, etc. It's much more inline with what this site actually is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And as a footnote, I've worked many years now in user-interface design and development. I speak to end-users on a regular basis, and translate their &quot;user-speak&quot; to application designs, taking special care that everything is clear and makes sense *from their point of view*. The discrepancy between the site name and scope and subsequential confusion it causes is extremely clear to me as a major cause of this site's problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know it won't fix everything, but it *will* significantly cut down on the number of off-topic questions that get asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7147/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25427" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7943" RevisionGUID="0eb8d032-bf18-4e9b-8f82-50354bcd0069" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The last week we had seen (again) some discussions here what is &quot;wrong&quot; with this site, why are here so many closed and downvoted questions and why people are interpreting this as &quot;hostility&quot; and &quot;unhelpfulness&quot;. Peter Tòmas Scott [made some kind of survey][1], and his final suggestions were&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Improve communication of the site's purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Change the self-moderating style&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first topic was already adressed [here][2] by an attempt of Rachel to get permission for changing the site's name. My question is: how can we address the second point (which is IMHO the more important one)? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will it improve the sites' perception if we try to improve our means of communication, being more polite, less terse, using the &quot;downvote&quot; button less often against newbies (even when we suggest to close a question), and so on? Let me show you some examples for questions which were closed and/or downvoted in the last 12 hours:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [I add dynamically dropdown and input fields rows using Jquery][3]&#xD;&#xA;2. [reading line from text files in java (netbeans)][4]&#xD;&#xA;3. [What's wrong about thos code][5]&#xD;&#xA;4. [While loops in C# for Windows Forms. I'm trying to loop certain coefficients so that they can keep displaying on certain labels][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we not have a more **polite** comment template for these kind of &quot;fix-my-code&quot; requests?  Like &quot;Hi OP, are you aware that these kind of questions are off-topic on Programmers? ...&quot;.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, these are a new users, can't we just close those questions instead of giving them a ton of additional downvotes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. [Should filenames be relative to their directory name?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, this is primarily opinion-based. But a downvote, and those precanned links? What about enclosing the link into somethink like &quot;Hi XYZ, are you aware that your question is probably too oppionated to let someone give you a good answer, see &lt;link-to-meta&gt; for more information&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. [What should I know to create applications in Phoenix Webframework?][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is IMHO a much better example of how the closing should happen, a comment which was detailed enough to get a &quot;thanks&quot; respond from the OP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. [Registration form with email verification][9]&#xD;&#xA;8. [Integrate between PHP and C program][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comments below those question are fine, and the questions are not yet closed. But the downvotes? The questions are not badly written or expect the reader to have a glass-bowl. And what about a friendly comment like &quot;Hi OP, are you aware that questions of this type are often downvoted or closed on this site if they do not show that the asker did some research effort before&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9. [Rejected by recruitment process on bad code review][11] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as &quot;unclear&quot; **after** it got a long-winded answer with 4 upvotes? Sorry, just because for some of us the question seemed to be unanswerable, others seemed to have a different opinion - and that was obvious at the time of closing. There must be a better way to deal with such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10. [If condition vs variable assignment performance wise][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as a dupe (that is debatable, my close vote would have been for a different reason), but 5 downvotes? The question was clearly written and from a newbie. There must be a better way to handle this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And finally, a more positive one: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;11. [Is it ok if I can't solve a problem when sitting in front of a computer?][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Correctly closed, because this was not programming specific, and surely too opinionated. But it got lots of comments and upvotes before (still those 3 IMHO unneccessary downvotes). So that is IMHO a much more constructive way of closing a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you think about this? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: Here is another one I would like to add for demonstration purposes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  12. [Quartz .net does not work when I inject dependency][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why not use a more friendly comment like &quot;Hi SlashMet, are you aware that we have a strict no-crosspost policy here in the stackexchange network? Please delete one of your doubles, or expect the community to downvote and close both of your questions.&quot; Of course, that question would be closed either because it is a &quot;fix-my-code&quot; request, and it would surely make sense to tell the OP that, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/four-years-later-can-we-change-our-site-name&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312536/i-add-dynamically-dropdown-and-input-fields-rows-using-jquery-php-but-how-to-sub&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312534/reading-line-from-text-files-in-java-netbeans&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312531/whats-wrong-about-thos-code&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312525/while-loops-in-c-for-windows-forms-im-trying-to-loop-certain-coefficients-so&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312533/should-filenames-be-relative-to-their-directory-name&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312530/what-should-i-know-to-create-applications-in-phoenix-webframework&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312522/registration-form-with-email-verification&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312513/integrate-between-php-and-c-program&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312488/rejected-by-recruitment-process-on-bad-code-review&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312472/if-condition-vs-variable-assignment-performance-wise&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312511/is-it-ok-if-i-cant-solve-a-problem-when-sitting-in-front-of-a-computer&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/312591/quartz-net-does-not-work-when-i-inject-dependency#comment660099_312591" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25428" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7990" RevisionGUID="784941d9-b32c-43ec-82fe-60b3bd257d00" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###What's a good, well-moderated site that would allow these kinds of discussions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reddit  &#xD;&#xA;https://www.reddit.com/r/programming  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quora  &#xD;&#xA;Computer Programming topic: https://www.quora.com/pinned/Computer-Programming  &#xD;&#xA;Search &quot;programming&quot; topics: https://www.quora.com/search?q=programming&amp;type=topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Stack site (shutdown)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*defunct* Stack Exchange site [Not Programming Related](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In 2010, a Stack Exchange site called Not Programming Related came out of Area51, the Stack Exchange staging zone. NPR was supposed to be a site where questions that were too subjective / broad for Stack Overflow would find a new home.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#### Why did it fail?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;[...] Turns out that while everyone loves those questions, very few are actually willing to spend any time to answer them (seriously), and maintain and moderate them. [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I can understand that when you allow opinion based questions you allow any answer to be correct which may encourage new non-programming users, or lower the knowledge threshold that is expected for users. This may cause these less experienced users to creep into other forums and lower the quality of Stack sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't think shutting down that site should have been the answer. Subjectively and naively, as I wasn't around for the site and don't know about issues it faced, I would think that eventually those issues would be dealt with by voting, editing existing answers, or wiki answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with Jeff's [comment](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6409/open-ended-questions-not-suited-to-this-site#comment17386_6409):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's strange. To me, a programmers life revolves around open ended thoughts. I know all of the code that I write is open ended. I can always find a way to go back and make it better, or think of an entirely new way to reach my objective." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25429" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8010" RevisionGUID="7ef44811-767f-46d4-8421-5cf20fa41535" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Upon skimming your headers to see if they would apply to my questions, my first instinct was to think *wait some of those are actually on-topic!* until I read your detailed notes. Perhaps we could clarify some of the header areas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Review my design**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't review entire software designs; that's a discussion, not a question. If you have a specific question about your software design, ask that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Gut response was *&quot;Wait we do offer opinions on software design!&quot;* but the final line does cover that. Perhaps we could make the header specific to generic design reviews, like **Generic feedback on my entire software design?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Which way is best?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Because you already understand the detailed specifications for your software project, you are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here. Otherwise, you're just trotting after a herd.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once again, my gut response on reading the header was *&quot;Asking which way is better in regards to performance/memory use/readability/etc is on-topic!&quot;*, but see that is covered in the final line of the description. Perhaps header can be changed to something like **Which way is best (with no clarification of what &quot;best&quot; means to you)?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What do you recommend?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't make product, service or technology recommendations of any kind. Try here or here, but read their Help Center first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of questions here ask &quot;What do you recommend&quot; without being about a specific product/service/technology/etc. We should specify that in the header line, like **What Product|Service|Technology|etc do you recommend?&quot;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea is that most people won't read the entire post line-by-line, but will rather scan the headers to see if each section would apply to their question. If they think it does, perhaps they'll read the detailed part. Clarifying the headers would help prevent the whole *&quot;this is stupid, why am I even bothering&quot;* response when something is taking too long online, and would probably increase the success rate with users that actually read and retain the information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And last of all on this section &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Name that thing**&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that ask &quot;Is there a name for this thing&quot; are just requests for Google help, which we don't provide here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought based on the [last meta post I saw about this, &quot;Name that thing&quot; is on-topic](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6582/1130) providing it was not a &quot;What should I name this thing/class/object/etc&quot; type of question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know from experience, that often being a new programmer there are a great number of terms we just don't know, and it is very hard to find the &quot;proper&quot; term with Google. Once we do find the right term though, it's very easy to google what you need to know, so find this category very useful as a new programmer, or even as an experienced programmer learning a new area.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25430" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8012" RevisionGUID="32a5054c-19fe-4014-be98-ee6058be5d4f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Does TFS have the capacity equivalent of branching/forking in Git?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to achieve in TFS branching/forking as in Git?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about Software configuration management are marked as on-topic in the Help Center but in this answer of [Where does my tool question go?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7253/where-does-my-tool-question-go) there is a restriction:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Question is about using a Tool in a Software Development Workflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question involves how to integrate a tool or type of tool into&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your workflow or process, then it is likely to be on-topic on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers. **Generally, if you aren't asking about how to use a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific feature of a tool, but trying to determine how to use the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tool to achieve a well-defined goal, start here.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you just want to know how to use TFS, StackOverflow would probably be better suited. I think you should ask that question on StackOverflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25432" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8030" RevisionGUID="9d7345d9-b427-425d-8997-fa4023f26987" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; We, obviously, do not want to reinvent the wheel over and over again.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So, how to ask such questions, that by definition cannot have the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; right answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are talking about is not a &quot;question,&quot; it is a &quot;discussion point.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question has no right answer there are three possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It is impossible to know (e.g. what is on the other side of an event horizon?)&#xD;&#xA;1. It is possible to know, but we do not have an answer yet (e.g. P == NP?)&#xD;&#xA;1. It is soliciting opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first two _can_ work as questions. History is littered with research papers that explore topics with the result &quot;nope, that doesn't work -- yet.&quot; But you asked about &quot;by definition&quot; not having a right answer, which fits squarely into condition three, which would be &quot;[primarily opinion-based][1],&quot; a close reason everywhere on Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My question is about questions that asks users to share their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; experience and/or offer creative suggestions in solving/approaching a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; particular problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sharing experiences works in a forum ([this is _not_ a forum][2]) or in [chat][3]. Not in the Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the &quot;particular problem&quot; part is probably on-topic if asked right. Questions should be about programming problems and soliciting creative solutions to solve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Presenting a design and asking for feedback is fine][4], as long as it is properly-scoped and not [too broad][5]. That is not really what you were getting at, but it is a better focus for those types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6491/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/92110/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6502/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6961/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25433" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8069" RevisionGUID="56d3a06b-acde-42d1-8d35-e0a316e4ba3a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I always believed that there is an important distinction between off-topic questions which are... well, “plain off-topic”, and the ones which are off-topic because they simply belong on a different SE site, which in case of Programmers.SE is StackOverflow, by lack of other migration paths.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Those which are off-topic without having a chance to be migrated to StackOverflow (either because their quality is too low or because they are off-topic on SO too for any other reason) should be closed. Answering them would be a sort of positive reinforcement for those questions, so... [don't answer them][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Those which are off-topic simply because they belong on StackOverflow are a very different beast. They can be good, valid, well formulated questions, which have no reason for being downvoted or unanswered of they were posted on StackOverflow in the first place. They also have a good chance being migrated instead of simply closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When encountering this second type of questions on Programmers.SE, I find it natural to vote for migration, as well as to write an answer (when I know the answer) even *before* the question is actually migrated. As I [explained previously][2], this seems like a good and harmless thing for Programmers.SE. The positive/negative reinforcement thing doesn't really apply here: the original poster made a small and understandable mistake, the community migrated the question where it belongs, no harm done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently, I received [a comment][3] from a well-respected member of our community, suggesting that I shouldn't do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...] It makes no sense to answer an off-topic question, on the off-chance that it might actually get migrated to the correct one. Most off-topic questions on Programmers get closed, not migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think one should do in such situation? If a question is about to be closed as off-topic (and *eventually* migrated to Stack Overflow), should I, while being *personally convinced that it is a good candidate for migration*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Avoid answering it, given that I won't probably bother tracking the question until it is closed/migrated in order to answer/upvote it after that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Answer it, hoping that community will be of the same opinion as me that the question should be migrated, instead of simply being closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Do something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2823/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2849/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37550012/serializing-net-object-into-a-json-string-produces-unreadable-output/37550013?noredirect=1#comment62589231_37550013" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25434" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8070" RevisionGUID="ff848701-4056-4f68-8581-3bdf5ecdb40e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Ultimately, the goal is to get off-topic questions off the front page *as quickly as possible,* so that they don't provide encouragement for other people to ask their off-topic questions.  Migration is not the best mechanism to do this; most off-topic questions asked here will not qualify for migration, and it's not uncommon for it to take hours for a question to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A long period of watching how these sites work has yielded some useful observations about how new users decide if they're going to ask their question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  They look at the title of the site.&#xD;&#xA;2.  They look at the tags (a terrible way to determine topicality, but they do it anyway),&#xD;&#xA;3.  They look at other questions to see if they are similar to the one they're about to ask, *without regard for downvotes, close banners, etc.*&#xD;&#xA;4.  If they do manage to find the Help Center/on-topic article, they try to shoehorn their question in some way into the on-topic list (&quot;My recommendation question is about design.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with #3 is especially egregious *if people are actually answering these off-topic questions.*  It sends the message &quot;We don't really mean what we say about site scope.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My advice?  If you feel compelled to answer such questions, either do it in a second-class comment, or wait until the question gets migrated to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Usability issues for first-time Stack Exchange users - a micro-study](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/279661/usability-issues-for-first-time-stack-exchange-users-a-micro-study)  &#xD;&#xA;[New Site Name and Scope Proposals](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8056)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25435" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8113" RevisionGUID="6350023d-fdd6-4d37-9369-44e9c05abb4f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think Robert and Thomas both make excellent points and we should heed their advice, but I would like to focus on something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On March 10, 2016, Rachel asked the question that set this whole thing off: [(4 years later) Dear Stack Exchange: can we change our site name?][1] On May 23, [Ana answered the question][2]. _Two and a half months later, a CM finally responded_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The day after Ana answered the question, Thomas asked [New Site Name and Scope Proposals][3] (May 24). I think it was actually more like hours later, but I am going off of the date stamps on the posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had four weeks to discuss this topic before a promised CM response, but it took until July 21. That is almost two months to receive any meaningful feedback from the CM team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actions speak louder than words. We have already discussed this topic to death. We already have community consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I propose making the changes outlined in Thomas' answer (preferably with Robert's interstitial page) without additional months or years of bickering, arguing, and delays from the CM team.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community at large already has a negative opinion of the tangible effects that the CM team provides: for reference, just take a stroll through [Meta.SE][4] at all the ignored and abandoned proposals. Or our own meta. We have some vocal users who [just want some simple changes to increase quality][5]. Be the CM that changes this perception _and get this change moving_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;N.B. as Durron mentions in the comments, this slow pace and the perception of poor communication has directly lead to the exodus of multiple active users who brought a lot of value to the site via community moderation and answering questions. This community needs change and quickly if it will stop the exodus and possibly even bring some users back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7935&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8054&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8056&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8103" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25436" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8151" RevisionGUID="51769402-74bc-43d5-a5be-582930f39bf9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am currently reading [the codeless code](http://thecodelesscode.com/), and have trouble understanding a particular [case](http://thecodelesscode.com/case/178). In particular which bad practice is pointed out in the last paragraph.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the fables and koans are all about good practice, corporate software dev culture, and other topics directly tied to software devellopment, I was tempted to ask help understanding what bad practice is pointed at in that fable.  &#xD;&#xA;But at the same time, if that particular question was asked in such a manner to be answerable and on topic, it could make a really bad precedent and bring up a lot of people asking help understanding a blog post [(or worse - twitter) post](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7182/what-goes-on-programmers-se-a-guide-for-stack-overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the [help about on topic question](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), it would be (arguably) in one or more of the &quot;do ask&quot;, and not in any &quot;don't ask&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    software requirements  &#xD;&#xA;    [x]    software architecture and design  &#xD;&#xA;    [x]    algorithm and data structure concepts  &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    quality assurance and testing  &#xD;&#xA;    [x]    development methodologies and processes  &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    software configuration management  &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    software engineering management  &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    software licensing  &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (ask on The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    understanding, writing, or debugging code (check out Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    where to find a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    career or education advice, salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;    [ ]    legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*As a side note, if the answer is &quot;it is off topic&quot;, which I think it will be, I ll just ask for help in the chat*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25437" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8184" RevisionGUID="86930e2b-0027-4e52-87d6-7786b93675cb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Chat Transcript: [New Site Name discussion Sep 9, 2016](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/new-site-name-discussion-sep-9-2016)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previous Discussion: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8114/follow-up-2-new-site-name-and-scope-proposals?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ana stopped by (Shog was not available today), and maple_shaft was around. Here's a summary of what we talked about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ana looked at [the only up-voted proposal last week that didn't include the term &quot;SDLC&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8156/4). Although it was a good proposal, the use of the term &quot;SDLC&quot; was the thing that got everyone involved in this discussion onto the same page in terms of what this community truly represents in terms of who we are and what we offer. We'll be sticking with the taglines that we came up with last time going forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We then took a good, hard look at the bullets that describe what is on-topic. It seems 4 is the go-to number, and we managed to get it down to four:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - requirements, architecture, and design &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance and testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The word &quot;software&quot; was dropped. On a site named Software Engineering, it should be pretty clear that questions should be about software development. It just added a little extra verbosity that should be apparent to users who are reading the page - it will be in the URL and the logo.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We brought in the &quot;development methods and practices&quot; to better advertise that these topics are on-topic. The first tag that falls into this category is [tag:agile], which is our 22nd most popular tag. Since there isn't a whole lot of visibility into this category of questions when you hit up the homepage or at the top of the list of tags, we felt that it was important to include.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also combined &quot;requirements&quot; into &quot;architecture and design&quot; to form &quot;requirements, architecture, and design&quot;. These are closely related topics. There are many architectural and design questions, but it's important to recognize and advertise other topics, like [tag:requirements], [tag:requirements-management], [tag:user-story], [tag:use-case], and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest change is that we eliminated the line item for &quot;algorithms and data structures&quot;. But this doesn't mean that these questions are off-topic, because they aren't. [I had a little back-and-forth discussion with maple_shaft][1], and since the SE folks really wanted 4 items, we felt that the type of questions that we want here are sufficiently captured under the &quot;design&quot; portion that we call out in the Help Center, but also the existing questions that can be used as a good example.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please leave any further comments in here. They will be reviewed and discussed when Ana (and maybe Shog) come back next week.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/32213588#32213588" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25438" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8186" RevisionGUID="d5822760-894d-4bd0-a9ff-d56f81bf97dd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**What's taking so long?** Why is this process stalled? Let's do some software engineering here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Hypothesis 1:** The development tools, methods, and processes are ill-fitting. I'm not into SE's back-end community tools so I may be missing key parts, but I see occasional promoted &quot;New Site Name&quot; questions and mentions of someone stopping by somewhere. This is not an effective way to form a team, clarify the problem, collect design ideas and ways to test if they work, do the tests, run it by the community, and decide.  &#xD;&#xA;    How many community members have contributed ideas or feedback on the proposal, or even seen the proposed SDLC tagline (that brings to mind Waterfall-model big project failures)?  &#xD;&#xA;    People are now so frustrated with the stall that they just want to launch a name change and hope it works (Waterfall style) and maybe measure the impact later.&#xD;&#xA;* **Hypothesis 2:** There's no evidence that the proposal will help, some risk that it will hurt, and it entails a large rebranding impact on the community that can't be done often without losing people. There's no need for a long discussion. Opinions are not evidence. A little evidence goes a long way and testing can be quick and cheap. [Suggestion below.]  &#xD;&#xA;    The last time I did a usability test for an open-source project, we developers had brainstormed icons for a heavily used part of a web site so people could drag a web link icon to their home screen for fast access. I did the test in one afternoon, showing the designs to ~8 people. The results were stark: None of the designs got the idea across and nobody thought of that part of the web site as a separate thing. [If y'all ever get into a UI design debate, a usability test does wonders.]  &#xD;&#xA;    The Stack Exchange folks ought to have usability testers and ways to gather test subjects. If not, then we're really pushing uphill here. If they do, then it's surprising that each site's &quot;what's in scope&quot; bullet items are buried behind many steps and an animation.&#xD;&#xA;* **Hypothesis 3:** The responsibilities are unclear. @ThomasOwens and others are pushing but action requires SE. Are @Ana and @Shog9 from SE? What does SE need to move forwards? Confidence in a proposed solution? I can see why it's important to do a single rebranding with site name, tagline, and in-scope bullets since you can't get broad attention often, but is it really necessary to continue tuning the bullets before launching the new name? Do you have evidence that 4 bullets is the most that people will read? Does that change if you put the bullets at the top of the page rather than within an animation halfway down the page?&#xD;&#xA;* **Hypothesis 4:** Maybe nobody has yet come up with an adequate proposal. Maybe there isn't one within the constraints, that is, without fixing SE design problems like how hidden the site description is. Maybe off-topic questions can be avoided only by coordinated moderator action. Maybe people asking questions look instead at high-voted questions to judge if this is a good place to ask their question. That would require a different solution like, say, reviewing high-voted questions, attaching fitting tags from the proposed 4 bullet points, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestion: State the goal** (requirements, such as *&quot;50% fewer programming-in-the-small off-topic questions&quot;*) and **test which proposals accomplish the goal.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Measure rather than debate guesses (hypotheses).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A usability test needn't be difficult, expensive, or slow. E.g.:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* find a wide variety of people who've asked fitting and non-fitting questions on this site,&#xD;&#xA;* show them the proposed site name, tagline, and 4-bullet description,&#xD;&#xA;* ask them which of various sample questions seem *in scope* vs. *out of scope*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name &quot;Software Engineering&quot; fits for me but maybe the people asking SO-like questions consider it just a synonym for &quot;building software&quot; (as @ricksmt noted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The proposed bullets make sense although they don't mention the deeper points of using principles to engineer a success and evaluating success (qualities like safety and reliability).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It helps to test more than one proposal. There's a [&quot;draft 3&quot; alternative at the end of a previous answer][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8156/122484" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25439" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8201" RevisionGUID="fdd3b5f4-5de8-41bd-9604-0c95045e2ba0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:05.533" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think your message is fine, it is polite and and contains useful information, especially for new users. IMHO it is a much better reaction than just downvoting and closing without any comment, or these rude or terse comments we saw in the past and [discussed here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I just tried to use a similar comment, first thing I noted is: this fits only to a certain kind of low-quality questions. For example, if someone blatantly asks for a website or book or other 3rd party resource, it is pretty pointless to tell him he should try it on another SE site. For these kind of questions, I think a downvote, a close vote, and just no comment is probably appropriate. The automatically displayer text the asker will be shown after his question is closed is IMHO self-explanatory enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nevertheless, I think the general idea is fine: having some precanned, polite text template or maybe templates for different issues, where we just need to fill out the name of the asker, can help to keep a better balance between removing the crap from the site as quickly as possible on one hand, but also staying professional and friendly to newcomers on the other hand. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like yours, but I would try to improve the wording in some details slightly, and I think adding a personal &quot;Hi User&quot; gives a much better impression to the asker. So here is my attempt to improve your text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi XYZ, welcome to Programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [This site list](http://stackexchange.com/sites) may help you to find out where [your topic fits best](http://goo.gl/YoQVd0). Please search existing answers first. If you do not find one which matches your issue, feel free to take it to an appropriate site. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Hi XYZ, welcome to Programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [This site list](http://stackexchange.com/sites) may help you to find out where [your topic fits best](http://goo.gl/YoQVd0). Please search existing answers first. If you do not find one which matches your issue, feel free to take it to an appropriate site. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Unfortunately, I needed to use an URL shortener to come around the maximum text size limit of comments, I hope that does not break any site rules).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, I am aware filling out the user name will slow down the process of making the comment a little bit, since you cannot just copy-paste the text blindly into the comment form. But it will (hopefully) give the reader a better impression that you treat him like a real person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7943/how-to-improve-our-style-for-reacting-on-low-quality-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25441" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7135" RevisionGUID="035dbc0a-1230-424b-97b7-738aba20173b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:21:11.157" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced https://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've only been an active SE user for a couple of weeks, and since PSE is my favorite one I've been mulling this question over pretty much the entire time (not to mention reading far too many meta posts). Some days it feels like we're closing too aggressively. Some days it feels like you need a bachelor's in Q&amp;A philosophy to tell what actually is on-topic for SO vs PSE vs all the other SEs. Some days it feels like the people writing questions can't construct a coherent sentence, much less an answerable question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on my experience thus far, it looks like the truth is probably the latter: **A lot of people are asking a lot of questions which are inherently bad, and they would be just as bad no matter what our scope or name was.** There's even [an old meta answer on this topic that reaches pretty much the same conclusion](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6993/161917).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By that I mean questions which are too vague, broad, or unclear, typically because they don't have anywhere near enough detail for us to figure out what question is actually being asked (often the asker himself doesn't appear to understand it). When it comes to technical subjects like programming, **the vast majority of newcomers do not understand that it is impossible to answer a question that hasn't been asked properly.** Until they gain the experience to understand that, there's simply no way to respond that doesn't run some risk of them perceiving us as lazy, unhelpful, rude or elitist (though we can certainly lower that risk by being polite) rather than figuring out what they did wrong. This is just as true here as it is on SO and on all the other SEs about semi-accessible-but-still-highly-technical subjects (like security.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't think there's anything we could do with PSE's question-asking UI to communicate this fundamental flaw in a newbie's conception of technical knowledge. PSE gets a bit more of it than most because people see it as SO with fewer restrictions, but we're not really that unique.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;So what *can* we do? Newbies are going to ask these questions no matter what, so in my opinion the best we can hope to do is improve our response to them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Try to emphasize that subjective questions still have to be *precise, specific and coherent enough to be answerable*. This is the number one thing newbies are not getting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Avoid emphasizing &quot;ivory tower&quot; close reasons like whether the question is &quot;useful to other programmers&quot;. Newbies don't care about that. I don't care about that. I care about whether or not the question can be answered. If the question is &quot;not useful&quot;, most of the time it's simply too broad/vague/unclear (or a code dump), so just say that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) When a question is just plain bad, so that it has no hope of being answerable on any SE site, we need to close it quickly. Looking at downvoted questions the front page right now, I see one that got put on hold, and several others that probably should have been put on hold or closed several hours ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Case in point, [look at the top of today's front page](https://i.stack.imgur.com/L3pEd.png). Although I'm not sure how I feel about the intellectual property question, the others are fix my code, how do I learn to X, another fix my code, a question about how C socket functions work that probably could've been answered by googling, and a question about Windows filesystem behavior that's nowhere near detailed enough to be answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit 2: Case in point again, [MichaelT just did the same thing with a much bigger sample size and reached the same conclusion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7145/on-a-name-for-the-site-and-the-questions-asked).&#xA;&#xA;-----&#xA;&#xA;Edit 3: Since it's been a very long time since I wrote this, and I recently achieved 10k reputation, it seemed worth an update. To my surprise there is nothing in this post that I have since changed my mind on; it's all just as true as it was back then. The only difference is that I believe we have gotten somewhat better at closing poor questions quickly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25442" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8" RevisionGUID="250d7c13-9a8f-436e-8805-d08dc1961b49" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; ###Update&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Community Wiki is [no longer an option](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/392/should-the-community-wiki-police-be-shut-down/7183#7183), across the network, for regular users when creating or editing a question. If a question should be flagged community wiki, flag a moderator for attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related to [Why would anyone accept an answer?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer), what's the criteria for what should be a community wiki and what is a regular question? If most, if not all questions are subjective, is there a need to generate one mega-answer through collaboration?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25444" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8" RevisionGUID="1003d75f-3035-4e6a-8ffa-48160c33566f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; ###Update&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Community Wiki is [no longer an option](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/392/should-the-community-wiki-police-be-shut-down/7183#7183), across the network, for regular users when creating or editing a question. If a question should be flagged community wiki, flag a moderator for attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related to [Why would anyone accept an answer?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer), what's the criteria for what should be a community wiki and what is a regular question? If most, if not all questions are subjective, is there a need to generate one mega-answer through collaboration?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25445" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="105" RevisionGUID="ff7a1f26-4e06-41de-9152-7d613ff311d9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've asked a lot of questions, but very few of them have any answer that nicely covers the whole issue or which is so much higher quality than the other answers that it deserves to be highlighted? My current accept rate is only 34%. Should I increase it by going back and selecting the answer with the highest number of votes or doesn't accept rate matter on this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Related:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why would anyone accept an answer?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25446" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="82" RevisionGUID="230838a1-acb7-42dc-a4c8-58d0631b1505" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Can we get a &amp;quot;Belongs on StackOverflow&amp;quot; as a closing reason?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/441/can-we-get-a-belongs-on-stackoverflow-as-a-closing-reason)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;It would be nice if some questions such as the famous quote and cartoon questions from StackOverflow could be copied or moved to this site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25448" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="105" RevisionGUID="a4b9aef5-2e91-49b9-be41-b50bc3919f56" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've asked a lot of questions, but very few of them have any answer that nicely covers the whole issue or which is so much higher quality than the other answers that it deserves to be highlighted? My current accept rate is only 34%. Should I increase it by going back and selecting the answer with the highest number of votes or doesn't accept rate matter on this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Related:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why would anyone accept an answer?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25449" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="145" RevisionGUID="95e980ba-0447-437d-81ac-353c760136ca" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Since most questions here can have an unlimited number of answers, I think the automatic conversion to CW when a question receives 30 answers should be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also: [Purpose of Community Wiki](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25450" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="82" RevisionGUID="7ade6f10-05e6-4e2c-a8fb-0e7b7c0cf425" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Can we get a &amp;quot;Belongs on StackOverflow&amp;quot; as a closing reason?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/441/can-we-get-a-belongs-on-stackoverflow-as-a-closing-reason)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;It would be nice if some questions such as the famous quote and cartoon questions from StackOverflow could be copied or moved to this site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25451" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="156" RevisionGUID="880ee43c-cae5-4326-92ff-c12743a00abf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Are all the current badges sufficient for the community or are there badges that don't fit the community?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Is the Tumbleweed badge working?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/329/is-the-tumbleweed-badge-working" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25452" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="145" RevisionGUID="e076f2b7-b56d-470b-8521-8d45da3cd442" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Since most questions here can have an unlimited number of answers, I think the automatic conversion to CW when a question receives 30 answers should be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also: [Purpose of Community Wiki](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25455" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="163" RevisionGUID="bd938c81-11cd-44fb-aade-fd39931ad400" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Posse request: jobs/career/etc. tag cleanup](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;[`career`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career): 29 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`work`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/work): 5 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`job`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/job): 15 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`career-development`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career-development): 8 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`employment`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/employment): 3 questions  &#xD;&#xA;`hiring` and `work-environment` are somewhat related, but I think may have a better case for independent existence. I propose the other tags be merged into `career`, the most populated one, with individual questions retagged as appropriate (for example, several of the `work` questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/58/tag-consolidation-and-blacklist/59#59. I created this question so that this issue could be discussed/voted on separately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25456" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="82" RevisionGUID="bf18a5d2-000f-4abd-8c37-2a025365eaa8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Can we get a &amp;quot;Belongs on StackOverflow&amp;quot; as a closing reason?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/441/can-we-get-a-belongs-on-stackoverflow-as-a-closing-reason)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;It would be nice if some questions such as the famous quote and cartoon questions from StackOverflow could be copied or moved to this site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25457" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="213" RevisionGUID="c95132dd-cba5-42d7-a303-e49bf26b5e4c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="One of the topics that's come up several times on Meta.StackOverflow is the perception that Programmers.SE is a joke proposal, existing solely to help keep Stack Overflow free of all the &quot;crappy&quot; questions that it gets plagued with every day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few of examples of this perception (**note: see Edits 2 and 3 below for clarification**):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You absolutely nailed my resentment of Programmers.SE; it was created as a tongue-in-cheek, NOT-Stack-Overflow site: the stuff we keep in the basement because it's not fit for keeping upstairs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The problem is that Programmers.SE was created as an amorphous blob where nothing is off topic (read: everything not Stack Overflow is on topic). The travesty is that Programmers.SE is, at least in perception, [your quote] &quot;an ocean of jokes and polls.&quot; That's where the problem lies. I would have created the site very differently: Subjective/soft programming topics okay; Industry/engineering issues okay; The business of software okay; Banal polls/jokes off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Programmers on stackexchange](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what you are saying is that Programmers.SE is the skin of evil left behind to free the race of titans from the bonds of destructiveness: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ims5W5bJl9s&amp;feature=related#t=11s&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64043#64043)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you browse questions on Meta for a bit, you'll quickly realize that there are a fair number of people who want to use SO for things that SO wasn't designed to be used for: discussions, polls, flame-wars, endless lists... And over time, this has created some amount of irritation on the site: some folks really, *really* want to, um, *participate* in questions like, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What's the single best way to type code?&#xD;&#xA;- Do you hurt sometimes (as a programmer)?&#xD;&#xA;- How can I get a job drawing cartoons featuring the funniest programmer joke about my favorite hidden feature in the worst language ever (on a boat)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So rather than just stamping them out, like so many ducks putting out flaming elephants, some rose-tint-spectacled user got the idea of proposing a site *for all the questions that shouldn't be asked on SO*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE is that site. Soon, it'll have its own set of rules and standards, and the cycle will begin anew. But until then, it remains an anarchic paradise of freedom and love.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Shog9*](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to challenge the premise behind the sentiment: in many ways, that *was* the purpose of the proposal, and Programmers.SE is flourishing despite it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm wondering if there's a way we can spin the content of this site more positively rather than being merely a wretched hive of scum and villainy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the things that's popping up here is we should leave Programmers.SE alone because it's popular and as Nathan Taylor puts it, &quot;Haters gonna hate.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think the content or community Programmers.SE needs changing *per se*. Rather, I think we just need to provide a clear way to show value to SOIS and others, because the current perception is that we don't, and this site is more or less a joke that's gotten out of hand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how can we do that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like SOIS has decided to [publicly address][1] the banality of Programmers.SE on its blog:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There’s an even longer list of things that really belong on the new Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense, and could benefit from an infusion of more meaty subjects, like these proposals:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've created a new question, [What questions are on topic, and what are off topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic), to see if we can hash out the proposed merges and other off-topic questions that have come up so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------ &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 3&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Cartaino clarified his position and the quotes above in the comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't actively despise the **concept** of Programmers.SE at all. Read my quotes (above) *very* carefully. What I lament is the perception created; the &quot;anything goes&quot; ethos that simply aims to flout what makes Stack Overflow great. I wanted a site about the &quot;Programmers' Life: a site for discussion of the business, careers, issues, and memes concerning professional developers.&quot; Subjective talk and soft topics okay if it follows a &quot;back it up&quot; philosophy or hard-earned experience. What I got instead was *&quot;what is the coolest/stupidest/weirdest/funniest thing you saw/did/tasted today?&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Q&amp;A will live on SO, Programmers, and a few academic sites. That's it. Not dozens of ridiculously niche and redundant proposals. But the mere mention of merging proposals with Programmers horrifies most. &quot;I don't want my subject on that site.&quot; That's a **huge problem.** Programmers.SE is the &quot;Park Place&quot; to Stack Overflow's &quot;Boardwalk&quot;; a tremendously valuable resource in a bad neighborhood. I'd prefer to paint over the graffiti and fix broken windows; to reestablish community pride so the police come out on occasion. But that's a far cry from &quot;hater&quot; or &quot;actively despise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jeff Atwood has created two topics with the basic premise that Programmers.SE as it is now is too undisciplined, and SOIS will be taking steps to correct that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Adding discipline to programmers.stackexchange.com](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;* [Should “Developer Testing” be folded into a more general “Programmers” site?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25458" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="156" RevisionGUID="c9eaf5d5-0e42-4881-a585-081f6e4dbb5f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Are all the current badges sufficient for the community or are there badges that don't fit the community?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Is the Tumbleweed badge working?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/329/is-the-tumbleweed-badge-working" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25459" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="213" RevisionGUID="f1bee062-4706-4630-b77e-2b2934b3e687" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="One of the topics that's come up several times on Meta.StackOverflow is the perception that Programmers.SE is a joke proposal, existing solely to help keep Stack Overflow free of all the &quot;crappy&quot; questions that it gets plagued with every day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few of examples of this perception (**note: see Edits 2 and 3 below for clarification**):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You absolutely nailed my resentment of Programmers.SE; it was created as a tongue-in-cheek, NOT-Stack-Overflow site: the stuff we keep in the basement because it's not fit for keeping upstairs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The problem is that Programmers.SE was created as an amorphous blob where nothing is off topic (read: everything not Stack Overflow is on topic). The travesty is that Programmers.SE is, at least in perception, [your quote] &quot;an ocean of jokes and polls.&quot; That's where the problem lies. I would have created the site very differently: Subjective/soft programming topics okay; Industry/engineering issues okay; The business of software okay; Banal polls/jokes off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Programmers on stackexchange](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what you are saying is that Programmers.SE is the skin of evil left behind to free the race of titans from the bonds of destructiveness: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ims5W5bJl9s&amp;feature=related#t=11s&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64043#64043)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you browse questions on Meta for a bit, you'll quickly realize that there are a fair number of people who want to use SO for things that SO wasn't designed to be used for: discussions, polls, flame-wars, endless lists... And over time, this has created some amount of irritation on the site: some folks really, *really* want to, um, *participate* in questions like, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What's the single best way to type code?&#xD;&#xA;- Do you hurt sometimes (as a programmer)?&#xD;&#xA;- How can I get a job drawing cartoons featuring the funniest programmer joke about my favorite hidden feature in the worst language ever (on a boat)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So rather than just stamping them out, like so many ducks putting out flaming elephants, some rose-tint-spectacled user got the idea of proposing a site *for all the questions that shouldn't be asked on SO*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE is that site. Soon, it'll have its own set of rules and standards, and the cycle will begin anew. But until then, it remains an anarchic paradise of freedom and love.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Shog9*](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to challenge the premise behind the sentiment: in many ways, that *was* the purpose of the proposal, and Programmers.SE is flourishing despite it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm wondering if there's a way we can spin the content of this site more positively rather than being merely a wretched hive of scum and villainy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the things that's popping up here is we should leave Programmers.SE alone because it's popular and as Nathan Taylor puts it, &quot;Haters gonna hate.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think the content or community Programmers.SE needs changing *per se*. Rather, I think we just need to provide a clear way to show value to SOIS and others, because the current perception is that we don't, and this site is more or less a joke that's gotten out of hand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how can we do that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like SOIS has decided to [publicly address][1] the banality of Programmers.SE on its blog:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There’s an even longer list of things that really belong on the new Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense, and could benefit from an infusion of more meaty subjects, like these proposals:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've created a new question, [What questions are on topic, and what are off topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic), to see if we can hash out the proposed merges and other off-topic questions that have come up so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------ &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 3&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Cartaino clarified his position and the quotes above in the comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't actively despise the **concept** of Programmers.SE at all. Read my quotes (above) *very* carefully. What I lament is the perception created; the &quot;anything goes&quot; ethos that simply aims to flout what makes Stack Overflow great. I wanted a site about the &quot;Programmers' Life: a site for discussion of the business, careers, issues, and memes concerning professional developers.&quot; Subjective talk and soft topics okay if it follows a &quot;back it up&quot; philosophy or hard-earned experience. What I got instead was *&quot;what is the coolest/stupidest/weirdest/funniest thing you saw/did/tasted today?&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Q&amp;A will live on SO, Programmers, and a few academic sites. That's it. Not dozens of ridiculously niche and redundant proposals. But the mere mention of merging proposals with Programmers horrifies most. &quot;I don't want my subject on that site.&quot; That's a **huge problem.** Programmers.SE is the &quot;Park Place&quot; to Stack Overflow's &quot;Boardwalk&quot;; a tremendously valuable resource in a bad neighborhood. I'd prefer to paint over the graffiti and fix broken windows; to reestablish community pride so the police come out on occasion. But that's a far cry from &quot;hater&quot; or &quot;actively despise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jeff Atwood has created two topics with the basic premise that Programmers.SE as it is now is too undisciplined, and SOIS will be taking steps to correct that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Adding discipline to programmers.stackexchange.com](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;* [Should “Developer Testing” be folded into a more general “Programmers” site?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25460" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="190" RevisionGUID="927aec1e-615d-4673-b624-bb04012b5892" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's a [&quot;Community Wiki&quot;][1] answer (one which doesn't have a permanent &quot;owner&quot;, can be edited by more users, and doesn't grant reputation to anyone) - this status is forced for answers to questions with more than 30 answers. On the other sites, this is done to try and reduce the motivation for posting duplicate answers on open-ended questions... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this site, [there's some discussion as to whether it's a useful behavior][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/145/remove-cw-conversion-at-30-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25462" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="274" RevisionGUID="bbe1b3e0-94ab-4780-80b9-0d1f710d0f49" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Supposing the current [best suggested name][1] might have a good chance to become our domain:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And an example of a tiny version which still needs some improvement through some pixel pushing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**About the colors:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We need to find a color that has a good characteristic for our site, maybe one that expresses subjectivity...&#xD;&#xA;I think we should change the color of Scope. We can also place a vertical line with the color in the tiny version which denotes the typing cursor, as if one is willing to type something between the brackets.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3/what-should-our-domain-name-be/116#116&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CdLZI.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CYdAJ.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25463" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="163" RevisionGUID="77f17a09-ab78-4643-bfa9-0e8be6b77356" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Posse request: jobs/career/etc. tag cleanup](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;[`career`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career): 29 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`work`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/work): 5 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`job`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/job): 15 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`career-development`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career-development): 8 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`employment`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/employment): 3 questions  &#xD;&#xA;`hiring` and `work-environment` are somewhat related, but I think may have a better case for independent existence. I propose the other tags be merged into `career`, the most populated one, with individual questions retagged as appropriate (for example, several of the `work` questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/58/tag-consolidation-and-blacklist/59#59. I created this question so that this issue could be discussed/voted on separately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25464" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="288" RevisionGUID="3de782cb-25b6-481d-bd86-b4687beb5580" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Questions like &quot;Can you recommend some good pottery for programmers?&quot; are an issue we need to figure out- to what extent are they allowed?  I see a few variants on this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that are clearly unrelated to programming in anyway, but have programming tacked on (eg, &quot;Can you recommend some good pottery for programmers?&quot; or &quot;What, as a programmer, is your favorite legume?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;2. Questions that are a middle ground: &quot;What are some good movies for programmer?&quot; is a good example- on one hand it'd be off-topic without &quot;for programmer,&quot; but on the other hand, programming-related movies affect programmer culture, and are something that is, to my mind, &#xD;&#xA;worth discussing here.&#xD;&#xA;3. Questions that are somewhat clearly directly related to programming: &quot;What are some good keyboards for programmers&quot;- since keyboards are the tool of our trade, this is definitely worth discussing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been a few discussions of this issue so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- An answer in &quot;[What questions are on-topic and what questions are off-topic](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic/238#238)&quot; starts to discuss this&#xD;&#xA;- In revision 7 on [What should be in our FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/74/revisions), Mark Trapp rolls back a change I made to suggest that blatant &quot;types of pickles&quot; questions should be off-topic.  He asserts that they are on-topic, citing a meta.SO post.  This exchange is why I'm making this question- we should have an internal question deciding it one way or another to point people to in the future.&#xD;&#xA;- An early discussion took place in the comments for the [programming fiction](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2982/recommended-fiction-for-programmers) question.&#xD;&#xA;- Mark points out [this](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046) answer on meta.SO&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been out for a few days, and I have't payed that much attention to external discussion of P.SE on meta.SO, so I may have missed us coming to a consensus on this issue, but it seems we haven't, and we need to.  What do you think- are 1, 2, and/or 3 on-topic or off-topic for this site, and how do we handle determining which side of the 'on-topic' line a question like this falls?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25465" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="156" RevisionGUID="d6fb3dd2-57c7-41d4-a3ee-999c93122192" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Are all the current badges sufficient for the community or are there badges that don't fit the community?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Is the Tumbleweed badge working?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/329/is-the-tumbleweed-badge-working" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25466" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="288" RevisionGUID="5cd913f2-cd35-447e-9ef4-2249c2788680" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Questions like &quot;Can you recommend some good pottery for programmers?&quot; are an issue we need to figure out- to what extent are they allowed?  I see a few variants on this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that are clearly unrelated to programming in anyway, but have programming tacked on (eg, &quot;Can you recommend some good pottery for programmers?&quot; or &quot;What, as a programmer, is your favorite legume?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;2. Questions that are a middle ground: &quot;What are some good movies for programmer?&quot; is a good example- on one hand it'd be off-topic without &quot;for programmer,&quot; but on the other hand, programming-related movies affect programmer culture, and are something that is, to my mind, &#xD;&#xA;worth discussing here.&#xD;&#xA;3. Questions that are somewhat clearly directly related to programming: &quot;What are some good keyboards for programmers&quot;- since keyboards are the tool of our trade, this is definitely worth discussing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been a few discussions of this issue so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- An answer in &quot;[What questions are on-topic and what questions are off-topic](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic/238#238)&quot; starts to discuss this&#xD;&#xA;- In revision 7 on [What should be in our FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/74/revisions), Mark Trapp rolls back a change I made to suggest that blatant &quot;types of pickles&quot; questions should be off-topic.  He asserts that they are on-topic, citing a meta.SO post.  This exchange is why I'm making this question- we should have an internal question deciding it one way or another to point people to in the future.&#xD;&#xA;- An early discussion took place in the comments for the [programming fiction](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2982/recommended-fiction-for-programmers) question.&#xD;&#xA;- Mark points out [this](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046) answer on meta.SO&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been out for a few days, and I have't payed that much attention to external discussion of P.SE on meta.SO, so I may have missed us coming to a consensus on this issue, but it seems we haven't, and we need to.  What do you think- are 1, 2, and/or 3 on-topic or off-topic for this site, and how do we handle determining which side of the 'on-topic' line a question like this falls?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25468" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="321" RevisionGUID="485a11ed-aafa-4e6d-bb83-72c6f4e4982e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What are the rules around moderators closing questions outright?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I'm just looking for some guidelines and examples, with an explanation of why it would not be acceptable to leave it up to the community to vote close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I couldn't find any answers to this in the FAQ or here on Meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25469" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="163" RevisionGUID="2006f419-4b71-4733-9bf8-5b9ac838cb87" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Posse request: jobs/career/etc. tag cleanup](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;[`career`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career): 29 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`work`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/work): 5 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`job`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/job): 15 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`career-development`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career-development): 8 questions  &#xD;&#xA;[`employment`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/employment): 3 questions  &#xD;&#xA;`hiring` and `work-environment` are somewhat related, but I think may have a better case for independent existence. I propose the other tags be merged into `career`, the most populated one, with individual questions retagged as appropriate (for example, several of the `work` questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/58/tag-consolidation-and-blacklist/59#59. I created this question so that this issue could be discussed/voted on separately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25470" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="220" RevisionGUID="cb575eb0-6b1a-445c-8f92-41425ad654e2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Let&amp;#39;s nuke the catch-all tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Surely all questions here are polls, in the sense that people vote for answers they agree with?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25471" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="190" RevisionGUID="bdbdd51f-ba39-4052-b4a8-c0b052b862f9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's a [&quot;Community Wiki&quot;][1] answer (one which doesn't have a permanent &quot;owner&quot;, can be edited by more users, and doesn't grant reputation to anyone) - this status is forced for answers to questions with more than 30 answers. On the other sites, this is done to try and reduce the motivation for posting duplicate answers on open-ended questions... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this site, [there's some discussion as to whether it's a useful behavior][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/145/remove-cw-conversion-at-30-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25472" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="385" RevisionGUID="e420a149-48d2-4656-ae48-cee64a36b745" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So, I went about it exactly the wrong way in the first place.  Does anybody have any objection to tagging questions hearkening to the &quot;best&quot; of things and the &quot;worst&quot; of things with two tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever the tag is, it shouldn't imply &quot;this is the best question on programmers.se&quot; nor should it imply that it is unto itself a worthless question.  Nor should it encourage people to ask questions like that to gain rep, by definition the first comment should be to such a question &quot;Make it CW, please&quot; (not &quot;HEY, don't you know anything? This should be CW&quot;).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also, runs counter to the way people have thought about programmers.SE though, when I asked the Programming Plant question - I made it CW and people said that wasn't the right reason to make it CW.  But I think a good reason to make a question CW is to show in good faith that you're not rep farming, even though you have an overly broad question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Best Delphi XE Reference&quot; is in a different category than &quot;Best Programming Condiment&quot;, but that's why there are 5 tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe it's just as worthless as the subjective tag on SO was.  But as so much vitriol has been spilled about this subject it seems like it better be discussed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please note, this is not meant as a repeat discussion of [Programming Pickles][1].  For better or worse, that's been pretty much settled.  I'd like to see what the community thinks about tagging the questions that do remain, so that the ones that come up in the future will have a better chance of being seen by the users who have the right to see them and not have them immediately quashed by the powers that be. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/288/dealing-with-what-are-some-good-types-of-pickles-for-programmers-type-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25473" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="385" RevisionGUID="68266168-f210-4778-9533-27e7517b5d23" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So, I went about it exactly the wrong way in the first place.  Does anybody have any objection to tagging questions hearkening to the &quot;best&quot; of things and the &quot;worst&quot; of things with two tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever the tag is, it shouldn't imply &quot;this is the best question on programmers.se&quot; nor should it imply that it is unto itself a worthless question.  Nor should it encourage people to ask questions like that to gain rep, by definition the first comment should be to such a question &quot;Make it CW, please&quot; (not &quot;HEY, don't you know anything? This should be CW&quot;).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also, runs counter to the way people have thought about programmers.SE though, when I asked the Programming Plant question - I made it CW and people said that wasn't the right reason to make it CW.  But I think a good reason to make a question CW is to show in good faith that you're not rep farming, even though you have an overly broad question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Best Delphi XE Reference&quot; is in a different category than &quot;Best Programming Condiment&quot;, but that's why there are 5 tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe it's just as worthless as the subjective tag on SO was.  But as so much vitriol has been spilled about this subject it seems like it better be discussed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please note, this is not meant as a repeat discussion of [Programming Pickles][1].  For better or worse, that's been pretty much settled.  I'd like to see what the community thinks about tagging the questions that do remain, so that the ones that come up in the future will have a better chance of being seen by the users who have the right to see them and not have them immediately quashed by the powers that be. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/288/dealing-with-what-are-some-good-types-of-pickles-for-programmers-type-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25474" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="190" RevisionGUID="d53306a8-870f-4a34-a98a-08f954745885" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's a [&quot;Community Wiki&quot;][1] answer (one which doesn't have a permanent &quot;owner&quot;, can be edited by more users, and doesn't grant reputation to anyone) - this status is forced for answers to questions with more than 30 answers. On the other sites, this is done to try and reduce the motivation for posting duplicate answers on open-ended questions... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this site, [there's some discussion as to whether it's a useful behavior][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/145/remove-cw-conversion-at-30-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25477" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="237" RevisionGUID="7ce0b10a-2086-4986-9fc0-b59309b5cd69" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Joel Spolsky created a post on the [Stack Overflow blog](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/) this afternoon on [merging Area51 proposals](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/). In it, he talks about how some proposals are just too specific or are subsets of larger sites and will be merged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of Programmers.SE, he had this to say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There’s an even longer list of things that really belong on the new Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense, and could benefit from an infusion of more meaty subjects, like these proposals[.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He then goes on to list all the proposals he thinks could or should be merged into Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier, there was an edit to the [Proposed FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain) to ban questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are some good television shows for programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few days ago, I created the question, [&quot;How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep). There, the consensus was to not change anything. Unfortunately, SOIS has spoken, and it looks like that sentiment will not be able to sustain the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, let's use this question as a way to identify possible on-topic and off-topic questions and vote on them. One topic per answer, and use the comments to discuss why or why not it's on topic for Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This way we can demonstrate what the community will and won't find acceptable on the site to better help SOIS and others make an informed decision when the time comes to merge." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25478" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="471" RevisionGUID="bb1b9860-f731-45af-a7ee-3bfe25e0129d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Because this is not a &quot;subjective site.&quot; Programmers.SE's purpose is to handle questions of interest to programmers which are not directly related to coding (Stack Overflow is about *coding*, explicitly). Those questions will *tend* to be more subjective than the topics on Stack Overflow, so we set up some guidelines for asking subjective questions which fall within the scope of good Q&amp;A: [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If questions cannot fit within the &quot;Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions,&quot; they need to be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's the point of a subjective site...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah, that's the crux of the issue. **There is no point** to a subjective site. &quot;Subjective&quot; is not a topic. You don't major in *subjective*. You cannot become an expert at *subjective*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This [has been covered](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/431/is-programmers-se-a-discussion-board-or-a-qa-board/433#433) extensively. If folks really want to hang out at a site which hosts [fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/), Stack Exchange simply is not the best venue. You'd be much better off setting up a phpBB forum somewhere.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25479" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="471" RevisionGUID="678451a6-06b7-4373-960b-de3c064a60b6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Because this is not a &quot;subjective site.&quot; Programmers.SE's purpose is to handle questions of interest to programmers which are not directly related to coding (Stack Overflow is about *coding*, explicitly). Those questions will *tend* to be more subjective than the topics on Stack Overflow, so we set up some guidelines for asking subjective questions which fall within the scope of good Q&amp;A: [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If questions cannot fit within the &quot;Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions,&quot; they need to be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's the point of a subjective site...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah, that's the crux of the issue. **There is no point** to a subjective site. &quot;Subjective&quot; is not a topic. You don't major in *subjective*. You cannot become an expert at *subjective*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This [has been covered](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/431/is-programmers-se-a-discussion-board-or-a-qa-board/433#433) extensively. If folks really want to hang out at a site which hosts [fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/), Stack Exchange simply is not the best venue. You'd be much better off setting up a phpBB forum somewhere.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25480" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="220" RevisionGUID="618b61c7-4248-4a0a-bffb-43575527dad6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Let&amp;#39;s nuke the catch-all tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Surely all questions here are polls, in the sense that people vote for answers they agree with?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25481" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="220" RevisionGUID="e115063a-63da-4d9f-b7c4-25e4a4a303bb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Let&amp;#39;s nuke the catch-all tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Surely all questions here are polls, in the sense that people vote for answers they agree with?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25482" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="480" RevisionGUID="ff841e2e-3485-426e-a3b7-430e27dbda32" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Why isn&amp;#39;t my reputation increasing?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/189/why-isnt-my-reputation-increasing)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I received several upvotes between 10/21 and 10/24 but my reputation screen doesn't show them and they weren't and aren't counted toward my rep.  By my calculations, I'm about 20 rep behind where I should be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know of [at least 2 upvotes][1] that did not cause a change in my rep.  As you can see, both between 10/21 and 10/24.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know 20 rep is no big deal, but if this is a problem it should be pointed out.  As you can see, my [stats][2] tab shows 3 answers with upvotes but my [rep][3] tab only shows two.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Excerpt from my rep screen:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    -- 2010-10-19 rep +58   = 87        &#xD;&#xA;     1     12870 (15)&#xD;&#xA;     1     11836 (2)&#xD;&#xA;    -- 2010-10-21 rep +17   = 104       &#xD;&#xA;    -- 2010-10-24 rep 0     = 104       &#xD;&#xA;     2     12870 (10)&#xD;&#xA;    -- 2010-10-25 rep +10   = 114 `&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I already made a question about this but [it disappeared][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6847/whats-your-favorite-programming-language/12424#12424&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4971?tab=stats&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4971?tab=reputationhistory&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/476/question-i-asked-dissappeared" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25483" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="480" RevisionGUID="89f325cd-c693-42c5-a7bb-7828bbe711a2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Why isn&amp;#39;t my reputation increasing?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/189/why-isnt-my-reputation-increasing)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I received several upvotes between 10/21 and 10/24 but my reputation screen doesn't show them and they weren't and aren't counted toward my rep.  By my calculations, I'm about 20 rep behind where I should be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know of [at least 2 upvotes][1] that did not cause a change in my rep.  As you can see, both between 10/21 and 10/24.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know 20 rep is no big deal, but if this is a problem it should be pointed out.  As you can see, my [stats][2] tab shows 3 answers with upvotes but my [rep][3] tab only shows two.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Excerpt from my rep screen:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    -- 2010-10-19 rep +58   = 87        &#xD;&#xA;     1     12870 (15)&#xD;&#xA;     1     11836 (2)&#xD;&#xA;    -- 2010-10-21 rep +17   = 104       &#xD;&#xA;    -- 2010-10-24 rep 0     = 104       &#xD;&#xA;     2     12870 (10)&#xD;&#xA;    -- 2010-10-25 rep +10   = 114 `&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I already made a question about this but [it disappeared][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6847/whats-your-favorite-programming-language/12424#12424&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4971?tab=stats&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4971?tab=reputationhistory&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/476/question-i-asked-dissappeared" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25484" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="237" RevisionGUID="77c59fe2-3cf1-4e44-a35d-48bbdaf853db" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Joel Spolsky created a post on the [Stack Overflow blog](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/) this afternoon on [merging Area51 proposals](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/). In it, he talks about how some proposals are just too specific or are subsets of larger sites and will be merged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of Programmers.SE, he had this to say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There’s an even longer list of things that really belong on the new Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense, and could benefit from an infusion of more meaty subjects, like these proposals[.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He then goes on to list all the proposals he thinks could or should be merged into Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier, there was an edit to the [Proposed FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain) to ban questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are some good television shows for programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few days ago, I created the question, [&quot;How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep). There, the consensus was to not change anything. Unfortunately, SOIS has spoken, and it looks like that sentiment will not be able to sustain the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, let's use this question as a way to identify possible on-topic and off-topic questions and vote on them. One topic per answer, and use the comments to discuss why or why not it's on topic for Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This way we can demonstrate what the community will and won't find acceptable on the site to better help SOIS and others make an informed decision when the time comes to merge." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25485" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="237" RevisionGUID="cd9d5398-7ed8-461d-ae80-1a236c9c11ba" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Joel Spolsky created a post on the [Stack Overflow blog](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/) this afternoon on [merging Area51 proposals](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/). In it, he talks about how some proposals are just too specific or are subsets of larger sites and will be merged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of Programmers.SE, he had this to say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There’s an even longer list of things that really belong on the new Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense, and could benefit from an infusion of more meaty subjects, like these proposals[.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He then goes on to list all the proposals he thinks could or should be merged into Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier, there was an edit to the [Proposed FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain) to ban questions like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are some good television shows for programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few days ago, I created the question, [&quot;How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep). There, the consensus was to not change anything. Unfortunately, SOIS has spoken, and it looks like that sentiment will not be able to sustain the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, let's use this question as a way to identify possible on-topic and off-topic questions and vote on them. One topic per answer, and use the comments to discuss why or why not it's on topic for Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This way we can demonstrate what the community will and won't find acceptable on the site to better help SOIS and others make an informed decision when the time comes to merge." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25486" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="239" RevisionGUID="b96ce7d2-676f-477e-a1d4-a907a4e4626a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### &lt;strike&gt;Software Engineering Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers. Software engineering deals with requirements engineering, software design and architecture, implementation, testing, maintenance, configuration management, process, tools, methodologies, quality, and ethics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How can I justify the use of throwaway prototyping to my manager?&#xD;&#xA;* What’s the best method for estimation? &#xD;&#xA;* I got a job in a company that practices Scrum. How can I prepare myself before the first workday? &#xD;&#xA;* What single book provides the best overview of key software engineering topics? &#xD;&#xA;* What is the single most important Software Engineering concept to learn for practical use?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Engineering soon to be beta, what should we do with SE questions?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/186/software-engineering-soon-to-be-beta-what-should-we-do-with-se-questions)&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Software Engineering has been re-proposed purposefully to avoid being merged, so it's no longer applicable.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6922/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25487" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="488" RevisionGUID="8d288dd9-392c-47d5-92d9-5181413dcfd5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You can read the [FAQ][1] to figure out. It's a protection measure to avoid spamming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25488" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="488" RevisionGUID="e8a11661-eb74-48fc-a05c-ecb3bdbbc860" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You can read the [FAQ][1] to figure out. It's a protection measure to avoid spamming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25489" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="239" RevisionGUID="16413f20-35df-431d-b910-48a8f8bf02ab" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### &lt;strike&gt;Software Engineering Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers. Software engineering deals with requirements engineering, software design and architecture, implementation, testing, maintenance, configuration management, process, tools, methodologies, quality, and ethics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How can I justify the use of throwaway prototyping to my manager?&#xD;&#xA;* What’s the best method for estimation? &#xD;&#xA;* I got a job in a company that practices Scrum. How can I prepare myself before the first workday? &#xD;&#xA;* What single book provides the best overview of key software engineering topics? &#xD;&#xA;* What is the single most important Software Engineering concept to learn for practical use?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Engineering soon to be beta, what should we do with SE questions?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/186/software-engineering-soon-to-be-beta-what-should-we-do-with-se-questions)&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Software Engineering has been re-proposed purposefully to avoid being merged, so it's no longer applicable.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6922/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25490" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="239" RevisionGUID="d2f2e8a2-b414-4044-92fb-551886c524bc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### &lt;strike&gt;Software Engineering Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers. Software engineering deals with requirements engineering, software design and architecture, implementation, testing, maintenance, configuration management, process, tools, methodologies, quality, and ethics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How can I justify the use of throwaway prototyping to my manager?&#xD;&#xA;* What’s the best method for estimation? &#xD;&#xA;* I got a job in a company that practices Scrum. How can I prepare myself before the first workday? &#xD;&#xA;* What single book provides the best overview of key software engineering topics? &#xD;&#xA;* What is the single most important Software Engineering concept to learn for practical use?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Engineering soon to be beta, what should we do with SE questions?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/186/software-engineering-soon-to-be-beta-what-should-we-do-with-se-questions)&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Software Engineering has been re-proposed purposefully to avoid being merged, so it's no longer applicable.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6922/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25491" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="242" RevisionGUID="6365f706-bca0-4adf-adc2-9acb1ea4ef39" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Hidden features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden Features of PHP?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/61401/hidden-features-of-php-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden Features of C#?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9033/hidden-features-of-c)&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden features of Python](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/101268/hidden-features-of-python)&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden Features of JavaScript?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/61088/hidden-features-of-javascript)&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden Features of Java](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15496/hidden-features-of-java)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Are hidden features questions on-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84/are-hidden-features-questions-on-topic)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25492" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="495" RevisionGUID="cfc7128f-eb96-42f4-a5c1-508d45cba50d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The &quot;accept rate&quot; feature seems useless to me and only leads into frustration for those asking questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[See this question.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/105/should-we-worry-about-accept-rate) (And no, it's not a duplicate as that question isn't a feature request...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Related**: [Alternative solution that can replace accept rate][1] if we still want to allow &quot;agreement&quot; of answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/108/should-the-point-distribution-system-be-changed-to-encourage-discussion-not-answ/192#192" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25493" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="495" RevisionGUID="0c025180-86f3-4b84-9b30-6c849fc700ee" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The &quot;accept rate&quot; feature seems useless to me and only leads into frustration for those asking questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[See this question.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/105/should-we-worry-about-accept-rate) (And no, it's not a duplicate as that question isn't a feature request...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Related**: [Alternative solution that can replace accept rate][1] if we still want to allow &quot;agreement&quot; of answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/108/should-the-point-distribution-system-be-changed-to-encourage-discussion-not-answ/192#192" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25494" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="242" RevisionGUID="561863a5-7fe2-465e-bb4a-2f641df0a754" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Hidden features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden Features of PHP?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/61401/hidden-features-of-php-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden Features of C#?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9033/hidden-features-of-c)&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden features of Python](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/101268/hidden-features-of-python)&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden Features of JavaScript?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/61088/hidden-features-of-javascript)&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden Features of Java](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15496/hidden-features-of-java)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Are hidden features questions on-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84/are-hidden-features-questions-on-topic)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25495" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="242" RevisionGUID="5b30437c-bb9c-440a-9df8-be35f923a9a8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Hidden features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden Features of PHP?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/61401/hidden-features-of-php-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden Features of C#?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9033/hidden-features-of-c)&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden features of Python](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/101268/hidden-features-of-python)&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden Features of JavaScript?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/61088/hidden-features-of-javascript)&#xD;&#xA;* [Hidden Features of Java](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15496/hidden-features-of-java)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Are hidden features questions on-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84/are-hidden-features-questions-on-topic)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25496" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="266" RevisionGUID="fe94b205-e129-4b8c-83f4-377515232e1a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Programmers.SE is often seen as a dumping ground for anything not suitable for StackOverflow. How would you more clearly define the type of questions that this site is intended for?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA; - [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable)&#xD;&#xA; - [Lots of subjective questions here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/176/lots-of-subjective-questions-here)&#xD;&#xA; - [What's the difference between Programmers and SO](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25497" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="499" RevisionGUID="c05fb0a9-0d59-4d59-a486-a203d8c7d11d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This might break the system... We should think about it before applying it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's say we've got 10 votes to close and 5 votes to open it would be closed.  &#xD;&#xA;But then it would require the people that want it open 10 votes to get it back open, unfair...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Why would someone vote to keep it open if it is already open?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- More votes are required to close and open a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I agree, the ping-pong is another [user frustration due to closed questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/492/how-to-prevent-why-is-my-question-being-closed-and-user-frustration) and needs improvement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps it could work with some fine tuning, but still it is something which has to be thought about..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25498" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="499" RevisionGUID="4a9ca48f-6f99-4e65-bea5-d5c0092452e3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This might break the system... We should think about it before applying it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's say we've got 10 votes to close and 5 votes to open it would be closed.  &#xD;&#xA;But then it would require the people that want it open 10 votes to get it back open, unfair...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Why would someone vote to keep it open if it is already open?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- More votes are required to close and open a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I agree, the ping-pong is another [user frustration due to closed questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/492/how-to-prevent-why-is-my-question-being-closed-and-user-frustration) and needs improvement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps it could work with some fine tuning, but still it is something which has to be thought about..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25499" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="271" RevisionGUID="380f7789-d330-4a68-9314-cae3e35c11fa" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Were trying to define it here: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain/74#74" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25500" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="541" RevisionGUID="e9432b70-7661-4bbc-b4fb-6e6d50eb4590" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Regarding &quot;Bad form&quot; check https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/521/is-this-kind-of-activity-allowed apparently it has the go ahead from one mod and a word of warning from another (which should not be taken lightly, if you have any doubts as to whether something you post is off topic, he will see to it that it is closed). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find myself asking questions on programmers.SE that could probably get much better answers from the larger user base on stackoverflow.  The one good thing about this site is that almost nothing slips through the cracks (for better or worse).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I kinda don't think there can be crossposted stuff between SO and here though, there is too much of a disconnect now between &quot;Opinion Answering&quot; on this site and &quot;Just the facts, dude&quot; on SO. You may be able to crosspost a pronunciation question between the English usage site and this one or a snack suggestion between &quot;Seasoned Advice&quot; and this site.  But in each of those cases, the post on this site is probably going to be closed (at least once).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh, and I don't think the &quot;migration paths&quot; open up till the site is out of beta (looks like that'll be soon)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25501" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="266" RevisionGUID="341eed07-29bf-4a49-a011-9dc8ff9e2df1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Programmers.SE is often seen as a dumping ground for anything not suitable for StackOverflow. How would you more clearly define the type of questions that this site is intended for?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA; - [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable)&#xD;&#xA; - [Lots of subjective questions here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/176/lots-of-subjective-questions-here)&#xD;&#xA; - [What's the difference between Programmers and SO](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25502" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="266" RevisionGUID="93dd4278-4868-4d3f-ac66-62bdc2428a8f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Programmers.SE is often seen as a dumping ground for anything not suitable for StackOverflow. How would you more clearly define the type of questions that this site is intended for?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA; - [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable)&#xD;&#xA; - [Lots of subjective questions here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/176/lots-of-subjective-questions-here)&#xD;&#xA; - [What's the difference between Programmers and SO](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25504" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="576" RevisionGUID="cf831ab4-1681-49aa-ae71-675e366bf312" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If that's what the question and its answers essentially were, you'd be correct in saying it's on topic because it deals with a developer's tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that's not what the question is, and the answers only mention in passing Mac OS X's development capability. Explaining what the command key does and where the Applications folder is doesn't make a professional programmer better at his job, but they do help someone new to a Mac in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In reality, a question like &quot;What are the essential things I should know about Mac?&quot; is essentially asking, &quot;Can someone read my mind and link every question I might find useful on [Apple.SE](http://apple.stackexchange.com)?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange system only works when people ask pointed questions that are directly related to the Stack Exchange they are on because they attract the knowledge and experience of experts on the topic. A person interested in learning more about specific things on a Mac should avail themselves of [Apple.SE](http://apple.stackexchange.com) and ask questions there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using the &quot;as a programmer&quot; qualifier to make any question on topic (among other cheese methods) has been discussed several times [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22as+a+programmer%22), on the [Stack Overflow blog](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/), and on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suffice it to say, Programmers.SE does not suffer from a lack of good questions such that we need to be a general-purpose question and answer site like [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) or [Quora](http://quora.com); where the only thing that you need to do is add the keyword &quot;programmer&quot; or the phrase &quot;as a programmer&quot; and ask an broad, easy-to-answer question to be on topic. There are literally dozens of specialized Stack Exchange sites that cover the topics more appropriately." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25505" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="271" RevisionGUID="5af91695-7ace-444c-8c18-7fc7caf24def" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Were trying to define it here: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain/74#74" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25507" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="640" RevisionGUID="6015cc46-f5ce-4617-a45b-b4c65099c960" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Programmers.SE has been in beta for [99 days](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related): all Stack Exchange sites, barring some exceptional circumstances like a business-development deal (e.g. [Ask Ubuntu](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/ubuntu-stack-exchange-is-askubuntu-com/)), stay in beta for at least 90 days. Many sites stay in beta for [significantly longer than that](http://area51.stackexchange.com/?tab=progress).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're currently next or second in line to leave beta: right now, Jin is [working on the final design](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed). Once that's done, we'll leave beta shortly thereafter." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25509" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="640" RevisionGUID="7a79a586-ddf4-44a9-8e52-f2e77716b2db" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Programmers.SE has been in beta for [99 days](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related): all Stack Exchange sites, barring some exceptional circumstances like a business-development deal (e.g. [Ask Ubuntu](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/ubuntu-stack-exchange-is-askubuntu-com/)), stay in beta for at least 90 days. Many sites stay in beta for [significantly longer than that](http://area51.stackexchange.com/?tab=progress).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're currently next or second in line to leave beta: right now, Jin is [working on the final design](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed). Once that's done, we'll leave beta shortly thereafter." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25510" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="666" RevisionGUID="cf652b6b-fa6b-4184-96f6-5537757474c9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [[work], [job], [career-development], [employment] =&amp;gt; [career]](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/163/work-job-career-development-employment-career)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;We have four tags containing the word &quot;career&quot;: career, career-development, career-advice, and career-guidance. I propose a tag merge to &quot;career&quot;. Upvote to agree, answer with your point of contention if you disagree." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25512" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="396" RevisionGUID="7925c1ac-52d3-40d8-bdda-05a31b68f286" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Hey Jeff, why not letting the community decide about [this question][1]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question has a purpose. I want to understand how people projects themselve in the future. I know that it's impossible to answer, and that's why the question is very valuable to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where can we discuss psychology of programmers if not at P.SE ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-will-programmer-profession-look-like-in-30-years-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25513" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="817" RevisionGUID="dd4bc05f-a084-4c80-97f0-cb12106d11eb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Now that there's a migration path from Stack Overflow to here, should we be more strict about what's off topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know there's [this old question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain) about what the FAQ should contain, but the current [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) doesn't have the what's not allowed list that the [Super User one](http://superuser.com/faq) or [Web Applications one](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/faq) does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, should we have an &quot;off topic&quot; list and what should it contain?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of things spring to mind straight away:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Office environment questions - such as questions about office chairs and desks. These apply to any office worker and aren't unique to developers.&#xD;&#xA;2. Office politics questions - these are clearly going to be *very* subjective and will usually fall foul of the 6 guidelines for quality subjective questions anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I need to chase up the ability edit the &quot;what's not allowed&quot; section. If it's not going to be forthcoming any time soon I'll go ahead and edit it into the section I *can* edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As all the answers seem to have pretty much universal approval from all those who voted, they're all in." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25514" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="817" RevisionGUID="006b5a25-c6f7-4546-8f68-42ee6b27010f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Now that there's a migration path from Stack Overflow to here, should we be more strict about what's off topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know there's [this old question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain) about what the FAQ should contain, but the current [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) doesn't have the what's not allowed list that the [Super User one](http://superuser.com/faq) or [Web Applications one](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/faq) does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, should we have an &quot;off topic&quot; list and what should it contain?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of things spring to mind straight away:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Office environment questions - such as questions about office chairs and desks. These apply to any office worker and aren't unique to developers.&#xD;&#xA;2. Office politics questions - these are clearly going to be *very* subjective and will usually fall foul of the 6 guidelines for quality subjective questions anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I need to chase up the ability edit the &quot;what's not allowed&quot; section. If it's not going to be forthcoming any time soon I'll go ahead and edit it into the section I *can* edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As all the answers seem to have pretty much universal approval from all those who voted, they're all in." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25515" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="396" RevisionGUID="23008ea7-e59c-494a-ba0e-88e323685d7e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Hey Jeff, why not letting the community decide about [this question][1]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question has a purpose. I want to understand how people projects themselve in the future. I know that it's impossible to answer, and that's why the question is very valuable to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where can we discuss psychology of programmers if not at P.SE ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-will-programmer-profession-look-like-in-30-years-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25516" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="855" RevisionGUID="360a9871-8b67-4c7c-aa45-b1403a723862" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm not a fan of seeing questions closed without the usual 5 closing votes, but I understand that sometimes that's necessary. Still, what are the rules around moderators closing questions outright?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, this one: [Why does Microsoft have such a bad reputation with the people involved in open source? [closed]][1]. Seems like a decent question, the answers are well thought out, and then it's mod-hammered down as &quot;not constructive&quot; with two votes and no explanation. Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: I did see [this question][2], but I wanted to raise the issue again with some context. The situations described in the answer there don't seem to apply in this case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/31603/why-does-microsoft-have-such-a-bad-reputation-with-the-people-involved-in-open-so&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25517" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="855" RevisionGUID="e6158aa8-60a1-430b-935e-b64d27bd0882" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm not a fan of seeing questions closed without the usual 5 closing votes, but I understand that sometimes that's necessary. Still, what are the rules around moderators closing questions outright?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, this one: [Why does Microsoft have such a bad reputation with the people involved in open source? [closed]][1]. Seems like a decent question, the answers are well thought out, and then it's mod-hammered down as &quot;not constructive&quot; with two votes and no explanation. Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: I did see [this question][2], but I wanted to raise the issue again with some context. The situations described in the answer there don't seem to apply in this case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/31603/why-does-microsoft-have-such-a-bad-reputation-with-the-people-involved-in-open-so&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25519" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1027" RevisionGUID="73f107d6-d837-4879-9f6f-6a843c58ed03" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have some general questions to ask. I hope each nominee will answer. Should I ask each questions individually or in a single question to avoid too much items in case other users want to do the same (which I hope will happens) ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm referring to https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1019/2011-community-moderator-election in which Jeff suggest to ask questions to nominees on meta with the Election tag. The answer to those questions won't fit in a comment anyway." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25520" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1027" RevisionGUID="7f7abb46-a17b-4eda-8aea-49606a524c23" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have some general questions to ask. I hope each nominee will answer. Should I ask each questions individually or in a single question to avoid too much items in case other users want to do the same (which I hope will happens) ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm referring to https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1019/2011-community-moderator-election in which Jeff suggest to ask questions to nominees on meta with the Election tag. The answer to those questions won't fit in a comment anyway." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25522" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1034" RevisionGUID="4a8c912a-e001-4c1a-9a4d-bb2ba8889f74" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="After a lot of discussion and changes throughout the past few months, Programmers.SE is currently on the right track and there's no reason to change how we approach the challenges the site will face in the future. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, I don't think moderators need to pledge anything to help Programmers.SE to prosper in the future: through the hard work of the community, Programmers.SE *is* prospering *now*. We as a community should continue to keep doing what we're doing to keep it that way, and it's the job of the moderator to help keep the community on the same path.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like ChrisF, I have the advantage of having some history to elaborate on my nomination, and I think [my record through moderation](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8/mark-trapp?tab=activity) and [participation on the meta discussion site](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8/mark-trapp) speaks louder than describing moderation styles in the abstract.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If elected, I will continue to act as I have been as a moderator *pro tempore* and as an active member of the site since the first day of private beta. If my style of moderation and participation, as demonstrated through my actions, works for you, I encourage you to vote for me. If it doesn't, I encourage you to vote for someone else who's demonstrated the type of moderation style you'd like to see." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25523" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="408" RevisionGUID="b248589a-6dc2-471c-9c33-694d191105fa" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've followed the evolution of this site for a little while now and I must say I am a little confused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm looking for a single place where I can join a community of, what might commonly be called, software engineers.  Some subjects commonly included in this field include project management, agile, testing and quality assurance, team work and leadership, methodologies, architecture and design, and estimation among others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding is that the main focus of StackOverflow is, literally, programming questions.  Unlike this site which I think is trying to be ironic?  (I understand that this site started off as a gag, but is that still the case?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding of a programming question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - language, syntax, and implementation&#xD;&#xA; - compiles or can be interpreted&#xD;&#xA; - definite &quot;right&quot; answer - it can be tested directly or builds&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But where do these other subjects I mentioned above belong?  Some here, some there, [the only guideline being on the basis of subjectivity][1]? This is kind of...abstract and a little hard to understand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I think subjectivity vs. objectivity is too blurry and confusing a delineator for partitioning content across sites. Really what we're talking about is macro-software development vs. micro-software development**, very similar to macroeconomics vs microeconomics.  Both macro and micro perspectives are critical to understanding how to build great software, both are huge fields with specialists and experts.  Both can coexist, and while there is some overlap, the perspectives are completely different enough that it makes sense to think of them as different things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I bring this up because if this site is about macro-software development, we can rephrase the summary language a little and reasonably justify official mergers with [other SE sites interested in macro-development topics][2].  I feel that this would benefit the community as a whole much more than the confused, divided state it's in now.  As it is phrased now, it's confusing who this site is for and what is actually covered here. It's for programmers, but it's not *really* about &quot;programming&quot;...?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25524" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1031" RevisionGUID="a6022f1c-6706-4383-9ed2-6e0363862f31" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Jeff [suggests][1] that we ask questions to nominees on meta with the **Election** tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So far I've seen four ways to ask questions to nominees:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Right in the comments of nominee's introduction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. One question in a meta, every nominee can answer (Jeff's [suggestion][1]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Many questions in a meta post ([used][2] on [Super User][2] by Ivo Flipse).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. One post on meta for many questions. Questions are asked in answers. Nominees edit the answer with their own. ([used][3] on [Math.SE][3]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've [used method 2][4] by grouping two questions with a very similar subjects as per [Anna's suggestion][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What's is your preferred way?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1019/2011-community-moderator-election&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.superuser.com/questions/1950/qa-with-the-candidates-in-2011-moderator-election&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1254/list-of-questions-for-candidates-in-2010-moderator-election&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1030/nominees-2011-could-you-please-tell-more-about-your-future-moderation-style&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1027/i-want-to-ask-few-questions-to-nominees-should-i-ask-them-in-a-single-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25525" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="408" RevisionGUID="00f76e13-cf41-42b1-8a91-57eec13cb489" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've followed the evolution of this site for a little while now and I must say I am a little confused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm looking for a single place where I can join a community of, what might commonly be called, software engineers.  Some subjects commonly included in this field include project management, agile, testing and quality assurance, team work and leadership, methodologies, architecture and design, and estimation among others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding is that the main focus of StackOverflow is, literally, programming questions.  Unlike this site which I think is trying to be ironic?  (I understand that this site started off as a gag, but is that still the case?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding of a programming question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - language, syntax, and implementation&#xD;&#xA; - compiles or can be interpreted&#xD;&#xA; - definite &quot;right&quot; answer - it can be tested directly or builds&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But where do these other subjects I mentioned above belong?  Some here, some there, [the only guideline being on the basis of subjectivity][1]? This is kind of...abstract and a little hard to understand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I think subjectivity vs. objectivity is too blurry and confusing a delineator for partitioning content across sites. Really what we're talking about is macro-software development vs. micro-software development**, very similar to macroeconomics vs microeconomics.  Both macro and micro perspectives are critical to understanding how to build great software, both are huge fields with specialists and experts.  Both can coexist, and while there is some overlap, the perspectives are completely different enough that it makes sense to think of them as different things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I bring this up because if this site is about macro-software development, we can rephrase the summary language a little and reasonably justify official mergers with [other SE sites interested in macro-development topics][2].  I feel that this would benefit the community as a whole much more than the confused, divided state it's in now.  As it is phrased now, it's confusing who this site is for and what is actually covered here. It's for programmers, but it's not *really* about &quot;programming&quot;...?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25526" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1096" RevisionGUID="2144230c-6167-4dde-9923-adfd84ff20c5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Thanks Rebecca for putting the chat together, it was fun and informative both as a candidate and member of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are my answers to questions I missed either prior to arrival or as the chat went along.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **How will you handle having a vote that is binding?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is, to me, an interesting part of the SO system.  I'm not 100% sure why it is chosen to work this way, but I believe it is because a moderator should be both more careful/accurate and more trusted with their decisions.  So, I will take it that way.  I will make sure I understand the comments or discussion and have explained my actions and responded to any valid concerns.  In addition, I will make sure that I have provided links for more help if the user is new or uniformed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **I have a question. What are your thoughts on the new &quot;Everyone can edit&quot; feature which was recently introduced and is still under development?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    I really believe the statement that one of the key differentiators of SE to other Q&amp;A sites is the edit.  I don't think that having 2000 rep is necessary for any other reason than to prevent abuse of the system.  Many well-meaning users become informed of how the site works very quickly, and so I think this is a good step in the right direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **We all know Programmers had a bit of a rough start. In your opinion, are things good now? Better? Still a lot of things to figure out?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Absolutely better now, though there are a lot of things to still figure out.  The [real questions have answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) blog post was a great step.  That doesn't mean there aren't still things to figure out.  For one, the interpretation of the &quot;6 guidelines for subjective questions&quot; is itself subjective.  It's good guidance, but it makes [enforcement](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) difficult when one user's interpretation is different from another's.  The best we have to deal with that situation now is the voting system, which is the core reason that the binding moderator vote has caused problems in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **If anyone minds, I was stagnant on Programmers for a while. What was the challenge initially?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    If I am remembering correctly the original SE proposal for Programmers was &quot;NPR - Not programming related&quot;.  The emphasis there is on program&lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;ing&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.  However, there was some connotation, partly due to SO history, that it would be `!StackOverflow`, or the site for things programmers wanted to talk about that didn't fit on SO; in other words, a dumping ground.  Since the site was born, it's become apparent that it has a much better purpose than that, which I think is summed up nicely by the [SE tagline](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq): **&quot;Programmers is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective questions on software development.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    As a hypothetical, it's hard to answer this really well without full information on a real scenario. However, I'd hope that well-thought-out and voted-up responses in comments could effectively deal with this situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Question, what do you think is more important: A moderator that interacts well with the community, or one that is willing to put in lots of hard work cleaning flags?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    If you are saying the moderator who puts in a lot of hard work cleaning flags is not interacting well with the community, then what is the point?  The same could be said vice-versa.  So, I think the best that can be said is, a moderator should learn how to interact well and then get to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **When should questions be closed and just left alone vs. when should they be closed and deleted? That is, when do you believe in deleting content?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Delete should be used for content that has no value.  The only difference between a closed question and an open one is that of adding answers.  To me that indicates that the tool is used to indicate that the question is not appropriate for receiving new answers, but existing answers and discussion may still have value of some kind.  The closed question may also serve as a type of marker for previous off-topic precedent, for commonly-revisited questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   I hope this means I will act with increased prudence and care, something I would look forward to!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25527" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1175" RevisionGUID="a4f33b48-5a2a-4666-930e-9a6b9b93f023" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For one thing: You should have posted this question here: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For another, &quot;career-development&quot; is very ambiguous. You asking the questions wrong. Decide what you want to do first, then come back and ask us how to get there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25528" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1175" RevisionGUID="11385beb-99c0-47df-a074-7056ae4ac109" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For one thing: You should have posted this question here: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For another, &quot;career-development&quot; is very ambiguous. You asking the questions wrong. Decide what you want to do first, then come back and ask us how to get there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25529" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="455" RevisionGUID="ace42699-4c4c-4c77-ad58-910a1020fee0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Can we get a &amp;ldquo;Belongs on StackOverflow&amp;rdquo; as a closing reason?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/441/can-we-get-a-belongs-on-stackoverflow-as-a-closing-reason)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;According to the [new blog entry][1], we can now move questions in between sites. Would it be possible for us, even though were in beta, to have several migration paths setup?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sites that I think deserve a migration path:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;  - Objective questions are already being asked here and will just grow. &#xD;&#xA;  - Examples&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12566/how-to-name-a-single-purpose-class-and-method-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12426/what-methods-can-be-employed-for-using-composition-over-inheritance-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12271/how-i-do-versioning-for-an-web-application-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12010/pyton-gtk-menu-show-the-menu-at-a-certain-position-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11451/jquery-post-quirk-closed&#xD;&#xA; - SuperUser&#xD;&#xA;  - Originally there were few good questions about computer setups which resulted in many objective questions about setups. We really don't need this stuff here&#xD;&#xA;  - Examples&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12839/what-monitors-have-larger-than-hd-resolution-size-is-less-important-closed&#xD;&#xA;        - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12584/how-would-you-make-a-qwerty-keyboard-more-programming-friendly-closed&#xD;&#xA;        - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12565/best-out-of-box-linux-distro-for-general-programming-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12375/what-mouse-model-or-brand-do-you-like-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11895/recommendation-electronic-reader-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11577/running-javascript-on-the-command-line-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think this can be setup? It would make much of this site a bit more friendly instead of a straight close. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/new-question-migration-paths/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25530" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="455" RevisionGUID="2606356e-77ee-4de7-b87d-14bc51595593" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Can we get a &amp;ldquo;Belongs on StackOverflow&amp;rdquo; as a closing reason?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/441/can-we-get-a-belongs-on-stackoverflow-as-a-closing-reason)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;According to the [new blog entry][1], we can now move questions in between sites. Would it be possible for us, even though were in beta, to have several migration paths setup?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sites that I think deserve a migration path:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;  - Objective questions are already being asked here and will just grow. &#xD;&#xA;  - Examples&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12566/how-to-name-a-single-purpose-class-and-method-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12426/what-methods-can-be-employed-for-using-composition-over-inheritance-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12271/how-i-do-versioning-for-an-web-application-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12010/pyton-gtk-menu-show-the-menu-at-a-certain-position-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11451/jquery-post-quirk-closed&#xD;&#xA; - SuperUser&#xD;&#xA;  - Originally there were few good questions about computer setups which resulted in many objective questions about setups. We really don't need this stuff here&#xD;&#xA;  - Examples&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12839/what-monitors-have-larger-than-hd-resolution-size-is-less-important-closed&#xD;&#xA;        - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12584/how-would-you-make-a-qwerty-keyboard-more-programming-friendly-closed&#xD;&#xA;        - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12565/best-out-of-box-linux-distro-for-general-programming-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12375/what-mouse-model-or-brand-do-you-like-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11895/recommendation-electronic-reader-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11577/running-javascript-on-the-command-line-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think this can be setup? It would make much of this site a bit more friendly instead of a straight close. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/new-question-migration-paths/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25532" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1210" RevisionGUID="2b07556a-8a30-4038-90fb-e89c7d8062fd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Since you linked to one of the questions I closed, I'll add my 2 cents.  Yes there needs to be more communication between people on SO closing/migrating questions and mods/users on Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand how it happens.  A question is posted on SO that clearly doesn't belong there, someone votes to migrate it to Programmers thinking it's not about code so it should live here, not really know if it meets Programmers guidelines.  It actually happens a lot.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do know that in recent weeks that some of the mods on SO have started [asking][1] here on Meta whether a question should be migrated to Programmers or just closed on SO.  This goes a long way to help the situation.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What it doesn't fix is the situation where 5 SO users vote to migrate a question here.  They may or may not know whether it's a good question to migrate and they may or may not care (as long as it's gone from SO).  I don't know how that gets fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's some other discussions about the same topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/872&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1162" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25533" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="455" RevisionGUID="b53a703a-750c-4da2-93c4-1fc7315df8a7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Can we get a &amp;ldquo;Belongs on StackOverflow&amp;rdquo; as a closing reason?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/441/can-we-get-a-belongs-on-stackoverflow-as-a-closing-reason)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;According to the [new blog entry][1], we can now move questions in between sites. Would it be possible for us, even though were in beta, to have several migration paths setup?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sites that I think deserve a migration path:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;  - Objective questions are already being asked here and will just grow. &#xD;&#xA;  - Examples&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12566/how-to-name-a-single-purpose-class-and-method-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12426/what-methods-can-be-employed-for-using-composition-over-inheritance-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12271/how-i-do-versioning-for-an-web-application-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12010/pyton-gtk-menu-show-the-menu-at-a-certain-position-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11451/jquery-post-quirk-closed&#xD;&#xA; - SuperUser&#xD;&#xA;  - Originally there were few good questions about computer setups which resulted in many objective questions about setups. We really don't need this stuff here&#xD;&#xA;  - Examples&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12839/what-monitors-have-larger-than-hd-resolution-size-is-less-important-closed&#xD;&#xA;        - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12584/how-would-you-make-a-qwerty-keyboard-more-programming-friendly-closed&#xD;&#xA;        - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12565/best-out-of-box-linux-distro-for-general-programming-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12375/what-mouse-model-or-brand-do-you-like-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11895/recommendation-electronic-reader-closed&#xD;&#xA;      - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11577/running-javascript-on-the-command-line-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think this can be setup? It would make much of this site a bit more friendly instead of a straight close. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/new-question-migration-paths/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25534" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1210" RevisionGUID="fb871e0e-38c3-4ce5-a214-d974e18388ff" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Since you linked to one of the questions I closed, I'll add my 2 cents.  Yes there needs to be more communication between people on SO closing/migrating questions and mods/users on Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand how it happens.  A question is posted on SO that clearly doesn't belong there, someone votes to migrate it to Programmers thinking it's not about code so it should live here, not really know if it meets Programmers guidelines.  It actually happens a lot.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do know that in recent weeks that some of the mods on SO have started [asking][1] here on Meta whether a question should be migrated to Programmers or just closed on SO.  This goes a long way to help the situation.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What it doesn't fix is the situation where 5 SO users vote to migrate a question here.  They may or may not know whether it's a good question to migrate and they may or may not care (as long as it's gone from SO).  I don't know how that gets fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's some other discussions about the same topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/872&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1162" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25536" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1371" RevisionGUID="55b5ff0c-e5e6-4c0a-afb5-4dc7ce160b4f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Great question. ( Not localizing on the OP's example)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a community with so many people reading the question its likely That people may misinterpret or not go to the trouble of understanding the intentions behind the OP's seemingly duplicate question.&#xD;&#xA;Due to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. OP' lack of proper expression/wording &#xD;&#xA; 2. Which in turn maybe due to the OP's grasp of the language,due to missing factors in the questions definition which may be uncovered with a discussion and such.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Remember Not everyone is a Native speaker of English,not everyone one is an excellent or an effective communicator.&#xD;&#xA; 4. The point is to give the OP some benefit of doubt and concern to his requirement.I am not implying we go overboard on this,But we are an open community aren't we?&#xD;&#xA; 5. If the volume of people who might not understand this at the time of posting the question it would be closed very soon much to the frustration of the OP.&#xD;&#xA; 6. It may also be due to the Inability of the readers to see beyond the seeming duplicate nature to understand the real meaning of the question.Some people just don't take the trouble of understanding the question properly.&#xD;&#xA; 7. Agreed that some users might find it tiring/worn out /annoying to what they think is a duplicate post.IT wouldn't kill them to just ignore or not post in the topic for a while at least until it gets some constructive answers.Luckily we see this happening often :) thats why seemingly duplicate posts get some answers before they are closed .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In my opinion, the question itself&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be edited so that it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; apparent to other users that the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is not a duplicate. If it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; really is a unique question, the body&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be able to be worded in a way&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that makes that pretty obvious.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -[Renesis][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Plea should stay as is. If its too long it should be shorted.If it is removed *It Defeats The Basic Purpose of Putting it There*** to prevent the people who jump to quick conclusions and who dont take the trouble of understanding the OP's requirement in the question. *The fact that the OP has indicated that his question may be a duplicate indicates that he has been through the other posts and understands ,needs something more or better*.Which is totally ignored by the people who just want to close the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/2314/renesis" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25537" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1371" RevisionGUID="d9dd53ce-2334-4186-b579-3987b41fe506" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Great question. ( Not localizing on the OP's example)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a community with so many people reading the question its likely That people may misinterpret or not go to the trouble of understanding the intentions behind the OP's seemingly duplicate question.&#xD;&#xA;Due to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. OP' lack of proper expression/wording &#xD;&#xA; 2. Which in turn maybe due to the OP's grasp of the language,due to missing factors in the questions definition which may be uncovered with a discussion and such.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Remember Not everyone is a Native speaker of English,not everyone one is an excellent or an effective communicator.&#xD;&#xA; 4. The point is to give the OP some benefit of doubt and concern to his requirement.I am not implying we go overboard on this,But we are an open community aren't we?&#xD;&#xA; 5. If the volume of people who might not understand this at the time of posting the question it would be closed very soon much to the frustration of the OP.&#xD;&#xA; 6. It may also be due to the Inability of the readers to see beyond the seeming duplicate nature to understand the real meaning of the question.Some people just don't take the trouble of understanding the question properly.&#xD;&#xA; 7. Agreed that some users might find it tiring/worn out /annoying to what they think is a duplicate post.IT wouldn't kill them to just ignore or not post in the topic for a while at least until it gets some constructive answers.Luckily we see this happening often :) thats why seemingly duplicate posts get some answers before they are closed .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In my opinion, the question itself&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be edited so that it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; apparent to other users that the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is not a duplicate. If it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; really is a unique question, the body&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be able to be worded in a way&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that makes that pretty obvious.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -[Renesis][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Plea should stay as is. If its too long it should be shorted.If it is removed *It Defeats The Basic Purpose of Putting it There*** to prevent the people who jump to quick conclusions and who dont take the trouble of understanding the OP's requirement in the question. *The fact that the OP has indicated that his question may be a duplicate indicates that he has been through the other posts and understands ,needs something more or better*.Which is totally ignored by the people who just want to close the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/2314/renesis" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25538" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="507" RevisionGUID="3736e7a5-112e-46eb-a4af-9ce6031cfcb1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and SO](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Sorry for the silly question, but looking at the question/answers in this beta i dont understand why this... exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, like the title, what is the exact difference between the topics treated here and those in stackoverflow.com?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25539" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="507" RevisionGUID="54509ada-e9e6-481f-8b66-1c920a1e1278" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and SO](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Sorry for the silly question, but looking at the question/answers in this beta i dont understand why this... exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, like the title, what is the exact difference between the topics treated here and those in stackoverflow.com?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25540" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1399" RevisionGUID="5af79899-e4fd-4195-91ab-5d4004828ac0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a lot of space dedicated to explaining the [difference between SO and PSE][1], but precious little cogent justification.  I can't see any reason to have 2 separate sites.  You're decentralizing information and forcing people to search in two places to find answers to questions that might or might not be considered subjective.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only that, but there are WAY more people out there answering questions on SO than on PSE - so migrating a question to PSE is really a kiss of death.  Case in point - I asked [this question][2] on SO, and very quickly got 8 very useful answers.  Then someone did me a &quot;favor&quot; and migrated my question to PSE.  Question is now effectively dead, with almost no views.  5 of the people who answered my question don't even have PSE accounts, so I can't ask them questions in the comments.  If I had asked the question on PSE in the first place, I would still be waiting for answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?  Why not just have a &quot;subjective&quot; tag, and let people who don't want to read subjective questions ignore them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the votes and comments to my [answer][3] to that question (+24 at this writing), it appears that the community is generally unhappy with the SO/PSE split.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, whoever the powers-that-be are who run this site - I really think you have done the programming community a big disservice by splitting PSE from SO.  Please will you seriously consider eliminating PSE and merging all the questions back to StackOverflow, where they belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/171/1715&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66380/advice-please-old-server-side-guy-learning-new-client-side-tricks&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so/199#199" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25541" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1399" RevisionGUID="7f8c4638-f4ab-47a1-b346-d94f422cf239" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a lot of space dedicated to explaining the [difference between SO and PSE][1], but precious little cogent justification.  I can't see any reason to have 2 separate sites.  You're decentralizing information and forcing people to search in two places to find answers to questions that might or might not be considered subjective.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only that, but there are WAY more people out there answering questions on SO than on PSE - so migrating a question to PSE is really a kiss of death.  Case in point - I asked [this question][2] on SO, and very quickly got 8 very useful answers.  Then someone did me a &quot;favor&quot; and migrated my question to PSE.  Question is now effectively dead, with almost no views.  5 of the people who answered my question don't even have PSE accounts, so I can't ask them questions in the comments.  If I had asked the question on PSE in the first place, I would still be waiting for answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?  Why not just have a &quot;subjective&quot; tag, and let people who don't want to read subjective questions ignore them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the votes and comments to my [answer][3] to that question (+24 at this writing), it appears that the community is generally unhappy with the SO/PSE split.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, whoever the powers-that-be are who run this site - I really think you have done the programming community a big disservice by splitting PSE from SO.  Please will you seriously consider eliminating PSE and merging all the questions back to StackOverflow, where they belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/171/1715&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66380/advice-please-old-server-side-guy-learning-new-client-side-tricks&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so/199#199" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25542" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="512" RevisionGUID="8ccef51b-3de6-40bc-a970-a779fed81aa0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**No, it's not a bad thing to discuss - it's just not suitable for Programmers.SE _(in its current form)_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# In General:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When considering whether to vote to close a question, I have a simple metric I use:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Will this question make [me] a better programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;i.e. I attempt to objectively determine if there is value in the question (and any answers) at the time of voting.&#xD;&#xA;Obviously applying empathy if I'm not directly involved/educated in the topic, and if it's borderline I might wait a bit and see how it evolves before voting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;six subjective guidelines&quot; I don't agree with, because it's not a matter of subjectivity, and &quot;sharing experiences&quot; is *not* a valid measure of whether something is useful (sometimes experiences are helpful, sometimes they're not).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Voting to close is not a one-way decision; it doesn't mean the question is bad or irredeemable. If a question is improved and made into something useful, I will happily vote in favour of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**This is all about me wanting to help create a Q&amp;A website which is useful and respected** - *not* one that is considered a dumping ground for everything closed on StackOverflow, nor a place where the signal:noise ratio (i.e. useful:mindless-fun) is too low. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to [share programming wisdom][1], (not discuss showers, dreaming, and tacky TV shows).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Specifically:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this specific question, when I voted, there wasn't any point in it. It was more of a discussion - so find a discussion forum to have it in, or pop into the SO chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When combined with responses such as these:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've always said I do my best programming in the shower.  &#xD;&#xA;_and_  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Driving, definitely the best ideas are coming while driving.  &#xD;&#xA;_and_  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Often when I can't sleep at night. Usually because I have a problem on my mind.  &#xD;&#xA;_and_  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sometimes a few weeks after release: I look at my code and wonder &quot;what was I thinking?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;_and_  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I came up with the solution to a totally intractable database problem in a dream the other night.  &#xD;&#xA;_and_  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;Usually on my way home, about 5 minutes after leaving the office.  &#xD;&#xA;_and_  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;This totally reminds me of that Big Bang Theory episode...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of those are helpful and will not make anyone a better programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## To make it a good question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It needs to focus on making people better programmers, and tuning the question towards what we can do to improve our inspirational abilities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And **to keep it on-topic**, it needs to be specifically targeted at programmers - what sort of ideas do programmers have/need compares to other people? Well, ideas on API design. To inspire yourself for that, you might get a list of method names from ten popular APIs, print them out, jumble them up, and see if that helps inspire you as to good names for your own API.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question body should remind people it's asking for programming advice on coming up with ideas, to make sure the answers are focused in the right direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25543" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="512" RevisionGUID="e6b8c0e0-ca30-44a0-91fe-0d78639e1e15" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**No, it's not a bad thing to discuss - it's just not suitable for Programmers.SE _(in its current form)_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# In General:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When considering whether to vote to close a question, I have a simple metric I use:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Will this question make [me] a better programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;i.e. I attempt to objectively determine if there is value in the question (and any answers) at the time of voting.&#xD;&#xA;Obviously applying empathy if I'm not directly involved/educated in the topic, and if it's borderline I might wait a bit and see how it evolves before voting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;six subjective guidelines&quot; I don't agree with, because it's not a matter of subjectivity, and &quot;sharing experiences&quot; is *not* a valid measure of whether something is useful (sometimes experiences are helpful, sometimes they're not).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Voting to close is not a one-way decision; it doesn't mean the question is bad or irredeemable. If a question is improved and made into something useful, I will happily vote in favour of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**This is all about me wanting to help create a Q&amp;A website which is useful and respected** - *not* one that is considered a dumping ground for everything closed on StackOverflow, nor a place where the signal:noise ratio (i.e. useful:mindless-fun) is too low. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to [share programming wisdom][1], (not discuss showers, dreaming, and tacky TV shows).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Specifically:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this specific question, when I voted, there wasn't any point in it. It was more of a discussion - so find a discussion forum to have it in, or pop into the SO chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When combined with responses such as these:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've always said I do my best programming in the shower.  &#xD;&#xA;_and_  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Driving, definitely the best ideas are coming while driving.  &#xD;&#xA;_and_  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Often when I can't sleep at night. Usually because I have a problem on my mind.  &#xD;&#xA;_and_  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sometimes a few weeks after release: I look at my code and wonder &quot;what was I thinking?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;_and_  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I came up with the solution to a totally intractable database problem in a dream the other night.  &#xD;&#xA;_and_  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;Usually on my way home, about 5 minutes after leaving the office.  &#xD;&#xA;_and_  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;This totally reminds me of that Big Bang Theory episode...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of those are helpful and will not make anyone a better programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## To make it a good question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It needs to focus on making people better programmers, and tuning the question towards what we can do to improve our inspirational abilities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And **to keep it on-topic**, it needs to be specifically targeted at programmers - what sort of ideas do programmers have/need compares to other people? Well, ideas on API design. To inspire yourself for that, you might get a list of method names from ten popular APIs, print them out, jumble them up, and see if that helps inspire you as to good names for your own API.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question body should remind people it's asking for programming advice on coming up with ideas, to make sure the answers are focused in the right direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25544" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1401" RevisionGUID="e6f71d82-ff31-41e3-ac05-ed755b023252" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; There's a lot of space dedicated to explaining the [difference between SO and PSE][1], but precious little cogent justification. I can't see any reason to have 2 separate sites.  You're decentralizing information and forcing people to search in two places to find answers to questions that might or might not be considered subjective.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sure you've read Joel's blog post [Merging Season](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/) which addresses this point, although it's pretty open ended.  But the important take-aways are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The delicacy of the balance is known to the community managers.&#xD;&#xA;* The list of proposals that, according to Joel, fit well within Programmers contains many that would not fit inside StackOverflow, and few that do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, check out the top [tags](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags) on Programmers. **career**, **programming-languages**, **learning**, **software-engineering**, **productivity**.  Compare this to the top [StackOverflow tags](http://stackoverflow.com/tags) - nearly all related to platforms and languages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the popular langauges are top tags on Programmers as well, but look at the difference between the stream of [Programmers Java questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/java?sort=newest&amp;pagesize=50) vs. [StackOverflow Java questions](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/java?sort=newest&amp;pagesize=50).  I'd say seeing an obvious difference in the question streams alone is a good indication that the division between the sites is working.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Not only that, but there are WAY more people out there answering questions on SO than on PSE - so migrating a question to PSE is really a kiss of death.  Case in point - I asked [this question][2] on SO, and very quickly got 8 very useful answers.  Then someone did me a &quot;favor&quot; and migrated my question to PSE.  Question is now effectively dead, with almost no views.  5 of the people who answered my question don't even have PSE accounts, so I can't ask them questions in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually, only 2/8 answers have a higher score than **1**, and [one of them](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66380/advice-please-old-server-side-guy-learning-new-client-side-tricks/66390#66390) was posted after the migration. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the question being dead, you can't blame that on Programmers.  Questions die on both sites.  If anything, *any* question has a higher likelihood of surviving the first few minutes, let alone hours, on Programmers than on StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I had asked the question on PSE in the first place, I would still be waiting for answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find this argument completely silly; there are [22 questions with no upvoted answers on Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/unanswered) out of 8606, (**0.25%**), and out of 1503865 on SO, 2730108 (**18.1%**) with no upvoted answers and 101104 (**6.7%**) with *no answers at all*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why?  Why not just have a &quot;subjective&quot; tag, and let people who don't want to read subjective questions ignore them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not a solution - who is going to do the work of making sure that every question that *would have fit on Programmers* is tagged subjective.  What is *subjective* is also subjective itself - it's not always obvious what is a subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Based on the votes and comments to my [answer][3] to that question (+24 at this writing), it appears that the community is generally unhappy with the SO/PSE split.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers has **160+** users with **&gt;2000** rep and growing.  Score on a meta post means little at this point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please, whoever the powers-that-be are who run this site - I really think you have done the programming community a big disservice by splitting PSE from SO.  Please will you seriously consider eliminating PSE and merging all the questions back to StackOverflow, where they belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best distinction between the two can be summed up in this [beautifully concise answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55373/half-of-everything-you-know-will-be-obsolete-in-18-24-months-true-or-false/55379#55379) by Robert Harvey.  In it, he compares fundamental knowledge to &quot;ephemeral&quot; knowledge:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Fundamental programming principles and techniques are eternal.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow is literally **filled to the brim** with &quot;ephemeral&quot; problems and solutions.  These **fundamental principles**, that will last with us long beyond Java generics syntax, CSS-3 box shadows, PHP frameworks, **deserve their own site**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/171/1715&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66380/advice-please-old-server-side-guy-learning-new-client-side-tricks&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so/199#199" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25545" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1401" RevisionGUID="56fc415e-cc21-4ec6-9d20-b1d433950c9e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; There's a lot of space dedicated to explaining the [difference between SO and PSE][1], but precious little cogent justification. I can't see any reason to have 2 separate sites.  You're decentralizing information and forcing people to search in two places to find answers to questions that might or might not be considered subjective.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sure you've read Joel's blog post [Merging Season](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/) which addresses this point, although it's pretty open ended.  But the important take-aways are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The delicacy of the balance is known to the community managers.&#xD;&#xA;* The list of proposals that, according to Joel, fit well within Programmers contains many that would not fit inside StackOverflow, and few that do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, check out the top [tags](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags) on Programmers. **career**, **programming-languages**, **learning**, **software-engineering**, **productivity**.  Compare this to the top [StackOverflow tags](http://stackoverflow.com/tags) - nearly all related to platforms and languages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the popular langauges are top tags on Programmers as well, but look at the difference between the stream of [Programmers Java questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/java?sort=newest&amp;pagesize=50) vs. [StackOverflow Java questions](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/java?sort=newest&amp;pagesize=50).  I'd say seeing an obvious difference in the question streams alone is a good indication that the division between the sites is working.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Not only that, but there are WAY more people out there answering questions on SO than on PSE - so migrating a question to PSE is really a kiss of death.  Case in point - I asked [this question][2] on SO, and very quickly got 8 very useful answers.  Then someone did me a &quot;favor&quot; and migrated my question to PSE.  Question is now effectively dead, with almost no views.  5 of the people who answered my question don't even have PSE accounts, so I can't ask them questions in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually, only 2/8 answers have a higher score than **1**, and [one of them](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66380/advice-please-old-server-side-guy-learning-new-client-side-tricks/66390#66390) was posted after the migration. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the question being dead, you can't blame that on Programmers.  Questions die on both sites.  If anything, *any* question has a higher likelihood of surviving the first few minutes, let alone hours, on Programmers than on StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I had asked the question on PSE in the first place, I would still be waiting for answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find this argument completely silly; there are [22 questions with no upvoted answers on Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/unanswered) out of 8606, (**0.25%**), and out of 1503865 on SO, 2730108 (**18.1%**) with no upvoted answers and 101104 (**6.7%**) with *no answers at all*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why?  Why not just have a &quot;subjective&quot; tag, and let people who don't want to read subjective questions ignore them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not a solution - who is going to do the work of making sure that every question that *would have fit on Programmers* is tagged subjective.  What is *subjective* is also subjective itself - it's not always obvious what is a subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Based on the votes and comments to my [answer][3] to that question (+24 at this writing), it appears that the community is generally unhappy with the SO/PSE split.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers has **160+** users with **&gt;2000** rep and growing.  Score on a meta post means little at this point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please, whoever the powers-that-be are who run this site - I really think you have done the programming community a big disservice by splitting PSE from SO.  Please will you seriously consider eliminating PSE and merging all the questions back to StackOverflow, where they belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best distinction between the two can be summed up in this [beautifully concise answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/55373/half-of-everything-you-know-will-be-obsolete-in-18-24-months-true-or-false/55379#55379) by Robert Harvey.  In it, he compares fundamental knowledge to &quot;ephemeral&quot; knowledge:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Fundamental programming principles and techniques are eternal.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;StackOverflow is literally **filled to the brim** with &quot;ephemeral&quot; problems and solutions.  These **fundamental principles**, that will last with us long beyond Java generics syntax, CSS-3 box shadows, PHP frameworks, **deserve their own site**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/171/1715&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66380/advice-please-old-server-side-guy-learning-new-client-side-tricks&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so/199#199" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25546" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1421" RevisionGUID="342ba9eb-616a-48e2-ad13-8f8ab539a99e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In [this question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1400/why-are-people-still-mass-upvoting-non-answers), we've established that this Q&amp;A site has grown to the point where adding more moderator coverage will help maintain the standards of a Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would the results of the last election still represent the current, active body of users?  Should we pull moderator #4, 5, and 6 based on the last election when the perceived quality of questions and answers was better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would the results be different if an election was done today for #4, 5, and 6?Would the users of today elect moderators who may not have the best interests of the site in mind?  For instance, some of the 3000+ users with close and reopen privileges may close/reopen questions that shouldn't be opened/closed, and if there are enough of these types of users voting in the election, could their votes affect the quality of the moderators who are selected?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible that elections in some cases may not actually result in what's best for the community, or would modifying the elections destroy the very foundation and design of the StackExchange network?  Which option is least-destructive to the community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25547" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1421" RevisionGUID="f4c371c1-e4d6-4b6b-ac86-2922924880db" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In [this question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1400/why-are-people-still-mass-upvoting-non-answers), we've established that this Q&amp;A site has grown to the point where adding more moderator coverage will help maintain the standards of a Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would the results of the last election still represent the current, active body of users?  Should we pull moderator #4, 5, and 6 based on the last election when the perceived quality of questions and answers was better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would the results be different if an election was done today for #4, 5, and 6?Would the users of today elect moderators who may not have the best interests of the site in mind?  For instance, some of the 3000+ users with close and reopen privileges may close/reopen questions that shouldn't be opened/closed, and if there are enough of these types of users voting in the election, could their votes affect the quality of the moderators who are selected?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible that elections in some cases may not actually result in what's best for the community, or would modifying the elections destroy the very foundation and design of the StackExchange network?  Which option is least-destructive to the community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25548" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1430" RevisionGUID="71847f1a-39d8-4e97-b6c1-1050d5c520c5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Should 'Programming psychology and philosophy' be added to the list of topics for questions in the faq?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of questions fall under that description&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: This [answer][1] to [Questions barely or not related directly to programming. We need handling them][2], got me thinking about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/642/questions-barely-or-not-related-directly-to-programming-we-need-handling-them/652#652&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/642/19799" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25549" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1466" RevisionGUID="975378a5-6a3a-4bed-9279-92c5e446bff1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### **[Developer Art][1]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm continuously amazed by his input - some of the contributions made are astounding.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Jonathan Khoo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Proposed by [Jonathan Khoo](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1461/sponsoring-a-community-member-to-attend-the-2011-rallyon-conference/1462#1462)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8685/developer-art&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25550" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1430" RevisionGUID="99df39b9-7a39-4948-baab-6c6094e87446" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Should 'Programming psychology and philosophy' be added to the list of topics for questions in the faq?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of questions fall under that description&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: This [answer][1] to [Questions barely or not related directly to programming. We need handling them][2], got me thinking about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/642/questions-barely-or-not-related-directly-to-programming-we-need-handling-them/652#652&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/642/19799" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25551" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1434" RevisionGUID="5cf18ab1-73c7-4ea7-a12c-808bf20b8613" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The goal of any Stack Exchange site is ask and provide **expert** answers that deal with the site's domain: answers that are based in reality and supported by cogent arguments and verifiable data.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is **not**, however, to provide a place to discuss whatever topic tangentially related to the site's domain. That is, Stack Exchange sites are not for the merely curious; for the armchair philosophers and armchair psychologists. The questions that appeal to them don't attract experts willing to offer their knowledge and experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if the purpose of this is to give free license to the questions linked in the answer you linked to, then no.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Indeed, the questions mentioned in the answer you linked support this: not a single question there has answers from expert psychologists or philosophers. And most (if not all) of the highest-voted answers are complete non-answers showing no expertise at all, but instead merely play to the crowd.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now, the site's problem is a [lack of **good answers**](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1400/why-are-people-still-mass-upvoting-non-answers), not a lack of good questions. It doesn't help the problem by introducing a whole new class of questions that invite bad answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25552" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1434" RevisionGUID="5573cb56-3eea-4d7a-bae6-4790339f1843" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The goal of any Stack Exchange site is ask and provide **expert** answers that deal with the site's domain: answers that are based in reality and supported by cogent arguments and verifiable data.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is **not**, however, to provide a place to discuss whatever topic tangentially related to the site's domain. That is, Stack Exchange sites are not for the merely curious; for the armchair philosophers and armchair psychologists. The questions that appeal to them don't attract experts willing to offer their knowledge and experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if the purpose of this is to give free license to the questions linked in the answer you linked to, then no.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Indeed, the questions mentioned in the answer you linked support this: not a single question there has answers from expert psychologists or philosophers. And most (if not all) of the highest-voted answers are complete non-answers showing no expertise at all, but instead merely play to the crowd.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now, the site's problem is a [lack of **good answers**](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1400/why-are-people-still-mass-upvoting-non-answers), not a lack of good questions. It doesn't help the problem by introducing a whole new class of questions that invite bad answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25553" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1472" RevisionGUID="976ffc82-295e-40fc-8c3a-0d515453c814" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As Jeff mentioned [in his answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1421/how-should-we-select-more-moderators-for-programmers-se/1423#1423), if another moderator is needed for whatever reason, we generally promote the 4th place election finisher to full moderator status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a result, [Mark Trapp](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8) has been promoted to moderator status." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25554" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1472" RevisionGUID="a4621305-5366-4f06-b9ae-959f146cd2cc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As Jeff mentioned [in his answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1421/how-should-we-select-more-moderators-for-programmers-se/1423#1423), if another moderator is needed for whatever reason, we generally promote the 4th place election finisher to full moderator status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a result, [Mark Trapp](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8) has been promoted to moderator status." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25555" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1472" RevisionGUID="3e8f2a12-d0e0-4e7c-bd95-0b7ba10f8174" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As Jeff mentioned [in his answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1421/how-should-we-select-more-moderators-for-programmers-se/1423#1423), if another moderator is needed for whatever reason, we generally promote the 4th place election finisher to full moderator status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a result, [Mark Trapp](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8) has been promoted to moderator status." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25556" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1519" RevisionGUID="29b4e821-8261-4ac9-a683-dc9fbde8f0a2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Any individual flag can be dismissed as valid or invalid. In this specific instance, your flag was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Kindly Migrate to expert site gamedev.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question, as explained in my comment on the question, did not warrant migration to GameDev.SE and as such, was dismissed as invalid. It was later found to be a duplicate of an earlier-asked question on Programmers.SE and was closed based on that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To quote myself on an [earlier question about flagging](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1488/8):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [P]lease don't put too much weight into flag...weight, especially on Programmers.SE. We don't get so many flags per day that having a low flag weight actually matters: we act on everything, even if that action is to take no action right away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flag weight determines the sorting of flags on the moderator tools screen. We don't get so many flags as to not be able to act on every single one in due time, and your flag weight is so high (currently 602.4794) that you are almost certainly at the top of the flag list regardless of a few false positives. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep flagging when you think you see something wrong: we appreciate it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25557" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1519" RevisionGUID="bcc3aff7-3e85-44ec-ba42-73f52522bd92" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Any individual flag can be dismissed as valid or invalid. In this specific instance, your flag was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Kindly Migrate to expert site gamedev.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question, as explained in my comment on the question, did not warrant migration to GameDev.SE and as such, was dismissed as invalid. It was later found to be a duplicate of an earlier-asked question on Programmers.SE and was closed based on that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To quote myself on an [earlier question about flagging](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1488/8):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [P]lease don't put too much weight into flag...weight, especially on Programmers.SE. We don't get so many flags per day that having a low flag weight actually matters: we act on everything, even if that action is to take no action right away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flag weight determines the sorting of flags on the moderator tools screen. We don't get so many flags as to not be able to act on every single one in due time, and your flag weight is so high (currently 602.4794) that you are almost certainly at the top of the flag list regardless of a few false positives. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep flagging when you think you see something wrong: we appreciate it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25558" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1519" RevisionGUID="f104d345-ebb4-436c-b87c-2a08595f1351" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Any individual flag can be dismissed as valid or invalid. In this specific instance, your flag was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Kindly Migrate to expert site gamedev.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question, as explained in my comment on the question, did not warrant migration to GameDev.SE and as such, was dismissed as invalid. It was later found to be a duplicate of an earlier-asked question on Programmers.SE and was closed based on that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To quote myself on an [earlier question about flagging](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1488/8):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [P]lease don't put too much weight into flag...weight, especially on Programmers.SE. We don't get so many flags per day that having a low flag weight actually matters: we act on everything, even if that action is to take no action right away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flag weight determines the sorting of flags on the moderator tools screen. We don't get so many flags as to not be able to act on every single one in due time, and your flag weight is so high (currently 602.4794) that you are almost certainly at the top of the flag list regardless of a few false positives. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep flagging when you think you see something wrong: we appreciate it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25559" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1580" RevisionGUID="4bd8185b-2814-4a52-8458-978145d3a1e0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="After reading the FAQ and the answers in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic, I feel that there is still a hole in the discussion, namely how can we help all those people that are genuinely asking for advice on how to progress their careers in terms of language knowledge?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems that there are a lot of college-level people asking this question and getting immediately closed as off-topic. I don't see that response as being particularly helpful, so I'd like to see some discussion around how we could update the FAQ or provide some useful feedback to the person asking the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More senior stackoverflow/programmers users know that in the real world knowing any particular language is not as important as knowing a range of languages, environments and toolkits. Juniors, however, do not know this. This is not limited to the software world, either. People will also agonize over whether to learn French or Spanish, or to study inorganic chemistry vs biochemistry etc. In each case *it doesn't really matter* except in specific circumstances (e.g. if you **really** want to work at the French embassy, or you only ever want to work with Android) as long as you learn *something*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is perfectly reasonable for a college kid to ask &quot;what should I learn&quot; or &quot;where should I focus my effort&quot; and so on, and for them many of the reasons why these are considered off-topic questions are irrelevant. To quote one of the answers from the https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    What does it depend on? Well this is an incomplete list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    What languages you already know&#xD;&#xA;    What problem you want to solve&#xD;&#xA;    What environment you have to solve the problem in&#xD;&#xA;    What language the company you're about to join uses&#xD;&#xA;    and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For college kids only the first point is relevent (and even then only vaguely - college kids are unlikely to be an expert in *any* language yet). They're not looking to solve a particular problem or join a particular company, and without some industry experience they will have no idea what &quot;and so on&quot; encompasses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think they're attempting to ask a deeper question &quot;How does one become a strong, employable developer&quot; but they don't know how to ask it. They mistakenly think that choice of language is the most important thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can we help the junior users to understand this without discouraging them with an immediate &quot;this is off-topic, go away&quot;? It could be as simple as a canned response that points them to a website hosting a good discussion of what makes a good developer (I know, I know, that's subjective and argumentative in itself)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25560" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1520" RevisionGUID="909a864d-3155-4ebd-83b8-5d07d7d88679" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For the most part, any moderator flag can be dismissed as valid or invalid. Comment flags can only be dismissed. There is no explicit valid/invalid distinction, but comment flags that aren't acted upon can decrease the flag weight as Mark described [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1488/why-are-spam-flags-for-posts-that-were-deleted-being-dismissed-as-invalid/1491#1491).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;It doesn't belong here&quot; flags from users with enough rep to vote to close will get converted to close votes, so there's nothing to dismiss there. For users with less than 3,000 rep, they will appear as normal flags for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't recall off-hand how spam flags I handled, but I believe those can be dismissed as valid or invalid as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mark said, we look at all flags, so flag weight on Programmers doesn't carry as much value as it would on busier sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25561" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1520" RevisionGUID="b67eec01-005f-4957-85b2-63a913413f4b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For the most part, any moderator flag can be dismissed as valid or invalid. Comment flags can only be dismissed. There is no explicit valid/invalid distinction, but comment flags that aren't acted upon can decrease the flag weight as Mark described [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1488/why-are-spam-flags-for-posts-that-were-deleted-being-dismissed-as-invalid/1491#1491).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;It doesn't belong here&quot; flags from users with enough rep to vote to close will get converted to close votes, so there's nothing to dismiss there. For users with less than 3,000 rep, they will appear as normal flags for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't recall off-hand how spam flags I handled, but I believe those can be dismissed as valid or invalid as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mark said, we look at all flags, so flag weight on Programmers doesn't carry as much value as it would on busier sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25562" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1520" RevisionGUID="52aa14c9-ce7b-4fa7-a02e-41a4f90bf2ca" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For the most part, any moderator flag can be dismissed as valid or invalid. Comment flags can only be dismissed. There is no explicit valid/invalid distinction, but comment flags that aren't acted upon can decrease the flag weight as Mark described [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1488/why-are-spam-flags-for-posts-that-were-deleted-being-dismissed-as-invalid/1491#1491).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;It doesn't belong here&quot; flags from users with enough rep to vote to close will get converted to close votes, so there's nothing to dismiss there. For users with less than 3,000 rep, they will appear as normal flags for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't recall off-hand how spam flags I handled, but I believe those can be dismissed as valid or invalid as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mark said, we look at all flags, so flag weight on Programmers doesn't carry as much value as it would on busier sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25563" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1535" RevisionGUID="ccc654b2-9abd-4490-ae3d-f54db6f481ed" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Badges awarded for upvotes received in a particular tag (such as [tag:career]) have a different style to differentiate them from the other kind of badges. For example, I have a badge for the [meta-tag:discussion] tag here on meta and it's shown in pink as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for why it's pink instead of any other colour... not a clue. That's probably a question only [Jin ♦][1] can answer. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1685/jin" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25564" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1623" RevisionGUID="fa4ac272-796f-40c8-a1e5-4c66d63d12a0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**tl;dr:** GTKY is Not a Real Question, no matter how much you qualify or restrict it. We want your experiences related to a solution to our problems, not just thrown out there for idle entertainment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;OT: I love the stuff you write, and your general attitude... But dude, I have the attention span of a gnat; it would be *sooo* much more soothing to my psyche if you could ever limit yourself to 2-3 paragraphs...&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A GTKY question is a GTKY question, no matter how much you dress it up. That's why I was *so* happy when [Real Questions Have Answers][1] was posted and [added to the FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/991/real-questions-have-answers). Because if *any answer is valid*, then no matter how good one answer might be, you're gonna have to live with the slow poison that is *every other person who reads it* potentially posting an EQUALLY VALID alternative to it. This isn't fair to the readers who actually want a solution to their problem. It's not fair to the authors of *good* answers who'll now eventually be deprived of reputation on the site when the number of answers rolls past 15. And it may not even be that useful to the original author, who quite possibly *wanted* to know &quot;What can I do that will work?&quot; even as he asked &quot;What did you do and what was the outcome?&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ guidelines on subjective Q&amp;A are meant [to *discourage* questions that attract lazy, unhelpful answers][2]. They are *not* a free pass for every question that happens to comply with them: a &quot;good subjective&quot; question can still be Off-Topic, Too Localized, or... simply Not a Real Question. That last one is my preferred reason for polls, GTKY and the like, although for this specific example it's arguable (especially given the answers) that there's simply nothing *programmer-specific* about it and therefore it's off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They can also be duplicates. I just closed that example as a duplicate of [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57507/how-to-become-more-productive-in-design-and-programming), since that's pretty much how I'd re-write it if I were trying to make it less of a GTKY question *and* more programmer-focused. There are other probable duplicates in existence; you linked to one in the comments, and I merged another... Frankly, this whole topic strikes me as the sort that really doesn't need more than one thread on the site, even though (or perhaps because) the specific *answer that works* will be different for every person. It's the classic &quot;how do I diagnose my computer?&quot; question - myriad root problems, countless eventual solutions, best answered with a trouble-shooting guide *if possible*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Would this be a useful rule of thumb?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not really. If the question is getting good answers with it, fine. If it's getting good answers *without it*, that's fine too. And if the question allows me to ramble on about that time I tried to be more productive by gorging on ephedrine and red bull provided I go into detail about how it didn't really work but did produce 30 new ways to re-arrange my desk, including &quot;disassembled&quot; and &quot;upside down&quot;, then burn it with fire.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1621/should-open-ended-poll-questions-be-allowed-just-because-they-say-to-explain-you/1622#1622" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25565" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1623" RevisionGUID="fafffad0-1707-4d3b-ba0c-e404722b037d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**tl;dr:** GTKY is Not a Real Question, no matter how much you qualify or restrict it. We want your experiences related to a solution to our problems, not just thrown out there for idle entertainment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;OT: I love the stuff you write, and your general attitude... But dude, I have the attention span of a gnat; it would be *sooo* much more soothing to my psyche if you could ever limit yourself to 2-3 paragraphs...&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A GTKY question is a GTKY question, no matter how much you dress it up. That's why I was *so* happy when [Real Questions Have Answers][1] was posted and [added to the FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/991/real-questions-have-answers). Because if *any answer is valid*, then no matter how good one answer might be, you're gonna have to live with the slow poison that is *every other person who reads it* potentially posting an EQUALLY VALID alternative to it. This isn't fair to the readers who actually want a solution to their problem. It's not fair to the authors of *good* answers who'll now eventually be deprived of reputation on the site when the number of answers rolls past 15. And it may not even be that useful to the original author, who quite possibly *wanted* to know &quot;What can I do that will work?&quot; even as he asked &quot;What did you do and what was the outcome?&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ guidelines on subjective Q&amp;A are meant [to *discourage* questions that attract lazy, unhelpful answers][2]. They are *not* a free pass for every question that happens to comply with them: a &quot;good subjective&quot; question can still be Off-Topic, Too Localized, or... simply Not a Real Question. That last one is my preferred reason for polls, GTKY and the like, although for this specific example it's arguable (especially given the answers) that there's simply nothing *programmer-specific* about it and therefore it's off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They can also be duplicates. I just closed that example as a duplicate of [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57507/how-to-become-more-productive-in-design-and-programming), since that's pretty much how I'd re-write it if I were trying to make it less of a GTKY question *and* more programmer-focused. There are other probable duplicates in existence; you linked to one in the comments, and I merged another... Frankly, this whole topic strikes me as the sort that really doesn't need more than one thread on the site, even though (or perhaps because) the specific *answer that works* will be different for every person. It's the classic &quot;how do I diagnose my computer?&quot; question - myriad root problems, countless eventual solutions, best answered with a trouble-shooting guide *if possible*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Would this be a useful rule of thumb?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not really. If the question is getting good answers with it, fine. If it's getting good answers *without it*, that's fine too. And if the question allows me to ramble on about that time I tried to be more productive by gorging on ephedrine and red bull provided I go into detail about how it didn't really work but did produce 30 new ways to re-arrange my desk, including &quot;disassembled&quot; and &quot;upside down&quot;, then burn it with fire.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1621/should-open-ended-poll-questions-be-allowed-just-because-they-say-to-explain-you/1622#1622" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25566" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1535" RevisionGUID="8ab7d629-0937-4827-a1e4-9b02e17c8b59" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Badges awarded for upvotes received in a particular tag (such as [tag:career]) have a different style to differentiate them from the other kind of badges. For example, I have a badge for the [meta-tag:discussion] tag here on meta and it's shown in pink as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for why it's pink instead of any other colour... not a clue. That's probably a question only [Jin ♦][1] can answer. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1685/jin" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25567" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1535" RevisionGUID="9d5a9a97-ebcb-4aa7-a039-aaf1a9f98d88" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Badges awarded for upvotes received in a particular tag (such as [tag:career]) have a different style to differentiate them from the other kind of badges. For example, I have a badge for the [meta-tag:discussion] tag here on meta and it's shown in pink as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for why it's pink instead of any other colour... not a clue. That's probably a question only [Jin ♦][1] can answer. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1685/jin" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25572" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1625" RevisionGUID="92b6b5f3-a519-45b7-95ac-0ed6f48491eb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In general, I think it's pretty well covered by the [`#dontask` section of the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, **open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site** and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”**&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also covered by [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/), which is linked and summarized in the FAQ as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **2. Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers.** The best subjective questions inspire your peers to share their actual experiences, not just post a mindless one-liner or cartoon in hopes of being rewarded with upvotes for being merely “first.” Sharing an experience takes at least one paragraph; ideally several paragraphs. If I’m asking about how to bake cookies, don’t give me a list of grocery items: milk. butter. vanilla. eggs. There is virtually nothing I can learn from a short, static list of grocery items that make up a recipe. Instead, tell me what happened the last time you made cookies from that recipe! Share your detailed experiences, so that we all might learn from them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **4. Great subjective questions invite sharing experiences over opinions.** Certainly experiences inform opinions, but the best subjective questions unabashedly and unashamedly prioritize sharing actual experiences over random opinions. It’s more useful to share with us what you’ve done than what you think. Everyone has an opinon. It takes zero effort or imagination to have an opinion about anything and everything. But people who have done things, real things in the world, and have the scars and arrows in their back to show for it — now that’s worth sharing. You should be uniquely qualified to have your opinion based on the specific experiences you had. And you should share those experiences, and more specifically what you learned from your experiences, with us!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason they're covered by these guidelines is that, time and time again, any time anyone asks a recommendation question it is almost certain to devolve into a list of favorites, with next to no justification for why anyone should care about that recommendation. Answers usually hinge on weasely opinion language like &quot;it's easy&quot;, &quot;it's cheap&quot;, &quot;it's awesome&quot;, &quot;I love it&quot;, and so forth. In this respect, they mirror [the thinly-veiled GTKY questions that Aaronaught brought up](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1621/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that point, questions that ask *how* to do something (where the &quot;recommendation&quot; *per se* is not the point of the question) are on-topic, questions that ask *what* will do something (where the &quot;recommendation&quot; *is* the point of the question) is off-topic. So,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is there something else like SquareSpace out there?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/78253/8)  — off-topic: asks for a list of stuff that meets X&#xD;&#xA;* [Need Advice on PHP Search Functionality](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/78379/8) — off-topic: asks for a list of stuff that meets X&#xD;&#xA;* [Learning C# quickly (given I already know…)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/78068/8) — on-topic: asks for info on *how* to do X&#xD;&#xA;* [What guidelines do you suggest for using Objective-C Properties?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/36262/8) — on-topic: asks for info on how to do X&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there might be some value to referencing the specific terms &quot;shopping recommendation&quot;, &quot;list of recommendations&quot;, and so forth to eliminate any ambiguity. The number of recommendation questions we've been getting have been growing an an increasing rate (I count 14 on the front page right now), and without a clear push to clean them up, Programmers.SE is nothing more than a glorified recommendation service.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And of course, that's [*not* the point of Stack Exchange](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/). We're here to help *solve* problems, not come up with a dubious list of resources to help solve a problem. People should feel comfortable asking about the problem they're having directly. It'd be like if people asked &quot;Can you point me to a website that tells me how to fix this error I'm getting?&quot; on Stack Overflow: there's no added value to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know where Programmers.SE went off the track on this: it might be an issue of broken windows, or something else, but a FAQ mention specifically about this problem could at least act as a basis for bringing the site back from this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that said, I do feel that it's hard to use the FAQ as a be-all and end-all to what's on and off-topic, as the basis for the site is founded upon several nuanced concepts, and at a certain point, people need to think for themselves and apply those concepts when deciding if a question is on-topic or off. Just because X isn't explicitly stated to be off-topic in the FAQ doesn't mean all the other stuff in the FAQ doesn't apply." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25573" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1625" RevisionGUID="6991a3cf-b59b-4231-a553-757611015e43" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In general, I think it's pretty well covered by the [`#dontask` section of the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, **open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site** and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”**&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also covered by [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/), which is linked and summarized in the FAQ as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **2. Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers.** The best subjective questions inspire your peers to share their actual experiences, not just post a mindless one-liner or cartoon in hopes of being rewarded with upvotes for being merely “first.” Sharing an experience takes at least one paragraph; ideally several paragraphs. If I’m asking about how to bake cookies, don’t give me a list of grocery items: milk. butter. vanilla. eggs. There is virtually nothing I can learn from a short, static list of grocery items that make up a recipe. Instead, tell me what happened the last time you made cookies from that recipe! Share your detailed experiences, so that we all might learn from them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **4. Great subjective questions invite sharing experiences over opinions.** Certainly experiences inform opinions, but the best subjective questions unabashedly and unashamedly prioritize sharing actual experiences over random opinions. It’s more useful to share with us what you’ve done than what you think. Everyone has an opinon. It takes zero effort or imagination to have an opinion about anything and everything. But people who have done things, real things in the world, and have the scars and arrows in their back to show for it — now that’s worth sharing. You should be uniquely qualified to have your opinion based on the specific experiences you had. And you should share those experiences, and more specifically what you learned from your experiences, with us!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason they're covered by these guidelines is that, time and time again, any time anyone asks a recommendation question it is almost certain to devolve into a list of favorites, with next to no justification for why anyone should care about that recommendation. Answers usually hinge on weasely opinion language like &quot;it's easy&quot;, &quot;it's cheap&quot;, &quot;it's awesome&quot;, &quot;I love it&quot;, and so forth. In this respect, they mirror [the thinly-veiled GTKY questions that Aaronaught brought up](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1621/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that point, questions that ask *how* to do something (where the &quot;recommendation&quot; *per se* is not the point of the question) are on-topic, questions that ask *what* will do something (where the &quot;recommendation&quot; *is* the point of the question) is off-topic. So,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is there something else like SquareSpace out there?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/78253/8)  — off-topic: asks for a list of stuff that meets X&#xD;&#xA;* [Need Advice on PHP Search Functionality](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/78379/8) — off-topic: asks for a list of stuff that meets X&#xD;&#xA;* [Learning C# quickly (given I already know…)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/78068/8) — on-topic: asks for info on *how* to do X&#xD;&#xA;* [What guidelines do you suggest for using Objective-C Properties?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/36262/8) — on-topic: asks for info on how to do X&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there might be some value to referencing the specific terms &quot;shopping recommendation&quot;, &quot;list of recommendations&quot;, and so forth to eliminate any ambiguity. The number of recommendation questions we've been getting have been growing an an increasing rate (I count 14 on the front page right now), and without a clear push to clean them up, Programmers.SE is nothing more than a glorified recommendation service.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And of course, that's [*not* the point of Stack Exchange](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/). We're here to help *solve* problems, not come up with a dubious list of resources to help solve a problem. People should feel comfortable asking about the problem they're having directly. It'd be like if people asked &quot;Can you point me to a website that tells me how to fix this error I'm getting?&quot; on Stack Overflow: there's no added value to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know where Programmers.SE went off the track on this: it might be an issue of broken windows, or something else, but a FAQ mention specifically about this problem could at least act as a basis for bringing the site back from this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that said, I do feel that it's hard to use the FAQ as a be-all and end-all to what's on and off-topic, as the basis for the site is founded upon several nuanced concepts, and at a certain point, people need to think for themselves and apply those concepts when deciding if a question is on-topic or off. Just because X isn't explicitly stated to be off-topic in the FAQ doesn't mean all the other stuff in the FAQ doesn't apply." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25578" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1665" RevisionGUID="d7f62478-a2a1-4a5d-91d8-5fb7a128d933" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Earlier today we saw http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80898/how-do-you-ask-or-get-asked-to-speak-at-a-software-conference asked and subsequently closed as &quot;not a real question&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's gathered 2 reopen votes already and I personally believe it deserves to be reopened. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the highest voted answer in [this question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers/292#292) here on Meta, I think the question fits most of the criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it interesting to programmers in general?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think so, provided they're the type of programmers who want to speak at a conference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Would answers be significantly different without &quot;for programmers&quot; added?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some answers would be more general, but I think there are enough development-specific things that could be pulled in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it is true that other professions have conferences, I doubt, for example, that a speaker at an economics conference has to attend a local user group or create an open source project to become more known in their field.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does the addition of &quot;for programmers&quot; seem like more than just an afterthought?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Software&quot; was edited into the question by request, but I don't think it's unreasonable to say that a question about conferences on a programming-themed site is about software conferences and not, say, knitting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Will the question produce useful and/or interesting discussion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think so. I think many developers are focused on their own jobs and daily tasks and might think that speaking at a conference is for other people. They might not consider the fact that they, too, have a lot to offer to the community and that presenting doesn't have to be intimidating or only done by the big names in the industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does this question make the internet better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See above, I think so. As a developer, reading the answers given to that question, I could also extrapolate beyond conferences and see how I could improve the soft side of my career in addition to eventually improving technical skills.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the question could be expanded a bit to include something like asking what sort of preparation (at the technical level) is required for presenting at a software conference, but even as it is now, I think it should be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25579" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1665" RevisionGUID="b3346ebe-6fcf-41f6-9cee-ee217d514afc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Earlier today we saw http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80898/how-do-you-ask-or-get-asked-to-speak-at-a-software-conference asked and subsequently closed as &quot;not a real question&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's gathered 2 reopen votes already and I personally believe it deserves to be reopened. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the highest voted answer in [this question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers/292#292) here on Meta, I think the question fits most of the criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it interesting to programmers in general?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think so, provided they're the type of programmers who want to speak at a conference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Would answers be significantly different without &quot;for programmers&quot; added?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some answers would be more general, but I think there are enough development-specific things that could be pulled in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it is true that other professions have conferences, I doubt, for example, that a speaker at an economics conference has to attend a local user group or create an open source project to become more known in their field.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does the addition of &quot;for programmers&quot; seem like more than just an afterthought?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Software&quot; was edited into the question by request, but I don't think it's unreasonable to say that a question about conferences on a programming-themed site is about software conferences and not, say, knitting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Will the question produce useful and/or interesting discussion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think so. I think many developers are focused on their own jobs and daily tasks and might think that speaking at a conference is for other people. They might not consider the fact that they, too, have a lot to offer to the community and that presenting doesn't have to be intimidating or only done by the big names in the industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does this question make the internet better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See above, I think so. As a developer, reading the answers given to that question, I could also extrapolate beyond conferences and see how I could improve the soft side of my career in addition to eventually improving technical skills.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the question could be expanded a bit to include something like asking what sort of preparation (at the technical level) is required for presenting at a software conference, but even as it is now, I think it should be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25582" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1702" RevisionGUID="07164905-6417-419f-afd3-ce87d7b620c9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Let&amp;#39;s nuke the catch-all tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;We have an artifact from the Antedisciplining period that should be removed: [tag:holy-war], which is obviously not the type of question we're looking for here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can it be purged with the fire from a thousand suns?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25583" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1719" RevisionGUID="57578957-f417-4406-b925-8a589e18b528" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are many discussions ([1][1] [2][2] [3][3] [4][4] [5][5] [6][6]) about what is currently on/off topic or what should be on/off-topic. That question is asked again and again but the way this community is managed it is not going to answered anytime soon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meanwhile, moderators &amp; community are doing their job by closing many questions from sometimes desperate programmers seeking help from other programmers (this is us).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Instead of closing the questions by only stating that it's off topic, should we seek for viable alternatives to propose them?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would help to make the internet better, correct? A place where people could find help from their peers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or should we consider that it's not our problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1162/would-this-question-be-on-topic-on-pse&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/what-types-of-programming-related-questions-are-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1568/are-which-technology-is-easier-questions-on-topic-even-though-which-technology&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1212/why-isnt-there-an-off-topic-off-topic-option&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1697/is-a-question-always-off-topic-when-it-applies-to-other-professions-too&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83510/benefit-of-arguing-with-your-manager-about-minor-development-things" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25585" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1719" RevisionGUID="8acc98db-596d-4363-84ed-a78def26f783" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are many discussions ([1][1] [2][2] [3][3] [4][4] [5][5] [6][6]) about what is currently on/off topic or what should be on/off-topic. That question is asked again and again but the way this community is managed it is not going to answered anytime soon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meanwhile, moderators &amp; community are doing their job by closing many questions from sometimes desperate programmers seeking help from other programmers (this is us).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Instead of closing the questions by only stating that it's off topic, should we seek for viable alternatives to propose them?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would help to make the internet better, correct? A place where people could find help from their peers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or should we consider that it's not our problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1162/would-this-question-be-on-topic-on-pse&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/what-types-of-programming-related-questions-are-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1568/are-which-technology-is-easier-questions-on-topic-even-though-which-technology&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1212/why-isnt-there-an-off-topic-off-topic-option&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1697/is-a-question-always-off-topic-when-it-applies-to-other-professions-too&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83510/benefit-of-arguing-with-your-manager-about-minor-development-things" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25586" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1656" RevisionGUID="32112a62-313e-45df-ab05-5bf8e8fa3fa3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm not saying my question was the best in the world, or even the worded in the best way, but I don't think it deserved to be closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80396/programming-languages-with-these-features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Mark Trapp](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8/mark-trapp), you can see, tells me in a comment that the [six guidelines for subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) applies to objective questions, as well. In fact, he interprets the rule to mean that we're not allowed to ask _any_ questions unless we have a real-life situation to solve. He implies that seeking knowledge out of pure curiosity is forbidden.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer to my question would have no opinion involved, only the satisfaction of the four criteria I laid out, so it's not subjective. It definitely has an answer in the form of a list. Do the guidelines for subjective questions really apply to objective questions, too?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Jeff Atwood](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/37/jeff-atwood) seems to make the distinction in a comment on [this Meta post](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice/369#369), but maybe not all moderators are in agreement?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm really trying to figure out why my question was closed, here. Not necessarily just because of that one question (although I am genuinely interested in it), but for future questions, as well. I'd appreciate any help." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25587" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1734" RevisionGUID="dd28578c-6444-4b0c-b69c-77db2ab4d4bd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### The context ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments may be removed by moderators with or without prejudice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If it was not apparent, a quick criterion of judging whether something should have been removed *with prejudice* is that, you think the commenter *probably* deserve a down-voting (reputation deducted) for posting that comment.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of reasons for removing comments *with prejudice* are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  *  (Just to list a few): useless, not contributing anything, not desirable, offensive, etc. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of reasons for removing comments *without prejudice*: (namely, to tidy up)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1457/620&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1127/620&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1639/620&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### My feature request ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the latter case, we may want to **keep some linked questions** that were once posted as comments even after those comments have been deleted, because a few of them may be relevant to the main question or OP. This will have to be decided on a case-by-case basis because not all linked questions are actually relevant; editorial insight will be needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, moderators should be able to directly edit the list of linked questions to add relevant ones and remove irrelevant (or borderline) ones. To be able to do this, the *linked/related questions* may need to be decoupled from the commentary system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This feature is more important to SO than to Programmers.SE because there is a higher tendency that *technical/mechanical/reference* questions are inter-related [1] and that if we require the related-question-provider to summarize the link, it would just be a verbatim quote of said technical matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Opposing opinion (1) ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, it might be argued that requiring a verbal summary/quote for every related link (by an answerer, not a commenter) may be a good thing because it improves signal-to-noise ratio. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If this is correct then there is no harm in deleting related links posted as comments.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Opposing opinion (2) ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP may want to have a say in what links are relevant and what aren't. If the OP decides that a link is relevant, the OP should edit the question to included the link, so that the SE engine can pick up and show it as a linked-question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Collaterals ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This feature would probably require declining https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/282/620&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#### My reflection ####&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a tendency to keep a lot of reference links &quot;just in case&quot;, and I was trained to look for &quot;signals&quot; in a sea of noise (i.e. to locate useful information in a mix of data of low signal-to-noise ratio)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#### Side note ####&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: just take a look at any reference documentation such as MSDN or NUnit to see how the pages are linked like a web.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25588" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1661" RevisionGUID="7ebed79f-e318-459b-a7f6-257694473b28" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="To put my own opinion on this into answer form (so that you can vote on my answer separately from my question):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pretty sure the [six guidelines for subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) applies to only _subjective_ questions rather than objective ones. This is the reason that was given for why my question was closed, and yet my question was an objective one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So now the question is whether or not objective questions in general are forbidden. Even if objective questions are forbidden, I believe my question should have been migrated to the appropriate site rather than closed. However, I read a comment from [Jeff Atwood](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/37/jeff-atwood) on [this Meta post](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice/369#369):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [W]e're not forcing subjective here, the difference is that subjective questions are welcomed and allowed. However, we do think that objective questions can do better on Stack Overflow in many cases...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought at the time that the subject matter of my question was a better fit for Programmers than Stack Overflow, so that's why I posted here rather than there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25589" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1734" RevisionGUID="99de9ba3-6ece-43d3-bef9-74ea14705697" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### The context ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments may be removed by moderators with or without prejudice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If it was not apparent, a quick criterion of judging whether something should have been removed *with prejudice* is that, you think the commenter *probably* deserve a down-voting (reputation deducted) for posting that comment.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of reasons for removing comments *with prejudice* are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  *  (Just to list a few): useless, not contributing anything, not desirable, offensive, etc. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of reasons for removing comments *without prejudice*: (namely, to tidy up)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1457/620&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1127/620&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1639/620&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### My feature request ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the latter case, we may want to **keep some linked questions** that were once posted as comments even after those comments have been deleted, because a few of them may be relevant to the main question or OP. This will have to be decided on a case-by-case basis because not all linked questions are actually relevant; editorial insight will be needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, moderators should be able to directly edit the list of linked questions to add relevant ones and remove irrelevant (or borderline) ones. To be able to do this, the *linked/related questions* may need to be decoupled from the commentary system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This feature is more important to SO than to Programmers.SE because there is a higher tendency that *technical/mechanical/reference* questions are inter-related [1] and that if we require the related-question-provider to summarize the link, it would just be a verbatim quote of said technical matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Opposing opinion (1) ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, it might be argued that requiring a verbal summary/quote for every related link (by an answerer, not a commenter) may be a good thing because it improves signal-to-noise ratio. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If this is correct then there is no harm in deleting related links posted as comments.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Opposing opinion (2) ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP may want to have a say in what links are relevant and what aren't. If the OP decides that a link is relevant, the OP should edit the question to included the link, so that the SE engine can pick up and show it as a linked-question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Collaterals ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This feature would probably require declining https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/282/620&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#### My reflection ####&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a tendency to keep a lot of reference links &quot;just in case&quot;, and I was trained to look for &quot;signals&quot; in a sea of noise (i.e. to locate useful information in a mix of data of low signal-to-noise ratio)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#### Side note ####&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: just take a look at any reference documentation such as MSDN or NUnit to see how the pages are linked like a web.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25590" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1661" RevisionGUID="0f925893-9d2c-46b0-a007-853797e9f6a2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="To put my own opinion on this into answer form (so that you can vote on my answer separately from my question):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pretty sure the [six guidelines for subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) applies to only _subjective_ questions rather than objective ones. This is the reason that was given for why my question was closed, and yet my question was an objective one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So now the question is whether or not objective questions in general are forbidden. Even if objective questions are forbidden, I believe my question should have been migrated to the appropriate site rather than closed. However, I read a comment from [Jeff Atwood](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/37/jeff-atwood) on [this Meta post](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice/369#369):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [W]e're not forcing subjective here, the difference is that subjective questions are welcomed and allowed. However, we do think that objective questions can do better on Stack Overflow in many cases...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought at the time that the subject matter of my question was a better fit for Programmers than Stack Overflow, so that's why I posted here rather than there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25591" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1736" RevisionGUID="2c66ba51-88b3-4cba-9630-5288b2c5aaef" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Generally moderators don't clean up relevant comments. This includes comments with relevant links. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is closed as a duplicate of one of those links, every comment that includes it will be [automatically deleted](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2246/automatic-removal-of-comments-when-a-question-gets-closed-as-exact-duplicate). This does turn out to be problematic on occasion, like when the comment contains more than just the link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do tend to clean up lengthy discussions (especially when they veer off topic) as described [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1457/how-do-our-moderators-and-community-members-feel-about-cleaning-up-comment-nois), but we do our best to avoid removing useful/relevant information while doing so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With all that said... I'm not really sure what you're asking for. Do you want moderators to validate links in comments and add them to the &quot;Linked questions&quot; sidebar?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25592" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1665" RevisionGUID="6a460a2c-b253-4fff-8f85-d8ff1e7af1d9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Earlier today we saw http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80898/how-do-you-ask-or-get-asked-to-speak-at-a-software-conference asked and subsequently closed as &quot;not a real question&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's gathered 2 reopen votes already and I personally believe it deserves to be reopened. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the highest voted answer in [this question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers/292#292) here on Meta, I think the question fits most of the criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it interesting to programmers in general?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think so, provided they're the type of programmers who want to speak at a conference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Would answers be significantly different without &quot;for programmers&quot; added?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some answers would be more general, but I think there are enough development-specific things that could be pulled in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it is true that other professions have conferences, I doubt, for example, that a speaker at an economics conference has to attend a local user group or create an open source project to become more known in their field.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does the addition of &quot;for programmers&quot; seem like more than just an afterthought?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Software&quot; was edited into the question by request, but I don't think it's unreasonable to say that a question about conferences on a programming-themed site is about software conferences and not, say, knitting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Will the question produce useful and/or interesting discussion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think so. I think many developers are focused on their own jobs and daily tasks and might think that speaking at a conference is for other people. They might not consider the fact that they, too, have a lot to offer to the community and that presenting doesn't have to be intimidating or only done by the big names in the industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does this question make the internet better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See above, I think so. As a developer, reading the answers given to that question, I could also extrapolate beyond conferences and see how I could improve the soft side of my career in addition to eventually improving technical skills.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the question could be expanded a bit to include something like asking what sort of preparation (at the technical level) is required for presenting at a software conference, but even as it is now, I think it should be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25593" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1736" RevisionGUID="352244ad-2340-4ea0-b310-a91f136e1907" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Generally moderators don't clean up relevant comments. This includes comments with relevant links. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is closed as a duplicate of one of those links, every comment that includes it will be [automatically deleted](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2246/automatic-removal-of-comments-when-a-question-gets-closed-as-exact-duplicate). This does turn out to be problematic on occasion, like when the comment contains more than just the link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do tend to clean up lengthy discussions (especially when they veer off topic) as described [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1457/how-do-our-moderators-and-community-members-feel-about-cleaning-up-comment-nois), but we do our best to avoid removing useful/relevant information while doing so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With all that said... I'm not really sure what you're asking for. Do you want moderators to validate links in comments and add them to the &quot;Linked questions&quot; sidebar?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25594" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1702" RevisionGUID="bdf90779-d2c7-44c1-83fc-52a8260798e9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Let&amp;#39;s nuke the catch-all tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;We have an artifact from the Antedisciplining period that should be removed: [tag:holy-war], which is obviously not the type of question we're looking for here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can it be purged with the fire from a thousand suns?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25595" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1764" RevisionGUID="3f99abb5-d728-4eec-8b48-b4acfaccd374" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The answer to [this chat-related question][1] leads to a feature request:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A simple way to notify and invite someone to chat regardless of whether they've ever chatted before or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Story:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    As a [stackexchange user] &#xD;&#xA;    I want to [invite another user to chat] &#xD;&#xA;    So that [we can continue our discussion easily]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ADENDUM: for archival purposes it might make sense to auto-create a room for discussions started in the comments of a particular question/answer. Yes, this effectively turns SO into a forum - but it keeps the discussiony stuff out of the main Q&amp;A stuff, which I think was the point of having a separate chat system.&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1761/how-to-invite-someone-to-chat-thats-not-already-in-a-chat-room" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25596" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1702" RevisionGUID="228c6b90-86a6-4c78-b329-ea4240ad3443" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Let&amp;#39;s nuke the catch-all tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;We have an artifact from the Antedisciplining period that should be removed: [tag:holy-war], which is obviously not the type of question we're looking for here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can it be purged with the fire from a thousand suns?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25597" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1764" RevisionGUID="c359b057-8fef-4a4a-aa7e-b77652990d3e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The answer to [this chat-related question][1] leads to a feature request:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A simple way to notify and invite someone to chat regardless of whether they've ever chatted before or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Story:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    As a [stackexchange user] &#xD;&#xA;    I want to [invite another user to chat] &#xD;&#xA;    So that [we can continue our discussion easily]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ADENDUM: for archival purposes it might make sense to auto-create a room for discussions started in the comments of a particular question/answer. Yes, this effectively turns SO into a forum - but it keeps the discussiony stuff out of the main Q&amp;A stuff, which I think was the point of having a separate chat system.&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1761/how-to-invite-someone-to-chat-thats-not-already-in-a-chat-room" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25598" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1719" RevisionGUID="d1e8d498-ea6b-4879-8b35-f21979b93c8d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are many discussions ([1][1] [2][2] [3][3] [4][4] [5][5] [6][6]) about what is currently on/off topic or what should be on/off-topic. That question is asked again and again but the way this community is managed it is not going to answered anytime soon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meanwhile, moderators &amp; community are doing their job by closing many questions from sometimes desperate programmers seeking help from other programmers (this is us).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Instead of closing the questions by only stating that it's off topic, should we seek for viable alternatives to propose them?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would help to make the internet better, correct? A place where people could find help from their peers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or should we consider that it's not our problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1162/would-this-question-be-on-topic-on-pse&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/what-types-of-programming-related-questions-are-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1568/are-which-technology-is-easier-questions-on-topic-even-though-which-technology&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1212/why-isnt-there-an-off-topic-off-topic-option&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1697/is-a-question-always-off-topic-when-it-applies-to-other-professions-too&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83510/benefit-of-arguing-with-your-manager-about-minor-development-things" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25599" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1784" RevisionGUID="8968fb4f-1ad1-4fa2-9866-51662f5880d6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicates:** &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [What are the rules around moderators closing questions outright?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright) &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does stackoverflow prevent the tyranny of selfish moderators who close questions at will (for instance because they are bureaucratic or have an ego problem)? Closing questions can be very frustrating for powerless newcomers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25600" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1968" RevisionGUID="cae42411-3baa-4c9c-94f9-fdfb190a9c7a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I refer to [this answer][2] from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/92508/3249 for which the question itself was actually the subject of [a previous meta question][1].  Quoted here in the unlikely event of changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Heavy processes are common, unfortunately. Some people - especially management - religiously imagine that processes produce products. So they overdo the processes and forget that it's really a handful of hard-working, smart people who actually create the products. For upper management, it's frightening to even think that their business is in the hands of few geeks, and so the close their eyes from the reality and think of their dear &quot;process&quot; instead, which gives them the illusion of control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; That's why agile startups with a handful of good engineers can beat big, established corporations, whose workers spend 95 % of their energy on process and reporting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This answer is making grand assertions left and right without a single shred of evidence to back any of them up.  Paraphrased from my comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Which people are &quot;some people&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;  * What evidence is there for managers believing it more often than anyone else?  Why would this be the case?&#xD;&#xA;  * Why liken it to a &quot;religious belief&quot;?  Is there no factual/logical evidence in favour of the belief?  How can we be sure?  Have those people been questioned about their belief?&#xD;&#xA;  * Who claimed/claims that &quot;processes produce products&quot; and what was the context of that claim?  If the answer, as I suspect, is &quot;nobody&quot;, then why mention this at all?&#xD;&#xA;  * What does &quot;overdo the process&quot; mean?  At what point does a process become &quot;overdone&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;  * Is it really true that the &quot;business is in the hands of a few geeks?&quot; Is this true in the 85% of programming jobs that are *not* in the software publishing industry, which is presumably where most of these heavy processes are being instituted?&#xD;&#xA;  * What does the phrase &quot;close their eyes from the reality&quot; mean? Do these people presumably have no accountability to their own managers, shareholders, board of directors, etc.?  How would they justify this?&#xD;&#xA;  * What does &quot;illusion of control&quot; mean? How is it different from actual control? What provides the illusion and how is it supposed to keep people fooled?&#xD;&#xA;  * Although the answer technically only says that &quot;agile startups&quot; *can* beat &quot;big established corporations&quot;, it's misleadingly worded as to imply that this is *routine*. To what degree does this actually happen and is there evidence that it's any more than chance, as opposed to better management?&#xD;&#xA;  * Where was the 95% figure derived from?  Was this measured somewhere?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As much as I hate to pick on one person/post, this isn't information, it's entertainment. It's mindless, populist drivel clearly written with one purpose: to provoke an emotional response and farm upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And in this community, it works.  Every single time.  With 84 upvotes and just 1 downvote (mine, obviously), this is clearly not only the *best* answer, but many times *better* than *any of the other answers*, which the author stubbornly uses as a justification for why it doesn't need to be improved (can't blame him, I guess, I wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth either).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the most irritating part is the most recent comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This forum is not a scientific paper. Nobody, not you nor me, is going to provide an explanation for every single sentence he writes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Call me old fashioned, but I thought that the whole point of the [Subjective Question Guidelines][3] was to elicit answers that would **Back It Up:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Back It Up! means that your answers must be based on either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Something that happened to you personally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Something you can back up with a reference&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I realize that we're not Wikipedia. We're not even [Skeptics.SE][4]. We can afford to be a little more lax.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But who is correct, him or me?  Do we/should we have no standards whatsoever for evidence, or are answers here supposed to be more than just statements of opinion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1935/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92508/too-much-version-control-and-bug-tracking-overhead-per-change/92514#92514&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25601" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1764" RevisionGUID="f63f26a5-58f5-4ea6-9bb9-0158f0a2d5ec" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The answer to [this chat-related question][1] leads to a feature request:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A simple way to notify and invite someone to chat regardless of whether they've ever chatted before or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Story:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    As a [stackexchange user] &#xD;&#xA;    I want to [invite another user to chat] &#xD;&#xA;    So that [we can continue our discussion easily]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ADENDUM: for archival purposes it might make sense to auto-create a room for discussions started in the comments of a particular question/answer. Yes, this effectively turns SO into a forum - but it keeps the discussiony stuff out of the main Q&amp;A stuff, which I think was the point of having a separate chat system.&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1761/how-to-invite-someone-to-chat-thats-not-already-in-a-chat-room" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25602" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1784" RevisionGUID="d53f1dd8-a636-4c56-9540-cc0a03f55aa7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicates:** &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [What are the rules around moderators closing questions outright?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright) &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does stackoverflow prevent the tyranny of selfish moderators who close questions at will (for instance because they are bureaucratic or have an ego problem)? Closing questions can be very frustrating for powerless newcomers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25603" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1734" RevisionGUID="efcc305e-b31b-4cb0-9203-539d329edfc0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### The context ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments may be removed by moderators with or without prejudice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If it was not apparent, a quick criterion of judging whether something should have been removed *with prejudice* is that, you think the commenter *probably* deserve a down-voting (reputation deducted) for posting that comment.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of reasons for removing comments *with prejudice* are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  *  (Just to list a few): useless, not contributing anything, not desirable, offensive, etc. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of reasons for removing comments *without prejudice*: (namely, to tidy up)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1457/620&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1127/620&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1639/620&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### My feature request ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the latter case, we may want to **keep some linked questions** that were once posted as comments even after those comments have been deleted, because a few of them may be relevant to the main question or OP. This will have to be decided on a case-by-case basis because not all linked questions are actually relevant; editorial insight will be needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, moderators should be able to directly edit the list of linked questions to add relevant ones and remove irrelevant (or borderline) ones. To be able to do this, the *linked/related questions* may need to be decoupled from the commentary system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This feature is more important to SO than to Programmers.SE because there is a higher tendency that *technical/mechanical/reference* questions are inter-related [1] and that if we require the related-question-provider to summarize the link, it would just be a verbatim quote of said technical matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Opposing opinion (1) ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, it might be argued that requiring a verbal summary/quote for every related link (by an answerer, not a commenter) may be a good thing because it improves signal-to-noise ratio. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If this is correct then there is no harm in deleting related links posted as comments.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Opposing opinion (2) ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP may want to have a say in what links are relevant and what aren't. If the OP decides that a link is relevant, the OP should edit the question to included the link, so that the SE engine can pick up and show it as a linked-question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Collaterals ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This feature would probably require declining https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/282/620&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#### My reflection ####&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a tendency to keep a lot of reference links &quot;just in case&quot;, and I was trained to look for &quot;signals&quot; in a sea of noise (i.e. to locate useful information in a mix of data of low signal-to-noise ratio)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#### Side note ####&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: just take a look at any reference documentation such as MSDN or NUnit to see how the pages are linked like a web.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25604" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1812" RevisionGUID="c5dd568c-9b5f-4880-84b6-af1a6cd2e1dc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is [this question from December 2010][1], with 10 upvotes for removing code golf from being on-topic here. There are also a total of 17 upvotes on posts advocating a separate puzzles/golf sits in [this question, also from 2010][2]. The &quot;code golf&quot; Stack Exchange is officially called [&quot;Programming Puzzles and Code Golf&quot;][3], making it on topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't seen very many puzzle/golf questions here, but I was reading the FAQ and noticed that this still exists. It's probably a hold over from before the other site was opened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This can include topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Software law&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**Programming puzzles**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/831/should-we-remove-code-golf-questions-from-on-topic-on-faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/38/where-do-code-golf-code-challenge-questions-belong&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25605" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1784" RevisionGUID="e7ab1736-7307-481f-a7e5-43d4c467dc82" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicates:** &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [What are the rules around moderators closing questions outright?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright) &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does stackoverflow prevent the tyranny of selfish moderators who close questions at will (for instance because they are bureaucratic or have an ego problem)? Closing questions can be very frustrating for powerless newcomers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25606" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1812" RevisionGUID="a3e66fd1-3148-4240-ada8-14ba975cd2df" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is [this question from December 2010][1], with 10 upvotes for removing code golf from being on-topic here. There are also a total of 17 upvotes on posts advocating a separate puzzles/golf sits in [this question, also from 2010][2]. The &quot;code golf&quot; Stack Exchange is officially called [&quot;Programming Puzzles and Code Golf&quot;][3], making it on topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't seen very many puzzle/golf questions here, but I was reading the FAQ and noticed that this still exists. It's probably a hold over from before the other site was opened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This can include topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Software law&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**Programming puzzles**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/831/should-we-remove-code-golf-questions-from-on-topic-on-faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/38/where-do-code-golf-code-challenge-questions-belong&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25607" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2028" RevisionGUID="fdb97611-12f4-4607-98a7-49ae84209047" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Since in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2003/620 there is a sentiment that at least some book recommendation questions are off-topic, would it be helpful if book lists can be added to the tag wiki?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(maybe sponsored adds too!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(There are even ideas to put a book voting system too! See http://stackoverflow.com/q/5098367/377657)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(**Edited** July 30th)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@ChrisF's answer inspires me an alternative implementation: Searching for [tag:scrum] + [tag:books] should give me a list of posts of book recommendations for scrum, right? We just need to add a convenience link on the tag wiki to do this search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(**Edited** July 30th) Related FAQ issue. Quoted from https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2003/620 :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If not, do we need to add a new line under What about other&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programming-related questions? to make it explicitly clear they're not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; allowed? Something like:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Book recommendations (e.g. What's the best book to learn Python?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can simply say &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are looking for book recommendations, try search your favorite&#xD;&#xA;&gt; topic together with the [tag:books] tag. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/agile+books&quot;&gt;Search: [agile] [books]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Keep in mind that there are too many books in the world**, and some companies (including our [affiliate sponsors](http://www.amazon.com/?tag=stackoverfl08-20)) already did a very good job listing them. Their recommendation system and reader reviews works really well. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25608" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1736" RevisionGUID="e59b2628-01ca-4243-b9df-9e920c2f777a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Generally moderators don't clean up relevant comments. This includes comments with relevant links. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is closed as a duplicate of one of those links, every comment that includes it will be [automatically deleted](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2246/automatic-removal-of-comments-when-a-question-gets-closed-as-exact-duplicate). This does turn out to be problematic on occasion, like when the comment contains more than just the link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do tend to clean up lengthy discussions (especially when they veer off topic) as described [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1457/how-do-our-moderators-and-community-members-feel-about-cleaning-up-comment-nois), but we do our best to avoid removing useful/relevant information while doing so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With all that said... I'm not really sure what you're asking for. Do you want moderators to validate links in comments and add them to the &quot;Linked questions&quot; sidebar?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25609" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1869" RevisionGUID="f3484bb6-5212-44f4-a087-3ab25ca0e46c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So I caught wind of this [&quot;Summer Cleaning&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning/) project y'all are running. Sounds like a real good time, especially if there are s'mores and plenty of references to unicorns in the Augean Stables...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But good ol' [Aaron, he's latched onto the idea][1] of targeting [tag:programming-languages] for some *hard-core exorcism*. Armed with bell, book, candle, and close votes, he's ventured alone into this wasteland...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I got to thinking... What this guy needs is a *Posse* - fearless men of good character, armed to the teeth and ready to ride, side by side, dispatching vigilante justice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After all, it's not like he's the only one on this site who can vote to close. Granted, questions closed (or re-opened...) without moderator assistance are rare as hen's teeth in these parts, but in theory it *could* happen...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if there be among you users who feel, like Aaronaught, that questions in this tag could use some fixin', I challenge you to step up and nominate yourselves for this thankless task. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Have close votes. Will use them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're *ready and willing*, post below. Once there are enough of you to form a posse, *you ride*...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning/1855#1855" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25610" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1812" RevisionGUID="cda77fc9-616a-4c95-824f-4ef21c520c92" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is [this question from December 2010][1], with 10 upvotes for removing code golf from being on-topic here. There are also a total of 17 upvotes on posts advocating a separate puzzles/golf sits in [this question, also from 2010][2]. The &quot;code golf&quot; Stack Exchange is officially called [&quot;Programming Puzzles and Code Golf&quot;][3], making it on topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't seen very many puzzle/golf questions here, but I was reading the FAQ and noticed that this still exists. It's probably a hold over from before the other site was opened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This can include topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Software law&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**Programming puzzles**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/831/should-we-remove-code-golf-questions-from-on-topic-on-faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/38/where-do-code-golf-code-challenge-questions-belong&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25612" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1869" RevisionGUID="d90195fb-0a12-419c-aa7e-3f39725afa84" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So I caught wind of this [&quot;Summer Cleaning&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning/) project y'all are running. Sounds like a real good time, especially if there are s'mores and plenty of references to unicorns in the Augean Stables...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But good ol' [Aaron, he's latched onto the idea][1] of targeting [tag:programming-languages] for some *hard-core exorcism*. Armed with bell, book, candle, and close votes, he's ventured alone into this wasteland...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I got to thinking... What this guy needs is a *Posse* - fearless men of good character, armed to the teeth and ready to ride, side by side, dispatching vigilante justice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After all, it's not like he's the only one on this site who can vote to close. Granted, questions closed (or re-opened...) without moderator assistance are rare as hen's teeth in these parts, but in theory it *could* happen...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if there be among you users who feel, like Aaronaught, that questions in this tag could use some fixin', I challenge you to step up and nominate yourselves for this thankless task. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Have close votes. Will use them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're *ready and willing*, post below. Once there are enough of you to form a posse, *you ride*...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning/1855#1855" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25613" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2003" RevisionGUID="cc70eede-a8dc-4d54-9684-a1a416d8c72a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We get [a *lot* of book recommendation questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=book%20recommendation), so much so that it's hard to keep up with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've been closing them as off-topic, not a real question, and not constructive based on a few different points of guidance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The [What questions should I not ask here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) part of our FAQ&#xD;&#xA;* [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are “I'm looking for X” questions on topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* Other consensus built elsewhere on the network like Gaming.SE: [What should be done with questions asking for game recommendations?](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1491/what-should-be-done-with-questions-asking-for-game-recommendations)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, due to the sheer number of these questions we get, I wonder if we should revisit this and see where we as a community stands on book recommendations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are book recommendations on-topic? If so, why? What preconditions need to be met for a good book recommendation question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not, do we need to add a new line under *What about other programming-related questions?* to make it explicitly clear they're not allowed? Something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Book recommendations (e.g. What's the best book to learn Python?)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25614" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1881" RevisionGUID="17ad7a66-265d-4025-abeb-9531ba18c18e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As per: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1877/moderator-powers-are-unchecked-closing-7-10-programmers-related-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree whole heartedly.  There are a couple moderators of programmers.SE who have gone power mad, deleting important content and leaving off-topic remarks in its place.  They close questions that the community is obviously interested in with no regard for that community at all.  These individuals are a detriment to the site and need to have their moderator priveleges revoked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE is a community run and driven architecture.  We are able to vote IN moderators but I've yet to see anything on how to vote OUT a moderator.  Surely if there is such a method it should be clarified, and if not it should be created.  During the voting procedure there's little to tell people how well a person will moderate and when it becomes clear that they are abusing their powers there should be a method in place for the same community that voted them into office to get rid of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does one begin the process of impeaching a moderator?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be noted that there's actually only a couple such moderators.  There's always a bad apple in every bunch.  I'm not saying the site doesn't need ANY application of moderation, only that certain individuals need to stop, have been asked to stop, and now need to be taken out of office.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since Mr. CRT wishes names to be named: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88953/what-kind-of-programmer-can-i-expect-for-near-minimum-wages/89262 &lt;- review the edits made to that post.  Perfect example of moderator trolling." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25615" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1869" RevisionGUID="b79ff45b-423d-4176-9871-81aa97ce852c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So I caught wind of this [&quot;Summer Cleaning&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning/) project y'all are running. Sounds like a real good time, especially if there are s'mores and plenty of references to unicorns in the Augean Stables...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But good ol' [Aaron, he's latched onto the idea][1] of targeting [tag:programming-languages] for some *hard-core exorcism*. Armed with bell, book, candle, and close votes, he's ventured alone into this wasteland...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I got to thinking... What this guy needs is a *Posse* - fearless men of good character, armed to the teeth and ready to ride, side by side, dispatching vigilante justice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After all, it's not like he's the only one on this site who can vote to close. Granted, questions closed (or re-opened...) without moderator assistance are rare as hen's teeth in these parts, but in theory it *could* happen...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if there be among you users who feel, like Aaronaught, that questions in this tag could use some fixin', I challenge you to step up and nominate yourselves for this thankless task. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Have close votes. Will use them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're *ready and willing*, post below. Once there are enough of you to form a posse, *you ride*...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning/1855#1855" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25616" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2134" RevisionGUID="3e51cc19-91de-462e-8a8f-f121d096075e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) says that &quot;algorithm and data structure concepts&quot; questions are on-topic on Programmers. However, we receive &quot;migrate to Stack Overflow&quot; flags on a lot of algorithm-related question. This tells me there's a misunderstanding somewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we want algorithm questions? What kind of questions are those? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly questions about implementing an algorithm are off-topic, but are questions asking to derive an algorithm okay? Is that &quot;conceptual&quot; enough?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like the idea of coming up with [examples of good questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2133/faq-should-include-examples-of-good-questions). So, what kinds of algorithm-related questions (if any) do you want to see on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's a consensus reached here, we can amend the FAQ to be more clear about the kinds of algorithm-related questions we want or don't want." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25618" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2170" RevisionGUID="2a4840a1-f3be-4d62-97c1-7626e07074ea" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the previous question about this, [Jeff suggested](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation/2158#2158) that we take our cues from the top-voted questions list, but that list generally isn't indicative of question quality, just popularity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a new question view that might be more helpful in coming up with a &quot;best of Programmers&quot; list: [the Greatest Hits](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/greatest-hits):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that got a large amount of views or a large amount of feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The current algorithm divides the number of page views with the total amount of question and answer feedback received (adding a bonus for high view counts), excluding questions with less views than the median :- 238.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are still some questions in the list that are duds, but overall it does seem to be better than other question views at capturing the site's intent." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25619" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1881" RevisionGUID="a07d1eb5-cb36-4017-a46d-54d92544ff1e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As per: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1877/moderator-powers-are-unchecked-closing-7-10-programmers-related-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree whole heartedly.  There are a couple moderators of programmers.SE who have gone power mad, deleting important content and leaving off-topic remarks in its place.  They close questions that the community is obviously interested in with no regard for that community at all.  These individuals are a detriment to the site and need to have their moderator priveleges revoked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE is a community run and driven architecture.  We are able to vote IN moderators but I've yet to see anything on how to vote OUT a moderator.  Surely if there is such a method it should be clarified, and if not it should be created.  During the voting procedure there's little to tell people how well a person will moderate and when it becomes clear that they are abusing their powers there should be a method in place for the same community that voted them into office to get rid of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does one begin the process of impeaching a moderator?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be noted that there's actually only a couple such moderators.  There's always a bad apple in every bunch.  I'm not saying the site doesn't need ANY application of moderation, only that certain individuals need to stop, have been asked to stop, and now need to be taken out of office.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since Mr. CRT wishes names to be named: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88953/what-kind-of-programmer-can-i-expect-for-near-minimum-wages/89262 &lt;- review the edits made to that post.  Perfect example of moderator trolling." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25620" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2170" RevisionGUID="46fd1494-dc98-4085-a3ad-f7e1a18c9b53" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the previous question about this, [Jeff suggested](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation/2158#2158) that we take our cues from the top-voted questions list, but that list generally isn't indicative of question quality, just popularity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a new question view that might be more helpful in coming up with a &quot;best of Programmers&quot; list: [the Greatest Hits](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/greatest-hits):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that got a large amount of views or a large amount of feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The current algorithm divides the number of page views with the total amount of question and answer feedback received (adding a bonus for high view counts), excluding questions with less views than the median :- 238.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are still some questions in the list that are duds, but overall it does seem to be better than other question views at capturing the site's intent." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25621" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1881" RevisionGUID="59941781-0863-4849-a7f5-5b9bbac4e0c5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As per: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1877/moderator-powers-are-unchecked-closing-7-10-programmers-related-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree whole heartedly.  There are a couple moderators of programmers.SE who have gone power mad, deleting important content and leaving off-topic remarks in its place.  They close questions that the community is obviously interested in with no regard for that community at all.  These individuals are a detriment to the site and need to have their moderator priveleges revoked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE is a community run and driven architecture.  We are able to vote IN moderators but I've yet to see anything on how to vote OUT a moderator.  Surely if there is such a method it should be clarified, and if not it should be created.  During the voting procedure there's little to tell people how well a person will moderate and when it becomes clear that they are abusing their powers there should be a method in place for the same community that voted them into office to get rid of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does one begin the process of impeaching a moderator?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be noted that there's actually only a couple such moderators.  There's always a bad apple in every bunch.  I'm not saying the site doesn't need ANY application of moderation, only that certain individuals need to stop, have been asked to stop, and now need to be taken out of office.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since Mr. CRT wishes names to be named: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88953/what-kind-of-programmer-can-i-expect-for-near-minimum-wages/89262 &lt;- review the edits made to that post.  Perfect example of moderator trolling." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25622" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1904" RevisionGUID="4bf4296c-f883-4359-9998-c8fbdd7e7492" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's only abuse if questions are getting closed incorrectly. :) Do you have evidence of moderation abuse by moderators and 3k+ users? See also the relatively recent [Frequently closing popular questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1675/frequently-closing-popular-questions) post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now on to the suggestions. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;When sites such as programmers become big enough, switch to &quot;moderation mode&quot; where questions have to be &quot;accepted&quot; by a moderator to show up. This will hopefully reduce noise a lot since moderators will pre-emptively be able to keep off duplicates, irrelevant questions etc etc. I will also reduce or remove the distracting comments about questions validity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming for a moment that we want to place questions in a limbo they may never come out of, let's define some terms here. Do you mean &quot;moderator&quot; as in &quot;diamond community moderator&quot; or as in &quot;a user with access to a subset moderator tools&quot;? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's the former, I don't think your idea would be workable. There are only 4 of us, we have day jobs, and we rely a lot on the community to do the bulk of its own moderation or to at least signal to us via flags what needs attention. Remembering/finding all the duplicates would be a challenge, if nothing else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's the latter... I think there would still be problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Make moderation powers available only to a select few. You need enough moderators that content goes through quickly but not so many that the quality of the moderation goes down. Moderation powers should probably be based on being amongst the top x% of users for a period of time (like a quarter). If moderation powers are based only on points than anyone can start moderating by scraping together points over time which might result in some dubious decisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You run the risk of not having enough people around to moderate or placing the power, such as it is, in the same hands all the time if the same people end up active on the site. However, if someone is active on the site doesn't mean they're interested in picking up the janitorial moderation duties. With your proposed system, you could end up with the same users consistently in the top X% and not interested in moderating at all. That would be bad, especially if combined with your first suggestion of getting every question approved." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25623" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2204" RevisionGUID="e2077802-139b-4495-b3c7-cf2626ced197" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed that a lot of questions related to books and book recommendations are getting downvoted and closed. [This][1] question suggests that some people have negative attitude towards such type of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the book related questions have common sense in them and I love them. Usually there are tonnes of books and it is hard to understand which one is the most helpful, unless you have been here for ages and know all the stuff. Books questions are mostly general, open-minded and have relationship to software development. People who tend to downvote and close questions don't seem to be interested in books and do not allow other members to answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Q:** Why not to let books-related question be here and stay open-minded?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25624" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2204" RevisionGUID="677dc05f-4815-4650-91d6-d4e1a6e118fb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed that a lot of questions related to books and book recommendations are getting downvoted and closed. [This][1] question suggests that some people have negative attitude towards such type of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the book related questions have common sense in them and I love them. Usually there are tonnes of books and it is hard to understand which one is the most helpful, unless you have been here for ages and know all the stuff. Books questions are mostly general, open-minded and have relationship to software development. People who tend to downvote and close questions don't seem to be interested in books and do not allow other members to answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Q:** Why not to let books-related question be here and stay open-minded?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25627" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1933" RevisionGUID="2beafd67-36ee-46d2-8adb-1b35a3b106ba" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The *too localized* question suffers from a bit of misuse due to a somewhat unclear description. &quot;In New York&quot; or &quot;In the UK&quot; wouldn't count as *too localized*, nor would most easily recognizable geographical names.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [Joel Spolsky likes to phrase it](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1057/too-localized-by-population-size-instead-of-geographical-area/1916#1916):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Classic example of too localized: &quot;Why is there a Green Honda Civic parked on my block right now?&quot; Or, &quot;Has the latest version of OS-X shipped yet?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, the *too localized* parts of these questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;on my block right now&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;latest version ... shipped yet&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Trying to detect a *too localized* question the same way *too subjective* questions are detected (keyword matching) would be difficult, if not impossible.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25628" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1904" RevisionGUID="f3752073-4e2d-436f-b4e3-4fa917792705" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's only abuse if questions are getting closed incorrectly. :) Do you have evidence of moderation abuse by moderators and 3k+ users? See also the relatively recent [Frequently closing popular questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1675/frequently-closing-popular-questions) post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now on to the suggestions. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;When sites such as programmers become big enough, switch to &quot;moderation mode&quot; where questions have to be &quot;accepted&quot; by a moderator to show up. This will hopefully reduce noise a lot since moderators will pre-emptively be able to keep off duplicates, irrelevant questions etc etc. I will also reduce or remove the distracting comments about questions validity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming for a moment that we want to place questions in a limbo they may never come out of, let's define some terms here. Do you mean &quot;moderator&quot; as in &quot;diamond community moderator&quot; or as in &quot;a user with access to a subset moderator tools&quot;? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's the former, I don't think your idea would be workable. There are only 4 of us, we have day jobs, and we rely a lot on the community to do the bulk of its own moderation or to at least signal to us via flags what needs attention. Remembering/finding all the duplicates would be a challenge, if nothing else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's the latter... I think there would still be problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Make moderation powers available only to a select few. You need enough moderators that content goes through quickly but not so many that the quality of the moderation goes down. Moderation powers should probably be based on being amongst the top x% of users for a period of time (like a quarter). If moderation powers are based only on points than anyone can start moderating by scraping together points over time which might result in some dubious decisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You run the risk of not having enough people around to moderate or placing the power, such as it is, in the same hands all the time if the same people end up active on the site. However, if someone is active on the site doesn't mean they're interested in picking up the janitorial moderation duties. With your proposed system, you could end up with the same users consistently in the top X% and not interested in moderating at all. That would be bad, especially if combined with your first suggestion of getting every question approved." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25629" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2226" RevisionGUID="7805966e-97e5-45b6-a2e4-ef3426428a86" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Stack Exchange now automatically suggests moving the conversation to chat when some threshold for &quot;extended discussion&quot; is reached. I'm not sure what that threshold is, but it seems to be around six comments between two people. We can take that as the definition of an extended discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, discussion (ordinary and otherwise) should happen in chat and answers should contain complete information. Comments can be used to enhance answers, but they're not a substitute for chat or forum threads.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related questions:  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/how-can-we-improve-our-guidance-about-the-purpose-of-comments  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1764/can-we-get-a-simple-way-to-initiate-a-chat&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25630" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2226" RevisionGUID="6af26b5f-d1d1-4e16-9234-325fd9e059b5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Stack Exchange now automatically suggests moving the conversation to chat when some threshold for &quot;extended discussion&quot; is reached. I'm not sure what that threshold is, but it seems to be around six comments between two people. We can take that as the definition of an extended discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, discussion (ordinary and otherwise) should happen in chat and answers should contain complete information. Comments can be used to enhance answers, but they're not a substitute for chat or forum threads.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related questions:  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/how-can-we-improve-our-guidance-about-the-purpose-of-comments  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1764/can-we-get-a-simple-way-to-initiate-a-chat&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25631" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1973" RevisionGUID="37d52932-45b5-4d83-bdde-93e0360c33e3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed yesterday that the -1 for down voting an answer is still in effect, as [ChrisF pointed out][1] it was the -1 for down voting questions that was removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is, should the -1 down voting reputation loss be removed on answers as well?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that the points made in regards to improving participation and quality that applied to questions also apply to answers.  Additionally since there is an observed trend that answers generate more votes than questions, is it reasonable to infer that we might see higher quality answers rising?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I bring this up with no axe to grind, I have observed some answers that were upvoted perhaps due to humour or entertainment value above more &quot;correct&quot; answers.  This would, perhaps, encourage more users to exercise their vote for quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would be genuinely interested in hearing opinions on this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1973/should-the-1-reputation-for-downvoting-be-removed/1974#1974&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25632" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1904" RevisionGUID="cf3fe86e-9449-4973-b871-63fe3733996f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's only abuse if questions are getting closed incorrectly. :) Do you have evidence of moderation abuse by moderators and 3k+ users? See also the relatively recent [Frequently closing popular questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1675/frequently-closing-popular-questions) post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now on to the suggestions. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;When sites such as programmers become big enough, switch to &quot;moderation mode&quot; where questions have to be &quot;accepted&quot; by a moderator to show up. This will hopefully reduce noise a lot since moderators will pre-emptively be able to keep off duplicates, irrelevant questions etc etc. I will also reduce or remove the distracting comments about questions validity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming for a moment that we want to place questions in a limbo they may never come out of, let's define some terms here. Do you mean &quot;moderator&quot; as in &quot;diamond community moderator&quot; or as in &quot;a user with access to a subset moderator tools&quot;? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's the former, I don't think your idea would be workable. There are only 4 of us, we have day jobs, and we rely a lot on the community to do the bulk of its own moderation or to at least signal to us via flags what needs attention. Remembering/finding all the duplicates would be a challenge, if nothing else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's the latter... I think there would still be problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Make moderation powers available only to a select few. You need enough moderators that content goes through quickly but not so many that the quality of the moderation goes down. Moderation powers should probably be based on being amongst the top x% of users for a period of time (like a quarter). If moderation powers are based only on points than anyone can start moderating by scraping together points over time which might result in some dubious decisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You run the risk of not having enough people around to moderate or placing the power, such as it is, in the same hands all the time if the same people end up active on the site. However, if someone is active on the site doesn't mean they're interested in picking up the janitorial moderation duties. With your proposed system, you could end up with the same users consistently in the top X% and not interested in moderating at all. That would be bad, especially if combined with your first suggestion of getting every question approved." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25633" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1933" RevisionGUID="e8a2f8c1-6b4b-4808-a770-ac3ae2af0bc9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The *too localized* question suffers from a bit of misuse due to a somewhat unclear description. &quot;In New York&quot; or &quot;In the UK&quot; wouldn't count as *too localized*, nor would most easily recognizable geographical names.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [Joel Spolsky likes to phrase it](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1057/too-localized-by-population-size-instead-of-geographical-area/1916#1916):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Classic example of too localized: &quot;Why is there a Green Honda Civic parked on my block right now?&quot; Or, &quot;Has the latest version of OS-X shipped yet?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, the *too localized* parts of these questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;on my block right now&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;latest version ... shipped yet&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Trying to detect a *too localized* question the same way *too subjective* questions are detected (keyword matching) would be difficult, if not impossible.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25634" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2237" RevisionGUID="641b5adb-04ed-447a-a626-27f09f17c74b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the difference between &quot;Stack Overflow&quot; and &quot;Programmers&quot; on Stack Exchange?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that on Stack Overflow there much much more people able to answer than here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25635" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1973" RevisionGUID="7f00bf12-b445-454a-95cd-fe995ebbd860" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed yesterday that the -1 for down voting an answer is still in effect, as [ChrisF pointed out][1] it was the -1 for down voting questions that was removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is, should the -1 down voting reputation loss be removed on answers as well?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that the points made in regards to improving participation and quality that applied to questions also apply to answers.  Additionally since there is an observed trend that answers generate more votes than questions, is it reasonable to infer that we might see higher quality answers rising?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I bring this up with no axe to grind, I have observed some answers that were upvoted perhaps due to humour or entertainment value above more &quot;correct&quot; answers.  This would, perhaps, encourage more users to exercise their vote for quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would be genuinely interested in hearing opinions on this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1973/should-the-1-reputation-for-downvoting-be-removed/1974#1974&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25636" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1980" RevisionGUID="a8e5189a-4f03-457f-a062-92835dfdcf4b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently wrote an [answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92508/too-much-version-control-and-bug-tracking-overhead-per-change/92514#92514) to Programmers.SE which has caused some [controversy](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1968/do-significant-claims-require-evidence/). I'm starting to realize that the biggest issue is probably not the content (or lack of content) of the answer, but its wording; it's written in strong, colorful language, and obviously some readers see only that surface. I've tried to clarify the answer [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1968/do-significant-claims-require-evidence/1979#1979).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was thinking about re-wording the answer so that it wouldn't invoke unintentional reactions. But then, I've got 90 upvotes from people who apparently liked the answer as it is. Is it fair to completely rewrite such an answer? What about those people who gave their vote - if they wouldn't like the answer after the rewrite, then the voting results are obviously screwed, because the answer isn't any more the one that was voted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25637" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2237" RevisionGUID="70aa602e-aa99-4ebd-a923-b25b36ccc69c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the difference between &quot;Stack Overflow&quot; and &quot;Programmers&quot; on Stack Exchange?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that on Stack Overflow there much much more people able to answer than here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25638" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2343" RevisionGUID="9b65a6e1-7556-43b0-be6d-b81c8c23e4df" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I open this question on meta because I want to know why Anna Lear closed my [question][1]? Is it my question really sucks or Anna Lear was angry with my comment in other unrelated [question][2]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone told me that I have offended the mod, so she just abuse her power to outright close my question without letting the community to decide. Is that true?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;p/s: I don't know what is the correct tag for this question. So forgive me for the mistake.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110205/what-are-the-consequences-of-still-sticking-with-windows-xp-despite-there-are-win&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2297/why-does-this-site-have-more-downvoted-closed-questions-than-other-stackexchange" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25639" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1980" RevisionGUID="0cbb624a-212d-465e-876a-1cfd6b2944f1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently wrote an [answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92508/too-much-version-control-and-bug-tracking-overhead-per-change/92514#92514) to Programmers.SE which has caused some [controversy](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1968/do-significant-claims-require-evidence/). I'm starting to realize that the biggest issue is probably not the content (or lack of content) of the answer, but its wording; it's written in strong, colorful language, and obviously some readers see only that surface. I've tried to clarify the answer [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1968/do-significant-claims-require-evidence/1979#1979).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was thinking about re-wording the answer so that it wouldn't invoke unintentional reactions. But then, I've got 90 upvotes from people who apparently liked the answer as it is. Is it fair to completely rewrite such an answer? What about those people who gave their vote - if they wouldn't like the answer after the rewrite, then the voting results are obviously screwed, because the answer isn't any more the one that was voted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25640" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2002" RevisionGUID="1bf2b388-e3b3-4ca8-9327-f099da3dd58d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been completed, and this placeholder answer is here to be up-voted or accepted so it'll be taken off the [unanswered](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/unanswered) question list. :P" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25642" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2002" RevisionGUID="d606a9fe-8c53-46a6-ab8b-c77fe4374713" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been completed, and this placeholder answer is here to be up-voted or accepted so it'll be taken off the [unanswered](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/unanswered) question list. :P" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25643" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2390" RevisionGUID="a340dc53-a3a1-4c63-8de7-081ed9ffb732" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm going to mainly address the concrete examples that you left comments on because as you mentioned, there have already been questions here that have addressed the general issue. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before that, I'd like to just first add an aside to the issue of the number of questions being closed: there are about 13% closed questions on the site as of today, which is on the high side but around the amount that are closed on Web Applications (~11%), English Language &amp; Usage (~10%), and Android Enthusiasts (~10%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mention this because this number, [as predicted](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation/2173#2173), has consistently gone down over the past few months. One would expect the number to stabilize or go up if the problems haven't been addressed. Cleanups take time, and they aren't over yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, an average poster knows whether a question would fit here by [reading the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq). The FAQ is a great resource for making sure you understand what a site's about before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you miss something or make a mistake, it's not that big of a deal because that's what moderation's for. Moderators and other members of the community are generally more than willing to help explain what's on-topic and what isn't. This might happen more often on Programmers due to the relationship with Stack Overflow, but most people seem to get it and most questions do just fine here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now to the specific questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112694/is-an-associate-engineer-the-same-as-a-junior-engineer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question asks about a specific job title and whether or not it's the same as another one. You left a comment saying, &quot;please leave this open although there is no possible answer to this as job titles vary from organization to organization and even within organizations.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It could've been closed for a different reason, but I'm not sure where the disconnect is or why you think this question should remain open if you yourself believe it doesn't have an answer. We're a question and answer site: we're in the business of providing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112629/learning-path-for-web-developer-net-or-java&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question asks two different things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. How many web servers run Windows&#xD;&#xA;2. Which is more useful for a web developer: .NET or Java&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question is a bit unanswerable: none of the existing answers even touched on it. One even dismissed it as being a nonsense question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second one [isn't really constructive](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/): .NET and Java both enjoy large portions of the web development market. The answers don't really converge on something that indicates this comparison is answerable in a definitive way: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* One guy says &quot;Java rules! But decide for yourself.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* One guy who says &quot;Nobody says no to .NET&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* A third guy who says &quot;.NET rules! Java sucks!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* A fourth guy says &quot;Nobody compares these two anymore. Why not learn both?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is someone supposed to learn from this? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25644" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2314" RevisionGUID="b912f2bc-0ddb-460d-befd-0f3e8811df22" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [Software Craftsmanship North America](http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.org/) conference is coming up on November 18-19 in Chicago. I would really like to attend, but unfortunately I am in a bit of a financial bind: I can get myself there but I cannot afford either the hotel or the conference itself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm putting this post together as a proposal for [Stack Exchange sponsorship](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/supporting-community-conferences/) in exchange for me promoting Programmers at the conference and bringing back the knowledge and experience to share with the community here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What is SCNA? Who will be there this year?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SCNA is a conference with a focus on software development as a craft. The talks cover the range from defining the software development profession and discussing the nature of what makes someone a good developer to development practices like TDD.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Last year included talks about functional programming, working with customers, and exploring what draws people to programming and keeps them going.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The full schedule and talk abstracts are unfortunately not up yet, but the [list of speakers](http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.org/speakers/) is up and there are immediately recognizable names on it, such as [Corey Haines](http://www.coreyhaines.com/), [Uncle Bob Martin](http://www.objectmentor.com/omTeam/martin_r.html), and [Michael Feathers](http://www.objectmentor.com/omTeam/feathers_m.html).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What's in it for Programmers.SE?&#xD;&#xA;Programmers covers a wide range of topics with a special focus on development practices rather than implementation details. I think SCNA is a perfect conference for technical topics that are relevant to this site as well as for topics that cover the people aspect of software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there's a great opportunity here to give out some swag and [business cards](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1729/programmers-moderator-cards), introduce Programmers to more developers out there, and to attract more experts to this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers doesn't have a blog of its own, but I will blog about individual sessions and the conference as a whole on my personal site and provide links in a follow-up meta post here. If/when good questions turn up during the conference that would be relevant here, I will post them and invite others at the conference to do the same. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I already got some experience promoting Stack Exchange during my [trip to RallyON](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1461/sponsoring-a-community-member-to-attend-the-2011-rallyon-conference) earlier this year. RallyON ended up being more focused on project management than software development concepts, but I believe SCNA would give us a lot more material that'd be of interest to the Programmers community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;What do you guys think? Any questions or concerns? I think this would be a great opportunity to increase our visibility and attract new users, not to mention a chance to wear my Stack Exchange t-shirts. :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25645" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2035" RevisionGUID="867de743-4681-4727-b435-1e92e6c2ab3b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are two different suggestions here, and they should probably be discussed separately, but I'll try to address both:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Adding book recommendations to the tag wiki for certain tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this idea. If you look at the tag wiki for [tag:php], for example, it'd be really helpful to get a list of the books everyone recommends for learning it. This is similar to how [Stack Overflow does it](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/php/info), and it'd be great if we did the same. I think being able to link to the tag wiki when closing book recommendation questions would go a long way to cleaning up the [tag:books] tag and cutting down on the amount of duplication we have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Adding a note in the FAQ on how to find book recommendation questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This I cannot support. Currently, book recommendations are generally on the &quot;off&quot; side of topicality based the guidance listed in [my question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic). ChrisF's answer to that question is a potentially good way to qualify that guidance, but it does not mean we should be getting so many book recommendation questions where we actively want people to keep asking them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, if a question is capable of producing *the canonical* book for a topic, there is no need for another question asking for book recommendations about the subject, and any subsequent question asking for the same information should be closed as a duplicate of the earlier one. So in the case of [tag:agile], there should only *be* one book recommendation question. That question can and should be linked in [tag:agile]'s tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, the FAQ is a general overview of the guidelines for the site: what's on topic, site etiquette, why certain things work the way they do, and where to find more help. It's not a roadmap for finding specific types of content, and search tips don't belong there. It *might* be worth proposing a meta FAQ question about it, but search tips are already pretty well explained on [Search Options](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search) page (which is also [linked to from the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#search-options)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25646" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2035" RevisionGUID="a1f3f113-7bd7-403e-9f62-fb81fcc0e957" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are two different suggestions here, and they should probably be discussed separately, but I'll try to address both:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Adding book recommendations to the tag wiki for certain tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this idea. If you look at the tag wiki for [tag:php], for example, it'd be really helpful to get a list of the books everyone recommends for learning it. This is similar to how [Stack Overflow does it](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/php/info), and it'd be great if we did the same. I think being able to link to the tag wiki when closing book recommendation questions would go a long way to cleaning up the [tag:books] tag and cutting down on the amount of duplication we have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Adding a note in the FAQ on how to find book recommendation questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This I cannot support. Currently, book recommendations are generally on the &quot;off&quot; side of topicality based the guidance listed in [my question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic). ChrisF's answer to that question is a potentially good way to qualify that guidance, but it does not mean we should be getting so many book recommendation questions where we actively want people to keep asking them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, if a question is capable of producing *the canonical* book for a topic, there is no need for another question asking for book recommendations about the subject, and any subsequent question asking for the same information should be closed as a duplicate of the earlier one. So in the case of [tag:agile], there should only *be* one book recommendation question. That question can and should be linked in [tag:agile]'s tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, the FAQ is a general overview of the guidelines for the site: what's on topic, site etiquette, why certain things work the way they do, and where to find more help. It's not a roadmap for finding specific types of content, and search tips don't belong there. It *might* be worth proposing a meta FAQ question about it, but search tips are already pretty well explained on [Search Options](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search) page (which is also [linked to from the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#search-options)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25647" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2413" RevisionGUID="01f5f1da-90a6-4768-b45e-427e87ef47df" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**DISCLAIMER: This question is *not* a response to [cleanup activity of *old content*][1].** It is about current content, that is blocked soon after posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am aware, that I am not the first one to address this issue. All the more I think it should be resolved. I have made an effort to read all related questions and their answers and I really can't conclude it's resolved just yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So here's the thing (in case this is the first time you hear of someone unhappy with actions taken by the moderators): Some recent moderator activity has left me quite displeased. **Specifically, there has been a number of cases, where questions/answers have been closed/deleted without prior notice, proper explanation and suggestions for improvement.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the last weeks, the problem has become intolerable and I feel that the current moderator team *fails* to pursue [their mission][2] - which AFAIU consists in *guidance* as well as *gentle* and *exceptional* intervention.  &#xD;&#xA;This makes being an active and caring part of this community a frustrating experience. Which leaves me with a simple question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a mere community member, what can I do in this situation?&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The argument has been made, that the current moderators are [elected][3] and therefore what they do is right. Which suggests I'll just have to live with it. However:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Only 3 of the 4 moderators have really been elected.&#xD;&#xA; - Only 11.8% of those entitled to vote have actually done so.&#xD;&#xA; - Just because you're elected, doesn't mean everything you do is right.&#xD;&#xA; - If you really are elected, then you have a responsibility towards those who elected you, which encompasses acting as promised prior to elections. This is precisely not what's happening IMHO.&#xD;&#xA; - Voting doesn't mean to give up power, but only to delegate it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In any case, I don't see trying to ignore this as an option. Since I just don't know how to respond to this, I thought meta might be the right platform for that. I am not looking to blow off steam or to attack anybody. I am looking for solutions to this problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore I would propose the following:&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For all content, that is not *clearly* off-topic or *entirely* substandard or causes immediate damage to the community (i.e. spam, declaration of religious wars):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Content should no longer be blocked without prior warning.&#xD;&#xA; - Content should no longer be blocked without leaving a proper explanation after doing so and pointers as to how to improve the content.  &#xD;&#xA;I've seen quite a number of things blocked, that arguably weren't conforming to the rules in place for programmers.SE, but that definitely contained quite some value. Yet no effort has been made to provide guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any thoughts on that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25648" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2343" RevisionGUID="da04de64-ed46-4b33-82a7-16d543cad295" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I open this question on meta because I want to know why Anna Lear closed my [question][1]? Is it my question really sucks or Anna Lear was angry with my comment in other unrelated [question][2]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone told me that I have offended the mod, so she just abuse her power to outright close my question without letting the community to decide. Is that true?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;p/s: I don't know what is the correct tag for this question. So forgive me for the mistake.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110205/what-are-the-consequences-of-still-sticking-with-windows-xp-despite-there-are-win&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2297/why-does-this-site-have-more-downvoted-closed-questions-than-other-stackexchange" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25649" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2048" RevisionGUID="244ebe5c-7f55-4f22-984a-6a8a5a969d41" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We've had [some discussion recently](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow) about bad Programmers questions being migrated from Stackoverflow. The number of close votes required to migrate on SO was changed from 3/5 to 4/5 in response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I'm not sure if that has made a difference. It seems to me that a lot of the migrated question get closed quickly. Unfortunately I don't have 10k yet so I can't see the actual stats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have another look at the closing statistics on migrated questions from SO? If there's not been a significant reduction in that rate, I suggest that the path be removed. If there are questions that belong here (and I know there are quite a few) they can be flagged and migrated by a moderator." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25650" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2048" RevisionGUID="431ad1e4-549e-4d29-ad04-72609f81f9dd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We've had [some discussion recently](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow) about bad Programmers questions being migrated from Stackoverflow. The number of close votes required to migrate on SO was changed from 3/5 to 4/5 in response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I'm not sure if that has made a difference. It seems to me that a lot of the migrated question get closed quickly. Unfortunately I don't have 10k yet so I can't see the actual stats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have another look at the closing statistics on migrated questions from SO? If there's not been a significant reduction in that rate, I suggest that the path be removed. If there are questions that belong here (and I know there are quite a few) they can be flagged and migrated by a moderator." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25651" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2415" RevisionGUID="d09a3879-224e-4b6e-8cb1-98ca7a852643" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[All four moderators were elected](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1421/how-should-we-select-more-moderators-for-programmers-se), not just three. We are all subject to constant peer-review from each other, the Stack Exchange team, the 100+ moderators across the Stack Exchange network, and users like you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every action is carefully considered, discussed, and explained: you need only look at the activity of each of the moderators on meta and the main site to see the amount of feedback we provide when we intervene. I personally make it a point to explain nearly every closure I do and respond to each and every complaint on meta: the other moderators do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an issue with a moderator or the moderator team and it isn't being resolved to your satisfaction via normal channels, you should contact the Stack Exchange team directly at `team+programmers@stackexchange.com`." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25653" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1973" RevisionGUID="7a2d36b2-4a0e-409e-b990-d279bd0ebf31" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed yesterday that the -1 for down voting an answer is still in effect, as [ChrisF pointed out][1] it was the -1 for down voting questions that was removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is, should the -1 down voting reputation loss be removed on answers as well?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that the points made in regards to improving participation and quality that applied to questions also apply to answers.  Additionally since there is an observed trend that answers generate more votes than questions, is it reasonable to infer that we might see higher quality answers rising?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I bring this up with no axe to grind, I have observed some answers that were upvoted perhaps due to humour or entertainment value above more &quot;correct&quot; answers.  This would, perhaps, encourage more users to exercise their vote for quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would be genuinely interested in hearing opinions on this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1973/should-the-1-reputation-for-downvoting-be-removed/1974#1974&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25654" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2051" RevisionGUID="8460aa00-fb7e-4cdf-ba25-8053ddd5448e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So in [Part I of the summer cleaning project](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning), we focused on deleting the bottom portion of our closed question backlog: things that never got any love and just were dying a slow, cold death.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In part II, I'd like to address the elephants in the room: our once popular, yet nevertheless off-topic questions that are no longer a fit for the current Programmers.SE direction. Many of them are from the Ante-disciplining period, some are bad migrations from Stack Overflow, and we've accumulated others throughout the year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nevertheless, they're broken windows: they continue to attract pageviews and still show up in Google searches, compounding any quality problems we have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taking the [closed questions with 20 or more up-votes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1+votes%3A20), we have a total of 116 questions. Because of the number of up-votes, they will likely never attract enough delete votes from the community, and would have to be deleted by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before that happens, I'd like to see what everyone thinks: what should be done with them? Is deleting them now the best way to go? Are there certain questions worth saving, and if so, how can we improve them to fit the guidelines of the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Note&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't official dictum: I'm asking personally about this specific issue. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question, like the previous questions on the summer cleanup, are here to involve you guys in the process of what gets cleaned up. It's asked in the spirit of the community consensus that we should clean up the place, but that—as a community—we still need to work through the details of that cleanup. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25655" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2051" RevisionGUID="10001d84-97d2-4aa5-90ce-c98d7792f74b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So in [Part I of the summer cleaning project](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning), we focused on deleting the bottom portion of our closed question backlog: things that never got any love and just were dying a slow, cold death.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In part II, I'd like to address the elephants in the room: our once popular, yet nevertheless off-topic questions that are no longer a fit for the current Programmers.SE direction. Many of them are from the Ante-disciplining period, some are bad migrations from Stack Overflow, and we've accumulated others throughout the year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nevertheless, they're broken windows: they continue to attract pageviews and still show up in Google searches, compounding any quality problems we have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taking the [closed questions with 20 or more up-votes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1+votes%3A20), we have a total of 116 questions. Because of the number of up-votes, they will likely never attract enough delete votes from the community, and would have to be deleted by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before that happens, I'd like to see what everyone thinks: what should be done with them? Is deleting them now the best way to go? Are there certain questions worth saving, and if so, how can we improve them to fit the guidelines of the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Note&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't official dictum: I'm asking personally about this specific issue. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question, like the previous questions on the summer cleanup, are here to involve you guys in the process of what gets cleaned up. It's asked in the spirit of the community consensus that we should clean up the place, but that—as a community—we still need to work through the details of that cleanup. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25656" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2436" RevisionGUID="49a297fb-623e-4918-8ac6-580ce7f7a1e7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In this specific case, the user who asked the deleted question asked the same duplicate question about 2 dozen times. And the question was exactly the type of question we *don't want here*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;I don't know what language I should learn next, is Java a good choice?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What's the difference between C# and Java: is Java better?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, the question was closed for a month without any activity: nobody tried to save it, make a case for it being the better duplicate, or vote to reopen it. Thus, it was deleted as part of the [ongoing cleaning](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=cleanup) of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closure [sets a question on the path to deletion](https://money.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/415/deleting-closed-question-of-no-value-is-not-happening/418#418). If a question is worth saving because of its answers, let's save it before that happens: make a case for it on meta, edit the question to improve it so it fits on our site, and/or flag it for reopening explaining why the question now (or always) fit the site's guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25657" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1980" RevisionGUID="3a46970b-4f3b-41c8-8d58-cf6fec17f34d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently wrote an [answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92508/too-much-version-control-and-bug-tracking-overhead-per-change/92514#92514) to Programmers.SE which has caused some [controversy](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1968/do-significant-claims-require-evidence/). I'm starting to realize that the biggest issue is probably not the content (or lack of content) of the answer, but its wording; it's written in strong, colorful language, and obviously some readers see only that surface. I've tried to clarify the answer [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1968/do-significant-claims-require-evidence/1979#1979).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was thinking about re-wording the answer so that it wouldn't invoke unintentional reactions. But then, I've got 90 upvotes from people who apparently liked the answer as it is. Is it fair to completely rewrite such an answer? What about those people who gave their vote - if they wouldn't like the answer after the rewrite, then the voting results are obviously screwed, because the answer isn't any more the one that was voted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25658" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2390" RevisionGUID="7f016440-307e-4201-9090-189a7b30dffb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm going to mainly address the concrete examples that you left comments on because as you mentioned, there have already been questions here that have addressed the general issue. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before that, I'd like to just first add an aside to the issue of the number of questions being closed: there are about 13% closed questions on the site as of today, which is on the high side but around the amount that are closed on Web Applications (~11%), English Language &amp; Usage (~10%), and Android Enthusiasts (~10%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mention this because this number, [as predicted](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation/2173#2173), has consistently gone down over the past few months. One would expect the number to stabilize or go up if the problems haven't been addressed. Cleanups take time, and they aren't over yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, an average poster knows whether a question would fit here by [reading the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq). The FAQ is a great resource for making sure you understand what a site's about before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you miss something or make a mistake, it's not that big of a deal because that's what moderation's for. Moderators and other members of the community are generally more than willing to help explain what's on-topic and what isn't. This might happen more often on Programmers due to the relationship with Stack Overflow, but most people seem to get it and most questions do just fine here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now to the specific questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112694/is-an-associate-engineer-the-same-as-a-junior-engineer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question asks about a specific job title and whether or not it's the same as another one. You left a comment saying, &quot;please leave this open although there is no possible answer to this as job titles vary from organization to organization and even within organizations.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It could've been closed for a different reason, but I'm not sure where the disconnect is or why you think this question should remain open if you yourself believe it doesn't have an answer. We're a question and answer site: we're in the business of providing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112629/learning-path-for-web-developer-net-or-java&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question asks two different things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. How many web servers run Windows&#xD;&#xA;2. Which is more useful for a web developer: .NET or Java&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question is a bit unanswerable: none of the existing answers even touched on it. One even dismissed it as being a nonsense question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second one [isn't really constructive](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/): .NET and Java both enjoy large portions of the web development market. The answers don't really converge on something that indicates this comparison is answerable in a definitive way: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* One guy says &quot;Java rules! But decide for yourself.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* One guy who says &quot;Nobody says no to .NET&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* A third guy who says &quot;.NET rules! Java sucks!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* A fourth guy says &quot;Nobody compares these two anymore. Why not learn both?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is someone supposed to learn from this? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25659" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2062" RevisionGUID="314e1ead-d109-4a36-845e-15beb339f19c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There have been a [number][1] of [discussions][2] raised about this.  How about some examples, with reasons why they shouldn't have been migrated?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason questions you don't like get migrated to Programmers is because people don't always understand what Programmers is about.  This shouldn't be surprising, given the history of Programmers.SE.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am a moderator on Stack Overflow.  That means that I have to not only know SO's charter, your charter, and the charter of a handful of other sites like Drupal, Tex and Linux; but also the current gestalt of those websites (i.e. what have people been discussing on meta about on-topic-ness).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Needless to say, there are a lot of moving parts to migrations.  So when I get a flag requesting that a question be migrated to programmers (especially on questions that have no close votes or only off-topic close votes), I'm inclined to honor it, if it doesn't seem like an unreasonable request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be honest, I would expect about 25% of such migrations to fail.  It's not a perfect world.  But providing some examples of questions that shouldn't have been migrated, and the reasons why they shouldn't have been migrated, might go a long way towards improving the migration success ratio.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**One example per answer, please.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2048/can-the-migration-path-from-so-be-reconsidered&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25660" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2062" RevisionGUID="fa459b6c-a823-48ce-bbeb-a4abb2242151" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There have been a [number][1] of [discussions][2] raised about this.  How about some examples, with reasons why they shouldn't have been migrated?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason questions you don't like get migrated to Programmers is because people don't always understand what Programmers is about.  This shouldn't be surprising, given the history of Programmers.SE.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am a moderator on Stack Overflow.  That means that I have to not only know SO's charter, your charter, and the charter of a handful of other sites like Drupal, Tex and Linux; but also the current gestalt of those websites (i.e. what have people been discussing on meta about on-topic-ness).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Needless to say, there are a lot of moving parts to migrations.  So when I get a flag requesting that a question be migrated to programmers (especially on questions that have no close votes or only off-topic close votes), I'm inclined to honor it, if it doesn't seem like an unreasonable request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be honest, I would expect about 25% of such migrations to fail.  It's not a perfect world.  But providing some examples of questions that shouldn't have been migrated, and the reasons why they shouldn't have been migrated, might go a long way towards improving the migration success ratio.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**One example per answer, please.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2048/can-the-migration-path-from-so-be-reconsidered&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25661" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2479" RevisionGUID="76439ae3-0042-4083-9775-7fdead682693" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You mean automatically convert a link to the question title? No, that's not possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can, however, use the markdown syntax to do it manually:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`[Links in comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2478/links-in-comments)` =&gt; [Links in comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2478/links-in-comments)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25662" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2002" RevisionGUID="92782b0f-3d8d-4b4e-80ba-7eeb3e2ea19c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been completed, and this placeholder answer is here to be up-voted or accepted so it'll be taken off the [unanswered](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/unanswered) question list. :P" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25663" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2079" RevisionGUID="9a3962e2-133d-4f58-8069-992cc5215196" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Unfortunately, I don't have access to the &quot;quick tag&quot; editor since I don't have enough (10k?) rep yet. Does editing only the tags using either the quick editor from the question or going to the edit page bump a question to the top of the question list?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I ask is because I want to implement [part of this change][1]. I want to go through all questions tagged [tag:software-engineering] and replace them with an appropriate (and hopefully existing tag) that is far more specific as to the areas of software engineering that the question is about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25664" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2079" RevisionGUID="ab34a4d4-f22b-4d9e-adc8-8565ff069334" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Unfortunately, I don't have access to the &quot;quick tag&quot; editor since I don't have enough (10k?) rep yet. Does editing only the tags using either the quick editor from the question or going to the edit page bump a question to the top of the question list?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I ask is because I want to implement [part of this change][1]. I want to go through all questions tagged [tag:software-engineering] and replace them with an appropriate (and hopefully existing tag) that is far more specific as to the areas of software engineering that the question is about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25665" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2585" RevisionGUID="592be297-2341-4351-a0c3-97f787330d12" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This *should* be covered by the other aspects of the FAQ, particularly the [six subjective guidelines](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) and [What kinds of questions should I *not* ask here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask). The general class of these questions are &quot;programmer lifestyle&quot; questions: people asking about general issues as if programmers somehow approached basic life skills qualitatively differently from other people. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We tried to lay out the guidelines for these types of questions earlier:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I do agree a FAQ entry is probably warranted, given how prevalent these once were and their inherent &quot;broken window&quot; nature. I propose the following be added to the &quot;but is **not about**&quot; section of the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle (including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25666" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2189" RevisionGUID="9249b635-42b7-4592-a012-672cab902755" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We [clean up comments that have outlived their use](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1457/how-do-our-moderators-and-community-members-feel-about-cleaning-up-comment-nois/1508#1508), and joke comments outlive their use as soon as they're posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flag them as *chatty* or *not constructive* and they'll be deleted. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25667" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2035" RevisionGUID="4c30c5bc-9112-489f-b116-474e0920a585" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are two different suggestions here, and they should probably be discussed separately, but I'll try to address both:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Adding book recommendations to the tag wiki for certain tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this idea. If you look at the tag wiki for [tag:php], for example, it'd be really helpful to get a list of the books everyone recommends for learning it. This is similar to how [Stack Overflow does it](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/php/info), and it'd be great if we did the same. I think being able to link to the tag wiki when closing book recommendation questions would go a long way to cleaning up the [tag:books] tag and cutting down on the amount of duplication we have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Adding a note in the FAQ on how to find book recommendation questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This I cannot support. Currently, book recommendations are generally on the &quot;off&quot; side of topicality based the guidance listed in [my question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic). ChrisF's answer to that question is a potentially good way to qualify that guidance, but it does not mean we should be getting so many book recommendation questions where we actively want people to keep asking them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, if a question is capable of producing *the canonical* book for a topic, there is no need for another question asking for book recommendations about the subject, and any subsequent question asking for the same information should be closed as a duplicate of the earlier one. So in the case of [tag:agile], there should only *be* one book recommendation question. That question can and should be linked in [tag:agile]'s tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, the FAQ is a general overview of the guidelines for the site: what's on topic, site etiquette, why certain things work the way they do, and where to find more help. It's not a roadmap for finding specific types of content, and search tips don't belong there. It *might* be worth proposing a meta FAQ question about it, but search tips are already pretty well explained on [Search Options](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search) page (which is also [linked to from the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#search-options)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25668" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2189" RevisionGUID="7a52fc5b-ed23-403d-b784-a1dcba82fce6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We [clean up comments that have outlived their use](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1457/how-do-our-moderators-and-community-members-feel-about-cleaning-up-comment-nois/1508#1508), and joke comments outlive their use as soon as they're posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flag them as *chatty* or *not constructive* and they'll be deleted. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25669" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2048" RevisionGUID="b39fd1c5-5953-45bb-89ab-5b2365650604" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We've had [some discussion recently](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow) about bad Programmers questions being migrated from Stackoverflow. The number of close votes required to migrate on SO was changed from 3/5 to 4/5 in response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I'm not sure if that has made a difference. It seems to me that a lot of the migrated question get closed quickly. Unfortunately I don't have 10k yet so I can't see the actual stats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have another look at the closing statistics on migrated questions from SO? If there's not been a significant reduction in that rate, I suggest that the path be removed. If there are questions that belong here (and I know there are quite a few) they can be flagged and migrated by a moderator." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25670" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2598" RevisionGUID="d9bc2147-3831-4b42-8a44-5709e66f2733" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Last week I attended Software Craftsmanship North America 2011 (thanks again, Stack Exchange!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I spoke to a number of people about Stack Exchange in general and Programmers in particular, and handed out some stickers and a few of my shiny and new moderator business cards. I don't know if this is going to translate into many new users for us, but the word's now out there. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a lot to go through, so it's going to take me a bit to get it all out there, but I'm going to post session summaries here as answers to this question. They'll also be cross-posted to [my blog](http://annalear.ca).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had grand plans to keep up with Programmers during the conference, but it really moved way too quickly to do any meaningful knowledge sharing then. Between my blog series and searching for existing related questions to add an answer to, I hope to bring back some value to the community here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, I had a blast at the conference. If the [Stack Exchange sponsorship grant](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/supporting-community-conferences/) still runs next year, I highly recommend applying for it. The sponsorship program is available to regular community users, not just moderators, so for that matter... if you know of a relevant conference you'd like to attend and help promote Programmers at, please make a meta post and tell us all about it! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime... enjoy the summaries here. I hope you'll find them interesting. If this is your first time in this question thread, sorting the answers [by oldest](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2598/scna-2011-conference-report?answertab=oldest#tab-top) is recommended." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25671" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2198" RevisionGUID="6f5c6a4f-d9cb-40fc-8b58-2296460439ca" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The Stack Exchange platform works with very specific types of questions, and we've found through a few years of trial and error recommendation questions don't work well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I closed the question, I provided a link to why recommendation questions don't work, which you can still find here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, questions asking for recommendations almost inevitably turn into a list of one line answers that don't provide any information as to why someone would use it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, when a question is ultra specific in its requirements, it's unlikely to help future visitors: if my requirements are off by a little from yours, your question doesn't answer *my* recommendation question, opening the door for several iterations of essentially the same question. To wit, we have [over 2,000 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=documentation+%2Btool&amp;submit=search) asking about documentation tools: most of them are terrible and help nobody.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that point, it's important to realize two things about closing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Closing is a manual process. Someone has to call a question to the attention of moderators or stumble onto the question and decide to vote to close. With over 14,000 questions on Programmers.SE, some bad questions slip through the cracks. When that happens, we rely on community members like yourself to flag those questions so they can be closed or improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [Closing isn't a death sentence for a question.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed) We close questions and provide guidance when they do, hopefully before they amass too many answers, so that they can be revised by the asker to meet our question guidelines. It was my intention to prompt you to read the linked guidance and improve your question (or ask another one) based on that guidance, and I apologize that my comment didn't make that clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a blog post (also linked from the above meta post) called [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/), that describes a better way to ask a recommendation question without it being a recommendation question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, if you ask *how* you can go about evaluating documentation tools, or *what things you should look for* when you are evaluating documentation tools, that'd be something that'd be on-topic and pretty useful for everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To quote the end of that blog post,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I had to summarize our network in a single word, that word is “learning”. People come to our sites to learn about topics they are passionate about. As the old Chinese proverb goes, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Every question and answer ultimately should be about teaching and learning — yes, even the shopping ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to why there are tags for questions that aren't on-topic here, tagging has never been Programmers.SE's strong suit, and [we're working on it](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/tagging).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25672" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2051" RevisionGUID="47e76c59-7bf9-49a7-85c0-a5bd4120fa11" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So in [Part I of the summer cleaning project](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning), we focused on deleting the bottom portion of our closed question backlog: things that never got any love and just were dying a slow, cold death.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In part II, I'd like to address the elephants in the room: our once popular, yet nevertheless off-topic questions that are no longer a fit for the current Programmers.SE direction. Many of them are from the Ante-disciplining period, some are bad migrations from Stack Overflow, and we've accumulated others throughout the year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nevertheless, they're broken windows: they continue to attract pageviews and still show up in Google searches, compounding any quality problems we have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taking the [closed questions with 20 or more up-votes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1+votes%3A20), we have a total of 116 questions. Because of the number of up-votes, they will likely never attract enough delete votes from the community, and would have to be deleted by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before that happens, I'd like to see what everyone thinks: what should be done with them? Is deleting them now the best way to go? Are there certain questions worth saving, and if so, how can we improve them to fit the guidelines of the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Note&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't official dictum: I'm asking personally about this specific issue. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question, like the previous questions on the summer cleanup, are here to involve you guys in the process of what gets cleaned up. It's asked in the spirit of the community consensus that we should clean up the place, but that—as a community—we still need to work through the details of that cleanup. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25673" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2198" RevisionGUID="4e26fea3-52cb-45ff-abbb-e30637260614" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The Stack Exchange platform works with very specific types of questions, and we've found through a few years of trial and error recommendation questions don't work well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I closed the question, I provided a link to why recommendation questions don't work, which you can still find here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, questions asking for recommendations almost inevitably turn into a list of one line answers that don't provide any information as to why someone would use it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, when a question is ultra specific in its requirements, it's unlikely to help future visitors: if my requirements are off by a little from yours, your question doesn't answer *my* recommendation question, opening the door for several iterations of essentially the same question. To wit, we have [over 2,000 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=documentation+%2Btool&amp;submit=search) asking about documentation tools: most of them are terrible and help nobody.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that point, it's important to realize two things about closing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Closing is a manual process. Someone has to call a question to the attention of moderators or stumble onto the question and decide to vote to close. With over 14,000 questions on Programmers.SE, some bad questions slip through the cracks. When that happens, we rely on community members like yourself to flag those questions so they can be closed or improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [Closing isn't a death sentence for a question.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed) We close questions and provide guidance when they do, hopefully before they amass too many answers, so that they can be revised by the asker to meet our question guidelines. It was my intention to prompt you to read the linked guidance and improve your question (or ask another one) based on that guidance, and I apologize that my comment didn't make that clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a blog post (also linked from the above meta post) called [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/), that describes a better way to ask a recommendation question without it being a recommendation question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, if you ask *how* you can go about evaluating documentation tools, or *what things you should look for* when you are evaluating documentation tools, that'd be something that'd be on-topic and pretty useful for everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To quote the end of that blog post,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I had to summarize our network in a single word, that word is “learning”. People come to our sites to learn about topics they are passionate about. As the old Chinese proverb goes, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Every question and answer ultimately should be about teaching and learning — yes, even the shopping ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to why there are tags for questions that aren't on-topic here, tagging has never been Programmers.SE's strong suit, and [we're working on it](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/tagging).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25674" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2413" RevisionGUID="22c0839f-12a8-41d9-a961-a2849dcc253e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**DISCLAIMER: This question is *not* a response to [cleanup activity of *old content*][1].** It is about current content, that is blocked soon after posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am aware, that I am not the first one to address this issue. All the more I think it should be resolved. I have made an effort to read all related questions and their answers and I really can't conclude it's resolved just yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So here's the thing (in case this is the first time you hear of someone unhappy with actions taken by the moderators): Some recent moderator activity has left me quite displeased. **Specifically, there has been a number of cases, where questions/answers have been closed/deleted without prior notice, proper explanation and suggestions for improvement.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the last weeks, the problem has become intolerable and I feel that the current moderator team *fails* to pursue [their mission][2] - which AFAIU consists in *guidance* as well as *gentle* and *exceptional* intervention.  &#xD;&#xA;This makes being an active and caring part of this community a frustrating experience. Which leaves me with a simple question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a mere community member, what can I do in this situation?&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The argument has been made, that the current moderators are [elected][3] and therefore what they do is right. Which suggests I'll just have to live with it. However:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Only 3 of the 4 moderators have really been elected.&#xD;&#xA; - Only 11.8% of those entitled to vote have actually done so.&#xD;&#xA; - Just because you're elected, doesn't mean everything you do is right.&#xD;&#xA; - If you really are elected, then you have a responsibility towards those who elected you, which encompasses acting as promised prior to elections. This is precisely not what's happening IMHO.&#xD;&#xA; - Voting doesn't mean to give up power, but only to delegate it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In any case, I don't see trying to ignore this as an option. Since I just don't know how to respond to this, I thought meta might be the right platform for that. I am not looking to blow off steam or to attack anybody. I am looking for solutions to this problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore I would propose the following:&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For all content, that is not *clearly* off-topic or *entirely* substandard or causes immediate damage to the community (i.e. spam, declaration of religious wars):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Content should no longer be blocked without prior warning.&#xD;&#xA; - Content should no longer be blocked without leaving a proper explanation after doing so and pointers as to how to improve the content.  &#xD;&#xA;I've seen quite a number of things blocked, that arguably weren't conforming to the rules in place for programmers.SE, but that definitely contained quite some value. Yet no effort has been made to provide guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any thoughts on that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/election" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25675" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2608" RevisionGUID="a9244371-4079-4a58-9e7e-b26593a804a9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There was a bit of a tussle earlier about a specific question related to why a specific line of JavaScript code was crafted the way that it was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122378/whats-the-point-of-initializing-a-variable-with-the-same-value-twice#question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [details are documented elsewhere](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2606/8), but suffice it to say there's obviously some confusion about whether these questions are on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our FAQ states the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about…   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, the [blog post that introduces Programmers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/) defines the distinction between Programmers and Stack Overflow as such:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In a nutshell, Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues. Hence the (awesome) whiteboard inspired design!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have actual source code in the questions or answers. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this specific question, the asker isn't working through issues with their code, they're asking a higher-level conceptual question about why the code was designed that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, after speaking with the Stack Overflow moderators, they believed it was only just barely on-topic on Stack Overflow, but on the subjective side.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given this background, are these questions on-topic here? If so, why? If not, why not?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25676" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2280" RevisionGUID="bc8a9327-6188-4f2e-a0dc-d4f0fc094bc0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I could've sworn we've fielded this question before, but at any rate, this is not a bug: every child meta except for Meta Stack Overflow pegs its users' reputation to the corresponding main site user. It's been like that since Stack Exchange 2.0 launched.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [the Meta FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reputation here is entirely derived from the main website; your reputation is the same here as it is there, synchronized hourly. Votes here do not affect your reputation in any way. However, you can earn unique badges here on the meta site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25677" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2062" RevisionGUID="7ef6a3c6-3a00-4555-b127-471b4e105e86" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There have been a [number][1] of [discussions][2] raised about this.  How about some examples, with reasons why they shouldn't have been migrated?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason questions you don't like get migrated to Programmers is because people don't always understand what Programmers is about.  This shouldn't be surprising, given the history of Programmers.SE.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am a moderator on Stack Overflow.  That means that I have to not only know SO's charter, your charter, and the charter of a handful of other sites like Drupal, Tex and Linux; but also the current gestalt of those websites (i.e. what have people been discussing on meta about on-topic-ness).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Needless to say, there are a lot of moving parts to migrations.  So when I get a flag requesting that a question be migrated to programmers (especially on questions that have no close votes or only off-topic close votes), I'm inclined to honor it, if it doesn't seem like an unreasonable request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be honest, I would expect about 25% of such migrations to fail.  It's not a perfect world.  But providing some examples of questions that shouldn't have been migrated, and the reasons why they shouldn't have been migrated, might go a long way towards improving the migration success ratio.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**One example per answer, please.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2048/can-the-migration-path-from-so-be-reconsidered&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25678" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2415" RevisionGUID="1610d5fd-cf98-48f6-9b8f-96ca7f82afa8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[All four moderators were elected](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1421/how-should-we-select-more-moderators-for-programmers-se), not just three. We are all subject to constant peer-review from each other, the Stack Exchange team, the 100+ moderators across the Stack Exchange network, and users like you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every action is carefully considered, discussed, and explained: you need only look at the activity of each of the moderators on meta and the main site to see the amount of feedback we provide when we intervene. I personally make it a point to explain nearly every closure I do and respond to each and every complaint on meta: the other moderators do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an issue with a moderator or the moderator team and it isn't being resolved to your satisfaction via normal channels, you should contact the Stack Exchange team directly at `team+programmers@stackexchange.com`." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25679" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2635" RevisionGUID="89af8945-5972-46a0-820e-9c888c8f0dd1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Community Promotion Ads - 2013](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5323/community-promotion-ads-2013)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;### What in the Wide, Wide World of Sports is Going On Here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;TL;DR -- put images and links in the answers. If they get voted up enough, they will appear on the main site as community promotion ads.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### But whyyyyyyy?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA;- cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA;- anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. And to click on it for great justice!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unlike the Open Source ads on Meta Stack Overflow, there is no requirement for the Programmers Community Ads to be a coding project of your own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be **220 x 250 pixels**&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/ads/display/2635" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25680" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2079" RevisionGUID="0b583fc6-fd43-46e1-b303-65c9958f03e9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Unfortunately, I don't have access to the &quot;quick tag&quot; editor since I don't have enough (10k?) rep yet. Does editing only the tags using either the quick editor from the question or going to the edit page bump a question to the top of the question list?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I ask is because I want to implement [part of this change][1]. I want to go through all questions tagged [tag:software-engineering] and replace them with an appropriate (and hopefully existing tag) that is far more specific as to the areas of software engineering that the question is about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25682" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2280" RevisionGUID="0fa8d7ca-e5a6-4206-952d-e52be3995904" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I could've sworn we've fielded this question before, but at any rate, this is not a bug: every child meta except for Meta Stack Overflow pegs its users' reputation to the corresponding main site user. It's been like that since Stack Exchange 2.0 launched.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [the Meta FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reputation here is entirely derived from the main website; your reputation is the same here as it is there, synchronized hourly. Votes here do not affect your reputation in any way. However, you can earn unique badges here on the meta site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25683" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2303" RevisionGUID="5323bc7d-63c3-44fd-a655-b1bd154b3062" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Those questions tend to be popular because anyone with a heartbeat can have an opinion about a work-related problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fortunately, those types of questions are off-topic here. We explicitly prohibit them in the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ________ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* **there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”**&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* **it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We link to [a meta post about it](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster) from the FAQ as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue is, of course, that because they are so wildly popular, they are [broken windows](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory): people don't bother to vote to close them, downvote them, or flag them; and new users see the proliferation of them as a reason to ask more. Generally, the users participating in these types of questions either don't know they're not allowed or don't care and [wish we'd stop closing them](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed+questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it's exceedingly rare that those questions are caught in time to be crafted into a&#xD;&#xA;constructive question: by the time someone who actually cares about stopping the proliferation of these questions sees them, they already have amassed a ton of activity. And not a day goes by where I don't close one within 5 minutes of asking only to see someone managed to sneak an answer in before the closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in practice, these questions just need to die. If you see one, flag it. Leave a comment explaining why the question isn't constructive or useful for this site. If you see a particularly egregious example, raise a question about it here on meta so it can be crystalized why the question is so bad. You don't have the privilege yet, but those who have it should be voting to close these questions as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The more people feel empowered to say &quot;enough is enough&quot;, the more useful Programmers.SE can become." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25684" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2189" RevisionGUID="31edd6aa-f2be-44d5-820b-5772f9f56206" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We [clean up comments that have outlived their use](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1457/how-do-our-moderators-and-community-members-feel-about-cleaning-up-comment-nois/1508#1508), and joke comments outlive their use as soon as they're posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flag them as *chatty* or *not constructive* and they'll be deleted. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25685" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2473" RevisionGUID="e8112f47-e661-4255-8513-4362126e65f8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Last month Stack Exchange has [graciously agreed to sponsor me](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2314/software-craftsmanship-north-america-2011-sponsorship-proposal) to attend the [Software Craftsmanship North America](http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.com) conference in Chicago next month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [conference schedule](http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.org/schedule) is now up on their site, although the [speaker list and talk abstracts](http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.org/speakers/) are still being fleshed out. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the main purpose of this trip is to bring information and knowledge back to the community here, what do *you* want to see? Which sessions do you want to hear about the most?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll try to make up a schedule for myself that hits as much of what you guys pick here as possible. And of course, if anyone else is going to be attending, come find me and say hi. I'll likely have stickers and such and who doesn't love stickers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25686" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2673" RevisionGUID="65994bb2-d789-4b83-a549-ecc276912894" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In order to solve the problem that you described, I recently proposed that moderators should have to *defend their seat*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2540/should-p-se-moderators-have-to-defend-their-seat&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to make two additional points:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It's unfair to paint all moderators with the same broad brush. Some are quite good.&#xD;&#xA;2. Recently, it seems like the moderation has improved." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25687" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2479" RevisionGUID="5269b4c8-b2bf-4643-b336-6d1569dd6944" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You mean automatically convert a link to the question title? No, that's not possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can, however, use the markdown syntax to do it manually:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`[Links in comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2478/links-in-comments)` =&gt; [Links in comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2478/links-in-comments)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25688" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2316" RevisionGUID="e504754d-bbb8-4b90-8cc1-8cd9dc412f80" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My only question is...Can we try to perhaps launch a blog around this time? This seems like the perfect kick-off. I know [I tossed around the idea shortly after I read about BlogOverflow][1] and [Mark asked the question about topics to discuss][2]. It seems like if we can use the next month and a half to actually move forward with a P.SE blog, and have this be a shortly-after-launch thing, it would be a bigger boost for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way I see it is that I'm not sure how many of these experts have time to regularly participate in a Stack Exchange site. I recognize some of these names, and they aren't lightweights in software development. I think if we can also add &quot;and we have a blog that is read by these people, and you can write and submit articles to it&quot; to the description of the site (taking into consideration like the people who read Programmers and how Google just eats up Stack Exchange sites), I think we would be more likely convince some of these people to potentially contribute to a blog when they might not be able to contribute very many answers to questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Getting more programmers (the attendees) of the conference active would be fantastic, and having someone to blog about it would be great for those of us who can't attend, but finding a way to grab in some of the subject matter experts would be awesome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1709/any-chance-of-a-programmers-community-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2108/what-should-a-programmers-se-blog-be-about" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25689" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2684" RevisionGUID="d3de2f8c-d0f5-4005-a713-86a2849a9878" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;What is the difference between &quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com&quot; and StackOverFlow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25690" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2198" RevisionGUID="2eb59368-b201-4b4b-b5b5-a02b1c23c084" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The Stack Exchange platform works with very specific types of questions, and we've found through a few years of trial and error recommendation questions don't work well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I closed the question, I provided a link to why recommendation questions don't work, which you can still find here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, questions asking for recommendations almost inevitably turn into a list of one line answers that don't provide any information as to why someone would use it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, when a question is ultra specific in its requirements, it's unlikely to help future visitors: if my requirements are off by a little from yours, your question doesn't answer *my* recommendation question, opening the door for several iterations of essentially the same question. To wit, we have [over 2,000 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=documentation+%2Btool&amp;submit=search) asking about documentation tools: most of them are terrible and help nobody.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that point, it's important to realize two things about closing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Closing is a manual process. Someone has to call a question to the attention of moderators or stumble onto the question and decide to vote to close. With over 14,000 questions on Programmers.SE, some bad questions slip through the cracks. When that happens, we rely on community members like yourself to flag those questions so they can be closed or improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [Closing isn't a death sentence for a question.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed) We close questions and provide guidance when they do, hopefully before they amass too many answers, so that they can be revised by the asker to meet our question guidelines. It was my intention to prompt you to read the linked guidance and improve your question (or ask another one) based on that guidance, and I apologize that my comment didn't make that clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a blog post (also linked from the above meta post) called [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/), that describes a better way to ask a recommendation question without it being a recommendation question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, if you ask *how* you can go about evaluating documentation tools, or *what things you should look for* when you are evaluating documentation tools, that'd be something that'd be on-topic and pretty useful for everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To quote the end of that blog post,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I had to summarize our network in a single word, that word is “learning”. People come to our sites to learn about topics they are passionate about. As the old Chinese proverb goes, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Every question and answer ultimately should be about teaching and learning — yes, even the shopping ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to why there are tags for questions that aren't on-topic here, tagging has never been Programmers.SE's strong suit, and [we're working on it](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/tagging).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25691" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2493" RevisionGUID="aae4e1d7-2f5f-4de8-9e55-efbc55a80972" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="When migrating a question to another site, the following notice is added:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### migrated from [programmers.stackexchange.com](http://programmers.stackexchange.com) 2 mins ago&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question came from our site for expert programmers interested in professional discussions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This appears to be an artifact from the early beta: the site isn't for [expert programmers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2411/removing-expert-from-the-site-description) or [discussions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can this be changed to match the [current FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) opening line?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### migrated from [programmers.stackexchange.com](http://programmers.stackexchange.com) 2 mins ago&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question came from our site for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25692" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2303" RevisionGUID="eecd09ee-9627-4ba8-82fe-c118f23a5ef2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Those questions tend to be popular because anyone with a heartbeat can have an opinion about a work-related problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fortunately, those types of questions are off-topic here. We explicitly prohibit them in the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ________ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* **there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”**&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* **it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We link to [a meta post about it](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster) from the FAQ as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue is, of course, that because they are so wildly popular, they are [broken windows](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory): people don't bother to vote to close them, downvote them, or flag them; and new users see the proliferation of them as a reason to ask more. Generally, the users participating in these types of questions either don't know they're not allowed or don't care and [wish we'd stop closing them](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed+questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it's exceedingly rare that those questions are caught in time to be crafted into a&#xD;&#xA;constructive question: by the time someone who actually cares about stopping the proliferation of these questions sees them, they already have amassed a ton of activity. And not a day goes by where I don't close one within 5 minutes of asking only to see someone managed to sneak an answer in before the closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in practice, these questions just need to die. If you see one, flag it. Leave a comment explaining why the question isn't constructive or useful for this site. If you see a particularly egregious example, raise a question about it here on meta so it can be crystalized why the question is so bad. You don't have the privilege yet, but those who have it should be voting to close these questions as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The more people feel empowered to say &quot;enough is enough&quot;, the more useful Programmers.SE can become." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25693" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2435" RevisionGUID="d1dbf21f-0ffa-476e-97de-3fedf8bd5776" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My response is going to come in two (and a half) parts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Part 1**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with your take on the question and have reopened it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Part 2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked a similar question ([&quot;What are the rules around moderators closing questions outright?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright&quot;)) last year and [one of the responses summed it up](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright/856#856):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;The principle is that moderators are encouraged to make decisions; that's why they're moderators. As such, a moderator's close decision goes into effect immediately... that's the way the Stack Exchange software was designed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not a bad thing. Sometimes we miss the mark and a decent question gets closed, but there are checks in place to make sure we don't run off into the wild. People like you making posts like this is one of those checks. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators get notified of every meta post, so your post showed up in my inbox with what I assume as its original title: &quot;Isn't this supposed to be a community website?&quot; It *is* a community website. This post is proof of that. Making a constructive meta post challenging a closing reason (which this post is) is always encouraged and we will always respond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Part 2.5**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is where I'm going to go off on a slight tangent. Disclaimer: I don't have a problem with your question, Macneil, but it reminded me of an ongoing trend I've noticed and would like to address.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key word above is &quot;constructive&quot;. We welcome constructive criticism and review/reverse decisions where needed. This is why there are four moderators and an entire community of people with reopen votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure what it is about meta that brings out the theatrics along the lines of &quot;moderators are nazi dictators, drunk with power and oppressing us hardworking folk&quot;, but it's getting old. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To everyone who reads this answer: if you disagree with the closure of a question (either by moderator or by community), please post on meta! Say which question was closed, why you think it should stay open, and leave it at that. Let's all collectively drop the drama and focus on what we are really trying to do here: building a great site full of great software development related content." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25694" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2280" RevisionGUID="31609171-8d64-45a6-b516-4e6ff03571cf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I could've sworn we've fielded this question before, but at any rate, this is not a bug: every child meta except for Meta Stack Overflow pegs its users' reputation to the corresponding main site user. It's been like that since Stack Exchange 2.0 launched.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [the Meta FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reputation here is entirely derived from the main website; your reputation is the same here as it is there, synchronized hourly. Votes here do not affect your reputation in any way. However, you can earn unique badges here on the meta site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25695" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2734" RevisionGUID="f42f4a5a-a52d-4ece-a37d-bae0006a99b2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some clarifications:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Half the answers are helpful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your questions (the one here and the one on StackOverflow) generated no answers, but [comments][1]. It's good that some of the comments were helpful, but comments don't follow the same quality guidelines as answers. For example, there are no down votes on comments, so you can't really say if the community disagrees with a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the other half think the topic isn't constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, regardless of how interesting your question may be, it doesn't have a single answer, and those kind of questions often lead to lengthy debates. We can't really safely measure a technology's popularity, your question is asking for opinions rather than experiences and facts. The pointers you got in the comments are valuable, but there's no objective way of judging them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding to that, it's also too localized, as @ThomasOwens [explained][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the [faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][3] blog post that is linked to the close notification and always keep in mind that &quot;not constructive&quot; is Stack Exchange lingo, it refers to how your question measures up to those guidelines. It's not a comment on the actual quality of your question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And you can always try asking around in [chat][4]. Same crowd there, and your question is interesting enough to start a discussion (I hope). Of course the discussion will probably be more casual. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**As a sidenote**: Avoid [cross posting][5]. If your question was closed on StackOverflow, chances are it will get closed here as well. Otherwise it would have been migrated instead of getting closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2731/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2531/what-is-the-current-policy-for-questions-that-are-duplicates-of-stack-overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25696" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2316" RevisionGUID="bc878084-b545-4d20-927f-26377af4a8f1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My only question is...Can we try to perhaps launch a blog around this time? This seems like the perfect kick-off. I know [I tossed around the idea shortly after I read about BlogOverflow][1] and [Mark asked the question about topics to discuss][2]. It seems like if we can use the next month and a half to actually move forward with a P.SE blog, and have this be a shortly-after-launch thing, it would be a bigger boost for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way I see it is that I'm not sure how many of these experts have time to regularly participate in a Stack Exchange site. I recognize some of these names, and they aren't lightweights in software development. I think if we can also add &quot;and we have a blog that is read by these people, and you can write and submit articles to it&quot; to the description of the site (taking into consideration like the people who read Programmers and how Google just eats up Stack Exchange sites), I think we would be more likely convince some of these people to potentially contribute to a blog when they might not be able to contribute very many answers to questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Getting more programmers (the attendees) of the conference active would be fantastic, and having someone to blog about it would be great for those of us who can't attend, but finding a way to grab in some of the subject matter experts would be awesome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1709/any-chance-of-a-programmers-community-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2108/what-should-a-programmers-se-blog-be-about" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25698" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2448" RevisionGUID="2f16829a-dc64-4826-af14-fb5489c79baf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It was originally closed as a duplicate of [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14706/overtime-is-part-of-the-job-true-but-a-bad-attitude) which was closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; and deleted. You should see this [in its revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/101988/revisions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather than cause confusion by having a chain of duplicates that led to a deleted question, I changed the close reason on the canonical question that's still visible to match the deleted question's close reason when it became clear it the 9-to-5 question was on its way to closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question of whether overtime/working on weekends is part of a programmer's job description is a soft, no-content question: everyone has an opinion and it's a controversial topic. We've now have the same question asked, with the same lack of consensus, three times with a ton of answers that don't really teach anyone anything they didn't already know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And questions attracting a ton of answers are [the sign of a question that's not focused enough](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question) for the Stack Exchange. A yes or no question that actually has an answer should not be attracting 20 answers each time it's asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's [a salvageable, constructive, and *solvable*](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) question to be asked about the topic, it's better off reasked under the understanding if it turns into an argue-fest like these three it's going to get closed again." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25699" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2303" RevisionGUID="842dc07a-1348-44e8-abcc-920cd5931535" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Those questions tend to be popular because anyone with a heartbeat can have an opinion about a work-related problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fortunately, those types of questions are off-topic here. We explicitly prohibit them in the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ________ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* **there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”**&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* **it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We link to [a meta post about it](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster) from the FAQ as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue is, of course, that because they are so wildly popular, they are [broken windows](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory): people don't bother to vote to close them, downvote them, or flag them; and new users see the proliferation of them as a reason to ask more. Generally, the users participating in these types of questions either don't know they're not allowed or don't care and [wish we'd stop closing them](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed+questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it's exceedingly rare that those questions are caught in time to be crafted into a&#xD;&#xA;constructive question: by the time someone who actually cares about stopping the proliferation of these questions sees them, they already have amassed a ton of activity. And not a day goes by where I don't close one within 5 minutes of asking only to see someone managed to sneak an answer in before the closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in practice, these questions just need to die. If you see one, flag it. Leave a comment explaining why the question isn't constructive or useful for this site. If you see a particularly egregious example, raise a question about it here on meta so it can be crystalized why the question is so bad. You don't have the privilege yet, but those who have it should be voting to close these questions as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The more people feel empowered to say &quot;enough is enough&quot;, the more useful Programmers.SE can become." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25700" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2435" RevisionGUID="8af023ea-d962-475d-a8c7-0c956b6fd7bf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My response is going to come in two (and a half) parts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Part 1**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with your take on the question and have reopened it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Part 2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked a similar question ([&quot;What are the rules around moderators closing questions outright?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright&quot;)) last year and [one of the responses summed it up](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright/856#856):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;The principle is that moderators are encouraged to make decisions; that's why they're moderators. As such, a moderator's close decision goes into effect immediately... that's the way the Stack Exchange software was designed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not a bad thing. Sometimes we miss the mark and a decent question gets closed, but there are checks in place to make sure we don't run off into the wild. People like you making posts like this is one of those checks. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators get notified of every meta post, so your post showed up in my inbox with what I assume as its original title: &quot;Isn't this supposed to be a community website?&quot; It *is* a community website. This post is proof of that. Making a constructive meta post challenging a closing reason (which this post is) is always encouraged and we will always respond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Part 2.5**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is where I'm going to go off on a slight tangent. Disclaimer: I don't have a problem with your question, Macneil, but it reminded me of an ongoing trend I've noticed and would like to address.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key word above is &quot;constructive&quot;. We welcome constructive criticism and review/reverse decisions where needed. This is why there are four moderators and an entire community of people with reopen votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure what it is about meta that brings out the theatrics along the lines of &quot;moderators are nazi dictators, drunk with power and oppressing us hardworking folk&quot;, but it's getting old. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To everyone who reads this answer: if you disagree with the closure of a question (either by moderator or by community), please post on meta! Say which question was closed, why you think it should stay open, and leave it at that. Let's all collectively drop the drama and focus on what we are really trying to do here: building a great site full of great software development related content." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25701" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2855" RevisionGUID="2383ca36-131b-48d4-9b4f-c3fb6118415e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Let's see what *you* can do: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Contribute longer answers. You [have][1] [a][2] [few][3] [really][4] [short][5] [ones][6].&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;    This is not a comment on the quality of your answers, only their length. Shorter answers may create the perception that the site is one where you can get quick &amp; casual answers (i.e. a forum).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Contribute on topic questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    4 out of 6 of your questions are closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Actively participate on Meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is your first post here, keep'em coming! Every constructive Meta post makes Programmers a better place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 4. Lurk around the Programmers chat room. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    There are newer users in there asking on how to improve their questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 5. [How to reconcile guidelines, community opinion and moderation][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And some more general tips:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you happen upon an off topic open question, flag it as such immediately. &#xD;&#xA;- If you happen upon a bad question (open or closed), do your best to improve it. If it's beyond improving, don't be afraid to down vote. That will alert other users, mostly via the review page but also users casually browsing the site, and your down vote may lead to the question getting improved by someone else. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a resident question killer, I don't think there is a problem. We certainly don't have &quot;bad&quot; users, and I was kind of annoyed when I first read your question. That said, there is a *mini* plague, but it's not something we can control, at least not directly. Most recent bad questions where migrated (directly or indirectly) from StackOverflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just yesterday I happened upon a question that was somewhat incomprehensible. I voted to close, and left a friendly (?!) comment. The OP responded revealing his frustration that he was down voted across the network. I checked his StackOverflow profile and found out that he had posted the exact same question there. The question was closed, but there where two comments by high-*ish* rep users suggesting Programmers as a better site for the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That would be a case of *indirect* migration. I left them both angry (but polite, I think) messages, pointing out that their comments lead to the question getting closed again, and that what they thought were helpful comments resulted in the OP getting even more frustrated. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of us are battling this mini plague through various means: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Being active on StackOverflow, and hunting down all these friendly suggestions that incorrectly point to Programmers.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Alerting the crowd there for the situation via Meta StackOverflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although at first I though of boycotting Anna Lear's bid on the latest moderation elections on StackOverflow (because I wanted her concentrated here, I don't like sharing), I went on and voted for her in the end just because she would have more direct control over migrations. I did notice the situation getting better, well done Anna.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And all our other mods are doing their best to spam Meta StackOverflow with friendly reminders that Programmers should not be treated as a place where StackOverflow question come to die.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only Programmers specific problem that leads to bad questions I can think of, is that there are quite a few highly voted old questions that currently wouldn't be on topic. Historically Programmers was supposed to be something of an anti-StackOverflow, and many of the posts of that time survive and are amongst the more popular. Some we close, some we leave as is. There is no point in hunting them down, as time goes by they will become less significant by default.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in a few cases, users defended their questions, on Meta or in comment threads, providing some of these old questions as similar to their own. Well, that doesn't happen often enough to be concerning. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are certainly bad days. We [noticed before][8]. But I don't think it's a major problem, we still have quite a few more good days than bad ones. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120265/easter-eggs-as-ip-protection-in-software/120279#120279&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119253/where-to-go-from-here-how-to-improve-learn-more/119293#119293&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122740/whats-the-idiomatic-name-for-a-throwaway-variable/122744#122744&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122740/whats-the-idiomatic-name-for-a-throwaway-variable/122744#122744&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122313/advice-needed-software-development/122323#122323&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122009/developing-a-feature-which-sole-purpose-to-be-taken-out/122069#122069&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2727/are-we-scaring-off-new-users" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25702" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2565" RevisionGUID="c8ee4d2c-da2e-4571-9a7d-8808b1eb6b8e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The following question got moved to meta: [&quot;Would it be possible to create an open source software library, entirely developed and moderated by an open community?&quot;][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It contains the following two sub-questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. Has anything like this been attempted before?&#xD;&#xA;  2. Are there platforms better suited for this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As neither the main question, nor the sub-question have got anything to do with meta, it evidently got closed here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I personally find I always take care of explicitly stating the questions I want answered. The title of this question is _&quot;Why did this non-meta question get moved to meta?&quot;_, meaning, that _is_ my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They always taught me it is good practice to end an email/letter/question explicitly with the question you want answered. In this case, I'm also interested in the following.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. How could I have better formulated my question(s) so they would have been better understood?&#xD;&#xA; 2. Could this question please be moved back to programmers where it belongs so I can at least vote to re-open it there? Re-opening it here doesn't make any sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Excuse the sarcastic nature of this question, but you might understand I am slightly frustrated with how this question got down voted/closed as I sincerely tried my best to formulate it clearly.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2561/15464" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25703" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2507" RevisionGUID="94bb794c-1e67-4eb3-8303-d7f9e37f37b1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You were banned from Stack Overflow for asking too many off-topic questions: because of that, [we won't migrate your questions there anymore](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2475/using-programmers-to-side-step-the-rules-on-stack-overflow). For more information about this ban, please check out the Meta Stack Overflow question, [What can I do when getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears you're very close to getting unbanned: to ensure that happens, you'll need to do two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Stop asking off-topic questions here and on Stack Overflow.** Please [read the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and heed moderators' advice and warnings: you've asked a number of questions here that do not belong on Programmers and and a number on Stack Overflow that don't belong there, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Start answering questions on Stack Overflow.** You only need a few more up-votes to be able to ask questions: you'll get those by paying it forward and helping others out with their problems. Be sure to answer questions that are on-topic there: answering off-topic questions will wind up penalizing you as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25704" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2316" RevisionGUID="3a908a78-f298-49a3-add9-002a94cb0963" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My only question is...Can we try to perhaps launch a blog around this time? This seems like the perfect kick-off. I know [I tossed around the idea shortly after I read about BlogOverflow][1] and [Mark asked the question about topics to discuss][2]. It seems like if we can use the next month and a half to actually move forward with a P.SE blog, and have this be a shortly-after-launch thing, it would be a bigger boost for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way I see it is that I'm not sure how many of these experts have time to regularly participate in a Stack Exchange site. I recognize some of these names, and they aren't lightweights in software development. I think if we can also add &quot;and we have a blog that is read by these people, and you can write and submit articles to it&quot; to the description of the site (taking into consideration like the people who read Programmers and how Google just eats up Stack Exchange sites), I think we would be more likely convince some of these people to potentially contribute to a blog when they might not be able to contribute very many answers to questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Getting more programmers (the attendees) of the conference active would be fantastic, and having someone to blog about it would be great for those of us who can't attend, but finding a way to grab in some of the subject matter experts would be awesome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1709/any-chance-of-a-programmers-community-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2108/what-should-a-programmers-se-blog-be-about" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25705" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2448" RevisionGUID="e85bf577-e574-4d39-974f-c15fff594919" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It was originally closed as a duplicate of [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14706/overtime-is-part-of-the-job-true-but-a-bad-attitude) which was closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; and deleted. You should see this [in its revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/101988/revisions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather than cause confusion by having a chain of duplicates that led to a deleted question, I changed the close reason on the canonical question that's still visible to match the deleted question's close reason when it became clear it the 9-to-5 question was on its way to closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question of whether overtime/working on weekends is part of a programmer's job description is a soft, no-content question: everyone has an opinion and it's a controversial topic. We've now have the same question asked, with the same lack of consensus, three times with a ton of answers that don't really teach anyone anything they didn't already know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And questions attracting a ton of answers are [the sign of a question that's not focused enough](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question) for the Stack Exchange. A yes or no question that actually has an answer should not be attracting 20 answers each time it's asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's [a salvageable, constructive, and *solvable*](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) question to be asked about the topic, it's better off reasked under the understanding if it turns into an argue-fest like these three it's going to get closed again." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25706" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2858" RevisionGUID="09aa65ac-47fd-4712-9244-9273aec38da5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We're a month behind, but that's no excuse to not celebrate our first birthday. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Following the discussion [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2677/programmers-birthday-celebration), it looks like we have most of a proposal in place that we can go to the community team at Stack Exchange with. I'm going to summarize what we have so far here and pose a couple more questions that need sorting out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Idea**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can do a &quot;topic of the week&quot; contest where users old and new alike ask questions about a topic (TBD). Every question that meets the criteria below grants an entry into a random draw at the end of the week that will determine 3 lucky prize (TBD) winners.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Criteria**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each qualifying question must:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- meet the site guidelines established in [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com);&#xD;&#xA;- be positively scored (&gt; 0);&#xD;&#xA;- be tagged with the pre-determined tags appropriate for the topic;&#xD;&#xA;- be posted while the contest is running. Older questions don't count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Topics**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can propose topics in the answers here. The highest voted one will be chosen. Naturally, topics must also fit the scope of Programmers, so no code golf please. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The Prizes**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each good question you post will increase your chances of winning. For the prizes, I'm thinking we can offer a choice of a book (perhaps related to the topic) or a development tool in the, say, $50 ballpark. I haven't pitched this price point to Stack Exchange, but I know similarly priced prizes have done well in the past on other sites so it seems like a reasonable starting point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the topic is chosen, I'd like to come up with 5 books and/or tools to choose from that are related and offer the 3 winners to choose from that list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mark Trapp suggested in comments on the original discussion post, we may also do a bountyathon a la [Gaming's bounty giveaway](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3506/omg-its-the-holiday-bounty-giveaway).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Next Steps**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you agree with this? Anything you'd change? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please let us know what you think and propose ideas for topics and prizes that would fit well with what we do here on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25708" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2435" RevisionGUID="015d4cc8-ec85-482c-9899-864d9febe081" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My response is going to come in two (and a half) parts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Part 1**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with your take on the question and have reopened it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Part 2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked a similar question ([&quot;What are the rules around moderators closing questions outright?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright&quot;)) last year and [one of the responses summed it up](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright/856#856):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;The principle is that moderators are encouraged to make decisions; that's why they're moderators. As such, a moderator's close decision goes into effect immediately... that's the way the Stack Exchange software was designed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not a bad thing. Sometimes we miss the mark and a decent question gets closed, but there are checks in place to make sure we don't run off into the wild. People like you making posts like this is one of those checks. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators get notified of every meta post, so your post showed up in my inbox with what I assume as its original title: &quot;Isn't this supposed to be a community website?&quot; It *is* a community website. This post is proof of that. Making a constructive meta post challenging a closing reason (which this post is) is always encouraged and we will always respond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Part 2.5**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is where I'm going to go off on a slight tangent. Disclaimer: I don't have a problem with your question, Macneil, but it reminded me of an ongoing trend I've noticed and would like to address.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key word above is &quot;constructive&quot;. We welcome constructive criticism and review/reverse decisions where needed. This is why there are four moderators and an entire community of people with reopen votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure what it is about meta that brings out the theatrics along the lines of &quot;moderators are nazi dictators, drunk with power and oppressing us hardworking folk&quot;, but it's getting old. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To everyone who reads this answer: if you disagree with the closure of a question (either by moderator or by community), please post on meta! Say which question was closed, why you think it should stay open, and leave it at that. Let's all collectively drop the drama and focus on what we are really trying to do here: building a great site full of great software development related content." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25709" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2572" RevisionGUID="21b01814-747f-4088-92a5-5cb3235fcade" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Your question isn't a great example since it's not a conceptual software development question but rather a question about the site itself.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, now that it's in the right place (on meta), let's talk about the issue you bring up. It would be helpful if you pointed to some questions you specifically think should not have been closed, but in the absence of examples, we can still talk about the general case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the main features of Stack Exchange is that it's high signal and low noise. Leaving questions that are off-topic or don't fit the Q&amp;A model well (e.g. discussion-oriented threads rather than questions that invite explanations) would contribute to noise and dilute the signal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've had several discussions about what to do with interesting but off-topic questions and the general result is that Programmers.SE doesn't have to cover everything. There are other sites such as Reddit or Quora that have different policies and philosophies and that might be more welcoming of some of the questions we end up rejecting here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some links to the previous discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta ([Jeff's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta/1896#1896) in particular)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2304/offtopic-posts-can-they-be-moved-rather-than-closed / https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2508/should-there-be-another-stackexchange-site-for-programmers/&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation/ ([Mark's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation/2173#2173) contains some analysis of our closed questions over the last couple of months)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond this, I think we need some specifics from you. Which questions do you think were wrongly closed? What topics do you think should be allowed that currently aren't?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25710" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2507" RevisionGUID="dc0591e4-e92b-4ce8-a777-1f471707af85" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You were banned from Stack Overflow for asking too many off-topic questions: because of that, [we won't migrate your questions there anymore](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2475/using-programmers-to-side-step-the-rules-on-stack-overflow). For more information about this ban, please check out the Meta Stack Overflow question, [What can I do when getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears you're very close to getting unbanned: to ensure that happens, you'll need to do two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Stop asking off-topic questions here and on Stack Overflow.** Please [read the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and heed moderators' advice and warnings: you've asked a number of questions here that do not belong on Programmers and and a number on Stack Overflow that don't belong there, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Start answering questions on Stack Overflow.** You only need a few more up-votes to be able to ask questions: you'll get those by paying it forward and helping others out with their problems. Be sure to answer questions that are on-topic there: answering off-topic questions will wind up penalizing you as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25711" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2448" RevisionGUID="f1ec3cae-5a64-4206-a64b-a091ca015029" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It was originally closed as a duplicate of [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14706/overtime-is-part-of-the-job-true-but-a-bad-attitude) which was closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; and deleted. You should see this [in its revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/101988/revisions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather than cause confusion by having a chain of duplicates that led to a deleted question, I changed the close reason on the canonical question that's still visible to match the deleted question's close reason when it became clear it the 9-to-5 question was on its way to closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question of whether overtime/working on weekends is part of a programmer's job description is a soft, no-content question: everyone has an opinion and it's a controversial topic. We've now have the same question asked, with the same lack of consensus, three times with a ton of answers that don't really teach anyone anything they didn't already know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And questions attracting a ton of answers are [the sign of a question that's not focused enough](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question) for the Stack Exchange. A yes or no question that actually has an answer should not be attracting 20 answers each time it's asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's [a salvageable, constructive, and *solvable*](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) question to be asked about the topic, it's better off reasked under the understanding if it turns into an argue-fest like these three it's going to get closed again." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25712" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2886" RevisionGUID="5c7bde0a-2e91-43d9-b893-e69ef9d9e3c1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So one of the major problems we have on Programmers is the proliferation of bad tags. We've had a number of [discussions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/tags) and [posse requests](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/posse) for different tags, but killing a tag—when it's even possible—tends to be incredibly ad hoc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, based on the recent [software tag cleanup](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2779/what-can-be-done-about-the-remaining-closed-questions-in-the-software-tag), I'd like to propose a more structured cleanup process for tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 1: determine a tag needs to die&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once a quarter-ish, we'll create a question here, tagged [meta-tag:featured], that'll request candidate tags for cleanup. Each tag will get its own answer so they can be discussed in comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After two weeks, the question will be closed, and any tag with a score of 5 or higher will move onto the next round. We'll work through each of these tags in the same way: once these are complete, we'll create a new call for candidate tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 2: create a cleanup notice for the tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once a tag is identified as needing to die, a moderator will create a new meta-discussion question tagged [meta-tag:featured] that starts the cleanup. The ground rules of the cleanup would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* One cleanup notice active at a time&#xD;&#xA;* If a question in the tag is closed as anything other than &quot;exact duplicate&quot;, has less than 20 score, and has been closed for a month or more, it can be deleted at any time&#xD;&#xA;* If a question's been closed as an exact duplicate, it'll be listed as a &quot;merge candidate&quot; in the cleanup notice.&#xD;&#xA;* If a question is closed and has a score of 20 or higher, it'll be listed as a &quot;deletion candidate&quot; in the cleanup notice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once this post notice is created, a two-week cleanup timer begins.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 3: cleaning up the tags, identifying close candidates, and the last call for heroic edits&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;During the two-week cleanup period, the community will be tasked with doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Cleaning up the tags: if a question is on-topic for the site, it needs to be revised and retagged with more meaningful tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Identifying close candidates: if a tagged question just slipped through the cracks and needs to be closed, it needs to be listed as a close candidate on the cleanup notice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. For any tagged closed question or close candidate, the cleanup period is the last chance to save them with heroic edits: consolidate lists into canonical answers and flag duplicate answers for deletion and substantially improve the quality of the question. If an attempt to save a question has been made, flag the question and list it as a &quot;saved question&quot; on the cleanup notice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 4: cleanup aftermath&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the two-week cleanup period:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* any questions marked saved will be reviewed and reopened if the edits have, in fact, substantially improved the question and addressed the original reasons why the question was closed&#xD;&#xA;* any deletion candidates not saved will be deleted&#xD;&#xA;* any merge candidates not saved will be merged&#xD;&#xA;* any close candidates not saved will be reviewed by moderators and closed if found to be off-topic, not constructive, too localized, not real questions, or exact duplicates of other questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any questions closed during the cleanup will stick around for a month to give one final chance to save them. If they haven't been reopened after that, they'll be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Wrap up and feedback&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is pretty close to what we've been doing for other tag cleanups, just in a more structured manner that keeps everyone in the loop about what's going to happen at any specific time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think? What concerns do you have? Are there specific implementation details that need tweaking?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25713" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2585" RevisionGUID="c58f4e86-8575-4c6e-8def-4d33d37f435a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This *should* be covered by the other aspects of the FAQ, particularly the [six subjective guidelines](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) and [What kinds of questions should I *not* ask here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask). The general class of these questions are &quot;programmer lifestyle&quot; questions: people asking about general issues as if programmers somehow approached basic life skills qualitatively differently from other people. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We tried to lay out the guidelines for these types of questions earlier:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I do agree a FAQ entry is probably warranted, given how prevalent these once were and their inherent &quot;broken window&quot; nature. I propose the following be added to the &quot;but is **not about**&quot; section of the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle (including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25714" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2583" RevisionGUID="70ea3339-c0f3-4b52-b4a0-88f81f40c743" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm gonna say pretty much the same thing here as [I said on MSO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/111073/811), but directed at you as the editor instead of someone else as the person approving edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's nothing *inherently wrong* with editing to add links to book posts. Indeed, it can be quite helpful... But before you do, **make sure you're not wasting your time and the time of everyone reviewing the edit.** There are *loads* of lousy questions asking for book recommendations that should probably just be closed and deleted, and many times more lousy *answers* (even on *good* questions) that make no effort to explain why the book being recommended is a good choice. Editing these is maybe *slightly* more useful than copy-editing bathroom-wall graffiti...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And [as Mark notes][1], you're not just wasting *your* time: you're wasting the time of the folks rejecting these edits and you're wasting the time of the folks reading the front page who see these popping up instead of something useful. Don't do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you're going through these posts anyway, why not do something productive: when you come across a poor question or a lazy answer, something no amount of hyperlinking will salvage, don't *edit* it... **flag it**. Ask a moderator to delete it. Instead of seeing these things pop up in the queue knowing they're on their way to making the front page of the site look like Amazon Rejects, they can send them on their way to that Great Booklist in the Sky.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2582/63" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25715" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2507" RevisionGUID="1d0ea096-a38b-419d-a64e-0d4a7f0c8146" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You were banned from Stack Overflow for asking too many off-topic questions: because of that, [we won't migrate your questions there anymore](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2475/using-programmers-to-side-step-the-rules-on-stack-overflow). For more information about this ban, please check out the Meta Stack Overflow question, [What can I do when getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears you're very close to getting unbanned: to ensure that happens, you'll need to do two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Stop asking off-topic questions here and on Stack Overflow.** Please [read the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and heed moderators' advice and warnings: you've asked a number of questions here that do not belong on Programmers and and a number on Stack Overflow that don't belong there, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Start answering questions on Stack Overflow.** You only need a few more up-votes to be able to ask questions: you'll get those by paying it forward and helping others out with their problems. Be sure to answer questions that are on-topic there: answering off-topic questions will wind up penalizing you as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25716" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2572" RevisionGUID="a95920d1-b60c-440c-b9eb-c364dbdf0fca" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Your question isn't a great example since it's not a conceptual software development question but rather a question about the site itself.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, now that it's in the right place (on meta), let's talk about the issue you bring up. It would be helpful if you pointed to some questions you specifically think should not have been closed, but in the absence of examples, we can still talk about the general case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the main features of Stack Exchange is that it's high signal and low noise. Leaving questions that are off-topic or don't fit the Q&amp;A model well (e.g. discussion-oriented threads rather than questions that invite explanations) would contribute to noise and dilute the signal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've had several discussions about what to do with interesting but off-topic questions and the general result is that Programmers.SE doesn't have to cover everything. There are other sites such as Reddit or Quora that have different policies and philosophies and that might be more welcoming of some of the questions we end up rejecting here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some links to the previous discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta ([Jeff's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta/1896#1896) in particular)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2304/offtopic-posts-can-they-be-moved-rather-than-closed / https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2508/should-there-be-another-stackexchange-site-for-programmers/&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation/ ([Mark's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation/2173#2173) contains some analysis of our closed questions over the last couple of months)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond this, I think we need some specifics from you. Which questions do you think were wrongly closed? What topics do you think should be allowed that currently aren't?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25717" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2598" RevisionGUID="1c483dc9-247f-4659-8a97-fa20626b7abb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Last week I attended Software Craftsmanship North America 2011 (thanks again, Stack Exchange!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I spoke to a number of people about Stack Exchange in general and Programmers in particular, and handed out some stickers and a few of my shiny and new moderator business cards. I don't know if this is going to translate into many new users for us, but the word's now out there. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a lot to go through, so it's going to take me a bit to get it all out there, but I'm going to post session summaries here as answers to this question. They'll also be cross-posted to [my blog](http://annalear.ca).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had grand plans to keep up with Programmers during the conference, but it really moved way too quickly to do any meaningful knowledge sharing then. Between my blog series and searching for existing related questions to add an answer to, I hope to bring back some value to the community here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, I had a blast at the conference. If the [Stack Exchange sponsorship grant](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/supporting-community-conferences/) still runs next year, I highly recommend applying for it. The sponsorship program is available to regular community users, not just moderators, so for that matter... if you know of a relevant conference you'd like to attend and help promote Programmers at, please make a meta post and tell us all about it! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime... enjoy the summaries here. I hope you'll find them interesting. If this is your first time in this question thread, sorting the answers [by oldest](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2598/scna-2011-conference-report?answertab=oldest#tab-top) is recommended." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25718" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2703" RevisionGUID="74522ffa-1901-4c66-808e-ed3114a005d6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Given your example questions, I think you mostly correctly identified where you want to ask them and what's on (and off) topic here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Where there's disagreement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to implement a queue algorithm? (Theoretical Computer Science)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like [Yannis mentions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2702/8), Theoretical Computer Science is research-level only: unless you're talking about it at a graduate-level or higher, this wouldn't be on-topic there. If you're talking about putting it into code, you'll want Stack Overflow. If you're talking about putting it into programming terms (but still at the conceptual stage), it'll likely be fine here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the generally accepted practice (vague but a general answer be provided)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9 times out of 10, this isn't a real question, or at best it's a non-constructive question. Questions need to provide specific, solvable problems: if that's missing, the answer to most &quot;best practices&quot; questions is &quot;it depends&quot; which really doesn't help anyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But given the set that *are* answerable, some are going to be Stack Overflow (I have X problem, my code isn't working, what's the generally accepted way to fix it?), some Code Review (What's the generally accepted way to refactor this code?), and some us (more whiteboard stuff)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What checkout module is available in Python? (definitely Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They're definitely off-topic here, but recommendation questions have been asked so many times on Stack Overflow, it's hard to imagine one that would actually be high quality or not duplicated. The best way to ask these are, &quot;I'm doing X. Here is my code with solution Y, but it doesn't do Z requirement. Is there a better way to accomplish what I'm doing?&quot; and let the recommendation for a different library come naturally from the answers provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How can I prioritize my queue? (algorithm)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There really isn't a good place to ask these types of questions on the network, but I think right now it's settled on Programmers being the best fit, even though it's unlikely to get a very good answer. There's a [non-research level Computer Science](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/35636/computer-science-non-programming?referrer=RaYobbitpqczXN85c5ibxQ2) site proposal in the works, where non-implementation questions about algorithms will probably wind up being best answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The ones you couldn't decide on&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What to do when two users simultaneously access the system? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would depend on the specifics of the question, but it sounds like high-level stuff that would be a fit here. If it was implementation specific (like really heavy into code), you might be better suited on Stack Overflow, but it likely would be fine here even still.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have implemented the above logic for a single event. How to apply it for multiple events?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, if you're supplying code and you want to know how to adapt it, Stack Overflow is the better choice. If you're still talking abstractly, it's on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If ticket not available, the user must be put in a waiting list and must be allocated when a user cancels transaction. How about this implementation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit tricky: it's definitely not a fit for us, but as to where it's on-topic it could either go Stack Overflow or Code Review. The safe bet would likely be Stack Overflow, but if flagged, I'd still run it by the mods on Code Review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25719" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2968" RevisionGUID="048b6e34-3ab2-4734-80a2-f0bdb4adecb2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="ChrisF and Yannis both talked about the general problem, but I just wanted to say that closed questions are, in fact, being deleted: we've even [advertised this](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1806/8) here on meta ([see here too](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2173/8)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, as ChrisF mentioned, [the rules for automatic deletions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1807/8) are incredibly strict, which leaves most closed question deletions done manually by moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The general criteria we use when determining if a question can be deleted is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Is the question more than 30 days old?** A month gives people enough time to contest a closure and give a chance for people to save the question&#xD;&#xA;* **Is the question highly upvoted?** As ChrisF mentioned, people get very vocal about the highly upvoted stuff. We have generally made it a point to leave things that have a ton of upvotes, under the assumption that [we'd eventually get around to taking care of them](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2051/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, these are just loose guidelines, and sometimes questions outside those get deleted or inside those stay. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the goals of the [Structured Tag Cleanup](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2886/8) initiative is to make deletions of old, crappy questions more streamlined." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25720" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2583" RevisionGUID="d108c157-6d8d-4ef0-9024-1f06b01f96b8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm gonna say pretty much the same thing here as [I said on MSO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/111073/811), but directed at you as the editor instead of someone else as the person approving edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's nothing *inherently wrong* with editing to add links to book posts. Indeed, it can be quite helpful... But before you do, **make sure you're not wasting your time and the time of everyone reviewing the edit.** There are *loads* of lousy questions asking for book recommendations that should probably just be closed and deleted, and many times more lousy *answers* (even on *good* questions) that make no effort to explain why the book being recommended is a good choice. Editing these is maybe *slightly* more useful than copy-editing bathroom-wall graffiti...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And [as Mark notes][1], you're not just wasting *your* time: you're wasting the time of the folks rejecting these edits and you're wasting the time of the folks reading the front page who see these popping up instead of something useful. Don't do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you're going through these posts anyway, why not do something productive: when you come across a poor question or a lazy answer, something no amount of hyperlinking will salvage, don't *edit* it... **flag it**. Ask a moderator to delete it. Instead of seeing these things pop up in the queue knowing they're on their way to making the front page of the site look like Amazon Rejects, they can send them on their way to that Great Booklist in the Sky.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2582/63" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25721" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2608" RevisionGUID="022da0ba-7fdb-4ddb-b648-029ca8091dee" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There was a bit of a tussle earlier about a specific question related to why a specific line of JavaScript code was crafted the way that it was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122378/whats-the-point-of-initializing-a-variable-with-the-same-value-twice#question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [details are documented elsewhere](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2606/8), but suffice it to say there's obviously some confusion about whether these questions are on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our FAQ states the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about…   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, the [blog post that introduces Programmers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/) defines the distinction between Programmers and Stack Overflow as such:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In a nutshell, Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues. Hence the (awesome) whiteboard inspired design!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have actual source code in the questions or answers. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this specific question, the asker isn't working through issues with their code, they're asking a higher-level conceptual question about why the code was designed that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, after speaking with the Stack Overflow moderators, they believed it was only just barely on-topic on Stack Overflow, but on the subjective side.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given this background, are these questions on-topic here? If so, why? If not, why not?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25722" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2572" RevisionGUID="5d814d1e-4dba-4fbe-9b8f-dccaa0b43aad" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Your question isn't a great example since it's not a conceptual software development question but rather a question about the site itself.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, now that it's in the right place (on meta), let's talk about the issue you bring up. It would be helpful if you pointed to some questions you specifically think should not have been closed, but in the absence of examples, we can still talk about the general case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the main features of Stack Exchange is that it's high signal and low noise. Leaving questions that are off-topic or don't fit the Q&amp;A model well (e.g. discussion-oriented threads rather than questions that invite explanations) would contribute to noise and dilute the signal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've had several discussions about what to do with interesting but off-topic questions and the general result is that Programmers.SE doesn't have to cover everything. There are other sites such as Reddit or Quora that have different policies and philosophies and that might be more welcoming of some of the questions we end up rejecting here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some links to the previous discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta ([Jeff's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta/1896#1896) in particular)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2304/offtopic-posts-can-they-be-moved-rather-than-closed / https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2508/should-there-be-another-stackexchange-site-for-programmers/&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation/ ([Mark's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation/2173#2173) contains some analysis of our closed questions over the last couple of months)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond this, I think we need some specifics from you. Which questions do you think were wrongly closed? What topics do you think should be allowed that currently aren't?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25723" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2710" RevisionGUID="63e95bbc-ea3f-4162-9d48-0a9d8ce49473" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Based on the [Are “name that thing” questions on-topic?][1] question I think [tag:naming] questions that don't qualify as [tag:terminology] questions are off topic / too localised, and quite a few of them are closed as such. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I can't find an example of an on topic [tag:naming] question that I wouldn't also consider a [tag:terminology] question. Are there any?&#xD;&#xA; - Can they be considered synonyms? I'd say not, but as a non native English speaker I'd like some back up.&#xD;&#xA; - Should we try and clean up [tag:naming]? There are 133 questions currently and I think some minor clean up effort would be in order, even if only to re-tag some of those as [tag:terminology] - happy to do it, in small steps, if I get some basic guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've just removed [tag:naming] from [this question][2], it felt more like a proper [tag:terminology] question, to my mind [tag:terminology] is more serious and on topic than [tag:naming] and my edit may discourage less serious naming suggestions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not really sure if [tag:naming] should die, that's was my instictual reaction when I first stumbled upon it, but if there are reasons for it to stay hopefully we'll get a tag wiki for it out of this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126194/need-help-with-naming-marshaling-interface-calls" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25724" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2979" RevisionGUID="7b228047-b5d9-4c36-a4dd-8238f990fc9d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Okay, I just spoke with Rebecca Chernoff about the blog, and I have a *game plan*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 1: we need a point person&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This person will be in charge of coordinating the blog's direction: getting drafts in order, setting up the schedule, making sure everything is running smoothly, and communicating directly with the moderators and SE about any issues with the blog. This will likely be a good amount of work, so consider whether or not you'll be around regularly to help make sure the blog doesn't die a horrible death.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 2: we need to coordinate the launch of the blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We should have at least five solid ideas that'll make the first five blog posts for the blog. The blog point person will need to coordinate with everyone who wants to contribute and come up with a schedule for when blog posts go out: I've [created a chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog) for those activities. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's likely going to be a good thing to have a scheduled meeting with the first round of contributors to figure out who's covering what: whoever is the point person should coordinate that meeting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 3: we launch(-ish)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the blog point person is in place and all the initial logistics have been worked out, I'll work with Rebecca to get the blog actually up and running, and set up the users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;strike&gt;So yeah, first things first: decide amongst yourselves who wants to be the dude or dudette who'll run the show.&lt;/strike&gt; [Jarrod Nettles](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/28877/jarrod-nettles) has graciously stepped up to be the blog &lt;strike&gt;whipping boy&lt;/strike&gt; overlord!&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25725" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2635" RevisionGUID="72ef9c39-05fd-42d7-b379-ad4fa76a3662" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Community Promotion Ads - 2013](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5323/community-promotion-ads-2013)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;### What in the Wide, Wide World of Sports is Going On Here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;TL;DR -- put images and links in the answers. If they get voted up enough, they will appear on the main site as community promotion ads.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### But whyyyyyyy?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA;- cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA;- anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. And to click on it for great justice!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unlike the Open Source ads on Meta Stack Overflow, there is no requirement for the Programmers Community Ads to be a coding project of your own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be **220 x 250 pixels**&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/ads/display/2635" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25726" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2583" RevisionGUID="d240fc3c-b041-4c26-9b2f-b8530875dfef" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm gonna say pretty much the same thing here as [I said on MSO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/111073/811), but directed at you as the editor instead of someone else as the person approving edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's nothing *inherently wrong* with editing to add links to book posts. Indeed, it can be quite helpful... But before you do, **make sure you're not wasting your time and the time of everyone reviewing the edit.** There are *loads* of lousy questions asking for book recommendations that should probably just be closed and deleted, and many times more lousy *answers* (even on *good* questions) that make no effort to explain why the book being recommended is a good choice. Editing these is maybe *slightly* more useful than copy-editing bathroom-wall graffiti...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And [as Mark notes][1], you're not just wasting *your* time: you're wasting the time of the folks rejecting these edits and you're wasting the time of the folks reading the front page who see these popping up instead of something useful. Don't do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you're going through these posts anyway, why not do something productive: when you come across a poor question or a lazy answer, something no amount of hyperlinking will salvage, don't *edit* it... **flag it**. Ask a moderator to delete it. Instead of seeing these things pop up in the queue knowing they're on their way to making the front page of the site look like Amazon Rejects, they can send them on their way to that Great Booklist in the Sky.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2582/63" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25727" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2703" RevisionGUID="5305fc62-f0f7-4923-9114-d67ddeebd63f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Given your example questions, I think you mostly correctly identified where you want to ask them and what's on (and off) topic here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Where there's disagreement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to implement a queue algorithm? (Theoretical Computer Science)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like [Yannis mentions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2702/8), Theoretical Computer Science is research-level only: unless you're talking about it at a graduate-level or higher, this wouldn't be on-topic there. If you're talking about putting it into code, you'll want Stack Overflow. If you're talking about putting it into programming terms (but still at the conceptual stage), it'll likely be fine here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the generally accepted practice (vague but a general answer be provided)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9 times out of 10, this isn't a real question, or at best it's a non-constructive question. Questions need to provide specific, solvable problems: if that's missing, the answer to most &quot;best practices&quot; questions is &quot;it depends&quot; which really doesn't help anyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But given the set that *are* answerable, some are going to be Stack Overflow (I have X problem, my code isn't working, what's the generally accepted way to fix it?), some Code Review (What's the generally accepted way to refactor this code?), and some us (more whiteboard stuff)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What checkout module is available in Python? (definitely Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They're definitely off-topic here, but recommendation questions have been asked so many times on Stack Overflow, it's hard to imagine one that would actually be high quality or not duplicated. The best way to ask these are, &quot;I'm doing X. Here is my code with solution Y, but it doesn't do Z requirement. Is there a better way to accomplish what I'm doing?&quot; and let the recommendation for a different library come naturally from the answers provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How can I prioritize my queue? (algorithm)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There really isn't a good place to ask these types of questions on the network, but I think right now it's settled on Programmers being the best fit, even though it's unlikely to get a very good answer. There's a [non-research level Computer Science](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/35636/computer-science-non-programming?referrer=RaYobbitpqczXN85c5ibxQ2) site proposal in the works, where non-implementation questions about algorithms will probably wind up being best answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The ones you couldn't decide on&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What to do when two users simultaneously access the system? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would depend on the specifics of the question, but it sounds like high-level stuff that would be a fit here. If it was implementation specific (like really heavy into code), you might be better suited on Stack Overflow, but it likely would be fine here even still.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have implemented the above logic for a single event. How to apply it for multiple events?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, if you're supplying code and you want to know how to adapt it, Stack Overflow is the better choice. If you're still talking abstractly, it's on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If ticket not available, the user must be put in a waiting list and must be allocated when a user cancels transaction. How about this implementation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit tricky: it's definitely not a fit for us, but as to where it's on-topic it could either go Stack Overflow or Code Review. The safe bet would likely be Stack Overflow, but if flagged, I'd still run it by the mods on Code Review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25728" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2749" RevisionGUID="a1948341-ddec-4ae8-b192-f6fed40beacb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are quite a few comments on the question explaining why it's off topic, and Dan McGrath gives an excellent summation in his [answer][1]. I would also have voted to close, if I happened upon the question while it was still open. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I care for my career, maybe a little too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently I found out that my boss twitted on a couple of my answers, in a very positive tone. That's obviously kind of a big deal to me. I tried to lure almost everyone from my team here (and on other Stack Exchange sites, depending on speciality). We are a relatively small team, but an expert team nonetheless (each on his field). No one really bothered, and most of them nagged about the amount of noise here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In parallel, I've introduced Programmers SE to quite a few core developers of my favourite platform through an internals mailing list, hoping to get actual experts to look our way. I'm saying &quot;actual&quot;, because I sit atop the list of &quot;top users&quot; for the platform's tag, and I can tell you I'm no expert. Anyways, most where not impressed, for the same reasons. And quite a few noticed how skewed the list I sit atop is, where number three is that Spolsky character, with a single answer, that albeit being a great one, shows no actual familiarity with the platform.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, you obviously think you asked a great question (I'm not saying it isn't, or that it is). It's interesting, and possibly useful, but it's not a question the crowd here can expertly answer. Certainly there are quite a few people here who can provide educated guesses, but the possibility of someone giving a definitive answer is fairly small, if there's actually a definitive answer. That would have been ok, if the question was about software development, as quite a few people here have long careers in the field. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, for argument's sake, let's say an expert came along and gave a great answer to your question. The whole point of Stack Exchange is that answers are peer reviewed, you expect every answer to be reviewed by experts and you can safely assume that if the answer is good it will get up voted. So we don't just need one expert to answer the question, we also need a few others to review the answer. The possibility of that happening (correctly) is even smaller.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to attract more and more experts, we need to concentrate on definitively answerable questions. And for all of us who participate with our real names, and our participation is visible to people we work with, it's extremely important to keep Programmers SE from turning into yet another forum. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are at least three [Area51][2] proposals where your question might find a better home:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Professional Matters][3],&#xD;&#xA;- [IT Careers &amp; Training][4], and&#xD;&#xA;- [Career development][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Familiarize yourself][6] with Area51, and help the proposals grow into full sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, more importantly, if you want to be taken seriously as a professional, be nice(r). Your company is also a community, and I don't think people there will appreciate your tone, even if you get perfect grades on your evaluation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-1 to you, from a lowly web developer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2748/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/12887/it-careers-training&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/21141/career-development&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25729" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3049" RevisionGUID="4b1037d9-b6de-4aab-aa82-7e4051f19636" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As [Anna mentioned in the comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1211/ability-to-review-questions-being-transferred-from-so-before-they-appear#comment2894_1211), similar feature requests come up from time to time on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) and—while popular—almost never get a warm response from Stack Exchange. This request should be another example of that. :P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've heard rumors that migrations will be tackled some time this year, so while it's unlikely this specific feature would ever be implemented, hopefully another, comparable solution will be implemented in the future." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25730" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2703" RevisionGUID="a2253169-64ae-4e90-871b-c0d6eae9a2d4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Given your example questions, I think you mostly correctly identified where you want to ask them and what's on (and off) topic here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Where there's disagreement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to implement a queue algorithm? (Theoretical Computer Science)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like [Yannis mentions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2702/8), Theoretical Computer Science is research-level only: unless you're talking about it at a graduate-level or higher, this wouldn't be on-topic there. If you're talking about putting it into code, you'll want Stack Overflow. If you're talking about putting it into programming terms (but still at the conceptual stage), it'll likely be fine here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the generally accepted practice (vague but a general answer be provided)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9 times out of 10, this isn't a real question, or at best it's a non-constructive question. Questions need to provide specific, solvable problems: if that's missing, the answer to most &quot;best practices&quot; questions is &quot;it depends&quot; which really doesn't help anyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But given the set that *are* answerable, some are going to be Stack Overflow (I have X problem, my code isn't working, what's the generally accepted way to fix it?), some Code Review (What's the generally accepted way to refactor this code?), and some us (more whiteboard stuff)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What checkout module is available in Python? (definitely Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They're definitely off-topic here, but recommendation questions have been asked so many times on Stack Overflow, it's hard to imagine one that would actually be high quality or not duplicated. The best way to ask these are, &quot;I'm doing X. Here is my code with solution Y, but it doesn't do Z requirement. Is there a better way to accomplish what I'm doing?&quot; and let the recommendation for a different library come naturally from the answers provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How can I prioritize my queue? (algorithm)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There really isn't a good place to ask these types of questions on the network, but I think right now it's settled on Programmers being the best fit, even though it's unlikely to get a very good answer. There's a [non-research level Computer Science](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/35636/computer-science-non-programming?referrer=RaYobbitpqczXN85c5ibxQ2) site proposal in the works, where non-implementation questions about algorithms will probably wind up being best answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The ones you couldn't decide on&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What to do when two users simultaneously access the system? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would depend on the specifics of the question, but it sounds like high-level stuff that would be a fit here. If it was implementation specific (like really heavy into code), you might be better suited on Stack Overflow, but it likely would be fine here even still.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have implemented the above logic for a single event. How to apply it for multiple events?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, if you're supplying code and you want to know how to adapt it, Stack Overflow is the better choice. If you're still talking abstractly, it's on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If ticket not available, the user must be put in a waiting list and must be allocated when a user cancels transaction. How about this implementation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit tricky: it's definitely not a fit for us, but as to where it's on-topic it could either go Stack Overflow or Code Review. The safe bet would likely be Stack Overflow, but if flagged, I'd still run it by the mods on Code Review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25731" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2761" RevisionGUID="e6d4e201-1efb-4b00-9b30-10b0135f19a2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I agree with [Anna Lear's idea of combining the Stack Overflow and current Programmers messages][1]. However, I have two alternative wordings that are very similar, with the exception of one sentence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format because it does not involve facts, references, specific expertise, or meet enough of our six guidelines for constructive subjective questions. All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. This question will likely solicit opinion, debate, argument, polling, or extended discussion. See the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format because it does not generally involve facts, references, specific expertise, or meet enough of our six guidelines for constructive subjective questions. All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. See the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a few other wordings, but something that combines the need to involve facts, references, expertise, and/or the guidelines for constructive subjective questions would be best.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2755/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25732" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2749" RevisionGUID="286baa12-a1ac-4502-8076-85c0e77be7c1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are quite a few comments on the question explaining why it's off topic, and Dan McGrath gives an excellent summation in his [answer][1]. I would also have voted to close, if I happened upon the question while it was still open. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I care for my career, maybe a little too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently I found out that my boss twitted on a couple of my answers, in a very positive tone. That's obviously kind of a big deal to me. I tried to lure almost everyone from my team here (and on other Stack Exchange sites, depending on speciality). We are a relatively small team, but an expert team nonetheless (each on his field). No one really bothered, and most of them nagged about the amount of noise here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In parallel, I've introduced Programmers SE to quite a few core developers of my favourite platform through an internals mailing list, hoping to get actual experts to look our way. I'm saying &quot;actual&quot;, because I sit atop the list of &quot;top users&quot; for the platform's tag, and I can tell you I'm no expert. Anyways, most where not impressed, for the same reasons. And quite a few noticed how skewed the list I sit atop is, where number three is that Spolsky character, with a single answer, that albeit being a great one, shows no actual familiarity with the platform.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, you obviously think you asked a great question (I'm not saying it isn't, or that it is). It's interesting, and possibly useful, but it's not a question the crowd here can expertly answer. Certainly there are quite a few people here who can provide educated guesses, but the possibility of someone giving a definitive answer is fairly small, if there's actually a definitive answer. That would have been ok, if the question was about software development, as quite a few people here have long careers in the field. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, for argument's sake, let's say an expert came along and gave a great answer to your question. The whole point of Stack Exchange is that answers are peer reviewed, you expect every answer to be reviewed by experts and you can safely assume that if the answer is good it will get up voted. So we don't just need one expert to answer the question, we also need a few others to review the answer. The possibility of that happening (correctly) is even smaller.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to attract more and more experts, we need to concentrate on definitively answerable questions. And for all of us who participate with our real names, and our participation is visible to people we work with, it's extremely important to keep Programmers SE from turning into yet another forum. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are at least three [Area51][2] proposals where your question might find a better home:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Professional Matters][3],&#xD;&#xA;- [IT Careers &amp; Training][4], and&#xD;&#xA;- [Career development][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Familiarize yourself][6] with Area51, and help the proposals grow into full sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, more importantly, if you want to be taken seriously as a professional, be nice(r). Your company is also a community, and I don't think people there will appreciate your tone, even if you get perfect grades on your evaluation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-1 to you, from a lowly web developer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2748/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/12887/it-careers-training&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/21141/career-development&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25733" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2673" RevisionGUID="42eec76a-b373-4e86-b380-5b5198c628db" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In order to solve the problem that you described, I recently proposed that moderators should have to *defend their seat*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2540/should-p-se-moderators-have-to-defend-their-seat&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to make two additional points:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It's unfair to paint all moderators with the same broad brush. Some are quite good.&#xD;&#xA;2. Recently, it seems like the moderation has improved." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25734" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2710" RevisionGUID="bbea9b03-f068-4c04-8f2a-5d1fddd8d91f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Based on the [Are “name that thing” questions on-topic?][1] question I think [tag:naming] questions that don't qualify as [tag:terminology] questions are off topic / too localised, and quite a few of them are closed as such. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I can't find an example of an on topic [tag:naming] question that I wouldn't also consider a [tag:terminology] question. Are there any?&#xD;&#xA; - Can they be considered synonyms? I'd say not, but as a non native English speaker I'd like some back up.&#xD;&#xA; - Should we try and clean up [tag:naming]? There are 133 questions currently and I think some minor clean up effort would be in order, even if only to re-tag some of those as [tag:terminology] - happy to do it, in small steps, if I get some basic guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've just removed [tag:naming] from [this question][2], it felt more like a proper [tag:terminology] question, to my mind [tag:terminology] is more serious and on topic than [tag:naming] and my edit may discourage less serious naming suggestions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not really sure if [tag:naming] should die, that's was my instictual reaction when I first stumbled upon it, but if there are reasons for it to stay hopefully we'll get a tag wiki for it out of this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126194/need-help-with-naming-marshaling-interface-calls" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25735" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3060" RevisionGUID="ac8d7652-a2be-47b6-92f5-b96dd6d52a57" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sub&gt;Adapted from [Cryptography meta](https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/a/130), originally posted by [Ninefingers](https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/users/46/ninefingers)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Rationale: why do we close questions?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are really two ways to do moderation. If you've been on any of the `.moderated` newsgroups you'll be well aware that to get a post on there, it needs to undergo a review process first and be accepted. The aim is to keep problem discussions from arising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE is slightly different - it works the other way. *Anyone* can ask a question on SE and closing a question is the equivalent of putting that question *back into review/improve mode*. It's a feedback mechanism designed to react to problem cases only, so the usual business of asking and answering good questions can just... *happen*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why do we close a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The philosophy of SE is that each site handles questions on *problems you face* or things you are trying to understand. The [don't ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section of the FAQ gives you a good overview of things that don't work - to summarise:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions invite arguments or extended debate that suck up time when members could be helping other people.&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions are too broad, too narrow or have other content problems.&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions belong elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These have been worked out over time and with a lot of experience from Stack Overflow and are, *broadly speaking* true. Sometimes, exceptions are made - it is always a case-by-case thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is closing like deletion?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, and this is an important distinction, deletion is a different concept on SE. Closed questions are put &quot;into improve mode&quot; if you like, and are still visible for *anyone* to improve. That's the idea. Deleted questions are different - they have a red background and are invisible to all but high reputation users. So deletion is different and solves a slightly different problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What are the requirements for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have 3000 reputation on the site you can vote to close any question for the reasons above. More on that in a moment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you do not have this level of reputation, you will find that under the flag menu, you have an option &quot;this question does not belong here&quot;. That will raise a flag for users who can vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why can anyone vote to close/reopen**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firstly, anyone can vote to close or reopen (or flag as such) because it is *your site*. This is really important - it's about expressing what you feel works and doesn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How are moderators different?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderator close votes complete the required vote count immediately, no matter how many people have voted. This applies for both close/reopen votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially, as the reputation requirement rules out many users, you will see moderators doing most of the closing to guide the site and look after the content. As you gain in reputation, you get to join in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Ok, so how does it work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Example close button][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, the important piece. Voting to close works like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Underneath the question, there will be a close link. When you click on this, you will be presented with a list of options from which you can pick a close reason most appropriate to the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Close vote reasons dialog][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * If other people have voted, you will see red numbers against the reason they chose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Other votes][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The exact duplicate page takes you to a page that allows you to specify a question to close as an exact duplicate against.&#xD;&#xA; * The &quot;off topic&quot; page will present you with [five options][5] - three standard reasons why a post is off topic, one to specify your own custom reason and one to migrate the question to a different site. Users can migrate question here and to [so]. Moderators can send questions elsewhere, so feel free to flag if you have a target in mind.&#xD;&#xA; * The other options are straight out closes.&#xD;&#xA; * Once you pick your option and click &quot;close&quot;, your vote is registered. &#xD;&#xA; * If five people agree that the question needs closing, the question will be closed, even if they don't agree on the reason. You've seen the effect of these before.&#xD;&#xA; * The majority vote is chosen as the published close reason. This is a simple 3/2 split. In the case of a 2/2/1 split the the last voted reason wins.&#xD;&#xA; * Your name, and the name of other closers, will appear on the bottom of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Close banner][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How does vote to re-open work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A closed question has a &quot;reopen&quot; link underneath it. If you click this, a dialog box will ask you if you are sure - click yes and your vote will be registered to re-open the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below, you can see an example of the re-open link with two votes registered for re-opening (out of five).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Re-open link][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What happens if I make a mistake?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't worry! Unless five people agree, or a moderator agrees, the question won't be closed.  &#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, you have the possibility to retract your close vote. This possibility is provided if you try to cast a second close vote on a question. After retracting your vote, you can not cast it again, so you can't use vote retraction to change the close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I've seen a closed question and I disagree. What can I do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, one option is to use your re-open vote! You can also always raise a discussion here on meta to seek clarification on why a question is closed and hopefully either a resolution will be reached, or you will get an explanation for the closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My name appears on the bottom - isn't this going to cause problems with other users?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually, surprisingly few closed questions generate any response at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you experience difficulties as a result of closing a question, you can and should contact a moderator via the flag mechanism (which is anonymous). We can then take any necessary action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I find questions I might need to close? What about re-opens?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually there are two tools for this. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Review][8]. Here, there are a number of options for seeing things that might need say editing. One of these is a tab for all questions with close votes. You are then free to look at the question and decide if you agree.&#xD;&#xA; * [Tools][9]. Commonly referred to as the &quot;10k tools&quot;, this page let's you see even more information - certain anonymous flags, re-open votes, delete votes etc. The important one for this is the re-open page. Here, you can see questions that might have been closed incorrectly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qogGL.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/duT0S.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/26heN.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5992/what-should-our-predefined-off-topic-reasons-be&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/K3F4V.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/syw4O.png&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25736" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2804" RevisionGUID="936c3f6a-560a-481e-80cf-365d120cdc9c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Like the [software development](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist) and [programming](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2147/blacklist-programming-and-programmers) tags, these add zero content to the question and should not exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We really [don't have a great way to deal with our crappy meta tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags); even though [tag:software-development] needs to die, I'm tempted to just merge [tag:code] and [tag:coding] into it, as—in practice—it's come to mean exactly the same thing (i.e., nothing). This way we'd be dealing with two less tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the end, we're going to need to clean it up, just like [we've perpetually been doing with the career and jobs tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25737" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2761" RevisionGUID="7d434076-6eff-4e91-915c-7e1efb41f070" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I agree with [Anna Lear's idea of combining the Stack Overflow and current Programmers messages][1]. However, I have two alternative wordings that are very similar, with the exception of one sentence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format because it does not involve facts, references, specific expertise, or meet enough of our six guidelines for constructive subjective questions. All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. This question will likely solicit opinion, debate, argument, polling, or extended discussion. See the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format because it does not generally involve facts, references, specific expertise, or meet enough of our six guidelines for constructive subjective questions. All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. See the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a few other wordings, but something that combines the need to involve facts, references, expertise, and/or the guidelines for constructive subjective questions would be best.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2755/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25738" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2684" RevisionGUID="ca3de71c-9564-4ddc-afe5-dc4d4f09af38" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;What is the difference between &quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com&quot; and StackOverFlow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25739" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2828" RevisionGUID="421cf2f6-d7c6-4701-b39c-c4373d8b4b1e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Adding to everything [ChrisF wrote][1], the question wasn't really on topic on CodeReview. [The other question][2], the one posted on CodeReview originally, was migrated to StackOverflow, where it was closed almost immediately. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, although the ability to migrate to sites other than StackOverflow would be handy, in this case it would have been an incorrect migration (even if it wasn't a cross post). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2827/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8824332/c-character-count-project-euler-17-wrong-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25740" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2749" RevisionGUID="8ecc07cb-538e-41da-a4c1-e5247abba1d4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are quite a few comments on the question explaining why it's off topic, and Dan McGrath gives an excellent summation in his [answer][1]. I would also have voted to close, if I happened upon the question while it was still open. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I care for my career, maybe a little too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently I found out that my boss twitted on a couple of my answers, in a very positive tone. That's obviously kind of a big deal to me. I tried to lure almost everyone from my team here (and on other Stack Exchange sites, depending on speciality). We are a relatively small team, but an expert team nonetheless (each on his field). No one really bothered, and most of them nagged about the amount of noise here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In parallel, I've introduced Programmers SE to quite a few core developers of my favourite platform through an internals mailing list, hoping to get actual experts to look our way. I'm saying &quot;actual&quot;, because I sit atop the list of &quot;top users&quot; for the platform's tag, and I can tell you I'm no expert. Anyways, most where not impressed, for the same reasons. And quite a few noticed how skewed the list I sit atop is, where number three is that Spolsky character, with a single answer, that albeit being a great one, shows no actual familiarity with the platform.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, you obviously think you asked a great question (I'm not saying it isn't, or that it is). It's interesting, and possibly useful, but it's not a question the crowd here can expertly answer. Certainly there are quite a few people here who can provide educated guesses, but the possibility of someone giving a definitive answer is fairly small, if there's actually a definitive answer. That would have been ok, if the question was about software development, as quite a few people here have long careers in the field. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, for argument's sake, let's say an expert came along and gave a great answer to your question. The whole point of Stack Exchange is that answers are peer reviewed, you expect every answer to be reviewed by experts and you can safely assume that if the answer is good it will get up voted. So we don't just need one expert to answer the question, we also need a few others to review the answer. The possibility of that happening (correctly) is even smaller.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to attract more and more experts, we need to concentrate on definitively answerable questions. And for all of us who participate with our real names, and our participation is visible to people we work with, it's extremely important to keep Programmers SE from turning into yet another forum. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are at least three [Area51][2] proposals where your question might find a better home:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Professional Matters][3],&#xD;&#xA;- [IT Careers &amp; Training][4], and&#xD;&#xA;- [Career development][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Familiarize yourself][6] with Area51, and help the proposals grow into full sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, more importantly, if you want to be taken seriously as a professional, be nice(r). Your company is also a community, and I don't think people there will appreciate your tone, even if you get perfect grades on your evaluation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-1 to you, from a lowly web developer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2748/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/12887/it-careers-training&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/21141/career-development&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25741" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2804" RevisionGUID="c2176e6b-07a9-4da1-b7e0-402f4f2f4c66" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Like the [software development](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist) and [programming](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2147/blacklist-programming-and-programmers) tags, these add zero content to the question and should not exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We really [don't have a great way to deal with our crappy meta tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags); even though [tag:software-development] needs to die, I'm tempted to just merge [tag:code] and [tag:coding] into it, as—in practice—it's come to mean exactly the same thing (i.e., nothing). This way we'd be dealing with two less tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the end, we're going to need to clean it up, just like [we've perpetually been doing with the career and jobs tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25742" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3175" RevisionGUID="4f525c2b-60ae-4768-b9c4-bedbbb976c11" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As far as I can tell moderator who declined your flag made two mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First mistake was not catching that [question is off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136082/java-interview-fundamentals) indeed. I believe it's minor because topicality at Programmers is [quite slippery](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3184/31260).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second mistake per my understanding is being too easy at casting decline to [your](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2471/rob-z) flag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Clarifications for declining flags given in **[September 2011 Newsletter](http://moderator.stackexchange.com/2011/09/september-2011-newsletter/)** of SE Community Moderator Blog look pretty straightforward:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; #Flags Too Often Marked `[declined]`  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Marking a flag `[declined]` was designed to deter serial abusers of the flagging system, but we find that this “slap on the wrist” is being used more often than is beneficial.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Flags should be closed as `[helpful]` under most circumstances. If you feel strongly that a question was flagged in bad faith, it is okay to mark it `[declined]`. But try to err on the side of clearing as `[helpful]` whenever the user is trying to be genuinely helpful, _even if you do not necessarily act on the flag_...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness - given that you both cast a close vote and flagged, I can imagine that moderator considered this as _abuse_ but I've yet to see from credible sources if this indeed qualifies as such.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;update&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Follow-up question at SO Meta:  &#xD;&#xA;  http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/123073/is-it-an-abuse-of-flagging-system-to-both-cast-a-close-vote-and-flag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25743" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2710" RevisionGUID="7c97ff23-ea11-4afa-a9ca-b78ec1608f8f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Based on the [Are “name that thing” questions on-topic?][1] question I think [tag:naming] questions that don't qualify as [tag:terminology] questions are off topic / too localised, and quite a few of them are closed as such. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I can't find an example of an on topic [tag:naming] question that I wouldn't also consider a [tag:terminology] question. Are there any?&#xD;&#xA; - Can they be considered synonyms? I'd say not, but as a non native English speaker I'd like some back up.&#xD;&#xA; - Should we try and clean up [tag:naming]? There are 133 questions currently and I think some minor clean up effort would be in order, even if only to re-tag some of those as [tag:terminology] - happy to do it, in small steps, if I get some basic guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've just removed [tag:naming] from [this question][2], it felt more like a proper [tag:terminology] question, to my mind [tag:terminology] is more serious and on topic than [tag:naming] and my edit may discourage less serious naming suggestions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not really sure if [tag:naming] should die, that's was my instictual reaction when I first stumbled upon it, but if there are reasons for it to stay hopefully we'll get a tag wiki for it out of this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126194/need-help-with-naming-marshaling-interface-calls" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25744" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2761" RevisionGUID="f055a2c6-57ce-4a86-9ffa-57dc01ab3206" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I agree with [Anna Lear's idea of combining the Stack Overflow and current Programmers messages][1]. However, I have two alternative wordings that are very similar, with the exception of one sentence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format because it does not involve facts, references, specific expertise, or meet enough of our six guidelines for constructive subjective questions. All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. This question will likely solicit opinion, debate, argument, polling, or extended discussion. See the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format because it does not generally involve facts, references, specific expertise, or meet enough of our six guidelines for constructive subjective questions. All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. See the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a few other wordings, but something that combines the need to involve facts, references, expertise, and/or the guidelines for constructive subjective questions would be best.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2755/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25745" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2828" RevisionGUID="20d1a0f6-d269-4679-ac53-59aca992fe65" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Adding to everything [ChrisF wrote][1], the question wasn't really on topic on CodeReview. [The other question][2], the one posted on CodeReview originally, was migrated to StackOverflow, where it was closed almost immediately. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, although the ability to migrate to sites other than StackOverflow would be handy, in this case it would have been an incorrect migration (even if it wasn't a cross post). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2827/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8824332/c-character-count-project-euler-17-wrong-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25746" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3193" RevisionGUID="b40f1e12-a349-4675-9ad9-72ee59b118d6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question [Burned out on programming and given up?][1] is currently [flagged for deletion][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be considered on-topic if the personal wall-of-text... er.. information was removed, and it is turned into a question about how to get past programming burnout, which seems to be what the OP was asking in the first place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have heavily edited the question in an attempt to bring it back on-topic. Please let me know if you think of anything else I can do to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/11425/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3172/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25747" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2972" RevisionGUID="1d5f4fe9-98ba-4ba2-92dd-58d1c838b270" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been a recurring problem since the site's inception: in reality, Programmers.SE [was originally conceived](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/64046/149432) to *be* the dumping ground for Stack Overflow, and even though that purpose was [dropped a couple of weeks after the site went into private beta](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/350/8), old habits die hard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past year, there have been a few things that have been done to combat the problem:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Migrations used to only require a first-past-the-post method of resolving: for example, if 2 people voted to migrate to Programmers, 1 voted to close as off-topic, 1 voted as not-constructive, and 1 voted as too-localized, it'd be migrated. Now, migrations require 4 people to agree to the migration before it happens. Otherwise, it gets closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We Programmers mods, much to the annoyance of them I'm sure, have worked with/conditioned the Stack Overflow mods to not migrate anything to us without checking with us first. So, any mod-led migration from Stack Overflow was likely approved by us and you can blame us if the question's bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, we can't prevent 4 people agreeing to use the migration path to us as their dumping ground, and our rejection rate from Stack Overflow hovers [around 32%](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been a number of requests to remove us as the migration path, or to provide some mechanism to &quot;approve&quot; or &quot;reject&quot; migrations:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73382/149432)&#xD;&#xA;* [A way to cut down on the inappropriate migrations](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84846/a-way-to-cut-down-on-inappropriate-migrations)&#xD;&#xA;* [Allow diamond moderators to reverse question migrations?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/35744/allow-diamond-moderators-to-reverse-question-migrations)&#xD;&#xA;* [Require migrated questions to be accepted by the destination site's moderators](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73391/require-migrated-questions-to-be-accepted-by-the-destination-sites-moderators)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to date, only small changes to the requirements for community migration (like the 4-person agreement, and having tags in common on the destination site) have been made. I have heard rumors that SE is planning to tackle migrations in a big way this year, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in lieu of some fundamental change in how migrations work, I think education and proactive moderation is the best strategy:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you have 10k+ rep on Stack Overflow, check the [Review queue](http://stackoverflow.com/review) for questions getting &quot;off topic; belongs on Programmers&quot; votes. It only takes two people to short circuit a migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Check [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) often. Every once in a while, someone gets the idea that the best way to clean up Stack Overflow is to migrate everything in a tag (usually [career-development]) to Programmers: we've been able to put a stop to a couple of those projects by [voicing our displeasure there](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/119725/149432) and explaining what is and isn't on-topic here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25748" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2734" RevisionGUID="7217566b-89b8-48ab-8bfc-b184311890de" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some clarifications:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Half the answers are helpful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your questions (the one here and the one on StackOverflow) generated no answers, but [comments][1]. It's good that some of the comments were helpful, but comments don't follow the same quality guidelines as answers. For example, there are no down votes on comments, so you can't really say if the community disagrees with a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the other half think the topic isn't constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, regardless of how interesting your question may be, it doesn't have a single answer, and those kind of questions often lead to lengthy debates. We can't really safely measure a technology's popularity, your question is asking for opinions rather than experiences and facts. The pointers you got in the comments are valuable, but there's no objective way of judging them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding to that, it's also too localized, as @ThomasOwens [explained][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the [faq](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][3] blog post that is linked to the close notification and always keep in mind that &quot;not constructive&quot; is Stack Exchange lingo, it refers to how your question measures up to those guidelines. It's not a comment on the actual quality of your question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And you can always try asking around in [chat][4]. Same crowd there, and your question is interesting enough to start a discussion (I hope). Of course the discussion will probably be more casual. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**As a sidenote**: Avoid [cross posting][5]. If your question was closed on StackOverflow, chances are it will get closed here as well. Otherwise it would have been migrated instead of getting closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2731/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2531/what-is-the-current-policy-for-questions-that-are-duplicates-of-stack-overflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25749" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2804" RevisionGUID="f88f6f57-9a5d-46ae-85b6-e6302bf7d379" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Like the [software development](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist) and [programming](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2147/blacklist-programming-and-programmers) tags, these add zero content to the question and should not exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We really [don't have a great way to deal with our crappy meta tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags); even though [tag:software-development] needs to die, I'm tempted to just merge [tag:code] and [tag:coding] into it, as—in practice—it's come to mean exactly the same thing (i.e., nothing). This way we'd be dealing with two less tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the end, we're going to need to clean it up, just like [we've perpetually been doing with the career and jobs tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25751" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3251" RevisionGUID="8d39aef5-78e3-4139-82ce-5552a341b5e6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Hooboy. Lots of stuff happened since I made this proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After additional discussion with the remaining moderators, it appears that there's too much going on right now to hold a contest that still hasn't been clearly defined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point it is too late to hold an anniversary contest. There hasn't been enough consensus from the community in general on what should happen or how it would run. So that boat has unfortunately sailed, but on the upside, there's only 9 months before the next birthday (December 16, 2012). :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime, I know other sites have done contests/events tied to site clean-ups and there is one [going on right now here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career), so perhaps everyone here can come up with something to do to celebrate a cleaner site when it's all done - for example, target old unanswered questions and give them some love.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If/when the details of that are hashed out, please give us (the community team) a shout and we'll work with you to make it happen." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25752" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2990" RevisionGUID="55e5fbdc-3887-48ab-acb3-05be3d486e1d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The following is a &quot;digest&quot; version of the [2012 Moderator Election Town Hall Chat](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2922/2012-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-tuesday-2200-utc-5pm-est). The format, [as described on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests), is one *answer* to this question *for every question* asked in the Town Hall, containing all the candidate's answers to that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**To view the digest chronologically, please sort the answers by &quot;oldest&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have questions or comments about this, **please do not answer this question** as the answers are designed to be used for the questions from the Town hall itself. Instead, please ask on [the parent question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests) or in [the Town Hall Discussion Room](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/352/town-hall-discussion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see any corrections which need to be made to this digest, or if you were a candidate who was unable to attend the town hall and would like your answers included, please @Rebecca or @TimStone [in the chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/251/programmers-town-hall-chat) and let us know!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25753" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2828" RevisionGUID="3405d2ab-a16f-4d0b-b0d1-7f6a520b2959" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Adding to everything [ChrisF wrote][1], the question wasn't really on topic on CodeReview. [The other question][2], the one posted on CodeReview originally, was migrated to StackOverflow, where it was closed almost immediately. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, although the ability to migrate to sites other than StackOverflow would be handy, in this case it would have been an incorrect migration (even if it wasn't a cross post). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2827/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8824332/c-character-count-project-euler-17-wrong-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25754" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2855" RevisionGUID="08a3e56c-f109-4d88-bc0b-0402a5925ede" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Let's see what *you* can do: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Contribute longer answers. You [have][1] [a][2] [few][3] [really][4] [short][5] [ones][6].&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;    This is not a comment on the quality of your answers, only their length. Shorter answers may create the perception that the site is one where you can get quick &amp; casual answers (i.e. a forum).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Contribute on topic questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    4 out of 6 of your questions are closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Actively participate on Meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is your first post here, keep'em coming! Every constructive Meta post makes Programmers a better place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 4. Lurk around the Programmers chat room. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    There are newer users in there asking on how to improve their questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 5. [How to reconcile guidelines, community opinion and moderation][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And some more general tips:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you happen upon an off topic open question, flag it as such immediately. &#xD;&#xA;- If you happen upon a bad question (open or closed), do your best to improve it. If it's beyond improving, don't be afraid to down vote. That will alert other users, mostly via the review page but also users casually browsing the site, and your down vote may lead to the question getting improved by someone else. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a resident question killer, I don't think there is a problem. We certainly don't have &quot;bad&quot; users, and I was kind of annoyed when I first read your question. That said, there is a *mini* plague, but it's not something we can control, at least not directly. Most recent bad questions where migrated (directly or indirectly) from StackOverflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just yesterday I happened upon a question that was somewhat incomprehensible. I voted to close, and left a friendly (?!) comment. The OP responded revealing his frustration that he was down voted across the network. I checked his StackOverflow profile and found out that he had posted the exact same question there. The question was closed, but there where two comments by high-*ish* rep users suggesting Programmers as a better site for the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That would be a case of *indirect* migration. I left them both angry (but polite, I think) messages, pointing out that their comments lead to the question getting closed again, and that what they thought were helpful comments resulted in the OP getting even more frustrated. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of us are battling this mini plague through various means: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Being active on StackOverflow, and hunting down all these friendly suggestions that incorrectly point to Programmers.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Alerting the crowd there for the situation via Meta StackOverflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although at first I though of boycotting Anna Lear's bid on the latest moderation elections on StackOverflow (because I wanted her concentrated here, I don't like sharing), I went on and voted for her in the end just because she would have more direct control over migrations. I did notice the situation getting better, well done Anna.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And all our other mods are doing their best to spam Meta StackOverflow with friendly reminders that Programmers should not be treated as a place where StackOverflow question come to die.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only Programmers specific problem that leads to bad questions I can think of, is that there are quite a few highly voted old questions that currently wouldn't be on topic. Historically Programmers was supposed to be something of an anti-StackOverflow, and many of the posts of that time survive and are amongst the more popular. Some we close, some we leave as is. There is no point in hunting them down, as time goes by they will become less significant by default.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in a few cases, users defended their questions, on Meta or in comment threads, providing some of these old questions as similar to their own. Well, that doesn't happen often enough to be concerning. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are certainly bad days. We [noticed before][8]. But I don't think it's a major problem, we still have quite a few more good days than bad ones. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120265/easter-eggs-as-ip-protection-in-software/120279#120279&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/119253/where-to-go-from-here-how-to-improve-learn-more/119293#119293&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122740/whats-the-idiomatic-name-for-a-throwaway-variable/122744#122744&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122740/whats-the-idiomatic-name-for-a-throwaway-variable/122744#122744&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122313/advice-needed-software-development/122323#122323&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122009/developing-a-feature-which-sole-purpose-to-be-taken-out/122069#122069&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2727/are-we-scaring-off-new-users" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25755" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3252" RevisionGUID="38327790-0480-4352-8a2f-9d8fce3a4280" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Like 634 others, I follow [@StackProgrammer][1] on Twitter to read and retweet [hot questions][2]. However, it's been nagging at me recently that I perceived &quot;a lot&quot; of these tweets -- tweets ostensibly meant to focus attention on those questions and bring both veteran and new users into the site -- were leading to questions already closed or deleted by the time I read them (and my tweetstream is always on).&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;I looked at the last 100 tweets of hot questions, which only takes us back to Feb 21st, and 14 were closed and 1 was deleted.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not questioning whether or not the questions should've been closed, or even the speed with which they are closed (I agree with the community in all of the instances), but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Should we be concerned that 15% of our tweeted hot questions will lead users to closed or deleted questions?&#xD;&#xA; - If we should be concerned, and knowing that the moderators &amp; community members are doing their jobs, is there any tuning that can be done to what I assume is an automated process at the SE level?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bear in mind that I only looked at the last 100 because I only noticed it happening recently -- it could very well be that this isn't an issue at all and is just an off week.  But if it continues to happen at a similar pace, I think from a community promotion standpoint it might be a problem we should consider trying to solve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edited to add links** to most of the 14 closed questions, per @Rachel's request in a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Version Number Soup in RoR: Is Grails Better? Django? \[closed\]][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [Online Code Editor \[closed\]][4]&#xD;&#xA; - [Is it a good idea to generate code with the help of your IDE? \[closed\]][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [What do you do when you can't seem to understand a certain part of programming? \[closed\]][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [Is Object Oriented stuff really that important? \[closed\]][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [why do some job posts say “high pressure environment”? \[closed\]][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [A Class named Class? \[closed\]][9]&#xD;&#xA; - [Offshoring a Software Project — Conflict Resolution \[closed\]][10]&#xD;&#xA; - [How long did it take you to get kernel programming down \[closed\]][11]&#xD;&#xA; - [Software engineer, already in late thirties, would I have trouble finding a new position? \[closed\]][12]&#xD;&#xA; - [Does Object Oriented Programming Really Model The Real World? \[closed\]][13]&#xD;&#xA; - [List of the really big and really small discrepancies with JS in the big 5 browsers \[closed\]][14]&#xD;&#xA; - [Python is slowly replacing C in universities. Does this move degrade the quality of CS students? \[closed\]][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1274/questions-being-tweeted&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136610/version-number-soup-in-ror-is-grails-better-django&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136736/online-code-editor&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137252/is-it-a-good-idea-to-generate-code-with-the-help-of-your-ide&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137385/what-do-you-do-when-you-cant-seem-to-understand-a-certain-part-of-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137372/is-object-oriented-stuff-really-that-important&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137520/why-do-some-job-posts-say-high-pressure-environment&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137715/a-class-named-class&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137794/offshoring-a-software-project-conflict-resolution&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137864/how-long-did-it-take-you-to-get-kernel-programming-down&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137896/software-engineer-already-in-late-thirties-would-i-have-trouble-finding-a-new&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137994/does-object-oriented-programming-really-model-the-real-world&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138132/list-of-the-really-big-and-really-small-discrepancies-with-js-in-the-big-5-brows&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138229/python-is-slowly-replacing-c-in-universities-does-this-move-degrade-the-quality" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25756" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3016" RevisionGUID="c2e27459-7d44-477f-a981-bab172dc6a02" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Andrew, sorry I missed that, questions were appearing very fast and yours is the only one that the whole message is not bold. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I wrote in my nomination stub:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If anything, my participation as a user has been highly visible. As a moderator I will take a step back, encourage users to take ownership of the community and intervene only when necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not up to the moderators to ensure that your voice is heard, or even shape the community. That's completely up to you and every other user, and the moderators should intervene only when absolutely necessary. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just yesterday we appointed our [Blog Overlord][1], Jarrod Nettles. Why him? Well, if you take a look at [blog related Meta discussions][2], you'll notice that he has been pushing for the blog since early on. To be fair, Thomas Owens started the discussion back in June, and would be perfectly capable of taking point, as would quite a few other members. But that doesn't really matter, we needed a point man, Jarrod was around yesterday when we had the discussion, case closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The moderators, in this case Mark Trapp, only stepped in after there was clear community consensus for the blog, plus a comprehensive list of topics and a sufficient list of volunteers. He contacted the team, [reported back][3], and in a couple of hours we went from having no idea of whether the blog will kick off to [discussing logistics][4].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's pretty close to how things should work. You may consider this a lame example, because there wasn't really anyone opposing the blog, but I think my point still gets across: Participation is key and it's not the moderators' job to hand hold anyone. As a user I have been extremely active on Meta, and I've explored ways to get [even more people to participate][5]. As a moderator, if elected, I will try to encourage people to do exactly what I've been doing so far, but that can only happen if people actually care to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't really handle dissenting opinions any differently than any other user, the voting system is perfectly suited for that. The only reason I would wear the moderator's hat on Meta would be when discussions are getting out of hand, rude or otherwise offensive. Other than that, I'd be yet another user, and it would be completely up to the community to decide if my opinions have merit or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2980/blog-volunteers-unite&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2979/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3214146#3214146&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119817/how-can-we-get-people-to-participate-on-meta" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25757" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2972" RevisionGUID="3d3eee9b-08d3-4c69-a18b-f6e7568ba2fe" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been a recurring problem since the site's inception: in reality, Programmers.SE [was originally conceived](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/64046/149432) to *be* the dumping ground for Stack Overflow, and even though that purpose was [dropped a couple of weeks after the site went into private beta](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/350/8), old habits die hard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past year, there have been a few things that have been done to combat the problem:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Migrations used to only require a first-past-the-post method of resolving: for example, if 2 people voted to migrate to Programmers, 1 voted to close as off-topic, 1 voted as not-constructive, and 1 voted as too-localized, it'd be migrated. Now, migrations require 4 people to agree to the migration before it happens. Otherwise, it gets closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We Programmers mods, much to the annoyance of them I'm sure, have worked with/conditioned the Stack Overflow mods to not migrate anything to us without checking with us first. So, any mod-led migration from Stack Overflow was likely approved by us and you can blame us if the question's bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, we can't prevent 4 people agreeing to use the migration path to us as their dumping ground, and our rejection rate from Stack Overflow hovers [around 32%](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been a number of requests to remove us as the migration path, or to provide some mechanism to &quot;approve&quot; or &quot;reject&quot; migrations:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73382/149432)&#xD;&#xA;* [A way to cut down on the inappropriate migrations](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84846/a-way-to-cut-down-on-inappropriate-migrations)&#xD;&#xA;* [Allow diamond moderators to reverse question migrations?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/35744/allow-diamond-moderators-to-reverse-question-migrations)&#xD;&#xA;* [Require migrated questions to be accepted by the destination site's moderators](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73391/require-migrated-questions-to-be-accepted-by-the-destination-sites-moderators)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to date, only small changes to the requirements for community migration (like the 4-person agreement, and having tags in common on the destination site) have been made. I have heard rumors that SE is planning to tackle migrations in a big way this year, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in lieu of some fundamental change in how migrations work, I think education and proactive moderation is the best strategy:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you have 10k+ rep on Stack Overflow, check the [Review queue](http://stackoverflow.com/review) for questions getting &quot;off topic; belongs on Programmers&quot; votes. It only takes two people to short circuit a migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Check [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) often. Every once in a while, someone gets the idea that the best way to clean up Stack Overflow is to migrate everything in a tag (usually [career-development]) to Programmers: we've been able to put a stop to a couple of those projects by [voicing our displeasure there](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/119725/149432) and explaining what is and isn't on-topic here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25758" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3562" RevisionGUID="0a6b973d-b280-4e82-9b68-e47d1b7b5c02" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This was [a discussion on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/131388/would-questions-about-app-store-approval-be-appropriate-for-so) a few days ago which had comments that mirrored an earlier [discussion we had here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2575/8), and while I don't want to say *every* app store question is off-topic here, it's unlikely many of the questions people would *want* to ask—namely questions about app store policies and such—would be on-topic anywhere on Stack Exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main issue is that we are not Apple, or RIM, or Amazon, or any of the other private entities that make or enforce those policies, so we'd only be speculating and a poor substitute for the people developers *should* be asking, which are the people who work for those companies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the example questions for the proposal, it looks like the App Stores proposal is going to suffer from this right from the get-go:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is there a limit on how long you can hold on to an app name in &lt;App market&gt;?&#xD;&#xA;2. Can an app name have special characters?&#xD;&#xA;3. I created an app that only works with third-party hardware. Do I have to send the hardware to Apple to get approval? How do they test such apps?&#xD;&#xA;4. Is there any hard evidence on how much individual app developers have actually earned?&#xD;&#xA;5. Will my app be deleted from [store] if no one downloads it for [x time]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions 1, 2, 3, and 5 are all questions for the companies running the App Stores and making the policies, not random strangers on the internet who aren't in the know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 4 is just a bad SE question in general: taken at its face value, it's a simple yes or no question (there is evidence or there isn't). Reading between the lines, someone asking that likely wants to know how much they're going to make as an app developer, which is highly localized (and more often than not, [attributable to pure dumb luck](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/05/ios-app-success-is-a-lottery-and-60-of-developers-dont-break-even.ars)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have high hopes for the App Store proposal: I don't think it's going to fail because of lack of interest, but because it's not a topic that Stack Exchange handles well. I don't think trying to redirect people from that proposal to here does anyone any favors." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25759" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2886" RevisionGUID="1dc7e439-e733-45f9-9158-4141c2e5cce9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So one of the major problems we have on Programmers is the proliferation of bad tags. We've had a number of [discussions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/tags) and [posse requests](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/posse) for different tags, but killing a tag—when it's even possible—tends to be incredibly ad hoc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, based on the recent [software tag cleanup](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2779/what-can-be-done-about-the-remaining-closed-questions-in-the-software-tag), I'd like to propose a more structured cleanup process for tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 1: determine a tag needs to die&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once a quarter-ish, we'll create a question here, tagged [meta-tag:featured], that'll request candidate tags for cleanup. Each tag will get its own answer so they can be discussed in comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After two weeks, the question will be closed, and any tag with a score of 5 or higher will move onto the next round. We'll work through each of these tags in the same way: once these are complete, we'll create a new call for candidate tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 2: create a cleanup notice for the tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once a tag is identified as needing to die, a moderator will create a new meta-discussion question tagged [meta-tag:featured] that starts the cleanup. The ground rules of the cleanup would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* One cleanup notice active at a time&#xD;&#xA;* If a question in the tag is closed as anything other than &quot;exact duplicate&quot;, has less than 20 score, and has been closed for a month or more, it can be deleted at any time&#xD;&#xA;* If a question's been closed as an exact duplicate, it'll be listed as a &quot;merge candidate&quot; in the cleanup notice.&#xD;&#xA;* If a question is closed and has a score of 20 or higher, it'll be listed as a &quot;deletion candidate&quot; in the cleanup notice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once this post notice is created, a two-week cleanup timer begins.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 3: cleaning up the tags, identifying close candidates, and the last call for heroic edits&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;During the two-week cleanup period, the community will be tasked with doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Cleaning up the tags: if a question is on-topic for the site, it needs to be revised and retagged with more meaningful tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Identifying close candidates: if a tagged question just slipped through the cracks and needs to be closed, it needs to be listed as a close candidate on the cleanup notice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. For any tagged closed question or close candidate, the cleanup period is the last chance to save them with heroic edits: consolidate lists into canonical answers and flag duplicate answers for deletion and substantially improve the quality of the question. If an attempt to save a question has been made, flag the question and list it as a &quot;saved question&quot; on the cleanup notice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Step 4: cleanup aftermath&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the two-week cleanup period:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* any questions marked saved will be reviewed and reopened if the edits have, in fact, substantially improved the question and addressed the original reasons why the question was closed&#xD;&#xA;* any deletion candidates not saved will be deleted&#xD;&#xA;* any merge candidates not saved will be merged&#xD;&#xA;* any close candidates not saved will be reviewed by moderators and closed if found to be off-topic, not constructive, too localized, not real questions, or exact duplicates of other questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any questions closed during the cleanup will stick around for a month to give one final chance to save them. If they haven't been reopened after that, they'll be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Wrap up and feedback&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is pretty close to what we've been doing for other tag cleanups, just in a more structured manner that keeps everyone in the loop about what's going to happen at any specific time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think? What concerns do you have? Are there specific implementation details that need tweaking?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25760" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2990" RevisionGUID="ea5305e8-fcdc-4ecd-9572-99f4d908a3e1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The following is a &quot;digest&quot; version of the [2012 Moderator Election Town Hall Chat](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2922/2012-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-tuesday-2200-utc-5pm-est). The format, [as described on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests), is one *answer* to this question *for every question* asked in the Town Hall, containing all the candidate's answers to that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**To view the digest chronologically, please sort the answers by &quot;oldest&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have questions or comments about this, **please do not answer this question** as the answers are designed to be used for the questions from the Town hall itself. Instead, please ask on [the parent question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests) or in [the Town Hall Discussion Room](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/352/town-hall-discussion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see any corrections which need to be made to this digest, or if you were a candidate who was unable to attend the town hall and would like your answers included, please @Rebecca or @TimStone [in the chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/251/programmers-town-hall-chat) and let us know!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25761" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3562" RevisionGUID="5a8beef7-0d03-4164-96c7-734891f02b23" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This was [a discussion on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/131388/would-questions-about-app-store-approval-be-appropriate-for-so) a few days ago which had comments that mirrored an earlier [discussion we had here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2575/8), and while I don't want to say *every* app store question is off-topic here, it's unlikely many of the questions people would *want* to ask—namely questions about app store policies and such—would be on-topic anywhere on Stack Exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main issue is that we are not Apple, or RIM, or Amazon, or any of the other private entities that make or enforce those policies, so we'd only be speculating and a poor substitute for the people developers *should* be asking, which are the people who work for those companies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the example questions for the proposal, it looks like the App Stores proposal is going to suffer from this right from the get-go:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is there a limit on how long you can hold on to an app name in &lt;App market&gt;?&#xD;&#xA;2. Can an app name have special characters?&#xD;&#xA;3. I created an app that only works with third-party hardware. Do I have to send the hardware to Apple to get approval? How do they test such apps?&#xD;&#xA;4. Is there any hard evidence on how much individual app developers have actually earned?&#xD;&#xA;5. Will my app be deleted from [store] if no one downloads it for [x time]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions 1, 2, 3, and 5 are all questions for the companies running the App Stores and making the policies, not random strangers on the internet who aren't in the know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 4 is just a bad SE question in general: taken at its face value, it's a simple yes or no question (there is evidence or there isn't). Reading between the lines, someone asking that likely wants to know how much they're going to make as an app developer, which is highly localized (and more often than not, [attributable to pure dumb luck](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/05/ios-app-success-is-a-lottery-and-60-of-developers-dont-break-even.ars)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have high hopes for the App Store proposal: I don't think it's going to fail because of lack of interest, but because it's not a topic that Stack Exchange handles well. I don't think trying to redirect people from that proposal to here does anyone any favors." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25762" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3573" RevisionGUID="32cf8320-8771-4110-b1df-890aabb36be3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Based on the current faq, it would be **off-topic**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current faq states that the site is for conceptual questions about software development, which includes things like design patterns, architecture decisions, data structures, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice and workplace issues are explicitly off-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site used to allow some career or workplace advice questions providing the answer required a programmer-specific answer and not an all-careers-specific answer, however that no longer appears to be the case since the [example on-topic career question][1] provided in the [linked meta post][2] of the faq for career advice questions has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I am mistaken and they really do allow some career or workplace advice questions  providing the answer is specific to programmers and not all careers, then I would consider the question would be on-topic. The question itself does not apply to all careers (not all careers find it beneficial to have a 20% time rule), and so therefore the answer does not apply to all careers. If &quot;Freelancing and Business Concerns&quot; are on-topic here, than I would expect questions on how to implement a popular development work strategy to also be on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8886/can-someone-find-a-job-as-a-programmer-without-an-education&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/590/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25763" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3056" RevisionGUID="dc892809-ea31-4370-9ddd-330c2bae2055" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We're trying to come up with a structured way to deal with the bad tags through the [Structured Tag Cleanup initiative](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2886/8), but in the meantime, if you want to help with tag cleanups, the golden rule is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Only make substantial edits to questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end, these things are helpful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging new questions asked that have bad tags&#xD;&#xA;* Substantively revising a question to address multiple issues, from bad tags to bad titles to copyediting issues&#xD;&#xA;* Small spurts of edits (5 or so) to prevent the front page from being flooded with old content&#xD;&#xA;* Proposing tag merges and synonyms here on meta&#xD;&#xA;* Voting to close questions in bad tags that have slipped through the cracks&#xD;&#xA;* Flagging closed questions in bad tags that have no chance of getting reopened for deletion&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Heroic&quot; edits on closed questions in bad tags to attempt to get them re-opened&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not helpful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Mass retagging in a short period of time&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging questions without doing anything else&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging closed questions that have no chance of ever getting opened again&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging questions and replacing bad tags with [even worse ones](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definitely check out the [Structured Tag Cleanup proposal](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2886/8), but otherwise, please try to keep the above in mind if you've got an urge to clean up some tags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25764" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2972" RevisionGUID="3df09c3e-4ad6-4221-b078-7473893746f5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been a recurring problem since the site's inception: in reality, Programmers.SE [was originally conceived](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/64046/149432) to *be* the dumping ground for Stack Overflow, and even though that purpose was [dropped a couple of weeks after the site went into private beta](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/350/8), old habits die hard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past year, there have been a few things that have been done to combat the problem:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Migrations used to only require a first-past-the-post method of resolving: for example, if 2 people voted to migrate to Programmers, 1 voted to close as off-topic, 1 voted as not-constructive, and 1 voted as too-localized, it'd be migrated. Now, migrations require 4 people to agree to the migration before it happens. Otherwise, it gets closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We Programmers mods, much to the annoyance of them I'm sure, have worked with/conditioned the Stack Overflow mods to not migrate anything to us without checking with us first. So, any mod-led migration from Stack Overflow was likely approved by us and you can blame us if the question's bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, we can't prevent 4 people agreeing to use the migration path to us as their dumping ground, and our rejection rate from Stack Overflow hovers [around 32%](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been a number of requests to remove us as the migration path, or to provide some mechanism to &quot;approve&quot; or &quot;reject&quot; migrations:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73382/149432)&#xD;&#xA;* [A way to cut down on the inappropriate migrations](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84846/a-way-to-cut-down-on-inappropriate-migrations)&#xD;&#xA;* [Allow diamond moderators to reverse question migrations?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/35744/allow-diamond-moderators-to-reverse-question-migrations)&#xD;&#xA;* [Require migrated questions to be accepted by the destination site's moderators](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73391/require-migrated-questions-to-be-accepted-by-the-destination-sites-moderators)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to date, only small changes to the requirements for community migration (like the 4-person agreement, and having tags in common on the destination site) have been made. I have heard rumors that SE is planning to tackle migrations in a big way this year, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in lieu of some fundamental change in how migrations work, I think education and proactive moderation is the best strategy:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you have 10k+ rep on Stack Overflow, check the [Review queue](http://stackoverflow.com/review) for questions getting &quot;off topic; belongs on Programmers&quot; votes. It only takes two people to short circuit a migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Check [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) often. Every once in a while, someone gets the idea that the best way to clean up Stack Overflow is to migrate everything in a tag (usually [career-development]) to Programmers: we've been able to put a stop to a couple of those projects by [voicing our displeasure there](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/119725/149432) and explaining what is and isn't on-topic here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25765" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3573" RevisionGUID="ac8172bd-9f80-4089-a446-de02a2ca8b09" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Based on the current faq, it would be **off-topic**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current faq states that the site is for conceptual questions about software development, which includes things like design patterns, architecture decisions, data structures, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice and workplace issues are explicitly off-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site used to allow some career or workplace advice questions providing the answer required a programmer-specific answer and not an all-careers-specific answer, however that no longer appears to be the case since the [example on-topic career question][1] provided in the [linked meta post][2] of the faq for career advice questions has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I am mistaken and they really do allow some career or workplace advice questions  providing the answer is specific to programmers and not all careers, then I would consider the question would be on-topic. The question itself does not apply to all careers (not all careers find it beneficial to have a 20% time rule), and so therefore the answer does not apply to all careers. If &quot;Freelancing and Business Concerns&quot; are on-topic here, than I would expect questions on how to implement a popular development work strategy to also be on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8886/can-someone-find-a-job-as-a-programmer-without-an-education&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/590/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25766" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3016" RevisionGUID="067bb370-6578-49ba-a236-e2f9b0a6275c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Andrew, sorry I missed that, questions were appearing very fast and yours is the only one that the whole message is not bold. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I wrote in my nomination stub:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If anything, my participation as a user has been highly visible. As a moderator I will take a step back, encourage users to take ownership of the community and intervene only when necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not up to the moderators to ensure that your voice is heard, or even shape the community. That's completely up to you and every other user, and the moderators should intervene only when absolutely necessary. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just yesterday we appointed our [Blog Overlord][1], Jarrod Nettles. Why him? Well, if you take a look at [blog related Meta discussions][2], you'll notice that he has been pushing for the blog since early on. To be fair, Thomas Owens started the discussion back in June, and would be perfectly capable of taking point, as would quite a few other members. But that doesn't really matter, we needed a point man, Jarrod was around yesterday when we had the discussion, case closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The moderators, in this case Mark Trapp, only stepped in after there was clear community consensus for the blog, plus a comprehensive list of topics and a sufficient list of volunteers. He contacted the team, [reported back][3], and in a couple of hours we went from having no idea of whether the blog will kick off to [discussing logistics][4].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's pretty close to how things should work. You may consider this a lame example, because there wasn't really anyone opposing the blog, but I think my point still gets across: Participation is key and it's not the moderators' job to hand hold anyone. As a user I have been extremely active on Meta, and I've explored ways to get [even more people to participate][5]. As a moderator, if elected, I will try to encourage people to do exactly what I've been doing so far, but that can only happen if people actually care to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't really handle dissenting opinions any differently than any other user, the voting system is perfectly suited for that. The only reason I would wear the moderator's hat on Meta would be when discussions are getting out of hand, rude or otherwise offensive. Other than that, I'd be yet another user, and it would be completely up to the community to decide if my opinions have merit or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2980/blog-volunteers-unite&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2979/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3214146#3214146&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119817/how-can-we-get-people-to-participate-on-meta" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25768" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3635" RevisionGUID="eb59c4df-af05-4f03-bc6d-e262e5ca63da" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After discussing with The Workplace moderators, and given the positive feedback both this and the [Meta Workplace discussion][1] received, I went ahead and updated our [off topic list][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is **not about**...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check out [The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/) instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementation issues or programming tools (ask on [Stack Overflow](http://www.stackoverflow.com/) instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including [which technology is better](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [career advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590), salary or compensation&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; For answers to common programming career advice questions, please see &quot;[Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/)&quot; by Patrick McKenzie.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt; If you are still seeing the old FAQ, it's caching. It's always caching...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now our off topic list is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the topics from the list that the Workplace welcomes are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - office politics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which I think should be combined in one item:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, career advice, office politics, résumé help (check out The Workplace instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including which technology is better,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've re-ordered the items, putting the two we have alternative suggestions for at the top, and the rest in order of occurrence. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/274/would-we-want-to-be-mentioned-in-the-programmers-faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25770" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2990" RevisionGUID="3dab650e-74fe-480f-a5ba-6a66b771df1d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The following is a &quot;digest&quot; version of the [2012 Moderator Election Town Hall Chat](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2922/2012-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-tuesday-2200-utc-5pm-est). The format, [as described on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests), is one *answer* to this question *for every question* asked in the Town Hall, containing all the candidate's answers to that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**To view the digest chronologically, please sort the answers by &quot;oldest&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have questions or comments about this, **please do not answer this question** as the answers are designed to be used for the questions from the Town hall itself. Instead, please ask on [the parent question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests) or in [the Town Hall Discussion Room](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/352/town-hall-discussion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see any corrections which need to be made to this digest, or if you were a candidate who was unable to attend the town hall and would like your answers included, please @Rebecca or @TimStone [in the chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/251/programmers-town-hall-chat) and let us know!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25771" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3115" RevisionGUID="766e4948-7a51-4f23-8c8b-f9bb407ada5a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was the moderator who handled the flags on the question.  From what I can tell, he just needed a little bit of help to clarify that his question—while not great—is on-topic here. It didn't appear need a moderator to intervene at first blush.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I looked at the flags, though, I saw:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **too localized:** Well, it's not too localized. While it might not be a problem every single programmer faces, how to design an RPN calculator is applicable to more than just [a vanishingly small number of people](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1916/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **off topic, belongs on Stack Overflow:** the guy's not asking about a coding issue but how to design the problem, and if it *is* a crappy question, migrating it to Stack Overflow goes against [the golden rule](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1901/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **not a real question:** this one had the most merit, but given a quick edit cleared things up, it really didn't warrant bringing a moderator's attention to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I suspect that the user is trying to do homework&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, based on seeing the question and evaluating the flags raised, I disagree that the question is so irredeemable that it required the swift hand of justice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, it's likely to be closed by the community anyway in short order.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note 1&lt;/sup&gt;: I suspect there's a bit of an inherent bias at play when people suspect that someone is trying to get homework help, but homework questions [shouldn't be discounted](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2895/8) or treated any differently than other questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25772" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3635" RevisionGUID="c3ad2c10-6f7a-4026-8e3e-1b9ee9ef9ac0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After discussing with The Workplace moderators, and given the positive feedback both this and the [Meta Workplace discussion][1] received, I went ahead and updated our [off topic list][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is **not about**...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check out [The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/) instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementation issues or programming tools (ask on [Stack Overflow](http://www.stackoverflow.com/) instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including [which technology is better](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [career advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590), salary or compensation&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; For answers to common programming career advice questions, please see &quot;[Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/)&quot; by Patrick McKenzie.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt; If you are still seeing the old FAQ, it's caching. It's always caching...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now our off topic list is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the topics from the list that the Workplace welcomes are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - office politics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which I think should be combined in one item:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, career advice, office politics, résumé help (check out The Workplace instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including which technology is better,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've re-ordered the items, putting the two we have alternative suggestions for at the top, and the rest in order of occurrence. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/274/would-we-want-to-be-mentioned-in-the-programmers-faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25773" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3650" RevisionGUID="3c54b71d-0b83-448b-aa38-359080cdf008" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [How can Programmers.SE be used to assist students with class assignments?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2894/how-can-programmers-se-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;The question [How to solve this problem without the use of if-else statements?][1]&#xD;&#xA;was recently asked. And somebody [answered][2] with the full solution to their problem, code and all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think they kind of behavior should be allowed as it does not benefit the student at all. It almost seems like people who do that are doing it for the reputation. And not for the good of the student, since it does no good for the student to be handed the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what is the official consensus on this? Am I totally in the wrong here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151312/how-to-solve-this-problem-without-the-use-of-if-else-statements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151312/how-to-solve-this-problem-without-the-use-of-if-else-statements/151328#151328" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25774" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3056" RevisionGUID="a9833170-13dd-42cd-bfdc-3e1f195b9f47" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We're trying to come up with a structured way to deal with the bad tags through the [Structured Tag Cleanup initiative](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2886/8), but in the meantime, if you want to help with tag cleanups, the golden rule is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Only make substantial edits to questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end, these things are helpful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging new questions asked that have bad tags&#xD;&#xA;* Substantively revising a question to address multiple issues, from bad tags to bad titles to copyediting issues&#xD;&#xA;* Small spurts of edits (5 or so) to prevent the front page from being flooded with old content&#xD;&#xA;* Proposing tag merges and synonyms here on meta&#xD;&#xA;* Voting to close questions in bad tags that have slipped through the cracks&#xD;&#xA;* Flagging closed questions in bad tags that have no chance of getting reopened for deletion&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Heroic&quot; edits on closed questions in bad tags to attempt to get them re-opened&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not helpful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Mass retagging in a short period of time&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging questions without doing anything else&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging closed questions that have no chance of ever getting opened again&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging questions and replacing bad tags with [even worse ones](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definitely check out the [Structured Tag Cleanup proposal](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2886/8), but otherwise, please try to keep the above in mind if you've got an urge to clean up some tags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25775" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3016" RevisionGUID="38114e20-ad6a-4716-a736-d1cd81444879" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Andrew, sorry I missed that, questions were appearing very fast and yours is the only one that the whole message is not bold. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I wrote in my nomination stub:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If anything, my participation as a user has been highly visible. As a moderator I will take a step back, encourage users to take ownership of the community and intervene only when necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not up to the moderators to ensure that your voice is heard, or even shape the community. That's completely up to you and every other user, and the moderators should intervene only when absolutely necessary. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just yesterday we appointed our [Blog Overlord][1], Jarrod Nettles. Why him? Well, if you take a look at [blog related Meta discussions][2], you'll notice that he has been pushing for the blog since early on. To be fair, Thomas Owens started the discussion back in June, and would be perfectly capable of taking point, as would quite a few other members. But that doesn't really matter, we needed a point man, Jarrod was around yesterday when we had the discussion, case closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The moderators, in this case Mark Trapp, only stepped in after there was clear community consensus for the blog, plus a comprehensive list of topics and a sufficient list of volunteers. He contacted the team, [reported back][3], and in a couple of hours we went from having no idea of whether the blog will kick off to [discussing logistics][4].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's pretty close to how things should work. You may consider this a lame example, because there wasn't really anyone opposing the blog, but I think my point still gets across: Participation is key and it's not the moderators' job to hand hold anyone. As a user I have been extremely active on Meta, and I've explored ways to get [even more people to participate][5]. As a moderator, if elected, I will try to encourage people to do exactly what I've been doing so far, but that can only happen if people actually care to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't really handle dissenting opinions any differently than any other user, the voting system is perfectly suited for that. The only reason I would wear the moderator's hat on Meta would be when discussions are getting out of hand, rude or otherwise offensive. Other than that, I'd be yet another user, and it would be completely up to the community to decide if my opinions have merit or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2980/blog-volunteers-unite&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2979/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3214146#3214146&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119817/how-can-we-get-people-to-participate-on-meta" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25776" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3650" RevisionGUID="e1f30da7-b5a2-46e7-ae3b-85d38d96d2d3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [How can Programmers.SE be used to assist students with class assignments?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2894/how-can-programmers-se-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;The question [How to solve this problem without the use of if-else statements?][1]&#xD;&#xA;was recently asked. And somebody [answered][2] with the full solution to their problem, code and all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think they kind of behavior should be allowed as it does not benefit the student at all. It almost seems like people who do that are doing it for the reputation. And not for the good of the student, since it does no good for the student to be handed the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what is the official consensus on this? Am I totally in the wrong here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151312/how-to-solve-this-problem-without-the-use-of-if-else-statements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151312/how-to-solve-this-problem-without-the-use-of-if-else-statements/151328#151328" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25779" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3049" RevisionGUID="1aad6e9a-1e26-44da-94bb-536c817ff64b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As [Anna mentioned in the comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1211/ability-to-review-questions-being-transferred-from-so-before-they-appear#comment2894_1211), similar feature requests come up from time to time on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) and—while popular—almost never get a warm response from Stack Exchange. This request should be another example of that. :P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've heard rumors that migrations will be tackled some time this year, so while it's unlikely this specific feature would ever be implemented, hopefully another, comparable solution will be implemented in the future." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25780" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3117" RevisionGUID="8b65e7cb-4ed0-493e-95a2-86689acca738" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Regarding https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3075/what-do-our-low-2012-election-numbers-mean. (I posted it as an answer, but I then deleted it and post it now as a question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;297/5874, yes, that's really a very low percentage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think Pierre303 is right in that people don't care enough about the votes and that it's certainly the main reason. I thought about it a little and maybe there could be some incentive to vote (that is more incentive than just having some new people we believe in for moderating the website we like), a &quot;carrot&quot; of some sort. I thought about this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why not - next time - offer a badge for those that voted ?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next year, on the main page, it could be written:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The 2013 Community Moderator Election is now underway! Elect your representatives and earn a &quot;*Voter*&quot; badge!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know some people don't care, but I'm pretty sure we could attract a significant number of voters next time. I don't know if it's done in other countries in the world, but in France, you have what could be called an &quot;Electorate Card&quot; that you keep with you, and that you bring with you to all elections. When you vote you get a stamp which effectively shows that you have voted. I've seen older people happily show their card to indicate they voted for the 1980's elections...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25781" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3115" RevisionGUID="dbce41aa-3b77-4318-ab15-fb046c9c6ded" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was the moderator who handled the flags on the question.  From what I can tell, he just needed a little bit of help to clarify that his question—while not great—is on-topic here. It didn't appear need a moderator to intervene at first blush.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I looked at the flags, though, I saw:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **too localized:** Well, it's not too localized. While it might not be a problem every single programmer faces, how to design an RPN calculator is applicable to more than just [a vanishingly small number of people](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1916/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **off topic, belongs on Stack Overflow:** the guy's not asking about a coding issue but how to design the problem, and if it *is* a crappy question, migrating it to Stack Overflow goes against [the golden rule](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1901/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **not a real question:** this one had the most merit, but given a quick edit cleared things up, it really didn't warrant bringing a moderator's attention to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I suspect that the user is trying to do homework&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, based on seeing the question and evaluating the flags raised, I disagree that the question is so irredeemable that it required the swift hand of justice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, it's likely to be closed by the community anyway in short order.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note 1&lt;/sup&gt;: I suspect there's a bit of an inherent bias at play when people suspect that someone is trying to get homework help, but homework questions [shouldn't be discounted](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2895/8) or treated any differently than other questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25783" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3056" RevisionGUID="da4300c9-10f2-4185-98c5-be2d1f74449b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We're trying to come up with a structured way to deal with the bad tags through the [Structured Tag Cleanup initiative](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2886/8), but in the meantime, if you want to help with tag cleanups, the golden rule is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Only make substantial edits to questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end, these things are helpful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging new questions asked that have bad tags&#xD;&#xA;* Substantively revising a question to address multiple issues, from bad tags to bad titles to copyediting issues&#xD;&#xA;* Small spurts of edits (5 or so) to prevent the front page from being flooded with old content&#xD;&#xA;* Proposing tag merges and synonyms here on meta&#xD;&#xA;* Voting to close questions in bad tags that have slipped through the cracks&#xD;&#xA;* Flagging closed questions in bad tags that have no chance of getting reopened for deletion&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Heroic&quot; edits on closed questions in bad tags to attempt to get them re-opened&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not helpful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Mass retagging in a short period of time&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging questions without doing anything else&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging closed questions that have no chance of ever getting opened again&#xD;&#xA;* Retagging questions and replacing bad tags with [even worse ones](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definitely check out the [Structured Tag Cleanup proposal](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2886/8), but otherwise, please try to keep the above in mind if you've got an urge to clean up some tags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25784" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3214" RevisionGUID="54232d70-5f84-4a38-8e0e-241586679d3f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We welcome _some_ book recommendations, as described in the [accepted answer][1] on [&quot;Are book recommendations on-topic?&quot;][2] (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would say that like &quot;what language should I learn&quot; questions, questions that effectively ask for a list of books on X should be closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, like programming language questions, if you have **specialised requirements** (you want to go into LINQ, or networking, or.. in great depth) then perhaps those should be allowed. They should inspire answers that explain why a book is good for this topic and shouldn't just produce a list of everyone's favourite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On book questions that we feel are borderline there are two equally valid options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Add the &quot;good subjective - bad subjective&quot; warning and hope for the best,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close the question as not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is getting down / close votes, flags, or very bad answers (think: just a link), option 2 is the better choice. The process is about the same for every borderline question and it's always a judgement call. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2004/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25785" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3965" RevisionGUID="d684ac91-68e8-4494-981b-e9ec2a755ace" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="##Askers yield&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a [prolific answerer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4767/oded?tab=answers &quot;as clearly indicated by your profile&quot;), you better keep in mind that your satisfaction with questions quality is considered more important than that of the asker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the official statement on above, refer to Stack Exchange blog, **[Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/ &quot;reference article at Stack Exchange blog&quot;)**:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...we’re determined to keep question quality high, **even at the cost of refusing a little sand**. It’s true that you can’t have Q&amp;A without _questions_, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&amp;A site is to flood it with low-quality questions...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&amp;A system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**. If this means aggressively downvoting or closing unworthy and uninteresting questions, so be it. Without a community of people willing to _answer_ questions, it really doesn’t matter if there are questions at all, does it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding of above is, when asker and answerer disagree about question quality, asker [yield](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/give_way &quot;'give precedence to other road users'&quot;)&lt;sup&gt; [1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3962/31260 &quot;term inspired by analogy used in another answer&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt; and answerer's opinion is given a precedence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Answerers drive by rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just like it is with driving, having a precedence does not in any way mean entitlement to break the rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that other cars should yield won't help one driving the wrong side of the road. For cases like we discuss, this analogy means answerers should be civil when expressing their opinions about question quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Authoritative references&lt;sup&gt; [1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/07/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-is-not-a-forum-the-role-of-niceness-on-a-qa-site/)&lt;/sup&gt; for Summer of Love I've seen so far definitely reiterate just two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* That rudeness will not be tolerated:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **See someone being rude? Flag it!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* That niceness yields to honesty, just like it has been before:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Everyone loves to quote from [the FAQ’s etiquette section](http://stackoverflow.com/faq#etiquette), particularly the first “be nice” bit. But it’s the last section that has all the action items:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; ###Be honest.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Above all, be honest. If you see misinformation, vote it down. Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Applied to the case you describe I would say you did OK. Asker having different opinion is expected, and it was reasonable that you expressed yours. You were civil which means you did not break rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, you did exactly as suggested in the _FAQ action items_ and as reiterated in Summer Of Love quote above:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25787" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3117" RevisionGUID="7d5a403f-b696-47b7-a3e8-915c3dfa8312" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Regarding https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3075/what-do-our-low-2012-election-numbers-mean. (I posted it as an answer, but I then deleted it and post it now as a question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;297/5874, yes, that's really a very low percentage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think Pierre303 is right in that people don't care enough about the votes and that it's certainly the main reason. I thought about it a little and maybe there could be some incentive to vote (that is more incentive than just having some new people we believe in for moderating the website we like), a &quot;carrot&quot; of some sort. I thought about this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why not - next time - offer a badge for those that voted ?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next year, on the main page, it could be written:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The 2013 Community Moderator Election is now underway! Elect your representatives and earn a &quot;*Voter*&quot; badge!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know some people don't care, but I'm pretty sure we could attract a significant number of voters next time. I don't know if it's done in other countries in the world, but in France, you have what could be called an &quot;Electorate Card&quot; that you keep with you, and that you bring with you to all elections. When you vote you get a stamp which effectively shows that you have voted. I've seen older people happily show their card to indicate they voted for the 1980's elections...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25788" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3229" RevisionGUID="f29803b5-cc55-4787-90a2-434e5279bd26" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The tags that should not be used should all have a description stating that in the tag description that appears when you are typing the tag. Examples include [tag:stci-career],  [tag:software-engineering] and [tag:software-development]. There are others, but I don't know what they all are off the top of my head.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also follow the [Structured Tag Clean-Up Initiative][1] here on Meta if you are interested in helping to clean up the bad tags that exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25789" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3193" RevisionGUID="e2377935-4fc8-4ca1-b06d-98c399b3cb51" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question [Burned out on programming and given up?][1] is currently [flagged for deletion][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be considered on-topic if the personal wall-of-text... er.. information was removed, and it is turned into a question about how to get past programming burnout, which seems to be what the OP was asking in the first place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have heavily edited the question in an attempt to bring it back on-topic. Please let me know if you think of anything else I can do to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/11425/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3172/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25790" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3965" RevisionGUID="1bd27bcc-36ed-4bb8-aba0-9a41cbb6d61b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="##Askers yield&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a [prolific answerer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4767/oded?tab=answers &quot;as clearly indicated by your profile&quot;), you better keep in mind that your satisfaction with questions quality is considered more important than that of the asker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the official statement on above, refer to Stack Exchange blog, **[Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/ &quot;reference article at Stack Exchange blog&quot;)**:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...we’re determined to keep question quality high, **even at the cost of refusing a little sand**. It’s true that you can’t have Q&amp;A without _questions_, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&amp;A site is to flood it with low-quality questions...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&amp;A system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**. If this means aggressively downvoting or closing unworthy and uninteresting questions, so be it. Without a community of people willing to _answer_ questions, it really doesn’t matter if there are questions at all, does it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding of above is, when asker and answerer disagree about question quality, asker [yield](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/give_way &quot;'give precedence to other road users'&quot;)&lt;sup&gt; [1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3962/31260 &quot;term inspired by analogy used in another answer&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt; and answerer's opinion is given a precedence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Answerers drive by rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just like it is with driving, having a precedence does not in any way mean entitlement to break the rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that other cars should yield won't help one driving the wrong side of the road. For cases like we discuss, this analogy means answerers should be civil when expressing their opinions about question quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Authoritative references&lt;sup&gt; [1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/07/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-is-not-a-forum-the-role-of-niceness-on-a-qa-site/)&lt;/sup&gt; for Summer of Love I've seen so far definitely reiterate just two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* That rudeness will not be tolerated:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **See someone being rude? Flag it!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* That niceness yields to honesty, just like it has been before:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Everyone loves to quote from [the FAQ’s etiquette section](http://stackoverflow.com/faq#etiquette), particularly the first “be nice” bit. But it’s the last section that has all the action items:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; ###Be honest.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Above all, be honest. If you see misinformation, vote it down. Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Applied to the case you describe I would say you did OK. Asker having different opinion is expected, and it was reasonable that you expressed yours. You were civil which means you did not break rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, you did exactly as suggested in the _FAQ action items_ and as reiterated in Summer Of Love quote above:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25791" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4053" RevisionGUID="b164e709-3c6f-444b-bae4-89727bff4943" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You can't &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want a distinct list of the gold badges its available here : https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=general&amp;filter=gold " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25792" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3115" RevisionGUID="74f7a92b-35cb-4f6f-b433-364a5bc365b6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was the moderator who handled the flags on the question.  From what I can tell, he just needed a little bit of help to clarify that his question—while not great—is on-topic here. It didn't appear need a moderator to intervene at first blush.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I looked at the flags, though, I saw:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **too localized:** Well, it's not too localized. While it might not be a problem every single programmer faces, how to design an RPN calculator is applicable to more than just [a vanishingly small number of people](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1916/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **off topic, belongs on Stack Overflow:** the guy's not asking about a coding issue but how to design the problem, and if it *is* a crappy question, migrating it to Stack Overflow goes against [the golden rule](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1901/8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **not a real question:** this one had the most merit, but given a quick edit cleared things up, it really didn't warrant bringing a moderator's attention to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I suspect that the user is trying to do homework&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, based on seeing the question and evaluating the flags raised, I disagree that the question is so irredeemable that it required the swift hand of justice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, it's likely to be closed by the community anyway in short order.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note 1&lt;/sup&gt;: I suspect there's a bit of an inherent bias at play when people suspect that someone is trying to get homework help, but homework questions [shouldn't be discounted](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2895/8) or treated any differently than other questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25793" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4053" RevisionGUID="c681718d-c278-46a8-ae0a-a006531293ef" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You can't &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want a distinct list of the gold badges its available here : https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=general&amp;filter=gold " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25794" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4121" RevisionGUID="c728df92-8153-4c1e-9901-d65eb691eea0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Ryathal mentioned][1] the ill fated What Stack Overflow is Not&lt;sup&gt; [[MSO 10K+ link][2]]&lt;/sup&gt; post, and I agree that the top voted answer applies there, so I've decided to adapt it (well, just replaced Stack Overflow with Programmers, really).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Programmers community is very forthcoming with their help, [provided you have done a few things to help yourself][3]. Have you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Put some effort into researching the problem,&#xD;&#xA;- Attempted to write some code yourself&#xD;&#xA;- Attempted to debug your code when it has failed, and&#xD;&#xA;- Some basic, fundamental knowledge of your tools?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Programmers community will not write a complete solution for you, develop a complete walk through of a problem, or do your background research for you, unless your question is specific and focused on a reasonably small scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4117/whats-wrong-with-this-question#comment11671_4119&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128548/what-stack-overflow-is-not&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25795" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3298" RevisionGUID="2bfc9e65-a9e9-4cc2-a07d-1e43d26b2c22" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Due to a huge amount of feedback received on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) regarding the deletion of massively-upvoted but off-topic/not-constructive questions, questions locked for historical reasons have taken on [new behavior](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/reputation-and-historical-archives/) that could be beneficial for Programmers (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Last but not least, we’re experimenting with ways to keep some of the more useful – [or even just fun](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/) – questions from the site’s history accessible in some way. To be clear: most of these are not great examples of questions that should be asked today… But some of them are, quite frankly, brilliant – and losing them entirely just because they aren’t a good fit for our strict Q&amp;A format is wrong. **For now, we’ve provided a “Historical Artifact” lock that completely freezes a question and its answers, preventing all further editing, voting, answering, and flagging. It will also remove it from the usual lists of questions on the site while allowing it to remain fully accessible and visible to everyone with a link to it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This, to me, obviates at least in part [previous guidance](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question) that locks should not be a substitute for closure and eventual deletion even on the whale questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since these questions are unlikely to be deleted any time soon, I'd like to propose locking for historical reasons the site's most popular closed questions—and thus removing them from the site's top questions list and helping to mitigate some user confusion—that have 100 score or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would be the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-programming-career&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/93983/why-dont-all-companies-buy-developers-the-best-hardware&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/perks-for-new-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91350/what-should-every-programmer-know&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20407/will-high-reputation-in-stack-overflow-help-to-get-a-good-job&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47197/are-there-any-famous-one-man-army-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64727/windows-azure-vs-amazon-ec2-vs-google-app-engine&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106202/my-boss-wants-a-narrated-line-by-line-english-explanation-of-our-code&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101988/should-developers-accept-overtime-weekend-work-denied-bonus-payments&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114819/are-9-to-5-programmers-looked-down-upon&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30355/how-to-become-a-faster-programmer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81929/is-it-normal-for-people-to-not-work&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36612/what-kind-of-innovative-non-cash-financial-benefits-do-i-offer-to-my-developers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32425/i-still-cant-figure-out-how-to-program&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11312/stuff-every-programmer-needs-while-working&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110804/why-are-zero-based-arrays-the-norm&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12807/make-a-big-deal-out-of-true&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50831/how-do-programmers-in-the-west-see-programmers-in-the-east&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1745/whats-the-most-absurd-myth-about-programming-issues&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Doing so should substantially clean up one of the major broken windows on the site: the [highest voted questions list](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25796" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3214" RevisionGUID="881910ad-b26d-4f82-b518-b791cb14ade9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We welcome _some_ book recommendations, as described in the [accepted answer][1] on [&quot;Are book recommendations on-topic?&quot;][2] (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would say that like &quot;what language should I learn&quot; questions, questions that effectively ask for a list of books on X should be closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, like programming language questions, if you have **specialised requirements** (you want to go into LINQ, or networking, or.. in great depth) then perhaps those should be allowed. They should inspire answers that explain why a book is good for this topic and shouldn't just produce a list of everyone's favourite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On book questions that we feel are borderline there are two equally valid options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Add the &quot;good subjective - bad subjective&quot; warning and hope for the best,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close the question as not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is getting down / close votes, flags, or very bad answers (think: just a link), option 2 is the better choice. The process is about the same for every borderline question and it's always a judgement call. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2004/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25797" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4068" RevisionGUID="8b001409-bf74-4054-a790-4f862f18c3af" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's a terrible tag and it should die an ignoble death.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had it on [the chopping block][1] before, but it slipped through the cracks while we were dealing with even worse tags that were far more prolific.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kill it. Kill it with fire.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1940/8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25798" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3346" RevisionGUID="258be62c-4897-434d-9679-faca89298e5e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just because you have a suspicion that a question may have answers resulting in doing the asker's job/homework is no reason to close or hate on a question. A question is either good or bad for other reasons not related to whether answering it may do the asker's job/homework. I believe [Mark Trap's Answer][1] regarding homework questions is also relevant here. If someone manages to get some free work out of this site more power to them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2857/41381" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25799" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3229" RevisionGUID="ec6fd2da-63a4-4f8f-97a7-18333bc7ff65" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The tags that should not be used should all have a description stating that in the tag description that appears when you are typing the tag. Examples include [tag:stci-career],  [tag:software-engineering] and [tag:software-development]. There are others, but I don't know what they all are off the top of my head.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also follow the [Structured Tag Clean-Up Initiative][1] here on Meta if you are interested in helping to clean up the bad tags that exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25800" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5131" RevisionGUID="e20245f1-0aa4-4786-8593-9b8c458b9aae" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Given some of the top voted answers in [the last discussion about resource requests][1] and the close votes and flags from other members of the community against your question, it appears that people want to see a bigger emphasis on questions about problems rather than resource requests (even a request for the &quot;canonical reference&quot;). Questions should be about solving a problem, and links to resources should be part of good answers, along with experiences of other users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, prior to closing (as I mentioned in my comment), I did a Google search for &quot;object-oriented C&quot; (without quotation marks) and received numerous results. A precursor to asking a question should be to search for an answer, using your favorite search engine and on any relevant Stack Exchange sites. A question should address why these resources aren't sufficient for solving your problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [the FAQ][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below are two excerpts from the answers that are tied for top answer in the question I linked to above. As of now, both have 8 up votes and 0 down votes from members of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Mark Trapp's top answer][3] in the linked question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The problem with these questions aren't that they are asking for a book, it's that they don't describe anything about the problem the user is having, or rather why the user is asking the question, to afford a useful response. They're like asking, &quot;tell me what book will teach me everything and anything about Java.&quot; Where to begin? Questions must narrow the scope down to a specific problem, otherwise, they don't belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Robert Harvey's top answer][4] in the linked question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; While I begrudgingly accept the idea that resource requests are on-topic if they are specific enough, people should really be asking &quot;how&quot; questions, not &quot;what&quot; questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4108/4&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4104/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25801" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4121" RevisionGUID="ff896cdc-dce4-4b62-83ce-c8454583d315" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Ryathal mentioned][1] the ill fated What Stack Overflow is Not&lt;sup&gt; [[MSO 10K+ link][2]]&lt;/sup&gt; post, and I agree that the top voted answer applies there, so I've decided to adapt it (well, just replaced Stack Overflow with Programmers, really).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Programmers community is very forthcoming with their help, [provided you have done a few things to help yourself][3]. Have you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Put some effort into researching the problem,&#xD;&#xA;- Attempted to write some code yourself&#xD;&#xA;- Attempted to debug your code when it has failed, and&#xD;&#xA;- Some basic, fundamental knowledge of your tools?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Programmers community will not write a complete solution for you, develop a complete walk through of a problem, or do your background research for you, unless your question is specific and focused on a reasonably small scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4117/whats-wrong-with-this-question#comment11671_4119&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128548/what-stack-overflow-is-not&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25802" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3117" RevisionGUID="f808366a-6b08-4377-8d17-9386e0758c29" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Regarding https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3075/what-do-our-low-2012-election-numbers-mean. (I posted it as an answer, but I then deleted it and post it now as a question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;297/5874, yes, that's really a very low percentage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think Pierre303 is right in that people don't care enough about the votes and that it's certainly the main reason. I thought about it a little and maybe there could be some incentive to vote (that is more incentive than just having some new people we believe in for moderating the website we like), a &quot;carrot&quot; of some sort. I thought about this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why not - next time - offer a badge for those that voted ?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next year, on the main page, it could be written:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The 2013 Community Moderator Election is now underway! Elect your representatives and earn a &quot;*Voter*&quot; badge!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know some people don't care, but I'm pretty sure we could attract a significant number of voters next time. I don't know if it's done in other countries in the world, but in France, you have what could be called an &quot;Electorate Card&quot; that you keep with you, and that you bring with you to all elections. When you vote you get a stamp which effectively shows that you have voted. I've seen older people happily show their card to indicate they voted for the 1980's elections...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25803" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3373" RevisionGUID="71bc3c43-cb96-4b81-a612-c047c7c410ee" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A little background on the bounty: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier today I closed the question referenced in [this Meta question][1], which is the same question @karlphillip mentions on his bounty. He felt he should award one last bounty to one of the answerers, but as the question was closed [I advised him to find another one of the answerer's answers][2], on an open question, and award the bounty there. Didn't really want to re-open the original question for 24 hours, as we both agreed on the closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously that failed miserably since he chose an even more close worthy question to set the bounty on ;P That's on me, I should have mentioned that he should find a good on topic question as I'm painfully aware that there are still a lot of open questions that don't belong to the site. Apologies for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back to the question in question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that it's off topic and the proper way to handle this would be to refund the bounty and close the question. If no one objects though, I'd prefer to wait for 5 hours for @karlphillip to award the bounty and then close it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3364/is-it-possible-to-remove-the-community-wiki-status-of-a-question&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3988916#3988916" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25804" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3252" RevisionGUID="45d9fb5e-039f-4ecb-84ef-3a4ebbad1942" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Like 634 others, I follow [@StackProgrammer][1] on Twitter to read and retweet [hot questions][2]. However, it's been nagging at me recently that I perceived &quot;a lot&quot; of these tweets -- tweets ostensibly meant to focus attention on those questions and bring both veteran and new users into the site -- were leading to questions already closed or deleted by the time I read them (and my tweetstream is always on).&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;I looked at the last 100 tweets of hot questions, which only takes us back to Feb 21st, and 14 were closed and 1 was deleted.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not questioning whether or not the questions should've been closed, or even the speed with which they are closed (I agree with the community in all of the instances), but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Should we be concerned that 15% of our tweeted hot questions will lead users to closed or deleted questions?&#xD;&#xA; - If we should be concerned, and knowing that the moderators &amp; community members are doing their jobs, is there any tuning that can be done to what I assume is an automated process at the SE level?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bear in mind that I only looked at the last 100 because I only noticed it happening recently -- it could very well be that this isn't an issue at all and is just an off week.  But if it continues to happen at a similar pace, I think from a community promotion standpoint it might be a problem we should consider trying to solve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edited to add links** to most of the 14 closed questions, per @Rachel's request in a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Version Number Soup in RoR: Is Grails Better? Django? \[closed\]][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [Online Code Editor \[closed\]][4]&#xD;&#xA; - [Is it a good idea to generate code with the help of your IDE? \[closed\]][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [What do you do when you can't seem to understand a certain part of programming? \[closed\]][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [Is Object Oriented stuff really that important? \[closed\]][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [why do some job posts say “high pressure environment”? \[closed\]][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [A Class named Class? \[closed\]][9]&#xD;&#xA; - [Offshoring a Software Project — Conflict Resolution \[closed\]][10]&#xD;&#xA; - [How long did it take you to get kernel programming down \[closed\]][11]&#xD;&#xA; - [Software engineer, already in late thirties, would I have trouble finding a new position? \[closed\]][12]&#xD;&#xA; - [Does Object Oriented Programming Really Model The Real World? \[closed\]][13]&#xD;&#xA; - [List of the really big and really small discrepancies with JS in the big 5 browsers \[closed\]][14]&#xD;&#xA; - [Python is slowly replacing C in universities. Does this move degrade the quality of CS students? \[closed\]][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1274/questions-being-tweeted&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136610/version-number-soup-in-ror-is-grails-better-django&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136736/online-code-editor&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137252/is-it-a-good-idea-to-generate-code-with-the-help-of-your-ide&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137385/what-do-you-do-when-you-cant-seem-to-understand-a-certain-part-of-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137372/is-object-oriented-stuff-really-that-important&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137520/why-do-some-job-posts-say-high-pressure-environment&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137715/a-class-named-class&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137794/offshoring-a-software-project-conflict-resolution&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137864/how-long-did-it-take-you-to-get-kernel-programming-down&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137896/software-engineer-already-in-late-thirties-would-i-have-trouble-finding-a-new&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137994/does-object-oriented-programming-really-model-the-real-world&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138132/list-of-the-really-big-and-really-small-discrepancies-with-js-in-the-big-5-brows&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138229/python-is-slowly-replacing-c-in-universities-does-this-move-degrade-the-quality" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25805" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5193" RevisionGUID="9c7c953e-39a9-4116-9afc-abb89e34fda6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As Thomas [already mentioned][1], this wouldn't really work as a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However it might work as a blog post, and if you feel you can write an interesting article about your project, explaining your design process and the features you are already planning to build, we'd love to host it in our [Community Blog][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will get feedback from the Programmers community through comments in your article, and of course it would be perfectly ok if you specifically asked for feedback on what features people would consider essential for your project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If that's something you feel is worth pursuing, you should ping `@WorldEngineer` or `@Dynamic` in our [Blog chat room][3] for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5169/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/2359/programmers-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25806" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5131" RevisionGUID="1c4fc32f-7a74-4bca-bf03-f037f58e018e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Given some of the top voted answers in [the last discussion about resource requests][1] and the close votes and flags from other members of the community against your question, it appears that people want to see a bigger emphasis on questions about problems rather than resource requests (even a request for the &quot;canonical reference&quot;). Questions should be about solving a problem, and links to resources should be part of good answers, along with experiences of other users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, prior to closing (as I mentioned in my comment), I did a Google search for &quot;object-oriented C&quot; (without quotation marks) and received numerous results. A precursor to asking a question should be to search for an answer, using your favorite search engine and on any relevant Stack Exchange sites. A question should address why these resources aren't sufficient for solving your problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [the FAQ][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below are two excerpts from the answers that are tied for top answer in the question I linked to above. As of now, both have 8 up votes and 0 down votes from members of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Mark Trapp's top answer][3] in the linked question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The problem with these questions aren't that they are asking for a book, it's that they don't describe anything about the problem the user is having, or rather why the user is asking the question, to afford a useful response. They're like asking, &quot;tell me what book will teach me everything and anything about Java.&quot; Where to begin? Questions must narrow the scope down to a specific problem, otherwise, they don't belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Robert Harvey's top answer][4] in the linked question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; While I begrudgingly accept the idea that resource requests are on-topic if they are specific enough, people should really be asking &quot;how&quot; questions, not &quot;what&quot; questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4108/4&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4104/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25808" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3175" RevisionGUID="41953a68-6f63-4525-be4e-27f498788627" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As far as I can tell moderator who declined your flag made two mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First mistake was not catching that [question is off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136082/java-interview-fundamentals) indeed. I believe it's minor because topicality at Programmers is [quite slippery](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3184/31260).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second mistake per my understanding is being too easy at casting decline to [your](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2471/rob-z) flag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Clarifications for declining flags given in **[September 2011 Newsletter](http://moderator.stackexchange.com/2011/09/september-2011-newsletter/)** of SE Community Moderator Blog look pretty straightforward:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; #Flags Too Often Marked `[declined]`  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Marking a flag `[declined]` was designed to deter serial abusers of the flagging system, but we find that this “slap on the wrist” is being used more often than is beneficial.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Flags should be closed as `[helpful]` under most circumstances. If you feel strongly that a question was flagged in bad faith, it is okay to mark it `[declined]`. But try to err on the side of clearing as `[helpful]` whenever the user is trying to be genuinely helpful, _even if you do not necessarily act on the flag_...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness - given that you both cast a close vote and flagged, I can imagine that moderator considered this as _abuse_ but I've yet to see from credible sources if this indeed qualifies as such.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;update&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Follow-up question at SO Meta:  &#xD;&#xA;  http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/123073/is-it-an-abuse-of-flagging-system-to-both-cast-a-close-vote-and-flag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25809" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5193" RevisionGUID="7aa0d97b-3429-4340-b40a-171a04a56bc2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As Thomas [already mentioned][1], this wouldn't really work as a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However it might work as a blog post, and if you feel you can write an interesting article about your project, explaining your design process and the features you are already planning to build, we'd love to host it in our [Community Blog][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will get feedback from the Programmers community through comments in your article, and of course it would be perfectly ok if you specifically asked for feedback on what features people would consider essential for your project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If that's something you feel is worth pursuing, you should ping `@WorldEngineer` or `@Dynamic` in our [Blog chat room][3] for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5169/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/2359/programmers-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25810" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="ef524556-786a-43b1-901e-a241f0432557" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [last celebration proposal][1] we had never got off of it's feet. In fact, the Birthday Celebration Proposal's time has come, and it left a long time ago. So a few other P.SE members and I came up with an idea: let's have a contest!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We realize that other sites that have had contests have had a lot of support, and the community didn't have to do too much of the dirty work. But that's the beauty of it. If we follow through with something like this, we will get more publicity and support from [higher powers][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have, somewhat, became the ugly little brother of Stack Overflow. We have had to rebuild, and clean up the mess from the early days of P.SE, before the [revolution][3]. A lot of other sites did too, but most are done. Mainly because they had SE backing them up. Or a CHAOS member.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why this contest will be great. We, as a community, will set the entire thing up, give it to SE, and let them serve it up. Overall, this is going to give us:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A stronger community.&#xD;&#xA; - More &quot;power users&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - A fun activity.&#xD;&#xA; - More executive support from SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;because they saw that we put it together ourselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you agree with any of these ideas please upvote. If you disagree, please downvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an idea, please post it as an answer to this question. Structure it in the same (or similar) format as I did. If you want to edit my idea, do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## And the winner is... Rachel! ##&#xD;&#xA;We will implement this contest as soon as possible. Hope everybody has a little fun and we can help the whole community. Thanks to everyone who voted and submitted ideas!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2858/belated-birthday-celebration-proposal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25811" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3193" RevisionGUID="89b650b7-9683-40cc-90f6-afb1b61dabd6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question [Burned out on programming and given up?][1] is currently [flagged for deletion][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be considered on-topic if the personal wall-of-text... er.. information was removed, and it is turned into a question about how to get past programming burnout, which seems to be what the OP was asking in the first place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have heavily edited the question in an attempt to bring it back on-topic. Please let me know if you think of anything else I can do to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/11425/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3172/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25812" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3298" RevisionGUID="dd0453f2-18d3-4bc1-b20e-74257847e2c0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Due to a huge amount of feedback received on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) regarding the deletion of massively-upvoted but off-topic/not-constructive questions, questions locked for historical reasons have taken on [new behavior](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/reputation-and-historical-archives/) that could be beneficial for Programmers (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Last but not least, we’re experimenting with ways to keep some of the more useful – [or even just fun](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/) – questions from the site’s history accessible in some way. To be clear: most of these are not great examples of questions that should be asked today… But some of them are, quite frankly, brilliant – and losing them entirely just because they aren’t a good fit for our strict Q&amp;A format is wrong. **For now, we’ve provided a “Historical Artifact” lock that completely freezes a question and its answers, preventing all further editing, voting, answering, and flagging. It will also remove it from the usual lists of questions on the site while allowing it to remain fully accessible and visible to everyone with a link to it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This, to me, obviates at least in part [previous guidance](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question) that locks should not be a substitute for closure and eventual deletion even on the whale questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since these questions are unlikely to be deleted any time soon, I'd like to propose locking for historical reasons the site's most popular closed questions—and thus removing them from the site's top questions list and helping to mitigate some user confusion—that have 100 score or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would be the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-programming-career&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/93983/why-dont-all-companies-buy-developers-the-best-hardware&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/perks-for-new-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91350/what-should-every-programmer-know&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20407/will-high-reputation-in-stack-overflow-help-to-get-a-good-job&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47197/are-there-any-famous-one-man-army-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64727/windows-azure-vs-amazon-ec2-vs-google-app-engine&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106202/my-boss-wants-a-narrated-line-by-line-english-explanation-of-our-code&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101988/should-developers-accept-overtime-weekend-work-denied-bonus-payments&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114819/are-9-to-5-programmers-looked-down-upon&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30355/how-to-become-a-faster-programmer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81929/is-it-normal-for-people-to-not-work&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36612/what-kind-of-innovative-non-cash-financial-benefits-do-i-offer-to-my-developers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32425/i-still-cant-figure-out-how-to-program&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11312/stuff-every-programmer-needs-while-working&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110804/why-are-zero-based-arrays-the-norm&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12807/make-a-big-deal-out-of-true&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50831/how-do-programmers-in-the-west-see-programmers-in-the-east&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1745/whats-the-most-absurd-myth-about-programming-issues&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Doing so should substantially clean up one of the major broken windows on the site: the [highest voted questions list](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25813" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3346" RevisionGUID="21d5381c-26b6-4db5-bb0c-fbeea66693a2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just because you have a suspicion that a question may have answers resulting in doing the asker's job/homework is no reason to close or hate on a question. A question is either good or bad for other reasons not related to whether answering it may do the asker's job/homework. I believe [Mark Trap's Answer][1] regarding homework questions is also relevant here. If someone manages to get some free work out of this site more power to them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2857/41381" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25814" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3214" RevisionGUID="8f458ff0-d765-42be-a473-fec3ae1fb435" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We welcome _some_ book recommendations, as described in the [accepted answer][1] on [&quot;Are book recommendations on-topic?&quot;][2] (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would say that like &quot;what language should I learn&quot; questions, questions that effectively ask for a list of books on X should be closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, like programming language questions, if you have **specialised requirements** (you want to go into LINQ, or networking, or.. in great depth) then perhaps those should be allowed. They should inspire answers that explain why a book is good for this topic and shouldn't just produce a list of everyone's favourite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On book questions that we feel are borderline there are two equally valid options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Add the &quot;good subjective - bad subjective&quot; warning and hope for the best,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Close the question as not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is getting down / close votes, flags, or very bad answers (think: just a link), option 2 is the better choice. The process is about the same for every borderline question and it's always a judgement call. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2004/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25815" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3492" RevisionGUID="5f02cfa1-278a-4c3b-9446-141903f1a3a8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Could we merge [tag:interface] questions (41 total) into [tag:interfaces] (10 total), and make them synonyms?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note given the number of questions, I'd bet 4:1 that &quot;interface&quot; makes better master tag. But since [the usual rule is to have the plural as the tag](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3492/tag-merge-synonym-request-interfaces-interface/3493#comment9388_3492 &quot;as pointed by Chris&quot;), I wouldn't mind it done the other way.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25816" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5217" RevisionGUID="a5f12838-acbb-42d3-abfd-a9979341db62" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While I understand that in the post Wikipedia era it's generally more difficult for professors to come up with homework questions whose answers don't exist on the web, that's a problem for the professors, not us. Adapt or die applies. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My teaching experience is extremely limited, and at a level a tad lower than University, however from that limited experience my conclusions are that cheaters will cheat, and there isn't much you can do about it. I was perhaps extremely lucky in that the majority of my students were interested enough in the subject matter to _not_ cheat, even though I actively _encouraged_ them to use Wikipedia and Stack Overflow (Programmers didn't exist at the time) and I'm very proud that some of them are today colleagues. A couple of the cheaters also made it, but most of them are flipping burgers somewhere. Oh, well, c'est la vie.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, I only taught for three years, let's see what [someone a tiny bit more experienced has to say][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My opinion is that there is nothing wrong at all with posting homework questions here, particularly interesting ones, and I find much of the negative reaction to homework-question posters to be somewhat strange, alien to my way of learning mathematics in a give-and-take exchange of mathematical ideas. Surely posting questions here and studying the answers is not much different than studying hard in the library, talking mathematics with one's colleagues at math tea or talking to one's professor, which are all excellent ways to learn mathematics. In particular, I expect that students who post questions here might learn just as much if not more from the resulting answers as from their professors---we have a number of talented mathematicians, who are very good at explaining things---and that math.SE provides a valuable service to students having unapproachable professors, having professors who do not explain well, or who have few colleagues able to help them. Furthermore, the math.SE community strongly benefits from the questions and the insightful answers that might be posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So my opinion is that there is no homework issue to speak of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In particular, I hereby give all of my own students complete permission to post any and all their homework problems here, and indeed I encourage them to post their questions here and to study the answers well and thereby to learn some mathematics. I will be testing them on their understanding at the exam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would also encourage all mathematics professors to adopt a policy of encouraging collaboration on homework among their students, as talking about mathematics with one's colleagues is assuredly one of the best ways to learn mathematics. Indeed, I recommend that all professors should actively encourage their students to form study groups in order to work on their homework problems together. Learning as a group, they will go very far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers already has very strict policies regarding the quality of questions, perhaps stricter than most other Stack Exchange sites, and there's absolutely no point at all in coming up with a specific policy regarding homework questions or what appears as homework questions. Any question that's within the scope of the site, as defined in our FAQ, and shows sufficient prior research is welcome to the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, and only for completeness sake, while &quot;professionals&quot; is in the description of the site, it does not disqualify amateurs, enthusiasts and students from using the site, provided they conduct themselves in a professional manner. Our goal is to build a high quality canonical resource that will hopefully help current and _future_ professionals, we don't check credentials at the door, and we never will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2894/how-can-programmers-se-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5157/appropriate-questions-on-java-programming-questions&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag &amp; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3202/blacklist-homework&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Stack Overflow: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [How to ask and answer homework questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions) - FAQ&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we now discourage the use of and burninate the homework tag?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/123758/can-we-now-discourage-the-use-of-and-burninate-the-homework-tag)&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we cut back on the “Is This Homework?” berating?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/130558/can-we-cut-back-on-the-is-this-homework-berating)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1652/what-do-we-do-with-users-who-post-numerous-unlabeled-homework-questions/1661#1661" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25817" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5217" RevisionGUID="99100f72-a8f7-424f-9dcd-3b410c8e666a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While I understand that in the post Wikipedia era it's generally more difficult for professors to come up with homework questions whose answers don't exist on the web, that's a problem for the professors, not us. Adapt or die applies. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My teaching experience is extremely limited, and at a level a tad lower than University, however from that limited experience my conclusions are that cheaters will cheat, and there isn't much you can do about it. I was perhaps extremely lucky in that the majority of my students were interested enough in the subject matter to _not_ cheat, even though I actively _encouraged_ them to use Wikipedia and Stack Overflow (Programmers didn't exist at the time) and I'm very proud that some of them are today colleagues. A couple of the cheaters also made it, but most of them are flipping burgers somewhere. Oh, well, c'est la vie.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, I only taught for three years, let's see what [someone a tiny bit more experienced has to say][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My opinion is that there is nothing wrong at all with posting homework questions here, particularly interesting ones, and I find much of the negative reaction to homework-question posters to be somewhat strange, alien to my way of learning mathematics in a give-and-take exchange of mathematical ideas. Surely posting questions here and studying the answers is not much different than studying hard in the library, talking mathematics with one's colleagues at math tea or talking to one's professor, which are all excellent ways to learn mathematics. In particular, I expect that students who post questions here might learn just as much if not more from the resulting answers as from their professors---we have a number of talented mathematicians, who are very good at explaining things---and that math.SE provides a valuable service to students having unapproachable professors, having professors who do not explain well, or who have few colleagues able to help them. Furthermore, the math.SE community strongly benefits from the questions and the insightful answers that might be posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So my opinion is that there is no homework issue to speak of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In particular, I hereby give all of my own students complete permission to post any and all their homework problems here, and indeed I encourage them to post their questions here and to study the answers well and thereby to learn some mathematics. I will be testing them on their understanding at the exam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would also encourage all mathematics professors to adopt a policy of encouraging collaboration on homework among their students, as talking about mathematics with one's colleagues is assuredly one of the best ways to learn mathematics. Indeed, I recommend that all professors should actively encourage their students to form study groups in order to work on their homework problems together. Learning as a group, they will go very far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers already has very strict policies regarding the quality of questions, perhaps stricter than most other Stack Exchange sites, and there's absolutely no point at all in coming up with a specific policy regarding homework questions or what appears as homework questions. Any question that's within the scope of the site, as defined in our FAQ, and shows sufficient prior research is welcome to the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, and only for completeness sake, while &quot;professionals&quot; is in the description of the site, it does not disqualify amateurs, enthusiasts and students from using the site, provided they conduct themselves in a professional manner. Our goal is to build a high quality canonical resource that will hopefully help current and _future_ professionals, we don't check credentials at the door, and we never will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2894/how-can-programmers-se-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5157/appropriate-questions-on-java-programming-questions&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag &amp; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3202/blacklist-homework&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Stack Overflow: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [How to ask and answer homework questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions) - FAQ&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we now discourage the use of and burninate the homework tag?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/123758/can-we-now-discourage-the-use-of-and-burninate-the-homework-tag)&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we cut back on the “Is This Homework?” berating?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/130558/can-we-cut-back-on-the-is-this-homework-berating)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1652/what-do-we-do-with-users-who-post-numerous-unlabeled-homework-questions/1661#1661" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25818" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3373" RevisionGUID="be1688ef-6277-49f3-9a6c-6274964ddb29" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A little background on the bounty: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier today I closed the question referenced in [this Meta question][1], which is the same question @karlphillip mentions on his bounty. He felt he should award one last bounty to one of the answerers, but as the question was closed [I advised him to find another one of the answerer's answers][2], on an open question, and award the bounty there. Didn't really want to re-open the original question for 24 hours, as we both agreed on the closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously that failed miserably since he chose an even more close worthy question to set the bounty on ;P That's on me, I should have mentioned that he should find a good on topic question as I'm painfully aware that there are still a lot of open questions that don't belong to the site. Apologies for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back to the question in question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that it's off topic and the proper way to handle this would be to refund the bounty and close the question. If no one objects though, I'd prefer to wait for 5 hours for @karlphillip to award the bounty and then close it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3364/is-it-possible-to-remove-the-community-wiki-status-of-a-question&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3988916#3988916" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25819" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3229" RevisionGUID="331d53f5-e655-4ddf-93b8-0696fe26a192" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The tags that should not be used should all have a description stating that in the tag description that appears when you are typing the tag. Examples include [tag:stci-career],  [tag:software-engineering] and [tag:software-development]. There are others, but I don't know what they all are off the top of my head.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also follow the [Structured Tag Clean-Up Initiative][1] here on Meta if you are interested in helping to clean up the bad tags that exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25820" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3496" RevisionGUID="4335b773-fe87-4354-99de-b0277330e80c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think it would be nice to merge tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [tag:vcs] (14 questions) -&gt; [tag:version-control] (307 questions)&#xD;&#xA;2. [tag:vm] (7 questions) -&gt; [tag:virtual-machine] (24 questions)&#xD;&#xA;3. [tag:foss] (11 questions) -&gt; [tag:open-source] (462 questions)  &#xD;&#xA;   that one looks tricky, see older discussion: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1405/we-have-an-open-source-a-free-software-and-a-foss-tag-are-philosophical-reason&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25821" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5223" RevisionGUID="a8f348e0-7c1b-43cb-951c-df82bb16e682" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If I'm sure the questions are not duplicates then I have no problem with copy/paste answers, however I try to always link to the source answer at the top of the question so the user can read it and possibly other answers there that might relate to them too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usually what ends up happening is I prefix my answer with a summary of the solution, add a link to the 2nd answer to say where I got the answer from, then copy/paste the 2nd answer in block quotes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everyone once in a while when the answer is similar, but not exact, I'll just copy/paste the answer straight and modify it to fit the 2nd question, however I usually still leave a link to the original answer for further reading if the other answers there may apply too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However like [Chris said][1], be sure it's not a duplicate first. If it is a duplicate, you don't want to copy/paste answers because its likely the questions will become merged, and you'll have two answers saying basically the same thing. So vote to close as a duplicate instead if the questions are the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5220/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25823" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5223" RevisionGUID="611d0f9e-08e7-4992-8d0c-b2786b20b888" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If I'm sure the questions are not duplicates then I have no problem with copy/paste answers, however I try to always link to the source answer at the top of the question so the user can read it and possibly other answers there that might relate to them too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usually what ends up happening is I prefix my answer with a summary of the solution, add a link to the 2nd answer to say where I got the answer from, then copy/paste the 2nd answer in block quotes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everyone once in a while when the answer is similar, but not exact, I'll just copy/paste the answer straight and modify it to fit the 2nd question, however I usually still leave a link to the original answer for further reading if the other answers there may apply too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However like [Chris said][1], be sure it's not a duplicate first. If it is a duplicate, you don't want to copy/paste answers because its likely the questions will become merged, and you'll have two answers saying basically the same thing. So vote to close as a duplicate instead if the questions are the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5220/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25824" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3564" RevisionGUID="0bdb2c18-94c4-49af-86b9-f7f034435224" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Should we force adding a comment with every down-vote?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/159/should-we-force-adding-a-comment-with-every-down-vote)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I'm here to help others by answering their questions to my best ability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel like I'm contributing to the community. Some of my answers get down-voted with no feedback. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that when somebody disagrees with your opinion, they should be required to leave their reason for down-voting. I'll be equally happy if reason is anonymous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the day I'm here to share knowledge as much as learn. I don't normally ask questions, so when I get down-voted I would like to see some structured criticism explaining the down-vote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, often it's obvious why answer is down-voted, but this is not always the case and it would be nice to get some feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are your thoughts on this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25825" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="68896afd-d52e-454d-93df-876f0f957cae" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [last celebration proposal][1] we had never got off of it's feet. In fact, the Birthday Celebration Proposal's time has come, and it left a long time ago. So a few other P.SE members and I came up with an idea: let's have a contest!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We realize that other sites that have had contests have had a lot of support, and the community didn't have to do too much of the dirty work. But that's the beauty of it. If we follow through with something like this, we will get more publicity and support from [higher powers][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have, somewhat, became the ugly little brother of Stack Overflow. We have had to rebuild, and clean up the mess from the early days of P.SE, before the [revolution][3]. A lot of other sites did too, but most are done. Mainly because they had SE backing them up. Or a CHAOS member.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why this contest will be great. We, as a community, will set the entire thing up, give it to SE, and let them serve it up. Overall, this is going to give us:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A stronger community.&#xD;&#xA; - More &quot;power users&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - A fun activity.&#xD;&#xA; - More executive support from SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;because they saw that we put it together ourselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you agree with any of these ideas please upvote. If you disagree, please downvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an idea, please post it as an answer to this question. Structure it in the same (or similar) format as I did. If you want to edit my idea, do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## And the winner is... Rachel! ##&#xD;&#xA;We will implement this contest as soon as possible. Hope everybody has a little fun and we can help the whole community. Thanks to everyone who voted and submitted ideas!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2858/belated-birthday-celebration-proposal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25826" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3252" RevisionGUID="ecee2692-ee09-4bff-a7d0-0d81c95014e6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Like 634 others, I follow [@StackProgrammer][1] on Twitter to read and retweet [hot questions][2]. However, it's been nagging at me recently that I perceived &quot;a lot&quot; of these tweets -- tweets ostensibly meant to focus attention on those questions and bring both veteran and new users into the site -- were leading to questions already closed or deleted by the time I read them (and my tweetstream is always on).&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;I looked at the last 100 tweets of hot questions, which only takes us back to Feb 21st, and 14 were closed and 1 was deleted.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not questioning whether or not the questions should've been closed, or even the speed with which they are closed (I agree with the community in all of the instances), but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Should we be concerned that 15% of our tweeted hot questions will lead users to closed or deleted questions?&#xD;&#xA; - If we should be concerned, and knowing that the moderators &amp; community members are doing their jobs, is there any tuning that can be done to what I assume is an automated process at the SE level?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bear in mind that I only looked at the last 100 because I only noticed it happening recently -- it could very well be that this isn't an issue at all and is just an off week.  But if it continues to happen at a similar pace, I think from a community promotion standpoint it might be a problem we should consider trying to solve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edited to add links** to most of the 14 closed questions, per @Rachel's request in a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Version Number Soup in RoR: Is Grails Better? Django? \[closed\]][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [Online Code Editor \[closed\]][4]&#xD;&#xA; - [Is it a good idea to generate code with the help of your IDE? \[closed\]][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [What do you do when you can't seem to understand a certain part of programming? \[closed\]][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [Is Object Oriented stuff really that important? \[closed\]][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [why do some job posts say “high pressure environment”? \[closed\]][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [A Class named Class? \[closed\]][9]&#xD;&#xA; - [Offshoring a Software Project — Conflict Resolution \[closed\]][10]&#xD;&#xA; - [How long did it take you to get kernel programming down \[closed\]][11]&#xD;&#xA; - [Software engineer, already in late thirties, would I have trouble finding a new position? \[closed\]][12]&#xD;&#xA; - [Does Object Oriented Programming Really Model The Real World? \[closed\]][13]&#xD;&#xA; - [List of the really big and really small discrepancies with JS in the big 5 browsers \[closed\]][14]&#xD;&#xA; - [Python is slowly replacing C in universities. Does this move degrade the quality of CS students? \[closed\]][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1274/questions-being-tweeted&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136610/version-number-soup-in-ror-is-grails-better-django&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136736/online-code-editor&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137252/is-it-a-good-idea-to-generate-code-with-the-help-of-your-ide&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137385/what-do-you-do-when-you-cant-seem-to-understand-a-certain-part-of-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137372/is-object-oriented-stuff-really-that-important&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137520/why-do-some-job-posts-say-high-pressure-environment&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137715/a-class-named-class&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137794/offshoring-a-software-project-conflict-resolution&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137864/how-long-did-it-take-you-to-get-kernel-programming-down&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137896/software-engineer-already-in-late-thirties-would-i-have-trouble-finding-a-new&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137994/does-object-oriented-programming-really-model-the-real-world&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138132/list-of-the-really-big-and-really-small-discrepancies-with-js-in-the-big-5-brows&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138229/python-is-slowly-replacing-c-in-universities-does-this-move-degrade-the-quality" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25827" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5239" RevisionGUID="f6c827c9-d9b5-47e6-bdb8-0a4402ff2582" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are a lot of things I don't like about the site's design, to the point that I'm using a stripped down version of NullUserException's [Theme Switcher userscript](http://stackapps.com/questions/2808/stackexchange-theme-switcher) to browse the site with the Beta theme:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although it's a very basic theme, I find it quite more enjoyable than the actual theme. But, who cares what I find enjoyable or not, this discussion is about identifying flaws in the design that are a bit more important than personal preference. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, the whiteboard concept. As you probably already know, the core concept of our design is inspired from this paragraph of [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In a nutshell, Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues. Hence the (awesome) whiteboard inspired design!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a great concept, and I'd be lying if I pretended I have a better idea. That said and while a whiteboard is an easily identifiable element of the software design process, it's also supposed to be ephemeral and sloppy. And basing the entire design on handrawn elements comes out more as sloppy than casual and/or conceptual. I don't know if the playful nature of the design was intentional or not, and I might be completely wrong but I feel that the original, more relaxed scope of the site was taken into consideration, even though the design was finalized after the scope changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [first round of design ideas](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed) was a lot cleaner and simpler than the [second round](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/655/site-design-round-2) and I'm guessing that feedback from the community played an important role in what appears to be a very drastic change in direction. The community back then was more accustomed to the old scope, and if you read through both discussions you'll find out that differentiating the site from Stack Overflow was considered quite important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it was, but I don't think it is any more. Programmers being defined by what it's not, rather than what it is has been a constant PITA for the community, and I really don't see why it should be such a big part of our identity _now_. We've gone a long way, we've certainly proved that we can stand on our own, and I'd really love it if the site's design and overall branding reflected that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not suggesting completely dropping the whiteboard concept (at least not until I come up with a better idea; expect a long wait), just that we're overusing it. Almost every design element has a hand-drawn look and feel, using [Hugh Laurie's handwritting](http://callsignkatejones.deviantart.com/art/House-Whiteboard-font-64929545) as our main font is completely nonsensical (more on this later), and nothing in the site says &quot;professional&quot;. Our design is far from clean and simple, in contrast with almost every other Stack Exchange site that targets professional audiences. Compare it, for example, with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Cross Validated](http://stats.stackexchange.com/) &#xD;&#xA;- [Database Administrators](http://dba.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [IT Security](http://security.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [User Experience](http://ux.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [GIS](http://gis.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Physics](http://physics.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even sites that mostly target enthusiasts, like [Bicycles](http://bicycles.stackexchange.com/), have cleaner and less playful designs. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Font (mini rant)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I _never_ understood why Hugh Laurie's handwritting was relevant to a site about conceptual questions on software development. I can certainly appreciate the nerd value, but: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **It's just a TV show.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A great TV show, but just a TV show and one that has absolutely nothing to do with programming. We love fun as much as everyone else, but this is supposed to be a place [where we hate fun](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **It's handwritting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not really the optimal choice for several of our labels, for example: [cohhunity bulletin](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3529/whats-this-cohhunity-bulletin). Any handwritting font has similar problems, and that's simply because handwritting fonts aren't really supposed to be clear and readable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **IT'S AN ALL CAPS FONT**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Why are we shouting things like &quot;QUESTIONS&quot;, &quot;COMMUNITY BULLETIN&quot;, &quot;FAVOURITE TAGS&quot;? Do we really need to emphasize labels that no other professional oriented Stack Exchange site seems to be emphasizing? Is there any value to using an ALL CAPS font, other than being annoyingly distracting? The only other site that uses ALL CAPS seems to be [Arqade](http://gaming.stackexchange.com/), which kinda proves my point, Arqade is awesome, but professional is not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All we're gaining with the font is nerd value, and I'm afraid going for nerd value on a site that's striving to be _the_ resource for conceptual software development questions isn't really a good idea, it's a quirky in joke that's fuelling a bad stereotype. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Can the design be changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A complete re-design is _probably_ out of the question. Jin, Stack Exchange's designer, already has a huge backlog, even if we only consider the custom themes of the Beta sites that are graduating. However I always felt that Programmers didn't really have the benefit of the normal process, with the drastic change in scope, and I'm hoping we could at least persuade Stack Exchange to at least consider taking another look at our theme, and perhaps we could just tone done some of the more playful elements. A few ideas:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Getting rid of the font,&#xD;&#xA;- Toning down (or completely removing) the horizontal header and footer lines,&#xD;&#xA;- A less curvy and over-styled header and footer,&#xD;&#xA;- Moving on from the whole whiteboard-y / handwritten style for at least some design elements (vote arrows, for example).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And while we're at it, we could also [fix the damn links](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1487/it-is-possible-to-change-the-colors-of-hypertext-links) ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to make it abudantly clear that changing anything in the design, even a complete re-design, would probably do _nothing_ at all to prevent low quality questions coming in. If that's our reason for changing the design, there are quite a few other things that we should improve first that would be far more beneficial in communicating what the site's about and what our general expectations are (stop upvoting crap, for example). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do feel though that a less casual, less playful design would help better communicating the site's purpose to our target audience. I had to explain the handwritting font a couple of times, and the response was less than enthusiastic, for more or less the reasons I explained in the mini-rant. My main reason for advocating for a cleaner, simpler, and all around more professional design is that it would help me advertise the site on professional communities, without having to explain quirky in-jokes or the no longer relevant need to differentiate ourselves from Stack Overflow.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/mgiXY.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25829" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5239" RevisionGUID="7751ec03-32dc-4c79-9832-e23bf73b9f6a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are a lot of things I don't like about the site's design, to the point that I'm using a stripped down version of NullUserException's [Theme Switcher userscript](http://stackapps.com/questions/2808/stackexchange-theme-switcher) to browse the site with the Beta theme:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although it's a very basic theme, I find it quite more enjoyable than the actual theme. But, who cares what I find enjoyable or not, this discussion is about identifying flaws in the design that are a bit more important than personal preference. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, the whiteboard concept. As you probably already know, the core concept of our design is inspired from this paragraph of [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In a nutshell, Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues. Hence the (awesome) whiteboard inspired design!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a great concept, and I'd be lying if I pretended I have a better idea. That said and while a whiteboard is an easily identifiable element of the software design process, it's also supposed to be ephemeral and sloppy. And basing the entire design on handrawn elements comes out more as sloppy than casual and/or conceptual. I don't know if the playful nature of the design was intentional or not, and I might be completely wrong but I feel that the original, more relaxed scope of the site was taken into consideration, even though the design was finalized after the scope changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [first round of design ideas](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed) was a lot cleaner and simpler than the [second round](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/655/site-design-round-2) and I'm guessing that feedback from the community played an important role in what appears to be a very drastic change in direction. The community back then was more accustomed to the old scope, and if you read through both discussions you'll find out that differentiating the site from Stack Overflow was considered quite important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it was, but I don't think it is any more. Programmers being defined by what it's not, rather than what it is has been a constant PITA for the community, and I really don't see why it should be such a big part of our identity _now_. We've gone a long way, we've certainly proved that we can stand on our own, and I'd really love it if the site's design and overall branding reflected that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not suggesting completely dropping the whiteboard concept (at least not until I come up with a better idea; expect a long wait), just that we're overusing it. Almost every design element has a hand-drawn look and feel, using [Hugh Laurie's handwritting](http://callsignkatejones.deviantart.com/art/House-Whiteboard-font-64929545) as our main font is completely nonsensical (more on this later), and nothing in the site says &quot;professional&quot;. Our design is far from clean and simple, in contrast with almost every other Stack Exchange site that targets professional audiences. Compare it, for example, with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Cross Validated](http://stats.stackexchange.com/) &#xD;&#xA;- [Database Administrators](http://dba.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [IT Security](http://security.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [User Experience](http://ux.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [GIS](http://gis.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Physics](http://physics.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even sites that mostly target enthusiasts, like [Bicycles](http://bicycles.stackexchange.com/), have cleaner and less playful designs. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Font (mini rant)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I _never_ understood why Hugh Laurie's handwritting was relevant to a site about conceptual questions on software development. I can certainly appreciate the nerd value, but: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **It's just a TV show.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A great TV show, but just a TV show and one that has absolutely nothing to do with programming. We love fun as much as everyone else, but this is supposed to be a place [where we hate fun](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **It's handwritting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not really the optimal choice for several of our labels, for example: [cohhunity bulletin](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3529/whats-this-cohhunity-bulletin). Any handwritting font has similar problems, and that's simply because handwritting fonts aren't really supposed to be clear and readable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **IT'S AN ALL CAPS FONT**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Why are we shouting things like &quot;QUESTIONS&quot;, &quot;COMMUNITY BULLETIN&quot;, &quot;FAVOURITE TAGS&quot;? Do we really need to emphasize labels that no other professional oriented Stack Exchange site seems to be emphasizing? Is there any value to using an ALL CAPS font, other than being annoyingly distracting? The only other site that uses ALL CAPS seems to be [Arqade](http://gaming.stackexchange.com/), which kinda proves my point, Arqade is awesome, but professional is not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All we're gaining with the font is nerd value, and I'm afraid going for nerd value on a site that's striving to be _the_ resource for conceptual software development questions isn't really a good idea, it's a quirky in joke that's fuelling a bad stereotype. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Can the design be changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A complete re-design is _probably_ out of the question. Jin, Stack Exchange's designer, already has a huge backlog, even if we only consider the custom themes of the Beta sites that are graduating. However I always felt that Programmers didn't really have the benefit of the normal process, with the drastic change in scope, and I'm hoping we could at least persuade Stack Exchange to at least consider taking another look at our theme, and perhaps we could just tone done some of the more playful elements. A few ideas:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Getting rid of the font,&#xD;&#xA;- Toning down (or completely removing) the horizontal header and footer lines,&#xD;&#xA;- A less curvy and over-styled header and footer,&#xD;&#xA;- Moving on from the whole whiteboard-y / handwritten style for at least some design elements (vote arrows, for example).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And while we're at it, we could also [fix the damn links](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1487/it-is-possible-to-change-the-colors-of-hypertext-links) ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to make it abudantly clear that changing anything in the design, even a complete re-design, would probably do _nothing_ at all to prevent low quality questions coming in. If that's our reason for changing the design, there are quite a few other things that we should improve first that would be far more beneficial in communicating what the site's about and what our general expectations are (stop upvoting crap, for example). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do feel though that a less casual, less playful design would help better communicating the site's purpose to our target audience. I had to explain the handwritting font a couple of times, and the response was less than enthusiastic, for more or less the reasons I explained in the mini-rant. My main reason for advocating for a cleaner, simpler, and all around more professional design is that it would help me advertise the site on professional communities, without having to explain quirky in-jokes or the no longer relevant need to differentiate ourselves from Stack Overflow.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/mgiXY.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25830" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3492" RevisionGUID="cbe56935-b45d-4c82-8214-05f8ebd30189" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Could we merge [tag:interface] questions (41 total) into [tag:interfaces] (10 total), and make them synonyms?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note given the number of questions, I'd bet 4:1 that &quot;interface&quot; makes better master tag. But since [the usual rule is to have the plural as the tag](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3492/tag-merge-synonym-request-interfaces-interface/3493#comment9388_3492 &quot;as pointed by Chris&quot;), I wouldn't mind it done the other way.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25831" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3629" RevisionGUID="7a820e24-4e03-4eb4-9318-d48e34480c61" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A while ago we cleaned up the [tag:beginners] tag, but it has returned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1473/do-we-need-to-ban-the-beginners-tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is now the time to request it gets added to the black list (after another clean up)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25832" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5272" RevisionGUID="d1cdf05e-3667-4c59-ace8-b8b60aea8ff0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="From what I notice, a number of requests notified on Meta are abandoned without being fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- For example [my request related to the color of the links][1] and posted a year ago is still ignored, while is has been shown (see [link][2] in the answer by Yannis Rizos to the linked request) that the actual choice of colors is poor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- In the same way, [the bug notification about the bottom of the links not being clickable][3] is still pending, one year after, with no reply whatsoever, while it is clearly a bug, and a very disturbing one, given that there is a visual response (red color) while the cursor is on a non-clickable area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Around a year ago (finding a link is a bit tricky), there was a request to add other relevant SE sites to the list shown when the question is being closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There is still only Stack Overflow, and no sign of willingness to add some relevant sites like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    - UX.SE or&#xD;&#xA;    - DBA.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  or a plethora of beta-state sites like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    - [Workplace.SE][4] (extremely relevant),&#xD;&#xA;    - [QA and testing][5] (would fit well for a bunch of questions posted the last week),&#xD;&#xA;    - [Personal Productivity][6] (the questions which fit better are quite frequent on Programmers.SE),&#xD;&#xA;    - [Project Management][7] (also a good place for many questions actually posted on Programmers.SE),&#xD;&#xA;    - etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What explains such passiveness? Is it because Joel Spolsky and his team lost interest in Programmers.SE, like he repeatedly explains in his podcasts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who is (or is there somebody) in charge of implementing new features and fixing bugs on Programmers.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a better place than Meta to ask for new features and to report bugs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1487/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/q/14194/6729&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/801/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25833" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3496" RevisionGUID="7b37f008-5ed9-4695-b2a9-aadb5f587669" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think it would be nice to merge tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [tag:vcs] (14 questions) -&gt; [tag:version-control] (307 questions)&#xD;&#xA;2. [tag:vm] (7 questions) -&gt; [tag:virtual-machine] (24 questions)&#xD;&#xA;3. [tag:foss] (11 questions) -&gt; [tag:open-source] (462 questions)  &#xD;&#xA;   that one looks tricky, see older discussion: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1405/we-have-an-open-source-a-free-software-and-a-foss-tag-are-philosophical-reason&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25834" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5272" RevisionGUID="b42580d8-65c3-474b-81c1-639e3c546b42" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="From what I notice, a number of requests notified on Meta are abandoned without being fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- For example [my request related to the color of the links][1] and posted a year ago is still ignored, while is has been shown (see [link][2] in the answer by Yannis Rizos to the linked request) that the actual choice of colors is poor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- In the same way, [the bug notification about the bottom of the links not being clickable][3] is still pending, one year after, with no reply whatsoever, while it is clearly a bug, and a very disturbing one, given that there is a visual response (red color) while the cursor is on a non-clickable area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Around a year ago (finding a link is a bit tricky), there was a request to add other relevant SE sites to the list shown when the question is being closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There is still only Stack Overflow, and no sign of willingness to add some relevant sites like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    - UX.SE or&#xD;&#xA;    - DBA.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  or a plethora of beta-state sites like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    - [Workplace.SE][4] (extremely relevant),&#xD;&#xA;    - [QA and testing][5] (would fit well for a bunch of questions posted the last week),&#xD;&#xA;    - [Personal Productivity][6] (the questions which fit better are quite frequent on Programmers.SE),&#xD;&#xA;    - [Project Management][7] (also a good place for many questions actually posted on Programmers.SE),&#xD;&#xA;    - etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What explains such passiveness? Is it because Joel Spolsky and his team lost interest in Programmers.SE, like he repeatedly explains in his podcasts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who is (or is there somebody) in charge of implementing new features and fixing bugs on Programmers.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a better place than Meta to ask for new features and to report bugs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1487/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/q/14194/6729&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/801/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25835" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3711" RevisionGUID="d495bf7f-70f0-4bde-9c33-067e02df2709" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="With my recent question issue  (see https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3709/where-did-this-question-go-wrong)&#xD;&#xA; it seems like a nice feature for users would be to auto suggest the correct site for a question. This could happen any number of ways, but I would think a quick and dirty implementation would use the tags the user has decided to use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, my question was apparently better suited for workplace. I used the people-management tag. If people management type of questions are not suitable for P.SE it would have been helpful (since I didn't know about workplace initially) for P.SE to suggest, &quot;Hey, you're using a tag that might make your question off-topic for this site. Maybe XYZ would be a better choice?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just my thoughts. I realize it could be a huge job, but could help new users and anyone who isn't familiar with the 50 SE sites that are available. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25836" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3564" RevisionGUID="3793394c-95ca-438b-b200-c92c840fb733" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Should we force adding a comment with every down-vote?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/159/should-we-force-adding-a-comment-with-every-down-vote)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I'm here to help others by answering their questions to my best ability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel like I'm contributing to the community. Some of my answers get down-voted with no feedback. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that when somebody disagrees with your opinion, they should be required to leave their reason for down-voting. I'll be equally happy if reason is anonymous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the day I'm here to share knowledge as much as learn. I don't normally ask questions, so when I get down-voted I would like to see some structured criticism explaining the down-vote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, often it's obvious why answer is down-voted, but this is not always the case and it would be nice to get some feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are your thoughts on this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25837" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3298" RevisionGUID="ad5f8969-0e11-4da5-9bb1-2943e70e6801" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Due to a huge amount of feedback received on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) regarding the deletion of massively-upvoted but off-topic/not-constructive questions, questions locked for historical reasons have taken on [new behavior](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/reputation-and-historical-archives/) that could be beneficial for Programmers (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Last but not least, we’re experimenting with ways to keep some of the more useful – [or even just fun](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/) – questions from the site’s history accessible in some way. To be clear: most of these are not great examples of questions that should be asked today… But some of them are, quite frankly, brilliant – and losing them entirely just because they aren’t a good fit for our strict Q&amp;A format is wrong. **For now, we’ve provided a “Historical Artifact” lock that completely freezes a question and its answers, preventing all further editing, voting, answering, and flagging. It will also remove it from the usual lists of questions on the site while allowing it to remain fully accessible and visible to everyone with a link to it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This, to me, obviates at least in part [previous guidance](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question) that locks should not be a substitute for closure and eventual deletion even on the whale questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since these questions are unlikely to be deleted any time soon, I'd like to propose locking for historical reasons the site's most popular closed questions—and thus removing them from the site's top questions list and helping to mitigate some user confusion—that have 100 score or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would be the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-programming-career&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/93983/why-dont-all-companies-buy-developers-the-best-hardware&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/perks-for-new-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/91350/what-should-every-programmer-know&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20407/will-high-reputation-in-stack-overflow-help-to-get-a-good-job&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47197/are-there-any-famous-one-man-army-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64727/windows-azure-vs-amazon-ec2-vs-google-app-engine&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106202/my-boss-wants-a-narrated-line-by-line-english-explanation-of-our-code&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101988/should-developers-accept-overtime-weekend-work-denied-bonus-payments&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114819/are-9-to-5-programmers-looked-down-upon&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30355/how-to-become-a-faster-programmer&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81929/is-it-normal-for-people-to-not-work&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36612/what-kind-of-innovative-non-cash-financial-benefits-do-i-offer-to-my-developers&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32425/i-still-cant-figure-out-how-to-program&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11312/stuff-every-programmer-needs-while-working&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110804/why-are-zero-based-arrays-the-norm&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12807/make-a-big-deal-out-of-true&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50831/how-do-programmers-in-the-west-see-programmers-in-the-east&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1745/whats-the-most-absurd-myth-about-programming-issues&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Doing so should substantially clean up one of the major broken windows on the site: the [highest voted questions list](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25839" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5290" RevisionGUID="c1106dec-79a5-4ef0-8c05-d47203fa7a1a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've noticed that there are various tags for C++, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c++]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c++03]&#xD;&#xA;* [c++0x &amp; c++11][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are tags for &quot;c--&quot;. Can we add some? I don't have enough reputation to create tags. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;Links on C--:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Wikipedia][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Official Website][3] ([Archive][4])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5289/c-duplicate-tags&#xD;&#xA; [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C--&#xD;&#xA; [3]: http://www.cminusminus.org/&#xD;&#xA; [4]: http://web.archive.org/web/20080822062234/http://www.cminusminus.org/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25840" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5319" RevisionGUID="d87b813d-e9ed-4c05-8915-bd9432577171" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'll probably get downvoted for this, but **No I don't think our FAQ represents the full reality of the site**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some of my reasons why I think that: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It defines on-topic based on the subject matter of the question only, while I feel our on-topic definition should also specify the type of answer required since the topic (conceptual software development) is so broad, and parts of it are off-topic for the site based on the type of answer they need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Existing proposal: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3318/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* There is no clarification about how Programmers differs from StackOverflow in the FAQ. This is one of the most frequently asked questions about Programmers, and I think having something in there would help reduce the number of code help questions we get that should be asked on SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Existing proposal: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1838/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Because of the number of broad recommendation requests we get, I would like to see something specifically stating that broad recommendation questions are off-topic, and a link to a meta post explaining why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Existing proposal: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3547/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I find the first FAQ line very misleading when combined with the current site name and design. It is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA; &gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA; &gt; about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I think it's too easy to mistakenly think this line is saying the site is &quot;for professional programmers [who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development]&quot;, instead of a site &quot;for getting expert answers to conceptual questions about software development by professional programmers&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Existing proposal: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3500/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know our FAQ covers a lot, and you might find some parts of the puzzle hidden in the wall of text somewhere, however I think it's missing some key pieces clarifying what types of questions are allowed here, and it could definitely use an update to make it shorter and easier to read/understand.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25842" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3346" RevisionGUID="e002b5dd-b841-41e3-bc2c-b1f27e4ad589" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just because you have a suspicion that a question may have answers resulting in doing the asker's job/homework is no reason to close or hate on a question. A question is either good or bad for other reasons not related to whether answering it may do the asker's job/homework. I believe [Mark Trap's Answer][1] regarding homework questions is also relevant here. If someone manages to get some free work out of this site more power to them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2857/41381" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25843" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3777" RevisionGUID="035c9a59-6c2e-4e4a-8f12-189bff3c6642" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="First of all, if you didn't know (and I can only hope you did), Programmers Stack Exchange has it's [own community blog][1] that anybody can contribute to. So, if you haven't been reading it, start now :-)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyways, currently we have very few solid contributors to the blog. We started with about 7 posts, and that number is quickly falling. Basically, if we don't get more community help with this, we are going to be on the verge of dying. So if you want to contribute, now is the time to start.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, we are in need of mainly writers, although if you would like to sign-up as an editor or proofreader, that would be fine. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To sign up, set up your answer as so:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Name&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ====&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ***Position (either editor/proofreader or writer or both)***&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Description. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are a writer, your description area is where you should put how many posts you'll be able to dish out per month or another time span. For example, `1 post every 1-2 months`. If you only want to write one post, and then stop helping, that's also fine, although we would love to see you stay. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once you sign up, we will contact you with your Wordpress account details and Trello account details. For more info on those services, and on how you will be helping, [see here][2]. If you have any questions, ping me in the [Programmers Blog Room][3], or leave a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's about it! Enjoy the blog, and start signing up :-)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Addendum**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Register on Trello with the handle you use here. I'll invite you once&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you ping me in the programmers blog chatroom. WP access can be gained&#xD;&#xA;&gt; by listing your email either in that chat or in your post here. If you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; want to be private about it send it to programmer.se.blog (at)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gmail.com with the subject line: Programmer Blog Sign-up. Please&#xD;&#xA;&gt; indicate your handle in the message as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25844" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5333" RevisionGUID="0058bd70-6fcf-4cc7-8e42-ab5674519fad" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've locked the question in question. It was closed once by 5 community users, reopened by 5 community users, and closed a second time by 5 community users - all of this without any moderator intervention. It's being discussed [in this Meta question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5327/are-general-nda-questions-on-topic), and so far no one has provided an answer to suggest that such questions are on topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25845" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3629" RevisionGUID="4e1d4bb0-2fe1-43ec-bf4d-58b7da0ea44e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A while ago we cleaned up the [tag:beginners] tag, but it has returned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1473/do-we-need-to-ban-the-beginners-tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is now the time to request it gets added to the black list (after another clean up)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25846" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3373" RevisionGUID="e96ee97b-968c-45a2-b02d-8209d68ffb27" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A little background on the bounty: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier today I closed the question referenced in [this Meta question][1], which is the same question @karlphillip mentions on his bounty. He felt he should award one last bounty to one of the answerers, but as the question was closed [I advised him to find another one of the answerer's answers][2], on an open question, and award the bounty there. Didn't really want to re-open the original question for 24 hours, as we both agreed on the closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously that failed miserably since he chose an even more close worthy question to set the bounty on ;P That's on me, I should have mentioned that he should find a good on topic question as I'm painfully aware that there are still a lot of open questions that don't belong to the site. Apologies for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back to the question in question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that it's off topic and the proper way to handle this would be to refund the bounty and close the question. If no one objects though, I'd prefer to wait for 5 hours for @karlphillip to award the bounty and then close it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3364/is-it-possible-to-remove-the-community-wiki-status-of-a-question&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3988916#3988916" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25847" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5319" RevisionGUID="16c8fef9-d631-4710-be44-c628580ef5d1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'll probably get downvoted for this, but **No I don't think our FAQ represents the full reality of the site**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some of my reasons why I think that: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It defines on-topic based on the subject matter of the question only, while I feel our on-topic definition should also specify the type of answer required since the topic (conceptual software development) is so broad, and parts of it are off-topic for the site based on the type of answer they need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Existing proposal: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3318/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* There is no clarification about how Programmers differs from StackOverflow in the FAQ. This is one of the most frequently asked questions about Programmers, and I think having something in there would help reduce the number of code help questions we get that should be asked on SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Existing proposal: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1838/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Because of the number of broad recommendation requests we get, I would like to see something specifically stating that broad recommendation questions are off-topic, and a link to a meta post explaining why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Existing proposal: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3547/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I find the first FAQ line very misleading when combined with the current site name and design. It is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA; &gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA; &gt; about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I think it's too easy to mistakenly think this line is saying the site is &quot;for professional programmers [who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development]&quot;, instead of a site &quot;for getting expert answers to conceptual questions about software development by professional programmers&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Existing proposal: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3500/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know our FAQ covers a lot, and you might find some parts of the puzzle hidden in the wall of text somewhere, however I think it's missing some key pieces clarifying what types of questions are allowed here, and it could definitely use an update to make it shorter and easier to read/understand.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25848" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3780" RevisionGUID="e661901b-f759-4c8c-a884-d9d309eb4aca" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've been following the Meta discussions that have been taking place for quite a while about the creation of our community blog.  And recently Dynamic posted here [asking for more contributors][1] to the blog.  I had no idea the blog was up and running and that there'd already been several good entries posted.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I can't find the Blog, what chance does someone have of finding it who isn't familiar with the site or even know that discussions have taken place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it would be a good idea to have our [community blog][2] be made visible somewhere on the main site.  More visibility would drive more interest and probably make requests for more contributors a thing of the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3777&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25849" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3711" RevisionGUID="a09dad6b-5878-410b-b307-f0c32756b6a6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="With my recent question issue  (see https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3709/where-did-this-question-go-wrong)&#xD;&#xA; it seems like a nice feature for users would be to auto suggest the correct site for a question. This could happen any number of ways, but I would think a quick and dirty implementation would use the tags the user has decided to use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, my question was apparently better suited for workplace. I used the people-management tag. If people management type of questions are not suitable for P.SE it would have been helpful (since I didn't know about workplace initially) for P.SE to suggest, &quot;Hey, you're using a tag that might make your question off-topic for this site. Maybe XYZ would be a better choice?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just my thoughts. I realize it could be a huge job, but could help new users and anyone who isn't familiar with the 50 SE sites that are available. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25850" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5333" RevisionGUID="346b000f-dc6b-4fb0-8833-3c2e5a957b71" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've locked the question in question. It was closed once by 5 community users, reopened by 5 community users, and closed a second time by 5 community users - all of this without any moderator intervention. It's being discussed [in this Meta question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5327/are-general-nda-questions-on-topic), and so far no one has provided an answer to suggest that such questions are on topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25852" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5335" RevisionGUID="7935185e-9601-4ccb-bee5-fe6e0d716ec6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just for the record, of the two questions you linked to, one was closed by 5 community members and the second was closed by a moderator in response to a user's flag on the post. Both were closed for the reason of &quot;not constructive&quot;, which is defined not only in the [FAQ's first three questions][1], but also two blog posts on the Stack Exchange blog - [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][2] and [Real Questions Have Answers][3] - which are also linked to in the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [first question, about iOS development][4], is a reference request. Generally, reference requests do not make good questions for Stack Exchange sites. As [previously discussed on Meta][5], the community is in favor of questions that are about solving a particular problem. The Stack Exchange format isn't good for generating lists of resources, but it's meant as a platform that requires humans to synthesize knowledge and experience combined with links to reputable resources to support that knowledge or experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although that question probably isn't salvageable, there are good questions in there about techniques for separation of concerns or the creation of a service model for domain objects using the Objective-C language on the iOS platform. Instead of asking for books about those subjects, the recommended approach would be to search through existing questions, then ask specific questions about your problem. Instead of getting a list of books, you'll get people's expertise and knowledge, along with links to various books, articles, blogs, documents, and so on that are appropriate for the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [second question, about reference variables][6], will likely begin a debate or extended discussion. One of the criteria for a good question on any Stack Exchange site is that it helps you solve some problem. Although there are some objective problems related to style and choosing a style, this particular question is just polling for opinions on which selection is better. Once you start getting into the realm of personal preferences and opinions, the question is no longer a good fit for the question and answer format of a Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178989/please-recommend-a-patterns-book-for-ios-development&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176260/what-is-the-convention-for-the-star-location-in-reference-variables" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25854" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3887" RevisionGUID="f70a48fa-aba0-4388-b4a7-d23ee06c89e4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159956/radio-button-select-and-deselect-when-making-onchange-from-dropdown-list) was closed earlier today with a comment left on it by @YannisRizos advising:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Hello and welcome! Implementation questions are off topic, you should ask them on our sister site Stack Overflow, however please make sure you add your code in the question. Read our FAQ thoroughly to see what questions we welcome on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although the question itself is not that great, should we have tried to help the user rephrase their question and then flagged it for migration to SO instead of closing the question? The user is most likely going to ask the question as-is (if at all) on SO and probably receive similar down and close votes there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [this question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/441/can-we-get-a-belongs-on-stackoverflow-as-a-closing-reason) it's my understanding we have a migration path to SO, should we be using that rather than a normal close vote?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25855" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5335" RevisionGUID="da22484f-a382-4be5-bb6e-c7d2e6af7279" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just for the record, of the two questions you linked to, one was closed by 5 community members and the second was closed by a moderator in response to a user's flag on the post. Both were closed for the reason of &quot;not constructive&quot;, which is defined not only in the [FAQ's first three questions][1], but also two blog posts on the Stack Exchange blog - [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][2] and [Real Questions Have Answers][3] - which are also linked to in the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [first question, about iOS development][4], is a reference request. Generally, reference requests do not make good questions for Stack Exchange sites. As [previously discussed on Meta][5], the community is in favor of questions that are about solving a particular problem. The Stack Exchange format isn't good for generating lists of resources, but it's meant as a platform that requires humans to synthesize knowledge and experience combined with links to reputable resources to support that knowledge or experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although that question probably isn't salvageable, there are good questions in there about techniques for separation of concerns or the creation of a service model for domain objects using the Objective-C language on the iOS platform. Instead of asking for books about those subjects, the recommended approach would be to search through existing questions, then ask specific questions about your problem. Instead of getting a list of books, you'll get people's expertise and knowledge, along with links to various books, articles, blogs, documents, and so on that are appropriate for the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [second question, about reference variables][6], will likely begin a debate or extended discussion. One of the criteria for a good question on any Stack Exchange site is that it helps you solve some problem. Although there are some objective problems related to style and choosing a style, this particular question is just polling for opinions on which selection is better. Once you start getting into the realm of personal preferences and opinions, the question is no longer a good fit for the question and answer format of a Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/178989/please-recommend-a-patterns-book-for-ios-development&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176260/what-is-the-convention-for-the-star-location-in-reference-variables" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25856" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5399" RevisionGUID="42198b12-aa9a-4098-988b-db3ce0242e2b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As ChrisF [already mentioned][1] you were never suspended by a moderator. We send you a message on Oct 9 expressing concerns about your questions, but that was just a friendly warning. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The automatic question block, that we have absolutely no control over, kicked in at the same time. While the mod message did _not_ trigger the question block, since the two events coincided I can understand why you thought the block was initiated by the moderators, and on behalf of the community I'd like to apologize for the confusion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've repeatedly asked Stack Exchange to let moderators know when the question block has kicked in, to avoid situations like these, but they've denied all my requests. I honestly feel like an idiot when I send a mod message explaining to the user what they can do to ask better questions in the future, only to find out that they can't ask questions because of the block. I would send a very different message if I knew the block was already in place (or I wouldn't send a message at all). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question block is something only you can reverse. You should concentrate on giving great answers, and follow all the advice given in the Meta Stack Overflow question ChrisF linked to. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5396/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25857" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3416" RevisionGUID="a3f80754-9cae-44ce-b54f-ce24d904670f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [last celebration proposal][1] we had never got off of it's feet. In fact, the Birthday Celebration Proposal's time has come, and it left a long time ago. So a few other P.SE members and I came up with an idea: let's have a contest!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We realize that other sites that have had contests have had a lot of support, and the community didn't have to do too much of the dirty work. But that's the beauty of it. If we follow through with something like this, we will get more publicity and support from [higher powers][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have, somewhat, became the ugly little brother of Stack Overflow. We have had to rebuild, and clean up the mess from the early days of P.SE, before the [revolution][3]. A lot of other sites did too, but most are done. Mainly because they had SE backing them up. Or a CHAOS member.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why this contest will be great. We, as a community, will set the entire thing up, give it to SE, and let them serve it up. Overall, this is going to give us:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A stronger community.&#xD;&#xA; - More &quot;power users&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; - A fun activity.&#xD;&#xA; - More executive support from SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;because they saw that we put it together ourselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you agree with any of these ideas please upvote. If you disagree, please downvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an idea, please post it as an answer to this question. Structure it in the same (or similar) format as I did. If you want to edit my idea, do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## And the winner is... Rachel! ##&#xD;&#xA;We will implement this contest as soon as possible. Hope everybody has a little fun and we can help the whole community. Thanks to everyone who voted and submitted ideas!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2858/belated-birthday-celebration-proposal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25858" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5399" RevisionGUID="25f45b6b-c5e1-4ebf-aee3-73666650158b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As ChrisF [already mentioned][1] you were never suspended by a moderator. We send you a message on Oct 9 expressing concerns about your questions, but that was just a friendly warning. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The automatic question block, that we have absolutely no control over, kicked in at the same time. While the mod message did _not_ trigger the question block, since the two events coincided I can understand why you thought the block was initiated by the moderators, and on behalf of the community I'd like to apologize for the confusion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've repeatedly asked Stack Exchange to let moderators know when the question block has kicked in, to avoid situations like these, but they've denied all my requests. I honestly feel like an idiot when I send a mod message explaining to the user what they can do to ask better questions in the future, only to find out that they can't ask questions because of the block. I would send a very different message if I knew the block was already in place (or I wouldn't send a message at all). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question block is something only you can reverse. You should concentrate on giving great answers, and follow all the advice given in the Meta Stack Overflow question ChrisF linked to. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5396/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25859" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3777" RevisionGUID="70d0f87f-bf94-4eb0-b6c3-b5446ee1b807" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="First of all, if you didn't know (and I can only hope you did), Programmers Stack Exchange has it's [own community blog][1] that anybody can contribute to. So, if you haven't been reading it, start now :-)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyways, currently we have very few solid contributors to the blog. We started with about 7 posts, and that number is quickly falling. Basically, if we don't get more community help with this, we are going to be on the verge of dying. So if you want to contribute, now is the time to start.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, we are in need of mainly writers, although if you would like to sign-up as an editor or proofreader, that would be fine. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To sign up, set up your answer as so:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Name&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ====&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ***Position (either editor/proofreader or writer or both)***&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Description. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are a writer, your description area is where you should put how many posts you'll be able to dish out per month or another time span. For example, `1 post every 1-2 months`. If you only want to write one post, and then stop helping, that's also fine, although we would love to see you stay. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once you sign up, we will contact you with your Wordpress account details and Trello account details. For more info on those services, and on how you will be helping, [see here][2]. If you have any questions, ping me in the [Programmers Blog Room][3], or leave a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's about it! Enjoy the blog, and start signing up :-)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Addendum**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Register on Trello with the handle you use here. I'll invite you once&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you ping me in the programmers blog chatroom. WP access can be gained&#xD;&#xA;&gt; by listing your email either in that chat or in your post here. If you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; want to be private about it send it to programmer.se.blog (at)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gmail.com with the subject line: Programmer Blog Sign-up. Please&#xD;&#xA;&gt; indicate your handle in the message as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25860" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5438" RevisionGUID="adc786e9-d89d-420e-96d8-2f2ce8fc4a53" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There exists a grace period for 5 minutes after the first submit that rolls all edits in that time into the original post so they don't count so you can make those quick minor edits. Otherwise start taking advantage of the instant preview it works great and it seems pretty crazy that you prefer more clicks to format your answer. Also please note that posting a partially complete answer and rapidly editing more and more info is somewhat discouraged behavior as it creates the [fastest gun in the west][1] problem. As for a Question it's in your best interest to post as good of a question as possible the first time, because once its posted people will start voting on it and you could wind up have a bunch of down-votes or close votes that could have been avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason the threshold exists is to prevent people from continually editing their answers/questions which [bumps](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info &quot;what's this&quot;) them to the top of the page for more rep from upvotes, 10 was decided as a fair number to allow people to benefit from providing meaningful updates and prevent bad people from benefiting too much. Moderators also have the ability to remove CW status, but this is rarely done and generally requires an [exceptional answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3527/31260 &quot;example request for an exceptional answer&quot;) that a user has obviously put forth a lot of effort to maintain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/9731/203115" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25861" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5438" RevisionGUID="a93e8976-0230-4ea1-91ad-89061d9fbc59" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There exists a grace period for 5 minutes after the first submit that rolls all edits in that time into the original post so they don't count so you can make those quick minor edits. Otherwise start taking advantage of the instant preview it works great and it seems pretty crazy that you prefer more clicks to format your answer. Also please note that posting a partially complete answer and rapidly editing more and more info is somewhat discouraged behavior as it creates the [fastest gun in the west][1] problem. As for a Question it's in your best interest to post as good of a question as possible the first time, because once its posted people will start voting on it and you could wind up have a bunch of down-votes or close votes that could have been avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason the threshold exists is to prevent people from continually editing their answers/questions which [bumps](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info &quot;what's this&quot;) them to the top of the page for more rep from upvotes, 10 was decided as a fair number to allow people to benefit from providing meaningful updates and prevent bad people from benefiting too much. Moderators also have the ability to remove CW status, but this is rarely done and generally requires an [exceptional answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3527/31260 &quot;example request for an exceptional answer&quot;) that a user has obviously put forth a lot of effort to maintain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/9731/203115" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25862" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3492" RevisionGUID="f13ce7d8-4f8a-40ce-8124-36e5e0914f7d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Could we merge [tag:interface] questions (41 total) into [tag:interfaces] (10 total), and make them synonyms?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note given the number of questions, I'd bet 4:1 that &quot;interface&quot; makes better master tag. But since [the usual rule is to have the plural as the tag](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3492/tag-merge-synonym-request-interfaces-interface/3493#comment9388_3492 &quot;as pointed by Chris&quot;), I wouldn't mind it done the other way.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25863" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3780" RevisionGUID="1e9e0ba5-5fab-459f-9907-08f685c24ef8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've been following the Meta discussions that have been taking place for quite a while about the creation of our community blog.  And recently Dynamic posted here [asking for more contributors][1] to the blog.  I had no idea the blog was up and running and that there'd already been several good entries posted.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I can't find the Blog, what chance does someone have of finding it who isn't familiar with the site or even know that discussions have taken place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it would be a good idea to have our [community blog][2] be made visible somewhere on the main site.  More visibility would drive more interest and probably make requests for more contributors a thing of the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3777&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25864" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5470" RevisionGUID="62e10a69-d9ef-471c-8e2c-65c31450e050" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've just deleted your question - for technical reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You cross posted the question on The Workplace, and the community there seemed to welcome it. When I noticed, I migrated the Programmers version to the Workplace, and promptly voted to close it as a duplicate of the version you posted yourself. The question was closed a couple of hours after the migration, and then merged with its duplicate. That was the plan, a single version of the question with all its answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But a few minutes ago I noticed that the Programmers version of the question - that was supposed to be just a migration stub pointing to the merged version on The Workplace - was actually appearing in full, with no mention of the migration and closed as off topic. What had happened was that a Workplace moderator deleted the merge stub on their site, which for some reason also rejected the migration and brought the question back to Programmers. That's... not normal, the deletion of the stub shouldn't had rejected the migration, and I've already contacted Stack Exchange about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To avoid any further confusion, I've deleted the Programmers version of the question. For reference, the relevant links are: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Workplace version][1], the proper version of the question, with all the answers&#xD;&#xA;- [Workplace merge stub][2], deleted (2K+ link)&#xD;&#xA;- [Programmers version][3], deleted (10K+ link)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I fully realize the [irony of deleting the question][4], it was necessary to maintain some sanity, a single version of the question with all its answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please _do not_ cross post**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flag the question for mod attention and ask for it to be migrated, cross posts are messy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9010/how-does-one-network-at-conferences-beyond-the-first-conversation&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9016/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences-beyond-the-first-conversation&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/184017/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences-beyond-the-first-conversation&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5463/are-we-too-strict-where-should-off-topic-questions-go#comment13743_5463" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25865" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5470" RevisionGUID="1623d2d8-2135-4ff7-aee2-5e1afac3e672" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've just deleted your question - for technical reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You cross posted the question on The Workplace, and the community there seemed to welcome it. When I noticed, I migrated the Programmers version to the Workplace, and promptly voted to close it as a duplicate of the version you posted yourself. The question was closed a couple of hours after the migration, and then merged with its duplicate. That was the plan, a single version of the question with all its answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But a few minutes ago I noticed that the Programmers version of the question - that was supposed to be just a migration stub pointing to the merged version on The Workplace - was actually appearing in full, with no mention of the migration and closed as off topic. What had happened was that a Workplace moderator deleted the merge stub on their site, which for some reason also rejected the migration and brought the question back to Programmers. That's... not normal, the deletion of the stub shouldn't had rejected the migration, and I've already contacted Stack Exchange about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To avoid any further confusion, I've deleted the Programmers version of the question. For reference, the relevant links are: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Workplace version][1], the proper version of the question, with all the answers&#xD;&#xA;- [Workplace merge stub][2], deleted (2K+ link)&#xD;&#xA;- [Programmers version][3], deleted (10K+ link)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I fully realize the [irony of deleting the question][4], it was necessary to maintain some sanity, a single version of the question with all its answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please _do not_ cross post**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flag the question for mod attention and ask for it to be migrated, cross posts are messy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9010/how-does-one-network-at-conferences-beyond-the-first-conversation&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9016/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences-beyond-the-first-conversation&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/184017/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences-beyond-the-first-conversation&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5463/are-we-too-strict-where-should-off-topic-questions-go#comment13743_5463" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25866" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3957" RevisionGUID="d1ca7212-ccd0-400b-ab4f-a0d31f479e2f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135260/server-response-as-return-value-for-function&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Preface: I'm **very** mindful of ['The Summer of Love'][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Problem: I feel like the OP has a genuine question [here][2]. It's just that it's obfuscated by extremely poor grammar and perhaps an incomplete understanding of how client-server architecture works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question: Is there a way that we could &quot;gently&quot; tell the OP that he must improve the grammar and the clarity of his question if he expects people to respond with constructive, helpful answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3836/programmers-se-and-the-summer-of-love&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135260/server-response-as-return-value-for-function" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25867" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3496" RevisionGUID="4dae0806-5cb8-467c-93b8-483d0a3c5c45" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think it would be nice to merge tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [tag:vcs] (14 questions) -&gt; [tag:version-control] (307 questions)&#xD;&#xA;2. [tag:vm] (7 questions) -&gt; [tag:virtual-machine] (24 questions)&#xD;&#xA;3. [tag:foss] (11 questions) -&gt; [tag:open-source] (462 questions)  &#xD;&#xA;   that one looks tricky, see older discussion: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1405/we-have-an-open-source-a-free-software-and-a-foss-tag-are-philosophical-reason&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25868" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5472" RevisionGUID="e0851ece-838c-46c1-82fa-1d316acc1e2b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As [Deco][1] [said][2], there is a similar question, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37029/difference-between-defect-and-bugtesting/ where one of the answers gives the definitions of _error_, _faults_, and _failures_ given by the IEEE Standards. As the questions on Academia doesn't have any answer, migrating it on Programmers would have just the effect of closing it, without even the possibility of merging them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/42031/deco&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5471/question-migrationerror-terminology#comment13773_5471" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25869" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3887" RevisionGUID="01677dd5-cf45-44bd-9a31-e49e7776c771" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159956/radio-button-select-and-deselect-when-making-onchange-from-dropdown-list) was closed earlier today with a comment left on it by @YannisRizos advising:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Hello and welcome! Implementation questions are off topic, you should ask them on our sister site Stack Overflow, however please make sure you add your code in the question. Read our FAQ thoroughly to see what questions we welcome on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although the question itself is not that great, should we have tried to help the user rephrase their question and then flagged it for migration to SO instead of closing the question? The user is most likely going to ask the question as-is (if at all) on SO and probably receive similar down and close votes there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [this question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/441/can-we-get-a-belongs-on-stackoverflow-as-a-closing-reason) it's my understanding we have a migration path to SO, should we be using that rather than a normal close vote?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25870" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5472" RevisionGUID="4828081c-e43a-45ac-bff4-a6a12483e674" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As [Deco][1] [said][2], there is a similar question, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37029/difference-between-defect-and-bugtesting/ where one of the answers gives the definitions of _error_, _faults_, and _failures_ given by the IEEE Standards. As the questions on Academia doesn't have any answer, migrating it on Programmers would have just the effect of closing it, without even the possibility of merging them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/42031/deco&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5471/question-migrationerror-terminology#comment13773_5471" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25871" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3564" RevisionGUID="5372091b-ec9c-4c2f-8599-2c9704bd1083" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Should we force adding a comment with every down-vote?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/159/should-we-force-adding-a-comment-with-every-down-vote)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I'm here to help others by answering their questions to my best ability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel like I'm contributing to the community. Some of my answers get down-voted with no feedback. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that when somebody disagrees with your opinion, they should be required to leave their reason for down-voting. I'll be equally happy if reason is anonymous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the day I'm here to share knowledge as much as learn. I don't normally ask questions, so when I get down-voted I would like to see some structured criticism explaining the down-vote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, often it's obvious why answer is down-voted, but this is not always the case and it would be nice to get some feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are your thoughts on this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25872" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3957" RevisionGUID="398b9d52-d9bf-473d-b01e-70475a586616" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135260/server-response-as-return-value-for-function&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Preface: I'm **very** mindful of ['The Summer of Love'][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Problem: I feel like the OP has a genuine question [here][2]. It's just that it's obfuscated by extremely poor grammar and perhaps an incomplete understanding of how client-server architecture works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question: Is there a way that we could &quot;gently&quot; tell the OP that he must improve the grammar and the clarity of his question if he expects people to respond with constructive, helpful answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3836/programmers-se-and-the-summer-of-love&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135260/server-response-as-return-value-for-function" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25873" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5506" RevisionGUID="ded460d7-91d9-4084-ba3a-de23359bf557" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Heh... You got *lucky*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See, [Sam *The Brand* Brand][1] has been doing this syndication deal with the respected tech-news site ArsTechnica. Today, they republished some of the top answers from [Is there an excuse for short variable names?](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names/)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[...Including yours...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names/176611#176611)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...Wherein you link to that &quot;problem domain&quot; question using the referral format:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The code simply assumes the [problem domain](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/125926/50950) familiarity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, *normally* using the referral shortlink in an answer doesn't do much for you; we don't count links from *within* Stack Exchange when figuring up these badges. But of course, if someone copies the text of your answer (hopefully [in a CC-Wiki-compliant fashion][2]) to another domain and it generates a bunch of inbound links, well...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Free badge! Yay! – [Yannis Rizos](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5505/buggy-announcer-badge#comment13887_5505)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/39006/samthebrand&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/attribution-required/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25874" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5506" RevisionGUID="989836c2-51e3-44f8-bb9f-294d0e8a2cba" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Heh... You got *lucky*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See, [Sam *The Brand* Brand][1] has been doing this syndication deal with the respected tech-news site ArsTechnica. Today, they republished some of the top answers from [Is there an excuse for short variable names?](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names/)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[...Including yours...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names/176611#176611)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...Wherein you link to that &quot;problem domain&quot; question using the referral format:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The code simply assumes the [problem domain](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/125926/50950) familiarity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, *normally* using the referral shortlink in an answer doesn't do much for you; we don't count links from *within* Stack Exchange when figuring up these badges. But of course, if someone copies the text of your answer (hopefully [in a CC-Wiki-compliant fashion][2]) to another domain and it generates a bunch of inbound links, well...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Free badge! Yay! – [Yannis Rizos](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5505/buggy-announcer-badge#comment13887_5505)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/39006/samthebrand&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/attribution-required/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25875" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3966" RevisionGUID="c87e21c2-2ed2-4256-b01b-e32afba071f1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Is there any site maintenance going on currently?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3944/is-there-any-site-maintenance-going-on-currently)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Last week, my reputation was about 550 and since then it's been decreasing down to 494, as of today. However, my profile shows no reputation changes since 3 weeks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can that be happening?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25877" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5511" RevisionGUID="7bdc1f9b-ffdd-4b75-b96f-61bcd44aa607" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per the [meta-faq post about career-questions][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Can I ask career advice questions?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; No, **unless your question is specifically about software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and requires the unique insights of a programmer**. Most career advice&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions [run the risk of being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; try to make yours a [good subjective&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the question is about a programmer-specific work environment, providing items from a Programmer-specific &quot;Bill of Rights&quot;, I think that it is on-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a side note, I know [another answer][2] suggested that the question get cleaned up and migrated to the Workplace, however the original question was [cross-posted](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/9381) on the Workplace. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They've edited their version to fit their site scope, and I edited the one here to try and fit Programmer's scope. The end result is two very different but related questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE**: [Is it reasonable to expect all the items on the &quot;Programmers Bill of Rights&quot;?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Workplace.SE**: [How to encourage an employer to adopt the &quot;Programmer's Bill of Rights&quot;?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think the Programmers version is OK now, and have voted to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1165/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5509/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/185784/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/9381" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25878" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3991" RevisionGUID="7157b844-858d-4799-a4b2-6e90a34a53a9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Many a times we need to refer some huge files while asking a question in this site. If I have a question regarding HTML, CSS or jQuery I can use jsFiddle to upload the content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the case of XML file (for example WSDL) what is the best place for uploading and referring?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are the most popular site for this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3993/is-it-encouraged-to-refer-jsfiddle&#xD;&#xA;2. http://www.awwwards.com/10-html-css-online-code-editors-for-web-developers.html&#xD;&#xA;3. Dabblet, Thimble, by Mozilla, jsFiddle, jsBin, Cloud9, CodeMirror, eXo Cloud IDE, CodeRun, Compilr, Codeanywhere, Kodingen, Google Developers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25879" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5511" RevisionGUID="a53d70e6-b391-4ee9-a06b-d65601d3d0fc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per the [meta-faq post about career-questions][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Can I ask career advice questions?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; No, **unless your question is specifically about software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and requires the unique insights of a programmer**. Most career advice&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions [run the risk of being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; try to make yours a [good subjective&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the question is about a programmer-specific work environment, providing items from a Programmer-specific &quot;Bill of Rights&quot;, I think that it is on-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a side note, I know [another answer][2] suggested that the question get cleaned up and migrated to the Workplace, however the original question was [cross-posted](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/9381) on the Workplace. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They've edited their version to fit their site scope, and I edited the one here to try and fit Programmer's scope. The end result is two very different but related questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE**: [Is it reasonable to expect all the items on the &quot;Programmers Bill of Rights&quot;?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Workplace.SE**: [How to encourage an employer to adopt the &quot;Programmer's Bill of Rights&quot;?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think the Programmers version is OK now, and have voted to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1165/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5509/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/185784/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/9381" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25880" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3629" RevisionGUID="6e07546a-2c12-4d43-b543-bb2addfb3bca" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A while ago we cleaned up the [tag:beginners] tag, but it has returned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1473/do-we-need-to-ban-the-beginners-tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is now the time to request it gets added to the black list (after another clean up)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25881" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5621" RevisionGUID="de53a6c8-7eb6-4b57-9d94-b81828ebe93f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per [Aaron's suggestion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5617/3965) the question has been edited to provide more emphasis on the differences that weren't covered in the duplicate.  Please join me in voting to reopen if you agree with the changes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25882" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4019" RevisionGUID="cfd04bfe-3fd7-40e9-a17b-98a8d7a2dbbc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Would the &amp;ldquo;General Reference&amp;rdquo; close reason be useful here on Programmers?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1994/would-the-general-reference-close-reason-be-useful-here-on-programmers)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;On Scifi.SE, they have a close reason &quot;General Reference&quot; that states &quot;This question is too basic; it can be definitively and permanently answered by a single link to a standard internet reference source designed specifically to find that type of information.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this would be tremendously useful and a much better explanation for closing many of the &quot;panic questions&quot; and &quot;help vampires&quot; that pop up. Would it be possible for us to get such a thing? I can't count the number of times I've seen questions like this appear on Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25883" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3650" RevisionGUID="7ddd6b3d-6b71-4391-a5cb-25a47514c1a9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [How can Programmers.SE be used to assist students with class assignments?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2894/how-can-programmers-se-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;The question [How to solve this problem without the use of if-else statements?][1]&#xD;&#xA;was recently asked. And somebody [answered][2] with the full solution to their problem, code and all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think they kind of behavior should be allowed as it does not benefit the student at all. It almost seems like people who do that are doing it for the reputation. And not for the good of the student, since it does no good for the student to be handed the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what is the official consensus on this? Am I totally in the wrong here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151312/how-to-solve-this-problem-without-the-use-of-if-else-statements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151312/how-to-solve-this-problem-without-the-use-of-if-else-statements/151328#151328" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25884" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4068" RevisionGUID="02a45ded-ea8a-44c2-89a7-e3a2e94189d7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's a terrible tag and it should die an ignoble death.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had it on [the chopping block][1] before, but it slipped through the cracks while we were dealing with even worse tags that were far more prolific.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kill it. Kill it with fire.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1940/8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25885" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3711" RevisionGUID="9f91201a-e487-46da-974c-4c9b202cd99e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="With my recent question issue  (see https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3709/where-did-this-question-go-wrong)&#xD;&#xA; it seems like a nice feature for users would be to auto suggest the correct site for a question. This could happen any number of ways, but I would think a quick and dirty implementation would use the tags the user has decided to use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, my question was apparently better suited for workplace. I used the people-management tag. If people management type of questions are not suitable for P.SE it would have been helpful (since I didn't know about workplace initially) for P.SE to suggest, &quot;Hey, you're using a tag that might make your question off-topic for this site. Maybe XYZ would be a better choice?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just my thoughts. I realize it could be a huge job, but could help new users and anyone who isn't familiar with the 50 SE sites that are available. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25886" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4097" RevisionGUID="7c927d10-e575-4643-a28b-ed233e52d112" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Why are so many questions closed?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I just joined this stackexchange, and I'm sure this question will get closed like so many others as being subjective or &quot;not constructive&quot;. I did a quick count on the first few pages, and it looks like at least 10% of questions are closed. One page I saw had 22 out of 50 questions closed. What does closing so many questions solve? Apparently it does not reduce the number of &quot;bad questions&quot;. Instead it just prevents people who would otherwise be interested in answering from doing so. Why can't the people who dislike all these questions just.. not answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25887" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5719" RevisionGUID="b3cd01e6-3527-4be8-a5ec-4d581606ce2f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="With this recent spurt of activity on meta, a number of opinions have come out. A number of these describe some rather radical changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(please pardon me if I ascribe rather extreme positions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On everything should be open&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**There are instances where people seem to be opposed to closing any question for any reason.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Many of these people who are 3k and above have few if any close vote&#xD;&#xA;   reviews&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This suggests that either everything should be open or that they are comfortable with what is closed.  This is sometimes refuted by numerous &quot;reopen&quot; votes without any &quot;leave closed&quot; reviews.  From this, I can only conclude that there is the perception that everything should be open and there should be no moderation closing things - everything can be salvaged, somehow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On down votes&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;**There are suggestions that there shouldn't be downvotes for users with less than a certain reputation.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Somehow this suggestion has 10 positive votes at the time of this&#xD;&#xA;   writing (and 11 downvotes)&#xD;&#xA; - This is done in the name of &quot;welcoming users&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - People seem to take down votes personally&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Down votes are a necessary feedback to users and part of the design of the system.  There is a threshold where questions don't show up on the front page if they are below a certain level (people complain about seeing too many closed questions on the front page that they don't want to see?  Down vote them.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [mentioned](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for#comment14418_5706),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We have a system for dealing with lousy answers This is where your argument fails. Yes, it's absolutely true that we have a system for dealing with lousy answers, but that's irrelevant if no one is actually using that system. Next time you see a closed question you think should be re-opened, moderate the answers first. Use your downvotes on crap answers that attempt to answer the question and your flags on answers that don't attempt to answer the question. Questions can easily get re-opened if people actually did something about it instead of just talking about it. &lt;/rant&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvotes are part of reopening good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On closure reasons&#xD;&#xA;------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**There is a consistent misunderstanding about closure reasons**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- I understand this is something that Stack Exchange is going to address&#xD;&#xA;- Many people complain about something being closed as off topic when it was closed as non-constructive or not a real question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not everything is closed for off topic.  Many of the questions of &quot;I don't understand why this was closed&quot; within [are you still confused...](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for) had to deal with not the scope, but rather with the structure of the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One such examples was [How can I learn algorithms and data structures of any type?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189143/how-can-i-learn-algorithms-and-data-structures-of-any-type)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am a novice computer science and engineering student. I am learning Java but i want to learn from the basics so I want to learn algorithms.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Where to start that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was not closed for scope reasons but rather that it is not a real question.  It was overly broad.  Attempts were made in the comments to try to figure out what is actually being asked - if there is some way to narrow it down.  It took nearly an hour between being asked and closed and the original questioner was gone not to be seen again within 3 minutes of the question being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another question of confusion was [My Company Wants To Get Into Mobile Development — And Use Multi-Platform Frameworks](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189393/my-company-wants-to-get-into-mobile-development-and-use-multi-platform-framew) that has with in:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What do you guys think about this? No one at my company has any experience with any of the mobile development frameworks. We're starting basically from scratch. I know a bit about iOS, a few people know a bit about android but it amounts to little.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Would love some input from some experts :D&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is polling - asking for lots of ideas.  Not an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is lots of history&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is lots of history to what Progammers.SE *was*.  Get over it.  The site has not been that way for a long time.  Go through the [top users in the past year](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=reputation&amp;filter=year) - The vast majority where not here in September of 2010.  These are the people that are here now.  Trying to tell us about how wonderful it was back then and how bad it is now - we don't think its that bad now, and what you try to tell us that we are missing, we don't think we really want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You want to tell me about how wonderful the site was back then?  Sure.  I have fond memories of BBS's and that his of a 1200 baud modem connecting.  Some of those old BBS's became telnet sites when slip and isdn became more common and web sites with forums and live chat later on.  Its not the same place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't the same place of July 2010.  It isn't likely to become so again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lots of ideas, not answers&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my mind, what people come to Stack Exchange for is an answer.  They come to Programmers.StackExchange for a reason too - they want an answer.  They don't want to [reddit programming](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/) or [ask slashdot](http://ask.slashdot.org) when they have a question about programming.  We offer something special here that people come *here* to find.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange doesn't have polls.  It doesn't have endless threads of comments.  It wasn't designed to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange and Social Media&#xD;&#xA;-------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've said this before, I'll say it again.  Read [A group is its own worst enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) by Clay Shirky.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't just because I think its an essential thing to read when trying to understand a group of people... but because this was part of the considerations when creating Stack Exchange and how it is built - and thus, how we can work within it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back in [Podcast #23](https://stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/default.asp?W25450) &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Atwood**: Maybe. But the cool thing about this is this is not just me, because that would be boring. It is actually me and Clay Shirky. You know, Clay Shirky is one of my heroes.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Spolsky**: Oh...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Atwood**: Yeah I know, it's awesome. So we get to talk about like building communities online and I get to talk about StackOverflow, you know, and all the lessons we've learned and, get to present with Clay. Obviously he's an expert so. That's one of the people that I have emailed actually, because I thought that would be good, because he is from New-York city as well. So we could A) show him the site and B) talk about the thing we are going to do together in March, because he needs to see the site to have some context. I mean I did meet him and talk to him about this earlier a few months ago, I think I mentioned it on the podcasts. But that was before we had sort of even going to beta, so there's really not a lot to show him. But I would love to show him in person. So we'll see if I'll hear back from him, I do not know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.StackExchange.com runs in the Stack Exchange framework.  It was designed with Clay's writings in mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*A Group...* goes into many points of online communities.  The one I've tried to bring to a forefront (there are far too many essential things in the article - for me to try to explain them all would have much more than the text I've already written, and I suspect by this time you are a bit weary.)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale. Scale alone kills conversations, because conversations require dense two-way conversations. In conversational contexts, Metcalfe's law is a drag. The fact that the amount of two-way connections you have to support goes up with the square of the users means that the density of conversation falls off very fast as the system scales even a little bit. You have to have some way to let users hang onto the less is more pattern, in order to keep associated with one another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't have a question that can be answered by 100 different answers.  Jeff considered the issue of scale when he designed Stack Exchange to make it difficult to have conversations in comments (and has apparently been thinking of things in for [discourse](http://www.discourse.org) - which apparently had been nagging him for [a long time](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/11/discussions-flat-or-threaded.html)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you want?&#xD;&#xA;---------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those of you discontent with Programmers.SE, when considering that this is the way that the software works and that great changes to the fundamental ideals of the sites won't happen - what is it that you actually see Programmers.SE being that it isn't today?  How does the site work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do we clean up broken windows and trash in the park?  What do you do about that guy who keeps asking how to interview for Google and Microsoft and Blizzard and Oracle again and again?  What does the FAQ say?  How does voting work?  Is voting there at all?  Do we try to make it so that every single person feels like this is a nice warm fuzzy place? Is there a place for [As a programmer, what are the most routine and what are the most creative development tasks?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189574/what-are-the-most-routine-and-what-are-the-most-creative-development-tasks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does what you perceive as the ideal site differ from reddit? Ask Slashdot? Generic php forum?  Can this be implemented in Stack Exchange?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25888" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5719" RevisionGUID="5aa738a8-da53-446b-9d88-e2cf772701dc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="With this recent spurt of activity on meta, a number of opinions have come out. A number of these describe some rather radical changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(please pardon me if I ascribe rather extreme positions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On everything should be open&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**There are instances where people seem to be opposed to closing any question for any reason.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Many of these people who are 3k and above have few if any close vote&#xD;&#xA;   reviews&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This suggests that either everything should be open or that they are comfortable with what is closed.  This is sometimes refuted by numerous &quot;reopen&quot; votes without any &quot;leave closed&quot; reviews.  From this, I can only conclude that there is the perception that everything should be open and there should be no moderation closing things - everything can be salvaged, somehow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On down votes&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;**There are suggestions that there shouldn't be downvotes for users with less than a certain reputation.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Somehow this suggestion has 10 positive votes at the time of this&#xD;&#xA;   writing (and 11 downvotes)&#xD;&#xA; - This is done in the name of &quot;welcoming users&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - People seem to take down votes personally&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Down votes are a necessary feedback to users and part of the design of the system.  There is a threshold where questions don't show up on the front page if they are below a certain level (people complain about seeing too many closed questions on the front page that they don't want to see?  Down vote them.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [mentioned](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for#comment14418_5706),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We have a system for dealing with lousy answers This is where your argument fails. Yes, it's absolutely true that we have a system for dealing with lousy answers, but that's irrelevant if no one is actually using that system. Next time you see a closed question you think should be re-opened, moderate the answers first. Use your downvotes on crap answers that attempt to answer the question and your flags on answers that don't attempt to answer the question. Questions can easily get re-opened if people actually did something about it instead of just talking about it. &lt;/rant&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvotes are part of reopening good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On closure reasons&#xD;&#xA;------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**There is a consistent misunderstanding about closure reasons**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- I understand this is something that Stack Exchange is going to address&#xD;&#xA;- Many people complain about something being closed as off topic when it was closed as non-constructive or not a real question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not everything is closed for off topic.  Many of the questions of &quot;I don't understand why this was closed&quot; within [are you still confused...](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for) had to deal with not the scope, but rather with the structure of the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One such examples was [How can I learn algorithms and data structures of any type?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189143/how-can-i-learn-algorithms-and-data-structures-of-any-type)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am a novice computer science and engineering student. I am learning Java but i want to learn from the basics so I want to learn algorithms.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Where to start that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was not closed for scope reasons but rather that it is not a real question.  It was overly broad.  Attempts were made in the comments to try to figure out what is actually being asked - if there is some way to narrow it down.  It took nearly an hour between being asked and closed and the original questioner was gone not to be seen again within 3 minutes of the question being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another question of confusion was [My Company Wants To Get Into Mobile Development — And Use Multi-Platform Frameworks](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189393/my-company-wants-to-get-into-mobile-development-and-use-multi-platform-framew) that has with in:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What do you guys think about this? No one at my company has any experience with any of the mobile development frameworks. We're starting basically from scratch. I know a bit about iOS, a few people know a bit about android but it amounts to little.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Would love some input from some experts :D&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is polling - asking for lots of ideas.  Not an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is lots of history&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is lots of history to what Progammers.SE *was*.  Get over it.  The site has not been that way for a long time.  Go through the [top users in the past year](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=reputation&amp;filter=year) - The vast majority where not here in September of 2010.  These are the people that are here now.  Trying to tell us about how wonderful it was back then and how bad it is now - we don't think its that bad now, and what you try to tell us that we are missing, we don't think we really want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You want to tell me about how wonderful the site was back then?  Sure.  I have fond memories of BBS's and that his of a 1200 baud modem connecting.  Some of those old BBS's became telnet sites when slip and isdn became more common and web sites with forums and live chat later on.  Its not the same place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't the same place of July 2010.  It isn't likely to become so again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lots of ideas, not answers&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my mind, what people come to Stack Exchange for is an answer.  They come to Programmers.StackExchange for a reason too - they want an answer.  They don't want to [reddit programming](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/) or [ask slashdot](http://ask.slashdot.org) when they have a question about programming.  We offer something special here that people come *here* to find.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange doesn't have polls.  It doesn't have endless threads of comments.  It wasn't designed to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange and Social Media&#xD;&#xA;-------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've said this before, I'll say it again.  Read [A group is its own worst enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) by Clay Shirky.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't just because I think its an essential thing to read when trying to understand a group of people... but because this was part of the considerations when creating Stack Exchange and how it is built - and thus, how we can work within it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back in [Podcast #23](https://stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/default.asp?W25450) &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Atwood**: Maybe. But the cool thing about this is this is not just me, because that would be boring. It is actually me and Clay Shirky. You know, Clay Shirky is one of my heroes.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Spolsky**: Oh...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Atwood**: Yeah I know, it's awesome. So we get to talk about like building communities online and I get to talk about StackOverflow, you know, and all the lessons we've learned and, get to present with Clay. Obviously he's an expert so. That's one of the people that I have emailed actually, because I thought that would be good, because he is from New-York city as well. So we could A) show him the site and B) talk about the thing we are going to do together in March, because he needs to see the site to have some context. I mean I did meet him and talk to him about this earlier a few months ago, I think I mentioned it on the podcasts. But that was before we had sort of even going to beta, so there's really not a lot to show him. But I would love to show him in person. So we'll see if I'll hear back from him, I do not know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.StackExchange.com runs in the Stack Exchange framework.  It was designed with Clay's writings in mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*A Group...* goes into many points of online communities.  The one I've tried to bring to a forefront (there are far too many essential things in the article - for me to try to explain them all would have much more than the text I've already written, and I suspect by this time you are a bit weary.)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale. Scale alone kills conversations, because conversations require dense two-way conversations. In conversational contexts, Metcalfe's law is a drag. The fact that the amount of two-way connections you have to support goes up with the square of the users means that the density of conversation falls off very fast as the system scales even a little bit. You have to have some way to let users hang onto the less is more pattern, in order to keep associated with one another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't have a question that can be answered by 100 different answers.  Jeff considered the issue of scale when he designed Stack Exchange to make it difficult to have conversations in comments (and has apparently been thinking of things in for [discourse](http://www.discourse.org) - which apparently had been nagging him for [a long time](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/11/discussions-flat-or-threaded.html)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you want?&#xD;&#xA;---------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those of you discontent with Programmers.SE, when considering that this is the way that the software works and that great changes to the fundamental ideals of the sites won't happen - what is it that you actually see Programmers.SE being that it isn't today?  How does the site work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do we clean up broken windows and trash in the park?  What do you do about that guy who keeps asking how to interview for Google and Microsoft and Blizzard and Oracle again and again?  What does the FAQ say?  How does voting work?  Is voting there at all?  Do we try to make it so that every single person feels like this is a nice warm fuzzy place? Is there a place for [As a programmer, what are the most routine and what are the most creative development tasks?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189574/what-are-the-most-routine-and-what-are-the-most-creative-development-tasks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does what you perceive as the ideal site differ from reddit? Ask Slashdot? Generic php forum?  Can this be implemented in Stack Exchange?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25890" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5281" RevisionGUID="f6308767-79bf-47ae-b16e-f719783a261e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A while ago I flagged [this question][1] to be moved to the [Workplace beta][2], because it seems like a very good fit there, and it continues to get a lot of views. The flag was rejected because the question is too old. I don't think this is a good reason in this case, because, like I said, the question continuos to get a lot of views, and thus could be a great support for an upcoming StackExchange site. I realize that Programmers once had the problem of [old questions being migrated from Stackoverflow][3], but again, I think Workplace could benefit from this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, I could just ask the question again there, but wouldn't it also be good for Programmers to have the question moved away, so as not to confuse new users about the topic of this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess in the end this is a request to rethink the decision and maybe still move the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85339/how-to-describe-your-skill-levels-in-the-cv&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/820/is-programmers-se-suddenly-going-to-be-flooded-with-old-unwanted-two-year-old" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25891" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5785" RevisionGUID="17ec166d-b448-412b-ae6e-7a983f472f10" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just saw https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5779/can-we-please-add-http-sqa-stackexchange-com-as-a-migration-target and in reading Tim Post's answer, I understand why SQA, or DBA would both make for poor migration paths away from programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, his thoughts only made my belief that Project Management should be a migration path from Programmers. We get quite a few PM based questions here, and while in the case of SQA or DBA there's good arguments that we have the expertise to give quality answers from a valuable perspective (that of a programmer). Questions that might be migrated in those directions could plausibly be riff-raff programmers just didn't want, which would be bad for those sites. On both of these points though Project Management is completely different.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often times PM type questions don't get much input as many of us may know the topic, but not at the detailed level to cite evidence in any fashion other than personal experience, which isn't the best way to answer a question. Also I can't imagine programmers trying to only migrate the low quality PM questions, as even good PM questions we're unlikely to have particularly good answers for. I do get that we give the programmers perspective on these questions, but more often than not the PM questions I've seen here aren't looking for that necessarily." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25892" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3777" RevisionGUID="21ac3b79-ae8e-4af0-86ad-78dab7fa3898" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="First of all, if you didn't know (and I can only hope you did), Programmers Stack Exchange has it's [own community blog][1] that anybody can contribute to. So, if you haven't been reading it, start now :-)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyways, currently we have very few solid contributors to the blog. We started with about 7 posts, and that number is quickly falling. Basically, if we don't get more community help with this, we are going to be on the verge of dying. So if you want to contribute, now is the time to start.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, we are in need of mainly writers, although if you would like to sign-up as an editor or proofreader, that would be fine. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To sign up, set up your answer as so:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Name&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ====&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ***Position (either editor/proofreader or writer or both)***&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Description. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are a writer, your description area is where you should put how many posts you'll be able to dish out per month or another time span. For example, `1 post every 1-2 months`. If you only want to write one post, and then stop helping, that's also fine, although we would love to see you stay. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once you sign up, we will contact you with your Wordpress account details and Trello account details. For more info on those services, and on how you will be helping, [see here][2]. If you have any questions, ping me in the [Programmers Blog Room][3], or leave a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's about it! Enjoy the blog, and start signing up :-)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Addendum**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Register on Trello with the handle you use here. I'll invite you once&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you ping me in the programmers blog chatroom. WP access can be gained&#xD;&#xA;&gt; by listing your email either in that chat or in your post here. If you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; want to be private about it send it to programmer.se.blog (at)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gmail.com with the subject line: Programmer Blog Sign-up. Please&#xD;&#xA;&gt; indicate your handle in the message as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2359/programmers-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25893" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5785" RevisionGUID="3b801fd6-4424-4c78-becf-d4aa0f1fd1c0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just saw https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5779/can-we-please-add-http-sqa-stackexchange-com-as-a-migration-target and in reading Tim Post's answer, I understand why SQA, or DBA would both make for poor migration paths away from programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, his thoughts only made my belief that Project Management should be a migration path from Programmers. We get quite a few PM based questions here, and while in the case of SQA or DBA there's good arguments that we have the expertise to give quality answers from a valuable perspective (that of a programmer). Questions that might be migrated in those directions could plausibly be riff-raff programmers just didn't want, which would be bad for those sites. On both of these points though Project Management is completely different.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often times PM type questions don't get much input as many of us may know the topic, but not at the detailed level to cite evidence in any fashion other than personal experience, which isn't the best way to answer a question. Also I can't imagine programmers trying to only migrate the low quality PM questions, as even good PM questions we're unlikely to have particularly good answers for. I do get that we give the programmers perspective on these questions, but more often than not the PM questions I've seen here aren't looking for that necessarily." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25894" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5290" RevisionGUID="062f2cb8-f545-4186-90cd-a4b557b4cbfa" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've noticed that there are various tags for C++, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c++]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c++03]&#xD;&#xA;* [c++0x &amp; c++11][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are tags for &quot;c--&quot;. Can we add some? I don't have enough reputation to create tags. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;Links on C--:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Wikipedia][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Official Website][3] ([Archive][4])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5289/c-duplicate-tags&#xD;&#xA; [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C--&#xD;&#xA; [3]: http://www.cminusminus.org/&#xD;&#xA; [4]: http://web.archive.org/web/20080822062234/http://www.cminusminus.org/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25895" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6130" RevisionGUID="4f7e768f-58d3-4937-b3d5-05ee051fad53" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In order of preference: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Do nothing** &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;  Your edit should start the re-open process automatically, as [MichaelT explained][1]. Also, every significant edit bumps the question to the top of the site's front page, so a new round of attention from people casually browsing the site is almost guaranteed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Chat**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  All five moderators and quite a few other regulars are active in [the Whiteboard][2], the site's main chat room. Even if there's no one around at the time, you can just drop a link to the question and eventually someone will ping you back with their thoughts on your edit. Or, if they happen to agree with the edit and there isn't much to discuss, they'll just vote to re-open it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. **Meta discussion**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If the question fails to get enough re-open votes through the re-open queue and you hadn't had any luck in chat, feel free to start a Meta discussion asking how the question in question can be further improved and re-opened. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you shouldn't do is flag for moderation attention. The site currently has 366 users who can vote to re-open (3000+ reputation), and most of them are fairly active; there's little need to call one of the five diamonds. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6127/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25896" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3780" RevisionGUID="cce23e7d-36b2-439c-b6c9-94fb8b379b7a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've been following the Meta discussions that have been taking place for quite a while about the creation of our community blog.  And recently Dynamic posted here [asking for more contributors][1] to the blog.  I had no idea the blog was up and running and that there'd already been several good entries posted.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I can't find the Blog, what chance does someone have of finding it who isn't familiar with the site or even know that discussions have taken place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it would be a good idea to have our [community blog][2] be made visible somewhere on the main site.  More visibility would drive more interest and probably make requests for more contributors a thing of the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3777&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25897" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5395" RevisionGUID="d9c1f454-0c62-488b-bedb-a63b5ef6ee1c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Why am I getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account”?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3041/why-am-i-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this-account)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Well I dont know whether to ask this in programmers meta is good or not, but please please unblock me, mods mailed me to reply, I replied to mods' reply on my blockage [here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/message/319#319), but yet didnt get reply back from him. I got blocked on 9 Oct 2012 and its very hard time since then, please unblock me, I assure everyone that I will be more careful while asking questions next time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25898" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6037" RevisionGUID="f7e8d8a5-59cd-40f3-8a8a-aa70c311364f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We've just updated our custom off topic close reasons, picking the top three from the [relevant Meta discussion][1]. None of them mentions another SE site, so they shouldn't be confused with migration votes anymore. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a perfect solution to the problem, we may need to add a mention to another site in the future, but I think it's good enough for now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5992/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25899" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5395" RevisionGUID="d3967fa9-0697-4cc2-80fc-4276003260cb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Why am I getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account”?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3041/why-am-i-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this-account)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Well I dont know whether to ask this in programmers meta is good or not, but please please unblock me, mods mailed me to reply, I replied to mods' reply on my blockage [here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/message/319#319), but yet didnt get reply back from him. I got blocked on 9 Oct 2012 and its very hard time since then, please unblock me, I assure everyone that I will be more careful while asking questions next time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25900" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3887" RevisionGUID="2f4b1402-f8ea-468c-addb-c1726462919e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159956/radio-button-select-and-deselect-when-making-onchange-from-dropdown-list) was closed earlier today with a comment left on it by @YannisRizos advising:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Hello and welcome! Implementation questions are off topic, you should ask them on our sister site Stack Overflow, however please make sure you add your code in the question. Read our FAQ thoroughly to see what questions we welcome on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although the question itself is not that great, should we have tried to help the user rephrase their question and then flagged it for migration to SO instead of closing the question? The user is most likely going to ask the question as-is (if at all) on SO and probably receive similar down and close votes there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [this question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/441/can-we-get-a-belongs-on-stackoverflow-as-a-closing-reason) it's my understanding we have a migration path to SO, should we be using that rather than a normal close vote?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25901" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5498" RevisionGUID="8a504f8b-156b-419d-82a0-66585954c1a9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As some of you may have noticed, the Programmers Blog hasn't had a new post in a month. Part of this is due to issues with my school causing distractions. While I am well and capable of managing the blog, I can't populate articles all by my lonesome. Morons and others have done a terrific job in the past writing useful and interesting articles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I'd like to hear even more voices. So, if you want to write for the blog and don't have access to the Trello board and the Wordpress instance, let me know by posting below and I'll set you up. You'll also need to send an email to programmer.se.blog (at) gmail.com with subject line : Blog Access. Also register on Trello and list your handle and I'll add there too. General Information and what nots can be found [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; You can write on just about anything you care to within the site's scope. Some things that are off topic or not-constructive make perfect blog topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25903" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5498" RevisionGUID="5807b8af-eea9-4d0a-8842-139178ae1cd3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As some of you may have noticed, the Programmers Blog hasn't had a new post in a month. Part of this is due to issues with my school causing distractions. While I am well and capable of managing the blog, I can't populate articles all by my lonesome. Morons and others have done a terrific job in the past writing useful and interesting articles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I'd like to hear even more voices. So, if you want to write for the blog and don't have access to the Trello board and the Wordpress instance, let me know by posting below and I'll set you up. You'll also need to send an email to programmer.se.blog (at) gmail.com with subject line : Blog Access. Also register on Trello and list your handle and I'll add there too. General Information and what nots can be found [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; You can write on just about anything you care to within the site's scope. Some things that are off topic or not-constructive make perfect blog topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25904" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3957" RevisionGUID="2750055e-6c75-40d8-8809-5fe8a9a9b1d5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135260/server-response-as-return-value-for-function&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Preface: I'm **very** mindful of ['The Summer of Love'][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Problem: I feel like the OP has a genuine question [here][2]. It's just that it's obfuscated by extremely poor grammar and perhaps an incomplete understanding of how client-server architecture works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question: Is there a way that we could &quot;gently&quot; tell the OP that he must improve the grammar and the clarity of his question if he expects people to respond with constructive, helpful answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3836/programmers-se-and-the-summer-of-love&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135260/server-response-as-return-value-for-function" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25905" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6297" RevisionGUID="349541dd-d48e-4756-a419-7faf577d2e9e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I didn't have any votes on this question, so this is more just me going &quot;hmm...&quot; with some various thoughts on the matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An important thing to realize is that questions have been asked in the past and are currently open is not an indication that something that is asked in the same or similar format will also be covered as &quot;older stuff is open too&quot;.  There is a lot of old questions that are not good examples of questions to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would also strongly suggest steering away from the &quot;but it was answered&quot; as an indication to question.  From a previous issue ( https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5563/closed-as-not-constructive/ ) the argument was made:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only answer given (likely before it was closed) clearly suggests that the question is constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason to close such a question is that it has the likelihood of blowing up to everyone adding their own two cents to the question.  I would suggest looking at your example of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171430/vocabulary-should-i-call-this-apply-or-map which has answers such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You could call it an n-dimensional pointwise Cartesian product of functions. However, that doesn't make for a short name, and might require explanation...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd call it fire_callbacks, call_callbacks, apply_callbacks, or something like that.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've usually had such a method as part of a signal or observable object.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To my mind, the word &quot;map&quot; implies some kind of association (e.g. a 'dictionary'), although there doesn't appear to be any association or pairing of data happening in your algorithm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everyone has their own opinion about how things are called, even if there is a real name for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is strongly related to the post https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic which has a variety of opinions on the topic.  A more recent meta post seeking a more updated clarification can be read at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6089/is-asking-what-is-the-technical-term-for-this-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this more recent question there are two opinions, one of which can be recapped as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; These kinds of questions essentially boil down to &quot;what terms should I Google for?&quot; They are an indirect proxy for resource requests, which are specifically off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key issue with the &quot;find the name&quot; is that we really don't want (and this is a community consensus thing more than a formal policy) to become [ELU single-word-requests](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/single-word-requests).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions of the 'name that thing' are without end - they are localized to *your* usage and situation and tend not to be something that generates long term useful content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A poor metric (I know) of that &quot;long term useful content&quot; might be in part driven from views.  If you look at your example questions, no matter how old they are they all have about 300-400 views. This suggests that they got them at the initial date of creation and then no one looked at them again.  I know that thats a *very* poor qualification because some of the more esoteric questions have even fewer views (I mean... who wants to read about haskell monads?) but are likely good long term material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thats all about my thoughts on the subject and bringing together some other posts to consider when looking into why it was closed.  The &quot;Name that thing&quot; is a touchy area because of the possibility that it brings in lots of people saying &quot;I call it `this` in my shop&quot; and others saying &quot;I call it `that` where I work.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to the &quot;called something else in each language...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question asks, essentially, how is it called when you create constants that refer to large namespaces in an attempt to simplify the writing. Basically, something like:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; `Sprite = Super::Large:Namespace::Graphics::Sprite`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, in perl, this is a [typeglob](http://perldoc.perl.org/perldata.html#Typeglobs-and-Filehandles) alias (what are types?) (not to be confused with [glob](http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/glob.html)s)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- language: perl --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    #!/usr/bin/perl&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    package Foo::Bar::Qux::Bletch;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    $var = 42;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    package main;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    print $Foo::Bar::Qux::Bletch::var, &quot;\n&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    *A = *Foo::Bar::Qux::Bletch::var;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    print $A,&quot;\n&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or at least... thats what I call it.  Though some people may call it [symbol table aliasing](http://perldoc.perl.org/perlmod.html#Symbol-Tables) which wouldn't really be wrong either.  And apparently some call it [glob aliasing](http://stackoverflow.com/a/14071422/289086) too.  Oh well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25906" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5579" RevisionGUID="e0015ed1-7273-4df2-985f-7be16b896872" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I disagree with [maple_shaft's assessment][1] that it's about what project to work on next. To me, you are clearly asking about how to determine what to work on next as a commercial venture, rather than asking people to tell you what to work on next. However, I see other problems with your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although the FAQ does say that freelancing and business concerns are on-topic, they should be unique to software development, as is true for all questions. Market research, as far as I can tell, is not unique to software development and there is not much that makes it special or different when applied to software projects. Market research is market research, whether it's a software product or a hardware product or any other kind of product.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you disagree, perhaps it would be best if you did some of your own research on market research and asked questions about making it fit a software project. We expect prior research to be done before asking questions. Have you researched market research and techniques for implementing it? What did you find? What confused you? How does this specifically relate to software projects? That last question is the most important - for things that cross domains, we expect the focus to be unique to software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5578/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25907" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6101" RevisionGUID="491cf04f-c8ef-4e09-9eb8-7d2dc9aaa2de" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Great idea! Except for most of what you said!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## This should go nowhere! Where should this go? [Nowhere](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6098/what-reasons-do-questions-get-closed-for-here-should-be-in-the-help-center-un/6101#6101). ##" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25908" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5595" RevisionGUID="6b85ba1e-e37f-47f6-8464-496e89d07b89" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session with the candidates.  This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.  I will be working with candidates to determine a time for the event.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***The Town Hall Chat took place Wednesday the 27th at 02:00:00Z UTC. A digest can be found [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5656/2013-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-digest).***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the details so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I would like to schedule this towards the beginning of the primary phase.  This means that I am looking at the 25th-27th of February. As soon as I coordinate with the existing moderators and candidates to find a best fit based on availability, I will edit this post with details on the &quot;when&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;* The Town Hall Chat will be a one-hour event using our [chat platform](http://chat.stackexchange.com/?tab=site&amp;sort=active&amp;host=programmers.stackexchange.com).  I will update this post with a direct link to the chat room once the event is scheduled.&#xD;&#xA;* The format will be an open discussion.  Users are encouraged to pose questions to the candidates regarding their thoughts on moderation.&#xD;&#xA;* Priority for scheduling is generally towards the greatest number of candidate openings as well as the earliest. Candidates who cannot show up during the live event will still be able to answer all questions posted, they will just do so at their earliest convenience.&#xD;&#xA;* If you can't make it but have questions you wish to pose to the candidates, please leave them here as a response, and I will ask it on your behalf.&#xD;&#xA;* After the chat session, a digest of the event will be permanently linked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25910" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3966" RevisionGUID="a595d9b5-7ebd-4e46-97c2-c90d35b11f91" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Is there any site maintenance going on currently?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3944/is-there-any-site-maintenance-going-on-currently)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Last week, my reputation was about 550 and since then it's been decreasing down to 494, as of today. However, my profile shows no reputation changes since 3 weeks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can that be happening?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25911" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5595" RevisionGUID="2e5c6c05-6dbf-4f22-9675-bbaacf8b60f5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session with the candidates.  This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.  I will be working with candidates to determine a time for the event.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***The Town Hall Chat took place Wednesday the 27th at 02:00:00Z UTC. A digest can be found [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5656/2013-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-digest).***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the details so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I would like to schedule this towards the beginning of the primary phase.  This means that I am looking at the 25th-27th of February. As soon as I coordinate with the existing moderators and candidates to find a best fit based on availability, I will edit this post with details on the &quot;when&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;* The Town Hall Chat will be a one-hour event using our [chat platform](http://chat.stackexchange.com/?tab=site&amp;sort=active&amp;host=programmers.stackexchange.com).  I will update this post with a direct link to the chat room once the event is scheduled.&#xD;&#xA;* The format will be an open discussion.  Users are encouraged to pose questions to the candidates regarding their thoughts on moderation.&#xD;&#xA;* Priority for scheduling is generally towards the greatest number of candidate openings as well as the earliest. Candidates who cannot show up during the live event will still be able to answer all questions posted, they will just do so at their earliest convenience.&#xD;&#xA;* If you can't make it but have questions you wish to pose to the candidates, please leave them here as a response, and I will ask it on your behalf.&#xD;&#xA;* After the chat session, a digest of the event will be permanently linked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25912" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6130" RevisionGUID="fa3f55f9-019b-4b8c-8116-4dce937deca3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In order of preference: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Do nothing** &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;  Your edit should start the re-open process automatically, as [MichaelT explained][1]. Also, every significant edit bumps the question to the top of the site's front page, so a new round of attention from people casually browsing the site is almost guaranteed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Chat**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  All five moderators and quite a few other regulars are active in [the Whiteboard][2], the site's main chat room. Even if there's no one around at the time, you can just drop a link to the question and eventually someone will ping you back with their thoughts on your edit. Or, if they happen to agree with the edit and there isn't much to discuss, they'll just vote to re-open it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. **Meta discussion**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If the question fails to get enough re-open votes through the re-open queue and you hadn't had any luck in chat, feel free to start a Meta discussion asking how the question in question can be further improved and re-opened. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you shouldn't do is flag for moderation attention. The site currently has 366 users who can vote to re-open (3000+ reputation), and most of them are fairly active; there's little need to call one of the five diamonds. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6127/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25913" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5649" RevisionGUID="4f0d173f-7784-4d7a-a839-aeac06eb233b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This was somewhat exceptional, as a few weird things were at play. I'd like to answer your question twice, first speaking to this specific incident, and then in a more general sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was originally [asked on Stack Overflow][1] (now deleted) and migrated here, [then rejected as folks were working on it][2] and then finally unlocked (but closed) which is its current state. As Yannis indicated, there's also some private administrative history which we really can't go into - but suffice it to say that suspending the user as was done was the fastest way to stop the disruption while the other factors at play were resolved. It was a perfect miniature storm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now - a more general answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, yes, we should definitely separate content from contributor when determining what adds to or detracts from the value of the site. A good question asked by a rather disagreeable user is still a good contribution, especially if it has attracted useful and well written answers. Sure, sometimes users get upset that their question wasn't as well received or understood as they hoped it would be, but seldom do you see these frustrations manifest themselves so intensely or vehemently. We also should assume that questions are asked in good faith unless it becomes blatantly obvious that they were not. So yes, in general, always try to salvage good and helpful content, unless doing so costs more than it's worth - at which point a moderator may need to be involved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This brings us back to the case at point. When actions seem a little strange, you can generally rest assured that the moderators are taking past history into consideration, even if that history is not immediately evident. This usually means handling things a little differently than usual, on a case by case basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the situation were any less complicated, the question would simply have been edited into shape, received the answers that it did and settled into an uneventful existence. This was really an exceptional case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15123889/why-do-data-types-in-computers-exist-if-its-really-all-just-bits&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5642/something-very-strange-going-on-in-a-closed-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25914" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="91cddc05-8dcb-418a-9024-ad4091d3c0fe" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted).  Why? And what can I do about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What technology to take up next](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6486/)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resource](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Legal Advice or Aid](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8335/)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Assistance in writing or debugging existing code](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7742/) &#xD;&#xA;        * (MSE) [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](//meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in/129632#129632)&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)  &#xD;&#xA;  certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three of categories listed under _Off topic_ match site-specific close reasons, see: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5992/what-should-our-predefined-off-topic-reasons-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links are from particular points in the history of Software Engineering (previously known as Programmers.SE) and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a [serial vote](//meta.stackexchange.com/tags/serial-voting/info &quot;what's this&quot;) reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For pasting into chat or comments there is a &quot;Quick link&quot; at the end of each answer.  The quick link for the question is `[Why was my question closed or down voted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483/)` - pasting this into chat or a comment will link to the question.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25915" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3991" RevisionGUID="258ba9ce-f921-44d1-8f77-d6fa7afc3722" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Many a times we need to refer some huge files while asking a question in this site. If I have a question regarding HTML, CSS or jQuery I can use jsFiddle to upload the content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the case of XML file (for example WSDL) what is the best place for uploading and referring?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are the most popular site for this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3993/is-it-encouraged-to-refer-jsfiddle&#xD;&#xA;2. http://www.awwwards.com/10-html-css-online-code-editors-for-web-developers.html&#xD;&#xA;3. Dabblet, Thimble, by Mozilla, jsFiddle, jsBin, Cloud9, CodeMirror, eXo Cloud IDE, CodeRun, Compilr, Codeanywhere, Kodingen, Google Developers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25916" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5649" RevisionGUID="77598b25-09bb-4f04-9d65-5a5bbeaa046b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This was somewhat exceptional, as a few weird things were at play. I'd like to answer your question twice, first speaking to this specific incident, and then in a more general sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was originally [asked on Stack Overflow][1] (now deleted) and migrated here, [then rejected as folks were working on it][2] and then finally unlocked (but closed) which is its current state. As Yannis indicated, there's also some private administrative history which we really can't go into - but suffice it to say that suspending the user as was done was the fastest way to stop the disruption while the other factors at play were resolved. It was a perfect miniature storm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now - a more general answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, yes, we should definitely separate content from contributor when determining what adds to or detracts from the value of the site. A good question asked by a rather disagreeable user is still a good contribution, especially if it has attracted useful and well written answers. Sure, sometimes users get upset that their question wasn't as well received or understood as they hoped it would be, but seldom do you see these frustrations manifest themselves so intensely or vehemently. We also should assume that questions are asked in good faith unless it becomes blatantly obvious that they were not. So yes, in general, always try to salvage good and helpful content, unless doing so costs more than it's worth - at which point a moderator may need to be involved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This brings us back to the case at point. When actions seem a little strange, you can generally rest assured that the moderators are taking past history into consideration, even if that history is not immediately evident. This usually means handling things a little differently than usual, on a case by case basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the situation were any less complicated, the question would simply have been edited into shape, received the answers that it did and settled into an uneventful existence. This was really an exceptional case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15123889/why-do-data-types-in-computers-exist-if-its-really-all-just-bits&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5642/something-very-strange-going-on-in-a-closed-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25917" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5656" RevisionGUID="e6bd415a-6a8a-4510-bcfb-0199334679c0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The following is a &quot;digest&quot; version of the [2013 Moderator Election Town Hall Chat](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5595/2013-moderator-election-town-hall-chat). The format, [as described on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests), is one *answer* to this question *for every question* asked in the Town Hall, containing all the candidate's answers to that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**To view the digest chronologically, please sort the answers by &quot;oldest&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have questions or comments about this, **please do not answer this question** as the answers are designed to be used for the questions from the Town hall itself. Instead, please ask on [the parent question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests) or in [the Town Hall Discussion Room](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/352/town-hall-discussion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see any corrections which need to be made to this digest, or if you were a candidate who was unable to attend the town hall and would like your answers included, please @GraceNote or @TimStone [in the chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/251/programmers-town-hall-chat) and let us know!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25918" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6297" RevisionGUID="e8398729-a95d-4a44-a5c5-51fa79010c54" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I didn't have any votes on this question, so this is more just me going &quot;hmm...&quot; with some various thoughts on the matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An important thing to realize is that questions have been asked in the past and are currently open is not an indication that something that is asked in the same or similar format will also be covered as &quot;older stuff is open too&quot;.  There is a lot of old questions that are not good examples of questions to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would also strongly suggest steering away from the &quot;but it was answered&quot; as an indication to question.  From a previous issue ( https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5563/closed-as-not-constructive/ ) the argument was made:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only answer given (likely before it was closed) clearly suggests that the question is constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason to close such a question is that it has the likelihood of blowing up to everyone adding their own two cents to the question.  I would suggest looking at your example of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171430/vocabulary-should-i-call-this-apply-or-map which has answers such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You could call it an n-dimensional pointwise Cartesian product of functions. However, that doesn't make for a short name, and might require explanation...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd call it fire_callbacks, call_callbacks, apply_callbacks, or something like that.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've usually had such a method as part of a signal or observable object.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To my mind, the word &quot;map&quot; implies some kind of association (e.g. a 'dictionary'), although there doesn't appear to be any association or pairing of data happening in your algorithm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everyone has their own opinion about how things are called, even if there is a real name for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is strongly related to the post https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic which has a variety of opinions on the topic.  A more recent meta post seeking a more updated clarification can be read at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6089/is-asking-what-is-the-technical-term-for-this-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this more recent question there are two opinions, one of which can be recapped as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; These kinds of questions essentially boil down to &quot;what terms should I Google for?&quot; They are an indirect proxy for resource requests, which are specifically off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key issue with the &quot;find the name&quot; is that we really don't want (and this is a community consensus thing more than a formal policy) to become [ELU single-word-requests](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/single-word-requests).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions of the 'name that thing' are without end - they are localized to *your* usage and situation and tend not to be something that generates long term useful content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A poor metric (I know) of that &quot;long term useful content&quot; might be in part driven from views.  If you look at your example questions, no matter how old they are they all have about 300-400 views. This suggests that they got them at the initial date of creation and then no one looked at them again.  I know that thats a *very* poor qualification because some of the more esoteric questions have even fewer views (I mean... who wants to read about haskell monads?) but are likely good long term material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thats all about my thoughts on the subject and bringing together some other posts to consider when looking into why it was closed.  The &quot;Name that thing&quot; is a touchy area because of the possibility that it brings in lots of people saying &quot;I call it `this` in my shop&quot; and others saying &quot;I call it `that` where I work.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to the &quot;called something else in each language...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question asks, essentially, how is it called when you create constants that refer to large namespaces in an attempt to simplify the writing. Basically, something like:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; `Sprite = Super::Large:Namespace::Graphics::Sprite`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, in perl, this is a [typeglob](http://perldoc.perl.org/perldata.html#Typeglobs-and-Filehandles) alias (what are types?) (not to be confused with [glob](http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/glob.html)s)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- language: perl --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    #!/usr/bin/perl&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    package Foo::Bar::Qux::Bletch;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    $var = 42;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    package main;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    print $Foo::Bar::Qux::Bletch::var, &quot;\n&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    *A = *Foo::Bar::Qux::Bletch::var;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    print $A,&quot;\n&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or at least... thats what I call it.  Though some people may call it [symbol table aliasing](http://perldoc.perl.org/perlmod.html#Symbol-Tables) which wouldn't really be wrong either.  And apparently some call it [glob aliasing](http://stackoverflow.com/a/14071422/289086) too.  Oh well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25919" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4019" RevisionGUID="766e4d7e-75f3-4fa7-a1b8-c69c16fe6572" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Would the &amp;ldquo;General Reference&amp;rdquo; close reason be useful here on Programmers?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1994/would-the-general-reference-close-reason-be-useful-here-on-programmers)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;On Scifi.SE, they have a close reason &quot;General Reference&quot; that states &quot;This question is too basic; it can be definitively and permanently answered by a single link to a standard internet reference source designed specifically to find that type of information.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this would be tremendously useful and a much better explanation for closing many of the &quot;panic questions&quot; and &quot;help vampires&quot; that pop up. Would it be possible for us to get such a thing? I can't count the number of times I've seen questions like this appear on Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25920" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5656" RevisionGUID="83617067-0f77-4bac-b612-2295480a2ebd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The following is a &quot;digest&quot; version of the [2013 Moderator Election Town Hall Chat](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5595/2013-moderator-election-town-hall-chat). The format, [as described on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests), is one *answer* to this question *for every question* asked in the Town Hall, containing all the candidate's answers to that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**To view the digest chronologically, please sort the answers by &quot;oldest&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have questions or comments about this, **please do not answer this question** as the answers are designed to be used for the questions from the Town hall itself. Instead, please ask on [the parent question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests) or in [the Town Hall Discussion Room](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/352/town-hall-discussion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see any corrections which need to be made to this digest, or if you were a candidate who was unable to attend the town hall and would like your answers included, please @GraceNote or @TimStone [in the chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/251/programmers-town-hall-chat) and let us know!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25921" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6398" RevisionGUID="f1740638-3fb3-46dd-9dd6-f8de4c859fdc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have earned the yearling badge twice, just a few days apart, in this year, on programmers: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/16658/fejesjoco?tab=badges&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also got them here on this meta site, where I have never contributed anything before this: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/16658/fejesjoco?tab=badges&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like a bug to me, I haven't seen this behavior on other SE sites yet." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25922" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4068" RevisionGUID="95e48040-93a4-497a-bc99-cb261dc09f1e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's a terrible tag and it should die an ignoble death.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had it on [the chopping block][1] before, but it slipped through the cracks while we were dealing with even worse tags that were far more prolific.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kill it. Kill it with fire.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1940/8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25923" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5788" RevisionGUID="18eae4f3-cdda-44f2-bda3-732febd55a6a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I like the meta tag [tag:resource-questions] as the [wiki info](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/resource-questions/info) for it can be a useful educational resource for new users.  I notice that user gnat has been using this in his comments where people post their first question asking for a list of tutorials or books.  Eg:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/192102/i-want-to-learn-scheme-which-interpreter-compiler-and-books-can-be-recommended#comment371576_192102&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [resource requests are not quite welcome at Programmers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/resource-questions/info). As far as I understand, one would rather present an **underlying problem** instead - a problem that was intended to be solved with particular resource requested &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is great and I don't think anybody would disagree with this, but perhaps it is a good idea that we create this tag on the main site so that when we identify blatant resource requests we can tag the question.  I think it will help speed up the cumbersome and time consuming process of cleanups as we will have a big list of things we can speedibly delete all at once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are your thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25924" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5788" RevisionGUID="c7aa3606-28ff-464a-be35-afe5d9f10081" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I like the meta tag [tag:resource-questions] as the [wiki info](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/resource-questions/info) for it can be a useful educational resource for new users.  I notice that user gnat has been using this in his comments where people post their first question asking for a list of tutorials or books.  Eg:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/192102/i-want-to-learn-scheme-which-interpreter-compiler-and-books-can-be-recommended#comment371576_192102&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [resource requests are not quite welcome at Programmers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/resource-questions/info). As far as I understand, one would rather present an **underlying problem** instead - a problem that was intended to be solved with particular resource requested &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is great and I don't think anybody would disagree with this, but perhaps it is a good idea that we create this tag on the main site so that when we identify blatant resource requests we can tag the question.  I think it will help speed up the cumbersome and time consuming process of cleanups as we will have a big list of things we can speedibly delete all at once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are your thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25925" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6534" RevisionGUID="2ed68dab-f8d7-4f79-9390-1365f8da3314" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="...if I was a homework cheater, I would applaud [an approach like that](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14258630#14258630 &quot;quote source, bold font is mine&quot;)...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm for deletion if not improved in a reasonable timeframe.  &#xD;&#xA;But minutes after closure is, I think, too speedy.  &#xD;&#xA;**I tend to give a few hours, a day** tops, or recent activity on the site with no edits made...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...because, you see, few hours of just staying there would be **good enough already** for my purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##I would applaud it, enjoy it, exploit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More, I would brag about my successful recipe at &quot;forums&quot;, sharing it with cheaters like me and helping them find a way to a promised land:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Create a throwaway account at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;2. Dump your homework.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;it's quite likely that you'll find a kind soul or two around to help&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;3. Keep squeezing solution details in question comments until it's deleted.&#xD;&#xA;4. If you're lucky to get an answer before question gets [closed](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10582/what-is-a-closed-or-on-hold-question &quot;what does that mean&quot;), do the same in answer comments.&#xD;&#xA;5. If you feel like nobody's paying attention, edit your question: that will [bump](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info) it and increase chances to attract someone willing to help.&#xD;&#xA;6. You may probably notice that question is getting funny marks -1, -2, -3... They call it [down-votes](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/down-votes/info) - don't worry about these, it's all imaginary.&#xD;&#xA;7. If you notice that you can't ask next question, don't worry. They call it [question ban](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th), all you need to circumvent it is to create new throwaway account and repeat above steps.&#xD;&#xA;8. [Only thing to keep in mind is](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3836/programmers-se-and-the-summer-of-love/3837#3837 &quot;paraphrased from here&quot;): **&quot;don't care how they react; go looking for the one guy that will actually do your homework for you (some people will)&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##As a community, what should we do about this approach?   &#xD;&#xA;Should we keep current &quot;policy&quot; as highlighted above, or should we consider speedier deletions?  Speedier deletions on down-voted questions may lead to the help-vampire hitting the question ban faster, but this can be worked around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're here to build a knowledgeable, rewarding community.  We're not here to feed the help-vampires or to reward answers on their questions as it merely encourages more of the bad behaviour.  How should we balance cleaning out the trash without appearing overly harsh to new community members that may be able to contribute once they learn the ropes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;To those interested in a broader context of above: **[what is the point to keep this homework dump visible?](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/what-is-the-point-to-keep-this-homework-dump-visible)**&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25926" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4097" RevisionGUID="f37826c1-86bc-48ed-b080-c4b1e324cc18" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Why are so many questions closed?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I just joined this stackexchange, and I'm sure this question will get closed like so many others as being subjective or &quot;not constructive&quot;. I did a quick count on the first few pages, and it looks like at least 10% of questions are closed. One page I saw had 22 out of 50 questions closed. What does closing so many questions solve? Apparently it does not reduce the number of &quot;bad questions&quot;. Instead it just prevents people who would otherwise be interested in answering from doing so. Why can't the people who dislike all these questions just.. not answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25927" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6404" RevisionGUID="6954300d-6a2e-4ef6-9460-595c1527d206" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Unclear what help you need ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Unclear what help you need](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important &quot;see: 'Why is research important?'&quot;).** Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell what problem you are trying to solve or what aspect of your approach needs to be corrected or explained. See the [ask] page for help clarifying this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note `[ask]` above is so called [magic link](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/magic-links), meaning that in comments it auto-expands into [How to Ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Slightly adapted from [this MSO post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/215806/165773)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25928" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5818" RevisionGUID="eeca2457-352b-4b0f-ad18-9da183189d50" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been [discussed before](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3556/are-app-store-questions-on-topic-on-programmers), but the [App Stores proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30702/app-stores) is inching closer to fulfilling the commitment requirements and I'd like to raise the topic again just to see if anything has changed in the past year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I saw the App Stores proposal, my first instinct was to say that the topic should be pretty well served by Stack Overflow and Programmers for all of the questions that would be a good fit for Stack Exchange in the first place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers has a lightly used [tag:appstore] tag and the questions that do exist there seem like exactly the kind of questions that'd fit the newly proposed site. The [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) also explicitly includes &quot;freelance and business concerns&quot; as a topic, which to me sounds like it would cover the less technical or implementation-related aspects of working with any app store.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm also on board with [this post](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/a/3003/26022) on Area 51:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If [...] the proposal is &quot;about bridging the gap between the development and business aspects of the App development process that don't fit on other StackExchange websites.&quot;, I'd roll it into a larger proposal. &quot;The business of development&quot;. We have a site that's essentially &quot;The business of being a programmer&quot; (Programmers), and I think that would have both a broader reach and a larger base of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That was written a good year and a half ago and Programmers has evolved quite a bit since then. I think at this point it may well be, at least in part, a &quot;business of development&quot; type of site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you all think? Would you welcome questions about dealing with app stores here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25929" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5818" RevisionGUID="9d4837bf-a68e-4a3c-939d-6f25cded6b7c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been [discussed before](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3556/are-app-store-questions-on-topic-on-programmers), but the [App Stores proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30702/app-stores) is inching closer to fulfilling the commitment requirements and I'd like to raise the topic again just to see if anything has changed in the past year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I saw the App Stores proposal, my first instinct was to say that the topic should be pretty well served by Stack Overflow and Programmers for all of the questions that would be a good fit for Stack Exchange in the first place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers has a lightly used [tag:appstore] tag and the questions that do exist there seem like exactly the kind of questions that'd fit the newly proposed site. The [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) also explicitly includes &quot;freelance and business concerns&quot; as a topic, which to me sounds like it would cover the less technical or implementation-related aspects of working with any app store.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm also on board with [this post](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/a/3003/26022) on Area 51:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If [...] the proposal is &quot;about bridging the gap between the development and business aspects of the App development process that don't fit on other StackExchange websites.&quot;, I'd roll it into a larger proposal. &quot;The business of development&quot;. We have a site that's essentially &quot;The business of being a programmer&quot; (Programmers), and I think that would have both a broader reach and a larger base of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That was written a good year and a half ago and Programmers has evolved quite a bit since then. I think at this point it may well be, at least in part, a &quot;business of development&quot; type of site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you all think? Would you welcome questions about dealing with app stores here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25930" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5272" RevisionGUID="108f2024-641c-4317-996a-889f6c66be6b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="From what I notice, a number of requests notified on Meta are abandoned without being fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- For example [my request related to the color of the links][1] and posted a year ago is still ignored, while is has been shown (see [link][2] in the answer by Yannis Rizos to the linked request) that the actual choice of colors is poor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- In the same way, [the bug notification about the bottom of the links not being clickable][3] is still pending, one year after, with no reply whatsoever, while it is clearly a bug, and a very disturbing one, given that there is a visual response (red color) while the cursor is on a non-clickable area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Around a year ago (finding a link is a bit tricky), there was a request to add other relevant SE sites to the list shown when the question is being closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There is still only Stack Overflow, and no sign of willingness to add some relevant sites like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    - UX.SE or&#xD;&#xA;    - DBA.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  or a plethora of beta-state sites like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    - [Workplace.SE][4] (extremely relevant),&#xD;&#xA;    - [QA and testing][5] (would fit well for a bunch of questions posted the last week),&#xD;&#xA;    - [Personal Productivity][6] (the questions which fit better are quite frequent on Programmers.SE),&#xD;&#xA;    - [Project Management][7] (also a good place for many questions actually posted on Programmers.SE),&#xD;&#xA;    - etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What explains such passiveness? Is it because Joel Spolsky and his team lost interest in Programmers.SE, like he repeatedly explains in his podcasts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who is (or is there somebody) in charge of implementing new features and fixing bugs on Programmers.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a better place than Meta to ask for new features and to report bugs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1487/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/q/14194/6729&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/801/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25931" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6582" RevisionGUID="96c59e5f-1e7c-49d6-879a-412afc7c7c9b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Difficulty with naming has a bit of a history with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are two hard problems in computer science: caching, naming, and off by one errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has been *repeatedly* revisited on meta and elsewhere&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (P.SE Aug 2012) https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3856/question-about-naming-conventions-not-constructive&#xD;&#xA;* (P.SE Oct 2011) https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* (P.SE Jan 2014) https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6406/name-that-thing-questions&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO Nov 2013) [What is the appropriate / preferred method for questions concerning programming nomenclature?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/203880/what-is-the-appropriate-preferred-method-for-questions-concerning-programming)&#xD;&#xA;* (Blog Feb 2012) [Lets Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yes, the guidance on these is confusing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, please answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Are the [tag:terminology] and [tag:naming] questions on topic?&#xD;&#xA;* If so, what should be expected of these questions to not be closed as custom, too broad, or primarily opinion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25932" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6411" RevisionGUID="cf925d5c-6c63-4ad0-8dbc-3ff453683f7d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Career advice is difficult because it is so individualized and time sensitive. We recommend that you ask such questions in our [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard). The Workplace.SE caters to some career related issues but has similar strictures on individualized questions. The doubled edge sword of Stack Exchange is to create an easily Googleable reference for getting expert answers to questions immediately. Career advice tends to fall outside that category as it tends to again, be highly individualized and time-sensitive. We tried allowing that sort of question type at the beginning of Programmers. It didn't go [well][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Chat exists specifically for working through the thornier questions without direct, converging answers. The [Whiteboard][2]'s activity stats will help you find the best time and day of the week to ask your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25933" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5843" RevisionGUID="fe9322cb-6b1e-4340-ad8f-bb0d1e76a095" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some recent posts make me feel like these could be automatically rejected by [quality filter](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/quality-filter/info &quot;what's this&quot;), thus saving community efforts for better quality questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To develope My Own linux Distro for Linux Beginners.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195209/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To Know How To prepare An understanding Doc To Track what I am Doing On daily Basis So that I can Be update To my Work.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195203/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I am A New Joinee In a major MNC And Currently I am Working In Vitria Team I dont Know Much about Vitria From Career Persepective.Plz Guide&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195204/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Above are full literal quotes of the posts, I did not change anything.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently it has been announced that quality filter is tightened at Trilogy sites (for your convenience, announcement is quoted below).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* As far as I understand, SE team is [open to consider similar change for Programmers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/174097/is-it-time-to-tighten-up-the-question-quality-filter/176875?noredirect=1#comment531396_176875 &quot;quote source&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the sad truth is that on Programmers, even questions with a maximum quality score fare worse on average than the ones passing the threshold I just put in place on SO. We can try tweaking the threshold there too, but it's probably worth a separate discussion on meta.programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we please somehow adjust quality filter at Programmers to prevent posting low quality stuff like in above examples?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the reference, announcement of [filter adjustment at Trilogy sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/176875/165773 &quot;here&quot;) is as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've bumped up the threshold below which questions will be blocked. The majority of *recently-asked* questions that fall below the new threshold do not fare well on Stack Overflow (i.e. they are closed, deleted, and/or down-voted). &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The down-side is that short questions will be harder to post (this is more than just a length check, but short + poor spelling / caps / punctuation / formatting will damn a post more readily). At this point, I think that's a fair trade-off on Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I've also increased the threshold on Super User and Server Fault; although the volume is lower there, they field even fewer reasonable questions in this range. A quick check of other high-traffic sites does not appear to justify raising this anywhere else at this time.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;FWIW: Stack Overflow already rejects something like twelve hundred questions a day based on this check - that'd amount to about 13% of questions if a lot of them weren't just the same folks retrying more or less the same text over and over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update** for the reference, at the &quot;quality score&quot; list provided in [this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5857/31260 &quot;thanks Shog!&quot;): first of above examples scores 70, second - 83, third - 81." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25934" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5281" RevisionGUID="0011db5f-aa13-49c0-9dc8-b02304ab5457" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A while ago I flagged [this question][1] to be moved to the [Workplace beta][2], because it seems like a very good fit there, and it continues to get a lot of views. The flag was rejected because the question is too old. I don't think this is a good reason in this case, because, like I said, the question continuos to get a lot of views, and thus could be a great support for an upcoming StackExchange site. I realize that Programmers once had the problem of [old questions being migrated from Stackoverflow][3], but again, I think Workplace could benefit from this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, I could just ask the question again there, but wouldn't it also be good for Programmers to have the question moved away, so as not to confuse new users about the topic of this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess in the end this is a request to rethink the decision and maybe still move the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85339/how-to-describe-your-skill-levels-in-the-cv&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/820/is-programmers-se-suddenly-going-to-be-flooded-with-old-unwanted-two-year-old" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25935" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5843" RevisionGUID="df0b6485-bbcd-4091-9b3e-8db0eae43640" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some recent posts make me feel like these could be automatically rejected by [quality filter](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/quality-filter/info &quot;what's this&quot;), thus saving community efforts for better quality questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To develope My Own linux Distro for Linux Beginners.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195209/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To Know How To prepare An understanding Doc To Track what I am Doing On daily Basis So that I can Be update To my Work.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195203/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I am A New Joinee In a major MNC And Currently I am Working In Vitria Team I dont Know Much about Vitria From Career Persepective.Plz Guide&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195204/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Above are full literal quotes of the posts, I did not change anything.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently it has been announced that quality filter is tightened at Trilogy sites (for your convenience, announcement is quoted below).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* As far as I understand, SE team is [open to consider similar change for Programmers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/174097/is-it-time-to-tighten-up-the-question-quality-filter/176875?noredirect=1#comment531396_176875 &quot;quote source&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the sad truth is that on Programmers, even questions with a maximum quality score fare worse on average than the ones passing the threshold I just put in place on SO. We can try tweaking the threshold there too, but it's probably worth a separate discussion on meta.programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we please somehow adjust quality filter at Programmers to prevent posting low quality stuff like in above examples?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the reference, announcement of [filter adjustment at Trilogy sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/176875/165773 &quot;here&quot;) is as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've bumped up the threshold below which questions will be blocked. The majority of *recently-asked* questions that fall below the new threshold do not fare well on Stack Overflow (i.e. they are closed, deleted, and/or down-voted). &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The down-side is that short questions will be harder to post (this is more than just a length check, but short + poor spelling / caps / punctuation / formatting will damn a post more readily). At this point, I think that's a fair trade-off on Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I've also increased the threshold on Super User and Server Fault; although the volume is lower there, they field even fewer reasonable questions in this range. A quick check of other high-traffic sites does not appear to justify raising this anywhere else at this time.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;FWIW: Stack Overflow already rejects something like twelve hundred questions a day based on this check - that'd amount to about 13% of questions if a lot of them weren't just the same folks retrying more or less the same text over and over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update** for the reference, at the &quot;quality score&quot; list provided in [this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5857/31260 &quot;thanks Shog!&quot;): first of above examples scores 70, second - 83, third - 81." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25936" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6428" RevisionGUID="55c8cf49-3658-4146-8e0b-8af85816e522" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've found a bunch of FAQ links here on meta.p.SE, all pointing to [programmers.stackexchange.com/faq][1] etc, for example [this one over here][2], to name just one. Maybe it is just my browser, but I am always redirected to the about page once I try to follow that link. Well, that's a nice page too, there's no question about it, but it's not a FAQ. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So where the FAQ are the FAQs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2684/difference-between-programmers-and-stackoverflow?rq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25937" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6584" RevisionGUID="4b15aa48-9509-4521-ba29-54b8bc23d4e1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text=" 1. yes, absolutely, these questions are on-topic, and here's why I think so:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - knowing the right word enables you to find a precise definition, and to search through the literature for more background information&#xD;&#xA; - knowing the right word enables effective communication.  If you don't know what a &quot;free variable&quot; is, I think it would be nearly impossible to have a good discussion about them&#xD;&#xA; - the answers are rarely opinion-based.  Most have been established in the literature and are well-defined.  &#xD;&#xA; - in the few cases where there are multiple possible names, the question provides an opportunity to cover the exact differences between what the names refer to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. criteria for good naming questions: [here's some good answers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2380/39685).  I would add that good naming questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - focus on what already exists and has already been defined&#xD;&#xA;  - aren't trying to come up with new names&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. let's keep in mind that a bad question is a bad question, and a lazy asker is a lazy asker.  Ultimately, good users will (probably) generate good content, and abusize users will game, abuse, and damage the system, no matter how complicated or precise the rules are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, I have seen this comment appearing frequently under suspected naming questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;name that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; thing&quot; question. &quot;Name that thing&quot; are bad questions for the same&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions. See&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I would like to request that users stop posting this.**  Oftentimes, it is inappropriate for the OP under which it was posted, because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - you can google them (see #1 above)&#xD;&#xA; - they are practical (see #1 above)&#xD;&#xA; - they do help others.  Of course they don't help *everybody*, but no question does.  &#xD;&#xA; - it uses unwarranted pejorative language (&quot;guessing game&quot;)&#xD;&#xA; - the linked blog has little to do with the OP under which the comment is pasted&#xD;&#xA;   - the examples have *nothing* to do with precise terms such as &quot;alpha substitution&quot;&#xD;&#xA;   - the intent of the question is totally different than a so-called &quot;guessing game&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you believe that a question is low quality, then (IMHO) please say why you think so, downvote it, or vote to close it.  **But please, do not copy-paste such comments when they don't apply.**  I believe it's simple harassment, incites pointless debate, turns off people from using the site and is unhelpful.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25938" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5290" RevisionGUID="9d68221d-d905-4b91-a950-869273e5b0d7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've noticed that there are various tags for C++, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c++]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:c++03]&#xD;&#xA;* [c++0x &amp; c++11][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are tags for &quot;c--&quot;. Can we add some? I don't have enough reputation to create tags. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;Links on C--:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Wikipedia][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Official Website][3] ([Archive][4])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5289/c-duplicate-tags&#xD;&#xA; [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C--&#xD;&#xA; [3]: http://www.cminusminus.org/&#xD;&#xA; [4]: http://web.archive.org/web/20080822062234/http://www.cminusminus.org/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25939" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5852" RevisionGUID="aa42124c-6e30-455d-a724-b62e7184e2f9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just looked at the question and I fully agree with the closure, mostly for the reasons outlined in [MichealT's answer][1]. I don't see how it's anything other than a poll for people's opinions: &quot;Do you [own your own tools]?&quot;, &quot;What do you think good people?&quot; I don't see how either of those questions will lead to anything other than an extended discussion or opinions. There's no visible problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should the question be locked? First, this question won't be automatically deleted. It has been up voted and has up voted answers. The automatic deletion script will not kick in. In order for this post to be deleted at this point, it requires moderator intervention or enough users voting to delete. As far as locking, the only valid reason for locking would be &quot;historical lock&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: [FAQ].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a good question for this site, but I don't see how it has historical significance. It has 623 views (a handful of which were probably generated by this Meta post) in 2 years. It only has a score of 9, and the top answer only has a score of 18. Looking through the answers, I'm not seeing anything amazing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this time, my recommendation would be to keep this question closed. If anyone is interested, I would suggest pulling out anything relevant and considering writing a post for the blog. It may be a candidate for deletion down the road, since I'm not seeing any significant value added by keeping the question around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5849/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25940" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5852" RevisionGUID="b6d5c2fa-e0bb-4022-adae-44102fa8d2d5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just looked at the question and I fully agree with the closure, mostly for the reasons outlined in [MichealT's answer][1]. I don't see how it's anything other than a poll for people's opinions: &quot;Do you [own your own tools]?&quot;, &quot;What do you think good people?&quot; I don't see how either of those questions will lead to anything other than an extended discussion or opinions. There's no visible problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should the question be locked? First, this question won't be automatically deleted. It has been up voted and has up voted answers. The automatic deletion script will not kick in. In order for this post to be deleted at this point, it requires moderator intervention or enough users voting to delete. As far as locking, the only valid reason for locking would be &quot;historical lock&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: [FAQ].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a good question for this site, but I don't see how it has historical significance. It has 623 views (a handful of which were probably generated by this Meta post) in 2 years. It only has a score of 9, and the top answer only has a score of 18. Looking through the answers, I'm not seeing anything amazing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this time, my recommendation would be to keep this question closed. If anyone is interested, I would suggest pulling out anything relevant and considering writing a post for the blog. It may be a candidate for deletion down the road, since I'm not seeing any significant value added by keeping the question around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5849/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25941" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6586" RevisionGUID="c6ccc9ef-ab94-4e54-86c5-281ac21c4299" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As has been previously pointed out, this issue has already been discussed at length, with a resulting consensus that there are two categories of &quot;naming things&quot; questions that might actually be on-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  What is the name of this well-known concept?&#xD;&#xA;2.  Questions about &quot;principles of naming things.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is, however, one remaining category of questions which I feel should always be off-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;What should I name this thing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is not a &quot;guessing game&quot; question; it is **[primarily opinion-based](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491).**  There are literally an *infinite* number of such questions; none of them are at all interesting to experts unless they can be answered from a principle-based perspective, in a way that could help others improve their naming skills." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25942" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6433" RevisionGUID="a41d4fc5-171f-44ac-b86a-abdff3ec9a4e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Well, as far as I'm aware, some career questions are still supposed to be on topic, according to [this meta answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/590/3965).  I don't know when or how voters decided *all* career questions are off topic, but I don't think it was by consensus." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25943" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5395" RevisionGUID="da6797c6-2ff8-403c-8539-f0c628cd84c0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Why am I getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account”?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3041/why-am-i-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this-account)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Well I dont know whether to ask this in programmers meta is good or not, but please please unblock me, mods mailed me to reply, I replied to mods' reply on my blockage [here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/message/319#319), but yet didnt get reply back from him. I got blocked on 9 Oct 2012 and its very hard time since then, please unblock me, I assure everyone that I will be more careful while asking questions next time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25944" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5898" RevisionGUID="2157380d-91ed-48ec-bbc9-248fae1893b2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; &quot;Duplicate of&quot; should be a transitive property (if A is a dupe of B, and B is a dupe of C, then A must be a dupe of C)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assumption of transitivity looks wrong; per my reading of the definition in [duplicate-questions tag wiki](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/duplicate-questions/info), it is not required:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to tell the user ...something like, _“Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.”_ Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question `A` having an answer in `B` does not automatically guarantee that it also has an answer in `C`, even though question `B` may have its answer in `C`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a simplified example, imagine &quot;chain of duplicates&quot; like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A:` How do I see result of multiplying 2 by 2?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B:` How do I multiply?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke `multiply` method of `arith` package. In order to view result, you invoke method of `display` package.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C:` How do I do arithmetic operations?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke appropriate method of `arith` package, like `multiply`, `divide` etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's easy to imagine readers being satisfied by closures `A -&gt; B` and `B -&gt; C` since answers given solve the problems asked about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, closure `A -&gt; C` would be problematic: first question asks about how to display results, while answer in the second question says nothing about this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note how question in `B` does not ask about displaying results, making dupe closure look reasonable. Also note how answer in `B` provides guidance _beyond_ its scope, along with addressing the question asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a more realistic example, refer to the non-transitive chain of duplicates at Meta Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A':` [Spiteful downvoting? Two fast DVs to my unrelated posts](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/178703/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B':` [What can I do if I'm the victim of serial downvoting?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/28756/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C':` [What is serial voting and how does it affect me?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/126829/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`A'` is closed as a duplicate of `B'`, which is in turn closed as a duplicate of `C'`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a closer look at [revisions history](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/178703/revisions &quot;here&quot;) and [comments](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/178703/spiteful-downvoting-two-fast-dvs-to-my-unrelated-posts#comment539909_178703 &quot;'changed the duplicate to one more relevant to the question asked...'&quot;), you will notice that initial closure has been changed from `A' -&gt; C'` to _narrower_ one, `A' -&gt; B'` because readers disagreed that _widest_ dupe target has answers relevant to the question asked in `A'`." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25945" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6451" RevisionGUID="05bb6c71-66af-499e-bbe4-48fb9590b651" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Recommendations are off topic on P.SE.  There is a long history to this on both P.SE and Stack Overflow.  For some of the P.SE history see [this search](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=recommendation).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a specific close reason for off topic for questions asking for some software recommendation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is what you need to look at.  We don't do recommendations.  There is, however, a (currently private beta) Stack Exchange site just for recommendations - http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/60887/software-recommendations - once this is in pubic beta you could ask such a question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, consider that questions of the use of a given tool is also off topic on P.SE, but on topic on Stack Overflow.  If you pick a tool you *may* be able to ask and get an answer for &quot;how to use that tool to do XYZ&quot; on Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25946" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5898" RevisionGUID="7344d954-1067-400f-be9a-8f2fa00cb585" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; &quot;Duplicate of&quot; should be a transitive property (if A is a dupe of B, and B is a dupe of C, then A must be a dupe of C)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assumption of transitivity looks wrong; per my reading of the definition in [duplicate-questions tag wiki](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/duplicate-questions/info), it is not required:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to tell the user ...something like, _“Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.”_ Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question `A` having an answer in `B` does not automatically guarantee that it also has an answer in `C`, even though question `B` may have its answer in `C`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a simplified example, imagine &quot;chain of duplicates&quot; like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A:` How do I see result of multiplying 2 by 2?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B:` How do I multiply?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke `multiply` method of `arith` package. In order to view result, you invoke method of `display` package.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C:` How do I do arithmetic operations?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke appropriate method of `arith` package, like `multiply`, `divide` etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's easy to imagine readers being satisfied by closures `A -&gt; B` and `B -&gt; C` since answers given solve the problems asked about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, closure `A -&gt; C` would be problematic: first question asks about how to display results, while answer in the second question says nothing about this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note how question in `B` does not ask about displaying results, making dupe closure look reasonable. Also note how answer in `B` provides guidance _beyond_ its scope, along with addressing the question asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a more realistic example, refer to the non-transitive chain of duplicates at Meta Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A':` [Spiteful downvoting? Two fast DVs to my unrelated posts](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/178703/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B':` [What can I do if I'm the victim of serial downvoting?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/28756/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C':` [What is serial voting and how does it affect me?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/126829/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`A'` is closed as a duplicate of `B'`, which is in turn closed as a duplicate of `C'`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a closer look at [revisions history](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/178703/revisions &quot;here&quot;) and [comments](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/178703/spiteful-downvoting-two-fast-dvs-to-my-unrelated-posts#comment539909_178703 &quot;'changed the duplicate to one more relevant to the question asked...'&quot;), you will notice that initial closure has been changed from `A' -&gt; C'` to _narrower_ one, `A' -&gt; B'` because readers disagreed that _widest_ dupe target has answers relevant to the question asked in `A'`." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25947" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5470" RevisionGUID="6b68a461-482e-4150-afcd-cb46bd389e15" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've just deleted your question - for technical reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You cross posted the question on The Workplace, and the community there seemed to welcome it. When I noticed, I migrated the Programmers version to the Workplace, and promptly voted to close it as a duplicate of the version you posted yourself. The question was closed a couple of hours after the migration, and then merged with its duplicate. That was the plan, a single version of the question with all its answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But a few minutes ago I noticed that the Programmers version of the question - that was supposed to be just a migration stub pointing to the merged version on The Workplace - was actually appearing in full, with no mention of the migration and closed as off topic. What had happened was that a Workplace moderator deleted the merge stub on their site, which for some reason also rejected the migration and brought the question back to Programmers. That's... not normal, the deletion of the stub shouldn't had rejected the migration, and I've already contacted Stack Exchange about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To avoid any further confusion, I've deleted the Programmers version of the question. For reference, the relevant links are: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Workplace version][1], the proper version of the question, with all the answers&#xD;&#xA;- [Workplace merge stub][2], deleted (2K+ link)&#xD;&#xA;- [Programmers version][3], deleted (10K+ link)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I fully realize the [irony of deleting the question][4], it was necessary to maintain some sanity, a single version of the question with all its answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please _do not_ cross post**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flag the question for mod attention and ask for it to be migrated, cross posts are messy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9010/how-does-one-network-at-conferences-beyond-the-first-conversation&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9016/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences-beyond-the-first-conversation&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/184017/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences-beyond-the-first-conversation&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5463/are-we-too-strict-where-should-off-topic-questions-go#comment13743_5463" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25948" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5913" RevisionGUID="364dca74-6cad-4440-bace-f14b261a5068" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Can questions be closed for a reason that is valid TODAY but did not exist at the time the question was asked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an example.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5847/why-close-a-2-year-old-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions are now &quot;routinely&quot; closed for &quot;polling.&quot; Depending on the site, people came to a &quot;consensus&quot; about this some time in the past two years. But the question was asked two years ago. And suppose this was before this consensus was formed? Are there ways of &quot;grandfathering&quot; such questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25949" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5913" RevisionGUID="70e0660e-a74a-4129-89ce-f50f5748e24e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Can questions be closed for a reason that is valid TODAY but did not exist at the time the question was asked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an example.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5847/why-close-a-2-year-old-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions are now &quot;routinely&quot; closed for &quot;polling.&quot; Depending on the site, people came to a &quot;consensus&quot; about this some time in the past two years. But the question was asked two years ago. And suppose this was before this consensus was formed? Are there ways of &quot;grandfathering&quot; such questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25950" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5498" RevisionGUID="9453fd2e-6352-41ee-bcca-7c8aaec03829" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As some of you may have noticed, the Programmers Blog hasn't had a new post in a month. Part of this is due to issues with my school causing distractions. While I am well and capable of managing the blog, I can't populate articles all by my lonesome. Morons and others have done a terrific job in the past writing useful and interesting articles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I'd like to hear even more voices. So, if you want to write for the blog and don't have access to the Trello board and the Wordpress instance, let me know by posting below and I'll set you up. You'll also need to send an email to programmer.se.blog (at) gmail.com with subject line : Blog Access. Also register on Trello and list your handle and I'll add there too. General Information and what nots can be found [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; You can write on just about anything you care to within the site's scope. Some things that are off topic or not-constructive make perfect blog topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25951" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6457" RevisionGUID="6c5c58a0-0e95-467b-8c0a-b1c977698437" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As the person who cast the third delete vote, I thought I would add some additional perspective as to why I cast the vote when I did.  Please consider this as supplementary to [MichaelT's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6456/53019)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Normally, I won't vote-to-delete on a question as recently closed as yours was.  But the follow-up edit that you put in place after the question was closed is what made up my mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me address some of your meta questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I cannot undestand what was wrong with it.  &#xD;&#xA;What rules have been violated?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question is asking about the norms of a 3rd party package unrelated to the Programmers site.  That alone is enough to make it off-topic, and that's why it was closed as &quot;primarily opinion based.&quot;  Loosely translated, that means the Programmers community is not able to give you an evidence or experience backed answer that would meet the site guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please note that the one answer your question received was pure speculation and wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why moderator removed completely innocuous question, which contained only the facts and nothing but the facts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community (not a moderator) voted to delete your question.  ChrisF pointed that out in the comments, and I want to repeat that it was a community decision.  The three of us that voted to delete your question take the privilege to delete posts seriously, and we take responsibility for our decisions.  Part of that responsibility means explaining our decisions, which is why I'm writing this response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question was not innocuous and it did not contain `nothing but the facts`.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You did the right thing in contacting the Dart team to ask why there was an issue.  Had your question been on-topic, you could have taken their reply and used it as a self-answer to your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But you didn't, and the nature of your additional questions to their reply is what made up my mind to vote to delete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You added in this answer from Dart Team member Bob Nystrom:  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;There is no why here.&#xD;&#xA;It's a bug in the examples.&#xD;&#xA;They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals.&#xD;&#xA;Can you file a ticket so we don't forget to fix this please? Thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then you asked:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Do I understand correctly that..&#xD;&#xA;1. They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals but they use it.&#xD;&#xA;2. This is not an indicator of quality, but just a bug. Becuase they written by a&#xD;&#xA; Dart team member but not by other person.&#xD;&#xA;3. There is no &quot;why&quot; here because it is better to remain silent than to say &#xD;&#xA;unpleasant things.&#xD;&#xA;4. Dart Team can forget to fix this if someone does not file a ticket.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;_Editorial note, I have numbered your questions to make them easier to identify_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Items 1 and 2 aren't really questions and appear to be just bashing the Dart team. I'll admit it's hard to tell what you're really asking because of the communication barrier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item 3 is where I saw your question turning into a rant about the Dart team and why I feared a long comment thread that would need to be cleaned up.  In particular, `it is better to remain silent than to say unpleasant things` is inflammatory and you're almost asking to start a bashing session. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tone of 3 biased how I read 4, and I couldn't see anything positive coming from leaving the question in place.  The tone of those follow-up questions is not innocuous.  So I voted to delete in order to prevent a minor flame war from breaking out in the comments of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All that said, I'll grant that there were some communication issues and in this case, we deleted your question too early.  So I apologize for the quick deletion, but I don't see how your question could be salvaged to be made more constructive.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if it helps, this is my _opinion_ of what the Dart team was trying to say.   &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Yes, please note that we're still in the &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; justification for closing the question.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There is no why here.  &#xD;&#xA;It's a bug in the examples.  &#xD;&#xA;They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Translated: Your original assumption about their example was correct and you found a bug.  There isn't any other reason behind that issue - hence &quot;there is no why here.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can you file a ticket so we don't forget to fix this please? Thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Translated: I'm really busy right now and don't have the time or enough details to enter a proper bug report.  Please enter a bug report so the team doesn't forget about it existing and so it can be prioritized.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also keep in mind that on some projects, entering a valid bug report is seen as bragging rights.  It means the person found a legitimate issue within the product and helped start the process to get it fixed.  That sort of activity can be used by some projects to determine who they will let contribute to the project." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25952" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5999" RevisionGUID="0ccd8798-35ec-4d1a-abc9-eee8bf78827b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Back in February, there was [a discussion about the &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; bullet point in the list of things that are on-topic][1]. All four answers identified that this was somewhat problematic, however there really wasn't an overwhelming popular opinion on what to do. So, in light of that, I'm going to rephrase the question differently:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anyone provide examples of freelancing and business concerns questions that require the expertise of a professional working in the field of software development, that do not require expertise in business, law, finance, marketing, or another non-software-related domain, and meet the other criteria for a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5605/weve-got-to-talk-about-freelancing-and-business-concerns" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25953" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5999" RevisionGUID="f0e3c0ba-b473-4705-a331-32f503ed2f25" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Back in February, there was [a discussion about the &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; bullet point in the list of things that are on-topic][1]. All four answers identified that this was somewhat problematic, however there really wasn't an overwhelming popular opinion on what to do. So, in light of that, I'm going to rephrase the question differently:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anyone provide examples of freelancing and business concerns questions that require the expertise of a professional working in the field of software development, that do not require expertise in business, law, finance, marketing, or another non-software-related domain, and meet the other criteria for a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5605/weve-got-to-talk-about-freelancing-and-business-concerns" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25954" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5579" RevisionGUID="419463f4-5293-4dad-8872-0310ab9859b0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I disagree with [maple_shaft's assessment][1] that it's about what project to work on next. To me, you are clearly asking about how to determine what to work on next as a commercial venture, rather than asking people to tell you what to work on next. However, I see other problems with your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although the FAQ does say that freelancing and business concerns are on-topic, they should be unique to software development, as is true for all questions. Market research, as far as I can tell, is not unique to software development and there is not much that makes it special or different when applied to software projects. Market research is market research, whether it's a software product or a hardware product or any other kind of product.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you disagree, perhaps it would be best if you did some of your own research on market research and asked questions about making it fit a software project. We expect prior research to be done before asking questions. Have you researched market research and techniques for implementing it? What did you find? What confused you? How does this specifically relate to software projects? That last question is the most important - for things that cross domains, we expect the focus to be unique to software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5578/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25955" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6059" RevisionGUID="95301239-6748-4672-a1d5-f6b4fd6b7366" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3049/what-decent-web-frameworks-exists-for-functional-programming#question is a potentially good topic to have a curated list &lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;. Yea or Nay?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; See: [New lock type for truly collaborative questions and answers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5991/new-lock-type-for-truly-collaborative-questions-and-answers)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25956" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6460" RevisionGUID="7dde72dc-1cc0-44c3-ba0b-f6e2991207db" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; [Following specification vs. following language standards](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/229310/following-specification-vs-following-language-standards)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way I see it, this question follows [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It inspires answers that explain &quot;why&quot;. Options are given, so I need reasons.&#xD;&#xA;2. Long answers are expected which provide example implementations and reasons for designing them that way (like why `XDocument` does not follow specification).&#xD;&#xA;3. It's not a holy war topic, so constructive tone is expected.&#xD;&#xA;4. It invites sharing experiences, because there're many standards implemented both by Microsoft and third-parties.&#xD;&#xA;5. As per above, facts and references are expected.&#xD;&#xA;6. And finally, it's a very important practical question about designing libraries.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way I see it, the question perfectly fits Programmers scope: **conceptual questions about software development**. It is about **software architecture** which is [declared as on-topic by FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, the question is: why was the question closed and how to fix it to get it reopened?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25957" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6037" RevisionGUID="93a52c4d-7860-4ede-8af5-662ed821aef4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We've just updated our custom off topic close reasons, picking the top three from the [relevant Meta discussion][1]. None of them mentions another SE site, so they shouldn't be confused with migration votes anymore. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a perfect solution to the problem, we may need to add a mention to another site in the future, but I think it's good enough for now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5992/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25958" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6655" RevisionGUID="54adc6a1-d72d-4a9b-8790-48ff4aa6f89d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would start by reading these:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Stack Overflow On Topic][1] vs [Programmers On Topic][2]&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you still don't understand where your question can go, you can either ask about it on a site's Meta (although you will have to be somewhat specific so that you can be directed to the right site), in a site's chat room (you have sufficient reputation to go ask), or you can choose the site you think is the most appropriate and if it's off-topic but still a good question for someplace else, have it migrated (don't cross-post questions, though - we'll make sure the question gets to where it can be answered).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of questions that were originally asked on Stack Overflow, but migrated here because they were off-topic there and on-topic here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238513/is-allocating-objects-from-a-memory-pool-a-security-anti-pattern&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237692/using-subclasses-for-datacontracts-used-with-json&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/235170/ddd-domain-driven-design-which-development-order-should-be-applied&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/232032/decoupling-server-and-client-using-rest-api&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/231627/is-the-adapter-the-correct-design-pattern-for-this-situation&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230363/iteratively-improve-software-architecture-quality-in-an-agile-process&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/223834/sequence-diagram-uml-use-case-ends&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/223878/how-can-you-add-acknowledgement-functionality-to-a-command-pattern-given-the-re&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25959" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6059" RevisionGUID="eae75f55-13f9-476a-896b-4329f313b499" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3049/what-decent-web-frameworks-exists-for-functional-programming#question is a potentially good topic to have a curated list &lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;. Yea or Nay?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; See: [New lock type for truly collaborative questions and answers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5991/new-lock-type-for-truly-collaborative-questions-and-answers)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25960" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5595" RevisionGUID="2fc6e091-859a-4c7f-9a4c-0fbcfd9a6729" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session with the candidates.  This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.  I will be working with candidates to determine a time for the event.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***The Town Hall Chat took place Wednesday the 27th at 02:00:00Z UTC. A digest can be found [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5656/2013-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-digest).***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the details so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I would like to schedule this towards the beginning of the primary phase.  This means that I am looking at the 25th-27th of February. As soon as I coordinate with the existing moderators and candidates to find a best fit based on availability, I will edit this post with details on the &quot;when&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;* The Town Hall Chat will be a one-hour event using our [chat platform](http://chat.stackexchange.com/?tab=site&amp;sort=active&amp;host=programmers.stackexchange.com).  I will update this post with a direct link to the chat room once the event is scheduled.&#xD;&#xA;* The format will be an open discussion.  Users are encouraged to pose questions to the candidates regarding their thoughts on moderation.&#xD;&#xA;* Priority for scheduling is generally towards the greatest number of candidate openings as well as the earliest. Candidates who cannot show up during the live event will still be able to answer all questions posted, they will just do so at their earliest convenience.&#xD;&#xA;* If you can't make it but have questions you wish to pose to the candidates, please leave them here as a response, and I will ask it on your behalf.&#xD;&#xA;* After the chat session, a digest of the event will be permanently linked here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25961" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6125" RevisionGUID="f9f55588-6ae6-4f07-8985-89e705346ad9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[tag:recommendations]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Almost all the questions on this tag are to be closed for being off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't it be banned?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another question talks about this: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/421/is-a-recommendations-tag-really-necessary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the question is 3 years old and nothing has been done since then. I'm just seeing a rise of this kind of questions lately, all of them being quickly closed. Shouldn't we warn the user that this is probably going to happen if he writes a banned tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sub&gt;PS: yes, the tag on this question is ironic. So meta!&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25962" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6483" RevisionGUID="8d886e78-d191-4360-8409-aa481e7c94a3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Help! My question was closed (or down voted).  Why? And what can I do about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoted](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6484#6484)&#xD;&#xA;* [Duplicate](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6485#6485)&#xD;&#xA;* Off topic&#xD;&#xA;    * [What technology to take up next](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6486/)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Recommend a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resource](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Career or education advice](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Legal Advice or Aid](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8335/)&#xD;&#xA;    * [Assistance in writing or debugging existing code](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7742/) &#xD;&#xA;        * (MSE) [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](//meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in/129632#129632)&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489)&#xD;&#xA;* [Too broad](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490)&#xD;&#xA;* [Primarily opinion-based](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Other](//meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6492#6492)  &#xD;&#xA;  certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three of categories listed under _Off topic_ match site-specific close reasons, see: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5992/what-should-our-predefined-off-topic-reasons-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers below try to summarize the issue and provide links to related content that helped shape the policies.  Realize that many of the links are from particular points in the history of Software Engineering (previously known as Programmers.SE) and while they have good advice and ideas in them, policies described in 2010 may not be the same as 2014 and beyond.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Please note: There are quite a few of my answers in this question.  Up voting (or down voting) them all in one go *may* lead to a [serial vote](//meta.stackexchange.com/tags/serial-voting/info &quot;what's this&quot;) reversal.  If this happens, it makes it even harder for you to vote on other things I may have written elsewhere on this meta.  In that light, please limit your voting on this question and its answers.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For pasting into chat or comments there is a &quot;Quick link&quot; at the end of each answer.  The quick link for the question is `[Why was my question closed or down voted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483/)` - pasting this into chat or a comment will link to the question.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25963" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6680" RevisionGUID="ee4a4748-4baf-41f8-b8d7-965485ddcca7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Following the post from Yannis Rizos about the use of &quot;No Action Needed&quot; for posts that are not all that good (https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6679/reviewing-first-posts-from-new-users), I am struggling to understand when to use &quot;No Action Needed&quot; in a review of a first post and when to use &quot;Skip&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Up to now, I used the heuristic that if the post wasn't bad enough to close vote/down vote/flag and wasn't good enough to upvote, then I would select &quot;No Action Needed&quot;. This means that I would use the &quot;No Action Needed&quot; option mostly for posts that had a bit of a 'meh' feeling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the post by Yannis, I gather that I should Skip the review for those posts and leave it for someone else to take action on the post (either positive or negative), but that leaves me with the question:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If good posts should be upvoted, bad posts downvoted (or otherwise dealt with) and meh posts skipped, on which posts should I use the &quot;No Action Needed&quot; option, or should that option not exist at all?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25965" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5649" RevisionGUID="ce0abeaa-994d-4acf-bb5d-97c70a860a63" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This was somewhat exceptional, as a few weird things were at play. I'd like to answer your question twice, first speaking to this specific incident, and then in a more general sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was originally [asked on Stack Overflow][1] (now deleted) and migrated here, [then rejected as folks were working on it][2] and then finally unlocked (but closed) which is its current state. As Yannis indicated, there's also some private administrative history which we really can't go into - but suffice it to say that suspending the user as was done was the fastest way to stop the disruption while the other factors at play were resolved. It was a perfect miniature storm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now - a more general answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, yes, we should definitely separate content from contributor when determining what adds to or detracts from the value of the site. A good question asked by a rather disagreeable user is still a good contribution, especially if it has attracted useful and well written answers. Sure, sometimes users get upset that their question wasn't as well received or understood as they hoped it would be, but seldom do you see these frustrations manifest themselves so intensely or vehemently. We also should assume that questions are asked in good faith unless it becomes blatantly obvious that they were not. So yes, in general, always try to salvage good and helpful content, unless doing so costs more than it's worth - at which point a moderator may need to be involved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This brings us back to the case at point. When actions seem a little strange, you can generally rest assured that the moderators are taking past history into consideration, even if that history is not immediately evident. This usually means handling things a little differently than usual, on a case by case basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the situation were any less complicated, the question would simply have been edited into shape, received the answers that it did and settled into an uneventful existence. This was really an exceptional case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15123889/why-do-data-types-in-computers-exist-if-its-really-all-just-bits&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5642/something-very-strange-going-on-in-a-closed-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25967" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6101" RevisionGUID="e191456c-994f-48d0-858c-de596deb663b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Great idea! Except for most of what you said!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## This should go nowhere! Where should this go? [Nowhere](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6098/what-reasons-do-questions-get-closed-for-here-should-be-in-the-help-center-un/6101#6101). ##" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25968" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5656" RevisionGUID="59e93ae7-ebb5-4322-ba8e-1a7b3e691279" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The following is a &quot;digest&quot; version of the [2013 Moderator Election Town Hall Chat](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5595/2013-moderator-election-town-hall-chat). The format, [as described on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests), is one *answer* to this question *for every question* asked in the Town Hall, containing all the candidate's answers to that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**To view the digest chronologically, please sort the answers by &quot;oldest&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have questions or comments about this, **please do not answer this question** as the answers are designed to be used for the questions from the Town hall itself. Instead, please ask on [the parent question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests) or in [the Town Hall Discussion Room](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/352/town-hall-discussion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see any corrections which need to be made to this digest, or if you were a candidate who was unable to attend the town hall and would like your answers included, please @GraceNote or @TimStone [in the chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/251/programmers-town-hall-chat) and let us know!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25969" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6534" RevisionGUID="d99aa422-4d21-4306-94c8-6f40d06db5d1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="...if I was a homework cheater, I would applaud [an approach like that](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14258630#14258630 &quot;quote source, bold font is mine&quot;)...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm for deletion if not improved in a reasonable timeframe.  &#xD;&#xA;But minutes after closure is, I think, too speedy.  &#xD;&#xA;**I tend to give a few hours, a day** tops, or recent activity on the site with no edits made...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...because, you see, few hours of just staying there would be **good enough already** for my purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##I would applaud it, enjoy it, exploit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More, I would brag about my successful recipe at &quot;forums&quot;, sharing it with cheaters like me and helping them find a way to a promised land:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Create a throwaway account at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;2. Dump your homework.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;it's quite likely that you'll find a kind soul or two around to help&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;3. Keep squeezing solution details in question comments until it's deleted.&#xD;&#xA;4. If you're lucky to get an answer before question gets [closed](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10582/what-is-a-closed-or-on-hold-question &quot;what does that mean&quot;), do the same in answer comments.&#xD;&#xA;5. If you feel like nobody's paying attention, edit your question: that will [bump](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info) it and increase chances to attract someone willing to help.&#xD;&#xA;6. You may probably notice that question is getting funny marks -1, -2, -3... They call it [down-votes](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/down-votes/info) - don't worry about these, it's all imaginary.&#xD;&#xA;7. If you notice that you can't ask next question, don't worry. They call it [question ban](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th), all you need to circumvent it is to create new throwaway account and repeat above steps.&#xD;&#xA;8. [Only thing to keep in mind is](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3836/programmers-se-and-the-summer-of-love/3837#3837 &quot;paraphrased from here&quot;): **&quot;don't care how they react; go looking for the one guy that will actually do your homework for you (some people will)&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##As a community, what should we do about this approach?   &#xD;&#xA;Should we keep current &quot;policy&quot; as highlighted above, or should we consider speedier deletions?  Speedier deletions on down-voted questions may lead to the help-vampire hitting the question ban faster, but this can be worked around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're here to build a knowledgeable, rewarding community.  We're not here to feed the help-vampires or to reward answers on their questions as it merely encourages more of the bad behaviour.  How should we balance cleaning out the trash without appearing overly harsh to new community members that may be able to contribute once they learn the ropes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;To those interested in a broader context of above: **[what is the point to keep this homework dump visible?](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/what-is-the-point-to-keep-this-homework-dump-visible)**&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25970" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6125" RevisionGUID="13466f09-5d9c-4537-b29b-95870eb687fb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[tag:recommendations]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Almost all the questions on this tag are to be closed for being off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't it be banned?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another question talks about this: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/421/is-a-recommendations-tag-really-necessary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the question is 3 years old and nothing has been done since then. I'm just seeing a rise of this kind of questions lately, all of them being quickly closed. Shouldn't we warn the user that this is probably going to happen if he writes a banned tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sub&gt;PS: yes, the tag on this question is ironic. So meta!&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25971" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6582" RevisionGUID="3fa61025-3228-4f0e-847c-7273ed5c1182" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Difficulty with naming has a bit of a history with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are two hard problems in computer science: caching, naming, and off by one errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has been *repeatedly* revisited on meta and elsewhere&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (P.SE Aug 2012) https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3856/question-about-naming-conventions-not-constructive&#xD;&#xA;* (P.SE Oct 2011) https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* (P.SE Jan 2014) https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6406/name-that-thing-questions&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO Nov 2013) [What is the appropriate / preferred method for questions concerning programming nomenclature?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/203880/what-is-the-appropriate-preferred-method-for-questions-concerning-programming)&#xD;&#xA;* (Blog Feb 2012) [Lets Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yes, the guidance on these is confusing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, please answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Are the [tag:terminology] and [tag:naming] questions on topic?&#xD;&#xA;* If so, what should be expected of these questions to not be closed as custom, too broad, or primarily opinion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25972" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6817" RevisionGUID="67d0b20f-9e89-4953-947c-4120c6cb25fb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I haven't interacted at all with that question (down votes or the too broad close vote).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My impressions of it are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Some meta stuff at the top.  This normally sets off a warning flag for me.  Things like &quot;I know this isn't the right place&quot; and the like tend to be questions that are otherwise problematic on the site.  Your particular meta comment was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Folks, there is no TL;DR version of my question. Please be patient.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Even if this isn't a post that *is* problematic, it sets one's mind to expect that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. A quick scroll down and I hit four code blocks, two of which have scroll bars on them.  This is something that then starts to *look* like one that is going to delve too far into code or fix my code/design type questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Many of the questions that tend to be &quot;here is a lot of code&quot; tend to get answers that are &quot;here is a lot of code too.&quot;  Those answers aren't ideal for P.SE, and so questions that ask them may get down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Where is the question?  After digging down a bit, they are between two code blocks.  The questions appear to be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    1. Is there another name for this pattern? &#xD;&#xA;    2. Is this really an Adapter?&#xD;&#xA;    3. So, does the compiler have no mechanism to check such semantic inconsistencies?&#xD;&#xA;    4. Something that looks like a design review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Asking multiple questions in a single post is problematic.  Someone could answer the &quot;another name&quot; question, and another answer the adapter one, and a third about the compiler.  None (or all) of them are 'right' for the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    While I may just be missing it... but I seem to have some difficulty matching the &quot;abstract stuff in C#&quot; in the question title to the questions being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. There's a naming question there.  Naming questions have a problematic history on P.SE - a bit more about that at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a lot there.  But I also have to read quite a bit to even find the question being asked and then go back and reread it.  And after that, I'm still confused about what question you are asking and what type of answer you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The mouseover for the the down vote reads &quot;this question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&quot; and that 'it is unclear' part may be something that people are voting on when reading the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some other bits that are in there from comments here and there...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@Doval, the site asks me to provide details and share my research. I did that. It is ridiculous that you guys vote down questions if they do not fit your mental models. Your lack of experience in working in teams and mentoring clearly shines through your comments. Gaining points on a forum is a completely different matter. Having the maturity to answer properly and with humility is a different matter altogether. –  msiyer yesterday&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@ Alex, I never mentioned anything about my breakfast. Oh! you were being sarcastic? Reserve your sarcasm for some other day. I would have asked small questions on StackOverflow. This is a site for detailed analysis. What does detailed mean? Please go and read the link I posted in my last comment. Guys, learn to respect others. The internet does not give you license to be rude. Just because you do not understand something does not mean there are not others who can provide some answers. This site provides me the license to showcase my research. Does that make any sense to you? –  msiyer yesterday&lt;/sub&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit rude in its wording.  Not enough that I'd go about flagging it... but it sets a negative tone and some people may vote accordingly.  If you are to point out that *other* people are being rude too (again, judgement call there) this is a question that you asked and people are voting on that (they may also be flagging comments, but that's not as obvious).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@Graham, Your comment is a good one and gentle too. I am not looking for a free code review. I just want to discuss if what i understood is proper. The attention span of these guys is just pathetic. They need questions that are couple of lines long so that they can answer fast and get points. This site is for detailed analysis as per FAQ. It also asks me to show my research. If I have to be concise I will post on StackOverflow. Why is this so difficult to comprehend? –  msiyer yesterday&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Setting aside the tone in this comment: &quot;I just want to **discuss** if what i understood is proper&quot; - [discussions don't work well on Stack Exchange](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6742/40980).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that you brought this up again in the meta question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;One guy also said that you are getting a free code review done here, so better get aligned to the rules laid down by the members. NO. I was not getting my code reviewed. I was trying to discuss something that troubles all beginners. Even if I was, I need not stoop and beg.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@Bart, you answered properly. But when you say &quot;compiler writers have better things to do&quot;, it kind of kills discussion. But we surely discussed on Design patterns. I sincerely feel that the questions were not bad. May not be a world class problem but nothing silly about it. These are issues I have seen all beginners deal with. i hoped a discussion would help others to learn. –  msiyer 6 hours ago&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, Stack Exchange is not a site for discussions.  There are other avenues and sites to look at if you *are* interested in a discussion.  Stack Exchange is designed to handle Q&amp;A - not discussions.  It does the former very well and the latter very poorly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25973" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5719" RevisionGUID="c1929323-a0ec-41c5-ada3-76d2d259c36d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="With this recent spurt of activity on meta, a number of opinions have come out. A number of these describe some rather radical changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(please pardon me if I ascribe rather extreme positions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On everything should be open&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**There are instances where people seem to be opposed to closing any question for any reason.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Many of these people who are 3k and above have few if any close vote&#xD;&#xA;   reviews&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This suggests that either everything should be open or that they are comfortable with what is closed.  This is sometimes refuted by numerous &quot;reopen&quot; votes without any &quot;leave closed&quot; reviews.  From this, I can only conclude that there is the perception that everything should be open and there should be no moderation closing things - everything can be salvaged, somehow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On down votes&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;**There are suggestions that there shouldn't be downvotes for users with less than a certain reputation.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Somehow this suggestion has 10 positive votes at the time of this&#xD;&#xA;   writing (and 11 downvotes)&#xD;&#xA; - This is done in the name of &quot;welcoming users&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - People seem to take down votes personally&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Down votes are a necessary feedback to users and part of the design of the system.  There is a threshold where questions don't show up on the front page if they are below a certain level (people complain about seeing too many closed questions on the front page that they don't want to see?  Down vote them.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [mentioned](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for#comment14418_5706),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We have a system for dealing with lousy answers This is where your argument fails. Yes, it's absolutely true that we have a system for dealing with lousy answers, but that's irrelevant if no one is actually using that system. Next time you see a closed question you think should be re-opened, moderate the answers first. Use your downvotes on crap answers that attempt to answer the question and your flags on answers that don't attempt to answer the question. Questions can easily get re-opened if people actually did something about it instead of just talking about it. &lt;/rant&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvotes are part of reopening good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On closure reasons&#xD;&#xA;------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**There is a consistent misunderstanding about closure reasons**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- I understand this is something that Stack Exchange is going to address&#xD;&#xA;- Many people complain about something being closed as off topic when it was closed as non-constructive or not a real question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not everything is closed for off topic.  Many of the questions of &quot;I don't understand why this was closed&quot; within [are you still confused...](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for) had to deal with not the scope, but rather with the structure of the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One such examples was [How can I learn algorithms and data structures of any type?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189143/how-can-i-learn-algorithms-and-data-structures-of-any-type)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am a novice computer science and engineering student. I am learning Java but i want to learn from the basics so I want to learn algorithms.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Where to start that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was not closed for scope reasons but rather that it is not a real question.  It was overly broad.  Attempts were made in the comments to try to figure out what is actually being asked - if there is some way to narrow it down.  It took nearly an hour between being asked and closed and the original questioner was gone not to be seen again within 3 minutes of the question being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another question of confusion was [My Company Wants To Get Into Mobile Development — And Use Multi-Platform Frameworks](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189393/my-company-wants-to-get-into-mobile-development-and-use-multi-platform-framew) that has with in:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What do you guys think about this? No one at my company has any experience with any of the mobile development frameworks. We're starting basically from scratch. I know a bit about iOS, a few people know a bit about android but it amounts to little.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Would love some input from some experts :D&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is polling - asking for lots of ideas.  Not an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is lots of history&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is lots of history to what Progammers.SE *was*.  Get over it.  The site has not been that way for a long time.  Go through the [top users in the past year](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=reputation&amp;filter=year) - The vast majority where not here in September of 2010.  These are the people that are here now.  Trying to tell us about how wonderful it was back then and how bad it is now - we don't think its that bad now, and what you try to tell us that we are missing, we don't think we really want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You want to tell me about how wonderful the site was back then?  Sure.  I have fond memories of BBS's and that his of a 1200 baud modem connecting.  Some of those old BBS's became telnet sites when slip and isdn became more common and web sites with forums and live chat later on.  Its not the same place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't the same place of July 2010.  It isn't likely to become so again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lots of ideas, not answers&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my mind, what people come to Stack Exchange for is an answer.  They come to Programmers.StackExchange for a reason too - they want an answer.  They don't want to [reddit programming](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/) or [ask slashdot](http://ask.slashdot.org) when they have a question about programming.  We offer something special here that people come *here* to find.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange doesn't have polls.  It doesn't have endless threads of comments.  It wasn't designed to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange and Social Media&#xD;&#xA;-------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've said this before, I'll say it again.  Read [A group is its own worst enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) by Clay Shirky.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't just because I think its an essential thing to read when trying to understand a group of people... but because this was part of the considerations when creating Stack Exchange and how it is built - and thus, how we can work within it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back in [Podcast #23](https://stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/default.asp?W25450) &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Atwood**: Maybe. But the cool thing about this is this is not just me, because that would be boring. It is actually me and Clay Shirky. You know, Clay Shirky is one of my heroes.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Spolsky**: Oh...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Atwood**: Yeah I know, it's awesome. So we get to talk about like building communities online and I get to talk about StackOverflow, you know, and all the lessons we've learned and, get to present with Clay. Obviously he's an expert so. That's one of the people that I have emailed actually, because I thought that would be good, because he is from New-York city as well. So we could A) show him the site and B) talk about the thing we are going to do together in March, because he needs to see the site to have some context. I mean I did meet him and talk to him about this earlier a few months ago, I think I mentioned it on the podcasts. But that was before we had sort of even going to beta, so there's really not a lot to show him. But I would love to show him in person. So we'll see if I'll hear back from him, I do not know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.StackExchange.com runs in the Stack Exchange framework.  It was designed with Clay's writings in mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*A Group...* goes into many points of online communities.  The one I've tried to bring to a forefront (there are far too many essential things in the article - for me to try to explain them all would have much more than the text I've already written, and I suspect by this time you are a bit weary.)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale. Scale alone kills conversations, because conversations require dense two-way conversations. In conversational contexts, Metcalfe's law is a drag. The fact that the amount of two-way connections you have to support goes up with the square of the users means that the density of conversation falls off very fast as the system scales even a little bit. You have to have some way to let users hang onto the less is more pattern, in order to keep associated with one another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't have a question that can be answered by 100 different answers.  Jeff considered the issue of scale when he designed Stack Exchange to make it difficult to have conversations in comments (and has apparently been thinking of things in for [discourse](http://www.discourse.org) - which apparently had been nagging him for [a long time](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/11/discussions-flat-or-threaded.html)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you want?&#xD;&#xA;---------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those of you discontent with Programmers.SE, when considering that this is the way that the software works and that great changes to the fundamental ideals of the sites won't happen - what is it that you actually see Programmers.SE being that it isn't today?  How does the site work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do we clean up broken windows and trash in the park?  What do you do about that guy who keeps asking how to interview for Google and Microsoft and Blizzard and Oracle again and again?  What does the FAQ say?  How does voting work?  Is voting there at all?  Do we try to make it so that every single person feels like this is a nice warm fuzzy place? Is there a place for [As a programmer, what are the most routine and what are the most creative development tasks?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189574/what-are-the-most-routine-and-what-are-the-most-creative-development-tasks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does what you perceive as the ideal site differ from reddit? Ask Slashdot? Generic php forum?  Can this be implemented in Stack Exchange?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25974" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6846" RevisionGUID="30f22317-b816-4b8b-8b1b-715056df7927" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This homework dump has been quickly deleted - [Problem : Valid Segments 1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254573/problem-valid-segments-1).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Consider text comprised of `blah blah`. Task is to find out `blah blah`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next day, it was slightly modified and reposted from different account - [Problem : Valid Segments 2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254641/valid-segments-2).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Consider text comprised of `blah blah`. Task is to find out `blah blah`. Participants submitting solutions in C language should `blah blah`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I [flagged](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6845/31260 &quot;as explained here&quot;) reposted dump for deletion. My flag was marked helpful but post wasn't deleted (I'd rather prefer opposite - flag decline, followed by deletion but oh well). About three hours after that, I flagged original dump, pointing out that it was reposted and referring repost in the flag message.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My flag, again, was marked helpful but the reposted dump, again, was kept hanging on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What would be the reason to keep the second dump instead of deleting it like it was done to first one?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25975" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5788" RevisionGUID="15e63a36-796d-4201-a274-28dbe7eb921e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I like the meta tag [tag:resource-questions] as the [wiki info](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/resource-questions/info) for it can be a useful educational resource for new users.  I notice that user gnat has been using this in his comments where people post their first question asking for a list of tutorials or books.  Eg:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/192102/i-want-to-learn-scheme-which-interpreter-compiler-and-books-can-be-recommended#comment371576_192102&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [resource requests are not quite welcome at Programmers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/resource-questions/info). As far as I understand, one would rather present an **underlying problem** instead - a problem that was intended to be solved with particular resource requested &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is great and I don't think anybody would disagree with this, but perhaps it is a good idea that we create this tag on the main site so that when we identify blatant resource requests we can tag the question.  I think it will help speed up the cumbersome and time consuming process of cleanups as we will have a big list of things we can speedibly delete all at once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are your thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25976" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6584" RevisionGUID="fc04c910-a3e9-4e44-96d4-82dd92139b06" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text=" 1. yes, absolutely, these questions are on-topic, and here's why I think so:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - knowing the right word enables you to find a precise definition, and to search through the literature for more background information&#xD;&#xA; - knowing the right word enables effective communication.  If you don't know what a &quot;free variable&quot; is, I think it would be nearly impossible to have a good discussion about them&#xD;&#xA; - the answers are rarely opinion-based.  Most have been established in the literature and are well-defined.  &#xD;&#xA; - in the few cases where there are multiple possible names, the question provides an opportunity to cover the exact differences between what the names refer to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. criteria for good naming questions: [here's some good answers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2380/39685).  I would add that good naming questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - focus on what already exists and has already been defined&#xD;&#xA;  - aren't trying to come up with new names&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. let's keep in mind that a bad question is a bad question, and a lazy asker is a lazy asker.  Ultimately, good users will (probably) generate good content, and abusize users will game, abuse, and damage the system, no matter how complicated or precise the rules are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, I have seen this comment appearing frequently under suspected naming questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;name that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; thing&quot; question. &quot;Name that thing&quot; are bad questions for the same&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions. See&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I would like to request that users stop posting this.**  Oftentimes, it is inappropriate for the OP under which it was posted, because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - you can google them (see #1 above)&#xD;&#xA; - they are practical (see #1 above)&#xD;&#xA; - they do help others.  Of course they don't help *everybody*, but no question does.  &#xD;&#xA; - it uses unwarranted pejorative language (&quot;guessing game&quot;)&#xD;&#xA; - the linked blog has little to do with the OP under which the comment is pasted&#xD;&#xA;   - the examples have *nothing* to do with precise terms such as &quot;alpha substitution&quot;&#xD;&#xA;   - the intent of the question is totally different than a so-called &quot;guessing game&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you believe that a question is low quality, then (IMHO) please say why you think so, downvote it, or vote to close it.  **But please, do not copy-paste such comments when they don't apply.**  I believe it's simple harassment, incites pointless debate, turns off people from using the site and is unhelpful.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25977" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6196" RevisionGUID="c869e3b1-c43f-49af-b62f-14dd1a719bac" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I opened [this Meta question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6190/what-recourse-is-there-for-a-post-that-is-locked-for-reasons-that-one-does-not-u) in response to [a P.SE question that was locked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that I laid out a dispassionate and objective argument that the whole rollback/edit history/locking issue was not handled properly by the moderator involved. My argument consisted of referencing a blog post, [&quot;Good Subjective v. Bad Subjective Questions&quot;](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) specifically because this post is linked directly from [the P.SE &quot;on-topic&quot; page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and was the only direct reference there that seemed relevant to my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I am happy to admit that my line of thinking and my argument might be incorrect. I don't *believe* they are incorrect, but they still could be. But regardless of the arguments' rightness or wrongness, I think it is indisputable that they are dispassionate references to P.SE's endorsed community standards and my interpretation thereof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, my interpretation and everything else could be wrong, but I was trying to make a serious argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To my surprise, the user @GlenH7 feels that I am being &quot;impetuous&quot; and &quot;petulant&quot;, evidenced in his comment on the post (as of 11 am EST today).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your impetuous and petulant meta question and comments are ... disappointing. I had written up a fairly length answer which I realized was just bashing you. The short version is this: you're wrong regarding your question on main and the basis behind your meta question is tenuous at best. 3 of the 5 mods have weighed in and called your crap out. Several high rep users, included the site's highest rep user, have called your crap out. Stop defending an untenable argument and try to learn from what the community is offering you. – GlenH7 12 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*And this comment received 2 upvotes*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could try to make an itemized list of why this comment is *categorically inappropriate* (for example, the entirely non-sequitur mention of this 'answer' @GlenH7 wrote up that was &quot;just bashing me.&quot; In addition to being mean, that's entirely irrelevant. Who cares about an answer you *were going to but ultimately did not* write. What possible use is it to mention to me that you *were going to write a post bashing me* but then did not?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But at this point I feel like it's no use. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does the community at large have advice for me on how to cope with this? I really, very seriously, feel pretty depressed by the entire thread of comments and answers at the meta question link. There are serious argumentative fallacies present in virtually all of the answers; ones that I've taken great pains to address.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if the end result of that thread was just that everyone still thought I was wrong, then so be it. But that's not the result of the thread. The result is that people want to write answers that are &quot;just bashing me&quot;, not publish them, and then tell me that that's what they were going to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*And then two other people upvoted them for that!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is a user supposed to cope with a community like that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25978" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6851" RevisionGUID="5168199b-2cf3-41ea-ab25-1494bc10baa8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I failed a review audit for [Cleanest way to report errors in Haskell][1]. I responded by voting to close it as &quot;primarily opinion based.&quot; I understand that answering an occasional review incorrectly [will not hurt][2], that is not my concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I out of line for believing that question should be closed as being primarily opinion-based, despite the seven upvotes? The asker outlines three different ways to deal with errors, and basically asks &quot;what would you do?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/252977/cleanest-way-to-report-errors-in-haskell&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6625/i-just-failed-an-audit-but-i-was-right-and-it-was-wrong-what-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25979" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6586" RevisionGUID="44051275-76b7-4c09-af8b-677e7bf2f3d6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As has been previously pointed out, this issue has already been discussed at length, with a resulting consensus that there are two categories of &quot;naming things&quot; questions that might actually be on-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  What is the name of this well-known concept?&#xD;&#xA;2.  Questions about &quot;principles of naming things.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is, however, one remaining category of questions which I feel should always be off-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;What should I name this thing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is not a &quot;guessing game&quot; question; it is **[primarily opinion-based](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491).**  There are literally an *infinite* number of such questions; none of them are at all interesting to experts unless they can be answered from a principle-based perspective, in a way that could help others improve their naming skills." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25980" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5818" RevisionGUID="efc3ee39-45a6-4057-b4e3-8b53c4846597" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been [discussed before](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3556/are-app-store-questions-on-topic-on-programmers), but the [App Stores proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30702/app-stores) is inching closer to fulfilling the commitment requirements and I'd like to raise the topic again just to see if anything has changed in the past year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I saw the App Stores proposal, my first instinct was to say that the topic should be pretty well served by Stack Overflow and Programmers for all of the questions that would be a good fit for Stack Exchange in the first place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers has a lightly used [tag:appstore] tag and the questions that do exist there seem like exactly the kind of questions that'd fit the newly proposed site. The [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) also explicitly includes &quot;freelance and business concerns&quot; as a topic, which to me sounds like it would cover the less technical or implementation-related aspects of working with any app store.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm also on board with [this post](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/a/3003/26022) on Area 51:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If [...] the proposal is &quot;about bridging the gap between the development and business aspects of the App development process that don't fit on other StackExchange websites.&quot;, I'd roll it into a larger proposal. &quot;The business of development&quot;. We have a site that's essentially &quot;The business of being a programmer&quot; (Programmers), and I think that would have both a broader reach and a larger base of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That was written a good year and a half ago and Programmers has evolved quite a bit since then. I think at this point it may well be, at least in part, a &quot;business of development&quot; type of site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you all think? Would you welcome questions about dealing with app stores here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25981" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6196" RevisionGUID="da08b32d-559e-4e44-a6f0-6350a2a10b5b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I opened [this Meta question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6190/what-recourse-is-there-for-a-post-that-is-locked-for-reasons-that-one-does-not-u) in response to [a P.SE question that was locked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that I laid out a dispassionate and objective argument that the whole rollback/edit history/locking issue was not handled properly by the moderator involved. My argument consisted of referencing a blog post, [&quot;Good Subjective v. Bad Subjective Questions&quot;](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) specifically because this post is linked directly from [the P.SE &quot;on-topic&quot; page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and was the only direct reference there that seemed relevant to my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I am happy to admit that my line of thinking and my argument might be incorrect. I don't *believe* they are incorrect, but they still could be. But regardless of the arguments' rightness or wrongness, I think it is indisputable that they are dispassionate references to P.SE's endorsed community standards and my interpretation thereof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, my interpretation and everything else could be wrong, but I was trying to make a serious argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To my surprise, the user @GlenH7 feels that I am being &quot;impetuous&quot; and &quot;petulant&quot;, evidenced in his comment on the post (as of 11 am EST today).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your impetuous and petulant meta question and comments are ... disappointing. I had written up a fairly length answer which I realized was just bashing you. The short version is this: you're wrong regarding your question on main and the basis behind your meta question is tenuous at best. 3 of the 5 mods have weighed in and called your crap out. Several high rep users, included the site's highest rep user, have called your crap out. Stop defending an untenable argument and try to learn from what the community is offering you. – GlenH7 12 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*And this comment received 2 upvotes*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could try to make an itemized list of why this comment is *categorically inappropriate* (for example, the entirely non-sequitur mention of this 'answer' @GlenH7 wrote up that was &quot;just bashing me.&quot; In addition to being mean, that's entirely irrelevant. Who cares about an answer you *were going to but ultimately did not* write. What possible use is it to mention to me that you *were going to write a post bashing me* but then did not?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But at this point I feel like it's no use. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does the community at large have advice for me on how to cope with this? I really, very seriously, feel pretty depressed by the entire thread of comments and answers at the meta question link. There are serious argumentative fallacies present in virtually all of the answers; ones that I've taken great pains to address.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if the end result of that thread was just that everyone still thought I was wrong, then so be it. But that's not the result of the thread. The result is that people want to write answers that are &quot;just bashing me&quot;, not publish them, and then tell me that that's what they were going to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*And then two other people upvoted them for that!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is a user supposed to cope with a community like that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25982" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6874" RevisionGUID="b19f6974-d270-446e-8118-73a04c72f6cf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I read [this post][1] and it gave some ideas. This is just a rough sketch. Do you think it has wings?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. a new area is created on relevant SE sites called something like &quot;help me with my homework&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;2. giving posters the answer is not allowed (punished with downvoting or worse). Helping them understand the problem is encouraged&#xD;&#xA;3. Professors or honest students can post questions too, either because they want help or because they want to register the question as a &quot;homework question&quot;&#xD;&#xA;4. If a (for lack of a better term) dishonest user posts a question that looks suspiciously like a &quot;homework&quot; question (but hasn't marked it as so), we now have a database to check against. &#xD;&#xA;5. If a positive match is found the question is flagged as a &quot;homework&quot; question, and sent to the new area where rules #2 and #3 apply.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25983" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6604" RevisionGUID="54d43aad-207b-4d84-aa27-8d0e689243ae" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Following [a Meta discussion][1] and some discussions in [our chat room][2] to iron out some finer points, we have completed an update to the [&quot;What topics can I ask about here?&quot; page of our Help Center][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is a summary of the changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Minor rewording of the tagline. It still emphasizes questions that require human expertise, but makes it clear that we are about more than just programmers. Questions about many aspects of the software development lifecycle from anyone working in it are welcome here.&#xD;&#xA; - Removed &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; from the list of things that are on-topic. The questions that were off-topic are still off-topic, but the ones that are on-topic are best captured in the &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; and &quot;software engineering management&quot; line items in what is on-topic.&#xD;&#xA; - Removed the &quot;software engineering&quot; line item from what is on-topic. It was replaced with more specific details of what software engineering topics are allowed here, which is most of them.&#xD;&#xA; - Clarified programming tools to specifically exclude coding tools such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs. We don't want to entirely preclude good tool questions that don't otherwise have a home at this time.&#xD;&#xA; - Added &quot;legal advice&quot; to the list of things that are not allowed. We are not lawyers.&#xD;&#xA; - Changed &quot;resume help&quot; to &quot;job hunting&quot; at the request of The Workplace. They do not do resume critiques and did not want our Help Center giving that impression.&#xD;&#xA; - Shortened the portion on subjective questions. This is better addressed by the [&quot;What types of questions should I avoid asking?&quot; page of the Help Center][4]. Maintained links to this page as well as the relevant blog posts, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally speaking, there isn't a change to site scope or audience. However, we have clarified some of the more ambiguous parts and more closely aligned the things our site is not about with some of the custom close reasons that exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to this, these changes (as applicable) have been rolled into our [About page][5] as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anyone has any suggestions, we'd still be glad to take them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6590/should-the-close-reasons-be-added-to-the-help-center-on-topic-article&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25984" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6253" RevisionGUID="54bc21ee-0255-4882-8d63-e5cf29f167fa" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question is prompted by some of the discussion in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q  Specifically, what MichaelT wrote to JensG and the comment Telastyn left on the bottom.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's consider: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120019/whats-the-benefit-of-object-oriented-programming-over-procedural-programming/120038#120038&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that a good question? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I first read it, its score was well into the negative (-4 or lower, don't remember). It was immediately pointed out how it was a duplicate and I'm sure it had 1 or 2 close votes, although those are now gone. Interestingly enough, data explorer query for that question shows that its score never dipped below -1, which I'm guessing is due to some of the original downvoters changing their minds and removing their downvote, unfortunately the schema doesn't track deleted up/down votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So as maintainers of P.SE content and upholders of FAQ (Is that the ultimate decision source?), what is our stance on such questions?  If you are bad, you are bad and we shall close you?  Or do the answers on the page have some leverage?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not questioning the up/down vote system. I think that's great. Bad stuff gets low score, good stuff gets high score. But if this question was closed as fast as some of the others I've seen, as JensG would put it, it would just get &quot;voted to an early death&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other part, I'm not quite sure about (maybe this should be a separate post, and if so I can separate it), we close what's considered low-quality questions so they don't pollute the... question-space(?) but they are all still there.  Hence what some refer to as &quot;a wall&quot;, although some others have never seen one.  So the closure doesn't actually remove the pollution, it just prevents a not so good question from potentially receiving a really good answer that could benefit the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I apologize in advance to the moderators if this is a noob question that has already been discussed and settled. I've been a member for a while now, but my involvement has mostly been drive-by posts here and there. I do appreciate the time and effort you guys are putting into keeping up this site. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25985" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5843" RevisionGUID="d7277eab-552a-44d4-a711-28ea6853c57b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some recent posts make me feel like these could be automatically rejected by [quality filter](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/quality-filter/info &quot;what's this&quot;), thus saving community efforts for better quality questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To develope My Own linux Distro for Linux Beginners.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195209/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To Know How To prepare An understanding Doc To Track what I am Doing On daily Basis So that I can Be update To my Work.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195203/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I am A New Joinee In a major MNC And Currently I am Working In Vitria Team I dont Know Much about Vitria From Career Persepective.Plz Guide&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195204/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Above are full literal quotes of the posts, I did not change anything.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently it has been announced that quality filter is tightened at Trilogy sites (for your convenience, announcement is quoted below).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* As far as I understand, SE team is [open to consider similar change for Programmers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/174097/is-it-time-to-tighten-up-the-question-quality-filter/176875?noredirect=1#comment531396_176875 &quot;quote source&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the sad truth is that on Programmers, even questions with a maximum quality score fare worse on average than the ones passing the threshold I just put in place on SO. We can try tweaking the threshold there too, but it's probably worth a separate discussion on meta.programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we please somehow adjust quality filter at Programmers to prevent posting low quality stuff like in above examples?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the reference, announcement of [filter adjustment at Trilogy sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/176875/165773 &quot;here&quot;) is as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've bumped up the threshold below which questions will be blocked. The majority of *recently-asked* questions that fall below the new threshold do not fare well on Stack Overflow (i.e. they are closed, deleted, and/or down-voted). &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The down-side is that short questions will be harder to post (this is more than just a length check, but short + poor spelling / caps / punctuation / formatting will damn a post more readily). At this point, I think that's a fair trade-off on Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I've also increased the threshold on Super User and Server Fault; although the volume is lower there, they field even fewer reasonable questions in this range. A quick check of other high-traffic sites does not appear to justify raising this anywhere else at this time.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;FWIW: Stack Overflow already rejects something like twelve hundred questions a day based on this check - that'd amount to about 13% of questions if a lot of them weren't just the same folks retrying more or less the same text over and over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update** for the reference, at the &quot;quality score&quot; list provided in [this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5857/31260 &quot;thanks Shog!&quot;): first of above examples scores 70, second - 83, third - 81." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25986" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6253" RevisionGUID="b2b81e05-cf33-4fb7-bac4-dc4fe5f5019e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question is prompted by some of the discussion in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q  Specifically, what MichaelT wrote to JensG and the comment Telastyn left on the bottom.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's consider: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120019/whats-the-benefit-of-object-oriented-programming-over-procedural-programming/120038#120038&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that a good question? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I first read it, its score was well into the negative (-4 or lower, don't remember). It was immediately pointed out how it was a duplicate and I'm sure it had 1 or 2 close votes, although those are now gone. Interestingly enough, data explorer query for that question shows that its score never dipped below -1, which I'm guessing is due to some of the original downvoters changing their minds and removing their downvote, unfortunately the schema doesn't track deleted up/down votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So as maintainers of P.SE content and upholders of FAQ (Is that the ultimate decision source?), what is our stance on such questions?  If you are bad, you are bad and we shall close you?  Or do the answers on the page have some leverage?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not questioning the up/down vote system. I think that's great. Bad stuff gets low score, good stuff gets high score. But if this question was closed as fast as some of the others I've seen, as JensG would put it, it would just get &quot;voted to an early death&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other part, I'm not quite sure about (maybe this should be a separate post, and if so I can separate it), we close what's considered low-quality questions so they don't pollute the... question-space(?) but they are all still there.  Hence what some refer to as &quot;a wall&quot;, although some others have never seen one.  So the closure doesn't actually remove the pollution, it just prevents a not so good question from potentially receiving a really good answer that could benefit the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I apologize in advance to the moderators if this is a noob question that has already been discussed and settled. I've been a member for a while now, but my involvement has mostly been drive-by posts here and there. I do appreciate the time and effort you guys are putting into keeping up this site. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25987" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6884" RevisionGUID="c71ae279-112f-4c20-b871-3be23f5d9b6f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've flagged my [question][1] and asked for it to be moved to Stack Overflow ([that's the right way of doing it, right?][2]) but it was closed instead. I think it's a good question ([not a crap][3]) that proved to be relevant to many people over the years.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44929/color-schemes-generation-theory-and-algorithms&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5874/move-question-to-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3887/closed-instead-of-migrated" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25989" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5852" RevisionGUID="e11b28c2-bd82-4fbc-be53-de6abe7d0987" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just looked at the question and I fully agree with the closure, mostly for the reasons outlined in [MichealT's answer][1]. I don't see how it's anything other than a poll for people's opinions: &quot;Do you [own your own tools]?&quot;, &quot;What do you think good people?&quot; I don't see how either of those questions will lead to anything other than an extended discussion or opinions. There's no visible problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should the question be locked? First, this question won't be automatically deleted. It has been up voted and has up voted answers. The automatic deletion script will not kick in. In order for this post to be deleted at this point, it requires moderator intervention or enough users voting to delete. As far as locking, the only valid reason for locking would be &quot;historical lock&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: [FAQ].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a good question for this site, but I don't see how it has historical significance. It has 623 views (a handful of which were probably generated by this Meta post) in 2 years. It only has a score of 9, and the top answer only has a score of 18. Looking through the answers, I'm not seeing anything amazing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this time, my recommendation would be to keep this question closed. If anyone is interested, I would suggest pulling out anything relevant and considering writing a post for the blog. It may be a candidate for deletion down the road, since I'm not seeing any significant value added by keeping the question around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5849/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25991" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6611" RevisionGUID="b18f4b15-9a0a-4231-8075-a97b7b6286cc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My father taught me to program back in the days of old.  He was a college chemistry lab director before he retired and had never taken a computer science class, nor was computer programming ever in his job description or duties.  The point I want to make here is that he was never a computer professional, but he was an educator and able to teach me how to program.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.StackExchange is [defined as](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Teaching a child how to program is in no way part of the scope of a professional or student answering questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking about how to teach a child how about syntax (because the asker is a programmer) is no more on topic here than asking how to teach a child to balance a checkbook on The Workplace because the person asking is an accountant for some company.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As programmers, we are not at all necessarily skilled in pedagogy. There is a great deal of background necessary to be able to properly answer these questions that fall outside of the realm of programming (and even the explaining a topic at a conference - which would be too broad).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider the guidance given in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488 which addresses the point that no two people (children in this case) are the same - nor are their instructors.  Each question will either be excessively nuanced to that individual or be hopelessly broad trying to answer for everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point to [On &quot;engineering&quot; and teaching pointers.](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/on-engineering-and-teaching-pointers) from chat where over the course of an hour and several hundred messages we worked through the how to teach pointers in C to an instructor who also helped guide *us* with the particulars for his class.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we (professional programmers) do have experience that can be useful, the aspect of teaching it to non-programmers is not a good question for the main site, but often a good topic in chat where we can get at the particulars of what is being taught and the language and the level of the students.  Those particulars make it a less than ideal main site question because it would involve could involve one question for each language and level of student understanding (and the cartesian product of the two)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25992" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6953" RevisionGUID="5e5ac4f4-7dd4-4838-b916-9cf53554391f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Update** - follow-up feature request to establish popup as discussed here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6983/improve-question-quality-by-informing-askers-of-expectations-in-some-career-rela&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As explained in [another answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6951/31260), tag specific [popup](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvXIT.png &quot;like this&quot;) can be used to guide askers and editors willing to use it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an [example](https://anime.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1083/improve-question-quality-by-informing-users-of-reverse-image-search-sites) of tag popup request. Process to create such a popup is described [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/242252/automatic-warnings-of-dangerous-tags/242355#comment792260_242355):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Post a [feature-request] for each tag, with specific guidance (ideally linking to a meta post if non-trivial so I don't have to edit these all the time) and justification for needing something more than the tag excerpt. Let folks discuss it, then ping me ([Community Manager]) if there's support... This is really something that should be discussed within each community, as these might become annoying if over-used (ideally you don't want multiple tags on a single question to produce warnings) and the guidance should reflect the lessons learned from handling these questions.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Suggestion to create a popup for this tag ([tag:job-market]) and other particularly troublesome career related tags:  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market], [tag:resume], [tag:career-transition], [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag popup content is derived from [career-development tag wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/career-development/info):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** Career advice is off-topic per the [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  Please note that most career advice questions end up being closed for being too broad or impractical; try to make yours a [good subjective question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they require the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;* Please make sure your question has the proper scope.  It needs to apply to other programmers besides yourself.  &#xD;&#xA;* If your question can also be applied to other job fields, then it does not uniquely apply to software development and is not on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;* _Before_ asking, review this meta guidance: [Why was my question closed or down voted? -&gt; Career or education advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488).  Make sure your question avoids the problems listed in the guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;This post is made community wiki in order to simplify editing.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25995" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6398" RevisionGUID="079ba186-6133-4069-b10c-50b278752ffd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have earned the yearling badge twice, just a few days apart, in this year, on programmers: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/16658/fejesjoco?tab=badges&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also got them here on this meta site, where I have never contributed anything before this: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/16658/fejesjoco?tab=badges&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like a bug to me, I haven't seen this behavior on other SE sites yet." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25996" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6642" RevisionGUID="c596f31c-854e-4b41-8dd3-e39508e76a0a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is a follow up to [BartMan's question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6637/3965), which is now locked.  We shouldn't be dismissive of the over-moderation concerns of potential new users.  You asked for 10 examples of inappropriately closed questions, so here they are, found by querying for closed questions I answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/236533/3965 Closed as opinion based, but actually has some interesting objective reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/235042/3965 Closed as too broad, after garnering four concise yet relatively thorough answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/234699/3965 Ironically, given the penchant on this site for closing questions as too broad, this rather specific question was closed as a duplicate of a question that was only vaguely related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/230784/3965 This question was closed as &quot;education advice,&quot; which we used to define as &quot;what school/degree program/course/certification should I personally enroll in&quot; and lately seems to be broadly defined as &quot;any question that mentions a university or degree or learning of any kind.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/230486/3965 This one admittedly might fit better on workplace, but has some very scrum-specific concerns, which makes it unique to our profession.  At the very least, it should have been migrated instead of closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/230271/3965 Despite an intentionally provocative title, this question asks useful, thought-provoking questions and received three insightful and relatively objective answers.  If you don't like the title, edit the title.  This question illustrates a larger concern that entire questions are frequently being rejected due to one small easily-edited part of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/224275/3965 Closed as opinion based, despite having concrete cultural and historical reasons behind the practice.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;8. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/227983/3965 Closed as &quot;unclear what you're asking&quot; despite having a short, clear answer.  It seems like this close reason is often used to mean &quot;I personally don't know the answer&quot; or &quot;I personally don't know how to explain this in a concise, easy to understand manner.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/227743/3965 Closed as &quot;what language should I learn next,&quot; but the question is more detailed, more objective, and less personal than that.  Also throws in the &quot;education advice&quot; reason, presumably because the question mentions the word &quot;learning.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/224356/3965 Closed as too broad, despite having a few good answers already.  This &quot;too broad&quot; reason is way overused for a site that's supposedly about conceptual questions.  If a concise conceptual answer can be given at the same abstraction level as the question, it's not too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could go on, and those are just the ones I personally got around to answering in the last month or so before they got closed.  I used to occasionally address these kinds of closings individually with meta posts, but it has become overwhelming, and people now seem more interested in finding excuses to close a question rather than reasons to keep it open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is twofold.  First, people have no incentive to be judicious with their close votes. Second, voting to close is easily done during normal use of the site while the questions are at the top of the page, whereas voting to reopen requires effort to go back and find appropriate questions that may no longer be visible on the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The balance of moderation power is heavily tilted in favor of the closers. All the 10k+ users put together currently have enough votes to close every single new question on this site every day 10 times over, and that's [not enough](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6507)?!  If that doesn't sound like over-zealous moderation, I don't know what does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My proposed solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Provide a notification to anyone capable of casting reopen votes (3000+ rep) when a question they upvoted or answered has been closed, or &#xD;&#xA; - Allow some means of casting reopen votes before a question is closed, and &#xD;&#xA; - Time out the downvoting and close voting privileges of people who vote to close a question that is later reopened.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25997" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6404" RevisionGUID="df836ff6-856e-44fd-90be-9b9cebb14a20" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Unclear what help you need ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Unclear what help you need](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important &quot;see: 'Why is research important?'&quot;).** Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell what problem you are trying to solve or what aspect of your approach needs to be corrected or explained. See the [ask] page for help clarifying this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note `[ask]` above is so called [magic link](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/magic-links), meaning that in comments it auto-expands into [How to Ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Slightly adapted from [this MSO post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/215806/165773)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25998" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5898" RevisionGUID="fc732913-35fe-48ef-a9af-a4a8bbfe7228" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; &quot;Duplicate of&quot; should be a transitive property (if A is a dupe of B, and B is a dupe of C, then A must be a dupe of C)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assumption of transitivity looks wrong; per my reading of the definition in [duplicate-questions tag wiki](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/duplicate-questions/info), it is not required:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to tell the user ...something like, _“Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.”_ Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question `A` having an answer in `B` does not automatically guarantee that it also has an answer in `C`, even though question `B` may have its answer in `C`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a simplified example, imagine &quot;chain of duplicates&quot; like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A:` How do I see result of multiplying 2 by 2?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B:` How do I multiply?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke `multiply` method of `arith` package. In order to view result, you invoke method of `display` package.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C:` How do I do arithmetic operations?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke appropriate method of `arith` package, like `multiply`, `divide` etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's easy to imagine readers being satisfied by closures `A -&gt; B` and `B -&gt; C` since answers given solve the problems asked about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, closure `A -&gt; C` would be problematic: first question asks about how to display results, while answer in the second question says nothing about this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note how question in `B` does not ask about displaying results, making dupe closure look reasonable. Also note how answer in `B` provides guidance _beyond_ its scope, along with addressing the question asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a more realistic example, refer to the non-transitive chain of duplicates at Meta Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A':` [Spiteful downvoting? Two fast DVs to my unrelated posts](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/178703/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B':` [What can I do if I'm the victim of serial downvoting?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/28756/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C':` [What is serial voting and how does it affect me?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/126829/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`A'` is closed as a duplicate of `B'`, which is in turn closed as a duplicate of `C'`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a closer look at [revisions history](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/178703/revisions &quot;here&quot;) and [comments](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/178703/spiteful-downvoting-two-fast-dvs-to-my-unrelated-posts#comment539909_178703 &quot;'changed the duplicate to one more relevant to the question asked...'&quot;), you will notice that initial closure has been changed from `A' -&gt; C'` to _narrower_ one, `A' -&gt; B'` because readers disagreed that _widest_ dupe target has answers relevant to the question asked in `A'`." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25999" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6772" RevisionGUID="7dd7a128-38b6-46c7-a039-0ac930d6d089" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Refer to this [question][1] which I've wrote yesterday.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have much experience with packages terminology, so I've put my best effort into constructing a scenario to illustrate a real and simple use case, then asked what terminology should be used for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can see, if there is no proper terminology then the answer should be just that – &quot;there is no standard terminology that meets your criteria&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet, my question was downvoted and closed as primarily opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through meta, all I could find was https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6338/why-is-this-terminology-question-considered-as-opinion-based whose accepted answer supports my point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is there anything I can improve in my question, or is it just not welcome here for some other reason?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/250477/91517" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26000" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7015" RevisionGUID="f52374f3-b3ed-4005-a78b-cea834b0b338" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My personal 2 cents... stop downvoting people who post on meta trying to get questions fixed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what stopped me a while back from doing it. It became such a chore to constantly feel like I'm fighting for something that none of the active users wanted, and to always be downvoted for my efforts by the same group of users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* -2 (+1/-3): https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3192/1130&#xD;&#xA;* -2 (+1/-3): https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3193/1130&#xD;&#xA;* -2 (+0/-2): https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3194/1130&#xD;&#xA;* -1 (+7/-8): https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3568/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We may not always post meta questions the way you'd like it formatted, or we may voice opinions that you disagree with in the question itself, but simply downvoting questions like this only discourages users who are trying to improve the site's content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead consider posting an answer explaining your disagreement, or upvoting an existing one. Or possibly even upvote the user for bothering to take the time to come to meta in the first place to try and fix the question (try to leave a comment if you do this, or upvote an existing one).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I still lurk in the meta site on occasion, and often see people getting downvoted for asking for help improving a question, or why something was off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also in regards to question #2, this was posted a while back that sounds related : https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3292/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26001" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6655" RevisionGUID="bc95470a-6846-4d4a-9e4a-f46949e8c267" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would start by reading these:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Stack Overflow On Topic][1] vs [Programmers On Topic][2]&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;- http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you still don't understand where your question can go, you can either ask about it on a site's Meta (although you will have to be somewhat specific so that you can be directed to the right site), in a site's chat room (you have sufficient reputation to go ask), or you can choose the site you think is the most appropriate and if it's off-topic but still a good question for someplace else, have it migrated (don't cross-post questions, though - we'll make sure the question gets to where it can be answered).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of questions that were originally asked on Stack Overflow, but migrated here because they were off-topic there and on-topic here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238513/is-allocating-objects-from-a-memory-pool-a-security-anti-pattern&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237692/using-subclasses-for-datacontracts-used-with-json&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/235170/ddd-domain-driven-design-which-development-order-should-be-applied&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/232032/decoupling-server-and-client-using-rest-api&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/231627/is-the-adapter-the-correct-design-pattern-for-this-situation&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230363/iteratively-improve-software-architecture-quality-in-an-agile-process&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/223834/sequence-diagram-uml-use-case-ends&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/223878/how-can-you-add-acknowledgement-functionality-to-a-command-pattern-given-the-re&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26002" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6411" RevisionGUID="f83d6b35-e7a7-4b70-b059-56fe63871aa6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Career advice is difficult because it is so individualized and time sensitive. We recommend that you ask such questions in our [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard). The Workplace.SE caters to some career related issues but has similar strictures on individualized questions. The doubled edge sword of Stack Exchange is to create an easily Googleable reference for getting expert answers to questions immediately. Career advice tends to fall outside that category as it tends to again, be highly individualized and time-sensitive. We tried allowing that sort of question type at the beginning of Programmers. It didn't go [well][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Chat exists specifically for working through the thornier questions without direct, converging answers. The [Whiteboard][2]'s activity stats will help you find the best time and day of the week to ask your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26003" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5913" RevisionGUID="5f1d53c1-0ed1-4821-8fac-9de8bf175f97" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Can questions be closed for a reason that is valid TODAY but did not exist at the time the question was asked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an example.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5847/why-close-a-2-year-old-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions are now &quot;routinely&quot; closed for &quot;polling.&quot; Depending on the site, people came to a &quot;consensus&quot; about this some time in the past two years. But the question was asked two years ago. And suppose this was before this consensus was formed? Are there ways of &quot;grandfathering&quot; such questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26005" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7020" RevisionGUID="c3ecb4ca-5461-4b7a-a54b-9fdca89ce168" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If a first time asker has an SO account that was recently (say, within a week) [question blocked](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/252645/165773 &quot;for more details on this, see 'When does the question ban get applied?' at MSE&quot;) over there, how about showing them a warning like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** You've recently been blocked at Stack Overflow. Consider that quality requirements at Software Engineering are similar. Note that Stack Overflow topics are _not_ covered here and that your questions [can't even be migrated to Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;) because of the block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This hopefully would help them avoid further frustration if they get down and close votes, angry comments, blocked migrations and question block over here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why can't we raise up questions quality?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6990/31260)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Per stats, Programmers appear to be [most popular of SE sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773) among this category of askers. After being blocked or scared by warnings at Stack Overflow they simply try to dump their low quality stuff over here...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;SE might want to think about how to improve their UX in order to educate during question composition...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there... how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26006" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7020" RevisionGUID="1d1c9a63-fe47-4416-a94d-84db4a288e29" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If a first time asker has an SO account that was recently (say, within a week) [question blocked](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/252645/165773 &quot;for more details on this, see 'When does the question ban get applied?' at MSE&quot;) over there, how about showing them a warning like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** You've recently been blocked at Stack Overflow. Consider that quality requirements at Software Engineering are similar. Note that Stack Overflow topics are _not_ covered here and that your questions [can't even be migrated to Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;) because of the block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This hopefully would help them avoid further frustration if they get down and close votes, angry comments, blocked migrations and question block over here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why can't we raise up questions quality?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6990/31260)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Per stats, Programmers appear to be [most popular of SE sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773) among this category of askers. After being blocked or scared by warnings at Stack Overflow they simply try to dump their low quality stuff over here...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;SE might want to think about how to improve their UX in order to educate during question composition...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there... how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26007" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6428" RevisionGUID="47da4f40-fa69-4324-b61a-0596d7df8a72" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've found a bunch of FAQ links here on meta.p.SE, all pointing to [programmers.stackexchange.com/faq][1] etc, for example [this one over here][2], to name just one. Maybe it is just my browser, but I am always redirected to the about page once I try to follow that link. Well, that's a nice page too, there's no question about it, but it's not a FAQ. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So where the FAQ are the FAQs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2684/difference-between-programmers-and-stackoverflow?rq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26008" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7023" RevisionGUID="6e3f12e3-2dd5-4361-9b69-01e984ee8683" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Based on the [most recent guidance for &quot;name that thing&quot; questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology), I'm going to reopen your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that the blogs are only suggestions. The per-site policies are best found on each site's Meta. There is some leeway in terms of what is acceptable or not on a per-site basis." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26009" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7023" RevisionGUID="c51332fb-70f0-411e-b777-3c0e49d59cf4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Based on the [most recent guidance for &quot;name that thing&quot; questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology), I'm going to reopen your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that the blogs are only suggestions. The per-site policies are best found on each site's Meta. There is some leeway in terms of what is acceptable or not on a per-site basis." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26010" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6433" RevisionGUID="807d443a-29b2-4397-9657-a49111efe59a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Well, as far as I'm aware, some career questions are still supposed to be on topic, according to [this meta answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/590/3965).  I don't know when or how voters decided *all* career questions are off topic, but I don't think it was by consensus." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26011" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5999" RevisionGUID="b9910c88-e257-452c-93d7-4117b5ada323" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Back in February, there was [a discussion about the &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; bullet point in the list of things that are on-topic][1]. All four answers identified that this was somewhat problematic, however there really wasn't an overwhelming popular opinion on what to do. So, in light of that, I'm going to rephrase the question differently:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anyone provide examples of freelancing and business concerns questions that require the expertise of a professional working in the field of software development, that do not require expertise in business, law, finance, marketing, or another non-software-related domain, and meet the other criteria for a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5605/weve-got-to-talk-about-freelancing-and-business-concerns" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26012" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6451" RevisionGUID="9577babd-2e1e-4db9-8136-a25fdb8f1189" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Recommendations are off topic on P.SE.  There is a long history to this on both P.SE and Stack Overflow.  For some of the P.SE history see [this search](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=recommendation).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a specific close reason for off topic for questions asking for some software recommendation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is what you need to look at.  We don't do recommendations.  There is, however, a (currently private beta) Stack Exchange site just for recommendations - http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/60887/software-recommendations - once this is in pubic beta you could ask such a question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, consider that questions of the use of a given tool is also off topic on P.SE, but on topic on Stack Overflow.  If you pick a tool you *may* be able to ask and get an answer for &quot;how to use that tool to do XYZ&quot; on Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26013" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6037" RevisionGUID="6df32283-f078-4ae0-848c-018a21f1506c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We've just updated our custom off topic close reasons, picking the top three from the [relevant Meta discussion][1]. None of them mentions another SE site, so they shouldn't be confused with migration votes anymore. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a perfect solution to the problem, we may need to add a mention to another site in the future, but I think it's good enough for now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5992/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26014" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7070" RevisionGUID="c30776cd-a70f-4e47-bba3-08df263ff866" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The dawn of a new year, 2015, now approaches, or has already approached, either way it means that it is now time to reset our Community Promotion Ads!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What are Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA; - cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA; - anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we reset the ads every year?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be **220 x 250 pixels**&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently **6**) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/ads/display/7070" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26015" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6059" RevisionGUID="45cc28e0-9b9a-40c6-b7fd-a15a09c1ed46" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3049/what-decent-web-frameworks-exists-for-functional-programming#question is a potentially good topic to have a curated list &lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;. Yea or Nay?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; See: [New lock type for truly collaborative questions and answers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5991/new-lock-type-for-truly-collaborative-questions-and-answers)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26016" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6457" RevisionGUID="e37be6b8-c9af-40d5-bfab-ed71ae349f24" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As the person who cast the third delete vote, I thought I would add some additional perspective as to why I cast the vote when I did.  Please consider this as supplementary to [MichaelT's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6456/53019)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Normally, I won't vote-to-delete on a question as recently closed as yours was.  But the follow-up edit that you put in place after the question was closed is what made up my mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me address some of your meta questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I cannot undestand what was wrong with it.  &#xD;&#xA;What rules have been violated?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question is asking about the norms of a 3rd party package unrelated to the Programmers site.  That alone is enough to make it off-topic, and that's why it was closed as &quot;primarily opinion based.&quot;  Loosely translated, that means the Programmers community is not able to give you an evidence or experience backed answer that would meet the site guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please note that the one answer your question received was pure speculation and wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why moderator removed completely innocuous question, which contained only the facts and nothing but the facts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community (not a moderator) voted to delete your question.  ChrisF pointed that out in the comments, and I want to repeat that it was a community decision.  The three of us that voted to delete your question take the privilege to delete posts seriously, and we take responsibility for our decisions.  Part of that responsibility means explaining our decisions, which is why I'm writing this response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question was not innocuous and it did not contain `nothing but the facts`.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You did the right thing in contacting the Dart team to ask why there was an issue.  Had your question been on-topic, you could have taken their reply and used it as a self-answer to your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But you didn't, and the nature of your additional questions to their reply is what made up my mind to vote to delete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You added in this answer from Dart Team member Bob Nystrom:  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;There is no why here.&#xD;&#xA;It's a bug in the examples.&#xD;&#xA;They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals.&#xD;&#xA;Can you file a ticket so we don't forget to fix this please? Thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then you asked:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Do I understand correctly that..&#xD;&#xA;1. They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals but they use it.&#xD;&#xA;2. This is not an indicator of quality, but just a bug. Becuase they written by a&#xD;&#xA; Dart team member but not by other person.&#xD;&#xA;3. There is no &quot;why&quot; here because it is better to remain silent than to say &#xD;&#xA;unpleasant things.&#xD;&#xA;4. Dart Team can forget to fix this if someone does not file a ticket.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;_Editorial note, I have numbered your questions to make them easier to identify_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Items 1 and 2 aren't really questions and appear to be just bashing the Dart team. I'll admit it's hard to tell what you're really asking because of the communication barrier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item 3 is where I saw your question turning into a rant about the Dart team and why I feared a long comment thread that would need to be cleaned up.  In particular, `it is better to remain silent than to say unpleasant things` is inflammatory and you're almost asking to start a bashing session. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tone of 3 biased how I read 4, and I couldn't see anything positive coming from leaving the question in place.  The tone of those follow-up questions is not innocuous.  So I voted to delete in order to prevent a minor flame war from breaking out in the comments of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All that said, I'll grant that there were some communication issues and in this case, we deleted your question too early.  So I apologize for the quick deletion, but I don't see how your question could be salvaged to be made more constructive.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if it helps, this is my _opinion_ of what the Dart team was trying to say.   &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Yes, please note that we're still in the &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; justification for closing the question.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There is no why here.  &#xD;&#xA;It's a bug in the examples.  &#xD;&#xA;They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Translated: Your original assumption about their example was correct and you found a bug.  There isn't any other reason behind that issue - hence &quot;there is no why here.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can you file a ticket so we don't forget to fix this please? Thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Translated: I'm really busy right now and don't have the time or enough details to enter a proper bug report.  Please enter a bug report so the team doesn't forget about it existing and so it can be prioritized.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also keep in mind that on some projects, entering a valid bug report is seen as bragging rights.  It means the person found a legitimate issue within the product and helped start the process to get it fixed.  That sort of activity can be used by some projects to determine who they will let contribute to the project." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26017" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="03bf2320-0e4a-49df-878f-f328d538bc6a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Software Engineering Stack Exchange (previously known as Programmers) would be a good question on Stack Overflow.  This isn't to say that if it is on topic on Stack Overflow then it is on topic here.  Rather that it's not too broad, not opinion polling, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Software Engineering.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggesting to someone to repost a question that is too broad or primary opinion would get it closed on Software Engineering.SE too and that's really something we'd rather avoid.  It is no fun to get a question bounced from one site to another and being told repeatedly we don't want it here.  If it needs to be fixed, it needs to be fixed before it is reposted or telling the OP *exactly* what needs to be fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Some commonly referred *poor* questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, we *don't* want these, though it seems like people keep suggesting them to be reposted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I don't understand...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). [There is an expectation](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773) that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here's my problem. Anyone have a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of commonly (incorrectly) referred questions are those of &quot;come up with a design or solution for me.&quot;  Similar to how Stack Overflow has issues with people doing problem statement questions (&quot;write a program that takes the average of three values&quot;), Programmers.SE has similar issues with similar questions (&quot;here is what I want the outcome to be, anyone have a solution?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Stack Overflow nor Software Engineering.SE is a code/solution writing service. Just because the question lacks code but has a problem statement doesn't mean it belongs here as is. The question needs to be fixed up significantly before it is reposted on the proper site and suggesting to do so with the question in its current state does a disservice to the person asking the question. For a more detailed outline of what is generally expected at Programmers, see https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A blog I read said...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our custom off topic reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What tool, library, language, project, resource to take up or use](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* [What career to take or what to study](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;* [Assistance in writing or debugging code](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7742/40980)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programming related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - software development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA; - requirements, architecture, and design&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - configuration management, build, release, and deployment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about the [Software Development Life Cycle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg) that aren't code troubleshooting questions.  Remember that algorithm questions are also on topic on Stack Overflow (so [you don't need to migrate those](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/ &quot;'Be a bit jealous of your site - don't blithely turn askers away simply because their question could be asked somewhere else...'&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Engineering.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the Perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the Delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Software Engineering.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Software Engineering (Programmers.SE) was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with [&quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260 &quot;we even had to introduce a chat bot for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow&quot;) and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) it's problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - it's exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so comments a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, it's like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if it's a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26018" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6460" RevisionGUID="909d45b4-6a19-47ed-826e-af0c0a382939" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; [Following specification vs. following language standards](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/229310/following-specification-vs-following-language-standards)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way I see it, this question follows [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It inspires answers that explain &quot;why&quot;. Options are given, so I need reasons.&#xD;&#xA;2. Long answers are expected which provide example implementations and reasons for designing them that way (like why `XDocument` does not follow specification).&#xD;&#xA;3. It's not a holy war topic, so constructive tone is expected.&#xD;&#xA;4. It invites sharing experiences, because there're many standards implemented both by Microsoft and third-parties.&#xD;&#xA;5. As per above, facts and references are expected.&#xD;&#xA;6. And finally, it's a very important practical question about designing libraries.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way I see it, the question perfectly fits Programmers scope: **conceptual questions about software development**. It is about **software architecture** which is [declared as on-topic by FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, the question is: why was the question closed and how to fix it to get it reopened?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26020" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="979c6341-2b8f-4b1e-aee9-b8dcc2741c56" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Software Engineering Stack Exchange (previously known as Programmers) would be a good question on Stack Overflow.  This isn't to say that if it is on topic on Stack Overflow then it is on topic here.  Rather that it's not too broad, not opinion polling, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Software Engineering.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggesting to someone to repost a question that is too broad or primary opinion would get it closed on Software Engineering.SE too and that's really something we'd rather avoid.  It is no fun to get a question bounced from one site to another and being told repeatedly we don't want it here.  If it needs to be fixed, it needs to be fixed before it is reposted or telling the OP *exactly* what needs to be fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Some commonly referred *poor* questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, we *don't* want these, though it seems like people keep suggesting them to be reposted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I don't understand...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). [There is an expectation](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773) that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here's my problem. Anyone have a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of commonly (incorrectly) referred questions are those of &quot;come up with a design or solution for me.&quot;  Similar to how Stack Overflow has issues with people doing problem statement questions (&quot;write a program that takes the average of three values&quot;), Programmers.SE has similar issues with similar questions (&quot;here is what I want the outcome to be, anyone have a solution?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Stack Overflow nor Software Engineering.SE is a code/solution writing service. Just because the question lacks code but has a problem statement doesn't mean it belongs here as is. The question needs to be fixed up significantly before it is reposted on the proper site and suggesting to do so with the question in its current state does a disservice to the person asking the question. For a more detailed outline of what is generally expected at Programmers, see https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A blog I read said...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our custom off topic reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What tool, library, language, project, resource to take up or use](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* [What career to take or what to study](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;* [Assistance in writing or debugging code](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7742/40980)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programming related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - software development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA; - requirements, architecture, and design&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - configuration management, build, release, and deployment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about the [Software Development Life Cycle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg) that aren't code troubleshooting questions.  Remember that algorithm questions are also on topic on Stack Overflow (so [you don't need to migrate those](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/ &quot;'Be a bit jealous of your site - don't blithely turn askers away simply because their question could be asked somewhere else...'&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Engineering.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the Perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the Delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Software Engineering.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Software Engineering (Programmers.SE) was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with [&quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260 &quot;we even had to introduce a chat bot for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow&quot;) and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) it's problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - it's exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so comments a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, it's like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if it's a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26021" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7293" RevisionGUID="06e330db-3d5b-4a59-a63e-7eb16030e301" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Postponed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:legal] [tag:law] [tag:copyright] [tag:software-patent] [tag:patents] [tag:proprietary] [tag:foss] [tag:trademark] [tag:intellectual-property]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:eula] [tag:terms-of-service] &#xD;&#xA;- [tag:gpl] [tag:lgpl] [tag:agpl] [tag:mit-license] [tag:bsd-license] [tag:apache-license] [tag:mpl] [tag:ms-pl] [tag:creative-commons] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Legal / licensing questions are generally difficult to clean up because some questions are legitimately on-topic here. See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this reason, we have decided to postpone these tags as being the active ones, though readers of this answer are welcome to make appropriate edits, tag removals and close votes as normal. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions [tagged both legal and licensing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[licensing]+[legal]+closed%3Ano) may have nothing to do with legal matters and therefore need just deletion of the inappropriate tag. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26022" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6101" RevisionGUID="c1f8009a-7140-43c8-b7e8-9a2523380c4b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Great idea! Except for most of what you said!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## This should go nowhere! Where should this go? [Nowhere](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6098/what-reasons-do-questions-get-closed-for-here-should-be-in-the-help-center-un/6101#6101). ##" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26023" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6604" RevisionGUID="709869d0-1120-48ca-9cf8-83c46765750b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Following [a Meta discussion][1] and some discussions in [our chat room][2] to iron out some finer points, we have completed an update to the [&quot;What topics can I ask about here?&quot; page of our Help Center][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is a summary of the changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Minor rewording of the tagline. It still emphasizes questions that require human expertise, but makes it clear that we are about more than just programmers. Questions about many aspects of the software development lifecycle from anyone working in it are welcome here.&#xD;&#xA; - Removed &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; from the list of things that are on-topic. The questions that were off-topic are still off-topic, but the ones that are on-topic are best captured in the &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; and &quot;software engineering management&quot; line items in what is on-topic.&#xD;&#xA; - Removed the &quot;software engineering&quot; line item from what is on-topic. It was replaced with more specific details of what software engineering topics are allowed here, which is most of them.&#xD;&#xA; - Clarified programming tools to specifically exclude coding tools such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs. We don't want to entirely preclude good tool questions that don't otherwise have a home at this time.&#xD;&#xA; - Added &quot;legal advice&quot; to the list of things that are not allowed. We are not lawyers.&#xD;&#xA; - Changed &quot;resume help&quot; to &quot;job hunting&quot; at the request of The Workplace. They do not do resume critiques and did not want our Help Center giving that impression.&#xD;&#xA; - Shortened the portion on subjective questions. This is better addressed by the [&quot;What types of questions should I avoid asking?&quot; page of the Help Center][4]. Maintained links to this page as well as the relevant blog posts, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally speaking, there isn't a change to site scope or audience. However, we have clarified some of the more ambiguous parts and more closely aligned the things our site is not about with some of the custom close reasons that exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to this, these changes (as applicable) have been rolled into our [About page][5] as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anyone has any suggestions, we'd still be glad to take them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6590/should-the-close-reasons-be-added-to-the-help-center-on-topic-article&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26024" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7258" RevisionGUID="db316d0a-d30d-4e12-8490-e952ab704c8d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[In this question, I had a disagreement with the original asker about whether a legal advice / software licensing question is on topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/277688/88986). *I now think that I was wrong when I voted to close originally, but that's a bit beside the point...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Context: Here's the help center about what's on topic (abbeviated):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - ...&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***and it is not about...***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - ...&#xD;&#xA; - legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to see the [tag:faq] on this issue improved some. There is enough potential overlap between **software licensing** and **legal advice or aid** that the relevant faq question should address this distinction explicitly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- So we have this faq question:&#xD;&#xA;  - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;- We also have this non faq question (which perhaps should be promoted to [tag:faq], or merged with the previous question): &#xD;&#xA;  - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can we add some clarity to the **faq guidelines** on this issue? Thank you @Ixrec for your answer about what is and what is not on topic, but some digging (see above) has shown this topic has come up before. This question is about **how should we change the faq** so that less digging needs to be done, and we can have a canonical answer on the subject." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26025" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6125" RevisionGUID="3c3cbf35-e772-4188-b858-dbfcfacff9a0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[tag:recommendations]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Almost all the questions on this tag are to be closed for being off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't it be banned?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another question talks about this: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/421/is-a-recommendations-tag-really-necessary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the question is 3 years old and nothing has been done since then. I'm just seeing a rise of this kind of questions lately, all of them being quickly closed. Shouldn't we warn the user that this is probably going to happen if he writes a banned tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sub&gt;PS: yes, the tag on this question is ironic. So meta!&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26026" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7307" RevisionGUID="100d2893-58d2-429a-afcb-9111399bc181" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[tag:books]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These tags appear to be resource requests or asking for educational information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26027" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7293" RevisionGUID="7d170ff1-1950-41cb-8825-a5339597ac9b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Postponed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:legal] [tag:law] [tag:copyright] [tag:software-patent] [tag:patents] [tag:proprietary] [tag:foss] [tag:trademark] [tag:intellectual-property]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:eula] [tag:terms-of-service] &#xD;&#xA;- [tag:gpl] [tag:lgpl] [tag:agpl] [tag:mit-license] [tag:bsd-license] [tag:apache-license] [tag:mpl] [tag:ms-pl] [tag:creative-commons] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Legal / licensing questions are generally difficult to clean up because some questions are legitimately on-topic here. See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this reason, we have decided to postpone these tags as being the active ones, though readers of this answer are welcome to make appropriate edits, tag removals and close votes as normal. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions [tagged both legal and licensing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[licensing]+[legal]+closed%3Ano) may have nothing to do with legal matters and therefore need just deletion of the inappropriate tag. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26028" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6196" RevisionGUID="252c441f-df55-4f9d-8aa3-20b23b614e76" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I opened [this Meta question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6190/what-recourse-is-there-for-a-post-that-is-locked-for-reasons-that-one-does-not-u) in response to [a P.SE question that was locked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that I laid out a dispassionate and objective argument that the whole rollback/edit history/locking issue was not handled properly by the moderator involved. My argument consisted of referencing a blog post, [&quot;Good Subjective v. Bad Subjective Questions&quot;](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) specifically because this post is linked directly from [the P.SE &quot;on-topic&quot; page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and was the only direct reference there that seemed relevant to my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I am happy to admit that my line of thinking and my argument might be incorrect. I don't *believe* they are incorrect, but they still could be. But regardless of the arguments' rightness or wrongness, I think it is indisputable that they are dispassionate references to P.SE's endorsed community standards and my interpretation thereof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, my interpretation and everything else could be wrong, but I was trying to make a serious argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To my surprise, the user @GlenH7 feels that I am being &quot;impetuous&quot; and &quot;petulant&quot;, evidenced in his comment on the post (as of 11 am EST today).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your impetuous and petulant meta question and comments are ... disappointing. I had written up a fairly length answer which I realized was just bashing you. The short version is this: you're wrong regarding your question on main and the basis behind your meta question is tenuous at best. 3 of the 5 mods have weighed in and called your crap out. Several high rep users, included the site's highest rep user, have called your crap out. Stop defending an untenable argument and try to learn from what the community is offering you. – GlenH7 12 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*And this comment received 2 upvotes*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could try to make an itemized list of why this comment is *categorically inappropriate* (for example, the entirely non-sequitur mention of this 'answer' @GlenH7 wrote up that was &quot;just bashing me.&quot; In addition to being mean, that's entirely irrelevant. Who cares about an answer you *were going to but ultimately did not* write. What possible use is it to mention to me that you *were going to write a post bashing me* but then did not?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But at this point I feel like it's no use. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does the community at large have advice for me on how to cope with this? I really, very seriously, feel pretty depressed by the entire thread of comments and answers at the meta question link. There are serious argumentative fallacies present in virtually all of the answers; ones that I've taken great pains to address.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if the end result of that thread was just that everyone still thought I was wrong, then so be it. But that's not the result of the thread. The result is that people want to write answers that are &quot;just bashing me&quot;, not publish them, and then tell me that that's what they were going to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*And then two other people upvoted them for that!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is a user supposed to cope with a community like that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26030" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7307" RevisionGUID="96f841ce-09c6-4e00-b205-c029f8534bec" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[tag:books]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These tags appear to be resource requests or asking for educational information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26031" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6611" RevisionGUID="eef57ba4-1f14-413f-a1c2-7bb86a9d11ba" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My father taught me to program back in the days of old.  He was a college chemistry lab director before he retired and had never taken a computer science class, nor was computer programming ever in his job description or duties.  The point I want to make here is that he was never a computer professional, but he was an educator and able to teach me how to program.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.StackExchange is [defined as](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Teaching a child how to program is in no way part of the scope of a professional or student answering questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking about how to teach a child how about syntax (because the asker is a programmer) is no more on topic here than asking how to teach a child to balance a checkbook on The Workplace because the person asking is an accountant for some company.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As programmers, we are not at all necessarily skilled in pedagogy. There is a great deal of background necessary to be able to properly answer these questions that fall outside of the realm of programming (and even the explaining a topic at a conference - which would be too broad).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider the guidance given in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488 which addresses the point that no two people (children in this case) are the same - nor are their instructors.  Each question will either be excessively nuanced to that individual or be hopelessly broad trying to answer for everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point to [On &quot;engineering&quot; and teaching pointers.](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/on-engineering-and-teaching-pointers) from chat where over the course of an hour and several hundred messages we worked through the how to teach pointers in C to an instructor who also helped guide *us* with the particulars for his class.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we (professional programmers) do have experience that can be useful, the aspect of teaching it to non-programmers is not a good question for the main site, but often a good topic in chat where we can get at the particulars of what is being taught and the language and the level of the students.  Those particulars make it a less than ideal main site question because it would involve could involve one question for each language and level of student understanding (and the cartesian product of the two)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26032" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6253" RevisionGUID="28310923-da89-41ed-822e-555d0fbbf121" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question is prompted by some of the discussion in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q  Specifically, what MichaelT wrote to JensG and the comment Telastyn left on the bottom.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's consider: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/120019/whats-the-benefit-of-object-oriented-programming-over-procedural-programming/120038#120038&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that a good question? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I first read it, its score was well into the negative (-4 or lower, don't remember). It was immediately pointed out how it was a duplicate and I'm sure it had 1 or 2 close votes, although those are now gone. Interestingly enough, data explorer query for that question shows that its score never dipped below -1, which I'm guessing is due to some of the original downvoters changing their minds and removing their downvote, unfortunately the schema doesn't track deleted up/down votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So as maintainers of P.SE content and upholders of FAQ (Is that the ultimate decision source?), what is our stance on such questions?  If you are bad, you are bad and we shall close you?  Or do the answers on the page have some leverage?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not questioning the up/down vote system. I think that's great. Bad stuff gets low score, good stuff gets high score. But if this question was closed as fast as some of the others I've seen, as JensG would put it, it would just get &quot;voted to an early death&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other part, I'm not quite sure about (maybe this should be a separate post, and if so I can separate it), we close what's considered low-quality questions so they don't pollute the... question-space(?) but they are all still there.  Hence what some refer to as &quot;a wall&quot;, although some others have never seen one.  So the closure doesn't actually remove the pollution, it just prevents a not so good question from potentially receiving a really good answer that could benefit the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I apologize in advance to the moderators if this is a noob question that has already been discussed and settled. I've been a member for a while now, but my involvement has mostly been drive-by posts here and there. I do appreciate the time and effort you guys are putting into keeping up this site. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26033" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7437" RevisionGUID="530a40b0-e49f-4bc5-8d97-a159e3c26f34" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've [expounded on locked questions before](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7404/40980) and mentioned that these often age poorly. If something *is* to be locked, especially today, it should have some amount of moderation and curation done. These are things that we should be putting in museums as questions that can produce good quality and we should aspire to (&quot;see, look, we can have good material on very soft questions if people act to moderate and keep the quality up&quot;) rather than things we want to lock away and forget.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this, I really have to ask about why http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8104/how-many-developers-actually-have-private-offices was locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question had 4 delete votes on it (6 needed total for it based on votes and popularity).  It was locked.  And... well... if it is something that we should be keeping around (I don't believe so - that's why one of those delete votes is mine), before it is locked it should be evaluated for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Poor quality and negatively scored posts should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;* Too chatty / not constructive comments should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;* Tags that are part of a burnination process should be removed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What really gets me here is that this question really is just a poll with one answer that is reasonable (but doesn't answer the poll question) and 23 answers that are &quot;I've got an office&quot; or &quot;I have an open plan.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel that this type of question - old polls - really doesn't age well and isn't indicative of what good quality on the site should be.  It is exactly the watercooler conversation type thing and getting to know you that the six subjective guidelines were put in place to prevent. That it hasn't been seen much and there are no in bound links from other questions on Programmers.SE suggests that it really isn't that valuable of a post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This type of question is the type of thing that a [Slashdot poll](http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl) (for example [do you need to wear headphones while working](http://it.slashdot.org/poll/2669/do-you-need-headphones-while-working)) does better than a Q&amp;A format site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I cannot flag [the post](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8104/how-many-developers-actually-have-private-offices) (its locked), and this question wouldn't fit into a flag text, please either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Unlock the post so that it may continue with the normal lifecycle of a post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Delete all poor quality material (I believe this would be 'all posts other than the accepted answer' - or first and third if you stretch it a bit), remove the burnination tags ([tag:jobs] and [tag:job-title] are both in [the current round](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7287/40980)), and rework the body of the question so that it isn't a poll and is answered exactly by the accepted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26035" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6642" RevisionGUID="c0fb254b-16df-466b-ab3f-45aea25ec806" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is a follow up to [BartMan's question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6637/3965), which is now locked.  We shouldn't be dismissive of the over-moderation concerns of potential new users.  You asked for 10 examples of inappropriately closed questions, so here they are, found by querying for closed questions I answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/236533/3965 Closed as opinion based, but actually has some interesting objective reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/235042/3965 Closed as too broad, after garnering four concise yet relatively thorough answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/234699/3965 Ironically, given the penchant on this site for closing questions as too broad, this rather specific question was closed as a duplicate of a question that was only vaguely related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/230784/3965 This question was closed as &quot;education advice,&quot; which we used to define as &quot;what school/degree program/course/certification should I personally enroll in&quot; and lately seems to be broadly defined as &quot;any question that mentions a university or degree or learning of any kind.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/230486/3965 This one admittedly might fit better on workplace, but has some very scrum-specific concerns, which makes it unique to our profession.  At the very least, it should have been migrated instead of closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/230271/3965 Despite an intentionally provocative title, this question asks useful, thought-provoking questions and received three insightful and relatively objective answers.  If you don't like the title, edit the title.  This question illustrates a larger concern that entire questions are frequently being rejected due to one small easily-edited part of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/224275/3965 Closed as opinion based, despite having concrete cultural and historical reasons behind the practice.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;8. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/227983/3965 Closed as &quot;unclear what you're asking&quot; despite having a short, clear answer.  It seems like this close reason is often used to mean &quot;I personally don't know the answer&quot; or &quot;I personally don't know how to explain this in a concise, easy to understand manner.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/227743/3965 Closed as &quot;what language should I learn next,&quot; but the question is more detailed, more objective, and less personal than that.  Also throws in the &quot;education advice&quot; reason, presumably because the question mentions the word &quot;learning.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/224356/3965 Closed as too broad, despite having a few good answers already.  This &quot;too broad&quot; reason is way overused for a site that's supposedly about conceptual questions.  If a concise conceptual answer can be given at the same abstraction level as the question, it's not too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could go on, and those are just the ones I personally got around to answering in the last month or so before they got closed.  I used to occasionally address these kinds of closings individually with meta posts, but it has become overwhelming, and people now seem more interested in finding excuses to close a question rather than reasons to keep it open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is twofold.  First, people have no incentive to be judicious with their close votes. Second, voting to close is easily done during normal use of the site while the questions are at the top of the page, whereas voting to reopen requires effort to go back and find appropriate questions that may no longer be visible on the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The balance of moderation power is heavily tilted in favor of the closers. All the 10k+ users put together currently have enough votes to close every single new question on this site every day 10 times over, and that's [not enough](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6507)?!  If that doesn't sound like over-zealous moderation, I don't know what does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My proposed solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Provide a notification to anyone capable of casting reopen votes (3000+ rep) when a question they upvoted or answered has been closed, or &#xD;&#xA; - Allow some means of casting reopen votes before a question is closed, and &#xD;&#xA; - Time out the downvoting and close voting privileges of people who vote to close a question that is later reopened.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26036" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7440" RevisionGUID="959e4d1c-cf27-43aa-b3fe-9fe964a8148e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**TL;DR** Suggest to [undelete the question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7438/31260) since it was edited to a better shape and made match the top answer. After that, remove &quot;poll item&quot; answers invalidated by the question edit and reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that in its current shape the question staying visible is not okay, even as historically locked. Low quality &quot;historical context&quot; seems to totally obscure worthy content in there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, it looks like a blatant poll, followed by multiple useless poll item &quot;answers&quot; (including even a [different question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/11110 &quot;blatant not-an-answer: 'Is there any software company in the US besides Microsoft and FogCreek Software which provides private offices for software engineers?'&quot;) posted as an answer) so that most readers could only wonder what was the reason to keep it at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that it looks like an exceptional case for question to be so much overwhelmed with bad content. All other historical questions I recall _do_ have bad stuff (otherwise there'd be no lock), but good parts in these are prominent enough and readers don't have to guess why these were decided to keep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With above in mind, our options seem to be as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1\.** Delete. Easy way out, the one I wanted before I stumbled over this meta question, but now, upon closer studying of the [top answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8203/31260) I am not quite comfortable about it anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2\. Unlock the question, retag to [tag:productivity] (to clear all issues related to ongoing tag cleanups), then pick one of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.1\.** Add a moderator comment referring to [this meta discussion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7437/31260), so that readers interested in historical context could discover it without having to stare at all 20+ low quality answers over there. After that, remove all answers except the top one, then lock it back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.2\.** [Aggressively edit](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1820/168) the question to bring it to better shape, worrying only about keeping consistency with top answer, about like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;So I know everyone here is all about private offices, how many developers actually have them. I am sort of half skeptical. I can believe that lead developers have them, but that's normally just one person in your average office.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;That makes me wonder, how many developers have private offices. Which leads to the actual question: why should they have them?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question [edit summary](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/edit-summary/info &quot;what's this&quot;) would better refer this meta discussion to help readers of edit history find out what led to the radical change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the edit, remove all answers that fail to match the revised question (as far as I can tell, these would be all except for the top answer), then reopen. Side note an edit drafted above would also &quot;trigger&quot; removal of the opening sentence from the top answer (&quot;I think the question should be...&quot;) but that's rather minor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Advantage of #2.1 is that it guarantees that worthy content is preserved. In comparison, 2.2 carries a (rather minor) risk that edited question will be eventually closed again and deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Advantage of #2.2 is that it doesn't introduce deviation of our usual practice to avoid cleanup prior to locking - since it doesn't involve locking at all. (that practice is in turn based on common sense - if you do cleanup anyway, it's only reasonable to improve content up to the point when it doesn't need locking at all)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for #1 (delete), it looks really inferior in comparison. It only doesn't deviate from our locking practices, but so does #2.2, which additionally offers a solid chance of preserving worthy content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that risk involved in #2.2 is minor, it looks like most appealing option." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26038" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7437" RevisionGUID="db179fe4-5c6a-48c0-bad5-fd2799926b18" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've [expounded on locked questions before](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7404/40980) and mentioned that these often age poorly. If something *is* to be locked, especially today, it should have some amount of moderation and curation done. These are things that we should be putting in museums as questions that can produce good quality and we should aspire to (&quot;see, look, we can have good material on very soft questions if people act to moderate and keep the quality up&quot;) rather than things we want to lock away and forget.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this, I really have to ask about why http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8104/how-many-developers-actually-have-private-offices was locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question had 4 delete votes on it (6 needed total for it based on votes and popularity).  It was locked.  And... well... if it is something that we should be keeping around (I don't believe so - that's why one of those delete votes is mine), before it is locked it should be evaluated for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Poor quality and negatively scored posts should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;* Too chatty / not constructive comments should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;* Tags that are part of a burnination process should be removed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What really gets me here is that this question really is just a poll with one answer that is reasonable (but doesn't answer the poll question) and 23 answers that are &quot;I've got an office&quot; or &quot;I have an open plan.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel that this type of question - old polls - really doesn't age well and isn't indicative of what good quality on the site should be.  It is exactly the watercooler conversation type thing and getting to know you that the six subjective guidelines were put in place to prevent. That it hasn't been seen much and there are no in bound links from other questions on Programmers.SE suggests that it really isn't that valuable of a post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This type of question is the type of thing that a [Slashdot poll](http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl) (for example [do you need to wear headphones while working](http://it.slashdot.org/poll/2669/do-you-need-headphones-while-working)) does better than a Q&amp;A format site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I cannot flag [the post](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8104/how-many-developers-actually-have-private-offices) (its locked), and this question wouldn't fit into a flag text, please either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Unlock the post so that it may continue with the normal lifecycle of a post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Delete all poor quality material (I believe this would be 'all posts other than the accepted answer' - or first and third if you stretch it a bit), remove the burnination tags ([tag:jobs] and [tag:job-title] are both in [the current round](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7287/40980)), and rework the body of the question so that it isn't a poll and is answered exactly by the accepted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26039" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6660" RevisionGUID="013559bd-ff39-444f-a66d-d00dc5713522" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The automatic check I would like to learn about looks like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For every `question` posted (alternatively: voted to close or pushed to close queue),&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Check if asker has linked SO account&#xD;&#xA;2. If yes, check 3 of their most recent questions at SO&#xD;&#xA;3. For every of above 3 questions, calculate [Levenshtein distance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance) of its text to that of to Programmers `question`.&#xD;&#xA;4. Raise system flag for mod attention (or [present blocking message](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p?noredirect=1#comment17959_6660 &quot;as suggested in comments&quot;)) if distance for a particular question is less than some `threshold`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What difficulties could be there in getting above check done automatically?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;`threshold` mentioned above can be derived based on a representative set of already identified cross-posts. This set (**few hundreds** in last half year), in turn, can be retrieved by searching flag database for my flags that are marked helpful and have message containing `http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info`.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Side note (as this has been asked twice in comments). I am somewhat skeptical on _blocking message_ approach. In theory, this would be ideal solution but I am concerned that if presented with block, some users will try to trick to break through Levenshtein threshold (for example, by adding dots to question text). This may return us back to having to discover them manually. My considerations are similar to those why question ban / serial voting algorithms are not exposed for &quot;direct user testing&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26040" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6679" RevisionGUID="71117382-9594-48fb-962d-93734b09cc23" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I took a quick look at the [review history][1] in our [first posts review queue][2] and I've noticed some &quot;No Action Needed&quot; reviews that I didn't agree with. That's not a problem, I don't expect anyone to share my opinions on what makes a good Programmers post. However, I think the nature of the queue is such, that there is almost always something to fix, even if it's simply spelling and grammar. The queue hosts the very first posts from brand new users, who - quite understandably - aren't always familiar with our philosophy and rules. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To make matters a bit more complicated, *it only takes one review to push the post out of the first posts queue*. This means that we need to be a bit more careful with it, than - say - with the close votes queue. Your &quot;No Action Needed&quot; vote is binding, and if you use it carelessly you may cheat a brand new user of possibly critical feedback. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to ask all our reviewers to just skip the review if you aren't 100% sure that the post can be improved (in any way), or don't have the time to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Related**: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Looking for guidance on using “No Action Needed” in the first posts review queue][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Please require more reviewers on First Posts][4] (on Meta Stack Exchange)&#xD;&#xA;- [How can we make First Posts review actually useful?][5] (on Meta Stack Exchange)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/history&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6680/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/188457/please-require-more-reviewers-on-first-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234153/how-can-we-make-first-posts-review-actually-useful" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26041" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7440" RevisionGUID="7721c73f-d67a-400e-ad1d-341d360f4ef5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**TL;DR** Suggest to [undelete the question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7438/31260) since it was edited to a better shape and made match the top answer. After that, remove &quot;poll item&quot; answers invalidated by the question edit and reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that in its current shape the question staying visible is not okay, even as historically locked. Low quality &quot;historical context&quot; seems to totally obscure worthy content in there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, it looks like a blatant poll, followed by multiple useless poll item &quot;answers&quot; (including even a [different question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/11110 &quot;blatant not-an-answer: 'Is there any software company in the US besides Microsoft and FogCreek Software which provides private offices for software engineers?'&quot;) posted as an answer) so that most readers could only wonder what was the reason to keep it at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that it looks like an exceptional case for question to be so much overwhelmed with bad content. All other historical questions I recall _do_ have bad stuff (otherwise there'd be no lock), but good parts in these are prominent enough and readers don't have to guess why these were decided to keep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With above in mind, our options seem to be as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1\.** Delete. Easy way out, the one I wanted before I stumbled over this meta question, but now, upon closer studying of the [top answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8203/31260) I am not quite comfortable about it anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2\. Unlock the question, retag to [tag:productivity] (to clear all issues related to ongoing tag cleanups), then pick one of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.1\.** Add a moderator comment referring to [this meta discussion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7437/31260), so that readers interested in historical context could discover it without having to stare at all 20+ low quality answers over there. After that, remove all answers except the top one, then lock it back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.2\.** [Aggressively edit](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1820/168) the question to bring it to better shape, worrying only about keeping consistency with top answer, about like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;So I know everyone here is all about private offices, how many developers actually have them. I am sort of half skeptical. I can believe that lead developers have them, but that's normally just one person in your average office.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;That makes me wonder, how many developers have private offices. Which leads to the actual question: why should they have them?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question [edit summary](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/edit-summary/info &quot;what's this&quot;) would better refer this meta discussion to help readers of edit history find out what led to the radical change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the edit, remove all answers that fail to match the revised question (as far as I can tell, these would be all except for the top answer), then reopen. Side note an edit drafted above would also &quot;trigger&quot; removal of the opening sentence from the top answer (&quot;I think the question should be...&quot;) but that's rather minor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Advantage of #2.1 is that it guarantees that worthy content is preserved. In comparison, 2.2 carries a (rather minor) risk that edited question will be eventually closed again and deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Advantage of #2.2 is that it doesn't introduce deviation of our usual practice to avoid cleanup prior to locking - since it doesn't involve locking at all. (that practice is in turn based on common sense - if you do cleanup anyway, it's only reasonable to improve content up to the point when it doesn't need locking at all)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for #1 (delete), it looks really inferior in comparison. It only doesn't deviate from our locking practices, but so does #2.2, which additionally offers a solid chance of preserving worthy content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that risk involved in #2.2 is minor, it looks like most appealing option." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26042" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6297" RevisionGUID="ac20064e-8fa0-4c24-9c0b-8befe56f7e3c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I didn't have any votes on this question, so this is more just me going &quot;hmm...&quot; with some various thoughts on the matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An important thing to realize is that questions have been asked in the past and are currently open is not an indication that something that is asked in the same or similar format will also be covered as &quot;older stuff is open too&quot;.  There is a lot of old questions that are not good examples of questions to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would also strongly suggest steering away from the &quot;but it was answered&quot; as an indication to question.  From a previous issue ( https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5563/closed-as-not-constructive/ ) the argument was made:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only answer given (likely before it was closed) clearly suggests that the question is constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason to close such a question is that it has the likelihood of blowing up to everyone adding their own two cents to the question.  I would suggest looking at your example of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/171430/vocabulary-should-i-call-this-apply-or-map which has answers such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You could call it an n-dimensional pointwise Cartesian product of functions. However, that doesn't make for a short name, and might require explanation...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd call it fire_callbacks, call_callbacks, apply_callbacks, or something like that.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've usually had such a method as part of a signal or observable object.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To my mind, the word &quot;map&quot; implies some kind of association (e.g. a 'dictionary'), although there doesn't appear to be any association or pairing of data happening in your algorithm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everyone has their own opinion about how things are called, even if there is a real name for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is strongly related to the post https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic which has a variety of opinions on the topic.  A more recent meta post seeking a more updated clarification can be read at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6089/is-asking-what-is-the-technical-term-for-this-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this more recent question there are two opinions, one of which can be recapped as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; These kinds of questions essentially boil down to &quot;what terms should I Google for?&quot; They are an indirect proxy for resource requests, which are specifically off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key issue with the &quot;find the name&quot; is that we really don't want (and this is a community consensus thing more than a formal policy) to become [ELU single-word-requests](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/single-word-requests).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions of the 'name that thing' are without end - they are localized to *your* usage and situation and tend not to be something that generates long term useful content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A poor metric (I know) of that &quot;long term useful content&quot; might be in part driven from views.  If you look at your example questions, no matter how old they are they all have about 300-400 views. This suggests that they got them at the initial date of creation and then no one looked at them again.  I know that thats a *very* poor qualification because some of the more esoteric questions have even fewer views (I mean... who wants to read about haskell monads?) but are likely good long term material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thats all about my thoughts on the subject and bringing together some other posts to consider when looking into why it was closed.  The &quot;Name that thing&quot; is a touchy area because of the possibility that it brings in lots of people saying &quot;I call it `this` in my shop&quot; and others saying &quot;I call it `that` where I work.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to the &quot;called something else in each language...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question asks, essentially, how is it called when you create constants that refer to large namespaces in an attempt to simplify the writing. Basically, something like:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; `Sprite = Super::Large:Namespace::Graphics::Sprite`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, in perl, this is a [typeglob](http://perldoc.perl.org/perldata.html#Typeglobs-and-Filehandles) alias (what are types?) (not to be confused with [glob](http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/glob.html)s)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- language: perl --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    #!/usr/bin/perl&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    package Foo::Bar::Qux::Bletch;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    $var = 42;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    package main;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    print $Foo::Bar::Qux::Bletch::var, &quot;\n&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    *A = *Foo::Bar::Qux::Bletch::var;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    print $A,&quot;\n&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or at least... thats what I call it.  Though some people may call it [symbol table aliasing](http://perldoc.perl.org/perlmod.html#Symbol-Tables) which wouldn't really be wrong either.  And apparently some call it [glob aliasing](http://stackoverflow.com/a/14071422/289086) too.  Oh well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26043" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6680" RevisionGUID="b50b1031-7e5e-4909-8910-58c805f308a6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Following the post from Yannis Rizos about the use of &quot;No Action Needed&quot; for posts that are not all that good (https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6679/reviewing-first-posts-from-new-users), I am struggling to understand when to use &quot;No Action Needed&quot; in a review of a first post and when to use &quot;Skip&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Up to now, I used the heuristic that if the post wasn't bad enough to close vote/down vote/flag and wasn't good enough to upvote, then I would select &quot;No Action Needed&quot;. This means that I would use the &quot;No Action Needed&quot; option mostly for posts that had a bit of a 'meh' feeling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the post by Yannis, I gather that I should Skip the review for those posts and leave it for someone else to take action on the post (either positive or negative), but that leaves me with the question:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If good posts should be upvoted, bad posts downvoted (or otherwise dealt with) and meh posts skipped, on which posts should I use the &quot;No Action Needed&quot; option, or should that option not exist at all?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26044" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6705" RevisionGUID="1569a39a-9e70-476b-aaa7-685bc7b9cb4f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've noticed in the reopen queue history and 10k close page that there are at least some people who will cast a reopen vote on nearly anything they see.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've gotta ask... *why* do you do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A bit ago, Rachel [commented](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6642/examples-of-inappropriately-closed-questions/6648#comment17931_6648)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @RobertHarvey I am showing the number of close votes/voters compared to the number of reopen votes/voters. I think the core problem here is summarized at the end of my answer: Your chances of getting something closed or reopened is tied to a random variable: how many people review the question at the same time as you. In the case of new open content, it is viewed by many people, including our group of &quot;close happy&quot; users. In the case of closed content, very few people view it, and we don't even have a decent sized group of active &quot;reopen happy&quot; users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll say that is not completely accurate in that if there is sufficient change to the question to merit it reopening, it's actually rather easy to get it reopened.  Sometimes it takes a bit of hunting for votes in chat (we can typically find 3 or 4 without bugging a mod)... but when it is something that *should* be reopened, the biggest challenge is finding the votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, here's the thing... you've got one vote and one shot to get a question reopened.  When you use your vote as a one off protest vote on everything that goes through the queue or when a question that you answered gets closed - it makes it that much harder to find the votes when something *should* be reopened (and try to use the reopen review rather than asking in chat or bugging a mod).  Once that reopen vote times out, you can't cast it again - it is gone.  So even when it does get fixed, you won't be able to cast a reopen vote on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is true that that reopening depends heavily on getting people to hit 'reopen' in the review queue rather than leave closed, why do you vote when there's no change? or when there's only a minimal change that doesn't fix the perceived issues that closed it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for that matter, if you honestly think it is something that should get reopened, but don't believe it will, ***edit*** it so that it ***is*** a good question that even the most hardened close voter will agree it is something that should be asked.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tossing your votes as a one off protest vote makes it that much harder to reopen good questions when the question *does* get edited into shape.  So why cast those votes without trying to edit the question to address the close reason and make better and unequivocally able to be reopened?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26045" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7504" RevisionGUID="128bae46-e25b-421e-88cf-ca4524897138" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question shows up in the [10k delete review list][1] because it has a delete vote cast:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How do I explain a “Hello World” program for beginners? \[closed\]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is a classic example of [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?][3] and as such was rightfully closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why does this question have a historical lock (by [maple_shaft][4])? Should we unlock it and delete it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/135925/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6629/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/25476/maple-shaft" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26046" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6398" RevisionGUID="d9bd6f03-ed75-4bf9-9249-f506833747d7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have earned the yearling badge twice, just a few days apart, in this year, on programmers: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/16658/fejesjoco?tab=badges&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also got them here on this meta site, where I have never contributed anything before this: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/16658/fejesjoco?tab=badges&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like a bug to me, I haven't seen this behavior on other SE sites yet." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26047" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7525" RevisionGUID="3ff3a898-2f04-4a7a-b6c9-72b9094df3ec" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A few recent questions seem to exhibit issues explained in [The Trouble With Popularity](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/) article:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we discovered that these posts... truly start to drown out everything else on the site... it's too addictive and too easy, and in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While these questions were open, they were widely advertised on the Hot Network List and gained relatively high scores [despite piling on of close votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773 &quot;feature request to account for these&quot;). All of them are now closed, but due to their high scores they present appealing examples for newer site visitors to try their luck asking similar questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;High scores send a fairly strong signal that those sorts of questions are welcome here. I think this _signal_ is much stronger than the subtle hint  of a close banner, especially for inexperienced users ([&quot;it's okay to ask about roses here...&quot;](http://communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/a/1247/516 &quot;if needed, refer here for more elaborate discussion of having off-topic questions in the hot list&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The crux of my question is: what can we do to make these closed questions less like [broken windows](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_Recent examples for review:_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the issues with this question are best covered in a custom close reason borrowed from the Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Topicality wise, it appears to be in overlap between our site and Workplace, probably closer to Programmers. Our close reason ([opinion based](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)) looks like a fit.  As for better matching Workplace close reason, it is likely because they (Workplace) are getting more troublesome questions of that kind and have acquired more experience at efficiently handling these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;...How would you explain a statement... to a beginner?&quot;_ - We have a dedicated meta post explaining exactly what the issues are with these kinds of questions: [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6630/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, hot list visitors who voted it up likely have no idea about our meta guidance.  And even if they knew, they likely don't care. (And even if they would care, [system simply wouldn't let them tell](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/238514/165773).)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;I personally prefer 4 spaces for each indentation level, but there are colleagues that prefer 2 and even 5 spaces... I decided to post a question see if there are tools/method to settle the problem without calling a meeting.&quot;_ - If that doesn't make it a [shopping list question](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) then I don't know what it makes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/290941/revisions) suggests that even some moderators have tried to figure out a way to protect and salvage the question. But, honestly, I am not surprised to see that this failed. Asker clearly indicated that they were _just shopping_ and there's nothing else on their mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone tried to &quot;derive&quot; a better, more substantial question from this one, they would end up with their own, and _different_ question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet another case when Workplace folks seem to be better prepared to recognize and handle troublesome questions of that kind with their custom close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **advice on what to do are not [practical answerable questions](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)** (e.g. *&quot;what job should I take?&quot;*, or *&quot;what skills should I learn?&quot;*). Questions should get answers explaining *why* and *how* to make a decision, not advice on what to do. For more information, click [here](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2695)...&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;Granted, I think that our own [education advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/31260) close reason also makes a good fit, but the majority of close voters picked another reason ([too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260)) which suggests that the match with the education close reason is not as clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yet again, issues with this question seem to be best covered in already quoted custom close reason from the Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although still somewhat workplace-y, this question looks much closer to Programmers than previous example covered by the this close reason (&quot;mentor's concern&quot;). Still, their close reason looks like a really good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm often conflicted when creating a project that requires manipulation of data in files... &amp;lt;example how JSON looks like&amp;gt; &amp;lt;example how CSV looks like&amp;gt; ...is it better to use larger, more readable formats, like JSON, or smaller, harder to read formats, like CSV, for data storage?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[If memory serves](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234894/165773 &quot;no, system won't help me recall&quot;), the close reason I picked was [too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260). The majority of voters have chosen [opinion based](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6491/31260) which also looks like a reasonable match ([Gorilla vs. Shark](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these questions were old, or if their score and views were acquired _organically_ due to great content, I'd probably ask for a [historical lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info). But that doesn't seem applicable due to the recency of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For what it's worth, I considered an option to edit them into better shape. Unfortunately, it looks like the answers that piled in prior to closing [&quot;lock the question&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773) from any substantial changes I could think of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One possible exception (which would involve removing most of the answers though) is the [question about indentation width](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width). It looks possible to convert it to a [collaborative effort question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before &quot;example&quot;). If we pick this option though, we had better do some substantial edits to the question text, to make it look like less of a wide open broken window for inexperienced site visitors. _&quot;Hey, folks do shopping over here, lemme try my own.&quot;_" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26049" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6738" RevisionGUID="1a389cae-17eb-441d-b2b6-85f4a30f9139" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Historical questions about [tag:recommendations]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6125/should-we-ban-the-recommendations-tag&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/421/is-a-recommendations-tag-really-necessary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The general consensus of these two is that the tag really should go away... though nothing has been done about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tag remains, it *really* needs a better tag-wiki akin to [tag:legal] or [tag:career-development] saying that its a very dangerous tag to ask in and needs to be properly formulated to have any chase of not getting closed quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tag is to go, there are apparently a few ways that this can be done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Someone goes through and removes the tag from all the questions.  There are 'only' 88 of them though thats still a mess... including bumping a number of closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;2. Have a mod do super powers to destroy the tag.  I'm not sure what these super powers are, but if they have them... well, **boom** goes the tag.&#xD;&#xA;3. Have SE use *their* super powers to completely burninate the tag.  Its gone and make it so that it can never come back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd really go for option #3... Number 1 is a mess.  Granted 88 isn't that big of a mess compared to some other tags, but thats still a mess... its about 2 days worth of front page activity.  If SE doesn't do the 'kill it with fire' approach, if a mod does have their super powers, then those should be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But please, just kill it.  Make it go *poof* and **boom** and other noises as it disappears into the `void*` never to be cast again.  There is no reason for its existence at all given that recommendations has *never* been on topic here...&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26050" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6404" RevisionGUID="0b9d6f98-9ead-4921-a348-1989963e9d55" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Unclear what help you need ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Unclear what help you need](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important &quot;see: 'Why is research important?'&quot;).** Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell what problem you are trying to solve or what aspect of your approach needs to be corrected or explained. See the [ask] page for help clarifying this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note `[ask]` above is so called [magic link](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/magic-links), meaning that in comments it auto-expands into [How to Ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Slightly adapted from [this MSO post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/215806/165773)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26051" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6772" RevisionGUID="2c6195d6-15fb-4391-ad8e-570f45b64515" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Refer to this [question][1] which I've wrote yesterday.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have much experience with packages terminology, so I've put my best effort into constructing a scenario to illustrate a real and simple use case, then asked what terminology should be used for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can see, if there is no proper terminology then the answer should be just that – &quot;there is no standard terminology that meets your criteria&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet, my question was downvoted and closed as primarily opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through meta, all I could find was https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6338/why-is-this-terminology-question-considered-as-opinion-based whose accepted answer supports my point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is there anything I can improve in my question, or is it just not welcome here for some other reason?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/250477/91517" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26052" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6828" RevisionGUID="34126f13-3938-4d9e-926d-9eb048f8d9b7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question can be answered with either &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot;.  Neither of those are good answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The ability to find an answer for this doesn't draw from expert knowledge of programmers, but rather that of regulators, lawyers, and [research librarians](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librarian#Positions_and_duties) (read the paragraph beginning with &quot;Reference or research librarians help people doing research to find the information they need&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The primary skills here are google-fu.  Furthermore, those who do not have access to something that isn't likely an [open standard](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard) can only say &quot;I can't find it if it is&quot; - also a poor answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As such, this question doesn't fit the Stack Exchange model for Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On P.SE, it would get closed as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(please read https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487 - the section beginning &quot;Asking for a link to something or statistics&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26053" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7536" RevisionGUID="2067f372-9ea3-4020-92c0-5e584677eb7c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It was quite interesting to observe impact of this meta post on the listed questions ([&quot;meta effect&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/235225/165773)). Or, more precisely, lack thereof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First thing I noticed is there were no attempts to improve / salvage these questions (except for an old one about indentation width, there was only one, more on that below). Attention brought to these by this meta post did not really help: &quot;active&quot; notices on listed questions (except for last one) say _2 months ago, 21, 17, 14, 16 days ago_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may ring a bell to readers familiar with [famous post about Programmers / NPR history](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Turns out that while everyone _loves_ those questions, very few are _actually_ willing to spend any time to... maintain and moderate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only _recent_ edit was done to question about [JSON vs CSV](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/291618/revisions), which recently changed wording to &quot;what are some advantages/disadvantages...&quot; Not that it made it worse (as far as I can tell, edit didn't even invalidate existing answers) but it didn't really help. Edited question now prominently exposes issues described in another meta post, [What is the problem with “Pros and Cons”?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6758/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another thing worth paying attention to is how little of negative feedback was given to these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It gets especially prominent if you account for attention given to this meta post, which is mostly about explaining what's wrong with them. It stuck in [hot meta posts](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/234453/165773) for about a week (quite the irony), has got almost 400 views and solid positive score. Now, let's take a look at the questions it lists:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;  3 votes down, 4 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  3 votes down, 3 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width  &#xD;&#xA;  7 votes down, 2 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code  &#xD;&#xA;  4 votes down, 2 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code  &#xD;&#xA;  4 votes down, 4 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f  &#xD;&#xA;  5 votes down, 3 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not much really, huh? Considering that some of these votes were cast long before the meta post, it becomes even weaker. Closer check of _The Trouble with Popularity_ suggests that this may actually be a common case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note how the article says nothing about negative feedback to such questions. This makes a fairly strong indication that there is no such feedback, at least not at a scale worth mentioning. (Atwood would probably be happy to point that at least part of community actively opposes such questions but it looks like this just doesn't happen.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reflecting on my own behavior in these questions makes me feel that there could be a good reason for this. I tend to feel _reluctant_ giving negative rating (down, close, delete) when post has high score. This may seem strange, given that I am well aware of upvotes to popular posts frequently degrading into useless &quot;likes&quot; of Facebook kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the thing is, I am much more used to looking on regular, on-topic, good quality questions. And in normal questions, high score fairly reliably indicates quality content worth voting up, not down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If many users are like me, it should indeed be that high score posts rarely get negative feedback, no matter how bad these are. People simply build an opposite habit by reading on-topic, good quality questions, where high score means that post deserves upvotes. Not surprising that they would feel discomfort trying to do opposite to what they are used to - at least that's the way I feel myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This probably won't make me many friends over here but summing up above, it looks like the most realistic way to address the matters of broken windows would be a moderator deletion of these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, interestingly, brings us back to the quote that opened this question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26054" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6817" RevisionGUID="51130c21-193a-4851-9eee-67d3d97463b6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I haven't interacted at all with that question (down votes or the too broad close vote).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My impressions of it are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Some meta stuff at the top.  This normally sets off a warning flag for me.  Things like &quot;I know this isn't the right place&quot; and the like tend to be questions that are otherwise problematic on the site.  Your particular meta comment was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Folks, there is no TL;DR version of my question. Please be patient.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Even if this isn't a post that *is* problematic, it sets one's mind to expect that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. A quick scroll down and I hit four code blocks, two of which have scroll bars on them.  This is something that then starts to *look* like one that is going to delve too far into code or fix my code/design type questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Many of the questions that tend to be &quot;here is a lot of code&quot; tend to get answers that are &quot;here is a lot of code too.&quot;  Those answers aren't ideal for P.SE, and so questions that ask them may get down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Where is the question?  After digging down a bit, they are between two code blocks.  The questions appear to be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    1. Is there another name for this pattern? &#xD;&#xA;    2. Is this really an Adapter?&#xD;&#xA;    3. So, does the compiler have no mechanism to check such semantic inconsistencies?&#xD;&#xA;    4. Something that looks like a design review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Asking multiple questions in a single post is problematic.  Someone could answer the &quot;another name&quot; question, and another answer the adapter one, and a third about the compiler.  None (or all) of them are 'right' for the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    While I may just be missing it... but I seem to have some difficulty matching the &quot;abstract stuff in C#&quot; in the question title to the questions being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. There's a naming question there.  Naming questions have a problematic history on P.SE - a bit more about that at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a lot there.  But I also have to read quite a bit to even find the question being asked and then go back and reread it.  And after that, I'm still confused about what question you are asking and what type of answer you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The mouseover for the the down vote reads &quot;this question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&quot; and that 'it is unclear' part may be something that people are voting on when reading the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some other bits that are in there from comments here and there...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@Doval, the site asks me to provide details and share my research. I did that. It is ridiculous that you guys vote down questions if they do not fit your mental models. Your lack of experience in working in teams and mentoring clearly shines through your comments. Gaining points on a forum is a completely different matter. Having the maturity to answer properly and with humility is a different matter altogether. –  msiyer yesterday&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@ Alex, I never mentioned anything about my breakfast. Oh! you were being sarcastic? Reserve your sarcasm for some other day. I would have asked small questions on StackOverflow. This is a site for detailed analysis. What does detailed mean? Please go and read the link I posted in my last comment. Guys, learn to respect others. The internet does not give you license to be rude. Just because you do not understand something does not mean there are not others who can provide some answers. This site provides me the license to showcase my research. Does that make any sense to you? –  msiyer yesterday&lt;/sub&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit rude in its wording.  Not enough that I'd go about flagging it... but it sets a negative tone and some people may vote accordingly.  If you are to point out that *other* people are being rude too (again, judgement call there) this is a question that you asked and people are voting on that (they may also be flagging comments, but that's not as obvious).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@Graham, Your comment is a good one and gentle too. I am not looking for a free code review. I just want to discuss if what i understood is proper. The attention span of these guys is just pathetic. They need questions that are couple of lines long so that they can answer fast and get points. This site is for detailed analysis as per FAQ. It also asks me to show my research. If I have to be concise I will post on StackOverflow. Why is this so difficult to comprehend? –  msiyer yesterday&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Setting aside the tone in this comment: &quot;I just want to **discuss** if what i understood is proper&quot; - [discussions don't work well on Stack Exchange](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6742/40980).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that you brought this up again in the meta question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;One guy also said that you are getting a free code review done here, so better get aligned to the rules laid down by the members. NO. I was not getting my code reviewed. I was trying to discuss something that troubles all beginners. Even if I was, I need not stoop and beg.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@Bart, you answered properly. But when you say &quot;compiler writers have better things to do&quot;, it kind of kills discussion. But we surely discussed on Design patterns. I sincerely feel that the questions were not bad. May not be a world class problem but nothing silly about it. These are issues I have seen all beginners deal with. i hoped a discussion would help others to learn. –  msiyer 6 hours ago&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, Stack Exchange is not a site for discussions.  There are other avenues and sites to look at if you *are* interested in a discussion.  Stack Exchange is designed to handle Q&amp;A - not discussions.  It does the former very well and the latter very poorly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26055" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7525" RevisionGUID="3a1dc25f-e58f-4cb3-a429-a1d61dd256eb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A few recent questions seem to exhibit issues explained in [The Trouble With Popularity](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/) article:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we discovered that these posts... truly start to drown out everything else on the site... it's too addictive and too easy, and in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While these questions were open, they were widely advertised on the Hot Network List and gained relatively high scores [despite piling on of close votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773 &quot;feature request to account for these&quot;). All of them are now closed, but due to their high scores they present appealing examples for newer site visitors to try their luck asking similar questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;High scores send a fairly strong signal that those sorts of questions are welcome here. I think this _signal_ is much stronger than the subtle hint  of a close banner, especially for inexperienced users ([&quot;it's okay to ask about roses here...&quot;](http://communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/a/1247/516 &quot;if needed, refer here for more elaborate discussion of having off-topic questions in the hot list&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The crux of my question is: what can we do to make these closed questions less like [broken windows](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_Recent examples for review:_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the issues with this question are best covered in a custom close reason borrowed from the Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Topicality wise, it appears to be in overlap between our site and Workplace, probably closer to Programmers. Our close reason ([opinion based](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)) looks like a fit.  As for better matching Workplace close reason, it is likely because they (Workplace) are getting more troublesome questions of that kind and have acquired more experience at efficiently handling these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;...How would you explain a statement... to a beginner?&quot;_ - We have a dedicated meta post explaining exactly what the issues are with these kinds of questions: [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6630/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, hot list visitors who voted it up likely have no idea about our meta guidance.  And even if they knew, they likely don't care. (And even if they would care, [system simply wouldn't let them tell](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/238514/165773).)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;I personally prefer 4 spaces for each indentation level, but there are colleagues that prefer 2 and even 5 spaces... I decided to post a question see if there are tools/method to settle the problem without calling a meeting.&quot;_ - If that doesn't make it a [shopping list question](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) then I don't know what it makes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/290941/revisions) suggests that even some moderators have tried to figure out a way to protect and salvage the question. But, honestly, I am not surprised to see that this failed. Asker clearly indicated that they were _just shopping_ and there's nothing else on their mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone tried to &quot;derive&quot; a better, more substantial question from this one, they would end up with their own, and _different_ question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet another case when Workplace folks seem to be better prepared to recognize and handle troublesome questions of that kind with their custom close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **advice on what to do are not [practical answerable questions](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)** (e.g. *&quot;what job should I take?&quot;*, or *&quot;what skills should I learn?&quot;*). Questions should get answers explaining *why* and *how* to make a decision, not advice on what to do. For more information, click [here](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2695)...&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;Granted, I think that our own [education advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/31260) close reason also makes a good fit, but the majority of close voters picked another reason ([too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260)) which suggests that the match with the education close reason is not as clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yet again, issues with this question seem to be best covered in already quoted custom close reason from the Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although still somewhat workplace-y, this question looks much closer to Programmers than previous example covered by the this close reason (&quot;mentor's concern&quot;). Still, their close reason looks like a really good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm often conflicted when creating a project that requires manipulation of data in files... &amp;lt;example how JSON looks like&amp;gt; &amp;lt;example how CSV looks like&amp;gt; ...is it better to use larger, more readable formats, like JSON, or smaller, harder to read formats, like CSV, for data storage?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[If memory serves](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234894/165773 &quot;no, system won't help me recall&quot;), the close reason I picked was [too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260). The majority of voters have chosen [opinion based](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6491/31260) which also looks like a reasonable match ([Gorilla vs. Shark](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these questions were old, or if their score and views were acquired _organically_ due to great content, I'd probably ask for a [historical lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info). But that doesn't seem applicable due to the recency of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For what it's worth, I considered an option to edit them into better shape. Unfortunately, it looks like the answers that piled in prior to closing [&quot;lock the question&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773) from any substantial changes I could think of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One possible exception (which would involve removing most of the answers though) is the [question about indentation width](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width). It looks possible to convert it to a [collaborative effort question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before &quot;example&quot;). If we pick this option though, we had better do some substantial edits to the question text, to make it look like less of a wide open broken window for inexperienced site visitors. _&quot;Hey, folks do shopping over here, lemme try my own.&quot;_" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26056" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6411" RevisionGUID="32bd0a6f-d9f6-4fae-b74a-eb848640ba52" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Career advice is difficult because it is so individualized and time sensitive. We recommend that you ask such questions in our [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard). The Workplace.SE caters to some career related issues but has similar strictures on individualized questions. The doubled edge sword of Stack Exchange is to create an easily Googleable reference for getting expert answers to questions immediately. Career advice tends to fall outside that category as it tends to again, be highly individualized and time-sensitive. We tried allowing that sort of question type at the beginning of Programmers. It didn't go [well][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Chat exists specifically for working through the thornier questions without direct, converging answers. The [Whiteboard][2]'s activity stats will help you find the best time and day of the week to ask your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26057" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7552" RevisionGUID="a2f0fa00-3796-4527-be7c-cc6d0db25b5f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't see why we shouldn't have Coffee.SE at least an option for people to vote up as an SE community we advertise for on P.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anybody (perhaps Robert Cartaino the diamond that deleted the post) tell me why it was removed? If not, I intend to just add it back, I think we definitely should be advertising Coffee.SE on P.SE..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[10k link to see the original but deleted coffee.SE community ad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7177/35276)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26058" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6855" RevisionGUID="7e9bbe1a-7e6f-4faf-880c-5ddf4a4046cf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Update Sep 4, 2014** - as of now, _recommendations_ and _suggestions_ tags appear empty - there are neither regular ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/recommendations), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/suggestions)) nor locked ([3](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[recommendations]+locked%3Ayes), [4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[suggestions]+locked%3Ayes)) questions there anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Prior content of the answer is below.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As pointed in [comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6738/recommendations-tag-burn-edit-blacklist-or-kill-one-by-one/6855#comment18527_6738), currently there are only three questions tagged recommendations. In these questions, tag removal requires moderator intervention, because historical lock doesn't even allow a regular user flag these:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25432/how-can-a-new-programmer-impress-the-software-engineer-boss  &#xD;&#xA;this question has recommendations as the only tag; could be retagged to [tag:new-job]&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10675/ideal-programming-language-learning-sequence&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49003/which-online-hosted-bug-tracking-tool-do-you-use-for-your-own-work-and-projects&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we're at it, let's also blacklist [tag:recommendations] twin tag - [tag:suggestions] - it's empty now and would be great if it never gets used again. Just like [recommendations](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/537/31260), it's a meta tag:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...It doesn't categorize the question's content, and it cannot stand on its own without other tags.  It should therefore be removed.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26059" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6846" RevisionGUID="fd34d3ff-5b7d-4b3c-b965-c5a301383fa2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This homework dump has been quickly deleted - [Problem : Valid Segments 1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254573/problem-valid-segments-1).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Consider text comprised of `blah blah`. Task is to find out `blah blah`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next day, it was slightly modified and reposted from different account - [Problem : Valid Segments 2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254641/valid-segments-2).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Consider text comprised of `blah blah`. Task is to find out `blah blah`. Participants submitting solutions in C language should `blah blah`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I [flagged](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6845/31260 &quot;as explained here&quot;) reposted dump for deletion. My flag was marked helpful but post wasn't deleted (I'd rather prefer opposite - flag decline, followed by deletion but oh well). About three hours after that, I flagged original dump, pointing out that it was reposted and referring repost in the flag message.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My flag, again, was marked helpful but the reposted dump, again, was kept hanging on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What would be the reason to keep the second dump instead of deleting it like it was done to first one?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26060" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6864" RevisionGUID="7fc676fb-d946-4270-bbc1-478fa66027a6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question should be added to the tour of programmers.stackexchange.com IMHO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every programmer coming on the site tries to know what's the difference with stackoverflow, where to go on one or the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not linking to the question, at least the reasoning should be shown somewhere. Right now, only when searching on meta can we find the reason." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26061" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6851" RevisionGUID="ea09933f-9c7e-440f-b455-d30cfc22683c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I failed a review audit for [Cleanest way to report errors in Haskell][1]. I responded by voting to close it as &quot;primarily opinion based.&quot; I understand that answering an occasional review incorrectly [will not hurt][2], that is not my concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I out of line for believing that question should be closed as being primarily opinion-based, despite the seven upvotes? The asker outlines three different ways to deal with errors, and basically asks &quot;what would you do?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/252977/cleanest-way-to-report-errors-in-haskell&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6625/i-just-failed-an-audit-but-i-was-right-and-it-was-wrong-what-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26062" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7536" RevisionGUID="45a0bf65-7918-4bc5-ab01-545dd408643f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It was quite interesting to observe impact of this meta post on the listed questions ([&quot;meta effect&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/235225/165773)). Or, more precisely, lack thereof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First thing I noticed is there were no attempts to improve / salvage these questions (except for an old one about indentation width, there was only one, more on that below). Attention brought to these by this meta post did not really help: &quot;active&quot; notices on listed questions (except for last one) say _2 months ago, 21, 17, 14, 16 days ago_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may ring a bell to readers familiar with [famous post about Programmers / NPR history](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Turns out that while everyone _loves_ those questions, very few are _actually_ willing to spend any time to... maintain and moderate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only _recent_ edit was done to question about [JSON vs CSV](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/291618/revisions), which recently changed wording to &quot;what are some advantages/disadvantages...&quot; Not that it made it worse (as far as I can tell, edit didn't even invalidate existing answers) but it didn't really help. Edited question now prominently exposes issues described in another meta post, [What is the problem with “Pros and Cons”?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6758/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another thing worth paying attention to is how little of negative feedback was given to these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It gets especially prominent if you account for attention given to this meta post, which is mostly about explaining what's wrong with them. It stuck in [hot meta posts](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/234453/165773) for about a week (quite the irony), has got almost 400 views and solid positive score. Now, let's take a look at the questions it lists:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;  3 votes down, 4 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  3 votes down, 3 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width  &#xD;&#xA;  7 votes down, 2 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code  &#xD;&#xA;  4 votes down, 2 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code  &#xD;&#xA;  4 votes down, 4 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f  &#xD;&#xA;  5 votes down, 3 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not much really, huh? Considering that some of these votes were cast long before the meta post, it becomes even weaker. Closer check of _The Trouble with Popularity_ suggests that this may actually be a common case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note how the article says nothing about negative feedback to such questions. This makes a fairly strong indication that there is no such feedback, at least not at a scale worth mentioning. (Atwood would probably be happy to point that at least part of community actively opposes such questions but it looks like this just doesn't happen.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reflecting on my own behavior in these questions makes me feel that there could be a good reason for this. I tend to feel _reluctant_ giving negative rating (down, close, delete) when post has high score. This may seem strange, given that I am well aware of upvotes to popular posts frequently degrading into useless &quot;likes&quot; of Facebook kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the thing is, I am much more used to looking on regular, on-topic, good quality questions. And in normal questions, high score fairly reliably indicates quality content worth voting up, not down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If many users are like me, it should indeed be that high score posts rarely get negative feedback, no matter how bad these are. People simply build an opposite habit by reading on-topic, good quality questions, where high score means that post deserves upvotes. Not surprising that they would feel discomfort trying to do opposite to what they are used to - at least that's the way I feel myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This probably won't make me many friends over here but summing up above, it looks like the most realistic way to address the matters of broken windows would be a moderator deletion of these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, interestingly, brings us back to the quote that opened this question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26063" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7554" RevisionGUID="a768aa8a-6424-4c83-8237-6ed6bafca4e0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't agree with the decision to delete the ad. [Coffee is a fundamental portion of the lives of many programmers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7547/is-every-day-coffee-day). We discuss it in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) often.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[@RobertCartarino states:](https://coffee.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/97/what-should-a-community-ad-for-coffee-stackexchange-look-like/100#comment1149_100)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @fredley The community-driven advertisements/bulletins have to be at least roughly aligned with the topic of the community. This advertisement is not appropriate for Programmers SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't agree with this statement on both counts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I don't agree that it isn't roughly aligned with with the topic of the community.&#xD;&#xA;   - This community is about issues that directly concern Programmers as idea people and thinkers, and *many* of us would not have ideas nor be able to think without coffee.&#xD;&#xA;2. I don't agree that it should have to be roughly aligned with the topic of the community.&#xD;&#xA;   - Programmers are people in addition being bots that transform coffee and pizza into code. We have lives just like everyone else.&#xD;&#xA;   - If we, as a community, have overwhelming support for an ad to another community, we should be made available to that community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently, [@abbyhairboat](https://coffee.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1156) wrote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why limit the hunt to Seasoned Advice?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sure, they get coffee questions, and that's why you've got a community promotion ad up there. But what if we try thinking beyond &quot;where are the coffee questions and how do we get them here?&quot;, and instead, think: &quot;where are the coffee people and how do we get them here?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of people are coffee Q&amp;A people? Millions of people drink coffee, but what we're looking for here is coffee hobbyists, not just drinkers.** People who like to experiment with brewing methods, spend money on gear, and optimize for various qualities. They aren't just coffee drinkers - they're coffee tinkerers. So people who might be drawn to this site are tinkerers in other fields who dabble in coffee (among many other likely hobbies).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This statement applies just as much here as it does to Seasoned Advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##We should be able to have this Community Ad." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26065" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6884" RevisionGUID="0b6b2fb4-7c77-4022-adce-fd780afa6bee" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've flagged my [question][1] and asked for it to be moved to Stack Overflow ([that's the right way of doing it, right?][2]) but it was closed instead. I think it's a good question ([not a crap][3]) that proved to be relevant to many people over the years.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44929/color-schemes-generation-theory-and-algorithms&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5874/move-question-to-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3887/closed-instead-of-migrated" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26066" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7552" RevisionGUID="0e427a98-e302-4b4a-b9ef-f54a37a1f08b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't see why we shouldn't have Coffee.SE at least an option for people to vote up as an SE community we advertise for on P.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anybody (perhaps Robert Cartaino the diamond that deleted the post) tell me why it was removed? If not, I intend to just add it back, I think we definitely should be advertising Coffee.SE on P.SE..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[10k link to see the original but deleted coffee.SE community ad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7177/35276)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26067" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6428" RevisionGUID="4b75c504-01c5-4ebd-8384-319e1b1740a4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've found a bunch of FAQ links here on meta.p.SE, all pointing to [programmers.stackexchange.com/faq][1] etc, for example [this one over here][2], to name just one. Maybe it is just my browser, but I am always redirected to the about page once I try to follow that link. Well, that's a nice page too, there's no question about it, but it's not a FAQ. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So where the FAQ are the FAQs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2684/difference-between-programmers-and-stackoverflow?rq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26068" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7556" RevisionGUID="a0ed59db-829c-4b0d-99ed-3de502b4c5d7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Culturally, caffeine and pizza are part of being a programmer.  While it doesn't make for [good main site questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/286216/40980) (10k link) coffee, tea and other caffeine delivery mechanisms are a [documented part](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/I/ISO-standard-cup-of-tea.html) of what it is to be a programmer for a significant period of time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted, this is such a culturally significant part of the desk of a programmer, that it is part of the site's design.  Think geek has [coffee mugs](http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/mugs-travel/) as a major section of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted on the https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7070/ you will note the wording:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the community is honestly interested in the culture of caffeine intake, then promoting that stack exchange site is well and good.  Its an advert on the side of the page - not a main site question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, however, the powers that be suggest that this *shouldn't* be the case, I would urge them to get the requisite 125 reputation, participate on the main site and the community here, and vote on the answer. I would similarly encourage them to do the audit of *all* of the other graduated sites and ask themselves why Health.SE is advertised on Gaming and Cooking and Space.SE on Skeptics and then ask if its really worth the trouble of going against the community when it has reached a consensus of what other things they want to advertise given the guidelines we are provided with." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26069" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6874" RevisionGUID="8617283b-28d5-4544-820a-58f6d91fb58e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I read [this post][1] and it gave some ideas. This is just a rough sketch. Do you think it has wings?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. a new area is created on relevant SE sites called something like &quot;help me with my homework&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;2. giving posters the answer is not allowed (punished with downvoting or worse). Helping them understand the problem is encouraged&#xD;&#xA;3. Professors or honest students can post questions too, either because they want help or because they want to register the question as a &quot;homework question&quot;&#xD;&#xA;4. If a (for lack of a better term) dishonest user posts a question that looks suspiciously like a &quot;homework&quot; question (but hasn't marked it as so), we now have a database to check against. &#xD;&#xA;5. If a positive match is found the question is flagged as a &quot;homework&quot; question, and sent to the new area where rules #2 and #3 apply.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26070" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6886" RevisionGUID="ed46a639-d5e1-4dea-94f4-5535fe077517" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While pondering upon today's [usual license shopping request](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/256092/31260 &quot;here my requirements, recommend a license&quot;) I discovered this old question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[How can I compare and contrast open source licenses?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/120308/31260)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it make sense to make above a [canonical duplicate target](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/217406/165773) for license shopping questions? Possibly along with [collaborative effort lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/182572/165773) on its answer(s).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a regular question it doesn't look like a good fit for the site, more like a candidate to be closed and deleted. Question per se reads [too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490) and the answers tend to refer readers to [&quot;another castle&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/225370/165773).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it somehow managed to outline basic research effort I would expect of askers before they dump their &quot;license requirments&lt;!-- note for editors - typo in word &quot;requirEments&quot; here is intentional, to highlight general laziness and ignorance of askers assumed to be addressed here --&gt;&quot; at us. As such, would it make a convenient dupe target?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26071" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7679" RevisionGUID="ed5b3f3f-7e34-4645-9b97-a5bd896c6447" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Software Recommendations is graduating][1] and will soon be a non-beta site!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[There is a question on their meta][2] about being a migration target: they are asking about other sites such as [Super User][3] having a migration path to [Software Recommendations][4]. [Programmers][5] did not come up there: while I would expect some other sites to have more recommendation questions, we do see some of these questions on Programmers and we have a few open slots for migration targets.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once Software Recommendations is fully graduated to a regular site, should Programmers have a migration path to it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Software recommendations stackexchange][6] - asked and answered before the graduation announcement.&#xD;&#xA;* [Revisiting what is on topic, with respect to new sites: Open Source, Law, and Software Recommendations][7] - software recommendations are _still_ off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2298&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2307&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://superuser.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6464&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7539" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26072" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6433" RevisionGUID="21074766-ac69-48e4-a2b0-8054cf5fc235" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Well, as far as I'm aware, some career questions are still supposed to be on topic, according to [this meta answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/590/3965).  I don't know when or how voters decided *all* career questions are off topic, but I don't think it was by consensus." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26073" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6886" RevisionGUID="a0eec84c-ccdc-426f-9563-06ebe0a0de38" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While pondering upon today's [usual license shopping request](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/256092/31260 &quot;here my requirements, recommend a license&quot;) I discovered this old question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[How can I compare and contrast open source licenses?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/120308/31260)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it make sense to make above a [canonical duplicate target](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/217406/165773) for license shopping questions? Possibly along with [collaborative effort lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/182572/165773) on its answer(s).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a regular question it doesn't look like a good fit for the site, more like a candidate to be closed and deleted. Question per se reads [too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490) and the answers tend to refer readers to [&quot;another castle&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/225370/165773).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it somehow managed to outline basic research effort I would expect of askers before they dump their &quot;license requirments&lt;!-- note for editors - typo in word &quot;requirEments&quot; here is intentional, to highlight general laziness and ignorance of askers assumed to be addressed here --&gt;&quot; at us. As such, would it make a convenient dupe target?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26074" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6451" RevisionGUID="25f0067f-505d-4ea8-a2f6-a9735d7ce27f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Recommendations are off topic on P.SE.  There is a long history to this on both P.SE and Stack Overflow.  For some of the P.SE history see [this search](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=recommendation).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a specific close reason for off topic for questions asking for some software recommendation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is what you need to look at.  We don't do recommendations.  There is, however, a (currently private beta) Stack Exchange site just for recommendations - http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/60887/software-recommendations - once this is in pubic beta you could ask such a question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, consider that questions of the use of a given tool is also off topic on P.SE, but on topic on Stack Overflow.  If you pick a tool you *may* be able to ask and get an answer for &quot;how to use that tool to do XYZ&quot; on Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26075" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6930" RevisionGUID="7657a608-27d7-4574-a267-367926013d37" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was reading the answer to this question and I find it very useful, agreeable and constructive: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6925/how-can-i-get-my-question-reopened-as-someone-answered-in-the-comments?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ChrisF states very clearly what an **user** of this community **should do**. But it's completely on the user side, there is nothing about what the **moderators** **should do**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course this is given as understood, treated in other places, and moderators here are doing a great work! But since this community is very ambitious, mature and tries to improves itself I would suggest another point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators are working hard, are doing their best, but this is an ambitious, technical community which tries to be constructive and scientific. And **psychology** and sociology have clearly studied the attitude of people to consider their own opinion as true. And not really put it into discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Being aware** of the limitation on our objectivity is an important step for someone who is called to administer &quot;objectively&quot; and supposed to be fair. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So as we find what users should do, I think it's fair to find what moderators should do. And work on their psychology, on their human-physiological bias could be important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you think moderator should make an effort and read these 2 articles?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(making_excuses)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(ps: this discussion may be probably seen as polemical and OT, but - true or not - if this adjective becomes an excuse to avoid taking it into consideration to make a work on ourself, this is a perfect example of rationalization: finding an excuse to justify our behavior, to confirm our ideas, to avoid putting ourself into discussion and putting effort in something which we don't like)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26076" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7554" RevisionGUID="808cbb96-e87f-4266-a9be-92a1fa82ba66" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't agree with the decision to delete the ad. [Coffee is a fundamental portion of the lives of many programmers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7547/is-every-day-coffee-day). We discuss it in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) often.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[@RobertCartarino states:](https://coffee.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/97/what-should-a-community-ad-for-coffee-stackexchange-look-like/100#comment1149_100)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @fredley The community-driven advertisements/bulletins have to be at least roughly aligned with the topic of the community. This advertisement is not appropriate for Programmers SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't agree with this statement on both counts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I don't agree that it isn't roughly aligned with with the topic of the community.&#xD;&#xA;   - This community is about issues that directly concern Programmers as idea people and thinkers, and *many* of us would not have ideas nor be able to think without coffee.&#xD;&#xA;2. I don't agree that it should have to be roughly aligned with the topic of the community.&#xD;&#xA;   - Programmers are people in addition being bots that transform coffee and pizza into code. We have lives just like everyone else.&#xD;&#xA;   - If we, as a community, have overwhelming support for an ad to another community, we should be made available to that community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently, [@abbyhairboat](https://coffee.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1156) wrote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why limit the hunt to Seasoned Advice?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sure, they get coffee questions, and that's why you've got a community promotion ad up there. But what if we try thinking beyond &quot;where are the coffee questions and how do we get them here?&quot;, and instead, think: &quot;where are the coffee people and how do we get them here?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of people are coffee Q&amp;A people? Millions of people drink coffee, but what we're looking for here is coffee hobbyists, not just drinkers.** People who like to experiment with brewing methods, spend money on gear, and optimize for various qualities. They aren't just coffee drinkers - they're coffee tinkerers. So people who might be drawn to this site are tinkerers in other fields who dabble in coffee (among many other likely hobbies).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This statement applies just as much here as it does to Seasoned Advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##We should be able to have this Community Ad." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26077" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6457" RevisionGUID="09c955d7-8c75-4272-98c5-a19ee43fd945" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As the person who cast the third delete vote, I thought I would add some additional perspective as to why I cast the vote when I did.  Please consider this as supplementary to [MichaelT's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6456/53019)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Normally, I won't vote-to-delete on a question as recently closed as yours was.  But the follow-up edit that you put in place after the question was closed is what made up my mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me address some of your meta questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I cannot undestand what was wrong with it.  &#xD;&#xA;What rules have been violated?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question is asking about the norms of a 3rd party package unrelated to the Programmers site.  That alone is enough to make it off-topic, and that's why it was closed as &quot;primarily opinion based.&quot;  Loosely translated, that means the Programmers community is not able to give you an evidence or experience backed answer that would meet the site guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please note that the one answer your question received was pure speculation and wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why moderator removed completely innocuous question, which contained only the facts and nothing but the facts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community (not a moderator) voted to delete your question.  ChrisF pointed that out in the comments, and I want to repeat that it was a community decision.  The three of us that voted to delete your question take the privilege to delete posts seriously, and we take responsibility for our decisions.  Part of that responsibility means explaining our decisions, which is why I'm writing this response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question was not innocuous and it did not contain `nothing but the facts`.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You did the right thing in contacting the Dart team to ask why there was an issue.  Had your question been on-topic, you could have taken their reply and used it as a self-answer to your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But you didn't, and the nature of your additional questions to their reply is what made up my mind to vote to delete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You added in this answer from Dart Team member Bob Nystrom:  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;There is no why here.&#xD;&#xA;It's a bug in the examples.&#xD;&#xA;They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals.&#xD;&#xA;Can you file a ticket so we don't forget to fix this please? Thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then you asked:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Do I understand correctly that..&#xD;&#xA;1. They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals but they use it.&#xD;&#xA;2. This is not an indicator of quality, but just a bug. Becuase they written by a&#xD;&#xA; Dart team member but not by other person.&#xD;&#xA;3. There is no &quot;why&quot; here because it is better to remain silent than to say &#xD;&#xA;unpleasant things.&#xD;&#xA;4. Dart Team can forget to fix this if someone does not file a ticket.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;_Editorial note, I have numbered your questions to make them easier to identify_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Items 1 and 2 aren't really questions and appear to be just bashing the Dart team. I'll admit it's hard to tell what you're really asking because of the communication barrier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item 3 is where I saw your question turning into a rant about the Dart team and why I feared a long comment thread that would need to be cleaned up.  In particular, `it is better to remain silent than to say unpleasant things` is inflammatory and you're almost asking to start a bashing session. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tone of 3 biased how I read 4, and I couldn't see anything positive coming from leaving the question in place.  The tone of those follow-up questions is not innocuous.  So I voted to delete in order to prevent a minor flame war from breaking out in the comments of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All that said, I'll grant that there were some communication issues and in this case, we deleted your question too early.  So I apologize for the quick deletion, but I don't see how your question could be salvaged to be made more constructive.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if it helps, this is my _opinion_ of what the Dart team was trying to say.   &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Yes, please note that we're still in the &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; justification for closing the question.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There is no why here.  &#xD;&#xA;It's a bug in the examples.  &#xD;&#xA;They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Translated: Your original assumption about their example was correct and you found a bug.  There isn't any other reason behind that issue - hence &quot;there is no why here.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can you file a ticket so we don't forget to fix this please? Thanks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Translated: I'm really busy right now and don't have the time or enough details to enter a proper bug report.  Please enter a bug report so the team doesn't forget about it existing and so it can be prioritized.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also keep in mind that on some projects, entering a valid bug report is seen as bragging rights.  It means the person found a legitimate issue within the product and helped start the process to get it fixed.  That sort of activity can be used by some projects to determine who they will let contribute to the project." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26078" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6938" RevisionGUID="911655e5-35d8-4b69-bcf2-4702d182f69e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Consider the following possible answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't think it's a hinderance. Knowing functional programming helps you understand various aspects of higher order functions that are finding themselves into many traditionally non-functional languages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Having all these ideas spinning around in my head?  Yea, thats a problem.  I can't decide if I should use a map or a fold.  And then when I *do* use these, they get taken out in code review for being overly complex and unnecessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are two fundamentally opposed answers that are equally right. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you end up asking:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Based on your experience, how would knowing multiple programming languages affect a software developer's (or your) ability to design programs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is asking for anecdotes.  The question seems to be looking to foster a discussion and a telling of stories:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Reason for the question (just a background; not part of the question. There is no need to discuss or explain this part unless you want to. I'm merely including this to shed light on why I asked my question above)&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, hidden within this is a career growth question, which *also* tends to foster opinions and anecdotes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm sure many people would be interested to know the answer to this question. Software engineers would like to know if not being limited to one language would improve their design ability, programmers would be thinking ahead, managers would also want to know especially when it's time to choose someone they can trust to come up with a good architecture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bit about discussions comes up - the Q&amp;A part of Stack Exchange is about questions that have answers.  From the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest that you read https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions and https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog (the later of which is particularly important with the passage &quot;In my readings, I came across a proposition saying that good programmers don't make good software engineers because, it was said, good programmers know a programming language (and a framework or technology) very well, and that would make his designs somehow as constrained as his language.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, to summarize:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * There are too many, personal, answers to your questions - the question is seeking discussion or to poll people for opinions and anecdotes.&#xD;&#xA; * The question you are asking *does* fall the bullet points of [what types of questions should I avoid asking](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask):&#xD;&#xA;    * there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA; * Trying to get people to explain other people's opinions is also an opinion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26079" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6938" RevisionGUID="20884c5c-b8a8-480c-9682-f793778990c4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Consider the following possible answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't think it's a hinderance. Knowing functional programming helps you understand various aspects of higher order functions that are finding themselves into many traditionally non-functional languages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Having all these ideas spinning around in my head?  Yea, thats a problem.  I can't decide if I should use a map or a fold.  And then when I *do* use these, they get taken out in code review for being overly complex and unnecessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are two fundamentally opposed answers that are equally right. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you end up asking:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Based on your experience, how would knowing multiple programming languages affect a software developer's (or your) ability to design programs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is asking for anecdotes.  The question seems to be looking to foster a discussion and a telling of stories:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Reason for the question (just a background; not part of the question. There is no need to discuss or explain this part unless you want to. I'm merely including this to shed light on why I asked my question above)&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, hidden within this is a career growth question, which *also* tends to foster opinions and anecdotes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm sure many people would be interested to know the answer to this question. Software engineers would like to know if not being limited to one language would improve their design ability, programmers would be thinking ahead, managers would also want to know especially when it's time to choose someone they can trust to come up with a good architecture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bit about discussions comes up - the Q&amp;A part of Stack Exchange is about questions that have answers.  From the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest that you read https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions and https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog (the later of which is particularly important with the passage &quot;In my readings, I came across a proposition saying that good programmers don't make good software engineers because, it was said, good programmers know a programming language (and a framework or technology) very well, and that would make his designs somehow as constrained as his language.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, to summarize:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * There are too many, personal, answers to your questions - the question is seeking discussion or to poll people for opinions and anecdotes.&#xD;&#xA; * The question you are asking *does* fall the bullet points of [what types of questions should I avoid asking](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask):&#xD;&#xA;    * there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA; * Trying to get people to explain other people's opinions is also an opinion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26080" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7723" RevisionGUID="a8c3bb6c-5a81-458b-8119-b333d6998a2a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**This experiment is over.** I will be adding an answer to show the results and suggest a plan for going forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the next 30 days, closing a question will require just 3 votes. Also 3 votes will be sufficient to reopen a closed question. In essence, each close and reopen vote has 5/3&lt;sup&gt;rds&lt;/sup&gt; the normal value. After 30 days I will revert the site setting back to 5 and evaluate the results. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have tested this change on a development instance and questions that currently have 3 or 4 close votes will not be closed automatically. Rather they will be closed when the next close vote comes in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's fair to say there's a lot of dissatisfaction with the question closing system on Programmers. [One proposed solution](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes) is to increase the number of close votes available to 10k users. Some of us on the community team have considered various schemes to scale close votes with reputation under the theory that people most invested in the site (as measured by reputation) will have the most incentive to curate questions. That might still happen, but we'd like to be pretty sure that it will solve the various problems with question closing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's pretty clear that organic closing (via the [close votes queue](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close) or people voting to close questions they find naturally) isn't working very well. To demonstrate, here's how close votes on questions asked in the last 30 days are distributed on Super User:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Super User close vote distribution][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most questions have no close votes (not shown). 461 questions have just one (the yellow circle on the left) and the number slopes down to 142 with 4 close votes. 5 votes is a natural [attractor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor) because people will keep voting to close off-topic and otherwise closable questions until they reach that limit. There's a long tail beyond 5 close votes (also not shown) due to votes expiring, close wars and so on. In essence, questions with at least 1 close vote, but not 5, are in a grey area in terms of closablity. This general pattern turns out to be extremely common across a variety of sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In contrast, here's the same graph for Programmers&amp;mdash;Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Programmers close vote distribution][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember this is only showing questions that have been asked in the last 30 days; we aren't talking about [Not Programming Related](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3273/not-programming-related) questions. Instead of a fairly smooth gradient between questions that should clearly be open to questions that clearly should be closed, this graph shows something closer to a binary state. My hypothesis is that since the people contributing the most close votes feel the need to conserve votes, they don't vote to close borderline questions. There's too great a risk those votes will expire impotently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also included the counts of questions that have been edited or deleted in each close vote bin. Relative to other sites, questions on Programmers with close votes are more likely to be deleted and less likely to be edited. It's entirely possible that a greater proportion of questions are unsalvageable on this site. But I suspect the underlying problem is that the questions that could most benefit from an improvement are not getting close votes in the first place. _That might not be a problem_, but close votes can provide incentives for askers to fix problems even before their questions are closed. Close votes also put questions in front of reviewers who might be inspired to improve them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another problem that we discovered [very dramaticly](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/7649/1) is that [closed questions are rarely reopened](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7654/96050). Most closed questions can't (and shouldn't) be reopened, but statistically speaking, we expect more than 1-2% will be. My hypothesis is that it takes so much effort (and coordination) to close questions that people are not interested in undoing that work even if there's been an edit to fix a question's problems. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, the breakdown in the close voting system is not limited to Programmers. It is, however, rare across the network for the division between open and closed questions to be so stark. We hope this test will help us understand how the close vote system breaks in order to (hopefully) fix it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Why 3 votes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially users with enough reputation could unilaterally close and reopen questions on Stack Overflow. In December 31, 2008, the close vote system [was created](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/) and required 3 votes. Between then and the [next April](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/), the limit was increased to 5. (Shog9 remembers 3 lasting a few weeks.) The documentation of the site setting reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; KEEP THIS AN ODD NUMBER&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we need an odd number greater than 1 and less than 5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# How will this change be evaluated?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a nontrivial chance something will break requiring me to revert the change. If we continue for the full 30 days, we will compare before and after the change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Close rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Obviously, it's now easier to close questions. Insofar as bad questions are put on a path toward either corrective edits or deletion, that's a good thing. But this site closes well over 50% of new questions, which is the highest rate on the network. (Considering _total_ questions closed to questions asked in a time period, the rate is [more like 70%](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last30days).) Paradoxically, I'd like to see the close rate remain steady or decrease.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Reopen rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Reopening questions is one way to mitigate against a high close rate. Since the bar for reopening is now lower, we'd expect more questions will be reopened. Currently the reopen rate is about 2% of closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Edit rate on closed questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  In general, the only path to reopening a question is editing. It's also the most effective way to prevent questions from being closed in the first place. Since it's easier to reopen questions, there's even more reason for askers to fix their own closed questions. In the last 30 days 9% of closed questions were subsequently edited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Deletion rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  About 65% of questions that get at least one close vote on Programmers are deleted. We aren't exactly looking at the cream of the crop here, but that's noticeably more than other sites. (Again, this only counts questions asked and deleted within the last 30 days.) We can't force people to ask questions that don't deserve deletion, but hopefully more questions can be salvaged with edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, I'm curious if this change helps people enjoy the site more overall. At the end of the experiment, I'll post my results and ask for any followup thoughts you as a community have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# How you can help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relatively few people are active in closing, reopening and deleting questions. Even fewer are [active in editing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Editors&amp;filter=month). In order for this experiment to improve the quality of content on this site, more people need to be involved in identifying questions with potential to be unlocked with a judicious edit. Fixing tags and removing signatures are good first steps. But title and (occasionally heroic) body edits might be needed to pull some questions out of mediocrity. Remember: once the question is posted, it belongs to the community as much as it does the original author.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, please use the answers below to let me know how the experiment is going.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EHxvb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ESxAD.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26081" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6460" RevisionGUID="69cc7ec7-7667-4afd-88e0-bf8d9f74c54a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; [Following specification vs. following language standards](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/229310/following-specification-vs-following-language-standards)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way I see it, this question follows [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It inspires answers that explain &quot;why&quot;. Options are given, so I need reasons.&#xD;&#xA;2. Long answers are expected which provide example implementations and reasons for designing them that way (like why `XDocument` does not follow specification).&#xD;&#xA;3. It's not a holy war topic, so constructive tone is expected.&#xD;&#xA;4. It invites sharing experiences, because there're many standards implemented both by Microsoft and third-parties.&#xD;&#xA;5. As per above, facts and references are expected.&#xD;&#xA;6. And finally, it's a very important practical question about designing libraries.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way I see it, the question perfectly fits Programmers scope: **conceptual questions about software development**. It is about **software architecture** which is [declared as on-topic by FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, the question is: why was the question closed and how to fix it to get it reopened?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26082" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7556" RevisionGUID="3e0524ec-fcfa-4591-ba5f-97b14388ab88" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Culturally, caffeine and pizza are part of being a programmer.  While it doesn't make for [good main site questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/286216/40980) (10k link) coffee, tea and other caffeine delivery mechanisms are a [documented part](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/I/ISO-standard-cup-of-tea.html) of what it is to be a programmer for a significant period of time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted, this is such a culturally significant part of the desk of a programmer, that it is part of the site's design.  Think geek has [coffee mugs](http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/mugs-travel/) as a major section of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted on the https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7070/ you will note the wording:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the community is honestly interested in the culture of caffeine intake, then promoting that stack exchange site is well and good.  Its an advert on the side of the page - not a main site question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, however, the powers that be suggest that this *shouldn't* be the case, I would urge them to get the requisite 125 reputation, participate on the main site and the community here, and vote on the answer. I would similarly encourage them to do the audit of *all* of the other graduated sites and ask themselves why Health.SE is advertised on Gaming and Cooking and Space.SE on Skeptics and then ask if its really worth the trouble of going against the community when it has reached a consensus of what other things they want to advertise given the guidelines we are provided with." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26083" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6941" RevisionGUID="e361463e-76c7-4f22-a40c-10c18477f543" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The canonical link from days of old for this is: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice is one of our perpetual problems on programmers.  The essence of the career advice close reason is that any information is *very* particular to the person asking.  In days of old, these would often be closed as &quot;too localized&quot; - either they are asking about too narrow a person (themselves), too narrow a time, or too narrow a locality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question has two issues with it.  The first is that 'too narrow' in time and location.  Questions asking for information about job opportunities is *highly* location and time dependent.  You'd get very different answers when asking for different times or locations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that you tagged this as [tag:job-market] - which a rough look through shows a *lot* of closed questions.  This should have been a warning that this question is problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question about economics and market theory?  That isn't exactly our area of expertise.  It might have been ok on [Economics.SE](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/1618/economics) but that was closed for lack of activity a couple of years ago.  Such a question is... I could see opinion and also the off topic (career advice), or a custom reason.  It really doesn't look for a good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other half of the question that is in the lead in:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would like some statistics if possible, or educated guesses if statistics are not possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for stats is also a difficult area.  The answers that you get to this are either polling type responses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The company I work for had a half dozen open positions for linux kernel engineer a year ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The company I work for doesn't touch open source with a 10' pole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These type of 'spot polling' answers often show up with requests for stats or guesses.  They are poor answers and questions that encourage such answers tend to get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other side of the asking for stats is that it makes the people answering the question into research librarians rather than expert programmers and software architects.  It asks us to use google for you, a crowdsourced search engine.  This doesn't draw upon our expert advice and information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice may not have been the *best* choice for a close reason.  But the question really isn't a good fit for Programmers.SE being a mix of economics, stats request, and a bit of career information too.  Career advice was likely the most convenient choice for the close reason." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26084" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6941" RevisionGUID="7671bd9b-70ed-492a-a60c-4e584df01537" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The canonical link from days of old for this is: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice is one of our perpetual problems on programmers.  The essence of the career advice close reason is that any information is *very* particular to the person asking.  In days of old, these would often be closed as &quot;too localized&quot; - either they are asking about too narrow a person (themselves), too narrow a time, or too narrow a locality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question has two issues with it.  The first is that 'too narrow' in time and location.  Questions asking for information about job opportunities is *highly* location and time dependent.  You'd get very different answers when asking for different times or locations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that you tagged this as [tag:job-market] - which a rough look through shows a *lot* of closed questions.  This should have been a warning that this question is problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question about economics and market theory?  That isn't exactly our area of expertise.  It might have been ok on [Economics.SE](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/1618/economics) but that was closed for lack of activity a couple of years ago.  Such a question is... I could see opinion and also the off topic (career advice), or a custom reason.  It really doesn't look for a good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other half of the question that is in the lead in:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would like some statistics if possible, or educated guesses if statistics are not possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for stats is also a difficult area.  The answers that you get to this are either polling type responses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The company I work for had a half dozen open positions for linux kernel engineer a year ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The company I work for doesn't touch open source with a 10' pole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These type of 'spot polling' answers often show up with requests for stats or guesses.  They are poor answers and questions that encourage such answers tend to get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other side of the asking for stats is that it makes the people answering the question into research librarians rather than expert programmers and software architects.  It asks us to use google for you, a crowdsourced search engine.  This doesn't draw upon our expert advice and information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice may not have been the *best* choice for a close reason.  But the question really isn't a good fit for Programmers.SE being a mix of economics, stats request, and a bit of career information too.  Career advice was likely the most convenient choice for the close reason." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26086" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6534" RevisionGUID="f172123d-d71f-45e5-a6e2-5e0bb93e4f19" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="...if I was a homework cheater, I would applaud [an approach like that](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14258630#14258630 &quot;quote source, bold font is mine&quot;)...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm for deletion if not improved in a reasonable timeframe.  &#xD;&#xA;But minutes after closure is, I think, too speedy.  &#xD;&#xA;**I tend to give a few hours, a day** tops, or recent activity on the site with no edits made...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...because, you see, few hours of just staying there would be **good enough already** for my purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##I would applaud it, enjoy it, exploit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More, I would brag about my successful recipe at &quot;forums&quot;, sharing it with cheaters like me and helping them find a way to a promised land:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Create a throwaway account at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;2. Dump your homework.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;it's quite likely that you'll find a kind soul or two around to help&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;3. Keep squeezing solution details in question comments until it's deleted.&#xD;&#xA;4. If you're lucky to get an answer before question gets [closed](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10582/what-is-a-closed-or-on-hold-question &quot;what does that mean&quot;), do the same in answer comments.&#xD;&#xA;5. If you feel like nobody's paying attention, edit your question: that will [bump](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info) it and increase chances to attract someone willing to help.&#xD;&#xA;6. You may probably notice that question is getting funny marks -1, -2, -3... They call it [down-votes](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/down-votes/info) - don't worry about these, it's all imaginary.&#xD;&#xA;7. If you notice that you can't ask next question, don't worry. They call it [question ban](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th), all you need to circumvent it is to create new throwaway account and repeat above steps.&#xD;&#xA;8. [Only thing to keep in mind is](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3836/programmers-se-and-the-summer-of-love/3837#3837 &quot;paraphrased from here&quot;): **&quot;don't care how they react; go looking for the one guy that will actually do your homework for you (some people will)&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##As a community, what should we do about this approach?   &#xD;&#xA;Should we keep current &quot;policy&quot; as highlighted above, or should we consider speedier deletions?  Speedier deletions on down-voted questions may lead to the help-vampire hitting the question ban faster, but this can be worked around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're here to build a knowledgeable, rewarding community.  We're not here to feed the help-vampires or to reward answers on their questions as it merely encourages more of the bad behaviour.  How should we balance cleaning out the trash without appearing overly harsh to new community members that may be able to contribute once they learn the ropes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;To those interested in a broader context of above: **[what is the point to keep this homework dump visible?](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/what-is-the-point-to-keep-this-homework-dump-visible)**&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26087" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7734" RevisionGUID="74c8bf6a-ef0f-4bc6-bfeb-ef0be4ac0655" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="After one week, the results are not encouraging:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Week posted Qs  Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion Rate&#xD;&#xA;    ----------- --- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- -------------&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-12  324    190      58.6%           8.9%     2.1%       5.9%         40.7%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-19  349    204      58.5%           8.8%     2.0%       5.6%         39.5%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-26  319    207      64.9%           8.7%     1.4%      11.1%         45.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-02  362    218      60.2%          12.8%     3.7%      10.7%         42.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09  286    205      71.7%          20.0%     3.4%       4.9%         36.0%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of this is in flux as weeks refer to when questions were asked. So questions asked in the week of Nov. 2 might still be closed or deleted while questions asked last week could still get edited and/or reopened. Also, a week is probably not enough time to spot trends since the numbers vary quite a bit from one week to the next. The one thing we can be confident about is that it's a lot easier to get questions closed now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Only 3 close votes needed.][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# _Pro forma_ closing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Watching the questions that have been closed in the past week reminds me of my (very short) stint [creating UML diagrams](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124996/is-code-commonly-generated-from-uml): theoretically necessary, but of dubious practical value. It seems clear to me that a lot of closing on Programmers isn't because certain types of questions cause problems, but because they _might_. In effect, questions are closed because they have a particular form with little regard to the substance and purpose of the question. I encourage you to look at the list of [recently closed questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=Close&amp;daterange=last7days) and **consider what actual problems these questions cause today**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me cherry-pick some recent examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302688/how-narrow-or-broad-should-constant-names-be (Closed as &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot;.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Is this the _form_ of a question that could devolve into religious warfare? Sure. Has it? Well there are 3 plausible answers and one that's meh. It was open for 6 hours. Unfortunately, I can't add my answer based on page 186 of my edition of _Code Complete_ until the question is reopened. (Hint: there's been real science done on this question.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302723/passing-fields-instance-variables-by-arguementsparameters-inside-an-object (Closed as &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot;.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This was immediately closed and only one answer slipped through. I'm not anything like an expert in OOP, so I can't judge the answer. Maybe it's heresy somewhere, but it sounds reasonably uncontroversial and grounded in objectivity to me. The close seems to be triggered by the final (unimportant) paragraph:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; What are the advantages and disadvantages of these solutions? Which is considered as better practise? Which one do you prefer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302567/what-are-the-advantages-of-a-traditional-backend-architecture-for-a-standard (Closed as &quot;too broad&quot;.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Two comments on the question are instructive:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; recommended reading: **[Why do 'some examples' and 'list of things' questions get closed?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7538/31260)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Asking for &quot;the advantages&quot; of X is almost always a list question ([the earlier comment] probably should've linked the &quot;pros and cons&quot; post for this one). As the existing answers have already demonstrated, you end up with a list of example applications for which X is a good thing, and then everyone has to debate in the comments whether those examples are valid because the original question wasn't sufficiently well-defined to make it clear what would or wouldn't count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There are exactly as many comments arguing about whether the question should be closed as there are about whether the examples are valid. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could go on, but I don't want to get bogged down into an argument because I picked a bad example. My point in bringing these up is not to get them reopened, but encourage you all to think a bit about **why questions need closing**. One advantage of lowering the bar for closing is that it gives this community freedom to field more potentially problematic questions. If things get out of hand, it's far easier to shut questions down than it used to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be completely clear, I have no intention of keeping this site setting if it accelerates the closing of questions.  It is my firm conviction that **a site which closes 70% of new questions is already failing**. That's one experiment I don't want to try.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been encouraged by valiant and occasionally successful attempts I've seen this week to fix and reopen questions. Whatever else I might imply above, I truly do admire the care and thoughtfulness you all have exhibited over the years. It's not easy to manage a radical change in scope as the one this community has pulled off. Let me restate that: **Programmers has successfully corrected itself from a very rough beginning**. That was accomplished not by the Stack Exchange software, but by the efforts of users such as the readers of this post. This site is now useful to actual programmers whereas the initial scope was not. So build off of that success.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/DR0KU.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26088" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6953" RevisionGUID="0bbf925e-ac6f-4bf4-a85c-5a50a875f1fd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Update** - follow-up feature request to establish popup as discussed here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6983/improve-question-quality-by-informing-askers-of-expectations-in-some-career-rela&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As explained in [another answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6951/31260), tag specific [popup](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvXIT.png &quot;like this&quot;) can be used to guide askers and editors willing to use it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an [example](https://anime.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1083/improve-question-quality-by-informing-users-of-reverse-image-search-sites) of tag popup request. Process to create such a popup is described [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/242252/automatic-warnings-of-dangerous-tags/242355#comment792260_242355):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Post a [feature-request] for each tag, with specific guidance (ideally linking to a meta post if non-trivial so I don't have to edit these all the time) and justification for needing something more than the tag excerpt. Let folks discuss it, then ping me ([Community Manager]) if there's support... This is really something that should be discussed within each community, as these might become annoying if over-used (ideally you don't want multiple tags on a single question to produce warnings) and the guidance should reflect the lessons learned from handling these questions.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Suggestion to create a popup for this tag ([tag:job-market]) and other particularly troublesome career related tags:  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market], [tag:resume], [tag:career-transition], [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag popup content is derived from [career-development tag wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/career-development/info):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** Career advice is off-topic per the [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  Please note that most career advice questions end up being closed for being too broad or impractical; try to make yours a [good subjective question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they require the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;* Please make sure your question has the proper scope.  It needs to apply to other programmers besides yourself.  &#xD;&#xA;* If your question can also be applied to other job fields, then it does not uniquely apply to software development and is not on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;* _Before_ asking, review this meta guidance: [Why was my question closed or down voted? -&gt; Career or education advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488).  Make sure your question avoids the problems listed in the guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;This post is made community wiki in order to simplify editing.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26089" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7610" RevisionGUID="8150b02c-5dff-498f-bbd8-d1f4614cd307" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Related: [Create a New Stack Overflow Instance for Beginner Users and Content](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/253646/839601) (MSO).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are getting many off-topic / implementation and coding kind questions where askers appear to be aware of Stack Overflow (at [10m questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/10m-questions-milestone/info) over there, who isn't) but for various reasons seem to suspect that their questions won't be well received there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This problem seems to be relatively new. In the past, Stack Overflow was lenient about question quality and askers didn't tend to bother worrying if their quality is okay. Things seem to have changed after [SE Quality Project](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/se-quality-project/info) features were rolled out at Stack Overflow and some of those who would previously ask over there, started looking to try their luck elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, they usually don't mention using Programmers as a proxy for Stack Overflow (they maybe think it's not important) but sometimes, [it leaks through](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297569/easy-create-junit-test-for-class-on-eclipse#comment617336_297569 &quot;example - 10K link&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want ask for StackOverflow but i cant becouse my one post have -3...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do something to prevent... _lifehacks_ like above from becoming popular?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Some folks (probably with [Math.SE background](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi?noredirect=1#comment22868_7610 &quot;as explained in comments&quot;)) even invent funny theories for why they [avoid Stack Overflow](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293373/how-to-run-c-file-if-header-class-and-main-are-not-in-the-same-folder#comment607486_293373 &quot;example - 10K link&quot;): _'my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here_'  (I think these theories became popular after Stack Overflow started burying very low quality questions in Triage, which cut their chances to get answers, even as hints in comments.)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is much larger than us, they get about 8K questions a day average. Even amount of questions they close (800 a day) is 20 times more than total questions we get (less than 50).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Site like ours can be totally flooded by &quot;Stack Overflow learning and training&quot; kind attempts if this becomes widespread. I would not want this to happen. I come here to learn and contribute to Programmers topics, not to guide those who are scared or blocked by Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26090" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6604" RevisionGUID="3cd9f7c9-1624-4420-9eb2-0c8f1bbf9172" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Following [a Meta discussion][1] and some discussions in [our chat room][2] to iron out some finer points, we have completed an update to the [&quot;What topics can I ask about here?&quot; page of our Help Center][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is a summary of the changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Minor rewording of the tagline. It still emphasizes questions that require human expertise, but makes it clear that we are about more than just programmers. Questions about many aspects of the software development lifecycle from anyone working in it are welcome here.&#xD;&#xA; - Removed &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; from the list of things that are on-topic. The questions that were off-topic are still off-topic, but the ones that are on-topic are best captured in the &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; and &quot;software engineering management&quot; line items in what is on-topic.&#xD;&#xA; - Removed the &quot;software engineering&quot; line item from what is on-topic. It was replaced with more specific details of what software engineering topics are allowed here, which is most of them.&#xD;&#xA; - Clarified programming tools to specifically exclude coding tools such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs. We don't want to entirely preclude good tool questions that don't otherwise have a home at this time.&#xD;&#xA; - Added &quot;legal advice&quot; to the list of things that are not allowed. We are not lawyers.&#xD;&#xA; - Changed &quot;resume help&quot; to &quot;job hunting&quot; at the request of The Workplace. They do not do resume critiques and did not want our Help Center giving that impression.&#xD;&#xA; - Shortened the portion on subjective questions. This is better addressed by the [&quot;What types of questions should I avoid asking?&quot; page of the Help Center][4]. Maintained links to this page as well as the relevant blog posts, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally speaking, there isn't a change to site scope or audience. However, we have clarified some of the more ambiguous parts and more closely aligned the things our site is not about with some of the custom close reasons that exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to this, these changes (as applicable) have been rolled into our [About page][5] as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anyone has any suggestions, we'd still be glad to take them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6590/should-the-close-reasons-be-added-to-the-help-center-on-topic-article&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26091" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7738" RevisionGUID="5e8cab42-e93a-40cb-8e11-dff79edec0fe" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Should we have a \[design-review\] tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, I know I have sufficient reputation to create one. That is the easy part.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, we have have several thousand questions in [tag:design] which appears to be a mix of design reviews, questions about &quot;why was C designed this way?&quot; and other design-related questions. **Should we move design review questions to their own tag?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue I see is the cost in time to recategorize design review questions and the benefit returned. This is not a quick tag merge, this would be an ongoing effort as we peruse questions. One side benefit would be as we find old questions of poor quality we can close them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could also have information about design reviews and a [link to our canonical meta question][1] in the tag wiki, if anyone bothers to read it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question [Migration paths to other sites][2] on Code Review Meta prompted me to think about this. Would it not be great to point them to a single \[design review\] tag and say &quot;look at the highly voted questions for great examples of migration candidates?&quot; Then reality set it when I started going through the tag trying to find good examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6502&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6141" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26092" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6976" RevisionGUID="4e46bce0-966f-49be-b6e2-df7841062039" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="First off, realize that each community on Stack Exchange is different.  You can ask the same question on two different sites and have it closed on one and open on the other.  That said, ***please don't crosspost questions***.  Really, pick the best one and post there first.  Posting the essentially same question unless it is specifically tailored to the community of the site fragments the information and questions across the network making it harder to find *the* answer.  Getting more attention to the question by cross posting is not a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, lets look at the question posted to Programmers.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it fundamentally possible to validate that an unmodified version of your client connects to your server?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And compare it to the one posted to Security.SE (without the leading meta bit):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This seems like a programming question but it's really a fundamental security question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it fundamentally possible to validate that an unmodified version of your client connects to your server?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was just thinking about the idea of having my client-side app hash it's own source code and send that as a key to the server with any requests as proof that it's unmodified, but that's silly because anyone could just have the client send a hash of the unmodified version via a modified version.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was wondering if there might be a secure way to do this though, via some sort of proof that the client was unmodified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think that this was a security problem, you should have asked it there.  Additionally, there is quite a bit more material on the Security.SE one than the P.SE one.  You are complaining that the one here got closed for too broad?  I will also note there is *absolutely* no effort at tailoring the question you asked for Programmers.SE community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will remind you of the post on Meta.SE: [Is a question that specifically asks for a summary of a broad topic valuable to Stack Exchange?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234642/is-a-question-that-specifically-asks-for-a-summary-of-a-broad-topic-valuable-to) and the points that I made there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programers.SE generally has the approach that you should at least have done a search on google and possibly read the corresponding Wikipedia page. This is especially true of questions that are likely to be broad. The scrum Wikipedia page is 43k and waterfall is 18k.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The biggest issue with asking such broad questions that are 'condense this other text that I don't want to read into a few paragraphs' is that, for the most part its lazy. Its asking someone else to try to fit a huge body of knowledge into a text box where there are pages of material out there that covers this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The post here shows no effort at all. It shows no level of comprehension of the nature of the problem.  It asks a very broad question to a relatively well known problem.  That of the [trusted client](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_client).  The answer you got here is a summary of that wikipedia page (no offense to Justin, it is in his own words and he likely didn't reference the wikipedia page, but it is covering much of the same information).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; While I acknowledge it that's my own work, I'd strongly suggest reading the guidance in meta.programmers.SE: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important/6560#6560 - we don't want to repeat what you already know, nor answer at the wrong level for the reader... and if you really don't know, explain what is confusing you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I again point you to https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important/6560#6560 and urge you to read it and consider the lessons contained within it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Setting aside all of that, Programmers.SE really doesn't like yes/no questions.  The appropriate guidance from Meta.SE can be found at: [Question closed because yes/no answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/183177/question-closed-because-yes-no-answer).  The question asked in this format is exactly the too broad nature.  There are *far* too many possible answers and good answers are far too long.  Go search Google a bit. Show us that you have thought about the problem and what it means rather than tossing whatever you think about into a text box and hitting 'Post Your Question'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally, the person asking the question has spent *at least* as much effort in thinking of the question, the problem, and how to ask a good question as the person answering it.  This is how we get good answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26093" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7652" RevisionGUID="087f7bab-4a0b-489d-9b0c-a0a84ce6ca9e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't see a purpose in deleting this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I removed the low quality tag of junior-programmers and deleted all of the negatively scored answers. I've also removed the mod notice about long answers. Right now, the question is closed as too broad and has a historical lock placed upon it. This should be a clear indicator to any visitor that this type of question is not suitable for the site and they shouldn't use it as an example of questions they should ask or ask similar questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, I don't think this question should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, it has a large number of views. As of right now, it has over 53,000 views over 4 years. That's something like 37 views per day, every day, for four years. It's probably linked to on other sites - I understand that Y Combinator picked it up. It could be referenced in other sites and posts as well. Deleting it would remove context from other posts and discussions on the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, it's a popular question. The question received 55 up votes and only 4 down votes before it was locked. The top answer received 98 up votes and 0 down votes. In addition, the question was favorited 25 times. This kind of response tells me that, at one point in time, this was considered a good question. With today's standards, I'd call it &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; or &quot;too broad&quot; (which is the close reason given). This change in direction is the reason for a historical lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't buy the argument that this question will bring people to the site to ask similar, low quality questions. Anyone who lands on this page should see that the question is closed and historically locked (which explicitly states &quot;it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here&quot;). There may be Meta.SE suggestions to improve the visibility of these notices (they are below the question) or perhaps to take steps to hurt the ranking of locked questions in search algorithms, but those are SE level suggestions that should be fleshed out and taken to Meta Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point in time, I don't feel comfortable deleting (or letting the community delete) this question. Is it a good question for Programmers? No, it's not. And that's why it's closed and locked. Does it add value to the Internet? Someone thinks that it does, or else it wouldn't have had so many views, up votes, and favorites (as well as in-bound links on other sites).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If other mods disagree, I'd be open to doing more. I don't feel comfortable doing more on my own. But given the recent visibility into this particular question and how we've been handling dealing with old, low quality, but highly visible questions, I don't see deletion as viable at this point in time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relevant and related: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7649/to-robert-cartaino-who-reopens-broad-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26094" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6611" RevisionGUID="875b8b9e-28e0-46a7-b8b7-c8d3e82261ca" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My father taught me to program back in the days of old.  He was a college chemistry lab director before he retired and had never taken a computer science class, nor was computer programming ever in his job description or duties.  The point I want to make here is that he was never a computer professional, but he was an educator and able to teach me how to program.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.StackExchange is [defined as](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Teaching a child how to program is in no way part of the scope of a professional or student answering questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking about how to teach a child how about syntax (because the asker is a programmer) is no more on topic here than asking how to teach a child to balance a checkbook on The Workplace because the person asking is an accountant for some company.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As programmers, we are not at all necessarily skilled in pedagogy. There is a great deal of background necessary to be able to properly answer these questions that fall outside of the realm of programming (and even the explaining a topic at a conference - which would be too broad).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider the guidance given in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488 which addresses the point that no two people (children in this case) are the same - nor are their instructors.  Each question will either be excessively nuanced to that individual or be hopelessly broad trying to answer for everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point to [On &quot;engineering&quot; and teaching pointers.](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/on-engineering-and-teaching-pointers) from chat where over the course of an hour and several hundred messages we worked through the how to teach pointers in C to an instructor who also helped guide *us* with the particulars for his class.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we (professional programmers) do have experience that can be useful, the aspect of teaching it to non-programmers is not a good question for the main site, but often a good topic in chat where we can get at the particulars of what is being taught and the language and the level of the students.  Those particulars make it a less than ideal main site question because it would involve could involve one question for each language and level of student understanding (and the cartesian product of the two)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26095" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6976" RevisionGUID="071fa789-3e02-4a3b-ba02-67fff2177f0a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="First off, realize that each community on Stack Exchange is different.  You can ask the same question on two different sites and have it closed on one and open on the other.  That said, ***please don't crosspost questions***.  Really, pick the best one and post there first.  Posting the essentially same question unless it is specifically tailored to the community of the site fragments the information and questions across the network making it harder to find *the* answer.  Getting more attention to the question by cross posting is not a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, lets look at the question posted to Programmers.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it fundamentally possible to validate that an unmodified version of your client connects to your server?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And compare it to the one posted to Security.SE (without the leading meta bit):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This seems like a programming question but it's really a fundamental security question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it fundamentally possible to validate that an unmodified version of your client connects to your server?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was just thinking about the idea of having my client-side app hash it's own source code and send that as a key to the server with any requests as proof that it's unmodified, but that's silly because anyone could just have the client send a hash of the unmodified version via a modified version.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was wondering if there might be a secure way to do this though, via some sort of proof that the client was unmodified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think that this was a security problem, you should have asked it there.  Additionally, there is quite a bit more material on the Security.SE one than the P.SE one.  You are complaining that the one here got closed for too broad?  I will also note there is *absolutely* no effort at tailoring the question you asked for Programmers.SE community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will remind you of the post on Meta.SE: [Is a question that specifically asks for a summary of a broad topic valuable to Stack Exchange?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234642/is-a-question-that-specifically-asks-for-a-summary-of-a-broad-topic-valuable-to) and the points that I made there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programers.SE generally has the approach that you should at least have done a search on google and possibly read the corresponding Wikipedia page. This is especially true of questions that are likely to be broad. The scrum Wikipedia page is 43k and waterfall is 18k.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The biggest issue with asking such broad questions that are 'condense this other text that I don't want to read into a few paragraphs' is that, for the most part its lazy. Its asking someone else to try to fit a huge body of knowledge into a text box where there are pages of material out there that covers this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The post here shows no effort at all. It shows no level of comprehension of the nature of the problem.  It asks a very broad question to a relatively well known problem.  That of the [trusted client](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_client).  The answer you got here is a summary of that wikipedia page (no offense to Justin, it is in his own words and he likely didn't reference the wikipedia page, but it is covering much of the same information).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; While I acknowledge it that's my own work, I'd strongly suggest reading the guidance in meta.programmers.SE: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important/6560#6560 - we don't want to repeat what you already know, nor answer at the wrong level for the reader... and if you really don't know, explain what is confusing you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I again point you to https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important/6560#6560 and urge you to read it and consider the lessons contained within it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Setting aside all of that, Programmers.SE really doesn't like yes/no questions.  The appropriate guidance from Meta.SE can be found at: [Question closed because yes/no answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/183177/question-closed-because-yes-no-answer).  The question asked in this format is exactly the too broad nature.  There are *far* too many possible answers and good answers are far too long.  Go search Google a bit. Show us that you have thought about the problem and what it means rather than tossing whatever you think about into a text box and hitting 'Post Your Question'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally, the person asking the question has spent *at least* as much effort in thinking of the question, the problem, and how to ask a good question as the person answering it.  This is how we get good answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26096" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7761" RevisionGUID="8d5333aa-454a-4b37-8070-2787132fad23" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I wasn't going to update the experiment this week, but the results this week were so encouraging I can't help myself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Week posted Qs  Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion Rate&#xD;&#xA;    ----------- --- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- -------------&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-12  325    190      58.5%           8.9%     2.6%      11.8%         40.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-19  349    205      58.7%           8.8%     2.4%       5.6%         39.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-26  319    207      64.9%           8.7%     1.4%      11.1%         46.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-02  362    218      60.2%          13.3%     3.7%      10.3%         44.2%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09  286    206      72.0%          20.9%     3.9%       7.0%         41.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-16  340    205      60.3%          17.6%     9.3%      30.6%         35.6%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only has the close rate dropped to something like the pre-experiment rate, the reopen rate has rather dramatically increased. Much of this is due to more edited questions getting reopened than in previous weeks. (It might be too early to tell if it's statistically significant, but more closed questions are being edited since the test began.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also spent some time last week trying to learn what prompted people to close so many questions on Programmers. While there are many detailed reasons, two themes emerged in my mind:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that remain open are signposts that prompt new questions of the same type.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. It's difficult to maintain the quality of answers on certain types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first didn't surprise me. It's a variation of the broken window theory (which is [different than &quot;zero-tolerance policing&quot;](http://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in-policing/research-evidence-review/broken-windows-policing/) by the way.) Since it's often difficult to curate a large corpus of answers, it's a lot more convenient to curate the questions instead. Some sites, however, pull it off. Skeptics, for instance, has [strict rules](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/faq-welcome-to-new-users) about what sort of questions can be asked (notably, notable ones) and what is required of answers (particularly that they be referenced). As a result, Skeptics deletes a large percentage of answers that have a score &gt; 0:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;       7634     35.5     19.64     0.05     0          97.16 Area 51 Discussions&#xD;&#xA;       8288     13.61    55.68     0.1      6.03       28.63 Skeptics&#xD;&#xA;       5782     10.26    46.49     0.09     0.02       48.74 Islam     &#xD;&#xA;     141392      9.38    25.01     0.45     0.02       78.15 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       4810      6.63    52.45     0.12     0.46       27.9  Biblical Hermeneutics&#xD;&#xA;      15660      5.86    45.84     0.03     0.37       48.31 Christianity&#xD;&#xA;      22572      5.08    28.81     0.33     0.02       63    Web Apps&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cut the list off at sites that delete at least 5% of positively-scored answers. Area 51 is interesting because 97% of &quot;good answers&quot; get deleted when their question gets deleted as a result of their [failed proposal being deleted](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/9068/do-not-delete-discussions-about-deleted-proposals). But the next in line is a real site: Skeptics. Their policies encourage deletion not only of entire questions, but individual answers as well. (Skeptics is unique in its extensive use of post notices.) [Islam](https://islam.meta.stackexchange.com/a/610/138), [Christianity](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1446/914) and [Biblical Hermeneutics](https://hermeneutics.meta.stackexchange.com/a/533/68) have fairly strict requirements that answers be well-supported. Those sites also emphasize narrow questions that allow moderators to delete many answers as non-answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm less familiar with Web Apps, but I believe they [had a major change in scope](https://webapps.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/764/proposal-to-clean-up-the-scope-of-the-site-is-your-question-about-using-a-speci) not unlike what happened on Programmers. When you shift the topic of a site, that will leave many now-off-topic questions that need deleting along with all their answers. As a corollary, there's a real need to lock questions and their answers. But look what happens when we limit to answers posted in the last year:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;      10617      4.53    34.44     0.01     0.03       66.53 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       2999      1.93    27.91     0.23     0          48.28 Web Apps  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Web Apps has settled into a fairly normal pattern of deleting relatively few upvoted answers. It's also split fairly evenly between deleting those answers individual and as a result of deleting the question. Programmers has become a little less extreme in terms of positively-scored-answer deletion, but it still ranks near the top of the list with Area 51 (31%), Skeptics (11%), Islam (4.5%) and Christianity (4%). More recent additions include Hinduism (4%) and Health (4%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Ok. What does this all mean?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Truthfully, I'm not sure. My current guess is that people are concerned that forces outside of their control will flood the site with embarrassing or just-plain-wrong answers. (This relates to another theme I heard a lot of: the Hot Network Questions list.) [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) gets [cited a lot here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=url%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.stackoverflow.com%2F2010%2F09%2Fgood-subjective-bad-subjective%2F). However, I wonder if the post gives the false impression that burden falls _solely on the question_. Certainly the way a question is asked increases or decreases the odds it will receive [crowd-pleasing nonanswers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers). But ultimately, we need to [hold answers to that standard too](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1110/96050).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other thing that kinda gets lost when talking about Good Subjective is that it isn't that opinions aren't allowed. Rather **naked opinions are noise**. The post even suggests:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Use your specific experiences to back up your opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that software engineering is one part science and one part craftsmanship, so it should be surprising to see some answers backed by experience rather than data. This is doubly true since the profession is incredibly young. Given quality of [users on this site](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&amp;filter=all), there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, it's a lot easier to delete popular answers if they don't actually answer the question. One technique that [seems to work](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/690/what-makes-a-good-focused-question) is requiring questions focus down on a specific domain. For instance, instead of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125320/do-todo-comments-make-sense maybe it would be better to ask &quot;Should TODO comments be removed when a project is in maintainance mode?&quot; That way the focus of the question isn't a holy war between pro-TODO and anti-TODO, but about the specific utility of those comments. (Obviously the asker should specify the situation they are actually facing.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26097" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6996" RevisionGUID="a0e63109-ea51-4a7d-820b-1c6d7fcaac9c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I will use both of your examples to talk briefly about the issues I see with them being posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How could I implement a simple blog in PHP?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would not be a good question for the site, not necessarily because it is about design, but because **it is [too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490).** There are many aspects of design that would go into designing a blog.  Web design, database design, application logic, cross cutting concerns, etc...  Even if this were language agnostic this doesn't change.  A better question for example would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&quot;I am trying to design a database schema that can properly capture domain model elements of a blog, here is what I tried.  Any improvements or suggestions to do this better?&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should always demonstrate the problem where possible, be clearly worded and focused to something that is clearly and completely answerable.  It should also demonstrate what you are thinking might be a solution or what you have tried.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How could I structure a Tic-Tac-Toe game in a Pythonic way?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ways to structure a Tic-Tac-Toe game might be considered a matter of opinion.  This would probably be closed as **[Primarily opinion-based](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)**.  Wherever possible a question should be answerable.  Questions that have 100 equally acceptable answers do not help anybody derive what the best solution is.  Going by the most highly upvoted answer doesn't tell you as this might be the first answer posted, or the person answering might be popular or the solution described is a popular one but might not be the best solution.  Even if this was language agnostic it probably doesn't change.  A better question might be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Here is how I was thinking of structuring my Tic-Tac-Toe game in a Pythonic way.  Does this particular design choice make sense for Python and what specifically could I improve or do better?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Here is how I was thinking of representing the data structure for my Tic-Tac-Toe game.  Is this a good data structure that lends itself to an efficient algorithm for Tic-Tac-Toe?  If not how can I improve this?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to benefit from discussing the problem on terms that are relevant to the technology stack I'm using.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to ask questions about the &quot;Pythonic way&quot; or the &quot;Java way&quot;, pending that the question follows these guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Properly scoped (not too broad to be effectively answered).  If an entire book can be written about or has been written about a topic then it is probably not a good question for this site.&#xD;&#xA; - Good questions have answers, not opinions.  Opinions lead to discussions and debates and this format doesn't lend itself well to this.&#xD;&#xA; - Have a clearly defined problem that you are trying to work through&#xD;&#xA; - Demonstrate prior effort or thought into solving it on your own.  This can be achieved simply by stating some ideas that are currently in your head.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you follow these guidelines and the question is on topic for the site then you shouldn't have any problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please read the articles in the [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help) for more details." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26098" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7679" RevisionGUID="09970cd4-2dca-4f30-8a23-3a693da68f5c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Software Recommendations is graduating][1] and will soon be a non-beta site!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[There is a question on their meta][2] about being a migration target: they are asking about other sites such as [Super User][3] having a migration path to [Software Recommendations][4]. [Programmers][5] did not come up there: while I would expect some other sites to have more recommendation questions, we do see some of these questions on Programmers and we have a few open slots for migration targets.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once Software Recommendations is fully graduated to a regular site, should Programmers have a migration path to it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Software recommendations stackexchange][6] - asked and answered before the graduation announcement.&#xD;&#xA;* [Revisiting what is on topic, with respect to new sites: Open Source, Law, and Software Recommendations][7] - software recommendations are _still_ off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2298&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2307&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://superuser.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6464&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7539" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26099" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6996" RevisionGUID="5de818b6-3e1b-44c2-9cb5-dcbf22f022f3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I will use both of your examples to talk briefly about the issues I see with them being posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How could I implement a simple blog in PHP?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would not be a good question for the site, not necessarily because it is about design, but because **it is [too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490).** There are many aspects of design that would go into designing a blog.  Web design, database design, application logic, cross cutting concerns, etc...  Even if this were language agnostic this doesn't change.  A better question for example would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&quot;I am trying to design a database schema that can properly capture domain model elements of a blog, here is what I tried.  Any improvements or suggestions to do this better?&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should always demonstrate the problem where possible, be clearly worded and focused to something that is clearly and completely answerable.  It should also demonstrate what you are thinking might be a solution or what you have tried.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How could I structure a Tic-Tac-Toe game in a Pythonic way?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ways to structure a Tic-Tac-Toe game might be considered a matter of opinion.  This would probably be closed as **[Primarily opinion-based](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)**.  Wherever possible a question should be answerable.  Questions that have 100 equally acceptable answers do not help anybody derive what the best solution is.  Going by the most highly upvoted answer doesn't tell you as this might be the first answer posted, or the person answering might be popular or the solution described is a popular one but might not be the best solution.  Even if this was language agnostic it probably doesn't change.  A better question might be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Here is how I was thinking of structuring my Tic-Tac-Toe game in a Pythonic way.  Does this particular design choice make sense for Python and what specifically could I improve or do better?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Here is how I was thinking of representing the data structure for my Tic-Tac-Toe game.  Is this a good data structure that lends itself to an efficient algorithm for Tic-Tac-Toe?  If not how can I improve this?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to benefit from discussing the problem on terms that are relevant to the technology stack I'm using.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to ask questions about the &quot;Pythonic way&quot; or the &quot;Java way&quot;, pending that the question follows these guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Properly scoped (not too broad to be effectively answered).  If an entire book can be written about or has been written about a topic then it is probably not a good question for this site.&#xD;&#xA; - Good questions have answers, not opinions.  Opinions lead to discussions and debates and this format doesn't lend itself well to this.&#xD;&#xA; - Have a clearly defined problem that you are trying to work through&#xD;&#xA; - Demonstrate prior effort or thought into solving it on your own.  This can be achieved simply by stating some ideas that are currently in your head.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you follow these guidelines and the question is on topic for the site then you shouldn't have any problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please read the articles in the [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help) for more details." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26100" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7023" RevisionGUID="7a926fd7-20a1-4c22-9f61-b57e7e6d5ede" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Based on the [most recent guidance for &quot;name that thing&quot; questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology), I'm going to reopen your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that the blogs are only suggestions. The per-site policies are best found on each site's Meta. There is some leeway in terms of what is acceptable or not on a per-site basis." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26101" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6642" RevisionGUID="43d2f104-29d0-4ed8-9046-a3d67661ddf2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is a follow up to [BartMan's question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6637/3965), which is now locked.  We shouldn't be dismissive of the over-moderation concerns of potential new users.  You asked for 10 examples of inappropriately closed questions, so here they are, found by querying for closed questions I answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/236533/3965 Closed as opinion based, but actually has some interesting objective reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/235042/3965 Closed as too broad, after garnering four concise yet relatively thorough answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/234699/3965 Ironically, given the penchant on this site for closing questions as too broad, this rather specific question was closed as a duplicate of a question that was only vaguely related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/230784/3965 This question was closed as &quot;education advice,&quot; which we used to define as &quot;what school/degree program/course/certification should I personally enroll in&quot; and lately seems to be broadly defined as &quot;any question that mentions a university or degree or learning of any kind.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/230486/3965 This one admittedly might fit better on workplace, but has some very scrum-specific concerns, which makes it unique to our profession.  At the very least, it should have been migrated instead of closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/230271/3965 Despite an intentionally provocative title, this question asks useful, thought-provoking questions and received three insightful and relatively objective answers.  If you don't like the title, edit the title.  This question illustrates a larger concern that entire questions are frequently being rejected due to one small easily-edited part of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/224275/3965 Closed as opinion based, despite having concrete cultural and historical reasons behind the practice.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;8. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/227983/3965 Closed as &quot;unclear what you're asking&quot; despite having a short, clear answer.  It seems like this close reason is often used to mean &quot;I personally don't know the answer&quot; or &quot;I personally don't know how to explain this in a concise, easy to understand manner.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/227743/3965 Closed as &quot;what language should I learn next,&quot; but the question is more detailed, more objective, and less personal than that.  Also throws in the &quot;education advice&quot; reason, presumably because the question mentions the word &quot;learning.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/224356/3965 Closed as too broad, despite having a few good answers already.  This &quot;too broad&quot; reason is way overused for a site that's supposedly about conceptual questions.  If a concise conceptual answer can be given at the same abstraction level as the question, it's not too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could go on, and those are just the ones I personally got around to answering in the last month or so before they got closed.  I used to occasionally address these kinds of closings individually with meta posts, but it has become overwhelming, and people now seem more interested in finding excuses to close a question rather than reasons to keep it open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is twofold.  First, people have no incentive to be judicious with their close votes. Second, voting to close is easily done during normal use of the site while the questions are at the top of the page, whereas voting to reopen requires effort to go back and find appropriate questions that may no longer be visible on the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The balance of moderation power is heavily tilted in favor of the closers. All the 10k+ users put together currently have enough votes to close every single new question on this site every day 10 times over, and that's [not enough](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6507)?!  If that doesn't sound like over-zealous moderation, I don't know what does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My proposed solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Provide a notification to anyone capable of casting reopen votes (3000+ rep) when a question they upvoted or answered has been closed, or &#xD;&#xA; - Allow some means of casting reopen votes before a question is closed, and &#xD;&#xA; - Time out the downvoting and close voting privileges of people who vote to close a question that is later reopened.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26102" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7826" RevisionGUID="6be49690-4cdb-4352-8097-da42a6dcc8b7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;(_special edition_ for folks coming from Math.SE, reposted from [Math meta](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/21680/hint-programmers-se-doesnt-do-coding-help-and-expect-research-before-asking &quot;10K link&quot;))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Hint: Software Engineering Stack Exchange doesn't do coding help and expect research before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, we at Software Engineering get a stream of troublesome questions from folks with linked accounts at Math.SE. One of them was kind enough to [explain why they get there](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7610/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another user, familiar with many other sites, even figured what could lead to such a [misconception](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi#comment22868_7610):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;This &quot;exchange&quot; is the undergraduate while &quot;overflow&quot; is the graduate level may because of the idea for Math vs MathOverflow and Physics vs PhysicsOverflow (not SE related) leaking into other domains. While I don't believe that that naming distinction needs to be fixed (nor can we do anything about it), being able to more promptly close (and delete) the debugging and blatantly off topic questions with a minimum of additional community moderation needed.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is sad to observe how many of them have fallen victims of this misunderstanding, getting their questions heavily voted down, closed and deleted. This includes even established users having over 1K rep at Math.SE ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/299572/given-a-integer-n-compute-nth-non-repeating-number &quot;10K link - user with 1.4K rep at Math asks very low quality question at Software Engineering&quot;), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/304765/31260 &quot;10K link - 1K Math rep user asks outright off-topic at Software Engineering&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things many Math.SE folks seem to miss when they try their luck at Software Engineering are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **coding and debugging help is off-topic** at Software Engineering.SE&#xD;&#xA;* it is generally expected of askers to **demonstrate research** they did before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading for those interested to learn more about Software Engineering.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Engineering Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is research important?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6559/31260)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or down voted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overview of CS and programming related sites at SE network:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-software-engineering-where-else-c&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26103" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7038" RevisionGUID="0bab2d3c-df30-4dad-a8c2-eeeac5b0ee5e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Update: tag is gone.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are no questions tagged _psychology_ anymore (not even [locked](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7039/31260) ones, thanks to [ChrisF](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7040/31260)) and [tags page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags) doesn't suggest it anymore when one tries to enter &quot;psychology&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After all the questions were retagged or deleted, [system took care](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/19754/165773) of the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tags not associated with any question are automatically destroyed..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26104" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7015" RevisionGUID="595446bb-91fd-4702-87e9-fd71283d7f4d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My personal 2 cents... stop downvoting people who post on meta trying to get questions fixed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what stopped me a while back from doing it. It became such a chore to constantly feel like I'm fighting for something that none of the active users wanted, and to always be downvoted for my efforts by the same group of users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* -2 (+1/-3): https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3192/1130&#xD;&#xA;* -2 (+1/-3): https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3193/1130&#xD;&#xA;* -2 (+0/-2): https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3194/1130&#xD;&#xA;* -1 (+7/-8): https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3568/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We may not always post meta questions the way you'd like it formatted, or we may voice opinions that you disagree with in the question itself, but simply downvoting questions like this only discourages users who are trying to improve the site's content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead consider posting an answer explaining your disagreement, or upvoting an existing one. Or possibly even upvote the user for bothering to take the time to come to meta in the first place to try and fix the question (try to leave a comment if you do this, or upvote an existing one).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I still lurk in the meta site on occasion, and often see people getting downvoted for asking for help improving a question, or why something was off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also in regards to question #2, this was posted a while back that sounds related : https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3292/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26105" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7891" RevisionGUID="5c7cfd88-b84d-438c-aaf5-5d4cfe0d80f3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As long as you focus on the design and not &quot;which tool is best for me?&quot; you should be fine. However, I recommend reading the following meta-posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###[Are Design Review questions on-topic?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Talks about the standards to meet for questions like this. [TL;DR][2]: keep it highly focused on one specific aspect of your program, with clear success criteria (a successful design must do X but not Y, as opposed to &quot;what is better?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Design review&quot; perhaps is more commonly associated with e.g. &quot;review my class diagram or description of what these classes do&quot; but also covers &quot;what technology should I leverage in this part of my program&quot; which often involves design aspects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic? - Requests for Recommendations?&quot;][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Resource requests, including &quot;what library or protocol should I use&quot; are off-topic. But libraries and protocols are fairly core to a discipline that pushes for code reuse and common interfaces. So if you focus on &quot;I need my program to communicate, with X and Y as design goals&quot; instead of &quot;recommend a library for me&quot; you should be fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Also, thank you for asking in meta first so we can help you ask a good question instead of going through a potentially frustrating experience with asking, downvoting, closing, editing, reopening, hopefully reversing downvotes, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6502&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tl%3Bdr&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26106" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6660" RevisionGUID="dbbb6385-9c7d-465e-8ed3-6dd94c1f4fc7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The automatic check I would like to learn about looks like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For every `question` posted (alternatively: voted to close or pushed to close queue),&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Check if asker has linked SO account&#xD;&#xA;2. If yes, check 3 of their most recent questions at SO&#xD;&#xA;3. For every of above 3 questions, calculate [Levenshtein distance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance) of its text to that of to Programmers `question`.&#xD;&#xA;4. Raise system flag for mod attention (or [present blocking message](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p?noredirect=1#comment17959_6660 &quot;as suggested in comments&quot;)) if distance for a particular question is less than some `threshold`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What difficulties could be there in getting above check done automatically?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;`threshold` mentioned above can be derived based on a representative set of already identified cross-posts. This set (**few hundreds** in last half year), in turn, can be retrieved by searching flag database for my flags that are marked helpful and have message containing `http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info`.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Side note (as this has been asked twice in comments). I am somewhat skeptical on _blocking message_ approach. In theory, this would be ideal solution but I am concerned that if presented with block, some users will try to trick to break through Levenshtein threshold (for example, by adding dots to question text). This may return us back to having to discover them manually. My considerations are similar to those why question ban / serial voting algorithms are not exposed for &quot;direct user testing&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26107" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7056" RevisionGUID="89ad9fb4-afe3-408d-8b41-3c1dc3c70449" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the comments for [this question][1], I was told that the close-and-reopen process is how the PSE community finds consensus on what is on-topic and what is off-topic. Is this correct?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7051/is-there-a-consensus-on-programmers-stack-exchange-that-programmers-cannot-autho" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26108" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7723" RevisionGUID="c85e92ce-fa6d-4e15-951e-5958db670cf8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**This experiment is over.** I will be adding an answer to show the results and suggest a plan for going forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the next 30 days, closing a question will require just 3 votes. Also 3 votes will be sufficient to reopen a closed question. In essence, each close and reopen vote has 5/3&lt;sup&gt;rds&lt;/sup&gt; the normal value. After 30 days I will revert the site setting back to 5 and evaluate the results. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have tested this change on a development instance and questions that currently have 3 or 4 close votes will not be closed automatically. Rather they will be closed when the next close vote comes in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's fair to say there's a lot of dissatisfaction with the question closing system on Programmers. [One proposed solution](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes) is to increase the number of close votes available to 10k users. Some of us on the community team have considered various schemes to scale close votes with reputation under the theory that people most invested in the site (as measured by reputation) will have the most incentive to curate questions. That might still happen, but we'd like to be pretty sure that it will solve the various problems with question closing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's pretty clear that organic closing (via the [close votes queue](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close) or people voting to close questions they find naturally) isn't working very well. To demonstrate, here's how close votes on questions asked in the last 30 days are distributed on Super User:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Super User close vote distribution][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most questions have no close votes (not shown). 461 questions have just one (the yellow circle on the left) and the number slopes down to 142 with 4 close votes. 5 votes is a natural [attractor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor) because people will keep voting to close off-topic and otherwise closable questions until they reach that limit. There's a long tail beyond 5 close votes (also not shown) due to votes expiring, close wars and so on. In essence, questions with at least 1 close vote, but not 5, are in a grey area in terms of closablity. This general pattern turns out to be extremely common across a variety of sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In contrast, here's the same graph for Programmers&amp;mdash;Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Programmers close vote distribution][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember this is only showing questions that have been asked in the last 30 days; we aren't talking about [Not Programming Related](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3273/not-programming-related) questions. Instead of a fairly smooth gradient between questions that should clearly be open to questions that clearly should be closed, this graph shows something closer to a binary state. My hypothesis is that since the people contributing the most close votes feel the need to conserve votes, they don't vote to close borderline questions. There's too great a risk those votes will expire impotently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also included the counts of questions that have been edited or deleted in each close vote bin. Relative to other sites, questions on Programmers with close votes are more likely to be deleted and less likely to be edited. It's entirely possible that a greater proportion of questions are unsalvageable on this site. But I suspect the underlying problem is that the questions that could most benefit from an improvement are not getting close votes in the first place. _That might not be a problem_, but close votes can provide incentives for askers to fix problems even before their questions are closed. Close votes also put questions in front of reviewers who might be inspired to improve them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another problem that we discovered [very dramaticly](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/7649/1) is that [closed questions are rarely reopened](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7654/96050). Most closed questions can't (and shouldn't) be reopened, but statistically speaking, we expect more than 1-2% will be. My hypothesis is that it takes so much effort (and coordination) to close questions that people are not interested in undoing that work even if there's been an edit to fix a question's problems. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, the breakdown in the close voting system is not limited to Programmers. It is, however, rare across the network for the division between open and closed questions to be so stark. We hope this test will help us understand how the close vote system breaks in order to (hopefully) fix it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Why 3 votes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially users with enough reputation could unilaterally close and reopen questions on Stack Overflow. In December 31, 2008, the close vote system [was created](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/) and required 3 votes. Between then and the [next April](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/), the limit was increased to 5. (Shog9 remembers 3 lasting a few weeks.) The documentation of the site setting reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; KEEP THIS AN ODD NUMBER&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we need an odd number greater than 1 and less than 5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# How will this change be evaluated?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a nontrivial chance something will break requiring me to revert the change. If we continue for the full 30 days, we will compare before and after the change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Close rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Obviously, it's now easier to close questions. Insofar as bad questions are put on a path toward either corrective edits or deletion, that's a good thing. But this site closes well over 50% of new questions, which is the highest rate on the network. (Considering _total_ questions closed to questions asked in a time period, the rate is [more like 70%](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last30days).) Paradoxically, I'd like to see the close rate remain steady or decrease.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Reopen rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Reopening questions is one way to mitigate against a high close rate. Since the bar for reopening is now lower, we'd expect more questions will be reopened. Currently the reopen rate is about 2% of closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Edit rate on closed questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  In general, the only path to reopening a question is editing. It's also the most effective way to prevent questions from being closed in the first place. Since it's easier to reopen questions, there's even more reason for askers to fix their own closed questions. In the last 30 days 9% of closed questions were subsequently edited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Deletion rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  About 65% of questions that get at least one close vote on Programmers are deleted. We aren't exactly looking at the cream of the crop here, but that's noticeably more than other sites. (Again, this only counts questions asked and deleted within the last 30 days.) We can't force people to ask questions that don't deserve deletion, but hopefully more questions can be salvaged with edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, I'm curious if this change helps people enjoy the site more overall. At the end of the experiment, I'll post my results and ask for any followup thoughts you as a community have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# How you can help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relatively few people are active in closing, reopening and deleting questions. Even fewer are [active in editing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Editors&amp;filter=month). In order for this experiment to improve the quality of content on this site, more people need to be involved in identifying questions with potential to be unlocked with a judicious edit. Fixing tags and removing signatures are good first steps. But title and (occasionally heroic) body edits might be needed to pull some questions out of mediocrity. Remember: once the question is posted, it belongs to the community as much as it does the original author.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, please use the answers below to let me know how the experiment is going.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EHxvb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ESxAD.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26109" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7985" RevisionGUID="1b4daef1-25ae-4d24-a80d-066bcff20d0a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Looks pretty valid to me. Knowing the history of [NPR-to-Programmers][1], programmers is quite a candidate-for-worst-name at the moment. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe a NotProgrammingButConceptRelated name could be fine. Of course, it should not be switched back to NotProgrammingRelated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26110" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7020" RevisionGUID="cc309e09-eb80-4e71-927a-5894fa5b7a1a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If a first time asker has an SO account that was recently (say, within a week) [question blocked](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/252645/165773 &quot;for more details on this, see 'When does the question ban get applied?' at MSE&quot;) over there, how about showing them a warning like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** You've recently been blocked at Stack Overflow. Consider that quality requirements at Software Engineering are similar. Note that Stack Overflow topics are _not_ covered here and that your questions [can't even be migrated to Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;) because of the block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This hopefully would help them avoid further frustration if they get down and close votes, angry comments, blocked migrations and question block over here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why can't we raise up questions quality?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6990/31260)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Per stats, Programmers appear to be [most popular of SE sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773) among this category of askers. After being blocked or scared by warnings at Stack Overflow they simply try to dump their low quality stuff over here...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;SE might want to think about how to improve their UX in order to educate during question composition...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there... how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26111" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6679" RevisionGUID="f7dba2d5-ee34-4a45-ae3c-c1523f644f4b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I took a quick look at the [review history][1] in our [first posts review queue][2] and I've noticed some &quot;No Action Needed&quot; reviews that I didn't agree with. That's not a problem, I don't expect anyone to share my opinions on what makes a good Programmers post. However, I think the nature of the queue is such, that there is almost always something to fix, even if it's simply spelling and grammar. The queue hosts the very first posts from brand new users, who - quite understandably - aren't always familiar with our philosophy and rules. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To make matters a bit more complicated, *it only takes one review to push the post out of the first posts queue*. This means that we need to be a bit more careful with it, than - say - with the close votes queue. Your &quot;No Action Needed&quot; vote is binding, and if you use it carelessly you may cheat a brand new user of possibly critical feedback. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to ask all our reviewers to just skip the review if you aren't 100% sure that the post can be improved (in any way), or don't have the time to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Related**: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Looking for guidance on using “No Action Needed” in the first posts review queue][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Please require more reviewers on First Posts][4] (on Meta Stack Exchange)&#xD;&#xA;- [How can we make First Posts review actually useful?][5] (on Meta Stack Exchange)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/history&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6680/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/188457/please-require-more-reviewers-on-first-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234153/how-can-we-make-first-posts-review-actually-useful" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26112" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7061" RevisionGUID="18590215-ce68-4024-85fa-955d9c4de3e6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As two of the comments mention, no, there isn't a site to ask opinion based questions. See [here][1], [here][2], and [here][3] for more information on that. However, Stack Exchange does have a [chat][4] where these discussions can happen. An example of one chat room would be the [Programmers main chat room, The Whiteboard][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26113" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8056" RevisionGUID="24f598d0-6806-4704-a158-39484a7a0098" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="From [Ana, a Stack Exchange Community Manager][1] in [the previous question about changing the site name][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It took us a good while, but the Community Team has circled up and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; here's where we stand on your request to change Programmers.SE's name.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###We agree that renaming this site is a good idea.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Programmers&quot; is an affinity group, whereas &quot;Software Architecture&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (for example) is an action and a discipline. It is entirely possible&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that changing the site's name will send clearer signals and prime new&#xD;&#xA;&gt; users to ask questions more consistently in line with what y'all would&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be proud to see and answer, particularly given where this site’s scope&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has solidified over the past few years.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; _So yes, we're open to proceeding with a name change._ That said, we'll need to make sure the change makes the kind of difference you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; want it to, because we can't repeat this process again several years&#xD;&#xA;&gt; down the line. We gotta get it right _this_ time. Last time the site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was renamed, the scope was very much still in flux; by now, hopefully&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you can identify much more precisely _what this site is about_ and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; commit to both a name _and_ description _and_ introductory materials&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that communicate this body of knowledge clearly and succinctly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Here's what the Community Team needs before we can move forward:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. **Tell us what you're proposing as the new site name.**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    &quot;Software Engineering&quot; and &quot;Software Architecture&quot; both look like&#xD;&#xA;&gt; good options from where I stand. Let’s not turn this into a bikeshed&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion; we need well-considered options here, not a popularity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; contest - Coffee McWhiskeyface is right out. The ideal name will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest _at a glance_ what this site is about, without suggesting that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it might be “fix my code” even a little bit.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. **Lay out what the [new site scope](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) will be.**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    Above all else, **the scope needs to be simple**. Seriously. No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gerrymandering - **it needs to be easy for any new visitor who bothers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to read** and even mildly pays attention to what they're reading to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; know what they can and cannot ask about here. Eliminate ambiguity for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a first time poster once and for all.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Let's talk again in a month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start answering the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What should our site name be?&#xD;&#xA;* What should [our tour][3] say? Specifically, the first paragraph below the site title that begins with &quot;Programmers Stack Exchange is a question and answer site...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* What should our [Help Center's on-topic page][4] say about what is on and off-topic? Note that what this site is about and not about also does appear on the tour.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/106878/ana?tab=profile&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7935/4&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26114" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7100" RevisionGUID="08ac384a-f108-499b-942b-5c4319ed1840" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="...so it seems to me that frozen would be a better word. I stumbled upon the question&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/61248/106929 and wanted to ask for clarification at one of the answers with a comment. But since comments are disabled on blocked questions this is not possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder if/how something can be done to a locked question, I already saw that [locking seems to be considered as a last option](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/285/106929), but how do this relate to unlocking it again?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26115" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7734" RevisionGUID="f3059b02-8945-44dd-8e66-6a9a8e66c77a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="After one week, the results are not encouraging:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Week posted Qs  Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion Rate&#xD;&#xA;    ----------- --- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- -------------&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-12  324    190      58.6%           8.9%     2.1%       5.9%         40.7%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-19  349    204      58.5%           8.8%     2.0%       5.6%         39.5%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-26  319    207      64.9%           8.7%     1.4%      11.1%         45.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-02  362    218      60.2%          12.8%     3.7%      10.7%         42.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09  286    205      71.7%          20.0%     3.4%       4.9%         36.0%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of this is in flux as weeks refer to when questions were asked. So questions asked in the week of Nov. 2 might still be closed or deleted while questions asked last week could still get edited and/or reopened. Also, a week is probably not enough time to spot trends since the numbers vary quite a bit from one week to the next. The one thing we can be confident about is that it's a lot easier to get questions closed now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Only 3 close votes needed.][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# _Pro forma_ closing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Watching the questions that have been closed in the past week reminds me of my (very short) stint [creating UML diagrams](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124996/is-code-commonly-generated-from-uml): theoretically necessary, but of dubious practical value. It seems clear to me that a lot of closing on Programmers isn't because certain types of questions cause problems, but because they _might_. In effect, questions are closed because they have a particular form with little regard to the substance and purpose of the question. I encourage you to look at the list of [recently closed questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=Close&amp;daterange=last7days) and **consider what actual problems these questions cause today**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me cherry-pick some recent examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302688/how-narrow-or-broad-should-constant-names-be (Closed as &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot;.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Is this the _form_ of a question that could devolve into religious warfare? Sure. Has it? Well there are 3 plausible answers and one that's meh. It was open for 6 hours. Unfortunately, I can't add my answer based on page 186 of my edition of _Code Complete_ until the question is reopened. (Hint: there's been real science done on this question.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302723/passing-fields-instance-variables-by-arguementsparameters-inside-an-object (Closed as &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot;.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This was immediately closed and only one answer slipped through. I'm not anything like an expert in OOP, so I can't judge the answer. Maybe it's heresy somewhere, but it sounds reasonably uncontroversial and grounded in objectivity to me. The close seems to be triggered by the final (unimportant) paragraph:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; What are the advantages and disadvantages of these solutions? Which is considered as better practise? Which one do you prefer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302567/what-are-the-advantages-of-a-traditional-backend-architecture-for-a-standard (Closed as &quot;too broad&quot;.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Two comments on the question are instructive:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; recommended reading: **[Why do 'some examples' and 'list of things' questions get closed?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7538/31260)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Asking for &quot;the advantages&quot; of X is almost always a list question ([the earlier comment] probably should've linked the &quot;pros and cons&quot; post for this one). As the existing answers have already demonstrated, you end up with a list of example applications for which X is a good thing, and then everyone has to debate in the comments whether those examples are valid because the original question wasn't sufficiently well-defined to make it clear what would or wouldn't count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There are exactly as many comments arguing about whether the question should be closed as there are about whether the examples are valid. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could go on, but I don't want to get bogged down into an argument because I picked a bad example. My point in bringing these up is not to get them reopened, but encourage you all to think a bit about **why questions need closing**. One advantage of lowering the bar for closing is that it gives this community freedom to field more potentially problematic questions. If things get out of hand, it's far easier to shut questions down than it used to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be completely clear, I have no intention of keeping this site setting if it accelerates the closing of questions.  It is my firm conviction that **a site which closes 70% of new questions is already failing**. That's one experiment I don't want to try.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been encouraged by valiant and occasionally successful attempts I've seen this week to fix and reopen questions. Whatever else I might imply above, I truly do admire the care and thoughtfulness you all have exhibited over the years. It's not easy to manage a radical change in scope as the one this community has pulled off. Let me restate that: **Programmers has successfully corrected itself from a very rough beginning**. That was accomplished not by the Stack Exchange software, but by the efforts of users such as the readers of this post. This site is now useful to actual programmers whereas the initial scope was not. So build off of that success.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/DR0KU.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26116" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6680" RevisionGUID="04a50c6d-994c-4ce5-b07c-8de52a93f6b9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Following the post from Yannis Rizos about the use of &quot;No Action Needed&quot; for posts that are not all that good (https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6679/reviewing-first-posts-from-new-users), I am struggling to understand when to use &quot;No Action Needed&quot; in a review of a first post and when to use &quot;Skip&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Up to now, I used the heuristic that if the post wasn't bad enough to close vote/down vote/flag and wasn't good enough to upvote, then I would select &quot;No Action Needed&quot;. This means that I would use the &quot;No Action Needed&quot; option mostly for posts that had a bit of a 'meh' feeling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the post by Yannis, I gather that I should Skip the review for those posts and leave it for someone else to take action on the post (either positive or negative), but that leaves me with the question:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If good posts should be upvoted, bad posts downvoted (or otherwise dealt with) and meh posts skipped, on which posts should I use the &quot;No Action Needed&quot; option, or should that option not exist at all?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26117" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7070" RevisionGUID="4fa3d894-ec5f-4556-b549-82ba87f2479b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The dawn of a new year, 2015, now approaches, or has already approached, either way it means that it is now time to reset our Community Promotion Ads!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What are Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA; - cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA; - anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we reset the ads every year?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be **220 x 250 pixels**&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently **6**) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/ads/display/7070" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26118" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7738" RevisionGUID="c0f7433e-5531-4c1b-8338-dc026e888182" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Should we have a \[design-review\] tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, I know I have sufficient reputation to create one. That is the easy part.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, we have have several thousand questions in [tag:design] which appears to be a mix of design reviews, questions about &quot;why was C designed this way?&quot; and other design-related questions. **Should we move design review questions to their own tag?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue I see is the cost in time to recategorize design review questions and the benefit returned. This is not a quick tag merge, this would be an ongoing effort as we peruse questions. One side benefit would be as we find old questions of poor quality we can close them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could also have information about design reviews and a [link to our canonical meta question][1] in the tag wiki, if anyone bothers to read it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question [Migration paths to other sites][2] on Code Review Meta prompted me to think about this. Would it not be great to point them to a single \[design review\] tag and say &quot;look at the highly voted questions for great examples of migration candidates?&quot; Then reality set it when I started going through the tag trying to find good examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6502&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6141" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26119" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7175" RevisionGUID="37fe57b8-3475-46e5-b363-c62c12cf07f3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So [this question][1] recently came up, and I'm not sure quite how to deal with the problems it caused. There are (at time of writing) 39 edits. Now some of them are grammatical, and some are clarifying, but the majority are... slight adjustments to the question based on answers to probe deeper into the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that over time, the question effectively _drifts_ into a different one - making existing answers invalid. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't want to suggest making a new question, since the new question would not be significantly different - leading to duplication. I don't want to suggest going to chat, since we're not a chat site. And I don't really know of any good general programming forums to suggest instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how to discourage this sort of interactive question? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This meta question][2] is relevant, but focuses on edits which are objectively bad. The individual edits of this question aren't bad in isolation, but the style/frequency of them certainly are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/272638/can-the-entire-program-be-called-an-algorithm&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6055/how-to-stop-bad-edits-from-a-user" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26120" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6705" RevisionGUID="a740529e-f140-469c-85e9-1b7701bc992a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've noticed in the reopen queue history and 10k close page that there are at least some people who will cast a reopen vote on nearly anything they see.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've gotta ask... *why* do you do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A bit ago, Rachel [commented](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6642/examples-of-inappropriately-closed-questions/6648#comment17931_6648)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @RobertHarvey I am showing the number of close votes/voters compared to the number of reopen votes/voters. I think the core problem here is summarized at the end of my answer: Your chances of getting something closed or reopened is tied to a random variable: how many people review the question at the same time as you. In the case of new open content, it is viewed by many people, including our group of &quot;close happy&quot; users. In the case of closed content, very few people view it, and we don't even have a decent sized group of active &quot;reopen happy&quot; users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll say that is not completely accurate in that if there is sufficient change to the question to merit it reopening, it's actually rather easy to get it reopened.  Sometimes it takes a bit of hunting for votes in chat (we can typically find 3 or 4 without bugging a mod)... but when it is something that *should* be reopened, the biggest challenge is finding the votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, here's the thing... you've got one vote and one shot to get a question reopened.  When you use your vote as a one off protest vote on everything that goes through the queue or when a question that you answered gets closed - it makes it that much harder to find the votes when something *should* be reopened (and try to use the reopen review rather than asking in chat or bugging a mod).  Once that reopen vote times out, you can't cast it again - it is gone.  So even when it does get fixed, you won't be able to cast a reopen vote on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is true that that reopening depends heavily on getting people to hit 'reopen' in the review queue rather than leave closed, why do you vote when there's no change? or when there's only a minimal change that doesn't fix the perceived issues that closed it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for that matter, if you honestly think it is something that should get reopened, but don't believe it will, ***edit*** it so that it ***is*** a good question that even the most hardened close voter will agree it is something that should be asked.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tossing your votes as a one off protest vote makes it that much harder to reopen good questions when the question *does* get edited into shape.  So why cast those votes without trying to edit the question to address the close reason and make better and unequivocally able to be reopened?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26121" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7214" RevisionGUID="5eb58882-de44-460b-85cd-f3ef08da95c7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Let's [burninate](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/burninate-request/info) tag [tag:video-lectures].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, there are 5 questions in this tag. All appear to be off-topic [education advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980) / [off-site resource](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) requests. None looks worth keeping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/274932/modernizing-my-net-knowledge&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101959/where-can-i-find-windows-via-c-c-video-training&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85698/trying-to-find-video-of-a-talk-on-the-impact-of-memory-access-latency&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70944/lecture-like-cs-videos&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67773/is-there-any-online-video-giving-a-useful-insight-on-programming-in-certain-lang" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26122" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="e3d87fff-cdfd-4614-afd6-d79c1e39330c" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Welcome&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Software Engineering** is a question and answer site for people involved in the [Systems Development Life Cycle][1] who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly. We don't address questions about debugging code or how to use specific tools in software development. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&amp;A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ask About&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the systems development life cycle&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Don't Ask About&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- writing or debugging code&#xD;&#xA;- support for software tools or packages&#xD;&#xA;- what to read, learn, buy or use&#xD;&#xA;- legal advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a question and answer site for people involved in the [Systems Development Life Cycle][1] who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software development [methods and practices][2]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [requirements engineering][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][4] and [design][5]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm) and [data structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [quality assurance and testing][6]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [configuration][7], [build][8] and [release][9] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][7] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][8]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][9].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][2] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10]. We have [a curated FAQ on our Meta site][11]. You can also check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][12].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26123" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7761" RevisionGUID="6d1e5241-f8b4-4a64-b59f-cd406ad8cd7e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I wasn't going to update the experiment this week, but the results this week were so encouraging I can't help myself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Week posted Qs  Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion Rate&#xD;&#xA;    ----------- --- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- -------------&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-12  325    190      58.5%           8.9%     2.6%      11.8%         40.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-19  349    205      58.7%           8.8%     2.4%       5.6%         39.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-26  319    207      64.9%           8.7%     1.4%      11.1%         46.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-02  362    218      60.2%          13.3%     3.7%      10.3%         44.2%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09  286    206      72.0%          20.9%     3.9%       7.0%         41.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-16  340    205      60.3%          17.6%     9.3%      30.6%         35.6%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only has the close rate dropped to something like the pre-experiment rate, the reopen rate has rather dramatically increased. Much of this is due to more edited questions getting reopened than in previous weeks. (It might be too early to tell if it's statistically significant, but more closed questions are being edited since the test began.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also spent some time last week trying to learn what prompted people to close so many questions on Programmers. While there are many detailed reasons, two themes emerged in my mind:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that remain open are signposts that prompt new questions of the same type.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. It's difficult to maintain the quality of answers on certain types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first didn't surprise me. It's a variation of the broken window theory (which is [different than &quot;zero-tolerance policing&quot;](http://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in-policing/research-evidence-review/broken-windows-policing/) by the way.) Since it's often difficult to curate a large corpus of answers, it's a lot more convenient to curate the questions instead. Some sites, however, pull it off. Skeptics, for instance, has [strict rules](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/faq-welcome-to-new-users) about what sort of questions can be asked (notably, notable ones) and what is required of answers (particularly that they be referenced). As a result, Skeptics deletes a large percentage of answers that have a score &gt; 0:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;       7634     35.5     19.64     0.05     0          97.16 Area 51 Discussions&#xD;&#xA;       8288     13.61    55.68     0.1      6.03       28.63 Skeptics&#xD;&#xA;       5782     10.26    46.49     0.09     0.02       48.74 Islam     &#xD;&#xA;     141392      9.38    25.01     0.45     0.02       78.15 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       4810      6.63    52.45     0.12     0.46       27.9  Biblical Hermeneutics&#xD;&#xA;      15660      5.86    45.84     0.03     0.37       48.31 Christianity&#xD;&#xA;      22572      5.08    28.81     0.33     0.02       63    Web Apps&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cut the list off at sites that delete at least 5% of positively-scored answers. Area 51 is interesting because 97% of &quot;good answers&quot; get deleted when their question gets deleted as a result of their [failed proposal being deleted](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/9068/do-not-delete-discussions-about-deleted-proposals). But the next in line is a real site: Skeptics. Their policies encourage deletion not only of entire questions, but individual answers as well. (Skeptics is unique in its extensive use of post notices.) [Islam](https://islam.meta.stackexchange.com/a/610/138), [Christianity](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1446/914) and [Biblical Hermeneutics](https://hermeneutics.meta.stackexchange.com/a/533/68) have fairly strict requirements that answers be well-supported. Those sites also emphasize narrow questions that allow moderators to delete many answers as non-answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm less familiar with Web Apps, but I believe they [had a major change in scope](https://webapps.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/764/proposal-to-clean-up-the-scope-of-the-site-is-your-question-about-using-a-speci) not unlike what happened on Programmers. When you shift the topic of a site, that will leave many now-off-topic questions that need deleting along with all their answers. As a corollary, there's a real need to lock questions and their answers. But look what happens when we limit to answers posted in the last year:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;      10617      4.53    34.44     0.01     0.03       66.53 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       2999      1.93    27.91     0.23     0          48.28 Web Apps  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Web Apps has settled into a fairly normal pattern of deleting relatively few upvoted answers. It's also split fairly evenly between deleting those answers individual and as a result of deleting the question. Programmers has become a little less extreme in terms of positively-scored-answer deletion, but it still ranks near the top of the list with Area 51 (31%), Skeptics (11%), Islam (4.5%) and Christianity (4%). More recent additions include Hinduism (4%) and Health (4%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Ok. What does this all mean?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Truthfully, I'm not sure. My current guess is that people are concerned that forces outside of their control will flood the site with embarrassing or just-plain-wrong answers. (This relates to another theme I heard a lot of: the Hot Network Questions list.) [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) gets [cited a lot here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=url%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.stackoverflow.com%2F2010%2F09%2Fgood-subjective-bad-subjective%2F). However, I wonder if the post gives the false impression that burden falls _solely on the question_. Certainly the way a question is asked increases or decreases the odds it will receive [crowd-pleasing nonanswers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers). But ultimately, we need to [hold answers to that standard too](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1110/96050).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other thing that kinda gets lost when talking about Good Subjective is that it isn't that opinions aren't allowed. Rather **naked opinions are noise**. The post even suggests:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Use your specific experiences to back up your opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that software engineering is one part science and one part craftsmanship, so it should be surprising to see some answers backed by experience rather than data. This is doubly true since the profession is incredibly young. Given quality of [users on this site](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&amp;filter=all), there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, it's a lot easier to delete popular answers if they don't actually answer the question. One technique that [seems to work](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/690/what-makes-a-good-focused-question) is requiring questions focus down on a specific domain. For instance, instead of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125320/do-todo-comments-make-sense maybe it would be better to ask &quot;Should TODO comments be removed when a project is in maintainance mode?&quot; That way the focus of the question isn't a holy war between pro-TODO and anti-TODO, but about the specific utility of those comments. (Obviously the asker should specify the situation they are actually facing.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26124" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6738" RevisionGUID="e917de0c-3e87-43f6-be7b-6b621e9049d9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Historical questions about [tag:recommendations]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6125/should-we-ban-the-recommendations-tag&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/421/is-a-recommendations-tag-really-necessary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The general consensus of these two is that the tag really should go away... though nothing has been done about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tag remains, it *really* needs a better tag-wiki akin to [tag:legal] or [tag:career-development] saying that its a very dangerous tag to ask in and needs to be properly formulated to have any chase of not getting closed quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tag is to go, there are apparently a few ways that this can be done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Someone goes through and removes the tag from all the questions.  There are 'only' 88 of them though thats still a mess... including bumping a number of closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;2. Have a mod do super powers to destroy the tag.  I'm not sure what these super powers are, but if they have them... well, **boom** goes the tag.&#xD;&#xA;3. Have SE use *their* super powers to completely burninate the tag.  Its gone and make it so that it can never come back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd really go for option #3... Number 1 is a mess.  Granted 88 isn't that big of a mess compared to some other tags, but thats still a mess... its about 2 days worth of front page activity.  If SE doesn't do the 'kill it with fire' approach, if a mod does have their super powers, then those should be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But please, just kill it.  Make it go *poof* and **boom** and other noises as it disappears into the `void*` never to be cast again.  There is no reason for its existence at all given that recommendations has *never* been on topic here...&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26125" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7227" RevisionGUID="cb47caec-45ae-4e8b-8818-bf599b44457e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You need 3000 reputation on the main site to cast close and open votes on questions, so the link below the question to cast the vote will not show up. In the mean time, you can ask about it on Meta or flag it for moderator review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This particular question won't likely be reopened - it's [overly broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490). There are entire books about applying Six Sigma to software engineering ([1][1], [2][2]), and some freely available resources linked to in the original question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, there isn't a concept of a &quot;sub-question&quot; on Stack Exchange. If you have questions that you think are [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and are written to avoid the things that [shouldn't be asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) and you [formulate it well](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), your question shouldn't be closed. Feel free to ask a new question - specific, well-written, and well-scoped questions about applying Six Sigma to software engineering is within the scope of this site. If you aren't sure, feel free to pop into chat or ask a question on Meta - someone will be able to help make sure your question is good for the site, point you to a better site, or point you to some resources to get you moving in the right direction so that if you have further questions, they are more appropriate for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.amazon.com/Sigma-Software-Development-Second-Edition/dp/1420044265&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.amazon.com/Six-Sigma-Software-Quality-Improvement/dp/0071700625/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1426434542&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=six%20sigma%20software" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26126" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="b00cb896-fe3c-41c7-ab70-05c5b80ce076" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Software Engineering Stack Exchange (previously known as Programmers) would be a good question on Stack Overflow.  This isn't to say that if it is on topic on Stack Overflow then it is on topic here.  Rather that it's not too broad, not opinion polling, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Software Engineering.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggesting to someone to repost a question that is too broad or primary opinion would get it closed on Software Engineering.SE too and that's really something we'd rather avoid.  It is no fun to get a question bounced from one site to another and being told repeatedly we don't want it here.  If it needs to be fixed, it needs to be fixed before it is reposted or telling the OP *exactly* what needs to be fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Some commonly referred *poor* questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, we *don't* want these, though it seems like people keep suggesting them to be reposted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I don't understand...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). [There is an expectation](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773) that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here's my problem. Anyone have a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of commonly (incorrectly) referred questions are those of &quot;come up with a design or solution for me.&quot;  Similar to how Stack Overflow has issues with people doing problem statement questions (&quot;write a program that takes the average of three values&quot;), Programmers.SE has similar issues with similar questions (&quot;here is what I want the outcome to be, anyone have a solution?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Stack Overflow nor Software Engineering.SE is a code/solution writing service. Just because the question lacks code but has a problem statement doesn't mean it belongs here as is. The question needs to be fixed up significantly before it is reposted on the proper site and suggesting to do so with the question in its current state does a disservice to the person asking the question. For a more detailed outline of what is generally expected at Programmers, see https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A blog I read said...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our custom off topic reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What tool, library, language, project, resource to take up or use](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* [What career to take or what to study](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;* [Assistance in writing or debugging code](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7742/40980)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programming related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - software development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA; - requirements, architecture, and design&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - configuration management, build, release, and deployment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about the [Software Development Life Cycle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg) that aren't code troubleshooting questions.  Remember that algorithm questions are also on topic on Stack Overflow (so [you don't need to migrate those](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/ &quot;'Be a bit jealous of your site - don't blithely turn askers away simply because their question could be asked somewhere else...'&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Engineering.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the Perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the Delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Software Engineering.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Software Engineering (Programmers.SE) was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with [&quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260 &quot;we even had to introduce a chat bot for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow&quot;) and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) it's problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - it's exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so comments a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, it's like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if it's a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26127" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6772" RevisionGUID="ec3a4a29-c5e0-4d40-8291-7ff00a7ca968" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Refer to this [question][1] which I've wrote yesterday.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have much experience with packages terminology, so I've put my best effort into constructing a scenario to illustrate a real and simple use case, then asked what terminology should be used for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can see, if there is no proper terminology then the answer should be just that – &quot;there is no standard terminology that meets your criteria&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet, my question was downvoted and closed as primarily opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through meta, all I could find was https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6338/why-is-this-terminology-question-considered-as-opinion-based whose accepted answer supports my point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is there anything I can improve in my question, or is it just not welcome here for some other reason?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/250477/91517" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26128" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7807" RevisionGUID="92871365-75ab-4c38-b31b-6aac14b166f1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It should come as a surprise to no one that I am disappointed about [the 3 close vote experiment being deemed a failure by the powers that be](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7797/3-votes-for-closing-reopening-experiment-the-results). Whether or not we did &quot;fail&quot; (and what that even means) is a big issue, which is already being hashed out in the answers to that question. But there's another equally large question that I don't think is getting discussed over there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming for the sake of argument that we did &quot;fail&quot; somehow, **I have absolutely no idea what SE wants us to do about it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing Jon tells us to do in that meta question is to not distrust users so much. I didn't think any of my actions on the site were based on distrust, but simply voting to close poor content based on how poor it is. If anything, I seem to habitually give first-time askers significantly more hand-written advice than they are willing to or capable of acting on. So, I really don't know what we're supposed to do with this instruction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I don't understand this suggestion, I currently *feel* like SE will do one of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Give up and completely ignore this site for the foreseeable future because they simply don't understand what's going on here.&#xD;&#xA;2. Assume they are correct in their belief that we close too many questions, and change the site mechanics to make it *harder* to close questions.&#xD;&#xA;3. Assume Jon's claim that &quot;distrust&quot; is the core problem is entirely accurate, and start taking disciplinary action against the most &quot;distrustful&quot; users, presumably for violating &quot;Be Nice&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe #1 is most likely, but part of me is genuinely concerned that #2, #3 or something equally misguided will happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My hope in asking this meta question is that Jon or someone else from SE can alleviate this uncertainty, ideally with a specific policy statement or some genuinely actionable advice.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some random questions/prompts to help demonstrate what I mean by &quot;actionable advice&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Should we be downvoting questions more often?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we be downvoting answers more often?&#xD;&#xA;- Are there any close reasons we should be using more often?&#xD;&#xA;- Are there any close reasons we should be using less often?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we be having frequent meta threads about whether a specific question is reopen-worthy, or can be edited to become reopen-worthy?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we encourage people to leave comments when downvoting or voting to close because of unclear/broad/POB? (as opposed to off-topic, which is much more self-explanatory)&#xD;&#xA;- Should we encourage people to stop leaving generic comments that simply link to a meta post without any specific advice about that particular question?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we stop trying to clean up &quot;broken windows&quot;, and just ignore any Qs/As beyond a certain age?&#xD;&#xA;- When a question is too unclear/broad to answer, and the OP never adds the missing details, are we supposed to make up details to edit in ourselves until the question becomes answerable?&#xD;&#xA;- When a bikesheddable question (let's say &quot;Should I use ++i or i += 1?&quot;) gets asked, should we close it as too broad/POB? Try to ruthlessly downvote the &quot;merely okay&quot; answers and hope only great ones survive? Just let people upvote everything into the stratosphere no matter how useless? Or something else entirely?&#xD;&#xA;- When a question asks for &quot;best practices&quot; without any explanation of what &quot;best&quot; means for them, should we not close that as unclear/broad/POB?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we try to come up with a clear set of guidelines that might help first-time askers avoid the unclear/broad/POB tarpit, better than the current FAQ does? For instance: describe what your application does, specify your language, specify whether you're after flexibility/intuitiveness/reliability/etc, explain why you want to do this, if there is a blindingly obvious solution explain why it doesn't apply, etc." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26130" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7236" RevisionGUID="4ee26e5c-a1d2-43b2-bd6c-e95cea64a437" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per [recent discussion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7233/where-can-i-see-what-kind-of-questions-are-or-are-not-relevant-on-programmers#comment21595_7234 &quot;'write up a suggested edit as a meta question and one of us can make the edit'&quot;), I drafted some updates I'd like to have in [Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), section _not about..._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Added text is in **bold**, deleted is &lt;del&gt;crossed&lt;/del&gt;, and some links are added and changed (more details under the draft):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - &lt;del&gt;[what book you should read next](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488)&lt;/del&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career **or education** advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - legal assistance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Primary motivation for the change was to make things like in [Workplace Help Center](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), where items listed as off-topic are linked to respective detailed meta guidance. (Frankly, Workplace's page still looks more elegant and easier to read to me - ideas on how to further improve ours are welcome)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also replaced straight links to Workplace and Stack Overflow with &quot;safer&quot; references to [help/on-topic] pages of these sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also please pay attention that &quot;career advice&quot; link has changed from [older FAQ post](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590) to a [newer one](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488). (I felt fairly safe doing this since older FAQ is linked near the top in references section in newer one but I may be wrong)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per [discussion in comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7236/help-center-tuning-help-on-topic-and-it-is-not-about-references-to-meta#comment21598_7236), &quot;what book you should read next&quot; was deleted. _In exchange_ I inserted &quot;education&quot; into an item about career advice - as far as I can tell, this covers books and makes a closer match to linked meta guidance and to respective [predefined close reason](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5992/31260 &quot;'career or education advice'&quot;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26131" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7826" RevisionGUID="4e092c5a-3fcd-44ee-b3de-b7769bfacec1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;(_special edition_ for folks coming from Math.SE, reposted from [Math meta](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/21680/hint-programmers-se-doesnt-do-coding-help-and-expect-research-before-asking &quot;10K link&quot;))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Hint: Software Engineering Stack Exchange doesn't do coding help and expect research before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, we at Software Engineering get a stream of troublesome questions from folks with linked accounts at Math.SE. One of them was kind enough to [explain why they get there](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7610/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another user, familiar with many other sites, even figured what could lead to such a [misconception](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi#comment22868_7610):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;This &quot;exchange&quot; is the undergraduate while &quot;overflow&quot; is the graduate level may because of the idea for Math vs MathOverflow and Physics vs PhysicsOverflow (not SE related) leaking into other domains. While I don't believe that that naming distinction needs to be fixed (nor can we do anything about it), being able to more promptly close (and delete) the debugging and blatantly off topic questions with a minimum of additional community moderation needed.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is sad to observe how many of them have fallen victims of this misunderstanding, getting their questions heavily voted down, closed and deleted. This includes even established users having over 1K rep at Math.SE ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/299572/given-a-integer-n-compute-nth-non-repeating-number &quot;10K link - user with 1.4K rep at Math asks very low quality question at Software Engineering&quot;), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/304765/31260 &quot;10K link - 1K Math rep user asks outright off-topic at Software Engineering&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things many Math.SE folks seem to miss when they try their luck at Software Engineering are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **coding and debugging help is off-topic** at Software Engineering.SE&#xD;&#xA;* it is generally expected of askers to **demonstrate research** they did before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading for those interested to learn more about Software Engineering.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Engineering Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is research important?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6559/31260)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or down voted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overview of CS and programming related sites at SE network:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-software-engineering-where-else-c&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26132" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7238" RevisionGUID="4464db9b-4f69-4e5e-875a-f946ca1e1cee" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My version...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is in the [history now](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/7238/revisions). Otherwise, it was just taking up space and confusing possible readers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26133" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7236" RevisionGUID="90af851d-8c8e-43be-9139-429a66bc8477" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per [recent discussion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7233/where-can-i-see-what-kind-of-questions-are-or-are-not-relevant-on-programmers#comment21595_7234 &quot;'write up a suggested edit as a meta question and one of us can make the edit'&quot;), I drafted some updates I'd like to have in [Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), section _not about..._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Added text is in **bold**, deleted is &lt;del&gt;crossed&lt;/del&gt;, and some links are added and changed (more details under the draft):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - &lt;del&gt;[what book you should read next](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488)&lt;/del&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career **or education** advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - legal assistance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Primary motivation for the change was to make things like in [Workplace Help Center](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), where items listed as off-topic are linked to respective detailed meta guidance. (Frankly, Workplace's page still looks more elegant and easier to read to me - ideas on how to further improve ours are welcome)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also replaced straight links to Workplace and Stack Overflow with &quot;safer&quot; references to [help/on-topic] pages of these sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also please pay attention that &quot;career advice&quot; link has changed from [older FAQ post](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590) to a [newer one](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488). (I felt fairly safe doing this since older FAQ is linked near the top in references section in newer one but I may be wrong)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per [discussion in comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7236/help-center-tuning-help-on-topic-and-it-is-not-about-references-to-meta#comment21598_7236), &quot;what book you should read next&quot; was deleted. _In exchange_ I inserted &quot;education&quot; into an item about career advice - as far as I can tell, this covers books and makes a closer match to linked meta guidance and to respective [predefined close reason](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5992/31260 &quot;'career or education advice'&quot;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26134" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8276" RevisionGUID="18b0c624-50f0-46f3-8323-f62974d28145" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Note: Most of this post was written before the [name change](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8266/96050) and I haven't changed to Software Engineering. I think that's appropriate, since I'm looking backward to when this site _was_ Programmers.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Note: This in response to [a comment by gnat on Meta Stack Exchange][1] asking for information regarding migrations to and from this site. It's being shared here since it may be of interest to the community.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wrote [a proposed philosophy of question migration](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/285467/1438). My thesis is that migration ought to be thought of as a convenience for the OP when they ask on the wrong site rather than a tool to manage content. Given there exists a [chatbot to detect _mentions_ of programmers.SE](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7154/96050) in order to deflect potential migration/crossposting, it seems to me that this site is particularly concerned about migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a baseline, here are some statistics for the entire history of the site going back to the very [first question asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/122955/96050):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Total Questions &#xD;&#xA;    --------------- &#xD;&#xA;    98768           &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Migrated Direction &#xD;&#xA;    -------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;     8900    out       &#xD;&#xA;    14484    in       &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Exported to:                      count  good &#xD;&#xA;    ------------                      -----  ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                  6482  6030 &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com         297   273  &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com        264   228  &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                       216   203  &#xD;&#xA;    security.stackexchange.com          173   171  &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                165   162  &#xD;&#xA;    meta.programmers.stackexchange.com  125   111  &#xD;&#xA;    dba.stackexchange.com               118   115  &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                103    97   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                 87    81   &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Imported from:                    count  good  &#xD;&#xA;    --------------                    ----- ----- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                 13828 11630 &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com        300   272   &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                        45    34    &#xD;&#xA;    serverfault.com                      40    32    &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                 31    28    &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                 31    19    &#xD;&#xA;    webmasters.stackexchange.com         27    16    &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com          26    22    &#xD;&#xA;    english.stackexchange.com            14    12    &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                 14    12    &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm just including at the top ten sites as there's a noticeable drop off in quantity after the top slot. As you can see, Programmers has received 5584 more questions from other sites (mostly Stack Overflow) than it has migrated away. A full 14% of the questions that have ever existed on this site began life on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But those all-time numbers hide an important story. Almost all of the migrations occurred before 2012: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Question migrations by year][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In recent years, Programmers has been a _net exporter_ of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Total Questions since         &#xD;&#xA;    --------------- ------------- &#xD;&#xA;    76426           2012-01-01 00:14:59&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Migrated Direction &#xD;&#xA;    -------- ---------&#xD;&#xA;    6629     out       &#xD;&#xA;    2307     in        &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Exported to:                       count good &#xD;&#xA;    ------------                       ----- ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                   3547 3116 &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com         151  118  &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com          128  104&#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                         68   59   &#xD;&#xA;    meta.programmers.stackexchange.com    63   51   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                  56   50   &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                  53   52   &#xD;&#xA;    dba.stackexchange.com                 48   45   &#xD;&#xA;    security.stackexchange.com            41   39   &#xD;&#xA;    unix.stackexchange.com                32   28   &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Imported from:                     count good &#xD;&#xA;    --------------                     ----- ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                    870  584  &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com         179  158  &#xD;&#xA;    serverfault.com                       23   16   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                  22   10   &#xD;&#xA;    webmasters.stackexchange.com           8    5    &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com            8    4    &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                   7    6    &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                   6    6    &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                          6    4    &#xD;&#xA;    webapps.stackexchange.com              4    3  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I picked January 1, 2012 because it's a handy cut off, not because of any particular event on the site. The quality of incoming questions has been respectable:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Migrated here Avg score Avg answers Avg comments Closure % Deletion % Avg age (days)&#xD;&#xA;    ------------- --------- ----------- ------------ --------- ---------- --------------&#xD;&#xA;             2307       6.0         2.6          3.5      14.3       16.0           32.3   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do remember votes from the source site are [reflected in the score](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/87031/1438). For instance, questions migrated from Stack Overflow to this site had an average score of 5.8 and 1.1 answers. So score might be less useful a measure of quality than the fact that these questions got new answers after migration and are [relatively](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7797/96050) less likely to get closed than organic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, fully a third of the questions migrated from Stack Overflow have been closed or deleted. We don't have an easy way to quantify _crossposted_ questions or questions asked at the prompting of misinformed commenters on another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/285467/a-proposed-philosophy-of-question-migration/285742#comment926949_285742&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Pp7bf.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26135" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6817" RevisionGUID="df520830-ed8c-4a5a-b1e4-d02003092a26" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I haven't interacted at all with that question (down votes or the too broad close vote).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My impressions of it are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Some meta stuff at the top.  This normally sets off a warning flag for me.  Things like &quot;I know this isn't the right place&quot; and the like tend to be questions that are otherwise problematic on the site.  Your particular meta comment was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Folks, there is no TL;DR version of my question. Please be patient.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Even if this isn't a post that *is* problematic, it sets one's mind to expect that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. A quick scroll down and I hit four code blocks, two of which have scroll bars on them.  This is something that then starts to *look* like one that is going to delve too far into code or fix my code/design type questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Many of the questions that tend to be &quot;here is a lot of code&quot; tend to get answers that are &quot;here is a lot of code too.&quot;  Those answers aren't ideal for P.SE, and so questions that ask them may get down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Where is the question?  After digging down a bit, they are between two code blocks.  The questions appear to be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    1. Is there another name for this pattern? &#xD;&#xA;    2. Is this really an Adapter?&#xD;&#xA;    3. So, does the compiler have no mechanism to check such semantic inconsistencies?&#xD;&#xA;    4. Something that looks like a design review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Asking multiple questions in a single post is problematic.  Someone could answer the &quot;another name&quot; question, and another answer the adapter one, and a third about the compiler.  None (or all) of them are 'right' for the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    While I may just be missing it... but I seem to have some difficulty matching the &quot;abstract stuff in C#&quot; in the question title to the questions being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. There's a naming question there.  Naming questions have a problematic history on P.SE - a bit more about that at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a lot there.  But I also have to read quite a bit to even find the question being asked and then go back and reread it.  And after that, I'm still confused about what question you are asking and what type of answer you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The mouseover for the the down vote reads &quot;this question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&quot; and that 'it is unclear' part may be something that people are voting on when reading the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some other bits that are in there from comments here and there...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@Doval, the site asks me to provide details and share my research. I did that. It is ridiculous that you guys vote down questions if they do not fit your mental models. Your lack of experience in working in teams and mentoring clearly shines through your comments. Gaining points on a forum is a completely different matter. Having the maturity to answer properly and with humility is a different matter altogether. –  msiyer yesterday&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@ Alex, I never mentioned anything about my breakfast. Oh! you were being sarcastic? Reserve your sarcasm for some other day. I would have asked small questions on StackOverflow. This is a site for detailed analysis. What does detailed mean? Please go and read the link I posted in my last comment. Guys, learn to respect others. The internet does not give you license to be rude. Just because you do not understand something does not mean there are not others who can provide some answers. This site provides me the license to showcase my research. Does that make any sense to you? –  msiyer yesterday&lt;/sub&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit rude in its wording.  Not enough that I'd go about flagging it... but it sets a negative tone and some people may vote accordingly.  If you are to point out that *other* people are being rude too (again, judgement call there) this is a question that you asked and people are voting on that (they may also be flagging comments, but that's not as obvious).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@Graham, Your comment is a good one and gentle too. I am not looking for a free code review. I just want to discuss if what i understood is proper. The attention span of these guys is just pathetic. They need questions that are couple of lines long so that they can answer fast and get points. This site is for detailed analysis as per FAQ. It also asks me to show my research. If I have to be concise I will post on StackOverflow. Why is this so difficult to comprehend? –  msiyer yesterday&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Setting aside the tone in this comment: &quot;I just want to **discuss** if what i understood is proper&quot; - [discussions don't work well on Stack Exchange](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6742/40980).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that you brought this up again in the meta question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;One guy also said that you are getting a free code review done here, so better get aligned to the rules laid down by the members. NO. I was not getting my code reviewed. I was trying to discuss something that troubles all beginners. Even if I was, I need not stoop and beg.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;@Bart, you answered properly. But when you say &quot;compiler writers have better things to do&quot;, it kind of kills discussion. But we surely discussed on Design patterns. I sincerely feel that the questions were not bad. May not be a world class problem but nothing silly about it. These are issues I have seen all beginners deal with. i hoped a discussion would help others to learn. –  msiyer 6 hours ago&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, Stack Exchange is not a site for discussions.  There are other avenues and sites to look at if you *are* interested in a discussion.  Stack Exchange is designed to handle Q&amp;A - not discussions.  It does the former very well and the latter very poorly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26136" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7891" RevisionGUID="a9d8aba0-c018-4cd2-99f7-f6c6332b34e3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As long as you focus on the design and not &quot;which tool is best for me?&quot; you should be fine. However, I recommend reading the following meta-posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###[Are Design Review questions on-topic?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Talks about the standards to meet for questions like this. [TL;DR][2]: keep it highly focused on one specific aspect of your program, with clear success criteria (a successful design must do X but not Y, as opposed to &quot;what is better?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Design review&quot; perhaps is more commonly associated with e.g. &quot;review my class diagram or description of what these classes do&quot; but also covers &quot;what technology should I leverage in this part of my program&quot; which often involves design aspects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic? - Requests for Recommendations?&quot;][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Resource requests, including &quot;what library or protocol should I use&quot; are off-topic. But libraries and protocols are fairly core to a discipline that pushes for code reuse and common interfaces. So if you focus on &quot;I need my program to communicate, with X and Y as design goals&quot; instead of &quot;recommend a library for me&quot; you should be fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Also, thank you for asking in meta first so we can help you ask a good question instead of going through a potentially frustrating experience with asking, downvoting, closing, editing, reopening, hopefully reversing downvotes, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6502&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tl%3Bdr&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26137" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7252" RevisionGUID="73275975-2b1a-4734-982c-e2db6210341b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just made some updates to https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/faq-index-for-programmers-se, adding some missing [meta-tag:faq] questions, mostly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that each of the questions in [meta-tag:faq] should have a link back to the index, similar to the links on MSE ([example](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8010/how-can-i-get-answers-fast)) and SO ([example](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/271542/why-wont-the-system-allow-me-to-ask-questions-for-several-days)). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this link should take the form:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;`[Return to FAQ index](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1646)`&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the bottom of the question post for each FAQ entry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't have edit privileges here and suggested edits are not allowed on [meta-tag:faq]. Presuming there are no objections to adding a FAQ index backlink to each entry, does somebody want to make these edits?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these changes are made, a note should probably be added to the end of the &quot;How can a question be added to this FAQ&quot; section at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1647/121251 as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26138" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6828" RevisionGUID="d74d2c38-cc9b-40c0-aa72-ae9fa705da12" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question can be answered with either &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot;.  Neither of those are good answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The ability to find an answer for this doesn't draw from expert knowledge of programmers, but rather that of regulators, lawyers, and [research librarians](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librarian#Positions_and_duties) (read the paragraph beginning with &quot;Reference or research librarians help people doing research to find the information they need&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The primary skills here are google-fu.  Furthermore, those who do not have access to something that isn't likely an [open standard](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard) can only say &quot;I can't find it if it is&quot; - also a poor answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As such, this question doesn't fit the Stack Exchange model for Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On P.SE, it would get closed as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(please read https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487 - the section beginning &quot;Asking for a link to something or statistics&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26139" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8429" RevisionGUID="f0d694df-46ea-4c28-9033-7bb5a9710926" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.040" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It is a bit late into this new year, being that we're already in the second month, but we are now cycling the Community Promotion Ads for 2017!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What are Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA; - cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA; - anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we reset the ads every year?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that if high DPI.&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB&#xD;&#xA; - If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently **6**) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/ads/display/8429" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26140" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7252" RevisionGUID="ce06e8c7-0789-4e02-89a8-fd5dc4d5c396" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just made some updates to https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/faq-index-for-programmers-se, adding some missing [meta-tag:faq] questions, mostly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that each of the questions in [meta-tag:faq] should have a link back to the index, similar to the links on MSE ([example](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8010/how-can-i-get-answers-fast)) and SO ([example](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/271542/why-wont-the-system-allow-me-to-ask-questions-for-several-days)). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this link should take the form:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;`[Return to FAQ index](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1646)`&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the bottom of the question post for each FAQ entry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't have edit privileges here and suggested edits are not allowed on [meta-tag:faq]. Presuming there are no objections to adding a FAQ index backlink to each entry, does somebody want to make these edits?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these changes are made, a note should probably be added to the end of the &quot;How can a question be added to this FAQ&quot; section at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1647/121251 as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26141" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7328" RevisionGUID="fb479489-a05a-46be-8944-39ccdccfefbd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently flagged an off-topic (implementation) [question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/280353/1) that was posted here with sole purpose to circumvent &quot;problem&quot; title block at Stack Overflow. I described the issue in [&quot;need of moderator intervention&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/254097/165773) kind of flag and got it declined with suggestion to &quot;just vote to close&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to better understand how to decide on whether to flag or not in cases like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* ['Problem' titles in off-topic questions of new users coming from Stack Overflow](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7221/31260)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; what's the point of wasting precious close votes on an issue essentially caused by some kind of a system &quot;leak&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Provide 10k users more close votes](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6508/31260)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **if you see someone that is very likely unable to ask questions on one site bringing the same poor quality here - flag it**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26142" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6846" RevisionGUID="2b15d368-c86b-468c-85aa-0efdfdfbf687" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This homework dump has been quickly deleted - [Problem : Valid Segments 1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254573/problem-valid-segments-1).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Consider text comprised of `blah blah`. Task is to find out `blah blah`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next day, it was slightly modified and reposted from different account - [Problem : Valid Segments 2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254641/valid-segments-2).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Consider text comprised of `blah blah`. Task is to find out `blah blah`. Participants submitting solutions in C language should `blah blah`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I [flagged](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6845/31260 &quot;as explained here&quot;) reposted dump for deletion. My flag was marked helpful but post wasn't deleted (I'd rather prefer opposite - flag decline, followed by deletion but oh well). About three hours after that, I flagged original dump, pointing out that it was reposted and referring repost in the flag message.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My flag, again, was marked helpful but the reposted dump, again, was kept hanging on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What would be the reason to keep the second dump instead of deleting it like it was done to first one?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26143" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7924" RevisionGUID="0ecd04b6-a768-454a-9e88-d290fbadda05" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Resource requests are explicitly [off-topic per the help center][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * where to find a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading: [Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - Requests for Recommendations?&quot;][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;The meta post goes into more detail explaining _why_ this is the case. Some of the important points summarized below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Stack Exchange is _timeless_. A question should be mostly valid years from now. In the context of Programmers, fundamental design and programming concepts change at a glacial pace. Sure, specific technology comes and goes, but those of us in the computer science and software engineering fields for a decade or longer know that some hot new technology comes up every day, but by and large, the fundamentals that underpin our career field really do not change day to day. The lessons in [Working Effectively with Legacy Code][3] are as applicable today as they were in 2004 when [Michael Feathers][4] wrote the book because he focuses on techniques and high-level concepts. Only the details about specific libraries and tools have changed over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This puts the following points into the proper context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Resource requests are asking for specific resources that are relevant to the broader concepts. Links to tutorials and blogs can stagnate: if you want a Python tutorial for the particular concept you are trying to learn, it can grow out of date. Could you imagine stumbling across your question years later when Python 6 is all the rage, and ye olde Python 3 code is considered legacy technology that programmers grumble about maintaining just like we do with COBOL today? This is the core reason why this site focuses on _conceptual_ problems that age well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Stack Exchange is designed to be a place where people can get answers for their questions, not as a thinly-veiled search engine where questions are answered with links to outside resources. We have Google for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Answers are encouraged to link to outside resources, but an answer must stand on its own. Links can vanish or move. Then a link-only answer is useless, even if it is voted up to +100. Note that I opened this answer with two links, but provided a bit of explanation. This is regardless of the fact those links should never vanish unless this answer does as well (i.e. someone made Programmers.SE go away).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    From the [help center][5]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Links to external resources are encouraged, but please add context&#xD;&#xA;&gt; around the link so your fellow users will have some idea what it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and why it’s there. Always quote the most relevant part of an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; important link, in case the target site is unreachable or goes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; permanently offline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thomas mentioned Stack Exchange's two resource recommendation sites, for software and hardware. Those are special: such questions are on-topic there. However, requesting links to blogs, tutorials, etc. are off-topic at both. Both sites have _very_ strict requirements for what constitutes an on-topic question. As always, view a site's help center and poke around its meta (like you did here) for a bit before asking just to be sure. It makes for a better experience for everyone involved, and helps keep the signal to noise ratio high.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.amazon.com/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Michael-Feathers/dp/0131177052&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://michaelfeathers.silvrback.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26144" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7388" RevisionGUID="273e1d82-0de0-4657-9ec3-bf96711ab0e6" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the continuing effort to clean up our image and the historical pathways that people find Programmers.SE (in the spirit of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7166/update-introducing-programmers-blog-to-reflect-site-scope-change ) I would point to [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This blog post features the text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But software and programming isn’t always a hard science, either. Once you get past the does this code compile or not questions, you’re dealing with issues of best practices, experiences, and behaviors. Perhaps because our communities have become so accustomed to getting quick, accurate, and timely answers, they feel that even a subjective Stack Overflow is better than the alternatives. So much so, that our fellow programmers created [a sister site specifically for their pent up subjective questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/). Take one heaping pile of subjective questions, bottle it up for over two years and… kablooey!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![stats][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The [programmers.stackexchange.com](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/) site exploded overnight, hosting some of the best (and worst) questions on the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and then further down:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can expect to see these guidelines enforced on programmers.stackexchange.com over the next week or so, and made policy network-wide, wherever subjectivity is part of the site topic itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's the question to consider. Would a person reading that understand what the scope of Programmers.SE as it is today is intended to be? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, we are *not* a place for subjective discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest putting in an &quot;editor's note&quot; to the effect that Programmers.SE is the place for *conceptual* questions of software design and architecture and while this does stray into the softer side of answers, it is certainly not the place for subjective discussions that the site was when it was 29 days old. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S.  Your links to &quot;The chat room/forum problem (&amp; an apology to @Technosailor)&quot; are dead.  The new link is http://scobleizer.com/?p=5980&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/wp-content/uploads/programmers-se.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26145" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7979" RevisionGUID="fbdf2d3b-7165-4be5-8875-e44744f61255" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[I know](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7930/if-the-scope-is-wrong-which-of-these-questions-belong-here) [about](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7974/is-asking-about-funny-related-topics-on-topic) [all](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7947/can-we-resuscitate-more-content) [of](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7904/can-i-ask-my-question-in-programmers-stackexchange-com) the [meta-tag:discussion] [about](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7876/regarding-the-one-return-only-question) what's [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), but I wanted to ask this question about [a specific question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/308503/201219), to satisfy my [wonder](http://codereview.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question in question: [Handling exceptions I don't know about](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/308503/201219).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a pretty Python-specific question, because Python is almost unusual among programming languages in its use of [Exception Handling](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_handling) for control flow where most other languages use it as a last resort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is asking, essentially:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's the best / most Pythonic way to structure this exception-driven control flow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some example code is provided, and an (apparently) objective answer or two was supplied.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My confusion arises from the fact that this question, if augmented with a little more Real Implementation Code,&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; would be *perfectly* on-topic on [Code Review](http://codereview.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that Programmers deals in the immaterialistic theories and misty, pure methodologies of programming, while CR deals in the application of the stated theories and methods against real code in real problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also seems to me that these two intents are inherently at odds for content; something posted on one site must not be a good fit for the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question in question is arguably more about the actual specific code than the methodologies and theories behind it, so:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**TL;DR**: Why's this question on-topic and accepted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1: Good, on-topic CR questions have real, tangible, working code that can be reviewed in an objective manner, not just *examples*, which is the cause for the note.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26146" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7397" RevisionGUID="c2115226-1919-4040-b225-124d1b365e4d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This would be instantly closed. Please see the Meta question [Why was my question closed or down voted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483/), especially the points [Off Topic: What technology to take up next](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6486/) and [Off Topic: Recommend a tool, library, or other](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While your metrics try to make the question objective, such recommendation questions are still ill-suited for Programmers.SE. Also, your metrics fail to provide an objective framework since nearly each metric is highly subjective, and the relation of metrics to each other is not defined – if a language ranks high on speed and low on productivity, is this better than a language that ranks medium on both axes?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26147" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7985" RevisionGUID="c61e883a-cd7b-4658-bb36-9a11995c5db2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Looks pretty valid to me. Knowing the history of [NPR-to-Programmers][1], programmers is quite a candidate-for-worst-name at the moment. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe a NotProgrammingButConceptRelated name could be fine. Of course, it should not be switched back to NotProgrammingRelated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26148" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7991" RevisionGUID="137efb3e-3772-4ec2-b908-287bb17af17f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My [Question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/313790/which-languages-allow-to-mix-its-source-code-with-c-source-code) was closed as unclear. It was not really bad from the beginning but some people still did not understand what I meant. Maybe because they were not familar with the example I made. But I still got two (from three) answers from people who understood my question. Then the question was put on hold and I tried to refine it more. To my astonishment it was closed. Still I have refined it even more to make it as precise as possible.  And I have also flagged it two times with the notice that there is no reason for keeping it closed. The moderators didn't care for it. I feel there is nothing more that I can do except asking here about help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is not a duplicate of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7537/why-do-some-examples-and-list-of-things-questions-get-closed as this a absolutely different topic. Also my question is not too broad because hybrid compilation is a very uncommon topic. My question is only about hybrid compilation regarding standard C++ on Windows/Mac OS. It is a question about how it is possible." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26149" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7450" RevisionGUID="b57c23a6-6827-4ed0-b7f9-656e77ad5279" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Ummm.... this question was titled with [tag:work-environment]. What happened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@ThomasOwens merged [tag:work-environment] into [tag:development-environment], which now needs a second pass from the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've done a lot of great work in the cleanup of the [tag:development-environment] (and [tag:work-environment]) tag, but it has become complicated enough that we need to handle the work in its own question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The major things that need to happen are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [Close, lock and/or edit the remaining open questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7451/88986)&#xD;&#xA; 2. [Burninate the tag from existing closed questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7452/88986)&#xD;&#xA; 3. [Burninate / replace the tag from closed, **locked** questions, which are obviously more complicated and require moderator involvement.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7453/88986)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please see the answers for progress on these three separate goals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For reference, also see current [tag wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/development-environment/info):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about the environment in which software development happens. This includes the hardware, software, and processes and methodologies used. Questions are expected to be unique to software development and require the expertise of people with education or experience in the field of software development." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26150" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7258" RevisionGUID="1157f579-f80c-4495-bdf4-88f20577a072" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[In this question, I had a disagreement with the original asker about whether a legal advice / software licensing question is on topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/277688/88986). *I now think that I was wrong when I voted to close originally, but that's a bit beside the point...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Context: Here's the help center about what's on topic (abbeviated):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - ...&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***and it is not about...***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - ...&#xD;&#xA; - legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to see the [tag:faq] on this issue improved some. There is enough potential overlap between **software licensing** and **legal advice or aid** that the relevant faq question should address this distinction explicitly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- So we have this faq question:&#xD;&#xA;  - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;- We also have this non faq question (which perhaps should be promoted to [tag:faq], or merged with the previous question): &#xD;&#xA;  - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can we add some clarity to the **faq guidelines** on this issue? Thank you @Ixrec for your answer about what is and what is not on topic, but some digging (see above) has shown this topic has come up before. This question is about **how should we change the faq** so that less digging needs to be done, and we can have a canonical answer on the subject." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26151" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7487" RevisionGUID="be0ec0ba-7cb8-4290-8b07-af03a8800f7d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There was [a post from July 2014 that was partially completed][1], but the tags [tag:coding-style] (543) and [tag:coding-standards] (329) still exist. They appear to be very similar. Should these tags be merged? If so, how?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6777/tag-merge-synonym-request-coding-standards" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26152" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6851" RevisionGUID="005c0a52-a65c-477b-b03f-d53847809fbc" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I failed a review audit for [Cleanest way to report errors in Haskell][1]. I responded by voting to close it as &quot;primarily opinion based.&quot; I understand that answering an occasional review incorrectly [will not hurt][2], that is not my concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I out of line for believing that question should be closed as being primarily opinion-based, despite the seven upvotes? The asker outlines three different ways to deal with errors, and basically asks &quot;what would you do?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/252977/cleanest-way-to-report-errors-in-haskell&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6625/i-just-failed-an-audit-but-i-was-right-and-it-was-wrong-what-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26153" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8056" RevisionGUID="c6e66a08-b2c0-427e-8929-fedeb7f08ee2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="From [Ana, a Stack Exchange Community Manager][1] in [the previous question about changing the site name][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It took us a good while, but the Community Team has circled up and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; here's where we stand on your request to change Programmers.SE's name.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###We agree that renaming this site is a good idea.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Programmers&quot; is an affinity group, whereas &quot;Software Architecture&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (for example) is an action and a discipline. It is entirely possible&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that changing the site's name will send clearer signals and prime new&#xD;&#xA;&gt; users to ask questions more consistently in line with what y'all would&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be proud to see and answer, particularly given where this site’s scope&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has solidified over the past few years.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; _So yes, we're open to proceeding with a name change._ That said, we'll need to make sure the change makes the kind of difference you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; want it to, because we can't repeat this process again several years&#xD;&#xA;&gt; down the line. We gotta get it right _this_ time. Last time the site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was renamed, the scope was very much still in flux; by now, hopefully&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you can identify much more precisely _what this site is about_ and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; commit to both a name _and_ description _and_ introductory materials&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that communicate this body of knowledge clearly and succinctly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Here's what the Community Team needs before we can move forward:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. **Tell us what you're proposing as the new site name.**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    &quot;Software Engineering&quot; and &quot;Software Architecture&quot; both look like&#xD;&#xA;&gt; good options from where I stand. Let’s not turn this into a bikeshed&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion; we need well-considered options here, not a popularity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; contest - Coffee McWhiskeyface is right out. The ideal name will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest _at a glance_ what this site is about, without suggesting that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it might be “fix my code” even a little bit.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. **Lay out what the [new site scope](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) will be.**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    Above all else, **the scope needs to be simple**. Seriously. No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gerrymandering - **it needs to be easy for any new visitor who bothers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to read** and even mildly pays attention to what they're reading to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; know what they can and cannot ask about here. Eliminate ambiguity for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a first time poster once and for all.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Let's talk again in a month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start answering the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What should our site name be?&#xD;&#xA;* What should [our tour][3] say? Specifically, the first paragraph below the site title that begins with &quot;Programmers Stack Exchange is a question and answer site...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* What should our [Help Center's on-topic page][4] say about what is on and off-topic? Note that what this site is about and not about also does appear on the tour.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/106878/ana?tab=profile&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7935/4&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26154" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7293" RevisionGUID="434ec9d7-7ad4-4034-bbde-86da4877d1a4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Postponed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:legal] [tag:law] [tag:copyright] [tag:software-patent] [tag:patents] [tag:proprietary] [tag:foss] [tag:trademark] [tag:intellectual-property]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:eula] [tag:terms-of-service] &#xD;&#xA;- [tag:gpl] [tag:lgpl] [tag:agpl] [tag:mit-license] [tag:bsd-license] [tag:apache-license] [tag:mpl] [tag:ms-pl] [tag:creative-commons] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Legal / licensing questions are generally difficult to clean up because some questions are legitimately on-topic here. See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this reason, we have decided to postpone these tags as being the active ones, though readers of this answer are welcome to make appropriate edits, tag removals and close votes as normal. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions [tagged both legal and licensing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[licensing]+[legal]+closed%3Ano) may have nothing to do with legal matters and therefore need just deletion of the inappropriate tag. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26155" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7498" RevisionGUID="86243631-935d-48d9-b200-1f31cefdd755" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Currently the [on-topic page][1] reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out The Workplace instead)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  how to use specific tools  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  what language/technology you should learn next, including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  what project you should do next  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  where to find a software library, tool or other resource  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  product or service recommendations  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  career or education advice, salary, or compensation   &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; activities  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;the &quot;where to find a software library, tool or other resource&quot; line could be expanded to include tutorials and books explicitly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know they are covered under the &quot;other resource&quot; line but it's better to have it explicit. Maybe link to the [meta discussion about it.][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26156" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6855" RevisionGUID="ab3f595a-8fc4-4254-94f0-445a2527a065" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Update Sep 4, 2014** - as of now, _recommendations_ and _suggestions_ tags appear empty - there are neither regular ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/recommendations), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/suggestions)) nor locked ([3](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[recommendations]+locked%3Ayes), [4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=[suggestions]+locked%3Ayes)) questions there anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Prior content of the answer is below.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As pointed in [comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6738/recommendations-tag-burn-edit-blacklist-or-kill-one-by-one/6855#comment18527_6738), currently there are only three questions tagged recommendations. In these questions, tag removal requires moderator intervention, because historical lock doesn't even allow a regular user flag these:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25432/how-can-a-new-programmer-impress-the-software-engineer-boss  &#xD;&#xA;this question has recommendations as the only tag; could be retagged to [tag:new-job]&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10675/ideal-programming-language-learning-sequence&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49003/which-online-hosted-bug-tracking-tool-do-you-use-for-your-own-work-and-projects&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we're at it, let's also blacklist [tag:recommendations] twin tag - [tag:suggestions] - it's empty now and would be great if it never gets used again. Just like [recommendations](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/537/31260), it's a meta tag:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...It doesn't categorize the question's content, and it cannot stand on its own without other tags.  It should therefore be removed.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26157" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7307" RevisionGUID="e468e68a-ee6f-46f9-84f4-5bcc78ced336" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[tag:books]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These tags appear to be resource requests or asking for educational information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26158" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="892900fa-7307-4756-be42-f0252c02ffdf" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Welcome&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Software Engineering** is a question and answer site for people involved in the [Systems Development Life Cycle][1] who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly. We don't address questions about debugging code or how to use specific tools in software development. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&amp;A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ask About&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the systems development life cycle&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Don't Ask About&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- writing or debugging code&#xD;&#xA;- support for software tools or packages&#xD;&#xA;- what to read, learn, buy or use&#xD;&#xA;- legal advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a question and answer site for people involved in the [Systems Development Life Cycle][1] who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software development [methods and practices][2]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [requirements engineering][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][4] and [design][5]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm) and [data structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [quality assurance and testing][6]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [configuration][7], [build][8] and [release][9] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][7] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][8]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][9].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][2] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10]. We have [a curated FAQ on our Meta site][11]. You can also check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][12].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26159" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7502" RevisionGUID="d635fc0e-995f-439e-ae83-a6d83a7ade22" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Post 7499][1] outlines the problems the questions cause. Despite this,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* they reflect a real and highly important need of the technical crowd, so they will never stop coming&#xD;&#xA;    * thus, unless we want to alienate users who have those needs and make them look for answers elsewhere, we must invent a way to address those needs, _somehow,_ in a manner consistent with SE's mission to disseminate knowledge, here or elsewhere&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This post outlines the possible remedies suggested.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _Enforce the &quot;Good subjective&quot; principle:_ require an asker to specify what exact problem they need to solve with the information from a book (get an overview, compare, learn how to complete a specific task(s)), and an answerer to specify how exactly that book will address those needs.&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes 1)&#xD;&#xA;    * partially fixes 2): a degree of uncleanness remains in any case&#xD;&#xA;* _Maintain topic overview articles_ (a wiki page/canonical answer) containing book references, among other things&#xD;&#xA;    * intended to fix 3) but a solution to make it &quot;endorsed by the system&quot; and visible to potential askers is most unclear.&#xD;&#xA;    * is part or a larger problem of users getting little to no rep for updating existing info. This matter warrants a separate discussion&#xD;&#xA;    * canonical answers are [used successfully at Server Fault][2]. &#xD;&#xA;        * [some do recommend books][3]&#xD;&#xA;        * in their case, it helps that enterprise sysadmins deal with a rather limited set of topics&#xD;&#xA;* _Find another &quot;sewer drain&quot; to offload those questions into,_ like general questions were once drained here from StackOverflow&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes everything here; the &quot;drain&quot; will have to deal with all this instead&#xD;&#xA;        * We'll still have an inflow of users asking this here (and getting answers!) regardless of the fact the questions get closed ([heck, even SO users think these are appropriate _per se!_][4])&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57383/the-fourth-place-polling-recommendations-and-subjective-ish-stuff discusses this matter. The conclusion is that the current SE model isn't good for this format&#xD;&#xA;    * The primary candidate is [Software Recommendations Stack Exchange][5] that is currently in beta. Book recommendations aren't any different from software recommendations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that nothing will fix 4) as long as the current &quot;an answer solves the problem by itself&quot; paradigm stays unshaken. Experience from the communities like Travel.SE that somehow managed to cope with matters that are by their nature incomplete and subjective, may help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7499/108337&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.serverfault.com/questions/1986/what-are-the-canonical-answers-weve-discovered-over-the-years&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://serverfault.com/questions/476918/what-data-center-room-routine-maintenance-tasks-should-be-done&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31438006/how-do-i-start-migration-to-hadoop&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26160" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6864" RevisionGUID="280f162a-176a-4c47-89db-dba053d5add0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question should be added to the tour of programmers.stackexchange.com IMHO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every programmer coming on the site tries to know what's the difference with stackoverflow, where to go on one or the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not linking to the question, at least the reasoning should be shown somewhere. Right now, only when searching on meta can we find the reason." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26161" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7669" RevisionGUID="c4ec0ac7-f00a-4ae1-8fca-f370731f9bd7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The first option, while not optimal, is trivial to do.  Go to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/151256/ahmad?tab=responses and page through them one at a time and read them. It works and doesn't require any additional hoops. I've even done this for myself at times to find things, and I have 89 pages of responses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also poke at http://data.stackexchange.com/ and write some SQL.  http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/376067/484421/ will pull back all comments on posts by a given user id - for you this is likely enough as there are only 121 rows. While the current version http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/376067/484422 has a keyword in there too which can be used to filter.  Your user id is `151256` (you can see it in the URL for your profile &lt;code&gt;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/151256/ahmad&lt;/code&gt; )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For what its worth, there is only one comment that exists on any of your posts that has the word 'book' in it - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Why algorithms textbook are more procedure-oriented?&quot; Java is also procedure-oriented. Java is an object oriented procedural language. – Pieter B Feb 6 at 8:01  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/272298/relation-between-object-orientation-and-algorithms#comment556547_272298)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Extending the query to find comments on answers to questions that a given user posted is left as an exercise to the reader." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26164" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7696" RevisionGUID="27a19035-f40b-4093-903c-52d1800c5db3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Currently, questions on [Big-Oh][1] are on-topic on the Programmers main site because they fall under &quot;[algorithm and data structure concepts][2].&quot; Does the community feel that these questions should continue to be on-topic, or should we change them to be off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Arguments for being on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* These questions are fairly harmless, easy to answer, and there are not a lot of them asked. They do not detract from the focus of the site, and people will ask them anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* There is no migration path to [Computer Science][3] where they are also on-topic, meaning we would need to deal with more moderator flags to migrate or create another open migration path which is additional effort. The status quo is the path of least resistance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Arguments for being off-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* While sites can and do overlap, [Computer Science][3] allows these questions. Being a more academic topic, it may be more appropriate there. Now that CS is out of beta, it is a more permanent target for these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* There is a canonical wiki locked question [What is O(…) and how do I calculate it?][4] which is a dupe target for many Big-Oh questions. _New questions do not really ask anything new_. Big-Oh is essentially a dead topic as far as new questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Many if not most of these questions are uninteresting [homework questions][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/big-o&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/132331&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6166" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26165" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8091" RevisionGUID="5553ef95-4413-4910-8e5f-9b47fb991267" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Short answer: most probably not (I would expect the community on Programmer's to close it). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact an old question from 2011 was not closed so far should not bring you to the conclusion that the same question would be still on-topic today. The site and it's scope has changed since then. Today, general questions (like questions about service contracts, or how to negotiate them) which are not specifically about conceptual software development are typically closed quickly by the community here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, the site will probably be renamed in future, and its scope description be more focused, read [this meta post][1] to inform yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8056/new-site-name-and-scope-proposals" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26166" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7437" RevisionGUID="30dbd886-268f-4088-8b18-2781af1265e5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've [expounded on locked questions before](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7404/40980) and mentioned that these often age poorly. If something *is* to be locked, especially today, it should have some amount of moderation and curation done. These are things that we should be putting in museums as questions that can produce good quality and we should aspire to (&quot;see, look, we can have good material on very soft questions if people act to moderate and keep the quality up&quot;) rather than things we want to lock away and forget.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this, I really have to ask about why http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8104/how-many-developers-actually-have-private-offices was locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question had 4 delete votes on it (6 needed total for it based on votes and popularity).  It was locked.  And... well... if it is something that we should be keeping around (I don't believe so - that's why one of those delete votes is mine), before it is locked it should be evaluated for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Poor quality and negatively scored posts should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;* Too chatty / not constructive comments should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;* Tags that are part of a burnination process should be removed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What really gets me here is that this question really is just a poll with one answer that is reasonable (but doesn't answer the poll question) and 23 answers that are &quot;I've got an office&quot; or &quot;I have an open plan.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel that this type of question - old polls - really doesn't age well and isn't indicative of what good quality on the site should be.  It is exactly the watercooler conversation type thing and getting to know you that the six subjective guidelines were put in place to prevent. That it hasn't been seen much and there are no in bound links from other questions on Programmers.SE suggests that it really isn't that valuable of a post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This type of question is the type of thing that a [Slashdot poll](http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl) (for example [do you need to wear headphones while working](http://it.slashdot.org/poll/2669/do-you-need-headphones-while-working)) does better than a Q&amp;A format site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I cannot flag [the post](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/8104/how-many-developers-actually-have-private-offices) (its locked), and this question wouldn't fit into a flag text, please either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Unlock the post so that it may continue with the normal lifecycle of a post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Delete all poor quality material (I believe this would be 'all posts other than the accepted answer' - or first and third if you stretch it a bit), remove the burnination tags ([tag:jobs] and [tag:job-title] are both in [the current round](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7287/40980)), and rework the body of the question so that it isn't a poll and is answered exactly by the accepted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26167" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7795" RevisionGUID="2ee85a6b-65cb-4407-a3a4-330022a62366" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was involved in both of these questions... so here we go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both of these questions delve quite far into natural language programming.  I had a college class that touched on this for a week (as part of a general survey of AI) and this is the type of thing that really is the subject of semester long classes, heavy books, and research papers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This brings us to the first point you have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The OP isn't going to understand the answer anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Elsewhere I wrote](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important) on the importance of including what you know.  Neither of the questions included shows that if we were to go to the NLP level of trying to answer the question - word taxonomies, part of speech identification, we'd find ourselves [writing a tutorial for one of the libraries out there](http://nlp.stanford.edu/software/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Writing one of these from scratch, you would need to show that you have at least a handle of the scope of the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the question with joke similarity said that edit distance *wasn't* a valid solution (though it *did* work for the material provided in the question) it leaves the door wide open for &quot;how do you solve two jokes being similar?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The similarity between two sentences question doesn't even show that the OP is familiar with the domain, and again, is either asking someone to write a tutorial for a python NLP library or is looking to write this from scratch.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Putting the entirety of [Natural language processing: an introduction](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3168328/) into an answer isn't helpful to people (and it doesn't fit) - this is something that can be found by searching.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers that we give will either be too high level to be useful to the OP, ***way*** too technical (until the OP clarifies the question to show that they *are* capable of handling that technical level), repeating tutorials that can be trivially found by searching, or don't even fit in the space allotted for an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that the following answer would 'answer' both questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You will need to:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; *  do sentence boundary detection which also identifies abbreviations and titles (so that &quot;I watched Dr. Who last night.&quot; isn't two sentences).  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * do tokenization of words and ideas (so that &quot;5 miles/day&quot; is one token as is &quot;2,6-diaminohexanoic&quot;)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Identify the part of speech of the word including homographs and gerunds  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * decompose compound words, possibly doing lemmatization to reduce a word to its root by removing its suffix  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * chunk the text into phrases&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Once this is complete, you will need to identify if there are any grammatical or spelling errors.  For jokes this is especially problematic as they may depend on puns and the error recovery will either mangle the sentence or render it unable to be parsed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Following that, you will need to do named entity recognition which identifies the various people, places, locations, and other categories of nouns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless you are familiar with linguistics and some computation, thats really not a useful answer for anyone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key decider for me when looking at something that is too broad it has the following two points:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The high level answer isn't useful&#xD;&#xA; * The low level answer isn't specified&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its clear what the general problem is, but the focus of the problem needs to be narrowed. Are you having trouble with the sentence boundary recognition? With the part of speech tagging? Chunking phrases? Identifying the name in the syntax tree?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions, given that the OP knows what they are asking about, are really easy to fix. The OP goes in and modifies the question to say &quot;I am having a problem recognizing if this noun phrase is similar to that noun phrase.&quot;  But the question of &quot;explain NLP to me&quot; which is at this time, the current written core question to both posts is something that falls into the &quot;high level not useful&quot; area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without the specification, these questions morph from one form to another as the OP gets a slightly better idea of what they are asking about and then refines the question again, and again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I hope I am never asked to try to figure out if one telling of The Aristocrats is the same as another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm also going to point out that the Jokes question is a also literature request:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can anyone point me in the direction of useful literature?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A [google scholar search for plagiarism detection](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;q=plagiarism+detection&amp;btnG=&amp;as_sdt=1%2C50&amp;as_sdtp=) comes back with 26,000 results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And while this is easily edited out, it again points to the unfocused and too broad nature of the question. I have no idea if any of those are what the OP wants, or are at the level that the OP is able to understand. Providing that material for me to be able to properly answer the question is something that the OP needs to do in each case - I can't guess about that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26168" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8103" RevisionGUID="f963224f-1b3d-4588-8051-128024a9a35f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Folks still ask for where they find it after 3 years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think above is generally a [valid concern](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/123386/165773 &quot;for the reasons discussed in details here&quot;). However some system limitations make it rather slippery to use popularity and historical interest as an _ultimate_ criteria on deciding whether to keep such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is, visual difference between &quot;normal&quot; and [historically locked](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;) questions is not really as prominent as it may seem to experienced users. I recall seeing at meta references to examples when inexperienced users didn't notice the differences and thought that these are normal, legitimate questions, [&quot;Why can't I ask X when Y exists?&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/broken-windows)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are essentially forced to decide whether &quot;harm to the Internet&quot; - link rot caused by deletion of particular question - outweighs the harm of it hanging in here and making a broken window for inexperienced users (who sometimes simply can't see / understand what historical lock means).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why historical interest alone doesn't determine whether question gets a historical lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's worth noting that so far suggestions to create and maintain some kind of an &quot;outcast&quot; / &quot;museum&quot; site for questions of historical interest were declined by Stack Exchange team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More generally, all suggestions to help community maintain historical questions known to me were either declined or ignored by SE team. Even when such suggestions require almost no effort and are apparently no risk / no harm, these are ignored (for example setting pink background when rendering historically locked posts [proposed here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7828/31260)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Set up an archive for legendary deleted questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73226/165773) (at MSE)&#xD;&#xA;* [Recent Trouble With Popularity](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(sort of a follow up) [Your comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8100/why-do-you-value-the-opinion-of-moderators-more-than-community-upvotes/8103#comment25141_8103) indicate a belief that inappropriate questions are harmless:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;need proof that suppressing these questions actually make the site rot, i.e. humorous questions starting to make a trend, because those questions exist in the first place. Without that maybe it's the case of suppressing a harmless thing because of valuing &quot;fear&quot; instead of &quot;evidence&quot;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a closer look at this site history [described here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/102937) you may find out that it is most likely not so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is, first few years such questions were allowed at Stack Overflow where they coexisted with &quot;boring&quot; programming questions. Fun questions were popular, entertaining, brought a lot of views and site visits. Now ask yourself a question, **if these were indeed harmless, why would they want to &quot;outsource&quot; them to a separate site (NPR)?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody in their sane mind would get rid of content that brings views and visits if it is harmless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I bet Stack Overflow creators would be happy to keep these questions on-site if (**if**) these weren't causing harm. The very fact that they moved it to a separate site (NPR) makes a very strong indication that these were indeed considered harmful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In case if you wonder about what specifically could make SO creators believe that there is harm consider taking a look at the canonical article explaining these matters - [The Trouble With Popularity](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we discovered that these posts become so popular over time that they truly start to drown out everything else on the site...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. **Broken windows.** Every 'fun' post users see is an open invitation for them to participate in the fun by adding *their own* fun question or answer. The stuff spreads like [kudzu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu)! Pretty soon the entire site is overrun with nothing but that kind of fun. And even if you grandfather a few in, you'll enjoy neverending requests asking why *their* fun question or answer has to be removed, while *this one over here* is allowed to remain.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;2. **Opportunity cost.** Every minute spent participating in an entertaining 'fun' post is time that someone could have spent asking or answering a substantive question, something practical that solves an *actual problem* for hundreds or thousands of people. Entertainment, within reason, is by no means a bad thing -- but I experience almost physical pain when I think about a brilliant topic expert spending 10 minutes on one of our sites deciding which hilarious cartoon is their favorite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is quite a solid evidence that Stack Exchange Q&amp;A model turned out poor in supporting &quot;pure fun&quot; kind of questions. They tried to keep these along with serious questions, they also tried to keep them at separate site... &quot;Sadly, it didn't work out.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26169" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7832" RevisionGUID="62fb8c30-26e3-458a-834f-39c36faf190b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; well, can it be reopened, because I think that there can be great answers? Now it's not off-topic. What do I need to do to be less to-broad, but still on topic? --[Josip Ivic](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7829/why-is-question-about-critical-embedded-software-for-nuclear-reactors-on-hold#comment23756_7830)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to make it so that the question isn't a poll. There is no one answer to this. Siemens may have written code in C, and then C++, and looked at using Java but stuck with C++.  The Navy may have mandated that Bechtel used Ada while Westinghouse write it in assembly for a custom microprocessor for which Ada wasn't an option, and who knows about Combustion Engineering or General Election which *also* made reactors for the US Navy (and that is just one navy - there are other nuclear powered naval vessels run by other countries).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The certification requirements for a civilian reactor in one country may differ from that in another and those may either mandate specific languages, or it is the case that specific languages make it easier to meet the requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This goes to the core of the 'too broad' - there are too many possible answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tangential part to all of this is that unless someone has specific in house knowledge (and that is not restricted by an NDA or other security clearance aspect), you won't get an answer beyond what is specified in the various certification requirements (which you can find with google). Your best course of action is to do the leg work and find out who makes the various reactors and ask their public spokesperson for information - that will get you a better answer than anyone here can give you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26170" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7440" RevisionGUID="6bcf8211-be45-48a2-9419-72a777ef3b31" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**TL;DR** Suggest to [undelete the question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7438/31260) since it was edited to a better shape and made match the top answer. After that, remove &quot;poll item&quot; answers invalidated by the question edit and reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that in its current shape the question staying visible is not okay, even as historically locked. Low quality &quot;historical context&quot; seems to totally obscure worthy content in there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, it looks like a blatant poll, followed by multiple useless poll item &quot;answers&quot; (including even a [different question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/11110 &quot;blatant not-an-answer: 'Is there any software company in the US besides Microsoft and FogCreek Software which provides private offices for software engineers?'&quot;) posted as an answer) so that most readers could only wonder what was the reason to keep it at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that it looks like an exceptional case for question to be so much overwhelmed with bad content. All other historical questions I recall _do_ have bad stuff (otherwise there'd be no lock), but good parts in these are prominent enough and readers don't have to guess why these were decided to keep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With above in mind, our options seem to be as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1\.** Delete. Easy way out, the one I wanted before I stumbled over this meta question, but now, upon closer studying of the [top answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8203/31260) I am not quite comfortable about it anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2\. Unlock the question, retag to [tag:productivity] (to clear all issues related to ongoing tag cleanups), then pick one of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.1\.** Add a moderator comment referring to [this meta discussion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7437/31260), so that readers interested in historical context could discover it without having to stare at all 20+ low quality answers over there. After that, remove all answers except the top one, then lock it back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.2\.** [Aggressively edit](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1820/168) the question to bring it to better shape, worrying only about keeping consistency with top answer, about like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;So I know everyone here is all about private offices, how many developers actually have them. I am sort of half skeptical. I can believe that lead developers have them, but that's normally just one person in your average office.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;That makes me wonder, how many developers have private offices. Which leads to the actual question: why should they have them?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question [edit summary](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/edit-summary/info &quot;what's this&quot;) would better refer this meta discussion to help readers of edit history find out what led to the radical change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the edit, remove all answers that fail to match the revised question (as far as I can tell, these would be all except for the top answer), then reopen. Side note an edit drafted above would also &quot;trigger&quot; removal of the opening sentence from the top answer (&quot;I think the question should be...&quot;) but that's rather minor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Advantage of #2.1 is that it guarantees that worthy content is preserved. In comparison, 2.2 carries a (rather minor) risk that edited question will be eventually closed again and deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Advantage of #2.2 is that it doesn't introduce deviation of our usual practice to avoid cleanup prior to locking - since it doesn't involve locking at all. (that practice is in turn based on common sense - if you do cleanup anyway, it's only reasonable to improve content up to the point when it doesn't need locking at all)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for #1 (delete), it looks really inferior in comparison. It only doesn't deviate from our locking practices, but so does #2.2, which additionally offers a solid chance of preserving worthy content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that risk involved in #2.2 is minor, it looks like most appealing option." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26171" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6886" RevisionGUID="7ce0bee6-a525-47f9-a8e9-1a22314bf9a2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While pondering upon today's [usual license shopping request](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/256092/31260 &quot;here my requirements, recommend a license&quot;) I discovered this old question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[How can I compare and contrast open source licenses?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/120308/31260)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it make sense to make above a [canonical duplicate target](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/217406/165773) for license shopping questions? Possibly along with [collaborative effort lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/182572/165773) on its answer(s).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a regular question it doesn't look like a good fit for the site, more like a candidate to be closed and deleted. Question per se reads [too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490) and the answers tend to refer readers to [&quot;another castle&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/225370/165773).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it somehow managed to outline basic research effort I would expect of askers before they dump their &quot;license requirments&lt;!-- note for editors - typo in word &quot;requirEments&quot; here is intentional, to highlight general laziness and ignorance of askers assumed to be addressed here --&gt;&quot; at us. As such, would it make a convenient dupe target?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26173" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7885" RevisionGUID="ea013528-1e42-42fb-8cfc-e0cfcc836098" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.020" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This site is focused on questions that can be answered (preferably definitively), and not just discussed. This, I'm afraid, is not the case with your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We simply don't know you well enough to comment on how _you_ can get over your resentment and be productive with the language in question (or anything, really). We don't even know if generic advice like &quot;there probably is another language that's equally appropriate for the task at hand&quot; is applicable in your situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see a way to re-open this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6742/25936&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6961/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26174" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7504" RevisionGUID="19d98c6e-4431-4ff1-afad-3e72700abda1" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question shows up in the [10k delete review list][1] because it has a delete vote cast:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How do I explain a “Hello World” program for beginners? \[closed\]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is a classic example of [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?][3] and as such was rightfully closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why does this question have a historical lock (by [maple_shaft][4])? Should we unlock it and delete it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/135925/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6629/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/25476/maple-shaft" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26175" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6930" RevisionGUID="ed5bcbe8-c732-4ca1-b65f-c8f20b210f4f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was reading the answer to this question and I find it very useful, agreeable and constructive: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6925/how-can-i-get-my-question-reopened-as-someone-answered-in-the-comments?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ChrisF states very clearly what an **user** of this community **should do**. But it's completely on the user side, there is nothing about what the **moderators** **should do**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course this is given as understood, treated in other places, and moderators here are doing a great work! But since this community is very ambitious, mature and tries to improves itself I would suggest another point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators are working hard, are doing their best, but this is an ambitious, technical community which tries to be constructive and scientific. And **psychology** and sociology have clearly studied the attitude of people to consider their own opinion as true. And not really put it into discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Being aware** of the limitation on our objectivity is an important step for someone who is called to administer &quot;objectively&quot; and supposed to be fair. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So as we find what users should do, I think it's fair to find what moderators should do. And work on their psychology, on their human-physiological bias could be important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you think moderator should make an effort and read these 2 articles?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(making_excuses)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(ps: this discussion may be probably seen as polemical and OT, but - true or not - if this adjective becomes an excuse to avoid taking it into consideration to make a work on ourself, this is a perfect example of rationalization: finding an excuse to justify our behavior, to confirm our ideas, to avoid putting ourself into discussion and putting effort in something which we don't like)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26176" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8276" RevisionGUID="3f2472c6-c097-4f84-b63b-e703a41d17a2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Note: Most of this post was written before the [name change](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8266/96050) and I haven't changed to Software Engineering. I think that's appropriate, since I'm looking backward to when this site _was_ Programmers.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Note: This in response to [a comment by gnat on Meta Stack Exchange][1] asking for information regarding migrations to and from this site. It's being shared here since it may be of interest to the community.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wrote [a proposed philosophy of question migration](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/285467/1438). My thesis is that migration ought to be thought of as a convenience for the OP when they ask on the wrong site rather than a tool to manage content. Given there exists a [chatbot to detect _mentions_ of programmers.SE](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7154/96050) in order to deflect potential migration/crossposting, it seems to me that this site is particularly concerned about migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a baseline, here are some statistics for the entire history of the site going back to the very [first question asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/122955/96050):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Total Questions &#xD;&#xA;    --------------- &#xD;&#xA;    98768           &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Migrated Direction &#xD;&#xA;    -------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;     8900    out       &#xD;&#xA;    14484    in       &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Exported to:                      count  good &#xD;&#xA;    ------------                      -----  ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                  6482  6030 &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com         297   273  &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com        264   228  &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                       216   203  &#xD;&#xA;    security.stackexchange.com          173   171  &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                165   162  &#xD;&#xA;    meta.programmers.stackexchange.com  125   111  &#xD;&#xA;    dba.stackexchange.com               118   115  &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                103    97   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                 87    81   &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Imported from:                    count  good  &#xD;&#xA;    --------------                    ----- ----- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                 13828 11630 &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com        300   272   &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                        45    34    &#xD;&#xA;    serverfault.com                      40    32    &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                 31    28    &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                 31    19    &#xD;&#xA;    webmasters.stackexchange.com         27    16    &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com          26    22    &#xD;&#xA;    english.stackexchange.com            14    12    &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                 14    12    &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm just including at the top ten sites as there's a noticeable drop off in quantity after the top slot. As you can see, Programmers has received 5584 more questions from other sites (mostly Stack Overflow) than it has migrated away. A full 14% of the questions that have ever existed on this site began life on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But those all-time numbers hide an important story. Almost all of the migrations occurred before 2012: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Question migrations by year][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In recent years, Programmers has been a _net exporter_ of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Total Questions since         &#xD;&#xA;    --------------- ------------- &#xD;&#xA;    76426           2012-01-01 00:14:59&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Migrated Direction &#xD;&#xA;    -------- ---------&#xD;&#xA;    6629     out       &#xD;&#xA;    2307     in        &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Exported to:                       count good &#xD;&#xA;    ------------                       ----- ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                   3547 3116 &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com         151  118  &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com          128  104&#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                         68   59   &#xD;&#xA;    meta.programmers.stackexchange.com    63   51   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                  56   50   &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                  53   52   &#xD;&#xA;    dba.stackexchange.com                 48   45   &#xD;&#xA;    security.stackexchange.com            41   39   &#xD;&#xA;    unix.stackexchange.com                32   28   &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Imported from:                     count good &#xD;&#xA;    --------------                     ----- ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                    870  584  &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com         179  158  &#xD;&#xA;    serverfault.com                       23   16   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                  22   10   &#xD;&#xA;    webmasters.stackexchange.com           8    5    &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com            8    4    &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                   7    6    &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                   6    6    &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                          6    4    &#xD;&#xA;    webapps.stackexchange.com              4    3  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I picked January 1, 2012 because it's a handy cut off, not because of any particular event on the site. The quality of incoming questions has been respectable:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Migrated here Avg score Avg answers Avg comments Closure % Deletion % Avg age (days)&#xD;&#xA;    ------------- --------- ----------- ------------ --------- ---------- --------------&#xD;&#xA;             2307       6.0         2.6          3.5      14.3       16.0           32.3   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do remember votes from the source site are [reflected in the score](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/87031/1438). For instance, questions migrated from Stack Overflow to this site had an average score of 5.8 and 1.1 answers. So score might be less useful a measure of quality than the fact that these questions got new answers after migration and are [relatively](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7797/96050) less likely to get closed than organic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, fully a third of the questions migrated from Stack Overflow have been closed or deleted. We don't have an easy way to quantify _crossposted_ questions or questions asked at the prompting of misinformed commenters on another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/285467/a-proposed-philosophy-of-question-migration/285742#comment926949_285742&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Pp7bf.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26177" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6938" RevisionGUID="db64aa65-ddd3-4612-8915-0f698a021eac" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Consider the following possible answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't think it's a hinderance. Knowing functional programming helps you understand various aspects of higher order functions that are finding themselves into many traditionally non-functional languages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Having all these ideas spinning around in my head?  Yea, thats a problem.  I can't decide if I should use a map or a fold.  And then when I *do* use these, they get taken out in code review for being overly complex and unnecessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are two fundamentally opposed answers that are equally right. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you end up asking:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Based on your experience, how would knowing multiple programming languages affect a software developer's (or your) ability to design programs?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is asking for anecdotes.  The question seems to be looking to foster a discussion and a telling of stories:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Reason for the question (just a background; not part of the question. There is no need to discuss or explain this part unless you want to. I'm merely including this to shed light on why I asked my question above)&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, hidden within this is a career growth question, which *also* tends to foster opinions and anecdotes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm sure many people would be interested to know the answer to this question. Software engineers would like to know if not being limited to one language would improve their design ability, programmers would be thinking ahead, managers would also want to know especially when it's time to choose someone they can trust to come up with a good architecture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bit about discussions comes up - the Q&amp;A part of Stack Exchange is about questions that have answers.  From the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest that you read https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions and https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog (the later of which is particularly important with the passage &quot;In my readings, I came across a proposition saying that good programmers don't make good software engineers because, it was said, good programmers know a programming language (and a framework or technology) very well, and that would make his designs somehow as constrained as his language.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, to summarize:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * There are too many, personal, answers to your questions - the question is seeking discussion or to poll people for opinions and anecdotes.&#xD;&#xA; * The question you are asking *does* fall the bullet points of [what types of questions should I avoid asking](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask):&#xD;&#xA;    * there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA; * Trying to get people to explain other people's opinions is also an opinion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26178" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8429" RevisionGUID="6ae1d7d8-c5f9-4232-8f66-753cb3e9f635" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.033" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It is a bit late into this new year, being that we're already in the second month, but we are now cycling the Community Promotion Ads for 2017!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What are Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA; - cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA; - anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we reset the ads every year?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that if high DPI.&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB&#xD;&#xA; - If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently **6**) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/ads/display/8429" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26179" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7525" RevisionGUID="bc18a982-d8cb-4aec-9f12-71e236eddbc5" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A few recent questions seem to exhibit issues explained in [The Trouble With Popularity](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/) article:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we discovered that these posts... truly start to drown out everything else on the site... it's too addictive and too easy, and in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While these questions were open, they were widely advertised on the Hot Network List and gained relatively high scores [despite piling on of close votes](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773 &quot;feature request to account for these&quot;). All of them are now closed, but due to their high scores they present appealing examples for newer site visitors to try their luck asking similar questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;High scores send a fairly strong signal that those sorts of questions are welcome here. I think this _signal_ is much stronger than the subtle hint  of a close banner, especially for inexperienced users ([&quot;it's okay to ask about roses here...&quot;](http://communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/a/1247/516 &quot;if needed, refer here for more elaborate discussion of having off-topic questions in the hot list&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The crux of my question is: what can we do to make these closed questions less like [broken windows](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_Recent examples for review:_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the issues with this question are best covered in a custom close reason borrowed from the Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Topicality wise, it appears to be in overlap between our site and Workplace, probably closer to Programmers. Our close reason ([opinion based](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)) looks like a fit.  As for better matching Workplace close reason, it is likely because they (Workplace) are getting more troublesome questions of that kind and have acquired more experience at efficiently handling these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;...How would you explain a statement... to a beginner?&quot;_ - We have a dedicated meta post explaining exactly what the issues are with these kinds of questions: [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6630/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, hot list visitors who voted it up likely have no idea about our meta guidance.  And even if they knew, they likely don't care. (And even if they would care, [system simply wouldn't let them tell](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/238514/165773).)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;I personally prefer 4 spaces for each indentation level, but there are colleagues that prefer 2 and even 5 spaces... I decided to post a question see if there are tools/method to settle the problem without calling a meeting.&quot;_ - If that doesn't make it a [shopping list question](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) then I don't know what it makes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/290941/revisions) suggests that even some moderators have tried to figure out a way to protect and salvage the question. But, honestly, I am not surprised to see that this failed. Asker clearly indicated that they were _just shopping_ and there's nothing else on their mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone tried to &quot;derive&quot; a better, more substantial question from this one, they would end up with their own, and _different_ question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet another case when Workplace folks seem to be better prepared to recognize and handle troublesome questions of that kind with their custom close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **advice on what to do are not [practical answerable questions](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)** (e.g. *&quot;what job should I take?&quot;*, or *&quot;what skills should I learn?&quot;*). Questions should get answers explaining *why* and *how* to make a decision, not advice on what to do. For more information, click [here](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2695)...&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;Granted, I think that our own [education advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/31260) close reason also makes a good fit, but the majority of close voters picked another reason ([too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260)) which suggests that the match with the education close reason is not as clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yet again, issues with this question seem to be best covered in already quoted custom close reason from the Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although still somewhat workplace-y, this question looks much closer to Programmers than previous example covered by the this close reason (&quot;mentor's concern&quot;). Still, their close reason looks like a really good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm often conflicted when creating a project that requires manipulation of data in files... &amp;lt;example how JSON looks like&amp;gt; &amp;lt;example how CSV looks like&amp;gt; ...is it better to use larger, more readable formats, like JSON, or smaller, harder to read formats, like CSV, for data storage?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[If memory serves](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234894/165773 &quot;no, system won't help me recall&quot;), the close reason I picked was [too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260). The majority of voters have chosen [opinion based](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6491/31260) which also looks like a reasonable match ([Gorilla vs. Shark](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these questions were old, or if their score and views were acquired _organically_ due to great content, I'd probably ask for a [historical lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info). But that doesn't seem applicable due to the recency of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For what it's worth, I considered an option to edit them into better shape. Unfortunately, it looks like the answers that piled in prior to closing [&quot;lock the question&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773) from any substantial changes I could think of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One possible exception (which would involve removing most of the answers though) is the [question about indentation width](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width). It looks possible to convert it to a [collaborative effort question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before &quot;example&quot;). If we pick this option though, we had better do some substantial edits to the question text, to make it look like less of a wide open broken window for inexperienced site visitors. _&quot;Hey, folks do shopping over here, lemme try my own.&quot;_" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26180" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6941" RevisionGUID="cfd4c491-ac43-4d50-9de6-d4d266d77211" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The canonical link from days of old for this is: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice is one of our perpetual problems on programmers.  The essence of the career advice close reason is that any information is *very* particular to the person asking.  In days of old, these would often be closed as &quot;too localized&quot; - either they are asking about too narrow a person (themselves), too narrow a time, or too narrow a locality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question has two issues with it.  The first is that 'too narrow' in time and location.  Questions asking for information about job opportunities is *highly* location and time dependent.  You'd get very different answers when asking for different times or locations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that you tagged this as [tag:job-market] - which a rough look through shows a *lot* of closed questions.  This should have been a warning that this question is problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question about economics and market theory?  That isn't exactly our area of expertise.  It might have been ok on [Economics.SE](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/1618/economics) but that was closed for lack of activity a couple of years ago.  Such a question is... I could see opinion and also the off topic (career advice), or a custom reason.  It really doesn't look for a good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other half of the question that is in the lead in:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would like some statistics if possible, or educated guesses if statistics are not possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for stats is also a difficult area.  The answers that you get to this are either polling type responses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The company I work for had a half dozen open positions for linux kernel engineer a year ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The company I work for doesn't touch open source with a 10' pole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These type of 'spot polling' answers often show up with requests for stats or guesses.  They are poor answers and questions that encourage such answers tend to get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other side of the asking for stats is that it makes the people answering the question into research librarians rather than expert programmers and software architects.  It asks us to use google for you, a crowdsourced search engine.  This doesn't draw upon our expert advice and information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice may not have been the *best* choice for a close reason.  But the question really isn't a good fit for Programmers.SE being a mix of economics, stats request, and a bit of career information too.  Career advice was likely the most convenient choice for the close reason." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26181" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7536" RevisionGUID="f699fb8f-5cdc-4267-9029-7535a64cd05f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It was quite interesting to observe impact of this meta post on the listed questions ([&quot;meta effect&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/235225/165773)). Or, more precisely, lack thereof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First thing I noticed is there were no attempts to improve / salvage these questions (except for an old one about indentation width, there was only one, more on that below). Attention brought to these by this meta post did not really help: &quot;active&quot; notices on listed questions (except for last one) say _2 months ago, 21, 17, 14, 16 days ago_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may ring a bell to readers familiar with [famous post about Programmers / NPR history](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Turns out that while everyone _loves_ those questions, very few are _actually_ willing to spend any time to... maintain and moderate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only _recent_ edit was done to question about [JSON vs CSV](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/291618/revisions), which recently changed wording to &quot;what are some advantages/disadvantages...&quot; Not that it made it worse (as far as I can tell, edit didn't even invalidate existing answers) but it didn't really help. Edited question now prominently exposes issues described in another meta post, [What is the problem with “Pros and Cons”?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6758/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another thing worth paying attention to is how little of negative feedback was given to these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It gets especially prominent if you account for attention given to this meta post, which is mostly about explaining what's wrong with them. It stuck in [hot meta posts](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/234453/165773) for about a week (quite the irony), has got almost 400 views and solid positive score. Now, let's take a look at the questions it lists:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;  3 votes down, 4 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  3 votes down, 3 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width  &#xD;&#xA;  7 votes down, 2 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code  &#xD;&#xA;  4 votes down, 2 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code  &#xD;&#xA;  4 votes down, 4 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f  &#xD;&#xA;  5 votes down, 3 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not much really, huh? Considering that some of these votes were cast long before the meta post, it becomes even weaker. Closer check of _The Trouble with Popularity_ suggests that this may actually be a common case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note how the article says nothing about negative feedback to such questions. This makes a fairly strong indication that there is no such feedback, at least not at a scale worth mentioning. (Atwood would probably be happy to point that at least part of community actively opposes such questions but it looks like this just doesn't happen.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reflecting on my own behavior in these questions makes me feel that there could be a good reason for this. I tend to feel _reluctant_ giving negative rating (down, close, delete) when post has high score. This may seem strange, given that I am well aware of upvotes to popular posts frequently degrading into useless &quot;likes&quot; of Facebook kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the thing is, I am much more used to looking on regular, on-topic, good quality questions. And in normal questions, high score fairly reliably indicates quality content worth voting up, not down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If many users are like me, it should indeed be that high score posts rarely get negative feedback, no matter how bad these are. People simply build an opposite habit by reading on-topic, good quality questions, where high score means that post deserves upvotes. Not surprising that they would feel discomfort trying to do opposite to what they are used to - at least that's the way I feel myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This probably won't make me many friends over here but summing up above, it looks like the most realistic way to address the matters of broken windows would be a moderator deletion of these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, interestingly, brings us back to the quote that opened this question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26182" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6976" RevisionGUID="081bd124-4fad-4b9c-887f-8995f7ab04bb" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="First off, realize that each community on Stack Exchange is different.  You can ask the same question on two different sites and have it closed on one and open on the other.  That said, ***please don't crosspost questions***.  Really, pick the best one and post there first.  Posting the essentially same question unless it is specifically tailored to the community of the site fragments the information and questions across the network making it harder to find *the* answer.  Getting more attention to the question by cross posting is not a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, lets look at the question posted to Programmers.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it fundamentally possible to validate that an unmodified version of your client connects to your server?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And compare it to the one posted to Security.SE (without the leading meta bit):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This seems like a programming question but it's really a fundamental security question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it fundamentally possible to validate that an unmodified version of your client connects to your server?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was just thinking about the idea of having my client-side app hash it's own source code and send that as a key to the server with any requests as proof that it's unmodified, but that's silly because anyone could just have the client send a hash of the unmodified version via a modified version.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was wondering if there might be a secure way to do this though, via some sort of proof that the client was unmodified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think that this was a security problem, you should have asked it there.  Additionally, there is quite a bit more material on the Security.SE one than the P.SE one.  You are complaining that the one here got closed for too broad?  I will also note there is *absolutely* no effort at tailoring the question you asked for Programmers.SE community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will remind you of the post on Meta.SE: [Is a question that specifically asks for a summary of a broad topic valuable to Stack Exchange?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234642/is-a-question-that-specifically-asks-for-a-summary-of-a-broad-topic-valuable-to) and the points that I made there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programers.SE generally has the approach that you should at least have done a search on google and possibly read the corresponding Wikipedia page. This is especially true of questions that are likely to be broad. The scrum Wikipedia page is 43k and waterfall is 18k.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The biggest issue with asking such broad questions that are 'condense this other text that I don't want to read into a few paragraphs' is that, for the most part its lazy. Its asking someone else to try to fit a huge body of knowledge into a text box where there are pages of material out there that covers this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The post here shows no effort at all. It shows no level of comprehension of the nature of the problem.  It asks a very broad question to a relatively well known problem.  That of the [trusted client](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_client).  The answer you got here is a summary of that wikipedia page (no offense to Justin, it is in his own words and he likely didn't reference the wikipedia page, but it is covering much of the same information).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; While I acknowledge it that's my own work, I'd strongly suggest reading the guidance in meta.programmers.SE: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important/6560#6560 - we don't want to repeat what you already know, nor answer at the wrong level for the reader... and if you really don't know, explain what is confusing you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I again point you to https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important/6560#6560 and urge you to read it and consider the lessons contained within it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Setting aside all of that, Programmers.SE really doesn't like yes/no questions.  The appropriate guidance from Meta.SE can be found at: [Question closed because yes/no answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/183177/question-closed-because-yes-no-answer).  The question asked in this format is exactly the too broad nature.  There are *far* too many possible answers and good answers are far too long.  Go search Google a bit. Show us that you have thought about the problem and what it means rather than tossing whatever you think about into a text box and hitting 'Post Your Question'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally, the person asking the question has spent *at least* as much effort in thinking of the question, the problem, and how to ask a good question as the person answering it.  This is how we get good answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26183" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7552" RevisionGUID="eb4236a1-dcc0-4f6c-a432-9cc9169163f2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't see why we shouldn't have Coffee.SE at least an option for people to vote up as an SE community we advertise for on P.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anybody (perhaps Robert Cartaino the diamond that deleted the post) tell me why it was removed? If not, I intend to just add it back, I think we definitely should be advertising Coffee.SE on P.SE..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[10k link to see the original but deleted coffee.SE community ad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7177/35276)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26184" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6996" RevisionGUID="ea5fbd8e-0cd9-4d34-9d1d-928cb613c053" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I will use both of your examples to talk briefly about the issues I see with them being posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How could I implement a simple blog in PHP?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would not be a good question for the site, not necessarily because it is about design, but because **it is [too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490).** There are many aspects of design that would go into designing a blog.  Web design, database design, application logic, cross cutting concerns, etc...  Even if this were language agnostic this doesn't change.  A better question for example would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&quot;I am trying to design a database schema that can properly capture domain model elements of a blog, here is what I tried.  Any improvements or suggestions to do this better?&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should always demonstrate the problem where possible, be clearly worded and focused to something that is clearly and completely answerable.  It should also demonstrate what you are thinking might be a solution or what you have tried.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How could I structure a Tic-Tac-Toe game in a Pythonic way?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ways to structure a Tic-Tac-Toe game might be considered a matter of opinion.  This would probably be closed as **[Primarily opinion-based](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)**.  Wherever possible a question should be answerable.  Questions that have 100 equally acceptable answers do not help anybody derive what the best solution is.  Going by the most highly upvoted answer doesn't tell you as this might be the first answer posted, or the person answering might be popular or the solution described is a popular one but might not be the best solution.  Even if this was language agnostic it probably doesn't change.  A better question might be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Here is how I was thinking of structuring my Tic-Tac-Toe game in a Pythonic way.  Does this particular design choice make sense for Python and what specifically could I improve or do better?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Here is how I was thinking of representing the data structure for my Tic-Tac-Toe game.  Is this a good data structure that lends itself to an efficient algorithm for Tic-Tac-Toe?  If not how can I improve this?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to benefit from discussing the problem on terms that are relevant to the technology stack I'm using.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to ask questions about the &quot;Pythonic way&quot; or the &quot;Java way&quot;, pending that the question follows these guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Properly scoped (not too broad to be effectively answered).  If an entire book can be written about or has been written about a topic then it is probably not a good question for this site.&#xD;&#xA; - Good questions have answers, not opinions.  Opinions lead to discussions and debates and this format doesn't lend itself well to this.&#xD;&#xA; - Have a clearly defined problem that you are trying to work through&#xD;&#xA; - Demonstrate prior effort or thought into solving it on your own.  This can be achieved simply by stating some ideas that are currently in your head.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you follow these guidelines and the question is on topic for the site then you shouldn't have any problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please read the articles in the [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help) for more details." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26185" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7554" RevisionGUID="a88cfbcc-6bd2-48d1-a0a9-f094b4f28b44" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't agree with the decision to delete the ad. [Coffee is a fundamental portion of the lives of many programmers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7547/is-every-day-coffee-day). We discuss it in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) often.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[@RobertCartarino states:](https://coffee.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/97/what-should-a-community-ad-for-coffee-stackexchange-look-like/100#comment1149_100)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @fredley The community-driven advertisements/bulletins have to be at least roughly aligned with the topic of the community. This advertisement is not appropriate for Programmers SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't agree with this statement on both counts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I don't agree that it isn't roughly aligned with with the topic of the community.&#xD;&#xA;   - This community is about issues that directly concern Programmers as idea people and thinkers, and *many* of us would not have ideas nor be able to think without coffee.&#xD;&#xA;2. I don't agree that it should have to be roughly aligned with the topic of the community.&#xD;&#xA;   - Programmers are people in addition being bots that transform coffee and pizza into code. We have lives just like everyone else.&#xD;&#xA;   - If we, as a community, have overwhelming support for an ad to another community, we should be made available to that community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently, [@abbyhairboat](https://coffee.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1156) wrote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why limit the hunt to Seasoned Advice?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sure, they get coffee questions, and that's why you've got a community promotion ad up there. But what if we try thinking beyond &quot;where are the coffee questions and how do we get them here?&quot;, and instead, think: &quot;where are the coffee people and how do we get them here?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of people are coffee Q&amp;A people? Millions of people drink coffee, but what we're looking for here is coffee hobbyists, not just drinkers.** People who like to experiment with brewing methods, spend money on gear, and optimize for various qualities. They aren't just coffee drinkers - they're coffee tinkerers. So people who might be drawn to this site are tinkerers in other fields who dabble in coffee (among many other likely hobbies).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This statement applies just as much here as it does to Seasoned Advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##We should be able to have this Community Ad." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26186" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7038" RevisionGUID="d5c4058a-bd8a-4c83-b2f7-f63487655288" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Update: tag is gone.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are no questions tagged _psychology_ anymore (not even [locked](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7039/31260) ones, thanks to [ChrisF](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7040/31260)) and [tags page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags) doesn't suggest it anymore when one tries to enter &quot;psychology&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After all the questions were retagged or deleted, [system took care](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/19754/165773) of the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tags not associated with any question are automatically destroyed..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26187" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7056" RevisionGUID="8326417a-0598-431c-9eb1-3287d095b4c7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the comments for [this question][1], I was told that the close-and-reopen process is how the PSE community finds consensus on what is on-topic and what is off-topic. Is this correct?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7051/is-there-a-consensus-on-programmers-stack-exchange-that-programmers-cannot-autho" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26188" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7556" RevisionGUID="7be92a8d-e980-410f-a10b-e64cc1b2c664" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Culturally, caffeine and pizza are part of being a programmer.  While it doesn't make for [good main site questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/286216/40980) (10k link) coffee, tea and other caffeine delivery mechanisms are a [documented part](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/I/ISO-standard-cup-of-tea.html) of what it is to be a programmer for a significant period of time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted, this is such a culturally significant part of the desk of a programmer, that it is part of the site's design.  Think geek has [coffee mugs](http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/mugs-travel/) as a major section of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted on the https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7070/ you will note the wording:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the community is honestly interested in the culture of caffeine intake, then promoting that stack exchange site is well and good.  Its an advert on the side of the page - not a main site question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, however, the powers that be suggest that this *shouldn't* be the case, I would urge them to get the requisite 125 reputation, participate on the main site and the community here, and vote on the answer. I would similarly encourage them to do the audit of *all* of the other graduated sites and ask themselves why Health.SE is advertised on Gaming and Cooking and Space.SE on Skeptics and then ask if its really worth the trouble of going against the community when it has reached a consensus of what other things they want to advertise given the guidelines we are provided with." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26189" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7061" RevisionGUID="c6da714e-2495-4d7b-848a-44ce72285ff3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As two of the comments mention, no, there isn't a site to ask opinion based questions. See [here][1], [here][2], and [here][3] for more information on that. However, Stack Exchange does have a [chat][4] where these discussions can happen. An example of one chat room would be the [Programmers main chat room, The Whiteboard][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26191" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7070" RevisionGUID="98ba0211-29be-46bc-bf27-afa5cfe8a953" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The dawn of a new year, 2015, now approaches, or has already approached, either way it means that it is now time to reset our Community Promotion Ads!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What are Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA; - cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA; - anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we reset the ads every year?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be **220 x 250 pixels**&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently **6**) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/ads/display/7070" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26192" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7610" RevisionGUID="92fd75f8-7518-49c2-8ef9-5d7ec875c1aa" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Related: [Create a New Stack Overflow Instance for Beginner Users and Content](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/253646/839601) (MSO).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are getting many off-topic / implementation and coding kind questions where askers appear to be aware of Stack Overflow (at [10m questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/10m-questions-milestone/info) over there, who isn't) but for various reasons seem to suspect that their questions won't be well received there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This problem seems to be relatively new. In the past, Stack Overflow was lenient about question quality and askers didn't tend to bother worrying if their quality is okay. Things seem to have changed after [SE Quality Project](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/se-quality-project/info) features were rolled out at Stack Overflow and some of those who would previously ask over there, started looking to try their luck elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, they usually don't mention using Programmers as a proxy for Stack Overflow (they maybe think it's not important) but sometimes, [it leaks through](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297569/easy-create-junit-test-for-class-on-eclipse#comment617336_297569 &quot;example - 10K link&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want ask for StackOverflow but i cant becouse my one post have -3...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do something to prevent... _lifehacks_ like above from becoming popular?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Some folks (probably with [Math.SE background](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi?noredirect=1#comment22868_7610 &quot;as explained in comments&quot;)) even invent funny theories for why they [avoid Stack Overflow](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293373/how-to-run-c-file-if-header-class-and-main-are-not-in-the-same-folder#comment607486_293373 &quot;example - 10K link&quot;): _'my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here_'  (I think these theories became popular after Stack Overflow started burying very low quality questions in Triage, which cut their chances to get answers, even as hints in comments.)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is much larger than us, they get about 8K questions a day average. Even amount of questions they close (800 a day) is 20 times more than total questions we get (less than 50).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Site like ours can be totally flooded by &quot;Stack Overflow learning and training&quot; kind attempts if this becomes widespread. I would not want this to happen. I come here to learn and contribute to Programmers topics, not to guide those who are scared or blocked by Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26193" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7100" RevisionGUID="7674af99-807f-4f08-b7dd-6cd0ecad41d7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="...so it seems to me that frozen would be a better word. I stumbled upon the question&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/61248/106929 and wanted to ask for clarification at one of the answers with a comment. But since comments are disabled on blocked questions this is not possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder if/how something can be done to a locked question, I already saw that [locking seems to be considered as a last option](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/285/106929), but how do this relate to unlocking it again?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26194" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7175" RevisionGUID="789096f4-3525-4137-9186-9c161729ce10" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So [this question][1] recently came up, and I'm not sure quite how to deal with the problems it caused. There are (at time of writing) 39 edits. Now some of them are grammatical, and some are clarifying, but the majority are... slight adjustments to the question based on answers to probe deeper into the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that over time, the question effectively _drifts_ into a different one - making existing answers invalid. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't want to suggest making a new question, since the new question would not be significantly different - leading to duplication. I don't want to suggest going to chat, since we're not a chat site. And I don't really know of any good general programming forums to suggest instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how to discourage this sort of interactive question? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This meta question][2] is relevant, but focuses on edits which are objectively bad. The individual edits of this question aren't bad in isolation, but the style/frequency of them certainly are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/272638/can-the-entire-program-be-called-an-algorithm&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6055/how-to-stop-bad-edits-from-a-user" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26195" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7652" RevisionGUID="462769ae-cf69-4eea-80bc-e65c7cbf7294" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't see a purpose in deleting this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I removed the low quality tag of junior-programmers and deleted all of the negatively scored answers. I've also removed the mod notice about long answers. Right now, the question is closed as too broad and has a historical lock placed upon it. This should be a clear indicator to any visitor that this type of question is not suitable for the site and they shouldn't use it as an example of questions they should ask or ask similar questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, I don't think this question should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, it has a large number of views. As of right now, it has over 53,000 views over 4 years. That's something like 37 views per day, every day, for four years. It's probably linked to on other sites - I understand that Y Combinator picked it up. It could be referenced in other sites and posts as well. Deleting it would remove context from other posts and discussions on the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, it's a popular question. The question received 55 up votes and only 4 down votes before it was locked. The top answer received 98 up votes and 0 down votes. In addition, the question was favorited 25 times. This kind of response tells me that, at one point in time, this was considered a good question. With today's standards, I'd call it &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; or &quot;too broad&quot; (which is the close reason given). This change in direction is the reason for a historical lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't buy the argument that this question will bring people to the site to ask similar, low quality questions. Anyone who lands on this page should see that the question is closed and historically locked (which explicitly states &quot;it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here&quot;). There may be Meta.SE suggestions to improve the visibility of these notices (they are below the question) or perhaps to take steps to hurt the ranking of locked questions in search algorithms, but those are SE level suggestions that should be fleshed out and taken to Meta Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point in time, I don't feel comfortable deleting (or letting the community delete) this question. Is it a good question for Programmers? No, it's not. And that's why it's closed and locked. Does it add value to the Internet? Someone thinks that it does, or else it wouldn't have had so many views, up votes, and favorites (as well as in-bound links on other sites).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If other mods disagree, I'd be open to doing more. I don't feel comfortable doing more on my own. But given the recent visibility into this particular question and how we've been handling dealing with old, low quality, but highly visible questions, I don't see deletion as viable at this point in time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relevant and related: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7649/to-robert-cartaino-who-reopens-broad-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26196" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7214" RevisionGUID="500d30ae-96f9-4085-b0a0-b2aaa104c773" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Let's [burninate](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/burninate-request/info) tag [tag:video-lectures].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, there are 5 questions in this tag. All appear to be off-topic [education advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980) / [off-site resource](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) requests. None looks worth keeping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/274932/modernizing-my-net-knowledge&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101959/where-can-i-find-windows-via-c-c-video-training&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85698/trying-to-find-video-of-a-talk-on-the-impact-of-memory-access-latency&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70944/lecture-like-cs-videos&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67773/is-there-any-online-video-giving-a-useful-insight-on-programming-in-certain-lang" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26197" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7227" RevisionGUID="262bbfcd-4f90-48c9-8987-d6d3928dc664" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You need 3000 reputation on the main site to cast close and open votes on questions, so the link below the question to cast the vote will not show up. In the mean time, you can ask about it on Meta or flag it for moderator review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This particular question won't likely be reopened - it's [overly broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490). There are entire books about applying Six Sigma to software engineering ([1][1], [2][2]), and some freely available resources linked to in the original question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, there isn't a concept of a &quot;sub-question&quot; on Stack Exchange. If you have questions that you think are [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and are written to avoid the things that [shouldn't be asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) and you [formulate it well](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), your question shouldn't be closed. Feel free to ask a new question - specific, well-written, and well-scoped questions about applying Six Sigma to software engineering is within the scope of this site. If you aren't sure, feel free to pop into chat or ask a question on Meta - someone will be able to help make sure your question is good for the site, point you to a better site, or point you to some resources to get you moving in the right direction so that if you have further questions, they are more appropriate for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.amazon.com/Sigma-Software-Development-Second-Edition/dp/1420044265&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.amazon.com/Six-Sigma-Software-Quality-Improvement/dp/0071700625/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1426434542&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=six%20sigma%20software" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26198" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7679" RevisionGUID="92462702-1e95-4aa4-a9b0-46b0e563f5ce" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Software Recommendations is graduating][1] and will soon be a non-beta site!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[There is a question on their meta][2] about being a migration target: they are asking about other sites such as [Super User][3] having a migration path to [Software Recommendations][4]. [Programmers][5] did not come up there: while I would expect some other sites to have more recommendation questions, we do see some of these questions on Programmers and we have a few open slots for migration targets.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once Software Recommendations is fully graduated to a regular site, should Programmers have a migration path to it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Software recommendations stackexchange][6] - asked and answered before the graduation announcement.&#xD;&#xA;* [Revisiting what is on topic, with respect to new sites: Open Source, Law, and Software Recommendations][7] - software recommendations are _still_ off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2298&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2307&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://superuser.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6464&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7539" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26199" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7236" RevisionGUID="62438197-5937-4778-bff6-027a6ac91208" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per [recent discussion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7233/where-can-i-see-what-kind-of-questions-are-or-are-not-relevant-on-programmers#comment21595_7234 &quot;'write up a suggested edit as a meta question and one of us can make the edit'&quot;), I drafted some updates I'd like to have in [Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), section _not about..._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Added text is in **bold**, deleted is &lt;del&gt;crossed&lt;/del&gt;, and some links are added and changed (more details under the draft):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - &lt;del&gt;[what book you should read next](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488)&lt;/del&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career **or education** advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - legal assistance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Primary motivation for the change was to make things like in [Workplace Help Center](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), where items listed as off-topic are linked to respective detailed meta guidance. (Frankly, Workplace's page still looks more elegant and easier to read to me - ideas on how to further improve ours are welcome)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also replaced straight links to Workplace and Stack Overflow with &quot;safer&quot; references to [help/on-topic] pages of these sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also please pay attention that &quot;career advice&quot; link has changed from [older FAQ post](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590) to a [newer one](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488). (I felt fairly safe doing this since older FAQ is linked near the top in references section in newer one but I may be wrong)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per [discussion in comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7236/help-center-tuning-help-on-topic-and-it-is-not-about-references-to-meta#comment21598_7236), &quot;what book you should read next&quot; was deleted. _In exchange_ I inserted &quot;education&quot; into an item about career advice - as far as I can tell, this covers books and makes a closer match to linked meta guidance and to respective [predefined close reason](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5992/31260 &quot;'career or education advice'&quot;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26200" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7238" RevisionGUID="deb71957-182f-4993-8b35-0fa51b2c5b86" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My version...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is in the [history now](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/7238/revisions). Otherwise, it was just taking up space and confusing possible readers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26201" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7723" RevisionGUID="35f3cd83-91f2-4091-a52e-2e8c8065ba2f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**This experiment is over.** I will be adding an answer to show the results and suggest a plan for going forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the next 30 days, closing a question will require just 3 votes. Also 3 votes will be sufficient to reopen a closed question. In essence, each close and reopen vote has 5/3&lt;sup&gt;rds&lt;/sup&gt; the normal value. After 30 days I will revert the site setting back to 5 and evaluate the results. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have tested this change on a development instance and questions that currently have 3 or 4 close votes will not be closed automatically. Rather they will be closed when the next close vote comes in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's fair to say there's a lot of dissatisfaction with the question closing system on Programmers. [One proposed solution](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes) is to increase the number of close votes available to 10k users. Some of us on the community team have considered various schemes to scale close votes with reputation under the theory that people most invested in the site (as measured by reputation) will have the most incentive to curate questions. That might still happen, but we'd like to be pretty sure that it will solve the various problems with question closing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's pretty clear that organic closing (via the [close votes queue](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close) or people voting to close questions they find naturally) isn't working very well. To demonstrate, here's how close votes on questions asked in the last 30 days are distributed on Super User:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Super User close vote distribution][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most questions have no close votes (not shown). 461 questions have just one (the yellow circle on the left) and the number slopes down to 142 with 4 close votes. 5 votes is a natural [attractor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor) because people will keep voting to close off-topic and otherwise closable questions until they reach that limit. There's a long tail beyond 5 close votes (also not shown) due to votes expiring, close wars and so on. In essence, questions with at least 1 close vote, but not 5, are in a grey area in terms of closablity. This general pattern turns out to be extremely common across a variety of sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In contrast, here's the same graph for Programmers&amp;mdash;Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Programmers close vote distribution][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember this is only showing questions that have been asked in the last 30 days; we aren't talking about [Not Programming Related](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3273/not-programming-related) questions. Instead of a fairly smooth gradient between questions that should clearly be open to questions that clearly should be closed, this graph shows something closer to a binary state. My hypothesis is that since the people contributing the most close votes feel the need to conserve votes, they don't vote to close borderline questions. There's too great a risk those votes will expire impotently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also included the counts of questions that have been edited or deleted in each close vote bin. Relative to other sites, questions on Programmers with close votes are more likely to be deleted and less likely to be edited. It's entirely possible that a greater proportion of questions are unsalvageable on this site. But I suspect the underlying problem is that the questions that could most benefit from an improvement are not getting close votes in the first place. _That might not be a problem_, but close votes can provide incentives for askers to fix problems even before their questions are closed. Close votes also put questions in front of reviewers who might be inspired to improve them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another problem that we discovered [very dramaticly](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/7649/1) is that [closed questions are rarely reopened](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7654/96050). Most closed questions can't (and shouldn't) be reopened, but statistically speaking, we expect more than 1-2% will be. My hypothesis is that it takes so much effort (and coordination) to close questions that people are not interested in undoing that work even if there's been an edit to fix a question's problems. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, the breakdown in the close voting system is not limited to Programmers. It is, however, rare across the network for the division between open and closed questions to be so stark. We hope this test will help us understand how the close vote system breaks in order to (hopefully) fix it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Why 3 votes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially users with enough reputation could unilaterally close and reopen questions on Stack Overflow. In December 31, 2008, the close vote system [was created](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/) and required 3 votes. Between then and the [next April](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/), the limit was increased to 5. (Shog9 remembers 3 lasting a few weeks.) The documentation of the site setting reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; KEEP THIS AN ODD NUMBER&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we need an odd number greater than 1 and less than 5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# How will this change be evaluated?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a nontrivial chance something will break requiring me to revert the change. If we continue for the full 30 days, we will compare before and after the change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Close rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Obviously, it's now easier to close questions. Insofar as bad questions are put on a path toward either corrective edits or deletion, that's a good thing. But this site closes well over 50% of new questions, which is the highest rate on the network. (Considering _total_ questions closed to questions asked in a time period, the rate is [more like 70%](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last30days).) Paradoxically, I'd like to see the close rate remain steady or decrease.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Reopen rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Reopening questions is one way to mitigate against a high close rate. Since the bar for reopening is now lower, we'd expect more questions will be reopened. Currently the reopen rate is about 2% of closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Edit rate on closed questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  In general, the only path to reopening a question is editing. It's also the most effective way to prevent questions from being closed in the first place. Since it's easier to reopen questions, there's even more reason for askers to fix their own closed questions. In the last 30 days 9% of closed questions were subsequently edited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Deletion rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  About 65% of questions that get at least one close vote on Programmers are deleted. We aren't exactly looking at the cream of the crop here, but that's noticeably more than other sites. (Again, this only counts questions asked and deleted within the last 30 days.) We can't force people to ask questions that don't deserve deletion, but hopefully more questions can be salvaged with edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, I'm curious if this change helps people enjoy the site more overall. At the end of the experiment, I'll post my results and ask for any followup thoughts you as a community have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# How you can help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relatively few people are active in closing, reopening and deleting questions. Even fewer are [active in editing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Editors&amp;filter=month). In order for this experiment to improve the quality of content on this site, more people need to be involved in identifying questions with potential to be unlocked with a judicious edit. Fixing tags and removing signatures are good first steps. But title and (occasionally heroic) body edits might be needed to pull some questions out of mediocrity. Remember: once the question is posted, it belongs to the community as much as it does the original author.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, please use the answers below to let me know how the experiment is going.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EHxvb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ESxAD.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26202" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7252" RevisionGUID="3e492278-fd37-43d9-aed6-20195198bfc0" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just made some updates to https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/faq-index-for-programmers-se, adding some missing [meta-tag:faq] questions, mostly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that each of the questions in [meta-tag:faq] should have a link back to the index, similar to the links on MSE ([example](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8010/how-can-i-get-answers-fast)) and SO ([example](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/271542/why-wont-the-system-allow-me-to-ask-questions-for-several-days)). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this link should take the form:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;`[Return to FAQ index](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1646)`&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the bottom of the question post for each FAQ entry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't have edit privileges here and suggested edits are not allowed on [meta-tag:faq]. Presuming there are no objections to adding a FAQ index backlink to each entry, does somebody want to make these edits?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these changes are made, a note should probably be added to the end of the &quot;How can a question be added to this FAQ&quot; section at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1647/121251 as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26203" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7734" RevisionGUID="ccb8cc72-2eec-4c19-9efd-4bf15506dba2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="After one week, the results are not encouraging:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Week posted Qs  Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion Rate&#xD;&#xA;    ----------- --- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- -------------&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-12  324    190      58.6%           8.9%     2.1%       5.9%         40.7%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-19  349    204      58.5%           8.8%     2.0%       5.6%         39.5%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-26  319    207      64.9%           8.7%     1.4%      11.1%         45.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-02  362    218      60.2%          12.8%     3.7%      10.7%         42.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09  286    205      71.7%          20.0%     3.4%       4.9%         36.0%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of this is in flux as weeks refer to when questions were asked. So questions asked in the week of Nov. 2 might still be closed or deleted while questions asked last week could still get edited and/or reopened. Also, a week is probably not enough time to spot trends since the numbers vary quite a bit from one week to the next. The one thing we can be confident about is that it's a lot easier to get questions closed now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Only 3 close votes needed.][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# _Pro forma_ closing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Watching the questions that have been closed in the past week reminds me of my (very short) stint [creating UML diagrams](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124996/is-code-commonly-generated-from-uml): theoretically necessary, but of dubious practical value. It seems clear to me that a lot of closing on Programmers isn't because certain types of questions cause problems, but because they _might_. In effect, questions are closed because they have a particular form with little regard to the substance and purpose of the question. I encourage you to look at the list of [recently closed questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=Close&amp;daterange=last7days) and **consider what actual problems these questions cause today**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me cherry-pick some recent examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302688/how-narrow-or-broad-should-constant-names-be (Closed as &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot;.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Is this the _form_ of a question that could devolve into religious warfare? Sure. Has it? Well there are 3 plausible answers and one that's meh. It was open for 6 hours. Unfortunately, I can't add my answer based on page 186 of my edition of _Code Complete_ until the question is reopened. (Hint: there's been real science done on this question.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302723/passing-fields-instance-variables-by-arguementsparameters-inside-an-object (Closed as &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot;.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This was immediately closed and only one answer slipped through. I'm not anything like an expert in OOP, so I can't judge the answer. Maybe it's heresy somewhere, but it sounds reasonably uncontroversial and grounded in objectivity to me. The close seems to be triggered by the final (unimportant) paragraph:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; What are the advantages and disadvantages of these solutions? Which is considered as better practise? Which one do you prefer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302567/what-are-the-advantages-of-a-traditional-backend-architecture-for-a-standard (Closed as &quot;too broad&quot;.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Two comments on the question are instructive:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; recommended reading: **[Why do 'some examples' and 'list of things' questions get closed?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7538/31260)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Asking for &quot;the advantages&quot; of X is almost always a list question ([the earlier comment] probably should've linked the &quot;pros and cons&quot; post for this one). As the existing answers have already demonstrated, you end up with a list of example applications for which X is a good thing, and then everyone has to debate in the comments whether those examples are valid because the original question wasn't sufficiently well-defined to make it clear what would or wouldn't count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There are exactly as many comments arguing about whether the question should be closed as there are about whether the examples are valid. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could go on, but I don't want to get bogged down into an argument because I picked a bad example. My point in bringing these up is not to get them reopened, but encourage you all to think a bit about **why questions need closing**. One advantage of lowering the bar for closing is that it gives this community freedom to field more potentially problematic questions. If things get out of hand, it's far easier to shut questions down than it used to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be completely clear, I have no intention of keeping this site setting if it accelerates the closing of questions.  It is my firm conviction that **a site which closes 70% of new questions is already failing**. That's one experiment I don't want to try.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been encouraged by valiant and occasionally successful attempts I've seen this week to fix and reopen questions. Whatever else I might imply above, I truly do admire the care and thoughtfulness you all have exhibited over the years. It's not easy to manage a radical change in scope as the one this community has pulled off. Let me restate that: **Programmers has successfully corrected itself from a very rough beginning**. That was accomplished not by the Stack Exchange software, but by the efforts of users such as the readers of this post. This site is now useful to actual programmers whereas the initial scope was not. So build off of that success.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/DR0KU.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26204" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7258" RevisionGUID="0e1fe1ef-db4a-41e5-b073-fe4e97f60672" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[In this question, I had a disagreement with the original asker about whether a legal advice / software licensing question is on topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/277688/88986). *I now think that I was wrong when I voted to close originally, but that's a bit beside the point...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Context: Here's the help center about what's on topic (abbeviated):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - ...&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***and it is not about...***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - ...&#xD;&#xA; - legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to see the [tag:faq] on this issue improved some. There is enough potential overlap between **software licensing** and **legal advice or aid** that the relevant faq question should address this distinction explicitly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- So we have this faq question:&#xD;&#xA;  - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;- We also have this non faq question (which perhaps should be promoted to [tag:faq], or merged with the previous question): &#xD;&#xA;  - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can we add some clarity to the **faq guidelines** on this issue? Thank you @Ixrec for your answer about what is and what is not on topic, but some digging (see above) has shown this topic has come up before. This question is about **how should we change the faq** so that less digging needs to be done, and we can have a canonical answer on the subject." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26205" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7738" RevisionGUID="bf1a52bf-36fb-416b-b916-2f621773907e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Should we have a \[design-review\] tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, I know I have sufficient reputation to create one. That is the easy part.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, we have have several thousand questions in [tag:design] which appears to be a mix of design reviews, questions about &quot;why was C designed this way?&quot; and other design-related questions. **Should we move design review questions to their own tag?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue I see is the cost in time to recategorize design review questions and the benefit returned. This is not a quick tag merge, this would be an ongoing effort as we peruse questions. One side benefit would be as we find old questions of poor quality we can close them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We could also have information about design reviews and a [link to our canonical meta question][1] in the tag wiki, if anyone bothers to read it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question [Migration paths to other sites][2] on Code Review Meta prompted me to think about this. Would it not be great to point them to a single \[design review\] tag and say &quot;look at the highly voted questions for great examples of migration candidates?&quot; Then reality set it when I started going through the tag trying to find good examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6502&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6141" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26206" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7328" RevisionGUID="f7e9dc07-51aa-49ca-abae-573c0b337842" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently flagged an off-topic (implementation) [question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/280353/1) that was posted here with sole purpose to circumvent &quot;problem&quot; title block at Stack Overflow. I described the issue in [&quot;need of moderator intervention&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/254097/165773) kind of flag and got it declined with suggestion to &quot;just vote to close&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to better understand how to decide on whether to flag or not in cases like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* ['Problem' titles in off-topic questions of new users coming from Stack Overflow](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7221/31260)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; what's the point of wasting precious close votes on an issue essentially caused by some kind of a system &quot;leak&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Provide 10k users more close votes](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6508/31260)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **if you see someone that is very likely unable to ask questions on one site bringing the same poor quality here - flag it**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26207" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7761" RevisionGUID="9f81c7d9-65a3-44d6-b44f-3d497b2776a9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I wasn't going to update the experiment this week, but the results this week were so encouraging I can't help myself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Week posted Qs  Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion Rate&#xD;&#xA;    ----------- --- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- -------------&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-12  325    190      58.5%           8.9%     2.6%      11.8%         40.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-19  349    205      58.7%           8.8%     2.4%       5.6%         39.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-26  319    207      64.9%           8.7%     1.4%      11.1%         46.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-02  362    218      60.2%          13.3%     3.7%      10.3%         44.2%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09  286    206      72.0%          20.9%     3.9%       7.0%         41.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-16  340    205      60.3%          17.6%     9.3%      30.6%         35.6%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only has the close rate dropped to something like the pre-experiment rate, the reopen rate has rather dramatically increased. Much of this is due to more edited questions getting reopened than in previous weeks. (It might be too early to tell if it's statistically significant, but more closed questions are being edited since the test began.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also spent some time last week trying to learn what prompted people to close so many questions on Programmers. While there are many detailed reasons, two themes emerged in my mind:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that remain open are signposts that prompt new questions of the same type.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. It's difficult to maintain the quality of answers on certain types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first didn't surprise me. It's a variation of the broken window theory (which is [different than &quot;zero-tolerance policing&quot;](http://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in-policing/research-evidence-review/broken-windows-policing/) by the way.) Since it's often difficult to curate a large corpus of answers, it's a lot more convenient to curate the questions instead. Some sites, however, pull it off. Skeptics, for instance, has [strict rules](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/faq-welcome-to-new-users) about what sort of questions can be asked (notably, notable ones) and what is required of answers (particularly that they be referenced). As a result, Skeptics deletes a large percentage of answers that have a score &gt; 0:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;       7634     35.5     19.64     0.05     0          97.16 Area 51 Discussions&#xD;&#xA;       8288     13.61    55.68     0.1      6.03       28.63 Skeptics&#xD;&#xA;       5782     10.26    46.49     0.09     0.02       48.74 Islam     &#xD;&#xA;     141392      9.38    25.01     0.45     0.02       78.15 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       4810      6.63    52.45     0.12     0.46       27.9  Biblical Hermeneutics&#xD;&#xA;      15660      5.86    45.84     0.03     0.37       48.31 Christianity&#xD;&#xA;      22572      5.08    28.81     0.33     0.02       63    Web Apps&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cut the list off at sites that delete at least 5% of positively-scored answers. Area 51 is interesting because 97% of &quot;good answers&quot; get deleted when their question gets deleted as a result of their [failed proposal being deleted](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/9068/do-not-delete-discussions-about-deleted-proposals). But the next in line is a real site: Skeptics. Their policies encourage deletion not only of entire questions, but individual answers as well. (Skeptics is unique in its extensive use of post notices.) [Islam](https://islam.meta.stackexchange.com/a/610/138), [Christianity](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1446/914) and [Biblical Hermeneutics](https://hermeneutics.meta.stackexchange.com/a/533/68) have fairly strict requirements that answers be well-supported. Those sites also emphasize narrow questions that allow moderators to delete many answers as non-answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm less familiar with Web Apps, but I believe they [had a major change in scope](https://webapps.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/764/proposal-to-clean-up-the-scope-of-the-site-is-your-question-about-using-a-speci) not unlike what happened on Programmers. When you shift the topic of a site, that will leave many now-off-topic questions that need deleting along with all their answers. As a corollary, there's a real need to lock questions and their answers. But look what happens when we limit to answers posted in the last year:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;      10617      4.53    34.44     0.01     0.03       66.53 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       2999      1.93    27.91     0.23     0          48.28 Web Apps  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Web Apps has settled into a fairly normal pattern of deleting relatively few upvoted answers. It's also split fairly evenly between deleting those answers individual and as a result of deleting the question. Programmers has become a little less extreme in terms of positively-scored-answer deletion, but it still ranks near the top of the list with Area 51 (31%), Skeptics (11%), Islam (4.5%) and Christianity (4%). More recent additions include Hinduism (4%) and Health (4%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Ok. What does this all mean?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Truthfully, I'm not sure. My current guess is that people are concerned that forces outside of their control will flood the site with embarrassing or just-plain-wrong answers. (This relates to another theme I heard a lot of: the Hot Network Questions list.) [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) gets [cited a lot here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=url%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.stackoverflow.com%2F2010%2F09%2Fgood-subjective-bad-subjective%2F). However, I wonder if the post gives the false impression that burden falls _solely on the question_. Certainly the way a question is asked increases or decreases the odds it will receive [crowd-pleasing nonanswers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers). But ultimately, we need to [hold answers to that standard too](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1110/96050).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other thing that kinda gets lost when talking about Good Subjective is that it isn't that opinions aren't allowed. Rather **naked opinions are noise**. The post even suggests:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Use your specific experiences to back up your opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that software engineering is one part science and one part craftsmanship, so it should be surprising to see some answers backed by experience rather than data. This is doubly true since the profession is incredibly young. Given quality of [users on this site](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&amp;filter=all), there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, it's a lot easier to delete popular answers if they don't actually answer the question. One technique that [seems to work](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/690/what-makes-a-good-focused-question) is requiring questions focus down on a specific domain. For instance, instead of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125320/do-todo-comments-make-sense maybe it would be better to ask &quot;Should TODO comments be removed when a project is in maintainance mode?&quot; That way the focus of the question isn't a holy war between pro-TODO and anti-TODO, but about the specific utility of those comments. (Obviously the asker should specify the situation they are actually facing.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26208" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7388" RevisionGUID="fceaa0df-1732-4afa-8e9f-b6f4b9774768" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the continuing effort to clean up our image and the historical pathways that people find Programmers.SE (in the spirit of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7166/update-introducing-programmers-blog-to-reflect-site-scope-change ) I would point to [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This blog post features the text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But software and programming isn’t always a hard science, either. Once you get past the does this code compile or not questions, you’re dealing with issues of best practices, experiences, and behaviors. Perhaps because our communities have become so accustomed to getting quick, accurate, and timely answers, they feel that even a subjective Stack Overflow is better than the alternatives. So much so, that our fellow programmers created [a sister site specifically for their pent up subjective questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/). Take one heaping pile of subjective questions, bottle it up for over two years and… kablooey!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![stats][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The [programmers.stackexchange.com](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/) site exploded overnight, hosting some of the best (and worst) questions on the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and then further down:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can expect to see these guidelines enforced on programmers.stackexchange.com over the next week or so, and made policy network-wide, wherever subjectivity is part of the site topic itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's the question to consider. Would a person reading that understand what the scope of Programmers.SE as it is today is intended to be? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, we are *not* a place for subjective discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest putting in an &quot;editor's note&quot; to the effect that Programmers.SE is the place for *conceptual* questions of software design and architecture and while this does stray into the softer side of answers, it is certainly not the place for subjective discussions that the site was when it was 29 days old. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S.  Your links to &quot;The chat room/forum problem (&amp; an apology to @Technosailor)&quot; are dead.  The new link is http://scobleizer.com/?p=5980&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/wp-content/uploads/programmers-se.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26209" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7397" RevisionGUID="bb143b73-fbfc-4b86-90a9-e0c03d01bce8" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This would be instantly closed. Please see the Meta question [Why was my question closed or down voted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483/), especially the points [Off Topic: What technology to take up next](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6486/) and [Off Topic: Recommend a tool, library, or other](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While your metrics try to make the question objective, such recommendation questions are still ill-suited for Programmers.SE. Also, your metrics fail to provide an objective framework since nearly each metric is highly subjective, and the relation of metrics to each other is not defined – if a language ranks high on speed and low on productivity, is this better than a language that ranks medium on both axes?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26210" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7807" RevisionGUID="d224e22a-7677-4c33-aca5-616bff2a6501" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It should come as a surprise to no one that I am disappointed about [the 3 close vote experiment being deemed a failure by the powers that be](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7797/3-votes-for-closing-reopening-experiment-the-results). Whether or not we did &quot;fail&quot; (and what that even means) is a big issue, which is already being hashed out in the answers to that question. But there's another equally large question that I don't think is getting discussed over there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming for the sake of argument that we did &quot;fail&quot; somehow, **I have absolutely no idea what SE wants us to do about it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing Jon tells us to do in that meta question is to not distrust users so much. I didn't think any of my actions on the site were based on distrust, but simply voting to close poor content based on how poor it is. If anything, I seem to habitually give first-time askers significantly more hand-written advice than they are willing to or capable of acting on. So, I really don't know what we're supposed to do with this instruction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I don't understand this suggestion, I currently *feel* like SE will do one of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Give up and completely ignore this site for the foreseeable future because they simply don't understand what's going on here.&#xD;&#xA;2. Assume they are correct in their belief that we close too many questions, and change the site mechanics to make it *harder* to close questions.&#xD;&#xA;3. Assume Jon's claim that &quot;distrust&quot; is the core problem is entirely accurate, and start taking disciplinary action against the most &quot;distrustful&quot; users, presumably for violating &quot;Be Nice&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe #1 is most likely, but part of me is genuinely concerned that #2, #3 or something equally misguided will happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My hope in asking this meta question is that Jon or someone else from SE can alleviate this uncertainty, ideally with a specific policy statement or some genuinely actionable advice.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some random questions/prompts to help demonstrate what I mean by &quot;actionable advice&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Should we be downvoting questions more often?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we be downvoting answers more often?&#xD;&#xA;- Are there any close reasons we should be using more often?&#xD;&#xA;- Are there any close reasons we should be using less often?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we be having frequent meta threads about whether a specific question is reopen-worthy, or can be edited to become reopen-worthy?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we encourage people to leave comments when downvoting or voting to close because of unclear/broad/POB? (as opposed to off-topic, which is much more self-explanatory)&#xD;&#xA;- Should we encourage people to stop leaving generic comments that simply link to a meta post without any specific advice about that particular question?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we stop trying to clean up &quot;broken windows&quot;, and just ignore any Qs/As beyond a certain age?&#xD;&#xA;- When a question is too unclear/broad to answer, and the OP never adds the missing details, are we supposed to make up details to edit in ourselves until the question becomes answerable?&#xD;&#xA;- When a bikesheddable question (let's say &quot;Should I use ++i or i += 1?&quot;) gets asked, should we close it as too broad/POB? Try to ruthlessly downvote the &quot;merely okay&quot; answers and hope only great ones survive? Just let people upvote everything into the stratosphere no matter how useless? Or something else entirely?&#xD;&#xA;- When a question asks for &quot;best practices&quot; without any explanation of what &quot;best&quot; means for them, should we not close that as unclear/broad/POB?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we try to come up with a clear set of guidelines that might help first-time askers avoid the unclear/broad/POB tarpit, better than the current FAQ does? For instance: describe what your application does, specify your language, specify whether you're after flexibility/intuitiveness/reliability/etc, explain why you want to do this, if there is a blindingly obvious solution explain why it doesn't apply, etc." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26211" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7450" RevisionGUID="5bff850c-0a97-4ecc-8a17-8aa3d0e7ae6d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Ummm.... this question was titled with [tag:work-environment]. What happened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@ThomasOwens merged [tag:work-environment] into [tag:development-environment], which now needs a second pass from the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've done a lot of great work in the cleanup of the [tag:development-environment] (and [tag:work-environment]) tag, but it has become complicated enough that we need to handle the work in its own question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The major things that need to happen are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [Close, lock and/or edit the remaining open questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7451/88986)&#xD;&#xA; 2. [Burninate the tag from existing closed questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7452/88986)&#xD;&#xA; 3. [Burninate / replace the tag from closed, **locked** questions, which are obviously more complicated and require moderator involvement.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7453/88986)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please see the answers for progress on these three separate goals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For reference, also see current [tag wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/development-environment/info):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about the environment in which software development happens. This includes the hardware, software, and processes and methodologies used. Questions are expected to be unique to software development and require the expertise of people with education or experience in the field of software development." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26212" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7487" RevisionGUID="ee01a1c5-cecc-416d-bb54-23c759842fa7" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There was [a post from July 2014 that was partially completed][1], but the tags [tag:coding-style] (543) and [tag:coding-standards] (329) still exist. They appear to be very similar. Should these tags be merged? If so, how?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6777/tag-merge-synonym-request-coding-standards" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26213" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7826" RevisionGUID="5e9790d3-b674-4a2b-ae7a-036f4809e867" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;(_special edition_ for folks coming from Math.SE, reposted from [Math meta](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/21680/hint-programmers-se-doesnt-do-coding-help-and-expect-research-before-asking &quot;10K link&quot;))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Hint: Software Engineering Stack Exchange doesn't do coding help and expect research before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, we at Software Engineering get a stream of troublesome questions from folks with linked accounts at Math.SE. One of them was kind enough to [explain why they get there](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7610/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another user, familiar with many other sites, even figured what could lead to such a [misconception](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi#comment22868_7610):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;This &quot;exchange&quot; is the undergraduate while &quot;overflow&quot; is the graduate level may because of the idea for Math vs MathOverflow and Physics vs PhysicsOverflow (not SE related) leaking into other domains. While I don't believe that that naming distinction needs to be fixed (nor can we do anything about it), being able to more promptly close (and delete) the debugging and blatantly off topic questions with a minimum of additional community moderation needed.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is sad to observe how many of them have fallen victims of this misunderstanding, getting their questions heavily voted down, closed and deleted. This includes even established users having over 1K rep at Math.SE ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/299572/given-a-integer-n-compute-nth-non-repeating-number &quot;10K link - user with 1.4K rep at Math asks very low quality question at Software Engineering&quot;), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/304765/31260 &quot;10K link - 1K Math rep user asks outright off-topic at Software Engineering&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things many Math.SE folks seem to miss when they try their luck at Software Engineering are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **coding and debugging help is off-topic** at Software Engineering.SE&#xD;&#xA;* it is generally expected of askers to **demonstrate research** they did before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading for those interested to learn more about Software Engineering.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Engineering Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is research important?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6559/31260)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or down voted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overview of CS and programming related sites at SE network:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-software-engineering-where-else-c&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26214" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7498" RevisionGUID="dc80cc48-f221-4205-a07a-056531533c01" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Currently the [on-topic page][1] reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out The Workplace instead)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  how to use specific tools  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  what language/technology you should learn next, including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  what project you should do next  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  where to find a software library, tool or other resource  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  product or service recommendations  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  career or education advice, salary, or compensation   &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; activities  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   *  legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;the &quot;where to find a software library, tool or other resource&quot; line could be expanded to include tutorials and books explicitly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know they are covered under the &quot;other resource&quot; line but it's better to have it explicit. Maybe link to the [meta discussion about it.][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26215" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7891" RevisionGUID="0741d75d-9abb-4fa6-9135-be17f0d9e3ef" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As long as you focus on the design and not &quot;which tool is best for me?&quot; you should be fine. However, I recommend reading the following meta-posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###[Are Design Review questions on-topic?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Talks about the standards to meet for questions like this. [TL;DR][2]: keep it highly focused on one specific aspect of your program, with clear success criteria (a successful design must do X but not Y, as opposed to &quot;what is better?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Design review&quot; perhaps is more commonly associated with e.g. &quot;review my class diagram or description of what these classes do&quot; but also covers &quot;what technology should I leverage in this part of my program&quot; which often involves design aspects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic? - Requests for Recommendations?&quot;][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Resource requests, including &quot;what library or protocol should I use&quot; are off-topic. But libraries and protocols are fairly core to a discipline that pushes for code reuse and common interfaces. So if you focus on &quot;I need my program to communicate, with X and Y as design goals&quot; instead of &quot;recommend a library for me&quot; you should be fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Also, thank you for asking in meta first so we can help you ask a good question instead of going through a potentially frustrating experience with asking, downvoting, closing, editing, reopening, hopefully reversing downvotes, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6502&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tl%3Bdr&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26216" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7502" RevisionGUID="44b141a4-2fa7-45f1-8d25-c66f249bc30d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Post 7499][1] outlines the problems the questions cause. Despite this,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* they reflect a real and highly important need of the technical crowd, so they will never stop coming&#xD;&#xA;    * thus, unless we want to alienate users who have those needs and make them look for answers elsewhere, we must invent a way to address those needs, _somehow,_ in a manner consistent with SE's mission to disseminate knowledge, here or elsewhere&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This post outlines the possible remedies suggested.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _Enforce the &quot;Good subjective&quot; principle:_ require an asker to specify what exact problem they need to solve with the information from a book (get an overview, compare, learn how to complete a specific task(s)), and an answerer to specify how exactly that book will address those needs.&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes 1)&#xD;&#xA;    * partially fixes 2): a degree of uncleanness remains in any case&#xD;&#xA;* _Maintain topic overview articles_ (a wiki page/canonical answer) containing book references, among other things&#xD;&#xA;    * intended to fix 3) but a solution to make it &quot;endorsed by the system&quot; and visible to potential askers is most unclear.&#xD;&#xA;    * is part or a larger problem of users getting little to no rep for updating existing info. This matter warrants a separate discussion&#xD;&#xA;    * canonical answers are [used successfully at Server Fault][2]. &#xD;&#xA;        * [some do recommend books][3]&#xD;&#xA;        * in their case, it helps that enterprise sysadmins deal with a rather limited set of topics&#xD;&#xA;* _Find another &quot;sewer drain&quot; to offload those questions into,_ like general questions were once drained here from StackOverflow&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes everything here; the &quot;drain&quot; will have to deal with all this instead&#xD;&#xA;        * We'll still have an inflow of users asking this here (and getting answers!) regardless of the fact the questions get closed ([heck, even SO users think these are appropriate _per se!_][4])&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57383/the-fourth-place-polling-recommendations-and-subjective-ish-stuff discusses this matter. The conclusion is that the current SE model isn't good for this format&#xD;&#xA;    * The primary candidate is [Software Recommendations Stack Exchange][5] that is currently in beta. Book recommendations aren't any different from software recommendations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that nothing will fix 4) as long as the current &quot;an answer solves the problem by itself&quot; paradigm stays unshaken. Experience from the communities like Travel.SE that somehow managed to cope with matters that are by their nature incomplete and subjective, may help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7499/108337&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.serverfault.com/questions/1986/what-are-the-canonical-answers-weve-discovered-over-the-years&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://serverfault.com/questions/476918/what-data-center-room-routine-maintenance-tasks-should-be-done&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31438006/how-do-i-start-migration-to-hadoop&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26217" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7924" RevisionGUID="1a96d79b-e350-47bc-a44b-5c7962dfa892" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Resource requests are explicitly [off-topic per the help center][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * where to find a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading: [Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - Requests for Recommendations?&quot;][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;The meta post goes into more detail explaining _why_ this is the case. Some of the important points summarized below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Stack Exchange is _timeless_. A question should be mostly valid years from now. In the context of Programmers, fundamental design and programming concepts change at a glacial pace. Sure, specific technology comes and goes, but those of us in the computer science and software engineering fields for a decade or longer know that some hot new technology comes up every day, but by and large, the fundamentals that underpin our career field really do not change day to day. The lessons in [Working Effectively with Legacy Code][3] are as applicable today as they were in 2004 when [Michael Feathers][4] wrote the book because he focuses on techniques and high-level concepts. Only the details about specific libraries and tools have changed over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This puts the following points into the proper context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Resource requests are asking for specific resources that are relevant to the broader concepts. Links to tutorials and blogs can stagnate: if you want a Python tutorial for the particular concept you are trying to learn, it can grow out of date. Could you imagine stumbling across your question years later when Python 6 is all the rage, and ye olde Python 3 code is considered legacy technology that programmers grumble about maintaining just like we do with COBOL today? This is the core reason why this site focuses on _conceptual_ problems that age well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Stack Exchange is designed to be a place where people can get answers for their questions, not as a thinly-veiled search engine where questions are answered with links to outside resources. We have Google for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Answers are encouraged to link to outside resources, but an answer must stand on its own. Links can vanish or move. Then a link-only answer is useless, even if it is voted up to +100. Note that I opened this answer with two links, but provided a bit of explanation. This is regardless of the fact those links should never vanish unless this answer does as well (i.e. someone made Programmers.SE go away).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    From the [help center][5]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Links to external resources are encouraged, but please add context&#xD;&#xA;&gt; around the link so your fellow users will have some idea what it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and why it’s there. Always quote the most relevant part of an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; important link, in case the target site is unreachable or goes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; permanently offline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thomas mentioned Stack Exchange's two resource recommendation sites, for software and hardware. Those are special: such questions are on-topic there. However, requesting links to blogs, tutorials, etc. are off-topic at both. Both sites have _very_ strict requirements for what constitutes an on-topic question. As always, view a site's help center and poke around its meta (like you did here) for a bit before asking just to be sure. It makes for a better experience for everyone involved, and helps keep the signal to noise ratio high.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.amazon.com/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Michael-Feathers/dp/0131177052&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://michaelfeathers.silvrback.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26218" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7504" RevisionGUID="6bdd0af4-5cef-4091-83c6-f9a347c0f23d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question shows up in the [10k delete review list][1] because it has a delete vote cast:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How do I explain a “Hello World” program for beginners? \[closed\]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is a classic example of [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?][3] and as such was rightfully closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why does this question have a historical lock (by [maple_shaft][4])? Should we unlock it and delete it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/135925/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6629/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/25476/maple-shaft" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26219" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7979" RevisionGUID="0121ea6d-06a6-4174-968a-5cec7e19aa32" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[I know](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7930/if-the-scope-is-wrong-which-of-these-questions-belong-here) [about](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7974/is-asking-about-funny-related-topics-on-topic) [all](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7947/can-we-resuscitate-more-content) [of](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7904/can-i-ask-my-question-in-programmers-stackexchange-com) the [meta-tag:discussion] [about](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7876/regarding-the-one-return-only-question) what's [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), but I wanted to ask this question about [a specific question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/308503/201219), to satisfy my [wonder](http://codereview.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question in question: [Handling exceptions I don't know about](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/308503/201219).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a pretty Python-specific question, because Python is almost unusual among programming languages in its use of [Exception Handling](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_handling) for control flow where most other languages use it as a last resort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is asking, essentially:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's the best / most Pythonic way to structure this exception-driven control flow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some example code is provided, and an (apparently) objective answer or two was supplied.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My confusion arises from the fact that this question, if augmented with a little more Real Implementation Code,&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; would be *perfectly* on-topic on [Code Review](http://codereview.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that Programmers deals in the immaterialistic theories and misty, pure methodologies of programming, while CR deals in the application of the stated theories and methods against real code in real problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also seems to me that these two intents are inherently at odds for content; something posted on one site must not be a good fit for the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question in question is arguably more about the actual specific code than the methodologies and theories behind it, so:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**TL;DR**: Why's this question on-topic and accepted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1: Good, on-topic CR questions have real, tangible, working code that can be reviewed in an objective manner, not just *examples*, which is the cause for the note.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26221" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7985" RevisionGUID="83058662-48ed-444e-9ab0-42515760977f" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Looks pretty valid to me. Knowing the history of [NPR-to-Programmers][1], programmers is quite a candidate-for-worst-name at the moment. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe a NotProgrammingButConceptRelated name could be fine. Of course, it should not be switched back to NotProgrammingRelated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26222" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7610" RevisionGUID="aa52ffac-904f-45b7-bf4c-51c75f5dede3" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Related: [Create a New Stack Overflow Instance for Beginner Users and Content](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/253646/839601) (MSO).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are getting many off-topic / implementation and coding kind questions where askers appear to be aware of Stack Overflow (at [10m questions](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/10m-questions-milestone/info) over there, who isn't) but for various reasons seem to suspect that their questions won't be well received there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This problem seems to be relatively new. In the past, Stack Overflow was lenient about question quality and askers didn't tend to bother worrying if their quality is okay. Things seem to have changed after [SE Quality Project](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/se-quality-project/info) features were rolled out at Stack Overflow and some of those who would previously ask over there, started looking to try their luck elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, they usually don't mention using Programmers as a proxy for Stack Overflow (they maybe think it's not important) but sometimes, [it leaks through](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297569/easy-create-junit-test-for-class-on-eclipse#comment617336_297569 &quot;example - 10K link&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want ask for StackOverflow but i cant becouse my one post have -3...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do something to prevent... _lifehacks_ like above from becoming popular?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Some folks (probably with [Math.SE background](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi?noredirect=1#comment22868_7610 &quot;as explained in comments&quot;)) even invent funny theories for why they [avoid Stack Overflow](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293373/how-to-run-c-file-if-header-class-and-main-are-not-in-the-same-folder#comment607486_293373 &quot;example - 10K link&quot;): _'my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here_'  (I think these theories became popular after Stack Overflow started burying very low quality questions in Triage, which cut their chances to get answers, even as hints in comments.)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is much larger than us, they get about 8K questions a day average. Even amount of questions they close (800 a day) is 20 times more than total questions we get (less than 50).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Site like ours can be totally flooded by &quot;Stack Overflow learning and training&quot; kind attempts if this becomes widespread. I would not want this to happen. I come here to learn and contribute to Programmers topics, not to guide those who are scared or blocked by Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26223" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7652" RevisionGUID="9c611f73-ee12-4f2e-b6bb-e979042bd431" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't see a purpose in deleting this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I removed the low quality tag of junior-programmers and deleted all of the negatively scored answers. I've also removed the mod notice about long answers. Right now, the question is closed as too broad and has a historical lock placed upon it. This should be a clear indicator to any visitor that this type of question is not suitable for the site and they shouldn't use it as an example of questions they should ask or ask similar questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, I don't think this question should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, it has a large number of views. As of right now, it has over 53,000 views over 4 years. That's something like 37 views per day, every day, for four years. It's probably linked to on other sites - I understand that Y Combinator picked it up. It could be referenced in other sites and posts as well. Deleting it would remove context from other posts and discussions on the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, it's a popular question. The question received 55 up votes and only 4 down votes before it was locked. The top answer received 98 up votes and 0 down votes. In addition, the question was favorited 25 times. This kind of response tells me that, at one point in time, this was considered a good question. With today's standards, I'd call it &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; or &quot;too broad&quot; (which is the close reason given). This change in direction is the reason for a historical lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't buy the argument that this question will bring people to the site to ask similar, low quality questions. Anyone who lands on this page should see that the question is closed and historically locked (which explicitly states &quot;it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here&quot;). There may be Meta.SE suggestions to improve the visibility of these notices (they are below the question) or perhaps to take steps to hurt the ranking of locked questions in search algorithms, but those are SE level suggestions that should be fleshed out and taken to Meta Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point in time, I don't feel comfortable deleting (or letting the community delete) this question. Is it a good question for Programmers? No, it's not. And that's why it's closed and locked. Does it add value to the Internet? Someone thinks that it does, or else it wouldn't have had so many views, up votes, and favorites (as well as in-bound links on other sites).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If other mods disagree, I'd be open to doing more. I don't feel comfortable doing more on my own. But given the recent visibility into this particular question and how we've been handling dealing with old, low quality, but highly visible questions, I don't see deletion as viable at this point in time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relevant and related: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7649/to-robert-cartaino-who-reopens-broad-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26224" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7991" RevisionGUID="b9ff647b-1256-4f59-8619-b5b4bd24f27a" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My [Question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/313790/which-languages-allow-to-mix-its-source-code-with-c-source-code) was closed as unclear. It was not really bad from the beginning but some people still did not understand what I meant. Maybe because they were not familar with the example I made. But I still got two (from three) answers from people who understood my question. Then the question was put on hold and I tried to refine it more. To my astonishment it was closed. Still I have refined it even more to make it as precise as possible.  And I have also flagged it two times with the notice that there is no reason for keeping it closed. The moderators didn't care for it. I feel there is nothing more that I can do except asking here about help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is not a duplicate of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7537/why-do-some-examples-and-list-of-things-questions-get-closed as this a absolutely different topic. Also my question is not too broad because hybrid compilation is a very uncommon topic. My question is only about hybrid compilation regarding standard C++ on Windows/Mac OS. It is a question about how it is possible." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26225" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7669" RevisionGUID="b9868367-c6b1-4092-9abd-2fa7283d60a4" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The first option, while not optimal, is trivial to do.  Go to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/151256/ahmad?tab=responses and page through them one at a time and read them. It works and doesn't require any additional hoops. I've even done this for myself at times to find things, and I have 89 pages of responses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also poke at http://data.stackexchange.com/ and write some SQL.  http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/376067/484421/ will pull back all comments on posts by a given user id - for you this is likely enough as there are only 121 rows. While the current version http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/376067/484422 has a keyword in there too which can be used to filter.  Your user id is `151256` (you can see it in the URL for your profile &lt;code&gt;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/151256/ahmad&lt;/code&gt; )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For what its worth, there is only one comment that exists on any of your posts that has the word 'book' in it - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Why algorithms textbook are more procedure-oriented?&quot; Java is also procedure-oriented. Java is an object oriented procedural language. – Pieter B Feb 6 at 8:01  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/272298/relation-between-object-orientation-and-algorithms#comment556547_272298)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Extending the query to find comments on answers to questions that a given user posted is left as an exercise to the reader." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26226" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8056" RevisionGUID="7991d7e2-d075-44a7-9980-48df54d756ed" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="From [Ana, a Stack Exchange Community Manager][1] in [the previous question about changing the site name][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It took us a good while, but the Community Team has circled up and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; here's where we stand on your request to change Programmers.SE's name.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###We agree that renaming this site is a good idea.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Programmers&quot; is an affinity group, whereas &quot;Software Architecture&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (for example) is an action and a discipline. It is entirely possible&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that changing the site's name will send clearer signals and prime new&#xD;&#xA;&gt; users to ask questions more consistently in line with what y'all would&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be proud to see and answer, particularly given where this site’s scope&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has solidified over the past few years.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; _So yes, we're open to proceeding with a name change._ That said, we'll need to make sure the change makes the kind of difference you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; want it to, because we can't repeat this process again several years&#xD;&#xA;&gt; down the line. We gotta get it right _this_ time. Last time the site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was renamed, the scope was very much still in flux; by now, hopefully&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you can identify much more precisely _what this site is about_ and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; commit to both a name _and_ description _and_ introductory materials&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that communicate this body of knowledge clearly and succinctly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Here's what the Community Team needs before we can move forward:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. **Tell us what you're proposing as the new site name.**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    &quot;Software Engineering&quot; and &quot;Software Architecture&quot; both look like&#xD;&#xA;&gt; good options from where I stand. Let’s not turn this into a bikeshed&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion; we need well-considered options here, not a popularity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; contest - Coffee McWhiskeyface is right out. The ideal name will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest _at a glance_ what this site is about, without suggesting that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it might be “fix my code” even a little bit.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. **Lay out what the [new site scope](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) will be.**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    Above all else, **the scope needs to be simple**. Seriously. No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gerrymandering - **it needs to be easy for any new visitor who bothers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to read** and even mildly pays attention to what they're reading to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; know what they can and cannot ask about here. Eliminate ambiguity for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a first time poster once and for all.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Let's talk again in a month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start answering the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What should our site name be?&#xD;&#xA;* What should [our tour][3] say? Specifically, the first paragraph below the site title that begins with &quot;Programmers Stack Exchange is a question and answer site...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* What should our [Help Center's on-topic page][4] say about what is on and off-topic? Note that what this site is about and not about also does appear on the tour.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/106878/ana?tab=profile&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7935/4&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26227" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7696" RevisionGUID="dabffabd-c498-46c0-8b7a-085baeffa4fd" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Currently, questions on [Big-Oh][1] are on-topic on the Programmers main site because they fall under &quot;[algorithm and data structure concepts][2].&quot; Does the community feel that these questions should continue to be on-topic, or should we change them to be off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Arguments for being on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* These questions are fairly harmless, easy to answer, and there are not a lot of them asked. They do not detract from the focus of the site, and people will ask them anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* There is no migration path to [Computer Science][3] where they are also on-topic, meaning we would need to deal with more moderator flags to migrate or create another open migration path which is additional effort. The status quo is the path of least resistance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Arguments for being off-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* While sites can and do overlap, [Computer Science][3] allows these questions. Being a more academic topic, it may be more appropriate there. Now that CS is out of beta, it is a more permanent target for these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* There is a canonical wiki locked question [What is O(…) and how do I calculate it?][4] which is a dupe target for many Big-Oh questions. _New questions do not really ask anything new_. Big-Oh is essentially a dead topic as far as new questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Many if not most of these questions are uninteresting [homework questions][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/big-o&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/132331&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6166" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26228" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7795" RevisionGUID="4b84fe3e-fc61-48b1-ba33-6cbefc0d1b12" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was involved in both of these questions... so here we go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both of these questions delve quite far into natural language programming.  I had a college class that touched on this for a week (as part of a general survey of AI) and this is the type of thing that really is the subject of semester long classes, heavy books, and research papers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This brings us to the first point you have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The OP isn't going to understand the answer anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Elsewhere I wrote](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important) on the importance of including what you know.  Neither of the questions included shows that if we were to go to the NLP level of trying to answer the question - word taxonomies, part of speech identification, we'd find ourselves [writing a tutorial for one of the libraries out there](http://nlp.stanford.edu/software/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Writing one of these from scratch, you would need to show that you have at least a handle of the scope of the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the question with joke similarity said that edit distance *wasn't* a valid solution (though it *did* work for the material provided in the question) it leaves the door wide open for &quot;how do you solve two jokes being similar?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The similarity between two sentences question doesn't even show that the OP is familiar with the domain, and again, is either asking someone to write a tutorial for a python NLP library or is looking to write this from scratch.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Putting the entirety of [Natural language processing: an introduction](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3168328/) into an answer isn't helpful to people (and it doesn't fit) - this is something that can be found by searching.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers that we give will either be too high level to be useful to the OP, ***way*** too technical (until the OP clarifies the question to show that they *are* capable of handling that technical level), repeating tutorials that can be trivially found by searching, or don't even fit in the space allotted for an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that the following answer would 'answer' both questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You will need to:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; *  do sentence boundary detection which also identifies abbreviations and titles (so that &quot;I watched Dr. Who last night.&quot; isn't two sentences).  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * do tokenization of words and ideas (so that &quot;5 miles/day&quot; is one token as is &quot;2,6-diaminohexanoic&quot;)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Identify the part of speech of the word including homographs and gerunds  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * decompose compound words, possibly doing lemmatization to reduce a word to its root by removing its suffix  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * chunk the text into phrases&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Once this is complete, you will need to identify if there are any grammatical or spelling errors.  For jokes this is especially problematic as they may depend on puns and the error recovery will either mangle the sentence or render it unable to be parsed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Following that, you will need to do named entity recognition which identifies the various people, places, locations, and other categories of nouns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless you are familiar with linguistics and some computation, thats really not a useful answer for anyone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key decider for me when looking at something that is too broad it has the following two points:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The high level answer isn't useful&#xD;&#xA; * The low level answer isn't specified&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its clear what the general problem is, but the focus of the problem needs to be narrowed. Are you having trouble with the sentence boundary recognition? With the part of speech tagging? Chunking phrases? Identifying the name in the syntax tree?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions, given that the OP knows what they are asking about, are really easy to fix. The OP goes in and modifies the question to say &quot;I am having a problem recognizing if this noun phrase is similar to that noun phrase.&quot;  But the question of &quot;explain NLP to me&quot; which is at this time, the current written core question to both posts is something that falls into the &quot;high level not useful&quot; area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without the specification, these questions morph from one form to another as the OP gets a slightly better idea of what they are asking about and then refines the question again, and again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I hope I am never asked to try to figure out if one telling of The Aristocrats is the same as another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm also going to point out that the Jokes question is a also literature request:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can anyone point me in the direction of useful literature?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A [google scholar search for plagiarism detection](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;q=plagiarism+detection&amp;btnG=&amp;as_sdt=1%2C50&amp;as_sdtp=) comes back with 26,000 results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And while this is easily edited out, it again points to the unfocused and too broad nature of the question. I have no idea if any of those are what the OP wants, or are at the level that the OP is able to understand. Providing that material for me to be able to properly answer the question is something that the OP needs to do in each case - I can't guess about that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26229" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8065" RevisionGUID="1948fe6d-caff-4267-b24c-084cdd924a10" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This answer is to summarize the requests for Stack Exchange in a single post. It is a community wiki, so if something else seems to be a consensus in this thread, feel free to add or edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Name&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change to **Software Engineering**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Tour / Tag Line&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Welcome&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Software Engineering** is a question and answer site for people involved in the [Systems Development Life Cycle][1] who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly. We don't address questions about debugging code or how to use specific tools in software development. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&amp;A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ask About&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the systems development life cycle&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Don't Ask About&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- writing or debugging code&#xD;&#xA;- support for software tools or packages&#xD;&#xA;- what to read, learn, buy or use&#xD;&#xA;- legal advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##On Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** is a question and answer site for people involved in the [Systems Development Life Cycle][1] who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software development [methods and practices][2]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [requirements engineering][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][4] and [design][5]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm) and [data structures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [quality assurance and testing][6]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [configuration][7], [build][8] and [release][9] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... then you're probably in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][7] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][8]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][9].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][2] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you still aren't sure, you can ask about our scope on [our Meta site][10]. We have [a curated FAQ on our Meta site][11]. You can also check out [our list of related sites within the Stack Exchange network][12].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life_cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-programmers-where-else-can-i-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26230" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7807" RevisionGUID="4ee74a47-c5b0-4f7b-a480-02bd37043a76" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It should come as a surprise to no one that I am disappointed about [the 3 close vote experiment being deemed a failure by the powers that be](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7797/3-votes-for-closing-reopening-experiment-the-results). Whether or not we did &quot;fail&quot; (and what that even means) is a big issue, which is already being hashed out in the answers to that question. But there's another equally large question that I don't think is getting discussed over there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming for the sake of argument that we did &quot;fail&quot; somehow, **I have absolutely no idea what SE wants us to do about it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing Jon tells us to do in that meta question is to not distrust users so much. I didn't think any of my actions on the site were based on distrust, but simply voting to close poor content based on how poor it is. If anything, I seem to habitually give first-time askers significantly more hand-written advice than they are willing to or capable of acting on. So, I really don't know what we're supposed to do with this instruction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I don't understand this suggestion, I currently *feel* like SE will do one of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Give up and completely ignore this site for the foreseeable future because they simply don't understand what's going on here.&#xD;&#xA;2. Assume they are correct in their belief that we close too many questions, and change the site mechanics to make it *harder* to close questions.&#xD;&#xA;3. Assume Jon's claim that &quot;distrust&quot; is the core problem is entirely accurate, and start taking disciplinary action against the most &quot;distrustful&quot; users, presumably for violating &quot;Be Nice&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe #1 is most likely, but part of me is genuinely concerned that #2, #3 or something equally misguided will happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My hope in asking this meta question is that Jon or someone else from SE can alleviate this uncertainty, ideally with a specific policy statement or some genuinely actionable advice.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some random questions/prompts to help demonstrate what I mean by &quot;actionable advice&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Should we be downvoting questions more often?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we be downvoting answers more often?&#xD;&#xA;- Are there any close reasons we should be using more often?&#xD;&#xA;- Are there any close reasons we should be using less often?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we be having frequent meta threads about whether a specific question is reopen-worthy, or can be edited to become reopen-worthy?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we encourage people to leave comments when downvoting or voting to close because of unclear/broad/POB? (as opposed to off-topic, which is much more self-explanatory)&#xD;&#xA;- Should we encourage people to stop leaving generic comments that simply link to a meta post without any specific advice about that particular question?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we stop trying to clean up &quot;broken windows&quot;, and just ignore any Qs/As beyond a certain age?&#xD;&#xA;- When a question is too unclear/broad to answer, and the OP never adds the missing details, are we supposed to make up details to edit in ourselves until the question becomes answerable?&#xD;&#xA;- When a bikesheddable question (let's say &quot;Should I use ++i or i += 1?&quot;) gets asked, should we close it as too broad/POB? Try to ruthlessly downvote the &quot;merely okay&quot; answers and hope only great ones survive? Just let people upvote everything into the stratosphere no matter how useless? Or something else entirely?&#xD;&#xA;- When a question asks for &quot;best practices&quot; without any explanation of what &quot;best&quot; means for them, should we not close that as unclear/broad/POB?&#xD;&#xA;- Should we try to come up with a clear set of guidelines that might help first-time askers avoid the unclear/broad/POB tarpit, better than the current FAQ does? For instance: describe what your application does, specify your language, specify whether you're after flexibility/intuitiveness/reliability/etc, explain why you want to do this, if there is a blindingly obvious solution explain why it doesn't apply, etc." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26232" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7832" RevisionGUID="ea47a6e2-5566-4b71-9b31-8feece772089" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; well, can it be reopened, because I think that there can be great answers? Now it's not off-topic. What do I need to do to be less to-broad, but still on topic? --[Josip Ivic](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7829/why-is-question-about-critical-embedded-software-for-nuclear-reactors-on-hold#comment23756_7830)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to make it so that the question isn't a poll. There is no one answer to this. Siemens may have written code in C, and then C++, and looked at using Java but stuck with C++.  The Navy may have mandated that Bechtel used Ada while Westinghouse write it in assembly for a custom microprocessor for which Ada wasn't an option, and who knows about Combustion Engineering or General Election which *also* made reactors for the US Navy (and that is just one navy - there are other nuclear powered naval vessels run by other countries).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The certification requirements for a civilian reactor in one country may differ from that in another and those may either mandate specific languages, or it is the case that specific languages make it easier to meet the requirements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This goes to the core of the 'too broad' - there are too many possible answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tangential part to all of this is that unless someone has specific in house knowledge (and that is not restricted by an NDA or other security clearance aspect), you won't get an answer beyond what is specified in the various certification requirements (which you can find with google). Your best course of action is to do the leg work and find out who makes the various reactors and ask their public spokesperson for information - that will get you a better answer than anyone here can give you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26233" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8091" RevisionGUID="f8641841-63bb-4580-8a35-27e000032041" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Short answer: most probably not (I would expect the community on Programmer's to close it). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact an old question from 2011 was not closed so far should not bring you to the conclusion that the same question would be still on-topic today. The site and it's scope has changed since then. Today, general questions (like questions about service contracts, or how to negotiate them) which are not specifically about conceptual software development are typically closed quickly by the community here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, the site will probably be renamed in future, and its scope description be more focused, read [this meta post][1] to inform yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8056/new-site-name-and-scope-proposals" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26234" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7885" RevisionGUID="3be22dd3-f627-49eb-b446-e5371e958872" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This site is focused on questions that can be answered (preferably definitively), and not just discussed. This, I'm afraid, is not the case with your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We simply don't know you well enough to comment on how _you_ can get over your resentment and be productive with the language in question (or anything, really). We don't even know if generic advice like &quot;there probably is another language that's equally appropriate for the task at hand&quot; is applicable in your situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see a way to re-open this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6742/25936&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6961/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26235" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8103" RevisionGUID="7e8ace85-e7ca-4af2-8aea-37f3f12f2c5e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Folks still ask for where they find it after 3 years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think above is generally a [valid concern](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/123386/165773 &quot;for the reasons discussed in details here&quot;). However some system limitations make it rather slippery to use popularity and historical interest as an _ultimate_ criteria on deciding whether to keep such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is, visual difference between &quot;normal&quot; and [historically locked](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;) questions is not really as prominent as it may seem to experienced users. I recall seeing at meta references to examples when inexperienced users didn't notice the differences and thought that these are normal, legitimate questions, [&quot;Why can't I ask X when Y exists?&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/broken-windows)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are essentially forced to decide whether &quot;harm to the Internet&quot; - link rot caused by deletion of particular question - outweighs the harm of it hanging in here and making a broken window for inexperienced users (who sometimes simply can't see / understand what historical lock means).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why historical interest alone doesn't determine whether question gets a historical lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's worth noting that so far suggestions to create and maintain some kind of an &quot;outcast&quot; / &quot;museum&quot; site for questions of historical interest were declined by Stack Exchange team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More generally, all suggestions to help community maintain historical questions known to me were either declined or ignored by SE team. Even when such suggestions require almost no effort and are apparently no risk / no harm, these are ignored (for example setting pink background when rendering historically locked posts [proposed here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7828/31260)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Set up an archive for legendary deleted questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73226/165773) (at MSE)&#xD;&#xA;* [Recent Trouble With Popularity](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(sort of a follow up) [Your comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8100/why-do-you-value-the-opinion-of-moderators-more-than-community-upvotes/8103#comment25141_8103) indicate a belief that inappropriate questions are harmless:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;need proof that suppressing these questions actually make the site rot, i.e. humorous questions starting to make a trend, because those questions exist in the first place. Without that maybe it's the case of suppressing a harmless thing because of valuing &quot;fear&quot; instead of &quot;evidence&quot;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a closer look at this site history [described here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/102937) you may find out that it is most likely not so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is, first few years such questions were allowed at Stack Overflow where they coexisted with &quot;boring&quot; programming questions. Fun questions were popular, entertaining, brought a lot of views and site visits. Now ask yourself a question, **if these were indeed harmless, why would they want to &quot;outsource&quot; them to a separate site (NPR)?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody in their sane mind would get rid of content that brings views and visits if it is harmless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I bet Stack Overflow creators would be happy to keep these questions on-site if (**if**) these weren't causing harm. The very fact that they moved it to a separate site (NPR) makes a very strong indication that these were indeed considered harmful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In case if you wonder about what specifically could make SO creators believe that there is harm consider taking a look at the canonical article explaining these matters - [The Trouble With Popularity](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we discovered that these posts become so popular over time that they truly start to drown out everything else on the site...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. **Broken windows.** Every 'fun' post users see is an open invitation for them to participate in the fun by adding *their own* fun question or answer. The stuff spreads like [kudzu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu)! Pretty soon the entire site is overrun with nothing but that kind of fun. And even if you grandfather a few in, you'll enjoy neverending requests asking why *their* fun question or answer has to be removed, while *this one over here* is allowed to remain.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;2. **Opportunity cost.** Every minute spent participating in an entertaining 'fun' post is time that someone could have spent asking or answering a substantive question, something practical that solves an *actual problem* for hundreds or thousands of people. Entertainment, within reason, is by no means a bad thing -- but I experience almost physical pain when I think about a brilliant topic expert spending 10 minutes on one of our sites deciding which hilarious cartoon is their favorite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is quite a solid evidence that Stack Exchange Q&amp;A model turned out poor in supporting &quot;pure fun&quot; kind of questions. They tried to keep these along with serious questions, they also tried to keep them at separate site... &quot;Sadly, it didn't work out.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26236" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7924" RevisionGUID="8d1494c0-4f5e-4c5d-86a4-5c635b5f658e" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Resource requests are explicitly [off-topic per the help center][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * where to find a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resources&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading: [Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - Requests for Recommendations?&quot;][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;The meta post goes into more detail explaining _why_ this is the case. Some of the important points summarized below:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Stack Exchange is _timeless_. A question should be mostly valid years from now. In the context of Programmers, fundamental design and programming concepts change at a glacial pace. Sure, specific technology comes and goes, but those of us in the computer science and software engineering fields for a decade or longer know that some hot new technology comes up every day, but by and large, the fundamentals that underpin our career field really do not change day to day. The lessons in [Working Effectively with Legacy Code][3] are as applicable today as they were in 2004 when [Michael Feathers][4] wrote the book because he focuses on techniques and high-level concepts. Only the details about specific libraries and tools have changed over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This puts the following points into the proper context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Resource requests are asking for specific resources that are relevant to the broader concepts. Links to tutorials and blogs can stagnate: if you want a Python tutorial for the particular concept you are trying to learn, it can grow out of date. Could you imagine stumbling across your question years later when Python 6 is all the rage, and ye olde Python 3 code is considered legacy technology that programmers grumble about maintaining just like we do with COBOL today? This is the core reason why this site focuses on _conceptual_ problems that age well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Stack Exchange is designed to be a place where people can get answers for their questions, not as a thinly-veiled search engine where questions are answered with links to outside resources. We have Google for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Answers are encouraged to link to outside resources, but an answer must stand on its own. Links can vanish or move. Then a link-only answer is useless, even if it is voted up to +100. Note that I opened this answer with two links, but provided a bit of explanation. This is regardless of the fact those links should never vanish unless this answer does as well (i.e. someone made Programmers.SE go away).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    From the [help center][5]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Links to external resources are encouraged, but please add context&#xD;&#xA;&gt; around the link so your fellow users will have some idea what it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and why it’s there. Always quote the most relevant part of an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; important link, in case the target site is unreachable or goes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; permanently offline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thomas mentioned Stack Exchange's two resource recommendation sites, for software and hardware. Those are special: such questions are on-topic there. However, requesting links to blogs, tutorials, etc. are off-topic at both. Both sites have _very_ strict requirements for what constitutes an on-topic question. As always, view a site's help center and poke around its meta (like you did here) for a bit before asking just to be sure. It makes for a better experience for everyone involved, and helps keep the signal to noise ratio high.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.amazon.com/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Michael-Feathers/dp/0131177052&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://michaelfeathers.silvrback.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26238" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7979" RevisionGUID="1efc4b8b-125f-430b-b8e2-0fa7c7c326c2" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[I know](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7930/if-the-scope-is-wrong-which-of-these-questions-belong-here) [about](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7974/is-asking-about-funny-related-topics-on-topic) [all](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7947/can-we-resuscitate-more-content) [of](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7904/can-i-ask-my-question-in-programmers-stackexchange-com) the [meta-tag:discussion] [about](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7876/regarding-the-one-return-only-question) what's [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), but I wanted to ask this question about [a specific question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/308503/201219), to satisfy my [wonder](http://codereview.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question in question: [Handling exceptions I don't know about](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/308503/201219).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a pretty Python-specific question, because Python is almost unusual among programming languages in its use of [Exception Handling](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_handling) for control flow where most other languages use it as a last resort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is asking, essentially:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's the best / most Pythonic way to structure this exception-driven control flow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some example code is provided, and an (apparently) objective answer or two was supplied.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My confusion arises from the fact that this question, if augmented with a little more Real Implementation Code,&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; would be *perfectly* on-topic on [Code Review](http://codereview.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that Programmers deals in the immaterialistic theories and misty, pure methodologies of programming, while CR deals in the application of the stated theories and methods against real code in real problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also seems to me that these two intents are inherently at odds for content; something posted on one site must not be a good fit for the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question in question is arguably more about the actual specific code than the methodologies and theories behind it, so:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**TL;DR**: Why's this question on-topic and accepted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1: Good, on-topic CR questions have real, tangible, working code that can be reviewed in an objective manner, not just *examples*, which is the cause for the note.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26239" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7991" RevisionGUID="c696814a-ccf0-4119-9599-4e1fa4cfcd1b" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My [Question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/313790/which-languages-allow-to-mix-its-source-code-with-c-source-code) was closed as unclear. It was not really bad from the beginning but some people still did not understand what I meant. Maybe because they were not familar with the example I made. But I still got two (from three) answers from people who understood my question. Then the question was put on hold and I tried to refine it more. To my astonishment it was closed. Still I have refined it even more to make it as precise as possible.  And I have also flagged it two times with the notice that there is no reason for keeping it closed. The moderators didn't care for it. I feel there is nothing more that I can do except asking here about help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is not a duplicate of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7537/why-do-some-examples-and-list-of-things-questions-get-closed as this a absolutely different topic. Also my question is not too broad because hybrid compilation is a very uncommon topic. My question is only about hybrid compilation regarding standard C++ on Windows/Mac OS. It is a question about how it is possible." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26240" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8276" RevisionGUID="2fa9e514-93af-46ec-9973-6206f48b6071" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Note: Most of this post was written before the [name change](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8266/96050) and I haven't changed to Software Engineering. I think that's appropriate, since I'm looking backward to when this site _was_ Programmers.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Note: This in response to [a comment by gnat on Meta Stack Exchange][1] asking for information regarding migrations to and from this site. It's being shared here since it may be of interest to the community.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wrote [a proposed philosophy of question migration](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/285467/1438). My thesis is that migration ought to be thought of as a convenience for the OP when they ask on the wrong site rather than a tool to manage content. Given there exists a [chatbot to detect _mentions_ of programmers.SE](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7154/96050) in order to deflect potential migration/crossposting, it seems to me that this site is particularly concerned about migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a baseline, here are some statistics for the entire history of the site going back to the very [first question asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/122955/96050):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Total Questions &#xD;&#xA;    --------------- &#xD;&#xA;    98768           &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Migrated Direction &#xD;&#xA;    -------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;     8900    out       &#xD;&#xA;    14484    in       &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Exported to:                      count  good &#xD;&#xA;    ------------                      -----  ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                  6482  6030 &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com         297   273  &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com        264   228  &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                       216   203  &#xD;&#xA;    security.stackexchange.com          173   171  &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                165   162  &#xD;&#xA;    meta.programmers.stackexchange.com  125   111  &#xD;&#xA;    dba.stackexchange.com               118   115  &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                103    97   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                 87    81   &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Imported from:                    count  good  &#xD;&#xA;    --------------                    ----- ----- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                 13828 11630 &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com        300   272   &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                        45    34    &#xD;&#xA;    serverfault.com                      40    32    &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                 31    28    &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                 31    19    &#xD;&#xA;    webmasters.stackexchange.com         27    16    &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com          26    22    &#xD;&#xA;    english.stackexchange.com            14    12    &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                 14    12    &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm just including at the top ten sites as there's a noticeable drop off in quantity after the top slot. As you can see, Programmers has received 5584 more questions from other sites (mostly Stack Overflow) than it has migrated away. A full 14% of the questions that have ever existed on this site began life on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But those all-time numbers hide an important story. Almost all of the migrations occurred before 2012: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Question migrations by year][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In recent years, Programmers has been a _net exporter_ of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Total Questions since         &#xD;&#xA;    --------------- ------------- &#xD;&#xA;    76426           2012-01-01 00:14:59&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Migrated Direction &#xD;&#xA;    -------- ---------&#xD;&#xA;    6629     out       &#xD;&#xA;    2307     in        &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Exported to:                       count good &#xD;&#xA;    ------------                       ----- ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                   3547 3116 &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com         151  118  &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com          128  104&#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                         68   59   &#xD;&#xA;    meta.programmers.stackexchange.com    63   51   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                  56   50   &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                  53   52   &#xD;&#xA;    dba.stackexchange.com                 48   45   &#xD;&#xA;    security.stackexchange.com            41   39   &#xD;&#xA;    unix.stackexchange.com                32   28   &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Imported from:                     count good &#xD;&#xA;    --------------                     ----- ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                    870  584  &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com         179  158  &#xD;&#xA;    serverfault.com                       23   16   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                  22   10   &#xD;&#xA;    webmasters.stackexchange.com           8    5    &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com            8    4    &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                   7    6    &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                   6    6    &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                          6    4    &#xD;&#xA;    webapps.stackexchange.com              4    3  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I picked January 1, 2012 because it's a handy cut off, not because of any particular event on the site. The quality of incoming questions has been respectable:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Migrated here Avg score Avg answers Avg comments Closure % Deletion % Avg age (days)&#xD;&#xA;    ------------- --------- ----------- ------------ --------- ---------- --------------&#xD;&#xA;             2307       6.0         2.6          3.5      14.3       16.0           32.3   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do remember votes from the source site are [reflected in the score](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/87031/1438). For instance, questions migrated from Stack Overflow to this site had an average score of 5.8 and 1.1 answers. So score might be less useful a measure of quality than the fact that these questions got new answers after migration and are [relatively](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7797/96050) less likely to get closed than organic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, fully a third of the questions migrated from Stack Overflow have been closed or deleted. We don't have an easy way to quantify _crossposted_ questions or questions asked at the prompting of misinformed commenters on another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/285467/a-proposed-philosophy-of-question-migration/285742#comment926949_285742&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Pp7bf.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26242" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8429" RevisionGUID="049e37b8-eab5-4906-8d5c-824eba753c96" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:38.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It is a bit late into this new year, being that we're already in the second month, but we are now cycling the Community Promotion Ads for 2017!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What are Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA; - cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA; - anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we reset the ads every year?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that if high DPI.&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB&#xD;&#xA; - If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently **6**) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/ads/display/8429" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26243" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8091" RevisionGUID="7b8a1756-7962-424d-8b28-9c14ca739cf9" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Short answer: most probably not (I would expect the community on Programmer's to close it). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact an old question from 2011 was not closed so far should not bring you to the conclusion that the same question would be still on-topic today. The site and it's scope has changed since then. Today, general questions (like questions about service contracts, or how to negotiate them) which are not specifically about conceptual software development are typically closed quickly by the community here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, the site will probably be renamed in future, and its scope description be more focused, read [this meta post][1] to inform yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8056/new-site-name-and-scope-proposals" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26244" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8103" RevisionGUID="cc551f17-55b8-4d64-9310-33f29ca7122d" CreationDate="2017-03-16T17:33:37.987" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Folks still ask for where they find it after 3 years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think above is generally a [valid concern](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/123386/165773 &quot;for the reasons discussed in details here&quot;). However some system limitations make it rather slippery to use popularity and historical interest as an _ultimate_ criteria on deciding whether to keep such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is, visual difference between &quot;normal&quot; and [historically locked](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;) questions is not really as prominent as it may seem to experienced users. I recall seeing at meta references to examples when inexperienced users didn't notice the differences and thought that these are normal, legitimate questions, [&quot;Why can't I ask X when Y exists?&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/broken-windows)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are essentially forced to decide whether &quot;harm to the Internet&quot; - link rot caused by deletion of particular question - outweighs the harm of it hanging in here and making a broken window for inexperienced users (who sometimes simply can't see / understand what historical lock means).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why historical interest alone doesn't determine whether question gets a historical lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's worth noting that so far suggestions to create and maintain some kind of an &quot;outcast&quot; / &quot;museum&quot; site for questions of historical interest were declined by Stack Exchange team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More generally, all suggestions to help community maintain historical questions known to me were either declined or ignored by SE team. Even when such suggestions require almost no effort and are apparently no risk / no harm, these are ignored (for example setting pink background when rendering historically locked posts [proposed here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7828/31260)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Set up an archive for legendary deleted questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73226/165773) (at MSE)&#xD;&#xA;* [Recent Trouble With Popularity](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(sort of a follow up) [Your comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8100/why-do-you-value-the-opinion-of-moderators-more-than-community-upvotes/8103#comment25141_8103) indicate a belief that inappropriate questions are harmless:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;need proof that suppressing these questions actually make the site rot, i.e. humorous questions starting to make a trend, because those questions exist in the first place. Without that maybe it's the case of suppressing a harmless thing because of valuing &quot;fear&quot; instead of &quot;evidence&quot;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a closer look at this site history [described here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/102937) you may find out that it is most likely not so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is, first few years such questions were allowed at Stack Overflow where they coexisted with &quot;boring&quot; programming questions. Fun questions were popular, entertaining, brought a lot of views and site visits. Now ask yourself a question, **if these were indeed harmless, why would they want to &quot;outsource&quot; them to a separate site (NPR)?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody in their sane mind would get rid of content that brings views and visits if it is harmless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I bet Stack Overflow creators would be happy to keep these questions on-site if (**if**) these weren't causing harm. The very fact that they moved it to a separate site (NPR) makes a very strong indication that these were indeed considered harmful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In case if you wonder about what specifically could make SO creators believe that there is harm consider taking a look at the canonical article explaining these matters - [The Trouble With Popularity](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we discovered that these posts become so popular over time that they truly start to drown out everything else on the site...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. **Broken windows.** Every 'fun' post users see is an open invitation for them to participate in the fun by adding *their own* fun question or answer. The stuff spreads like [kudzu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu)! Pretty soon the entire site is overrun with nothing but that kind of fun. And even if you grandfather a few in, you'll enjoy neverending requests asking why *their* fun question or answer has to be removed, while *this one over here* is allowed to remain.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;2. **Opportunity cost.** Every minute spent participating in an entertaining 'fun' post is time that someone could have spent asking or answering a substantive question, something practical that solves an *actual problem* for hundreds or thousands of people. Entertainment, within reason, is by no means a bad thing -- but I experience almost physical pain when I think about a brilliant topic expert spending 10 minutes on one of our sites deciding which hilarious cartoon is their favorite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is quite a solid evidence that Stack Exchange Q&amp;A model turned out poor in supporting &quot;pure fun&quot; kind of questions. They tried to keep these along with serious questions, they also tried to keep them at separate site... &quot;Sadly, it didn't work out.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26245" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8487" RevisionGUID="0db4717e-cd8f-46a8-9b6d-43cc4cc0d331" CreationDate="2017-03-16T23:54:18.230" UserId="265774" Text="This question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15056896/why-is-the-symbol-for-or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;was closed for being Off-topic on StackOverflow.  I recommend that it be migrated to here, where it would be decidedly more topical.  &#xD;&#xA;Then, I recommend that this question be closed as a Duplicate:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/317905/why-is-a-vertical-bar-used-as-the-or-operator-in-so-many-programming-languages" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26246" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8487" RevisionGUID="0db4717e-cd8f-46a8-9b6d-43cc4cc0d331" CreationDate="2017-03-16T23:54:18.230" UserId="265774" Text="Migrate one question, Close another" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26247" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8487" RevisionGUID="0db4717e-cd8f-46a8-9b6d-43cc4cc0d331" CreationDate="2017-03-16T23:54:18.230" UserId="265774" Text="|discussion|migration|moderation|closing-questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26248" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8488" RevisionGUID="a3fd8356-6ac3-45f3-a062-1fce192e55d5" CreationDate="2017-03-17T01:06:39.920" UserId="4" Text="The question on Stack Overflow was asked over 4 years ago. It cannot be migrated due to its age." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26249" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="699" RevisionGUID="495086bd-b6d0-49fb-81a1-cc492e584b5a" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The consensus, if you could call it that, on removing the accept rate was mostly achieved before [Great Redisiplining](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice). People can and should be accepting answers: the acceptance criteria on all Stack Exchange sites is &quot;this answer helped me, personally, the most.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To clarify, the re-disiplining of Programmers.SE set guidelines that discourage people from asking questions they don't actually need the answers to (i.e. so-called &quot;pointless water cooler nonsense&quot;). With that, the [standard criteria for accepting answers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work) applies to all questions on Programmers.SE like it does on the rest of the Stack Exchange network." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26250" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="44" RevisionGUID="6e729c35-5f7a-4107-8206-a338bd9e5113" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; ### Note (copied from Mark Trapp's answer)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question was posted before the Great Disciplining of Programmers.SE and is rendered obsolete by the following resources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Programmers.SE FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When this site was proposed, there was an unspoken understanding &amp;#8212; heck, sometimes it wasn't even unspoken &amp;#8212; that it was the place for questions like &quot;[What's your favorite programmer cartoon?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/84556/whats-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon)&quot; and &quot;[What book should every programmer read?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read)&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming for a moment that the migration pathway opens up from SO after the beta &amp;#8212; that's being discussed at [a separate question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/23/should-we-migrate-subjective-question-from-stackoverflow) &amp;#8212; do we still want to ask those questions during the beta?  It's already happening; [example 1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon), [example 2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-programming-quote).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the one hand, it seems redundant.  But on the other hand, there's always the merge function.  Back to the first hand, merging will probably create some dupe answers.  But on the second hand again, there are already dupe answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26251" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1537" RevisionGUID="73d969b4-c9fd-4f1f-83ee-34a573816c1b" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="ChrisF and Anna Lear answered why it's different, so I'm not going to repeat them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And [Jin](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1685/jin), Stack Exchange's designer-in-residence, would be able to answer definitively as to why it's *specifically* pink. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I always understood the badges to be abstractions of the Post-It Note:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Regular Badge&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Yellow Post-It Notes][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Tag Badge&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Pink Post-It Notes][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/fhKxX.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6GH6R.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26252" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="48" RevisionGUID="0cd9b53f-db74-40fa-ae2d-7277a78a2dd9" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are now a lot of questions that are of the same caliber:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What's your favourite programming quote?][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [What is your favorite “programmer” cartoon?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is your favorite editor/IDE?][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [What's your favorite programming joke?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35/whats-your-favorite-programming-joke)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can you recommend some good programming blogs?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67/can-you-recommend-some-good-programming-blogs)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should these types of questions be allowed on Programmers.SE, or should we be limiting the scope of the site to subjective questions that promote extended discussion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was suggested on the [Community Wiki on Programmers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/community-wiki-on-programmers) question that we should use the *Community Wiki* flag to allow these types of questions, but prevent rep farming on them. But is that a good solution? What about closing these questions as off-topic even on Programmers.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-programming-quote&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/219/what-is-your-favorite-editor-ide" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26253" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2422" RevisionGUID="dada5f4b-a5ff-49b2-811c-e0272ff1b7d0" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There have been a few questions lately about improving the guidance and clarity of what this site is about. We rely heavily on [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) for this guidance, but over the past year, our FAQ has become longer and longer as more caveats, exceptions, commentary, and other things that seem important at the time gets added.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to get the FAQ into a state that's clear and easy to read?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: this is solely about **rewriting the FAQ with the current scope.** If you want to suggest changes to the scope of the site, please propose it in [a new question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/ask).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also note we can't change the entire FAQ: just the first part (up to and including &quot;Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26254" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="59" RevisionGUID="f3683fb9-a810-4c47-896e-f20661c9aefa" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Meta tags&#xD;&#xA;Given the nature of the content on Programmers.SE, I think *some* meta-tags would be helpful. Many questions are going to have specific topics of interest, but others are so subjective they necessarily encompass vaguely defined topics but are still on-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One example of a tag I think would be beneficial would be *poll*. Assuming it's decided that asking people about their favorite *X* is considered on-topic (related discussion: [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable), it'd be really useful for people to add those types of questions to their ignored or interested tag lists. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A similar use-case could be made for *humor* and other similar tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Programmer tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to see those renamed or removed: they're redundant. It's assumed if you're talking about a *language*, it's C++ or Erlang, not French or Spanish; and every question on this site has something to do with *programmers* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:** *Programmers* tag removed, *programming-tool* renamed to *tools*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### *Favorite* tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to see this renamed to *poll*. *Favorite* is subjective and does not convey anything about the question: is it the author's favorite question? The taggers? *Poll* is specific and concrete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:** *Favorite* tag is deprecated in favor of *Poll*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Hiring/Job/Career tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These should be consolidated into one tag: *careers* and synonyms created for the other tags. There is no difference in the type of questions among these tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26255" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2424" RevisionGUID="a2281cc9-c46f-4595-b64e-c4ff2f9d4f7e" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Looking through the other FAQs, many are starting to use what's been called the &quot;[Super User style](http://superuser.com/faq)&quot;: explaining right up front what's on-topic and the exceptions to that list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users. If you have a question about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * computer hardware&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *computer software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;and it is not about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * videogames or consoles&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * websites or web services like Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * electronic devices, media players, cell phones or smart phones, except insofar as they interface with your computer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * a shopping or buying recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should follow that. I also think we should drop much of the commentary, as it only clouds the issue related to what's on-topic and what isn't. For example, it's difficult understand all the caveats and exceptions to the career advice policy and whether or not any specific question meets the criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other parts of the FAQ, like the note about comments, are [explained elsewhere](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So here is what I'm proposing instead:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* design patterns&#xD;&#xA;* developer testing&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;* freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and it is **not about**…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [career advice, including general workplace issues](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590)&#xD;&#xA;* what language you should learn next, including [which technology is better](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;* résumé help&#xD;&#xA;* what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;* programming tools (ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com) instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;…then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![proper scope for question](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please also [look around](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search) to see if your question has been asked before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## What about subjective questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. **Please keep it professional at all times**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All subjective questions are expected to be _constructive_. How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;* tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;* have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;* invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;* insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;* are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot; Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26256" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3087" RevisionGUID="09805eee-a8ac-4a22-a400-f3190b0b60c1" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Related:**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  [Request for comment: structured tag cleanups](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a call for proposals for the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Provide one proposal per post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A tag cleanup proposal is a tag, or a collection of *highly* related tags (e.g., tags all sharing the same stem) that needs to be dealt with *en masse*. Besides naming the tag or tags to be handled, your proposal must specify:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **What the problem is.** Why does the tag need to be dealt with? What problems has it caused? Why can't it be handled by a tag merge/rename?&#xD;&#xA;2. **What the solution is.** Does the tag need to go away and replaced with set of new tags? What are those tags? Does it just need a quality review to make it less of a honeypot? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Discuss and vote on proposals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Use the comments on the proposal to discuss any improvements that can be made to the proposal. Be bold and revise proposals based off of those discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote up proposals you think should be done this round, and vote down proposals you don't think have merit, or should not be handled yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Clean up!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**On February 22nd, 2012 at 00:00 UTC or when a proposal gets a 5 score, whichever comes last, this call for proposals will be closed.** We will then handle each proposal with 5 score or higher one at a time in order of their score. A new post will be created that will detail the cleanup activities for the cleanup.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **This is not the place to discuss the merits of or improvements to the Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative.** If you'd like to propose changes to this process for future rounds, please do so on the [RFC for the initiative](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups).&#xD;&#xA;* **This is not a to-do list for unilateral action.** The purpose of the Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative is to be more transparent and organized about cleaning up tags. In order for this to work, it's important we work within the framework and achieve community consensus.&#xD;&#xA;* **Proposals should be reasonable in scope and clearly defined.** &quot;I think we should do something about low quality questions&quot; is not a proposal. &quot;Here's 50 tags someone should do about&quot; is too broad. &quot;I think X tag should be handled but I don't know how&quot; is too vague. [Use chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21) to flesh out an idea.&#xD;&#xA;* **Any proposals that don't meet the threshold can be suggested on later cleanups.** Once the proposals from this round have been handled, a new call for proposals round will begin. Use the time in between to refine and improve any proposal that doesn't make the cut." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26257" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3092" RevisionGUID="93f4765d-fb3b-4483-a0cb-5b3678ef6a32" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Proposed tag**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:software-development], 343 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Problem**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's possibly the worst _on topic_ tag we have. _Every_ question is (or should be) about software-development, hence redundant. Furthermore the tag is oftenly coupled with other troublesome / ambiguous tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:best-practices] = [21 questions][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:software-engineering] = [17 questions][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:career] = [7 questions][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:productivity] = [8 questions][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:self-improvement] = [16 questions][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-development] + [tag:jobs] = [3 questions][6] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, ~ 21% of [tag:software-development] questions attracted other clean up worthy tags. Also explicitly mentioned in the &quot;[The Death of Meta Tags][7]&quot; post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Solution** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Most open questions are perfectly on topic and otherwise appropriately tagged, appropriately retagging would suffice.  &#xD;&#xA;- There are about 30 questions that are only tagged [tag:software-development], those are going to be tricky ones. I went through them and the topics discussed on most of them are clear, so we can easily retag.&#xD;&#xA;- There are 75 closed questions that may or may not be salvageable. The tag may be bad, but it's mostly used on topic questions, so the closed ones are clearly problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the tag is no longer used, we should ask SE to blacklist it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cleanup question: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3354/structured-tag-cleanup-software-development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+best-practices&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+career&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+productivity&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-development+self-improvement&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://%5Bsoftware-development%5D%20%5Bjobs%5D&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/lets-nuke-the-catch-all-tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26258" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="101" RevisionGUID="6a00cd2e-3f7d-4f69-b96c-804cb7edc123" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [How to ask a question about software library resources](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1234/how-to-ask-a-question-about-software-library-resources)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;When asking a question that will result in a list (which is a big chunk of this site's content), people often provide an example answer in their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example:[What non programming books should a programmer read?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this is at least twofold. Firstly the question may get upvotes based on the example answer, rather than being a good question. Secondly, the answer provided in the question will not sit in the list in the correct place in the voting, as it's unlikely anyone else will add that answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose that we should encourage people when asking &quot;list&quot; type questions to provide their own answer separately so that the question and answer can be voted on independently, and the answer can be part of the list of answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/966/what-non-programming-books-should-a-programmer-read-that-helps-developing-progra" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26259" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3094" RevisionGUID="4f0aa7ba-89d1-4bed-99cc-ec7f9770a5b1" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Proposed Tag**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:software-engineering]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Problem**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag is too vague to be meaningful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Solution**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tag should be removed and replaced with more specific tags that more adequately describe what the question is about, whether its a methodology, a lifecycle phase, and so on. We already have several tags for each of these, but they are too numerous to name all of. A few examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:requirements]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:agile]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:project-management]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:architecture]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:metrics]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cleanup question: &#xD;&#xA; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3263/structured-tag-cleanup-software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26260" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3124" RevisionGUID="832fbeb6-186e-4fbb-8441-964fafc4de69" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Closed is meant as a temporary state for question. A question that is closed is on the chopping block, so to speak. Either someone should make [heroic edits][1] to the question to fix the reason why it was closed, or the question will eventually get deleted. As to why this particular question was deleted at this particular time, I'm not sure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26261" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="107" RevisionGUID="71057655-8be9-4570-948f-89b7377a18fa" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###[FishToaster][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to throw my hat in, since the guidelines say self-nomination is encouraged.  No one's been here long enough to really establish their credentials, but we need people with mod tools, so here I am.  I've been reasonably active in both NPR and meta.NPR, and intend to be for a while (at the very least for the duration of the temporary modship).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6/fishtoaster" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26262" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3171" RevisionGUID="fef52f2b-6bfe-48ce-88c8-5dea81f8b809" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Related:**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  [Request for comment: structured tag cleanups](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Structured Tag Cleanup — Call for proposals #1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Welcome to the first structured tag cleanup! Based on the voting in the [call for proposals](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1), the first round goes to the [tag:career] tag, with 567 current questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a means to contain the disaster, the tag has been renamed to [stci-c​areer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci-career), which should prevent people from adding any more questions to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ground rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of this cleanup is to systematically clean up the career tag without causing disruption to the rest of the site.  Your job, should you choose to accept it, is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [deletion candidates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3172/8) below and see if there's a way to save any of the questions before they go gently into that good night through [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits). At the end of the clean up period, any questions not sufficiently improved will be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [merge candidates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3173/8) to see if can be merged into one question. If they shouldn't be, revise the questions to demonstrate how it's not in any way like the question it's been duplicated to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [closure candidates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3174/8) list to see if you agree with what others have identified as being out of the site's scope. If you agree, vote to close. If you don't agree, use [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to address the problems the question has and bring it back into scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the currently open questions and see which ones do not fit our site scope. Vote to close them and add them to the closure candidates list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Improve the leftover questions by copyediting, fixing spelling, flow, adding clearer titles, etc. while replacing the `stci-c​areer` tag with something more meaningful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    [tag:career-development] for questions about taking steps to improve one's programming career and *requires* the unique insights of a programmer   &#xD;&#xA;    [tag:interview] for questions about interviewing for a software development position   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:hiring] for questions about hiring programmers and other software developers   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market] for questions about the prospects or what one needs to do to get a specific job in software development   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-title] for questions about what a specific type of software development job entails   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:project-management] for questions about managing the scope and requirements of a specific project   &#xD;&#xA;[tag:teamwork] for questions about working within a software development team&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ...and other, more specific tags as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Finally, and this is perhaps the most important of all the rules: **do not just remove the stci-c​areer tag without improving the question.** If all our tag problems were solved by retagging, we would've done so months ago. Every time you retag without improving a question, I silently judge you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ## ಠ_ಠ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### End date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This round of cleanups will end on **Wednesday, March 7th at 04:00 UTC.** At that time, all the default actions will be done: deletions, merges, closures, and such. If the `stci-c​areer` tag is not empty by then, it'll be renamed back to [tag:career] and be saved for later rounds of cleanups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good luck, and godspeed!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26263" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3173" RevisionGUID="8b1c7ba8-7e43-420a-8c51-7679e4773316" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Merge candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions closed as duplicates to see if they can be merged. If they shouldn't be merged, please use [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to clarify why the questions aren't duplicates of each other and vote to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86502/move-on-and-look-elsewhere-or-confront-the-boss &amp;rarr;   &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4765/when-do-you-know-its-time-to-move-on-from-your-current-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11153/will-programmers-be-around-in-a-few-years &amp;rarr;   &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81160/does-being-a-jack-of-all-trades-hurt-your-career &amp;rarr;   &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20653/is-it-better-to-specialize-in-a-single-field-i-like-or-expand-into-other-fields&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/361/ive-graduated-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-im-even-clo &amp;rarr;   &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/15857/did-microsoft-kill-silverlight &amp;rarr;   &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/28078/does-silverlight-have-a-future&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20723/how-do-i-get-better-at-acing-technical-interviews &amp;rarr;   &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/93384/how-can-i-really-wow-an-employer-at-an-interview&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41720/which-order-would-you-teach-programming-languages-in-when-teaching-a-newbie &amp;rarr;   &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/10675/ideal-programming-language-learning-sequence&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61678/can-a-developer-move-into-a-fast-paced-career-later-in-life &amp;rarr;   &#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/370/how-old-is-too-old" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26264" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="112" RevisionGUID="e53b6279-1ad0-4112-bf52-ba64d6992f2a" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**[ChrisF][1]** ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to put myself forward as an extra or backup moderator. **I don't want to take the place of anyone else who's willing and able to do the job**, but I thought it might be useful if there was somebody who &quot;knew the ropes&quot; so to speak.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm already a moderator on the [Web Applications site](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/users/21/chrisf) and I'm a 10K user on [Stack Overflow][3], [Super User][4] and [Meta Stack Overflow][5] so I know how the system works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/47&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/47/chrisf&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/59303/chrisf&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://superuser.com/users/289/chrisf&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/59303/chrisf" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26265" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3188" RevisionGUID="3822e1d0-c04b-43d4-95c8-ca21036d0435" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2373/should-we-nuke-the-catch-all-tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a tag that could theoretically be added to every question on the site. If you think about it all questions are ultimately asking for the &quot;best&quot; way to do something.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26266" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="116" RevisionGUID="04493dc2-e7a4-4837-a2fe-f96d1450c7a3" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="outofscope.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taken / Available for purchase&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[GoodEnough][1] is the owner and willing to sell.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/220/goodenough" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26268" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3243" RevisionGUID="59299bd7-fc7e-419f-ad78-7575ba08d13e" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This post made me chuckle: in leaving, I think my deepest regret is that I was never able to explain sufficiently or clearly enough to people like yourself who still cling to &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; what the site is or how Stack Exchange works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ isn't what moderators—including me—act on. [They act](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/) based on what they understand the scope of the site—decided by regular community users like yourself—to be. Moderators were elected—twice—to act in accordance with that scope. The FAQ is a summary—a cheat sheet if you will—of what the community-decided scope is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The scope of the site was [solidified two weeks after private beta ended](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/350/8). Since then, moderators and other community members have worked to contain the severe cancer that was produced from &quot;Not Programming Related&quot;. After months and months of effort, the cancer's gone into remission and now people are [cleaning up the dead cells](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The people, like yourself, who wish this was still the &quot;Not Programmers Related&quot; site from *September 2010* are in the very, very small minority. A vocal minority, but a small one, and one that shrinks as time goes on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange isn't for everyone: if there's one piece of advice I could instill now that I'm no longer a moderator, it's that perhaps—after 18 months of seeing the wind blow the other way—maybe it's time to cut your losses and find or [create a new home](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/977/8)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26270" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3265" RevisionGUID="dafea44a-85c7-4dcc-8217-6b4ba75bc154" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Merge candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions closed as duplicates to see if they can be merged. If they shouldn't be merged, please use [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to clarify why the questions aren't duplicates of each other and vote to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26271" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3272" RevisionGUID="b7df3bb1-aa30-4a27-9f23-2d14b76d33f7" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Questions are being closed and edited with respect to the [Structured Tag Clean-Up Initiative for the careers tag][1]. It should subside soon, although the frequency of edits might be a bit too high this time around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26272" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3276" RevisionGUID="5ef1e7e8-b6b7-42c1-9d24-7f99dd4bcbff" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [proposal][1] to the [tag:software-engineering] tag was to remove the tag because it was too broad, and retag the questions with more appropriate tags. I voted this one up because I agree with this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The actual [solution][2] that appears to be being implemented is to close/delete questions in this tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking through the [list of closure candidates][3], I see many which are asking about design patterns, and the SDLC, which are on-topic for this site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are we focusing our time on closing these questions, especially since this was not the proposed solution for this tag? I feel user and moderator resources could be better spent elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3094/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3263/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3264/1130&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26273" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3278" RevisionGUID="6a52332b-f98e-467e-ae12-6cfa3fc4a00f" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The cleanup proposal is part of the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative][1], which includes closing, merging and deleting questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Step 3: cleaning up the tags, identifying close candidates, and the last call for heroic edits**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; During the two-week cleanup period, the community will be tasked with doing the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cleaning up the tags: if a question is on-topic for the site, it needs to be revised and retagged with more meaningful tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Identifying close candidates: if a tagged question just slipped through the cracks and needs to be closed, it needs to be listed as a close candidate on the cleanup notice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; For any tagged closed question or close candidate, the cleanup period is the last chance to save them with heroic edits: consolidate lists into canonical answers and flag duplicate answers for deletion and substantially improve the quality of the question. If an attempt to save a question has been made, flag the question and list it as a &quot;saved question&quot; on the cleanup notice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;STCI is well documented in that question, and I directed you in posting an answer there instead of posting comments in the specific proposal, as it seemed to me that you were contesting whether the initiative in itself had anything to do with weeding out questions that somehow don't belong. I felt it was extremely counter productive to post comments on specific proposal questions when there was a Meta question where you could summarize your concerns, as comments are ephemeral, don't allow for consensus, and are quite less visible than Meta answers.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Going through a tag is a great opportunity to clean up questions that don't belong to the site, for whatever reason. I agree that almost every question under [tag:software-engineering] is on topic, however topicality is not the only issue with close worthy questions. Several of the questions that are identified in the closure candidates list fall under the not constructive category, but as I told you if you want to discuss specific questions [feel free to ping me in chat][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3263/structured-tag-cleanup-software-engineering#comment8466_3263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26274" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3357" RevisionGUID="0ce7045b-f818-4aa1-8b91-990f7cef7725" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Deletion candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions to see which can be saved through [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) and reopened. If no improvement would make them on topic, vote to delete if you have the reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118962/is-it-normal-to-think-about-a-design-problem-for-days-with-no-code-written&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97484/why-are-bad-developers-offended-by-flaws-in-their-code&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/125383/how-to-get-rogues-to-use-good-programming-practices" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26275" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3579" RevisionGUID="1a2aed47-2231-49f2-b0b6-0e9021bd1981" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As ChrisF [already mentioned][1] the question is &quot;not constructive&quot;, which to us means:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit to our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. See the FAQ for guidance on how to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is nothing inherently wrong with these questions, they just don't fit the philosophy and available tools of a Stack Exchange site. For further details on what &quot;not constructive&quot; means for us, you should read these two blog posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Real Questions Have Answers][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I have found that Quora is a solid alternative for these questions. I'm fairly new there, but it seems that their platform was designed with discussion oriented questions in mind, and more or less works as expected. It's a bit noisy, and I can't really say that I'm satisfied by the overall quality of the discussions, but I have found some gems that would never work in the Stack Exchange format. Worth a try.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, for the issue of the confusion with the site's name and design: It is true that the site's brand targeted its original scope, and I partially agree with you that it doesn't really serve the current scope. It's just too friendly, and we are not ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, although it has been theorized that some people find the site confusing, no solid evidence have been brought forth that this is the case for a lot of people _or_ that even for the few that are confused that the confusion doesn't go away after reading the FAQ and browsing the site for a few days. Very recently, a fairly new user came to Meta and, well, [described the site like a pro][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is an [open discussion on the matter][4], feel free to contribute your thoughts there if you wish. Notice however that the overwhelming majority of the community, either through answers or upvotes, dismiss the matter as a non issue, or at least as something of a quirk that only affects a handful of people, and only for a very short time, what we like to call &quot;too localized&quot; ;P Don't get me wrong, I too was confused initially. Well, after about a week of staying around, no problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3576/if-we-cannot-ask-about-the-programmers-bill-of-responsibilities-on-this-site-why/3577#3577&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3561/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26276" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="132" RevisionGUID="10e883ca-3014-47cc-89bc-1ea633a708a3" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###[Joe][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;I'm interested, and would like to nominate myself. I am very interested in helping this site grow, and seeing it become a great place to be on the internet. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am pretty active in the parent site, and somewhat on meta. Although my rep isn't very high, as of the time of this writing I am on the first page of the users list.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/81/joe&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/81/joe" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26277" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3674" RevisionGUID="ede645fa-61da-431a-ba4c-3c2feb22962d" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Are book recommendations on-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I asked this [question][1] and someone closed it. Why asking for books recommendation is OffTopic and be closed instead? I see a lot of books recommendation still open and receiving answers!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;WTF stackexchange???!!! Here is the list of example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150510/learning-to-build-real-time-web-applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/150225/what-is-a-comprehensive-book-on-concurrent-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143553/what-are-good-books-for-learning-c11&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141060/book-to-get-started-with-mongodb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135762/learning-asynchronous-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135673/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-requirements-gathering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/151899/i-need-books-for-procedural-programming" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26278" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3726" RevisionGUID="be46fe71-a024-4675-bc71-9bd0c53a3565" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="To be explicitly clear, this post is coming exclusively from me as member of the Programmers community, not as a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&amp;A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like [Mark Trapp][1], I want to see data to support this. I'm not convinced that the name has anything to do with the closure rate. Anyone who spends a couple of minutes looking at the FAQ or reading existing questions should see what the site is about, and anyone posting here should take a few minutes to understand the site before they post. The very first line in the FAQ even says that &quot;Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have any numbers, but I get the feeling that most people who visit this site learn what it's about. Even if you look at other sites, [like Stack Overflow][2], you can see that there are closed questions that can be avoided if people read the FAQ and understand the site before randomly posting. You don't spend effort dealing with (and I'm borrowing some ideas from some corporate HR policies) the 5% of the people who are the &quot;bad apples&quot;. You focus on the 95% of the people who are good contributors and make it possible for them to do what they do best.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we advertise as a Q&amp;A site about programmers, however we are not a site about programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see that anywhere. Every place I see refers to the site being &quot;for professional programmers&quot; and a place to ask &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;. If there is a place that makes it seem like this site is for questions about programmers or being a programmer, please provide a link to it. If there is any ambiguity, it should be cleared up. However, I haven't found any yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, from my personal experiences (about a dozen or so data points, which is most likely statistically insignificant), the name does cause a **small** problem when pitching the site to people with professional titles such as &quot;Software Architect&quot;, &quot;Systems Architect&quot;, &quot;Software Quality Assurance Engineer&quot;, &quot;Software Process Improvement Specialist&quot;, &quot;Process Engineer&quot;, and so on. These people all could ask and answer questions that are on-topic here, however none of them consider themselves programmers. It's not impossible to pitch the site after mentioning &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot; and highlighting specific topics that they would be interested in, but the name requires an explanation of the acceptable content to people who aren't programmers. It makes an elevator pitch (&lt;2 minutes) more difficult, but not impossible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that this is the same point that [jmort253 brought up in the comments][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If any reason exists to consider changing the name, I think that it would be to rebrand the site to better encompass the things that [we consider on topic][4]. Many of the people who are professionals in areas of architecture, process, software licenses, and the business side of software developers might not consider themselves programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be curious about what experiences people have had pitching this site to non-programming software development professionals (anyone who has the potential to ask and answer on-topic questions, but does not professionally build software) and if there were any difficulties creating an elevator pitch (30-120 seconds) to get them interested in the site. I think that such information could be used to make a case for rebranding - if a member of this community can't easily convey the purpose of this community to someone who would be interested in it, that could be problematic to the continued growth and development of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3724/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=closed:1&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3718/change-the-name-of-programmers-to-something-that-more-accurately-reflects-the-si#comment10281_3718&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26279" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="134" RevisionGUID="a2209d60-1805-4852-8eec-81575d0a68ba" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###[Shady M. Najib][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;###Self-nominated&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been benefiting out of StackOverflow for quite sometime, lately I decided to join to pay back. Though I'm kinda new to Stack Exchange as a whole, You might want to check my profile here &amp; also on [StackOVerFlow][3], [Area51][4], I claim I'm very passionate about community&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/212/shady-m-najib&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/212/shady-m-najib&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/406464/shady-m-najib&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/users/14222/shady-m-najib" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26280" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3733" RevisionGUID="5e3e1438-5267-429e-be01-2569da8a6709" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I write this both as a 20,000+ user and former elected moderator on Programmers, and as a community manager at Stack Exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First and foremost: **we will not be changing this site's name**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why? Well, let's talk about that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As others have brought up here, there is no evidence right now to support the claim that the site's name is leading to its problems. If anything, I have a counterexample - the site itself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think by now we all know how [the site came about](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/64046/155160). When [the new scope was handed down](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/), it was not received terribly well and we're still sorting some of that out. The fact is, though, that throughout most of last year, the site slowly evolved to move away from the [&quot;Stack Overflow's toilet bowl&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl) image and to what it is today. It happened through comments, (sometimes bitter) meta arguments, flag handling, etc., and look at what we have now - there's an engaged, active community involved in moderation and governance. Even though there were a [couple](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title) [discussions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site), the site name did not matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I remember when most of the front page would be closed questions and I'd be somewhere promoting the site and trying not to feel embarrassed to point people to it. I wouldn't be embarrassed now. I look at the front page and I see 6 closed questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154283/should-i-demand-unit-testing-from-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; and in my opinion rightly so - it's a discussion-oriented question designed to affirm the asker's existing belief. Discouraging questions like this one is a part of our core principles at Stack Exchange to the point where it's written down in the shared FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, **avoid** asking subjective questions where ...  &#xD;&#xA;  &gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154339/advice-on-scrum-for-the-solitary-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as a duplicate of a [canonical, open question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/220/agile-for-the-solo-developer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154342/are-there-references-discussing-the-use-parallel-programming-as-a-development-me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Reference-seeking question. I don't have a strong feeling on this one. Could go either way, personally, but usually questions like this result in poorly curated lists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154338/identifying-methods-with-a-specified-id-in-d&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Migrated to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154282/if-variable-type-not-working-properly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Off-topic, though opted to not migrate, which is fair enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154270/is-learning-blackberry-programming-a-good-choice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Canonically off-topic for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I look at these questions, I see a pattern: **all of them are about some aspect of software development**. Changing your name to &quot;Software Development Stack Exchange&quot; or anything of that ilk will not stop questions like these. Changing your name to an abstract concept will not automatically draw people in. What attracts experts to a site is the content. Focus on that instead and you will continue to grow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, Gaming SE is currently in the spotlight after having been [rebranded to Arqade](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/06/welcome-to-the-arqade/), so it's natural that that's prompting other sites to ask about getting a brand and a domain of their own. Our official answer is that you can ask, but there is no definite answer. **Name changes will happen exceedingly rarely at best, and you should not plan on, depend on, or even anticipate it.** There's no fixed traffic criteria or an &quot;awesome meter&quot; that will say definitively that you've *earned* your name change and that it *will* happen. If we do it again, it will likely be an act-of-god kind of scenario. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example is Fitness &amp; Nutrition now known as Physical Fitness. In that case, part of the site's name explicitly mentioned a subject that was off-topic on the site. The site's community rallied together to start enforcing that and we eventually matched their efforts with a new name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not in either of these situations. So the bottom line is, stop fixating on the name. A name change isn't a silver bullet that will fix your problems. Keep growing the site, solidifying the scope, addressing whatever other issues you (as a community) perceive to exist, but don't worry about the name. It is not holding you back." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26281" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="170" RevisionGUID="2fe5be53-ae3b-475f-8544-6ee0024ced6d" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###[Pavel Shved][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;About time someone nominated a person *other than themselves*. So here's why I think Pavel would make a great moderator for Programmers.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Adept at mocking other users&#xD;&#xA;- Terrible manners&#xD;&#xA;- Unpronounceable name&#xD;&#xA;- Honest about why he shouldn't be a moderator&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/34/pavel-shved&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/34/pavel-shved" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26282" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3894" RevisionGUID="bf2c74cc-d6b0-45b6-97e2-e0b7d2eaa6ce" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Something us regular users can do would be to make an ad for the blog in the [Community Promotion Ads](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2635/1130) meta post, and vote it up a few times so it shows up on occasion in the advertisement box on the right side of the screen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Thanks to Morons][1], we now have an ad for the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Screenshot of ad][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2635/community-promotion-ads-2012/3905#3905&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/UPNBP.png &quot;ad for the blog&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Oj2dZ.png " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26283" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="176" RevisionGUID="4304af19-127b-47aa-a07d-7a24032a8419" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;It seems like half of this site should be community wiki. Also, what kind of questions are supposed to go here that don't already fit into StackOverflow or Webmasters? Webmasters is loosely defined as it is. This site only means to complicate it even more." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26284" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="181" RevisionGUID="da74abe3-2229-4e81-b98a-e7fa6dcd6bda" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###[Chinmay Kanchi][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to nominate myself as well. For the most part, I think I fit in well at this community and I participate actively. I'm not super-active at meta, but that's because Fishtoaster seems to beat me to most answers ;). I do read it regularly though, and will throw in an opinion if I think it'll help. I program for a living (well, I'm a PhD student who programs extensively for his project) and I've been programming long enough that I have some understanding of the kinds of things discussed here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/61/chinmay-kanchi&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/61/chinmay-kanchi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26285" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4011" RevisionGUID="e79c72ca-5abd-4aec-934f-84c54c32bd2b" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think I can identify some of the reasons why&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The site scope has changed dramatically from what it originally was supposed to be](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130). A lot of users (particularly on SO) will refer people here to ask their questions, not realizing that the question would no longer be on-topic for the site. This leads to a lot of questions getting asked that the community views as off-topic, or &quot;bad&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* There seems to be a lot of confusion over what is on/off topic on here by new users, and older users have gotten tired of explaining the same thing repeatedly. This leads to them just downvoting and moving on instead of repeating the same explanation they just gave on another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Some close votes give an automatic downvote, and we get many close votes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Question downvotes don't cost anything, so people are quite willing to vote questions down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Downvoting seems to be encouraged on meta and in chat&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I watch meta and chat a lot, and I see a lot of users promoting downvoting, or [bragging about their downvote record](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3136/are-we-going-down-hill#comment8011_3139). Downvotes are often recommended when someone asks about what can be done about low quality questions, although I've also seen it recommended as [a way to push questions off the front page too](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3779/1130).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Some active users just see a few key words or phrases, (such as &quot;Books&quot; or &quot;What's the best...&quot;) and automatically downvote and vote to close without actually reading the question. For example, see [this meta question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4002/1130).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can be done about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some users don't actually view the number of downvotes as a problem. [Others do][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think it's a problem, but I'm honestly not sure what one person alone can do about it. Most solutions I can think of would require either a community effort, or for SE to step in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few things I can think of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* To fix the number of downvotes we see, we really need to fix the quality of questions that get asked. The easy solution is to make new users understand the site scope better. The not-so-easy part is figuring out how. If you have any ideas, feel free to post them here: [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3551/1130)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I know I've suggested this many times and SE has denied it, but one thing I think would help would be to [rename the site to match it's scope, or change the scope to match the site name](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* When promoting downvotes on meta, make sure to include instructions to leave a comment about why you're downvoting. Sure users don't have to follow it, but the guideline will be there for users that are only trying to &quot;do the right thing&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Promote the SE app which lets you [automatically insert generic comments](http://stackapps.com/questions/2116/autoreviewcomments-pro-forma-comments-for-se). If you find yourself downvoting a lot and being tired of leaving the same comments, I'd suggest checking out this SE app which lets you quickly and easily add generic comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* This only applies to a few users (you know who you are), but stop bragging about the # of downvotes you have. You shouldn't be proud of the fact you have contributed more negative votes than positive ones to your site. You guys are high rep users of the site, and people will look up to you and try to follow your example. Downvoting can be good, but I feel your attitude about it takes it to an unhealthy level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Probably not a good solution, but SE could make question downvoting cost -1 again. I'm pretty sure SE removed the -1 downvote cost in the first place because they didn't want people to be hesitant in downvoting questions over 1 reputation, so I don't think this will happen and probably wouldn't be a good solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2727/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26286" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="183" RevisionGUID="de6bf4c2-efd1-44a4-9aef-325c7a31567c" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###[Lorenzo][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm subjective and argumentative, but (hope) on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/11/lorenzo&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11/lorenzo" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26287" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5182" RevisionGUID="98a7e225-05c6-4e0f-a020-667164d76342" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Based on @freiheit's suggestion, I've added a [community ad][1] you can vote for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the moment, the link is to my donation page, leave a comment if you think a different URL would be more aposite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5181/12436" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26288" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5203" RevisionGUID="e7712ea8-3167-4daa-aa00-7a5b76aa1c16" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Following on, and related to (but not duplicate of) [this question about migrating questions to SQA][1]: the scope of this site, [as defined by the FAQs][2] include, *inter alia*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - developer testing&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that we now have a standalone [Software Quality Assurance and Testing site][3] should we devolve those questions, and (as such) make them *Off Topic* here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I appreciate that there is always going to be **SOME** overlap between the various SE sites, but it does not make logical sense to have a site dedicated to a subject, whilst other sites lay claim to it too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose moving these two items to the *and it is not about..* section, with the prompt *(ask on [SQA][3] instead)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5185/how-to-flag-off-topic-to-migrate-to-sqa/5190#5190&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26289" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="211" RevisionGUID="0f85d3e6-fadd-480b-9546-bca77ae2e5a3" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### How is Programmers.SE different from [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow) and other related Stack Exchange sites?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On **Stack Overflow**, subjective questions, questions requiring extended discussion, and list-type questions are considered off-topic and will be closed. On **Programmers.SE**, these questions are considered on-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, questions that are only tangentially related to programming, but aren't *actually* programming questions, are accepted on **Programmers.SE**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example questions that are off-topic on **Stack Overflow** but on-topic on **Programmers.SE**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is your favorite “programmer” cartoon?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon)&#xD;&#xA;* [I've stopped coding for fun, is this a bad sign?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3558/ive-stopped-coding-for-fun-is-this-a-bad-sign)&#xD;&#xA;* [Job hopping, is it a problem?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3272/job-hopping-is-it-a-problem)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the (craziest, stupidest, silliest) thing a client/boss asked you to do?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2051/what-is-the-craziest-stupidest-silliest-thing-a-client-boss-asked-you-to-do)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why do programmers write apps and then make them free?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3233/why-do-programmers-write-apps-and-then-make-them-free)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example questions that are off-topic on **Programmers.SE** but on-topic on **Stack Overflow**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How do emulators work and how are they written?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/448673/how-do-emulators-work-and-how-are-they-written)&#xD;&#xA;* [round() for float in C++](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/485525/round-for-float-in-c)&#xD;&#xA;* [In-Place Radix Sort](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/463105/in-place-radix-sort)&#xD;&#xA;* [How to Round in MS Access, VBA](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/137114/how-to-round-in-ms-access-vba)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Happy Primes!](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3543811/code-golf-happy-primes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Sources:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How do you deal with famous questions of Stack Overflow that are being asked again on Programmers?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/162/how-do-you-deal-with-famous-questions-of-stack-overflow-that-are-being-asked-agai)&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the difference between Programmers and SO](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)&#xD;&#xA;* [Where do Code Golf/Code Challenge questions belong?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/38/where-do-code-golf-code-challenge-questions-belong)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable)&#xD;&#xA;* [Should we migrate subjective question from StackOverflow ?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/23/should-we-migrate-subjective-question-from-stackoverflow)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26291" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="224" RevisionGUID="b4eaa031-c68f-48ca-8ee2-0446d9b058ae" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Can I use Programmers.SE to advertise, promote, or recruit for my project/site/product?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No. Programmers.SE is a question-and-answer site meant to catalog the community's answers to questions asked here: a question should be in the form of question whose answers would be useful to the greater community of programmers, not just yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of questions that are off-topic on Programmers.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Can you fill out my questionnaire on how many programmers use Vim over Emacs?&#xD;&#xA;* Would you donate to my charity to help the lost children of C#?&#xD;&#xA;* Would you be interested in a timeshare condo marketed specifically to programmers?&#xD;&#xA;* Can I hire one of you to do my homework?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Sources:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is recruiting appropriate?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/93/is-recruiting-appropriate)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26293" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5276" RevisionGUID="cfa1f2d0-f2b7-4355-b322-48f7063415ae" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Manishearth's answer is (basically) the short version. Our core development team is ~7 people strong, and our design team is *literally* a single person. There's *lots* of projects, network-wide, that vie equally for their attention. Eight people handle *all* user feature requests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The longer answer is a bit more complicated. Since I'm talking to people involved in the SDLC, I'm a little astonished that you're not all a bit more sympathetic. After all, the network is 90+ sites, and we serve double-digit millions of users, and getting the project *right* from step one takes time and person-power we don't really have right now. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bugs and errors you point out, while important, aren't going to get top priority because there are other problems that affect the *entire* network that may require immediate attention (e.g. a site blackout) or are concentrating developer resources right now (e.g. the `/review` queue, or our localization efforts). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What explains such passiveness? Is it because Joel Spolsky and his team lost interest in Programmers.SE, like he repeatedly explains in his podcasts?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, let me clear about something: there is more to the Stack Exchange team than Joel or the dev team. For one, there's the team I'm on: your (hopefully beloved) [Community Managers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/99338/who-are-the-community-managers-and-what-do-they-do). And, in fact, we even [hired on one of your moderators](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2875/41785) based on her work here. So, no, the *company* doesn't hate Programmers. Denying your community's complicated history would be foolish and short-sighted, and a great number of really *excellent* lessons were learned over the course of the last two years. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;passiveness&quot; you're referring to is entirely perceived; it's a symptom of the real issue, which is that our development team is overextended. Their time is an extremely precious, scarce resource. Not to put too fine a point on it: they're only human. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Who is (or is there somebody) in charge of implementing new features and fixing bugs on Programmers.SE?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Design bugs are usually handled by our always-wonderful, one-man design team of [Jin Yang](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1685/jin). Jin is literally *one single person* handling *all site design issues* across the network. Jin *also* does the design for our marketing initiatives, some of our advertising, helps us make fliers and small promo items, [puts together top user swag](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1669/41785) and a whole host of things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is there a better place than Meta to ask for new features and to report bugs?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No. Meta is exactly the correct place for you to be reporting these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look, I'm sympathetic. I really, really am. I've been [working on making features happen](https://boardgames.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/867/we-should-implement-magic-the-gathering-pop-ups-on-hover#comment1635_867) on some of our other sites for months now. The toughest is knowing that [doing a fun, exciting event](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5240/do-we-want-hats) would basically &quot;cost&quot; us a feature for a site. All decisions regarding dev allocations are made with great care and after a *lot* of deliberation. We don't just assign development time to things willy-nilly because ***we cannot do so***. It's *literally* a thing we can't do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're dissatisfied with our ability to meet our users' needs (and it does sound like you are) then you're in luck. Right now, [**we're hiring for a bunch of positions**](http://stackexchange.com/about/hiring), including developers. If you know someone who could/should be working for us, who loves our sites (yes, even Programmers!) and is a talented developer who is looking for a new challenge, ***tell them to apply!***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, for the mean time, I can only advise you sit tight and be patient. It's all on The List&lt;sup&gt;TM&lt;/sup&gt; and I'm confident we'll get to it. It just might take some time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26294" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="268" RevisionGUID="a42ab2a0-0c3b-405e-95a6-1970ee75b4f6" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I kind of think being in beta and the fact there is much discussion about on-topic/off-topic sites, some mods are hasty to close questions without first determining the best place for it first. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;see: [voting to close based on possible dupe][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/261/are-we-now-voting-to-close-based-on-content-in-other-websites" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26295" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5377" RevisionGUID="a8673ff5-c432-47b7-bbe4-6978eacdd4cc" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In September 2012 [registration requirement to ask questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4001/31260 &quot;as announced here&quot;) has been introduced:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In the past 60 days, 76% of all questions from unregistered users have been either down-voted below 0, closed, deleted, or some combination of the three. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;That's a total of 182 questions, compared to 877 similarly bad questions from *registered* users. It's a relatively small number, but as a percentage of the total it's high enough that implementing #1 holds little risk - at worst, you'll lose maybe a question a day from someone too lazy to register. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;So, I've turn on the registration requirement in order to ask questions here. Let's **check back in a month or so** and see if it made any difference...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that **more than 3 months** passed, is it time to somehow see if it made a difference?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I recall correctly, back then one of major concerns against this was that it may somehow inhibit asking good questions. With this in mind I think it would make sense to find out about the differences in the amount / rate of &quot;good&quot; questions (defined as say, open with non-negative score).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Given that registration presumably simplifies handling of [question bans](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-ban/info &quot;what's this&quot;) I think it would be particularly interesting to estimate if there was a difference in amount (rate) of such bans.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;It would be also interesting to study the difference in &quot;ban failure rate&quot;, which could be estimated as percentage of users caught at attempts to overcome it: those who created fake accounts that were later discovered and merged into original banned account.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It looks quite simple how to get upper bound of detected attempts to abuse question ban. First, let's count how many accounts were added in last 4 months, as of Jan 12 these are roughly between [62044](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/62044) and [78338](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/78338), `78338-62044=16294`. Now if we find how many of these accounts are gone, as indicated by respective user profile being `404 Not Found`, this will give us how many accounts were either self-deleted, or gone through legitimate merges, or... **and this is exactly what I'd want to estimate**... or were merged as a result of detected abuse of question ban. It is of course impossible to manually scan 16K+ profile pages, wonder if this could be done somehow automagically?&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26296" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="316" RevisionGUID="2204ab8a-d953-40a5-9448-a159608112fe" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Why bigown?** Nothing against him, but he wasn't even in the [poll](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5)... so I don't understand the logic or the procedure behind that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26297" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="10c9e21a-0829-40cf-84fd-38fde887cd06" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This request has been [warp driven](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_drive_%28Star_Trek%29 &quot;what's this&quot;) to the following requests at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [In “network hot” questions formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/192046/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* [Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/216260/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note - this very answer has been used as a &quot;buffer&quot; to draft the latter request: [details in revisions history](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/5542/revisions).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26298" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="334" RevisionGUID="bbfb073b-ba60-4fb0-a093-ae82b74921c9" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Remove the Community Wiki feature entirely&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would eliminate the issue.  Based on the [purpose-of-community-wiki](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki) thread, it looks like there's no need for it anyway.  The only problem would be that we'd be out of luck if there's some unforeseen category of question that is appropriate for here and needs to be CW in the future." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26299" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5629" RevisionGUID="a3b085e7-16e1-4a0e-abe3-7d384e2bbca6" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Voting to close. See [Are programming-related history/trivia questions acceptable on P.SE?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2021/are-programming-related-history-trivia-questions-acceptable-on-p-se/2029#2029) That, along with the fact that this doesn't seem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to be related to a real problem, makes this off topic and not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; constructive. – Caleb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The history of [tag:history] questions has had a confused history in Programmers.SE.  Closing because this is a history question based on one particular meta post may not capture the full scope of the history tag's history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the earlier meta posts about history (September '10): [How can historical questions be on topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/363/how-can-historical-questions-be-on-topic) - with very few votes at the time (top voted answer has two as of this writing), there was no great consensus.  There were two yes and two no.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[One of the yes answers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/364/40980) reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Yes. In general I don't see any reason why questions on programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; history should not be acceptable here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; (That said, if the answer is simple enough to be found on a wikipedia&#xD;&#xA;&gt; page, I would possibly question it's merit from that perspective, but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that would have to be judged on a case by case basis)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From July '11 [Are programming-related history/trivia questions acceptable on P.SE?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2021/are-programming-related-history-trivia-questions-acceptable-on-p-se/2029)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [accepted answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2022) by `user8` ([site moderator](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3242/31260) back then) reads&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Any question that's trivia, by definition, would be any that ask about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unimportant (i.e. trivial) facts and matters. Those would be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; prohibited and should be closed as not constructive:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; That said, a question stops being trivia the moment an actual,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solvable problem is defined: that is, if one tells us why you want to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; know X or how knowing X solves Y problem, the question is a whole lot&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question includes a follow up comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think it can be justifiable in some cases; for example in the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; foo/bar example, indicating that you keep seeing foo and bar in code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you're looking at and wish to understand more about it is not that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; fundamentally different than indicating you keep seeing some&#xD;&#xA;&gt; particular coding technique in code you're looking at and wish to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; understand more about it. – Jeff Atwood♦ Jul 30 '11 at 6:43&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In March of 2012, a question of a specific history question was raised in meta - [Is the question about statements being terminated by semicolons appropriate for Programmers?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3325/is-the-question-about-statements-being-terminated-by-semicolons-appropriate-for)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is lots of text and comments which should be read to get the full scope of the post.  It does have some useful quotes in referencing a [chat from user2334 (aka user8)](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3908862#3908862).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Save for the accepted answer, I thought the semicolons question was&#xD;&#xA;&gt; pretty good. Programming history has always been an overlooked aspect&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of Programmers's scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More recently, in May of 2012, there was a [contest](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/programmers-se-contest-the-complete-outline) that included a week dedicated to history questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tangentially, word origin questions have had some meta posts.  Most recently (Feb '13), [Are word origin questions on-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5524/are-word-origin-questions-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examining my own votes on the various questions and opinions, I've been inconsistent in my opinions of history and origin questions.  However, if I was to try to find a common thread to this it can be seen in a [recent chat message](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8273988#8273988):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The biggest problem that I perceive with it is a lack of research / utility. That is a difficult thing to fix.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @SomeKittens &quot;Why&quot; questions are especially challenging for historical things - that unless one is able to find documentation to state it one way or another, it is mostly speculation. Speculation can have a multitude of answers, all of which equally correct in speculation. That is difficult to fit into the SE Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are likely to become speculation or don't demonstrate sufficient research (despite the interesting topic) I frown upon, while ones that show that they can be answered substantially should be open.  I'd be fast to close *and* fast to reopen to let someone try to answer it substantially.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing *because* it is a history question I don't see as a justifiable reason." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26300" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="338" RevisionGUID="469bbf9d-5554-4628-9623-d717e8df5ac3" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Remove CW conversions at 30 answers&#xD;&#xA;See [the original question][1] which has sufficient votes but should be in this concensus. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the original author:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Since most questions here can have an unlimited number of answers,  &#xD;&#xA;I think the automatic conversion to CW when a question receives 30 answers should be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/145/remove-cw-conversion-at-30-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26301" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5638" RevisionGUID="a5e93e7a-340f-4cd6-b0ba-eca99e1e9c95" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My [answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5637/53019) to Yannis' question on [historical questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5633/53019) led me to the conclusion that the braces question should be opened back up.  I didn't start out intending to create a response for this question, but that's what happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short version - the braces question has several similar characteristics as other historical questions that have provided some great answers.  Those other questions are open, so logic would dictate we open the braces question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I'm still not comfortable with two aspects of this conclusion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It doesn't make a distinction about other special characters.  [Lundin's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5636/53019) in this question raises some very good points regarding the slippery slope this can present.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The determination about &quot;is this a good question&quot; is relying upon an [a posteriori](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori) determination which I'm not comfortable with for a number of reasons.  I cling to the belief that a question should be determinable as &quot;good for SE&quot; by the question alone and not rely upon the answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26302" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="376" RevisionGUID="c62fa3c2-c736-4e75-9f89-a96e7b64eb78" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**No, it's useful to have this as a normal/meta tag, because of one of the following reasons:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The [6-Q guidelines](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) aren't there to enforce questions to be about [experience].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - *Feel free to add reasons here, discuss these in the comments.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26304" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6172" RevisionGUID="263f1d6e-f497-4d0f-9a2e-f44e126e850c" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Right now, we are limited to three custom &quot;off-topic&quot; close reasons. I wrote a fourth this morning to address a number of recent closures, but it's not possible to even turn it on without turning off one of the other three.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This new reason reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions must **demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved or concept being asked about**. When asking a question, please demonstrate (as appropriate) that you have researched the issue, elaborate on your current understanding of the situation, and identify the specific things that are confusing or problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This follows from a number of recent closed questions (including some that have been flagged for moderator attention). Some people have used some custom close reasons, but I've noticed that some have been rather cold and terse (not necessarily rude or offensive, but not welcoming or helpful to potential new users or visitors who read them after finding questions via search engines).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I'm not suggesting that the above close reason is final - if you have improvements, please suggest them.** However, I believe that it would be beneficial to have a &quot;minimal understanding&quot; type close reason. Stack Overflow actually has two - one for describing the specific problem and how to reproduce it and one for minimal understanding. I don't think two are necessary on Programmers, but if someone wants to refine this reason, please do so. However, it can't be a default reason unless the number is expanded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples of questions where such a close reason may be used are (as asked for by the community team):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/210850/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-stand-up-and-its-duration-in-agile-methodologies - The top answer quotes Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, who have written (freely available as well as in books) about Scrum. For me, Google searches also turn up answers. It could possibly be a good question if it was more unique to the situation and the transformation from the plan-driven to the agile. It's clear, but easily answerable with simple searches.&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/211176/in-need-of-a-more-technical-answer-for-an-interview-question-about-how-the-inter - I'm not sure if Programmers is the best place for this, but I understand the question being asked. If you've been asked the question, you can use that as an opportunity to research the topic and then ask specific questions about what was read and not understood. Either that, or what you read solves the question and you don't need to ask it anymore (or you can ask it and self answer).&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/211535/technical-requirements-document - Very much on-topic and the user claims to have done research. It's not unclear as to what he wants (he wants to know what to put into a section), but needs more specifics.&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/211475/implement-a-new-class-named-newstring - Probably a &quot;gimme the codez&quot; question, but if design or algorithm understanding was an issue or the concepts behind C strings, pointers, null termination, copy constructors were not understood, specific questions are on-topic on Programmers. This question doesn't make it clear what the problem is and is not suitable for migration. When I closed it, it was a toss up between off-topic and unclear. I would have prefered &quot;demonstrate what you are having problems with&quot; as guidance to the asker and/or future users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of these may be addressed by unclear if the default unclear text was better, such as being closer to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please demonstrate that you have researched the issue, elaborate on your current understanding of the situation, and identify the specific things that are confusing or problematic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In most cases, the current definition of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell exactly what you're asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;doesn't work. It's clear what they want, but it's that no one can answer it because an answer would likely be unhelpful. It's the difference between &quot;I don't know what you want&quot; and &quot;I understand where you're coming from, but I don't have enough information to give you a useful answer&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With additional reasons, I'd also like to consider [implementing this custom close reason](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6106/close-reason-and-associated-expand-the-close-reason-count-request), but perhaps not make it specific to Stack Overflow. Instead, I'd phrase it more like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers. There may be [an appropriate Stack Exchange site](http://stackexchange.com/sites#name) where this subject is on topic, but the question may not be a good fit as currently written. If there is an appropriate community, please consult their Help to understand what they expect from questions and reform it as appropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26305" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="475" RevisionGUID="7e407c91-055c-4b85-868d-fe09ac52b7db" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Question I asked dissappeared](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/476/question-i-asked-dissappeared)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;A couple of answers and comments that I wrote a few hours ago have mysteriously disappeared from the site. Does this have anything to do with the server migration that's in progress? Will my answers be restored from a backup?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26306" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6187" RevisionGUID="420c9be1-81b1-4c88-be77-4381a23df6f0" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="*Can* it be? Sure; should it be though? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest danger in adding more options is causing analysis paralysis in close voters. Without *any* custom OT reasons defined, there are already 9 different options for closing a question here (including &quot;other&quot; and the two migration options). The first custom option replaces the default, putting the current set of options at 11, divided unevenly into three separate lists. The Off Topic sub-list already holds 5 separate options - as many as the top-level list of close reasons - that's a lot of choices, and for them to be effectively used they should be clearly differentiated from one another and obvious as to their purpose - adding more options increases the likelihood of stress on the part of the close-voter, and thus the need for clarity. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What happens if the reasons aren't sufficiently clear and distinct? Well, it's possible that some folks will just give up and not vote. It's also likely that folks familiar with the system will skip trying to pick a single &quot;best&quot; reason and just go with whatever fits. This then leads to another problem: folks learning by example, where the example includes questions closed with an inapplicable (at least superficially) close reason. It's not hard to find examples of this among the old close reasons: both Not a Real Question and Too Localized started out very narrow in scope, but by the end were used for all sorts of questions where they were only tangentially applicable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The examples&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So let's look at the problems identified in your examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Easily Google-able](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/210850/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-stand-up-and-its-duration-in-agile-methodologies). This is almost never a good reason to shut down a question, but even if it is *in this case* you'd be setting a bad precedent by ensconcing such a reason in the system. Today it's a rhetorical question from someone looking for backup in a political situation; tomorrow it's a good question that's simply been answered on a different website first. Is this a site that can provide answers that are better than the greater internet, or just a site that answers questions no one else wants to bother with? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  **Existing close reasons that fit:** Primarily Opinion-based, Too Broad.   &#xD;&#xA;  **Suggestions for correction:** state one specific problem or question, drop squishy bits (&quot;Am I wrong to feel this way?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [No details on what research has been done](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/211176/in-need-of-a-more-technical-answer-for-an-interview-question-about-how-the-inter). &quot;Show your work&quot; is almost always a good suggestion, but... In this case the question would *still* be too broad - and almost certainly off-topic as well! Of course, there's also the chance that the interview question isn't the *real* question here at all, but rather the meta-question of &quot;how much detail should I try to provide for questions like this?&quot; That question at least makes sense, and *might* even be on-topic here. But it's unclear whether that's actually what he wanted, and the answers go both ways. Maybe he just wanted folks to commiserate a bit after making it through a tough interview? Closing it with &quot;insufficient research&quot; ignores all of these critical flaws. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  **Existing close reasons that fit:** Unclear, Too Broad, Off Topic (belongs on Super User) and possibly even Primarily Opinion Based. &#xD;&#xA;  **Suggestions for correction:** Remember that this is a site for high-level software development questions, and then state the *specific* problem you're trying to solve. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. [Needs more specific details](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/211535/technical-requirements-document). As with #2, &quot;show your work&quot; wouldn't be amiss here, but ignores the primary problem with the question: it isn't at all clear what's being asked. Realistically, no canned close reason can be as effective here as a simple comment asking, &quot;what context did you find this term in?&quot; - and it's possible that no answer can be as effective as just asking the person who wrote the template, regardless of how much research effort is shown. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  **Existing close reasons that fit:** Unclear, OT-&gt;Other (&quot;give us some context&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;  **Suggestions for correction:** Please provide context!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. [Not sure where the problem lies](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/211535/technical-requirements-document). Turns out, this exact question was asked by the author on Stack Overflow, where it was closed with Stack Overflow's &quot;no-effort homework&quot; OT reason (upon which your suggestion is based) minutes before he posted it here. Showing his work isn't gonna fly here, since the actual question being asked (gimme teh codez) is off-topic. Realistically, any effort spent trying to categorize or rehabilitate questions like this is a waste of time; at best, you may end up answering a question no-one asked, while at worst you end up letting trash questions set a bad precedent for others. If you *were* going to create a custom OT reason for this, [&quot;crap SO doesn't want&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6106/close-reason-and-associated-expand-the-close-reason-count-request/6107#6107) would be it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  **Existing close reasons that fit:** OT-&gt;Other (&quot;would belong on SO, if it were better&quot;), Unclear&#xD;&#xA;  **Suggestions for correction:** Fix your question on SO; if they don't want it, neither do we.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##More examples&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best way to determine if a new OT reason is needed is probably to just look at what folks are entering when they select &quot;Other&quot;. I wish I had a better way of grouping these, but until I figure something out here's a list of every custom off-topic reason selected at least twice since this feature became available: http://jsbin.com/ajipiKI/1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...Use whatever methodology you see as appropriate to analyze these. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26309" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6480" RevisionGUID="c040e281-04b3-4061-a83a-6c5147a9875d" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm going to pull up some recently closed questions and am curious what you feel is bullying or the appropriate approach to deal with the questions.  If you have issues about other specific questions and you feel like they are getting an unfair treatment, please consider posting questions on meta about those&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230025/database-career-path&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm really new to database careers and no idea what is their work look like. All I know is they maintain or design a database.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What I want to know is the career path of Database Administrator, what I mean is for example a programmer in the future may become a team leader and so on. What about in database what is the hierarchy of this job. And also I want to know what is the required knowledge and technology to attain a specific level of the job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Put on holds off topic - career and education advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230013/how-to-generate-data-matrix-from-a-seq-file-in-java&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Lots of stuff&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And so on… the rows indicates user and each 17 columns represents page hits to that page by that user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;So send me the code in java to perform this operation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(not closed currently, but on its way)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/229967/hello-im-a-13-year-old-app-developer-wannabe-for-windows-android-what-lang&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Recently, my friend got me interested in programming. I've always thought it was this ultra complicated concept, but after watching the code.org's &quot;What Schools Don't Teach&quot; I'm really wanting to work on something. I want to build Android and Windows apps and games. I would like to build a building/tower defense-esq game for both both platforms. My main questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;-What programming languages should I learn?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -What engine should I use for a 2D building/ RTS (much like Ubisoft's &quot;The Settlers Online&quot;)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as what language, technology, or project one should take up next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You appear to be referring most recently, however, to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230003/finding-out-skill-level&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am writing this question due to the fact that I came across a JUG(Java User Group) facebook page. There was a guy in need of a 'junior' java developer. They told me that a junior Java developer is someone who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there any kind of test someone can take (apart from the oracle exams etc...)? Also , are these information valid or partly true?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To which you commented:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; my friend you have come to very unhelpful and unpleasant place to post your questions. Programmers stack exchange should be related to ask questions related to programming and skills, but the bullies here are to close your question without a single doubt in their head. They are ruining PSE. You are better off in Java Forums where these bullies cannot close your questions. –  Jhilke Dai&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career and education advice is off topic.  It is specifically called out as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The off topic message for the question is intended to give the appropriate guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel this is incorrect and that career questions should be allowed, please make meta post that states this and provides a good argument for how they should be handled and lead to valuable content for the site.  Note that this has been addressed many times in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6458/there-seems-to-be-some-contradictory-guidance-with-respect-to-asking-career-deve&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6410/is-there-a-stackexchange-site-that-would-be-appropriate-for-cs-career-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2483/why-are-all-of-the-good-career-related-threads-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A core principle with Stack Exchange is the desire to attract experts that stay and answer questions.  Without experts the site will suffer the fate of [artificial intelligence.SE](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/no-artificial-intelligence-in-area-51/) or [Startups.SE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/214315/what-happened-to-startups-se).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end it is necessary to down vote and close questions that are not appropriate for the site.  Sometimes this is from a lack of information to make it into a good question (there was a lengthy discussion about that in chat the other day - it was begrudgingly acknowledged that without down votes and closed question the question would not have been improved).  Other times it is necessary for such to get the person to read the appropriate parts of the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly (and a difficult one to get one's head around) it is *not* about helping the person asking the question but the *next* person asking the **same** question.  Questions asking about career paths (a two of my examples) are often *very* specific to that individual or that company (for the DBA, I've never seen a DBA at two different companies have the same set of responsibilities).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Third, discussions on the main site *don't* work.  It wasn't designed for that.  I really suggest reading [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) (which also points out some of the issues you seem to take issue with) which was mentioned in some of the early podcasts by Jeff as being influential in the design of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are other communities where discussion works (as well as they do).  I will point out that even [reddit/r/cscareerquestions](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions) has a hefty [FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index) that is expected to be required reading *before* asking such a question.  Polling and discussion is the *raison d'être* there.  That said, the level of hostility and snark that people have commented finding on reddit (or hacker news) far exceeds our own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And well, give-me-the-codes is welcomed at eLance and similar freelancing sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do better? Probably.  However, posting comments about dissatisfaction with P.SE and about 'bullies' is *not* the way to encourage this process." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26310" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="518" RevisionGUID="0d32914a-3281-4ee1-addf-b52b08a0c320" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think they should be revisited, as there are some flaws in the current wording. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I actually posted a fuller answer to this as an answer to Jeff's original post. It's probably redundant for me to re-post my answer, so I'll simply [link to it][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice/415#415" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26311" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6505" RevisionGUID="461862c5-5d31-4b0e-99b3-7a43c61798d1" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I prefer to use &quot;and-clause&quot; borrowed and slightly rephrased from [Codereview.SE](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. Does my question contain design? (Please include the design in the question, not a link to it)&#xD;&#xA;2. Did I write that design?&#xD;&#xA;3. Is it actual design from a project rather than pseudo-design or example design?&#xD;&#xA;4. Do I want the design to be good design, (i.e. not design-golfing, obfuscation, or similar)&#xD;&#xA;5. To the best of my knowledge, does the design work?&#xD;&#xA;6. Do I want feedback about any or all facets of the design?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If you answered yes to all the above questions, your question is on-topic for design review at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading, _question in question_ passed above clause.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a more general note, blindly letting questions pass based on bare stamp &quot;design review&quot; wouldn't be a good idea, because there would be no way to verify research effort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, one could just thoughtlessly glue some buzzwords and see how it sticks: &quot;I am considering SOA+ORM+responsive Web UI, any thoughts?&quot; I for one would vote close braindumps like this as [**unclear what help you need**](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260 &quot;custom close reason&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that, [as pointed in comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6502/design-review-on-topic-or-not/6505#comment17558_6505), #6 may be interpreted as [too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490), that is, focusing on specific design concern(s) would be safer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26312" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="590" RevisionGUID="981cf3da-6107-4f7d-88dd-98b751745cef" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="*Note:  The current Meta thinking is &quot;No&quot;, they are never on topic.*  &#xD;&#xA;Some may be appropriate on [The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com), see [their guidance](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate directly to software development; general career advice questions with no relation to software development or where software development is a minor facet of the question are off-topic. A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as *off-topic*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(This aspect is discussed in [Dealing with “What are some good types of pickles for programmers?” type questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/288/8).)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, the general rule of thumb should be whether the question can help others in a similar situation. If the circumstances surrounding the question are too specific to the question asker such that there is no way to generalize and answer the question, they should be closed as *too localized*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Applying that rule should put a theoretical limit on the amount of ways the question &quot;My job is X, what should I do?&quot; can be asked. Questions that have similar set of circumstances to already-asked questions should be closed as *exact duplicates*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, if there isn't something pointed being asked in the question, and the asker is merely using Programmers.SE as a means to vent about whatever annoyed them at their job that day, it should be closed as *not constructive*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, and only if, a career-advice question passes those three tests, should it stay open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of career guidance questions that should be closed: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Mid level IT lead](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20289/mid-level-it-lead)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the best qualification route for me to get back into programming? (UK)](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22350/what-is-the-best-qualification-route-for-me-to-get-back-into-programming-uk)&#xD;&#xA;* [On programmers, INTJ personality, human interactions, and large companies.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18227/on-programmers-intj-personality-human-interactions-and-large-companies-close) (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should also be noted that most, if not all, of the other Stack Exchanges have elected to consider their versions of &quot;help my exact situation&quot;-type questions (gaming recommendations, code reviews, proofreading, etc.) to be off-topic on the basis that a Q&amp;A system does not lend well to the necessary discussion to tease out all the details to fully answer the question. I don't see why Programmers.SE should be any different." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26314" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6583" RevisionGUID="7e2fb794-ee12-403d-a222-290ca52d940a" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Much of the past guidance (from 2011, 2012 and 2014 linked above in the question) has suggested that these questions are off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3856/question-about-naming-conventions-not-constructive/3859#3859&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on StackExchange sites need to be presented in such a way that there can be an answer that is &quot;the answer&quot;. As I read the question, every possible answer to it would be equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question asks:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; how should I represent the separate words in the filename?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't see how this can be answered where there aren't 15 different answers, giving 15 different opinions, all equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for other naming convention questions being valid, thanks for bringing them up, we'll go through them and clean up those that slipped through the cracks. The fact that they exist on the site, doesn't make this one or any future questions more constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic/2382#2382&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think there's a difference between questions that ask for a proper term for a concept and questions that ask for naming suggestions for a class or a method.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The former would be fine, in my opinion, but the latter do not belong on Stack Exchange for reasons of being both too localized and entirely discussion-oriented.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are *two* types of name questions that are fairly consistently asked, though one can blend into the other.  And we *continue* to get both types of questions - the &quot;what should I name&quot; and &quot;what is the name of&quot;. This makes it difficult to provide *the* answer and easily risk getting too many poor quality answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;**Context:** When this question was written, many naming questions were getting closed with a custom off topic message referencing [Let's Play the Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/).  Prior to that questions were often being closed as &quot;Not Constructive.&quot;  This is saying that these questions are on topic, though frequently have other problems (getting closed as primary opinion or too broad when there isn't any help given to answers to say what a *good* answer to the question is nor inspiring answers that meet the ideals of Good Subjective, Bad Subjective. Furthermore, the questions often get down voted for lack of research. It is my hope that by following these points below that the questions can overcome these difficulties and have a chance at remaining open.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are **marginally** on topic.  However, these questions are often poor and without additional information they should be closed as too broad or primarily opinion.  Much of the historical guidance points to this being the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In an effort to try to make these questions better fit the Q&amp;A format rather than being a poll of answers where &quot;I think it is an XYZ&quot; and &quot;Have you considered XWZ?&quot; we need to help the questions be better asked so that they don't generate one sentence answers and stay away from the [questions not to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) so that they have the &quot;long, not short, answers&quot;.  From the blog post [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers.** The best subjective questions inspire your peers to share their actual experiences, not just post a mindless one-liner or cartoon in hopes of being rewarded with upvotes for being merely “first.” Sharing an experience takes at least one paragraph; ideally several paragraphs. If I’m asking about how to bake cookies, don’t give me a list of grocery items: milk. butter. vanilla. eggs. There is virtually nothing I can learn from a short, static list of grocery items that make up a recipe. Instead, tell me what happened the last time you made cookies from that recipe! Share your detailed experiences, so that we all might learn from them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this end, we need to provide some guidance that will help people avoid asking the questions that will be nothing more than a poll of word ideas, pattern names, and guessing at what was intended (and would get closed as either primarily opinion or too broad). Secondly, we should try to help people ask questions that won't be down voted for &quot;this question does not show any research effort&quot; (from the mouseover text on the down vote triangle).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have exactly the same problem that English.SE does with their own single word requests - lots of them, low quality, uninteresting, attract poor answers from users, and they get complained about in chat, they attract less active users and repel more active users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Drawing from [English.SE tag: single-word-requests](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/single-word-requests) and [Against single word requests](https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1654/against-single-word-requests) there is a set of questions that are necessary to make these questions better:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Describe exactly the context that the name or terminology is used**&#xD;&#xA;    * Programming language - the same concept can be used in multiple ways.  As I point out in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6296/why-is-this-question-wrong-asking-for-the-name-of-a-specific-practice/6297#6297 and ultimately http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218986/how-is-it-called-when-you-define-constants-that-simply-refer-to-a-large-namespac/219323#219323 there is sometimes no standard way to handle this across *all* programming languages.&#xD;&#xA;    * Code example - without a demonstration of what the code is to do, multiple terms can be used for the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;* **Describe the criteria for acceptance**&#xD;&#xA;    * Without some criteria for acceptance of the term, there is no way to say which one is better than another and the question is simply a poll for people to toss out suggestions for a name.&#xD;&#xA;* **Which names/terms have you thought of and discarded as inappropriate?**&#xD;&#xA;    * Just asking for a name doesn't let us know which direction you have thought and as described in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important we need to know what you have already thought of and discarded.&#xD;&#xA;* **Does the question show that you searched for a suitable word before asking the question?**&#xD;&#xA;    * Without the information to show that you *have* tried, such questions reek of intellectual laziness.  The use of Google is not hard.  Sometimes these words are right there if you just enter the language of choice and the code construct you are working with.  Stack exchange is not and should never be a &quot;I don't know, I'll ask what its called on P.SE and see if anyone answers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the above pieces of information being provided in the question, it *might* be acceptable to keep the question open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also *strongly* want people to look at the English.SE tags: http://english.stackexchange.com/tags and note that Single-word-requests on that site make up an average of 30/week or about 1/5&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; of all of their questions on a day to day basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we, P.SE, want to have a similar bit of 1/5th of our questions be questions about what to name some 'pattern' or what a particular structure is called within some code?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26315" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="624" RevisionGUID="af40d8fc-63b0-4892-89d8-a9e36b4d1304" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="What happen with the most voted logo? Community approved it. Is there any problem?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like/473#473&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Added:&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/412/write-an-elevator-pitch-tagline/472#472" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26316" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6598" RevisionGUID="ed0230b6-5dd7-4c5f-b815-dfb0b82d2202" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="##Protection racket&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Your own list illustrates how pointless](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/6597/1) this sort of proactive activity is: in most cases, few or no new answers were posted *regardless* of whether the questions were protected. Indeed, the most-answered question of the lot was immediately protected. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not the raw *traffic* that creates the problem. It's traffic coupled with a question that begs for *participation*. Ars has its own forum attached to these, there's no pressing need for readers to come here to kibitz - unless the question itself is crying out for yet another answer...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes this is unavoidable. Questions that, *within the rules of the community* can only be answered in a narrow, controlled fashion may inadvertently imply a much broader scope to outsiders who don't know or don't care about the community norms. Protect is useful in these situations, where every *n* views will tend to generate *m* poor/spam/non- answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But these tend to be the exceptions, *particularly* on a site like this which doesn't really go in so much for discussions of tools or hardware or other spam-friendly topics. Protection here should be reserved for those cases where a good, answered question is attracting a large volume of noise / meta commentary *from new users*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to *pre-emptively* do something useful to forestall noise on questions, then **edit them.** Get rid of bits that implicitly invite any and all opinions, tighten up the scope, focus on making the question reflect its *best answers* rather than aiming for a big tent that welcomes all *participants.* Not only can this reduce confusion for outsiders, it can also benefit the folks already on the site who wouldn't be affected by Protection anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Effects of Ars&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm counting roughly 192 questions that've been linked to from ArsTechnica over the past 2 years that Sam's been doing this. Could be a few more or less; there's a lot of cross-linking, and I might have missed a few related questions - but this should be the *vast* majority of all questions that've been linked to. You can view a list [here](https://stackedit.io/viewer#!provider=gist&amp;gistId=4be501a1cd10129c71f8&amp;filename=progsears.md) if you're interested...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, some basic stats on how these questions have aged. Out of those 192, 31 are *currently* closed and 61 are *currently* protected. The average number of (non-deleted) answers is 12, the average # of deleted answers is 2. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now... How they fared after being shared. I'm going to look at this from two different angles: a simple look at the number of answers attracted that *would* have been blocked by Protected status (had it been applied) and a comparison of the answer distribution before and after.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Protect-worthy answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If *all* of the questions in that list had been protected prior to being shared, a total of 55 answers would have been blocked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of those 55 answers, 18 scored less than 0 and 16 are currently deleted. 23 currently score &gt; 0. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Needless to say, these were posted to the 131 questions that *weren't* Protected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Answer distribution&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the 2578 answers posted before these questions were shared, 2019 are currently scored &gt; 0 while 211 are scoring &lt; 0. 219 are deleted. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the 124 answers posted *after* these questions were shared, 60 are currently scored &gt; 0 while 33 are scoring &lt; 0. 23 are deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I noted in the first section, it's clear that Protection has relatively little effect on these. This jibes with my observations elsewhere on the network: trying to predict which questions will attract crap answers based purely on *traffic* is exceedingly error-prone; other heuristics are needed. [Which is why we implemented better heuristics](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/226619/auto-protect-questions-that-get-more-than-n-answers-from-new-users-in-a-24-hour/228805#228805), based on observing which questions actually benefited from Protected status. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The % of not-useless answers posted after sharing is considerably lower than the % posted before; this shouldn't be too surprising, given none of them were new or unanswered. The % of not-useless new-user answers posted is lower than the % from existing users, but the volume is considerably lower. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reserve Protected status for questions that are attracting noise or abuse from new users. Protect is not a prophylactic. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26317" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="655" RevisionGUID="012c1a50-8ef6-4de2-80bc-ad351a50685e" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [New Design Launched](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/687/new-design-launched)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;First, I want to thank you for your valuable feedback for the &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed&quot;&gt;first design concept&lt;/a&gt;. Programmers.SE is a site about people and conceptual design more than coding. The old design simply did not reflect that; so it failed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I talked to Jeff about this, and he agrees that Programmers.se is much different from Stackoverflow. I quote him:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is when you sit down in front of the compiler,&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is when you sit down in front of the whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Dan Grossman and Jon Purdy also thought a whiteboard theme was more appropriate from their comments regarding the first design review, and I agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since late last week I've been working on a whiteboard theme, and I'm pleased with the outcome. I feel it gives the site a more positive and personal touch, and has some similarities from the Beta theme. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(click to see full res version.)*&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MQPlw.png&quot;&gt;![alt text][2]&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The handwritten font in the title, top nav and section header is &lt;a href=&quot;http://callsignkatejones.deviantart.com/art/House-Whiteboard-font-64929545&quot;&gt;House Whiteboard&lt;/a&gt;. Yes, it is actually Hugh Laurie's handwriting. (&quot;It's Not Lupus!&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the question title typeface, I tried a few &quot;handwritten&quot; ones; they looked great visually, but they scored rather poorly on readability. I eventually went with &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/webfonts/family?family=Yanone+Kaffeesatz&amp;subset=latin&quot;&gt;Yanone Kaffeesatz&lt;/a&gt;. I feel it has that soft look, and works well with the whiteboard theme.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please let me know what you think. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**bonus:** (the making of)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/hmenW.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MQPlw.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26318" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6606" RevisionGUID="d1db2677-c61c-4dd6-89a1-ddf6e043c5d1" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yes, there was an informal “protection racket” in place to protect questions that were to be featured in Ars Technica.  The racket came to be after several of the regulars within The Whiteboard noticed the effects of being featured.  Those effects included lots of views and votes, but also frequently included low-quality forumesque answers that pushed the question into community wiki status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Protecting questions was a purely preventative measure.  Most questions that are featured already have a high number of answers (where `high` ~= 10) and it didn’t take much to convert to CW status.  There were two additional factors that encouraged pro-active protection.  First, it was difficult to predict when the views from the Ars publicity would start rolling in.  Second, many of the questions that have been selected are of marginal quality.  Not necessarily close-worthy but definitely ripe for bike shed, forumesque answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I have had time and advance warning of a question to be featured (ie. seeing the edit requests from Sam), I have gone through the question to flag questionable comments and vote on answers if I haven’t already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I’m going to echo [MichaelT’s answer here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6601/53019) for the sake of brevity.  I agree with his thoughts regarding protection being a poor tool.  But lacking better tools, you do what you can in order to help things along.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All that said, I don’t believe a protection racket is required anymore for questions that receive a lot of publicity.  The biggest issue was questions converting to Community Wiki status which unfairly punishes participants in a question.  Without the sword of Community Wiki dangling over a question, community moderation has the time it needs in order to clean up from any potential aftermath." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26319" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="668" RevisionGUID="90996fc2-c626-477b-9f53-45fc9a1b016d" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Hi all,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I have started the CSS conversion of the [new design][1], since it's gotten a lot of positive feedback this time. I'm aiming to launch the site very soon!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Meanwhile, I need some ideas for the new site's 404/Captcha/Error page images. Examples from other SE sites:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cooking site's 404:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Gaming site's CAPTCHA&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][2]&#xD;&#xA;(Normally for Captcha, we do a &quot;robot&quot; theme.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Photography site's 404 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea is to have these images somewhat light hearted, and reflect the theme of the site. &#xD;&#xA;For the new Programmers site, I will make the images hand-drawn marker style. I need your help with coming up with ideas. You can either describe a concept, or link to an existing image that has the concept you have in mind. I'll recreate it hand drawn style.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/655/site-design-round-2&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PFoPH.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EE8PW.jpg&#xD;&#xA;[4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/bSQ7c.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26320" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6651" RevisionGUID="f5fbf345-81e7-4769-92d1-e9f19f149f2a" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Closing your question was correct. The topic was indeed quite interesting, but let's look at this excerpt:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; how do you categorize them, where are they sticked to? In general: how do you use them? Why and how are they better than bug tracker or progress tracker software?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The “*how do you use them?*” is a poll. In a poll, there could be hundreds of equally valid answers. Hence, part of the *too broad* closing reason explanation is “*There are […] too many possible answers*”.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The “*Why and how are they better than bug tracker or progress tracker software*” is a potentially good question, but it gets uncomfortably close to the other part of the *too broad* closing reason explanation: “*good answers would be too long for this format*”, with a touch of *primarily opinion based*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The meta post [Why was my question closed as too broad?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/) explains this in more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding the top-voted answers: oh, yes, we absolutely agree with you. In the dark old ages where almost anything was allowed here, a lot of interesting crap was asked and had a lot of time to attract an enourmous amount of votes. By the [current on-topic guidelines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), these questions are rarely suitable. Wherever you see such questions, please raise a flag for them to be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By the way:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [What technical details should a programmer of a web application consider before making the site public?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/46716/60357) – It has been locked so that no new answers can be added. 87 old answers have been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report. How can I convince him that it's a bad idea?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/154733/60357) – This one *is* in fact about software development. Also, The Workplace was very young when that question was asked. Anyway, it's now too old to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Where did the notion of “one return only” come from?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/118703/60357) – I think this is actually a quite interesting question. Not only do old habits die hard, they are also transferred to new programmers who never had any need for them in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code — what now?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/155488/60357) – This has at least been valuable as [many questions were closed as duplicate of this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=duplicate%3Ayes+url%3A*questions%2F155488*). But you are right: it is absolutely too broad. Please flag it as such to put it into the close queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/48698/60357) – Yes, that's one big “real programmers” fallacy. Flag it to be closed as primarily opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Is there a name for this technique in testing?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/238466/60357) – Asking for naming things is absolutely off topic, see [“Name that thing” questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6407/60357).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Do you use automatic garbage collection with standard C++?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/16058/60357) – It's a fucking poll, and doesn't fit anywhere inside the Q&amp;A concept of Stack Exchange." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26321" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="738" RevisionGUID="7169774c-f072-4e8f-888b-c80aea7642ca" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I can reproduce this on Firefox on Mac, see: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/737/new-design-header-bug" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26323" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1072" RevisionGUID="b453191e-62dd-4ae2-b6a7-36a744e40b2a" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is similar to https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/888, but it has to do with the &quot;Flag&quot; icon that shows up when hovering over comments.  On my machine it looks like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The blackness of the flag lines seem quite harsh when compared to the grays of the comment score and upvote triangle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could it be toned down to match the grays of the other things near it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/HSygm.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26324" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1339" RevisionGUID="50bd16c0-6cff-4265-ade0-0e3b82e78ea5" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&quot;Oh! this answer has highest votes it must be good *bling*  upvote!!&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The kind of votes that keep getting added to the most catchy answer because it has high votes already. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A kind of peer pressure that puts you on the spot to vote for a popular answer so you'd fit in the popular/hip thinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a mystery to see if most voters make it down to the bottom of the page to see new answers .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Question :** Is this phenomenon a norm these days?.&#xD;&#xA; -  **Question :**  I am i correct in observing this phenomenon to be true? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How to discourage crowd-pleasing&#xD;&#xA;   non-answers?][1]&#xD;&#xA; - [Since when did Vote Count indicate the correct answer to the question?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;Conversely,for example when a person with very high rep or seniority ( mention of their years of experience and such) posts an answer to the question.In some cases even though it may not be right or relevant their answers still get up votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - For reasons of respect to seniority.Simply for the trouble they have taken to post an answer&#xD;&#xA; - Like you don't say no to your boss or your superior. say yes on the terms, OK it may not apply to this but it maybe useful in some other cases.&#xD;&#xA; - Up votes for reasons of not appearing to be bad or stupid to ignore or be contrary the words of a senior person( rep count/experience/age) lest their post gets flamed or discourage others in not answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is why you would notice rep builds up easier after a certain level at a slight extent maybe due to the above factors ,Besides The **obvious** volume and/or good quality answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S : I am not trying to flame or offend any one with high rep&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;( as natural consequence of providing great answers over a period of time) or seniority.Neither do i dismiss the factors of tenure,diplomacy,strategic up/down voting, Rep W***ing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit2: I am not claiming that this happens every time or for every up voted question or answer.&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1316/since-when-did-vote-count-indicate-the-correct-answer-to-the-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26325" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1467" RevisionGUID="72d9e130-90d4-41b8-98a4-b9c030fbd5cd" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### [Berin Loritsch][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The same reasons as S.Lott, except he wouldn't tell everyone to shut up.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Jonathan Khoo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Proposed by [Jonathan Khoo](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1461/sponsoring-a-community-member-to-attend-the-2011-rallyon-conference/1462#1462)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6509/berin-loritsch" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26326" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6983" RevisionGUID="4f903051-21d1-4306-82e3-26d870f387ce" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Over here at Programmers, a lot of askers seems to misunderstand site-specific expectations of career related questions, which frequently results in questions closure and deletions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Propose to help question askers and editors by establishing tag-specific popup ([tag-tips](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/tag-tips)) for particularly troublesome career related tags:  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market], [tag:resume], [tag:career-transition], [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;(For the sake of completeness, implementation of above request also included [career-transition and career-_anyotherword_](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6983/improve-question-quality-by-informing-askers-of-expectations-in-some-career-rela/7112?noredirect=1#comment21415_7112) tags.)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggestion for popup content is as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** Career advice is off-topic per the [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  Please note that most career advice questions end up being closed for being too broad or impractical; try to make yours a [good subjective question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they require the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;* Please make sure your question has the proper scope.  It needs to apply to other programmers besides yourself.  &#xD;&#xA;* If your question can also be applied to other job fields, then it does not uniquely apply to software development and is not on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;* _Before_ asking, review this meta guidance: [Why was my question closed or down voted? -&gt; Career or education advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488).  Make sure your question avoids the problems listed in the guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope this measure could help question askers significantly. For detailed discussion of this proposal and some alternatives, refer prior question: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6950/current-state-of-the-job-market&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We are getting pummeled with the same off topic questions over and over again... The point here is to put something directly on the posting page... something more prominent than what we have now might make a dent in the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6940/clarification-on-what-is-career-advice  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; tag... seems to be causing more trouble than anything else&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it is also worth mentioning that in the past, career related tags have been through community cleanups ([1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1963/31260 &quot;Posse request: jobs/career/etc. tag cleanup&quot;), [2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2358/31260 &quot;Offering Solutions to the Career and Jobs Tags&quot;)) meaning that older content in these tags has already been through some extra scrutiny and generally deemed worth keeping." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26327" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1469" RevisionGUID="6e4a3fca-cec9-42df-95f8-9c5885e2cd5a" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### [Pierre 303][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This guy *understands* people and shows it by knowing how to write. His questions are back with a lot of common sense but also include another point which people would never think of.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Jonathan Khoo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Proposed by [Jonathan Khoo](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1461/sponsoring-a-community-member-to-attend-the-2011-rallyon-conference/1462#1462)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2567/pierre-303&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26328" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6990" RevisionGUID="32df41a4-cfff-4bbb-aa1a-bb6723f1ad7b" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am a voracious StackExchange user, always I have a technical question I go to StackOverflow, also every morning I like to come here to programmer to read some more advanced questions and opinions about design stuff and programmer challenges (as opposed to programming challenges). I noted, a long ago already, that we have a great number of negative voted question. I can understand the motives. [&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;][1] [&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But why can't we raise up the quality of the Questions? Look at this chart I [extracted from data.stackechange.][3]  It shows the ratio of down voted questions to total questions asked that year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Despite its huge size, StackOverflow could, given the years control (and for some time, lower) the negative voted Questions. In Programmers in other-hand negative question have increased over the years (except in 2013-2014 period, where it appear to be controlled).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. What can we do to help with the questions quality?&#xD;&#xA;2. Are we already controlling better new posts in the review queue?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/246189/negative-vs-positive-questions-over-time&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Tfak6.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26329" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1470" RevisionGUID="278007f4-78d3-41de-8c36-6d06b2ba7470" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### [S.Lott][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;A very knowledgeable member of the community. Even though he's the bluntest member of P.SE and would probably tell everyone at the conference to shut up, it's obvious that he's patient and would be able to connect with a lot of people.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Jonathan Khoo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Proposed by [Jonathan Khoo](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1461/sponsoring-a-community-member-to-attend-the-2011-rallyon-conference/1462#1462)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/5834/s-lott&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26330" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1500" RevisionGUID="d921ff69-1441-490d-a6ad-62a34e6e8844" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Cross-posting on behalf of [Eric Willeke](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/21994/eric-willeke) from Rally Software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Original post is [here on Meta.PM.SE](https://pm.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/205/sponsoring-a-community-member-to-attend-the-2011-rallyon-conference/209#209).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;A request from Rally, and some background on how we see our event interacting with PMSE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our Requests&#xD;&#xA;First, I'd like the community's perspective on us adding a tag &quot;RallyOn11&quot; to PMSE that our attendees can use to easily identify and browse topics arising from the conference. After some period (90 days? 180 days?) we'd be happy to delete the tag as it would no longer contribute to the meaningful taxonomy of the content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, I suspect (hope!) we'll be driving an influx of new members during that period, who will all be practicing members of project leadership. I know you'll continue as a group to be your awesome, supportive selves, and I wanted you to know we at Rally strongly appreciate the PMSE community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've attached a draft of what we've shared internally about PMSE for you to see in addition to what @Alex shared above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here’s our thinking...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The customers attending RallyOn are among our most energetic agile champions, and the questions they are willing to voice will be ones held in silence by many others. Equally valuable, posting the questions in an open, online forum allows our many users that are not attending RallyOn to share in and contribute to the experience by providing their perspectives and knowledge. We desire that the important and interesting questions raised by our attendees live on as questions in Stack Exchange, and for our entire team to provide answers, seeding the community in both directions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The leadership of Stack Exchange is providing support by sending two community champions to join RallyOn and guide us as we try and share the knowledge we are creating during the conference. As such, please welcome Anna Lear (@aalear) and TBD (@TBD) to RallyOn!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We will rely on our participants in the roles of scribes, room facilitators, speakers, and members of the audience to keep an ear open for interesting and appropriate questions during the sessions. We need to help these questions find their way on to the appropriate Stack Exchange, likely either http://pm.stackexchange.com/ or http://programmers.stackexchange.com/. It’s our responsibility to ensure that attendees have as little friction as possible in the process. However, it is very important that we strive to help our customers join the site rather than posting the questions ourselves." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26331" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1537" RevisionGUID="c3e3c8cc-659e-4f6e-9e45-8e8a896c11d4" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="ChrisF and Anna Lear answered why it's different, so I'm not going to repeat them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And [Jin](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1685/jin), Stack Exchange's designer-in-residence, would be able to answer definitively as to why it's *specifically* pink. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I always understood the badges to be abstractions of the Post-It Note:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Regular Badge&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Yellow Post-It Notes][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Tag Badge&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Pink Post-It Notes][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/fhKxX.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6GH6R.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26332" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7034" RevisionGUID="bd01aa9d-f646-466e-8da2-e09a52cbeb7f" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="These are all the [meta-tag:faq] tagged questions at this time (sorted by newest).  Here's my take on what should be done with each one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems - It's good, though I'm probably biased.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting - Its good&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog - **Defaq it until the blog is active.  Alternatively, have someone who is active in the blog update it.**&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here - Ok&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic - Ok&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/faq-index-for-programmers-se - Ok though **should be updated** too.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic - Ok.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic - Ok.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1165/can-i-ask-career-advice-questions - Ok&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/what-types-of-programming-related-questions-are-off-topic (borderline) **Obsolete** - if not, it should be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright - **Obsolete** - this is largely dating back from the great scope change and the contentions around that timeframe.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster - Mostly **obsolete** (the two tags it mentions are gone) otherwise duplicate of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1165/can-i-ask-career-advice-questions -- we really shouldn't have too many copies of the same question in the [meta-tag:faq].&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/516/how-do-i-get-started-with-programmers-se - Ok&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice - **Obsolete** Yes, it was very important in its time, though this really isn't a  question anymore.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers - **Obsolete** not an issue anymore.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow - **Rewrite and clean up**&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain **Obsolete**, so *very* obsolete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, from above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are the questions that should be dettaged:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/what-types-of-programming-related-questions-are-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions should be updated:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/faq-index-for-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that the FAQ Index itself may instead be better to put in the tag wiki for [meta-tag:faq] instead of having it be its own question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26333" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1595" RevisionGUID="fe511091-715c-412f-b2d2-4c119427a9ae" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Right now we have just 8 [meta-tag:faq] posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not *terrible*, but they are in various states, various formats, and one of them is even closed. &#xD;&#xA;I think it would be great to clean up these posts, decide on a format and figure out a process for bringing in new FAQ questions (and apply the tag now to the best ones we have here on Meta).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Motivations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Provide a great place for new users to start learning about the best ways to use this site.&#xD;&#xA;2. Provide links for experienced users to use in comments on questions or answers that need attention.&#xD;&#xA;3. Take a big step in [fixing this site](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1400/2314)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have **three main proposals** and a couple questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 1. Make the FAQ tagged questions more FAQ-y&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my understanding, the [meta-tag:faq] tag should be used for **the most frequently asked and answered questions on Meta.** (That's what the tag wiki says, at least.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I propose we review which questions are tagged **faq**, and fix any that are out of place (such as those about the **site-faq** which I propose as the replacement tag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. I believe that these questions should be in **Question and Answer** form, so that users can see quickly that it's a question they actually have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now, these are the questions we have in the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is “what language should I learn” considered off-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic) - Good question.  Should be community wiki, and I'm not sure the answers are quite there yet.&#xD;&#xA;* [Proposed FAQ change regarding career advice questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1165/2314) - Since it's about the *actual FAQ page* I'm not sure if the tag was correctly applied, but it's a good question (deserves it anyway).  It just needs to be edited to question-answer form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [I've updated our FAQ.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/ive-updated-our-faq) - Honestly I'm not sure I understand the inclusion of this one (why is it closed as too localize?)&#xD;&#xA;* [How does Programmers site work?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/516/how-does-programmers-site-work) - Perfect.  Shining example of what a **faq** question can be.  Oh - except for maybe fixing the grammar in the title :)&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) - Great topic, but needs Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu) - Good&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow) - Great question. Need to turn Mark's whole answer into an updated answer, and I wish we could accept it somehow.&#xD;&#xA;* [What should our FAQ contain?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain) - Kind of meta. I think it's more **site-faq** than **faq**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 2. A FAQ index&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The FAQ for Stack Exchange Sites at Meta.SO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7931/faq-for-stack-exchange-sites) is great.  Would be cool to see one like that here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 3. Figure out a process for bringing in new FAQ posts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, where do we propose a good posts, discuss its merits, or decide on the &quot;right&quot; answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My first nomination is &quot;Real Questions have Answers&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;[This is the post](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/991/real-questions-have-answers) announcing the addition of the section to the FAQ page, but I think it would be great to have a **&quot;Are polls ok?&quot;** question with a bit longer answer (community wiki) comprising the [best](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) [writing](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179) on this topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally this answer would also talk about how we should avoid &quot;you/your&quot; in questions, so we can use it in comments on [questions like this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76710/would-you-rather-work-in-a-small-company-or-a-large-one) &amp;mdash; the question that got me thinking about all of this in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this process, maybe we could use the [meta-tag:meta-faq] tag I created for this question (no others fit).&#xD;&#xA;### Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is the **Q&amp;A format** (a la Meta.SO) correct for this site?  I believe it is, but I'm open to opposing viewpoints.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. If we *do* go with Q&amp;A format for FAQ questions, how do we arrive at the *right* answer but still allow voting, discussion (comments), and editing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    The [Skeptics site is working on solution for this](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/413/on-adding-the-faq-tag-to-questions) that involves turning the original into a discussion/staging area and posting a new question with the best/correct answer.  However, I'm not a big fan of this.  I [posted an answer](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/519/discussion-about-requiring-references-for-all-claims/343#343) that became [the &quot;official&quot; one](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5/must-all-claims-be-referenced/522#522) but all that served to do was branch the conversation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. How do we push the right answer to the top on FAQ questions? Votes? Accept it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26334" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7131" RevisionGUID="8d765f0b-5640-4825-8aec-8ed1e5a9b450" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has already come up several times before. Here are the related questions that I found quickly:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/784/are-we-closing-too-many-good-questions-now?rq=1 (December 2010)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed?rq=1 (November 2011)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers?rq=1 (January 2012)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4097/why-are-so-many-questions-closed?rq=1 (October 2012 - duplicate of the November 2011 question)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here (October 2013)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts (June 2014)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6788/a-lot-of-front-page-down-votes (July 2014 - closed as a duplicate of he October 2013 and June 2014 questions)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26335" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1599" RevisionGUID="d6757542-63ec-46fb-b626-c546bb5a31c1" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Edit:** Over the past couple of weeks, we've been accumulating several FAQ-worthy questions that provide a good amount of detail beyond what the one-page FAQ, so I've taken the extra couple of steps to consolidate and adjust the questions to be more FAQ-like. We now have a [FAQ Index](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1646/8) which links to several questions on meta and elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think there's a tremendous amount of value in spending a whole lot of time on this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Stack Overflow, they get a ton of questions about all the sites about every possible mechanic. They get dozens upon dozens of questions about the same things, and as such, require canonical posts to point to for the purposes of duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, the amount of questions they get about various aspects of the site require extensive detail that can't be fit into a single page FAQ. For example, there's a FAQ post that goes into the excruciating minutiae of [how comment replies work](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/43019/how-do-comment-replies-work).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, Meta Stack Overflow has what Jeff Atwood terms &quot;big city problems&quot;. The [meta-tag:faq] tag is the only reasonable way to handle the onslaught of support questions they get about the engine and global policies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't really have that problem. We get ~2-3 questions every couple of days, and for the most part, cover new issues that do need a discussion or a real answer (i.e. they can't be closed as a duplicate). Even the ones that cover the same ground as earlier questions, we (usually) can answer the question in a way that makes it specific to the person asking it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we've been using [meta-tag:faq] to tag questions to the few questions frequently arise organically: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* how is Programmers.SE different from Stack Overflow, &#xD;&#xA;* changes to the main FAQ sparked by frequent on-topic discussions, &#xD;&#xA;* the consequences of the Great Redisciplining,&#xD;&#xA;* and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main intent of these questions is to explain the background behind the policies Programmers.SE has, not to explain in detail the different mechanics behind those policies (like Meta Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for the stuff everyone needs to know—the stuff we want to refer to when closing questions or discussing policy—we use [our single-page FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq). If anything should get some love, it's that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, if you see something that really explains the problems with an issue that frequently comes up, by all means flag it. Beyond that, the normal Stack Exchange guidelines apply:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you have a better answer to a question, answer it.&#xD;&#xA;* If you like an answer, up-vote it.&#xD;&#xA;* If you don't like an answer, down-vote it and leave a comment explaining why." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26336" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1616" RevisionGUID="a30e4d77-4a03-4c04-8f9b-ec5b0e33a038" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As [Anna says](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1613/resume-feedback/1615#1615), it's possible to post good on-topic questions about resumes here, but you have to make sure it's **not too specific to your situation,** nor too broad to specifically apply to programmers, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many people who do post those kinds of personal questions don't actually realize that their question *can* be extended to apply to many software engineers, **if they just isolated what their *real question* was and left out the superfluous details.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You just want to fit into the blue range:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26337" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7135" RevisionGUID="70e6dfb3-b5fc-413d-89d6-b59061372677" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've only been an active SE user for a couple of weeks, and since PSE is my favorite one I've been mulling this question over pretty much the entire time (not to mention reading far too many meta posts). Some days it feels like we're closing too aggressively. Some days it feels like you need a bachelor's in Q&amp;A philosophy to tell what actually is on-topic for SO vs PSE vs all the other SEs. Some days it feels like the people writing questions can't construct a coherent sentence, much less an answerable question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on my experience thus far, it looks like the truth is probably the latter: **A lot of people are asking a lot of questions which are inherently bad, and they would be just as bad no matter what our scope or name was.** There's even [an old meta answer on this topic that reaches pretty much the same conclusion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6993/161917).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By that I mean questions which are too vague, broad, or unclear, typically because they don't have anywhere near enough detail for us to figure out what question is actually being asked (often the asker himself doesn't appear to understand it). When it comes to technical subjects like programming, **the vast majority of newcomers do not understand that it is impossible to answer a question that hasn't been asked properly.** Until they gain the experience to understand that, there's simply no way to respond that doesn't run some risk of them perceiving us as lazy, unhelpful, rude or elitist (though we can certainly lower that risk by being polite) rather than figuring out what they did wrong. This is just as true here as it is on SO and on all the other SEs about semi-accessible-but-still-highly-technical subjects (like security.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't think there's anything we could do with PSE's question-asking UI to communicate this fundamental flaw in a newbie's conception of technical knowledge. PSE gets a bit more of it than most because people see it as SO with fewer restrictions, but we're not really that unique.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;So what *can* we do? Newbies are going to ask these questions no matter what, so in my opinion the best we can hope to do is improve our response to them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Try to emphasize that subjective questions still have to be *precise, specific and coherent enough to be answerable*. This is the number one thing newbies are not getting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Avoid emphasizing &quot;ivory tower&quot; close reasons like whether the question is &quot;useful to other programmers&quot;. Newbies don't care about that. I don't care about that. I care about whether or not the question can be answered. If the question is &quot;not useful&quot;, most of the time it's simply too broad/vague/unclear (or a code dump), so just say that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) When a question is just plain bad, so that it has no hope of being answerable on any SE site, we need to close it quickly. Looking at downvoted questions the front page right now, I see one that got put on hold, and several others that probably should have been put on hold or closed several hours ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Case in point, [look at the top of today's front page](https://i.stack.imgur.com/L3pEd.png). Although I'm not sure how I feel about the intellectual property question, the others are fix my code, how do I learn to X, another fix my code, a question about how C socket functions work that probably could've been answered by googling, and a question about Windows filesystem behavior that's nowhere near detailed enough to be answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit 2: Case in point again, [MichaelT just did the same thing with a much bigger sample size and reached the same conclusion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7145/on-a-name-for-the-site-and-the-questions-asked).&#xA;&#xA;-----&#xA;&#xA;Edit 3: Since it's been a very long time since I wrote this, and I recently achieved 10k reputation, it seemed worth an update. To my surprise there is nothing in this post that I have since changed my mind on; it's all just as true as it was back then. The only difference is that I believe we have gotten somewhat better at closing poor questions quickly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26338" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1630" RevisionGUID="14856481-72ed-482b-8e29-e7e4a1cf036a" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Mr. CRT covered the specific issue with adding *best* as a stop-word, but in general, this is a problem that can't be solved entirely by heuristics. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we ban &quot;best&quot;, &quot;greatest&quot; will take its place. Once &quot;greatest&quot; is banned, &quot;most awesome&quot;, and so on will come. Heck, we've even had problems with [people inventing words](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/382/8) to evade moderation focused on weasel words.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mr. CRT alluded to, when you see a question hinged upon a word like that, it's the symptom of a larger problem with the question in general, one that isnt going to be fixed by removing a single word." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26339" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7146" RevisionGUID="2f17ee9b-4bee-4fe4-800a-305dcc1cc478" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Lets consider &quot;Software Engineering&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271586/what-examples-are-there-for-mean-js and http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271584/what-cms-to-use-for-mean-js - both software/resource recommendation questions. This is a bit of a [herp derp oh look a textbox syndrome](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name/3225#comment7479_2950)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271573/how-to-speed-up-the-following-matlab-code a code review question. It looks just as on topic for a site named Software Engineering as it does for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271545/clarification-on-migrating-to-visual-studio-2010 A tooling question that looks just as on topic for Software Engineering as it does for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271544/is-there-any-harm-in-using-amazon-aws-as-a-development-environment A question that looks just as appropriate for software engineering as programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271541/what-do-you-do-while-youre-waiting-for-your-tests-to-run A polling question that misses the point of Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271537/how-to-choose-a-framework A too broad question that is just as on topic for programmers as it is for software engineering - the issue is the broad scope of it, not the topicality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271535/compare-values-from-two-spinner-and-display-the-result-accordingly-in-android-st Someone asking how to write some code.  This would be asked on Software Engineering too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271532/best-way-to-get-data-from-database-inside-thread-class-in-spring, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271515/can-i-use-qtcreator-with-pyqt5 and http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271531/c-malloc-error are implementation issues that have been migrated to Stack Overflow. This would likely be *more* common with Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271530/univerisity-iphone-assignment-without-an-apple-mac a rant. I suspect it would be asked on Software Engineering too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271510/code-blocks-not-opening-new-console-why-is-this-happening a tooling question with the text &quot;I am unable to start a project in Code Blocks :/ always getting this error&quot; and a screen shot.  This would be asked on Software Engineering too and may also suffer from the above mentioned syndrome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271507/git-hangs-when-pushing a git command line issue that has been migrated. Again, likely still asked on Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271497/difficulty-finding-a-recursive-starting-point-for-an-algorithm is getting too broad votes. This isn't an issue of topicality but rather the scope of the question. It would also be asked on Software Engineering and would be too broad there too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271491/i-want-to-build-a-software-with-c-book-list-is-needed and http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271487/installment-of-python-2-7-9-and-3-4-2-recommended-learning-source are asking for books would also be done on Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271490/how-to-learn-backend-development is closed as career or education advice, and would also be asked on a Software Engineering site (such questions are asked on *many* sites)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271473/best-way-to-implement-in-app-purchases is a resource and code request and would, again, also be asked on a Software Engineering site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271472/php-ajax-error-get-404-when-type-first-char is a code question that we didn't migrate to SO because it was already posted there too.  This would also be asked on a Software Engineering site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For 10ks there are also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271529/does-php-can-solve-this&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/360/for-windows-developers-who-would-like-to-get-into-the-mac-os-x-software-developm &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271560/how-to-solve-the-problem-of-fault-face-detection-in-image-processing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1763/generous-budget-whats-your-ideal-setup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271517/recommend-a-british-based-programmer-small-company-that-also-does-design-a-la&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271480/what-books-helped-you-to-become-a-better-programmer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These were asked and deleted in the past 24h and would likely have been asked no matter what the site name was.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so, there's my list. I contend that all the problematic questions would still be asked on a Software Engineering site and changing the name would be pointless and confusing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26340" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1801" RevisionGUID="816414ed-9215-42f4-b895-a8b141e58cfe" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="At first glance it looks like the question could equally apply to any profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take a look at this image (borrowed from [this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1613/resume-feedback/1616#1616)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![What's on topic](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question fits in the &quot;All Careers&quot; section and is therefore off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We should be asking questions that fit into the blue &quot;All Programmers&quot; section." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26341" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7157" RevisionGUID="1b451457-7dd6-4901-a330-196e23c766f4" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="See: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7154/new-se-chat-bot-feature-for-identifying-when-programmers-is-mentioned-on-stackov&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now, the chat bot is publishing messages into The Whiteboard, the main chat room for Programmers. Should the messages be published into The Whiteboard or into a special chat room?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26342" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1939" RevisionGUID="8b6a5f76-47e4-406e-b7a5-45fb98af94d2" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was looking through some of the tags on this site, and, well, yecccch. And then I thought, hey, could this be part of the [Programmers.SE Summer Cleaning](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning) project?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance, the question [Do we need a programming tag here?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/543/do-we-need-a-programming-tag-here) was asked last December. [The accepted answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/543/do-we-need-a-programming-tag-here/777#777) said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This tag needs to be killed and blacklisted with extreme prejudice.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;There are 122 questions tagged with [tag:programming]: *every* question is about programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Today, there are **421 questions** tagged [tag:programming]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 76 tagged [tag:programmers]&#xD;&#xA;- 1 tagged [tag:programmer]&#xD;&#xA;- 5 tagged [tag:bad-programmer] *[(no biscuit?)](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22bad+*+no+biscuit%22)*&#xD;&#xA;- 5 tagged [tag:copy-paste-programming]&#xD;&#xA;- 48 tagged [tag:great-programmer]&#xD;&#xA;- 1 tagged [tag:rockstar-programmers]&#xD;&#xA;- 28 tagged [tag:junior-programmer]&#xD;&#xA;- 30 tagged [tag:non-programmers]&#xD;&#xA;- 21 tagged [tag:application], 37 tagged [tag:applications], 18 tagged [tag:desktop-application], and 25 tagged [tag:web-applications]&#xD;&#xA;- 2 tagged [tag:backup], and 2 tagged [tag:backups]&#xD;&#xA;- 8 tagged [tag:blog], 55 tagged [tag:blogs], and 5 tagged [tag:blogging]&#xD;&#xA;- 8 tagged [tag:bug], 60 tagged [tag:bugs], 38 tagged [tag:bug-tracking], and 53 tagged [tag:debugging]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so on, and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;You know what to do…&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26343" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7221" RevisionGUID="be965369-ebf0-4db3-98fc-916d349e59c7" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently learned that some off-topic questions seem to be posted at Programmers with sole purpose to circumvent ['problem'](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7205/31260) and ['help'](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/22863090#22863090) title block at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do something to save these askers frustration and disappointment when their off-topic questions get voted down and close? Absence of the block probably makes them expect warmer welcome over here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/T1ZyG.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/T1ZyG.png &quot;screen shot: example of how asker would be blocked at SO because of the word 'problem' in title&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7020/lets-help-askers-who-are-trying-to-circumvent-question-block-at-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5843/is-it-time-to-tighten-up-the-quality-filter-at-programmers?lq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26344" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1940" RevisionGUID="4f9aa96c-0586-4936-8bc0-53897f57e8f7" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think this is a great idea, and long overdue, but its one heck of a task. Here's what I got so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Merged&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:abstractions] &amp;rarr; [tag:abstraction]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:agile-project-management], [tag:agile-processes] &amp;rarr; [tag:agile]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:application] &amp;rarr; [tag:applications]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:ai] &amp;rarr; [tag:artificial-intelligence]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:guidelines] &amp;rarr; [tag:best-practices]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:backup] &amp;rarr; [tag:backups]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:blog] &amp;rarr; [tag:blogs]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:xp] &amp;rarr; [tag:extreme-programming]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:bugs] &amp;rarr; [tag:bug] (so `bug-*` tags work)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:telephone-interview], [tag:interviews], [tag:interviewing], [tag:interview-preparation] &amp;rarr; [tag:interview]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programmer] &amp;rarr; [tag:programmers]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:rockstar-programmers], [tag:rockstar] &amp;rarr; [tag:great-programmer]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:cv] &amp;rarr; [tag:resume]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:personal-development] &amp;rarr; [tag:self-improvement]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:work-from-home] &amp;rarr; [tag:telecommute]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:verbiage] &amp;rarr; [tag:wording]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:zend] &amp;rarr; [tag:zend-framework]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Blacklist requests&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All questions on the site fall into these tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:programmers], [tag:programming], [tag:self-improvement], [tag:learning], [tag:advice]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Merge discussion needed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:programming-practices] &amp;rarr; [tag:best-practices]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:jobs] &amp;rarr; [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:bugs], [tag:bug-tracking] &amp;rarr; [tag:debugging]&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:hiring], [tag:interview-questions] &amp;rarr; [tag:interview]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Aaronaught's Posse fodder&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These tags are smells of likely bad questions and could use some [community weeding](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1869/posse-nominations-for-aaronut).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:bad-programmer], [tag:blogs],  [tag:copy-paste-programming], [tag:great-programmer], [tag:junior-programmer], [tag:non-programmers],[tag:programmers], [tag:programming], [tag:recommendations], [tag:technology]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### &quot;Fixed the glitch&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone retagged all the posts in these tags, so it's no longer a problem:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:blogging]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26345" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1946" RevisionGUID="5f5a936e-86b2-4be5-85be-d1d571fc5c0c" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the first part of what will assuredly be a several part series on [tag cleanups](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea), I'd like to discuss merging [tag:jobs] into [tag:career].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both tags generally are about jobs: working at a job, career development, getting a job, etc. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a reason we need to keep these tags separate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26346" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7241" RevisionGUID="e69921d0-4390-47c0-b5e0-57a25ee86c1e" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My apologies for taking a bit of time in getting around to answer this.  The set of 'newest 50' that I am working from may not be the ones you saw.  Let's look at all the down voted ones:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Career advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276703/im-a-university-student-and-im-a-asking-for-a-road-map-for-studying-computer-s (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question is one of the career and education advice questions that we often get. They've always been problematic since the start.  This one wasn't tagged with [tag:career-development] and if you read the excerpt there, you will note that we *really* try discouraging people from asking those questions.  We can't remove the tag wholesale, because there are historical posts that we [don't want to remove](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6983/31260 &quot;'in the past, career related tags have been through community cleanups meaning that older content in these tags has already been through some extra scrutiny and generally deemed worth keeping...'&quot;) - removing the tag would make those much more difficult to find (and hopefully head off additional questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Implementation and debugging questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often we get questions about implementation or debugging.  Many times these are [cross posted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info &quot;'Cross-posting is frowned upon...'&quot;) to both Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE.  Other times, the question was posted here because the OP can't post it on SO for some reason or another. P.SE is distinctly different than SO in its scope and we aren't a &quot;can't post on SO, post on P.SE&quot; alternative site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276681/really-confused-about-maperase (-2 migrated)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276649/java-try-catch-block (-8)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question was asked on Programmers.SE in an attempt to get around a question block on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276647/what-cause-the-error-opening-trace-file-no-such-file-or-directory-2 (-3)   &#xD;&#xA;    A cross posted question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276625/how-run-a-exe-file-with-direct-connect-to-an-ipport (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    Another cross posted question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276613/python-how-to-print-in-rows (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A ***very*** poorly specified problem with python.  It is probably actually [this](http://stackoverflow.com/q/29135600/289086) question in a one sentence form, but its still an implementation or debugging issue that doesn't belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276607/passing-parameters-to-pthread-create (-3)&#xD;&#xA;    Aside from the self centered comments from the poster (it sets up a negative feeling about how one should vote), it's another implementation question that is off topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for the best&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276677/what-is-the-most-advised-way-to-handle-i18n-on-microservices (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question was asking for the best way to do something, without an actual problem to solve. As came out in the comments, the question was also looking for a discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276633/what-are-the-best-compression-algorithms-with-respect-to-a-minimising-cpu-usag (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    It's important to point out that this question has been changed from its [original](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/276633/revisions), which asked for an overview of compression algorithms. Searching google for [comparison of compression algorithms](https://www.google.com/search?q=comparison+of+compression+algorithms) brings up [this](http://binfalse.de/2011/04/04/comparison-of-compression/).  That said, we aren't a crowd sourced search engine. Those aren't fun questions to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276609/best-way-to-store-large-geo-tagged-data (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    A very broad and possibly resource recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Others&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276691/how-to-create-a-json-or-html-file-that-dynamically-mirrors-file-directory-struct (-1)  &#xD;&#xA;    This one isn't so bad. It's also at only -1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276690/simple-way-to-write-to-sql-file-from-java (-1)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question is a bit on the unclear side. It has some possibility, but it needs a clear problem definition.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276683/image-upload-fuctionality-in-a-web-application (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question failed to do any research and asked a rather [commonly asked question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/119488/40980) again.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276634/wearable-devices-that-communicate-with-my-apps-or-applicaiton (-1)  &#xD;&#xA;    A really unclear question that seems to be trying to find an architect for some idea of wearable devices or something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276631/where-can-i-find-an-open-source-project-or-body-of-code-written-in-clean-read (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    Polling for projects.  We've had a [poor history](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/165773 &quot;'We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...'&quot;) of providing answers to such questions and curating those that have been asked in the past. On P.SE they rarely produce good content (and when they do, it's surrounded by a dozen poorly answered posts). The down votes are a warning to people thinking of answering it of &quot;don't waste your time here, this question isn't a good fit for the site&quot; as well as a &quot;don't ask these questions&quot;.  Far too often people point to past questions with an up vote that are still around as a &quot;this can get asked again&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276617/how-to-store-integer-array-in-mysql-database (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    This is an XY problem where the posted is asking for a solution that follows the particular idea for how he or she thinks will solve it, but isn't the actual problem. These don't often make for good questions, though if the poster can refine it to the actual problem being asked it might be something that can be turned around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276615/image-uploading-with-blog-post-best-practice (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    Best practice questions are a sore spot with people who answer questions on the site. There is no actual problem being described in the question - it's a &quot;what do people do&quot; type poll.  Rarely are best practices ever the best practices or even applicable to the situation that is actually the unmentioned problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276604/how-to-formally-present-a-web-app-solution-to-a-panel-plus-pricing (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    Pricing of applications (and other forms of compensation) is listed as off topic in the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  The price someone wants to charge for something is based on too many factors for us to accurately base an answer on (do you have dependents? is this a job or hobby? what is the median income in your locale? etc...).  The question boils down to a poll of how people have sold software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276600/selecting-string-pattern-matching-algorithm-easier (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    A [copy and paste of a homework](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems) question.  Or at least it looks that way. It really isn't a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### And asked and deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10k links here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276687/simple-interest-loop-error (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A rather poorly specified implementation question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276682/for-the-college-dropouts-what-was-missing-from-the-university-program-that-caus (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A poll of CS college dropouts about what could have been better in their programs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276675/display-time-in-sorting-order-based-on-dynamicall-added-arrived-time-with-curren (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    A cross posted question.  You can find the SO version [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29117975/display-data-in-sorting-order-based-on-arrived-time-with-current-date-using-linq)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276621/case-insensitive-search-is-not-working-in-strongloop (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A reposted implementation question.  The [repost](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276420/case-insensitive-search-issue-in-strongloop) was at -5 when it was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, there's the list and why they are down voted.  We often wonder why we attract such questions, especially when we have many of these clearly spelled out in the Help Center for &quot;please don't ask them&quot;.  There is a suspicion that many of these are spill over from Stack Overflow (can't ask there, ask here) or a realization that Stack Overflow would close the questions, so you go down to the bottom of Stack Overflow and look at the sites...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and lo and behold, there is Programmers right next to it.  Let's try asking there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you believe that any of these *should't* have been down voted, are on topic, and not too broad or in otherwise need of fixing/clarification by the person who posted the question (we often fix those that have all the material, just poorly formatted), please point it out.  If you think that some of these *should* be asked here and the policies and community norms are in error, please bring that up so that we can help by demonstrating the path that brought us here, and look at influencing people to make that change either by making exemplary questions of that type, or writing about it on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Until we understand what people feel need to be changed, it's rather hard to work off of &quot;there are a lot of down voted posts on the front page&quot;.  We know. We really try to help it and have probably done the most changes to our help center in recent times of any Stack Exchange site (we're going through [another round](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7236/40980) of refinement - trying to make it more clear about what is and isn't on topic here). If you have suggestions about how to modify the help center, please help us make those changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/YZTDq.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26347" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7243" RevisionGUID="ebb4f94d-6d4e-4372-8571-f8495d210989" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Stack Overflow has got an **[interesting feature](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/288387/839601 &quot;find more detailed description here&quot;)** that may be related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't tell that it helps to lower amount of bad questions _asked_ (I honestly don't know if this is possible at all) - but it _at least_ helps to save site home page from being polluted by such questions (bold font in below quote is mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;*All* questions flagged Very Low Quality now immediately enter [Triage](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7053/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...and **while these questions are being triaged, they're *not* shown on the home page. Take *that*, [wall of crap.](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so)**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;[![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1rTGm.png)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* MSE discussion of instilling above features network wide:  &#xD;&#xA; [Triage and Help &amp; Improvement review queues at sites other than Stack Overflow?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/251737/165773)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26348" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2044" RevisionGUID="3d370a32-c025-4089-aa11-bf51172bdd74" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Based on [network-wide guidance](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/77373/149432) and [a discussion here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1457/8), we've been actively deleting comment chains that have become obsolete, chatty, or pointless. This has been met with some resistance, in part because of the differing expectations of what comments are for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have the following entry in our FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are useful for getting clarifications, but extended discussions detract from the question and its answers. If you'd like to discuss anything related to programming with other expert programmers, please use our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But perhaps we can make it better. In [a discussion on this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97207/what-does-c-do-better-than-d/97211#97211), it was suggested we highlight the alternatives for disagreeing with an answer where the answerer chooses not to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to address this? Are there other things we should address in our FAQ's guidance about comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26349" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2110" RevisionGUID="a643d3bb-b532-44ef-8f6a-95b98df3925a" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was one of the moderators you interacted with and the one who migrated the question. Your question was flagged for moderators as being too localized, which is why moderators stepped in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the main goals for Programmers.SE is to ask questions that will serve as useful information for future vistors: if someone is having a similar problem, we want them to be able to find the question and derive value from it. To that end, questions need to be generally applicable to all programmers, not just the question asker, and have some amount of lasting value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Programmer diagram][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your original question and its current, &quot;tl;dr&quot; version state the framework in question is dead, that you're unsure of what the status of the project is, and your question still asks what you can do to make it work again. A comment was left, stating:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Per the Sourceforge mailing list it's a memory issue with watin.org and it's being looked into; WatiN isn't dead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Essentially, rumors of its death are greatly exaggerated: it isn't dead, its website is just having some trouble. In a few days, the question would be obsolete when the website comes back online.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granting you didn't know about the mailing list beforehand, you do now, and that would be where you'd want to check on the status of the website and follow-up with any concerns about the status of the project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, your question asks for a list of recommendations for a testing framework, and you laid out several requirements for that framework, scoping the question specifically to your situation. We're not looking for questions that specific, as they are unlikely to ever help future visitors, especially on a site that's geared towards programmers in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, the question's scope goes from all programmers (our target scope), to testers, to people who use the framework in question, to people having trouble with the framework in question, to people having trouble with the framework in question and have the same exact set of requirements you have. There aren't a lot of visitors, if any, who would derive value from that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why we generally don't field questions that ask for [lists of recommendations](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic) or [shopping recommendations](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/): everyone's requirements are different, and it has the potential to create an infinite number of iterations of the question, each one only helping the question asker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of questions that give a person a fish, we want questions that teach a person how to fish. &quot;How do I go about selecting a testing framework?&quot; would be a better, more general question and would work well on Programmers. The comments left on your question were intended to guide you towards editing your question to that effect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to why it took so long to get the question migrated: we don't migrate questions away unless they are especially good fits for the destination site (the so-called [&quot;don't migrate crap&quot; rule](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow/1901#1901)). I put a feeler out to the moderators on SQA.SE to see if it would be something that they would be interested in, and it took a few hours for them to get back to me. Once they determined it would be a good fit for their site, it was migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/lgkjg.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26350" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7263" RevisionGUID="15f35b6d-1f17-4a23-8719-4fbfa3f8c3fe" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have added the [meta-tag:licensing] to the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6186/question-regarding-license-violation&#xD;&#xA; - &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/915/are-software-license-questions-acceptable&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/882/software-law-definition&#xD;&#xA; - &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2220/what-is-the-difference-between-the-mit-and-mit-license-tags&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/would-a-how-to-choose-the-best-oss-license-type-question-be-appropriate-for-ps&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3131/can-we-put-software-licensing-questions-are-off-topic-in-the-faq/5964#5964&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7258/reconciling-no-legal-advice-and-yes-software-licensing&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6886/how-can-i-compare-and-contrast-open-source-licenses-canonical-dupe-for-lice&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6497/what-is-the-difference-between-software-licensing-and-copyright&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5456/discussion-on-if-questions-about-eulas-are-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were some other questions that were tagged [meta-tag:legal] but they weren't strictly about licensing, so I didn't tag them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26351" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7467" RevisionGUID="09be8888-adac-4750-805d-c4d7c5baef7a" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Is the question about the interview process itself or career advice in general?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Yes:** do not ask here, it is off-topic. It _might_ be appropriate at [The Workplace][1], but you need to read their help center for guidance and compare against what you want to ask. You can always drop in their chat or ask on their meta to be sure first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**No:** remove language relevant to the interview. Congratulations! You have a question useful for your immediate need while also being applicable to other programmers, whether they are interviewing or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example: if you want feedback on a whiteboard-type question asked during an interview, leave out the interview part and try to keep it in scope to avoid it being closed as too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also be sure to [read the link that gnat posted][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;[2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6361/31260&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26353" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7474" RevisionGUID="c6cf813c-850e-49dc-bd86-820b50e4e296" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Call me dumb if you wish but I really [don't understand](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489) what is written in the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the meaning of manage c++? -- Just want to ask what is the meaning of manage c++?. Follow up question, how does it differ from c++?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for comments referring to some place elsewhere which could help one understand the question, I think the problem with this approach has been best covered in a discussion at sister meta, [Should a question that is meaningless without viewing an external link be closed?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/266910/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt;  Unclear what you are asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;would seem to be the most appropriate close reason here... questions (like answers) should really stand on their own merits and only have external links for references etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone understands what the question is about, they would better edit it into a shape allowing other readers to understand it too (if only to vote close for other reason, although [protecting from getting senseless guesses as answers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/98026/165773 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;) wouldn't hurt either)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26354" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2147" RevisionGUID="465c7011-664a-4b07-9c77-30ba06264157" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Other sites have been able to get their site name and primary focus blacklisted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [English](https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/625/how-about-getting-rid-of-the-english-tag)&#xD;&#xA;* [WordPress](https://wordpress.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/338/why-wordpress-tag-on-wordpress-answers)&#xD;&#xA;* [Drupal](https://drupal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128/block-the-cms-tag)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a request to get ours blacklisted as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our entire site could be tagged with [tag:programming] and/or [tag:programmers], and people tend to use it as a tag when they don't have anything better to tag their question. And, like other zero-content tags, it tends to attract a large number of questions that were never good fits for our site anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previous discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/58/tag-consolidation-and-blacklist&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/543/do-we-need-a-programming-tag-here&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/yet-another-cleanup-idea" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26355" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7573" RevisionGUID="fec3a79c-5615-4e44-93cc-74acb98e963e" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; My question was closed within seconds using the close reason normally used for lazy questions asking for laundry lists of libraries and other resources. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not about calling it a &quot;lazy question&quot;.  That's the standard close reason for off-site resource requests.  And that's why the final item in the list is there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  or favorite off-site resource &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I rephrased your question to &quot;Does Programmers.SE have any empirical evidence backing Brooks' claims?&quot;  The answer is &quot;No, it doesn't.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if we use a loose form of the question you asked &quot;Is there any empirical evidence backing Brooks' claims?&quot;  The answer is &quot;we don't know.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you haven't already, have a read of [this meta answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487/53019) that goes into detail why off-site resource questions are closed.  And yes, there is a portion in that answer that directly addresses the main point of your meta question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26356" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2217" RevisionGUID="294a70bd-b742-42f8-a6d0-edf96ec33be1" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If we do, someone should add it to the wiki for the [now-deprecated][1] [tag:software-engineering].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Options that I see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:programming] works, but it's too vague. It's also very similar to the name of the site. It also covers a lot of ground and could be put on a lot of questions here.&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:construction] exists, but has been used to refer to constructors. Construction is the phase name as defined in the SWEBOK. However, the SWEBOK definition for &quot;construction&quot; includes coding, verification, unit testing, and integration testing.&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:coding] seems simplistic to me, but it exists with 66 questions tagged. It seems like this is the current standard, although I've seen questions about the act of writing code not tagged with it.&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:implementation] exists in a plural form [tag:implementations]. However, this tag refers to implementations of features, usually at the language level (from what I gathered). Having two very similar tags to refer to two very different things seems silly and confusing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like [tag:coding] is the winner, but I'm not sure if it's the best choice. It works, it's well understood, and it has some meaning. What does the community think, though?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2052/should-the-software-engineering-and-software-development-tags-exist" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26357" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2228" RevisionGUID="7a3228f2-5f6d-4d0b-9ad4-f9fec4f81e20" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It has been suggested in [this question][1] that comments should be for the purpose of clarification of a question or answer, and that eventually the clarifications should be editted into the question/answer so that people don't have to look down the comment change to see what was &quot;really&quot; meant. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We took up a [policy of removing irrelevant comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1457/how-do-our-moderators-and-community-members-feel-about-cleaning-up-comment-nois), but it seems that the issue is larger now than just dealing with noise in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When, if at all, should we delete comments? For that matter, is there any reason that comments should not just be deleted after a certain period of time? They can be fun to read, but do comments truly serve any purpose 6 months after they were posted if questions are being properly edited? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2225/what-is-an-extended-discussion/2227#2227" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26358" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7614" RevisionGUID="790afaad-9a88-435d-beac-c6be38482a5f" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Yes, this is a duplicate of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/ intended to re-ask the question more clearly and without the tangents of trying to explain it in the comments that have distracted from the core question.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For some reason, Programmers.SE is seeing an increase in the rate of new users asking pure code and debugging questions.  These questions are, and have always been, off topic on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qf04b.png&quot; /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of the time, these questions are down voted quite severely, closed, and often deleted very promptly. This is quite simply, again, that these questions are off topic here and asking such a question suggests that the user didn't even *attempt* to read the tour or any of the help center before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For 10k users, poke at the [question close stats for the last 30 days](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last30days).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To those who don't have access to this, the second and third highest custom close reasons are the all too familiar:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be a [fix-my-code-dump request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/258685/839601), an outright off-topic, totally ignoring what Programmers is **[about](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour)**: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or a variation on it. The top one is a custom 'unclear' which also often acts as a proxy for the &quot;I have no idea why you are asking this question here.&quot;  There is also a smattering of other close reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We don't troubleshoot code here, sorry. No, we don't know where else you can ask.&#xD;&#xA;* We don't debug code here, sorry. No, we don't know where else you can ask. See also [How to Debug Small Programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/).&#xD;&#xA;* Voting to close as this is a debugging question, but I'm not sure it belongs on StackOverflow since this is a classic example of a bug that can be found simply through proper use of a debugger.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because we don't do fix-my-code requests here.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because Programmers is not a fix-my-code site.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's a &quot;fix my code&quot; request.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is asking us to debug the code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also a fair amount of &quot;I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is an implementation question, but not of sufficient quality to migrate to [so]&quot; and variations on *that* reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing is realizing that [no, we aren't going to migrate crap to Stack Overflow](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6878/31260 &quot;as was already complained about particular mistaken migration&quot;). Migrating an awful debugging question to Stack Overflow isn't going to do anyone any favors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this fairly consistent stream of completely off topic debugging questions is draining the community moderation on the site and discouraging to many people who are either active or casual users of the site. It is very discouraging to see &quot;1 new active question&quot; and then look to see it is another poor quality &quot;debug this for me&quot; question. It is also discouraging to for the casual user to look at new questions and see half of them down voted and/or closed. This can be seen in some of the [recent](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7606/40980) meta [questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7593/40980) (and many who are active and read meta know that there are quite a few more of this type of question that are older).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, there are a *lot* of questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what can we do to help reduce the rate of off topic 'fix this for me' questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some have suggested that changes to Stack Overflow's question visibility for low quality questions have caused people who are asking these low quality questions to try posting on other sites (ours in particular). How accurate is this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there things that Stack Exchange devs might be able to implement that would help new users recognize the scope of the site more rapidly (before they hit a question ban? or get discouraged with posting on Stack* (its just a bunch of jerks who close everything))?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can the existing community more promptly handle these questions? Do we need to try to hire Oded 7/24 to close these questions promptly&lt;/joke&gt;? Or is there a valid mandate for the diamond mods to close vote (and delete) the clear cut debugging things that show up in new questions more promptly than the community does?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for any Stack Exchange community managers - do ***you*** have any suggestions for us? How important is it that we provide a good user experience for these users? Could we get another close vote reason for 'fix my code is off topic here' so that it is something that is more official and less curt than the plethora of custom close vote reasons that we currently employ? And while we have anecdotal suggestions of this, is there any change to the &quot;questions asked and closed within 48 hours&quot; rate recently compared to historical trends?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26359" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2235" RevisionGUID="e09392ec-8bda-460c-b5cd-db13b9b5f5a3" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="*Disclaimer: in this answer, I'm assuming comments' content is not offensive, insulting, or otherwise not in keeping with the spirit of the &quot;Be nice&quot; guideline.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there are two things to tackle here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. automatic deletion of comments;&#xD;&#xA;2. manual deletion of comments and removal of some discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should we automatically delete comments after some time? Absolutely not.** While it is true that extended discussion in comments is discouraged universally across the Stack Exchange network, there is still value in comments that add supporting information. Ideally that information should be edited into the answer, but that doesn't always happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments on questions serve the purpose of someone being able to add a helpful hint that might just be a guess or otherwise not fit to stand on its own as an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is absolutely no way to automatically or manually ensure that all information given in a comment is preserved in a question or an answer. This leaves us with some comments that are more noise than signal. Those we have to remove as we find them. When I say &quot;we&quot; here I mean both the community and the moderators. As moderators, we typically react to flags on comments, but given enough flags on a comment, it will be removed automatically without our intervention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments have always been and probably will continue to be second-class citizens on the network. That is entirely by design and that's shown in the limitations that comments have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* comments have a length limit;&#xD;&#xA;* there is no downvoting on comments, so they are not subject to the usual community vetting of their quality;&#xD;&#xA;* comments do not affect reputation;&#xD;&#xA;* comments are collapsed when their number exceeds 5;&#xD;&#xA;* moderators see an automated &quot;more than 20 comments posted&quot; flag on posts that generate a lot of comments in a short amount of time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The design of each site places primary focus on questions and answers. We want all useful information required to answer a question to ideally be in an answer. How that answer was developed is largely unimportant so long as the final product of that development is valuable. How valuable it is can be determined through up and down votes on the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange set out to &quot;make the internet better&quot; by creating an environment where the best information rises to the top. Asking the user to dig through a lengthy comment thread on the off chance that the information they're looking for is there goes completely counter to that mission. If we're going to allow that, we might as well just abandon this whole Q&amp;A idea and go back to forums where readers can already sift through pages of unrelated or possibly contradictory information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For an example, compare the comments between Rook and me on [his answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2228/auto-delete-comments-over-time/2234#2234). Is it really beneficial to have our discussion there or is it better for him to express his point in his answer and for me to express mine here? In my opinion, reading one coherent answer is infinitely better than reading a string of broken up comments. Granted, meta posts are a bit of a special case since here we encourage discussion, but I think this still illustrates my point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I do think we can be better about defining extended discussions and clearing up comment threads. We can discuss that [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/how-can-we-improve-our-guidance-about-the-purpose-of-comments).** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know it can be difficult to watch your comments be removed and I apologize for that. I know the chat isn't perfect in many ways, and I apologize for that too. But at the end of the day, comments are designed to be transient. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For what it's worth, as moderators we typically only respond to comment flags from community members and to the automatic &quot;more than 20 comments posted&quot; flag as those are usually a good indication that something might be going off-track. It's not typical for posts to generate large amounts of comments in a short amount of time. We do not (far as I know) go out looking for comments to delete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26360" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7748" RevisionGUID="3576d053-861c-496c-9fc2-5282d2580d76" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question &quot;[Can we ship libeay32.dll and ssleay32.dll with our installer?][1]&quot; was put on hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The legal tag says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about legal problems which may arise during software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development or questions about software law, patents and copyrights in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not get why legal questions are discouraged if we have a legal tag (seems to be a contradiction). On the other hand sometimes legal questions seem to be OK ( https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5741/31438 ). So what is wrong with my question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303302/can-we-ship-libeay32-dll-and-ssleay32-dll-with-our-installer?noredirect=1#comment633381_303302" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26362" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7797" RevisionGUID="ea33cb67-91dd-4cc8-ad4d-5ac26a8d457b" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm sure you remember [this experiment](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7723/96050), which changed the required number of close/reopen votes from 5 to 3. Before getting to the meat of the analysis, I should point out that the change worked almost exactly as intended. Close votes [clustered around 3](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7734/96050) and the median time to close dropped noticably from November 9 to December 9, 2015:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Median time to close by week][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the statistics I said I'd be looking at:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Month posted Qs   Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion&#xD;&#xA;    ------------ ---- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- ---------&#xD;&#xA;    2014-11-09   1379    572      41.5%          12.1%     2.1%      10.1%     29.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2014-12-09   1251    730      58.4%          13.4%     1.5%       7.1%     32.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-01-09   1490    788      52.9%          11.3%     1.6%      10.1%     32.6%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-02-09   1507    816      54.1%          11.0%     1.6%      10.0%     31.7%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-03-09   1493    883      59.1%           9.7%     1.1%       8.1%     35.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-04-09   1391    814      58.5%          12.5%     1.1%       4.9%     34.2%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-05-09   1394    726      52.1%          10.2%     2.1%       9.5%     41.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-06-09   1472    764      51.9%           9.2%     2.1%      14.3%     37.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-07-09   1496    839      56.1%          10.8%     1.2%       5.5%     36.7%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-08-09   1392    785      56.4%          11.6%     0.9%       3.3%     52.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-09-09   1376    816      59.3%          11.4%     3.3%      18.3%     47.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-09   1463    869      59.4%           8.9%     2.2%       6.5%     43.5%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09   1308    955      73.0%          15.4%     4.9%      17.0%     47.0%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rates remained steady for the most part in the months leading up to the experiment. For the month of the experiment closing, editing of closed questions, and reopening spiked noticeably. (Deletion has a longer [lag time](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/262077/1438) so we don't have the final tally.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The big number that sticks out is the 73% closure rate. We've already gone round and round about what that number _should be_, so there's no point in rehashing that argument. I think too many questions closed here are salvageable and other people (who have firsthand experience in the close queue) believe that the lines are clear and most closed questions would be bad for the site. If [Jeff couldn't grok this site](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2260/we-cant-pronounce-anything), I don't see why I would either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I don't understand the goals of this site is, in fact, _because_ I'm not part of this community. Closing is part of how this community, as [Clay Shirky puts it](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html), &quot;defends itself so that it can stay on its sophisticated goals and away from its basic instincts.&quot; Bikeshed questions represent a considerable portion of those instincts, I suspect. Closing questions that verge toward [bad subjective](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) protects the group from junk answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shirky also points out in &quot;A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You have to find some way to protect your own users from scale. This doesn't mean the scale of the whole system can't grow. But you can't try to make the system large by taking individual conversations and blowing them up like a balloon; human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon. It either dissipates, or turns into broadcast, or collapses. So plan for dealing with scale in advance, because it's going to happen anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our solution to scaling historically has been to encourage users to [**trust fellow programmers**](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/251175/1438). While it's not without problems, the philosophy does allow one community to handle [8k questions a day](http://stackexchange.com/sites#questionsperday). It's been ages since anyone could read all the questions on the site, but the system works well enough to produce an enormous (and growing) store of knowledge about coding. [Most of the questions are crap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law), but that's more than balanced by the quality of the content that rises to the top of searches. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's clear that changing the number of votes required to close questions will allow this site to scale without changing the criteria for closing questions. I completely understand why this would be desirable. But I think it would be a short-term hack. It will not fix the root of the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You might as well know what I think the core problem is: **distrust**. Over and over since I started this experiment, I've heard (whether this is what was intended or not, I don't know) concern that outsiders will take advantage of this community the moment its guard is dropped. And it's not just outsiders: there is a deep division among high-reputation users and former users of the site that is marked by distrust. I have some suggestions about how to work toward a compromise, but I haven't earned any trust here myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the off chance that it could still be useful, I'm going to toss out my ideas anyway:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Assume that only the sign and not the magnitude of question scores matter.** Voting volume tends to follow the number of views. Views are driven largely by how interested the general public is in the question and it's answers. The second most-upvoted question on SO is: [How do you undo the last commit?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/927358/1438) It didn't [start off](http://stackoverflow.com/revisions/927358/1) as a particularly good question, but it represents an _extremely common problem_ and so it gets a lot of views. I suppose in a just world, those views would not turn into votes. But in the real world, not everything is tied to merit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Assume that only the first few answers are ever read.** Almost a corollary to the previous point: popular questions will get more answers. If you dig through those answers, it's pretty likely some of them are low-quality. Gallingly, they are likely to have more votes than brilliant answers to obscure questions. But within a question, voting does a good job of surfacing quality. Studies consistently find that people [rarely finish reading pages they land on](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/page-fold-manifesto/). Either they find the information they are looking for and leave or they give up on the page. Downvote bad answers and trust your fellows to do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. **There will always be people who misunderstand the nature of this site.** Several people pointed me to a comment (on a now-deleted question) that cited [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/77479/96050) as a reason for asking something similar. The example has been closed for over a year. _Closing questions does not make them less tempting to copy._ Don't confuse _post hoc_ justification for motivation. People will ask dumb questions whether there are similar questions around or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. **Be proud of your past.** I know this site has gone through a lot of pain. It's also produced some amazing answers. I've seen the accepted answer to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60544/why-do-game-developers-prefer-windows cited several times by people who aren't active on Stack Exchange. The answers to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29109/is-there-any-reason-to-use-c-instead-of-c-perl-python-etc make me wonder if I gave up on C++ templates too soon. While poking around the codebase here at Stack Overflow, I found the answers to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127624/what-is-mvc-really useful. These bikeshed questions manage to produce exceptional answers in spite of themselves. Or rather, there are some amazing contributors here who have turned leaden questions into answer gold. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. **The single best defense against worthless opinions is voter diversity.** Studies have consistently found that [&quot;diverse minds do better, when their decisions are averaged, than expert minds.&quot;](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140708-when-crowd-wisdom-goes-wrong) New users should not be treated as threats, but as potential contributors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The increase in closure rate makes reducing the number of votes required to close questions impractical. Other effects (particularly reopen rate and median time to close) were encouraging, but did not counter-balance the cost in terms of new questions closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/NOUb5.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26363" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7801" RevisionGUID="9483edc5-e83f-40b3-b672-104af390a0d5" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'd like to focus on an aspect that hasn't been addressed yet.  Namely, the edit and reopen rate.  During the experiment, the site had an atypically high Close-&gt;Edit-&gt;Reopen rate.  I don't believe that was by chance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Several of us within The Whiteboard noted during the experiment that we had more time available to edit marginal questions so that they could be re-opened.  I even made a comment to the effect that one of the major benefits of three votes-to-close was that it freed active community members up to focus on higher order aspects of the site.  That's a very, very good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of us share a common goal of creating high quality content for the site.  [Robert's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7799/53019) very eloquently addresses why it is imperative for us to get rid of the crap questions quickly.  This site simply doesn't have the volume of quality questions to drown out the crap questions, so we need to be diligent in cleaning the site.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we treat active users' time as a zero-sum game, then it's fair to explore _how_ we want them investing their time.  Personally, I would much rather they focus on editing the salvageable questions in order to foster higher quality content.  I think the experiment created the right conditions to allow active users to focus on more valuable contributions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All that said, I understand there is disagreement in how to interpret these results.  I believe that the true results of the experiment may be masked by the relatively short duration of the experiment and natural fluctuations in the various rates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd suggest re-running the experiment but for an extended period of time.  At a minimum, let's see what happens after 3 months.  Or more preferably, let's run the next experiment for 6 months and then analyze the results.  Arguably the only risk is that we'll close more questions than perhaps ought to be closed.  On the other hand, we should see higher quality questions resulting from the additional editing that can be provided." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26364" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2277" RevisionGUID="d662c0ef-725b-4057-825b-78c05ef2b99f" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The issue is that there is no answer: we don't have time machines and we don't have crystal balls. Any &quot;answer&quot; provided is a guess: an educated guess perhaps, but still a guess. There's no criteria by which to gauge the answers in a meaningful manner: who had the best theory? Who wrote the most? Who cares?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not the place to opine about a topic. If you're looking for that type of place, where you can poll fellow programmers to see what they think about some hot or future topic, you will be consistently disappointed. I would suggest looking into Hacker News or /r/Programming or any number of programming forums out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if you have a question that you're actually facing, then that's fine: ask about that. The question you linked is *not* that. It states X is what Y other profession does and asks what would happen if X happened in software engineering. What's the practical problem being faced? What real-world experience related to software development can be provided to answer such a hypothetical?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And consider it from a practical perspective: if you have an actual problem you're facing right now that you need someone to help you with, do you really want to see your question pushed down the front page by people dreaming up hypothetical scenarios to poll the audience about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In response to your new questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do we define what is practical, and who has to consider it practical for it to be practical? For something to be practical, does it have to be practical to someone in an office doing work that eventually leads to or otherwise supports delivered software? Or can it be practical and useful to a researcher or academic who is looking to make the professional lives of those people delivering software easier or better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think [it's pretty straightforward](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask): is the question asking about a problem the asker *is actually facing right now*? If so, it's a practical question that deserves further consideration. If not, it either needs to be revised to ask about a problem the asker is actually facing or it'll be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If on-topic (as per the list of topics in the FAQ) questions that are answerable with either facts, reputable sources, or personal experiences, yet are not about a specific problem that someone is having right now aren't allowed here, where should they go? There are many good questions in this realm that are suitable for a Stack Exchange community (suitable meaning they aren't discussions or debates). Should another Stack Exchange be made, further dividing the software development community? Or can we improve guidance as to making it easier to define what is or isn't a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When we talk about constructiveness, it's not a Programmers.SE-only policy: it's network-wide. Programmers [was originally created](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) to be the less-strict version of Stack Overflow and it sucked *hard*. That's when it was figured out there's a standard level of questions, objective or not, *every* Stack Exchange site needs to have in order to thrive. There really is no room for a less-strict version of another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an alternative to Stack Exchange, I would suggest [Quora](http://quora.com), [Reddit's Programming subreditt](http://reddit.com/r/programming), or [Hacker News](http://news.ycombinator.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the minimum level of certainty and/or reliability for a question to be considered answerable? How do we measure this? How is a diamond moderator or 5 users who aren't knowledgable in a given topic able to assertain the answerability of a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not really about whether someone *knows* the answer or knows whether there *is* an answer, and the &quot;only ask about problems you actually face&quot; guidance covers this pretty well: you don't need to know if your question is answerable, but you need to ask about something you're actually facing right now. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In cases where the FAQ is unclear and a person asks a borderline question, it's entirely up to the answers to demonstrate the question's value and community moderation to revise the question into a workable form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to reiterate, *in this specific case*, it's not borderline: it's spelled out pretty clearly in [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask). The question also received 6 downvotes and 2 flags for closure, which to me indicates the community agrees prima facie this question is not a good fit for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But when a question is closed, [there's still opportunity](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed) to get the question into shape. And that includes this question: if it actually asked about a real problem instead of a hypothetical scenario, I'd be the first one to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can we apply the Back-It-Up policy as defined in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective to allow more good (non-debate, non-discussion) questions that have answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do: I touched on it above, but when a question is borderline, whether it's receiving absolutely stellar answers that are backed up by facts and experiences is [what determines if it's able to be saved](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright/862#862). But again, in this specific case, this question is not borderline: it's hypothetical speculation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26365" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2309" RevisionGUID="93192daa-4177-4eb7-abcd-0dc85182054b" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Based on your examples, those look closeable to me. They probably predate the /faq changes and got missed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Can I ask career advice questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No, unless your question is specifically about software development and requires the unique insights of a programmer. Most career advice questions [run the risk of being closed][1]: try to make yours a good subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure your question has the proper scope. If your question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really something that uniquely applies to software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26366" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2358" RevisionGUID="f9b08ed7-7b1c-4635-8f9d-0be4c3c02c32" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We can’t perform the operation [requested here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2298/blacklist-career-and-jobs), that is, blacklist [tag:career] and [tag:jobs] while still leaving the tags present on the site. We have some suggestions on what could be done as an alternative, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Nuke The Tags&#xD;&#xA;Simply put, obliterate the tag. I’m aware that the previous request was to explicitly not destroy the tag, but it remains a simple, direct, and potent form of action. It’s swift and easy to do - simply need to grab a dev and get it done. It is also instantaneous, taking no time. And it gets the most important aspect of the job done: the prevention of future questions with this tag. The cleanup afterwards is just to remove [tag:untagged] from a much smaller portion of questions remaining. Without a doubt, the fastest option available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not without fault, though, the main issue being that it erases all traces of the tag. There may be several questions which had other tags, yet may have benefited from additional retagging. The ease of finding these questions would be lost.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Plot The Disambiguation&#xD;&#xA;Rather than obliterate the tag as a first step, an alternate route is to work through the existing tag, without performing any retags but instead plotting out how the disambiguation would work out. This would entail collecting links of all the questions, and organizing them into discrete groups of similar properties, so that the consequent retagging job is highly organized. An organized set of links to all the posts would allow for the tag to be safely removed from all instances without inhibiting the ability to revisit them; it would also allow for the merits of any particular retag direction to be discussed and fine-tuned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the minus side, it is an extensive amount of work to perform, perhaps the most time-consuming option available. Assuming it is done merely as a side task rather than a focused effort of hours at a time, merely running through a handful of questions, cataloging their links into appropriate groups, it will take a team of users several days to tackle 1100 questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Use A Dummy Tag&#xD;&#xA;This is [what Seasoned Advice did](https://cooking.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/970/discouraging-the-proliferation-of-bad-tags-proposal) when they had to deal with the likewise horrible [cooking-techniques] and [ingredients] tags that were just easily misunderstood, ambiguous, and waaaay too widespread across their site. They created a new tag, [please-remove-this-tag], which all of the bad tags were renamed to. This gave them the ability to take their time with the retag effort while preventing the bad tags from resurfacing during that time period.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is similar to the previous suggestion, but exchanges the high level of organization for a much faster execution. The immediacy of the renaming will prevent future tag instances much sooner, while still preserving the access to all the questions. It is, however, a bit clunky in appearance, and users may be confused by the presence of a tag which requests its own removal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are the current options on the table. There may be better tools available in the future, but dilly-dallying until those tools are available is just going to let those tags continue to grow, festering like a fetid pile of compost salad." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26367" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2365" RevisionGUID="8d983719-f892-4fde-bcc2-ba0698fc6380" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While it sucks we can't get them blacklisted, I'm pretty sure we've already ruled out the &quot;nuke the tags&quot; and &quot;use a dummy tag&quot; options, and we've already had stabs at disambiguating the tags (without enumerating every single question):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Iteration the first: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/163/work-job-career-development-employment-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Iteration the second:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Aaronaught's answer on https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While those questions started with thinking we could merge everything into career and sort out the rest, in both iterations, the idea of merging them into one giant supercrap tag was considered to be worse than leaving the tags as they are while we sort through and disamiguate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Nuke the tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nuking the tag seems to be the worst of these options: while we'd have lower number of questions with onerous tags on them, we'd have several hundred questions with no career-related tag floating out there, without any way to track them. It &quot;solves&quot; the problem of the tag being available to users &lt; 1,500 rep, but it doesn't actually deal with the questions or tag them correctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Disambiguate the tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We already have lists of tags that need dealing with: the tag pages. We need people to use their best judgement while working through those tags to clean them up. That's what we're currently doing. Manually relisting all the questions in the tags just to avoid a blacklist seems to me to be a non-starter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Rename the tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rebecca mentioned in her comment, having [please-remove-this-tag] doesn't seem to be a great user experience either, and I don't see how synonymizing tags to it would be any less disruptive to users. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we can just rename [jobs] and [career] (which have been used interchangeably anyway), it'd get people to stop using those tags while still leaving us with the questions to deal with, but it's still not ideal and has its own set of problems: namely that [please-remove-this-tag] becomes the most-used tag, being on about 1 out of every 10 existing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a bit bikesheddy, but calling it [please-remove-this-tag] seems to be counterproductive: if people see the tag and have no idea about the disambiguation process, they'll do what the tag says: remove it. It becomes a slower version of the &quot;nuke the tags&quot; option. Not sure what else it could be called to clue people into it being a tag you shouldn't use and you shouldn't just remove without replacing it with one of the approved career-related tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;We have a problem with 1,300 questions that's going to take many manhours and months to fix whether they're called [career], [jobs], [please-remove-this-tag], or [untagged]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these are our only options, disambiguating the tags on the fly—as we've been doing—still seems to be the least onerous of the three. I'd be okay with renaming the tags to some master crap tag and working through that tag in the same manner as we've been doing, but I don't see how that's any less disruptive to the user experience than just blacklisting [career] and [jobs].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Addendum&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Talking with Aaronaught about the Seasoned Advice cleanups, they were only working with 150-200 questions, which is a lot of questions, but a fraction of the problem set we have. It is, however, close to the number of [jobs] questions we currently have: 245. There are also 92 [jobs] questions tagged with [career].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we did the rename *just* for [jobs] for now, we'd at least collapse this problem down to one tag. Removing the 92 questions from the [career] pile would bring the total number questions left to be dealt with through only disambiguation  down to 1,000." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26368" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2376" RevisionGUID="85863d20-9ed8-4712-8e0b-0093b7885c29" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Given ChrisF's comment that tags can't be blacklisted when they still exist, I think the only criteria is if they can be replaced by a better tag. There are really two options: either the tag has no suitable replacements and it should just be outright nuked or there are better tags to use in place of the tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that[tag:software-engineering], and perhaps [tag:software-development] and [tag:programming-languages] should not be nuked, but [posse-cleaned up like the jobs/careers tags][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the other tags don't seem like they have suitable &quot;better&quot; tags. Really, every question here is about learning, obtaining recommendations or advice, and best practices for a given situation, making those tags useless. Questions tagged holy war either need to be closed for non-constructive or have the tag removed (so perhaps go through, flag the appropriate questions, then delete).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see two problems with the posse cleanups, though. First, they haven't been wildly successful in terms of getting people involved, but I think that can be changed. Second, I've started to clean up the software engineering tag, but the problem is that editing tags also bumps questions to the top of the page, so I don't retag more than a dozen posts in a day - it just doesn't feel right flooding the homepage with old questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26369" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2484" RevisionGUID="c58d6ccf-add1-44d2-aa43-cff6dc67081e" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Programmers is for questions about software development and being a programmer: career advice questions are off-topic here unless they uniquely apply to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, they hit the blue part of this diagram:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Scope](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most don't: there are a great many things about careers that are applicable to *any* job, which dilutes the core focus of this site and diminishes the [value Stack Exchange brings](http://stackexchange.com/about) to the Q&amp;A space: focused sites filled with experts on that one particular subject. Programmers's expertise is software development, not general career advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there *is* a proposal in the works, [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2), that will invite experts on general career and workplace questions. It's currently in the commitment phase: with a few more committed people, it'll launch.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond the scope issue we get into problems that are just unsolvable in the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A format: particularly questions where the asker wants someone to tell them what they should do given a broad situation. Those questions aren't going to fit here or Professional Matters, regardless of topical scope. We simply don't know the person asking well enough to provide meaningful advice to their specific situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more about this problem, check out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to why an inordinate amount of questions in the [tag:career] tag (also, [tag:jobs], [tag:advice]) are closed: we deprecated them in favor of more specific and meaningful tags a few months ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, [tag:career]-tagged questions are either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Good, on-topic questions that get retagged; or&#xD;&#xA;2. Off-topic questions that are closed and left to either be substantially improved to become on-topic or deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since we've been fairly vigilant about the former category, the end result is a tag that's more or less a wasteland. We've [tried various tactics to clean the tag up more quickly](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags), but we haven't found a magic bullet yet." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26370" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2514" RevisionGUID="5ca1d4e6-7835-4f92-9887-b7b255838b10" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are a few different types of questions where the test applies, most of which are straightforward:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Questions that a reasonable person would recognize has nothing to do with software development.** These are questions like, &quot;What color tie should I wear to work?&quot;, &quot;What do I do if my co-worker smells bad?&quot;, &quot;What's your favorite member of *The New Kids on the Block*?&quot;. These are just categorically off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Questions that a reasonable person would consider off-topic, but are scoped to include an &quot;as a programmer&quot; clause.** These are questions like, &quot;What is your favorite pickle (as a programmer)?&quot;, &quot;As a programmer, do you think Justin Timblerlake is dreamy?&quot;, or &quot;What do programmers look for in a spouse?&quot; They almost always try to ask about the mythical programmer &quot;lifestyle&quot;, and are also off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Questions that are unambiguously about software development.** Stuff like, &quot;How should I optimize my Towers of Hanoi solver?&quot;, &quot;Why do I have to use a sigil in PHP?&quot;, or &quot;Is reflection the appropriate way to get access to a private method?&quot; These are categorically on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Most* questions will fall into one of the above categories, and there isn't a lot of thought required to determine if a question falls into one of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The one that gets the most pushback is the second group: it's a general question, but they want to know how a programmer would answer it. There's also the gray area you mention, where the asker doesn't know that the problem isn't specific to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is a little bit different from other Q&amp;A sites in that the asker's intent is secondary to the value of the question for the rest of the internet. We want questions that are going to help future visitors and attract experts to the site so they can help with the really tough questions that haven't been answered elsewhere. We *don't* want questions that are only going to help a single person or are going to make experts roll their eyes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it's important—for the sake of building up a corpus of reference questions—that what the asker *intended* or what the asker *believes* is taken out of the picture when evaluating a question's merit. Instead, does the question, *as written*, invite answers from a programmer's perspective? Is the problem *really* unique to software development?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, borderline questions like this are judged by the community's reaction to the question: in comments, flags, close-votes, and answers. Tells include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* None of the answers mention the programmer perspective&#xD;&#xA;* The question gets a ton of down-votes in a short period of time, or settles on a negative score&#xD;&#xA;* The comments on the question are argumentative and/or contain an number of clarifying questions for the poster&#xD;&#xA;* The question received a number of close-vote flags (this tell is restricted to moderators and 10k+ users)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the community, through its activity, doesn't consider it to be a problem unique to programmers, it really doesn't belong here. It's kind of annoying not to be able to determine on borderline questions whether it's going to work ahead of time, but it's incredibly hard (if not impossible) to create a set of rules or guidelines that's going to cover every possible question or scenario.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, as [Anna mentions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2513#comment-6321), if it can later be shown the problem *is* specific to software development, the question can be reopened: [closure isn't an automatic death sentence](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed). Usually this is prompted by a revision the question to demonstrate why it's a programmer problem (*more* than adding a &quot;as a programmer&quot; clause) or from creating consensus here on meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26371" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7803" RevisionGUID="053537c0-b95c-47ea-85be-371a1140b774" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###tl;dr:&#xD;&#xA;Most question closures, when questions in aggregate are analyzed, are valid. This suggests the experiment was successful - not a failure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This meta post won't be for the faint of heart.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Abstract&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have often heard/seen the &quot;p.se closes too much!&quot; cry but _rarely_ see this supported by a random selection of questions which are closed and an analysis as to whether this is appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is important when trying to call the closure rate on Programmers &quot;good?&quot; or &quot;bad?&quot; by understanding what the characteristics of the questions are. If 70% of all questions here are &quot;hi give me a book plz&quot; then a close rate above 70% is _ok_ - likewise, if 70% of questions are good, solid, appropriate questions then a close rate of 70% is unacceptable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The objective of this book of a post is to provide one perspective regarding closed questions the community has already deemed somewhat valuable (see Methods).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This post is a comprehensive attempt to analyze the _aggregate_ (not focusing on the individual exceptions, which are discussed per-question below) to find meaningful trends. Isolating individual questions and finding fault with their closure is pointless, if the overwhelming majority disagrees. In other words: focusing on outliers may miss what the data indicates. Don't bikeshed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The objective is to answer: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are too many questions unfairly closed on Programmers.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Methods&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I looked at at the questions which satisfied the [following criteria](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/412111/open-programmers-questions?site=http%3A%2F%2Fprogrammers.stackexchange.com%2F):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Closed&#xD;&#xA; - Undeleted&#xD;&#xA; - Upvoted at least once (regardless of score)&#xD;&#xA; - Not closed as duplicate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a enderland designed heuristic to try to indicate questions that _might not be_ good to be closed. It's not perfect nor all inclusive. It won't include deleted questions (regardless of the number of upvotes). But it's a good chunk of the remaining questions which were closed that have the highest likelihood of being &quot;maybe should be reopened closures.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are, as of writing this meta post, only 127 questions fitting this criteria (of the 951 questions closed during the period). Note that some of these have actually been since deleted but since SEDE is not live data the total will be incorrect (20 total). A few didn't show as dups in SEDE either for various reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Enderland's on/off topic philosophy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am generally a bit less strict when it comes to off-topicness than many others here. For example, of this entire list, I only cast close votes on two of them (despite being active in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) far too much).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am generally a bit more accepting of borderline questions, such as indicated by how infrequently I had voted on these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When reviewing, I took care to write &quot;deleted&quot;, &quot;marginal&quot;, and &quot;reopened&quot; in my descriptions in order to do a better search/count to quickly summarize totals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I include this section is it perspective on how I generally vote for close and reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Results&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the 107 non-deleted (of 127) questions, I cast reopen on 15 questions. Assuming my heuristic is reasonable, and my interpretation of on-topic-ness is right, it means that a very small percentage of questions are being wrongly closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also labeled 24 questions as &quot;marginal&quot; - in some cases I voted to reopen these and some I did not. Most marginal reopen votes were erring on the side of generosity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That means, of the 107 non-deleted questions, over 80% I (even with a fairly generous review attitude) would leave closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on the appropriateness of closure, there were a handful of missed questions. I expect a few on this list to be reopened as a result. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I didn't expect was how _few_ questions on the list are well scoped for a Q/A site. [Robert's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7799/52929) provides considerable insight into why this might be, so I will not elaborate. Given the strong language in the original results, I expect to find considerably more marginal questions or to run out of reopen votes. Again, I only found 24 questions I considered marginal - I only found 1 in 4 questions meeting my heuristic were considered marginally on topic. And these are the ones that survived and are good! _And_ I expect many people will disagree they are even good enough to be marginal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, regarding the closure rates, focusing purely on the number of questions put on hold is misleading. The entire purpose of &quot;on hold&quot; vs &quot;closed&quot; is to allow users to clarify their question (or have them edited) and have them opened by the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this in mind, analyzing not just closure rate but the characteristics of the data, we notice some interesting trends. In _spite_ of the significant increase in question closure, the percentage of questions edited after closure was only 15.2% (vs an average of 11% the year before). This suggests that most questions here are either abandoned by the poster or community at a fairly high rate regardless of how quickly they get closed (85% vs 89%). A single month is not really significant enough to determine the implications of this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I do not see this experiment as a &quot;failure.&quot;**  I see this as a pretty _good_ result to be honest. Let's say I'm wrong and 2x as many questions from this list should be reopened, which makes 30. Let's also say there were another 30 deleted questions which are accidentally deleted. That means that about a 6% false-closure rate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on finding ways to benefit the community in dealing with the 94% of questions which _should_ have been closed seems preferable than handicapping them over the generous 6% which were incorrectly closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------- &#xD;&#xA;#Future Work&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Ideally, a random sampling of all questions asked during this period would be used in order to arrive at a better understanding of the correctness of closing&#xD;&#xA; - It would be interesting to characterize the votes on closed questions, such as % closed with zero total upvotes, % at -4 or lower, for the trial period vs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the list of all the specific questions I reviewed individually and my evaluation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My perspective is clearly not going to be perfect. You may disagree (or agree) with my reasoning. Be aware the goal here is not the individual questions isolated from each other but the aggregate result.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that there were two questions that were way too long for me to review in a meaningful fashion, indicated by tl;dr.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Ubuntu vs Tails](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303752) - Score:-4&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [How would you create this UML class diagram?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303827) - Score:-4&#xD;&#xA; - needs to be answered by their professor&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is automated testing used in game development?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304302) - Score:-3&#xD;&#xA; -  deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [HTML/PHP - Wordpress](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303072) - Score:-3&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [For loop valid usage?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303154) - Score:-3&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Designing a programming language, seeking simple and logical parameter behavior](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302519) - Score:-3&#xD;&#xA; - more of a rant than question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Use free functions or inheritance for serialization](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304260) - Score:-2&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [I am looking for a clear explanation of java method labels and when to use them.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303915) - Score:-2&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Avoid copy and paste programming, what pattern to use?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303716) - Score:-2&#xD;&#xA; - this is marginal at best, considering it's an XY question but the real question is &quot;how to make good code&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [When &gt; apply a performance and memory profiler?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304344) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - far too broad (answer is basically link to offsite resource)&#xD;&#xA;1. [What is better to design or discover interface](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303051) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - nearly the definition of opinion - &quot;I think this, coworker thinks other, what do you think?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [what is () called?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302449) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;my professor is wrong right?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Strategy for mobile apps sharing a core code base](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303341) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - only answer is basically &quot;it depends talk to your users&quot; - marginal at best&#xD;&#xA;1. [Maximization algorithm wrt external dataset](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303235) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - lacks information&#xD;&#xA;1. [Looking for a proper Algorithm to my problem](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304314) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is it safe to execute the &quot;regedit&quot; command on Windows?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303301) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - XY at best, accepted an answer that doesn't answer any question about &quot;safety&quot; but rather &quot;how to avoid confirmations&quot; but real question is &quot;what is the registry and why is it important&quot; which _might_ be scoped for Superuser?&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to abbreviate &quot;Local&quot; for a time variable, like UTC](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302535) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - I think this is ok (voted to reopen), but it's a &quot;name that thing&quot; which is a hotly debated subject here&#xD;&#xA;1. [How did the gets function ever make into the standard?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303620) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - discussion. user was very hostile to those helping too..&#xD;&#xA;1. [eradicating the array = loop mindset](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302830) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - rant against dumb coworkers&#xD;&#xA;1. [Design of simple disassembler](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303723) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - pretty much exact definition of too broad. _May_ be editable&#xD;&#xA;1. [Can a linkedlist be created without using dynamic allocation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303298) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Can a business application be developed / enhanced with more than one language?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303056) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - no problem described&#xD;&#xA;1. [Best way to control serialisation of posted form data](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304044) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - this seems ok, I voted to reopen (but those familiar with C# voted to close it and I'm unfamiliar with C#)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Approaches to Concurrency](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303383) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;let's make lists and pros and cons of each item!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Why is there a leading `for (;;);` in all of Facebook XHR, JSON-like requests?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304398) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Why don't style-guides include longer explanations why something should be done in a particular way?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302584) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - resource request (and discussion)&#xD;&#xA;1. [What is the name for &quot;the set of all versions of something&quot;?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304449) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [What are the differences between these ways to hide sections in an HTML document?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302810) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted migrated stub &#xD;&#xA;1. [What are my options for keeping user state through SPA?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303108) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [What are good ways to measure project size? How do I compare the size of my project to other projects?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303333) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - this is marginal, it needs some editing to focus it but _could_ be?&#xD;&#xA;1. [Use a hash character or a dot when referring to methods and fields in software documentation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304400) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - needs more info&#xD;&#xA;1. [Tips for working with badly designed software](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304518) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, _could_ be edited, maybe?  it's a strong XY problem&#xD;&#xA;1. [Super classes that represent a wordly hierarchy: naming conventions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303190) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - comments there clarify why off topic&#xD;&#xA;1. [Should we check for duplicated record?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304072) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - very marginal, but I voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Shopping cart in PHP : Sessions or Database?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302099) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - needs more info from asker&#xD;&#xA;1. [Scala: Partition range into subranges](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303654) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - belongs on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;1. [Optimization: How much time saved is considered worth it?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303339) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;how to be good at programming?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [New Kind of VM Type](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304408) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Micro libraries and angularjs](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304592) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - self declared opinion based&#xD;&#xA;1. [Low cost exceptions implementation using metaprogramming](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303210) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - 20 comments, tl;dr (might be ok?)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is there a way for me to use regex to distinguish this set of input?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303318) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted stack overflow stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is it always better to use __construct() in CodeIgniter's Models and Views, even if it's not needed?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303408) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, needs more clarity for the actual question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Inheritance hierarchy design approach - Javascript](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304444) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - pros/cons&#xD;&#xA;1. [How two objects of the same class communicate?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303536) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - only 4 &lt;0 answers that are not deleted... and it's a discussion pros/cons&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to map entity class (ClassA) in two different table (Table1 and Table2) in Entity Framework Code First?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302946) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal quality overall. Probably could be edited&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to document **kwargs in python?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303677) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, but I voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [How much of computer internals should I know to be an application programmer?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302303) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - way too broad, lacking info&#xD;&#xA;1. [How can I use a framework like Bootstrap when I already have designs from a design team](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303566) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - pretty broad, could be easily clarified by asker but..&#xD;&#xA;1. [How can I handle errors in functions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303388) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - dup closed incorrectly&#xD;&#xA;1. [How big should be an input array to unit test a method with a loop?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302367) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - lacking info&#xD;&#xA;1. [Fanout vs point to point on AWS](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303327) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Does testing the characteristics of a runtime have a generally accepted name?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302234) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - name that thing (marginal)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Docstring convention for Python `__str__`, `__unicode__`, and `__repr__` class methods](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303380) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - really poor quality but still on topic, voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Do you have to use an in-memory db for integration testing?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303793) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - not enough info&#xD;&#xA;1. [Data structure for effects animation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303305) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;It's hard to say, given what you've put into your question (no mention of language or performance requirements).&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Could this class be considered as a Factory class?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304438) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, but kind of an XY question and &quot;am I right?&quot; without a problem to be solved&#xD;&#xA;1. [Confusion about data types, compilers, hardware data representation and static vs dynamic typing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303783) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - resource request (or way too broad, whichever)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Best way to represent multiple JSON response in a REST service?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304514) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal&#xD;&#xA;1. [Best way to design chess game](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302495) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - kind of a mess, asking an interview question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Architecture/technology for implementing Management console](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303537) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - pretty broad but perhaps marginal&#xD;&#xA;1. [API: Benefits of having root_node followed by object_id vs. object_id](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304519) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [windows users vs. custom](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303602) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - answer is basically &quot;you didn't give enough info&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [When do you need precision with thread execution timing and how do you do it with Java?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303694) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - too broad (_slightly_ marginal)&#xD;&#xA;1. [What is a good way to make estimates clear to the customer?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304068) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, but I voted to reopen as I think after the many edits it's better&#xD;&#xA;1. [What does `Resolving` mean in programing?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302404) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;why did they name things this way&quot; which isn't really great&#xD;&#xA;1. [What are the advantages of a 'traditional' 'backend' architecture for a standard CRUD app?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302567) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - pros/cons discussion&#xD;&#xA;1. [Trying to Simplify a Java Method](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302364) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted migrated stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [Syntax warnings](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302520) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - this is the **first** I've voted to reopen that looks like a non-marginal question &#xD;&#xA;1. [Strategies for creating a mobile site?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303121) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;I want to design a mobile site&quot; too broad&#xD;&#xA;1. [Soap vs. rest - a hybrid approach?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302937) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;name my project&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Should I use a jump table or a switch case statement for similar functions but may have some parameters that are not relevant](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304601) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - Seems ok, voted to reopen non-marginal&#xD;&#xA;1. [Running simulations in parallel, managing each separately](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303626) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - XY that isn't really resolved by OP&#xD;&#xA;1. [Resistance to abstraction](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302926) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;why do my coworkers thing like this?&quot; is unanswerable&#xD;&#xA;1. [Refusing to define 2 or more classes in one .cpp file](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303972) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - basically duped on SO, and a &quot;why does my company do this&quot; otherwise&#xD;&#xA;1. [Reading from Memory vs Performing an Operation](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304099) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - this is pretty marginal, but I'm not voting to open again&#xD;&#xA;1. [Push instead of pull on a list that might change due to a command in addition to events?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303668) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - not clear given comments&#xD;&#xA;1. [Possible design patterns for a service that synchronizes two third party services](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303362) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - asking for a design pattern but no problem&#xD;&#xA;1. [Number of parallel lines in a given set of lines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304352) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - needs more info&#xD;&#xA;1. [microservices: How to model related domain objects?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303888) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - answer says &quot;in my opinion&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;1. [Java Threads vs AMQP for Async tasks](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302539) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - needs a lot more info&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is there an advantage to defining a metasyntactic variable type?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302713) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - unclear&#xD;&#xA;1. [is boost::random::uniform_real_distritbution supposed to be the same across processors?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302913) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [Internal API to public API - versioning](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303168) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - really basic, but I guess it's on topic, so I voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [I'm graduating as a CS major from a bad CS program. How can I catch up? How can I get over it?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302617) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;how can I learn and catch up&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [I have one app on one server - is there a critical reason to use a web server like IIS or NGINX?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303411) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - pretty marginal&#xD;&#xA;1. [I had modulus problems. When I input two integers the values doesn't display when I run my program](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303095) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to write highly changeable, highly complex software?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303737) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - too broad, &quot;how do I develop large applications?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to make git automatically merge increased build numbers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304423) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - more of a git question for SO that wasn't migrated&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to design a meta model for configuration?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304028) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - pretty much definition of a discussion&#xD;&#xA;1. [How do Symbol Tables, Lexers and Parsers work together in a modern design?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303233) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - maybe on topic, tl;dr right now though&#xD;&#xA;1. [How can I organise a better deployment process?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302323) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - no problem, more of a &quot;what do you guys think about...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Hide, obfuscate or otherwise prevent the harvesting of email addresses](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303634) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - I edited this and voted to reopen, it's kind of marginal, but ok I guess&#xD;&#xA;1. [Heavy Compute, &quot;Medium Data&quot; application Architecture and design patterns?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304499) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Handling authentication for API](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303985) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - feels marginal, was edited after closed and not reopened though&#xD;&#xA;1. [Getting a Candidate to do a Pull Request Review in an Interview](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304599) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - all about interviewing&#xD;&#xA;1. [Factory of factories?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303706) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - self identified lack of problem..&#xD;&#xA;1. [Code attribution to a post quoting an original source](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304245) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - needs more info/context to be answerable (or is too broad)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Best way to structure a complicated web-based quiz](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303860) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - needs clarity on the specific problem, not &quot;help me design a web page&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Architecture supporting digitally signing of tons of soap requests](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302889) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - way too broad&#xD;&#xA;1. [Angular on Linux server -- what backend services to use](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303720) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - tool request&#xD;&#xA;1. [Why do Android programmers use Hungarian notation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302513) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - duplicate&#xD;&#xA;1. [Who does what in a Single Page Application?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303663) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - five broad questions all at once&#xD;&#xA;1. [Webservices vs Microservices](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304312) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, I'm not voting though&#xD;&#xA;1. [Private variables and the old FORTRAN common blocks](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303245) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - also marginal but leaving closed&#xD;&#xA;1. [Passing fields (instance variables) by arguments (parameters) inside an object - does it make sense?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302723) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - dup&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is node.js a safe bet for writting a new CMS that aims to be easily installable/deployable?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304507) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - needs a crystal ball&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is it ok to use service locator for ubiquitously used dependencies?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303830) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - really needs clarity on the specifics of the problem in my opinion&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to set up Visual Studio 2013 projects for building nuget packages targeting multiple .Net versions?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304285) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - deleted stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [Enterprise Architecture: Where to put persistence/dbContext management?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303435) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - too broad design review question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Dealing with big data](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303515) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - a (bad) XY problem, sort-of-answered in comments, but the question isn't really a real question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Architecture on OpenStack with Docker](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304137) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - will require someone with deep Docker knowledge, but this feels on topic (voted to reopen)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Architect in our company is against DTO](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303898) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;I would love to hear your opinion on how much this is true&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Will ECMAScript add classes to JavaScript? What does this mean?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304345) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - needs edits from OP&#xD;&#xA;1. [Rationale of IEEE754 direct rounding behavior near infinity](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303848) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - this is marginal, would require VERY expert knowledge that I'm not sure is reasonable&#xD;&#xA;1. [Passing MVVM objects to other classes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304595) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;I hope you understand that there is no objective answer to your question, and as such it is liable to be closed as primarily opinion base&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How do I model a sortable resource in sql database?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303209) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - I had a hard time understanding this. That might be because I've read 100+ mostly bad questions...&#xD;&#xA;1. [Design review of a small configuration framework](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302686) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - this is pretty broad and a &quot;please fully design review this&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Combinatorial Optimization: Filling a Bag with Sand](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304361) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - I think this is on topic, voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Can this be considered an API?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303864) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;is this an API&quot; isn't a good fit&#xD;&#xA;1. [Sorting algorithm that can handle some error](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302737) - Score:4&#xD;&#xA; - I already had argued for this question, voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Identifying plagiarized jokes?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304368) - Score:4&#xD;&#xA; - this seems ok at first glance, but that... covers a _large_ field and as a &quot;just for fun&quot; question its way too broad ([here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7795/52929) is more info)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Strategies to increasing the maintainability of assertions in code](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303806) - Score:5&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;am I over asserting?&quot; --&gt; maybe? but then &quot;If you have more tips on using assertions and similar tests in code please mention them in your answer.&quot; is pretty much definition of opinion&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is it an overkill to write unit tests for a small code base?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304228) - Score:5&#xD;&#xA; - dup&#xD;&#xA;1. [Refactoring byzantine payment processing code on a limited budget](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303879) - Score:8&#xD;&#xA; - this is pretty marginal, it is well written but pretty broad still&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to deal with a bug which seems to have fixed itself?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303997) - Score:15&#xD;&#xA; - this already had a reopen vote and I cast one - seems _reasonably_ on topic?&#xD;&#xA;1. [Using compound statements (&quot;{&quot; ... &quot;}&quot; blocks) to enforce variable locality](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302217) - Score:37&#xD;&#xA; - dup&#xD;&#xA;1. [Almost every reported bug is a high-priority bug](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302763) - Score:45&#xD;&#xA; - feels more workplacey " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26372" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2521" RevisionGUID="2c4151f4-66f6-46f5-90ab-20fe7eca9e34" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We are currently working through hundreds of questions in old badly used tags such as [tag:career] and [tag:jobs]. Some questions that obviously no longer fit the scope of the site are closed, but others have to be retagged. Too many edits at one time can flood the front page with old questions, so we tend to only edit a handful at a time, but having the questions pop up to the front page for a bit is not a bad thing. It allows the community to review them again and see if a better answer can be made or if the question needs further editing (or to be closed).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most edits you'll see on old questions on Programmers are likely due to a retagging. You can click on the edit timestamp on each edited post to see a revision history and check out the changes made by each editor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more information on the question clean-up, see [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning), [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2051/programmers-se-summer-cleaning-part-ii-electric-boogaloo), and [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup). Feel free to get involved by editing and/or flagging old questions for moderator attention as needed. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26374" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7911" RevisionGUID="e50c3568-cafa-4c00-b3b3-440442a86878" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Well I just saw a [second Meta question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7910/programmers-se-has-become-a-site-to-avoid?noredirect=1#comment24081_7910) expressing strong ill-will for this site after [first witnessing](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away) this, seemingly well-trodden, battlefield. Given that I am already weary of it, I can only assume that others are much more so, but bear with me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Breaking this down into as simple a a description as possible:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*A substantial number of users are arriving here with a different/false understanding of what this site is for; this results in a lot of closed questions and consequent animosity.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two parts to this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. People wanting this site to be something it's not; i.e disagreeing with / not understanding the site's objective&#xD;&#xA; 2. People disagree with the site' enforcement; i.e. thinking that valid questions are being downvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to discount the second option as a valid grounds for debate since it seems to have been quite categorically answered by [MichaelT's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7907/174739) to a previous Meta question. Even if there is the odd question that is within scope that is getting voted down, this is a smaller problem compared to item 1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been comments about poor communication when down-voting and some quite bitter words about specific users; I don't care about any of that because I think that it is all a symptom, not the cause of this phenomenon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## How can we better communicate the site's purpose?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below are all current ideas as to what could be done. If you have any other ideas either edit this question or post them in an answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CN | Change Name&#xD;&#xA;Self-explanatory, *Pogrammers.SE* become *OtherName.SE*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### ST | Add Sub-title&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add a sub-title to the website's header to better describe the site's purpose (e.g. *Programmers: Architecture, Planning, &amp; Concepts*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### SA | Make Scope More Accessible&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Display the scope in a simply-worded form next to the 'ask a question' interface; this makes it more likely users will read it before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### BL | Add Blurb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add a descriptive blurb that is displayed to users before they are able to post their first question. Make this focus-stealing; i.e. background is greyed-out and the user must take an action to continue (e.g. click 'got it').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CS | Change Scope&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change the scope to include some of the areas that are currently being down-voted as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CE | Change Enforcement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actively cultivate questions to improve them; narrow their focus if they are too broad, make them more abstract of they are too narrow (i.e. they are debugging specific code instead of asking about architecture/concepts), etc. This would mean slower closing of questions and the encouragement of users to learn about what is/is-not suitable for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CH | Change Help Center&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Create a series of Meta Q&amp;As that are designed to help user improve their answers. This way people can post links to those discussions rather than forever trying to discuss the same things over and over&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So... votes, thoughts, ideas, scathing indictments... let the games begin.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26375" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2648" RevisionGUID="eaca9c45-2a0d-4748-af07-3afd74f8c4c7" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think that if the question is essentially about the meaning of the words themselves, i.e. the use of the English language, then the question should be on [English Language &amp; Usage][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is more about the *meaning* of a quotation as a whole and the concepts underlying that quotation then (in the case of programming related question) [Programmers][2] would be a better place for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To my mind, [What does Tim Peters mean by “complex is better than complicated”?][3] seems to tend towards being an English language question, whereas [What did Bill Gosper mean by saying a data structure is just a stupid programming language?][4] seems to be a deeper question about the meaning in a programming context. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thinking of it another way, if the question can be answered by just explaining the meaning of the words (it is not subjective) then it it is a good option for [EL&amp;U][5], otherwise it is probably better off handled as a [subjective question][6] in the most appropriate stack exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://english.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/53517/22493&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/123390/22493&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://english.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26376" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7913" RevisionGUID="aaa7b7f2-256e-488f-9ca5-32f32bab3d43" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here are my thoughts on the solutions currently listed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Change Name** is *BAD* because it was [already rejected by SE top brass][1] and for seemingly valid reasons; namely, there isn't an alternative name that narrows the definition whilst staying true to this site's purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Add Sub-title** is *GOOD* providing that the right wording could be found. Sub-titles are less restrictive than the main name so they can be a little longer and they can be very effective at refining the definition of the site to a perspective user; they are more likely to read a sub-title than a specific page that defines what is/is-not on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Make Scope More Accessible** is *GOOD* because I agree that finding an authoritative description of the scope can be tricky and putting this front-and-center will at least reduce some of the confusion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Add Blurb** is *NEUTRAL* because I don't know how viable it is or if it would be read. If anything I would lean towards *GOOD* because, if it is worded correctly and is sufficiently brief, the fact that it is specifically targeted at new users could be a great improvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Change Scope** is *BAD* because the site's scope appears to have been modified to its current form for valid reasons; namely to ensure that the site remains useful to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Change Enforcement** is *NEUTRAL* because I think it is separate to the current topic. To my eyes, fixing the problem of lots of off-topic questions being posted here would naturally result in people being less trigger-happy with the border-line on-topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3718/change-the-name-of-programmers-to-something-that-more-accurately-reflects-the-si/3733#3733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26377" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2767" RevisionGUID="9954834b-1a7c-4796-93eb-7d5a08ff7e9f" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here's my meta question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2765/why-is-it-not-suitable-for-ask-how-to-name-a-process&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm presuming it's been downvoted because it's not appropriate to ask questions about questions in meta, despite a mod pointing me at it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I guess I'm doing it again here (there's no meta-meta that I'm aware of), but if someone could fill me in.." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26378" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7919" RevisionGUID="fd904990-46f3-4b1a-8bca-7339d6b8d4d2" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think part of the problem is it is _too easy_ to ask questions. Not that it should be difficult, but perhaps require taking the tour first even for established users (+100 association bonus). While this is a low bar, I doubt it would work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is difficult to force users to read and understand the help center, for example. I am reminded of every time I have had to take sexual harassment training on the computer for work. Play on my phone until the required time passed for a &quot;lesson&quot; then check the checkboxes and hope for the best. Asking on a Stack Exchange site is no different.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I ask or answer on a Stack Exchange site where I do not already regularly contribute, I am careful to read the help center and some of the meta posts first. I look at recent questions that received both positive and negative attention. I ask myself &quot;why did this question get upvoted, and another downvoted or closed?&quot; In general, this has served me well (also, never post when drunk).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Certain sites go above and beyond the general scope and quality requirements. [Code Review][1] (6 &quot;yeses&quot;), [Skeptics][2] (citations), [Programming Puzzles &amp; Code Golf][3] (challenge type, scoring), and a couple others come to mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not one of those. We just want a reasonably-scoped, clear, objectively-answerable, on-topic question and answers that actually answer the question as asked. We have a help center and many meta posts describing our standards, which do not require an excessive amount of effort to meet: they are simply unclear to some people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not believe there is anything more we can do to help the situation except for token gestures that in the end, users will ignore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;On another note, I know several of us do try to post meta-links in response to questions that fall into one of several common traps:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or down voted?][4]&#xD;&#xA;* [Green fields, blue skies, and the white board - what is too broad?][5]&#xD;&#xA;* [On discussions and why they don't make good questions][6]&#xD;&#xA;* [Where to start?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no point in rehashing the same points over and over: post a link, then if the asker is interested in working _with_ us, we are generally willing to help. If the asker is genuinely concerned in learning and has enough reputation, we have even invited them to [The Whiteboard][8] to hash things out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Finally, you make a point about possibly changing scope to match what users want. We tried this, it did not work. I recommend reading up on this site's history if you have not done so already:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is the history behind the site scope change from NPR to “conceptual questions about software development”?][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6961/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6742/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6366/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/22815" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26379" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2895" RevisionGUID="0dca6396-2ae2-4cdc-be57-d25940aaafe6" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We [recently had a discussion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2411/removing-expert-from-the-site-description) about the usage of the word &quot;expert&quot; in the FAQ: the consensus being that this site, while not necessarily only for experts, is for professionals. [Aaronaught's excellent answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1994/would-the-general-reference-close-reason-be-useful-here-on-programmers/2000#2000) to whether we need a &quot;General Reference&quot; close reason also discusses the importance of this site being both &quot;advanced&quot; and &quot;disciplined&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not to say if you're not a classically-identified &quot;professional&quot; (i.e., you're a hobbyist or someone who does programming as a tangential job duty) your questions aren't welcome here, but that the site doesn't cater to non-professional-level questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, for the most part, people using Programmers for homework help or class supplements are probably in the wrong place: stuff like &quot;can you explain to me when I would need an array?&quot; or &quot;What's a good language to learn as a teenager?&quot; are routinely closed as being either too broad or not constructive, and I have a hard time imagining questions that would be class assignments and on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the same time, we shouldn't be calling people out with the scarlet [tag:homework] tag, adjusting the level of content in answers, or closing questions for something that happens to be part of a class assignment. If someone's asking a question that's similar in scope and expertise as other questions on the site, they're fine, even if they happen to be homework: treat them as you would any other question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for educators, I think it's important to realize we can't know if a question is homework or not, and given the intended audience of the site and the [goals of the network](http://stackexchange.com/about), it'd be untenable for us to accommodate special homework-only rules (like not providing full and complete answers, or using the Socratic method). If a student happens to ask a question here and it meets the site's quality guidelines, it'll definitely be answered." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26380" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8028" RevisionGUID="9a4386fc-fa7d-4357-b268-49f88e05a739" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I did read the [Six Subjective Questions post][1] and its [Enforcement Notice][2], as well as some of the following discussions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is about questions that asks users to share their experience and/or offer creative suggestions in solving/approaching a particular problem.  Obviously everybody's experience differs, so answers could be deemed *subjective*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We, obviously, do not want to reinvent the wheel over and over again. So, how to ask such questions, that by definition cannot have the right answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everybody's experience differs, so different folks would suggest different remedies.  I am not starting a discussion about what is better, merely looking for an advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, it could be a question about heuristic rules employed in the application monitoring process with enough specifics to narrow it down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26381" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2912" RevisionGUID="49fd7866-2fd1-4ace-ae36-d2b798c2432c" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="At one point, software law topics were on-topic, but [that was replaced with &quot;software licensing&quot;][1] to differentiate questions about various licensing issues and creating or using software under a specific license from questions about copyright of code, patents on algorithms, and so on. However, people do still ask questions about copyright, trademark, or other legal issues that are best answered by a lawyer and not by software developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I think that something should be added to the &quot;and it is not about…&quot; list, as a one line bullet point.** My personal suggestion is something along the lines of &quot;copyright, patent, or trademark law&quot; with a footnote that legal questions should be directed toward a lawyer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the comments, Yannis Rizos brings up the point that people will still ask off-topic questions. However, I believe that it will be easier to deal with if such topics are specifically identified as on-topic/off-topic as appropriate. This will give the community and the moderators something concrete to point to and say that something is not allowed, leaving no room for contention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of recent questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Question about ownership][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [Was there any plagiarism committed in the Rybka vs ICGA saga?][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [Copyright Code to an Unregistered Organization][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/131802/question-about-ownership&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/128797/was-there-any-plagiarism-committed-in-the-rybka-vs-icga-saga&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126693/copyright-code-to-an-unregistered-organization" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26382" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8057" RevisionGUID="3e11a980-c1c8-464d-bf6d-dfcf3a6afa02" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I believe our scope is mostly fine already. I think the issues this site has are not related to scope, but a desire to devolve from Q&amp;A to an open-ended, discussion-friendly forum-like site. In other words, a partial or total revert to the [NPR days][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I fully support our current scope and focusing on questions that are narrowly-scoped and invite objective answers, or at least good subjective answers. We need to buck the trend of being known as &quot;that place where you can ask about your [green field or blue sky][2] projects. These may be the types of questions that people need answered, but they are difficult to address in the Q&amp;A format and are not interesting to the high-reputation users who provide the bulk of the useful answers on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly, our name does not help. It does not accurately reflect what this site is about. It invites questions that are not appropriate here. Furthermore, our [on-topic list][3] is on the longer side compared to other Stack Exchange sites. It may not be the longest, but it is not very concise nor does it accurately convey the overall theme of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To address these concerns, I advocate for the following three changes (two requested in Ana's meta answer plus one more):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Change our name to Software Engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is in a name? &quot;First impressions.&quot; _We are not about programming, nor are we a catch-all bucket for Programmers' issues_. Look at our on-topic list: we are about software engineering. &quot;Programmers&quot; evokes NPR-style questions in my mind. &quot;Oh, I am a programmer and I have a question about some random topic. This site is called Programmers. I should load up the crap cannon and ask my question here.&quot; Nope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Refactor the on-topic list&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember earlier, I said our scope is fine but the list is verbose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Software lifecycle: requirements, design, architecture, development methodologies, unit testing.&#xD;&#xA;1. Software configuration management strategies (the way it is now, but make it clear that SCM _tool_ questions are off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;1. Algorithm and data structure concepts.&#xD;&#xA;1. Software engineering and team management and processes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is primarily a restructuring of the current list into fewer bullet points that are more closely related, but there is one important change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No more software licensing questions. These tend to be problematic, resulting in a zillion comments about whether a particular question is on-topic or not, or whether a programmer rather than a lawyer can answer it. We should avoid the whole debate and make them categorically off-topic. [Open Source SE][4] is in beta but doing well, and covers the majority of licensing questions that are currently on-topic here. Closed-source licensing questions typically end with &quot;ask the vendor&quot; anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Site UI Redesign&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change the site design to something that &quot;looks&quot; more like software engineering, not a programmer's desk. I am awful with graphics design so I cannot recommend much, but we need a change here. Something that looks unfriendly to someone who wants to post a code dump, or ask a broad blue sky question with zero useful information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this site is pretty much set up to be a good, useful site. We just need some guardrails to help guide people away from the broad, opinion-based questions and more toward the interesting design and software engineering questions that are already on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6961/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26383" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2938" RevisionGUID="6e429126-afbb-4008-b41e-e06eca17a368" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="That's a tricky one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your edit, although obviously in good faith, invalidated most answers - I counted 10 out of the total 14. I'm a bit uncomfortable with that. In this instance, I think it would be preferable to rollback your edit, close the question and re-ask your far better version.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, let's hope people will [refrain from answering obviously off topic / bad questions][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2823/please-dont-post-answers-on-obviously-off-topic-bad-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26384" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2943" RevisionGUID="c5411a1d-e518-4142-9410-24eca265d467" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A few, quick clarifications:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* You weren't told to take it to [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2): I suggested that you might be interested in the proposal, which aims to cover workplace questions of a more general nature.&#xD;&#xA;* Likewise, you weren't told to take it to [Parenting](http://parenting.stackexchange.com) either: an active user on Parenting suggested to me that [this question](http://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/1027/what-is-the-best-way-to-calmly-respond-to-a-pre-schooler-who-will-not-listen) had some good, general advice  that might be related to your situation, and it was added as a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To quote from [the answer I linked](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2484/8):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [T]here are a great many things about careers that are applicable to *any* job, which dilutes the core focus of this site and diminishes the [value Stack Exchange brings](http://stackexchange.com/about) to the Q&amp;A space: focused sites filled with experts on that one particular subject. Programmers's expertise is software development, not general career advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're not a general purpose career site: we never have been, and we never will be. For the past 18 months, we've *always* been about questions requiring the *unique* experience of those in software development. It's worked out pretty well for us so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I think everyone acknowledges that there is a pent-up demand for a Q&amp;A site for more general workplace questions, which is why the [Professional Matters site proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2) was created. The way we get to a point where general professional questions are accepted on Stack Exchange is to *commit to and promote that proposal*, not redefining a random site on the network that superficially looks similar to the expertise required to answer such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you want to ask general professional questions, I strongly encourage you to support [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2). It's highly unlikely it won't ever be created, but it'll be created a whole lot sooner if people—such as yourself—who are interested in the topic commit to it and help build critical mass for it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26386" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2949" RevisionGUID="64589763-1cb5-45eb-9a1e-ced777eb73a5" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This isn't the first time the name of the site has been questioned. See [here][1] and [here][2]. Part of the confusion/problem comes from the origin of the site. Originally, it was supposed to be a home to those fun questions about programmers that were closed on Stack Overflow. However, that wasn't a good fit for the Stack Exchange site. So this site became focused on the more subjective, non-coding questions that are faced by those in the software development profession (see here for a [discussion about software engineering][3]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that the name is a poor reflection of what the site has become. However, the FAQ and Meta discussions, not the name of the site, is the true reflection of topicality and appropriate questions. I would suspect that most professions have found this site to be more helpful than a site about programmers/programmer culture - I know I have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do also agree with Yannis's comment - changing the (domain) name will probably have an impact on SEO and the automated indexing. That's far outside my area of expertise, but the great thing about SE sites is how quickly they are indexed and appear in searches - I've searched for additional information to include in posts that I know exists, and come across the question I was answering as a top hit. Doing anything that compromises this would probably be a bad idea, for the Good of the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think the best thing for us to do would be to improve the FAQ and identify key Meta discussions that went into defining the site. Something to be careful of (and Yannis and I had this discussion) is increasing the size of the FAQ - it's already long compared to other sites. Ultimately, the FAQ needs to clearly define the scope (it does an OK/solid job right now) regardless of what this site is called or looks like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose there are a number of questions to ask, and I think a Stack Exchange employee would be the one to have to answer them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is it technically feasible to change the name and domain name of a Stack Exchange site, while preserving all of the content?&#xD;&#xA;2. What damage, particularly to the indexing and SEO of the site, would be done by changing the domain name? Would any damage be done by simply changing the name and look of the site without changing the domain name?&#xD;&#xA;3. Is it acceptable to have a site name that is different than the site's domain name? There are some examples of minor differences, such as &quot;cstheory.se.com&quot; having the full name of Theoretical Computer Science, but there is no precidence for having a domain name &quot;programmers.se.com&quot; and a site name of Software Development (as an example).&#xD;&#xA;4. Is it possible, feasible, and appropriate to totally rebrand a site post-launch to reflect a change in direction?&#xD;&#xA;5. Would doing any of the above set a precident for other current or future SE sites that is inappropriate?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26387" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8060" RevisionGUID="26b40f89-66f8-4c4a-a8dd-f61aa5664800" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I like [maple_shaft's answer][1], however wanted to write my own for reducing the [on-topic page's wall-of-text][2] since it's far too long for a comment on his answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software engineering and related fields&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software engineering, software architecture, and software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm or data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software release management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance or testing strategies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * understanding, writing, or debugging code (check out [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career, workplace, education, or lifestyle advice&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [legal advice or aid][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For more details, please see [our curated FAQ on Meta Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize changes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Replaced initial paragraph with tag line from maple_shaft's answer&#xD;&#xA;* Reduced on-topic list. Its not to say those other items are not on-topic, but they can be generally lumped together with a different bullet point or are a part of the broader common definition of &quot;software engineering&quot;. I am tempted to remove the QA&amp;Testing bullet point as well, but I'll leave that up to someone else.&#xD;&#xA;* Reduced the off-topic list. This is not to say those items are now on-topic, but I think they no longer will need to be explicitly mentioned in the On-Topic page as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;* Removed or reduced a lot of the remaining text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Scope should not change. Even licensing questions can sit in a gray area where if the specific question falls under the general umbrella of software engineering, it's OK, but if it's too close to &quot;legal aid&quot;, it's off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8058/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7248/how-do-you-get-20-rep-to-get-into-chat&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/faq/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26388" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2965" RevisionGUID="90363967-a8ee-48a0-b168-f065936d3862" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Closed questions are deleted, at some point. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But not immediately, there is always a chance someone will step up and salvage a closed question. There is indeed a very large number of closed questions, mostly due to historical reasons. [Mark Trapp's answer][1] on [How to reconcile guidelines, community opinion and moderation][2] gives an excellent outline of those reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As ChrisF mentions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - It takes time to work through all the closed questions, working out which are salvageable and which need to be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - People complain bitterly if highly upvoted closed questions are deleted. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a gigantic clean up effort going on for at least six months, involving [career related questions][3]. This and other clean ups have generated a fair share of Meta drama,  so right now we are focused on better [organizing clean up efforts][4], and part of that effort is for community consensus to be crystal clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The path to deletion is simple, every closed question will be deleted at some point. But that doesn't mean that every closed question can't be re-opened, so we must allow for some time before a question is deleted. We may be a bit slower in deleting questions than the trilogy crowd, but it's only a matter of pace and not one of going against common SE practices. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. We have a lot to clean up,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Let's worry about deletions after that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Searching for closed questions doesn't distinguish between close reasons. Duplicates, for example are not prime candidates for deletion, for SEO reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've build a [SEDE query][5] that doesn't count duplicates, and the close total is fairly smaller: 1936. The current SEDE data are valid up to Dec 22, but I don't think we closed a lot of questions since then (?!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2173/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/60095/closed-non-dupe-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26389" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8062" RevisionGUID="c9ac2ee8-bc27-467e-af49-a5d86ad23122" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just like most if not all prior answerers I like the current scope of the site as it is. To me, primary reason to participate here is pretty much covered in two bullets in [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First bullet is probably also on-topic at Stack Overflow (hat tip to Robert Harvey) but it doesn't help me over there, because these topics are difficult to find and follow at SO. Given that I am not interested in asking and answering code troubleshooting questions and that my interest in reading these is quite specific and limited, I essentially have no other option but Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the second bullet, it is probably also somehow covered at Project Management but, again, this doesn't help. I am primarily interested in these topics from perspective of a developer, not a manager, that makes it so much more comfortable to have them here, on a site where development and architecture concerns are firmly within site scope. Besides, my interest in &quot;pure management&quot; topics is rather limited and I am not fond of participating in the site which has these as primary focus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other bullet points (except for licensing, more on it below), I would be comfortable if these aren't mentioned explicitly but instead assumed to be okay in the context of &quot;my&quot; bullet points: requirements, algorithm and data structures, quality assurance and testing, configuration management, software engineering management.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that such implicit inclusion may make Programmers less of a welcoming home for some &quot;pure forms&quot; of QA and algorithms questions but such questions don't seem to be going particularly well here anyway, which makes it more of a theoretical concern. And, which is probably most important, such questions seem to have solid coverage at other SE sites which have them as primary focus (SQA, CS, TCS).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Licensing questions seem a bit tricky. I haven't yet seen compelling explanation of their fundamental relevance to &quot;my&quot; bullet points. But on the other hand I haven't yet seen compelling explanation for opposite either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of that I am not going to change my voting habits if licensing isn't listed explicitly. I just won't vote close these questions - or more precisely will handle them per [current guidance](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7265/31260). I may change this approach later if I find that some other SE site holds these questions really well (like it happened to career topics at Workplace) but as of now this doesn't seem to be the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness - since this question asks about site name - I don't care about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had some reservations on this in the past when I saw people expecting this to help us against floods of debugging garbage and I wasn't sure that this would help and it looked like in case if this fails, this could damage site image. &quot;Look, these suckers changed name of the site they had for 5 years only because they were scared by debugging spammers. And, you know, this didn't help them, bwa ha ha.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what I observe for past few weeks made me feel much safer about that. It looks like recently introduced [network wide rate limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/322265/839601) cut the flow of debugging off-topic garbage and do this fairly efficiently and that site name just doesn't matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the light of above, whatever name site community picks I will be fine with it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26390" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2976" RevisionGUID="4e6c2bb6-6d5e-4bbd-b983-80f431c7fe78" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We've had quite a bit of [discussion][1] about getting the Programmers Stack Exchange blog up and running. There has been a [discussion][2] of topic/theme, and there has even been a [call for volunteers][3] - to which there was (in my opinion) a fantastic first response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Several months have gone by since the last forward progress - and I feel that its time to get the ball rolling again and **see this thing happen**. We will never get that flywheel spinning until we have actual work being done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe its time to go forward and start publishing content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - We've had ample discussion on the direction, tone, and topic of the blog.&#xD;&#xA; - There are a significant number of volunteers for both writing and proofreading/editing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's what I believe are the next steps forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Let's go to the powers that be and get the actual **blog system up and running**. This will let us start writing and a team of editors can start proofreading and getting content into the &quot;publication pipeline&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Decide on a small team of editors who will proofread and approve content for publication.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts? Comments? Objections?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1709/any-chance-of-a-programmers-community-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2108/what-should-a-programmers-se-blog-be-about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26391" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2978" RevisionGUID="4f443864-c237-4011-b31c-928cdd90d393" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A few thoughts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The volunteers should reaffirm their commitment. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It's been 5 months since the [post calling for contributors][1], and things might have changed. For example, Anna is now a Community Manager and I don't know if she still wishes to contribute. Everyone could do a small edit on their answers, saying &quot;I'm still in!&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Editorial team&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Assuming all volunteers reaffirm their commitment, we have a ready team + Jarrod, no need to waste any more time discussing that. Let's see how the first couple of months go, and we can discuss a new team if need be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Schedule&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The guidelines [propose a post per week][2], minimum. Let's ignore that and target a post per fortnight. Some of the [other blogs][3] have a faster pace, some slower. Let's start with a reasonably low goal and if there's interest pick up the pace later on. I think it would be sensible to post on Mondays, so editors can check posts during the weekend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2335/who-would-contribute-to-a-p-se-blog&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blogoverflow.com/getting-started/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blogoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26392" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8064" RevisionGUID="be1fe69b-1d3e-42c5-bd20-49566db6b4da" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Site Name&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've started to come around to the name &quot;Software Engineering&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I still have some lingering objections regarding the overuse of the term &quot;engineering&quot; in software development, I think that the benefits would outweigh my personal objections. It does bring to mind a professional-oriented site that caters to people that work throughout the software development life cycle, from business analysts to developers to managers to leads. It also pairs nicely with Computer Science, especially since both correspond to the underlying academic disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Tour and Tagline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&amp;A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ripped this from sites like Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. I removed the portion about &quot;expert answers on conceptual questions about software development&quot; since that can be confusing and I don't see how it's necessary. I tended toward the wording used on Computer Science.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first line of the /help/on-topic page is just the first sentence of the /tour description, word-for-word.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## On-Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm shamelessly stealing this idea from Robert Harvey, but I think that we should do some minor refactoring and link to appropriate Wikipedia articles that define terms. Unfortunately, I don't think that we can get this down to &quot;no more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no gerrymandering&quot;. I think we can avoid multi-line comma-separated lists and gerrymandering, but the discipline of Software Engineering is broad. Being clear about what is on-topic and what is off-topic (and what sites support questions about things that are off-topic) is essential and helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that the shortest reasonable on-topic list would be something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I removed &quot;algorithm and data structure concepts&quot;, since I would consider that part of &quot;software architecture and design&quot;. Evaluating and choosing various data structures and algorithms is inherently a design activity. I also removed &quot;and testing&quot; from &quot;quality assurance and testing&quot; since testing is one aspect of quality assurance, but we don't take all testing questions (such as, for example, writing or debugging unit test code). I also merged &quot;software engineering management&quot; and &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; into &quot;software process, methods, and management&quot; since these three things are very tightly related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Like maple_shaft][10], I'd like to talk about software licensing. I recognize how important the topic is, but when it was added and clarified, neither the Law nor the Open Source Stack Exchange existed. It is something that software engineers operating in a professional environment should be aware of and do need to work in, and the IEEE does bury a small section on &quot;Legal Issues&quot; (referring to trademarks, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, professional liability, trade compliance, cybercrime) under &quot;Software Engineering Professional Practice&quot;. At the same time, the IEEE also puts things like &quot;Employment Contracts&quot;, team dynamics, working in multicultural environments, reading, writing, and presenting under &quot;Software Engineering Professional Practice&quot; and these are definitely off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recommend removing the &quot;software licensing&quot; line. The [Law Stack Exchange is graduating][11] and the [new rules for the graduation process][12] will likely mean that Open Source won't end up closing in the foreseeable future. These sites can do a much better job of handling licensing questions (along with other types of questions) than we can.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, writing, or debugging code (check out Stack Overflow instead) how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (ask on The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - open source philosophy, licenses, and open source communities (visit Open Source instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - legal concepts, theory, and terms (check out Law instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - where to find a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resource&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career or education advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest change is that we start linking to Open Source and Law. Before we actually do this, we do need to consult with their communities and make sure it's OK. But since there are better sites, I think it's safe to punt these questions to the experts anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Slight reordering of the things that are off-topic. We may want to check through the Meta questions that are currently linked and make sure they are correct. The biggest change is the removal of &quot;personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&quot; - I'd hope that a distinct change to the site name would make this very explicit to visitors as your personal life is not Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We may want to also identify some other sites to point people to. We could link to Software Recommendations and Hardware Recommendations next to &quot;product or service recommendations&quot;, as an example. There are also other sites that are related to software engineering that we don't identify as being off-topic (because it should be obvious) - Mathematics, Cross Validated/Statistics, User Experience, Information Security, Writers, Database Administrators, Code Review, Project Management (beta), Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing (beta), Computer Science, Engineering (beta), Law (beta), and Open Source (beta).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to see a theme change on the site. Something that is more professional. I like the general idea of diagrams and models, but parts of the site do seem cartooney. I'd like to be crisper, more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to look at methods for linking to related sites. Adding them to a Help Center page, like /help/on-topic, may work, but it would make that page much longer. I'd like to try to make Help Center pages smaller and less dense. It makes sense to point people to sites that they may not otherwise know about. Perhaps a Meta question that is part of the [tag:faq] would work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box, similar to how the Law and Health sites do, but to talk about the changes? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, so just a brief overview and link to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8058/4&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://law.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/425/congrats-law-se-will-be-graduating-soon?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/257614/graduation-site-closure-and-a-clearer-outlook-on-the-health-of-se-sites" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26393" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3029" RevisionGUID="53e126e0-8732-4f0d-a790-695f9271f0aa" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Your question was closed by five regular users, so I fail to see how the moderators have anything to do with that. ChrisF commented:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this a problem that's unique to software developers? Doesn't the situation also apply to other professions? Check the FAQ for more information on our target audience and where your question should be aimed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To which you replied:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It is unique to software development, and I am asking only in that context. But it could be applied to other technical fields as well such as Design Engineer etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I ask, if the question applies to other technical fields, how is it unique to software development?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the other questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/133014/looking-for-suggestions-on-how-to-better-handle-developers-questions-from-out-o &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;strike&gt;A downvote and two close votes already&lt;/strike&gt;. Couple of downvotes and three close votes. Probably will be closed soon, unless of course it's revised to fit the scope of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132977/how-to-convince-company-to-start-documenting-for-legacy-software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The question may be a bit borderline, but the way I read it it's on topic. It asks for an evaluation of common arguments on code documentation, maybe in a bit rantish tone, but still the topics discussed are clearly within the scope of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several off topic open questions, and quite a few clean up efforts summarized in a recent Meta question: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups. We would appreciate your help in any of these efforts, you should flag every question you think is off topic.  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26394" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3032" RevisionGUID="8b6f7aea-7402-451f-8dda-96fcc663b9fe" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is a little bit of a tautological request: there are always going to be things that programmers deal with that are similar or overlap with other professions. The fact that it might overlap with another profession is not grounds for closure, and the questions you listed weren't closed for that reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But this [specific issue has come up before](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1697/is-a-question-always-off-topic-when-it-applies-to-other-professions-too), and as [Jeff mentions there](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1716/8), you **must** make a case that your question **requires** the unique perspective of programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question that fails to do that is not specific enough, and it's not on-topic here. The vast, vast majority of the time people don't to do that: they assume that—by virtue of asking *as a programmer*—it's on-topic and the answers will be uniquely programmer-centric.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But we're not special flowers: the majority of issues a programmer will face in his or her lifetime—or even in his or her career—are not programmer-specific. Erring on the side of &quot;well there *could* be a programmer-specific answer&quot; is the road to ruin, and re-scopes the site from &quot;a site for programmers&quot; to a &quot;a site for general advice that happens to have programmers on it&quot;. That's not [expertise](http://stackexchange.com/about), that's [Yahoo! Answers with less teens](http://quora.com). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't need a scope change: we need more heroic editors. What I'd love to see is people editing questions that attract close votes and flags to clearly explain what specific unique programmer expertise is being asked for. Why can't it be answered by anyone else? I don't think that's asking for the moon, and it'd do a whole lot to improve the quality of the site without having to close as often." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26395" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8105" RevisionGUID="6825b304-60e1-44f8-8454-4c1cfd4a914c" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've been pondering [these proposed changes to the site's name and scope](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8056/new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8065#8065) for the past few weeks. This was, you'll recall, instigated by Ana's response to Rachel's proposal for [a new name for this site.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/4-years-later-dear-stack-exchange-can-we-change-our-site-name). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Why are we changing anything again?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The purpose of that name-change request was explicitly to *end the confusion over what this site is about*. Ana's request was that y'all do a thorough review of your scope at the same time, for exactly the same reason. Because, let's face it: when you gotta have [a chatbot](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/125580/duga) running to catch all the folks who erroneously recommend your site, there's some pretty widespread misunderstandings as to what your site is about... To put a stop to that, [we need a clear, succinct definition](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/4-years-later-dear-stack-exchange-can-we-change-our-site-name/8054#8054):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Above all else, the scope needs to be simple. Seriously. No more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no gerrymandering - it needs to be easy for any new visitor who bothers to read and even mildly pays attention to what they're reading to know what they can and cannot ask about here. Eliminate ambiguity for a first time poster once and for all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...because, remember, *that was the whole point of doing anything at all*. If we can't do it right, there's no point in doing it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The proposed changes are not exactly succinct](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8056/new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8065#8065). They're... the sort of [laundry-lists](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/164778/what-should-we-put-on-our-about-page/164779#164779) that make folks who already know what the site is about feel good, but don't do anything to help or hinder the folks coming here confused. You want to establish a path of least resistance that *isn't* asking a sketchy question and seeing if it sticks - if I make it past the home page, through the signup process, past the tour, and get to the Ask page, I'm *probably* going to ask a question regardless of what text you throw at me... Folks tend to build up momentum as they make decisions; you don't want to wait until the last possible moment to tell 'em they're in the wrong place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##What I *think* you're asking for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, there's a lot of good stuff mixed into that proposal, if you take the time to dig a bit. After [talking to folks in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/30760512#30760512) a couple of weeks ago (and then another two hours talking with Ana today while she patiently guided me through it), I came away with this as the *structure* of the proposal:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Name&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Description / tour tagline&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question and answer site for people directly involved in the Software Development Lifecycle who care about writing, shipping, and maintaining code responsibly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###On-topic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Off-topic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - troubleshooting or debugging code &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - requests for code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what to read, learn, buy or use.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - legal advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's short. I could theoretically paste that entire quote into a comment, and still have room to reply to someone by name and properly cite [its source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_Trump).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More importantly, it's short enough that it might actually get *read* by the hundreds of folks who clearly aren't reading anything here today. Which was, again, the entire point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I dropped a few things. That's ok; you don't need to exhaustively document every possible topic that falls under the umbrella &quot;Software Engineering&quot; - the ultimate source of truth is what's actually *on the site*. If someone comes in from Google because there's a question about Agile they're interested in, it won't matter that it's not explicitly called out in the docs. On the other hand, eliminating requirements and methodologies from that list also lets you avoid having to qualify those topics with a paragraph about where to stick broad, opinionated discussion questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##What this site is really about&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I love the idea of a site about software engineering, especially one created as the evolution of *this* site: it fits the spirit of what y'all are doing, gives you a name and a topic you can communicate with pride, and even [resolves an old, old dispute](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se) in a less depressing fashion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But none of that matters. **What's important here is whether y'all actually believe this reflects what you're doing.** Remember, the goal was to clear up all those cringe-worthy misconceptions... Not to create a whole pile of new ones. So I ask of you,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Does *anything* in the quote above strike you as *incorrect?***&#xD;&#xA;2. Does the quote above reflect the site you know and love?&#xD;&#xA;3. Is the quote above something you'd feel comfortable giving to someone unfamiliar with the site, by way of an introduction?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you for your time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26396" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8174" RevisionGUID="b6e87585-1dbb-40ac-9787-267265fea69a" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've been using this message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Welcome to programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [Many sites](http://stackexchange.com/sites) have [different rules](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8067/131624). Feel free to take your issue to an appropriate site. Search existing answers first. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Welcome to programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [Many sites](http://stackexchange.com/sites) have [different rules](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8067/131624). Feel free to take your issue to an appropriate site. Search existing answers first. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's been successful in getting a few askers to clean up on their own. I might even suggest that with this, fewer bitter arguments start after the close.  Bit hard to tell yet but I think it's helped.  Use it if you like. Maybe you can do better. If you can, please share.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26397" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3122" RevisionGUID="5c0e688c-bcda-4ff0-aa3c-cae2e5ef8f5e" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="These suggestions come from the existing tag base. It's certainly not based on the tags I've asked questions in previously or answered questions, and it's not the [most popular tags](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags). If I ask a question I get a different set:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;so there is be a random element in there - in fact the three example tags are chosen randomly from the top thirty tags on the site. If you notice mine even suggests the [tag:career] tag - even worse! - these tags persist for me when I open the Ask Question page again, so there is an element of caching in there as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the bad tags are removed from all questions ([hint, hint][2]) then they shouldn't appear in the list again, so get retagging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the developers will see this question and be able to give a definitive answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/a2l15.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3088/31260 &quot;career related tag cleanup proposal&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26398" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8196" RevisionGUID="16490917-442c-422d-9694-23f313c19ca3" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Previous Discussion: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8184/follow-up-3-new-site-name-and-help-center-discussions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After approval from [Ana][1], I published the discussed updates to the [Help Center's /help/on-topic page][2] and the [site's /tour][3]. In the near future, we should be hearing from her about the timeline of the technical implementation for changing our site's name and domain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please leave any feedback here about these changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/106878/ana&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26399" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3140" RevisionGUID="3a1763c9-fcb4-44c6-80c9-9e9c7ed49a81" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think we are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site scope was [changed dramatically][1] from its original proposal, without the consent of the Programmers community, which drove many users away. Since then, strict enforcement of keeping questions on-topic with the new site scope, combined with the fact [our site name doesn't match the FAQ][2] has been causing a lot of users to misunderstand what the site is meant for, and to lose interest and stop asking/answering questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, here's a graph of our [new user growth][3]. It remains fairly steady, because many programmers are interested in a site for programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And here's a graph of [new questions asked][5]. It is going down hill fairly steadily for a while now, and I don't believe it's because all the good questions have been asked/answered. I think it's instead people being aware of stricter rules, and/or being uncertain about if they should post something for fear of just getting downvoted and closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be noted that the above graph shows posts which were closed as of 5/10/12 (which is when I noticed I was including answers in my old graph). To view a graph of actual open/close post history, use [this query][7], which was added in May. It should also be noted that some of the larger spikes of posts getting closed can be attributed to the massive cleanup that some users undertook.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our [number of votes][9] is also declining, which is the result of less user participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't speak for others, but personally I've gotten frustrated with the way our site is going and have kind of given up. I don't think I'm alone either judging by questions on meta, and the disappearance of several formerly-active users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is yours, so you can run it however you want, however I strongly believe that the downward nature of the graphs is caused by a lot of misunderstanding and confusion about the site scope, and the way SE treated the Programmers community when they decided to change the site scope without their consent. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site was meant to be a site for programmers about programmers, and it has since changed to a site for programmers about software development only. A lot of old active users have lost interest, and a lot of new users don't understand the site scope and ask low quality questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/66279&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OlKXf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/69756&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vgvp4.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/69764&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/RZyPg.png&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/66286&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/gvnGr.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26400" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8215" RevisionGUID="8dcbbf99-2d1c-41ab-a130-e4da54a34618" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="##History Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;History questions are still on-topic, provided the op can demonstrate some relevance with an ongoing concern related to the SDLC.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Candied Orange [provided some great insights](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8209/this-question-isnt-remotely-subjective#comment25712_8210):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; History can be thought of as everything that isn't happening right now. That isn't what is off topic. What's off-topic is anything that ONLY has value from a historian's perspective. Simply having value from a historian's perspective doesn't make it off topic. Doesn't make it on topic either. So it would need another reason to be on topic. Doesn't matter if the OP frames it for a historian or not. So the ugly history of waterfall that led to agile is on topic. The reasoning behind Java being named after an island that exports coffee is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Historically (no pun intended), history questions have fared well here, provided they are interesting and not merely curiosity questions about some very obscure and random thing that can only be answered by someone that was actually there when it happened.  Questions about the design of the Babbage engine are probably on-topic; questions about the color Babbage painted his engine are probably not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Licensing Questions&#xD;&#xA;Licensing questions are not part of the SDLC; they are entirely a legal concern.  Law and Open-source have demonstrated a willingness to accept such questions, and can answer them better than we can.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I've been told that, in some cases, the Software Engineer is the one making these decisions, and so it's still a relevant concern on a Software Engineering site. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26401" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8321" RevisionGUID="8cf79764-8997-4609-946f-c9d1ad0689b1" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.030" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Update - these questions are now considered wholly off-topic here, so I've simplified the guidance further:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** [Job / Career questions are off-topic here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). Yes, there are still a few around; it's a long story.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can try [The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/tour) for career development questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; See also: [Why was my career or education advice question closed or down voted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...also these tags are blacklisted and can no longer be used on new questions. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26402" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3148" RevisionGUID="c58486b9-49f4-49f1-950f-9d590ffb1ff8" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Are we Going down hill?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3136/are-we-going-down-hill)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;[In my last post][1] a few people pointed out the that decline in average score and question count was not a good metric for showing the decline of this site.. So here is some additional evidence. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I Basically classified every question as  **Good**, **Bad** or **Ok**  &#xD;&#xA;**Good**= A score &gt;1 and Open&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Ok**= A score =1 and Open&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Bad**= A score &lt;0 or Closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here is The Graph (Including a Line for total)**&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the SQL:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Select&#xD;&#xA;    	week.week&#xD;&#xA;        ,good.cnt as Good&#xD;&#xA;        ,ok.cnt as ok&#xD;&#xA;        ,bad.cnt as bad&#xD;&#xA;    from &#xD;&#xA;    	(select distinct &#xD;&#xA;    		CAST(year(p.CreationDate) as char(4))+'-'+CAST(DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) as char(2)) as week &#xD;&#xA;    		from Posts p&#xD;&#xA;    		where p.CreationDate&gt;dateadd(yy,-1,getdate())) week&#xD;&#xA;    join &#xD;&#xA;    	(select  &#xD;&#xA;    		CAST(year(p.CreationDate) as char(4))+'-'+CAST(DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) as char(2)) as week &#xD;&#xA;    		 ,count(1) as Cnt&#xD;&#xA;    		from Posts p&#xD;&#xA;    		where score&gt;1 and Closeddate is Null&#xD;&#xA;    		group by   year(p.CreationDate),DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) &#xD;&#xA;    	) good on good.week=week.week&#xD;&#xA;    join &#xD;&#xA;    	(select  &#xD;&#xA;    		CAST(year(p.CreationDate) as char(4))+'-'+CAST(DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) as char(2)) as week &#xD;&#xA;    		 ,count(1) as Cnt&#xD;&#xA;    		from Posts p&#xD;&#xA;    		where score=0 and Closeddate is Null&#xD;&#xA;    		group by   year(p.CreationDate),DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) &#xD;&#xA;    	) ok on ok.week=week.week&#xD;&#xA;    join &#xD;&#xA;    	(select  &#xD;&#xA;    		CAST(year(p.CreationDate) as char(4))+'-'+CAST(DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) as char(2)) as week &#xD;&#xA;    		 ,count(1) as Cnt&#xD;&#xA;    		from Posts p&#xD;&#xA;    		where score&lt;0 or Closeddate is not Null&#xD;&#xA;    		group by   year(p.CreationDate),DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) &#xD;&#xA;    	) bad on bad.week=week.week&#xD;&#xA;    order by week.week&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3136/are-we-going-down-hill&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/uY1aI.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26403" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3236" RevisionGUID="6f76e341-81e2-46ed-9245-47096dcc6d6a" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are the FAQ's, plenty of closed questions (heads on top of spears), and comments about what types of questions are appropriate, but since so many questions of the same type are closed, should they just get deleted? I'm assuming this would reduce clutter. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing questions may not be providing the intended disincentive. Seeing so many closed questions appears to put some users off:  https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2389/how-long-will-this-forum-survive-if-the-moderators-keep-closing-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hate to sweep them under the rug and would like to hear what is being done it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: **I don't think the closing question process should be replaced with deletion.** Most are in a grey area, but some are just obviously wrong. They're voted to close and get downvoted immediately. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26404" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3241" RevisionGUID="009f6de7-f76c-4c4c-869a-f33705c32172" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some closed questions [get deleted by the system over time][1]. At 30 days, unlocked and unanswered questions with a negative score get deleted. At 365 days, questions with a score of 0 or less (or 1 with a deleted owner), no answers, not locked, has limited comments, and a small view count will get automatically deleted. The checks are not run daily, but weekly, so there might be a few days between it hitting the point for automatic deletion and it actually getting deleted automatically.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here on Programmers, we also have the [Structured Tag Clean-Up Initiative][2], which deals with poor tags on the site. Part of this process is also identifying questions within the tag that can not be salvaged and deleting them manually. However, this only addresses one tag at a time. Also, there are closed questions in good tags that are both inappropriate for this site and unsalvagable - these won't get caught by STCI.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed is meant as a temporary state. Most questions should not go from closed to deleted quickly. The purpose of closed is to give the community a chance to turn the question into something good, while preventing answers. It's much easier to save a question with no or few answers than one with a lot of answers - edits to a question that invalidate answers don't make sense. The reason is that invalidating answers would lead to answers getting downvoted because the answerer was unaware the question changed and didn't delete or change their answer - these would be unwarranted downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, perhaps someone could build a Data Explorer query to show all closed questions, ordered by date (oldest first) and then votes (most negative first). Perhaps an additional piece would be to restrain it to those questions that are at least 3 or 4 months old. Questions that show up in this query could be targets for immediate editing or deletion. I'm not sure if we want to stack this clean up initiative on top of STCI, but it might give us some data to work with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78048/auto-deleting-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year/92006#92006&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=stci" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26405" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3250" RevisionGUID="cbf0bf8b-ae6e-4f57-b7c1-c449ebb19f24" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; *I've just seen a question closed by a moderator because &quot;Career advice is explicitly off-topic, per the FAQ&quot; (link), which is simply incorrect: the FAQ makes clear that career advice specific to programmers is relevant, by linking to an answer, the first sentence of which is &quot;First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate directly to software development&quot;.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Closing the question did nothing to make this a better site, and was taken on the basis of a clearly incorrect understanding of what is defined as on-topic.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [Meta answer][1] you reference is not an one liner, I really don't understand why you choose to build an argument around a single sentence. You could have at least gone with the first paragraph (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate directly to software development: **general career advice questions with no relation to software development or where software development is a minor facet of the question are off-topic**. A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;**Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as off-topic.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The core questions in the [closed question][2] are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So basically here are my questions: 1. Will getting an MSc in AI hurt my chances in getting an SE job (in case I decide to leave academia)? 2. What are the job prospects in SE in Canada in comparison with the US.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is nothing in those two questions that _requires_ the unique expertise of software developers, as software development has absolutely nothing to do with predicting job perspectives. There is a [single answer][3] in that question, coincidentally yours: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To be honest, if you want to do a PhD, just do a PhD. There's no reason to do a master's first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; From your question, it sounds like you really want to study more, and that this is a one-shot thing. You might as well go for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The amazing thing here is that, even if you are not convinced the question is off topic, your answer actually proves it, since there is nothing in there that shows any specific software development related expertise. That's not a comment on whether you have or don't have software development expertise, but only if that's visible in that specific answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I certainly agree with the **three users** and the fellow moderator who voted to close the question. Unfortunately there are quite a few similar questions that are still open, and that may have confused you on whether we consider them on or off topic. Fortunately, the [Structured Tag Cleanup][4] of the [career] tag take care of a lot of that crap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize on career related questions: They are off topic, unless they explicitly require the unique expertise of software developers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138152/choosing-between-an-msc-and-an-industry-job&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/138153/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26406" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3263" RevisionGUID="53909f14-ff7e-4f4a-82b6-5abf4e58172f" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Welcome to the second structured tag cleanup! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the voting in the [call for proposals](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1), the second round goes to the [tag:software-engineering] tag, with 84 current questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tag has been renamed to [stci-software-engineering](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci-software-engineering), which should prevent people from adding any more questions to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ground rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of this cleanup is to systematically clean up the software engineering tag without causing disruption to the rest of the site.  Your job, should you choose to accept it, is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [deletion candidates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3266/25936) below and see if there's a way to save any of the questions before they go gently into that good night through [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits). At the end of the clean up period, any questions not sufficiently improved will be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [merge candidates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3265/25936) to see if can be merged into one question. If they shouldn't be, revise the questions to demonstrate how it's not in any way like the question it's been duplicated to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [closure candidates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3264/25936) list to see if you agree with what others have identified as being out of the site's scope. If you agree, vote to close. If you don't agree, use [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to address the problems the question has and bring it back into scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the currently open questions and see which ones do not fit our site scope. Vote to close them and add them to the closure candidates list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Improve the leftover questions by copyediting, fixing spelling, flow, adding clearer titles, etc. while replacing the `stci-software-engineering` tag with something more meaningful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:architecture] for questions relating to system level architecture, documenting architecture, view models, architectural quality, and product line development.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:design] for questions relating to software design.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:documentation] for questions about documentation. &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:requirements] for questions about requirements engineering and documenting requirements.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:testing] for questions about unit, integration, smoke, and system testing using white box or black box techniques.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:maintenance] for questions about maintaining legacy software systems.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:quality] for questions about process quality, product quality, code quality, or measuring the quality of any of these.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:education] for questions about formal education, self-teaching, and self-improvement as a software developer.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:metrics] for questions about software metrics.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:patterns] for questions on design patterns.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:agile] for questions on agile methodologies.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:project-management] for questions on project management.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ...and other, more specific tags as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Finally, and this is perhaps the most important of all the rules: **do not just remove the stci-software-engineering tag without improving the question and its answers.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### End date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This round of cleanups will end on **Wednesday, March 21th at 04:00 UTC.** At that time, all the default actions will be done: deletions, merges, closures, and such. If [tag:stci-software-engineering] is not empty by then, it'll be renamed back to [tag:software-engineering] and be saved for later rounds of cleanups." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26407" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3269" RevisionGUID="950efbdd-5b16-47ff-8df0-f12f8eeb92d0" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It appears that these closures were part of the Structured [Tag Clean-Up Initiative for the careers tag][1], so this was coming. The short story is that having a career tag invited a number of off-topic questions, so it was decided to go through and remove the tag and evaluate all of the questions to make sure it was appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this time, there is no general purpose career Stack Exchange site. The closest thing is [The Workpace][2], which is still in the committal phase. It's about 70% to completion at this point. However, the general practice is to not move questions until the site is out of beta (or at least it is well-established as to what is on-topic and what is off-topic on the other site). In addition, older questions or non-constructive questions are never moved (first rule of migrations: never migrate crap). There's a more detailed discussion of this concern [here, in another Meta question][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, at this time, all career questions that apply to all careers and do not require the specific expertise of professional software developers will be closed because they are off-topic here. If you feel that you can salvage one through the use of [heroic edits][4] to make it constructive and on-topic, please do so and try to get it reopened (including using chat, Meta, and moderator flags as appropriate).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3185/structured-tag-cleanup-career-what-happens-to-good-off-topic-quesitons&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26408" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3270" RevisionGUID="18b87d7f-e143-49e2-9027-11e31544850b" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="These questions are being cleaned up as part of the [structured tag cleanup](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career) that's going on at the moment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means that there will be times when the home page has old, closed questions on it as we remove the offending tag - in this case &quot;careers&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general old questions are not migrated to new sites - either to seed the site or once they've settled on their final scope. This is because these questions skew the reputation of participants - they've had longer to exist than questions on the new site and thus tend to have more votes. We found out this to our cost when old questions were migrated from Stack Overflow to us." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26409" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3337" RevisionGUID="51899181-78c3-44ec-bfed-191094c2bbff" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am all for making these synonyms - created an &quot;official&quot; suggestion for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's now up to those having a right to vote whether to approve or reject,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...Users with a total answer score (total upvotes minus total downvotes) of 5 or more on the tag, can vote for tag synonyms. Suggestions will be automatically approved when they reach a score of 4, and automatically deleted when they reach a score of -2.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/pdKuA.jpg][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, suggested synonymizing is done (thanks to [Thomas][3] and all who voted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pdKuA.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/unit-testing/synonyms &quot;click to proceed to synonym suggestion for voting&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3335/tag-synonym-unit-tests-unit-testing/3337#comment8857_3337" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26410" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3355" RevisionGUID="d94afa86-b1ca-4ff2-b3b0-9487e0fe4e92" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-development\] tag](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bstci-software-development%5D+closed%3A0) that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/139201/how-to-become-very-strong-in-middleware-java-coding&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140582/writing-drivers-for-a-printer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80575/when-to-remove-programmer-access-in-dev-sandbox&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29167/need-repository-layout-references&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32785/first-time-application-where-to-start&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40235/development-cost-for-ipad-application-and-on-going-maintenance&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/47993/best-software-development-methodology-environment-for-fresh-graduates&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57828/your-software-problem-solution-approach&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61891/how-and-where-to-organize-a-team-to-make-a-website&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65600/using-personal-blog-as-well-as-software-company&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76108/decisions-affecting-software-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/88198/advice-on-how-to-understand-in-general-and-in-practice-it-infrastructure&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126751/what-technologies-and-what-languages-should-i-choose-to-make-web-application-por&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134060/is-there-a-snippets-program-that-allows-for-tab-entry-of-variables-across-the-ma&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134093/to-develop-a-front-end-web-application-with-tablets-in-mind-or-not&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134940/can-a-company-deny-that-you-teach-people-how-to-use-a-software-under-mit-license&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25733/where-can-i-get-people-to-test-my-software-for-free&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43113/looking-software-for-making-an-animated-cartoon-to-present-a-new-application-sce&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/50427/books-on-software-development-is-code-complete-good-or-should-i-read-something&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66902/project-management-and-team-connecting-tools-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136015/standard-c-tools-frameworks-in-2012&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43214/how-do-you-educate-your-teammates-without-seeming-condescending-or-superior&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136441/can-anybody-recommend-an-application-for-laying-out-algorithms-on-a-mac&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49457/learning-to-program-in-the-modern-era&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64875/what-are-your-examples-of-great-companies-with-work-environments&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60906/productivity-and-communication-in-teamwork-vs-individual-concentration-and-list&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46429/is-porting-a-windows-application-to-mac-worth-it&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43113/looking-software-for-making-an-animated-cartoon-to-present-a-new-application-sce&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38140/can-a-freelancer-use-agile-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30046/developing-for-research-vs-developing-a-product&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/22224/recommended-bounty-site&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97658/how-do-i-host-a-project-on-github-or-sourceforge&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58593/how-much-knowledge-do-you-need-to-call-yourself-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86170/security-programming-jobs&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60694/what-is-the-correlation-between-the-quality-of-the-software-development-process&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61698/remote-job-opportunities-for-software-developers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92696/how-to-grow-after-failing-in-a-software-development-shop&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90559/why-dont-modern-software-developers-follow-the-advice-of-alan-cooper-and-jef-ra&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101725/is-there-any-tv-channel-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36317/what-are-some-good-online-tech-talks&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57987/which-db-should-i-use-for-my-newbie-program&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58584/how-can-i-change-my-career-from-windows-server-admin-to-software-developer&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/94197/how-to-i-build-a-sudoku-solver-software-using-c&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66286/as-a-developer-which-version-of-windows-has-everything-needed-for-standard-pro&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95336/what-are-the-research-components-involved-in-a-software-product-development&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/72451/sources-of-information-for-flight-hotel-reservation-recommendation-sites&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/115509/what-are-some-group-oriented-project-development-sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. add questions here" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26411" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3359" RevisionGUID="e29ea704-ec34-4316-9505-8ecb8562a66f" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question was identified as a [closure candidate][1] (#54) in the [recent structured cleanup of the \[career\] tag][2]. It received no attention from the community during the two week period of the cleanup and it was closed a few hours after the cleanup ended. I should have left a comment pointing to the cleanup Meta question when I closed it, sorry about that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for why it's off topic: From our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although the question is on a business concern, it doesn't require the unique expertise of software developers, it falls in the &quot;all careers&quot; part of the diagram. You may state in the question text that you want answers that are specific to software development companies but the actual parameters of the question aren't unique to software development companies, but apply to all service oriented businesses. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not see how it could be rewritten to be on topic, but I'm open to suggestions. For further details on why we decided to close career related questions that were open for quite a long time, please read [the \[career\] cleanup proposal][4] and the linked Meta discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3174/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3171/structured-tag-cleanup-career&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kJ3Ze.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3088/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26412" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3412" RevisionGUID="7015de21-6a58-4f06-ac4a-d2b9c81a44de" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="How did the topic of this site to change from &quot;Not-Programming-Related&quot; to &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've tried looking through meta questions to find where the change in site scope was discussed, but haven't found much. The biggest change in site scope I see on meta is the [Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice][1], which doesn't really discuss site scope at all other than rules for subjective questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this was a community-decision, I would expect there to be a lot of meta questions related to the site scope change. If this was an executive decision, I would expect to see some kind of notice posted that got a lot of attention. Maybe I'm just using the wrong keywords in my meta searches.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone explain the history of how this site changed from the original &quot;Not-Programming-Related&quot; proposal to be a site for programmers about issues not directly related to programming, to the current site scope of &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Mark's answer][2] provides the timeline I was looking for, along with some great links, however [Walter's comment][3] pretty much sums it up:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There really wasn't discussion on Meta about the site change, it was&#xD;&#xA;&gt; an edict from above saying this must change... and so it did&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can further be seen in the links Mark provides where site scope was discussed on P.SE meta, and the general consensus was [not to change anything][4], other than to crack down on some of the nonsense questions that just had &quot;as a programmer&quot; tacked on. To [quote Mark][5]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A few days ago, I created the question, &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [&quot;How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?&quot;][6]. There, the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; consensus was to not change anything. Unfortunately, SOIS has spoken,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it looks like that sentiment will not be able to sustain the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I am disappointed in this, at least now I know where the change came from. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I actually didn't realize the change in site scope went that far back, because I never saw any kind of announcement telling us that NPR was no longer going to be tolerated. The only thing I saw was an [announcement about subjective questions guidelines][7], which I thought was the attempt to crack down on the &quot;as a programmer&quot; nonsense questions, and many subsequent battles on meta over site scope where it seemed the users had one opinion, and the moderators had another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I did see the [blog post][8] when P.SE finally left beta, however I thought it was merely trying to advertise the more constructive side of P.SE, not that the NPR side was no longer valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/350/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3415/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio#comment9142_3414&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/214/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/237/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26413" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3414" RevisionGUID="cbddef39-0925-4f48-b4e9-33fcd4177014" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="September 2010 appears to be a _turning point_, indicated by [Joel's blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/ &quot;Merging Season&quot;) mentioning&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which was further followed by [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic) and [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26414" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3498" RevisionGUID="b077e33f-1767-4f18-a1c6-d38ae27e89d4" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Why am I getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account”?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3041/why-am-i-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this-account)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I post a question here a while ago when I was banned. Then somehow my ban was lifted. After that I have been answering questions for the most part. Today I felt the need to ask a question, and there is goes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account. See&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://goo.gl/C1Kwu to learn more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before, I was skeptical of the ban process. I thought it has to do with moderators. I even asked a question about this on skeptics.SE site as well which was deleted. However the discussion there before my question was deleted convinced me that the ban is totally automatic and nothing to do with moderators. I just want to point out that the ban process is quite flawed in my opinion. Here are all my previous answers ![enter image description here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Adding my asked questions as well. I did go to reputation tab, show removed post and I do not see any deleted post there. But I know I had a couple of deleted questions that contributed to my banned in the first place months ago. Since then most of my activity is positive. In fact all of the activity you see here is after that ban. As general, you can see it is positive. My only old question that got -2 votes was http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/112336/creating-a-blog-for-software-changes which had +2 votes on it but is still not negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a person like me, the reason one should be banned is if he spams, overposts, does not do research before asking. However that is not that case with my questions. Or may be I am too dumb to be a member of this site according to SE standards, which is good to know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/SO6dw.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ReYyU.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26415" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3526" RevisionGUID="90a1161d-b96b-449f-aced-40aaa643bcd3" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A word of caution, based on an [advice given in comments in another question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3523/user-who-asks-many-low-quality-questions#comment9549_3523):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...just don't go on a down voting spree..., last time he made it into Meta three people started downvoting everything and they were caught by the serial voting script.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##It ain't _that_ easy...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/6brWm.jpg][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;...not that I suggest to stop downvoting bad questions, just when you do that, better make sure that it works as you intended.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6brWm.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/26782/goma?tab=reputation&amp;sort=time &quot;click to view the reputation tab for the user showing downvotes, reversals etc...&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26416" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3531" RevisionGUID="b59e94e7-107b-4707-8c10-2457d8378d76" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As you may already know, Programmers.SE will soon hold it's first ever, [site-wide contest][1]. However, there is one more thing we need community input on: **prizes**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, until Thursday, at 20:00 UTC, we will be accepting recommendations for incentives. But:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It has to be a book.&#xD;&#xA; - Keep it in a reasonable price range &#xD;&#xA; - Has to be somewhat on topic with the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The top 4 books voted will be the ones given out during the contest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Get going!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3418/34364" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26417" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3546" RevisionGUID="db4e11be-1ea6-486e-a3f0-57621a5f68a2" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Wait! Programmers.SE is having a contest!? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*What have you been living under a rock?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just kidding (maybe). Yes, Programmers is having a contest. And it's going to be awesome! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So how will this contest work? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest will be divided into 4 weeks. For each of the 4 weeks, there will be a tag dedicated to it. The schedule will go like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [tag:data-structures] -- May 7 ([results][1])&#xD;&#xA; 2. [tag:documentation] -- May 14 ([results][2])&#xD;&#xA; 3. [tag:history] -- May 21 ([results][3])&#xD;&#xA; 4. [tag:algorithms] -- May 28 ([results][4])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each week, users who post questions and answers for that weeks tag will have their post entered into the contest. The following categories can win:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Best Answer:** The best answer from the week will be a winner. Best answer is judged by **votes**. Any answer to a closed question is ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - **Best Question:** The best question from the week will also be awarded. Best question is not judged on votes, but instead **views**. Closed questions will be disqualified. ***We encourage advertising your question (on non-SE sites) to get more views. Please do not spam the chat rooms.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, you are only eligible if you post under the current week's tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Prizes! ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best of all, we try to get you the best prizes possible. In order to do that, we had to put on a few restrictions. But **winners can choose their own site-related prize from Amazon, as long as it:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Is under $50 (including shipping and handling)&#xD;&#xA; - Is related to the site and its topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your one prize does not use up the $50, you may choose up to 3 different things (still has to be under $50 all total).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So when do we start? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The contest is going on now!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Important Notes of Eligibility and Such##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You must have a valid email address in your profile so that we can contact you and ask you what you want from Amazon (if you win).&#xD;&#xA; - No closed questions or negatively scored questions (regardless of views). &#xD;&#xA; - SE employees are ineligible. &#xD;&#xA; - The question you are asking or answering must contain the contest tag to be eligible&#xD;&#xA; - Bounties on contest questions are more than welcome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3591/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3604/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3631/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3652/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26418" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3551" RevisionGUID="551eeeda-0879-4120-a621-21a13754bc36" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As of right now, the close/migrated question rate for the past month or so is around 43% (see notes below)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of the closures are valid based on our site standards, however the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for. Most people don't willingly post unwelcome questions on a Q&amp;A site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of questions are closed because they are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Code questions** - These should be asked on SO, and get migrated there if they are suitable for SO. If the question quality is not suitable for SO, they simply get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Requests for broad recommendations**, like book suggestions, what to learn next, or general advice in X situation. Any kind of broad question like this is usually closed on SE sites as unanswerable since there is no one right answer to the question, and they usually turn into a poll with everyone chiming in with their own recommendation or opinion&#xD;&#xA; - **Questions about or for programmers, that are unrelated to conceptual software development.** The site is meant for Q&amp;A on conceptual software development, so questions asked should be related to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things that contribute to our high close/migration rate include:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Users not reading the FAQ, and not understanding what this site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Users migrating bad questions from Stack Overflow because they don't understand our site's scope. [Per Yannis][1], 41% of migrations from SO were rejected in the past 90 days ([about 70-80 questions][2]), but that's for a 90-day period, not the last 30 days. The average for a 30-day period would be somewhere around 25&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Users who have been suspended on SO, or are banned from asking questions, so are asking code questions here instead. Yannis said they get one of those every few days or so, so its not a lot but it does contribute to the problem (around 10-15 questions over the past month)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(If I missed something in either list list, let me know in a comment and I'll add it)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So my question is, what can we do to improve the way we present the site to users, and prevent so many bad questions from being asked?**&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;For those who want to know how the close/migration percentage was determined:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;46% is the number is obtained by going to the question list, sorting by Newest, and counting the number of questions since 4/4, then filtering for `closed:1` and doing the same thing. There are 1029 questions total, while 441 are closed, so `441 / 1029 = 42.8%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`closed:1` includes `migrated:1`, so a separate filter for `migrated:1` shows 77 migrated questions in the past month, so `(441 - 77) / 1029 = 35%`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, I didn't count those one at a time. :) I sorted by date, found the date I wanted to go back to, and multiplied the page number - 1 by the number of questions per page, and only counted the # of questions on the final page.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better#comment9644_3552&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/4476129#4476129" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26419" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3553" RevisionGUID="82a7e7ab-2c69-4b3c-8861-d8aeed54be40" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I went through all closed questions of the past month and deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Cross posts**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Questions that were identified as having asked on other sites before being asked on Programmers. None had answers, all were downvoted (which is good), and they were quite a few of them (didn't count, but aproximately 1/10).&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Questions posted here to avoid bans or suspensions on Stack Overflow**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Argh.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Rejected migrations**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions that were migrated here, mostly from Stack Overflow, and we closed them. Those stayed around locked, and there were quite a few of them.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Succesful migrations**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Questions that were migrated away and had found a better home at the target site, which means that they were got a few up votes (&gt;3), and up voted answers (and in _most_ cases accepted answers). Yes I checked each and every one of them.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Downvoted questions with no answers or no upvoted answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  All hopelessly off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Heavily downvoted questions with no highlish upvoted answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Heavily downvoted &lt;= -3, highlish upvoted &lt;= +2, all hopelessly off topic.&#xD;&#xA;	   	&#xD;&#xA;Questions that satisfied any of the above criteria were _not_ deleted if they had at least one re-open vote, and of course duplicates were left untouched. I asked The Workplace mods if they wanted a couple of questions, one was deleted by the OP before we get a chance to migrate (which is funny as the mod I talked with liked the question) and the other was rejected (but not deleted, as with some rewording it _might_ fit another site, waiting confirmation). I've also re-opened a question that was closed as not constructive, as it had two re-open votes and a good(ish) answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was honestly curious to see what was going on with the closed questions, I'm happy with _all_ closures, they are all justified, regardless if they were delete worthy or not. However deleting the questions was only a by product of the process, I only did it because it made sense to clean up while going through the closed questions, my primary motivation was to get a better feel of our closures and our overal closing attitude. My conclusions and thoughts are (in no particular order):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Snarky comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I saw _a lot_ of comments I didn't really like. The majority of commenters were being nice and helping OPs understand why their question was off topic, but there were a lot of comments that were... umph. Not outright rude, but not particularly helpful either. I do enjoy sarcasm as much as everyone, and perhaps a little more, but I think we should be a bit kinder to newer users. I understand that several of us are getting increasingly tired of having to deal with the same crap questions over and over, but I would like to ask everyone to refrain from commenting on newer users questions if they are not feeling productive. &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  I would like to suggest a very easy workflow: If you happen upon a snarky comment, and you feel you can provide better guidance to the OP, please do, even if it means re-iterating the earlier comment. And after you post your comment, flag the earlier one so we can remove it. Simple as that, and please avoid responding to the snarky comment with an even snarkier. A few of our higher rep users already do that, and I think they are setting a perfect example for the rest of us.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **Stack Overflow sucks**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not the _real_ Stack Overflow, that's a wonderful place, but the part of it that finds it's way here. The questions I deleted were of extreme low quality to begin with, but those that came from Stack Overflow were the worst of the worst. That includes direct migrations, questions asked here because of Stack Overflow bans or suspensions, and questions asked here after being closed on Stack Overflow because some &quot;friendly&quot; commenter pointed OP to Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Most Programmers regulars are probably aware of how troublesome our migration relationship with Stack Overflow is, however it's worth noting that 59% of migrations from there the past 90 days were good migrations, and Stack Overflow is our top referring site (excluding search engines). So it's not all bad.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;1. **We should be deleting some questions more quickly**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Cross posts, questions that were asked here to circumvent bans or suspensions on other sites, and failed migrations don't really serve any purpose staying around for long. All they do is contribute in our questions lists looking like a battlefield, without having any chance of being salvageable. 10K+ users please contribute delete votes when you see a comment identifying a question in one of the first two categories, lower rep users please flag if you happen upon those questions a week after they were asked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Not constructive**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  We have some not constructive questions that I think could be salvaged. I didn't have the energy to look deeper into them, but I invite everyone to go through [highly upvoted closed questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1) and see if you can help bring them up to shape. Don't go at it alone, if you find a question you think could be re-opened, post it in chat and ask others to evaluate and help. Don't go blindly casting re-open votes, always keep in mind that re-open votes are more powerfull in twos (and even more in threes).&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course deleting the questions changed the numbers Rachel references, the current numbers are (for the last 30 days, and at the time of writing this, new questions may have popped up):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Open questions         = 599&#xD;&#xA;    Closed questions (all) = 283&#xD;&#xA;    Total questions        = 882&#xD;&#xA;    ----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;    Migrated questions     = 37&#xD;&#xA;    Closed (excl. migrat.) = 246&#xD;&#xA;    ----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;    Closed % (incl. migr.) = 32%&#xD;&#xA;    Closed % (excl. migr.) = 27,8%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**27,8%** is our current close rate, having deleted an abudance of crap. Again this wasn't about hiding things under the carpet, this was about getting a clear idea of how many questions we close excluding:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions we have little control over (first three categories of the deletions),&#xD;&#xA;1. Migrations,&#xD;&#xA;1. Hopelessly off topic questions that aren't salvageable (last two categories of the deletions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am excluding migrations (from us to other sites), because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- The questions are labeled [migrated] and not [closed], it's reasonable to assume that they don't contribute to scaring newer users off (which is the basis of this question)&#xD;&#xA;- Migrations are cool, we are only trying to find a better place for the question, and most OPs really appreciate that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And don't forget that our closure rate includes duplicates, something that's not really cool, I _strongly_ believe that most OPs appreciate finding quick answers or at least don't scare off because of duplicates. However duplicates are still labeled [closed] and they might contribute in giving the wrong idea for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which leaves us with the hopelessly off topic questions, the heart of the matter, and of course the rest of the closed questions that I didn't delete. Yes, there is room for improvement. Yes, our expectations are a bit higher than most other Stack Exchange sites. Yes, we all want more people to love the site as much as we do, and yes we all want less closed questions. But is it a problem? I think not, at least not a major one and certainly not one we can't deal with efficiently. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start by being a bit more helpful when guiding newer users, and a bit more aggresive when protecting borderline not constructive questions. We (the mods) have said countless times that bad answers may lead to a borderline question getting closed, however the community hasn't really been responsive in defending those magnificently interesting questions by vehemently cleaning up the crap answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Use your down votes people, and please for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, resist the urge to add yet another opinion heavy answer to the pile. Great answers with references and _relevant_ experiences is what we are looking for, treat everything else like it should be treated. **The best way of lowering our close rate is by re-opening borderline questions.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [upcoming contest](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/programmers-se-contest-the-complete-outline) will probably bring us a lot new users, the coming month is a perfect opportunity to help the site grow. Be nice(r) to the newcomers, spend a few more seconds explaining why their questions might not fit or better yet, edit them to fit. Please avoid completely un-productive comments &amp; discussion about stuff only a handful of people may find interesting, long comment discussions, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26420" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3632" RevisionGUID="32984993-54ae-4708-bc89-5ddaff4df24f" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Sort of following up on https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3432/how-should-we-guide-questions-toward-the-workplace I was thinking our FAQ's bit that says we're NOT about &quot;career advice, including general workplace issues&quot; to explicitly reference The Workplace, where those questions, when constructive, *are* on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Workplace currently gets a substantial amount of traffic from Programmers (directly), so while I'm a bit concerned that some of the &quot;off topic anywhere on SE&quot; questions will spill over into workplace, it seems people have behaved themselves reasonable well so far. I also think this is a great time to *try* this arrangement right now as question volume is low on Workplace so, as a pro temp moderator on Workplace, it's pretty easy to manage if a few problems slip over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a good idea? How can we word it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also started a receiving discussion on [Workplace Meta][1]; I want the blessing of both sites before we continue with this of course.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/274/would-we-want-to-be-mentioned-in-the-programmers-faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26421" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3694" RevisionGUID="33ea2d98-1ceb-45df-8ae7-f9db100c4763" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Programmers Stack Exchange is one of the 84 (currently) Q&amp;A sites of the Stack Exchange network, that includes Stack Overflow. You can find more details about Stack Exchange at [stackexchange.com](http://stackexchange.com/) and more specifically: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [About Stack Exchange][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [List of all Stack Exchange sites][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are interested in finding out what Programmers is about, you should read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Our [about page][3], &#xD;&#xA;- Our [FAQ][4], and &#xD;&#xA;- Our frequently asked Meta questions, assembled in this [index][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the &quot;human verification&quot; thingy, it pop ups occasionally (and it's a bit annoying!), but it pops up less frequently if you register for an account. If you already have a Stack Overflow account, you can use the same credentials for Programmers, and your two accounts will be automatically linked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#answers&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1647/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26422" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3726" RevisionGUID="376b3a3e-caa1-4931-9451-2fb11da2cfbd" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="To be explicitly clear, this post is coming exclusively from me as member of the Programmers community, not as a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I believe our name is the biggest reason for the extremely high number of bad/off-topic questions that get asked here, because users not familiar with our site think this is a Q&amp;A site about programmers, not one about conceptual software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like [Mark Trapp][1], I want to see data to support this. I'm not convinced that the name has anything to do with the closure rate. Anyone who spends a couple of minutes looking at the FAQ or reading existing questions should see what the site is about, and anyone posting here should take a few minutes to understand the site before they post. The very first line in the FAQ even says that &quot;Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have any numbers, but I get the feeling that most people who visit this site learn what it's about. Even if you look at other sites, [like Stack Overflow][2], you can see that there are closed questions that can be avoided if people read the FAQ and understand the site before randomly posting. You don't spend effort dealing with (and I'm borrowing some ideas from some corporate HR policies) the 5% of the people who are the &quot;bad apples&quot;. You focus on the 95% of the people who are good contributors and make it possible for them to do what they do best.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we advertise as a Q&amp;A site about programmers, however we are not a site about programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see that anywhere. Every place I see refers to the site being &quot;for professional programmers&quot; and a place to ask &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot;. If there is a place that makes it seem like this site is for questions about programmers or being a programmer, please provide a link to it. If there is any ambiguity, it should be cleared up. However, I haven't found any yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, from my personal experiences (about a dozen or so data points, which is most likely statistically insignificant), the name does cause a **small** problem when pitching the site to people with professional titles such as &quot;Software Architect&quot;, &quot;Systems Architect&quot;, &quot;Software Quality Assurance Engineer&quot;, &quot;Software Process Improvement Specialist&quot;, &quot;Process Engineer&quot;, and so on. These people all could ask and answer questions that are on-topic here, however none of them consider themselves programmers. It's not impossible to pitch the site after mentioning &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot; and highlighting specific topics that they would be interested in, but the name requires an explanation of the acceptable content to people who aren't programmers. It makes an elevator pitch (&lt;2 minutes) more difficult, but not impossible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that this is the same point that [jmort253 brought up in the comments][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If any reason exists to consider changing the name, I think that it would be to rebrand the site to better encompass the things that [we consider on topic][4]. Many of the people who are professionals in areas of architecture, process, software licenses, and the business side of software developers might not consider themselves programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be curious about what experiences people have had pitching this site to non-programming software development professionals (anyone who has the potential to ask and answer on-topic questions, but does not professionally build software) and if there were any difficulties creating an elevator pitch (30-120 seconds) to get them interested in the site. I think that such information could be used to make a case for rebranding - if a member of this community can't easily convey the purpose of this community to someone who would be interested in it, that could be problematic to the continued growth and development of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3724/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=closed:1&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3718/change-the-name-of-programmers-to-something-that-more-accurately-reflects-the-si#comment10281_3718&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26423" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3733" RevisionGUID="87e34c31-927e-45af-ac2e-4a063fe45ebf" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I write this both as a 20,000+ user and former elected moderator on Programmers, and as a community manager at Stack Exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First and foremost: **we will not be changing this site's name**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why? Well, let's talk about that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As others have brought up here, there is no evidence right now to support the claim that the site's name is leading to its problems. If anything, I have a counterexample - the site itself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think by now we all know how [the site came about](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/64046/155160). When [the new scope was handed down](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/), it was not received terribly well and we're still sorting some of that out. The fact is, though, that throughout most of last year, the site slowly evolved to move away from the [&quot;Stack Overflow's toilet bowl&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl) image and to what it is today. It happened through comments, (sometimes bitter) meta arguments, flag handling, etc., and look at what we have now - there's an engaged, active community involved in moderation and governance. Even though there were a [couple](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title) [discussions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site), the site name did not matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I remember when most of the front page would be closed questions and I'd be somewhere promoting the site and trying not to feel embarrassed to point people to it. I wouldn't be embarrassed now. I look at the front page and I see 6 closed questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154283/should-i-demand-unit-testing-from-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; and in my opinion rightly so - it's a discussion-oriented question designed to affirm the asker's existing belief. Discouraging questions like this one is a part of our core principles at Stack Exchange to the point where it's written down in the shared FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, **avoid** asking subjective questions where ...  &#xD;&#xA;  &gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154339/advice-on-scrum-for-the-solitary-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as a duplicate of a [canonical, open question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/220/agile-for-the-solo-developer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154342/are-there-references-discussing-the-use-parallel-programming-as-a-development-me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Reference-seeking question. I don't have a strong feeling on this one. Could go either way, personally, but usually questions like this result in poorly curated lists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154338/identifying-methods-with-a-specified-id-in-d&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Migrated to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154282/if-variable-type-not-working-properly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Off-topic, though opted to not migrate, which is fair enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154270/is-learning-blackberry-programming-a-good-choice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Canonically off-topic for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I look at these questions, I see a pattern: **all of them are about some aspect of software development**. Changing your name to &quot;Software Development Stack Exchange&quot; or anything of that ilk will not stop questions like these. Changing your name to an abstract concept will not automatically draw people in. What attracts experts to a site is the content. Focus on that instead and you will continue to grow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, Gaming SE is currently in the spotlight after having been [rebranded to Arqade](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/06/welcome-to-the-arqade/), so it's natural that that's prompting other sites to ask about getting a brand and a domain of their own. Our official answer is that you can ask, but there is no definite answer. **Name changes will happen exceedingly rarely at best, and you should not plan on, depend on, or even anticipate it.** There's no fixed traffic criteria or an &quot;awesome meter&quot; that will say definitively that you've *earned* your name change and that it *will* happen. If we do it again, it will likely be an act-of-god kind of scenario. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example is Fitness &amp; Nutrition now known as Physical Fitness. In that case, part of the site's name explicitly mentioned a subject that was off-topic on the site. The site's community rallied together to start enforcing that and we eventually matched their efforts with a new name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not in either of these situations. So the bottom line is, stop fixating on the name. A name change isn't a silver bullet that will fix your problems. Keep growing the site, solidifying the scope, addressing whatever other issues you (as a community) perceive to exist, but don't worry about the name. It is not holding you back." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26424" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3836" RevisionGUID="82025174-cd33-42b1-8645-f98c6de50772" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Programmers.SE, we need to talk.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've had a rough couple of years, what with being originally a place to ask anything and everything and having to shape up. I get that it's annoying to still see off-topic question or questions that are unanswerable day in and day out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that's no excuse for the excessively rude and offensive comments and answers that currently happen on [questions like these](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/158554/8). Questions like that aren't great: they're probably off-topic. But when we have users with literally thousands of reputation leaving comments like the now-deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No thanks, I'm not your [expletive deleted].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And answers [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/158558/8) that link to extremely condescending and overtly hostile [GIFs like these](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LvpOO.gif), we have completely lost our way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't an isolated incident, either: hostile comments and answers like these happen all the time, and what appears to be increasing frequency, from people with enough reputation to know better:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [If I had a quarter for every time I've seen posts like this, I wouldn't need my job. Son, I suggest you learn to program if you want to create one.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154430/looking-for-a-programmer#comment294513_154430)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [A young, good looking developer could always work as a stripper but even then it is not a surefire way.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/152123/how-can-a-developer-realize-the-full-value-of-his-work#comment289122_152123) (+2)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [this is a rant ( there is not answerable question ) by someone with an inflated ego at best, and completely off topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/152123/how-can-a-developer-realize-the-full-value-of-his-work#comment289123_152123) (+5)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [There really isn't a question here, if under the thinly veiled bias and flamebait there is actually a small semblance of a real question then it not constructive and inviting of debate. And besides security being a non-issue - You keep believing that and high price consultants will be making bank for a long time cleaning up the mess.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/149956/stored-procedures-out-of-style#comment284230_149956) (+3)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [IMHO, if indeed it was asked like you quote it, this is a stupid question, and that should be the correct answer.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132905/situations-where-22-does-not-necessarily-equal-4#comment248793_132905)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [nice rant, now - where is the question?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/157143/dealing-with-technically-ignorant-and-apathetic-bosses-and-colleagues#comment299686_157143) (+1)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Answer that links to LMGTFY and Guru.com](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/153916/8) (+1)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Anything wrong with Google today? &quot;Javadoc for C++&quot; brings excellent results. ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155146/javadoc-for-c#comment295311_155146) (+3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me be clear: we make the internet a worse place when stuff like this happens. We make our site look like trash.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, stop it. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. Vote to close, flag, down-vote, or leave a polite comment explaining to the user where they went wrong and just *move on.* If you find yourself unable to resist leaving a snarky or hostile comment on a question or answer you don't like, I humbly suggest you do what I did: take a break from the site. It'll still be here when you come back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Kicking off the Summer of Love](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/07/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Etiquette for posting civil and informative comments](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/138173/etiquette-for-posting-civil-and-informative-comments/)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3626/what-are-some-examples-of-good-guiding-comments-to-leave-users-to-help-underst" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26426" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3894" RevisionGUID="c4da45a9-a2a6-47c6-95d3-ffdd2a59f4e6" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Something us regular users can do would be to make an ad for the blog in the [Community Promotion Ads](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2635/1130) meta post, and vote it up a few times so it shows up on occasion in the advertisement box on the right side of the screen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Thanks to Morons][1], we now have an ad for the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Screenshot of ad][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2635/community-promotion-ads-2012/3905#3905&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/UPNBP.png &quot;ad for the blog&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Oj2dZ.png " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26427" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3920" RevisionGUID="527d9485-1301-4481-bcb7-8502ba09576b" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="What kind reaction would you expect to a post looking [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/161525/31260)?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **This question would surely be considered off-topic, but... A friend of mine who lives in France is going to marry soon. And we (his friends) are looking for a nice place to make a geek party somewhere in Central Europe. If someone has had an experience like this please let us know.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvote, close-vote, flag for deletion? Yeah I did all that, &lt;sup&gt;yeah post closed, flag is marked helpful&lt;/sup&gt; now guess what?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/EcH5u.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guess what? Post still hangs there, right at the front page. Guess what? it even attracted an upvote. Next thing would probably be some kind soul going to suggest something helpful in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You know, I spend _some_ time at Programmers, studying questions and answers. I learn a lot and where possible, I try to teach others by answering, I gain a reasonably high rep and I am proud of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I use every opportunity to refer colleagues to particular Programmers questions that relate to our day job, especially when there are my answers &lt;sup&gt;(for comparison I rarely did so with programming community I participated in prior to SE)&lt;/sup&gt;. By doing so, I hope they get impressed by my contribution and in particular with the fact that it is done in high-quality, high standard,&#xD;&#xA;##professional looking environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Now, next guy I point to some valuable answer, reads it, gets impressed, clicks &lt;kbd&gt;QUESTIONS&lt;/kbd&gt; to see what else is there and what they see is...&#xD;&#xA;##looking for a nice place to make a geek party&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Would you expect me to complain seeing snarky comments on a **visible** post like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Give me a break. Give me a freaking break.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The guy I mention above -- that colleague I pointed to some good answer -- would better see that community has low tolerance for garbage like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would sure worry about snarky / unprofessional stuff in reasonably (even remotely) appropriate posts - even downvoted, even not too high quality - exactly for the reasons explained above. I want others I refer to Programmers to see it following high professional standards. In that sense, your heads-up would be helpful if it was accompanied with relevant examples. But it isn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultra low quality posts used as examples here are whole another game to me. These posts damage site image no matter if there are snarky comments there or not. Such posts should be quickly deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All eight example questions that were referred to since [revision 6](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/3836/6) are currently **removed**. If you worry about snarky comments in posts like that, well the real solution is simply to delete these posts - the sooner the better. Whatever comments are there, will be deleted along the way, making it not an issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EcH5u.png &quot;downvoted, close-voted, flagged&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26429" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3984" RevisionGUID="54d8e054-78cb-4e1e-abf2-6a7166b8d834" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="##The general policy on deletions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Why are some questions or answers removed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are extremely off topic, or of very low quality, may be removed at the discretion of the community and moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Over time, closed questions that are not useful as signpoints to other questions may also be removed, as well as questions which have no significant activity over a very long period after being asked. For additional guidance, see How to Ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - commentary on the question or other answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asking another, different question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - “thanks!” or “me too!” responses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - exact duplicates of other answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - barely more than a link to an external site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - not even a partial answer to the actual question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you wish to improve an existing answer, click edit. For additional guidance, see How to Answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the policy, I'm sure you are aware of it, I'm only including it for completeness. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Questions with historical significance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a [historical lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for) that has been introduced (fairly recently) as a counter measure to link rot: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What is the purpose of a Historical Lock?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A historical lock preserves older content that was very popular when it was originally posted, but is now off-topic or otherwise out of scope for the site it is posted on. Historically locking a post ends the debate over whether a question should be kept on the site or deleted, and is often the final state of a question that has been deleted and undeleted more than once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **How are questions affected by historical locking?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In addition to the post notice being prominently displayed, posts which are historically locked are &quot;frozen in time;&quot; they cannot be voted on, answered, edited or commented. Historically-locked questions are omitted from normal question lists (those on the home page, /questions, and the various per-tag lists), but can still be found by searching for words in the post or title (via either site-search or Google, etc). The visual appearance of the entire post is altered by removal of the voting arrows from the question and all answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that historical locked questions on meta sites are not hidden in this manner, though their answers are still frozen in the same fashion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions can be historically locked when:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is contentious; i.e. it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When is it not appropriate to historically-lock a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should not be historically locked if they:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Are being actively maintained, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Have little or no redeeming value.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A good rule of thumb: If the question does not minimally meet Jeff Atwood's 3rd rule in the &quot;[We Hate Fun Here](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/)&quot; blog post, it's probably not a good candidate for historical locking. The third rule is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Does this question teach me anything that could make me better at my job? Can I learn something from it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I request a historical lock on a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Flag the question for moderator attention, with the &quot;custom description&quot; option. In the flag description, explain why you think the post should be historically locked. A moderator will evaluate the question using the criteria outlined above, and will either lock the question, or decline your flag with an explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Alternatively, if you want to try and gain more community support for the question, or contest the moderator decision, you can post a question here on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you are currently under 10K, your only option to request a historical lock is to post a question about it on Meta. I would advice you to use a far more appropriate tone that in this question, and: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Clearly explain why you think the question has redeeming value,&#xD;&#xA;- Politely request from the community to review it and decide whether it should be historically locked or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not _every_ deleted question qualifies for the historical lock, please do _not_ waste everyone's time by bringing up questions on Meta that clearly don't qualify. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Clarification:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The historical lock is only meant for _deleted_ questions (or questions that are about to be deleted), locking closed questions prevents them from being edited and voted on. Furthermore the community cannot reverse a lock, while it can (and often does) reverse a closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Changing the policy &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears you disagree with it. Fair enough. Change it. Stop complaining about it, and change it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I'd support any **constructive** attempt to solve the problem, however I must point out that there have been tons of discussions on Stack Overflow about deletions, and although the &quot;link rot&quot; problem is true for popular Stack Overflow questions it's almost completely irrelevant for lower traffic sites like Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand that clicking on a link, only to find a 404 page stinks, but should also understand that keeping crap around stinks more. And although there might be some gems amongst our deleted questions, most of them are plain crap. This is _not_ Stack Overflow, if you are interested in changing Stack Overflow's or the network's policy, please post your question on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meta Programmers is a place were we discuss Programmers specific issues, and from a Programmers perspective **the deleted popular questions that were linked all over the place were _not_ ours to begin with**. Unfortunately tons and tons of crap were migrated here from Stack Overflow in the early days of the site. Most of these questions were closed (at some point), which send them back to Stack Overflow. What was deleted here was their (locked) rejected migration stubs. What was linked all over the place was their Stack Overflow URL, and not (so much) their Programmers one. If you want to make a case for them, please do it on Stack Overflow, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally speaking, closed but popular questions are _not_ being deleted on Programmers, at least not systematically. I've deleted more posts than all my fellow moderators _combined_, if popular questions were being deleted, trust me, I'd know it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Are we making the internet better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, let's what our most voted deleted questions are: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. What's your favorite “programmer ignorance” pet peeve? (+410),&#xD;&#xA;1. What's your most controversial programming opinion? (+391),&#xD;&#xA;1. What real life bad habits has programming given you? (+368),&#xD;&#xA;1. As a programmer what single discovery has given you the greatest boost in productivity? (+315),&#xD;&#xA;1. How to hide Thinking at Work so that the Non-Programmers don't suspect Slacking? (+257)&#xD;&#xA;1. What are the best RSS feeds for programmers/developers? (238)&#xD;&#xA;1. Best Java book you have read so far (+211)&#xD;&#xA;1. How did you get your first programming job? (+140) &#xD;&#xA;1. Does the D programming language have a future? (+138)&#xD;&#xA;1. What's wrong with cplusplus.com? (+128)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;Best Java book you have read so far&quot; one is the one (from the list) with the most views, around 33K. And zero answers. Yeap, zero. It's a question that got all of its answers on Stack Overflow, and 99% of it's activity, including views, there. Gone. Again, if you want to make a case for it, go to Meta Stack Overflow please, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly _don't_ know if we are making the internet better. However having (partially) reviewed some of the above questions, I don't see any indication that we are making the internet worse by deleting them. _If_ they were originally asked on Programmers and were part of our community's history, we would have a whole different discussion, but right now all I can say about them and their eventual fate is: **meh**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#The blog post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was the worst possible example you could bring forth: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The question was deleted long time ago,&#xD;&#xA;1. I could only find five links to the Programmers version of it,&#xD;&#xA;1. The blog post _clearly indicated_ that it would lead to a 404 for most people,&#xD;&#xA;1. The URL was `nofollow`, so there wasn't an issue with indexing,&#xD;&#xA;1. The only reason the URL was included was for our 10K users to be able to review it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, the completely inappropriate tone you chose for your question made me re-think the whole effort to salvege **old and long forgotten** deleted questions by converting them to blog posts. Although I do not have any expectations for appreciation for my efforts to give back to the community, I am not a moron and will _not_ freely volunteer my time to promote the community through an activity that has absolutely nothing to do with my diamond status when this is what I get for it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At some point you got to say enough is enough. I've removed the url from the blog post, so users who would deliberatily click on a link that says &quot;hey, this is deleted&quot; won't have a bad experience. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Trash Stack Exchange solution (and its many variants)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been proposed countless times, and every time it has been denied by Stack Exchange. Personally I find it a good enough solution, but Stack Exchange doesn't seem to care enough for hosting content that has been deemed unsuitable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Stargazer712's proposal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stargazer712 made what I must admit is an [interesting suggestion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3976/25936) (carefully hidden under tons of borderline insulting crap). However it's based on a misunderstanding of the scale of the effort to salvage questions by converting them to blog posts. We are certainly not talking about converting _every_ deleted question to a blog post, I have found 5 so far that I'd like to salvage, plus another one from Stack Overflow and _no one_ else has shown any interest in this. So, for all intents and purposes when we are talking about the blog as a way to salvage questions, we are talking about a total of six questions. That's it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that 2 days after you posted this you still haven't brought forth any other evidence of systematic deletion of popular content with at least some redeeming value on Programmers, I'm sorry but I'll have to dismiss this as a non issue. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, we had numerous organized clean up efforts in the past that included deletions. I'm honestly hoping those are _not_ the deletions you have in mind, as all the organized clean up efforts were discussed thoroughly on Meta before they began, and only began when it was obvious that the community supported them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you do update your question, please either ping me in chat or post a comment here so I can review your updates. Apologies for the tone in my earlier answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26430" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4013" RevisionGUID="174d8c93-b595-4ee2-9502-9f38f98b4c74" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="@Rachel just pointed it out this morning. [Pierre 303's account is gone!][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What happened to him? Was he at odds with the way Stack Exchange was being run?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He was an all-star! The departure of a user of his caliber is a significant loss for this community!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anyone explain?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** If Pierre chooses to come back in a year, can we simply undelete his account?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Usogf.png][2]][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/6092021#6092021&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Usogf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3914/31260 &quot;who's Pierre?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26431" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4095" RevisionGUID="b420120c-09cf-4470-bb0d-12517c45fc92" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm seeing this on Chromium 22 (Windows &amp; Linux) &amp; Firefox 15 (Windows):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The footer line is a bit in the way. Tried the usual clearing of caches/hard refresh but that doesn't seem to help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Related: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4064/footer-line-isnt-where-its-supposed-to-be-in-review-stats-and-history - but that's not on the same page.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also broke in Chrome 22, but only on the review page, not the stats:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additional info &amp;ndash; this link:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/&#xD;&#xA;               this thing here looks important ^&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which is what &quot;review&quot; in the header links to, leads me to a page with the footer misplaced as in the screenshots above. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**But**, this one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which is what the &quot;Review&quot; in the in-page header (to the left of the stats and buttons in the review pages themselves) links to, leads me to a page with the footer _where it's supposed to be_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hoping this could help debugging the issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vw9Et.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZXKDT.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26433" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5276" RevisionGUID="e1bd6c27-24f8-4639-8d7d-012d169aa83f" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Manishearth's answer is (basically) the short version. Our core development team is ~7 people strong, and our design team is *literally* a single person. There's *lots* of projects, network-wide, that vie equally for their attention. Eight people handle *all* user feature requests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The longer answer is a bit more complicated. Since I'm talking to people involved in the SDLC, I'm a little astonished that you're not all a bit more sympathetic. After all, the network is 90+ sites, and we serve double-digit millions of users, and getting the project *right* from step one takes time and person-power we don't really have right now. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bugs and errors you point out, while important, aren't going to get top priority because there are other problems that affect the *entire* network that may require immediate attention (e.g. a site blackout) or are concentrating developer resources right now (e.g. the `/review` queue, or our localization efforts). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What explains such passiveness? Is it because Joel Spolsky and his team lost interest in Programmers.SE, like he repeatedly explains in his podcasts?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, let me clear about something: there is more to the Stack Exchange team than Joel or the dev team. For one, there's the team I'm on: your (hopefully beloved) [Community Managers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/99338/who-are-the-community-managers-and-what-do-they-do). And, in fact, we even [hired on one of your moderators](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2875/41785) based on her work here. So, no, the *company* doesn't hate Programmers. Denying your community's complicated history would be foolish and short-sighted, and a great number of really *excellent* lessons were learned over the course of the last two years. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;passiveness&quot; you're referring to is entirely perceived; it's a symptom of the real issue, which is that our development team is overextended. Their time is an extremely precious, scarce resource. Not to put too fine a point on it: they're only human. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Who is (or is there somebody) in charge of implementing new features and fixing bugs on Programmers.SE?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Design bugs are usually handled by our always-wonderful, one-man design team of [Jin Yang](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1685/jin). Jin is literally *one single person* handling *all site design issues* across the network. Jin *also* does the design for our marketing initiatives, some of our advertising, helps us make fliers and small promo items, [puts together top user swag](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1669/41785) and a whole host of things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is there a better place than Meta to ask for new features and to report bugs?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No. Meta is exactly the correct place for you to be reporting these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look, I'm sympathetic. I really, really am. I've been [working on making features happen](https://boardgames.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/867/we-should-implement-magic-the-gathering-pop-ups-on-hover#comment1635_867) on some of our other sites for months now. The toughest is knowing that [doing a fun, exciting event](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5240/do-we-want-hats) would basically &quot;cost&quot; us a feature for a site. All decisions regarding dev allocations are made with great care and after a *lot* of deliberation. We don't just assign development time to things willy-nilly because ***we cannot do so***. It's *literally* a thing we can't do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're dissatisfied with our ability to meet our users' needs (and it does sound like you are) then you're in luck. Right now, [**we're hiring for a bunch of positions**](http://stackexchange.com/about/hiring), including developers. If you know someone who could/should be working for us, who loves our sites (yes, even Programmers!) and is a talented developer who is looking for a new challenge, ***tell them to apply!***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, for the mean time, I can only advise you sit tight and be patient. It's all on The List&lt;sup&gt;TM&lt;/sup&gt; and I'm confident we'll get to it. It just might take some time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26434" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5348" RevisionGUID="3cd4284b-4fa3-4959-aa71-8835ecf0d205" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is what I came up with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've already posted it in the [2013 Community Ads question][2], if you like it you should upvote the answer there, and the ad will start appearing automagically. And if you don't like it... well you should have seen the first draft (I even managed to misspell programmers!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Iq29h.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5347/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26435" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5746" RevisionGUID="06a5ab7b-6dbc-4c8b-b6da-7ee84795b465" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[faq][1] says &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;it is **not** *about*&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; career advice, salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see lots of career questions asked on programmers.stackexchange, some closed, many not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/116040/transitioning-into-a-programming-career-from-system-administration&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49018/cs-concentrations-and-career-paths&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/86042/switching-domains-in-ones-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/54423/switching-to-a-career-in-machine-learning&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2483/why-are-all-of-the-good-career-related-threads-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'm a bit confused on their interpretation of &quot;career advice&quot;. When is a question about one's career qualify as career advice, and when does it not. For these [career] questions,  what does your decision-to-close tree look like?&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26436" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5766" RevisionGUID="4ee51250-9747-4c14-8ed0-e40fbf836e63" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1/comments-are-a-code-smell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq), I would expect it to fall under the &quot;good&quot; topic of Software Engineering, and from [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/), it seems to meet almost all the criteria for &quot;Good Subjective&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Not only to the answers posted all agree, they also all explain _why_.&#xD;&#xA;* Most answers are medium-length, not short.&#xD;&#xA;* Most of the upvoted ones are impartial (that second one, not so much).&#xD;&#xA;* On the other hand, that second one falls under this criteria - it shares an experience to explain _why_.&#xD;&#xA;* There are references in some of the less-upvoted answers.&#xD;&#xA;* This one in particular seems to have hit a nerve - it's most definitely not &quot;mindless social fun&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_And_ there's the massive amount of upvotes both the question and answers have, so it was definitely a question users liked.  (I'm still using it as a reference _because_ of the high-quality answers and examples!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So... Shouldn't this be an open question on this site?  It seems like _exactly_ the type of thing [we should be encouraging](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for).  (Perhaps, just edit the question's &quot;What do you think?&quot; and change it to &quot;Is he right?&quot;)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26437" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5771" RevisionGUID="893a09de-58d1-453c-9a24-cb3c85b4860c" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Not entirely sure what you're asking here, but... The various quality checks do take rep into account - beyond a certain point, it's assumed you know what you're doing in certain areas (code formatting, for instance).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The basic writing-style checks apply to everyone though. Complete sentences, punctuation, and enough text to reasonably explain a problem are universally important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[As World Engineer notes][1], suggested edit audits are temporarily attributed to a random recent editor - they don't actually appear in his activity though, nor does approval or rejection have any effect on him. Once you've completed the audit, the [Community user][2] will be displayed instead. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5769/does-rep-count-for-anything-anymore/5770#5770&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/-1/community" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26438" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6051" RevisionGUID="b81d26d5-1ec6-4f3d-abc6-c6181caccfbc" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's not a bug but a &quot;feature&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way the links are tracked are via the &quot;share&quot; links which are of the form:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6050/47`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;where the first number is the question id and the second is the user id. The link above is for this question and has my user id. If it was your share link it would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6050/14363`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Someone else has shared a question but introduced a typo to the link which just happens to match your user id.&#xD;&#xA;2. Someone has constructed a link of this form and used your user id - possibly by accident, but in the case of Ars Technica it appears to be deliberate policy to &quot;reward&quot; a specific user (see [Matsemann's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6052/47))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are no moderator tools available to tell us where incoming links are from. I assume that the community team would have access to this information, but I don't know whether they'd share that information." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26439" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6071" RevisionGUID="3a85f5ab-b5a1-498a-8c7b-f4837a6f5526" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For me, Stack Exchange is the last resort for questions (I have a few floating on Stack Overflow) - after I have researched everything I can on the subject.  Many times I find the answer to the question before I get to Stack Exchange - not always, but many times.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that finding and [making mistakes](http://thecodelesscode.com/case/100) is an essential part of learning and so I try to make as many as I can before I get to Stack Exchange.  Going to Stack Exchange first circumvents all the possible mistakes/learning experiences that I could have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I do find myself with a P.SE question, many times it requires context or is about opinions.  These questions aren't always appropriate for P.SE, however, being active in chat, the questions are asked there.  Sure, I don't get any rep (I get stars instead!) but that doesn't matter too much in the end.  The questions in chat would have gotten closed as posted questions - too localized, or off topic (a polling question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that reputation often comes from *popular* questions and their answers.  For these, it is about learning how to write well (an often neglected skill for programmers) and knowing how and where to research (independent of the knowledge) knowing where to look rather than knowing the answer right off the top of one's head.  Having the question and answer show up on the social networks (my highest rep answer found its way to reddit and got a significant amount of rep that I'm still rather embarrassed about) can substantially boost rep.  Lastly, as questions age they still produce rep - something that is a year old still pays dividends on reputation, and over time this leads to being a high rep user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, you may also find [Why always answers of users who have the maximum reputation in a question accepted and voted up?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5868/why-always-answers-of-users-who-have-the-maximum-reputation-in-a-question-accept) to shed some additional light on the question from another perspective." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26440" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6224" RevisionGUID="07529f9f-a58d-4bdd-be7c-a3ec110207b4" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked a question about joining a startup as a grad, specifically about the scenario where there wouldn't be any more senior programmers working above the grads: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/214306/as-a-soon-to-be-grad-will-my-skills-and-or-career-suffer-if-i-join-a-startup-wh&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was closed as off-topic (career advice), but I think the question of whether grads should join startups where there might not be technical leadership is one that could apply to lots of people, and the information in the accepted answer are definitely general enough to be helpful to future readers. Thus the closure of the question seems to go against the 'rule of thumb' from this officially cited answer: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it help if I edited the question remove most of the information that is specific to my situation, making it even more generally applicable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two final things: I flagged the question for mod attention and was told to come here. Also I'm not new to Stack Exchange, I'm an established user on Stack Overflow, but I wanted to ask this programmers question with a throwaway, seeing as I'm expressing concern about a potential future employer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26441" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6240" RevisionGUID="ecdc91c4-0482-496c-8cbd-c2f5864794e2" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Site scope and question quality expectations seem to be set, stabilized and well understood by majority of _regulars_ long time ago, as discussed eg here: [Are you still confused about what Programmers is for?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my observations, most troublesome questions are either asked by newcomers or are old ones [bump](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info)ed by answers from newcomers which makes me feel that somehow, site &quot;image&quot; for those newcomers is blurred.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on several months of observations on questions that are exposed / promoted to SE network users via [collider](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info) I firmly believe that to large extent, misguiding newcomers about Programmers is caused by **[the way how questions are selected for exposure at collider](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/202962/165773 &quot;issue details and change request officially submitted here: 'Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign'&quot;)**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how I see collider damage to Programmers is described in more details in this answer: [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I think this is likely related to issues with answers quality in hot questions ([discussed here in more details](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;Answers quality in hot questions&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Hot garbage waves&quot; in the answers once or twice a week&#xD;&#xA;* poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making interesting and well presented problems look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/)  &#xD;&#xA;* regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;An &quot;outsider&quot; reading low quality answers in hot questions, could naturally think,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;hey here I can _chit-chat about how git is fantastic_ and get my portion of cheap upvotes, c00l&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a **steady source of misguided contributors**.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...the way how users can be confused about what Programmers are about is probably best explained in a [comment made by Ben Brocka](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13830_5482 &quot;here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;Often hot questions have lots of bad or meh answers that are bad enough to drag down quality of the content and general discourse (encouraging similarly bad new answers)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Side note. For the sake of completeness, I don't think that collider damage is contained within Programmers (and [Workplace](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1967/168 &quot;another site suffering from brain-damaging hotness formula: 'victims of the Stack Exchange(TM MultiCollider SuperDropdown(TM)'&quot;) for that matter).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As discussed eg [here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10706837#10706837), it looks like damage is spread over whole SE network, even though indirectly:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...really, say guys at SO are protected from _direct_ impact. Meaning when they see _meh_, they can flag _no-code_ and get crap deleted. But thing is, it's SO users who look at collider and who visit &quot;sticky&quot; questions and who pick the crappy attitude and they get back to SO and get posting _meh_ answers there  &#xD;&#xA;and, well, there are hundreds and thousands of them. And _meh_ attitude gets spread over multiple questions and SO mods only can delete minor part of crap that has been influenced through collider&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;they start thinking it's the norm. That's what low quality answers in hot questions teach readers. That's what &quot;educated&quot; readers spread further, to their answers to other questions. That lowers overall quality of answers in multiple other questions, that is the site-wide damage  &#xD;&#xA;This makes it look like good questions are those having many meh answers, the effect that is amplified by these questions being highly visible to collider audience - hundreds and thousands of SE users. Misguided users spread acquired attitude further into other questions and answers, posting stuff that follows what they saw at the &quot;cool&quot; (&quot;hot&quot;) questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;**nobody is really protected, collider spreads it across all the SE network**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26442" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6293" RevisionGUID="4a0e9744-b632-4ef6-8ced-005e2985e7a0" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Between CS.SE, P.SE, and SO the scope of each overlaps and depends significantly on what type of answer the person asking wants get.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off as a starter, read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/190106/dealing-with-find-out-whos-going-to-buy-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;    * http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/13420/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206073/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants-accounting-for-possible-absence&#xD;&#xA;    * http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/12151/who-brings-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll also point to a recent example - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218222/searching-integer-sequences - this question would be perfectly suitable on *either* (or both?) P.SE and CS.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging by the words in the question, it is a very non-trivial problem.  A question that asks about an algorithm could show up on any of the sites and be appropriate.  A slight tweak to the question ('i am having a doubt about the c i wrote') and it would rapidly get pushed to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, realize that the scope of a site, while it has inertia to it also does have some variability over time.  The scope of a site may get more strict (to the point where TCS is) or it may loosen up over time (do you accept homework problems?) This is very evident when looking at the history of questions on P.SE to see what was acceptable a year or two ago and what it is now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, judging by the migration stats and the failure - most times, it is asked on the right site *or* isn't appropriate anywhere.  For example, 2 posts from CS where migrated to P.SE in the last and one of them was rejected.  7 posts were migrated from P.SE to CS.SE and one of them was rejected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If humans can't get get it right, do you think a program could?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *really* want to take a crack at it - go grab the Stack Exchange data dump http://data.stackexchange.com/help and see if you can identify questions that would get migrated (or closed).  The 'or closed' bit was the topic of a [machine learning contest](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-machine-learning-contest/) - though I don't think it was accurate enough to merit inclusion... or something.  http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/161538/are-there-any-robot-moderators-on-so&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68689/automatic-central-question-sorting on MSO which asked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've noticed the Stack Exchange has grown immensely since its inception as Stack Overflow. As a result, I find asking questions in the right place here unnecessarily challenging. I'm wondering if you have thought about implementing a feature on the Stack Exchange central site where people ask the question there and either the scripts or staff/community members would sort the question to the right place.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Not sure if this would be too challenging or costly to implement. Just a thought to save your time while making users' lives easier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jeff said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you're not willing to invest the small amount of time it takes to figure out where to ask your question -- the odds of your question being a good one are .. small." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26443" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6299" RevisionGUID="92d82f05-28e0-47d8-81db-f8b11ec96b2d" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="When looking at the 10k tools, I saw a little '1' next to the flags and thought I'd go poke at it to see what it was.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was a very short answer, not more than a poorly formed sentence.  But it vaguely tried to answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Elsequestion - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5607/why-is-this-question-not-low-quality/5609#5609&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The &quot;very low quality&quot; flag is intended for questions that have severe formatting or content problems, that can't be solved by editing and/or commenting. If you can parse the question and understand what it says, it's not a &quot;very low quality&quot; one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is, how should I respond to the automatic flag?   As I see it, there are four options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Dispute it (its not low quality).  By the above standards, thats probably true.  However, when its a mid to low 70's on that quality meter... I really can't say in good conscious &quot;yea, thats an ok answer&quot;... because its not.&#xD;&#xA;2. Agree with the flag (that it is low quality).  Add another flag to it.  However, I like a consistent message on flagging, and that seems to run counter to what is established.  People are confused enough with what flags get handled how.  &#xD;&#xA;3. Custom mod flag &quot;Bleh&quot;.  I prefer &quot;meh&quot;, but &quot;Bleh&quot; seems to get results.&#xD;&#xA;4. Just ignore it and when it shows up in the Low Quality Review Queue, recommend deletion there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I went with #4.  I am just wondering if one of the first three is a better way of handing the automatic low quality flags from the system in a consistent way with how they are handled from flagging from a question (since the mods don't know (I presume) which way a flag came from).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To given some context, the answer as a 10k sees it looks like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![flag in the 10k queue][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The auto flag is the slightly greyed out one.  *That* is the one I'm wondering how to flag or deal with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pz0m6.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26445" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6439" RevisionGUID="0765c15b-3f89-4f7b-8143-2f30eaadf2b9" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="(this got a bit big to put into a comment... so...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the first key differences to realize between SO and... well... the rest of the Stack Exchange network of sites is that SO is many times larger than the other sites.  Stack Overflow creates 8k questions/day - or one P.SE every 4 days.  With such volume most questions on Stack Overflow never get much attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus [from this comment](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6437/how-could-this-question-be-worded-to-avoid-being-stamped-on#comment17418_6438)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @RobertHarvey I've been here twice. Got 4 up votes for an answer and 4 down votes for a question. When I do something silly or wrong on stackoverflow I can understand the odd anonymous drive by down vote or deafening silence but 4 down votes and gone in 60 seconds for my question - I just don't agree with the philosophy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On P.SE you can vote on almost every single question every single day without using up all your votes. P.SE has vote/view ratio compared to the rest of the network and sites its size (see [Why are votes per post on the decrease (what can we do to improve this)?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/216297/213963) - full image at https://i.stack.imgur.com/SRLlM.png ). Having a post get +4 or -4 is not uncommon.  P.SE is more generous with both upvotes *and* downvotes than Stack Overflow because we have more per question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.SE gets quite a few career / education questions.  Unfortunately, outside of a few broad ones that keep popping up (&quot;should I get a certificate?&quot;) every single one is different.  The person is asking about *their* background information, *their* situation, *their* plans for the future.  A stereotypical question goes like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have a CS degree and spent a few years in tech support, now I got a job working with php.  I know some C, but I haven't used it in a few years.  What do I need to study to get a job doing embedded programming? or maybe operating system design?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that this is an &quot;I&quot; question.  If any parameter changes (no degree, worked in finance, knows some java and uses it currently, looking for a job in biotech) the question becomes useless to them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, the difficulty with career questions in general.  From https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590 :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Beyond that, the general rule of thumb should be whether the question can help others in a similar situation. If the circumstances surrounding the question are too specific to the question asker such that there is no way to generalize and answer the question, they should be closed as too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too localized doesn't exist anymore, but we do have the 'close as career / education advice' which is designed to address this particular and common occurrence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key problem with these questions is that they require a dense, two way conversation to get all of the particulars to that out.  The Q&amp;A part of the site is poorly designed (intentionally so) for such conversations - it is optimized for &quot;Here is a question, here is an answer&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please realize that chat is one of the resources that we have available to ask such questions.  This supports the dense conversations that are available and provides a way for people to give opinions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26446" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6466" RevisionGUID="89623c2b-3901-4d26-9419-fffa99907e1e" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Workplace has been officially graduated: [new site design](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2364/168) has no &quot;beta&quot; anymore, and [privileges](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/privileges) are set to the level of graduated sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes it possible to add this site to our migration path, does it make sense to do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To better understand this, I would like to learn stats / rates of [successful and rejected migrations](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/202188/165773 &quot;preferably accounting for known inconsistency of these at source and target sites&quot;) to Workplace. I also would like to compare these against successful and rejected migrations to our long established target site - Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For your convenience, below is a list of some prior meta discussions related to Workplace migrations:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3699/closing-questions-that-should-go-to-workplace&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3632/should-we-mention-the-workplace-in-our-faq&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3432/how-should-we-guide-questions-toward-the-workplace&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3204/should-a-list-be-assembled-for-migration-to-the-workplace-once-it-opens&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2439/the-workplace-is-now-in-the-commitment-phase" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26447" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6556" RevisionGUID="b1e5cb61-434b-40b6-a17f-9e1300b897a7" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Because the single anecdote proves the rule, right?  &#xD;&#xA;I'm adding this answer to show how failing to close bad questions quickly impacts new visitors to the site and gives them a bad impression.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This gem of a question &quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/233104/53019&quot; triggered [this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/233106/53019).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it occurred on an afternoon when many of the regular reviewers were out of close votes for the day as hinted at in [this chat comment](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14400704#14400704)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, there's nothing horrifically wrong about the question that's asked.  But it is off-topic and it's not a good fit for the site.  That type of question occurs often enough that we have a [meta post explaining why it was closed](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start/6367#6367).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that the person answering the bad question didn't realize they were walking into a trap. Their answer was down voted and they reacted negatively to comments that were left trying to clarify what happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![First part of comment chain][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Second part of comment chain][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the user is new to the site, having joined only 6 days ago.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![user profile snippet][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it appears everything worked out well in this case since iCobot wasn't too rattled by the interaction, I think this occurs more often than we realize.  If so, then we are losing otherwise valuable contributors because of a bad interaction from seeing bad questions that weren't closed off quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully that puts a real example behind the site quality reasons justifying this request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for additional perspective, here's a screenshot of the 10k tools from today looking at questions needing review / close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![first half of 10k tools][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![second half of 10k tools][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As further proof of the confusion caused by not getting questions closed quickly, the comment thread has continued into the next day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![comments, round two, part 1][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![comments, round two, part 2][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/emK9E.jpg &quot;First part of comment chain&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7Kxoa.jpg &quot;Second part of comment chain&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ns9ux.jpg &quot;user profile snippet&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MAbgF.jpg &quot;first half of 10k tools&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B2gdC.jpg &quot;second half of 10k tools&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tJ0PA.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/5CKMq.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26448" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6583" RevisionGUID="450349f0-cad7-44de-b6b0-866ea3901812" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Much of the past guidance (from 2011, 2012 and 2014 linked above in the question) has suggested that these questions are off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3856/question-about-naming-conventions-not-constructive/3859#3859&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on StackExchange sites need to be presented in such a way that there can be an answer that is &quot;the answer&quot;. As I read the question, every possible answer to it would be equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question asks:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; how should I represent the separate words in the filename?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't see how this can be answered where there aren't 15 different answers, giving 15 different opinions, all equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for other naming convention questions being valid, thanks for bringing them up, we'll go through them and clean up those that slipped through the cracks. The fact that they exist on the site, doesn't make this one or any future questions more constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic/2382#2382&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think there's a difference between questions that ask for a proper term for a concept and questions that ask for naming suggestions for a class or a method.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The former would be fine, in my opinion, but the latter do not belong on Stack Exchange for reasons of being both too localized and entirely discussion-oriented.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are *two* types of name questions that are fairly consistently asked, though one can blend into the other.  And we *continue* to get both types of questions - the &quot;what should I name&quot; and &quot;what is the name of&quot;. This makes it difficult to provide *the* answer and easily risk getting too many poor quality answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;**Context:** When this question was written, many naming questions were getting closed with a custom off topic message referencing [Let's Play the Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/).  Prior to that questions were often being closed as &quot;Not Constructive.&quot;  This is saying that these questions are on topic, though frequently have other problems (getting closed as primary opinion or too broad when there isn't any help given to answers to say what a *good* answer to the question is nor inspiring answers that meet the ideals of Good Subjective, Bad Subjective. Furthermore, the questions often get down voted for lack of research. It is my hope that by following these points below that the questions can overcome these difficulties and have a chance at remaining open.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are **marginally** on topic.  However, these questions are often poor and without additional information they should be closed as too broad or primarily opinion.  Much of the historical guidance points to this being the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In an effort to try to make these questions better fit the Q&amp;A format rather than being a poll of answers where &quot;I think it is an XYZ&quot; and &quot;Have you considered XWZ?&quot; we need to help the questions be better asked so that they don't generate one sentence answers and stay away from the [questions not to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) so that they have the &quot;long, not short, answers&quot;.  From the blog post [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers.** The best subjective questions inspire your peers to share their actual experiences, not just post a mindless one-liner or cartoon in hopes of being rewarded with upvotes for being merely “first.” Sharing an experience takes at least one paragraph; ideally several paragraphs. If I’m asking about how to bake cookies, don’t give me a list of grocery items: milk. butter. vanilla. eggs. There is virtually nothing I can learn from a short, static list of grocery items that make up a recipe. Instead, tell me what happened the last time you made cookies from that recipe! Share your detailed experiences, so that we all might learn from them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this end, we need to provide some guidance that will help people avoid asking the questions that will be nothing more than a poll of word ideas, pattern names, and guessing at what was intended (and would get closed as either primarily opinion or too broad). Secondly, we should try to help people ask questions that won't be down voted for &quot;this question does not show any research effort&quot; (from the mouseover text on the down vote triangle).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have exactly the same problem that English.SE does with their own single word requests - lots of them, low quality, uninteresting, attract poor answers from users, and they get complained about in chat, they attract less active users and repel more active users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Drawing from [English.SE tag: single-word-requests](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/single-word-requests) and [Against single word requests](https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1654/against-single-word-requests) there is a set of questions that are necessary to make these questions better:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Describe exactly the context that the name or terminology is used**&#xD;&#xA;    * Programming language - the same concept can be used in multiple ways.  As I point out in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6296/why-is-this-question-wrong-asking-for-the-name-of-a-specific-practice/6297#6297 and ultimately http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218986/how-is-it-called-when-you-define-constants-that-simply-refer-to-a-large-namespac/219323#219323 there is sometimes no standard way to handle this across *all* programming languages.&#xD;&#xA;    * Code example - without a demonstration of what the code is to do, multiple terms can be used for the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;* **Describe the criteria for acceptance**&#xD;&#xA;    * Without some criteria for acceptance of the term, there is no way to say which one is better than another and the question is simply a poll for people to toss out suggestions for a name.&#xD;&#xA;* **Which names/terms have you thought of and discarded as inappropriate?**&#xD;&#xA;    * Just asking for a name doesn't let us know which direction you have thought and as described in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important we need to know what you have already thought of and discarded.&#xD;&#xA;* **Does the question show that you searched for a suitable word before asking the question?**&#xD;&#xA;    * Without the information to show that you *have* tried, such questions reek of intellectual laziness.  The use of Google is not hard.  Sometimes these words are right there if you just enter the language of choice and the code construct you are working with.  Stack exchange is not and should never be a &quot;I don't know, I'll ask what its called on P.SE and see if anyone answers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the above pieces of information being provided in the question, it *might* be acceptable to keep the question open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also *strongly* want people to look at the English.SE tags: http://english.stackexchange.com/tags and note that Single-word-requests on that site make up an average of 30/week or about 1/5&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; of all of their questions on a day to day basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we, P.SE, want to have a similar bit of 1/5th of our questions be questions about what to name some 'pattern' or what a particular structure is called within some code?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26449" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6592" RevisionGUID="90c055e8-b600-45cc-9c09-a03dad3f8e52" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Recent efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is [long known &quot;tradition&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112598/165773 &quot;see 'Annotate user accounts network-wide when they get rate-limited or banned' at MSE&quot;) of attempts to circumvent such bans by posting at inappropriate sites:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The core issue here seems to be the abusive &quot;I can't ask any more, so I'll ask my question on a similar site, in the hope it is migrated&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder how much impact could this have on Programmers. To understand this, I would like to find out how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be also helpful to learn similar statistics for questions from users who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* aren't _yet_ banned, but are already [warned about approaching a ban](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773 &quot;recently introduced feature&quot;) at SO&#xD;&#xA;* are rate-limited to ask questions at SO by [anti-recidivism system](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234518/165773 &quot;'If the user was blocked from posting questions at the time of deletion, then the recreated account will be restricted to posting only one question per week until the quality of their contributions is demonstrated'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically I am trying to figure whether it's something that can be dealt with in our regular ways, or it is worth looking for a dedicated approach to address (like, say, system triggering automated flag for mod attention when post from such a user gets close vote / flag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Let's burn down the close queue!](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [Block migration if user is suspended/question-blocked at destination](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/102293/block-migration-if-user-is-suspended-question-blocked-at-destination)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [Warn new users when they ask a question after a previous question is closed, downvoted, or deleted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [What is the reasoning behind limiting &quot;recidivists&quot; to post one question per week?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/234609/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSO) [Why won't the system allow me to ask questions for several days?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/271543/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Stats on how attempts to circumvent SO question blocks impact other sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Meta P.SE) https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26450" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6659" RevisionGUID="05c16929-a53b-4495-891e-20eceb3f092b" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The biggest problem of this site is, in my opinion, that the scope of this site is [subjective questions][1], but the line between subjective and opinion-based is very thin, and the latter has very little tolerance here. From what I see, even the questions which fall under the guidelines described in [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][2] still get closed a lot. It is almost as if the site fights itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now I'm looking at top questions on the website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237697/if-null-is-bad-why-do-modern-languages-implement-it - has pretty precise answers on why that happened. But still closed as &quot;opinion-based&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238754/on-naming-conventions-would-you-recommend-short-names-or-longer-more-descripti - it [has been said][3] that &quot;programming books have entire chapters full of well-researched, concrete, and objective reasons why certain names are better than others&quot;. In practice, here's a question which asks exactly this, and it gets closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238604/how-are-the-skills-used-in-typical-interview-questions-applied-in-the-real-job - definitely has at least one good answer, which is &quot;long&quot;, &quot;explains why and how&quot;, and so on. Closed as &quot;opinion-based&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238162/writing-in-c-for-performance - this is probably not the best example, since it is closed for the reason of recommending a tool. I don't really think that it is a valid reason here, though, because the question is more about the language and not specific tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And there are tons of questions like these. I'd venture to say that **nobody even knows what the site is about anymore**. Sure, in theory we know which subjective questions are good and which are bad, but in reality questions just seem to be randomly closed because no one can draw an exact line between good and bad, and questions get closed &quot;just in case&quot;. Even I can't always guess which question will get closed, though I've been reading this site for a long time, so I have no idea how newcomers are supposed to do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We really need to lighten up on what we consider opinion-based. Frankly, I would say the value of the site as it exists now is rather questionable. And we are definitely [going downhill][4]. Just rerun [the query on upvotes and downvotes][5] from that question, compare that to other sites, and you'll see what I mean.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6477/32689&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3136/are-we-going-down-hill&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/66286" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26451" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6671" RevisionGUID="dd7eeff8-5233-425a-bea5-c80dd3c724f5" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The bottom bar (that black almost a straight line thing) is floating in the middle of the page on reviews.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may be a regression of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4095/footer-line-floats-up-too-high-in-the-main-review-page&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5187/line-in-ui-goes-under-review-tasks&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5231/image-covers-the-review-page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Safari (7.0.3 (9537.75.14)):&#xD;&#xA;![Safari][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Chrome (34.0.1847.137):&#xD;&#xA;![Chrome][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firefox (28.0 &lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Yeah, I don't use it that much, though I just updated to 29.0.1 and its still there&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;):&#xD;&#xA;![Firefox][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: the bottom bar *is* at the correct spot when doing close vote reviews on Meta.P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0HDwF.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Of9JD.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qRQt3.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26452" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6718" RevisionGUID="cd380081-def2-42ca-9736-ed32a873c3c6" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This will be fixed in the next deploy. Keep an eye out for revision 2014.6.24.1677.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The gist of the problem here was that the sidebar on Prog.SE is styled differently from other sites, so it requires [a bit more love to get the mod dialog to show up](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4039/mod-dialog-in-review-doesnt-show-up-properly-and-a-bonus-feature-request) when a moderator brings it up in /review. (Fun fact: there's a &quot;mod&quot; link beside the &quot;link&quot; link if you have a diamond.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original fix set us up for the issue reported here, and it should be fixed for good now. (I know, I know. Famous last words. :))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. As a bonus, the mod dialog will also show up correctly on Prog.SE meta where it was until now still trying to fit into the sidebar.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26453" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6792" RevisionGUID="d27e4500-5801-4686-a25c-8aab0431dffc" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's a straightforward question I tend to ask when I can't figure why something was posted at Programmers instead of Stack Overflow. I expect askers to read my comment at a face value:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###&quot;why didn't you ask at Stack Overflow?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second part of my comment is a reference to MSE post that provides a fairly detailed guidance on this matter: [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I add it to make sure that asker understands what is my take on the matter and will help me understand their reasons for posting here according to mentioned guidance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Implementation problems, and questions on software tools commonly used by programmers. If your code or your IDE doesn't work, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Does not welcome subjective questions (anymore).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;### [Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The main focus is whiteboard questions, problems that you face while in front of your whiteboard designing your project. Everything that can be considered part of the [SDLC][1], except implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Also, questions on freelancing and business concerns that require the unique expertise of software developers. We use this lovely diagram to help people understand if their questions belong on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;![And somehow people still don't get it][2] &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your questions fall in the &quot;all careers&quot; circle, you should ask them on [The Workplace][3].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Programmers welcomes some subjective questions, but they should still be suitable for the Q&amp;A format. No polls, no lists, no product recommendations, no discussions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for close votes, no, it doesn't depend on whether I am out of or short on these. What it really depends on is whether asker appears to have a reasonably solid presence on Stack Overflow or not (I check their profile prior to asking).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I abstain of asking someone who doesn't have SO account or is registered there only recently, assuming that they most likely just don't know. I also don't ask if it turns out that question has been cross-posted ([seems to happen rather frequently](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p &quot;related feature request&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/P6bIb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26454" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6844" RevisionGUID="3ef41d69-7181-4a42-839f-b84547bf4c86" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As [September](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September) is coming, site is getting spammed by zero effort homework dumps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particularly _passionate_ spammers even drop their garbage at us at highest rate allowed (today examples: [1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254573), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254575), [3](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254567), [4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254568) - 10K links). And prior examples are not an isolated incident. As pointed in [comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6844/please-increase-rate-limit-for-new-users-asking-questions-to-one-used-at-stack-o#comment18506_6844), next day after posting this request we've got yet another example separated by 10 minutes: [04:27](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254641/valid-segments-2), [04:38](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254642/problem-cyclic-palindrome).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we please throttle spammers activity by raising rate limit the same way as it was done at Stack Overflow, ie to 1 question in 90 minutes for users with less than 125 reputation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note, given that [one of the spammers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/147424/samy-ragul) in above examples also has accounts at **Code Review** and **Code Golf**, it probably makes sense to consider similar limits for these sites as well.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Questions are now rate-limited to 1 per 90 minutes?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/256324/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you need to ask questions more than every 1.5 hours, you _probably_ aren't putting enough thought, time or both into your questions, which isn't fair to us, as it diminishes the perceived quality of the resource we're working very hard to build and maintain...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;It's a bit unfortunate for those that _do_ ask good questions right off the bat, and bless you if you're in that very small minority - it won't take long for you to establish yourself, perhaps just one question could do it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Open letter to students with homework problems](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...If your question on Programmers.SE is just a copy paste of homework problem, expect it to be downvoted, closed, and deleted - potentially in quite short order.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers.SE and the Summer of Love](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3837/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Responding negatively to those folks who copy paste their homework assignments is just a waste of time.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;These people don't care how you react; they're looking for the one guy that will actually do their homework for them (some people will).  Consequently, your negative comment will have no effect on the OP, and will only succeed in irritating your fellow community members and alienating new visitors to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;A better response is to downvote the question, and cast a moderator flag with a custom explanation, like this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Request for speedy deletion: this question is a copy-paste of a homework assignment, with no effort on the part of the OP to do the assignment himself." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26455" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6901" RevisionGUID="d94f2eaa-f02f-429d-bc64-cf8a7fdffae2" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think this can be summed up with one of your own canned responses to poor questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Sharing your research helps everyone][1]. Tell us what you've tried&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and why it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the time to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers, and most of all it helps you get a more specific and relevant&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer. Also see [How to Ask][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When asking something that is close to another question it helps to research previous questions, provide links, and explain what is different.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is a duplicate and the asker does not explain the difference between the new and old questions (if any) I will vote to close. If the question is different, even slightly, and the asker explains why his question is different or the accepted answer to the other question does not apply, I will give it the benefit of a doubt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26456" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6950" RevisionGUID="c03fa887-5dc4-4030-9bfe-ff3b961295bf" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As of now, there are over 87 questions in [tag:job-market] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**All** of these questions are closed, except for [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/61248/31260) which has  [historical lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;). Could we do something to help askers understand the risks associated with this tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Clarification on what is career advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6941/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a rough look through shows a _lot_ of closed questions. This should have been a warning that this question is problematic...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Automatic warnings of 'dangerous' tags](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/242252/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; could we identify the tags beforehand as being problematic ones, and in the event that no tag guidance is provided if the tag has a closure rate above some threshold (50%? 75%?) a canned warning is displayed..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26457" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6963" RevisionGUID="276b31d2-f941-4a8d-998a-876abfbc73fd" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Could we do something to help askers understand the risks associated with this tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe; if we can come to an understanding of the *rewards* of the tag. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By which I mean, if we're to warn folks against using it outside of narrowly-defined circumstances, we need to know what those circumstances *are*. As it stands, with 100% of the questions in the tag closed or locked, I'm leaning toward &quot;non-existent&quot; - which doesn't require a warning, but rather a blacklist! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The job-market tag is not allowed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about the prospects of getting a specific programming job are considered off-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, as the job market for programmers is constantly in flux and any advice obtained here today will be inaccurate or down-right harmful tomorrow... Or too specific to your situation to be of any use to anyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming I'm right, we can wrap this up quite easily, and over time remove the existing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although... I rather hope I'm wrong. As cringe-worthy as some of those questions are ([oh god, not this again...][1]) there *are* some real problems being solved, in areas where it's possible the answers are in fact *unique to programmers*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90139/are-there-drawbacks-to-taking-a-job-where-i-will-be-using-a-unique-programming-l&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64822/do-job-postings-exaggerate-their-requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/121465/why-are-part-time-jobs-in-programming-an-anomaly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61248/what-is-the-role-of-c-today&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd argue all of those are unique to this profession and, with the possible exception of the last one, reasonably likely to be useful in the future. But there certainly is a fine line between job market advice specific to programmers and career advice where you just happen to be a programmer.  Of course, this isn't new - [the old test for career advice still holds](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, *that's* probably the best guidance we could offer anyone asking such questions, as it's actually possible for folks to apply it. Perhaps something like...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about the job market should be *specific* to hiring programmers; if you can imagine a job-seeker or hiring manager asking a similar question for *any other profession*, then your question is **off-topic** - consider asking it on [The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/) instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Additionally, please word your question in a way that will be useful to others - we can help you learn how to make important decisions, but [we can't make them for you](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But... That's only good if y'all really *do* want these questions here. Right now, you're closing 100% of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what's it gonna be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49/why-isnt-functional-programming-more-popular-in-the-industry-does-it-catch-on" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26458" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7018" RevisionGUID="1a180402-2f5d-44e5-be95-9383cf335615" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Update: [this chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/26942/programmers-cv-please)** has been established with primary focus on question closes, reopens etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that chat appears to work more or less fine, I think it makes sense to continue using it. Additional benefit is that chat messages can't be voted down, this addresses concerns mentioned in [another answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7015/31260 &quot;'stop downvoting people who post on meta trying to get questions fixed...'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;A limitation of chat worth keeping in mind is that users with rep under 20 can only read it. But meta has this limitation too, it is lower (5 rep) but still. I don't know a good solution for that, so to keep things simple I will simply assume users having sufficient rep to participate. For users with insufficient reputation, the only reliable approach to communicate seems to be in comments under their posts, optionally [moved to dedicated chat room](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237976/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A drawback of current approach that I am particularly uncomfortable with is that Whiteboard room [scrolls too fast](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions/7018#comment20061_7014 &quot;as been discussed in comments&quot;). Few hours out of chat and I will most likely miss mention of the post I could be interested to improve. Chat pings that take me a while to reply are inconvenient because my reply to these lands in a totally changed context. That's not good. In fact, that's very bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparent solution for this appears to establish a **dedicated chat room** focusing strictly on question improvements. This is just the way I would want to have it, except that [there is a risk](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions/7018#comment20062_7014 &quot;as (again) been discussed in comments&quot;) that room gets frozen due to inactivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way I can think of to deal with room freezes is by using moderator flags: if one finds that room is frozen, they simply flag the post they want to discuss and ask moderator to unlock. *Unless moderators indicate that they would decline such flags* I am going to assume below that this way will work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we pick dedicated chat room approach, it would be worth to check the way how [SO close reviewers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251955/so-close-vote-reviewers) approach this. In brief, they have a room and a cross-linked meta post. As far as I can tell, most activity goes within room, but they also sometimes update / bump the meta post when needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that their gig runs fine for almost a year, we may probably learn something from their experience. (Some might find it ironic to learn from guys that seem to act in somewhat _opposite direction_ but I honestly don't care:).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, I think the dedicated chat room is the way to go (coupled with dedicated meta post, like of SO close reviewers). This doesn't mean though that meta is to be avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Technically, meta provides much richer platform to support complicated improvements and in-depth discussion, it can offer better visibility and powerful [meta effect](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204311/165773). Meta is less likely to be [blocked by corporate firewalls](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/114297/165773 &quot;see 'Provide an alternate URL for chat rooms' at MSE&quot;) etc. Lower barrier to participate (5 rep instead of 20 for chat) is also a benefit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As demonstrated by [broken-windows-review at TWP](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/broken-windows-review &quot;tag dedicated to Workplace questions improvement&quot;), meta can be successfully used to improve questions if done right. This experience also looks worth studying, especially because purpose of review at TWP is very much like one we discuss here: their primary focus is on salvaging and improving the questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26459" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7205" RevisionGUID="82c5ec1c-441b-4cbd-968e-57ea8d115ce4" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Studying issues in one of the questions posted today ([Problem with Spring Rest request](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/275484/1)) made me feel that this can be indeed related to differences in [quality filter](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5857/31260) settings between Programmers and Stack Overflow, namely to the fact that SO [blocks word **&quot;problem&quot;** in titles](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/107989/165773) while at Programmers it is allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Checking first of examples in my question shows that it would also be blocked at SO for this reason, as its title contains blocked word: &quot;problem to load code of captcha in codeIgniter&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to be easy to test, particularly because this block is not limited to new users. When I tried to enter this title into Ask Question page at SO, I've got red block message shown at screen shot below. When I tried at Programmers Ask Questions, there was no block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Checking [my flag history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/flag-summary/31260 &quot;available to SE developers and possibly to moderators&quot;) suggests that we are getting low quality / blatant off-topic &quot;problem&quot; questions about once in every 2-3 days average.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more accurate estimate of how much of an issue it is would be based on stats for deleted questions with &quot;problem&quot; titles, but I don't have access to these stats (probably moderators have).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/T1ZyG.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/T1ZyG.png &quot;screen shot: example of how asker would be blocked at SO because of the word 'problem' in title&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Those interested in original revision of this answer can find it [in the post history](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/7205/1).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26460" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7254" RevisionGUID="e576bc9c-29a9-42be-8cef-b93f7a588c96" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Question is About How to Use a Development Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool that you are using is a tool that is used to design and develop software and is used primarily in a software development environment, you should check out [Stack Overflow][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A number of development tools already have questions and answers on Stack Overflow, ranging from requirements management tools ([DOORS][2]) to architecture and design tools ([Dia][3], [Rhapsody][4], [Enterprise Architect][5]) to editors ([Visual Studio][6], [Eclipse][7], [Notepad++][8]) to mathematical packages ([MATLAB][9], [Sage][10]) to version control ([git][11], [ClearCase][12]) to peer review tools ([Collaborator][13]) to test tools ([TestComplete][14], [Selenium][15]) to project management tools ([Jira][16], [FogBugz][17]), and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about How to Use a General Purpose Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool is general purpose software, check out [Super User][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all of the tools that we use during the course of software development are unique to software developers. Tools such as office suites ([Microsoft Office][19], [OpenOffice.org][20]), web browsers ([Internet Explorer][21], [Chrome][22]) file transfer tools ([Filezilla][23], [WinSCP][24]), virtualization software ([VirtualBox][25], [VMWare][26]), and analysis software ([MATLAB][27], [Mathematica][28]) are used by many types of people in different environments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about a Tool in a Context Specific to an Operating System&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several Stack Exchange sites devoted to particular operating systems and associated software packages or applications: [Android][29], [Apple][30], [Unix and Linux][31], and [Ubuntu][32]. Be sure to read their Help Center, Meta site, and search for similar questions before asking to make sure that your specific question is on-topic for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about using a Tool in a Software Development Workflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question involves how to integrate a tool or type of tool into your workflow or process, then it is likely to be on-topic on Software Engineering. Generally, if you aren't asking about how to use a specific feature of a tool, but trying to determine how to use the tool to achieve a well-defined goal, start here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Other Considerations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some tools have their own Stack Exchange sites as well. For example, there are sites for [Drupal][33], [Expression Engine][34], [Mathematica][35], [Salesforce][36], [SharePoint][37], and [Wordpress][38]. There are even more sites for both particular environments and specific tools in beta - check out [the complete list of Stack Exchange sites][39].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  However, if you decide to post the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions may be on-topic on multiple sites. If you see your favorite tool on a site, check out some of the questions and answers to see if your question fits and which site is most likely to provide the answers that you are looking for. Do not cross-post questions - if you feel that your question should be moved to a different site, flag it and let the site's moderation team know. If you aren't sure, every site has a Meta site and many sites have a chat room, so you can always ask before asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators can, and do, migrate questions. If you do ask in the wrong place, there's a site that is more appropriate, and it's a well-written question, it will likely be migrated. Low quality questions that don't meet the quality guidelines of the other site won't be moved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are site-specific [automatic question blocks][40] - posting on the wrong site will not help you get answers and will likely lead to being blocked on other sites. It's also not possible to migrate questions if you are blocked on the target site. If you are blocked somewhere, do not post questions that are off-topic somewhere else. Instead, work to improve your existing questions and answers to have the block lifted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or downvoted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are Questions Asking for Help Using a Tool Off-Topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6701/are-questions-asking-for-help-using-a-tool-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are there a subset of tool questions that are appropriate for Software Engineering?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5519/are-there-a-subset-of-tool-questions-that-are-appropriate-for-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* [Where does my GIT question go?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6311/where-does-my-git-question-go)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/doors&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/dia&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/rhapsody&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/enterprise-architect&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/visual-studio&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/eclipse&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/notepad%2B%2B&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/sage&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/git&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/clearcase&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/code-collaborator&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/testcomplete&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/selenium&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/jira&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/fogbugz&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://superuser.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/microsoft-office&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/openoffice.org&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/internet-explorer&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/google-chrome&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/filezilla&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/winscp&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/virtualbox&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/vmware&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/mathematica&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://android.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [32]: http://askubuntu.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [33]: http://drupal.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [34]: http://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [35]: http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [36]: http://salesforce.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [37]: http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [38]: http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [39]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [40]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26461" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7265" RevisionGUID="11cea0fd-5377-43f6-b904-381b77e4dda4" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would like to ask a question about software licensing. The help center says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - ...&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***and it is not about...***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - ...&#xD;&#xA; - legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems like there is a lot of overlap between those two categories. In what situations is my software licensing question on-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading, history and citations:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;- [&lt;strike&gt;Reconciling &quot;no legal advice&quot; and &quot;yes software licensing&quot; [duplicate]&lt;/strike&gt;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7258/reconciling-no-legal-advice-and-yes-software-licensing)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26462" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6592" RevisionGUID="d5cd005e-e528-47c3-b9d2-e6d5d6fc72a1" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Recent efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is [long known &quot;tradition&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112598/165773 &quot;see 'Annotate user accounts network-wide when they get rate-limited or banned' at MSE&quot;) of attempts to circumvent such bans by posting at inappropriate sites:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The core issue here seems to be the abusive &quot;I can't ask any more, so I'll ask my question on a similar site, in the hope it is migrated&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder how much impact could this have on Programmers. To understand this, I would like to find out how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be also helpful to learn similar statistics for questions from users who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* aren't _yet_ banned, but are already [warned about approaching a ban](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773 &quot;recently introduced feature&quot;) at SO&#xD;&#xA;* are rate-limited to ask questions at SO by [anti-recidivism system](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234518/165773 &quot;'If the user was blocked from posting questions at the time of deletion, then the recreated account will be restricted to posting only one question per week until the quality of their contributions is demonstrated'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically I am trying to figure whether it's something that can be dealt with in our regular ways, or it is worth looking for a dedicated approach to address (like, say, system triggering automated flag for mod attention when post from such a user gets close vote / flag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Let's burn down the close queue!](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [Block migration if user is suspended/question-blocked at destination](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/102293/block-migration-if-user-is-suspended-question-blocked-at-destination)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [Warn new users when they ask a question after a previous question is closed, downvoted, or deleted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [What is the reasoning behind limiting &quot;recidivists&quot; to post one question per week?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/234609/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSO) [Why won't the system allow me to ask questions for several days?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/271543/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Stats on how attempts to circumvent SO question blocks impact other sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Meta P.SE) https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26463" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7272" RevisionGUID="fb47f7fb-edba-442a-b28f-0271dd492f6f" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is not a duplicate of this: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5427/usefulness-of-career-development-and-career-transition-tags ... it's time for them to be blacklisted. The narrowness of scope of what actually would be on topic here is so narrow that it's pretty much invisible. **All it does is invite off topic posts.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We absolutely can and should keep the tag around for historically significant posts. According to Meta, we can do this. But it should be blacklisted for all future posts. See http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/252898/mark-a-tag-as-a-historical-significance-only&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has come up many times before, for example: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags (2011) (Note: this question didn't suggest blacklisting because blacklisting didn't exist when it was discussed)&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3279/blacklist-career (2012)&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup (2013)&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6426/career-transition-tag-inappropriate (Early 2014)&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6458/there-seems-to-be-some-contradictory-guidance-with-respect-to-asking-career-deve (Early 2014)&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6983/improve-question-quality-by-informing-askers-of-expectations-in-some-career-rela (Late 2014)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For crying out loud, this is the [tag:jobs] tag wiki:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do not use this tag. Click &quot;info&quot; for better alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the [tag:career-development] tag wiki:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Career advice is off-topic per Help Center. 99% of questions with this tag are off-topic and will be closed. Study other questions under this tag closely that aren't closed before asking your question, if you want any chance of it not being closed. Closed questions add up to a possible question-ban &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bottom line... there is an awful lot of bad here, and very, very little good. It's nigh impossible to write an on-topic question with these tags. A lot of those are out of date because **The Workplace had not even graduated until February 2014**. Some relevant comments (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Rachel](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel) [Jan 6 '13 at 18:30](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5427/usefulness-of-career-development-and-career-transition-tags#comment13618_5427) (this is the best that can be managed by someone that *likes* the tag):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think [career-development] does serve a purpose, and it's one of my favorite tags to browse on the site. Career advice isn't the same as career development. We can't advise someone on what career path they should take, but we can answer some questions about career development for software developers. I'm not sure about [career-transition] though... **I can't think of any cases where it could be on-topic here.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [@Yannis Rizos♦︎](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/25936/yannis-rizos) [Jan 19 '13 at 22:19](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5427/usefulness-of-career-development-and-career-transition-tags#comment13769_5446)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is all good, but irrelevant if the tags aren't used as they are supposed to be used. If a lot of people use [career-development] to ask career advice questions, then the **tag is problematic and should probably go away.** The two topics are distinct, but their differences are subtle, and become even more subtle if we consider non native English speakers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##It's time for them to go.##" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26464" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6659" RevisionGUID="7e206bb4-4c10-4e39-9812-448d274e09bd" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The biggest problem of this site is, in my opinion, that the scope of this site is [subjective questions][1], but the line between subjective and opinion-based is very thin, and the latter has very little tolerance here. From what I see, even the questions which fall under the guidelines described in [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][2] still get closed a lot. It is almost as if the site fights itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now I'm looking at top questions on the website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237697/if-null-is-bad-why-do-modern-languages-implement-it - has pretty precise answers on why that happened. But still closed as &quot;opinion-based&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238754/on-naming-conventions-would-you-recommend-short-names-or-longer-more-descripti - it [has been said][3] that &quot;programming books have entire chapters full of well-researched, concrete, and objective reasons why certain names are better than others&quot;. In practice, here's a question which asks exactly this, and it gets closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238604/how-are-the-skills-used-in-typical-interview-questions-applied-in-the-real-job - definitely has at least one good answer, which is &quot;long&quot;, &quot;explains why and how&quot;, and so on. Closed as &quot;opinion-based&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238162/writing-in-c-for-performance - this is probably not the best example, since it is closed for the reason of recommending a tool. I don't really think that it is a valid reason here, though, because the question is more about the language and not specific tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And there are tons of questions like these. I'd venture to say that **nobody even knows what the site is about anymore**. Sure, in theory we know which subjective questions are good and which are bad, but in reality questions just seem to be randomly closed because no one can draw an exact line between good and bad, and questions get closed &quot;just in case&quot;. Even I can't always guess which question will get closed, though I've been reading this site for a long time, so I have no idea how newcomers are supposed to do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We really need to lighten up on what we consider opinion-based. Frankly, I would say the value of the site as it exists now is rather questionable. And we are definitely [going downhill][4]. Just rerun [the query on upvotes and downvotes][5] from that question, compare that to other sites, and you'll see what I mean.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6477/32689&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3136/are-we-going-down-hill&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/66286" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26465" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6671" RevisionGUID="f4a4ce8a-1c37-4267-9b0c-8365f47499c5" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The bottom bar (that black almost a straight line thing) is floating in the middle of the page on reviews.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may be a regression of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4095/footer-line-floats-up-too-high-in-the-main-review-page&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5187/line-in-ui-goes-under-review-tasks&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5231/image-covers-the-review-page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Safari (7.0.3 (9537.75.14)):&#xD;&#xA;![Safari][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Chrome (34.0.1847.137):&#xD;&#xA;![Chrome][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firefox (28.0 &lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Yeah, I don't use it that much, though I just updated to 29.0.1 and its still there&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;):&#xD;&#xA;![Firefox][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: the bottom bar *is* at the correct spot when doing close vote reviews on Meta.P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0HDwF.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Of9JD.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qRQt3.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26466" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7285" RevisionGUID="3bfa51b6-21fa-4e66-8e9f-b9a0441b94d5" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Back in 2012, we launched the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative (STCI)](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups). It was very successful in identifying tags to create, merge, remove, and blacklist. However, it has been about 3 years since this effort was launched, and I think that it's time to relaunch this campaign.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The process will be very similar to the last effort:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Identify a tag that has issues.** This may be a tag that should be deleted and blacklisted, or two or more tags that need to be merged or made synonyms of each other. As these tags are identified, post an answer in this question. If you think that a multi-way merge is necessary (for example, someone identified that tag X and Y should be merged, and you feel that tag Z should also be part of this merge), edit the existing answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Vote on candidate actions.** Using the comment feature, comment on the proposed actions. Up or down vote as well. I hope to take the next 2-3 weeks to gather a list of actions and then treat this question as a queue. Starting in May 1, I'll accept the top voted question and that will mark the cleanup action. After completing the action, I'll delete the answer and accept the next one. Note that at the very end of the initiative, I'll undelete all of the answers and close the question for historical reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. **Execute the cleanup.** Review the questions in the tag. Vote on the question and answers, make edits to improve them, edit the tag wikis, flag for immediate moderator attention or for moderator actions, and otherwise improve that corner of the site. Each cleanup will likely last 1-2 weeks, depending on the size of the tag. Please try to avoid flooding the homepage with edits. If there are a large number of questions that require edits, the window for a particular tag may be longer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. **Feedback.** After a few cleanups, we'll review the process and how we're doing and prioritize the work going forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Questions tagged `stci`](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26467" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6718" RevisionGUID="4bd03547-2521-4af7-98e8-9b6273983bba" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This will be fixed in the next deploy. Keep an eye out for revision 2014.6.24.1677.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The gist of the problem here was that the sidebar on Prog.SE is styled differently from other sites, so it requires [a bit more love to get the mod dialog to show up](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4039/mod-dialog-in-review-doesnt-show-up-properly-and-a-bonus-feature-request) when a moderator brings it up in /review. (Fun fact: there's a &quot;mod&quot; link beside the &quot;link&quot; link if you have a diamond.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original fix set us up for the issue reported here, and it should be fixed for good now. (I know, I know. Famous last words. :))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. As a bonus, the mod dialog will also show up correctly on Prog.SE meta where it was until now still trying to fit into the sidebar.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26468" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6792" RevisionGUID="4bd1a86d-3f94-497e-8b9d-cc5b95a6c223" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's a straightforward question I tend to ask when I can't figure why something was posted at Programmers instead of Stack Overflow. I expect askers to read my comment at a face value:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###&quot;why didn't you ask at Stack Overflow?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second part of my comment is a reference to MSE post that provides a fairly detailed guidance on this matter: [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I add it to make sure that asker understands what is my take on the matter and will help me understand their reasons for posting here according to mentioned guidance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Implementation problems, and questions on software tools commonly used by programmers. If your code or your IDE doesn't work, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Does not welcome subjective questions (anymore).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;### [Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The main focus is whiteboard questions, problems that you face while in front of your whiteboard designing your project. Everything that can be considered part of the [SDLC][1], except implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Also, questions on freelancing and business concerns that require the unique expertise of software developers. We use this lovely diagram to help people understand if their questions belong on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;![And somehow people still don't get it][2] &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your questions fall in the &quot;all careers&quot; circle, you should ask them on [The Workplace][3].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Programmers welcomes some subjective questions, but they should still be suitable for the Q&amp;A format. No polls, no lists, no product recommendations, no discussions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for close votes, no, it doesn't depend on whether I am out of or short on these. What it really depends on is whether asker appears to have a reasonably solid presence on Stack Overflow or not (I check their profile prior to asking).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I abstain of asking someone who doesn't have SO account or is registered there only recently, assuming that they most likely just don't know. I also don't ask if it turns out that question has been cross-posted ([seems to happen rather frequently](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p &quot;related feature request&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/P6bIb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26470" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6844" RevisionGUID="8ea6341d-49ee-4607-abae-daae7c3a0d2c" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As [September](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September) is coming, site is getting spammed by zero effort homework dumps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particularly _passionate_ spammers even drop their garbage at us at highest rate allowed (today examples: [1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254573), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254575), [3](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254567), [4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254568) - 10K links). And prior examples are not an isolated incident. As pointed in [comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6844/please-increase-rate-limit-for-new-users-asking-questions-to-one-used-at-stack-o#comment18506_6844), next day after posting this request we've got yet another example separated by 10 minutes: [04:27](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254641/valid-segments-2), [04:38](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254642/problem-cyclic-palindrome).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we please throttle spammers activity by raising rate limit the same way as it was done at Stack Overflow, ie to 1 question in 90 minutes for users with less than 125 reputation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note, given that [one of the spammers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/147424/samy-ragul) in above examples also has accounts at **Code Review** and **Code Golf**, it probably makes sense to consider similar limits for these sites as well.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Questions are now rate-limited to 1 per 90 minutes?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/256324/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you need to ask questions more than every 1.5 hours, you _probably_ aren't putting enough thought, time or both into your questions, which isn't fair to us, as it diminishes the perceived quality of the resource we're working very hard to build and maintain...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;It's a bit unfortunate for those that _do_ ask good questions right off the bat, and bless you if you're in that very small minority - it won't take long for you to establish yourself, perhaps just one question could do it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Open letter to students with homework problems](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...If your question on Programmers.SE is just a copy paste of homework problem, expect it to be downvoted, closed, and deleted - potentially in quite short order.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers.SE and the Summer of Love](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3837/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Responding negatively to those folks who copy paste their homework assignments is just a waste of time.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;These people don't care how you react; they're looking for the one guy that will actually do their homework for them (some people will).  Consequently, your negative comment will have no effect on the OP, and will only succeed in irritating your fellow community members and alienating new visitors to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;A better response is to downvote the question, and cast a moderator flag with a custom explanation, like this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Request for speedy deletion: this question is a copy-paste of a homework assignment, with no effort on the part of the OP to do the assignment himself." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26472" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6901" RevisionGUID="4b401ac9-8447-4d34-8ac2-620a3e19f716" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think this can be summed up with one of your own canned responses to poor questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Sharing your research helps everyone][1]. Tell us what you've tried&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and why it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the time to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers, and most of all it helps you get a more specific and relevant&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer. Also see [How to Ask][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When asking something that is close to another question it helps to research previous questions, provide links, and explain what is different.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is a duplicate and the asker does not explain the difference between the new and old questions (if any) I will vote to close. If the question is different, even slightly, and the asker explains why his question is different or the accepted answer to the other question does not apply, I will give it the benefit of a doubt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26473" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6950" RevisionGUID="ee895d08-7e7f-4bc9-b229-0dd0f401db38" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As of now, there are over 87 questions in [tag:job-market] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**All** of these questions are closed, except for [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/61248/31260) which has  [historical lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;). Could we do something to help askers understand the risks associated with this tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Clarification on what is career advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6941/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a rough look through shows a _lot_ of closed questions. This should have been a warning that this question is problematic...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Automatic warnings of 'dangerous' tags](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/242252/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; could we identify the tags beforehand as being problematic ones, and in the event that no tag guidance is provided if the tag has a closure rate above some threshold (50%? 75%?) a canned warning is displayed..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26474" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7319" RevisionGUID="6124da06-8dd8-4aad-8fc8-040b9375d186" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I can appreciate the idea that sometimes popular questions can get closed simply because they are crazy popular. However, I strongly doubt this is an issue that would need to be addressed immediately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a highly upvoted question suddenly gets closed, to a point where it triggers red flags in the Community Manager system, the right thing for the Community Management team is to *bring the question to us in Meta*. Something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hey guys, this question was closed, but we can't see any good reason to do so. Why did the community choose to do it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there would probably be [an answer from someone like @MichaelT](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7289/why-was-how-can-i-deal-with-the-cargo-cult-programming-attitude-reopened?cb=1#comment21821_7290)&lt;/sup&gt; like (these comments really deserve to be an answer):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We've been looking at some less than ideal tags for the site. One of those is [tag:teaching] which this question has. It wasn't the 'wildly popular' that was the criteria. It was the 'questions of this tag are often poor fit for the Q&amp;A format and often are either polling or education advice.' With the goal of cleaning up broken windows (because new users often use [old open questions as examples](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/278959/area-of-expertise-for-a-good-web-developer#comment574168_278959)) we endeavor to maintain the site's quality and that sometimes means revisiting old questions that don't fit well with the site's focus. Popularity isn't the selecting factor. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would point out that its not 'five users suddenly' - it was 'one user cast a close vote on it, three more [found it in /review](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close/98599), and well, then there's gnat'. This wasn't a coordinated closing. Just another question in /review that someone found. One should look at 'is this question too broad' when deciding to reopen a question that was closed by the community as too broad. We [really try to provide good guidance](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/40980) on our close reasons that are available to all. While you (as a community manager) may have a different view into this you will generally find that we don't have people debating and denigrating if a question should have been closed or not. We would likely really like to have a place for discussions, but we recognize that the Q&amp;A format that SE has provided doesn't work that way and when you get questions that can inspire dozens of short answers (and despite having an accepted one) we often find new users wanting to add their two bits to the content (and that can have a very poor experience when it gets down voted compared to not being able to ask because it is closed / locked).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've generally found that, in most cases the pace of things getting done on Stack Exchange doesn't need to be very fast. A popular post was closed, **it deserves to get it's time on Meta [before being unilaterally reopened.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119111/moderator-cheat-sheet/119112#119112)**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26475" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7407" RevisionGUID="55273798-5079-43bb-859e-f0f6302cce77" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[tag:terminology] [tag:definition]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often becomes a &quot;name this thing&quot;-type question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relevant meta discussion from last year: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related is [tag:naming] which also tends to get into opinionated questions about naming conventions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26476" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6963" RevisionGUID="6be1325d-1cfb-4da6-bb7b-dff7e7a537b8" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Could we do something to help askers understand the risks associated with this tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe; if we can come to an understanding of the *rewards* of the tag. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By which I mean, if we're to warn folks against using it outside of narrowly-defined circumstances, we need to know what those circumstances *are*. As it stands, with 100% of the questions in the tag closed or locked, I'm leaning toward &quot;non-existent&quot; - which doesn't require a warning, but rather a blacklist! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The job-market tag is not allowed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about the prospects of getting a specific programming job are considered off-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, as the job market for programmers is constantly in flux and any advice obtained here today will be inaccurate or down-right harmful tomorrow... Or too specific to your situation to be of any use to anyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming I'm right, we can wrap this up quite easily, and over time remove the existing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although... I rather hope I'm wrong. As cringe-worthy as some of those questions are ([oh god, not this again...][1]) there *are* some real problems being solved, in areas where it's possible the answers are in fact *unique to programmers*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/90139/are-there-drawbacks-to-taking-a-job-where-i-will-be-using-a-unique-programming-l&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64822/do-job-postings-exaggerate-their-requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/121465/why-are-part-time-jobs-in-programming-an-anomaly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61248/what-is-the-role-of-c-today&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd argue all of those are unique to this profession and, with the possible exception of the last one, reasonably likely to be useful in the future. But there certainly is a fine line between job market advice specific to programmers and career advice where you just happen to be a programmer.  Of course, this isn't new - [the old test for career advice still holds](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, *that's* probably the best guidance we could offer anyone asking such questions, as it's actually possible for folks to apply it. Perhaps something like...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about the job market should be *specific* to hiring programmers; if you can imagine a job-seeker or hiring manager asking a similar question for *any other profession*, then your question is **off-topic** - consider asking it on [The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/) instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Additionally, please word your question in a way that will be useful to others - we can help you learn how to make important decisions, but [we can't make them for you](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But... That's only good if y'all really *do* want these questions here. Right now, you're closing 100% of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what's it gonna be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49/why-isnt-functional-programming-more-popular-in-the-industry-does-it-catch-on" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26477" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7470" RevisionGUID="2bf83b36-b164-4a2c-9920-b0aded0b5df1" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="GlenH7, Amon, and I were the three delete votes on it.  A closed question that is at -3 can be deleted by [users that have 20k rep](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/trusted-user) without having to wait for two days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was attracting *significant* discussion in the comments.  The question post had 13 comments, the posts had 10, 14, and 4 comments on them (and showed no sign of stopping or slowing down).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question had a number of reopen votes on it, which would have likely made it (and I will point out that it would likely get closed again - neither Glen, Amon nor I had cast close votes on it in the first round).  The question itself was (I believe) a rant about the lack of experience of php coders, an opinion poll about what to do when interviewing a candidate who can't do recursion for a Fibonacci series.  The answers were veering off into critiquing the interview question and the applicability of recursion in today's computing environment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The combination of these things (the discussion in comments, the off topic nature of the question, that the question was likely to get reopened and reclosed (with probably a few more answers jumping into the bandwagon)) strongly suggests that it is going to become even *more* contentious with time. At best (or worst depending on opinion), it would be one of those ugly historical locks (historical significance on a 1 day old question?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussions are indeed fun and interesting - but they are a [poor fit for the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A format](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6743/31260 &quot;see 'On discussions and why they don't make good questions'&quot;). I would love to banter about this in chat, or see what anecdotes occur on Quora or Reddit for it... but it is very tough to get it to fit in the Q&amp;A format as asked and written.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deleting the question gives people who have 10k reputation (and the OP) the opportunity to try to edit it into a question that should be reopened without the drama associated with bumping the question and repeated &quot;leave closed&quot; reviews.  In its current form, however, it should remain closed and ultimately be deleted as it isn't a good fit for the Q&amp;A format. That it was done sooner than later was to try to reduce the poor experiences for the people who chance to answer it in the reopen/reclose cycle and reduce any associated drama." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26478" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7537" RevisionGUID="e7ca73f2-6efd-44c9-a8ea-1aad3a8c8be8" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A common form of question that is often asked is the &quot;what are some examples of...&quot;  While this is [hinted at in the help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/), or [strongly rooted in opinions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491). We should be able to answer your questions in the equivalent of a few pages of text and graphics and provide references to support claims. If you have questions that warrant an extended discussion, feel free to come to chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;explained in those links, and written about in meta site for all of Stack Exchange in the [list-questions tag](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/list-questions/info), these questions show up often enough that it merits asking again here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why do these list questions get closed and down voted on Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26479" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6983" RevisionGUID="72efc271-9295-45a2-9885-48b95849bc53" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Over here at Programmers, a lot of askers seems to misunderstand site-specific expectations of career related questions, which frequently results in questions closure and deletions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Propose to help question askers and editors by establishing tag-specific popup ([tag-tips](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/tag-tips)) for particularly troublesome career related tags:  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market], [tag:resume], [tag:career-transition], [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;(For the sake of completeness, implementation of above request also included [career-transition and career-_anyotherword_](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6983/improve-question-quality-by-informing-askers-of-expectations-in-some-career-rela/7112?noredirect=1#comment21415_7112) tags.)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggestion for popup content is as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** Career advice is off-topic per the [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  Please note that most career advice questions end up being closed for being too broad or impractical; try to make yours a [good subjective question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they require the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;* Please make sure your question has the proper scope.  It needs to apply to other programmers besides yourself.  &#xD;&#xA;* If your question can also be applied to other job fields, then it does not uniquely apply to software development and is not on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;* _Before_ asking, review this meta guidance: [Why was my question closed or down voted? -&gt; Career or education advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488).  Make sure your question avoids the problems listed in the guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope this measure could help question askers significantly. For detailed discussion of this proposal and some alternatives, refer prior question: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6950/current-state-of-the-job-market&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We are getting pummeled with the same off topic questions over and over again... The point here is to put something directly on the posting page... something more prominent than what we have now might make a dent in the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6940/clarification-on-what-is-career-advice  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; tag... seems to be causing more trouble than anything else&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it is also worth mentioning that in the past, career related tags have been through community cleanups ([1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1963/31260 &quot;Posse request: jobs/career/etc. tag cleanup&quot;), [2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2358/31260 &quot;Offering Solutions to the Career and Jobs Tags&quot;)) meaning that older content in these tags has already been through some extra scrutiny and generally deemed worth keeping." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26480" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7551" RevisionGUID="6c629aa6-3ca1-414a-843e-f329bf59fb13" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[![Coffee Stack Exchange][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LzvlP.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://coffee.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(thanks to MichaelT for pointing to [appropriate ad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7177/31260 &quot;10K link&quot;))&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26481" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6990" RevisionGUID="2808cedd-87c1-4d4f-a70e-46eeb1218fcd" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am a voracious StackExchange user, always I have a technical question I go to StackOverflow, also every morning I like to come here to programmer to read some more advanced questions and opinions about design stuff and programmer challenges (as opposed to programming challenges). I noted, a long ago already, that we have a great number of negative voted question. I can understand the motives. [&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;][1] [&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But why can't we raise up the quality of the Questions? Look at this chart I [extracted from data.stackechange.][3]  It shows the ratio of down voted questions to total questions asked that year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Despite its huge size, StackOverflow could, given the years control (and for some time, lower) the negative voted Questions. In Programmers in other-hand negative question have increased over the years (except in 2013-2014 period, where it appear to be controlled).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. What can we do to help with the questions quality?&#xD;&#xA;2. Are we already controlling better new posts in the review queue?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/246189/negative-vs-positive-questions-over-time&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Tfak6.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26483" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7018" RevisionGUID="83b23ae1-54ed-4331-9ea0-7adf56ec9c3e" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Update: [this chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/26942/programmers-cv-please)** has been established with primary focus on question closes, reopens etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that chat appears to work more or less fine, I think it makes sense to continue using it. Additional benefit is that chat messages can't be voted down, this addresses concerns mentioned in [another answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7015/31260 &quot;'stop downvoting people who post on meta trying to get questions fixed...'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;A limitation of chat worth keeping in mind is that users with rep under 20 can only read it. But meta has this limitation too, it is lower (5 rep) but still. I don't know a good solution for that, so to keep things simple I will simply assume users having sufficient rep to participate. For users with insufficient reputation, the only reliable approach to communicate seems to be in comments under their posts, optionally [moved to dedicated chat room](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237976/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A drawback of current approach that I am particularly uncomfortable with is that Whiteboard room [scrolls too fast](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions/7018#comment20061_7014 &quot;as been discussed in comments&quot;). Few hours out of chat and I will most likely miss mention of the post I could be interested to improve. Chat pings that take me a while to reply are inconvenient because my reply to these lands in a totally changed context. That's not good. In fact, that's very bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparent solution for this appears to establish a **dedicated chat room** focusing strictly on question improvements. This is just the way I would want to have it, except that [there is a risk](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions/7018#comment20062_7014 &quot;as (again) been discussed in comments&quot;) that room gets frozen due to inactivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way I can think of to deal with room freezes is by using moderator flags: if one finds that room is frozen, they simply flag the post they want to discuss and ask moderator to unlock. *Unless moderators indicate that they would decline such flags* I am going to assume below that this way will work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we pick dedicated chat room approach, it would be worth to check the way how [SO close reviewers](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251955/so-close-vote-reviewers) approach this. In brief, they have a room and a cross-linked meta post. As far as I can tell, most activity goes within room, but they also sometimes update / bump the meta post when needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that their gig runs fine for almost a year, we may probably learn something from their experience. (Some might find it ironic to learn from guys that seem to act in somewhat _opposite direction_ but I honestly don't care:).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, I think the dedicated chat room is the way to go (coupled with dedicated meta post, like of SO close reviewers). This doesn't mean though that meta is to be avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Technically, meta provides much richer platform to support complicated improvements and in-depth discussion, it can offer better visibility and powerful [meta effect](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204311/165773). Meta is less likely to be [blocked by corporate firewalls](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/114297/165773 &quot;see 'Provide an alternate URL for chat rooms' at MSE&quot;) etc. Lower barrier to participate (5 rep instead of 20 for chat) is also a benefit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As demonstrated by [broken-windows-review at TWP](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/broken-windows-review &quot;tag dedicated to Workplace questions improvement&quot;), meta can be successfully used to improve questions if done right. This experience also looks worth studying, especially because purpose of review at TWP is very much like one we discuss here: their primary focus is on salvaging and improving the questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26485" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7649" RevisionGUID="292a8251-8962-4685-84b7-7f7bf7a52a61" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Every day we get opinionated questions asked here.  People seem to think that this is the place to ask them.  New users point to the old open questions that have fallen through the cracks of time as reason that their question should be open too.  Old Stack Overflow users continue to suggest reposting discussions on &lt;s&gt;NotProgrammingRelated&lt;/s&gt; Programmers.SE.  Consider this exchange on [a Stack Overflow question](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32921809):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;s&gt;This is not an appropriate question here because it is opinion-based. You might get help at [Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/). — Ed Cottrell&lt;/s&gt; (deleted)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @EdCottrell programmers has the same rules about opinion-based questions as SO. Please take a look at the help centre there before sending people our way. cheers. –  MetaFight  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @MetaFight my apologies. I see lots of these kinds of questions over there and didn't realize they weren't acceptable. –  Ed Cottrell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have been [told in the past](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/220099/213963) that when our site is full of crappy questions, our site sucks.  Yes, the answers may be great - but the questions aren't.  As said, fixing that is a painful process. It also means that we need to change the perception of what Programmers.SE is about. This means closing questions that are too broad, or primary opinion, or career advice from days of old.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Popularity of old questions](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/) does not mean that it is something that should be enshrined in a museum for all time.  Well, that's what a historical lock is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I will also point out that the new users who cite historical locked questions apparently don't read the text)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE one of the highest ratio of locked questions to questions of major sites (note also that the great contentious cleanup of SF hasn't been completely resolved).  Digging into [data.SE](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/371072/478325) (feel free to refine the query - comparing it to search here, I do see discrepancies, however it is consistently applied to other sites):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Site | Questions  | Locked&#xD;&#xA;    P.SE |     37,017 |  744 (2.01%)&#xD;&#xA;    SO   | 10,258,635 | 2702 (0.02%)&#xD;&#xA;    Math |    496,668 |  638 (0.13%)&#xD;&#xA;    SU   |    284,455 |  764 (0.26%)&#xD;&#xA;    SF   |    205,689 | 4265 (2.07%)&#xD;&#xA;    AU   |    202,900 | 1233 (0.60%)&#xD;&#xA;    TeX  |     97,119 |  180 (0.18%)&#xD;&#xA;    U&amp;L  |     74,315 |  220 (0.29%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are the *most* preservationist of the sites that are out there.  We even tried moving some of our popular questions to the blog (it didn't work out well).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that it is necessary to reopen those closed questions of old popularity so that someone can add another answer and continue the *discussion*, then go right ahead.  The site was down that road once before and we were told that this was something that wasn't sustainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime, the community that is here has defined our scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is not Quora, or Reddit or any other site. We are a site to give practical answers to questions of software design and architecture. It says so right in our [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask about:  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software requirements  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software architecture and design  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ algorithms and data structures  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ development methodologies and processes  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software engineering management  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ quality assurance and testing  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software licensing  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't ask about...  &#xD;&#xA; general workplace issues, career advice, job hunting, salary, or compensation  &#xD;&#xA; implementation issues and coding tools  &#xD;&#xA; what you should learn next  &#xD;&#xA; what projects to do or books to read  &#xD;&#xA; where to find libraries, tools, resources, or other product/service recommendations  &#xD;&#xA; personal lifestyle or non-programming activities  &#xD;&#xA; questions that are primarily opinion-based  &#xD;&#xA; questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a Stack Exchange employee, reopening questions that are in direct conflict with what the site scope is about sends a confusing message to our users - both the ones asking questions and the ones closing them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, there are many wonderful blog posts in our old, off topic, too broad, and opinion answers. They may be worthwhile to try to preserve -  *as blog posts*. It would be helpful to have people who are good editors to help us migrate these posts to a different medium and make posting blog posts something that is easier to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Referring to the specific question of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75486/why-arent-young-programmers-interested-in-mainframes when I started the close vote process on it wasn't its popularity - it was the tag [tag:junior-programmer] that is littered with bad questions and itself being on the verge of a meta-tag. When looking through a tag, I tend to start at the oldest as those are the ones that have the most answers and the least fixable. This often means seeing some of the old popular ones before the newer less popular ones. However, the phrasing of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Closing questions with great content years after the fact simply because they became popular seems like an inherently spiteful and self destructive way to make a point. You can certainly control your own scope, but when groups of users go out explicitly to hunt down the most-popular questions specifically because they ***are*** popular doesn't make the site any better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is incorrect about my motives and needlessly antagonistic. It also suggests that you have a different vision of what types of questions should be asked on Programmers.SE.  If this is the case, then please state it clearly.  We've gone through this [in the past](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/350/40980) and there is even a [blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) that I am sure you are familiar with.  In it, it states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thus, **questions that are not answerable -- discussions, debates, opinions -- should be closed as subjective.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question asked in the post http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75486/why-arent-young-programmers-interested-in-mainframes falls exactly into that category:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why is this? What makes mainframes unattractive to young programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not answerable. It is subjective and requires extended discussion. It would be something to ask on a discussion board. The explicit question presented in the post is a poll of personal experiences. It is entirely composed of opinions and personal anecdotes. It is not within the scope of the site today. With its 26 answers, it speaks exactly to the first part of the blog post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Most forums and chat rooms have a scale problem. As in, they don't. The more people that join the discussion, the more noise each of those connections bring. So the forums get progressively noisier and noisier, and suddenly one day … [you stop learning](http://scobleizer.com/the-chat-roomforum-problem-an-apology-to-technosailor/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Because we believe so deeply in learning, we are willing to go to great lengths to suppress the discussion, debate, and opinions that -- while plenty entertaining -- cause most forums to inevitably break down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note: as of this writing, your blog entry has a broken link, the correct link is provided above&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These old, popular, and off topic / too broad / opinion polls are ones that new users often find when they first hit the site and seek to contribute.  This is unfortunate because they are often not adding anything that isn't there in the previous twenty some-odd questions, lack good writing skills, and are unfamiliar with the scope of the site.  All of this leads to a rather negative experience for new users (doubly so if they ask another question like it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Allowing these old questions to remain open is in direct conflict with providing new users to the site a good experience - answering a good question or asking a good question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26486" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7034" RevisionGUID="ca933e55-8ed5-48e8-98c4-279fbd34b3a4" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="These are all the [meta-tag:faq] tagged questions at this time (sorted by newest).  Here's my take on what should be done with each one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems - It's good, though I'm probably biased.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting - Its good&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog - **Defaq it until the blog is active.  Alternatively, have someone who is active in the blog update it.**&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here - Ok&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic - Ok&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/faq-index-for-programmers-se - Ok though **should be updated** too.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic - Ok.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic - Ok.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1165/can-i-ask-career-advice-questions - Ok&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/what-types-of-programming-related-questions-are-off-topic (borderline) **Obsolete** - if not, it should be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright - **Obsolete** - this is largely dating back from the great scope change and the contentions around that timeframe.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster - Mostly **obsolete** (the two tags it mentions are gone) otherwise duplicate of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1165/can-i-ask-career-advice-questions -- we really shouldn't have too many copies of the same question in the [meta-tag:faq].&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/516/how-do-i-get-started-with-programmers-se - Ok&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice - **Obsolete** Yes, it was very important in its time, though this really isn't a  question anymore.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers - **Obsolete** not an issue anymore.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow - **Rewrite and clean up**&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain **Obsolete**, so *very* obsolete.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, from above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are the questions that should be dettaged:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/contributing-to-the-blog&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/what-types-of-programming-related-questions-are-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions should be updated:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/faq-index-for-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that the FAQ Index itself may instead be better to put in the tag wiki for [meta-tag:faq] instead of having it be its own question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26487" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7131" RevisionGUID="05201b1a-49c0-4b17-8812-e6f0e7d3ca36" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has already come up several times before. Here are the related questions that I found quickly:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/784/are-we-closing-too-many-good-questions-now?rq=1 (December 2010)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed?rq=1 (November 2011)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers?rq=1 (January 2012)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4097/why-are-so-many-questions-closed?rq=1 (October 2012 - duplicate of the November 2011 question)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here (October 2013)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts (June 2014)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6788/a-lot-of-front-page-down-votes (July 2014 - closed as a duplicate of he October 2013 and June 2014 questions)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26488" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7654" RevisionGUID="a232b67b-ba85-46b4-916e-45af23c3fa5e" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Something came up in the comments on [Robert's answer][1] that I'd like to address...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But why should it remain open? Curation of existing content for questions that are off topic, primarily opinion, or too broad is most easily done when the question is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -- [MichaelT](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7649/to-robert-cartaino-who-reopens-broad-questions#comment22998_7650)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- I will not write anything about putting questions on trains bound for some camp. I will not write anything about putting questions on trains bound for some camp. I will not write anything about putting questions on trains bound for some camp. I will not write anything about putting questions on trains... --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closure doesn't mean deletion, and I think many community participants confuse the two. All closure does it prevent new answers from being posted, and signal to the community that we really don't want these kinds of questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -- [Robert Harvey](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7649/to-robert-cartaino-who-reopens-broad-questions#comment23015_7650)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar sentiments were expressed in other comments and in chat. They're not entirely *wrong*, but I think they largely ignore the practical realities of how things work - both in terms of the software that drives these sites, and in terms of how this site operates using that software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Closing as limbo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This - the notion that closing is a state wherein questions can remain until salvaged - has merit; indeed, the system itself reflects this usage by marking questions as &quot;on hold&quot; for the first few days after they're closed, a signal that they can and should be edited and reopened if they can be. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, **most are not**. [Have a look at the closing statistics for the past 90 days here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last90days) - in particular, the stats for questions closed as &quot;Too Broad&quot;: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Close reason Closed % of total Edited % of closed Reopened % of closed Edited and Reopened % of edited&#xD;&#xA;    ------------ ------ ---------- ------ ----------- -------- ----------- ------------------- -----------&#xD;&#xA;    too broad    603    19.03 %    56     9.29 %      6       1.00 %       3                   5.36 %&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only 1% of questions closed thusly are reopened; less than 10% are even edited, and *of those* barely 5% are reopened. In real numbers, we're talking about 3 questions where this ideal is actually realized; if you were wagering on the outcome of a question, this would not be where you'd want to put your money.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Closing as a permanent state which prevents only the addition of answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, this isn't entirely *wrong*... The system does indeed block the addition of new answers to closed questions, and some closed questions *do* remain visible long after being closed... But ignores the *other* big change in status that closing implies, namely that the question is now eligible for deletion: privileged users may vote to delete it, and in some cases the system itself will remove such questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some statistics on closed question outcomes for the past 90 days:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- #11340 --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    closed deleted reopened &#xD;&#xA;    ------ ------- -------- &#xD;&#xA;    3169   2039    24       &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over 99% of closed questions *stay closed*. Over 64% are deleted relatively quickly. Now here are the same stats for questions closed in a 90-day period ending 1 year ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- #11340 --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    closed deleted reopened &#xD;&#xA;    ------ ------- -------- &#xD;&#xA;    2837   2125    41      &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reopened % jumps to... less than 2%, while the deletion % rockets to over 74%. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't necessarily a *bad thing*, mind you: if most questions that are closed aren't worth saving, then you'd *expect* the reopen % to be low and *hope* the deletion % is high. But... You'd also be naive to believe that closing is **not** an immediate precursor to deletion; clearly it is just that for the majority of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Why does this matter?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember the premise of this question was that certain questions shouldn't be reopened. Whether or not that's actually the case, it's bad news if the folks who are closing questions do so misinformed of what that actually *means*. If you're voting to close a question, you should be comfortable with that question being deleted - statistically, *that is what will happen.* If you'd be disappointed in that outcome, then you should probably choose a different plan of action. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7649/to-robert-cartaino-who-reopens-broad-questions/7650#7650&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26489" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7135" RevisionGUID="a7482f96-8726-424c-a62f-3f416c5bc70d" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've only been an active SE user for a couple of weeks, and since PSE is my favorite one I've been mulling this question over pretty much the entire time (not to mention reading far too many meta posts). Some days it feels like we're closing too aggressively. Some days it feels like you need a bachelor's in Q&amp;A philosophy to tell what actually is on-topic for SO vs PSE vs all the other SEs. Some days it feels like the people writing questions can't construct a coherent sentence, much less an answerable question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on my experience thus far, it looks like the truth is probably the latter: **A lot of people are asking a lot of questions which are inherently bad, and they would be just as bad no matter what our scope or name was.** There's even [an old meta answer on this topic that reaches pretty much the same conclusion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6993/161917).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By that I mean questions which are too vague, broad, or unclear, typically because they don't have anywhere near enough detail for us to figure out what question is actually being asked (often the asker himself doesn't appear to understand it). When it comes to technical subjects like programming, **the vast majority of newcomers do not understand that it is impossible to answer a question that hasn't been asked properly.** Until they gain the experience to understand that, there's simply no way to respond that doesn't run some risk of them perceiving us as lazy, unhelpful, rude or elitist (though we can certainly lower that risk by being polite) rather than figuring out what they did wrong. This is just as true here as it is on SO and on all the other SEs about semi-accessible-but-still-highly-technical subjects (like security.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't think there's anything we could do with PSE's question-asking UI to communicate this fundamental flaw in a newbie's conception of technical knowledge. PSE gets a bit more of it than most because people see it as SO with fewer restrictions, but we're not really that unique.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;So what *can* we do? Newbies are going to ask these questions no matter what, so in my opinion the best we can hope to do is improve our response to them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Try to emphasize that subjective questions still have to be *precise, specific and coherent enough to be answerable*. This is the number one thing newbies are not getting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Avoid emphasizing &quot;ivory tower&quot; close reasons like whether the question is &quot;useful to other programmers&quot;. Newbies don't care about that. I don't care about that. I care about whether or not the question can be answered. If the question is &quot;not useful&quot;, most of the time it's simply too broad/vague/unclear (or a code dump), so just say that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) When a question is just plain bad, so that it has no hope of being answerable on any SE site, we need to close it quickly. Looking at downvoted questions the front page right now, I see one that got put on hold, and several others that probably should have been put on hold or closed several hours ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Case in point, [look at the top of today's front page](https://i.stack.imgur.com/L3pEd.png). Although I'm not sure how I feel about the intellectual property question, the others are fix my code, how do I learn to X, another fix my code, a question about how C socket functions work that probably could've been answered by googling, and a question about Windows filesystem behavior that's nowhere near detailed enough to be answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit 2: Case in point again, [MichaelT just did the same thing with a much bigger sample size and reached the same conclusion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7145/on-a-name-for-the-site-and-the-questions-asked).&#xA;&#xA;-----&#xA;&#xA;Edit 3: Since it's been a very long time since I wrote this, and I recently achieved 10k reputation, it seemed worth an update. To my surprise there is nothing in this post that I have since changed my mind on; it's all just as true as it was back then. The only difference is that I believe we have gotten somewhat better at closing poor questions quickly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26490" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7667" RevisionGUID="486f115e-b312-429d-9038-a31504cb0f08" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have recommended that this question be locked as &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot;. In retrospect, it should be locked as duplicate. Do I need to provide an example?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see no reason why there should be a double standard on this site for moderators and users with high reputation (ie. for questions that fit suit personal opinions). If someone were to ask &quot;Why are all my posts being closed&quot; it would be marked immediately as duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look at this post https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3500/programmers-tag-line-is-misleading-can-we-rephrase-it?rq=1 and see that it is down-voted 6 times whereas this post is up-voted eight times and closed as not-constructive. That is democracy for you. Where do you assert to yourselves such certainty of your own opinions? I think there is much merit to his post and less to yours. It should be one way or the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The post is also too long to read in its entirety and not clearly related to its title line. The post “Why aren't young programmers interested in mainframes?” is not the main subject of this question, just an ad for the author's opninion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't feel that I can offer an opinion here, as it might be down-voted, thus affecting my reputation. But see what it is like to have your own post booted and condemned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with @Robert Cartaino, but look at the comments under his question? ex. &quot;But why!!!???&quot;, with boldface and attitude - it is all opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: I apologize for any real or apparent hatred against SO. I am not serious that this post should be closed, far from it. I'm just not clear why this post is open and all the others like it are closed. The opinions that you do not like should ALSO have their place on the SO meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26491" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7766" RevisionGUID="b33b6914-d0e2-4843-bf70-7b50259ad942" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The comment in your example is not quite typical. It is copied from [Workplace meta](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2696/168). They get this particular kind of troublesome questions much more often than Programmers, that's why they invested extra effort into writing detailed description of what's specifically wrong with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the nice tone of this comment, this is, again, kind of a brand mark of Workplace. Moderators and active regulars over there are fond of expressing the critique in very polite way and as far as I can tell, they do it really well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can bookmark and refer appropriate sections (answers) in [their meta post](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2693/168) when you see workplace-y questions that don't look OK, although as I already mentioned Programmers get these quite infrequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more typical issues in the questions, I refer respective posts at our meta, conveniently listed in FAQ: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One thing I'd want to warn against is referring that _whole FAQ_ instead of meta posts specifically targeted to address concrete issues in the post you comment on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, I haven't seen our regulars (mis)using FAQ like that but I believe it's important enough to explicitly warn against this. Askers are unlikely to pay attention to your meta references unless they can easily see how it directly applies to specific issues with their question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for technical means to make it easier, as pointed in comments, StackApps have special &quot;pro-forma&quot; script for that ([discussed in details at MSE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/136609/165773)). Note that if you switch browsers or machine you'd lose data for this script, so you may prefer to simply keep comments in some file and copy from there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26492" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7898" RevisionGUID="aea3ae19-5b0c-4750-9e67-8265fcf09db8" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**This was previously declined as CR.SE was in beta and migrations to beta sites are not allowed. CR is no longer in beta! Congratulations to CR!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know we don't want too many migration paths, and we definitely don't want ones that are likely to leech away our *good* questions, but I think of all the technology related websites, the scope of Code Review actually has likely the least overlap with us of any others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No part of our site scope is reviewing written completed *code*, architecture sure but not *code*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no part of code reviews site is *doing anything else at all*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't get questions for this migration often, but I've seen ones migrated to SO with totally working code, just because we have a migration path to SO but not CR.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Migration path to Code Review please?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5901/35276" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26493" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7146" RevisionGUID="56a0f13b-958e-4cd6-bd81-d7c2946a3bc6" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Lets consider &quot;Software Engineering&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271586/what-examples-are-there-for-mean-js and http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271584/what-cms-to-use-for-mean-js - both software/resource recommendation questions. This is a bit of a [herp derp oh look a textbox syndrome](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name/3225#comment7479_2950)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271573/how-to-speed-up-the-following-matlab-code a code review question. It looks just as on topic for a site named Software Engineering as it does for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271545/clarification-on-migrating-to-visual-studio-2010 A tooling question that looks just as on topic for Software Engineering as it does for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271544/is-there-any-harm-in-using-amazon-aws-as-a-development-environment A question that looks just as appropriate for software engineering as programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271541/what-do-you-do-while-youre-waiting-for-your-tests-to-run A polling question that misses the point of Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271537/how-to-choose-a-framework A too broad question that is just as on topic for programmers as it is for software engineering - the issue is the broad scope of it, not the topicality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271535/compare-values-from-two-spinner-and-display-the-result-accordingly-in-android-st Someone asking how to write some code.  This would be asked on Software Engineering too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271532/best-way-to-get-data-from-database-inside-thread-class-in-spring, http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271515/can-i-use-qtcreator-with-pyqt5 and http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271531/c-malloc-error are implementation issues that have been migrated to Stack Overflow. This would likely be *more* common with Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271530/univerisity-iphone-assignment-without-an-apple-mac a rant. I suspect it would be asked on Software Engineering too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271510/code-blocks-not-opening-new-console-why-is-this-happening a tooling question with the text &quot;I am unable to start a project in Code Blocks :/ always getting this error&quot; and a screen shot.  This would be asked on Software Engineering too and may also suffer from the above mentioned syndrome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271507/git-hangs-when-pushing a git command line issue that has been migrated. Again, likely still asked on Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271497/difficulty-finding-a-recursive-starting-point-for-an-algorithm is getting too broad votes. This isn't an issue of topicality but rather the scope of the question. It would also be asked on Software Engineering and would be too broad there too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271491/i-want-to-build-a-software-with-c-book-list-is-needed and http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271487/installment-of-python-2-7-9-and-3-4-2-recommended-learning-source are asking for books would also be done on Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271490/how-to-learn-backend-development is closed as career or education advice, and would also be asked on a Software Engineering site (such questions are asked on *many* sites)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271473/best-way-to-implement-in-app-purchases is a resource and code request and would, again, also be asked on a Software Engineering site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271472/php-ajax-error-get-404-when-type-first-char is a code question that we didn't migrate to SO because it was already posted there too.  This would also be asked on a Software Engineering site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For 10ks there are also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271529/does-php-can-solve-this&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/360/for-windows-developers-who-would-like-to-get-into-the-mac-os-x-software-developm &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271560/how-to-solve-the-problem-of-fault-face-detection-in-image-processing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1763/generous-budget-whats-your-ideal-setup&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271517/recommend-a-british-based-programmer-small-company-that-also-does-design-a-la&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271480/what-books-helped-you-to-become-a-better-programmer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These were asked and deleted in the past 24h and would likely have been asked no matter what the site name was.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so, there's my list. I contend that all the problematic questions would still be asked on a Software Engineering site and changing the name would be pointless and confusing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26494" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7900" RevisionGUID="44370f5f-9534-4bd2-9299-7a0eb32d1b27" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would like to present this chart from [Checklist for how to write a good Code Review question](https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1957/42632) first:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![chart][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you can see, the metaphorical _distance_ in scope between Programmers and Code Review is significant. From a CR regular standpoint, I can say for myself that we do get, _on occasion_, a question which is off-topic at CR but could be on-topic at Programmers _(most off-topic Qs we get are broken code/&quot;give-me-the-code&quot;)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When this happens, normally one of us will hop over to The Whiteboard to ask if it would be a good migration candidate, and if it is the case, mods move forward with manual migration. This happens... once a week at the most, I'd say. I'm not a regular at Programmers so I cannot speak on your behalf, but I think the important question is: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; __Does the volume of off-topic on Programmers, on-topic on Code Review questions justify a migration path?__&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please reference [MichaelT's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7901/140090) for migration stats between Programmers and Code Review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Td6Ev.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26495" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7157" RevisionGUID="56000bbb-b3e2-48fd-8091-38c8b665e3e8" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="See: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7154/new-se-chat-bot-feature-for-identifying-when-programmers-is-mentioned-on-stackov&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now, the chat bot is publishing messages into The Whiteboard, the main chat room for Programmers. Should the messages be published into The Whiteboard or into a special chat room?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26496" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7205" RevisionGUID="dcb036be-5b01-4186-ad99-581c3fd682b1" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Studying issues in one of the questions posted today ([Problem with Spring Rest request](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/275484/1)) made me feel that this can be indeed related to differences in [quality filter](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5857/31260) settings between Programmers and Stack Overflow, namely to the fact that SO [blocks word **&quot;problem&quot;** in titles](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/107989/165773) while at Programmers it is allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Checking first of examples in my question shows that it would also be blocked at SO for this reason, as its title contains blocked word: &quot;problem to load code of captcha in codeIgniter&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to be easy to test, particularly because this block is not limited to new users. When I tried to enter this title into Ask Question page at SO, I've got red block message shown at screen shot below. When I tried at Programmers Ask Questions, there was no block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Checking [my flag history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/flag-summary/31260 &quot;available to SE developers and possibly to moderators&quot;) suggests that we are getting low quality / blatant off-topic &quot;problem&quot; questions about once in every 2-3 days average.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more accurate estimate of how much of an issue it is would be based on stats for deleted questions with &quot;problem&quot; titles, but I don't have access to these stats (probably moderators have).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/T1ZyG.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/T1ZyG.png &quot;screen shot: example of how asker would be blocked at SO because of the word 'problem' in title&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Those interested in original revision of this answer can find it [in the post history](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/7205/1).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26497" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7935" RevisionGUID="c284751d-e0d9-4a31-a5bc-2a36c332fb32" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Four years ago [we asked for a name change][1], which was [rejected by SE][2] because there was no evidence to support the claim it was causing user confusion, and there were other things the site should focus on first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now four years later, users have done all that they can and things are not improving in relation to off-topic posts and user confusion. We still have a very high percentage of closed questions here, [and][3] [repeatedly][4] [get][5] [negative][6] [feedback][7] [on][8] [meta][9] [about][10] [this][11]. (As a lurker of P.SE Meta, I can tell you there are many more links too - these are just the ones found with a quick search of recent questions.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Steps taken to improve site since four years ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The site scope and FAQ has been clarified so it is very clear what is on or off topic now&#xD;&#xA;* Users have worked hard to generate a set of meta posts to help guide new users with common misconceptions&#xD;&#xA;* There is an active group of users who are very aggressive about maintaining questions according to the current site scope and standards&#xD;&#xA;* More focus is placed on guiding and educating new users&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The subject of the site's name still keeps coming up time and again from both new and veteran users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [maple_shaft][12] (mod)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The solution to the vast majority of bad content that I speak of is Our Domain Name. It is as simple as that. Change the domain name of the site from Programmers to Software Engineering and Architecture or something akin to this and I will personally step down as a moderator if spam on the site doesn't cut by half.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [enderland][13]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't think anyone -- other than SE itself -- disagrees that the site is poorly named. However... that is well outside our ability to influence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Carson2000][14]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this site poorly named? Are people coming to &quot;programmers.stackexchange.com&quot; and immediately thinking &quot;aha, the place for my programming questions! they will help me debug my code!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Mage xy][15]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've never really understood why the site was called &quot;Programmers.SE&quot;... we're all programmers, aren't we? Pretty much the same over at SO... so from a newb's perspective, what's the difference?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [AndresF][16]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; For example, the name change was rejected in 2012! Sites, people and rules evolve. Maybe it's time to re-evaluate those decisions? I happen to think the name programmers.SE is part of the problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Alexei Averchenko][17]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software architecture is a viable topic, but if it's the main one on this site, it's better to rename it. the name &quot;Programmers&quot; connotes that it's a site about people, not code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt;  .. turning away people who seek advice from seasoned programmers on a site called &quot;Programmers&quot; is downright criminal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could keep going if you want, but those are just some comments from recent posts. There are many more of them if you keep looking further back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So please Stack Exchange, can we get your permission to change the name of our site? It doesn't need to be a complete re-design, just a domain name change and a title. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3718/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3733/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7361/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7910/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7906/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6815/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6788/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6233/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4009/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7130/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7593/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7809/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away#comment24097_7907&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away#comment24077_7907&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations/7934#comment24129_7911&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations/7934#comment24179_7913&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7316/putting-soft-questions-on-hold-unproductive#comment21909_7316" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26498" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7243" RevisionGUID="227632d5-33e8-45ac-b22e-0f2987859fd9" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Stack Overflow has got an **[interesting feature](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/288387/839601 &quot;find more detailed description here&quot;)** that may be related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't tell that it helps to lower amount of bad questions _asked_ (I honestly don't know if this is possible at all) - but it _at least_ helps to save site home page from being polluted by such questions (bold font in below quote is mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;*All* questions flagged Very Low Quality now immediately enter [Triage](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7053/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...and **while these questions are being triaged, they're *not* shown on the home page. Take *that*, [wall of crap.](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so)**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;[![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1rTGm.png)](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* MSE discussion of instilling above features network wide:  &#xD;&#xA; [Triage and Help &amp; Improvement review queues at sites other than Stack Overflow?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/251737/165773)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26499" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7939" RevisionGUID="45e6af3a-e6f5-4f81-a576-04e8a1cd7059" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It is a valid request, but I see some problems here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- to find a name which really describes the sites scope **better**, and not just **different** or **equally bad** (or **worse**). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- once the name is changed, there is probably no easy way back for the next few years. A site name change is something I do not expect the SE team to make every two weeks. So if the change does not bring the benefits we expect from it, what then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we could just try out if a name like &quot;SoftwareDesign.SE&quot; (or &quot;Programmer's Whiteboard&quot;, a older suggestion of Robert Harvey which would be my favorite) would increase the ratio of &quot;good vs. bad posts&quot;, I think no one here would hesitate to do this. But such a change has a high risk of collateral damage - one has to be very sure about that it is worth the hassle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me, it looks your proposal for a name change is trying to solve a problem which might be better addressed differently. [This post two days][1] ago and its topmost answer reveals where the real problem is - not the site's name has to change, but the way how some people (and I don't exclude myself from this) behave in the process of closing, replying to bad questions and commenting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, I am not against a name change, but whoever will do this, please do it with care. And do not be too astonished if the number of low quality question does not drop significantly after the change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26500" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8011" RevisionGUID="8d5730a7-32f1-415e-8893-50f377116013" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While running a [test on Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/319131/1-2-3-test-let-s-increase-the-number-of-reviews-close-votes-for-science), there were some questions about whether we were driving traffic to Programmers, so I decided to rerun some of the numbers in [Shog’s original answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7332/28602) and compare the 30 days prior to the test to the testing period. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Prior to the Stack Overflow Test&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, let's look at the 30 days of activity here on Programmers prior to the start of the test, the time period was **February 15, 2016 to March 16, 2016**.  During this time there were:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!---14320, 14321, 14322, 14323, 14324---&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **1452** questions asked here, from &#xD;&#xA;- **1283** distinct account, of which&#xD;&#xA;- **1143** have/has account on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;- **298** of these users hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow in the 30 days. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From those 298 users:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **354** questions were posted &#xD;&#xA;- **200** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **244** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **233** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **124** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **74** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For comparison:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **701** questions were closed in total &#xD;&#xA;- **843** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **801** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **596** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **434** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking into the details, I also checked the IP addresses associated with these posts to see how many came from blocked address on Stack Overflow. Of the IP Addresses, 288 hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow. From those addresses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **339** questions were posted here&#xD;&#xA;- **185** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **216** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **208** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **128** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **81** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##During the Test Period (March 16, 2016 - April 13, 2016)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!---14311, 14313, 14315, 14318, 14319---&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The numbers over the test were:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **1388** questions asked, from &#xD;&#xA;- **1202** distinct account, of which&#xD;&#xA;- **1087** have/has account on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;- **248** of these users hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From those 248 users:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **307** questions were posted&#xD;&#xA;- **151** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **158** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **193** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **119** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **63** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By comparison for the rest of the questions asked during this time:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **543** questions were closed in total&#xD;&#xA;- **578** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **729** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **607** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **418** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the total IP Addresses, 298 hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow. From those addresses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **355** questions were posted here&#xD;&#xA;- **164** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **172** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **211** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **135** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **81** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the 30 days prior to the test, approximately 23% of the users asking question on Programmers had hit a block on SO, but during the test this dropped to 20%.  Blocked users asked approximately 24% of questions prior to the test, and 22% of questions during it. While there was a slight increase in the number of questions from blocked IP Addresses, it went from 23% to 25%, I'm not seeing a huge indication that the test on Stack Overflow drove traffic to Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26501" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7254" RevisionGUID="6aea56c3-6794-4c1e-8623-8b2d022faed2" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Question is About How to Use a Development Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool that you are using is a tool that is used to design and develop software and is used primarily in a software development environment, you should check out [Stack Overflow][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A number of development tools already have questions and answers on Stack Overflow, ranging from requirements management tools ([DOORS][2]) to architecture and design tools ([Dia][3], [Rhapsody][4], [Enterprise Architect][5]) to editors ([Visual Studio][6], [Eclipse][7], [Notepad++][8]) to mathematical packages ([MATLAB][9], [Sage][10]) to version control ([git][11], [ClearCase][12]) to peer review tools ([Collaborator][13]) to test tools ([TestComplete][14], [Selenium][15]) to project management tools ([Jira][16], [FogBugz][17]), and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about How to Use a General Purpose Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool is general purpose software, check out [Super User][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all of the tools that we use during the course of software development are unique to software developers. Tools such as office suites ([Microsoft Office][19], [OpenOffice.org][20]), web browsers ([Internet Explorer][21], [Chrome][22]) file transfer tools ([Filezilla][23], [WinSCP][24]), virtualization software ([VirtualBox][25], [VMWare][26]), and analysis software ([MATLAB][27], [Mathematica][28]) are used by many types of people in different environments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about a Tool in a Context Specific to an Operating System&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several Stack Exchange sites devoted to particular operating systems and associated software packages or applications: [Android][29], [Apple][30], [Unix and Linux][31], and [Ubuntu][32]. Be sure to read their Help Center, Meta site, and search for similar questions before asking to make sure that your specific question is on-topic for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about using a Tool in a Software Development Workflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question involves how to integrate a tool or type of tool into your workflow or process, then it is likely to be on-topic on Software Engineering. Generally, if you aren't asking about how to use a specific feature of a tool, but trying to determine how to use the tool to achieve a well-defined goal, start here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Other Considerations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some tools have their own Stack Exchange sites as well. For example, there are sites for [Drupal][33], [Expression Engine][34], [Mathematica][35], [Salesforce][36], [SharePoint][37], and [Wordpress][38]. There are even more sites for both particular environments and specific tools in beta - check out [the complete list of Stack Exchange sites][39].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  However, if you decide to post the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions may be on-topic on multiple sites. If you see your favorite tool on a site, check out some of the questions and answers to see if your question fits and which site is most likely to provide the answers that you are looking for. Do not cross-post questions - if you feel that your question should be moved to a different site, flag it and let the site's moderation team know. If you aren't sure, every site has a Meta site and many sites have a chat room, so you can always ask before asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators can, and do, migrate questions. If you do ask in the wrong place, there's a site that is more appropriate, and it's a well-written question, it will likely be migrated. Low quality questions that don't meet the quality guidelines of the other site won't be moved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are site-specific [automatic question blocks][40] - posting on the wrong site will not help you get answers and will likely lead to being blocked on other sites. It's also not possible to migrate questions if you are blocked on the target site. If you are blocked somewhere, do not post questions that are off-topic somewhere else. Instead, work to improve your existing questions and answers to have the block lifted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or downvoted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are Questions Asking for Help Using a Tool Off-Topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6701/are-questions-asking-for-help-using-a-tool-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are there a subset of tool questions that are appropriate for Software Engineering?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5519/are-there-a-subset-of-tool-questions-that-are-appropriate-for-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* [Where does my GIT question go?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6311/where-does-my-git-question-go)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/doors&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/dia&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/rhapsody&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/enterprise-architect&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/visual-studio&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/eclipse&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/notepad%2B%2B&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/sage&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/git&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/clearcase&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/code-collaborator&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/testcomplete&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/selenium&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/jira&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/fogbugz&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://superuser.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/microsoft-office&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/openoffice.org&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/internet-explorer&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/google-chrome&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/filezilla&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/winscp&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/virtualbox&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/vmware&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/mathematica&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://android.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [32]: http://askubuntu.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [33]: http://drupal.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [34]: http://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [35]: http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [36]: http://salesforce.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [37]: http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [38]: http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [39]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [40]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26502" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8024" RevisionGUID="75abf9bc-83d4-43ea-ab48-0330ce90720a" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="ThomasOwens addressed the reason for the temporary question ban. I would like to address the reason for the reason, that is, _why_ your previous questions led to the current situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that deleted questions are only visible to moderators, 10k users, or the user who asked them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Is it wise to invest in Angular 2?][1] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rightly closed as primarily opinion-based _and_ deleted. This is speculation that cannot be answered objectively.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [How common is it to get unpaid but skilled labor?][2] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Invites discussion (not answers), essentially asks for career advice which is off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Explaning to newbies that sometimes “it works” isn't “it works well”][3] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asks for advice on how to deal with coworker situations. Off-topic and subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [What does the $-operator mean (C# and EF context) for strings?][4] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asked on the wrong site, self-deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Using VS12 to create and manage an Azure-SQL DB (simple tasks)][5] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asks for a software tool which is explicitly off-topic per our help center.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Does TFS have the capacity equivalent of branching/forking in Git?][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay question about source control. Probably better-suited for Stack Overflow because it is asking about source control software, not strategy, but I wouldn't close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [How to motivate adaptive an shifting class access modifiers][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On-topic, but probably a duplicate. It is also a bit verbose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [How to store sensitive information (e.g. clients' credentials) accessibly for everybody inside?][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On-topic question about software process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Relation between projects and solutions in VS][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On-topic, but on the verge of being too broad. Still, it is about software organization and development processes so definitely on-topic and rightly does not have any downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Automatic code snippets in VS 12][10] (closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asks for help configuring a software tool. With more details it might be acceptable at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now for the important part: constructive feedback. Once you are able to ask questions again, I would focus on these items:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I see a few &quot;soft&quot; questions asking about opinion or how to convince a teammate about something. These questions are off-topic, unsalvageable, and unfortunately for you are simply not a good fit here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions that belong at Stack Overflow. Some people have a difficult time understanding just where the line is between the two sites. I agree it can be a bit blurry at times, and it is fine if you post incorrectly but in the gray area. We can fix that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [What are the differences between Stack Overflow, Programmers, and Code Review?][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A small number of off-topic questions that simply fall into one of the off-topic categories in the [help center][13].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [Why was my question closed or down voted?][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Several of your questions are very verbose. Try to focus on one thing, choose your words carefully, and describe the problem fully but in less space. This will help encourage us to read the question more fully, understand what it is asking, and hopefully upvote it. If the question needs improvement, it makes it easier for us to edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/313651&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/310681&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/309821&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/306324&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/203020&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/315885&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/314460&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/274265&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/250825&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/204871&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/266341&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26503" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8080" RevisionGUID="3ebd98a9-f64b-4ebf-8d37-0a40627dfc3d" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I saw a question at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5793/132033. Still I could not get my head around that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a question specific to some programming language (Python), possibly a bug. But I am not sure as to where should I post the question. How do I decide that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should I post my question here so that I can get help in deciding on an answer to my query?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me post the question anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    import numpy as np&#xD;&#xA;    g = [1.1,1.2,1.3]&#xD;&#xA;    for j in np.arange(len(g)):&#xD;&#xA;        c = 0&#xD;&#xA;        for k in np.arange(len(g)-1,j,-1):&#xD;&#xA;            if (g[j]-g[k])**2 &lt; 0.01:&#xD;&#xA;                c += 1&#xD;&#xA;                h.append(g[k])&#xD;&#xA;                print 0.01-(g[j]-g[k])**2      # line 9&#xD;&#xA;                g.pop(k)&#xD;&#xA;                &#xD;&#xA;    #            print 'g=', g,',length=',len(g),'\n'&#xD;&#xA;    #    length = len(g)&#xD;&#xA;        print 'g[j],c=',g[j],c&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem I am facing here is that the difference I asked to print at line 9 should be zero. But I am getting **2.60208521397e-17**. I have been scratching my head over this for long.&#xD;&#xA;&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26504" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7263" RevisionGUID="d4d2b40c-afed-49c8-85eb-c566d8b6f62f" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have added the [meta-tag:licensing] to the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6186/question-regarding-license-violation&#xD;&#xA; - &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/915/are-software-license-questions-acceptable&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/882/software-law-definition&#xD;&#xA; - &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2220/what-is-the-difference-between-the-mit-and-mit-license-tags&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/would-a-how-to-choose-the-best-oss-license-type-question-be-appropriate-for-ps&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3131/can-we-put-software-licensing-questions-are-off-topic-in-the-faq/5964#5964&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7258/reconciling-no-legal-advice-and-yes-software-licensing&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6886/how-can-i-compare-and-contrast-open-source-licenses-canonical-dupe-for-lice&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6497/what-is-the-difference-between-software-licensing-and-copyright&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5456/discussion-on-if-questions-about-eulas-are-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were some other questions that were tagged [meta-tag:legal] but they weren't strictly about licensing, so I didn't tag them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26505" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8093" RevisionGUID="606fbda6-ac27-45cc-8558-5b0120fbaa19" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This... should've gone up about six months ago. But let's not let it turn into another six months! Today, your 2016 community promotion ads starts with the new format! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What are Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA; - cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA; - anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we reset the ads every year?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be **300 x 250 pixels**, or double that if high DPI.&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of **150 KB**&#xD;&#xA; - **If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently **6**) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/ads/display/8093" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26506" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7265" RevisionGUID="4ad2af55-d376-4acc-afce-786df133dd46" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would like to ask a question about software licensing. The help center says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - ...&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***and it is not about...***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - ...&#xD;&#xA; - legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems like there is a lot of overlap between those two categories. In what situations is my software licensing question on-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading, history and citations:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;- [&lt;strike&gt;Reconciling &quot;no legal advice&quot; and &quot;yes software licensing&quot; [duplicate]&lt;/strike&gt;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7258/reconciling-no-legal-advice-and-yes-software-licensing)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26507" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8136" RevisionGUID="6cb7bf7a-d2ed-4bb9-931b-a6991e506607" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;!-- let's talk about elephant in the room --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading of [July 22nd discussion](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/new-site-name-discussion-jul-22-2016) primary focus of the coming changes is to prevent the flood of debugging questions. Both SE Community Manager and our moderators appear to be in agreement about that:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; \-  There are a crazy number of things that should be closed or downvoted or edited or just discouraged, but only a tiny handful reach the sort of volume that you need to _announce them to all visitors_.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;\- And the code troubleshooting types are, by far, the worst.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;\- I'm pretty sure just about every site on the network gets coding questions now and then, but only a few bother mentioning that they're off-topic explicitly anywhere. &#xD;&#xA;here, they're a problem, so you focus on that &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explicit mentioning of **&quot;not code troubleshooting&quot;** in the [suggested site tagline](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vkfDr.png) also appears to support this vision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given above I wonder if we need to somehow change the way how blatant debugging questions are handled, maybe have more active involvement of diamond moderators or maybe ask for system features &lt;sup&gt;[1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6795/31260 &quot;example - automatic checks for cross-posting and question block at SO&quot;), [2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260 &quot;example - showing a warning&quot;), [3](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8056/new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8061#comment24925_8065 &quot;example - interstitial page&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt; or something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding of the current approach is, it assumes primarily involvement of regular community members which leads to cumbersome and lengthy process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;First, a question needs to collect five close votes from 3K users. Per my observations this tends to take few hours or even days. After closure, question hangs on the site for 9 days before it gets [auto-deleted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/177675/165773). If it manages to get an upvoted or accepted answer prior to closure things get even more complicated because such questions aren't eligible for automatic deletion and can in theory hang in here indefinitely.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that planned changes are so much focused on preventing debugging questions our current way looks somewhat worrying.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope that the changes will help to educate newcomers against asking for code troubleshooting over here. But [statistics](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6592/31260) seems to suggest that ~20% questions here come from users who simply don't have an option to ask for debugging help at more appropriate site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes me wonder how to handle it when such questions are posted here despite all the effort and guidance." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26509" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7272" RevisionGUID="8476056f-16a4-40b0-815a-71732b664d61" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is not a duplicate of this: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5427/usefulness-of-career-development-and-career-transition-tags ... it's time for them to be blacklisted. The narrowness of scope of what actually would be on topic here is so narrow that it's pretty much invisible. **All it does is invite off topic posts.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We absolutely can and should keep the tag around for historically significant posts. According to Meta, we can do this. But it should be blacklisted for all future posts. See http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/252898/mark-a-tag-as-a-historical-significance-only&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has come up many times before, for example: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags (2011) (Note: this question didn't suggest blacklisting because blacklisting didn't exist when it was discussed)&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3279/blacklist-career (2012)&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup (2013)&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6426/career-transition-tag-inappropriate (Early 2014)&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6458/there-seems-to-be-some-contradictory-guidance-with-respect-to-asking-career-deve (Early 2014)&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6983/improve-question-quality-by-informing-askers-of-expectations-in-some-career-rela (Late 2014)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For crying out loud, this is the [tag:jobs] tag wiki:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do not use this tag. Click &quot;info&quot; for better alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the [tag:career-development] tag wiki:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Career advice is off-topic per Help Center. 99% of questions with this tag are off-topic and will be closed. Study other questions under this tag closely that aren't closed before asking your question, if you want any chance of it not being closed. Closed questions add up to a possible question-ban &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bottom line... there is an awful lot of bad here, and very, very little good. It's nigh impossible to write an on-topic question with these tags. A lot of those are out of date because **The Workplace had not even graduated until February 2014**. Some relevant comments (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Rachel](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel) [Jan 6 '13 at 18:30](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5427/usefulness-of-career-development-and-career-transition-tags#comment13618_5427) (this is the best that can be managed by someone that *likes* the tag):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think [career-development] does serve a purpose, and it's one of my favorite tags to browse on the site. Career advice isn't the same as career development. We can't advise someone on what career path they should take, but we can answer some questions about career development for software developers. I'm not sure about [career-transition] though... **I can't think of any cases where it could be on-topic here.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [@Yannis Rizos♦︎](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/25936/yannis-rizos) [Jan 19 '13 at 22:19](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5427/usefulness-of-career-development-and-career-transition-tags#comment13769_5446)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is all good, but irrelevant if the tags aren't used as they are supposed to be used. If a lot of people use [career-development] to ask career advice questions, then the **tag is problematic and should probably go away.** The two topics are distinct, but their differences are subtle, and become even more subtle if we consider non native English speakers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##It's time for them to go.##" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26510" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8181" RevisionGUID="d0963ec2-50c3-4bc8-86e5-a8e86e655c61" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Having read [this][1] question about a reasonable feature request and seen that it was closed as a dupe of a question from 2013 (and 2011 by another user), I wonder what is the best way &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - to leave a note to the SE team that I would also like to see such a feature added. &#xD;&#xA; - to advertise certain feature requests after some years again to get some feedback if there are more users now which think the feature would be beneficial for the site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just upvoting those old feature requests seems to have no impact, since chances are high noone just notice about the upvote to such an old question. Asking about the feature again seems to be the wrong way, too (will get closed as a dupe, see above). Adding a bounty, as suggested [here][2], simply does not work on Programmer's meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what can I do increase the chance a good suggestion which was probably just forgotten over the years won't vanish completely?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8176/please-add-mathjax&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/106860/what-is-meta-protocol-for-re-requesting-ignored-feature-requests" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26511" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8183" RevisionGUID="9d423367-8531-43bb-9755-ac1193054f9f" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For many thorough discussion on this matter, refer [What is Meta protocol for re-requesting ignored feature requests?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/106860/165773) and questions linked to it at at MSE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that bounties, being one of most popular ideas expressed in these discussions, apply only at MSE. At per site metas there is no way to set bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over here your options are narrower: edit, answer, discuss in chat, maybe ask non-duplicate question or do something like was done in famous [(4 years later)...](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7935/31260) request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26512" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7285" RevisionGUID="8071b090-9f29-4d35-badc-9fbd83eddae9" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Back in 2012, we launched the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative (STCI)](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups). It was very successful in identifying tags to create, merge, remove, and blacklist. However, it has been about 3 years since this effort was launched, and I think that it's time to relaunch this campaign.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The process will be very similar to the last effort:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Identify a tag that has issues.** This may be a tag that should be deleted and blacklisted, or two or more tags that need to be merged or made synonyms of each other. As these tags are identified, post an answer in this question. If you think that a multi-way merge is necessary (for example, someone identified that tag X and Y should be merged, and you feel that tag Z should also be part of this merge), edit the existing answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Vote on candidate actions.** Using the comment feature, comment on the proposed actions. Up or down vote as well. I hope to take the next 2-3 weeks to gather a list of actions and then treat this question as a queue. Starting in May 1, I'll accept the top voted question and that will mark the cleanup action. After completing the action, I'll delete the answer and accept the next one. Note that at the very end of the initiative, I'll undelete all of the answers and close the question for historical reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. **Execute the cleanup.** Review the questions in the tag. Vote on the question and answers, make edits to improve them, edit the tag wikis, flag for immediate moderator attention or for moderator actions, and otherwise improve that corner of the site. Each cleanup will likely last 1-2 weeks, depending on the size of the tag. Please try to avoid flooding the homepage with edits. If there are a large number of questions that require edits, the window for a particular tag may be longer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. **Feedback.** After a few cleanups, we'll review the process and how we're doing and prioritize the work going forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Questions tagged `stci`](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26513" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8189" RevisionGUID="f3ea0353-4d0a-407c-8649-5bc0458accf8" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A question is either a question that belongs or a question that doesn't belong. We, as a community, have decided that some types of questions aren't a good fit for this format. Resource requests are one such type of question that is not a good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guiding principle can be found in the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][1] and [Real Questions Have Answers][2] blog posts. Questions that generate lists aren't the kind of questions we want because they don't generate the answers that we want. This is a good platform for sharing human knowledge and applying experiences, not aggregating large numbers of links to resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've also had specific discussions on resource requests on Meta [here][3] and [here][4] and [here][5] and [here][6] where you can get several reasons why this type of question doesn't work. Each time the top voted posts have been opposed to questions about resource requests. That continues to be the perspective of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4002/resource-questions-automatic-close&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5299/why-are-reference-request-questions-off-topic?rq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26515" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8208" RevisionGUID="4ce6a311-de00-4ea7-ba73-09a3d8a0d6bb" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**NO**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [Robert Harvey says](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8207/145)&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering is a site for asking questions directly related&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to the Systems Development Life Cycle (but not code troubleshooting or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; writing specific code).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic. They are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26517" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8211" RevisionGUID="d98d4dbb-b51a-4f83-a445-a8ea2a27b008" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I read [your original question][1], [your question here on Meta][2], and the comment chain on [Robert Harvey's answer][3]. After reading everything, I casted a reopen vote on your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's been a while since we've visited a discussion of history questions and their topicality, but I still agree with the [answers presented in the last discussion][4], and I really don't see a reason to reopen the topicality discussion, since we've had plenty of luck with history questions - they tend to produce well researched answers that bring together individual knowledge and information from multiple sources in a way that is very searchable. All of those are positives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, this isn't the only site to have a solid set of questions about the history of their field. [Computer Science][5], [Electrical Engineering][6], [Mathematics][7], and [Statistics][8] all do it well, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, that doesn't mean that there aren't improvements that can't be made to the question. My biggest problem after reading everything is that it doesn't actually answer the question you are interested in. But that still doesn't mean that it's not a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You [left a comment on Robert's answer][9] that states you are interested in language design. This information is not presented in your original question at all. It may not be intuitive, but Stack Exchange is not about you getting an answer to your question, but about providing a repository of questions and answers for other people (I think there is some discussion on Meta Stack Exchange about this, but I'm not able to find it right now). This question isn't that useful for someone else who is designing a language and wondering if they should use a caret for XOR or exponentiation - they would have to interpret the history in their own way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also don't think that this is the best community to ask language design questions on.  We do have some people with this background here - [Eric Lippert][10] comes to mind. However, consider the intended audience of this community: [professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly][11] (or, in simpler terms, practitioners of [software engineering][12] or [software craftsmanship][13]). Considering that they also accept history questions, [the community at Computer Science][14] may be better suited to answering questions about programming language design - traditionally, [programming language theory is a branch of computer science][15]. However, just because it's on-topic there doesn't mean it is off-topic here. I do think that wording it more about your design of a programming language rather than a history question may have been better here, since as people who care about creating and maintaining software, we do have a stake in languages that are easy to use and maintainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, I've reopened the question. I don't see any reason to keep it closed. There's also no discussion regarding removing history from this site's scope, as long as it's related to the history of software engineering or software craftsmanship.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/331388/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8209/4&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8210/4&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5633/is-programming-history-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/history&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/history&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/math-history&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/history&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8209/this-question-isnt-remotely-subjective#comment25693_8210&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6505/eric-lippert&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_craftsmanship&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language_theory" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26518" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8226" RevisionGUID="848f05c8-fb92-4857-b517-f809a8078009" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question may be on-topic as a software design question, not a software development methods and practices question. The [Help Center's on-topic page][1] provides links to Wikipedia to define these terms - methods and practices refers to methods like sequential development, the agile methods, Lean, and CMMI and practices refers to things like Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design. Software design includes identifying and selecting data structures and algorithms, along with a number of other topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although it's likely to be on-topic, I'm not sure you'll get a good answer here because of the core audience of this community. We are &quot;professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;. We may not have the depth of experience in graphics engines or mathematics to provide a suitable answer to your question. We maintain [a list of other Stack Exchange sites that cover topics related to software development][2], some of which may be on-topic here but they provide a different set of experiences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should read their Help Center and search before asking a question, but it looks like [Computer Science][3], [Computational Science][4], and [Signal Processing][5] may be good fits for your question. Don't forget that cross-posting is not acceptable on the Stack Exchange network, so be sure to tailor your question for the specific audience to receive the best answers from that given community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8066/4&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://dsp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26519" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7319" RevisionGUID="51b79055-bf3f-46c6-9f63-21ef75d5ad81" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I can appreciate the idea that sometimes popular questions can get closed simply because they are crazy popular. However, I strongly doubt this is an issue that would need to be addressed immediately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a highly upvoted question suddenly gets closed, to a point where it triggers red flags in the Community Manager system, the right thing for the Community Management team is to *bring the question to us in Meta*. Something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hey guys, this question was closed, but we can't see any good reason to do so. Why did the community choose to do it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there would probably be [an answer from someone like @MichaelT](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7289/why-was-how-can-i-deal-with-the-cargo-cult-programming-attitude-reopened?cb=1#comment21821_7290)&lt;/sup&gt; like (these comments really deserve to be an answer):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We've been looking at some less than ideal tags for the site. One of those is [tag:teaching] which this question has. It wasn't the 'wildly popular' that was the criteria. It was the 'questions of this tag are often poor fit for the Q&amp;A format and often are either polling or education advice.' With the goal of cleaning up broken windows (because new users often use [old open questions as examples](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/278959/area-of-expertise-for-a-good-web-developer#comment574168_278959)) we endeavor to maintain the site's quality and that sometimes means revisiting old questions that don't fit well with the site's focus. Popularity isn't the selecting factor. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would point out that its not 'five users suddenly' - it was 'one user cast a close vote on it, three more [found it in /review](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close/98599), and well, then there's gnat'. This wasn't a coordinated closing. Just another question in /review that someone found. One should look at 'is this question too broad' when deciding to reopen a question that was closed by the community as too broad. We [really try to provide good guidance](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/40980) on our close reasons that are available to all. While you (as a community manager) may have a different view into this you will generally find that we don't have people debating and denigrating if a question should have been closed or not. We would likely really like to have a place for discussions, but we recognize that the Q&amp;A format that SE has provided doesn't work that way and when you get questions that can inspire dozens of short answers (and despite having an accepted one) we often find new users wanting to add their two bits to the content (and that can have a very poor experience when it gets down voted compared to not being able to ask because it is closed / locked).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've generally found that, in most cases the pace of things getting done on Stack Exchange doesn't need to be very fast. A popular post was closed, **it deserves to get it's time on Meta [before being unilaterally reopened.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119111/moderator-cheat-sheet/119112#119112)**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26520" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7407" RevisionGUID="ffb73595-194a-4066-9a9b-a0ed28b628d0" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[tag:terminology] [tag:definition]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often becomes a &quot;name this thing&quot;-type question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relevant meta discussion from last year: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related is [tag:naming] which also tends to get into opinionated questions about naming conventions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26521" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8235" RevisionGUID="1025bebc-aab6-49cf-be4a-6ecc77e5c1bf" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:45.163" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Since you seem to be mostly active at Stack Overflow, the main (and essentially the only) difference you will probably observe at Programmers is absence of debugging help questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators at this site were given a [guidance](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31225279#31225279 &quot;delete everything that's blatantly off-topic as soon as it appears&quot;) to quickly delete such questions and as far as I can tell they happily follow this recommendation. Also, community over here is quite [unwelcoming](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7864/31260) towards debugging questions so you may notice many of them quickly closed at score -3 and lower and deleted by 20K users even before moderators intervene.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for bikeshedding / [beat the strawman](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/314341/mvc-as-a-subset-of-client-server-architecture#comment664445_314341 &quot;'Someone dumps a question with a simple but terribly misguided / flawed assumption and answerers pile on it competing who would be the best in trashing it. This genre will definitely be popular (as it's essentially a sub-genre of bikeshedding). And it will be widespread because it is dead easy to construct such strawmans to beat'&quot;) kind questions, there is not really much difference. I spend quite a bit of time in SO close queue and it looks like such questions are posted to SO at about the same rate as here and standards of both sites have nothing to do with this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What looks to you like more encouragement here is misleading impression.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only reason why more of Programmers questions of this kind get and stick in hot questions is that system has special adjustment &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; that pushes Stack Overflow questions out of HNQ list after few hours while Programmers questions, just like all other sites, stick in the list for days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;For readers who may be not aware of that, purpose of [hot questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/hot-questions/info) is established pretty firmly: this feature is there only to show network wide audience entertaining / interesting questions. Those interested can refer MSE for more details on that: [What is the Goal of “Hot Network Questions”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/165773)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness you may also notice that Programmers get a bit more of project management questions than Stack Overflow. But as far as I can tell there is not much of a difference really, probably because these questions tend to be better handled at other site (PM.SE).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7182/31260&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;If you're interested, special adjustment mentioned above is [explained in more details here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/250154/165773). Official reason for this adjustment is to prevent SO questions dominating hot list but this is nonsense, ignore it. If they wanted just to avoid SO domination, they would implement the adjustment differently.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;There is a parameter in hotness formula that controls just how to limit amount of questions from single site and tweaking this parameter would guarantee desired limit for questions that can enter the list. Instead of simply changing this parameter they picked an indirect way that makes SO questions leave hot list faster which apparently was the main purpose of this adjustment. The reason they wanted that was to avoid too loud meta complaints when SO questions stick in the list ([&quot;croissants&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/190106/165773) probably scared them).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Programmers also complain about HNQ and we even [delete worst of such questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7525/31260) but this site is too small and SE management doesn't give a damn. About 2-3 months ago Shog told me that they are perfectly happy with the way how hot questions work and they don't plan for any changes in that (indeed why would they now that they shut down complaints from the only site that was big enough to force them change).&lt;/sub&gt; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26522" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7467" RevisionGUID="a9914532-56bc-4d1c-ab41-b4a276619711" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Is the question about the interview process itself or career advice in general?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Yes:** do not ask here, it is off-topic. It _might_ be appropriate at [The Workplace][1], but you need to read their help center for guidance and compare against what you want to ask. You can always drop in their chat or ask on their meta to be sure first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**No:** remove language relevant to the interview. Congratulations! You have a question useful for your immediate need while also being applicable to other programmers, whether they are interviewing or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example: if you want feedback on a whiteboard-type question asked during an interview, leave out the interview part and try to keep it in scope to avoid it being closed as too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also be sure to [read the link that gnat posted][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;[2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6361/31260&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26523" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7470" RevisionGUID="969c6624-fecf-4e10-a177-fc3bb3fe1098" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="GlenH7, Amon, and I were the three delete votes on it.  A closed question that is at -3 can be deleted by [users that have 20k rep](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/trusted-user) without having to wait for two days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was attracting *significant* discussion in the comments.  The question post had 13 comments, the posts had 10, 14, and 4 comments on them (and showed no sign of stopping or slowing down).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question had a number of reopen votes on it, which would have likely made it (and I will point out that it would likely get closed again - neither Glen, Amon nor I had cast close votes on it in the first round).  The question itself was (I believe) a rant about the lack of experience of php coders, an opinion poll about what to do when interviewing a candidate who can't do recursion for a Fibonacci series.  The answers were veering off into critiquing the interview question and the applicability of recursion in today's computing environment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The combination of these things (the discussion in comments, the off topic nature of the question, that the question was likely to get reopened and reclosed (with probably a few more answers jumping into the bandwagon)) strongly suggests that it is going to become even *more* contentious with time. At best (or worst depending on opinion), it would be one of those ugly historical locks (historical significance on a 1 day old question?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussions are indeed fun and interesting - but they are a [poor fit for the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A format](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6743/31260 &quot;see 'On discussions and why they don't make good questions'&quot;). I would love to banter about this in chat, or see what anecdotes occur on Quora or Reddit for it... but it is very tough to get it to fit in the Q&amp;A format as asked and written.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deleting the question gives people who have 10k reputation (and the OP) the opportunity to try to edit it into a question that should be reopened without the drama associated with bumping the question and repeated &quot;leave closed&quot; reviews.  In its current form, however, it should remain closed and ultimately be deleted as it isn't a good fit for the Q&amp;A format. That it was done sooner than later was to try to reduce the poor experiences for the people who chance to answer it in the reopen/reclose cycle and reduce any associated drama." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26524" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7474" RevisionGUID="a85d2520-301d-4312-b603-ee018adc79e3" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Call me dumb if you wish but I really [don't understand](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489) what is written in the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the meaning of manage c++? -- Just want to ask what is the meaning of manage c++?. Follow up question, how does it differ from c++?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for comments referring to some place elsewhere which could help one understand the question, I think the problem with this approach has been best covered in a discussion at sister meta, [Should a question that is meaningless without viewing an external link be closed?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/266910/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt;  Unclear what you are asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;would seem to be the most appropriate close reason here... questions (like answers) should really stand on their own merits and only have external links for references etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone understands what the question is about, they would better edit it into a shape allowing other readers to understand it too (if only to vote close for other reason, although [protecting from getting senseless guesses as answers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/98026/165773 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;) wouldn't hurt either)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26525" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7537" RevisionGUID="0a434669-6084-4e4c-adb1-e41fb2486308" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A common form of question that is often asked is the &quot;what are some examples of...&quot;  While this is [hinted at in the help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/), or [strongly rooted in opinions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491). We should be able to answer your questions in the equivalent of a few pages of text and graphics and provide references to support claims. If you have questions that warrant an extended discussion, feel free to come to chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;explained in those links, and written about in meta site for all of Stack Exchange in the [list-questions tag](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/list-questions/info), these questions show up often enough that it merits asking again here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why do these list questions get closed and down voted on Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26526" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7551" RevisionGUID="6184c45c-fa88-4af5-975d-29af7e428d60" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[![Coffee Stack Exchange][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LzvlP.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://coffee.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(thanks to MichaelT for pointing to [appropriate ad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7177/31260 &quot;10K link&quot;))&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26527" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7573" RevisionGUID="2b85bc96-086a-4ddf-b7d1-adb952ccd9e5" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; My question was closed within seconds using the close reason normally used for lazy questions asking for laundry lists of libraries and other resources. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not about calling it a &quot;lazy question&quot;.  That's the standard close reason for off-site resource requests.  And that's why the final item in the list is there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  or favorite off-site resource &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I rephrased your question to &quot;Does Programmers.SE have any empirical evidence backing Brooks' claims?&quot;  The answer is &quot;No, it doesn't.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if we use a loose form of the question you asked &quot;Is there any empirical evidence backing Brooks' claims?&quot;  The answer is &quot;we don't know.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you haven't already, have a read of [this meta answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487/53019) that goes into detail why off-site resource questions are closed.  And yes, there is a portion in that answer that directly addresses the main point of your meta question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26529" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7614" RevisionGUID="1aae3b36-79f3-45d7-9ee5-d905ce38edfc" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Yes, this is a duplicate of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/ intended to re-ask the question more clearly and without the tangents of trying to explain it in the comments that have distracted from the core question.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For some reason, Programmers.SE is seeing an increase in the rate of new users asking pure code and debugging questions.  These questions are, and have always been, off topic on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qf04b.png&quot; /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of the time, these questions are down voted quite severely, closed, and often deleted very promptly. This is quite simply, again, that these questions are off topic here and asking such a question suggests that the user didn't even *attempt* to read the tour or any of the help center before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For 10k users, poke at the [question close stats for the last 30 days](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last30days).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To those who don't have access to this, the second and third highest custom close reasons are the all too familiar:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be a [fix-my-code-dump request](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/258685/839601), an outright off-topic, totally ignoring what Programmers is **[about](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour)**: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or a variation on it. The top one is a custom 'unclear' which also often acts as a proxy for the &quot;I have no idea why you are asking this question here.&quot;  There is also a smattering of other close reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We don't troubleshoot code here, sorry. No, we don't know where else you can ask.&#xD;&#xA;* We don't debug code here, sorry. No, we don't know where else you can ask. See also [How to Debug Small Programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/).&#xD;&#xA;* Voting to close as this is a debugging question, but I'm not sure it belongs on StackOverflow since this is a classic example of a bug that can be found simply through proper use of a debugger.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because we don't do fix-my-code requests here.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because Programmers is not a fix-my-code site.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's a &quot;fix my code&quot; request.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is asking us to debug the code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also a fair amount of &quot;I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is an implementation question, but not of sufficient quality to migrate to [so]&quot; and variations on *that* reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing is realizing that [no, we aren't going to migrate crap to Stack Overflow](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6878/31260 &quot;as was already complained about particular mistaken migration&quot;). Migrating an awful debugging question to Stack Overflow isn't going to do anyone any favors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this fairly consistent stream of completely off topic debugging questions is draining the community moderation on the site and discouraging to many people who are either active or casual users of the site. It is very discouraging to see &quot;1 new active question&quot; and then look to see it is another poor quality &quot;debug this for me&quot; question. It is also discouraging to for the casual user to look at new questions and see half of them down voted and/or closed. This can be seen in some of the [recent](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7606/40980) meta [questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7593/40980) (and many who are active and read meta know that there are quite a few more of this type of question that are older).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, there are a *lot* of questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what can we do to help reduce the rate of off topic 'fix this for me' questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some have suggested that changes to Stack Overflow's question visibility for low quality questions have caused people who are asking these low quality questions to try posting on other sites (ours in particular). How accurate is this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there things that Stack Exchange devs might be able to implement that would help new users recognize the scope of the site more rapidly (before they hit a question ban? or get discouraged with posting on Stack* (its just a bunch of jerks who close everything))?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can the existing community more promptly handle these questions? Do we need to try to hire Oded 7/24 to close these questions promptly&lt;/joke&gt;? Or is there a valid mandate for the diamond mods to close vote (and delete) the clear cut debugging things that show up in new questions more promptly than the community does?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for any Stack Exchange community managers - do ***you*** have any suggestions for us? How important is it that we provide a good user experience for these users? Could we get another close vote reason for 'fix my code is off topic here' so that it is something that is more official and less curt than the plethora of custom close vote reasons that we currently employ? And while we have anecdotal suggestions of this, is there any change to the &quot;questions asked and closed within 48 hours&quot; rate recently compared to historical trends?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26531" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7649" RevisionGUID="80c90932-db5d-4927-a2a0-9a91df4e231d" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Every day we get opinionated questions asked here.  People seem to think that this is the place to ask them.  New users point to the old open questions that have fallen through the cracks of time as reason that their question should be open too.  Old Stack Overflow users continue to suggest reposting discussions on &lt;s&gt;NotProgrammingRelated&lt;/s&gt; Programmers.SE.  Consider this exchange on [a Stack Overflow question](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32921809):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;s&gt;This is not an appropriate question here because it is opinion-based. You might get help at [Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/). — Ed Cottrell&lt;/s&gt; (deleted)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @EdCottrell programmers has the same rules about opinion-based questions as SO. Please take a look at the help centre there before sending people our way. cheers. –  MetaFight  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @MetaFight my apologies. I see lots of these kinds of questions over there and didn't realize they weren't acceptable. –  Ed Cottrell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have been [told in the past](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/220099/213963) that when our site is full of crappy questions, our site sucks.  Yes, the answers may be great - but the questions aren't.  As said, fixing that is a painful process. It also means that we need to change the perception of what Programmers.SE is about. This means closing questions that are too broad, or primary opinion, or career advice from days of old.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Popularity of old questions](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/) does not mean that it is something that should be enshrined in a museum for all time.  Well, that's what a historical lock is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I will also point out that the new users who cite historical locked questions apparently don't read the text)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE one of the highest ratio of locked questions to questions of major sites (note also that the great contentious cleanup of SF hasn't been completely resolved).  Digging into [data.SE](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/371072/478325) (feel free to refine the query - comparing it to search here, I do see discrepancies, however it is consistently applied to other sites):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Site | Questions  | Locked&#xD;&#xA;    P.SE |     37,017 |  744 (2.01%)&#xD;&#xA;    SO   | 10,258,635 | 2702 (0.02%)&#xD;&#xA;    Math |    496,668 |  638 (0.13%)&#xD;&#xA;    SU   |    284,455 |  764 (0.26%)&#xD;&#xA;    SF   |    205,689 | 4265 (2.07%)&#xD;&#xA;    AU   |    202,900 | 1233 (0.60%)&#xD;&#xA;    TeX  |     97,119 |  180 (0.18%)&#xD;&#xA;    U&amp;L  |     74,315 |  220 (0.29%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are the *most* preservationist of the sites that are out there.  We even tried moving some of our popular questions to the blog (it didn't work out well).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that it is necessary to reopen those closed questions of old popularity so that someone can add another answer and continue the *discussion*, then go right ahead.  The site was down that road once before and we were told that this was something that wasn't sustainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime, the community that is here has defined our scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is not Quora, or Reddit or any other site. We are a site to give practical answers to questions of software design and architecture. It says so right in our [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask about:  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software requirements  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software architecture and design  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ algorithms and data structures  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ development methodologies and processes  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software engineering management  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ quality assurance and testing  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software licensing  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't ask about...  &#xD;&#xA; general workplace issues, career advice, job hunting, salary, or compensation  &#xD;&#xA; implementation issues and coding tools  &#xD;&#xA; what you should learn next  &#xD;&#xA; what projects to do or books to read  &#xD;&#xA; where to find libraries, tools, resources, or other product/service recommendations  &#xD;&#xA; personal lifestyle or non-programming activities  &#xD;&#xA; questions that are primarily opinion-based  &#xD;&#xA; questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a Stack Exchange employee, reopening questions that are in direct conflict with what the site scope is about sends a confusing message to our users - both the ones asking questions and the ones closing them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, there are many wonderful blog posts in our old, off topic, too broad, and opinion answers. They may be worthwhile to try to preserve -  *as blog posts*. It would be helpful to have people who are good editors to help us migrate these posts to a different medium and make posting blog posts something that is easier to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Referring to the specific question of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75486/why-arent-young-programmers-interested-in-mainframes when I started the close vote process on it wasn't its popularity - it was the tag [tag:junior-programmer] that is littered with bad questions and itself being on the verge of a meta-tag. When looking through a tag, I tend to start at the oldest as those are the ones that have the most answers and the least fixable. This often means seeing some of the old popular ones before the newer less popular ones. However, the phrasing of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Closing questions with great content years after the fact simply because they became popular seems like an inherently spiteful and self destructive way to make a point. You can certainly control your own scope, but when groups of users go out explicitly to hunt down the most-popular questions specifically because they ***are*** popular doesn't make the site any better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is incorrect about my motives and needlessly antagonistic. It also suggests that you have a different vision of what types of questions should be asked on Programmers.SE.  If this is the case, then please state it clearly.  We've gone through this [in the past](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/350/40980) and there is even a [blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) that I am sure you are familiar with.  In it, it states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thus, **questions that are not answerable -- discussions, debates, opinions -- should be closed as subjective.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question asked in the post http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75486/why-arent-young-programmers-interested-in-mainframes falls exactly into that category:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why is this? What makes mainframes unattractive to young programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not answerable. It is subjective and requires extended discussion. It would be something to ask on a discussion board. The explicit question presented in the post is a poll of personal experiences. It is entirely composed of opinions and personal anecdotes. It is not within the scope of the site today. With its 26 answers, it speaks exactly to the first part of the blog post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Most forums and chat rooms have a scale problem. As in, they don't. The more people that join the discussion, the more noise each of those connections bring. So the forums get progressively noisier and noisier, and suddenly one day … [you stop learning](http://scobleizer.com/the-chat-roomforum-problem-an-apology-to-technosailor/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Because we believe so deeply in learning, we are willing to go to great lengths to suppress the discussion, debate, and opinions that -- while plenty entertaining -- cause most forums to inevitably break down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note: as of this writing, your blog entry has a broken link, the correct link is provided above&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These old, popular, and off topic / too broad / opinion polls are ones that new users often find when they first hit the site and seek to contribute.  This is unfortunate because they are often not adding anything that isn't there in the previous twenty some-odd questions, lack good writing skills, and are unfamiliar with the scope of the site.  All of this leads to a rather negative experience for new users (doubly so if they ask another question like it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Allowing these old questions to remain open is in direct conflict with providing new users to the site a good experience - answering a good question or asking a good question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26532" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7654" RevisionGUID="e80576b0-6717-4570-bd20-9a324e6ff320" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Something came up in the comments on [Robert's answer][1] that I'd like to address...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But why should it remain open? Curation of existing content for questions that are off topic, primarily opinion, or too broad is most easily done when the question is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -- [MichaelT](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7649/to-robert-cartaino-who-reopens-broad-questions#comment22998_7650)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- I will not write anything about putting questions on trains bound for some camp. I will not write anything about putting questions on trains bound for some camp. I will not write anything about putting questions on trains bound for some camp. I will not write anything about putting questions on trains... --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closure doesn't mean deletion, and I think many community participants confuse the two. All closure does it prevent new answers from being posted, and signal to the community that we really don't want these kinds of questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -- [Robert Harvey](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7649/to-robert-cartaino-who-reopens-broad-questions#comment23015_7650)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar sentiments were expressed in other comments and in chat. They're not entirely *wrong*, but I think they largely ignore the practical realities of how things work - both in terms of the software that drives these sites, and in terms of how this site operates using that software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Closing as limbo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This - the notion that closing is a state wherein questions can remain until salvaged - has merit; indeed, the system itself reflects this usage by marking questions as &quot;on hold&quot; for the first few days after they're closed, a signal that they can and should be edited and reopened if they can be. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, **most are not**. [Have a look at the closing statistics for the past 90 days here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last90days) - in particular, the stats for questions closed as &quot;Too Broad&quot;: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Close reason Closed % of total Edited % of closed Reopened % of closed Edited and Reopened % of edited&#xD;&#xA;    ------------ ------ ---------- ------ ----------- -------- ----------- ------------------- -----------&#xD;&#xA;    too broad    603    19.03 %    56     9.29 %      6       1.00 %       3                   5.36 %&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only 1% of questions closed thusly are reopened; less than 10% are even edited, and *of those* barely 5% are reopened. In real numbers, we're talking about 3 questions where this ideal is actually realized; if you were wagering on the outcome of a question, this would not be where you'd want to put your money.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Closing as a permanent state which prevents only the addition of answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, this isn't entirely *wrong*... The system does indeed block the addition of new answers to closed questions, and some closed questions *do* remain visible long after being closed... But ignores the *other* big change in status that closing implies, namely that the question is now eligible for deletion: privileged users may vote to delete it, and in some cases the system itself will remove such questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some statistics on closed question outcomes for the past 90 days:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- #11340 --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    closed deleted reopened &#xD;&#xA;    ------ ------- -------- &#xD;&#xA;    3169   2039    24       &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over 99% of closed questions *stay closed*. Over 64% are deleted relatively quickly. Now here are the same stats for questions closed in a 90-day period ending 1 year ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- #11340 --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    closed deleted reopened &#xD;&#xA;    ------ ------- -------- &#xD;&#xA;    2837   2125    41      &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reopened % jumps to... less than 2%, while the deletion % rockets to over 74%. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't necessarily a *bad thing*, mind you: if most questions that are closed aren't worth saving, then you'd *expect* the reopen % to be low and *hope* the deletion % is high. But... You'd also be naive to believe that closing is **not** an immediate precursor to deletion; clearly it is just that for the majority of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Why does this matter?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember the premise of this question was that certain questions shouldn't be reopened. Whether or not that's actually the case, it's bad news if the folks who are closing questions do so misinformed of what that actually *means*. If you're voting to close a question, you should be comfortable with that question being deleted - statistically, *that is what will happen.* If you'd be disappointed in that outcome, then you should probably choose a different plan of action. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7649/to-robert-cartaino-who-reopens-broad-questions/7650#7650&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26533" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7667" RevisionGUID="7d1814be-7ba9-49e4-9b91-b1839f7bdcfd" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have recommended that this question be locked as &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot;. In retrospect, it should be locked as duplicate. Do I need to provide an example?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see no reason why there should be a double standard on this site for moderators and users with high reputation (ie. for questions that fit suit personal opinions). If someone were to ask &quot;Why are all my posts being closed&quot; it would be marked immediately as duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look at this post https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3500/programmers-tag-line-is-misleading-can-we-rephrase-it?rq=1 and see that it is down-voted 6 times whereas this post is up-voted eight times and closed as not-constructive. That is democracy for you. Where do you assert to yourselves such certainty of your own opinions? I think there is much merit to his post and less to yours. It should be one way or the other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The post is also too long to read in its entirety and not clearly related to its title line. The post “Why aren't young programmers interested in mainframes?” is not the main subject of this question, just an ad for the author's opninion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't feel that I can offer an opinion here, as it might be down-voted, thus affecting my reputation. But see what it is like to have your own post booted and condemned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with @Robert Cartaino, but look at the comments under his question? ex. &quot;But why!!!???&quot;, with boldface and attitude - it is all opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: I apologize for any real or apparent hatred against SO. I am not serious that this post should be closed, far from it. I'm just not clear why this post is open and all the others like it are closed. The opinions that you do not like should ALSO have their place on the SO meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26534" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7748" RevisionGUID="a43e5825-eb49-4f16-bf2c-18c0f0b37219" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question &quot;[Can we ship libeay32.dll and ssleay32.dll with our installer?][1]&quot; was put on hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The legal tag says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about legal problems which may arise during software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development or questions about software law, patents and copyrights in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not get why legal questions are discouraged if we have a legal tag (seems to be a contradiction). On the other hand sometimes legal questions seem to be OK ( https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5741/31438 ). So what is wrong with my question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303302/can-we-ship-libeay32-dll-and-ssleay32-dll-with-our-installer?noredirect=1#comment633381_303302" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26535" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7766" RevisionGUID="8294f705-cb51-4932-90a7-9cacdefb3c50" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The comment in your example is not quite typical. It is copied from [Workplace meta](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2696/168). They get this particular kind of troublesome questions much more often than Programmers, that's why they invested extra effort into writing detailed description of what's specifically wrong with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the nice tone of this comment, this is, again, kind of a brand mark of Workplace. Moderators and active regulars over there are fond of expressing the critique in very polite way and as far as I can tell, they do it really well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can bookmark and refer appropriate sections (answers) in [their meta post](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2693/168) when you see workplace-y questions that don't look OK, although as I already mentioned Programmers get these quite infrequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more typical issues in the questions, I refer respective posts at our meta, conveniently listed in FAQ: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One thing I'd want to warn against is referring that _whole FAQ_ instead of meta posts specifically targeted to address concrete issues in the post you comment on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, I haven't seen our regulars (mis)using FAQ like that but I believe it's important enough to explicitly warn against this. Askers are unlikely to pay attention to your meta references unless they can easily see how it directly applies to specific issues with their question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for technical means to make it easier, as pointed in comments, StackApps have special &quot;pro-forma&quot; script for that ([discussed in details at MSE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/136609/165773)). Note that if you switch browsers or machine you'd lose data for this script, so you may prefer to simply keep comments in some file and copy from there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26536" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7797" RevisionGUID="d9391221-95fc-4368-9691-529c4d78cec7" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm sure you remember [this experiment](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7723/96050), which changed the required number of close/reopen votes from 5 to 3. Before getting to the meat of the analysis, I should point out that the change worked almost exactly as intended. Close votes [clustered around 3](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7734/96050) and the median time to close dropped noticably from November 9 to December 9, 2015:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Median time to close by week][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the statistics I said I'd be looking at:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Month posted Qs   Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion&#xD;&#xA;    ------------ ---- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- ---------&#xD;&#xA;    2014-11-09   1379    572      41.5%          12.1%     2.1%      10.1%     29.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2014-12-09   1251    730      58.4%          13.4%     1.5%       7.1%     32.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-01-09   1490    788      52.9%          11.3%     1.6%      10.1%     32.6%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-02-09   1507    816      54.1%          11.0%     1.6%      10.0%     31.7%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-03-09   1493    883      59.1%           9.7%     1.1%       8.1%     35.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-04-09   1391    814      58.5%          12.5%     1.1%       4.9%     34.2%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-05-09   1394    726      52.1%          10.2%     2.1%       9.5%     41.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-06-09   1472    764      51.9%           9.2%     2.1%      14.3%     37.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-07-09   1496    839      56.1%          10.8%     1.2%       5.5%     36.7%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-08-09   1392    785      56.4%          11.6%     0.9%       3.3%     52.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-09-09   1376    816      59.3%          11.4%     3.3%      18.3%     47.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-09   1463    869      59.4%           8.9%     2.2%       6.5%     43.5%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09   1308    955      73.0%          15.4%     4.9%      17.0%     47.0%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rates remained steady for the most part in the months leading up to the experiment. For the month of the experiment closing, editing of closed questions, and reopening spiked noticeably. (Deletion has a longer [lag time](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/262077/1438) so we don't have the final tally.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The big number that sticks out is the 73% closure rate. We've already gone round and round about what that number _should be_, so there's no point in rehashing that argument. I think too many questions closed here are salvageable and other people (who have firsthand experience in the close queue) believe that the lines are clear and most closed questions would be bad for the site. If [Jeff couldn't grok this site](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2260/we-cant-pronounce-anything), I don't see why I would either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I don't understand the goals of this site is, in fact, _because_ I'm not part of this community. Closing is part of how this community, as [Clay Shirky puts it](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html), &quot;defends itself so that it can stay on its sophisticated goals and away from its basic instincts.&quot; Bikeshed questions represent a considerable portion of those instincts, I suspect. Closing questions that verge toward [bad subjective](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) protects the group from junk answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shirky also points out in &quot;A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You have to find some way to protect your own users from scale. This doesn't mean the scale of the whole system can't grow. But you can't try to make the system large by taking individual conversations and blowing them up like a balloon; human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon. It either dissipates, or turns into broadcast, or collapses. So plan for dealing with scale in advance, because it's going to happen anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our solution to scaling historically has been to encourage users to [**trust fellow programmers**](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/251175/1438). While it's not without problems, the philosophy does allow one community to handle [8k questions a day](http://stackexchange.com/sites#questionsperday). It's been ages since anyone could read all the questions on the site, but the system works well enough to produce an enormous (and growing) store of knowledge about coding. [Most of the questions are crap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law), but that's more than balanced by the quality of the content that rises to the top of searches. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's clear that changing the number of votes required to close questions will allow this site to scale without changing the criteria for closing questions. I completely understand why this would be desirable. But I think it would be a short-term hack. It will not fix the root of the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You might as well know what I think the core problem is: **distrust**. Over and over since I started this experiment, I've heard (whether this is what was intended or not, I don't know) concern that outsiders will take advantage of this community the moment its guard is dropped. And it's not just outsiders: there is a deep division among high-reputation users and former users of the site that is marked by distrust. I have some suggestions about how to work toward a compromise, but I haven't earned any trust here myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the off chance that it could still be useful, I'm going to toss out my ideas anyway:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Assume that only the sign and not the magnitude of question scores matter.** Voting volume tends to follow the number of views. Views are driven largely by how interested the general public is in the question and it's answers. The second most-upvoted question on SO is: [How do you undo the last commit?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/927358/1438) It didn't [start off](http://stackoverflow.com/revisions/927358/1) as a particularly good question, but it represents an _extremely common problem_ and so it gets a lot of views. I suppose in a just world, those views would not turn into votes. But in the real world, not everything is tied to merit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Assume that only the first few answers are ever read.** Almost a corollary to the previous point: popular questions will get more answers. If you dig through those answers, it's pretty likely some of them are low-quality. Gallingly, they are likely to have more votes than brilliant answers to obscure questions. But within a question, voting does a good job of surfacing quality. Studies consistently find that people [rarely finish reading pages they land on](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/page-fold-manifesto/). Either they find the information they are looking for and leave or they give up on the page. Downvote bad answers and trust your fellows to do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. **There will always be people who misunderstand the nature of this site.** Several people pointed me to a comment (on a now-deleted question) that cited [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/77479/96050) as a reason for asking something similar. The example has been closed for over a year. _Closing questions does not make them less tempting to copy._ Don't confuse _post hoc_ justification for motivation. People will ask dumb questions whether there are similar questions around or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. **Be proud of your past.** I know this site has gone through a lot of pain. It's also produced some amazing answers. I've seen the accepted answer to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60544/why-do-game-developers-prefer-windows cited several times by people who aren't active on Stack Exchange. The answers to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29109/is-there-any-reason-to-use-c-instead-of-c-perl-python-etc make me wonder if I gave up on C++ templates too soon. While poking around the codebase here at Stack Overflow, I found the answers to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127624/what-is-mvc-really useful. These bikeshed questions manage to produce exceptional answers in spite of themselves. Or rather, there are some amazing contributors here who have turned leaden questions into answer gold. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. **The single best defense against worthless opinions is voter diversity.** Studies have consistently found that [&quot;diverse minds do better, when their decisions are averaged, than expert minds.&quot;](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140708-when-crowd-wisdom-goes-wrong) New users should not be treated as threats, but as potential contributors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The increase in closure rate makes reducing the number of votes required to close questions impractical. Other effects (particularly reopen rate and median time to close) were encouraging, but did not counter-balance the cost in terms of new questions closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/NOUb5.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26537" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7801" RevisionGUID="7f4937a1-0634-4ea6-8f4d-59f61f418046" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'd like to focus on an aspect that hasn't been addressed yet.  Namely, the edit and reopen rate.  During the experiment, the site had an atypically high Close-&gt;Edit-&gt;Reopen rate.  I don't believe that was by chance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Several of us within The Whiteboard noted during the experiment that we had more time available to edit marginal questions so that they could be re-opened.  I even made a comment to the effect that one of the major benefits of three votes-to-close was that it freed active community members up to focus on higher order aspects of the site.  That's a very, very good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of us share a common goal of creating high quality content for the site.  [Robert's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7799/53019) very eloquently addresses why it is imperative for us to get rid of the crap questions quickly.  This site simply doesn't have the volume of quality questions to drown out the crap questions, so we need to be diligent in cleaning the site.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we treat active users' time as a zero-sum game, then it's fair to explore _how_ we want them investing their time.  Personally, I would much rather they focus on editing the salvageable questions in order to foster higher quality content.  I think the experiment created the right conditions to allow active users to focus on more valuable contributions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All that said, I understand there is disagreement in how to interpret these results.  I believe that the true results of the experiment may be masked by the relatively short duration of the experiment and natural fluctuations in the various rates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd suggest re-running the experiment but for an extended period of time.  At a minimum, let's see what happens after 3 months.  Or more preferably, let's run the next experiment for 6 months and then analyze the results.  Arguably the only risk is that we'll close more questions than perhaps ought to be closed.  On the other hand, we should see higher quality questions resulting from the additional editing that can be provided." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26538" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7803" RevisionGUID="ad03d49a-b205-4e12-9f42-7114c720b203" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###tl;dr:&#xD;&#xA;Most question closures, when questions in aggregate are analyzed, are valid. This suggests the experiment was successful - not a failure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This meta post won't be for the faint of heart.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Abstract&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have often heard/seen the &quot;p.se closes too much!&quot; cry but _rarely_ see this supported by a random selection of questions which are closed and an analysis as to whether this is appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is important when trying to call the closure rate on Programmers &quot;good?&quot; or &quot;bad?&quot; by understanding what the characteristics of the questions are. If 70% of all questions here are &quot;hi give me a book plz&quot; then a close rate above 70% is _ok_ - likewise, if 70% of questions are good, solid, appropriate questions then a close rate of 70% is unacceptable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The objective of this book of a post is to provide one perspective regarding closed questions the community has already deemed somewhat valuable (see Methods).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This post is a comprehensive attempt to analyze the _aggregate_ (not focusing on the individual exceptions, which are discussed per-question below) to find meaningful trends. Isolating individual questions and finding fault with their closure is pointless, if the overwhelming majority disagrees. In other words: focusing on outliers may miss what the data indicates. Don't bikeshed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The objective is to answer: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are too many questions unfairly closed on Programmers.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Methods&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I looked at at the questions which satisfied the [following criteria](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/412111/open-programmers-questions?site=http%3A%2F%2Fprogrammers.stackexchange.com%2F):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Closed&#xD;&#xA; - Undeleted&#xD;&#xA; - Upvoted at least once (regardless of score)&#xD;&#xA; - Not closed as duplicate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a enderland designed heuristic to try to indicate questions that _might not be_ good to be closed. It's not perfect nor all inclusive. It won't include deleted questions (regardless of the number of upvotes). But it's a good chunk of the remaining questions which were closed that have the highest likelihood of being &quot;maybe should be reopened closures.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are, as of writing this meta post, only 127 questions fitting this criteria (of the 951 questions closed during the period). Note that some of these have actually been since deleted but since SEDE is not live data the total will be incorrect (20 total). A few didn't show as dups in SEDE either for various reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Enderland's on/off topic philosophy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am generally a bit less strict when it comes to off-topicness than many others here. For example, of this entire list, I only cast close votes on two of them (despite being active in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) far too much).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am generally a bit more accepting of borderline questions, such as indicated by how infrequently I had voted on these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When reviewing, I took care to write &quot;deleted&quot;, &quot;marginal&quot;, and &quot;reopened&quot; in my descriptions in order to do a better search/count to quickly summarize totals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I include this section is it perspective on how I generally vote for close and reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Results&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the 107 non-deleted (of 127) questions, I cast reopen on 15 questions. Assuming my heuristic is reasonable, and my interpretation of on-topic-ness is right, it means that a very small percentage of questions are being wrongly closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also labeled 24 questions as &quot;marginal&quot; - in some cases I voted to reopen these and some I did not. Most marginal reopen votes were erring on the side of generosity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That means, of the 107 non-deleted questions, over 80% I (even with a fairly generous review attitude) would leave closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on the appropriateness of closure, there were a handful of missed questions. I expect a few on this list to be reopened as a result. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I didn't expect was how _few_ questions on the list are well scoped for a Q/A site. [Robert's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7799/52929) provides considerable insight into why this might be, so I will not elaborate. Given the strong language in the original results, I expect to find considerably more marginal questions or to run out of reopen votes. Again, I only found 24 questions I considered marginal - I only found 1 in 4 questions meeting my heuristic were considered marginally on topic. And these are the ones that survived and are good! _And_ I expect many people will disagree they are even good enough to be marginal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, regarding the closure rates, focusing purely on the number of questions put on hold is misleading. The entire purpose of &quot;on hold&quot; vs &quot;closed&quot; is to allow users to clarify their question (or have them edited) and have them opened by the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this in mind, analyzing not just closure rate but the characteristics of the data, we notice some interesting trends. In _spite_ of the significant increase in question closure, the percentage of questions edited after closure was only 15.2% (vs an average of 11% the year before). This suggests that most questions here are either abandoned by the poster or community at a fairly high rate regardless of how quickly they get closed (85% vs 89%). A single month is not really significant enough to determine the implications of this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I do not see this experiment as a &quot;failure.&quot;**  I see this as a pretty _good_ result to be honest. Let's say I'm wrong and 2x as many questions from this list should be reopened, which makes 30. Let's also say there were another 30 deleted questions which are accidentally deleted. That means that about a 6% false-closure rate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on finding ways to benefit the community in dealing with the 94% of questions which _should_ have been closed seems preferable than handicapping them over the generous 6% which were incorrectly closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------- &#xD;&#xA;#Future Work&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Ideally, a random sampling of all questions asked during this period would be used in order to arrive at a better understanding of the correctness of closing&#xD;&#xA; - It would be interesting to characterize the votes on closed questions, such as % closed with zero total upvotes, % at -4 or lower, for the trial period vs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the list of all the specific questions I reviewed individually and my evaluation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My perspective is clearly not going to be perfect. You may disagree (or agree) with my reasoning. Be aware the goal here is not the individual questions isolated from each other but the aggregate result.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that there were two questions that were way too long for me to review in a meaningful fashion, indicated by tl;dr.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Ubuntu vs Tails](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303752) - Score:-4&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [How would you create this UML class diagram?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303827) - Score:-4&#xD;&#xA; - needs to be answered by their professor&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is automated testing used in game development?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304302) - Score:-3&#xD;&#xA; -  deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [HTML/PHP - Wordpress](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303072) - Score:-3&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [For loop valid usage?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303154) - Score:-3&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Designing a programming language, seeking simple and logical parameter behavior](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302519) - Score:-3&#xD;&#xA; - more of a rant than question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Use free functions or inheritance for serialization](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304260) - Score:-2&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [I am looking for a clear explanation of java method labels and when to use them.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303915) - Score:-2&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Avoid copy and paste programming, what pattern to use?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303716) - Score:-2&#xD;&#xA; - this is marginal at best, considering it's an XY question but the real question is &quot;how to make good code&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [When &gt; apply a performance and memory profiler?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304344) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - far too broad (answer is basically link to offsite resource)&#xD;&#xA;1. [What is better to design or discover interface](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303051) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - nearly the definition of opinion - &quot;I think this, coworker thinks other, what do you think?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [what is () called?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302449) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;my professor is wrong right?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Strategy for mobile apps sharing a core code base](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303341) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - only answer is basically &quot;it depends talk to your users&quot; - marginal at best&#xD;&#xA;1. [Maximization algorithm wrt external dataset](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303235) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - lacks information&#xD;&#xA;1. [Looking for a proper Algorithm to my problem](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304314) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is it safe to execute the &quot;regedit&quot; command on Windows?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303301) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - XY at best, accepted an answer that doesn't answer any question about &quot;safety&quot; but rather &quot;how to avoid confirmations&quot; but real question is &quot;what is the registry and why is it important&quot; which _might_ be scoped for Superuser?&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to abbreviate &quot;Local&quot; for a time variable, like UTC](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302535) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - I think this is ok (voted to reopen), but it's a &quot;name that thing&quot; which is a hotly debated subject here&#xD;&#xA;1. [How did the gets function ever make into the standard?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303620) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - discussion. user was very hostile to those helping too..&#xD;&#xA;1. [eradicating the array = loop mindset](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302830) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - rant against dumb coworkers&#xD;&#xA;1. [Design of simple disassembler](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303723) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - pretty much exact definition of too broad. _May_ be editable&#xD;&#xA;1. [Can a linkedlist be created without using dynamic allocation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303298) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Can a business application be developed / enhanced with more than one language?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303056) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - no problem described&#xD;&#xA;1. [Best way to control serialisation of posted form data](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304044) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - this seems ok, I voted to reopen (but those familiar with C# voted to close it and I'm unfamiliar with C#)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Approaches to Concurrency](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303383) - Score:-1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;let's make lists and pros and cons of each item!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Why is there a leading `for (;;);` in all of Facebook XHR, JSON-like requests?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304398) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Why don't style-guides include longer explanations why something should be done in a particular way?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302584) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - resource request (and discussion)&#xD;&#xA;1. [What is the name for &quot;the set of all versions of something&quot;?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304449) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [What are the differences between these ways to hide sections in an HTML document?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302810) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted migrated stub &#xD;&#xA;1. [What are my options for keeping user state through SPA?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303108) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [What are good ways to measure project size? How do I compare the size of my project to other projects?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303333) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - this is marginal, it needs some editing to focus it but _could_ be?&#xD;&#xA;1. [Use a hash character or a dot when referring to methods and fields in software documentation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304400) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - needs more info&#xD;&#xA;1. [Tips for working with badly designed software](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304518) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, _could_ be edited, maybe?  it's a strong XY problem&#xD;&#xA;1. [Super classes that represent a wordly hierarchy: naming conventions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303190) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - comments there clarify why off topic&#xD;&#xA;1. [Should we check for duplicated record?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304072) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - very marginal, but I voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Shopping cart in PHP : Sessions or Database?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302099) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - needs more info from asker&#xD;&#xA;1. [Scala: Partition range into subranges](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303654) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - belongs on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;1. [Optimization: How much time saved is considered worth it?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303339) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;how to be good at programming?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [New Kind of VM Type](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304408) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Micro libraries and angularjs](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304592) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - self declared opinion based&#xD;&#xA;1. [Low cost exceptions implementation using metaprogramming](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303210) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - 20 comments, tl;dr (might be ok?)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is there a way for me to use regex to distinguish this set of input?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303318) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted stack overflow stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is it always better to use __construct() in CodeIgniter's Models and Views, even if it's not needed?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303408) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, needs more clarity for the actual question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Inheritance hierarchy design approach - Javascript](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304444) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - pros/cons&#xD;&#xA;1. [How two objects of the same class communicate?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303536) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - only 4 &lt;0 answers that are not deleted... and it's a discussion pros/cons&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to map entity class (ClassA) in two different table (Table1 and Table2) in Entity Framework Code First?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302946) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal quality overall. Probably could be edited&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to document **kwargs in python?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303677) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, but I voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [How much of computer internals should I know to be an application programmer?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302303) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - way too broad, lacking info&#xD;&#xA;1. [How can I use a framework like Bootstrap when I already have designs from a design team](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303566) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - pretty broad, could be easily clarified by asker but..&#xD;&#xA;1. [How can I handle errors in functions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303388) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - dup closed incorrectly&#xD;&#xA;1. [How big should be an input array to unit test a method with a loop?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302367) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - lacking info&#xD;&#xA;1. [Fanout vs point to point on AWS](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303327) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Does testing the characteristics of a runtime have a generally accepted name?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302234) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - name that thing (marginal)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Docstring convention for Python `__str__`, `__unicode__`, and `__repr__` class methods](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303380) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - really poor quality but still on topic, voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Do you have to use an in-memory db for integration testing?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303793) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - not enough info&#xD;&#xA;1. [Data structure for effects animation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303305) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;It's hard to say, given what you've put into your question (no mention of language or performance requirements).&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Could this class be considered as a Factory class?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304438) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, but kind of an XY question and &quot;am I right?&quot; without a problem to be solved&#xD;&#xA;1. [Confusion about data types, compilers, hardware data representation and static vs dynamic typing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303783) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - resource request (or way too broad, whichever)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Best way to represent multiple JSON response in a REST service?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304514) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - marginal&#xD;&#xA;1. [Best way to design chess game](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302495) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - kind of a mess, asking an interview question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Architecture/technology for implementing Management console](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303537) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - pretty broad but perhaps marginal&#xD;&#xA;1. [API: Benefits of having root_node followed by object_id vs. object_id](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304519) - Score:0&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [windows users vs. custom](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303602) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - answer is basically &quot;you didn't give enough info&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [When do you need precision with thread execution timing and how do you do it with Java?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303694) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - too broad (_slightly_ marginal)&#xD;&#xA;1. [What is a good way to make estimates clear to the customer?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304068) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, but I voted to reopen as I think after the many edits it's better&#xD;&#xA;1. [What does `Resolving` mean in programing?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302404) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;why did they name things this way&quot; which isn't really great&#xD;&#xA;1. [What are the advantages of a 'traditional' 'backend' architecture for a standard CRUD app?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302567) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - pros/cons discussion&#xD;&#xA;1. [Trying to Simplify a Java Method](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302364) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted migrated stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [Syntax warnings](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302520) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - this is the **first** I've voted to reopen that looks like a non-marginal question &#xD;&#xA;1. [Strategies for creating a mobile site?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303121) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;I want to design a mobile site&quot; too broad&#xD;&#xA;1. [Soap vs. rest - a hybrid approach?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302937) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;name my project&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Should I use a jump table or a switch case statement for similar functions but may have some parameters that are not relevant](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304601) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - Seems ok, voted to reopen non-marginal&#xD;&#xA;1. [Running simulations in parallel, managing each separately](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303626) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - XY that isn't really resolved by OP&#xD;&#xA;1. [Resistance to abstraction](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302926) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;why do my coworkers thing like this?&quot; is unanswerable&#xD;&#xA;1. [Refusing to define 2 or more classes in one .cpp file](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303972) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - basically duped on SO, and a &quot;why does my company do this&quot; otherwise&#xD;&#xA;1. [Reading from Memory vs Performing an Operation](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304099) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - this is pretty marginal, but I'm not voting to open again&#xD;&#xA;1. [Push instead of pull on a list that might change due to a command in addition to events?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303668) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - not clear given comments&#xD;&#xA;1. [Possible design patterns for a service that synchronizes two third party services](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303362) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - asking for a design pattern but no problem&#xD;&#xA;1. [Number of parallel lines in a given set of lines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304352) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - needs more info&#xD;&#xA;1. [microservices: How to model related domain objects?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303888) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - answer says &quot;in my opinion&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;1. [Java Threads vs AMQP for Async tasks](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302539) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - needs a lot more info&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is there an advantage to defining a metasyntactic variable type?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302713) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - unclear&#xD;&#xA;1. [is boost::random::uniform_real_distritbution supposed to be the same across processors?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302913) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [Internal API to public API - versioning](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303168) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - really basic, but I guess it's on topic, so I voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [I'm graduating as a CS major from a bad CS program. How can I catch up? How can I get over it?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302617) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;how can I learn and catch up&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [I have one app on one server - is there a critical reason to use a web server like IIS or NGINX?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303411) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - pretty marginal&#xD;&#xA;1. [I had modulus problems. When I input two integers the values doesn't display when I run my program](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303095) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to write highly changeable, highly complex software?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303737) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - too broad, &quot;how do I develop large applications?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to make git automatically merge increased build numbers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304423) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - more of a git question for SO that wasn't migrated&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to design a meta model for configuration?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304028) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - pretty much definition of a discussion&#xD;&#xA;1. [How do Symbol Tables, Lexers and Parsers work together in a modern design?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303233) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - maybe on topic, tl;dr right now though&#xD;&#xA;1. [How can I organise a better deployment process?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302323) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - no problem, more of a &quot;what do you guys think about...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Hide, obfuscate or otherwise prevent the harvesting of email addresses](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303634) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - I edited this and voted to reopen, it's kind of marginal, but ok I guess&#xD;&#xA;1. [Heavy Compute, &quot;Medium Data&quot; application Architecture and design patterns?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304499) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - deleted&#xD;&#xA;1. [Handling authentication for API](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303985) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - feels marginal, was edited after closed and not reopened though&#xD;&#xA;1. [Getting a Candidate to do a Pull Request Review in an Interview](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304599) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - all about interviewing&#xD;&#xA;1. [Factory of factories?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303706) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - self identified lack of problem..&#xD;&#xA;1. [Code attribution to a post quoting an original source](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304245) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - needs more info/context to be answerable (or is too broad)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Best way to structure a complicated web-based quiz](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303860) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - needs clarity on the specific problem, not &quot;help me design a web page&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Architecture supporting digitally signing of tons of soap requests](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302889) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - way too broad&#xD;&#xA;1. [Angular on Linux server -- what backend services to use](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303720) - Score:1&#xD;&#xA; - tool request&#xD;&#xA;1. [Why do Android programmers use Hungarian notation?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302513) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - duplicate&#xD;&#xA;1. [Who does what in a Single Page Application?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303663) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - five broad questions all at once&#xD;&#xA;1. [Webservices vs Microservices](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304312) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - marginal, I'm not voting though&#xD;&#xA;1. [Private variables and the old FORTRAN common blocks](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303245) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - also marginal but leaving closed&#xD;&#xA;1. [Passing fields (instance variables) by arguments (parameters) inside an object - does it make sense?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302723) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - dup&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is node.js a safe bet for writting a new CMS that aims to be easily installable/deployable?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304507) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - needs a crystal ball&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is it ok to use service locator for ubiquitously used dependencies?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303830) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - really needs clarity on the specifics of the problem in my opinion&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to set up Visual Studio 2013 projects for building nuget packages targeting multiple .Net versions?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304285) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - deleted stub&#xD;&#xA;1. [Enterprise Architecture: Where to put persistence/dbContext management?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303435) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - too broad design review question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Dealing with big data](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303515) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - a (bad) XY problem, sort-of-answered in comments, but the question isn't really a real question&#xD;&#xA;1. [Architecture on OpenStack with Docker](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304137) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - will require someone with deep Docker knowledge, but this feels on topic (voted to reopen)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Architect in our company is against DTO](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303898) - Score:2&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;I would love to hear your opinion on how much this is true&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Will ECMAScript add classes to JavaScript? What does this mean?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304345) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - needs edits from OP&#xD;&#xA;1. [Rationale of IEEE754 direct rounding behavior near infinity](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303848) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - this is marginal, would require VERY expert knowledge that I'm not sure is reasonable&#xD;&#xA;1. [Passing MVVM objects to other classes](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304595) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;I hope you understand that there is no objective answer to your question, and as such it is liable to be closed as primarily opinion base&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How do I model a sortable resource in sql database?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303209) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - I had a hard time understanding this. That might be because I've read 100+ mostly bad questions...&#xD;&#xA;1. [Design review of a small configuration framework](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302686) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - this is pretty broad and a &quot;please fully design review this&quot;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Combinatorial Optimization: Filling a Bag with Sand](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304361) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - I think this is on topic, voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Can this be considered an API?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303864) - Score:3&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;is this an API&quot; isn't a good fit&#xD;&#xA;1. [Sorting algorithm that can handle some error](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302737) - Score:4&#xD;&#xA; - I already had argued for this question, voted to reopen&#xD;&#xA;1. [Identifying plagiarized jokes?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304368) - Score:4&#xD;&#xA; - this seems ok at first glance, but that... covers a _large_ field and as a &quot;just for fun&quot; question its way too broad ([here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7795/52929) is more info)&#xD;&#xA;1. [Strategies to increasing the maintainability of assertions in code](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303806) - Score:5&#xD;&#xA; - &quot;am I over asserting?&quot; --&gt; maybe? but then &quot;If you have more tips on using assertions and similar tests in code please mention them in your answer.&quot; is pretty much definition of opinion&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is it an overkill to write unit tests for a small code base?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304228) - Score:5&#xD;&#xA; - dup&#xD;&#xA;1. [Refactoring byzantine payment processing code on a limited budget](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303879) - Score:8&#xD;&#xA; - this is pretty marginal, it is well written but pretty broad still&#xD;&#xA;1. [How to deal with a bug which seems to have fixed itself?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303997) - Score:15&#xD;&#xA; - this already had a reopen vote and I cast one - seems _reasonably_ on topic?&#xD;&#xA;1. [Using compound statements (&quot;{&quot; ... &quot;}&quot; blocks) to enforce variable locality](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302217) - Score:37&#xD;&#xA; - dup&#xD;&#xA;1. [Almost every reported bug is a high-priority bug](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/302763) - Score:45&#xD;&#xA; - feels more workplacey " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26539" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7898" RevisionGUID="e557be3a-b644-4910-be5f-d901485a85e3" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**This was previously declined as CR.SE was in beta and migrations to beta sites are not allowed. CR is no longer in beta! Congratulations to CR!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know we don't want too many migration paths, and we definitely don't want ones that are likely to leech away our *good* questions, but I think of all the technology related websites, the scope of Code Review actually has likely the least overlap with us of any others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No part of our site scope is reviewing written completed *code*, architecture sure but not *code*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no part of code reviews site is *doing anything else at all*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't get questions for this migration often, but I've seen ones migrated to SO with totally working code, just because we have a migration path to SO but not CR.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Migration path to Code Review please?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5901/35276" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26540" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7900" RevisionGUID="a47de123-b0f1-421a-affe-60730bd8b281" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would like to present this chart from [Checklist for how to write a good Code Review question](https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1957/42632) first:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![chart][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you can see, the metaphorical _distance_ in scope between Programmers and Code Review is significant. From a CR regular standpoint, I can say for myself that we do get, _on occasion_, a question which is off-topic at CR but could be on-topic at Programmers _(most off-topic Qs we get are broken code/&quot;give-me-the-code&quot;)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When this happens, normally one of us will hop over to The Whiteboard to ask if it would be a good migration candidate, and if it is the case, mods move forward with manual migration. This happens... once a week at the most, I'd say. I'm not a regular at Programmers so I cannot speak on your behalf, but I think the important question is: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; __Does the volume of off-topic on Programmers, on-topic on Code Review questions justify a migration path?__&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please reference [MichaelT's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7901/140090) for migration stats between Programmers and Code Review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Td6Ev.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26541" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7911" RevisionGUID="4f46d0c7-42f5-4e9e-a297-d6a8175557b4" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Well I just saw a [second Meta question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7910/programmers-se-has-become-a-site-to-avoid?noredirect=1#comment24081_7910) expressing strong ill-will for this site after [first witnessing](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away) this, seemingly well-trodden, battlefield. Given that I am already weary of it, I can only assume that others are much more so, but bear with me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Breaking this down into as simple a a description as possible:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*A substantial number of users are arriving here with a different/false understanding of what this site is for; this results in a lot of closed questions and consequent animosity.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two parts to this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. People wanting this site to be something it's not; i.e disagreeing with / not understanding the site's objective&#xD;&#xA; 2. People disagree with the site' enforcement; i.e. thinking that valid questions are being downvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to discount the second option as a valid grounds for debate since it seems to have been quite categorically answered by [MichaelT's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7907/174739) to a previous Meta question. Even if there is the odd question that is within scope that is getting voted down, this is a smaller problem compared to item 1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been comments about poor communication when down-voting and some quite bitter words about specific users; I don't care about any of that because I think that it is all a symptom, not the cause of this phenomenon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## How can we better communicate the site's purpose?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below are all current ideas as to what could be done. If you have any other ideas either edit this question or post them in an answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CN | Change Name&#xD;&#xA;Self-explanatory, *Pogrammers.SE* become *OtherName.SE*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### ST | Add Sub-title&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add a sub-title to the website's header to better describe the site's purpose (e.g. *Programmers: Architecture, Planning, &amp; Concepts*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### SA | Make Scope More Accessible&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Display the scope in a simply-worded form next to the 'ask a question' interface; this makes it more likely users will read it before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### BL | Add Blurb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add a descriptive blurb that is displayed to users before they are able to post their first question. Make this focus-stealing; i.e. background is greyed-out and the user must take an action to continue (e.g. click 'got it').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CS | Change Scope&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change the scope to include some of the areas that are currently being down-voted as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CE | Change Enforcement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actively cultivate questions to improve them; narrow their focus if they are too broad, make them more abstract of they are too narrow (i.e. they are debugging specific code instead of asking about architecture/concepts), etc. This would mean slower closing of questions and the encouragement of users to learn about what is/is-not suitable for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### CH | Change Help Center&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Create a series of Meta Q&amp;As that are designed to help user improve their answers. This way people can post links to those discussions rather than forever trying to discuss the same things over and over&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So... votes, thoughts, ideas, scathing indictments... let the games begin.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26542" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7913" RevisionGUID="60305604-747e-4408-99c3-72a97a4cabdb" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here are my thoughts on the solutions currently listed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Change Name** is *BAD* because it was [already rejected by SE top brass][1] and for seemingly valid reasons; namely, there isn't an alternative name that narrows the definition whilst staying true to this site's purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Add Sub-title** is *GOOD* providing that the right wording could be found. Sub-titles are less restrictive than the main name so they can be a little longer and they can be very effective at refining the definition of the site to a perspective user; they are more likely to read a sub-title than a specific page that defines what is/is-not on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Make Scope More Accessible** is *GOOD* because I agree that finding an authoritative description of the scope can be tricky and putting this front-and-center will at least reduce some of the confusion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Add Blurb** is *NEUTRAL* because I don't know how viable it is or if it would be read. If anything I would lean towards *GOOD* because, if it is worded correctly and is sufficiently brief, the fact that it is specifically targeted at new users could be a great improvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Change Scope** is *BAD* because the site's scope appears to have been modified to its current form for valid reasons; namely to ensure that the site remains useful to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Change Enforcement** is *NEUTRAL* because I think it is separate to the current topic. To my eyes, fixing the problem of lots of off-topic questions being posted here would naturally result in people being less trigger-happy with the border-line on-topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3718/change-the-name-of-programmers-to-something-that-more-accurately-reflects-the-si/3733#3733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26543" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7919" RevisionGUID="4d84a9cf-1734-49d8-84d8-f1fc04cea4d5" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think part of the problem is it is _too easy_ to ask questions. Not that it should be difficult, but perhaps require taking the tour first even for established users (+100 association bonus). While this is a low bar, I doubt it would work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is difficult to force users to read and understand the help center, for example. I am reminded of every time I have had to take sexual harassment training on the computer for work. Play on my phone until the required time passed for a &quot;lesson&quot; then check the checkboxes and hope for the best. Asking on a Stack Exchange site is no different.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I ask or answer on a Stack Exchange site where I do not already regularly contribute, I am careful to read the help center and some of the meta posts first. I look at recent questions that received both positive and negative attention. I ask myself &quot;why did this question get upvoted, and another downvoted or closed?&quot; In general, this has served me well (also, never post when drunk).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Certain sites go above and beyond the general scope and quality requirements. [Code Review][1] (6 &quot;yeses&quot;), [Skeptics][2] (citations), [Programming Puzzles &amp; Code Golf][3] (challenge type, scoring), and a couple others come to mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not one of those. We just want a reasonably-scoped, clear, objectively-answerable, on-topic question and answers that actually answer the question as asked. We have a help center and many meta posts describing our standards, which do not require an excessive amount of effort to meet: they are simply unclear to some people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not believe there is anything more we can do to help the situation except for token gestures that in the end, users will ignore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;On another note, I know several of us do try to post meta-links in response to questions that fall into one of several common traps:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or down voted?][4]&#xD;&#xA;* [Green fields, blue skies, and the white board - what is too broad?][5]&#xD;&#xA;* [On discussions and why they don't make good questions][6]&#xD;&#xA;* [Where to start?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no point in rehashing the same points over and over: post a link, then if the asker is interested in working _with_ us, we are generally willing to help. If the asker is genuinely concerned in learning and has enough reputation, we have even invited them to [The Whiteboard][8] to hash things out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Finally, you make a point about possibly changing scope to match what users want. We tried this, it did not work. I recommend reading up on this site's history if you have not done so already:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is the history behind the site scope change from NPR to “conceptual questions about software development”?][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6961/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6742/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6366/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/22815" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26544" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7935" RevisionGUID="8de2dba5-17e3-4ca2-872e-626fb64d2625" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Four years ago [we asked for a name change][1], which was [rejected by SE][2] because there was no evidence to support the claim it was causing user confusion, and there were other things the site should focus on first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now four years later, users have done all that they can and things are not improving in relation to off-topic posts and user confusion. We still have a very high percentage of closed questions here, [and][3] [repeatedly][4] [get][5] [negative][6] [feedback][7] [on][8] [meta][9] [about][10] [this][11]. (As a lurker of P.SE Meta, I can tell you there are many more links too - these are just the ones found with a quick search of recent questions.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Steps taken to improve site since four years ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The site scope and FAQ has been clarified so it is very clear what is on or off topic now&#xD;&#xA;* Users have worked hard to generate a set of meta posts to help guide new users with common misconceptions&#xD;&#xA;* There is an active group of users who are very aggressive about maintaining questions according to the current site scope and standards&#xD;&#xA;* More focus is placed on guiding and educating new users&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The subject of the site's name still keeps coming up time and again from both new and veteran users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [maple_shaft][12] (mod)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The solution to the vast majority of bad content that I speak of is Our Domain Name. It is as simple as that. Change the domain name of the site from Programmers to Software Engineering and Architecture or something akin to this and I will personally step down as a moderator if spam on the site doesn't cut by half.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [enderland][13]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't think anyone -- other than SE itself -- disagrees that the site is poorly named. However... that is well outside our ability to influence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Carson2000][14]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this site poorly named? Are people coming to &quot;programmers.stackexchange.com&quot; and immediately thinking &quot;aha, the place for my programming questions! they will help me debug my code!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Mage xy][15]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've never really understood why the site was called &quot;Programmers.SE&quot;... we're all programmers, aren't we? Pretty much the same over at SO... so from a newb's perspective, what's the difference?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [AndresF][16]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; For example, the name change was rejected in 2012! Sites, people and rules evolve. Maybe it's time to re-evaluate those decisions? I happen to think the name programmers.SE is part of the problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Alexei Averchenko][17]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software architecture is a viable topic, but if it's the main one on this site, it's better to rename it. the name &quot;Programmers&quot; connotes that it's a site about people, not code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt;  .. turning away people who seek advice from seasoned programmers on a site called &quot;Programmers&quot; is downright criminal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could keep going if you want, but those are just some comments from recent posts. There are many more of them if you keep looking further back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So please Stack Exchange, can we get your permission to change the name of our site? It doesn't need to be a complete re-design, just a domain name change and a title. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3718/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3733/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7361/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7910/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7906/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6815/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6788/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6233/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4009/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7130/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7593/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7809/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away#comment24097_7907&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away#comment24077_7907&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations/7934#comment24129_7911&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations/7934#comment24179_7913&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7316/putting-soft-questions-on-hold-unproductive#comment21909_7316" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26545" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7939" RevisionGUID="fc8d2601-d336-474e-a5b3-d08d0042fd5d" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It is a valid request, but I see some problems here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- to find a name which really describes the sites scope **better**, and not just **different** or **equally bad** (or **worse**). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- once the name is changed, there is probably no easy way back for the next few years. A site name change is something I do not expect the SE team to make every two weeks. So if the change does not bring the benefits we expect from it, what then?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we could just try out if a name like &quot;SoftwareDesign.SE&quot; (or &quot;Programmer's Whiteboard&quot;, a older suggestion of Robert Harvey which would be my favorite) would increase the ratio of &quot;good vs. bad posts&quot;, I think no one here would hesitate to do this. But such a change has a high risk of collateral damage - one has to be very sure about that it is worth the hassle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me, it looks your proposal for a name change is trying to solve a problem which might be better addressed differently. [This post two days][1] ago and its topmost answer reveals where the real problem is - not the site's name has to change, but the way how some people (and I don't exclude myself from this) behave in the process of closing, replying to bad questions and commenting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, I am not against a name change, but whoever will do this, please do it with care. And do not be too astonished if the number of low quality question does not drop significantly after the change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26546" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8011" RevisionGUID="9061e92c-bf2e-4bb2-a2f8-9052e28c3b7d" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While running a [test on Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/319131/1-2-3-test-let-s-increase-the-number-of-reviews-close-votes-for-science), there were some questions about whether we were driving traffic to Programmers, so I decided to rerun some of the numbers in [Shog’s original answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7332/28602) and compare the 30 days prior to the test to the testing period. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Prior to the Stack Overflow Test&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, let's look at the 30 days of activity here on Programmers prior to the start of the test, the time period was **February 15, 2016 to March 16, 2016**.  During this time there were:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!---14320, 14321, 14322, 14323, 14324---&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **1452** questions asked here, from &#xD;&#xA;- **1283** distinct account, of which&#xD;&#xA;- **1143** have/has account on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;- **298** of these users hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow in the 30 days. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From those 298 users:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **354** questions were posted &#xD;&#xA;- **200** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **244** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **233** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **124** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **74** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For comparison:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **701** questions were closed in total &#xD;&#xA;- **843** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **801** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **596** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **434** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking into the details, I also checked the IP addresses associated with these posts to see how many came from blocked address on Stack Overflow. Of the IP Addresses, 288 hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow. From those addresses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **339** questions were posted here&#xD;&#xA;- **185** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **216** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **208** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **128** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **81** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##During the Test Period (March 16, 2016 - April 13, 2016)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!---14311, 14313, 14315, 14318, 14319---&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The numbers over the test were:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **1388** questions asked, from &#xD;&#xA;- **1202** distinct account, of which&#xD;&#xA;- **1087** have/has account on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;- **248** of these users hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From those 248 users:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **307** questions were posted&#xD;&#xA;- **151** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **158** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **193** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **119** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **63** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By comparison for the rest of the questions asked during this time:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **543** questions were closed in total&#xD;&#xA;- **578** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **729** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **607** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **418** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the total IP Addresses, 298 hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow. From those addresses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **355** questions were posted here&#xD;&#xA;- **164** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **172** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **211** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **135** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **81** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the 30 days prior to the test, approximately 23% of the users asking question on Programmers had hit a block on SO, but during the test this dropped to 20%.  Blocked users asked approximately 24% of questions prior to the test, and 22% of questions during it. While there was a slight increase in the number of questions from blocked IP Addresses, it went from 23% to 25%, I'm not seeing a huge indication that the test on Stack Overflow drove traffic to Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26547" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8024" RevisionGUID="2be4b441-9add-41f1-aafc-fa2662439925" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="ThomasOwens addressed the reason for the temporary question ban. I would like to address the reason for the reason, that is, _why_ your previous questions led to the current situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that deleted questions are only visible to moderators, 10k users, or the user who asked them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Is it wise to invest in Angular 2?][1] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rightly closed as primarily opinion-based _and_ deleted. This is speculation that cannot be answered objectively.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [How common is it to get unpaid but skilled labor?][2] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Invites discussion (not answers), essentially asks for career advice which is off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Explaning to newbies that sometimes “it works” isn't “it works well”][3] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asks for advice on how to deal with coworker situations. Off-topic and subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [What does the $-operator mean (C# and EF context) for strings?][4] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asked on the wrong site, self-deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Using VS12 to create and manage an Azure-SQL DB (simple tasks)][5] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asks for a software tool which is explicitly off-topic per our help center.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Does TFS have the capacity equivalent of branching/forking in Git?][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay question about source control. Probably better-suited for Stack Overflow because it is asking about source control software, not strategy, but I wouldn't close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [How to motivate adaptive an shifting class access modifiers][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On-topic, but probably a duplicate. It is also a bit verbose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [How to store sensitive information (e.g. clients' credentials) accessibly for everybody inside?][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On-topic question about software process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Relation between projects and solutions in VS][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On-topic, but on the verge of being too broad. Still, it is about software organization and development processes so definitely on-topic and rightly does not have any downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Automatic code snippets in VS 12][10] (closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asks for help configuring a software tool. With more details it might be acceptable at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now for the important part: constructive feedback. Once you are able to ask questions again, I would focus on these items:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I see a few &quot;soft&quot; questions asking about opinion or how to convince a teammate about something. These questions are off-topic, unsalvageable, and unfortunately for you are simply not a good fit here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions that belong at Stack Overflow. Some people have a difficult time understanding just where the line is between the two sites. I agree it can be a bit blurry at times, and it is fine if you post incorrectly but in the gray area. We can fix that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [What are the differences between Stack Overflow, Programmers, and Code Review?][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A small number of off-topic questions that simply fall into one of the off-topic categories in the [help center][13].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [Why was my question closed or down voted?][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Several of your questions are very verbose. Try to focus on one thing, choose your words carefully, and describe the problem fully but in less space. This will help encourage us to read the question more fully, understand what it is asking, and hopefully upvote it. If the question needs improvement, it makes it easier for us to edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/313651&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/310681&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/309821&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/306324&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/203020&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/315885&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/314460&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/274265&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/250825&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/204871&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/266341&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26548" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8028" RevisionGUID="1e25afa6-7f6e-4afe-bc92-37964191b69b" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I did read the [Six Subjective Questions post][1] and its [Enforcement Notice][2], as well as some of the following discussions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is about questions that asks users to share their experience and/or offer creative suggestions in solving/approaching a particular problem.  Obviously everybody's experience differs, so answers could be deemed *subjective*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We, obviously, do not want to reinvent the wheel over and over again. So, how to ask such questions, that by definition cannot have the right answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everybody's experience differs, so different folks would suggest different remedies.  I am not starting a discussion about what is better, merely looking for an advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, it could be a question about heuristic rules employed in the application monitoring process with enough specifics to narrow it down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26549" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8057" RevisionGUID="9e785657-452c-448d-ae2f-5fd05b0eb697" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I believe our scope is mostly fine already. I think the issues this site has are not related to scope, but a desire to devolve from Q&amp;A to an open-ended, discussion-friendly forum-like site. In other words, a partial or total revert to the [NPR days][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I fully support our current scope and focusing on questions that are narrowly-scoped and invite objective answers, or at least good subjective answers. We need to buck the trend of being known as &quot;that place where you can ask about your [green field or blue sky][2] projects. These may be the types of questions that people need answered, but they are difficult to address in the Q&amp;A format and are not interesting to the high-reputation users who provide the bulk of the useful answers on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly, our name does not help. It does not accurately reflect what this site is about. It invites questions that are not appropriate here. Furthermore, our [on-topic list][3] is on the longer side compared to other Stack Exchange sites. It may not be the longest, but it is not very concise nor does it accurately convey the overall theme of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To address these concerns, I advocate for the following three changes (two requested in Ana's meta answer plus one more):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Change our name to Software Engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is in a name? &quot;First impressions.&quot; _We are not about programming, nor are we a catch-all bucket for Programmers' issues_. Look at our on-topic list: we are about software engineering. &quot;Programmers&quot; evokes NPR-style questions in my mind. &quot;Oh, I am a programmer and I have a question about some random topic. This site is called Programmers. I should load up the crap cannon and ask my question here.&quot; Nope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Refactor the on-topic list&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember earlier, I said our scope is fine but the list is verbose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Software lifecycle: requirements, design, architecture, development methodologies, unit testing.&#xD;&#xA;1. Software configuration management strategies (the way it is now, but make it clear that SCM _tool_ questions are off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;1. Algorithm and data structure concepts.&#xD;&#xA;1. Software engineering and team management and processes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is primarily a restructuring of the current list into fewer bullet points that are more closely related, but there is one important change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No more software licensing questions. These tend to be problematic, resulting in a zillion comments about whether a particular question is on-topic or not, or whether a programmer rather than a lawyer can answer it. We should avoid the whole debate and make them categorically off-topic. [Open Source SE][4] is in beta but doing well, and covers the majority of licensing questions that are currently on-topic here. Closed-source licensing questions typically end with &quot;ask the vendor&quot; anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Site UI Redesign&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Change the site design to something that &quot;looks&quot; more like software engineering, not a programmer's desk. I am awful with graphics design so I cannot recommend much, but we need a change here. Something that looks unfriendly to someone who wants to post a code dump, or ask a broad blue sky question with zero useful information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this site is pretty much set up to be a good, useful site. We just need some guardrails to help guide people away from the broad, opinion-based questions and more toward the interesting design and software engineering questions that are already on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6961/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26551" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8060" RevisionGUID="e8ed28fc-ae04-491d-9af2-b5e50282936a" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I like [maple_shaft's answer][1], however wanted to write my own for reducing the [on-topic page's wall-of-text][2] since it's far too long for a comment on his answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h3&gt;What topics can I ask about here?&lt;/h3&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Software Engineering** Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software engineering and related fields&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software engineering, software architecture, and software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm or data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software release management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance or testing strategies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * understanding, writing, or debugging code (check out [Stack Overflow][3] instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career, workplace, education, or lifestyle advice&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [legal advice or aid][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][5] or [strongly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rooted in opinions][6]. If you have questions that warrant an extended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion, feel free to [come to chat][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Before asking, [look around][8] to see if your question has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For more details, please see [our curated FAQ on Meta Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange][9].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize changes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Replaced initial paragraph with tag line from maple_shaft's answer&#xD;&#xA;* Reduced on-topic list. Its not to say those other items are not on-topic, but they can be generally lumped together with a different bullet point or are a part of the broader common definition of &quot;software engineering&quot;. I am tempted to remove the QA&amp;Testing bullet point as well, but I'll leave that up to someone else.&#xD;&#xA;* Reduced the off-topic list. This is not to say those items are now on-topic, but I think they no longer will need to be explicitly mentioned in the On-Topic page as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;* Removed or reduced a lot of the remaining text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Scope should not change. Even licensing questions can sit in a gray area where if the specific question falls under the general umbrella of software engineering, it's OK, but if it's too close to &quot;legal aid&quot;, it's off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8058/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7248/how-do-you-get-20-rep-to-get-into-chat&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/faq/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26552" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8062" RevisionGUID="e29c83f1-96d3-4020-8c27-aa7778118fad" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just like most if not all prior answerers I like the current scope of the site as it is. To me, primary reason to participate here is pretty much covered in two bullets in [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First bullet is probably also on-topic at Stack Overflow (hat tip to Robert Harvey) but it doesn't help me over there, because these topics are difficult to find and follow at SO. Given that I am not interested in asking and answering code troubleshooting questions and that my interest in reading these is quite specific and limited, I essentially have no other option but Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the second bullet, it is probably also somehow covered at Project Management but, again, this doesn't help. I am primarily interested in these topics from perspective of a developer, not a manager, that makes it so much more comfortable to have them here, on a site where development and architecture concerns are firmly within site scope. Besides, my interest in &quot;pure management&quot; topics is rather limited and I am not fond of participating in the site which has these as primary focus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other bullet points (except for licensing, more on it below), I would be comfortable if these aren't mentioned explicitly but instead assumed to be okay in the context of &quot;my&quot; bullet points: requirements, algorithm and data structures, quality assurance and testing, configuration management, software engineering management.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that such implicit inclusion may make Programmers less of a welcoming home for some &quot;pure forms&quot; of QA and algorithms questions but such questions don't seem to be going particularly well here anyway, which makes it more of a theoretical concern. And, which is probably most important, such questions seem to have solid coverage at other SE sites which have them as primary focus (SQA, CS, TCS).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Licensing questions seem a bit tricky. I haven't yet seen compelling explanation of their fundamental relevance to &quot;my&quot; bullet points. But on the other hand I haven't yet seen compelling explanation for opposite either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of that I am not going to change my voting habits if licensing isn't listed explicitly. I just won't vote close these questions - or more precisely will handle them per [current guidance](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7265/31260). I may change this approach later if I find that some other SE site holds these questions really well (like it happened to career topics at Workplace) but as of now this doesn't seem to be the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness - since this question asks about site name - I don't care about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had some reservations on this in the past when I saw people expecting this to help us against floods of debugging garbage and I wasn't sure that this would help and it looked like in case if this fails, this could damage site image. &quot;Look, these suckers changed name of the site they had for 5 years only because they were scared by debugging spammers. And, you know, this didn't help them, bwa ha ha.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what I observe for past few weeks made me feel much safer about that. It looks like recently introduced [network wide rate limits](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/322265/839601) cut the flow of debugging off-topic garbage and do this fairly efficiently and that site name just doesn't matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the light of above, whatever name site community picks I will be fine with it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26553" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8064" RevisionGUID="aeae9d2f-b5a4-47d6-89fa-554d6022c109" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Site Name&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've started to come around to the name &quot;Software Engineering&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I still have some lingering objections regarding the overuse of the term &quot;engineering&quot; in software development, I think that the benefits would outweigh my personal objections. It does bring to mind a professional-oriented site that caters to people that work throughout the software development life cycle, from business analysts to developers to managers to leads. It also pairs nicely with Computer Science, especially since both correspond to the underlying academic disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Tour and Tagline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&amp;A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ripped this from sites like Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. I removed the portion about &quot;expert answers on conceptual questions about software development&quot; since that can be confusing and I don't see how it's necessary. I tended toward the wording used on Computer Science.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first line of the /help/on-topic page is just the first sentence of the /tour description, word-for-word.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## On-Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm shamelessly stealing this idea from Robert Harvey, but I think that we should do some minor refactoring and link to appropriate Wikipedia articles that define terms. Unfortunately, I don't think that we can get this down to &quot;no more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no gerrymandering&quot;. I think we can avoid multi-line comma-separated lists and gerrymandering, but the discipline of Software Engineering is broad. Being clear about what is on-topic and what is off-topic (and what sites support questions about things that are off-topic) is essential and helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that the shortest reasonable on-topic list would be something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I removed &quot;algorithm and data structure concepts&quot;, since I would consider that part of &quot;software architecture and design&quot;. Evaluating and choosing various data structures and algorithms is inherently a design activity. I also removed &quot;and testing&quot; from &quot;quality assurance and testing&quot; since testing is one aspect of quality assurance, but we don't take all testing questions (such as, for example, writing or debugging unit test code). I also merged &quot;software engineering management&quot; and &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; into &quot;software process, methods, and management&quot; since these three things are very tightly related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Like maple_shaft][10], I'd like to talk about software licensing. I recognize how important the topic is, but when it was added and clarified, neither the Law nor the Open Source Stack Exchange existed. It is something that software engineers operating in a professional environment should be aware of and do need to work in, and the IEEE does bury a small section on &quot;Legal Issues&quot; (referring to trademarks, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, professional liability, trade compliance, cybercrime) under &quot;Software Engineering Professional Practice&quot;. At the same time, the IEEE also puts things like &quot;Employment Contracts&quot;, team dynamics, working in multicultural environments, reading, writing, and presenting under &quot;Software Engineering Professional Practice&quot; and these are definitely off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recommend removing the &quot;software licensing&quot; line. The [Law Stack Exchange is graduating][11] and the [new rules for the graduation process][12] will likely mean that Open Source won't end up closing in the foreseeable future. These sites can do a much better job of handling licensing questions (along with other types of questions) than we can.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, writing, or debugging code (check out Stack Overflow instead) how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (ask on The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - open source philosophy, licenses, and open source communities (visit Open Source instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - legal concepts, theory, and terms (check out Law instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - where to find a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resource&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career or education advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest change is that we start linking to Open Source and Law. Before we actually do this, we do need to consult with their communities and make sure it's OK. But since there are better sites, I think it's safe to punt these questions to the experts anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Slight reordering of the things that are off-topic. We may want to check through the Meta questions that are currently linked and make sure they are correct. The biggest change is the removal of &quot;personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&quot; - I'd hope that a distinct change to the site name would make this very explicit to visitors as your personal life is not Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We may want to also identify some other sites to point people to. We could link to Software Recommendations and Hardware Recommendations next to &quot;product or service recommendations&quot;, as an example. There are also other sites that are related to software engineering that we don't identify as being off-topic (because it should be obvious) - Mathematics, Cross Validated/Statistics, User Experience, Information Security, Writers, Database Administrators, Code Review, Project Management (beta), Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing (beta), Computer Science, Engineering (beta), Law (beta), and Open Source (beta).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to see a theme change on the site. Something that is more professional. I like the general idea of diagrams and models, but parts of the site do seem cartooney. I'd like to be crisper, more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to look at methods for linking to related sites. Adding them to a Help Center page, like /help/on-topic, may work, but it would make that page much longer. I'd like to try to make Help Center pages smaller and less dense. It makes sense to point people to sites that they may not otherwise know about. Perhaps a Meta question that is part of the [tag:faq] would work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box, similar to how the Law and Health sites do, but to talk about the changes? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, so just a brief overview and link to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8058/4&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://law.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/425/congrats-law-se-will-be-graduating-soon?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/257614/graduation-site-closure-and-a-clearer-outlook-on-the-health-of-se-sites" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26554" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8080" RevisionGUID="8b6e96c9-9e17-4ff1-8398-d59535830f87" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I saw a question at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5793/132033. Still I could not get my head around that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a question specific to some programming language (Python), possibly a bug. But I am not sure as to where should I post the question. How do I decide that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should I post my question here so that I can get help in deciding on an answer to my query?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me post the question anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    import numpy as np&#xD;&#xA;    g = [1.1,1.2,1.3]&#xD;&#xA;    for j in np.arange(len(g)):&#xD;&#xA;        c = 0&#xD;&#xA;        for k in np.arange(len(g)-1,j,-1):&#xD;&#xA;            if (g[j]-g[k])**2 &lt; 0.01:&#xD;&#xA;                c += 1&#xD;&#xA;                h.append(g[k])&#xD;&#xA;                print 0.01-(g[j]-g[k])**2      # line 9&#xD;&#xA;                g.pop(k)&#xD;&#xA;                &#xD;&#xA;    #            print 'g=', g,',length=',len(g),'\n'&#xD;&#xA;    #    length = len(g)&#xD;&#xA;        print 'g[j],c=',g[j],c&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem I am facing here is that the difference I asked to print at line 9 should be zero. But I am getting **2.60208521397e-17**. I have been scratching my head over this for long.&#xD;&#xA;&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26555" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8093" RevisionGUID="4251353f-be18-43a8-a905-ab3fa6b14dd2" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This... should've gone up about six months ago. But let's not let it turn into another six months! Today, your 2016 community promotion ads starts with the new format! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What are Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - the site's twitter account&#xD;&#xA; - cool events or conferences&#xD;&#xA; - anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Why do we reset the ads every year?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### How does it work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers you post to this question _must_ conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All answers should be in the exact form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        [![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;           [1]: http://image-url&#xD;&#xA;           [2]: http://clickthrough-url &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [meta-tag:community-ads] tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Image requirements&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The image that you create must be **300 x 250 pixels**, or double that if high DPI.&#xD;&#xA; - Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)&#xD;&#xA; - Must be GIF or PNG&#xD;&#xA; - No animated GIFs&#xD;&#xA; - Absolute limit on file size of **150 KB**&#xD;&#xA; - **If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Score Threshold&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently **6**) before it will be shown on the main site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/ads/display/8093" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26556" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8105" RevisionGUID="93174ce6-bef2-42fa-afff-bb1cfcd2edb2" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've been pondering [these proposed changes to the site's name and scope](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8056/new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8065#8065) for the past few weeks. This was, you'll recall, instigated by Ana's response to Rachel's proposal for [a new name for this site.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/4-years-later-dear-stack-exchange-can-we-change-our-site-name). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Why are we changing anything again?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The purpose of that name-change request was explicitly to *end the confusion over what this site is about*. Ana's request was that y'all do a thorough review of your scope at the same time, for exactly the same reason. Because, let's face it: when you gotta have [a chatbot](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/125580/duga) running to catch all the folks who erroneously recommend your site, there's some pretty widespread misunderstandings as to what your site is about... To put a stop to that, [we need a clear, succinct definition](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/4-years-later-dear-stack-exchange-can-we-change-our-site-name/8054#8054):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Above all else, the scope needs to be simple. Seriously. No more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no gerrymandering - it needs to be easy for any new visitor who bothers to read and even mildly pays attention to what they're reading to know what they can and cannot ask about here. Eliminate ambiguity for a first time poster once and for all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...because, remember, *that was the whole point of doing anything at all*. If we can't do it right, there's no point in doing it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The proposed changes are not exactly succinct](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8056/new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8065#8065). They're... the sort of [laundry-lists](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/164778/what-should-we-put-on-our-about-page/164779#164779) that make folks who already know what the site is about feel good, but don't do anything to help or hinder the folks coming here confused. You want to establish a path of least resistance that *isn't* asking a sketchy question and seeing if it sticks - if I make it past the home page, through the signup process, past the tour, and get to the Ask page, I'm *probably* going to ask a question regardless of what text you throw at me... Folks tend to build up momentum as they make decisions; you don't want to wait until the last possible moment to tell 'em they're in the wrong place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##What I *think* you're asking for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, there's a lot of good stuff mixed into that proposal, if you take the time to dig a bit. After [talking to folks in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/30760512#30760512) a couple of weeks ago (and then another two hours talking with Ana today while she patiently guided me through it), I came away with this as the *structure* of the proposal:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Name&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Description / tour tagline&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question and answer site for people directly involved in the Software Development Lifecycle who care about writing, shipping, and maintaining code responsibly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###On-topic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Off-topic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - troubleshooting or debugging code &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - requests for code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what to read, learn, buy or use.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - legal advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's short. I could theoretically paste that entire quote into a comment, and still have room to reply to someone by name and properly cite [its source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_Trump).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More importantly, it's short enough that it might actually get *read* by the hundreds of folks who clearly aren't reading anything here today. Which was, again, the entire point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I dropped a few things. That's ok; you don't need to exhaustively document every possible topic that falls under the umbrella &quot;Software Engineering&quot; - the ultimate source of truth is what's actually *on the site*. If someone comes in from Google because there's a question about Agile they're interested in, it won't matter that it's not explicitly called out in the docs. On the other hand, eliminating requirements and methodologies from that list also lets you avoid having to qualify those topics with a paragraph about where to stick broad, opinionated discussion questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##What this site is really about&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I love the idea of a site about software engineering, especially one created as the evolution of *this* site: it fits the spirit of what y'all are doing, gives you a name and a topic you can communicate with pride, and even [resolves an old, old dispute](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se) in a less depressing fashion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But none of that matters. **What's important here is whether y'all actually believe this reflects what you're doing.** Remember, the goal was to clear up all those cringe-worthy misconceptions... Not to create a whole pile of new ones. So I ask of you,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Does *anything* in the quote above strike you as *incorrect?***&#xD;&#xA;2. Does the quote above reflect the site you know and love?&#xD;&#xA;3. Is the quote above something you'd feel comfortable giving to someone unfamiliar with the site, by way of an introduction?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you for your time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26557" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8136" RevisionGUID="ee3d8faa-3540-4c28-a914-b8d73f2c81bf" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;!-- let's talk about elephant in the room --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading of [July 22nd discussion](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/new-site-name-discussion-jul-22-2016) primary focus of the coming changes is to prevent the flood of debugging questions. Both SE Community Manager and our moderators appear to be in agreement about that:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; \-  There are a crazy number of things that should be closed or downvoted or edited or just discouraged, but only a tiny handful reach the sort of volume that you need to _announce them to all visitors_.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;\- And the code troubleshooting types are, by far, the worst.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;\- I'm pretty sure just about every site on the network gets coding questions now and then, but only a few bother mentioning that they're off-topic explicitly anywhere. &#xD;&#xA;here, they're a problem, so you focus on that &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explicit mentioning of **&quot;not code troubleshooting&quot;** in the [suggested site tagline](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vkfDr.png) also appears to support this vision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given above I wonder if we need to somehow change the way how blatant debugging questions are handled, maybe have more active involvement of diamond moderators or maybe ask for system features &lt;sup&gt;[1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6795/31260 &quot;example - automatic checks for cross-posting and question block at SO&quot;), [2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260 &quot;example - showing a warning&quot;), [3](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8056/new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8061#comment24925_8065 &quot;example - interstitial page&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt; or something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding of the current approach is, it assumes primarily involvement of regular community members which leads to cumbersome and lengthy process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;First, a question needs to collect five close votes from 3K users. Per my observations this tends to take few hours or even days. After closure, question hangs on the site for 9 days before it gets [auto-deleted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/177675/165773). If it manages to get an upvoted or accepted answer prior to closure things get even more complicated because such questions aren't eligible for automatic deletion and can in theory hang in here indefinitely.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that planned changes are so much focused on preventing debugging questions our current way looks somewhat worrying.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope that the changes will help to educate newcomers against asking for code troubleshooting over here. But [statistics](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6592/31260) seems to suggest that ~20% questions here come from users who simply don't have an option to ask for debugging help at more appropriate site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes me wonder how to handle it when such questions are posted here despite all the effort and guidance." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26558" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8174" RevisionGUID="d34fbd2f-130c-4b42-a346-627c2caccd3e" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've been using this message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Welcome to programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [Many sites](http://stackexchange.com/sites) have [different rules](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8067/131624). Feel free to take your issue to an appropriate site. Search existing answers first. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Welcome to programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [Many sites](http://stackexchange.com/sites) have [different rules](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8067/131624). Feel free to take your issue to an appropriate site. Search existing answers first. Please [don't cross post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's been successful in getting a few askers to clean up on their own. I might even suggest that with this, fewer bitter arguments start after the close.  Bit hard to tell yet but I think it's helped.  Use it if you like. Maybe you can do better. If you can, please share.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26560" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8181" RevisionGUID="f2d8f42e-9744-4ca7-8482-f3ec246383ea" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Having read [this][1] question about a reasonable feature request and seen that it was closed as a dupe of a question from 2013 (and 2011 by another user), I wonder what is the best way &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - to leave a note to the SE team that I would also like to see such a feature added. &#xD;&#xA; - to advertise certain feature requests after some years again to get some feedback if there are more users now which think the feature would be beneficial for the site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just upvoting those old feature requests seems to have no impact, since chances are high noone just notice about the upvote to such an old question. Asking about the feature again seems to be the wrong way, too (will get closed as a dupe, see above). Adding a bounty, as suggested [here][2], simply does not work on Programmer's meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what can I do increase the chance a good suggestion which was probably just forgotten over the years won't vanish completely?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8176/please-add-mathjax&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/106860/what-is-meta-protocol-for-re-requesting-ignored-feature-requests" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26561" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8183" RevisionGUID="320d31ad-8447-4085-bee1-7ce857332476" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For many thorough discussion on this matter, refer [What is Meta protocol for re-requesting ignored feature requests?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/106860/165773) and questions linked to it at at MSE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that bounties, being one of most popular ideas expressed in these discussions, apply only at MSE. At per site metas there is no way to set bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over here your options are narrower: edit, answer, discuss in chat, maybe ask non-duplicate question or do something like was done in famous [(4 years later)...](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7935/31260) request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26562" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8189" RevisionGUID="21e55137-887a-4850-a160-b07f393fa48d" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A question is either a question that belongs or a question that doesn't belong. We, as a community, have decided that some types of questions aren't a good fit for this format. Resource requests are one such type of question that is not a good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Guiding principle can be found in the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][1] and [Real Questions Have Answers][2] blog posts. Questions that generate lists aren't the kind of questions we want because they don't generate the answers that we want. This is a good platform for sharing human knowledge and applying experiences, not aggregating large numbers of links to resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've also had specific discussions on resource requests on Meta [here][3] and [here][4] and [here][5] and [here][6] where you can get several reasons why this type of question doesn't work. Each time the top voted posts have been opposed to questions about resource requests. That continues to be the perspective of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4002/resource-questions-automatic-close&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5299/why-are-reference-request-questions-off-topic?rq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26563" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8196" RevisionGUID="3e7cb5a6-ad88-4e1c-a7a9-865e22d9d06d" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Previous Discussion: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8184/follow-up-3-new-site-name-and-help-center-discussions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After approval from [Ana][1], I published the discussed updates to the [Help Center's /help/on-topic page][2] and the [site's /tour][3]. In the near future, we should be hearing from her about the timeline of the technical implementation for changing our site's name and domain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please leave any feedback here about these changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/106878/ana&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26564" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8208" RevisionGUID="9976130e-60fc-4f52-986d-c1dfa412a6c8" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**NO**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [Robert Harvey says](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8207/145)&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering is a site for asking questions directly related&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to the Systems Development Life Cycle (but not code troubleshooting or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; writing specific code).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic. They are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26565" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8211" RevisionGUID="3f703d9a-f7ed-4afd-9943-4289ababcfff" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I read [your original question][1], [your question here on Meta][2], and the comment chain on [Robert Harvey's answer][3]. After reading everything, I casted a reopen vote on your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's been a while since we've visited a discussion of history questions and their topicality, but I still agree with the [answers presented in the last discussion][4], and I really don't see a reason to reopen the topicality discussion, since we've had plenty of luck with history questions - they tend to produce well researched answers that bring together individual knowledge and information from multiple sources in a way that is very searchable. All of those are positives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, this isn't the only site to have a solid set of questions about the history of their field. [Computer Science][5], [Electrical Engineering][6], [Mathematics][7], and [Statistics][8] all do it well, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, that doesn't mean that there aren't improvements that can't be made to the question. My biggest problem after reading everything is that it doesn't actually answer the question you are interested in. But that still doesn't mean that it's not a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You [left a comment on Robert's answer][9] that states you are interested in language design. This information is not presented in your original question at all. It may not be intuitive, but Stack Exchange is not about you getting an answer to your question, but about providing a repository of questions and answers for other people (I think there is some discussion on Meta Stack Exchange about this, but I'm not able to find it right now). This question isn't that useful for someone else who is designing a language and wondering if they should use a caret for XOR or exponentiation - they would have to interpret the history in their own way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also don't think that this is the best community to ask language design questions on.  We do have some people with this background here - [Eric Lippert][10] comes to mind. However, consider the intended audience of this community: [professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly][11] (or, in simpler terms, practitioners of [software engineering][12] or [software craftsmanship][13]). Considering that they also accept history questions, [the community at Computer Science][14] may be better suited to answering questions about programming language design - traditionally, [programming language theory is a branch of computer science][15]. However, just because it's on-topic there doesn't mean it is off-topic here. I do think that wording it more about your design of a programming language rather than a history question may have been better here, since as people who care about creating and maintaining software, we do have a stake in languages that are easy to use and maintainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, I've reopened the question. I don't see any reason to keep it closed. There's also no discussion regarding removing history from this site's scope, as long as it's related to the history of software engineering or software craftsmanship.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/331388/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8209/4&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8210/4&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5633/is-programming-history-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/history&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/history&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/math-history&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/history&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8209/this-question-isnt-remotely-subjective#comment25693_8210&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6505/eric-lippert&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_craftsmanship&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language_theory" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26566" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8215" RevisionGUID="61ed4bdd-47b9-40e3-9dbd-809297224569" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="##History Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;History questions are still on-topic, provided the op can demonstrate some relevance with an ongoing concern related to the SDLC.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Candied Orange [provided some great insights](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8209/this-question-isnt-remotely-subjective#comment25712_8210):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; History can be thought of as everything that isn't happening right now. That isn't what is off topic. What's off-topic is anything that ONLY has value from a historian's perspective. Simply having value from a historian's perspective doesn't make it off topic. Doesn't make it on topic either. So it would need another reason to be on topic. Doesn't matter if the OP frames it for a historian or not. So the ugly history of waterfall that led to agile is on topic. The reasoning behind Java being named after an island that exports coffee is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Historically (no pun intended), history questions have fared well here, provided they are interesting and not merely curiosity questions about some very obscure and random thing that can only be answered by someone that was actually there when it happened.  Questions about the design of the Babbage engine are probably on-topic; questions about the color Babbage painted his engine are probably not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Licensing Questions&#xD;&#xA;Licensing questions are not part of the SDLC; they are entirely a legal concern.  Law and Open-source have demonstrated a willingness to accept such questions, and can answer them better than we can.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I've been told that, in some cases, the Software Engineer is the one making these decisions, and so it's still a relevant concern on a Software Engineering site. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26567" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8226" RevisionGUID="60da2e6c-bce6-4627-8423-656c163314aa" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question may be on-topic as a software design question, not a software development methods and practices question. The [Help Center's on-topic page][1] provides links to Wikipedia to define these terms - methods and practices refers to methods like sequential development, the agile methods, Lean, and CMMI and practices refers to things like Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design. Software design includes identifying and selecting data structures and algorithms, along with a number of other topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although it's likely to be on-topic, I'm not sure you'll get a good answer here because of the core audience of this community. We are &quot;professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;. We may not have the depth of experience in graphics engines or mathematics to provide a suitable answer to your question. We maintain [a list of other Stack Exchange sites that cover topics related to software development][2], some of which may be on-topic here but they provide a different set of experiences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should read their Help Center and search before asking a question, but it looks like [Computer Science][3], [Computational Science][4], and [Signal Processing][5] may be good fits for your question. Don't forget that cross-posting is not acceptable on the Stack Exchange network, so be sure to tailor your question for the specific audience to receive the best answers from that given community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8066/4&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://dsp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26568" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8235" RevisionGUID="aa6bd572-5738-428a-be9f-fb0e989cb883" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Since you seem to be mostly active at Stack Overflow, the main (and essentially the only) difference you will probably observe at Programmers is absence of debugging help questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators at this site were given a [guidance](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31225279#31225279 &quot;delete everything that's blatantly off-topic as soon as it appears&quot;) to quickly delete such questions and as far as I can tell they happily follow this recommendation. Also, community over here is quite [unwelcoming](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7864/31260) towards debugging questions so you may notice many of them quickly closed at score -3 and lower and deleted by 20K users even before moderators intervene.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for bikeshedding / [beat the strawman](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/314341/mvc-as-a-subset-of-client-server-architecture#comment664445_314341 &quot;'Someone dumps a question with a simple but terribly misguided / flawed assumption and answerers pile on it competing who would be the best in trashing it. This genre will definitely be popular (as it's essentially a sub-genre of bikeshedding). And it will be widespread because it is dead easy to construct such strawmans to beat'&quot;) kind questions, there is not really much difference. I spend quite a bit of time in SO close queue and it looks like such questions are posted to SO at about the same rate as here and standards of both sites have nothing to do with this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What looks to you like more encouragement here is misleading impression.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only reason why more of Programmers questions of this kind get and stick in hot questions is that system has special adjustment &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; that pushes Stack Overflow questions out of HNQ list after few hours while Programmers questions, just like all other sites, stick in the list for days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;For readers who may be not aware of that, purpose of [hot questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/hot-questions/info) is established pretty firmly: this feature is there only to show network wide audience entertaining / interesting questions. Those interested can refer MSE for more details on that: [What is the Goal of “Hot Network Questions”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/165773)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness you may also notice that Programmers get a bit more of project management questions than Stack Overflow. But as far as I can tell there is not much of a difference really, probably because these questions tend to be better handled at other site (PM.SE).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7182/31260&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;If you're interested, special adjustment mentioned above is [explained in more details here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/250154/165773). Official reason for this adjustment is to prevent SO questions dominating hot list but this is nonsense, ignore it. If they wanted just to avoid SO domination, they would implement the adjustment differently.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;There is a parameter in hotness formula that controls just how to limit amount of questions from single site and tweaking this parameter would guarantee desired limit for questions that can enter the list. Instead of simply changing this parameter they picked an indirect way that makes SO questions leave hot list faster which apparently was the main purpose of this adjustment. The reason they wanted that was to avoid too loud meta complaints when SO questions stick in the list ([&quot;croissants&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/190106/165773) probably scared them).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Programmers also complain about HNQ and we even [delete worst of such questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7525/31260) but this site is too small and SE management doesn't give a damn. About 2-3 months ago Shog told me that they are perfectly happy with the way how hot questions work and they don't plan for any changes in that (indeed why would they now that they shut down complaints from the only site that was big enough to force them change).&lt;/sub&gt; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26569" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8321" RevisionGUID="0cbb57e3-fc05-472b-914d-a6b2c995525e" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:26:44.943" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Update - these questions are now considered wholly off-topic here, so I've simplified the guidance further:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** [Job / Career questions are off-topic here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). Yes, there are still a few around; it's a long story.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can try [The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/tour) for career development questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; See also: [Why was my career or education advice question closed or down voted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...also these tags are blacklisted and can no longer be used on new questions. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26570" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="942" RevisionGUID="1dc41040-f6cf-4549-bf07-c2db1c58b16d" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:59:44.053" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.superuser.com/ with https://meta.superuser.com/" Text="As detailed in the answer to [this question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/74582/59303) on Meta Stack Overflow, the threshold can be set on a site by site basis and is now 15 for Programmers (along with Super User, where the threshold was [originally reduced in an effort to stem the tide of pile-on answers][1]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't affect existing questions, but if a new answer is posted to those they will convert.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.superuser.com/questions/274/reduce-community-wiki-force-threshold-to-15-answers-on-superuser" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26571" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1031" RevisionGUID="9de5d4b7-82ad-4e37-a618-2b01916694d7" CreationDate="2017-03-17T08:59:44.053" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.superuser.com/ with https://meta.superuser.com/" Text="Jeff [suggests][1] that we ask questions to nominees on meta with the **Election** tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So far I've seen four ways to ask questions to nominees:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Right in the comments of nominee's introduction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. One question in a meta, every nominee can answer (Jeff's [suggestion][1]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Many questions in a meta post ([used][2] on [Super User][2] by Ivo Flipse).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. One post on meta for many questions. Questions are asked in answers. Nominees edit the answer with their own. ([used][3] on [Math.SE][3]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've [used method 2][4] by grouping two questions with a very similar subjects as per [Anna's suggestion][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What's is your preferred way?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1019/2011-community-moderator-election&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.superuser.com/questions/1950/qa-with-the-candidates-in-2011-moderator-election&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1254/list-of-questions-for-candidates-in-2010-moderator-election&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1030/nominees-2011-could-you-please-tell-more-about-your-future-moderation-style&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1027/i-want-to-ask-few-questions-to-nominees-should-i-ask-them-in-a-single-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26572" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1409" RevisionGUID="dc4f82e1-24e6-4e39-829a-d2adf1478d8c" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:12:26.250" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.superuser.com/ with https://meta.superuser.com/" Text="There are roughly 111 total users with 3000+ reputation and 21 users over 10k.  With these numbers, we should be able to effectively maintain the standards on this Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem that I see is not every high rep user fully understands that this *is* a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion site.  I feel like there are some things we can try:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Evangelize and educate more of the 3000+ and 10k users to take part in actively moderating the site through encouragement and education of the dangers of the site becoming a doomed discussion forum.  Where at all possible, we should reference the knowledge of Jeff, Joel, Robert, Rebecca, and Dori, who have seen countless StackExchange sites succeed and fail.  They *do* know what they're talking about, and the blog is a wealth of knowledge that we should reference when dealing with stubborn users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Appoint/Elect more moderators.  If there are more people responsible for the site, this will help take pressure off the current 3 moderators. (It's 3, right?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Take the approach that [Ivo Flipse has taken on SuperUser and start a blog](https://meta.superuser.com/questions/2153/the-super-user-blog-now-officially-blessed).  For Programmers, we could reward higher rep users with the ability to blog about certain questions that may be off-topic here on the Q&amp;A site, but that may thrive on the blog, since blogs are more appropriate for discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26573" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2884" RevisionGUID="d3e7328c-b7e1-4188-b439-428cb094f78b" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:12:26.250" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.superuser.com/ with https://meta.superuser.com/" Text="Are you using HTTPS-Everywhere?  This has been known to cause problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Specific problem and fix found:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; HTTPS-Everywhere forces the use of the secure reCAPTCHA API. The problem with this is the invalid certificate used; specifically, it is expired as of 09-05-04 13:32:04 (GMT).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This can be worked around by navigating to https://api-secure.recaptcha.net/ and adding a permanent exception for the certificate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tested on Firefox 4 final on Ubuntu 10.10 to http://superuser.com/captcha.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Courtesy of [Hello71](https://meta.superuser.com/users/36565/hello71) on [Super User's meta](https://meta.superuser.com/a/2460/42458)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26574" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7502" RevisionGUID="d5b476dd-86b7-48df-b91f-e4b8ff75aca9" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:13:00.887" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.serverfault.com/ with https://meta.serverfault.com/" Text="[Post 7499][1] outlines the problems the questions cause. Despite this,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* they reflect a real and highly important need of the technical crowd, so they will never stop coming&#xD;&#xA;    * thus, unless we want to alienate users who have those needs and make them look for answers elsewhere, we must invent a way to address those needs, _somehow,_ in a manner consistent with SE's mission to disseminate knowledge, here or elsewhere&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This post outlines the possible remedies suggested.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _Enforce the &quot;Good subjective&quot; principle:_ require an asker to specify what exact problem they need to solve with the information from a book (get an overview, compare, learn how to complete a specific task(s)), and an answerer to specify how exactly that book will address those needs.&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes 1)&#xD;&#xA;    * partially fixes 2): a degree of uncleanness remains in any case&#xD;&#xA;* _Maintain topic overview articles_ (a wiki page/canonical answer) containing book references, among other things&#xD;&#xA;    * intended to fix 3) but a solution to make it &quot;endorsed by the system&quot; and visible to potential askers is most unclear.&#xD;&#xA;    * is part or a larger problem of users getting little to no rep for updating existing info. This matter warrants a separate discussion&#xD;&#xA;    * canonical answers are [used successfully at Server Fault][2]. &#xD;&#xA;        * [some do recommend books][3]&#xD;&#xA;        * in their case, it helps that enterprise sysadmins deal with a rather limited set of topics&#xD;&#xA;* _Find another &quot;sewer drain&quot; to offload those questions into,_ like general questions were once drained here from StackOverflow&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes everything here; the &quot;drain&quot; will have to deal with all this instead&#xD;&#xA;        * We'll still have an inflow of users asking this here (and getting answers!) regardless of the fact the questions get closed ([heck, even SO users think these are appropriate _per se!_][4])&#xD;&#xA;    * http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57383/the-fourth-place-polling-recommendations-and-subjective-ish-stuff discusses this matter. The conclusion is that the current SE model isn't good for this format&#xD;&#xA;    * The primary candidate is [Software Recommendations Stack Exchange][5] that is currently in beta. Book recommendations aren't any different from software recommendations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that nothing will fix 4) as long as the current &quot;an answer solves the problem by itself&quot; paradigm stays unshaken. Experience from the communities like Travel.SE that somehow managed to cope with matters that are by their nature incomplete and subjective, may help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7499/108337&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.serverfault.com/questions/1986/what-are-the-canonical-answers-weve-discovered-over-the-years&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://serverfault.com/questions/476918/what-data-center-room-routine-maintenance-tasks-should-be-done&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31438006/how-do-i-start-migration-to-hadoop&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26575" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1806" RevisionGUID="8f7aec2e-8330-4abf-be0f-1455afa8c189" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:13:10.920" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.askubuntu.com/ with https://meta.askubuntu.com/" Text="So it's summer-time, and while you may be thinking that means warm temperatures and blue skies (sorry, Southern Hemisphere!), the Stack Exchange network has caught the clean-up bug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our sister sites like [OnStartups](http://meta.answers.onstartups.com/questions/526/onstartups-clean-up-getting-started) and [Ask Ubuntu](https://meta.askubuntu.com/questions/1220/clean-up-week-event-planning) have proposed cleaning up old questions to spruce up the place, and we thought it'd be a good idea to explore here on Programmers.SE, as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange has an automatic deletion system in place (see [Jeff's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning/1807#1807) for the details), but we've still amassed 2,690 (and counting) closed questions so far. The idea would be to sweep up the hundreds of questions collecting dust because they weren't great fits for our site and were closed or abandoned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It'd also be a way to get everyone involved in moderating the site, and we moderators would rely heavily on you guys to go through and take a look at what needs to go or what needs to be reviewed. Plus, it's a chance for more flag weight increases than you can possibly imagine!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Criteria for deletion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our thinking right now is to follow the leads of our sister sites and delete questions that have one or more of the following criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Have a vote total of -2 or less *(Edit: mostly complete)*&#xD;&#xA;* Have a very low view count&#xD;&#xA;* Have no answers, or no upvoted answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the additional criterion that the question must've been closed, ideally for a decent amount of time to allow the original poster to revise the question and try to get it reopened (let's say, a month).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, based on Joel Spolsky and Robert Cartaino's suggestions, any questions with have not been answered and haven't had any activity in several months (i.e. the &quot;forgotten&quot; questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Getting involved&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is where you guys come in. If you see a question that's worth saving but exhibits the qualities above, **fight for it.** If a question is sitting around that really doesn't belong here, **tell us.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does that mean? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Identifying questions that could be improved.** Some questions were closed because they were bad fits for the *as written*, but nevertheless had some really great answers. If you think you can get the question into a state that'd make it a fit for our site without invalidating the answers, edit the question or suggest an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Voting on questions.** If you have the ability to vote for deletion or re-open, use your powers for good. If you see a question that's wrongfully closed, vote to re-open it. If you see a question that should be deleted, vote to delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Flagging questions that need moderator's attention.** If you find a closed question that needs one of us to take a look at it, flag it and let us know what your concern is. If you don't have the ability to vote to re-open or delete but feel strongly about it, let us know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Finding candidate questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE search has a few operators to help locate candidate questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [All questions that are closed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1)&#xD;&#xA;* [Closed questions with -2 score or less](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1530/closed-questions-with-2-score-or-less)&#xD;&#xA;* [Closed questions with less than 100 views and more than -2 score](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1531/closed-questions-with-less-than-100-views-and-greater-than-2-score)&#xD;&#xA;* [Questions with no activity and no answers for 6 months](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1532/questions-with-no-answers-and-no-activity-for-6-months)&#xD;&#xA;* Others? Post 'em!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Questions and comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you guys think? Are there any other parts of the site we should be looking at for some clean-up? Do you have any suggestions or ideas about how to handle this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26576" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1381" RevisionGUID="75458b8f-7b73-4fd9-b51e-2888a6720296" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="This has been brought up [many times][1] on Meta.StackOverflow and rejected. The posts are now closed as duplicates tracing back to [this question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3230/so-badge-progress-report).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=progress%20badges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26577" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2159" RevisionGUID="a52555a7-46a5-4d7a-a6c9-9485ead5f050" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="I see several types of closed questions on the Programmers' stack exchange that concern me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. ***Non-duplicate-duplicates***: [Questions closed as duplicates that are at least some degree different from the question that is cited as a duplicate](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101988/should-developers-accept-overtime-weekend-work-denied-bonus-payments). (The concern here is that a good question, when asked in a different light, can elicit different, possibly better answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. ***Poor questions***: [Questions closed as not fulfilling enough of the 6 guidelines for a good question that are &quot;on the border&quot; of fulfilling enough of the guidelines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102528/what-is-more-standard-shortening-for-regular-expression-regex-or-regexp) that, to the casual observer, appear to be good questions. (The concern here is that closing good questions makes the exchange less valuable as a medium for exchanging information about, in this case, the programming profession).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. ***Mis-labeled closed questions***: Questions closed as not fulfilling guidelines that are actually good questions, but clearly off-topic, [such as this one on what is an iteration](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95920/what-is-each-time-through-a-loop-called), or [this one from a 14-year old beginner](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97785/my-dad-is-impatient-with-the-pace-of-my-learning-to-program-what-do-i-do). (The concern here is that newbies can become confused between what it means to stay on topic and how to ask good questions.  Another concern is that moderation can take the appearance of being incompetent when it lists the wrong reason for closing a question.) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. ***Marginally off-topic questions***: Questions that are closed as being off topic that, while not being exactly on topic, have the casual appearance of being on topic, such as [this one about interruptions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33667/how-to-fend-off-external-interuptions). (The concern here is that closing good questions makes the exchange less valuable as a medium for exchanging information about, in this case, the programming profession. Another concern is that moderation can take the appearance of being in the control of mindless bureaucrats rather than reasoned, pragmatic elders.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way to handle this is to ask the moderators to take some extra time to explain close decisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance, noting that Programmers' stack exchange is for ***expert*** programmers would be sufficient to close [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97785/my-dad-is-impatient-with-the-pace-of-my-learning-to-program-what-do-i-do) and [this one also](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95920/what-is-each-time-through-a-loop-called).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For ***poor questions***such as [this one on GIT](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96933/why-did-git-get-so-much-hype-while-others-dont) or this one on [regex/regexp](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102528/what-is-more-standard-shortening-for-regular-expression-regex-or-regexp), ticking off the guidelines that are not present would really help casual users understand the elements of a good question better. For instance, the [regex/regexp](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102528/what-is-more-standard-shortening-for-regular-expression-regex-or-regexp) question could be closed because it is merely mindless fun, it cannot be answered through facts or references, it does not invite sharing of experiences, it is not asked in an impartial tone, it only elicits short answers, and it will not inspire good answers. (Note -- I am curious about why [the regex/regexp question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102528/what-is-more-standard-shortening-for-regular-expression-regex-or-regexp) is not a good question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The entire community can help out with ***mis-labeled closed*** questions by flagging then for re-labeling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When closing, ***marginally off-topic*** questions -- either close them with the caveat that they be reworded to apply to expert programmers, or explain why the question is considered off-topic. For instance, the [question about interruptions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/33667/how-to-fend-off-external-interuptions) is a real problem for programmers as interruptions impact the productivity of programmers differently than they impact most other professions, so either it can be reworded to apply to programmers, or it should be explained that this is off-topic because other professions (such as mathematicians) also have the same problem with interruptions, so this question will always be considered off-topic in this stack exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not know the answer to the ***non-duplicate-duplicate*** issue, this one is heavily discussed in [meta.stackoverflow](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=non-duplicate+duplicate) as well. It is just one of the minor annoyances of using stack exchanges, I guess.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The moderators for this stack exchange have been very busy lately. I do not know if it is fair to ask them to shoulder the additional thought and care that the above recommendations would entail." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26578" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2241" RevisionGUID="06dce208-f3a7-482b-994a-91c61e3a4686" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="I'd suggest reading [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) and particularly the [answer on Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179) created by our very own [Aaronaught](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/3249/aaronaught), which goes into more finer detail about why just such a bad fit for Stack Exchange, but in short, the purpose of Stack Exchange is to get an answer to an actual problem a person is facing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One answer that actually solves the problem is what we're looking for: not a host of suggestions. A future visitor, who has the same issue, should be able to look at the set of answers and be able to determine two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What the community has decided is the correct answer (highest number of votes)&#xD;&#xA;* What the question asker has decided is the correct answer (accept flag)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you use Stack Exchange for polling, these two concepts break down. When every answer is equally valid (it's a survey, after all), voting doesn't mean anything: what do people vote for? Their favorite answer? There's no value in that in the Stack Exchange network: it adds another, hidden dimension to voting that a future visitor, not aware of the exception to the rule being made for the specific question, isn't going to pick up on. &quot;Use voting as a means to vet the answers...except on this question! Ignore the voting on this question!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, I'd consider this to be an abuse of the user base. Stack Exchange users are not &quot;participants&quot;, sitting around waiting to take surveys for whatever purpose someone coming to the site needs. They're experts, who have generously devoted their time and knowledge to help people solve problems. Every time we forget that there are actual people here with specific issues and specific knowledge by reducing them to one point on a graph, we diminish the value of their contributions. Answering a few questions for a survey is *not* the same thing as providing a long, thoughtful answer about a specific problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, Community Wiki is not the answer. Community Wiki—for questions—was made a moderator-only function specifically to combat its abuse to keep questions that were off-topic or bad fits for Stack Exchange (but were ostensibly interesting) open. Recently on the Stack Exchange blog, [Grace Note](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/146126/grace-note) went into a good amount of detail about [the point of Community Wiki](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; With suggested edits now in place, you could argue that the removal of reputation from voting is now the only function of community wiki. Unfortunately, this means it is often seen as a magic switch to allow questionable content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One of the first feature requests I saw on Meta Stack Overflow was Moderator Filtering of Highest Voted Questions, which was deemed necessary because questions like Coolest Server Names show the wrong side of the site. The actual problem-solving nature of sites is too easily buried under the weight of all these “fun” community wiki questions. At one point, “Our top voted post is an actual question!” was a point of pride. That’s … not a positive sign for a Q&amp;A network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, as Grace Note  continues, we should be looking for quality content that stands *without* Community Wiki. We *might* be able to do that by rewriting survey questions into a question about a problem the asker is actually facing: this would bring back the voting and acceptance functions into play, and make a question that meets our general guidelines *without* having to abuse Community Wiki." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26579" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2429" RevisionGUID="7cdd374d-2914-473f-9bba-3f6228ceef05" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="This has been discussed before on Meta Stack Overflow. I can't find the specific question, but a search for [&quot;hide reputation&quot;](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=hide+reputation) gives 24 results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These three questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/198/should-there-be-anonymous-answers-and-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/79621/should-reputation-be-hidden-until-an-answer-is-accepted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/21458/hide-the-rep-and-badge-count-on-a-users-info-box-on-answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are closest to what you're asking&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26580" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3350" RevisionGUID="9b10978f-090d-4309-96e0-3ce82638679a" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Studying similar ([faq-proposed](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/faq-proposed/info)) question at SO Meta and especially its accepted answer helped me to make my mind on that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Where can I ask a “how to get started” question on a Stack Exchange site with respect to technology?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/121705/where-can-i-ask-a-how-to-get-started-question-on-a-stack-exchange-site-with-re)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...tag wiki's is perhaps the best we can do.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the wiki for a topic doesn't already contain this information - links to web sites, books, tutorials etc. then perhaps we should be making all efforts to ensure that it does...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Above brought peace and light into my life.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if I can imagine an answer making good tag wiki, it means question is OK to me. &lt;sup&gt;assuming it is on-topic&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, I take a deeper look into the question and try to find out if there's something wrong with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for [the question you referred to](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84739/what-is-the-preferable-mobile-android-iphone-game-development-tool-for-a-c-ne), well, it doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While casting close vote I have been choosing between not constructive and too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Per re-reading [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) I was rather inclined to vote for _too localized_ but the statement &quot;Which development tool is widely used now?&quot; made me feel that _not constructive_ would be a better match.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Understanding scope of the question helps to find out if it's appropriate or not. _&quot;I am a newbie, how do I get started writing new programming language?&quot;_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[FAQ discourages](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask &quot;`What kind of questions should I not ask here?'&quot;) questions that are too wide:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an _entire book_ that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that _not constructive_ close reasons description matches above with _&quot;this question will likely solicit... extended discussion&quot;_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![https://i.stack.imgur.com/BWAjl.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Not a real question_ can also match in blatant cases, with _&quot;overly broad&quot;_ close reason. _&quot;Need help getting started with programming.&quot;_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/BWAjl.jpg &quot;FAQ quidance about question scope&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26581" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3462" RevisionGUID="f5d8008c-47ad-4aff-a497-d36b44dfd6b7" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="##The great tag wiki edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How this would work: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Set up a contest time frame and chat room,&#xD;&#xA; 1. discuss and evaluate tag wiki edits submitted during time frame set,  &#xD;&#xA;    &lt;sub&gt;in order to short-list ones to be presented in nominees list at next step,&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA; 1. set up a &quot;voting question&quot; with nominees list (like [elections town hall](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2990/2012-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-digest) or [SCNA wish list](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2473/what-do-you-want-to-see-from-scna)),&#xD;&#xA; 1. whoever edit scores best &lt;strike&gt;gets kissed by Anna Lear and Mark Trapp&lt;/strike&gt; wins.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rules:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; 1. No edits outside the time frame. &#xD;&#xA; 1. Contest period: A month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What we gain:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. tag wiki improvements&#xD;&#xA; 1. more [publicity](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73261/how-to-motivate-users-to-write-tag-wikis &quot;How to motivate users to write tag wikis?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA; 1. better understanding of [Tag Wiki best practices](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/69584/tag-wiki-best-practices&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Background&#xD;&#xA;* definition from page with a _really nice_ title: [&amp;#39;tag-wiki&amp;#39; tag wiki - Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/tag-wiki/info &quot;title is full of meta isn't it&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An editable page that briefly summarizes the topic of the tag and that may provide links to existing questions that are often useful to many people...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tag wikis are made of 2 parts:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The Excerpt - which is displayed on question lists and tag hover menu.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The Body - which contains detailed information about a tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* definition that inspired me, from a [tag homepage/FAQ](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1195/create-a-tag-homepage-faq) request at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a community-wiki editable home page... where we could place essentially the tag-specific FAQ and other tag-specific links" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26582" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="94413933-23cd-49d7-b564-1dfbef75024b" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot;** in the answers appear to happen once or twice a week on average, frequent enough to feel the connection between these and respective questions making their way into [SE collider list](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My particular concern is the poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making **interesting and well presented problems** look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;&quot;Oh look: ['my guess is fairly prosaic. Git is brilliant...'](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177890/31260 &quot;example&quot;) - with upvoted answer like that it [can't be a real question](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;not-a-real-question - what's this?&quot;)&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to [repel garbage answers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3835/31260 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;), I can easily name a handful of active regulars who [can and do](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;filter=all &quot;our editors gang is pretty strong&quot;) just that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that [invalidates my edit](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;). And answer that exploits another minor ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions: per my observations &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; have been smart enough to pick questions that have reasonably good wording as-is.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how things work now helps to attract new contributors but I would appreciate if achieving this important goal &lt;sup&gt;**[1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/when-is-an-account-abandoned/ &quot;'reduce the friction of... answering to little more than entering an anonymous comment on a blog'&quot;), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/helping-the-experts-get-answers/ &quot;'attract notable experts to your site'&quot;), [3](http://stackexchange.com/about &quot;'free and open to everyone... answer questions without even bothering to register'&quot;)**&lt;/sup&gt; would somehow be less damaging for good, highly visible questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **protect your own users from scale ...human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon...** ([A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy ](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html &quot;quote source&quot;))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some additional observations based on discussions that followed posting this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Low quality answers in hot questions likely contribute to the fact that currently, it is [hard for users to understand site standards](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;), which results in posting many &quot;bad&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a steady source of misguided contributors... There are... [broken windows](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info)... **&quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;**.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Until recently](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228940/165773 &quot;until this change announced 2014-04-09&quot;), low quality answers also threated to [penalize contributors](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13713_5448 &quot;see 'clear that 10k barrier...' and further discussion&quot;) who post good ones because when piled on in hot questions, garbage answers trigger [CW](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info &quot;automatic community wiki when there are more than 15 answers&quot;) which consequently turns all the upvotes given to good answers into zero reputation for their authors.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [more than 1700 answers scored 25+ turned community wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;q=wiki%3ayes%20is%3aanswer%20score%3a25)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of precision, note that number `1700` above is only indicative since search does not exclude answers turned CW for other reasons. Also note some of the answers could be high-voted &quot;unfairly&quot;: per analysis 10+ voted answers in sampled questions (below), this could happen, although rather infrequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through few [sampled](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/181999/31260 &quot;random sampling, stuff like that&quot;) questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, note that besides 199 answers reviewed above, there are also 19 answers deleted in 16 questions listed above. These answers are visible only to moderators and to users with [sufficient privileges](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;Access to Moderator tools -&gt; 'View deleted posts'&quot;). Of these 19, 9 are deleted by moderators, the rest has been deleted by owners. Of 10 answers deleted by owners, I would downvote 7-8.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summing up, I would downvote about **101-118 of 218** answers I reviewed per above research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some data related to [recently added](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/5413/revisions &quot;see changes in rev 13&quot;) observations on community wiki status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 2K+ views - about **25%** are CW, [307](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [1247](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 10K+ views - about **60%** are CW, [62](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [101](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting [self](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13717_5448 &quot;from here&quot;), wow. Just... wow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26583" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5448" RevisionGUID="d516d39c-7081-4902-b365-74130df52956" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="&gt;  the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above issue looks real, as indicated by [54.32% &quot;bad&quot; questions asked](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5379/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this is likely related to issues with answers quality in hot questions ([discussed here in more details](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;Answers quality in hot questions&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Hot garbage waves&quot; in the answers once or twice a week&#xD;&#xA;* poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making interesting and well presented problems look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/)  &#xD;&#xA;* regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An &quot;outsider&quot; reading low quality answers in hot questions, could naturally think,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hey here I can _chit-chat about how git is fantastic_ and get my portion of cheap upvotes, c00l&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a **steady source of misguided contributors**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Above makes me doubt that widespread misunderstanding of site purpose is really caused by either of [name-FAQ mis-match](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name), or misleading [site name](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3718/31260) / [tag line](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3500/31260), or [scope change](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/31260). There are much larger [broken windows](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info) than that: &quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If above reasoning is correct, then ensuring good quality of the answers in hot questions will help users reading these better understand the site and eventually lead to less of a bad posts from misguided users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update: recent feature request intended to address above issues is https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5482/31260&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Connection between mentioned request and the way how users can be confused about what Programmers are about is probably best explained in a [comment made by Ben Brocka](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13830_5482 &quot;here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Often hot questions have lots of bad or meh answers that are bad enough to drag down quality of the content and general discourse (encouraging similarly bad new answers)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26584" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5477" RevisionGUID="1fffd650-826a-470b-8f5a-81d7d11d2664" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="The wrong close reason was chosen for your question; that happens sometimes.  The correct close reason is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **not constructive**   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key phrase in your question being this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a checklist or are there techniques to recognize when you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; understand the problem well enough to start coding?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is a [request for a List of Things](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;respective tag wiki at MSO&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In any case, your question is impossible to answer definitively, given:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When is it most productive to think and design more vs. code some&#xD;&#xA;&gt; experiments and figure out the over-all design later?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which is classic &quot;Not Constructive:&quot; it invites opinions and extended discussion, which doesn't really fit into the Q&amp;A model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am not aware of a more appropriate place to ask such a question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's no guarantee that any given question will be on-topic somewhere on the SE network.  Some questions don't have a home." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26585" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="982658b3-9d59-4c43-85fb-4cbc3178d39c" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Could we please make a trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Modification details are described in [this MSO post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164712/165773) as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As far as I can tell, substantial part of `Qanswers` in current formula is fake.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;  `(log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascores)`&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;About 1/3 of the answers [studied here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever&quot;) (83 of total 254) have score less than 1/100 of top voted post in respective question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Given that questions checked were ones with tens thousands views, **insultingly low score** indicates that assuming these answers to be popular wouldn't even be in the ballpark. Still, the formula pumps these into `Qanswers` value, as if it is something everyone would be happy to read (hint: it isn't).&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Consider tuning the formula to make it deviate less from voting results. **Ignore answers with non-positive score. Or [better yet](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13857_5485 &quot;preference for cut off at (TopAnswerScore/10-1) explained in comments here&quot;), ignore answers scored less than some reasonable fraction (eg 1/10) of the top one.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that current formula appears to give an unjustified value to crappy answers in highly upvoted questions (`Qscore/5`, no matter how much is answer downvoted), I would like to perform test run to find out if suggested change would make an impact to issues outlined in Programmers meta posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Note: results of the trial run to be analyzed using study analogous to one performed in _Answers quality in hot questions_. Current evaluation shows about **101-118 low quality of 218** answers sampled.  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Upon completion of trial run, similar evaluation is to be done in order to estimate whether there was a substantial impact, positive or negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Complementary information to this request is provided in [comments below](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment16044_5482 &quot;starting from here&quot;), marked with &quot;for the record...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I expect modified formula to be competitive to current one at &quot;moderately hot&quot; questions, following the [reasoning outlined here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773):&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;For questions that are not too hot (likely 2-3 clicks away from top of the list) it's natural to see things working exactly as intended. Answers and comments quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), [collider](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;) brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and cool...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recent hot question about [automated testing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/185819/31620) gives an example of why I would want to try a modified formula. In 17 hours, question collected 17 answers, merely 5-7 of which provide useful original content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overheat of fake hotness impacted question like a [Black Saturday fire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a01_17890753.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the fire settled, what is left for future visitors of the question looks like a wasteland of low quality garbage (note that due to high views, it will score high in web searches).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a04_17906927.jpg][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the light of above, [community wiki](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info) status stamped on the question looks especially despicable. It kind of suggests that **after damage has done**, community members are invited to go over the crap brought in by braindead formula, carefully analyze it and try to tame the pain by downvotes. As if they don't have anything better to do!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Update&#xD;&#xA;Related feature request has been posted at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/192046/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please stop counting proven low score answers in hotness formula. Please roll the dice fairly, let user voting and time decay contribute to hotness score as intended. Please promote to collider audience less brain-damaging content to learn from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vKQvI.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B1hjy.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26586" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5543" RevisionGUID="3e79c190-c9ff-4fd5-a7b3-19138fdd11ed" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Most likely reason for the issues with answers quality is a [particular bug](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164712/165773 &quot;described here&quot;) in a hotness formula (&quot;fake popularity&quot;). This bug causes some of the questions with many answers to be placed unreasonably close to the top of the [collider](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Issues caused by this are explained in details in a post about particularly troublesome ([&quot;sticky&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;)) kind of questions affected by the bug in formula:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One problem with hot questions seems to be that there is no way for &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; to differentiate **genuine** popularity from **fake** one, that is from popularity introduced by the algorithm itself... the algorithm simply is incapable to detect cases when popularity is [its own byproduct](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback &quot;due to positive feedback loop&quot;)...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;For questions that are not too hot... quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), collider brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and fair...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;But when question gets closer to the top of collider, things change... it attracts a lot of visitors whose desire to answer is not balanced by local community norms. At this point &quot;intended life-cycle of a hot question&quot; breaks.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Hotness algorithm assumes the question gets bumped mostly by good answers and that infrequent deviations are corrected by local community through voting and comments. Thing is though, this does not work on top of the collider...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Post further explains why community moderation (&quot;quality control&quot; through voting, comments and editing by site regulars) tends to break on questions impacted by unnatural hotness score:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...There are just too many new visitors to keep things under local community control, and there are just too many new voters and commenters to get things going as designed... So comes next and next and next round of garbage answers, bumping the question, bringing mindless upvotes, over and over and over again.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Hotness algorithm calculates this as genuine popularity, keeps it accordingly high at collider, bringing more visitors that are breaking things further and so on and so on. Note it's not limited to newcomers only, everyone is invited to the party. Community regulars can clearly see that usual quality norms are broken... and that they are free to follow the New Order just like anyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;**That's how fake popularity makes shit stick to the ceiling and helps to keep it there.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It also explains why there are so much community wiki (triggered by too-many-answers) among questions affected by hotness formula bug:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; _Regular_ open questions (&quot;appropriate&quot; ones) tend to have much less than 30 answers indeed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;But when we look at &quot;sticky&quot; questions, things seem to be different. These questions aren't &quot;inappropriate&quot;, otherwise these would be closed long time ago. Still, 10 examples of sticky questions have more than 270 answers total, about 27 average per question...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...at least **2/3 answers in sticky questions are just a garbage** that somehow leaked in (probably because &quot;fake hotness&quot; gave question an unnaturally high exposure in collider).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Here are feature requests to address this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5482/31260&#xD;&#xA;* [In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/192046/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please stop counting proven low score answers in hotness formula. Please roll the dice fairly, let user voting and time decay contribute to hotness score as intended. Please promote to collider audience less brain-damaging content to learn from." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26587" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5552" RevisionGUID="6d81d30c-737e-48b5-9a8f-f0b61e90b239" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Programmers is a site in the Stack Exchange format for asking questions that potentially have single, correct answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One example of a question (just looking through some recent ones) of this nature is [Why Was Python Written with the GIL?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/186889/why-was-python-written-with-the-gil)  There is an answer to this question - it has to do with optimizations on single threaded programs, and avoiding some other pitfalls of multithreaded natures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hiring people with exact skill is difficult.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; So our strategy has been hiring people based on talent and make sure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they are as young as possible. Then we train them.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We can't give them big project straight away. If we do that, we often&#xD;&#xA;&gt; end up reprogramming from scratch due to design issues.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think we should give them debugging jobs or small project jobs.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What other tasks usually such people do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(emphasis mine)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is asking for a [range of answers](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;more details about 'list questions' at MSO tag wiki&quot;) - all of them potentially equally correct.  There is no single correct answer, or even the possibility of one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange format is not set up for discussions or polling of ideas.  It just doesn't work well for those cases.  Trying to make it work for those compromises the thing it does work really well for - questions that have single correct answer.  People come to the Stack Exchange network to find answers - not to discuss problems or see what everyone else has to say on a given topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26588" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5572" RevisionGUID="6d905d79-6cab-4ef2-8dd4-a76ad7a47d9c" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="There has been some minor stir about a user who apparently rage-quit P.SE.  This isn't exactly common, but it isn't exactly uncommon either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I admit to this being a less than idea question itself - I am asking several things at once and I don't believe that there is a single answer to this.  However, chat while archived is ephemeral in the minds of its denizens.  Blog post on this isn't the answer, and P.SE certainly isn't the right place.  A Meta post seems to be the only reasonable equivalent to the watering hole that has some permanence in the minds of people (at least more than chat).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Related [How to prevent “Why is my question being closed?” and User Frustration?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/492/how-to-prevent-why-is-my-question-being-closed-and-user-frustration) - though this is only one part of it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe there are a number of contributing factors to this - the question is what can we do not only as P.SE but also SO and to an extent, the stack exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This began with a post on Stack Overflow - [How do I take my web dev learning to the next level?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14906948/how-do-i-take-my-web-dev-learning-to-the-next-level).  There were comments in this that I recall (I might be wrong, if there is issue, I believe a mod can clarify the specifics of this) that were in essence:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Career advice should be asked on P.SE -- someone (**1**)&#xD;&#xA;- Ok, but why don't you just answer this? -- OP (**2**)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point the question was closed, and the original poster reasked the question on P.SE.  Someone got in an answer before it was closed here. (**3**)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The poster then asked on meta [Closed as not constructive?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5563/closed-as-not-constructive).  While he got answers to it, they were not the ones he was looking for and (IMHO) was a bit argumentative in the comments to the answers provided - I was less inclined to help him after he responded with what amounts to [&quot;that's what you think.&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5563/closed-as-not-constructive#comment14015_5565)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question meta was downvoted (**4**) which lead to an edit, [asking why it was downvoted](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/5563/revisions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Following this, there appears to have a rage-quit from P.SE (his account is still active on SO).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. What can we do to help clarify the proper migration criteria to the SO community at large so they don't refer off topic questions to P.SE.&#xD;&#xA; 2. I'm not sure what can be done to help this, but it was a point of raising frustration for the OP.&#xD;&#xA; 3. Again, sometimes people get answers in before the close.  This lead to the increased frustration as expressed in the meta question: &quot;The only answer given (likely before it was closed) clearly suggests that the question is constructive.&quot; .The desire to help is there, even when we know its off topic for the site.  Myself, I admit to answering a question and close voting it. &#xD;&#xA; 4. [Meta downvotes are different](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/faq#vote-differences).  However, without going through the various meta faq's, one likely isn't aware of this on their first trip to meta (especially if they haven't lurked).  While those familiar with the site are aware of this, it is another point of raising frustration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On any of these points, what can we do to help people from becoming more frustrated?  Or was this just an unfortunate crash of personality and site philosophy that couldn't be averted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26589" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5679" RevisionGUID="90ffadcd-096f-4179-8a5a-c5d5de9ca029" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="As far as I can tell, good history question is one that evolves into a retrospective case study.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Practical purpose of case studies is explained eg in [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_method):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...an intensive analysis of an individual unit (e.g., a person, group, or event) stressing developmental factors in relation to context... Case studies may be descriptive or explanatory. The latter type is used to **explore causation in order to find underlying principles.** They may be prospective... or retrospective (in which **criteria are established for selecting cases from historical records for inclusion in the study**).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...&quot;Case studies are analyses of persons, events, decisions, periods, projects, policies, institutions, or other systems that are studied holistically by one or more methods. The case that is the subject of the inquiry will be **an instance of a class of phenomena that provides an analytical frame** — an object — within which the study is conducted and which the case illuminates and explicates.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Another suggestion is that case study should be defined as a research strategy, an **empirical inquiry that investigates a phenomenon within its real-life context**. Case study research can mean single and multiple case studies, can include quantitative evidence, relies on multiple sources of evidence, and benefits from the prior development of theoretical propositions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Case studies balance the need to understand something big (something that would be too broad / NARQ in Stack Exchange terms) with a limitation of being sufficiently specific to allow for reasonably scoped _productive learning_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Say, one shouldn't ask at Programmers _what do I need to know about mission critical projects_ - that would be too broad for our format. Instead, one asks [What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/159637/31260) - that's still tough but at least something we can handle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar to Stack Overflow, Programmers questions (including history ones) serve the purpose of picking and applying programming technologies. The difference is, due to _conceptual_ nature of Programmers questions, the purpose could be not as immediate / direct as at Stack Overflow...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you ask about mission critical software a week before interview, you're probably few months too late: few months ago, you should ask yourself whether you are interested, and what would you want to understand about doing software development in this context.&#xD;&#xA;* And you don't necessary need to understand the context of mission critical software development just because you are involved. In fact, it can be opposite:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hey you suggest us _Fagan inspections_, why? I mean I perfectly understand how these are justified in _mission critical_ projects, but how does this apply to our non-critical application, compared to lightweight reviews?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summing up, I believe that history questions can serve a practical purpose, sufficiently compliant with Programmers topics (if done right).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, above assumes these pass through community moderation, business as usual. Questions that do not fit get closed per standard [close reasons](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/close-reasons/info), answers that don't fit get downvoted / flagged / deleted per usual [community quality control](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/75717/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; [...] real questions have *answers*, __not *items* or *ideas* or *opinions*__.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...&quot;Real questions&quot; don't necessarily have *practical* answers, but they do have __*authoritative* ones__." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26590" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5789" RevisionGUID="9b7cd0d6-7d7a-45ea-a07a-613fbf29f292" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="As pointed in the [comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5788/is-tagresource-questions-a-good-idea-for-the-main-site#comment14683_5788 &quot;here&quot;), this is not quite a good idea because having such a tag could have an opposite effect: users may think it's OK to use it, even if you write in its wiki and excerpt that it's forbidden - &quot;if there's a tag, why can't I ask about it?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you refer to my comment - for the sake of precision, this was only second time (I wish it would also be the last but unfortunately it wouldn't) when I referred asker to tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior to that, my similar comments were pointing to particular meta discussion (the one that is currently set in the tag wiki as the guidance point). It was when my comment has been (quite legitimately imNSho) [challenged](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190911/code-network-metrics-with-ui-events#comment370863_190911) by asker who pointed to another meta discussion to back up somewhat different approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, I suggested [tag wiki](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/186) and [excerpt](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/187) and switched to using these in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a more general note, I believe tag wiki like that are to be established any time when there is a confusion among meta readers caused by differing &quot;canonical&quot; / &quot;authoritative&quot; posts and comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's not a new idea, explained eg in [flagger's guide to link-only answers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/154922/165773) at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;In some meta posts or comments you may see moderators suggesting / requiring particular kind flag to be used (or to avoid) for link-only answers. Convenient _[litmus test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litmus_test_%28politics%29)_ in cases like that is to ask author whether this is their personal opinion or a statement that can be quoted in [tag wiki](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/tag-wiki/info &quot;what's this&quot;) (wiki for respective flag or for [link-only  answers](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/link-only-answers/info)). **Tag wiki are quite authoritative reference; anything else, read: _use at your own risk_.**&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a more recent example you can refer to MSO [profanity tag wiki](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/172893/revisions &quot;tag wiki history&quot;) that have been established because of similar [confusion](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/172734/copying-profanities-and-obscene-words-on-meta/172747#comment513141_172747 &quot;discussed here&quot;) caused by having differing &quot;authoritative&quot; posts on the subject." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26591" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5806" RevisionGUID="c59a9786-f92f-42f0-9358-f7f5b1fef0a2" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Some old closed questions have many answers that probably were considered OK back then but are not quite up to current quality standards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are readers supposed to vote, edit, comment, flag answers in these questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's better to leave these alone, then I would like to also understand how readers are supposed to know that they stumbled upon &quot;untouchable&quot; posts (questions I am asking about don't have [historical lock](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples of the questions having many problematic answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Open-source wanted list](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26425/open-source-wanted-list)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20120411074124/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/26425/open-source-wanted-list)&#xD;&#xA;* [Language agnostic programming books](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/language-agnostic-programming-books)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [What haskell blogs do you follow?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30058/what-haskell-blogs-do-you-follow)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20130331133445/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/30058/what-haskell-blogs-do-you-follow)&#xD;&#xA;* [What traits do the best managers you've worked for have in common?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7966/what-traits-do-the-best-managers-youve-worked-for-have-in-common)&#xD;&#xA;* [What are some good programming cheat sheets?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3684/what-are-some-good-programming-cheat-sheets)&#xD;&#xA;* [What tools do you use to manage requests from users?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/13396/what-tools-do-you-use-to-manage-requests-from-users)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [How do you keep up to date with the C# programming language and community?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3023/how-do-you-keep-up-to-date-with-the-c-programming-language-and-community)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20101203140823/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3023/how-do-you-keep-up-to-date-with-the-c-programming-language-and-community)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Programmer's experiences book](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97303/programmers-experiences-book)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20110913190105/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97303/programmers-experiences-book)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Top research institutes in the world?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12416/top-research-institutes-in-the-world)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20110815235122/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12416/top-research-institutes-in-the-world)&#xD;&#xA;* [As a software engineer, who should I be following on Twitter?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/135/as-a-software-engineer-who-should-i-be-following-on-twitter)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Recommended book about algorithms, data structures and complexity?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12833/recommended-book-about-algorithms-data-structures-and-complexity)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20101118060951/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/12833/recommended-book-about-algorithms-data-structures-and-complexity)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Are there any magazines still worth reading?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1108/are-there-any-magazines-still-worth-reading)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20110817004231/http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1108/are-there-any-magazines-still-worth-reading)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the general tech news website every programmer should read?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21118/what-is-the-general-tech-news-website-every-programmer-should-read)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In all the examples listed above I found at least 3 (usually more) answers that look like severely lacking explanation and context, total about 90 such answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. For the sake of completeness I'll explain in more details what kind posts are considered problematic here. In the context of my question, these are answers that fail an _&quot;imaginary opposite&quot; challenge_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's see how _challenge_ works, using some example answers from questions listed here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        1. &quot;Clean Code - Robert Martin&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        2. &quot;Ezyang is pretty good&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        3. &quot;Redmine&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        4. &quot;Ward Cunningham&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If someone posts an opposite claim** like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        1'. &quot;Clean Code - Robert Martin is a book to avoid&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        2'. &quot;Ezyang is pretty bad&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        3'. &quot;Redmine is a bad tool&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        4'. &quot;Ward Cunningham tweets are useless&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;, how would this answer help reader to pick of these differing opinions? You see, without an explanation the answer becomes useless in case if someone else posts a differing / opposing opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26592" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5877" RevisionGUID="8ad355bc-2c5d-4a5e-9d74-7a0c3713e4e7" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="It was a [review audit](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/review-audits/info &quot;what's this&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Review audit passed 1 hour ago:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every so often you will be presented with a fake audit just to make sure you are paying attention. This was one of those times.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything is working as expected.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26593" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6140" RevisionGUID="520b229c-a37a-4edf-9cd1-473c0909b5b2" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="&quot;These articles are in opposition.&quot; + &quot;prove Jeff Atwood&quot; suggest that OP already knows the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Atwood trashed Norvig. If you know the answer, why ask? That means, _unclear what you're asking_, which was my close vote (&quot;opinion-based&quot; [shown to readers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/209295/revisions) is pure fake [indiscriminately attributed to me](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10922461#10922461) due to... shall we say, not too smart user interface - a bit more on that below...).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a &quot;clean room&quot; case, I would shrug, edit this unfortunate phrase into something like &quot;These articles appear at odds with each other, how can I find a way out?&quot; and walk away knowing that _unclear_ doesn't apply anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, at the moment question has been [&quot;locked&quot; from such an edit](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;how's that?&quot;) by already submitted [FGITW](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/fastest-gun/info &quot;what's this&quot;) answer: &quot;You're missing the point...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides above, there are a few issues _induced_ by the phrase &quot;Is there a [friggin'](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2905/31260 &quot;Sprinkling &quot;Science&quot; on top of something does not automatically render it correct&quot;) scientific evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► Is-there part of the phrase shifts it into Yes/No territory with [all its known issues](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/183177/165773 &quot;discussed eg here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is not just a 'get an answer for me' place, it's &quot;Produce quality content that is useful for people who follow&quot;. In the case of your question, the second part is lacking...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;When asking a yes/no question there are one of two possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. You really want a yes/no answer. If this is the case, and you don't need anything else to answer your question then it means the answers will be inherently low quality. An answer that only says &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; (in addition to not meeting the minimum length) would be of very low quality. SO answers expect more.&#xD;&#xA;2. You don't actually want a yes/no answer, in which case your real question is not actually a yes/no question, and you're hoping that people will determine what your real question is. For example, someone might ask, &quot;Can I do [...]?&quot; when what they really meant to ask was, &quot;How can I do [...]?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Almost all yes/no questions I've seen fall into case 2; they should be edited into a question that isn't really asking for just a yes/no, it should be asking to explain something. (Even if it has a yes/no in there somewhere.) Note that just adding &quot;Explain&quot; at the end isn't really a good way to go about this; you should refactor the question on a more fundamental level...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► The part &quot;evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach&quot; sucks, well, because it blatantly misses the opposite: &quot;evidence to prove the Peter Norvig approach&quot;. This is yet another indication of question quality issues (happily ignored by reopeners).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the very least, I would rephrase to symmetric wording &quot;evidence to prove one of these approaches above another&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► Issues with &quot;scientific&quot; part are addressed in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I for one like the way these are presented in [this comment](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question#comment7317_2903 &quot;just discovered it's written by one of my favorite MSO authors&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Slapping a request for scientific literature onto the question... doesn't really make this question any better. It still is enormously vague and unanswerable, there is no objective scientific measure..., it remains a question that should be nuked on sight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above does not fully apply to this particular case because there is an answerable question obscured by scientificevidence garbage there, but it rather makes a point that it would be better to wipe out that scevidence crap outta there at all (if such an edit wouldn't invalidate existing answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last but not the least, even with all imaginary editing cleanup, the question would still remain average.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, resolving false contradictions can be fun, I sometimes enjoy [doing this myself](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/193864/advice-on-rehabilitating-an-unpopular-meta-question-or-not#comment608984_193864 &quot;example&quot;) but it's often way too simple. And this case looks simple to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mysticial [would probably say](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/1262201#1262201), it's not _really advanced question_. Meh.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note, regarding question closure notice, I would rather prefer it to be shown rephrased to something that doesn't put words in my mouth. There is a bunch of [feature requests](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/194593/165773 &quot;listed eg here&quot;) for something like that at MSO, but SE team doesn't give a shit.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26594" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6171" RevisionGUID="2cff6076-f10a-4fb9-aa57-515872fb449d" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="I think that strong point of your _question draft_ is description of the situation: it looks clear, detailed and easy to understand. This lays a solid ground for a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you're done with it though, there is a sharp drop in question quality, and the rest essentially spoils the fun:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So, in terms of making it easier for myself what do you think should I do: - try to convenience them to start from scratch? - get on with the current design and try to achieve what they want?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Have you got any experience with similar cases? What should I do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, the only valuable elements in above quote are &quot;try to convince them to start from scratch&quot; and &quot;get on with the current design&quot;. Anything besides that can be stuffed into any imaginary question and would add no value to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think of it, &quot;in terms of making it easier for myself&quot; - no one would be interested in making it harder to themselves. Or, &quot;what do you think&quot; - any asker is sure interested in this. Stuff like that is basic, it is implied in any question at Programmers, stating it explicitly is just noise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the perspective of those who would answer your question it is useless - drop it, wipe it out, get rid of it - and this cleanup will help you find out what is missing in your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, how would it look if you filter out the noise? Something like,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Options I can think of are either _try to convince them to start from scratch_ or _get on with the current design_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above is fairly poor but at least: 1) you can see that it's poor yourself (which opens a door to thinking how to improve) and 2) as small as it is, it's 100% _substantial_ - there's nothing to throw away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, how it can be improved? Improvements I suggested in [comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6168/would-my-question-be-on-topic-for-programmers#comment16661_6168) quickly posted after you asked here may sound like wisdom obtained through some magic glass, but it really isn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, key aspects of SE posts are **substance, presentation and effort** and I simply evaluate everything I read / write through these. Let's see how it will work at your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way you explained the situation tells that your _presentation_ is all-right (and I think you know it yourself).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Substance_ is there, too - what is left after we removed the noise, is substance, and it _is_ there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The feel that it's still poor indicates that it's _effort_ that is missing and if you take a closer look at cleaned up part, you'll see that effort you are expected to put into considering mentioned options just isn't there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What kind effort is expected? well whenever you deal with options, most basic effort to put is to list and evaluate pros and cons of these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Note, since we are at Stack Exchange, this is not something you could expect answerers to do for you: asking for _list_ part won't fly because [list questions](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info) aren't welcome, and as for _evaluation_ part, without knowing lots of your concrete details and context, doing this would be, as they say in one of [close reasons](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/close-reasons/info), &quot;too broad&quot;.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding this to your question would cover _effort_ part, the only thing left after that would be to, well, just state the very question, explain what would you want to learn / understand. What would it be - no one can tell you beforehand, since this should be based on your analysis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no magic glass nor magic aspects that would predict what would be outcome of your research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you're done with it though, there will be one _magic thing_ you could do prior to posting. Simply put your text into &quot;Ask question&quot; box and study [similar questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/similar-questions) that get loaded to the right. This trick often works better than plain search and it can give you an insight on how to further improve your question or even, if you are lucky, reveal that there is already an answered question like yours.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26595" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6463" RevisionGUID="e5745d61-c7aa-42e8-927e-a009d81e457d" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="While general approach to the tag has been thoroughly addressed in [another answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6459/31260 &quot;here&quot;), I would like to focus on a question used as an &quot;acceptable&quot; example in Help Center. As far as I can see, in its current shape it does more harm than good, by misleading the readers into couple of wrong beliefs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Please answer for your region/city/country only&quot;** - this part of the question makes readers believe that poll / [list](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info) questions are acceptable. The very presence of this part makes low quality answers look legitimate and acceptable:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Personally I wouldn't hire someone without a masters degree, unless they could document some relevant experience and had very good references. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* In some minor companies in my country (Brazil) you can get a job, but due to some laws you'll get difficulty to be promoted, because to work in some positions, the laws require some education degrees.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* I would hire that developer if he can show me the his abilities and prove that he is the one that my job needs through interview directly. Of course, it's difficult if his resume does not show any interested information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers quoted above are purely opinionated, brief &quot;polling entries&quot;, lacking an explanation and effort, making very wrong impressions on what kind posts are welcome at Programmers. Advertising posts like these through Help Center looks harmful and misleading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Can someone / Would someone even consider** part of the question shifts it into Yes/No territory with [all its known issues](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/183177/165773 &quot;discussed eg here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is not just a 'get an answer for me' place, it's &quot;Produce quality content that is useful for people who follow&quot;. In the case of your question, the second part is lacking...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;When asking a yes/no question there are one of two possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. You really want a yes/no answer. If this is the case, and you don't need anything else to answer your question then it means the answers will be inherently low quality. An answer that only says &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; (in addition to not meeting the minimum length) would be of very low quality. SO answers expect more.&#xD;&#xA;2. You don't actually want a yes/no answer, in which case your real question is not actually a yes/no question, and you're hoping that people will determine what your real question is. For example, someone might ask, &quot;Can I do [...]?&quot; when what they really meant to ask was, &quot;How can I do [...]?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Almost all yes/no questions I've seen fall into case 2; they should be edited into a question that isn't really asking for just a yes/no, it should be asking to explain something. (Even if it has a yes/no in there somewhere.) Note that just adding &quot;Explain&quot; at the end isn't really a good way to go about this; you should refactor the question on a more fundamental level..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26596" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="edcdd708-8a07-4e9c-887f-f3de109f9f21" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend tools, libraries, programming languages, resources (including books, blogs, tutorials, and examples), or projects to undertake###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **find or recommend tools, libraries, programming languages, resources (including books, blogs, tutorials, and examples), or projects to undertake** are off-topic here as they attract opinionated answers that won't have lasting value to others. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard][1], our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### We do book review and suggestions poorly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the classic recommendation questions is that of a book.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do book reviews very poorly. All the answers that one gets are opinions and this is fundamentally a poll of opinions. This is to say nothing of that the technology behind them changes too.  There are indeed timeless books (and [many have written on the subject](https://www.google.com/search?q=timeless+computer+books)), though their value is a [matter of debate](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2uBpc.jpg). &lt;!-- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14298/is-analysis-patterns-reusable-object-models-still-a-good-book-to-use-for-its --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Between the polling nature of the question, the opinions people have on certain books, the constantly changing target, and the site's history of producing poor quality answers to these questions (and not moderating them), asking for a book suggestion is very likely to get closed and down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for a link to something or statistics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason.  Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to things suffer from link rot.  Statistics become out of date over time.  Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is someone asking in 2012 &quot;What is the market share of Android vs iPhone?&quot;  This information would be out of date in a few months as new numbers come out and someone else would ask in 2013 &quot;The question [link] asks about the stats, but they are all for 2012.  What is the market share for android vs iPhone in 2013?&quot;  And again, this information would be out of date and prompt another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for information about statistics, or more generally, asking us to search for some data for you is off topic because of these problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No actual problem to solve&#xD;&#xA;* Not drawing from expert knowledge of the community&#xD;&#xA;* Will suffer from link rot or become out of date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Link Rot&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, external resources may move or be deleted for a variety of reasons. Perhaps a particular site reorganizes its links without setting up redirects. Perhaps an organization goes out of business or discontinues product X or library Y.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to the reasons stated above, external resources tend to be _transient_. Whatever tool, library, or other resource who requested might not exist in five years or be otherwise readily available. This has the effect of making an answer utterly useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one asks for a library to perform function X, and the answer links to web site Y, and either function X or web site Y cease to exist as defined in the answer, that answer is now useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one more reason why questions like this tend to be of low value and are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [What exactly is a recommendation question?](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254393/what-exactly-is-a-recommendation-question)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why are “shopping list” questions bad?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - Requests for Recommendations?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26597" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="e13af0d3-bfec-4a25-a4a4-a7e707faaf12" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling / Big List of Things###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are just polls for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the accepted answer is based on &quot;which answer I like best,&quot; rather than &quot;which answer solves my problem,&quot; the question is probably a poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While some other Stack Exchanges allow it, Software Engineering SE frowns upon ['big list' type questions](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;see also: list-questions tag wiki at MSO&quot;) that seem to want to compile a list of things.  Questions that fall into this category typically have the form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What are all the problems I will encounter with XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * What are the pros and cons of XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * How can XYZ be used?&#xD;&#xA; * Any ideas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like these don't pose a problem that can be solved by an answer.  There is no definitive *right* answer that someone can go to, see the accepted answer and say &quot;yep, that is the answer.&quot;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6366/&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6629/&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6961/&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7537/&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Is a question that specifically asks for a summary of a broad topic valuable to Stack Exchange?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234642/is-a-question-that-specifically-asks-for-a-summary-of-a-broad-topic-valuable-to)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help Center &gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Too Broad?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26598" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6621" RevisionGUID="68f72dd9-a58e-4a74-99d3-8ce15ed043db" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="###Please seat comfortable and take some time. I will not be synthetic, but it will be interesting, try to read it completely and see if you like. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to judge only after reading the whole document :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have a look to this question: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251758/why-is-stack-overflow-so-negative-of-late&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It got 5 hundred upvotes in a really few time by both the people who thinks that SO is too much harsh and restrictive, and the people who would like to have a more strict rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason is that this discussion doesn't express an opinion. Doesn't make a suggestion on how to solve the problem or why there is a problem. But allows everyone to express his own idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Here][1] a famous write well explain how to speak to win and influence people. For curious men, the reason is bound to self-esteem. You can Google for: confirmation bias, [rationalization][2], psychological self-defense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to scientific evidence human tries to find / see only the evidences which confirms their own opinions, this is a self-defense mechanism for protecting the self-esteem. This mechanism is made through [Rationalization][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - This means that human prefer to be asked their opinion instead of listening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Means that human prefer to confirm their idea instead of revising them&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Means that they try to see only the evidence which confirms their own ideas&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; These are not theories. **All this stuff is completely supported by tons&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of search made by brain [fMRI][4] and so on**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What does all this stuff means? Why I'm saying that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because it's really important to understand that human being should not completely trust themselves. We have a strong bias towards confirming our own ideas. So we should always make a strong effort to deeply listen and understand if other people opinion is in someway right, and if ours is in someway bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another very important stuff which you should think of. Is that *when an individual is put inside a flow of ideas, like a community, he will tend to polarize in that direction and look for confirmation that all that ideas are completely correct, good and so on.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Most of individual will stop trying to see alternative possibility. It is called [Conformity][5].**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Now, according to what I said from Dale Carnegie it's not convenient for me to express an opinion which goes against the **beliefs** of other people. Because this would wound their self-esteem.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm not good at this, and I hope you to be mature enough to deeply think on what I reported here. I'm pretty sure to get dozen of downvotes, and this is not a good signal, but hope is the last stuff to die.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*The **main** objective of SE is **to spread knowledge** or **to classify which question are of a good quality and allowed**?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Are we here **to learn** or **to instruct a neural network** how to recognize 'good' (better to say allowed) questions?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both are objective, but which is the MAIN one?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is probably against many rules. At the same time it strongly spreading information (for the definition of information spreading look at [Information Gain][6]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also this question was a bit against the rules but it was spreading some information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/236941/learning-r-and-related-concepts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Have you ever deeply thought on all this stuff?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_%28making_excuses%29&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_%28making_excuses%29&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_magnetic_resonance_imaging&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1859554/what-is-entropy-and-information-gain" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26599" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6663" RevisionGUID="56778085-7c7f-43a7-ac95-dc5fa7e6ce41" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="I'm thinking of doing an experiment with a JS program to utilize Japanese Multiplication, and I want to ask whether or not a software math shortcut is actually a shortcut at all. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, I'm contemplating writing a program to get benchmarks for the comparison of normal multiplication and Japanese Multiplication via programming, and I'd like to ask whether or not this makes sense to do before spending time to build the experiment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Remember, this is a question of whether or not this question is appropriate for this site.** Any additional thoughts on the topic should be described either in the comments or answers to the actual question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also asked whether or not this question would be appropriate on Stack Overflow, Mathematics SE, and Computer Science SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13751/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-mathematical-programming-co&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/255301/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-programming-concept&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/861/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-mathematical-programming-co&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Theoretically, the question would look like this:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Japanese Multiplication simulation - is a program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On SuperUser, I asked [a (possibly silly) question about processors using mathematical shortcuts][1] and would like to have a look at the possibility at the **software application** of that concept.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to write a JS simulation of Japanese Multiplication to get benchmarks on large calculations utilizing the shortcut vs traditional CPU multiplication. **I'm curious as to whether it makes sense to do this.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My Question:** I'd like to know whether or not a software math shortcut, as described above is actually a shortcut at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a question of programming concept. By utilizing the simulation of Japanese Multiplication, **is my program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My theory** is that since addition is computed faster than multiplication, a simulation of Japanese multiplication may actually allow a program to multiply (large) numbers faster than the CPU arithmetic unit can. I think this would be a very interesting finding, if it proves to be true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://superuser.com/questions/755648/do-processors-utilize-mathematical-shortcuts-and-tricks-like-we-do?noredirect=1#comment976766_755648&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/swF5p.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26602" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6801" RevisionGUID="811865e7-882a-42f9-9805-ca7b2fa053fa" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="First, the all-time stats:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Closed Closed then Edited Closed then Reopened Closed then Edited then Reopened &#xD;&#xA;    ------ ------------------ -------------------- -------------------------------- &#xD;&#xA;    34567  4388               1174                 545                              &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, slightly over 3%, jumping to 12% for edited questions. For the past 365 days, we see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Closed Closed then Edited Closed then Reopened Closed then Edited then Reopened &#xD;&#xA;    ------ ------------------ -------------------- -------------------------------- &#xD;&#xA;    11824  1084               263                  140                              &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or roughly 2%, jumping to just shy of 13% again for edited questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The more interesting breakdown by close reason follows, again looking only at questions closed within the past 365 days:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Name                       Closed Closed then Edited Closed then Reopened Closed then Edited then Reopened &#xD;&#xA;    -------------------------- ------ ------------------ -------------------- -------------------------------- &#xD;&#xA;    duplicate                  713    49                 22                   10                               &#xD;&#xA;    off-topic                  6257   406                103                  48                               &#xD;&#xA;    primarily opinion-based    1598   187                53                   29                               &#xD;&#xA;    too broad                  1761   185                33                   15                               &#xD;&#xA;    unclear what you're asking 1494   257                52                   38                               &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Expressed as percentages:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Name                       Closed then Edited Closed then Reopened Closed then Edited then Reopened &#xD;&#xA;    -------------------------- ------------------ -------------------- -------------------------------- &#xD;&#xA;    duplicate                  6.9 %              3.1 %                20.4 %                           &#xD;&#xA;    off-topic                  6.5 %              1.6 %                11.8 %                           &#xD;&#xA;    primarily opinion-based    11.7 %             3.3 %                15.5 %                           &#xD;&#xA;    too broad                  10.5 %             1.9 %                8.1 %                            &#xD;&#xA;    unclear what you're asking 17.2 %             3.5 %                14.8 %                           &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is mostly in keeping with [what we observed on Stack Overflow][1], but it's worth noting that both duplicates and opinion-based questions stand a slightly better chance of being reopened, *particularly* if they're edited. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/266709/how-often-are-closed-questions-re-opened/266844#266844" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26603" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6825" RevisionGUID="21b9b0c5-39ac-4d61-9aaf-5b68d2bc9a5a" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Is the following an on-topic question on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Are there existing formal standards targeted to airbag controlling&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think for example at IEC 62304. To give a bit of context: I asked myself the question after browsing at http://www.hovding.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked a [similar question at meta.stackoverflow][1] and they suggested to ask also here at meta.programmers... they told me that cross-posting between meta sites is acceptable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/269158/15485" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26604" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6861" RevisionGUID="c88dcf18-f390-4d29-826b-ea5421a83d3e" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="What's up with the [Meaning of MIT license](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/255227/31260)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This five years old post was recently migrated from SO to Programmers. Not that I complain, but regular migrations like that are blocked by system (see [Disable migration for questions older than 60 days](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/151890/165773)). What makes this question special to overrule this limitation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I briefly checked recent posts at [MSO](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/) and [MSE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/) and found nothing about this migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Question revision history at SO](http://stackoverflow.com/posts/706799/revisions) shows couple funny changes made recently:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Deleted by Tim Post♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Locked by Community♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Migrated Away to programmers.stackexchange.com by Tim Post♦&#xD;&#xA;  	  	 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Closed as &quot;off-topic&quot; by Tim Post♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Undeleted by Tim Post♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Reopened by Tim Post♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Migration Rejected 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Unlocked by Community♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Deleted by Shog9♦ 	occurred 19 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Locked by Community♦ 	occurred 19 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Migrated Away to meta.programmers.stackexchange.com by Shog9♦&#xD;&#xA;  	  	 	occurred 19 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Closed as &quot;off topic&quot; by Wouter J, egrunin, msmucker0527, Mario, Linger&#xD;&#xA;  	  	 	occurred Mar 6 '13 at 20:37&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;FWIW it looks like a duplicate of [MIT vs. BSD vs. Dual License](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/121998/31260) to me.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26605" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6948" RevisionGUID="dcf22ae7-d0a7-4dbf-b2bb-c7e619296b72" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="I've seen this glitch a few times with Safari (7.1) on the Mac (10.9.5).  It manifests as either no spacing between text and the link in a comment, or irregular location of the hyphen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![safari][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice the space (lack there of) between 'Thismeta'.  Furthermore, the hyphen that is before the signature and time stamp is between the digit of the time stamp and the units.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Chrome this comment renders as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![chrome][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am certainly willing to chalk this up to a bug in Safari (it did update recently), but if it's not, well, there's a bug report for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comment in question is [this one](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6947/how-can-i-reword-this-question-to-better-fit-programmers-se#comment19808_6947) and if it happens, it appears to *always* happen, though it doesn't happen on all comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As this has become more interesting of a problem, I pulled up a laptop I haven't touched in a month and a half (Safari 7.0.5) to look at the comment, and it displays the same problem ([img](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9wGri.png)).  Therefore, the update mentioned previously was *not* the cause of the issue.  It could still be a bug with Safari, however, it is one that was introduced at least some time ago and hasn't been tickled through the CSS until recently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also shows up in iOS 6 safari browser (again, not updated in some time).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This tends to point to a change in CSS that is exposing the bug (which might need to be worked around).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Associated MSO post: [“missing space” bug in comments. (on OSX)](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/275151/missing-space-bug-in-comments-on-osx)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/GKpjY.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/JvlKw.png&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26606" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6951" RevisionGUID="d5832a20-e94e-445d-b3b4-d289bf5a9f10" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Do you mean a warning like the one present in [this answer](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/274634/1345223)? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If so, this was [recently discussed in The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/18195121#18195121) and Shog9 [suggested coming up with a wording](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/18195359#18195359) and it could be implemented.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- SEE! There is more to be discussed on The Whiteboard than just booze and horror stories! --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvXIT.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26607" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6991" RevisionGUID="dd426ca3-d727-44d1-a334-0d6dd24fd39c" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Your data is inaccurate because SEDE doesn't account for [deleted questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/157462/165773) but anyway, there are few factors worth thinking of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, Programmers were getting a reasonable mix of good and bad questions related to careers, software recommendations and code reviews. Even when topicality of these was slippery, well presented questions about interesting, real problems were considered worthy of upvotes by many readers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nowadays, we lost a good part but bad part remains with us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean, users capable of asking good questions in above topics, eventually find their way and stick to specialized sites - [TWP](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [CR](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [SR](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is left to us are askers who _want_ to ask but _can't_ make a good question. They post (or cross-post) their stuff at Programmers, Stack Overflow, Yahoo Answers, anywhere, in a hope to find a [kind soul to feed them](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/276637/839601). This contributes to lowering average quality of questions in these topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another stream of low quality questions are those from users blocked / warned at Stack Overflow. [Per recent stats](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7332/31260), we're getting 4-5 delete-worthy questions a day from these folks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, they could pollute SO with their low quality stuff for months or even years but for last year or two, due to improvements in [burning down SO close queue](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue), they started hitting question blocks and warnings more and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Per stats, Programmers appear to be [most popular of SE sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773) among this category of askers. After being blocked or scared by warnings at Stack Overflow they simply try to dump their low quality stuff over here, thus also lowering average quality level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If honestly, I can't see what we can do to help with the quality of questions like above, nor how we can control these in review queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't realistically expect askers of bad questions to &quot;refocus&quot; to specialized sites because at these sites, such questions seem to be detected and rejected even faster than over here. This is probably because of clearer, narrower specialization regulars at these sites build a better sense of what is good and what is not (at least that's how I feel at TWP).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also can't imagine how it would be possible to make users blocked / warned at SO stop their attempts to leak through Programmers. I can't think of a way to tell someone facing a [block message at SO](http://stackoverflow.com/help/question-bans) that they shouldn't try their luck at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;**Wait!** You've recently been blocked (warned) at Stack Overflow. Consider that quality requirements at Programmers are similar. Note that Stack Overflow topics are _not_ covered here and that your questions [can't even be migrated to Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;) because of the block.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Are you sure that you want to proceed asking question?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Click &lt;kbd&gt;No&lt;/kbd&gt; to cancel asking.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Click &lt;kbd&gt;Back&lt;/kbd&gt; to return to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!--&#xD;&#xA;Note to editors. Choices above are *intentionally* limited to No/Cancel - absence of option &quot;Yes&quot; to proceed asking question is not a simple mistake. If you plan to add such an option, make sure to also remove this comment, otherwise I will rollback your edit for not giving enough attention to edited content.&#xD;&#xA;--&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26608" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7048" RevisionGUID="dbc97286-8688-486d-ae00-6e0db86c4c29" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="This has been asked many times before:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Compare the [Help Center On-Topic page for Programmers][1] to the [Help Center On-Topic page for Stack Overflow][2].&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/423/how-is-this-site-different-than-stack-overflow?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;  - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1747/what-is-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow?rq=1&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2237/what-is-the-difference-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;- [Choosing between Stack Overflow and Programmers Stack Exchange](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254570/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stack-overflow?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26609" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7053" RevisionGUID="3b56a922-5753-4afd-89ab-87202393e1db" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Triage review is being tested at Stack Overflow for about three weeks now. I briefly &quot;triaged&quot; it myself and as far as I can tell, Programmers can benefit from such a review too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a plan to test it at Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For those interested to learn more, details are laid out in this post at MSO: [Help us test question triage!](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **tl;dr:** [there's a new review queue](http://stackoverflow.com/review/triage/). It'll be getting somewhere around 1-2 questions per minute.  The only thing they have in common is that the system is unsure of what to do with them. Some are great, some are awful, some are in-between. We need you to help the system decide which category these questions belong in...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Behind the scenes, a &quot;quality score&quot; is calculated for each question based on an automated analysis of the content. Those that score well are sent immediately to the homepage; those that score poorly will now be sent to Triage. From there, they'll go to one of three places based on human input:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. The homepage, where they can be answered&#xD;&#xA;2. The close or moderator flag queue where they can be reviewed and eventually deleted&#xD;&#xA;3. A new &quot;Help and Improvement&quot; queue where they can be edited&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26610" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7185" RevisionGUID="852896bb-b496-450d-9793-ce3a79705db0" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="My question [Who is developing Wake?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/273579/who-is-developing-wake) was closed as unclear what I'm asking. In addition, one user posted a comment on my question saying, &quot;recommended reading: [Why we're not customer support for [your favorite company]](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/255746/839601).&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree with both reasons for closing my question and would appreciate it if the closers' reasoning could be made more clear to me. I'm active around the SE network, but not much on Programmers, so I might not understand Programmers' specific community standards, and if that's the case, I would appreciate it if what I did poorly could be explained to me so I can write better questions in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, I don't think my question is unclear. In my question, I ask:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Which company, organization or person is developing [Wake]? Have they made any announcements about why they decided to create Wake?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe my question makes it clear that I want to learn two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Who is creating Wakelang&#xD;&#xA; 2. Whether the creators have publicly said anything clarifying why they are creating the language.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both of these are, in my opinion, unambiguous and answerable with objective responses. &quot;Who is creating Wakelang?&quot; asks for a specific company, organization, or person, and &quot;Whether the developers have made any announcements&quot; asks for either a link to a relevant blog post or press release or an indication that it's difficult to find any such information. Is my understanding correct, or are there other reasons my question is unclear that I'm missing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, I disagree with the comment directing me to [Why we're not customer support for [your favorite company]](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/255746/839601) (although I will admit that I am less confident in my reasoning about this comment then I am about whether my question is clear). I think what the comment is getting at is that Programmers.SE isn't the right place to ask for information that would be better obtained from the developers of the language I'm asking about, and asking who is developing a language is an example of such a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree with that, though. I think that understanding who is developing a language is important to understanding the language. For example, C and C++ are not developed by single companies. Instead, non-profit organizations write and update the languages' standards, and then multiple for-profit and OSS organizations implement their own compilers. Someone who does not understand that about C and C++ will not understand some very important concepts, such as how to write portable code or why some code examples that rely on implementation-specific behavior don't work on their compilers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a result, I would argue that asking who is developing a language is, at the least, on-topic at Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also disagree that this is a question that I should only ask the developer of Wake instead of on Programmers.SE for three reasons. First, as I just discussed, I think knowing who develops a language is something that is of general interest to programmers. Second, as I mention in my question, I was having trouble identifying who the developer was! I'm not able to ask a question of someone if I don't know who they are. Third, I'm not asking for support for the language per say. Instead, I'm asking for some background on it. I agree that if I wanted to understand how to use the language, that would be a much better question for the Wake developer (or at least SO).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for asking why the developer created Wake, I deliberately phrased my question as&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have [the deveopers] made any announcements about why they decided to create Wake?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if the developers haven't made any announcements that are easy to find, &quot;No,&quot; would be an acceptable answer, and one that I wouldn't have to ask the developer to receive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do my arguments make sense? If so, can my question please be reopened? If not, can you please let me know why my question still goes against Programmers.SE's standards so I can avoid these mistakes in the future?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26611" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7251" RevisionGUID="47a71a56-0ceb-4fb5-aa57-a74c74a0f3d2" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="As explained in [this answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/251744/165773) to related question at MSE, there is no such plan.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More specifically, Triage review was not intended to be applicable network wide; it was designed based on assumptions that apply at Stack Overflow but not necessarily hold at other network sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, per what I additionally learned at MSE ([1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251737/triage-and-help-improvement-review-queues-at-sites-other-than-stack-overflow#comment822246_251744), [2](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251737/triage-and-help-improvement-review-queues-at-sites-other-than-stack-overflow#comment822318_251744)), site needs to cover following points for Triage to make sense:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. Set the goals (for SO, goals are said to be &quot;de-emphasize questions from folks who haven't yet learned... but don't immediately nuke them&quot; and protect home page from [&quot;wall of crap&quot;](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so))&#xD;&#xA;2. Enough content to keep scoring algorithm relevant - 100 troublesome questions a month won't do, nor probably 1000 would.&#xD;&#xA;3. Timely escape - we don't want automatic scoring nor user flags to hide question for hours solely because there's nobody around to review.&#xD;&#xA;4. It must be clear to many that the existing tools are insufficient: in particular, if the &quot;home page as work area&quot; strategy is working well for a given community, there's little need for anything more elaborate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does above match to what we've got at Programmers? Let's see...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding point **#1** about _goals_, first thing that comes to mind is that those stated for SO apply here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given meta discussions, we are interested in helping folks to learn (https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions) - though I am not completely certain that existing tools are proven as insufficient as implied by point **#4**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another goal, about &quot;wall of crap&quot; at homepage, also looks relevant to us, as indicated by multiple recurring discussions about [too many bad questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7130?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Point **#2**, at first sight, doesn't match. Being 100-200 times smaller than Stack Overflow, Programmers hardly can serve sufficiently reliable data feed into question scoring. One option worth considering to address this is to simply &quot;borrow&quot; Stack Overflow data feed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may work because site topics substantially overlap and, especially, because many troublesome questions over here appear to be posted by users who are simply [trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260). Using same scoring data that is supposed to detect and block them at Stack Overflow would make sense, wouldn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Point **#3**, about timely escape, also doesn't seem to match at first sight. Per my observations, it rather frequently happens that _for several hours_ there's just not enough 3K/diamond regulars around to make decisions supposed to drive Triage. [Not that I complain](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14524409#14524409 &quot;moderation is just not supposed to be 24x7 watch, this is not how system is expected to work&quot;), but there is just no way to ensure that questions in Triage queue would be reviewed within reasonable timeframe.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Probably the only way to overcome this would be to automatically kick questions off this queue and let them go to homepage after some timeout (say, 1-2 hours) if these haven't got sufficient attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;FWIW it is quite likely that &quot;kick off by timeout&quot; will be eventually implemented (if it is not there already) in Stack Overflow Triage. Thing is, given their scale, as soon as this queue gets into &quot;mass production&quot;, there will be a solid chance that all reviewers press Skip on particular post, making it stuck in there, while as pointed in **#3**, &quot;we don't want automatic scoring nor user flags to hide question for hours solely because there's nobody around to review&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26612" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7257" RevisionGUID="5be9ae39-e136-44b4-970b-f30ec845df17" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Propose to detect troublesome questions using Stack Overflow quality scoring data and put them to [Triage queue](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage) for an hour or two. If the timeout expires before decision is made, let questions go to homepage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the questions that fail the Triage, one option to handle these is to keep them invisible for a day or two (if not edited), then automatically [bump](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/bump/info) them for a broader community review. This way would keep them away from the top of [newest tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest). (Attentive readers may notice that bumps imply certain pollution of [active tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active) but this looks less of an issue to me, as this tab is rather heavily dominated by better questions being bumped by answers and edits. Not to mention that Triage would spare active page from questions deserving flagging for speedy deletion - spam, [homework dumps](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3837/31260), [&quot;cubicle fart&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6677/31260) kind stuff...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reasons why I consider above approach feasible are [laid out here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7251/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  goal, about [&quot;wall of crap&quot;](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so) at homepage, also looks relevant to us, as indicated by multiple recurring discussions about [too many bad questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7130?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...site topics substantially overlap and... many troublesome questions over here appear to be posted by users who are simply [trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260). Using same scoring data that is supposed to detect and block them at Stack Overflow would make sense, wouldn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...there is just no way to ensure that questions in Triage queue would be reviewed within reasonable timeframe... automatically kick questions off this queue and let them go to homepage after some timeout (say, 1-2 hours) if these haven't got sufficient attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-there-something-wrong-with-this-sites-rules-for-posting-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7614/why-are-we-getting-so-many-off-topic-debug-this-for-me-questions-what-can-we&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7593/is-there-any-point-in-this-site-still-existing  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note this one even suggests Stack Overflow (protected by Triage!) as an example of how a site should look like.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7130/so-many-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7239/there-are-way-more-negative-votes-in-the-top-50-questions-than-positive-time-to&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7221/problem-titles-in-off-topic-questions-of-new-users-coming-from-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7020/lets-help-askers-who-are-trying-to-circumvent-question-block-at-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6990/why-cant-we-raise-up-questions-quality&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6850/how-effective-is-the-quality-filter-against-this-question-with-all-caps-brief-ti&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6788/a-lot-of-front-page-down-votes&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6371/how-can-we-encourage-people-to-read-the-faq-before-asking-their-first-question&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5618/better-selection-title-for-top-questions-list&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5377/requiring-registration-to-ask-questions-did-it-made-a-difference&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4029/why-are-there-so-many-minus-points-on-questions-in-this-site&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4009/programmers-stack-exchange-question-downvoting-what-to-do&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3947/what-can-we-do-about-extremely-low-quality-questions-from-unregistered-users&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3778/can-we-have-some-way-to-not-show-closed-questions-on-the-front-page&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2744/how-can-i-create-a-custom-filtered-view-of-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2727/are-we-scaring-off-new-users&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Nov 17 '11)&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4097/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Oct 8 '12)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1589/what-to-do-about-the-proliferation-of-bad-questions-from-generic-accounts&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/841/why-are-almost-half-the-questions-on-the-front-page-marked-closed&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/784/are-we-closing-too-many-good-questions-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26613" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7312" RevisionGUID="3ec85fb3-c73a-4d7e-8273-1a594b4fb2b2" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Note: This is a follow-up question to [this][1] one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm planning to practice some system design questions asked during tech interviews, and I'd like to get reviews/opinions on how I'd design some systems from the Programmers/StackExchange community if I can.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can I post these questions on Programmers, or would some other StackExchange site be more appropriate for this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/290723/is-stack-overflow-the-appropriate-website-to-ask-about-system-design-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26614" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7510" RevisionGUID="9431eeff-39ac-4993-8981-989a6c38b55a" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="One of the [on topic points on Ask Different](http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Apple services including iTunes Connect (selling music, books, apps)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may want to check out the [existing questions with the itunes-connect tag][1] and [their meta site][2] first ([including three meta questions tagged with itunes-connect][3]) before posting there to make sure your question fits into the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would be off-topic here and on Stack Overflow, since [we aren't customer support for other companies][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/itunes-connect&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://apple.meta.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/itunes-connect&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/255745/839601" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26615" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7624" RevisionGUID="3de92cdf-1712-4761-bfd1-3267be0630f3" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Here's the approach I am currently using when I stumble upon this kind of questions. (Those interested in what else I tried before coming at it, can find details below.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Add comment referring to MSE guidance [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;2. Vote down.&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote close as unclear.&#xD;&#xA;4. Vote delete (when question becomes eligible for that).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned MSE guidance is sufficient to help asker figure another, more appropriate site to focus their efforts on. Worth noting that in the past, I've been referring it rather judiciously for the fear that it may lead to reposting very low quality debugging questions at SO. Nowadays, I am not concerned about this, because SO (finally) found an efficient way to handle garbage questions by burying them in Triage queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote down is because it's off-topic. Additionally, it makes it easier for the system to trigger blocking, rate limiting and [anti-recidivism protection](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/anti-recidivism-system/info &quot;what's this&quot;) in case if asker intends to persist in asking inappropriate questions like that, for example in order to use Programmers as a proxy for Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Close reason picked (unclear) is because I abstain of wasting effort on checking whether the question is good enough to migrate to SO or not, or maybe it needs some improvements to become good enough to migrate. Another facet of this reason is, it's _unclear_ to me why asker picked Programmers instead of more appropriate and much better known site (Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote delete serves same purpose as vote down, to help system act in case if there's intended and persistent misuse. FWIW when voting this way, I expect that for occasional mistakes it doesn't harm, ie that question blocks work as [explained by SE team here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/236568/165773): &quot;first question doesn't count&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As promised, here is a brief overview of what else I tried before coming to above approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1\. &quot;Classical&quot; review.** You know, it's when you start with checking whether question is good enough for Stack Overflow and if it is, vote migrate. If not, you additionally study the question to either figure how to edit it to improve, or pick close reason that would help the asker find how to improve, maybe also comment with more explanations, stuff like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This way used to work pretty well until amount of debugging questions increased so that studying them started taking too much time. When I noticed this, I dropped it. Quoting self, &quot;I come here to learn and contribute to Programmers topics&quot; - I invest extra effort into studying off-topic questions only if it doesn't take much time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\. Trying to use system capabilities.** You know, system can tell many cases when debugging question is posted here to abuse it. It can tell whether asker was recently blocked at SO and likely tries to circumvent that, or if the question has been cross-posted here, possibly in hope to gather more feedback if it needs to improve. It can tell if the question is of such a troublesome quality that Stack Overflow would hide it (or maybe already did that) in Triage queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tried to figure how above can be used to simplify handling these questions and posted various feature requests. So far, all of them have been ignored... and likely will stay that way, given that even _very_ easy to implement and reasonable request to block same titles as are blocked at SO (with words 'problem' and 'help') stays ignored.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**3\. Flagging.** For readers unfamiliar with how it works, you explain in the flag message what specifically is wrong with the flagged post and why moderator involvement is required (as opposed to regular means like community voting, comments, edits, canned flags etc).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly to &quot;classical&quot; reviewing, this used to work like a charm in the past, and just like it, this way broke when amount of debugging questions increased so that flagging them started taking too much time. One can't just type in flag message &quot;hey, this is debugging&quot; and expect moderator to take it from there. To make a compelling flag message, you have to study the post quite thoroughly, that's why I dropped it when site started getting too many debugging questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6795/perform-automatic-checks-for-cross-posting-and-question-block-at-so-when-post-en&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7257/could-we-please-detect-troublesome-questions-using-stack-overflow-data-and-offlo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7564/if-problem-and-help-are-to-be-blocked-on-stack-overflow-question-titles-blo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Should one advise on off-topic questions?](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/276637/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't ever answer a question, not via chat, comments, or any other way. It is even dangerous to say: go here, Google for that, because next time, they will do the exact same and eventually get what they want." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26616" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7770" RevisionGUID="95ec6a06-cff4-4856-ac93-c2f61e5517b9" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="**TL;DR** Can the system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently I've seen notes from Stack Exchange staff about how it would be nice if site would allow for broader, softer kind questions. This was [said by Robert Cartaino here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7650/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The idea that there are hordes of people just waiting flood the site for want of a single precedent was one of those things we worried about before we had anything to back it up. But if you haven't noticed, Stack Exchange has moved on from a lot of those old adages foretelling of widespread doom in ways that simply never materialized in actual use... _every_ question must have exactly one absolutely factual answer. ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and [by Jon Ericson here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7761/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Given quality of users on this site, there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, the system makes it difficult (I would say, unnecessarily difficult) to produce and maintain quality content in questions with many answers. It doesn't provide any means to make it easier and some features even tend to incentivize low quality content in questions of this kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current UI doesn't offer any means to help answerers and readers find / avoid repeating what was stated before. Combined with being very easy to post an answer, this leads to useless answers that don't add anything over what was posted before. This is noticeable even in questions with brief answers which are easy to check ([example](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/271158/839601)) and when answers are lengthy, things become even worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This penalizes web search visitors, forcing them to read same points over and over and over again. Letting repetitive answers proliferate is a step toward old-fashioned &quot;forums&quot;, and quite a substantial one I think.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particular feature that essentially encourages low quality content is Hot Network Questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To set the record straight for readers not familiar with its purpose - it is established pretty firmly and it has nothing to do with content quality. The feature is there only to show network wide audience entertaining / interesting questions. If you're interested, refer MSE for more details on that: [What is the Goal of “Hot Network Questions”?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per se, entertainment aspect of HNQ looks pretty acceptable and I don't think it should necessarily be that it makes a critical obstacle in maintaining quality content. Thing is though, as implemented currently... it really does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;HNQ, the way it is now, make maintaining quality content cumbersome and painful. Problems with content quality in hot questions are well known for a long time ([1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;), [2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;'Answers quality in hot questions'&quot;)), and it keeps happening here and now, see for example https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over years, Stack Exchange tried various ways to handle questions with multiple answers but none of these seemed to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Jeff Atwood's warning](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/86895/165773) was probably the first one,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Did you read through all the existing answers first to make sure your answer will be contributing something new?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All I can say about it is that it doesn't work, has never worked and is unlikely to ever work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another thing they tried was automatic conversion to community wiki when there are many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This worked... sorta, in the sense that it made it easier to downvote low quality answers (without incurring rep penalty) and removed incentive to flood popular questions with answers in a (frankly, quite realistic) hope to gain a bit of rep with a random upvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this trick is, it had some _very_ ugly side effects due to involved rep denial from users providing quality content and in the end it was [deservedly discarded](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228940/165773). Thing is though, nothing was done to compensate loss of features used to counter issues in questions with many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, there's standard rhetoric about voting down low quality answers but tell me, how many users can afford rep loss of voting this way, say, 5-10 of total 20 non-CW answers in a question? how many of them can afford doing this every month? every week? And if you additionally consider [&quot;sympathy upvotes&quot;](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/311408/839601 &quot;what's this&quot;) frequently happening to such answers in popular questions (each worth more than 4 votes down rep wise), this starts looking like a wishful thinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another approach that was tried about two years ago is randomizing hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seemed to work at first but as time passed by it revealed signs of inability to scale. Shuffling 100 hot questions to 100K site visitors works, shuffling same amount to 1 million will break and essentially return us back to old known issues with &quot;snowball effect&quot; when questions stick in the list solely because they were advertised there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Somewhere along the way they implemented special adjustment for Stack Overflow questions, which strongly pushes these from hot list after 7 hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to work, in the sense that there aren't very loud complaints about hot questions at MSO anymore (like it was in the past with [&quot;croissants&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/190106/165773)). Still, this doesn't resolve problems at other sites. And still, even SO is having garbage answers problem in questions that acquire popularity and high views organically, not via hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Yet another feature intended to help control answers quality is question protection, which makes it impossible to answer for users having less than 10 on-site reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By design, protection is intended to handle only cases of extreme abuse. It doesn't provide any means against low quality answers posted by users with over 10 rep. Also, due to some implementation specifics, even very limited functionality it offers frequently turns out useless in hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Can the system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26617" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7828" RevisionGUID="18242881-3d6c-4441-ac76-0201633a9af4" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Related: [Tags that only exist on locked questions, should we treat these the same as tags that don't exist at all?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/259740/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; philosophically Historical Lock questions are **deleted**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Visual difference between historically locked and legitimate questions looks quite subtle to me, even though I have few years experience on the site. It can be even harder for inexperienced readers to tell the difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that historical lock is applied mostly to (inappropriate) questions [having large amount of views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A20000 &quot;currently, search shows 132 locked questions having 20K views or more&quot;) and ranked highly in web search engines, this creates wide open broken windows. Inexperienced site visitors coming from web searches at h/l questions think that these are legitimate and try to ask similar ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to help newcomers see the difference, suggest to use pink background when rendering historically locked posts - same that is currently used to render deleted posts displayed to 10K users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related feature request at MSE (hat tip to [durron597](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/300687/i-think-this-old-deleted-question-should-be-undeleted-and-historically-locked-i/300727?noredirect=1#comment315138_300727)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Automatic visual indication of old questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/98589/165773)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26618" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8034" RevisionGUID="5b4a75f2-6ab7-4094-bb30-26a0a7dda36c" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="For a couple of reasons ([discussed in this post at MSO](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/322265/839601)) rate limit for new users asking questions is now set to 40 minutes at Stack Overflow, Programmers and network wide. More precisely,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. The new-user ask limit is now one question every **40** minutes, *network-wide.* That means only 1 question every 40 minutes on Stack Overflow, but also means you'd need to wait 40 minutes after asking a question on, say, Woodworking to ask a related question on Crafting or Home Improvement. ...it also means you'd need to wait 40 minutes after asking a question on Stack Overflow before asking a question on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;2. [Rolling rate-limits](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/243460/165773 &quot;what's this&quot;) kick in faster. Like, *immediately*. If your first question is downvoted and you try to ask another one 40 minutes later, you'll be forced to wait at least a day. That's potentially very harsh... But probably also better than penalizing *everyone* for the behavior of a few. We'd always intended rolling rate-limits to supplant the new-user rate-limits, and this will hopefully allow them to do so...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though not precisely 90 minutes as requested originally, to me above seems to be good enough to qualify as [meta-tag:status-completed]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26619" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8386" RevisionGUID="0d6ae0f1-c35a-465c-9f3f-b27ae5888b05" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Instead of creating an external blog to replace the Stack Exchange blog, why don't we just leverage the normal Q&amp;A to do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Here's how it would work:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Write your blog post in any ordinary editor.&#xD;&#xA;2.  Split your post into a question &amp; answer pair or title/abstract/body combination (Abstract goes into question, body goes into answer).&#xD;&#xA;3.  [Answer your own question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/132886/what-is-this-answer-your-own-question-jazz).&#xD;&#xA;4.  Flag the post and ask a moderator to add a &quot;Wiki Lock&quot; to it (not Community Wiki).  The Wiki Lock allows anyone to collaboratively edit the post (if they have editing privileges), but prevents other answers from being posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know what you're thinking: &quot;This won't work, because reasons.&quot;  Here's why I think it will work, and why it will work better than a blog:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  The community owns it (with first-authorship preserved).&#xD;&#xA;2.  There is already some precedent: it's [called *Canonical Q&amp;A.*](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/291992/what-is-a-canonical-question-answer-and-what-is-their-purpose)  We've already done that here [at least once](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before), with great effect.&#xD;&#xA;3.  Canonical posts benefit from all of the facilities that are already provided by the Q&amp;A machinery, such as full visibility, voting, collaborative editing and the ability to comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###But what about closing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to prevent closure, your blog post would have to be high enough quality to overcome objections like &quot;Too Broad.&quot;  Not everyone is going to rise to this level of quality, but that's why it's a Canonical post and not ordinary Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The usual &quot;on-topic&quot; rules would have to be relaxed a little bit.  Obviously they would still have to pertain in some way to Software Engineering.  But let's be honest: most questions are not closed because they are off-topic; they're closed because they're just not all that interesting, and &quot;off-topic&quot; provides a good excuse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Overflow, canonical questions have allowed people on many occasions to post useful, blog-like material that extends well beyond the usual parade of code troubleshooting questions.  Similarly, we could use this mechanism to provide those folks who have an itch with an outlet to create better content than the usual parade of pattern matching, name that thing and &quot;am I doing it right&quot; questions and answers that frequent our front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[List of Canonical Questions on Stack Overflow](https://www.google.com/search?q=&quot;This%20question%27s%20answers%20are%20a%20collaborative%20effort&quot;%20site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fstackoverflow.com)  &#xD;&#xA;[Encyclopedia Stack Exchange](https://stackoverflow.blog/2012/05/encyclopedia-stack-exchange/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26620" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8407" RevisionGUID="5024b2d3-b698-4321-ac37-258d4ceb1ce6" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Yesterday I asked this Qn:  &#xD;&#xA;http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/340510/24410&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But some fellow members felt that, it belongs to below category:  &#xD;&#xA;[Why we're not customer support for [your favorite company]](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/255745/why-were-not-customer-support-for-your-favorite-company)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However I am unable to understand that how is it a customer support request? Or how can it be an opinion based Qn?  &#xD;&#xA;On the contrary, I assumed that it will give way to many interesting analysis such as,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If an organization like Android has decided to follow the footsteps of Apple, by favouring Clang, then there has to be legitimate reasons for it.&#xD;&#xA; - Is there something really wrong with GCC as such?&#xD;&#xA; - Android, Clang &amp; GCC all are free &amp; possibly open source softwares. How do they make choices?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The sense of my Qn is well crafted by a fellow member [@JonathanEunice](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/55314/jonathan-eunice) in below comment:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;Why a major software project would make such a historic shift of toolsets is a legitimate and pertinent question for a software engineering Q&amp;A site. **Shifts of this magnitude are rarely driven merely by fickle preference or opinions**. There are undoubtedly technical and ecosystem justifications for the shift that would benefit many to understand.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why this Qn has generated so much heat that it has been downvoted, closed &amp; now being attempted for deletion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26621" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8472" RevisionGUID="3e3bd57b-360b-4bc8-91c2-2dc2b47fa3e4" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:37:54.727" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="I've got [a question regarding template specializations in C++](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/343505/when-one-should-use-template-specialization): I understand what this is, but do not understand when and why it should be used (examples that I have are not great). Quoting the last part (note that the question was significantly edited since then, here are old words):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My question being: when one should use template specialization in C++03/C++11? Alternative wording: what are some good examples of template specialization, like `std::swap` (if it is a good example at all)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A person suggested that this question is off-topic and pointed me to [Why do 'some examples' and 'list of things' questions get closed?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7537/why-do-some-examples-and-list-of-things-questions-get-closed/7538#7538) question on meta. This Q&amp;A refers to help center and states that these these question are off-topic &quot;because there is no right answer&quot; (not answer**s**).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I agree with the reasoning and there are things in my question which can be significantly improved, I was quite surprised that there is no place to ask about &quot;when to use X&quot; questions. So, I did some research. I started with [Is there a less restrictive Stack Exchange site specially suited for not too specific questions?](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/252777/is-there-a-less-restrictive-stack-exchange-site-specially-suited-for-not-too-spe) question and corresponding [answer](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/253111/767632):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. Conceptual questions. That is covered on softwareengineering.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that &quot;when do I use X&quot; is a conceptual question. Still, comments suggest that &quot;Programmers&quot; (old name of softwareengineering) has its own rules and questions should not be opinion-based. Ok, let's look at Meta:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is a “best practice” question off topic?](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/265928/is-a-best-practice-question-off-topic) on SO Meta. The answer suggests to ask &quot;best practices&quot; questions on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;* [Making “best practices” questions more palatable: how to ask a “best practice” question that is acceptable to the community?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7091/making-best-practices-questions-more-palatable-how-to-ask-a-best-practice-q) on SE.SE Meta. Answers mainly suggest that one should ask for a solution of a _specific situation_, not about general &quot;best practices&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fair enough: looks like general questions are too board and opinion-based because different situations require different solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I've found several open popular question on both StackOverflow and softwareengineering which are, I think, similar to mine (all of them are of form &quot;when to use X&quot; and do not provide any specify problems that OPs try to solve). From SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Factory Pattern. When to use factory methods?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/69849/factory-pattern-when-to-use-factory-methods), +181.&#xD;&#xA;* [When should I use the Visitor Design Pattern?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/255214/when-should-i-use-the-visitor-design-pattern), +209.&#xD;&#xA;* [When to use a Class vs. Function in PHP](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2122123/when-to-use-a-class-vs-function-in-php), +50.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a bunch of very general questions marked with `c++-faq` (they probably went through some special process which lifts some restrictions), from SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Operator overloading](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4421706/operator-overloading), +1537 - asks about idioms of operator overloading as well.&#xD;&#xA;* [What is a smart pointer and when should I use one?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/106508/what-is-a-smart-pointer-and-when-should-i-use-one), +1046 - note the  &quot;when should I use one&quot;, which is probably &quot;opinion-based&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And some questions closed for being either non-constructive or opinion-based:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is so bad about singletons? [closed]](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/137975/what-is-so-bad-about-singletons), +1427.&#xD;&#xA;* [Naming Classes - How to avoid calling everything a “&lt;WhatEver&gt;Manager”? [closed]](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1866794/naming-classes-how-to-avoid-calling-everything-a-whatevermanager), +670.&#xD;&#xA;* [On Design Patterns: When to use the Singleton? [closed]](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/228164/on-design-patterns-when-to-use-the-singleton), +282.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, finally, questions on SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Does using == in JavaScript ever make sense?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/268124/does-using-in-javascript-ever-make-sense), +255.&#xD;&#xA;* [Are there real-life usage and applications for “do while” loops? [closed]](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/268145/are-there-real-life-usage-and-applications-for-do-while-loops), +4.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it looks like _some_ questions survive, become popular and are not closed. Moreover, there is a special &quot;C++ FAQ&quot; section on StackOverflow which aims at not-situation-specific questions. However, most questions I found were on StackOverflow and they're quite old, so rules and mood could have changed. Two question from softwareengineering were asked almost at the same time, but one lives and other is closed. I don't see what's essentially different between them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Main question being: are questions &quot;when do I use X&quot; on-topic on SoftwareEngineering? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26622" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1852" RevisionGUID="3f664071-5705-49e0-bbc8-92f083017a1c" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:46:00.740" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://security.stackexchange.com/ with https://security.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question you answered was migrated to [IT Security.SE](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/4844/how-can-you-become-a-competent-web-application-security-expert-without-breaking-t). There, you'll find your answer: if you log in on IT Security.SE, you should automatically reclaim ownership of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question gets migrated, all answers are deleted and reposted on the destination site. As a normal user, deleted questions and answers don't appear in searches or on your profile." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26623" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2006" RevisionGUID="1ef41f96-c656-4092-9ce2-bdeb87d3dc93" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:46:00.740" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://security.stackexchange.com/ with https://security.stackexchange.com/" Text="A couple of questions have been flagged today as more appropriate on [IT Security](https://security.stackexchange.com/). I thought I'd do a check on what had been migrated there by moderators and came up with the following list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96553/is-steganography-a-safe-method-migrated?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96547/building-a-security-framework-migrated?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95544/what-are-the-chances-of-a-database-being-hacked-migrated?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/94306/storing-sensitive-information-securely-migrated?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/56870/compute-the-aes-encryption-key-given-the-plaintext-and-its-ciphertext-migrated?noredirect=1 (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/87337/how-can-you-become-a-competent-web-application-security-expert-without-breaking-t?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84989/how-secure-are-the-default-asp-net-membership-and-role-providers-for-sql-server?noredirect=1 (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32980/pci-encryption-key-management-migrated?noredirect=1 (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this enough evidence to enable the migration route on the close dialog?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there any other questions that would be a better fit for IT Security?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26624" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2530" RevisionGUID="f8a1ba1f-15bb-494c-9ef6-41454f9b5014" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:46:00.740" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://security.stackexchange.com/ with https://security.stackexchange.com/" Text="Crypto-mod here. *See how amazing moderators are with all this cross site effort we put in to make sure we don't close something when it might have a home elsewhere?!*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately I've had a chat with both the other cryptography moderators and whilst we do accept questions on &quot;historical&quot; algorithms (which we take to mean algorithms used pre the computing era), the consensus was as it stands it wouldn't be a good fit for us. We tend to focus on the [details and workings of the algorithms][1] and their consequences for implementation. We'd also be concerned that, in our current context, it might get a bit discussion-y.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I'd be happy to have a post raised about history questions on our meta, if only to see what people think.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our [chat][2] is fairly  quiet sometimes, but someone there might know the answer. Similarly, Thomas Pornin made the observation: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There is an underlying crypto question, which is: how would I generate and verify a &quot;token&quot; embedded in the URL, destined to filter out non-genuine URL ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions of that nature, or questions you face when doing this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I made the above question because I'm currently working on implementing said tokens and I wanted to read material on the subject&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would definitely be good, on-topic questions, possibly for [crypto][3] or [security][4]. The difference is summed up (again by Thomas) as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The rule of thumb, here, being that you should post to crypto.SE if you want to understand the internals, and to security.SE if you want to know what you should do now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/784/cryptography&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/784/cryptography&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://security.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26625" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5133" RevisionGUID="956b8335-6d28-4951-975b-6b6f6db109de" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:46:00.740" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://security.stackexchange.com/ with https://security.stackexchange.com/" Text="Programmers and Stack Overflow overlap in expertise, it's not uncommon for questions to fit both sites. It's not always clear if a question is more conceptual (Programmers) than technical (Stack Overflow) and there are questions that sit right on the fence. When questions overlap significantly we tend to let them stay at the site they were originally asked, it's a simple enough solution. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think we need to change the FAQ of either site, and since you're asking this in the interest of keeping Programmers as clean as possible I'd like to encourage you to examine whether a question is a good question before examining whether it fits our FAQ. Only after you decide it's a good question you should start wondering whether it's more suitable for us or Stack Overflow (or any other site). If you can't decide, chances are that it's one of those that fit either site, in which case it's in our interest to keep it here, Stack Overflow gets 5.8K questions per day, we get 35. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it's not just Stack Overflow, here's a brief list of Stack Exchange sites we overlap with: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Database Administrators][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [Game Development][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [IT Security][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [Project Management][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [Computer Science][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://security.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26626" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5141" RevisionGUID="07794c40-c174-4563-ae67-3b2ae3d9ac6e" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:46:00.740" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://security.stackexchange.com/ with https://security.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noted that over at [security.stackexchange.com](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/22824/why-not-rsa-encrypt-the-entire-document) they actually include the underlines on the links and that makes them much easier to pick out of a document.  We really do need to fix the links on programmers.SE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26627" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5239" RevisionGUID="c0e6f52f-b802-44ce-88e7-d860eec8e461" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:46:00.740" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://security.stackexchange.com/ with https://security.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are a lot of things I don't like about the site's design, to the point that I'm using a stripped down version of NullUserException's [Theme Switcher userscript](http://stackapps.com/questions/2808/stackexchange-theme-switcher) to browse the site with the Beta theme:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although it's a very basic theme, I find it quite more enjoyable than the actual theme. But, who cares what I find enjoyable or not, this discussion is about identifying flaws in the design that are a bit more important than personal preference. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, the whiteboard concept. As you probably already know, the core concept of our design is inspired from this paragraph of [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In a nutshell, Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor working through code issues. Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard working through higher level conceptual programming issues. Hence the (awesome) whiteboard inspired design!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a great concept, and I'd be lying if I pretended I have a better idea. That said and while a whiteboard is an easily identifiable element of the software design process, it's also supposed to be ephemeral and sloppy. And basing the entire design on handrawn elements comes out more as sloppy than casual and/or conceptual. I don't know if the playful nature of the design was intentional or not, and I might be completely wrong but I feel that the original, more relaxed scope of the site was taken into consideration, even though the design was finalized after the scope changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [first round of design ideas](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed) was a lot cleaner and simpler than the [second round](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/655/site-design-round-2) and I'm guessing that feedback from the community played an important role in what appears to be a very drastic change in direction. The community back then was more accustomed to the old scope, and if you read through both discussions you'll find out that differentiating the site from Stack Overflow was considered quite important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it was, but I don't think it is any more. Programmers being defined by what it's not, rather than what it is has been a constant PITA for the community, and I really don't see why it should be such a big part of our identity _now_. We've gone a long way, we've certainly proved that we can stand on our own, and I'd really love it if the site's design and overall branding reflected that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not suggesting completely dropping the whiteboard concept (at least not until I come up with a better idea; expect a long wait), just that we're overusing it. Almost every design element has a hand-drawn look and feel, using [Hugh Laurie's handwritting](http://callsignkatejones.deviantart.com/art/House-Whiteboard-font-64929545) as our main font is completely nonsensical (more on this later), and nothing in the site says &quot;professional&quot;. Our design is far from clean and simple, in contrast with almost every other Stack Exchange site that targets professional audiences. Compare it, for example, with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Cross Validated](http://stats.stackexchange.com/) &#xD;&#xA;- [Database Administrators](http://dba.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [IT Security](https://security.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [User Experience](http://ux.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [GIS](http://gis.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Physics](http://physics.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;- etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even sites that mostly target enthusiasts, like [Bicycles](http://bicycles.stackexchange.com/), have cleaner and less playful designs. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Font (mini rant)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I _never_ understood why Hugh Laurie's handwritting was relevant to a site about conceptual questions on software development. I can certainly appreciate the nerd value, but: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **It's just a TV show.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A great TV show, but just a TV show and one that has absolutely nothing to do with programming. We love fun as much as everyone else, but this is supposed to be a place [where we hate fun](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **It's handwritting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not really the optimal choice for several of our labels, for example: [cohhunity bulletin](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3529/whats-this-cohhunity-bulletin). Any handwritting font has similar problems, and that's simply because handwritting fonts aren't really supposed to be clear and readable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **IT'S AN ALL CAPS FONT**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Why are we shouting things like &quot;QUESTIONS&quot;, &quot;COMMUNITY BULLETIN&quot;, &quot;FAVOURITE TAGS&quot;? Do we really need to emphasize labels that no other professional oriented Stack Exchange site seems to be emphasizing? Is there any value to using an ALL CAPS font, other than being annoyingly distracting? The only other site that uses ALL CAPS seems to be [Arqade](http://gaming.stackexchange.com/), which kinda proves my point, Arqade is awesome, but professional is not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All we're gaining with the font is nerd value, and I'm afraid going for nerd value on a site that's striving to be _the_ resource for conceptual software development questions isn't really a good idea, it's a quirky in joke that's fuelling a bad stereotype. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Can the design be changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A complete re-design is _probably_ out of the question. Jin, Stack Exchange's designer, already has a huge backlog, even if we only consider the custom themes of the Beta sites that are graduating. However I always felt that Programmers didn't really have the benefit of the normal process, with the drastic change in scope, and I'm hoping we could at least persuade Stack Exchange to at least consider taking another look at our theme, and perhaps we could just tone done some of the more playful elements. A few ideas:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Getting rid of the font,&#xD;&#xA;- Toning down (or completely removing) the horizontal header and footer lines,&#xD;&#xA;- A less curvy and over-styled header and footer,&#xD;&#xA;- Moving on from the whole whiteboard-y / handwritten style for at least some design elements (vote arrows, for example).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And while we're at it, we could also [fix the damn links](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1487/it-is-possible-to-change-the-colors-of-hypertext-links) ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to make it abudantly clear that changing anything in the design, even a complete re-design, would probably do _nothing_ at all to prevent low quality questions coming in. If that's our reason for changing the design, there are quite a few other things that we should improve first that would be far more beneficial in communicating what the site's about and what our general expectations are (stop upvoting crap, for example). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do feel though that a less casual, less playful design would help better communicating the site's purpose to our target audience. I had to explain the handwritting font a couple of times, and the response was less than enthusiastic, for more or less the reasons I explained in the mini-rant. My main reason for advocating for a cleaner, simpler, and all around more professional design is that it would help me advertise the site on professional communities, without having to explain quirky in-jokes or the no longer relevant need to differentiate ourselves from Stack Overflow.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/mgiXY.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26628" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7066" RevisionGUID="c93be885-b340-439d-93ef-8083067cd57f" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:46:00.740" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://security.stackexchange.com/ with https://security.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's not off-topic per se but if your focus is security then we've got a site for that called &quot;[Information Security][1]&quot; that may yield a more detailed answer regarding the security aspects of the technology.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://security.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26629" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7067" RevisionGUID="06c0521d-6ee2-4584-9f9c-312ae8fbdc44" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:46:00.740" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://security.stackexchange.com/ with https://security.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think it depends on your focus. If you are looking at specific vulnerabilities and real-world details, then World Engineer's answer is the way to go. From [Information Security help center][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **IT Security Stack Exchange** is for Information Security professionals to discuss protecting **assets** from **threats** and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **vulnerabilities**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to approach it from a more abstract angle of why one security model is more or less secure, in a computer-sciencey way, then Programmers would be better. But if you do ask here, it really needs to be more conceptual while also answerable. From [our help center][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, discussing the merits of each architecture would fall under &quot;software architecture and design&quot; in my opinion, as long as the question is worded correctly. It would have to be about a program you are writing (conceptual questions about software development) and not why Sun/Oracle did something a certain way (ask Sun or Oracle instead).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://security.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26630" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8067" RevisionGUID="3899439e-9684-4ed6-b9c3-0960c8d0f972" CreationDate="2017-03-17T10:46:00.740" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://security.stackexchange.com/ with https://security.stackexchange.com/" Text="The following sites may be of interest to members of the Software Engineering community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [CrossValidated][4] &#xD;&#xA;* [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;* [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;* [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;* [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;* [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;* [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;* [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;* [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;* [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;* [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;* [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;* [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;* [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;* [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;* [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;* [Signal Processing][21]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][22]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Recommendations][23]&#xD;&#xA;* [Super User][24]&#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow][25]&#xD;&#xA;* [User Experience][26]&#xD;&#xA;* [Unix &amp; Linux][27]&#xD;&#xA;* [The Workplace][28]&#xD;&#xA;* [Writers][29]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before posting, be sure to read their Help Centers to fully understand what these communities expect from high quality questions and any specific rules they may have. As always, if you aren't sure if your question is a good fit, post on a Meta site and you can be directed to an appropriate site on the Stack Exchange network, if one exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a site doesn't exist yet, check out [Area 51][30], where users can collaborate to define and launch new Stack Exchange sites. If there's a proposal for your idea, you can follow it and contribute to it's definition. If not, you can create a new proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More detailed information about each site follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Code Review Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; peer review of your code. We're working together to improve the skills&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of programmers worldwide by taking working code and making it better.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from your project in the following areas…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Best practices and design pattern usage&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Security issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Correctness in unanticipated cases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then you are in the right place!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computational Science Stack Exchange is for questions and answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about computational methods used in technical disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First-time posters are strongly advised to read Eric Raymond's How to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask Questions the Smart Way for advice on how to ask good questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (not for technical answers). Although written for an audience asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions about open source software, the same advice applies when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking questions about any subject area.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is run by volunteers; the best way to get an answer to your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is to ask it in a way that makes it easy for someone with a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broad computational science background to answer it with 15 minutes of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; effort or less.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Topics that are usually a good fit for this site:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about software packages or languages used broadly in computational science (e.g., PETSc, MATLAB, Trilinos, LAPACK, SLEPc,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; R, NumPy, SciPy, Julia, Maple, Octave) except Mathematica (which has&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its own site now). In general, high-level questions (e.g., about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/package features) are best. Questions that are essentially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about debugging a code sample, or about low-level language syntax are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a poor fit for this site, and are usually closed; such questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be asked on language-/package-specific forums. Package&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developers interested in using this site as a resource should look at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this meta question. Package developers answering questions should look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at this meta question for guidelines on disclosing project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; affiliations.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about algorithms or methods used to solve problems in applied mathematics (e.g., finding roots of a polynomial, finding the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; eigenvalues/eigenvectors of a matrix, solving an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elliptic/parabolic/hyperbolic PDE)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions that ask about appropriate methods for a given application area (e.g., what numerical methods would I use when modeling shock&#xD;&#xA;&gt; waves, what numerical methods would I use when modeling combustion,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what graph algorithms would I use if I wanted to understand social&#xD;&#xA;&gt; networks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer Science Stack Exchange is for students, researchers and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practitioners of computer science.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer science, also sometimes called computing science, is the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; science of computation and its applications. This site covers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; theoretical and applied computer science at any level, including but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms, models of computation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming language semantics, formal methods&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - computer architecture, networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, natural language processing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - vision, graphics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [CrossValidated][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CrossValidated is for statisticians, data miners, and anyone else&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doing data analysis or interested in it as a discipline. If you have a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical analysis, applied or theoretical&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - designing experiments&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - collecting data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - data mining&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - visualizing data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - probability theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - mathematical statistics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical and data-driven computing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Crypto Stack Exchange is for software developers, mathematicians and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others interested in cryptography.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cryptography Stack Exchange is for asking questions about the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mathematics and properties of cryptographic systems, their analysis&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (&quot;cryptanalysis&quot;) and subsidiary topics that generally make up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cryptology, such as random number generation. As such, we welcome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions on topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Asymmetric and symmetric cryptographic algorithms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographic protocols&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptanalysis techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Hash functions, hashing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Entropy and information theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographically Secure (Pseudo-)Random Number Generation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dba.se is for those needing expert answers to advanced&#xD;&#xA;&gt; database-related questions concerning traditional SQL RDBMS and NoSQL&#xD;&#xA;&gt; alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Database Administration including configuration and backup / restore&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Querying including window-functions, dynamic-sql, and query-performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Modelling and database-design, including referential-integrity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Programming in built-in server-side languages including stored-procedures and triggers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence including etl, reporting, and olap&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Examples of questions that are likely to be on-topic for Data Science&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given process monitoring data arriving every 10ms, what statistical tool should I use to best characterize a change in the process - mean?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a distribution?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When is it suitable to apply L1 regularization for feature selection?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I would like to produce a infographic on the 'Brexit' referendum. Given public opinion data across the UK, what are some meaningful&#xD;&#xA;&gt; techniques to visaualize it in a dashboard?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When executing an ARIMA model in Spark, what are the pros and cons of using Python instead of R?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given Facebook Likes, is there an ML technique to predict age and gender?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for electronics and electrical engineering professionals,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; students, and enthusiasts. We ask and answer questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electrical and electronics engineering topics, which include&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electronics, physical computing, and those working with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; microcontrollers, Arduinos and embedded systems. We feel the best&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Electronics Design questions have a schematic, links to pertinent&#xD;&#xA;&gt; datasheets or some source code in them, but if your question generally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific electronics design problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the theory and simulation of electromagnetic forces&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a communication scheme&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Engineering Stack Exchange are usually well-received when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Identify a specific engineering problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Require expert engineering knowledge to solve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Include any relevant drawings, images or references that may be necessary to understand the problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Excite or challenge experienced professionals in the field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Game Development Stack Exchange is for professional and amateur&#xD;&#xA;&gt; video/computer game developers. If you have a question relating to ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asset pipelines (creation, storage, editing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game-specific programming issues (engine architecture, game-related APIs, networking, tools, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - project management (testing, team management, scheduling, publishing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game industry (careers, trends, technology, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware Recommendations is a community-run website to help you find a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific product for your needs. That means you can ask for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware to perform a specific task. However, you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be aware that &quot;hardware&quot; is not an all-encompassing term — for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; details of what hardware is accepted on this site, please see What is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware?. In essence, we can help you if you're looking for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware that is &quot;an electronic item that is,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interfaces with, or connects to a computer to operate&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; IT Security Stack Exchange is for Information Security professionals&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to discuss protecting assets from threats and vulnerabilities. Topics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; include, but are not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - web app hardening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - network security&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - social engineering, including phishing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - risk management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - policies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - penetration testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - security tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - using cryptography&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - incident response&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physically securing the office, datacentre, information assets etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Law Stack Exchange is for legal professionals, students, and others&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with experience or interest in law.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The best questions are those that have specific answers; Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange is not a general discussion forum. In general, ask here if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question which covers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Statutes or court decisions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal terms and language, doctrines and theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal process and procedure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Historical legal applications&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Dealing with legal professionals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mathematics Stack Exchange is for people studying mathematics at any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; level and professionals in related fields. We welcome questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Understanding mathematical concepts and theorems.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Mathematical problems such as one might come across in a course or textbook. (First read our how to ask a good question page.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Solving mathematical puzzles.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software that mathematicians use (except Mathematica, which has its own Stack Exchange site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Network Engineering Stack Exchange is for asking questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professionally managed networks in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - operating, maintaining, purchasing or managing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - planning or designing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - model or product line features and differences;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - lab scenarios involving on-topic equipment;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used by network professionals;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - servers operating as a router/switch/firewall;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design or theory of protocols used to operate a network (e.g. IP, TCP, routing protocols, STP, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - content delivery networks;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - production troubleshooting or problem resolution;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physical infrastructure (e.g. standard color coding of cables, types of fiber, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementing and enforcing network security or policies;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and meets the following requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - under your direct control (if the network is not under your control you will not likely be able to provide the information required to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer your question);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware that has a paid support option (enterprise/provider class products, some small business class devices);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then this is likely the correct place to ask unless it meets any of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the off-topic conditions detailed below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Open Source Stack Exchange is a question &amp; answer site about a group&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of related movements which encourage people to give up some of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rights given to them by copyright law, by using licenses which give&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others the freedom to use and transform their creative works, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which optionally (by using copyleft/share-alike licenses) ensure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; these works will always be made available with the same rights. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site is not limited to software, but also covers art, literature,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hardware, databases and more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; These movements have been spearheaded by a group of organisations:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FSF, OSI, Creative Commons, Free Culture. These organisations prefer a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; variety of different terms (free, open source, libre) and sometimes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; define them with slight differences. But on this site these terms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should in general be considered to be synonymous, except for questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which ask directly about their differences.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You've come to the right place if you have questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the history and philosophies of the FSF, OSI, CC etc&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, applying, and complying with Free &amp; Open licenses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how communities collaborate together to produce, distribute, market and sometime monetize these projects&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what license to use for a specific situation - but please read How do I ask for a license recommendation? first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Personal Productivity Stack Exchange is for people wanting to improve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their personal productivity. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - achieving a productivity workflow, using techniques like GTD, Covey, Pomodoro, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - fighting procrastination by getting energetic and motivated workflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - ergonomics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - effective sleep habits and the entire sleep-wake transition&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - learning, memory and creativity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The site is for project management practitioners, academics and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; amateur theorists. This is a site about the field of project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; management for people who love the subject. Our site includes the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following topics:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Management Practices and Theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Agile&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Scrum&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - PRINCE2&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Tool Usage in Project Management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Manager Career Advancement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reverse Engineering Stack Exchange is for researchers and developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who explore the principles of a system through analysis of its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structure, function, and operation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software analysis (static or dynamic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - disassembly or decompilation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware analysis and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools commonly used for reverse engineering hardware or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deterring reverse engineering efforts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Server Fault is for questions about managing information technology&#xD;&#xA;&gt; systems in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - managing the hardware or software of servers, workstations, storage or networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used for administering, monitoring, or automating these&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deployment to and management of third-party provided information technology platforms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Signal Processing][21]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Signal Processing Stack Exchange is for practitioners of the art and science of signal, image and video processing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][22]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing Stack Exchange is for software quality control experts, automation engineers, and software testers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Recommendations][23]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for questions asking for recommendations of software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ready-to-use to accomplish a particular task, that is, “what software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can I use to do …?”. While this includes software libraries for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development use, note that recommendations of tutorials, data sources,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; media libraries (e.g. icon collections) etc. are off-topic – as are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions like “what technology to use for …?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good software recommendation requests have two components:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A purpose — a task to accomplish, a user story&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Some objective requirements — a minimum set of features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Stack Overflow][25]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; a specific programming problem, or a software algorithm, or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tools commonly used by programmers; and is a practical, answerable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem that is unique to software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#[Super User][24]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users. If you have a question about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * computer hardware,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * computer software, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal and home computer networking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming and software development,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * video games or consoles,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * websites or web services like Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * electronic devices, media players, cell phones or smart phones, except insofar as they interface with your computer,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * issues specific to corporate IT support and networks,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * asking for a product, service or learning material recommendation,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Unix &amp; Linux][27]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Unix and Linux Stack Exchange is for users of Linux, FreeBSD and other Un*x-like operating systems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Using or administering a *nix desktop or server&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The Unix foundation underlying OS X (but generally not frontend application questions)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The underlying *nix OS on an embedded system or handheld device (e.g. an Android phone)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Shell scripting&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Applications packaged in *nix distributions (note: being cross-platform does not disqualify)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UNIX C API and System Interfaces ( within reason )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;then you're in the right place. Note that Ubuntu posts are a special case. If your question applies to Ubuntu only, or you're looking for answers that are Ubuntu-specific, you should post it on the Ask Ubuntu Stack Exchange site. If your question applies to other distros or you welcome more generic solutions, you're in the right place here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If your question is a programming question, requiring knowledge of programming languages other than unix shell scripting languages, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Please note that requests for learning materials (tutorials, how-tos etc.) are off topic. The only exception is questions about where to find official documentation (e.g. POSIX specifications).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [User Experience][26]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; User Experience Stack Exchange is for User Experience Designers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Information Architects, and Human Computer Interaction researchers. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Specific UX design problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UX issues that can be solved with expert advice or existing research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about HCI and user research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [The Workplace][28]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Workplace Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site about the workplace and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other career-related topics. With your help we're working to build a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; library to every question about the workplace related to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Finding employment (resumes/cv/cover letters, recruiters, hiring-managers, interviews, negotiations, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Maintaining employment (promotions, pay increases, harassment, bullying, poor working conditions, communication problems, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Leadership in the workplace (motivating people, encouraging people, making decisions, holding hard conversations, intervening in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unproductive situations, asking for and giving help, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Terminating employment (notice period, breaking the news, handing over work, reference letters, relieving letters, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Writers][29]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Writers Stack Exchange is for authors, editors, reviewers, bloggers, copywriters, professional and aspiring writers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on these topics are welcome here:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Non-fiction, technical, or scholarly writing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Writing fiction, poetry, song lyrics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - General copywriting, style, and organization&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Professional-level blogging&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The publishing and editing process itself&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about specialized writing tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; On the other hand, these kinds of questions aren't allowed here:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions seeking to interpret or analyze an existing work, although there are exceptions if is being applied to a real-world writing project.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Proofreading requests.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Requests to critique your work. However, please do feel free to use your own writing as examples in on-topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The strictly interpreted correctness of English grammar or syntax rules (please ask those on English Stack Exchange, instead).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Finding a professional to write for you, be your agent, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A specific, localized shopping recommendation as described here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Asking how to write a particular kind of email, letter, memo, or other correspondence -- or, more generally. asking &quot;what should I write about&quot; (more about this here).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Requests to rephrase something - a few sentences, or even a single sentence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://datascience.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://security.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://math.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://serverfault.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://dsp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://superuser.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://writers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26631" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8489" RevisionGUID="01f38ff5-2e22-4793-8e30-bdca11a80cc5" CreationDate="2017-03-19T18:39:18.017" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="In addition to what Thomas Owens said, there is another thought to consider, which is [my close vote][1] on the question asked here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is not about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the systems development life cycle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The core question is one of the history of programming language design. While history is interesting, it does not fit into the systems development life cycle. It does not address a problem to be solved anywhere between requirements gathering and deploying a finished system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That being said, [sometimes questions about programming history do end up staying open][2], or get a historical lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/317905/why-is-a-vertical-bar-used-as-the-or-operator-in-so-many-programming-languages#comment739921_317905&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7188/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26632" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8490" RevisionGUID="c3d9ac40-0570-4e73-9761-d6b601a1e067" CreationDate="2017-03-20T02:40:21.157" UserId="4" Text="I would like to edit this [question/answer][1] to provide specific guidance for asking and answering questions related to ethics on Software Engineering:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ethics questions are on-topic, provided the asker can demonstrate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; relevance to one or more activities that are part of the SDLC and [fall within &#xD;&#xA;&gt; the scope of this community](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are about the law or require the expertise of a lawyer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; are off-topic here, but may be a suitable fit on [Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange](http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). Ethical questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that stray into the realm of &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; or &quot;too broad&quot; will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also be closed. Anyone asking questions about ethics in software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; should keep in mind [the criteria for good subjective questions](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * tend to have long, not short, answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * invite sharing experiences over opinions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * are more than just mindless social fun&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good answers should include facts and references, including to accepted &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ethical theories and frameworks. Great answers would be framed with respect to &#xD;&#xA;&gt; one or more codes of ethics directly related to software engineering or &#xD;&#xA;&gt; computing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've elaborated on several points below, and feedback would be much appreciated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1:** At least some ethics questions are a good fit for the Stack Exchange format. [Ethics is one of the top tags on Philosophy](http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ethics) and [there are three questions about ethics on Engineering, none of which are closed and all of which are positively scored](http://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ethics).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2:** We already have over 100 questions tagged [tag:ethics]. [46 of these questions are not closed][2]. Minimally, this tag should be cleaned up to provide a good picture of acceptable questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**3:** We do not need to consider a range of questions that would be considered primarily opinion based or too broad. [The Help Center provides 6 criteria for good subjective questions][3] and any question asked should meet most, if not all of these criteria. Questions and answers that don't meet their respective criteria should be down voted and/or removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**4:** The field of software engineering has a number of relevant codes of ethics or professional conduct, including [the Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice][4] jointly maintained by the ACM and IEEE Computer Society. Professional organizations such as [the ACM][5], [the IEEE][6], [the BCS][7], and others also have relevant codes for any members. Any good answers would be minimally grounded in acceptable ethical theories (likely coming from [normative ethics][8] or [descriptive ethics][9]), if not one or more relevant codes of ethics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**5:** Any ethical questions must be tied to the SDLC. Consider some recent news stories: [Volkswagen's software that was used to cheat on emissions tests][10] or [Uber's Greyball][11]. One could frame questions about systems concept development, requirements analysis, design, development, or operations &amp; maintenance about these or similar cases. This is [the same standard applied to history questions][12] - there must be relevance to and direct questions regarding at least one SDLC activity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**6:** No changes to the guidance in the Help Center will be required. The scope of on-topic questions continues to be issues found while working in the systems development life cycle. In addition, questions about the law or requiring the expertise of a lawyer will continue to be off-topic. Additional guidance will be added to this [question][1] / [answer][12] which provides some supplementary notices on these edge cases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**7:** In order to be a community that responds to the needs of professionals, academics, and students working in software engineering and related fields, we need to adapt to the changing fields. The changing landscape of cybersecurity, privacy, autonomous vehicles (including cars and aircraft), &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8212/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bethics%5D%20closed%3A0&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.acm.org/about/se-code&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/previous-versions/1992-acm-code/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://www.bcs.org/category/6030&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_ethics&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyball&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8215/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26633" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8490" RevisionGUID="c3d9ac40-0570-4e73-9761-d6b601a1e067" CreationDate="2017-03-20T02:40:21.157" UserId="4" Text="Do we need to provide guidance for questions related to ethics?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26634" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8490" RevisionGUID="c3d9ac40-0570-4e73-9761-d6b601a1e067" CreationDate="2017-03-20T02:40:21.157" UserId="4" Text="|discussion|on-topic-definition|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26635" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="112" RevisionGUID="668fc605-140f-4728-930b-35d7af7d024b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="**[ChrisF][1]** ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to put myself forward as an extra or backup moderator. **I don't want to take the place of anyone else who's willing and able to do the job**, but I thought it might be useful if there was somebody who &quot;knew the ropes&quot; so to speak.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm already a moderator on the [Web Applications site](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/users/21/chrisf) and I'm a 10K user on [Stack Overflow][3], [Super User][4] and [Meta Stack Overflow][5] so I know how the system works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/47&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/47/chrisf&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/59303/chrisf&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://superuser.com/users/289/chrisf&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/59303/chrisf" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26637" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1043" RevisionGUID="2bc87ec1-f07a-4dbf-8997-5e9f0af2d5da" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="[Yi Jiang](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/150097/yi-jiang) has put together a nice site that use the Stack Overflow API to display information on the moderator candidates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Click here to see all the information](http://se.awio.com/election.html).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The information presented is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What the candidate wrote when nominating themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Answers/Questions on the main site and it's meta&#xD;&#xA;* Up-vote/down-vote ratio&#xD;&#xA;* Average reputation earned per post&#xD;&#xA;* Average reputation earned per day.&#xD;&#xA;* Participation in other Stack Exchange sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It displays what Yi Jiang considers to be noteworthy badges and whether the nominee has the badge and a summary of their recent activity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The information is presented as is with no commentary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It came about from this question on MSO [Moderator nomination possibly useful statistics](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/75454/59303)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26638" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1542" RevisionGUID="1e98777a-ca2b-4b02-9567-d12d81e367d8" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="The only way to customise the look of the site is via user scripts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you check [Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/) there are some posted there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have positive suggestions then please edit them into your question. The designer, Jin, checks the sites from time to time and will see this question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26639" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2240" RevisionGUID="d6116fcb-5098-4611-a4be-24676a65ac1a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="&gt;*I posted a comment giving a link, but I'll copy the answer from there anyway  &#xD;&#xA;Thank you to [Alpine][1] from StackOverflow Meta for the answer.*&#xD;&#xA;(see http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/82988/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is related to coding, it should be on [Stack Overflow][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's related to higher level programming concepts or is subjective (but still related to programming), it should be on [Programmers][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;From [Introducing Programmers.StackExchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In a nutshell, **Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor** working through code issues. **Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard** working through higher level conceptual programming issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have **actual source code in the questions or answers**. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [Stack Overflow FAQ][4]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; enthusiast programmers, people who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; write code because they love it. We&#xD;&#xA;&gt; feel the best Stack Overflow questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have a bit of source code in them, but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; if your question generally covers … &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific programming problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a software algorithm&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software tools commonly used by programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - matters that are unique to the programming profession&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [Programmers FAQ][5]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; expert programmers who are interested&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in subjective questions on software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This can include topics such as: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software law &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Programming puzzles &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective does not mean “anything&#xD;&#xA;&gt; goes”. Please keep it professional at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; all times. If this is a question you'd&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be uncomfortable discussing with your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; colleagues in a work environment, it's&#xD;&#xA;&gt; probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**However, pay attention to the next bit of the FAQ, which explicitly lists the types of question that are off-topic. Programmers SE is not a free-for-all.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/157949/alpine&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26640" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2682" RevisionGUID="2e18ab34-5bb6-4550-90aa-b76403583dac" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="I'm with you on that. The homepage is actually &quot;Questions -&gt; active&quot;, and that should be shown when a new user first lands on the homepage (Questions marked as active, active tab marked as active).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't really care for the &quot;Unanswered&quot; menu item but the &quot;unanswered&quot; tab on Questions is kind of redundant. But it's the same across the Stack Exchange network and I don't see any of this changing, as it will take a lot of work for something that is annoying but not really a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've introduced a couple of non technical friends to different Stack Exchange sites and they did had some trouble navigating, especially in the first hour. The general user experience for any Stack Exchange site feels geared towards technical people, stuck to the era where it was only StackOverflow (or just the original triad).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was one major redesign since then, the recent update to the profile page. I wouldn't call it an improvement, but it does prove that the Stack Exchange people are actively working on changing major parts of the interface. And of course there are small interface improvements at each new build.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you should do is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Post related questions on the Stack Exchange interface to [User Experience Stack Exchange][1]. They have a more educated crowd on user experience, and it would help to back up your claims with some answers from there. But keep your questions [on topic][2].&#xD;&#xA; - And then arm yourself with those educated answers and post a question to [Meta StackOverflow][3], which acts as Meta StackExchange (yet another relic from when it was just StackOverflow and not a network of sites). Since the change would be network wide, it's a better place to post such questions than the Programmers meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will need major community support to change the menu, established sites generally don't like changing their navigation elements, as there's always the possibility of massively losing members. The &quot;if it's not broken, don't fix it&quot; principle is especially true for user experience, after a couple of months of using the site I know exactly where everything is and although I fully agree with you that the menu system is counter intuitive I don't really know if I will welcome a major change, which will mean that I will have to re learn where everything is and what it does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But with enough support from the community, any change to the system is possible. Go for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26641" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3429" RevisionGUID="a791c3a9-f429-4ac2-b13c-10640ba3e9c0" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Adapted from [meta.wordpress.stackexchange][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Recommended Reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Blog][2] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [I Move to Close This Question][3] &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;    How and why closing was introduced on Stack Overflow in 2008.&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; It’s important to note here that closing a question is a step on the road to deletion. Closing is effectively “nominate to delete”, as a question that can’t be answered is no longer truly “alive”. That said, some closed questions should be kept around. For example, duplicate questions that have totally different wording are sometimes useful. With the duplicates, people can find either variation with search terms and link through to the original.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions][4]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    About duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; Don’t answer questions that have already been answered elsewhere. Yeah, you might earn a couple of points of reputation, but, because you are duplicating content, you are actually making the internet worse. Why? Because that answer might be true today, but as technology changes, it might not be true tomorrow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Stack Overflow Question Lifecycle][5]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How and when questions are closed or deleted.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers][6], [Gorilla vs. Shark][7] and [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    About the _not constructive_ close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Meta Stack Overflow][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is a “closed” question?][10] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; * 24 votes to close per day (50 on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * 5 votes are required to close or reopen&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * Votes will expire after 4 days if the question does not reach 5 votes&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * Questions containing a bounty cannot be closed&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * You can only vote to close once per question&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * You can only vote to reopen once per question&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How do you reopen a closed question?][11] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; The owner must have 250 rep in order to vote to reopen their own question. Other users can also vote to reopen, but they must have a minimum 3000 reputation points.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Leaving comments about voting to reopen does nothing in and of itself. You can try and [address a specific user](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2035/notify-user-when-their-name-is-mentioned-in-comment-closed) who may have left a comment as to why they voted to close and ask them to help cast reopen votes if you think they voted in error.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  See also: [How do you challenge the closing of one of your questions?][12], [Why was my question closed and how to contact the closer][13] and [My question has been closed. What do I do now?][14] (on meta.crypto.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Closing/Migrating question instructions/guidance][15]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  A long explanation of the close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What can cause my question to be bumped?][16]  &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;  Close/reopen votes on the question do not bump the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Etiquette for closing your own questions][17] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; I don't think you should close your questions lightly. There are very few questions that have a definite answer that will never change, or that cannot be improved upon.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How to handle duplicate questions?][18]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not by tagging or editing, vote to close or flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Please add the ability to filter \[Closed\] questions out of my results][19] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Stick the closed:0 parameter in your search pipe and you're smoking out the closed questions: [closed:0](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A0)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; But if you're in the mood of puffing around the closed: [closed:1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1)&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  See also our [search tips][20]. &#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Allow question askers to close their own questions unilaterally][21]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Once you post a question it is not exactly YOURS in every sense of the word anymore, it belongs to EVERYONE.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  But you can _delete_ your own question as long as there are no upvoted answers.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How useful must a question be to be allowed?][22]  &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;  About the _too localized_ close reason, derived from [this question on Gaming][23]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; What value does this question have to anyone else on the planet, other than the one person who asked? In other words, what internet user is going to be searching for and finding information about a game one person vaguely remembers playing in broad terms?&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;  See also: [What questions should be closed with reason “too localized”?][24]&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Remove/downweight closed questions in “hot” question sort][25]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; I think there's a misconception here -- closing does not mean &quot;get this off my screen ASAP&quot;, closing means, &quot;this question should be re-evaluated by the community&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Can we have the ability to rescind a close vote before it closes?][26]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No. See Jeff’s answer … with a lot of negative votes. :)&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Close Votes expire too soon for low-traffic tags][27]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: Fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Close votes (and probably reopen votes) only expire after all of these conditions are met:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1. 4 days have passed since the last close vote.  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2. The question has more than 100 views.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Auto-deleting old, unanswered zero-score questions after a year?][28]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There is a garbage collector which works as follows:&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; If the question is more than 30 days old, and ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has -1 or lower score&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has no answers&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* is not locked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; If the question is more than 365 days old, and ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has a score of 0 or a score of 1 with a deleted owner&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has no answers&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* is not locked&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has a viewcount &lt;= the age of the question in days times 1.5&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has 1 or 0 comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; This check is run every week across all sites.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  **Each time you misuse the answer field for pseudo-comments you break the garbage collector.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Do “fix my code pleeese!” questions qualify for closure as “too localized”?][29]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Yes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## My own summary after a long reading session&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing is not deleting. A closed question is still visible, it can be improved and reopened. It [doesn’t affect the accept rate][30] but prevents potentially useless answers. Help us to stay [on focus][31], use your close votes.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a moderator (on WordPress Stack Exchange) I don’t like to act unilaterally. Your close votes are helping me and the other moderators to decide and we don’t feel so bad if we close a question. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://wordpress.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1035/73&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10582/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/36415/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/19126/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/119638/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/q/144/1910&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/32490/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/48578/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/5215/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10841/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/7913/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10363/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/70521/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1455&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/4818/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/107153/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/915/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/97556/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/78048/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/82874/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/08/new-question-asker-features/&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26642" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3470" RevisionGUID="4fa81fce-b177-424e-aa3b-3cc7b2982ecc" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="This is will be fixed in the next build.  I blame [Jin][1] and his wonky fonts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/147574/jin" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26643" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3984" RevisionGUID="f8a79a5e-a86d-4fc8-81b6-9950e9be69b6" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="##The general policy on deletions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Why are some questions or answers removed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are extremely off topic, or of very low quality, may be removed at the discretion of the community and moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Over time, closed questions that are not useful as signpoints to other questions may also be removed, as well as questions which have no significant activity over a very long period after being asked. For additional guidance, see How to Ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - commentary on the question or other answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asking another, different question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - “thanks!” or “me too!” responses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - exact duplicates of other answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - barely more than a link to an external site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - not even a partial answer to the actual question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you wish to improve an existing answer, click edit. For additional guidance, see How to Answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the policy, I'm sure you are aware of it, I'm only including it for completeness. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Questions with historical significance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a [historical lock](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for) that has been introduced (fairly recently) as a counter measure to link rot: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What is the purpose of a Historical Lock?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A historical lock preserves older content that was very popular when it was originally posted, but is now off-topic or otherwise out of scope for the site it is posted on. Historically locking a post ends the debate over whether a question should be kept on the site or deleted, and is often the final state of a question that has been deleted and undeleted more than once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **How are questions affected by historical locking?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In addition to the post notice being prominently displayed, posts which are historically locked are &quot;frozen in time;&quot; they cannot be voted on, answered, edited or commented. Historically-locked questions are omitted from normal question lists (those on the home page, /questions, and the various per-tag lists), but can still be found by searching for words in the post or title (via either site-search or Google, etc). The visual appearance of the entire post is altered by removal of the voting arrows from the question and all answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that historical locked questions on meta sites are not hidden in this manner, though their answers are still frozen in the same fashion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions can be historically locked when:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is contentious; i.e. it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When is it not appropriate to historically-lock a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should not be historically locked if they:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Are being actively maintained, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Have little or no redeeming value.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A good rule of thumb: If the question does not minimally meet Jeff Atwood's 3rd rule in the &quot;[We Hate Fun Here](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/)&quot; blog post, it's probably not a good candidate for historical locking. The third rule is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Does this question teach me anything that could make me better at my job? Can I learn something from it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I request a historical lock on a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Flag the question for moderator attention, with the &quot;custom description&quot; option. In the flag description, explain why you think the post should be historically locked. A moderator will evaluate the question using the criteria outlined above, and will either lock the question, or decline your flag with an explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Alternatively, if you want to try and gain more community support for the question, or contest the moderator decision, you can post a question here on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you are currently under 10K, your only option to request a historical lock is to post a question about it on Meta. I would advice you to use a far more appropriate tone that in this question, and: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Clearly explain why you think the question has redeeming value,&#xD;&#xA;- Politely request from the community to review it and decide whether it should be historically locked or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not _every_ deleted question qualifies for the historical lock, please do _not_ waste everyone's time by bringing up questions on Meta that clearly don't qualify. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Clarification:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The historical lock is only meant for _deleted_ questions (or questions that are about to be deleted), locking closed questions prevents them from being edited and voted on. Furthermore the community cannot reverse a lock, while it can (and often does) reverse a closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Changing the policy &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears you disagree with it. Fair enough. Change it. Stop complaining about it, and change it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I'd support any **constructive** attempt to solve the problem, however I must point out that there have been tons of discussions on Stack Overflow about deletions, and although the &quot;link rot&quot; problem is true for popular Stack Overflow questions it's almost completely irrelevant for lower traffic sites like Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand that clicking on a link, only to find a 404 page stinks, but should also understand that keeping crap around stinks more. And although there might be some gems amongst our deleted questions, most of them are plain crap. This is _not_ Stack Overflow, if you are interested in changing Stack Overflow's or the network's policy, please post your question on [Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meta Programmers is a place were we discuss Programmers specific issues, and from a Programmers perspective **the deleted popular questions that were linked all over the place were _not_ ours to begin with**. Unfortunately tons and tons of crap were migrated here from Stack Overflow in the early days of the site. Most of these questions were closed (at some point), which send them back to Stack Overflow. What was deleted here was their (locked) rejected migration stubs. What was linked all over the place was their Stack Overflow URL, and not (so much) their Programmers one. If you want to make a case for them, please do it on Stack Overflow, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally speaking, closed but popular questions are _not_ being deleted on Programmers, at least not systematically. I've deleted more posts than all my fellow moderators _combined_, if popular questions were being deleted, trust me, I'd know it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Are we making the internet better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, let's what our most voted deleted questions are: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. What's your favorite “programmer ignorance” pet peeve? (+410),&#xD;&#xA;1. What's your most controversial programming opinion? (+391),&#xD;&#xA;1. What real life bad habits has programming given you? (+368),&#xD;&#xA;1. As a programmer what single discovery has given you the greatest boost in productivity? (+315),&#xD;&#xA;1. How to hide Thinking at Work so that the Non-Programmers don't suspect Slacking? (+257)&#xD;&#xA;1. What are the best RSS feeds for programmers/developers? (238)&#xD;&#xA;1. Best Java book you have read so far (+211)&#xD;&#xA;1. How did you get your first programming job? (+140) &#xD;&#xA;1. Does the D programming language have a future? (+138)&#xD;&#xA;1. What's wrong with cplusplus.com? (+128)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;Best Java book you have read so far&quot; one is the one (from the list) with the most views, around 33K. And zero answers. Yeap, zero. It's a question that got all of its answers on Stack Overflow, and 99% of it's activity, including views, there. Gone. Again, if you want to make a case for it, go to Meta Stack Overflow please, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly _don't_ know if we are making the internet better. However having (partially) reviewed some of the above questions, I don't see any indication that we are making the internet worse by deleting them. _If_ they were originally asked on Programmers and were part of our community's history, we would have a whole different discussion, but right now all I can say about them and their eventual fate is: **meh**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#The blog post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was the worst possible example you could bring forth: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The question was deleted long time ago,&#xD;&#xA;1. I could only find five links to the Programmers version of it,&#xD;&#xA;1. The blog post _clearly indicated_ that it would lead to a 404 for most people,&#xD;&#xA;1. The URL was `nofollow`, so there wasn't an issue with indexing,&#xD;&#xA;1. The only reason the URL was included was for our 10K users to be able to review it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, the completely inappropriate tone you chose for your question made me re-think the whole effort to salvege **old and long forgotten** deleted questions by converting them to blog posts. Although I do not have any expectations for appreciation for my efforts to give back to the community, I am not a moron and will _not_ freely volunteer my time to promote the community through an activity that has absolutely nothing to do with my diamond status when this is what I get for it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At some point you got to say enough is enough. I've removed the url from the blog post, so users who would deliberatily click on a link that says &quot;hey, this is deleted&quot; won't have a bad experience. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Trash Stack Exchange solution (and its many variants)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been proposed countless times, and every time it has been denied by Stack Exchange. Personally I find it a good enough solution, but Stack Exchange doesn't seem to care enough for hosting content that has been deemed unsuitable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Stargazer712's proposal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stargazer712 made what I must admit is an [interesting suggestion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3976/25936) (carefully hidden under tons of borderline insulting crap). However it's based on a misunderstanding of the scale of the effort to salvage questions by converting them to blog posts. We are certainly not talking about converting _every_ deleted question to a blog post, I have found 5 so far that I'd like to salvage, plus another one from Stack Overflow and _no one_ else has shown any interest in this. So, for all intents and purposes when we are talking about the blog as a way to salvage questions, we are talking about a total of six questions. That's it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that 2 days after you posted this you still haven't brought forth any other evidence of systematic deletion of popular content with at least some redeeming value on Programmers, I'm sorry but I'll have to dismiss this as a non issue. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, we had numerous organized clean up efforts in the past that included deletions. I'm honestly hoping those are _not_ the deletions you have in mind, as all the organized clean up efforts were discussed thoroughly on Meta before they began, and only began when it was obvious that the community supported them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you do update your question, please either ping me in chat or post a comment here so I can review your updates. Apologies for the tone in my earlier answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26644" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5166" RevisionGUID="6ffae4c5-8c6d-4add-8b35-7bf3dcc709f7" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="&gt; Will deleting this post take away further consideration of whether my account can be considered unbanning?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deleting a question would have quite the opposite effect, as question ban considers also deleted questions, whenever they are deleted from you, or other users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you can do is putting the question in shape, fixing it basing on what [George Stocker][1] said in his answer here.  &#xD;&#xA;The alternative is getting up-voted for answering questions asked by other users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/16587/george-stocker" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26645" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5377" RevisionGUID="f5391b50-b6d6-4b26-9cf8-4d6c2ff7be44" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="In September 2012 [registration requirement to ask questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4001/31260 &quot;as announced here&quot;) has been introduced:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In the past 60 days, 76% of all questions from unregistered users have been either down-voted below 0, closed, deleted, or some combination of the three. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;That's a total of 182 questions, compared to 877 similarly bad questions from *registered* users. It's a relatively small number, but as a percentage of the total it's high enough that implementing #1 holds little risk - at worst, you'll lose maybe a question a day from someone too lazy to register. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;So, I've turn on the registration requirement in order to ask questions here. Let's **check back in a month or so** and see if it made any difference...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that **more than 3 months** passed, is it time to somehow see if it made a difference?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I recall correctly, back then one of major concerns against this was that it may somehow inhibit asking good questions. With this in mind I think it would make sense to find out about the differences in the amount / rate of &quot;good&quot; questions (defined as say, open with non-negative score).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Given that registration presumably simplifies handling of [question bans](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-ban/info &quot;what's this&quot;) I think it would be particularly interesting to estimate if there was a difference in amount (rate) of such bans.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;It would be also interesting to study the difference in &quot;ban failure rate&quot;, which could be estimated as percentage of users caught at attempts to overcome it: those who created fake accounts that were later discovered and merged into original banned account.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It looks quite simple how to get upper bound of detected attempts to abuse question ban. First, let's count how many accounts were added in last 4 months, as of Jan 12 these are roughly between [62044](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/62044) and [78338](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/78338), `78338-62044=16294`. Now if we find how many of these accounts are gone, as indicated by respective user profile being `404 Not Found`, this will give us how many accounts were either self-deleted, or gone through legitimate merges, or... **and this is exactly what I'd want to estimate**... or were merged as a result of detected abuse of question ban. It is of course impossible to manually scan 16K+ profile pages, wonder if this could be done somehow automagically?&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26646" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5393" RevisionGUID="3202a00d-192e-413d-8800-1506b2c8e3e6" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="It was closed because 5 users thought that it didn't belong on this site and they voted to close it. Although the majority of the five users decided that it was off topic, &quot;not constructive&quot; would probably have been a better reason. The question exhibits several characteristics that make it unsuitable for the Stack Exchange format - it is a [list question](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), there's no criteria on which to rate answers other than personal opinion, and it focuses on requesting resources rather than sharing a combination of knowledge and experiences." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26647" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5416" RevisionGUID="2327baa4-5226-4866-91d3-2a6f1a0db8ed" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="I would have chosen &quot;Not Constructive&quot; as it's asking for a list of debugging techniques.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[List questions](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info) aren't a good fit for the Stack Exchange Q &amp; A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's entirely possible that 2 people selected this reason, but the displayed reason is always the one chosen by the majority.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can edit it so that it's not calling for a list and your edit doesn't invalidated the existing answers we can consider reopening - though I'm not making any guarantees." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26648" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5438" RevisionGUID="3bf70207-8108-4f31-a3a1-3ebb9b3a7e1a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="There exists a grace period for 5 minutes after the first submit that rolls all edits in that time into the original post so they don't count so you can make those quick minor edits. Otherwise start taking advantage of the instant preview it works great and it seems pretty crazy that you prefer more clicks to format your answer. Also please note that posting a partially complete answer and rapidly editing more and more info is somewhat discouraged behavior as it creates the [fastest gun in the west][1] problem. As for a Question it's in your best interest to post as good of a question as possible the first time, because once its posted people will start voting on it and you could wind up have a bunch of down-votes or close votes that could have been avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason the threshold exists is to prevent people from continually editing their answers/questions which [bumps](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info &quot;what's this&quot;) them to the top of the page for more rep from upvotes, 10 was decided as a fair number to allow people to benefit from providing meaningful updates and prevent bad people from benefiting too much. Moderators also have the ability to remove CW status, but this is rarely done and generally requires an [exceptional answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3527/31260 &quot;example request for an exceptional answer&quot;) that a user has obviously put forth a lot of effort to maintain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/9731/203115" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26649" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5562" RevisionGUID="5b7ca772-570d-4617-85f9-c11d96df21c1" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="I for one voted to close as [NARQ](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;what's this&quot;) because of the text I read in [rev 1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/187231/1):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to create a application in VB6 which blah-blah. Is it possible to create one and how to create one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You see, I didn't care (and still don't) if the _blah blah_ part is OT or whatever else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stuff like that reads gimmecodez / do my research and means NARQ, &quot;cannot be reasonably answered in its current form&quot;, we're not a code / research factory here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26650" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5843" RevisionGUID="d69910bc-4b2b-4dc5-97a7-8a90756a1b83" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Some recent posts make me feel like these could be automatically rejected by [quality filter](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/quality-filter/info &quot;what's this&quot;), thus saving community efforts for better quality questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To develope My Own linux Distro for Linux Beginners.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195209/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To Know How To prepare An understanding Doc To Track what I am Doing On daily Basis So that I can Be update To my Work.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195203/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I am A New Joinee In a major MNC And Currently I am Working In Vitria Team I dont Know Much about Vitria From Career Persepective.Plz Guide&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195204/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Above are full literal quotes of the posts, I did not change anything.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently it has been announced that quality filter is tightened at Trilogy sites (for your convenience, announcement is quoted below).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* As far as I understand, SE team is [open to consider similar change for Programmers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/174097/is-it-time-to-tighten-up-the-question-quality-filter/176875?noredirect=1#comment531396_176875 &quot;quote source&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the sad truth is that on Programmers, even questions with a maximum quality score fare worse on average than the ones passing the threshold I just put in place on SO. We can try tweaking the threshold there too, but it's probably worth a separate discussion on meta.programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we please somehow adjust quality filter at Programmers to prevent posting low quality stuff like in above examples?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the reference, announcement of [filter adjustment at Trilogy sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/176875/165773 &quot;here&quot;) is as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've bumped up the threshold below which questions will be blocked. The majority of *recently-asked* questions that fall below the new threshold do not fare well on Stack Overflow (i.e. they are closed, deleted, and/or down-voted). &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The down-side is that short questions will be harder to post (this is more than just a length check, but short + poor spelling / caps / punctuation / formatting will damn a post more readily). At this point, I think that's a fair trade-off on Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I've also increased the threshold on Super User and Server Fault; although the volume is lower there, they field even fewer reasonable questions in this range. A quick check of other high-traffic sites does not appear to justify raising this anywhere else at this time.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;FWIW: Stack Overflow already rejects something like twelve hundred questions a day based on this check - that'd amount to about 13% of questions if a lot of them weren't just the same folks retrying more or less the same text over and over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update** for the reference, at the &quot;quality score&quot; list provided in [this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5857/31260 &quot;thanks Shog!&quot;): first of above examples scores 70, second - 83, third - 81." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26651" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5849" RevisionGUID="09c41137-1bc6-41c7-96c7-e4f5cafe0d7e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="I went on a search for &quot;what do you think&quot; last night after seeing a few &quot;what do you think&quot; questions get asked, or answered and closed - this was one (of many) that I found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many times new users attempt to [use old open questions as examples for why their question should be remain open](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info &quot;respective tag wiki at MSO&quot;).  Closing old questions that don't fit the current quality standards helps limit this avenue of misunderstanding about the site scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often new users will find an &quot;what do you think&quot; question and answer it.  These questions, because of their age, votes, and views will cause it to immediately jump to the top of the hot questions, which attracts more answers of questionable merit.  These new answers to &quot;what do you think&quot; are often quite poor and garner downvotes resulting in a poor new user experience answering questions on P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Locking is not available to most people, and is actually a stronger action than closing as it also prevents comments and votes (and new answers as closing does).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing does not mean deletion.  As I understand it, having answers (and upvoted answers) will prevent such automated cleanups (of negative voted, unanswered questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There seems to be some misgivings about the questions...  My close vote spree included:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What do Java developers think of Scala?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25509/what-do-java-developers-think-of-scala)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think of the F# language?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3066/what-do-you-think-of-the-f-language)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think of the Joel Test?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2776/what-do-you-think-about-the-joel-test)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think of this book “JavaScript Programmer's Reference”](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73967/what-do-you-think-of-this-book-javascript-programmers-reference)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think about the fork of Redmine : ChiliProject](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/64477/what-do-you-think-about-the-fork-of-redmine-chiliproject)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think would be a perfect testing tool for waterfall model?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45345/what-do-you-think-would-be-a-perfect-testing-tool-for-waterfall-model)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think about design by contract?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1158/what-do-you-think-about-design-by-contract)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you think of this generator syntax?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41277/what-do-you-think-of-this-generator-syntax)&#xD;&#xA;- [What do you use string reversal for?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/24691/what-do-you-use-string-reversal-for)&#xD;&#xA;- [what do you do to keep learning?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45803/what-do-you-do-to-keep-learning)&#xD;&#xA;- [What skills do you think a performance engineer should have?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59292/what-skills-do-you-think-a-performance-engineer-should-have)&#xD;&#xA;- [Licenses that prevent usage in weapons](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/66983/licenses-that-prevent-usage-in-weapons)&#xD;&#xA;- [Will enterprise software development kill my dreams?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/94256/will-enterprise-software-development-kill-my-dreams)&#xD;&#xA;- [Should I include C private tutoring experience on my CV ( resume )?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/57953/should-i-include-c-private-tutoring-experience-on-my-cv-resume)&#xD;&#xA;- [Do you own your tools?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43838/do-you-own-your-tools)&#xD;&#xA;- [Legality/Ethics of crawling a site to basically copy its database?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98111/legality-ethics-of-crawling-a-site-to-basically-copy-its-database)&#xD;&#xA;- [What to do with bad source code?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29671/what-to-do-with-bad-source-code)&#xD;&#xA;- [Punishing users for insecure passwords](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/92199/punishing-users-for-insecure-passwords)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If people feel that my votes on any of these in error, please help me understand where they were the mistake was made. My skill set at rewriting old questions is not the greatest, and I would welcome any help in reformulating these questions into ones that can be reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26652" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5898" RevisionGUID="56377f21-c84b-4c36-985a-97abc0b1bfc2" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="&gt; &quot;Duplicate of&quot; should be a transitive property (if A is a dupe of B, and B is a dupe of C, then A must be a dupe of C)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assumption of transitivity looks wrong; per my reading of the definition in [duplicate-questions tag wiki](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/duplicate-questions/info), it is not required:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to tell the user ...something like, _“Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.”_ Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question `A` having an answer in `B` does not automatically guarantee that it also has an answer in `C`, even though question `B` may have its answer in `C`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a simplified example, imagine &quot;chain of duplicates&quot; like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A:` How do I see result of multiplying 2 by 2?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B:` How do I multiply?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke `multiply` method of `arith` package. In order to view result, you invoke method of `display` package.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C:` How do I do arithmetic operations?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke appropriate method of `arith` package, like `multiply`, `divide` etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's easy to imagine readers being satisfied by closures `A -&gt; B` and `B -&gt; C` since answers given solve the problems asked about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, closure `A -&gt; C` would be problematic: first question asks about how to display results, while answer in the second question says nothing about this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note how question in `B` does not ask about displaying results, making dupe closure look reasonable. Also note how answer in `B` provides guidance _beyond_ its scope, along with addressing the question asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a more realistic example, refer to the non-transitive chain of duplicates at Meta Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A':` [Spiteful downvoting? Two fast DVs to my unrelated posts](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/178703/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B':` [What can I do if I'm the victim of serial downvoting?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/28756/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C':` [What is serial voting and how does it affect me?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/126829/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`A'` is closed as a duplicate of `B'`, which is in turn closed as a duplicate of `C'`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a closer look at [revisions history](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/178703/revisions &quot;here&quot;) and [comments](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/178703/spiteful-downvoting-two-fast-dvs-to-my-unrelated-posts#comment539909_178703 &quot;'changed the duplicate to one more relevant to the question asked...'&quot;), you will notice that initial closure has been changed from `A' -&gt; C'` to _narrower_ one, `A' -&gt; B'` because readers disagreed that _widest_ dupe target has answers relevant to the question asked in `A'`." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26653" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5928" RevisionGUID="ffaefe81-7101-466c-99c4-17090f618933" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Given the &quot;We were checking if you're paying attention!&quot; part of the flow you described, this was an audit rather than an actual &quot;this question needs to be closed&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given your timing and the review queue [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close/29657) was the [audit](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/review-audits/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are issues with audits that are occasionally brought up on MSO such as one that seems to be similar to your issue:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Close vote review audit flawed - fails without casting vote](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/179651/close-vote-review-audit-flawed-fails-without-casting-vote)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26654" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6240" RevisionGUID="52029860-22f9-4638-a764-37ca09abf45a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Site scope and question quality expectations seem to be set, stabilized and well understood by majority of _regulars_ long time ago, as discussed eg here: [Are you still confused about what Programmers is for?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my observations, most troublesome questions are either asked by newcomers or are old ones [bump](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info)ed by answers from newcomers which makes me feel that somehow, site &quot;image&quot; for those newcomers is blurred.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on several months of observations on questions that are exposed / promoted to SE network users via [collider](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info) I firmly believe that to large extent, misguiding newcomers about Programmers is caused by **[the way how questions are selected for exposure at collider](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/202962/165773 &quot;issue details and change request officially submitted here: 'Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign'&quot;)**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how I see collider damage to Programmers is described in more details in this answer: [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I think this is likely related to issues with answers quality in hot questions ([discussed here in more details](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;Answers quality in hot questions&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Hot garbage waves&quot; in the answers once or twice a week&#xD;&#xA;* poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making interesting and well presented problems look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/)  &#xD;&#xA;* regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;An &quot;outsider&quot; reading low quality answers in hot questions, could naturally think,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;hey here I can _chit-chat about how git is fantastic_ and get my portion of cheap upvotes, c00l&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a **steady source of misguided contributors**.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...the way how users can be confused about what Programmers are about is probably best explained in a [comment made by Ben Brocka](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13830_5482 &quot;here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;Often hot questions have lots of bad or meh answers that are bad enough to drag down quality of the content and general discourse (encouraging similarly bad new answers)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Side note. For the sake of completeness, I don't think that collider damage is contained within Programmers (and [Workplace](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1967/168 &quot;another site suffering from brain-damaging hotness formula: 'victims of the Stack Exchange(TM MultiCollider SuperDropdown(TM)'&quot;) for that matter).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As discussed eg [here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10706837#10706837), it looks like damage is spread over whole SE network, even though indirectly:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...really, say guys at SO are protected from _direct_ impact. Meaning when they see _meh_, they can flag _no-code_ and get crap deleted. But thing is, it's SO users who look at collider and who visit &quot;sticky&quot; questions and who pick the crappy attitude and they get back to SO and get posting _meh_ answers there  &#xD;&#xA;and, well, there are hundreds and thousands of them. And _meh_ attitude gets spread over multiple questions and SO mods only can delete minor part of crap that has been influenced through collider&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;they start thinking it's the norm. That's what low quality answers in hot questions teach readers. That's what &quot;educated&quot; readers spread further, to their answers to other questions. That lowers overall quality of answers in multiple other questions, that is the site-wide damage  &#xD;&#xA;This makes it look like good questions are those having many meh answers, the effect that is amplified by these questions being highly visible to collider audience - hundreds and thousands of SE users. Misguided users spread acquired attitude further into other questions and answers, posting stuff that follows what they saw at the &quot;cool&quot; (&quot;hot&quot;) questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;**nobody is really protected, collider spreads it across all the SE network**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26655" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6255" RevisionGUID="8d955a52-21f7-4eca-86cc-2ebe7ab36f9a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Recently, Nick did some tests on Stack Overflow to see what impact MathJax would have on Stack Overflow.  This was likely done in part to put to rest the 'heavy dependency' argument.  The full post can be read at [There's seriously no reason why LaTeX markup via MathJax shouldn't be enabled on SO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204003/213963)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a Stack Overflow page load (even when its doing 'nothing'):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Stack Overflow (no MathJax)][1]: **1.380s**&#xD;&#xA; - [Stack Overflow (with MathJax)][2]: **1.675s**&#xD;&#xA; - [Math.StackExchange][3] (with MathJax including content using it): **2.341s**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, for sites that have those pesky `$` that show up in code, it can be a breaking change for existing questions changing the rendering for:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...] which then stores into a $_SESSION - the problem is most of the settings will be set by javascript, and as javascript is a client side script you can't access PHP $_SESSION variables as its server based. [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Unexpected MathJax rendering][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, there are [reports](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204034/213963) that adding MathJax significantly impacts the time it takes for a preview to show up while writing an answer because MathJax needs to be called to rerender the preview *on every keystroke*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(numbers, links and images from the associated answers in the [MSO question](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/252282/289086))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131102_08_QQQ/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131103_DV_CS/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131102_BT_QR2/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MqzCa.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26656" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6284" RevisionGUID="062bbc56-c70f-4b7c-9b10-42e07f817e3a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="There are two core problems with this type of question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Temporal ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is tied (closely or loosely) to a specific event.  These questions have difficulty developing long term value for the site.  In this case we are talking about Typhoon Haiyan, however the response for another natural disaster (earthquake somewhere, storm in another nation - compare Sandy vs Haiyan, tsunami at Fukushima) will have different answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of it being related to a specific time also means that different agencies are available or applicable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## List question ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of the question leads to a list of options.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One can go through and add the latest group that is doing something.  The poverty question mentioned above has 39 undeleted answers (and another 3 deleted ones) that each list a way.  You get answers such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Has no you yet posted a link to hackers for charity? They have a list of volunteer positions that need to be filled, many of which can be done over the web.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange as a whole doesn't do a good job of handling [list questions](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info).  Listing charities or projects is no exception.  People haven't shown an interest in curating existing historical list questions, I have little faith in their willingness to curate and maintain *new* ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Stack exchange and content ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of Stack Exchange, as a whole, is to produce long term quality content that people see and trust in search results. With this in mind, it is difficult to use it to mobilize a response to a specific event.  The question becomes outdated, the answers become outdated (I've voted to delete questions asking about what sessions to attend at a conference in 2010, or how to register for MacWorld 2011).  Stack exchange just isn't designed to be able to handle that type of question and answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## What can be done? ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone wants to help with an event, form a chat room and get people to crowdsource a blog post for the Programmers.SE blog ( http://programmers.blogoverflow.com ).  But the Q&amp;A side of Stack Exchange is a poor way to get poor answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have your heart set upon having the question in the Q&amp;A side, talk with the moderators about making a good, long lasting question with a good answer and the necessary steps to use a collaborative lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, please remember that a question being collaborative does not absolve people of taking on the responsibility of making sure it retains good content." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26657" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6354" RevisionGUID="5fa5e6a0-fd25-4312-a38e-4a40e0b273f9" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="**Polling**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a poll based question. Multiple answers could address this question equally well, which makes it a poor fit the for StackExchange Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Guessing Game**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat and Robert Harvey)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;name that thing&quot; question. &quot;Name that thing&quot; are bad questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Minimal understanding** &lt;sub&gt;(aka WT? are you asking?)&lt;/sub&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to Jim G.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it doesn't demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should be on SO but doesn't meet their requirements**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to MichaelT)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers. It would best be asked on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet their minimum requirements. Please read the [Stack Overflow question checklist]&amp;#40;https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/260648/stack-overflow-question-checklist) and [edit] your question to make it suitable for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should have been on SO, but too old to migrate**  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to gnat &amp; MichaelT)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is [about] programming tools - it might belong to Stack Overflow, but is too old to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should be on SO and already is** (aka cross-posted)  &#xD;&#xA;(hat tip to ChrisF)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about an implementation issue but it has already been asked via cross-post on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Legal question**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is about legal matters outside of the community's experience and is best answered by an attorney with expertise in your jurisdiction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Blatantly off-topic**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because the main problem does not involve any of the topics outlined in the [help/on-topic]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`[help/on-topic]` links to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26658" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6529" RevisionGUID="57c74267-5909-48f1-ac69-76e383c801c5" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Aside from the relative merit of using sonnets to answer a question, the guiding principle is this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are for clarifying questions and answers, or asking for clarification.  Any other use makes them subject to removal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the comments are anything but that, cast a flag against them, and a moderator will remove them if they are onerous.  The key on any Stack Exchange site is to reduce the noise as much as possible.  This is already done by the system collapsing long strings of comments, but if the comment thread has become particularly noisy, a moderator can take care of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For some comment conversations, a &quot;would you like to move this conversation to chat&quot; link is offered.  Chat is more relaxed about these things; if you want to discuss the relative merits of answering Stack Exchange questions via sonnet, by all means avail yourself of the chat facility.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[How do Comments Work? (Meta FAQ)](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/19756/193412)  &#xD;&#xA;[How to Use the Comment Privilege (from the Help Center)](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/comment)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26659" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6534" RevisionGUID="005dcc35-61f4-4f1a-a5f1-b8e254af61e6" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="...if I was a homework cheater, I would applaud [an approach like that](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14258630#14258630 &quot;quote source, bold font is mine&quot;)...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm for deletion if not improved in a reasonable timeframe.  &#xD;&#xA;But minutes after closure is, I think, too speedy.  &#xD;&#xA;**I tend to give a few hours, a day** tops, or recent activity on the site with no edits made...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...because, you see, few hours of just staying there would be **good enough already** for my purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##I would applaud it, enjoy it, exploit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More, I would brag about my successful recipe at &quot;forums&quot;, sharing it with cheaters like me and helping them find a way to a promised land:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Create a throwaway account at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;2. Dump your homework.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;it's quite likely that you'll find a kind soul or two around to help&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;3. Keep squeezing solution details in question comments until it's deleted.&#xD;&#xA;4. If you're lucky to get an answer before question gets [closed](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10582/what-is-a-closed-or-on-hold-question &quot;what does that mean&quot;), do the same in answer comments.&#xD;&#xA;5. If you feel like nobody's paying attention, edit your question: that will [bump](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info) it and increase chances to attract someone willing to help.&#xD;&#xA;6. You may probably notice that question is getting funny marks -1, -2, -3... They call it [down-votes](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/down-votes/info) - don't worry about these, it's all imaginary.&#xD;&#xA;7. If you notice that you can't ask next question, don't worry. They call it [question ban](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th), all you need to circumvent it is to create new throwaway account and repeat above steps.&#xD;&#xA;8. [Only thing to keep in mind is](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3836/programmers-se-and-the-summer-of-love/3837#3837 &quot;paraphrased from here&quot;): **&quot;don't care how they react; go looking for the one guy that will actually do your homework for you (some people will)&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##As a community, what should we do about this approach?   &#xD;&#xA;Should we keep current &quot;policy&quot; as highlighted above, or should we consider speedier deletions?  Speedier deletions on down-voted questions may lead to the help-vampire hitting the question ban faster, but this can be worked around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're here to build a knowledgeable, rewarding community.  We're not here to feed the help-vampires or to reward answers on their questions as it merely encourages more of the bad behaviour.  How should we balance cleaning out the trash without appearing overly harsh to new community members that may be able to contribute once they learn the ropes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;To those interested in a broader context of above: **[what is the point to keep this homework dump visible?](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/what-is-the-point-to-keep-this-homework-dump-visible)**&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26660" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6592" RevisionGUID="b549109d-5604-4f0e-a9b3-6a050a555624" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Recent efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is [long known &quot;tradition&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112598/165773 &quot;see 'Annotate user accounts network-wide when they get rate-limited or banned' at MSE&quot;) of attempts to circumvent such bans by posting at inappropriate sites:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The core issue here seems to be the abusive &quot;I can't ask any more, so I'll ask my question on a similar site, in the hope it is migrated&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder how much impact could this have on Programmers. To understand this, I would like to find out how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be also helpful to learn similar statistics for questions from users who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* aren't _yet_ banned, but are already [warned about approaching a ban](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773 &quot;recently introduced feature&quot;) at SO&#xD;&#xA;* are rate-limited to ask questions at SO by [anti-recidivism system](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234518/165773 &quot;'If the user was blocked from posting questions at the time of deletion, then the recreated account will be restricted to posting only one question per week until the quality of their contributions is demonstrated'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically I am trying to figure whether it's something that can be dealt with in our regular ways, or it is worth looking for a dedicated approach to address (like, say, system triggering automated flag for mod attention when post from such a user gets close vote / flag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Let's burn down the close queue!](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [Block migration if user is suspended/question-blocked at destination](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/102293/block-migration-if-user-is-suspended-question-blocked-at-destination)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [Warn new users when they ask a question after a previous question is closed, downvoted, or deleted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [What is the reasoning behind limiting &quot;recidivists&quot; to post one question per week?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/234609/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSO) [Why won't the system allow me to ask questions for several days?](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/271543/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Stats on how attempts to circumvent SO question blocks impact other sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Meta P.SE) https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26661" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6789" RevisionGUID="63ed78e8-9932-4add-9c55-ddf6ab116b87" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Inspired by &quot;[How often are closed questions re-opened?](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/266709/1345223)&quot; on MSO, I wanted to find out how often questions on Programmers get re-opened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[One of the answers there](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/266724/1345223) provided two queries to get fairly close to the answer.  [Query One](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/210226/test) and [Query Two](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/210227/test) brought back 8783 closed questions and 743 reopened questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That gives Programmers a ~8.5% reopen rate for closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the super sneaky and amazing Shog9♦ used his super-duper developer powers and came up with much [more detailed numbers](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/266844/1345223) since his developer access gives him more details than what us mere mortals can glean from data explorer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, inquiring minds want to know.  What's the _**real**_ reopen rate for Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Bootnote: [Shog specifically asked me to open this question here on MPSE](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/266709/how-often-are-closed-questions-re-opened#comment70843_266844) &lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26662" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6815" RevisionGUID="dd092f57-6ccf-45f3-ba49-f56111e9da91" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="I posted a question after having thought about the concept for a week or so. I posted the relevant research I had done and the sample code I used for trying out the concept. The question was long and I still feel this is a site for long questions and proper analysis of concepts. Your site tour explains:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about what you have tried and exactly what you are trying to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I said I found a lot about this concept during a bug fix. I explained that I had written an article about this stuff on Codeproject. I also mentioned that I have no experience with other languages. All this was done within the rules defined by you. When you say include details, it means details - code, links etc., right? Is there a thing called **brief details** or **concise details** or **short details**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your site tour further explains:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Not all questions work well in our format. Avoid questions that are primarily opinion-based, or that are likely to generate discussion rather than answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked two to-the-point questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is there another name for the concept I have just described in common language?&#xD;&#xA; 2. Why compiler does not optimize obvious semantic inconsistencies?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I deleted my question, but the moderators can grab it back I know.&#xD;&#xA;These two questions are not **STUPID**. I was told by guys that they do not want to hear anything about what I did or where I posted my research etc. They do not want the **gory details**. What? The site asks me to post details. Who are these people who want **short, concise details**? Do they even understand what detail means?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone said that **what i had for breakfast** was irrelevant to them. Another guy mentioned that my code sample was **ridiculous**. All this within seconds of me posting my 1000 words question (including code). This surely means that they have not read the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I pointed them to the following link:&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254570/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who are these guys? What experience have they got? &#xD;&#xA;I can tell clearly that these guys have no experience of working in a team or mentoring. It will be really sad if they ever get employed because they surely will destroy the team they work with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only answer I received was not poisonous. It just said that the compiler writers have better things to do than to catch what would eventually be a runtime error. What? Really. What better things do you mean. Can you not give me examples where such runtime errors would be a disaster and compilers and tools employed for such an environment do such checking? What are the benefits of not doing such a checking etc. in normal environment?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you expect me to do? Post one line questions here? I could do that on StackOverflow. Had I posted something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How to use interfaces in C# to delegate a functionality?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am sure I would have been voted up to seventh heaven. These answers are so readily available that the guy answering receives a lot of points with minimal effort. If they have to dig to get an answer, they go berserk.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One guy also said that you are getting **a free code review** done here, so better get aligned to the rules laid down by the members. NO. I was not getting my code reviewed. I was trying to discuss something that troubles all beginners. Even if I was, I need not stoop and beg.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This attitude is poisonous and needs to be corrected. These guys need serious enlightenment. Real world is different from classrooms. Learn how to behave.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not intend to be a part of this community. Please delete my account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26663" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6839" RevisionGUID="3e9db61a-9af0-4359-9b91-3a759ca0ce4b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="The question being asked was [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254266/building-a-python-password-guesser) (10k link) (the struck out part is from an earlier revision).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have the python shell (IDEL) on my mac, but all of the tutorials i have seen online look different than mine and i was wondering if there is anything else I should download from python to get more than just the shell. &lt;s&gt; Also does anyone know any password guessing algorithms.&lt;/s&gt; Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To which I had a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The specifics of why a given tool doesn't match what you are expecting to see is best asked on Stack Overflow. However, you should make sure to include the text (code and output) of what you are doing and what you are expecting. The &quot;password guessing algorithms&quot; as asked is not appropriate anywhere on Stack Exchange. You need to do the research for that yourself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As described in the help center - [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) note the bit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question about how python (and specifically IDLE) is behaving is a question about a coding tool.  Thus, it belongs on Stack Overflow (note the [python-idle](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/python-idle) tag there - you should probably look through the existing [python-idle + osx](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/python-idle+osx) tagged questions - there are only 31 of them).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't find a question that matches what you are asking, you should ask a question *there*.  To help write a good Stack Overflow question, be sure to read the [Stack Overflow question checklist](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/260648/stack-overflow-question-checklist).  You will need to at least have the information about python version, osx version, the code you are running, what you are expecting, what your results are and make sure that its formatted well too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about how to use tools belong on Stack Overflow - not Programmers.SE.  Your question was closed here because it was off topic here and if it was migrated to Stack Overflow, it would likely have been closed there too because of the issues I mentioned previously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question of 'password guessing algorithms' is something *you* need to search for.  I can think of a dozen off the top of my head.  Because of this, the question of 'what is a good password guessing algorithm' is too broad - there are too many possible answers to it.  You *really* need to just think about this and do some research about it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26664" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6840" RevisionGUID="0e166253-cbe5-48ad-b0b1-03f325d909b9" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Per my observations, a lot of such posts come here because of misleading comments at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For an example, here are just few recent cases at SO that directly led to users posting very low quality, outright off-topic questions because of comments directing them at Programmers: [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25469779/what-is-the-average-yearly-salary-in-singapore-for-a-candidate-of-3-years-of-wor), [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25366016/how-can-i-socket-programming-to-online-examination-system), [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25276812/any-tools-available-to-help-migrate-legacy-windows-6-1-mobile-app-to-windows-8-1#comment39392956_25276812), [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25090005/how-should-i-browse-a-huge-project-where-to-start#comment39040827_25090005).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice like you suggest will definitely be helpful in stopping at least most reasonable misguided newbies. However, I believe that we need stronger measures in cutting down the issue at its source.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an example, in [first case](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25469779/what-is-the-average-yearly-salary-in-singapore-for-a-candidate-of-3-years-of-wor) I listed, recommendation to post at Programmers was given by a user with 15K SO reputation. If a newcomer gets such a _personal_ advice from such an _authoritative_ user, would this &quot;override&quot; any automatic notice they will see on their way? you bet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The right way to go would be to find and delete as much as possible misleading comments at Stack Overflow. &quot;Finding&quot; part is technically easy, all it needs is tweaking one of [Doorknob's queries](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/180319/165773) and studying its results. We did something like that this Spring when cleaning up &quot;+1 great post&quot; comments at Programmers. Searching for &quot;programmers + belongs&quot; will likely show us the worst offenders, although &quot;programmers + career&quot; and &quot;programmers + recommendations&quot; will likely work well too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* For example, [this SEDE query](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/133379/recent-p-se-comments) can help to find more misguiding comments ([hat tip to MichaelT](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/273228/why-was-my-purge-comments-flag-declined/273235#comment103787_273235 &quot;query mentioned here&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deletion part is tricky and requires help from SE developers. A while ago, I &quot;tested&quot; it - I flagged several comments using &quot;Other&quot; flag with verbose messages explaining why these should be deleted. All of my flags went through successfully, however I learned along the way that this way is _terribly_ inefficient. Involving diamond moderators and writing verbose explanatory messages for hundreds, possibly thousands garbage comments like &quot;ask careers at Programmers&quot;? give me a break.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is needed instead is to add &quot;programmers&quot; to the list of [&quot;sensitive&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/121226/165773  &quot;Yeah, you read it right - I want 'programmers' to be treated in comments same way as f-word, no kidding&quot;) words that trigger comment deletion with a single flag. That way would let us cleanup harmful garbage with a single &quot;too chatty&quot; or &quot;not constructive&quot; flag. (Optionally, it would be good to exclude from sensitive heuristics comments that refer famous **[toilet bowl guidance](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73382/165773 &quot;Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl&quot;)** but I don't insist on that.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another issue where help of SE dev team would be much appreciated is &quot;other&quot; [close reason](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/close-reasons/info) messages. You know, I am active close reviewer at SO. I focus strongly only on most terrible questions and totally skip the rest (except for infrequent &quot;known good&quot; audits, to keep more system faith in me). But even in these - I stress - totally, absolutely awful - questions I sometimes see &quot;try your garbage at Programmers&quot;. I don't even dare to think what happens in less awful (but still totally inappropriate) questions at SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The way to stop this would be to block close messages containing word &quot;programmers&quot; - SO close voters willing to &quot;help&quot; askers like that should totally drop that and try &lt;strike&gt;jQuery&lt;/strike&gt; their luck flagging for migration. Hopefully mod declines will teach them something at last." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26665" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6844" RevisionGUID="e4e17f9e-d226-4510-990d-e0e16e8aa350" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="As [September](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September) is coming, site is getting spammed by zero effort homework dumps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particularly _passionate_ spammers even drop their garbage at us at highest rate allowed (today examples: [1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254573), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254575), [3](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254567), [4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/254568) - 10K links). And prior examples are not an isolated incident. As pointed in [comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6844/please-increase-rate-limit-for-new-users-asking-questions-to-one-used-at-stack-o#comment18506_6844), next day after posting this request we've got yet another example separated by 10 minutes: [04:27](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254641/valid-segments-2), [04:38](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/254642/problem-cyclic-palindrome).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we please throttle spammers activity by raising rate limit the same way as it was done at Stack Overflow, ie to 1 question in 90 minutes for users with less than 125 reputation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note, given that [one of the spammers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/147424/samy-ragul) in above examples also has accounts at **Code Review** and **Code Golf**, it probably makes sense to consider similar limits for these sites as well.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Questions are now rate-limited to 1 per 90 minutes?](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/256324/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you need to ask questions more than every 1.5 hours, you _probably_ aren't putting enough thought, time or both into your questions, which isn't fair to us, as it diminishes the perceived quality of the resource we're working very hard to build and maintain...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;It's a bit unfortunate for those that _do_ ask good questions right off the bat, and bless you if you're in that very small minority - it won't take long for you to establish yourself, perhaps just one question could do it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Open letter to students with homework problems](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...If your question on Programmers.SE is just a copy paste of homework problem, expect it to be downvoted, closed, and deleted - potentially in quite short order.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers.SE and the Summer of Love](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3837/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Responding negatively to those folks who copy paste their homework assignments is just a waste of time.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;These people don't care how you react; they're looking for the one guy that will actually do their homework for them (some people will).  Consequently, your negative comment will have no effect on the OP, and will only succeed in irritating your fellow community members and alienating new visitors to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;A better response is to downvote the question, and cast a moderator flag with a custom explanation, like this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Request for speedy deletion: this question is a copy-paste of a homework assignment, with no effort on the part of the OP to do the assignment himself." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26666" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6880" RevisionGUID="898031ec-b347-4925-b411-42c2f86ad1f0" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Close voters at Programmers would better memorize the criteria for debugging questions to be [acceptable for Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/258685/839601 &quot;announced here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking debugging help (&quot;**why isn't this code working?**&quot;) must include the desired behavior, a *specific problem or error* and *the shortest code necessary* to reproduce it **in the question itself**. Questions without **a clear problem statement** are not useful to other readers. See: [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the [question in question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/255703/revisions), I for one picked the custom close reason that stated that question [isn't appropriate at both sites](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/255703/how-to-get-the-average-of-an-array?noredirect=1#comment516369_255703 &quot;'off topic on Programmers.SE, and would also get closed on StackOverflow'&quot;). It was pretty sad to see how it was migrated [against my will](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/54917/165773 &quot;known issue with closing system obscuring this information&quot;) and I immediately voted to close the incorrectly migrated question using above reason:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;&quot;Questions seeking debugging help (&quot;why isn't this code working?&quot;) must include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. Questions without a clear problem statement are not useful to other readers. See: How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example.&quot; – **gnat**, Stijn, Unihedron, ItachiUchiha, kiheru&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26667" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6983" RevisionGUID="e03b011c-b2c7-4f2c-9c82-50f4ec47d356" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Over here at Programmers, a lot of askers seems to misunderstand site-specific expectations of career related questions, which frequently results in questions closure and deletions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Propose to help question askers and editors by establishing tag-specific popup ([tag-tips](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/tag-tips)) for particularly troublesome career related tags:  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market], [tag:resume], [tag:career-transition], [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;(For the sake of completeness, implementation of above request also included [career-transition and career-_anyotherword_](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6983/improve-question-quality-by-informing-askers-of-expectations-in-some-career-rela/7112?noredirect=1#comment21415_7112) tags.)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggestion for popup content is as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** Career advice is off-topic per the [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  Please note that most career advice questions end up being closed for being too broad or impractical; try to make yours a [good subjective question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they require the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;* Please make sure your question has the proper scope.  It needs to apply to other programmers besides yourself.  &#xD;&#xA;* If your question can also be applied to other job fields, then it does not uniquely apply to software development and is not on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;* _Before_ asking, review this meta guidance: [Why was my question closed or down voted? -&gt; Career or education advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488).  Make sure your question avoids the problems listed in the guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope this measure could help question askers significantly. For detailed discussion of this proposal and some alternatives, refer prior question: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6950/current-state-of-the-job-market&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We are getting pummeled with the same off topic questions over and over again... The point here is to put something directly on the posting page... something more prominent than what we have now might make a dent in the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6940/clarification-on-what-is-career-advice  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; tag... seems to be causing more trouble than anything else&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it is also worth mentioning that in the past, career related tags have been through community cleanups ([1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1963/31260 &quot;Posse request: jobs/career/etc. tag cleanup&quot;), [2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2358/31260 &quot;Offering Solutions to the Career and Jobs Tags&quot;)) meaning that older content in these tags has already been through some extra scrutiny and generally deemed worth keeping." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26668" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7007" RevisionGUID="b7491ed1-9720-4cab-b3d1-ed7338613d91" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="I [reverted the changeset](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/277642/105971) that introduced this problem. The fix will be live in the next build." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26669" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7018" RevisionGUID="7e2811de-fafc-4490-b22a-af09a2dffd71" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="**Update: [this chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/26942/programmers-cv-please)** has been established with primary focus on question closes, reopens etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that chat appears to work more or less fine, I think it makes sense to continue using it. Additional benefit is that chat messages can't be voted down, this addresses concerns mentioned in [another answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7015/31260 &quot;'stop downvoting people who post on meta trying to get questions fixed...'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;A limitation of chat worth keeping in mind is that users with rep under 20 can only read it. But meta has this limitation too, it is lower (5 rep) but still. I don't know a good solution for that, so to keep things simple I will simply assume users having sufficient rep to participate. For users with insufficient reputation, the only reliable approach to communicate seems to be in comments under their posts, optionally [moved to dedicated chat room](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237976/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A drawback of current approach that I am particularly uncomfortable with is that Whiteboard room [scrolls too fast](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions/7018#comment20061_7014 &quot;as been discussed in comments&quot;). Few hours out of chat and I will most likely miss mention of the post I could be interested to improve. Chat pings that take me a while to reply are inconvenient because my reply to these lands in a totally changed context. That's not good. In fact, that's very bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparent solution for this appears to establish a **dedicated chat room** focusing strictly on question improvements. This is just the way I would want to have it, except that [there is a risk](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions/7018#comment20062_7014 &quot;as (again) been discussed in comments&quot;) that room gets frozen due to inactivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way I can think of to deal with room freezes is by using moderator flags: if one finds that room is frozen, they simply flag the post they want to discuss and ask moderator to unlock. *Unless moderators indicate that they would decline such flags* I am going to assume below that this way will work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we pick dedicated chat room approach, it would be worth to check the way how [SO close reviewers](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251955/so-close-vote-reviewers) approach this. In brief, they have a room and a cross-linked meta post. As far as I can tell, most activity goes within room, but they also sometimes update / bump the meta post when needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that their gig runs fine for almost a year, we may probably learn something from their experience. (Some might find it ironic to learn from guys that seem to act in somewhat _opposite direction_ but I honestly don't care:).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, I think the dedicated chat room is the way to go (coupled with dedicated meta post, like of SO close reviewers). This doesn't mean though that meta is to be avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Technically, meta provides much richer platform to support complicated improvements and in-depth discussion, it can offer better visibility and powerful [meta effect](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204311/165773). Meta is less likely to be [blocked by corporate firewalls](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/114297/165773 &quot;see 'Provide an alternate URL for chat rooms' at MSE&quot;) etc. Lower barrier to participate (5 rep instead of 20 for chat) is also a benefit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As demonstrated by [broken-windows-review at TWP](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/broken-windows-review &quot;tag dedicated to Workplace questions improvement&quot;), meta can be successfully used to improve questions if done right. This experience also looks worth studying, especially because purpose of review at TWP is very much like one we discuss here: their primary focus is on salvaging and improving the questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26670" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7193" RevisionGUID="2e382a54-9f1b-47bb-bc39-d094bcb3599c" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="A (first-day) user quickly dropped two [code dumps](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/258685/839601) at our front page: [1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/273937/problem-to-load-code-of-captcha-in-codeigniter), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/273938/how-to-run-this-code-in-codeigniter-where-to-save-all-these-files-in-codeigniter). That's all-right, 'it happens, and these will probably be closed and deleted soon, which is fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What made me raise eyebrows though is [their SO profile](http://stackoverflow.com/users/4590497/mahesh) - it also shows that they are a first day visitor, but there are _no_ questions (even though one may suspect that users like this one will try to push their stuff anywhere where possible).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How come? Does Stack Overflow have a magic dust to _repel_ stuff like that? If yes, can we have some of it at Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26671" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7243" RevisionGUID="31cfa4d1-3ad1-4bf9-8862-0bcc219a5b69" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Stack Overflow has got an **[interesting feature](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/288387/839601 &quot;find more detailed description here&quot;)** that may be related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't tell that it helps to lower amount of bad questions _asked_ (I honestly don't know if this is possible at all) - but it _at least_ helps to save site home page from being polluted by such questions (bold font in below quote is mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;*All* questions flagged Very Low Quality now immediately enter [Triage](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7053/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...and **while these questions are being triaged, they're *not* shown on the home page. Take *that*, [wall of crap.](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so)**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;[![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1rTGm.png)](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* MSE discussion of instilling above features network wide:  &#xD;&#xA; [Triage and Help &amp; Improvement review queues at sites other than Stack Overflow?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/251737/165773)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26672" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7252" RevisionGUID="47754ed1-808a-40e5-a638-be3f8893125b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="I just made some updates to https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/faq-index-for-programmers-se, adding some missing [meta-tag:faq] questions, mostly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that each of the questions in [meta-tag:faq] should have a link back to the index, similar to the links on MSE ([example](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8010/how-can-i-get-answers-fast)) and SO ([example](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/271542/why-wont-the-system-allow-me-to-ask-questions-for-several-days)). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this link should take the form:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;`[Return to FAQ index](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1646)`&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the bottom of the question post for each FAQ entry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't have edit privileges here and suggested edits are not allowed on [meta-tag:faq]. Presuming there are no objections to adding a FAQ index backlink to each entry, does somebody want to make these edits?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these changes are made, a note should probably be added to the end of the &quot;How can a question be added to this FAQ&quot; section at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1647/121251 as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26673" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7302" RevisionGUID="7a066179-5622-413b-ac94-83b4e411b43f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Without an explanation, this answer may become useless in case if someone else posts an opposite opinion. For example, if someone posts a claim like...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; For the ASP.NET part (your example case), *avoid* pointing them to &quot;Robust ASP.NET Exception Handling&quot; book.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; And as for the Java part, books to *avoid* are &quot;Robust Java: Exception Handling, Testing, and Debugging&quot; and &quot;Java Exception Handling&quot; (another book with an alike name).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...how would your answer help reader to pick of two opposing opinions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvote arrow tooltip says &quot;This answer is not useful&quot; - maybe that's what voters thought, although one can only guess - system is [fairly strict in keeping votes anonymous](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/285253/839601)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26674" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7474" RevisionGUID="776d4f7e-2ceb-4307-bddf-7e501b5d7db2" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Call me dumb if you wish but I really [don't understand](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489) what is written in the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the meaning of manage c++? -- Just want to ask what is the meaning of manage c++?. Follow up question, how does it differ from c++?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for comments referring to some place elsewhere which could help one understand the question, I think the problem with this approach has been best covered in a discussion at sister meta, [Should a question that is meaningless without viewing an external link be closed?](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/266910/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt;  Unclear what you are asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;would seem to be the most appropriate close reason here... questions (like answers) should really stand on their own merits and only have external links for references etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone understands what the question is about, they would better edit it into a shape allowing other readers to understand it too (if only to vote close for other reason, although [protecting from getting senseless guesses as answers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/98026/165773 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;) wouldn't hurt either)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26675" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7584" RevisionGUID="aee988e7-7838-4411-9c23-1ed0bd4ed479" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="There is a question about [data storage in Android without SQLite][1]. As of its [meta-post][2], it was at first proposed to belong to Programmers (and later retracted). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It specifies the kind of data and the use case, and that it needs to be on android, so this is (hopefully) not too broad, as &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is a question about a recommendation, yet it does not require any products, it is more about the technology type to use (ORM vs some kind of NoSQL).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does that question belong to Programmers, or not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32246376/data-storage-without-sqlite&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/305292/please-explain-why-this-question-was-closed-as-off-topic/305295#305295" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26676" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7610" RevisionGUID="1e2d025e-e77a-4cfc-9269-625a478ee8fe" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Related: [Create a New Stack Overflow Instance for Beginner Users and Content](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/253646/839601) (MSO).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are getting many off-topic / implementation and coding kind questions where askers appear to be aware of Stack Overflow (at [10m questions](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/10m-questions-milestone/info) over there, who isn't) but for various reasons seem to suspect that their questions won't be well received there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This problem seems to be relatively new. In the past, Stack Overflow was lenient about question quality and askers didn't tend to bother worrying if their quality is okay. Things seem to have changed after [SE Quality Project](http://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/se-quality-project/info) features were rolled out at Stack Overflow and some of those who would previously ask over there, started looking to try their luck elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, they usually don't mention using Programmers as a proxy for Stack Overflow (they maybe think it's not important) but sometimes, [it leaks through](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297569/easy-create-junit-test-for-class-on-eclipse#comment617336_297569 &quot;example - 10K link&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want ask for StackOverflow but i cant becouse my one post have -3...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do something to prevent... _lifehacks_ like above from becoming popular?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Some folks (probably with [Math.SE background](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi?noredirect=1#comment22868_7610 &quot;as explained in comments&quot;)) even invent funny theories for why they [avoid Stack Overflow](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293373/how-to-run-c-file-if-header-class-and-main-are-not-in-the-same-folder#comment607486_293373 &quot;example - 10K link&quot;): _'my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here_'  (I think these theories became popular after Stack Overflow started burying very low quality questions in Triage, which cut their chances to get answers, even as hints in comments.)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is much larger than us, they get about 8K questions a day average. Even amount of questions they close (800 a day) is 20 times more than total questions we get (less than 50).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Site like ours can be totally flooded by &quot;Stack Overflow learning and training&quot; kind attempts if this becomes widespread. I would not want this to happen. I come here to learn and contribute to Programmers topics, not to guide those who are scared or blocked by Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26677" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7614" RevisionGUID="dc1d83fe-4c57-4637-b586-d1562bd7319c" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Yes, this is a duplicate of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/ intended to re-ask the question more clearly and without the tangents of trying to explain it in the comments that have distracted from the core question.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For some reason, Programmers.SE is seeing an increase in the rate of new users asking pure code and debugging questions.  These questions are, and have always been, off topic on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qf04b.png&quot; /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of the time, these questions are down voted quite severely, closed, and often deleted very promptly. This is quite simply, again, that these questions are off topic here and asking such a question suggests that the user didn't even *attempt* to read the tour or any of the help center before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For 10k users, poke at the [question close stats for the last 30 days](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last30days).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To those who don't have access to this, the second and third highest custom close reasons are the all too familiar:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be a [fix-my-code-dump request](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/258685/839601), an outright off-topic, totally ignoring what Programmers is **[about](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour)**: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or a variation on it. The top one is a custom 'unclear' which also often acts as a proxy for the &quot;I have no idea why you are asking this question here.&quot;  There is also a smattering of other close reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We don't troubleshoot code here, sorry. No, we don't know where else you can ask.&#xD;&#xA;* We don't debug code here, sorry. No, we don't know where else you can ask. See also [How to Debug Small Programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/).&#xD;&#xA;* Voting to close as this is a debugging question, but I'm not sure it belongs on StackOverflow since this is a classic example of a bug that can be found simply through proper use of a debugger.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because we don't do fix-my-code requests here.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because Programmers is not a fix-my-code site.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's a &quot;fix my code&quot; request.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is asking us to debug the code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also a fair amount of &quot;I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is an implementation question, but not of sufficient quality to migrate to [so]&quot; and variations on *that* reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing is realizing that [no, we aren't going to migrate crap to Stack Overflow](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6878/31260 &quot;as was already complained about particular mistaken migration&quot;). Migrating an awful debugging question to Stack Overflow isn't going to do anyone any favors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this fairly consistent stream of completely off topic debugging questions is draining the community moderation on the site and discouraging to many people who are either active or casual users of the site. It is very discouraging to see &quot;1 new active question&quot; and then look to see it is another poor quality &quot;debug this for me&quot; question. It is also discouraging to for the casual user to look at new questions and see half of them down voted and/or closed. This can be seen in some of the [recent](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7606/40980) meta [questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7593/40980) (and many who are active and read meta know that there are quite a few more of this type of question that are older).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, there are a *lot* of questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what can we do to help reduce the rate of off topic 'fix this for me' questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some have suggested that changes to Stack Overflow's question visibility for low quality questions have caused people who are asking these low quality questions to try posting on other sites (ours in particular). How accurate is this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there things that Stack Exchange devs might be able to implement that would help new users recognize the scope of the site more rapidly (before they hit a question ban? or get discouraged with posting on Stack* (its just a bunch of jerks who close everything))?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can the existing community more promptly handle these questions? Do we need to try to hire Oded 7/24 to close these questions promptly&lt;/joke&gt;? Or is there a valid mandate for the diamond mods to close vote (and delete) the clear cut debugging things that show up in new questions more promptly than the community does?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for any Stack Exchange community managers - do ***you*** have any suggestions for us? How important is it that we provide a good user experience for these users? Could we get another close vote reason for 'fix my code is off topic here' so that it is something that is more official and less curt than the plethora of custom close vote reasons that we currently employ? And while we have anecdotal suggestions of this, is there any change to the &quot;questions asked and closed within 48 hours&quot; rate recently compared to historical trends?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26678" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7638" RevisionGUID="cad5832a-9c96-4f2d-8d0b-0ef27dff4857" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="This is a network-wide change. See [this Meta.SE question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/266696/can-we-raise-the-bar-for-reputation-for-late-answers-to-enter-the-review-queue) and [this answer to it](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/267080/572):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; # Queue growth&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Review queues lose effectiveness if posts aren't regularly (and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; accurately) cleared. A queue such as [close votes on Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Overflow](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that never seems to get to 0 fails to provide time-sensitive feedback&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that aids learning. So if we raise the bar for late answers which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; increases the number of tasks going into the queue, we risk making the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; queue less useful for people answering questions late.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; As I write, the Late Answer queue on Stack Overflow is empty. In the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; last 24 hours the number (non-audit) review tasks of each type added&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to the queues:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     Review Tasks Type           &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     ------------ ----------------- &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     2467         Triage            &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     2428         First Post        &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     2333         Close Votes       &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     1846         Suggested Edit    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      883         Low Quality Posts &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      619         Late Answer       &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      594         Helper            &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      141         Reopen Vote        These two factors suggest that there's room to add more tasks to the Late Answer queue. Assuming we&#xD;&#xA;&gt; raised the reputation limit to 100, we'd add about 300 tasks:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     Rep Bin Tasks &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     ------- ----- &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      10       417   &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      20       160   &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      30        85    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      40        76    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      50        44    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      60        41    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      70        37    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      80        21    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      90        20    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     100        20   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You might expect the number of tasks associated with the 1 to 10&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reputation bin would equal the number of late answer tasks in the last&#xD;&#xA;&gt; day. The discrepancy stems from reputation earned since answers were&#xD;&#xA;&gt; added to the queue. But the takeaway is that raising the reputation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; limit to 100 would add half again as much work to the queue. That&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doesn't seem particularly onerous.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Not surprisingly, Stack Overflow would see the most added Late Answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reviews by far. Other large sites, such as Ubuntu, Server Fault, Super&#xD;&#xA;&gt; User and Mathematics, would get 10 or so extra reviews a day.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## Justifying 100 rather than 50 reputation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Discovering answers as comments certainly would suggest 50 as a good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; limit for this queue. But this queue is as much about granting&#xD;&#xA;&gt; exposure to potentially upvote-worthy answers as it is about finding&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problems. Especially on large sites, it's pretty easy for a good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer to a very old question to be lost in the noise. As a [strategy&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for new users](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/304135/1438) answering&#xD;&#xA;&gt; old questions that already have good, but not excellent, answers seems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; productive if not that few people will notice those answers. At 10&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reputation, a knowledgeable new user has one shot at earning upvotes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from excellent answers to aged questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## A potential complication&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The one concern I have is that answers are dequeued once the author&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has reached 100 reputation. If we raise the maximum reputation for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; going into the queue, we should also raise the minimum for coming out&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of it. Unfortunately, I don't have an easy way to gather numbers to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; set an appropriate level. One of the reasons I'm only looking back a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; day in the numbers I showed above is that it minimizes the effect of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gained reputation. It's possible, but messy to estimate reputation at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the time a user answered a question. So while my instinct would be to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; raise the deque minimum to 200, but I can't really predict if that's&#xD;&#xA;&gt; appropriate or not.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; # Proposal&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Raising the bar to 100 would require changing two variables at once.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Since that would make it harder to evaluate each individual change,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd like to try raising the reputation for getting enqueued to the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Late Answer reviews to 50 and reconsider upping it to 100 at some&#xD;&#xA;&gt; point in the future." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26679" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7797" RevisionGUID="2d778762-dccc-42df-951e-112ee547c508" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="I'm sure you remember [this experiment](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7723/96050), which changed the required number of close/reopen votes from 5 to 3. Before getting to the meat of the analysis, I should point out that the change worked almost exactly as intended. Close votes [clustered around 3](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7734/96050) and the median time to close dropped noticably from November 9 to December 9, 2015:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Median time to close by week][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the statistics I said I'd be looking at:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Month posted Qs   Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion&#xD;&#xA;    ------------ ---- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- ---------&#xD;&#xA;    2014-11-09   1379    572      41.5%          12.1%     2.1%      10.1%     29.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2014-12-09   1251    730      58.4%          13.4%     1.5%       7.1%     32.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-01-09   1490    788      52.9%          11.3%     1.6%      10.1%     32.6%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-02-09   1507    816      54.1%          11.0%     1.6%      10.0%     31.7%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-03-09   1493    883      59.1%           9.7%     1.1%       8.1%     35.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-04-09   1391    814      58.5%          12.5%     1.1%       4.9%     34.2%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-05-09   1394    726      52.1%          10.2%     2.1%       9.5%     41.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-06-09   1472    764      51.9%           9.2%     2.1%      14.3%     37.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-07-09   1496    839      56.1%          10.8%     1.2%       5.5%     36.7%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-08-09   1392    785      56.4%          11.6%     0.9%       3.3%     52.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-09-09   1376    816      59.3%          11.4%     3.3%      18.3%     47.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-09   1463    869      59.4%           8.9%     2.2%       6.5%     43.5%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09   1308    955      73.0%          15.4%     4.9%      17.0%     47.0%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rates remained steady for the most part in the months leading up to the experiment. For the month of the experiment closing, editing of closed questions, and reopening spiked noticeably. (Deletion has a longer [lag time](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/262077/1438) so we don't have the final tally.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The big number that sticks out is the 73% closure rate. We've already gone round and round about what that number _should be_, so there's no point in rehashing that argument. I think too many questions closed here are salvageable and other people (who have firsthand experience in the close queue) believe that the lines are clear and most closed questions would be bad for the site. If [Jeff couldn't grok this site](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2260/we-cant-pronounce-anything), I don't see why I would either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I don't understand the goals of this site is, in fact, _because_ I'm not part of this community. Closing is part of how this community, as [Clay Shirky puts it](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html), &quot;defends itself so that it can stay on its sophisticated goals and away from its basic instincts.&quot; Bikeshed questions represent a considerable portion of those instincts, I suspect. Closing questions that verge toward [bad subjective](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) protects the group from junk answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shirky also points out in &quot;A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You have to find some way to protect your own users from scale. This doesn't mean the scale of the whole system can't grow. But you can't try to make the system large by taking individual conversations and blowing them up like a balloon; human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon. It either dissipates, or turns into broadcast, or collapses. So plan for dealing with scale in advance, because it's going to happen anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our solution to scaling historically has been to encourage users to [**trust fellow programmers**](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/251175/1438). While it's not without problems, the philosophy does allow one community to handle [8k questions a day](http://stackexchange.com/sites#questionsperday). It's been ages since anyone could read all the questions on the site, but the system works well enough to produce an enormous (and growing) store of knowledge about coding. [Most of the questions are crap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law), but that's more than balanced by the quality of the content that rises to the top of searches. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's clear that changing the number of votes required to close questions will allow this site to scale without changing the criteria for closing questions. I completely understand why this would be desirable. But I think it would be a short-term hack. It will not fix the root of the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You might as well know what I think the core problem is: **distrust**. Over and over since I started this experiment, I've heard (whether this is what was intended or not, I don't know) concern that outsiders will take advantage of this community the moment its guard is dropped. And it's not just outsiders: there is a deep division among high-reputation users and former users of the site that is marked by distrust. I have some suggestions about how to work toward a compromise, but I haven't earned any trust here myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the off chance that it could still be useful, I'm going to toss out my ideas anyway:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Assume that only the sign and not the magnitude of question scores matter.** Voting volume tends to follow the number of views. Views are driven largely by how interested the general public is in the question and it's answers. The second most-upvoted question on SO is: [How do you undo the last commit?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/927358/1438) It didn't [start off](http://stackoverflow.com/revisions/927358/1) as a particularly good question, but it represents an _extremely common problem_ and so it gets a lot of views. I suppose in a just world, those views would not turn into votes. But in the real world, not everything is tied to merit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Assume that only the first few answers are ever read.** Almost a corollary to the previous point: popular questions will get more answers. If you dig through those answers, it's pretty likely some of them are low-quality. Gallingly, they are likely to have more votes than brilliant answers to obscure questions. But within a question, voting does a good job of surfacing quality. Studies consistently find that people [rarely finish reading pages they land on](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/page-fold-manifesto/). Either they find the information they are looking for and leave or they give up on the page. Downvote bad answers and trust your fellows to do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. **There will always be people who misunderstand the nature of this site.** Several people pointed me to a comment (on a now-deleted question) that cited [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/77479/96050) as a reason for asking something similar. The example has been closed for over a year. _Closing questions does not make them less tempting to copy._ Don't confuse _post hoc_ justification for motivation. People will ask dumb questions whether there are similar questions around or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. **Be proud of your past.** I know this site has gone through a lot of pain. It's also produced some amazing answers. I've seen the accepted answer to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60544/why-do-game-developers-prefer-windows cited several times by people who aren't active on Stack Exchange. The answers to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29109/is-there-any-reason-to-use-c-instead-of-c-perl-python-etc make me wonder if I gave up on C++ templates too soon. While poking around the codebase here at Stack Overflow, I found the answers to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127624/what-is-mvc-really useful. These bikeshed questions manage to produce exceptional answers in spite of themselves. Or rather, there are some amazing contributors here who have turned leaden questions into answer gold. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. **The single best defense against worthless opinions is voter diversity.** Studies have consistently found that [&quot;diverse minds do better, when their decisions are averaged, than expert minds.&quot;](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140708-when-crowd-wisdom-goes-wrong) New users should not be treated as threats, but as potential contributors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The increase in closure rate makes reducing the number of votes required to close questions impractical. Other effects (particularly reopen rate and median time to close) were encouraging, but did not counter-balance the cost in terms of new questions closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/NOUb5.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26680" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7805" RevisionGUID="712e6a36-1515-49c0-97bf-9869f369b8a3" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="In response to some of the answers so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Print them out, get five programmers from the office and ask them to do a triage on them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a fine idea. I reported my results internally and asked for volunteers to do this experiment. I haven't heard back from anyone yet, but it is a Friday and there's some movie premiering today, I believe. I'll see about following up in the next few weeks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Were you really expecting a different result?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not really. I was, however, hoping for one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Not understanding the site] is just not a defensible position. Programmers is the easiest site on the entire network to understand. What is it about? Wait for it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; **software design and development**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I can take this one of three ways:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I don't understand this site because I'm not a programmer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   As it happens, I've been writing and maintaining software most of my life. But maybe my previous jobs don't count as &quot;design and development&quot;? I've done a lot more work on other people's code than building new systems, so it's possible I don't get the topic after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. I don't understand this site because I don't understand the Stack Exchange model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I was a beta user of Stack Overflow and have asked questions on dozens of sites with minimal closure. I'm also working as a Community Manager here. On the other hand, I've historically been [soft on question closing](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/286407/1438), so maybe this is my problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. I don't understand this site because it's a community more complex than the cross section of software design and development and Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I feel this is the most likely explanation because I don't think #1 or #2 apply to me. I certainly don't think either #1 or #2 apply to Jeff Atwood. Therefore, I'm fairly confident that this site can be difficult to understand for reasons entirely separate from the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A couple of years ago, Stack Overflow nearly collapsed under the weight of a hundred thousand monkeys bashing away at a hundred thousand typewriters. Your response was to _put in an automated system_ that blocks a significant percentage of all questions asked at Stack Overflow before the community ever sees them. It further blocks those users who manage to get through those quality filters and persistently ask bad questions. That's not trusting the community; it's trusting a machine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Correct. I don't think any of us is happy about that outcome. But what do you think we use for input? Other than the [annoying title filter](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/115480/1438) all of the automated systems use community feedback as a primary source of input. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As the review system has improved, we've significantly softened the [question block system](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans). In addition, we have added [speed bumps](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/asking-rate-limited) to slow down users who have show a pattern of asking poorly-recieved questions. (Rolling rate limits are now [enabled network-wide](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/243460/1438), by the way.) We used to get _many_ false positives (meaning people were banned who probably shouldn't have been). After making those changes, we see far fewer false positives. We think that the reason for this is that the system is doing a better job of amplifying other users' feedback to people who have a difficult time understanding it for whatever reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow can be content with housing millions of questions and having perhaps a hundred thousand of them receive a significant audience; Programmers doesn't have that same luxury, nor can it have the same tolerance for chaff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't follow this logic. Remember there are almost 150 sites of all shapes and sizes. Stack Overflow has a unique scaling problem. As it turns out, the systems we built to scale our flagship site work fairly well for a wide variety of topics and at the full range of question rate. I would phrase the final sentence in reverse: &quot;Programmers has the luxury to be intolerant of chaff.&quot; Having a small volume of questions means this community can ignore the systems that allow Stack Overflow to scale. It's a lot of unnecessary work but you can do it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **On Programmers, we close questions ruthlessly and viciously. And that's a good thing.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't help but notice this is an excellent example of the [Sanctity moral foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Foundations_Theory). The only other site that has anything like Programmers emphasis on purity of questions is Skeptics. I'd suggest that this community's unique set of values, and not topic confusion, make this site difficult for outsiders.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Several of us within The Whiteboard noted during the experiment that we had more time available to edit marginal questions so that they could be re-opened. I even made a comment to the effect that one of the major benefits of three votes-to-close was that it freed active community members up to focus on higher order aspects of the site. That's a very, very good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree. If we could keep that without dramatically increasing question closing (which is already a deep outlier on the network), than I would be advocating for this change to be kept.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(It's drifting too far from the topic at hand, but I don't think treating user time as a zero-sum is a reasonable estimate. People tend to spend more time on sites they enjoy. It's one of the reasons we [encourage people to have fun](http://stackoverflow.com/help/be-nice). Why would anyone keep participating in a hobby that makes them miserable?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This meta post won't be for the faint of heart.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No it is not. ;-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll need to take more time going over it in the future, but my initial sampling of those questions is that I wouldn't vote to close most of them. But that shouldn't surprise you, I guess. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26681" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7836" RevisionGUID="6367db55-b486-4920-8efd-0bab70dc1fee" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Let's say I want to draw a picture of an alien and I'm given only two &quot;colors&quot;: black and white. I could probably do an okay job of it. Black and white are enough to clearly delimit boundaries and shape. With a little creative shading, I can show how light falls on the alien. The simplicity of black and white is attractive. I'd be particularly successful if the alien was somehow familiar. If the alien looked like, say, an otter, the viewer could look at my drawing, access what they know about otters, and draw sensible conclusions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what if the alien isn't at all familiar? Since we're talking about aliens, it might be there are no clear-cut boundaries. The alien may have fewer reference points, like an abstract painting. In that case, adding the rest of the colors from my palette might be useful. Additional color adds higher-order meaning. They call all of the machinery in our eyes into service. Even if our eyes can't see something natively, the creative use of color sometimes makes things understandable. Take the [Crab Nebula][1]. Much of what we see in pictures isn't truly visible to the naked eye, but with a little color shifting it leaps vividly into our imagination.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, there are some downsides to using color. Object recognition algorithms tend to ignore color in favor of saturation/brightness. (Computers aren't good with &quot;color&quot; in my metaphor.) Some people don't experience all of the colors. Even if they do, [phenomenology][2] argues that it's possible different people have entirely different subjective color experiences so there's no objective &quot;truth&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even with the meager strikes against it, a fully colored picture is no *less* effective than black and white. A red/green colorblind person gracefully falls back to black and white where appropriate. An algorithm simply ignores what it doesn't need. If phenomenology is correct, black and white pictures are equally doomed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Related: [Bulletpoints EVERYWHERE][3] (Community pressure to edit to a creative norm.)]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=crab%20nebula&amp;source=lnms&amp;tbm=isch&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjl7rLU3p_KAhWMkh4KHdD5BX8Q_AUIBygB&amp;biw=1409&amp;bih=778&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/307540/7625" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26682" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7861" RevisionGUID="46d30900-1897-4e72-b383-9833e8ab5f3f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="It has been clarified through comments that this would be applied per-site, so someone posting on [Seasoned Advice](https://cooking.stackexchange.com/) wouldn't interfere with someone else posting on Programmers. With this clarification, I __support__ the proposal, at least on a trial basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if traffic on Programmers increases anywhere near Stack Overflow levels, this would begin to interfere with on-topic use of the site. The 90-minute policy at Stack Overflow combined with the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses has already caused problems for users behind network address translation (NAT). When you have the same IPv4 address as another user of the same Stack Exchange site, it can be tough to squeeze in your question when others are waiting for the same 90-minute window to reopen so that they can squeeze in their own questions. See, for example, the question &quot;[Error — 'you can only post once every 90 minutes' but I haven't posted in days](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/259941/2738262)&quot; by Bryan on Meta Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why might people be behind NAT? Some people access the Internet at a school, office, or public library, which typically has one Internet access subscription with one IP address. Others use an ISP that puts multiple subscribers behind one IPv4 address using [carrier-grade NAT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier-grade_NAT). CGNAT is common in countries with smaller IPv4 allocations and on cellular Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments to the answer to Bryan's question recommend subscribing to cellular Internet access and asking the question through that connection. This ignores cellular CGNAT as well as the added cost of a subscription to cellular Internet access. I thought not having to pay for ExpertS-exChange was why the Stack Exchange network was created in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus without the ability to ask or answer questions before 125 reputation, a new user would have to farm rep by suggesting edits and have 62 accepted just to be able to use the service as intended." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26683" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8011" RevisionGUID="e8a09e20-ad16-43e8-98f1-aac00aea8402" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="While running a [test on Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/319131/1-2-3-test-let-s-increase-the-number-of-reviews-close-votes-for-science), there were some questions about whether we were driving traffic to Programmers, so I decided to rerun some of the numbers in [Shog’s original answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7332/28602) and compare the 30 days prior to the test to the testing period. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Prior to the Stack Overflow Test&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, let's look at the 30 days of activity here on Programmers prior to the start of the test, the time period was **February 15, 2016 to March 16, 2016**.  During this time there were:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!---14320, 14321, 14322, 14323, 14324---&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **1452** questions asked here, from &#xD;&#xA;- **1283** distinct account, of which&#xD;&#xA;- **1143** have/has account on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;- **298** of these users hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow in the 30 days. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From those 298 users:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **354** questions were posted &#xD;&#xA;- **200** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **244** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **233** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **124** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **74** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For comparison:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **701** questions were closed in total &#xD;&#xA;- **843** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **801** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **596** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **434** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking into the details, I also checked the IP addresses associated with these posts to see how many came from blocked address on Stack Overflow. Of the IP Addresses, 288 hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow. From those addresses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **339** questions were posted here&#xD;&#xA;- **185** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **216** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **208** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **128** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **81** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##During the Test Period (March 16, 2016 - April 13, 2016)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!---14311, 14313, 14315, 14318, 14319---&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The numbers over the test were:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **1388** questions asked, from &#xD;&#xA;- **1202** distinct account, of which&#xD;&#xA;- **1087** have/has account on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;- **248** of these users hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From those 248 users:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **307** questions were posted&#xD;&#xA;- **151** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **158** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **193** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **119** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **63** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By comparison for the rest of the questions asked during this time:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **543** questions were closed in total&#xD;&#xA;- **578** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **729** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **607** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **418** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the total IP Addresses, 298 hit some sort of block on Stack Overflow. From those addresses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **355** questions were posted here&#xD;&#xA;- **164** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **172** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **211** scored &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **135** had at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **81** scored &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the 30 days prior to the test, approximately 23% of the users asking question on Programmers had hit a block on SO, but during the test this dropped to 20%.  Blocked users asked approximately 24% of questions prior to the test, and 22% of questions during it. While there was a slight increase in the number of questions from blocked IP Addresses, it went from 23% to 25%, I'm not seeing a huge indication that the test on Stack Overflow drove traffic to Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26684" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8024" RevisionGUID="4e22341d-9836-4a85-b633-4d7eb21b3986" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="ThomasOwens addressed the reason for the temporary question ban. I would like to address the reason for the reason, that is, _why_ your previous questions led to the current situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that deleted questions are only visible to moderators, 10k users, or the user who asked them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Is it wise to invest in Angular 2?][1] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rightly closed as primarily opinion-based _and_ deleted. This is speculation that cannot be answered objectively.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [How common is it to get unpaid but skilled labor?][2] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Invites discussion (not answers), essentially asks for career advice which is off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Explaning to newbies that sometimes “it works” isn't “it works well”][3] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asks for advice on how to deal with coworker situations. Off-topic and subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [What does the $-operator mean (C# and EF context) for strings?][4] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asked on the wrong site, self-deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Using VS12 to create and manage an Azure-SQL DB (simple tasks)][5] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asks for a software tool which is explicitly off-topic per our help center.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Does TFS have the capacity equivalent of branching/forking in Git?][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay question about source control. Probably better-suited for Stack Overflow because it is asking about source control software, not strategy, but I wouldn't close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [How to motivate adaptive an shifting class access modifiers][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On-topic, but probably a duplicate. It is also a bit verbose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [How to store sensitive information (e.g. clients' credentials) accessibly for everybody inside?][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On-topic question about software process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Relation between projects and solutions in VS][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On-topic, but on the verge of being too broad. Still, it is about software organization and development processes so definitely on-topic and rightly does not have any downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Automatic code snippets in VS 12][10] (closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asks for help configuring a software tool. With more details it might be acceptable at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now for the important part: constructive feedback. Once you are able to ask questions again, I would focus on these items:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I see a few &quot;soft&quot; questions asking about opinion or how to convince a teammate about something. These questions are off-topic, unsalvageable, and unfortunately for you are simply not a good fit here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions that belong at Stack Overflow. Some people have a difficult time understanding just where the line is between the two sites. I agree it can be a bit blurry at times, and it is fine if you post incorrectly but in the gray area. We can fix that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [What are the differences between Stack Overflow, Programmers, and Code Review?][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A small number of off-topic questions that simply fall into one of the off-topic categories in the [help center][13].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [Why was my question closed or down voted?][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Several of your questions are very verbose. Try to focus on one thing, choose your words carefully, and describe the problem fully but in less space. This will help encourage us to read the question more fully, understand what it is asking, and hopefully upvote it. If the question needs improvement, it makes it easier for us to edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/313651&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/310681&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/309821&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/306324&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/203020&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/315885&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/314460&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/274265&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/250825&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/204871&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/266341&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26685" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8062" RevisionGUID="50986662-40c2-4b27-b266-129ec2a67353" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="Just like most if not all prior answerers I like the current scope of the site as it is. To me, primary reason to participate here is pretty much covered in two bullets in [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First bullet is probably also on-topic at Stack Overflow (hat tip to Robert Harvey) but it doesn't help me over there, because these topics are difficult to find and follow at SO. Given that I am not interested in asking and answering code troubleshooting questions and that my interest in reading these is quite specific and limited, I essentially have no other option but Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the second bullet, it is probably also somehow covered at Project Management but, again, this doesn't help. I am primarily interested in these topics from perspective of a developer, not a manager, that makes it so much more comfortable to have them here, on a site where development and architecture concerns are firmly within site scope. Besides, my interest in &quot;pure management&quot; topics is rather limited and I am not fond of participating in the site which has these as primary focus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other bullet points (except for licensing, more on it below), I would be comfortable if these aren't mentioned explicitly but instead assumed to be okay in the context of &quot;my&quot; bullet points: requirements, algorithm and data structures, quality assurance and testing, configuration management, software engineering management.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that such implicit inclusion may make Programmers less of a welcoming home for some &quot;pure forms&quot; of QA and algorithms questions but such questions don't seem to be going particularly well here anyway, which makes it more of a theoretical concern. And, which is probably most important, such questions seem to have solid coverage at other SE sites which have them as primary focus (SQA, CS, TCS).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Licensing questions seem a bit tricky. I haven't yet seen compelling explanation of their fundamental relevance to &quot;my&quot; bullet points. But on the other hand I haven't yet seen compelling explanation for opposite either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of that I am not going to change my voting habits if licensing isn't listed explicitly. I just won't vote close these questions - or more precisely will handle them per [current guidance](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7265/31260). I may change this approach later if I find that some other SE site holds these questions really well (like it happened to career topics at Workplace) but as of now this doesn't seem to be the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness - since this question asks about site name - I don't care about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had some reservations on this in the past when I saw people expecting this to help us against floods of debugging garbage and I wasn't sure that this would help and it looked like in case if this fails, this could damage site image. &quot;Look, these suckers changed name of the site they had for 5 years only because they were scared by debugging spammers. And, you know, this didn't help them, bwa ha ha.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what I observe for past few weeks made me feel much safer about that. It looks like recently introduced [network wide rate limits](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/322265/839601) cut the flow of debugging off-topic garbage and do this fairly efficiently and that site name just doesn't matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the light of above, whatever name site community picks I will be fine with it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26686" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8158" RevisionGUID="c9cd0801-a461-44bb-ad76-ef75f993ef8c" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="This was asked and [answered by Community Manager](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/281690/165773) at MSE:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the product isn't quite ready to go elsewhere... Once it is [known to work](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/328405/documentation-has-entered-public-beta#comment369176_328405), then we can discuss the possibility of adding it to other sites but that won't be for [6-8 weeks](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19478/the-many-memes-of-meta/19514#19514)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26687" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8239" RevisionGUID="10962c65-2c7b-4e62-b129-cc26a5deb8fe" CreationDate="2017-03-20T09:16:29.470" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/" Text="A question like yours about a specific OASIS standard has IMHO a certain risk of getting closed for the same reasons mentioned in [this older SO meta post][1]. However, for standards like CMIS, as it was mentioned in your question, there is a much better place where you can ask: the related [Oasis mailing list][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/255745/why-were-not-customer-support-for-your-favorite-company&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26688" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="112" RevisionGUID="c5143e66-df03-49cb-a847-a3180a6ac124" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:04:27.893" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/" Text="**[ChrisF][1]** ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to put myself forward as an extra or backup moderator. **I don't want to take the place of anyone else who's willing and able to do the job**, but I thought it might be useful if there was somebody who &quot;knew the ropes&quot; so to speak.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm already a moderator on the [Web Applications site](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/users/21/chrisf) and I'm a 10K user on [Stack Overflow][3], [Super User][4] and [Meta Stack Overflow][5] so I know how the system works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/47&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/47/chrisf&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/59303/chrisf&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://superuser.com/users/289/chrisf&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/59303/chrisf" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26689" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="703" RevisionGUID="8a489e76-a293-4260-b52f-974412585eae" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:04:27.893" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/" Text="Off hand, I would think that [Super User][1] might also be a good one to be able to send questions to. Beyond that, questions relevant to [Webmasters][2] or [Webapps][3] might show up from time to time, but I suspect they would be quite rare.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://superuser.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26690" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="817" RevisionGUID="a0e959dd-ca5b-46c1-8618-5d2457563d2a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:04:27.893" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/" Text="Now that there's a migration path from Stack Overflow to here, should we be more strict about what's off topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know there's [this old question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain) about what the FAQ should contain, but the current [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) doesn't have the what's not allowed list that the [Super User one](https://superuser.com/faq) or [Web Applications one](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/faq) does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, should we have an &quot;off topic&quot; list and what should it contain?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of things spring to mind straight away:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Office environment questions - such as questions about office chairs and desks. These apply to any office worker and aren't unique to developers.&#xD;&#xA;2. Office politics questions - these are clearly going to be *very* subjective and will usually fall foul of the 6 guidelines for quality subjective questions anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I need to chase up the ability edit the &quot;what's not allowed&quot; section. If it's not going to be forthcoming any time soon I'll go ahead and edit it into the section I *can* edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As all the answers seem to have pretty much universal approval from all those who voted, they're all in." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26691" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1168" RevisionGUID="7ce4c285-e451-4e79-a13a-80da7cc0da60" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:04:27.893" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/" Text="User “romkyns” asked an interesting question about the future of professional programming. It has little if anything to do with *users* and most certainly cannot be answered by anyone who is not in the field of programming. The question I’m referring to is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Can the “Documents” standard folder be rescued and how?](https://superuser.com/questions/246232)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is clearly intended to incite a philosophical debate on the use of the documents folder *by programmers* and possible steps that future software system designers may take to improve the dire situation he describes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is not going to garner any useful, insightful, constructive or interesting discussion on SuperUser.&#xD;&#xA;Can this question please be moved back?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26692" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2424" RevisionGUID="b660edf3-994b-4dd4-8b69-3589f2ff784f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:04:27.893" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/" Text="Looking through the other FAQs, many are starting to use what's been called the &quot;[Super User style](https://superuser.com/faq)&quot;: explaining right up front what's on-topic and the exceptions to that list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users. If you have a question about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * computer hardware&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *computer software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;and it is not about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * videogames or consoles&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * websites or web services like Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * electronic devices, media players, cell phones or smart phones, except insofar as they interface with your computer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * a shopping or buying recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should follow that. I also think we should drop much of the commentary, as it only clouds the issue related to what's on-topic and what isn't. For example, it's difficult understand all the caveats and exceptions to the career advice policy and whether or not any specific question meets the criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other parts of the FAQ, like the note about comments, are [explained elsewhere](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So here is what I'm proposing instead:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* design patterns&#xD;&#xA;* developer testing&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;* freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and it is **not about**…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [career advice, including general workplace issues](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590)&#xD;&#xA;* what language you should learn next, including [which technology is better](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;* résumé help&#xD;&#xA;* what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;* programming tools (ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com) instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;…then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![proper scope for question](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please also [look around](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search) to see if your question has been asked before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## What about subjective questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. **Please keep it professional at all times**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All subjective questions are expected to be _constructive_. How do we define that?  Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;* tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;* have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;* invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;* insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;* are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot; Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26694" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2533" RevisionGUID="5432208d-9e54-4f6d-9653-594fd18a9570" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:04:27.893" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/" Text="In the case of identical questions, there's a network-wide policy: [Is cross-posting a question on multiple Stack Exchange sites permitted if the question is on-topic for each site?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64068/is-cross-posting-a-question-on-multiple-stack-exchange-sites-permitted-if-the-qu) The answer is no: posting the same question twice is not acceptable. This comes up now and then between [Super User](https://superuser.com/), [Server Fault](http://serverfault.com/), [Unix &amp; Linux](http://unix.stackexchange.com/) and [Ask Ubuntu](http://askubuntu.com/), which have overlapping scopes. We arrange to keep only one version open, ideally the single one that has answers already. In this case, please comment (so that potential answerers don't waste time repeating an answer that someone else wrote on another site), vote to close where you can, and flag for a speedy close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the questions are similar and posted by different users, it's a different matter. If the question is off-topic on one site, of course, close it as off-topic. If the issue is on-topic on both sites but the questions are suitably tailored to their respective sites, let both live: there's no notion of cross-site duplicates, and different communities might have different insights.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26695" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2884" RevisionGUID="a58835de-5189-42de-abbe-55667bf534a2" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:04:27.893" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/" Text="Are you using HTTPS-Everywhere?  This has been known to cause problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Specific problem and fix found:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; HTTPS-Everywhere forces the use of the secure reCAPTCHA API. The problem with this is the invalid certificate used; specifically, it is expired as of 09-05-04 13:32:04 (GMT).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This can be worked around by navigating to https://api-secure.recaptcha.net/ and adding a permanent exception for the certificate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tested on Firefox 4 final on Ubuntu 10.10 to https://superuser.com/captcha.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Courtesy of [Hello71](https://meta.superuser.com/users/36565/hello71) on [Super User's meta](https://meta.superuser.com/a/2460/42458)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26696" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2914" RevisionGUID="11619450-6edb-4294-800d-7ab2da728069" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:04:27.893" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/" Text="I have only one concern about this: Our FAQ is pretty long as it is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a quick look at the trilogy and sites of similar scope &amp; size, you'll notice that the site definition part of their FAQ is extremely concise. For example: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Stack Overflow][1]&#xD;&#xA; - [Super User][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [Server Fault][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [Ask Ubuntu][4]&#xD;&#xA; - [Web Applications][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [CrossValidated][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [Mathematics][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [Ask Different][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not arguing against clearing up ambiguity, and better defining the scope of Programmers, but adding every possible off topic category in the FAQ will eventually make it too long for anyone to bother reading it carefully. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've identified three questions that are along the lines of &quot;copyright, patent, or trademark law&quot;, posted in a span of a month. I don't think it's a large enough group of questions to justify adding any clarifications to the FAQ, or that it will actually stop people from asking those questions; The FAQ has a list of topics that are welcome, and I can't even begin to imagine why the three OPs though their questions would be.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;(all) That said, we can simply add a &quot;legal advice&quot; bullet point in the &quot;and it is not about…&quot; list.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. [tag:legal] is atop my list of future clean ups. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://superuser.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://serverfault.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://askubuntu.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://math.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26697" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2950" RevisionGUID="bd55e499-30a5-48ad-816e-57dee1522151" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:04:27.893" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/" Text="I think it's OK not to worry about stuff like that. I mean,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#just look at the Trilogy and their FAQ's&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Stack Overflow is for ...people who write code because they love it...&quot; ([FAQ](http://stackoverflow.com/faq))  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Do they feel the need to rename site to &quot;Coding Lovers&quot; or rephrase FAQ to &quot;...discussions about stack overflow&quot;? I don't think so&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users&quot; ([FAQ](https://superuser.com/faq))  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Do they feel the need to rename site to &quot;Power Users&quot; or rephrasing FAQ to &quot;Super User is for super users&quot;? I don't think so&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Server Fault is for system administrators and desktop support professionals&quot; ([FAQ](http://serverfault.com/faq))  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Do they feel the need to rename site to &quot;Desktop Support&quot; or rephrasing FAQ to &quot;...for discussions about server faults&quot;? I don't think so&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26699" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3893" RevisionGUID="7945a4b0-ccd8-4a0e-a662-31f30ab77b98" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:04:27.893" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/" Text="This is fairly easy to accomplish using IE's *Accessibility* options in *Tools » Internet Options » General » Accessibility*. If you follow the instructions to the letter, results look as blindingly amazing as this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Screenshot after settings applied][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Create a file named `userstyle-programmers.css` and enter the following contents:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    .question-page .post-text a {&#xD;&#xA;    text-decoration: underline !important;&#xD;&#xA;    color: orange !important;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;    .question-page .post-text a:hover {&#xD;&#xA;    color: yellow !important;&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Select it in the aforementioned dialog under *User style sheet* and save.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Screenshot of settings dialog][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, one downside to this is that is it applied to all sites. While the CSS is probably restrictive enough to only actually apply the style to SE sites, it'll get applied to [all of them](https://superuser.com/questions/419070/transatlantic-ping-faster-than-sending-a-pixel-to-the-screen).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Screenshot of SU with same style applied][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To prevent this, create a new file named e.g. `userstyle-switcher.css` with the following contents that are actually a script executed for every `html` element loaded. Not as nice as domain selection in Greasemonkey, but at least it works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    html {&#xD;&#xA;       behavior:expression( (function(el){&#xD;&#xA;       var _doc = el.document;&#xD;&#xA;       if(_doc.location.host.toLowerCase() == 'programmers.stackexchange.com') {&#xD;&#xA;         var elmLink = _doc.createElement('link');&#xD;&#xA;         elmLink.rel='stylesheet';&#xD;&#xA;         elmLink.type='text/css';&#xD;&#xA;         elmLink.href= 'file://C:/Users/Daniel Beck/Documents/userstyle-programmers.css';&#xD;&#xA;         _doc.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(elmLink);&#xD;&#xA;       }&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;       el.runtimeStyle.behavior = 'none';&#xD;&#xA;      })(this));&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, replace `C:/Users/Daniel Beck/Documents/userstyle-programmers.css` with wherever you saved the other user style sheet file. Remember to use forward slashes and specify the actual path on disk, not what Explorer shows you (so no *My Documents* on e.g. Windows 7). Save, and select *this file* as the user style sheet for IE. The script will get execute on every web page, but the other CSS file will only get loaded when on `programmers.stackexchange.com`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the &quot;CSS&quot; used in the switcher script is from [here](http://wiki.bit-hive.com/ie_user_css/), but I have no idea what that page says around the code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/yjXWt.png &quot;Screenshot after settings applied&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/txs6M.png &quot;Screenshot of settings dialog&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/jCPtt.png &quot;Screenshot of SU with same style applied&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26700" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5320" RevisionGUID="b1d6ddf0-5270-454c-b023-bcb4a5db4cc8" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:04:27.893" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/" Text="Stack Exchange sites solve a problem that other platforms don't. They're not discussion forums; instead, they're highly targeted, laser-focused questions and answers sites. Programmers SE is about solving whiteboard problems in software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As gnat says, the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) defines the list of topics that [Programmers SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) supports as well as topics that are explicitly off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question about how to use keyboards on different computers is not unique to the programming profession. Anyone who owns both a Mac and a PC may very well face this problem; thus, it's not a good fit for a site about whiteboard problems in software development. It doesn't make it a bad question; it just means it's not a good fit for *this* SE site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There may be a site for your question, but it's not here. Please see the [List of Stack Exchange sites](http://stackexchange.com/sites) and the various FAQs to see if any would welcome questions about keyboards. I'd suggest starting with [Super User's FAQ](https://superuser.com/faq) first. Hope this helps!&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26701" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6107" RevisionGUID="dfd5b8eb-7c00-4243-904d-3bd83febdae7" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:04:27.893" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/" Text="I think having a &quot;Stack Overflow question&quot; off-topic reason is a good idea. Here are the off-topic reasons that exist now *or have existed*, along with the number of votes or flags that chose them since site-specific off-topic reasons were introduced:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **776**  &#xD;&#xA;   [CURRENTLY ACTIVE] Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.                             &#xD;&#xA;                                                                                                                                          &#xD;&#xA;- **578**  &#xD;&#xA;   This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **454**  &#xD;&#xA;   Other (add a comment explaining what is wrong)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **397**  &#xD;&#xA;   [CURRENTLY ACTIVE] Questions seeking **career or education advice** are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.                                               &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **165**  &#xD;&#xA;   Questions about **specific programming problems encountered while writing code** are off-topic, but can be asked on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/about).   &#xD;&#xA;                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            &#xD;&#xA;- **152**  &#xD;&#xA;  [CURRENTLY ACTIVE] Questions about **what language, technology, or project one should take up next** are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), our chat room. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **63**  &#xD;&#xA;   Questions seeking **career advice or help with office politics** are off-topic here unless they're specific to the programming profession. If people in other professions face similar problems, ask about it on [The Workplace Stack Exchange](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/about).                                                                                                                 &#xD;&#xA;            &#xD;&#xA;- **25**  &#xD;&#xA;   Questions about **the use of general computer hardware or software** are off-topic, but can be asked on [Super User](https://superuser.com/about).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        &#xD;&#xA;Something that should jump out at you right away is the relative usage of the &quot;specific programming problems&quot; reason compared to &quot;what language should I take up next&quot; - even though the latter has now been active for about twice as long (4 weeks) as the former. Here's a crowded graph to curse at:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![OT reason usage by week][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note how the number of &quot;belongs on other site&quot; votes jumped as soon as &quot;programming&quot; was disabled?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I strongly recommend replacing &quot;what language should I learn&quot; with some variation on &quot;you should ask this on SO, after you learn how to ask questions on SO&quot;.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/XgX8q.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26702" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6663" RevisionGUID="aa00c0de-908e-4d7d-ac46-29d8fb11d430" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:04:27.893" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/" Text="I'm thinking of doing an experiment with a JS program to utilize Japanese Multiplication, and I want to ask whether or not a software math shortcut is actually a shortcut at all. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, I'm contemplating writing a program to get benchmarks for the comparison of normal multiplication and Japanese Multiplication via programming, and I'd like to ask whether or not this makes sense to do before spending time to build the experiment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Remember, this is a question of whether or not this question is appropriate for this site.** Any additional thoughts on the topic should be described either in the comments or answers to the actual question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also asked whether or not this question would be appropriate on Stack Overflow, Mathematics SE, and Computer Science SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13751/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-mathematical-programming-co&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/255301/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-programming-concept&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/861/can-i-ask-this-question-about-the-effectiveness-of-a-mathematical-programming-co&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Theoretically, the question would look like this:*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Japanese Multiplication simulation - is a program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?&#xD;&#xA;------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On SuperUser, I asked [a (possibly silly) question about processors using mathematical shortcuts][1] and would like to have a look at the possibility at the **software application** of that concept.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to write a JS simulation of Japanese Multiplication to get benchmarks on large calculations utilizing the shortcut vs traditional CPU multiplication. **I'm curious as to whether it makes sense to do this.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My Question:** I'd like to know whether or not a software math shortcut, as described above is actually a shortcut at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a question of programming concept. By utilizing the simulation of Japanese Multiplication, **is my program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My theory** is that since addition is computed faster than multiplication, a simulation of Japanese multiplication may actually allow a program to multiply (large) numbers faster than the CPU arithmetic unit can. I think this would be a very interesting finding, if it proves to be true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://superuser.com/questions/755648/do-processors-utilize-mathematical-shortcuts-and-tricks-like-we-do?noredirect=1#comment976766_755648&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/swF5p.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26703" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7254" RevisionGUID="0e5416dd-2573-43c5-8865-3de811e75023" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:04:27.893" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/" Text="### Question is About How to Use a Development Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool that you are using is a tool that is used to design and develop software and is used primarily in a software development environment, you should check out [Stack Overflow][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A number of development tools already have questions and answers on Stack Overflow, ranging from requirements management tools ([DOORS][2]) to architecture and design tools ([Dia][3], [Rhapsody][4], [Enterprise Architect][5]) to editors ([Visual Studio][6], [Eclipse][7], [Notepad++][8]) to mathematical packages ([MATLAB][9], [Sage][10]) to version control ([git][11], [ClearCase][12]) to peer review tools ([Collaborator][13]) to test tools ([TestComplete][14], [Selenium][15]) to project management tools ([Jira][16], [FogBugz][17]), and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about How to Use a General Purpose Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool is general purpose software, check out [Super User][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all of the tools that we use during the course of software development are unique to software developers. Tools such as office suites ([Microsoft Office][19], [OpenOffice.org][20]), web browsers ([Internet Explorer][21], [Chrome][22]) file transfer tools ([Filezilla][23], [WinSCP][24]), virtualization software ([VirtualBox][25], [VMWare][26]), and analysis software ([MATLAB][27], [Mathematica][28]) are used by many types of people in different environments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about a Tool in a Context Specific to an Operating System&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several Stack Exchange sites devoted to particular operating systems and associated software packages or applications: [Android][29], [Apple][30], [Unix and Linux][31], and [Ubuntu][32]. Be sure to read their Help Center, Meta site, and search for similar questions before asking to make sure that your specific question is on-topic for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about using a Tool in a Software Development Workflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question involves how to integrate a tool or type of tool into your workflow or process, then it is likely to be on-topic on Software Engineering. Generally, if you aren't asking about how to use a specific feature of a tool, but trying to determine how to use the tool to achieve a well-defined goal, start here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Other Considerations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some tools have their own Stack Exchange sites as well. For example, there are sites for [Drupal][33], [Expression Engine][34], [Mathematica][35], [Salesforce][36], [SharePoint][37], and [Wordpress][38]. There are even more sites for both particular environments and specific tools in beta - check out [the complete list of Stack Exchange sites][39].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  However, if you decide to post the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions may be on-topic on multiple sites. If you see your favorite tool on a site, check out some of the questions and answers to see if your question fits and which site is most likely to provide the answers that you are looking for. Do not cross-post questions - if you feel that your question should be moved to a different site, flag it and let the site's moderation team know. If you aren't sure, every site has a Meta site and many sites have a chat room, so you can always ask before asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators can, and do, migrate questions. If you do ask in the wrong place, there's a site that is more appropriate, and it's a well-written question, it will likely be migrated. Low quality questions that don't meet the quality guidelines of the other site won't be moved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are site-specific [automatic question blocks][40] - posting on the wrong site will not help you get answers and will likely lead to being blocked on other sites. It's also not possible to migrate questions if you are blocked on the target site. If you are blocked somewhere, do not post questions that are off-topic somewhere else. Instead, work to improve your existing questions and answers to have the block lifted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or downvoted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are Questions Asking for Help Using a Tool Off-Topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6701/are-questions-asking-for-help-using-a-tool-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are there a subset of tool questions that are appropriate for Software Engineering?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5519/are-there-a-subset-of-tool-questions-that-are-appropriate-for-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* [Where does my GIT question go?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6311/where-does-my-git-question-go)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/doors&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/dia&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/rhapsody&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/enterprise-architect&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/visual-studio&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/eclipse&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/notepad%2B%2B&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/sage&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/git&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/clearcase&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/code-collaborator&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/testcomplete&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/selenium&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/jira&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/fogbugz&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: https://superuser.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/microsoft-office&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/openoffice.org&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/internet-explorer&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/google-chrome&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/filezilla&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/winscp&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/virtualbox&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/vmware&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/mathematica&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://android.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [32]: http://askubuntu.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [33]: http://drupal.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [34]: http://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [35]: http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [36]: http://salesforce.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [37]: http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [38]: http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [39]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [40]: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26704" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7679" RevisionGUID="085e345f-5bf1-4ecb-ad5f-07bd08cf6703" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:04:27.893" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/" Text="[Software Recommendations is graduating][1] and will soon be a non-beta site!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[There is a question on their meta][2] about being a migration target: they are asking about other sites such as [Super User][3] having a migration path to [Software Recommendations][4]. [Programmers][5] did not come up there: while I would expect some other sites to have more recommendation questions, we do see some of these questions on Programmers and we have a few open slots for migration targets.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once Software Recommendations is fully graduated to a regular site, should Programmers have a migration path to it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Software recommendations stackexchange][6] - asked and answered before the graduation announcement.&#xD;&#xA;* [Revisiting what is on topic, with respect to new sites: Open Source, Law, and Software Recommendations][7] - software recommendations are _still_ off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2298&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2307&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://superuser.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6464&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7539" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26705" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8067" RevisionGUID="c2ef4d1e-59d4-432f-bab0-f68dc35507cd" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:04:27.893" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/" Text="The following sites may be of interest to members of the Software Engineering community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [CrossValidated][4] &#xD;&#xA;* [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;* [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;* [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;* [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;* [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;* [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;* [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;* [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;* [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;* [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;* [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;* [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;* [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;* [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;* [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;* [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;* [Signal Processing][21]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][22]&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Recommendations][23]&#xD;&#xA;* [Super User][24]&#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow][25]&#xD;&#xA;* [User Experience][26]&#xD;&#xA;* [Unix &amp; Linux][27]&#xD;&#xA;* [The Workplace][28]&#xD;&#xA;* [Writers][29]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before posting, be sure to read their Help Centers to fully understand what these communities expect from high quality questions and any specific rules they may have. As always, if you aren't sure if your question is a good fit, post on a Meta site and you can be directed to an appropriate site on the Stack Exchange network, if one exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a site doesn't exist yet, check out [Area 51][30], where users can collaborate to define and launch new Stack Exchange sites. If there's a proposal for your idea, you can follow it and contribute to it's definition. If not, you can create a new proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More detailed information about each site follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Code Review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Code Review Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; peer review of your code. We're working together to improve the skills&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of programmers worldwide by taking working code and making it better.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are looking for feedback on a specific working piece of code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from your project in the following areas…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Best practices and design pattern usage&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Security issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Correctness in unanticipated cases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then you are in the right place!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computational Science][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computational Science Stack Exchange is for questions and answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about computational methods used in technical disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; First-time posters are strongly advised to read Eric Raymond's How to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask Questions the Smart Way for advice on how to ask good questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (not for technical answers). Although written for an audience asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions about open source software, the same advice applies when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking questions about any subject area.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is run by volunteers; the best way to get an answer to your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question is to ask it in a way that makes it easy for someone with a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; broad computational science background to answer it with 15 minutes of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; effort or less.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Topics that are usually a good fit for this site:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about software packages or languages used broadly in computational science (e.g., PETSc, MATLAB, Trilinos, LAPACK, SLEPc,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; R, NumPy, SciPy, Julia, Maple, Octave) except Mathematica (which has&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its own site now). In general, high-level questions (e.g., about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/package features) are best. Questions that are essentially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about debugging a code sample, or about low-level language syntax are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a poor fit for this site, and are usually closed; such questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be asked on language-/package-specific forums. Package&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developers interested in using this site as a resource should look at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this meta question. Package developers answering questions should look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at this meta question for guidelines on disclosing project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; affiliations.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about algorithms or methods used to solve problems in applied mathematics (e.g., finding roots of a polynomial, finding the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; eigenvalues/eigenvectors of a matrix, solving an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elliptic/parabolic/hyperbolic PDE)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions that ask about appropriate methods for a given application area (e.g., what numerical methods would I use when modeling shock&#xD;&#xA;&gt; waves, what numerical methods would I use when modeling combustion,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what graph algorithms would I use if I wanted to understand social&#xD;&#xA;&gt; networks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Computer Science][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer Science Stack Exchange is for students, researchers and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practitioners of computer science.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Computer science, also sometimes called computing science, is the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; science of computation and its applications. This site covers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; theoretical and applied computer science at any level, including but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms, models of computation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming language semantics, formal methods&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - computer architecture, networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, natural language processing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - vision, graphics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [CrossValidated][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; CrossValidated is for statisticians, data miners, and anyone else&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doing data analysis or interested in it as a discipline. If you have a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical analysis, applied or theoretical&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - designing experiments&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - collecting data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - data mining&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - machine learning&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - visualizing data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - probability theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - mathematical statistics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - statistical and data-driven computing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Cryptography][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Crypto Stack Exchange is for software developers, mathematicians and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others interested in cryptography.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cryptography Stack Exchange is for asking questions about the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mathematics and properties of cryptographic systems, their analysis&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (&quot;cryptanalysis&quot;) and subsidiary topics that generally make up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cryptology, such as random number generation. As such, we welcome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions on topics such as:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Asymmetric and symmetric cryptographic algorithms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographic protocols&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptanalysis techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Hash functions, hashing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Entropy and information theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Cryptographically Secure (Pseudo-)Random Number Generation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Database Administrators][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dba.se is for those needing expert answers to advanced&#xD;&#xA;&gt; database-related questions concerning traditional SQL RDBMS and NoSQL&#xD;&#xA;&gt; alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Database Administration including configuration and backup / restore&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Querying including window-functions, dynamic-sql, and query-performance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Modelling and database-design, including referential-integrity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Advanced Programming in built-in server-side languages including stored-procedures and triggers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence including etl, reporting, and olap&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Data Science][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Examples of questions that are likely to be on-topic for Data Science&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given process monitoring data arriving every 10ms, what statistical tool should I use to best characterize a change in the process - mean?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a distribution?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When is it suitable to apply L1 regularization for feature selection?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - I would like to produce a infographic on the 'Brexit' referendum. Given public opinion data across the UK, what are some meaningful&#xD;&#xA;&gt; techniques to visaualize it in a dashboard?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - When executing an ARIMA model in Spark, what are the pros and cons of using Python instead of R?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Given Facebook Likes, is there an ML technique to predict age and gender?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Electrical Engineering][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for electronics and electrical engineering professionals,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; students, and enthusiasts. We ask and answer questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electrical and electronics engineering topics, which include&#xD;&#xA;&gt; electronics, physical computing, and those working with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; microcontrollers, Arduinos and embedded systems. We feel the best&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Electronics Design questions have a schematic, links to pertinent&#xD;&#xA;&gt; datasheets or some source code in them, but if your question generally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific electronics design problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the theory and simulation of electromagnetic forces&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a communication scheme&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Engineering][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to ask and answer your own question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Engineering Stack Exchange are usually well-received when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Identify a specific engineering problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Require expert engineering knowledge to solve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Include any relevant drawings, images or references that may be necessary to understand the problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Excite or challenge experienced professionals in the field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Game Development][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Game Development Stack Exchange is for professional and amateur&#xD;&#xA;&gt; video/computer game developers. If you have a question relating to ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asset pipelines (creation, storage, editing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game-specific programming issues (engine architecture, game-related APIs, networking, tools, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - project management (testing, team management, scheduling, publishing, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - game industry (careers, trends, technology, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Hardware Recommendations][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware Recommendations is a community-run website to help you find a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific product for your needs. That means you can ask for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware to perform a specific task. However, you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be aware that &quot;hardware&quot; is not an all-encompassing term — for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; details of what hardware is accepted on this site, please see What is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hardware?. In essence, we can help you if you're looking for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommendation for hardware that is &quot;an electronic item that is,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interfaces with, or connects to a computer to operate&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Information Security][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; IT Security Stack Exchange is for Information Security professionals&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to discuss protecting assets from threats and vulnerabilities. Topics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; include, but are not limited to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - web app hardening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - network security&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - social engineering, including phishing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - risk management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - policies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - penetration testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - security tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - using cryptography&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - incident response&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physically securing the office, datacentre, information assets etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Law][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Law Stack Exchange is for legal professionals, students, and others&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with experience or interest in law.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The best questions are those that have specific answers; Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange is not a general discussion forum. In general, ask here if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question which covers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Statutes or court decisions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal terms and language, doctrines and theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Legal process and procedure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Historical legal applications&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Dealing with legal professionals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Mathematics][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mathematics Stack Exchange is for people studying mathematics at any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; level and professionals in related fields. We welcome questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Understanding mathematical concepts and theorems.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Mathematical problems such as one might come across in a course or textbook. (First read our how to ask a good question page.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Solving mathematical puzzles.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software that mathematicians use (except Mathematica, which has its own Stack Exchange site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Network Engineering][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Network Engineering Stack Exchange is for asking questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professionally managed networks in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - operating, maintaining, purchasing or managing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - planning or designing an enterprise / service provider network;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - model or product line features and differences;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - lab scenarios involving on-topic equipment;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used by network professionals;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - servers operating as a router/switch/firewall;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design or theory of protocols used to operate a network (e.g. IP, TCP, routing protocols, STP, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - content delivery networks;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - production troubleshooting or problem resolution;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - physical infrastructure (e.g. standard color coding of cables, types of fiber, etc);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementing and enforcing network security or policies;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and meets the following requirements&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - under your direct control (if the network is not under your control you will not likely be able to provide the information required to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer your question);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware that has a paid support option (enterprise/provider class products, some small business class devices);&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; then this is likely the correct place to ask unless it meets any of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the off-topic conditions detailed below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Open Source][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Open Source Stack Exchange is a question &amp; answer site about a group&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of related movements which encourage people to give up some of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rights given to them by copyright law, by using licenses which give&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others the freedom to use and transform their creative works, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which optionally (by using copyleft/share-alike licenses) ensure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; these works will always be made available with the same rights. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site is not limited to software, but also covers art, literature,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hardware, databases and more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; These movements have been spearheaded by a group of organisations:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FSF, OSI, Creative Commons, Free Culture. These organisations prefer a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; variety of different terms (free, open source, libre) and sometimes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; define them with slight differences. But on this site these terms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should in general be considered to be synonymous, except for questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which ask directly about their differences.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You've come to the right place if you have questions about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - the history and philosophies of the FSF, OSI, CC etc&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, applying, and complying with Free &amp; Open licenses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - how communities collaborate together to produce, distribute, market and sometime monetize these projects&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what license to use for a specific situation - but please read How do I ask for a license recommendation? first&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Personal Productivity][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Personal Productivity Stack Exchange is for people wanting to improve&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their personal productivity. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - achieving a productivity workflow, using techniques like GTD, Covey, Pomodoro, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - fighting procrastination by getting energetic and motivated workflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - ergonomics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - effective sleep habits and the entire sleep-wake transition&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - learning, memory and creativity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Project Management][18]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The site is for project management practitioners, academics and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; amateur theorists. This is a site about the field of project&#xD;&#xA;&gt; management for people who love the subject. Our site includes the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following topics:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Management Practices and Theory&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Agile&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Scrum&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - PRINCE2&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Tool Usage in Project Management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Project Manager Career Advancement&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Reverse Engineering][19]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Reverse Engineering Stack Exchange is for researchers and developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who explore the principles of a system through analysis of its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structure, function, and operation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software analysis (static or dynamic)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - disassembly or decompilation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hardware analysis and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools commonly used for reverse engineering hardware or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deterring reverse engineering efforts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Server Fault][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Server Fault is for questions about managing information technology&#xD;&#xA;&gt; systems in a business environment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - managing the hardware or software of servers, workstations, storage or networks&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tools used for administering, monitoring, or automating these&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - deployment to and management of third-party provided information technology platforms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Signal Processing][21]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Signal Processing Stack Exchange is for practitioners of the art and science of signal, image and video processing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][22]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing Stack Exchange is for software quality control experts, automation engineers, and software testers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Software Recommendations][23]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is for questions asking for recommendations of software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ready-to-use to accomplish a particular task, that is, “what software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can I use to do …?”. While this includes software libraries for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development use, note that recommendations of tutorials, data sources,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; media libraries (e.g. icon collections) etc. are off-topic – as are&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions like “what technology to use for …?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good software recommendation requests have two components:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A purpose — a task to accomplish, a user story&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Some objective requirements — a minimum set of features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Stack Overflow][25]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generally covers…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; a specific programming problem, or a software algorithm, or software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tools commonly used by programmers; and is a practical, answerable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem that is unique to software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#[Super User][24]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users. If you have a question about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * computer hardware,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * computer software, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal and home computer networking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming and software development,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * video games or consoles,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * websites or web services like Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * electronic devices, media players, cell phones or smart phones, except insofar as they interface with your computer,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * issues specific to corporate IT support and networks,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * asking for a product, service or learning material recommendation,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Unix &amp; Linux][27]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Unix and Linux Stack Exchange is for users of Linux, FreeBSD and other Un*x-like operating systems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If your question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Using or administering a *nix desktop or server&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The Unix foundation underlying OS X (but generally not frontend application questions)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The underlying *nix OS on an embedded system or handheld device (e.g. an Android phone)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Shell scripting&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Applications packaged in *nix distributions (note: being cross-platform does not disqualify)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UNIX C API and System Interfaces ( within reason )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;then you're in the right place. Note that Ubuntu posts are a special case. If your question applies to Ubuntu only, or you're looking for answers that are Ubuntu-specific, you should post it on the Ask Ubuntu Stack Exchange site. If your question applies to other distros or you welcome more generic solutions, you're in the right place here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If your question is a programming question, requiring knowledge of programming languages other than unix shell scripting languages, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Please note that requests for learning materials (tutorials, how-tos etc.) are off topic. The only exception is questions about where to find official documentation (e.g. POSIX specifications).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [User Experience][26]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; User Experience Stack Exchange is for User Experience Designers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Information Architects, and Human Computer Interaction researchers. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Specific UX design problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UX issues that can be solved with expert advice or existing research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about HCI and user research&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [The Workplace][28]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The Workplace Stack Exchange is a Q&amp;A site about the workplace and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other career-related topics. With your help we're working to build a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; library to every question about the workplace related to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Finding employment (resumes/cv/cover letters, recruiters, hiring-managers, interviews, negotiations, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Maintaining employment (promotions, pay increases, harassment, bullying, poor working conditions, communication problems, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Leadership in the workplace (motivating people, encouraging people, making decisions, holding hard conversations, intervening in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unproductive situations, asking for and giving help, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Terminating employment (notice period, breaking the news, handing over work, reference letters, relieving letters, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# [Writers][29]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Writers Stack Exchange is for authors, editors, reviewers, bloggers, copywriters, professional and aspiring writers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on these topics are welcome here:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Non-fiction, technical, or scholarly writing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Writing fiction, poetry, song lyrics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - General copywriting, style, and organization&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Professional-level blogging&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The publishing and editing process itself&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about specialized writing tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; On the other hand, these kinds of questions aren't allowed here:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions seeking to interpret or analyze an existing work, although there are exceptions if is being applied to a real-world writing project.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Proofreading requests.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Requests to critique your work. However, please do feel free to use your own writing as examples in on-topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The strictly interpreted correctness of English grammar or syntax rules (please ask those on English Stack Exchange, instead).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Finding a professional to write for you, be your agent, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A specific, localized shopping recommendation as described here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Asking how to write a particular kind of email, letter, memo, or other correspondence -- or, more generally. asking &quot;what should I write about&quot; (more about this here).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Requests to rephrase something - a few sentences, or even a single sentence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://datascience.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://security.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://math.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://serverfault.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://dsp.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: https://superuser.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://writers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26706" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8477" RevisionGUID="42cff98d-44b2-4b18-b5d8-4f14c9a72a63" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:04:27.893" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/" Text="I've had a couple of posts recently that really prompt me to question whether Apple still really cares about Unix users. One of these posts was http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/270509/terminal-has-been-unstable-since-last-upgrade-osx-10-12-2; I wrote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have had repeated Terminal.app crashes while working with the command line, whether on the local computer or shelled into a Linux VPS.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this a known issue? Are there alternative CLI terminal applications that will behave like terminal, only at least being more stable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thanks,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@j.c. answered:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To answer your other question: &quot;Is this a known issue?&quot;, I have been having problems with Terminal.app crashing too, and [this post](https://discussions.apple.com/message/31309932#message31309932) seems to suggest that the issue is known to Apple. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More recently I posted another issue: there's something called Apache installed, and I can't do an ``apachectl start`` twice without getting an error of ``/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist: service already loaded``, but I can't for the life of me connect to port 80 on localhost. I posted on apple.SE at https://superuser.com/questions/1185171/how-do-i-get-apache-to-run-from-osx-sierra-10-12-13 :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've made multiple searches for e.g. &quot;apache Sierra&quot;, but haven't been able to find my issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have a MacBook Pro running OSX Sierra 10.12.13, and it seems to have some version of Apache installed, but I can't connect on port 80 (or 443), either with a browser, or by running ``telnet localhost 80``. If I run ``apachectl restart``, it runs without reported error; if I run ``apachectl stop`` it runs without reported error; if I run ``apachectl start`` when I think Apache is running, it gives an error message, ``/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist: service already loaded``. A ``which apachectl`` gives ``/usr/sbin/apachectl``, so I believe I'm running OSX's native Apache and not a version pulled in from Homebrew.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What can/should I be doing so that Apache is running normally?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thanks,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the question was old enough to be eligible for bounty, *and I had gotten off the phone with Apple technical support*, I flagged it for moderator attention and requested migration to ServerFault.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the technical support call, which lasted a bit short of an hour, I was escalated twice; even the first escalation was with someone who didn't know the command line and didn't know what Apache was. I was told that Apple offers Server which may include Apache, installable from the store, and supported GUI-driven use of Server, but Apple technical support does not offer help for the command line or command-line-driven Apache setup and configuration file editing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those both look like significant red flags. It's mainstream for users who want Macs to offer Unix functionality to want a stable Terminal.app and it's mainstream for web developers to want a working Apache installation on their box even if it's not shared.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I know that MacOS and iOS, with their ``NSString``s, owe a nearly indelible debt to Unix. And there are workarounds, like [iTerm2](https://www.iterm2.com/) and Homebrew or source builds of Apache, and I'm using iTerm2 and plan on building another Apache. But I see ominous writing on the wall; it seems that Apple is losing its respect for hackerdom.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there other examples or signs that Apple is dropping care for Unix hackers?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26708" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="96" RevisionGUID="bc9883bb-1e28-4db9-ac95-2c6c1500cbb6" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is strongly related to [this question][1] I asked on meta.stacko where it was a huge no-no that there should be no Accept button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/58543/do-all-stack-exchange-sites-need-an-accept-answer-button" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26709" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="137" RevisionGUID="81150900-d939-4e4c-b648-480744da97fd" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="progpub.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short version based on a suggestion in [Renaming the Not Programming Related Proposal][1]...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/62734/renaming-the-not-programming-related-proposal/62849#62849" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26710" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="160" RevisionGUID="4f9e6537-f138-43f3-9077-f8a694e42ed2" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This topic has been hashed over and over on Meta.StackOverflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Encouraging people to explain down-votes](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135)&#xD;&#xA;* [So annoyed with no-comment, vindictive downvoting](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22934/so-annoyed-with-no-comment-vindictive-downvoting)&#xD;&#xA;* [Who has downvoted me and why [closed]](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63895/who-has-downvoted-me-and-why)&#xD;&#xA;* [If you don't like my question you have to explain why. [closed]](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/50738/if-you-dont-like-my-question-you-have-to-explain-why)&#xD;&#xA;* [Downvoters and comments [closed]](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/55324/downvoters-and-comments)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a *Bad Idea*. Downvoting is a personal thing for the voter, is necessary for a functioning voting system (that is, down-voters should not be subject to reprisal), and should not be taken so personally that you feel you are owed an explanation. Shrug downvotes, concentrate on providing the best answers you can, and move on." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26711" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="223" RevisionGUID="ff52a904-59c7-482f-a1b9-db89275ef7ad" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's [30 votes a day](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5212/are-there-any-voting-limits-in-stackoverflow), and it really shouldn't be raised. Limits are in place to prevent abuse: SOIC has ostensibly thought a lot about what the limits should be and why they're necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further discussion: [Why are there voting limits?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/28314/why-are-there-voting-limits)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26712" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="285" RevisionGUID="f3ec9ec9-b7c9-4d78-9049-4ce3d4da53fd" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In connection to [this][1], and the closing of [Why are so many programmers arrogant?][2]. The question was closed (unjustifiably, IMHO), then reopened by those of us who disagreed. The question has now been locked, preventing others from participating. I have a feeling this is going to happen to the [Do programmers have higher tendency to be atheists than non programmers?][3] as well (_**EDIT:** this has happened, as predicted_), which has been closed and reopened as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, even though both questions _could_ potentially lead to flamewars, I think it is a credit to this community that there was not a single answer (apart from one joke answer that was subsequently deleted) that was potentially inflammatory. I fail to see why such questions should be locked, as long as the community wants it open. If the question turns into a close-reopen war, and is closed and reopened more than _x_ times (say thrice), then perhaps it might be worth locking. Even then, it should be done on a case-by-case basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as far as the &quot;Why are so many programmers&quot; arrogant question goes, it has only been closed and reopened once, and at least one of the high-rep users has said that he voted to close by accident. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone please tell me why this decision was taken? Both questions are perfectly valid  for programmers.se, and while such questions _should_ be closed, locked (and probably deleted) on SO, doing so here merely amounts to censorship.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed&#xD;&#xA;[2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;[3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/do-programmers-have-higher-tendency-to-be-atheists-than-non-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** OK, the unilateral closing of the atheist question has really pissed me off. If this happens a few more times, I see myself leaving the community for good. People were being respectful and the community at large had no problem with the question. It was closed once, and reopened once and had no close votes the last time I looked. That means that only 5 people felt strongly enough about it to vote to close it, and the rest were happy to let it be. This makes the &quot;community-run&quot; aspect of the website look like simply lip-service. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 2:** I should clarify that I have absolutely nothing against vote-based closing. I may or may not agree with the closers, but at least everyone (at least those who have enough rep) is on an equal footing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 3:** Jeff has been talking about [removing the &quot;worst&quot; 15-20% of questions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com). If this happens, I'm going to ask for my account on p.se to be deleted in protest. That's what voting and flagging are for. Remember, a closed question can be deleted if enough high-rep users cast delete votes. If I'd known that this site wasn't going to be strictly community-run, I would have approached participation _very_ differently. Why should I be active on meta, cast close/delete votes or view flagged posts if every so often, the community's verdict is going to be overridden unilaterally?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26713" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="308" RevisionGUID="c8b745b7-247b-4ee7-8408-d0130dd39a22" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We have a lot of code here. I think everyone agree that we need syntax highlighting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;[Support this feature request on MSO][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/72797/enable-syntax-highlighting-to-code-blocks-on-programmers-se" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26714" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="331" RevisionGUID="b2a3ddad-cbcd-4a29-99a8-e38e3ee3460b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are two issues at play:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [The text for the Tumbleweed badge on Programmers.SE is out of date](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65803/tumbleweed-text-on-programmers-se-is-out-of-date). It should read:&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Asked a question with no votes, no answers, no comments, and low views for a week&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. None of your questions meet the requirements for the badge, given the correct definition. If you're curious about the viewcount requirement, it's [10-15](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/32376/tumbleweed-how-many-views-is-low)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26715" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="333" RevisionGUID="27d797f2-751f-4677-bcb1-6f3a5fa76c6a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###Edit: Problem solved.  As Mark Trapp points out, [normal users can no longer mark CW](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67039/what-can-we-do-to-make-community-wiki-better/67192#67192).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [consensus](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki) seems to be that community wiki is useless here, and we've been pointing this out in various question comment threads.  The problem is that new user keep coming in with the old expectations of how CW should work, and marking their questions CW just because they're subjective.  I see a few options for dealing with this that I'll post in separate answers- of course, post your own if you can think of a better solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we get a clear consensus, the mods, in their capacity of liaisons, can take it to SOIS." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26716" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="335" RevisionGUID="835f7a98-3cde-4a1d-8b1a-7756e9b63c87" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Allow Mods and/or 10k (2k for beta) users to De-CW a question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would solve our problem without losing the CW feature.  However, it's require a more active effort on the part of the mods and the top users.  Further, it's been discussed [on meta.SO](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6821/ability-to-undo-the-community-wiki) to, as far as I can tell, no effect." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26718" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="502" RevisionGUID="6dc43443-1ecf-4378-9004-6422c08e6094" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's one of [the highest requested ideas][1] on Meta Stack Overflow, but has been declined by management.  It would be great if they implemented this since it really sucks to try and keep track of posts so that when they get re-opened, I can go back and cast my one close vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/125/how-about-a-vote-not-to-close-option-to-counter-the-vote-to-close" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26719" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="517" RevisionGUID="5188bedd-4ad7-4bc0-86d4-45c99fb96326" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Basics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Go through the tour.][1]&#xD;&#xA;- You can log in with your Google, Yahoo, etc. user by clicking the on icon of the service you have an account on the Login page.&#xD;&#xA;- Unlike forums and mailing lists, this concentrates on highlighting the good answers, and downvoting the incorrect or bad answers.  **It's not a replacement for discussion**, just a more efficient way to get answers.&#xD;&#xA;- *After you get some reputation make sure you are voting good posts up, and bad posts down!*&#xD;&#xA;- A ton of value comes from finding a question and answer via a search engine. We want a good answer to be the top hit for &quot;How do I use the me menu?&quot;  Don't worry if the questions are scrolling by too quickly on the front page, this isn't about tracking discussions.&#xD;&#xA;- What is Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow?  Joel's [announcement for stackoverflow.com][3] mentions the motivation behind this method of Q&amp;A.  More information on Stack Exchange in general can be found in the [Stack Overflow community FAQ][4] (much of it is general, some is specific to Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Asking good questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- People will upvote your question based on its quality, so [put some effort][5] into it.&#xD;&#xA;- Use tags to classify your question. This makes questions easier to read on the front page and brings up related questions on the sidebar.&#xD;&#xA;- There's no need to bump a question &amp;mdash; if your question is unanswered the community user will bump it on occasion.  Consider adding a [bounty](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/bounty) if you want to attract more attention to your question.&#xD;&#xA;- Feel free to continue to work on your question; edit, edit, edit.  This will give it a natural bump, and people will be able to watch your progress in adding more detail. People tend to help/upvote people who are actively trying to investigate their problem.&#xD;&#xA;- As you add to your question, if you end up finding the answer, then answer your own question so that future generations can benefit from it!&#xD;&#xA;- If someone answers your question, accept it as the answer. This is an important [part of the process][6] and rewards the people trying to help you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Giving good answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Don't only link to random sources on the Internet. Any person can type their answer into Google and do that. If the information is good and under an open license, just put it in the answer (don't forget to link to and attribute the author).&#xD;&#xA;- Edit, edit, edit should be your mantra. &amp;mdash; If you've got a good answer and someone adds more detail, integrate it, and remember to always respect an individual's work.&#xD;&#xA;- Comments are like &quot;meta&quot; for the answer. *Don't ping pong back and forth in comments with new data, when someone leaves a comment with more information or something, just add the information to your question directly.* If people post updates to a comment ask them to add it to their question; that's where the power of Stack Exchange comes in: updates on people answering their question happens in the answers and the questions, so that when you are finished people don't have to track the conversation, just the final answer and solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Spread the word&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- We need help getting the word out, [we have some ideas][7] on how you can help, especially in places where users are already asking you for help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/15.html&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/7931/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/5234&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7/how-do-we-promote-our-site&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26720" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="526" RevisionGUID="684b0854-5d18-4ee2-82a9-9c03c5c47abc" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="See this [Meta SO post][1] for a Greasemonkey script to do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/43055/greasemonkey-script-for-displaying-threaded-comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26721" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="553" RevisionGUID="318143d7-1642-42d4-abbb-212380db64f7" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If what you want is to use a single OpenID and have all your SE accounts associated *except* for your Programmer's account, then sorry, [you can't do that](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/52272/stop-repeatedly-auto-associating-accounts-on-login).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're okay with disassociating all of your accounts, then go to [your Programmer's account page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/191?tab=accounts), where you should see a link/button/box at the very bottom that says [`Clear all associations`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/191?tab=accounts#clear-associations). Clicking that *should* do the trick.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another approach is to create a new OpenID and use it just for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to answer the general question: anyone can go to [one of your account pages](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/191?tab=accounts) and see all your associated accounts at once." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26724" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="641" RevisionGUID="4620b7ff-409a-4693-998b-5b0a03699209" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We are next in line.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jin is working on the design, but has decided on to do a redesign based on the feedback from [the first &amp; second attempts](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/609/design-ideas-for-programmers-site-closed). Once that's been agreed we'll probably go live.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's also a question on Meta Stack Overflow about [identifying questions to migrate from SO](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate) that indicates the go live date is imminent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com is *probably* going live this week," ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26725" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="645" RevisionGUID="40f2f93e-5c69-41b0-b384-8fb33243ac02" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Often, I face myself asking a tricky question where someone interested in giving me a constructive answer would have to sit down and **think**. They would also need to **care** about my question and my problem and be **open-minded** (which is the whole idea behind [Programmers.SE][1]). Instead, they often end up just trying to make a point - the point they may have had all their lives and they wouldn't reconsider - or make me bad or show off their (sometimes questionable) knowledge. In short: useless and not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usually, this doesn't happen when the question itself is technical and can be answered very objectively (as on [Stackoverflow][2]). But as soon as I'd like a subjective, critical but constructive answer, I get a bashing. And even more so, the bashers get voted up by other bashers such that the really constructive, interesting answers will move down in ranking among all the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a way to circumvent that? E.g. in phrasing my question very carefully (how?) Any ideas welcome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;NOTE: I've already asked the question here: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71977/how-to-phrase-my-subjective-question-to-avoid-unconstructive-answers, but **meta.programmers** is the better place for it than **meta.stackoverflow**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26726" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="650" RevisionGUID="82698b7c-9bca-4fef-b334-b93026884970" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We're discussing this on [MSO][1]. It's important for our users to get in discussion there to avoid dumping their trash here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate/71734#71734" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26728" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="739" RevisionGUID="f6c1b456-8867-4f8a-bce3-80898d9f9a14" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="From the [Meta Stack Overflow FAQ on accepting answers](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Which answer should I choose?&#xD;&#xA;- Don't hesitate to accept an answer that is well-written, suggests a good practice and works for you.&#xD;&#xA;- It is generally accepted that you should wait 24 to 48 hours to let a bunch of people have a chance to answer your question. A question with an accepted answer may deter people from looking at a question.&#xD;&#xA;- Make sure that besides working for you, the answer is really good practice. Sometimes after the answer gets accepted, another comes in, uncovering the fact that previous one was in fact a bad hack.&#xD;&#xA;- __The bottom line is to accept the answer that you found to be the most helpful to you, personally.__&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26729" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="757" RevisionGUID="ca41d008-c10a-4b8b-afdc-d6369cf8623a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The recalc removes any up- or downvotes you got for answers or questions that have been deleted. It also gives you back the one rep you lost for downvoting an answer or question that has then been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically it undoes any changes that a deleted post had on your reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the feature request in response to which this feature has been introduced: [Self-instigated rep recalc](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14200/self-instigated-rep-recalc)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26730" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="821" RevisionGUID="0d7df61d-67bc-4cb2-9642-fa1be159339b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's important that we disallow SO to push trash to us. Engage on these questions on MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Programmers is about to go live, which questions should we migrate?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Multiple duplicated question on SO are being migrated to PSE partially][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Have Code Golf questions been implicitly disallowed on StackOverflow, now that migration to PSE is possible?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Migration questions from SO to PSE just to stay temporarily][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl][5] specially this answer: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl/73431#73431&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Who should be granted to Migration Path feature?][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73375/multiple-duplicated-question-on-so-are-being-migrated-to-pse-partially&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73332/have-code-golf-questions-been-implicitly-disallowed-on-stackoverflow-now-that-mi&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73373/migration-questions-from-so-to-pse-just-to-stay-temporarily&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73493/who-should-be-granted-to-migration-path-feature" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26731" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="869" RevisionGUID="dfaeb64e-6eb9-4b11-b7a0-ef763713e7a3" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In general, I have been deleting the questions that I think have no lasting value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only ones I want migrated are the ones that are *useful*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See:  &#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73226/set-up-an-archive-for-legendary-deleted-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26732" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="870" RevisionGUID="12de84e5-4427-4b66-9e25-b8af4d13530f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In general, I have been deleting the questions that I think have no lasting value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only ones I want migrated are the ones that are *useful*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See:  &#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73226/set-up-an-archive-for-legendary-deleted-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26733" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="872" RevisionGUID="848a0377-f8e1-4093-923c-7ec38f130ca2" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Following up to [Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the main opposition position, which based on votes is pretty popular, is essentially &quot;you're not getting rid of the crap, so we're going to keep flushing,&quot; it doesn't look like we're going to stop getting terribad Stack Overflow questions for some time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was a feature suggestion that moderators should be able to &quot;accept&quot; incoming migrations to police what's sent to their Stack Exchange site: failing that feature being implemented, do moderators want all potentially terrible migrated questions to be flagged so they can make a call about closing them without waiting for 5 close votes that may or may not come? I've been flagging the obvious career advice and duplicate questions, but there are some potentially bad questions beyond that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26734" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="876" RevisionGUID="93c66721-b996-45b7-bc45-7ab999adfb44" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think it's [supposed to work like that](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/17552/why-do-migrated-questions-lack-redirection-via-http-response-status-code-301-mov), although it certainly threw me for a loop when I clicked it. I didn't realize I was on SO right away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Appending `?noredirect=1` to the P.SE URL lets you view [the original question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32590/unicode-to-ascii-conversion-closed?noredirect=1)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26736" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="917" RevisionGUID="a081b3dd-2f52-4a4f-8535-43fba33366ca" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is the right place to post this, as it deals with a migration from Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that it shouldn't have been migrated to CSTheory.SE, and the commenter that suggested that was obviously mistaken. But I don't think it should be migrated to Math.SE: it's a question that's better suited for Stack Overflow, which handles issues related to programming, including regular expressions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But at this point, that question has no chance to survive: if it keeps getting migrated, [it's a sign of a deeper problem](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63564/weird-behavior-when-migrating-a-migrated-question/63576#63576), which is shown by the significant confusion as to where it belongs." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26737" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="991" RevisionGUID="52c31a03-6666-4031-a0c0-ae829ef57c66" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a new post on the Stack Overflow blog entitled [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), which serves to expand upon the [six subjective guidelines](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) we all know and love. I encourage you to read it and [the original answer from Aarobot](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179) that sparked the post itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main point that's now been added to [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) is the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: &amp;ldquo;What&amp;rsquo;s your favorite \_\_\_\_\_?&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: &amp;ldquo;I use \_\_\_\_\_ for \_\_\_\_\_, what do you use?&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: &amp;ldquo;I&amp;rsquo;m curious if other people feel like I do.&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: &amp;ldquo;What if \_\_\_\_\_ happened?&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - it is a rant disguised as a question: &amp;ldquo;\_\_\_\_\_ sucks, am I right?&amp;rdquo;&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about \_\_\_\_\_”, then you should not be asking here. If your motivation is “I would like others to explain \_\_\_\_\_ to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are your thoughts on the new guidelines? Is there a problem with these types of questions that needs addressing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to encourage questions that don't fall into the trap of being poll questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26738" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1066" RevisionGUID="7c4eb274-7ff8-4ec4-bed9-844ae7eebc3e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My moderation style would be to give users time to edit their question before closing, never close based on the quality of the answers and consider the popularity of the question when deciding whether or not it truly requires moderator attention. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some examples of helping a user on Meta to edit a question to get it reopened.  This is how I would guide users to making changes to their questions rather than welcoming them with a closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/923/this-question-should-not-have-been-closed/938#938&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16618/what-will-be-considered-harmful-next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(or not)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/510/is-my-question-that-bad-or-am-i-totally-out-of-it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, in the interest of full disclosure, here's something that got me banned from programmers.SE for a day.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66438/p-se-user-is-creating-bad-tags-for-personal-harassment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I add this to explain that I believe in retagging, the use meta-tags within the paradigm, and until the feature is deprecated using tags to filter out junk you don't want to see.  Also, I am committed to I asking questions on meta before I go it alone and when I make a mistake, apologize. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26739" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1093" RevisionGUID="c2f76e71-e921-4c22-9c44-eaccacf5a37b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The technical aspect of the ban (blacklisting lmgtfy.com links in posts) might not be active, but it's my understanding the practice effectively is banned for all the reasons pointed out in the original [Ban lmgtfy (let me google that for you) links](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/15650/ban-lmgtfy-let-me-google-that-for-you-links) question on Meta Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There isn't a context in which they are helpful or constructive on a site where one of the main sections in the FAQ is [Be Nice](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#benice). If you see it being used, I suggest flagging it for moderator review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26740" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1118" RevisionGUID="2df8b7ec-bcf9-4897-835d-606261fd6377" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Seems you didn't like my rather open-minded answer... :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's talk serious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) I'd be very much interested in writing good elaborate answers. I actually have done so on numerous occasions. You know what? **People don't read them.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can't tell you how many times I wrote single-line answers to get numerous votes and immediately after adding &quot;substance&quot; as you call it the voting ended up abruptly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I actually learned this tactic from seasoned high-rep users (40K+) on SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People just don't want to read the stuff. I can't do anything to change them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I see folks don't read my answers, I have no motivation of writing them really.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the very least I can amuse myself by seeing numbers tick (rep growing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) The other reason is that by the time you finished writing an elaborate answer there will be 10+ single-lined answers voted up to the heaven. **Nobody will notice yours.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who's to blame if the site is all about being the [Fastest Gun in the West][1]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose the blame is partially on the site creator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been COUNTLESS proposals on how to change the operational model to realign to the quality rather than to quantity and mass. They were all turned down. The creator is very stubborn and doesn't want to listen to input.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even I proposed an improvement - lock out answers display for the first N minutes to give everyone sufficient time to contribute *quality* answers - I got laughed at.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Just tried to locate that old question of mine - seems it was deleted. So much for user voice.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That other trick with limiting reputation growth to 200 per day only results in newcomers desperately trying to reach the elder by contributing an insane amount of answers, quality evidently suffers here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also see with all that stackexchange expansion that the creators do not concern themselves with the conceptual problems - it's now all about growth, expansion, consumption of markets, going public and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At that time I'm starting to hope somebody will start a different Q&amp;A site - with the right priorities and with the right attitude.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26741" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1154" RevisionGUID="ab152d14-6646-47ae-8637-fac3af379c29" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is [meta-tag:status-bydesign]: IE6 is not supported at all, and even IE7 is minimally supported. Check Meta Stack Overflow for [a list of browsers that are currently supported](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/56161/which-browsers-are-officially-supported/71208#71208). Things might work in IE6 on some sites, but working functionality is purely coincidental." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26742" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1224" RevisionGUID="d2120f19-ecc3-4c4f-8f08-4620147f5f90" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="See https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80862/sudden-sharp-drop-in-reputation-find-out-reason-recalc for the details.  This was StackExchange wide in preparation for some upcoming changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26743" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1237" RevisionGUID="a42e0f75-4065-4d9d-9ccc-1b20bdd135d6" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If you look at [this answer][1] from the [bounty faq][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What happens if there's no answer after the bounty period?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What happens if I feel my question is still unanswered?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What is automatic awarding?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; At the end of the bounty period, if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the bounty starter has not manually&#xD;&#xA;&gt; awarded the bounty, eligible answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can be automatically awarded half the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; bounty amount. The criteria for an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer to be eligible for automatic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; awarding are as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The answer must be given after the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; bounty was started The answer must&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have a score of at least +2 If two or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more eligible answers have the same&#xD;&#xA;&gt; score, the oldest answer is awarded&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no answers meet these criteria, the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; bounty ends without it being awarded&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to any answer, and is not refunded to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the bounty starter.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; An accepted answer that does not meet&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the above criteria is still ignored by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the automatic-awarding system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like the bounty was automatically given to [this answer][3] by Alex. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This explains why it went to alex. It also explains why no badge for you. Automatic awards don't count because the benefactor badge goes for the &quot;First bounty you **manually** awarded on&#xD;&#xA; your own question&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16065/how-does-the-bounty-system-work/16067#16067&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/16065/148672&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40394/how-do-you-organize-your-projects/41938#41938" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26744" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1239" RevisionGUID="4555464a-7731-43ee-81dc-2d8e057d4013" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Flag weight is a measure of how reliable your content flags are. When you flag a post or an answer for moderator attention, we get the option to dismiss the flag as valid or invalid. &quot;Valid&quot; increases your flag weight, &quot;invalid&quot; lowers it. Your flags will be given a lower priority (i.e. appear further down the list of mod flags) if you have a low flag weight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More details and the official FAQ entry [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26745" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1262" RevisionGUID="52695ba1-9faf-4a2f-b0b8-27dde501a6ef" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="They removed it recently from the main banner. It's now on your main site profile page. There's 3 links: edit | add openid | log out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;meta.SO question - [Logout link now missing](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/80610/154388)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26746" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1286" RevisionGUID="b186d781-73be-40ff-ac4e-1a4de09daa65" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/79435/what-is-stack-overflows-business-model/79448#79448" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26747" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1295" RevisionGUID="f1ca652d-f1f9-4aa0-abea-e9e4f5e6b186" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm going to include my [answer from Meta SO on this topic](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83825/great-question-got-deleted/83864#83864).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is not a real question.  It's not an on-topic question for at least three of the reasons listed in the [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq).  It's opinionated, which means the original poster already has an answer.  He posted that answer in his question box:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It may not be physically demanding but it sure is mentally demanding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to keep this site productive, the line in the sand has to be drawn somewhere.  Otherwise, we'll get more gray area questions like `What do programmers eat?  I know they eat food at some point in their day`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, I agree with Jeff, the answers are essentially all the same AOL &quot;me too&quot; type answers that don't really tell me anything I didn't already know or couldn't figure out by Googling some forum somewhere, a forum, that I might add, is probably now a ghost town on the Internet because the professionals keeping the site alive all moved elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The blog articles that Robert, Jeff, and other StackExchange employees have written makes a great case for sites thriving because they're properly policed for content that doesn't meet the goals of the site.  Unfortunately, we're not all going to agree with every decision, but please keep in mind that those decisions are made with the community's best interests in mind.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a clearer, well written explanation of the dangers of allowing poor questions, please read [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26748" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1303" RevisionGUID="fda68d29-2293-4370-9e8e-8e1d0f61fd22" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I made a feature request question so that we could get some indication on the badges as to when &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/72903/is-the-timing-of-badge-awards-documented&quot;&gt;each badge will be awarded&lt;/a&gt; on meta so.  Still hopeful.  It might be useful to also know if you knew if any of your badges have lapsed due to migration or deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some badges are awarded instantly, some at the end of the day (I guess after a batch run or sql job) and some (like tenacious) 7-10 days after you qualify for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that Good Answer falls into the 'will be awarded at the end of the day' bracket - so after this much time I guess its not going to come." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26749" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1323" RevisionGUID="251b40ec-01ca-46da-b6c3-e7a3ce7f9901" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[There's this thing][1] made for Stackoverflow which let's you track your reputation on Firefox (check [microsummaries][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some guy made an [enhanced version][3], it's worth checking it out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be great to have one for Programmers too. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If only I had *teh skillz*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12362/firefox-users-your-stack-overflow-reputation-microsummary&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Microsummaries#Introduction&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12362/firefox-users-your-stack-overflow-reputation-microsummary/12372#12372&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/FhFFD.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26750" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1330" RevisionGUID="7d197ebf-f6f8-484e-9d0e-3867e67829fb" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I used to delete my low (zero or below) scoring answers once someone else got the green check. My premise was that my answer was thought so poorly by the rest of the readership that not one other person felt it worthy of a single upvote. But I don't do that anymore. There is the &quot;[sportsmanship][1]&quot; badge that one can get by leaving one's low scores up and voting for competing answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another reason I've stopped doing it is that on beta sites, your commitment cannot be fulfilled if you have less than 10 answers + questions, so deleting low scoring answers is counterproductive. And a silly bug I've noticed on beta sites is that if you award bounties that take you below 100 karma, no matter how many badges you've acquired by the end of the private beta week, you forfeit your beta badge (which supposedly only requires 3 badges). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67397/list-of-all-badges-with-full-descriptions/68258#68258" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26751" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1345" RevisionGUID="c7221279-1cf4-47ec-9378-abc919829345" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You're gonna have some trouble, since a key part of maintaining &quot;the quality and maturity&quot; of the SE network is built around *not* allowing questions like that...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, you gotta start somewhere.  [Where can I find interesting programming discussions?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13198/where-can-i-find-interesting-programming-discussions) has a few suggestions you might consider...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I was recently informed that Prog.SE user [AmmoQ][1] has carved out a little corner on [The Daily WTF Forums](http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/27.aspx) specifically for questions that cannot and should not be asked here on Programmer's. TDWTF is not affiliated with Stack Exchange, and has its own standards of quality and conduct, so be respectful of these if you decide to make use of this resource. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/6617/ammoq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26752" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1349" RevisionGUID="b9fc6301-962e-4b5e-8d45-2707c41d1d67" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Please see: [How does peer review for edits work?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76251/how-does-peer-review-for-edits-work/76284#76284)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - All users with the [edit privilege][1] may vote on suggested edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(voting includes rejecting as well as accepting)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[There is some discussion underway][2] about making that page a bit more visible...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84693/eeeek-i-sense-an-eeeek-question-about-missing-a-unanswered-tab" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26753" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1408" RevisionGUID="86df4450-b0ef-4675-bcfb-bd53d8bbae76" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If you catch it early *enough*, I think the answer is easy, I've had success with it myself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Downvote** and **comment**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    I came upon an interesting question ([I made a mistake accepting this job](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/63657/i-made-a-mistake-accepting-this-job)) which had about 5 answers already, and the top one, if I remember correctly, in 4 minutes had already gone up to **+5/-0** (sadly the [timeline](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/63657/timeline) doesn't break it down into small enough chunks to actually tell).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    I didn't want to be so harsh, but I felt like the community was going to run away with it if I didn't say something.  Soon the comment had several upvotes and the momentum on the answer had been killed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59606/is-type-safety-worth-the-trade-offs/59608#59608 this is another example where a comment stopped the streak of upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;* If you have time, **answer**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Since I had downvoted, the OP asked me what my problem with it was and what my thoughts were.  I hadn't planned on answering, but I figured if I was going to be a naysayer then I had a responsibility to back up what I'd said if asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some users actually like these short answers; One poster commented this, and said that others (I can only assume mine) were too long-winded.  In response to me, he subsequently posted an [answer here on meta](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers/1365#1365) stating his reasoning.  I disagree with this view, but if it is a conscious opinion, than it is that user's prerogative and I am OK with that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I *don't* think this is a problem of members of the community *wanting* short answers, or valuing them over good ones in a completely fair comparison.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is another manifestation of [Fastest Gun in the West Problem](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem), and it *may be worse here on Programmers*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A short answer by nature has less to disagree with.&#xD;&#xA;* The short answer is more likely to be read by people just scanning the answers.&#xD;&#xA;* The short answer is digested quickly by all readers.&#xD;&#xA;* If the short answer already has votes, it's easy to *assume* that someone else has read the long answers for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the answers to the FGITW problem, [Adam Davis starts out with](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem/9758#9758):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've asked questions that have received an immediate answer with enough information to get me past my block, but not served on a platter as you propose, with all the information I might need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This quick-answer nature is ***very*** specific to StackOverflow.  A *high* percentage of questions on SO are likely to have been a &quot;blocker&quot; for someone, while almost all on Programmers are the thoughtful, non-urgent kind of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [(non-)solution](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73/is-the-fastest-gun-in-the-west-solved#93) to the FGITW problem is to encourage people to vote better.  This solution is much better suited to SO than to Programmers, and I believe needs revisiting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**In conclusion** I disagree with the idea that something is wrong the the &quot;people&quot; here.  It is completely natural to see a highly-upvoted short answer, read it, agree; then scan the rest and see a long-winded answer and assume everyone else must not have agreed and skip it.  Then you add your vote to the stack on the short answer, and voila, the cycle continues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If we want to fix this, the software is going to have to change.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26754" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1457" RevisionGUID="27dc12ac-3db5-4e31-95a0-fbea938c7a2a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **This question has been superseded by the following questions:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [How can we improve our guidance about the purpose of comments?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/how-can-we-improve-our-guidance-about-the-purpose-of-comments)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2228/when-should-comments-be-deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subsequent to a question about technical solutions to cleaning up noise, Jeff Atwood posted [this answer](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83480/add-possibility-to-remove-comment-noise-fancy-edition/88010#88010):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;I appreciate the *intent*, but this is hellishly complex. I think my solution is even simpler than Shog9's&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Simply flag the first comment in the series for mod attention** with the text&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; irrelevant comment conversation; delete this conversation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A moderator could then blam, blam, blam, blam on each [x] to remove it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with this.  I've often wanted to even clean up my own conversations after resolving something that was productive, but not worth preserving.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, as we all know, with the introduction of [flag weight](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight) our flagging ability and priority gets diminished if no action is taken on our flags.  So, I think it's up to our community and moderators to decide (and therefore send the message to our moderators and 10k users) whether we believe this is an appropriate action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, **I'm all for it** - I'd love to see transient and incidental conversations completely disappear (not just be hidden) so that new visitors have a higher comment signal-to-noise ratio." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26755" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1480" RevisionGUID="daa243fa-98d5-44d5-b324-d26a9ff654e0" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has come up on [Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/53302/necromancer-badge-anomaly), so it's a known issue. Personally, I think they technically *did* meet the requirements of the badge, even if they didn't realize it: by virtue of the merge, they answered a question more than 60 days old and received a score of 5 or higher.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some badges are easy to game, this isn't the only way one can game the Necromancer badge, and merging certainly isn't the easiest way  to acquire it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. answer a question that's an exact duplicate of an earlier question, &#xD;&#xA;2. get people to only add answers that would be equally applicable to the earlier question, then &#xD;&#xA;3. convince a moderator to merge the new question with the old one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my advice would be to not worry about it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26756" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1491" RevisionGUID="201409f1-913b-4a62-ae78-682748979145" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Two of your posts were for the same unregistered user, who was going around spamming a giant wall of text. I deleted the user, which deleted the posts and cleared the flags on those posts automatically. I assumed the flags were automatically dismissed as *valid*, but this appears this might not have been the case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, one possible way to lose flag weight without realizing it (or having moderators know what happened) is to lose it on comment flags. When you flag a comment, moderators have four options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Delete the comment outright&#xD;&#xA;* Edit the comment to remove the offending bits&#xD;&#xA;* Dismiss the comment&#xD;&#xA;* Take no action and/or leave another comment addressing the first commenter (e.g. &quot;Be nice&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only the first two options awards an increase of 5 flag weight outright. The third will decrease your flag weight automatically, and the last will decrease your flag weight if four other people don't also flag the comment (a common occurrence, especially if a moderator steps in via comments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, unlike flagged posts, these *won't* show up on your flag weight audit. You'll just see the change in flag weight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussion on Meta Stack Overflow: [Can a flag that attracts moderator action be treated as invalid?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/87931/149432)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as Chris said, please don't put too much weight into flag...weight, especially on Programmers.SE. We don't get so many flags per day that having a low flag weight actually matters: we act on everything, even if that action is to take no action right away." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26757" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1499" RevisionGUID="cff34619-cb05-427c-9dcb-fadbae60463a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is a known issue, and has been [discussed on Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/88217/149432). From Nick Craver's answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We're doing a best-guess match on locations across the network in an effort to get more consistent location formats for all the users, for example mine would be &quot;Winston-Salem, NC&quot;, &quot;City, ST&quot;, or &quot;Something, Ontario&quot; for Canada, &quot;London, United Kingdom&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To do this we needed to perform a backfill of locations across the network, but we can't do this instantaneously since we're hitting against Yahoo's API to do this (which would more than likely ban us for a massive hit like that).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's unfortunate but we will get a few false positives in here...we've reduced that as much as possible and checked many of the matches to ensure the correct location's being returned...but some will slip through, and we apologize for that. In the future this is done from your profile, rather than on the server-side, so whatever location you leave in that field after this we'll respect (but still recommend the match we found on the right optionally).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to why IN got translated to Indiana, IN is the US Postal Service abbreviation for the state of Indiana." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26758" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1518" RevisionGUID="6612999c-c56a-46a0-aa61-597827aabdfb" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is this question [Can a flag that attracts moderator action be treated as invalid?][1]   &#xD;&#xA;which deals with the general idea behind the validity of any flag. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What i am asking is the specific flag option when we hit the flag button. The area in which we  address the moderator regarding the type of attention that is required. Can this flag be dismissed as invalid? Meaning who ever raised it Did not need to and it did not warrant a mods attention?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance this topic http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/73667/mobile-games-paid-vs-ad-supported  I was unable to define the exact nature of the problem, as i was unable to find its duplicate here. IMHO it needed a mods attention. Hence i flagged it using the inform moderator flag stating that it could be migrated to gamedev.stackexchange.com - the idea in itself is valid. and it is valid topic.&#xD;&#xA; Mod attention was required and the topic was closed as duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leaving me miffed as to why this type flag was dismissed as invalid. specifically when this was not defined In absolutes as off topic or duplicate or does not belong here.&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/87931/can-a-flag-that-attracts-moderator-action-be-treated-as-invalid" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26759" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1529" RevisionGUID="522ad376-60d7-45c6-a3d9-7ac90d5b882e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is no official repository of Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange Approved™ wallpapers, but this question has been asked on [Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/39049/where-can-i-get-stack-overflow-wallpapers), where you might find some questionable candidates." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26760" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1569" RevisionGUID="7477be26-87be-4e2c-91c2-91ab9b5811c2" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There used to be a very popular question on Stack Overflow called [Surprise for a programmer on Birthday][1], but it got deleted. It had a bunch of suggestions for humorous code snippets and other jokes to put on a programmer's birthday cake, and I was planning to post pictures of the cake I just made with inspiration from some of those suggestions. It seems obvious to me that posting something on Stack Overflow is just going to get deleted, but would it be welcome on this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm hoping that it is close enough to a programming puzzle and far enough from mindless social fun that it would be tolerated here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just to be clear, I want to create a page with a question like, &quot;What are some fun ideas for decorating a programmer's birthday cake?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to see the content of the old page, it's available on [Stack Printer][2]. I also asked a slightly more general version of this question on [the main meta site][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2420689/surprise-for-a-programmer-on-birthday/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.stackprinter.com/export?question=2420689&amp;format=HTML&amp;service=stackoverflow&amp;printer=false&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/91219/131335" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26761" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1594" RevisionGUID="ae215c65-c22d-4be2-a00f-ca036adbba5f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's a recent change done mostly on a trial basis to see how it performs. And it's all questions, not just those that have been closed. The idea is that we want to encourage voting on questions in general and using downvotes as a means of quality control.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/90324/should-downvotes-on-questions-be-free) on Meta.SO." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26762" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1596" RevisionGUID="189227c2-a0e7-4c5d-9ee6-595b2dff49b7" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm just going to say it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community-wiki auto conversion sucks.  And it's not (really) the rep, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been racking my brain trying to figure out why I don't have a [career tag badge](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/60/career).  After all, I have [many answers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=user:2314+[career]), and even in the first 6 non-wiki or so, I've got more than 100 upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can accept that CW *upvotes* don't really count toward tag badges (even though it's a little weird), though I definitely think that **votes before the CW conversion *should* count**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, [here's the problem requirement](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63835/what-are-tag-badges-how-do-they-work/63836#63836): Must have **20 non-wiki answers**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it looks like I'm not too far away, but I'm still quite irked by this whole auto-conversion thing.  Why?  Because I don't tend to answer questions that are pile-on polls like http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38505/most-overhyped-software-engineering-technologies-and-concepts-of-the-last-20-year.  But every once in a while, I do get a [decent answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38746/software-design-build-it-fast-or-build-it-well/38752#38752) in on a question which becomes highly viewed, and how am I rewarded? **Community wiki!** (that one stopped at 16 answers... ugh.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not an &quot;we should change the whole system to benefit me&quot; post.  I understand that rep should not be dished out like mad to posts with a hockey-puck view trajectory.  But I really wish the auto-conversion would not slap the answerers on those posts which *barely ever* reach the 15 answer limit.  **After all, that's *most really good questions* given enough time.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26763" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1611" RevisionGUID="0e9e34b5-3bcb-4d93-8ce1-442984577dcd" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="When something like this happens, it's an indication that there's generally something wrong with the question. Good questions, at least on Programmers.SE, shouldn't be so easy to answer that they'll suffer the &quot;[fastest gun in the west](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/9731/149432)&quot; problem as we have [general guidelines in place](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) that insist questions invite long, detailed, and thoughtful answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this specific case, it so happens that the question in practice covers identical ground as an earlier question, so I've closed it as a duplicate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26764" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1617" RevisionGUID="dcac4fa2-68e3-4439-80a3-51fd7d0277ec" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is a difference of intent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is *off-topic*, that is akin to asking about tea on `coffee.stackexchange.com`. It's a blatant, obvious violation of the parameters of the site. Now, you could argue that users simply don't read, and I will agree with you, but ignorance of the law is not an excuse. But in this case, *it is egregiously off topic*. That is, even the most casual browsing of the front page would immediately let you know what is and is not on topic without thinking too hard about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is *not constructive* the distinction is much subtler. It can take a bit of trial and error to &quot;get it&quot;. I also believe that many unconstructive questions do NOT indicate the same level of obliviousness bordering on irresponsible failure to just *look at* the questions on the homepage and ask something similar. I believe it is possible for some people to honestly try to read the faq and still get it slightly wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore I don't support this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(However I do think that egregious examples of unconstructive questions should regularly be downvoted and remember, downvotes on questions are now free... https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/90324/should-downvotes-on-questions-be-free )" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26765" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1679" RevisionGUID="5851bd2b-c857-4c1d-a8ec-4c6588952e63" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In my case, when it comes to popular questions, I typically act on flags from people with less than 3000 rep, so if I end up closing them, it's usually not a unilateral decision. Flags are unfortunately not transparent to the community at all. I've opened a [feature request](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/92623/155160) on Meta.SO for better visibility of &quot;duplicate of&quot; flags, but perhaps I'll write up another one for any &quot;it doesn't belong here&quot; flag since they're essentially close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime, voting to reopen, flagging for another moderator to review the closure, or posting to meta are the best ways to voice your disagreement with the closure of a particular question. As Pierre pointed out, sometimes that does result in the reopening of a question. (The reverse is also true - if you see a question that should clearly have been closed or you can make a case of it, post to meta and see if there's agreement.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With all that said, the 6 guidelines apply to Stack Exchange as a whole, not just to Programmers and I don't think we're in a position to change them at the site level. I don't know if you've read the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) blog post, but if you haven't it might shed more light on the &quot;why and how&quot; behind those guidelines and take some mystery out of them. We also use [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) to supplement the six guidelines for constructive questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26766" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1732" RevisionGUID="a073a21a-df15-4dc9-b976-99e691fb003c" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm gonna have to ask around why it was removed. As I mentioned in my comment to Josh, there was a [problem with migrations](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/95153/same-questions-migrated-multiple-times) last night, but the other two questions that were affected seem to still be around. I'm not sure why this one was removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Looks like it was just deleted by accident during the clean-up after fixing the problem I linked to above. It's been restored now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26767" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1853" RevisionGUID="2eb208b3-7fca-4504-955c-c2aa3108c16f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This was marked [meta-tag:status-bydesign] on [Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/14614/149432). Anton Geraschenko probably phrased why this is best:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The point of keeping closed questions around (rather than deleting them) is that they might still be relevant. For example, if a question is closed as a duplicate, it might still have phrased the question in a completely different way, and that different phrasing might be very useful to someone. In particular, looking at a related closed question might be just the thing you need to realize that the question you're looking at solves your problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To his point, we regularly use the related column to find duplicates that may be of use to a question asker, even if they happen to be closed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26768" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1912" RevisionGUID="26d99d78-537f-4df3-8acc-a463cd0036d5" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The problems Software Quality Assurance has shouldn't have any effect on our site: [Joel Spolsky warned](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/) about the issues of trying to segment the programmer population into progressively smaller camps, and the fact that they can't field enough questions, to me, indicates Spolsky wasn't far off the mark in his original assessment. Many, although perhaps not all, questions related to the topic *are* on-topic here and shouldn't be migrated to a struggling beta site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to the other questions: as Anna points to, [they're not on-topic on Stack Overflow, and are on-topic here](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/). Stack Overflow is for very specific, here-is-my-code-and-I'm-not-sure-where-I-went-wrong-with-it questions; Programmers.SE is for conceptual I'm-planning-on-doing-this-but-need-help-with-the-big-picture questions. The topics you list as being better off on Stack Overflow are are our *best*, most useful questions: the questions that most resemble what Programmers.SE is about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, if *these* questions aren't on-topic here, what *is*? The [junky questions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl) that [aren't good enough](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow) for Stack Overflow? We figured out early on in beta that wasn't going to work, and that's why Programmers.SE was launched as the conceptual yang to Stack Overflow's concrete yin." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26769" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1961" RevisionGUID="17c688dc-d168-4fbe-bb60-17adf37cfed9" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been done to death on [Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The consensus is that while it would nice if people did, there's not a lot we can do to enforce this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26770" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1983" RevisionGUID="e4de1682-7e1b-4301-89b9-70393cb6e82a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has come up a few times on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1975/ability-to-sort-reorder-interesting-ignored-tags-in-sidebar  &#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/23488/sort-interested-ignored-tags-alphabetically&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and this request to &quot;lock&quot; the tags so you can't accidentally delete one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/29350/option-to-lock-interesting-tags-section-so-x-isnt-hit-accidentally-on-a-tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of them are marked [status-declined] so the team will be open to implementing them if they think there's enough demand. Head over to MSO and up-vote these questions and make it clear you support them in other ways. I understand feature requests are looked at in order of votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26772" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1994" RevisionGUID="ff20bc12-11a0-40ff-8666-d9f12072362a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/95920/what-is-each-time-through-a-loop-called) on terminology was asked earlier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should the &quot;General Reference&quot; close reason as outlined [in this blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/are-some-questions-too-simple/) and [this Meta Stack Overflow answer](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86043/introduce-a-general-reference-close-reason/88521#88521) be enabled here on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there any other questions that would fit this bill, or was this just a one-off that we can live with?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does the existing &quot;Not constructive&quot; close reason cover this case?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26773" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2027" RevisionGUID="75509e3c-c31f-47da-a8f9-0539af9dbb14" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Probably not](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/886/a-friends-list-on-stack-overflow-would-be-nice).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This idea has been brought in up various ways on Meta Stack Overflow and it has always been rejected. The users aren't the focus of Stack Exchange. Content and knowledge sharing are. Being able to &quot;favourite&quot; users goes against that philosophy of deemphasizing the person in favour of the content they produce.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This goes both ways -- someone's reputation or fame doesn't exempt them from having to adhere to the quality and behaviour standards set on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, &quot;who&quot; doesn't matter. &quot;What&quot; does." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26774" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2078" RevisionGUID="7b01a78c-756c-4c1c-b94b-b683103f73f2" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked for this [on Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2238/would-it-be-useful-so-show-peoples-hit-rate-i-e-percentage-of-answers-accep) way back in June 2009.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing to come out of that appeared to be the accept rate of questions - not on answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree it would be nice statistic to have. Not sure about the badges though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26775" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2122" RevisionGUID="698b86e8-c91c-4b5d-84db-5ef597382917" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There was a previous bounty that ended less than 24 hours ago (as of this writing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a [grace period of 24 hours](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68050/a-grace-period-of-one-day-to-award-the-bounty-after-expiration-without-remaining/74037#74037) at the end of the bounty to give the bounty setter time to award the bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As there can only be one bounty on a question at any one time I can only assume that this means that you can't start your own until the full 24 hours have passed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This section of the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#bounty) explains how bounties work, but doesn't include the 24 hour grace period." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26776" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2128" RevisionGUID="cae103b4-0af8-4d26-a6fe-94fc13b84d2b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are actually four questions on your account. All of them have been closed and two have been deleted by you. At the time of this writing, one is at 0 score, and the rest are at -1, -4, and -5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The exact details of the banning algorithm are not public, but [this answer](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this/86998#86998) on Meta Stack Overflow suggests a couple ways to potentially undo the ban. The gist of it is that you can still use the site and provide answers. If you focus on giving good answers that receive upvotes, your account may get unblocked and you will be able to ask questions again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know for sure how the algorithm works, but I think you may have tripped it just slightly, since your deleted questions are self-deleted and out of the two that remained visible one was closed as a duplicate after being migrated to us. You can try emailing team@stackoverflow.com and make your case for why your account should not have been banned. Be prepared to justify your request. No promises that it'll work for sure, but it can't hurt to ask.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26777" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2142" RevisionGUID="0648be21-0016-483c-ad2a-6cab0e2e8728" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question [What is the reasoning behind the reputation cap?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/22447/59303) on Meta Stack Overflow is probably the definitive one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several reasons including the one you mention. Another is to give you a reason to stop using the site - you've hit the reputation cap, there's no need to keep posting." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26778" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2155" RevisionGUID="d69ecdcf-97aa-45ff-8971-35d3075c4fbb" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="After 500, your flag weight increases asymptotically towards the current cap of 750. Because of this, as you get closer and closer to the cap, it's possible to only receive .001 flag weight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So rather than display a rounded number (and thus, no change as you get closer to the cap when you flag correctly), it's shown as a double once you pass 500.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More information:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is flag weight?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight/80178#80178)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unnecessary precision displayed for flag weight](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83657/unnecessary-precision-displayed-for-flag-weight)&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the flag weight formula in the 500-750 range?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83530/whats-the-flag-weight-formula-in-the-500-750-range)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26779" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2173" RevisionGUID="334ef646-f5fd-4067-a4ec-ef0bae73716e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Update - October 20th, 2011&#xD;&#xA;Current statistics:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Total Questions: 13,440&#xD;&#xA;* Total Closed but not deleted: 1,321&#xD;&#xA;* Closed Percentage: 9.38% (▼ 7.56% from September 20th, ▼ 10.81% since this post was written)&#xD;&#xA;* SE 2.0 Closed Percentage (no Trilogy): 5.36% (▼ 0.72%)&#xD;&#xA;* Network Closed Percentage (w/Trilogy): 2.56% (▼ 0.04%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point, we have a lower close percentage than Web Applications, Android, English, and Webmasters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was some concern that we're bleeding users: not sure how long they've been tracking it, but [the Stack Exchange site tracks](http://stackexchange.com/sites?sort=newengagedusers&amp;expand=true) new 200+ users over a rolling two weeks period: Programmers has consistently had the second highest number of 200+ users (only Stack Overflow itself has beaten us), and the number has gone up since I've been tracking it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've also updated [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) to be much more straightforward, which will hopefully alleviate some confusion about what is and isn't on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I don't think it's particularly constructive to approach a problem this way, I think it's important, if we do, to work with accurate numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of right now, there are 2,816 closed—but not deleted—questions on Programmers. There are 13,925 questions total on Programmers. This makes the closed, but not deleted ratio of questions 20.2%. In the 10 days since you measured this, it's gone down 3%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on the same metrics you did your post, here are number closed with at least 5 score and number closed with less than or equal to 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 774 (27.5%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 265 (9.4%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This puts the ratio of 5+ score questions closed higher than what you had and the ratio of &lt;= 0 score questions much lower than what you had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand why, we need to include data you didn't have access to when you did this survey: the number of deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of deleted questions on Programmers.SE is 2,975: more than the number of closed questions you see. If we also include these numbers into the mix, we get a different story:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 891. % of closed or deleted: 15.3%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 2,223. % of closed or deleted: 38.3%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This paints a bit of a different picture than measuring just the closed questions and the results presented in your survey. Why? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's because we routinely delete low-scoring questions as they are uncontroversially bad for the site, and the scores on those questions agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we don't delete nearly as many high-scoring answers is because [&quot;closed&quot; doesn't mean &quot;bad&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed). It means the question doesn't meet the site's guidelines in some way, but there's some value, and it could even be improved and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, *deletion*—not closure—is where bad questions go to spend eternity in Hell. Closure, on the other hand, is the purgatory of questions. They're not on-topic, but they're providing *some* value: enough to stick around while we figure out what to do with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A Comparison&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that we're working with accurate numbers, how do they compare to other sites, particularly Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From a purely quantitative standpoint, Stack Overflow's numbers are in a different league:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Publicly viewable questions: 1,997,856&#xD;&#xA;* Closed, but not deleted: ~39,048 (2%)&#xD;&#xA;* Deleted: 194,008 (8.9%)&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~1,964 (5%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~4,142 (1.8%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~26,123 (67%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~199,326 (85.5%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like Programmers, Stack Overflow's ratios skew a lot higher when  deleted low-scoring questions are added, and lower when it deleted high-voted questions are added. This isn't coincidence: the same moderation style is used on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Some context&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's important, from a qualitative standpoint, to put these numbers into context. Stack Overflow is not qualitatively similar to Programmers.SE, and comparing their closed/deleted percentage to ours is about as meaningless as comparing our percentages to [Quora](http://quora.com) or [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com). We just simply don't have the same issues or types of questions they have. If we did, there wouldn't be a separate site: we'd just be part of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also important to put Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE into historical context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was the first, and for a long period of time, the only Stack Exchange site. It did not, for much of its history, have the benefit of knowledge gleaned from the year of trial and error with the Stack Exchange 2.0 project. And notably, it did not have the benefit of 40+ other sites with 40+ other sets of problems to crystalize what makes and doesn't make a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This difference in background and two year head start is [a constant cause of problems](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow): 27% of all questions migrated here from Stack Overflow are closed and/or deleted. Thousands upon thousands of questions that should be off-topic there and on-topic here never get closed or migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of its history as the flagship Stack Exchange site, it also has enormous scaling issues. They have [~10 volunteer moderators for 2 million questions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/101431/should-stack-overflow-moderators-have-a-standard-of-duty): one for every 200,000 asked. We have 4 for 16,000: one for every 4,000. We are just better equipped to close bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The history of Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But going into [our history](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) a little bit: Stack Overflow had a serious problem with popular questions that didn't really belong anywhere: &quot;What's your favorite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What do you like about programming?&quot;, etc. When Stack Exchange 2.0 and the Area 51 engine launched, one of the first proposals to gain traction was [*Not Programming Related*](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related), intended to house all of these types of questions. It launched on September 1st, 2010 and for a period of 3 weeks, surged in popularity as all the questions repressed on Stack Overflow were asked on this new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the quality was all over the place: the site had some of the worst questions and some of the best questions. After a few weeks of this, [new guidelines were put into place](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) to try to raise the level of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the rest of the beta period, these guidelines were enforced sporadically as the community tried to come to terms with its original charter and what it would take to make a useful site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On December 16, 2010, [Programmers.SE was launched](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/) under its new mission, having been the test-bed for a number of guidelines about questions that later generations of Stack Exchange sites benefitted from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left 3.5 months of questions asked during a particularly formative point in the Stack Exchange network: more than a quarter of our site's lifespan. Compare this to Stack Overflow, which has had the benefit of 2.5 years of maturity and wasn't originally created to be [the toilet bowl of a different site](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we're slowly resolving those initial growing pains, it's going to take some more time. The ratios will normalize, but they aren't going to normalize in the next month: it going to take several months to a couple of years to stabilize into a site as mature as the currently-three-year-old Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The situation isn't as dire as it might seem from one reading of the numbers. It was dire at one time, but that was last year. Now, we're moving forward: our traffic is increasing and our closed ratio is decreasing. More and more, people are taking ownership of Programmers.SE as something to be proud of, and the quality of questions and answers is noticeably rising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there's a lot we can improve, but it's going to be far more constructive and productive to isolate specific failings and correct those, not to make generalizations about the site as a whole. If we stick to generalizations, we might as well just shut this site down and start over." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26780" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2175" RevisionGUID="c5f32636-c2c0-4b36-9411-ead4416c543f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It seems to be a [recent bug](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/104094/new-badges-do-not-update-your-badge-count-when-awarded).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The badge counts were updating yesterday (25th August).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bug has been [fixed](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/104094/new-badges-do-not-update-your-badge-count-when-awarded/104104#104104), so you should see your badge count correct itself soon." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26781" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2180" RevisionGUID="0ac498e9-b3ae-4d5c-92d4-109243383a5f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is [meta-tag:status-bydesign]. Suggested edits are disabled on meta sites, so you will need to have 2,000 reputation before you will see the edit link on other people's posts. The only exception is Meta Stack Exchange which functions as a meta for all Stack Exchange sites and has its own reputation pool.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/87890/why-cant-i-suggest-edits-on-se-meta-sites/97371#97371) for Jeff Atwood's explanation of the rationale behind that decision." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26782" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2265" RevisionGUID="6da28a81-1479-40d7-a74f-82fcdfbe2dcf" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="No, there isn't: [it's been suggested periodically](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/3669/149432) on the network-wide meta discussion site, but it's always roundly rejected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All questions on Stack Exchange need to be verifiable in principle: the asker should be able to take an answer and see if it works for them. That's the answer that they'll generally accept. It might not be the most optimal solution or the one that the community agrees with, but the asker is always going to be in a better position to know what's going to work for them because they're the ones in a position to try it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the idea is that there are two different metrics people should be looking at:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What the community thinks is the right answer&#xD;&#xA;* What the asker felt helped him or her the most&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first is marked by the answer with the most votes. The second is marked by the acceptance check mark." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26783" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2287" RevisionGUID="2363e5db-6b85-4997-a452-36a81091eb64" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been asked before and there are probably better answers out there, but here's my take:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Down-votes on meta have a different meaning to down-votes on the main site. Here they also mean &quot;I disagree&quot;, &quot;I don't think your suggestion would work&quot;, &quot;It's not a bug&quot;, etc. However, it doesn't mean that you deserve to loose reputation over it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there was &quot;real&quot; reputation involved people would be more reluctant to offer up their suggestions or down-vote the bad answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more appropriate question would be &quot;Why does Meta Stack Overflow have separate reputation?&quot;,  but that has already been asked and answered [over there](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1451/should-reputation-from-so-carry-over-to-meta).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26784" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2294" RevisionGUID="e567f63a-2ae3-4e50-a3dd-a11c14fde274" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You've asked 6 questions, 5 of which have been deleted or migrated away from the site. Because of this, your account has had an automatic ban from asking questions placed on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [FAQ entry on Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this) goes into more detail about why you might've received this ban, so I'll just quote the last part, on getting the ban lifted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### How long do I have to wait before I can ask questions again? What can I do to release the ban? How can I reactivate my account?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Question bans never expire or &quot;time out.&quot; This means that you cannot simply wait for a certain amount of time to ask your next question. If you do not take action, you will never be allowed to ask questions again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you tripped the heuristic by just a tiny bit, then writing a few quality answers that get upvoted [might](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68884/why-i-cant-ask-questions/68885#68885) enable you to ask questions again. But as the internals of the filter are secret, there is no way to know for sure. And even if you're lucky then you're still very close to being banned again, if you get new downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you really, *really* think the question ban is an error, then email the team directly at the address provided at the bottom of every page. But note that Stack Overflow alone gets more than 3,000 questions per day, so a few rejected questions won't be missed. Therefore, reactivation of banned accounts [is not a high priority](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/62373/better-explanation-when-account-is-blocked/62374#62374).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Can I simply create a new account?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No. The question ban is at [a lower level than account](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/72180/clarify-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this-account-error/76167#comment-174366).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26785" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2300" RevisionGUID="a02d74d1-2f49-49c6-beac-545fc7ea6ad9" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm not sure about an explicit ban in the TOS, but the system automatically catches unusual voting patterns and will roll back the changes if it fits its vote fraud heuristic. This rollback generally occurs once a day, so check back in a few hours to see if the votes are still there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's [a FAQ entry on Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19920/how-does-the-so-voter-fraud-detection-mechanism-work) that goes through the vote fraud detector in greater detail, and we'll look into it, but to preserve the integrity of the automatic fraud detection systems and prevent gaming the system, we really can't talk about anything more specific." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26786" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2375" RevisionGUID="6e0d641c-af9e-4628-ab2e-c5904212c1a1" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Suspensions are a private matter between moderators and a user. We [do not discuss](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/23385/avoid-the-streisand-effect-be-clear-about-the-reason-when-suspending-an-account/23548#23548) suspension reasons unless the issue is brought up by the person who got suspended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting from Jeff Atwood:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I believe it is the reponsibility and right of the user who was placed in timed suspension to have the freedom to discuss (or *not* discuss) what happened to them.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;It is a basic matter of respecting other users' privacy." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26787" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2418" RevisionGUID="ce523ee7-e052-41cb-9bdc-f26ee2e17c13" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is already being address on [Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/109160/no-dennis-ritchie-quote-on-stack-overflow-why) with respect to a **message** on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I didn't think that the Steve Jobs message was appropriate, but I don't own the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your question about asking a **question**, then no, that wouldn't be appropriate at all. At best it's too localised." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26788" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2461" RevisionGUID="b976d8d2-2e34-4615-8fb5-835183d327c5" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is a new [&quot;post notices&quot; feature](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/102363/support-for-banners/107142#107142) that was introduced last month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently there are three options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. This post does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.&#xD;&#xA;2. Post is related to a rapidly changing event&#xD;&#xA;3. We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer: please explain why you're recommend it as a solution. Answers that don't explain anything will be deleted. See Good Subjective, Bad Subjective for more information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only moderators can add these notices, so feel free to flag questions you think could use them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26789" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2478" RevisionGUID="e9d848be-b9a3-4123-9ec9-c51f0cc51d08" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Is it possible to pretty up links in comments?  Similar to the way we can in answers.  [SO][1] says no. I'm unsuccessful finding an answer for meta-Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/37758/inline-links-in-comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26790" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2555" RevisionGUID="080644bc-fa05-46be-9b26-1bd6843b2cc3" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is a [known problem](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/112181/cant-vote-to-close-as-off-topic) and should be fixed in the next deploy (when ever that is).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are still having problems try clearing out your cache - there may be some old JavaScript files (or similar) lying around." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26791" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2560" RevisionGUID="c260c485-ee41-45ef-b083-a0e888752d7c" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Writing better titles is high on the list of worthwhile edits to a question, but there are a few caveats you should keep in mind, especially when you're editing below 2,000 reputation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Editing *en masse* [really messes with the front page](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/110768/on-select-sites-show-the-flag-suggested-edit-count-when-it-is-0-instead-of/110816#110816). It also clogs up the suggested edit queue, where people are tasked with approving edits from users below 2,000 reputation. If you're going to edit, do it in short spurts, not 20 at once.&#xD;&#xA;* Nearly every question has problems other than the title: we have [a huge tag problem](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags), for example. But beyond that, nearly every question will have spelling,  capitalization, formatting, or other copyediting issues. When editing a question, try to improve as much as possible beyond just the title.&#xD;&#xA;* While many titles are terrible and ought to be reworded as actual questions, there are a lot of questions that have *okay* titles or even good ones that aren't actually questions. If you were going into them to edit more than just the title, editing the title is a nice bonus, but otherwise, it's best to just leave them alone. Ask yourself, &quot;does the title change make the question any clearer?&quot; If it doesn't, don't bother just for the sake of making it into a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than that, thank you for taking the time to make the site a better place!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26792" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2580" RevisionGUID="518c1bc4-73fc-44e1-a705-0a9b91e28eef" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Considering this [Meta Stack Overflow question][1] about the same subject, are edits to include Amazon links to books appropriate on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/111054/are-edits-to-include-amazon-links-to-books-appropriate" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26793" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2582" RevisionGUID="0de3c387-6a37-4bc8-b704-6a1191d0b5f5" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The issue isn't adding the links: it's adding the links to [50 posts in the span of an hour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/7454/matthieu?tab=activity).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you suggest 50 edits in a short period, you clog up the suggested edit queue and should those edits be approved, you completely hose the front page, pushing new questions and questions with legitimate activity out of the way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I [provided more detail](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/110768/on-select-sites-show-the-flag-suggested-edit-count-when-it-is-0-instead-of/110816#110816) on Meta Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]one issue for sites that are not Stack Overflow is that the front page—the site's advertisement to the world—doesn't change all that often over the course of the day. You'll get a mix of new questions, older questions that haven't been resolved yet, and a sprinkling of questions risen from the dead by people who finally found that awesome answer to that niche question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This type of activity is a great sign: it shows the site has life and many different people are actively engaged. It's like the forest at the beginning of *Bambi*: questions young and old get a safe haven to play and frolic while waiting for an answer from passers by.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Well, when someone gets the idea to edit all the things for some minor issue, they inevitably disrupt the quiet serenity of the front page. They're the hunter from *Bambi* that comes in and starts shooting up the place, and no question is safe. &quot;Ended your post with 'thanks'? Edited. Oh, you did it to all 75 of your questions over the last year? **Edit. all. of. them.**&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; After a short period of time, the front page stops looking like a peaceful forest full of life. It becomes a wasteland of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And that new question I mentioned before learns a hard fact of life: the forest is forever ruined and the chances of getting answered have been significantly reduced all because someone thought &quot;thanks&quot; needed to be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to suggest edits, please do two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Do it in short spurts: 5 at a time, not 50.&#xD;&#xA;2. Make *substantial* improvements to the posts. You were suggesting edits to posts that were terrible: one line answers, answers with spelling and grammar mistakes, answers that provided no context to their recommendations, etc. Adding Amazon links to those posts did not significantly improve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is something that needs to be changed on a huge number of posts, please don't do this on your own: bring it up here on meta first. This way we as a community can figure out the best way to go about it and ensure the front page doesn't get hosed in the process." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26794" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2678" RevisionGUID="d12a6239-2669-450f-8326-d99e56d5aacd" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It only took a year to answer this, but I found the answer! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[It's ordered by your reputation.](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/85872/149432) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Presumably, sites where you have the most reputation are the ones you want to access most frequently." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26795" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2683" RevisionGUID="4d288d0a-be99-4994-9dad-c5e4b6c67d2f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The discrepancy between the front page and the questions page comes from the fact they are not, and are not meant to be, one in the same. One is meant as **a general landing page that gives a taste of the site** - it has an excerpt of questions along with a much more occupied sidebar that includes meta, ads, and chat (slightly different for beta sites). Above all, this is the page that almost any new user will first land on. Meanwhile, **the questions list is just focused on questions**, and also meant to access the whole set of questions. It's geared more towards the power users or at least those who have gotten a taste of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, onto the parts of your screencapture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Selection of elements&#xD;&#xA;The front page isn't any of those sections. It stands to reason that highlighting any of them would be misrepresentative of its function. It is not the Questions section because it only has an *excerpt* of the questions, and at the bottom it even tells you to go to the Questions section to see more. On the actual Questions section, you'd just get pagination navigation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Different sort orders&#xD;&#xA;This is because of the goal of each of the sections is different. Remember, the front page is only there to show you the recent activity on the site as an excerpt. Its focus on activity is why the timestamp links to the most recent activity on the question, and also why all of its sort options (`active`, `featured`, and all the hotness variants, as well as Stack Overflow's `interesting`) are focused on activity level. It's all geared towards the illustration of &quot;What's happening now?&quot;. What questions just got posted, what just got answered, what cool bounties are available right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Questions section on the other hand, it is meant to give you access to the full library of questions. So it has things like `votes`, `faq`, and `unanswered` which are measured across all of the site's history. It also has the `newest` sort and pagination on its `active` and `featured` sorts to aid in seeing the complete picture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Redundancy of Unanswered&#xD;&#xA;Originally, the questions section didn't have an `unanswered` filter - adding it has proven beneficial to the ability to browse and search through it. There had even been plans to [completely phase out the top-level &quot;Unanswered&quot; navigation in favor of &quot;Review&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84693/eeeek-i-sense-an-eeeek-question-about-missing-a-unanswered-tab). It's a recognized point of text duplication that we'll probably fix down the road.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In summary, the rationale is that we have two separate goals to accomplish, which is why we have two separate pages. Their designs are intended to work with the intents of those pages. Is it necessarily perfect? Perhaps not. It's open to change now and then (I reassert the aforementioned plan to phase out the Unanswered section). But here's at least the rationale of the current design pattern." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26796" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2706" RevisionGUID="1fe8ad3c-8d59-4494-9e64-ef2ec6f496e1" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[One of your answers][1], the one with the 2 upvotes, is on a question that was made [community wiki][2] before you answered (or before you got any upvotes). You don't earn or lose rep for those - but you can still earn badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further investigating, the question was made community wiki on [Nov 1 at 23:06][3], and you answered on Nov 2 at 10:21, so it was automatically turned to community wiki, as shown in the [revision history][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But it says &quot;21 answers&quot; and I think the limit is 30.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The limit [here is 15][5]. 30 is the limit at [StackOverflow][6], and can be different at different sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/117440/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117243/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/117440/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1596/the-15-answer-cw-conversion-really-sucks&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26797" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2708" RevisionGUID="5504caf0-4aae-418b-972c-44474bb741b9" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the active page and the homepage, the avatar is of the one that last modified the question, not necessarily the original asker. Modified can mean a number of things, an edit to the question or any of its answers, a new answer, closing the question, making it [community wiki][2] (automatically or by hand), etc&lt;sup&gt;(?)&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, when visiting the newest page you are explicitly asking for the questions to be ordered on when they where asked, so it makes a little bit more sense&lt;sup&gt;(?)&lt;/sup&gt; to show the original asker's avatar.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the answers count, the question has found a new home at [StackOverflow][3], and all its answers followed the migration, so essentially zero answers here. They exist there now, and not here. The same goes with any downvotes to the question, they don't follow the migration, kind of a fresh start. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the way it is. I don't necessarily like it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/E1ONm.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8583017/how-do-i-resolve-an-expected-expression-before-unsigned-error" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26798" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2784" RevisionGUID="8a2519e8-faa4-43c6-94ae-9cde85ec8737" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Initially I was going to suggest that migrating questions that are more on topic to PMSE than here, was actually a good thing and it would help PMSE kick off as a full site sooner. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then I found a [couple][1] [of][2] MSO discussions that seem to support your view. PMSE is not doing that bad, according to my interpretation of [the stats][3], but I wouldn't say it's doing particurarly well either. So, at this point I'm rather confused :) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it would be easier to clarify if we want to migrate to beta sites first, and discuss PMSE later. Sites that somehow overlap with PSE will keep popping up, and any stance should be adjustable, but let's clarify that part first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When (and if) PMSE comes out of beta, I'd prefer it if we migrated all non programmers specific questions there, and limit our PM scope to questions that can *only* be answered from a programming perspective. But that's a future discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84405/migrating-project-management-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/113427/to-migrate-or-not-to-migrate&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackexchange.com/sites?expand=true" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26799" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2854" RevisionGUID="aa031de0-3e59-424c-aabe-da8838d85814" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Well, if there is a trend, it might be [my fault][1]!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Insofar I've rejected only two edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. One that only [removed the automated duplicate notification][2],&#xD;&#xA; 2. A weird one that revised *only* two words, that where referenced in a comment to the question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those where too minor, but obviously also otherwise problematic. But I can't really say I happened upon really minor edits. For argument's sake, here's a few examples I'd consider too minor:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Links that don't add anything valuable, an example would be someone adding Amazon links to [this answer][3].&#xD;&#xA; - Spelling &amp; grammar corrections on a post that has a lot more of such errors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question I would ask myself, if I happened upon those is if they where made in good faith. The Amazon links I would probably reject, but the minor spelling &amp; grammar corrections I would improve, or if lacking the time I would simply approve. To my mind, these edits would be from someone not very confident with his/her English but stll eager to contribute in any way (s)he could, and I don't mind that. But I wouldn't mind anyone rejecting them either, and if such a rejection ever made it to Meta, I would defend it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Special cases that I would reject outright, would be minor edits on old posts. If someone is on a badge run for [Strunk &amp; White](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/12/strunk-white) and / or [Archaeologist](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/92/archaeologist) and spamming the front page with minor edits, it wouldn't be very nice. Assuming I noticed repeated such edits from the same user, I would flag one of his posts for moderation attention, and continue my own run towards the elusive [Marshal][4] badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for tags: Retagging is possible at a lower rep threshold. If it's an edit that's mostly retagging I'd assume the user was going to do that originally, but just went ahead and capitalized those I's as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recently found out that suggested edits on StackOverflow [require approval from two users][5]. To be honest I would prefer that would be the case here as well, only if for the process to be peer reviewed, as is (almost) everything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2588/are-micro-edits-on-new-posts-insignificant&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2816/should-we-reject-edits-that-remove-the-automatic-duplicate-notification&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/124109/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-design-patterns/124114#124114&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/94/marshal&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119232/why-cant-i-edit-a-question-answer-after-i-voted-approve-in-review-suggested-edi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26800" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8" RevisionGUID="e9530d1c-d29a-4c5e-a227-51b18edfdabc" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; ###Update&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Community Wiki is [no longer an option](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/392/should-the-community-wiki-police-be-shut-down/7183#7183), across the network, for regular users when creating or editing a question. If a question should be flagged community wiki, flag a moderator for attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related to [Why would anyone accept an answer?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1/why-would-anyone-accept-an-answer), what's the criteria for what should be a community wiki and what is a regular question? If most, if not all questions are subjective, is there a need to generate one mega-answer through collaboration?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26801" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2856" RevisionGUID="5a0e2d21-a384-4841-bd8c-f5a43c9628d5" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As an extension to this previous question - [Should our FAQ contain a list of what's off topic and if so what should that list contain?][1], can we add two categories of questions that are often asked by new users but not on topic :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **&quot;coding homework&quot; questions** - [recent question][2] / [Recent discussion about homework tag][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specific enough questions can be migrated to [StackOverfow][4]. They accept coding homework questions with this politic as the tag description explains :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Homework means the asker is requesting help with school homework. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lets potential answerers know that they should guide the student in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solving the problem, rather than simply showing the complete answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means people shouldn't answer directly a question that looks like homework before migration. But I don't know how to enforce that (in the FAQ ?). Any ideas are welcome on that subject, and may be part of another question if it proves extensive =) (There is an [extensive discussion about how to answer homework questions on Meta-SO][5])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **personalized lesson plan / school guidance** - `What courses should I follow/ What should I start with to learn X with my specific background` - [recent question][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same idea as career questions. If it generalized enough, why not. If it's too localized, it's off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also close to this point :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;[and is not about...] what language you should learn next, including&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which technology is better&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But people seems to miss the point that &quot;part of a language&quot; is about the same as a language itself, and will mostly end up with a generic answer that looks like &quot;You should learn everything about this language&quot;. For example those questions :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What do I need to learn of C# for ASP.NET?][7] &#xD;&#xA;- [What do you need to learn to become professional ASP.NET programmer?][8] &#xD;&#xA;- [Should I be a professional in C# programming in order to build good web applications using ASP.NET?][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ends up with the same generic answer : &quot;Be the best as you can in C#&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-lis&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130468/lottery-program&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/homework&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130454/what-are-some-ways-to-get-started-learning-java-and-where-should-i-go-from-ther&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/130080/what-do-i-need-to-learn-of-c-for-asp-net&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44701/what-do-you-need-to-learn-to-become-professional-asp-net-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62170/should-i-be-a-professional-in-c-programming-in-order-to-build-good-web-applicat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26802" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="79" RevisionGUID="4451b7ee-3301-4fb3-88ce-ce7cff9ecccc" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="slackoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;===&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taken / Available for purchase&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I proposed this on [meta.stackoverflow.com][1] and Jeff suggested to add it here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/62734/renaming-the-not-programming-related-proposal/62849#62849" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26803" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2894" RevisionGUID="cba8c075-5653-4fb7-809f-08d248aecd65" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We've had [recent](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2856/addendum-to-off-topic-themes-in-the-faq) [discussions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag) here on meta regarding how to handle homework questions, but I would like to turn the discussion around a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of discussing _how_ to handle these kinds of questions, I'd like to discuss _if_ Programmers.SE can be a viable option for students seeking help. [Robert Harvey](http://stackoverflow.com/users/102937/robert-harvey) brought this question up on [Meta.SO](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119976/how-can-stack-overflow-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments) and I'd like to put it in the context of P.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Can Programmers.SE be used by students to get help with their class assignments, and if so, how can it be done in a way that respects the P.SE community? What rules and regulations would the students need to follow?_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_How well would P.SE accomodate the influx of students, each having questions about the same homework assignment?_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: Please feel free to edit the wording or formatting as needed.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26805" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2926" RevisionGUID="621c3b30-3cfd-456d-af4d-7a58bda2be4c" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; do any of the moderator candidates intend to moderate differently than the incumbents&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well to me above is not of a major importance thing. My primary expectations of moderator actions are as expressed [in one of the answers at &quot;big&quot; Meta](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/119089/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **something that a mod needs to develop by themselves - quick, competent and independent judgement of a situation**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Compared to above, consistency plays rather secondary role. I mean, as long as moderator is capable to justify their decision in the face of community review (eg here at Meta) I wouldn't mind if this decision has a personal touch.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* With above said, I would also like to make it perfectly clear that I am against total dismissal of consistency expectation. I believe that in (rare) cases when moderator actions [fail to meet primary expectations](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2JQ86.jpg) - in cases like that concerns of consistency, shared understanding, majority agreement and such can make a perfect ground for respective _corrective actions_." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26807" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="161" RevisionGUID="7f8da412-783a-4d3f-8ee3-9e9568fbb3e7" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Jon Skeet says it all here:&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votes/2268#2268&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reading this: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2009/05/20/reasons-for-voting-on-questions-and-answers.aspx&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder why not use the same system in comments for voting?&#xD;&#xA;That's if you like a question/answer up-vote it, if not, you either comment about what you see wrong or flag it if it's such an offshoot" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26808" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3042" RevisionGUID="aa4e43f1-898a-432c-b2b1-b6ec287f8539" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [canonical answer to this is on Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi), which is where the link in the notice takes you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An automatic filter is in place to ban questions from IP addresses or accounts with a history of extremely poor questions. To avoid bypassing the filter its internal rules are a secret, but it is partly based on downvotes cast by other members of the communities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Once you have posted too many bad quality questions, you will be banned from asking more, and see the error message. You can then still use the site, except for asking questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at [your profile](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/30160/dave), you've asked 6 questions, only one of which has been upvoted, 4 of which were closed, and 3 of which were deleted. You've provided few answers, and only one of which was up-voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you'd like to ask questions in the future, focus on helping others first by providing high-quality answers and taking [the feedback you've received on your past closures](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3029/8) to heart.  While the details of the low-quality ban are purposefully kept secret, creating a trend of high-quality answers generally will help towards getting it removed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26809" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="190" RevisionGUID="01ab2384-f464-4ec2-acae-918e5ec17e7e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's a [&quot;Community Wiki&quot;][1] answer (one which doesn't have a permanent &quot;owner&quot;, can be edited by more users, and doesn't grant reputation to anyone) - this status is forced for answers to questions with more than 30 answers. On the other sites, this is done to try and reduce the motivation for posting duplicate answers on open-ended questions... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this site, [there's some discussion as to whether it's a useful behavior][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/145/remove-cw-conversion-at-30-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26810" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3095" RevisionGUID="459f53a7-6cb1-49bf-9523-7608faf56af7" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm not going to take a stance on whether these questions are welcome on Programmers Stack Exchange. However, consider this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * If the questions are worth having on the site, then you should not block them from gaining new answers, or from being commented on, or from being improved through edition.&#xD;&#xA; * If the questions are not worth having on the site, then they should be removed from the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Locking is not at all appropriate for questions that do not belong here, even if it was once thought they did. Locking was practiced on Stack Overflow as a **temporary** measure while the site's scope was settling. It has unfortunately lasted longer than it should have, but really, do not take example from that. Locking is appropriate as a temporary measure to prevent content wars. Locked questions with useful information buried inside dozens of answers do not help anyone. The information should be in answers to focused, searchable questions. Make up your mind: either the questions are useful, and then they should be **maintained** (hence open); or they are not, and then they should be **deleted**. Locking bad questions just for historical value makes no sense: you're [framing garbage](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/112910/do-not-lock-old-questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![framed garbage](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xYpi3.jpg &quot;framed garbage&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to retain the present content — sure, it probably does have nuggets of wisdom if you dig deep enough — a questions and answers platform is not the right place. Take it offsite! I hear there are plenty of companies who'll host your content for a small monetary consideration.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26812" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3107" RevisionGUID="af8b55fd-efba-433f-92c5-87b649210eab" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You did the correct thing: [expletives are verboten here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/22233/149432), except in a [purely academic context](https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/q/253/2512) (e.g., if you asking about the etymology of one on [English.SE](http://english.stackexchange.com)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Expletives are not acceptable behavior on meta or any other Stack Overflow site. If you can't effectively communicate what you need to say without resorting to lowest common denominator cursing, then keep it to yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you use expletives, you will get a warning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you continue to use expletives, you will be placed on [timed suspension](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/a-day-in-the-penalty-box/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whether or not you agree with the belief you can effectively communicate without cursing, you've identified the practical reason why cursing is more-or-less banned on Stack Exchange: overactive internet filters in people's workplaces, when this site is meant to be used as a professional resource.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see it in a post, always edit it out. If you see it in a comment, flag it so it can be edited or deleted by a moderator." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26813" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3154" RevisionGUID="c05af2c3-789a-4dee-8249-9915895c91a4" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="According to [your profile](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/34364/jae?tab=activity), you only have 93 suggested edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Jae's Profile][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A number of those were also rejected, which would get you to the 79 edits listed on the Review page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the future, also keep in mind that not every edit [counts towards the editor badges](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/442/what-kind-of-edits-contribute-to-the-editor-badges):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - does not include edits to your own posts&#xD;&#xA;- does not include edits to tags &#xD;&#xA;- community-wiki posts are eligible&#xD;&#xA;- tag wiki posts are eligible&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To count for S&amp;W/Copy Editor, the edit must cover the title, the body or both.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Dfop5.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26814" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3189" RevisionGUID="f96a9a5e-1ecf-4fb9-a9b2-885aec12d89f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Background on polling questions:** Stack Exchange by it's very nature to a voting Q&amp;A site, which is to say every question is a poll. The best explanation of the difference between a &quot;polling&quot; question and a SE question might be found in [Aarobot answer here][1]; which is referenced by [Jeff Atwood here][2] on the Stack Overflow blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Question this question is about:** [Google Code Search Replacement][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here's why I do not believe it's a poll:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Question is looking for a replacement for a now discontinued programing  tool, [Google Code Search][4].&#xD;&#xA; - Google Code Search's is a well defined solution, and to search for a replacement is not subjective; meaning the best answer would be an exact clone of the tool.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I might be wrong, I believe [Yannis Rizos comment on an answer][5] points to my observations above: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; provide the link for reference. Especially since you are the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; co-founder, you should expand the answer a bit and tell us why your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; service is a good alternative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meaning for a good answer it must be in the context of being an alternative to Google Code Search, and every answer is not as good as another answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/75179/152184&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114629/google-code-search-replacement&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.google.com/codesearch&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/130588/4942" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26815" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="213" RevisionGUID="42662260-011f-4615-a331-48ce51d01aaa" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="One of the topics that's come up several times on Meta.StackOverflow is the perception that Programmers.SE is a joke proposal, existing solely to help keep Stack Overflow free of all the &quot;crappy&quot; questions that it gets plagued with every day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few of examples of this perception (**note: see Edits 2 and 3 below for clarification**):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You absolutely nailed my resentment of Programmers.SE; it was created as a tongue-in-cheek, NOT-Stack-Overflow site: the stuff we keep in the basement because it's not fit for keeping upstairs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The problem is that Programmers.SE was created as an amorphous blob where nothing is off topic (read: everything not Stack Overflow is on topic). The travesty is that Programmers.SE is, at least in perception, [your quote] &quot;an ocean of jokes and polls.&quot; That's where the problem lies. I would have created the site very differently: Subjective/soft programming topics okay; Industry/engineering issues okay; The business of software okay; Banal polls/jokes off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se/64449#64449)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Programmers on stackexchange](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what you are saying is that Programmers.SE is the skin of evil left behind to free the race of titans from the bonds of destructiveness: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ims5W5bJl9s&amp;feature=related#t=11s&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Robert Cartaino*](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64043#64043)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you browse questions on Meta for a bit, you'll quickly realize that there are a fair number of people who want to use SO for things that SO wasn't designed to be used for: discussions, polls, flame-wars, endless lists... And over time, this has created some amount of irritation on the site: some folks really, *really* want to, um, *participate* in questions like, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - What's the single best way to type code?&#xD;&#xA;- Do you hurt sometimes (as a programmer)?&#xD;&#xA;- How can I get a job drawing cartoons featuring the funniest programmer joke about my favorite hidden feature in the worst language ever (on a boat)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So rather than just stamping them out, like so many ducks putting out flaming elephants, some rose-tint-spectacled user got the idea of proposing a site *for all the questions that shouldn't be asked on SO*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE is that site. Soon, it'll have its own set of rules and standards, and the cycle will begin anew. But until then, it remains an anarchic paradise of freedom and love.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;—[*Shog9*](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to challenge the premise behind the sentiment: in many ways, that *was* the purpose of the proposal, and Programmers.SE is flourishing despite it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm wondering if there's a way we can spin the content of this site more positively rather than being merely a wretched hive of scum and villainy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the things that's popping up here is we should leave Programmers.SE alone because it's popular and as Nathan Taylor puts it, &quot;Haters gonna hate.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think the content or community Programmers.SE needs changing *per se*. Rather, I think we just need to provide a clear way to show value to SOIS and others, because the current perception is that we don't, and this site is more or less a joke that's gotten out of hand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how can we do that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like SOIS has decided to [publicly address][1] the banality of Programmers.SE on its blog:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There’s an even longer list of things that really belong on the new Programmers Stack Exchange, which appears to be degrading into fairly stupid water-cooler nonsense, and could benefit from an infusion of more meaty subjects, like these proposals:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've created a new question, [What questions are on topic, and what are off topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic), to see if we can hash out the proposed merges and other off-topic questions that have come up so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------ &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 3&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Cartaino clarified his position and the quotes above in the comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't actively despise the **concept** of Programmers.SE at all. Read my quotes (above) *very* carefully. What I lament is the perception created; the &quot;anything goes&quot; ethos that simply aims to flout what makes Stack Overflow great. I wanted a site about the &quot;Programmers' Life: a site for discussion of the business, careers, issues, and memes concerning professional developers.&quot; Subjective talk and soft topics okay if it follows a &quot;back it up&quot; philosophy or hard-earned experience. What I got instead was *&quot;what is the coolest/stupidest/weirdest/funniest thing you saw/did/tasted today?&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Q&amp;A will live on SO, Programmers, and a few academic sites. That's it. Not dozens of ridiculously niche and redundant proposals. But the mere mention of merging proposals with Programmers horrifies most. &quot;I don't want my subject on that site.&quot; That's a **huge problem.** Programmers.SE is the &quot;Park Place&quot; to Stack Overflow's &quot;Boardwalk&quot;; a tremendously valuable resource in a bad neighborhood. I'd prefer to paint over the graffiti and fix broken windows; to reestablish community pride so the police come out on occasion. But that's a far cry from &quot;hater&quot; or &quot;actively despise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit 4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jeff Atwood has created two topics with the basic premise that Programmers.SE as it is now is too undisciplined, and SOIS will be taking steps to correct that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Adding discipline to programmers.stackexchange.com](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;* [Should “Developer Testing” be folded into a more general “Programmers” site?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26816" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3219" RevisionGUID="8df5d0cf-f197-4c4a-97e7-c905daa5d095" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You can easily take care of this yourself. See [the instructions here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22223/how-do-i-remove-an-openid-or-login):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Open your profile page&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. Click the &quot;my logins&quot; link near the top&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3. Click the little (x) to the right of the login you wish to remove." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26817" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3224" RevisionGUID="976c4de5-4700-4a84-b9e9-81ccebceb013" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have [posted a question on meta][3] asking to lower standards for re-opening questions on smaller SE sites, and wish to provide a link here because the question was generated from the frustration I feel towards being unable to re-open older questions here on Programmers, even after significant edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please visit the question and vote to support if you agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize, currently users get a **[single re-open vote for the lifetime of a question][1]**, and that **[re-open vote will expire][2]** in 4 days. This 4-day limit can be extended if someone else votes to re-open within that 4 days, however this only resets the 4-day timer and once it expires, all votes expire at a rate of 1-per-day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've made a few suggestions in the MSO question that would make it easier for smaller SE communities to reopen their questions, although the one I'd like to see implemented the most would be to [refund re-open votes if they don't actually get used][4], so users can participate in other re-open attempts at a later date if the question gets more attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just a FYI, I have been part of this site since beta and do not ever remember seeing an older question get re-opened by the community. I have seen a handful of newer questions get re-opened by getting the 5 votes needed, however I have never seen an older one get re-opened without moderator intervention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/124077/158605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/123784/158605&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/124100/158605&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/99333/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26818" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="239" RevisionGUID="88a4846b-f0b8-4c92-b123-f37ea9777771" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### &lt;strike&gt;Software Engineering Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for students, practitioners, and researchers. Software engineering deals with requirements engineering, software design and architecture, implementation, testing, maintenance, configuration management, process, tools, methodologies, quality, and ethics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How can I justify the use of throwaway prototyping to my manager?&#xD;&#xA;* What’s the best method for estimation? &#xD;&#xA;* I got a job in a company that practices Scrum. How can I prepare myself before the first workday? &#xD;&#xA;* What single book provides the best overview of key software engineering topics? &#xD;&#xA;* What is the single most important Software Engineering concept to learn for practical use?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Engineering soon to be beta, what should we do with SE questions?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/186/software-engineering-soon-to-be-beta-what-should-we-do-with-se-questions)&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Software Engineering has been re-proposed purposefully to avoid being merged, so it's no longer applicable.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6922/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26819" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="259" RevisionGUID="79acfd8c-da10-49e8-9480-5689456276ac" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="##basement.stackoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Idea taken from: [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;You absolutely nailed my resentment of Programmers.SE; it was created as a tongue-in-cheek, NOT-Stack-Overflow site: &lt;b&gt;the stuff we keep in the basement&lt;/b&gt; because it's not fit for keeping upstairs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26820" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3301" RevisionGUID="4b8be5cf-326e-4c4b-8d1d-1c634e350698" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A while back I made a suggestion to [either rename the site to match the FAQ, or change the FAQ so it matches the site name][1] to help clear up a lot of the confusion I see over what P.SE is for. That question was asked to see if this idea had any support, and I believe it does judging by the 25 upvotes it currently has, and the [other][2] [questions][3] which were pointed out that ask the same thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site name is the first, and often only, piece of information a user has to judge our site on. Since we can't change the site's name, this question is to ask **what kind of changes can we make to the FAQ to make it accurately reflect the site name, without going back to the mindless fun this site began as?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see a lot of confusion over the scope of P.SE, and I think [this recent MSO comment][20] sums up what I've seen:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; no one recommends Programmers anymore because it's unclear what the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site's scope is and some of its users disagree strongly with what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others of its users think the site's scope entails&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My suggestions are below. I wanted to post them all together in one answer since they I feel the suggestions make the most sense if you read them in order, but ultimately decided to separate them so we can comment, evaluate, and vote on each suggestion individually. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this would go a long ways towards making the site scope match the site name, and clear up the confusion caused by the current differences. In addition, I am hoping this will help reconcile users from both sides of the site scope argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review and vote on the suggestions, or add your own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/124923/where-in-the-stack-exchange-world-can-i-initiate-a-programming-related-discuss/124927#comment336347_124925" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26821" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3323" RevisionGUID="ff6f175b-6d61-46cd-8147-cdb6098dc117" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Unless you have lots of money you cannot self host the Stack Exchange engine. This was tried for SE 1.0 but it didn't work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The business model is built around communities coming to a single location (Stack Exchange) and building within the existing framework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When SE 2.0 (of which Programmers is just one site out of 80+) was started there was no possibility of self hosting, but there have been [comments that indicate](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16054/is-the-stack-exchange-engine-available/16055#16055) that large corporations (we're talking the size of Microsoft, Oracle, etc.) could:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There is a Stack Exchange Enterprise option for internal use. The pricing makes this feasible for large organizations only. You can email team at stackoverflow and your inquiry will be routed to the correct place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you really like the model then check out the list of [Stack Exchange clones](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2267/stack-overflow-clones) on Meta Stack Overflow. You should be able to find one you can install and use." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26822" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="288" RevisionGUID="39c59e1d-d6bc-47d5-affe-4113189ed864" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Questions like &quot;Can you recommend some good pottery for programmers?&quot; are an issue we need to figure out- to what extent are they allowed?  I see a few variants on this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that are clearly unrelated to programming in anyway, but have programming tacked on (eg, &quot;Can you recommend some good pottery for programmers?&quot; or &quot;What, as a programmer, is your favorite legume?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;2. Questions that are a middle ground: &quot;What are some good movies for programmer?&quot; is a good example- on one hand it'd be off-topic without &quot;for programmer,&quot; but on the other hand, programming-related movies affect programmer culture, and are something that is, to my mind, &#xD;&#xA;worth discussing here.&#xD;&#xA;3. Questions that are somewhat clearly directly related to programming: &quot;What are some good keyboards for programmers&quot;- since keyboards are the tool of our trade, this is definitely worth discussing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been a few discussions of this issue so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- An answer in &quot;[What questions are on-topic and what questions are off-topic](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic/238#238)&quot; starts to discuss this&#xD;&#xA;- In revision 7 on [What should be in our FAQ](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/74/revisions), Mark Trapp rolls back a change I made to suggest that blatant &quot;types of pickles&quot; questions should be off-topic.  He asserts that they are on-topic, citing a meta.SO post.  This exchange is why I'm making this question- we should have an internal question deciding it one way or another to point people to in the future.&#xD;&#xA;- An early discussion took place in the comments for the [programming fiction](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2982/recommended-fiction-for-programmers) question.&#xD;&#xA;- Mark points out [this](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/programmers-on-stackexchange/64046#64046) answer on meta.SO&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been out for a few days, and I have't payed that much attention to external discussion of P.SE on meta.SO, so I may have missed us coming to a consensus on this issue, but it seems we haven't, and we need to.  What do you think- are 1, 2, and/or 3 on-topic or off-topic for this site, and how do we handle determining which side of the 'on-topic' line a question like this falls?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26824" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3329" RevisionGUID="6f9639f9-db87-47bb-980c-66630f03c04f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Typically we evaluate questions on research effort and usefulness:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Research effort**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The question shows no research effort at all. It's a curiosity question, which I'm perfectly fine with in general, but that doesn't mean that OP still doesn't have to do at least some minor research prior to asking. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A simple web search for &quot;programming languages semicolon&quot; revealed the [Comparison of programming languages (syntax)][1] and [Syntactic sugar][2] Wikipedia articles that discuss semicolons as terminating characters, and the very interesting [The Semicolon Wars][3] article. The lack of proper terminology (statement terminators) and vagueness of the question tells me that there wasn't any research effort at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Usefulness** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It could be argued that the question would be useful to someone researching language design, but that would be a very weak argument since there's nothing in the question to even hint towards language design and every answer that approached the question from a language design perspective did so in extremely vague terms. Furthermore, even from a language design angle the question is a [typical bikeshed question][4], and amazingly it fits [Wadler's Law][5] perfectly, as it's a question on syntax rather than semantics: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; In any language design, the total time spent discussing a feature in this list is proportional to two raised to the power of its position.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; 0\. Semantics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; 1\. Syntax&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; 2\. Lexical syntax&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; 3\. Lexical syntax of comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, let's take a look at our [FAQ][6]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions should I not ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We _tend to forget_ that part once in a while, but for me it's the most important part of the FAQ, one that clearly indicates that we are not a discussion forum but a Q&amp;A site. The question in question is a great example of why that paragraph is important: It's a barely useful question, no research effort at all, but highly upvoted. However there is no actual problem to be solved, it's a typical discussion oriented question, and even if it wasn't otherwise troublesome it should have been closed as not constructive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which brings us to the notorious [6SG][7]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question itself fails all but the last one. It's simply too short to guide answers in a constructive manner, and although some of the answers are not bad, that has little (if anything) to do with the question. I won't evaluate the answers themselves, because I feel we kinda failed in protecting people from wasting their time in answering a question that clearly doesn't belong to the site, and that's not the answerers fault.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**In conclusion:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I fully support closing the question, and if I wasn't on the road when the question appeared I would have closed it sooner, it's not a type of question I would want to encourage on Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It gathered quite a few upvotes and so did the three top answers, so it's not a question I would delete, but I don't think there's a point in trying to rewrite and re-open as I think it has run it's circle and there's little (if any) chance it will gather any more good answers. &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Further reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [The Trouble With Popularity][8]&#xD;&#xA;- [Parkinson's Law of Triviality][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_languages_%28syntax%29&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_sugar&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/the-semicolon-wars&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/31253/the-bike-shed-problem-and-so&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Wadlers_Law&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26825" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3345" RevisionGUID="4892a5d0-f623-4b09-832c-67e609bb5890" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Small inconsistencies like that are not uncommon, reputation synchronization is not immediate and what you are seeing on your SO profile is probably a cached version.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the missing +4 is a refund from a post that was deleted on March 17, and since there where some [recent changes to reputation regarding deleted posts][1], this might be a bug after all. If your reputation on SO isn't listed correctly in a couple of days, post a comment to this answer so I can notify the developers about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your P.SE reputation is listed correctly on [your SO profile][2] now, so it was caching after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/123319/recent-reputation-history-changes&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/543572/james-drinkard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26826" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3433" RevisionGUID="9a7cbc20-6f1d-4f1f-abc4-1c8ff8248c45" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The Workplace is [launching Tuesday or Wednesday](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/4823/what-is-coworking#comment9210_4847), barring any unforeseen problems. During the private beta, there will be no involvement from other Stack Exchange sites (save for active people here who also committed to the proposal): it'll be up to the community there to quickly figure out their scope and how they'll ensure the site will be viable if/when it goes public.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But even sites in public beta are never added as migration paths. The beta period is the time for the site to bootstrap itself without becoming a dumping ground for other sites: normal users generally don't understand what to migrate [even when sites are launched](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The lack of a migration path does not, however, prevent moderators from migrating questions to a beta site. Historically, [we worked with moderators on beta sites](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2782/8) to determine if a question would be a better fit for them. This tended to be a win-win situation for all involved, as it let the destination sites get questions they want and it prevented unnecessary drama when a question gets unceremoniously closed here for being off-topic or sits around with no answers (or worse, bad answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like [the current moderators](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3419/8) are [loath to do this](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3428/8), and it's unlikely very many, if any, questions would be migrated to the Workplace while it's in beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind, however, that The Workplace was [created specifically to house questions that are categorically off-topic here](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/a/1401/16359): there should be very little, if any, overlap between the two sites. Off-topic questions that would be a fit for The Workplace have historically gotten comments from closers directing the asker to support the proposal: perhaps the only real change needed to that workflow is to modify the wording to indicate it's already live.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26828" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="440" RevisionGUID="f31fda2c-af4f-422c-93d8-8d6106394729" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="SOIS has decided to [disable the community feature entirely for end-users](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67039/what-can-we-do-to-make-community-wiki-better/67192#67192). Now, if you want a question to be community wiki, you need to flag it for moderator attention. So, that's that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26829" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3451" RevisionGUID="ef222ba9-370d-411e-8d82-354d0b49eadc" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The feature already exists, but only for diamond moderators. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every time a similar feature has been asked for regular users, it has been declined summarily, although I'm certain that everyone who votes to migrate means well, incorrect migrations are quite often. Programmers especially [has suffered a lot][1] from incorrect migrations from Stack Overflow, the past 90 days we have rejected more than 1/3 of questions coming here from Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main problem is that although you are required to have at least 3,000 reputation at the source to vote to migrate, you aren't even required to have an account at the target site, and people seem eager to vote to migrate without thinking if the question is actually suitable for the target site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'd say that flagging for moderation attention is not only an acceptable workaround, but imho it's actually the preferred action. We can notify the other site's moderators and only migrate the question if they verify that it is suitable for their site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In theory, we could discuss adding another migration target. Right now our most popular migration target is Stack Overflow with 170 questions the past 90 days, and our second most popular is Code Review with 9 questions over the same period, too few to justify a migration path. If we start getting a lot of Code Review questions, trust me I'll be the first to nag about it ;) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26830" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="549" RevisionGUID="bfc2eda0-fdc6-4de6-ace9-31789d4e922d" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="See [What can we do to make Community Wiki better?][1] on Meta.SO. So you can request it for moderators, but I just convert to CW if the question requires CW status. If you want it, please explain why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67039/what-can-we-do-to-make-community-wiki-better/67192#67192" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26831" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3460" RevisionGUID="443c82c2-598e-4282-b858-a7e1f0dd5df9" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The fix for this is being deployed right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See [this post on Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129002/new-tag-wikis-cannot-be-created)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26832" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="576" RevisionGUID="8174a81c-63e9-46cf-a2a1-013d13189e48" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If that's what the question and its answers essentially were, you'd be correct in saying it's on topic because it deals with a developer's tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that's not what the question is, and the answers only mention in passing Mac OS X's development capability. Explaining what the command key does and where the Applications folder is doesn't make a professional programmer better at his job, but they do help someone new to a Mac in general.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In reality, a question like &quot;What are the essential things I should know about Mac?&quot; is essentially asking, &quot;Can someone read my mind and link every question I might find useful on [Apple.SE](http://apple.stackexchange.com)?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange system only works when people ask pointed questions that are directly related to the Stack Exchange they are on because they attract the knowledge and experience of experts on the topic. A person interested in learning more about specific things on a Mac should avail themselves of [Apple.SE](http://apple.stackexchange.com) and ask questions there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using the &quot;as a programmer&quot; qualifier to make any question on topic (among other cheese methods) has been discussed several times [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22as+a+programmer%22), on the [Stack Overflow blog](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/), and on [Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suffice it to say, Programmers.SE does not suffer from a lack of good questions such that we need to be a general-purpose question and answer site like [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) or [Quora](http://quora.com); where the only thing that you need to do is add the keyword &quot;programmer&quot; or the phrase &quot;as a programmer&quot; and ask an broad, easy-to-answer question to be on topic. There are literally dozens of specialized Stack Exchange sites that cover the topics more appropriately." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26833" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3527" RevisionGUID="c91ddd64-c147-4613-9bef-a003bf6d5c7a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/49550/what-hashing-algorithm-is-good-for-uniqueness-and-speed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particular answer to above question has been made CW per automatic rule ([quote source](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/11741/165773 &quot;MSO answer to 'What are “Community Wiki” posts?'&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The post has been edited ten (10) times by the original owner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Automatically applying generic rule in this particular case looks unfair.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;In case of doubt, check the answer to decide whether you agree with above.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* answer: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/145633/31260&#xD;&#xA;* timeline: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/49550/timeline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##This answer looks exceptionally good&#xD;&#xA; to me, and not only to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to clear CW status to recognize an extraordinary contribution of the author?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/CRw3X.jpg][1]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/145633/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CRw3X.jpg &quot;screen shot - top part of the answer. And there's more, much much more...&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26835" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3587" RevisionGUID="efda1205-43d1-415d-9810-09557683fae4" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I believe that is correct as code is included in the content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; to Remix — to adapt the work  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; to make commercial use of the work  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anything that you post to StackOverflow will be under the terms of the creative commons license. You can find more info by looking at the bottom right of the page and clicking the cc-wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Do I have to worry about copyright issues for code posted to StackOverflow?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12527/do-i-have-to-worry-about-copyright-issues-for-code-posted-on-stackoverflow)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26837" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3589" RevisionGUID="44725f52-9e60-4518-962c-2b11ff6c578d" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I went browsing Meta SO for any profile rules, and it appears there really aren't any. A user's profile is a reflection of the user, not a reflection of the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can put pretty much anything in there, [even profanity][1], although since it is a reflection of the you, you may want to consider carefully what you put in there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Rules for Profiles?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/31504/158605)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Generally speaking, your profile is (to an extent) fair game, as it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a reflection of you as a person, not the site as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Self-promotion, your e-mail address, humor, (if you know HTML) imagery&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and even the f-bomb are allowed there.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are reasonable limitations for all of those, but generally&#xD;&#xA;&gt; speaking, unless you're a hard-core spammer or you put something truly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; offensive / crazy in there (like hate speech or pornography), you'll&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/31209/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26838" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="699" RevisionGUID="dcfbccdb-9f45-46d7-96cc-4b855d30cd48" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The consensus, if you could call it that, on removing the accept rate was mostly achieved before [Great Redisiplining](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice). People can and should be accepting answers: the acceptance criteria on all Stack Exchange sites is &quot;this answer helped me, personally, the most.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To clarify, the re-disiplining of Programmers.SE set guidelines that discourage people from asking questions they don't actually need the answers to (i.e. so-called &quot;pointless water cooler nonsense&quot;). With that, the [standard criteria for accepting answers](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work) applies to all questions on Programmers.SE like it does on the rest of the Stack Exchange network." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26839" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3600" RevisionGUID="a443db21-9bfb-49c5-896d-f2ca000fd119" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yes, that's true. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers had a troubled start, fully documented in [this answer][1]. In the beginning the site was called &quot;Not Programming Related&quot; and it was a very relaxed place where questions that didn't belong on Stack Overflow found a home. Inane (but populist) questions were migrated here from Stack Overflow en masse, carrying [ridiculous amounts of upvotes][2] with them, and for a short while NPR was the one place in the Stack Exchange universe where you'd go for mindless fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it soon became evident that people flocked around the [bike shed][3] ones and ignored any serious questions or answers, and the site was quickly filling up with crap. Which led to a somewhat sudden and drastic scope change, the site was essentially rebooted to be what it is today. The redefined scope meant higher quality standards, which for Stack Exchange usually translates to less down votes and more up votes. Combined with the fact that down votes on questions [became free][4] about a year ago, people are down voting a lot more liberally than in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course you should also consider that older questions had obviously more time to gather up votes, they aren't all bad, newer questions will get there in time. But the main reason for the few whales that remain was the undisciplined culture of the early days, people would upvote just about anything. To give you an idea, one of that era's questions was [&quot;What's your most controversial programming opinion?&quot;][5], which had 391 upvotes and 414 answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As time goes by we become even more sharply focused, and we set our standards even higher. Useful and well research questions may not get a lot of up votes, but they do get a lot more visibility and quite more useful answers than a couple of years ago, as they are a lot easier to discover when you don't have to look for hours amongst an ocean of pointless questions like &quot;What's your most controversial programming opinion?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3415/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/ &quot;see SE blog post: The Trouble With Popularity&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/31253/the-bike-shed-problem-and-so&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3557/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26840" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1043" RevisionGUID="38509b99-1fba-4769-8c54-17bf607da487" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Yi Jiang](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/150097/yi-jiang) has put together a nice site that use the Stack Overflow API to display information on the moderator candidates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Click here to see all the information](http://se.awio.com/election.html).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The information presented is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What the candidate wrote when nominating themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Answers/Questions on the main site and it's meta&#xD;&#xA;* Up-vote/down-vote ratio&#xD;&#xA;* Average reputation earned per post&#xD;&#xA;* Average reputation earned per day.&#xD;&#xA;* Participation in other Stack Exchange sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It displays what Yi Jiang considers to be noteworthy badges and whether the nominee has the badge and a summary of their recent activity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The information is presented as is with no commentary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It came about from this question on MSO [Moderator nomination possibly useful statistics](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/75454/59303)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26841" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3662" RevisionGUID="9e89cb7d-a78f-48b2-a56f-8662c101cea0" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Stack Exchange's aggregate traffic is public and available on Quantcast][1], but it may or may not be an accurate or up-to-date picture at any moment in time. It should, however, be accurate enough for the purposes of figuring out if a contest helped: [it was used a lot on Gaming.SE][2] during the [Skyrim vs. Modern Warfare 3 promotion][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Much more detailed analytics are indeed available to SE employees and to moderators, but they're not available mostly for the reasons outlined in the answers to the MSO question, [Why are stats not public information?][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, [cwallenpoole's answer][5]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I might hazard some guesses:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. This might have to do with the same reason that SE sites are &quot;not about the rep&quot;. If exact numbers are used, that could lead to someone gaming the system, realizing that x and y conditions lead to condition z. In the context of a blog, this can lead to especially perverse aberrations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. It also could have to do with principles similar to those outlined in Tufte's *Visual Explanations.* The quantifiable, without appropriate contextualization can lead to grossly inaccurate conclusions. (you can see his discussion on pg. 36, if you care. A better example from a different book is the stock-market to sun-spot ratio chart at the beginning of *Visual Display of Quantitative Information*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. One rule to rule them all means both that you don't have to micro-manage what is and is not appropriate and you don't have the complaint, &quot;But *`&lt;pronoun&gt;`* gets to do it *`&lt;possesive-pronoun&gt;`* way...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Of course, these are more guesses as to/justification of the reasoning than they are the rationale themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, [Jeff Atwood's answer][6]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Pretty much what cwallenpoole said in his answer; in my mind, this is like arguing for full disclosure of people's salaries. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And anyway, what's the *problem?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Those who need to know, can get the information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Those who wish to know, can ask those that have it for a summary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Just because you *can* get the information doesn't mean you *need* it. Information porn can be harmful. And having it can cause a distraction from the stuff that matters, just like real porn...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you mentioned, they'll generally provide a 10,000-foot picture of those analytics upon request, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.quantcast.com/programmers.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3205/3389&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://skyrimvsmw3.com&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/106306/why-are-stats-not-public-information&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/106314/149432&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/107437/149432" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26842" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1210" RevisionGUID="926f376e-7881-4f52-8cff-1da6b4213e0d" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Since you linked to one of the questions I closed, I'll add my 2 cents.  Yes there needs to be more communication between people on SO closing/migrating questions and mods/users on Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand how it happens.  A question is posted on SO that clearly doesn't belong there, someone votes to migrate it to Programmers thinking it's not about code so it should live here, not really know if it meets Programmers guidelines.  It actually happens a lot.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do know that in recent weeks that some of the mods on SO have started [asking][1] here on Meta whether a question should be migrated to Programmers or just closed on SO.  This goes a long way to help the situation.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What it doesn't fix is the situation where 5 SO users vote to migrate a question here.  They may or may not know whether it's a good question to migrate and they may or may not care (as long as it's gone from SO).  I don't know how that gets fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's some other discussions about the same topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/872&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1162" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26843" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1223" RevisionGUID="13c6d282-3cf8-49ce-8bb4-4dbae72f5601" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There was a rep recalculation performed on your account. It would've removed rep from questions and answers that were deleted or migrated to another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was a StackExchange-wide recalc done as part of the preparations for the new Users page. More details [here][1] on Meta.SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80862/sudden-sharp-drop-in-reputation-find-out-reason-recalc" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26844" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1250" RevisionGUID="871abcc0-e93b-429a-9361-695c76e5ef6e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This was reported on Meta.SO][1] and fixed today. The fix should be released in the next day or so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/81985/flag-weight-deputy-badge-bug" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26845" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3682" RevisionGUID="167b538e-a14d-4e56-b0c6-9e31853c1294" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Sometimes we suspend after only two consecutive closed negative score questions depending on if they seemed to acknowledge our feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hm, no we don't, unless I missed a memo or something. Mod messages may carry a suspension or be just warnings, and that's no immediately clear from, let's say, the [list of recent mod messages][1]. We typically go with a warning first, and suspend only if the behaviour is repeating. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The typical dance is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. A mod message warning for first offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Suspension for a week for second time offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Suspension for a month for third time offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 4. Suspension for a year or more for the absolutely nefarious ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course that may vary a bit per offence, and you're right, our &quot;policy&quot; is mostly a mixup of instinct, looking at past mod messages, TL chats. Generally I go for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Consistently low quality questions over time**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The most common abusive pattern, and the one where we've gone with the typical warning/suspension dance almost every time. I don't think there's need for a change in policy here, warn first, suspend if the behaviour persists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Question repetition**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is mostly a noob mistake, and I don't think it's worth a mod message, it's easily resolved with a comment (or two). I'd go for a suspension only if the user blatantly ignores the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Sockpuppet upvoting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Although I haven't had to deal with this one yet, I'd say it makes sense to skip the warning and suspend all participants. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Abusive to others**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Per case, and I'd prefer if there was some mod discussion before a warning or a suspension, this one almost always demands a second set of eyes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Revenge downvoting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The last time I mod messaged someone for revenge downvoting, I went for just a warning, and regretted it a week later when he did something else, equally suspension worthy (this time, I pulled the trigger). I wouldn't mind if we skip the warning for revenge downvoting in general and suspend on first offence, but I also wouldn't object to warn first timers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Self-destruction of own content**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Also a common noob mistake, that's rarely repeated. Warn, and only suspend if (s)he does it again. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Using signatures or taglines**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I'm only mentioning this one because there's a template for it. The time to edit out the signature or tagline is less than mod messaging the user...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Excessive self-promotion**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If the only contributions from the user is spam, destroy the account.&#xD;&#xA; - If there are non spam contributions, delete the spam ones and warn or suspend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Excessive discussion in comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  My favourite one. Warning the first time, and possibly the second time, not necessarily via a mod message, a comment on the post the discussion is going on _or_ a superping in chat would be enough (imho). For people who keep pestering others with borderline rude comments, a suspension should be considered even for first time offenders and especially if they've already ignored a comment by a mod asking them to calm down and be nice (which is what all of us go for at first).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Something else...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Strictly per case, obviously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If an issue can be discussed publicly, a comment or a superping in chat is preferable and if not, there's always the option of a private chat, a completely tedious and cumbersome process that doesn't however leave a permanent black mark&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; on the user's record, the way mod messages do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Worth noting that SE takes the black mark thingy seriously, I got in trouble for suspending a fellow SE mod and a user who volunteered while testing a [rather obnoxious bug][2]. Apparently for science isn't a good reason for a suspension, even for a day.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To clarify for non mods: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a few of your questions get closed / down voted, an automatic mod only flag is raised. The first time that happens, you may get a mod warning (or not), but a suspension is unwarranted (imho), unless of course the questions are of the [&quot;how is babby formed&quot;][3] variety.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second time the flag is raised you will be suspended for a short time (week or less) _or_ you may get by with a warning, if we forget to send it the first time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/admin/users&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/133291/mod-message-header-notification-is-missing&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080329181633AAdYPKu" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26846" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1458" RevisionGUID="05dde3d3-acb8-4ffb-ad3d-dad62f676cae" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Flag weights diminish if you constantly use the flag system *inappropriately*. If you are acting in good faith, I would not obsess too much over &quot;maintaining the integrity&quot; of your flag weight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I raised this issue in meta: [**Should moderators delete ... comments**](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77373/should-moderators-delete-make-correction-done-comments)? The consensus seems to be (and the action taken) that comments which no longer serve a purpose (or never *had* a purpose to begin with) should be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's all about creating the highest quality content possible; the end result. If a comment-conversation was the *means* of getting that content &amp;mdash; and that means was served &amp;mdash; those now-superfluous discussions should be removed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a matter of community self-moderation. Moderators should remove irrelevant comments in the routine course of using the site. Users can help by flagging comments that that serve no further purpose." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26847" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3686" RevisionGUID="b695abfc-9b31-480a-9721-1c863e02f640" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;strike&gt;No.&lt;/strike&gt; Apparently there is on [Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/40353/stack-overflow-glossary-dictionary-of-commonly-used-terms)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I know there aren't many acronyms that are specific to Stack Exchange (apart from the obvious use of site initials - e.g. SO for Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have you tried http://acronymfinder.com?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if someone uses an acronym in a post that you're not familiar with leave them a comment asking them to explain what it means. There are far too many of these TLAs* for us all to remember them all and some have multiple meanings.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Three Letter Acronyms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26848" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3701" RevisionGUID="3b62919e-4f8e-4929-9ccb-9e366febfef5" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Migrating to beta sites and sites that are not in our migration target list**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Showing the full list of sites in the off topic dialog has been asked for a ton of times, and has been declined each time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; maybe one that is dependant on reputation, only people who have over 10000 rep can see beta sites or a comment block for where else it should go&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, no, unless you mean reputation on the target site. We've suffered enough from bad migrations from Stack Overflow to know that reputation on the source site says absolutely nothing about whether a question belongs on the target site or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Migration comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are an extremely bad habit, and I really (really) dislike them. The typical dance is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. A question that includes the word &quot;career&quot; is closed, or is gathering down / close votes fast.&#xD;&#xA; 1. An (un)helpful commenter posts something like &quot;this belongs on the Workplace&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; 1. OP, being new and having no idea we can migrate, posts on the Workplace. &#xD;&#xA; 1. The question is closed on the Workplace as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same dance happens for OnStartups, for questions that include the word &quot;business&quot;. Cross posting is not something we like very much, but the important thing here is that the OP has been rejected by two sites. If getting your question closed in one site sucks, imagine how much it stinks when it happens twice in a day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main issue here is that people feel they are being nice by proposing an alternative, and they are, however migration is _not_ an alternative to closing poor questions that don't belong on Stack Exchange in general. What annoys me the most is that 99% of the times I see a migration comment from a high(ish) rep member, they haven't taken the time to bring the question to shape, even if just by fixing obvious spelling / grammar mistakes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously this doesn't apply to you, comments like [this one][1]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://workplace.stackexchange.com/ is a better fit for most work questions, but I'm not sure this is really a work question. I think it is a very poor idea to get a Masters immediately after you graduate. Get a few years of work experience first. I would not hire someone with a masters and no professional work experience over someone with a BA or BS for an entry level job because they expect more money and still only have entry level skills. And wanting what pays best and is easiest is a conflict, the hard stuff pays best. -  HLGEM 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;are exactly what a migration comment should be like. Thanks for taking the time to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Point to the workplace, but also pointing out that the question might not fit there.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Provide a mini answer to the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do we migrate to the Workplace, then?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll answer the same way [I've answered for Programmers][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Flag for moderation attention, or&#xD;&#xA;1. Drop the questions in the [Water Cooler][3], the Workplace's main chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both options involve the Workplace community having a say in whether the question belongs on their site or not, and that's a good thing, and far better than a random migration comment, that more often than not is more obnoxious than useful. I realize you are part of the Workplace community, and currently the top user by reputation there, however you can't decide on your own if the question should or should be not migrated. Lacking an option for users to vote to migrate to the Workplace, flagging or visiting the Water Cooler are what's left, and are good enough solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`&lt;/rant&gt;`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/153085/master-degree-in-software-engineering-vs-game-development-vs-web-development#comment291063_153085&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/135239/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26849" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1595" RevisionGUID="7934cf1e-a872-40ec-a196-33c9a5cfa1c4" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Right now we have just 8 [meta-tag:faq] posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not *terrible*, but they are in various states, various formats, and one of them is even closed. &#xD;&#xA;I think it would be great to clean up these posts, decide on a format and figure out a process for bringing in new FAQ questions (and apply the tag now to the best ones we have here on Meta).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Motivations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Provide a great place for new users to start learning about the best ways to use this site.&#xD;&#xA;2. Provide links for experienced users to use in comments on questions or answers that need attention.&#xD;&#xA;3. Take a big step in [fixing this site](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1400/2314)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have **three main proposals** and a couple questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 1. Make the FAQ tagged questions more FAQ-y&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my understanding, the [meta-tag:faq] tag should be used for **the most frequently asked and answered questions on Meta.** (That's what the tag wiki says, at least.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I propose we review which questions are tagged **faq**, and fix any that are out of place (such as those about the **site-faq** which I propose as the replacement tag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. I believe that these questions should be in **Question and Answer** form, so that users can see quickly that it's a question they actually have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now, these are the questions we have in the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is “what language should I learn” considered off-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic) - Good question.  Should be community wiki, and I'm not sure the answers are quite there yet.&#xD;&#xA;* [Proposed FAQ change regarding career advice questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1165/2314) - Since it's about the *actual FAQ page* I'm not sure if the tag was correctly applied, but it's a good question (deserves it anyway).  It just needs to be edited to question-answer form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [I've updated our FAQ.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/ive-updated-our-faq) - Honestly I'm not sure I understand the inclusion of this one (why is it closed as too localize?)&#xD;&#xA;* [How does Programmers site work?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/516/how-does-programmers-site-work) - Perfect.  Shining example of what a **faq** question can be.  Oh - except for maybe fixing the grammar in the title :)&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice) - Great topic, but needs Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu) - Good&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow) - Great question. Need to turn Mark's whole answer into an updated answer, and I wish we could accept it somehow.&#xD;&#xA;* [What should our FAQ contain?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-should-our-faq-contain) - Kind of meta. I think it's more **site-faq** than **faq**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 2. A FAQ index&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The FAQ for Stack Exchange Sites at Meta.SO](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7931/faq-for-stack-exchange-sites) is great.  Would be cool to see one like that here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 3. Figure out a process for bringing in new FAQ posts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, where do we propose a good posts, discuss its merits, or decide on the &quot;right&quot; answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My first nomination is &quot;Real Questions have Answers&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;[This is the post](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/991/real-questions-have-answers) announcing the addition of the section to the FAQ page, but I think it would be great to have a **&quot;Are polls ok?&quot;** question with a bit longer answer (community wiki) comprising the [best](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) [writing](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179) on this topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally this answer would also talk about how we should avoid &quot;you/your&quot; in questions, so we can use it in comments on [questions like this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76710/would-you-rather-work-in-a-small-company-or-a-large-one) &amp;mdash; the question that got me thinking about all of this in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this process, maybe we could use the [meta-tag:meta-faq] tag I created for this question (no others fit).&#xD;&#xA;### Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is the **Q&amp;A format** (a la Meta.SO) correct for this site?  I believe it is, but I'm open to opposing viewpoints.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. If we *do* go with Q&amp;A format for FAQ questions, how do we arrive at the *right* answer but still allow voting, discussion (comments), and editing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    The [Skeptics site is working on solution for this](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/413/on-adding-the-faq-tag-to-questions) that involves turning the original into a discussion/staging area and posting a new question with the best/correct answer.  However, I'm not a big fan of this.  I [posted an answer](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/519/discussion-about-requiring-references-for-all-claims/343#343) that became [the &quot;official&quot; one](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5/must-all-claims-be-referenced/522#522) but all that served to do was branch the conversation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. How do we push the right answer to the top on FAQ questions? Votes? Accept it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26851" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1599" RevisionGUID="7d412a9e-8824-41b3-9a2f-109fcfd2a976" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Edit:** Over the past couple of weeks, we've been accumulating several FAQ-worthy questions that provide a good amount of detail beyond what the one-page FAQ, so I've taken the extra couple of steps to consolidate and adjust the questions to be more FAQ-like. We now have a [FAQ Index](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1646/8) which links to several questions on meta and elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think there's a tremendous amount of value in spending a whole lot of time on this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Stack Overflow, they get a ton of questions about all the sites about every possible mechanic. They get dozens upon dozens of questions about the same things, and as such, require canonical posts to point to for the purposes of duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, the amount of questions they get about various aspects of the site require extensive detail that can't be fit into a single page FAQ. For example, there's a FAQ post that goes into the excruciating minutiae of [how comment replies work](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/43019/how-do-comment-replies-work).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, Meta Stack Overflow has what Jeff Atwood terms &quot;big city problems&quot;. The [meta-tag:faq] tag is the only reasonable way to handle the onslaught of support questions they get about the engine and global policies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't really have that problem. We get ~2-3 questions every couple of days, and for the most part, cover new issues that do need a discussion or a real answer (i.e. they can't be closed as a duplicate). Even the ones that cover the same ground as earlier questions, we (usually) can answer the question in a way that makes it specific to the person asking it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we've been using [meta-tag:faq] to tag questions to the few questions frequently arise organically: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* how is Programmers.SE different from Stack Overflow, &#xD;&#xA;* changes to the main FAQ sparked by frequent on-topic discussions, &#xD;&#xA;* the consequences of the Great Redisciplining,&#xD;&#xA;* and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main intent of these questions is to explain the background behind the policies Programmers.SE has, not to explain in detail the different mechanics behind those policies (like Meta Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for the stuff everyone needs to know—the stuff we want to refer to when closing questions or discussing policy—we use [our single-page FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq). If anything should get some love, it's that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, if you see something that really explains the problems with an issue that frequently comes up, by all means flag it. Beyond that, the normal Stack Exchange guidelines apply:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you have a better answer to a question, answer it.&#xD;&#xA;* If you like an answer, up-vote it.&#xD;&#xA;* If you don't like an answer, down-vote it and leave a comment explaining why." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26852" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3835" RevisionGUID="ace4ea86-ee28-4c52-90b2-e75db10e6309" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; ...this question &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158341/average-career-programmer-with-no-passion-try-harder-or-try-related-it-field&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;hellip; and I think such a canonical-form question should exist here on programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To reopen / rewrite above question and to have its answers converge into useful _canon_ instead of diverging into garbage bits of unrelated advice, consider passing it through an [Atwood's transform](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/124930/165773 &quot;what's this?&quot;)&lt;sup&gt; 1&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;_What traits to look for in &quot;outside&quot; career fields in order to leverage programming experience_ - stuff like that.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need something, some wording to effectively _repel_&lt;sup&gt; 2&lt;/sup&gt; answers like &quot;oh our company has a BA/QA/PM position opened, question is 10 years old, are you still interested in a new career?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need wording that would allow connecting different answers into some larger picture that makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Question wording would ideally allow reader to connect advice like &quot;go QA&quot;, &quot;go BA&quot;, &quot;assess your current skill set&quot;, &quot;decide between fields involving some minor coding, or dealing with programmers, or dealing with software product / process&quot; - to build something bigger on it, instead of leaving it lay as an unsorted heap of minor ideas.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _Atwood's transform_ - here is a recent example for the reference: [a question at Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/posts/2799/revisions &quot;How can I tell if my shyness is an issue at a workplace?&quot;), revisions 3 through 5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; _repel_ garbage answers - one sure can not 100% protect a question from getting garbage answers. But at least try to phrase the question so that you can come to Meta, say _&quot;Here's the question, here's the answer, I don't feel like the answer is OK&quot;_ and have a good chance of garbage being downvoted by active community members who happen to read your post. Fair enough?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Incidentally, I've found an older question at _Workplace_ that sounds pretty close to what I would expect of &quot;canonical&quot; question of this kind:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Possible career transitions for a seasoned software developer?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/199/168)**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have been a software developer for 11 years...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...I am thinking of making a career change - ideally moving somewhere my technical skills would still be beneficial in some shape or form...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are the steps I can take to figure out what I really like and what can make an interesting career going further?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26853" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3912" RevisionGUID="383586a5-61a1-4c94-b6a1-863ad7189e7b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The code doesn't really answer the asker's question or add value, IMO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A similar question has been asked on MSO [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/95473/189446). Generally on SO I see a lot of &quot;code only&quot; answers get down-voted and/or deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original question is more about &quot;why&quot; and &quot;is this correct&quot; rather than a &quot;I need the code to do this&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26854" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1807" RevisionGUID="12805b81-0b02-4455-adeb-3f420bbfe54e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For reference, the automatic rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78048/auto-deleting-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year/92006#92006&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Just to formally document the exact policies we have in place to remove old abandoned / dead questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If the question is more than `30` days old, and ...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - has -1 or lower score&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - has no answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - is not locked&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If the question is more than `365` days old, and ...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - has a score of 0 *or* a score of 1 with a deleted owner&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - has no answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - is not locked&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - has a viewcount &lt;= the age of the question in days times 1.5&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - has 1 or 0 comments&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This check is run every week across all sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26855" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3969" RevisionGUID="53e23434-00d7-4048-a076-cb17d2a649c1" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have been hitting quite a few 404's on P.SE lately. I was wondering how great the idea of perma deleting questions *that have been around a long time and indexed and linked to* (not spam or such) really is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, [the lastest blog post][1] by Yannis Rizos contains a link to a deleted question ([391 upvotes FCS!][2]) in the 2nd paragraph, resulting in a 404 error for basically all(?) the audience of the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not saying that these questions are a good fit to the site, but removing them completely, leaving dangling links all over the internet (am I exaggerating? :-) certainly isn't my idea of Making The Internet a Better Place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that don't mind closing; I wouldn't even mind a `trash.stackexchange.com`; but in my very humble opinion, deleting valuable content from SE sites (not just P.SE) that has been lying there for weeks and months is just dead stupid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Follow up question on Meta Stack Overflow: [Are you guys turning SE into a 404 black hole?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/148620/are-you-guys-turning-se-into-a-404-black-hole)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/31104/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26856" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1917" RevisionGUID="2073a04a-e612-4647-93a3-6e7cd81604f5" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think what you really mean when you say that those questions are valuable is that the **answers** are valuable, or have the potential to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bad questions can receive great answers; hell, there's even a [badge for it][1].  The yardstick of a great question is the *ratio* of great answers.  Note that I say yardstick and not criteria; it's an heuristic, something that *often* provides great insight but isn't infallible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A truly amazing question helps the craft *not only* by mentioning a popular or thought-provoking topic that other developers can relate to, but also by challenging and persuading readers to *make their answers count*, to *think* before posting and really make sure that the message matters and will have a real impact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some people are gifted teachers, or just very meticulous in their reading and writing; they have an uncanny ability to distill the pure essence out of impure questions and reflect it back in a genuinely enlightening and often entertaining answer.  However, as Shog points out in a comment, that talent is at least partially wasted because the original question remains in its raw, unedited, unclear, unfocused form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've noticed that many people have a lot of sincere difficulty maintaining separate mental scorecards for questions vs. answers.  This even permeated the Stack Exchange dev team and we ended up with [answers protecting questions from community deletion][2].  What's interesting is that most people have no trouble identifying the reverse situation - it's somewhat common to see highly-upvoted questions with only low-voted answers - but most of the time, question scores seem to get lifted up by answer scores, and even if they don't, the questions still get labeled as &quot;valuable&quot; in meta discussions such as this one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has the potential to over-credit the question authors.  Certainly, if a question has but one answer and that answer blows your mind, then probably the question itself was at least a little bit special.  But if a question has 1 or 2 great answers amidst a sea of 50-100 crappy ones, then that doesn't really tell you anything at all about the quality of the question, other than the fact that it happened to be posted in the right place at the right time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The former indicates a question that is difficult to answer, or has an authoritative answer (or maybe a couple of them).  The latter indicates a question that *anybody* can answer which happened to catch the fleeting attention of a few of the more prolific contributors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These answers are worth keeping, in both cases - but not at the expense of polluting the site tenfold with frivolity.  The lower-quality questions have to be edited and, in many cases, have their answers cleaned up by moderators, before they become valuable *questions* worthy of continued attention.  Otherwise, those great answers might as well just be archived as blog posts somewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that the rules need to be simplified, and I think that they already are quite flexible.  All of the history and context and discussion around question-asking here - the Six Guidelines, Real Questions Have Answers, the concentric circles now in the FAQ - they all boil down to the same essential concept, which is: **Is this *important* to our community?** That means more than just tickling our collective fancy - it implies that there is some *gravity* to the situation, a real problem that needs solving.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, to me, the First Principle of asking questions, here or anywhere else.  All of the current guidelines around it are just the mathematical formulas, intended to save the less-thoughtful or time-starved students from having to work it all out themselves.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the core, it really is simple; simple things get complicated because everybody tries to interpret them in the way that best serves their own interests. That's why our real-life codes of laws and regulations are so mind-numbingly detailed and specific; we're trying to minimize, if not eliminate, any room for (mis)interpretation.  At least the FAQ isn't a bunch of dense legalese; it's just [six guidelines][3] and [five counterexamples][4].  If that's really too hard to understand, then all hope is lost.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/50/reversal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/50523/should-delete-votes-be-limited-like-close-votes/51071#51071&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26857" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4047" RevisionGUID="2175712e-e7ad-476a-89fe-09960d702bea" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I went looking for this after [you asked on Meta Stack Overflow][1], and from looking at the [Database schema documentation for the public data dump and Data Explorer][2] there doesn't seem to be an easy way to query for badges per class. The badges table schema is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Badges&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Id&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UserId, e.g.: &quot;420&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Name, e.g.: &quot;Teacher&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Date, e.g.: &quot;2008-09-15T08:55:03.923&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you are only interested in gold badges, and [there aren't that many of them][3], the simple solution would be to hardcode their IDs in your query.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/148117/badge-that-is-achieved-by-most-number-of-people&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/2677/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=general&amp;filter=gold" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26858" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2000" RevisionGUID="054dd70c-865a-4e97-8eac-1e3df2c126d0" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question got me thinking about a deeper issue on Stack Exchange - but first, let me answer the specific questions here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should the &quot;General Reference&quot; close reason as outlined [in this blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/are-some-questions-too-simple/) and [this Meta Stack Overflow answer](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86043/introduce-a-general-reference-close-reason/88521#88521) be enabled here on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**No**, because those should already be covered by the [Official FAQ][1] and the site's &quot;elevator pitch&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for **expert programmers** who are interested in conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Emphasis mine.  General reference questions are, by definition, not *expert* questions.  SciFi.SE and English.SE don't have that criteria, so it's more of an issue for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does the existing &quot;Not constructive&quot; close reason cover this case?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**No**, I don't think so - it doesn't fit any of the qualifying definitions of Not Constructive. It's sort of practical, it's answerable, it might educate some beginners in the community. It's not really open-ended, and definitely doesn't have an infinite list of answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**So what should we do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless we get a &quot;too easy&quot; close reason, I think we should close these as **off topic**.  The word &quot;expert&quot; is right there in the site's tagline; **if it's not relevant to an *experienced, practicing* programmer, then it's not in our scope.**  I'm sorry if it sounds callous, but we're here to help each other, not educate every single newbie on how to program.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Check this out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Quality Venn][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pretty sure that the purple area between &quot;Advanced&quot; and &quot;Disciplined&quot; is where we are *supposed* to be.  We focus entirely on the subjective (objective questions go on Stack Overflow), so we have to be on the right side; and since we're nowhere near as disciplined as Skeptics, we have to make up for it by discussing subjects that are more advanced.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we start allowing questions that are subjective *and* beginner-level, then we end up with [bike shed][3] questions, which almost invariably produce crap answers *and* drag down the rest of the site with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From now on, I'm going to start closing these &quot;Learn PHP in 21 days&quot; questions as *off topic*. These guys can go read a tutorial or take a class or something; the whole point of this site is to discuss the topics we *don't* learn in school and often don't learn on the job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/yzan7.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_Law_of_Triviality" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26859" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4108" RevisionGUID="e64c4c43-576b-4ee3-9d3e-41aa02717515" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Believe me, I'd be the first in line to shut down recommendation questions if there was a real problem, or if there was a good reason to, but I'm not seeing either here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How are we doing right now in handling these types of questions? Are the current policies sufficient or are there more concrete policies that would be best implemented?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's hard to tell how we're handling these types of questions without a significant amount of data demonstrating a problem. You've cited two questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168144/books-for-exam-487-developing-windows-azure-and-web-services&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168145/books-for-exam-486-asp-net-4-5-mvc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They were both asked by the same person in rapid succession relatively about the same topic and both are absolutely terrible. If these two questions are demonstrative of an alleged problem with book recommendation questions, then I don't see it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest issue with their closing is that they were closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; instead of what they are: not real questions. The &quot;not constructive&quot; close reason seems to be used more and more as the &quot;I don't care why it's closed, just close it&quot; reason, which dilutes its meaning and causes ambiguity about why questions don't belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with these questions aren't that they are asking for a book, it's that they don't describe anything about the problem the user is having, or rather *why* the user is asking the question, to afford a useful response. They're like asking, &quot;tell me what book will teach me everything and anything about Java.&quot; Where to begin? Questions *must* narrow the scope down to a *specific* problem, otherwise, they don't belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because the two cited questions are incomplete in this respect, they're not real questions. They'd be &quot;not constructive&quot; if they had asked something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What's your favorite way to study for Exam 486?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Exam 487 really sucks, how am I supposed to study for this stupid exam?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;How does Exam 486 make you feel (as a programmer)?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What are some tips and tricks for overcoming my inability to take Exam 487 seriously?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;My co-worker/buddy/priest/cat says *X* book is the best for Exam 486. Help me prove him/her/it wrong.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Without expertise in the subject matter, how do people (especially moderators who might have to act on a flag) know if there is a singular &quot;canonical&quot; book on the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not the guideline for books, and it's not up to anyone (much less moderators) to determine ahead of time (or during the act of moderation) whether there is a single canonical book for a subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, mimicking the guidelines in &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][1]&quot;, and as I described in &quot;[What's up with all the book recommendation flags?][2]&quot;, the important things are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **the topic asked about is *capable* of providing a canonical book on the subject.** The application of this criteria requires common sense. Java doesn't count. PHP doesn't count. NLP for Big Data probably does. F# or any other boutique language probably does. If someone's really in doubt whether something counts, do an [Amazon.com search][3] for the subject. If there's over 10,000 hits, it doesn't count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **the questions sufficiently describes a situation or problem space that invites converging on a small number of correct answers.** &quot;What are some good books on F#?&quot; sucks. &quot;Coming from a purely C# background, I'm trying to add F# to my repertoire. What is the definitive [read: canonical] book for getting up to speed with idiomatic F#?&quot; doesn't, or at least sucks a lot less. If in doubt, wait. If the question attracts dozens of answers, that's a problem. If it settles on 3–5, awesome. If there's a dozen but only a couple of really stand-out answers, cull the herd and protect the question if necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither of these guidelines require domain-specific knowledge of the question; just an understanding of how to ask a good question, which is something anyone moderating (diamond or otherwise) should have a good handle on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What happens to topic areas covered by a small number of resources now (such as the latest language or library) down the road, when it is more popular and prevalent? Might resource requests, perhaps, be too localized since the available (and perhaps even what is considered canonical) change over the course of time?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Irrelevant: [Stack Exchange is designed to handle changing answers][4], even rapidly changing answers, through frictionless editing. Answers for pretty much any subject or problem change over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Problems arise trying to keep questions up to date when there are dozens of posts to maintain, which is why [there are guidelines and technical features][5] that kick in once a question starts getting over 15-30 answers. Per the guidelines for book recommendation questions, this is a non-issue for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So unless there's some other reason, not mentioned, to shut them down now, I don't see anything that's cause for a policy change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2666/8&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://amazon.com&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/87415/149432&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2321/8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26860" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2044" RevisionGUID="9686d050-37dd-423b-a354-1e049122ed0b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Based on [network-wide guidance](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/77373/149432) and [a discussion here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1457/8), we've been actively deleting comment chains that have become obsolete, chatty, or pointless. This has been met with some resistance, in part because of the differing expectations of what comments are for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have the following entry in our FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are useful for getting clarifications, but extended discussions detract from the question and its answers. If you'd like to discuss anything related to programming with other expert programmers, please use our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But perhaps we can make it better. In [a discussion on this answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97207/what-does-c-do-better-than-d/97211#97211), it was suggested we highlight the alternatives for disagreeing with an answer where the answerer chooses not to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to address this? Are there other things we should address in our FAQ's guidance about comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26861" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5127" RevisionGUID="613f7f0b-9fb3-472f-8c62-0ea995ca1895" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You have asked 8 questions in total, 4 of them deleted. Here's a breakdown:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [How to use a switch statement with enum efficiently?][1] (+5, open)&#xD;&#xA;- [How faster an IIf is as compared to if and in when to use it?][2] (+1, open)&#xD;&#xA;- [What are the pros and cons of multiple inheritance?][3] (+1, closed),&#xD;&#xA;- [How to climb up the hierarchy from a programmer (codesmith) to a full-fledged Software Engineer?][4] (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;- A good book on managing software projects in MS Project and Visio (-2, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- Why Java does not support mutidimentional arrays, unlike C or Fortran? (-7, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- How to teach computer programming to a 9 year old kid? (-3, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- Which programming language to go for in order to learn Object Oriented Programming? (-3, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Out of a total of 8 questions, only 2 are open. That's... not good. Please follow the instructions given in the [link on the question ban message][5] and keep in mind that the ban is automatic, there is nothing anyone can do to reverse it, it's completely up to you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/126886/how-to-use-a-switch-statement-with-enum-efficiently&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122213/how-faster-an-iif-is-as-compared-to-if-and-in-when-to-use-it&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/122480/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-multiple-inheritance&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/127545/how-to-climb-up-the-hierarchy-from-a-programmer-codesmith-to-a-full-fledged-so&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26862" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2046" RevisionGUID="92f9c0ea-36ff-44ae-9c8f-3825640d76ad" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think addressing the recourse people have when an answer doesn't get improved the way they like is a good idea. To that end, perhaps we can revise it to say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Can I use comments to discuss the topic of a post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are useful for getting clarifications, but extended discussions detract from the question and its answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you'd like to discuss anything related to programming with other expert programmers, please use our &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21&quot;&gt;chat room&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * This site is &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#editing&quot;&gt;collaborative&lt;/a&gt;: if a question or answer can be improved without changing the author's intent, please edit it or suggest an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you like a post, show your appreciation by voting it up.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you disagree with an answer or a question remains unclear, feel free to down-vote it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If you have a better answer to a question, please leave your own answer instead of writing a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yoda over on Gardening.SE [provided a great guide](https://gardening.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/201/when-should-i-post-an-answer-and-when-should-i-post-a-comment/202#202) on when to use comments, and created this awesome chart:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![How to use comments: a flow chart][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The issue of [how to improve the purpose of comments in the FAQ](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/104981/is-the-official-comment-policy-obsolete-and-should-we-change-it) is being discussed on Meta Stack Overflow, as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/JS6Z8.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26863" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5138" RevisionGUID="7fe89b8a-4e93-4d4b-a4e0-c9410aa104f4" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I tried to find a reference or advice on Meta Stack Overflow, but couldn't. If one turns up, let me know and I'll edit it in. Also, if any other Meta sites are having this discussion, edit those in so we can cross link to how other communities are dealing with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a Meta Stack Overflow question about [how to write a good answer][1]. The concepts of right and wrong have no bearing on what makes a good answer. This means, to me, that answers have a measure of &quot;goodness&quot; as well as measure of &quot;rightness&quot;, which are two distinct things. When you are using the low quality review tool, you should be judging an answer based on it's goodness, not on it's rightness.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you have enough expertise in the subject matter to judge rightness, you should use that. Open the question and down vote wrong answers. Leave comments or ask clarifying questions. If the question is bad, consider voting on the question or even flagging it if it needs more immediate attention or might be too old to have the eyes of the community on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, keep in mind that wrong answers are not suitable for moderator attention. It's a reason to decline flags on answers, in fact. If moderators shouldn't intervene with wrong answers that have been flagged, I would suspect they aren't good candidates for deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7656/how-do-i-write-a-good-answer-to-a-question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26864" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2080" RevisionGUID="85fe5aa7-40a0-48e5-a7d6-a384c375ede6" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Any edit to a post bumps it. It doesn't matter whether this is from the normal &quot;edit&quot; link or the quick tag edit option available to 10K+ users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only exception to this are the [CHAOS team](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/100137/what-is-the-meaning-of-chaos-is-it-related-to-the-psi-character) (those with a Ψ after their name) who have been given special &quot;powers&quot; to edit a title (and only a title) without bumping the post." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26865" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5143" RevisionGUID="6c22c55a-d32f-4467-b7a7-2488e0fd0791" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Then I ask my first question, some days later this was closed as a duplicate. Also I make an acceptable answer. After that I did nothing but look at some Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you linked to might be the first one you asked, but it's not the only one. The question ban is automatic, there is nothing anyone can do to help you reverse it, it's completely up to you. Read the instructions in the [link][2] carefully (twice) and follow them to the letter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should also read and follow the advice given on:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Matt Gemmell's excellent article [What have you tried?][3], and&#xD;&#xA;- Jon Skeet's [Writing the perfect question][4] blog post, the canonical guide on asking questions on Stack Overflow (the principles apply on Programmers as well).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While your willingness to learn is admirable, you'll have to keep in mind that we are all freely volunteering our time here and expecting you to do some minimal research and to show us that you at least tried to solve your problem prior to asking is not unreasonable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/p41EZ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers/86998#86998&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26866" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="243" RevisionGUID="89d69e0d-03ec-48d7-94d0-830fa6a089f0" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Code Golf &amp; Programming Puzzles Questions&#xD;&#xA;Area 51 Proposal ([Link][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Description:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Proposed Q&amp;A site for code golfers and for those who interested in code golfing (from beginners to experts), and programming puzzles.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Seven Segments](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1407422/code-golf-seven-segments)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Code 39 Bar Code](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2800073/code-golf-code-39-bar-code)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Morse code](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1352587/code-golf-morse-code)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf New Year Edition - Integer to Roman Numeral](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/394574/code-golf-new-year-edition-integer-to-roman-numeral)&#xD;&#xA;* [Code Golf: Factorials](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/237496/code-golf-factorials)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related Discussion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Where do Code Golf/Code Challenge questions belong?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/38/where-do-code-golf-code-challenge-questions-belong)&#xD;&#xA;* [We have puzzle, code-golf, and now code-chess tags. Can we migrate them all somewhere else?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64511/we-have-puzzle-code-golf-and-now-code-chess-tags-can-we-migrate-them-all-somew)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4570/code-golf-programming-puzzles" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26867" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5150" RevisionGUID="66149230-63b0-43cd-945a-72220e1baeb3" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="To elaborate on what ChrisF said, the post block is an automatic activity based on your history. This feature exists on all sites in the Stack Exchange network and is [well-discussed on Meta Stack Overflow][1]. That post is a far better description than I can put into a post here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The system can't distinguish between an expert and a beginner. However, regardless of your skill and knowledge level, everyone is held to the same standard when it comes to the quality of their questions and answers. The relevant things to read are our [FAQ][2], [guide on how to ask good questions][3], and the blog posts on [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][4] and [Real Questions Have Answers][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would recommend first reading those resources. Then, go through your closed or down voted questions. Not every question is salvageable easily - questions with answers are harder to save than questions that aren't answered yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you need help, you can always ask very specific questions about what you can do to improve your questions. But keep in mind that not every question can be saved. Also look for any questions that you can answer - even good answers that provide new information to old questions are valuable and might help return your account to good standing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26868" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2240" RevisionGUID="a75edcda-4cd5-4cdd-b26d-d814c81c8a8b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt;*I posted a comment giving a link, but I'll copy the answer from there anyway  &#xD;&#xA;Thank you to [Alpine][1] from StackOverflow Meta for the answer.*&#xD;&#xA;(see https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/82988/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is related to coding, it should be on [Stack Overflow][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's related to higher level programming concepts or is subjective (but still related to programming), it should be on [Programmers][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;From [Introducing Programmers.StackExchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In a nutshell, **Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor** working through code issues. **Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard** working through higher level conceptual programming issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have **actual source code in the questions or answers**. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [Stack Overflow FAQ][4]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; enthusiast programmers, people who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; write code because they love it. We&#xD;&#xA;&gt; feel the best Stack Overflow questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have a bit of source code in them, but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; if your question generally covers … &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a specific programming problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - a software algorithm&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software tools commonly used by programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - matters that are unique to the programming profession&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [Programmers FAQ][5]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; expert programmers who are interested&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in subjective questions on software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This can include topics such as: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Software law &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Programming puzzles &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective does not mean “anything&#xD;&#xA;&gt; goes”. Please keep it professional at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; all times. If this is a question you'd&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be uncomfortable discussing with your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; colleagues in a work environment, it's&#xD;&#xA;&gt; probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**However, pay attention to the next bit of the FAQ, which explicitly lists the types of question that are off-topic. Programmers SE is not a free-for-all.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/157949/alpine&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26869" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="264" RevisionGUID="1662cd03-162f-4173-9e0c-addb5a4f34c3" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Hmmm... I kinda liked that question. Seemed to fit the &quot;best/worst UI&quot; category. Didn't really understand the edit though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is actually *better suited* for another site, then it should probably be closed here. But there's [an argument to be made][1] in favor of asking *similar* questions to different audiences. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4708/what-to-do-with-cross-site-duplicates" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26870" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="307" RevisionGUID="f67363b8-b49f-4b7c-8995-790b85ac7772" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The banner message for new/not-logged-in users reads&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to Q&amp;A site for expert programmers interested...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There should be an article in there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to a Q&amp;A site for...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or, if we want to be fancier:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to the super-mega-ultimate best-on-the-Interblags programmer Q&amp;A site!!!!eleven!!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reference image (ignore the freehand text, I'm reusing an earlier screenshot (hey, I'm being &quot;green&quot;)) available [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65401/limit-the-size-of-banner-messages)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26871" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5178" RevisionGUID="ac8f5173-d327-4651-94fc-6baf95773a90" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Locating an article is _not_ a software development problem, regardless of what the article is about. Questions that are nothing more than a request to an external resource are off topic, not only on Programmers but on Stack Exchange in general, this isn't a link sharing service.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finding an article or a blog post is _not_ a conceptual software development question. We make a small exception for [canonical books][2], but that's the only exception, not the rule. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Let’s Play The Guessing Game][4]&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient&#xD;&#xA;- [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [Real Questions Have Answers][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why is asking for references/sources to study specific topics considered not constructive?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/153220/why-is-asking-for-references-sources-to-study-specific-topics-considered-not-con" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26872" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2277" RevisionGUID="5fc59eb7-80bd-4c60-bd46-b61cbeef13dc" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The issue is that there is no answer: we don't have time machines and we don't have crystal balls. Any &quot;answer&quot; provided is a guess: an educated guess perhaps, but still a guess. There's no criteria by which to gauge the answers in a meaningful manner: who had the best theory? Who wrote the most? Who cares?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not the place to opine about a topic. If you're looking for that type of place, where you can poll fellow programmers to see what they think about some hot or future topic, you will be consistently disappointed. I would suggest looking into Hacker News or /r/Programming or any number of programming forums out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if you have a question that you're actually facing, then that's fine: ask about that. The question you linked is *not* that. It states X is what Y other profession does and asks what would happen if X happened in software engineering. What's the practical problem being faced? What real-world experience related to software development can be provided to answer such a hypothetical?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And consider it from a practical perspective: if you have an actual problem you're facing right now that you need someone to help you with, do you really want to see your question pushed down the front page by people dreaming up hypothetical scenarios to poll the audience about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In response to your new questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How do we define what is practical, and who has to consider it practical for it to be practical? For something to be practical, does it have to be practical to someone in an office doing work that eventually leads to or otherwise supports delivered software? Or can it be practical and useful to a researcher or academic who is looking to make the professional lives of those people delivering software easier or better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think [it's pretty straightforward](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask): is the question asking about a problem the asker *is actually facing right now*? If so, it's a practical question that deserves further consideration. If not, it either needs to be revised to ask about a problem the asker is actually facing or it'll be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If on-topic (as per the list of topics in the FAQ) questions that are answerable with either facts, reputable sources, or personal experiences, yet are not about a specific problem that someone is having right now aren't allowed here, where should they go? There are many good questions in this realm that are suitable for a Stack Exchange community (suitable meaning they aren't discussions or debates). Should another Stack Exchange be made, further dividing the software development community? Or can we improve guidance as to making it easier to define what is or isn't a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When we talk about constructiveness, it's not a Programmers.SE-only policy: it's network-wide. Programmers [was originally created](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) to be the less-strict version of Stack Overflow and it sucked *hard*. That's when it was figured out there's a standard level of questions, objective or not, *every* Stack Exchange site needs to have in order to thrive. There really is no room for a less-strict version of another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an alternative to Stack Exchange, I would suggest [Quora](http://quora.com), [Reddit's Programming subreditt](http://reddit.com/r/programming), or [Hacker News](http://news.ycombinator.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the minimum level of certainty and/or reliability for a question to be considered answerable? How do we measure this? How is a diamond moderator or 5 users who aren't knowledgable in a given topic able to assertain the answerability of a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not really about whether someone *knows* the answer or knows whether there *is* an answer, and the &quot;only ask about problems you actually face&quot; guidance covers this pretty well: you don't need to know if your question is answerable, but you need to ask about something you're actually facing right now. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In cases where the FAQ is unclear and a person asks a borderline question, it's entirely up to the answers to demonstrate the question's value and community moderation to revise the question into a workable form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to reiterate, *in this specific case*, it's not borderline: it's spelled out pretty clearly in [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask). The question also received 6 downvotes and 2 flags for closure, which to me indicates the community agrees prima facie this question is not a good fit for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But when a question is closed, [there's still opportunity](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed) to get the question into shape. And that includes this question: if it actually asked about a real problem instead of a hypothetical scenario, I'd be the first one to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can we apply the Back-It-Up policy as defined in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective to allow more good (non-debate, non-discussion) questions that have answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do: I touched on it above, but when a question is borderline, whether it's receiving absolutely stellar answers that are backed up by facts and experiences is [what determines if it's able to be saved](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/855/what-are-the-rules-around-moderators-closing-questions-outright/862#862). But again, in this specific case, this question is not borderline: it's hypothetical speculation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26873" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="315" RevisionGUID="98c2bd17-57b2-4458-b409-47831e9c2b8b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Is everyone OK with the tag being removed?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting TheLQ's comment on an answer at [Adding discipline to programmers.SE][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... If you look at it, all subjective questions are polls, ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As most questions could be tagged with [poll] and nobody speaks up it really seems like a redundant tag. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com/65440#65440&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a strong believe people would agree:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The poll tag is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * a meta tag as it doesn't tell something about the content,&#xD;&#xA; * redundant as it's an useless tag for the reasons described in this question and its comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**As of now, it's gone...**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those that disagree should start a serious meta question with a reason for such tags to exist.  &#xD;&#xA;After waiting some days, a lot of people have agreed and nobody has disagreed..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26874" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2321" RevisionGUID="eb30b376-dc5d-4a52-a67c-eab0ac2c23a7" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As a reminder, we [already suppress the answer box and nag people when there are more than {threshold} answers][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Lknb7.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my very strong belief that any &quot;question&quot; which gets 40+ answers is fundamentally a *discussion* (or worse, a *poll*) and not an answerable question, as noted in the Not Constructive close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Chatty, open-ended discussion questions** diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We of course support the idea that &quot;there's more than one way to do it&quot;, because there always is. But there should not be an *infinite* number of ways to do it, either. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like to use the &quot;Peanut Butter Sandwich&quot; rule here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;how do YOU backup??&quot;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;how do YOU store passwords??&quot;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;how do YOU like your peanut butter sandwiches??&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the thing you are talking about in the question can be replaced by a Peanut Butter Sandwich, the question isn't making meaningful distinctions about what it is soliciting, and therefore either needs to be closed, or **whipped into shape via editing to be far more specific**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84870/add-a-message-when-posting-to-old-questions-with-more-than-n-answers/86893#86893&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26875" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5192" RevisionGUID="9dfe1601-9b8e-4ae4-a80f-3cc1cd58c5dd" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So there are two ways to do this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Close as a duplicate here, but instead of being restricted to the current site's questions when choosing a duplicate target, allow Stack Overflow questions to be chosen as well.&#xD;&#xA;* Close as &quot;off-topic, belongs on Stack Overflow&quot; here, but also allow people to optionally specify a dupe target while voting to close. End result is a migration, followed by immediate closure as a duplicate of whatever question was chosen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on [your comments][1], you're looking for the former, but I'll mention both:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Allow cross-site duplicate targets when voting to close as duplicate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There might be something I'm not thinking of, but I don't have any ideological or philosophical objections to this. It seems like something that might cause a lot of strain on the backend, but I'm not a developer so that's their problem to solve or say it can't be done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has come up a few times on Meta Stack Overflow, with no outcome:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The ability to link cross site duplicates][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Close as cross post][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Allow users to migrate a question and close it as a duplicate after migration&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm against this. Each community knows its site best: which questions should be closed, which should be open, etc. They should be the ones to decide if a new question is a duplicate of an existing question, not people on a different site who have no inherent interest in the other site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or to put it another way, let's say I have 10k rep  here on Programmers, allowing me to vote to close, but only 1k rep on Stack Overflow. Allowing dupe closing during migration would allow me to close questions on Stack Overflow even though I'm 1,000 rep short of the privilege.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think a question is a duplicate of something asked on Stack Overflow, there are three options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you can vote to close on Stack Overflow, vote to migrate, and keep an eye on it so you can vote to close when it gets there&#xD;&#xA;* If you can't vote to close on Stack Overflow, vote to migrate and let SO users deal with it when it gets there&#xD;&#xA;* Leave a comment pointing to the duplicate question on Stack Overflow and vote to close as off-topic in place here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm partial to the last option: knowingly closing a question twice—once on each site—is just pointless bureaucracy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5191/belongs-on-stack-overflow-and-is-a-duplicate-on-stack-overflow/5192#comment12904_5192&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16703/the-ability-to-link-cross-site-duplicates&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/94322/close-as-cross-post" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26876" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="347" RevisionGUID="fa8f320a-03b5-4009-8fac-a2d2cd6d7ed5" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You're kinda straddling the line between SO-appropriate and P.SE appropriate...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##How to ask for a code review&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[There's nothing wrong with asking SO for feedback on some code][1], *provided you've put some effort into it*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###*Bad*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Is there anything wrong with this code?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ???&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &lt;massive code dump&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###*Good*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Are there problems with passing a callback to a constructor to allow for lazy initialization?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Description of technique used in code&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     Brief code snippet(s) illustrating only relevant techniques&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've managed to get about half-way on this: you're asking for feedback on the practicality of a specific technique, but rather than describing the technique and your motivations for using it, you've just dumped the code with a few hints as to what it does. Your question starts out sounding like it might be P.SE-appropriate (&quot;what would you think upon seeing this signature?&quot;) but then delves into meatier implementation details (more of a SO thing). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, your title is unacceptably vague.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Decide what you want the answers to look like. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're questioning the readability/maintainability of the code (whether the implementation, or the client code) then ask about *that* - P.SE is a reasonable location. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're concerned that the implementation itself fails in some way (error handling, efficiency, unforeseen pitfalls involving the callback referencing disposed data) then be clear about why and how you're using it, and ask on SO. Note that you'll probably get comments on readability/maintainability as well, 'cause SO users are helpful like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1957/should-so-allow-give-me-some-feedback-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26877" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2334" RevisionGUID="06ef4e98-1f09-4d0e-ba8e-6fd63817995e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="To clarify what's going on, from [Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/91097/getting-too-many-edits-further-edits-are-not-allowed-until-tomorrow):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; That code was (correctly) not counting recent (today/yesterday) posts in the &quot;how many have you edited&quot; [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This sanity check avoids a few scenarios:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - front-page spamming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - hijacked account vandalism&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - rage-quit vandalism&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't have any objection to improving posts, and yes: it is meant to have an amnesty on anything recent (so you can improve your recent answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you're just improving posts in the last day, you should be fine. If you're trying to edit a ton of your old posts in rapid succession, that's by design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As the message says, you should be contacting a moderator if you have a need to revise your posts en masse. Is there a reason you're trying to edit more than 5 of your old posts in rapid succession?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just to encapsulate what I said in comments, an error message that only reads &quot;too many recent edits&quot; does seem to be overly brief. The original message read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Too many edits**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   You have already edited 5 of your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; own posts today (not including very&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recent posts). Further edits are not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; allowed until tomorrow.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   Please contact a moderator if you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; require assistance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which clarified what was going on. To that end, I agree that should be changed or addressed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26878" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="370" RevisionGUID="5b6e2c35-5ad5-4fba-b87d-4c5781190071" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="See the close votes and comments on the question [When will IE6 be irrelevant?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/815/when-will-ie6-be-irrelevant):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Off topic (2)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Not constructive (1)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Not a real question (1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can you edit this question to meet &quot;Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Which guidelines of the big 6 do you think this question apply? Gradually we will close questions that doesn't fit on the 6 Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions. If you think your question doesn't meet enough points it would be a good thing the author of the question initiate the close process. Otherwise community or moderators can take the initiative if they they consider this question inappropriate to this site. Thank you. See more: blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective Maybe an edit turns it more suitable to guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are people now checking the 6-Q guidelines **before checking whether the question is off-topic**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those people can't change their vote to off-topic, so this question stays open while it shouldn't...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can we prevent this behavior? Should we make the vote reasons more clear?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS: It would be so useful to be able to [contact](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/431/any-way-to-send-a-personal-message-to-another-user) [another](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57537/how-do-i-contact-other-users) [user](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/389/bigown) somehow, then this didn't have to be so public." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26879" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2356" RevisionGUID="cf4f1839-f905-4045-bef9-9c5c20b68d77" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Anonymous voting is a key part of how Stack Exchange sites work. If we assume for a moment that you are not suggesting revealing the names along with the comments, forcing people to explain their downvotes still would not get you any usable information. Once you make those comments anonymous, you also take away any sort of accountability for content, so in most cases you'll end up with throwaway or gibberish comments like mine. (Although is intended specifically to illustrate the point.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been brought up many a time on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com). The [request to force anonymous commenting](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6521/allow-users-to-leave-an-anonymous-comment-when-voting) was declined. [The request to encourage explanations](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votes) was implemented via a pop-up that every user sees when they downvote a question or an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26880" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5215" RevisionGUID="52a75829-b8ee-4a24-b3c3-2f32f99a0c46" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This may or may not have been asked on our meta site before but it was certainly a well discussed issue at Meta StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I know, this discussion here applies equally as well to homework questions about design, algorithms, and software development in general.  I personally agree with the highest voted answer there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we have established that if a student falls in the acceptable guidelines for asking a homework question that it is okay, now we ask ourselves if this policy towards homework questions is ethical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion it is ethical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If people are simply providing the answer with no context then perhaps the student might copy the answer and get a good grade now, but how does this prepare the student for future assignments and exams?  This doesn't help the student in the long term because they haven't learned anything and we will not always be there to hold there hand.  Eventually they must stand on their own two feet or they will be unsuccessful in life and in their career.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If an answer is good and provides context however then we as a community have a real opportunity to tutor the student and teach them the concepts that will help them do well in school, life and their careers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Grades are a temporary thing, knowledge once gained is kept forever." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26881" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2507" RevisionGUID="2b035125-b74d-460a-be92-ee063f0f8211" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You were banned from Stack Overflow for asking too many off-topic questions: because of that, [we won't migrate your questions there anymore](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2475/using-programmers-to-side-step-the-rules-on-stack-overflow). For more information about this ban, please check out the Meta Stack Overflow question, [What can I do when getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account”?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears you're very close to getting unbanned: to ensure that happens, you'll need to do two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Stop asking off-topic questions here and on Stack Overflow.** Please [read the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and heed moderators' advice and warnings: you've asked a number of questions here that do not belong on Programmers and and a number on Stack Overflow that don't belong there, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Start answering questions on Stack Overflow.** You only need a few more up-votes to be able to ask questions: you'll get those by paying it forward and helping others out with their problems. Be sure to answer questions that are on-topic there: answering off-topic questions will wind up penalizing you as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26882" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5226" RevisionGUID="078db6b5-d173-4646-8f39-9da6350471f5" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**[&quot;any suggestions for a good tool/service&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/175268/2 &quot;wording as of revision 2&quot;)** makes question a perfect match for type questions that are strongly discouraged per [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, question looks salvageable using a healthy dose of [Atwood's transform](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/124930/165773 &quot;what's this?&quot;). I would consider editing it into something like _&quot;How do I tell if a product planning tool would suit my needs... etc_ then [flagging to reopen](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1753/31260 &quot;related discussion&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that question has been closed while it had no answers greatly simplifies editing it. Otherwise one would have to take additional care to make sure that changes don't invalidate existing answers - which in some cases can [effectively lock the question from any substantial editing at all](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;an example discussed here: 'Change the question, and you invalidate all of the answers...'&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26883" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="401" RevisionGUID="3b2723b4-923c-4aee-a5b0-26be0ac4a21b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The first thing you should always do if you are confused about what's happening on a Stack Exchange site is to check the FAQ. From [our FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;.** Please keep it professional at all times. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot;** Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, you should check the tags colored red on the meta-discussion site. If you did, you would've found this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions are being closed in accordance with the guidelines for this site. If you're confused because this is vastly different from the Area 51 proposal which has a lot of fluff questions, this redefinition was discussed on Meta.StackOverflow.com:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Should “Developer Testing” be folded into a more general “Programmers” site?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Adding discipline to programmers.stackexchange.com](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And discussed on this meta-discussion site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* [valid questions being closed.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do I totally not understand the point of Programmers.SE?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/360/do-i-totally-not-understand-the-point-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do we need a definition of subjective?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/324/do-we-need-a-definition-of-subjective)&#xD;&#xA;* [Remove the options to close questions on this site.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/355/remove-the-options-to-close-questions-on-this-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why should we have to battle to keep questions open? [closed]](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/339/why-should-we-have-to-battle-to-keep-questions-open-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [Please let's not lock questions unless as an absolute last resort](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/285/please-lets-not-lock-questions-unless-as-an-absolute-last-resort)&#xD;&#xA;* [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* *and so on...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry you missed all of the discussion we had about the definition of the site, but the decision has already been made to redefine the site as it currently is in the FAQ, and the time for discussion is over. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If Programmers.SE no longer appeals to you or your question does not fit within the guidelines of this site, you might want to try to find a different site, like [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) or [Quora](http://quora.com)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26884" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2541" RevisionGUID="dc53570e-3e0d-4a77-a054-dc331a3be962" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Rotating is a pretty poor idea; this isn't kindergarten: not everyone gets a turn to play with the good toy. A site deserves the best set of moderators, whether that means it's the same set for multiple terms or it means new people come in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, and I can't speak for the other moderators, I'm [all for periodic elections](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/101431/should-stack-overflow-moderators-have-a-standard-of-duty/101459#101459): not only does it serve the chance for users to re-evaluate who's moderating, it also gives moderators who successfully run a mandate to do what they need to do to get the job done." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26885" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="406" RevisionGUID="741aed20-f6e7-40b3-b417-5463c6083f71" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This discussion is going on at stackoverflow meta:&#xD;&#xA;[adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I was to ask a specific topic about one single other SE site here, it would be closed as off-topic (and rightly so). Why is this discussion that is specifically about this site happening on another meta?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you agree with having that discussion there instead of here? Can explain why you think this discussion should (or should not) be happening on this meta instead?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26886" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2558" RevisionGUID="ffdfcda7-da51-4935-882b-cbc828289179" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While this error was indicative of [a problem on Imgur's end a few weeks ago](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/109857/failed-to-upload-image-format-not-supported-error-when-uploading-supported-form), I can't reproduce this now. This is a JPEG upload:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![This is a JPEG][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things to check:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **You might be uploading a file that has the JPEG file extension but not the `image/jpeg` mimetype.** Have you tried checking to make sure the file is actually a JPEG and not something else? If you're on a *nix-based system, you can check by using [`file`](http://linux.die.net/man/1/file).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **You're using the &quot;From the web&quot; option with a URL from a site that doesn't allow Imgur to rip its images.** Try downloading the image yourself and uploading it manually.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **You're experiencing a localized disruption of Imgur.** Try uploading the image again to see if it works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While the &quot;From the web&quot; option didn't work, downloading it first and manually uploading it worked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Image problem][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like it's a problem with the image host.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/rGb2z.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/rKzAw.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26887" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5248" RevisionGUID="9a2a4550-98e3-4f3b-a538-3f33cd0bd622" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**No.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keeping things more central is actually antithetical to Stack Exchange's philosophy of creating laser sharp focused Q&amp;A sites. Additionally if &quot;discussion&quot; and &quot;open topic for general questions&quot; is your description of what Programmers is about, you should really read our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) a bit more carefully. While we welcome _some_ subjective questions, Programmers is definitely _not_ a free for all discussion forum.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, more responsiveness is _not_ necessarily a good thing. We strive to be a canonical resource, answers should be as detailed and complete as possible, being quick is an added bonus but not a goal in itself. From the perspective of the asker, quick answers might be more useful, but Programmers and every other Stack Exchange site (including Stack Overflow) aren't only about the asker. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thirdly, folding Programmers into Stack Overflow right now would be a disaster for everyone involved. Stack Overflow, similarly to Programmers, has created and maintains a community culture that is different, and in many respects conflicting to ours. While the target audience of both sites might more or less be the same, the focus and scope is distinctly different, thus is community culture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, Stack Overflow is gigantic, and that's one of the many reasons, perhaps the main one, I never really participated in the site. To put it very simply, if it takes me more than 5 minutes to find interesting content on a site, that site is not for me. Reducing the conceptual aspects of the [SDLC][1] to a set of Stack Overflow tags would be extremely counter-productive, it would take a certain level of masochism to put yourself in the position of searching for interesting methodology questions (for example) in the vast ocean of crap Stack Overflow is slowly becoming. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you posted this as a feature request and there are tons of earlier discussions both on our Meta and Meta Stack Overflow that explain how the sites are different and what's the purpose of Programmers, I'm afraid I'll have to decline it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Should Programmers.SE exist?][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [Choosing between Stack Overflow and Programmers Stack Exchange][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [Is Stack Exchange becoming too fragmented for programmers?][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why was the Programmers site on Stack Exchange created?][7]&#xD;&#xA;- [When do these questions belong on programmers instead of stackoverflow?][8]&#xD;&#xA;- [Once all the disciplining is done and P.SE is purely professional, will it be merged with stackoverflow?][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/153082/should-programmers-se-exist&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/82988/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/105428/is-stack-exchange-becoming-too-fragmented-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1704/once-all-the-disciplining-is-done-and-p-se-is-purely-professional-will-it-be-me" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26888" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="456" RevisionGUID="1522716b-86db-4dc5-8184-b3b314398ab6" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The current philosophy from the Team is that they [won't provide migration until the Beta is over][1], but it seems like that part of the site should be vetted in Beta also.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68000/allow-beta-sites-to-migrate-questions-to-relevant-sites/68003#68003" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26889" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2583" RevisionGUID="66b590c9-719f-4587-b65f-84554264fe14" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm gonna say pretty much the same thing here as [I said on MSO](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/111073/811), but directed at you as the editor instead of someone else as the person approving edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's nothing *inherently wrong* with editing to add links to book posts. Indeed, it can be quite helpful... But before you do, **make sure you're not wasting your time and the time of everyone reviewing the edit.** There are *loads* of lousy questions asking for book recommendations that should probably just be closed and deleted, and many times more lousy *answers* (even on *good* questions) that make no effort to explain why the book being recommended is a good choice. Editing these is maybe *slightly* more useful than copy-editing bathroom-wall graffiti...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And [as Mark notes][1], you're not just wasting *your* time: you're wasting the time of the folks rejecting these edits and you're wasting the time of the folks reading the front page who see these popping up instead of something useful. Don't do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you're going through these posts anyway, why not do something productive: when you come across a poor question or a lazy answer, something no amount of hyperlinking will salvage, don't *edit* it... **flag it**. Ask a moderator to delete it. Instead of seeing these things pop up in the queue knowing they're on their way to making the front page of the site look like Amazon Rejects, they can send them on their way to that Great Booklist in the Sky.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2582/63" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26890" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5372" RevisionGUID="76d6a75c-4097-445a-b097-73de12ba2d92" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is a +/- 12 hour leeway on the hats. Stack Exchange time is based on UTC. This is expected behavior. [Here is a comment by Nick Craver about it][1], as part of a larger Meta Stack Overflow discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/159577/off-by-twelve-error-and-i-feel-fine-hat#comment462135_159579" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26891" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="462" RevisionGUID="bd5b42ad-8ecd-4aa7-a521-01152f3b1eea" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Me and 2 others have reported this a while ago on Meta.SO. Its been reproduced on at least SuperUser and Gaming. Currently its `[status-planned]`, but who knows when it will actually get fixed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Root question: [Misleading error message on SE metas](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65390/you-must-have-at-least-5-reputation-on-parent-site-to-answer-a-question-for-c)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other reports&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Per-site metas say I need more than 5 reputation to answer a closed question…](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66528/per-site-metas-say-i-need-more-than-5-reputation-to-answer-a-closed-question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [“You must have at least 5 reputation on [parent site] to answer a question” for closed questions (despite having the rep)](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64767/misleading-error-message-on-se-metas)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26892" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2857" RevisionGUID="1b4ba09a-546d-4d07-8469-ad210e90545e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't think we need to make a special mention of homework in the FAQ: if it's about a specific implementation, it's off-topic here anyway whether ot not it's homework. If it's about a conceptual problem, it's on-topic here even if it's homework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where askers run into trouble is when they expect people to help them from start to finish without providing anything (or very little) up-front. To that end, I think FAQ covers it already, under [What kind of questions should I *not* ask here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding Stack Overflow's sanction of the [tag:homework] tag: it's due to [baggage from the time before the Great Meta-tag Culling](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/60422/is-homework-an-exception) that has never been removed. Much like they [hold onto the &quot;Good C++ books&quot;-esque questions and such like grim death](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/112910/do-not-lock-old-questions). Thankfully, while our baggage is great, we don't have to deal with this specific Stack Overflow curiosity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, I'd rather we treat homework questions on their merits like we do every other question. It's not important how the asker came to ask the question, but whether they define the problem clearly and succinctly and provided enough information and background on what they've done so far in order to help them. In reality, we get a *ton* of questions that are worse quality than many homework questions, and we don't make a special dispensation for them, so why homework specifically?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, although it's not directly related to homework tags, I would support making it more explicit that this site is not for questions about specific coded implementations. Something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [and is not about...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * A specific problem you're having with your source code (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which would cover all the homework—and non-homework—questions we get that really ought to have been asked on Stack Overflow first.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26893" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="484" RevisionGUID="3c0baa82-c455-47d5-a908-70610544e8d8" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="From [Meta.StackOverflow.com](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5999/can-i-delete-my-account):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to delete your account:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. **Edit your profile to say &quot;please delete me&quot;** so we can confirm your ownership of the account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. **Obtain your user page URL or numeric user ID**. This is linked from the top of every page of the site, when you are logged in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3. **Email the support address linked at the bottom of every web page** on the site. Where it says &quot;contact us&quot;, click that. In your email, you **MUST** include your user page URL or user ID so we can find your account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Within the Programmers.SE help center, this information can be found at [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help) &gt; [My Account](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/account) &gt; [How do I delete my account?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/deleting-account)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26894" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5411" RevisionGUID="9a7219ba-fa26-4b2f-a6ec-148614909869" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="One solution would be to start posting friendly comments explaining the closure when you vote to close, or when you see a question closed as &quot;not-constructive&quot; with no comment left for the OP to explain why it was closed and what they can do to get their question reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was actually reading [this answer](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/130231/158605) earlier today and thought it might be related. To quote parts of it (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &quot;Not constructive&quot; is already *extremely broad* in what it covers, to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the point where it's almost too easy to apply it in cases where [the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closer should really just be editing to clarify instead][2]. It's also&#xD;&#xA;&gt; one of the hardest reasons to explain to the author of the post being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed - the description is pretty good, and links to the FAQ which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elaborates... But at first glance, it's *already* too close to &quot;we&#xD;&#xA;&gt; don't like your question, kthanksbye&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Finally, the core problem with your two examples is that there's **no&#xD;&#xA;&gt; clear explanation of the specific problems in the comments**; there is a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; decent meta discussion, but the confusion could have been mitigated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more easily if the close-voters had simply been more clear as to what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they found troublesome about these questions. Because of the breadth&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of scope (see above), Not Constructive tends to require more of this&#xD;&#xA;&gt; than, say, &quot;Not a real question&quot; or &quot;Exact Duplicate&quot;. The alternative&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solution would be to break it up into multiple close reasons... But&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we've seen this cause problems in the past; **encouraging closers to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; explain their rationale tends to produce more thoughtful closing**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'd encourage users who vote to close as not-constructive to leave a friendly and helpful comment explaining what makes the question not-constructive, and explain what needs to be done to get it reopened (if such a comment doesn't already exist of course). You don't need to be the close-voter to leave helpful comments like that either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally when I first started with the SE sites, I got upset with some question closures as well. Having an actual person (instead of an extremely broad auto-generated closure message) point out the flaws of the questions to me, and explain what needed to be done to get the question reopened is probably part of the reason why I'm still participating in SE sites today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129423/on-the-boundaries-of-not-constructive-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26895" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2949" RevisionGUID="2f526b07-4528-4f65-8e2f-fc8a0f0ea609" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This isn't the first time the name of the site has been questioned. See [here][1] and [here][2]. Part of the confusion/problem comes from the origin of the site. Originally, it was supposed to be a home to those fun questions about programmers that were closed on Stack Overflow. However, that wasn't a good fit for the Stack Exchange site. So this site became focused on the more subjective, non-coding questions that are faced by those in the software development profession (see here for a [discussion about software engineering][3]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that the name is a poor reflection of what the site has become. However, the FAQ and Meta discussions, not the name of the site, is the true reflection of topicality and appropriate questions. I would suspect that most professions have found this site to be more helpful than a site about programmers/programmer culture - I know I have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do also agree with Yannis's comment - changing the (domain) name will probably have an impact on SEO and the automated indexing. That's far outside my area of expertise, but the great thing about SE sites is how quickly they are indexed and appear in searches - I've searched for additional information to include in posts that I know exists, and come across the question I was answering as a top hit. Doing anything that compromises this would probably be a bad idea, for the Good of the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think the best thing for us to do would be to improve the FAQ and identify key Meta discussions that went into defining the site. Something to be careful of (and Yannis and I had this discussion) is increasing the size of the FAQ - it's already long compared to other sites. Ultimately, the FAQ needs to clearly define the scope (it does an OK/solid job right now) regardless of what this site is called or looks like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose there are a number of questions to ask, and I think a Stack Exchange employee would be the one to have to answer them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is it technically feasible to change the name and domain name of a Stack Exchange site, while preserving all of the content?&#xD;&#xA;2. What damage, particularly to the indexing and SEO of the site, would be done by changing the domain name? Would any damage be done by simply changing the name and look of the site without changing the domain name?&#xD;&#xA;3. Is it acceptable to have a site name that is different than the site's domain name? There are some examples of minor differences, such as &quot;cstheory.se.com&quot; having the full name of Theoretical Computer Science, but there is no precidence for having a domain name &quot;programmers.se.com&quot; and a site name of Software Development (as an example).&#xD;&#xA;4. Is it possible, feasible, and appropriate to totally rebrand a site post-launch to reflect a change in direction?&#xD;&#xA;5. Would doing any of the above set a precident for other current or future SE sites that is inappropriate?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26896" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5426" RevisionGUID="435a1ee6-9bba-46b6-8c40-c89c803303df" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The down vote came from the close reason. Some close reasons, including off-topic, automatically apply a down vote to the question. The reason for closure is clearly stated in [the FAQ][1]: questions about &quot;implementation issues or programming tools&quot; belong on Stack Overflow. A good rule of thumb is that if you are sitting at your computer, in front of your development tools, the question probably belongs on Stack Overflow. If you're at a whiteboard or in a conference room, Programmers is probably a better bet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was not eligible for migration to Stack Overflow because of its age. In the past few months, a restriction was placed on migration. After 60 days (refer to [this feature request at MSO](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/151890/165773 &quot;'Disable migration for questions older than 60 days'&quot;) for details), questions can no longer be migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there are indeed &quot;tons of similar questions&quot; on Programmers, please point them out. Implementation details are, and always have been (as far as I can remember), off-topic here. If any exist, they should be closed or migrated to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26897" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="635" RevisionGUID="996db998-225a-4cd0-81a9-cd326a944fed" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I probably missed it, but I had assumed that once you could propose synonyms you would be able to vote on them.  After I figured out how to propose one it seemed it was the only one in the system until I noticed there were more on the all tab and I eventually found this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64247/show-synonym-suggestions-awaiting-my-vote&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can somewhat see the point of that decision, but it took a while to figure out what was going on and I still don't think I understand what the &quot;merge&quot; tag is for.  I am certain I can find that answer as well, but I would suggest either adding some of this to the FAQ or providing some more obvious instruction or description.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Certainly not a huge deal, but for someone that has only lurked before on stackexchange sites it is a bit confusing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26898" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5527" RevisionGUID="c5250990-404a-4259-b5bf-30fc166b6144" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm not sure whether this falls under &quot;idle curiosity&quot; or not, but I have a devil of a time keeping the distinction between arguments and parameters straight - knowing the history behind them - the &quot;why&quot; - might well help. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or it might just be one more bit of trivia to be confused and forgotten. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But frankly, this does seem like the sort of [&quot;conceptual&quot; question][1] that the site is intended to serve. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/165952/what-should-be-the-range-of-acceptable-why-questions-on-stack-overflow#comment485094_165952" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26899" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2972" RevisionGUID="d97f9551-650b-4235-8d6e-bc0af557efbc" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been a recurring problem since the site's inception: in reality, Programmers.SE [was originally conceived](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/64046/149432) to *be* the dumping ground for Stack Overflow, and even though that purpose was [dropped a couple of weeks after the site went into private beta](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/350/8), old habits die hard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past year, there have been a few things that have been done to combat the problem:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Migrations used to only require a first-past-the-post method of resolving: for example, if 2 people voted to migrate to Programmers, 1 voted to close as off-topic, 1 voted as not-constructive, and 1 voted as too-localized, it'd be migrated. Now, migrations require 4 people to agree to the migration before it happens. Otherwise, it gets closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We Programmers mods, much to the annoyance of them I'm sure, have worked with/conditioned the Stack Overflow mods to not migrate anything to us without checking with us first. So, any mod-led migration from Stack Overflow was likely approved by us and you can blame us if the question's bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, we can't prevent 4 people agreeing to use the migration path to us as their dumping ground, and our rejection rate from Stack Overflow hovers [around 32%](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There have been a number of requests to remove us as the migration path, or to provide some mechanism to &quot;approve&quot; or &quot;reject&quot; migrations:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73382/149432)&#xD;&#xA;* [A way to cut down on the inappropriate migrations](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84846/a-way-to-cut-down-on-inappropriate-migrations)&#xD;&#xA;* [Allow diamond moderators to reverse question migrations?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/35744/allow-diamond-moderators-to-reverse-question-migrations)&#xD;&#xA;* [Require migrated questions to be accepted by the destination site's moderators](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73391/require-migrated-questions-to-be-accepted-by-the-destination-sites-moderators)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to date, only small changes to the requirements for community migration (like the 4-person agreement, and having tags in common on the destination site) have been made. I have heard rumors that SE is planning to tackle migrations in a big way this year, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in lieu of some fundamental change in how migrations work, I think education and proactive moderation is the best strategy:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you have 10k+ rep on Stack Overflow, check the [Review queue](http://stackoverflow.com/review) for questions getting &quot;off topic; belongs on Programmers&quot; votes. It only takes two people to short circuit a migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Check [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) often. Every once in a while, someone gets the idea that the best way to clean up Stack Overflow is to migrate everything in a tag (usually [career-development]) to Programmers: we've been able to put a stop to a couple of those projects by [voicing our displeasure there](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/119725/149432) and explaining what is and isn't on-topic here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26900" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5644" RevisionGUID="d313d6fb-3d76-4b86-b864-2508c61ee3c0" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is sort of an edge-case. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a migration is [rejected](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/35744/allow-diamond-moderators-to-reverse-question-migrations), its answers are deleted on the target site, it is locked, and the reverse happens on the origin site - so right now on SO, [that question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15123889/why-do-data-types-in-computers-exist-if-its-really-all-just-bits) is just marked closed; it could be re-opened, deleted, edited, etc. - unless you check the history, there's no evidence it was ever migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Normally, folks don't *do stuff* to migrated questions after the migration has been rejected. It gets weird. That question now exists in both places. (I will clean this up)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That being said, we probably could do a better job of communicating the state of the question. My preference would be to explicitly state that the question was migrated in *and then rejected*; but we could also just [tack on the normal Locked notice](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/130116/show-lock-banners-on-rejected-migrations); vote for that if you like the idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26901" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2981" RevisionGUID="f6d75a5d-6937-40cc-9833-7962422d2610" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For the [sake of sanity](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/120339/when-did-stack-overflow-start-advertising-for-wikipedia), we recently [switched from using full-blown Markdown](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119684/what-markdown-formatting-features-are-available-for-bounty-remarks) to using MarkdownMini (that's the version used in comments and in chat) in post notices.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While full Markdown wraps (almost) everything in `&lt;p&gt;` tags, MarkdownMini does not (since there aren't really paragraphs in comments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The style rules in the CSS however expect the text to be in `&lt;p&gt;` tags. In the next built, that expectation will be met again." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26902" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2990" RevisionGUID="7c6ad616-6e67-4005-8b2c-1a46344d361a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The following is a &quot;digest&quot; version of the [2012 Moderator Election Town Hall Chat](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2922/2012-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-tuesday-2200-utc-5pm-est). The format, [as described on Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests), is one *answer* to this question *for every question* asked in the Town Hall, containing all the candidate's answers to that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**To view the digest chronologically, please sort the answers by &quot;oldest&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have questions or comments about this, **please do not answer this question** as the answers are designed to be used for the questions from the Town hall itself. Instead, please ask on [the parent question](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests) or in [the Town Hall Discussion Room](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/352/town-hall-discussion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see any corrections which need to be made to this digest, or if you were a candidate who was unable to attend the town hall and would like your answers included, please @Rebecca or @TimStone [in the chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/251/programmers-town-hall-chat) and let us know!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26903" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5750" RevisionGUID="d6f32b55-0a22-4eb4-8a28-f48b99b7cc50" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="All the changes are now live, you can find more details on [MSO][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first step was the brand new [about page][1] (see our [about page][2]), and the next one was the [changes in how duplicates work][3]. Right now Stack Exchange is looking for feedback on revamping the close reasons, on the main Meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will be updating this answer as more changes and requests for feedback are announced:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [We're rolling out a new “Quick Start” guide to help new users learn the basics][4] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)][5] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Help us make “Off-Topic” close reasons clearer to the OP][6] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Help us make “Not Constructive” and “Not a Real Question” closures more effective][7] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Every “close” has its thorn: help us improve closing verbiage](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/173497/every-close-has-its-thorn-help-us-improve-closing-verbiage) &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/169814/help-us-make-off-topic-close-reasons-clearer-to-the-op&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/163254/were-rolling-out-a-new-quick-start-guide-to-help-new-users-learn-the-basics&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/169814/help-us-make-off-topic-close-reasons-clearer-to-the-op&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171732/help-us-make-not-constructive-and-not-a-real-question-closures-more-effectiv&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/184154/closing-the-loop-the-closing-overhaul-is-live" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26904" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3016" RevisionGUID="4683bf4c-4506-471e-8ecc-145851314bba" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Andrew, sorry I missed that, questions were appearing very fast and yours is the only one that the whole message is not bold. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I wrote in my nomination stub:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If anything, my participation as a user has been highly visible. As a moderator I will take a step back, encourage users to take ownership of the community and intervene only when necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not up to the moderators to ensure that your voice is heard, or even shape the community. That's completely up to you and every other user, and the moderators should intervene only when absolutely necessary. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just yesterday we appointed our [Blog Overlord][1], Jarrod Nettles. Why him? Well, if you take a look at [blog related Meta discussions][2], you'll notice that he has been pushing for the blog since early on. To be fair, Thomas Owens started the discussion back in June, and would be perfectly capable of taking point, as would quite a few other members. But that doesn't really matter, we needed a point man, Jarrod was around yesterday when we had the discussion, case closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The moderators, in this case Mark Trapp, only stepped in after there was clear community consensus for the blog, plus a comprehensive list of topics and a sufficient list of volunteers. He contacted the team, [reported back][3], and in a couple of hours we went from having no idea of whether the blog will kick off to [discussing logistics][4].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's pretty close to how things should work. You may consider this a lame example, because there wasn't really anyone opposing the blog, but I think my point still gets across: Participation is key and it's not the moderators' job to hand hold anyone. As a user I have been extremely active on Meta, and I've explored ways to get [even more people to participate][5]. As a moderator, if elected, I will try to encourage people to do exactly what I've been doing so far, but that can only happen if people actually care to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't really handle dissenting opinions any differently than any other user, the voting system is perfectly suited for that. The only reason I would wear the moderator's hat on Meta would be when discussions are getting out of hand, rude or otherwise offensive. Other than that, I'd be yet another user, and it would be completely up to the community to decide if my opinions have merit or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2980/blog-volunteers-unite&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/blog&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2979/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3214146#3214146&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119817/how-can-we-get-people-to-participate-on-meta" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26905" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5763" RevisionGUID="fd9d787c-b8c5-4b20-886a-f03b27bb2809" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The deleted question is actually closed as a duplicate to [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51591/sites-for-getting-freelancer-jobs), which contains a more complete list of freelance sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best solution in this case would be to probably edit the existing answer to point to this non-deleted post instead of the deleted post, although in other cases where there isn't a good non-deleted duplicate, we'd probably want to edit the answer to remove the dead link (or remove the answer itself it the only content it contained was the dead link).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the rare event that the deleted post contains valuable information that is linked to from many places, it may qualify to be undeleted and a [historical lock][1] placed on it. That type of action usually depends on the content, how many views/votes the post has, and how many links go to it, and the deleted post you mention probably would not qualify because of it's low number of views (770).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also to answer your question about what you can do to see a deleted post when you don't have 10K+ reputation, you can try to find the post on [the Wayback Machine][2] or [StackPrinter][3], or you could try asking in [chat][4] or perhaps even here on [Meta][5] to see if a user with 10K+ rep or a moderator would be nice enough to get you a copy of the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/126587/158605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://archive.org/web/web.php&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.stackprinter.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26906" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3058" RevisionGUID="11f27607-4118-4982-8abb-8af7d74aec84" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I [posted this to Meta Stack Overflow when it was asked there](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/121291/149432), but it's probably good to have it here on this question as well. In general, understanding the meaning of well-known programming terminology used in names would be on-topic for Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is a delegate? What things count as delegates?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, understanding the appropriate use of design patterns (which would likely indirectly lead to answering a question about naming) would be on-topic for Programmers as well: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm working on X problem: would using the observer pattern be the most appropriate way to handle it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And finding the correct terminology to describe a concept is *usually* on-topic on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've used this pattern that looks similar to other code I've seen, but I'm not sure how to refer to it so I don't look dumb in front of my coworkers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But many of these types of &quot;concept naming&quot; questions get too far into bike-shedding and neologisms and thus aren't constructive:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can you think of a name to call this pattern I just made up?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Likewise, naming advice for your classes, methods, et al is not constructive anywhere, including Programmers. It ultimately rests on who's reading the code and what the internal naming conventions for the project are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  What should I call this method that does X?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subsequently, understanding people's code would not be on-topic for Programmers (or Stack Overflow) either as it requires private knowledge about the intent of a person we don't know:   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why did my coworker name this method `punchFluffyBunnies()`?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26907" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5770" RevisionGUID="f63d17e2-8e38-4fae-ab3e-80007a9efb34" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The issue has been discussed on [Meta Stack Overflow][1]. Clearly something is still going on. I'll look into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/170683/stop-using-real-accounts-in-suggested-edit-audits/171562#171562" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26908" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5776" RevisionGUID="fc68c386-dcfc-4eb6-8b1f-28345961b728" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's an automated process that runs daily and checks and reverses serial votes (either up or down). It will most probably reverse the downvotes the next time it runs, 9 downvotes in a very short time is certainly an abnormal pattern. In the highly unlikely case that the votes haven't been reversed in 24h, give me a shout in chat so I can ask a SE employee to take a closer look and manually invalidate the votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming the votes are indeed abusive (confirmed either by the script or by a SE employee), the next step is to contact and/or suspend the culprit, our tolerance for juvenile behaviours like this is extremely low. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More info on the serial voting script can be found in this [M.SO post][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/28756/what-can-i-do-if-im-the-victim-of-serial-downvoting" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26909" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3175" RevisionGUID="d3565c68-62d9-443d-b919-b771d04a6795" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As far as I can tell moderator who declined your flag made two mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First mistake was not catching that [question is off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136082/java-interview-fundamentals) indeed. I believe it's minor because topicality at Programmers is [quite slippery](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3184/31260).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second mistake per my understanding is being too easy at casting decline to [your](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/2471/rob-z) flag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Clarifications for declining flags given in **[September 2011 Newsletter](http://moderator.stackexchange.com/2011/09/september-2011-newsletter/)** of SE Community Moderator Blog look pretty straightforward:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; #Flags Too Often Marked `[declined]`  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Marking a flag `[declined]` was designed to deter serial abusers of the flagging system, but we find that this “slap on the wrist” is being used more often than is beneficial.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Flags should be closed as `[helpful]` under most circumstances. If you feel strongly that a question was flagged in bad faith, it is okay to mark it `[declined]`. But try to err on the side of clearing as `[helpful]` whenever the user is trying to be genuinely helpful, _even if you do not necessarily act on the flag_...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness - given that you both cast a close vote and flagged, I can imagine that moderator considered this as _abuse_ but I've yet to see from credible sources if this indeed qualifies as such.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;update&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Follow-up question at SO Meta:  &#xD;&#xA;  https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/123073/is-it-an-abuse-of-flagging-system-to-both-cast-a-close-vote-and-flag" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26910" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5817" RevisionGUID="e3449885-fb85-40d0-9e03-58ed5b1511b6" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Should be back to working now; see https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/175161/chat-se-is-down on Meta Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26911" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3199" RevisionGUID="aa884a83-9fc9-4773-9029-41f6f31fbf1d" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have high hopes for [this meta proposal suggesting a read-only archive site for good off-topic questions][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd suggest going there and casting your vote to support it :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/122249/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26912" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5840" RevisionGUID="f8f40836-cbc7-46b2-8a4d-54538a1e315d" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My vote has been based on what is stated in the questions and in MSO guidance. Let's see,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Closed question ([revision that I voted on](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/194969/1)):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would like to know from the programmers what programming language is to be preferred?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;Target&quot; question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41798/programming-an-expert-system):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the general process to define the behavior of an expert system, from the initial assessment of the conditions to the actual code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given above, I voted in accordance with **[this guidance at MSO](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/166707/165773)**:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to tell the user ...something like, “*Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.*” Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26913" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="701" RevisionGUID="1c9fada6-2a9d-4116-8019-21482cf038a7" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="see&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67054/can-we-grandfather-in-rep-abilities-as-sites-leave-beta&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;TL;DR version -- reputation levels need to be the same across the network.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26914" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3241" RevisionGUID="8381fd7d-02e9-46c0-8fab-23b35b95712c" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some closed questions [get deleted by the system over time][1]. At 30 days, unlocked and unanswered questions with a negative score get deleted. At 365 days, questions with a score of 0 or less (or 1 with a deleted owner), no answers, not locked, has limited comments, and a small view count will get automatically deleted. The checks are not run daily, but weekly, so there might be a few days between it hitting the point for automatic deletion and it actually getting deleted automatically.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here on Programmers, we also have the [Structured Tag Clean-Up Initiative][2], which deals with poor tags on the site. Part of this process is also identifying questions within the tag that can not be salvaged and deleting them manually. However, this only addresses one tag at a time. Also, there are closed questions in good tags that are both inappropriate for this site and unsalvagable - these won't get caught by STCI.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed is meant as a temporary state. Most questions should not go from closed to deleted quickly. The purpose of closed is to give the community a chance to turn the question into something good, while preventing answers. It's much easier to save a question with no or few answers than one with a lot of answers - edits to a question that invalidate answers don't make sense. The reason is that invalidating answers would lead to answers getting downvoted because the answerer was unaware the question changed and didn't delete or change their answer - these would be unwarranted downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, perhaps someone could build a Data Explorer query to show all closed questions, ordered by date (oldest first) and then votes (most negative first). Perhaps an additional piece would be to restrain it to those questions that are at least 3 or 4 months old. Questions that show up in this query could be targets for immediate editing or deletion. I'm not sure if we want to stack this clean up initiative on top of STCI, but it might give us some data to work with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78048/auto-deleting-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year/92006#92006&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=stci" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26915" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5934" RevisionGUID="d0bc72ff-d53e-4bae-891b-4135a001ea14" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Nothing will happen if you fail an audit (or two). If you repeatedly fail audits, you might find yourself (automatically) suspended from reviewing for a week. If, after your suspension you continue failing audits, you might find yourself suspended for a bit longer. Moderators also have the ability to suspend a user from reviewing, in case the automatic measures miss something. We also have the ability to lift a review suspension, if it's unjustified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, this was a very sneaky audit. The question is borderline, I can see why you voted to close it (although it might be salvageable with an edit or two). The audits system picks questions and answers from the last 30 days, and as any automated system, it can only rely on the available data. At the time you reviewed the question, it had 7 upvotes, 0 downvotes, 0 close votes, 0 flags and 4 upvoted answers. Naturally, the system assumed it was a very good question for the site, and expected you to think the same. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interesting reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What are review tests (audits) and how do they work?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/157121/what-are-review-tests-audits-and-how-do-they-work)&#xD;&#xA;- [Clearly wrong close review audit - what action to take?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/180417/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [How many failed audits to be put on quarantine?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/167962/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [Why am I getting the message “You've failed too many recent review audits”?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/158675/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [The robo-approvers are killing my will to review edits][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [Are 'reasonably bad' reviewers in any way being detected or 'punished'?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/179929/are-reasonably-bad-reviewers-in-any-way-being-detected-or-punished)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/155561/162704" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26916" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="831" RevisionGUID="19bb1899-c1da-4fc2-81bb-67085e1307a7" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="See more about this discussion on Mark Trapp's [comment][1] and [question][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I'm directly asking for permission to drop it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73332/have-code-golf-questions-been-implicitly-disallowed-on-stackoverflow-now-that-mi/73372#73372&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67780/why-is-code-golf-now-the-domain-of-programmers-se" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26917" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3256" RevisionGUID="b304e559-ed66-4857-82c1-e76b04d1a3a1" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am concerned as it seems to affect all sites, not just ours. I don't like the fact that questions that aren't the best advertisement for the site being Tweeted or posted to Google+.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been raised by moderators several times in the past and we have be told that changes to the way questions are Tweeted are in the pipeline. I thought that there was supposed to be a change where questions with pending close votes weren't Tweeted - but obviously if a question is closed by a single moderator vote that rule won't apply. I will double check what the situation is and report back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm fairly sure that closed questions aren't Tweeted, but that doesn't help if the question is closed *after* it has been publicised.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other request that has been made is to give diamond moderators some control over what questions get Tweeted. At the very least this would give a pair of human eyes on what goes out for a sanity check.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to point out that I rarely close questions without there being at least one moderator flag being raised. My job isn't to trawl the site looking for things to do, but to react to flags and questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A search of Meta (not by me - my meta searches suck) has turned up this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/115722/avoid-tweeting-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears that the bot shouldn't be Tweeting closed questions. The only thing I can think of is that the question has had enough activity to be Tweeted ([the rules are here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/101340/140548)), but the question has also picked up flags as well. We see the flags and close the question but it's out there in the Twitterverse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The sequence will be something like (assuming it doesn't look at flags):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Question gets posted.&#xD;&#xA;2. Question gets flagged.&#xD;&#xA;3. Question gets enough activity to be Tweeted.&#xD;&#xA;4. Question gets close votes.&#xD;&#xA;5. Question gets closed by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it appears that the bot is pimping closed questions. Therefore, it would useful if the bot could look at any existing flags and not Tweet it if there are any. Obviously it won't help if the question gets flagged *after* it's Tweeted, but questions that don't fit tend to get flagged quite quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE 2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've reported this problem on [Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/124994/the-twitter-bot-should-not-tweet-posts-that-have-flags-on-them) as its clearly Tweeting posts with flags." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26918" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5990" RevisionGUID="0cd81958-9e71-49f6-94b9-8c78b64c11ee" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There was a bug in [the scheduled job that cleans up migration stubs][1]: it also automatically deleted questions that had been migrated and then *rejected*. Obviously, that was not the intent and has been fixed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the other problem here is that a very popular question was rejected years after being migrated and after many edits and improvements had been made. The appropriate action here would've been to lock it. Unfortunately, a big part of the value that a question like this brings to the site comes from the ability of the community to edit it, updating and improving the answers as the years roll by. In other words, the question has value *as a wiki*. But there's no type of lock that reflects this need to foster editing while preventing pile-on answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...Well, *now* there is: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![wiki answer lock][2]](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This particular question was well-suited for testing this strategy: there were only a few answers, and the top answer had *massively* more activity (and popularity) than the rest. So I've cleaned up the migration rejection, restored the top answer, and locked it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We'll see how this works in practice, but at very least it should never be accidentally deleted again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78048/enable-automatic-deletion-of-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/XT45O.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26919" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5992" RevisionGUID="9371bebb-685b-4ba6-9830-9b60fb5b750a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are some fairly major changes coming soon to how posts are closed, you may want to read up on the details:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Closing changes: [on hold], unclear, too broad, opinion-based, off-topic reasons, bye-bye to Too Localized](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/184154/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [Responding to your “too localized” concerns](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/185102/162704)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We will need to come up with our own list of custom off topic reasons for Programmers. These reasons will be available to close voters after they have picked the generic &quot;off topic&quot; one. Here's a screenshot of Meta Stack Overflow's close dialog, where the new system is already available:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8locR.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;other&quot; option will allow a custom message, when none of the three custom reasons applies:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFP1n.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have an &quot;off topic&quot; reason you'd like to nominate, please post it as an answer. Some general guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- One reason per answer, so they can be voted separately.&#xD;&#xA;- A brief comment explaining why the general category is off topic is mandatory. See the examples in the first screenshot for inspiration. If we have a _good_ Meta discussion explaining in detail why the category doesn't work, please link to it in your comment.&#xD;&#xA;- Examples to existing closed questions that would fit your custom reason would be immensely helpful.&#xD;&#xA;- If there's already an answer with a reason similar to what you have in mind, but with a slightly different phrasing, please consider commenting on the existing answer and refining the phrasing instead of posting a new answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The winners: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [&quot;what language, technology, or project one should take up next&quot;][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [&quot;career or education advice&quot;][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [&quot;recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource&quot;][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5994/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5993/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6025/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26920" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="833" RevisionGUID="78c4b1c7-e0cf-41e4-826c-51b7a33cb4a4" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Most of my response is in [the question I posed on Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67780/why-is-code-golf-now-the-domain-of-programmers-se), but it's so completely out of place here. Our de-facto elevator pitch involves saying Programmers.SE is for all those things *about* programming that aren't *actually* programming, and Code Golf *is* programming (albeit *fun* programming)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26921" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6029" RevisionGUID="270bc1b7-0421-49c9-a1a2-cf1ce0860cae" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am confused whether questions about IDEs can be asked on [programmers main website][1] or not? Questions such as which IDEs have this feature? An example would be [this question on Stackoverflow][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked such questions on stackoverflow before being told to ask on superuser or other websites. I [read this][3], [asked this question on its meta][4] but it seems the [questions about IDE][5] are still being put on hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So before posting questions on programmers I decided to ask it on its meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Should I ask questions about IDEs here or not? &#xD;&#xA; - If not then which websites do they belong to?&#xD;&#xA; - Is there a question about the where I can ask questions not fitting on this website. Like [the one on Stackoverflow][6].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have looked at the [about page][7]. It says to ask such questions on stackoverflow. But on stackoverflow I have been told otherwise. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17439620/an-ide-with-drag-and-drop-feature-for-python-2-7-tkinter&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/113087/software-tools-in-faq-is-too-hazy&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/181041/confusion-regarding-the-faq-and-a-question&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17439620/an-ide-with-drag-and-drop-feature-for-python-2-7-tkinter&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8401/where-can-i-ask-questions-that-dont-fit-or-are-off-topic-for-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26922" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3429" RevisionGUID="3ae29fee-c294-4196-89f5-81ce3b47fc87" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Adapted from [meta.wordpress.stackexchange][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Recommended Reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Blog][2] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [I Move to Close This Question][3] &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;    How and why closing was introduced on Stack Overflow in 2008.&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; It’s important to note here that closing a question is a step on the road to deletion. Closing is effectively “nominate to delete”, as a question that can’t be answered is no longer truly “alive”. That said, some closed questions should be kept around. For example, duplicate questions that have totally different wording are sometimes useful. With the duplicates, people can find either variation with search terms and link through to the original.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions][4]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    About duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; Don’t answer questions that have already been answered elsewhere. Yeah, you might earn a couple of points of reputation, but, because you are duplicating content, you are actually making the internet worse. Why? Because that answer might be true today, but as technology changes, it might not be true tomorrow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Stack Overflow Question Lifecycle][5]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How and when questions are closed or deleted.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers][6], [Gorilla vs. Shark][7] and [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    About the _not constructive_ close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Meta Stack Overflow][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What is a “closed” question?][10] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; * 24 votes to close per day (50 on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * 5 votes are required to close or reopen&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * Votes will expire after 4 days if the question does not reach 5 votes&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * Questions containing a bounty cannot be closed&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * You can only vote to close once per question&#xD;&#xA;	&gt; * You can only vote to reopen once per question&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How do you reopen a closed question?][11] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; The owner must have 250 rep in order to vote to reopen their own question. Other users can also vote to reopen, but they must have a minimum 3000 reputation points.&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Leaving comments about voting to reopen does nothing in and of itself. You can try and [address a specific user](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2035/notify-user-when-their-name-is-mentioned-in-comment-closed) who may have left a comment as to why they voted to close and ask them to help cast reopen votes if you think they voted in error.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  See also: [How do you challenge the closing of one of your questions?][12], [Why was my question closed and how to contact the closer][13] and [My question has been closed. What do I do now?][14] (on meta.crypto.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Closing/Migrating question instructions/guidance][15]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  A long explanation of the close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What can cause my question to be bumped?][16]  &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;  Close/reopen votes on the question do not bump the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Etiquette for closing your own questions][17] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; I don't think you should close your questions lightly. There are very few questions that have a definite answer that will never change, or that cannot be improved upon.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How to handle duplicate questions?][18]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not by tagging or editing, vote to close or flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Please add the ability to filter \[Closed\] questions out of my results][19] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Stick the closed:0 parameter in your search pipe and you're smoking out the closed questions: [closed:0](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A0)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; But if you're in the mood of puffing around the closed: [closed:1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1)&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  See also our [search tips][20]. &#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Allow question askers to close their own questions unilaterally][21]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Once you post a question it is not exactly YOURS in every sense of the word anymore, it belongs to EVERYONE.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  But you can _delete_ your own question as long as there are no upvoted answers.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [How useful must a question be to be allowed?][22]  &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;  About the _too localized_ close reason, derived from [this question on Gaming][23]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; What value does this question have to anyone else on the planet, other than the one person who asked? In other words, what internet user is going to be searching for and finding information about a game one person vaguely remembers playing in broad terms?&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;  See also: [What questions should be closed with reason “too localized”?][24]&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Remove/downweight closed questions in “hot” question sort][25]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; I think there's a misconception here -- closing does not mean &quot;get this off my screen ASAP&quot;, closing means, &quot;this question should be re-evaluated by the community&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Can we have the ability to rescind a close vote before it closes?][26]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: No. See Jeff’s answer … with a lot of negative votes. :)&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;* [Close Votes expire too soon for low-traffic tags][27]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Short answer: Fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Close votes (and probably reopen votes) only expire after all of these conditions are met:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1. 4 days have passed since the last close vote.  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2. The question has more than 100 views.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Auto-deleting old, unanswered zero-score questions after a year?][28]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There is a garbage collector which works as follows:&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; If the question is more than 30 days old, and ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has -1 or lower score&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has no answers&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* is not locked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; If the question is more than 365 days old, and ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has a score of 0 or a score of 1 with a deleted owner&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has no answers&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* is not locked&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has a viewcount &lt;= the age of the question in days times 1.5&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;	* has 1 or 0 comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; ... it will be automatically deleted.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; This check is run every week across all sites.&#xD;&#xA;	&#xD;&#xA;  **Each time you misuse the answer field for pseudo-comments you break the garbage collector.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Do “fix my code pleeese!” questions qualify for closure as “too localized”?][29]  &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Yes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## My own summary after a long reading session&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing is not deleting. A closed question is still visible, it can be improved and reopened. It [doesn’t affect the accept rate][30] but prevents potentially useless answers. Help us to stay [on focus][31], use your close votes.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a moderator (on WordPress Stack Exchange) I don’t like to act unilaterally. Your close votes are helping me and the other moderators to decide and we don’t feel so bad if we close a question. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://wordpress.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1035/73&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10582/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/36415/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/19126/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/119638/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/q/144/1910&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/32490/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/48578/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/5215/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10841/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/7913/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10363/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/70521/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1455&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/4818/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/107153/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/915/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/97556/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/78048/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/82874/145551&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/08/new-question-asker-features/&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26923" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6106" RevisionGUID="5f8198cc-cdd0-452a-9015-f376894f8ee1" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I really don't like migrating crappy questions to SO.  This is really the only place where its an issue because of the migration path (no, taking away the migration path would mean more suggestions to repost - there are enough of those for the workplace).  The past 90 days, we did 206 migrations To SO and 23 of them were rejected.  A number of them were embarrassingly bad.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When something is off topic here, on topic there, isn't up to the standards there and would get closed - the close reason being:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for code must demonstrate a **minimal understanding of the problem being solved**. Include attempted solutions, why they didn't work, and the expected results. See also: [Stack Overflow question checklist](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to see a new close reason along the lines of:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers.Stack Exchange. It would best be answered on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet the minimum requirements for a question on Stack Overflow.  Please read the [Stack Overflow question checklist](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist) to fix up your question for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this close reason, we might be able to avoid some poor migrations, giving close voters another sanctioned reason (people tend to avoid the custom reason for &quot;this is off topic here, but not up to the standards there.&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, the reasons not to are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. We shouldn't be guessing as to someone else's close reasons after a migration&#xD;&#xA;2. A rejected migration about two a week isn't that big of a deal&#xD;&#xA;3. This would be used for about two closes every week which isn't enough to persuade the powers that be to give us another close reason (and if we had one, there are likely better close reasons than this)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26924" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3474" RevisionGUID="44157d45-cb40-47bb-9414-d64728fd3c18" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This MSO discussion](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129021/154388) sums it up well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Of course, obviously the better answers will generally be longer than one line. To bulk up the content, you might consider doing things like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- linking to the appropriate documentation&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- including a code sample&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- suggesting a superior alternative approach&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- cautioning against some things that people in the same situation commonly do wrong&#xD;&#xA; &gt;- adding superfluous bulleted lists&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many good answers that can be written in one sentence. However, the *best* answers explain the reasoning behind that one line. They explain the thought process that is required to arrive at the correct decision. They may include a personal experience that supports the conclusion reached. I've seen some good answers that take the approach the OP originally thought of and show how it leads to failure, and then present a better solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best defense against _harmful_ one-liners, as with many things on SE, is your voting powers. Don't be afraid to downvote the one-liners!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26925" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="877" RevisionGUID="8aeb9f87-a4c2-4508-827f-ef26636012de" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It seems to me there is a difference of opinion about how to handle questions that would be considered overly broad, and that is leading to inconsistent handling of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For your consideration, here are two questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first that came along is [&quot;What are good resources for design patterns?&quot;][1], which is a two-liner, general, question asking for resources about design patterns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second, and most recent, is [&quot;design pattern for unit testing&quot;][2], which was, originally, a two-liner, general, question asking for resources about design patterns as they relate to unit testing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was brought up in the comments that the second question was too broad, and there was a close vote to that. But arguably the second question had more context because it was asking about design patterns as they pertain to unit testing and not just design patterns in general. I have no idea if there were any close votes on the first question as I don't have those privileges (yet). [This question on Meta was raised][3] which touches upon the topic of overly broad questions, but doesn't really discuss them in real detail and seems more focused on duplicate questions (which is quickly turning into an uncontrollable problem in the sites I frequent). Strictly speaking, neither of these question violate the guidelines of subjective questions which appears to be the gold standard for assessing the quality of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I won't debate the point that either question is broad, but both questions have brought some useful answers (particularly the first). The broad questions of these types seem to be logical ones to ask, I'm sure everyone here has asked them at one point or another, but there are few places to ask them outside of the SE family of websites. Alternatives have yet to be presented by the objector(s) of the second question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the P.SE community does decide to close questions that are broad, that it should at least wait to see the quality of the answers before submitting the close vote. Or, better still, simply mark it as `community wiki` and let it fly. These are really not that much different than the &quot;favorite tool/application/technique&quot; questions that exist now and will always be asked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The subjective guidelines are great—and people need to remember they are just guidelines and not strict rules—and judging something as being &quot;overly broad&quot; is just as subjective a topic. I think the community would benefit from a clear definition of &quot;overly broad&quot; and a consistent implementation that would result.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE:** What I am proposing is that the definition of &quot;broad&quot;, its existence as a reason to close, and the policy of closing for broad context should be revisited. While this isn't nearly as important as past issues, it is one that I think hasn't been hashed out enough and some questions (and possibly potential contributors) are suffering as a result. What one may consider a simple, basic question, another may consider a bad one. Is voting to close it really the best way to handle it, particularly if the topic would yield solid, basic answers? It's not as though the SE sites, SO and P.SE in particular, make any clearly stated assumptions and qualifications of the skill level of people who post questions. Until that happens, these types of questions are going to come up again and again, and I think there ought to be a better way of managing them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2240/what-are-good-resources-for-design-patterns&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32571/design-pattern-for-unit-testing&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26926" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3562" RevisionGUID="46eec080-0487-45e3-a363-d6c01722a231" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This was [a discussion on Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/131388/would-questions-about-app-store-approval-be-appropriate-for-so) a few days ago which had comments that mirrored an earlier [discussion we had here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2575/8), and while I don't want to say *every* app store question is off-topic here, it's unlikely many of the questions people would *want* to ask—namely questions about app store policies and such—would be on-topic anywhere on Stack Exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main issue is that we are not Apple, or RIM, or Amazon, or any of the other private entities that make or enforce those policies, so we'd only be speculating and a poor substitute for the people developers *should* be asking, which are the people who work for those companies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the example questions for the proposal, it looks like the App Stores proposal is going to suffer from this right from the get-go:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is there a limit on how long you can hold on to an app name in &lt;App market&gt;?&#xD;&#xA;2. Can an app name have special characters?&#xD;&#xA;3. I created an app that only works with third-party hardware. Do I have to send the hardware to Apple to get approval? How do they test such apps?&#xD;&#xA;4. Is there any hard evidence on how much individual app developers have actually earned?&#xD;&#xA;5. Will my app be deleted from [store] if no one downloads it for [x time]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions 1, 2, 3, and 5 are all questions for the companies running the App Stores and making the policies, not random strangers on the internet who aren't in the know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 4 is just a bad SE question in general: taken at its face value, it's a simple yes or no question (there is evidence or there isn't). Reading between the lines, someone asking that likely wants to know how much they're going to make as an app developer, which is highly localized (and more often than not, [attributable to pure dumb luck](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/05/ios-app-success-is-a-lottery-and-60-of-developers-dont-break-even.ars)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't have high hopes for the App Store proposal: I don't think it's going to fail because of lack of interest, but because it's not a topic that Stack Exchange handles well. I don't think trying to redirect people from that proposal to here does anyone any favors." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26927" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6113" RevisionGUID="5a0ce147-35ac-4c62-8dbf-13a8871457e6" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="That's a lot of questions, and they are all valid, but they avoid a basic principle of voting, which is this: *Community members can use their votes however they wish, so long as they are not being abusive.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I believe it would be a bad thing for such questions to get deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the community may not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It has been fairly long and established policy that questions that are dupes to other questions shouldn't be deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... Unless they are.  The community may not deem the post worthy of preservation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should there be a 'major news source/blog' lock to prevent closed questions that have been featured in a way that SE wants to maintain from being accidentally deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ask for a &quot;historical lock.&quot;  But be prepared to defend your request with reasoning and evidence; historical locks are used very sparingly, and only under very specific circumstances.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26928" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3566" RevisionGUID="0de30524-682f-433d-850f-0f26e1f98590" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="See this Meta Stack Overflow question for more than you'll ever want to know on this subject:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Encouraging people to explain down-votes](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-down-votes)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26929" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="932" RevisionGUID="7b4116f6-e888-40bf-8a29-5c9b3cbb2964" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The requirement is that you flag a post as [spam or offensive](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6120/citizen-patrol-badge-not-awarded): flagging something for moderator attention doesn't count. It also takes a little bit of time for the system to recognize it: from my experience, it takes an hour or two." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26930" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6155" RevisionGUID="765b7bcc-135c-4600-acc6-118570e29330" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="On Stack Overflow, the [tag:asp] tag was made a synonym of [tag:asp-classic] since that is generally what is meant. Looking over the 8 that &lt;s&gt;are&lt;/s&gt; were tagged here as [tag:asp] shows a similar pattern of usage. (though I should add that most weeks we still end up with a dozen or so that meant asp.net...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was done as most of the time [tag:asp] was being used by people who were unaware that there were two different technologies that that tag was referring to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's some of the related discussion from the main Meta.SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Classic Re-Tag Discussion on some good ole ASP (Classic)](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/26870/25163)&#xD;&#xA;* [Let's Ban the [ASP] Tag on StackOverflow!](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/84175/25163)&#xD;&#xA;* [Where'd the [asp] tag go, and why did it come back?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/119037/25163)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest making a similar change here and removing all the [tag:asp] and changing to [tag:asp-classic] or [tag:asp.net] as appropriate. And maybe borrowing the text from the tag wiki for [tag:asp-classic] and [tag:asp.net].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd fix it, but I'm a little short on the rep requirement... I did some suggested edits/flags for the 6 that were there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26931" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3582" RevisionGUID="da1c17f4-2670-4306-99fd-55863719646b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'll summarize [my answer over on SO Meta][1] here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I started out believing that SE could support a recommend X... In the end these questions can only ever be considered subjective, and therefore not a good fit for the SE format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/113678/how-to-request-book-recommendations/131432#131432" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26932" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3634" RevisionGUID="a4c8f869-e215-465d-a278-1763b9273a72" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Having lived through [Stack Overflow summarily directing their trash to us][1], I'd be leery to do the same to another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, however, the Workplace wants that mention in our FAQ, I'm all for it. I do think they should propose the wording, as they know best what types of workplace and career questions are on-topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26933" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="934" RevisionGUID="1fad7757-28f4-447d-bcc8-e5215f7c71f9" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [Recent feature changes to Stack Exchange](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/59445/recent-feature-changes-to-stack-exchange) question on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) catalogs all announced and undocumented changes to the system." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26934" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6157" RevisionGUID="285ddbc6-3cb3-4c7a-8f04-77645220ea74" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="So, the cleanup has been done.  There are no questions tagged as asp.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Let's Ban the [ASP] Tag on StackOverflow!](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112317/213963) the next step would appear to be making it a tag synonym.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From Stack Overflow a screen shot of http://stackoverflow.com/tags/synonyms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is probably what we should have too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way to do this would be to go to the [tag:asp-classic] tag and navigate to synonyms - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/asp-classic/synonyms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The requirements for suggesting and voting on this are:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Users with more than 2500 reputation and a total answer score of 5 or more on the tag, can suggest tag synonyms. Users with a total answer score (total upvotes minus total downvotes) of 5 or more on the tag, can vote for tag synonyms. Suggestions will be automatically approved when they reach a score of 4, and automatically deleted when they reach a score of -2.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since I've got nothing in the asp tag for answers or questions, I can't vote on this one (or suggest it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And asp-classic its not that highly asked of a question area - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/asp-classic/topusers so there aren't many who do have the necessary rep to cast votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its probably up to a mod to do this, if it is modable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/eZuvN.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26935" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6180" RevisionGUID="d2ac045a-1ba6-430c-b3b4-6c6f6be981a8" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per my reading of [this answer](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/150253/165773 &quot;here&quot;) written by SE developer, downvotes increase chances of the post getting into Low Quality queue:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; approach to low-quality auto-flagging, by looking for similarities in posts **downvoted** or flagged as low quality...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is worth noting that per mentioned answer, upvotes tend to have an opposite effect:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; referenced post got 2 upvotes..., so it **wouldn't even make it into** the low quality queue&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those interested to know how Low Quality queue is expected to work, can refer to [respective guidelines](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/180029/165773 &quot;here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Guidelines for reviewing Low Quality Posts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Questions appear in the low quality post queue both by algorithm and [by flags from users](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/190639/167534).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;### Basic workflow&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA; 1. Check if the post can be improved. If it can, by all means **Edit** it. A typical example are code-only answers, which can benefit from additional explanation about how that code works.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA; 2. If you think the post is unsalvageable and should be deleted, **Recommend Deletion** (see common reasons below).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA; 3. If the post looks good, choose **Looks Good**. If you are unsure, **Skip** it..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26936" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="942" RevisionGUID="487dca65-bf92-4590-a52a-2414e28ccc61" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As detailed in the answer to [this question](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/74582/59303) on Meta Stack Overflow, the threshold can be set on a site by site basis and is now 15 for Programmers (along with Super User, where the threshold was [originally reduced in an effort to stem the tide of pile-on answers][1]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't affect existing questions, but if a new answer is posted to those they will convert.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.superuser.com/questions/274/reduce-community-wiki-force-threshold-to-15-answers-on-superuser" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26937" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3733" RevisionGUID="9ca11cab-3040-480e-935e-761230c9176e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I write this both as a 20,000+ user and former elected moderator on Programmers, and as a community manager at Stack Exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First and foremost: **we will not be changing this site's name**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why? Well, let's talk about that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As others have brought up here, there is no evidence right now to support the claim that the site's name is leading to its problems. If anything, I have a counterexample - the site itself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think by now we all know how [the site came about](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/64046/155160). When [the new scope was handed down](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/), it was not received terribly well and we're still sorting some of that out. The fact is, though, that throughout most of last year, the site slowly evolved to move away from the [&quot;Stack Overflow's toilet bowl&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl) image and to what it is today. It happened through comments, (sometimes bitter) meta arguments, flag handling, etc., and look at what we have now - there's an engaged, active community involved in moderation and governance. Even though there were a [couple](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/600/misleading-site-title) [discussions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/465/can-we-change-the-name-of-the-site), the site name did not matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I remember when most of the front page would be closed questions and I'd be somewhere promoting the site and trying not to feel embarrassed to point people to it. I wouldn't be embarrassed now. I look at the front page and I see 6 closed questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154283/should-i-demand-unit-testing-from-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; and in my opinion rightly so - it's a discussion-oriented question designed to affirm the asker's existing belief. Discouraging questions like this one is a part of our core principles at Stack Exchange to the point where it's written down in the shared FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, **avoid** asking subjective questions where ...  &#xD;&#xA;  &gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154339/advice-on-scrum-for-the-solitary-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as a duplicate of a [canonical, open question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/220/agile-for-the-solo-developer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154342/are-there-references-discussing-the-use-parallel-programming-as-a-development-me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Reference-seeking question. I don't have a strong feeling on this one. Could go either way, personally, but usually questions like this result in poorly curated lists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154338/identifying-methods-with-a-specified-id-in-d&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Migrated to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154282/if-variable-type-not-working-properly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Off-topic, though opted to not migrate, which is fair enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154270/is-learning-blackberry-programming-a-good-choice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Canonically off-topic for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I look at these questions, I see a pattern: **all of them are about some aspect of software development**. Changing your name to &quot;Software Development Stack Exchange&quot; or anything of that ilk will not stop questions like these. Changing your name to an abstract concept will not automatically draw people in. What attracts experts to a site is the content. Focus on that instead and you will continue to grow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, Gaming SE is currently in the spotlight after having been [rebranded to Arqade](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/06/welcome-to-the-arqade/), so it's natural that that's prompting other sites to ask about getting a brand and a domain of their own. Our official answer is that you can ask, but there is no definite answer. **Name changes will happen exceedingly rarely at best, and you should not plan on, depend on, or even anticipate it.** There's no fixed traffic criteria or an &quot;awesome meter&quot; that will say definitively that you've *earned* your name change and that it *will* happen. If we do it again, it will likely be an act-of-god kind of scenario. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example is Fitness &amp; Nutrition now known as Physical Fitness. In that case, part of the site's name explicitly mentioned a subject that was off-topic on the site. The site's community rallied together to start enforcing that and we eventually matched their efforts with a new name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not in either of these situations. So the bottom line is, stop fixating on the name. A name change isn't a silver bullet that will fix your problems. Keep growing the site, solidifying the scope, addressing whatever other issues you (as a community) perceive to exist, but don't worry about the name. It is not holding you back." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26939" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3764" RevisionGUID="b644cf8a-bcca-4e59-8a69-06d8c06995c9" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Unless things have changed (and given the status-declined tag, it doesn't appear that way), [an answer is limited to 30,000 characters][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The explanation given is that posts that exceed 30,000 characters are rare and might indicate other problems with the question. Like [the FAQ says][2], if a book is more suited to answer the question, then it's not an appropriate question for a Stack Exchange site. 30,000 characters is (by my estimate) 12 pages of double-spaced 12 point Times New Roman text - if a question actually requires that much text, it probably has problems. For example, it might be asking multiple questions that should be broken out into independent questions or it might be overly broad (one of the reasons for closing as a non-constructive question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're right that truncation is not the answer, though. It's not very user-friendly when content gets chopped off without warning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13784/please-increase-the-maximum-allowed-length-for-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26940" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="969" RevisionGUID="870ec175-c8e5-4644-a0ec-04c23a827091" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The mechanics of the community wiki flag are as blind as Lady Justice: if a post is marked community wiki, reputation stops accruing regardless of what the circumstances behind that which is marked as such. Simply:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    function addRep(value) {&#xD;&#xA;      if (!this-&gt;communityWiki) {&#xD;&#xA;        this-&gt;user-&gt;addRep(value);&#xD;&#xA;      }&#xD;&#xA;    }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for why there's no distinction, we need to go back to [what the community wiki flag is for](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community wiki flag is used when it's determined (either by the original author of the post or automatically) that the post could benefit from the community taking ownership of it. Since the community as a whole takes ownership of the post, there's no single person to award the reputation to and it is not awarded at all. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it another way, once the community wiki flag is set, you are no longer considered to be the owner of the post, so that's why you stopped getting reputation for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [this case](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36612/what-kind-of-innovative-non-cash-financial-benefits-do-i-offer-to-my-developers-t), it looks like you ran into an automatic triggering of the flag that occurred when the answer got 15 answers. You can think of the reason why posts automatically convert to community wiki as a reaction to problem with scope: the vast majority of constructive, pointed questions only have a few answers. When a question starts to get a ton of answers, two things have likely occurred:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. People are providing new answers, intentionally or unintentionally, to slightly tweak existing answers&#xD;&#xA;2. The original question is very broad and its scope not very well defined, allowing for a plethora of ways to answer it that are likely irrelevant to the original intent&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In both cases, community ownership winds up being a good thing as it allows others to address the quality of both the question and answers: community wiki relaxes the rep requirement to edit, so answers can be made more useful and distinct and the question can be made more specific by people who would otherwise just post a new answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26942" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3836" RevisionGUID="7987dd9f-16cd-47ba-b750-ab970586345e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Programmers.SE, we need to talk.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've had a rough couple of years, what with being originally a place to ask anything and everything and having to shape up. I get that it's annoying to still see off-topic question or questions that are unanswerable day in and day out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But that's no excuse for the excessively rude and offensive comments and answers that currently happen on [questions like these](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/158554/8). Questions like that aren't great: they're probably off-topic. But when we have users with literally thousands of reputation leaving comments like the now-deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No thanks, I'm not your [expletive deleted].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And answers [like this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/158558/8) that link to extremely condescending and overtly hostile [GIFs like these](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LvpOO.gif), we have completely lost our way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't an isolated incident, either: hostile comments and answers like these happen all the time, and what appears to be increasing frequency, from people with enough reputation to know better:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [If I had a quarter for every time I've seen posts like this, I wouldn't need my job. Son, I suggest you learn to program if you want to create one.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154430/looking-for-a-programmer#comment294513_154430)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [A young, good looking developer could always work as a stripper but even then it is not a surefire way.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/152123/how-can-a-developer-realize-the-full-value-of-his-work#comment289122_152123) (+2)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [this is a rant ( there is not answerable question ) by someone with an inflated ego at best, and completely off topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/152123/how-can-a-developer-realize-the-full-value-of-his-work#comment289123_152123) (+5)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [There really isn't a question here, if under the thinly veiled bias and flamebait there is actually a small semblance of a real question then it not constructive and inviting of debate. And besides security being a non-issue - You keep believing that and high price consultants will be making bank for a long time cleaning up the mess.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/149956/stored-procedures-out-of-style#comment284230_149956) (+3)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [IMHO, if indeed it was asked like you quote it, this is a stupid question, and that should be the correct answer.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132905/situations-where-22-does-not-necessarily-equal-4#comment248793_132905)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [nice rant, now - where is the question?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/157143/dealing-with-technically-ignorant-and-apathetic-bosses-and-colleagues#comment299686_157143) (+1)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Answer that links to LMGTFY and Guru.com](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/153916/8) (+1)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Anything wrong with Google today? &quot;Javadoc for C++&quot; brings excellent results. ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155146/javadoc-for-c#comment295311_155146) (+3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me be clear: we make the internet a worse place when stuff like this happens. We make our site look like trash.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, stop it. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. Vote to close, flag, down-vote, or leave a polite comment explaining to the user where they went wrong and just *move on.* If you find yourself unable to resist leaving a snarky or hostile comment on a question or answer you don't like, I humbly suggest you do what I did: take a break from the site. It'll still be here when you come back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Kicking off the Summer of Love](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/07/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Etiquette for posting civil and informative comments](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/138173/etiquette-for-posting-civil-and-informative-comments/)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3626/what-are-some-examples-of-good-guiding-comments-to-leave-users-to-help-underst" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26943" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6195" RevisionGUID="d69c426d-344b-436e-8248-ed594c3ca8f2" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You seem to believe that question locked for content dispute at meta should remain at main site as originally posted (&quot;Lock question as-is&quot;). This approach doesn't make sense to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the purpose of meta discussion, it is insignificant what particular revision is hanging on the main site because [full revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/212517/revisions &quot;example for your post&quot;) and [original version](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/212517/1 &quot;example for your post&quot;) are always available to study content and edits in as much details as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With above in mind, I would expect moderator locking the post to take whatever edits deemed appropriate in order to make it look OK for regular, inexperienced readers of the site - for those who just read what is posted and don't pay attention to obscure, strictly internal notices about _meta_, _content dispute_ etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this perspective, I would expect moderators to err on the safer side, performing pre-dispute cleanup of the content. Given that _final_ version of the content is to be determined by community discussion at meta anyway, I see no point to fixate about what is there on the main site during the dispute (it helps that locked post can not be voted, thus question score can't be influenced until it's unlocked back).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is worth noting that expecting mentioned cleanup to be performed by asker would be a really bad idea, as they are naturally biased.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In your particular case, part cleaned up at main site prior to dispute is: *&quot;Are there any definitive or widely cited sources of best practices literature&quot;*. To me, cleaning it up looks reasonable safety wise, as this part of the question makes a perfect match to one of the [close reasons](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6025/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Oh and please don't tell me that it's safe to keep because this part is hidden deep inside your &quot;main&quot; question. It's there and readers will find it. I remember myself being new at Programmers, carefully studying questions, stumbling upon resource-request parts and posting [low quality answers](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nyfwh.png &quot;example&quot;) _&quot;look here's the resource you asked about: &amp;lt;link&amp;gt;&quot;_.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to also address one of the [comments](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments#comment419290_212517) you made, likely intending to support the question with an authoritative reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that my post specifically implements the tactics referred to in that post to achieve usefulness as a subjective post. It isn't shopping for a source if you insist that an experience or widely-known principle be backed up by references. This is why it says &quot;Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your interpretation of [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) article looks wrong to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reading of the statement _&quot;questions insist that opinion be backed up&quot;_ is that it's a strong prohibition against filling questions with a [**poison** like &quot;what's your opinion?&quot;, &quot;what do you think?&quot;, &quot;what do you prefer?&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/184574/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;)... and yeah, &quot;which resource do you recommend&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question should _never_ have words like &quot;what's your opinion&quot; simply because this makes a wide open door for crappy answers where authors just post their opinion without even attempting to back it up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good question, in addition, is worded in a way that actually _[repels](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5401/31260 &quot;more on that here&quot;)_ garbage answers - allowing readers, guys like you and me, to flag low quality posts for mod attention and request deletion on the ground that these don't answer the question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Note that what's-your-opinion in the question immediately makes such flagging and demanding deletion impossible because, well, such answers _match the questions asked_. Same reasoning applies to resource requests - it is officially legal to post a [low quality](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/8259/165773 &quot;more on link-only answers here&quot;) &quot;I recommend this URL&quot; and pretend that this just answers to what have been asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I would like to expand on what looks fundamentally wrong in your position.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You (and some [other askers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6147/31260)) re-post excerpts from the article, plainly translating these into requirements to answers and pretend that this makes your question compliant. **Don't do that.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above &quot;translation&quot; is purely yours, you have no grounds to state that this can be inferred from the article you refer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing to remember is, this article states requirements for _questions_, not for the _answers_. Re-read it again and pay attention to the sub-title (quoted below, keeping font close to original):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Article is about guidelines for _questions_, plain and simple as in the title quoted above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever requirements for _answers_ you stuff into your questions, you have no ground to link these to the article. These are all yours, and, frankly, from the perspective of those who read your question, these are pure noise, as these add nothing [substantial](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6171/31260 &quot;related discussion here&quot;) to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't pollute the question with requirements to answers - for readers, these are useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, _after reading_ particular answer, you feel like something is not OK there, check whether it fits [answering guidelines](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer &quot;here&quot;) and if you believe that it doesn't, feel free to raise your concerns." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26944" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="994" RevisionGUID="51f2523d-99b1-452b-901a-d570e5129e1b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; What are your thoughts on the new guidelines? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am exceedingly happy about them! One of the most persistent abuses of SO, right from the very start, has been Getting To Know You questions (often incorrectly referred to as polls&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;) - a bored user asking others to share their favorite X, tell a story about X, commiserate in X, etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's forum-fodder, a staple of newsgroups and message boards, and perfectly appropriate for those venues, but utterly useless on SO/SE (where questions are expected to live on for years). They're fun, and often they'll collect a small number of very interesting answers... This in turn makes them very hard to kill: &quot;How dare you delete Eric's brilliant story about how he once built a web browser out of corn?!! You heartless bastard!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the broader category of [&quot;list questions&quot;][1] (poll, GTKY, product recommendation, brainstorming, tips, etc.), there are perhaps a handful that are generally useful... And invariably, they're asked by users who actually *care deeply* about getting some useful answers. The rest, asked by the bored/lazy/rep-hungry, quickly devolve into fluff, as the asker has no vested interest in refining his question to limit such responses. And so every compromise we've tried - meta-tagging, mandatory-CW, [fluff-ghetto][2] - has been resisted and ultimately has failed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, the only way to combat this rot is by judging the intent of the asker. And you gauge their intent by the words they use: while &quot;What's your favorite editor?&quot; and &quot;What's a good editor for Windows that supports &gt;5GB files and has built-in macros?&quot; are superficially close, the projected intent is utterly different. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's good to know that we can now refer to the FAQ when editing or closing these beasts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;sub&gt;A poll is useless unless someone is compiling the responses into a finite set of categories. This almost never happens. The only *painless* way to run an effective poll on SE is to post a finite set of answers, CW everything, and then close the question and let people vote and comment - this hasn't been possible without moderator intervention for over two years.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11760/whats-the-opinion-on-list-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26945" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3843" RevisionGUID="357c85aa-074a-4527-8620-d56ba1d47bc1" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Thank you for bring this up on meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am constantly seeing rude, snarky, condescending, and even hostile comments like these all over Programmers, and appreciate you taking the time to bring this issue to everyone's attention. Its not all users, but its enough users to make a noticeable difference in the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I couldn't agree more with this&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. Vote to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; close, flag, down-vote, or leave a polite comment explaining to the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; user where they went wrong and just move on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're actually interested in helping the user understand their problem so they can correct it, that's fine. But if you want to comment just to make a point and never see the question again, refrain from commenting altogether.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, here's another bit of advice stolen from [Arquade's Meta post on rude comments][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; #How should one react to rude comments?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't engage. **Don't upvote the rude comment**.  Remember even if a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rude comment is funny to you it may be irritating to others. Telling&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off the rude user will only make matters worse. If the rude comment&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also says something useful (e.g. &quot;Hey stupid butt, your question is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off topic&quot;) consider adding a *polite* comment that contains&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *constructive* information instead and flag the rude comment for removal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And a [comment][2] below explaining why you don't upvote rude comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&quot;Don't upvote the rude comment.&quot;** I feel this is really important. When we do that, we're pretty much giving tacit approval to whatever&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been posted and sending the message that the community approves of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this type of behavior&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of people I see posting questions on here are asking for help, and I hate seeing them turned away with sarcasm, rudeness, and a condescending or elitist attitude. I don't think SE would succeed if it wasn't for the millions of people that volunteer their time to help others solve their problems, and having these sort of comments all over the site, with frequent upvotes, is a good way to make volunteers think this site is not for them, and to leave the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also stolen from Arqade's post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; #Is there anything I can do to get rid of rude comments?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Just flag them; there's a little flag icon to the left of a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Click it and select &quot;rude or offensive&quot; in the menu that pops up.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The comment will be flagged for moderator attention, a moderator can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; remove the comment if they agree the post is rude/offensive. However&#xD;&#xA;&gt; if 3 or more users total flag the same comment as rude, it will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [automatically be deleted (see this comment for the formula)][4]. If&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the comment is very high scoring it might take a couple extra flags to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; automatically delete, but **it only takes 3 flags to delete most&#xD;&#xA;&gt; comments**.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that nothing bad can happen to you or even the poster of the rude&#xD;&#xA;&gt; comment when you flag. These flags are anonymous. By flagging a single&#xD;&#xA;&gt; comment you're not getting anyone into trouble, you're just helping&#xD;&#xA;&gt; keep the site a clean, civil place. If you feel someone is being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; persistently and problematically rude, flag one of their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; posts/comments (or one of your own posts) with an &quot;other&quot; flag and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; explain the situation; a moderator can privately contact the user&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about persistent rudeness.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[tl;dr][5]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all&#xD;&#xA; - Don't upvote rude comments&#xD;&#xA; - If you see rude comments, flag them as rude/offensive for removal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5046/8462&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5045/how-should-we-deal-with-rude-comments/5046#comment14552_5046&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CkmHj.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/138168/reduce-the-threshold-for-comment-deletion-with-flags#comment388193_138168&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Too_long;_didn%27t_read" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26946" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6229" RevisionGUID="1d0ad5bb-94b5-43a7-a096-a572ee94b5a7" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Is it possible to get results of a particular SEDE query executed against an older data snapshot? I am interested in these in order to perform sort of retrospective study.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Query I would like to run is [Marginal short answers with links](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102718/marginal-short-answers-with-links?AnswerScoreMax=100&amp;AnswerScoreMin=-100&amp;AnswerLength=200 &quot;with certain parameters - posts score between -100 and 100 and answer length up to 200&quot;). I would like to see results of this query executed against data snapshot taken in the beginning of March / end of February, when the query was introduced. A close enough [data dump](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/207811/165773 &quot;SE data dumps explained in more details here&quot;) seems to be one uploaded on March 18, 2013 here: http://www.clearbits.net/torrents/2121-mar-2013&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my recollection, back then query has been showing about one or two (maybe three) thousands posts. Today, it shows less than 60 posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to learn what happened to thousands posts that are not there anymore, how many was there back then, how many of these were deleted, edited, historically locked." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26947" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3889" RevisionGUID="de8c138a-585a-48b0-af8d-ef7995468f30" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [first rule of migration is &quot;don't migrate crap&quot;][1]. If a question isn't already a good question, it doesn't get migrated. I've actually stepped in and closed questions for off-topic without a migration even as people were voting to migrate because the question was not suitable for migration and would have been closed on the target site anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yannis posted a comment saying what needs to be done - ask the question on Stack Overflow and include code. There are really four things that I can see happening - the user doesn't do anything and never gets an answer, they repost the identical question on Stack Overflow and they get their new question closed, they repost on Stack Overflow after adding code and get an answer, or they edit their post on Programmers to include code and it gets migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm really not sure what other help we can provide, other than to ask on the appropriate site and include the relevant information (the code).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/115184/seriously-a-mod-wont-migrate#comment299931_115184" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26948" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6252" RevisionGUID="4f0da346-9c9e-4c40-8a4c-000291a15114" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Would be migrated to SO, but likely closed there ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is off topic on Programmers. It would best be asked on Stack Overflow, however, the question doesn't meet their minimum requirements. Please read the [Stack Overflow question checklist](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/) and [edit] your question to make it suitable for migration.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26949" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1308" RevisionGUID="36ec39af-466e-42ac-bab2-f9d56e1ebaea" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;strike&gt;Regarding the first part of your question: this already exists. All new users have to pass through a page that explains the guidelines of the site. If a user hasn't figured it out after that, well... that's what community moderation is for.&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Overflow and sites during private beta, users get hit with a page that explains the guidelines for asking good questions. I thought it was there for all sites, but apparently it's not: I agree that something similar should be there that gets people to at least ostensibly agree to the site's guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding the second part of your question, there are two aspects to this: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Whether it's acceptable or encouraged to nag people about their accept rates&#xD;&#xA;2. Whether people should be worrying about accepting answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the first part, people nagging others about their accept rate is just crass: there are so many more important things to worry about than pestering people about one metric. It's noise, and there are a lot of people who flag those comments as noise/spam. The FAQ actually covers this: **[be nice](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#benice)**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the second part, whether people should be worrying about accepting answers: as user #8, I'm confident in saying accept rate is not irrelevant, even on Programmers.SE. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The misguided idea that there are no accepted answers, or that people shouldn't accept answers, or that it's acceptable to never accept answers, comes from a short period of Programmers.SE's history when it was unclear what types of questions were acceptable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, that was **quickly** nipped in the bud and Programmers.SE does not have any special dispensation that makes it qualitatively different than the literally dozens of other Stack Exchange sites that follow the same conventions and norms when it comes to question and answer model. The guidelines in the FAQ are the result of months of discussion both here and elsewhere in the Stack Exchange system: they comprise best practices that have been tested time and time again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In reality, while Programmers.SE is home to questions of a more subjective nature, [every question has an answer](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/). That is, a good question that deserves a home on the Stack Exchange network needs to be the result of an actual problem a person faces. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That problem is going to have a solution: therefore, unless the question got terrible answers, there's going to be an answer the question asker can accept. So the advice in the FAQ is correct: [people should be accepting answers that helped them, personally, the most](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work/5235#5235). It serves as an acknowledgement that the problem was solved and that another user was instrumental in solving that problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And that really is the value proposition to answering questions: people want to know that they actually helped someone. Otherwise, what's the point? Answering for the sake of filling out textareas?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26950" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6276" RevisionGUID="10fd07dc-711c-4eaf-861b-d387aa81f84e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## What is the name of this thing ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;What is the name of this thing&quot; questions are off-topic. These are poor questions for the same reasons that &quot;identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story&quot; are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they don't help anyone else, and allowing them opens the door for the asking of other types of marginal questions. See Also [Let's Play the Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Slightly adapted from [this MSO post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/203884/165773)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26951" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3951" RevisionGUID="a032409b-3b19-4533-938d-6b5444d15a79" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="##Closure  rate 70% for unregistered users&#xD;&#xA;is an awful lot of trouble. In comparison, stats for registered users make one feel that simple act of registration has a magic effect of cutting half of it (to 38%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...We could do a **trial run** for a couple of months and evaluate the results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that requiring registration for questions can be cancelled if _trial run_ results turn out negative&lt;sup&gt; 1&lt;/sup&gt; above looks like a low risk test.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading, such a trial would fit the spirit of guidance provided in **[Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/ &quot;reference article at Stack Exchange blog&quot;)**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...we’re determined to keep question quality high, **even at the cost of refusing a little sand**. It’s true that you can’t have Q&amp;A without _questions_, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&amp;A site is to flood it with low-quality questions. I think [Mark Trapp](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/91808/about-new-downvote-policy-on-meta/91813#91813) summed it up best in [this meta answer](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/91808/about-new-downvote-policy-on-meta/91813#91813):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; To put it another way, when I go to a Stack Exchange home page, I see a **list of questions**. If most of those are terrible questions with little to no indication that I’d be wasting my time by reading them, the value proposition of visiting and participating is diminished: I have better things to do.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Compare that to _answers_ on a specific question: I’ve made a conscious choice to look into what I think is an interesting question. I already made the decision that the question is worth my time. If I find the answers to be useless, I have a few different options, as an interested party, to register my displeasure, including writing my own answer. Being able to write your own answer is key: if your answer is good enough, it’ll rise above the junk answers and everyone will be better off for it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; There is no such action for question lists. I can’t say “these questions suck, show me this question I just thought up instead”: that’d be silly. So, it’s imperative the question list have a high signal-to-noise ratio, and removing the penalty for those users who do take the time to read a question and later find it to be useless so they can down-vote is conducive to that. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Fundamentally, answers can be filtered in ways that questions cannot. While there is a tension between having “enough” questions and a bunch of amazing, highly skilled answerers twiddling their thumbs waiting around for something to do, in the long run we’d much rather err on the side of having _interesting_ and _on-topic_ questions for these folks to sink their teeth into.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&amp;A system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**. If this means aggressively downvoting or closing unworthy and uninteresting questions, so be it. Without a community of people willing to _answer_ questions, it really doesn’t matter if there are questions at all, does it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;_if trial run results turn out negative_ - (not incidentally,) above guidance also provides a criteria on how to judge trial run results: **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. As an **answerer** like one of mentioned above (5+ K rep on answers), I am not particularly happy about current questions quality, which I think is clearly indicated by 5+ K downvotes I cast. One thing I find particularly frustrating is that sometimes, after downvoting bad questions, I find myself out of votes that I would use to upvote good ones - this happens frequently enough to make me feel that better prevention of low quality questions is needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Registration requirement is turned on:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/LJAQh.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!--&#xD;&#xA;  tested by attempt to ask a question when not logged in&#xD;&#xA;  for comparison, made similar attempt at Workplace which did not require log in to ask&#xD;&#xA;--&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LJAQh.png &quot;'You must log in to ask a question'&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26952" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1372" RevisionGUID="cdefb4f2-26cf-4146-a907-75678220d1ea" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="That's [The Herd Instinct][1]. I talk about this phenomenom in another (controversed) [meta post][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Voting for already highly voted answers feel &quot;safe&quot;. Therefore, consciously or unconsciously you do it. On rare occasion, you do the inverse, by rebellion ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kate mention the impact of ordering which is real and IMHO is an unfair advantage for those who answer the question first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've observed that phenomenum many time. It is unlikely that better answers that come later get more vote than the inferior (and first) one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why timezone also affect how much reputation you can get from your answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fICjq822SwQ&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77416/proposal-for-amendments-to-the-election-primary" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26953" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6278" RevisionGUID="8f9be28c-f988-4a64-99e6-0259de534016" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="First and foremost, [Stack Exchange is not a forum][1].  There's a really good blog post on this that I can't find right now.  The tl;dr version is that forums have a terrible signal to noise ratio.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange exists [to build a library of high-quality questions and answers][2].  Oddly enough, solving any one user's problem isn't as high a priority as one might expect.  The priority is to collect general / reusable questions and answers that benefit hundreds or thousands of people who have the same issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most (all?) SE sites have [chat][3].  I haven't used it much, but if you need to have a conversation, that's the place to do it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community Wiki [isn't always the right answer][4].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/92107/218240&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/333/64132" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26954" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1381" RevisionGUID="daf734d7-de7c-440f-b465-16a578601b3e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been brought up [many times][1] on Meta.StackOverflow and rejected. The posts are now closed as duplicates tracing back to [this question](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3230/so-badge-progress-report).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=progress%20badges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26955" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1384" RevisionGUID="e9b7110b-4312-497b-a807-7571ddb33f6a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Question upvotes used to award 10 points. That was changed last year. From [this blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/03/important-reputation-rule-changes/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question upvotes will now grant only +5 rep instead of +10.* There is no change to answer upvotes. This will apply retroactively to all &gt;users.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - While we value good questions (and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking a great question is absolutely&#xD;&#xA;&gt; an art), we want to explicitly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; encourage people to provide the best&#xD;&#xA;&gt; possible answers. Without people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interested in providing good answers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the questions are moot. We know that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers have more intrinsic value than&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions, and the reputation balance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should reflect that. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asker already enjoys a substantial&#xD;&#xA;&gt; benefit beyond reputation gain from&#xD;&#xA;&gt; upvotes on their question — namely,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they get great answers to their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question! Thus, the asker shouldn’t&#xD;&#xA;&gt; need as much reputation gain. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - There&#xD;&#xA;&gt; are a few users who ask hundreds,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; sometimes even thousands of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Over time, these users generate a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; fairly sizable reputation entirely&#xD;&#xA;&gt; through the tiny trickle of upvotes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gained by these questions. In a sense,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to discourage question asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a little bit, and make sure that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; people who ask questions are doing it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for the right reasons and not to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; generate reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also this [discussion post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/42769/should-the-weight-of-question-upvotes-be-reduced) on Meta.SO." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26956" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3984" RevisionGUID="b3d25bc0-853d-443b-98be-c3a9350ab150" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="##The general policy on deletions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Why are some questions or answers removed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are extremely off topic, or of very low quality, may be removed at the discretion of the community and moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Over time, closed questions that are not useful as signpoints to other questions may also be removed, as well as questions which have no significant activity over a very long period after being asked. For additional guidance, see How to Ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - commentary on the question or other answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - asking another, different question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - “thanks!” or “me too!” responses&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - exact duplicates of other answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - barely more than a link to an external site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - not even a partial answer to the actual question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you wish to improve an existing answer, click edit. For additional guidance, see How to Answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's the policy, I'm sure you are aware of it, I'm only including it for completeness. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Questions with historical significance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a [historical lock](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for) that has been introduced (fairly recently) as a counter measure to link rot: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What is the purpose of a Historical Lock?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A historical lock preserves older content that was very popular when it was originally posted, but is now off-topic or otherwise out of scope for the site it is posted on. Historically locking a post ends the debate over whether a question should be kept on the site or deleted, and is often the final state of a question that has been deleted and undeleted more than once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **How are questions affected by historical locking?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In addition to the post notice being prominently displayed, posts which are historically locked are &quot;frozen in time;&quot; they cannot be voted on, answered, edited or commented. Historically-locked questions are omitted from normal question lists (those on the home page, /questions, and the various per-tag lists), but can still be found by searching for words in the post or title (via either site-search or Google, etc). The visual appearance of the entire post is altered by removal of the voting arrows from the question and all answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that historical locked questions on meta sites are not hidden in this manner, though their answers are still frozen in the same fashion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions can be historically locked when:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is contentious; i.e. it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When is it not appropriate to historically-lock a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should not be historically locked if they:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Are being actively maintained, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Have little or no redeeming value.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - A good rule of thumb: If the question does not minimally meet Jeff Atwood's 3rd rule in the &quot;[We Hate Fun Here](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/)&quot; blog post, it's probably not a good candidate for historical locking. The third rule is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Does this question teach me anything that could make me better at my job? Can I learn something from it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I request a historical lock on a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Flag the question for moderator attention, with the &quot;custom description&quot; option. In the flag description, explain why you think the post should be historically locked. A moderator will evaluate the question using the criteria outlined above, and will either lock the question, or decline your flag with an explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Alternatively, if you want to try and gain more community support for the question, or contest the moderator decision, you can post a question here on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you are currently under 10K, your only option to request a historical lock is to post a question about it on Meta. I would advice you to use a far more appropriate tone that in this question, and: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Clearly explain why you think the question has redeeming value,&#xD;&#xA;- Politely request from the community to review it and decide whether it should be historically locked or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not _every_ deleted question qualifies for the historical lock, please do _not_ waste everyone's time by bringing up questions on Meta that clearly don't qualify. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Clarification:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The historical lock is only meant for _deleted_ questions (or questions that are about to be deleted), locking closed questions prevents them from being edited and voted on. Furthermore the community cannot reverse a lock, while it can (and often does) reverse a closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Changing the policy &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears you disagree with it. Fair enough. Change it. Stop complaining about it, and change it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I'd support any **constructive** attempt to solve the problem, however I must point out that there have been tons of discussions on Stack Overflow about deletions, and although the &quot;link rot&quot; problem is true for popular Stack Overflow questions it's almost completely irrelevant for lower traffic sites like Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand that clicking on a link, only to find a 404 page stinks, but should also understand that keeping crap around stinks more. And although there might be some gems amongst our deleted questions, most of them are plain crap. This is _not_ Stack Overflow, if you are interested in changing Stack Overflow's or the network's policy, please post your question on [Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meta Programmers is a place were we discuss Programmers specific issues, and from a Programmers perspective **the deleted popular questions that were linked all over the place were _not_ ours to begin with**. Unfortunately tons and tons of crap were migrated here from Stack Overflow in the early days of the site. Most of these questions were closed (at some point), which send them back to Stack Overflow. What was deleted here was their (locked) rejected migration stubs. What was linked all over the place was their Stack Overflow URL, and not (so much) their Programmers one. If you want to make a case for them, please do it on Stack Overflow, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally speaking, closed but popular questions are _not_ being deleted on Programmers, at least not systematically. I've deleted more posts than all my fellow moderators _combined_, if popular questions were being deleted, trust me, I'd know it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Are we making the internet better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, let's what our most voted deleted questions are: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. What's your favorite “programmer ignorance” pet peeve? (+410),&#xD;&#xA;1. What's your most controversial programming opinion? (+391),&#xD;&#xA;1. What real life bad habits has programming given you? (+368),&#xD;&#xA;1. As a programmer what single discovery has given you the greatest boost in productivity? (+315),&#xD;&#xA;1. How to hide Thinking at Work so that the Non-Programmers don't suspect Slacking? (+257)&#xD;&#xA;1. What are the best RSS feeds for programmers/developers? (238)&#xD;&#xA;1. Best Java book you have read so far (+211)&#xD;&#xA;1. How did you get your first programming job? (+140) &#xD;&#xA;1. Does the D programming language have a future? (+138)&#xD;&#xA;1. What's wrong with cplusplus.com? (+128)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;Best Java book you have read so far&quot; one is the one (from the list) with the most views, around 33K. And zero answers. Yeap, zero. It's a question that got all of its answers on Stack Overflow, and 99% of it's activity, including views, there. Gone. Again, if you want to make a case for it, go to Meta Stack Overflow please, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly _don't_ know if we are making the internet better. However having (partially) reviewed some of the above questions, I don't see any indication that we are making the internet worse by deleting them. _If_ they were originally asked on Programmers and were part of our community's history, we would have a whole different discussion, but right now all I can say about them and their eventual fate is: **meh**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#The blog post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was the worst possible example you could bring forth: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The question was deleted long time ago,&#xD;&#xA;1. I could only find five links to the Programmers version of it,&#xD;&#xA;1. The blog post _clearly indicated_ that it would lead to a 404 for most people,&#xD;&#xA;1. The URL was `nofollow`, so there wasn't an issue with indexing,&#xD;&#xA;1. The only reason the URL was included was for our 10K users to be able to review it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, the completely inappropriate tone you chose for your question made me re-think the whole effort to salvege **old and long forgotten** deleted questions by converting them to blog posts. Although I do not have any expectations for appreciation for my efforts to give back to the community, I am not a moron and will _not_ freely volunteer my time to promote the community through an activity that has absolutely nothing to do with my diamond status when this is what I get for it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At some point you got to say enough is enough. I've removed the url from the blog post, so users who would deliberatily click on a link that says &quot;hey, this is deleted&quot; won't have a bad experience. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The Trash Stack Exchange solution (and its many variants)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been proposed countless times, and every time it has been denied by Stack Exchange. Personally I find it a good enough solution, but Stack Exchange doesn't seem to care enough for hosting content that has been deemed unsuitable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Stargazer712's proposal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stargazer712 made what I must admit is an [interesting suggestion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3976/25936) (carefully hidden under tons of borderline insulting crap). However it's based on a misunderstanding of the scale of the effort to salvage questions by converting them to blog posts. We are certainly not talking about converting _every_ deleted question to a blog post, I have found 5 so far that I'd like to salvage, plus another one from Stack Overflow and _no one_ else has shown any interest in this. So, for all intents and purposes when we are talking about the blog as a way to salvage questions, we are talking about a total of six questions. That's it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that 2 days after you posted this you still haven't brought forth any other evidence of systematic deletion of popular content with at least some redeeming value on Programmers, I'm sorry but I'll have to dismiss this as a non issue. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, we had numerous organized clean up efforts in the past that included deletions. I'm honestly hoping those are _not_ the deletions you have in mind, as all the organized clean up efforts were discussed thoroughly on Meta before they began, and only began when it was obvious that the community supported them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you do update your question, please either ping me in chat or post a comment here so I can review your updates. Apologies for the tone in my earlier answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26957" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6335" RevisionGUID="cd21c7b3-3552-4eb4-967f-cabb2f7d6a60" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is by design:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##How does a post become a Community Wiki post?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are several ways a question or answer can enter community wiki mode, and most of &gt;these ways will occur automatically based on the rules of the system.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Posts enter community wiki mode when one of the following happens:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The body of the post has been edited&lt;sup&gt;&amp;dagger;&lt;/sup&gt; by at least five (**5**) &gt;different users.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The post has been edited&lt;sup&gt;&amp;dagger;&lt;/sup&gt; ten (**10**) times by the original owner.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The **answer**'s author checks the *community wiki* checkbox when composing the answer. Note that this checkbox isn't available to new&#xD;&#xA;&gt; users. The checkbox also is not available if the question is already a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Community Wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Since [October 2010](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/67582/152859), there is no *community wiki* checkbox when asking a question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The **answer** is edited by its original author, who when doing so opts to check the *community wiki*.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * An answer posted to a Community Wiki question will also be Community Wiki. Note that when a question is made CW after answers have already&#xD;&#xA;&gt; been posted, all existing answers are automatically converted to CW&#xD;&#xA;&gt; too. Older questions did not do this, so it is possible to have a CW&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question with non-CW answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The question generates more than **30** answers (**15** on Super User and Programmers, **60** on Code Golf). In this case, the question and all answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; will enter community mode, as will any future answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * A moderator has reason to believe that the **question** serves better in community wiki mode - if you believe your question [should&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; converted](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to a Community Wiki, you may [flag it for moderator&#xD;&#xA;&gt; attention](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/392/should-the-community-wiki-police-be-shut-down/7183#7183).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; *&lt;sup&gt;&amp;dagger;&lt;/sup&gt; As far as what constitutes an &quot;edit&quot; for community wiki, only edits to the actual body of the post will count&#xD;&#xA;&gt; towards automatic community wiki. Edits to the title and tags, as well&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as rollbacks, do not contribute to automatic wikification.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ([source][2])*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;i&gt;* note that the rules outlined above are based on observations; the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; actual behavior of SO is subject to change without notice, and may&#xD;&#xA;&gt; well have done so since this was last updated...&lt;/i&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Source https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to *why* it's there - here's my take:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see it as a way to encourage you to make a few, substantial edits to the post to improve it and then leave it alone rather than continually tweaking the post with a few characters at a time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also there to discourage you making trivial edits just to bump the question back onto the homepage in order to try to get more votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think your edits are useful and you're only editing to improve the post without thought for the reputation you might earn from repeated exposure of the question then flag the post for moderator attention using the &quot;other&quot; option and we'll consider the request to &quot;unwiki&quot; the post." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26958" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1492" RevisionGUID="ac25605e-cd5a-453a-b575-66a7ff31ee82" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="These tags were actively being deleted as they add no value. I would of though this one wants deleting too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/60318/cant-keep-a-good-tag-down&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26959" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4004" RevisionGUID="b7f4acfc-c9be-4d7c-83f5-bbf36dbed9bc" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question doesn't really qualify for the [historical lock][1] (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions can be historically locked when:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **The post is contentious; i.e. it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question remains closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - There is a risk of it being deleted at some later point. We rarely delete highly upvoted questions without very good reason, however I can't promise that three 10K+ users or a fellow moderator won't vote to delete it.&#xD;&#xA; - It and its answers are still editable and can be voted on (including re-open votes for the question)&#xD;&#xA; - It appears in site searches.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question gets a historical lock:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It will be frozen as is, no more edits or (any kind of) votes.&#xD;&#xA; - It won't appear in site searches, and will only be accessible via its url. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The historical lock is more intended for questions that are already deleted or, for whatever reason, are very close to being deleted. For example if we where doing an organized cleanup, similar to [meta-tag:stci] and we were targeting [tag:project-management] questions, then yes, it would make sense to lock it. But right now the question isn't really on a path to deletion, or if you prefer that path is extremely long, it already survived [meta-tag:stci] (check [revision 5][2]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't mind locking it, the whole process is just a click of a button really, but given that one of its answers was edited earlier today, and the question has a pending re-open vote, it seems that its current state is preferable. Is there a very specific reason we should froze it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/43409/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26960" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6397" RevisionGUID="76a17b0e-8d90-4d05-8c70-8a2f113cb7ae" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There used to be a link to Meta in the navigation bar, but it was removed recently. Now, you'll have to expand the StackExchange dropdown to move between Meta and main: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not immediately obvious where the links are, but once you find them I think. it's pretty easy to switch between the sites. Note that the link to site you are currently on (in my case Meta) is bolded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign][2] (on MSO)&#xD;&#xA;- [A New Top Bar for Stack Exchange][3] (on blog.SO)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZlJ5S.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/198613/feedback-request-new-top-bar-and-multicollider-redesign&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/12/a-new-top-bar-for-stack-exchange/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26961" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4039" RevisionGUID="ac1583bb-471a-422a-ab4b-debeac4d0a8c" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Let's start with the feature request. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![mod link on review answers][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![mod link on review questions][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When reviewing answers we have two mod links, when reviewing questions we only have the one. Having the mod link under the post feels a bit more natural, as that's where it normally is. Extremely insignificant feature request, I know, but coupled with the bug it's a bit more serious. Let's see what happens when you click the sidebar mod link:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![mod link bug][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, that's not right ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, when doing anything from the mod menu (the one that works), you're redirected to the post's page instead of the post's review page. Not sure if this is a bug or a feature request, but it would be nice if we were redirected back where we came from, to continue reviewing. And it would be _extra_ nice if mod actions counted as review actions, mods love [badges][4] too!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Psij.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/4XYaQ.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/J1IaD.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/147912/new-community-review-badges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26962" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1531" RevisionGUID="081ee886-7e32-4346-8ab9-9f6b9f50e9a6" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There was an [issue or two](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/84799/149432) with case sensitivity in searches that was fixed. Searching for `f#` (lowercase) [now works](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=f%23)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26963" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6401" RevisionGUID="5d1e02bd-75d1-40d3-b643-6eeca5e7c16b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I removed it as being [overly specific][1] and unlikely to come up in searches of the site. I try not to flood the front page with edits which is why I did not remove it entirely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Chess analysis as a programming thing is more algorithm theory than software engineering and thus unlikely to come up much as a tag. It's certainly a valid domain and very interesting as a field of research but we have both Game Dev and CS Stack Exchanges where it would find a wider audience. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Game Dev has 6 questions with the tag, only 4 have a positive scores. CS has questions on Chess algorithms and such but lacks the tag. It's a &quot;[Do Not Use][2]&quot; tag on Stack Overflow. I'm inclined to agree with their perspective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/18878/how-do-i-correctly-tag-my-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/tags/chess/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26964" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4040" RevisionGUID="bb9208de-9241-4bd4-a99f-cc49baa2e90b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've just discovered [review][1] and got [two Custodian badges][2] for it, sweet! But I never got a notification for them, as I did for every other badge, and only discovered them when I noticed my bronze badge count incrementing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was also [reported yesterday on Meta StackOverflow][4], and it seems a bit random as [some people did get notifications][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/120/custodian?userid=51770&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/tJxNC.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/147918/didnt-get-notifications-for-custodian-badge&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/147922/small-typo-in-the-notification-for-new-community-review-badges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26965" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6432" RevisionGUID="31b0e2a9-58f3-440e-b0a3-3935d778d198" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The questions are picked automatically from questions in the past time period (I think its 1 month and at least some minimum number of days) that have 5 or more upvotes (but less than 15), no downvotes, no close votes, some minimum number of views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, this does cause problems with soft questions that have a number of upvotes on them that are borderline.  This is a known 'issue', but realize that audits are there to serve two purposes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Catch roboreviewers who say *everything* is a certain way&#xD;&#xA;* Help people reconsider what they chose and why to help guide reviews to match the community consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I understand it, the second bullet point is a distant second to the first one and so the borderline cases really aren't as big of an issue as people who fail the review audit consider them to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From MSO: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How do we select audits for Reopen review?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/168381/213963)&#xD;&#xA;* [Failed a Reopen Question audit — sure looks like “Not a real question” to me](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/168372/213963)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26966" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4121" RevisionGUID="c7aac586-62ba-4ce7-ad8c-06d4d2b58500" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Ryathal mentioned][1] the ill fated What Stack Overflow is Not&lt;sup&gt; [[MSO 10K+ link][2]]&lt;/sup&gt; post, and I agree that the top voted answer applies there, so I've decided to adapt it (well, just replaced Stack Overflow with Programmers, really).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Programmers community is very forthcoming with their help, [provided you have done a few things to help yourself][3]. Have you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Put some effort into researching the problem,&#xD;&#xA;- Attempted to write some code yourself&#xD;&#xA;- Attempted to debug your code when it has failed, and&#xD;&#xA;- Some basic, fundamental knowledge of your tools?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Programmers community will not write a complete solution for you, develop a complete walk through of a problem, or do your background research for you, unless your question is specific and focused on a reasonably small scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4117/whats-wrong-with-this-question#comment11671_4119&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128548/what-stack-overflow-is-not&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26967" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1577" RevisionGUID="53c3d96d-07e3-41c2-9892-257d98293e6b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've had a question migrated here but I don't think its a good fit for programmers. If I understand the nature of the questions you get.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/76396/how-can-you-make-a-cluster-run-a-task-only-once&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should this have been migrated here? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit 1**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tried asking this on meta.stackoverflow.com but to no real avail. &#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/91349/is-this-question-a-good-match-for-programmers-stackexchange-com-site&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26968" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6494" RevisionGUID="3384bc5d-a91f-4e30-887b-bfa368391548" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You weren't banned. Your account has an automatic block for asking new questions due to your other questions being down voted, closed, and/or deleted. You should read [this post on Meta Stack Overflow][1] to learn more about the block and how to overcome it. At this time, you can still post answers, and posting high quality answers is one method to overcome the block. Another is to edit your posts that have been closed to improve them and get them reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26969" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6526" RevisionGUID="1339d60f-6ce7-4eb9-98a7-bd4bb2012dbc" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It is technically feasible, when adjustment involves data that is available at the moment when hotness score is calculated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the adjustment involves only `AnswerCount`, it's easy to implement, taking into account that [current formula](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/61343/165773 &quot;explained here&quot;) uses it anyway:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;    (MIN(AnswerCount, 10) * QScore) / 5 + AnswerScore&#xD;&#xA;    -------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;             MAX(QAgeInHours + 1, 6) ^ 1.4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an example, adjustment to lower part of the formula (age factor) can look like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    (AnswerCount &lt; 5 ? MAX(QAgeInHours + 1, 6)&#xD;&#xA;        : AnswerCount &lt; 10 ? (QAgeInHours + 3)&#xD;&#xA;        :  ? (QAgeInHours + 5)) ^ 1.4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feature request based on above submitted at MSO: [Make hot questions with multiple answers age away faster on smaller / subjective-ish sites](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/224750/165773).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26970" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5186" RevisionGUID="36d805c8-7897-41d5-b028-02a8e8a930ad" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Please note that there is now an official policy against migrating questions older than 60 days to another site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/151890/disable-migration-for-questions-older-than-60-days&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is off topic for us then it should be closed. However, note that QA questions aren't completely off topic for us, so there's no need to do anything with these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question has no answers (or no upvoted answers) then I would be willing to consider migration, but it would have to be with the agreement of the moderators on QA Stack Exchange." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26971" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1612" RevisionGUID="dd832d94-4983-4867-8360-2764a572eb73" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="When a question is closed as being *off-topic* or *not a real question*, the question is automatically down-voted. This was instituted network-wide after some discussion [a couple of months ago](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/84978/149432).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems like this behavior should extend to *not constructive*, which is arguably worse than an off-topic question, at least on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there any reasons why it wouldn't or shouldn't?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26972" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6531" RevisionGUID="0a84d262-e8c2-4b07-a812-0b207b04c004" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;5\. in a pinch you can escape the point `.` to preserve the numbering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Markdown source: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;5\. in a pinch you can escape the point `.` to preserve the numbering&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;5. Now [you don't need to escape the point anymore](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/239121 &quot;as announced here&quot;) to start a numbered list at an arbitrary number.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Markdown source: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;5. Now [you don't need to escape the point anymore](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/239121 &quot;as announced here&quot;) to start a numbered list at an arbitrary number.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26973" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1742" RevisionGUID="89ded80a-4f3f-476d-925d-bccef0798077" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This [has been declined](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/32277/add-a-cancel-button-when-editing-an-answer/32283#32283) in the past on our sister meta-site, [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Adding a &quot;cancel&quot; button means there's some percent chance people will accidentally click on it and lose their changes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's another item on the page that [Makes You Think](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000377.html).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Compare with the back button, and I can't see any reason to make this change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would agree with that: the back button accomplishes the same thing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26975" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5247" RevisionGUID="439bcb23-f3c7-449d-b076-c30b68ea0f8e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Programmers.SE and StackOverflow have two completely different site scopes - which is why Programmers exists. There are a number of meta discussions on both here and meta.SO which discuss the difference between SO and P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Introducing Programmers.StackExchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In a nutshell, **Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor** working through code issues. **Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard** working through higher level conceptual programming issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have **actual source code in the questions or answers**. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/82988/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68384/whats-the-difference-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-se&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In regards to [your question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13370531/looking-for-a-short-explanation-of-fuzzy-logic) that was downvoted on SO, the comments on there advise you that Programmers is probably a better place to ask the question - which I agree with and [notice you have done](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/175753/looking-for-a-short-explanation-of-fuzzy-logic) and received some answers on your question.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26976" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1765" RevisionGUID="bdcc5418-62e5-49ae-9cc5-a9cab9aa2e2a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think it'd be nice to have an &quot;invite to chat&quot; link in a user profile similar to the ones already in the chat profiles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, this has been brought up on [Meta.SO](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/70385/add-invite-user-to-chat-function-on-main-site) before and while it wasn't outright [meta-tag:status-declined], it received a lukewarm response at best." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26977" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6588" RevisionGUID="75f1160e-edd0-4e02-a02d-081b16ff5835" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I guess I should have searched all of the meta sites...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It turns out that there is a formula used to increase the flag quantity based on activity. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Recent changes to flagging and limits][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You start with 10 flags per day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Based on your reputation and flagging history, you can end up with as many as 100 per day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Currently, that means you get an extra flag per day for every 2000 reputation points or 10 net helpful flags (helpful-unhelpful).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/185888/on-the-recent-changes-to-flagging-and-limits" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26978" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1838" RevisionGUID="88be3af8-7e3d-4b62-a6ea-287955d4932e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As many, I had a question migrated from Stack Overflow to Programmers.SE. I actually liked the fact it was migrated, as I initially also had the gut feeling it was more appropriate on Programmers.SE than Stack Overflow, but I couldn't find anything backing up this feeling in either Programmers.SE or Stack Overflow FAQ. On the contrary, I could find indication that the question was a better fit for Stack Overflow on their FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  if your question generally covers matters that are unique to the programming profession then you’re in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I [asked][1] clarifications on why the question was migrated a user came up with a dead easy explanation that I am proposing to include in both Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE FAQs:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If it's a question about *programming* belongs on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA; - If it's a question about *programmers* belongs on Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/96845/why-was-my-question-migrated" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26979" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5276" RevisionGUID="7f4da647-59a9-46ea-93e3-a44c4c409328" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Manishearth's answer is (basically) the short version. Our core development team is ~7 people strong, and our design team is *literally* a single person. There's *lots* of projects, network-wide, that vie equally for their attention. Eight people handle *all* user feature requests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The longer answer is a bit more complicated. Since I'm talking to people involved in the SDLC, I'm a little astonished that you're not all a bit more sympathetic. After all, the network is 90+ sites, and we serve double-digit millions of users, and getting the project *right* from step one takes time and person-power we don't really have right now. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bugs and errors you point out, while important, aren't going to get top priority because there are other problems that affect the *entire* network that may require immediate attention (e.g. a site blackout) or are concentrating developer resources right now (e.g. the `/review` queue, or our localization efforts). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What explains such passiveness? Is it because Joel Spolsky and his team lost interest in Programmers.SE, like he repeatedly explains in his podcasts?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, let me clear about something: there is more to the Stack Exchange team than Joel or the dev team. For one, there's the team I'm on: your (hopefully beloved) [Community Managers](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/99338/who-are-the-community-managers-and-what-do-they-do). And, in fact, we even [hired on one of your moderators](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2875/41785) based on her work here. So, no, the *company* doesn't hate Programmers. Denying your community's complicated history would be foolish and short-sighted, and a great number of really *excellent* lessons were learned over the course of the last two years. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;passiveness&quot; you're referring to is entirely perceived; it's a symptom of the real issue, which is that our development team is overextended. Their time is an extremely precious, scarce resource. Not to put too fine a point on it: they're only human. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Who is (or is there somebody) in charge of implementing new features and fixing bugs on Programmers.SE?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Design bugs are usually handled by our always-wonderful, one-man design team of [Jin Yang](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1685/jin). Jin is literally *one single person* handling *all site design issues* across the network. Jin *also* does the design for our marketing initiatives, some of our advertising, helps us make fliers and small promo items, [puts together top user swag](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1669/41785) and a whole host of things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is there a better place than Meta to ask for new features and to report bugs?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No. Meta is exactly the correct place for you to be reporting these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look, I'm sympathetic. I really, really am. I've been [working on making features happen](https://boardgames.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/867/we-should-implement-magic-the-gathering-pop-ups-on-hover#comment1635_867) on some of our other sites for months now. The toughest is knowing that [doing a fun, exciting event](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5240/do-we-want-hats) would basically &quot;cost&quot; us a feature for a site. All decisions regarding dev allocations are made with great care and after a *lot* of deliberation. We don't just assign development time to things willy-nilly because ***we cannot do so***. It's *literally* a thing we can't do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're dissatisfied with our ability to meet our users' needs (and it does sound like you are) then you're in luck. Right now, [**we're hiring for a bunch of positions**](http://stackexchange.com/about/hiring), including developers. If you know someone who could/should be working for us, who loves our sites (yes, even Programmers!) and is a talented developer who is looking for a new challenge, ***tell them to apply!***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, for the mean time, I can only advise you sit tight and be patient. It's all on The List&lt;sup&gt;TM&lt;/sup&gt; and I'm confident we'll get to it. It just might take some time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26980" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1890" RevisionGUID="c63cb84a-d426-49d1-a95b-10be3fae095a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89839/how-do-i-determine-the-runtime-of-a-double-recursive-function) is considered on-topic on Programmers.SE, and I don't understand why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is a question about computer science, not a question about programming or programmers. It's something a good programmer should know, but it's not programming (in the same way, using a computer is definitely required of a programmer, yet computer usage isn't programming). It's a subject where an expert would be a computer scientist, not a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, it's an objective question. The run time of a function is a perfectly well-defined notion (at least in a given context, and the choice of context isn't relevant here). There may be more than one way to compute it, it would still be the same thing being computed — this isn't about making a design choice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, going by the [site FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) as well as the overall tone and audience of the site, this question doesn't belong here. I [don't think there's currently a site in the Stack Exchange network that's really appropriate for it](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80023/where-on-se-to-discuss-computer-science)¹, but the closest, and [officially-sanctioned](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80023/where-on-se-to-discuss-computer-science/80058#80058), is [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why, then, is this question not migrated to Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;¹ &lt;sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Reminder: [CSTheory](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/) is about *research-level* computer science only.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26981" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="939db9e0-b46d-4e3c-9874-284dc5275f8f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is [the original Help Center][1] page, with some minor changes.  It turns out that most of the Off-Topic subjects are already covered here, so I just added a couple of new ones to cover the missing cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA; - a product or service recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Additional updates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Removed &quot;Freelancing and Business Concerns&quot; from the on-topic list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Removed &quot;software engineering&quot; in favor of more specific topics, many of which were already included.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Clarified &quot;Programming Tools.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  Added &quot;Legal Assistance&quot; to &quot;not about.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. Changed &quot;resume help&quot; to &quot;job hunting&quot; at the request of The Workplace mods to prevent people with resume critique questions from thinking they are on-topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. Shortened the subjective questions portion, since it's better addressed on the dont-ask page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;software requirements&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software architecture and design&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies and processes&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software engineering management&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;quality assurance and testing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software licensing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h3&gt;and it is not about...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead)&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead)&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what project you should do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; next&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what book you should read next&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;where to find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a software library, tool or other resource&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a  product&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or service recommendation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&quot;&gt;career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice&lt;/a&gt;, salary, or compensation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;personal lifestyle,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including relationships, and non-programming activities&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;legal assistance&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot; alt=&quot;proper scope for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. &lt;strong&gt;Please keep it professional&lt;/strong&gt;. If this is a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question you'd be uncomfortable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see the Help Center page about &lt;a href=&quot;/help/dont-ask&quot;&gt;what not to ask&lt;/a&gt; as well as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot;&gt;Good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; blog posts for details and examples&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;/search&quot;&gt;look around&lt;/a&gt; to see if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been asked before. It’s also OK to &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;/helpcenter/self-answer&quot;&gt;ask and answer your own&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange, it may be on topic for &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;another Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;commit to&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&quot;&gt;propose&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a new site at &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Area51&lt;/a&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically&#xD;&#xA;&gt; created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26982" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5302" RevisionGUID="b322ffd4-9d95-4964-8453-0243375aa85c" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The ban is automatic, there's little (if anything) we can do to help, you should (carefully) read and follow the advice given in [What can I do when getting “Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that deleted questions _do_ factor in the post ban, and you have three of them ([10K+](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;what's this&quot;) links): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Finding no. of search results in google using programming](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162412/finding-no-of-search-results-in-google-using-programming) (-2)&#xD;&#xA;- [Key concerns when developing online forums](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155995/key-concerns-when-developing-online-forums) (-2)&#xD;&#xA;- [Programming knowledge and Architecture knowledge for great products](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155993/programming-knowledge-and-architecture-knowledge-for-great-products) (self-deleted a minute after it was posted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first one is the one that _probably_ triggered the ban, as it's your most recent question. I can't see any way of improving any of the three, unfortunately, and undeleting them might get you more downvotes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should concentrate on giving _great_ answers to others' questions, although the exact algorithm of the question ban is kept secret, great answers will certainly help. But please don't just rush to post answers, only answer questions that are well within your expertise and you can provide very thorough and well researched answers to. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26984" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5401" RevisionGUID="fe71e728-f624-492b-b09b-bb137d283627" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="When I sense a good question buried within a vague wording (and your [felt like that](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/180824/1) to me), I for one try to get it closed as soon as possible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is, vague wording is a road to closure anyway but while open, it can attract irrelevant answers which will make it difficult ([as explained here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773)) to further edit the question into the shape allowing to repel &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; garbage answers and reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you can see, fast closure here serves the primary need to make reopening easier and protect the poorly worded good question from getting bad answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _repel_ garbage answers - one sure can not 100% protect a question from getting garbage answers. But one can at least try to phrase the question so that one can come to Meta, say _&quot;Here's the question, here's the answer, I don't feel like the answer is OK&quot;_ and have a good chance of garbage being downvoted by active community members who happen to read this complaint." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26985" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1976" RevisionGUID="8b0d5973-0570-4ab3-9dc3-925fe1756451" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It depends on what you think Programmers.SE is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's a site for [expert programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#questions), then answers had better be backed up by references. Even for the kind of subjective questions that make up the meat of the site, some kind of justification should be provided — real experts don't just say “yes” or “no”, they can explain why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If Programmers.SE is [Stack Overflow's toilet bowl](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl), then answers aren't for reading, you don't know where they've been (or rather you do!), so who cares.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26986" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5430" RevisionGUID="5d025e5f-ae20-4b8d-9023-e3227d739785" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Aarthi is [looking for feedback regarding the Winter Bash 2012][1] over on Meta Stack Overflow. If you have any comments, complaints, suggestions, or anything else, I'd recommend posting it over there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/161188/what-do-you-think-of-winter-bash" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26987" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6616" RevisionGUID="982fc722-c49d-4fcb-a73a-401ba1434031" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="With [Let's get rid of the 10K flag queue](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/226092/lets-get-rid-of-the-10k-flag-queue) (MSE), the ability for 10k users to see flags (particularly not an answer and very low quality) is gone.  This means that the little blue box for notifying a 10k user of a not an answer or low quality flag is gone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What this means is that the only way for 20k users to be notified of discovered bad answers is through the low quality review queue ( http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/stats ).  Note that a single 'looks good' or 'edit' can kick a question out of the low quality review queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask that people not use trivial edits on bad answers to remove it from the queue.  If an answer is in there and you fix an 'i' to an 'I' it is removed from the queue and drastically reduced in visibility - but it still isn't a better answer.  Such changes mean it is *more* likely to get deleted by a moderator rather than a 20k user and this complicates the workflow for a user to edit and undelete the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a 10k user one has the [ability to see the history of *everyone's* activity in a queue](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/184309/165773 &quot;feature announcement at MSE&quot;) and the action took:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;[![https://i.stack.imgur.com/T6rhA.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;20k users, please use this ability to double check edit and looks good reviews that have been booted from the queue to see if a delete vote is necessary on them anyways.  Also, please look at the [10k tools deletes page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=Delete&amp;daterange=last7days) to see if there are delete votes on existing answers that need to be handled.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators (and I dislike telling moderators how to do their job - but I've done so in the past&lt;!-- and will likely do so in the future, until you tell me how to do your job --&gt;), if booting from a queue removes *your* visibility into these flags... well, you've got everything from have a chat with the user to review bans in your utility belt.  With the 10k flag handling gone we (20k users) have less visibility into to handling the answer deletes and its likely you'll need to do more if nothing else changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/T6rhA.png &quot;screen shot: LQ queue history as shown to 10k users&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/history" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26988" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5438" RevisionGUID="bccf01af-5480-4de1-8c96-264f2bf48c5b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There exists a grace period for 5 minutes after the first submit that rolls all edits in that time into the original post so they don't count so you can make those quick minor edits. Otherwise start taking advantage of the instant preview it works great and it seems pretty crazy that you prefer more clicks to format your answer. Also please note that posting a partially complete answer and rapidly editing more and more info is somewhat discouraged behavior as it creates the [fastest gun in the west][1] problem. As for a Question it's in your best interest to post as good of a question as possible the first time, because once its posted people will start voting on it and you could wind up have a bunch of down-votes or close votes that could have been avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason the threshold exists is to prevent people from continually editing their answers/questions which [bumps](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info &quot;what's this&quot;) them to the top of the page for more rep from upvotes, 10 was decided as a fair number to allow people to benefit from providing meaningful updates and prevent bad people from benefiting too much. Moderators also have the ability to remove CW status, but this is rarely done and generally requires an [exceptional answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3527/31260 &quot;example request for an exceptional answer&quot;) that a user has obviously put forth a lot of effort to maintain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/9731/203115" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26989" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1991" RevisionGUID="34259500-3f0d-4986-bbab-b1fa746eb5da" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="No, profanity is not allowed in questions or answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22232/are-expletives-allowed-on-se-sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to the professionalism issue, there's also the matter of being blocked by corporate proxies based on inappropriate language." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26990" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6623" RevisionGUID="af216a48-d96e-4d94-94e4-1157a0af3606" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="First off: they are not fully lost. Users with more than 10k rep will be able to see the question if they have the link to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second deleting it avoids the [&quot;broken window&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info) effect. Or in other words because low quality crud remains on the site, it causes users to think that posting low quality crud is acceptable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26991" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1997" RevisionGUID="618e1c01-1ab0-4de2-90d0-ad75e286dce5" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been requested many times on Meta Stack Overflow and always declined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is [the canonical question](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3615/should-downvoting-be-allowed-on-comments).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your problem - perhaps you need to consider what you type in your comment reply to try to avoid starting a flame war.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26992" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5445" RevisionGUID="5a9d3a1c-f168-4f3c-b2cb-6c11789c9060" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You have up-voted 124 deleted posts. Such votes do show up in your totals, [and also count toward various badges](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/117846/votes-cast-should-include-votes-on-deleted-contributions/123048#123048); they have the additional advantage of *not* counting toward the daily voting limit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They *don't* show up on your profile's votes tab, because that would mean showing you links to deleted posts - that would equate to giving you broken links on your profile which would be *bad*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For comparison, you've *down-voted* 4,587 deleted posts. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26993" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5504" RevisionGUID="0b390b13-91c6-4c0f-b3f0-4d848f1a1908" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A feature similar to this one has been implement, you can counter-act close votes by voting to &quot;leave open&quot; in the [close vote review queue][1]. It's not exactly what you've asked for, and it's only accessible through the review queue, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more details, read [this answer][2] on MSO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/134673/162704" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26994" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2024" RevisionGUID="6028ea63-334e-4945-90da-5412d0f48040" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The community wiki flag is set automatically once a question reaches 15 answers: this is to encourage collaboration on existing answers, as after 15 or so of them, it's highly likely answers are going to overlap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, this automatic action is marked with a confusing message: the person who had the privilege of posting the answer that triggered the automatic conversion to community wiki is the one who gets the attribution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our sister meta site, [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com), has more background on the [mechanics of community wiki](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts), but you can rest assured that nobody has the ability to &quot;troll&quot; people with community wiki flags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions can only be converted to community wiki by diamond moderators or through automatic conversion&#xD;&#xA;* Answers can only be converted to community wiki by the post owner, diamond moderators, or through automatic conversion" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26995" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6636" RevisionGUID="923fd0e9-57f2-47c0-86a5-a3df35b40b59" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="They're not suggested edits...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![~23 posts awaiting review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's everything waiting in all of the queues. As a member of the site with [moderator privileges](), you're trusted with information on what's happening outside of your specific area, now including the *total* /review backlog. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Normally, it should turn over fairly regularly: if you notice that's taking a long time, try to drum up some enthusiasm for the task from your peers - otherwise, the reviews *you've* done that are blocked by the need for others are just wasted effort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/191638/notify-users-of-possible-reviews-on-toolbar&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/imu9s.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26996" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5542" RevisionGUID="fb30ba56-09ff-44ea-8e0d-67b85c909edf" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This request has been [warp driven](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_drive_%28Star_Trek%29 &quot;what's this&quot;) to the following requests at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [In “network hot” questions formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/192046/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* [Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence)](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/216260/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note - this very answer has been used as a &quot;buffer&quot; to draft the latter request: [details in revisions history](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/5542/revisions).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26997" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6656" RevisionGUID="a78038a6-ba02-490c-9b15-1584c8c09e65" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per my reading of the timeline, [this question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/216371/should-you-always-pass-the-bare-minimum-data-needed-into-a-function) has got 3 answers in 24 hours from new users (i.e. users who earned less than 10 reputation on the site, excluding any association bonuses): http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/216371/timeline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - May 10 '14 **16:28**, **16:50** and May 11 '14 **08:16**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I understand, these answers [should have triggered auto-protection](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228805/165773).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How come that this did not happen?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26998" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6665" RevisionGUID="34555e55-dded-4d18-bbac-5d4665a9ff3e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I ask the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [following question here](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/240404/japanese-multiplication-simulation-is-a-program-actually-capable-of-improving?noredirect=1) led to the OP asking the [greater meta.stackexchange.com site here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/231885/should-strictly-on-topic-cross-posts-be-put-on-hold-as-off-topic/231888#231888) which seems to have a broader and more popular consensus that when a question is well received and on topic that it should not be closed as &quot;Off-Topic&quot; for purposes of preventing cross-posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently myself and I believe other moderators at Programmers when flagged about cross-posting will currently close the question on Programmers it if appears to circumvent a ban on the other site or if it historically appears after the original question on the other site.  The OP sometimes legitimately realizes that he needs a different perspective, or perhaps they weren't getting the attention they felt they needed so they wanted to try a different community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current tag info for cross posting on meta.stackexchange: [link here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) still seems to suggest that it is still frowned upon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cross Posting refers to posting the same question over multiple Stack Exchange sites. Cross-posting is strictly frowned upon as it leads to fragmented answers splattered all over the network. If you spot a user cross-posting, please make use of Moderator Flags to inform the Moderators.  Refer to cross-posting faq for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask the community, are we right to do this and should we change how high rep users and moderators are dealing with cross posting on this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To sum up the great answers and suggestions I have seen thus far, and reviewing the greater discussion on Meta.StackExchange, I feel I can compile the popular and agreed upon points below so that we can use this question as a canonical guide on how to deal with cross-posting on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Poor quality, unclear questions and opinion/flame bait should be put on hold as expected regardless of cross-posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Off-topic hold reasons should not be used against cross posted questions unless it is legitimately off topic (NOTE: There is overlap in Programmers between CS, Project Management, et al.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. If the question is not tailored for target audience, software developers, and is instead copied from the other site still targeted to computer scientists, project managers, or others then a user can flag for a moderator to investigate, and moderators can use their discretion if a temporary content dispute lock should be used while the moderator gives the OP the chance to state why they wanted to cross post on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 4. If the question is not tailored and the OP shows no desire to change the question or does not respond, then the moderator or other users can decide to edit the question to try and improve it and make it more appropriate for Programmers, otherwise it can be put on hold as off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 5. If the cross post is tailored for the target audience and the OP wishes to get a different perspective or perhaps felt the question didn't get enough attention at the original community, then he/she is well in his right to do so. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26999" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5634" RevisionGUID="a734f283-432a-4492-a171-c9e41519b41c" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="##Do history questions offer value to the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, absolutely. A quick look at our [highest voted history questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bhistory%5D+closed%3A0) reveals quite a few exceptional questions and answers. The history tag is not one of our most active tags, but it does have a significant amount of questions (153 currently) and _only 2_ of them are downvoted. That's... impressive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I'm fully aware of the several valid concerns about history questions, and share most of them, I can't imagine Programmers _without_ history questions. They are a bit special, but the exceptional ones are proof enough that the topic belongs on the site, and with vigorous moderation we can deal with the low end ones.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;##How do history questions pass the &quot;practical problem&quot; test?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) dictates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the prime directive for all Stack Exchange sites, and Programmers is no exception. However it's a directive that was written with Stack Overflow in mind and _some times_ it proves to be more confusing than helpful on every other Stack Exchange site. If we go by a strict interpretation of the prime directive, then history questions are off topic. That, however, would also mean that 9/10 Stack Exchange sites should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a related discussion on MSO, [I commented](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/164436/is-there-a-rule-of-thumb-for-objective-questions-asked-out-of-curiosity#comment480234_164692): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  I don't care at all if the problem is actual or practical (by whatever definition of practical), what I care about is the asker being serious about it, at least serious enough to have done some minimal research before s/he resorts to a community of volunteers. Intellectual curiosity is as great motivator as any, idle curiosity is a different beast entirely, one that, if entertained, will ultimately suck the life out of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The prime directive's goal is to stop people from asking questions out of idle curiosity. Intellectual curiosity on the other hand _can_ be an excellent motivator for questions, especially on sites that are focused on conceptual questions like Programmers. I think the fact that the majority of our history questions are either exceptional or crap it's because the first were asked out of intellectual curiosity and the latter out of idle curiosity.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And what divides the two is prior effort. If the asker has spend some time researching their question and reached a point where they can't get to the answer by themselves, guess what, they are facing an _actual_ problem. A problem that, judging from the impressive answer rate of our history questions, we can certainly help solve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##What should our general guidelines be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Intellectual curiosity is _not_ an excuse for poor questions, our guidelines should be exactly the same as with every other question. Since history questions have proven to be troublesome, let me re-iterate: &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;- **Askers _must_ do their homework**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If the answer to a history question can be found on a freely available reference site (read: Wikipedia) _or_ the language's / system's / project's freely available documentation, then the question is **off topic** and will be closed as such.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is perhaps the most important guideline for history questions. We are not here to copy paste the relevant Wikipedia article for you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Askers _must_ share their research**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Except for the very few of us that have mind reading powers, we can't guess what you already know. Please share your research with us, to avoid having people wasting their time answering with what you already know. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Questions _must_ be answerable**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   From our [about page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Programmers is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat.  &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;   Our [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is ideal for open ended discussions on programming history. History questions on the main site, as all questions on the main site, should be focused, specific and as clear as they can be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Programming history questions should be about _programming_ history**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The focus areas of the site are software development and software engineering, not _everything_ that's related to computing is acceptable on the site and history questions are no exception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **No trivia**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Trivia _by definition_ doesn't belong on Programmers. Our [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is ideal for discussions around programming history trivia." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27000" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6726" RevisionGUID="7707d55f-e4f3-4946-8948-19a74e7b5975" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Above statement has just been filed when I tried to post a new question (or maybe a bit cleaner wording, but the idea is the same nonetheles):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Wait! Some of your past questions have not been well-received, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you're in danger of being blocked from asking any more.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For help formulating a clear, useful question, see: How do I ask a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; good question?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also, edit your previous questions to improve formatting and clarity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I have only asked here 4 questions, one of it is closed because of &quot;off topic&quot; (but quite frankly I still think this ought to be ontopic here and would open a discussion if I came more often).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another is closed because of a duplicate --- though i clearly indicated I did not understand the answering with the &quot;duplicate&quot;. So for clarification I asked my question. Now I found the solution so I didn't explain why it is different (no point discussing to open it just to let it die).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of them seemed to me as &quot;terrible&quot; - so why the hell did I get this message?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;EDIT&#xD;&#xA;As said in the comments, I should clarify: I have 2 currently &quot;closed&quot; question. One of them is for offtopic. The other is a duplicate (which is asked based on [this][1] so duplicate mark is dubious). And further I do not have any deleted questions in last 90 days.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/112980/what-should-i-do-if-my-question-has-already-been-asked-but-the-answers-dont-he" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27001" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5656" RevisionGUID="d77e97a6-7f52-4860-ac35-45bfe73329ab" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The following is a &quot;digest&quot; version of the [2013 Moderator Election Town Hall Chat](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5595/2013-moderator-election-town-hall-chat). The format, [as described on Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests), is one *answer* to this question *for every question* asked in the Town Hall, containing all the candidate's answers to that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**To view the digest chronologically, please sort the answers by &quot;oldest&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have questions or comments about this, **please do not answer this question** as the answers are designed to be used for the questions from the Town hall itself. Instead, please ask on [the parent question](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77831/how-can-we-improve-the-town-hall-digests) or in [the Town Hall Discussion Room](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/352/town-hall-discussion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see any corrections which need to be made to this digest, or if you were a candidate who was unable to attend the town hall and would like your answers included, please @GraceNote or @TimStone [in the chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/251/programmers-town-hall-chat) and let us know!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27002" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6728" RevisionGUID="36d14a48-0cfc-47a2-8d93-595211ba6b4b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Based on your past questions, system decided to warn that you may be approaching question ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is described in more details in [Warn new users when they ask a question after a previous question is closed, downvoted, or deleted](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773) at MSE (bold font in below quote is mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Starting today, we are going to show a warning to folks who are about to post a question or an answer when they already have a track record of ... suboptimal questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;![https://i.stack.imgur.com/xfiXS.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xfiXS.png &quot;question warning&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...The specific criteria for these aren't public largely for the same reasons the quality block criteria aren't public, but let's just say that **folks who are nearing hitting a block will be getting a heads up and some instructions first**." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27003" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2075" RevisionGUID="83efdcbe-17dc-449e-967c-3e4c491e1c36" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Is it to discourage people from being obnoxious?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Pretty much. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been discussed several times over on MetaSO - [this is a good example](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/45273/allow-more-than-one-name-notification-per-comment). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's worth contrasting the design of comment @-notifications with those of [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/), where you *can* notify multiple users in a single message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Comments always notify the post-author, regardless of @... Chat messages appear to anyone in the room.&#xD;&#xA;- Comments can @-notify anyone who has ever commented / edited the post... Chat messages can notify anyone who has been in the room *recently*.&#xD;&#xA;- Comment notifications persist in your global SE inbox... Chat notifications produce a small indicator *within chat*, with an entry in the SE inbox only if you don't respond.&#xD;&#xA;- You can only leave one comment every 15 seconds... You can post multiple chat messages within that timespan.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, chat messages will only notify people who are probably expecting them, having recently joined a chat room for the purpose of chatting. Comments might notify people who've long ago forgotten about the topic. Making it easier to mass-notify multiple users via comments has a much larger &quot;harassment&quot; potential.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27005" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6803" RevisionGUID="0f31f617-ced8-4fa2-ae0c-d8d3e1bb18f8" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="What probably happened is you voted to re-open at some point and your vote expired (~ there wasn't another re-open vote for four days). There's no visible trace of expired votes, so this is more of an educated guess. Unfortunately you can't re-cast an expired vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related (on Meta Stack Exchange):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Why do close votes expire?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/120896/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [Close Votes expire too soon for low-traffic tags](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/97556/162704)&#xD;&#xA;- [Bogus “You have already voted to close this question” on expired votes](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/99141/162704)&#xD;&#xA;-  [Please allow expired close/open votes to be re-cast](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/99333/162704)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27006" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2076" RevisionGUID="2fb45c60-8096-41a7-8d93-33f4f79e7235" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Why not do [what they do on SO][1]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; More info: http://stackoverflow.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit from Mark Trapp&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators now have the [ability to annotate locked posts](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/106137/better-handling-of-locked-questions-and-answers) with messages that specify why the question was locked, including the historical significance reason seen on Stack Overflow. In lieu of any other consensus, highly upvoted closed questions will be locked with this message.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/192793/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-t-shirt" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27007" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5720" RevisionGUID="87923019-e023-418a-a94c-8dc60048db67" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### On everything should be open  &#xD;&#xA;I don't think anyone believes this.  Even the most liberal of the inclusionists has a limit on the amount of water-cooler nonsense they can tolerate.  For some, that water mark is really high, but it's still there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On giving new users a break from downvotes  &#xD;&#xA;The simple fact is, you have to treat everyone equally.  It's not fair to veteran users to be treated any differently than the new users.  Discipline without teeth is not discipline at all; if there are no consequences for bad posts, then the bad posts will continue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On closure reasons&#xD;&#xA;These are in the process of [being overhauled](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/169814) by SE.  The new close reasons will be kinder, gentler, more educational, and probably won't use the word &quot;closed.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On unanswerable questions and the strictness of closure&#xD;&#xA;I've been giving this a lot of thought since I asked my last question here on Meta.  I've begun experimenting with the way I use close votes and answer questions, using this guiding principle:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Can I answer this question in a meaningful way that is interesting and relevant to others?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's why: Being strict has not improved the quality of questions being asked here.  If anything, the *overall* quality of questions has gone down over time.  The diligence we've exerted to keep questions tightly focused has not improved the quality of questions other people ask, and neither has constantly arguing over the site scope.  Absent interesting questions to answer, there's no reason to participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I come here because it is *fun and educational to rub shoulders with other people who have interesting ideas about programming.*  We can't have that if people are constantly being turned away without a commensurate increase in participation by those who know how to ask great questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27008" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6832" RevisionGUID="5a44a0c5-f25c-4710-b6c9-18d5175394d0" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="lang-ml already does this for F# as written on the main site. Syntax highlighting appears to be identical with usage on [Stack Overflow][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![SO example][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usage on Programmers in a preview box:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Programmers Example][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The raw markdown is an identical copy-paste. I also tested it on Arqade where the syntax is not enabled as well as Game Dev where it is fully enabled. Associations appear to be universal where syntax highlighting is enabled. This makes sense because Stack Exchange [outsources][4] the highlighting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't work on Meta but no syntax highlighting seems to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10615461/async-post-fails-on-wp7-and-f&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/aft4t.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/AjX5e.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/184108/what-is-syntax-highlighting-and-how-does-it-work" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27009" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2095" RevisionGUID="2db908e2-de60-4097-8a16-b4d206062ad9" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just stumbled over this edit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/98434/revisions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I'm confident the edit was done with good intents, it feels a bit like an abuse of the site's mechanics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is editing questions only to bump them to the top of the 'active questions' list accepted practice?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not sure how meta.programmers.SE relates to meta.stackoverflow, but there's a quite [similiar question regarding SO questions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/53012/what-is-the-best-way-to-bump-re-ask-an-old-question)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27010" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6843" RevisionGUID="c42d9d77-97b0-4d5c-8655-b8a031561bc7" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently updated my Stack Exchange profile to include a link to my newly created Area 51 proposal [Scientific Imagination][1]. I included a sample question from the proposal as a level 1 header. It looks good on my Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow profiles, but here it appears very cluttered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Stack Exchange profile][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Stack Exchange profile][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Stack Overflow profile][4]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Stack Overflow profile][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Programmers profile][6]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do a little tweak to site's CSS to make it a bit more appealing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/75912/scientific-imagination?referrer=IPIEcsN2huMFuP7v0aO_3g2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/262588/krumia&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xANt1.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/1461424/krumia&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/3s1Sb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/139479/krumia&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/P2lb1.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27011" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5843" RevisionGUID="6b3e82f8-9d52-487e-89a1-7f2ddc049ace" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some recent posts make me feel like these could be automatically rejected by [quality filter](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/quality-filter/info &quot;what's this&quot;), thus saving community efforts for better quality questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To develope My Own linux Distro for Linux Beginners.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195209/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I want To Know How To prepare An understanding Doc To Track what I am Doing On daily Basis So that I can Be update To my Work.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195203/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;I am A New Joinee In a major MNC And Currently I am Working In Vitria Team I dont Know Much about Vitria From Career Persepective.Plz Guide&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/195204/31260 &quot;deleted - visible only to 10K users&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Above are full literal quotes of the posts, I did not change anything.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently it has been announced that quality filter is tightened at Trilogy sites (for your convenience, announcement is quoted below).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* As far as I understand, SE team is [open to consider similar change for Programmers](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/174097/is-it-time-to-tighten-up-the-question-quality-filter/176875?noredirect=1#comment531396_176875 &quot;quote source&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the sad truth is that on Programmers, even questions with a maximum quality score fare worse on average than the ones passing the threshold I just put in place on SO. We can try tweaking the threshold there too, but it's probably worth a separate discussion on meta.programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we please somehow adjust quality filter at Programmers to prevent posting low quality stuff like in above examples?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the reference, announcement of [filter adjustment at Trilogy sites](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/176875/165773 &quot;here&quot;) is as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've bumped up the threshold below which questions will be blocked. The majority of *recently-asked* questions that fall below the new threshold do not fare well on Stack Overflow (i.e. they are closed, deleted, and/or down-voted). &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The down-side is that short questions will be harder to post (this is more than just a length check, but short + poor spelling / caps / punctuation / formatting will damn a post more readily). At this point, I think that's a fair trade-off on Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I've also increased the threshold on Super User and Server Fault; although the volume is lower there, they field even fewer reasonable questions in this range. A quick check of other high-traffic sites does not appear to justify raising this anywhere else at this time.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;FWIW: Stack Overflow already rejects something like twelve hundred questions a day based on this check - that'd amount to about 13% of questions if a lot of them weren't just the same folks retrying more or less the same text over and over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update** for the reference, at the &quot;quality score&quot; list provided in [this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5857/31260 &quot;thanks Shog!&quot;): first of above examples scores 70, second - 83, third - 81." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27013" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5898" RevisionGUID="db5d7f4c-4388-42b3-9db4-62c4e53bc7d4" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; &quot;Duplicate of&quot; should be a transitive property (if A is a dupe of B, and B is a dupe of C, then A must be a dupe of C)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assumption of transitivity looks wrong; per my reading of the definition in [duplicate-questions tag wiki](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/duplicate-questions/info), it is not required:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to tell the user ...something like, _“Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.”_ Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question `A` having an answer in `B` does not automatically guarantee that it also has an answer in `C`, even though question `B` may have its answer in `C`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a simplified example, imagine &quot;chain of duplicates&quot; like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A:` How do I see result of multiplying 2 by 2?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B:` How do I multiply?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke `multiply` method of `arith` package. In order to view result, you invoke method of `display` package.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C:` How do I do arithmetic operations?  &#xD;&#xA;`answer:`  &#xD;&#xA;You invoke appropriate method of `arith` package, like `multiply`, `divide` etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's easy to imagine readers being satisfied by closures `A -&gt; B` and `B -&gt; C` since answers given solve the problems asked about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, closure `A -&gt; C` would be problematic: first question asks about how to display results, while answer in the second question says nothing about this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note how question in `B` does not ask about displaying results, making dupe closure look reasonable. Also note how answer in `B` provides guidance _beyond_ its scope, along with addressing the question asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a more realistic example, refer to the non-transitive chain of duplicates at Meta Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `A':` [Spiteful downvoting? Two fast DVs to my unrelated posts](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/178703/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * `B':` [What can I do if I'm the victim of serial downvoting?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/28756/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;      * `C':` [What is serial voting and how does it affect me?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/126829/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`A'` is closed as a duplicate of `B'`, which is in turn closed as a duplicate of `C'`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a closer look at [revisions history](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/178703/revisions &quot;here&quot;) and [comments](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/178703/spiteful-downvoting-two-fast-dvs-to-my-unrelated-posts#comment539909_178703 &quot;'changed the duplicate to one more relevant to the question asked...'&quot;), you will notice that initial closure has been changed from `A' -&gt; C'` to _narrower_ one, `A' -&gt; B'` because readers disagreed that _widest_ dupe target has answers relevant to the question asked in `A'`." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27014" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6957" RevisionGUID="685ad061-692f-49bb-be0b-02257035a820" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Search shows](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=is%3Aanswer+hasnotice%3A1 &quot;is:answer hasnotice:1&quot;) several answers with old mod [notices](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), could these be [reconciled](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconciliation_%28accounting%29)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At first I thought to flag them but there seems to be too many and some are not quite clear cut so I decided to ask at meta instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Notice appears ignored:&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/194589&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/151524&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/171241&#xD;&#xA;  * (\*) http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/201190  &#xD;&#xA;  * (\*) http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/155059  &#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177532&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/202497&#xD;&#xA;  * (\*) http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/172957  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. There was an edit but I can't tell if the issue is addressed indeed:&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/167776&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/185954&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/173248&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Notice appears to be obsoleted by answer edits:&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/175249&#xD;&#xA;  * (\*) http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/148870  &#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/167393&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/159829&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/228080&#xD;&#xA;  * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/198499&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In list above, (\*) denotes cases where not only answer but also question itself looks troublesome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am particularly concerned about answers in first and last groups. First makes site visitors think that it's okay to ignore mod notice, last makes them think that moderators ignore attempts to improve." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27015" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2241" RevisionGUID="703fc92a-a196-411a-b82d-c9c2ff8071b1" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'd suggest reading [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) and particularly the [answer on Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179) created by our very own [Aaronaught](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/3249/aaronaught), which goes into more finer detail about why just such a bad fit for Stack Exchange, but in short, the purpose of Stack Exchange is to get an answer to an actual problem a person is facing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One answer that actually solves the problem is what we're looking for: not a host of suggestions. A future visitor, who has the same issue, should be able to look at the set of answers and be able to determine two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What the community has decided is the correct answer (highest number of votes)&#xD;&#xA;* What the question asker has decided is the correct answer (accept flag)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you use Stack Exchange for polling, these two concepts break down. When every answer is equally valid (it's a survey, after all), voting doesn't mean anything: what do people vote for? Their favorite answer? There's no value in that in the Stack Exchange network: it adds another, hidden dimension to voting that a future visitor, not aware of the exception to the rule being made for the specific question, isn't going to pick up on. &quot;Use voting as a means to vet the answers...except on this question! Ignore the voting on this question!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, I'd consider this to be an abuse of the user base. Stack Exchange users are not &quot;participants&quot;, sitting around waiting to take surveys for whatever purpose someone coming to the site needs. They're experts, who have generously devoted their time and knowledge to help people solve problems. Every time we forget that there are actual people here with specific issues and specific knowledge by reducing them to one point on a graph, we diminish the value of their contributions. Answering a few questions for a survey is *not* the same thing as providing a long, thoughtful answer about a specific problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, Community Wiki is not the answer. Community Wiki—for questions—was made a moderator-only function specifically to combat its abuse to keep questions that were off-topic or bad fits for Stack Exchange (but were ostensibly interesting) open. Recently on the Stack Exchange blog, [Grace Note](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/146126/grace-note) went into a good amount of detail about [the point of Community Wiki](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; With suggested edits now in place, you could argue that the removal of reputation from voting is now the only function of community wiki. Unfortunately, this means it is often seen as a magic switch to allow questionable content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One of the first feature requests I saw on Meta Stack Overflow was Moderator Filtering of Highest Voted Questions, which was deemed necessary because questions like Coolest Server Names show the wrong side of the site. The actual problem-solving nature of sites is too easily buried under the weight of all these “fun” community wiki questions. At one point, “Our top voted post is an actual question!” was a point of pride. That’s … not a positive sign for a Q&amp;A network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, as Grace Note  continues, we should be looking for quality content that stands *without* Community Wiki. We *might* be able to do that by rewriting survey questions into a question about a problem the asker is actually facing: this would bring back the voting and acceptance functions into play, and make a question that meets our general guidelines *without* having to abuse Community Wiki." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27016" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5928" RevisionGUID="c2724452-dc41-4068-b0fa-c372d3705e4e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Given the &quot;We were checking if you're paying attention!&quot; part of the flow you described, this was an audit rather than an actual &quot;this question needs to be closed&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given your timing and the review queue [this](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close/29657) was the [audit](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/review-audits/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are issues with audits that are occasionally brought up on MSO such as one that seems to be similar to your issue:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Close vote review audit flawed - fails without casting vote](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/179651/close-vote-review-audit-flawed-fails-without-casting-vote)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27017" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5982" RevisionGUID="b719827f-bcc4-48f0-8653-c84b9a783cfc" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="That is apparently how [Gregory House writes it.](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/93372/what-font-is-used-on-the-programmers-stack-exchange-site)  (It's not Lupus!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An examination of the symbols on the top row of the keyboard yields:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where a couple of symbols (namely the @ and the *) are conspicuously missing.  Apparently Hugh Laurie never wrote them on the whiteboard during the entire series.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;UL is an abbreviation for a number of medical terms, including Undifferentiated Lymphoma.  It is entirely possible that the maker of the font confused that abbreviation with the ampersand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, it requires a font editor (and an intern with a black marker and a steady hand) to fix it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/4MBVO.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27018" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6968" RevisionGUID="bb5c8f6c-9026-4ff1-b067-f67d9e1e2019" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="From https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/142353/102937&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;While you may be an exemplary, clear-thinking, individual, who uses the term 'best practice' in a constructive manner, you have been preceded by a giant procession of zombies who use it as the antithesis of thought. Instead of understanding the important specifics of their situation and looking for an appropriate solution, all they want is to spot a herd in the distance and go trotting off after it. Thus, the term 'best practice' has been rendered an extremely strong signal of a empty resonant cavity in the place where a brain should be, and questions that mention the phrase get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question to the OP is often this: *what do you mean by best?*  The answer is often, &quot;What programmers generally accept as the correct solution,&quot; which is a tautology, or &quot;which one do programmers choose most often,&quot; which suggests popularity as a valid metric for choosing a technology.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My response is often &quot;The best way is the one that most effectively achieves your software's functional and non-functional requirements.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software design patterns are a different animal.  These are well-accepted solutions to well-understood problems, and serve as a vocabulary for developers designing their programs.  They are considered best practices, not because they are &quot;correct&quot; or most popular, but because they are proven solutions in the problem domains they are solving.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a person asks &quot;what is the best design pattern for this particular problem,&quot; they are engaging in a *pattern-matching exercise,* not [cargo-cult programming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27019" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6011" RevisionGUID="4f83b2cf-3fdf-4f8c-aba6-29a7d307e55a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is indeed a bug, the answer shouldn't have appeared in the review queue (neither as an audit, nor as a regular review). The reason is that [the question][1] is [locked][2], therefore it and its answers cannot be voted on or edited. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is an [old bug][3] that resurfaced, I will let SE know about it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44/are-certifications-worth-it&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22228/what-is-a-locked-post&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/141435/new-beta-review-displays-locked-posts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27020" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2286" RevisionGUID="ed535f67-c52b-43c9-9096-a19aec076c1d" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You'll know a post is from a moderator when that user has a diamond (♦) next their name: for example, me right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in general, the idea is that, by knowing how active a user is on the main site, you should be able to determine how well the user knows the main site when answering questions about it. It's not a 1:1 match, but it works for most meta purposes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was [also discussed on Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66412/why-is-the-meta-reputation-derived-directly-from-the-parent-site), where Robert Cartaino said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It seems like the more participation you have on the PARENT site, the more abilities and bigger the role you should have in the discussions *about* that site. Creating a separate reputation score for META activity means that only frequent META USERS would have the leading roles... not necessarily the same people who actually use the site (i.e. the stakeholders). Having one meta score (for using the ACTUAL SITE) seems like a better system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One other thing to consider is that it frees up people to participate without affecting a reputation total: people can down-vote bad ideas and participate more without worrying about their reputation being affected. On child metas, where there are already low activity levels, killing as many barriers to entry is important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An [answer by Rebecca Chernoff](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64267/is-there-a-reason-why-we-gain-ghost-reputation-on-the-meta-of-an-se-website/64268#64268) and a [blog post by Jeff Atwood](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/new-per-site-metas/) touches upon this aspect and others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there's some confusion because Meta Stack Overflow, ostensibly the meta for Stack Overflow, *does* have its own reputation system, and the suggestion from the other angle—eliminating rep there and pegging it to Stack Overflow—comes up often, too. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A [detailed answer on why there is this discrepency](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1451/should-reputation-from-so-carry-over-to-meta/63235#63235) can be found on the question [Should reputation from SO carry over to Meta?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1451/should-reputation-from-so-carry-over-to-meta):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Each site's meta (other than this one) is designed for site-specific discussions about things like:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Defining a site's culture&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Determining each site's tolerance for certain types of questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Discussing tagging practices, moderators, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And on those sites, it makes more sense for the meta site rep to mirror the parent site rep, since **the most &quot;trust&quot; to define the site's culture should be assigned to those that have earned the most trust on the site itself; *they are its culture.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site, meta.SO, continues to serve that role of discussing the culture and goals of StackOverflow.com (and that of Area 51,) but it also serves an important larger need:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It is also the meta site for discussion of the *unified engine that will drive both the trilogy sites and the SE 2.0 sites*, addressing things like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Bugs&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Feature Requests&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Questions about the system as a whole (ads, rep-gaming gaps, re-posting policy, etc.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; On a site about *the engine*, it does not make as much sense to make the reputation mirror one or some of the other sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27021" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7064" RevisionGUID="1c447271-b6f0-4fb8-b74f-389274810b76" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is [the official guidance for cross-posting questions between Stack Exchange sites][1]. In short, each site is a different community. Even if the question would be on-topic on multiple sites, you should read each site's Help Center to find out what is and isn't on-topic and similar questions to find out the types of answers each site provides, and then ask the question where you feel you'll get the best answers. If you aren't getting the answers you need, moderators can migrate it if it's necessary. Alternatively, you can always ask a new question on a new site that is worded differently to get better answers. However, simply copy and pasting questions between sites isn't recommended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64068/is-cross-posting-a-question-on-multiple-stack-exchange-sites-permitted-if-the-qu" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27022" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6206" RevisionGUID="7ae88ea0-1d77-4253-9964-37e7b5746c9c" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Good to be noticed!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Indeed, I make these minor (occasionally significant) edits once a week in preparation for the week's [Ask Stack column at Ars Technica][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you know, it's easy to get hung up on a minor speling or, punctuation error. And it's important to me that the awesome questions and answers here aren't overshadowed by a trivial slip of the keyboard.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But yes. I understand that my minor edits may seem like rep mining to those who don't know me, and my behavior could conceivably train users to be bad actors. Don't act like me!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or maybe do... I personally agree with Gilles &amp; MichaelT that even the shortest &quot;correct&quot; edit is a perfectly acceptable edit. Whether minor edits should bump a question to the front page, well, that's [a good question for Meta][2], though it's worth noting that even minor edits can be malicious edits, and thus it *might* make sense for all edits to get front page exposure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks for reaching out. And even more thanks for creating content that demonstrates the best of what our network, communities, and individuals have to offer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feel free to ping me any time in chat if you think I'm making an edit in error, being unreasonably heavy-handed, or if you just want to say hi. Going forward I'll try to be more articulate in my edit descriptions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Slowly, I will grind my way towards 2,000 rep. Until then, I hope you approve me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/26483/166581" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27023" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7196" RevisionGUID="43211c3d-b249-4663-8c71-22b53277964a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is hitting an edge case with the markdown [space forcer](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/44011/zero-width-non-joiner-allows-unclickable-titles) workaround. In order to remove it we have to rework the comment structure from tables to something nicer. I'm deferring this one for now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27024" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2307" RevisionGUID="9faddd10-b9e1-4ae1-8d5c-41c6a8c99e08" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The idea that we should have `offtopic.stackoverflow.com` is how this site got started and it became quickly apparent that it cannot survive on the SE network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Popularity isn't the definitive measure of quality and usefulness. I highly recommend reading [this summary](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) of the history of Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27025" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7363" RevisionGUID="09af9bd1-4f26-460e-8d2f-38ddb6e2a80d" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; you can kindly comment and tell them that this question is offtopic in a friendly way, but don't downvote innocent questions or close them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have come into a fundamental misconception. It's a common one, but it's still a misconception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Downvotes are not personal.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are not &quot;attacks&quot;, or &quot;hate&quot;, or &quot;rudeness&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are not &quot;punishment&quot; (though they do lose you rep as we'll explore in a moment).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**They are a measure of post quality.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your post is of poor quality (or is simply in the wrong place / on the wrong site), it *should* have a low score. That's how other visitors, and any automated processes on the site (e.g. rankings, search result filtering) can tell that the post has a poor quality without having to read it and find out for themselves (certainly tricky for those automated processes!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, the fact that you lose a little bit of rep when you get downvoted is the reverse consequence of this: **you *gain* a little bit of rep when you get upvoted** ([in fact, _more_ than you lose from the same number of downvotes!][1]). There's your incentive to instead post good, useful questions that are \*gasp\* on-topic and \*gasp\* abide by the rules and values of this Stack Exchange network. It's pretty obvious why the system was designed to encourage you to do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is important to realise that people do not answer questions to help _you_. This is not a site for _you_ to get help whenever you need it. It is a [repository of questions and answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/ &quot;The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions&quot;)! Your question, and its answers (if any), _must be able to help someone else some day_. It must be potentially of help for _everybody_. If it does not, it belongs in a chat room or on a forum. This is not &quot;rude&quot;: it is a fact. It is the basis on which the site stands. If that does not suit your needs, you are certainly more than welcome to post the question on a different site that does or, alternatively, hire someone to provide personal training/consultancy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not &quot;rude&quot; to keep the site clean and tidy by downvoting and closevoting when it is appropriate; conversely, it *is* rather &quot;rude&quot; to come onto the site stomping your feet and shouting at everybody for following all of the above, simply because you failed to research and/or comprehend the purpose of this website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do I know you haven't performed that research? Well, it was a bit of a clue when you posted this rant on the main site instead of meta, making it off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/7238/255171" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27026" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6240" RevisionGUID="0871c161-bc5c-4e2a-9e63-2e23f0e67413" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Site scope and question quality expectations seem to be set, stabilized and well understood by majority of _regulars_ long time ago, as discussed eg here: [Are you still confused about what Programmers is for?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my observations, most troublesome questions are either asked by newcomers or are old ones [bump](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info)ed by answers from newcomers which makes me feel that somehow, site &quot;image&quot; for those newcomers is blurred.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on several months of observations on questions that are exposed / promoted to SE network users via [collider](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info) I firmly believe that to large extent, misguiding newcomers about Programmers is caused by **[the way how questions are selected for exposure at collider](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/202962/165773 &quot;issue details and change request officially submitted here: 'Feedback request: New top bar and MultiCollider redesign'&quot;)**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how I see collider damage to Programmers is described in more details in this answer: [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I think this is likely related to issues with answers quality in hot questions ([discussed here in more details](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;Answers quality in hot questions&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Hot garbage waves&quot; in the answers once or twice a week&#xD;&#xA;* poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making interesting and well presented problems look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/)  &#xD;&#xA;* regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;An &quot;outsider&quot; reading low quality answers in hot questions, could naturally think,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;hey here I can _chit-chat about how git is fantastic_ and get my portion of cheap upvotes, c00l&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a **steady source of misguided contributors**.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...the way how users can be confused about what Programmers are about is probably best explained in a [comment made by Ben Brocka](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13830_5482 &quot;here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;Often hot questions have lots of bad or meh answers that are bad enough to drag down quality of the content and general discourse (encouraging similarly bad new answers)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Side note. For the sake of completeness, I don't think that collider damage is contained within Programmers (and [Workplace](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1967/168 &quot;another site suffering from brain-damaging hotness formula: 'victims of the Stack Exchange(TM MultiCollider SuperDropdown(TM)'&quot;) for that matter).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As discussed eg [here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10706837#10706837), it looks like damage is spread over whole SE network, even though indirectly:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...really, say guys at SO are protected from _direct_ impact. Meaning when they see _meh_, they can flag _no-code_ and get crap deleted. But thing is, it's SO users who look at collider and who visit &quot;sticky&quot; questions and who pick the crappy attitude and they get back to SO and get posting _meh_ answers there  &#xD;&#xA;and, well, there are hundreds and thousands of them. And _meh_ attitude gets spread over multiple questions and SO mods only can delete minor part of crap that has been influenced through collider&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; &#xD;&#xA;they start thinking it's the norm. That's what low quality answers in hot questions teach readers. That's what &quot;educated&quot; readers spread further, to their answers to other questions. That lowers overall quality of answers in multiple other questions, that is the site-wide damage  &#xD;&#xA;This makes it look like good questions are those having many meh answers, the effect that is amplified by these questions being highly visible to collider audience - hundreds and thousands of SE users. Misguided users spread acquired attitude further into other questions and answers, posting stuff that follows what they saw at the &quot;cool&quot; (&quot;hot&quot;) questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;**nobody is really protected, collider spreads it across all the SE network**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27027" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2394" RevisionGUID="2c8841d5-39c3-4730-bfcd-aa68349b459b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Votes are locked after 5 minutes to [prevent tactical downvoting](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6460/if-you-just-witnessed-tactical-downvoting-is-it-a-reportable-offense/18046#18046): voting people down just to make sure your answer appears first to accrue votes, then reversing that when it no longer is needed to get back the lost reputation and hide the evidence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a weird edge case, but it's been around for a long time and unlikely to change. However, if the post gets edited later on, your vote is unlocked and you can change your vote then. Otherwise, don't worry about it too much: mistaken votes happen often, and the community voting as a whole should iron those inconsistencies out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feel free to flag questions even when you up-vote: moderators can't see individual voting patterns so we have no idea whether you up-voted or not. We also don't particularly *care* either: how you vote is your business. If something needs our intervention, definitely flag it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27028" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6255" RevisionGUID="873da051-874c-4e1a-bb5e-6b9d29582a07" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Recently, Nick did some tests on Stack Overflow to see what impact MathJax would have on Stack Overflow.  This was likely done in part to put to rest the 'heavy dependency' argument.  The full post can be read at [There's seriously no reason why LaTeX markup via MathJax shouldn't be enabled on SO](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204003/213963)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a Stack Overflow page load (even when its doing 'nothing'):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Stack Overflow (no MathJax)][1]: **1.380s**&#xD;&#xA; - [Stack Overflow (with MathJax)][2]: **1.675s**&#xD;&#xA; - [Math.StackExchange][3] (with MathJax including content using it): **2.341s**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, for sites that have those pesky `$` that show up in code, it can be a breaking change for existing questions changing the rendering for:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...] which then stores into a $_SESSION - the problem is most of the settings will be set by javascript, and as javascript is a client side script you can't access PHP $_SESSION variables as its server based. [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Unexpected MathJax rendering][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, there are [reports](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204034/213963) that adding MathJax significantly impacts the time it takes for a preview to show up while writing an answer because MathJax needs to be called to rerender the preview *on every keystroke*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(numbers, links and images from the associated answers in the [MSO question](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/252282/289086))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131102_08_QQQ/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131103_DV_CS/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131102_BT_QR2/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MqzCa.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27029" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6291" RevisionGUID="97d3ec96-62e2-496d-a350-21ad2b0f8533" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This was tried in the initial days of Programmers and it failed spectacularly.](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/165773 &quot;as explained in more details here&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site came very close to be being shut down, but we managed, through the herculean efforts of everybody - moderators, community managers and committed users, to turn it around and have a site that is, on the whole, useful." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27030" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7404" RevisionGUID="b7dde0f1-4dc7-440d-ae98-7025cdd66f81" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The locked questions that I am particularly (dis)interested in are the ones that were historically locked at some point in the back and *really* haven't aged well. They are relatively low view and vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[is:question closed:yes locked:yes duplicate:no migrated:no views:..3000 votes:..20](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=is%3Aquestion+closed%3Ayes+locked%3Ayes+duplicate%3Ano+migrated%3Ano+views%3A..3000+votes%3A..20)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that this picks up a fair number of rejected migrations too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This query brings up things such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163/language-agnostic-programming-books : score of 20, 1242 views, 10 answers of which many of them are *really* poorly written links and one liners.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1674/suggestions-for-programs-to-develop-for-learning : score of 12, 894 views, very poorly written question, 9 answers of which most are a single sentence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/1701/career-guidance-books-for-programmers : score of 18, 1463 views, 10 answers and it shouldn't be a surprise that I include it here because most are single sentence answers (some not even a sentence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2192/what-can-slow-a-developer-down : score of 12, 1606 views, 31 answers (2 deleted), and... yes, mostly single sentence answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2331/which-language-features-are-considered-harmful : score of 20, 2454 views, 32 answers. Mostly single sentence answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hold that these questions (and others) should be closely reexamined with the [criteria from MSE](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/126631/213963).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not believe that any of these questions meet the criteria of &quot;The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature&quot; and likely also fail to come close to the criteria of &quot;There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post&quot;.  Despite these question being several years old they have not shown that they have the views or the score to warrant permanency.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that these questions should be deleted. If you wish to unlock them first and then have the community delete them, that's certainly an option.  Note that only one of them in this list would require more than three delete votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After digging a bit on Data.SE [this isn't too big of a list to re-evaluate](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/321872?Views=3000&amp;Score=20) (once you get the migrations, unlocked, and merged questions out of there) it brings up a number of... well,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/21032/help-me-construct-a-list-of-best-approaches-for-new-c-and-c-developers (+1 score, 483 views, wiki lock, last accessed a year ago)&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/65316/what-are-some-tips-for-avoiding-death-by-powerpoint-during-a-technical-present (+1 score, 956 views with some really not stellar answers)&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11757/what-are-good-social-coding-sites (+2 score, 1938 views with answers of &quot;github&quot;, &quot;bitbucket&quot; and &quot;bitbucket&quot; and &quot;I have a public svn server&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141676/recommendable-reads-about-programming-history (+3 score, 539 views, 10 answers of which half don't even take up enough space to line wrap)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are questions that we are saying have historical significance and are stellar examples (all be it off topic) of what the site wishes to maintain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27031" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2400" RevisionGUID="16831815-3d06-439e-8d08-8d7d5990fff9" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a [formatting sandbox question](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3122/formatting-sandbox) over on Meta Stack Overflow which you can use for testing the formatting, but I suspect you'll find the existing answers cover most (if not all) of the formatting options available.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What specifically do you want to test?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27032" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6293" RevisionGUID="69590273-5c92-420c-b5af-ca6d5684c47f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Between CS.SE, P.SE, and SO the scope of each overlaps and depends significantly on what type of answer the person asking wants get.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off as a starter, read:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/190106/dealing-with-find-out-whos-going-to-buy-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;    * http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/13420/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;    * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206073/find-out-whose-turn-it-is-to-buy-the-croissants-accounting-for-possible-absence&#xD;&#xA;    * http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/12151/who-brings-the-croissants&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll also point to a recent example - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218222/searching-integer-sequences - this question would be perfectly suitable on *either* (or both?) P.SE and CS.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging by the words in the question, it is a very non-trivial problem.  A question that asks about an algorithm could show up on any of the sites and be appropriate.  A slight tweak to the question ('i am having a doubt about the c i wrote') and it would rapidly get pushed to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, realize that the scope of a site, while it has inertia to it also does have some variability over time.  The scope of a site may get more strict (to the point where TCS is) or it may loosen up over time (do you accept homework problems?) This is very evident when looking at the history of questions on P.SE to see what was acceptable a year or two ago and what it is now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, judging by the migration stats and the failure - most times, it is asked on the right site *or* isn't appropriate anywhere.  For example, 2 posts from CS where migrated to P.SE in the last and one of them was rejected.  7 posts were migrated from P.SE to CS.SE and one of them was rejected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If humans can't get get it right, do you think a program could?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *really* want to take a crack at it - go grab the Stack Exchange data dump http://data.stackexchange.com/help and see if you can identify questions that would get migrated (or closed).  The 'or closed' bit was the topic of a [machine learning contest](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-machine-learning-contest/) - though I don't think it was accurate enough to merit inclusion... or something.  https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/161538/are-there-any-robot-moderators-on-so&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68689/automatic-central-question-sorting on MSO which asked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've noticed the Stack Exchange has grown immensely since its inception as Stack Overflow. As a result, I find asking questions in the right place here unnecessarily challenging. I'm wondering if you have thought about implementing a feature on the Stack Exchange central site where people ask the question there and either the scripts or staff/community members would sort the question to the right place.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Not sure if this would be too challenging or costly to implement. Just a thought to save your time while making users' lives easier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jeff said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you're not willing to invest the small amount of time it takes to figure out where to ask your question -- the odds of your question being a good one are .. small." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27033" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7406" RevisionGUID="70d45b30-4390-4861-a495-8ab176573a3a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The close vote reason provides a description of why the question was closed. It also brings you to the [help center page for what it means when a question is closed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions). That help page, among other things, has a link to a page that [tells you what to do when a question is closed](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/reopen-questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is closed, you should read the reason for closure attached to the question and the linked content in the Help Center. You should also see if anyone has left a comment explaining their vote. If you disagree with the closure or don't understand it, the help center says that you should ask on Meta. Here on Programmers, we have a regular chat that may also provide help as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although this focuses on down votes, it's relevant to close votes as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/154895/downvoting-without-comment-why-its-allowed&#xD;&#xA;* https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-downvotes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27034" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2429" RevisionGUID="1cd7b072-86cb-4daf-b440-9429fc9a6ce5" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been discussed before on Meta Stack Overflow. I can't find the specific question, but a search for [&quot;hide reputation&quot;](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=hide+reputation) gives 24 results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These three questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/198/should-there-be-anonymous-answers-and-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/79621/should-reputation-be-hidden-until-an-answer-is-accepted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/21458/hide-the-rep-and-badge-count-on-a-users-info-box-on-answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are closest to what you're asking&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27035" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6367" RevisionGUID="1cb5ebee-6b79-4579-a655-9f389bb363fa" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The &quot;where do I start?&quot; question has several issues with it that make it a poor question to ask.  It is unclear what the level of knowledge of the asker is, has too many possible answers, and ultimately doesn't have a clear problem defined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unclear&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's head over to [Seasoned Advice](http://cooking.stackexchange.com) (Cooking Stack Exchange) and think about a hypothetical question to ask there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to learn how to bake a cake?  Where should I start?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A person attempting to answer this question doesn't know what your skill level is.  Do you know how to read a recipe? Can you operate an oven without supervision? Are you trying to make a simple [pound cake](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_cake) or are you attempting to make a multi layer red velvet cheesecake with frosting from scratch that should match something from [pinterest](http://www.pinterest.com/bakerstreet/cheesecake-recipes/)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without this knowledge of where the OP is at, the person attempting to answer is either going to engage in a hopelessly long series of comments *trying* to find out the level, or is going to take a shot in the dark and probably not answer the question satisfactorily for the person asking it, or the next person viewing the page from a google search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too Broad&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back to programming as the idiom and away from cakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next part of the problem is that there are numerous approaches to learning a language or projects one can do.  There are an unprecedented number of different things one can do to start.  Dozens of programming challenges out on the web that can be good starting points for programming (search for them) and hundreds of open source projects that are out there that are at an appropriate level for someone learning (no, don't tackle trying to do something *huge*, but find a nice little utility that could do with some additional functionality).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Such questions have people leaving short answers that are little more to a link.  Stack Exchange works very poorly as a link aggregator - if you are looking for that type of answer, look to link aggregators instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No Clear Problem&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have a problem - you don't know where to start with a design.  But that isn't a clear problem.  Are you stuck at the modeling of the data objects? At the structure of the classes and their responsibilities? trying to figure out how to use Spring or Rails or ${overly large library}?  Is the [ORM](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-relational_mapping) just not connecting to the right neurons in the brain?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of these are part of the &quot;I don't know where to start&quot; set of problems.  Obviously you have gotten to some point in the design.  You want a program that can do X, Y, and Z.  You've fired up the IDE and you've... this is where you need to describe what you have done, what you have thought of and where you are stuck.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to try *something* before you have a good question.  The design from an enterprise coder could steer you into strange n-tier designs, while others are going to suggest strange metaprogramming idioms or [sneak a monad into your design](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/206543/40980).  These aren't *wrong* answers, but they may not be right for where you are at in your learning and figuring out the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider also, that the best way to figure out how to design something is to learn how to design something.  For personal projects learning about how to do something, the paths down the wrong way, while discouraging, are some of the best learning experiences to be used in the *next* project.  Be wary of the programming architect who has never designed a bad system, for when they do they won't know what to do at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try Chat&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have 20 rep (four up votes on questions, two up votes on answers, one up vote and an accept on an answer, ten accepted edits or [some combination of the previous](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/164035/165773 &quot;see: 'How does a lurker gain reputation?'&quot;)), you can [chat](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/chat) in the chat rooms.  Programmer.SE's chatroom is called [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and we're quite open to answering the questions that don't work well on the Q&amp;A part of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The advantage of chat for these type of questions is that we *can* engage in the dense back and forth that would otherwise be in comments to determine your skill level and also work through different problems.  Remember though that chat is *not* a tutorial service despite how helpful people may be." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27038" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6404" RevisionGUID="a704aa85-21c9-4fb1-ab8e-b72ea4507db3" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Unclear what help you need ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Unclear what help you need](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important &quot;see: 'Why is research important?'&quot;).** Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell what problem you are trying to solve or what aspect of your approach needs to be corrected or explained. See the [ask] page for help clarifying this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note `[ask]` above is so called [magic link](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/magic-links), meaning that in comments it auto-expands into [How to Ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Slightly adapted from [this MSO post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/215806/165773)&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27039" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7569" RevisionGUID="71506ada-6b38-439d-b78b-34531c3b8dd6" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We have all seen it: a user asks a question on Software Engineering that belongs on a different site. There are many technology sites on Stack Exchange, and sometimes navigating the lot of them to find the right site for a question can be daunting for new users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, another user will respond to an off-topic question by saying &quot;post at site XYZ!&quot; The user who asked the question may then post a cross-site duplicate, which has its own set of problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The site recommendation might not be appropriate to begin with.&#xD;&#xA;* The question might be on-topic at the other site, but require editing to avoid being closed at that site.&#xD;&#xA;* Asking on multiple sites may result in _two_ messes to clean up.&#xD;&#xA;* The user asking the question gets bounced between sites, which is almost as bad as calling a cable company for customer support and being bounced between departments. _I just want an answer to my question and nobody here knows where I belong_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have guidance for specific instances of this issue ([What goes on Software Engineering (previously known as Programmers)? A guide for Stack Overflow][1] and [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?][2]), what is the general guidance for dealing with users who recommend asking on another site when the question is off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7182/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/129598/&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27041" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7640" RevisionGUID="7420bb81-4cfc-4f6e-ad66-faa865ff9006" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In some cases, the system will delete questions. See the Meta Stack Exchange questions [here][1] and [here][2]. However, at present, the automatic deletion does not pick up questions that have 1 or more up-votes (like your question does now).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you do is up to you, but if the question is not a good fit for the site and people come across it in the various review queues or during other activities, they may down vote it, causing you to lose reputation. If you aren't going to fix it, I'd probably delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/78048/572&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/5221/572" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27044" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7691" RevisionGUID="6be8f41d-4897-44c5-b0ef-626874d563d2" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Code questions may belong on [one of several sites][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Broken or incomplete code belongs on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;* Working code that you want feedback on belongs on Code Review&#xD;&#xA;* Code does not belong on Programmers _unless_ it is supporting your question: while this is a conceptual site, it _is_ about programming after all. But a question dealing _only_ with a block of code would be closed as off-topic. Think of it like this: if your question is a thesis paper, code is like references. They help, but a thesis full of only references is no good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That being said, &quot;help me understand this code&quot; is generally off-topic everywhere. _Sometimes_ those question will slide by on Stack Overflow, but _only_ if there is a suspected bug or other code malfunction (i.e. does not work as expected). I would search Stack Overflow's meta site and maybe ask on their meta first to be safe.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in/129632#129632" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27045" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2510" RevisionGUID="72eed994-09ea-4709-98bf-d56226b72dd1" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In short: no.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A longer answer is that [Programmers was born out of the desire for exactly the site you describe](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046). All the questions that were off-topic or otherwise closed on Stack Overflow were intended to find a home here. Shortly after public beta began, it became apparent that that doesn't work. It doesn't make for a good Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong. &quot;What's the best ...&quot; and other fun discussions *are fun*, but they're not what Stack Exchange is built to do. Stack Exchange is built to host professional Q&amp;A and all the systems it has (voting, accepted answers, transient comments, enforcing the fact that responses to questions should be actual answers, etc.) are built with that in mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are tons of forums out there and sites like Reddit and Quora where you can participate in discussions and other open-ended questions. Stack Exchange is simply not the place for that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27046" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6439" RevisionGUID="05c7fa49-53c0-4443-95c1-b595becb1e03" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="(this got a bit big to put into a comment... so...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the first key differences to realize between SO and... well... the rest of the Stack Exchange network of sites is that SO is many times larger than the other sites.  Stack Overflow creates 8k questions/day - or one P.SE every 4 days.  With such volume most questions on Stack Overflow never get much attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus [from this comment](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6437/how-could-this-question-be-worded-to-avoid-being-stamped-on#comment17418_6438)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @RobertHarvey I've been here twice. Got 4 up votes for an answer and 4 down votes for a question. When I do something silly or wrong on stackoverflow I can understand the odd anonymous drive by down vote or deafening silence but 4 down votes and gone in 60 seconds for my question - I just don't agree with the philosophy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On P.SE you can vote on almost every single question every single day without using up all your votes. P.SE has vote/view ratio compared to the rest of the network and sites its size (see [Why are votes per post on the decrease (what can we do to improve this)?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/216297/213963) - full image at https://i.stack.imgur.com/SRLlM.png ). Having a post get +4 or -4 is not uncommon.  P.SE is more generous with both upvotes *and* downvotes than Stack Overflow because we have more per question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.SE gets quite a few career / education questions.  Unfortunately, outside of a few broad ones that keep popping up (&quot;should I get a certificate?&quot;) every single one is different.  The person is asking about *their* background information, *their* situation, *their* plans for the future.  A stereotypical question goes like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have a CS degree and spent a few years in tech support, now I got a job working with php.  I know some C, but I haven't used it in a few years.  What do I need to study to get a job doing embedded programming? or maybe operating system design?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that this is an &quot;I&quot; question.  If any parameter changes (no degree, worked in finance, knows some java and uses it currently, looking for a job in biotech) the question becomes useless to them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, the difficulty with career questions in general.  From https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590 :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Beyond that, the general rule of thumb should be whether the question can help others in a similar situation. If the circumstances surrounding the question are too specific to the question asker such that there is no way to generalize and answer the question, they should be closed as too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too localized doesn't exist anymore, but we do have the 'close as career / education advice' which is designed to address this particular and common occurrence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key problem with these questions is that they require a dense, two way conversation to get all of the particulars to that out.  The Q&amp;A part of the site is poorly designed (intentionally so) for such conversations - it is optimized for &quot;Here is a question, here is an answer&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please realize that chat is one of the resources that we have available to ask such questions.  This supports the dense conversations that are available and provides a way for people to give opinions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27047" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7756" RevisionGUID="4cbc8fcf-b8f7-4f93-a7a2-3af2448f4212" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Cmon, now.](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-an-alien-language?noredirect=1#comment633790_303438) Apparently using a hyperbolic writing style is grounds for marking things as &quot;unclear&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question very clearly describes a scenario in which the UTF-8 standard would have to be greatly expanded, and the effects/feasibility of such an act. The question has garnered many direct and concrete answers ranging from historical considerations to [mathematical limitations](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-an-alien-language?noredirect=1#comment633785_303438).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One argument for the closing of the discussion was that it would be [hard to search for](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-an-alien-language?noredirect=1#comment633769_303438) (I'm assuming that's the reason for throwing a random link at me, anyway). However, aside from SEO considerations there are, at the time of this writing, [40 questions tagged &lt;kbd&gt;unicode&lt;/kbd&gt;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/unicode) and [15 tagged &lt;kbd&gt;utf-8&lt;/kbd&gt;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/utf-8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the answer to whomever's question cannot be found among the [52 questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/utf-8+or+unicode) on this site because of the way the question was posed, then they're not going to find it on this site *at all*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was garnering a good amount of information that I have yet to find aggregated into a single place other than the RFC for unicode (which doesn't address alien invasion hypotheticals, mind you), and the closure of the post yielded a [missed opportunity for a potentially revealing and informative answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-the-inclusion-of-a-vast-alien-language#comment633790_303438). Not to mention a diamond mod [closed it](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/303438/revisions) in a mere 30 seconds or so, which leads me to believe it [wasn't read in-full to begin with](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/185288/180420) (link is generously written by one of the opponents to the question at hand).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this what I should expect from Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27048" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2533" RevisionGUID="488396b8-5f4a-46cb-b523-1f685a16853f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the case of identical questions, there's a network-wide policy: [Is cross-posting a question on multiple Stack Exchange sites permitted if the question is on-topic for each site?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64068/is-cross-posting-a-question-on-multiple-stack-exchange-sites-permitted-if-the-qu) The answer is no: posting the same question twice is not acceptable. This comes up now and then between [Super User](https://superuser.com/), [Server Fault](http://serverfault.com/), [Unix &amp; Linux](http://unix.stackexchange.com/) and [Ask Ubuntu](http://askubuntu.com/), which have overlapping scopes. We arrange to keep only one version open, ideally the single one that has answers already. In this case, please comment (so that potential answerers don't waste time repeating an answer that someone else wrote on another site), vote to close where you can, and flag for a speedy close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the questions are similar and posted by different users, it's a different matter. If the question is off-topic on one site, of course, close it as off-topic. If the issue is on-topic on both sites but the questions are suitably tailored to their respective sites, let both live: there's no notion of cross-site duplicates, and different communities might have different insights.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27049" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6466" RevisionGUID="73cbcadd-70b1-4e12-bb3e-1b46fc38c6c1" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Workplace has been officially graduated: [new site design](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2364/168) has no &quot;beta&quot; anymore, and [privileges](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/privileges) are set to the level of graduated sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes it possible to add this site to our migration path, does it make sense to do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To better understand this, I would like to learn stats / rates of [successful and rejected migrations](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/202188/165773 &quot;preferably accounting for known inconsistency of these at source and target sites&quot;) to Workplace. I also would like to compare these against successful and rejected migrations to our long established target site - Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For your convenience, below is a list of some prior meta discussions related to Workplace migrations:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3699/closing-questions-that-should-go-to-workplace&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3632/should-we-mention-the-workplace-in-our-faq&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3432/how-should-we-guide-questions-toward-the-workplace&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3204/should-a-list-be-assembled-for-migration-to-the-workplace-once-it-opens&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2439/the-workplace-is-now-in-the-commitment-phase" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27050" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2554" RevisionGUID="364c476b-d0bc-4f2f-b595-cd57010ab0af" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The red &quot;Flag question&quot; button in the flagging modal doesn't seem to work today for when &quot;off topic&quot; is chosen. I've tried on two questions, flagged them as not constructive instead (worked fine).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can't seem to see anything wrong in Firebug or Chrome's dev tools. I'm using Chrome 15.0.874.120 m. I'd prefer to test this further before reporting, but since it involves flagging...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone else noticed that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The workaround proposed in the [meta.so discussion][1] worked. The route I tested was &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. it doesn't belong here&#xD;&#xA;2. exact duplicate&#xD;&#xA;3. back&#xD;&#xA;4. off topic&#xD;&#xA;5. flag question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/112181/cant-vote-to-close-as-off-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27051" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7871" RevisionGUID="271b1b61-cbcd-4459-a0ca-e05e7b082b80" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The tag has since been created/now exists. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more details on how tags are created, see the answers to https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/146949/can-we-please-have-the-foo-tag-on-our-site" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27052" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2569" RevisionGUID="c4cbfbc9-d00d-4e27-9c24-9a83626014cb" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I merged [tag:php5] into [tag:php], but opted not to create a synonym for the same reasons [they're not synonyms on Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/59285/synonyms-mean-interchangeable-not-similar): a synonym should be interchangeable, not merely a similar term.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also went ahead and merged [tag:php-5.3] into [tag:php], as the questions were being used to say &quot;I'm using this version&quot; instead of &quot;I'm asking about this version,&quot; and PHP 5.3 has been out for several years." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27053" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7893" RevisionGUID="ac6b7db2-6374-47ec-807d-317066b72946" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I wonder about this question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/308245/should-we-avoid-language-features-that-c-has-but-java-doesnt-to-increase-main&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It stuck in hot list for 4-5 days, got about 14K views, 16 answers, over 100 upvotes (plus few hundreds more upvotes were cast on answers). That's quite expected in cases like this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strange things happened after it dropped off the list, it was like immediately forgotten and ignored. In a month that passed since it has got only 4 votes and about 300 views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(You can check votes in the [question timeline](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/308245/timeline). As for views, I started checking these after I got curious about how fast it has lost popularity - Feb 7: 14,435 views, Feb 14: 14,569, Feb 21: 14,663, Feb 28: 14,736.)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that [usefulness isn't the goal](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/165773 &quot;as discussed here&quot;) of hot questions but it's hard to believe that 14K views and few hundreds upvotes went to content that isn't even _interesting_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also used [this query](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/95383/anonymous-feedback-for-a-certain-question-and-its-answers) (hat tip to Yannis) to learn about [anonymous feedback](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/post-feedback/info &quot;what's this&quot;) and it doesn't look impressive: votes on top answer were +29/-5, on question +12/-20, other answers got less than 10.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At 14K views this means only one of 400-500 visitors bothered to click the voting arrows. Granted, this seems to be typical, I used same query to compare against two other recent questions with similar score and views and numbers look pretty similar (post ids 307467 and 307292)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27054" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2651" RevisionGUID="0d1f76e8-6483-4197-a1bb-58dd72ef4155" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It looks like you're exposing your email address in the &quot;About Me&quot; field in your profile. That's available to anyone to use as they see fit, which unfortunately includes scraping and spam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A [similar case](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/106943/spam-from-tc-vectors-jeff-please-protect-our-email-addresses-from-spambots) turned up on Meta Stack Overflow a couple months ago, and the general consensus there was that Stack Exchange protects the &quot;email&quot; field of your profile, but there's not much they can do about publicly displayed email in the &quot;About&quot; section.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting [Jeff Atwood's answer](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/107334/155160):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;There is absolutely no way I can think of that we'd be exposing email addresses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;As others have noted, be careful about putting your email in your &quot;About Me&quot; field if you are concerned about unwanted email contact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't *think* there's any data being collected on the address scrapers, but I can't say for sure since I'm not an SE employee." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27055" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8120" RevisionGUID="6640e012-f43c-4df1-9666-9b60e2d5c8d0" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Using a tag for this purpose isn't appropriate. It a [meta tag][1]: a tag which describes something other than the content of the question (examples being a skill level or motivation) or an ill-defined concept. Tags are meant to describe the content of the question, not the current state of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally, it would be nice if the thresholds for questions that appear on the homepage are adjusted to make the homepage more friendly. However, this is something that Stack Exchange staff would need to review. I believe questions are removed from the homepage at a score of -4, regardless of their on-hold status. There may be one or more suggestions on [Meta Stack Exchange][2] regarding this, but I'm not aware of any.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/meta-tags&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27056" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2686" RevisionGUID="f025e57a-1c57-4943-a4a2-6501c0c92604" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yes it does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, unless you [explicitly tell the highlighter which language it is][1] by including:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- language: lang-cpp --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;at the start of your code snippet, it uses the tags to decide which language the code is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you've tagged the question [tag:html] and [tag:css] it's going to assume that the code is either HTML or CSS, not C++.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So either retag the question or use the language hint.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/981/syntax-highlighting-language-hints" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27057" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8243" RevisionGUID="db847d8b-b84c-4216-890b-e433d61a2163" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Lately, I've seen a number of questions closed as duplicates with only gnat's vote, such as http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/332688/3965 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![marked as duplicate by gnat, Community][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I know, the only legitimate way to do this is by having a [gold badge](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/dupehammer/info &quot;'dupehammer' feature&quot;) in one of the associated tags.  As gnat's one and only tag badge is a bronze badge in [tag:java], I can only assume this is a bug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OxUw9.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27058" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6480" RevisionGUID="b32d1675-a906-4505-9275-91d84ba8e33e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm going to pull up some recently closed questions and am curious what you feel is bullying or the appropriate approach to deal with the questions.  If you have issues about other specific questions and you feel like they are getting an unfair treatment, please consider posting questions on meta about those&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230025/database-career-path&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm really new to database careers and no idea what is their work look like. All I know is they maintain or design a database.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What I want to know is the career path of Database Administrator, what I mean is for example a programmer in the future may become a team leader and so on. What about in database what is the hierarchy of this job. And also I want to know what is the required knowledge and technology to attain a specific level of the job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Put on holds off topic - career and education advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230013/how-to-generate-data-matrix-from-a-seq-file-in-java&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Lots of stuff&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And so on… the rows indicates user and each 17 columns represents page hits to that page by that user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;So send me the code in java to perform this operation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(not closed currently, but on its way)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/229967/hello-im-a-13-year-old-app-developer-wannabe-for-windows-android-what-lang&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Recently, my friend got me interested in programming. I've always thought it was this ultra complicated concept, but after watching the code.org's &quot;What Schools Don't Teach&quot; I'm really wanting to work on something. I want to build Android and Windows apps and games. I would like to build a building/tower defense-esq game for both both platforms. My main questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;-What programming languages should I learn?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -What engine should I use for a 2D building/ RTS (much like Ubisoft's &quot;The Settlers Online&quot;)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as what language, technology, or project one should take up next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You appear to be referring most recently, however, to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230003/finding-out-skill-level&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am writing this question due to the fact that I came across a JUG(Java User Group) facebook page. There was a guy in need of a 'junior' java developer. They told me that a junior Java developer is someone who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there any kind of test someone can take (apart from the oracle exams etc...)? Also , are these information valid or partly true?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To which you commented:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; my friend you have come to very unhelpful and unpleasant place to post your questions. Programmers stack exchange should be related to ask questions related to programming and skills, but the bullies here are to close your question without a single doubt in their head. They are ruining PSE. You are better off in Java Forums where these bullies cannot close your questions. –  Jhilke Dai&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career and education advice is off topic.  It is specifically called out as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The off topic message for the question is intended to give the appropriate guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel this is incorrect and that career questions should be allowed, please make meta post that states this and provides a good argument for how they should be handled and lead to valuable content for the site.  Note that this has been addressed many times in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6458/there-seems-to-be-some-contradictory-guidance-with-respect-to-asking-career-deve&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6410/is-there-a-stackexchange-site-that-would-be-appropriate-for-cs-career-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2483/why-are-all-of-the-good-career-related-threads-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A core principle with Stack Exchange is the desire to attract experts that stay and answer questions.  Without experts the site will suffer the fate of [artificial intelligence.SE](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/no-artificial-intelligence-in-area-51/) or [Startups.SE](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/214315/what-happened-to-startups-se).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end it is necessary to down vote and close questions that are not appropriate for the site.  Sometimes this is from a lack of information to make it into a good question (there was a lengthy discussion about that in chat the other day - it was begrudgingly acknowledged that without down votes and closed question the question would not have been improved).  Other times it is necessary for such to get the person to read the appropriate parts of the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly (and a difficult one to get one's head around) it is *not* about helping the person asking the question but the *next* person asking the **same** question.  Questions asking about career paths (a two of my examples) are often *very* specific to that individual or that company (for the DBA, I've never seen a DBA at two different companies have the same set of responsibilities).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Third, discussions on the main site *don't* work.  It wasn't designed for that.  I really suggest reading [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) (which also points out some of the issues you seem to take issue with) which was mentioned in some of the early podcasts by Jeff as being influential in the design of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are other communities where discussion works (as well as they do).  I will point out that even [reddit/r/cscareerquestions](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions) has a hefty [FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index) that is expected to be required reading *before* asking such a question.  Polling and discussion is the *raison d'être* there.  That said, the level of hostility and snark that people have commented finding on reddit (or hacker news) far exceeds our own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And well, give-me-the-codes is welcomed at eLance and similar freelancing sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do better? Probably.  However, posting comments about dissatisfaction with P.SE and about 'bullies' is *not* the way to encourage this process." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27059" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2833" RevisionGUID="40df4a15-ebe8-4436-aecd-05ad0c341361" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Although I have no idea if that's what causing the issue, IE7 is [not _fully_ supported][1]. The (somewhat) [official policy on browser support][2] is: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We support current and previous versions (and possibly previous-previous version) of all popular web browsers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - IE&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Chrome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Safari&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Firefox&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Opera&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Where &quot;popular&quot; means &quot;has some reasonable amount of market share&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, right now IE8 (previous) and IE9 (current stable) are the versions officially supported, and IE7 specific issues will probably never be resolved. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As IE10 Platform Preview 4 was released in November, I think you should start considering browsing StackExchange with Chrome or Safari, since I'm guessing you have a pretty good reason to not upgrade IE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/71208/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/56161/which-browsers-are-officially-supported-and-what-else-do-i-need/56192#56192" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27060" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8245" RevisionGUID="ffe85c63-5ca7-47b1-b1fe-93b8c5da2e51" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's not single-handed: notice the presence of Community in the close voter list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Last year a feature was introduced to Stack Exchange to [allow question askers to single-handedly close][single] their questions as duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When someone else proposes a possible duplicate, [the original poster (and only that person) sees a banner at the top of the post][newUI]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![&quot;May already have an answer&quot; banner](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BtT34.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the poster clicks the &quot;That solved my problem!&quot; button, the question is closed as a duplicate. The Community &quot;user&quot; is given the responsibility of being the final close voter, but any other voters are listed in the close banner as usual.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what's happening here is that gnat has proposed a duplicate, and the question asker agreed that the proposal solved the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[single]:https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10363/allow-question-askers-to-close-their-own-questions-unilaterally&#xD;&#xA;[newUI]:https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/250981/159251" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27061" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2967" RevisionGUID="276b8939-beaf-4716-9882-754f7c818752" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As a sidenote, a large number of deleted questions may get you [question banned][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Are deleted questions taken into account too?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Yes. It's not a problem to have deleted questions. But if a large percentage of your questions are deleted by yourself or the community, then apparently they were not suitable for the site. But meanwhile they might have wasted time from users who read them, or even answered them. Therefore deleted questions might have an effect on the filter, among many other secret factors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Beware that an account with a high public reputation might very well have many deleted questions, including auto-deleted old low-score questions, all of which are only visible to moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously, you have nothing to worry about, all your questions, even the very few closed ones, are highly up voted - the algorithm may be secret(ish) but I don't think it would be so blatantly naive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27062" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6484" RevisionGUID="727d0edc-03df-4d56-bdd1-dbe47261634f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="# Downvoted #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to look at is the mouseover for the down vote button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Realize that this is a completely subjective grading and people may down vote because they were late to work or don't like unicorns.  However one's feeling of unicorns, this *is* information for you to look at and consider how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Make sure that the question is not just asking for something that can be easily searched with google.###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking other people to do your searching for you is considered poor form.  Everyone answering questions is doing so on a volunteer basis (even the SE employees that sometimes answer questions - they aren't paid to do so).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also extends to things that you should have been able to find when searching on Software Engineering SE.  As you enter the information be sure to tag the question appropriately.  The combination of tags and title *may* help you find something right away that answers the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Explain your current understanding of the issue###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just saying &quot;Could someone explain ${concept} to me&quot; doesn't show what you *do* understand.  It lacks research.  Often the answer to this is spent repeating what is already available in Wikipedia.  If you had read this already and don't understand a part of it, explain that part and what you do understand.  Correcting a misconception is easier (and a better question) than trying to explain the entire topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Blatantly off topic###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read the help center on [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [off-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) questions. Questions that are asking for a discussion, or polling or one of the reasons specified in the help center are often down voted.  Especially note that questions *should* have been posted on Stack Overflow (implementation) or questions that should have been posted on Stack Overflow, but would be off topic there too (do this work for me) are similarly often down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [How much research effort is expected of Stack Overflow users?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/182266/how-much-research-effort-is-expected-of-stack-overflow-users/182380#182380)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Encouraging people to explain downvotes](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/2373/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link:&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;`[Why was my question down voted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27063" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3050" RevisionGUID="a94a4116-ef08-4d25-9340-7665dc17feac" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Moderators do have access to analytics, [including referral data](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/114257/149432), but this information is considered confidential information and is likely never to be made available to the public.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you ask a moderator in chat, we can see about providing glimpses of that on a case-by-case basis." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27064" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8250" RevisionGUID="3b92e223-7582-4e4d-9025-dccca0c35499" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Questions are sometimes closed as duplicates of later questions because the later question is clearly of higher quality, and/or it has better answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading:**  &#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/147643&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27065" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3052" RevisionGUID="f1d7f2a9-37b9-48d3-9976-9adac29268fa" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The message is a system message and, as such, cannot be dismissed by individual users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has been brought up before [on Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64118/allow-us-an-exit-hatch-to-dismiss-the-system-message-notification-bar) and has always been declined." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27066" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8252" RevisionGUID="0b34c29b-732a-42eb-923a-3f36c384d451" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Editing and collaboration][1] are fundamental parts of Stack Exchange. Except for rare cases of content disputes (a large number of edits and rollbacks or Meta discussion on a particular post's quality) or historical protection of posts that would otherwise be deleted, all posts can be edited. However, we do have guidance for editing - edits should fix grammar or spelling, clarifying the meaning, incorporate information from comments, add updates as the post ages, or add related links.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I reviewed the edit and saw that it didn't meet the criteria. It changed the words without accomplishing any of the objectives for edits - it didn't become more clear or incorporate new information or add anything of value. Because of this, I [rolled the edit back][2]. Anyone with edit rights to a post can also use this rollback function.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the future, if you see anything wrong, here are things that you can do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Fix it. At 2,000 reputation, you have the ability to edit questions and answers without review. Prior to this, you can make edits and put them into a review queue for people with sufficient reputation to review. By this point, you've also gained other editing capabilities - creating new tags (300), editing community wiki (100), and commenting (50).&#xD;&#xA;* [Flag it for moderator review][3]. If you suspect that something bad is happening, please flag it. We review our flags very regularly and handle things. We have lots of good tools to help us.&#xD;&#xA;* Bring it up on Meta, like you did here. If you don't need a moderator to handle it or something needs broader discussion by the community, open a discussion. Moderators are also notified of all new Meta posts, so if it requires our input or review, we'll see it and should be able to look into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/editing&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/17038/what-is-a-rollback&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/flagging" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27067" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6488" RevisionGUID="71467562-745a-4ca7-93b6-d4cb29c1894e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Career or education advice###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic here. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career advice questions are only applicable to the person asking the question.  No two people are looking at the same set of classes, or the same job.  Every question that is asked is either only for one person or the answers will always be hopelessly incomplete because of the lack of the nuanced information and context that the person asking the question is in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career questions are often **very important** questions to the person asking them.  Although assistance can be provided, the answer is one that *you* need to find yourself, and not from random strangers on the Internet.  If you are in academia, ask a career counselor at the school, or one of the instructors - they know you better than we do.  Similar resources can be found for people in the job market already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the biggest difficulties with Q&amp;A for career questions is that to get the nuances of your situation and getting to know you better requires a dense two way communication - lots of clarification back and forth.  To this end, [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) is a resource where (the current) denizens can have that conversation.  We still won't get to know you as well as people who know you know you, but on the whole we are familiar with the various parts of the software industry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please also note that we are notoriously bad at predicting the future.  If you had asked someone if Objective C was going to be a popular language (prior to the iPhone) they would have looked at you funny (&quot;[Apple has less than a 2% market share](http://www.macworld.com/article/1043741/marketshare.html) - who would use it?&quot;) - yet it became a _very_ popular language and subsequently fell out of favor once Apple switched to Swift.  Or if you asked about running JavaScript outside of the web browser they would have laughed at you.  Technology is changing at an incredible rate and to ask about what it will be in another decade? Your guess is as good as mine... maybe better (its less hampered by a few decades of industry preconceptions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking questions to predict the future job market and what skills are best is completely speculation and cannot have any right answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Reddit) [/r/cscareersquestions FAQ](http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/wiki/index)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5746/are-career-questions-acceptable-or-not&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6594/are-now-all-questions-about-teaching-programming-to-be-considered-off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Where to ask for general advice for young programmers?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/216589/where-to-ask-for-general-advice-for-young-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* Workplace.SE -&gt; [topics guidance](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)  &#xD;&#xA;  Workplace.SE -&gt; [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - Career or Educational Advice?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27068" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6491" RevisionGUID="b0c23641-18e4-4c85-8343-95630b0f1533" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Primarily opinion-based#&#xD;&#xA;Good questions ask for expertise, not opinions. Examples of questions that are primarily opinion-based:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What did this person mean when he said...&quot; (We're not mind-readers)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Which of these two designs is the better one?&quot; (what do you mean by &quot;better?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;How should I arrange the folders in my project?&quot; (really?)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Is this the best practice?&quot; (what do you mean by &quot;best?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What is the name of this thing so I can go look it up?&quot; (Ask us your specific question about the thing)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key distinguishing factor is that there is no way to get an authoritative answer for the question - the answers are all based on opinion rather than the knowledge of the person answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that if the answers to the question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design A} for these reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- break --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I like ${design B} for these other reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If both of these answers are valid then the question is likely opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6758/what-is-the-problem-with-pros-and-cons&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **tl;dr** We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/142353/why-is-asking-a-question-on-best-practice-a-bad-thing/142354#142354)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Primarily Opinion-Based?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6491/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27069" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3257" RevisionGUID="47e5b208-c1ae-4a00-9355-0668de1f5772" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yes it is a bit concerning, although 15% is not that much. I went through some of the questions and there is a minor pattern there, several of the closed questions that made it to Twitter were incorrectly migrated from Stack Overflow and they carried upvotes and upvoted answers from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is in the &quot;hot questions&quot; algorithm and as [ChrisF mentioned][1] it affects all sites, not just Programmers. Some things we could do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close questions quicker&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   There seems to be a deep rooted perception that closing questions is a bad thing. It's not, and it should happen fast. Closing is just a peer review mechanism, a signal that a question is a bit problematic and in need of improvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Re-open questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Don't dismiss closed questions, they are not dead. If you feel a question can be re-opened, please try to get it re-opened. Bring it up on chat or Meta, find others that can help. Not every closed question will be re-opened, obviously, but some will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote sensibly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Upvote questions that show research effort, are clear and useful. Don't upvote questions that you feel are interesting / fun but blatantly off topic. Similarly with downvotes, they are a comment to the question, not the person asking the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [A guide to moderating programmers.stackexchange yourself - close voting][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [What's all this about heroic edits?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, we prefer to be called [diamond moderators][4] ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the list of questions, there where flags on all questions, including the three questions that where closed by a single moderator vote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136610/version-number-soup-in-ror-is-grails-better-django&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Typical &quot;which technology is better&quot; question, it could have been closed as off topic. Closed by a user and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136736/online-code-editor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Blatantly off topic question, but borderline on Stack Overflow. Closed by a moderator, and I trust that it was never migrated to SO because the SO mods rejected it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137252/is-it-a-good-idea-to-generate-code-with-the-help-of-your-ide&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as a duplicate by a moderator. This shouldn't really be an issue for someone coming to the site from Twitter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137385/what-do-you-do-when-you-cant-seem-to-understand-a-certain-part-of-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Extremely vague and open ended question, gentle reminder to everyone: Programmers Stack Exchange is not a free for all discussion forum. Closed by a user and a moderator, and it makes me sad that it got as many upvotes as it did (question &amp; answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137372/is-object-oriented-stuff-really-that-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Extremely open ended and argumentative question, comment wars on the question and almost every answer (and a particularly nasty &quot;discussion&quot;, that has since been removed). Closed by a user and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137520/why-do-some-job-posts-say-high-pressure-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Blatantly off topic, typical example of a populist question. Closed by five users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137715/a-class-named-class&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I closed this one because it was getting a bit out of hand, and there wasn't any need for further answers. It had three re-open votes, and I've just re-opened it with a notice for longer answers. If it starts gathering poor answers again, I won't hesitate to close it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137794/offshoring-a-software-project-conflict-resolution&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Very open ended. Closed by two users and a moderator. Potentially salvageable, but it requires a lot of work, and OP seems satisfied with the existing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137864/how-long-did-it-take-you-to-get-kernel-programming-down&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Open ended and quite difficult to understand what it's actually about. Closed by five users. I don't understand why this was tweeted, it's a zero scored question with no answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137896/software-engineer-already-in-late-thirties-would-i-have-trouble-finding-a-new&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Duplicate, closed by four users and a moderator. Same as (3).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/137994/does-object-oriented-programming-really-model-the-real-world&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I closed this one because it started gathering answers that re-iterated earlier answers. It's not a question that will be deleted soon (if ever). It deserves the community's attention (wink).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138132/list-of-the-really-big-and-really-small-discrepancies-with-js-in-the-big-5-brows&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Vague, overly broad, argumentative and mostly off topic. Closed by five users, I wonder if the fact that the single answer was negatively voted should have prevented tweeting it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/138229/python-is-slowly-replacing-c-in-universities-does-this-move-degrade-the-quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Vague, speculative, argumentative, wrong. Close by five users, I suspect it got twitted because of the highly upvoted answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is worth reiterating that there where flags on all questions, including ones closed by a single moderator. I will keep an eye on the one I re-opened, hopefully answerers will not fail to read the notice for yet another time...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3256/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75189/who-are-the-diamond-moderators-and-what-is-their-role" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27070" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8285" RevisionGUID="2caa168e-acde-4a81-ad65-4952ba448d81" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:38.800" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## No&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The concept of licensing questions being on-topic has a long history. When the topicality of this site was first discussed, [&quot;software law&quot; was originally on-topic][1]. But this definition of [legal questions needed clarification][2]. Eventually, [we even updated the help documentation to better reflect scope][3]. And [then had to make more changes to the FAQ][4] (which pre-dated the current Help Center). And even then there were [many][5], [many][6], [many][7], [many][8], [many][9], [many][10] questions to clarify this particular point of the scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today, the [accepted stance is that software licensing questions are on-topic][11]. However, it's incredibly nuanced. The answer requires 24 bullets (3 deep in some cases) to describe how to determine if your software licensing question is on or off-topic. In addition, there need to be three other examples and guidance. [The post describing the set of on-topic software licensing questions][12] is over twice length of the entire [Help Center article for what is on-topic][13] (520 words to 260 words / 2,987 characters to 1,580 characters).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At one point, [I even advocated for us making sure that licensing questions were on-topic here][14]. I don't dispute that [we have many great questions and some great and many really good answers about software licenses][15]. I also don't dispute that this topic is incredibly important to software engineers - creating, extending, and incorporating third-party software packages is essential and open source software is pervasive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, when I advocated for licensing questions to be on-topic here, that was before the [Law][16] and [Open Source][17] communities were launched. We were a community of software engineers who cared, among other things, about software licenses. There was no site where these questions fit well and we had sufficient expertise to at least try to help people who came to us with at least a subset of licensing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe one of our first responsibilities should be to the person who is asking the question and to people who may find that question when they do a search using their favorite search engine. They should ideally end up on a site where the community can provide expert answers and review (and vote on) those answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [&quot;Respect the community - your own, and others'&quot; blog post][18] provides some guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, it cites a previous blog post, [Why Can't You Have Just One Site?][19] to figure out the definition of your community:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it really so hard to figure out which community you belong to, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; thus, where your question belongs? Ask yourself this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - what is your job title?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - which community do you consider yourself a part of?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - what are you trying to accomplish?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can use the same mountain to go downhill really fast on snow --&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but it's plainly evident to the participant which culture they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; consider themselves a part of, &quot;skiers&quot; or &quot;snowboarders&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Following all of the recent discussions regarding our name, we came up with the definition (which is now in our Help Center and [Tour][20]) that we are a community of &quot;professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle&quot; - we are software engineers (and some people don't like that term, so I'll also say that we are also [software craftsman][21]). We are trying to accomplish &quot;creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For completeness sake, I frequently cite it for the scope of the discipline of software engineering, so I do need to point out that one subsection of Software Engineering Professional Practice in the [IEEE Guide to the Software Body of Knowledge v3][22] is indeed legal issues and includes &quot;matters related to standards, trademarks, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, professional liability, legal requirements, trade compliance, and cybercrime&quot;. However, it also goes on to say that &quot;software engineers must consult attorneys who specialize in the type and jurisdiction of any identified legal issues.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Scope Gerrymandering: attempting to micromanage what’s on-topic in order to avoid overlap with other sites or simply drive away users seen as undesirable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Respect the Community blog post says to avoid gerrymandering. I agree that there is going to be overlap. I accept that - we even had [the croissants experiment][23] where we demonstrated the overlap and differences with sites like Computer Science, Stack Overflow, and Code Golf. I believe when we took on the whole realm of software law, and then even after we narrowed that down to software licensing, we were doing the opposite of gerrymandering (I also learned that there is no antonym of gerrymander).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are all practitioners of software engineering. Many of us have formal and structured training, either from a college, a university, or a bootcamp. However, the amount of education in the topic of legal issues tends to be very small for many of us. I don't see this as attempting to avoid overlap or drive users away, but guide users to a more appropriate place to ask their questions, get answers, and have those answers peer reviewed by many other people with the needed knowledge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don’t migrate poorly-asked or non-constructive questions. Just close them. If you want to help the asker out by recommending a site where their question would be on-topic, go ahead - but also recommend they read that site’s FAQ first!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we do this. For low quality questions, we have a custom &quot;legal advice&quot; close reason that calls out the Help Centers of Open Source and Law. However, this only addresses those poorly asked questions. Many of the software licensing questions asked here are actually good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do leave comments on questions that might get better answers somewhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree with this advice. [We have had significant problems with users on Stack Overflow telling people to ask their questions on our site][24]. It leads to cross-posting. As a moderator, I'd rather have a flag and a reviewing a possible migration than having people leave comments and dealing with cleaning up low-quality answers left by people who aren't knowledgable on the topic or cleaning up after cross-posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the end of the day, I want to do what is best for the people with the problem. I think that is moving questions to where the experts are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/882/software-law-definition&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3131/can-we-put-software-licensing-questions-are-off-topic-in-the-faq/3132&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/would-a-how-to-choose-the-best-oss-license-type-question-be-appropriate-for-ps?s=95%7C0.0000&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3921/why-was-my-question-on-free-open-software-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5456/discussion-on-if-questions-about-eulas-are-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6497/what-is-the-difference-between-software-licensing-and-copyright&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6186/question-regarding-license-violation&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7748/why-do-we-have-a-legal-tag-if-legal-questions-are-not-welcome/7749#7749&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7266/4&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3135/4&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/licensing?sort=votes&amp;pageSize=50&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://law.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/07/why-cant-you-have-just-one-site/&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tour&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_craftsmanship&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: https://www.computer.org/web/swebok/v3&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6293/4&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27071" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6529" RevisionGUID="0f3bcb0e-0695-4e31-ada6-aba5f114e30a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Aside from the relative merit of using sonnets to answer a question, the guiding principle is this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are for clarifying questions and answers, or asking for clarification.  Any other use makes them subject to removal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the comments are anything but that, cast a flag against them, and a moderator will remove them if they are onerous.  The key on any Stack Exchange site is to reduce the noise as much as possible.  This is already done by the system collapsing long strings of comments, but if the comment thread has become particularly noisy, a moderator can take care of that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For some comment conversations, a &quot;would you like to move this conversation to chat&quot; link is offered.  Chat is more relaxed about these things; if you want to discuss the relative merits of answering Stack Exchange questions via sonnet, by all means avail yourself of the chat facility.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[How do Comments Work? (Meta FAQ)](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/19756/193412)  &#xD;&#xA;[How to Use the Comment Privilege (from the Help Center)](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/comment)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27072" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3292" RevisionGUID="0f5c5ba6-4688-4ffc-924a-1a4b21177302" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I found [this post][1] on SO's meta site, and since the question was about meta participation on P.SE, I thought I'd post the same question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to improve meta participation on P.SE's meta site? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/119817/158605&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27074" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6534" RevisionGUID="5e11a682-8b46-4386-90f7-facad3bd29d9" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="...if I was a homework cheater, I would applaud [an approach like that](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14258630#14258630 &quot;quote source, bold font is mine&quot;)...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm for deletion if not improved in a reasonable timeframe.  &#xD;&#xA;But minutes after closure is, I think, too speedy.  &#xD;&#xA;**I tend to give a few hours, a day** tops, or recent activity on the site with no edits made...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...because, you see, few hours of just staying there would be **good enough already** for my purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##I would applaud it, enjoy it, exploit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More, I would brag about my successful recipe at &quot;forums&quot;, sharing it with cheaters like me and helping them find a way to a promised land:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Create a throwaway account at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;2. Dump your homework.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;it's quite likely that you'll find a kind soul or two around to help&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;3. Keep squeezing solution details in question comments until it's deleted.&#xD;&#xA;4. If you're lucky to get an answer before question gets [closed](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10582/what-is-a-closed-or-on-hold-question &quot;what does that mean&quot;), do the same in answer comments.&#xD;&#xA;5. If you feel like nobody's paying attention, edit your question: that will [bump](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info) it and increase chances to attract someone willing to help.&#xD;&#xA;6. You may probably notice that question is getting funny marks -1, -2, -3... They call it [down-votes](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/down-votes/info) - don't worry about these, it's all imaginary.&#xD;&#xA;7. If you notice that you can't ask next question, don't worry. They call it [question ban](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th), all you need to circumvent it is to create new throwaway account and repeat above steps.&#xD;&#xA;8. [Only thing to keep in mind is](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3836/programmers-se-and-the-summer-of-love/3837#3837 &quot;paraphrased from here&quot;): **&quot;don't care how they react; go looking for the one guy that will actually do your homework for you (some people will)&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##As a community, what should we do about this approach?   &#xD;&#xA;Should we keep current &quot;policy&quot; as highlighted above, or should we consider speedier deletions?  Speedier deletions on down-voted questions may lead to the help-vampire hitting the question ban faster, but this can be worked around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're here to build a knowledgeable, rewarding community.  We're not here to feed the help-vampires or to reward answers on their questions as it merely encourages more of the bad behaviour.  How should we balance cleaning out the trash without appearing overly harsh to new community members that may be able to contribute once they learn the ropes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;To those interested in a broader context of above: **[what is the point to keep this homework dump visible?](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/what-is-the-point-to-keep-this-homework-dump-visible)**&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27075" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3350" RevisionGUID="ff942130-ceaa-4b0e-b302-9408a9070c29" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Studying similar ([faq-proposed](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/faq-proposed/info)) question at SO Meta and especially its accepted answer helped me to make my mind on that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Where can I ask a “how to get started” question on a Stack Exchange site with respect to technology?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/121705/where-can-i-ask-a-how-to-get-started-question-on-a-stack-exchange-site-with-re)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...tag wiki's is perhaps the best we can do.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the wiki for a topic doesn't already contain this information - links to web sites, books, tutorials etc. then perhaps we should be making all efforts to ensure that it does...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Above brought peace and light into my life.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if I can imagine an answer making good tag wiki, it means question is OK to me. &lt;sup&gt;assuming it is on-topic&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, I take a deeper look into the question and try to find out if there's something wrong with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for [the question you referred to](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/84739/what-is-the-preferable-mobile-android-iphone-game-development-tool-for-a-c-ne), well, it doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While casting close vote I have been choosing between not constructive and too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Per re-reading [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) I was rather inclined to vote for _too localized_ but the statement &quot;Which development tool is widely used now?&quot; made me feel that _not constructive_ would be a better match.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Understanding scope of the question helps to find out if it's appropriate or not. _&quot;I am a newbie, how do I get started writing new programming language?&quot;_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[FAQ discourages](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask &quot;`What kind of questions should I not ask here?'&quot;) questions that are too wide:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an _entire book_ that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that _not constructive_ close reasons description matches above with _&quot;this question will likely solicit... extended discussion&quot;_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![https://i.stack.imgur.com/BWAjl.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Not a real question_ can also match in blatant cases, with _&quot;overly broad&quot;_ close reason. _&quot;Need help getting started with programming.&quot;_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/BWAjl.jpg &quot;FAQ quidance about question scope&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27076" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6592" RevisionGUID="957a89ba-8ce2-49e2-975f-e9552f0b33f6" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Recent efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is [long known &quot;tradition&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112598/165773 &quot;see 'Annotate user accounts network-wide when they get rate-limited or banned' at MSE&quot;) of attempts to circumvent such bans by posting at inappropriate sites:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The core issue here seems to be the abusive &quot;I can't ask any more, so I'll ask my question on a similar site, in the hope it is migrated&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder how much impact could this have on Programmers. To understand this, I would like to find out how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be also helpful to learn similar statistics for questions from users who:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* aren't _yet_ banned, but are already [warned about approaching a ban](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773 &quot;recently introduced feature&quot;) at SO&#xD;&#xA;* are rate-limited to ask questions at SO by [anti-recidivism system](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234518/165773 &quot;'If the user was blocked from posting questions at the time of deletion, then the recreated account will be restricted to posting only one question per week until the quality of their contributions is demonstrated'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically I am trying to figure whether it's something that can be dealt with in our regular ways, or it is worth looking for a dedicated approach to address (like, say, system triggering automated flag for mod attention when post from such a user gets close vote / flag).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [Let's burn down the close queue!](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [Block migration if user is suspended/question-blocked at destination](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/102293/block-migration-if-user-is-suspended-question-blocked-at-destination)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [Warn new users when they ask a question after a previous question is closed, downvoted, or deleted](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSE) [What is the reasoning behind limiting &quot;recidivists&quot; to post one question per week?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/234609/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * (MSO) [Why won't the system allow me to ask questions for several days?](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/271543/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Stats on how attempts to circumvent SO question blocks impact other sites](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Meta P.SE) https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27078" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6598" RevisionGUID="8e985939-bbce-4e28-80c3-cee3dd9beafb" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="##Protection racket&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Your own list illustrates how pointless](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/6597/1) this sort of proactive activity is: in most cases, few or no new answers were posted *regardless* of whether the questions were protected. Indeed, the most-answered question of the lot was immediately protected. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not the raw *traffic* that creates the problem. It's traffic coupled with a question that begs for *participation*. Ars has its own forum attached to these, there's no pressing need for readers to come here to kibitz - unless the question itself is crying out for yet another answer...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes this is unavoidable. Questions that, *within the rules of the community* can only be answered in a narrow, controlled fashion may inadvertently imply a much broader scope to outsiders who don't know or don't care about the community norms. Protect is useful in these situations, where every *n* views will tend to generate *m* poor/spam/non- answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But these tend to be the exceptions, *particularly* on a site like this which doesn't really go in so much for discussions of tools or hardware or other spam-friendly topics. Protection here should be reserved for those cases where a good, answered question is attracting a large volume of noise / meta commentary *from new users*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to *pre-emptively* do something useful to forestall noise on questions, then **edit them.** Get rid of bits that implicitly invite any and all opinions, tighten up the scope, focus on making the question reflect its *best answers* rather than aiming for a big tent that welcomes all *participants.* Not only can this reduce confusion for outsiders, it can also benefit the folks already on the site who wouldn't be affected by Protection anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Effects of Ars&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm counting roughly 192 questions that've been linked to from ArsTechnica over the past 2 years that Sam's been doing this. Could be a few more or less; there's a lot of cross-linking, and I might have missed a few related questions - but this should be the *vast* majority of all questions that've been linked to. You can view a list [here](https://stackedit.io/viewer#!provider=gist&amp;gistId=4be501a1cd10129c71f8&amp;filename=progsears.md) if you're interested...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, some basic stats on how these questions have aged. Out of those 192, 31 are *currently* closed and 61 are *currently* protected. The average number of (non-deleted) answers is 12, the average # of deleted answers is 2. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now... How they fared after being shared. I'm going to look at this from two different angles: a simple look at the number of answers attracted that *would* have been blocked by Protected status (had it been applied) and a comparison of the answer distribution before and after.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Protect-worthy answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If *all* of the questions in that list had been protected prior to being shared, a total of 55 answers would have been blocked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of those 55 answers, 18 scored less than 0 and 16 are currently deleted. 23 currently score &gt; 0. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Needless to say, these were posted to the 131 questions that *weren't* Protected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Answer distribution&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the 2578 answers posted before these questions were shared, 2019 are currently scored &gt; 0 while 211 are scoring &lt; 0. 219 are deleted. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the 124 answers posted *after* these questions were shared, 60 are currently scored &gt; 0 while 33 are scoring &lt; 0. 23 are deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I noted in the first section, it's clear that Protection has relatively little effect on these. This jibes with my observations elsewhere on the network: trying to predict which questions will attract crap answers based purely on *traffic* is exceedingly error-prone; other heuristics are needed. [Which is why we implemented better heuristics](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/226619/auto-protect-questions-that-get-more-than-n-answers-from-new-users-in-a-24-hour/228805#228805), based on observing which questions actually benefited from Protected status. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The % of not-useless answers posted after sharing is considerably lower than the % posted before; this shouldn't be too surprising, given none of them were new or unanswered. The % of not-useless new-user answers posted is lower than the % from existing users, but the volume is considerably lower. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reserve Protected status for questions that are attracting noise or abuse from new users. Protect is not a prophylactic. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27079" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3415" RevisionGUID="5c24dfbb-58fa-487d-bb23-1aa141a6833b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The timeline of this was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* June 3, 2010 — [NPR proposal][1] created in Area51&#xD;&#xA;* September 1, 2010 — NPR enters private beta as &quot;Programmers&quot; (will continue to call it NPR for the sake of distinguishing it from the current site)&#xD;&#xA;* September 7, 2010 — NPR enters public beta&#xD;&#xA;* September 13, 2010 — MSO starts to grapple with how bad NPR is [when trying to dupe Software Engineering proposals to it](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* September 15, 2010 — We on Meta Programmers.SE [start to deal with that perception](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* September 17, 2010 — SE [makes a blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/) announcing the decision to start merging programming-related proposals to improve NPR&#xD;&#xA;* September 18, 2010 — We begin to [redefine the scope of the site](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* September 23, 2010 — MSO and SE [do the same](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site), with [different results][2]&#xD;&#xA;* September 29, 2010 — &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&quot; is published, new scope and guidelines [begin to be enforced](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice), and the free-for-all NPR proposal dies. It's replaced with Programmers, the site for expert programmers who are interested in subjective questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;* December 16, 2010 — Programmers launches, and the position statement is tweaked from &quot;subjective questions&quot; to &quot;conceptual questions&quot; to [make it easier to explain why it exists compared to Stack Overflow](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/).&#xD;&#xA;* December 17, 2010–Present — Clean-up of the colossal mess left over from beta, including [incorrect UI strings and FAQ wordings](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio/3415#comment9139_3414), [crappy questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning), [awful tags](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups), [misconceptions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl), and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Within 29 days the site went from programmers hanging out and discussing their lifestyle to programmers discussing software development issues, now over 18 months ago, which is why I'm always surprised people still cling to that old proposal. I would've thought they'd all move on by now: the writing was on the wall almost immediately after the site left private beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/65439/149432" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27080" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3462" RevisionGUID="f22ca8e5-32db-4c54-9a2d-abca4a5b9eaa" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="##The great tag wiki edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How this would work: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Set up a contest time frame and chat room,&#xD;&#xA; 1. discuss and evaluate tag wiki edits submitted during time frame set,  &#xD;&#xA;    &lt;sub&gt;in order to short-list ones to be presented in nominees list at next step,&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA; 1. set up a &quot;voting question&quot; with nominees list (like [elections town hall](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2990/2012-moderator-election-town-hall-chat-digest) or [SCNA wish list](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2473/what-do-you-want-to-see-from-scna)),&#xD;&#xA; 1. whoever edit scores best &lt;strike&gt;gets kissed by Anna Lear and Mark Trapp&lt;/strike&gt; wins.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rules:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; 1. No edits outside the time frame. &#xD;&#xA; 1. Contest period: A month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What we gain:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. tag wiki improvements&#xD;&#xA; 1. more [publicity](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73261/how-to-motivate-users-to-write-tag-wikis &quot;How to motivate users to write tag wikis?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA; 1. better understanding of [Tag Wiki best practices](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/69584/tag-wiki-best-practices&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Background&#xD;&#xA;* definition from page with a _really nice_ title: [&amp;#39;tag-wiki&amp;#39; tag wiki - Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/tag-wiki/info &quot;title is full of meta isn't it&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An editable page that briefly summarizes the topic of the tag and that may provide links to existing questions that are often useful to many people...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tag wikis are made of 2 parts:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The Excerpt - which is displayed on question lists and tag hover menu.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * The Body - which contains detailed information about a tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* definition that inspired me, from a [tag homepage/FAQ](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1195/create-a-tag-homepage-faq) request at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a community-wiki editable home page... where we could place essentially the tag-specific FAQ and other tag-specific links" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27081" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6648" RevisionGUID="11222a12-175a-404e-814a-a97108d87f67" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I agree that it is extremely frustrating and sometimes almost impossible to try to get an acceptable post re-opened, while it is extremely easy to get any question closed on here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect that in part it is because we have a dedicated group of &quot;closers&quot; on the site, while we don't have a dedicated group of &quot;reopeners&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want proof, here's some Data.SE queries that contain the stats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Top Close Voters since 2013][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Count	User			LastPostDate	LastVoteDate&#xD;&#xA;3601	gnat			04/20/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;3273	MichaelT		04/29/2014		04/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;2366	GlenH7			04/29/2014		03/27/2014&#xD;&#xA;1440	Kilian Foth		04/29/2014		&#xD;&#xA;1396	Bart			04/30/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;805		Martijn Pieters	05/03/2014		&#xD;&#xA;709		Robert Harvey	05/02/2014		05/02/2014&#xD;&#xA;692		Dan Pichelman	05/01/2014		02/21/2014&#xD;&#xA;622		*World Engineer	04/09/2014		10/15/2013&#xD;&#xA;512		Dynamic			12/18/2013		07/03/2013&#xD;&#xA;460		Glenn Nelson	03/04/2014		02/02/2013&#xD;&#xA;415		BЈовић			05/02/2014		12/02/2013&#xD;&#xA;345		thorsten müller	03/04/2014		10/04/2013&#xD;&#xA;340		*ChrisF			04/12/2013		&#xD;&#xA;327		Jim G.			05/03/2014		03/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Top Reopen Voters since 2013][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Count	User			LastPostDate	LastVoteDate&#xD;&#xA;61		gnat			04/20/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;59		*World Engineer	04/09/2014		10/15/2013&#xD;&#xA;54		*maple_shaft	02/27/2014		06/27/2013&#xD;&#xA;54		GlenH7			04/29/2014		03/27/2014&#xD;&#xA;47		*Yannis Rizos	12/01/2013		02/20/2014&#xD;&#xA;43		*ChrisF			04/12/2013		&#xD;&#xA;37		Rachel			12/20/2013		05/30/2012&#xD;&#xA;33		Martijn Pieters	05/03/2014		&#xD;&#xA;29		Bart 			04/30/2014		05/03/2014&#xD;&#xA;27		*Thomas Owens	04/30/2014		11/30/2012&#xD;&#xA;24		Karl Bielefeldt	05/04/2014		04/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;19		MichaelT		04/29/2014		04/29/2014&#xD;&#xA;15		Jimmy Hoffa		04/25/2014		04/22/2014&#xD;&#xA;15		Yusubov			04/06/2014		09/06/2013&#xD;&#xA;14		Jalayn			11/05/2013		10/07/2013&#xD;&#xA;13		Telastyn		05/04/2014		&#xD;&#xA;12		thorsten müller	03/04/2014		10/04/2013&#xD;&#xA;11		Mason Wheeler	05/02/2014		03/17/2013&#xD;&#xA;11		MattDavey		03/03/2013		12/04/2012&#xD;&#xA;10		Robert Harvey	05/02/2014		05/02/2014&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Notes*&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;* This only counts Successful Close/Reopen votes, and it does not include Deleted posts. I imagine if Deleted posts were included, the Closed count would be much higher since most items are closed before they're deleted, and last I checked we had a 40-50% delete rate.&#xD;&#xA;* The `LastVoteDate` only counts Favorites and Bounty &quot;votes&quot;. I just didn't feel like removing those columns from every line once I noticed that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice anything about the numbers, names, and approximate last activity dates? Also moderator (noted by a * before their name) vs non-moderator close/reopen activity?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In regards to your proposed solutions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **1)** Provide a notification to anyone capable of casting reopen votes (3000+ rep) when a question they upvoted or answered has been closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would love this providing it didn't spam me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **2)** Allow some means of casting reopen votes before a question is closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I like this idea since I think posts get the most visibility before they are closed, and are much more likely to get a &quot;fair closure trial&quot; at this time than afterwards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **3)** Time out the downvoting and close voting privileges of people who vote to close a question that is later reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have some reservations about this one, as there are too many cases where it could incorrectly shut out someone from helping maintain the sites. If done right, I'd be OK with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**4th suggestion:** https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/99333/158605&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that this only refers to *unsuccessful* expired votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now your chances of getting something closed or reopened is tied to a random variable: how many people review the question at the same time as you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the case of close votes, there are quite a few &quot;close happy&quot; people who do this. In the case of reopen votes and &quot;reopen happy&quot; people? Not so much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90851/top-close-voters&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90852/top-reopen-voters" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27082" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3504" RevisionGUID="37ec2235-f789-4fa3-9c1d-bb8aa9dc27b1" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Even though the tag wiki says that you can use this tag for asking where to find resources, I don't think that's valid. [Stack Exchange sites are not search engines][1]. What you are asking for is simply asking for external resources - the best place to do that is in the search bar of your favorite search engine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also sounds like you're asking for a list of things. [Stack Exchange sites are also not for generating lists of things][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128548/what-stack-overflow-is-not/128549#128549&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128548/what-stack-overflow-is-not/128561#128561" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27083" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3557" RevisionGUID="0e276d5a-0f12-4e14-ba01-0e03312ac118" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Down voting answers costs you 1 reputation point, this is [meta-tag:status-bydesign]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reasoning is that it makes revenge / retaliatory / otherwise abusive down voting less attractive, as discussed in a [very early Stack Overflow podcast][1] (circa 2008). Furthermore it emphasizes up voting over down voting, as does every other voting related mechanism we have (up votes earn you more rep than down votes cost you, etc). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, the penalty is too small to matter when you have legitimate reasons to down vote. It might matter a bit more to newer users, but I'm sure you having quite a lot of reputation wouldn't think twice before down voting a bad answer. And of course if you down vote sensibly and the community agrees with you, it's highly probable that the answer will be removed and your reputation will be refunded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There used to be a reputation penalty when down voting questions as well. This [changed a year ago][2]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thus, to incentivize more balanced question voting, we are considering removing the -1 cost of casting a downvote on a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know if it worked or not, but I enjoy free down votes on questions too much to care ;) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/15866/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/90324/should-downvotes-on-questions-be-free" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27084" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6655" RevisionGUID="f60b9f24-8996-498f-991e-a6d87ed2b304" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would start by reading these:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Stack Overflow On Topic][1] vs [Programmers On Topic][2]&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;- https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you still don't understand where your question can go, you can either ask about it on a site's Meta (although you will have to be somewhat specific so that you can be directed to the right site), in a site's chat room (you have sufficient reputation to go ask), or you can choose the site you think is the most appropriate and if it's off-topic but still a good question for someplace else, have it migrated (don't cross-post questions, though - we'll make sure the question gets to where it can be answered).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of questions that were originally asked on Stack Overflow, but migrated here because they were off-topic there and on-topic here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/238513/is-allocating-objects-from-a-memory-pool-a-security-anti-pattern&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237692/using-subclasses-for-datacontracts-used-with-json&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/235170/ddd-domain-driven-design-which-development-order-should-be-applied&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/232032/decoupling-server-and-client-using-rest-api&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/231627/is-the-adapter-the-correct-design-pattern-for-this-situation&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230363/iteratively-improve-software-architecture-quality-in-an-agile-process&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/223834/sequence-diagram-uml-use-case-ends&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/223878/how-can-you-add-acknowledgement-functionality-to-a-command-pattern-given-the-re&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27085" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6666" RevisionGUID="e4ca10ee-ff50-4fcd-a94e-df1da3a08686" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I agree with [Robert Harvey's answer on Meta Stack Exchange][1]. Although cross-posting should be discouraged, especially questions that are directly copied/pasted between sites without tailoring to nuances that exist between each community, the copy-paste by itself is not a valid reason for closure. Questions should be closed on their merit - they are a duplicate of an existing question, they are off-topic, the question is unclear or too broad, or the answer will draw opinions instead of facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think in most cases, cross-posts tend to be lower-quality questions, people evading question bans on a site and posting on a related site, or more spammy posts. However, if someone has a good question that does indeed fit on multiple sites, they shouldn't be punished for approaching the questions from all available experts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231886/572" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27086" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3611" RevisionGUID="c376a364-3514-4057-b1ee-d741eeb3dd4c" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I really don't know why you need to close questions at all. If a question is related to programming, even if quite tenuously, then it should be left to the users of the site to arbiter whether it is relevant or not. The mechanism for that is quite simple and already exists - people will vote for questions they like, downvote questions they don't and, most importantly, provide answers to questions they feel are interesting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it totally ridiculous that you can have a question that has lots of answers and is provoking discussion to be suddenly closed because some unelected moderator decides to exert their power. No wonder we are at the ludicrous situation where so many questions are being closed. Personally I hardly even bother coming here any more (and I know for a fact other people feel the same) as half the questions I'm interested in are suddenly closed (without often the mundane and dull questions left). Why should people bother wasting time supplying an answer to a question when they know that it could (seemingly) arbitrarily be closed at any moment?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I subscribe to the StackExchange twitter feed and it's amazing how many of the questions selected to appear in that feed (presumably automatically based on popularity) end up being closed. If people are interested in it, contributing and provoking discussion then what gives someone else the right to stamp down on that? I remember when this site was set up it was to act as an &quot;overflow&quot; for the questions that weren't quite suitable for StackOverflow yet were programming related (with an example cited as the (in)famous &quot;[What is your favourite programming cartoon?][1]&quot;). The irony is that [questions like that][2] would never be allowed here any more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sure moderators think they are doing their best by following some &quot;charter&quot;, but who wrote that? Who was consulted? Again I come back to **letting the people decide** what should be here via the mechanisms that already exist with moderators only needing to close the most egregious violations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/84556/whats-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71731/programmers-is-about-to-go-live-which-questions-should-we-migrate/71733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27087" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6679" RevisionGUID="5b2afb3e-5155-4be0-903a-eb1f30cb23f2" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I took a quick look at the [review history][1] in our [first posts review queue][2] and I've noticed some &quot;No Action Needed&quot; reviews that I didn't agree with. That's not a problem, I don't expect anyone to share my opinions on what makes a good Programmers post. However, I think the nature of the queue is such, that there is almost always something to fix, even if it's simply spelling and grammar. The queue hosts the very first posts from brand new users, who - quite understandably - aren't always familiar with our philosophy and rules. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To make matters a bit more complicated, *it only takes one review to push the post out of the first posts queue*. This means that we need to be a bit more careful with it, than - say - with the close votes queue. Your &quot;No Action Needed&quot; vote is binding, and if you use it carelessly you may cheat a brand new user of possibly critical feedback. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to ask all our reviewers to just skip the review if you aren't 100% sure that the post can be improved (in any way), or don't have the time to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Related**: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Looking for guidance on using “No Action Needed” in the first posts review queue][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Please require more reviewers on First Posts][4] (on Meta Stack Exchange)&#xD;&#xA;- [How can we make First Posts review actually useful?][5] (on Meta Stack Exchange)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/history&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6680/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/188457/please-require-more-reviewers-on-first-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234153/how-can-we-make-first-posts-review-actually-useful" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27088" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3708" RevisionGUID="a7f956d9-7d5c-47f5-baee-7f9f1bf8aeb2" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[meta-tag:status-completed] (somewhat)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are [no longer a migration target][1] on Stack Overflow, and the difference is already showing, last time we rejected a Stack Overflow question was May 22. Of course we get a lot less migrations now than before, but the ones we get are definitely on topic and of good/high quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SOpedians can still _suggest_ migrating to Programmers, either by flagging for moderation attention or through comments, and the latter is still a problem (&quot;my question was closed on Stack Overflow, let's copy paste it verbatim on that other site the helpful commenter pointed me to&quot;), but it's a far lesser problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/134636/update-migration-path-list-for-non-moderators" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27089" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6730" RevisionGUID="934fffb4-aeec-4f13-8593-c56aa335aea2" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I support allowing MathJax also in Programmers.SE; I just missed again its absence while editing this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/246543/find-the-smallest-summed-distances-by-uniquely-pairing-elements-of-one-set-to-el&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will add more questions on this list whenever I run again into this obstacle. (Since I am not the OP, I hesitated to edit the question in order to add examples of questions where MathJax would be of help, as requested in the comments by @MichaelT).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Addressing the concerns in other answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can read [which SE sites currently allow MathJax here][1]. Recently, as of this writing, &quot;Code Review&quot; allowed it with `\$` delimiters, which could be a solution to the conflict with code like `$_SESSION`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is true that rendering the post preview on each keystroke can be taxing, but I have used the Math.SE site and just noticed a small delay between keystrokes.  It is not an incredible hit on user experience; the best proof is that the site is very alive and much larger than Programmers, in traffic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is true that a negative aspect is **waiting for all question titles** to be rendered on the general index, and that in other contexts (e.g. the mobile application) **math in titles is not rendered at all**, leaving the questions almost incomprehensible.  So I would prefer **not** enabling MathJax for titles, if that is possible at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Last but not least, if the Stack Exchange site on &quot;Amateur Radio&quot; allows MathJax, I strongly feel that &quot;Programmers&quot; should have it. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/216606/which-stack-exchange-sites-use-mathjax&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/981/syntax-highlighting-language-hints" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27090" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3758" RevisionGUID="d58dd5a5-a3c0-4c6b-becd-5ccfff273cb8" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question ban is automatic, and it's not something the moderators control. We don't even know that you are question banned, unless you tell us. To lift the question ban you will need to follow the instructions given in this [link][1], that should have appeared when you tried to ask a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question history is troubling, as maple_shaft [already mentioned][2], from your 16 questions in total:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 9 were closed and deleted,&#xD;&#xA;- from the remaining 7, one is down voted and all but two were edited to fix obvious and not so obvious issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and you have provided no answers. We don't require you to answer questions, provided you ask great ones, but when your questions are not really welcomed by the community, we do expect you to give back by providing some good answers. We are a community of volunteers, and it's only reasonable to expect you to give something back for all the help you have been getting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems that this time the troubling question pattern kicked off both the manual suspension process&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _and_ the automatic question ban. That's a bit harsh, and about a month ago I asked Stack Exchange to let moderators know when a user is question banned, as I feel it's quite annoying to come back from a suspension only to find out that a secondary and silent ban is in place, but my request was ignored. I honestly had no idea that you were question banned when I suspended you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't even know the exact algorithm of the question ban and can't even guess if a user is banned or not, and at this point it's all up to you. If you feel the ban is unfair, you will have to contact Stack Exchange directly, at `team+programmers@stackexchange.com`. &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; There were a lot of user flags on your questions, which brought the pattern to my attention, and I decided to suspend you.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3757/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27091" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3760" RevisionGUID="ea08845b-d8b2-4c78-8574-1802fe547237" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has already been [proposed and declined][1], a brief summary of the answers there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The feature would do more to encourage crap questions than discourage incorrect closures, people would be hesitant to vote to close even the most obvious closeworthy questions in fear of the reputation penalty,&#xD;&#xA; 1. We can't penalise people for a process we don't award them for. People are voting to close to help the site maintain it's quality standards, they don't get _any_ reward for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Every asker that had their question closed thought it was interesting, useful and on-topic before asking it. If five people decided it's not, it will take five other people to review the closure, the asker's opinion alone won't overcome the community's. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have examples of questions that you feel were wrongly closed, feel free to bring them up on Meta for review. That may sound like a waste of time to you, but we are a community of volunteers, freely volunteering our time to help others. If you are not interested in spending some time improving the question, I'm sorry, but there isn't much we can do about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9817/suggestion-if-you-voted-to-close-a-question-and-it-gets-re-opened-you-lose-100" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27092" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6743" RevisionGUID="7082c17c-98c1-451a-a984-3555efe0234d" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Why we're not a forum&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to realize is that Stack Exchange brands itself as a Q&amp;A site. This is the very top of the content when you go to http://stackexchange.com.  It calls out that this is something *different* than forums, that there are *right answers.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When one goes to the [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour) page, note the wording of the text there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat. Just questions...  and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Going further into the help center, one finds [What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) which links to three other pages that goes into more about what isn't allowed on the site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Thus, questions that are not answerable — discussions, debates, opinions — should be closed as subjective. It seems simple enough: Fact good; opinion and discussion bad. But why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Most forums and chat rooms have a scale problem. As in, they don’t. The more people that join the discussion, the more noise each of those connections bring. So the forums get progressively noisier and noisier, and suddenly one day … you stop learning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## On the nature of discussions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The nature of a discussion is back and forth.  Lines of communication.  Look at sites that are intended for discussion and you will find threads and nested comments and a system that isn't designed around getting answers but rather to make connections with people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is different.  As stated in the tour and time and time again in other documents, this is a Q&amp;A site.  As such it has intentionally made having these discussions difficult.  Things such as limited sizes of comments, limited markdown in comments, the automatic move comment to chat feature.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussions make it harder to find the answer - you have to wade through all the other stuff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;As an aside, there is *nothing* worse than trying to go from reading a post, to reading the comments to going back to the post to see the reply, and back to the comments to see the next reply and back to the post... Don't do that. Remove the 'Edit:' and 'Update:' from your edit, make the entire thing a cohesive whole and leave a comment saying that the post has been updated to take this into account - people can read the revision history if they want to see what changed.&amp;lt;/rant&amp;gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are sites that do discussions very well... or, as well as discussions can be done.  Jeff Atwood even went off to make another site model designed precisely for discussions (http://www.discourse.org)... and it's not a Q&amp;A site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not to say that one can't try to mix Q&amp;A and discussions.  But it's *very* hard to do both right.  It's hard enough to do one of them right.  Stack Exchange chose to get Q&amp;A right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Where else can discussions be had?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *do* want to have a discussion there are some options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Visit [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard).  The _Whiteboard_ chat room is one such place within the Stack Exchange network where discussions are allowed (and encouraged).&#xD;&#xA;* Ask somewhere else.  There are numerous other sites out there that are designed for discussions.  [Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/), [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/ask), [Slashdot](http://ask.slashdot.org), [Quora](https://www.quora.com) to name a few.  These are sites that are specifically designed with discussions in mind - the voting system on them, the moderation, the community formed around them - all about discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So why is it a big deal?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with discussions is that discussions can easily overwhelm the rest of the site.  Unlike objective questions that have answers (and if asked again can be directed to the previous one asked that will answer this one too), discussions of the same topic are infinite in their variety based on the participants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is based on the premise that good questions and answers attract and retain the experts that answer them and that people come to find answers.  The quality that Stack Exchange provides is unique within the Internet so far (quite a few clones, but none as compelling).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, discussions tend to drive away experts.  Not always, but it's the trend.  This has been seen many times since the days of Usenet news... experts really don't want to spend their time arguing with someone who doesn't understand the topic at hand when they want to just answer a question... and if they *do*, there are ways to have that discussion via other channels.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not to say that there are experts who do enjoy discussions... and that Stack Exchange isn't exactly working for them.  This is unfortunate, but it does not mean that discussions need to be allowed or that Stack Exchange needs to change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Related reading and links from above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is Stack Overflow a forum?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/92107/213963) on Meta.StackExchange&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;* [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html) by Clay Shirky" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27093" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3763" RevisionGUID="60cc6093-aeaf-4778-98db-8c5194813bab" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I seem to have reached this limit while editing my answer to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit frustrating, as the editor didn't warn me, so I typed away and submitted... and it truncated the end of the text AND the links...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So now I'll gladly rewrite this quickly, and make sections more concise to fit everything in, but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What exactly is the limit?&#xD;&#xA; * Maybe the editor should warn and block submission, like the comment section does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Though I agree such long posts probably do not happen too often. Sorry. got interested in this question more and more :)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Update 2012/07/11:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * See [Shog9's answer][1] and comments below it for more details.&#xD;&#xA; * See this [answer from JeffAtwood][2] on another similar Meta.SO thread, where a fix is said to have been implemented, and the discussion we have in comments.&#xD;&#xA; * And finally see my [&quot;test-case answer&quot;][3] below and in particular its [revision log][4]. See steps below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Steps to reproduce:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   * The [&quot;test-case answer&quot;][5] was created by simply identifying where things went wrong in [my answer][6] to the [question linked above][7] and I narrowed it down to between revisions [12][8] and [13][9].&#xD;&#xA;   * So I created a question with content from revision 12 (+disclaimer a the top about testing),&#xD;&#xA;   * then edited it with content from revision 13 (but with the link table of revision 12, to get the untrucated ones in there as well, as the revision 13 was obviously damaged),&#xD;&#xA;   * the submission went through just fine and without warning, and the content was indeed truncated again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Update 2012/07/11 - continued:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Crap, it appears the revision log of my test-case doesn't show all the steps, and doesn't show the messages I had left in the &quot;change logs&quot;. Probably because I did them without a big interval between them, and when that's the case the SE systems seem to merge them in one changeset (probably so we don't hit the `10 edits =&gt; CW` rule when editing answers rapidly while they're new).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, that's annoying here for looking at the test-case (maybe SE gods have a way to see full logs), but the **steps I gave above should be enough to reproduce it** anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Update by Shog9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reproduced, definitely a bug, [written up on MSO][10].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3767/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/26723/151515&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3770/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/3770/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3770/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/155505/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/7b75c2e1-15ac-408d-807a-4cd83a2494bc/view-source&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/596bbe49-17a3-4c25-8175-d6242d796064/view-source&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/139320/post-maximum-length-check-ignores-markdown-results-in-long-formatted-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27094" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6792" RevisionGUID="651b912b-f482-48b1-bbc4-e1230ea42447" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's a straightforward question I tend to ask when I can't figure why something was posted at Programmers instead of Stack Overflow. I expect askers to read my comment at a face value:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###&quot;why didn't you ask at Stack Overflow?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second part of my comment is a reference to MSE post that provides a fairly detailed guidance on this matter: [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I add it to make sure that asker understands what is my take on the matter and will help me understand their reasons for posting here according to mentioned guidance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Implementation problems, and questions on software tools commonly used by programmers. If your code or your IDE doesn't work, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Does not welcome subjective questions (anymore).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;### [Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;The main focus is whiteboard questions, problems that you face while in front of your whiteboard designing your project. Everything that can be considered part of the [SDLC][1], except implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Also, questions on freelancing and business concerns that require the unique expertise of software developers. We use this lovely diagram to help people understand if their questions belong on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;![And somehow people still don't get it][2] &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your questions fall in the &quot;all careers&quot; circle, you should ask them on [The Workplace][3].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Programmers welcomes some subjective questions, but they should still be suitable for the Q&amp;A format. No polls, no lists, no product recommendations, no discussions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for close votes, no, it doesn't depend on whether I am out of or short on these. What it really depends on is whether asker appears to have a reasonably solid presence on Stack Overflow or not (I check their profile prior to asking).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I abstain of asking someone who doesn't have SO account or is registered there only recently, assuming that they most likely just don't know. I also don't ask if it turns out that question has been cross-posted ([seems to happen rather frequently](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p &quot;related feature request&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/P6bIb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27095" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3767" RevisionGUID="580fcb92-08a3-4131-a79e-1adf4880df50" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I can't reproduce this; trying to submit several chapters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland produces,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Oops! Your answer couldn't be submitted because:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - body is limited to 30000 characters; you entered 34491&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Submitting an edit using the default inline editor behaves a little differently - I got a little pop-up reading,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; body is limited to 30000 characters; you entered 34701&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Opening the editor in a separate tab reverts to the submission failing with an error:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Oops! Your edit couldn't be submitted because:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - body is limited to 30000 characters; you entered 34837&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even here, the text wasn't *truncated* - the submission was flat-out rejected. It may be that some combination of formatting or link markup specific to your answer allowed it to bypass the first check and be accepted (but truncated); if you can reproduce this, please post details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;haylem managed to reproduce this quite effectively! I've written up a full bug report on MSO: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/139320/post-maximum-length-check-ignores-markdown-results-in-long-formatted-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27096" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6840" RevisionGUID="d4f48261-87fd-4caa-9a83-2f5d5efb26a8" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per my observations, a lot of such posts come here because of misleading comments at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For an example, here are just few recent cases at SO that directly led to users posting very low quality, outright off-topic questions because of comments directing them at Programmers: [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25469779/what-is-the-average-yearly-salary-in-singapore-for-a-candidate-of-3-years-of-wor), [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25366016/how-can-i-socket-programming-to-online-examination-system), [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25276812/any-tools-available-to-help-migrate-legacy-windows-6-1-mobile-app-to-windows-8-1#comment39392956_25276812), [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25090005/how-should-i-browse-a-huge-project-where-to-start#comment39040827_25090005).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice like you suggest will definitely be helpful in stopping at least most reasonable misguided newbies. However, I believe that we need stronger measures in cutting down the issue at its source.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an example, in [first case](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25469779/what-is-the-average-yearly-salary-in-singapore-for-a-candidate-of-3-years-of-wor) I listed, recommendation to post at Programmers was given by a user with 15K SO reputation. If a newcomer gets such a _personal_ advice from such an _authoritative_ user, would this &quot;override&quot; any automatic notice they will see on their way? you bet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The right way to go would be to find and delete as much as possible misleading comments at Stack Overflow. &quot;Finding&quot; part is technically easy, all it needs is tweaking one of [Doorknob's queries](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/180319/165773) and studying its results. We did something like that this Spring when cleaning up &quot;+1 great post&quot; comments at Programmers. Searching for &quot;programmers + belongs&quot; will likely show us the worst offenders, although &quot;programmers + career&quot; and &quot;programmers + recommendations&quot; will likely work well too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* For example, [this SEDE query](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/133379/recent-p-se-comments) can help to find more misguiding comments ([hat tip to MichaelT](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/273228/why-was-my-purge-comments-flag-declined/273235#comment103787_273235 &quot;query mentioned here&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deletion part is tricky and requires help from SE developers. A while ago, I &quot;tested&quot; it - I flagged several comments using &quot;Other&quot; flag with verbose messages explaining why these should be deleted. All of my flags went through successfully, however I learned along the way that this way is _terribly_ inefficient. Involving diamond moderators and writing verbose explanatory messages for hundreds, possibly thousands garbage comments like &quot;ask careers at Programmers&quot;? give me a break.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is needed instead is to add &quot;programmers&quot; to the list of [&quot;sensitive&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/121226/165773  &quot;Yeah, you read it right - I want 'programmers' to be treated in comments same way as f-word, no kidding&quot;) words that trigger comment deletion with a single flag. That way would let us cleanup harmful garbage with a single &quot;too chatty&quot; or &quot;not constructive&quot; flag. (Optionally, it would be good to exclude from sensitive heuristics comments that refer famous **[toilet bowl guidance](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73382/165773 &quot;Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl&quot;)** but I don't insist on that.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another issue where help of SE dev team would be much appreciated is &quot;other&quot; [close reason](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/close-reasons/info) messages. You know, I am active close reviewer at SO. I focus strongly only on most terrible questions and totally skip the rest (except for infrequent &quot;known good&quot; audits, to keep more system faith in me). But even in these - I stress - totally, absolutely awful - questions I sometimes see &quot;try your garbage at Programmers&quot;. I don't even dare to think what happens in less awful (but still totally inappropriate) questions at SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The way to stop this would be to block close messages containing word &quot;programmers&quot; - SO close voters willing to &quot;help&quot; askers like that should totally drop that and try &lt;strike&gt;jQuery&lt;/strike&gt; their luck flagging for migration. Hopefully mod declines will teach them something at last." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27097" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3797" RevisionGUID="6ef11c46-cba7-4d1e-86e8-ea1a49f66b7f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Closed is the same as your &quot;frozen&quot;. The idea behind closing a question is to prevent answers to a question that is not a good fit for Programmers (or, more generally, to the Stack Exchange format). Closed is meant as a temporary state. Either the question gets sufficient corrections and reopened or it can't be salvaged and gets deleted. There are even some [automatic procedures in place to clean up some questions][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing early (as in before any answers have been posted) is a very good thing. It enables people (preferably the author, otherwise the community members) to fix the question and make it a good question. Once there are answers, it takes more work to make the question good, since edits will either have to be sure to not invalidate any existing answers or the community will also have to clean up the existing answers to make them valid (otherwise, a moderator would have to delete them).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are also two other states for questions - protected and locked. Protected questions can not be answered by users who have not hit a reputation threshold. Locked questions are to resolve extremely serious problems and prevent all voting and editing (and for questions, new answers) and provides for questions that are being discussed on Meta, questions that have historical significance but are not good questions, or have generated a large number of off-topic or chatty comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're trying to save old questions, [go through the list of closed questions][2]. If you see a question that you don't think should have been closed, ask about the reasoning in Chat or on Meta. If you can save it, make a heroic edit, clean it up, and vote to reopen (and maybe share your work on chat to get more feedback, edits, and reopen votes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From my perspective as a moderator, I rarely see flags to reopen a closed question. If you make a heroic edit and aren't getting reopen votes, flag it for review by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, something that we haven't been doing (and perhaps should consider) is looking at the old closed questions that don't meet the criteria for automatic deletion and either salvaging them or deleting them. However, that would need to be a new discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78048/auto-deleting-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year/92006#92006&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed:1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27098" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6879" RevisionGUID="e78821d3-1077-442c-be97-28103906269f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Has SO become the trash dump of Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The specific question certainly isn't... stellar, but you are over-reacting. In fact, of the 258 questions we've migrated to SO (in the last 90 days), only 13% have been rejected. Conversely, the numbers aren't as good the other way around. We've rejected 16% of the questions SO has send us ([but you don't see us complaining about it, do you?][1] ;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next time you spot a shady migration, just vote to close it and move on. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27099" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3898" RevisionGUID="42f3869b-3e4e-4817-ad25-3a46a116c726" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just asked [this question][1] with regards to using cognitive enhancing drugs to assist with your coding job.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It wasn't as good of a question as I thought it would be, considering I left out specific details to not bring attention to a possible ethical issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, should I reveal the source and name of medication in order to make this a better question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt; Edit&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;GlenH7 has attempted an [Atwood Transform][2] on the question in order to make it more on-topic to programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/160392/ethical-to-dope-to-increase-performance-while-coding&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/124930" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27100" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6880" RevisionGUID="29d27853-0aba-4358-b240-84ed83ee00dd" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Close voters at Programmers would better memorize the criteria for debugging questions to be [acceptable for Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/258685/839601 &quot;announced here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions seeking debugging help (&quot;**why isn't this code working?**&quot;) must include the desired behavior, a *specific problem or error* and *the shortest code necessary* to reproduce it **in the question itself**. Questions without **a clear problem statement** are not useful to other readers. See: [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the [question in question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/255703/revisions), I for one picked the custom close reason that stated that question [isn't appropriate at both sites](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/255703/how-to-get-the-average-of-an-array?noredirect=1#comment516369_255703 &quot;'off topic on Programmers.SE, and would also get closed on StackOverflow'&quot;). It was pretty sad to see how it was migrated [against my will](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/54917/165773 &quot;known issue with closing system obscuring this information&quot;) and I immediately voted to close the incorrectly migrated question using above reason:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;&quot;Questions seeking debugging help (&quot;why isn't this code working?&quot;) must include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. Questions without a clear problem statement are not useful to other readers. See: How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example.&quot; – **gnat**, Stijn, Unihedron, ItachiUchiha, kiheru&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27101" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4018" RevisionGUID="4b2eb954-d9a0-4136-af70-7bba6d7248f4" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've been talking with him through email, and when I asked him why he left P.SE he said:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;I left for the exact same reason you wrote on your P.SE profile.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(He also said it was OK to share his thoughts in an answer here, and that he's not going to bother posting an answer here because he's gone for good, but he's pretty sure everyone knows why he left)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for [my profile][1], well it's not very flattering because I wrote it one day while I was frustrated towards P.SE. My feelings haven't changed, but normally I would have kept them to myself&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If someone makes a Q&amp;A site for Programmers to ask questions and get&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers from other Programmers about any issue related to their career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; choice or self-identity as a programmer, let me know. I'd love to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participate in such a site again, and will help you promote it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; As for this site, I'm done with it unless something changes. I feel&#xD;&#xA;&gt; its changed too far from the original programming resource it once&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was, and the current moderation style is not for me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I dislike that so much valuable information gets deleted for the sake&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of &quot;maintaining a clean site&quot;, dislike the way many users are treated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (particularly new ones), and dislike the way the overall culture of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this site has been changing from a community of programmers out to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; teach and learn from each other, to an insular group of programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elitists (of course this isn't all of you, or probably even most of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you. Its just a large percentage of the more active/vocal users who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; take part in running the site).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anyways, I'm not interested in helping to support this site anymore,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; although I will be happy to take part in any initiatives to changes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope the powers-that-be will take this into account when deciding future policies for a site, as Pierre is not the first one of our top users to quit the site. I can confirm that `DeveloperArt` left for the same reason (been talking to him via email too), and I've seen many other high-rep names quietly disappear over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to your 2nd question, yes [it's possible to recover a deleted account][2] although according to MSO it requires &quot;Jeff-Level&quot; access&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/22568/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27102" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6886" RevisionGUID="fd1f53a1-8549-4ab9-b413-d41242c8b1d2" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While pondering upon today's [usual license shopping request](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/256092/31260 &quot;here my requirements, recommend a license&quot;) I discovered this old question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[How can I compare and contrast open source licenses?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/120308/31260)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it make sense to make above a [canonical duplicate target](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/217406/165773) for license shopping questions? Possibly along with [collaborative effort lock](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/182572/165773) on its answer(s).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a regular question it doesn't look like a good fit for the site, more like a candidate to be closed and deleted. Question per se reads [too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490) and the answers tend to refer readers to [&quot;another castle&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/225370/165773).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it somehow managed to outline basic research effort I would expect of askers before they dump their &quot;license requirments&lt;!-- note for editors - typo in word &quot;requirEments&quot; here is intentional, to highlight general laziness and ignorance of askers assumed to be addressed here --&gt;&quot; at us. As such, would it make a convenient dupe target?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27103" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4020" RevisionGUID="5df89c22-5a20-4e6f-b047-bd5ebe0c5739" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Personally, I think this would make a good addition to the list of close reasons. This was [status-declined on Meta Stack Overflow in 2011][1], but I think that it could be something that is revisited. The current policy might work fine on Stack Overflow, but setting the bar at a minimum amount of prerequisite knowledge (Theoretical Computer Science) and effort (all Stack Exchange sites) is something that has worked well and clearly specifying this as a close message would help reinforce it..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I tend to close them as off-topic, citing the part in the FAQ that says Programmers is a site for &quot;professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers&quot; with the reasoning that if a question is something that I'd expect a professional in the given field to know and fully understand, it falls outside of the scope. Other times, I have used &quot;not constructive&quot;, citing that you don't need specific expertise to answer the question (eg - a simple Google search yields the answer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can see how Stack Overflow might not need this, but any professional-oriented Stack Exchange can have questions that are just too basic and should clearly differentiate this as a reason for bad questions. I can see this being useful not only here on Programmers, but perhaps Computer Science, Theoretical Computer Science, Cross-Validated, Cognitive Sciences, Server Fault, IT Security, Project Management, Signal Processing, Academia, and so on - the sites that focus on people with a certain level of existing knowledge, skills, and experience in a given domain (especially a domain that requires an amount of education and skill development, either formally or informally).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime, I wonder if there's something more specific in the FAQ (or something more specific that can be added to the FAQ) that can be referenced for these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86043/introduce-a-general-reference-close-reason" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27104" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6910" RevisionGUID="72895a10-3e26-4c69-b9e2-d67072e4fc72" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per the MSE question: [faq-sidebar-for-per-site-metas](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/240186/faq-sidebar-for-per-site-metas) this is to request a FAQ sidebar instead of the chat sidebar on Programmers Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So instead of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![MPSE frontpage with chat][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We would have a listing of the questions from [tag:faq] instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it would look kind of like this&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![MSE frontpage with FAQ][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Note that this example is from MSE, not MPSE&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Why?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ should provide more relevant information to Meta visitors than an invitation to chat would provide.  And putting the FAQ questions on the front page would make them a lot easier to find for first time visitors to Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/VHsLdm.png &quot;MPSE frontpage with chat&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/VfMHbm.png &quot;MSE frontpage with FAQ&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27105" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5128" RevisionGUID="24667742-14c1-4de2-bad7-e7de6f72d8a0" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This [question on Meta Stack Overflow][1] explains just about everything about question and answer bans. It seems pretty straight forward to me: an account is banned from asking questions on a site when they routinely ask low-quality questions as determined by a number of factors (including deleted questions, closed questions, and down votes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have asked 8 questions. Of those 8 questions, 2 of those questions are closed and not deleted, 4 are closed and deleted, and 5 have a net negative score. Cumulatively, your questions (including the deleted ones) have been rated -11. That's a poor track record of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you need to do is try to improve your existing questions. We have several resources that outline what we're looking for in terms of questions and answers, such as our [FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq) and [How to Ask guide](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask). If, after reading those pages and any comments on your questions, you don't understand why your question was closed or how to improve it, ask about it here on Meta or in our [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), although I'd recommend Meta as a first choice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27106" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6950" RevisionGUID="18d88be3-91b6-49b3-ac00-c5b35b23ecb7" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As of now, there are over 87 questions in [tag:job-market] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**All** of these questions are closed, except for [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/61248/31260) which has  [historical lock](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;). Could we do something to help askers understand the risks associated with this tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Clarification on what is career advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6941/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a rough look through shows a _lot_ of closed questions. This should have been a warning that this question is problematic...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Automatic warnings of 'dangerous' tags](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/242252/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; could we identify the tags beforehand as being problematic ones, and in the event that no tag guidance is provided if the tag has a closure rate above some threshold (50%? 75%?) a canned warning is displayed..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27107" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5217" RevisionGUID="9020f04e-0f8a-4a22-8ef9-aef2f2924d79" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While I understand that in the post Wikipedia era it's generally more difficult for professors to come up with homework questions whose answers don't exist on the web, that's a problem for the professors, not us. Adapt or die applies. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My teaching experience is extremely limited, and at a level a tad lower than University, however from that limited experience my conclusions are that cheaters will cheat, and there isn't much you can do about it. I was perhaps extremely lucky in that the majority of my students were interested enough in the subject matter to _not_ cheat, even though I actively _encouraged_ them to use Wikipedia and Stack Overflow (Programmers didn't exist at the time) and I'm very proud that some of them are today colleagues. A couple of the cheaters also made it, but most of them are flipping burgers somewhere. Oh, well, c'est la vie.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, I only taught for three years, let's see what [someone a tiny bit more experienced has to say][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My opinion is that there is nothing wrong at all with posting homework questions here, particularly interesting ones, and I find much of the negative reaction to homework-question posters to be somewhat strange, alien to my way of learning mathematics in a give-and-take exchange of mathematical ideas. Surely posting questions here and studying the answers is not much different than studying hard in the library, talking mathematics with one's colleagues at math tea or talking to one's professor, which are all excellent ways to learn mathematics. In particular, I expect that students who post questions here might learn just as much if not more from the resulting answers as from their professors---we have a number of talented mathematicians, who are very good at explaining things---and that math.SE provides a valuable service to students having unapproachable professors, having professors who do not explain well, or who have few colleagues able to help them. Furthermore, the math.SE community strongly benefits from the questions and the insightful answers that might be posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So my opinion is that there is no homework issue to speak of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In particular, I hereby give all of my own students complete permission to post any and all their homework problems here, and indeed I encourage them to post their questions here and to study the answers well and thereby to learn some mathematics. I will be testing them on their understanding at the exam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would also encourage all mathematics professors to adopt a policy of encouraging collaboration on homework among their students, as talking about mathematics with one's colleagues is assuredly one of the best ways to learn mathematics. Indeed, I recommend that all professors should actively encourage their students to form study groups in order to work on their homework problems together. Learning as a group, they will go very far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers already has very strict policies regarding the quality of questions, perhaps stricter than most other Stack Exchange sites, and there's absolutely no point at all in coming up with a specific policy regarding homework questions or what appears as homework questions. Any question that's within the scope of the site, as defined in our FAQ, and shows sufficient prior research is welcome to the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, and only for completeness sake, while &quot;professionals&quot; is in the description of the site, it does not disqualify amateurs, enthusiasts and students from using the site, provided they conduct themselves in a professional manner. Our goal is to build a high quality canonical resource that will hopefully help current and _future_ professionals, we don't check credentials at the door, and we never will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2894/how-can-programmers-se-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5157/appropriate-questions-on-java-programming-questions&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag &amp; https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3202/blacklist-homework&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Meta Stack Overflow: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [How to ask and answer homework questions?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions) - FAQ&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we now discourage the use of and burninate the homework tag?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/123758/can-we-now-discourage-the-use-of-and-burninate-the-homework-tag)&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we cut back on the “Is This Homework?” berating?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/130558/can-we-cut-back-on-the-is-this-homework-berating)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1652/what-do-we-do-with-users-who-post-numerous-unlabeled-homework-questions/1661#1661" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27108" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6976" RevisionGUID="6dd57bd3-a117-48e2-8db5-d1d250bcb70a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="First off, realize that each community on Stack Exchange is different.  You can ask the same question on two different sites and have it closed on one and open on the other.  That said, ***please don't crosspost questions***.  Really, pick the best one and post there first.  Posting the essentially same question unless it is specifically tailored to the community of the site fragments the information and questions across the network making it harder to find *the* answer.  Getting more attention to the question by cross posting is not a good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, lets look at the question posted to Programmers.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it fundamentally possible to validate that an unmodified version of your client connects to your server?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And compare it to the one posted to Security.SE (without the leading meta bit):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This seems like a programming question but it's really a fundamental security question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it fundamentally possible to validate that an unmodified version of your client connects to your server?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was just thinking about the idea of having my client-side app hash it's own source code and send that as a key to the server with any requests as proof that it's unmodified, but that's silly because anyone could just have the client send a hash of the unmodified version via a modified version.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was wondering if there might be a secure way to do this though, via some sort of proof that the client was unmodified.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think that this was a security problem, you should have asked it there.  Additionally, there is quite a bit more material on the Security.SE one than the P.SE one.  You are complaining that the one here got closed for too broad?  I will also note there is *absolutely* no effort at tailoring the question you asked for Programmers.SE community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will remind you of the post on Meta.SE: [Is a question that specifically asks for a summary of a broad topic valuable to Stack Exchange?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234642/is-a-question-that-specifically-asks-for-a-summary-of-a-broad-topic-valuable-to) and the points that I made there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programers.SE generally has the approach that you should at least have done a search on google and possibly read the corresponding Wikipedia page. This is especially true of questions that are likely to be broad. The scrum Wikipedia page is 43k and waterfall is 18k.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The biggest issue with asking such broad questions that are 'condense this other text that I don't want to read into a few paragraphs' is that, for the most part its lazy. Its asking someone else to try to fit a huge body of knowledge into a text box where there are pages of material out there that covers this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The post here shows no effort at all. It shows no level of comprehension of the nature of the problem.  It asks a very broad question to a relatively well known problem.  That of the [trusted client](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_client).  The answer you got here is a summary of that wikipedia page (no offense to Justin, it is in his own words and he likely didn't reference the wikipedia page, but it is covering much of the same information).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; While I acknowledge it that's my own work, I'd strongly suggest reading the guidance in meta.programmers.SE: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important/6560#6560 - we don't want to repeat what you already know, nor answer at the wrong level for the reader... and if you really don't know, explain what is confusing you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I again point you to https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important/6560#6560 and urge you to read it and consider the lessons contained within it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Setting aside all of that, Programmers.SE really doesn't like yes/no questions.  The appropriate guidance from Meta.SE can be found at: [Question closed because yes/no answer](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/183177/question-closed-because-yes-no-answer).  The question asked in this format is exactly the too broad nature.  There are *far* too many possible answers and good answers are far too long.  Go search Google a bit. Show us that you have thought about the problem and what it means rather than tossing whatever you think about into a text box and hitting 'Post Your Question'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally, the person asking the question has spent *at least* as much effort in thinking of the question, the problem, and how to ask a good question as the person answering it.  This is how we get good answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27109" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5282" RevisionGUID="4ca3774e-d50a-4602-a35a-11530607e96e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Migration for questions older than 60 days is disabled][1] (even for mods). It's not that we don't want to move it, we can't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel it's a good question for the Workplace, you should re-ask it there (but please search for existing duplicates first).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/151890/disable-migration-for-questions-older-than-60-days" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27110" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5285" RevisionGUID="c4ac8ee2-1f5b-4389-80d2-6e89aa1e4df3" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently posted a question: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177190/supporting-and-testing-multiple-versions-of-a-software-library-in-a-maven-projec in which I included some XML code samples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tagged the samples as XML code:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- language: xml --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        &lt;foo&gt;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This hasn't worked and it looks like the Java highlighting is in effect. Is this an error on my part or a bug?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to the [editing help](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/editing-help#syntax-highlighting), &quot;xml&quot; is a [supported language](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63800/interface-options-for-specifying-language-prettify/81970#81970). It certainly works fine on StackOverflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27111" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7018" RevisionGUID="301802ab-add1-464c-be9b-d545d957af20" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Update: [this chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/26942/programmers-cv-please)** has been established with primary focus on question closes, reopens etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that chat appears to work more or less fine, I think it makes sense to continue using it. Additional benefit is that chat messages can't be voted down, this addresses concerns mentioned in [another answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7015/31260 &quot;'stop downvoting people who post on meta trying to get questions fixed...'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;A limitation of chat worth keeping in mind is that users with rep under 20 can only read it. But meta has this limitation too, it is lower (5 rep) but still. I don't know a good solution for that, so to keep things simple I will simply assume users having sufficient rep to participate. For users with insufficient reputation, the only reliable approach to communicate seems to be in comments under their posts, optionally [moved to dedicated chat room](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237976/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A drawback of current approach that I am particularly uncomfortable with is that Whiteboard room [scrolls too fast](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions/7018#comment20061_7014 &quot;as been discussed in comments&quot;). Few hours out of chat and I will most likely miss mention of the post I could be interested to improve. Chat pings that take me a while to reply are inconvenient because my reply to these lands in a totally changed context. That's not good. In fact, that's very bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparent solution for this appears to establish a **dedicated chat room** focusing strictly on question improvements. This is just the way I would want to have it, except that [there is a risk](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions/7018#comment20062_7014 &quot;as (again) been discussed in comments&quot;) that room gets frozen due to inactivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way I can think of to deal with room freezes is by using moderator flags: if one finds that room is frozen, they simply flag the post they want to discuss and ask moderator to unlock. *Unless moderators indicate that they would decline such flags* I am going to assume below that this way will work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we pick dedicated chat room approach, it would be worth to check the way how [SO close reviewers](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251955/so-close-vote-reviewers) approach this. In brief, they have a room and a cross-linked meta post. As far as I can tell, most activity goes within room, but they also sometimes update / bump the meta post when needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that their gig runs fine for almost a year, we may probably learn something from their experience. (Some might find it ironic to learn from guys that seem to act in somewhat _opposite direction_ but I honestly don't care:).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, I think the dedicated chat room is the way to go (coupled with dedicated meta post, like of SO close reviewers). This doesn't mean though that meta is to be avoided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Technically, meta provides much richer platform to support complicated improvements and in-depth discussion, it can offer better visibility and powerful [meta effect](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/204311/165773). Meta is less likely to be [blocked by corporate firewalls](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/114297/165773 &quot;see 'Provide an alternate URL for chat rooms' at MSE&quot;) etc. Lower barrier to participate (5 rep instead of 20 for chat) is also a benefit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As demonstrated by [broken-windows-review at TWP](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/broken-windows-review &quot;tag dedicated to Workplace questions improvement&quot;), meta can be successfully used to improve questions if done right. This experience also looks worth studying, especially because purpose of review at TWP is very much like one we discuss here: their primary focus is on salvaging and improving the questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27112" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7025" RevisionGUID="15e7431d-b198-4972-971e-dd409fb06d41" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As of April 9&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; 2014, [all of the automatic triggers that convert a post to community wiki have been removed](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228940/213963).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This includes the trigger for the n&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; answer (which was site dependent) and the m&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; edit to a post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The corresponding blog post announcing these changes is [Putting the Community back in Wiki](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2014/04/putting-the-community-back-in-wiki/).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27113" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5298" RevisionGUID="f244a9ff-b8c6-40af-8cd8-da2f80b5083a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't know. Why don't you ask on [Meta Stack Overflow](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) as the question is on Stack Overflow **not** Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said there are a couple of questions referencing deleted content:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/61221/deleted-meta-questions-archive&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73455/popular-deleted-so-su-programmers-questions-list&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That may help you.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27114" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5396" RevisionGUID="8c675c13-cc73-4cba-bbfa-284e129b9b82" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Your account was never suspended by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are getting the message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;then this is an automatic process which we cannot affect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please read [this Meta Stack Overflow question](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers) and it's answers to guide you on what you can do to get the ban lifted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27115" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7038" RevisionGUID="880e580e-1f07-43c9-b325-ac4bbea3dedc" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Update: tag is gone.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are no questions tagged _psychology_ anymore (not even [locked](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7039/31260) ones, thanks to [ChrisF](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7040/31260)) and [tags page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags) doesn't suggest it anymore when one tries to enter &quot;psychology&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After all the questions were retagged or deleted, [system took care](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/19754/165773) of the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tags not associated with any question are automatically destroyed..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27116" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7061" RevisionGUID="32e77316-e724-42dd-8856-e7e5d97c4093" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As two of the comments mention, no, there isn't a site to ask opinion based questions. See [here][1], [here][2], and [here][3] for more information on that. However, Stack Exchange does have a [chat][4] where these discussions can happen. An example of one chat room would be the [Programmers main chat room, The Whiteboard][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27117" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7205" RevisionGUID="768ddfc2-5a19-49dd-a453-d6894644ab03" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Studying issues in one of the questions posted today ([Problem with Spring Rest request](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/275484/1)) made me feel that this can be indeed related to differences in [quality filter](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5857/31260) settings between Programmers and Stack Overflow, namely to the fact that SO [blocks word **&quot;problem&quot;** in titles](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/107989/165773) while at Programmers it is allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Checking first of examples in my question shows that it would also be blocked at SO for this reason, as its title contains blocked word: &quot;problem to load code of captcha in codeIgniter&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to be easy to test, particularly because this block is not limited to new users. When I tried to enter this title into Ask Question page at SO, I've got red block message shown at screen shot below. When I tried at Programmers Ask Questions, there was no block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Checking [my flag history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/flag-summary/31260 &quot;available to SE developers and possibly to moderators&quot;) suggests that we are getting low quality / blatant off-topic &quot;problem&quot; questions about once in every 2-3 days average.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more accurate estimate of how much of an issue it is would be based on stats for deleted questions with &quot;problem&quot; titles, but I don't have access to these stats (probably moderators have).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/T1ZyG.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/T1ZyG.png &quot;screen shot: example of how asker would be blocked at SO because of the word 'problem' in title&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Those interested in original revision of this answer can find it [in the post history](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/7205/1).&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27118" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7214" RevisionGUID="69f3a3aa-e8f2-4f35-b86e-0f26860e5c96" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Let's [burninate](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/burninate-request/info) tag [tag:video-lectures].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, there are 5 questions in this tag. All appear to be off-topic [education advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980) / [off-site resource](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) requests. None looks worth keeping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/274932/modernizing-my-net-knowledge&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/101959/where-can-i-find-windows-via-c-c-video-training&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/85698/trying-to-find-video-of-a-talk-on-the-impact-of-memory-access-latency&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70944/lecture-like-cs-videos&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/67773/is-there-any-online-video-giving-a-useful-insight-on-programming-in-certain-lang" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27119" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="3b39121c-a042-4f07-b68e-d9ba46f78abc" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot;** in the answers appear to happen once or twice a week on average, frequent enough to feel the connection between these and respective questions making their way into [SE collider list](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My particular concern is the poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making **interesting and well presented problems** look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;&quot;Oh look: ['my guess is fairly prosaic. Git is brilliant...'](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177890/31260 &quot;example&quot;) - with upvoted answer like that it [can't be a real question](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;not-a-real-question - what's this?&quot;)&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to [repel garbage answers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3835/31260 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;), I can easily name a handful of active regulars who [can and do](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;filter=all &quot;our editors gang is pretty strong&quot;) just that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that [invalidates my edit](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;). And answer that exploits another minor ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions: per my observations &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; have been smart enough to pick questions that have reasonably good wording as-is.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how things work now helps to attract new contributors but I would appreciate if achieving this important goal &lt;sup&gt;**[1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/when-is-an-account-abandoned/ &quot;'reduce the friction of... answering to little more than entering an anonymous comment on a blog'&quot;), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/helping-the-experts-get-answers/ &quot;'attract notable experts to your site'&quot;), [3](http://stackexchange.com/about &quot;'free and open to everyone... answer questions without even bothering to register'&quot;)**&lt;/sup&gt; would somehow be less damaging for good, highly visible questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **protect your own users from scale ...human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon...** ([A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy ](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html &quot;quote source&quot;))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some additional observations based on discussions that followed posting this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Low quality answers in hot questions likely contribute to the fact that currently, it is [hard for users to understand site standards](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;), which results in posting many &quot;bad&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a steady source of misguided contributors... There are... [broken windows](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info)... **&quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;**.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Until recently](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228940/165773 &quot;until this change announced 2014-04-09&quot;), low quality answers also threated to [penalize contributors](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13713_5448 &quot;see 'clear that 10k barrier...' and further discussion&quot;) who post good ones because when piled on in hot questions, garbage answers trigger [CW](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info &quot;automatic community wiki when there are more than 15 answers&quot;) which consequently turns all the upvotes given to good answers into zero reputation for their authors.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [more than 1700 answers scored 25+ turned community wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;q=wiki%3ayes%20is%3aanswer%20score%3a25)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of precision, note that number `1700` above is only indicative since search does not exclude answers turned CW for other reasons. Also note some of the answers could be high-voted &quot;unfairly&quot;: per analysis 10+ voted answers in sampled questions (below), this could happen, although rather infrequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through few [sampled](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/181999/31260 &quot;random sampling, stuff like that&quot;) questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, note that besides 199 answers reviewed above, there are also 19 answers deleted in 16 questions listed above. These answers are visible only to moderators and to users with [sufficient privileges](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;Access to Moderator tools -&gt; 'View deleted posts'&quot;). Of these 19, 9 are deleted by moderators, the rest has been deleted by owners. Of 10 answers deleted by owners, I would downvote 7-8.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summing up, I would downvote about **101-118 of 218** answers I reviewed per above research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some data related to [recently added](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/5413/revisions &quot;see changes in rev 13&quot;) observations on community wiki status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 2K+ views - about **25%** are CW, [307](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [1247](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 10K+ views - about **60%** are CW, [62](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [101](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting [self](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13717_5448 &quot;from here&quot;), wow. Just... wow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27120" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5442" RevisionGUID="dfaa85b6-7709-4b44-97e7-274c046226a5" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My [profile summary page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=summary) currently says 3668 upvotes while votes-&gt;upvotes sub tab ([dev team only link](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=votes&amp;sort=upvote)) counts less than that - 3544.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`3668-3544=124` - as far as I understand this difference could be [due to deleted posts](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144757/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;), does that mean more than 100 posts I **upvoted** during last one and half year are **all** deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my past observations deletion indeed decreases the count, I only don't know if there's anything else besides that could also cause the miss (eg like it was with expiration in [this bug report posted at MSO](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/162044/profile-page-shows-6-reopen-votes-total-while-i-have-at-least-25-successful-ones)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;For the record, I also tried to check if this could somehow relate to deleted users but it appears to be not the case. My favorite [&quot;good one-liner example&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3477/31260 &quot;advertised here:)&quot;) that was posted by now-deleted user shows my upvote just the way it was cast in April 2012.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27121" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7241" RevisionGUID="04abce79-dd23-48d8-9ef8-3ebb3057f498" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My apologies for taking a bit of time in getting around to answer this.  The set of 'newest 50' that I am working from may not be the ones you saw.  Let's look at all the down voted ones:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Career advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276703/im-a-university-student-and-im-a-asking-for-a-road-map-for-studying-computer-s (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question is one of the career and education advice questions that we often get. They've always been problematic since the start.  This one wasn't tagged with [tag:career-development] and if you read the excerpt there, you will note that we *really* try discouraging people from asking those questions.  We can't remove the tag wholesale, because there are historical posts that we [don't want to remove](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6983/31260 &quot;'in the past, career related tags have been through community cleanups meaning that older content in these tags has already been through some extra scrutiny and generally deemed worth keeping...'&quot;) - removing the tag would make those much more difficult to find (and hopefully head off additional questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Implementation and debugging questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often we get questions about implementation or debugging.  Many times these are [cross posted](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info &quot;'Cross-posting is frowned upon...'&quot;) to both Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE.  Other times, the question was posted here because the OP can't post it on SO for some reason or another. P.SE is distinctly different than SO in its scope and we aren't a &quot;can't post on SO, post on P.SE&quot; alternative site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276681/really-confused-about-maperase (-2 migrated)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276649/java-try-catch-block (-8)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question was asked on Programmers.SE in an attempt to get around a question block on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276647/what-cause-the-error-opening-trace-file-no-such-file-or-directory-2 (-3)   &#xD;&#xA;    A cross posted question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276625/how-run-a-exe-file-with-direct-connect-to-an-ipport (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    Another cross posted question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276613/python-how-to-print-in-rows (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A ***very*** poorly specified problem with python.  It is probably actually [this](http://stackoverflow.com/q/29135600/289086) question in a one sentence form, but its still an implementation or debugging issue that doesn't belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276607/passing-parameters-to-pthread-create (-3)&#xD;&#xA;    Aside from the self centered comments from the poster (it sets up a negative feeling about how one should vote), it's another implementation question that is off topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for the best&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276677/what-is-the-most-advised-way-to-handle-i18n-on-microservices (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question was asking for the best way to do something, without an actual problem to solve. As came out in the comments, the question was also looking for a discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276633/what-are-the-best-compression-algorithms-with-respect-to-a-minimising-cpu-usag (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    It's important to point out that this question has been changed from its [original](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/276633/revisions), which asked for an overview of compression algorithms. Searching google for [comparison of compression algorithms](https://www.google.com/search?q=comparison+of+compression+algorithms) brings up [this](http://binfalse.de/2011/04/04/comparison-of-compression/).  That said, we aren't a crowd sourced search engine. Those aren't fun questions to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276609/best-way-to-store-large-geo-tagged-data (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    A very broad and possibly resource recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Others&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276691/how-to-create-a-json-or-html-file-that-dynamically-mirrors-file-directory-struct (-1)  &#xD;&#xA;    This one isn't so bad. It's also at only -1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276690/simple-way-to-write-to-sql-file-from-java (-1)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question is a bit on the unclear side. It has some possibility, but it needs a clear problem definition.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276683/image-upload-fuctionality-in-a-web-application (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    This question failed to do any research and asked a rather [commonly asked question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/119488/40980) again.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276634/wearable-devices-that-communicate-with-my-apps-or-applicaiton (-1)  &#xD;&#xA;    A really unclear question that seems to be trying to find an architect for some idea of wearable devices or something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276631/where-can-i-find-an-open-source-project-or-body-of-code-written-in-clean-read (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    Polling for projects.  We've had a [poor history](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/165773 &quot;'We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out...'&quot;) of providing answers to such questions and curating those that have been asked in the past. On P.SE they rarely produce good content (and when they do, it's surrounded by a dozen poorly answered posts). The down votes are a warning to people thinking of answering it of &quot;don't waste your time here, this question isn't a good fit for the site&quot; as well as a &quot;don't ask these questions&quot;.  Far too often people point to past questions with an up vote that are still around as a &quot;this can get asked again&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276617/how-to-store-integer-array-in-mysql-database (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    This is an XY problem where the posted is asking for a solution that follows the particular idea for how he or she thinks will solve it, but isn't the actual problem. These don't often make for good questions, though if the poster can refine it to the actual problem being asked it might be something that can be turned around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276615/image-uploading-with-blog-post-best-practice (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    Best practice questions are a sore spot with people who answer questions on the site. There is no actual problem being described in the question - it's a &quot;what do people do&quot; type poll.  Rarely are best practices ever the best practices or even applicable to the situation that is actually the unmentioned problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276604/how-to-formally-present-a-web-app-solution-to-a-panel-plus-pricing (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    Pricing of applications (and other forms of compensation) is listed as off topic in the [help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  The price someone wants to charge for something is based on too many factors for us to accurately base an answer on (do you have dependents? is this a job or hobby? what is the median income in your locale? etc...).  The question boils down to a poll of how people have sold software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276600/selecting-string-pattern-matching-algorithm-easier (-2)  &#xD;&#xA;    A [copy and paste of a homework](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems) question.  Or at least it looks that way. It really isn't a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### And asked and deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10k links here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276687/simple-interest-loop-error (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A rather poorly specified implementation question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276682/for-the-college-dropouts-what-was-missing-from-the-university-program-that-caus (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A poll of CS college dropouts about what could have been better in their programs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276675/display-time-in-sorting-order-based-on-dynamicall-added-arrived-time-with-curren (-4)  &#xD;&#xA;    A cross posted question.  You can find the SO version [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29117975/display-data-in-sorting-order-based-on-arrived-time-with-current-date-using-linq)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276621/case-insensitive-search-is-not-working-in-strongloop (-3)  &#xD;&#xA;    A reposted implementation question.  The [repost](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/276420/case-insensitive-search-issue-in-strongloop) was at -5 when it was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, there's the list and why they are down voted.  We often wonder why we attract such questions, especially when we have many of these clearly spelled out in the Help Center for &quot;please don't ask them&quot;.  There is a suspicion that many of these are spill over from Stack Overflow (can't ask there, ask here) or a realization that Stack Overflow would close the questions, so you go down to the bottom of Stack Overflow and look at the sites...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and lo and behold, there is Programmers right next to it.  Let's try asking there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you believe that any of these *should't* have been down voted, are on topic, and not too broad or in otherwise need of fixing/clarification by the person who posted the question (we often fix those that have all the material, just poorly formatted), please point it out.  If you think that some of these *should* be asked here and the policies and community norms are in error, please bring that up so that we can help by demonstrating the path that brought us here, and look at influencing people to make that change either by making exemplary questions of that type, or writing about it on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Until we understand what people feel need to be changed, it's rather hard to work off of &quot;there are a lot of down voted posts on the front page&quot;.  We know. We really try to help it and have probably done the most changes to our help center in recent times of any Stack Exchange site (we're going through [another round](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7236/40980) of refinement - trying to make it more clear about what is and isn't on topic here). If you have suggestions about how to modify the help center, please help us make those changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/YZTDq.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27122" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5461" RevisionGUID="88243ccf-6113-4c2c-b035-594d3e790a41" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The problems that you mention come from a misuse of comments. Comments meant to point out issues with or suggestions for the post that they are attached to. They should be used if the question needs additional information or to ask about what has already been tried or to elaborate on points that someone answering would need to know about to provide a better, more relevant answer. Comments on an answer are likewise meant to ask for clarification of points or to point out errors or concerns with an answer. They are not meant for extended discussion. This [Meta Stack Overflow answer](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/139812/572) provides a good overview.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a post has a number of irrelevant or obsolete comments, flag them for deletion so that they don't cause the problems you're seeing. Once issues with the post have been resolved, the comments are probably no longer necessary and can be cleaned up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, if you need to have an extended discussion that maintains an order, feel free to start a chat room and link to it in the comments. At 100 reputation, a user can create a custom chat room. This room may go dormant or get locked, but the content is preserved much like the content on the main site. A comment linking to the chat room can be left for people to follow and refer to the extended discussion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27123" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5467" RevisionGUID="b2dd8bfa-0d2a-4623-911a-c85afea40036" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Sorry for the late response; this issue was [fixed][1] on Sep 25, 2012. Thanks for the report.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/141435/new-beta-review-displays-locked-posts/143562#comment425684_143562" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27124" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7243" RevisionGUID="cbe7b4f3-7f74-47f2-9e9a-f039d725f193" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Stack Overflow has got an **[interesting feature](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/288387/839601 &quot;find more detailed description here&quot;)** that may be related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't tell that it helps to lower amount of bad questions _asked_ (I honestly don't know if this is possible at all) - but it _at least_ helps to save site home page from being polluted by such questions (bold font in below quote is mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;*All* questions flagged Very Low Quality now immediately enter [Triage](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7053/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...and **while these questions are being triaged, they're *not* shown on the home page. Take *that*, [wall of crap.](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so)**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;[![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1rTGm.png)](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* MSE discussion of instilling above features network wide:  &#xD;&#xA; [Triage and Help &amp; Improvement review queues at sites other than Stack Overflow?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/251737/165773)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27125" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7252" RevisionGUID="a782f8d4-f0a4-412b-a5c4-d1e260372763" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just made some updates to https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1646/faq-index-for-programmers-se, adding some missing [meta-tag:faq] questions, mostly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that each of the questions in [meta-tag:faq] should have a link back to the index, similar to the links on MSE ([example](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8010/how-can-i-get-answers-fast)) and SO ([example](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/271542/why-wont-the-system-allow-me-to-ask-questions-for-several-days)). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this link should take the form:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;`[Return to FAQ index](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1646)`&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the bottom of the question post for each FAQ entry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't have edit privileges here and suggested edits are not allowed on [meta-tag:faq]. Presuming there are no objections to adding a FAQ index backlink to each entry, does somebody want to make these edits?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these changes are made, a note should probably be added to the end of the &quot;How can a question be added to this FAQ&quot; section at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1647/121251 as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27126" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5478" RevisionGUID="760065af-be60-4325-99c3-a1bea6032710" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is a market in terms of &quot;If someone was to create a website where this was the goal and allowed, it would likely find people willing to visit it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before you go off designing such a website (the Stack Exchange format doesn't go well for such a type of question - by design I believe, and a good choice), I believe the naive implementation it is doomed to failure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) by Clay Shirky.  Though a decade old, it has important truths about social software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this article:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Scale alone kills conversations, because conversations require dense&#xD;&#xA;&gt; two-way conversations. In conversational contexts, Metcalfe's law is a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; drag. The fact that the amount of two-way connections you have to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; support goes up with the square of the users means that the density of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; conversation falls off very fast as the system scales even a little&#xD;&#xA;&gt; bit. You have to have some way to let users hang onto the less is more&#xD;&#xA;&gt; pattern, in order to keep associated with one another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange works reasonably because it makes conversations difficult.  You have questions and answers which is not a two way conversation - it is a question and an answer and it's done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the code detects a conversation happening in comments, it suggests people take the comments to a chat room (where conversations of a small group work).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From earlier in the article:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The downside of going for size and scale above all else is that the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; dense, interconnected pattern that drives group conversation and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; collaboration isn't supportable at any large scale. Less is different&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -- small groups of people can engage in kinds of interaction that large groups can't. And so we blew past that interesting scale of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; small groups. Larger than a dozen, smaller than a few hundred, where&#xD;&#xA;&gt; people can actually have these conversational forms that can't be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; supported when you're talking about tens of thousands or millions of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; users, at least in a single group.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question of &quot;what language should I learn&quot; or &quot;what should I do next&quot; or &quot;what book should I read&quot; requires a conversation to understand the context of what is being asked.  The answer to &quot;what language should I learn&quot; is not &quot;C&quot; in every case.  The correct answer requires that the asker and the answerer exchange a dozen messages each way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The conversation that would need to happen is one that would be unmanageable (and thus, the reason why SE tries to prevent conversations in the Q&amp;A part).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For an example of what this would become, head over to a forum that allows &quot;shopping&quot; type questions (deviant art photography forum springs to mind, though it may have changed since I was there last - Reddit may also be a place that allows this and consider what asking such a question there will result in) and look at the size and number of pages of discussion for a &quot;simple&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, you may want to read [Web Discussions: Flat by Design](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/12/web-discussions-flat-by-design.html) which does go into some of the difficulty with online conversations.  Additionally, the M.SO post [Is Stack Overflow a forum](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/92107/is-stack-overflow-a-forum) goes into the nature of what it is:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; For example, on a forum you might ask how to run a game in windowed mode. You will get several responses, some of which will be nothing but &quot;oh, I love that game!&quot; or &quot;I haven't played that in a while, wow.&quot; You'll be lucky if you get a relevant response. By contrast, on Stack Exchange you'd get [practical responses](http://gaming.stackexchange.com/q/21955/1925) that are 100% relevant to your question. &lt;sup&gt;[1](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/92110/165773 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;...  &#xD;&#xA; Stack Exchange neither supports nor encourages a &quot;forum-style&quot; of open, free-for-all discussion (many-to-many conversations). This is by design... Stack Exchange is built on the premise that **forums don't scale**. All those open conversations mean that those forums only tend to get noisier and noisier. What inevitably happens is... you stop learning. &lt;sup&gt;[2](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/92115/165773 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27127" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="189cda74-d17d-4527-8cf4-bd277b28a9bc" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Could we please make a trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Modification details are described in [this MSO post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164712/165773) as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As far as I can tell, substantial part of `Qanswers` in current formula is fake.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;  `(log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascores)`&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;About 1/3 of the answers [studied here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever&quot;) (83 of total 254) have score less than 1/100 of top voted post in respective question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Given that questions checked were ones with tens thousands views, **insultingly low score** indicates that assuming these answers to be popular wouldn't even be in the ballpark. Still, the formula pumps these into `Qanswers` value, as if it is something everyone would be happy to read (hint: it isn't).&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Consider tuning the formula to make it deviate less from voting results. **Ignore answers with non-positive score. Or [better yet](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13857_5485 &quot;preference for cut off at (TopAnswerScore/10-1) explained in comments here&quot;), ignore answers scored less than some reasonable fraction (eg 1/10) of the top one.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that current formula appears to give an unjustified value to crappy answers in highly upvoted questions (`Qscore/5`, no matter how much is answer downvoted), I would like to perform test run to find out if suggested change would make an impact to issues outlined in Programmers meta posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Note: results of the trial run to be analyzed using study analogous to one performed in _Answers quality in hot questions_. Current evaluation shows about **101-118 low quality of 218** answers sampled.  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Upon completion of trial run, similar evaluation is to be done in order to estimate whether there was a substantial impact, positive or negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Complementary information to this request is provided in [comments below](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment16044_5482 &quot;starting from here&quot;), marked with &quot;for the record...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I expect modified formula to be competitive to current one at &quot;moderately hot&quot; questions, following the [reasoning outlined here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773):&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;For questions that are not too hot (likely 2-3 clicks away from top of the list) it's natural to see things working exactly as intended. Answers and comments quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), [collider](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;) brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and cool...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recent hot question about [automated testing](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/185819/31620) gives an example of why I would want to try a modified formula. In 17 hours, question collected 17 answers, merely 5-7 of which provide useful original content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overheat of fake hotness impacted question like a [Black Saturday fire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a01_17890753.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the fire settled, what is left for future visitors of the question looks like a wasteland of low quality garbage (note that due to high views, it will score high in web searches).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a04_17906927.jpg][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the light of above, [community wiki](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info) status stamped on the question looks especially despicable. It kind of suggests that **after damage has done**, community members are invited to go over the crap brought in by braindead formula, carefully analyze it and try to tame the pain by downvotes. As if they don't have anything better to do!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Update&#xD;&#xA;Related feature request has been posted at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/192046/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please stop counting proven low score answers in hotness formula. Please roll the dice fairly, let user voting and time decay contribute to hotness score as intended. Please promote to collider audience less brain-damaging content to learn from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vKQvI.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B1hjy.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27128" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7254" RevisionGUID="93406edc-e977-41c4-92c6-1de98c709dda" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Question is About How to Use a Development Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool that you are using is a tool that is used to design and develop software and is used primarily in a software development environment, you should check out [Stack Overflow][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A number of development tools already have questions and answers on Stack Overflow, ranging from requirements management tools ([DOORS][2]) to architecture and design tools ([Dia][3], [Rhapsody][4], [Enterprise Architect][5]) to editors ([Visual Studio][6], [Eclipse][7], [Notepad++][8]) to mathematical packages ([MATLAB][9], [Sage][10]) to version control ([git][11], [ClearCase][12]) to peer review tools ([Collaborator][13]) to test tools ([TestComplete][14], [Selenium][15]) to project management tools ([Jira][16], [FogBugz][17]), and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about How to Use a General Purpose Tool&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the tool is general purpose software, check out [Super User][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all of the tools that we use during the course of software development are unique to software developers. Tools such as office suites ([Microsoft Office][19], [OpenOffice.org][20]), web browsers ([Internet Explorer][21], [Chrome][22]) file transfer tools ([Filezilla][23], [WinSCP][24]), virtualization software ([VirtualBox][25], [VMWare][26]), and analysis software ([MATLAB][27], [Mathematica][28]) are used by many types of people in different environments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about a Tool in a Context Specific to an Operating System&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several Stack Exchange sites devoted to particular operating systems and associated software packages or applications: [Android][29], [Apple][30], [Unix and Linux][31], and [Ubuntu][32]. Be sure to read their Help Center, Meta site, and search for similar questions before asking to make sure that your specific question is on-topic for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Question is about using a Tool in a Software Development Workflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question involves how to integrate a tool or type of tool into your workflow or process, then it is likely to be on-topic on Software Engineering. Generally, if you aren't asking about how to use a specific feature of a tool, but trying to determine how to use the tool to achieve a well-defined goal, start here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Other Considerations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some tools have their own Stack Exchange sites as well. For example, there are sites for [Drupal][33], [Expression Engine][34], [Mathematica][35], [Salesforce][36], [SharePoint][37], and [Wordpress][38]. There are even more sites for both particular environments and specific tools in beta - check out [the complete list of Stack Exchange sites][39].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  However, if you decide to post the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions may be on-topic on multiple sites. If you see your favorite tool on a site, check out some of the questions and answers to see if your question fits and which site is most likely to provide the answers that you are looking for. Do not cross-post questions - if you feel that your question should be moved to a different site, flag it and let the site's moderation team know. If you aren't sure, every site has a Meta site and many sites have a chat room, so you can always ask before asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators can, and do, migrate questions. If you do ask in the wrong place, there's a site that is more appropriate, and it's a well-written question, it will likely be migrated. Low quality questions that don't meet the quality guidelines of the other site won't be moved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are site-specific [automatic question blocks][40] - posting on the wrong site will not help you get answers and will likely lead to being blocked on other sites. It's also not possible to migrate questions if you are blocked on the target site. If you are blocked somewhere, do not post questions that are off-topic somewhere else. Instead, work to improve your existing questions and answers to have the block lifted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or downvoted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are Questions Asking for Help Using a Tool Off-Topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6701/are-questions-asking-for-help-using-a-tool-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are there a subset of tool questions that are appropriate for Software Engineering?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5519/are-there-a-subset-of-tool-questions-that-are-appropriate-for-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* [Where does my GIT question go?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6311/where-does-my-git-question-go)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/doors&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/dia&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/rhapsody&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/enterprise-architect&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/visual-studio&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/eclipse&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/notepad%2B%2B&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/sage&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/git&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/clearcase&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/code-collaborator&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/testcomplete&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/selenium&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/jira&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/fogbugz&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: https://superuser.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/microsoft-office&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/openoffice.org&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/internet-explorer&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/google-chrome&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/filezilla&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/winscp&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/virtualbox&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/vmware&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/matlab&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/mathematica&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: http://android.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [32]: http://askubuntu.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [33]: http://drupal.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [34]: http://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [35]: http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [36]: http://salesforce.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [37]: http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [38]: http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [39]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [40]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27129" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5490" RevisionGUID="49a56b39-e2c5-40c7-a01b-3619d20e5ea4" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Issues like this are addressed in MSO faq post **[What is the XY problem?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/66378/165773)** (by the way there's also quite an interesting list of linked questions there).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...asking about your attempted solution rather than your actual problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As long as your answer explains why there is an underlying problem implicitly present in question asked and provides a solution to it, it should be OK." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27130" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5496" RevisionGUID="909c0b69-45c3-4fbc-969a-3e6364c65dbc" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/180588/31260&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above answer has been made CW per automatic rule ([quote source](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/11741/165773 &quot;MSO answer to 'What are “Community Wiki” posts?'&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The post has been edited ten (10) times by the original owner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Automatically applying generic rule in this particular case looks unfair.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;In case of doubt, check the answer contents and revisions history to decide whether you agree with above.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* answer: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/180588/31260&#xD;&#xA;* revisions: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/180588/revisions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer looks exceptionally good and revisions (all made by author) look like substantially adding a value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to clear CW status to recognize an extraordinary contribution of the author?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27131" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5535" RevisionGUID="9087b283-f253-49c2-84fb-af5c3a99ebe9" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You've got it completely wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is by no means “not constructive”. The fact that the guidelines are met should be a hint. It's a well-written question about an interesting subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That this question was closed as NC [doesn't surprise me](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/165882/appeal-a-not-constructive-question/165911#165911). There are more things on heaven and earth than dreamt of in most programmers' philosophy, but your average SO/Prog.SE close voter barely dreams, let alone imagine that there's a whole world out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The study of languages is a science. The question is perhaps not well-suited for the site: it's on-topic (I guess) in that it's about programming languages, but the target audience would be computer scientists, who understand what a programming language is and how natural languages are modeled.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Speaking as a moderator on [Computer Science](http://cs.stackexchange.com/), I'll recommend migrating the question there. Both programming language theory and natural language modeling are on-topic there, and we don't dismiss “it's not part of my daily job as a programmer” as non-constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(However, I'm afraid user881920 is going to be disappointed. While the question is thought-provoking, the answer is an unexciting no.)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27132" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7272" RevisionGUID="60836dac-894f-4145-8d65-a708043ae6f8" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is not a duplicate of this: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5427/usefulness-of-career-development-and-career-transition-tags ... it's time for them to be blacklisted. The narrowness of scope of what actually would be on topic here is so narrow that it's pretty much invisible. **All it does is invite off topic posts.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We absolutely can and should keep the tag around for historically significant posts. According to Meta, we can do this. But it should be blacklisted for all future posts. See https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/252898/mark-a-tag-as-a-historical-significance-only&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has come up many times before, for example: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2358/offering-solutions-to-the-career-and-jobs-tags (2011) (Note: this question didn't suggest blacklisting because blacklisting didn't exist when it was discussed)&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3279/blacklist-career (2012)&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup (2013)&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6426/career-transition-tag-inappropriate (Early 2014)&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6458/there-seems-to-be-some-contradictory-guidance-with-respect-to-asking-career-deve (Early 2014)&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6983/improve-question-quality-by-informing-askers-of-expectations-in-some-career-rela (Late 2014)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For crying out loud, this is the [tag:jobs] tag wiki:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do not use this tag. Click &quot;info&quot; for better alternatives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the [tag:career-development] tag wiki:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Career advice is off-topic per Help Center. 99% of questions with this tag are off-topic and will be closed. Study other questions under this tag closely that aren't closed before asking your question, if you want any chance of it not being closed. Closed questions add up to a possible question-ban &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bottom line... there is an awful lot of bad here, and very, very little good. It's nigh impossible to write an on-topic question with these tags. A lot of those are out of date because **The Workplace had not even graduated until February 2014**. Some relevant comments (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Rachel](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel) [Jan 6 '13 at 18:30](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5427/usefulness-of-career-development-and-career-transition-tags#comment13618_5427) (this is the best that can be managed by someone that *likes* the tag):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think [career-development] does serve a purpose, and it's one of my favorite tags to browse on the site. Career advice isn't the same as career development. We can't advise someone on what career path they should take, but we can answer some questions about career development for software developers. I'm not sure about [career-transition] though... **I can't think of any cases where it could be on-topic here.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [@Yannis Rizos♦︎](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/25936/yannis-rizos) [Jan 19 '13 at 22:19](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5427/usefulness-of-career-development-and-career-transition-tags#comment13769_5446)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is all good, but irrelevant if the tags aren't used as they are supposed to be used. If a lot of people use [career-development] to ask career advice questions, then the **tag is problematic and should probably go away.** The two topics are distinct, but their differences are subtle, and become even more subtle if we consider non native English speakers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##It's time for them to go.##" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27134" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5543" RevisionGUID="65c06032-c138-4815-b5fa-044cbe138b3b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Most likely reason for the issues with answers quality is a [particular bug](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164712/165773 &quot;described here&quot;) in a hotness formula (&quot;fake popularity&quot;). This bug causes some of the questions with many answers to be placed unreasonably close to the top of the [collider](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Issues caused by this are explained in details in a post about particularly troublesome ([&quot;sticky&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;)) kind of questions affected by the bug in formula:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One problem with hot questions seems to be that there is no way for &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; to differentiate **genuine** popularity from **fake** one, that is from popularity introduced by the algorithm itself... the algorithm simply is incapable to detect cases when popularity is [its own byproduct](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback &quot;due to positive feedback loop&quot;)...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;For questions that are not too hot... quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), collider brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and fair...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;But when question gets closer to the top of collider, things change... it attracts a lot of visitors whose desire to answer is not balanced by local community norms. At this point &quot;intended life-cycle of a hot question&quot; breaks.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Hotness algorithm assumes the question gets bumped mostly by good answers and that infrequent deviations are corrected by local community through voting and comments. Thing is though, this does not work on top of the collider...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Post further explains why community moderation (&quot;quality control&quot; through voting, comments and editing by site regulars) tends to break on questions impacted by unnatural hotness score:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...There are just too many new visitors to keep things under local community control, and there are just too many new voters and commenters to get things going as designed... So comes next and next and next round of garbage answers, bumping the question, bringing mindless upvotes, over and over and over again.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Hotness algorithm calculates this as genuine popularity, keeps it accordingly high at collider, bringing more visitors that are breaking things further and so on and so on. Note it's not limited to newcomers only, everyone is invited to the party. Community regulars can clearly see that usual quality norms are broken... and that they are free to follow the New Order just like anyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;**That's how fake popularity makes shit stick to the ceiling and helps to keep it there.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It also explains why there are so much community wiki (triggered by too-many-answers) among questions affected by hotness formula bug:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; _Regular_ open questions (&quot;appropriate&quot; ones) tend to have much less than 30 answers indeed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;But when we look at &quot;sticky&quot; questions, things seem to be different. These questions aren't &quot;inappropriate&quot;, otherwise these would be closed long time ago. Still, 10 examples of sticky questions have more than 270 answers total, about 27 average per question...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...at least **2/3 answers in sticky questions are just a garbage** that somehow leaked in (probably because &quot;fake hotness&quot; gave question an unnaturally high exposure in collider).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Here are feature requests to address this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5482/31260&#xD;&#xA;* [In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/192046/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please stop counting proven low score answers in hotness formula. Please roll the dice fairly, let user voting and time decay contribute to hotness score as intended. Please promote to collider audience less brain-damaging content to learn from." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27135" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5553" RevisionGUID="dc493ee7-a4e1-4d37-922c-8ccd619330dc" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Last week I asked [a question on future-proof programming](http://stackoverflow.com/q/14756472/974555) on Stack Overflow. It was closed as off-topic there. I flagged it for migration, but although the flag was deemed helpful, the non-migration [appears to imply rejection](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/167700/172266).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is my question, closed on Stack Overflow, a good fit on Programmers? Was a migration rejected? Why (not)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27136" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7319" RevisionGUID="d89d0214-0ad9-4c05-af6c-533de1e3af14" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I can appreciate the idea that sometimes popular questions can get closed simply because they are crazy popular. However, I strongly doubt this is an issue that would need to be addressed immediately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a highly upvoted question suddenly gets closed, to a point where it triggers red flags in the Community Manager system, the right thing for the Community Management team is to *bring the question to us in Meta*. Something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hey guys, this question was closed, but we can't see any good reason to do so. Why did the community choose to do it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there would probably be [an answer from someone like @MichaelT](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7289/why-was-how-can-i-deal-with-the-cargo-cult-programming-attitude-reopened?cb=1#comment21821_7290)&lt;/sup&gt; like (these comments really deserve to be an answer):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We've been looking at some less than ideal tags for the site. One of those is [tag:teaching] which this question has. It wasn't the 'wildly popular' that was the criteria. It was the 'questions of this tag are often poor fit for the Q&amp;A format and often are either polling or education advice.' With the goal of cleaning up broken windows (because new users often use [old open questions as examples](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/278959/area-of-expertise-for-a-good-web-developer#comment574168_278959)) we endeavor to maintain the site's quality and that sometimes means revisiting old questions that don't fit well with the site's focus. Popularity isn't the selecting factor. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would point out that its not 'five users suddenly' - it was 'one user cast a close vote on it, three more [found it in /review](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close/98599), and well, then there's gnat'. This wasn't a coordinated closing. Just another question in /review that someone found. One should look at 'is this question too broad' when deciding to reopen a question that was closed by the community as too broad. We [really try to provide good guidance](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/40980) on our close reasons that are available to all. While you (as a community manager) may have a different view into this you will generally find that we don't have people debating and denigrating if a question should have been closed or not. We would likely really like to have a place for discussions, but we recognize that the Q&amp;A format that SE has provided doesn't work that way and when you get questions that can inspire dozens of short answers (and despite having an accepted one) we often find new users wanting to add their two bits to the content (and that can have a very poor experience when it gets down voted compared to not being able to ask because it is closed / locked).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've generally found that, in most cases the pace of things getting done on Stack Exchange doesn't need to be very fast. A popular post was closed, **it deserves to get it's time on Meta [before being unilaterally reopened.](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119111/moderator-cheat-sheet/119112#119112)**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27137" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5560" RevisionGUID="0d55ec6d-44e0-49c7-9d8e-91d23b7e966f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would not judge content based on it's potential moral or ethical uses&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The more we know about security loopholes, the more secure we can build our applications. Consider for example, the exact same question asked, but with the purpose of preventing such security loopholes in the first place. Then the moral/ethical argument would no longer be there, and you'll still get the exact same answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, the OP is very correct with [his comment][1] that *&quot;when you learn cyber hacking and various exploits, it is not necessary you wants to be a black hat hacker&quot;*. In fact, the US government plans to [dramatically increase the size of their cyber security department][2], and plan on hiring many more &quot;hackers&quot; in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also as a side note related to that specific question, I recently wrote up [an answer][3] to a MSO question about effective ways to guide new users so they have a higher chance of becoming a contributing member of the SE communities, and one of the points there was to &quot;Assume the best about the user, and not the worst&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you posted as an example is the exact sort of case I was referring to. By assuming the worst about the person (that they are only asking to create malware), you are presenting the OP with a very unfriendly welcome to the site, and it is unlikely they will stick around. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In contrast, if you assume the best (that they are merely a curious student like they say they are), they are much more likely to listen to what you say, and may potentially become a contributing member to the community in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/187231/create-a-unterminable-process-in-windows#comment360653_187231&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/us/pentagon-to-beef-up-cybersecurity-force-to-counter-attacks.html&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/167474/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27138" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7328" RevisionGUID="1cfc9e9c-ccea-438e-8928-62a84b3ce4f1" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently flagged an off-topic (implementation) [question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/280353/1) that was posted here with sole purpose to circumvent &quot;problem&quot; title block at Stack Overflow. I described the issue in [&quot;need of moderator intervention&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/254097/165773) kind of flag and got it declined with suggestion to &quot;just vote to close&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to better understand how to decide on whether to flag or not in cases like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* ['Problem' titles in off-topic questions of new users coming from Stack Overflow](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7221/31260)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; what's the point of wasting precious close votes on an issue essentially caused by some kind of a system &quot;leak&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Provide 10k users more close votes](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6508/31260)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **if you see someone that is very likely unable to ask questions on one site bringing the same poor quality here - flag it**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27139" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5588" RevisionGUID="a6f3e65f-ea96-4e88-bbe9-4cece0b2ca06" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Although a user's Close/Reopen votes aren't displayed in Data.SE, the Post History record is public, and you can parse the line saying who closed the post to get a list of a user's closed posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can use [this Data.SE query][1] that [Tim Stone shared][2] to look at posts that a user has successfully closed. It should be noted that this does not include votes on deleted posts, nor does it include close votes that have expired or did not result in the question getting closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also played around with that query a bit and found you can fairly easily get a list of the [Top Close Voters][3] and [Top Reopen Voters][4], although those queries take a bit longer to run and I would not recommend running them on a larger site like SO. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both these queries are currently set to only show votes since 2012, but you can change the date at the top if you want to look at a larger date range. Also, the same restrictions apply as the first query: it only includes non-deleted posts, and only contains close/reopen votes that resulted in the question successfully getting closed or reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a related note, since it's fairly trivial to view a user's successful close/reopen vote history, I have a MSO proposal to [show successful Close/Reopen votes in Data.SE][5] that would make queries like this easier to run and more efficient.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/98815/close-votes-by-user&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/160981/show-successful-close-reopen-votes-in-sede-regardless-of-if-theyve-expired-or-n#comment467269_160981&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90851/top-close-voters&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/90852/top-reopen-voters&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/160981/158605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27140" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7340" RevisionGUID="8105f945-2b5a-4752-82ff-35eb7777e259" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Thats part of the realized behavior of people...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a badge ([Electorate](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/28)) to try to encourage people to vote on questions more.  There's also the way [votes themselves work](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/90256/213963) ([related](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/89534/213963)) (if you use your votes on questions, you get more of them).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why? I suspect its part of the 'up vote for effort' nature that happens. If you put in work, you are likely to get up voted just because its well written and lengthy. That's just my observation. Most of the time, answers require more effort to be put in them and thus the answer gets an up vote for that effort.  I'm not saying this is good nor bad - just a theory of why votes happen to fall the way they do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, votes on posts do help with the relevancy of related questions on the side and search results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Trying to guess how people are going to vote or trying to get the community to vote in some way or another is often met with opposition and intentional data fowling (&quot;this post was down voted? I'll up vote it! Why was this post up voted? I'll down vote it!&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I chalk it up to 'its one of those emerged social behaviors on the site that the devs have tried to channel to get more votes on questions but it still doesn't work too well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related on MSE: [Why aren't people voting for questions?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/9508/213963)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27141" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5679" RevisionGUID="54e130e6-c04a-4c1f-9a3c-b5f9133cbb44" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As far as I can tell, good history question is one that evolves into a retrospective case study.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Practical purpose of case studies is explained eg in [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_method):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...an intensive analysis of an individual unit (e.g., a person, group, or event) stressing developmental factors in relation to context... Case studies may be descriptive or explanatory. The latter type is used to **explore causation in order to find underlying principles.** They may be prospective... or retrospective (in which **criteria are established for selecting cases from historical records for inclusion in the study**).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...&quot;Case studies are analyses of persons, events, decisions, periods, projects, policies, institutions, or other systems that are studied holistically by one or more methods. The case that is the subject of the inquiry will be **an instance of a class of phenomena that provides an analytical frame** — an object — within which the study is conducted and which the case illuminates and explicates.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Another suggestion is that case study should be defined as a research strategy, an **empirical inquiry that investigates a phenomenon within its real-life context**. Case study research can mean single and multiple case studies, can include quantitative evidence, relies on multiple sources of evidence, and benefits from the prior development of theoretical propositions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Case studies balance the need to understand something big (something that would be too broad / NARQ in Stack Exchange terms) with a limitation of being sufficiently specific to allow for reasonably scoped _productive learning_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Say, one shouldn't ask at Programmers _what do I need to know about mission critical projects_ - that would be too broad for our format. Instead, one asks [What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/159637/31260) - that's still tough but at least something we can handle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar to Stack Overflow, Programmers questions (including history ones) serve the purpose of picking and applying programming technologies. The difference is, due to _conceptual_ nature of Programmers questions, the purpose could be not as immediate / direct as at Stack Overflow...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you ask about mission critical software a week before interview, you're probably few months too late: few months ago, you should ask yourself whether you are interested, and what would you want to understand about doing software development in this context.&#xD;&#xA;* And you don't necessary need to understand the context of mission critical software development just because you are involved. In fact, it can be opposite:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hey you suggest us _Fagan inspections_, why? I mean I perfectly understand how these are justified in _mission critical_ projects, but how does this apply to our non-critical application, compared to lightweight reviews?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summing up, I believe that history questions can serve a practical purpose, sufficiently compliant with Programmers topics (if done right).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, above assumes these pass through community moderation, business as usual. Questions that do not fit get closed per standard [close reasons](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/close-reasons/info), answers that don't fit get downvoted / flagged / deleted per usual [community quality control](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/75717/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; [...] real questions have *answers*, __not *items* or *ideas* or *opinions*__.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...&quot;Real questions&quot; don't necessarily have *practical* answers, but they do have __*authoritative* ones__." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27142" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7353" RevisionGUID="f93a365c-dcf8-4ad3-969f-adfcb785b6c3" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="From [Replace links with the current question title in comments](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/86909/213963) on MSE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No, because comments are processed on the fly. This means a page with 12 links would incur 12 additional database queries -- every time the page is loaded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are meant to be lightweight. If you want this, put your links in a post, where it is already supported.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links are stored in the database as just the text. Not the markdown and html (like posts are). When a link is rendered, it grabs the text and renders it right then and there. To have links get auto nice titles, it would either mean:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Doubling the storage requirements of comments (there are 38,091,590 undeleted comments on Stack Overflow alone)&#xD;&#xA;* Suffering a performance hit when you render a page for each comment that has a link to another post.&#xD;&#xA;     * Scan the raw link to see if its a link to another post&#xD;&#xA;     * If so, hit the database to find the post (if its undeleted) and substitute the name&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither of these appear to be acceptable tradeoffs for the ability to auto-pretty link a post for SE's developers and so, well, if you want a nice name to a title of a post, then you're left with the traditional format of `[nice name](http://link.to.post)`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One can also always grab the [SE Comment Link Helper](http://stackapps.com/questions/2378/se-comment-link-helper)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27143" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7368" RevisionGUID="29f564d5-3e42-4088-94fa-fcdaeea755fb" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Ok, I decided to weigh in on this one...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The specific question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The text of the question in question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have a site in wordpress and added menu in sidebar and I have changed the size of some tabs to show them separate, I just want when site loads then 2nd 3rd 4th 5th and 6th tab should be hide and open on when click on foirst tab then hide on clicking first tab,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     $(document).ready(function(){&#xD;&#xA;        $(&quot;#main-menu ul li:nth-child(2)&quot;).click(function(){&#xD;&#xA;            $(&quot;#main-menu ul li:nth-child(n+2):nth-child(-n+6)&quot;).toggle();&#xD;&#xA;        });&#xD;&#xA;    });&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also I don't know where should I put my javascript function in wordpress website,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that this question is off topic and that any answers that it gets here would cause *more* moderator work (migrating it to SO, duping it there, merging it there), closing it promptly *here* would be a good thing and reduce moderator work and the drain on community close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was asked at 1:07 UTC, and closed at 20:17 UTC. A tad bit over 19 hours. That's awkward and could have easily gotten some 'helpful' user posting an answer here. Fortunately it didn't. But if it *did*, it would have meant a flag for moderators to migrate it to the correct site where it *is* on topic (and as of this writing, still open).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this question, I believe the flag should have been acted upon and closed. I personally feel it's a rather clear cut case of an off topic question and a mod close could have prevented other possible answers in the wrong place. We get those often enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We should endeavor to avoid bouncing people and questions around form site to site - thats a bad experience. We should furthermore, endeavor to avoid the situations where we would be deleting questions that are completely inappropriate here (off topic fix my code) but have somehow garnered answers that would end up being deleted here (no one likes having their material deleted). Both of these require prompt action to avoid a poor experience; and sometimes the community isn't and can't be prompt enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The general case&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question is on topic on both sites, being cross posted is *not* a reason to close as off topic - its on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I've often found that questions that are posted identically to two or more sites suffer from lack of specificity and are often (not always) too broad or unclear. Those are perfectly acceptable reasons to close a question. This is especially frequent in situations where the OP wants &quot;diverse answers from multiple communities.&quot;  Many times, these questions are seeking discussion rather than solving problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that posting identical questions on multiple sites I consider to be very rude to the communities of those sites - having multiple groups working on solving a problem when its already solved somewhere else is wasting the time of multiple users.  Having questions where it didn't get an answer on one site but did on another leads to fragmentation of knowledge across the network and poor search results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Across the metas&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My take on this can be found on Meta.SE: [Can cross-posts actually be valuable to two communities, with the exception of being worded identically?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/243851/213963).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll also point to [Are cross-site questions acceptable in rare cases?](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5369/177) from Gaming.SE and highlight a bit from there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The reason cross-posting is frowned upon is because it's the hallmark of a vague question. If it's broad enough to be equally applicable to multiple SE sites, you haven't refined the question enough. More thought needs to be invested to see which group would be best able to answer your question. You need to decide which site you think has the best chance of answering the question. If you don't manage to get an answer, feel free to delete and ask on another. That way, there's no duplication of effort, no bickering, and if you get an answer on another site, it will be applicable to those that view it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### In conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it may not be off topic, and posting an identical question on multiple sites  can sometimes be acceptable, it ***will*** be judged with a more critical eye as to how it is applicable ***here***. The question may very well receive borderline votes of too broad or unclear because of how the question applies *here* rather than *there*." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27144" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5705" RevisionGUID="8297bb29-d399-4c6a-a2b4-31fccca23b4c" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would like to address one point I noticed in quite a few prior answers here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * conceptual question on software development, why wouldn't I ask it on **Stack Overflow**... &lt;sup&gt;[1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5680/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * On **StackOverflow**, many questions that are not in the prohibited categories... &lt;sup&gt;[2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5699/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * there is considerable overlap between **Stack Overflow** and programmers... &lt;sup&gt;[3](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5704/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * those questions are valuable and interesting..., and happily go on using **StackOverflow**... &lt;sup&gt;[4](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5676/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yeah you guys brag so much about how easier it is to _pass through_ at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you probably don't consider is that [huge backlog in close votes queue](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/151833/165773 &quot;about 50K questions to close&quot;) makes (_currently_ makes) close voting at SO somewhat... _random_, compared to systematic effort you see at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **I hate to be the one to tell you, but don't expect this to last forever...**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yxu4K.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it will be very interesting to see what happens in about [21 months from now](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/163837/165773 &quot;'we should have it cleared in just under 21 months'&quot;), when mentioned backlog is expected to be cleared.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;One can probably get an idea of how it would feel like by observing current effort to [Close all the typo questions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167342/close-all-the-typo-questions &quot;refer to MSO for more details on that&quot;). Watching their &quot;live backlog&quot; makes a strong impression: dozens of questions getting closed and deleted daily with ease, and don't forget that only a small percentage of [about 10 thousands SO close-voters](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/167915/165773 &quot;estimate here&quot;) participate!&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When close votes backlog is finally cleared, expect close votes processing to get to the pace at which other SO reviews are dealt with (think about something like **10x faster than at Programmers**).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What would you guys say when it will become only a matter of few minutes between first close vote / flag and question closure at Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If (when) that happens to your favorite &quot;conceptual&quot; questions at SO (as it happens already &lt;sup&gt;[1](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/170394/165773 &quot;recent example&quot;), [2](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/157216/165773 &quot;another example&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt; - just not that frequently), please don't forget to get back here and tell us again if it's that easy to pass at SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yxu4K.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/review/close/stats &quot;'can't you see I'm working on it...'&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27145" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5737" RevisionGUID="c06b58b7-ff9a-48ff-bbad-e274383ab01f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Typically a moderator will lock a post for one of a few reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    A question or answer where repeated voting or editing is happening in a way which attempts to game, hack, or otherwise abuse the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    A question that gets opened and closed repeatedly many times without achieving community consensus on whether it should stay open or closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    A question that, for whatever reason, continues to attract flame posts, spam, or other inappropriate answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    A question that is repeatedly vandalized by its asker; for example, to drastically alter the meaning of the question that invalidates existing answers, or to obliterate/obscure the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22228/what-is-a-locked-post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I locked the post temporarily because it was closed as a duplicate by community consensus, then started to receive flags disputing that it was in fact **not** a duplicate of the following question....&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45378/is-commented-out-code-really-always-bad&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I felt as if I agreed with this, however it had over 10 answers already and at the other over 13.  I couldn't really see too much else of value being added in addition to what others have already answered well and completely.  I was hoping that with a temporary lock that it wouldn't attract anymore answers and if anybody was concerned or highly disagreed with my reopen of the question then they would bring the subject up on Meta for us to discuss.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am glad that you brought it up because this question can be the perfect vehicle for such a discussion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27146" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7371" RevisionGUID="f8c81871-8061-46da-b5c9-3274f6617141" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="@MichaelT and I were [discussing the purpose of locked questions last night in chat.](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/21732881#21732881) He brought up this post from Meta.SE: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for/126631#126631&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions can be historically locked when:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1.  The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2.  The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3.  There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4.  The post is contentious; i.e. it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### When is it not appropriate to historically-lock a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should not be historically locked if they:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1.  Are being actively maintained, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2.  Have little or no redeeming value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this in mind, I searched for all locked posts. We have [744 locked posts](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes); many of these are good and we should keep around, and is quite a lot of posts especially for what would have to be a moderator only review. Can we do better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have [175 posts that match the search `locked:yes views:0..5000 score:0..10 duplicate:no migrated:no`](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A0..5000+score%3A0..10+duplicate%3Ano+migrated%3Ano). They have low views (so don't help much with SEO), low score, and don't help with searching as merge source questions, and won't disappear on their own when the migration timeout ends. This search results in gems like these ***first** three posts returned under **relevance** sort*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Economy simulation software](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/146781/economy-simulation-software)&#xD;&#xA; - [PHP and SQL, together or individually](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80434/php-and-sql-together-or-individually)&#xD;&#xA; - [Providing work experience on my resume](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/82342/providing-work-experience-on-my-resume)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see almost no reason to keep **any** of these 175 posts. They add nothing. If we drop the view threshold to **2000** posts, we are *still left with [142 questions](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A0..2000+score%3A0..10+duplicate%3Ano)*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Why should we bother?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@MichaelT said it best last night:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Consider if that is the type of impression we wish to give to users who are coming into the site about the types of things we have on the site (remember, new users don't know / understand / care about historical locks).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that not all of these are historical locks; many (most? all?) of them are rejected migrations. That's no reason to keep them. [**Note that migration rejected stubs never get deleted from the destination site!**](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/224474/are-rejected-migrations-ever-automatically-deleted-from-the-destination-site-sh)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Let's get rid of them with fire.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Burn with fire!][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/9YfMu.gif&#xD;&#xA; [2]: https://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A0..5000+score%3A0..10+duplicate%3Ano" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27147" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5789" RevisionGUID="f5a92261-2322-49f8-88dd-7859c80c40b4" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As pointed in the [comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5788/is-tagresource-questions-a-good-idea-for-the-main-site#comment14683_5788 &quot;here&quot;), this is not quite a good idea because having such a tag could have an opposite effect: users may think it's OK to use it, even if you write in its wiki and excerpt that it's forbidden - &quot;if there's a tag, why can't I ask about it?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you refer to my comment - for the sake of precision, this was only second time (I wish it would also be the last but unfortunately it wouldn't) when I referred asker to tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior to that, my similar comments were pointing to particular meta discussion (the one that is currently set in the tag wiki as the guidance point). It was when my comment has been (quite legitimately imNSho) [challenged](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/190911/code-network-metrics-with-ui-events#comment370863_190911) by asker who pointed to another meta discussion to back up somewhat different approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, I suggested [tag wiki](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/186) and [excerpt](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/187) and switched to using these in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a more general note, I believe tag wiki like that are to be established any time when there is a confusion among meta readers caused by differing &quot;canonical&quot; / &quot;authoritative&quot; posts and comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's not a new idea, explained eg in [flagger's guide to link-only answers](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/154922/165773) at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;In some meta posts or comments you may see moderators suggesting / requiring particular kind flag to be used (or to avoid) for link-only answers. Convenient _[litmus test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litmus_test_%28politics%29)_ in cases like that is to ask author whether this is their personal opinion or a statement that can be quoted in [tag wiki](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/tag-wiki/info &quot;what's this&quot;) (wiki for respective flag or for [link-only  answers](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/link-only-answers/info)). **Tag wiki are quite authoritative reference; anything else, read: _use at your own risk_.**&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a more recent example you can refer to MSO [profanity tag wiki](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/172893/revisions &quot;tag wiki history&quot;) that have been established because of similar [confusion](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/172734/copying-profanities-and-obscene-words-on-meta/172747#comment513141_172747 &quot;discussed here&quot;) caused by having differing &quot;authoritative&quot; posts on the subject." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27148" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7395" RevisionGUID="62aaad57-7d00-4cf4-974e-62fa6b4a1ff2" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**At first glance**, this actually does not appear to be a problem (keep reading!!); I used [this SEDE query](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/edit/319614) to see what custom close reasons we are using for this; only 24 of these 171 questions have a comment that includes the characters `implementation`, `debug`, or `verflow`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**However, this is not a complete picture of the story.** Sometimes other things happen to these questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. These questions get deleted. This happens often, and therefore cannot be analyzed using SEDE.&#xD;&#xA; 2. These questions are migrated to Stack Overflow, even when they are of low quality. This also happens often. Robert Harvey can probably speak to this better than I can. &#xD;&#xA;   - A famous Jeff Atwood quote comes to mind: [Don't migrate crap!!](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/82941/please-dont-migrate-low-quality-questions-to-other-sites) Without this custom close reason, we will migrate crap far more often than we ought to.&#xD;&#xA; 3. People use less accurate close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;   - Of course, this is fine from the principle of crap getting closed, but...&#xD;&#xA;   - It's not fine from the principle of &quot;educating users exactly why things are happening&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**We need this custom close reason.** These questions are already getting closed and deleted by the community **anyway**; having an extra close reason isn't going to change that. What it will do is organize these questions more appropriately, and **educate future users on how and where to ask questions**." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27150" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7474" RevisionGUID="516ab655-b189-4499-91cc-7364b931c317" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Call me dumb if you wish but I really [don't understand](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489) what is written in the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the meaning of manage c++? -- Just want to ask what is the meaning of manage c++?. Follow up question, how does it differ from c++?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for comments referring to some place elsewhere which could help one understand the question, I think the problem with this approach has been best covered in a discussion at sister meta, [Should a question that is meaningless without viewing an external link be closed?](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/266910/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt;  Unclear what you are asking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;would seem to be the most appropriate close reason here... questions (like answers) should really stand on their own merits and only have external links for references etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone understands what the question is about, they would better edit it into a shape allowing other readers to understand it too (if only to vote close for other reason, although [protecting from getting senseless guesses as answers](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/98026/165773 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;) wouldn't hurt either)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27151" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5819" RevisionGUID="235419e9-a6e1-446a-be32-66fe05aba0f7" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="My comment from a recent question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions of online store policies for clarification are best addressed by contacting the support for the online store. At best, we can guess, present our own interpretation, or share anecdotes - none of which are good answers in a Q&amp;A format. The only authoritative answer can come from the store itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key point in my comment is about the authoritative answer.  For this I point to an answer from [The halting problem - or - the fallacy of “real questions have answers”](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This has an (admittedly drastically shorted) summary of:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Real questions&quot; don't necessarily have practical answers, but they do have authoritative ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For every question about app stores that I have seen (not all that exist, but all that I have seen), no one here is able to provide an authoritative answer. They are asking for interpretations of sometimes fuzzy policies written by someone else (that are then interpreted again by that agency).  Any answer that we (people who don't work for the app store and are not reviewers of apps for that store) can be wrong even if it is &quot;right&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A year ago there was a question [Are App Store questions on topic on programmers?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3556/).  All the same points are still valid today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27152" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5845" RevisionGUID="ec3d504f-0397-4ece-91b0-024400dc4b2f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Short version: Does P.SE have similar new user limitations as SO does?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Buried in the MSO FAQ is this answer about [new user restrictions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/89241/194162).  And it states that new users are only allowed 6 questions in a 24 hour period at a maximum rate of one question every 20 minutes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I have noticed many new users ask 3 questions and then stop.  Is there a different limiter in place for P.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27153" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7502" RevisionGUID="97f48d10-6b90-40bd-874c-ec1ccf4ff232" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Post 7499][1] outlines the problems the questions cause. Despite this,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* they reflect a real and highly important need of the technical crowd, so they will never stop coming&#xD;&#xA;    * thus, unless we want to alienate users who have those needs and make them look for answers elsewhere, we must invent a way to address those needs, _somehow,_ in a manner consistent with SE's mission to disseminate knowledge, here or elsewhere&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This post outlines the possible remedies suggested.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* _Enforce the &quot;Good subjective&quot; principle:_ require an asker to specify what exact problem they need to solve with the information from a book (get an overview, compare, learn how to complete a specific task(s)), and an answerer to specify how exactly that book will address those needs.&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes 1)&#xD;&#xA;    * partially fixes 2): a degree of uncleanness remains in any case&#xD;&#xA;* _Maintain topic overview articles_ (a wiki page/canonical answer) containing book references, among other things&#xD;&#xA;    * intended to fix 3) but a solution to make it &quot;endorsed by the system&quot; and visible to potential askers is most unclear.&#xD;&#xA;    * is part or a larger problem of users getting little to no rep for updating existing info. This matter warrants a separate discussion&#xD;&#xA;    * canonical answers are [used successfully at Server Fault][2]. &#xD;&#xA;        * [some do recommend books][3]&#xD;&#xA;        * in their case, it helps that enterprise sysadmins deal with a rather limited set of topics&#xD;&#xA;* _Find another &quot;sewer drain&quot; to offload those questions into,_ like general questions were once drained here from StackOverflow&#xD;&#xA;    * Fixes everything here; the &quot;drain&quot; will have to deal with all this instead&#xD;&#xA;        * We'll still have an inflow of users asking this here (and getting answers!) regardless of the fact the questions get closed ([heck, even SO users think these are appropriate _per se!_][4])&#xD;&#xA;    * https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57383/the-fourth-place-polling-recommendations-and-subjective-ish-stuff discusses this matter. The conclusion is that the current SE model isn't good for this format&#xD;&#xA;    * The primary candidate is [Software Recommendations Stack Exchange][5] that is currently in beta. Book recommendations aren't any different from software recommendations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that nothing will fix 4) as long as the current &quot;an answer solves the problem by itself&quot; paradigm stays unshaken. Experience from the communities like Travel.SE that somehow managed to cope with matters that are by their nature incomplete and subjective, may help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7499/108337&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.serverfault.com/questions/1986/what-are-the-canonical-answers-weve-discovered-over-the-years&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://serverfault.com/questions/476918/what-data-center-room-routine-maintenance-tasks-should-be-done&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31438006/how-do-i-start-migration-to-hadoop&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27154" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5850" RevisionGUID="c8a310d8-60bb-4464-8eac-f6c3632e175b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have noticed a lot of questions being flagged as duplicates lately when I didn't feel that they were duplicates of the question that the people closing them said they were duplicates of. In some cases they didn't seem close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that the definition of &quot;duplicate&quot; should be very close to an exact duplicate of the question, in intent if not in wording. If the question is otherwise ambiguous or of low quality we shouldn't be closing it as a duplicate, we should be trying to clarify it or closing it for an appropriate reason. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reading the [guidance from MSO][1] that @gnat mentioned, I see this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  the answers to the original question must solve the dupe’s problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case I could see no answers to the question that came close to solving the duplicate's problem and clearly neither could the person asking it. There was some good information that was pertinent to their decision making, but nothing there which was an answer to *this question*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27155" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7537" RevisionGUID="a4971d02-2e4d-4cd5-9cf4-7993e2afb27e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A common form of question that is often asked is the &quot;what are some examples of...&quot;  While this is [hinted at in the help center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure that your question is not [too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/), or [strongly rooted in opinions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491). We should be able to answer your questions in the equivalent of a few pages of text and graphics and provide references to support claims. If you have questions that warrant an extended discussion, feel free to come to chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;explained in those links, and written about in meta site for all of Stack Exchange in the [list-questions tag](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/list-questions/info), these questions show up often enough that it merits asking again here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why do these list questions get closed and down voted on Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27156" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5933" RevisionGUID="baaea339-5d14-467a-9ed9-ff4f1b8db2bd" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="taken for the review audit FAQ on [MSO][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt;What happens if I fail?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;For most, [nothing][2]. You'll be given some guidance on why the post was inappropriate and what you could have done instead, and then allowed to continue reviewing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Repeated failures, especially in short succession can lead to your review privileges being suspended for a week or longer, depending on the frequency of the failures. Stack Exchange is continuing to analyze the data to determine the best action to take in these cases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Review audits aren't perfect though and its somewhat common that a poor question is chosen, but that shouldn't matter for users actually interested in reviewing questions, the audits are designed to help prevent robo-reviewing if you take your time and review normally its unlikely you will fail enough audits in a short enough period to matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/157121/what-are-review-tests-audits-and-how-do-they-work&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156938/stop-look-and-listen-audit-tricked-me/156942#comment452398_156942" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27158" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5953" RevisionGUID="46bea950-973a-4798-8794-0a59d3c022cd" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question][1] is posed in terms of ASP.NET, but (in my opinion) is really about collecting payment. (See [xy problem][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are questions about collecting payment for freelance work on topic? The FAQ lists &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; as on-topic, but I would think questions about writing a contract that includes payment collection would be better directed to a lawyer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/199785/clever-way-to-license-obfuscate-web-applications-until-the-client-has-paid-for-i&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/66378/192138" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27159" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7575" RevisionGUID="ff858589-1e25-45e8-a2e2-2bc92c091457" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We have a lot of bad questions to clean up, and not very many delete votes to do it with. So it's commonplace to downvote questions worthy of deletion to make the &quot;roomba&quot; delete them for us rather than wasting precious delete votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only problem with this is [the roomba is kinda complicated](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/5222/279182), and that answer is written from the roomba's POV rather than the delete voter's POV, so it's not immediately obvious under what circumstances I should use downvotes and/or close votes instead of delete votes. After studying that MSE answer for a while, I believe the most useful algorithm for me to try to remember is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    if question is locked, migrated, has reopen votes, or is not worthy of deletion&#xD;&#xA;    	ignore these questions for the purpose of this algorithm&#xD;&#xA;    else if there is an accepted answer&#xD;&#xA;    	delete vote&#xD;&#xA;    else &#xD;&#xA;        close vote (not as duplicate) if not already closed&#xD;&#xA;    	if question and all answers have non-positive scores&#xD;&#xA;        	roomba in 9 days&#xD;&#xA;        else if question and all answers have &quot;low&quot; score&#xD;&#xA;    	    downvote them until they have non-positive scores&#xD;&#xA;    	    roomba in 9 days&#xD;&#xA;    	else&#xD;&#xA;    	    delete vote&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have I missed or misunderstood anything?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27160" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5957" RevisionGUID="cb4229e2-0032-4fea-821d-8885c65b9198" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Unfortunately, there's no easy way. You might be interested in supporting these related feature requests on MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Is there any analytics information that moderators can access for individual questions?][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [Can we add moderator features to see keyword analytics and annotated traffic graphs for specific questions?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, if you do a [simple search for the question's title][3], you'll find out it's been shared on several sites. The more likely culprit for the question's sudden popularity seems to be this recent [Hacker News thread][4]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/77138/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/165593/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22How%20should%20I%20behave%20as%20a%20developer%20in%20a%20project%20that%27s%20headed%20for%20failure%22&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5785759" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27161" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5991" RevisionGUID="f65b6954-1684-4ccb-913e-4f26150b0691" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We have a [new lock type](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/182572/165773 &quot;announced here&quot;) that can be added to questions that are not strictly on topic or constructive but have, because they have been edited and expanded, become a valuable resource.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question that it's been applied to is this one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This lock is best applied to a question that has a single CW answer that covers all the points. At the moment that doesn't apply to this question, so if people could take one of the answers and edit it into the accepted answer then flag that, now redundant, answer for moderator deletion it will make the task of cleaning it up that much easier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there are any other questions you think this lock would apply too, flag those as well. It doesn't matter if the question is closed or not - we can sort that out. Starting the ball rolling by editing the best answer would be useful too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27162" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7582" RevisionGUID="914c0446-a59c-4dba-a45e-2f2b83e3c4b6" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I delete as soon as I can in cases where the question is unsalvageable. This might have something to do with having more delete votes than close votes ([delete votes scale with reputation](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/105876/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;)). I've got 30 delete votes a day - many days I don't use them all so I'm not delete vote constrained. So no, I'm not wasting delete votes unless there is something that I *want* to delete today that needs to be deleted *now* rather than later when I'm out of votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reasoning as to casting delete votes on many questions is thus:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions that are unsalvageable consume space on the front page (if scored at -3 or higher); new questions; and, if a user is editing it, active questions. &#xD;&#xA; * This space is valuable - it is where people look when they hit the site. &#xD;&#xA;* Having the question get less than 2k rep users trying to fix the 'i' to 'I' and the like for the 2 rep that it brings results in a poor user experience for them when the question is ultimately deleted (they lose it) - thus delete it *before* they spend their time on a question that will be deleted.&#xD;&#xA; * This also applies to the trivial edits that don't fix the question and keep showing up in reopen reviews. Not that we're ever backed up on those, but its a &quot;*sigh*, no, this isn't enough to reopen it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA; * It is likely a worse user experience to go from 1 rep to 6 to 4 to 9 to 7 to 5 to 3 to 1 (as down votes and up votes mix and eventually get collected by the Roomba) than it is to remain at 1 and have it quickly deleted.&#xD;&#xA;* We get our share of &quot;why is &lt;s&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/s&gt; Programmers.SE so negative&quot; questions. And while it is indeed sweeping the questions of the users who misunderstand the site under the rug (so to speak), it helps present our best foot forward - look at the new questions, look at the active questions, look at the front page - that is what we want.  Or at least, I want to be able to say that.&#xD;&#xA;  *  I write this, there's a -6 debugging question, a -6 user poll, a -4 how to use windows XP, a -4 why did facebook do that, a -5 something about IIS, a -4 debugging question (with accepted answer - that will never get deleted by the Roomba), -3 how to explain a broad concept to a stranger, a -5 shark vs gorilla, a -7 unclear something about scripting languages being accepted (no, wait, two delete votes that weren't mine - that one is gone).&#xD;&#xA; * I want to see *more* things from our second page that are good in the newest questions. Once they get off the front page and newest questions first 25, it becomes harder for them to get visibility. Visibility that they lost because someone asked &quot;What well paid programming jobs can be gained for maths majors&quot; or &quot;Unexpected IndexOutOfBoundsException&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;* People that get answers to their polls, discussions or debugging will try it again because they got help once before. Even if its in the comments on a -3 score question. Deleting the post through user action (rather than automated script several days later) sends a stronger message about what Stack Exchange's focus is. Deleting the question *before* it gets the answers doesn't reward the person for asking an off topic question in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;* There is also the &quot;support our mods.&quot;  They get the occasional flack about &quot;deleted by mod fiat! Those evil diamond mods delete everything!&quot; By having a &quot;Deleted by MichaelT, Thomas Owens&quot; in there, I try to do my part of &quot;no, the community moderation was acting on it - it wasn't just mods with super powers.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27163" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6095" RevisionGUID="e525bb9c-2ad1-4f9b-926a-16798951138a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This might be a self-balancing process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When there are little-to-none items in the queue, there is a little interest among most of the users eligible for reviewing. And this is unlikely to change; if one checks the queue occasionally and there's always only 0, 1, 2 items in there, there is little motivation not just to work there but even to frequently check it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When queue is small, one can expect only small, _dedicated_ group of users doing reviews regularly. From this perspective, **perception of most closures done by that small group** is unavoidable I'm afraid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, when queue grows in size, it begins attracting attention from more reviewers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One day, typical infrequent visitor decides to take a look at [review page](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review) - _just to check there's 0 as usual_, finds 10 (20, 30...) items in the queue and, well, reviews these. Next day, same guy will quite likely get there again, now knowing there might be a queue waiting for them, finds that it's so indeed, reviews and... voila, _infrequent visitor has turned into regular reviewer_ (possibly until queue drops back small).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note above dynamics might in turn change if queue would grow to daunting size, but that would be a [different story](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/151833/165773 &quot;'Huge close votes review queue on Stack Overflow' (btw I discovered a truly amazing explanation for why it keeps that way, but it's too large to fit into tooltip)&quot;).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Balancing described above is mostly based on my own experience of working with [SO Late Answers queue](http://stackoverflow.com/review/late-answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In December 2012, there were few thousands items in this queue and I was visiting it daily, submitting 50 flags a day (review limit was 40 if memory serves, but I flagged some posts out of the queue, using Skip option to avoid bumping into the limit).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In January 2013, this queue drained to zero and my usage of it has dropped, too. Nowadays, I take a look at it once in a week or maybe even once in a month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it ever gets back to larger size, I will be happy to get back to working on it again (after all, I still have some 300+ reviews to do to get Steward badge there:). I think that's about how it is supposed to be balanced." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27164" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7595" RevisionGUID="26c58b10-b867-48ee-afdf-3e441e8351ca" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="TL;DR: We vote on everything.  90% of everything is crap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Programmers, we are rather sensitive to poor migrations. Every day we get dozens of people suggesting reposting off topic, too broad, unclear, and opinion questions on Programmers.SE (see [Duga's Playground](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/20298/2015/9/8) and the historic [Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl)). I will not tell someone to repost a question that will get closed on another site to post on the other site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anecdotally, most people just repost the question even if you tell them that it needs to be fixed before it could be appropriate on another site.  If one says &quot;this should be posted on Stack Overflow, after remove the call for library refrences and add an mcve&quot; two minutes later it gets reposted without removing the request for library references or providing a mcve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many times, you will also see no attempt to migrate when the post is posted to multiple sites. Migrating at that point creates more work for Stack Overflow mods who would then need to close-duplicate the question and then merge it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When we *do* want to migrate the question, mentioning Stack Overflow (as mentioned) will often mean the person will repost the question on Stack Overflow... and then the votes to migrate go through. More work for everyone around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you find something that you believe should be on Stack Overflow, flag it for migration.** If you believe it needs to get moved sooner than later, jump into chat and ask for some help / attention on the question. There's often a moderator (who can do fancy diamond things if the question is already closed) and often three or four other users who can cast votes to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We get a fair amount of people who hit one quality filter on Stack Overflow or another and then repost here.  Questions that have 'question', 'help', and the like in the title can't be posted on Stack Overflow. They appear to not be restricted here. So many times someone will try posting a (low quality) question on Stack Overflow, fail, and then try here and succeed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also an aspect of how many votes people have to cast what. There are many days where I have run out of close votes. At this point, the only way to express my &quot;this needs to be closed&quot; (without custom flagging everything begging the mods to do it) is to down vote it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, you are seeing September in force. This leads to a fair amount of completely off topic questions being asked on Programmers.SE - people who need to learn how to debug. The answer to such is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Step through with a debugger. Put printf statements everywhere. [Learn how to debug](http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html#id2790282). Putting the printf statement you have every other line would give you a better idea of what is going on. –  MichaelT 9 hours ago   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggesting these to go to Stack Overflow or migrating them would do a disservice to the person asking the question and Stack Overflow. The Stack Exchange layout is not well designed for pedagogy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a lower rate of question asking on Programmers.SE. We get as many questions per day as Stack Overflow gets on some of its medium volume tags. This means that everyone can vote each day on (nearly) every post. And we do. Good posts get up votes. Poor ones get down votes. Its often easier to agree on the poor ones that are deserving of down votes.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look at [Users by votes on P.SE](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Voters&amp;filter=all) and compare it to [Users by votes on SO](http://stackoverflow.com/users?tab=Voters&amp;filter=all).  Our top voter has cast more votes here than the top voter on Stack Overflow, despite the site being a small fraction of the size. We have one of the higher [votes per views](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SRLlM.png) (from [Why are votes per post on the decrease (what can we do to improve this)?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/216297/213963))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way to say &quot;no, Programmers.SE should not exist&quot; is simple.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have Stack Overflow accept that the questions that they want to send here should remain (and remain open) on Stack Overflow instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Provide the quality of answers that we provide here to the questions asked on Stack Overflow - both new and old.  This involves active curation of the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make it easy to find the questions that don't require code and an mcve in some way other than using a meta tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Until these things are done, Programmers.SE has a distinct place within the scope of Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would also encourage you to read [How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/167516/213963) which has a bit of history for both Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE.  That people are still misunderstanding the site and believing it to be &quot;the site for everything that lacks code&quot; or &quot;NotProgrammingRelated&quot; of old on Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27165" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6112" RevisionGUID="048c7727-a2d2-4834-9430-a4dcd28be44f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I saw a delete vote on a rather highly voted question [Is it OK to split long functions and methods into smaller ones even though they won't be called by anything else?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/195989/is-it-ok-to-split-long-functions-and-methods-into-smaller-ones-even-though-they).  And yes, I do have the top answer there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This delete vote confuses me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of the reason the question recently regained my attention is that I got an announcer badge from it (and I don't announce things).  It turns out that it is linked from an external resource - [ars technica - Ask Stack: Is it OK to split into small functions, even if they’re called once?](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/ask-stack-is-it-ok-to-split-into-small-functions-even-if-theyre-called-once/).  I believe it would be a bad thing for such questions to get deleted as they are used as examples of Programmers.SE.  (The list of ars technica posts that have an author of 'stack-exchange' can be seen at http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/ )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Building on this, questions that are used by major news sources bring eyeballs to the site which is a key part of the SE business strategy.  Like the questions or not, deleting these questions would be counter productive to the people that keep the lights on at the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, it has been fairly long and established policy that questions that are dupes to other questions shouldn't be deleted.  The associated MSO discussion - [Do not delete duplicates!](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/32311/do-not-delete-duplicates)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I am missing something in the best practices for 10k tools, I would appreciate being informed what it is that I'm missing so I too can cast a delete vote on the question with a clear conscious and understanding of how .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, on the other hand, someone else is missing some part of understanding of what to delete and not to delete, until the question is deleted (and given its high vote question and answers takes quite a few more votes), I would have difficulty knowing who to articulate my comments to (to the best of my knowledge, delete votes are private until they are acted upon), and thus am broadcasting them here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Tangential question*: If Stack Exchange wishes to keep these featured questions from news and blog around (and make note of them?) - should there be a 'major news source/blog' lock to prevent closed questions that have been featured in a way that SE wants to maintain from being accidentally deleted (either by an errant migration and close or misinformed mod or an over zealous 10ker?) " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27166" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6127" RevisionGUID="8545ebc0-73d8-47dc-b629-1bd568b39b35" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="When a closed question is edited by the asker (as opposed to someone else just fixing it up), it is automatically entered into the 'reopen review queue'.  No flagging is necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is edited by someone else, it will need to be either flagged (a mod will review the flag), a reopen vote cast by yourself (for those who have 3k rep), or a reopen vote cast by someone else (consider going into chat to ask if anyone can start the ball rolling).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The details of these mechanics are in the MSO answer to [Can we have the ability to flag for reopening?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/186722/can-we-have-the-ability-to-flag-for-reopening/186728#186728)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  **Adding items to the queue in response to 3rd-party edits.** Currently, this is done when [the author edits][1], but not if [someone else does the same][2]. It would be possible to change that - although there are [some pitfalls][3] we'd have to avoid. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/157584/should-questions-be-added-to-the-reopen-queue-as-soon-as-theyre-edited-by-the-o&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/157584/should-questions-be-added-to-the-reopen-queue-as-soon-as-theyre-edited-by-the-o&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/183233/give-2k-users-a-dont-put-this-in-the-reopen-queue-checkbox?lq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27168" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6140" RevisionGUID="bf73bd17-166b-4dc9-85c7-e81acaea5930" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&quot;These articles are in opposition.&quot; + &quot;prove Jeff Atwood&quot; suggest that OP already knows the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Atwood trashed Norvig. If you know the answer, why ask? That means, _unclear what you're asking_, which was my close vote (&quot;opinion-based&quot; [shown to readers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/209295/revisions) is pure fake [indiscriminately attributed to me](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10922461#10922461) due to... shall we say, not too smart user interface - a bit more on that below...).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a &quot;clean room&quot; case, I would shrug, edit this unfortunate phrase into something like &quot;These articles appear at odds with each other, how can I find a way out?&quot; and walk away knowing that _unclear_ doesn't apply anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, at the moment question has been [&quot;locked&quot; from such an edit](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;how's that?&quot;) by already submitted [FGITW](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/fastest-gun/info &quot;what's this&quot;) answer: &quot;You're missing the point...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides above, there are a few issues _induced_ by the phrase &quot;Is there a [friggin'](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2905/31260 &quot;Sprinkling &quot;Science&quot; on top of something does not automatically render it correct&quot;) scientific evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► Is-there part of the phrase shifts it into Yes/No territory with [all its known issues](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/183177/165773 &quot;discussed eg here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is not just a 'get an answer for me' place, it's &quot;Produce quality content that is useful for people who follow&quot;. In the case of your question, the second part is lacking...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;When asking a yes/no question there are one of two possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. You really want a yes/no answer. If this is the case, and you don't need anything else to answer your question then it means the answers will be inherently low quality. An answer that only says &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; (in addition to not meeting the minimum length) would be of very low quality. SO answers expect more.&#xD;&#xA;2. You don't actually want a yes/no answer, in which case your real question is not actually a yes/no question, and you're hoping that people will determine what your real question is. For example, someone might ask, &quot;Can I do [...]?&quot; when what they really meant to ask was, &quot;How can I do [...]?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Almost all yes/no questions I've seen fall into case 2; they should be edited into a question that isn't really asking for just a yes/no, it should be asking to explain something. (Even if it has a yes/no in there somewhere.) Note that just adding &quot;Explain&quot; at the end isn't really a good way to go about this; you should refactor the question on a more fundamental level...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► The part &quot;evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach&quot; sucks, well, because it blatantly misses the opposite: &quot;evidence to prove the Peter Norvig approach&quot;. This is yet another indication of question quality issues (happily ignored by reopeners).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the very least, I would rephrase to symmetric wording &quot;evidence to prove one of these approaches above another&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► Issues with &quot;scientific&quot; part are addressed in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I for one like the way these are presented in [this comment](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question#comment7317_2903 &quot;just discovered it's written by one of my favorite MSO authors&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Slapping a request for scientific literature onto the question... doesn't really make this question any better. It still is enormously vague and unanswerable, there is no objective scientific measure..., it remains a question that should be nuked on sight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above does not fully apply to this particular case because there is an answerable question obscured by scientificevidence garbage there, but it rather makes a point that it would be better to wipe out that scevidence crap outta there at all (if such an edit wouldn't invalidate existing answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last but not the least, even with all imaginary editing cleanup, the question would still remain average.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, resolving false contradictions can be fun, I sometimes enjoy [doing this myself](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/193864/advice-on-rehabilitating-an-unpopular-meta-question-or-not#comment608984_193864 &quot;example&quot;) but it's often way too simple. And this case looks simple to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mysticial [would probably say](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/1262201#1262201), it's not _really advanced question_. Meh.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note, regarding question closure notice, I would rather prefer it to be shown rephrased to something that doesn't put words in my mouth. There is a bunch of [feature requests](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/194593/165773 &quot;listed eg here&quot;) for something like that at MSO, but SE team doesn't give a shit.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27169" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7610" RevisionGUID="de25ef4d-075d-4f95-8e46-0431bed504ca" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Related: [Create a New Stack Overflow Instance for Beginner Users and Content](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/253646/839601) (MSO).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are getting many off-topic / implementation and coding kind questions where askers appear to be aware of Stack Overflow (at [10m questions](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/10m-questions-milestone/info) over there, who isn't) but for various reasons seem to suspect that their questions won't be well received there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This problem seems to be relatively new. In the past, Stack Overflow was lenient about question quality and askers didn't tend to bother worrying if their quality is okay. Things seem to have changed after [SE Quality Project](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/se-quality-project/info) features were rolled out at Stack Overflow and some of those who would previously ask over there, started looking to try their luck elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, they usually don't mention using Programmers as a proxy for Stack Overflow (they maybe think it's not important) but sometimes, [it leaks through](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/297569/easy-create-junit-test-for-class-on-eclipse#comment617336_297569 &quot;example - 10K link&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want ask for StackOverflow but i cant becouse my one post have -3...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do something to prevent... _lifehacks_ like above from becoming popular?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Some folks (probably with [Math.SE background](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi?noredirect=1#comment22868_7610 &quot;as explained in comments&quot;)) even invent funny theories for why they [avoid Stack Overflow](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/293373/how-to-run-c-file-if-header-class-and-main-are-not-in-the-same-folder#comment607486_293373 &quot;example - 10K link&quot;): _'my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here_'  (I think these theories became popular after Stack Overflow started burying very low quality questions in Triage, which cut their chances to get answers, even as hints in comments.)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow is much larger than us, they get about 8K questions a day average. Even amount of questions they close (800 a day) is 20 times more than total questions we get (less than 50).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Site like ours can be totally flooded by &quot;Stack Overflow learning and training&quot; kind attempts if this becomes widespread. I would not want this to happen. I come here to learn and contribute to Programmers topics, not to guide those who are scared or blocked by Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27170" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6171" RevisionGUID="ffedb8f8-2e3d-45a6-b7a1-67c21081bfb7" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think that strong point of your _question draft_ is description of the situation: it looks clear, detailed and easy to understand. This lays a solid ground for a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you're done with it though, there is a sharp drop in question quality, and the rest essentially spoils the fun:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So, in terms of making it easier for myself what do you think should I do: - try to convenience them to start from scratch? - get on with the current design and try to achieve what they want?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Have you got any experience with similar cases? What should I do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, the only valuable elements in above quote are &quot;try to convince them to start from scratch&quot; and &quot;get on with the current design&quot;. Anything besides that can be stuffed into any imaginary question and would add no value to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Think of it, &quot;in terms of making it easier for myself&quot; - no one would be interested in making it harder to themselves. Or, &quot;what do you think&quot; - any asker is sure interested in this. Stuff like that is basic, it is implied in any question at Programmers, stating it explicitly is just noise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the perspective of those who would answer your question it is useless - drop it, wipe it out, get rid of it - and this cleanup will help you find out what is missing in your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, how would it look if you filter out the noise? Something like,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Options I can think of are either _try to convince them to start from scratch_ or _get on with the current design_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above is fairly poor but at least: 1) you can see that it's poor yourself (which opens a door to thinking how to improve) and 2) as small as it is, it's 100% _substantial_ - there's nothing to throw away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay, how it can be improved? Improvements I suggested in [comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6168/would-my-question-be-on-topic-for-programmers#comment16661_6168) quickly posted after you asked here may sound like wisdom obtained through some magic glass, but it really isn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, key aspects of SE posts are **substance, presentation and effort** and I simply evaluate everything I read / write through these. Let's see how it will work at your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way you explained the situation tells that your _presentation_ is all-right (and I think you know it yourself).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Substance_ is there, too - what is left after we removed the noise, is substance, and it _is_ there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The feel that it's still poor indicates that it's _effort_ that is missing and if you take a closer look at cleaned up part, you'll see that effort you are expected to put into considering mentioned options just isn't there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What kind effort is expected? well whenever you deal with options, most basic effort to put is to list and evaluate pros and cons of these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Note, since we are at Stack Exchange, this is not something you could expect answerers to do for you: asking for _list_ part won't fly because [list questions](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info) aren't welcome, and as for _evaluation_ part, without knowing lots of your concrete details and context, doing this would be, as they say in one of [close reasons](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/close-reasons/info), &quot;too broad&quot;.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Adding this to your question would cover _effort_ part, the only thing left after that would be to, well, just state the very question, explain what would you want to learn / understand. What would it be - no one can tell you beforehand, since this should be based on your analysis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no magic glass nor magic aspects that would predict what would be outcome of your research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you're done with it though, there will be one _magic thing_ you could do prior to posting. Simply put your text into &quot;Ask question&quot; box and study [similar questions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/similar-questions) that get loaded to the right. This trick often works better than plain search and it can give you an insight on how to further improve your question or even, if you are lucky, reveal that there is already an answered question like yours.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27171" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7614" RevisionGUID="0e952abd-a7f8-44b0-b157-ae74af1ecb02" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Yes, this is a duplicate of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/ intended to re-ask the question more clearly and without the tangents of trying to explain it in the comments that have distracted from the core question.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For some reason, Programmers.SE is seeing an increase in the rate of new users asking pure code and debugging questions.  These questions are, and have always been, off topic on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qf04b.png&quot; /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The majority of the time, these questions are down voted quite severely, closed, and often deleted very promptly. This is quite simply, again, that these questions are off topic here and asking such a question suggests that the user didn't even *attempt* to read the tour or any of the help center before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For 10k users, poke at the [question close stats for the last 30 days](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last30days).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To those who don't have access to this, the second and third highest custom close reasons are the all too familiar:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be a [fix-my-code-dump request](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/258685/839601), an outright off-topic, totally ignoring what Programmers is **[about](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour)**: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or a variation on it. The top one is a custom 'unclear' which also often acts as a proxy for the &quot;I have no idea why you are asking this question here.&quot;  There is also a smattering of other close reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* We don't troubleshoot code here, sorry. No, we don't know where else you can ask.&#xD;&#xA;* We don't debug code here, sorry. No, we don't know where else you can ask. See also [How to Debug Small Programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/).&#xD;&#xA;* Voting to close as this is a debugging question, but I'm not sure it belongs on StackOverflow since this is a classic example of a bug that can be found simply through proper use of a debugger.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because we don't do fix-my-code requests here.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because Programmers is not a fix-my-code site.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's a &quot;fix my code&quot; request.&#xD;&#xA;* I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is asking us to debug the code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also a fair amount of &quot;I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is an implementation question, but not of sufficient quality to migrate to [so]&quot; and variations on *that* reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing is realizing that [no, we aren't going to migrate crap to Stack Overflow](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6878/31260 &quot;as was already complained about particular mistaken migration&quot;). Migrating an awful debugging question to Stack Overflow isn't going to do anyone any favors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this fairly consistent stream of completely off topic debugging questions is draining the community moderation on the site and discouraging to many people who are either active or casual users of the site. It is very discouraging to see &quot;1 new active question&quot; and then look to see it is another poor quality &quot;debug this for me&quot; question. It is also discouraging to for the casual user to look at new questions and see half of them down voted and/or closed. This can be seen in some of the [recent](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7606/40980) meta [questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7593/40980) (and many who are active and read meta know that there are quite a few more of this type of question that are older).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, there are a *lot* of questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what can we do to help reduce the rate of off topic 'fix this for me' questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some have suggested that changes to Stack Overflow's question visibility for low quality questions have caused people who are asking these low quality questions to try posting on other sites (ours in particular). How accurate is this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there things that Stack Exchange devs might be able to implement that would help new users recognize the scope of the site more rapidly (before they hit a question ban? or get discouraged with posting on Stack* (its just a bunch of jerks who close everything))?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can the existing community more promptly handle these questions? Do we need to try to hire Oded 7/24 to close these questions promptly&lt;/joke&gt;? Or is there a valid mandate for the diamond mods to close vote (and delete) the clear cut debugging things that show up in new questions more promptly than the community does?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for any Stack Exchange community managers - do ***you*** have any suggestions for us? How important is it that we provide a good user experience for these users? Could we get another close vote reason for 'fix my code is off topic here' so that it is something that is more official and less curt than the plethora of custom close vote reasons that we currently employ? And while we have anecdotal suggestions of this, is there any change to the &quot;questions asked and closed within 48 hours&quot; rate recently compared to historical trends?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27172" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6251" RevisionGUID="0eccbfcb-1d67-4535-bbc9-3c66e6ad694b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We only have so many canned, built in, close reasons.  There are so many other reasons to close something at times - giving a better message than trying to shoehorn the reason to close something into too broad or primarily opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Custom close messages have the significant advantage when it comes to trying to get a *good* answer in that they also leave a comment that (ideally) would help the person asking (or attempting to fix) the question understand what needs to be done *before* the question is closed and make it suitable (or delete it if its really off topic and would ultimately garner down votes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short and abrupt close messages may be off-putting to some and don't help as much when it comes to getting people to write good questions.  The tricks to writing good messages is a combination of having them at the ready and knowing the quick little 'magic links' that can be used to link to the right spot.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Close reasons use the comment markdown, which gives a bunch of additional magic links.  MSO details them in [balpha's answer](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/94000/213963), thought the short version most applicable to close reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [meta] =&gt; a link to meta.programmers.stackexchange&#xD;&#xA;* [help] =&gt; a link to the help section&#xD;&#xA;    * [help/on-topic] is a link to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;&#xD;&#xA;    * [help/dont-ask] is a link to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask and rendered as &quot;help center&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* [ask] =&gt; link to the &quot;How to Ask&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* [chat] =&gt; link to the chat page&#xD;&#xA;* [about] =&gt; link to about page http://programmers.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;* [edit] =&gt; link to edit the page itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Using these quick links will make it easier to fit more into a canned (or not) message without actually using more text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, its a better experience for all involved to *not* migrate questions that will get closed in some way *other* than a duplicate on the target site.  A fine line should be considered when suggesting to *repost* a question on another site without having it closed/deleted on the first one.  Be sure that the question is on topic at the target site.  If in doubt, don't suggest reposting but instead flag for a moderator to migrate the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have also found the following links to be helpful to reference when writing close messages (not everyone knows where they are).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* `[Stack Overflow question checklist](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/)` =&gt; [Stack Overflow question checklist](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist) - a compressive list of things to check before posting a question to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;* `[Let’s Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game)` =&gt; [Let’s Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game) - a Jeff Atwood blog post from Feb 2012 about the awkward nature of trying to name something&#xD;&#xA;* `[Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)` =&gt; [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) - a Jeff Atwood blog post from November 2010 about questions asking for a shopping list.&#xD;&#xA;* `[What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/)` =&gt; [What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/) - the question ban MSE reference.  Likely not that useful in a close reason (you'd need to be a mod on SO to check if a user is question banned prior to a migration - however, when a migration fails because of a question ban on the target site, this is a useful link to have so its included here).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've often found myself going to a meta question to pull up a pre-written close message and then copying and pasting that into the question.  Just go in, edit the question to grab the source and copy and paste it into the close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully, this will help people looking for the right wording for closing a question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27173" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6378" RevisionGUID="6261d50d-eaea-40e4-9ca2-a53a10d98276" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Programmers.SE has had a bit of history to it.  Much of it you can read about in the Meta here and on Meta.StackOverflow too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The short version (glossing over much) is that it started out with a very permissive &quot;what is allowed&quot;.  There were difficulties with this and a new direction was charted to something that is likely more in line with what exists now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Part of that readjustment of vision has been a more active moderation (*not* necessarily moderation by moderators, but rather the community that has formed since).  Part of this moderation is close votes, but part of it is also down votes - both are necessary as close votes don't always signal to the OP that the question is need in revision or fixing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For some reason, there are many people who ask questions that aren't good questions for the Q&amp;A format.  Polls, recommendations, fix my code because I'm question banned at StackOverflow, etc...  Without down votes, there is no way to signal to the person that they need to fix their questions.  Whats more, down votes contribute to the algorithm that feeds the automatic question ban and stops people from asking questions that doesn't generate good content for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest reading [Yannis's answer in How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?&#xD;&#xA;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/213963) which goes a bit of the history with the stats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another bit to read is [Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its not negativity, it is a firm commitment to keeping the quality of the site - the questions and answers you read and others come here to read - high.  It is through this commitment that the site continues to grow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27174" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7638" RevisionGUID="5e053eff-c88d-4d65-9174-6bc633156619" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is a network-wide change. See [this Meta.SE question](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/266696/can-we-raise-the-bar-for-reputation-for-late-answers-to-enter-the-review-queue) and [this answer to it](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/267080/572):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; # Queue growth&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Review queues lose effectiveness if posts aren't regularly (and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; accurately) cleared. A queue such as [close votes on Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Overflow](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that never seems to get to 0 fails to provide time-sensitive feedback&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that aids learning. So if we raise the bar for late answers which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; increases the number of tasks going into the queue, we risk making the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; queue less useful for people answering questions late.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; As I write, the Late Answer queue on Stack Overflow is empty. In the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; last 24 hours the number (non-audit) review tasks of each type added&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to the queues:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     Review Tasks Type           &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     ------------ ----------------- &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     2467         Triage            &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     2428         First Post        &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     2333         Close Votes       &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     1846         Suggested Edit    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      883         Low Quality Posts &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      619         Late Answer       &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      594         Helper            &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      141         Reopen Vote        These two factors suggest that there's room to add more tasks to the Late Answer queue. Assuming we&#xD;&#xA;&gt; raised the reputation limit to 100, we'd add about 300 tasks:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     Rep Bin Tasks &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     ------- ----- &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      10       417   &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      20       160   &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      30        85    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      40        76    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      50        44    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      60        41    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      70        37    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      80        21    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;      90        20    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     100        20   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You might expect the number of tasks associated with the 1 to 10&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reputation bin would equal the number of late answer tasks in the last&#xD;&#xA;&gt; day. The discrepancy stems from reputation earned since answers were&#xD;&#xA;&gt; added to the queue. But the takeaway is that raising the reputation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; limit to 100 would add half again as much work to the queue. That&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doesn't seem particularly onerous.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Not surprisingly, Stack Overflow would see the most added Late Answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reviews by far. Other large sites, such as Ubuntu, Server Fault, Super&#xD;&#xA;&gt; User and Mathematics, would get 10 or so extra reviews a day.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## Justifying 100 rather than 50 reputation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Discovering answers as comments certainly would suggest 50 as a good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; limit for this queue. But this queue is as much about granting&#xD;&#xA;&gt; exposure to potentially upvote-worthy answers as it is about finding&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problems. Especially on large sites, it's pretty easy for a good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer to a very old question to be lost in the noise. As a [strategy&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for new users](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/304135/1438) answering&#xD;&#xA;&gt; old questions that already have good, but not excellent, answers seems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; productive if not that few people will notice those answers. At 10&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reputation, a knowledgeable new user has one shot at earning upvotes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from excellent answers to aged questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## A potential complication&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The one concern I have is that answers are dequeued once the author&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has reached 100 reputation. If we raise the maximum reputation for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; going into the queue, we should also raise the minimum for coming out&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of it. Unfortunately, I don't have an easy way to gather numbers to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; set an appropriate level. One of the reasons I'm only looking back a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; day in the numbers I showed above is that it minimizes the effect of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gained reputation. It's possible, but messy to estimate reputation at&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the time a user answered a question. So while my instinct would be to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; raise the deque minimum to 200, but I can't really predict if that's&#xD;&#xA;&gt; appropriate or not.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; # Proposal&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Raising the bar to 100 would require changing two variables at once.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Since that would make it harder to evaluate each individual change,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd like to try raising the reputation for getting enqueued to the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Late Answer reviews to 50 and reconsider upping it to 100 at some&#xD;&#xA;&gt; point in the future." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27176" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6456" RevisionGUID="def3cf7e-482e-44c6-8d6c-140e35ac1c72" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is a balancing act that is being walked between the &quot;[everything is downvoted and closed](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q)&quot; and the &quot;you delete things too soon&quot;.  The stress between these two philosophies has also gotten a touch more stressed with an interpretation of an answer [elsemeta](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/219922/what-is-the-goal-of-hot-network-questions/220099#220099).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is quite possible that we've been overeager with deleting things quickly.  That said, it may have eventually have gotten [deleted on its own](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/173513/turbocharging-the-roomba-solutions-for-premature-deletion/177675#177675) without intervention (arguably though the faster delete tries to reduce the perception of lost rep if something was upvoted... a bit of thought does go into what to delete or not).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deletion of the question was not about breaking rules (or not) but rather an attempt at hastening the ultimate janitorial actions.  And sometimes we delete fast because we don't want to forget to delete it later (there isn't a &quot;delete queue&quot; like there is for close votes and once it falls from view it becomes more difficult for people to delete what (ultimately) (debatably) should be deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would ultimately be deleted somehow.  If its done a few days after the question was asked or a week, or a month... its (arguably) just a matter of time.  In its current state, it is unlikely to have been reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question itself is really unanswerable by anyone not part of the Dart Team.  It requires one to go and ask them and any of us are equally capable of doing that compared to what you can do (this 'ask them' [has been done before](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/210399/why-is-there-a-new-in-go/216582#216582) and *can* be done as a good question - you may consider flagging the question for reopening if you find the answer to then do a self answer of the question).  Note that the reception of how well the question and interesting the question to the community as a whole is as fickle as the community itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with the question is that it is asking other people to do work for you that you are just as capable as doing yourself.  This applies to questions where people ask them to (basically) search google or quote wikipedia for them too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also with the edit, you've edited in an answer [from the Dart team](https://groups.google.com/a/dartlang.org/forum/#!msg/misc/8Uchi3bW1YQ/LTKIrC4L564J) - though clarifications for the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do I understand correctly that..&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals but they use it.&#xD;&#xA;* This is not an indicator of quality, but just a bug. Becuase they written by a Dart team &#xD;&#xA;member but not by other person.&#xD;&#xA;* There is no &quot;why&quot; here because it is better to remain silent than to say unpleasant things.&#xD;&#xA;* Dart Team can forget to fix this if someone does not file a ticket.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;needs to be asked of the Dart team, not P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that this clarification didn't help the question.  In my reading of it, the third point combined with the main question reads like a rant about a style guide (or inconstant following of it).  To that, I've read a number of unpleasant comment threads in other questions that have a rant-like tone (again *my* reading of the question) that become wholesale delete the entire comments (and sometimes lock the question while the participants simmer down).  To this, quickly deleting the question quickly can help reduce the total amount of janitorial work that needs mod involvement (and thats where my vote came from)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27177" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7649" RevisionGUID="2d997a1b-3ba6-4179-9e7b-25f07dadd409" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Every day we get opinionated questions asked here.  People seem to think that this is the place to ask them.  New users point to the old open questions that have fallen through the cracks of time as reason that their question should be open too.  Old Stack Overflow users continue to suggest reposting discussions on &lt;s&gt;NotProgrammingRelated&lt;/s&gt; Programmers.SE.  Consider this exchange on [a Stack Overflow question](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32921809):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;s&gt;This is not an appropriate question here because it is opinion-based. You might get help at [Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/). — Ed Cottrell&lt;/s&gt; (deleted)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @EdCottrell programmers has the same rules about opinion-based questions as SO. Please take a look at the help centre there before sending people our way. cheers. –  MetaFight  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @MetaFight my apologies. I see lots of these kinds of questions over there and didn't realize they weren't acceptable. –  Ed Cottrell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have been [told in the past](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/220099/213963) that when our site is full of crappy questions, our site sucks.  Yes, the answers may be great - but the questions aren't.  As said, fixing that is a painful process. It also means that we need to change the perception of what Programmers.SE is about. This means closing questions that are too broad, or primary opinion, or career advice from days of old.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Popularity of old questions](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/) does not mean that it is something that should be enshrined in a museum for all time.  Well, that's what a historical lock is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I will also point out that the new users who cite historical locked questions apparently don't read the text)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE one of the highest ratio of locked questions to questions of major sites (note also that the great contentious cleanup of SF hasn't been completely resolved).  Digging into [data.SE](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/revision/371072/478325) (feel free to refine the query - comparing it to search here, I do see discrepancies, however it is consistently applied to other sites):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Site | Questions  | Locked&#xD;&#xA;    P.SE |     37,017 |  744 (2.01%)&#xD;&#xA;    SO   | 10,258,635 | 2702 (0.02%)&#xD;&#xA;    Math |    496,668 |  638 (0.13%)&#xD;&#xA;    SU   |    284,455 |  764 (0.26%)&#xD;&#xA;    SF   |    205,689 | 4265 (2.07%)&#xD;&#xA;    AU   |    202,900 | 1233 (0.60%)&#xD;&#xA;    TeX  |     97,119 |  180 (0.18%)&#xD;&#xA;    U&amp;L  |     74,315 |  220 (0.29%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are the *most* preservationist of the sites that are out there.  We even tried moving some of our popular questions to the blog (it didn't work out well).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that it is necessary to reopen those closed questions of old popularity so that someone can add another answer and continue the *discussion*, then go right ahead.  The site was down that road once before and we were told that this was something that wasn't sustainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the meantime, the community that is here has defined our scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is not Quora, or Reddit or any other site. We are a site to give practical answers to questions of software design and architecture. It says so right in our [tour](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tour):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ask about:  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software requirements  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software architecture and design  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ algorithms and data structures  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ development methodologies and processes  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software engineering management  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ quality assurance and testing  &#xD;&#xA;✔︎ software licensing  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't ask about...  &#xD;&#xA; general workplace issues, career advice, job hunting, salary, or compensation  &#xD;&#xA; implementation issues and coding tools  &#xD;&#xA; what you should learn next  &#xD;&#xA; what projects to do or books to read  &#xD;&#xA; where to find libraries, tools, resources, or other product/service recommendations  &#xD;&#xA; personal lifestyle or non-programming activities  &#xD;&#xA; questions that are primarily opinion-based  &#xD;&#xA; questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a Stack Exchange employee, reopening questions that are in direct conflict with what the site scope is about sends a confusing message to our users - both the ones asking questions and the ones closing them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, there are many wonderful blog posts in our old, off topic, too broad, and opinion answers. They may be worthwhile to try to preserve -  *as blog posts*. It would be helpful to have people who are good editors to help us migrate these posts to a different medium and make posting blog posts something that is easier to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Referring to the specific question of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75486/why-arent-young-programmers-interested-in-mainframes when I started the close vote process on it wasn't its popularity - it was the tag [tag:junior-programmer] that is littered with bad questions and itself being on the verge of a meta-tag. When looking through a tag, I tend to start at the oldest as those are the ones that have the most answers and the least fixable. This often means seeing some of the old popular ones before the newer less popular ones. However, the phrasing of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Closing questions with great content years after the fact simply because they became popular seems like an inherently spiteful and self destructive way to make a point. You can certainly control your own scope, but when groups of users go out explicitly to hunt down the most-popular questions specifically because they ***are*** popular doesn't make the site any better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is incorrect about my motives and needlessly antagonistic. It also suggests that you have a different vision of what types of questions should be asked on Programmers.SE.  If this is the case, then please state it clearly.  We've gone through this [in the past](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/350/40980) and there is even a [blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) that I am sure you are familiar with.  In it, it states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thus, **questions that are not answerable -- discussions, debates, opinions -- should be closed as subjective.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question asked in the post http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75486/why-arent-young-programmers-interested-in-mainframes falls exactly into that category:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why is this? What makes mainframes unattractive to young programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not answerable. It is subjective and requires extended discussion. It would be something to ask on a discussion board. The explicit question presented in the post is a poll of personal experiences. It is entirely composed of opinions and personal anecdotes. It is not within the scope of the site today. With its 26 answers, it speaks exactly to the first part of the blog post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Most forums and chat rooms have a scale problem. As in, they don't. The more people that join the discussion, the more noise each of those connections bring. So the forums get progressively noisier and noisier, and suddenly one day … [you stop learning](http://scobleizer.com/the-chat-roomforum-problem-an-apology-to-technosailor/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Because we believe so deeply in learning, we are willing to go to great lengths to suppress the discussion, debate, and opinions that -- while plenty entertaining -- cause most forums to inevitably break down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note: as of this writing, your blog entry has a broken link, the correct link is provided above&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These old, popular, and off topic / too broad / opinion polls are ones that new users often find when they first hit the site and seek to contribute.  This is unfortunate because they are often not adding anything that isn't there in the previous twenty some-odd questions, lack good writing skills, and are unfamiliar with the scope of the site.  All of this leads to a rather negative experience for new users (doubly so if they ask another question like it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Allowing these old questions to remain open is in direct conflict with providing new users to the site a good experience - answering a good question or asking a good question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27178" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7689" RevisionGUID="acf31a7b-6bb2-46b1-ac8b-1b043d007d7b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="No, that sort of question would not be on-topic here.  It _might_ be on-topic at StackOverflow, but you need to make sure that you come up with a [SSCCE (Short, Self Contained, Correct, Example)][meta] for your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[meta]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22754/sscce-how-to-provide-examples-for-programming-questions&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27179" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6463" RevisionGUID="e1890a92-ea0f-4d84-893a-0eaa95b0e1c8" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="While general approach to the tag has been thoroughly addressed in [another answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6459/31260 &quot;here&quot;), I would like to focus on a question used as an &quot;acceptable&quot; example in Help Center. As far as I can see, in its current shape it does more harm than good, by misleading the readers into couple of wrong beliefs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Please answer for your region/city/country only&quot;** - this part of the question makes readers believe that poll / [list](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info) questions are acceptable. The very presence of this part makes low quality answers look legitimate and acceptable:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Personally I wouldn't hire someone without a masters degree, unless they could document some relevant experience and had very good references. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* In some minor companies in my country (Brazil) you can get a job, but due to some laws you'll get difficulty to be promoted, because to work in some positions, the laws require some education degrees.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* I would hire that developer if he can show me the his abilities and prove that he is the one that my job needs through interview directly. Of course, it's difficult if his resume does not show any interested information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers quoted above are purely opinionated, brief &quot;polling entries&quot;, lacking an explanation and effort, making very wrong impressions on what kind posts are welcome at Programmers. Advertising posts like these through Help Center looks harmful and misleading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Can someone / Would someone even consider** part of the question shifts it into Yes/No territory with [all its known issues](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/183177/165773 &quot;discussed eg here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is not just a 'get an answer for me' place, it's &quot;Produce quality content that is useful for people who follow&quot;. In the case of your question, the second part is lacking...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;When asking a yes/no question there are one of two possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. You really want a yes/no answer. If this is the case, and you don't need anything else to answer your question then it means the answers will be inherently low quality. An answer that only says &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; (in addition to not meeting the minimum length) would be of very low quality. SO answers expect more.&#xD;&#xA;2. You don't actually want a yes/no answer, in which case your real question is not actually a yes/no question, and you're hoping that people will determine what your real question is. For example, someone might ask, &quot;Can I do [...]?&quot; when what they really meant to ask was, &quot;How can I do [...]?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Almost all yes/no questions I've seen fall into case 2; they should be edited into a question that isn't really asking for just a yes/no, it should be asking to explain something. (Even if it has a yes/no in there somewhere.) Note that just adding &quot;Explain&quot; at the end isn't really a good way to go about this; you should refactor the question on a more fundamental level..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27180" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6485" RevisionGUID="c7e617ac-2ba3-4565-bca5-e5fc5a850985" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="# Duplicate questions#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A duplicate question in and of itself [isn't a bad thing](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/ &quot;see 'Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication'&quot;).  Often it means that the people who have suggested it as such think that the answer to your question is already in the original question.  Questions are closed as duplicates because we want future readers to be able to go to one place to find the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Make sure you read *all* of the answers on the original question and consider the implications behind the answers too - not just the first reading.  An example of this can be seen on Stack Overflow when debugging questions trying to track down a `NullPointerException` in Java are linked to a question that explains about `NullPointerExceptions` rather than trying to resolve that particular instance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that something is closed as a duplicate incorrectly, edit your question to explain specifically how it differs from the other question and the answers in the duplicate question do not apply to your situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE FAQ) [How should duplicate questions be handled?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10841/how-should-duplicate-questions-be-handled)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Does the new guidance on duplicate questions suggest closing a question as duplicate, if the original answers the OP's question?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/217401/does-the-new-guidance-on-duplicate-questions-suggest-closing-a-question-as-dupli)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Someone flagged my question as already answered, but it's not](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/194476/someone-flagged-my-question-as-already-answered-but-its-not)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as a duplicate?](http://meta.softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/6485/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27181" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7717" RevisionGUID="5129e10a-94e1-4646-a835-fba2fb8d26e8" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="On the sidebar, this is what it looks like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related from MSE from awhile back: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/239002/213963&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please look at the other sites too, some of them have extremely pale backgrounds without borders that blend in too easily with our site's background.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Zg73z.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27182" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7746" RevisionGUID="0a826bf0-c802-409b-a0fc-f6536ca2ff96" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Since this applies to all StackExchange sites, it's covered on Meta StackExchange in [this FAQ Q&amp;A](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th). This is the part that answers your question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Before you do anything else, fix your existing posts!** As noted above,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; down-votes cast by the rest of the community factor into the ban - so&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the single best thing you can do to get it lifted is to address any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; objections raised by others. Were your past questions unclear? Did&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they fail to show any effort on your part? Poorly worded, titled,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; formatted, and overly long or short? **Then fix them!**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note the emphasis on fixing. **Do not delete your posts.** As explained&#xD;&#xA;&gt; above, deleted questions (if less than 30 days old when deleted) do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; still count towards the question ban. Deleting your posts does not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; help to lift the ban. Only fixing does! Under some conditions you can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; see a list of your own deleted questions and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are banned from asking questions, then writing a few quality&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers that get upvoted might enable you to ask questions again. But&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as the internals of the filter are secret, there is no way to know for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; sure." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27183" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7766" RevisionGUID="8dc439d2-1097-4066-ad30-51dae979e076" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The comment in your example is not quite typical. It is copied from [Workplace meta](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2696/168). They get this particular kind of troublesome questions much more often than Programmers, that's why they invested extra effort into writing detailed description of what's specifically wrong with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the nice tone of this comment, this is, again, kind of a brand mark of Workplace. Moderators and active regulars over there are fond of expressing the critique in very polite way and as far as I can tell, they do it really well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can bookmark and refer appropriate sections (answers) in [their meta post](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2693/168) when you see workplace-y questions that don't look OK, although as I already mentioned Programmers get these quite infrequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more typical issues in the questions, I refer respective posts at our meta, conveniently listed in FAQ: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One thing I'd want to warn against is referring that _whole FAQ_ instead of meta posts specifically targeted to address concrete issues in the post you comment on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, I haven't seen our regulars (mis)using FAQ like that but I believe it's important enough to explicitly warn against this. Askers are unlikely to pay attention to your meta references unless they can easily see how it directly applies to specific issues with their question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for technical means to make it easier, as pointed in comments, StackApps have special &quot;pro-forma&quot; script for that ([discussed in details at MSE](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/136609/165773)). Note that if you switch browsers or machine you'd lose data for this script, so you may prefer to simply keep comments in some file and copy from there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27184" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6487" RevisionGUID="547931f5-03de-40f5-9135-04ea7c7aa108" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Off Topic#&#xD;&#xA;###Recommend tools, libraries, programming languages, resources (including books, blogs, tutorials, and examples), or projects to undertake###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **find or recommend tools, libraries, programming languages, resources (including books, blogs, tutorials, and examples), or projects to undertake** are off-topic here as they attract opinionated answers that won't have lasting value to others. You may be able to get help in [The Whiteboard][1], our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not designed to be a book, library, or link review site.  It just doesn't work well that way.  Asking for libraries and tools often attracts spam answers where the person answering it just drops a link to some library in an answer, without explaining anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try libXYZ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like &quot;What is the best book to learn Java from&quot; are incredibly broad, polling questions that have no right answer, only opinions.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of books on Java.  Often times these books become outdated as fast as the technology does. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### We do book review and suggestions poorly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the classic recommendation questions is that of a book.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do book reviews very poorly. All the answers that one gets are opinions and this is fundamentally a poll of opinions. This is to say nothing of that the technology behind them changes too.  There are indeed timeless books (and [many have written on the subject](https://www.google.com/search?q=timeless+computer+books)), though their value is a [matter of debate](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2uBpc.jpg). &lt;!-- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14298/is-analysis-patterns-reusable-object-models-still-a-good-book-to-use-for-its --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Between the polling nature of the question, the opinions people have on certain books, the constantly changing target, and the site's history of producing poor quality answers to these questions (and not moderating them), asking for a book suggestion is very likely to get closed and down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Asking for a link to something or statistics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason.  Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Links to things suffer from link rot.  Statistics become out of date over time.  Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example of this is someone asking in 2012 &quot;What is the market share of Android vs iPhone?&quot;  This information would be out of date in a few months as new numbers come out and someone else would ask in 2013 &quot;The question [link] asks about the stats, but they are all for 2012.  What is the market share for android vs iPhone in 2013?&quot;  And again, this information would be out of date and prompt another question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for information about statistics, or more generally, asking us to search for some data for you is off topic because of these problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* No actual problem to solve&#xD;&#xA;* Not drawing from expert knowledge of the community&#xD;&#xA;* Will suffer from link rot or become out of date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Link Rot&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, external resources may move or be deleted for a variety of reasons. Perhaps a particular site reorganizes its links without setting up redirects. Perhaps an organization goes out of business or discontinues product X or library Y.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition to the reasons stated above, external resources tend to be _transient_. Whatever tool, library, or other resource who requested might not exist in five years or be otherwise readily available. This has the effect of making an answer utterly useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one asks for a library to perform function X, and the answer links to web site Y, and either function X or web site Y cease to exist as defined in the answer, that answer is now useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one more reason why questions like this tend to be of low value and are off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is there a place where I can ask such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for software recommendations is on topic at [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  However, if you decide to repost the question on that site, the required information for posting a question has a *much* higher threshold.  From the [ground rules](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/455/how-to-ask-and-answer-software-recommendation-questions-aka-the-ground-rules) and [What is required for a question to contain “enough information”](https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/336/what-is-required-for-a-question-to-contain-enough-information), you will need to describe your specific need *in detail*.  If you are unsure how to frame such a question, please ask in the [SoftwareRec chatroom](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/12851/software-recommendations) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO) [What exactly is a recommendation question?](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254393/what-exactly-is-a-recommendation-question)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3674/why-asking-for-books-recommendation-is-offtopic-and-be-closed-instead&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Should / Let's close old Recommendation questions?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136648/should-lets-close-old-recommendation-questions)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Why are “shopping list” questions bad?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158809/why-are-shopping-list-questions-bad)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2204/why-book-questions-tend-to-get-downvoted-and-closed&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient &#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Gorilla vs. Shark](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)&#xD;&#xA;* (SO Blog) [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Off Topic - Requests for Recommendations?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27185" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7771" RevisionGUID="756bf210-7faa-4a4d-a183-e891be043998" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As an example, here are some ideas of what can be considered:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* When there are many answers already, [let users compare draft of their post against prior answers](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2562/168). This would make it naturally harder to add yet another answer as their amount increases (note how this isn't limited to low rep users, as opposed to protection). This would also help responsible users ensure that their answer doesn't repeat what was stated already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Get rid of first day voting](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237661/165773). This would help taming careless upvotes from passers by armed with association bonus. &quot;Wanna vote? stick with us! (for at least a day or two)&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Introduce more scalable randomisation of hot questions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/247195/165773) by picking more than 100 &quot;candidate&quot; questions for hot list. This would ensure that audience attention is spread more evenly and help tame &quot;snowball effect&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Give elevated protection privileges to 30K users in questions with 3 or more answers](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/268729/165773) and [don't count reputation gained within checked question](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/242942/165773) to trigger automatic protection. This would make protection of hot and organically popular questions more usable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27186" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7791" RevisionGUID="dbf2ea98-93dd-4da7-bb35-9433eebd50be" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="When you consider a question on Stack Overflow for migration, the first thing you should ask yourself is *&quot;Is this a good question?&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Good questions:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are clear and understandable.&#xD;&#xA; - Have *a specific problem statement,* tailored to Programmers' scope.&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *lists of things.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *product or service recommendations.* &#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask questions that require *extended discussions or lengthy explanations.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask *&quot;which is better&quot;* or *&quot;is this a good idea&quot;* without explaining what &quot;good&quot; or &quot;better&quot; specifically means, in a way that isn't a tautology ([**&quot;best practice&quot;**](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937) is not any better than &quot;better.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, if it's Too Broad or Unclear What You Are Asking on Stack Overflow, then that is likely to be the case  on Programmers as well.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are still on-topic for Stack Overflow, even though they look like Programmers questions.  Questions about software algorithms, for example, are still on topic on Stack Overflow, and shouldn't be migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In summary, migration is only for high-quality questions that are on-topic on programmers, but specifically off-topic for Stack Overflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27187" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6489" RevisionGUID="9cd66932-b5f7-410f-9ee8-850f86be8705" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Unclear what you are asking#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are looking for, in the [context of Software Engineering SE](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This close reason can also be a bit unclear as to what the issue is.  Please be sure to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Give enough context that someone reading the question can understand it&#xD;&#xA;* Explain what you are looking for&#xD;&#xA;* Check to make sure you are not using jargon that is particular to one specific branch of computing (and if you are, either change the jargon or link to a site that explains it)&#xD;&#xA;* Check that there are no hidden assumption or &quot;leaps of thought&quot; in your question. They might be obvious to you, but they won't be to the wider community. It is often better to spell it all out explicitly, even if you think it is blindingly obvious.&#xD;&#xA;* Make sure you are on the proper site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last point is important too.  This close reason is often used as a proxy for &quot;we don't think that this question is a good question for Software Engineering SE (it might be on Stack Overflow), but would get closed there too.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explain your design.  Explain what you have done.  Explain where you are having difficulty.  Explain what you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;* [Unclear what help you need](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6404/31260) (see also [linked MSE post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/215806/165773))&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7513/how-to-ask-how-to-understand-some-code-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Unclear?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6489/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27188" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7799" RevisionGUID="6740ab86-fa90-47d9-9014-5a33d0babf91" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="##Were you really expecting a different result?&#xD;&#xA;  This is simple mathematics; you reduce the number of votes to close, and the number of questions that get closed is going to increase. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not what this is about anyway.  It's about whether or not the *right* questions are getting closed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do think that some salvageable questions get incorrectly closed, but I also think it's a relatively small percentage of closed questions.  I've worked with the community to get some of these questions reopened, and to relax their standards a bit.  I've prevailed in some cases.  But that's not the real problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The real problem is that most questions that get asked here suck.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to address some things you've stated in your post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If Jeff couldn't grok this site, I don't see why I would either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just not a defensible position.  Programmers is the easiest site on the entire network to understand.  What is it about?  Wait for it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###software design and development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it.  Simple, isn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The **only** exception to this categorical statement of topicality is *writing and troubleshooting code,* which we're very specific about because we don't want to be another Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our solution to scaling historically has been to encourage users to trust fellow programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*That's just not true.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A couple of years ago, Stack Overflow nearly collapsed under the weight of a hundred thousand monkeys bashing away at a hundred thousand typewriters.  Your response was to *put in an automated system* that blocks a significant percentage of all questions asked at Stack Overflow before the community ever sees them.  It further blocks those users who manage to get through those quality filters and persistently ask bad questions.  That's not trusting the community; it's trusting a machine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't need that at our scale.  All we've ever asked for here on Programmers is a way to close crap questions easier, so that we can get them off the front page faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leaving it up to the community at Stack Overflow, by and large, has produced a site scope which basically amounts to &quot;how do I fix my broken code?&quot;  A lot of these questions are far too specific to ever be useful to anyone else, though I am consistently surprised by Stack Overflow's ability to answer a programming question I have through the result of a Google Search, a quality I attribute to the sheer number of questions that have been asked and answered there.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because Programmers only attracts a tiny percentage of Stack Overflow's volume, I doubt that it will ever reach the same critical mass, which means that the quality of the questions we decide to keep here becomes far more important.  Stack Overflow can be content with housing millions of questions and having perhaps a hundred thousand of them receive a significant audience; Programmers doesn't have that same luxury, nor can it have the same tolerance for chaff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What kinds of questions are acceptable here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's easy: *good questions.*  Assuming they are on-topic; that is, they are about Software Design and Development (excluding specific coding questions), good questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are clear and understandable.&#xD;&#xA; - Have *a specific problem statement.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *lists of things.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask for *product or service recommendations.* &#xD;&#xA; - Don't require *extended discussions or lengthy explanations.*&#xD;&#xA; - Don't ask *&quot;which is better&quot;* without explaining what &quot;better&quot; specifically means to them, in a way that isn't a tautology ([**&quot;best practice&quot;**](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937) is not any better than &quot;better.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These should already look familiar to you; they are all the same metrics that will cause a question to get closed at Stack Overflow if they are not respected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Within a question, voting does a good job of surfacing quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only if the question asked is a good, on-topic one that follows the rules described above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There will always be people who misunderstand the nature of this site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody disagrees with this, but there are reasons why this happens more often than it should: old, highly-voted but off-topic questions that serve as bad examples, tags that don't belong here, an extremely vague site title, our checkered past.  And there is still a contingent of people who strongly believe that Programmers should be what it once was: a water cooler for programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing questions does not make them less tempting to copy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why *deletion,* not just closing, is required for those questions that do not adequately represent the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Be proud of your past...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This whole paragraph basically asks us to accept mounds of chaff on the off-chance that one of those ill-advised questions might produce a golden nugget.  The vast majority of them will falter, leaving us with inadequate shovels to clean up the resulting piles of shit.  Stack Overflow doesn't put up with this, nor should we.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; New users should not be treated as threats, but as potential contributors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, nobody disagrees with this.  We give people every opportunity to reform their unsuitable questions.  Most of them do not oblige, else they wouldn't have posted their question in its original form to begin with.  This is nothing new; you've dealt with it for years on Stack Overflow, but with bigger guns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###I'm sad that the experiment failed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not because it was not a success (I believe it was), but because our goals seem to differ.  Your goal seems to be to save the rare ugly ducklings that lay golden eggs (it seems inconceivable to me how you thought reducing the number of close votes would achieve that, unless you were relying on the three votes to reopen to balance the equation). Our goal is to make closing a bit easier so that we can sweep the questions that nobody really wants (except the ones asking them) off the front page so that visitors to the site can see the good questions that accurately represent who we are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *When I go to a Stack Exchange home page, I see a list of questions. If most of those are terrible questions with little to no indication that I'd [not] be wasting my time by reading them, the value proposition of visiting and participating is diminished: I have better things to do.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Compare that to answers on a specific question: I've made a conscious choice to look into what I think is an interesting question. I already made the decision that the question is worth my time. If I find the answers to be useless, I have a few different options to register my displeasure, including writing my own answer. Being able to write your own answer is key: if your answer is good enough, it'll rise above the junk answers and everyone will be better off for it.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *There is no such action for question lists. I can't say &quot;these questions suck, show me this question I just thought up instead&quot;: that'd be silly. So, it's imperative the question list have a high signal-to-noise ratio, removing the penalty for those users who do take the time to read a question and later find it to be useless.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; -- Mark Trapp, former Programmers Moderator&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Optimizing for Pearls, not Sand](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27189" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7805" RevisionGUID="865b594e-25e2-4e76-9e1b-78091190a299" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="In response to some of the answers so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Print them out, get five programmers from the office and ask them to do a triage on them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a fine idea. I reported my results internally and asked for volunteers to do this experiment. I haven't heard back from anyone yet, but it is a Friday and there's some movie premiering today, I believe. I'll see about following up in the next few weeks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Were you really expecting a different result?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not really. I was, however, hoping for one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Not understanding the site] is just not a defensible position. Programmers is the easiest site on the entire network to understand. What is it about? Wait for it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; **software design and development**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I can take this one of three ways:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I don't understand this site because I'm not a programmer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   As it happens, I've been writing and maintaining software most of my life. But maybe my previous jobs don't count as &quot;design and development&quot;? I've done a lot more work on other people's code than building new systems, so it's possible I don't get the topic after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. I don't understand this site because I don't understand the Stack Exchange model.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I was a beta user of Stack Overflow and have asked questions on dozens of sites with minimal closure. I'm also working as a Community Manager here. On the other hand, I've historically been [soft on question closing](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/286407/1438), so maybe this is my problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. I don't understand this site because it's a community more complex than the cross section of software design and development and Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I feel this is the most likely explanation because I don't think #1 or #2 apply to me. I certainly don't think either #1 or #2 apply to Jeff Atwood. Therefore, I'm fairly confident that this site can be difficult to understand for reasons entirely separate from the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A couple of years ago, Stack Overflow nearly collapsed under the weight of a hundred thousand monkeys bashing away at a hundred thousand typewriters. Your response was to _put in an automated system_ that blocks a significant percentage of all questions asked at Stack Overflow before the community ever sees them. It further blocks those users who manage to get through those quality filters and persistently ask bad questions. That's not trusting the community; it's trusting a machine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Correct. I don't think any of us is happy about that outcome. But what do you think we use for input? Other than the [annoying title filter](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/115480/1438) all of the automated systems use community feedback as a primary source of input. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As the review system has improved, we've significantly softened the [question block system](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans). In addition, we have added [speed bumps](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/asking-rate-limited) to slow down users who have show a pattern of asking poorly-recieved questions. (Rolling rate limits are now [enabled network-wide](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/243460/1438), by the way.) We used to get _many_ false positives (meaning people were banned who probably shouldn't have been). After making those changes, we see far fewer false positives. We think that the reason for this is that the system is doing a better job of amplifying other users' feedback to people who have a difficult time understanding it for whatever reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow can be content with housing millions of questions and having perhaps a hundred thousand of them receive a significant audience; Programmers doesn't have that same luxury, nor can it have the same tolerance for chaff.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't follow this logic. Remember there are almost 150 sites of all shapes and sizes. Stack Overflow has a unique scaling problem. As it turns out, the systems we built to scale our flagship site work fairly well for a wide variety of topics and at the full range of question rate. I would phrase the final sentence in reverse: &quot;Programmers has the luxury to be intolerant of chaff.&quot; Having a small volume of questions means this community can ignore the systems that allow Stack Overflow to scale. It's a lot of unnecessary work but you can do it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **On Programmers, we close questions ruthlessly and viciously. And that's a good thing.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't help but notice this is an excellent example of the [Sanctity moral foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Foundations_Theory). The only other site that has anything like Programmers emphasis on purity of questions is Skeptics. I'd suggest that this community's unique set of values, and not topic confusion, make this site difficult for outsiders.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Several of us within The Whiteboard noted during the experiment that we had more time available to edit marginal questions so that they could be re-opened. I even made a comment to the effect that one of the major benefits of three votes-to-close was that it freed active community members up to focus on higher order aspects of the site. That's a very, very good thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree. If we could keep that without dramatically increasing question closing (which is already a deep outlier on the network), than I would be advocating for this change to be kept.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(It's drifting too far from the topic at hand, but I don't think treating user time as a zero-sum is a reasonable estimate. People tend to spend more time on sites they enjoy. It's one of the reasons we [encourage people to have fun](http://stackoverflow.com/help/be-nice). Why would anyone keep participating in a hobby that makes them miserable?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This meta post won't be for the faint of heart.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No it is not. ;-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll need to take more time going over it in the future, but my initial sampling of those questions is that I wouldn't vote to close most of them. But that shouldn't surprise you, I guess. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27191" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6490" RevisionGUID="c462ed99-d72f-4f1b-b9f3-7fa0ed364972" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Too Broad#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question you have asked either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* has too many possible answers &#xD;&#xA;* would require answers that are too long.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Polling / Big List of Things###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions are just polls for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the accepted answer is based on &quot;which answer I like best,&quot; rather than &quot;which answer solves my problem,&quot; the question is probably a poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While some other Stack Exchanges allow it, Software Engineering SE frowns upon ['big list' type questions](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;see also: list-questions tag wiki at MSO&quot;) that seem to want to compile a list of things.  Questions that fall into this category typically have the form of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What are all the problems I will encounter with XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * What are the pros and cons of XYZ?&#xD;&#xA; * How can XYZ be used?&#xD;&#xA; * Any ideas?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like these don't pose a problem that can be solved by an answer.  There is no definitive *right* answer that someone can go to, see the accepted answer and say &quot;yep, that is the answer.&quot;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Too long###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone explain Java to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is too broad.  There is far too much in Java to explain it to a person.  While long and complete answers are a good thing, questions that would require books to answer completely don't make good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often these questions can be resolved by spending some time thinking about what the core problem is or what the first problem you are running into is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6366/&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6629/&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6961/&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7537/&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75674/the-halting-problem-or-the-fallacy-of-real-questions-have-answers/75717#75717)&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [Is a question that specifically asks for a summary of a broad topic valuable to Stack Exchange?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234642/is-a-question-that-specifically-asks-for-a-summary-of-a-broad-topic-valuable-to)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help Center &gt; What types of questions should I avoid asking?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed as &quot;Too Broad?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27192" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7874" RevisionGUID="72d0dc26-d454-435d-b4fe-be76be174f08" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="From [Close votes shouldn't expire on bountied questions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/120675/213963) on MSE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Remember: closing is a nomination for deletion. Saying, &quot;Oh, no need&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to involve a moderator; if close votes don't expire, I'll just sit on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; my hands until the bounty is done and *then* close -&gt; delete it&quot; is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; effectively saying, &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; **&quot;I'm fine with someone putting serious effort into answering this question out of hope for a bounty reward, because I plan to delete the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question and their answer, thus erasing both their effort and the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reputation involved.&quot;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't do that. Contact a moderator - if the question *must* be closed&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or migrated, they can *refund* the bounty and do so immediately,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; removing the question from the Featured list. The longer you wait, the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more potential for grief exists for everyone involved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that while my close vote on the round 1 was reopened, there appears to be at least a reasonable number of people looking at closing it on round 2 (once the bounty expires).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question is not improved (and there doesn't seem to be any attempt by the OP to do so) to one that *is* answerable, once it is closed, I intend to cast a delete vote on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, ***hey &lt;s&gt;you guys&lt;/s&gt; mods***:  &quot;Before someone puts in some serious effort into answering this question out of hope for a bounty, you should look at letting this question get closed so that it can get fixed to not be vague so that I don't feel the need to delete vote it once the bounty expires and it gets closed again.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27193" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7968" RevisionGUID="da291cf9-12e8-46f2-9987-0d7365f69945" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Algorithm questions are on-topic both on Programmers and Stack Overflow. I have seen users on both sites comment that a question should be closed or migrated, but my own observation is that this does not happen a lot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Image color/grayscale classification][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was closed as &quot;unclear,&quot; which may have nothing to do with its topicality. I say &quot;may&quot; because &quot;unclear&quot; is often used as a cop-out &quot;I am too lazy to type why I believe this question is off-topic&quot; close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I did not vote on this specific question, I think it could use more details to provide a better answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Pizza Hut math problem #1 in Haskell][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was migrated to [Code Review][3]&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; because it is asking for help improving **working code**. It is not asking for algorithm help, or help with broken code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Two questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Why does this take so long?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. I really feel like all those extra conditions I wrote should be able to be abstracted into one condition, but I couldn't figure it out&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on my own. Any ideas on how to condense that into one, more abstract&#xD;&#xA;&gt; condition?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is exactly what Code Review is for: how can I take this functioning code and improve it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;Note that it was [migrated to Meta.CR first][4], then again to CR main. Because its most recent migration was from meta, there is no migration banner on the question. But check the link URL in this answer: it points to Programmers, and ends up on CR main.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/131067&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/313167&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/277122 &quot;see 'Bug when mod migrating - very easy to migrate to a site's Meta instead of main site'&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27194" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6492" RevisionGUID="5975021e-17b1-4d43-8858-be793dc974bf" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Other#&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions can be closed with a custom reason.  These are found in the comments for the question.  To that extent it is difficult to enumerate all the possible reasons people may try to close a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The essence of Software Engineering SE was summed up in chat by Thomas Owens:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Picture Software Engineering like a small conference room with a whiteboard. No computer, no books, no papers. You write your question on the whiteboard and experts walk by. Someone sees one that they can answer, they stop in and help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read the explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related reading&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6251/how-can-i-write-a-good-custom-close-message&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/why-do-certification-questions-keep-getting-closed&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6283/current-events-questions-and-answers&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;* (MSE) [cross-posting (posting the same question over multiple Stack Exchange sites)](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quick link: &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;`[Why was my question closed - other reasons?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6492/)`&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27196" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6516" RevisionGUID="26f2dec2-58a5-4565-8788-63114d7e1458" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am pondering particular feature request, but before diving deep into polishing its presentation and details, I would like to understand whether the change it would require is [technically feasible at all](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/199006/165773 &quot;because my prior request in this area has been fairly but rather brutally declined based on pure technical grounds&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder if it is technically possible to implement a different aging factor for Programmers questions depending on the amount of answers in these? About as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- hotness score of questions having 0 to 4 answers ages away exactly as of now&#xD;&#xA;- score of questions having 5 to 9 answers decays a bit faster than above  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;say, calculated as if it started aging away earlier&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- score of questions having 10 or more answers decays another bit faster than those with 5 to 9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;FWIW, I would like to stress that I am interested to learn whether this is possible to implement at Programmers, not network-wide. As far as I understand, the problem I am thinking about addressing doesn't make an issue eg at Stack Overflow ([priority -17 there](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/220325/165773 &quot;judging by the score of related question at recent moderator elections&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;In case if it matters, here's a rough sketch of the feature request mentioned above. Due to extended exposure to wide SE network, hot questions tend to attract certain amount of low quality answers. These answers would better be (and eventually are) removed, but due to [limitations in moderation power and inadequate flagging system](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/223403/165773 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;) removal takes quite a lot of time. This slowdown in removal coupled with the way how hotness formula inflates score depending on amount of answers causes hot questions stick in the list longer than it could be in case of timely removal. If the aging decay of questions is adjusted to account for that, this would unblock other [entertaining](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/220099/165773) / [interesting](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/222730/165773) questions of our site and allow them to enter hot list.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27197" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6554" RevisionGUID="fd4fcd55-c006-4612-b7d6-51e80920644e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As explained [here][1], such questions are off topic :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There is now a dedicated site for [programming puzzles and code golf](http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/87892/155223" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27198" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8024" RevisionGUID="82599df0-70b3-47fd-8431-e09ba7cfbd7a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="ThomasOwens addressed the reason for the temporary question ban. I would like to address the reason for the reason, that is, _why_ your previous questions led to the current situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that deleted questions are only visible to moderators, 10k users, or the user who asked them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Is it wise to invest in Angular 2?][1] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rightly closed as primarily opinion-based _and_ deleted. This is speculation that cannot be answered objectively.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [How common is it to get unpaid but skilled labor?][2] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Invites discussion (not answers), essentially asks for career advice which is off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Explaning to newbies that sometimes “it works” isn't “it works well”][3] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asks for advice on how to deal with coworker situations. Off-topic and subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [What does the $-operator mean (C# and EF context) for strings?][4] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asked on the wrong site, self-deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Using VS12 to create and manage an Azure-SQL DB (simple tasks)][5] (deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asks for a software tool which is explicitly off-topic per our help center.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Does TFS have the capacity equivalent of branching/forking in Git?][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Okay question about source control. Probably better-suited for Stack Overflow because it is asking about source control software, not strategy, but I wouldn't close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [How to motivate adaptive an shifting class access modifiers][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On-topic, but probably a duplicate. It is also a bit verbose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [How to store sensitive information (e.g. clients' credentials) accessibly for everybody inside?][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On-topic question about software process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Relation between projects and solutions in VS][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On-topic, but on the verge of being too broad. Still, it is about software organization and development processes so definitely on-topic and rightly does not have any downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Automatic code snippets in VS 12][10] (closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asks for help configuring a software tool. With more details it might be acceptable at Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now for the important part: constructive feedback. Once you are able to ask questions again, I would focus on these items:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I see a few &quot;soft&quot; questions asking about opinion or how to convince a teammate about something. These questions are off-topic, unsalvageable, and unfortunately for you are simply not a good fit here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions that belong at Stack Overflow. Some people have a difficult time understanding just where the line is between the two sites. I agree it can be a bit blurry at times, and it is fine if you post incorrectly but in the gray area. We can fix that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [What are the differences between Stack Overflow, Programmers, and Code Review?][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A small number of off-topic questions that simply fall into one of the off-topic categories in the [help center][13].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [Why was my question closed or down voted?][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Several of your questions are very verbose. Try to focus on one thing, choose your words carefully, and describe the problem fully but in less space. This will help encourage us to read the question more fully, understand what it is asking, and hopefully upvote it. If the question needs improvement, it makes it easier for us to edit it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/313651&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/310681&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/309821&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/306324&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/203020&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/315885&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/314460&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/274265&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/250825&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/204871&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/266341&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27199" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6559" RevisionGUID="82a78eca-6600-4e74-842a-cd863ad9ab8c" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You've probably seen it [somewhere](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136609/repository-of-useful-pro-forma-comments)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sharing your research helps everyone. Tell us what you've tried and why &#xD;&#xA;it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time &#xD;&#xA;to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, &#xD;&#xA;and most of all it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer! &#xD;&#xA;Also see [how to ask](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does this mean? Why do people keep asking for research? Knowing this, how can I ask a better question and avoid [downvotes](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6484/31260)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27200" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6582" RevisionGUID="c3f92786-4617-4b74-b7ad-796469d1aac8" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Difficulty with naming has a bit of a history with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are two hard problems in computer science: caching, naming, and off by one errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has been *repeatedly* revisited on meta and elsewhere&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (P.SE Aug 2012) https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3856/question-about-naming-conventions-not-constructive&#xD;&#xA;* (P.SE Oct 2011) https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* (P.SE Jan 2014) https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6406/name-that-thing-questions&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO Nov 2013) [What is the appropriate / preferred method for questions concerning programming nomenclature?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/203880/what-is-the-appropriate-preferred-method-for-questions-concerning-programming)&#xD;&#xA;* (Blog Feb 2012) [Lets Play The Guessing Game](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yes, the guidance on these is confusing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, please answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Are the [tag:terminology] and [tag:naming] questions on topic?&#xD;&#xA;* If so, what should be expected of these questions to not be closed as custom, too broad, or primarily opinion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27202" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6590" RevisionGUID="91704186-3cc0-44d1-abfa-915a60c7c4a8" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am a moderator on Stack Overflow. I got tired of getting into extended conversations with people who read the phrase &quot;practical, answerable problems that are unique to software development&quot; as tacit permission to ask their off-topic questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were also specific complaints that things like &quot;requests for library recommendations&quot; are not specifically called out in the Help Center as closeable offenses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I added the following section to the Help Center/On Topic article there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;b&gt;Some questions are still off-topic, even if they fit into one of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the categories listed above:&lt;/b&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 5. Questions that *lack sufficient information to diagnose the problem.* Describe your problem in more detail or include a [minimal&#xD;&#xA;&gt; example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) in the question itself.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 5. Questions about *a problem that can no longer be reproduced or that was caused a simple typographical error*. While similar questions may&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be on-topic here, these are often resolved in a manner unlikely to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; help future readers. This can often be avoided by identifying and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closely inspecting the [shortest program necessary to reproduce the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) before posting.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3.  Questions asking for code must *demonstrate a minimal understanding of the problem being solved.* Include attempted&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solutions, why they didn't work, and the expected results. See also:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Stack Overflow question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; checklist](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156810/stack-overflow-question-checklist).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4.  Questions asking for homework help must include a summary of the work you've done so far to solve the problem, and a description of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; difficulty you are having solving it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 5. Questions asking us to *recommend or find a tool, library or favorite off-site resource* are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, [describe the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/139399/) and what has been&#xD;&#xA;&gt; done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1.  Questions about *general computing hardware and software* are off-topic for Stack Overflow unless they directly involve tools used&#xD;&#xA;&gt; primarily for programming. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4. Questions on *professional server, networking, or related infrastructure administration* are off-topic for Stack Overflow unless&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they directly involve programming or programming tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose that we do something similar for the Help Center/On-Topic article here on Programmers, but using the close reasons that we have here (not the ones on Stack Overflow).  This page is editable by moderators, so we don't need SE permission.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I floated the idea to one of our mods, and he said that we need some community consensus before we do this.  So that's what I'm asking for.  I hope to avoid conversations like [this one](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/235272/1204), and maybe even have a few people simply refrain from posting such questions here and wasting everyone's time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27203" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8064" RevisionGUID="d3207350-6166-41c1-bec6-01690db2665d" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Site Name&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've started to come around to the name &quot;Software Engineering&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I still have some lingering objections regarding the overuse of the term &quot;engineering&quot; in software development, I think that the benefits would outweigh my personal objections. It does bring to mind a professional-oriented site that caters to people that work throughout the software development life cycle, from business analysts to developers to managers to leads. It also pairs nicely with Computer Science, especially since both correspond to the underlying academic disciplines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Tour and Tagline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&amp;A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ripped this from sites like Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. I removed the portion about &quot;expert answers on conceptual questions about software development&quot; since that can be confusing and I don't see how it's necessary. I tended toward the wording used on Computer Science.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, practitioners, and researchers of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first line of the /help/on-topic page is just the first sentence of the /tour description, word-for-word.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## On-Topic Page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm shamelessly stealing this idea from Robert Harvey, but I think that we should do some minor refactoring and link to appropriate Wikipedia articles that define terms. Unfortunately, I don't think that we can get this down to &quot;no more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no gerrymandering&quot;. I think we can avoid multi-line comma-separated lists and gerrymandering, but the discipline of Software Engineering is broad. Being clear about what is on-topic and what is off-topic (and what sites support questions about things that are off-topic) is essential and helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that the shortest reasonable on-topic list would be something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software requirements][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [architecture][2] and [design][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [software quality assurance][4]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [configuration][5], [build][6] and [release][7] management&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software [process][8] and [management][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I removed &quot;algorithm and data structure concepts&quot;, since I would consider that part of &quot;software architecture and design&quot;. Evaluating and choosing various data structures and algorithms is inherently a design activity. I also removed &quot;and testing&quot; from &quot;quality assurance and testing&quot; since testing is one aspect of quality assurance, but we don't take all testing questions (such as, for example, writing or debugging unit test code). I also merged &quot;software engineering management&quot; and &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; into &quot;software process, methods, and management&quot; since these three things are very tightly related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Like maple_shaft][10], I'd like to talk about software licensing. I recognize how important the topic is, but when it was added and clarified, neither the Law nor the Open Source Stack Exchange existed. It is something that software engineers operating in a professional environment should be aware of and do need to work in, and the IEEE does bury a small section on &quot;Legal Issues&quot; (referring to trademarks, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, professional liability, trade compliance, cybercrime) under &quot;Software Engineering Professional Practice&quot;. At the same time, the IEEE also puts things like &quot;Employment Contracts&quot;, team dynamics, working in multicultural environments, reading, writing, and presenting under &quot;Software Engineering Professional Practice&quot; and these are definitely off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recommend removing the &quot;software licensing&quot; line. The [Law Stack Exchange is graduating][11] and the [new rules for the graduation process][12] will likely mean that Open Source won't end up closing in the foreseeable future. These sites can do a much better job of handling licensing questions (along with other types of questions) than we can.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - understanding, writing, or debugging code (check out Stack Overflow instead) how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (ask on The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - open source philosophy, licenses, and open source communities (visit Open Source instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - legal concepts, theory, and terms (check out Law instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - where to find a software library, tool, book, research paper, blog, forum, or other resource&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career or education advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest change is that we start linking to Open Source and Law. Before we actually do this, we do need to consult with their communities and make sure it's OK. But since there are better sites, I think it's safe to punt these questions to the experts anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Slight reordering of the things that are off-topic. We may want to check through the Meta questions that are currently linked and make sure they are correct. The biggest change is the removal of &quot;personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&quot; - I'd hope that a distinct change to the site name would make this very explicit to visitors as your personal life is not Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We may want to also identify some other sites to point people to. We could link to Software Recommendations and Hardware Recommendations next to &quot;product or service recommendations&quot;, as an example. There are also other sites that are related to software engineering that we don't identify as being off-topic (because it should be obvious) - Mathematics, Cross Validated/Statistics, User Experience, Information Security, Writers, Database Administrators, Code Review, Project Management (beta), Software Quality Assurance &amp; Testing (beta), Computer Science, Engineering (beta), Law (beta), and Open Source (beta).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Other&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to see a theme change on the site. Something that is more professional. I like the general idea of diagrams and models, but parts of the site do seem cartooney. I'd like to be crisper, more like the other science and engineering sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to look at methods for linking to related sites. Adding them to a Help Center page, like /help/on-topic, may work, but it would make that page much longer. I'd like to try to make Help Center pages smaller and less dense. It makes sense to point people to sites that they may not otherwise know about. Perhaps a Meta question that is part of the [tag:faq] would work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could we have a temporary box, similar to how the Law and Health sites do, but to talk about the changes? I suspect we'll have a summary Meta post after the name is changed, so just a brief overview and link to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_requirements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality_assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_management&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_management&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8058/4&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://law.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/425/congrats-law-se-will-be-graduating-soon?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/257614/graduation-site-closure-and-a-clearer-outlook-on-the-health-of-se-sites" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27204" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6597" RevisionGUID="dbfe61cd-3998-4325-880a-17c0aa29608d" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per my understanding, for a while there was a sort of informal agreement to protect questions that are going to be featured at Ars Technica. Recently [this approach has been challenged](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/protecting-ars &quot;in Whiteboard chat&quot;), so I would like to have a dedicated meta discussion to sort this out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does it make sense to protect such questions as soon as we learn about coming exposure at Ars Technica or it is better to stick with approach designed in 2010 for Stack Overflow and Super User - that is, protect when there is &quot;a lot of drive-by noise answers&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO - Feb '11) [For 15k+ users: Guidelines on Protecting Questions?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/78764/165773)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Jeff offered more information on [why post protection was implemented and what he expected it to be used for](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/new-protected-question-status/) in his blog.  This was when only moderators had this power, but the same reasoning applies to 15k users who can now protect posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (SE blog - Jun '10) [New Protected Question Status](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/new-protected-question-status/)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **if you see a question that is attracting a lot of drive-by noise answers, please flag it for moderator attention. We’ll turn on protection.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those interested in more details about questions we discuss can find links to them in [this feed](http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/feed/) or in [edits history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/39006/samthebrand?tab=activity) of [SE community evangelist](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6200/can-we-give-the-community-evangelist-something-more-notable-to-make-suggested-ed). Some details of 40 questions featured so far are provided [in the 1st revision of this question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/6597/1 &quot;find these under 'For your convenience...'&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27206" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6600" RevisionGUID="55288814-1594-48d1-823f-9f339ce5e2a4" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="You have asked 5 questions on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/235271/modify-memory-in-borland-6 asked on April 8, self-deleted on April 8&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/233158/should-i-use-http-search asked on March 21, open, net score of 1&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/232123/standard-way-for-webrequest asked on March 12, closed by 5 user votes, deleted, net score of -1&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189617/install-cloud9-on-windows-8-or-linux asked on March 7, 2013, closed by 5 user votes, deleted, net score of -4&#xD;&#xA; - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188926/migrate-wcf-to-node-js asked on March 1, 2013, closed with 5 votes, deleted by moderator, net score of -4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Across these questions, your net question score is -8, which isn't that good. The details of the automatic question block algorithm are not known outside of the Stack Exchange team - not even to moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should read [the page in the help center about question bans][1] as well as a [a Meta Stack Exchange post that describes the question block and how to get out of it][2]. The advice is to fix your old posts (if you can) and contribute good posts of the type that you can (you can still post answers to questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27207" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8103" RevisionGUID="7935fbf0-8f5e-4e2b-a41e-2d7ed428f35d" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Folks still ask for where they find it after 3 years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think above is generally a [valid concern](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/123386/165773 &quot;for the reasons discussed in details here&quot;). However some system limitations make it rather slippery to use popularity and historical interest as an _ultimate_ criteria on deciding whether to keep such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is, visual difference between &quot;normal&quot; and [historically locked](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;) questions is not really as prominent as it may seem to experienced users. I recall seeing at meta references to examples when inexperienced users didn't notice the differences and thought that these are normal, legitimate questions, [&quot;Why can't I ask X when Y exists?&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/broken-windows)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are essentially forced to decide whether &quot;harm to the Internet&quot; - link rot caused by deletion of particular question - outweighs the harm of it hanging in here and making a broken window for inexperienced users (who sometimes simply can't see / understand what historical lock means).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why historical interest alone doesn't determine whether question gets a historical lock.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's worth noting that so far suggestions to create and maintain some kind of an &quot;outcast&quot; / &quot;museum&quot; site for questions of historical interest were declined by Stack Exchange team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More generally, all suggestions to help community maintain historical questions known to me were either declined or ignored by SE team. Even when such suggestions require almost no effort and are apparently no risk / no harm, these are ignored (for example setting pink background when rendering historically locked posts [proposed here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7828/31260)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Set up an archive for legendary deleted questions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/73226/165773) (at MSE)&#xD;&#xA;* [Recent Trouble With Popularity](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(sort of a follow up) [Your comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8100/why-do-you-value-the-opinion-of-moderators-more-than-community-upvotes/8103#comment25141_8103) indicate a belief that inappropriate questions are harmless:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;need proof that suppressing these questions actually make the site rot, i.e. humorous questions starting to make a trend, because those questions exist in the first place. Without that maybe it's the case of suppressing a harmless thing because of valuing &quot;fear&quot; instead of &quot;evidence&quot;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a closer look at this site history [described here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/102937) you may find out that it is most likely not so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is, first few years such questions were allowed at Stack Overflow where they coexisted with &quot;boring&quot; programming questions. Fun questions were popular, entertaining, brought a lot of views and site visits. Now ask yourself a question, **if these were indeed harmless, why would they want to &quot;outsource&quot; them to a separate site (NPR)?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody in their sane mind would get rid of content that brings views and visits if it is harmless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I bet Stack Overflow creators would be happy to keep these questions on-site if (**if**) these weren't causing harm. The very fact that they moved it to a separate site (NPR) makes a very strong indication that these were indeed considered harmful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In case if you wonder about what specifically could make SO creators believe that there is harm consider taking a look at the canonical article explaining these matters - [The Trouble With Popularity](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we discovered that these posts become so popular over time that they truly start to drown out everything else on the site...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. **Broken windows.** Every 'fun' post users see is an open invitation for them to participate in the fun by adding *their own* fun question or answer. The stuff spreads like [kudzu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu)! Pretty soon the entire site is overrun with nothing but that kind of fun. And even if you grandfather a few in, you'll enjoy neverending requests asking why *their* fun question or answer has to be removed, while *this one over here* is allowed to remain.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;2. **Opportunity cost.** Every minute spent participating in an entertaining 'fun' post is time that someone could have spent asking or answering a substantive question, something practical that solves an *actual problem* for hundreds or thousands of people. Entertainment, within reason, is by no means a bad thing -- but I experience almost physical pain when I think about a brilliant topic expert spending 10 minutes on one of our sites deciding which hilarious cartoon is their favorite.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is quite a solid evidence that Stack Exchange Q&amp;A model turned out poor in supporting &quot;pure fun&quot; kind of questions. They tried to keep these along with serious questions, they also tried to keep them at separate site... &quot;Sadly, it didn't work out.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27208" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6613" RevisionGUID="b70aadc3-e819-4f66-b15f-4ffb372999a3" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It should be closed.  This is an English site (btw, you can try to figure out what it is and get the language detection with http://translate.google.com using the 'detect language').  Answers in not-english are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Not useful for people who don't speak the language searching&#xD;&#xA;* If translated to english, may not be useful for the original poster&#xD;&#xA;  * Furthermore, the OP is may be unable to give additional information&#xD;&#xA;* We don't necessarily have the moderators who can handle issues that come up in non-english.&#xD;&#xA;* We don't have the people able to read an off topic (or too broad or unclear) non-english question and decide if it is on topic or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it may be something that someone can read, or send through google translate to get an essence of, it is ultimately something that the OP needs to put forth the effort into to write in the appropriate language.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can go a long way to fixing spelling and grammar of someone who doesn't write English well - but it is necessary for it to start out and be conducted in English.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking a question in Stack Overflow (or P.SE) is no more appropriate than asking in English on [Stack Overflow em Português](http://pt.stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a set of area 51 proposals for Stack Overflow in XYZ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/42810/stack-overflow-in-spanish&#xD;&#xA;* http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/34945/stack-overflow-in-turkish&#xD;&#xA;* http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/41168/stack-overflow-in-russian&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;MSE: [Non-English Q&amp;A translations](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171034/non-english-qa-translations)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;MSE: [Is English required on Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13676/is-english-required-on-stack-overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;MSE: [non-english-speakers tag](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/non-english-speakers)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SO Blog: [Non-English Question Policy](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/07/non-english-question-policy/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27209" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6633" RevisionGUID="d96c6679-6813-4911-b6e8-e57af744a40a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is [by design](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/52765/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Users with 10 or more reputation can answer a protected question. However, **the +100 account association bonus is ignored for this check**, so you must have earned 10 or more reputation on that specific site to answer a protected question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Related&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Auto-protect questions that get more than N answers from new users in a 24-hour period](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/226619/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The association bonus should not enable users to vote on every site](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/183109/the-association-bonus-should-not-enable-users-to-vote-on-every-site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy ](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; my favorite pattern is from MetaFilter, which is: When we start seeing effects of scale, we shut off the new user page. &quot;Someone mentions us in the press and how great we are? Bye!&quot; That's a way of raising the bar, that's creating a threshold of participation. And anyone who bookmarks that page and says &quot;You know, I really want to be in there; maybe I'll go back later,&quot; that's the kind of user MeFi wants to have..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27210" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8105" RevisionGUID="6308224d-1b0a-485a-b413-bdfc69f27dbf" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've been pondering [these proposed changes to the site's name and scope](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8056/new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8065#8065) for the past few weeks. This was, you'll recall, instigated by Ana's response to Rachel's proposal for [a new name for this site.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/4-years-later-dear-stack-exchange-can-we-change-our-site-name). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Why are we changing anything again?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The purpose of that name-change request was explicitly to *end the confusion over what this site is about*. Ana's request was that y'all do a thorough review of your scope at the same time, for exactly the same reason. Because, let's face it: when you gotta have [a chatbot](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/125580/duga) running to catch all the folks who erroneously recommend your site, there's some pretty widespread misunderstandings as to what your site is about... To put a stop to that, [we need a clear, succinct definition](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/4-years-later-dear-stack-exchange-can-we-change-our-site-name/8054#8054):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Above all else, the scope needs to be simple. Seriously. No more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no gerrymandering - it needs to be easy for any new visitor who bothers to read and even mildly pays attention to what they're reading to know what they can and cannot ask about here. Eliminate ambiguity for a first time poster once and for all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...because, remember, *that was the whole point of doing anything at all*. If we can't do it right, there's no point in doing it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The proposed changes are not exactly succinct](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8056/new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8065#8065). They're... the sort of [laundry-lists](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/164778/what-should-we-put-on-our-about-page/164779#164779) that make folks who already know what the site is about feel good, but don't do anything to help or hinder the folks coming here confused. You want to establish a path of least resistance that *isn't* asking a sketchy question and seeing if it sticks - if I make it past the home page, through the signup process, past the tour, and get to the Ask page, I'm *probably* going to ask a question regardless of what text you throw at me... Folks tend to build up momentum as they make decisions; you don't want to wait until the last possible moment to tell 'em they're in the wrong place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##What I *think* you're asking for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, there's a lot of good stuff mixed into that proposal, if you take the time to dig a bit. After [talking to folks in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/30760512#30760512) a couple of weeks ago (and then another two hours talking with Ana today while she patiently guided me through it), I came away with this as the *structure* of the proposal:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Name&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Description / tour tagline&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question and answer site for people directly involved in the Software Development Lifecycle who care about writing, shipping, and maintaining code responsibly. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###On-topic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - configuration, build and release management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Off-topic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - troubleshooting or debugging code &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - requests for code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what to read, learn, buy or use.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - legal advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's short. I could theoretically paste that entire quote into a comment, and still have room to reply to someone by name and properly cite [its source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_Trump).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More importantly, it's short enough that it might actually get *read* by the hundreds of folks who clearly aren't reading anything here today. Which was, again, the entire point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I dropped a few things. That's ok; you don't need to exhaustively document every possible topic that falls under the umbrella &quot;Software Engineering&quot; - the ultimate source of truth is what's actually *on the site*. If someone comes in from Google because there's a question about Agile they're interested in, it won't matter that it's not explicitly called out in the docs. On the other hand, eliminating requirements and methodologies from that list also lets you avoid having to qualify those topics with a paragraph about where to stick broad, opinionated discussion questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##What this site is really about&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I love the idea of a site about software engineering, especially one created as the evolution of *this* site: it fits the spirit of what y'all are doing, gives you a name and a topic you can communicate with pride, and even [resolves an old, old dispute](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se) in a less depressing fashion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But none of that matters. **What's important here is whether y'all actually believe this reflects what you're doing.** Remember, the goal was to clear up all those cringe-worthy misconceptions... Not to create a whole pile of new ones. So I ask of you,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Does *anything* in the quote above strike you as *incorrect?***&#xD;&#xA;2. Does the quote above reflect the site you know and love?&#xD;&#xA;3. Is the quote above something you'd feel comfortable giving to someone unfamiliar with the site, by way of an introduction?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you for your time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27211" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6640" RevisionGUID="367fe05c-62c0-45ad-8ae9-08d86d551a6c" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Question bans are on a per-site basis and are based on your asking history on that site. Your reputation on Stack Overflow has no bearing on your standing here, where you have asked 3 questions ([here][1], [here][2], and [here][3] for you and [10k+ users][7]). All three have a net negative score, two were closed, and all three were deleted. It's not surprising that this triggered the automatic question ban, which are [described in detail in the Help Center][4] and [in this question on Meta Stack Exchange](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're interested in participating here, I would recommend that you read how to get a question ban lifted as well as better understand what is and is not on-topic here (which is pretty clear in our Help Center's [on-topic][5] and [do not ask][6] pages. If you aren't interested in working to get your question ban lifted, then yes, finding an alternative is likely your only option.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/236093/clicking-qt-app-vs-running-exe-in-terminal&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218893/the-state-of-c-development-on-linux&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/189650/which-gui-framework-for-a-gui-newbie-but-expert-c-developer&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;who can view deleted posts&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27212" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8136" RevisionGUID="7cd7eb04-9403-43b3-8daf-97fc1e76c9d1" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;!-- let's talk about elephant in the room --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading of [July 22nd discussion](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/new-site-name-discussion-jul-22-2016) primary focus of the coming changes is to prevent the flood of debugging questions. Both SE Community Manager and our moderators appear to be in agreement about that:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; \-  There are a crazy number of things that should be closed or downvoted or edited or just discouraged, but only a tiny handful reach the sort of volume that you need to _announce them to all visitors_.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;\- And the code troubleshooting types are, by far, the worst.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;\- I'm pretty sure just about every site on the network gets coding questions now and then, but only a few bother mentioning that they're off-topic explicitly anywhere. &#xD;&#xA;here, they're a problem, so you focus on that &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explicit mentioning of **&quot;not code troubleshooting&quot;** in the [suggested site tagline](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vkfDr.png) also appears to support this vision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given above I wonder if we need to somehow change the way how blatant debugging questions are handled, maybe have more active involvement of diamond moderators or maybe ask for system features &lt;sup&gt;[1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6795/31260 &quot;example - automatic checks for cross-posting and question block at SO&quot;), [2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260 &quot;example - showing a warning&quot;), [3](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8056/new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8061#comment24925_8065 &quot;example - interstitial page&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt; or something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding of the current approach is, it assumes primarily involvement of regular community members which leads to cumbersome and lengthy process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;First, a question needs to collect five close votes from 3K users. Per my observations this tends to take few hours or even days. After closure, question hangs on the site for 9 days before it gets [auto-deleted](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/177675/165773). If it manages to get an upvoted or accepted answer prior to closure things get even more complicated because such questions aren't eligible for automatic deletion and can in theory hang in here indefinitely.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that planned changes are so much focused on preventing debugging questions our current way looks somewhat worrying.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope that the changes will help to educate newcomers against asking for code troubleshooting over here. But [statistics](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6592/31260) seems to suggest that ~20% questions here come from users who simply don't have an option to ask for debugging help at more appropriate site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes me wonder how to handle it when such questions are posted here despite all the effort and guidance." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27213" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8145" RevisionGUID="d74095d4-e8db-473b-b2fb-aba4a2ad6fca" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This was discussed quite thoroughly in the comments. For readers not inclined to dive into details below are key takeaways:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently there seem to be no need to do anything because it is expected that coming changes (particularly tagline) will suffice to prevent enough of debugging questions (including those from users blocked at SO) to let the rest to be handled efficiently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may be reconsidered later if (**if**) it turns that even after changes we still get too many questions asking for debugging help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for diamond moderators more actively deleting debugging questions, this is possibly not even related to site rename because SE Community Manager [already recommended them doing this](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31225279#31225279 &quot;'delete everything that's blatantly off-topic as soon as it appears'&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;\- will the diamond moderators take a more active role in sweeping up the code troubleshooting questions...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;\- Personally, I have been. Ever since Shog strongly suggested faster deletions in The Whiteboard. Previously, I was hesitant to delete questions that would otherwise be [Roomba](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/177675/165773 &quot;what's this&quot;)'d, but I am now. I guess I don't see that as a change that is related to the rebranding at all.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27214" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6645" RevisionGUID="6d84e98a-0a73-4c37-b50e-a86eb2e7a8b6" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The first thing to realize is all but one of these questions have five close votes. Not a single one is there a review by you with a close vote review of 'leave open' on it.  That is the best time to act on them if they are to remain open rather than closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In most cases, the reopen review was done by three *different* people than who did the close votes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/236533/what-are-the-benefits-of-exotic-languages-and-scripts (reopen review: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/60905 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This question is too broad with three nested questions in it.  It is asking for people's opinions on things &quot;Why would somebody explicitly want this?&quot; and asking for a poll of the reasons for the original request (on Software Recommendation) reasoning.  We can't know what the reason is, we are only guessing and giving our opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/235042/what-are-the-perks-and-drawbacks-of-using-html-templates-versus-building-the-htm (reopen review: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/58877 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This question is a poll.  Plain and simple.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; what are other advantages and disadvantages of both approaches?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It can get dozens more answers and *still* not have a right answer.  There is no problem posed in the question.  There can be no answers solving the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/234699/segregating-interfaces-concerns-to-a-tree&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Apparently this one has been reopened from being a dup.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230784/is-a-degree-in-cs-and-a-degree-in-se-the-same-thing (Reopen review: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/56022 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This question is asking about career and education and is asking questions specific to the curriculum at various universities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230486/giving-team-members-more-decision-making-power-led-to-very-long-arguments-block (I couldn't find a reopen review on this one)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I'd argue its a better fit for PM.SE.  The question is one more of project management than methodologies and working with the *people* more than the *patterns*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230271/is-procedural-programming-the-root-of-all-object-oriented-evil (Reopen review http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/56018 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Seriously?&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Is procedural programming the root of all object oriented evil?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   You've got debate forming language right in the question title. If you think this can be a good question, *edit it* into one that isn't inflammatory and isn't trying to spark a debate or discussion. You have just as much ability to fix the issue as other people do and appear to have a better idea of what the proper question *should* be.  When answers start out with &quot;I think the problem is not so much...&quot; you've got answers that are going to try to discuss this and debate it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/224275/why-are-there-so-few-comments-in-c-c-code (Reopen review: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/49492 ) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question is speculation about a particular culture.  I've seen wonderfully documented C.  I've seen awfully documented C.  The comments fairly well sum it up with that it is who you are dealing with and the culture. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;8. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/227983/how-do-we-go-from-assembly-to-machine-codecode-generation (I couldn't find a reopen review for this)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- this is likely an Andy sock --&gt; This question is asking some questions but lacks the associated information about what is understood.  The question was risked with http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/229346/how-does-assembly-relate-to-machine-binary-code that included additional information that remains open. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/227743/coming-from-high-level-to-c (Reopen review: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/52927 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   This question is a combination of career advice and what language should I learn next. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Coming from high-level languages, should I go down the ladder (to Java, then C++, then C) or just skip to the bottom (C) and go up from there if I need?&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Is learning C with Internet tutorials easy, or even recommended?&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Do I need C for common software? Does my knowing C help me with coding high level?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Those three questions are the epitome of the close reasons given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/224356/debugging-checklists-how-much-its-necessary-to-have (Reopen review http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/50374 (had one 'reopen' vote) )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  On the surface, this question is too broad, polling for people's suggestions on debugging checklists.  I should also stress that the original question that at least some votes where on was against the question:&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Should making debug-checklists be an essential part of development process? How it can be integrated with unit-tests?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  which was the entirety of the question.  The question now has a long rambling update which presents a revised question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; If the above example could save myself or another developer 10-15 minutes of looking around to find the problem, should we make it mandatory for every developer to write this kind of checklists when they spot something that's potential to be source of a problem on a specific part of application later?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  At that point, the question becomes one of opinion.  If focused down to what the question really is, and the problem rather than the poll, it might be something to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to point out that *every single* reopen review except one that I was able to find was a unanimous &quot;Leave Closed&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just tossing a reopen vote on a closed question will likely *not* get it reopened.  If the question is to be reopened it likely needs some work of some sort - an edit to fix the issues raised in the close vote reason (and possibly some that don't show up in the close vote majority reason).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fix the question, then vote to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Provide a notification to anyone capable of casting reopen votes (3000+ rep) when a question they upvoted or answered has been closed, or&#xD;&#xA;* Allow some means of casting reopen votes before a question is closed, and&#xD;&#xA;* Time out the downvoting and close voting privileges of people who vote to close a question that is later reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first item is addressed on MSE: [Notify upvoters and answerers when a question is closed](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/133660/notify-upvoters-and-answerers-when-a-question-is-closed) and was status-declined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second item is addressed on MSE: [You should be able to vote to reopen a question before it is actually closed](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/33259/you-should-be-able-to-vote-to-reopen-a-question-before-it-is-actually-closed), [How about a “Vote not to close” option to counter the “Vote to close”?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/125/how-about-a-vote-not-to-close-option-to-counter-the-vote-to-close).  The key here is to do reviews - thats where the 'remove from queue' functionality is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The third point, I'd suggest that you ask that on MSE instead. &lt;!-- I don't want to dignify it with a response --&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27215" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8158" RevisionGUID="6cf00b77-4bf0-4923-aa83-adc585729e28" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This was asked and [answered by Community Manager](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/281690/165773) at MSE:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the product isn't quite ready to go elsewhere... Once it is [known to work](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/328405/documentation-has-entered-public-beta#comment369176_328405), then we can discuss the possibility of adding it to other sites but that won't be for [6-8 weeks](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19478/the-many-memes-of-meta/19514#19514)..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27216" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8174" RevisionGUID="f45ce388-91b6-4223-b3ca-785c8b1ccf9f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've been using this message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Welcome to programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [Many sites](http://stackexchange.com/sites) have [different rules](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8067/131624). Feel free to take your issue to an appropriate site. Search existing answers first. Please [don't cross post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Welcome to programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [Many sites](http://stackexchange.com/sites) have [different rules](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8067/131624). Feel free to take your issue to an appropriate site. Search existing answers first. Please [don't cross post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's been successful in getting a few askers to clean up on their own. I might even suggest that with this, fewer bitter arguments start after the close.  Bit hard to tell yet but I think it's helped.  Use it if you like. Maybe you can do better. If you can, please share.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27217" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8181" RevisionGUID="4d2d9420-2170-4119-baf7-696e6ca27912" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Having read [this][1] question about a reasonable feature request and seen that it was closed as a dupe of a question from 2013 (and 2011 by another user), I wonder what is the best way &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - to leave a note to the SE team that I would also like to see such a feature added. &#xD;&#xA; - to advertise certain feature requests after some years again to get some feedback if there are more users now which think the feature would be beneficial for the site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just upvoting those old feature requests seems to have no impact, since chances are high noone just notice about the upvote to such an old question. Asking about the feature again seems to be the wrong way, too (will get closed as a dupe, see above). Adding a bounty, as suggested [here][2], simply does not work on Programmer's meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what can I do increase the chance a good suggestion which was probably just forgotten over the years won't vanish completely?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8176/please-add-mathjax&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/106860/what-is-meta-protocol-for-re-requesting-ignored-feature-requests" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27218" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6652" RevisionGUID="15c79b67-08b4-4df3-bf5f-ccfea4f9f5bf" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; My first and only question on this site has been closed. I've a fair amount of rep on SO and I know how things work here. Before asking it I have read the FAQ and the What topics can I ask about here? section. I'm fairly sure my question fits the &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; or even &quot;software engineering management&quot; sections.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't agree that your question fits as the site is defined. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, I'm concerned about topicality. It is about a methodology and process, but if you continue reading the [&quot;what topics can I ask about&quot; page][1], there's a diagram that shows that questions asked here must be unique to software developers. Why does this question require the expertise of a professional software developer to answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it doesn't fit that, why not migrate it to The Workplace? The next problem that I have with it is that the question is too broad. You're polling for opinions. The [&quot;don't ask&quot; Help Center page][2] addresses this. Of the questions that you ask, there is no way to measure the rightness or wrongness of how other people use a tool. If you focused on your current process and quantified how you wanted to improve it, you may be able to get a good question out of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the current content is best suited to an extended discussion. Both Programmers and The Workplace have chat rooms - [The Whiteboard][3] for Programmers and [The Water Cooler][4] for The Workplace. The chat rooms are good for either discussing topics with other people or for getting help from site regulars on how to refine your question so that it fits on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So let's look at some of your other &quot;top questions&quot; that you have concerns with and address those, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What technical details should a programmer of a web application consider before making the site public?][5] -- definitely too broad. There is no definite, finite list of things. The answer depends on the language, technology, libraries.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to note is that this question was asked 5 years ago, on Stack Overflow, before Programmers existed. This site has had a long history, with some turmoil in the early days. You can read about it [in more detail here][6], but the short story is that the original definition of Programmers didn't work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second thing to note is that this question is locked. Stack Exchange introduced a new [Collaborative Lock functionality][7] and this was [the first question that it was applied to on Programmers][8]. Before the Collaborative Lock was introduced, the [Historical Lock][9] was applied to the question, which prevented all changes to anything. The reason this was done was because the question wasn't a good fit, but it had a lot of useful information that should not be lost. The question was viewed many times, had many incoming links from outside sites, came up in Google searches frequently - deleting it would have been a disservice to the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report. How can I convince him that it's a bad idea?][10] -- offtopic. Should be in the workplace SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could build an argument about migration to The Workplace, but The Workplace was still in beta. Admittedly, it was a public beta. The norm is to minimize migrations to beta sites so that they can develop their own culture as a community. Unless the question is very much off-topic on the site where it was posted and very much on-topic on the beta site, it shouldn't be migrated to a beta site. If this question was asked today, I highly suspect that it would be migrated since I could argue that it applies to more than just software developers, but anyone designing or building a product.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Where did the notion of “one return only” come from?][11] -- it's not a programming question. It could be asked on history, if anywhere. Don't know how this didn't get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about the history of software development [are on-topic here][12]. I'm not sure how you can argue that it's not related to software development, since it's about a programming construct. Would people outside of the software development community care about this question? Probably not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code — what now?][13] -- could it be any more too broad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're right on this one. It's not a good question, but it does have historical significance. It has a large number of views, and many questions are closed as a duplicate of this one. I put a historical lock on the question so the content isn't lost, but to discourage people from using this as an example of the kind of question that can be asked here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][14] -- opinion based as hell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're right again on this one. This isn't a good question. However, it has a very large number of views. I treated this just as if someone had flagged it and put a Historical Content lock on the question. It's really not a good question and can't be used as an example of what to ask, but given the number of views and the content in the answers, it falls into the same category as the first question you pointed out. Closing and deleting it would be a disservice to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overall, I think you should read through some Meta posts. Maybe jump into The Whiteboard and chat with the regulars to get a better feel for this community. We have a certain culture here and a certain expectation for questions and answers. Coming from other sites, it can be a bit of a shock - many SE sites have their own expectations and standards and nuances as to how they work. One closed question isn't that big of a deal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/182566/this-lock-notice-is-partly-misleading/182572#182572&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5991/new-lock-type-for-truly-collaborative-questions-and-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/154733/my-boss-decided-to-add-a-person-to-blame-field-to-every-bug-report-how-can-i&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118703/where-did-the-notion-of-one-return-only-come-from&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5633/is-programming-history-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/48698/i-dont-program-in-my-spare-time-does-that-make-me-a-bad-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27219" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8183" RevisionGUID="d8110bd1-f649-4708-a482-cdbc8cf4ccf9" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For many thorough discussion on this matter, refer [What is Meta protocol for re-requesting ignored feature requests?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/106860/165773) and questions linked to it at at MSE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that bounties, being one of most popular ideas expressed in these discussions, apply only at MSE. At per site metas there is no way to set bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over here your options are narrower: edit, answer, discuss in chat, maybe ask non-duplicate question or do something like was done in famous [(4 years later)...](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7935/31260) request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27220" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8222" RevisionGUID="f5cede33-acb8-41e5-8175-a9891d656de4" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Questions that merely ask &quot;What is the best way to do something&quot; are not answerable.  Because there are always several ways to solve a problem in computing, **there is no &quot;best&quot; way; there is only the way that most effectively solves your specific problem,** in whatever way you define &quot;effective.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So instead of asking what is the best way, **tell us what &quot;best&quot; means to you.**  Do you want it to be the fastest code?  The least amount of code?  The most flexible or modular code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't respond with &quot;I want it to be all of these things.  I want it to be the 'best'.&quot;  **Design goals can often conflict:** to get the fastest possible code, you sometimes have to sacrifice readability and maintainability.  So tell us which characteristics are the most important to you.  Tell us, for example, that you're willing to sacrifice readability for speed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Don't respond with a tautology.**  &quot;I want it to be the kind of code most software developers regard as industry standard&quot; doesn't tell us anything more about what &quot;best&quot; means to you, unless you can point to an actual formal standard like an ISO standard that objectively defines &quot;best&quot; in your specific situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27221" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8235" RevisionGUID="d85b7e25-f160-4488-babd-51a53f05816f" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Since you seem to be mostly active at Stack Overflow, the main (and essentially the only) difference you will probably observe at Programmers is absence of debugging help questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators at this site were given a [guidance](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31225279#31225279 &quot;delete everything that's blatantly off-topic as soon as it appears&quot;) to quickly delete such questions and as far as I can tell they happily follow this recommendation. Also, community over here is quite [unwelcoming](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7864/31260) towards debugging questions so you may notice many of them quickly closed at score -3 and lower and deleted by 20K users even before moderators intervene.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for bikeshedding / [beat the strawman](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/314341/mvc-as-a-subset-of-client-server-architecture#comment664445_314341 &quot;'Someone dumps a question with a simple but terribly misguided / flawed assumption and answerers pile on it competing who would be the best in trashing it. This genre will definitely be popular (as it's essentially a sub-genre of bikeshedding). And it will be widespread because it is dead easy to construct such strawmans to beat'&quot;) kind questions, there is not really much difference. I spend quite a bit of time in SO close queue and it looks like such questions are posted to SO at about the same rate as here and standards of both sites have nothing to do with this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What looks to you like more encouragement here is misleading impression.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only reason why more of Programmers questions of this kind get and stick in hot questions is that system has special adjustment &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; that pushes Stack Overflow questions out of HNQ list after few hours while Programmers questions, just like all other sites, stick in the list for days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;For readers who may be not aware of that, purpose of [hot questions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/hot-questions/info) is established pretty firmly: this feature is there only to show network wide audience entertaining / interesting questions. Those interested can refer MSE for more details on that: [What is the Goal of “Hot Network Questions”?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/165773)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness you may also notice that Programmers get a bit more of project management questions than Stack Overflow. But as far as I can tell there is not much of a difference really, probably because these questions tend to be better handled at other site (PM.SE).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7182/31260&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;If you're interested, special adjustment mentioned above is [explained in more details here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/250154/165773). Official reason for this adjustment is to prevent SO questions dominating hot list but this is nonsense, ignore it. If they wanted just to avoid SO domination, they would implement the adjustment differently.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;There is a parameter in hotness formula that controls just how to limit amount of questions from single site and tweaking this parameter would guarantee desired limit for questions that can enter the list. Instead of simply changing this parameter they picked an indirect way that makes SO questions leave hot list faster which apparently was the main purpose of this adjustment. The reason they wanted that was to avoid too loud meta complaints when SO questions stick in the list ([&quot;croissants&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/190106/165773) probably scared them).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Programmers also complain about HNQ and we even [delete worst of such questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7525/31260) but this site is too small and SE management doesn't give a damn. About 2-3 months ago Shog told me that they are perfectly happy with the way how hot questions work and they don't plan for any changes in that (indeed why would they now that they shut down complaints from the only site that was big enough to force them change).&lt;/sub&gt; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27222" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6681" RevisionGUID="6347a0e2-4800-4c7b-a28f-36c7f12a19fa" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Let's look at a block of &quot;No Action Needed&quot; reviews:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![No action needed][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What constitutes a 'reviewed' review?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Leaving a comment&#xD;&#xA; * Up voting a comment&#xD;&#xA; * Up voting the post&#xD;&#xA; * Down voting the post&#xD;&#xA; * Flagging (or close voting)&#xD;&#xA; * Editing the post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If something is likely to be closed, even if one doesn't agree with the closing philosophy leaving a comment suggesting for how to refocus the question in a way that isn't likely to get closed.  Alternatively, editing it to try to make it something that won't get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a no action needed it means that ***none*** of the above reasons are applicable or needed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Not bad enough to down vote&#xD;&#xA;* Not good enough to up vote&#xD;&#xA;* No existing comments to up vote to help suggest a better question or improve the existing answer&#xD;&#xA;* No additional guidance needed to help improve the post (note: likely in conflict with 'not good enough to up vote' - it is unlikely that *both* of these are true, but may be the case)&#xD;&#xA;* Grammar, spelling, and formatting of the post are acceptable and don't need any work (note: it's a good thing to click 'edit' to see the actual markdown and make sure there isn't formatting that has been lost that needs to be brought back out like a numbered list or line breaks)&#xD;&#xA;    * There is no unnecessary preamble or bit at the end that is appropriate to remove ('hello', 'thanks', 'hope this helps', etc... consider also linking to [Should 'Hi', 'thanks,' taglines, and salutations be removed from posts?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2950/should-hi-thanks-taglines-and-salutations-be-removed-from-posts))&#xD;&#xA;    * Double check the title.  Tags in the title are unnecessary ([MSE guidance](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19190/should-questions-include-tags-in-their-titles)).  Make sure the title of the question matches the question.&#xD;&#xA;* On topic without any need to migrate or suggest a way to make it narrower, less opinion, or need to refocus it from an existing off topic reason.&#xD;&#xA;* Not a duplicate of another post (do a search - especially the case with questions, many new users don't know of existing questions)&#xD;&#xA;* Not posted elsewhere on Stack Exchange (example: [&quot;This was posted on Stack Overflow as well, where it was closed and has now been deleted.&quot;](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241598/cms-desktop-app-control#comment486410_241598) from http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/241598/cms-desktop-app-control could have either been up voted or researched and written themselves)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't want to check these things, either hit skip or don't do the First Posts review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Selecting 'no action needed' means that someone else *can't* do the review to check these things, completing it and giving guidance to the new P.SE user that may help them have a more positive experience on P.SE and Stack Exchange as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is in part an issue with the system.  The First Post review queue, by its nature, has binding votes for *every* review.  This isn't something that people are always aware of, but the First Post review (and late answer) are both review queues that one should approach with all the seriousness of a diamond mod because there's no redo or community safety net for these reviews.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/IxqNK.png &quot;No action needed?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27223" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8273" RevisionGUID="e444791d-4047-43d8-8249-edd3a53ef087" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The point of [magic links](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/94000) is to link to a site quickly in comments.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;`[softwareengineering.se]` is quite a mouthful. It looks like `[se.se]` is not a valid link to our site and it's questionable if it ever will be as a two letter abbreviation might cause naming conflicts in the future and/or might be reserved for bigger sites like `[so]` and `[su]`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a compromise, `[programmers.se]` still works for backwards compatibility (I guess) and is not quite as long as `[softwareengineering.se]`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will this backwards compatibility ever cease to exist?&#xD;&#xA;**Is it safe to keep using `[programmers.se]`?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27225" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8288" RevisionGUID="13e5b094-e839-41b8-a149-5bd499417f1b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Stack Exchange recently started a collaboration project with the University of Melbourne, in an attempt to improve the automatic detection of duplicate questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More information on the project and a call for help from the community can be found here: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/286329/project-reduplication-of-deduplication-has-begun&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In it, Tim Post mentions that Doris Hoogeveen (me) will post a message on the different meta sites to let you know that we're ready for help. This is it!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a brief summary, the project is about finding ways to automatically determine if two questions are duplicates, and also to detect the opposite: falsely tagged duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;To validate our methods, we need manual judgements from people who really know the data. This is where we need your help.&#xD;&#xA;It is impossible to manually annotate all the data from Stack Exchange, and so we have applied several filters to make sure we only show you questions pairs with a high likelihood of being duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Participation is completely optional, and there's no minimum time requirement.&#xD;&#xA;If you are interested in participating in the project, please head over to the annotation interface, which can be found here: http://hum.csse.unimelb.edu.au/se-annotate/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can log in with your Stack Exchange account, so no sign up is required.&#xD;&#xA;The site also contains some more information on the project, which might answer some questions you may have. And I'm also happy to answer them here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27226" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6742" RevisionGUID="cff9b6fe-fc2a-4646-ae5f-a8736838ca00" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;I'll start off with the irony of this question being tagged with a discussion and point out that [meta is different](https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/whats-meta).&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why don't discussion questions work in Stack Exchange? What is it about the software and the format that leads to people closing these questions as primarily opinion? or rejecting edits that invite discussion on the subject?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27227" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8378" RevisionGUID="3d6f5b6c-73d6-4d3f-a2c5-984cba821806" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Q &amp; A, of the type that we practice here at Stack Exchange, rests on a few fundamental principles and assumptions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Each site has [a specific subject matter area](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tour).  Questions asked on Stack Exchange must fit the subject matter of the site you post them on.&#xD;&#xA;2.  The questions you ask must have [a well-defined scope][1]; that is, they must be specific enough to be answerable.  What that means in practice is that you can't ask questions that solicit opinions, ask for a list of things, make product recommendations, or are too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are very good reasons why we follow these principles.  If you've ever tried to get an answer to one of your questions in a forum environment, you already know why we have these conditions: it's very nearly impossible to get a decent answer on a forum.  In short, [forums suck](http://www.aneclecticmind.com/2008/04/11/why-forums-suck/).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we do everything we can to avoid those forum behaviors that prevent people from getting good answers to their questions.  This reduces the noise and is more attractive to those subject matter experts who are here to provide [answers to your specific questions](https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are not [aware of these principles](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7931/faq-for-stack-exchange-sites), or fail to follow them for whatever reason, you're going to have a very hard time participating anywhere on Stack Exchange.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27228" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6746" RevisionGUID="9febcb20-0050-48ed-86a0-0c4f809b9c14" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Comment [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6735/how-important-is-it-for-new-users-to-be-able-to-ask-question-at-programmers-imme#comment18232_6735 &quot;'yet another step that would push new users away from this site, and as I pointed out here, new users are needed to keep any online community healthy...'&quot;) expressed concern on whether site is attractive for new users. I would like some statistics to learn more about that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per user ids it looks like site has got 5,000 new users this month, I would like to find more about their activity, how many of them are registered, how many asked, answered, commented, suggested an edit, voted etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the purpose of comparison, I would like to also have similar stats on how it was half year ago, one, two and three years ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is how I would want to measure trends in user &quot;stickiness&quot;: by comparing how many of users registered in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 visited site for 5, 10, 30, 100 days. [SEDE](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/data-explorer/info) query for this would be a piece of cake if [visited days](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/visited-days) were in schema... but these aren't." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27229" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8415" RevisionGUID="b52881dc-9506-41f3-9f83-f3f75176b4c5" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:39.830" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Are questions about flowcharts appropriate on Software Engineering?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/290129/269617" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27230" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6783" RevisionGUID="842da56a-40df-4944-bd32-4b1727dcfac8" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [language highlighting rules][1] are determined by the tags applied to the question. In this case, the question doesn't have any language tags, so it looks like you need to be explicit. You'd also have to be explicit in the event that your code was in a language that was not part of the question's tags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/184108/what-is-syntax-highlighting-and-how-does-it-work" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27231" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6795" RevisionGUID="f724c768-e707-4695-bd19-9d008767c8ba" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Suggest to perform automatic checks for cross-posting (including deleted SO cross-posts, like [this one](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26059920/what-makes-the-functional-and-logic-programming-paradigms-well-suited-for-progra) for example) and question block / warning at Stack Overflow when post enters close queue, not only when it is attempted to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If check detects a problem, system would raise automatic flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I expect above preemptive checks to help us more efficiently address attempts to abuse the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Annotate user accounts network-wide when they get rate-limited or banned](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112598/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A few of the migration rules are skipped if it is a ♦ moderator clicking the button, however: the &quot;is the user suspended or blocked from asking&quot; is **always** applied.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Stats on how attempts to circumvent SO question blocks impact other sites](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237534/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; working on a design for enhancing our our recidivism system to discourage this and other sorts of unproductive behavior...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Check to make sure a duplicate does not exist before migrating](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/225679/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A migration will be rejected if...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - ...An *exact*, word-for-word duplicate already exists on the destination site, or...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - ...A question created within a week of the one being migrated exists on the destination site with the same author and *very* similar body text.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Moderators can override this restriction...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [What difficulties could be there in establishing automatic checks for SO cross-posts...](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/what-difficulties-could-be-there-in-establishing-automatic-checks-for-so-cross-p#comment17969_6660)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [At smaller sites, penalize hot questions having 3-4 close votes](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; At smaller sites... closing a question takes hours or even days...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [How many questions do we get from users recently banned at SO, how many of these are closed / deleted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6592/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Provide 10k users more close votes](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6507/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Refund close votes for questions deleted on the same day](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237386/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [Recover Close votes if asker deletes their own question](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/69166/165773)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27232" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6804" RevisionGUID="283d95fe-bc41-41e1-ad98-18d0f558655a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Every now and then the moderators will get a flag identifying a possible duplicate question that is a very general or root issue to the potential problem or query given by the OP of the flagged question.  The reasoning behind this is that the canonical accepted answer of the general popular question happens to be also a good answer for the dupe question that is far more specific.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flagged Duplicate: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/252262/should-you-ever-use-private-on-fields-and-methods-in-c&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Original Question with Canonical Answer: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/141005/how-would-you-know-if-youve-written-readable-and-easily-maintainable-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am unsure the best way to proceed with this.  Historically I would decline such flags with the reasoning that the questions are far too different to be considered duplicate.  The OP certainly might not understand the general root of their question, hence why they are asking in the first place and I can see them becoming confused and angry about this without a good deal of explanation as to why the canonical answer on the dupe is actually fundamentally answering their question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other argument for declining the flag is that the flagged question is so specific that the canonical answer while technically correct, is insufficient to explain the context about why.  In the example above, the canonical answer is to &quot;Peer review your code&quot;, which implies that the specific question about why one would explicitly declare the private keyword in C# is intrinsically related to coding style on the team.  The canonical answer I feel is not good enough and doesn't provide enough context specifically to answer the flagged question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand the other side of this too that the question is actually pretty basic and doesn't really show much research on the part of the OP, or demonstrates an actual problem the OP faces so to reduce noise on the site we can link all of these to the question with the canonical answer.  If the community feels this is the best option then I fully support it with the caveat that we should take extra effort to adequately explain to users why we are doing this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the opinion of the community on how to handle this going forward?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The relevant MSE Discussion on this:&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/217401/does-the-new-guidance-on-duplicate-questions-suggest-closing-a-question-as-dupli&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are not necessarily beholden to the outcome of question on MSE and if we don't feel this will work well for our community we are free to come to our own conclusion.  I do think we should very carefully consider the outcome of MSE discussions however on this site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27233" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6835" RevisionGUID="2a501ca1-d079-4636-976f-cc287b781882" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The list of topics for each site should be on [`/help/on-topic`](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions asking which site to ask on are on-topic for the Meta sites. If you think your question might be on-topic for XX.SE, you should ask in meta.XX.SE if you are right in your assessment.  &#xD;&#xA;If you don't have a clue which site to ask on, ask for a site recommendation at [meta.SE](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/site-recommendation)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27234" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6845" RevisionGUID="9acd506d-7a80-410d-839d-c79e44b95f31" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here's an example comment I leave to a&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##blatant, zero effort homework dump:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; `recommended reading: **[Open letter to students with homework problems](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6166/)** &quot;...If your question on Programmers.SE is just a copy paste of homework problem, expect it to be downvoted, closed, and deleted - potentially in quite short order.&quot;`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above is markdown allowing straight copy and paste into comments field.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After commenting like above, I also flag the question to moderator:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; `Request for speedy deletion: this question is a copy-paste of something like homework assignment or interview questions, with no effort on the part of the OP to do the assignment himself. (flagging as per advice at meta discussion http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/3837/31260)`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above, again, can be copied and pasted straight into flag message.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;After above, if I am not out of votes, I also vote down and close, as this increases chance that next time user wants to ask the question, they will be notified to be more careful as described in [Warn new users when they ask a question after a previous question is closed, downvoted, or deleted](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/231118/165773):&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;Starting today, we are going to show a warning to folks who are about to post a question or an answer when they already have a track record of ... suboptimal questions&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27235" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6861" RevisionGUID="b6c13101-9287-4d74-91e4-722b7952b19a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="What's up with the [Meaning of MIT license](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/255227/31260)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This five years old post was recently migrated from SO to Programmers. Not that I complain, but regular migrations like that are blocked by system (see [Disable migration for questions older than 60 days](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/151890/165773)). What makes this question special to overrule this limitation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I briefly checked recent posts at [MSO](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/) and [MSE](https://meta.stackexchange.com/) and found nothing about this migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Question revision history at SO](http://stackoverflow.com/posts/706799/revisions) shows couple funny changes made recently:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Deleted by Tim Post♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Locked by Community♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Migrated Away to programmers.stackexchange.com by Tim Post♦&#xD;&#xA;  	  	 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Closed as &quot;off-topic&quot; by Tim Post♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Undeleted by Tim Post♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Reopened by Tim Post♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Migration Rejected 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Unlocked by Community♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Deleted by Shog9♦ 	occurred 19 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Locked by Community♦ 	occurred 19 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Migrated Away to meta.programmers.stackexchange.com by Shog9♦&#xD;&#xA;  	  	 	occurred 19 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Closed as &quot;off topic&quot; by Wouter J, egrunin, msmucker0527, Mario, Linger&#xD;&#xA;  	  	 	occurred Mar 6 '13 at 20:37&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;FWIW it looks like a duplicate of [MIT vs. BSD vs. Dual License](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/121998/31260) to me.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27236" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6876" RevisionGUID="c9ca0235-ae95-46c0-878a-891831652c35" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Homework is especially problematic on a number of STEM related stack exchange sites.   There is a constant deluge of it on StackOverflow, [Math](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16734/are-they-really-learning-something), and Physics... and we get a bit of the spillover from StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fundamental problems with trying to tack homework on to an existing stack exchange site are the combination of (what many see as) arbitrary constraints ('do this without using a for loop') and that the person asking the question isn't going to necessarily understand the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, students seem to have great difficulty searching and finding [existing answers](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11409621/creating-a-triangle-with-for-loops) for their questions that they ask [again](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16477858/nested-for-loop-for-a-triangle) and [again](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14493599/java-creating-a-triangle-with-numbers-using-nested-for-loops) and [again](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20777749/triangle-that-prints-with-numbers-as-rows) and [again](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22430158/i-want-this-program-to-print-the-numbers-in-triangle-shape) and... well.  That question gets asked [a lot](http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=triangle+java+number+is%3Aquestion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This existing knowledge base is the center of the of the Q&amp;A format and it is key that people asking questions use that knowledge base and then ask a good question if its not there.  Many homework problems fall into that category of missing what is there and not asking a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most people in Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE answering questions are not educators.  We're posed with a problem and we look to solve it.  We take shortcuts.  We skip over things.  We don't know what the educators are actually trying to teach.  In many cases, for us (professionals in the work force) trying to help students, they will learn really bad habits that miss the target of what is trying to be taught.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually teaching someone requires a dense two way communication in most cases.  Our answers are (should be) the quality of a good lecture.  Thats not a two way communication.  When a student is having trouble and has missed (the point of) the lecture, us, providing another lecture isn't going to help.  What they need to do is go to some place that provides the means for two way communication.  Office hours are the best option there.  Failing that, a chat or discussion oriented site is probably a better option for working through the understandings and misunderstandings of the material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've helped people work through a number of homework issues ***in chat***.  The back and forth of explaining and re-explaining something when it wasn't understood the first time - and me actually getting the feedback of what is and isn't understood as I type it is key.  Doing such a question as Q&amp;A on the main site would have been tedious or a chameleon question that keeps morphing with the new understanding and gets re-asked again and again with edits and updates that leaves the resulting mess something that is so specific to *that* person asking that it becomes useless for the site as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an aside, I will point out that there are some entire SE sites that are dedicated to specific courses (this appears to be a bit of a trial run to see if it works or not): http://cs50.stackexchange.com and http://edx-cs169-1x.stackexchange.com are two that I've stumbled across.  Note that these are designed for asking for help about specific problems with well known (to the people answering) constraints.  They still don't do the dense communication well though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange format is specially designed to try to avoid, hinder, and prohibit the back and forth and conversations one finds in forums.  It does this to maintain the focus on Q&amp;A, not discussions.  I'd suggest giving [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html) a read.  In particular:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4.) And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale. Scale alone kills conversations, because conversations require dense two-way conversations. In conversational contexts, Metcalfe's law is a drag. The fact that the amount of two-way connections you have to support goes up with the square of the users means that the density of conversation falls off very fast as the system scales even a little bit. You have to have some way to let users hang onto the less is more pattern, in order to keep associated with one another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to an Area 51 proposal for homework, I'd give [Request for a homework Stack Exchange site](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/148595/request-for-a-homework-stack-exchange-site) a read.  The proposal itself appears to have been [deleted](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/44531/stack-overflow-homework). You can get an idea of some bits about it on [with this search](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/search?q=homework+is%3Aquestion). You might poke on [Meta.StackExchange](http://meta.stackexchange.com) for more on why homework and SE's Q&amp;A format don't work well (I'll warn you that you might get a few down votes if you try asking for such without being aware of the history to it on MSE though). " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27237" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6885" RevisionGUID="8903ba28-2d18-4e10-a042-ebd0dbd3a094" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Questions older than 60 days can no longer be migrated][1], not even by moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question, albeit being off topic on both Programmers and Stack Overflow, is fairly popular and generated a few very useful answers. This, I assume, is why Thomas decided to place a historical lock on it. The lock will prevent it from being deleted by the community, which is what usually happens to off topic questions after a while.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/151890/disable-migration-for-questions-older-than-60-days" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27238" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6915" RevisionGUID="c3d5781e-cde3-44c6-ad94-80758c947313" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="When a question is edited it [shows back up](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/48578/165773 &quot;see 'What can cause my question to be bumped?'&quot;) on the recently active questions.  People read it again and it takes time from people.  Deleting a question removes it from view and allows the OP (if he or she should desire) to be able to edit it (you *can* edit deleted posts if you can see them - such as 10k users and the OP can) and flag it for undeletion.  In the meantime, deletion prevents further down votes of the question and can reduce the comment drama that can detract from the rest of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most recently, this happened with the question [Steps for App Development?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/257714/steps-for-app-development) (10k link):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original version:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##App Development minimal knowledge&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to create some mobile and web applications quickly. I am aware of the 'full stack' but I do not know any of its associated technologies. If I were to use 'back-end as a service' what is left for me to do in deploying an app besides simply coding it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The edited version:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Steps for App Development?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to create some mobile and web applications quickly. I am working in 'full stack' environment but I do not know any of its associated technologies. If I were to start there and use 'back-end as a service' what additional steps do I need to take in deploying an app besides simply coding it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the comments on it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/…](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490) –  gnat yesterday&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I made the question &quot;less broad&quot; by asking for &quot;additional steps,&quot; and wonder if it can be re-opened in its current form. –  Tom Au 22 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @TomAu that still doesn't make it not too broad. What technologies are known? What end result is desired? Mobile and web apps are very different. Is this android or iOS or that windows phone thing? Do you even have the right hardware? If we're talking about web apps is this to be on the intranet? or the cloud? There is ***much*** more information that the OP needs to provide to make this an answerable question. –  MichaelT 22 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this question, I can think of dozens of ways to answer it for various combinations of technology.  For ruby, it would be one thing, for a php another, for python another, for the .NET suite another, for Java yet another. And then I'd answer it answer it differently if this was being deployed on the corporate intranet vs putting it out in the intranet... and then there's the mobile bit that is very different from web apps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, the OP doesn't even know where to begin and no amount of tweaking of the question will change it from that unless the OP provides the additional information about the actual problem being encountered and the path they are trying to follow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comment that gnat provided to https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490 exactly details what is wrong with the question and that *all* of those things need to be fixed before it is reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deleting the question prevents people from spending additional, undue time on the question. Questions that don't fix the close reason (and *really* fix it, not just a slight narrowing of scope) don't get reopened.  Transforming it from one close reason to another (for example, unclear to a poll) is also not a useful edit. Consider how the question would be answered and if those answers would be ones that meet the desired quality of Programmers.SE's answers.  If there are too many possible answers or the answers would require pages of tutorials then it is still too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bumping a heavily down voted closed (or on hold) question will draw increased scrutiny of the question which, if it's not a good question, can lead to it getting deleted more rapidly than the [roomba](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/177675/165773 &quot;automatic deletion&quot;) would (and in some cases because the roomba won't).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is an edit to be made, fix *all* of the problems and make it into a good question not just a less bad one.  Alternatively, ask clarifying comments for the OP to respond to (and if the OP puts it in the comments, *then* edit those comments into the question)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27239" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6953" RevisionGUID="806e7d14-ba33-47ae-99eb-974614beff4c" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Update** - follow-up feature request to establish popup as discussed here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6983/improve-question-quality-by-informing-askers-of-expectations-in-some-career-rela&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As explained in [another answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6951/31260), tag specific [popup](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvXIT.png &quot;like this&quot;) can be used to guide askers and editors willing to use it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an [example](https://anime.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1083/improve-question-quality-by-informing-users-of-reverse-image-search-sites) of tag popup request. Process to create such a popup is described [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/242252/automatic-warnings-of-dangerous-tags/242355#comment792260_242355):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Post a [feature-request] for each tag, with specific guidance (ideally linking to a meta post if non-trivial so I don't have to edit these all the time) and justification for needing something more than the tag excerpt. Let folks discuss it, then ping me ([Community Manager]) if there's support... This is really something that should be discussed within each community, as these might become annoying if over-used (ideally you don't want multiple tags on a single question to produce warnings) and the guidance should reflect the lessons learned from handling these questions.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Suggestion to create a popup for this tag ([tag:job-market]) and other particularly troublesome career related tags:  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market], [tag:resume], [tag:career-transition], [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag popup content is derived from [career-development tag wiki](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/career-development/info):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** Career advice is off-topic per the [Help Center](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  Please note that most career advice questions end up being closed for being too broad or impractical; try to make yours a [good subjective question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they require the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;* Please make sure your question has the proper scope.  It needs to apply to other programmers besides yourself.  &#xD;&#xA;* If your question can also be applied to other job fields, then it does not uniquely apply to software development and is not on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;* _Before_ asking, review this meta guidance: [Why was my question closed or down voted? -&gt; Career or education advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488).  Make sure your question avoids the problems listed in the guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;This post is made community wiki in order to simplify editing.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27240" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6991" RevisionGUID="48c1635c-f875-4297-842c-617df990e816" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Your data is inaccurate because SEDE doesn't account for [deleted questions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/157462/165773) but anyway, there are few factors worth thinking of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, Programmers were getting a reasonable mix of good and bad questions related to careers, software recommendations and code reviews. Even when topicality of these was slippery, well presented questions about interesting, real problems were considered worthy of upvotes by many readers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nowadays, we lost a good part but bad part remains with us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean, users capable of asking good questions in above topics, eventually find their way and stick to specialized sites - [TWP](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [CR](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), [SR](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is left to us are askers who _want_ to ask but _can't_ make a good question. They post (or cross-post) their stuff at Programmers, Stack Overflow, Yahoo Answers, anywhere, in a hope to find a [kind soul to feed them](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/276637/839601). This contributes to lowering average quality of questions in these topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another stream of low quality questions are those from users blocked / warned at Stack Overflow. [Per recent stats](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7332/31260), we're getting 4-5 delete-worthy questions a day from these folks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the past, they could pollute SO with their low quality stuff for months or even years but for last year or two, due to improvements in [burning down SO close queue](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251489/lets-burn-down-the-close-queue), they started hitting question blocks and warnings more and more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Per stats, Programmers appear to be [most popular of SE sites](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773) among this category of askers. After being blocked or scared by warnings at Stack Overflow they simply try to dump their low quality stuff over here, thus also lowering average quality level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If honestly, I can't see what we can do to help with the quality of questions like above, nor how we can control these in review queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't realistically expect askers of bad questions to &quot;refocus&quot; to specialized sites because at these sites, such questions seem to be detected and rejected even faster than over here. This is probably because of clearer, narrower specialization regulars at these sites build a better sense of what is good and what is not (at least that's how I feel at TWP).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also can't imagine how it would be possible to make users blocked / warned at SO stop their attempts to leak through Programmers. I can't think of a way to tell someone facing a [block message at SO](http://stackoverflow.com/help/question-bans) that they shouldn't try their luck at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;**Wait!** You've recently been blocked (warned) at Stack Overflow. Consider that quality requirements at Programmers are similar. Note that Stack Overflow topics are _not_ covered here and that your questions [can't even be migrated to Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;) because of the block.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Are you sure that you want to proceed asking question?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Click &lt;kbd&gt;No&lt;/kbd&gt; to cancel asking.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Click &lt;kbd&gt;Back&lt;/kbd&gt; to return to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!--&#xD;&#xA;Note to editors. Choices above are *intentionally* limited to No/Cancel - absence of option &quot;Yes&quot; to proceed asking question is not a simple mistake. If you plan to add such an option, make sure to also remove this comment, otherwise I will rollback your edit for not giving enough attention to edited content.&#xD;&#xA;--&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27241" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7020" RevisionGUID="7672a2c7-3ce0-4baf-9242-072f6a6d3aa8" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="If a first time asker has an SO account that was recently (say, within a week) [question blocked](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/252645/165773 &quot;for more details on this, see 'When does the question ban get applied?' at MSE&quot;) over there, how about showing them a warning like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** You've recently been blocked at Stack Overflow. Consider that quality requirements at Software Engineering are similar. Note that Stack Overflow topics are _not_ covered here and that your questions [can't even be migrated to Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;) because of the block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This hopefully would help them avoid further frustration if they get down and close votes, angry comments, blocked migrations and question block over here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why can't we raise up questions quality?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6990/31260)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Per stats, Programmers appear to be [most popular of SE sites](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/237540/165773) among this category of askers. After being blocked or scared by warnings at Stack Overflow they simply try to dump their low quality stuff over here...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;SE might want to think about how to improve their UX in order to educate during question composition...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;efforts in SO close vote queue make me think that quite a lot of users started hitting the question ban there... how many questions per day are posted by users that were banned at SO less than a month ago, and how many of these questions end up closed / deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27242" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7051" RevisionGUID="d92d5e90-0cf6-4448-999a-0cb26b97591b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked [this][1] this question. It was put on hold by [Bart van Ingen Schenau][2], who kindly and patiently explained that he rejected the question because of a community consensus that programmers cannot authoritatively answer questions involving the legal topic at hand (copyright law).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have searched [Programmers Meta][3], and I find no evidence of such a consensus. To the contrary, I find a pronounced lack of consensus. Relevant posts seem to be [What types of legal questions are on-topic here?][4], [Are software law questions off-topic here?][5], and [“consult your lawyer” answers][6]. Among those discussions, there seems to be a contingent arguing that programmers are qualified to answer no legal questions; a contingent arguing that programmers can answer only those legal questions intimately related to programming; a contingent arguing that programmers can answer a wide range of legal topics as long as &quot;common sense&quot; is applied to the interpretation of the answers; and a contingent arguing that programmers may potentially be able to answer any legal question. No contingent clearly dominates the others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a newcomer browsing the documented record, my perception is that the community is very far from a consensus on this matter. Nevertheless, community consensus was cited in Mr. Schenau's explanation for the rejection of my question. The apparent implication is that a non-existent community standard is being used to justify the rejection of questions on Programmers Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I come to Meta (at Mr. Schenau's suggestion) in search of clarity. Does there exist a consensus on programmers' inability to answer questions on copyright law sufficient to justify the rejection of questions on that topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is attracting answers which are not quite on-point, so I think it would help if I elaborate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the help center guidelines are out-of-sync with community standards, especially when it comes to deciding whether or not legal questions are off-topic. I suspect what has happened is that the community has formed a shared opinion over time, but hasn't kept the guidelines up-to-date. That's okay -- We can fix it by establishing what the community standards are, then updating the guidelines to reflect them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start with the one question where I've been told there is a consensus: Does everyone agree that programmers cannot authoritatively answer questions of copyright law? If yes, then let's edit the guidelines to say that copyright questions are off-topic for that reason. If no, then let's tell people to stop citing that as a reason for closing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems likely that follow-up questions will be necessary. Doc Brown says we shouldn't encourage legal advice because it may be illegal to do so, or carry too much responsibility. Maybe we should look for a consensus on that point and, if we find one, write that into the guidelines. Telastyn suggests that copyright questions are too specific to be useful. Perhaps the community agrees with that, and it should be written into the guidelines. Snowman suggests that legal answers carry too big a risk of leading to bad decisions. Etc. Etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But let's take things one step at a time. The question on the table is whether or not we agree that programmers are incapable of giving authoritative answers to copyright questions. Yes or no?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks to everyone who answered or commented on this question. Here is a summary of what I learned:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Some respondents suggest that my question is based on a misconception. I had believed that Programmers Stack Exchange first establishes a consensus on which topics should be allowed, then writes those criteria into the help center guidelines, then instructs its moderators to close only those questions which fail to meet the guidelines. (Let's call this System A.) However, Eric King, Walter Mitty, and Rob Y suggest that Programmers Stack Exchange doesn't work this way. Instead, moderators vote to close and reopen questions at their own discretion, and the balance of votes, not the help center guidelines, determines what is on-topic or off-topic. Consensus doesn't play a formal role in the process, but you can infer consensus by looking at which questions remain closed and which remain open. (Let's call this System B.) I felt this was too big a concept to address properly in the comments here, so I started a [new question][7] to discuss it. Thank you to Eric, Walter, and Rob for opening my eyes to System B. It explains a lot of what I see on PSE, and it helps me to understand the replies to my question. If Stack Exchange does, in fact, work along the lines of System B, then my original question and my earlier edit in which I suggest that we bring the help center guidelines up-to-date with community standards are misguided; the site simply doesn't work the way I expected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Some respondents assert that the help center guidelines prohibit most legal questions through their prohibition on legal assistance. Snowman says that anything which crosses the line beyond &quot;how the license works&quot; is &quot;explicitly off-topic per the help center&quot;. MichaelT says &quot;The help center already has 'legal advice' in there as off topic&quot; and suggests that this implicitly extends to &quot;interpretations&quot;. Robert Harvey says &quot;Legal interpretation, advice, and assistance are all the same thing.&quot; My conclusion is that some moderators believe the help center contains a broad prohibition on legal questions, and may use it to justify the closure of any question with a legal aspect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) Several respondents went beyond answering whether or not there is a consensus on whether programmers can authoritatively answer questions of copyright law, and tried to explain why programmers cannot or should not answer legal questions in general. The diversity of these replies convinces me that there is no doctrine on the subject, but rather a bunch of individual theories.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/266445/is-early-binding-legally-constrained-while-late-binding-is-not#&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/5099/bart-van-ingen-schenau&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=legal/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/89961/consult-your-lawyer-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7056/is-the-vote-to-close-process-how-pse-finds-consensus-on-appropriate-topics" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27243" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7091" RevisionGUID="a898b6ad-e7e4-4915-934d-5b43240a821b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="We all know what the problems with most &quot;best practices&quot; questions is.  Quite Often, it is [spotting a herd in the distance and going trotting off after it.](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354)  The other problem is that they can often be too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what, after all, is a site like Programmers all about, if it's not about best practices?  Surely that's what we're all here for: *writing better code.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This morning, we had someone stumble over the [Why is asking a question about best practices a bad thing?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/142353)  So instead of asking a question about bad practices, he asked one about statistical usage of techniques.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Uh, oh.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6984)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, rather than discuss more legalistic ways to screen out &quot;best practices&quot; questions, I am now asking: what elements need to be present in a &quot;best practices&quot; question to make it suitable for Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, I'd like to see more question and answer pairs of the form: *&quot;This practice is preferred because [well-thought out reasons here], and this practice is discouraged because [sensible rationale here].&quot;*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27245" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7183" RevisionGUID="1a1e67fa-a269-449b-96ad-52fdd8a4d8e3" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="## What is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question on Software Engineering Stack Exchange (previously known as Programmers) would be a good question on Stack Overflow.  This isn't to say that if it is on topic on Stack Overflow then it is on topic here.  Rather that it's not too broad, not opinion polling, and not unclear. If you have the slightest inkling of closing the question for any of those reasons, don't suggest Software Engineering.SE.  Those reasons span all of the Stack Exchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggesting to someone to repost a question that is too broad or primary opinion would get it closed on Software Engineering.SE too and that's really something we'd rather avoid.  It is no fun to get a question bounced from one site to another and being told repeatedly we don't want it here.  If it needs to be fixed, it needs to be fixed before it is reposted or telling the OP *exactly* what needs to be fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The interpretation of these close reasons is described in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted which may have a bit higher of a bar in some aspects than Stack Overflow.  This meta question also goes into the off topic reasons for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Some commonly referred *poor* questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, we *don't* want these, though it seems like people keep suggesting them to be reposted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I don't understand...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that that boil down to &quot;I don't understand ${concept}&quot; with no additional information about what *is* understood tend to get down voted and closed (too broad). [There is an expectation](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234663/165773) that at least the person read the Wikipedia article on the concept and explained what was understood and not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Here's my problem. Anyone have a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of commonly (incorrectly) referred questions are those of &quot;come up with a design or solution for me.&quot;  Similar to how Stack Overflow has issues with people doing problem statement questions (&quot;write a program that takes the average of three values&quot;), Programmers.SE has similar issues with similar questions (&quot;here is what I want the outcome to be, anyone have a solution?&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither Stack Overflow nor Software Engineering.SE is a code/solution writing service. Just because the question lacks code but has a problem statement doesn't mean it belongs here as is. The question needs to be fixed up significantly before it is reposted on the proper site and suggesting to do so with the question in its current state does a disservice to the person asking the question. For a more detailed outline of what is generally expected at Programmers, see https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A blog I read said...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that are trying to get someone to explain more about something someone said in a blog (or worse - twitter) post also often have trouble with being a good question here.  More about those questions can be read at https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6417/discuss-this-blog&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Our custom off topic reasons&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then there's our off topic reasons that were alluded to above:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What tool, library, language, project, resource to take up or use](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) (the wording was modeled after Stack Overflow's close reason)&#xD;&#xA;* [What career to take or what to study](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980)&#xD;&#xA;* [Assistance in writing or debugging code](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7742/40980)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specific forms of polling that the Q&amp;A format really isn't geared to answer.  While close voters may argue amongst themselves about too broad or the clarity of the question - these reasons often meet with very prompt close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what ***is*** in scope here? I thought it was everything &quot;not programming related&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we have some of the legacy of &quot;not programming related&quot; still hanging over us, the help center is likely the best spot to read for our scope: [What topics can I ask about here?](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - software development methods and practices&#xD;&#xA; - requirements, architecture, and design&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - configuration management, build, release, and deployment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So what questions do you want?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well thought out and researched questions about the [Software Development Life Cycle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg) that aren't code troubleshooting questions.  Remember that algorithm questions are also on topic on Stack Overflow (so [you don't need to migrate those](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/respect-the-community-your-own-and-others/ &quot;'Be a bit jealous of your site - don't blithely turn askers away simply because their question could be asked somewhere else...'&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question, stop into [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard) and ask (we're a friendly bunch).  If it's a good question, we might be able to prod a SO mod into migrating it or help flag it ourselves. I don't believe I've had a flag to migrate a question from SO to P.SE declined - explaining that the person flagging the question, despite the low Stack Overflow rep is a trusted user on the target site and will endeavor to have it remain open on the target site rather than being a rejected migration does go a long ways to helping.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider that many of the &quot;soft and squishy&quot; questions are ones that *can* be answered in chat.  We are easily distracted by actual questions when people ask them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, why so mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software Engineering.SE has a much smaller community than Stack Overflow. We get about 30-40 questions per day.  Stack Overflow gets about 8k questions per day. This is orders of magnitude different in what we look at.  It also partially relates to how many people we have available to moderate the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put this into comparison, the Java tag on Stack Overflow gets more questions in one hour than we get in a day.  We're much more in line with the Perl tag on Stack Overflow, or Matlab and a bit more active than the Delphi tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are days when there are more ***suggestions*** to migrate or repost to Software Engineering.SE than there are questions posted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a bit of a history here.  Back when Software Engineering (Programmers.SE) was changing from its &quot;not programming related&quot; charter to its &quot;conceptual software design questions&quot; we got crap hurled at us. Several times more crap questions were migrated to Programmers.SE each day than were asked on the site.  This lead to the post https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl because we were getting all the questions that were &quot;meh, no code, migrate it to Programmers.SE&quot;.  As an aside, also give https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes a read for some more history.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a new user posts a question and then gets told to repost it on Programmers.SE... and then has it resoundingly trounced and down voted - it's not a good experience for anyone involved.  We really don't want that.  We've got our own set of &quot;why is Programmers.SE so negative&quot; and &quot;why do we get so much crap?&quot; questions in meta too. Exacerbating the problem really doesn't help anyone and it takes up the time of the community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow can completely swamp us with [&quot;post this on Programmers.SE&quot; comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7154/31260 &quot;we even had to introduce a chat bot for identifying when Programmers is mentioned on Stack Overflow&quot;) and when even a fraction of those questions show up here (and get closed) it's problematic. So the attempts to nip it in the bud and try to help educate the person suggesting the reposting, and the person asking the question, and hopefully try to prevent the &quot;no code, repost elsewhere&quot; meme from spreading we will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That you have made it this far, I will apologize for any suggestion that we're a bit terse or angry in the comments. It can be true (though we're not angry - we're just not able to fully express our feelings - it's exasperation and weariness). But when there are a dozen or so comments a day with suggestions one can be a bit sparse with words.  Imagine hanging out on the php tag and writing a customized comment each time someone has a SQL injection vulnerability in the code... yea, it's like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And no, trying to fit all of this in a comment doesn't work either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what can you do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Think about if it's a good question.&#xD;&#xA;* Flag it for migration if it is.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's a really good question, ask in chat here for us to help it move along.&#xD;&#xA;* Avoid bouncing users from one site to another (and having the question get closed on each)&#xD;&#xA;* Try answering good questions on this site to understand what we are looking for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27246" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7237" RevisionGUID="8ac44590-c9c7-4613-b040-c415ad5445f9" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA; - software configuration management&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [how to use specific tools][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career or education advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - [legal advice or aid][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;. **Please keep it professional**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see [the Help Center page about what not to ask][11] as well as the [*Good Subjective, Bad Subjective*][12] and [*Real Questions Have Answers*][13] blog posts for details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][14] or [strongly rooted in opinions][15]. We should be able to answer your questions in the equivalent of a few pages of text and graphics and provide references to support claims. If you have questions that warrant an extended discussion, feel free to [come to chat][16].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before asking, [look around][17] to see if your question has been asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions. It’s also OK to [ask and answer your own question][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for [another Stack Exchange site][19]. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may [commit to][20] or [propose][21] a new side at [Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are created][22].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more details, please see [our curated FAQ on Meta Programmers Stack Exchange][23].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7253/where-does-my-tool-question-go?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1655&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7248/how-do-you-get-20-rep-to-get-into-chat&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/faq/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27247" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7251" RevisionGUID="bba193aa-97c5-4916-a3e5-ce164c345f63" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="As explained in [this answer](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/251744/165773) to related question at MSE, there is no such plan.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More specifically, Triage review was not intended to be applicable network wide; it was designed based on assumptions that apply at Stack Overflow but not necessarily hold at other network sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, per what I additionally learned at MSE ([1](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251737/triage-and-help-improvement-review-queues-at-sites-other-than-stack-overflow#comment822246_251744), [2](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251737/triage-and-help-improvement-review-queues-at-sites-other-than-stack-overflow#comment822318_251744)), site needs to cover following points for Triage to make sense:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. Set the goals (for SO, goals are said to be &quot;de-emphasize questions from folks who haven't yet learned... but don't immediately nuke them&quot; and protect home page from [&quot;wall of crap&quot;](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so))&#xD;&#xA;2. Enough content to keep scoring algorithm relevant - 100 troublesome questions a month won't do, nor probably 1000 would.&#xD;&#xA;3. Timely escape - we don't want automatic scoring nor user flags to hide question for hours solely because there's nobody around to review.&#xD;&#xA;4. It must be clear to many that the existing tools are insufficient: in particular, if the &quot;home page as work area&quot; strategy is working well for a given community, there's little need for anything more elaborate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does above match to what we've got at Programmers? Let's see...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regarding point **#1** about _goals_, first thing that comes to mind is that those stated for SO apply here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given meta discussions, we are interested in helping folks to learn (https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/where-and-how-to-improve-questions) - though I am not completely certain that existing tools are proven as insufficient as implied by point **#4**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another goal, about &quot;wall of crap&quot; at homepage, also looks relevant to us, as indicated by multiple recurring discussions about [too many bad questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7130?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Point **#2**, at first sight, doesn't match. Being 100-200 times smaller than Stack Overflow, Programmers hardly can serve sufficiently reliable data feed into question scoring. One option worth considering to address this is to simply &quot;borrow&quot; Stack Overflow data feed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may work because site topics substantially overlap and, especially, because many troublesome questions over here appear to be posted by users who are simply [trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260). Using same scoring data that is supposed to detect and block them at Stack Overflow would make sense, wouldn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Point **#3**, about timely escape, also doesn't seem to match at first sight. Per my observations, it rather frequently happens that _for several hours_ there's just not enough 3K/diamond regulars around to make decisions supposed to drive Triage. [Not that I complain](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/14524409#14524409 &quot;moderation is just not supposed to be 24x7 watch, this is not how system is expected to work&quot;), but there is just no way to ensure that questions in Triage queue would be reviewed within reasonable timeframe.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Probably the only way to overcome this would be to automatically kick questions off this queue and let them go to homepage after some timeout (say, 1-2 hours) if these haven't got sufficient attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;FWIW it is quite likely that &quot;kick off by timeout&quot; will be eventually implemented (if it is not there already) in Stack Overflow Triage. Thing is, given their scale, as soon as this queue gets into &quot;mass production&quot;, there will be a solid chance that all reviewers press Skip on particular post, making it stuck in there, while as pointed in **#3**, &quot;we don't want automatic scoring nor user flags to hide question for hours solely because there's nobody around to review&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27248" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7257" RevisionGUID="b187f0a3-2715-4879-98c3-ba2a528ba38b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Propose to detect troublesome questions using Stack Overflow quality scoring data and put them to [Triage queue](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage) for an hour or two. If the timeout expires before decision is made, let questions go to homepage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the questions that fail the Triage, one option to handle these is to keep them invisible for a day or two (if not edited), then automatically [bump](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/bump/info) them for a broader community review. This way would keep them away from the top of [newest tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest). (Attentive readers may notice that bumps imply certain pollution of [active tab](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active) but this looks less of an issue to me, as this tab is rather heavily dominated by better questions being bumped by answers and edits. Not to mention that Triage would spare active page from questions deserving flagging for speedy deletion - spam, [homework dumps](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3837/31260), [&quot;cubicle fart&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6677/31260) kind stuff...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reasons why I consider above approach feasible are [laid out here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7251/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  goal, about [&quot;wall of crap&quot;](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so) at homepage, also looks relevant to us, as indicated by multiple recurring discussions about [too many bad questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7130?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...site topics substantially overlap and... many troublesome questions over here appear to be posted by users who are simply [trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260). Using same scoring data that is supposed to detect and block them at Stack Overflow would make sense, wouldn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...there is just no way to ensure that questions in Triage queue would be reviewed within reasonable timeframe... automatically kick questions off this queue and let them go to homepage after some timeout (say, 1-2 hours) if these haven't got sufficient attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-there-something-wrong-with-this-sites-rules-for-posting-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7614/why-are-we-getting-so-many-off-topic-debug-this-for-me-questions-what-can-we&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7593/is-there-any-point-in-this-site-still-existing  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note this one even suggests Stack Overflow (protected by Triage!) as an example of how a site should look like.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7130/so-many-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7239/there-are-way-more-negative-votes-in-the-top-50-questions-than-positive-time-to&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7221/problem-titles-in-off-topic-questions-of-new-users-coming-from-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7020/lets-help-askers-who-are-trying-to-circumvent-question-block-at-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6990/why-cant-we-raise-up-questions-quality&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6850/how-effective-is-the-quality-filter-against-this-question-with-all-caps-brief-ti&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6788/a-lot-of-front-page-down-votes&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6371/how-can-we-encourage-people-to-read-the-faq-before-asking-their-first-question&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5618/better-selection-title-for-top-questions-list&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5377/requiring-registration-to-ask-questions-did-it-made-a-difference&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4029/why-are-there-so-many-minus-points-on-questions-in-this-site&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4009/programmers-stack-exchange-question-downvoting-what-to-do&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3947/what-can-we-do-about-extremely-low-quality-questions-from-unregistered-users&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3778/can-we-have-some-way-to-not-show-closed-questions-on-the-front-page&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2744/how-can-i-create-a-custom-filtered-view-of-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2727/are-we-scaring-off-new-users&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Nov 17 '11)&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4097/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Oct 8 '12)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1589/what-to-do-about-the-proliferation-of-bad-questions-from-generic-accounts&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/841/why-are-almost-half-the-questions-on-the-front-page-marked-closed&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/784/are-we-closing-too-many-good-questions-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27249" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7332" RevisionGUID="0329f9d4-1181-433a-af41-17c228690553" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm working on something related to this right now, so it's worthwhile to pull the data. More on that in a bit, but first...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **1380** questions asked here in the last 30 days, from &#xD;&#xA;- **1219** distinct accounts, of which&#xD;&#xA;- **1100** have/had accounts on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;- **184** of whom hit *some kind of block* on Stack Overflow during the past 60 days (this includes not just the quality-ban, but also spam blocks and 4 types of rate-limits). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From those 184 users...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **227** questions were posted during the past 30 days. &#xD;&#xA;- **152** were closed&#xD;&#xA;- **135** were deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **161** score &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **62** received at least one answer&#xD;&#xA;- **25** score &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For comparison,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **771** questions were closed in total during the past 30 days,&#xD;&#xA;- **636** were deleted,&#xD;&#xA;- **728** score &lt; 0,&#xD;&#xA;- **523** were answered, and &#xD;&#xA;- **323** score &gt; 0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But... that's not the whole story. See, posting here in response to a block on Stack Overflow is a real desperation move - and there are less extreme tactics to try first. Like sockpuppets...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I grabbed the IP addresses associated with those 1380 posts and looked to see how many had been associated with blocked questions on Stack Overflow in the past 60 days. From those 255 IPs,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **267** questions were posted here during the past 30 days,&#xD;&#xA;- **168** of which were closed,&#xD;&#xA;- **154** of which were deleted,&#xD;&#xA;- **176** of which score &lt; 0,&#xD;&#xA;- **87** of which were answered, and&#xD;&#xA;- **35** of which score &gt; 0 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, folks share IPs, and hop between networks. IP-based banning isn't a great long-term solution for anything... But if your goal is to slow down folks searching desperately for any text box into which they can type, then it ain't bad. Which is why we've been working on a system for temporarily classifying networks according to the number of bad posts coming from them. I took the *currently-live* data for this and compared it to the questions posted here during the past 2 days:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **9** questions from potentially &quot;bad&quot; networks&#xD;&#xA;- **4** of these closed&#xD;&#xA;- **5** of these deleted&#xD;&#xA;- **5** scoring &lt; 0&#xD;&#xA;- **2** answered&#xD;&#xA;- **3** upvoted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Total stats for the same time period: 166,47,37,58,30,58.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus far, blocks on SO are a pretty weak predictor for quality. While there is a *massive* overlap between users on both sites, blocked users don't account for a very large chunk of the total here, and the false-positive rate is high. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Network-based tracking is even worse... But there's a caveat: we're *only* tracking networks with problematic posts on Stack Overflow right now, so all of those posts (and users) having issues on Programmers itself don't count. Right now, the network quality signal is used to feed Triage review on Stack Overflow... [Potentially][1], turning on tracking for Programmers would allow it to do the same thing here, and save a considerable amount of time identifying these questions on *both* sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251737/triage-and-help-improvement-review-queues-at-sites-other-than-stack-overflow/251744#251744" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27250" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7366" RevisionGUID="baf9be98-b825-4eec-b385-97f187df39ae" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I flagged a question using this message:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as complained in comments, cross-posted at SO: [programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/284058/…](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/284058/hide-menu-on-load-and-click-toggle-menu#comment584342_284058) (flagging per https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info - **&quot;If you spot a user cross-posting, please make use of moderator flags to inform the moderators&quot;**)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why was my flag declined? Decline message was&#xD;&#xA;&gt; flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;The only reason why I flagged is that instruction quoted above tells to do this. If it wouldn't be there, I wouldn't flag&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27251" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7375" RevisionGUID="7f6774f9-de31-42f5-839f-efb30071da18" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question appears to be quite popular:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134118/why-are-shortcuts-like-x-y-considered-good-practice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently it has over 34K views, making it in [top 250 all time](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A34000) ([top 150](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A34000+closed%3Ano) if we discard closed questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, it managed to attract couple answers of sub-par quality. Can we please do something about these, following [guidance provided in related discussion at MSE](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/103069/165773 &quot;How aggressively should we maintain and improve very popular questions?&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...answers that are strong candidates for deletion:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;  - belong to low rep or anon users with no real commitment to the community&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;  - are *provably* duplicate, that is, were added well after (30+ mins later) other answers that contained the same exact information&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;  - are short in length&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;  - do not explain much of anything" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27252" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7380" RevisionGUID="3a5125fb-e436-43d6-b7c0-6b48e25bee26" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have asked &quot;[Why do famous CMSes uss string flags in the database instead of integers?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/284530/57759)&quot; question here. After asking it (and receiving an answer) I realized that Database Administrators has [`database-design`](http://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/database-design) tag and I have found [this answer](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/216770/189165).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is currently +2 upvoted, but it also contains two close votes. And I wonder, if these are because someone just didn't like my question or maybe because I asked it in the wrong place and I should rather go to Database Designers with next questions of this kind?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27253" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7389" RevisionGUID="62839af4-ee87-4771-9965-4e98078a53c9" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yeah, ok, done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;Editorial note (May 26, 2015):&lt;/b&gt; It's instructive to look back now on the direction the Programmers community took after the enforcement of these standards began... Today it remains an excellent venue for conceptual questions on programming and software development, but has little patience for the sorts of overtly-subjective discussions (some might say &quot;navel-gazing&quot;) that marked its early history. You can read more about the history of this site and these questions in &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144&quot;&gt;veteran moderator Yannis's writeup on Meta Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27256" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7440" RevisionGUID="ab3790e8-7db9-40ad-9ee2-7df39de1d605" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**TL;DR** Suggest to [undelete the question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7438/31260) since it was edited to a better shape and made match the top answer. After that, remove &quot;poll item&quot; answers invalidated by the question edit and reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that in its current shape the question staying visible is not okay, even as historically locked. Low quality &quot;historical context&quot; seems to totally obscure worthy content in there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, it looks like a blatant poll, followed by multiple useless poll item &quot;answers&quot; (including even a [different question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/11110 &quot;blatant not-an-answer: 'Is there any software company in the US besides Microsoft and FogCreek Software which provides private offices for software engineers?'&quot;) posted as an answer) so that most readers could only wonder what was the reason to keep it at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that it looks like an exceptional case for question to be so much overwhelmed with bad content. All other historical questions I recall _do_ have bad stuff (otherwise there'd be no lock), but good parts in these are prominent enough and readers don't have to guess why these were decided to keep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With above in mind, our options seem to be as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1\.** Delete. Easy way out, the one I wanted before I stumbled over this meta question, but now, upon closer studying of the [top answer](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/8203/31260) I am not quite comfortable about it anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2\. Unlock the question, retag to [tag:productivity] (to clear all issues related to ongoing tag cleanups), then pick one of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.1\.** Add a moderator comment referring to [this meta discussion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7437/31260), so that readers interested in historical context could discover it without having to stare at all 20+ low quality answers over there. After that, remove all answers except the top one, then lock it back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.2\.** [Aggressively edit](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1820/168) the question to bring it to better shape, worrying only about keeping consistency with top answer, about like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;So I know everyone here is all about private offices, how many developers actually have them. I am sort of half skeptical. I can believe that lead developers have them, but that's normally just one person in your average office.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;That makes me wonder, how many developers have private offices. Which leads to the actual question: why should they have them?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question [edit summary](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/edit-summary/info &quot;what's this&quot;) would better refer this meta discussion to help readers of edit history find out what led to the radical change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the edit, remove all answers that fail to match the revised question (as far as I can tell, these would be all except for the top answer), then reopen. Side note an edit drafted above would also &quot;trigger&quot; removal of the opening sentence from the top answer (&quot;I think the question should be...&quot;) but that's rather minor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Advantage of #2.1 is that it guarantees that worthy content is preserved. In comparison, 2.2 carries a (rather minor) risk that edited question will be eventually closed again and deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Advantage of #2.2 is that it doesn't introduce deviation of our usual practice to avoid cleanup prior to locking - since it doesn't involve locking at all. (that practice is in turn based on common sense - if you do cleanup anyway, it's only reasonable to improve content up to the point when it doesn't need locking at all)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for #1 (delete), it looks really inferior in comparison. It only doesn't deviate from our locking practices, but so does #2.2, which additionally offers a solid chance of preserving worthy content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that risk involved in #2.2 is minor, it looks like most appealing option." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27257" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7441" RevisionGUID="de1a2968-37e0-4594-9b69-1ff5eb39350e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="##http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102041/why-are-data-structures-so-important-in-interviews&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question has almost 60,000 views, and is in the top 50 in views in questions that are not closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it's pretty clearly off topic, asking us why we think that interviews happen a certain way falls under both the **primarily opinion-base** close reason and under the **career advice** close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it needs a historical lock, but I'm not prepared to flag for that yet as it needs a pretty solid cleanup first, [according to the guidelines.](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/103053/how-aggressively-should-we-maintain-and-improve-very-popular-questions/103069#103069)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Several of the answers are really just comments and should be converted or deleted&#xD;&#xA; - Old comments that add nothing of value need to be deleted&#xD;&#xA; - Other things I'm probably not thinking of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a request for help editing the question to a lockable form, including 20k+ and moderators to assist in deleting the bad answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27258" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7453" RevisionGUID="4a7efe32-77e7-4881-b236-fa58baedf8e3" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="# Burninate / replace the tag from closed, locked questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/250840/tags-that-only-exist-on-locked-questions-should-we-treat-these-the-same-as-tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Pending questions with multiple tags&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/14706/overtime-is-part-of-the-job-true-but-a-bad-attitude?s=9|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Replace both [tag:jobs] and [tag:work-environment] with [tag:productivity]&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2757/how-many-monitors-do-you-use-why-how-they-are-used?s=11|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Pending questions with only one tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59173/why-do-ads-for-s-w-engineers-always-say-they-offer-a-fast-paced-environment&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:development-environment] would be superior to [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/11312/stuff-every-programmer-needs-while-working?s=5|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:development-environment] would be superior to [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Edited questions&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/78547/how-do-you-tell-if-advice-from-a-senior-developer-is-bad&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/perks-for-new-programmers&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - We should remove the tag, and [tag:hiring] too.&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/25432/how-can-a-new-programmer-impress-the-software-engineer-boss&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Both [tag:career-development] and [tag:work-environment] need to go. Replace with [tag:management]&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/604/is-the-80-character-limit-still-relevant-in-times-of-widescreen-monitors&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/81929/is-it-normal-for-people-to-not-work?s=4|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Should be tagged [tag:productivity] instead&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2051/what-is-the-craziest-stupidest-silliest-thing-a-client-boss-asked-you-to-do&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - I've got nothing. [tag:team]? [tag:teamwork]? [tag:management]? All seem bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Deleted questions&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5267/what-should-i-do-when-i-cant-reach-my-deadline?s=12|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/59740/change-managements-mind?s=13|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45525/open-office-arrangement-with-non-programmers-sales-etc-talking-all-day?s=15|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/96871/my-manager-hates-documentation-in-our-large-project-what-should-i-do?s=16|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102348/my-lead-does-not-co-operate-may-be-lack-of-knowledge-or-unwillingness?s=17|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60091/programmers-and-database-professionals-in-performance-based-companies?s=18|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/89606/working-at-home-for-a-junior-developer?s=14|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27259" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7481" RevisionGUID="c378c5cf-2296-419f-bba3-e45afb72c683" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Meta Stack Exchange has a good writeup about what to do when you are automatically blocked from creating new questions or new answers][1]. You should first attempt to fix your posts, if you can. Some aren't salvageable, but others are. If you aren't sure, asking about your questions on Meta or [in chat][2] The block also only affects one type of post - if you're blocked from new questions, contributing good answers is one method to work toward having the block listed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Creating a new account won't help either. As mentioned in the Meta Stack Exchange post, as of December 2010, it is at [a lower level than accounts][3]. Also consider that if successfully created, your accounts made to circumvent a suspension or block may also be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/72180/clarify-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-this-account-error/76167#comment-174366" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27260" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7525" RevisionGUID="7fb17a6c-fa83-437f-a2cc-623511e05f56" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="A few recent questions seem to exhibit issues explained in [The Trouble With Popularity](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/) article:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we discovered that these posts... truly start to drown out everything else on the site... it's too addictive and too easy, and in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While these questions were open, they were widely advertised on the Hot Network List and gained relatively high scores [despite piling on of close votes](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773 &quot;feature request to account for these&quot;). All of them are now closed, but due to their high scores they present appealing examples for newer site visitors to try their luck asking similar questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;High scores send a fairly strong signal that those sorts of questions are welcome here. I think this _signal_ is much stronger than the subtle hint  of a close banner, especially for inexperienced users ([&quot;it's okay to ask about roses here...&quot;](http://communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/a/1247/516 &quot;if needed, refer here for more elaborate discussion of having off-topic questions in the hot list&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The crux of my question is: what can we do to make these closed questions less like [broken windows](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_Recent examples for review:_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the issues with this question are best covered in a custom close reason borrowed from the Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Topicality wise, it appears to be in overlap between our site and Workplace, probably closer to Programmers. Our close reason ([opinion based](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)) looks like a fit.  As for better matching Workplace close reason, it is likely because they (Workplace) are getting more troublesome questions of that kind and have acquired more experience at efficiently handling these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;...How would you explain a statement... to a beginner?&quot;_ - We have a dedicated meta post explaining exactly what the issues are with these kinds of questions: [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6630/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, hot list visitors who voted it up likely have no idea about our meta guidance.  And even if they knew, they likely don't care. (And even if they would care, [system simply wouldn't let them tell](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/238514/165773).)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;I personally prefer 4 spaces for each indentation level, but there are colleagues that prefer 2 and even 5 spaces... I decided to post a question see if there are tools/method to settle the problem without calling a meeting.&quot;_ - If that doesn't make it a [shopping list question](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) then I don't know what it makes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The revision history](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/290941/revisions) suggests that even some moderators have tried to figure out a way to protect and salvage the question. But, honestly, I am not surprised to see that this failed. Asker clearly indicated that they were _just shopping_ and there's nothing else on their mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone tried to &quot;derive&quot; a better, more substantial question from this one, they would end up with their own, and _different_ question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet another case when Workplace folks seem to be better prepared to recognize and handle troublesome questions of that kind with their custom close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **advice on what to do are not [practical answerable questions](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)** (e.g. *&quot;what job should I take?&quot;*, or *&quot;what skills should I learn?&quot;*). Questions should get answers explaining *why* and *how* to make a decision, not advice on what to do. For more information, click [here](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2695)...&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;Granted, I think that our own [education advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/31260) close reason also makes a good fit, but the majority of close voters picked another reason ([too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260)) which suggests that the match with the education close reason is not as clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yet again, issues with this question seem to be best covered in already quoted custom close reason from the Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although still somewhat workplace-y, this question looks much closer to Programmers than previous example covered by the this close reason (&quot;mentor's concern&quot;). Still, their close reason looks like a really good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm often conflicted when creating a project that requires manipulation of data in files... &amp;lt;example how JSON looks like&amp;gt; &amp;lt;example how CSV looks like&amp;gt; ...is it better to use larger, more readable formats, like JSON, or smaller, harder to read formats, like CSV, for data storage?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[If memory serves](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234894/165773 &quot;no, system won't help me recall&quot;), the close reason I picked was [too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260). The majority of voters have chosen [opinion based](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6491/31260) which also looks like a reasonable match ([Gorilla vs. Shark](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these questions were old, or if their score and views were acquired _organically_ due to great content, I'd probably ask for a [historical lock](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info). But that doesn't seem applicable due to the recency of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For what it's worth, I considered an option to edit them into better shape. Unfortunately, it looks like the answers that piled in prior to closing [&quot;lock the question&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773) from any substantial changes I could think of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One possible exception (which would involve removing most of the answers though) is the [question about indentation width](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width). It looks possible to convert it to a [collaborative effort question](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before &quot;example&quot;). If we pick this option though, we had better do some substantial edits to the question text, to make it look like less of a wide open broken window for inexperienced site visitors. _&quot;Hey, folks do shopping over here, lemme try my own.&quot;_" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27261" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7536" RevisionGUID="6c4caff0-964e-4013-915e-4e424df951bd" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="It was quite interesting to observe impact of this meta post on the listed questions ([&quot;meta effect&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/235225/165773)). Or, more precisely, lack thereof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First thing I noticed is there were no attempts to improve / salvage these questions (except for an old one about indentation width, there was only one, more on that below). Attention brought to these by this meta post did not really help: &quot;active&quot; notices on listed questions (except for last one) say _2 months ago, 21, 17, 14, 16 days ago_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may ring a bell to readers familiar with [famous post about Programmers / NPR history](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Turns out that while everyone _loves_ those questions, very few are _actually_ willing to spend any time to... maintain and moderate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only _recent_ edit was done to question about [JSON vs CSV](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/291618/revisions), which recently changed wording to &quot;what are some advantages/disadvantages...&quot; Not that it made it worse (as far as I can tell, edit didn't even invalidate existing answers) but it didn't really help. Edited question now prominently exposes issues described in another meta post, [What is the problem with “Pros and Cons”?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6758/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another thing worth paying attention to is how little of negative feedback was given to these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It gets especially prominent if you account for attention given to this meta post, which is mostly about explaining what's wrong with them. It stuck in [hot meta posts](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/234453/165773) for about a week (quite the irony), has got almost 400 views and solid positive score. Now, let's take a look at the questions it lists:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;  3 votes down, 4 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  3 votes down, 3 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width  &#xD;&#xA;  7 votes down, 2 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code  &#xD;&#xA;  4 votes down, 2 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code  &#xD;&#xA;  4 votes down, 4 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f  &#xD;&#xA;  5 votes down, 3 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not much really, huh? Considering that some of these votes were cast long before the meta post, it becomes even weaker. Closer check of _The Trouble with Popularity_ suggests that this may actually be a common case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note how the article says nothing about negative feedback to such questions. This makes a fairly strong indication that there is no such feedback, at least not at a scale worth mentioning. (Atwood would probably be happy to point that at least part of community actively opposes such questions but it looks like this just doesn't happen.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reflecting on my own behavior in these questions makes me feel that there could be a good reason for this. I tend to feel _reluctant_ giving negative rating (down, close, delete) when post has high score. This may seem strange, given that I am well aware of upvotes to popular posts frequently degrading into useless &quot;likes&quot; of Facebook kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the thing is, I am much more used to looking on regular, on-topic, good quality questions. And in normal questions, high score fairly reliably indicates quality content worth voting up, not down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If many users are like me, it should indeed be that high score posts rarely get negative feedback, no matter how bad these are. People simply build an opposite habit by reading on-topic, good quality questions, where high score means that post deserves upvotes. Not surprising that they would feel discomfort trying to do opposite to what they are used to - at least that's the way I feel myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This probably won't make me many friends over here but summing up above, it looks like the most realistic way to address the matters of broken windows would be a moderator deletion of these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, interestingly, brings us back to the quote that opened this question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27262" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7545" RevisionGUID="eee042b6-9f5a-445e-85e1-bea4f315791a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Based upon a [recent answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7534/53019)&lt;sup&gt;1, 2&lt;/sup&gt; to a [previous question of mine](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6507/53019), I'd like to re-visit an older request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Please give all close voters&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; on Programmers 50 votes instead of the standard 24&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_Why?_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All of the [original reasons](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6507/53019) that were laid out before still hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. New users to the site end up with a poor impression regarding what is on-topic for the site when off-topic questions are not cleared out quickly.  The more quickly we can patch up the broken windows, the more favorable Programmers and StackExchange appear to new visitors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. The [stats show](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7534/53019) that our active close voters regularly run out of votes and this is impacting their ability to help provide community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. The influx of low quality questions from {bans at SO | ignorance of SO} continues to increase.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. Items like the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7285/53019) put a strain on the community when they are trying to balance closing off incoming low quality questions as well as cleaning up old NPR-style low quality questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. This version of the request is much easier to implement as it's already part of the per-site configuration setting and doesn't require a code change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. More close votes means being able to migrate questions more quickly.  That in turn cuts down on extra work created for mods when they have to merge cross-posted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;`Finally, if we were going to increase the limit, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to just raise it for 10k users. From a very practical standpoint, changing it for everyone is a site setting, but changing it for users over 10k would require a code change. For another, the setting has already been raised to 50 for 3k+ users on SO, Math, Super User, Ubuntu, and Server Fault without any particular problems. I'd suggest removing that portion of the feature request that needlessly confuses matters`&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;[Gratuitous footnotes are because I heard someone likes them](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/166518/194162)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;By &quot;Close Voters&quot;, I mean anyone who has earned [at least 3k rep](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions) on the site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;My assumption is that the number of allowed votes in the close review queue increases proportionately, but if not, I'll make a separate request.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27263" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7576" RevisionGUID="523d5cab-e301-4ef5-a6d7-889e5e23e84d" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="That's a very good question but I think every user having a privilege to delete may answer it a bit differently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Amount of delete votes is limited and one better takes care to use them efficiently. From this perspective, questions that are to be auto-deleted are lower priority indeed. When voting on these, one needs to decide whether it is worth it to &quot;help&quot; system to have a question deleted sooner than it would happen automatically, or it makes better sense to vote something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One kind of &quot;doomed&quot; questions I prefer to vote delete (YMMV) is those with titles looking like [broken windows](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info). &quot;Help with career as programmer&quot;, &quot;recommend me tutorials&quot;, &quot;problem: syntax error when adding 2 and 2&quot;, stuff like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;This is especially so when question title contains words that are blocked at Stack Overflow - [&quot;problem&quot; and &quot;help&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7567/31260). Very presence of such questions sends a signal to folks blocked by quality filter over there that they can try their luck here. If it additionally happens that such question gets migrated to SO (losing negative score along the way), this is not just a signal, a royal road for one willing to use Programmers as **drafting area** for off-topic implementation questions (that's by the way why I _never_ vote to migrate such questions - at the very least, I'd edit blocked words out of the title before doing so).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another kind of &quot;doomed&quot; questions I tend to vote delete is ones that already have two delete votes. It sometimes happens mind you that I find it harmless and prefer to leave it hanging around until auto-deleted, but this happens very _very_ rarely. Overwhelming majority looks like a terrible content deserving speedy deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not surprising, if you think of it. Single delete vote may be emotional, but for two high-rep users to fall into a blind rage is really unlikely. (I sometimes even wonder why moderators don't use this simple heuristics to check for questions worthy of a fast removal).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only thing I would recommend against is to be emotional when voting to delete. As you can see from above, this will most likely lead to your vote being wasted without making a difference. Try sticking with carefully calculated decisions, re-check delete votes tab in your profile to learn whether these work as you wanted to or not, adjust your criteria if needed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27264" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7594" RevisionGUID="3aa91327-981f-48b4-85ff-553d32dd6138" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="The questions worthy of migration to Stack Overflow *do* get migrated. **When a question gets migrated, its downvotes are cleared.** See: [**What is migration? How does it work?**](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/10250/200235). It's entirely appropriate to downvote an off topic question, *especially if you expect the question to be migrated and the downvotes cleared*. Off topic is off topic, even if the question is a &quot;good&quot; one for another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These 6 questions have all been migrated in the last two days:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [I want to make an inventory system for my game in Python V 3.4.3](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32486754/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [K&amp;R qsort understanding](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32467724/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [Simple recursive series in matlab](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32448566/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [In ruby, should I use instance variables or direct method calls](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32444305/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [Using Sed to Append Lines to File During Vagrant Provisioning](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32437006/1768232)&#xD;&#xA; - [Atmel Studio installing library is empty](http://stackoverflow.com/q/32431232/1768232)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it absolutely does happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as the questions that are not appropriate for migration goes, we get many of them because people don't understand that we have a very narrow scope here. We tried allowing a much broader range of questions here and it failed. See: **https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since then, we have attempted to very tightly moderate what's acceptable here in an attempt to teach people what this site is about, but people *still don't read the guidance.* This has resulted in many well written meta questions about site scope, capped with IMO the two most important: **https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7182/88986** and **https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483/88986**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, we downvote the bad questions, to take them *off the front page* (a question disappears from the front page when it his -4 or below) in an attempt to have a front page full of decent-to-good questions. The hope is that this user training will teach current and future users what's actually good and appropriate here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Addendum: @Ixrec correctly points out that it's currently September, which means a lot of young students are posting homework questions all over the internet, which are almost always off topic here, so the front page is worse than normal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People *also* have a tendency to post questions about career advice here, even though it's *explicitly off topic* and all the related tags about it say &quot;do not use&quot;. These questions get downvoted to oblivion as well." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27265" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7624" RevisionGUID="3efb17aa-50c2-430d-8220-5de33fa7ca54" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here's the approach I am currently using when I stumble upon this kind of questions. (Those interested in what else I tried before coming at it, can find details below.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Add comment referring to MSE guidance [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;2. Vote down.&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote close as unclear.&#xD;&#xA;4. Vote delete (when question becomes eligible for that).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mentioned MSE guidance is sufficient to help asker figure another, more appropriate site to focus their efforts on. Worth noting that in the past, I've been referring it rather judiciously for the fear that it may lead to reposting very low quality debugging questions at SO. Nowadays, I am not concerned about this, because SO (finally) found an efficient way to handle garbage questions by burying them in Triage queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote down is because it's off-topic. Additionally, it makes it easier for the system to trigger blocking, rate limiting and [anti-recidivism protection](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/anti-recidivism-system/info &quot;what's this&quot;) in case if asker intends to persist in asking inappropriate questions like that, for example in order to use Programmers as a proxy for Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Close reason picked (unclear) is because I abstain of wasting effort on checking whether the question is good enough to migrate to SO or not, or maybe it needs some improvements to become good enough to migrate. Another facet of this reason is, it's _unclear_ to me why asker picked Programmers instead of more appropriate and much better known site (Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote delete serves same purpose as vote down, to help system act in case if there's intended and persistent misuse. FWIW when voting this way, I expect that for occasional mistakes it doesn't harm, ie that question blocks work as [explained by SE team here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/236568/165773): &quot;first question doesn't count&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As promised, here is a brief overview of what else I tried before coming to above approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1\. &quot;Classical&quot; review.** You know, it's when you start with checking whether question is good enough for Stack Overflow and if it is, vote migrate. If not, you additionally study the question to either figure how to edit it to improve, or pick close reason that would help the asker find how to improve, maybe also comment with more explanations, stuff like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This way used to work pretty well until amount of debugging questions increased so that studying them started taking too much time. When I noticed this, I dropped it. Quoting self, &quot;I come here to learn and contribute to Programmers topics&quot; - I invest extra effort into studying off-topic questions only if it doesn't take much time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\. Trying to use system capabilities.** You know, system can tell many cases when debugging question is posted here to abuse it. It can tell whether asker was recently blocked at SO and likely tries to circumvent that, or if the question has been cross-posted here, possibly in hope to gather more feedback if it needs to improve. It can tell if the question is of such a troublesome quality that Stack Overflow would hide it (or maybe already did that) in Triage queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tried to figure how above can be used to simplify handling these questions and posted various feature requests. So far, all of them have been ignored... and likely will stay that way, given that even _very_ easy to implement and reasonable request to block same titles as are blocked at SO (with words 'problem' and 'help') stays ignored.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**3\. Flagging.** For readers unfamiliar with how it works, you explain in the flag message what specifically is wrong with the flagged post and why moderator involvement is required (as opposed to regular means like community voting, comments, edits, canned flags etc).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly to &quot;classical&quot; reviewing, this used to work like a charm in the past, and just like it, this way broke when amount of debugging questions increased so that flagging them started taking too much time. One can't just type in flag message &quot;hey, this is debugging&quot; and expect moderator to take it from there. To make a compelling flag message, you have to study the post quite thoroughly, that's why I dropped it when site started getting too many debugging questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6795/perform-automatic-checks-for-cross-posting-and-question-block-at-so-when-post-en&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7257/could-we-please-detect-troublesome-questions-using-stack-overflow-data-and-offlo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7564/if-problem-and-help-are-to-be-blocked-on-stack-overflow-question-titles-blo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Should one advise on off-topic questions?](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/276637/839601)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Don't ever answer a question, not via chat, comments, or any other way. It is even dangerous to say: go here, Google for that, because next time, they will do the exact same and eventually get what they want." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27266" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7627" RevisionGUID="fe224ff4-ad9c-4d42-b994-f2432a4b6aa8" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I took a look at your answer and I feel it makes a reasonable effort to answer the question and posits a plausible explanation for the question that was asked.  I do think the assertion that this is because &quot;programmers are lazy&quot; perhaps could have some more credibility with a quoted source, but I digress, no *major* problems I see with this answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With that being said, I am telling you this as my personal opinion and in a way that I am no way directing at you in particular.  This is merely a generalization that I have noticed and I am making some assumptions about the motives of others so hear goes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have noticed that when people see a new post to a popular question, by a newer user or lower reputation user, when there is already a supremely excellent and comprehensive answer, and the new answer has some strong opinions, then people tend to judge it a little more harshly.  A good flank steak on the grill with some A1 sauce is a good treat.  You put it next to a well marbled ribeye then the flank might as well be stew meat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now when somebody leaves a comment to that answer that may not be a fair assessment, and that person leaves 5 or 6 pretty agitated comments in response, well ... many people are just going to think that person is being a troll and will downvote you not because they don't just not like the answer, but *because they don't like the user*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This problem fortunately can be easily solved for everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Be Nice.](https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/be-nice)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think user gnat is a troll? Get in line, he has more villains after him than the Bond franchise.  The fact remains though that is one person, who utilizes the Citizen Patrol features that his reputation allows him, to do one thing and one thing reasonably well and that is help maintain quality content on this site.  If it weren't for people like him then this site would be just another Yahoo Answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't always agree with him.  I didn't agree with his assessment of your answer either and you can probably find where we threw gloves on Meta on the many disagreements we have had through the years.  But again, I think he is a net positive for this site and he is just ONE downvote, ONE close vote and ONE comment to the extent of his powers.  You just don't need to get that worked up over ONE opinion that you disagree with. Our community doesn't consist of a bunch of sheeple that are incapable of thinking for themselves and making their own determination on the content that you provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So again, Be Nice, write good content and the upvotes will reward far more than any single downvote." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27267" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7741" RevisionGUID="f1f85725-28a9-4c77-b641-76253453ef2a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This experiment appears to be a dead end. The problem it revealed can't be fixed by quick closes... it can't be fixed by closes at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my observations, since the experiment started, we've got lively and interesting reopen queue. To me this indicates that solid amount of closed questions are worth improving and reopening.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, when I tried to find these questions myself, not through reopen queue, it turned out very difficult. Site is flooded with blatantly off-topic, unsalvageable crap that hides questions deserving a closer look.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Guess we need to thank [SE Quality Project](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/se-quality-project/info) which (finally) made it really difficult for low quality questions to get answers at SO. As a result, askers are now trying their luck at other sites. (I wonder by the way why they put &quot;Stack Exchange&quot; in the name of that project. Only site that benefits of it is Stack Overflow; at Programmers it only brings pain and suffering.)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Salvageable questions being visible only through reopen queue is very bad thing. It means that only very small fraction of site users can participate - 3K users who frequent that queue plus few others who were lucky enough to catch a question before it was buried under heaps of unworthy garbage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This in turn means very low chance for questions to improve and reopen, and no matter how fast we close, we can't change that - the flood of hopeless stuff simply hides questions worth looking at.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above makes me think that &quot;Server Fault experiment&quot; may be a better way to go for us. Folks over there [recently elected moderators](http://serverfault.com/election/5) who seem to be quickly closing and _most importantly_, deleting, questions that are clear cut off-topic. This way we can get more usable site front page where _every user_ can find gray area, incorrectly closed, salvageable questions and take care of these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(On a historical note, I couldn't even imagine proposing above option two years ago. Back then, site scope wasn't settled firmly enough to allow such measures.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meanwhile, an advice to those who want to continue reopening efforts no matter what.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When [searching through closed questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=closed%3ayes%20migrated%3ano%20duplicate%3ano), skip most recent ones and proceed to those posted 3-4 days ago. At this age, some of the worst off-topics are cleaned up by delete votes of 20K / 10K users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may get even cleaner selection at 10 days old questions which are additionally cleaned by _roomba_, but since that script is automatic, it may also delete some salvageable questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27268" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7770" RevisionGUID="ca17182f-14d0-47b0-83f4-35adef4dd387" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="**TL;DR** Can the system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recently I've seen notes from Stack Exchange staff about how it would be nice if site would allow for broader, softer kind questions. This was [said by Robert Cartaino here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7650/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The idea that there are hordes of people just waiting flood the site for want of a single precedent was one of those things we worried about before we had anything to back it up. But if you haven't noticed, Stack Exchange has moved on from a lot of those old adages foretelling of widespread doom in ways that simply never materialized in actual use... _every_ question must have exactly one absolutely factual answer. ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and [by Jon Ericson here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7761/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Given quality of users on this site, there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, the system makes it difficult (I would say, unnecessarily difficult) to produce and maintain quality content in questions with many answers. It doesn't provide any means to make it easier and some features even tend to incentivize low quality content in questions of this kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Current UI doesn't offer any means to help answerers and readers find / avoid repeating what was stated before. Combined with being very easy to post an answer, this leads to useless answers that don't add anything over what was posted before. This is noticeable even in questions with brief answers which are easy to check ([example](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/271158/839601)) and when answers are lengthy, things become even worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This penalizes web search visitors, forcing them to read same points over and over and over again. Letting repetitive answers proliferate is a step toward old-fashioned &quot;forums&quot;, and quite a substantial one I think.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particular feature that essentially encourages low quality content is Hot Network Questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To set the record straight for readers not familiar with its purpose - it is established pretty firmly and it has nothing to do with content quality. The feature is there only to show network wide audience entertaining / interesting questions. If you're interested, refer MSE for more details on that: [What is the Goal of “Hot Network Questions”?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per se, entertainment aspect of HNQ looks pretty acceptable and I don't think it should necessarily be that it makes a critical obstacle in maintaining quality content. Thing is though, as implemented currently... it really does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;HNQ, the way it is now, make maintaining quality content cumbersome and painful. Problems with content quality in hot questions are well known for a long time ([1](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;'Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever'&quot;), [2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260 &quot;'Answers quality in hot questions'&quot;)), and it keeps happening here and now, see for example https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7525/recent-trouble-with-popularity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Over years, Stack Exchange tried various ways to handle questions with multiple answers but none of these seemed to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Jeff Atwood's warning](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/86895/165773) was probably the first one,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Did you read through all the existing answers first to make sure your answer will be contributing something new?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All I can say about it is that it doesn't work, has never worked and is unlikely to ever work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another thing they tried was automatic conversion to community wiki when there are many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This worked... sorta, in the sense that it made it easier to downvote low quality answers (without incurring rep penalty) and removed incentive to flood popular questions with answers in a (frankly, quite realistic) hope to gain a bit of rep with a random upvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this trick is, it had some _very_ ugly side effects due to involved rep denial from users providing quality content and in the end it was [deservedly discarded](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228940/165773). Thing is though, nothing was done to compensate loss of features used to counter issues in questions with many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, there's standard rhetoric about voting down low quality answers but tell me, how many users can afford rep loss of voting this way, say, 5-10 of total 20 non-CW answers in a question? how many of them can afford doing this every month? every week? And if you additionally consider [&quot;sympathy upvotes&quot;](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/311408/839601 &quot;what's this&quot;) frequently happening to such answers in popular questions (each worth more than 4 votes down rep wise), this starts looking like a wishful thinking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Another approach that was tried about two years ago is randomizing hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seemed to work at first but as time passed by it revealed signs of inability to scale. Shuffling 100 hot questions to 100K site visitors works, shuffling same amount to 1 million will break and essentially return us back to old known issues with &quot;snowball effect&quot; when questions stick in the list solely because they were advertised there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Somewhere along the way they implemented special adjustment for Stack Overflow questions, which strongly pushes these from hot list after 7 hours.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to work, in the sense that there aren't very loud complaints about hot questions at MSO anymore (like it was in the past with [&quot;croissants&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/190106/165773)). Still, this doesn't resolve problems at other sites. And still, even SO is having garbage answers problem in questions that acquire popularity and high views organically, not via hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Yet another feature intended to help control answers quality is question protection, which makes it impossible to answer for users having less than 10 on-site reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By design, protection is intended to handle only cases of extreme abuse. It doesn't provide any means against low quality answers posted by users with over 10 rep. Also, due to some implementation specifics, even very limited functionality it offers frequently turns out useless in hot questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Can the system do something to help us more efficiently handle quality of the content in questions with multiple answers?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27269" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7826" RevisionGUID="69b948a1-1856-47d1-9c51-35dc5861b3f2" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;(_special edition_ for folks coming from Math.SE, reposted from [Math meta](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/21680/hint-programmers-se-doesnt-do-coding-help-and-expect-research-before-asking &quot;10K link&quot;))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Hint: Software Engineering Stack Exchange doesn't do coding help and expect research before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, we at Software Engineering get a stream of troublesome questions from folks with linked accounts at Math.SE. One of them was kind enough to [explain why they get there](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7610/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another user, familiar with many other sites, even figured what could lead to such a [misconception](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi#comment22868_7610):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;This &quot;exchange&quot; is the undergraduate while &quot;overflow&quot; is the graduate level may because of the idea for Math vs MathOverflow and Physics vs PhysicsOverflow (not SE related) leaking into other domains. While I don't believe that that naming distinction needs to be fixed (nor can we do anything about it), being able to more promptly close (and delete) the debugging and blatantly off topic questions with a minimum of additional community moderation needed.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is sad to observe how many of them have fallen victims of this misunderstanding, getting their questions heavily voted down, closed and deleted. This includes even established users having over 1K rep at Math.SE ([1](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/299572/given-a-integer-n-compute-nth-non-repeating-number &quot;10K link - user with 1.4K rep at Math asks very low quality question at Software Engineering&quot;), [2](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/304765/31260 &quot;10K link - 1K Math rep user asks outright off-topic at Software Engineering&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things many Math.SE folks seem to miss when they try their luck at Software Engineering are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **coding and debugging help is off-topic** at Software Engineering.SE&#xD;&#xA;* it is generally expected of askers to **demonstrate research** they did before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading for those interested to learn more about Software Engineering.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Engineering Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is research important?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6559/31260)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or down voted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overview of CS and programming related sites at SE network:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-software-engineering-where-else-c&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27270" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7828" RevisionGUID="d73246bd-5c5a-45e9-b950-82af2c02945d" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Related: [Tags that only exist on locked questions, should we treat these the same as tags that don't exist at all?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/259740/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; philosophically Historical Lock questions are **deleted**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Visual difference between historically locked and legitimate questions looks quite subtle to me, even though I have few years experience on the site. It can be even harder for inexperienced readers to tell the difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that historical lock is applied mostly to (inappropriate) questions [having large amount of views](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A20000 &quot;currently, search shows 132 locked questions having 20K views or more&quot;) and ranked highly in web search engines, this creates wide open broken windows. Inexperienced site visitors coming from web searches at h/l questions think that these are legitimate and try to ask similar ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to help newcomers see the difference, suggest to use pink background when rendering historically locked posts - same that is currently used to render deleted posts displayed to 10K users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related feature request at MSE (hat tip to [durron597](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/300687/i-think-this-old-deleted-question-should-be-undeleted-and-historically-locked-i/300727?noredirect=1#comment315138_300727)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Automatic visual indication of old questions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/98589/165773)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27271" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7849" RevisionGUID="7d568598-458a-432d-b1a2-fd807e4a0c58" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't think anything needs to be done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those of [us with diamonds are not required to do anything][1] - there's a [DMCA][dmca] process in place for copyright holders to use to contact the employee team and have action taken and it doesn't involve moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before you do anything, though, consider [fair use][2]. It's OK to include copyrighted material for some purposes, and it does maintain attribution (there's a clear statement of the owner and copyright on the image itself). If it was unclear as to the ownership (the poster passed it off as his own work), there may be more of an issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/114919/what-should-i-do-when-i-see-copyright-violations-posted-on-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&#xD;&#xA;[dmca]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27272" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7880" RevisionGUID="9dd76b6a-b5fa-44bb-8483-2143c10449ec" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Sort of a later follow-up: question was further cleaned up and 14 answers that didn't attempt to address the question and/or were repeating prior ones were removed by moderator (one or two answers were deleted by their authors per discussion in comments).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question looks generally good to me, it appears to be reasonably clear and focused and rather difficult to misinterpret.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though some answerers managed to &quot;leak through&quot; minor slippery points in wording. Granted, some of them dumped their stuff in first several hours prior to [revision 4](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/118703/revisions &quot;'Nov 9 '11 at 23:19'&quot;), while text (and especially title) of the question were leaving bit more room for misinterpretation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior editors did pretty good job of cleaning it up but there still seem to be some corrections worth considering, especially now that question apparently gained [huge popularity](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/103053/165773 &quot;see 'How aggressively should we maintain and improve very popular questions?'&quot;) and has got to our [all time top 50 open questions](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A85000+closed%3Ano) with over 85K views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would particularly recommend the following changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Add [tag:history] tag. After revision 4 main focus of the question has been very prominently shifted to this and lack of the respective tag looks really confusing. Not to mention that this makes it harder to search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Note about ternary operator that &quot;gets even less love among Java programmers etc&quot;. It probably fit well into trollish / ranty mood of the original text but in current form, it looks rather poor fit to the rest of the question. I would replace it with more neutral explanation, about like this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;But that's only because code snippet was made as simple as possible to clearer show the idea, the question is about more realistic cases where ternary operator is not an option.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Closing words &quot;why do people adhere to it rigidly?&quot; are worth removing. These are just a leftover of original rant and really have no place in the question. Actually, words like this are usually enough for me to vote close as [opinion based / too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6742/31260 &quot;see 'On discussions and why they don't make good questions'&quot;) but prior editors did a really good job of making it clear that it's tangential to the question (except for maybe the [most _rigidly_ careless answerers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/118703/where-did-the-notion-of-one-return-only-come-from/119117#comment654398_212495 &quot;example: 'the question was twofold and I answered to the latter aspect of it... rigidly blah blah' OMFG&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cleaning up the question may be good, but we would better take care of tangential answers as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even now, visitors probably find these confusing and wonder how these are related to the question. But very attentive readers can at least re-check the question text and say, _&quot;ah, this answer exploits &amp;lt;such and such minor point of the question&amp;gt;, I understand&quot;_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if the question is cleaned as suggested above, these answers will become really harmful, telling tens thousands visitors, _&quot;hey, it's okay to totally ignore what is asked about and just drop into answer box whatever comes to your mind&quot;_." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27273" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7912" RevisionGUID="1a7d60fc-ecc0-470f-a2a9-d416c235037b" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Alright I'll bite. I have a few general points, but first off, it was my question referenced by OP, and I'd like to point out that *while I used questionable / bad wording (&quot;Is it possible?&quot;)*, there was more to my question than that, taking it beyond the yes/no answer format, and of the scope, it certainly seems to meet at least one point, if not a few other vaguely:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- software requirements&#xD;&#xA;- software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;- algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;- quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;- **development methodologies and processes**&#xD;&#xA;- software configuration management&#xD;&#xA;- software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;- software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it certainly had the potential, with a few edits, to become a good question. Instead it immediately, within a few hours, got 3 negative votes, 3 votes to close, and ***zero*** suggestions for improvement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the major trend for questions in need of improvement on this site, and my whole point is that a large portion of the self-moderating activity on this site is making the problem of poor questions worse by choosing to down-vote and close rather than suggest ways of improving the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Stack Exchange communities improve their user base's question output quality by actively and continuously suggesting improvement to salvageable questions. By immediately pulling the trigger on 3 down-votes, 3 close votes, you skip this step completely.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I pointed out a specific user who I've noticed over a wide range of cases, and a long span of time, has been the &quot;first-responder&quot;, and potentially the catalyst for this trend, because psychology and common sense show that after the first vote is made, it will encourage further votes in the same direction. This goes for close votes, positive votes, and negative votes. People follow suit, suddenly one extremely active user is causing alot of damage when his behavior is followed by others systematically over a long period of time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just think of how many people you could have ***trained*** to ask better questions in the past year with a few moments spent suggesting improvements to questions rather than just cutting them down, closing, and offering at ***most*** a link to a related meta post with no explanation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thousands. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I made a [suggestion on Meta.SE][1] based on my thoughts here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Side-note regarding your improvement suggestion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to make more clear what your awkwardly strict and confusing scope is, how about making it more accessible?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now, the scope accessibility is horrible in terms of UX. It requires 2 page changes just to find the full scope definition, and that's after having to read through all sorts of meta information to find the right link. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How about placing the scope definition as an expandable module right there on the question asking interface, and perhaps even use some form of subtle animation to bring it to the attention of new users?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or even just make it one click away? If you're trying to educate users on your scope the *last* thing you want is to hide the information behind two links. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/276621/i-suggest-a-mechanic-to-improve-quality-of-life-for-questions-that-could-be-impr" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27274" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7990" RevisionGUID="86ba5c91-5d86-47c9-b526-5c22f3093567" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###What's a good, well-moderated site that would allow these kinds of discussions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reddit  &#xD;&#xA;https://www.reddit.com/r/programming  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quora  &#xD;&#xA;Computer Programming topic: https://www.quora.com/pinned/Computer-Programming  &#xD;&#xA;Search &quot;programming&quot; topics: https://www.quora.com/search?q=programming&amp;type=topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Stack site (shutdown)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*defunct* Stack Exchange site [Not Programming Related](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167516/how-can-i-encourage-stack-overflow-to-rein-in-the-subjective-vigilantes/200144#200144) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In 2010, a Stack Exchange site called Not Programming Related came out of Area51, the Stack Exchange staging zone. NPR was supposed to be a site where questions that were too subjective / broad for Stack Overflow would find a new home.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#### Why did it fail?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;[...] Turns out that while everyone loves those questions, very few are actually willing to spend any time to answer them (seriously), and maintain and moderate them. [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I can understand that when you allow opinion based questions you allow any answer to be correct which may encourage new non-programming users, or lower the knowledge threshold that is expected for users. This may cause these less experienced users to creep into other forums and lower the quality of Stack sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't think shutting down that site should have been the answer. Subjectively and naively, as I wasn't around for the site and don't know about issues it faced, I would think that eventually those issues would be dealt with by voting, editing existing answers, or wiki answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree with Jeff's [comment](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6409/open-ended-questions-not-suited-to-this-site#comment17386_6409):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;It's strange. To me, a programmers life revolves around open ended thoughts. I know all of the code that I write is open ended. I can always find a way to go back and make it better, or think of an entirely new way to reach my objective." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27275" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="50ec51ef-fac7-4dc6-a879-4a58eb411878" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This post is a supplement to the [Help Center Article](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) of the same name.  That article, in a nutshell, describes questions that are either too broad, too opinionated, or too discussion-oriented to make good questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This article describes the *specific categories of questions* that you should avoid asking.  Where can you ask them instead?  Try [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), if you have 20 reputation or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Coding help&#xD;&#xA;If you need help writing or troubleshooting code (or using the tools), ask your question on Stack Overflow, not here.   Read [&quot;What topics can I ask about&quot;](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) before you ask your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Review my design&#xD;&#xA;We don't review entire software designs; that's a *discussion,* not a question.  If you have a *specific question* about your software design, ask that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What is the name of this thing?&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask us to name things or provide word definitions are just requests for search engine help, which we don't provide here.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Which way is best?&#xD;&#xA;*The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because *you* already understand the detailed specifications for your software project,  *you* are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here.  Otherwise, you're just [trotting after a herd](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Convince my boss/coworker&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to help you win your argument.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Customer service&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about how a company or organization's product is licensed, priced, serviced, released, etc., *ask the company.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Legal Advice or Licensing&#xD;&#xA;Ask a lawyer, or one of our sister sites like Law or Open Source.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Where do I find...?&#xD;&#xA;We don't help people find things here.  We don't know where you can find that highly obscure paper/product/whatever. You have access to the same tool we do, which is Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What do you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;We don't make product, service or technology recommendations of any kind.  Try [here](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) or [here](http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), but *read their Help Center first.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What should I learn? &#xD;&#xA;We don't know that.  We can't predict the future, and your personal circumstances are too specific to make a good question that can benefit everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is [technology] popular/dead?&#xD;&#xA;We don't know that either.  Even if we did, any answer we provide would become useless a week from now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27276" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8030" RevisionGUID="d16b6617-2d00-4e3f-9716-d84c3ccc29b2" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; We, obviously, do not want to reinvent the wheel over and over again.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So, how to ask such questions, that by definition cannot have the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; right answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you are talking about is not a &quot;question,&quot; it is a &quot;discussion point.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a question has no right answer there are three possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It is impossible to know (e.g. what is on the other side of an event horizon?)&#xD;&#xA;1. It is possible to know, but we do not have an answer yet (e.g. P == NP?)&#xD;&#xA;1. It is soliciting opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first two _can_ work as questions. History is littered with research papers that explore topics with the result &quot;nope, that doesn't work -- yet.&quot; But you asked about &quot;by definition&quot; not having a right answer, which fits squarely into condition three, which would be &quot;[primarily opinion-based][1],&quot; a close reason everywhere on Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My question is about questions that asks users to share their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; experience and/or offer creative suggestions in solving/approaching a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; particular problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sharing experiences works in a forum ([this is _not_ a forum][2]) or in [chat][3]. Not in the Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the &quot;particular problem&quot; part is probably on-topic if asked right. Questions should be about programming problems and soliciting creative solutions to solve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Presenting a design and asking for feedback is fine][4], as long as it is properly-scoped and not [too broad][5]. That is not really what you were getting at, but it is a better focus for those types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6491/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/92110/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6502/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6961/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27277" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8034" RevisionGUID="d84243e0-e24b-4597-8090-317aeeae29f0" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For a couple of reasons ([discussed in this post at MSO](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/322265/839601)) rate limit for new users asking questions is now set to 40 minutes at Stack Overflow, Programmers and network wide. More precisely,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. The new-user ask limit is now one question every **40** minutes, *network-wide.* That means only 1 question every 40 minutes on Stack Overflow, but also means you'd need to wait 40 minutes after asking a question on, say, Woodworking to ask a related question on Crafting or Home Improvement. ...it also means you'd need to wait 40 minutes after asking a question on Stack Overflow before asking a question on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;2. [Rolling rate-limits](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/243460/165773 &quot;what's this&quot;) kick in faster. Like, *immediately*. If your first question is downvoted and you try to ask another one 40 minutes later, you'll be forced to wait at least a day. That's potentially very harsh... But probably also better than penalizing *everyone* for the behavior of a few. We'd always intended rolling rate-limits to supplant the new-user rate-limits, and this will hopefully allow them to do so...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though not precisely 90 minutes as requested originally, to me above seems to be good enough to qualify as [meta-tag:status-completed]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27278" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8063" RevisionGUID="ed7c6807-bf34-4e32-86b4-d8c88cdc9631" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="###On behalf of emeritus member MichaelT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;There's nothing wrong with the scope. The essence of it could be condensed to fewer bullet points, but such is of relatively minor consequence. The bullet points are more of an issue for moderators of other sites that check the help/on-topic before migrating... and the rare individual who read it before posting a comment of &quot;belongs on Programmers.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name, as demonstrated in the comments of http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/319375/ (10k link) is of some confusion to some people who post with the &quot;but I'm trying to ask programmers this question.&quot;  A name such as software-engineering or software-architecture may have give them second thought about where to post the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it should also be pointed out with the above question that this demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the Q&amp;A model that SE uses - to the point that changing the name alone will not do it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned in https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/279661/ the thing that new users (and lets be honest - a significant chunk of the 70% closed questions are from new users) look at is other questions without regard for the &quot;on hold&quot; status of the question. There was a podcast awhile back by Joel and David about the intent of [Closed] - and part of that was as a head on a pike. I'm sure SE employees would more easily dig it out than I can. The mini-meta survey demonstrates that this is completely failing. One can refine the scope and change the name till the end of time - questions will be asked like the ones that show up when you go to the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This brings up an awkward realization - the way to make the questions go away from immediate view is to down vote them heavily. This leads to the &quot;why are you all so negative&quot; posts which are not at all fun to deal with, especially without moderator and community manager support.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one wants to cut down on the off topic questions - close and delete the unsalvageable posts quickly. Gnat likes to point out that triage on Stack Overflow helps with this. Failing the ability to prevent questions from showing up on the front page with triage, down votes, close votes, and 20k delete votes are the thing necessary to cut down on the off topic questions that reinforce the perception that this is where one is to ask such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This brings up another awkward realization - the active pool of close votes and 20k delete votes is on the decline. And to this, no amount of UI, name change, fiddling with the help/on-topic, or trying to make a one sentence thing to put in the tour will accomplish significant amounts. Moderators will likely need to step up and more than just close and ignore the off topic questions - close and delete them - preferably quickly. Instead of 70% of the front page showing questions that one shouldn't ask, 70% of the front page should be showing questions that one should ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One might want to consider adjusting the privilege levels for a few months after the redesign, giving 10k or 15k users the ability to cast delete votes on questions that are less than a few days old... and reviving the 3 vote experiment again. The front page needs to reflect the scope and the both the moderators and the community at large needs to step up and make the site match the vision of what they want to see.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there isn't any change to how (and who) people cast close votes; or the duration that an unsalvageable question remains visible on the front page, serving as a model for how to ask another question - the results from this exercise in scope, name, and design will not likely have the intended effect of consistently reducing the number of off topic questions asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is another problem with the 'scope' though. It isn't about the scope itself, but rather the question of where does one draw the line with primarily opinion and too broad questions. Even with a more concise scope of Software lifecycle, Software configuration management, Algorithm and data structures and Software engineering and team management as described by Snowman, there are still questions that are primarily opinion or too broad that fit within this area of topicality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to be one of the more difficult and overlooked parts in this process of a name change - and these are the questions that have given the people who actively curate and moderate the site the most headaches. Without any guidance (and I'm not going to offer any here), questions along the lines of &quot;how should I lay out my Git repo&quot; or &quot;what patterns/algorithms should I use to solve some problem&quot; will still be asked and still consume too much community moderation and curation time and still be a point of contentious debate on meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27279" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8070" RevisionGUID="ebf6f7d7-80ee-4005-a8fb-3979c60fa8ea" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Ultimately, the goal is to get off-topic questions off the front page *as quickly as possible,* so that they don't provide encouragement for other people to ask their off-topic questions.  Migration is not the best mechanism to do this; most off-topic questions asked here will not qualify for migration, and it's not uncommon for it to take hours for a question to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A long period of watching how these sites work has yielded some useful observations about how new users decide if they're going to ask their question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  They look at the title of the site.&#xD;&#xA;2.  They look at the tags (a terrible way to determine topicality, but they do it anyway),&#xD;&#xA;3.  They look at other questions to see if they are similar to the one they're about to ask, *without regard for downvotes, close banners, etc.*&#xD;&#xA;4.  If they do manage to find the Help Center/on-topic article, they try to shoehorn their question in some way into the on-topic list (&quot;My recommendation question is about design.&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with #3 is especially egregious *if people are actually answering these off-topic questions.*  It sends the message &quot;We don't really mean what we say about site scope.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My advice?  If you feel compelled to answer such questions, either do it in a second-class comment, or wait until the question gets migrated to answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[Usability issues for first-time Stack Exchange users - a micro-study](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/279661/usability-issues-for-first-time-stack-exchange-users-a-micro-study)  &#xD;&#xA;[New Site Name and Scope Proposals](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8056)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27280" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8113" RevisionGUID="42336e79-1cbc-4bfd-858b-1784fc64bb02" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think Robert and Thomas both make excellent points and we should heed their advice, but I would like to focus on something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On March 10, 2016, Rachel asked the question that set this whole thing off: [(4 years later) Dear Stack Exchange: can we change our site name?][1] On May 23, [Ana answered the question][2]. _Two and a half months later, a CM finally responded_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The day after Ana answered the question, Thomas asked [New Site Name and Scope Proposals][3] (May 24). I think it was actually more like hours later, but I am going off of the date stamps on the posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had four weeks to discuss this topic before a promised CM response, but it took until July 21. That is almost two months to receive any meaningful feedback from the CM team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actions speak louder than words. We have already discussed this topic to death. We already have community consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I propose making the changes outlined in Thomas' answer (preferably with Robert's interstitial page) without additional months or years of bickering, arguing, and delays from the CM team.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community at large already has a negative opinion of the tangible effects that the CM team provides: for reference, just take a stroll through [Meta.SE][4] at all the ignored and abandoned proposals. Or our own meta. We have some vocal users who [just want some simple changes to increase quality][5]. Be the CM that changes this perception _and get this change moving_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;N.B. as Durron mentions in the comments, this slow pace and the perception of poor communication has directly lead to the exodus of multiple active users who brought a lot of value to the site via community moderation and answering questions. This community needs change and quickly if it will stop the exodus and possibly even bring some users back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7935&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8054&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8056&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8103" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27281" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8201" RevisionGUID="4907df58-a864-4595-a5a2-e1dbb45f49d3" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think your message is fine, it is polite and and contains useful information, especially for new users. IMHO it is a much better reaction than just downvoting and closing without any comment, or these rude or terse comments we saw in the past and [discussed here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I just tried to use a similar comment, first thing I noted is: this fits only to a certain kind of low-quality questions. For example, if someone blatantly asks for a website or book or other 3rd party resource, it is pretty pointless to tell him he should try it on another SE site. For these kind of questions, I think a downvote, a close vote, and just no comment is probably appropriate. The automatically displayer text the asker will be shown after his question is closed is IMHO self-explanatory enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nevertheless, I think the general idea is fine: having some precanned, polite text template or maybe templates for different issues, where we just need to fill out the name of the asker, can help to keep a better balance between removing the crap from the site as quickly as possible on one hand, but also staying professional and friendly to newcomers on the other hand. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like yours, but I would try to improve the wording in some details slightly, and I think adding a personal &quot;Hi User&quot; gives a much better impression to the asker. So here is my attempt to improve your text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi XYZ, welcome to Programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [This site list](http://stackexchange.com/sites) may help you to find out where [your topic fits best](http://goo.gl/YoQVd0). Please search existing answers first. If you do not find one which matches your issue, feel free to take it to an appropriate site. Please [don't cross post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Hi XYZ, welcome to Programmers. We only support [good](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [This site list](http://stackexchange.com/sites) may help you to find out where [your topic fits best](http://goo.gl/YoQVd0). Please search existing answers first. If you do not find one which matches your issue, feel free to take it to an appropriate site. Please [don't cross post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Unfortunately, I needed to use an URL shortener to come around the maximum text size limit of comments, I hope that does not break any site rules).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, I am aware filling out the user name will slow down the process of making the comment a little bit, since you cannot just copy-paste the text blindly into the comment form. But it will (hopefully) give the reader a better impression that you treat him like a real person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7943/how-to-improve-our-style-for-reacting-on-low-quality-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27283" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8276" RevisionGUID="e4e3790a-165f-4080-8e35-4e8bcddeea1a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Note: Most of this post was written before the [name change](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8266/96050) and I haven't changed to Software Engineering. I think that's appropriate, since I'm looking backward to when this site _was_ Programmers.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Note: This in response to [a comment by gnat on Meta Stack Exchange][1] asking for information regarding migrations to and from this site. It's being shared here since it may be of interest to the community.]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wrote [a proposed philosophy of question migration](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/285467/1438). My thesis is that migration ought to be thought of as a convenience for the OP when they ask on the wrong site rather than a tool to manage content. Given there exists a [chatbot to detect _mentions_ of programmers.SE](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7154/96050) in order to deflect potential migration/crossposting, it seems to me that this site is particularly concerned about migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a baseline, here are some statistics for the entire history of the site going back to the very [first question asked](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/122955/96050):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Total Questions &#xD;&#xA;    --------------- &#xD;&#xA;    98768           &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Migrated Direction &#xD;&#xA;    -------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;     8900    out       &#xD;&#xA;    14484    in       &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Exported to:                      count  good &#xD;&#xA;    ------------                      -----  ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                  6482  6030 &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com         297   273  &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com        264   228  &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                       216   203  &#xD;&#xA;    security.stackexchange.com          173   171  &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                165   162  &#xD;&#xA;    meta.programmers.stackexchange.com  125   111  &#xD;&#xA;    dba.stackexchange.com               118   115  &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                103    97   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                 87    81   &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Imported from:                    count  good  &#xD;&#xA;    --------------                    ----- ----- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                 13828 11630 &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com        300   272   &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                        45    34    &#xD;&#xA;    serverfault.com                      40    32    &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                 31    28    &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                 31    19    &#xD;&#xA;    webmasters.stackexchange.com         27    16    &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com          26    22    &#xD;&#xA;    english.stackexchange.com            14    12    &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                 14    12    &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm just including at the top ten sites as there's a noticeable drop off in quantity after the top slot. As you can see, Programmers has received 5584 more questions from other sites (mostly Stack Overflow) than it has migrated away. A full 14% of the questions that have ever existed on this site began life on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But those all-time numbers hide an important story. Almost all of the migrations occurred before 2012: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Question migrations by year][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In recent years, Programmers has been a _net exporter_ of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Total Questions since         &#xD;&#xA;    --------------- ------------- &#xD;&#xA;    76426           2012-01-01 00:14:59&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Migrated Direction &#xD;&#xA;    -------- ---------&#xD;&#xA;    6629     out       &#xD;&#xA;    2307     in        &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Exported to:                       count good &#xD;&#xA;    ------------                       ----- ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                   3547 3116 &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com         151  118  &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com          128  104&#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                         68   59   &#xD;&#xA;    meta.programmers.stackexchange.com    63   51   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                  56   50   &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                  53   52   &#xD;&#xA;    dba.stackexchange.com                 48   45   &#xD;&#xA;    security.stackexchange.com            41   39   &#xD;&#xA;    unix.stackexchange.com                32   28   &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    Imported from:                     count good &#xD;&#xA;    --------------                     ----- ---- &#xD;&#xA;    stackoverflow.com                    870  584  &#xD;&#xA;    codereview.stackexchange.com         179  158  &#xD;&#xA;    serverfault.com                       23   16   &#xD;&#xA;    cs.stackexchange.com                  22   10   &#xD;&#xA;    webmasters.stackexchange.com           8    5    &#xD;&#xA;    workplace.stackexchange.com            8    4    &#xD;&#xA;    pm.stackexchange.com                   7    6    &#xD;&#xA;    ux.stackexchange.com                   6    6    &#xD;&#xA;    superuser.com                          6    4    &#xD;&#xA;    webapps.stackexchange.com              4    3  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I picked January 1, 2012 because it's a handy cut off, not because of any particular event on the site. The quality of incoming questions has been respectable:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Migrated here Avg score Avg answers Avg comments Closure % Deletion % Avg age (days)&#xD;&#xA;    ------------- --------- ----------- ------------ --------- ---------- --------------&#xD;&#xA;             2307       6.0         2.6          3.5      14.3       16.0           32.3   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do remember votes from the source site are [reflected in the score](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/87031/1438). For instance, questions migrated from Stack Overflow to this site had an average score of 5.8 and 1.1 answers. So score might be less useful a measure of quality than the fact that these questions got new answers after migration and are [relatively](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7797/96050) less likely to get closed than organic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, fully a third of the questions migrated from Stack Overflow have been closed or deleted. We don't have an easy way to quantify _crossposted_ questions or questions asked at the prompting of misinformed commenters on another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/285467/a-proposed-philosophy-of-question-migration/285742#comment926949_285742&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Pp7bf.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27284" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8278" RevisionGUID="324a8d50-bb97-4ca3-b364-3db78c86aad5" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't think that there's anything surprising in this data.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The Importing of Questions from Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The high number of imported questions from Stack Overflow makes sense. Software Engineering was originally Programmers, which was originally proposed as Not Programming Related. The proposal for Not Programming Related was for a safe place to ask the questions that were too centered on opinions or too broad for Stack Overflow. That didn't last very long, and the quality of questions led to [a blog post on the Stack Overflow blog][1]. This site was one of the main reasons for the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][1] and [Real Questions Have Answers][2] posts, and numerous Meta discussions about question quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This transition from Not Programming Related to something pretty close to what we are today spanned from the proposal on 3 June 2010 through the private beta that started on 1 September 2010 through a lot of the public beta which began on 8 September 2010. However, by our full launch in early December 2010, we had changed our scope to something closer to what it is today. This turmoil in definition was about 6 months, but wasn't clear to anyone who didn't participate on the Meta site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One big problem with all of this turmoil was that, until a few days ago, we continued to have the same name and branding. To anyone outside of active participants on our community, they may not have been aware of the drastic change in expected question quality or scope. This is why Duga exists - to help us find people (primarily on Stack Overflow) who are blindly suggesting our site without understanding our scope. The things that should have made our scope change blindingly obvious to anyone - new subdomain, new logo - [were flat-out rejected in June 2012][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Until June 2012, Stack Overflow users could vote to migrate questions here][4]. When that Meta post was written, we had a 26% rejection rate for migration. The history of migration from Stack Overflow to Programmers was so bad that, [in December 2010, we had to ask Stack Overflow users to stop using Programmers as their toilet bowl][5]. Even with us seeing the influx of garbage sent from Stack Overflow, it still took a year and a half to stop individual users from migrating questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also in October 2012, [migrations for questions older than 60 days were disabled][6].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2012 was a big year for stopping incoming migrations. It stopped users from sending old (and likely low quality) SO questions to us by taking away their ability to migrate to us and even stopped SO mods (who may not have understood our site) from migrating old questions to us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The Exporting of Questions to Other Sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The high number of exported questions also makes sense. A general trend in increase of migrations also makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since 2010, our scope has been stable, for the most part. When we went live in December 2010 and [were introduced to the world in a blog post][7], the things that were on topic here included software engineering, developer testing, algorithms and data structures, design patterns, architecture, development methodologies, quality assurance, software law, and business concerns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Really, what has always been on-scope here is software engineering. Most of the things in the original list of things on-topic are [part of software engineering][8]. Today, we have a more succinct list of things that are on-topic, but it's still essentially all of software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, some aspects of software engineering are better covered on other sites. Information Security, Database Administrators, Writers, Project Management, Computer Science, The Workplace, Law, and Open Source were all started after Programmers was, and these are all things that someone working in software engineering would learn, either as part of a curriculum or on-the-job. It's not that database design questions or data structure and algorithm questions or licensing questions are off-topic here, it's just that there are communities who can give better answers to these types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that part of this exporting culture may have been on us, as a community. When we shifted from the original Not Programming Related concept to Programmers, I think that we kind of normalized around the idea that we were actually a community of software engineers. Being primarily professionals, we wanted a site where the questions we had as professionals would be accepted without being lost in a sea of &quot;fix my code plz&quot; questions on Stack Overflow. There were already sites for writing and debugging code, professional-level system administration, using various computer software tools, mathematics, statistics, user experience, and a few other things that we cared about. So we include a variety of our professional concerns in the list of things that were on-topic. Until The Workplace came around, we had more tolerance of education and career questions. Before Computer Science, we took in some of the more theoretical/mathematical algorithmic questions. Before Law and Open Source, we took in a lot of law and licensing questions (but began to constrain that since we realized we weren't lawyers and couldn't answer all of these questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two good examples for migrations. First, [we did a little experiment where the same question was asked on multiple sites][9]. The answers were dramatically different. Here, they were very practical, focused on the quality attributes of the software (testability, readability, performance), and written in more plain English. On CS, they were more mathematical and focused on the theoretical behavior of the algorithm. Another example is Open Source and Law - the people there have learned more about and worked with copyright and licensing and the quality in answer is so much higher - just look at the answers here vs there in software license questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ideally, we should be seeing this trend downwards. It may rise slightly if a new related site goes into a public beta or launches, but shouldn't really spike. At this point, we have a well-defined scope that focuses on the core aspects of software engineering without the tangential things. The main reason for this is that a lot of these tangential things now have their own communities in various states of development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The Purpose of Migration&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree with the thesis that &quot;migration ought to be thought of as a convenience for the OP when they ask on the wrong site rather than a tool to manage content&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Migration is a tool to manage content, just like deletion. However, unlike closure or deletion, it preserves the content and signals to the user &quot;yes, you asked a good question, but although we can't give you a great answer here, you can get a great answer over there&quot;. By moving the good question, we help the asker get a solution to their problem and introduce them to a community of experts if they have a similar problem in the future. We help people who have the same question in the future have access to higher quality answers. We also add one more good question to another site that will help boost its discoverability by searching.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As long as we continue to uphold [the rule of &quot;don't migrate crap&quot;][10], we will probably be an exporter of questions. Our new name gives people a good impression of what we are about, but they may not be aware of niche communities that would be better for very specific questions. They may also not be aware of nuances between some communities, such as Software Engineering and Computer Science and the differences in answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing migration go away. A question is either on-topic or not and it doesn't need to be our concern if they get the best answers or not. We can use comments and other tools to let people know about other communities that exist. However, as it stands now, I have a tool that helps me ensure that the user gets the best possible answers for their questions, so I use it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3718/change-the-name-of-programmers-to-something-that-more-accurately-reflects-the-si&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/134636/update-migration-path-list-for-non-moderators/134642&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/151890/disable-migration-for-questions-older-than-60-days&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering#Subdisciplines&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6293/4&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10249/what-is-migration-and-how-does-it-work" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27285" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8386" RevisionGUID="dd6c443c-fd1c-4877-acd3-c3462b8c0ca0" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="Instead of creating an external blog to replace the Stack Exchange blog, why don't we just leverage the normal Q&amp;A to do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Here's how it would work:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Write your blog post in any ordinary editor.&#xD;&#xA;2.  Split your post into a question &amp; answer pair or title/abstract/body combination (Abstract goes into question, body goes into answer).&#xD;&#xA;3.  [Answer your own question](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/132886/what-is-this-answer-your-own-question-jazz).&#xD;&#xA;4.  Flag the post and ask a moderator to add a &quot;Wiki Lock&quot; to it (not Community Wiki).  The Wiki Lock allows anyone to collaboratively edit the post (if they have editing privileges), but prevents other answers from being posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know what you're thinking: &quot;This won't work, because reasons.&quot;  Here's why I think it will work, and why it will work better than a blog:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  The community owns it (with first-authorship preserved).&#xD;&#xA;2.  There is already some precedent: it's [called *Canonical Q&amp;A.*](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/291992/what-is-a-canonical-question-answer-and-what-is-their-purpose)  We've already done that here [at least once](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before), with great effect.&#xD;&#xA;3.  Canonical posts benefit from all of the facilities that are already provided by the Q&amp;A machinery, such as full visibility, voting, collaborative editing and the ability to comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###But what about closing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to prevent closure, your blog post would have to be high enough quality to overcome objections like &quot;Too Broad.&quot;  Not everyone is going to rise to this level of quality, but that's why it's a Canonical post and not ordinary Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The usual &quot;on-topic&quot; rules would have to be relaxed a little bit.  Obviously they would still have to pertain in some way to Software Engineering.  But let's be honest: most questions are not closed because they are off-topic; they're closed because they're just not all that interesting, and &quot;off-topic&quot; provides a good excuse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Overflow, canonical questions have allowed people on many occasions to post useful, blog-like material that extends well beyond the usual parade of code troubleshooting questions.  Similarly, we could use this mechanism to provide those folks who have an itch with an outlet to create better content than the usual parade of pattern matching, name that thing and &quot;am I doing it right&quot; questions and answers that frequent our front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Further Reading**  &#xD;&#xA;[List of Canonical Questions on Stack Overflow](https://www.google.com/search?q=&quot;This%20question%27s%20answers%20are%20a%20collaborative%20effort&quot;%20site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fstackoverflow.com)  &#xD;&#xA;[Encyclopedia Stack Exchange](https://stackoverflow.blog/2012/05/encyclopedia-stack-exchange/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27286" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8461" RevisionGUID="51678a7e-18d9-453f-a11b-88fae64d0ce3" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="For the full details, please see the discussion on Meta Stack Exchange: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/291301/can-a-machine-be-taught-to-flag-spam-automatically&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, a group of users have created an application that, historically, has much higher accuracy in identifying spam. This application has been turned on for all sites in the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please direct any general discussion of this new application to the above Meta Stack Exchange discussion. Any discussion or questions as it pertains to Software Engineering is appropriate here - if it needs an answer, I can ping the right people." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27287" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8478" RevisionGUID="b8cf70f1-ca91-4cba-bfeb-d27af8ffb7f1" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:29:40.137" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://meta.stackexchange.com/ with https://meta.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question is off-topic on any Stack Exchange site I am aware of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The crux of the issue is question like this are looking for one of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Opinions about a company's strategy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Resources that indicate a company's strategy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Inside information about a company's strategy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the first case, anyone can make a guess. Yours is as good as mine. _There is no objective way to answer the question: all answers are speculation_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, [resource requests are off-topic][1]. That link explains it better than I can here, so please read it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Third, the internet at large is unlikely to have any special knowledge answering why a company is doing whatever they are doing. At most we can give opinions derived from typical business actions (e.g. &quot;doing what is profitable&quot;), or link to blogs or other information from people who work there. Both of those are covered in my previous two paragraphs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you need to do is sharpen your google-fu skills, and perhaps post on an actual discussion forum ([Stack Exchange is _not_ a forum][2]) or [reddit][3] ([1][4], [2][5]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/92110/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://www.reddit.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://www.reddit.com/r/osx/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27288" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8490" RevisionGUID="6be91cf5-7dca-455d-a810-b9e1e95401c5" CreationDate="2017-03-20T10:37:16.523" UserId="4" Comment="added 228 characters in body" Text="I would like to edit this [question/answer][1] to provide specific guidance for asking and answering questions related to ethics on Software Engineering:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ethics questions are on-topic, provided the asker can demonstrate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; relevance to one or more activities that are part of the SDLC and [fall within &#xD;&#xA;&gt; the scope of this community](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are about the law or require the expertise of a lawyer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; are off-topic here, but may be a suitable fit on [Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange](http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). Ethical questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that stray into the realm of &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; or &quot;too broad&quot; will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also be closed. Anyone asking questions about ethics in software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; should keep in mind [the criteria for good subjective questions](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * tend to have long, not short, answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * invite sharing experiences over opinions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * are more than just mindless social fun&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good answers should include facts and references, including to accepted &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ethical theories and frameworks. Great answers would be framed with respect to &#xD;&#xA;&gt; one or more codes of ethics directly related to software engineering or &#xD;&#xA;&gt; computing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've elaborated on several points below, and feedback would be much appreciated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1:** At least some ethics questions are a good fit for the Stack Exchange format. [Ethics is one of the top tags on Philosophy](http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ethics) and [there are three questions about ethics on Engineering, none of which are closed and all of which are positively scored](http://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ethics).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2:** We already have over 100 questions tagged [tag:ethics]. [46 of these questions are not closed][2]. Minimally, this tag should be cleaned up to provide a good picture of acceptable questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**3:** We do not need to consider a range of questions that would be considered primarily opinion based or too broad. [The Help Center provides 6 criteria for good subjective questions][3] and any question asked should meet most, if not all of these criteria. Questions and answers that don't meet their respective criteria should be down voted and/or removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**4:** The field of software engineering has a number of relevant codes of ethics or professional conduct, including [the Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice][4] jointly maintained by the ACM and IEEE Computer Society. Professional organizations such as [the ACM][5], [the IEEE][6], [the BCS][7], and others also have relevant codes for any members. Any good answers would be minimally grounded in acceptable ethical theories (likely coming from [normative ethics][8] or [descriptive ethics][9]), if not one or more relevant codes of ethics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**5:** Any ethical questions must be tied to the SDLC. Consider some recent news stories: [Volkswagen's software that was used to cheat on emissions tests][10] or [Uber's Greyball][11]. One could frame questions about systems concept development, requirements analysis, design, development, or operations &amp; maintenance about these or similar cases. This is [the same standard applied to history questions][12] - there must be relevance to and direct questions regarding at least one SDLC activity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**6:** No changes to the guidance in the Help Center will be required. The scope of on-topic questions continues to be issues found while working in the systems development life cycle. In addition, questions about the law or requiring the expertise of a lawyer will continue to be off-topic. Additional guidance will be added to this [question][1] / [answer][12] which provides some supplementary notices on these edge cases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**7:** In order to be a community that responds to the needs of professionals, academics, and students working in software engineering and related fields, we need to adapt to the changing fields. The changing landscape of cybersecurity, privacy, autonomous vehicles (including cars and aircraft), and others are raising questions about ethical decisions in technology, and specifically in software development. We should be willing to accept questions in this area, as long as they meet our other criteria for good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8212/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bethics%5D%20closed%3A0&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.acm.org/about/se-code&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/previous-versions/1992-acm-code/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://www.bcs.org/category/6030&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_ethics&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyball&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8215/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27289" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7185" RevisionGUID="134690e3-6608-428c-b2e7-bfa28bf6721e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T15:52:31.570" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Programmers -&gt; Software Engineering" Text="My question [Who is developing Wake? (10k link)][1] was closed as unclear what I'm asking. In addition, one user posted a comment on my question saying, &quot;recommended reading: [Why we're not customer support for \[your favorite company\]][2].&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree with both reasons for closing my question and would appreciate it if the closers' reasoning could be made more clear to me. I'm active around the SE network, but not much on Software Engineering, so I might not understand Software Engineering's specific community standards, and if that's the case, I would appreciate it if what I did poorly could be explained to me so I can write better questions in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, I don't think my question is unclear. In my question, I ask:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Which company, organization or person is developing [Wake]? Have they made any announcements about why they decided to create Wake?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe my question makes it clear that I want to learn two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Who is creating Wakelang&#xD;&#xA; 2. Whether the creators have publicly said anything clarifying why they are creating the language.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both of these are, in my opinion, unambiguous and answerable with objective responses. &quot;Who is creating Wakelang?&quot; asks for a specific company, organization, or person, and &quot;Whether the developers have made any announcements&quot; asks for either a link to a relevant blog post or press release or an indication that it's difficult to find any such information. Is my understanding correct, or are there other reasons my question is unclear that I'm missing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, I disagree with the comment directing me to [Why we're not customer support for \[your favorite company\]][2] (although I will admit that I am less confident in my reasoning about this comment then I am about whether my question is clear). I think what the comment is getting at is that Software Engineering isn't the right place to ask for information that would be better obtained from the developers of the language I'm asking about, and asking who is developing a language is an example of such a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree with that, though. I think that understanding who is developing a language is important to understanding the language. For example, C and C++ are not developed by single companies. Instead, non-profit organizations write and update the languages' standards, and then multiple for-profit and OSS organizations implement their own compilers. Someone who does not understand that about C and C++ will not understand some very important concepts, such as how to write portable code or why some code examples that rely on implementation-specific behavior don't work on their compilers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a result, I would argue that asking who is developing a language is, at the least, on-topic at Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also disagree that this is a question that I should only ask the developer of Wake instead of on Software Engineering for three reasons. First, as I just discussed, I think knowing who develops a language is something that is of general interest to programmers. Second, as I mention in my question, I was having trouble identifying who the developer was! I'm not able to ask a question of someone if I don't know who they are. Third, I'm not asking for support for the language per say. Instead, I'm asking for some background on it. I agree that if I wanted to understand how to use the language, that would be a much better question for the Wake developer (or at least SO).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for asking why the developer created Wake, I deliberately phrased my question as&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have [the developers] made any announcements about why they decided to create Wake?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if the developers haven't made any announcements that are easy to find, &quot;No,&quot; would be an acceptable answer, and one that I wouldn't have to ask the developer to receive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do my arguments make sense? If so, can my question please be reopened? If not, can you please let me know why my question still goes against Software Engineering's standards so I can avoid these mistakes in the future?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/273579/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/255746/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27290" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8487" RevisionGUID="1d08ddc8-6639-4768-b257-de5f118a7921" CreationDate="2017-03-20T15:55:57.037" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Cleaned up links." Text="This question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Why is &quot;||&quot; the symbol for or?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;was closed for being Off-topic on StackOverflow.  I recommend that it be migrated to here, where it would be decidedly more topical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, I recommend that this question be closed as a duplicate:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Why is a vertical bar used as the OR operator in so many programming languages?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/q/15056896/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/317905/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27293" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8490" RevisionGUID="01e29ad1-0381-46ce-a656-24171fb068a7" CreationDate="2017-03-20T20:17:22.983" UserId="4" Comment="added 200 characters in body" Text="I would like to edit this [question/answer][1] to provide specific guidance for asking and answering questions related to ethics on Software Engineering:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ethics questions are on-topic, provided the asker can demonstrate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; relevance to one or more activities that are part of the SDLC and [fall within &#xD;&#xA;&gt; the scope of this community](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are about the law or require the expertise of a lawyer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; are off-topic here, but may be a suitable fit on [Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange](http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). Ethical questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that stray into the realm of &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; or &quot;too broad&quot; will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also be closed. Anyone asking questions about ethics in software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; should keep in mind [the criteria for good subjective questions](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * tend to have long, not short, answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * invite sharing experiences over opinions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * are more than just mindless social fun&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good answers should include facts and references, including to accepted &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ethical theories and frameworks. Great answers would be framed with respect to &#xD;&#xA;&gt; one or more codes of ethics directly related to software engineering or &#xD;&#xA;&gt; computing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any discussions on *if* this subject should be on-topic can be held, but that is a separate concern. Right now, this is on-topic. We just have no guidance as to what is acceptable in this boundary case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've elaborated on several points below, and feedback would be much appreciated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1:** At least some ethics questions are a good fit for the Stack Exchange format. [Ethics is one of the top tags on Philosophy](http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ethics) and [there are three questions about ethics on Engineering, none of which are closed and all of which are positively scored](http://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ethics).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2:** We already have over 100 questions tagged [tag:ethics]. [46 of these questions are not closed][2]. Minimally, this tag should be cleaned up to provide a good picture of acceptable questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**3:** We do not need to consider a range of questions that would be considered primarily opinion based or too broad. [The Help Center provides 6 criteria for good subjective questions][3] and any question asked should meet most, if not all of these criteria. Questions and answers that don't meet their respective criteria should be down voted and/or removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**4:** The field of software engineering has a number of relevant codes of ethics or professional conduct, including [the Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice][4] jointly maintained by the ACM and IEEE Computer Society. Professional organizations such as [the ACM][5], [the IEEE][6], [the BCS][7], and others also have relevant codes for any members. Any good answers would be minimally grounded in acceptable ethical theories (likely coming from [normative ethics][8] or [descriptive ethics][9]), if not one or more relevant codes of ethics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**5:** Any ethical questions must be tied to the SDLC. Consider some recent news stories: [Volkswagen's software that was used to cheat on emissions tests][10] or [Uber's Greyball][11]. One could frame questions about systems concept development, requirements analysis, design, development, or operations &amp; maintenance about these or similar cases. This is [the same standard applied to history questions][12] - there must be relevance to and direct questions regarding at least one SDLC activity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**6:** No changes to the guidance in the Help Center will be required. The scope of on-topic questions continues to be issues found while working in the systems development life cycle. In addition, questions about the law or requiring the expertise of a lawyer will continue to be off-topic. Additional guidance will be added to this [question][1] / [answer][12] which provides some supplementary notices on these edge cases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**7:** In order to be a community that responds to the needs of professionals, academics, and students working in software engineering and related fields, we need to adapt to the changing fields. The changing landscape of cybersecurity, privacy, autonomous vehicles (including cars and aircraft), and others are raising questions about ethical decisions in technology, and specifically in software development. We should be willing to accept questions in this area, as long as they meet our other criteria for good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8212/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bethics%5D%20closed%3A0&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.acm.org/about/se-code&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/previous-versions/1992-acm-code/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://www.bcs.org/category/6030&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_ethics&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyball&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8215/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27294" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8492" RevisionGUID="3cf625d7-6089-496e-add9-c80ee960563e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T20:57:12.803" UserId="205439" Text="There is a somewhat frequent type of question around SE.SE that makes me scratch my head in confusion, sometimes - The &quot;What's the best pattern for X&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More often than not, the person who is asking those questions is a somewhat newbie developer, having its first contacts with a more advanced concept like patterns. Often, the developer in the question isn't concerned about the exact details of the problem he has to solve - he just want a pattern that can fix his barely specified problem and be done with it, more or less like some people love to copy-paste code from Stack Overflow without understanding what exactly is going on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While design patterns are _really helpful_ to understand software and to think about possible solutions, they are a relatively dangerous type of power tool for us developers and designers, more or less like a chainsaw - they are awesome to solve a few problems but can _hurt you very badly_ if you don't know _exactly_ what you're doing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, usually, when I see those questions asking for help to shop for a pattern for a problem they barely described, I usually leave a comment pointing them to the fact that patterns are not a buffet of solutions to pick from, and that they should understand their language and their problem better before hunting for patterns. Those questions still gather answers anyways, because _reasons_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm starting to question myself is those questions aren't actively spreading misinformation about this really useful resource. While it is good that people search for the best solutions for their problems, &quot;give-me-a-pattern&quot; style of questions are just lazy, not far away from &quot;give-me-da-code&quot; questions from SO. Those questions normally show such a lack of understanding for the topic they end up being just garbage - the developer in question not only won't be able to implement those patterns properly (because he lacks the skill to understand how they work in the first place, which is not low) but will also leave a blighted question on the site that _incentives_ that sort of lazy, low-quality, not-critical thinking that is hurting our profession badly nowadays.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Design Patterns aren't something one can just pick from a book and use to solve a problem, and they aren't something that can effectively be recommended using a shallow description of a problem as a basis. They are very important structural decisions that must be made by people that understand the full scope of the problem, not by us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, while I applaud the questions about _implementing_ design patterns correctly, I suggest that we close those &quot;Shopping-for-patterns&quot; questions on sight. They are not helping us, really, nor the developers that ask them without knowing exactly where they are going.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any thoughts on this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27295" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8492" RevisionGUID="3cf625d7-6089-496e-add9-c80ee960563e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T20:57:12.803" UserId="205439" Text="How bad are &quot;Shopping for Patterns&quot;-type questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27296" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8492" RevisionGUID="3cf625d7-6089-496e-add9-c80ee960563e" CreationDate="2017-03-20T20:57:12.803" UserId="205439" Text="|discussion|questions|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27297" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8493" RevisionGUID="b7914e12-3058-4a5d-b59f-3f3bddb57569" CreationDate="2017-03-20T21:56:16.847" UserId="241947" Text="It is implicit in the title that *Software Engineering* answers should exhibit significant application of best practice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However many answers and suggestions in comments do not exhibit this property.  In fact many exhibit very poor practice.  A common fault for example is solutions that are highly/tightly coupled, or suggestions to use accessors/getters which are often up-voted.  While better advice to follow SOLID Principles, the Law of Demeter, Hollywood principle or inverting the control are ignored or even downvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems what is missing is some form of meta moderation to correct poor primary moderation.  Instead, gaming the scores, with naive and populist is rewarded.  The net result is many answers are pretty poor examples of  Software Engineering.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27298" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8493" RevisionGUID="b7914e12-3058-4a5d-b59f-3f3bddb57569" CreationDate="2017-03-20T21:56:16.847" UserId="241947" Text="Naive suggestions and answers failing to apply best practice are promoted" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27299" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8493" RevisionGUID="b7914e12-3058-4a5d-b59f-3f3bddb57569" CreationDate="2017-03-20T21:56:16.847" UserId="241947" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27300" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8494" RevisionGUID="2491b207-543d-4290-b69d-b1d1db84383a" CreationDate="2017-03-20T22:36:22.183" UserId="4" Text="Without specific links to questions or answers that you feel are problematic, it's hard to address anything specific. But I can still answer in generalities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, moderation is done by all members of the community. This is explained in [the tour](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tour). We also have [a list of privileges and when you earn them](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges) - at 5 reputation, you can post on Meta; at 15 vote up; at 20 use chat; at 50 leave comments on all posts; at 125 vote down. These are the primary tools. See an answer you like? Up vote it. See an answer that you feel is bad? Down vote it and leave a comment pointing out problems or gaps. You can also leave an answer of your own and point out why your solution is better than any of the others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nearly everything here is done by the community. There is a [small team of elected moderators](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators), but we're exception handlers. We don't delete answers just because they aren't technically accurate, are wrong, or are not helpful (in fact, if you flag answers for any of these reasons, there are custom decline reasons that we have). We handle things that are detrimental to the community - things like rude or abusive users, spammers, or other reasons for deleting [questions](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/deleted-questions) or [answers](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/deleted-answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You mention that answers that include best practices are getting ignored while answers that are more naive get attention. I'm assuming you mean up votes and/or accepted status. Best practices are things that work for most people most of the time. They aren't rules. Software engineering is about balancing various trade-offs, risks and rewards, complexity and sophistication. Sometimes, that means not sticking to textbook best practices and accepting technical debt to deliver value on time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I ask you: Have you voted or commented on these answers that you think are bad? Have you provided your own answers that you feel are better? Are you using the moderation tools that you have at your disposal?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27301" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8495" RevisionGUID="844777bf-3a33-4fef-b6db-e360691f363f" CreationDate="2017-03-21T03:59:34.603" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="What is a &quot;best practice?&quot; I normally think of it as &quot;what everyone else is doing&quot; whether it is necessarily the best solution to the problem at hand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software development requires a rich and diverse toolbox of ideas, technologies, and methodologies. Saying that &quot;the ideal solution to problem X is to apply 'best practice' Y&quot; is, quite honestly, a terrible idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;best practice&quot; is to use one's brain, find the proper tool for the job, and use it no matter what everyone else is doing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Best practice&quot; implies there is a &quot;best&quot; solution to every problem. In reality, most problems tend to be complex and require tradeoffs that make each solution unique, even if just a little. In the real world, there may be two or even twelve solutions to a problem that are valid and will result in success. What is the &quot;best&quot; practice?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Saying that an answer or comment must adhere to a limited set of &quot;best&quot; practices such as SOLID is doing a disservice to the person asking the question. Yes, there are some good software engineering principles that are broadly applicable, but not _universally_ applicable. SOLID is not always the answer: in fact, for some problems (rarely), it is a bad thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Solutions are not one-size-fits-all. One of the marks of a good software designer is knowing when to take all the SOLIDs and DRYs and throw them out the window in favor of a solution that is _not_ over-engineered. Yes, I have copy and pasted code. Yes, I have violated the Law of Demeter and Liskov Substitution Principle. I try to adhere to those principles when I can (99% of the time), but sometimes, they are not the &quot;best&quot; solution to a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Finally, as Thomas said, this site is _community_ moderated. You have high enough reputation right now to do _your_ part to address the shortcomings you mentioned. Once you get to the point you can downvote, the next major milestones (in my opinion) are 3k to cast close votes, and 10k to cast delete votes on questions. However, your issue seems to be with answers and comments, which you are already empowered to do something about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;###See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is asking a question on &quot;best practice&quot; a bad thing?][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Cargo cult programming][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27302" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8496" RevisionGUID="54af250c-6a74-49a2-b727-8e5e883c47e7" CreationDate="2017-03-21T04:15:47.583" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="You are correct, these types of questions tend to be problematic for a variety of reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Too broad**. Maybe multiple design patterns could work. Maybe none. Maybe the answer is a short novel on how to shoehorn in patterns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Unclear**. Often these questions tend to be light on details, as if the asker wants us to be mind readers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Off-topic: resource request**. This has a weaker justification in my opinion, although I have cast this close vote at time for some questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, these questions suffer from one of two problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Asker does not understand how to design software, and believes applying a pattern will solve the problem.&#xD;&#xA;* Asker has a solution in mind, and needs to find out how to get there (X/Y problem).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The correct thing to do is put the question on hold for whatever reason to avoid poor-quality answers to a poor-quality question, and work with the asker to improve the question so it can be reopened and a proper answer written. Ideally, we would share our experience on how to design software _beyond_ throwing a dart at the dartboard of design patterns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;###See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These links are all applicable to some extent. Design pattern shopping is about &quot;best practices&quot; (applying a pattern thoughtlessly) which is a type of cargo cult programming (do whatever the popular thing is). They tend to be shopping for solutions instead of seeking advice to better oneself (give me fish/teach me how to fish). Finally, they are often X/Y problems: I think I need solution Y, when in reality I need help solving problem X.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is asking a question on &quot;best practice&quot; a bad thing?][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Cargo cult programming][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the XY problem?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/11/23/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/66378/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27303" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8490" RevisionGUID="adfa884b-9609-4691-ab70-77c64f346197" CreationDate="2017-03-21T10:29:02.423" UserId="4" Comment="added 22 characters in body" Text="I would like to edit this [question/answer][1] to provide specific guidance for asking and answering questions related to ethics on Software Engineering:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ethics questions are on-topic, provided that direct&#xD;&#xA;&gt; relevance to one or more SDLC activities are provided and the question [falls within &#xD;&#xA;&gt; the scope of this community as defined in the Help Center](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are about the law or require the expertise of a lawyer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; are off-topic here, but may be a suitable fit on [Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange](http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). Ethical questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that stray into the realm of &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; or &quot;too broad&quot; will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also be closed. Anyone asking questions about ethics in software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; should keep in mind [the criteria for good subjective questions](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * tend to have long, not short, answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * invite sharing experiences over opinions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * are more than just mindless social fun&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good answers should include facts and references, including to accepted &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ethical theories and frameworks. Great answers would be framed with respect to &#xD;&#xA;&gt; one or more codes of ethics directly related to software engineering or &#xD;&#xA;&gt; computing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any discussions on *if* this subject should be on-topic can be held, but that is a separate concern. Right now, this is on-topic. We just have no guidance as to what is acceptable in this boundary case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've elaborated on several points below, and feedback would be much appreciated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1:** At least some ethics questions are a good fit for the Stack Exchange format. [Ethics is one of the top tags on Philosophy](http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ethics) and [there are three questions about ethics on Engineering, none of which are closed and all of which are positively scored](http://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ethics).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2:** We already have over 100 questions tagged [tag:ethics]. [46 of these questions are not closed][2]. Minimally, this tag should be cleaned up to provide a good picture of acceptable questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**3:** We do not need to consider a range of questions that would be considered primarily opinion based or too broad. [The Help Center provides 6 criteria for good subjective questions][3] and any question asked should meet most, if not all of these criteria. Questions and answers that don't meet their respective criteria should be down voted and/or removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**4:** The field of software engineering has a number of relevant codes of ethics or professional conduct, including [the Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice][4] jointly maintained by the ACM and IEEE Computer Society. Professional organizations such as [the ACM][5], [the IEEE][6], [the BCS][7], and others also have relevant codes for any members. Any good answers would be minimally grounded in acceptable ethical theories (likely coming from [normative ethics][8] or [descriptive ethics][9]), if not one or more relevant codes of ethics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**5:** Any ethical questions must be tied to the SDLC. Consider some recent news stories: [Volkswagen's software that was used to cheat on emissions tests][10] or [Uber's Greyball][11]. One could frame questions about systems concept development, requirements analysis, design, development, or operations &amp; maintenance about these or similar cases. This is [the same standard applied to history questions][12] - there must be relevance to and direct questions regarding at least one SDLC activity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**6:** No changes to the guidance in the Help Center will be required. The scope of on-topic questions continues to be issues found while working in the systems development life cycle. In addition, questions about the law or requiring the expertise of a lawyer will continue to be off-topic. Additional guidance will be added to this [question][1] / [answer][12] which provides some supplementary notices on these edge cases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**7:** In order to be a community that responds to the needs of professionals, academics, and students working in software engineering and related fields, we need to adapt to the changing fields. The changing landscape of cybersecurity, privacy, autonomous vehicles (including cars and aircraft), and others are raising questions about ethical decisions in technology, and specifically in software development. We should be willing to accept questions in this area, as long as they meet our other criteria for good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8212/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bethics%5D%20closed%3A0&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.acm.org/about/se-code&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/previous-versions/1992-acm-code/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://www.bcs.org/category/6030&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_ethics&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyball&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8215/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27304" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8490" RevisionGUID="edc45d8b-b1b4-4ae3-a1b8-75ff013c04c6" CreationDate="2017-03-21T10:56:16.300" UserId="4" Comment="deleted 4 characters in body" Text="I would like to edit this [question/answer][1] to provide specific guidance for asking and answering questions related to ethics on Software Engineering:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ethics questions are on-topic, given that direct&#xD;&#xA;&gt; relevance to one or more SDLC activities is provided and the question [falls within &#xD;&#xA;&gt; the scope of this community as defined in the Help Center](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are about the law or require the expertise of a lawyer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; are off-topic here, but may be a suitable fit on [Law Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange](http://law.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). Ethical questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that stray into the realm of &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; or &quot;too broad&quot; will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also be closed. Anyone asking questions about ethics in software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; should keep in mind [the criteria for good subjective questions](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * tend to have long, not short, answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * invite sharing experiences over opinions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * are more than just mindless social fun&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good answers should include facts and references, including to accepted &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ethical theories and frameworks. Great answers would be framed with respect to &#xD;&#xA;&gt; one or more codes of ethics directly related to software engineering or &#xD;&#xA;&gt; computing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any discussions on *if* this subject should be on-topic can be held, but that is a separate concern. Right now, this is on-topic. We just have no guidance as to what is acceptable in this boundary case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've elaborated on several points below, and feedback would be much appreciated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1:** At least some ethics questions are a good fit for the Stack Exchange format. [Ethics is one of the top tags on Philosophy](http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ethics) and [there are three questions about ethics on Engineering, none of which are closed and all of which are positively scored](http://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ethics).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2:** We already have over 100 questions tagged [tag:ethics]. [46 of these questions are not closed][2]. Minimally, this tag should be cleaned up to provide a good picture of acceptable questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**3:** We do not need to consider a range of questions that would be considered primarily opinion based or too broad. [The Help Center provides 6 criteria for good subjective questions][3] and any question asked should meet most, if not all of these criteria. Questions and answers that don't meet their respective criteria should be down voted and/or removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**4:** The field of software engineering has a number of relevant codes of ethics or professional conduct, including [the Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice][4] jointly maintained by the ACM and IEEE Computer Society. Professional organizations such as [the ACM][5], [the IEEE][6], [the BCS][7], and others also have relevant codes for any members. Any good answers would be minimally grounded in acceptable ethical theories (likely coming from [normative ethics][8] or [descriptive ethics][9]), if not one or more relevant codes of ethics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**5:** Any ethical questions must be tied to the SDLC. Consider some recent news stories: [Volkswagen's software that was used to cheat on emissions tests][10] or [Uber's Greyball][11]. One could frame questions about systems concept development, requirements analysis, design, development, or operations &amp; maintenance about these or similar cases. This is [the same standard applied to history questions][12] - there must be relevance to and direct questions regarding at least one SDLC activity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**6:** No changes to the guidance in the Help Center will be required. The scope of on-topic questions continues to be issues found while working in the systems development life cycle. In addition, questions about the law or requiring the expertise of a lawyer will continue to be off-topic. Additional guidance will be added to this [question][1] / [answer][12] which provides some supplementary notices on these edge cases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**7:** In order to be a community that responds to the needs of professionals, academics, and students working in software engineering and related fields, we need to adapt to the changing fields. The changing landscape of cybersecurity, privacy, autonomous vehicles (including cars and aircraft), and others are raising questions about ethical decisions in technology, and specifically in software development. We should be willing to accept questions in this area, as long as they meet our other criteria for good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/8212/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bethics%5D%20closed%3A0&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.acm.org/about/se-code&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/previous-versions/1992-acm-code/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://www.bcs.org/category/6030&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_ethics&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyball&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/8215/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27305" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8496" RevisionGUID="09863d02-ca1a-4f1e-bdac-93b282730f3a" CreationDate="2017-03-21T14:23:03.740" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 106 characters in body" Text="You are correct, these types of questions tend to be problematic for a variety of reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Too broad**. Maybe multiple design patterns could work. Maybe none. Maybe the answer is a short novel on how to shoehorn in patterns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Unclear**. Often these questions tend to be light on details, as if the asker wants us to be mind readers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Off-topic: resource request**. This has a weaker justification in my opinion, although I have cast this close vote at time for some questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, these questions suffer from one of two problems:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Asker does not understand how to design software, and believes applying a pattern will solve the problem.&#xD;&#xA;* Asker has a solution in mind, and needs to find out how to get there (X/Y problem).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The correct thing to do is put the question on hold for whatever reason to avoid poor-quality answers to a poor-quality question, and work with the asker to improve the question so it can be reopened and a proper answer written. Ideally, we would share our experience on how to design software _beyond_ throwing a dart at the dartboard of design patterns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;###See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These links are all applicable to some extent. Design pattern shopping is about &quot;best practices&quot; (applying a pattern thoughtlessly) which is a type of cargo cult programming (do whatever the popular thing is). They tend to be shopping for solutions instead of seeking advice to better oneself (give me fish/teach me how to fish). Finally, they are often X/Y problems: I think I need solution Y, when in reality I need help solving problem X.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is asking a question on &quot;best practice&quot; a bad thing?][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Cargo cult programming][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the XY problem?][4]&#xD;&#xA;* [Patterns are not building blocks][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/11/23/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/66378/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://the-whiteboard.github.io/2016/09/02/patterns.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27306" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8497" RevisionGUID="186ff0e5-007f-45e7-b2df-7f45bf72b399" CreationDate="2017-03-21T15:34:48.703" UserId="855" Text="I tend to not like these questions either, but I also feel like there may be many developers who are using the term design pattern when they really mean best practices. Maybe a follow-up question along these lines to the OP would help clarify?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If they insist on a design pattern (I'd like to hear their reason why.), vote to close." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27307" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8498" RevisionGUID="99754df4-1087-4202-9527-eb5acae967a1" CreationDate="2017-03-21T15:50:28.853" UserId="855" Text="Although we want to encourage questions and usage of the site, we still have to keep in mind that this is a site that deals with a particular profession. Explaining is good up to a point. We know there are people who are just starting out or only program for a hobby, but they should expect to get much better answers here than on some wide-open Q&amp;A site. With that comes a little responsibility.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was a time when those that joined a site/message board were expected to be patient, read the FAQs, look around, observe how others behave and act accordingly or get called a newbie. I think this site has a more kindler and gentler approach, but at some point, the rules need to be pointed out. Some people just can't take criticism even when it is constructive and helps them be a better programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel someone is being rude, nothing wrong with pointing that out." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27308" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8490" RevisionGUID="af6e9ecb-9edc-4d87-9607-b2b186f2d63f" CreationDate="2017-03-21T21:39:39.603" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/844302509837598720" />
  <row Id="27309" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8499" RevisionGUID="1bbc1d15-8289-46c4-b84c-06a6f5cc73c0" CreationDate="2017-03-22T04:11:28.137" UserId="131624" Text="What's the best screw driver to use on a nail?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A hammer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I completely agree that &quot;give me the pattern&quot; questions can be problematic. We should close them when nothing useful to the site can be made of them. But some can be redeemed with the right answer that points other lost souls to wisdom. Not everything can be solved with a pattern but that doesn't mean there isn't a solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The hard question at that point is how many other lost souls? It's hard to tell if this answer only helps the OP if you've never been so confused you thought a some kind of screw driver was what you should use on a nail.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I say vote to close unless you can see where the confusion is coming from and can point to a good answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for how to close them I like [gnats dupe target](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8492/how-bad-are-shopping-for-patterns-type-questions?cb=1#comment26691_8492). Just wish closing as dupe wasn't such a pain.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27310" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8499" RevisionGUID="52e554d7-ef62-4292-a6c1-9682627b014c" CreationDate="2017-03-22T13:59:38.427" UserId="131624" Comment="added 77 characters in body" Text="What's the best screw driver to use on a nail?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A hammer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of the best answers on this site reject the premise of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I completely agree that &quot;give me the pattern&quot; questions can be problematic. We should close them when nothing useful to the site can be made of them. But some can be redeemed with the right answer that points other lost souls to wisdom. Not everything can be solved with a pattern but that doesn't mean there isn't a solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The hard question at that point is how many other lost souls? It's hard to tell if this answer only helps the OP if you've never been so confused you thought a some kind of screw driver was what you should use on a nail.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I say vote to close unless you can see where the confusion is coming from and can point to a good answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for how to close them I like [gnats dupe target](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8492/how-bad-are-shopping-for-patterns-type-questions?cb=1#comment26691_8492). Just wish closing as dupe wasn't such a pain.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27311" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8492" RevisionGUID="f6d3526a-db24-42d8-950e-f6de2f602fbd" CreationDate="2017-03-22T15:50:25.357" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/844577009221226500" />
  <row Id="27312" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6971" RevisionGUID="63e60c44-9d6c-4562-8b33-1e3f3bf75ba5" CreationDate="2017-03-24T02:48:25.160" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="added 670 characters in body" Text="A &quot;best practice&quot; is a technique or process that developers agree is the correct way to do something. However, the question is rather loaded. What makes it &quot;best?&quot; Why is one technique better than another, and does it depend on context? Of course what is &quot;best&quot; in one instance of a problem might not be best in another. In other words, why not just ask &quot;how do I solve this problem?&quot; instead of &quot;what cookie-cutter technique can I apply here?&quot; A best practice is, in essence, a popularity contest anyway. That works well for random &quot;reality&quot; TV shows, not so well for developing good software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Design patterns are objective. I can draw a [strategy pattern][1] on a whiteboard and we can agree that it is, in fact, the strategy pattern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The difference here is that while we can clearly define a design pattern, we do not necessarily agree that it is the right tool for a particular job or is the best way to approach a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, &quot;pattern shopping&quot; problems tend to exhibit similar problems to &quot;best practice shopping&quot; problems. The key here is &quot;shopping.&quot; Someone heard of a buzzword and thinks it will solve a problem, so they ask a question for &quot;I need a recommendation on which widget is the best one.&quot; Whether talking about best practices or design patterns, the correct question is to ask how to solve the problem at hand, and to be open to all constructive suggestions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_pattern" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27313" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8500" RevisionGUID="614e182c-0567-4855-aa71-40859ff9bf38" CreationDate="2017-03-24T22:45:14.563" UserId="263785" Text="Before choosing one of the other answers please consider that &quot;Software Engineering&quot; is the only community where I consistently see lots of down-votes in comparison. Most other stackexchange communities I participate in get by with-out using this feature.&#xA;&#xA;If you care for the topic you should help others in getting better in it. Sharing your knowledge is caring. &#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27314" PostHistoryTypeId="6" PostId="8461" RevisionGUID="8c4235d5-61e8-4189-b19f-2be817cae7c6" CreationDate="2017-03-25T00:06:12.577" UserId="-1" Text="|discussion|spam|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27315" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8501" RevisionGUID="ee8db289-5ce9-42ef-8c46-146b3db41423" CreationDate="2017-03-25T13:21:15.783" UserId="131624" Text="I just hit the 20K mark for the first time and to a large extent it doesn't feel that different than the 3k mark.  Sure, there are a few more privileges I'm being trusted with but I'm more interested in what the community expects of me at this level and where I could be doing better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm a big boy so feel free to be honest and direct with your constructive criticism. If there's something I'm doing well feel free to point it out.  I'm making this question about me but the point is what's best for the community.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27316" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8501" RevisionGUID="ee8db289-5ce9-42ef-8c46-146b3db41423" CreationDate="2017-03-25T13:21:15.783" UserId="131624" Text="Just hit 20K. How am I doing?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27317" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8501" RevisionGUID="ee8db289-5ce9-42ef-8c46-146b3db41423" CreationDate="2017-03-25T13:21:15.783" UserId="131624" Text="|discussion|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27318" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8502" RevisionGUID="cd097c29-d090-4050-8e11-3ca77e9520ae" CreationDate="2017-03-25T18:18:21.300" UserId="47" Text="Just keep on doing what you've been doing thus far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you can see from the [Trusted User Privileges page](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/trusted-user) you can now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Voting to delete answers with score of -1 or lower&#xD;&#xA;* Voting to undelete answers except those deleted by a moderator&#xD;&#xA;* Voting to delete questions with a score of -3 or lower immediately after they are closed&#xD;&#xA;* Editing tag wikis without needing approval&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first and third of these new abilities will help you help us keep the site clean and tidy, removing questions and answers that don't need to be here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second helps with making sure that good content isn't lost - in cases where people have misguidedly deleted it in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to giving feedback on your behaviour, we (both as users and moderators) are encouraged to deal with problems as soon as possible and not let things fester. That they sometimes do is down is something to acknowledge and see where we can do better, but that's not relevant here. Beyond upvotes and leaving positive comments there are no other mechanisms for giving positive feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you were doing things wrong you would have heard about it by now. However, it does mean that if you are doing OK to great you don't get to hear about it, you just see a steady increase in reputation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27319" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8503" RevisionGUID="180f8666-073a-413b-93ea-273094741503" CreationDate="2017-03-27T17:49:08.603" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="This question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Should older code be updated to use newer language constructs, or should outdated constructs be sticked with?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;was closed as a duplicate of this question, a canonical locked question about refactoring old code:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code — what now?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Despite receiving enough votes to be closed, and enough of those close votes to close as a duplicate, there is some disagreement about whether the question should be closed or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should be done with this question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Reopen.&#xD;&#xA;* Remain closed as a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;* Close for a different reason.&#xD;&#xA;* Something else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/344886/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/155488/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27320" PostHistoryTypeId="1" PostId="8503" RevisionGUID="180f8666-073a-413b-93ea-273094741503" CreationDate="2017-03-27T17:49:08.603" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="Should a question about older code being updated to use newer language constructs be closed as a duplicate?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27321" PostHistoryTypeId="3" PostId="8503" RevisionGUID="180f8666-073a-413b-93ea-273094741503" CreationDate="2017-03-27T17:49:08.603" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="|discussion|specific-question|" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27322" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8504" RevisionGUID="40153427-52a5-4af1-b450-0299ede5d9e5" CreationDate="2017-03-27T17:49:08.603" UserDisplayName="user22815" Text="This is a good question that is relevant to the systems engineering development life cycle. However, I feel the duplicate adequately answers it, so it should remain closed as a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original question states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I happen to want to make some enhancements in a still-functional code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that was written a long time ago, before the programming language it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is written in grew in features. In theory, the whole project uses the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; up-to-day version of the language, however this particular module (and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in fact, many other modules) are still written in the older dialect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The crux of the issue is &quot;this is old code that works, but is written in a different way than other modules.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the accepted answer at the dupe target:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Quick Tips for Good House-Keeping&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * When in hotfix-mode, based on a customer support request:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  * It's usually a best practice to NOT go around fixing other issues, as you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; might introduce new ones unwillingly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  * Go at it SEAL-style: get in, kill the bug, get out, and ship your patch. It's a surgical and tactical strike.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * But for all other cases, if you open a file, make it your duty to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  * definitely: review it (take notes, file issue reports),&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  * maybe: clean it (style cleanups and minor violations),&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  * ideally: refactor it (reorganize large sections and their neigbors).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a checklist of approaches to take when editing old code. Specifically, the &quot;all other cases&quot; section answers the original question by saying, paraphrased, &quot;go ahead and clean it up as time permits, and use official review channels (put it in a bug tracker, for example) to track what you are doing and what might need regression testing.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I get it that the dupe-target answer is huge. It is super-long and includes information that is not relevant here. However, it _does_ contain an answer to the question, which should remain closed as a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27323" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8505" RevisionGUID="3f7c1790-cf37-467d-9f46-a41fc4be52a2" CreationDate="2017-03-27T18:01:19.083" UserId="4" Text="I hit up this question in the review queue and reopened it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even though there may be mostly an answer in [the &quot;duplicate&quot;][1], it's hard to find and doesn't focus on the particular problem at hand. Reading through the &quot;duplicate&quot;, it talks about having a style guide with templates and conventions and guidelines for using the infrastructure and tools (which would include compilers and languages).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this &quot;duplicate&quot; doesn't address updating these conventions as the environment changes or how you manage software that was written as these conventions apply. I don't think the current answer does that well, either. I'd like to see an answer to the new question about good practices for maintaining and revising the things mentioned in the &quot;duplicate&quot; and how to have legacy code under a previous revision of the conventions live with new code written under a current revision of the conventions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are definitely related. I think the top answer in the &quot;duplicate&quot; is worth reading. But once you have those things which help manage large and complex source code, there's no guidance for revising as time goes on. I think that's what is being looked for in the new question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27324" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8506" RevisionGUID="cd94ec78-7567-4f41-ba86-d706f06a4caa" CreationDate="2017-03-28T17:27:39.207" UserId="264829" Text="Well I just started my journey, I might feel like getting an Olympic medal if I reach 20k :P, Amazing contribution bro... have less reputation to add comment, so I m writing this post as an answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27325" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8507" RevisionGUID="c218fb9f-80de-44e6-a24c-7865fc5a35de" CreationDate="2017-03-29T16:31:36.790" UserId="262846" Text="If you look at my reputation, you´ll come to the point that im either not really good at software development, or not long enough at it - no matter what is the case, there are things I am good at. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me there is only one thing I am looking for: Does what I´m doing meet my requirements? If so I am satisfied, if not I try to reach the next level. Because of some bad experiences I´ve learned, that this is the most important thing, because you´ll never know what people really think of you and (more important) why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I´ve taken a closer look to your profile and I am indeed impressed: nearly 3 years of activity, 9 questions, 13 answers, about 5k reached people - and 20k reputation... Seems like you understood, how the reputation thing works at SE. But I think there are much more important things than gaining reputation (I am the perfect person to tell you that though ;) )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Being polite, helpful to new users or beginners and always curios about the thoughts of other people would meet my expectations. No matter what reputation you have. But your question shows me, that youre on the right way for my expecations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And one more thing, to take a little deepness from my post: If it was your childhood-dream to reach 20K rep at SE-Software Engineering: Well done mate, you got it! Enjoy your success and if you´ve finished enjoying watch out for the next site to reach 20k rep (https://stackexchange.com/sites#) ;))" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27331" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6962" RevisionGUID="4228438f-b192-4f12-b81c-2c932d01f389" CreationDate="2017-03-30T18:12:26.673" UserDisplayName="user22815" Comment="Programmers -&gt; Software Engineering, link cleanup." Text="A [greenfield project][1] is one without restrictions on prior systems or protocols.  Blue sky projects are ones that are completely wide open (&quot;develop a knowledge base&quot;). In the context of a question on Software Engineering, a greenfield or blue sky question is one along the lines of &quot;How do I write this?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything about &quot;how do I write this?&quot; it is on the table - no design has been thought of, no problems have been encountered. In effect, the question is asking the community to design the entire system. This is similarly problematic as asking someone to write all the code for a set of requirements on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest problem with such a question is it is very broad. One could design the system at a high level and another person could do the same solution from a low level. Alternatively, there can be *many* designs for the same system. This leads to the question being [very broad][2] and in danger of being closed for such a reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With a design question, it is expected that the person asking the question has taken some time to sketch out the design that they have come up with and identify the problem they are encountering with the design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is a difficulty even getting started, as described in [where to start?][3] one should sit down and spend some time coming up with a design that is something that they are capable of coding to. That last point should not be overlooked - it is quite possible for an [architecture astronaut][4] to come up with a design from scratch that is impossible for anyone to code to or implement with any hope of getting it right (&quot;it is an n-tier design that makes use of MVC that is controlled by a dispatcher that has been configured with dependency injection and....&quot; -- just say 'no').&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are interested in hiring an architect that has this experience and can make such decisions for you on where to start, that is indeed a path to look down - but asking the community to be the architect is irresponsible and ultimately unmaintainable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, sit down and [sketch out][5] the design that you have and what problems you are encountering when thinking through the design. Draw something up on the white board, draw a circle around it and say &quot;I don't know how to get this piece and that piece to talk together correctly - I thought of using a message queue, but that has some problems in our architecture because...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned in another post ([10k link][6]):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This isn't so much &quot;white-boardy&quot; as it is &quot;blue-sky-y&quot;. There are entire careers built on trying to solve this problem - you're gonna have to narrow it down a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key to writing a good question is to scope the question properly so that it is one that addresses a problem in the design, rather than completely wide open &quot;pie in the sky&quot; with its options.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [An algorithm-based content ranking crawler][6] (10k link)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I need to implement a web crawler to crawl websites and rank visited pages based on content. For example, a website can be ranked as 80% political content or 70% sport content. There is no problem by implementing crawler. The only point would be an algorithm to set an approximate rank to content of crawled website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there any algorithm to reach this goal?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### [Grails app providing REST services, with Angular frontend in SPA configuration… Feasible?][7] (10k link)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Could you just begin an Angular project with Bower/Grunt/NPM give it its own directory and the whole nine yards ... and then just throw it in your Grails directory somewhere with the index.html page to be rendered as a static HTML file by a Grails controller?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So basically all the Grails app does is provide RESTful resources and literally redirects you to a static html file - which happens to be your Angular Single Page Application.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note the first example question here is one that leaves the described whiteboard completely untouched. There is nothing about the design, just a few vague requirements and the request to identify or design the algorithm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question draws a picture of sorts. It is still quite vague in places, but there's a design put forth that is being considered. There is something on the whiteboard that is being described. &quot;You've got this thing over here that provides this service that redirects over to this other thing...&quot; (you could picture a co-worker saying that with a marker in hand). And thus, the question is one that is whiteboardy. I'll certainly agree that the question is broad and may have other issues, but it *isn't* ***too*** broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whats more, the first question is one that could possibly be answered with &quot;you are looking for ${algo_XYZ}&quot;. While the second question wouldn't encourage simplistic or poor answers.  That is the key behind the ideas of [optimizing for pearls, not sand][8].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_project&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6366/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architecture-astronauts-scare-you/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://asciiflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/260209/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/260976/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/06/13/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27332" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8504" RevisionGUID="b0653652-f157-4655-8c64-ad305fbaa812" CreationDate="2017-04-03T20:07:27.137" UserId="9113" Comment="replaced &quot;duplicate&quot; by &quot;duplicate candidate&quot;" Text="This is a good question that is relevant to the systems engineering development life cycle. However, I feel the duplicate candidate adequately answers it, so it should remain closed as a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original question states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I happen to want to make some enhancements in a still-functional code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that was written a long time ago, before the programming language it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is written in grew in features. In theory, the whole project uses the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; up-to-day version of the language, however this particular module (and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in fact, many other modules) are still written in the older dialect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The crux of the issue is &quot;this is old code that works, but is written in a different way than other modules.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the accepted answer at the dupe target:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Quick Tips for Good House-Keeping&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * When in hotfix-mode, based on a customer support request:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  * It's usually a best practice to NOT go around fixing other issues, as you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; might introduce new ones unwillingly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  * Go at it SEAL-style: get in, kill the bug, get out, and ship your patch. It's a surgical and tactical strike.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * But for all other cases, if you open a file, make it your duty to:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  * definitely: review it (take notes, file issue reports),&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  * maybe: clean it (style cleanups and minor violations),&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  * ideally: refactor it (reorganize large sections and their neigbors).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a checklist of approaches to take when editing old code. Specifically, the &quot;all other cases&quot; section answers the original question by saying, paraphrased, &quot;go ahead and clean it up as time permits, and use official review channels (put it in a bug tracker, for example) to track what you are doing and what might need regression testing.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I get it that the dupe-target answer is huge. It is super-long and includes information that is not relevant here. However, it _does_ contain an answer to the question, which should remain closed as a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27333" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8507" RevisionGUID="3d106c06-88d3-4ee1-9378-3655529766b6" CreationDate="2017-04-04T07:46:22.240" UserId="262846" Comment="deleted 241 characters in body" Text="If you look at my reputation, you´ll come to the point that im either not really good at software development, or not long enough at it - no matter what is the case, there are things I am good at. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me there is only one thing I am looking for: Does what I´m doing meet my requirements? If so I am satisfied, if not I try to reach the next level. Because of some bad experiences I´ve learned, that this is the most important thing, because you´ll never know what people really think of you and (more important) why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there are much more important things than gaining reputation (I am the perfect person to tell you that though ;) ) Being polite, helpful to new users or beginners and always curios about the thoughts of other people would meet my expectations. No matter what reputation you have. But your question shows me, that youre on the right way for my expecations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And one more thing, to take a little deepness from my post: If it was your childhood-dream to reach 20K rep at SE-Software Engineering: Well done mate, you got it! Enjoy your success and if you´ve finished enjoying watch out for the next site to reach 20k rep (https://stackexchange.com/sites#) ;))" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27339" PostHistoryTypeId="2" PostId="8510" RevisionGUID="378c44a1-ecb7-478b-a42f-a4e821bf11aa" CreationDate="2017-04-07T13:57:45.077" UserId="9113" Text="If you want to measure your success over time, may I suggest you look at your &quot;average score per post&quot;? That might give you a more accurate impression on how the community values your contributions. For example, mine is currently around 64, which is not very high compared with the other &gt;50K users." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27343" PostHistoryTypeId="25" PostId="8503" RevisionGUID="53f9a6dc-120f-4ff5-a54b-82ed8fea2c0a" CreationDate="2017-04-10T20:42:53.443" Comment="http://twitter.com/StackSoftEng/status/851535982667198464" />
  <row Id="27345" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="133" RevisionGUID="5e2796bd-3bdd-4684-a541-61a140519155" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:29:42.677" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://ui.stackexchange.com/ with https://ux.stackexchange.com/" Text="###[Thomas Owens][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be interested in helping this community out. Of all the current Stack Exchanges, this is one of my favorites (the other being Stack Overflow, where [I'm a 20k+ user][3] and have been involved since the early beta). In terms of Area 51 participation (see [my profile][4]), I currently have one proposal for a Software Engineering Stack Exchange (currently in the committal phase). In the current public betas, I usually lurk around SEs such as (links go to my profile page) [Theoretical Computer Science][5], [Mathematics][6], [Statistical Analysis][7], and [User Interface][8], since these are areas that I'm somewhat interested in (although don't usually have enough of a background to contribute that much).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/572/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/users/2531/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/users/403/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://math.stackexchange.com/users/91/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/110/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/343/thomas-owens" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27347" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="155" RevisionGUID="5c01c220-dde4-496e-8cd3-07178f106e25" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are a lot of tags where a tag wiki wouldn't fit or is just plain stupid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example... For the tag [programming-languages][1] a wiki could be made but would it be useful?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming-languages" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27348" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="186" RevisionGUID="2971a7e2-4671-4e51-9675-a08e3fc8d9cd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are some questions on our site regarding Software Engineering. ([Example 1][1], [Example 2][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should we do with those questions when [Area 51 - Software Engineering][3] will be pubilc beta?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - keep them open as they are valid for the FAQ? (If not, we should list SE as an exception)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - close them as off-topic and ask them to post their request at the other site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - or do something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1224/whats-the-most-effective-way-to-perform-code-reviews&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/954/whats-your-programming-philosophy&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6922/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27349" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="225" RevisionGUID="36caffd1-853f-40a7-b50e-8bc08218b44d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's too sooner to try Google. I want know if P.SE have some public information about the referrer of landed page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question had a huge traffic today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Question][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1785/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-programming" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27350" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="261" RevisionGUID="8ba48bc2-10e7-4db5-a449-c45a42223e00" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[When did this policy go into effect?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just don't think that this works.  If you really believe that duplication of material on other websites is a problem, we will need a way to link to the duplicate on the other website.  The SE software doesn't work this way right now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4901/what-is-the-worst-designed-website-you-have-ever-seen" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27351" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="276" RevisionGUID="1f36f440-c2f1-432f-ad5b-4a68ae51a083" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="there is something wrong with closed questions, here is a popular one [why are so many programmers arrogant][1] it has a lot answers and a lot views and it seems a valid question and was closed just for a few peoples.&#xD;&#xA;shouldn't the system of close votes be reformulated?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;here is a question that got a close vote Mark Trapp user&#xD;&#xA;[what-s-the-minimal-requeriment-for-a-code-be-considerated-an-ai-implementation][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;he says: by possible duplicate of  (Covers same ground) [Will we ever develop artificial intelligence?][3]– Mark Trapp 2 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;insane.. there is nothing duplicated.&#xD;&#xA;So, it would be nice to lock valid questions for don't get close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;shouldn't you agree that valid questions would be locked for don't get close votes?&#xD;&#xA;I know it depends of the moderation and has no efficient way to moderators analyze question by question &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;but anyway what do you think should be done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5034/what-s-the-minimal-requeriment-for-a-code-be-considerated-an-ai-implementation&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/959/will-we-ever-develop-artificial-intelligence" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27352" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="346" RevisionGUID="e4a65103-4e87-421b-bea8-1a19a9657742" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently posted [this question][1] to get the opinions of other programmers. To me there really isn't a definite answer so wouldn't that make it an appropriate question for this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7887/what-are-your-thoughts-on-this-constructor-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27353" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="421" RevisionGUID="09456ab6-f61f-4f93-8465-dfabf0718c04" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Seen this on a [few questions][1], but is it really necessary? Isn't half this site recommendations? We recommend principles, languages, contests, and best ways to handle something. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thought I would ask before removing them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/recommendations" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27354" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="429" RevisionGUID="fdddc3bb-2d7b-4b82-b467-d101ffb23a25" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="That's quite an outrage, why go so far against the grain to inflict your will upon the masses and not even acknowledge why you are doing so?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/11033/which-programming-jargon-words-are-your-least-favorite-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Give me a break, why wasn't &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2119/which-programming-jargon-words-are-your-favorite&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;closed as well?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27355" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="551" RevisionGUID="87223ae5-0343-4c1c-a530-e5ca84f156f5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [Reputation Privileges][1] state that editing should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - to fix grammatical or spelling mistakes&#xD;&#xA; - to clarify the meaning of a post without changing it&#xD;&#xA; - correct minor mistakes or add addendums / updates as the post ages&#xD;&#xA; - add related resources or hyperlinks&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also says, &quot;Try to make the post substantively better when you edit, not just change a single character. Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, can anyone tell me how I could edit someone else's question and make it better? Should I presume that I understand the question being asked better than the asker? Or would it be better to simply make a comment on the question that clarifies or asks that the question be clarified?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, with regard to the &quot;Tiny, trivial&quot; part, does that mean I should not correct spelling/grammer errors should I see them? One of the sample reasons for editing is &quot;corrected spelling, fixed grammar&quot;, after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27357" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="560" RevisionGUID="93975aff-ba2f-44cd-b0f1-7613adb06c2b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7656/do-you-ever-write-code-with-pen-and-paper-and-should-we-do-it-more-often/21307#21307&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I view my answer, it contains the following text&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... I'll jot it down,&lt;br&gt; down,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I tried to edit it, I realized there is only one 'down'.    It seems that the word wrap algorithm at the new line is duplicating the word 'down'.  This happens in IE7 on Windows XP, regardless of how wide I have my window set.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27358" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="571" RevisionGUID="30f6ff25-906a-412d-86a7-7728756e6090" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have noticed recently a number of new users who have a significant amount of closed questions.  One [user][1] in particular has around 50% of 28 questions asked that have been closed.  A lot of the questions asked are inane and completely useless and it seems fairly obvious that this user has not read the FAQ.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do we handle new users like this?  What's the best way to teach them what makes a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/8226" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27359" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="591" RevisionGUID="9b74224d-9b0e-4ca5-ae5e-88aabbe010ea" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/22504/what-would-you-add-in-this-software-development-project-checklist&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to start a bounty there. It's not always possible. What are the rules?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27361" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="742" RevisionGUID="38550799-f6f1-4b52-8e78-5670a3d6833a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Can you merge this account &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/9635/sevki to this https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/1567/sevki account dear moderator" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27362" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="744" RevisionGUID="13762632-a12e-453d-b23c-faa1b85ba6d1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I see someone felt like [my delicious Question][1] didn't meet 6 points of decent subjective Questions, and after having a look at [that blog post][2], am curious which of those points did it fall short on?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[**update**] In response to a Comment, here's an expansion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. pass&#xD;&#xA;2. not too relevant here; observation is more important than personal experience here (not sure if observation==opinion)&#xD;&#xA;3. pass&#xD;&#xA;4. see (2)&#xD;&#xA;5. see (2)&#xD;&#xA;6. not sure of this one&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyways, it was interesting to learn about people you might not even, but are having an influence in your life as a programmer. Maybe that's not enough, but then the decision would mean some other Questions got to be closed. I'm here referring to Questions like favorite programming language, or even the [Question][3] I linked to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/25100/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1202/who-is-the-greatest-and-most-influential-programmer-of-all-time" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27363" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="746" RevisionGUID="e65166e0-9286-4984-835f-ec2234c3806b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently asked a question about how PHP can be improved: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/27564/what-features-you-like-to-have-in-php-language&#xD;&#xA;which was promptly closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; - even though I specifically asked constructive questions and provided guideline to bring constructive answers - and got some too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, we have such questions as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Is there anyone who has used Python/Ruby and PHP for a long time and still prefer PHP?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why is php considerd the darkside of programing?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why do you hate/love PHP][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've re-read the guidelines and I am still wondering - can somebody explain what definition of &quot;constructive&quot; and &quot;subjective&quot; being used here so that question asking for specific opinions of people to improve X is closed as &quot;subjective&quot; but question soliciting subjective rants on hating X is perfectly fine? Could you provide me an example of how could I have written my question so it would be in accordance with the guidelines? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tried to (1) inspire answers that explain “why” and “how” (2) to have long, not short, answers (3) have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone (4) invite sharing experiences over opinions (5) insist that opinion be backed up with fact and (6) have more than just mindless social fun. Obviously, I failed. Moreover, I still fail - I fail to see where exactly my failure was. Could you please point it out to me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/22742/is-there-anyone-who-has-used-python-ruby-and-php-for-a-long-time-and-still-prefer&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2323/why-is-php-considerd-the-darkside-of-programing&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/696/why-do-you-hate-love-php" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27364" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="766" RevisionGUID="316859ea-63c0-4535-b0f4-55bdf1ccf04a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As I've participated in this site I've seen quite a few questions whose answer will always be, &quot;It depends.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that all answers should give a justification for their opinion. Answers like [this](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/28314/is-the-ternary-operator-evil/28316#28316) seem not helpful at all, since they don't give an opinion, much less a justification for that opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone have suggestions for giving constructive answers on this kind of question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27365" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="773" RevisionGUID="612ff76b-5afd-47b8-bad1-34b3a10f57db" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is a summary of the question :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Gives a file size and encryption method. Seeks information on how easy/difficult it is to crack, what kind of infrastructure is required and what are the best programming languages to write a program to crack this file.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the link  : https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/27227/breaking-wikileaks-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially this question was down-voted 6 times and later closed as in-appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why should a question that seems perfectly legitimate be dealt with in this fashion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;b&gt;Edit :&lt;/b&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;I have edited the question, I think most people had a problem with the wordings on the third point on the question to what I meant :&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I read the guidelines of what is a good enough question. I am trying to figure out where the problem was with this question.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;For Ref :&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;tend to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over opinions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand if this question is not meant to be on programmers and should be on SO instead. But otherwise I fail to see where this question is not right. I just feel this question has been closed when it should have been left open." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27366" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="779" RevisionGUID="2ede8aed-6a5a-4408-acc1-3149cb3c146d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I dont know if this is a question but to me it seems wrong that these answers exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take this question [Is anything in programming truly evil?&#xD;&#xA;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/28667). Currently there is **35** answers and i counted about 7 real answers (of what is evil) out of the 35. Thats a lot of answers (28/35) that arent really answers (nor are comments). Something about it feels wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But then again i hate another thread and all of them are serious real answers. I only consider [one to be actually correct](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/28238/is-using-else-bad-programming/28248#28248) and cant believe all the upvote in the thread especially the top answer (currently +63) which doesnt even address avoiding the ELSE keyword which can EASILY be done!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Total nonsense -_-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27367" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="782" RevisionGUID="ffc258b2-69ee-4a4e-87a5-ef4caeb7f592" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [FAQ][1] has conflicting values for being able to vote to close/reopen. It lists both 250 and 3000. There might be other parts that need to be updated too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27368" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="788" RevisionGUID="f1ef09e6-235e-4929-a1d6-2217bd637e6c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm trying to accept an answer to a question I asked ([specifically this one][1]) and as far as I can tell it just isn't working- I get the &quot;hand&quot; pointer when I mouseover the tick but clicking on it has no clear effect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm using IE8 at the moment. I'll try it in a proper browser later, but it seems to me one should be able to use the site even in Exploder.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/27632/what-are-common-pitfalls-of-cloud-development-that-you-have-run-into" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27369" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="799" RevisionGUID="39a7c591-9750-40ab-a76f-4e9cff436d8e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Hi.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought I definitely agreed with the Subjective Questions Guidelines, and it made sense to me to close those which did not reach a score of at least 4/6. It seems, though, that my interpretation of the guidelines was somewhat flawed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm asking now after a specific case, and the question - er - in question was mine, but please grant me enough trust not to assume I'm not impartial in judgement. I really love this place, although I'm kind of a newbie, and I want to play it by the rules - and to do so, I need to know them first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, [this][1] is the question. I added a self-evaluation post-scriptum about the guidelines, too, before posting. Nevertheless, I got some downvotes for not abiding to them, and one person - with a way higher reputation and experience here than mine - also made me notice which points my question supposedly didn't respect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Problem is: I disagree, and I think the reasons are clear, so there could be something I'm missing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, could you please tell me what I fail to understand in the guidelines implications, if I fail to understand something? I know it's an effort, but it would be really helpful for me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/29485/does-music-increase-your-productivity/29609" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27370" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="814" RevisionGUID="85dc8f45-cc26-425f-8276-13276ca30d68" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't mean &quot;Hi Everybody&quot; or &quot;I hope someone can help me&quot; or even &quot;I've tried a search but can't find anything.&quot; I mean&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 0 down vote favorite&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;example here https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/30153/285 and it's not the first time I've seen it. Is it a marker of some kind of copying and pasting?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27371" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="836" RevisionGUID="6cc22468-4014-41bf-93ef-6c145f08d733" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So I [asked a question][1] which doesn't jibe with the normal flow of questions on this site, but I don't think it is off-topic and I edited the question to specifically relate it to software development and appease even the minute details of the commentators to no avail&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be tempted to ask &quot;Why is there no patron saint of computer programmers?&quot; I'm pretty sure it would get closed for the same reason, which is unbeknownst to me. I can't really help it if people I don't know don't believe there needs to be a patron of programmers, but I don't see how a disconnect between the beliefs of certain programmers makes the question inappropriate - or necessarily misses the boat on any of the subjective criteria. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to argue &quot;Where else could I ask this question and get a decent answer&quot; the reason for asking the question was mainly so people who type &quot;Patron Saint of Computer Programmers&quot; into their [search engine of choice][2] could hit a living community where-in the patron could actually be determined, which is how we've always done things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I asked &quot;Why is there no patron saint&quot; the answer would actually be A: because programmers have higher tendency to be skeptics and B: because programmers who aren't skeptics don't have much of a cohesive presence (i.e. a guild). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original intent (and still the intent) of Stack Overflow was for C++ programmers to answer C++ question and Java programmers to answer Java questions, but they're certainly free to cross from one realm to another.  It's no different with our website, a person should be free to ask and answer questions from their own points of view.  If a Java question is answered with a C++ code example and the answerer says, sorry that's the only syntax I can muster up, then he'll be voted on based on how well he answers the question - it may very well be the best answer.  The same goes for our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/29326/who-would-be-the-most-efficacious-patron-saint-of-programmers-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://dogpile.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27372" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="854" RevisionGUID="52703c02-733f-4f18-800b-2afdf6252ff8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="We've got some questions that seem to cover very similar ground, specifically:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/282/what-are-the-best-podcasts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/26730/optimizing-your-daily-commute&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/26002/road-trip-listening-material&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And they have been effectively marked as duplicates of each other.  All well and good.  The thing is that I think that while the answers to all the questions have largely worked out to cover the same meta-question, the questions themselves are not really the same and don't really cover the same thing that their answers do.  I think that that is what may be preventing the merging of the answers to these 3 questions into a single question that can continue to be updated with new answers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I would suggest is that someone create a new question, which more broadly covers the ground in the three questions above (something like &quot;How to pass time in the car&quot;) and then we merge all the answers from the 3 questions above into that single question, which can then be left open for future additions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does that make sense to anyone else?  &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27373" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="889" RevisionGUID="6d84a10d-5393-4504-ae07-b87ab2b330d4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just wondering but I've seen it happen a number of times, but when answers get blatantly obvious duplicate/repeat answers from multiple people. Now, I normally just upvote the first person if the answer is good, but take [this][1] question for instance. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's the etiquette for dealing with repeat answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/32956/what-are-the-common-revenue-models-for-free-software-companies" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27374" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="904" RevisionGUID="8a79837a-7033-4253-9538-17ac96100e1a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [tag:requirments-gathering] and [tag:requirements-engineering] tags were just added via the question [What is the difference between requirements Elicitation and Requirements Analysis in the real world?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/33722/what-is-the-difference-between-requirements-elicitation-and-requirements-analysis): the former is misspelled and the latter is a rephrase of the tags already on the question. Can these be killed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27375" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="935" RevisionGUID="5341f228-a118-43d6-aec2-ab1ecba4046a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="On StackOverflow, lmgtfy.com is banned by a word filter, because it's insulting and because it's not in keeping with the goals of the site which is to be a encyclopedia of sorts of answers to common and uncommon questions. [Someone](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/35098/something-like-php-net-for-ruby-on-rails) decided to post an lmgtfy.com link as an answer to a question here on programmers.stackexchange.com. Should the same word filter be installed here too?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27376" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="937" RevisionGUID="2b10f6ae-db64-4040-968d-14b20b6cfe83" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Steps to reproduce:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Visit [Programmers - Stack Exchange][1] or [Programmers chat][2] in browser.&#xD;&#xA;2. Keep page open for a while.&#xD;&#xA;3. Notice blemish on monitor at edge of vision, reach with hand or cloth to clean it off.&#xD;&#xA;4. Realize that blemish is actually the theme's background image and you just wiped it for nothing/touched monitor with finger and *actually made it worse*. Possible infinite loop condition.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(P.S. I would've tagged this [fun] if I had the rep. =))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27377" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="944" RevisionGUID="838fc65b-e715-4dfa-9b30-1fa56da7e6ab" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have noticed that sometimes new questions don't show up until they are 5-10mins old. Some of them even have answers that are not much younger. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been running a few experiments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With a partner we use two different computers  on the same LAN.  &#xD;&#xA;We used separate accounts.  &#xD;&#xA;We refreshed the page using the &quot;new&quot; navigation button until a new question showed up in the feed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On more than one occasion, one of us was able to see a new question for approximatively (5-10) mins. before the other.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone please explain the delay?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per CRT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Link&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question:&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/35798/fixing-a-bug-that-has-never-caused-a-problem-until-now&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On that specific question the first answer was not post yet when I clicked on the question. After I answered, I noticed that the question was answered and the time on the answer read 10 mins ago. Then I noticed that the question was 14mins old. I am positive that it did not take me 10-14 mins to write two sentences. That is what spawned the investigation. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27378" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1002" RevisionGUID="617b08eb-d21d-44c0-b3c7-7a120fe1e29d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="What is the consensus around formatting? If things like bold and h1 tags are their in the formatting bar I assume it's ok to use them. I can empathize that one shouldn't abuse formatting since it would make the site look &quot;messy&quot; to say the least. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However I have some answers where I've put a heading  (h1) and bolded a key phrase and some moderator has taken upon himself to remove it from each and every answer. If that kind of formatting isn't allowed why have it there at all?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;if the normal formatting for h1,h2 etc is &quot;obnoxious&quot; I'd suggest decreasing their size and impact on the page. If h1, h2 etc shouldn't be used them why not remove them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What do you say to people when they say that programming is not demanding?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/37373/revisions)&#xD;&#xA;* [Coupling. Best practices.](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/37736/revisions)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27380" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1019" RevisionGUID="8a96a3a2-c8d3-4c8f-96ca-c25b1e749bbe" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The 2011 Community Moderator Election is now underway!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community moderator elections have three phases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Nomination phase&#xD;&#xA;2. Primary phase&#xD;&#xA;3. Election phase&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends how many candidates there are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please visit the official election page at&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/election&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;for more detail, and to participate!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged [meta-tag:election]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27381" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1040" RevisionGUID="b5833411-dec7-4728-b107-0c4384ca8c84" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Why is it that [Can there be too much uniformity in coding standards?][1] gets challenged by a mod as &quot;not a real question&quot; but yet this [Easter eggs, good or bad?][2] is just fine and is determined a &quot;real question&quot;.  I'm really getting confused as the point of this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/38810/can-there-be-too-much-uniformity-in-coding-standards&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/39200/what-arguments-are-there-against-easter-eggs-are-there-any-arguments-to-even-sup" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27382" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1288" RevisionGUID="753873d1-a794-40aa-a2fd-02aad38fa28e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have a question [here][1] that I've used lobby for fixes in VS2010 SP1.  I haven't yet gone through the release notes to determine what has been fixed in SP1 or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the best action that should be taken on a question that refers to a product that is one version behind current?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/9378/what-usability-issues-have-you-had-with-vs2010/58285#58285" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27383" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1307" RevisionGUID="5d5ae195-db99-4500-a23a-3cb9d68fd68d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've been on this site for over a month now and have noticed several fundamental issues regarding the FAQ. The purpose of this post is **to elucidate these issues or wait for other users to tell me to hush.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rules or FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;--&#xD;&#xA;The general usage of the FAQ (exclusive of the StackExchange network) is a *reference*. It is used as a guide when things are not clear and obvious. While I have never used a question-and-answer site before, I read everything I could before posting my first answer and question. Fortunately, likewise with most people, I realised that the so-called **rules actually reside within the FAQ.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While containing guidelines inside the FAQ is fine for the majority of people who are considerate and strive to behave 'correctly' on this site, there is still a large number of people who the FAQ as a secondary reference (or not at all) and then find their question closed within minutes for asking something off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that 'rules' itself is a strong term - independently, the FAQ contains guidelines on what is permissible, but yet questions get closed promptly because people don't adhere to the rules in the FAQ; in this case, they *are* hard-and-fast rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggestion: make the rules more distinct or force each newcomer to read the rules section of the FAQ before posting a question. It is true they will learn inevitably, but let's go one step further and properly define what is and isn't accepted here from the beginning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Accepting an Answer&#xD;&#xA;--&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [FAQ][1] states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When you have decided which answer is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the most helpful to you, mark it as&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the accepted answer by clicking on the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; check box outline to the left of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer. This lets other people know&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that you have received a good answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to your question. Doing this is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; helpful because it shows other people&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that you’re getting value from the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; community. (If you don’t do this,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; people will often politely ask you to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; go back and accept answers for more of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your questions!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this site, it is simply wrong. There are countless instances where a member will ask the original poster to accept more answers. This is **always** countered by another (more experienced) user or moderator stating that the acceptance rate is irrelevant to programmers.stackexchange.com. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example: 2-3 weeks ago, [Péter Török][4], possibly the fastest person to gain reputation on this site was in the position of asking the original poster to accept more questions. [Anna Lear][5] was the one who retorted, saying that accepting answers doesn't matter because this site is based on subjective discussions. This shouldn't have happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the stackexchange model ([here][2] and [here][3]), this site is a self-regulating site (where the community sets the conventions). This results in advice (from experienced users) and direction (from the moderating team) which directly conflicts with what is stated in the FAQ. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Suggestion: change the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/moderator-pro-tempore/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/14221/peter-torok&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/226/anna-lear" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27384" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1376" RevisionGUID="de4c8a55-e5c3-4133-9284-bb282066bfb1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question&#xD;&#xA;[Where and how to mention Stackoverflow participation in the résumé?][1]&#xD;&#xA;I had started a bounty to get better direct answer to the question. The whole topic has much discussion on yes and no to putting the participation on resume with no real answers on where and how to mention. except a very few.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the bounty had started 06:10 I had posted an answer to make it relevant on what kind of answer was expected for the bounty  .The newly [posted answer][2] was at 6:13. &#xD;&#xA;Over the week's duration this had got the highest votes.&#xD;&#xA;Which should be given  Community awarded bounty i.e 50 rep. This has not happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had checked the rules and similar post on meta regarding this and confirmed that the bounty should be awarded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/38597/where-and-how-to-mention-stackoverflow-participation-in-the-resume/63130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/38597/where-and-how-to-mention-stackoverflow-participation-in-the-resume/63130#63130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27385" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1387" RevisionGUID="20b72084-05e9-45fe-b7e6-64bc881a5b15" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I incorrectly flagged [this answer][1] as being not-an-answer. Any way to take it back?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/65541/why-does-hacking-in-movies-always-have-to-involve-extremely-fancy-graphical-inter/65613#65613" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27387" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1417" RevisionGUID="02f4b171-cb6b-477a-988e-95ef43893be5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Surely, if a question is important to programmers and careers in programming, even if it applies to other jobs/careers outside of that scope, it is a valid question for the community of programmers. I'm especially thinking about questions where the answers themselves are specific to the community, even if the question could be asked in other domains.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know what the FAQ says about non-domain-specific questions - but it doesn't really cover this aspect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example - this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/67438/research-and-articles-on-bonus-schemes-and-how-they-relate-to-overtime-and-team-h&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would say that this is important to a lot of programmers and managers of programmers. But a comment from one user shows that it may very well be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't there be room for questions like this, while stopping the ones that read like &quot;So, what colour socks do you wear while programming?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short form question: Why does a question have to be &quot;specific&quot; and not simply &quot;important/relevant&quot;?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27388" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1431" RevisionGUID="a526a5c5-5dd3-457a-85d1-f39c71affbb7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/68258/6415&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, the tone is somewhat argumentative. But it's a legitamate question - he wants some ideas on how to help his junior programmers be aware of SQL injection attacks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Post by OP after close:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So maybe it was a stupid question that wasn't really a question, but thanks for nothing, guys. You think you are being helpful but you aren't...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I must say I agree. I feel the question is on-topic. It also has several good answers - joke posts aren't an issue here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27389" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1439" RevisionGUID="d5947b0d-3dbf-4e10-911c-747b15c958fa" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question on Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;[What is the datastore used by Google for Google Instant?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is pretty much an exact duplicate of this on on SO: [How does Google Instant work?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quite rightly, the answer to the Programmers question references the SO answer (and althought the answerer on Programmers suggest upvoting on the SO answer a couple of votes were cast on this answer - no problem so long as the original answer also got upvotes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly these would be merged as duplicates if they were both on one site, but as Anna clarifed to me the other day we do not close questions as duplicates if the dupe is on another SE site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, does this imply that one of these questions should actually be migrated, in which case one of them can be closed, or do we expect some questions to meet the FAQs for both sites, and so they would both remain as they are?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What would be the correct flagging here? Should I flag such as a question as attention migration, or should I leave alone if it appears to meet the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/68601/what-is-the-datastore-used-by-google-for-google-instant&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3670831/how-does-google-instant-work" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27390" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1479" RevisionGUID="3adb6809-917f-4816-b914-9e579484a37f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="for example this user https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/44/necromancer?userid=16337 had got the necromancer badge today as a question was merged with the one which was older than 60 days. i.e https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/17826/how-do-people-read-big-technical-books/56934#56934&#xD;&#xA;Does this mean every one who gets up voted above 5 votes automatically earns this badge? .&#xD;&#xA;IMHO the actual badge description makes this a rare and a relatively hard badge to earn.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Answered a question more than 60 days later with score of 5 or more&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it is to be earned by the user when he resurrects an old question by answering it or by editing an existing old answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Merged Questions Do not consider the Effort Portion of the user in answering a 60 days old question as this is already done implicitly by merging. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27391" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1493" RevisionGUID="c6986777-948c-43cc-a7ef-2d7305e758d1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Why did https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1920/what-are-the-must-have-development-tools-for-linux get closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, it looks like someone just read&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Fails 1, 2, 4, and 5? Maybe 6?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;mdash; Roger Pate, Oct 20 '10 at 21:57&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and didn't check out the rules or help to improve the post instead of using the 'mighty close hammer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, my question finely holds with all of the rules and none of them seem to really fail:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does not fail 1, it inspires &quot;why they are good&quot; and &quot;how they are more productive&quot;. Does not fail 2, when you answer these questions you will have long enough answers, take an example of what Anto has answered. Does not fail 4, as using software gives you experience and I'm asking why people have a good experience with them. Rule 5 should be part of the FAQ, it's a bit silly to ask for this in every single question and conflicts with Rule 4 as I'm mostly asking for experience. I don't see how this is mindless social fun, programmers use tools and should thus be able to discuss tools...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;mdash; TomWij, Apr 27 '11 at 18:28&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, why did my question get closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1913/what-are-the-must-have-development-tools-for-windows" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27392" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1516" RevisionGUID="32211d5f-a112-42e0-abc4-61b32b01d732" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This][1] is a question that I thought was perfectly reasonable for P.SE.  It was closed as &quot;too localized&quot; due to the fact that the answer may change over time.  I find this to be a strange reason to close the question, as many of the answers to P.SE questions would change over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've seen questions on this site pertaining to architecture, software lifecycles, design patterns, methodologies, etc.  Answers to almost all of these types of questions might change over time, as the technologies, and thinking around those technologies, change.  This is a site focused on a technology profession which is in a state of constant evolution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we really be closing questions because appropriate answers may change over time?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/73206/career-in-vb-net-or-c-net/73285#73285" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27393" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1552" RevisionGUID="9db7dac0-b594-46fb-a750-7ccf1647d3fa" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I feel strongly that my [question][1] was improperly closed. There is clearly a sharp difference of opinion on this question, but that is far different than the question being &quot;ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical&quot;. Even a moderator who closed the question took a definite position and answered the question in his/her comments. One answer that has received 14 upvotes already, so clearly people think that the question is answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a way to lobby to have the question reopened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/75064/true-or-false-the-natural-limit-on-the-length-of-a-programming-career-is-about-2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27394" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1554" RevisionGUID="15eae2cc-d45e-40c6-981a-50a80afbc0a9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="After reviewing (and leaving undecided, for now) a [suggested edit](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/993) that revealed that the [tag:websites] tag can have both concrete meaning (about developing websites or [having a website](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12279/is-having-your-own-website-important)) and meta-meaning ([websites about X](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/756/programming-puzzles)), I am not sure what to do with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* This [seems like a meta tag](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/) but, is it?  After all, if it is, then isn't [tag:books] also?&#xD;&#xA;* If it is a meta tag in one form, then how do we stop its growth, even if we untag all the meta-usages?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27395" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1635" RevisionGUID="73720cb8-a566-48cf-8e73-690034f2a207" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Is there anywhere on Stack Exchange for this question I asked? https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/78651/suggestions-on-what-database-to-use&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Also, should this be tagged as &quot;support&quot; and not as &quot;discussion&quot;?)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27396" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1639" RevisionGUID="f177dbab-8650-4f59-8cf1-cbf2906af6f3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question sprang to mind due to [this question][1] on the main site. My original comment about the question not fitting is no longer applicable since the OP rephrased the question. In fact *all* the comments basically are no longer useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In instances like this,&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Should we as community members&#xD;&#xA;    delete our comments?&#xD;&#xA; 2. Should the moderator re-opening delete/tidy the comments?&#xD;&#xA; 3. Leave them as they are as they pertain to previous form of the question?&#xD;&#xA; 4. Should they be marked in some way to show they are about an older version of the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/79011/industry-switch-to-space-technologies" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27397" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1651" RevisionGUID="10dd9ee7-82ae-4d16-a4b2-52105309127a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Anna Lear and I have a disagreement on the validity of a question on P.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How to promote Facebook app?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me it seems, that the promotion of an application is subject to localization and the subject matter of the application. The best promotion for two applications will not be the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;eg.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I were to promote a music application, I would likely want to promote and partner with music websites and sources. If I was developing a game however, this would not be the ideal source for promotion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you believe this topic (and topics like it) is off-topic, or is there a better location for such a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/78280/how-to-promote-facebook-app" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27398" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1697" RevisionGUID="f46581b2-739c-46d8-8f9b-25a91431134e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Example: [How can you filter out irritable programmers in interviews?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously, other professions probably have similar problems. You wouldn't want an irritable policeman, teacher or salesmen in your team either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, one might argue that the solution depends on the job. At least it's easier to implement a solution crafted for the typical interviewing process of a programmer than a generic answer that might fit for every possible job description.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/82663/how-can-you-filter-out-irritable-programmers-in-interviews-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27400" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1776" RevisionGUID="67db61ad-b3cd-440d-97dc-f62cee72a5c5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question here was directly prompted by this QA:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/85921/how-do-i-explain-to-hr-that-my-work-experience-is-relevant-even-if-it-doesnt-mat&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure if I think this should be closed. On the one hand, I'm fine with the original question. I don't *like* it but I'm fine with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, the ensuing discussion in the comments is shaping up to be a flamewar because of the argumentativeness of the person who asked the original question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it appropriate to close (or in my case flag, since I can't close) a question because of it's ensuing discussion?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27401" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1781" RevisionGUID="34662b35-151e-45da-bccb-898318716e7c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Say I've asked a question that may be rather controversial. Oh, wait, [I have](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/85754/are-there-any-non-self-taught-famous-programmers). It was closed, and for good reason: it's probably not the best fit for Stack Exchange, no matter how interesting the resulting answers and discussion might have been.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange sites are known for having very fast turnaround: I can ask a question and have votes, comments, and answers within minutes. On Stack Overflow, sometimes within seconds. That's great for getting answers to legitimate questions, but unfortunately, it's also great for getting close-votes on questions whose legitimacy is in doubt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose that on a subjective-question site such as Programmers, when a question could go either way, closing be postponed until *answers* demonstrate whether or not the question has merit. A so-so question can still garner great answers, because the people who provide great answers are likely going to view the question impartially; and after all, answers are the blood of Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a good solution to this?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27402" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1859" RevisionGUID="4c41798e-fc97-4248-a8e8-92fc77d4478f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So we have a question that's pretty popular today: [Are programmers getting lazier and less competent](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/88745/8)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, to me personally, reads very much like a rant and the answers its received have mainly been to challenge the assertions in the question itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Normally, it's a question that would be closed as not constructive, but it's got a lot of activity and no close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So is this question constructive? If so, why? If it isn't, what can we do to get the community more animated in helping moderate popular questions that are ultimately poor fits for our site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27403" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1918" RevisionGUID="267d5f15-556a-4f51-90d8-e4069ccbdd52" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Today I have written two tag descriptions. The way I have done this was by clicking the 'help us create it' link in the tag overview.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few minutes ago I wanted to describe the 'maven' tag, but now the named link references to https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/edit-tag-wiki/@tag.Id. As you see there seems to be a problem with the tag.Id parameter. I have tried this with several other tags which doesn't have a tag summary, all of them references to this URL.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can still create a tag summary by clicking the 'about the ... tag' in the tag overview and then click the 'Propose Tag Wiki'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also I can replace the @tag.Id with the name of the tag within this URL. It redirects to an URL where the tag name is replaced with its id." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27404" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1934" RevisionGUID="04be80e2-8069-4dd4-8cfe-46ead220d188" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just merged [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/92682/cover-flow-license-issues#question) (10k+ link) into [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/92614/cover-flow-license-issues), but it looks like only my comment made it over into the master question and Vitor's comment was left behind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that the expected behaviour?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27405" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1992" RevisionGUID="f83262fb-c133-4647-9999-a7d770183932" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently got a Notable Question badge for [this](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/238/what-are-your-favorite-programming-related-movies-documentaries) question. My profile says it has more than 3k views, but on the question page it shows less than that. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27406" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2023" RevisionGUID="dbc80b29-3f4a-4f78-8986-ada51e1da1eb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed that [a recent high-profile post](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/96933/why-did-git-get-so-much-hype-while-others-dont) had all answers put in community wiki fairly fast, by the same mysterious person which has not participated at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a case of &quot;Community Wiki Troll&quot;, or is there a perfectly acceptable reason?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe Community Wikis are set for all answers once set for the question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27407" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2034" RevisionGUID="2b9b7989-e65c-40f0-bd22-6723292ad826" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In [this question][1], I got 2 upvotes, and system has recognized it, as it comes in my reputation history. But my reputation score at the top of the screen doesn't change. Why? Is it a bug?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/97295/a-practical-use-of-yield-keyword-in-c" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27408" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2083" RevisionGUID="f95d1ed2-8709-4e83-99d9-a76f6f8290d7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[tag:process] -&gt; [tag:development-process]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure how to work this one. I think we need to differentiate between business processes (there's already a [tag:business-process] tag with 8 questions) and process models/methodologies. I don't like the name &quot;development-process&quot;, though, since a typical process model covers everything from requirements through end-of-life of a project. I suppose it depends on how you define &quot;development&quot; - it could be the development of a project or it could mean the actual construction/building/development phase of a project. I want to know what the community thinks on this guy, though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some manual work to ensure that questions about things that aren't process methodologies (such as [this question][1]) aren't rolled into the tag about process models and methodologies, whatever tag that may be. I also do think that process models and methodologies should be grouped into a single tag. An option for this would be to settle on a name for process questions and then make process-model and process-methodology synonyms with that tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/91621/guidelines-for-html-css-js-optimization-process" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27409" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2089" RevisionGUID="788b1e31-cd98-4fe1-ae65-030ebd2712ad" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was looking through the Stack Exchange hottests questions and stumbled on one of the Programmers questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[When do you start documenting the code?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I'm reading Code Complete and I hoped to find another insightful post to help me decide when I should be doing this. Only to find an answer like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If you don't comment the code as you write it chances are minimal that you will come back and do it later (let alone do it properly).`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly? This answer only tells the OP he should do it, because else he has to come back and do it anyway. No explanation about how writing your code as pseudocode, which can be converted to comments might lead to fewer errors. Or how commenting what you write helps you think harder about the code you just wrote. **Nothing**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why does this answer have 25(!) upvotes? That's a lot of rep for something that doesn't answer the question and clearly doesn't teach anything to users who are interested in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now if this were just incidental it wouldn't be a problem, but I stumble over your 'hot' questions a lot and more often than not I've come back disappointed. Don't believe me? Here's another example from the top 50 [Laptop ergonomics][2]: **How do you position yourself when working on a laptop for long hours?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Normally, like I would if I was working on a desktop computer. Regular desk, a sturdy wooden chair (I don't like ergonomic chairs or anything of the kind) and a normal posture. &#xD;&#xA;Worked for me. YMMW though!`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing about using an external keyboard, a mouse rather than a trackpad, using a laptop stand for a better viewing angle or height? There's a whole industry devoted to this and there's actual science behind the ergonomics, yet an answer that says: 'Worked for me' gets 5 upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I don't have a solution to offer, but as a fellow Stack Exchange user I think upvoting such answers is giving a bad example. Worst of all, legitimately interested users like myself are repelled from even looking at Programmer questions any more because of the bad experiences, which I hope isn't something we're striving here for. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should we be rewarding poor quality answers like this?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/99255/when-do-you-start-documenting-the-code&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/99274/laptop-ergonomics" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27410" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2171" RevisionGUID="60f94987-bdfb-4450-8afb-bbc119b0584c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm just curious as to if there have been changed in topicality recently, after I saw this question had been migrated from here to PM.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Should a group of three students working on a big programming project have a leader?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a few ways to cut this. I organized them in order of my personal preference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It's on-topic both here and at PM.SE. Migration {should | should not} (aside: my preference is should not have been migrated, especially since PM is not out of beta yet) have happened. It's a project management question, but software project management is inherently different than managing projects in other engineering disciplines or even cross-disciplinary projects. Since the main focus was software, it's on-topic here. However, since it has to do with subject matter in the [Project Management Body of Knowledge][5] (mainly Project Human Resources Management), it's also on-topic at PM.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. It's on-topic here and should not have been migrated. One of the on-topic categories is &quot;software engineering&quot;. My take on that is that the formal definition of what is included in software engineering should come from the [SWEBOK][2]. Software engineering management is a [knowledge area in the SWEBOK][3], and therefore is on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. It's on topic here and should not have been migrated. The project, based on the question, is specifically and exclusively a software project. There was no mention of other engineering or business disciplines. The [P.SE FAQ][4] states that conceptual questions about software development are on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. It's off-topic here because it's relevant to more than just software engineers. Although software projects are different than other projects, if and how to choose a leader remains the same. It's a cross-cutting PM concern of interest to all PMs, software or otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. It's off-topic here because the question was worded to generally. Although it was a software project, no key concerns about developing software were identified. Unless there is some kind of demonstration of relevance to exclusively software, it should be moved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure who moved it, but these are what I see as the major possibilities for dealing with this question are. The only one I don't like is 5 - if that's the case, could the question have been edited to be made more specific?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose this does prompt another question, though. How do we deal with a site like PM that's in such overlap with a huge chunk of relevant questions? It might be something to look at in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/3235/should-a-group-of-three-students-working-on-a-big-programming-project-have-a-lead&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/swebok/home&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/swebok/html/ch8&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_to_the_Project_Management_Body_of_Knowledge" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27412" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2201" RevisionGUID="dee96167-7fe6-4c89-a486-f34373fded39" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="If a [question is moved to a beta site][1], and the beta site does not get promoted to permanently live, will the question get moved back to the live site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT - response to questions and comments ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;** I don't object to moving per se .. I object to moving to a site that subsequently goes away and not putting the questions back.  The question, **and the answers which people have put effort into** are effectively deleted.  I think that doesn't show proper respect for the contributors and their contributions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;** Would the question have been closed on Programmers absent the existence of PM?  If no, then the logic of &quot;it doesn't belong and was moved as a courtesy&quot; doesn't really apply.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;** I didn't ask the question I linked, but I don't think that it was better suited for PM than for Programmers. In fact I think it was just the opposite. It was a programmer asking if a team of programmers needs a team leader. The programmer is going to want other programmers to answer, not PMs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/103930/1655" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27413" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2207" RevisionGUID="846b7198-5aa6-445d-9997-c800f47c2ecb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I certainly thought this [question about wrist pain][1] was off-topic, given that the FAQ says *nothing* about health issues, but my flag was declined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I mis-reading the FAQ? Is there any other meta-issue here? While I realize the question may be of *interest* to programmers, it would also apply to *anyone* who uses a computer extensively, not just programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/62149/do-you-have-finger-wrist-pain-how-do-you-deal-with-that" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27414" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2283" RevisionGUID="acd9fb65-ba40-4c29-9212-68a54399993f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked a question few days back, which was very clear in its statement. The question was regarding compiler and definitely can be answered and was answered pretty well by the fellow programmers. But, still the question was closed as unreal, ambiguous, and vague. I requested for the reopen but it stated that I need 5 votes. Since the question was closed after more than 2 days, everyone had read it; so no one considered to re-visit and upvote it(may be many of them didnt value it that much). And Now, the question is closed and cant be seen so how can i expect 5 votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question i am talking about is this [ONE][1]. Can this be reopened or still lacks substance to be live at Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It might not be a great question but still holds a minute value. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/104710/compilers-are-only-for-developers-right" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27415" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2290" RevisionGUID="7bfa6d94-7b62-42bf-bef2-5eb7c823eb14" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm thinking of asking a question for papers (e.g. from IEEE or ACM) that are of interest to programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's similar question at [Theoretical Computer Science](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/1168/what-papers-should-everyone-read) that has some great answers, but there's a lot of theory there and I'm more interested in less theoretical ones with more interest to programmers and engineers day-to-day at the code-face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would result in a list, and should be one answer per paper, with a summary of why we should read this paper. I hope to find some classic and influential papers of interest to the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Would this be allowed?&#xD;&#xA;* Should it be community wiki?&#xD;&#xA;* What tags to you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;* If not here on Programmers.SE, how about another site?&#xD;&#xA;* What's the general Programmers.SE policy on list-generating questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This similar question was [closed](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/870/if-you-could-only-have-one-programming-related-book-on-your-bookshelf-what-would) as not constructive but this similar question is [open](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/966/what-non-programming-books-should-a-programmer-read-to-help-develop-programming-t).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27416" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2304" RevisionGUID="aec5573f-187f-4432-9b35-5f682baf8a36" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have noticed several very active threads that have been closed as off topic or not constructive ([here][1] is just one example). Given the vote count these posts are obviously interesting and popular. I feel it would be more constructive to move them to another site, say offtopic.stackoverflow where they could be discussed without detracting from the quality of the main site. Is this a workable idea? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/93476/how-did-you-get-your-first-programming-job" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27417" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2320" RevisionGUID="e2b60087-6882-4218-83d1-35a15abe667d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You may have noticed a few whale questions—ones with a ton of answers—getting bumped to the front page and subsequently closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot; This is part of a cleanup based on some new guidance we've received about questions that  have accrued way too many answers to be helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you look at the close reason for &quot;not constructive&quot;, it says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### closed as not constructive by Mark Trapp♦ 8 mins ago&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not meet enough of our [six guidelines for constructive subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/). All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question has dozens of answers, they stop being practical: if everyone and anyone can have an opinion about the content of the question, it's hard to learn anything other than what a few dozen people think about the subject. While surveys are fine in some contexts, that's [not what Stack Exchange is about](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the system is designed to facilitate collaborating on a few answers instead of providing dozens of separate ones. Once a question gets 16 answers, it will automatically convert to community wiki: this stops reputation accrual for answers and substantially lowers the threshold to edit answers without approval.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once a question gets converted to community wiki, it's meant to be a not-so-subtle warning that the question is becoming unwieldy and requires the community to regulate the answers its getting. Questions getting more than a dozen or so answers should be treated like a page on Wikipedia: existing answers should be edited to make them better rather than new ones added.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, per the guidance we've received from Stack Exchange, we'll now be closing [questions that get more than 50 answers](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=answers%3A50). Existing questions (~40 right now) will remain where they are (but closed), and if we can find a way to prune back the answers to get them below the threshold, we'll do it. There are a few questions with some really stellar, canonical answers that should not go away merely because they got too many mediocre answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can help clean these questions up by going through the answers, consolidating similar answers, and flagging for deletion the answers that add no additional value. If we can get some of these questions back down to a manageable number of answers, they'll be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27418" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2328" RevisionGUID="a762ed76-556e-4971-913a-9c2e5fcae134" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The Programmers.se FAQ states that &quot;Freelancing and business concerns&quot; are on topic for this exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a developer involved in recruiting, I consider recruiting to be an critical 'business concern' for any programmer, manager, team leader, or individual programmer.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask because I found [this closed question][1] to be very relevant to my own situation (that is, I too have found it almost impossible to find really qualified devs).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to know how other teams, especially those of small outfits handle this problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There certainly ought to be somewhere where recruiting questions can be asked.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[appeal to authority] Joel thought it was important enough to write a book on the subject! [/appeal to authority]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/110750/recruiting-asp-net-mvc-web-developers-why-do-i-get-so-few-good-candidates" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27419" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="117" RevisionGUID="621b5165-4769-4c67-b7cc-2e5727cacc61" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So [this][1] question was closed at off topic, but the close reason took me back&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Programmers are expected&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to **generally relate to indirectly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; relate to programming**, within the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; scope defined in the faq.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1301/how-can-i-make-money-other-than-salary-through-internet-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27420" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2368" RevisionGUID="6bbbd243-cbf4-41f3-94e6-5b0c3e6b4278" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked this question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/111530/is-c-harder-to-learn-use-than-other-languages and it was promptly closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, that's fine. But judging from the comments, it was seen as being anti-C++, and basically a rant. That really wasn't what i was aiming for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I want to know is if C++ programmers find C++ harder to program in than, for example, Java. (If so, I can presume that there are benefits that make it worth the difficulty.) Alternatively, do the C++ idioms make C++ just as easy to program in as Java, once you get to know them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically: Harder, or just Different?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can I ask this in a way that makes it a useful question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27421" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="300" RevisionGUID="c4c33b3b-b438-4f7a-ba90-439b0eec4299" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A mod is really more appropriate in this kind of situation. People just need to realize that this is a semi-professional site and they need to act as such. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And as @Chinmay said, I've yet to see a flame war, even in the [Vi vs Emacs question][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1271/which-is-better-vim-vs-emacs" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27422" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2371" RevisionGUID="052a645a-2b39-479d-8627-3a8206035c94" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="@Mark Trapp marked:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [what do i need to learn in order to get an entry level asp.net job?][1]  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; as a duplicate of&#xD;&#xA; - [If you develop with ASP.NET, which other technologies do you use?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions aren't even close!&#xD;&#xA;They're asking two completely different things!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:**  &#xD;&#xA;Q: What do i need to learn in order to get an entry level asp.net job?  &#xD;&#xA;A: You need to learn how to create CRUD pages and you need to learn SQL.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Q: If you develop with ASP.NET, which other technologies do you use?  &#xD;&#xA;A: I use a hodgepodge of complimentary technologies. I use technology X, technology Y, etc..., NHibernate, and Entity Framework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both answers are perfectly valid answers to their respective questions.  &#xD;&#xA;Neither answer is a good answer to the opposite question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/111881/what-do-i-need-to-learn-in-order-to-get-an-entry-level-asp-net-job&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/66389/if-you-develop-with-asp-net-which-other-technologies-do-you-use" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27423" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2397" RevisionGUID="5475034a-60f9-443b-be02-9b5f20c86531" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yesterday I posted a comment on [this question][1] with a link to an answer on StackOverflow that answered this question. Now the OP wants me to post it as an answer so they can accept it. I am not sure what to do because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On one hand, this is the answer that the OP was looking for, so I want to post it as an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, I can't post just the link because I would flag that as &quot;not an answer&quot; and I don't feel like I should just copy someone else's answer into mine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should I do in this situation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/113201/efficiently-implementing-a-prime-sieve" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27424" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="317" RevisionGUID="1cba6923-f2f0-4a49-92de-bc3907b80b0b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[What is the best X?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7167/what-is-the-best-editor) versus&#xD;&#xA;[What is your favorite X?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/219/what-is-your-favorite-editor-ide) versus [What X to use?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5/what-program-to-use-to-edit-and-or-view-text-files-on-windows)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm wondering if such questions result in the same answer, often the best is your favorite and vice-versa.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My guess is that we should see such questions as duplicates, but what do you think?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27425" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2421" RevisionGUID="ea683b01-8db1-4248-9317-00ea3979cf30" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm upset that [my question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/113757/are-version-control-systems-a-form-of-design-pattern) caused such negative responses. For my part I am sorry to have contributed to the Bait, Bully and Gang activity that I feel the post was creating. I was on the defensive for a misunderstanding based on, what I can only conclude, was a bad tag--if it had been tagged philosophy of programming then I would likely not have angered the &quot;design pattern&quot; followers who, I now realize, take these questions very seriously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said. My question is not being acurately edited by Mr.Trapp. While it is his determination this is best for the community, it is actually not a good edit. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, if someone wants to ask a different question, they should make their own post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, if you want to improve the quality of the site's answers, do not allow people who Bait, Bully or Gang to make snotty comment in someone's post if there is a misunderstanding of terminology--as was the case here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Third, To change the details of my post and morph into a better question is good for &quot;future users&quot; to read a title that maps closer to the results, but is this why people ask questions? I don't think of myself participating here to create some **generic** Wiki on programming. I think of it as a **very specific** Wiki. If the question didn't come off correctly then I think it should stand as it is--warts and all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't believe it is in the interest of a **participating** community to have their questions *smoothed over* when it suits a moderator's sense of editing duty. The information is out there, its the synergy between the questions and the answers that makes it more meaningful than if I had just posted a question such as &quot;what is a design pattern?&quot; I can find this answer on Wikipedia (and I liked to it in my post). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if you insist on hyjacking my question, then I will want to have my name removed from it--because its no longer my mistaken question but some generic &quot;I should have used google&quot; goof. AND I want my reputation points back, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Programmers is collaboratively edited: your question has been revised to better align with the answers received and so that it can remain open and hopefully be of use to people in the future. We can disassociate your name from the question if you don't want to be associated with it anymore: just let me know.&quot; [1][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/113757/are-version-control-systems-a-form-of-design-pattern&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27426" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="395" RevisionGUID="c3638e79-7136-48f7-99dd-a6a7e10396ad" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Please note that I use &quot;you&quot; in my answer, but this could refer to anyone who can benefit.  &#xD;&#xA;See the &quot;make it relevant to others&quot; section of [ask advice][1], which is an adaption from [Google's Tips][2]...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The story might make the question too localized/specific, but that's not the reason I've closed it for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I were one of the people who decided to vote for a close these were my thoughts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;1 -&gt; inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;4 -&gt; invite sharing experiences over opinions.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;5 -&gt; insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question asks for opinions and does get different opinions as an answer.  &#xD;&#xA;They all say you should do something, this doesn't result in an useful decision...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As nothing is backed up by experiences/facts/references, there is nothing to base your decision on. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;3 -&gt; have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As there are a lot of different opinions, the answers aren't constructive towards a decision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is what the close reason is about.  &#xD;&#xA;There can be questions that have constructive opinions that can help you create a subjective answer...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;2 -&gt; tend to have long, not short, answers.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;6 -&gt; are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These two are just fine, but not enough to have an overall effect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it seemed a bad idea to leave some questions open, it now seems a bad idea to close some questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**To answer your questions:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In my view, if I can't post something like that here, then which SE site is appropriate for it? Any?  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Or was it just a matter of how the question was asked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is on-topic, but as it isn't subjective in a good way it might not be useful in its current form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest to reform it to match the enforcement notice more, so it invites experiences and then the rest would come automatically. Please note that the notice isn't there to enforce questions that are solely based on experience, but experience tends to work out better for a question to be useful...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It is a bit frustrating, because the question generated a lot of good answers and those answers helped me a great deal, but now if these types of questions aren't welcomed here, then where can someone turn to?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sorry, perhaps I looked wrong at the answers that where there when I voted? I'm in for re-opening.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reforming the question might help, but feel free to disagree with me...&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/ask-advice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/09/tips-for-getting-help-with-your-site.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27427" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2430" RevisionGUID="2f2266e8-5b4f-4cce-981a-63c91a687038" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="What are the differences between this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Should there be a regulatory body to regulate the number of developers graduating every year? \[closed\]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What were the reasons why Windows never had a decent shell?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first was closed by [Mark Trapp][3] after he commented that Programmers [isn't a discussion board][4]. The second has active speculative answers that seem to me to simply be discussions and opinions about the question. Disregarding the quality of the question (the closed one could have been closed simply on that merit) what makes the Shell question worthy of continued discussion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/114580/should-there-be-a-regulatory-body-to-regulate-the-number-of-developers-graduatin&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/114530/what-were-the-reasons-why-windows-never-had-a-decent-shell&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/8/mark-trapp&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27428" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="447" RevisionGUID="b3c8fb12-5ad9-4c70-9c84-cf980ac4852b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've been monitoring [the heathcare IT][1] SO and I'd really like it to take off so I can rant and rave about the government somewhere.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today (actually yesterday) [CMS][2] (part of the American Health and Human Services) was supposed to release a file that we were supposed to have in our update.  However, that file never got released.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to ask about how I could get a [redress of grievances][3] but was unceremoniously slammed by people who probably had no idea what I was talking about. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, did we reject [this edict][4] or just ignore it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6433/healthcare-it&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://www.cms.gov/NursingHomeQualityInits/30_NHQIMDS30TechnicalInformation.asp&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12298/when-the-government-is-the-problem-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/merging-season/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27430" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="449" RevisionGUID="4b7a164a-33de-4ad5-af2c-b87f3909d441" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Changed to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for professional topics related to programming. It's 100% free, no registration required.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;for more, see the [faq](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27431" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="494" RevisionGUID="904f579a-1913-447d-8db0-3a69b8408c71" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Share it in a social manner, eg. Facebook, Twitter, Friends, Blog, Digg, IM, ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By doing that you are publishing the question to a public outside the StackExchange community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for how, just copy the link and paste it. Perhaps give it some explanation so it's more than a link...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Announcer:** Shared a link to a question that was visited by 25 unique IP addresses in 3 days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Booster:** Shared a link to a question that was visited by 300 unique IP addresses in 4 days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Publicist:** Shared a link to a question that was visited by 1000 unique IP addresses in 5 days.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More info on badges [here](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27432" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2449" RevisionGUID="e5811579-7f10-458e-9e0d-aff384a369f3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/115115/are-there-any-jobs-in-the-programming-field-that-dont-require-you-to-sit-at-a-d/115127#115127,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;one user said in comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (2 upvotes) +1 this is a good suggestion... I forgot to mention that.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Plus, you didn't mention the main perk... young impressionable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (female) undergrads. :P – AJC 9 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and another was&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (7 upvotes) Although in my experience females seem to account for about 10 % of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; class size, add impressionable &amp; attractive and you will soon find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; there isnt much of a pool there ! – NWS 7 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further down in the comments, someone has said&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (1 upvote, by me) @AJC, NWS, you're f-ing scum. So is everyone who voted that up. (And&#xD;&#xA;&gt; f- the moderators who deleted my comment but not the above.) – Joe&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Wreschnig 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Did a moderator delete a comment complaining about sexism without deleting the sexist comments? Or was the comment automatically deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27433" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="542" RevisionGUID="311f5299-1bd0-44cc-aa68-99dff3329654" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="No - it should not be _completely_ killed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, so as in the comment above I removed the tag from most questions, but as I was going through I noticed three exceptions, where it seems relevant to keep the tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Language agnostic programming books](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/163/language-agnostic-programming-books)&#xD;&#xA;* [What should I do to be language-agnostic?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1189/what-should-i-do-to-be-language-agnostic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Language-agnostic libs every programmer should consider learning?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/language-agnostic-libs-every-programmer-should-consider-learning)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the topic of those tags is *specifically* about being language agnostic, (rather than it being a non-descriptive tag as in the other cases), I figured it makes sense to keep it there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully others agree?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27434" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2463" RevisionGUID="9b161c07-f0c4-48a5-9b83-c0983f75f668" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I came across [this question][1] that was closed because it's &quot;not a real question&quot; when cleaning up [tag:software-engineering]. Why was it closed? So far, the answers are pretty poor. This question is easily answerable, but doesn't have any good answers yet. It's a clearly answerable question, as this post answers it. Due to the low quality of answers, it should either be reopened so that a high-quality, correct answer that cites reputable sources can be provided or deleted to prevent the wrong answers from surfacing, especially since this linked question is #2 on my Google search for &quot;are developers stakeholders&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Citing Karl Wieger's Software Requirements:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **stakeholder** A person, group, or organization that is actively involved in a project, is affected by its outcome, or can influence its outcome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Citing Ian Sommverville's Software Engineering 8:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The term *stakeholder* is used to refer to any person or group who will be affected by the system, directly or indirectly. Stakeholders include end-users who interact with the system and everyone else in an organisation that may be affected by its installation. Other system stakeholders may be engineers who are developing or maintaining related systems, business managers, domain experts, and trade union representatives.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Roger S. Pressman's Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach (6th Edition) defines five groups or stakeholders: senior managers who define business issues, project/technical managers who organize and control the practitioners, the practitioners who engineer the system, customers who specify the requirements for the software, and end-users who will interact with the delivered system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/36415/are-developers-a-stakeholder-in-a-system" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27435" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2502" RevisionGUID="513f2bd8-df02-43fe-8557-ba6f5fcb0707" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[A question was asked](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/117538/swag-for-expensive-dev-tools) about the return on investment for swag included with software, and it was not received well: it garnered several downvotes and flags within 15 minutes of asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While marketing in general isn't on-topic, business concerns for software development are. From the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But due to the negative reaction to this question, do we need to narrow &quot;business concerns&quot; to exclude marketing questions like this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27436" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="544" RevisionGUID="537933c6-5eff-4cf4-bb2a-563b756d984e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="See that question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/13623/does-giving-a-developer-a-slower-development-machine-result-in-faster-more-effici&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From OP's comment &quot;many many responses... but not many answers.&quot;. This question is very silly, so it's very unlikely an answer could been given. I'm concerned about Pr.SE direction. Silly questions should be ignored or downvoted. One or two posts should be enough. That question was turned on a forum thread. Just discussion and repeated posts writing the same thing in another words.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we accept this kind of question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12807/make-a-big-deal-out-of-true&#xD;&#xA;And: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/20407/will-high-reputation-in-stack-overflow-help-to-get-a-good-job&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They attract attention but few or no good answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you think?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27437" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2506" RevisionGUID="b8dfee6d-99ab-4cc5-ad24-db383ff65088" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Could someone please reopen then migrate [{RapidXML} Cannot open XML files unless in main][1] to Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/117615/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27438" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2568" RevisionGUID="64bae780-bf6a-42da-8336-4da4c798eb3d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 458 questions tagged [tag:php]&#xD;&#xA;- 9 questions tagged [tag:php5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of the 9 [tag:php5] questions two are closed and none ask for anything specific to PHP5 (There's [one comparison with earlier versions question][1], but it fits fine under [tag:php]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The distinction between PHP5 and earlier versions (namely 4) was important in the early days of PHP5 as it employed a completely rewritten engine which introduced quite a lot of compatibility issues. But it's not relevant any more, as PHP4 essentially [reached it's end of life in 2008][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think [tag:php5] doesn't make any sense on its own and probably never will, so we should merge it with [tag:php]. I would have used the &quot;suggest a synonym&quot; thingy, but since [tag:php5] is version specific, it's up to the moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've scanned the popular language tags and I didn't find any other version specific tags lurking around, which is a good thing, we should probably avoid them as most questions that would fit them better than the language tag would probably be off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/120023/how-does-php5-fare-with-earlier-versions-of-the-language&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://php.net/ChangeLog-4.php" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27439" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="575" RevisionGUID="c782cb12-8d64-4b34-a413-fdacc2c884a3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Recently https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/21280/what-are-the-essential-things-i-should-know-about-the-mac-closed was close as off-topic: **Questions on Programmers are expected to be about subjective issues in software development, within the scope defined in the faq.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question could be summed up as &quot;I'm a programmer who is new to the Mac: What does a programmer need to know about programming when using Mac OS?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't a purely subjective question, but it's as subjective as many others are, and there isn't just one right answer, so it seems appropriate for Pr.SE (roughly &amp;mdash; `inappropriate for SO and about programmers == appropriate for Pr.SE`?).  It is also very much in scope according to the FAQ: **Developer tools and techniques**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that it was closed by long-standing members of this community, but I thought I'd ask since it seems like a pretty good question to me (and where else would it be more appropriate?)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27440" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2586" RevisionGUID="0a365aa5-c62d-4be4-9b8c-622d430cebbd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I voted to close [this][1] question before it was edited. After the edit it think the question is of much higher quality and I dont want it closed. There dosent seem to be any way of revoking a close vote (unlike normal votes which can be changed if the question is edited). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this an oversight or a delibrate feature? (If the latter then why?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/121097/agile-scrum-and-uml-round-trip-tools" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27441" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="634" RevisionGUID="05f4eacb-e3e0-4a3d-adeb-4a1b692899d3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Extending the time limit for accepting answers addresses the wrong facet of the problem.  The central issue is not a lack of *thoughtful* answers, but an overabundance of *thoughtless* answers, and a 3-day waiting period will do precisely nothing to hold back the tide of one-liners and hyper-generous Civic Duty-seeking voters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suggest swift and merciless downvoting of *thoughtless* answers, and moderator-flagging of truly useless (joke or retort) answers.  That's how this site, and every SE site, is designed to be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also wouldn't hurt to point these members to the [FAQ][1], politely explaining that the question guidelines also apply broadly to answers.  In other words, explain your answer, back it up, and mind your tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may be hard for some people to believe, but on other SE sites, we've actually had fairly mindless poll questions saved by early, thoughtful, detailed answers.  It's a matter of instilling those values in the community, and the way to do that is not with arbitrary and frustrating technical limitations, but with behaviour - positive and negative reinforcement - and ongoing discussion and education.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know about you guys, but my reputation on Programmers.SE means about as much to me as my Meta.SO rep, which is to say, not much.  Just downvote, guys; stop worrying about the -1 rep hit you'll take.  It doesn't matter if 10 people upvote a stupid answer when there are 30 more waiting to downvote it, and eventually after seeing the negative scores, people will start to take the hint that unconstructive answers are frowned upon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(And yes, I am aware of the unwritten law that any meta answer encouraging downvoting must be downvoted several times, so go ahead and downvote it - just don't forget to downvote on the parent site, too.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*P.S. Increasing the weight of downvotes probably wouldn't hurt either.  It's not appropriate for Stack Overflow, but it makes a certain amount of sense for subjectivity-oriented sites because people are more likely to post controversial or rep-whoring answers.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27442" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="681" RevisionGUID="7ffccfde-78aa-4652-a068-c9721a572e86" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is a vote to reopen, but you have to have the required rep to cast it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It takes 3000 rep for anyone to cast that vote, and 250 rep to vote to reopen your own post.  See the [FAQ][1] for the rep enabling numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27444" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="441" RevisionGUID="c30fd751-1d24-4228-9ca5-9c823dfbec17" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Once in a while someone pops up with an objective &quot;help me with my code&quot; question like [this one][1]. I think it'd be nice to have a mechanism to migrate these to StackOverflow. Thoughts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12010/pyton-gtk-menu-show-the-menu-at-a-certain-position" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27445" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="719" RevisionGUID="7e1c2712-5c57-46fa-873e-9765a25b8d4f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="With the site going fully live the reputation privileges have changed. From the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) they are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 15	 Vote up  &#xD;&#xA;15	 Flag offensive  &#xD;&#xA;50	 Leave comments†  &#xD;&#xA;100	 Edit community wiki posts  &#xD;&#xA;125	 Vote down  &#xD;&#xA;150	 Create new tags  &#xD;&#xA;200	 Reduced advertising  &#xD;&#xA;200	 Retag questions  &#xD;&#xA;250	 Vote to close, reopen, or migrate your questions  &#xD;&#xA;1000	 Show total up and down vote counts  &#xD;&#xA;2000	 Edit other people's posts  &#xD;&#xA;3000	 Vote to close, reopen, or migrate any questions  &#xD;&#xA;**10000	 Delete closed questions, access to moderation tools**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(with added emphasis)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can check your (new) progress to each level at the [privileges page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27446" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2669" RevisionGUID="e9d34001-67f4-45d6-949b-ba563a34c6fb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Considering [this question - *Explain Big O notation in your words*][1], are questions in this form considered constructive ? There are quality answers, but in the end, everyone has their own words to describe something. Questions like this have a good chance to end up with a plethora of different answers that basically tell the same thing. Would there be a way to improve this kind of question ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;N.B. : As pointed out in the comments of the question, an [alternative version of it][2] exists as well on [StackOverflow][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/14682/explain-big-o-notation-in-your-words&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/487258/plain-english-explanation-of-big-o&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27447" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="913" RevisionGUID="04c072d7-7ff2-4de6-ba3e-cea172f84e7c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Have you compared that against [this link][1]? There are sometimes lags ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27448" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="784" RevisionGUID="39e43551-7804-4201-88fe-af36b36b0936" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Something has changed ever since Programmers got out of beta. Too many good questions, which are fully in the spirit of the site, are getting closed prematurely. Mostly these questions seem to be closed due to minor issues like grammar. Others have been improved by more senior members, but get closed anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are a few examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [What criteria should be used in evaluating if a company is worth working for?][1]&#xD;&#xA; - [What features would you like to have in PHP?][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [What is 1 WORD that best highlights a productive programming mindset?][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [What prompted Alex Stepanov to consider object-orientation a hoax?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The closing of the PHP question was particularly shocking, not because it was asked by a PHP developer, but because &quot;what feature would you like to see in *X*?&quot;-style questions have been around here for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand the impulse to close when there is more than one red flag: (1) poor grammar; (2) the question has meta commentary, asking if this is the right place; (3) extra detail is added, which pulls away emphasis on the question itself. Now that all of the red flag issues have been addressed on these questions, I hope we can reconsider the decision to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Simply, if you close questions and provide specific reasons for doing so, and then when those reasons are addressed you leave the question closed, you will discourage good users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:** Here's yet another example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Cant answer very many questions on StackOverflow. How can I improve?][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like [Anna Lear][6]'s comment: *&quot;The close makes no sense. This question isn't about SO as a site and doesn't belong on meta. The question is about ways to improve as a developer to be able to better answer questions.&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/27786/what-criteria-should-be-used-in-evaluating-if-a-company-is-worth-working-for&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/27564/what-features-would-you-like-to-have-in-php&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/28919/what-is-1-word-that-best-highlights-a-productive-programming-mindset/28923#28923&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/27388/what-prompted-alex-stepanov-to-consider-object-orientation-a-hoax&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/29118/cant-answer-very-many-questions-on-stackoverflow-how-can-i-improve-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/226/anna-lear" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27449" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2685" RevisionGUID="7becf673-a516-4ccc-9766-db424453b4d7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Does Programmers Stack Exchange site support syntax-highlighting for C++?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I ask is that the code in [my question][1] isn't highlighted in Firefox 8.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/125569/programmically-generating-htmlcss" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27450" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="997" RevisionGUID="a3ea6173-1f65-4744-b0b3-0ad18dc0a709" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Well, in this specific case, **Programmers is a bit unusual** because it's a proving grounds for a lot of network learning about &quot;how do we allow *constructive* subjective questions?&quot; -- something we did not really do en masse before this site was launched. And that is challenging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(also, bear in mind that question predates a lot of these decisions being made)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read up:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;- http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and of course:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, *in the general case*, I do like to see at least one other 3k user voting to close in addition to the moderator. But I support the moderators, and I think you need to make a case here for that specific question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my personal opinion, that question meets most of the 6 guidelines, doesn't run afoul of the explicit subjective pitfalls, and is probably OK. I have certainly seen much much MUCH worse." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27451" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="898" RevisionGUID="36bd6c35-e210-438e-a1e5-83f6c108c0e7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In [my experience][1] on this site, changing an answer to CW would have been a bad idea, even after 17 down votes - so they may just be hurting themselves through the conversion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/16618/what-will-be-considered-harmful-next/16621#16621" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27452" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2687" RevisionGUID="9d0e1e7f-7a76-4507-bae5-781652f20902" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have [two][1] [answers][2] that are late answers, from the same 1-rep user (usually they are greedy enough to set their website to the project homepage, but not this one...), and that don't give much information about the product, but promoting it the same way. Is it enough to consider it as spam?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/125564/7454&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/123362/7454" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27453" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1035" RevisionGUID="e4cbc7ba-786c-4f52-8dbf-d7245436a9f7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; In introductions I've seen many different way of describing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; moderation. I’ve seen words like&#xD;&#xA;&gt; serving, leading, navigating, guiding,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; facilitating, etc. Those are very&#xD;&#xA;&gt; different way of moderating. Could you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; explain in more details your way of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; moderation and why it will be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; efficient here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I view moderating as serving the community. What that means to me is being present to uphold existing standards of quality and environment. What it doesn't mean is always going with the popular opinion. I like where P.SE is now. We get many great questions and answers daily and I want to see it remain that way. It can be sometimes difficult to judge if a question fits well on P.SE due to the site's inherently subjective nature, but I do my best to keep the six guidelines and the FAQ in mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I used to run RPG games back in the day (anyone else here from the MUSH crowd?) and there it was all about coaching new players to greatness and making sure the experienced players had fun and stayed within the bounds of the rules. I see P.SE in a similar light. New users sometimes need a little help to get acquainted with how SE sites work, and old users want to have a place they enjoy coming back to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unlike other candidates, I don't have pre-existing SE moderation experience, but my plan is to continue what I've been doing up until now even without mod powers: leave comments on posts that can be improved, vote to close as needed, and upvote good questions and answers. I check the site several times daily and have a pretty good handle on which questions are new, which have been around a while, or which ones are likely duplicates of something we've seen before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Regarding general criteria the owner specified in https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/election, could you please provide some concrete example on how you proven to be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For concrete examples, I invite everybody to examine my answer and comment history. I believe it will paint a better picture of my communication style than I can describe here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - patient and fair&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - led by example&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As ChrisF said, fairness can be difficult to achieve, but I too try to remain consistent. I'm always happy to explain the reasoning behind a decision or to accept that I've made the wrong call or had a wrong opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been an active participant on the site over the last few months. I don't ask a lot of questions, but that's usually because most questions I come up with are something that's already been asked. I make use of answers and comments as appropriate. What my activity history won't show is the times when I've typed up an answer or a comment and then decided against posting it because I felt it might be too abrasive or pointless. I do a fair amount of thinking before posting, which I think is a good example to set.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - shown respect to fellow community members in their actions and words&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've done my best to remain civil and diplomatic even with people I perceive to be intentionally pushing against the limits of the rules and constructive communication. I avoid sarcasm and strive to maintain a neutral and non-aggressive tone. Even when I disagree with someone (and most notably I have disagreed with a number of close reasons), I communicate that in a reasonable manner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - and open to some light but firm moderation to keep the community on track and resolve (hopefully) uncommon disputes and exceptions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one's hard for me to provide an example for, since I haven't yet been a moderator. I think the site is doing well enough right now that it doesn't need heavy moderating, but at the same time its subjective nature requires consistent moderating from people who can justify their decisions. I believe I can do that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27454" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1053" RevisionGUID="38b3ca24-d30a-40d1-9133-a7f423b8d996" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Questions like [Is there an alternative to HTML Web Sockets, now that Firefox 4 has disabled them?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/33713/is-there-an-alternative-to-html-web-sockets-now-that-firefox-4-has-disabled-them) always give me pause.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was asked January 4.  To me, it is clearly suited better for StackOverflow than Programmers, since it is an answerable programming question, not a question about programmers or about the development process.  But, I say &quot;gray area&quot; since clearly the poster thought it was appropriate and most of the community haven't felt concerned with it remaining open on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is, **what do we do about questions which *do* fall into some sort of a gray area between StackOverflow and Programmers?** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I see a question like this, I have three options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Vote to close as off-topic, or at the very least to post a comment saying it's better suited there.&#xD;&#xA;2. Answer (mark as community-wiki if I'm also voting to close)&#xD;&#xA;3. Leave it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I'm unable to answer, my inclination would be to choose #1, to help the user find a better forum for obtaining an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However well-intentioned that would be, when the question is in a gray area, it's likely to cause some to think I'm just being unhelpful and better off just leaving the question alone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, once it's been around for 2 weeks, it seems more people are inclined to let it stay simply because it has longevity and answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any advice for this situation?  Am I being too sensitive?  Could we benefit from a clear description of the difference between SO/Programmers in the &quot;How to Ask&quot; note on the Ask Question page? Are there any other ways in which we could reduce this gray area?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27455" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2711" RevisionGUID="778a24c8-221b-4300-b8f8-61ffb87452ba" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the [main list of questions][1], we have dark blue for visited and light blue for not. Okay. But in the [related tab for any question][2], it's light blue for visited and dark blue for not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is seriously confusing me. Argh.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/24681/charles-barkley-syndrome" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27456" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1064" RevisionGUID="4e16d4aa-1b14-405c-80f0-841964e6ba6d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="see &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#bounty&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;specifically&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you do not award your bounty within 7 days, the highest voted answer created after the bounty started with at least 2 upvotes will be awarded half the bounty amount." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27457" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1044" RevisionGUID="ac641b63-9cc5-4d51-86ce-a2e03755555e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; In introductions I've seen many different way of describing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; moderation. I’ve seen words like&#xD;&#xA;&gt; serving, leading, navigating, guiding,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; facilitating, etc. Those are very&#xD;&#xA;&gt; different way of moderating. Could you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; explain in more details your way of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; moderation and why it will be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; efficient here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderating isn't about playing the middle, it's about bringing things to the middle as best as possible through community encouragement, judicious editing, and a flexible view of what the intention of the user is. There have been quite a few questions that with the collaborative editing power of the community have been excellent topics for discussion. Then I say discussion I mean answering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you look at the other extreme end of the spectrum you find questions that simple need to be handled swiftly and efficiently, whether it's off topic (technical SO questions chief among them), or not real questions (spam, advertising, etc). Closing for reasons of not constructive and too localized I view as too subjective to be handled by one person alone unless there is a strong precedent to lead with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll be the first to admit I'm not always the most patient, but I do try to be as fair as possible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have tried to provide complete answers whenever possible. I do appreciate a certain terseness. I have left comments for the majority (if not all) of my downvotes in an attempt to promote better answers / questions. I have had a few [controversial answers](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/24412/do-you-have-your-own-misc-utils-library-what-part-are-you-most-proud-of/24432#24432), but those a rare now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27458" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2757" RevisionGUID="b54cf156-bed8-4300-bbfb-bdd6544b0c6e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Questions sorted by votes:&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not spending much time here, so maybe I'm missing something. But looking at the top questions - the best adjective I can come up with to describe them in my poor English is - &quot;populistic&quot;. I guess the only reason they get so many upvotes is because everyone understands them. Otherwise I feel that there is not much difference between questions that get lot's of upvotes and those that are downvoted and closed immediately. It's a random process for me.&#xD;&#xA;(I have a theory though that it's partially a crowd psychology effect - the initial voting determines whether the question will be going seriously up or seriously down.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions/answers that require some research effort and expertise aren't upvoted that much, perhaps for the very reason that very few can understand/answer them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: Looking at those top-voted questions one gets confused about what questions are welcomed here. I know that I was and still am.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27459" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1068" RevisionGUID="f92838fb-e403-4727-93d4-2b41eb903f3a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Have you checked your reputation report https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/reputation? That will give you an output which will show you exactly how much reputation you've received for the day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Checking the rep graph on your profile page (which is all I can see) doesn't really help. It looks like you've actually earned 220 points - which can't be right. Post today's section of the report.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And don't forget the Stack Exchange day is UTC.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reputation report - which is &quot;the truth&quot; - shows 200 points for the day, so you're not missing out on any rep. I'm asking around to see if anyone else has seen this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here's what's going on**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The discrepancy is due to a deleted answer [this one](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/40290/what-is-the-best-way-to-count-time-spans/40293#40293) - (you should be able to see it, but if not it gained you an upvote).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The deletion causes a loss of the original 10 rep from the upvote because the upvote ceases, but the &quot;real-time&quot; counter thinks you've hit the rep cap and so doesn't add any more points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you hit the &quot;recalc now&quot; button at the bottom of the report you'll &quot;get back&quot; the missing 10 points because your history will be re-run and the deleted post won't count at all - it's as though it never happened. You will probably find that your rep goes down due to other deleted posts though." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27460" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1051" RevisionGUID="5e1f31a3-754a-4c0d-b5f5-c7b37c158368" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I prefer that approach. Moderators are for edge cases, not power closing every question they come across. [Some questions still hang around for days](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/38299/do-computer-glasses-work) but that's fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With almost 100 users with closing reputation there should be far less moderator involvement then there has been recently. Abilities should be exercised, otherwise lost. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27461" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2771" RevisionGUID="28efb091-ffee-488d-a8be-3c64b24c3442" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="We have a [tag:good] tag! Only two questions so far, the second one [appeared today][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's just get rid of it, sooner than later.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/128321/how-do-i-get-the-whole-picture" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27462" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1109" RevisionGUID="52d5f0a7-16ce-4128-b3d3-256e89196541" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3st-Hai1y54&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of good and fairly specific questions on P.SE end up getting answers that are witty, abstract, agreeable and popular -- but have no substance, and don't really answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't like to be a buzzkill, but I really don't think we at P.SE need to be reminded that [whitespace is good][1] or that [we don't like closed-minded employers][2] or that [stopping learning isn't conducive to learning][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure, there can be wisdom in tautologies, but they seldom answer questions, and when said plainly, their messages are quite mundane.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that simply down-voting them isn't enough, because popular answers have a lot of votes, even if they're not necessarily good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there ways when you ask a question to discourage these kinds of answers? Or is there anything policy-wise that could be done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/17305/how-do-you-use-blank-lines-in-your-code/17306#17306&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/43771/what-tool-would-make-you-turn-down-a-job-because-you-couldnt-use-it/43775#43775&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/42260/learning-to-be-a-good-developer-what-parts-can-you-skip-over/42271#42271" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27463" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1060" RevisionGUID="1fd46d44-7515-45e1-80ef-d1de74c7f9fa" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="One thing that is important to remember is that it's been well agreed upon by moderators and the site owners that **upvotes are not an indicator that a question should remain open**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I don't think this is very well communicated to users who haven't being reading meta or the comments of many closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To those users, it's natural to think that upvotes indicate a **good** question.  What it indicates is that it's a **popular** question.  If you read http://meta.stackoverflow.com and http://blog.stackoverflow.com, you'll realize this has been addressed many times - even popular questions can have a long term negative effect on keeping the site in line with it's purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a number of topics that would likely receive a high net score, but yet be closed as not aligned with the site's purpose.  Just search through the [questions sorted by votes](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes) and you'll find several, including two of the first four.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That being said, I didn't see anything wrong with your question, and I felt like the upvotes were also well deserved.  As others have pointed out, sometimes the wording of a question can simply feel like a &quot;discussion topic&quot; to a moderator rather than an answerable question, but I didn't see yours that way (which is why I answered it!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27464" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1082" RevisionGUID="3a9f1ba0-3115-4602-b5e5-58e4ea5b0d44" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="From the [*Edit questions and answers* privilege page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Try to make the post substantively better when you edit, not just change a single character. Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All edits bump the question back to the front page, so editing for the sake of correcting a minor typo or spelling mistake is potentially annoying to other users. If your edit isn't substantial enough to avoid the filter, it's probably not worth doing at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In terms of the copyediting you're requesting, it's not necessary at all. It is perfectly valid to say &quot;only be visible to you&quot;: given the context, &quot;only be&quot; modifies &quot;visible to you&quot;. The other way to read it, that your edit will stop being visible to you once approved, doesn't make any sense in this context." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27465" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1116" RevisionGUID="bb9a813e-ae28-43e7-95ba-b87b7113c1a1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'll merge account [15794](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/15794/alex) into [10538](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/10538/alex) as the latter has your answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Account 15794 uses a Yahoo OpenID, 10583 a Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure you log into the Google account and edit both profiles to indicate this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Post a comment on this answer so I know you've done it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27466" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2816" RevisionGUID="5df11541-393c-4c31-887e-288f65f55673" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just rejected [this edit][1] that was suggested on this question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/129349/how-can-i-tell-bad-code-from-good-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The edit did correct a spelling mistake in the title (as the edit comment suggested), but also removed the duplicate notification that was applied automatically when the question was closed. My reasoning was that there wasn't any significant improvement on the edit that made the question not a dupe, and even if there was, there's no reason to remove the notification until (and if) the question is reopened. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Was rejecting the edit justified? &#xD;&#xA; 2. What if there were far more significant edits?&#xD;&#xA; 3. Are there any repercussions for the user who suggested the edit? I'm only asking because of the scary reject dialog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/129349/3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27467" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1084" RevisionGUID="47f5cb03-145d-4b1c-b11b-cd2b8905e8b8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am not sure I understand your question -- if you see a question that isn't answered, and you have the expertise or knowledge to answer it ... why wouldn't you?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only time I would refrain from answering a question is when I know it is clearly off-topic, e.g.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27468" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1192" RevisionGUID="347046a8-4025-4cf1-afa3-1bed3e9eb8fc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There was a styling issue with margin here which has now been fixed - the search page is pretty again :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To try it out: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27469" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2841" RevisionGUID="9689c891-d0b9-4c56-b5a6-ab575a25e829" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A user has been going around on [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/104867/what-does-the-latest-c-renaissance-mean) and trolling -- posting anti-C++ answers -- to a question whose activity ended ~3 months ago, with no technical basis, to every possible comment box. However, when we flag for moderator attention, we flag only a single comment. What's the best way to tell a moderator that while a comment might itself be okay on it's face, but that the comments taken as a whole amount to trolling?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27470" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1103" RevisionGUID="b55d53a3-2299-47ec-ac90-d79f10d4d45c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You misunderstand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [tag-wiki edit **privilege**](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit-tag-wiki) is earned at 1,500 rep - which you've just past. This gives you the ability to create and edit tag wikis - short pieces of information that explain what the tag is about. It's not a badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be able to edit tag wikis:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; .. editors must also either&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * be in the top 20 answerers for the tag, or&#xD;&#xA;* have a total score of 100 or more for the tag on non CW questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually this isn't strictly true any more. If you are in the top 20 or have a score of 100 you will be able to edit as normal, but any user can propose an edit to tag wikis in the same way that they can propose edits to questions and answers. The edit must be approved by a user that meets the above criteria though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look in your profile to see which tags you have a score of 100 or more, and check the top users page ([C# Top Users](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/c%23/topusers)) where you'll see if you are in the top 20. You are currently 8th - so you can edit that tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will get the badge on your first edit to a tag-wiki body and it will be linked to from your profile page. See [which one I got it for on Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/badges/254/tag-editor?userid=59303)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27471" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1248" RevisionGUID="6c920dd4-1b2e-4bdc-9cd1-a0b1a3108d94" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just wondering if I've misunderstood the requirements for the [Deputy badge][1]. *(I haven't received it.)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Achieved maximum flag weight by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reviewing and flagging appropriately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![flag weight][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Have I misinterpreted the requirements?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/75/deputy&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ULEE8.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27472" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2852" RevisionGUID="a84ed51b-c382-4b72-8071-87e6f19ff650" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I see very often some minor edits awaiting validation, including edits that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Spell check of one or two words,&#xD;&#xA;- Remove of one or two typos,&#xD;&#xA;- Add a link to a term,&#xD;&#xA;- Add a single tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I always reject them as being too minor. Sometimes, it fails, displaying a message saying that the edit was accepted meanwhile, which indicates that while I was sure that the edit must be rejected, another high-rep user was convinced that the edit must be accepted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are edits like this valid edits?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If yes, what would be an edit being &quot;too minor&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Spell check is not minor when the mistakes seriously affect the question/answer. If somebody wrote &quot;he have&quot;, it's an error, but it doesn't worth an edit of a long answer, since we still understand what's being said.&#xD;&#xA;- Edit is not minor when it removes several typos (the number of typos being related to the length of the original question/answer).&#xD;&#xA;- Edit is not minor when adding multiple links which are undoubtedly useful, or one link of an extremely high importance (i.e. if the term is ambiguous and is subject to wrong interpretation by a large part of the audience). On the other hand, a link to Wikipedia of a mostly known term isn't worth it.&#xD;&#xA;- Edit is not minor when adding a tag which gives the meaning to the question. For example a simple &quot;php&quot; tag can change a meaning of [the whole question][1]: in one case, it appears off-topic. In other one, it seems valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just don't get the idea that we can receive +2 rep by adding just another tag or correcting one or two typos, compared to the effort to write a question or an answer to receive +5 or +10/+15.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have I misunderstood the &quot;too minor&quot; concept?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/130355/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27473" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1253" RevisionGUID="7aebb8d3-23b8-462b-84dc-4202cc009400" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In a [recent question][1], a commenter suggested the existence of a &quot;rant&quot; tag so that she may keep track of programmer rants, as she sometimes enjoys reading them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should a &quot;rant&quot; tag exist?  If so, should any rules regarding its use be instituted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/55823/how-much-effort-should-you-put-into-a-junior-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27474" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1127" RevisionGUID="ddaf9539-5084-4b21-a0f9-5a08ba20d64a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm not sure if it's just me, but I've been seeing a lot of answers that are being posted in comments. Nothing wrong with that, per se, but I would like to be able to upvote that as an answer that gives the commenter more rep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Example](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/45510/6415)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27475" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2865" RevisionGUID="3d046ad6-04da-4035-8f05-6cccffc4c4cf" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm new to Programmers and asked a question that was considered off topic according to the Programmer's FAQ -- unfortunate cause I was directed to Programmers from StackOverflow (see my comment in the question [here][1])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, my question was downvoted multiple times. Is there any way to recover my reputation considering the circumstances?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/130527/how-can-i-find-programming-work-in-south-america" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27476" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1400" RevisionGUID="002dc543-e4df-42f6-b779-428da338487b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm sorry to flog a dead horse, but I'm honestly disgusted by the conduct in the [Programming Tourism][1] question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to be clear about this.  I would never do the kind of thing he's proposing.  I'd go out and enjoy the sights and sounds and smells and tastes and &lt;del&gt;harlots&lt;/del&gt; company.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the OP asks two very simple questions, point blank:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Is it legal?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. Is it possible?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the top-voted, *ridiculously* voted [answer][2], now at 62 upvotes, scornfully rejects the premise of the question without offering any real insight or rationale:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, but I think you're crazy. Paris is one of the most interesting and lively cities in the world. You have a 10 day vacation with your girlfriend and you want to spend that time coding?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why not take a break from computers for the 10 days and come back refreshed and energised to complete your Ph.D?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it.  That's the *whole* post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not an answer to the question.  It doesn't answer either #1 or #2.  It does not provide an &quot;alternative&quot; because the OP was not asking for options.  It is no more than a snarky retort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me reiterate: *I agree* with the general feelings expressed *within* that answer.  But there is a difference between feeling the same way as someone and upvoting their answer.  The answer is not helpful or useful to the person who asked the question, or any future readers, in any way.  It is no different from all the joke answers on Stack Overflow we saw in the early days that went, *dude, you should totally drop that and try jQuery* - now relegated to a silly meta meme.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What really bothers me is not that the answer was posted; quite honestly, I can forgive Steve for having the knee-jerk reaction he did, even if I personally would have had more tact.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the mass upvoting and people *militantly* defending the answer afterward is *not* what these Q&amp;A sites are supposed to be about.  This is not supposed to be a place where people come genuinely looking for help, and not only get shot down, but get a *pile-on* of comments and votes telling him that, basically, he's a loser.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meanwhile, [serious questions about software development][3] collect dust, and even [easier serious ones][4] don't get nearly as much attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I *know* that we're seeing the bike shed effect, but this seems *way* out of proportion to any of the bikeshedding I've seen on any other Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there something I'm missing?  Why has this answer been upvoted so many times?  Why hasn't it been locked or deleted?  Are there seriously people who don't think this is utterly childish and a very poor reflection on the community in general?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there anything more we can be doing to improve the level of discipline here?  (Don't say flag/downvote - I already did.)  Or is this type of behaviour already firmly entrenched in the site's culture, something that we're all expected to just ignore or chuckle at when it comes up?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site's come a long way in terms of *question* quality - but are answers and votes still basically a free for all, or is there actually some standard people are expected to follow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/66881/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/66881/programming-tourism/66893#66893&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/66502/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/66708/3249" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27477" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1149" RevisionGUID="a0496c37-8171-4deb-9ae0-7c09c2a903e0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question was closed today: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46386/what-is-programming-like-in-the-japanese-language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was never closed: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1483/do-people-in-non-english-speaking-countries-code-in-english" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27478" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1413" RevisionGUID="2c9da324-bdc7-4b7c-a3d7-b9d3efea7109" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="While I don't see any problem is *helping* newcomers (or even older members) write better questions in order to get better answers, I think all the stuff regarding the *quality* is too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been involved in communities for years, and I've observed many efforts from the manager to make it &quot;better&quot; without much success. Because &quot;better&quot; is subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the user's point of view, all I want when I ask a question is to get answers. I don't expect them to visit the FAQ quite often.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, we should focus our efforts in improving the [Ask Question][1] page. It's where **all** askers go. Today, we have info about potential duplicates and formatting tips.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The link &quot;[asking help »][2]&quot; bring the user to a very useful page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I suggest that the content of the [asking help page][3] be displayed (even in a smaller form) within the [Ask Question][4] page.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/ask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/ask&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/DtM82.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27479" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2874" RevisionGUID="03b59358-0f25-48fc-a028-651e29e53ed4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="We have two separate questions asking whether you need to know/like/enjoy math to be a good programmer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4680/is-it-possible-to-become-a-good-programmer-if-you-dont-like-math   &#xD;&#xA;Asked in the Antedisciplining period&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/89158/do-you-have-to-be-good-at-math-to-be-a-good-programmer#question   &#xD;&#xA;&quot;Lovingly&quot; migrated to us from Stack Overflow a few months ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From my standpoint, these look like 1:1 duplicates and could be merged. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any reason to have both of these questions? Is there some exclusivity to either question that I'm not seeing which would warrant having both around?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27480" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1152" RevisionGUID="04a18420-166f-4b5c-afb1-7d45cafb928f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As Pemdas indicated, the other question is the *generalized* and more correct form of your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27481" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1574" RevisionGUID="34a5c24f-35df-4b98-a2a9-e9c91eaa5817" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The reason it's off topic is because the question has been asked already so many times that it's no longer a valuable question for the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just take a look at this search for [Search: What language next](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=what+language+next) and look at all of the countless questions about what language to learn next.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is also not valuable because it's just too argumentative and not constructive. It's the type of question that just spurs a lot of debate between the different groups of developers who defend their platform *because* it's their platform. You can do a quick Google search and find many dead forums on this topic that have died simply because the noise was too overwhelming. The Q&amp;A site goals are different:  To create great content to serve as a reference of questions and answers that will still be valuable in years to come.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, the answer to the question really doesn't matter. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27482" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1187" RevisionGUID="1fe20a9a-6d7a-4a6f-96e8-74ec37321e60" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Hello &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone help in merging my accounts on programmers stack exchange ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;please merge &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/9779/user9009&quot;&gt;this account&lt;/a&gt; into the &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/17335/user9009&quot;&gt;new one&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not able to access my old account because of lost openid credentials&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27484" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1589" RevisionGUID="28ffe121-fed2-43e2-aab8-29bb54d8596e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="For instance, [user252244](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/25244/user25244) has asked twelve questions in the three days they have been a member and ten of them have been closed. That's an 83% close rate. These generic &quot;userXXXXX&quot; accounts seem mostly inactive but when they are active they seem to ask a lot of poor questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These account names also indicate a minimum of investment in becoming a productive member of our communities (that they didn't take the time to choose a unique, meaningful or memorable username might imply that they won't take the time to formulate useful questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Need anything be done about these accounts in general or do we continue to handle them on a case-by-case basis? Can anything be done that is more useful than a &quot;please choose a meaningful/memorable username&quot; suggestion and a reiteration to read the FAQ before asking questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27485" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2900" RevisionGUID="2c1fe169-fe40-44fb-b749-d790752295ea" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The 2012 Community Moderator Election is now underway!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community moderator elections have three phases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Nomination phase&#xD;&#xA;2. Primary phase&#xD;&#xA;3. Election phase&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please visit the official election page at&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/election&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;for more detail, and to participate!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged [meta-tag:election]." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27487" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1206" RevisionGUID="088248ad-4430-46e1-ab7f-b9449cd30ec2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I keep finding interesting sounding questions that are closed only to find out they were closed the same day they were migrated because they shouldn't be here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sounds like we need more coordination between the people migrating questions and the people closing them!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's a sample question that was closed within minutes of being migrated:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/37804/which-big-web-applications-use-linq-to-sql&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks to whoever can shed some light on this for me.  Also, if I missed a Meta question that already addresses this, please point me in the right direction.  I couldn't find one." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27488" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1624" RevisionGUID="797036e2-a48b-4868-a7b3-5e32c9014dd1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question [Is there something else like SquareSpace out there?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/78253/is-there-something-else-like-squarespace-out-there-closed) (10k link) reminded me that there is nothing explicit in our [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) about shopping recommendation questions. The question starts out with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've been looking at SquareSpace to host my business and customer-support website, but I really require a forum, and SquareSpace's equivalent, a Discussion widget, frankly sucks for the purpose. Are there any other SquareSpace-like outfits that do have a good UI-designer as well as a good Forum? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should there be? Should we take an approach similar to Super User and Gaming where recommendations are off-topic? And if so, do we exclude only questions like &quot;I'm looking for a service that does what I need&quot; or also things like &quot;is there a library in language X that has feature Y&quot;? (Here's an [example](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/78379/need-advice-on-php-search-functionality) of the latter kind of questions.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27490" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1644" RevisionGUID="90bfaf86-c1fd-46c7-beb9-80aad7a8f901" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's part of the design (assuming you mean the picture on [this page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/47/chrisf) - as an example)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27491" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1215" RevisionGUID="bbc9be2d-eb1e-405d-899d-e465c05a2874" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="OK, so the question is, as far as it goes, fine, not great but not an immediate close (though maybe off-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/50989/arguing-developers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the answers have largely descended into a passive agressive self-help group with threats of violence and so on. There are enough up votes that simply down voting isn't going to do it - reason enough to close?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or am I being OTT?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27493" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1749" RevisionGUID="aac131c9-5a41-4434-8f31-04f8c6bf1dd5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Example (the title promises more than the body of the question delivers):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/84739/what-is-the-preferable-mobile-android-iphone-game-development-tool-for-a-c-ne&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The asker has only a relatively vague idea what he is going to do, and often, when someone points him to an obvious place to look for an answer, the reply is an &quot;but where do I start&quot; comment from the asker. Doesn't seem to be very constructive to me. Plus there are only so many questions of that kind possible before &quot;exact duplicates&quot; are inevitable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27494" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2971" RevisionGUID="abe1b74a-adca-4c8d-b849-8ec8f531c4ee" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I ran into this question on StackOverflow that was offtopic there, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/132657/25476&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By the time I saw it, it was less than 2 minutes old but already received 3 migration votes to Programmers which I found utterly astounding.  I tried to write a quick comment telling people that it was offtopic for Programmers as well and I intended to flag a moderator for them to close the question on their side.  Before I could even finish my one sentence comment it had already migrated over by non-moderator intervention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly anybody that took 5 minutes to read the [Programmers FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) would realize that this **could** be offtopic here as well and maybe wouldn't have been so quick to migrate the question.  I would hope that the moderators on StackOverflow would know better than this, but then this isn't a moderator problem, these are users with reasonably high reputation on StackOverflow who are allowed to make close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you feel that something can be done differently to prevent Programmers from getting dumped on with questions that are clearly not fit for our site?  Here is one suggestion off the top of my head:  Do not automatically migrate a question to the selected site unless the vote is unanimous or a moderator voted for migration.  If the vote is for majority migration then automatically flag a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me know what you think or if you think I am 110% off the mark." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27495" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1235" RevisionGUID="a9ae6289-ce32-4aa3-a0dd-2fe0deea12f4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I opened a bounty on my question a while back and gave a maximum of 450 bounty points. I **really** wanted some great answers and I got them. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/40394/how-do-you-organize-your-projects&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two things went wrong:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A) Amy P never got the bounty awarded to her. She is still at around 200 reputation points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;B) I never got the Benefactor badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks for your help. :)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27496" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3064" RevisionGUID="fb4db738-ffcb-4ca0-ba5f-24d7c297f89d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="How to decide whether a question belongs on [Programmers.SE][1] or [CSTheory.SE][2] site? Is there a general rule on how to decide what kind of questions belong on these two?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have read both FAQs, and it looks like these two SE sites have many things in common. Or, am I mistaken?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27497" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1769" RevisionGUID="af199016-07a9-4997-a1b1-f701a98842ca" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [original question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/85559/226) was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm currently trying to decide what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; server-side language to learn and use&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for web development, and while it's&#xD;&#xA;&gt; relatively easy to get information on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; why x, y, or z is a good thing, it's&#xD;&#xA;&gt; harder to figure out the downsides to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; each of them.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; In particular, I'm curious about what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; drawbacks there are to learning and/or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; using Ruby on Rails as opposed to any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other given language/framework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And [my answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/85559/what-are-the-downsides-of-ror/85709#85709) (there were about 10 solid answers already posted to the question):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is coming from a spanky new RoR&#xD;&#xA;&gt; coder, so... I'm POSITIVE my point of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; view is the one you are looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (since we're in the same boat)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd have to say the biggest problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you'll encounter is ... well... the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; high number of &quot;a-holeiness&quot; coders&#xD;&#xA;&gt; involved. Take this highly scientific&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ascii graph for example:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;        40                                                        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     a  |                                                *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;        |                                                *        *  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     h  30                                               *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     o  |                 *                    *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     l  |                 *                    *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     i  20                *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     n  |                 *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     e  |                 *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     s  10        *       *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     s  |         *       *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;        |         *       *          *         *         *        *&#xD;&#xA;&gt;       0+------------------------------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     language      PHP   ASP/.NET    JQuery    Java     Perl     RoR &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You know when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you've out-done PERL coders in this&#xD;&#xA;&gt; graph, that there's something serious&#xD;&#xA;&gt; going on (Not going to say any more&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about PERL coders lest I incur their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; wrath). Of course there are the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; caveats that the a-holiness of the ASP&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and .NET developers is kind of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; inverse of of the other languages, as&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their levels stem strictly from having&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to work in a windows environment, so&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is based from anger, rather than a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; strict religious adherence. Similarly,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the lowest scoring language is PHP, as&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their coders are blissfully ignorant&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as to actually HOW to code. JQuery is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; kinda middle of the road since it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; attracts the best (and worst) from&#xD;&#xA;&gt; every language... and yea... it's a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; front end language, so the worst (see:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; me) happily cavort about butchering&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it, and the other half (see: you other&#xD;&#xA;&gt; half) publicly stab us (me) with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a-holy pitchforks (I just included&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this for referential purposes). Java&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has a very interesting caveat as well,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; since their a-holiness stems from&#xD;&#xA;&gt; their smug &quot;why bother worrying about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a job when I can plop 'java' on my&#xD;&#xA;&gt; resume and land a kush gig with out&#xD;&#xA;&gt; even trying&quot; attitude.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Whelp... hope that helped!&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; (pssssst! Just between you and me I'm&#xD;&#xA;&gt; casting my vote for js on the server&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (see Node.js)... I think in the near&#xD;&#xA;&gt; future, REST-ish interactions will go&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the way of the TCP/IP layer, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you'll just write js like you would a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; native app! But... I really do like&#xD;&#xA;&gt; RoR a whole lot too!)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Welcome to Programmers. Stack Exchange&#xD;&#xA;&gt; isn't a place for unsubstantiated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinions. We require answers to be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; backed up by references. Please read&#xD;&#xA;&gt; through the FAQ and improve your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer, or be prepared to see it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; downvoted and possibly removed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Thanks. – Anna Lear♦ 9 hours ago  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One's perception of the attitude of programmers of language X may be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rather biased if one hasn't sought out&#xD;&#xA;&gt; every forum, mailing list, chat room,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; etc. where people talk about language&#xD;&#xA;&gt; X. For example, in an IRC channel with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; hundreds of users, the tone seems to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be set by the small handful of users&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are the most active. When you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gauge the attitude of a group of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; people, go back to your logs and make&#xD;&#xA;&gt; sure you're not actually gauging the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; attitude of one or two people. – Joey&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Adams 6 hours ago  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3 No offense,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but this site (along with others in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the StackExchange network) has a more&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional tone than you might be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; used to (though we do like to have fun&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from time to time). It's hard to start&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;flame wars&quot; on this site, as such&#xD;&#xA;&gt; posts will likely get deleted quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; – Joey Adams 6 hours ago  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I originally upvoted for the main point which is the rails&#xD;&#xA;&gt; community can be a bit elitist, but I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have to downvote because your entire&#xD;&#xA;&gt; attitude does not belong on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; stackexchange. Trash talk and flame&#xD;&#xA;&gt; baiting should be taken somewhere else&#xD;&#xA;&gt; where we don't attempt to be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; constructive. – Raynos 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I added 2 comments (1 was fairly snarky I'll admit) that I deleted when I woke up this morning that aren't included (sorry for the incompleteness... I was going to be frank and set things straight before I realized it had been deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mostly I'm confused.  Was it not apparent that I was totally joking?  From the replies that I got, it seems like folks took me seriously.  Also, the reason stated by the moderator for deletion was weak at best (imho), as EVERY answer was an opinion, the question was opinionated etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the reason was more like: &quot;ha... funny... but we try to keep the clutter down and only include 'good' answers so I'm gonna delete&quot;... THAT makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27498" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1268" RevisionGUID="6d491683-3635-4bf6-914a-489e2f852e11" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Did you, perchance, take a look at the FAQ? It's linked all over the place, including&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- the top of the page&#xD;&#xA;- the bottom of the page&#xD;&#xA;- on the mandatory greeting for new users (two places)&#xD;&#xA;- on the /questions/ask page seen when asking a new question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short of driving to your home and delivering you a hand-embossed, countersigned, wax sealed copy ... I'm not sure what else to do other than provide the very same link:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read closely, particularly the top 4 or 5 paragraphs and related bulleted lists." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27499" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3077" RevisionGUID="d0cfda7c-f9f5-446a-98d3-61267cdd36f7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question [here][1] was closed as a duplicate. However, I feel strongly that the close is inaccurate. The linked question doesn't answer my question in the slightest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is &quot;what is the best approach&quot; where the supposed duplicate is &quot;are there benefits&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Already know many of the benefits, I'm trying to best implement them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/133782/github-workflow-for-solo-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27500" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1772" RevisionGUID="8857081e-e4c0-4027-8b2d-b2ae7ddb4e7f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Funny that the [first question][1] I asked in 4 months was closed, even though it garnered good responses, a few positive votes and is objectively a good question pertaining only to programmers and the business of programming.  I'd think it was the direct influence of a man with no capacity for abstract thinking or imagination for that matter. A true prerequisite for a real programmer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd go so far as to say that the man who closed my question is not even a programmer, and as thus, has no business here among us kings of men! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not asking for close reasons, as the reasons are pretty obvious to me.  I don't even want to define a gray area.  I just want to discuss the difference between the ethics of a moderator who is a programmer and the ethics of a moderator who is not.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/85605/do-programmers-possess-the-means-of-production-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27501" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1275" RevisionGUID="890657dd-164d-4541-a088-e77a44be5641" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's algorithmically determined based on hotness, without repetition (no duplicates).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/?tab=hot&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The (mostly) complete list of twitter accounts is here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/twitter-question-feeds-for-stack-exchange/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27502" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1835" RevisionGUID="4e18cf0e-e3b9-4cd2-83a9-bb45f8c37e44" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="No, that would not be on-topic. Or, more precisely, it would not be constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For one, it's a question where every answer is equally valid. For another, it's kind of a &quot;getting to know you&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both of those are explicitly discouraged in the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27503" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3129" RevisionGUID="0b9178f1-0280-4219-b35f-4fdf19451649" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just asked a question that was clearly not suited for stack overflow, so I figured I'd ask here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/135173/i-want-to-put-up-a-donation-link-to-a-charitable-cause-in-my-site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;instead of a helpful advice it got immediately closed and downvoted. **Where** do I ask this? Off topic, I get that and am sorry, but that's all the feedback I received: a &quot;GTFO&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question's at least semi-programming-related and I need a concrete answer: ways to implement and a reference to charity organizations that accept online donations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please help me, guys, I can't think of a more proper place to ask this than in Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27504" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1299" RevisionGUID="c51a7c00-9ea6-4168-be32-6253f1a16b02" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="For members with less than 3000 reputation&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The usual cases for flagging are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **A question (or answer) is off-topic**. Use the [FAQ][1] to discern what is accepted or unaccepted. Also monitor what gets closed by a moderator or closed by getting five votes by other users.&#xD;&#xA; - **A question or answer is spam.** If it is *obviously* unwelcome here, flagging is the single most effective way for getting a moderator's attention to deal with the suspect post.&#xD;&#xA; - **A question that belongs on SO.** These are usually riddled with specific technical details. It should be obvious to anyone here what does and does not belong on SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each person will have to learn which posts constitutes flagging, as it's not very obvious from the beginning. When I've been unsure, I've filled out the textbox with a reason for flagging. Then I've watched the question to see what action was taken.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Members with 3000 reputation (or higher)&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**A question or answer that requires immediate attention.** Most users (with 3000 reputation or higher) will vote to close appropriately, but since a moderator has the power to close or remove questions and answers, they should be informed in the case of a post requiring immediate attention. If a question is horribly off-topic or blatant spam, then I believe it should be flagged so that it gets closed ASAP, saving other members from wasting their time reading gibberish. Every other case should be voting to close (assuming all 12 votes have not been used) to conform with the community's beliefs and conventions on what is accepted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each day, there's a period of time when the three (active) moderators aren't lingering on this site. The overall activity is lower during that time of the day. The site can get a bit messy from time to time, but once the *next* moderator is due to wake up, it gets cleaned up promptly. During this time, continue to flag and wait.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Reason for not dismissing my answer: I have a flag weight of 551.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27505" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3211" RevisionGUID="8d543fd8-7afe-47c1-966a-7e110a1a9765" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question [Is taking frequent breaks really that beneficial when programming?][1] got closed as off-topic today. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a valid question for software developers, and that the answers provide some good advice to developers wondering the same thing. In fact, I saw a question today that was asking advice about what to do during the 5-10 minutes they took for a break, and I pointed them to the answers to this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question is, what can I do to this question to make it on-topic and get it re-opened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/16595/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27506" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1943" RevisionGUID="d82ac01d-17db-4281-aba1-c0002e59cfcf" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[looking for regex engines comparison and benchmark][1] was closed as &quot;not a real question&quot;. The user was told stackexchange does not have a place for technology comparisons. This seems odd for a few reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The question is answerable. The user did not ask for opinions. They asked for feature comparisons and benchmarks. Without doing a lot of research, I've confirmed such things exist. Wikipedia offers a [grid of feature comparisons][2] and Heng Li offers [benchmarks on sourceforge][3]. I'm not claiming they're perfect resources, but they certainly suggest the question can be answered.&#xD;&#xA;2. The benchmark portion of the question was [already asked on stackoverflow][4]. Granted, it isn't rich with responses, but the fact it exists seems likely to confuse the user. This was the user's first question. As well as closing, someone took the time to downvote them. Classy.&#xD;&#xA;3. The user was directed to the FAQ for clarification. As far as I can tell, the FAQ doesn't mention anything about technology comparisons being out-of-bounds. The FAQ's core concepts seem to be that your post must be a question and it must be answerable. If I were the user, I would feel I met the FAQ's criteria.&#xD;&#xA;4. Stackexchange is full of technology comparisons. From P.SE: [Python and ruby frameworks equivalent to codeignter][5] (misspelling left intact) , [What one should look for when choosing a cross-platform C++ GUI library?][6], [Current C++ IDE options:][7], [Selecting the (right?) technology and environment][8], etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not suggesting this is an amazing question or that it belongs on P.SE. I'll leave that for others to decide. I just assume that our main goal is to be helpful. If I were the user asking the question, I wouldn't feel helped. I would feel like I'd been slapped on the wrist and excluded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/92792/looking-for-regex-engines-comparison-and-benchmark&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_regular_expression_engines&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://lh3lh3.users.sourceforge.net/reb.shtml&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3544225/regular-expression-library-benchmarks&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/92807/python-and-ruby-frameworks-equivalent-to-codeignter&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/88888/what-one-should-look-for-when-choosing-a-cross-platform-c-gui-library&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/92552/current-c-ide-options&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/27379/selecting-the-right-technology-and-environment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27507" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1318" RevisionGUID="d50d5db7-e632-42f7-9b30-4d8ba12aff6f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="See https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/51156/revisions for example. I don't think the automated Community user that bumps old posts edited in some more speculation about the date of the PDC." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27509" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1949" RevisionGUID="0bffe025-8cab-41ae-86ae-f086af39fffd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What *problem* was this person trying to solve? Hard to tell, when the question was all of about two sentences." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27510" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1321" RevisionGUID="ec6f3e29-293b-4b37-99f9-87da6f53a762" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You can actually do an audit of people deleting their own low-voted answers because there's [a badge for that](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/20/peer-pressure).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But generally, people are extremely liberal with their voting on Programmers.SE: the only answers and questions that tend to get more downvotes than upvotes are ones that are egregiously offensive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So there winds up being a very high correlation between posts that are flagged (and thus deleted) and posts that have negative vote totals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm of the mind that the community *should* feel robbed: votes are more or less meaningless on Programmers.SE because nearly everything—no matter how inane, banal, or off-topic—gets upvotes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27511" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3338" RevisionGUID="9f3e278a-39a0-4cd4-a1cc-1f9e91eb66b5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question was closed: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/140512/can-it-be-a-good-idea-to-lease-a-house-rather-than-a-standard-office-space-for-a#comment264887_140512&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was a little surprised, as I did read the [FAQ][1]. Does the question fall under &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; without falling victim to &quot;career advice, including general workplace issues&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought it did, was I wrong? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, these types of questions are useful because they are about providing programmers with the best environment possible without making the shop as a whole too inefficient. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27512" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1350" RevisionGUID="f5f66603-24b1-4ca7-91ee-e970192142a5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A very good example would be this question that came in today: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/63584/parsing-rss-feeds.  I purposely avoided the LMGTFY, although a question like that begs for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I asked something recently that borders on that as well: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/63381/functional-languages-that-compile-to-androids-dalvik-vm.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think both of these questions, and I will take care of mine, could use a bit of an edit to request personal experience with the tool, if it exists.  Recommendations on how to make these types of questions better for the community at large?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27513" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2021" RevisionGUID="72434d08-0631-4f18-b3bf-33e4dae8e376" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think I have found an appropriate tag for this type of questions: [tag:trivia]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Inventor and History of programming technology&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/97065/620&#xD;&#xA;  * [version:1 Favorite Pascal language features and when were they introduced?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/96770/revisions) (Before the question was reworded and reopened in its current form)&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/221/620 [duplicate of https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/69788/620, still open]&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/96784/620 [closed]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My view of the tag relationship is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [tag:history] for significant historical questions&#xD;&#xA;  * Questions about historical, but are not significant enough to worth remembering, can be called [tag:trivia]. They may be tagged both.&#xD;&#xA;  * Other questions which are also not significant enough to remember, can be just tagged [tag:trivia].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is: is trivia questions acceptable on P.SE? &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27514" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3376" RevisionGUID="4327bea9-0f86-48a2-984f-52ade3d75f42" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked [a question][1] and it got some answers. But none of them was what I really wanted. After investigating by myself, I found a solution that best fit my needs, so [I answered my own question][2] and marked my own answer as the accepted one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My answer is not the first one at the top. Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/139603/google-analytics-with-multiple-environments&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/141949/38148" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27515" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2029" RevisionGUID="0fe22871-a9cf-4f40-9c33-9e0dcdb84f7c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It depends and it *might* be one of those cases where the quality of the *answers* determines whether the question remains open or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A trivia question that just elicits short or one line answers is almost certainly &quot;not constructive&quot;. From the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;* tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if the question gives rise to longer answers that go beyond that which is necessary then it *might* be left open, but there's no guarantee.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, as Mark states in his answer, it helps if you've got a real problem you need solving." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27516" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3381" RevisionGUID="8d16426a-1963-477c-a4e2-31d207e25b59" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's purely management question to the moderators team. In topic [&quot;Can we set up svn server on a local computer without any network access?&quot;][1] (and probably some other places) I'm under [downvoting attack][2] from person, known as [Mark Booth][3]. He decrease rating of my correct answer in retaliation for criticism ([here][4] and [here][5]) of his response, which contains offtopic partially and for my -1 on other offtopic answers in this topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I ask for support and protection** from dishonest personalized attacks on the results of my labor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry to distract you with my problems and taking up your time - I can't see another way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268265_142131&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/22493/mark-booth&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268263_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268271_142128" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27517" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2117" RevisionGUID="ec5e4b62-bc4e-4ce0-960a-c0f41b1ed3cd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It is absolutely appropriate. I personally love seeing comments that I'd leave left by someone else and that's only in part because that saves me typing. :) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As moderators, we are doing our best to let the community handle as much of its own organizing as possible. Seeing mod-like comments from the community members tells us that we're all collectively on the same page. It's a nice sanity check to have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only requirement is that the comments should be polite. I'm not saying that yours wouldn't be, but I want to cover all the bases. It's sometimes tempting to make a snarky or a snide comment, but it's important that we all keep our cool and remember the &quot;be nice&quot; part of the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#etiquette) especially when it comes to commenting on new users' posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ChrisF and Tim Post both touched on the reputation aspect, so I'll just close with saying that having regular community members contribute to site's moderation with comments and votes is what makes Stack Exchange awesome, unique, and community-driven. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27518" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1367" RevisionGUID="627d5724-2492-422e-9318-5178f8e8ae3f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Answer to https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/64449/can-a-function-be-too-short/64514#64514 by user &quot;Uncle Bob&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If so, welcome Uncle Bob! I'm thrilled to see you answering questions on Programmers! " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27519" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2126" RevisionGUID="8078d931-a6ed-45c8-8689-c49715e3b809" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The &quot;badge details&quot; pages are showing lists of posts that awarded the badge in different font sizes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![screenshot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is affecting only some of the badges. Others use the same size for all posts on their page, but different size from other pages: for example, [Nice Question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/46/nice-question) shows all posts in the same font size (the larger one from the screenshot) while [Altruist](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/32/altruist) shows all posts in the smaller size.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At @ChrisF suggestion, I checked if questions and answers appeared in different sizes and that seems to be the case: questions are in the larger font and answers are in the smaller.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Browser/OS: Chrome 13.0.782.112 on Windows 7 64-bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ID9c5.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27520" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3387" RevisionGUID="7c81c3ef-2e25-41ee-a16a-f750264198dc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am curious as to the reasoning behind closing  https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/142186/22493 as an *exact duplicate* of  https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/47370/22493 when they are clearly asking the *exact opposite*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I realise that both questions *could* easily cover the same ground, but despite the flaws in https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/142186/22493, none of the answers to https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/47370/22493 really provide an answer to it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27521" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2140" RevisionGUID="6c6a07bd-41c2-4d65-b48a-1123be7b1759" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A question with a long list of short answers mentioning people's favourite language isn't very useful and is not what Stack Exchange is trying to do. We want to help people solve problems, not create lists of things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't want vague &quot;what language should I use&quot; kind of questions to the point where &quot;what language should I learn next&quot; is explicitly mentioned as off-topic in the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The exception to that rule is finding a language that fits a specific set of criteria. The goal is to encourage answers that explain *why* a language fits a given set of requirements. ChrisF pretty much summed up what I was going to say on that before I got to it. I think the question can be edited with his suggestions and reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27522" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3435" RevisionGUID="cfd36d62-b8ac-4780-85c5-e004e2f3c73a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/143520/a-talk-about-observer-pattern) about Observer pattern, so I could get some help with my talk that I have to hold. I understand the problematic part that its teasing a debate, but I tried really hard to phrase it in a way it does fit Q&amp;A format, by specifying 2 things I want to know, so nobody would start a arguing. What can I improve there so it will not get closed? (I have another talk I have to hold in a month or so - and I would be really happy to get peoples support)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27523" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1378" RevisionGUID="c37dc1ee-7951-417e-8aab-48c2b838a813" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="From here:&#xD;&#xA;http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2011/03/29/10146895.aspx?PageIndex=1#comments  &#xD;&#xA;It proves that what I've said here:  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/64245/vs2010-aka-very-slow-2010  &#xD;&#xA;is valid/constructive and over all true.  Funny but in the first link there are comments which are almost identical to what I've said in my second link provided.  &#xD;&#xA;I sometimes wonder about people who even though Microsoft itself admitts that Very Slow 2010 is slower than 2008 ([here][1]) yet, they still saying that on their machines Very Slow 2010 is working faster than VS2008?&#xD;&#xA;So the question is: After reading what I've provided in links are you still saying that Very Slow 2010 performs better than VS2008&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2011/03/03/10136696.aspx?PageIndex=3#comments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27524" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3446" RevisionGUID="79efc253-af67-47aa-9ffb-9e17c0f2993b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This is the question I'm referring to][1].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are developers the best suited for answering questions about job postings for developers? Should the question therefore have been left open?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/143845/any-good-articles-on-how-to-write-a-good-job-description-for-a-web-developer-pos" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27525" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2272" RevisionGUID="d179d4a6-32dd-4b4d-afdd-ea06039936b9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Pierre 303 actually has *212* bronze badges, not 21.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are actually several badges that do not have bronze equivalents:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Archaeologist](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/92/archaeologist): Edited 100 posts that were inactive for 6 months.&#xD;&#xA;* [Beta](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/16/beta): Actively participated in the private beta.&#xD;&#xA;* [Enlightened](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/36/enlightened): First to answer and accepted with at least 10 upvotes. This badge can be awarded multiple times.&#xD;&#xA;* [Enthusiast](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/22/enthusiast): Visited the site each day for 30 consecutive days.&#xD;&#xA;* [Favorite Question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/38/favorite-question): Question favorited by 25 users. This badge can be awarded multiple times.&#xD;&#xA;* [Generalist](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/14/generalist): Provided non-wiki answers of 15 total score in 20 of top 40 tags.&#xD;&#xA;* [Guru](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/43/guru): Accepted answer and score of 40 or more. This badge can be awarded multiple times.&#xD;&#xA;* [Sportsmanship](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/58/sportsmanship): Up voted 100 competing answers.&#xD;&#xA;* [Tenacious](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/34/tenacious): Zero score accepted answers: more than 5 and 20% of total.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it's technically possible to have more silver than copper, and in certain cases—namely when you have a lot of first accepted answers or when your questions are favorited a lot—it's possible for silver to outpace copper, but that's pretty rare (so rare I've never seen it happen)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27526" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1433" RevisionGUID="f68a7504-93d4-4da5-aef1-32ac80c43ef0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="For the **who**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## [Anna Lear][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My second choice is [Chris F][2], if someone put an answer with him, I'll upvote it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have no idea where.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/226/anna-lear&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/47/chrisf" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27527" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3503" RevisionGUID="f2b0fa34-c510-4d17-8141-182f1ebfa9f1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Why was this [question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/145645/records-of-daily-work-of-programmers) closed as off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was tagged `training` and when you look at the definition of the tag `training`:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You may use this tag when your question revolves around for example:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Where can I find materials to train for ... ? Asking which training&#xD;&#xA;&gt; course is best for you is off topic or not constructive at best as the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers will be equally valid and only apply to you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;you can see that my question is on-topic and wasn't asking for the &quot;best&quot; thing for me." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27528" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3507" RevisionGUID="30f502e7-6319-41ad-85f4-0fc918eb80f6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just glanced at my [profile][1] a moment ago and noticed a significant stream of 20 downvotes on answers all within the same 1 minute.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could these be automatic, or simply a malicious user with a grudge?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/7048/craige?tab=reputation&amp;StartDate=2012-04-24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27529" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1514" RevisionGUID="8ff39e0d-18cb-47f8-bf0d-f5c78fd37016" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/72806/how-do-you-make-people-accept-code-review) was migrated from Stack Overflow yesterday (1st May 2011). It has an answer from Jon that is quite highly upvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you check [Jon's reputation graph](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/8958/jon-skeet?tab=reputation#reppage_1-repview_graph) you can see a spike on Friday August 29th 2009 *when the question was originally answered* that must have included a bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This must be the source of the increase.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Jon's reputation *on this site* has increased dramatically over the last 24 hours as a result even though the reputation was first awarded nearly 2 years ago. I'd suggest it's an edge case that we'll have to live with." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27530" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2276" RevisionGUID="bc494291-3058-4b40-9206-4bc18eb07715" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mark Trapp closed [this question on the licensure of software engineers][1] on Programmers for the reason of not being constructive. More recently, [another question about replacing XML with JSON was closed for the same reasons][2]. In the comments of both, he called it a &quot;hypothetical question&quot; and cited the FAQ. I believe that the ultimate problem lies in the definition of hypothetical and practical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The text of the notice for non-constructive questions states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we can agree that open-ended discussion questions, &quot;getting to know you&quot; questions, and questions asking for predicting the future aren't practical, answerable, or of educational value and are more suited to other forums. And there are plenty of questions like this, such as trying to figure out, [the next big language][3], what [features C# will add in the next version][4], or [what terminology you use to refer to the { character][5]. We, as developers, don't know what the next big language is going to be, or what features the next version will have until the creator(s) tell us, and it really doesn't matter that I call { the open-stache and you call it the open brace. Questions like these should be closed, and I think we can all agree on that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I think we need to come to terms, as a community, with what is practical, answerable, and of some educational value. We also need to discuss the balance between the three of them. I think that all questions have to be answerable, but how does an individual (or even a subset) decide what is practical or of educational value to the community at large.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Practicality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For practicality, how do we define what is practical, and who has to consider it practical for it to be practical?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, I just pulled this decent question on [MS SQL XML best practices][6] from the home page. This is practical to people who are working with MSSQL and XML, but it's not practical to me in my job (I'm currently doing Java development with some MySQL database work here and there) nor in my professional interests (I'm interested in the softer topics of software engineering). Should I vote to close it because it's not practical to me? No, because it's practical to a reasonable subset of software developers out there (meaning it's not localized to a particular geographic area, period in time, or individual).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just take a look at my profile to see what I'm referring to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My professional interests include software project management, software engineering process models and methodologies, software measurements and metrics, empirical software engineering, leadership, and professionalism in software engineering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are entire academic disciplines and research areas devoted to these, and the four are specific to software engineering. Questions and answers on these topics are practical, to me. But also, practicality is different depending on context. For example, empirical software engineering isn't necessarily practiced across industry, but it has led to insights into techniques and tools used to develop software better. For something to be practical, does it have to be practical to someone in an office doing work that eventually leads to delivered software, or can it be practical and useful to a researcher or academic who is looking to make the professional lives of those people delivering software easier or better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Answerability&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the minimum level of certainty and/or reliability for a question to be considered answerable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we can all agree that questions must be answerable in some way. There are clearly unanswerable questions (especially those asking to predict the future, or career planning advice that's incredibly localized to a person's current state), but there are also questions that we can draw on experiences and outside knowledge to answer. Going back to this licensure question, I think we can consider Steve McConnell (among others) an expert and cite his work, and we can look at other professions that require licensure and look at what happened there to draw conclusions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;The issue is that there is no answer: we don't have time machines and we don't have crystal balls. Any &quot;answer&quot; provided is a guess: an educated guess perhaps, but still a guess. There's no criteria by which to gauge the answers in a meaningful manner: who had the best theory? Who wrote the most? Who cares? - Mark Trapp&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't entirely agree with that. If I have a question, chances are, I don't know everything that's been written or how answerable the question is. I might have read a book or a blog post or talked to a co-worker about something. I think that the ability to present an expert's theory (which, if you can substantiate it, might be your own theory) in response to a question is perfectly acceptable, as long as you provide a summary or short quotation and a citation so that the original source can be found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you need a time machine or crystal ball to answer the question, that means that the question should be closed. However, if you can provide well-educated guesses based on experiences, knowledge, and reputable sources, that's perfectly acceptable, in my opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][7]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In fact, most academic fields don’t have objective answers. Topics like economics, engineering, the arts, literature, and social sciences don’t exactly have correct and incorrect answers. There is a growing list of proposals about increasingly subjective topics, and we believe many of them are going to make great Stack Exchange sites!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Educational Value&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do we measure how educational a question (and its answers) is?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure about other people, but I had to learn about software engineering professionalism and ethics as part of my undergraduate curriculum. In fact, we had a discussion about licensure and/or certification and their value. I think specific, pointed questions about industry trends are good questions to learn from, especially for people who have 30+ years left to spend in it. The opportunity to stay current on topics I learned about 4-5 years ago is valuable to me, and clearly adds educational value. At least 5 people (4 + the author) appeared to learn something from my answer to the licensure question, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How do we define what is practical, and who has to consider it practical for it to be practical? For something to be practical, does it have to be practical to someone in an office doing work that eventually leads to or otherwise supports delivered software? Or can it be practical and useful to a researcher or academic who is looking to make the professional lives of those people delivering software easier or better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If on-topic (as per the list of topics in the FAQ) questions that are answerable with either facts, reputable sources, or personal experiences, yet are not about a specific problem that someone is having right now aren't allowed here, where should they go? There are many good questions in this realm that are suitable for a Stack Exchange community (suitable meaning they aren't discussions or debates). Should another Stack Exchange be made, further dividing the software development community? Or can we improve guidance as to making it easier to define what is or isn't a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What is the minimum level of certainty and/or reliability for a question to be considered answerable? How do we measure this? How is a diamond moderator or 5 users who aren't knowledgable in a given topic able to assertain the answerability of a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How do we measure how educational a question (and its answers) is?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Can we apply the [Back-It-Up policy as defined in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][8] to allow more good (non-debate, non-discussion) questions that have answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** @Thomas Owens made several great points in this post. Now that @Mark Trapp is gone, we might want to reevaluate some of his unilateral closures. If I see any, I'll bring them up on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/108789/what-impact-would-licensing-software-engineers-have-on-the-profession&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/108740/can-we-replace-xml-with-json-entirely&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/296/what-will-be-the-next-big-language&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6275/what-do-you-think-will-be-added-in-c-5&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/11077/what-do-you-call-this-character&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/108834/ms-sql-xml-best-practices&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27531" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3521" RevisionGUID="31165d46-9c5d-44c6-88be-acf6ae73a846" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/146235/mac-os-x-certification) was closed as not a real question, but it seems obvious enough? Restated it's asking if Apple offers the equivalent of Sun's Java programming certificates.  The question could be stated a bit more clearly (Apple only, or anyone offering such for iPhone/objective C), but on the whole it doesn't seem like a bad question, it would not be hard at all to anwser in such a way as to cover the possible answers to the question, even without it being editted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems like a good fit to the site to me (unlike SO, where it started), so why was it closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27532" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1525" RevisionGUID="ba93640d-6068-429c-b843-879155a9317f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A user deleted [content in my question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/73995/revisions) that took me almost 30 minutes to type up... so if I sound mad it is because I am (it feels like my time was unfairly stolen from me).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could I get some help with what I'm being told about this edit in the comments to [my question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/73995/key-programming-for-hire-contract-points) please?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this editor is being unreasonable and is overly-narrowly applying some ideal about &quot;never having lists in questions because that always makes them too subjective and instantly in the format 'I like X, what do you like'?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm asking because I don't want to just have an edit war, which I could very easily and fanatically do, (though he might then flag my question as inappropriate to assert his personal control to get the outcome he wants), but rather I'm looking for input from many instead of letting just the one person unilaterally dictate to me how he's going to run my question for me on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if the consensus is that the list I included should be deleted, I think the edit was NOT in the spirit of what the edit privilege should be used for. I edit posts on stackoverflow ALL the time... to improve the grammar or format the code or add a link or state an important caveat. But I would never just delete whole sections I don't like. That in my opinion should be handled through communication with the poster, because even though we are able to edit other people's posts, *the original poster still owns the question* unless it's been made community wiki. Some respect of the poster's intent and time seems in order to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just in case the comments get deleted, here they are for the record:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi Erik, list questions, especially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; list questions that provide answers in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the body, aren't constructive here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There is, however, a good question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; without the list, so I've edited your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question to remove your rules for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; crowd-sourcing a list. You can always&#xD;&#xA;&gt; provide your examples as an answer to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your question, but keep in mind what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; types of answers work well here. –&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mark Trapp&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Mark The&#xD;&#xA;&gt; faq doesn't say anything about &quot;list&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions&quot;. And I don't think I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; provided the answer in the body. The&#xD;&#xA;&gt; point of the list was to save any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answerers the work of thinking about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; every possible important item, so they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; could focus on the ones that the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; contract missed. To me it seems a very&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answerable question. If I rephrased my&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question &quot;what are the other points we&#xD;&#xA;&gt; missed in this contract&quot; will that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; avoid all appearance of answering the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question in the question? It was kind&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of brutal to slash what took me 25&#xD;&#xA;&gt; minutes to distill and type up. – Erik&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Erik&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from the part of the FAQ I linked to,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;To prevent your question from being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; flagged and possibly removed, avoid&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking subjective questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; where...your answer is provided along&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with the question, and you expect more&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers: “I use ______ for ______,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what do you use?”&quot; See also the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; explanation of the second guideline&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for constructive questions in the Good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective, Bad Subjective article I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; linked, which explains the problems&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with list questions. – Mark Trapp&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Erik&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your question is fine as it is now:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the only thing I removed was the list&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and the request for a list. As I said&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in my earlier comment, you're welcome&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to offer your own research as an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer instead: doing so would have&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the added benefit of getting separate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; feedback on what you've found so far.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; – Mark Trapp&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Mark If I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; provided program code I had already&#xD;&#xA;&gt; written and asked what was wrong with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it, you would hardly say &quot;don't&#xD;&#xA;&gt; provide the answer with the question&quot;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; even though the answer would repeat&#xD;&#xA;&gt; most of my code! You would understand&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was showing respect to the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participants by not making them&#xD;&#xA;&gt; produce the entire piece of code from&#xD;&#xA;&gt; scratch. If I show the contract we&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have now and ask for critique of it,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this is not even close to &quot;I use X,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what do you use?&quot; It is much closer to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;here's my code, what's wrong with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it?&quot; – Erik" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27533" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3558" RevisionGUID="3168613c-69b6-4f7d-8c26-5dc3ea772451" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/45138/worst-practices-in-c-common-mistakes was closed for being &quot;not constructive&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually, my sole intent was to get answers that &quot;generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise&quot; and not &quot;opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have edited the question and changed the vague term &quot;bad things&quot; to the word &quot;pitfalls&quot;, which I hope is somewhat clearer. What other things could I change to emphasize that I'm not looking for subjective arguments in the answers, but real facts and knowledge which is truly beneficial to C++ learners, and thus make the question on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27534" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1527" RevisionGUID="8eb5262f-fab9-4ff8-bea2-6996cadfec06" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; A user deleted content in my question that took me almost 30 minutes to type up... so if I sound mad it is because I am (it feels like my time was unfairly stolen from me).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not lost. What you typed is still there in the revision history - if you take Mark's advice and convert it to an answer, or merely wish to reference it later on, you won't have to type it again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But I would never just delete whole sections I don't like.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And you shouldn't. Your personal preference, void of any justification, is not a reason to edit. *However,* if the choice is between closing a question as not-constructive, or editing out the section that *makes it* not constructive, then by failing to edit you're doing the author a disservice. Don't be *timid* in your edits - as I noted, the system tracks revisions, so what you delete won't be permanently lost. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Some respect of the poster's intent and time seems in order to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming the poster's intent was to get an answer to his question, edits that further this goal are in line with it. Authors who are so attached to their words that they recoil at the thought of anyone else touching them have been discouraged from using these sites [in the FAQ][1] for a long, long, *loooong* time - pussy-footing around users who can't accept that is a disservice to both them and the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#editing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27535" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2281" RevisionGUID="e38ac060-b4f1-405e-9eb4-6d3ad294841f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/108740/can-we-replace-xml-with-json-entirely-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This *might* be reopenable if it is refocused on XML Namespaces (or something else a bit more specific) and stops being so ridiculously open-ended. **As currently stated, it is correctly closed IMO.** It is very much [Gorilla vs. Shark][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/108789/what-impact-would-licensing-software-engineers-have-on-the-profession-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems slightly more defensible; if Mark's concern is that this is too hypothetical (and note it has 6 downvotes) then perhaps it should be rephrased as something like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When I apply for jobs I have to compete with too many other software engineers who have little or no skill and dilute the candidate pool. I feel it devalues our profession and ultimately pushes down the salary levels for all practicing software engineers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I feel my career, and that of other skilled software engineers, would benefit if less unskilled software engineers were prevented from entering the field until they passed a standard set of tests to become &quot;licensed&quot;, like the medicine and law professions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not an exact edit, but you get the idea: the actual problem is that *your* profession is being harmed and *your* salary is being harmed. I do think it's a good topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll go ahead and finish this edit and make it so...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/ " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27536" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3606" RevisionGUID="11ac0076-d678-4d46-a95a-5e4976cc6965" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked [the question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/149534/is-just-publishing-my-program-on-github-enough-for-it-to-be-searchable-for-users), but instead of answers/comments got only downvotes and close votes. I though programmers.SE is just right place for this question because of, being not technical (so SO is not good option), it is about what programmers should do with their projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the problem with that question? Where should I ask it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27537" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2340" RevisionGUID="8ee13f2e-64b9-4f81-b5c8-019fa24fe1be" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's not *solely* for career software developers, but *mainly* for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first line of the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) reads (my bold):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for **expert** programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You don't get to be an expert unless you've spent a lot of time doing something and you usually only spend a lot of time doing your job or your passion. We welcome questions from anybody, but we really want the experts to answer them. That way we can &quot;make the internet better&quot; and hopefully software development practices too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, what the graphic represents is where the **question** sits not where the **questioner** sits. On all Stack Exchange sites the primary elements are the question and answer not the people who post those questions and answers. You vote on posts not people (for example). So if your question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's the best chair?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then this is off topic as it applies to anyone who works at a desk all day not just software developers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Equally if your question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have a bad back due to an injury I suffered when I was 10, what's the best chair?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then this is too localised as the answer is specific to you and you alone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Note: these aren't the best example questions as there's no chair question that would be on topic - but you get the idea)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27538" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1530" RevisionGUID="1bee21fb-5a23-4de0-97c9-edf8ff65ff96" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="When questions are moderated, generally people use their best judgement to determine the merits of the question *by itself*. Does it meet our site's standards? Does the question make sense? Is it answerable? I don't want to say it's completely non-existant, but it's exceedingly rare that community moderation takes into account the country of origin for a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, community moderation is governed by humans who occasionally make mistakes or overlook certain things. One question might get the benefit of community moderation, while another slips through the cracks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the cases where a question slips through the cracks and you notice it, it's important to do something about it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Edit the question to bring it in line with our site's [standards](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;* Comment on the question to provide feedback as to why the question doesn't fit&#xD;&#xA;* Use voting to down-vote bad things, up-vote good things, and close off-topic things.&#xD;&#xA;* If it's something that really needs attention right away, flag it for moderator review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27539" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3734" RevisionGUID="4fed9b52-2c24-4bf7-9cd0-688643e500dc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Before posting [my question][1] I searched to see if I could find some similar question (which I did not). I read the faq, and I did read the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][2] blog. I phrased the question in a way so that I cannot see how I stronger could try to stimulate &quot;Back It Up!&quot; answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Was it overly broad? I do not think so, I both provided a project context which limits it as well as I specifically limited it to not include thinks like working conditions etc. Maybe it was a bit short, but do I have to write a novel to ask subjective questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Despite my effort to keep the question on topic it was closed. What have I missed? What could I have done differently to not have it closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154424/new-code-base-what-experiences-recommendations-do-you-have&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27540" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2481" RevisionGUID="4f2a3f33-f00f-494f-ac2a-c8c59f20f63e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Most of the closed questions have 200+ answers and are questions like &quot;[What should every programmer know?][1]&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of these questions were closed as duplicates but most simply don't fit the format of a Q&amp;A site very well. Q&amp;A sites like programmers.SE are good for questions that have one or two finite answers or at least where one answer is considered &quot;more correct&quot; than any other. These questions, for the most part, were too open-ended and encouraged too much discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like these are great for the rep of those involved, but it is false rep, given for popularity rather than correctness or meaningful participation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/91350/what-should-every-programmer-know" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27541" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1619" RevisionGUID="1f71955c-6a35-46f6-80c5-32a768eef7c1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question needed a good clean up, but I think it's on-topic here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per [the FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq), business concerns that affect developers on-topic here. In this case, the basic question was whether it's worth it to develop for a currently-niche tablet market if you want to get into mobile development, which is a question I think most mobile developers will have to grapple with." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27542" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3745" RevisionGUID="a4562346-4e5c-48da-91b5-406af4b4a6ab" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Look at the linked [suggested edit][1] by [this user][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The user essentially changed a rotted link (404) to what appears to me to be a commercial site that has nothing to do with the previously linked document.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the user doesn't have any posts on programmers, I felt this was the only way to bring attention to this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/5512&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/2571/gertschi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27543" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1653" RevisionGUID="4a9bf7e8-76fb-45ae-943a-a6afa13c2d9b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question: [AddIn, AddOn and Plugin](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/80716/addin-addon-and-plugin-closed) has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I first read it I thought it might be better suited to [EL&amp;U](http://english.stackexchange.com/), but since the question is something specific to computer programmes, this seems like it is a good place to ask. It is a useful thing for developers to be able understand the terminology for their own profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is not vague, incomplete, ambiguous, or overly broad and has been answered in its current form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why was this question closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27544" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3785" RevisionGUID="98f3e42b-0e18-47a4-b488-d8d2547f5951" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is one of those things that I really didn't put much stock into until I saw this award-winning question posted...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/156673/which-editor-is-best-for-php&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... and yes the question itself contains as many words as the title.  It would make Yahoo! Answers proud.  I am all about short, sweet and to the point but that is absolutely ridiculous that we actually allow 6 word questions to be posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We already have a minimum character feature for comments, so why not a minimum word feature for posting a question or answer?  If you agree, what should the limit be?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27545" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1688" RevisionGUID="7838cddd-47f7-48e8-a282-7f789c34279c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="While we can discuss the potential merits of such a change in guidelines (or &quot;rules&quot;, if you want to phrase it that way), it appears this may be a solution in search of a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take the [month](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/?tab=month) tab on the main site: it lists the top 50 questions for the past month based, for the most part, on popularity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now out of those 50 questions, **five** have been closed. Two of them were closed entirely by members of the community (i.e. without moderator intervention), two of them were closed by a moderator after other members of the community voted to close, and one was closed by me as an exact duplicate of an even more popular question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But even if you take a look at the [week](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/?tab=week) tab, you'll see the same ratio: five questions out of 50 were closed. Three were closed with public input from the community in the form of votes, and two were closed as a result of community members flagging the posts for moderator review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now if the contention is that even these questions shouldn't have been closed, community moderation—*even by regular users*—is being taken off the table. If that's the case, I'm afraid Stack Exchange might not be the best fit for you: the value proposition of Stack Exchange is centered around the practice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27547" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2599" RevisionGUID="fa89463c-749c-4485-ab37-f6192bcb53ee" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Two questions were recently asked regarding research or studies about a specific topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/121953/what-data-is-available-regarding-cowboy-coding&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/122326/survival-rate-of-open-source-projects&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both were closed by the community in short order.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've had a few other questions with the same type request in the past:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Open&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/60282/has-there-been-research-into-programming-linguistics&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/87851/is-there-any-research-out-there-on-geographic-differences-in-work-environments&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/108735/schemes-to-resolve-deadlocks&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/60439/programming-languages-and-credible-data-on-market-conditions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/92580/are-there-any-studies-that-correlate-time-spent-coding-and-productivity&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/91758/debugging-facts-and-statistics&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/109615/what-factors-can-make-mid-project-join-successful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/122326/survival-rate-of-open-source-projects&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/121953/what-data-is-available-regarding-cowboy-coding&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/35501/non-english-based-programming-languages&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Closed and deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Are there any languages, frameworks, techniques, or any kind of research designed specifically for organic growth of large systems over time?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/99102/are-there-any-languages-frameworks-techniques-or-any-kind-of-research-designe)&#xD;&#xA;* [What motivates students to choose a CS/IT track?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/55062/what-motivates-students-to-choose-a-cs-it-track)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is IT/programming the profession with the least happy people?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/14299/why-is-it-programming-the-profession-with-the-least-happy-people)&#xD;&#xA;* [How many developers should a software company have?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/108991/how-many-developers-should-a-software-company-have)&#xD;&#xA;* [Programming can cause a decrease in spelling and grammar skills?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/50863/programming-can-cause-a-decrease-in-spelling-and-grammar-skills)&#xD;&#xA;* [Which specific programming activities do women, on average, perform better than men?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57420/which-specific-programming-activities-do-women-on-average-perform-better-than)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So there's a bit of an inconsistency in how they've been dealt with. Are these on-topic? If so, why? If not, why not?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27549" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3806" RevisionGUID="5c311205-e21c-406d-904f-28c1503d048b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am not able to comment on my own question. So the flow goes like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Posted a question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Someone posted a comment to my question asking for some more details or some suggestions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) I am not able to reply to them because I don't have 15 reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it will be good to remove this constraint atleast for the my own posts. No? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Link to the question https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/157171/java-bufferedreader-vs-separate-producer-consumer-thread/157207#157207" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27550" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2764" RevisionGUID="5c70c0fb-d1a8-45b0-95ea-cc3d43643ae0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You can already do this—provided you and the question meet the [usual bounty criteria](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/set-bounties)—by clicking the &quot;add a bounty&quot; link at the bottom of the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Bounty link][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7gSm9.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27551" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1752" RevisionGUID="73e561ec-7870-4e04-bac9-98a3b30a59c5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Programmers has the same &quot;view vote counts&quot; privilege as every other Stack Exchange site. It becomes available at [1000 reputation](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/view-vote-counts). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Matt Allen said, the current vote split on your answer is +34 / -5. I don't think it really means anything other than &quot;34 people agreed enough to upvote my question and 5 thought it was worth downvoting&quot;. I wouldn't read too much into the comment upvotes, since there is no corresponding downvote to balance them out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the explanation for what you're seeing is simple: it costs rep to downvote an answer and it doesn't cost anything to upvote a comment. Not now that the answer is community wiki which might even it out a bit, but even then there will be people who disagree but not strongly enough to downvote." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27552" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3817" RevisionGUID="dc40625b-b990-43ef-b604-d81d6343c4c3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I wonder if a question like this one is on topic, at programmers.stackexchange.com. (If not, do you know some other StackExchange site where I could ask?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;i&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;To which PHP frameworks would you port a better discussion system?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose that popular and growing/non-declining frameworks would be appropriate. However I don't know much about the PHP world.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The discussion system would manage the comments following a blog post, or forum thread.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I've ported to one PHP framework already.)&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/i&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;What kind of questions can I ask here?&quot; — &quot;[...] business concerns [...]&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27553" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2791" RevisionGUID="688c6fea-ac28-4b71-809d-2e8f68f26455" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="When your question was closed, I left specific feedback about why it was closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi Evan, general professional advice isn't on-topic here: for that, you might be interested in an upcoming site proposal, [Professional Matters](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2). However, bear in mind Stack Exchange is about getting help with *specific* problems: cataloging everything that one needs to know about contracting is too broad a scope for the Stack Exchange style of Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically, it comes down to two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 1. We're not a general-purpose professional matters site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You quoted a part of the FAQ, but missed the very first line, which says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   That is, the part you emphasized should be read as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; freelancing and business concerns **[that are about software development]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's something *specific* to software development, you need to make that clear in your question. You can do that be revising it to explain what, specifically about software development, you want to know. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it another way (also mentioned in the FAQ), we're trying to hit the blue region on this diagram:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Scope diagram](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, many people on the network have recognized there is a demand for a general-purpose professional questions site, and [that site proposal is currently in commitment](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2). If there is nothing about contracting that's specific to software development that you want to know, it is your best shot for getting help about the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 2. Cataloging everything about a subject is too broad a scope for Stack Exchange&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The body of your question asks 6 different things, including the ultra broad, open ended prompt: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anything else that caught you by surprise when you started contracting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not in any way definitively answerable. As the [FAQ says](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask),&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Getting your question reopened&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number one reason a question doesn't get reopened has nothing to do with mods being drunk on power or community apathy or any other malicious or nefarious reason: it's because the reasons why the question was closed in the first place is never addressed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing is meant to be a way to say &quot;this question, *as it is written now*, is not a fit for the site. If you can address the problems stated and revise your question, it's just as easy to reopen it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the case of this specific question, it's very easy to get it into shape:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Explain what you need to know about contracting that requires the expertise of the site's audience (i.e. programmers)&#xD;&#xA;2. Narrow the scope of your question down to asking about a specific, *solvable* problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You do that, and I'll be the first to reopen and upvote it.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27554" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1789" RevisionGUID="719463bb-71d5-49b2-9640-2bbec5a1392e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yeah, I learned about [lambda expressions][1] and how to do them in Delphi. I thought that was a pretty cool thing and I seriously didn't know it before.  I'm glad I asked. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/33663/delphi-doesnt-have-lambda-expressions-and-im-a-delphi-programmer-what-am-i-mis" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27555" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1790" RevisionGUID="72dcf026-5d7b-4ef1-9287-b1537172fd2b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was able to answer the question of someone [dealing with a personal problem][1] by relating it to my own, and this helped me understand my problem better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/43260/how-to-stay-creative-when-going-through-tough-emotional-times-divorce-family-de" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27557" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3828" RevisionGUID="02ecb84a-d5fd-40d7-9ac5-d7ed0fdf30ca" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Is there a canonical **&quot;What can I do with my programming skills if I'm weary of heads-down coding?&quot;** question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that's what the OP is really asking for in this question &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/158341/average-career-programmer-with-no-passion-try-harder-or-try-related-it-field&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;hellip; and I think such a canonical-form question should exist here on programmers. A very similar question was asked on Workplaced and closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What kind of business management fields are available to a programmer who no longer wants to program?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/2658)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this comment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Software Engineers should give you job options (other than programmers) such as: Business Analyst/Requirements Engineer, System Architect, Configuration/Build Manager, Project Manager, Test Engineer/Management, etc. Try looking for management jobs in IT, contractor/consultancy firms are big on this. Also, job fairs are a good place to start looking if you're still at the campus. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should be closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here on Workplace **they are asking for programmers to answer the question!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is kind of exactly my point. A single, canonical&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What can I do with my programming skills if I'm weary of heads-down coding?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question is, I think, something many programmers (not chefs, lawyers, or firemen) might ask themselves at some point in their lives. Such a question is valuable to, and entirely specific to, programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- it's concrete. There is data, there are facts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Either having programming skills is something that is typically in the hiring requirements for such positions, or it is not. &#xD;&#xA;   - Either there is a documented record of ex-programmers moving into these positions and being successful, or there is not. &#xD;&#xA;   - Either there are 100k such positions worldwide, or there are none.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- it applies to &quot;all programmers&quot;. The root skill is programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- it has nothing to do with feelings or motivation. It's about skills, specifically programming skill, and how you use it. (Just not in the typical &quot;heads down coding all the time&quot; way.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I looked around a bit and I couldn't find such a question, but **I strongly believe it needs to exist** -- at the very least you could close-as-dupe a bunch of soft [tag:career-development] and [tag:career-transition] questions with something nice and hard and concrete." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27558" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2931" RevisionGUID="880ae6a0-f4a2-48eb-b9e3-1f37e1cdde6e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="First of all, popularity doesn't say much when it comes to whether a question is on topic or not. Consider these questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t &#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-programming-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are all great! [And there are a lot more][1]! Why are these closed? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One less obvious reason is that these highly rated but off topic questions will keep generating lesser quality questions on similar topics. People will keep asking those, as long as they feel they are on topic, and it will be impossible to explain why their questions were closed when similar popular questions are open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And of course the [FAQ][2] very clearly defines that on topic questions should be discussing topics that apply uniquely to programming: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The whole point of Stack Exchange is for questions to be _expertly_ answer. Although the question in question is an extremely interesting one, I fail to see how it can be expertly answered by software developers. And even if one amongst us can expertly answer it, it still doesn't matter, because most of as aren't knowledgeable enough to verify if the answer is a good one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The core question is: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I need a team who can learn to do things right autonomously, not just follow instructions. How does one correct a junior developer, but still encourage him to think for himself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you tell me how this question is any different than this: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I need a team who can learn to do things right autonomously, not just follow instructions. How does one correct a junior member, but still encourage him to think for himself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=closed:1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7jTZE.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27559" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1886" RevisionGUID="14dc4440-af48-4c7b-805d-476596e10720" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The close reason is given in the text below the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed as off topic by Steven A. Lowe, Chris, ChrisF♦ 22 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions on Programmers - Stack Exchange are expected to generally relate to software development, within the scope defined in the [faq](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So follow the link to the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not always feasible to leave a comment explaining *exactly* why the question falls foul of the FAQ, but I will often leave comments prior to closing if I feel the question can be edited into shape." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27560" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3020" RevisionGUID="ad004433-92d0-4ed0-a6cb-5c236cd43dfb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="While they might be good questions unless they deal with team communications as it specifically and uniquely affects software development and developers they are off topic for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you read the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) you'll see this diagram:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question falls squarely in the &quot;All Careers&quot; circle (well actually the &quot;All Careers that involve working with a team&quot; circle, but that's nit-picking).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While there might be a unique software development aspect to this you have to make sure you bring it out in your question so that it moves into the blue &quot;All Programmers&quot; circle. If you can do this then there's a good chance your question will get reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other questions you have linked to may have done this or elicited answers that do this. However, it's a *very* fine line and one we are clearly not getting right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now whether the solution is to change the FAQ or not I don't know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/V97HN.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27561" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3839" RevisionGUID="e7b8d346-6141-4719-8a73-e8b74ae0dd41" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Is this question on-topic here on Programmers SE: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/157531/issues-tracker-for-both-developers-and-end-users&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) doesn't explicitly disallow such questions nor does it seem to explicitly allow them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, shopping recommendations are considered off-topic for the Stack Exchange engines but some allowances are made for them if the question asks how to make a good shopping decision rather than simply crowdsourcing the community and letting random people on the Internet make a decision for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Every question and answer ultimately should be about teaching and learning — yes, even the shopping ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I noticed the question has been here for a week, is upvoted, and has no close votes on it. So, what's the verdict. Should this be closed? If it's on-topic, why? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27562" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2012" RevisionGUID="632a9e07-7910-462f-9196-09121119cd4e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; how can OP sue such an action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect you already know this, but you can't sue because the moderator of a website did something you don't like. About the most you can do is bring it up on meta like you already have&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; He at least could wait for other moderators to vote for close up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators can't vote, they just act. If you mean he could've waited for other *users* to vote, I suppose so, but moderators are elected because they understand how their respective sites work -- their judgement is generally pretty good&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closing a question on a single thought is true dictatorship and egoistic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a dictatorship; again, they were [elected](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/election/1). And I know ChrisF well enough to be confident he doesn't get an ego boost closing questions, he's just trying to keep the quality of the site high. The [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) explains what questions are off-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27563" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2036" RevisionGUID="4576bf99-5ca5-4ccb-9032-28460d3072c7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You've hit [the reputation cap](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation) for today, and you won't receive any more reputation from up-votes until tomorrow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can see your current reputation for today on [your reputation page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/31418/saeed?tab=reputation). You've received 202 reputation so far: 200 from up-votes and 2 from accepting an answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27564" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3075" RevisionGUID="30e847b5-1be2-4e0d-a796-7795a8241a33" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I [noticed][1] and [so did several others][2] that vote counts seemed very low for the 2012 moderator elections. Here are some statistics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Moderator Election for 2012**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 5,874 voters were eligible  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2,198 visited the site during the election  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 652 visited the election page  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **297** voted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems like a depressingly low participation rate for our site and I'll admit that I was shocked when I saw the results. I was interested and decided to a small case study to see how we compared to other sites on the StackExchange network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Just as a note - I am not a statistician and the numbers presented here are rather basic computations. However, I believe that they communicate an encouraging trend for our community.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I visited election pages for every other full, non-beta site on the network that held an election at some point in early to mid 2011. The following graph is a scatter plot for each of these sites of what I call **Interested User Conversion (IUC)** rate. This percentage is computed by:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *Number of People Who Voted* **/** *Number of People Who Visited the Election Page*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**StackExchange IUC Scatterplot**&#xD;&#xA;![2011 interested user conversion][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Where was Programmers.SE IUC in 2011?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stackoverflow - 35.173%  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Serverfault - 54.770%  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE - **55.448%**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; *StackExchange Overall* - 63.483%  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means that in 2011, roughly 55% of people who were eligible to vote and visited our election page actually bothered to vote. That's actually a very strong percentage and not that surprising - people involved with the site in its earliest phases tend to be stronger supporters and more interested in things like elections.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does this stack up to our 2012 elections? Only a handful of sites have completed elections so far, so I only have Stack Overflow and Server Fault to compare ourselves against.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Basic 2012 Comparisons**  &#xD;&#xA;![2012 runoff][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had 66% more eligible voters this election than in 2011, and we increased our number of votes by about 23%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Compare this with Stack Overflow which added around 40% more eligible voters and only managed to increase their votes by **.48%**. That's right - Stack Overflow participation remained **virtually static** in spite of their increased voter base. Our own numbers are even stronger when looked at in this light:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Stack Overflow** added 29,130 eligible voters **but only had 24 additional people vote**.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Serverfault** added 2,516 eligible voters and had 102 **FEWER** people vote.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Programmers.SE** added 3,944 eligible voters and had 68 additional people vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now lets look at the **IUC** statistic I brought up with 2011 a little earlier.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Where was Programmers.SE IUC in 2012?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stackoverflow - 27.953%  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Serverfault - 43.882%  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE - **45.552%**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had a decrease in the ratio of our participation - this is to be expected. We will always add more users than will participate in things like elections. However, our growth rate is very encouraging, especially compared to Stack Overflow and Serverfault.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/election/2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3303991#3303991&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PH68A.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/R1AZK.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27565" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3857" RevisionGUID="4549c624-8f41-48d2-958e-76a3889b8caa" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The following question is just a thinly veiled attempt at advertising!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/159087/where-lies-the-future-of-angularjs" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27566" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3871" RevisionGUID="09e8f962-6ecc-409b-b7ed-d192ca10f117" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Another tag for collective review:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:space] has [four links](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/space).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two are recent, and very similar to each other referencing space from the Mars probe.&#xD;&#xA;The third has space as the 5th tag, and it's discussing searching / branching.&#xD;&#xA;The last is in reference to outer space techniques.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My vote is to remove and delete the tag.&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27567" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2160" RevisionGUID="177c11a5-6507-4222-94b7-e3ad931ec60a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I had asked these two questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [Roadmap for switching from a Developer to a Project Manager][1]&#xD;&#xA; 2. [What can developer do when he bored of his job?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;but both of them are closed for the same reason. So if I want to ask this kind of question again, where can I ask?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/89320/roadmap-for-switching-from-a-developer-to-a-project-manager&#xD;&#xA;[2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/103301/what-can-developer-do-when-he-bored-of-his-job" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27568" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3907" RevisionGUID="05eda960-a2d2-460a-bbbd-72213fb75f7f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I suggest this edit yesterday:  https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/5895&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that it is a very substantial edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In first reading the title, there is a substantial difference between how to unit test and how to unit test in a specific development environment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, if someone is following the visual-studio-2010 tag, then this is specifically applicable to what they are following.  If the visual-studio-2010 tag is not added to this post, then this post is not listed in their tagged items, even though this post is specifically applicable to that development environment and no other development environment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a platform or messaging system in which I can present these ideas to have the edit reconsidered?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27569" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2164" RevisionGUID="dffd675d-6631-45bc-b758-b4c3ba5553c5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Your answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/103501/thoughts-on-development-using-virtual-machines/103504#103504) was marked &quot;community wiki&quot;. Revision history showed it was set by you 18 hours ago (as of this writing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best explanation I can give is that you accidentally checked the &quot;community wiki&quot; checkbox when making the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I removed the CW status and turned it into a normal answer. Visit the [reputation breakdown](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/reputation) and use the button at the bottom of the page to trigger a reputation recalc. You should get your reputation back (up to the daily cap) at that point." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27570" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3916" RevisionGUID="cc3ccfbd-41e5-4af5-98e4-bf8968376b1d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This post](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review-beta/low-quality-posts/268) came up while using the new &quot;Review Low Quality Posts&quot; tool, but it wouldn't let me vote because the post is locked.  If you can't vote on it, it shouldn't pop up for review in the first place." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27571" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3086" RevisionGUID="2f5fb56b-98a6-4d50-bc8b-c99a7367b08c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are some highly-voted questions on our site that don't match the FAQ, but I feel are extremely valuable to programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've only been programming a few years, and when I came across these questions I felt like I found a goldmine of information. There's so much out there that I don't know I don't know, and having a bunch of things that can improve me as a programmer in a central location is extremely valuable to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not want to see these go away in a purge, so can we keep these questions opened, but locked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/11312/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; I first saw this question a year or two back, and at the time I was fairly new to programmering, and usually worked by myself. Some of the answers to this questions are extremely useful to new programmers, and are a huge help in productivity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; For example, I had no idea the kind of value an extra monitor would give me. When I saw that was rated one of the highest-voted answers, I asked for a 2nd monitor at work and was amazed at how much more productive it made me. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Another answer that assisted me was I didn't realize it was common for programmers to wear headphones or listen to music at work to help keep distractions out. I always thought that kind of behavior was rude and unprofessional, and would have never considered bring headphones in to work to shut out the distractions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Other answers that were of value to me was allocating time for research, and the value of having my own personal whiteboard. I now have both :) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/44177/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; There's so much good information in these answers that have helped me, but I'll try and highlight the ones that made the biggest change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; *Try to work with people smarter than yourself.* This helped me when the company decided it wanted to increase the size of their programming team, and I was responsible for finding a candidate. At first I considered hiring a few interns or juniors to help with the workload, and then I remembered this and decided to go for one person with more experience than myself to try and improve my own programming skills. The company was fine with that and I got my way, and I working with someone that has more experience than me has has taught me so much that I didn't realize I didn't know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; *listen to what others have to say, regardless of job title* I noticed I was weighing opinions based on who was telling me things. For example, we had a network guy who started dabbling in programming, and at the time I discounted some of his opinions because didn't think he knew what he was talking about. But I soon realized that just because someone is inexperienced does not mean they don't know what they're talking about, and we ended up implementing some of his suggestions after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; *Start a pet project* and *teaching others*. I think these were the two that lead me to starting my own programming blog, although I really couldn't pinpoint the exact answers because at the time there wasn't nearly this many answers and upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/30355/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Again, another one of those questions with so much good advice for new programmers that I don't even know where to start. But here are some of the answers that made the biggest impact on my programming style:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; *Avoid gold plating - do only what is asked of you (in terms of requirements)* I can't tell you how many times I would try and add extra features, or suggest things that weren't actually required. After reading this (and many other similar answers) I really started simplifying things and only building what was asked for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; *Don't reinvent the wheel, consider reusing past work and the work of others* I was one of those people who always liked to build stuff myself to using pre-made stuff. Answers like this were the reason I started using 3rd party libraries more, and I've actually managed to talk my company into purchasing a commercial library (Telerik) which has reduced development times by quite a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; *Avoid switching tasks too often. Distractions and task switching can kill a day* / *Eliminate distractions* I started noticing how much distractions and interruptions were affecting my productivity (I got interrupted a lot), and started doing things like putting my phone on DND for hours at a time when I needed to get stuff done. I noticed an immediate increase in productivity, and now most people know to email me if they want something that isn't an emergency instead of calling me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I realize much of this information can be found online, however seeing the suggestions with such a high amount of support from programmers (upvotes) really made me think about them again, and instead of simply taking note of it and moving on I actively went out and tried to make changes in my work environment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've found quite a few [open][1]-[but][2]-[locked][3] questions on StackOverflow which were are clearly not a good fit for the site, but contain so much useful information that they are locked with the following message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. More&#xD;&#xA;&gt; info: FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was hoping we could do the same for these questions since I think they contain a lot of good information for new programmers, and would hate to see them go away because they're a bad fit for the current site scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://tp://stackoverflow.com/q/9033/302677&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/365489/302677" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27572" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3921" RevisionGUID="fb33a349-937e-49fa-a17c-c743f3b43841" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked a question about the [overlap between Free Software (as defined by the FSF) and Open Source Software (as defined by the OSI)][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Note that this question was **not** subjective. I was not asking about peope's personal idiosyncratic definitions of the terminology, nor about the difference between copyleft and permissive licencing, nor about which type of license was &quot;better&quot;. (I did get a bunch of off topic responses answering those questions which I hadn't asked, but I edited the question to clarify, and there's been no trouble since.)&#xD;&#xA;2. Note that the question has an excellent, simple, accepted answer.&#xD;&#xA;3. Note that, in general, good answers are voted up, and a bad answer is voted down.&#xD;&#xA;4. Note that the question is nearly two years old, and has stood without trouble that long.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why was it suddenly and unilaterally closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;? What does this achieve? Who is helped by this closure?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/21907/2406" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27573" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2223" RevisionGUID="6c6caca9-ce99-4b9d-ac78-4ec13b431c81" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A clearly off-topic question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/106165/what-is-the-relationship-between-chuck-norris-and-programmers/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wrote an answer making it clear that there is no real significance, as I assumed it could be useful for someone trying to find information in a bizarre circumstance: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/106165/what-is-the-relationship-between-chuck-norris-and-programmers/106169#106169 (**update:** I deleted the answer, it may be visible to high-rep users)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is ANY response to such a blatantly off topic question detrimental to the community (despite the intention to add a scintilla of usefulness)? Should questions like this be completely ignored until they're closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27574" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2252" RevisionGUID="4021a2c8-bab1-499d-8f16-babc4cde8207" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The problem is that **as phrased** the question is a poll. If you check the [What kind of questions should I *not* ask here?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section of the FAQ you'll see the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **avoid** asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question fails (as I see it) because the poster doesn't have a problem they're trying to solve, every answer is fundamentally equally valid (&quot;Yes I still use flow charts&quot;, &quot;No I don't use flow charts any more&quot;) and it answered the question in the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also check out the blog post on [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) linked to from the close reason. This goes into more details about the type of open ended question that makes a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more useful question *might* be something along the lines of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Are flowcharts still useful with modern software development techniques and methodologies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though I'm sure someone else could phrase that a lot better." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27575" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3097" RevisionGUID="df477549-d74a-4b5d-8b22-c1e8c2a7d5e2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="### What's a heroic edit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A heroic edit is any edits, or set of edits, that goes beyond the normal call of duty to help save a post from itself. They generally substantially revise a post to extract and make clear what, exactly, is so special about the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### What's the point?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To maintain the quality and scope of a site, routine closures are a part of Stack Exchange. Closures are a way to signal from the community that a question has problems that must be addressed before it can accept new answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is not a homogeneous community, and people do disagree. If a person disagrees that there's a problem with a question, they can vote to reopen the question (if they have enough rep) and/or convince other members of the community to vote to reopen. If 5 members of the community or one moderator is convinced, the question will be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If or when that fails, that's when the heroic edit comes in. By addressing the problems already identified by the closure, people will be more likely to be convinced that the question should be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### But I don't think there's anything wrong with the post!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fair enough: you can try to keep looking for people who agree with your assessment, and can vote to reopen the question, to do so. But by taking other people's concerns with the question seriously and addressing them, you're likely to convince more people about the value of the post faster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Can I just do some minor copyediting and be done with it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Copyediting is a relatively minor issue, and it's almost never the reason why a question gets closed. While improving the copy helps any post, it's unlikely to be enough to get a question reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### So what do I need to do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Posts can be closed for a variety of reasons: there is no single type of heroic edit that'll work for all cases. The goal is to address why the post was closed, so understanding why others closed the question is essential. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Start by looking at the close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Exact duplicate:** people have determined the question duplicates the content of another one, or has enough overlap  that there is no point in rehashing the topic. Try to revise the question to avoid as much overlap with the earlier question as possible.&#xD;&#xA;* **Off topic:** people have determined the question does not fit within the site's scope. Try to think about the audience of the site and whether or not they have the unique expertise to answer the question. Revise the question to more clearly ask something about the subject the audience is an expert in.&#xD;&#xA;* **Not constructive:** people have determined that, while potentially on-topic, the question and answer pair is not a good fit for the Stack Exchange style of Q&amp;A: it's not a practical problem, it's an open-ended question, it's a list, or it's a discussion. Review &quot;[Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&quot; and &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&quot;, identify how the question as it is now fails the guidance there, and address it.&#xD;&#xA;* **Not a real question:** people have determined that it's not clear the post is actually a question, what the question is asking for, or that the question  is way too broad to be answered in the Stack Exchange format. Revise the question to tease out the potential you see between the lines.&#xD;&#xA;* **Too localized:** people have determined the problem is so local to the user it's not going to help anyone in the future. Revise the question to generalize the problem and make it clear it's common other programmers face the same issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then check the comments on the question, or check the meta-discussion site to see what people have said about it. Try to address those concerns as well in your revisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, talk to the people who closed the question: they can explain what reservations they had with the question and help you address their concerns in your edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Your advice for heroically editing questions closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; is weak. What specifically can I do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not constructive covers a lot of issues. While talking with the people who closed the question can make the problems specific, there's some general advice:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **The question has a ton of answers, many of them short:** The question and answer pair has become a list, so it needs to be revised to not be one anymore. Ping a moderator in chat to work with them to help remove duplicate answers and consolidate answers into one canonical answer.&#xD;&#xA;* **The question is a rant or inflammatory:** Try to identify the legitimate problem the asker has and rewrite the question from a neutral point of view.&#xD;&#xA;* **The answers have dismissed the question and answered a different one:** If all the answers have addressed a different question because the question asked something unanswerable, revise the question to match the answers received.&#xD;&#xA;* **Many of the answers have dismissed the question by providing [non-answers](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion):** Flag non-answers, no matter how upvoted they are, for deletion. Xkcd, Dilbert, clichés, and one-line adages are not answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Okay, so I've made my heroic edit. What now?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most really good heroic edits will attract reopen votes quickly and automatically. You can also flag it for moderator review or [post the question in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21) to see if you can get others to reopen the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### I made all these edits, but it's still not reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all questions can be saved, even with the most heroic of edits. Other times, people still aren't convinced the issues have been addressed. If you think the question should be reopened and talking to individual people hasn't made that happen, open up a question on meta to discuss what—if anything—can be done to get the question reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27576" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3985" RevisionGUID="c476e97d-2185-4723-93c7-32dc3212753e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="While using the new review tool for poor quality answers, I keep coming across a pattern that leaves me thinking there must be a better way to handle it.  Take the following question, for example.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/53848/stuff-you-learned-in-school-that-you-have-never-used-again&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was closed as not constructive, rightly so.  However, then a bunch of its answers also get flagged for the tool, primarily because they express a short, list item opinion as an answer to a question that encourages short, list item opinions.  I see this pattern over and over again of closed questions that encouraged poor answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There has to be a better way to handle these kinds of answers.  Is &quot;bad answer bait&quot; a valid reason to delete a question rather than deal with each answer individually?  Is there another preferred way to handle this situation?  Should that method be spelled out in the review tool?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27577" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2319" RevisionGUID="8ff30d7b-37bd-4f15-b812-dcf57d6f5273" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You can certainly ask novice-level questions here, so long as they fit what is described in the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The difference between Stack Overflow and Programmers isn't the complexity level of questions but rather the kind of questions that are asked. Stack Overflow is for specific coding problems (e.g. when you have some code and it's broken) and Programmers is for conceptual questions about software architecture, design, and (to a certain extent) software development as a profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each Stack Exchange site attempts to attract experts so that people like you who have entry-level questions can find out the answers quickly and painlessly. So, feel free to look around the site and see if we cover the kinds of questions that you have on your mind." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27578" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3181" RevisionGUID="fa2cd9c0-61d1-40a4-873d-0b0f9a0fe9c5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Recently one of my questions was closed as not constructive:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/136309/why-dont-software-libraries-solve-all-our-problems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could someone please help me rephrase this question so that it is a good fit for this community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27579" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2322" RevisionGUID="9644d099-9be5-4155-9a56-ca7349dc141d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="One of the measures of a good subjective questions is that it invites &quot;sharing experiences over opinions&quot;. A question that solicits experiences that many people have had can be a good question, and could have an infinite number of good answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a site like Stack Overflow where it's more factual, there should be significantly fewer answers - there might be a lot of ways to solve a problem, but of those, some are Just Plain Bad while a smaller number of others are a Good Answer. I'm of the opinion that if you have a Good Answer on a site like Stack Overflow, you should post it, since the accepted solution might not work for someone else for any number of reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, on a site where experiences matter more and there are far fewer questions with The One Right Answer, there are going to be more answers. Having an excessive number of answers (I'm not sure how to define excessive, but I'd think of as a function of the total number of users on the site, among other things) is a red flag to look at the question and make sure it's valuable and constructive, but it doesn't necessarily mean the question is bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps [a tool][1] could be added to easily view questions that have recently passed different thresholds for large numbers of answers. As an example, view questions that have had their 10th, 15th, and 25th answers posted within the specified time frame. This would give the mods and high-rep users a chance to see the question and decide what to do (flag, close, edit, protect). Honestly, editing is going to be hard since there are already so many answers - my biggest concern (and has been for a number of questions) is &quot;breaking&quot; the existing answers. If you break existing answers and the answerer doesn't realize this and come back fairly quickly to update or delete the answer, then it's more likely to be downvoted since it doesn't apply. Perhaps a tool to &quot;protect&quot; an answer (after a major edit to the question, notify all people who answered the question so they can deal with it, also let diamond mods explicitly &quot;hide&quot; answers and notify a user that their answer is good but not longer appropriate and let the user explicitly choose to unhide with or without edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You explicitly mention that &quot;existing answers should be edited to make them better rather than new ones added&quot;. I'm extremely hesitant to edit any post on Programmers to do things other than fixing spelling and grammar, cleaning up links, and just generally improving readability. My reason is that many answers share experiences, and I'm not comfortable editing other people's experiences or putting words into their mouths. Personally, I'm fine with people editing my posts for the same reasons I edit other posts, and fixing minor factual mistakes, but the moment that I start sharing my experiences on a subject, the only changes made to that section should be spelling and grammar - you weren't there, you don't know what I saw/did/heard, and if you have a question to me, ask it in a comment and I'll personally improve that section.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tools" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27580" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4070" RevisionGUID="8108d16f-7bd8-417b-b056-037904c55506" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I posted an answer to a question I view interesting, and that I often asks myself, namely https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/166893/should-i-add-parameters-to-instance-methods-that-use-those-instance-fields-as-pa.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to know... Is it advisable, ethical, and/or seen as a positive indicator to add a bounty to a question I posted an answer to ? I feel like there could be a better answer from +30K rep users such as Peter Torok for example..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27581" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2348" RevisionGUID="844c6687-01de-4d7f-a6b4-67d43164c4a8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You can rollback a post, but please realize that [Stack Exchange is collaboratively edited](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#editing): people can and will edit your posts to improve them and make them better comply with our rules and guidelines. If you're not comfortable with people editing your stuff in good faith, this might not be the site for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rollbacks should only be used when edits are done in bad faith (e.g. vandalism) or if the edits drastically change the meaning of your post without explanation. Otherwise, please try to resolve any issues in comments before resorting to a rollback: we will lock posts that devolve into edit warring." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27582" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3275" RevisionGUID="8616c651-e469-449f-920f-d9699b8d8d79" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Ah, you missed the best part...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![This big blue box appears above the title on Area 51][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The title, description, definition questions, and discussions on Area51 are of purely historic interest. [The FAQ][2] here is the definitive reference for the site as it exists today.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LSqYc.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27583" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4117" RevisionGUID="cdb304c2-ecb3-4a2f-bdd9-0ab90970f845" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question: [Problem using python QPID and gevent together][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't really seem to fit the description of not a real question, and I think the only problem with it is the last two sentences: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does anybody else have experience of getting gevent and QPID to work together? or Has anybody else seen the same issues?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But other than that the question seems to be very specific and well defined. Am I missing something here? Could a simple edit have saved the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;BTW:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- It's not my question, I just find it _very_ interesting. Browsed over 50 questions today, this one was the highlight.&#xD;&#xA;- I'm not really familiar with the concepts involved in the question (which is probably why I find it so interesting), there could be a lot I'm missing here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/168576/problem-using-python-qpid-and-gevent-together" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27584" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4122" RevisionGUID="90359c18-3147-4246-8aed-9ee13e2f5b57" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are many abstract concepts programmers encounter and remember before needing a reference manual or Google, and few other disciplines require this same level of abstract thought.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't help be feel that there must be something different to the way programmers remember concepts since these concepts aren't as easily tied to the real world.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a better way to ask this question in that context and so that it doesn't violate the Programmers StackExchange rules?:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Are there any memorization techniques that exist for programmers?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if so, what action should I take. Do I simply post a new question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/168729/are-there-any-memorization-techniques-that-exist-for-programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27585" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2438" RevisionGUID="da738b55-8ac2-4bf8-b182-a008ca0b8a25" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Nothing: community moderation is done by humans and some things slip through the cracks. When that happens, we rely on users like yourself to find the things we missed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What were the reasons why Windows never had a decent shell?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/114530/what-were-the-reasons-why-windows-never-had-a-decent-shell) is just pure speculation like the other question, so it's been closed now too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27586" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3442" RevisionGUID="35e3b9e6-49dc-4548-97d2-5199473d0db8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Done - according to [offshore tag synonyms page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/offshore/synonyms),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The following tags will be remapped to [tag:offshore]  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [tag:off-shore]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/wzEe0.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/wzEe0.jpg &quot;synonyms page screen shot&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27588" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2593" RevisionGUID="91fda35f-845c-424d-a863-0ebc5d361ad7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Why keep this [question open][1] and others like it open which basically asks how long does it take to learn a programming language?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Yet I ask a valid question which basically asks][2] how esteemed is a mathematics degree from the UK open university and would software employers hire whilst you are the course.. and it gets closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I love the advice I get from this site and I appreciate the fact that Software Technicians of all types use this site, but it's a bit shallow if you can't ask a question with a little bit of the real world involved&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46260/how-long-would-it-take-to-learn-objective-c&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/121875/how-seriously-would-an-employer-take-a-job-application-from-an-applicant-studyin" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27589" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3477" RevisionGUID="83839bcb-07e3-475f-8fe9-49eff4765ef4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Your example looks like an awesome answer to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; \- How would you know if you've written readable and easily maintainable code?  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; \- [Your peer tells you after reviewing the code.](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/141010/2 &quot;original version of the answer&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only does it answer the question, it also introduces important notions of peers, code review and feedback, ties them together and presents in a way that is easy to understand and use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer style is not quite typical, in the sense that most other good answers I've seen at Programmers tend to be more verbose. But since stylistic consistency is **not the only criteria** I use, this doesn't worry me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For the sake of completeness need to note that this particular one-liner is pretty exceptional; vast majority of other one-liners I deal with at P.SE are not like that - easy targets for downvote, flag or &quot;expanding edit&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The question is: Should we expect from the readers to infer the needed context? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good question. My take is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. in more typical cases it's better to just err on safe side and provide context explicitly  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Mainly because expanding **average** one-liner does no harm.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;1. in this particular case - yes, it looks reasonable to expect that from a reader  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Because expanding **high quality** one-liner could do more harm than good.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To avoid misunderstanding, I would like to make it perfectly clear that I **support** general guidelines you referred to. I believe that one-liners are typically not a good fit for Programmers. I also think that providing explicit answer context is as a rule beneficial for the answer quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that I may occasionally encounter particular exceptional case (like it was with your example answer) won't stop me from following these guidelines." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27590" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5134" RevisionGUID="e03dca8e-6004-4b9c-9bcd-664a763178f9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Would you have a look at this [question][1] and see if it was rightfully closed?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe I followed all rules this time and I also got answers in the comments. While I should have received those as answers not comments, this is due to the question being closed.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question indeed needed to be closed, then please tell me what is wrong with it so that it doesn't happen again.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/169997/when-can-we-expect-the-next-version-of-cc12#comment326196_169997" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27591" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3761" RevisionGUID="5289e202-3d97-4994-9c82-5f073dd044a4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Please, if you're going to offer up pseudo-code, then at least try to get the formatting close to what we'd expect to see.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;May I suggest:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;ref pseQuestion question;&#xD;&#xA;int repLoss = 100;&#xD;&#xA;int opScaleFactor = 5;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;//nail the buggers / gits for voting to close when&#xD;&#xA;// arbitrary user deemed question worthwhile.&#xD;&#xA;foreach( pseUser user in CloseVoters )&#xD;&#xA;{&#xD;&#xA;     if( user.CloseVote.Reason != arbitraryUserJudgement.isValid &amp;&amp;&#xD;&#xA;          question.wasClosed( user.CloseVote.Reason ) &amp;&amp;&#xD;&#xA;          question.wasReopened( arbitraryUserJudgement.Unfair(user.CloseVote.Reason) ) &#xD;&#xA;     )&#xD;&#xA;          user.Reputation -= repLoss;&#xD;&#xA;}&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(apologies in advance for the trailing paranthesis on the if, not my preferred style)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And while we're at it, let's give the closed question's author a chance for some extra retribution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;if( arbitraryUserJudgement.currentUser == question.OP )&#xD;&#xA;     uesr.Reputation -= ( opScaleFactor * repLoss );&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or maybe instead of all of that, we could just focus on editing the questions that can be saved.  If you feel that you (or the OP) are spending an excessive amount of time justifying the question, then maybe that's a sign that the question wasn't very well poised to begin with.  Here's a good [checklist](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask) to start with to make sure your questions are good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;FWIW, I think Yannis' answer is pretty spot-on.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The part of your question that I object to is &quot;who decides what is unfair?&quot;  5 close votes by the community is about as close to fair as we're going to get.  If you have an alternative approach to deeming what is fair, please bring it up for the community to discuss." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27592" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="29" RevisionGUID="852617d5-b5c9-4526-a824-b270d2ebc42a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was originally okay with it, but in the first hour of beta, there are three mostly-identical questions that deal with different locales:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Hourly Billing or per project? Rates in the US?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/134/hourly-billing-or-per-project-rates-in-the-us)&#xD;&#xA;* [Best country for getting a job](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/118/best-country-for-getting-a-job)&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmer's salary in UK](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/19/programmers-salary-in-uk)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unchecked, this could consume the site. I think these types of questions should be closed as **too localized**." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27593" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3848" RevisionGUID="35b797a2-9f54-45e6-8ac1-86cbaa014209" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Why is the question [Pros and cons of PHP vs C,C++ as language in a programming interview? [closed]](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57497/pros-and-cons-of-php-vs-c-c-as-language-in-a-programming-interview) locked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean it is one thing to close it, I agree with that, it meets at least 3 criteria for closing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Locking it means it can't be down voted off the front page! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also can't commented on or edited to correct mistakes or make it a better question for re-opening, even though I doubt that would happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is going to stay locked, it should just be deleted as it is just noise on the front page, and has been for a long time seeing as the actual question and last edit is a over a year old!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/jixbb.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears that this question only exists on programmers and not stackoverflow, at least I can't find it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/jixbb.png &quot;screen shot - question is locked&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27594" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5136" RevisionGUID="18ce71a0-2512-41f4-9e76-99429b59511a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've been fairly active in the new review queue this week and have found a particular breed of low quality posts that I'm not sure of how to handle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, this answer in https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1262/most-useful-features-of-vim-that-arent-standard-in-a-ide/37598#37598&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, to me, this is &quot;wrong&quot;, most IDEs I've used allow splitting the screen, but just because I disagree with projecktzero's opinion on the matter, I don't think this is grounds for it to be flagged for deletion, similarly, I don't think it &quot;Looks good&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the best action to take on posts of this type?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27595" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3864" RevisionGUID="0bc784f8-d53f-46a4-9dbe-18e48ea87291" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="When I look at the history of some post and switch to markdown diff, the left half of the diff overlaps the right part and both continue outside the screen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, [this history](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/158829/revisions) looks like this to me (notice the highlighted part and the scrollbar):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![History of the linked answer](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GwFFW.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes the markdown version of the diff pretty much unusable, could this be fixed?&#xD;&#xA;It's most likely some problem with CSS.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This also seems to happen here on meta, but not on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm using Firefox 14.0.1 on Windows 7." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27596" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5170" RevisionGUID="d4361e29-265c-4cde-9e3f-79de999ec5db" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just flagged this question about [the difference between a port and a socket][1] as off-topic. My flag was declined. Can someone explain to me how is this question related to programmers? To me, it's more related to network stuff which don't really belong here in my opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/171734/38148" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27597" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3914" RevisionGUID="9c42eee0-1ffd-40a7-9ea4-b568cfad4d19" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="While extremely impressive, it's not a record. Our top user, [Pierre 303][1], had amassed 9500+ points his first couple of months, according to his [reputation graph][2]. Don't know if that's the record or not, dig around Data Explorer and let us know if you find someone with a faster pace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Usogf.png][3]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/2567/pierre-303&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackexchange.com/users/132549/pierre?tab=reputation&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Usogf.png &quot;~9.4 K rep / 59 days&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27598" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5172" RevisionGUID="4d41bfd1-18b3-4693-acba-5421de1c6f07" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="*Update:* Changing this to be a feature request. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Request: Notifications of removed comments with included rationale.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reasoning: Personally, pandering to people's sensibilities is silly from my perspective, but being a community driven site, we are at the will of the masses. Knowing what kinds of comments/etc. the masses approves of directly fosters continued community involvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;Original&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm fairly certain that I commented on [this][1] question. I am certain that I flagged it (and my flag was marked as helpful)... but when I check the question, it looks like my comment has been removed (unless of course, I backed out of the comment and just flagged... I was a wee bit sleepy at the time)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How would I know if my comment was removed, or would I? If not, then could I get mod input on what happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/171747/diminishing-returns-on-additional-developers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27599" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5176" RevisionGUID="e3d59ca0-aca9-49cd-835d-481e2efe1a7e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This][1] was just closed and I don't understand why. It says off-topic, but it is specifically about programmers and not a poll nor does it meet any of the &quot;do not ask about&quot;s in the FAQ, in fact in the do-ask-about's of the FAQ I would place this under &quot;business concerns&quot; from the description of the article.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Call me crazy, but I'm rather certain if I posted a question asking:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Can anyone direct me to this blog I read that detailed online security, it was about how passwords are shared around every site and had a comic about a gordian knot and some xkcd about a battery and a horse&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would get the answer with link pretty quickly, and it would serve as a reference for future programmers who couldn't remember where they saw that blog. It's specific so not a poll as book requests are, it's constructive because it will direct people in the future to a valuable article on an important topic to programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what's wrong with the linked question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/173045/article-on-disruptives-vs-something-else" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27600" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5211" RevisionGUID="edd274a5-fb09-4ed9-8cda-db8aa6546784" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There appears to be [a particular user][1] who is reposting questions from online quiz/testing sites and (what I would call) trolling for solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Taken singularly the questions aren't terrible ([they're certainly not high quality, as Yannis has seen][2]) but altogether, the behaviour seems a bit abusive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then again, maybe it's just me?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/66910/7aces&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/174848/number-game-algorithm" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27601" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2605" RevisionGUID="c1cb5912-50bd-4b89-b24e-97346ad7d01d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/112998/to-php-or-not-to-php/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have an answer to the question that has a decent number of upvotes on it.  The question is erratic in its flow and it isn't clear on what the real question is.  It was moved from SO to here and then closed for a good reason.  However, it is a really good question *in essence* and is one I've seen come up numerous times.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it may be of better help to reword the question and then close it as a duplicate of https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/36034/what-are-the-benefits-of-php, especially because both mention web applications specifically.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also might not be worth doing anything.  Thoughts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27602" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5286" RevisionGUID="0fdcf527-e49b-40da-a0b2-1bd1445606cd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="How the question &quot;[How to tell whether your programmers are under-performing][1]&quot; amasses 17 votes and counting.... but is now closed. The close reason is &quot;off topic&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you can see, this question provides a lot of value to the community, and programmers, managers and everyone alike really love this kind of question/answers that won't usually be found in blog posts, books and so on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the name of community interest, can the Programmers moderators be so kind as to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Reopen the question&#xD;&#xA; 2. And if you can't do this, move the question to an appropriate site, namely, [WorkPlace SE][2]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/177167/how-to-tell-whether-your-programmers-are-under-performing&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27603" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="58" RevisionGUID="7cee5cd1-d4f8-4011-a355-967d8415c9c3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Request for comment: structured tag cleanups](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I think we're starting to already get some duplication and unnecessary tagging; we should use this post as a means to figure out what should be combined and what should be blacklisted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Questions to consider&#xD;&#xA;* Are meta-tags allowed? (e.g. *poll*, *discussion*, [*quotes*](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/quotes), [*humor*](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/humor), etc.)&#xD;&#xA;* Given this site is called **Programmers**, should the word *programming* and its synonyms be avoided in tags? (e.g. [*programming languages*](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming-languages), [*programming tool*](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming-tool), [*programmers*](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programmers), etc.)&#xD;&#xA;* What tags should be merged as synonyms?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27604" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2614" RevisionGUID="77502e8a-9bc7-46af-af2f-f0f7c2349360" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Editing a closed question just to close it as a duplicate doesn't make much sense. You could try and edit it, but I don't think you'll get enough support to reopen it, unless of course you make an original and on topic question out of it. The close reason is less important than the fact that the question is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this particular question, I think the sooner it gets &lt;strike&gt;deleted&lt;/strike&gt; downvoted to oblivion the better. Almost all the answers have large amounts of misinformation and unsubstantiated opinions, and it gets a lot worse in the comments, as its usually the norm with holy war questions. And if you had sensed the holy war potential before answering, you shouldn't have contributed to the madness. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it's far from being a good question, &quot;what language you should learn next, including which technology is better&quot; questions are off topic, as per the [faq][1]. That being said, I've also voted to close the other question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27605" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3947" RevisionGUID="067e73d3-99e0-49cd-bf35-aec8e9402aef" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**The problem**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tons of extremely low quality questions from *unregistered* accounts. A few recent examples: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/162691/question-on-pl-sql-evaluate-the-pl-sql-block-given-above-and-determine-the-dat&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/162604/help-me-make-a-choice-between-comp-science-and-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/162555/programming-in-r-help&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/162544/jsp-datagrid-tab-library&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/162463/learning-the-java-language&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/162413/java-unitilsexception-executed-scripts-table-public-dbmaintain-scripts-does&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/161709/how-active-the-new-element-in-jquery&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/161592/running-nuint-in-visual-studio-express-edition&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/161540/how-to-display-hyperlink-field-for-download-pdf-file-in-gridview-control&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of them are now deleted, apologies to those with less than 10K, but we can't keep crap like that around for long. If you'd like me to show you screenshots to get an idea of how painfully horrible these were, feel free to ping me in chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The pattern**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All these questions seem to me like Stack Overflow rejects, extremely low quality questions about implementation issues / programming tools. Stack Overflow requires users to register before they asked, and I _think_ that some of these questions appeared on Programmers after they were closed &amp; deleted on Stack Overflow and / or the askers' accounts were automatically question banned or suspended. It might just be that noobs are naturally more interested in implementation issues, and Stack Overflow has no involvement in this, but my spider sense is tingling. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a few confirmed cases of people posting off topic questions on Programmers to sidestep their question ban / suspension on Stack Overflow, but this isn't easy to confirm for unregistered accounts. Some smells:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- A handfull of cases where the unregistered accounts posting low quality Stack Overflow type questions shared IPs with quite a few other unregistered accounts that also did the same (it might be an accident, or it might be the same guy/gal taking advantage of the system),&#xD;&#xA;- A couple of cases where we confirmed the unregistered account was question banned on Stack Overflow, either by them admitting it in comments, or by asking someone with access to the database to confirm it for us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Moderation issues**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderating unregistered accounts is extremely inefficient: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Suspensions don't work, the only thing the suspendee has to do is clear their cookies and they can post again.&#xD;&#xA;- Automatic question bans are enforced at a deeper level, but they seem to also fail for unregistered accounts.&#xD;&#xA;- Deleting / destroying an account for posting very low quality questions is overkill, we typically only delete spam accounts or accounts that posted extremely offensive content. &#xD;&#xA;- Even for good but off topic questions, migrating to Stack Overflow is discouraged, the unregistered accounts will most likely lose ownership of the question if they don't register there. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Suggestions**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. *Require users to register before asking, same as with Stack Overflow.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I personally don't like it, but it's the obvious solution. We could do a trial run for a couple of months and evaluate the results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. *Tweak the question ban algorithm to be a bit stricter for unregistered accounts.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is completely up to Stack Exchange, my thoughts would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Given the overlap with Stack Overflow, have the algorithm check question banned IPs on Stack Overflow, and not let the account post more than one question, if their first one was downvoted and closed as Off Topic or Not A Real Question.&#xD;&#xA;  - Be more aggressive with unregistered accounts in general. Couple of Off Topic questions, ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. ???&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Hard data**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closure (closure and/or deletion) rates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 35% for unregistered users, 17% for registered (all time),&#xD;&#xA;- 72% for unregistered users, and 40% for registered (last 6 months, retrieved Aug 10),&#xD;&#xA;- 70% for unregistered users, and 38% for registered (last 3 months, retrieved Aug 10).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for people banned on SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- 79 questions asked this month, 39 were closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It seems that science doesn't point at Stack Overflow as the (main) cause of our troubles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27606" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="153" RevisionGUID="f275f889-a2db-4f24-bee5-76af390d405b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Request for comment: structured tag cleanups](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;[[language]](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/language)  &#xD;&#xA;[[languages]](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/languages)  &#xD;&#xA;[[programming-languages]](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming-languages)  &#xD;&#xA;[[spoken-languages]](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/spoken-languages)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27607" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5303" RevisionGUID="419fcf1a-a608-4d80-a809-ff3447de1af3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just curious, this question turned into a community wiki mighty fast and doesn't have the up votes or activity I typically see with community wikis&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/178411/was-c-usability-tested-before-it-was-released" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27608" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2627" RevisionGUID="3fe6624e-bf41-4d14-88f9-d755986fb62e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="When  a post is deleted, it no longer counts towards your reputation: that includes both up votes and down votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, reputation is cached, and any reputation changes will not reflect in your total until your reputation is manually recalculated. This can occur from:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* You manually doing it yourself by going to the [reputation page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/reputation) and pressing the *Trigger Reputation Recalc* button&#xD;&#xA;* A moderator or Stack Exchange employee doing it, generally as part of other action done to your account (think suspension)&#xD;&#xA;* A global recalculation, usually due to some major change in how reputation is handled. This is extremely rare: once or year or less." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27609" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4003" RevisionGUID="b880dffd-a0dc-406a-9405-3a84e7380431" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/43409/dealing-with-engineers-that-frequently-leave-their-jobs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's true. This question does not meet the core criteria for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it generated some fantastic answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we please lock this question so that others may learn from it too?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27610" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2636" RevisionGUID="21b0906f-e57c-4b5e-9658-b974e6800f8d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I gave a [bad answer][1]. It was bad because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - it had a flame-bait quote&#xD;&#xA; - it was mostly off-topic&#xD;&#xA; - it originally didn't even answer the actual question (now it kinda does)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is, how bad is this answer?  **Is it bad enough that it should be deleted, or should it just be downvoted?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A point in favor of deletion is that the answer itself may be flame-bait; it's drawn a few *unhappy* comments (which seem to have been deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just want to emphasize that the answer was actually intended to be helpful, and not rude or offensive.  I sincerely apologize that it missed its mark.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/122788/is-this-a-correct-situation-to-use-a-constant/122793#122793" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27611" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5305" RevisionGUID="1015a169-7334-4622-866f-be29d32fd1eb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Posted this question a few days ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/178307/has-any-programming-language-been-usability-tested&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Despite getting some **really interesting answers** it was closed based on the scope being too large.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I decided to take good chunk of the previous answers, narrow the scope and ask again:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/178411/was-c-usability-tested-before-it-was-released&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please help me ask better questions, and let me know what I'm doing wrong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question was edited and re-opened. I've deleted the second question as it was overlapping too much.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27612" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="162" RevisionGUID="a1179fd0-1d0d-49c6-9414-ffcd943ccb3c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm seeing a lot of great famous Stack Overflow questions asked again here on Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;Why allowing to duplicate those greatest hits questions?   &#xD;&#xA;Here are some examples :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/192793/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-t-shirt  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2212/whats-the-best-programming-t-shirt&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/58640/great-programming-quotes-closed  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-programming-quote&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will you delete or close or merge them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My 0.02c approach:  &#xD;&#xA;1. Temporarily close them as Duplicate on Programmers  &#xD;&#xA;2. When Programmers will be out of the Beta, import\merge them.  &#xD;&#xA;3. Reopen them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Probably I feel it as a problem because I read and loved hundreds of top voted questions of Stack Overflow and now, seeing them popping up again, it's like a Dejavù.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27613" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2658" RevisionGUID="01641a85-0c7a-4a5c-b0de-c7c44b6ee76d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Posts I've already voted on through normal browsing of the site, are not marked as such (red arrow) in the [review page][1]. It's more of an annoyance than a bug, if I try to vote again I get the &quot;already voted, vote is locked&quot; notification and the vote arrow becomes red. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's a waste of a second, and those are extremely valuable these days... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27614" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4056" RevisionGUID="1c0dca96-0faf-48db-a2f4-2a9837609f50" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Reading through the [relevant piece of FAQ][1], constructive subjective questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;- tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;- have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;- invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;- insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;- are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think (if correctly worded) **questions on naming conventions should be *on* topic** here. They are very relevant to programmers, there are often very practical considerations and experiences that form the basis for answers, and it's easy to leave out opinions using votes, comments, downvotes, and moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note / disclosure: I personally asked [this question on CSS naming conventions][2], and the [accepted answer][3] was (in my opinion) of the *good subjective* kind: substantial, based on experience, explaining the &quot;why&quot;, backed up by references, and with a constructive, fair and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note 2: I do understand why naming conventions might be considered &quot;not constructive&quot;, as it's indeed hard (if not: impossible) to have one correct answer. But then again, looking at the [top questions by votes][4], there are several great questions that (sh/w)ould be closed by that same standard (e.g. [1][5], [2][6], [3][7], [4][8], [5][9], etc.) - which is probably why we now have the &quot;Good Subjective / Bad Subjective&quot; distinction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#what-about-subjective-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/141988/practical-considerations-for-html-css-naming-conventions-syntax&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/142703/40625&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/92862/im-a-manager-how-can-i-improve-work-relationships-and-communication-with-progr&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/90059/new-team-lead-how-to-deal-with-a-resentful-former-peer&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/61655/how-do-you-know-youre-writing-good-code" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27615" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5307" RevisionGUID="6489b271-439b-4768-9937-a3c89343e958" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question [here][1] was almost immediately closed. I can see why. However I feel like there is still a well-formed question lurking in here somewhere, and it seems like if I could get to it this would be useful for both myself and others as which tool you use here is a potentially consequential issue in software engineering workflow and methodology. Can I get some advice on how I could I have made this a productive question? Or is my question ultimately always going to be a forum-discussion type of topic that won't work here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: Looking at the comments on the question, I wonder I couched the question too much about me and &quot;I&quot;, which naturally made it overly subjective. What if I'd said &quot;It's well-known that the key differences of Bitbucket are a different pricing model favorable to small teams and support for Mercurial; what are the the most important lower-level features that differentiate Github and Bitbucket from a software development workflow and efficiency point of view?&quot; or something like that? Would that bring it into the realm of productive questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/178517/lesser-known-github-features-that-im-missing-out-on-with-bitbucket" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27616" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="164" RevisionGUID="f7ddc591-b9dd-4137-a273-3c45a00a9df1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; ### Note&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer was posted before the Great Disciplining of Programmers.SE and is rendered obsolete by the following resources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Programmers.SE FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is a separate site from Stack Overflow: the questions are on topic and not duplicates of questions on Programmers, so they should not be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;strike&gt;The site was proposed and set up specifically to *hold* all the popular but nevertheless off-topic questions on Stack Overflow: there will be overlap on some popular questions because they are important seeding questions. If the site makes it out of beta, there [will be a migration path](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/23/should-we-migrate-subjective-question-from-stackoverflow) to move and merge questions from Stack Overflow to here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See also my answer on [How should we handle questions currently closed on SO?&#xD;&#xA;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/44/how-should-we-handle-questions-currently-closed-on-so/45#45)&lt;/strike&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27617" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5295" RevisionGUID="c03628c4-119e-45b3-9615-b9cba0b72362" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/177448/about-to-graduate-from-good-school-without-any-progamming-skills&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question apparently received 5 close votes without a single comment explaining why it deserves to be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a very good question, and it's gotten some very good answers, and most important, it's from a new user who genuinely wants to learn and improve himself, which is the entire point of this site.  The last thing we want to do is scare people like that off by giving the impression that they and their questions are not welcome here.  Can we get this reopened please?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27618" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="173" RevisionGUID="b69fc2c0-f432-49a2-a091-be5c2b354e59" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="From [Introducing Programmers.StackExchange.com](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;In a nutshell, **Stack Overflow is for when you’re front of your compiler or editor** working through code issues. **Programmers is for when you’re in front of a whiteboard** working through higher level conceptual programming issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stated another way, Stack Overflow questions almost all have **actual source code in the questions or answers**. It’s much rarer (though certainly OK) for a Programmers question to contain source code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additional Resources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Programmers.SE FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;* [Stack Overflow FAQ](http://stackoverflow.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;* [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27619" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2698" RevisionGUID="96e8a2c6-4d95-409c-8af7-801a4b6b3267" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The first line of the [about page][1] is: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a free, community driven Q&amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the first line of the [faq][2] is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't really tell which one you are referring to, both are equally important: The about page is worded to be a little bit friendlier to people who don't really know what StackExchange is and the faq page assumes you already know that and goes on to distinguish this from other sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you commented that your question is `for stackoverflow ppl`, I'm assuming you mean the faq, as I think they'll probably skip the about page when first visiting Programmers. But it doesn't really matter, as the answer to bold-*ifying* both lines is: **Nope**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [Jakob Nielsen][3] [best put it][4] (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Text Should be Scannable**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Scanning can save users time. During the study, 15 participants always approached unfamiliar Web text by trying to scan it before reading it. Only 3 participants started reading text word by word, from the top of the page to the bottom, without scanning. Elements that enhance scanning include headings, large type, **bold text**, highlighted text, bulleted lists, graphics, captions, topic sentences, and tables of contents.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; One user from Study 1 who scanned an article but failed to find what he was looking for said, &quot;If this happened to me at work, where I get 70 emails and 50 voicemails a day, then that would be the end of it. If it doesn't come right out at me, I'm going to give up on it.&quot; &quot;Give me bulleted items,&quot; another user said. While looking at a news site, one person said, &quot;**This is easy to read because it uses bold to highlight certain points.**&quot; An essay containing long blocks of text prompted this response: &quot;The whole way it looked made it kind of boring. It's intimidating. People want to read things that are broken up. It gets the points across better.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At first the quote may seem to support your point, but it doesn't: Bold should be used sparingly as a mechanism to enhance *scannability* and *readability*, and it's completely useless for sentences or other elements that already stand out. And the first line of the faq page and the about page stand out just because they are the *first lines*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No need to emphasize more. Users that won't bother reading the first line, won't bother reading it even if it looks like that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. #&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I don't think it's worth spending any time emphasizing text for people who don't bother reading the first line of a text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Nielsen_%28usability_consultant%29&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27621" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5341" RevisionGUID="fa269e03-d4ae-45e1-ab4a-6cea64bcbcac" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This [user][1] has been suggesting some very unhelpful wiki and tag excerpt edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the time the suggested content is either not very helpful (for [tag:clean-code] he suggested something to the line of &quot;The book by Robert Martin&quot; for both the excerpt and wiki entry).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the fuller entries are fully taken off Wikipedia or such with 0 attribution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been rejecting these, but the user doesn't seem to be getting the hint.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/16620/soner-gonul?tab=activity&amp;sort=suggestions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27622" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2722" RevisionGUID="778c6916-52ff-4e9d-9527-90373950d8ff" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This answer][1] was awarded 25 points by the [community user][2]. How does it happen?&#xD;&#xA;Which answers are awarded?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/124770/20065&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/-1/community" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27624" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2746" RevisionGUID="028bc830-1c89-4bfd-9db0-5dec4156fd63" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is no way to create another filter that'll show up on the site, but you could create a search and bookmark the URL in your browser of choice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, this will show all open questions with score 0 or more, sorted by activity. So it's basically like an active sort for the front page but only for non-negatively scored open questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;q=closed%3a0%20votes%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can read about additional search options [here](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27625" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5369" RevisionGUID="b48729a7-7e6e-44ca-9427-eac1176dddea" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have this question https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/180020/53019 open on P.SE currently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My original focus is captured in the title, specifically I was worried about naming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Several of the answers and comments have suggested not using an enum, which takes the question in an unexpected direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that whether or not an enum should be used would be a separate question from my original question, but I recognize that my semi-arbitrary decision to use an enum is complicating the community's ability to provide solid answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will attempt to clarify my original question and show why I think an enum is required, but I'm concerned that I'll be derailing the original question by doing that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what's the best way to handle a situation where the original question is somewhat dependent upon a technology choice that could also be subjected to a question of its own?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update** - here's [the new question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/180335/53019) over on [main]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27626" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5385" RevisionGUID="4568cf92-78ec-4c7e-b722-cf33604da67e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="click on the &quot;Users&quot; link on the Menu Bar of every page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Leader Board][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/D2228.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27628" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2782" RevisionGUID="33d7fe2d-9b03-4a9e-b953-bf052fe9d5ec" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Speaking in broad generalities, the [value of Stack Exchange](http://stackexchange.com/about) is to get answers from experts on a subject: it's why we don't have one site for all questions and have 80+ sites all targeting specific types of people. One of the first questions one must ask when determining if a question is on-topic is, &quot;Is the audience of this site experts in the topic of the question?&quot; If they aren't, it's not a fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is off-topic here and a possible good fit for another site on the network, we consult with the destination site's moderators and see whether they think the question would do well on their site. If they say &quot;yes, it'd be a perfect fit!&quot; we migrate it. If they say &quot;nah, it's not going to do well&quot;, we leave don't: either it gets closed for any number of reasons or it stays in hopes a heroic edit or answer can save it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, if a question is on-topic here and on-topic on another site, it's the asker's choice: if they ask it here, it should stay here, if they ask it on the other site, it should stay on the other site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To get into specifics, the key issue is whether any specific question is on-topic here: we're a site for Programmers, not Project Managers, and our expertise is in programming. While there are a number of project management-related issues that are programmer-specific, there are a *ton* that aren't. That's why [Project Management.SE](http://pm.stackexchange.com) was created.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, just because programmers might use a project management technique like Kanban or Agile does not automatically make it on-topic here. If there's something particular to the problem that specifically requires a programmer to answer, by all means it should stay here. Otherwise, Project Management.SE is a perfectly fine candidate for migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end: the example you provided, [What do you do if the Product Owner is ill?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/128349/what-do-you-do-if-the-product-owner-is-ill), lacks any indication on why it necessitates the expertise of a programmer and not an actual project manager.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it can be revised to clearly explain that connection (and I do not mean simply adding &quot;(as a programmer)&quot; to the question), by all means it should be done. Otherwise, it's perfectly reasonable to migrate it away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And speaking in generalities again, the default action—when you see a question closed that you think shouldn't be—is to always, **always** edit it to make it clear why it's on-topic. A question that is attracting close votes, flags, or comments saying it's off-topic is a question that needs to be revised to be made better and more plain why it's on-topic. As a community-run site, we can't just assert questions are on topic without clearly expressing the specific problem in a way that convinces others it is, in fact, on-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27629" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5400" RevisionGUID="66ffdc1f-cf88-49e4-a9ad-7e676cd0c71e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="With reference to [the FAQ's Don't Ask][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe the question can be edited to make it more focussed, but as it stands (IMHO) it fails this test.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27630" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="263" RevisionGUID="72542d69-41fe-42c0-ac25-e22bf4e71df1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Should we be close duplicates of questions that came from other SE sites?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, we shouldn't.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me quote [Thomas Owens][1] from [Math.SE - Vote to Close as Exact Duplicate][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; From my perspective, the existence of MathOverflow has nothing to do with anything here.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; In fact, life should go on as if it doesn't exist because this is a totally separate site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While MathOverflow is a non-SE site, we should have the same behavior with other SE sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We must see if the question could fit on our site, not if it could fit on other sites...&#xD;&#xA;Which brings us to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Should the question be closed?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, it needs improvement...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me quote the [about page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/about):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We are a site for expert programmers interested in subjective discussions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sure bad website designs can be learned from and might fit in our domain,  &#xD;&#xA;but the question is stated similar to requesting people for their desktop wallpapers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I see it right to close this question for off-topic reasons, but it's not a duplicate in my eyes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/users/91/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/310/vote-to-close-as-exact-duplicate-should-accept-mathoverflow-question-urls" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27631" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5486" RevisionGUID="e7e5651d-3d99-49ec-bb19-b713e0b57612" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My [question][1] was closed.  Can someone please explain to me why this is?  None of the people who voted to close it left a comment.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The inbuilt message says it was closed because &quot;We expect answers to be supported by facts, **references, or specific expertise**&quot; and in my question I ask specifically for &quot;**expert knowledge, including references** to the original W3C (or other committee) specification documents or meeting minutes.&quot;  So essentially, the inbuilt message tells me nothing.    &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why was the question closed in the first place?  And how can the question be improved for re-opening?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/184890/why-is-there-such-a-thing-as-an-id-if-you-can-just-have-classes-with-only-one-el" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27632" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5402" RevisionGUID="45cf9d04-bca9-4758-9ce1-df680d15b0e5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/40296/what-is-the-best-java-programming-book-out-there-for-starters&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Was closed as a duplicate. The question it was allegedly a duplicate of has been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Needless to say, this is a tad useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we have a process for this? Should we not delete questions which are the targets of closed-as-duplicate-of links? Should we unclose questions which have dangling closed-as-duplicate-of links? Should we delete them too?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27633" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2803" RevisionGUID="b48d60fc-c665-4810-884a-eda896304653" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's no preference setting to show or hide closed questions, but you can bookmark a search:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;q=closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This shows you the open question sorted in the descending order by recent activity. See more search tips [here](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27634" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="351" RevisionGUID="ef924639-9baf-47a8-a62a-141c3fb64d59" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Will these rules be applied to existing questions, or just to new ones? Specifically with regards to old, popular questions ([Favorite Joke](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/35/whats-your-favorite-programming-joke),[What music do you code to](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/344/what-music-do-you-code-to), or [Favorite Cartoon](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon))?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Ok, a few of these were addressed [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable), but what about existing question in general that don't meet the new guidelines?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27635" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5549" RevisionGUID="b21fd537-1383-4b8d-97bf-4bb9f0a9645d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a link to the [privileges page][2] in the drop down menu that appears when you hover over your username (on the main site):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kYfGM.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27636" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="45" RevisionGUID="03581671-ed2e-48ad-b4d3-3b3dfcb24c39" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; ### Note&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer was posted before the Great Disciplining of Programmers.SE and is rendered obsolete by the following resources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Programmers.SE FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think asking them now before a migration path is important as it sets the tone for the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;strike&gt;This site is a little different than previous SE sites in that it's meant as *the place you put all the off-topic and subjective but still programming-related questions that get closed on Stack Overflow*. It's important that we can show that demonstrably by seeding the site with quality questions that would normally get closed on Stack Overflow.&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we limit ourselves to questions that haven't already been asked on Stack Overflow when this site is meant as a place for all those questions that don't belong on Stack Overflow, the amount of questions available to seed the site becomes very limited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although, I should say the examples you pointed out are pretty low quality to begin with, and I hope they aren't going to be used as exemplars for what Programmers.SE will become. [On another question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/community-wiki-on-programmers/33#33), I suggested those types of questions that are of the ilk *What's your favorite cartoon?* or *What's your favorite quotation?* might be better off closed as *off-topic* even on Programmers.SE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27637" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="360" RevisionGUID="a02782a8-487e-438e-8bd1-e2c1ddaeaaa6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've asked 3 questions so far&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [The programming plant one][1] &#xD;&#xA; 2. [The pronunciation of Delphi one][2]&#xD;&#xA; 3. [The Unnecessary Code One][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and they've all been scoffed at or given joke answers.  I think I've been improving with each iteration.  I've read the FAQ.  I've been on SO and every other site for longer than you, I'd think I'd understand the game by now.  I was under the impression that the stupid stuff I posted on SO that got closed within one hour would at least last a day on this site.  But it doesn't and ya'll are playing popularity control because this site seems to be growing wildly out of proportion to it's actual usefulness.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm in it for myself - not to improve the internet.  My cactus dies, I ask a programmer what kind of a plant they think is a cool plant a programmer might have, the kind of plant they might sell to a programmer on ThinkGeek if ThinkGeek sold plants.  Everyone in the office says Del Fee, everyone in America Says Del Fi, everyone in the rest of the world says Del Fee.  I think this is interesting, so I ask about it on this website.  I write some dumb code, I think it is funny so I want to see what other dumb code people write - at least as good a question as [least useful comment][4]. And asked in the right place, made it community wiki - and people have the discourtesy to try to close it.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. I don't give a hoot about &quot;[Jeff's guidelines][5]&quot;. I'm not sure what he's thinking if he wants to micromanage the kinds of questions we can ask on a community driven site.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6055/awesomest-programming-plant-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8241/how-to-pronounce-delphi&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8384/whats-your-best-unnecessary-code&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/143429/whats-the-least-useful-comment-youve-ever-seen&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27638" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2812" RevisionGUID="e383e08d-957c-4e0c-b317-364aacf61e65" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Comments with the sole intention of pointing out spelling / syntax fixes are [discouraged][1]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When *shouldn't* I comment?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Comments are not recommended for any of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Suggesting corrections that don't fundamentally change the meaning of the post; instead, make or suggest an edit;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Go ahead and do the edits yourself, and flag such comments as obsolete (if you can spare the time).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27639" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5406" RevisionGUID="fb7e4eb4-d7e0-4204-b7ec-19bfd43c6baa" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/180986/best-approach-for-a-combo-selling-site-with-mysql-and-php&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is straight up design question!&#xD;&#xA;Granted it could have been writing better, I didn't fully understand what he was asking at first. **But Off Topic**???" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27640" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="377" RevisionGUID="8564a06c-ae53-4ac9-ab58-fd68565d0c72" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In my opinion, [this question][1] was doomed, not because of what it was asking, but because it too obviously didn't match the phraseology of a question you're supposed to be able to ask on SE websites.  I see the purpose of this requirement on SO, when subjective questions were able to be asked with a 50/50 chance of getting closed - it reduced the chances of bad factionalism resulting from a Brazilian SO and a Pakistani SO all mixed together and very confusing.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It asks an interesting question about programming culture and the history of development houses, the question mentions an outline of a historical event that a good answerer might use in his answer had he not mentioned it in his question. But this should not disqualify the question.  I think questions that expose prejudices and give people knowledge about how it is to program in a certain geographic area is a good thing for programmers to know!  Before I move my family to either coast, I'd like to know what the expectations are: I'm not exactly aware of the differences between programming on either coast.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, I don't think it's wise to close a question just because there is no one qualified to answer the question who is a member of the site yet.  I'm prepared to wait a month for a proper answer.  No decent programmer is going to write an essay on this site while at work, it's just a waste of time.  We almost need to accept short answers at first - and then wait for the answer to develop.   That's at a microlevel, but at a macrolevel we need to do that for the whole site.    &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope that the people who turn out to be the stellar rep-getters on this site aren't the folks with the most opinions (or even the wittiest), but the people who have learned the most from the most diverse experiences!  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is a way to change the question to make it acceptable, why can't we just change the question instead of closing it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8694/east-vs-west-coast-usa-programming/8796#8796" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27641" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="168" RevisionGUID="89a48c4c-8b53-48c5-a0ae-42d07c3e991e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here's what I think about the tags you listed.  IMHO they fall into several topics, not just one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. The topic you probably meant is **career development**.  It addresses such topics as:&#xD;&#xA;  * How do I develop my career to make a better specialist?&#xD;&#xA;  * What languages should I learn for that?&#xD;&#xA;  * Should I turn that job and get master's education, or...?&#xD;&#xA;  * Will certification make me a better developer? &#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  [career] seems a perfect tag for this kind of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2.  Another topic, which *mirrors* the previous one, is **being a good employer**.  It addresses:&#xD;&#xA;  * How do I become an attractive employer?&#xD;&#xA;  * Can Java developers make it in a C# project?&#xD;&#xA;  * Are people with MS degree better programmers?&#xD;&#xA;  * Will certificates help us if our company focuses on Microsoft tech stack?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  As these questions are essentially the same ones as those in pt.1 (essentially, they're dupes), so they fall into the same [career] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. However, if the questions in the previous point are asked with accent on **how to hire good developers**, it deserves more of a [hiring] tag.  At least I think that the tag should be different to [career].  Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * How would you describe your company in a job ad?&#xD;&#xA;  * What traits of Java developers should be scrutinized if I'm interviewing them for a C# project?&#xD;&#xA;  * Should I prefer developers with MS degree to those with BS only?&#xD;&#xA;  * Should I consider only Certified Developers if our company uses only Microsoft technologies?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Different, aren't they?  Perhaps, the last two aren't defferent from their counterparts at pt. 2, but they all are very different from those in pt.1.  So we definitely need another tag here ([hiring]). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. Some questions concern **the way you work** as programmer.  They're sometimes tagged as [work].  Actually, among [five questions tagged [work]][1], and *[only one][2] is about [career] actually*.  Most likely that one question is just a misunderstanding (for example, in Russian, only one word is used for both &quot;work&quot; and &quot;job&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summary:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. tags like [career], [career-development], [employment] are generally the same and should be merged into [career].&#xD;&#xA;2. The [hiring] tag deserves a separate treatment, as it's about &quot;how to hire/interview&quot; developers.&#xD;&#xA;3. The [work] tag presents a different concept, and, perhaps, is to be renamed, but not merged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/work&#xD;&#xA;[2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2130/what-are-the-biggest-differences-between-working-for-a-small-company-and-working" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27642" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2825" RevisionGUID="1928aaaa-be3a-44ae-9ea1-9c145a368ef2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="At the office, I'm stuck using IE7 (all other browsers are banned by group policy).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was trying to flag [this question][1], but am unable to do so. Flagging it for &quot;it needs moderator attention&quot; sometimes gives me 1, and sometimes 3 options. Typing in the &quot;other&quot; box gives the same message that Thomas is reporting. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Issue: too many first time posters, all within an hour of each other, praising &quot;About Objects&quot;. They might be legit, but it looks like an astroturf situation. I voted to close the thread, and tried to flag the post for mod approval, then tried to flag some of the answers as spam, but not everything seemed to work. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/124028/is-big-nerd-ranch-or-aboutobjects-ios-training-worth-it/129583" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27643" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5558" RevisionGUID="788c36f1-f120-4e94-9d94-6c77b86f8fc8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I believe that we should not use flags or close votes to enforce content that is legitimately on topic, yet has potential ethical or moral issues involved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/187231/create-a-unterminable-process-in-windows&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am going to be perfectly honest here, I don't believe him that he is not trying to create a piece of malware or do something malicious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand though, I am intrigued and fascinated about the ingenuity of Evil Software Developers.  The more we understand how Evil Software Development works then the better equipped we are to combat such negative activity.  The community as a whole is richer for having such content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you believe, do you consider questions where the OP is coming from an unethical or immoral place are justified in being closed as Not Constructive, or do you believe we have no right to judge others content by their morality?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27644" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5479" RevisionGUID="52c33bf3-1ed8-4de0-8967-ae81b25bebe5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was stupid an [answered][1] a question with just a link.  I then went back and edited my answer to actually something useful, only to find that no one will ever see it again because a moderator deleted it (Sad Panda).  Is there a way to get it undeleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/184624/37138" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27645" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="382" RevisionGUID="1e45ad8e-da6a-4d16-b9e0-afe7d98ad011" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Peter Turner][1] is retagging a hole lot of questions and adding the tag [`[bestestes]`][2]. I can't understand the meaning of the tag or how it is useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's the point of the tag `[bestestes]`? and is it useful?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1973/peter-turner&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/bestestes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27646" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2843" RevisionGUID="27553afe-5c97-4e93-aa4e-3622f6d97ffa" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Flag any of the user's comments for moderation attention, and explain the situation. Make sure to point out that there are other comments and provide the user's handle, they can take it from there. Flagging all the user's comments will also make the moderators aware of the behaviour, but describing the situation is obviously quicker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if all comments are relevant to their respective posts and follow the [normal comment guidelines][1] there might not be much a moderator can do. But do flag anyway, if the behaviour is persistent it will most likely lead to a temporary suspension. If not, at the very least the moderators will clean up the flame-ish comments. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From what you describe, and without checking the question to see the comments myself, it's definitely a troll. Generic &quot;anti-whatever&quot; comments clearly fail the purpose of the comments, as does any comment without a technical basis. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if you think there's trolling in C++ questions, you really don't want to know what goes on in PHP questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Checked every comment in there, flagged about 10 of them... It's not as bad as you describe it (imho), but definitely worth noting. Several poor comments, not just from the one user, and some blame for that should be attributed to the not so very high quality of the question itself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27648" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="485" RevisionGUID="5b249d5d-e76f-4f77-a481-bd499b87e7d4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I trully understand when a question is unproper for a site, but this is ridiculous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was ['Do you have a phone on your desk?'][1]. Obviously my intent was to share experiences from fellow programmers. It is not about some error in my code, it is about a programmer's daily work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe my question follows some of [Jeff Atwood' Six Subjective Question Guidelines][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I that wrong? Am I missing something? My question got 17 answers and some up votes in those answers, one of them from a deaf guy, which I believe is pretty interesting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anybody please explain why people closed that question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/14226/do-you-have-a-phone-on-your-desk-closed&#xD;&#xA;[2]:https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27649" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5563" RevisionGUID="4fb18917-2b22-4839-a30a-ed17fc344c96" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Can someone explain why my question was not constructive?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/187264/how-do-i-take-my-web-dev-learning-to-the-next-level&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only answer given (likely before it was closed) clearly suggests that the question is constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see the question as controversial or frankly that different from similar questions that ask for recommendations on books, learning material, tools, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;UPDATE: Just a point to take note of... this question is getting down voted. What's wrong with this question? Why is there no mechanism to correct this issue -- if you're all so concerned with &quot;quality&quot; on this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27650" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2902" RevisionGUID="5a7c066c-7197-44e4-9b91-84e6f1ceddf1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the sidebar of [the election page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/election), it says it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###moderator positions available   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27651" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5491" RevisionGUID="696e33af-a0b6-4ba6-823b-fefa5538da03" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/184912/is-node-js-a-suitable-server-platform-for-financial-applications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please tell me why this isn't a good question for the site?  As it turns out there are some serious issues with node/JS and floating point calculations, making it totally unfit for monetary transactions, according to the maintainers.  Hopefully anyone else who wants to know the answer finds where to get help, since we've decided not to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;UPDATE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the mods actually suggested that I make it more specific, and so I have, and I'm also going to post an answer in a moment that I got from a node maintainer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27652" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="238" RevisionGUID="e4251242-2387-45b3-853a-c1988044578b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Normally off-topic questions made on-topic by restricting the domain to &quot;programmers.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What are some good television shows for programmers?&#xD;&#xA;* [What is your favorite &quot;programmer&quot; cartoon?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon)&#xD;&#xA;* [What are good keyboards for programming?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2254/what-are-good-keyboards-for-programming)&#xD;&#xA;* [How much coffee do you drink in a normal work day of programming?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4446/how-much-coffee-do-you-drink-in-a-normal-work-day-of-programming)&#xD;&#xA;* [What's your favourite programming quote?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-programming-quote)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27653" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="492" RevisionGUID="9c493bab-2002-43dc-94e4-012e7863278a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are a lot of frustrations all on the front page (Nov 2010, still occuring Jun 2011):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Why is this question closed? It's a good question about a bad idea.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/554/why-is-this-question-closed-its-a-good-question-about-a-bad-idea)&#xD;&#xA; - [I don't think peaple understand Programmers SE.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/485/i-dont-think-people-or-me-understand-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA; - [What's the point of closing a question?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question)&#xD;&#xA; - [How do you delete an account from programmers?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/483/how-do-you-delete-an-account-from-programmers)&#xD;&#xA; - [Why? The high numbers of closed questions are extremely annoying.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/469/why-high-number-of-closed-questions-extremely-annoying)&#xD;&#xA; - [Mods should be stopped from closing reopened stuff automatically the second time.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/429/mods-should-be-stopped-from-closing-reopened-stuff-automatically-the-second-time)&#xD;&#xA; - [Questions are being closed without community requests.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/396/question-being-closed-without-community-requests-closed)&#xD;&#xA; - [Why should we have to battle to keep questions open?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/339/why-should-we-have-to-battle-to-keep-questions-open-closed)&#xD;&#xA; - [Can the closed questions please be removed from the related section?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/282/can-the-closed-questions-please-be-removed-from-related)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The above questions are a *clear sign*. What could the problem be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too low reputation requirement for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Yes, we are one of the Area 51 sites that got a lot more visitors. And our site allows one to gain reputation more quickly than on other sites, let my account be an example for when you ask a lot of questions and I'm pretty sure that there are top users that just have famous answers in frequently visited questions that are non wiki...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Too strong rules on asking questions, or are these rules applied to strong?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Questions should be constructive, but for some people all rules seem needed.  &#xD;&#xA;   While they stated originally that it's fine that only 3 of the rules apply to your question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **Users aren't clearly informed about it?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   If we get these questions on meta, it seems to me that they might have no idea about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **We want to be professional?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   We can be professonal, but if we close content is such way that a lot of people are complaining I think it's a step too far. And it's not just the above, but also comments to meta and closed parent questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; But don't you think that closing on this site has become discouragement, not incentive?  &#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Peter Turner](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/489/whats-the-point-of-closing-a-question#491)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   And another one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Now there is that new generic excuse to close topics: &quot;not constructive&quot;. If you don't like something, you can ban it as &quot;not constructive&quot;. What an improvement!   &#xD;&#xA; &gt; &amp;mdash; [Lorenzo](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/what-trends-do-you-see-for-your-profession-in-30-years)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   I have once disagreed with these users in the past, but I now understand their concern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Did you know that **25% of the questions are closed** here? Compare that to SO (1%), SU (8%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Now... What do you think**: &#xD;&#xA;How we can improve the community to prevent this?  &#xD;&#xA;Or am I writing non-sense and is the current behavior of the community right?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27654" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5592" RevisionGUID="7cb6da7f-9a4b-4e77-847c-63aba4450bab" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/187771/how-do-saas-companies-provide-data-liberation-services&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a question that is pertinent to everyone developing SaaS applications today. There is no one right answer, but there are many right answers for different situations. I feel it's a valuable question to explore and the answers could help many SaaS providers as well as their customers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27656" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2919" RevisionGUID="964591ef-5023-4a44-b0a8-34477f71dc1a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Moderating is a very subjective activity. Some candidates may feel that they can uphold the programmers.se charter, but do it in a way that differs from the way that the incumbents do it today. Specifically, if a candidate spots a troubled question, they may endeavor to understand the intent behind the troubled question, rather than rapidly choosing to close that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My personal goal is to minimize the times when a post is closed by one or two users and a moderator. It's not that the decision to close those questions is wrong, as I usually agree with it. If I don't agree with it, I've voted to reopen or raised the concern on Meta. However, I think it looks really bad to see questions closed by one or two users and a diamond mod and it looks worse to see it closed by just a diamond mod, especially if it's a very new question with a low view count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Preferably, I'd like to give the community a chance to salvage the question, and I'd be more than happy to help with that effort. That could be asking for more information in comments and encouraging the asker to work more details in. It could also be taking comments attached to other answers and working them into the original question so it's easier to understand and read. Or it might just be cleaning up the spelling and grammar. Regardless of what it is, I'd like the community to have a chance to work its magic before I would close most questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I said most. Questions that are blatantly off-topic - I wouldn't have a problem closing them. People trying to avoid post restrictions on another site, hoping for a migration - I wouldn't have a problem closing them without a migration. Helping to move a question to the appropriate site so it gets good answers soon - I'd move it if it was appropriate to do so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general, I'd like to see the community begin to stand up on its own in terms of closing and cleaning up posts. I'd support them in any way I could, but I don't want to act as an individual unless it was absolutely necessary to ensure the health and awesome of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; With this in mind, do any of the moderator candidates intend to moderate differently than the incumbents?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not going to generalize our current moderators into one group. They are all individuals and should be treated as such. They just happen to work together to support this community. As a moderator, I'd support the decisions of both the community and the Stack Exchange network staff. Above, I described how I would moderate. If you have any questions, please ask for clarification on this post, or [ask me a more directed question on my nomination][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/election/2#post-131468" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27657" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="267" RevisionGUID="94b5d797-7f48-4448-8981-c28b0032ec13" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="On or off? For me is off-topic. maybe it's localized, because this is a personal taste completely unrelated with programming. This is just chit chat. If I could I would down vote my answer to indicate my opinion against this noise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How long have you been in your current job closed][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What time of day do you prefer to shower?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How much coffee do you drink in a normal work day of programming?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What's your favorite programming snack?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3389/how-long-have-you-been-in-your-current-job-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/571/what-time-of-day-do-you-prefer-to-shower-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4446/how-much-coffee-do-you-drink-in-a-normal-work-day-of-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3878/whats-your-favorite-programming-snack" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27658" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5532" RevisionGUID="bc1ff814-c427-41c7-bbfd-25b8d9fd698b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have just signed up to this site in order to ask a specific programming question I thought would be unsuitable to ask on Stackoverlflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was quickly closed down, here is a link to my question [My closed question][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why can't this site also be about the more philosophical aspects of programming also? I understand now that my question breaks the simple Q&amp;A system, as it is quite subjective, but philosophical questions always are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where can these types of programming questions be asked?? Not here, not on Stackoverflow (understandably) and not really on a philosophy Q&amp;A site (because a good understanding of programming is needed to really give a good constructive answer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I went on a philosophy QA site I'm sure my question would not be closed, but it would also not be answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/186315/are-programming-languages-becoming-more-like-natural-languages#comment358540_186315" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27659" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5596" RevisionGUID="4d20195b-11a4-462a-b7e4-b88fb9449084" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Straight from the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What constitutes too basic a question for this site? Having seen a question on the basics of [&quot;How does if/else work internally in all programming languages?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/187159/how-does-if-else-work-internally-in-all-programming-languages), I have to ask where does one draw the line on a question such as this? Knowing conditional branching is more or less fundamental knowledge one must have to write programs. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should questions about the fundamentals of programming be considered on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27660" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="513" RevisionGUID="c51c96a0-a246-46b3-ab7e-29489f625ada" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="We all know about the &quot;Six Subjective Question Guidelines&quot; which we were [__ENFORCED__][1] to follow while asking questions in Programmers.SE. For convenience I am quoting them here-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    1. Inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;    2. Tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;    3. Have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;    4. Invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;    5. Insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;    6. Are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And many questions are being closed now because of not following the guideline. I just seen [one][2](and already voted for reopen). But I feel, it was helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please have a look at the [most voted][3] questions of this site. I don't feel all of them meet all of  these criteria mentioned in the guideline. But I think these are the  questions which represents the 'type of questions' should be asked in Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel only two things (other than being `subjective`) should be considered for deciding whether the question is a good one or not-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Is it helpful?   &#xD;&#xA;OR&#xD;&#xA;- Is it fun (harmless definitely)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also consider the description of Programmers.SE in [area51][4]-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Beta Q&amp;A site for expert programmers interested in discussions that are only indirectly related to programming.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And again there can be a guideline for asking good subjective questions. But then, people will __NOT__ be enforced to follow it. That means, no questions will be closed because of not following the guideline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/15856/when-do-you-get-your-best-programming-ideas&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?page=1&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=50&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27661" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="287" RevisionGUID="fa11af96-5232-4b11-bfdc-bb576cb73335" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Locking does not prevent people voting or commenting on answers: it just prevents the question from being edited or being answered. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the particular case of [Why are so many programmers arrogant?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant), an edit-war erupted when the original poster insisted on using the question as a platform to air his grievances with the people who closed it. I think after 41 answers, an accepted answer, and 36 thousand views, adding more answers isn't really an issue anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Edit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I said elsewhere, if you guys can't understand *why* the atheist question was closed and locked, or why people are quickly closing questions like the homophobic or arrogant question, I don't know what to tell you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This isn't 'nam, there are rules.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiQmQhA-OrM#t=0m57s) If you want to ask shock questions and discuss any issue under the sun without any rules, use [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) instead of trying shoehorn &quot;programmers&quot; into a hot-button topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a community, we need to be **less stupid** when it comes to identifying issues that are inflammatory or *completely inappropriate* for any public site, especially one that is supposed to be for professionals. Maybe it should be spelled out in the FAQ: &quot;If asking or answering this question in the real world would have a high likelihood of someone yelling or getting punched, it is not appropriate for this site.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27662" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5556" RevisionGUID="ba8b9eb0-8a60-47f8-8369-6ddcb4727fb3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/187205/how-to-write-a-program-in-java-that-prints-square-of-integers-without-using-vari), which was just closed, seems appropriate to me.  My reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - the asker is trying to learn about functional programming&#xD;&#xA; - when reading an article about FP, the asker wasn't able to understand an example due to a key missing concept&#xD;&#xA; - the intent of the question is to understand the concepts behind implementing an algorithm in FP -- not just getting some code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, I think it's an on-topic, valuable question (unless a duplicate exists, although I didn't find one), and I've upvoted it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it an appropriate question?  If not, can it be improved to meet Programmers' standards (and how)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27663" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2973" RevisionGUID="3c5357ae-489b-485c-8e9f-9d12a06ef65b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Personally, I think that this continues to show something that I've said multiple times since the migration paths were set up: letting users vote to move a question is a bad idea. Having a migration path requires users to understand, in detail, what other communities are about and what types of questions they accept at present. There are people on Stack Overflow that don't know what we are about, and I'm sure some think of us as the dumping ground that we were a year and a half ago. Expecting people to keep up-to-date on communities that they aren't actively involved in of is a flawed concepts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've (and others, in various posts on MSO) said time and time again that users should only be able to vote as off-topic and say &quot;this doesn't belong here&quot; and somehow let moderators find and move questions to the appropriate sites (if they are actually good questions), either via push or pull. But so far, nothing has ever come from this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In terms of this specific question, it's a rather vague question and doesn't show any explicit ties to software developers, but I don't think an exit interview question is always off-topic here. If we accept questions about interviews (presently [439 tagged][1], [345 open][2]), there's no reason why we can't accept good questions about how to best gather relevant and useful information from software developers in an exit interview. I don't know what such a question would look like, as every exit interview I've done has only been done with HR and not a technical person, but I would presume that there might be some questions out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/interview&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Binterview%5D%20closed:0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27664" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5608" RevisionGUID="9fab1014-c25e-4e8c-b930-403e6385c150" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question is perfectly reasonable for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not a question about what project to work on next. The person asking clearly has an idea of what they want to create. That point in the FAQ is made to address questions like [this one][1] or [this one][2], where people are actively seeking a project or want people to generate ideas. These types of questions are not appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as not having built anything, that's true of many questions. Questions about more up-front activities (requirements, architecture, design) along with the softer side of software development (process, project management) are very clearly on-topic here and mentioned in our FAQ as things to ask about. Choosing an appropriate communication protocol for your application that meets your requirements is clearly an architectural or design problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that it only presents two alternatives is not an issue at all. One answer presents alternatives. In fact, two of them are good answers and the third is acceptable, but probably needs more detail to be a &quot;good answer&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that most users are able to read beyond the words written and answer the actual problem of choosing a communication protocol that meets the requirements described.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/35447/earning-extra-cash-as-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8990/interesting-projects-for-a-hackathon" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27665" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="524" RevisionGUID="358667a9-679a-418a-9018-2aa30cb55769" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="See [How do you rate Hosting?][1]. It seems a genuine question for a programmer but I don't know if this kind of quesion should be on-topic. What do you think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/17947" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27667" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2988" RevisionGUID="5ab6c6d7-101e-4353-a6fc-b26ab39db672" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="For the record, the town hall was at an inconvenient time for me.  I didn't purposely skip your question, just didn't have time to get to them all.  I find it ironic your unanswered question was about making sure people feel heard :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I [wrote an answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/131810/3965) last week regarding listening and leadership, and the same principles apply here.  Don't just tell people their ideas are wrong.  Give in sometimes.  Incorporate the good parts of what they say if possible.  If not, explain your reasoning behind it.  Address all their concerns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other way to make people feel heard is to lead by example, and ask for input on decisions even if you feel you already know the right way to go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[That question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/131746/3965) is a good illustration of listening to the community.  In the last 10 days, only 2 questions were voted higher, yet it was closed as off topic.  To me, getting that many votes and good answers essentially makes it on topic by community fiat, especially on a question that has nowhere else to go until professional matters launches, and is certainly something programmers deal with at work.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why I made an exception to the rule and answered instead of voting to close, even though I would have closed if I got there before it gathered any attention.  As long as it doesn't get out of hand, I have no problem with deferring to the community and letting a few popular borderline questions slip through every once in a while." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27668" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="528" RevisionGUID="7900804d-6df6-4999-932f-ef5672ece068" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="From http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/ :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;our fellow programmers created [a sister site specifically for their pent up subjective questions][1]. Take one heaping pile of subjective questions, bottle it up for over two years and… kablooey!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted that question here because it was my impression that this forum is the only one that accepts subjective questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27669" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="380" RevisionGUID="158fd9c1-01a5-4780-bac1-9bf2425f0fec" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In last Friday moderators had a chat cast to clarify some points of the http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/ Robert will post new blog posts with details, so we can't be overzealous with every question on Pr.SE. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;List/Poll questions should have home on Pr.SE. This type of question doesn't meet 6 guidelines but it fits on usefulness. Not every list/poll question should be kept open, just the useful ones. We'll wait Robert give us more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, probably poll tag will survive. We should wait.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Usefulness for whole community** probably will be more important.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One misconception about new guidelines is that they change everything. Actually nothing changed, they are just more clear now. I have seen question with 4 votes to close which probably will survive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To some questions, it's not clear yet, at least to me. An example: [What symbols out there best represent programming?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We count with collaboration of whole community to close bad subjective questions, but these guidelines should be applied when the usefulness is doubtful. This is not a official position of SOIS team, I am just trying to clarify before the closes go out of control. Again we'll get more details soon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Feel free to post your doubts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8772/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27670" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="548" RevisionGUID="db11d042-bf9c-4261-86b8-7746c3839744" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Purpose of Community Wiki](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I just posted [this][1] question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I saw no options to make it community wiki. I remember that option. Why I don't see it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/20363/what-is-the-most-inspiring-speech-from-a-developer-you-ever-watched" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27671" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3019" RevisionGUID="8e6c67d2-4409-4125-a8f5-7a439e99cd5f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently asked [this question][1] which got very bad responses from the respectable moderators and moderators-to-be of this very good site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was something like &quot;how to deal with a colleague when having repeating design confrontations&quot;, people said it's off-topic, and even not related to software or programming.  &#xD;&#xA;You can notice that after Yannis' remarks I edited the question to be an entirely different one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I accepted it being closed, but I got to some questions, which I read kind of the same:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[&quot;how to deal with a boss that only seek to please users&quot;][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[&quot;I have a colleague who makes bad decisions - what to do?&quot;][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[&quot;How to make management do the decisions we think are right&quot;][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think all of them are good questions, why is mine so bad? I think they all deal with team communication. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope you will see this question not as a rant, but as a real and honest intent to improve my questions and make them better, and also choose the right type of questions in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/132923/how-to-deal-with-a-teammate-who-rather-has-his-design-ideas-over-good-ideas&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/132852/dealing-with-management-that-does-not-see-value-in-improvements-that-are-not-imm&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/75866/how-to-deal-with-terrible-design-decisions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2082/guiding-management-to-the-correct-decision" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27672" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5622" RevisionGUID="4a7cb5f1-8763-4591-aefc-02dc1406a936" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Note at [2013 Moderator Election page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/election/3) states:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In the election phase, **10 candidates** advance to final community voting...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are **three** candidates, not **10**, as indicated by another note at this very page. Could this be fixed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z4ZeN.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z4ZeN.png &quot;3 != 10&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27673" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="603" RevisionGUID="09f6bb62-03e0-4a31-8179-e4b8b61aee25" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Where is my Beta badge?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/527/where-is-my-beta-badge)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;So I know from Mark Trapp's [answer][1] to [this question][2] that &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The private beta for Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lasted for 7 days immediately&#xD;&#xA;&gt; following the conclusion of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; commitment period. It is unattainable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; now. We're currently in the public&#xD;&#xA;&gt; beta period.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So from I gather the Private Beta started on 9/1/2010. [My oldest answer][3] is from 9/3/2010. So I had some activity in the first week. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously I wasn't active enough. Any ideas what more I needed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/527/where-is-my-beta-badge/529#529&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/527/where-is-my-beta-badge&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/775/what-is-the-ideal-mix-of-senior-to-junior-developers-on-a-team/788#788" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27674" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5600" RevisionGUID="39b689d9-50e3-4238-a3c5-24f0889e4ba0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/184404/nodejs-as-an-avenue-towards-learning-javascript&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a question that only someone who knows both JavaScript and Node fairly in-depth could answer properly. I would call that &quot;specific expertise&quot; and am confused by the closure of this question. Favorite books is one thing. I don't see a problem with somebody asking whether a given path to take in learning a new technology might be less productive than another within the context of that specific technology based on people's experience." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27675" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="401" RevisionGUID="a7f06ba7-fbbf-419d-9f69-e73f02eeff58" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The first thing you should always do if you are confused about what's happening on a Stack Exchange site is to check the FAQ. From [our FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;.** Please keep it professional at all times. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Questions that do not meet enough of these six guidelines will be closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot;** Please see the [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective) blog post for more details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, you should check the tags colored red on the meta-discussion site. If you did, you would've found this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions are being closed in accordance with the guidelines for this site. If you're confused because this is vastly different from the Area 51 proposal which has a lot of fluff questions, this redefinition was discussed on Meta.StackOverflow.com:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is the Software Engineering site proposal a duplicate of programmers.SE?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64407/is-the-software-engineering-site-proposal-a-duplicate-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Should “Developer Testing” be folded into a more general “Programmers” site?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65439/should-developer-testing-be-folded-into-a-more-general-programmers-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Adding discipline to programmers.stackexchange.com](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And discussed on this meta-discussion site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* [valid questions being closed.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of subjective questions are not acceptable?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-types-of-subjective-questions-are-not-acceptable)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do I totally not understand the point of Programmers.SE?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/360/do-i-totally-not-understand-the-point-of-programmers-se)&#xD;&#xA;* [Do we need a definition of subjective?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/324/do-we-need-a-definition-of-subjective)&#xD;&#xA;* [Remove the options to close questions on this site.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/355/remove-the-options-to-close-questions-on-this-site)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why should we have to battle to keep questions open? [closed]](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/339/why-should-we-have-to-battle-to-keep-questions-open-closed)&#xD;&#xA;* [Please let's not lock questions unless as an absolute last resort](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/285/please-lets-not-lock-questions-unless-as-an-absolute-last-resort)&#xD;&#xA;* [What questions are on-topic, and what are off-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237/what-questions-are-on-topic-and-what-are-off-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [How can we avoid Programmers.SE from becoming the SE black sheep?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/how-can-we-avoid-programmers-se-from-becoming-the-se-black-sheep)&#xD;&#xA;* *and so on...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry you missed all of the discussion we had about the definition of the site, but the decision has already been made to redefine the site as it currently is in the FAQ, and the time for discussion is over. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If Programmers.SE no longer appeals to you or your question does not fit within the guidelines of this site, you might want to try to find a different site, like [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com) or [Quora](http://quora.com)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27676" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5701" RevisionGUID="316d2221-137a-48d5-9c04-ba8caac4812f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Programmers' [third moderator election][1] has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the new moderator is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![World Engineer][2]][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He'll be joining [the existing crew][6] shortly — please thank him for volunteering, and share your assistance and advice as he learns the ropes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For details on how the voting played out, you can download the election results [here][7], or [view a summary report online][8].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also wish to announce that veteran moderator [Josh K][4] is stepping down after two years. Moderating a site as *spirited* as Programmers can be a thankless job at times, so please join me now in thanking him for his service, and wishing him all the best on the next leg of his pilgrimage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/election/3&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/flair/28988.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/28988&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/2654&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/election/3&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://www.opavote.org/results/958001/0&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27677" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3026" RevisionGUID="6e2400ef-c1b6-4208-acfc-c65bdd483a03" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [acid test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_test_%28gold%29#Figurative_meanings) I use is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. remove / replace all the phrases feeling like _for-programmers_, _as-a-developer_&#xD;&#xA;1. review the remainder&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's see how it works using your examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* your question. **Fails** the test - nothing programming-related in the remainder:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We have a situation in our team in which one member prefers his own ideas no matter what problems it has.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; When confronted with issues about a specific work he made - this teammate can get very protective and does not see the problems.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; In a result, this is a serious work issue for our team, because in the end some of the teammate's work will fall through to the end-result, and it will damage our work result.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should we confront the teammate about his overall behavior?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should we go the boss and tell him we can't deal with it and it's hurting our work results?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;boss that only seek to please users&quot;. **Passes** - no amount of _my acid_ can wipe out:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Automatic Reference Counting for iOS programs. This is a major improvement over the manual retain/release calls one previously had to use. The code is easier to write and easier to maintain. The changeover itself is likely to produce some crashes. But once those are worked out, the number of random weird crashes is likely to go down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;colleague who makes bad decisions&quot;. **Passes** - because of:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; M:M relationships are being stored in the database as a comma-delimited string rather than using a conjunction table to hold the relationships&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;decisions we think are right&quot;. **Fails** - nothing programming-related, nothing at all  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Saved only by [clearly programming-related answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/2096/31260). And by the fact that it isn't damaged (yet?) by another dozen of _not so good_ answers that somehow just tend to stick to off-topic questions like that.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; prototyped/implemented things my way ahead of time (on my own time) so that when a decision meeting comes, we could say: &quot;Well, this already written code...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not that passing the test necessarily guarantees the question is good. Rather, failing it indicates that question is likely bad.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27678" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="416" RevisionGUID="4fcba587-b927-428f-97e8-efb2d25e60f0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked [this](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/238/what-are-your-favorite-programming-related-movies-documentaries) question back at the private beta phase after watching Pirates of Silicon Valley and Revolution OS, which I found to be both enjoyable and *informative*, and I wanted to find more movies like that. Back then the idea of what was on topic and what wasn't was more loose, and so many people answered with movies that were more on the entertainment side, and got even upvoted quite a lot. I myself was hoping to see more answers in the documentary genre, but I felt like I should let the events play out because: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. I realized in advance that there might be some movies that are more on the entertainment side of things but still very iconic and influential to programmers' culture, and I felt like they should still be mentioned due to cultural relevance, so I left a slight gray area in that respect. Therefore, these answers were still kinda on topic. &#xD;&#xA; 2. I wasn't familiar with a lot of the answers, so it was difficult for me to judge if they were good ones or not and I gave them the benefit of doubt. &#xD;&#xA; 3. The definition of this site was more loose and the whole &quot;discussion&quot; was on topic in the grand scope of the site itself. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that I got to watch some of the top answers, and in light of the overlords cracking down on fun centric questions, I began to wonder if maybe the selection of answers in that question should be fixed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm saying this because I still feel like my question has value for the same reason that movies about making movies have value for cinema students, and for the same reason that &quot;what are your favorite programming blogs&quot; has value, but because it was asked at the time when people were looking for a more forum-like community, and the boundries were loosly defined, the informative aspect of the question wasn't addressed, and now those top answers are setting the tone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;strike&gt;I modified the wording of my question, but now the effect is that there's a question with lots of high-rated answers that clearly don't answer it, and yet they are there because they were originally on topic. &lt;/strike&gt;  **(EDIT: reverted to the original, asked a new question)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you think we should do about it? Create a new question? Ask the authors of each answer to re-evaluate it? Leave it as it is? &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27679" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5602" RevisionGUID="f5e59ffd-bb0e-4fa1-936c-b8067a1dc360" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="After spending a large amount of time [answering a question][1], I notice that the author deleted the question after obtaining the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it an expected behavior? I believed that we can remove a question only when there were no answers, especially to prevent people to remove their question once they receive an answer. Am I wrong?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/188149/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27680" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5712" RevisionGUID="1ec11944-b0e3-4314-8254-a5545ef474ca" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Downvotes have clear and specific meanings and you can see them from the tooltips.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For questions it's:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For answers it's:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This answer is not useful&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the answer is wrong then it should be down-voted. However, that doesn't mean you can't add a comment either before down-voting to give the user time to improve the post or afterwards. If you do it afterwards you should, as a matter of courtesy, go back and check if the post has indeed been improved so you can remove the down-vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The mistake a lot of people make is confusing a vote on the **post** with a vote on the **person**. I understand this can be hard to do, but people need to keep this in mind. Perhaps this should be made clearer in the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) or [About](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/about) page, but I'm not sure it will help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;New users should not be immune to down-votes otherwise we have no way to indicate that this is a bad answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27681" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5765" RevisionGUID="b1e5c138-1a3e-4648-a25f-a71e7fefb8ac" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/190745/i-need-some-help-with-defining-a-shell-syntax) and have started building negative rep for it. I'm actually finding it very difficult to just ask for help here without upsetting someone. What am I doing wrong?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm happy to edit the question and to migrate it, or whatever else needs doing to bring it up to scratch. I just don't know what more I can do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks for your time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27682" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3057" RevisionGUID="9a9f9074-cc75-4093-a149-1f7639a6545b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is a small list of [Stack Exchange Data Explorer][1] queries I've compiled for my run towards the elusive [Marshal badge][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Duplicates**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Find suggested duplicates that haven't led to question closure][3] &#xD;&#xA;- [Find suggested duplicates that haven't led to question closure in a tag][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Controversial posts**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Most controversial posts][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Self answers**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Forum style questions - multiple self answers from asker][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Recent self answers][7]&#xD;&#xA;- [You're probably doing it wrong (Questions with Multiple Answers by the OP)][8]&#xD;&#xA;- [Not accepted self answers with negative votes][9]&#xD;&#xA;- [Recent Not accepted self answers with negative votes][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Not an answer**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Posts that could be marked as 'not an answer' to help get the Marshal badge][11]&#xD;&#xA;- [Seek and Destroy: Comments with the phrase &quot;not an answer&quot;][12]&#xD;&#xA;- [Something to Flag &quot;Not an answer&quot; in the body of an answer][13]&#xD;&#xA;- [Answers With Questions][14]&#xD;&#xA;- [Find Something to Flag 1][15] (small answers with links)&#xD;&#xA;- [Find &quot;me too&quot; (so-called) answers][16]&#xD;&#xA;- [Finding bad answers through comments][17]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Downvote Comments][19] (all those -1 comments)&#xD;&#xA;- [Find obsolete &quot;should be wiki&quot; comments][20]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://data.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/94/marshal&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/2036/find-suggested-duplicates-that-havent-led-to-question-closure&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/2037/find-suggested-duplicates-that-havent-led-to-question-closure-in-a-tag&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/18/most-controversial-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1950/forum-style-questions-multiple-self-answers-from-asker&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1949/recent-self-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1844/youre-probably-doing-it-wrong-something-to-flag&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1595/not-accepted-self-answers-with-negative-votes&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1662/recent-not-accepted-self-answers-with-negative-votes&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1818/posts-that-could-be-marked-as-not-an-answer-to-help-get-the-marshal-badge&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1636/seek-and-destroy-comments-with-the-phrase-not-an-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1816/something-to-flag-not-an-answer-in-the-body-of-an-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1741/answers-with-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1300/find-something-to-flag-1&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/2008/find-me-too-so-called-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1925/finding-bad-answers-through-comments&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/447/why-the-downvotes&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/2053/downvote-comments&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/2006/find-obsolete-should-be-wiki-comments&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/2420275#2420275" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27683" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="652" RevisionGUID="6dd2f8de-202c-416e-8166-a30174149f98" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's hard to even *begin* to answer a question like this because so much of the history of this community is steeped in the &quot;anything goes&quot; philosophy that it originated with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of you may view me as being pro-moderation, but I want to remind those people that I argued against the merging of proposals like testing and architecture and software law into Programmers.SE because it was diametrically opposed to the community's collective mindset, not to mention the proposal's original stated purpose.  I was in favour of it remaining as a free-for-all.  Nevertheless, that merge happened, primarily because the team was not satisfied with this being a water cooler, and so here we are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't want to try to define in this answer what the site's scope *should be*.  My aim here is merely to highlight the identity crisis that this community still hasn't quite put behind itself, which *must* be resolved before it can successfully put anything into policy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start with what's in the FAQ today:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Developer tools and techniques&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Practical algorithms and data structures&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Software law&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Code golf &amp; programming puzzles&#xD;&#xA;&gt;* Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This reads like the description of a site for professionals.  Indeed, I'm sure that many of us (although certainly not all of us) want it to have a professional, if quirky, tone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now let's look at the top 15 questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job?][1]&#xD;&#xA;2. [Does giving a developer a slower development machine result in faster/more efficient code?][2]&#xD;&#xA;3. [What is the good/bad decision you made in your mid 20's about your career][3]&#xD;&#xA;4. [Make a big deal out of == true?][4]&#xD;&#xA;5. [Stuff every programmer needs while working][5]&#xD;&#xA;6. [What's your favourite quote about programming?][6]&#xD;&#xA;7. [What's the most absurd myth about programming issues?][7]&#xD;&#xA;8. [What's your experience with female programmers?][8]&#xD;&#xA;9. [Will programmers be around in a few years?][9]&#xD;&#xA;10. [Why are so many programmers arrogant?][10]&#xD;&#xA;11. [What are the worst false economies in software development?][11]&#xD;&#xA;12. [Do people in non-English-speaking countries code in English?][12]&#xD;&#xA;13. [What is the (craziest, stupidest, silliest) thing a client/boss asked you to do?][13]&#xD;&#xA;14. [I've stopped coding for fun, is this a bad sign?][14]&#xD;&#xA;15. [How can a new programmer impress the software engineer (boss)?][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two of these are closed; if you go further down the list (I won't, in order to keep this long-winded post as short as possible) you'll see that fewer than 1/10 questions are actually closed; #9 and #10 are outliers in that respect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So let's now ask the question: Which of the top 15 (or indeed, top 25 or even top 100) questions actually fit into *any* of the sub-topics outlined in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Could maybe be lumped in under &quot;Freelancing and business concerns&quot;&#xD;&#xA;2. Nope.&#xD;&#xA;3. Definitely not.&#xD;&#xA;4. Nope.&#xD;&#xA;5. Double nope.&#xD;&#xA;6. Nope.&#xD;&#xA;7. No...&#xD;&#xA;8. Eh...&#xD;&#xA;9. Er...&#xD;&#xA;10. Dear lord no.&#xD;&#xA;11. Also maybe &quot;business concerns&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;12. Nope.&#xD;&#xA;13. Triple nope.&#xD;&#xA;14. Nah.&#xD;&#xA;15. No.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, **I am not saying that these questions are all off-topic or don't belong here** - only that they don't match any of the topics *listed*, and that is bound to lead to confusion over what's *actually* on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps what's actually needed are a few more topics in the list, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Coding style (#4)&#xD;&#xA;* Software Career Development (#1, #3, possibly #8 and #14, #15)&#xD;&#xA;* Software Project Management (#2, #5 with major edits, possibly #8)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other questions in the list do seem to be &quot;programmer&quot; specific (to varying degrees) but can only really be classified as &quot;general interest&quot;, &quot;poll&quot;, or even &quot;rant&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So there's a definite impedance mismatch here.  Officially, you guys are saying that this site is for the professional working programmer, the senior developers and maybe a few of the juniors, people who are looking to *broaden their software skill set beyond just coding*.  Ostensibly, it's a Q&amp;A site for developers truly committed to creating better software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the questions and votes tell another story.  Even if we rule out the rants and jokes in the questions *and* answers - the ultimate removal of which is an unenviable task that is nowhere near complete - the site appears to cater to the *casual* programmer or even the *aspiring* programmer.  People who are just getting into software and are frustrated or confused.  People who want to reach out and exchange stories and water-cooler chat with other programmers and *maybe* learn a little bit in the process.  It's like the &quot;Programmers' Pub&quot;.  I'll take the [Language Holy War][16] with a side of [Pointless Bitching][17], please.  And do you have [Cartoons][18] on tap?  No matter, a bottle is fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I don't want to be prescriptive here.  If that is to be the scope of the site, *that's okay*.  It's also okay for people to occasionally argue about whether or not a specific question reasonably fits in scope.  However, it's very unhealthy for the community to be split down the middle on *what the site is supposed to be about*.  Programmers.SE is a confused adolescent, just about to graduate with no idea what to do next.  Will it be an exciting but hollow affair with Mrs. Robinson, or an uncertain, awkward bus ride into the horizon with Elaine?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry to be so dramatic, but Programmers.SE seems to have effectively become center stage for the epic and probably never-ending battle between inclusionists and deletionists.  Stack Overflow isn't *about* to dump its problems on you, it already *has* dumped its problems on you.  And because you no longer have the trusty metaphorical lanterns of code and objectivity to help you navigate through the proverbial fog, I don't think you can continue to play both sides the way that Stack Overflow did.  A few migrated questions are not going to make a lick of a difference when most of the frivolous questions are already *originating* here; you guys have to decide what you're going to be when you grow up, and you have to decide fast.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would love to write out a long list of examples of questions that should be closed or redirected to an Area 51 proposal.  But right now, I have no idea which of the Area 51 proposals you've listed are actually supposed to be off topic here.  There are already *so many* questions here about career advice, project management, interviewing, freelancing, brain power, etc., almost *none* of which are closed, that you can't start applying a bunch of arbitrary scope rules to *new* questions and expect them not to end in kicking and screaming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want a broader scope than what's spelled out in the FAQ, then you need to broaden the scope.  You need to come up with a definition that actually encompasses all of the subjects that are being talked about here *today* and currently considered on topic.  You need to revise the FAQ.  Normally this all would have been settled in Area 51, but Programmers.SE did a 180 halfway through, which makes matters more difficult.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if you actually want the scope to be what you currently have prescribed, then you need to start enforcing it on existing questions before you can even talk about what you're going to do with new questions.  Start by closing the most massively-upvoted off-topic questions.  *Then* observe patterns and see if it makes sense to point people to new or existing Area 51 proposals.  Then consider deleting the off-topic questions so that they're not sitting in the top 50, confusing the hell out of everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Either way is fine.  I have no personal axe to grind here, no serious investment in this site one way or the other.  Serious questions, fun questions, professional questions, newbie questions, I don't care.  But I don't think you can do this piecemeal; you need to take a holistic look at what this site is / should be, because otherwise you will have people bickering over every single closure and migration (sort of like... right now).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I admire your efforts to develop a policy here but just don't think that the community is ready for it.  Maybe Tim is right and you should just wait and see how things play out, although, speaking as a relative outsider, it doesn't look like that's been a very effective strategy so far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Evidently, based on some of the comments in here, part of the community does not even agree that *there should be rules*.  If you want to talk about restricting the scope, then you've got your work cut out for you; before anything else, you're going to need to address this sub-community directly and come up with some sort of compromise (or just lay down the law, whatever works).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My personal suggestion is to start with the hopelessly vague [elevator pitch][19].  &quot;Sharing wisdom&quot; communicates precisely nothing about who you are.  If somebody's able to come up with a meaningful pitch that gets decent support, then maybe you'll have your answer as to what the scope should be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's my absurdly long-winded two cents.  Take or leave it.  Thanks for reading, if you got this far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/20407/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/13623/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/18120/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/12807/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/11312/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/39/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/1745/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/3974/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/11153/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/4693/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/19573/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/1483/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/2051/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/3558/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/25432/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/2846/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/14706/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/154/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/412/3249" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27684" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3080" RevisionGUID="46465f1b-d15c-444c-982e-fba8ddc40772" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Currently, there are five tags containing &quot;performance&quot; in their title:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:performance] (141, 38) *“Questions related to improving application performance [...]”*,&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:software-performance] **(10, 4)** No wiki summary,&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:web-performance] **(9, 0)** No wiki summary,&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:performance-tools] **(4, 1)** No wiki summary,&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:job-performance] **(7)** *“Questions related to excelling at one's current job [...] performance review”*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [tag:software-performance] and [tag:web-performance] brings nothing useful compared to the more popular [tag:performance], and so they must be merged. [tag:web-performance] might be more specific (for example, a question about CSS sprites is better tagged [tag:web-performance] than [tag:performance] since the technique is directly related to web, but still, the tag was not used very often to show its benefit. As for [tag:software-performance], I believe [Does object-orientation really affect algorithm performance?][1] question illustrates quite well how a more general [tag:performance] would be more appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [tag:performance-tools] may be removed too, since it probably encourages off-topic questions of two types: [the ones][2] where people will ask for product recommendations (off-topic), and the ones where people will ask how to use a specific product related to performance (off-topic, belongs to Super User).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. [tag:job-performance] is a very different kind. It's not related to [tag:performance] as it is defined in its wiki summary, but to the job, specifically the job of a developer. Therefore, this tag must remain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/125753/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/105285/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27685" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5741" RevisionGUID="ca6b953c-a063-4f9a-b153-e6d40b7b1b4f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I answered a legal question, with the usual disclaimer about not being a lawyer. My answer was not only down-voted for this, but, when I tried to discuss why it was down-voted, my comments were deleted, then my answer was deleted too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know we want to keep things on topic, but this was a perfectly valid answer to the question in my opinion, and the moderator was clearly being rude to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should users refrain from providing opinions on legal questions, even where they are confident the answer is correct and helpful? I'm now afraid to do so in fear of zealous moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Question has been deleted, [10K users](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools) can view it at the URL:  &#xD;&#xA;  https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/190299/is-scraping-images-from-tumblr-legal&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question text:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I were to take the images from a Tumblr page, would that be considered legal?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer text:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think, and I'm not a lawyer, that it is illegal in many countries.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;There's obviously copyright law, so you need a license to copy each image before you scrape them. There's also some restrictions on accessing a computer you don't own, then using it in ways that the owner doesn't want you to. If my understanding is correct, then every website's terms of service are legally binding, as a contract you enter into automatically, but voluntarily, by accessing their property, their servers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Again, I'm not a lawyer, and this is not something I really understand at all, but that's my take on it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27686" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="735" RevisionGUID="bc5e940b-5f0d-408f-b814-229ad739d121" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="After reviewing the '[Great Redisiplining][1]' and learning that we now *do* accept answers here, I'm not sure how I should handle accepting some of my previous questions. I have only asked a few, but some of them do not have have specific 'right' answer. For example, '[Do you work contract projects in addition to your full-time job?][2]' and '[What features are missing from the languages you use?][3]' are open-ended forum-type questions that have produced valuable discussion, but there is no correct response which should be accepted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a related note, one of my first questions-&#xD;&#xA;[Good furniture for programmers][4], although rather popular, almost certainly does not fit here under the new guidelines; should it be closed? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the questions above and perhaps similar ones like it by other members, what is the correct course of action and are they still permissible here under the new guidelines?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit&#xD;&#xA;--&#xD;&#xA;The chief concern here is that we have chosen not to hide the accept rate from profiles, so I don't really wish to be toting around a badge that says '0% Accept Rate' if it is going to have an adverse affect on my standing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/10495/do-you-work-contract-projects-in-addition-to-your-full-time-job&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/634/what-features-are-missing-from-the-languages-you-use&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/742/good-furniture-for-programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27688" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5808" RevisionGUID="143f263b-c683-41de-8d46-ac38dcd9af8a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/193696/what-is-the-difference-between-a-stock-hardware-and-a-micro-coded-machine started out ranty, and people got carried away in the comments, but the underlying question is a good one.  It's interesting, it's relevant, and deserves an answer.  Could someone please clean up the comments and give it another shot?  I have an unambiguous and clear answer ready to go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand rants make people not want to help.  That's what the edit button is for, not the close button." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27689" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3134" RevisionGUID="953a6b3f-95b3-4a63-811c-fb0461e720c0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Go to the [suggestions tab](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/40327/karthik-sreenivasan?tab=activity&amp;sort=suggestions) on your profile page. This lists all the suggested edits you've made.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you click on the [suggested edit](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/4066) link you'll see your edit and how it was resolved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case the reason was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This edit is too minor; suggested edits should be substantive improvements addressing multiple issues in the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically you only added one word to the title rather than looking at the whole post and correcting other errors. That, coupled with the fact is was an old question were the reasons I would have rejected the edit had I seen it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27690" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5800" RevisionGUID="a69160a3-5c9c-47f4-b5b8-51633be85c34" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; I asked a legitimate, specific, relevent, answerable question here...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's legitimate and relevant, no argument there, and perhaps even interesting (at least to those of us with backgrounds in similar systems). But I really wouldn't call it specific or answerable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are essentially giving us two answers to chose from, and they are certainly specific enough, but... What we need you to be specific about is the actual problem you are trying to solve and not the ongoing debates in your company. You don't even mention what the disparate systems are about (in general terms at least).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A vague question will only bring you [vague answers][1], and you have already [noted yourself][2] that the answer isn't really applicable to the specific situation you are facing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sounds impossible. Maybe when the world stood still it might be possible to wrap it all in code. In real: That won't succeed. You will have some parts more nice than others. Do you mean that large integrated enterprise systems such as Oracle, Siebel, Epicor, Peoplesoft, and thousands of others are &quot;impossible&quot; and dont actually, really exist?? Is that what you are saying???? Have you ever even written code for a large ERP system?? Do you know how they are designed and built??? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have written code for a large(ish) ERP system, and what I've realized is that ERP is a catch all term that roughly translates to &quot;über complicated behemoth that's does what the client(s) want it to do, in a way that suits the client(s) and is different from every other über complicated behemoth that's does what the client(s) want it to do, in a way that suits the client(s) and is different from ...&quot;. It is important for us to (better) understand your current systems before giving you answers, because Stack Exchange sites are about giving solutions to practical problems, not about generally debating various positions. If a debate is what you are looking for, that's fine, but you are at the wrong place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a first step you should edit your question and give us a high level overview of the various systems and how they currently work together. I'd also remove the opening paragraph completely, buzzphrases like &quot;very complex business processes&quot; and &quot;very dynamic environment&quot; are completely meaningless. Give us technical details, not marketing-speak, replace some of the overly general fluff with concrete technical parameters and you'll get _much_ better answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, closure is a temporary state and it's only meant to signal to you and to readers that the question is (somehow) problematic. And yours is, but it's not unsalvageable (or irrelevant, or illegitimate, or even uninteresting), it just needs a few clarifications on the technical side and we are good to go. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/193177/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/193142/do-integrated-systems-increase-development-time-and-cause-inflexibility#comment-372813" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27692" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3150" RevisionGUID="a7e7f6c5-4e0e-4e10-a4d3-c8f61fc771c8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently came across [this answer][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It states an untrue statement in which, I think, was in a joking manor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should I do when I see an answer like this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/49425/34364" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27693" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5822" RevisionGUID="f45676ab-dd73-4626-9278-d5dc51dad2cd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am struggling to figure out why [“Too object-oriented”][1] was closed as a duplicate of [How can I convince management to deal with technical debt?][2]. I see that there's a relationship between the two, but there's a vast difference between&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How do I convince management we need to rewrite some code?&#xD;&#xA;- How do I convince my peers to allow me not to make the situation worse?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I missing something?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/193929/too-object-oriented#193929&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/43948/how-can-i-convince-management-to-deal-with-technical-debt" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27694" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5811" RevisionGUID="bb8aec35-32ab-4f37-8751-c3d2cec283c1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In my opinion [this question][1] should be preserved even though it is bad, because it has nice answers worthy of preserving. To pick one example, I personally found idea of *sleep sort* to be rather enlightening in the thinking-outside-of-the-box kind of way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/21082/what-is-the-most-obscure-sorting-algorithm-you-know" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27695" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1073" RevisionGUID="da99933e-3ea3-4879-b7fc-81bb49c5581c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's two questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [favorite programming language][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [worst software bug in history][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How come one is still open, and the other one closed? I ask because both seem to me to be *mere curiosity* questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6847/whats-your-favorite-programming-language-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27696" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="517" RevisionGUID="513a654a-1b88-4c45-b6c5-a238df08ae4e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Basics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Go through the tour.][1]&#xD;&#xA;- You can log in with your Google, Yahoo, etc. user by clicking the on icon of the service you have an account on the Login page.&#xD;&#xA;- Unlike forums and mailing lists, this concentrates on highlighting the good answers, and downvoting the incorrect or bad answers.  **It's not a replacement for discussion**, just a more efficient way to get answers.&#xD;&#xA;- *After you get some reputation make sure you are voting good posts up, and bad posts down!*&#xD;&#xA;- A ton of value comes from finding a question and answer via a search engine. We want a good answer to be the top hit for &quot;How do I use the me menu?&quot;  Don't worry if the questions are scrolling by too quickly on the front page, this isn't about tracking discussions.&#xD;&#xA;- What is Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow?  Joel's [announcement for stackoverflow.com][3] mentions the motivation behind this method of Q&amp;A.  More information on Stack Exchange in general can be found in the [Stack Overflow community FAQ][4] (much of it is general, some is specific to Stack Overflow).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Asking good questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- People will upvote your question based on its quality, so [put some effort][5] into it.&#xD;&#xA;- Use tags to classify your question. This makes questions easier to read on the front page and brings up related questions on the sidebar.&#xD;&#xA;- There's no need to bump a question &amp;mdash; if your question is unanswered the community user will bump it on occasion.  Consider adding a [bounty](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/bounty) if you want to attract more attention to your question.&#xD;&#xA;- Feel free to continue to work on your question; edit, edit, edit.  This will give it a natural bump, and people will be able to watch your progress in adding more detail. People tend to help/upvote people who are actively trying to investigate their problem.&#xD;&#xA;- As you add to your question, if you end up finding the answer, then answer your own question so that future generations can benefit from it!&#xD;&#xA;- If someone answers your question, accept it as the answer. This is an important [part of the process][6] and rewards the people trying to help you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Giving good answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Don't only link to random sources on the Internet. Any person can type their answer into Google and do that. If the information is good and under an open license, just put it in the answer (don't forget to link to and attribute the author).&#xD;&#xA;- Edit, edit, edit should be your mantra. &amp;mdash; If you've got a good answer and someone adds more detail, integrate it, and remember to always respect an individual's work.&#xD;&#xA;- Comments are like &quot;meta&quot; for the answer. *Don't ping pong back and forth in comments with new data, when someone leaves a comment with more information or something, just add the information to your question directly.* If people post updates to a comment ask them to add it to their question; that's where the power of Stack Exchange comes in: updates on people answering their question happens in the answers and the questions, so that when you are finished people don't have to track the conversation, just the final answer and solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Spread the word&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- We need help getting the word out, [we have some ideas][7] on how you can help, especially in places where users are already asking you for help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/15.html&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/7931/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/5234&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7/how-do-we-promote-our-site&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27697" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5839" RevisionGUID="841be8c2-3b3a-4f4c-a32e-0048653b2ee9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just learned that [this question][1] is a duplicate of some other question (the link to which is supplied now in the first question). Reading through both questions I cannot see how one could defer the answer to the new one from an answer for the other one. The new one is a completely different question and asks which programming language to use for this kind of task. This may or may not be approriate for this site, but it is for sure not a duplicate of the other one (which focuses on what an expert system is supposed to do). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think that this kind of inaccurracy in this kind of decision is helpful for this site, nor does it create trust in the decision of those users who marked it as duplicate.  &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/194969/what-programming-language-is-best-suited-for-an-expert-system-that-also-requires" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27698" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1077" RevisionGUID="d8c5b5c2-a895-4e46-bc7f-f6534c14b9d3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Further to my [post on the nomination page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/election#post-39586), I'd just add that my &quot;moderation style&quot; will be that of a teacher rather than a disciplinarian.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators do have a difficult task given them &amp;mdash; keep a site that is open to community-created content clean and in-line with the site's purpose; at the same time being civil, courteous and helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even users who have posted several questions and have significant reputation may end up posting questions that don't seem in line with established rules or guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* This doesn't mean that those users wish to fill up the site with junk&#xD;&#xA;* It doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't aware of the guidelines&#xD;&#xA;* It doesn't even necessarily mean that they don't understand the guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They may just have a different view of them (I've [been there](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/28172/what-does-a-productive-programmer-day-consist-of-closed) myself). I believe this can be a learning experience for all involved. The question may be in fact [in a gray area](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1053/so-programmers-gray-area).  Maybe situation doesn't fall neatly into any category of guidance.  **Very likely, there is a good question in there that just isn't worded in the most productive way**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tools that moderators and even members have should be used very carefully.  An experience I had just a few days ago illustrated this to me.  I was closely watching a question that was interesting. A new answer was posted that I very much disagreed with.  It was well written and a valid opinion, but to me, personally, it was philosophically wrong. So, I downvoted the question. However, I appreciated the perspective it added to the answers, because I felt like it brought up an angle that had not been addressed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few minutes later, I realized it had been deleted.  The user had obviously thought that by getting a downvote so quickly, it was better off to just get rid of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I regretted having downvoted so quickly and wished I had let more members of the community read that opinion and see what they thought. I didn't consider the impact my downvote would have to the poster, and I think that I should have commented prior to downvoting so early.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I take this same view with the close-vote and the tools a moderator has. They are not just a mop and a broom (what Wikipedia administrators refer to their tools as).  Here, I believe, we have a great responsibility to teach &amp;mdash; ask questions first and early, give suggestions, help, etc., and clean up (vote to close/delete) if needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To address Pierre's point about being &quot;firm&quot; - I absolutely understand that no matter how nice or helpful a moderator has been, it doesn't mean that conflict will never arise.  When it does, I don't believe a moderator is out of line to act authoritatively &amp;mdash; I would simply be careful to make sure that I have exhausted my ability to be helpful prior to taking any action that could be viewed as unilateral.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the end, I would simply be asking of my actions &quot;is what I'm doing helping the community reach the potential it has?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27699" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3288" RevisionGUID="0b08912a-2fe5-4c3a-b144-db6bf9bdb8f1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/139000/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is asking what language to use for small, in-browser games, such as tower-defense  games, RPGs, and multi-user dungeons. The OP was told somewhere online that ASP.Net MVC would be suited for this, however is (rightfully) questioning that answer since it doesn't seem right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the question, in it's current form, is a decent one for this site and should not be closed. The only suggestion I would really make is to write out the example game types because not everyone knows what `muds, tds, and roguelikes` are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not think this is too broad of a question since the answer the OP seems to be looking for is to use an RIA technology. Which one to use is up to her. I also don't think it should be edited to include a specific example because it would limit the question to only being useful to the OP, and not to any programmer wishing to build small browser games.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3764419#3764419" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27700" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5855" RevisionGUID="a73a997e-7134-4cf9-9ebb-aa55dd6af4fa" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Looks good to me now, I made some edits and sussed out what I'm fairly certain the author really wanted to ask, if it looks good please reopen otherwise any tips? I think it should be good now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/195359/from-tiff-to-jpeg-2000-can-i-use-jpeg-2000-now-at-2013" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27701" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="540" RevisionGUID="efdd26fe-994b-4faa-906f-6cdec687a27c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently linked my SO account here to PE, and asked a [question][1]. A got some decent answers, but I realized that the question is specific enough to ask on SO and possibly get more interest/views/response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should I do in this case? Is it considered bad form to duplicate a question across sites? I'm not trying to game the rep system, I just want my question to get good exposure. Is there a way of migrating the question that doesn't require moderator assistance? Should I just leave the question here on PE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/18838/haskell-and-lisp-vs-haskell-or-lisp" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27702" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1132" RevisionGUID="e85bbbaf-fe63-4118-9be3-e663e5647ebc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Short version:**  Is this the same as a question &quot;without a definitive answer&quot;?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Long version:**  Personally, I understood &quot;subjective&quot; to mean, &quot;without a definitive answer&quot;, yet I keep seeing questions on this subjective question site closed because they lack definitive answers.  I understand the requirement that not all answers be equally valid to mean that there should be some reasonably obvious criteria for determining if a certain answer is &quot;more valid&quot; than another answer.  This could be &quot;correctness&quot;, but since subjective questions often defy correct / incorrect assessments, I would think it could also be some other reasonable criteria, such as &quot;thought-provoking&quot;, which maybe should be specified in the question.  I think a good litmus test for this is, &quot;Could you downvote something for being less valid, and support your claim based on the question?&quot;  E.g., &quot;Down-voted because this is common sense and not thought-provoking.&quot;  Does this seem like a correct understanding?  Can you provide me with a better interpretation, so I don't run afoul of this rule again?  Should this be clarified in the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Commentary:**  I suspect a non-official reason people understand this requirement as &quot;needs a definitive answer&quot; is that it stops threads where everyone has something to contribute that can easily grow very large.  People enjoy these questions, perhaps partly because everyone can contribute meaningfully, so more people read and respond and they get a lot of votes.  While I understand frustration when this is blatant &quot;rep-farming&quot;, I think there is at least one class of questions which are best answered by accumulating a lot of answers and letting the cream rise to the top.  This becomes a sort of process of &quot;community inference&quot;, and lets the community explore topics that maybe aren't yet understood well enough to have a &quot;right answer&quot; yet, or maybe are too complex to ever be fully answered. While I agree that the reputation system has an undesirable result for these questions, I feel like the problem is with the SE system and not with the questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am especially frustrated because I find that many software test questions fall into this category, and right now programmers.se seems to be the best site available for these questions (I've voted for the [QA Area 51 proposal][1], but it's stuck in the &quot;commit&quot; phase).  Lots of the work that testers do requires inferential analysis, and being able to draw from wider ranges of experiences with questions like these is a *big* help!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Disclaimer:**  I did post [a question][2] that falls into this category.  My goal wasn't to farm rep, and I considered if it was appropriate to mark 'community wiki', but decided against it based on [this meta thread on the purpose of 'community wiki'][3].  I was frustrated when it was closed but glad to see discussion over the closure (followed by it being re-opened), and thought the discussion was *really* good and the general topic deserved a full thread on meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/2241/software-quality-assurance&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/45594/what-have-you-learned-from-the-bugs-you-helped-discover-and-fix&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/purpose-of-community-wiki" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27703" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5879" RevisionGUID="ee60aafb-f65b-48a2-8377-5c92fa04bedb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/196578/disable-spell-check-when-sending-code-in-outlook&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;was migrated by a **very-low-rep** user to SU.  Is that supposed to be possible?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This same user then &quot;answered&quot; the question on SU with an answer that illustrates the very reason I wanted the question on Programmers not SU... the answer shows a lack of basic understanding of the unique issues of a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(He advises me to add to a spell-check dictionary every possible variable and method name I will ever use in the future)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I chose Programmers because I thought that was the best community to understand my problem and have faced it before.  Migrating the question was overly zealous and counter-productive.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27704" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5903" RevisionGUID="6f206978-6212-4463-a053-f1a2d4496db2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My [post][1] to [this question][2] was deleted.  Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was about a team that uses color-coded source code to keep track of what needs to be done, but now they have a color-blind team member, and want to know what to do.  For anyone who can't read it, my answer was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Well, you could do what the rest of the world does and use an [issue tracker][3], along with comments in the code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a serious answer - there is no need to use a convoluted color-based system to solve a problem that has already been solved.  Apparently a lot of people agreed with me, since it was the third most-upvoted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet, it was recently deleted.  Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/86963/13815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/86850&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue_tracking_systems" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27705" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="553" RevisionGUID="b5b5d9d5-91ae-40d0-8fc3-1b0396dbc08f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="If what you want is to use a single OpenID and have all your SE accounts associated *except* for your Programmer's account, then sorry, [you can't do that](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/52272/stop-repeatedly-auto-associating-accounts-on-login).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're okay with disassociating all of your accounts, then go to [your Programmer's account page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/191?tab=accounts), where you should see a link/button/box at the very bottom that says [`Clear all associations`](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/191?tab=accounts#clear-associations). Clicking that *should* do the trick.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another approach is to create a new OpenID and use it just for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But to answer the general question: anyone can go to [one of your account pages](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/191?tab=accounts) and see all your associated accounts at once." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27706" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3291" RevisionGUID="49cf6391-321c-42eb-951c-1ad1ac194b75" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**This question should have not been closed**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is a good programming question and encouraging for young budding programmers. The fact that they can't ask simple question that can broaden their horizons and point of view is not good for programmers site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have seen a trend lately that this was not the only question that was closed as off topic, there were a couple of others which probably were ok questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me address some of the issues raised by @wordengineer in his answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets not talk about absoluteness. Everyone has an answer and every answer is a valid answer. Some answer can be too out of the way, that might get negative votes. Others will be dead on target, they will get up votes. The reason that we have up/down voting system, strengthen the idea that the right answer get selected. Let say I answer this question with C++. I am sure I will get a couple of negative votes and that way I will realized c++ is not a good language to program the browser. May be another person says, JavaScript and HTML. May be he gets a few up votes and the OP realizes well, this might be it. Why would you close this question off topic? If the community can vote a answer up/down to make it clear to the OP that this might be the answer, why is such question not answerable or off topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/139000/what-programming-language-would-be-the-best-fit-for-small-browser-games/139002#139002&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What is in this question that is off topic? I totally disagree.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And by the way there is an absolute answer for this question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/113839/explain-to-a-non-technical-manager-that-the-tool-he-chose-isnt-apt&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Doesn't it work on the same principle. You post your answer, I post mine. The one that gets voted up, might be a good candidate for correct asnwer? Or you think there really was only one answer and the rest were just totally useless?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27707" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1150" RevisionGUID="b6ab79a1-225e-452b-ae9c-ba9c584bc498" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is not a duplicate of https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1072/the-flag-comment-icon-is-too-harsh because I actually like the image of the flag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Rather, the problem is when you hover over it. On Meta, if you hover over the flag so it turns from white to black, the heights of the two images are not the same. It results in the control (and anything below it) being shifted up one pixel if the comment's length is short and does not increase the height. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For an example, see https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-list and hover over the flag of a short comment and the flag of a long comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's different on Programmers. On Programmers, the height *and width* are off. See https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/23120/does-tweeting-9-to-5-hurt-job-applicants for an example. (Specifically, GrandMasterB's comment on the original question post)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Due to the way browsers render font sizes and line lengths, this may vary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there is an extremely simple way to know something is wrong: the bottom of the hovered &quot;flag&quot; image is cut off." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27708" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5897" RevisionGUID="fb79b21b-5381-4865-bb77-b7fd1179dacc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I agree with you that it is silly to have a string of duplicates ultimately leading to something offtopic.  That doesn't do the user any services by looking at it and thinking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Well these kinds of questions are okay here, but this one just so happens to have been asked before.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that things like this do sometimes happen as a function over time.  Sometimes a question can be duplicate to another, only for the original to be later closed as Off Topic.  It is not just the moderators closing things, higher reputation users have the ability to close vote as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/195351/using-industrial-earmuffs-while-programming-to-filter-out-talking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I reopened and closed as Off Topic as I felt it was slightly different but still does not exclusively apply to the realm of software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other duplicate I merged into the original offtopic question as they were essentially exactly the same." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27709" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="645" RevisionGUID="e8858332-7f8f-444e-b749-d7f9997b2595" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Often, I face myself asking a tricky question where someone interested in giving me a constructive answer would have to sit down and **think**. They would also need to **care** about my question and my problem and be **open-minded** (which is the whole idea behind [Programmers.SE][1]). Instead, they often end up just trying to make a point - the point they may have had all their lives and they wouldn't reconsider - or make me bad or show off their (sometimes questionable) knowledge. In short: useless and not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Usually, this doesn't happen when the question itself is technical and can be answered very objectively (as on [Stackoverflow][2]). But as soon as I'd like a subjective, critical but constructive answer, I get a bashing. And even more so, the bashers get voted up by other bashers such that the really constructive, interesting answers will move down in ranking among all the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a way to circumvent that? E.g. in phrasing my question very carefully (how?) Any ideas welcome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;NOTE: I've already asked the question here: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71977/how-to-phrase-my-subjective-question-to-avoid-unconstructive-answers, but **meta.programmers** is the better place for it than **meta.stackoverflow**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27710" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5945" RevisionGUID="45344fe8-364a-464f-a1f6-667f6acec933" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question was closed along with downvotes: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/199257/what-level-of-queries-should-i-expect-from-an-interviewer-regarding-my-official&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It contained the following text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Background:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;I have been working with a software company for some 5 years now. I haven't handled a &quot;project&quot; by myself yet. This is a robotics company and I am not a robotics person. So, the kind of work that I have handled so far are *&quot;small&quot;* C++ programming related stuffs in the projects. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Tiny examples:   &#xD;&#xA;1. Someone has already made classes and written socket programming for this software X with UDP. My job was to add the TCP code using Qt API.  &#xD;&#xA;2. I had to add a &quot;callback&quot; functionality (using C++ templates) somewhere in the project for some reason.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Another somewhat bigger example:   &#xD;&#xA;I had to set up a functionality of message exchanging between two components (according to protocol given) in C++.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Both these example tasks are related to the &quot;proprietary&quot; software of this company.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;***What kind of questions (in which depth) should I expect the interviewer to ask regarding these example tasks?***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions aren't closed: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/49845/what-should-a-c-developer-expect-on-an-interview-at-a-rails-company?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/105494/what-should-i-expect-from-a-technical-evaluation-for-c?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/70251/what-should-i-expect-as-a-c-software-engineer-in-a-company-that-develops-pytho?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How is my question different from them, and what should be done to improve it?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27711" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3314" RevisionGUID="3991178f-97ec-4817-9742-3fe0ed27a987" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The following question was asked and then flagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/139459/25476&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By all accounts it is inappropriate for Programmers, more appropriate for Stack Overflow but still should be considered &quot;Not a Real Question&quot; on SO.  Moderator Thomas Owens added a comment with the hopes of the question being improved before migration, however this occurred after somebody had *already* provided an equally bad answer that shortly after was *accepted* by the user who wrote the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the right thing to do here?  The question DOES NOT belong here but by all accounts it would just fall like a terrible needle into a stack of needles on SO.  The question and answer are so poor that it will never benefit anybody and it will never get appropriate moderator attention over there.  The active SO community that actively participates and flags bad questions is hopelessly outnumbered by the legion so it like every other bad question over there will fall into obscurity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we close and delete it because it doesn't belong on SO?  If we do then are we setting the precedent then that we may be making moderation decisions for questions that belong *on a different* SE site than Programmers?  Is this acceptable because we know that if we don't then we are just adding to the growing malignant &quot;Plz teh codez! Plz teh designz!&quot; cancer on SO?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27712" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1196" RevisionGUID="eb772bb1-9383-4a57-86b1-c2425c1de514" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [What&amp;#39;s the difference between Programmers and SO](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Not sure what kind of questions should post in [programmers][1] and others in [stackoverflow][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27713" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5918" RevisionGUID="bb122761-225f-45b7-9766-69728d9a7575" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was close voter #5&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off, let me address the tone of the meta question. Getting upset and angry at us, lacing the question with unnecessary vitriol sets the tone of the question and may make it more difficult to get sympathetic help. While I do realize that having a question closed or downvoted can be a bit of an ego hit, please do remember that we are people too and are attempting to keep the site on target and focused. With P.SE, that has been a long and constant battle with much history to it.  I would suggest reading [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) for some insight into the dynamics of the communities of social software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two problems with this question that I saw, the &quot;not constructive&quot; being the bigger one... the other one being off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was off topic because the question did not pertain to programming.  Usenet had a plethora of news groups - most of which were not about programming at all.  While you mentioned comp.lang.c, replacing it with alt.games.rougelike.nethack would be the same question.  If the question was only about programming, it could have stayed here... if it was about nethack, we could have migrated it to gaming.SE.  As it is about everything, its off topic on Programmers.SE (and likely other places too)..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Question applies to:][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other part of the question was not constructive.  This is a guideline that spans all stack exchanges (even if something was on topic for gaming or cooking that got mistakenly posted here - the &quot;not constructive&quot; would still apply).  This is quite different than closing the question as not a real question (as you say, it is real - though it isn't constructive).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A constructive question should have one answer that authoritatively answers the problem/question. A poll for resources &quot;I am looking for a book on C&quot;, while vaguely on topic doesn't have a single answer.  The usenet community has split exists in bits on google groups, mailing lists, stack exchange, reddit, twitter, blogs, perlmonks, private/restricted usenet feeds, and a plethora of other social media sites and resources that cater to a particular bit of the conglomeration that was known as usenet.  Since all these answers are correct (and I am sure that people can think of others that are equally correct), the question itself cannot have an answer and is not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The social norms of one site may differ from another.  The reputation of someone on one site isn't transitive to another site.  If anything, having a reputation of a seasoned SE user on another site would mean that we expect more of you when writing a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On close votes - as you do have 3k rep on SO, you might consider browsing the [close vote review queue](http://stackoverflow.com/review/close) there.  It has about ~52500 questions that are in the queue.  After spending some time with such questions, I would hope that you would have a more sympathetic bend to those who close without comment - trusting that the explanation of the close reason itself was enough to communicate the reasoning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PbmDK.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27714" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5956" RevisionGUID="b7e1eb59-7f59-45d2-b0e4-894fd7d63948" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am curious because [one of my questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/197650/how-should-i-behave-as-a-developer-in-a-project-thats-headed-for-failure) suddenly got 100 more upvotes and 40k views apparently overnight. Is it possible to know where the sudden traffic came from, just for curiosity? Probably it is linked by an external article or shared by a popular person/media?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27715" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="830" RevisionGUID="ede85aa1-9a97-44d1-bbe2-45ac94e4a75e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm glad you brought this up. I have no problem with questions being migrated. There are some question that have come already that do belong here, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [How to persuade programmers to follow the basic rules](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/30985/6415)&#xD;&#xA; - [Should I Learn C/C++ Even If I Just Want To Do Web Programming?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/30974/6415)(This one is a duplicate, but I think is on topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then a question that is off topic (too localized) for *any* SE site: [Programmer's Wages [closed]](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/30918/6415).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that perhaps as the &quot;newness&quot; of the migration path wears off we will see less junk questions being dumped here. That being said, I'd wait a week or so before doing anything off-site. If this continues, we need to open a new discussion on meta.SO about the issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as what to do with junky questions, **CLOSE THEM!** They aren't doing us any good open. If they belong on another SE site such as webmasters, etc., then certainly migrate them, but kill it otherwise. If they are of no use, delete them. No reason to clutter our site up with other site's horrible questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please visit the links @bigown has posted. Even if you don't have anything to add, vote up the answers present the best solutions with P.SE's best interests. (and vote down the bad ones!) &quot;If you don't vote, don't complain&quot; - be heard!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27716" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1246" RevisionGUID="d7144dfc-d981-4c98-b148-f143982ca343" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are athletic programmers who work in &quot;adult&quot; industries... The truth is, &quot;life&quot; questions from programmers aren't usually all that different from those of other professions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, the challenges you face in your daily non-work life are considerably different from those of your friend the investment-banking cyclist. Then again, they're probably also considerably different from *mine*. Many different factors influence our lives, and grouping questions by profession isn't necessarily any more effective than grouping them by age, race, location, or favorite food. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not that there's anything inherently wrong in carving out a niche... But if you're going to do so [on Stack Exchange][1], there better be enough people firmly dedicated to that niche to sustain it. Trying to get around that by grouping a bunch of mostly-unrelated niche topics together (programmer-HEALTH, programmer-RELATIONSHIPS, programmer-COMPETITIVE ROSE GROWING) just ends up creating a site about anything and nothing at all... and that won't fly. [We sorta tried that already...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352?phase=definition)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange isn't a social network or a support group. It's about questions, and their answers. If you can ask a health question in a way that makes it sufficiently unique to the software development profession, [it *might* find a home on this site][2]... Otherwise, you'd be better off asking it on a dedicated health site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1242/a-site-for-life-outside-work-issues-dedicated-to-programmers/1243#1243&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/38299/do-computer-glasses-work" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27717" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3332" RevisionGUID="32ac0a2f-5f38-4132-bd21-204abdae128e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="From the very first line in the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'd say yes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want it migrating flag it for a Stack Overflow moderator to migrate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27718" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="876" RevisionGUID="261233f5-22d2-4560-b0ce-f0b1d24ea65e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think it's [supposed to work like that](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/17552/why-do-migrated-questions-lack-redirection-via-http-response-status-code-301-mov), although it certainly threw me for a loop when I clicked it. I didn't realize I was on SO right away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Appending `?noredirect=1` to the P.SE URL lets you view [the original question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/32590/unicode-to-ascii-conversion-closed?noredirect=1)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27719" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1271" RevisionGUID="49e732de-0ee2-483a-89f0-10fd87af07de" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the case of Programmers.SE, the [main][1] site is to discuss *anything related to programming* (further defined in the [FAQ][2]). Whereas the [meta site][3] exists to discuss *the main site*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you take a look at the [recent popular questions in Meta][4], you'll find:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - bug reports&#xD;&#xA; - generic questions regarding to Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA; - suggestions to FAQ modifications&#xD;&#xA; - discussions on which questions are on and off topic (for the main site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All of which do not contain anything directly related to programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/?tab=month" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27720" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5929" RevisionGUID="dd1c5e5c-3e1e-4a58-8ef7-a3448ebbf9a1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/181550/is-this-javascript-property-defaulting-pattern-horrible is the question at, um, question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not upset or offended by the closure; no ego involved here, and I got the feedback I needed before the question was closed anyway, but in the interests of being a good citizen I'd like to understand why folks considered this to be off-topic.  Given the [FAQ][1], this seems to be clearly in the realm of a design pattern question and thus on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose it could be considered to be an implementation question (and thus more suited for Overflow) but when I asked it I was really asking about the pattern (as the question title indicates) not a specific implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27721" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5985" RevisionGUID="095e4bbb-2aad-4bf8-9436-323cc8f9fdfb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have a question https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/167508/what-are-the-real-world-practical-problems-where-only-the-best-exact-solution  &#xD;&#xA;As few people pointed out the bolded question can be misleading. I wrote the Update trying to clarify what I mean by statement `(but not the good-enough solution)`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are still no answers to the question itself. Is it because my formulation is not clear? Or is the problem of a kind that does not have any answers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27722" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3363" RevisionGUID="ea0350fa-54f5-4e39-9faa-5bf878b20cd0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="From our [FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Why are some questions or answers removed?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are [extremely off topic][2], or of very low quality, may be removed at the discretion of the community and moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Over time, closed questions that are not useful as signpoints to other questions may also be removed, as well as questions which have no significant activity over a very long period after being asked. For additional guidance, see [How to Ask][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The link under &quot;extremely off topic&quot; leads to this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions should I not ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And your question was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Which is better for an open standard for data cleaning: R or SAS or Python?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Actually, none of the above. SAS has a lot of room for improvement for usability (learning curve and readability). Moreover, it's too expensive. R has serious usability problems for cleaning data and preparing it for analysis. Once the data is cleaned, R is great. For usability, Python is a work of sheer genius. But it lacks a smoothly-integrated data processing paragraph (think: SAS data step, or for many-many join SQL SELECT).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An open standard for data cleaning, that's designed to be easy for learning and reading (kind of pythonic, but for data preparation/cleaning with data tables): this would be a valuable benefit for scientific researchers who work with data. It would be my 3rd language. And since it's positioned as a public good, and would benefit science, I want to get a research grant for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If SQL is well designed for data management DURING data collection (not after), this could be SPL. ( P = Preparation ).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only question in there is the rhetorical one in the title. Programmers Stack Exchange is neither a free for all discussion forum, your personal blog or any other platform for self promotion, **you should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Other than the 6 downvotes (and no upvotes) the post received two &quot;not a real question flags&quot; and one spam flag, as Thomas already mentioned. I'm also very confident in saying that the post wasn't welcomed by the community and fully support Thomas' decision to close and delete it. This was as a clear cut moderation action as they get, and I would have closed it regardless of its down votes and flags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore you need to understand that every post you make on a Stack Exchange site is  [licensed under Creative Commons][4], and can be edited by every other member, closed by members with close privileges, and deleted by members with delete privileges. To quote the [FAQ][5] (for yet another time): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you are not comfortable with the idea of your contributions being collaboratively edited by other trusted users, this may not be the site for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same goes for every other action, not just edits. Either you trust the community, and will play by our rules, or you don't. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't feel free to raise issues whenever you want to (in a *constructive* manner), (almost) every action on the site is reversible. We could even undeleted your question, if we reviewed the deletion and decided that it was incorrect, every deleted post is available to users with more than 10K reputation and to moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And now that I included it in this answer, it's available to every member of the community, let's see what everyone thinks of it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#editing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27723" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1293" RevisionGUID="57a248d7-602e-4a34-a3c7-95d303fb233b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The deletion mafia has struck again. We had this discussion before on Meta.SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Case in point: the question [What do you say to people when they say that programming is not demanding?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/37316) was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we just please, *please* agree that this is not constructive behaviour and that questions – even ones that get closed for valid reasons – should **not** be deleted except when they are really disruptive?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question above ([cached copy here][1]) wasn’t a great question but it got *great* answes and I had linked to it elsewhere. It is just *really* annoying that such questions get deleted, and it completely runs counter the spirit of the Internet: *do not let links go stale*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I’m serious about this. **Pervasive deleting destroys these sites. It’s a bad attitude and it needs to stop.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XVdaauL6aP0J:programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/37316/what-do-you-say-to-people-when-they-say-that-programming-is-not-demanding/37318+https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/37316&amp;cd=1&amp;hl=en&amp;ct=clnk&amp;source=www.google.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27724" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5987" RevisionGUID="ea89cba6-579e-4ad0-9c5e-c829e14305a4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'd like a way to favorite a particular answer [such as this one][1].  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not a Hadooper and 6 months from now I'm not going to remember that I favored the question because it had a good general purpose answer regarding certifications.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If favoring an answer isn't possible, would it be possible to attach a short note to my favorite so I can remember why I liked it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/126833/64132" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27725" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5965" RevisionGUID="0914324f-1153-45f6-881f-bb95ef77e072" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was just getting my daily dose of programmers SE and noticed another closed &quot;not constructive&quot; question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/200812/is-writing-software-easier-than-reading-and-understanding-it-from-scratch&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've read through it and the answers and couldn't agree with the decision to close. OP is clearly someone new but between himself and a friend, he arrived at the same conclusion that several great authors (Uncle Bob being one among them) have also pointed out in their books.  It took me almost decade of professional programming before I discovered and read those books. And I can't see those books about writing better software and improving your own skills and our profession as being a bad topic for programmers SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've worked with professionals with more experience and higher salaries compared to me who seems have never stopped even once to ponder this very same question. I would reward OP for taking the time and thought he put in, instead of turning him away, as that question is very relevant to our profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I fully appreciate the work moderators are doing to keep this site going and overall, I am very grateful for the effort you guys are putting in, but it does feel that sometimes we over-aggressively close questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27726" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1343" RevisionGUID="6cec1a1b-a2b2-4770-b054-2ecea2742dfa" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I had a &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/62916/why-is-there-so-much-hate-for-net-in-the-world&quot;&gt;subjective question&lt;/a&gt; that I was pretty sure would get closed, and it did.  Before I wrote this question I debated with myself for quite a while before asking it for a few reasons.  I highly respect the Stack Exchange network and I didn't want to get my question closed for violating the standards and guidelines of questions.  I also wrote and re-wrote my question several times trying to get the wording right to follow the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;six guidelines of subjective questions&lt;/a&gt;, which I failed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Still things didn't seem right, so I decided to ask the meta site &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1333/where-do-i-ask-a-subjective-question&quot;&gt;where I should ask a subjective question&lt;/a&gt;.  Thank you to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1333/where-do-i-ask-a-subjective-question/1334#1334&quot;&gt;very helpful answer&lt;/a&gt; I was able to understand the reasons why my wording was poor and why my question was closed.  However, in my meta question I also asked &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&quot;if there is not an appropriate stackexchange site, where is a good forum that I can ask that sort of question that has the maturity and popularity of the stackexchange sites so that I can get a quality response?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you to Jeff Atwood's comment, which I agree and kind of thought might be the case before I submitted the question in the first place, that the best place would have been to ask this outside of the stackexchange network.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, my question is, where is a good place to go outside of the stackexchange network where I can ask this very subjective question (probably with better wording as suggested by the answers to my meta question) but still be reaching the maturity and quality of the stackexchange community?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27727" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1066" RevisionGUID="3001f647-cdf1-4cd3-9b08-977ad2efb092" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My moderation style would be to give users time to edit their question before closing, never close based on the quality of the answers and consider the popularity of the question when deciding whether or not it truly requires moderator attention. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some examples of helping a user on Meta to edit a question to get it reopened.  This is how I would guide users to making changes to their questions rather than welcoming them with a closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/923/this-question-should-not-have-been-closed/938#938&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/16618/what-will-be-considered-harmful-next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(or not)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/510/is-my-question-that-bad-or-am-i-totally-out-of-it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, in the interest of full disclosure, here's something that got me banned from programmers.SE for a day.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66438/p-se-user-is-creating-bad-tags-for-personal-harassment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I add this to explain that I believe in retagging, the use meta-tags within the paradigm, and until the feature is deprecated using tags to filter out junk you don't want to see.  Also, I am committed to I asking questions on meta before I go it alone and when I make a mistake, apologize. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27728" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3369" RevisionGUID="cc1ad2e7-fdb1-4bf3-b727-4c5e351961ee" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="First of all, the question was closed by two regular members and a moderator, it wasn't just &quot;the moderators&quot;. Now, the notification for the close reason reads as: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **closed as not a real question**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. [See the FAQ][1] for guidance on how to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Not a real question&quot; is just a title, you should be concentrating on the text and not the title. Your question, at least the way I read it, is ambiguous, vague, and overly broad, so I'd say that the close reason applies perfectly. The &quot;not constructive&quot; close reason applies equally, as you are polling for people's opinions and you don't present us with an actual practical problem. It's more of a discussion oriented question, not a bad one, don't get me wrong, just not specific enough to be sufficiently answered on a Stack Exchange site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot have changed since Oct 2010, obviously. I wasn't a member back then so I can't really comment on whether the question was acceptable, but I imagine it was. Right now, it's not, the scope of the site has been better defined, we have a lot more experience on what questions work well with the Q&amp;A format and what do not, etc. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a bit frustrating that this question was closed after being open for so long, I guess it's because it hadn't had any activity until very recently and the [tag:self-improvement] tag hasn't been targeted for a cleanup. What brought the question to our attention are the two [recent][2] [answers][3], which bumped the question on the front page and (probably) attracted the close votes and flags. Both answers are, let's say less than stellar, and when a question starts attracting low quality answers it's a very good sign that it has run it's circle. We typically don't judge a question by its answers, but if a question is borderline, then the answers may be what triggers the closing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would have closed this question as well, probably as &quot;not constructive&quot;, I think for this specific question the &quot;not constructive&quot; text would better convey why the question is not a good fit for the site. But that's not to say that I have any issues with the question being closed as &quot;not a real question&quot;, both close reasons apply and closed is closed, regardless of the reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, please [don't edit messages to moderators][4] (or anyone) in your questions, there's little chance your message will reach us this way and the text of your questions should only have information that are relevant to what you are looking for. If you wish to contact the moderators you can flag your question for moderation attention, ping us in chat or post a Meta question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/141669/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/141689/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/9290/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27729" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5972" RevisionGUID="2110ceb4-dbf1-4e62-ad1e-47776148e2f3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I learned a lot reading '[What was your most difficult bug hunt][1]' I'm sure it will help me and others (who I plan to narrate some of the stories to) will benefit too. can we please re open it and keep it so others may add a few more ? I know it can be used as an excuse for more discussion style, but this one is a real gem and helpful in more than a general way. There are specific learning points there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. bug might be due to a particular area in a other wise common area on&#xD;&#xA;    screen (top scorer, I wont mention the particular term used there as&#xD;&#xA;    I do not like it)&#xD;&#xA; 2. the most simplest things like int and short can cause issues&#xD;&#xA; 3. know your API/ flush&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am sure others can add more. Let us not lose the chance of others adding more great answers, the next bug just might not be found as yet or is being made as you read this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2699/what-was-your-most-difficult-bug-hunt-and-how-did-you-find-it-and-kill-it" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27730" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1086" RevisionGUID="4929eedb-9c61-4c4c-b7d7-e88f41743299" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Take, for example, [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/41760/which-version-of-net-should-i-learn-to-find-a-job). The last paragraph is an explanation of how the question isn't a duplicate and references meta for justification. This explanation is longer than the question itself. Is it reasonable to edit it out of the question? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm personally not a fan of reading instructions to not close a question, but I can see how sometimes it may be useful to explain the reasoning behind asking a question that at first glance may look like a great candidate for closing. I edited the question this time, since it looks like the &quot;it's not a duplicate&quot; plea was only relevant on SO, but what's the common approach to that sort of thing?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27731" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3396" RevisionGUID="71329c33-754c-455d-8d86-4c8bf542901c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The close notification for &quot;not constructive&quot; reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit to our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. See the FAQ for guidance on how to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. 6 answers, and most of them missed the point of your question (judging from your comments to them),&#xD;&#xA; 1. 23 comments on the question (+1 deleted),&#xD;&#xA; 1. 31 comments on all answers (+1 deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6 answers and 56 comments in total is a good sign that the question solicits opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion, which is why it was closed. Although you make a very good point that it would be more appropriate to invite the users that could not stick to the question to give a precise answer rather than close the question, you need to consider that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Closure is a temporary state, it _might_ lead to deletion after a while, but initially it's just a temporary state that has a single goal: no more answers. &#xD;&#xA; - It's always preferable to close early, review, improve and re-open. Not every closed question is salvageable, obviously, but some are, and closing early protects people from wasting time answering a question that may be deleted if not improved, and protects the question itself from spiraling into an uncontrollable mess.&#xD;&#xA; - Sometimes on borderline questions the answers are the deciding factor. It may not be fair to the asker, but if more people miss the point of the question than those who actually got it, well, perhaps the point of the question wasn't very clear to begin with.&#xD;&#xA; - Closing a question is the fastest option, when a question is troublesome. Please don't take this the wrong way, but we are all volunteering our time here, and closure does serve as a signal to other users that the question is in need of help. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question had 3 close votes and 1 flag (for the extended discussion in the comments) when I first visited it, and I considered all of the above before closing it. If I had seen the flame bait in the [original version][1], I would have closed it asap. I'm guessing that some of the close votes were directed at the original version, although there isn't really a way to verify that, but in any case it's irrelevant.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question will need 5 re-open votes from regular users to be re-opened, or a single re-open vote from a fellow moderator. I won't cast mine, this is still a community closure and I'm not convinced that the question is constructive, at least not to the point of reversing a community closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In any case, I would like to ask for suggestions how to formulate a question even better or about possible measures to take, in case a similar situation (answers not sticking to the point) should occur again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as this question is concerned, I honestly don't know. Closing the question bumped it on the front page, and it will get some extra visibility through this Meta question, so hopefully the community will find ways to improve it (which might not have much to do with the question itself).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For future reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Avoid flame bait, stick to the point and always try to back your subjective claims with references. And no, comments to Programmers questions and answers don't count as references,&#xD;&#xA;- Flag off topic / chatty / not constructive / obsolete comments as such,&#xD;&#xA;- Down vote answers that completely missed the point of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/142698/1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27732" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5974" RevisionGUID="0f8cf9c5-02ff-4bc0-a55a-5a4157e05098" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="To put simply, it was **Not Constructive**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As stated in the [Help Center][1], questions that are subjective in which each answer is equally valid is usually not a good fit for the site. Stack Exchange frowns upon subjective questions; it's just not a good fit for this style of Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27733" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1093" RevisionGUID="140b2040-b01f-4d50-a23a-74feb685ea12" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The technical aspect of the ban (blacklisting lmgtfy.com links in posts) might not be active, but it's my understanding the practice effectively is banned for all the reasons pointed out in the original [Ban lmgtfy (let me google that for you) links](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/15650/ban-lmgtfy-let-me-google-that-for-you-links) question on Meta Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There isn't a context in which they are helpful or constructive on a site where one of the main sections in the FAQ is [Be Nice](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#benice). If you see it being used, I suggest flagging it for moderator review." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27734" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1389" RevisionGUID="835457dd-338b-4927-82b7-10c0ea0f0d42" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [When is it acceptable for a moderator to make a unilateral decision to close a question?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/321/when-is-it-acceptable-for-a-moderator-to-make-a-unilateral-decision-to-close-a-qu)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recently had the pleasure of reading the top 1500 questions/answers on programmers.SE, and noticed an alarming trend. About 100 of these questions, all with a community vote ranging from about +10 to +300, were closed by a select few moderators for being not 'constructive'. Only around 15 questions among these top 1500 were closed collectively by non-moderators for this reason - a large difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point of this post is not to debate the 'constructiveness' of the questions within the set I speak of, or to debate about the '6 guidelines for constructive questions'. There is no doubt in my mind that some of these questions are constructive. It is also clear that these questions, as a whole, are viewed as constructive by the community. As a whole, these questions and answers have probably garnered significantly more than 10,000 community upvotes. They are obviously useful to many. If they really were not at all constructive, I imagine they would be removed from the site, instead of still sitting in their same place with a little [closed] sign stifling further growth.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is also not the point to bemoan the power of the moderator to close questions with a click. I believe that this is an important tool for some to possess, and takes much of the burden off of the user base when it comes to regulating spam, duplicates, and non-questions. I am grateful to the moderators that use their bestowed power for these reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I do see a problem here, and the plot thickens. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overwhelming majority of these closed questions were flagged as 'not constructive' by a single user. Yes, a single user. I won't call you out, because I don't need to. It is an easy fact to find, for anyone looking. This flag draws moderator attention, which dispatches those with the mod-hammer. It appears that a few moderators really enjoy swinging it, so the questions get closed. I feel that this is an abuse of both the flagging system and of moderator power.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not really sure how we arrived at a point on programmers where this can happen. I do acknowledge and understand why the subjective question criteria exist, and although I don't feel like they are perfect, nothing really is, and i'm willing to accept them, as open to interpretation as they are. My problem rests in the fact that a moderator can easily spoil a good question, well accepted by the community, with a click of a button and no explanation, because they feel that it doesn't meet enough of the criteria, or doesn't meet the criteria well enough. In all the questions mentioned, the community disagreed with the moderator decision to an overwhelming degree. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Case in 2 points, briefly - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question has been mod-hammered. It has a total of +63 ups, and has been favorited by 36 users. It has been twittered about by Joel, and about this question Jeff says, &quot;the measurement of the worst software bug, and the idea that programmers need to consider the consequences of their professional actions, puts it on the other side of the line to 'acceptable'&quot;. For this question, both founders feel it fits, and so does the community. One moderator disagrees, however, so it is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(quoted from https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1073/some-inconsistency-in-closing-questions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, this is my question, and yes, it helped sparked this question. It was mod-hammered for not being constructive. I asked this question because I am working in NLP/AI, not because it just popped into my head and thought it would be useless but fun question to post here. The answers people gave helped me further understand the aspects from which a computer is generally considered to be different from a machine, information I can extrapolate from the questions listed. I can ask my robot all the answers (questions) provided by the community. To me, this is very 'constructive'. The included comment regarding the close - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;I was prepared to leave this open, but I think it's run its course.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really don't get this. At all. I don't feel like this is the moderator's place to judge the 'course' of a question. What is the harm in leaving it open? I hate to see the most awesome community QA site be subverted by a small handful of individuals on some sort of bent that I don't understand. If this question were closed by the community, because the community as a whole did not accept the question, I still wouldn't understand, but I would accept. In these cases, however, I do not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more complete list - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[.. excessively long list of URLs elided, try searching using the `isclosed:` and `votes:` modifiers ..]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I'm not trying to say that all of these mod-closed questions belong here. Some of them don't, in my eyes, and I would cast a vote to close. But even if I were a moderator, I don't think I would exercise my authority on any of these, especially given the overwhelmingly positive community response to them. I do feel that it is better to have borderline questions open than closed, but not even all of these questions are borderline, in my eyes. Some of them are just plain awesome! What is the harm, and has the mod-hammer been taken overboard? Is there any way we can escape the tyranny? To the offenders (no need to call you out either) - Why? Why would you ever do this? I love the SE community, but it is things like this that makes me want to bring my contribution (and questions) elsewhere. This is a community site. I don't enjoy seeing it stifled by a handful of trolling mods. I'm now seeing questions arise on the regular with a 'do not close' plea. Is there anything that can be done? Do you feel that anything needs to be done, or do you disagree in entirety? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: 43% closed unilaterally." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27735" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3408" RevisionGUID="9b35b7f1-b613-4f18-afaf-cc49ab3a981a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [version of the question that has been closed](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/142876/2 &quot;Revision 2&quot;) is tagged **resume** and starts with&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm working on a **resume**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which puts it into off-topic per [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...is **not about**...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _For answers to common programming career advice questions, please see &quot;[Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/)&quot; by Patrick McKenzie._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;As for software development [tag:terminology], it is typically considered on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;##update&#xD;&#xA;After major edit done in rev 3, question has been reopened (reference: [post timeline](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/142876/timeline)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;! I also revoked question downvote thanks to edit mentioned above." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27736" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5983" RevisionGUID="5dbd4931-085d-4bc5-9b21-59e69f469982" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Hi I wrote a question [asking the community where it gets its ideas from, to prompt some discussion on self-improvement in the generic sense.][1] While I don't want to get into an argument on whether it should have been closed, I'm curious to know where it should go instead?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that its not directly related to a programming problem, its not really in the scope of StackOverflow; its not about programming in the workplace, so that rules out The Workplace; nor is it really about computer science or maths.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if its not appropriate for Programmers, where would one ask fellow programmers how they go about improving their skills and identifying appropriate problems to explore new programming paradigms as an important part of self-improvement?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/201855/where-do-people-draw-inspiration-for-personal-coding-projects" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27737" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1178" RevisionGUID="e48bfe7a-3464-4d47-80cd-3ac64e9374aa" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question &quot;What language to Learn Next?&quot; and all the various derivatives of that same question has been answered countless times, both by the volunteers on this site, as well as the authors of numerous blogs, articles, career journals, and forums.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, here is the same question [What Should I Learn Next?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/33964/what-should-i-learn-next).  There are 8 answers there about what language to learn next.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This Programmers SE Search for &quot;What Language Should I Learn&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=what+language+should+i+learn) turns up 67 pages of results, with the first 2 pages dedicated to various different incarnations of the question `What Language Should I Learn Next?`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, if you want to know the answer to that question.  Start there and work your way through the bounty of answers available.  In addition to answers, you'll find links to other resources, which will link to other forums, documents, opinions, articles, and journals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal is to not answer the same questions that have already been answered; instead, the volunteers here look forward to challenging new questions that have yet to be answered." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27738" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3495" RevisionGUID="dc8f4dd8-3633-4a08-843b-02e9cb3784f4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a list of all the comments you've posted on your profile:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Go to [Activity &gt; Comments](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/29020/giorgio?tab=activity&amp;sort=comments)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it doesn't distinguish between comments on questions and comments on answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27739" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5989" RevisionGUID="5eab3b66-2049-4da9-80e2-b2ed01b7c2e6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question [what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development][1] was removed (google web cache version [here][3]) with the following reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question was removed from Programmers Stack Exchange for reasons of moderation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was the top of with 2194+ points and had a nice and big comprehensive response with 1923+ points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even after reading the [help area on removed questions][4] I still do not have a clue why this question was removed. &quot;Being removed because of moderation&quot; sounds too vague&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From my point of view, the top answer had a ton of good information and it is bad losing it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone explain me why the question was removed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?biw=1920&amp;bih=959&amp;sclient=psy-ab&amp;q=cache:https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development&amp;oq=cache:https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development&amp;gs_l=hp.3..0l4.8289.10624.0.10883.7.7.0.0.0.0.223.902.0j4j1.5.0...0.2...1c.1j2.17.psy-ab._aHGNRQQqS8&amp;pbx=1&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/deleted-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27741" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6023" RevisionGUID="b5b7c71c-71aa-43fb-b8eb-82fe24cd75c2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Asking for generic feedback is considered both &quot;too broad&quot; and &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot;, making it not suitable for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you have specific questions about your architecture, design, use of data structures or algorithms, testing, or any of [the other topics that are allowed][1], you can ask those, but you need to be specific about a problem and not soliciting general feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you need assistance with reviewing working code, check out [Code Review][2]. For specific usability questions, check out [User Experience][3]. If you're having problems with implementation or tools, check out [Stack Overflow][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27742" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1211" RevisionGUID="9b1b86aa-bb14-48b0-aece-fe2c697dc6ac" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A significant proportion of questions being transferred here from SO are being closed pretty rapidly upon arrival.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be possible to have them transfer to a holding area where they can be reviewed (by mods or suitably rep-ed up users - appearing in the tools area) prior to appearing on the site?  I'd suggest a threshold of two (or more) users have to accept the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's accepted then it appears as normal, if not then it gets returned to SO closed with a comment explaining what's happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: Can I just highlight in light of: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/88846/what-are-you-doing-with-cables-under-workrtable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a question which should obviously be shut rather than migrated anywhere. If SO can't give it more thought then this then the migration functionality should be disabled." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27743" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3514" RevisionGUID="4ca746fd-b7e4-4c79-a7bb-bc98bc96df40" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think not, but it was originally closed as a duplicate of https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/81591/in-the-absense-of-a-cs-degree-how-can-i-fill-in-the-gaps-so-to-speak but reopened by 5 members of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am inclined to agree with you that it's not a good question - despite, or perhaps because of, it's length. However, I think the OP has to be the one that edits it down to a more manageable length, otherwise there is a real risk that the essence of the question will be lost.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once the question is edited, *then* we'll be able to make an informed decision on it's suitability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't propose to close it again unless it gets new close votes from the community." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27744" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1455" RevisionGUID="56125b33-42c0-4a8e-9e20-641165458fa5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Born from the earlier question [Inclusion to the question topics section of the faq](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1430/inclusion-to-the-question-topics-section-of-the-faq) which asked whether 'programming psychology and philosophy' be added to the list of topics for questions in the FAQ, should we add *programmer relations* and *programmer development* to the FAQ instead?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(Quoted from [an earlier revision](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/c8bb7de9-1814-423a-86bd-798f09913817/view-source) of the previous question:)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that fall under 'Programmer relations' are those that concern teamwork, programmer to manager to stakeholder (or anyone in the development process?) etc...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Some examples from today are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [How can I get programmers to stop writing code vulnerable to SQL injection?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What is the best advice to give someone in this industry who resists change?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that fall under 'Programmer development' are those that concern self improvement as a programmer, such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;[“The pragmatic Programmer” or “Clean Code”. which one would you get, and why?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Suggestions to set goals][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/68258/19799&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/69111/19799&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/69059/19799&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/69176/19799" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27745" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1237" RevisionGUID="7fc9b4b0-c7a1-45fc-8c4e-0f0a83c62a58" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="If you look at [this answer][1] from the [bounty faq][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What happens if there's no answer after the bounty period?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What happens if I feel my question is still unanswered?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What is automatic awarding?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; At the end of the bounty period, if&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the bounty starter has not manually&#xD;&#xA;&gt; awarded the bounty, eligible answers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can be automatically awarded half the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; bounty amount. The criteria for an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answer to be eligible for automatic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; awarding are as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The answer must be given after the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; bounty was started The answer must&#xD;&#xA;&gt; have a score of at least +2 If two or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more eligible answers have the same&#xD;&#xA;&gt; score, the oldest answer is awarded&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no answers meet these criteria, the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; bounty ends without it being awarded&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to any answer, and is not refunded to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the bounty starter.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; An accepted answer that does not meet&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the above criteria is still ignored by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the automatic-awarding system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like the bounty was automatically given to [this answer][3] by Alex. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This explains why it went to alex. It also explains why no badge for you. Automatic awards don't count because the benefactor badge goes for the &quot;First bounty you **manually** awarded on&#xD;&#xA; your own question&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16065/how-does-the-bounty-system-work/16067#16067&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/16065/148672&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/40394/how-do-you-organize-your-projects/41938#41938" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27746" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6038" RevisionGUID="75cfdb9c-4985-4b78-8669-33b2eb83f2d8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Allow that I have been here pretty much from the start&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let us take:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/203975/development-test-interview&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as &quot;too broad&quot;. *Really* ? I might allow that a bit more detail of the nature of the test would help but it seems to me that its just about as specific as it can reasonably be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's a better place to ask, I'd be pleased to know - but it seems that there are progressively fewer and fewer questions that can be reasonably asked here? And if not here then where (I'm not talking about questions that obviously belong on stackoverflow, rather the ones that fairly obviously don't)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot; ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, I've gone read the rest of the stuff and yes clearly the example is a marginal question (in so far as it _might_ be off-topic - but it wasn't closed as off-topic...)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27747" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1468" RevisionGUID="04a643ca-25e6-4154-9ba4-ebc318802d54" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The topics of programmer interactions and professional development are generally on topic, but that doesn't mean that every question in those categories will remain open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The topic is only a part of what contributes to the question staying open or closed. Some will be open because they are asked in a [constructive way](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) and apply to a general internet audience. Some will be closed because they are too broad to be definitively answered or too localized to the asker. Some will be closed because they're not programmer-specific (i.e. questions about general coworker issues that are not limited to software development).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is nothing in the [FAQ][1] right now that prohibits these kinds of questions. So long as they fall within the guidelines described in the &quot;What questions can I ask here?&quot; sections and avoid the pitfalls of the &quot;What questions should I not ask here?&quot; sections, they should be fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27748" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3516" RevisionGUID="93e56414-5ef4-4b69-9530-a3b703262c44" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's getting flags and close votes now, so I've opted to close the question. Here is a summary of my thoughts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Most of the body is a personal background. If such a personal background is necessary for the question, the question is most likely too localized. Questions must be relevant to a number of people, so if you have to explain, in great detail, your educational and occupational history, that indicates that perhaps your question is only relevant to the subset of people with a similar educational or occupational history and not appropriate for a Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;* There are multiple questions being asked. Although they are related, they are distinct enough that they should be presented as multiple questions, with the answer(s) to one driving the next. The three questions that I'm seeing are to first how to determine the difference between a math degree and a CS degree, how to prioritize the importance of the things missing in one degree, and methods for learning each of those tasks.&#xD;&#xA;* Questions about these topics have already been asked. There's not a single duplicate of this question, but each of the parts appear to have been asked. A example is this question about [how to fill in the gaps left by not having a degree][1]. Admittedly, it's not an exact duplicate, but a good question would include cross-references to indicate that the asker has searched the site, found and read related questions, and explain the differences as to why the answers to the related question don't work. This also goes back to my previous point about asking one question (or a small number of very closely related questions) at a time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the current state, I wouldn't recommend editing this post. The substantial edits needed to salvage the question would invalidate answers that have already been posted. I would recommend going through the answers that you have now and thinking up narrower questions that can be addressed in a manner useful to a wider audience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overall, I think the nature of the questions is very appropriate for this site. However, the presentation of those questions is the driving factor leading me to close the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/81591/in-the-absense-of-a-cs-degree-how-can-i-fill-in-the-gaps-so-to-speak" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27749" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1295" RevisionGUID="9081da08-59da-4bb7-88d0-a6d84bf38f56" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm going to include my [answer from Meta SO on this topic](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83825/great-question-got-deleted/83864#83864).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is not a real question.  It's not an on-topic question for at least three of the reasons listed in the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq).  It's opinionated, which means the original poster already has an answer.  He posted that answer in his question box:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It may not be physically demanding but it sure is mentally demanding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to keep this site productive, the line in the sand has to be drawn somewhere.  Otherwise, we'll get more gray area questions like `What do programmers eat?  I know they eat food at some point in their day`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, I agree with Jeff, the answers are essentially all the same AOL &quot;me too&quot; type answers that don't really tell me anything I didn't already know or couldn't figure out by Googling some forum somewhere, a forum, that I might add, is probably now a ghost town on the Internet because the professionals keeping the site alive all moved elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The blog articles that Robert, Jeff, and other StackExchange employees have written makes a great case for sites thriving because they're properly policed for content that doesn't meet the goals of the site.  Unfortunately, we're not all going to agree with every decision, but please keep in mind that those decisions are made with the community's best interests in mind.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a clearer, well written explanation of the dangers of allowing poor questions, please read [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27750" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3518" RevisionGUID="ec73a011-4cdf-4660-9c1c-d81f512a5aab" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Stack Overflow questions are typically expected to be more specific, involving particular languages, libraries, and development tools. Programmers questions tend to be more abstract - things that you would talk about around a whiteboard or when brainstorming or at a level beyond sitting at your computer writing code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right from [the Programmers FAQ][1], `algorithm and data structure concepts` are on-topic. Since it's not about implementation details, it belongs here more than it does on Stack Overflow. Although answers might contain an implementation in a given programming language, that's not required in this case - a textual or pseudocode description of the algorithm would be just as good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27751" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6049" RevisionGUID="059c4c3b-a9ae-4fc0-9bcf-1ef1fc9b365b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="One of the hardest things to realize about Stack Exchange is that we are *contributors* to a site, but we are not the revenue stream for the business model.  That lines from the *next* person to visit the site.  Much of the site is designed around this - optimizing the search engine and being the place to go to find **the** answer to the question (not a forum that has a dozen answers, if you want that, there are many sites that cater to that approach).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a question to be useful to this business model, it must be something someone wants to come to and see.  A question that is only helpful to one person - the one who asked it - adds negligible value to Stack Exchange as a whole.  Compare to a question that people do want to come to and see.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As users with a reasonable amount of reputation it is our responsibility to keep the site on topic, and useful to this end.  If someone is asking polling question, or a question that doesn't do a good job of explaining itself it needs to be addressed.  In many cases, this means closing questions.  For some reason, P.SE tends to get a lot of the people looking for help on their career, education, or with very poorly defined questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't believe that it is fewer questions that are allowed to be asked, but rather that you see more and more of the borderline and on the poor side of borderline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will note that I personally have a philosophy of close fast, fix, reopen to try to avoid getting answers to questions that don't work correctly (the polling questions are most notorious for this).  I do dismay at the difficulty that people seem to have reading the on topic portion of the help center and those who have the question closed as &quot;too broad&quot; or &quot;primarily opinion based&quot; on Stackoverflow and then reask it here without fixing the underlying problem of too broad or opinion based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Aside from closing questions, we have the ability to edit them.  Transforming a question that isn't a good fit into one that is a good fit (*even if it is not the one originally asked, but **should** have been asked*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the editing part, consider [Java continuous integration with extras](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/204632/revisions) and [Considerations on which Java version to run in Production](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/183982/revisions) which are two examples of questions that I reworked into ones that fit the site.  I am sure other people have other examples - I just don't know them off the top of my head.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is a question that you believe should be open, please, come into the chat room and people there would be happy to work with you to figure out how a question can be worded so that it can fit properly within the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many times, though, this will involve working with the original asker of the question which can be difficult (there is a surprisingly large number of users who ask a question and never revisit the site logged in again - even if it is a good question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd much rather have a open good question on the site than a closed question, but I'd rather see a closed question than a multitude of poor quality open ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Going back to chat again, it really is a good place for the 'fun' things that people seem to nostalgize about and asking/answering those really fuzzy questions that seem to keep showing up about careers and education." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27752" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1345" RevisionGUID="b8b1b57d-5ecd-448e-8b3a-d2f6199c5f24" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You're gonna have some trouble, since a key part of maintaining &quot;the quality and maturity&quot; of the SE network is built around *not* allowing questions like that...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, you gotta start somewhere.  [Where can I find interesting programming discussions?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13198/where-can-i-find-interesting-programming-discussions) has a few suggestions you might consider...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I was recently informed that Prog.SE user [AmmoQ][1] has carved out a little corner on [The Daily WTF Forums](http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/27.aspx) specifically for questions that cannot and should not be asked here on Programmer's. TDWTF is not affiliated with Stack Exchange, and has its own standards of quality and conduct, so be respectful of these if you decide to make use of this resource. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/6617/ammoq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27753" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3648" RevisionGUID="5ce41b46-351c-4178-a4ad-5127979c3604" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've seen many questions which are too localized go un-closed. For example, [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/151312/8553) is much too localized. It's only ever helpful to that one guy doing that one professor's homework that one time, and is worthless to everyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I'd like to ask why the above question hasn't been closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27754" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1486" RevisionGUID="b2cd8ec2-9bad-4932-8569-3db6de22bc80" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Does this even mean anything when used *correctly*? [Mark notes][1] that since programmers themselves are on-topic for the site it could be used to refer to questions *about* beginners... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...But who is a beginner? The kid typing his [first &quot;Hello world&quot; program][2]? The freshman [about to attend class][3]? The new graduate starting his [first real-world project][4]? The [polyglot programmer][5] trying to make sense of Ruby? Beginner as a description for a person means very different things in different contexts, much more so than a *role* like [tag:team-leader]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A similar tag is [tag:great-programmer], where a disturbing number of the questions tagged are concerned with *[de][6][fi][7][ni][8][ng][9] [wh][10][at][11] [it][12] [me][13][an][14][s][15]*...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Mark argues][1] that beginner could be useful for a person starting their professional life to find questions about other people in the same situation. But Renesis suggests the [tag:junior-programmer] tag for this, which is probably a better choice seeing as I can only find a couple of questions tagged &quot;beginners&quot; that actually fit this criteria. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regardless of how it *could* be used, [tag:beginners] **is** primarily used as a meta-tag. They're not questions *about* beginners, they're questions *from* beginners! For the vast majority of the questions currently tagged `beginners`, [tag:learning], [tag:teaching] and [tag:education] are all better choices.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's get rid of it.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1473/do-we-need-to-ban-the-beginners-tag/1475#1475&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/60406/which-programming-language-first-introduced-hello-world&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/51669/getting-started-and-learning-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/70661/how-big-is-the-gap-between-what-you-learn-in-cs-curriculums-and-what-you-need-in&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46045/why-is-it-always-what-language-should-i-learn-next-instead-of-what-project-sho&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/9055/what-are-the-big-contemporary-names-in-the-programming-field&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7749/how-do-you-go-from-a-so-so-programmer-to-a-great-one&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4680/is-it-possible-to-become-a-good-programmer-if-you-dont-like-math&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1106/when-can-you-call-yourself-good-at-language-x&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4711/what-are-the-most-common-schools-of-knowledge-prevalent-in-great-programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3849/when-would-someone-be-considered-a-great-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/28/what-personal-qualities-make-for-a-successful-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7439/which-web-site-gives-the-most-accurate-indication-of-a-programmers-capabilities&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/14052/is-there-such-a-thing-as-a-super-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/50818/is-it-possible-to-measure-if-someone-is-a-good-programmer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27755" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1349" RevisionGUID="811ea564-341a-46f9-987b-b34ec8a6d1bc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Please see: [How does peer review for edits work?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76251/how-does-peer-review-for-edits-work/76284#76284)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - All users with the [edit privilege][1] may vote on suggested edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(voting includes rejecting as well as accepting)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[There is some discussion underway][2] about making that page a bit more visible...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/84693/eeeek-i-sense-an-eeeek-question-about-missing-a-unanswered-tab" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27756" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6072" RevisionGUID="82d8d03c-0c39-4718-8ab0-79c88eb4bdb3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A question I asked yesterday was put on hold because I asked if a library or framework exists that can solve my problem.  Here is the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/205730/looking-to-create-a-custom-graphical-editor-for-a-data-model-using-html5-and-sv&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I am not asking for your *favorite* or the *best* library. I am asking if one exists at all.  The former would be opinionated and the latter is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How could I rephrase my question so that it would not be closed and would be answered appropriately? I would accept the first answer that pointed me to a library that does what I need it to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:**&#xD;&#xA;I also think an appropriate answer would be something like: &quot;This kind of thing doesn't exist AFAIK, but you could try X approach, which gets you 50% of the way.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I don't see a fundamental difference between this kind of question and a question like: &quot;Does an algorithm exist to do Y?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27757" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1655" RevisionGUID="3cb92568-8882-4d74-ad10-3800aec9e131" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I know legal issues are in the faq as on-topic but I could not find an existing discussion of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do legal questions such as the [iPhone issue][1] or [non-paying customer question][2] really have a place here? I think that providing amateur legal advice (even if it is good) is a disservice to the community and it would be better if we were to close these as off-topic.  It seems these topics always end up with a lot of meta-discussion in the comments directly related to the dubious nature of internet legal advice, caveats etc. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/80785/should-i-remove-my-ios-app-from-sale-fearing-lodsys&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/23404/how-to-get-money-from-reluctant-client" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27758" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3671" RevisionGUID="b1244e96-2f64-42b4-ad77-fd88786b2575" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are 8 questions tagged with [tag:compensation] and 5 are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, compensation is *literally* off-topic according to the FAQ: *salary or compensation*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The 3 questions that remain open seem as if they are appropriate for this site, but I am a bit conflicted given that the FAQ explicitly forbids them. Are these special cases, or are these now considered off-topic? If they are off-topic, should we blacklist the [tag:compensation] tag all together?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a side note, there is no [tag:salary] tag. I don't know if it ever existed or  was addressed in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have edited the tag out of all the closed questions. Here is the list of them for reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Why do business analysts and project managers get higher salaries than programmers?][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it possible/likely to be paid fairly without a college degree?][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Salary Negotiation; How Best to Broach the Subject?][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [Is there any site which tells or highlights by zone developer income source? I think i am getting less yearly][4]&#xD;&#xA;* [Jobs asking for web design and development skills, should it be doubling the pay? ][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think any of these questions should be reopened. They are basically consulting a programmers perspective, and not really about software development. At least that's how I am interpreting them against the FAQ. I'll report on the other open questions when I have time to really digest them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/45776/why-do-business-analysts-and-project-managers-get-higher-salaries-than-programme&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/70377/is-it-possible-likely-to-be-paid-fairly-without-a-college-degree&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/127775/salary-negotiation-how-best-to-broach-the-subject&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/132346/is-there-any-site-which-tells-or-highlights-by-zone-developer-income-source-i-t&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/137928/jobs-asking-for-web-design-and-development-skills-should-it-be-doubling-the-pay" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27759" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="554" RevisionGUID="28ccc4f8-2042-4774-ac5b-0c00cf0d18f7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Does giving a developer a slower development machine result in faster/more efficient code?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like most respondents, I am horrified that anyone would think this is a good strategy.  But that doesn't make the question unconstructive or off-topic.  It stimulated a good discussion of development strategies for slow target platforms, and of the difference between development and test.  Pros and Cons for the strategy were suggested (and the cons clearly won out).   It was the 2nd highest voted question on the site, and near the top of the view count too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What makes that an unconstructive question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Disclaimer - I neither wrote nor answered this question - I am just suprised to see it closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/13623/145" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27760" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1408" RevisionGUID="b525764a-7fca-4cb7-87ec-18b495d8f228" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="If you catch it early *enough*, I think the answer is easy, I've had success with it myself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Downvote** and **comment**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    I came upon an interesting question ([I made a mistake accepting this job](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/63657/i-made-a-mistake-accepting-this-job)) which had about 5 answers already, and the top one, if I remember correctly, in 4 minutes had already gone up to **+5/-0** (sadly the [timeline](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/63657/timeline) doesn't break it down into small enough chunks to actually tell).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    I didn't want to be so harsh, but I felt like the community was going to run away with it if I didn't say something.  Soon the comment had several upvotes and the momentum on the answer had been killed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/59606/is-type-safety-worth-the-trade-offs/59608#59608 this is another example where a comment stopped the streak of upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;* If you have time, **answer**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Since I had downvoted, the OP asked me what my problem with it was and what my thoughts were.  I hadn't planned on answering, but I figured if I was going to be a naysayer then I had a responsibility to back up what I'd said if asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some users actually like these short answers; One poster commented this, and said that others (I can only assume mine) were too long-winded.  In response to me, he subsequently posted an [answer here on meta](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers/1365#1365) stating his reasoning.  I disagree with this view, but if it is a conscious opinion, than it is that user's prerogative and I am OK with that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I *don't* think this is a problem of members of the community *wanting* short answers, or valuing them over good ones in a completely fair comparison.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is another manifestation of [Fastest Gun in the West Problem](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem), and it *may be worse here on Programmers*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* A short answer by nature has less to disagree with.&#xD;&#xA;* The short answer is more likely to be read by people just scanning the answers.&#xD;&#xA;* The short answer is digested quickly by all readers.&#xD;&#xA;* If the short answer already has votes, it's easy to *assume* that someone else has read the long answers for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the answers to the FGITW problem, [Adam Davis starts out with](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem/9758#9758):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've asked questions that have received an immediate answer with enough information to get me past my block, but not served on a platter as you propose, with all the information I might need.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This quick-answer nature is ***very*** specific to StackOverflow.  A *high* percentage of questions on SO are likely to have been a &quot;blocker&quot; for someone, while almost all on Programmers are the thoughtful, non-urgent kind of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [(non-)solution](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73/is-the-fastest-gun-in-the-west-solved#93) to the FGITW problem is to encourage people to vote better.  This solution is much better suited to SO than to Programmers, and I believe needs revisiting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**In conclusion** I disagree with the idea that something is wrong the the &quot;people&quot; here.  It is completely natural to see a highly-upvoted short answer, read it, agree; then scan the rest and see a long-winded answer and assume everyone else must not have agreed and skip it.  Then you add your vote to the stack on the short answer, and voila, the cycle continues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If we want to fix this, the software is going to have to change.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27761" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6074" RevisionGUID="b3d06284-d1d0-4fb9-bdfc-1962b894ff14" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Wikipedia definition:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Eating your own dog food, also called dogfooding, is a slang term used to reference a scenario in which a company (usually, a computer software company) uses its own product to demonstrate the quality and capabilities of the product. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are unique process, design, and testing challenges involved when a company &quot;eats its own dog food&quot; while developing a software product. I think a `dogfooding` tag would be useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/205834/when-is-it-appropriate-to-start-using-the-next-revision-of-a-tool-when-dogfoodin&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27762" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3705" RevisionGUID="b352d7d3-636b-4dbe-a1f7-49b5900a3d16" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Open Source related question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/153311/53019)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is the linked question an appropriate question for P.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In it's current / original form, I think it's partially there since it relates to business decisions and software licensing.  OTOH, the question is a shade too close to a rant." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27764" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1422" RevisionGUID="91626961-5c05-4b49-8e88-7a96cdb0dac4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="To provide a little bit of context behind the last election, there were several candidates who ran on a platform of &quot;less moderation&quot; due to a vocal portion of the community who believed the moderators pro tempore were too hands on. If you look at [the platforms people ran on](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/election/1), you can see that definitely influenced the  other candidates (myself included) to address that issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the election was incredibly close: it took 17 rounds of runoffs before a third person crossed the threshold needed to be elected. The next three people were:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Me (Mark Trapp)](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/8/mark-trapp)&#xD;&#xA;* [Ryan Hayes](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/1521/ryan-hayes)&#xD;&#xA;* [ammoQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/6617/ammoq)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was most certainly considered a &quot;stern&quot; candidate, Ryan Hayes seemed to run on a mostly middle-to-lax moderation platform, and ammoQ ran on a &quot;as little moderation as possible&quot; platform.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the top 6, it's hard to make any generalizations about whether the election process failed the community, or whether the choices would be significantly different. Obviously I disagree with some of the candidates, as I'm sure they disagree with me. I think if anything, it shows the community is deeply divided about what constitutes a &quot;good&quot; site. But you don't need the election to see that: it's evident in the questions on meta and comments on controversial questions.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27765" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6117" RevisionGUID="74759cf3-ccef-46d4-859b-f341c4b3cbfd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="First off, do a little sanity-check: are you *sure* the question is off-topic? If it's about cats, then that's an easy check; otherwise, review [the faq](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next, do another sanity-check: is it spam? Is it someone trolling for attention? There are specific flags for &quot;spam&quot; and &quot;it is not welcome in our community&quot; that are a heck of a lot more effective than closing for stuff that needs to be removed ASAP - don't waste your time and everyone else's time trying to find the best close reason for &quot;Cheap Gucci Handbags&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, see if any of the close reasons are reasonably close. Not *just* the OT reasons, but also things like &quot;Too Broad&quot; and &quot;Primarily opinion-based&quot;. If OT is the best fit, then read the predefined reasons carefully: the OT reasons listed in the dialog represent the most common off-topic questions, so there's a pretty good chance that one of them *will* fit, but... Keep in mind that there are *also* a lot of perfectly good questions that touch on the same topics; *how the question is asked* can matter almost as much as *what it asks about.* Consider if an edit might be able to transform the question into something more acceptable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, either pick one of the predefined off-topic reasons, or - if none of them fits - back up and select &quot;other&quot; on the main flagging dialog. If you do the latter, keep in mind that you're asking a moderator to review the post: is it something that *really* needs a moderator's attention? If you don't feel strongly about it, *don't flag*. If you do, great! Explain *why*. Don't just type &quot;off-topic&quot;; provide enough information to help the moderator understand what problems you envision the post causing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Oh - and to answer your last question: right now, no one&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; sees the off-topic reasons you choose when flagging. That may change in the future, but for now they exist primarily for *your* benefit, to provide examples of the sorts of things that you should consider flagging when you come across them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;They are recorded, I'm looking at them in aggregate and will probably expose that information to moderators at some point, but the design is in keeping with the whole [&quot;training wheels for future close-voters&quot;][1] aspect, not &quot;feedback for askers&quot; since - no offense - a lot of flaggers have really weird ideas about what is on or off-topic.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/improved-flagging/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27766" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1815" RevisionGUID="00a0d610-19b5-45be-986c-0aa153f4dbc6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As you mention, the questions that work on Stack Exchange are ones that have a specific, singular, and solvable problem: that is, you ask a question, you get targeted answers that may or may not help you solve the problem. If they don't, you edit your question to clarify. If the answers are unclear, you ask the answerers to expand on their answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, that's not what happened: you've presented a position, asked several questions, and attempted to carry on a conversation with all the answerers in a now deleted answer complete with your own thoughts and ideas about the subject. That's not really what Stack Exchange is about: we're not a discussion board where free-form conversations can take place about a general topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The blog post [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) talks about this type of problem and provides specific guidance that is codified in our [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.** To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* **there is no actual problem to be solved:** “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here.** If your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if you distilled all the discussion you were trying to have in all the comments, and all the opinions you might have about a topic, what is the *exact nature* of the problem you're trying to solve? Asking about that likely is going to be a good fit for us. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to ask yourself, &quot;what does a *correct* answer to this question look like?&quot; If it's hard to imagine it, the question is likely a discussion topic, and should be revised. That is, if you're not getting the answers you want, your first inclination should be to tighten up the question, not to initiate a discussion about your opinions or thoughts about the topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To speak to the specific nature of *this* question, you wanting to know what language you should switch to, that's off-topic here unless it's particularly specific. That is, you have a specific use-case and you need to know if a specific language would be more appropriate: perhaps something like, &quot;Can I interact with an RDBMS using something other than SQL?&quot; or &quot;How can I develop iOS applications without knowing Objective-C?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more information about why the more general &quot;What language should I use?&quot; is off-topic, check out the question, [Why is “what language should I learn” considered off-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1573/why-is-what-language-should-i-learn-considered-off-topic):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The simple answer is that the question as stated &quot;which language should I learn next?&quot; is **unanswerable**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only answer anyone should give is **always** &quot;it depends&quot; - which isn't an answer at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Ultimately it's not a real problem. The next language you should learn is largely determined by the project you are working on and unless you are in the rare situation of having complete freedom over what you do this will have been chosen by someone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As to other questions, feel free to flag questions you don't believe fit these criteria for moderator review. With over 12,000 questions asked, some slip through the cracks of community moderation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27767" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1466" RevisionGUID="1a9d8b09-7a9e-407c-8c69-94b563cbdbb8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="### **[Developer Art][1]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm continuously amazed by his input - some of the contributions made are astounding.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Jonathan Khoo&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Proposed by [Jonathan Khoo](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1461/sponsoring-a-community-member-to-attend-the-2011-rallyon-conference/1462#1462)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/8685/developer-art&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27768" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="600" RevisionGUID="4af5fdef-d371-4553-92de-65b2cd64dcf0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The first of the FAQ is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; expert programmers who are interested&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in subjective discussions on software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to the FAQ it is about the actual development of software not programmers, there a lot of questions about programmers (eg https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1166/how-important-is-dress-code-to-you)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is in complete contrast to the Area 51 proposal Not Programming Related (which is the proposal for this site) the tagline on Area 51 is &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Beta Q&amp;A site for expert programmers interested in discussions that are only indirectly related to programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is wider than the FAQ, also take this On topic question (13 votes):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should I work for a company that makes you wear a suit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be closed on this site under the current FAQ. I think people want a somewhat more open ended site, I've pretty new here to the site and programming but its the feeling I get from the people who actually use the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm asking for the site to be widened to allow more subjective questions that currently available. I think it as long as it related to programmers (and programming) it should be ok, no matter what the question is (pretty much like that anyway).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alternatively rename the site to Programm*ing* as the FAQ says this site is about Programming only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So either change the title or the FAQ (preferably the FAQ)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27769" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6119" RevisionGUID="eb02b28c-e2d5-4401-b2d3-0af090abd65f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Hovering the mouse pointer over a link having a title attribute should display the title, but currently this works only when you are looking at an editing preview of the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is something wrong with the translation from link markdown to HTML. The optional title field is normally translated to an HTML title attribute. The title attribute is missing when *viewing* a post, but is present when *editing* a post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is [an example] [id] reference-style link.&#xD;&#xA;    [id]: http://example.com/  &quot;Optional Title Here&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is translated to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com/&quot; title=&quot;Optional Title Here&quot;&gt;an example&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;    reference-style link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;in the editor preview, but to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com/&quot;&gt;an example&lt;/a&gt; reference-style link.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;after editing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: I cannot reproduce this problem on another site ([english.se]), which is why I am reporting it here and not on [meta.se].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: A post which illustrates the problem in the wild is: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/186318/39089&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: The problem was not reproducible after saving an edit to the post – even though the edit has nothing to do with the link. The problem was still not reproducible even after rolling the edit back. HOWEVER, between 2013 and 2016 the bug resurfaced. The post does exhibit the problem again, and presumably will continue to do so as long as nobody edits the post." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27770" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1817" RevisionGUID="8a7585e6-ad72-401e-93e3-45495dbd0b5b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a subtle but pernicious problem with the quoted answer and many like it: *it's impossible to prove a negative.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This kind of answer would never fly on any of the science SE sites because it is incorrect *by definition*.  The best *objective* answer one can give (assuming one agrees with the &quot;no&quot; premise) is to list the reasons that *might* be considered valid and explain why they should be considered invalid.  If no such reasons are known, then the correct answer to the question isn't *&quot;no&quot;*, it's actually *&quot;I don't know&quot;*, which clearly isn't worth posting as an answer.  Maybe a comment, if the question goes [tumbleweed][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know if we should be trying to &quot;moderate away&quot; these answers, but [as I've pleaded for in the past][1], we desperately need people to start downvoting these fact-free &quot;pithy phrase&quot; answers instead of upvoting them.  I think that having answers on top of the heap that look like they took 5 seconds to poop out (maybe less) really hurt our credibility as a community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange wants to [optimize for pearls, not sand][2].  *Part* of this is emphasizing the value of great answers.  The other part is *de-emphasizing the poor ones*.  This is exactly why we have downvotes.  Has anyone *ever* seen a 1-line answer singled out in a positive light on the SE blog, or on any major blog, or really anywhere other than maybe reddit?  *Some* short answers may genuinely be correct and complete, but *most* of them are... sand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop pressing the other arrow when you see this type of pandering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1400/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/21/tumbleweed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27771" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1819" RevisionGUID="93dacca3-1f6e-49b7-bdf5-80dffd050fcb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've been noticing a trend towards more and more answers that folks *want* to be true, even when real-life experience states the opposite. [Example][1], where &quot;run away&quot; is the most common of answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/86502/move-on-and-look-elsewhere-or-confront-the-boss" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27772" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1518" RevisionGUID="3ae6087e-e10d-4830-8d71-d858b8b50746" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is this question [Can a flag that attracts moderator action be treated as invalid?][1]   &#xD;&#xA;which deals with the general idea behind the validity of any flag. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What i am asking is the specific flag option when we hit the flag button. The area in which we  address the moderator regarding the type of attention that is required. Can this flag be dismissed as invalid? Meaning who ever raised it Did not need to and it did not warrant a mods attention?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance this topic https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/73667/mobile-games-paid-vs-ad-supported  I was unable to define the exact nature of the problem, as i was unable to find its duplicate here. IMHO it needed a mods attention. Hence i flagged it using the inform moderator flag stating that it could be migrated to gamedev.stackexchange.com - the idea in itself is valid. and it is valid topic.&#xD;&#xA; Mod attention was required and the topic was closed as duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Leaving me miffed as to why this type flag was dismissed as invalid. specifically when this was not defined In absolutes as off topic or duplicate or does not belong here.&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/87931/can-a-flag-that-attracts-moderator-action-be-treated-as-invalid" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27773" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="660" RevisionGUID="29b51876-d375-47b2-b2dd-93c88cf74c95" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question was closed as too localized:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/25975/best-programming-books-in-2010&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure that &quot;too localized&quot; is a bad thing in this case.  This question, in my mind, would have been useful for people who already own, have read, or have considered buying many of the &quot;classics&quot; (GoF, SICP, Dragon, Pragmatic Programmer, etc, etc, etc).  I'm at fault for not stating my rational in my question, but I asked the question precisely because this would be useful for me.  It's hard to sift through all the past very good books to find the good **new** books.  Given the number of upvotes and stars I think it was useful to others too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, it can be useful for people who want to keep on top of new developments in the field.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cheers,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;JD" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27774" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6122" RevisionGUID="e720e0bd-fbd9-4185-b00c-6f6678bdfece" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [Help Center's page on what is on topic][1] specifically mentions that questions about tools should be asked on [Stack Overflow][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27775" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1536" RevisionGUID="0abd3e1b-19e0-4cc3-be1e-b8dbe70dbc80" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's a tag badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two kinds of badges:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [general badges](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges) awarded for specific things&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [tag badges](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=tags) awarded &quot;These badges are awarded for participating in **non community-wiki questions** with particular tags.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag badges can be revoked if you fall below the criteria." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27776" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1880" RevisionGUID="3f82a5e1-5707-41e2-bfcc-93fd58d90e0d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As ChrisF mentioned, questions need to invite some unique insight from programmers beyond just a simple &quot;I'm asking programmers&quot; clause. In terms of possible scope, we want to hit the blue area of this diagram:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Programmers.SE scope](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, real questions invite *answers*, not *ideas*, *opinions*, or *lists*. From [our FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `_____`”, then you should not be asking here. (You are more than welcome to have such discussions in our [real time web chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/).) However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged [and possibly removed](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#deletion), **avoid** asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite `______`?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I closed it as off-topic per these guidelines: Stack Exchange is not well suited for generating lists of recommendations. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, after looking around, I found we had an earlier round that I thought might be helpful (even if it happened to have been closed), so I changed the close reason to exact duplicate to provide a link back to the earlier question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As others have noted, it's probably a better fit for [Productivity.SE](http://productivity.stackexchange.com) or even [Project Management.SE](http://pm.stackexchange.com), but the guidelines about open-ended questions are a network-wide thing, and lists of recommendations are off-topic everywhere, not just on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Are questions not directly related to programming (but might concern programmers) on-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/288/are-questions-not-directly-related-to-programming-but-might-concern-programmers)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are “I'm looking for X” questions on topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also check out [Frequently closing popular questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1675/frequently-closing-popular-questions), where the idea that the guidelines in place shouldn't apply to popular questions was discussed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27777" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3707" RevisionGUID="044a5c8c-fb16-4970-a128-0ee40c8dba62" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="No, it's not on-topic and it should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The wall of text is a treatise on the asker's own thoughts about the topic, and doesn't actually ask about any specific problem the author is personally having. Rather than creating an answerable question, it creates a prompt for discussion: as an answerer, you *must* engage in the asker's own personal beliefs about the subject to answer comprehensively, which only leads to more discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is why [this section][1] is in the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite `______`?”&#xD;&#xA;* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use `______` for `______`, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;* there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if `______` happened?”&#xD;&#xA;* it is a rant disguised as a question: “`______` sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One possible way you can fix that is to remove the asker's own answer to whatever the question is and encourage him or her to add it as their own answer. If you do that, this is what you're left with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; My company has a very broad range of products and there are a few that are not strategic to us so I wanted to open source them (so we can focus on what makes us unique and open source the products that every firm has).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our industry (quant) does not open source(we would be the first firm to try this) and the feedback I'm getting from my management team is either 1) we'll destroy the industry or 2) all competitive commercial firms will unite against us and we'll be wiped out either way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our industry is very secretive and I don't want to put anyone(even my competitors employees) out of a job yet I don't want to protect inefficient people by not being open with everyone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts(doesn't have to be to my specific situation, I'm looking for the general lessons). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what are your thoughts? Does open sourcing apply generally or is it only really applicable to software? Is it overall good for people in the quant industry and outside? I'm actually more interested in the negativeness effects(although positive are welcomed as well)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're provided a picture of a secretive quant industry that would—according to the asker's managers—completely implode if whatever the asker does was open-sourced.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then we're asked a series of questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So what are your thoughts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Not a real question.** We're not a discussion board: we don't provide &quot;thoughts&quot; on vague situations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does open sourcing apply generally or is it only really applicable to software?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Not a real question/off-topic.** Because we're on Programmers.SE, it *should* be assumed the question's about software development, but this question presents a comparsion between open source applying to software only or &quot;generally&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does &quot;generally&quot; mean? Open source food? Open source cars? Open source plumbing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we're not talking about software development, this is off-topic. If we *are* talking about software development, this comparison doesn't make any sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it overall good for people in the quant industry and outside? I'm actually more interested in the negativeness effects(although positive are welcomed as well)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Not a real question.** &quot;Overall good&quot; and &quot;negativeness [sic] effects&quot; are vague and broad correctness criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is bad as written, and trying to save it by keeping the asker's intent is not going to help. Is there a way to substantially rewrite the question in a way that could work here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think there is. If you remove all the discussion prompts and the asker's really long answer to their own discussion prompts, what you're left with is a simple question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is open source bad for business?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, if you scope to a problem someone actually faces, can be reformulated as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should [my company|I] adopt open source as part of [my company's|my] business model?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We don't know. Programmers.SE users have opinions about that, sure, but there is no generally-applicable answer that can be provided in the &quot;fun size unit of work&quot; answer that Stack Exchange specializes in.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People write books about it, make a living as consultants defending one side or the other, or even devote their entire life to the idea. We can't possibly hope to provide a useful answer here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is why we have this line in the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an *entire book* that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, it's like asking:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Should my company standardize on .NET?&#xD;&#xA;* Should I learn Python?&#xD;&#xA;* Is creating a Facebook killer worth it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All things we close here regularly because we're not equipped to decide life for people: we can only answer specific questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Final housekeeping note: &quot;is open source good/bad?&quot; is such a popular question in software development that the first thing you should be doing when you see a question like this nearly two years after this site launched is searching for duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And indeed, there are several:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/139058/isnt-open-source-bad-for-developers-themselves&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/61091/to-open-source-or-not-to-open-source-that-is-the-question&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/139912/the-reason-to-make-some-code-open-source&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2682/does-making-source-code-available-affect-your-ability-to-generate-revenue&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/130341/open-source-or-closed-source-for-saas&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/114804/in-what-situations-is-it-a-bad-idea-to-use-open-source-code-for-a-corporate-proj&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So even if you don't find my argument convincing, at least close the question as a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27779" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1884" RevisionGUID="9bd03da5-2e28-4027-a0ee-d3e7f694bd9c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is the [complete text of your question][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Best simplest project / todo manager for programmers in OSX&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm trying to figure out the best project / todo manager.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am a single programmer, working on a single project in spare time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've tried using TextEdit (notepad), I've tried big project managers, they're too cumbersome with due dates, start dates, etc.  I spend more time organizing what's next and how it's linked with everything else than actually programming / testing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I need some suggestions.  Right now I'm using TaskPaper, which gets the job done very well, but am open for others' suggestions.  It has to be for OSX.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is explicitly covered in https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite \_\_\_\_\_\_?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use \_\_\_\_\_\_ for \_\_\_\_\_\_, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question has the &quot;every answer is equally valid&quot; and the &quot;What do you use? I'll go first&quot; problems, which are listed above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/89585/best-simplest-project-todo-manager-for-programmers-in-osx" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27780" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3789" RevisionGUID="bd7dcfae-12ee-4ade-a4b3-3488ffdc0ec7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It looks like Jarrod Roberson actually did a good edit too it to make it a good constructive question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/156740/revisions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I went ahead and reopened it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27781" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6137" RevisionGUID="ae6c27c6-f735-4941-aa78-c5ad675e8b96" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Question from main:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/209295/53019&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**This meta question is to hash out the meta commentary going on about the Q.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Synopsis: the question pitches two extreme points of view about programming against each other and asks for evidence to back up the more recent and perhaps more radical of the two points of view.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Current) Top answer comes from one of our highest ranked community members and points out the fallacy(ies) behind the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other two answers are okay and meh.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the question is on-topic; constructive; and answerable by expertise not just by opinion. So that's why I cast the 5th re-open vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers to this meta question should either be in support of keeping the subject question open or why it should be closed (again).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27782" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="914" RevisionGUID="a7ab743f-d379-4b45-a672-3dfe952cfbc0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Can we get the [migrated answer account](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/34023/how-to-end-a-relationship-with-a-client-without-pissing-them-off) merged with the [new posters account](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/12490/thesam18888)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27783" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1583" RevisionGUID="12583424-58da-4c54-ab13-a2198dc60b0b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="When a user asks a question, the sidebar links to [the FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) and  [How to Ask](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask), which describes how to ask a constructive question, including some very basic advice along with links:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On-site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Our search](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search) so they can get help immediately instead of asking a duplicated question&#xD;&#xA;* Our FAQ (again) so they can understand what questions work best here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Off-site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Google's [tips for getting help](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/09/tips-for-getting-help-with-your-site.html)&#xD;&#xA;* Jon Skeet's [Writing the perfect question](http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx)&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask question's the smart way](http://catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html)&#xD;&#xA;* [Help vampires: a spotter's guide](http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/)&#xD;&#xA;* [How to ask a question](http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When they start typing in a question title, the system presents them with a ton of related questions that might be really close to what they intended to ask about, thereby preventing another question that covers the same ground from being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, most questions get a ton of feedback in comments (and in answers) addressing the *problems* with the question: a question asker can use that feedback to edit and better hone their question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, when a question is closed, there's a very brief message that explains what was wrong with the question; and, in most cases, moderators will leave a comment explaining what was wrong and what the next steps are for the user (how to rephrase, what to read, or how to get the question reopened).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By all means, we'd love for every possible developer to be able to ask questions that are going to get answers that are helpful to them, but after all of the above, they *still* ask an off-topic question, or a question that's not constructive, or a question that doesn't clearly say what problem the asker is trying to solve, **I'm not sure there's any more we can do.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE is one of the more popular Stack Exchange sites: we get a lot of users, a lot of questions, and a lot of answers. We can't spend a great deal of time mentoring every single user who happens upon the site: at some point, users either need to help themselves and figure out if they're in the right place to ask their question (and, if they are, how to ask it in a way that makes it interesting to other people), or if they can't, find a place that's better suited for them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27784" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1899" RevisionGUID="e7cef3e1-ac48-454c-83e1-bb42fc9892f7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So over the past few days I noticed a bit of an up-tick in the number of questions being migrated from Stack Overflow that aren't good fits for Programmers.SE or Stack Exchange in general: either they're off-topic, not-constructive, or just not answerable questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I decided to do a bit of an analysis on questions migrated here, and here's what I found:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Last day: 6/16 migrated questions closed (37.5% fail rate)&#xD;&#xA;* Last week: 21/66 (31.8% fail rate)&#xD;&#xA;* Last 30 days: 79/316 (25% fail rate)&#xD;&#xA;* Previous 30 days: 70/306 (22% fail rate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So there is a bit of an up-tick, but I'm not sure what to make of it or if there are any conclusions to be drawn from it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is, is a 20% fail rate normal or expected? What about 40%? Is this just a quirk of two popular sites sharing a migration path, or is there something that can be done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Edit&#xD;&#xA;There's a [new migration stats page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats) in the 10k+ tools that now show these numbers for the past 90 days: it's a 26% failure rate for Stack Overflow over that time period." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27785" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3813" RevisionGUID="f3c6162d-3c3d-477c-bd77-831e37453d31" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/56847/outsourcing-a-private-project-can-it-be-done&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one probably could have been improved and focused with a good edit to reword the question from:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Can it be done?  I don't know, can it be done to study the effects of Bengal Tiger mating practices in zero-G environments?  Certainly it could be with enough time, effort and money so *Can it be done?* is the wrong question to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - What is the best way to outsource development and manage potential quality issues?  This is a much better question and is probably what you really wanted to know anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regardless, it wasn't closed for quality, it was closed because this question has been asked before and there were a number of excellent answers that you could have benefited from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/42685/sql-plan-guide-comparison-syncing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can anyone suggest a good way to sync plan guides for a database across multiple environments? (dev/prod etc). It seems that vs2010 database project schema comparison does not cater for this...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't speak for Mark, but I feel that he probably closed this because it is a very specific question about a very specific situation with a very specific software.  He felt it was too specific to be of any real benefit to future visitors.  For more information see the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as deletion, this may have been in an effort to clean up the culmination of closed questions that have no hope of improvement." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27786" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6160" RevisionGUID="35930f4a-bab5-45bc-9e7e-93acacf5994f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just noticed that https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/50819/is-there-a-measure-of-code-rot/50821#50821, which was created in February 2011 was closed two weeks ago as a duplicate of https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/135993/how-can-i-quantify-the-amount-of-technical-debt-that-exists-in-a-project, which is a year younger.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Putting aside for a moment my annoyance at people seemingly randomly closing old inactive questions like that, what earthly purpose does it serve to close an older question as a duplicate of a newer one?  If anything, it should be the other way around.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/61558/turn-away-a-bug-if-no-reproducible-test-case-exists, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/45230/do-programmers-at-non-software-companies-need-the-same-things-as-at-software-com, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/61655/how-do-you-know-youre-writing-good-code, and https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12439/code-smell-inheritance-abuse?lq=1 are other examples.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27787" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="923" RevisionGUID="7a14be79-733d-4b6b-88d5-49f9272145b4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm referring to this question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/23535/5497&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No offense to moderator **bigown**, but I don't see how this is fair or constructive behavior.  The question has plenty of upvotes.  The answers have plenty of upvotes.  It has been viewed 1,305 times at the time of this writing, and there are 23 answers and plenty of comments and discussion!  The community obviously approves of this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, bigown thinks the question doesn't meet the six guidelines.  He's entitled to an opinion.  According to the privileges page, [4 other people typically need to share his opinion to close the question][1].  I realize moderators can just close a question on their own, but this seems like overzealous behavior.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/close-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27788" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1596" RevisionGUID="c08e870e-2662-4fe6-92e6-9baee5761bec" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm just going to say it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community-wiki auto conversion sucks.  And it's not (really) the rep, either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been racking my brain trying to figure out why I don't have a [career tag badge](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/60/career).  After all, I have [many answers](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=user:2314+[career]), and even in the first 6 non-wiki or so, I've got more than 100 upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can accept that CW *upvotes* don't really count toward tag badges (even though it's a little weird), though I definitely think that **votes before the CW conversion *should* count**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, [here's the problem requirement](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63835/what-are-tag-badges-how-do-they-work/63836#63836): Must have **20 non-wiki answers**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, it looks like I'm not too far away, but I'm still quite irked by this whole auto-conversion thing.  Why?  Because I don't tend to answer questions that are pile-on polls like https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/38505/most-overhyped-software-engineering-technologies-and-concepts-of-the-last-20-year.  But every once in a while, I do get a [decent answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/38746/software-design-build-it-fast-or-build-it-well/38752#38752) in on a question which becomes highly viewed, and how am I rewarded? **Community wiki!** (that one stopped at 16 answers... ugh.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not an &quot;we should change the whole system to benefit me&quot; post.  I understand that rep should not be dished out like mad to posts with a hockey-puck view trajectory.  But I really wish the auto-conversion would not slap the answerers on those posts which *barely ever* reach the 15 answer limit.  **After all, that's *most really good questions* given enough time.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27789" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3886" RevisionGUID="0678c7f7-d7ca-43a7-9b7c-29e376eb8ddb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Paragraphs**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.&lt;kbd&gt;enter&lt;/kbd&gt;&lt;kbd&gt;enter&lt;/kbd&gt;Praesent in metus diam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will produce this: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Praesent in metus diam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Linebreaks**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.&lt;kbd&gt;space&lt;/kbd&gt;&lt;kbd&gt;space&lt;/kbd&gt;&lt;kbd&gt;enter&lt;/kbd&gt;Praesent in metus diam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will produce this: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Praesent in metus diam.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't forget to check out our [Markdown editing help page][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/editing-help" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27790" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="945" RevisionGUID="7970fb3c-d6c3-48a3-a863-25008f716cf0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I created one entry for the [career-advice wiki tag][1], and decided to see if I qualified to create any others. According to the &quot;top users&quot; link for a couple other tags, I appear in the top 20 answerers for a couple others, for example &quot;[best practices][2]&quot; (oh no, I'm at the bottom of the list!). There is no edit functionality for me when I try to edit the wiki tag for best practices. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career-advice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/best-practices/topusers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27791" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1622" RevisionGUID="97780da4-5157-4871-b27e-c2d51c4ca0a1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't feel picked on. Thanks for bringing this up. Your post speaks to something I've been trying to put into coherent words for the last few days. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Far as that question goes, my intent with saying &quot;Please be sure to include in your answers *how* the things you do affect your productivity.&quot; was simply to remind people that one-liners aren't okay and that if they have something to suggest, they should substantiate it with something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main reason I added that in was that I felt (and still do, to a point) that there was merit to the question, but it fell into the trap of crappy phrasing and answers. I was hoping to tease out something better out of it without putting an explicit &quot;moderator note&quot; in it. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. This time it doesn't look like it did much either way, although the question that was chosen as the duplicate is, in my mind, actually worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that aside, let's talk about your idea. I like the spirit of it, but I wonder if most of the questions here are such that if you remove the explanation from answers you end up with thoughtless one-liners.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughtless one-liners are not acceptable and we have other parts of the FAQ that cover that -- usually questions that go for a list of one-liners are described somewhere in the [&quot;What kind of questions should I not ask here?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section. But out of all the guidelines for constructive subjective questions, short answers appear only once. I think it's possible for a question to contain short but meaningful answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of trying to measure that level of meaning in an additional guideline, I think it may be better to agree on how we should enforce existing guidelines that cover the same ground. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we delete short/thoughtless answers? Do we allow their posters a chance to edit more information in? Does the community accept direct moderator intervention in those cases or are we just going to end up with an endless fight? Sure, moderators are given their power for a reason and all that, but if we don't have the community backing us up and performing some part of the moderation as well, this is gonna be a full-time job, nevermind the resentment that's going to build up until everyone takes their toys and goes home.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in the end, I think your suggestion is a useful rule of thumb, but I'd prefer a clear/unified way to enforce existing guidelines instead of writing it into the FAQ as it might open a very subjective can of worms." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27792" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="978" RevisionGUID="3ebfd9cb-b867-40db-8d9c-62a1426597a1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This][1] question started out so-so, but by the time you get to the comments on the last (most downvoted) question, it's descended into a mire of tit-for-tat insults between two people who have ended up using Programmers to settle an internal dispute.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever the merits of their respective cases, or the value of the original question, and even taking into account the time invested by answerers and commenters, I can't help thinking that this question ought to be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/34877/hired-developer-insists-on-doing-things-the-wrong-way" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27794" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3923" RevisionGUID="8ded5963-64b0-4d43-950b-e47620659074" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; 1\. Note that this question was not subjective. I was not asking about peope's personal idiosyncratic definitions of the terminology, nor about the difference between copyleft and permissive licencing, nor about which type of license was &quot;better&quot;. (I did get a bunch of off topic responses answering those questions which I hadn't asked, but I edited the question to clarify, and there's been no trouble since.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually you are asking us to verify or dispute your idiosyncratic definitions of the terminology, right here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; These definitions, although they derive from very different ideologies, are broadly compatible, and most Free Software is also Open Source Software and vice versa. I believe, however, that it is possible for this not to be the case: It is possible for software to be Open Source without being Free, or to be Free without being Open Source.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not a question, that's a confusing &amp; confused opinion based on unreferenced claims. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2\. Note that the question has an excellent, simple, accepted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3\. Note that, in general, good answers are voted up, and a bad answer is voted down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also note that there are four deleted answers, two of them up voted. You confused a lot of people with your question, 11 answers in total, all answering to a slightly different question. That, by definition, is not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 4\. Note that the question is nearly two years old, and has stood without trouble that long.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sorry about that, we should have closed this one earlier. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So why was it suddenly and unilaterally closed as &quot;Not Constructive&quot;? What does this achieve? Who is helped by this closure?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It helps signal future readers that the question and its answers are problematic. You rushed in accepting an answer, and arrived at a possibly wrong conclusion: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And the answer, it seems, is that it's impossible to be Free without being Open, but possible to be Open without being Free. Thank you everyone who actually answered the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of licences that are approved by the FSF but not by OSI: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [WTFPL][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [original BSD license][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [CeCILL][3] &#xD;&#xA;- [Cryptix General License][4]&#xD;&#xA;- XFree86 1.1 License&#xD;&#xA;- [Netscape Public License][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [OpenSSL license][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact some of those where pointed to you in a [later answer][7], at which point you dismissed OSI approved as a parameter, and moved on to your own definition of what an open source license is. That's unfair to the answerers, your question is build around the FSF and OSI definitions, and it's implied that one of the parameters of it is that the licences discussed should be approved by either the FSF or OSI, or both. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are not here to discuss personal interpretations and ideologies, what is the **actual practical problem** you are trying to solve? Your question lacks well defined parameters, it's a very interesting discussion topic, but unfortunately discussions don't really work with the Q&amp;A philosophy and format of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_What_The_Fuck_You_Want_To_Public_License&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_license&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CeCILL&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptix_General_License&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Public_License&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSSL_license#Licensing&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/134786/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27795" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1036" RevisionGUID="ffa3feb5-45fc-4c40-84b4-1db6e03da73a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have [asked a question about what to do when coding feel boring and the same all over again][1]. All the answer can be for a community point of view right, so there is no one answer right, but the right question is a little sum of all the answer, what can i do in this case ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[the related question is this one][1] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/38225/what-to-do-when-coding-begins-to-feel-boring-like-it-is-all-just-more-of-the-sam" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27796" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1907" RevisionGUID="b2ff725d-0554-45c1-8915-566d0ebc4faf" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As per Jeff's [request][1] (see comments), I will try to illustrate how I see things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The high number of closed questions and frustrated users complaints is a pretty good indication that our rules and/or guidelines are too complicated to understand by the average developer (and I'm one of them). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the goal is to create an elitistic community of programmers (and attact elites), we should keep them and continue to apply them blindly. It will probably work long term.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However if we really want to make the internet better for programmers, regardless their level, culture, beliefs, *[put any difference here]*, we should either ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- simplify the rules&#xD;&#xA;- be more flexible about them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that that kind of questions should be avoided in the future:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/10087/if-you-had-the-power-to-remove-one-thing-in-your-daily-job-what-would-it-be&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I see a lot of closed questions that should be kept open because of the value they (and will) provide to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/90848/is-outsourcing-offshoring-disloyal&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1156/how-do-you-deal-with-bad-coworkers&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/10916/do-speakers-get-paid-for-their-tech-talks&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/72090/want-to-quit-they-want-me-to-stay&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/90383/punishment-for-breaking-the-build&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/78956/i-no-longer-want-to-be-a-developer&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3272/job-hopping-is-it-a-problem&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/21782/stagnating-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/11440/being-a-good-mentor&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5372/how-do-programmers-stay-healthy&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/87155/evolution-of-mainstream-programming-languages-simplicity-versus-complexity&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But on the other hand, I see many questions that should be closed according the same rules, but are left open. I selected questions where at least one moderator answered: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/89666/promotion-or-de-motivation/&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/84265/giving-employer-power-of-attorney-to-obtain-your-inventions/&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/83225/should-a-developer-be-forced-to-memorize-details/&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/76858/how-important-is-it-to-finish-projects/&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/72001/so-theyre-trying-to-pull-me-into-management/&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4000/how-involved-should-our-employers-be-in-our-education/&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/80898/how-do-you-ask-or-get-asked-to-speak-at-a-software-conference/&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/77102/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences/ &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, **all the questions** above deserve to stay opened. With their answers, they are all **very valuable** for the vast majority of programmers and **contribute to a better internet**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should measure how valuable a question would be before closing it, instead of applying rules blindly. That's the role of the moderators. To be effective, this task **must** be collective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that questions which main aim is having fun and/or social interactions should be closed, however, some highly interesting questions should be able to remain on the site. Because they are interesting and useful, and only for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When in doubt, moderator should request opinions like Mark Trapp [did][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That flexibility, that is called [practical wisdom][3], and I strongly believe it's the way to go.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/are-you-fed-up-with-all-the-frustration-that-come-here-on-meta/1896#1896&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1859/whats-constructive-about-being-lazy-and-incompetent&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1675/frequently-closing-popular-questions/1677#1677" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27797" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6162" RevisionGUID="450c03d6-e5be-4161-9950-dba264651d31" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="(wrote this as an answer, it got a little too long for a comment)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the examples given, compare the following stats:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 1 ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/50819/is-there-a-measure-of-code-rot](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/50819/is-there-a-measure-of-code-rot)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * Viewed 860 times&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 17 / 5 favorites&#xD;&#xA;    * 5 answers (accepted answer rep 7)&#xD;&#xA;    * Active 15 days ago (duped August 26)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/135993/how-can-i-quantify-the-amount-of-technical-debt-that-exists-in-a-project](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/135993/how-can-i-quantify-the-amount-of-technical-debt-that-exists-in-a-project)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 1 year ago&#xD;&#xA;    * Viewed 1868 times&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 31 / 14 favorites&#xD;&#xA;    * 10 answers (accepted answer rep 24)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 2 ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/61558/turn-away-a-bug-if-no-reproducible-test-case-exists](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/61558/turn-away-a-bug-if-no-reproducible-test-case-exists)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 1073 views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 10 / 2 favorites&#xD;&#xA;    * 11 answers / Accepted answer 17 rep&#xD;&#xA;    * Active 3 months ago (closed June 14th)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/102819/how-do-i-isolate-difficult-to-reproduce-bugs](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/102819/how-do-i-isolate-difficult-to-reproduce-bugs)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 494 views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 12 / 6 favorites&#xD;&#xA;    * 4 answers / Accepted answer 24 rep&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This looks to be the right relationship.  While the views is lower, the rep is higher.  The answer appears to be more authoritative and less opinionated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 3 ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/45230/do-programmers-at-non-software-companies-need-the-same-things-as-at-software-com](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/45230/do-programmers-at-non-software-companies-need-the-same-things-as-at-software-com)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 352 views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 5 / no favs&#xD;&#xA;    * 4 answers, no accepted answer, top answer 11 rep&#xD;&#xA;    * Active 2 years ago (Closed April 13th)&#xD;&#xA;* [https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/96729/whats-the-difference-between-working-at-a-software-company-and-a-company-whose](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/96729/whats-the-difference-between-working-at-a-software-company-and-a-company-whose)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 2210 views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 22 / 6 favs&#xD;&#xA;    * 10 answers, accepted answer 32 rep&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 4 ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/61655/how-do-you-know-youre-writing-good-code](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/61655/how-do-you-know-youre-writing-good-code)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 13k views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 191 / 95 favs&#xD;&#xA;    * 31 answers, accepted answer 240 rep&#xD;&#xA;    * Active 1 year ago (closed March 27th)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/141005/how-would-you-know-if-youve-written-readable-and-easily-maintainable-code](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/141005/how-would-you-know-if-youve-written-readable-and-easily-maintainable-code)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 1 year ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 5964 views&#xD;&#xA;    * 76 rep / 26 favs&#xD;&#xA;    * 21 answers, accepted answer 116 rep&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one you might be able to argue a reversal on... though I do have a slight preference for the answers in the 'master' over the 'dup'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## 5 ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12439/code-smell-inheritance-abuse](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12439/code-smell-inheritance-abuse)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 2673 views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 34 / 10 favorites&#xD;&#xA;    * 10 answers, no accepted, top answer rep 31&#xD;&#xA;    * Active 8 months ago (Closed June 29th)&#xD;&#xA;* [https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/65179/where-does-this-concept-of-favor-composition-over-inheritance-come-from](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/65179/where-does-this-concept-of-favor-composition-over-inheritance-come-from)&#xD;&#xA;    * Asked 2 years ago&#xD;&#xA;    * 12k views&#xD;&#xA;    * Rep 57 / 33 favorites&#xD;&#xA;    * 16 answers, accepted answer rep 65&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging by these metrics, the dup relationship seems to be reasonable as those are the ones that people have voted up and find when looking for that problem more often.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there any specific ones were there is some reason why the relationship should be reversed from what they currently are?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would also contend the &quot;people seemingly randomly closing old inactive questions&quot; -- they are not all inactive (some activated just before their closure).  Furthermore, inactive questions (especialy popular ones) often attract attention of new, well meaning new users who want to add their $0.02 in this forum.  Yes, I know its not a forum." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27799" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3932" RevisionGUID="e53f79bc-0f7f-429b-ad6e-36e6a1b20702" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Done as requested.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* ['prototyping' tag synonyms](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/prototyping/synonyms) page:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  The following tags will be remapped to [tag:prototyping]  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:prototype]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* ['type-systems' tag synonyms](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/type-systems/synonyms) page:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  The following tags will be remapped to [tag:type-systems]  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:type-system]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27800" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1668" RevisionGUID="258c36d8-4a47-4de5-8fa8-fa4d1ac16d6c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I personally think this could work, but it doesn't help that the question is so short.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For one thing, there's no rationale; invite answerers to explain *why* the OP thinks it could be beneficial to a programmer to speak at a software conference -- not just how:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Constructive subjective questions &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not seeing this question do much of the above, primarily because it is so short that it provides zero guidance to potential answerers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27801" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2054" RevisionGUID="dbe209e4-5422-4f2f-aa61-05093f21ced2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I disagree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since we have [tag:career] questions (as an example), many of which it would not make sense to tag as programming, software engineering or software development, there is ample scope for question not relating to any of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, it would not make sense to tag [&quot;How to get into accessibility consulting?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/98165/how-to-get-into-accessibility-consulting) with [tag:programming], [tag:software-engineering] or [tag:software-development] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am all for removing pointless tag, but I don't not think these three qualify. (Although programming and software engineering might be merged as synonyms, I'm not sure.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having looked through some of the [tag:software-engineering] questions, the tag does seem to be a meta tag that adds little to a question. I am for removing the tag, since [meta is murder](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/meta-is-murder.html)&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27802" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1800" RevisionGUID="415a76e4-a4ab-4b06-a286-5d497bb140a3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's not unique to programmers - as such it's off topic here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;General questions such as this fall outside of the scope here. See [the FAQ on Questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#questions). " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27803" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6168" RevisionGUID="a10a2ed4-1370-4da5-84f6-82cfeca9b6e9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have looked through [What topics can I ask about here?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) in the help-centre. If I were to define a category for my question I would go with [freelancing and business concerns](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). On the other hand I have concerns that my question is not a good fit for programmers because I [couldn't find](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=how+long+should+take+me) any similar questions. I have tried different variations of searching but haven't even come close to anything related to my question (or maybe overlooked it). I realize that my question is primarily opinion-based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As a business analyst(not officially but a programmer too) I was asked&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to analyse and rebuild an Excel spreadsheet that came to a company&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from another one ages ago. The spreadsheet is used as both back and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; front end as it stands. They would like me to break them apart and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; design a front end for it and create a template (back end) that could&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be automated based on content in some other files. The whole point is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to reduce the possibility of human error in populating data.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Currently, there is no one at that company who would be able to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; explain all the parts of the spreadsheet. After local research it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; turns out that the file is populated by different departments. It&#xD;&#xA;&gt; turns out some people say: oh, we do not need this or that part cause&#xD;&#xA;&gt; nobody uses it while others say do not touch this or that it's needed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It is a mess...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I wouldn't know which parts of the spreadsheet are needed and which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ones are not needed. I am afraid it would take me *ages* to work that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out. I would have to go through all the people who use the spreadsheet&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to figure out *who does what*. I have the time to do that but I am&#xD;&#xA;&gt; unsure if it wouldn't be easier to start the file from scratch.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; They held a meeting for the review of the file (which I did not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; attend, no invitation was sent out to me) and literally nothing has&#xD;&#xA;&gt; been decided but the fact that the spreadsheet needs to be rebuilt. I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; know this sounds extreme to some of you but I guess it's how that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; company works... They sit in a meeting for hours talking about some&#xD;&#xA;&gt; changes, *bollocking,* although every one leaves with no conclusions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and no further instructions. Also, it's one of the &quot;we hate any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; changes&quot; places...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's a hell of a job to actually achieve what they want. So, in terms&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of making it easier for myself what do you think should I do:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - try to convenience them to start from scratch?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - get on with the current design and try to achieve what they want?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Have you got any experience with similar cases? What should I do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it completely off for Programmers or should I ask it somewhere else (maybe another stack exchange site)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there anything I can improve or modify to make it fit for Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27804" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1171" RevisionGUID="6fb750f2-b076-47d8-b7e3-21f629dbce10" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&#xD;&#xA;Insert self-aggrandizing question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Insert about 10 &quot;Congratulations, looks like you are just as cool as me&quot; answer here. Then insert a link to one of the top 10 frequently referenced books here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do exchanges like these add any value to this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A specific example of the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/48240/developing-instincts-and-subconscious-debugging&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27805" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="50" RevisionGUID="33d791cd-3169-498e-bad6-f99cb8d427a2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't think any should be. Looking at the main page, nearly all the questions are subjective in some way and voting is based mainly on opinion (any counter-examples?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If questions were made CW according to how useful they were, it would be difficult to draw the line. Is [this question][1] pointless or asking for a genuine recommendation. It's open ended, but very useful to someone wanting to start an open source project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/237/i-want-to-start-an-open-source-project-wheres-the-best-place-to-host-it" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27806" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2087" RevisionGUID="f13933cf-c261-4592-8082-8d48ae87ebc3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Putting contentious questions on probation](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1781/putting-contentious-questions-on-probation)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;So at least once every day we have this kind of question where somebody asks to give advice about some technical topic. (I'm not talking about career advice, though that may be handled too). Those questions mostly get closed immediately. Often as to localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I fully understand the reasons behind closing them, mainly for the knowledge base style of StackExchange, I still feel slightly bad for the users who ask those questions. From their subject those questions often fit very well to the community (best way to learn some subject, good tools to do something) and people justifiably expect that they can get good answers here. Often enough, some of the answers given before closing confirm this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Wouldn't it be possible to add a kind of &quot;delayed closing&quot;, that allows users to answer for maybe three days. After this period the question gets closed automatically. This way StackExchange would stay a knowledge base. Or would this still be too much &quot;chatting&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe somebody has a better idea how this can be handled. I just think it would be nice if we at least have a chance to help some people, as long as there are users ready to answer this kind of question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some examples**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure, if every single one would fit for such a solution, so please don't start discussions about the questions as such. Just to give some idea:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[how long to learn c++?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/99145/how-long-to-learn-c)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe the worst example, since the questions isn't very good. But this could be enhanced instead of closing it. After all he is mainly asking for some input on C++ and how difficult people with experience think it is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is the single most effective thing you did to improve your programming skills? ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skill)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seems to be a 'historical' question. Obviously with some interesting results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Need a simple example theme for wordpress](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/99204/need-a-simple-example-theme-for-wordpress)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously closed for good reasons. Too localized, only interesting to one person. But within a day or two, most likely somebody would have given him a few interesting links and he would be happy. Question than auto closed and never to be seen again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What topics should a university course introducing software engineering cover?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/98280/what-topics-should-a-university-course-introducing-software-engineering-cover)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That one I really like as an example. It's too unspecified and can't be answered clearly, but is a interesting question anyway.&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Difficulty here of course, that it's a duplicate of an older question. But maybe that makes it even more interesting by drawing temporary attention to te older one and allowing new users to consider adding new material.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How can I follow news from the development community?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/98814/how-can-i-follow-news-from-the-development-community)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another one of the 'give him some interesting links and he is happy' type. Everybody interested could follow it for a few days, get some interesting information exchange and then forget it ever was asked (and in six months there would be new information anyway)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Is it easier to start with Ruby on Rails or with ASP.NET MVC?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/99132/is-it-easier-to-start-with-ruby-on-rails-or-with-asp-net-mvc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Typical 'technology-advice' question. We have the people here who use those technologies since years and can tell him everything he needs to know. Sure, no clear answer and in a few months the game may have changed toward another technology.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can say that many answers to those questions where interesting to me. I either learned something from experienced people or maybe got a link to some interesting blog. I wouldn't know any other site were I could reliably get serious answers to such questions. So having them around for some days as a kind of 'slowed down chat' wouldn't hurt and increase the flow of information between members.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another one that just came in and will most likely be closed soon:&#xD;&#xA;[What's better right now: IronRuby or IronPython?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/99305/whats-better-right-now-ironruby-or-ironpython)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too bad, user used a 'bad' word: better. Question is auto doomed...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me give an example from real life:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few years ago I had to make a decision about how to implement full text search on a website I was writing in Ruby. There were several engines available, all of them had some community. Namely there was Ferret, which was used by many people and Sphinx which was relatively new and didn't have many users yet. But everybody who had worked with them would have told you clear enough, that Ferret had several very annoying bugs while Sphinx worked very good. There was not much discussion about this. Though the answer would have been too localized in time, since of course Ferret could have been improved. If I would ask this question here, it would be closed within minutes, just because I ask to compare two technologies based on practical experience in real world projects." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27807" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6175" RevisionGUID="c9fc09b8-e176-492e-979a-404e170138b4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Your account is not and has never been suspended by a moderator. If you were suspended, your reputation would have been locked at 1 and you couldn't have posted this Meta question (or do anything else but read the site). No idea why you think we (mods) would suspend you - or anyone else - for a single comment. We typically only intervene when there's a repeating pattern of abuse, and when we do, we typically send a warning first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, your account has been automatically blocked from asking questions by the system. There's no time limit on automatic blocks, if you don't follow the advice given in the [linked article][1] in the block message, your account will remain blocked. This is completely up to you, there's nothing any one of us can do to help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27808" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1179" RevisionGUID="c14f9521-42dc-4be5-b093-6927d9aea2dd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was under the impression that coding-style questions are allowed here, even if they deal with a language-specific feature; but [other users assert this is not the case][1], and that these questions should be closed. I couldn't find any explicit policy regarding this, so I'm turning to meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My opinion is that these sort of questions are not coding problems (which belong on SO) but squarely rest in the coding-style field, which seems to be allowed here. Not to mention that with the variety between different programming languages, every coding style question could be said to be specific to a certain (and possibly small) group of languages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, are coding style questions in general on-topic, and does the size of the group of programming languages they refer to matter?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/48413/in-java-should-i-use-final-for-parameters-and-locals-even-when-i-dont-have-to" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27809" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="133" RevisionGUID="66801c7a-3af0-4793-a939-cb2898481b6b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="###[Thomas Owens][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be interested in helping this community out. Of all the current Stack Exchanges, this is one of my favorites (the other being Stack Overflow, where [I'm a 20k+ user][3] and have been involved since the early beta). In terms of Area 51 participation (see [my profile][4]), I currently have one proposal for a Software Engineering Stack Exchange (currently in the committal phase). In the current public betas, I usually lurk around SEs such as (links go to my profile page) [Theoretical Computer Science][5], [Mathematics][6], [Statistical Analysis][7], and [User Interface][8], since these are areas that I'm somewhat interested in (although don't usually have enough of a background to contribute that much).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/572/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/users/2531/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/users/403/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://math.stackexchange.com/users/91/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/110/thomas-owens&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://ux.stackexchange.com/users/343/thomas-owens" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27810" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2146" RevisionGUID="3238c208-6fbd-4d5b-89db-b4f8054efb52" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This tag is a broken window, and it's causing problems by its continued existence:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* People [see the tag and assume career advice questions are automatically on-topic](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/102177/ever-wondered-why-i-havent-got-that-job-position-instead-of-him-her)&#xD;&#xA;* It's a Venus Fly Trap for Bad questions&#xD;&#xA;* It's a completely superfluous tag to our *other* bad career tag, [tag:career]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've [already discussed how bad this tag is](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/tag-merge-discussion-jobs-career/1952#1952), and should it go away, none of the questions still tagged with it would be untagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can [tag:career-advice] please be blacklisted once and for all?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27811" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6179" RevisionGUID="2617d354-4722-4eca-a65a-6161e0782377" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Done - according to [dry tag synonyms page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/dry/synonyms),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The following tags will be remapped to [tag:dry]  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [tag:dry-principle]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/whFQB.png][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/whFQB.png &quot;synonyms page screen shot&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27813" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3945" RevisionGUID="30c4e43a-43e6-4bc3-8a8a-57dfb40e4fed" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is a &quot;show removed posts&quot; checkbox at the bottom of your [profile's reputation tab][1], if you enable it you will see that two questions you had answers on were deleted. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Past couple of days I've been doing routine cleanups, deleting closed &amp; negatively scored questions. Most of them had no answers, I concentrated on old migration stubs, closed questions with no answers, horribly worded dupes and questions with zero voted answers, but somewhere along the way I deleted a handful of questions with positively scored answers that had pending delete votes (and no re-open votes) or were obviously unsalvageable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/53019/glenh7?tab=reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27815" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1952" RevisionGUID="49103999-5632-49d3-a026-4402bbcb5e84" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This [seems to have been proposed a long time ago][1] but never followed through on.  This is what happens when you let them fester...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, to me there are actually several different subcategories of career questions, almost none of which are properly represented by the current tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * **Career development** means advancing one's career, irrespective of their current job.  In other words, topics such as becoming a more attractive/in-demand employee or candidate, advancing up the ranks, or developing interviewing or negotiating skills.  Some well-defined CD questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/54506/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/48100/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/35208/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/13892/3249&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * **Career advice** is essentially an umbrella term for aimless &quot;help me, I fail at life&quot; questions which should be terminated with extreme prejudice.  Right now, these tend to share the [tag:career] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/43528/3249 (thanks Stack Overflow!)&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/18502/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/29213/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/21782/3249&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Then there are **job rants**, which I personally don't even think deserve the dignity of being closed (as opposed to flat-out deleted).  The hallmark of these topics is that the essential question - if there actually is one - is almost always some variant of *&quot;should I quit?&quot;*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/74913/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/20866/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/22609/3249&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Several questions exist about **finding and acquiring jobs**.  These are similar, on the surface, to career development questions, but tend to be at the tactical rather than strategic level:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/13811/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/14551/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/37915/3249&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * There are also some (admittedly few) from the **employer** or **management** side, many of which are legitimately tagged [tag:project-management] and don't deserve to be saddled with [tag:career]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/348/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/50616/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/46920/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/43409/3249&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Finally there are several - far too many, actually, including a *ridiculous* number of &quot;talking to management&quot; questions - that I would classify as **managing one's own job**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/70765/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/59740/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/3383/3249&#xD;&#xA;    * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/34570/3249&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, this is not just a simple matter of merging a tag.  The [tag:jobs] tag itself is very unfocused and contains a lot of questions about job searching, job management, and I think a few about hiring.  Merging it with the [tag:career] tag will only create more chaos in *that* tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to suggest dispensing entirely with both the [tag:career] and [tag:jobs] tags and propose the following new categories (of course, this is just a suggestion):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [tag:career-development] for questions that are about... uh, career development. This is currently a synonym of [tag:career] - it probably shouldn't be.&#xD;&#xA;  * [tag:job-searching] or [tag:job-market] for questions about getting a [new] job.  I'd suggest [tag:employment] instead, but I think that is prone to misinterpretation.&#xD;&#xA;  * [tag:job-satisfaction] for questions about work/life balance, creating better workspaces, etc.&#xD;&#xA;  * [tag:job-advancement] and also [tag:teamwork] for questions about excelling in one's current position. [tag:job-performance] might be another possibility.&#xD;&#xA;  * [tag:project-management] and/or [tag:employee-relations] and/or [tag:business] for employer-focused questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the type of thing that's only going to be solved by a long, arduous process of community-supported hand-sorting.  Fortunately, I think this site has enough daily activity to support some bulk manual retagging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alternatively, go ahead and merge it all into [tag:career] but then put the [tag:career] tag on notice saying that it needs to be phased out and sorted into subcategories.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/163/3249" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27816" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2148" RevisionGUID="71da9994-0e1c-43c0-b9f3-b643b1d224fe" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The linked post has the tags [tag:career], [tag:jobs], [tag:job-market]. and [tag:career-advice].  Except for [tag:job-market], they could all be synonyms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there are other tags with a similar problem.  Here are the tag wiki excerpt and body for each tag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:career]  &#xD;&#xA;   **Excerpt**: Questions about career, rather than a specific programming project.  &#xD;&#xA;   **Wiki**: See the separate tags for hiring and interviewing.&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:jobs]  &#xD;&#xA;   **Excerpt**: The [tag:jobs] tag has no wiki summary, would you like to [help us create it?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/edit-tag-wiki/1279)  &#xD;&#xA;   **Wiki**: No wiki&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:career-advice]&#xD;&#xA;   **Excerpt**: This tag is no longer used. Please see tag wiki for better alternatives.  &#xD;&#xA;   **Wiki**: &#xD;&#xA;   &gt; This tag is no longer used, as general career advice questions are not on-topic here. Please use the following suggestions instead:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; * [tag:career-development] for questions that are about developing your career.   &#xD;&#xA;   &gt; * [tag:job-searching] or [tag:job-market] for questions about getting a *new* job. &#xD;&#xA;   &gt; * [tag:job-satisfaction] for questions about work/life balance, creating better workspaces, etc.&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; * [tag:job-advancement] and also [tag:teamwork] for questions about excelling in one's current position.&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; * [tag:project-management] and/or [tag:employee-relations] and/or [tag:business] for employer-focused questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:job-market]  &#xD;&#xA;   **Excerpt**: Career prospects as programmers in general. Likelihood of getting hired if one is seeking a new position,a.k.a. job. There can be some cases where the question is rather specific in terms of applying to a small geographic area however.  &#xD;&#xA;   **Wiki**: Same as Excerpt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the exception of [tag:job-market], none of these tags mention that they should be exclusive to programming.  For honeypot tags like this, it's important that the excerpt mentions that they must be applied to programming-specific problems.  [tag:career-development] is colloquially synonymous with [tag:career-advice], but *it has no excerpt*.  By blacklisting one pair of words, you're just killing the messenger.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fix the excerpts, so that users see something useful when they type the tags in." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27817" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="189" RevisionGUID="cfa54e79-b16c-4bc4-8ad9-cd868481a2db" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1338/#1993&quot;&gt;an answer with 10 up-votes&lt;/a&gt; on programmers.stackexchange.com, but my reputation is still stuck at 101 (for linking my accounts across other Stack* sites).  Shouldn't my reputation be increasing for each up-vote I get?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27818" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1267" RevisionGUID="4d4ef809-ecce-4930-9ffd-673bf40d4b16" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm not sure if this where it's brought up, but i can't see any other avenue to discuss (or  query) why this question was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should this be the wrong avenue, please email on my username with a dot between the first and second names at gmail.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**CRUX:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are plenty of questions in the career, work-environment and lifestyle tags where you could replace 'programmer' (or your favorite synonym) slice of text with near all professions or lifestyle choices.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Considering [this question][1] was both asked by a programmer (with application to activity whilst programming), and received responses from (i assume) other programmers (due to the perceived audience), why was it closed?  Was it not relevant to programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/56897/what-can-i-keep-my-hand-occupied-with" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27819" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1976" RevisionGUID="644a2b27-e494-49ae-8ca4-d3f24366fa4c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It depends on what you think Programmers.SE is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's a site for [expert programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#questions), then answers had better be backed up by references. Even for the kind of subjective questions that make up the meat of the site, some kind of justification should be provided — real experts don't just say “yes” or “no”, they can explain why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If Programmers.SE is [Stack Overflow's toilet bowl](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl), then answers aren't for reading, you don't know where they've been (or rather you do!), so who cares.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27820" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6216" RevisionGUID="615b58d0-c539-43d7-a355-caaec7ad3b34" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Questions about Scrum, or any other development methodology or process, are [very much on-topic here][1]. Generally, if your question is about a software-intensive project, it's on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can browse through some related tags to see what kinds of questions have been asked here about things like [project management][2], [development processes][3] and [life cycle models][4] (specifically [Scrum][5], [CMMI][6], [Rational Unified Process][7]) or [the agile methods][8] in general, [project planning][9], [estimation][10] ([cost][11] and [time][12]) and [scheduling][13] and [software schedules][14], and [measurement][15] and [metrics][16].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of these tags are also in use on Project Management - [development processes][17] ([Scrum][18], [CMMI][19], [Rational Unified Process][20]) and [the agile methods][21], [project planning][22], [scheduling][23], and [measurement][24] and [metrics][25].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd recommend browsing those some of the questions on both sites and seeing how the questions are asked and the type of answers that are generated, since the community tends to be different (with some overlap).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You shouldn't cross-post questions between sites without tailoring them for the audience. If you do post a question and find you aren't getting answers or are getting answers that might not be what you're looking for, you can try to rephrase the question on the other site or flagging it and asking for moderator migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I'd like to see more software management, process, and professional practice questions here on Programmers since that's my area of expertise. But you should be asking on the site that you think will best give you the answers you need to solve your problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bproject-management%5D+closed%3Ano+is%3Aquestion&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bdevelopment-process%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Blife-cycle%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bscrum%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bcmmi%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Brational-unified-process%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bagile%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bproject-planning%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bestimation%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bcost-estimation%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Btime-estimation%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bscheduling%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsoftware-schedules%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bmeasurement%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bmetrics%5D%20closed:no%20is:question&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/development-process&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/scrum&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/cmmi&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/rup&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/agile&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/planning&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/scheduling&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/measurement&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/metrics" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27821" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1269" RevisionGUID="c7031591-abf2-441a-8f66-f17a4900e1b0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I wasn't sure where else to put it, so I decided upon Meta.Programmers.StackExchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you evaluate the html generated for [this post][1], you will notice that it generates mismatched tags when making bold-italic text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Platform&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deadline&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;/&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Budget&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;...&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Content&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not particularly a W3C validation nut, but surely we can all agree this is wrong?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-a-developer-know-before-building-a-public-web-site/46763#46763" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27822" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="214" RevisionGUID="c237ae98-6fc9-4f50-b9e6-aec5adcd9841" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="One idea I had was to position ourselves as a sort of mechanical turk: yes, there is a proliferation of polls and greatly subjective questions, but that has value to a passerby *because* it's a great forum to get a variety of possible opinions about something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take [Job hopping, is it a problem?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3272/job-hopping-is-it-a-problem), for example. There are a ton of different opinions, some similar to others, some completely divergent. There's very little evidence to support any one answer's perspective as being the canonical answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the value in the question is being able to accumulate all possible perspectives on the issue in one shot so one can synthesize their own answer to a related question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could even be applied to the categorically silly questions like [What is your favorite “programmer” cartoon?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon): if I was looking for programming cartoons for whatever reason, I could spend a lot of time performing Google searches, or I could just ask &quot;What's your favorite programming cartoon?&quot; on Programmers.SE and relatively quickly have a fairly-curated list of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example that would be beneficial to Stack Overflow (while still being off-topic there) are questions like [What is your opinion of the new Java 7 features?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3700/what-is-your-opinion-of-the-new-java-7-features). You can ask here to get a list of various opinions about a specific programming topic to get up to speed and so you can create an informed question or answer on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, I think we can keep being the garbage dump for Stack Overflow and still have some selling point when it comes time for Programmers.SE to be reviewed as being viable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27823" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3972" RevisionGUID="b6b4b754-1957-4b9c-980c-b3452be537c2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/163375/how-do-i-start-a-personal-programming-project&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At a glance, the **title** put the question in danger of being closed as 'Off-Topic'. But further than that, the grammar is poor, and it's unclear what the OP is asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I flagged this question for immediate closure, but a moderator declined the flag because he thought it was of sufficient quality." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27824" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1994" RevisionGUID="1b77115c-ef7f-4a19-a7f2-6987bbd36d4c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/95920/what-is-each-time-through-a-loop-called) on terminology was asked earlier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should the &quot;General Reference&quot; close reason as outlined [in this blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/are-some-questions-too-simple/) and [this Meta Stack Overflow answer](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86043/introduce-a-general-reference-close-reason/88521#88521) be enabled here on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are there any other questions that would fit this bill, or was this just a one-off that we can live with?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does the existing &quot;Not constructive&quot; close reason cover this case?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27825" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2236" RevisionGUID="611dc852-bcec-43ff-8780-a90a2d79813f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="To clarify, I'm referring to [statistical surveys][1] and questionnaires that are [well designed][2], ask open-ended questions, are relevant to programmers as per the diagram in the FAQ, aren't rants, and generally add value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically, questions more like [this one][3] (although that's a mediocre example, at best) or questions like what a professional or academic study would entail (if anyone has read [The Dark Side of Software Engineering][4], they included a sample of questions they asked to professional software developers and their responses).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that, overall, well-written survey questions could add value to people looking to tap into the total knowledge and experience here on Programmers, as well as add legitimacy to the site by bringing in academics and software engineering researchers to access practitioners and perhaps provide answers to questions based on the latest academic research, where applicable. However, it would have to be monitored and controlled to ensure only high-quality surveys are allowed - ones that don't add value or demonstrate relevance are closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions should also be made community-wiki. By nature, they are designed to bring in a large number of answers, typically relating to personal experiences and knowledge gained from them. There's no right or wrong answers, and as such, reputation should not be assigned to the question or any answers provided for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is similar to [another discussion here on Meta][5], but provides a much more narrow definition of what is allowed and what isn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_survey&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questionnaire_construction&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/106924/on-average-how-many-times-does-eclipse-crash-during-a-day-for-you&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Software-Engineering-Computing/dp/0470597178&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1621/should-open-ended-poll-questions-be-allowed-just-because-they-say-to-explain-you" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27826" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="279" RevisionGUID="f153f71e-31f9-40fd-8caa-144c01a03165" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Why [why are so many programmers arrogant][1] was closed by accident:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;People saw this as a fun question and didn't really like it, the large thread of comments to the question lead into confusion (I was between the people who voted) and were enough to hide the first serious answer, and it seems that after some initial down-votes people decide more quickly based on negative comments...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, 5 people were wrong... But it is reasonable with the amount of people that can vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seems it triggered some kind of near-the-edge case because of the &quot;this is a fun question&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Ignore [what 's the minimal requeriment for a code be considerated an AI implementation?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5034/what-s-the-minimal-requeriment-for-a-code-be-considerated-an-ai-implementation)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a single vote and nobody else has agreed with it, if a question is really related but not duplicate, such an accidental close vote can happen and you shouldn't worry about it... Just ignore it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our site is community driven, it is thus impossible for one to lock a question against downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What should be done?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing, in most cases problems resolve itself... In this case it has.  &#xD;&#xA;Your question is back open again, the other question is open, the edit war has stopped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it wasn't the case, attention from a diamond user or valued associated might have been appropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27827" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6218" RevisionGUID="e17811f1-7e7b-49cb-a959-6ecfb7d42db0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The reading of the title of the question reads as a poll asking for examples.  If this is what is desired, then it is off topic because polling itself implies that there are multiple correct answers that may be at odds with each other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While P.SE does stretch it a bit, from [help - don't ask](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for &quot;Are there any real-world practical problems where only the best (exact) solution algorithm or program will do (but not the good-enough solution)?&quot; - it is unclear what the actual problem that is faced is.  This is where the unclear closure likely comes from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, the last paragraph of the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think that we live in a world where it is required from programming solutions to practical purposes to be good enough. In rare cases really very very good but still not the best ones. Isn't it? If it's not can you provide an example of such solved or unsolved problem of practical interest?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This sounds like a call for a discussion.  Discussions don't work well in the Q&amp;A format.  We welcome such in chat, but as questions they just don't work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key for this to be reopened would be to address these issues in the question - don't poll for examples, make it clear what the problem that needs to be solved is, and don't try to have a discussion about the topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27828" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4052" RevisionGUID="ff0f0060-e97c-4ef5-b758-a83a8279bb8f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Your edit [was rejected][1] by DXM, the original author of the answer, that's why your edit is no longer visible in the answer. He left you a comment there explaining the rejection:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The OP is asking about programming languages. These are APIs to other technologies, so I don't feel they are exactly relevant to my answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To see the history of your suggested edits, and whether they have been approved or rejected, go to the [activity tab][2] in your profile, and sort by [suggestions][3]. I know you realized your own mistake here, but I thought it was worth pointing out where you can find out the eventual fate of your suggested edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Until you get to 2,000 reputation, all your edits will need to be peer reviewed, so mistakes like this one will probably be caught, however do try to be a bit more careful in the future. Unfortunately there isn't a way to withdraw an edit, but _if_ the edit had been accepted all you needed to do would be to roll it back, so that's a good enough workaround. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review-beta/suggested-edits/10429&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/177/luiscubal?tab=activity&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/177/luiscubal?tab=activity" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27829" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1296" RevisionGUID="d79e009f-bc62-4ea3-bca9-3bb9aad7fca6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed that my answer here https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3233/why-do-programmers-write-applications-and-then-make-them-free/3267#3267 did not give me a Good Answer badge. I noticed this after I suddenly received a Nice Answer badge for it, a few weeks after it passed 70 upvotes. This sounds like a bug to me, unless there are rules that are specific to community wiki answers that I'm unaware of? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27830" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2003" RevisionGUID="cba88784-604a-4e42-93a8-143c1a397e99" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="We get [a *lot* of book recommendation questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=book%20recommendation), so much so that it's hard to keep up with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've been closing them as off-topic, not a real question, and not constructive based on a few different points of guidance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The [What questions should I not ask here?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) part of our FAQ&#xD;&#xA;* [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;* [Are “I'm looking for X” questions on topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/are-im-looking-for-x-questions-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* Other consensus built elsewhere on the network like Gaming.SE: [What should be done with questions asking for game recommendations?](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1491/what-should-be-done-with-questions-asking-for-game-recommendations)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, due to the sheer number of these questions we get, I wonder if we should revisit this and see where we as a community stands on book recommendations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are book recommendations on-topic? If so, why? What preconditions need to be met for a good book recommendation question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not, do we need to add a new line under *What about other programming-related questions?* to make it explicitly clear they're not allowed? Something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Book recommendations (e.g. What's the best book to learn Python?)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27831" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6236" RevisionGUID="7f3c4da0-ec1f-41ad-a4e4-595236db677b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="this [question][1] has a suggestion to migrate to ux.stackexchange. This seems quite reasonable, and ideed its not uncommon to se UX questions here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that programmers and UX are full sites would it make sense to have ux.stackexchange as a migration target?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;there is also a ux tag with only 9 questions and a search for ux shows another couple of hundred questions (one of which is already migrated to ux)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/215833/10563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27832" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="285" RevisionGUID="c221e280-843c-402b-b8ae-1112e335416b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In connection to [this][1], and the closing of [Why are so many programmers arrogant?][2]. The question was closed (unjustifiably, IMHO), then reopened by those of us who disagreed. The question has now been locked, preventing others from participating. I have a feeling this is going to happen to the [Do programmers have higher tendency to be atheists than non programmers?][3] as well (_**EDIT:** this has happened, as predicted_), which has been closed and reopened as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO, even though both questions _could_ potentially lead to flamewars, I think it is a credit to this community that there was not a single answer (apart from one joke answer that was subsequently deleted) that was potentially inflammatory. I fail to see why such questions should be locked, as long as the community wants it open. If the question turns into a close-reopen war, and is closed and reopened more than _x_ times (say thrice), then perhaps it might be worth locking. Even then, it should be done on a case-by-case basis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as far as the &quot;Why are so many programmers&quot; arrogant question goes, it has only been closed and reopened once, and at least one of the high-rep users has said that he voted to close by accident. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone please tell me why this decision was taken? Both questions are perfectly valid  for programmers.se, and while such questions _should_ be closed, locked (and probably deleted) on SO, doing so here merely amounts to censorship.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/276/valid-questions-being-closed&#xD;&#xA;[2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4693/why-are-so-many-programmers-arrogant&#xD;&#xA;[3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/do-programmers-have-higher-tendency-to-be-atheists-than-non-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** OK, the unilateral closing of the atheist question has really pissed me off. If this happens a few more times, I see myself leaving the community for good. People were being respectful and the community at large had no problem with the question. It was closed once, and reopened once and had no close votes the last time I looked. That means that only 5 people felt strongly enough about it to vote to close it, and the rest were happy to let it be. This makes the &quot;community-run&quot; aspect of the website look like simply lip-service. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 2:** I should clarify that I have absolutely nothing against vote-based closing. I may or may not agree with the closers, but at least everyone (at least those who have enough rep) is on an equal footing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 3:** Jeff has been talking about [removing the &quot;worst&quot; 15-20% of questions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65437/adding-discipline-to-programmers-stackexchange-com). If this happens, I'm going to ask for my account on p.se to be deleted in protest. That's what voting and flagging are for. Remember, a closed question can be deleted if enough high-rep users cast delete votes. If I'd known that this site wasn't going to be strictly community-run, I would have approached participation _very_ differently. Why should I be active on meta, cast close/delete votes or view flagged posts if every so often, the community's verdict is going to be overridden unilaterally?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27835" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4094" RevisionGUID="06d0a82a-3754-4383-a648-086abffd15cd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Your question is a request for external resources on a very broad and vague subject. That by definition is Not Constructive: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- There's no actual practical problem to be solved, and that's a requirement for all questions as per our [FAQ][1]. &#xD;&#xA;- The question is naturally attractive to equally valid answers, you give us absolutely no parameters to help us judge whether an answer referencing one study would be a better or worse answer than another one referencing a different study.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The vagueness of the topic alone could even justify closing it as Not A Real Question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore there's no evident prior research or effort in your question. That _usually_ would be a reason to downvote the question, not close it, but I'm mentioning it because some times prior research helps better define the question itself, and it might have helped it escape closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see how the question could be improved without changing its core, all three answers are opinion heavy (again, a strong hint of a not constructive question), and all of them comment, implicitly or explicitly, on the vagueness of the topic and how productivity can't be easily quantified. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There _are_ studies out there, for example this empirical study on [Programming Language Fragmentation and Developer Productivity][2], but if you research the subject yourself you'll notice that the studies are sharply focused on specific aspects of productivity, and probably wouldn't be good answers to your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sorry, won't be casting my re-open vote on this one. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://sequoia.cs.byu.edu/lab/files/pubs/Krein2011a.pdf" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27837" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1441" RevisionGUID="e92ac856-2e91-410e-adec-aa2ecc8a59df" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/68724/where-to-find-good-clients&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I specificity bold this line:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I’m simply search for a site that ranks clients based on employer/freelancers opinions.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't see how this question is a duplicates? The answers doesn't help either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46981/where-to-find-clients" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27839" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2308" RevisionGUID="aa795696-cc36-412b-b685-4b6142fa4f65" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="What I understand from the FAQ is that any question concerning Ideas for a project and career enhancement doesn't seem appropriate for the site, no matter in what context or manner they are put up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I kind of flag them as off-topic or not fulfilling any of the six guidelines. Am I going correct or should consider few things before flagging them because now and then I see these floating easily with moderators answering them.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions in this context which are still open : - &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [What would be a good first functional programming project?][1]&#xD;&#xA; - [Get a job in C#][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some other questions too like these&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/79608/what-would-be-a-good-first-functional-programming-project&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/69056/get-a-job-in-c" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27840" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6126" RevisionGUID="25ca258e-4158-4235-9506-948e4b4915c5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Is there as way to notify a moderator after you edit an off-topic question to make it on-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I edited [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/208498/91765)'s title to make it on-topic, but I'm not sure if I need to do something more for a moderator to review my edit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27841" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1445" RevisionGUID="3e4956da-598e-4940-9e81-58b2ce39eecc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In [the FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) under the heading [**What kind of questions should I *not* ask here?**](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask), the following advice is given:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question would be of interest to …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Professional and enthusiast programmers**, ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, there are some questions that should be asked on Stack Overflow because they are of interest to professional and enthusiast programmers, but that's not the main reason a question should be asked on Stack Overflow instead of Programmers.SE. Indeed, the entire premise for Programmers.SE is... *to ask questions that would be of interest to professional and enthusiast programmers*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This part of the FAQ is misleading at best, incorrect at worst, and really ought to be removed. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27842" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4119" RevisionGUID="786b80f6-3643-4078-9981-8d92e25ee0b7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="From my perspective, there's not enough information. One of the pieces of [asking a good question][1] is to do your homework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this specific case, that means digging into the problem more: check the versions (acknowledged in the question, apparently not done) and produce a minimal sample that demonstrates the problem (acknowledges and not done yet). At this point in time, the person asking is just fishing for suggestions rather than getting to a roadblock, presenting all the specific information, and waiting for a specific answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this appears to be a programming problem. As soon as it gets into the implementation details, it's more suitable for Stack Overflow. So assuming that the asker has checked for version mismatches and posts some minimal code, it becomes clearly off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27843" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2063" RevisionGUID="7800a950-5365-492b-8d04-a806e8be98a4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="OK - totally ignoring your one example per answer comment I'm just going to post links from the list of recently migrated in questions. People feel free to take each of these and turn them into an answer for Robert. Presented here so a) those with access to https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/here don't have to repeat what I've just done and b) those without access but close votes can find them easily.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/98588/how-do-you-think-about-and-architect-programs-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/98047/moving-between-developer-jobs-what-should-i-do-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/97958/are-there-any-big-name-programmers-that-started-late-in-life-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/97812/where-to-buy-a-digital-signature-at-the-lowest-price-possible-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/97405/tests-for-c-core-skills-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/97223/how-to-convince-my-colleagues-to-learn-new-technologies-and-programming-languages&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/97080/career-advice-late-20s-career-change-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/97052/from-non-cs-background-algorithm-programmer-to-lone-software-developer-what-shou&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/96478/dealing-with-coworkers-when-developing-need-advice-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/96437/a-question-to-interviewers-should-i-stick-to-c-or-learn-something-new-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/95678/what-is-the-best-version-control-system-for-individual-work-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/95650/perl-python-functional-programming-language-and-c-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's 12 out of 49 in the last 10 days, and that's just the first page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't delved into the questions but from the titles there seem to be a lot of duplicates." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27844" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6250" RevisionGUID="2da9fb98-ed66-4f80-8c3f-8ba32943fdc3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't think so.  Mostly because I would use it... and that 2&lt;sup&gt;nd&lt;/sup&gt; point that GlenH7 makes is key.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm just looking through my flags (yea, the declined ones) and would really like to get the stance from UX.SE mods about a few things that I've flagged to migrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/216252/when-is-it-appropriate-to-use-colour-in-a-command-line-application&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/215133/recommended-display-background-brightness-ratio-and-ui-color-schemes&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/215655/main-activity-design-too-busy (ok, didn't flag that one)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     &gt; When I took my iPhone programming class we were taught about navigation views and tabbed views. Lately I've been noticing a lot of apps using this alternative style though, for example, the Facebook app.&#xD;&#xA;     &gt;&#xD;&#xA;     &gt; The style is that it has a navigation bar at the top, but in the top-left is an &quot;options&quot; button of some sort. When that's clicked a menu slides out from the left side of the screen to control navigation. I'm not sure what view that is, or if each of these apps are creating a custom view or what. Just looking to get pointed in the right direction here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/209866/does-an-ugly-computer-messy-interface-affect-productivity (10k link)&#xD;&#xA;     &gt; I'm using a standard Toshiba laptop that's pretty beat up and the poor screen-size/ratio gives off the vibe that all the open programs and windows are cluttered and gives me immense anxiety, which ultimately affects how much I accomplish in a day.&#xD;&#xA; * [How to replace the “beep” in software running of modern computer](http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/42928/how-to-replace-the-beep-in-software-running-of-modern-computer) (migrated)&#xD;&#xA; * [Design Suggestions On A Program](http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/42423/design-suggestions-on-a-program) (migrated)&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/203442/url-naming-convention-for-with-repetitive-letter&#xD;&#xA; * [Any advice on how to solve the problem of bouncing rate for a professional network [closed]](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/202060/any-advice-on-how-to-solve-the-problem-of-bouncing-rate-for-a-professional-netwo) (10k link - rejected migration?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;       &gt; I have a tech professional network that connects between talent and those who are looking for talent. The problem I had for the last three years is that most users seem to fly right from the front page. The front page is similar to Linkedin. My question is: it it better to feature all the content right in the front page or leave it as it. The main features of the website are showcased projects &amp; published articles. Right now I am out of ideas on how to establish the network and I already have spend lot of time and money on it. I am starting to think I need to make the front page look like behance featuring projects, articles, answers, jobs, etc.. Please give me your advice as user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [What is the name of the view style that the Facebook iPhone app uses? [closed]](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/200217/what-is-the-name-of-the-view-style-that-the-facebook-iphone-app-uses) (10k link - not migrated)&#xD;&#xA; * [Synonym for 'GUI' for non-technical people?](http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/38857/synonym-for-gui-for-non-technical-people) (migrated)&#xD;&#xA; * [Positioning in cross browsers](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/190932/positioning-in-cross-browsers) (10k link)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I'm designing and developing a website for a school project which looks fine on my MacBook Pro in Chrome and Firefox. However, when I try to view it on IE 9 and Firefox on my work's PC, the positioning is completely off. The font size in IE 9 is also really off.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm rather glad that there's at least one mod there that says &quot;no&quot; to a lot of these suggestions.  I'd be a bit worried about the quality of the content we'd be migrating if these all *did* go through." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27845" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2380" RevisionGUID="c37faad0-73be-4069-892a-3e03ad3da015" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Occasionally, we'll get a question asking for help about naming a concept or symbol, and we've been closing them as &quot;off-topic&quot; and &quot;not constructive&quot; on the basis that naming questions rarely amount to detailed answers beyond &quot;Name it X.&quot; or &quot;What about Y?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previously, there was a discussion in regards to [questions like this](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/95920/what-is-each-time-through-a-loop-called) on whether or not [we needed a &quot;general reference&quot; close reason](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1994/would-the-general-reference-close-reason-be-useful-here-on-programmers). The consensus, as I understood it, was that we don't need a new close reason because such questions are off-topic by the first line in our FAQ (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for **expert programmers** who are interested in conceptual questions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;What do I call X?&quot; is a question that's generally uninteresting and irrelevant to expert programmers, and thus should not be here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there was some discussion about an [attempted migration from English.SE](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/44295/what-is-the-name-for-the-class-of-computer-programs-that-act-as-a-front-end-for-a#question) on whether this excludes *all* naming questions or if there is a certain subset of naming questions that would be allowed, particularly ones that are not blindingly obvious.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Should* all naming questions be considered off-topic and not constructive?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If so, should we add a line to our FAQ about it?&#xD;&#xA;* If not, why not? What types of naming questions could work here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27846" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5198" RevisionGUID="2268ba7f-07d9-49e4-bedd-76d067f82621" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You need [50 points](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment) to be able to comment on any question or answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can comment on your own posts or answers to your own questions with [1 point](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/create-posts)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27847" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="394" RevisionGUID="78f7ea6a-697a-4311-b7af-21e34d484675" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I know there is &lt;b&gt;a lot&lt;/b&gt; of discussion about subjective questions, not just here, but all over the Stack Exchange network of sites. And I'm posting this because my question [&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8890/boss-asking-to-work-overtime-but-under-the-radar-closed&quot;&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8890/boss-asking-to-work-overtime-but-under-the-radar-closed&lt;/a&gt;] was closed, but I'm not arguing that it shouldn't have been. I'm wondering where I should have posted the question, if it is not appropriate for Programmers SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my view, if I can't post something like that here, then which SE site is appropriate for it? Any? Or was it just a matter of how the question was asked? It is a bit frustrating, because the question generated a lot of good answers and those answers helped me a great deal, but now if these types of questions aren't welcomed here, then where can someone turn to?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27848" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6265" RevisionGUID="930aa97f-67c7-4f2d-ad27-087990e95738" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The main font of the site is [Whiteboard Regular][1], and as far as I know you can use it freely in your projects. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything else is copyrighted by Stack Exchange. You'll have to contact them directly ([&quot;contact us&quot;][2] link in the footer) to discuss what you can and cannot use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.fonts2u.com/whiteboard.font&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/contact" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27849" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2096" RevisionGUID="0b388f5f-679b-44f7-a536-b3ead5d9bc16" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; *edit: gratuitous bump to front page*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is definitely frowned upon. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you must edit, edit in the spirit of the faq: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#bounty &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To get better answers, you may need to put additional effort into your question. **Edit your question to provide status and progress updates.** Document your own continued efforts to answer your question. This will naturally bump your question and get more people interested in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't just add noise, add signal!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27850" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2432" RevisionGUID="c3d2bf82-a738-4272-a3cf-1a272b5d9843" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As a duplicate question it becomes a **candidate** for deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not all duplicates are deleted the wording of the question may be sufficiently different to make it useful as an alternate route to the initial question on the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case it looks like another moderator decided that the deleted question wasn't sufficiently different. The fact that [your answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/101649/a-modern-review-of-java/101737#101737) linked to [another answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/92157/what-features-are-there-in-c-and-not-in-java/92333#92333) would tend to support that view. If both questions could have effectively the same answer then they are clearly duplicate questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27851" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5202" RevisionGUID="8efbf8a4-8ed2-4fe6-90ac-0f3bb4ff05ee" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Maybe this should be a comment, rather than an answer, but...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've just hit this problem with [this question][1] which I flagged, with a comment about it being an [exact duplicate of a question on StackOverflow][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My flag was *declined* (fair enough) with the response:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We can't do anything about a cross site duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;OK, if true, but seems a bit unfortunate!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/173588/multiple-files-in-powershell&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5549516/run-a-powershell-script-from-another-one" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27852" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="420" RevisionGUID="06266ef9-6ac0-4e34-bce4-2be1712739bd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="With [a][1] [few][2] [questions][3] around here about version control, I think we need to pick a tag and stick with it. In the title are 3 that I could find. Which one should be the master tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(On a related note, do we have some kind of tag synonym system on here?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## UPDATE ##&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Synonyms added, please upvote them so their permanent!][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/source-control&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/source-repository&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/version-control&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/version-control/synonyms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27853" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2465" RevisionGUID="8a2a74e8-5434-482c-a427-3c0bb4d2c04b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Sometimes a see questions that to me seem to fit the faq but have been closed ([this][1] for example). Could there be some way of giving more information or more specific details of why a question is closed in the less obvious cases?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would feel more confident in voting to close questions if I understood fully why previous examples were closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/106202/my-boss-wants-a-narrated-line-by-line-english-explanation-of-our-code" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27854" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1539" RevisionGUID="f711d96d-596d-4a49-9ddc-02c4b0aaf36f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/74116/how-often-is-too-often-to-change-workplaces&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really something that uniquely applies to software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask this question because that question has received several upvotes, answers, and no close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this question actually specific to Programmers in some way?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-or-&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this requirement still working for us?  Does the community even notice questions that violate that requirement? Or is this just one (of the many) that slip through?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27855" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2122" RevisionGUID="173e3ae8-5873-42e8-8098-799e661e7d96" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There was a previous bounty that ended less than 24 hours ago (as of this writing).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a [grace period of 24 hours](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68050/a-grace-period-of-one-day-to-award-the-bounty-after-expiration-without-remaining/74037#74037) at the end of the bounty to give the bounty setter time to award the bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As there can only be one bounty on a question at any one time I can only assume that this means that you can't start your own until the full 24 hours have passed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This section of the FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#bounty) explains how bounties work, but doesn't include the 24 hour grace period." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27856" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5213" RevisionGUID="b7587009-4073-4978-9dd6-18efd1bc0534" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It is tempting for students to ask their homework questions here, and it is equally tempting for people that know the answer to chip in with their answers.  What are the ethics of this practice?  (I have looked through the old discussion on meta and didn't find this issue talked about.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once a question and answer have been posted here, they will remain for eternity, and we will be robbing other future students from the benefit of learning by thinking for themselves, and we make it harder for lecturers/professors in coming up with homework questions whose answers don't exist on the web.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here, for instance, is a [recent question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/173559/using-foldr-to-append-two-lists-together-haskell), where the questioner guessed the answer to a homework question but asked for an explanation of how it worked.  Now, the homework question, its answer, and an explanation of the answer exist on the web.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Has the ethics of this issue been thought about?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27857" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6308" RevisionGUID="c231e770-9d96-4cfc-9c22-e357bd9ec01a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="(10k link - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/219691/is-the-mvc-software-architecture-used-only-in-web-development )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was deleted by the author of the question - likely when they realized it wasn't going to garner a positive response in its current form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![screen shot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/q9D7q.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27860" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1560" RevisionGUID="7ce0852d-f048-4e79-9c07-bd33a96fd174" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am referring to this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * [What stressors do programmers encounter on the job?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can see that one of the moderators stepped in and added some guidance for answers, but it sure doesn't look like anybody took it seriously, and the question itself seems like a pure &quot;pet peeve&quot; poll.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there something I'm missing?  What redeeming value is there in a question like this?  How is it any different from simply asking *&quot;What do you hate about being a programmer?&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about dealing with *specific* impediments are great - I even answered one about [getting better requirements][2], that being the #1 item on the list in Joel's (accepted) answer.  Of course, the 3 line blurb there is (no offense to Joel) really not going to help any programmer be better at his/her job, whereas the former targeted question at least has a chance.  The &quot;stressors&quot; question is really just yet another bitch-fest, pardon my French.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ordinarily I'd just flag these questions, but since it's already picked up a ridiculous number of votes *and* been touched by at least one moderator, I figured it made more sense to ask for clarification.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/74913/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/67923/3249" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27861" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5266" RevisionGUID="99626fa8-f0b9-4858-8f82-3b1c4faa42cd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You are identified to a particular Stack Exchange site by your **user id** on that site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can change your user name without fear of losing your reputation. The only restriction is that you can't change it again for 30 days - so choose wisely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Go to your profile page - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/39058/chac (for example) and click on the &quot;edit&quot; button. This is on a per site basis so unless you use the &quot;copy to other sites&quot; button at the bottom of the page. Be warned - if you have any different information on other sites (profile, e-mail) this will overwrite it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27862" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="521" RevisionGUID="b83ce151-f6ce-4b58-9d4d-0fe178a8ecbe" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I found a question which was asked in two sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/4823/are-you-a-geek-or-nerd&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/17779/are-you-a-geek-or-nerd&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Need your thoughts on this. Is this allowed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27863" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6320" RevisionGUID="f6fc8ed4-2883-4233-8a58-846353273af2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is an official list of things that are [on-topic][1] for the site. Implementation questions should go on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27864" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2542" RevisionGUID="d6ebdff6-d981-4581-9c43-815f6f7c4add" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Why should we let four people serve as P.SE moderators indefinitely?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why *not*? Are you worried about burnout? Do you feel the current moderators are doing a poor job? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're not particularly interested in holding periodic elections *just for the fun of it*. It's  a big distraction and tends to stir up pointless drama. Not that I don't enjoy a bit of pointless drama, but for the sake of the site I should probably just watch more daytime TV.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Being a moderator is a volunteer position. If a person tires of it, they'll step down. If we ask them to, they'll step down. If *you* (the community) ask them to, they'll step down. And we'll run an election so you can pick someone to replace them. But when things are running smoothly, there is absolutely *no reason* to conduct elections as some sort of pageant that contributes *nothing* by way of actual content to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###And one more thing...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Imagine that we have eight people who are perfectly capable of performing their duties as P.SE moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a long time, I *had* to imagine this. Because it wasn't the case. Not too long ago, the stats on Programmers indicated that, apart from the moderators and maybe *two* other users, almost no one bothered voting to close, voting to re-open, or editing on a regular basis. For a site with this much regular traffic, that was very, very depressing. It's gotten... *better*... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's still not *great*. In the last week, *two* questions have been re-opened. [One person](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/33/copy-editor) has the Copy Editor badge. Out of the top-ten close-voters on the site, four are the active moderators, two are former moderators, and one's a moderator on another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't think of Moderator as some sort of status-symbol. They're - at best - [exception handlers][1]. All too often, they're more like janitors. A healthy site has scores of &quot;junior janitors&quot; doing the bulk of the work - cleaning up poor questions, helping new users understand how things work... When that happens reliably, holding an election is easy - you know there are competent folks willing to take on that responsibility. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm sorry, but that is simply not the case here. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe in another year...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27865" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2197" RevisionGUID="e89b020a-48c3-421f-aae6-123de8f86871" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Can some one review this question and actually tell me if its particularly bad. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/105285/best-single-tool-to-generate-documentation-related-to-a-web-application-speed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just wanted to know. A tool is one of the basic requirement for any programmer. It doesn't matter what it is but tools make programmers life easy and it often is very important to know whether there exist a tool to do something that you want to accomplish and the best way to do is ask another programmer what he uses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; How can these sort of questions be off topic in programmers stack exchange. The more questions i post i feel like almost all important stuff are marked off topic here then why do we have to name this programmers. Do any of the programmers here actually work here without tools or have any of you ever not asked another programmer what tool he uses and used the same thing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok so even if its off topic why have a tag for it here. When i type in a question when i enter a tag it shows a lot of questions with the tags, and the mere fact that there is a tag for it shows that it is indeed a related question. Yet my questions, where, i specifically say i require &quot;ONE&quot; tool, and give &quot;all&quot; its functionalities and which has a very specific answer yet it was closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I m taking about 15 minutes of time to come up with this post because i feel that newbies are not allowed to use this site at all. What ever questions we come up with its being closed. Even if it has a definitive answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of closing the questions blatantly and making the asker look like a fool, would'nt it be better if you *big* guys bestowed with all powerful closing permissions answer it with all ur mighty experience and make the eco system much friendlier. I think downvoting and closing is too hostile for any ecosystem for the freshlings to survive. For particularly bad single line &quot;give me the codez&quot; question its ok but even for genuine descriptive questions is an overkill.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Im sure that this is going to get downvoted too. But let it be. This is what i feel and i feel i have to break the ice here. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27866" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5279" RevisionGUID="1f2a2b9b-ffd5-424d-934e-6818201388df" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think questions about micro-controllers would be more appropriate for [Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange][1] than Programmers, they have over [800 micro-controller questions][2], while we only have 1, [yours][3]. Also Programmers is more focused on conceptual questions, technical questions about programming (implementation issues, coding tools, etc) belong on Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You should read [their FAQ][4] thoroughly and browse the site for a while, and if you feel it's a better place for your question, I could migrate it there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/microcontroller&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/176798/how-to-use-keyword-sbit-in-microcontroller-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27867" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6355" RevisionGUID="ca56a9c2-25b3-4bef-9ab8-fe2b2d7c9925" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Is this a correct implementation of an Immutable class in Java?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/220430/15162) was migrated from Code Review to Programmers.  I think I understand why it was migrated from CodeReview (the author's concern is on making sure the code works, rather than on making working code better).  However, I am confused as to why it would be considered conceptual enough to be on Programmers rather than Stackoverflow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27868" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="583" RevisionGUID="cc73effd-761b-4bce-8c68-8d64a9145a68" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've deleted my [answer][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I didn't want to hurt anyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I checked the FAQ again and there is nothing about that point except the fact that my answer is clearly not [constructive][2].&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Should we delete or avoid posting question that can potentially hurt people feelings?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where is the limit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8511/how-should-older-programmers-respond-when-interviewed/8609#8609&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27869" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1568" RevisionGUID="de9f388f-af2e-4109-b765-6b63fb71c039" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have perceived some inconsistency regarding the treatment of borderline OT questions. For instance, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/76144/in-what-context-php-is-easier-than-asp-net-c has had comment discussion leaning towards reopening even though it seems (to me) to violate the &quot;Which technology is better?&quot; clause in the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it enough to replace &quot;better&quot; with a near synonym such as &quot;easier&quot; to avoid closing, or is there some deeper reason that this question is on-topic? I think &quot;easier&quot; could also be replaced with a lot of other near-synonyms to give this question a broader application.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, did this question slip through on a technicality or is it in fact a type of question that we want to encourage ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27870" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2588" RevisionGUID="4d6c30cb-bcc4-4547-8d64-eb6157fa215c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The issue of editing *en masse* has been discussed a few times on meta, most recently on @MarkTrapp's [answer][1] on the question on [Amazon Links][2] and I think it's clear that no one likes a messy homepage. I've tried to limit myself to 3-4 substantial edits per day on older posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But how about new questions, let's say questions that are on the first page of the newest tab at any given time (and answers to those questions)? Are micro edits like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- removing &quot;thanks&quot;, &#xD;&#xA;- capitalizing Is, &#xD;&#xA;- removing spaces before punctuation marks,&#xD;&#xA;- putting quotes in blockquotes, etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;a bad practice? I've been doing a lot of those recently, strictly on new questions, thinking that they are on the homepage already, and getting bumped at the top of it doesn't really matter. Is there any side effect I should be aware of?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Update: An [example][3] of my micro-edits, where I edited 2 minutes after the question was posted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2582/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://%20Amazon%20links%20to%20books%20appropriate?&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/121435/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27871" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5284" RevisionGUID="6c7ee0f4-6650-4185-910f-140a17185600" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Your question was closed by 5 users. In order for it to have been closed as a duplicate, the majority of the users must have agreed that it was. That's simply how voting on Stack Exchange sites work - 5 users with at least 3000 reputation on the site (or a single community-elected moderator) can close a question. On the other hand, 5 users (or a single moderator) can reverse that decision and vote to reopen the question if it happened wrongly. That's the way it works on every site on the network, and I highly doubt that will change - it seems to be working quite well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for your specific case, let's take it one step at a time:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, why do you not think it's a duplicate? One of our [guidelines for asking questions][1] is to search first. You don't reference any other question on our site about working with legacy code, and there are plenty. How do these existing questions not help you in your situation? You should address in your question that you've done your research and why things that you are finding are either confusing or inadequate for your situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Something to be careful of, though, is that if you are too specific, your question might be closed as too localized. If your question is so specific to your unique instance that the answers won't help other people, then the question is too specific. The purpose of this site (and every Stack Exchange site) is to capture knowledge that is useful to a given population (in our case, people developing software, often in a professional environment). Be sure to keep that in mind when reading through existing questions or other resources and when framing your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next, what is the smallest set of information that we need to address your concerns? Your question is rather lengthy, and I think some of your concerns get lost in the details. You mention specific technologies - are these really relevant? You mention specific platforms - are the specific platforms relevant or just the fact there are multiple platforms? There's really a lot to digest here, and a lot of it is extra information. Having extra information means more to wade through and people might miss the differences that separate your question from others if it's buried. Right now, it seems like it's a very common &quot;how do I deal with poorly designed and built legacy systems&quot; question, which is what it is closed as a duplicate of. Why is it not that question, but something different? It seems like there's a very particular aspect of this project you are concerned with, but it gets lost in the noise of everything else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, there are some comments. The details requested by the comments should be edited into the post. It's OK to respond in a comment as well, either with the information or to let the commenter know your post was updated. However, comments are second-class citizens. Make sure your question reflects all of the information that other people who want to share their knowledge need. It might also help to reformulate the question - the question you mention in the comments is very different than how the post reads.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given the fact that your post has answers, it probably won't be reopened, even with an edit. We tend to not reopen posts that have been answered if the edits would invalidate existing answers. However, I'd encourage you to search the site and possibly reask. Maybe focus less on the details of the project and the technologies (except where necessary) and on the explicit question you ask in the comments - the feasibility of maintaining two databases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27872" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2205" RevisionGUID="f500f946-6ed7-4203-a534-787ee6655ad0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The problem with book questions is that it's very hard to write one that isn't basically:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's your favourite book on [Topic]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are specifically mentioned in the [What kind of questions should I *not* ask here?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section of the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two areas they fail. One is that they promote discussion and secondly *with this wording* every answer is equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a book question to be any good it needs to be asking for a book that covers a *specific* topic. Something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What book will explain networking between distributed offices?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is better, but still not really a **good** question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(However, this might not be a good example as all networking books might cover this. But you get the point).*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Really a question like this is only as good as the answers it receives so unless the answers explain *why* the book meets the criteria set out in the question they are no better than just listing your favourite (or the one you read last). The relevant bit from the FAQ is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers that explain will be longer and more detailed - which is good." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27873" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6368" RevisionGUID="66ff74df-6f22-4d46-8c96-3a234945dc4d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="1. Are pure citational answers considered a *Good Answer* ™ vis-á-vis general StackOverflow policies? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Should the citation be labelled in some way to credit the source of the borrowed wisdom, and if so, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - what would be the recommended ways to do this?&#xD;&#xA; - what would be absolutely unacceptable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From my point of view, in some cases a citation is the best answer possible, but of course the original author (or source) should be given adequate credits. I'd like to know other people's opinion on this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This answer][1] may serve as an example of what I think of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/222717/optimal-if-else-tree-algorithm-to-minimize-duplicate-code/222720#222720" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27874" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="588" RevisionGUID="db98780e-a5dc-4821-9c86-1f98e3aa451b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career-advice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career-guidance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There seem to be a fair number of &quot;should I leave this job&quot; questions.  Are they actually useful to anyone except the OP?  Do they add to the value of the site?  A lot of them strike me as just a platform for the poster to vent about how frustrating his workplace is.  Is that a valid use for P.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27875" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5312" RevisionGUID="95abfcf3-0fc9-4877-888c-6929056b09c7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is obviously begging to be shut down right away and have all my privileges revoked or whatever but why do some people feel they have the right to shut down legitimate discussion? Who decides what is a &quot;real&quot; question or topic of interest? If you don't think it's valid, just click somewhere else but it is really getting to me on this site and Stack Overflow how many really useful questions are shut down because people are asking opinions not textbook facts. Questions like **[this one](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/25812/whats-wrong-with-erlang)** are genuinely useful. Don't shut them down. You are making this site less useful for everyone else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do people get their kicks by just wandering around the site closing questions? It seems many of the same names appear on the &quot;closed down&quot; box. Just go to a different page, don't ruin everyone else's education the way they choose it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27876" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2597" RevisionGUID="86da42e9-4450-49bd-a37b-276a696fa3a1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Since you only have one [question][1] closed as a duplicate, let me speak specifically to that one.  The duplicate question received an impressive amount of helpful answers on the subject.  Your only distinction seemed to be that those answers were not basic enough for a complete beginner, but it's not a beginner topic.  It requires a foundational understanding of computer science of the sort one usually gets in a university degree.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not an elitist who believes a university degree is the *only* way to learn those concepts, but there *are* a few tasks that require that knowledge one way or the other, if you want a halfway decent chance of succeeding.  Designing a programming language and its tools is one of them.  Even with that background, only maybe 10% of professional developers I know could design a compiler.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would suggest revisiting the duplicate's answers, looking up any concepts you aren't familiar with, and keep digging deeper until you hit concepts you know, and build from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/115920/first-steps-of-making-a-programming-language" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27877" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1579" RevisionGUID="6b8daa1b-8bd6-4e8b-8fa0-eaddb8ee615c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Recently I posted a question that asked a slightly similar (but not anywhere near exactly the same as) question which had already been posted by another user. Shortly thereafter, it was closed as a &quot;Duplicate&quot; by a moderator, and I was not given a chance to edit/change it or what-not before the question simply disappeared from my profile.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any way to dispute these flags when they come up? Should I contact the site admins or the flagging mod directly?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks in advance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Also, please forgive my ignorance if this has already been addressed. I signed up today and I've been going through the FAQs and what-not but I haven't come across anything that talks about this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit II: Per Anna's request, here is the link to the question to which I'm referring: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/76484/i-feel-like-i-am-capable-of-learning-how-to-code-but-i-lose-motivation-because-i" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27878" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2241" RevisionGUID="ab484583-929d-4b3a-bd13-5de44e561c8c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'd suggest reading [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) and particularly the [answer on Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179) created by our very own [Aaronaught](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/3249/aaronaught), which goes into more finer detail about why just such a bad fit for Stack Exchange, but in short, the purpose of Stack Exchange is to get an answer to an actual problem a person is facing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One answer that actually solves the problem is what we're looking for: not a host of suggestions. A future visitor, who has the same issue, should be able to look at the set of answers and be able to determine two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What the community has decided is the correct answer (highest number of votes)&#xD;&#xA;* What the question asker has decided is the correct answer (accept flag)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you use Stack Exchange for polling, these two concepts break down. When every answer is equally valid (it's a survey, after all), voting doesn't mean anything: what do people vote for? Their favorite answer? There's no value in that in the Stack Exchange network: it adds another, hidden dimension to voting that a future visitor, not aware of the exception to the rule being made for the specific question, isn't going to pick up on. &quot;Use voting as a means to vet the answers...except on this question! Ignore the voting on this question!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, I'd consider this to be an abuse of the user base. Stack Exchange users are not &quot;participants&quot;, sitting around waiting to take surveys for whatever purpose someone coming to the site needs. They're experts, who have generously devoted their time and knowledge to help people solve problems. Every time we forget that there are actual people here with specific issues and specific knowledge by reducing them to one point on a graph, we diminish the value of their contributions. Answering a few questions for a survey is *not* the same thing as providing a long, thoughtful answer about a specific problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, Community Wiki is not the answer. Community Wiki—for questions—was made a moderator-only function specifically to combat its abuse to keep questions that were off-topic or bad fits for Stack Exchange (but were ostensibly interesting) open. Recently on the Stack Exchange blog, [Grace Note](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/146126/grace-note) went into a good amount of detail about [the point of Community Wiki](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; With suggested edits now in place, you could argue that the removal of reputation from voting is now the only function of community wiki. Unfortunately, this means it is often seen as a magic switch to allow questionable content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One of the first feature requests I saw on Meta Stack Overflow was Moderator Filtering of Highest Voted Questions, which was deemed necessary because questions like Coolest Server Names show the wrong side of the site. The actual problem-solving nature of sites is too easily buried under the weight of all these “fun” community wiki questions. At one point, “Our top voted post is an actual question!” was a point of pride. That’s … not a positive sign for a Q&amp;A network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, as Grace Note  continues, we should be looking for quality content that stands *without* Community Wiki. We *might* be able to do that by rewriting survey questions into a question about a problem the asker is actually facing: this would bring back the voting and acceptance functions into play, and make a question that meets our general guidelines *without* having to abuse Community Wiki." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27879" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6403" RevisionGUID="ed6be3a3-30be-4c1f-9e02-f5673c9f8bb2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Programmers's [tag:chess] currently comes up with 5 questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* 1 is closed&#xD;&#xA;* All are positively voted&#xD;&#xA;* All are relatively low views (&lt; 500)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Searching programmers for [chess questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=chess+is%3Aquestion) comes back with 36 results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (Somewhat surprisingly) All are either neutral or positively voted&#xD;&#xA;* Very few are closed&#xD;&#xA;* A significant number of them are directly related to chess, and not just mentioning the word chess.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For that particular question, I think tagging it with [tag:chess] was the right thing to do.  And the search results indicate there are several other questions that could / should have their tags updated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;More broadly, I think [tag:chess] is a useful tag for the site and we ought to keep it.  There's a fair amount of material that could get aggregated into that tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I would propose we have a reverse tag-cleanup where we go through the above search and make sure the questions are tagged appropriately." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27880" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5325" RevisionGUID="c18e6710-6e4d-42e1-8a2c-ebac834ed290" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/178787) has some controversy over whether it belongs on P.SE, so I posted a comment yesterday pointing out that the FAQ says &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; are on-topic. Someone upvoted that comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today, the comment is gone. In fact, there is at least one other comment I distinctly remember that is also no longer there. These comments could not have reasonably been considered offensive. Where did they go?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27881" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="594" RevisionGUID="729a35e1-4f86-4d12-95ca-e619f6bc94d0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Please refer to the following question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[I hate the users. Am I a sinner ?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, 4 people have already voted to reopen it, without leaving any comments as to why.  It would appear to me that the question fails on [**all** counts][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It does not appear to ask any serious &quot;how&quot; or &quot;why&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;2. It doesn't call for detailed answers (there are some, but there are just as many one-liners).&#xD;&#xA;3. It most certainly does not have an impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. It does not at any point ask for experiences, only opinions (and it barely even asks for those).&#xD;&#xA;5. It *absolutely* does not call for facts or evidence as backup.&#xD;&#xA;6. It may not exactly be mindless *fun*, but it's definitely mindless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Aren't constructive questions supposed to meet at least 4 or 5 out of the 6?  Why would a question that is *so far off the mark* (with respect to the 6 guidelines) be reopened, not to mention voted up 20 times?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this really even a question at all, and not just a rant?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it the kind of question that we want representing the community here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/22897/i-hate-the-users-am-i-a-sinner-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27882" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6203" RevisionGUID="3f274426-67fb-4519-93b7-018155f943ba" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just failed on a review audit honeypot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone tell me why this isn't a resource request and why it shouldn't be closed (until it's revised)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/212057/what-is-an-example-of-a-continuation-not-implemented-as-a-procedure" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27883" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2634" RevisionGUID="ed419906-70f6-4a50-b667-08cd0bc7ff08" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just deleted the question: it's way below our quality standards, had a tremendous amount of down-votes, and was never going to be saved. Feel free to [recalculate your reputation](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2627/8) to get your points back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mention that because when you answer a question like that, you're only setting yourself up for pain: the question's going to get closed and deleted, and you're not doing yourself any favors by answering it before it does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, you just open yourself up for something like what happened: bad question, you leave an answer most people don't like it, and now you've got a negative-scored answer on a question that really wasn't worth anyone's time of day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And your answer was nothing more than a link to an external resource: even barring the implications of cheating or what-have-you, it's not an answer. From [the FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * commentary on the question or other answers&#xD;&#xA;* asking another, different question&#xD;&#xA;* “thanks!” or “me too!” responses&#xD;&#xA;* exact duplicates of other answers&#xD;&#xA;* **barely more than a link to an external site**&#xD;&#xA;* not even a partial answer to the actual question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As others have said, people can vote however they like, but in reality, people should've flagged your answer as &quot;not an answer.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if you left that as a *comment*, it wouldn't have been subject to downvotes or have affected your reputation, and would've been perfectly fine. Keep that in mind in the future: if you just want to link to something that might help the OP, just do it as a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To your final question, about whether it's acceptable to revenge down-vote someone who's done you wrong: no, it's not. It'll almost certainly be caught and reversed, and you'll likely wind up getting a message from one of us moderators about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And in reality, it wasn't *just* the person who said they down-voted that did it: there were 4 people who did. At least one person had the courtesy to tell you why they did it: why retaliate against them when clearly several people felt the same way about your answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27884" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2447" RevisionGUID="599bf9ea-040a-4507-b7a6-0ded1044d308" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question **[Should developers accept overtime/weekend work/denied bonus payments?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/101988/should-developers-accept-overtime-weekend-work-denied-bonus-payments)** was closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; by a single vote.  I'm just curious &amp;mdash; what was wrong with it? No comment was left.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question with so much attention might be more deserving of a bit of cleanup instead of an outright close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also compounded the problem of **[Are 9 to 5 programmers looked down upon?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/114819/are-9-to-5-programmers-looked-down-upon)** being closed as a duplicate of it &amp;mdash; even though I don't see any duplication &amp;mdash; now it's the duplicate of a closed question, instead of just being considered on its own merits.  Does that mean that one is *equally* &quot;not constructive&quot;, or not?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27885" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5338" RevisionGUID="92d25e17-19d1-4eaf-a853-6aa3309ec60b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think you are seeing the normal ebb and flow of Programmers.  Typically when a question is searched for on Google, Programmers ends up somewhere on the first page if the question has been asked before here.  This person will sometimes bump the question with an answer, comment, vote, or an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/179163/25476&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following answer was given about 11 hours ago from now so it looks like this user bumped it.  When this happens it makes its way to the home page for a while, which shows all recent activity on the site.  This will sometimes give it considerably more attention and then you see additional answers, comments, then finally 4 hours ago a 5th close vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in other words it looks perfectly normal to me :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27887" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1610" RevisionGUID="8d7f8018-3e2b-4b2f-ab76-3d5f60c49c55" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="For example, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/77637/yyyy-mm-dd-hhmm-vs-major-minor-revision&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, I'm referring to a &quot;burst&quot; of answers submitted within a few minutes or so, when the question has just been asked within the hour and appeared on everyone's screen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Normally, this is less likely to happen on questions which require thoughtful answers, because the time taken to prepare an answer will make it less likely for a &quot;burst&quot; to happen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we shorten the time interval for checking &quot;Another answer has been submitted, click to refresh&quot; especially when answers are short?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27888" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2645" RevisionGUID="78cd1ce2-8f77-4a4f-afa5-60af59d96209" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've [noticed][1] [several][2] [questions][3] along the lines of `What did &lt;Person&gt; mean when he said X`. The questions are asking for some explanation of the quote. They seem a bit trivial (and in the case of Python seem more like an English question). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can these questions truly be answered? Unless there is an interview or blog post where the speaker explains himself, wouldn't any answer be merely speculation? Are questions of this nature appropriate for the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/53517/what-does-tim-peters-mean-by-complex-is-better-than-complicated&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/92126/what-did-bjarne-stroustrup-mean-by-his-characterization-of-c-and-c&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/10998/what-does-the-jamie-zawinskis-quotation-about-regular-expressions-mean" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27889" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6418" RevisionGUID="7e8df657-15f2-455e-8518-4cf98152eb0b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Blog posts, [(esoteric) web comics](http://xkcd.com), keynote talks, and even letters (and papers) from old [computer scientists](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/) - trying to cite them and ask about particular parts fail at being good questions for several factors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first is that many of these are driven ultimately by views.  The more views they get, the better (for them).  Everyone who writes for the media (be it a paper in the ACM or a blog post tucked away in a bliki) says things with some degree of exaggeration and hyperbole to get people to think about what is written, to generate readership and to get people to discuss the material (hopefully on their own blog or letters to the editor).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point is, the **discuss** part.  Larry Wall wanted people to be discussing what he said at the State Of The Onion talk.  Dijkstra *wanted* people to be discussing and thinking about the education system for teaching programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussions don't work here&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange works on a different model.  Its not people talking *about* what is said here that brings the eyeballs.  Its the quality of the material.  To provide good material, the system was designed with the intent to make discussions difficult.  This runs completely contrary to how blogs work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One can certainly debate if Dijkstra was wrong, or if Larry broke perl in version 1.0, or if `goto` can be used properly.  These are good questions to ask... but not here.  They are debates.  In the Help Center - [What types of questions should I avoid asking](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) it says thus:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about `______`”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain `______` to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Explanation of Opinions are Primarily Opinion themselves&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Inherently, explaining and opinion is an opinion itself.  It is one thing to explain why `goto` cannot fit into the Java Virtual Machine model.  It is quite another to try to explain why it is considered harmful.  The first is something that has an answer that is right or wrong, the second is expanding upon an opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An explanation of what someone else thought is *my* interpretation of those thoughts from what I am familiar with.  I think that Dijkstra was writing because of a deep set loathing of code that lacked structure and any artistic merit or craftsmanship.  Someone else may believe that Dijkstra was writing that about Fortran because he was concerned that it would cause people to be forever constrained to programs no wider than 80 columns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who knows? Which answer is right?  It can only be opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The source material is too broad&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the Dijkstra quote at the top, lets look at the Fortran bit instead (searching for 'basic' returns too many hits that aren't about the language):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; FORTRAN —&quot;the infantile disorder&quot;—, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[EWD498](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD04xx/EWD498.html) is ~650 words.  There are 51 EWD writings that mention [FORTRAN](http://ewd.cs.utexas.edu.master.com/texis/master/search/mysite.html?q=Fortran).  Consider that this may amount to a [0th](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD831.html) approximation of 30,000 words to get the complete scope of what Dijkstra thought about the failings of FORTRAN.  To try to explain the full scope of the material would imply reading about 100 pages of a typical novel.  Trying to condense that material into a text box is the definition of too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unclear about the problem&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the help center [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) again,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking to explain a quote, or comic, or blog post isn't something that is practical, answerable, or an actual problem.  It is an open ended discussion based on something that was *meant* to spark discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Discussion is fine, it just doesn't work well on the Q&amp;A part of Stack Exchange (try [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard))." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27890" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="752" RevisionGUID="92660512-53a8-4cb9-98e6-3cb8f9bf4fe1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It means you must have voted on 600 questions and 25% of your total votes must be on questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/6329&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now you've cast 801 votes, so unless at *least* 600 of those votes were on questions, you won't get the badge." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27891" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5367" RevisionGUID="bad68ea3-f7c0-446d-8015-14c7afb882dc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Honestly, I wanted to close the question as Not Constructive. It's [original form][1] was substantially different than what [it currently is][2] on The Workplace. It was specifically a request for books/resources on communicating with professional software developers in the general sense. It was very easily off-topic (doesn't appear to fall into one of the categories mentioned in the FAQ), not constructive (list/extended discussion), and not a real question (overly broad as it covered the breath of software development), depending on how you wanted to slice it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It had 4 close votes when it was flagged by a Workplace mod for migration. I believe all four close votes were for Not Constructive or Not a Real Question. The options were to leave it here, where it would be closed by a single vote from anyone or migrate it to a site that said they could deal with it. Since it's much easier to migrate a question before it gets closed (otherwise, I would need to reopen it and then close it as off-topic, selecting a target site) and it was already accepted by The Workplace, I migrated it over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there wasn't a requested migration on it, I would have closed as NC or NARQ and we might have been able to work with it to narrow the scope of the question and make it something other than a resource request question or polling for advice question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/180017/what-books-should-i-read-to-be-be-able-to-communicate-with-programmers?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/7155/how-can-i-learn-to-communicate-better-with-colleagues-from-another-profession" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27892" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2566" RevisionGUID="d3e23097-7a16-4270-b355-796b5d0684cc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just to be clear, five regular community members voted to migrate your question, not moderators. If I was a betting man, it was because of this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You don't know whether an idea is any good until you try it, so I decided to create [an Extension Methods proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/36504/extension-methods?referrer=_i6de9mK9CxzlM3ffhDq4Q2) on Area51. I belief with proper moderation, it could be possible for the site to be more than a Q&amp;A site, and that an actual library (or subsets of it) could be extracted from it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Has anything like this been attempted before?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. Are there platforms better suited for this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It reads like you're asking for feedback for your Area 51 proposal. That's not on-topic on Programmers: at best, it's a meta discussion topic (but to that point, not a meta discussion topic *here*). If you're looking for feedback about an Area 51 proposal, you want to participate directly in the process on [Area 51](http://area51.stackexchange.com), not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've reversed the migration (you can find it again in [its original location](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/120082/would-it-be-possible-to-create-an-open-source-software-library-entirely-develop)), but your question as written has confused enough community members about what you're looking for so much that they migrated it here: it's not clear what you're looking for or how it's [on-topic for Programmers](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it might make sense to follow the business correspondance format for petitioning a company or a public servant, when writing questions, you want to get right to the point and do two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Explain what the problem is&#xD;&#xA;* Ask a specific, answerable question that will solve the problem for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more tips, I suggest taking a look at [How to Ask](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask), which contains a few links to other guides about asking great questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But beyond that, open-ended feedback and recommendation requests might make great discussion topics (which is why a meta discussion site like here or Area 51 is everyone's first thought), but they're not the type of question that works well or has a home on the main Stack Exchange sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, even specific questions about development tools are not on-topic here: for that, you want [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com). But reposting your question there will certainly get it closed again: you need to ask a *specific* solvable problem, not ask for feedback about an idea." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27893" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1618" RevisionGUID="019e3438-bedb-417c-a151-ab7847106fd7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here's a recent example: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/78172/nook-color-development-market-stats-and-ease-of-promoting-an-equivalent-android&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is this kind of question appropriate for programmers? If not, is there a sister site where it should be migrated?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27894" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6430" RevisionGUID="85411566-8e6c-4545-9de2-f299bc2339ae" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I saw this question on &quot;reopen votes&quot; as an audit question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/223006/communication-between-nested-directives&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is a month old, despite not eliciting a single answer or comment.  IMO, it's too broad and oddly worded to be a useful question.  Which seemed like a good reason to close it, although I'm not sure if the question was ever closed at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which leads me to wonder about the mechanism by which the audit questions are selected, both in general an for this question in particular?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Are review questions chosen manually by site admins, as stellar examples?&#xD;&#xA; * Are they selected from questions that passed a given review-able action, and then passed with a certain percentage of consensus among the review questions?&#xD;&#xA; * Or is each review queue different, with &quot;re-open&quot; selecting questions that were never closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27895" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5420" RevisionGUID="8acc3e8c-4782-43a5-a0d4-6d9770eecab7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="From yesterday I was seeing there are many down votes are being given to the questions, without explanation. Today I found this question &#xD;&#xA;[can-code-completion-be-consideration-of-choosing-a-programming-language][1]&#xD;&#xA;which I think is a good fit, but again given down vote and no-one in the comments has mentioned about down vote. &#xD;&#xA;Also one of the answer for some other question has unexplained down vote. [unnecessary down vote][2].&#xD;&#xA;I could have given up votes but I do not want to give up vote just to avoid down votes. Isn't there any way to avoid this &lt;strong&gt;anonymous down voting?&lt;/strong&gt;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/181332/can-code-completion-be-consideration-of-choosing-a-programming-language&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/181331/8820" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27896" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="816" RevisionGUID="c301e9fe-8981-44f9-b155-0193092f10f7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some questions that should have been migrated to Stack Overflow (had the option existed):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2979/how-do-you-set-sourcegear-vault-as-the-scc-for-vs2010-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3597/questions-related-to-search-engine-friendly-urls-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4509/bitwise-operator-predence-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1840/creating-a-vb-log-in-page-using-an-already-existing-program-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5365/open-a-new-window-and-call-javascript-function-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6933/java-exception-handling-i-want-to-repair-errors-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are others, these are from the first few pages of closed questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27897" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2582" RevisionGUID="2338d903-5a1d-4b1f-be15-039e3d096773" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The issue isn't adding the links: it's adding the links to [50 posts in the span of an hour](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/7454/matthieu?tab=activity).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you suggest 50 edits in a short period, you clog up the suggested edit queue and should those edits be approved, you completely hose the front page, pushing new questions and questions with legitimate activity out of the way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I [provided more detail](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/110768/on-select-sites-show-the-flag-suggested-edit-count-when-it-is-0-instead-of/110816#110816) on Meta Stack Overflow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]one issue for sites that are not Stack Overflow is that the front page—the site's advertisement to the world—doesn't change all that often over the course of the day. You'll get a mix of new questions, older questions that haven't been resolved yet, and a sprinkling of questions risen from the dead by people who finally found that awesome answer to that niche question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This type of activity is a great sign: it shows the site has life and many different people are actively engaged. It's like the forest at the beginning of *Bambi*: questions young and old get a safe haven to play and frolic while waiting for an answer from passers by.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Well, when someone gets the idea to edit all the things for some minor issue, they inevitably disrupt the quiet serenity of the front page. They're the hunter from *Bambi* that comes in and starts shooting up the place, and no question is safe. &quot;Ended your post with 'thanks'? Edited. Oh, you did it to all 75 of your questions over the last year? **Edit. all. of. them.**&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; After a short period of time, the front page stops looking like a peaceful forest full of life. It becomes a wasteland of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&gt; edited by **Mark Trapp** 2m ago   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And that new question I mentioned before learns a hard fact of life: the forest is forever ruined and the chances of getting answered have been significantly reduced all because someone thought &quot;thanks&quot; needed to be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to suggest edits, please do two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Do it in short spurts: 5 at a time, not 50.&#xD;&#xA;2. Make *substantial* improvements to the posts. You were suggesting edits to posts that were terrible: one line answers, answers with spelling and grammar mistakes, answers that provided no context to their recommendations, etc. Adding Amazon links to those posts did not significantly improve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is something that needs to be changed on a huge number of posts, please don't do this on your own: bring it up here on meta first. This way we as a community can figure out the best way to go about it and ensure the front page doesn't get hosed in the process." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27898" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2647" RevisionGUID="dcc3d680-2e03-492c-b16b-7bf3dd009fc8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="They are on-topic, *[provided they meet the six guidelines.](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example of a marginal &quot;What does this mean&quot; question, demonstrating no research effort:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What does &quot;Premature optimization is the root of all evil&quot; mean?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of good alternative questions, meeting the six guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/33020/when-is-optimization-not-premature-and-therefore-not-evil&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/45259/is-premature-optimization-always-bad&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/80084/is-premature-optimization-really-the-root-of-all-evil&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/79938/what-optimizations-are-premature" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27899" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1649" RevisionGUID="fc5e1855-52f7-4d50-ae0f-7c8ea7d014c6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've noticed this question; [If you had the power to remove one thing in your daily job, what would it be?][1] floating around on the 'active' page and I can't help but wonder how this is still open when questions such as [What stressors do programmers encounter on the job, and how do you deal with them? ][2] have been closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Did this one slip through the net or am I missing something?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/10087/19799&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/74913/19799" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27900" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6443" RevisionGUID="29493b8d-7977-46c3-98c5-321ff5a6986e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Questions about certifications have a number of issues facing them.  It *is* possible to ask a good question about certifications, but there are quite a few questions that don't generate good content for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Timeliness&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One certification question I recall seeing was one about what certification for Java 1.5 replaced one that was out there for Java 1.4.  As of this writing Java 1.7 is the target and 1.8 is just around the corner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the [wild, weird, fast changing variety of tools and technologies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_engineering_topics &quot;see eg Outline of software engineering at Wikipedia&quot;), the companies offering the certificates, the prerequisites to the certificates, and the certificates themselves are constantly being changed.  Something that is valid today may be completely gone with the next release of the software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This leads to a nearly endless stream of &quot;what certificate replaces ${previous certificate}?&quot; questions with constantly changing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Spam&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the companies that do certificates do so for the money (not all, just most).      Likewise, there are countless companies that offer training and materials for the certificates.  When someone asks [How do you study for MCPD?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/108875/how-do-you-study-for-mcpd) it attracts spam from people advertising their own materials - be it a website with advertisements peppering the page or &quot;buy this book for ${lots}&quot;. Those with [10k rep](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;allowing to view deleted posts&quot;), you can see exactly that in the linked question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;kbd&gt;![https://i.stack.imgur.com/XlouH.png][1]&lt;/kbd&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Value&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Outside from a *few* big name certifications the general consensus of the community is they're worthless (see [Are certifications worth it?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/44/are-certifications-worth-it)).  To this extent, one could argue that by not helping you get a certification, you are being helped... in some sort of twisted logic.  The essence is still there though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Career / Education Advice&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the questions are also of the &quot;what do I need to learn or study for ${cert}&quot; or &quot;what certification will help me get my next job?&quot;.  These questions are exactly the type of question that the career and education advice close reason means to cover.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this is that besides the &quot;certificates are not helpful&quot; belief, the one that may help you is very particular to your own situation that doesn't translate well to other people. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Googlable results&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is left tends to be things of the nature that are trivially googlable.  A recent question: [Is it necessary to pass the MTA certification to get MCSD?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/227937/is-it-necessary-to-pass-the-mta-certification-to-get-mcsd) when searching [google](https://www.google.com/#q=MTA%20a%20required%20prerequisite%20for%20MCSA%20or%20MCSD &quot;search phrase 'MTA a required prerequisite for MCSA or MCSD'&quot;) gives the top result the material that is in the answer - from Microsoft.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;kbd&gt;![google results][2]&lt;/kbd&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many questions are similar to this, asking about current requirements for a certification or information about it.  The information provided through Google that links to the current information on the certificate site will be more up to date than a question on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unless someone familiar with the question stumbles across it (they likely won't be searching for it) and provides a new answer to the question with the up to date information, these questions rapidly become wrong and useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/XlouH.png &quot;screen shot for those having less than 10k rep&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/pQE7H.png &quot;google results&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27901" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="820" RevisionGUID="e0f0e651-3014-442f-b475-359159515bd1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Example here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/30513/as-a-programmer-what-single-discovery-has-given-you-the-greatest-boost-in-product&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***Really?***" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27902" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2584" RevisionGUID="ecb5090d-1445-44fa-badf-086a27c6633a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I know that there's always plenty of healthy debate regarding on- and off-topic questions for this site.  We can probably all agree that there are a lot of gray areas and ambiguities.  Then, there are questions like https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/121209/dating-advices-for-programmers, which are fun to answer and entertaining, but IMHO, entirely useless to the knowledge base.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should there be an entry in the faq explicitly saying that questions that loosely combine topic X and programming (GTKY type questions, &quot;What kind of dancin' shoes should programmers wear on a Tuesday?&quot;) may have been entertained at one point, but are no longer pertinent (going beyond what is stated in [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/))?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27903" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1672" RevisionGUID="e6b8f599-7218-4d7e-8aeb-097993bf0e2e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I reached 10 upvotes on [this answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/4000/how-involved-should-our-employers-be-in-our-education/4053#4053) today, but for some reason the `Nice Answer` badge I got as a result was for [this answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/65477/why-is-it-important-that-a-unit-test-not-test-dependencies/65482#65482) instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I also have 12 upvotes for the latter answer, so the badge itself makes sense, but why now and not whenever it was that I got 10 votes on it? That question doesn't appear on my reputation page today at all:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    +60	 23 mins ago	6 votes	 How involved should our employers be in our education?&#xD;&#xA;    +10	 4 hours ago	upvote	How do you ask or get asked to speak at a software conference?&#xD;&#xA;    +10	 6 hours ago	upvote	Should you version web applications?&#xD;&#xA;    +10	 7 hours ago	upvote	Hard-copy approaches to time tracking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should I still expect a badge for the first answer?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27904" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2656" RevisionGUID="e43c3008-fc47-4426-bed3-f23c37b48e31" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="If you'll bear with me, there are two different answers: the official answer and the realistic answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The official answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no difference between the two questions: the web developer question *should* be closed. We originally had a lock reason for this, but this was removed and [we were told to close as not constructive any question that started to amass too many answers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2320/too-many-answers-is-the-sign-of-a-bad-question). The web developer question [*was* closed](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/46716/revisions), but was later reopened by the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it seems pointless to keep closing a question that can easily be reversed—even though that's the official policy—we haven't bothered to re-close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The realistic answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The value in the Stack Exchange engine is that, for every question, there's going to be an answer that floats to the top. That answer has been vetted by the community (through voting) or by the asker (though accepting) as being the correct answer. So, when a visitor comes along in the future and has the same problem, they can just read the top answer and have their problem solved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so the major difference between the maintainability question and the web developer question is that in the web developer question, [there is one answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/46760/8) that compiled all the knowledge from every other answer, effectively providing a definitive and comprehensive answer. You don't need to read any of the other answers because the first one covers them all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, despite the question essentially being a poll, one answer is so damn good we overlook the question's other flaws. It's a rarity: an exception to the rule. [One out of every hundred or so similar questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/) has the community actually take the time to meticulously maintain such an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But 99 times out of 100, we just get a poll, where every answer just lists one small piece of the puzzle. If you wanted to even begin to understand the full answer, you have to read all the answers. But since none of the answers actually fully solve the problem, all the things we cherish on Stack Exchange—community vetting and voting—are meaningless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everybody's answer is equally valid and invalid at the same time because there's no way to judge what the correct answer *would* be: if you have an opinion about the subject, you technically provided an answer. [Not really ideal at all](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), and not really [what Stack Exchange is about](http://stackexchange.com/about).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's what the maintainability question turned into. Despite deferring early flags and putting up a post notice to help keep the question on point, we still got junky answers we had to delete and nobody stepped up to provide a comprehensive answer. So when 3 members of the community voted to close and we got a flag pointing out what it turned into, we closed it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Moving forward&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thankfully, there's a really easy workaround for getting questions like this to be on-topic and avoid the trappings of being labeled a poll and amassing a bunch of answers that don't quite cover everything: just provide a specific problem the answers can be tested against:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm working on project A, where I'm trying to do B. I want to make sure that when I pass it off to my client or the next developer, that all my bases are covered with respect to C. How can I make sure my project A is maintainable for the next guy?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Straightforward, to the point, and more importantly, testable. Someone can look at the situation, read the answers, and judge whether any specific answer actually helps the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, while this would've been helpful to prevent the state it's in now, what we have now is a ton of answers that don't really fully answer the question. We can fix that, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question automatically gets converted to community wiki (after getting 15 answers), it's *supposed* to be a not-so-subtle hint from the engine to the community that existing answers should be improved and/or consolidated: once a question goes community wiki, nobody gets any reputation anymore and post ownership gets heavily downplayed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So while none of the 18 answers fully solve the problem, if we could create one comprehensive answer from all of them, then we'd be cooking with gas. If someone would like to do this, feel free to flag any answers that have been incorporated into the comprehensive answer and we'll delete them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27905" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5433" RevisionGUID="7b8b35a0-fac4-4201-ad80-10d40b3a73cc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/181802/how-to-release-to-the-app-store-as-an-individual&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've written an iOS app, and I'd like to release it on to the App&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Store. I'm an individual so it's not being released via a company or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; anything, just me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it typical to just release a free app under your own name? If so,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what would be appropriate copyright information to submit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27906" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6481" RevisionGUID="bbef7e14-44ec-4395-aff4-0338badfcbf6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just answered a question this morning, and it was marked as down, but honestly, I don't know how to improve it? Ps: English is not my first language, but i still want to join this community. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Plz help me, thanks!&#xD;&#xA;Question link:https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/230045/refreshing-website-design-and-architecture/230047#230047" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27907" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2755" RevisionGUID="a279cde3-3926-4b2c-a964-815256fc0cc8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think it's worth it to try and improve the wording. Some of the questions we get may indeed be of educational value, but too discussion-oriented or attracting opinions over references. For example, a lot of the questions we get about someone's specific employment situation or future options can fall into this category.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My proposed wording change is a blend of what we have now and Stack Overflow's version:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not meet enough of our [six guidelines for constructive subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) and is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. [Please see the FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#close)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27908" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5460" RevisionGUID="e9ad498c-3d48-4968-9c85-d65acada3812" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="When viewing a question or answer that has gathered a lot of attention, viewing the comments on the answer become a pain. The comments are ranked based on the up-votes they receive and the ordering totally changes the context. See a response [here](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in/159638#159638). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are many comments that are targeted to specific users and cause a small but important dialogue. It gets increasingly difficult to follow the dialogues as the question/response receives more attention and hence comments (yes I know, the comments should not include long dialogues, but still following up on them helps).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible/foreseeable to have a `reply-to` link as we do in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27909" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6517" RevisionGUID="fa5a6905-55dd-44a0-988e-787a05a0abdc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm looking at [this question][1]. And not five minutes after it was posted there's an &quot;I'm voting to close&quot; Comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we allow questions a grace period because what someone might see as irrelevant might just be the seed for a GREAT answer. Plus if you look at the comments, we have yet another frustrated first timer who won't come back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we're becoming beholden to the law of the land rather than letting it be a guide. Let the community decide if a question is valid before voting to close is opened. I'd argue the option to close should only be available after two days and only then if a certain threshold of votes/answers with positive votes has not been met. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/231364/is-there-a-best-practice-for-populating-a-dropdown-in-asp-net-mvc" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27910" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="930" RevisionGUID="49ca9f1a-2420-4aa2-bbd8-539cbfe12c7b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/19408/what-are-must-have-tools-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6157/what-tools-should-every-programmer-know&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1913/what-are-the-must-have-development-tools-for-windows&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/826/must-have-development-tools-for-a-mac&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/19725/languages-and-tools-that-are-portable-work-well-from-a-usb-storage-drive&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/18751/tools-to-produce-manage-specifications-requirements-not-ticket-trackers&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/11002/best-free-uml-authoring-tool&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/17434/the-useful-tools-for-windows-device-driver-developers&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/33102/what-are-the-preferred-documentation-tools-for-the-major-programming-languages&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8808/what-is-the-best-agile-project-management-tool-have-you-used&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of these questions probably should be close either but do you can see the difference of these questions to your second example? Probably your question could be closed as off-topic because it has nothing to do with programming. Your question would be great on Super User (actually the same question did a huge success there).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first example provided just be closed as duplicated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anna's answer complements what I think." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27911" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1704" RevisionGUID="eefd2653-e381-4ea9-bb18-db074a7dd1fb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the beginning, Stackoverflow contained all kinds the questions, including the famous &quot;comics for programmer&quot; type of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then programmers.stackexchange.com was created, and all that stuff was migrated here, so only &quot;professional&quot; questions remained at stackoverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then came the disciplining, and now programmers.stackexchange.com has become another place that only allows professional questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a distinction between &quot;objective&quot; (so) and &quot;subjective&quot; (p.se) questions, but I think that this is a bit arbitrary. In fact, questions migrated from so are often closed in p.se as well; and there are non-closed questions on both sites that could be asked on the other site as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples (all from the first page as of this writing):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/82952/how-do-i-implement-the-mpl-whats-this-exhibit-a-thingy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/82940/types-of-encoding-in-xml&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/82904/are-msdn-licenses-transferrable-how-about-if-they-have-expired&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6303407/when-to-choose-webservices&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6302780/what-is-the-best-replacement-for-amazon-s3&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A possible solution to that dilemma would be to restrict SO to pure technical/coding questions. Currently, most of the questions on SO fall into that category anyway. That would require a change in SO's FAQ, though, since it reads...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... if your question generally covers …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     * a specific programming problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     * a software algorithm&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     * software tools commonly used by programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     * matters that are unique to the programming profession&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; … then you’re in the right place to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last item on the list includes a lot of things that are allowed on P.SE too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27912" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2724" RevisionGUID="7933aa12-309a-4d42-beff-06b87e069527" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm looking at https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/126513/form-screenshot-for-legal-proof-of-clicking-one-of-the-checkboxes and it feels like a mostly legal problem rather than a software development question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have visited legal questions here on meta before ([here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here) and [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here)) and the general consensus seems to be that questions pertaining to copyright, trademark, and licensing are fine but other legal concerns are best left to lawyers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our FAQ has also been adjusted to only mention software licensing as a suggested on-topic subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So with that in mind and considering that we aren't legal experts, is the question above actually on-topic? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are other problems with it as well, like being phrased as poll and attracting answers that do nothing but address that &quot;yes or no&quot; part of it, which is not really what Stack Exchange is here to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do we, as a community, want to keep this question as is? Is it going to be helpful to future visitors? Is there an answer to it or is it more of a discussion topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27913" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3028" RevisionGUID="e346d93a-2837-450b-9845-92f82dcfdfd0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question was close because it was off topic. Here it is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/132878/how-to-sell-yourself-to-the-manager&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was asked in the context as developer. I have quoted example of development and I have reference software in my question. But it was closed. I was asked to check the faq. I did and I realized, ok it was off-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then looked at other question, some of them are these&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/133014/looking-for-suggestions-on-how-to-better-handle-developers-questions-from-out-o&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does this question fit the criteria. Isn't it work related issue?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/132977/how-to-convince-company-to-start-documenting-for-legacy-software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this algorithm related question as well or it is plainly related to work atmosphere?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are not just two! There are a ton of question like that. My question is are programmers [faq][1] followed when they don't close such question as off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Here are some more examples][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;Let me add this steller question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1386/how-do-you-share-your-craft-with-non-programmers#comment249050_1386 (23 upvotes)&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://hammadk.com/programmers-stackoverflow-off-topic-moderation/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27914" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="956" RevisionGUID="7e708c88-0a5f-4d41-a856-0bf081fa23d3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Are the posts community wiki? If so they are editable at a lower rep threshold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27916" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1728" RevisionGUID="fe2f033e-d3bd-44bf-97f7-5490f046c944" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yesterday I asked a question about web development, here's [the link](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/84062/starting-web-development-and-interactive-experiences)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the question was removed, and I wanted to look back at it. Why is this?  &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27917" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2726" RevisionGUID="601339b6-4a4a-467e-acec-3be60b238a34" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think that the &quot;not obviously on topic&quot; parts of question, fit under the &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot; category. I didn't read it as a request for any of kind legal aid, my interpretation was quite close to what the [OP actually meant][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some answers did treat the question as a purely legal one, but most went into legal territory to illustrate that the best way to convince the client would be to propose whatever alternative local law considers reliable, which would be a fine answer to the question, without going into any legal details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But there are some evidence it's not a very good question (in SE terms): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Although there are some very good answers, I don't think it's clearly evident which one (or two or three) are the &quot;best&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Several answers overlap,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Some of [the][2] [latter][3] [answers][4] don't really add much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the main problem is that the question is actually three (and possibly more) very good questions, and they would have been better answered as individual questions. Currently the answers are either concentrated on parts of the question, or vaguely addressing all distinct issues. But the different questions are somewhat coupled, and individually they might have raised several requests for clarifications.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, several answers comment on the absurdity of the claim, something that's useless in answering the question. I can't really blame any of the answerers, but future visitors may perceive the answers as too noisy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A minor clean up effort could help, for example remove all comments that fail their purpose, or became obsolete. If there's a general feeling that the question asks for legal aid, we could update it to the [more concise and to the point version][6]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in the grand scheme of things, I think the question and most answers are (way) above the average, in terms of quality. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In conclusion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do we, as a community, want to keep this question as is? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The question has been visited by several 3k+ users (answerers + commenters), no close votes. (but if there where flags, I wouldn't know)&#xD;&#xA; 2. Although popularity is not a good measurement, the fact that there isn't a single downvote on the question or any answer should be considered. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd say we definitely *want* to keep the question.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**update**: Two downvotes on answers appeared after I wrote this. Still, too few, considering the total sum of upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there an answer to it or is it more of a discussion topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the question has been answered, not by a single answer unfortunately, but still answered sufficiently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it going to be helpful to future visitors?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, predicting the future is off topic :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strictly speaking, it should be closed. It's overly broad and I don't think it will generate any more good answers. But far worse questions slip through all the time, and there are all these old ones that still survive. I'd prefer for this one to stay open. We could just add a notification for longer answers instead (seeing how there isn't an accepted answer yet). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it's community wiki already, I guess one approach would be to write an answer that definitively answers the question. Any volunteers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/126582/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/126598/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/126586/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/126515/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2725/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27918" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3042" RevisionGUID="3075f57c-e02a-4537-92b9-4a167108440a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [canonical answer to this is on Meta Stack Overflow](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-from-thi), which is where the link in the notice takes you:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An automatic filter is in place to ban questions from IP addresses or accounts with a history of extremely poor questions. To avoid bypassing the filter its internal rules are a secret, but it is partly based on downvotes cast by other members of the communities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Once you have posted too many bad quality questions, you will be banned from asking more, and see the error message. You can then still use the site, except for asking questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at [your profile](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/30160/dave), you've asked 6 questions, only one of which has been upvoted, 4 of which were closed, and 3 of which were deleted. You've provided few answers, and only one of which was up-voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you'd like to ask questions in the future, focus on helping others first by providing high-quality answers and taking [the feedback you've received on your past closures](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3029/8) to heart.  While the details of the low-quality ban are purposefully kept secret, creating a trend of high-quality answers generally will help towards getting it removed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27919" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="991" RevisionGUID="5c21b9bd-580c-45d8-92f7-1bb3e8e510d7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a new post on the Stack Overflow blog entitled [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/), which serves to expand upon the [six subjective guidelines](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) we all know and love. I encourage you to read it and [the original answer from Aarobot](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75168/should-polls-be-maintained-as-community-wiki-questions-or-should-they-be-closed/75179#75179) that sparked the post itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main point that's now been added to [our FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) is the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: &amp;ldquo;What&amp;rsquo;s your favorite \_\_\_\_\_?&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: &amp;ldquo;I use \_\_\_\_\_ for \_\_\_\_\_, what do you use?&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: &amp;ldquo;I&amp;rsquo;m curious if other people feel like I do.&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: &amp;ldquo;What if \_\_\_\_\_ happened?&amp;rdquo;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - it is a rant disguised as a question: &amp;ldquo;\_\_\_\_\_ sucks, am I right?&amp;rdquo;&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about \_\_\_\_\_”, then you should not be asking here. If your motivation is “I would like others to explain \_\_\_\_\_ to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are your thoughts on the new guidelines? Is there a problem with these types of questions that needs addressing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do to encourage questions that don't fall into the trap of being poll questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27920" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5503" RevisionGUID="f7119f15-174e-452c-86c4-89708433ec76" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Your first revision ([Examples of large legacy codebases that have been improved][1]) was asking for a list of examples, which is considered &quot;not-constructive&quot; by StackExchange because the end result is a big list of items, each of which are equally valid and with no one-right-answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your second revision ([What is the best example of a large legacy codebases that have has been significantly improved][2]) is better, however everyone's definition of &quot;best&quot; is different, so in order for a question asking for &quot;the best X&quot; to stay open, you have to clearly define what you consider &quot;best&quot; to be. Most efficient, best performing, etc. Otherwise the same thing happens: the end result is a list of answers that could all be equally valid, with no way for users to objectively vote which answer is better than the rest.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've made an update to your question to try and get it reopened, by focusing on the actual problem you appear to be facing (figuring out proven ways to update a large legacy application to meet today's quality standards, without rewriting it), however it still needs 4 other reopen votes by the community to get reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's currently at 4 reopen votes, so I don't think it will have a problem getting the 5th vote and getting reopened now :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/185130/1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/185130/2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27921" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6546" RevisionGUID="a114d752-b498-4ad5-a709-8839e42b4b66" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="If you visit [the question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/232687/compare-swing-and-javafx), you can see that it was put on hold for being too broad, meaning that &quot;there are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format&quot; and links are given to the [Help Center](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions) that explain what on hold and closed questions are and how to deal with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the comments also links to [this Stack Exchange blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/) which explains why pro/con or advantage/disadvantage questions aren't a good fit for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reading the help center and the blog post, if you're still confused, you'll need to edit more detail into this question. I'm just not sure what you're looking for, since a lot of information was provided on the question itself as to why, in its present form, it's not a good fit for Stack Exchange." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27922" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1751" RevisionGUID="82842f65-79f0-4c32-86ea-a1fda2abef3c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[My answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/84278/how-do-i-create-my-own-programming-language-and-a-compiler-for-it/84282#84282) seems to have a fair amount of upvotes, call it N(&gt;25).  I didn't think it controversial, but the first comment in response is pretty negative about the quality of the answer, and has a huge upvote count (&gt;N-4).  I assume that means there are a bunch of folks to agree with the negative assessment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ignoring the answer itself, why would it be the case that the answer has a huge upvote count, and the negative remark has a huge upvote count?  The answer is getting almost exactly one vote in favor, for each upvote on the negative comment, if I interpret this data, which seems statistically strange to me.  Weirder, the differences in votes for and the negative comment count seem to have held steady at a small constant (&quot;4?&quot;).  If I didn't think SO+friends was well built, I'd say the first-comment count was automatically tracking the positive-vote count without any human beings participating.&#xD;&#xA;(That's the question: is it broken? Nah, can't be ...?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd generally expect downvoters to vote against the answer, rather than upvoting the comment (but maybe they're all in violent agreement which is pretty strange at SO in my experience).&#xD;&#xA;If I could see the actual for/against votes as on StackOverflow, would I see a positive vote count of 2N+4, and a negative vote count of N?   Why doesn't Programmers have the same vote display mechanism, which would let me lay my fears to rest?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27923" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2777" RevisionGUID="d189b960-e8a8-48e4-80ef-87251b2fba8e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's a junk tag, and it's a honeypot for junk questions and junk tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Closed questions: 21](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsoftware%5D+closed%3A1)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:software-development]: [9 questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+software-development)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:career]: [5 questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+career)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:development]: [4 questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+development)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:best-practices]: [4 questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+best-practices)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:experience]: [3 questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+experience)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:developer]: [3 questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+developer)&#xD;&#xA;* [tag:software] + [tag:company]: [2 questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software+company)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Kill it with fire. Please [observe normal tag cleanup rules](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27924" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6496" RevisionGUID="cbf3c5f7-13fe-4e95-af3d-8c7d00f0f89c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I voted to close [this question][1], and then the OP asked for downvoters to give a comment.  Which made me wonder: what do new (low rep) users see when there is a close vote on their question (before it has been closed)?  I know that as someone with the right to vote, I could see what the votes are simply by starting the process of voting to close on my own question, but would that be necessary?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/230207/what-are-some-good-resources-on-text-formatting-algorithms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27925" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3060" RevisionGUID="f4582a7e-e31d-461c-a574-a1483aa949de" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sub&gt;Adapted from [Cryptography meta](https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/a/130), originally posted by [Ninefingers](https://crypto.meta.stackexchange.com/users/46/ninefingers)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Rationale: why do we close questions?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are really two ways to do moderation. If you've been on any of the `.moderated` newsgroups you'll be well aware that to get a post on there, it needs to undergo a review process first and be accepted. The aim is to keep problem discussions from arising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE is slightly different - it works the other way. *Anyone* can ask a question on SE and closing a question is the equivalent of putting that question *back into review/improve mode*. It's a feedback mechanism designed to react to problem cases only, so the usual business of asking and answering good questions can just... *happen*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why do we close a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The philosophy of SE is that each site handles questions on *problems you face* or things you are trying to understand. The [don't ask](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section of the FAQ gives you a good overview of things that don't work - to summarise:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions invite arguments or extended debate that suck up time when members could be helping other people.&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions are too broad, too narrow or have other content problems.&#xD;&#xA;* Some questions belong elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These have been worked out over time and with a lot of experience from Stack Overflow and are, *broadly speaking* true. Sometimes, exceptions are made - it is always a case-by-case thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Is closing like deletion?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, and this is an important distinction, deletion is a different concept on SE. Closed questions are put &quot;into improve mode&quot; if you like, and are still visible for *anyone* to improve. That's the idea. Deleted questions are different - they have a red background and are invisible to all but high reputation users. So deletion is different and solves a slightly different problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What are the requirements for closing a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have 3000 reputation on the site you can vote to close any question for the reasons above. More on that in a moment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you do not have this level of reputation, you will find that under the flag menu, you have an option &quot;this question does not belong here&quot;. That will raise a flag for users who can vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why can anyone vote to close/reopen**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firstly, anyone can vote to close or reopen (or flag as such) because it is *your site*. This is really important - it's about expressing what you feel works and doesn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How are moderators different?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderator close votes complete the required vote count immediately, no matter how many people have voted. This applies for both close/reopen votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially, as the reputation requirement rules out many users, you will see moderators doing most of the closing to guide the site and look after the content. As you gain in reputation, you get to join in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Ok, so how does it work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Example close button][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, the important piece. Voting to close works like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Underneath the question, there will be a close link. When you click on this, you will be presented with a list of options from which you can pick a close reason most appropriate to the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Close vote reasons dialog][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * If other people have voted, you will see red numbers against the reason they chose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Other votes][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The exact duplicate page takes you to a page that allows you to specify a question to close as an exact duplicate against.&#xD;&#xA; * The &quot;off topic&quot; page will present you with [five options][5] - three standard reasons why a post is off topic, one to specify your own custom reason and one to migrate the question to a different site. Users can migrate question here and to [so]. Moderators can send questions elsewhere, so feel free to flag if you have a target in mind.&#xD;&#xA; * The other options are straight out closes.&#xD;&#xA; * Once you pick your option and click &quot;close&quot;, your vote is registered. &#xD;&#xA; * If five people agree that the question needs closing, the question will be closed, even if they don't agree on the reason. You've seen the effect of these before.&#xD;&#xA; * The majority vote is chosen as the published close reason. This is a simple 3/2 split. In the case of a 2/2/1 split the the last voted reason wins.&#xD;&#xA; * Your name, and the name of other closers, will appear on the bottom of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Close banner][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How does vote to re-open work?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A closed question has a &quot;reopen&quot; link underneath it. If you click this, a dialog box will ask you if you are sure - click yes and your vote will be registered to re-open the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below, you can see an example of the re-open link with two votes registered for re-opening (out of five).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Re-open link][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What happens if I make a mistake?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't worry! Unless five people agree, or a moderator agrees, the question won't be closed.  &#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, you have the possibility to retract your close vote. This possibility is provided if you try to cast a second close vote on a question. After retracting your vote, you can not cast it again, so you can't use vote retraction to change the close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I've seen a closed question and I disagree. What can I do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, one option is to use your re-open vote! You can also always raise a discussion here on meta to seek clarification on why a question is closed and hopefully either a resolution will be reached, or you will get an explanation for the closure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My name appears on the bottom - isn't this going to cause problems with other users?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually, surprisingly few closed questions generate any response at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you experience difficulties as a result of closing a question, you can and should contact a moderator via the flag mechanism (which is anonymous). We can then take any necessary action.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do I find questions I might need to close? What about re-opens?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Actually there are two tools for this. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [Review][8]. Here, there are a number of options for seeing things that might need say editing. One of these is a tab for all questions with close votes. You are then free to look at the question and decide if you agree.&#xD;&#xA; * [Tools][9]. Commonly referred to as the &quot;10k tools&quot;, this page let's you see even more information - certain anonymous flags, re-open votes, delete votes etc. The important one for this is the re-open page. Here, you can see questions that might have been closed incorrectly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qogGL.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/duT0S.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/26heN.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5992/what-should-our-predefined-off-topic-reasons-be&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/K3F4V.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/syw4O.png&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tools" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27926" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1001" RevisionGUID="0c77173a-0ab3-40d3-854e-6bd4b7df7c29" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Whenever one of the questions you've starred has new activity, the envelope lights up. By the looks of it, [you have a few very popular questions starred](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/8575/chrisaycock?tab=favorites), which is why you see it light up every time you visit." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27927" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1753" RevisionGUID="cd443b21-3840-47fd-a154-d71cd66ab17b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yesterday this question ([Considering career change to patent agent/patent engineer [closed]](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/84484/considering-career-change-to-patent-agent-patent-engineer)) was closed. The question was now edited by the original author and I would like to flag it for reopening. Is this possible? If it isn't, I'd like to suggest this as a feature request." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27928" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5510" RevisionGUID="3acfcd60-cc11-404d-b28a-c6f20f89c47e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/185589/3965 was deemed on topic by Yannis, but subsequently closed.  My own answer was not really programmer specific, but that was partially because as a programmer I understand the degree of overlap between front end and back end programmers, and I'm not sure a non-programmer could take that into account with their answer.  At any rate, it's a decent question that deserves to be open on one site or the other.  Can we settle once and for all where it belongs?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27929" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1085" RevisionGUID="354e1a48-f958-4d14-b6d2-2ac51d1d0322" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You could post a link to the question on your blog, Facebook page or Twitter (for example).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you use the URL from the &quot;link&quot; link then this includes your user id and visits using that URL are tracked. If you get enough visits within a given time period you might get the [&quot;Announcer&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/54/announcer), [&quot;Booster&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/55/booster) or even [&quot;Publicist&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/56/publicist) badge." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27930" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1755" RevisionGUID="423a1896-3da7-4eb2-8de0-764e878e5ee4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Moderator message for Questions with many answer is very negative (See an example [here][1]):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; With 75 answers it is highly unlikely that your answer will add anything new. Please feel free to comment or even edit existing answers if you wish to add extra information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A better message could be a positive one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; With 75 answers, it is highly *likely that an answer similar to yours was already posted*. Please feel free to comment or even edit existing answers if you wish to add extra information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-a-developer-know-before-building-a-public-web-site" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27931" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6571" RevisionGUID="05f1b111-8e93-4659-9e87-8d1855ae01e6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="What is the correct stackExchange site to ask about conceptual question about computer systems? Is programmers better or computer science one better?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not really planning on asking anything related to actual coding or debugging at all though.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was request to provide examples, so here are the types of questions I plan on asking:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/234004/how-does-fds-flat-datacenter-storage-make-optimizations-around-locality-unnece&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/23155/why-does-appending-permutations-of-servers-at-the-end-of-hash-table-avoid-bottle&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some hypothetical examples are as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another hypothetical example could be, I would like to discuss X detail of map reduce (and provide the link to the paper) or Y detail of two-phase commit, Z detail of Paxos (and provide a link of Lamport's paper) or P detail of Spanner, or W detail of EPaxos. etc&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27932" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5570" RevisionGUID="c91076ee-5ed7-4d6a-8fc9-b6e878bc5f37" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I stumbled upon this question today: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/187403/import-module-vs-from-module-import-function&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was closed as not constructive, but honestly I believed it's a very good fit for the site.  As you can see from the top answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The question admits answers backed by facts&#xD;&#xA; 2. There are available references supporting those facts&#xD;&#xA; 3. Even though there could be religious/off-topic/not constructive arguments made, the fact is that this question had at least one objective, fact-based answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd be happy to see this question reopened, even though it was already answered, because I think it's indeed a good fit for programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly, it pains me to see so many closed questions on the front page sometimes.  Now I agree most of them shouldn't be on here, but it must be discouraging for new users as well as confusing.  It's hard to tell what's a good question on programmers.SE, much more so than on SO, so I think good questions like this one should stay open." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27934" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1793" RevisionGUID="c04f3334-ac65-434a-a7d5-368c33088f7f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My rep on the P.Se site was 641 this morning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The `/reputation` page showed a total of 645 or so, and I pressed the button to `Trigger Recalc`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It now [jumps to 905][1] and the `/reputation` page shows a total of 905 as well. I'm not sure where the 260 came from - this discrepancy is only on p.se and not on SO, meta.so etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Has anyone else faced this today?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've checked that none of the CW answers have suddenly turned to scoring ones, they're still CW.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*I'm not complaining* - just wondering if I got someone else's stats by mistake?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit after Jeff's comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've checked and think it's related [to this answer][2] from May 2010 which was migrated over from SO on Feb 15 2011 **as CW**. But now I can see it has accumulated 290 rep on p.se on dates prior to the migration. This is original rep from SO which I think was not credited earlier on P.SE - but which I remember I did lose on SO when the migration happened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So probably the rep did not get calculated all this while - but I'm sure I saw the breakdown only showing 645 this morning. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/1681/jose&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/48117/how-do-software-projects-go-over-budget-and-under-deliver/48123#48123" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27935" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6625" RevisionGUID="ff4c8190-b1c2-481d-8ab4-3f592cb7c3c0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just failed an audit on this question:&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/60664.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was submitted as a first post from a new user, but that's wrong. I remember this post and it was mostly definitely not from a new user. I searched for it as a duplicate and couldn't find it, on either Programmers or SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My recollection is that the question was down-voted or deleted. It was not really a very good question, so maybe it really was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I was intending to flag it as a duplicate by someone apparently cheating the system, registering a new user so they could ask the same question again. Instead, I got the &quot;you failed an audit&quot; rap over the knuckles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Surely this is always a risk if you set real questions as audits that could easily have been seen by the reviewer? I know it doesn't 'really' matter, but somehow it doesn't seem the right thing to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some helpful answers and comments prompt me to make one small suggestion. Since it appears that failing an audit may not be all that rare even for experienced reviewers, perhaps the language could be reworded slightly. Less of the &quot;gotcha&quot; and perhaps more of the &quot;we all miss one occasionally but don't make a habit of it.&quot; Just a thought." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27936" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2779" RevisionGUID="a1b6be61-c409-40d7-9758-1ca12442c63c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As part of a cleanup of the [tag:software] tag [mentioned earlier on meta](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2773/is-there-a-point-to-software), we need to clean up the [closed questions found therein](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bsoftware%5D+closed%3A1).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's no point in shuffling around tags on questions that are off-topic or bad to begin with: if we can save these highly-upvoted questions, now's the time to do it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###1.  Merge candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two questions that were closed as being exactly duplicates of earlier questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/26076/what-are-some-handy-tools-in-windows-that-makes-programmers-life-easy &amp;rarr; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1913/what-are-the-must-have-development-tools-for-windows&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/25181/what-are-the-symptoms-events-or-actions-of-a-software-death-cycle &amp;rarr; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1371/what-are-the-warning-signs-of-impending-doom-to-watch-out-for-on-a-project&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any reason why these questions should not be merged, effectively deleting the [tag:software] tagged versions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not, can these questions be improved so that they can be reopened? Otherwise, flag or vote for deletion so we can clean them up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### 2. The rest&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/60303/what-are-nets-starlibs&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/19408/what-are-must-have-tools-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/26076/what-are-some-handy-tools-in-windows-that-makes-programmers-life-easy&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5168/whats-the-biggest-software-security-vulnerabilty-youve-personally-discovered&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can these questions be saved by a heroic edit and community pruning?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If any of these questions can be saved, please be bold and do so: flag bad answers for deletion, combine piecemeal answers into a single canonical one, rewrite the question, flag for reopening.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, the end game for these questions is deletion; so if there's something about these questions that necessitate them being here, let's whip them into shape." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27937" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6542" RevisionGUID="16b1a82f-73b2-4761-a378-264a728e441f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Should debug and debugging tags be synonyms? Should they be merged? I think so. I would like to hear your opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am referring to [debug tag][1] and [debugging tag][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/debug?sort=votes&amp;pageSize=15&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/debugging?sort=votes&amp;pageSize=15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27938" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5585" RevisionGUID="893ac3ef-517d-4265-b581-4424de28468d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Close *votes* are not public, at least not until they've actually resulted in a post being closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, [reviews][1] *are* public - and if a candidate participates in reviewing questions, the results can give you a much broader picture of how he'll likely behave as a moderator. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember, the posts being reviewed aren't necessarily those that the candidates have any specific interest in; rather, they've been identified by someone else on the site (or by the system itself) as potentially problematic, and presented to the reviewer for a decision. **This is pretty close to what moderators find themselves doing much of the time, and thus a very good way to gauge their aptitude for the job.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each candidate's review history will be linked to from their nomination following the next build. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/34364/dynamic?tab=activity&amp;sort=reviews&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/28988/world-engineer?tab=activity&amp;sort=reviews" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27939" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3114" RevisionGUID="6e1013da-08ed-4508-b2dc-460bb16e921c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm not fond of calling users out, but with [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/134702/how-should-i-design-my-rpn-calculator), I'm a bit confused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It came across initially as fitting the &quot;I'm question banned on SO, so I'm parking it here&quot; category to be honest and frank.  I understand that it looks like it could be more of a conceptual question, but I think at the heart, it's looking for someone to code the majority of the procedures.  There was some great editing, and I agree that doing so gets it out of the irretrievable box a bit, but at what cost?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the interest of transparency, I did flag this question, and the flag was rejected, so that's not the issue here.  I do wonder why it passed muster, though. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27940" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1797" RevisionGUID="fdd48f23-7d5a-468a-a16b-031526a36c51" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A few hours ago I got downvoted on all my questions and only questions. Is it because downvoting question is now free?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/2567/pierre-303?tab=reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27941" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6689" RevisionGUID="86bff4e3-9298-4042-a1af-8197f2157325" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question stemmed from happenings on this [question.][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was one person that voted to close, that also answered the question. The same person also edited the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On other sites, at least, I've always felt that &quot;if a question is good enough to answer, it's good enough to leave open.&quot; Sometimes I would edit and improve the question before answering it. But having done so, I wouldn't vote to close it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, on the other hand, I felt that the question was bad enough to vote to close, then I wouldn't dignify it with an answer. Is this the right posture, to discourage others from answering until the other four close votes are registered? (I don't have enough rep on this site to vote to close, so I flag moderators instead.) And is there a potential conflict of interest with answering a question, then voting to close, meaning that I can get &quot;rep&quot; for an answer, but deny the opportunity to others?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, I wouldn't both edit and vote to close. Either my edit was good enough to salvage the question, or maybe it wasn't. But again, is there a conflict of interest if I did both?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/244550/after-html-and-css" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27942" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5642" RevisionGUID="6d846c6b-bce1-4ad8-8c30-19fa3f50f1a5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Can someone have a look at [this question][1]?  Some newbie who apparently doesn't understand the idea of abstraction came along and asked a question that, admittedly, is a bit ranty.  Several people, including myself, tried to come up with useful answers that would help the asker learn and understand... but several other people closed it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But then something crazy happened.  I went to cast a reopen vote, and there's no reopen link.  The Edit link is grayed out, and hovering over it says that the question is locked.  But there's no &quot;Locked&quot; message anywhere on the question, nor any evidence that a moderator ever looked at it.  (The question was closed by five ordinary users.)  Something appears to be very broken here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone please fix this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/188657/why-do-data-types-in-computers-exist-if-its-really-all-just-bits" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27944" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1346" RevisionGUID="ff6736db-dcf1-45ef-bae5-c5c7123ab1f2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A user's reputation tab now shows the actual time votes to posts were given, so you could infer it from that.  For example, for the question https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/38597/where-and-how-to-mention-stackoverflow-participation-in-the-resume&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can look at the [asker's reputation tab](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/4443/sandeepan-nath?tab=reputation):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; +5 	23:01 	upvote 	 &#xD;&#xA;&gt; +5 	10:33 	upvote 	 &#xD;&#xA;&gt; +5 	06:49 	upvote 	 &#xD;&#xA;&gt; +5 	06:20 	upvote 	 &#xD;&#xA;&gt; +5 	06:13 	upvote 	 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [revisions tab](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/38597/revisions) shows when the bounty was added (17 hours ago)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just click [active](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/38597/where-and-how-to-mention-stackoverflow-participation-in-the-resume?tab=active#tab-top) to see the answers by recent activity (sort of what you are asking) or [oldest](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/38597/where-and-how-to-mention-stackoverflow-participation-in-the-resume?tab=oldest#tab-top) (the order they were posted, but in reverse, so you'd have to look to the end for the newest answers).  Again, you'd have to infer which is which by the time the bounty was posted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27945" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2823" RevisionGUID="a22e8360-0960-4e13-86d1-f1ac5c48ce1e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Check out these two recent questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/129497/looking-for-advice-about-my-employment-salary-situation (now deleted)&#xD;&#xA;2. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/129500/java-developer-interview-questions-regarding-sql&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The text of the first question has [been replaced by the OP][1] to &quot;Please delete thanks&quot;. In this instance OP cannot delete the question himself because there is an answer to it. The answer starts by saying: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is off-topic for Programmers, but I'll give you my advice:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question is a wall of text, story of OP's life type of question. It's still open at the time I'm writing this, but if not improved it will be closed. There's also an answer to it that appeared after a comment clearly pointed out the (obvious) problems with the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strictly speaking, we shouldn't try to answer obviously off topic questions, as discussed in [this earlier meta question][2]. For question (1) the answerer even acknowledged the question was off topic, and I fail to see any point to the answer whatsoever, other than rep-farming.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For question (2) it's a little bit more complicated. There's a core question in there that might even be a good question for StackOverflow. I can't blame an answerer for going for it, if (s)he truly believes the answer will be migrated. But there are all sorts of wrong with the question and chances are it will be closed very soon and the answer is NOT one that would fly well on StackOverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I've personally answered [quite][3] [a][4] [few][5] [extremely][6] [low][7] [hanging][8] [fruits][9], I'm no stranger to rep-farming and I don't really have any problem with answerers. But to me, both questions were obviously at the very low end of the quality spectrum, and I'd prefer it if people refrain from answering those, especially with casual answers (i.e. short, without facts and references). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For question (1) the OP lost the ability to delete his post because of the casual answer, and now we have a question that says &quot;please delete&quot; and a judgement call for a moderator/10K users, as deleting the question will also delete a positively voted answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm fully aware that answers can be updated as well, and that several of us opt to answer fast and improve later, and I hope that's the case with these two answers. If not, please don't post answers on obviously off topic / bad questions, especially casual ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts? Arguments? Cookies?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first question and one or possibly more answers on the second one were deleted. although that's more of a guess, as the current answers where posted as is (no edits) and wouldn't have sparked that post. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/129497/2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2223/are-useful-answers-to-off-topic-questions-useful-to-the-community&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/118212/s-shaped-perl-program/118214#118214&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/128376/benefits-pitfalls-of-include/128377#128377&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/119357/what-are-silverlight-wcf-ria-services-or-applications/119361#119361&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/122270/creating-a-library-that-requires-other-libraries-php/122273#122273&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/78183/what-is-the-best-method-for-releasing-free-extension-or-example-code-based-on/79306#79306&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/118449/is-php-and-mysql-web-development-4th-ed-an-outdated-book-to-learn-from/118462#118462&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/117289/does-the-session-implicit-objects-are-examples-of-the-model-objects-of-mvc/117306#117306" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27946" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3121" RevisionGUID="29ac67a5-8583-4b29-a4cb-6275416fa584" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) it plainly states that career advice questions are not appropriate.  Yet when a new question is being asked you are prompted to input a tag, including the [tag:career-development].  Perhaps we shouldn't prompt users to input this tag if it is not appropriate for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![A screenshot showing improper tag prompt][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/JLULM.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27949" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5646" RevisionGUID="f16c891f-aaeb-4d34-b7e0-b29c03865818" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="By default, that list is everything that's been recently active (you can change this via the tabs on the right). &quot;Top&quot; in this case is a synonym for &quot;recent&quot; - it's the top of the stack, so to speak. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to see the top-as-in-best questions for the site, check out the [Greatest Hits](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/greatest-hits) " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27950" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6698" RevisionGUID="4deb1961-44a1-45d9-83b1-020c4daf654b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Have you read the close reason?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or the [&quot;what not to ask&quot; section of the listing of what's on-topic here][1]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To address your specific points, question quality is extremely important to Stack Exchange. To attract experts in a particular subject area, the questions need to be interesting and relevant. We have a very specific [scope][2], relatively strict [guidelines for what makes a good question][3], and [rules for post quality and content][4]. These rules are what make Stack Exchange successful, draw in experts, and provide high quality answers for people who are searching for them (Google loves Stack Exchange sites - many are often on the first page or two of Google if there's a related question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, the community is wrong. Up votes don't mean that a question should remain open. If it doesn't belong, it should be closed. If possible, it should be cleaned up to make it appropriate for the site. If not, then it may eventually be deleted so that the site eventually becomes a set of high quality questions with high quality answers that solve people's problems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/behavior" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27951" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6696" RevisionGUID="f9f8bc84-7a3a-4edb-9c63-30756eec6c10" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="When I click the &quot;flag&quot; link on [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/244800/qml-and-qfilesystemmodel-interaction-problem), the popup claims I have already flagged it twice:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * it is a duplicate... This question has been asked before and already has an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have already raised this type of flag&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * it should be closed for another reason... This question does not meet this site's standards and should be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you have already raised this type of flag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can believe that I flagged it once (as &quot;...another reason...&quot; if I encountered it yesterday), but I'm pretty sure I didn't flag it twice - I cannot imagine that I flagged it as a duplicate of anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My flag history agrees and shows only one flag:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Qml and QfileSystemModel interaction problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asked yesterday by user136432&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off-topic – Andrew Medico 20 hours ago   helpful &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why, then, is the system claiming I flagged it twice?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27952" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1502" RevisionGUID="d157fed5-e0c9-423f-92c5-671a2deb6bf0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Your [profile][1] contains all your starred questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/22098/ryuzaki" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27953" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5648" RevisionGUID="730837c4-6f25-404d-b542-d47842ef7bbe" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Recently, my question [Looking for books on the C and POSIX standards](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/188639/looking-for-books-on-the-c-and-posix-standards) was closed as &quot;off topic&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;I don't really agree with that, and feel misunderstood. Reading the FAQ didn't make it clear either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can someone clarify? =/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks,&#xD;&#xA;Andy" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27954" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1863" RevisionGUID="dff9f2f1-11a5-46b4-b1c4-07fcb9943d99" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[A question I asked recently](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/88953/what-kind-of-programmer-can-i-expect-for-10-to-12-50-an-hour) was closed on the basis of it being to localized and / or not helping any future visitors.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted a chance to explain myself as this is a very important question to me and I would like as much input as possible. Someone's future is at stake!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I brought up my geographic data because it was relevant to show the difference between what my boss wants to pay a highly technical position and what a McDonald’s worker makes. I was not asking a question about a specific region. I was basically trying to ask “If minimum wage is x and my boss wants to pay x + 2, who will I be able to hire?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How will the question not help future users? I posted that question and in the first 5 minutes it picked up 50 views, 5 answers, some up votes, and no trolls. The question was directly answerable and not open ended or conversational. I looked for similar questions on other forums and found nothing useful. As is usually the case, the SE community came through. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27955" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6748" RevisionGUID="a11e34ac-e680-4d06-8f47-0120062ea40b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="After some months I got back to [programmers.stackexchange][1] to ask a question there. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I get this really disturbing message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We are no longer accepting questions from this account. See [the Help Center][2] to learn more. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I remember I always had a positiv statistic at programmers, so I do not see any reason for some kind of ban. From what I can see in my profile, there are only positive questions / answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From my profile I can see that I have 2 questions asked. One positive, one deleted because it seemed to be offtopic (which I tried to discuss, because the question is legit from what the rules tell).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, 1 good question, 1 closed question and 1 good answer... this gets me banned?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, my question is very simple:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can I find out what on the world led to that ban?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27956" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3138" RevisionGUID="8dea1748-7f64-462c-ad26-11b52afd2067" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="With the exception of StackOverflow, I find this information promising actually...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question scores are merely falling in line with the **actual** average quality of questions in Programmers.  There have always been bad questions on Programmers, but up until recently, more active users finally understand the scope of the site and care enough to participate in meeting that vision.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an example of a question that should have been heavily downvoted and closed with impunity.  The answers are by far and away **even WORSE**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/9409/what-was-the-worst-experience-youve-had-with-a-customer-user&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No offense Pierre, but we were all fresh users at one point before we really understood what this place was about." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27957" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1506" RevisionGUID="510167b1-782d-48f9-8bcf-39ac255745fd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would rather we merge [tag:courses] into [tag:training-courses] to prevent ambiguity. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We need to do something about [tag:career-advice] and [tag:career-guidance] beyond/instead of merging it into [tag:career]: career advice is [off-topic here](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) except in very specific circumstances. I'm even going to go out on a limb and say they're pointless meta-tags: all on-topic questions here are necessarily about programming as a career, and having separate tags for advice and guidance only serves to reinforce the idea that asking for *advice* and *guidance*, as opposed to *answers*, is okay." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27958" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2838" RevisionGUID="2651dcfc-219e-4948-9e00-3714024ebf71" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [main point of Stack Exchange](http://stackexchange.com/about), and why there are 80+ sites, is that when you ask a question on one of the sites, you're going to get expert-level answers about the subject of your question. Uniquely targeted content attracts experts in the field who can then help those seeking expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if you go to [Biology.SE](http://biology.stackexchange.com), and ask a question about biology, you're going to get an answer from an expert biologist vetted by other experts in the field. There's a higher chance the answer is correct—and more importantly, high quality—than if you went to a general purpose site like [Quora](http://quora.com) or [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the other side of this coin is that if you ask about music or the arts on Biology.SE, you're not going to get an expert answer (if you even *get* an answer) because the audience of the site isn't music. For that, you want to go to [Music.SE](http://music.stackexchange.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this framework, our site is for experts in programming. You ask a question *about* programming, you're ostensibly going to get answers from expert programmers vetted by other expert programmers. If you ask a question about anything else, you're going to get low quality answers vetted by people who aren't experts in the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, we programmers tend to be a pretty confident and self-involved bunch. There a lot of things we do, like, or believe that we think are unique; that by virtue of asking about something *as a programmer* it is much different than asking about it *as anything else*. And of course, that because it's in the context of a *programmer* involved, we must be experts and qualified to answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The truth is that this isn't actually the case: we aren't special snowflakes who see the world qualitatively differently from everyone else. Yes, there are a lot of things that are directly about programming, but there are an awful lot of things that really have nothing to do with it and require the expertise of people who aren't programmers, or require expertise outside the scope of programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are off-topic: if you're asking about cryptographic protocols in general, you want to ask [our site for cryptography experts](http://crypto.stackexchange.com), where they will cater to you. If you want to ask about HAL 9000, you want to ask on [our site for experts on science fiction and fantasy](http://scifi.stackexchange.com), not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then there are questions that don't request expertise, or, given the way we're structured, require an expertise that can't be found on Stack Exchange. Things like personal career advice, polls, workplace therapy and the like require the expertise of people who know the asker on a personal level, or at least knows the situation from all sides. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, I can't tell you what's going to be good for your career because I don't know you. I don't know what you like to do, what motivates you, what your current life situation is, how many bridges you've burned, and so on. I *could* get to know you and find all those things out, but that'll take forever. What you *really* need is a mentor. Stack Exchange is not a mentoring service: we're a Q&amp;A service. The &quot;A&quot; stands for answers, not advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Suggestion 1: Rename the site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So given all this background, there's no need for a name change because we really do only allow questions directly to programming. We even have a handy chart in [the FAQ](http://programmers.stackexchange.com):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Programmers scope](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is, people tend to think their question fits the blue, &quot;All Programmers&quot; area when really it's in the white &quot;Just You&quot;, &quot;All Careers&quot;, or &quot;All People&quot; areas.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Suggestion 2: Allow closures to be peer-reviewed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [Anna noted in the comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2837/should-the-good-question-criteria-be-revised-or-has-flagging-become-over-zea#comment-7096), if you have enough reputation to vote to close ([currently 3,000](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/close-questions)), you also have the ability to vote to reopen any close questions. It takes five community members to reopen any question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Alternatively, if you'd like to make your case and try and convince others (including moderators, who can reopen any question unilaterally), create a meta discussion question here and explain why the question is on-topic and how you've revised the question to address the concerns that it's not. This way, we as a community can discuss the closure and come to a consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Suggestion 3: Provide more sites for migration&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We moderators can, and often do, migrate questions anywhere else on the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is flagged for closure, we check to see if it might be a better fit elsewhere on the network. If we find a potential match, we contact the moderators on the candidate site and see if they want the question. If they do, it goes; if they don't, we close it here as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally, the reasons sites don't want questions fall into two categories:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **The question is low quality.** There's a network-wide golden rule: [don't migrate crap](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1901/8). If a question isn't a stellar fit for the destination site, it shouldn't get migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **The question is actually off-topic on the destination site.** Tying into the background above, each site is a community of experts. We're not experts in all the subjects that might take off-topic questions that have been asked here. What might look like, to us, a question that's on-topic on one site might actually be out of scope there, for whatever reason. We can't force people to accept questions on other sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Summary&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, in short, if you think a question's closed but is really, truly about programming (and not about something else asked by a programmer), revise the question to explain what, specifically, is being asked that requires the unique insights of a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see a question that might be a good fit on another site on the network, flag it for moderator attention and we'll contact the appropriate people and make the arrangements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Specifics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/130018/book-on-network-cryptographic-protocols   &#xD;&#xA;General question about cryptography asking for book recommendations. General cryptography questions are on-topic on our sister site, [Cryptography.SE](http://crypto.stackexchange.com). However, like us, broad-stroke book recommendation questions are off-topic there because they're open-ended polls for opinions instead of definitively answerable with expertise. I contacted the moderators on Cryptography.SE and they declined the migration.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/130061/how-can-i-branch-out-from-ui-into-other-areas-of-development   &#xD;&#xA;Broad career advice question about a person's specific situation dealing with their team and how they can get into the any-programming-that-isn't-UI-programming business. Beyond the issue of not knowing the person well enough to tell them how they should develop their career or deal with their coworkers, &quot;how do I get better at programming?&quot; is way broad for a site about programming. Asking specific questions about learning a specific subsection of programming would be on-topic, instead.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27959" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3154" RevisionGUID="0a5aad49-edeb-44ee-88b7-c0eaa97c447e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="According to [your profile](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/34364/jae?tab=activity), you only have 93 suggested edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Jae's Profile][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A number of those were also rejected, which would get you to the 79 edits listed on the Review page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the future, also keep in mind that not every edit [counts towards the editor badges](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/442/what-kind-of-edits-contribute-to-the-editor-badges):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - does not include edits to your own posts&#xD;&#xA;- does not include edits to tags &#xD;&#xA;- community-wiki posts are eligible&#xD;&#xA;- tag wiki posts are eligible&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To count for S&amp;W/Copy Editor, the edit must cover the title, the body or both.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Dfop5.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27960" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1885" RevisionGUID="054986de-d18a-41a1-bd71-a0192d1d9d88" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A [question][1] of mine was recently closed as 'off topic'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was no message left explaining the reason, and it is not as obvious to me as it apparently was to those closing it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I initially posted this question on SO, then realized it was the wrong place to ask and deleted my question to re-post it on Programmers, as I was sure this place was fitting. Even more surprising came the quick close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be obvious to anyone thinking about the question for a second that this is related to programming. The all people - all careers - all programmers - only me point also &#xD;&#xA;does not apply here. The question is not too localized, too. I was left in confusion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why I would love to see a comment explaining the reason to close. I do consider it pretty rude to simply close the question without any remark and leave me standing as an idiot. This has actually been discussed a LOT on meta.so and the consensus was to have the mods close as they believe is fit (which is very good and I'm perfectly fine with that) and add a quick message explaining the reason (which was not the case here).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case (and more than enough other cases I experienced) a politely helpful (and as per the meta discussion, &quot;suggested to exist&quot;) comment regarding close reason was not given. Please make adding a comment on closing questions a requirement. It is not as blatantly obvious to others as to you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This carries additional weight on this site because apparently a lot of questions get closed, and I'm sure everyone gets bored of the often ensuing discussions on meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/89515/svr-or-srv-correct-abbreviation-for-server&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I'm going to tag this 'discussion' because I also asked about a specific question, though feature-request might be more fitting? I'm not sure, please feel free to re-tag.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27961" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1528" RevisionGUID="5988b626-76cc-494f-aa61-1712549a0825" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="If your intent is for a site recommendation, that's [off-topic here](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask &quot;Where can I get X?&quot;—recommendation questions—don't really demonstrate learning. I can ask &quot;Where do I find good clients?&quot; and likely get an answer, but then a few days later, I can ask &quot;Where do I find good clients who have X?&quot;, then a few days later, &quot;Where do I find good clients who have Y?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of these questions help me learn *how* to select good clients, and answers just become a glorified search engine. That's not what Stack Exchange is about. Instead, we want to help you answer *how* to select good clients so the next time the issue comes up (but with a slightly different set of circumstances), you can answer it yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, it helps others who aren't in your same exact situation apply the question to their own situation, preventing multiple similar questions because the first question didn't exactly apply.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more information, check out [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/), which describes this problem in detail:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If I had to summarize our network in a single word, that word is **“learning”**. People come to our sites to learn about topics they are passionate about. As the old Chinese proverb goes, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Every question and answer ultimately should be about teaching and learning — yes, even the shopping ones.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27962" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5697" RevisionGUID="405deb02-47a8-4075-88e9-98bf3dbe6ab7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was just browsing topics and came to https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/151857/why-most-use-cygwin-and-not-uwin which reads to me like a product plug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not complaining in the least about this, but I figured the rate of question closing on this board makes me think really hard before posting, and I would *never* think to say something like &quot;what is the reason more people don't use X?  It seems good!&quot;... :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hope I'm not stepping on any toes.. I assume there's a little more leeway in Meta..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27964" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6715" RevisionGUID="c5925fe5-5f45-436b-91d7-7a5e71e3a6a2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So this question I posted about data cleansing was deemed off topic, in spite of having attracted two upvotes, a favourite and a positive comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/245563/are-there-any-useful-programming-tools-or-techniques-for-cleaning-data-files&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the help center, it would appear that the question is in a slightly gray area in terms of relevance. I would argue that if falls under several of the criteria for relevance:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - software requirements &#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes &#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But equally it would seem to fall foul of one of the criteria deemed off-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's left me wondering where on the SE family my question would be seen as more relevant than here? The search for useful programming tools and libraries would seem extremely tenuous on Stack Overflow or Software Recommendations, after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if there isn't anywhere more relevant for these types of questions, should that particular relevance criteria perhaps be relaxed? Or should there be more guidance on how to ask a question like this in a &quot;more relevant manner&quot; (quoted, because I'm not sure how it could be edited for relevance)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27965" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6771" RevisionGUID="32c7e5b3-6d91-4abb-81e5-b040becedfd4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The two likely questions that contributed to the question ban were these two, both of which received a pretty significant net negative score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/228891 - -5&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/219843 - -4&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are also not blocked from answering questions, so contributing answers (along with [the other steps on this page][1]) should help get over this block. Note that moderators can not lift it - the only way to get over this block is by contributing positively to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27966" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1586" RevisionGUID="62c2b7b2-1d2a-4b1a-b6d3-4ee6d2cdb81e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You can use&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed:0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;in the search which gives the url:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search for more search options." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27967" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1931" RevisionGUID="f9b457d5-96d4-4e2e-8526-ea6ea250911c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's been several days now - should I have earned a Guru badge for: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/90561/co-worker-renamed-all-of-my-queries/90566#90566&#xD;&#xA;?&#xD;&#xA;It's not the answer with the highest vote count, but I didn't see that as a requirement." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27968" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3172" RevisionGUID="aba19cfa-8ea6-4a8a-b32b-5c9e7b2f0719" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Deletion candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions to see which can be saved through [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) and reopened. If no improvement would make them on topic, vote to delete if you have the reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/18120/what-is-the-good-bad-decision-you-made-in-your-mid-20s-about-your-career&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/88798/am-i-an-idealist&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/63657/i-made-a-mistake-accepting-this-job&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/36007/which-are-the-best-investments-you-have-done-for-your-career-as-programmer&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/18502/who-wants-to-keep-developing&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/23075/what-is-the-coolest-way-to-handle-a-failure&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/39992/are-there-too-many-qualified-software-development-engineers-chasing-too-few-jobs&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/11425/burned-out-on-programming-and-given-up&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/14827/typical-hours-week-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/20866/the-job-is-stressing-me-out-and-i-am-unable-to-get-enough-sleep-at-night&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/69500/dont-make-me-write-bad-code-is-that-all-programmers-really-want&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/49105/how-do-you-apply-to-a-company-way-out-of-your-league&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/21782/stagnating-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46514/what-to-do-when-youre-the-interviewer-and-you-dont-like-your-job&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/22714/what-are-the-telltale-signs-that-the-code-youre-writing-is-already-obsolete&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1006/how-do-you-motivate-yourself-to-program-when-youd-really-rather-be-doing-somet&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/63592/how-do-senior-developers-keep-up-to-learning-as-much-as-a-junior&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/53168/what-are-some-good-performance-goals-for-a-software-engineer&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5920/how-do-you-manage-your-resume-cv&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/16222/how-to-remain-calm-in-all-situations&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1360/what-are-the-top-motivators-for-a-programmer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27970" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1698" RevisionGUID="2c475bb5-c867-423d-badb-d91558fdcc6f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="From the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please note that the following subjects are considered off-topic here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * If your question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really something that uniquely applies to software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So basically yes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I can see that, as you point out, there might be cases where the solution is unique to software development - but it might not be immediately obvious and these situations might be few and far between.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The danger is, that if we (as a community) leave these questions open we risk diluting the site content until it becomes a general employment discussion site - something we don't really want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know what the answer is. Unfortunately I think we have to err on the side of caution at the moment. If you think something's been unfairly closed then please do flag it or raise it here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27971" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6753" RevisionGUID="6ec818d9-20ad-4799-a736-b474bd00d5d4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A migrated question has one answer.&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24416871/netbeans-changed-after-uml-installed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But when I look at the list of questions, I see, that the question has zero answers. &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/uml&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27972" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5709" RevisionGUID="adc06cb9-c946-4e89-b900-7443a0fbf6e1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Relevant Link: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/189582/how-is-an-ide-compiled&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought I was asking a fair question that's fit for programmers.stackexchange. Apparently, many experts do not think so. What's more unfortunate is that I cannot delete the question now even though it's terrible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not here to argue, I'm genuinely curious as to why the question is considered bad. All I'm interested in hearing is the procedures used to build a modern IDE, and I simply gave an example of VS and Eclipse to illustrate my point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently, people think the example is way too farfetched so I tried to remove the example given regarding VS and Eclipse. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some specific questions I want to ask:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Is the question itself bad? For example, is it something blatantly obvious that you can't figure out why anyone would ask such question?&#xD;&#xA; 2. Is the question simply not fit for Programmers.SE?&#xD;&#xA; 3. Is the question itself fine but very poorly written? I'm not sure how I can improve the question from as is. I'd really love to hear suggestions for this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27973" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1935" RevisionGUID="a7e6f24f-4a71-46e8-98d9-b92a3433dbb5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So we have a question that's pretty popular today: [Software engineering has become all about the red-tape and not about the programming.](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/92508/8)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, to me personally, reads very much like a rant and the answers its received have mainly been to chime in with personal opinions about how things suck. It even received a comment with 36 upvotes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this a question or a blog post?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Normally, it's a question that would be closed as not constructive, but it's got a lot of activity and no close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So is this question constructive? If so, why? If it isn't, what can we do to get the community more animated in helping moderate popular questions that are ultimately poor fits for our site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27974" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6793" RevisionGUID="82e8fdff-b9e6-4f0f-bc0f-3edd74eaafb8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Check out https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/200362/does-dedicated-maintenance-work-hamper-a-programmers-career. I was reading the answers with interest, and considering adding my own, when I realized that the question had been tagged as a duplicate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;No problem&quot;, I thought, &quot;let me just head to the original question&quot;. I was a bit surprised to find that the linked question in the duplicate tag was https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/108085/how-do-i-get-myself-out-of-a-dead-end-programming-job. This question, in turn, was flagged as a duplicate in its own right, and tied back to https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/161384/how-do-you-break-out-of-the-role-of-a-code-maintainer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's my problem: the things I wanted to post, which are basically some seldom-discussed strengths of maintenance programmers, wouldn't make sense as answers to the second or third questions I listed. The second question makes a bunch of statements about a &quot;bad&quot; job (lack of structure, obsolete tools/methods) that don't involve maintenance programming, and it would be odd for me to provide an answer dealing with the topic of maintenance programming. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The third question starts with the premise that maintenance programming is inherently bad, and it's not my role in responding to contradict the premise. (If someone on a travel site asked, &quot;what's the quickest way to get out of Wilmington, DE?&quot;, an answer telling the person about reasons to stay would be most unwelcome.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The people flagging the first question as duplicate apparently made an assumption, namely that &quot;maintenance programming&quot; equals &quot;dead end&quot;. I don't agree with that, and even if I did I wouldn't expect this assumption to be baked into the moderation rules of this site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The people flagging the second question were a bit more reasonable. Both questions are basically in the spirit of &quot;help me find a way out&quot;. Taking things one step further, I'd say that question #1 is a pretty interesting one, whereas questions #2 and #3 are fairly mundane, and even borderline inappropriate. If someone really doesn't know the names of a few job sites or technical recruiters, I don't think this is the proper venue for finding this information out, nor is ordinary jawboning about one's job very welcome here." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27975" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1735" RevisionGUID="06a7424c-7889-4a5e-bf38-1dcc2ed37698" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There was an issue last night with migrations due to an unrelated push, causing this to migrate multiple times.  In correcting it we deleted all the duplicates, but unfortunately we deleted the one that the [original][1] question [points][2] to as well...oops.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I undeleted [that question][2] (the same you linked in *this* question) to correct this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6349835/starting-web-development-and-interactive-experiences?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/84062/starting-web-development-and-interactive-experiences" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27976" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2849" RevisionGUID="f8ce1599-5fcc-4d53-a15e-12790e122a96" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The fact is, in most cases what is obvious to someone is not to another person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take [this question][1] as en example. ChrisF commented that the question is off-topic. Is it? Well, as it was at the beginning and with `php` tag, it strongly feels as Stack Overflow or Webmasters.SE related question, which has nothing to do with programming in general. Remove the tag, slightly reformulate the question, and it doesn't seem off-topic any longer (even if I would rather say it belongs more to Webmasters.SE).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question was &quot;How to set different languages for different crawlers in PHP?&quot;, then yes, it would be a Stack Overflow question. As is, it's not the best candidate to be closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even in much more obvious situations, there are still a few reasons to answer anywhere:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Imagine the question belongs to Stack Overflow, and it *will* &amp;nbsp;be migrated, for sure. I have an account on both Stack Overflow and here. Do I really need to wait until the question is migrated, then search for it on SO, and then answer? It's much easier to answer now and, at the same time, to vote to migrate. For the community, it doesn't change anything, except that the question is answered earlier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- I don't answer for reputation. I answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. To help people,&#xD;&#xA;  2. Because I like answering questions related to general programming,&#xD;&#xA;  3. Because some of my answers might be useful for community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It means that there is no reason to not answering a question before it's closed: the answer helps the OP, I enjoy writing the answer (well, I don't enjoy receiving &quot;The answer is closed&quot; notification while writing the answer for the last ten minutes) and the community may still read the question and the answer, since closed questions remain accessible by every user, unless deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  If you answer just to get rep, then yes, you may want to avoid doing it on a question which will be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If there is a good answer to a closed question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. It will bring people to Programmers.SE when they search for the same subject on Google,&#xD;&#xA;  2. It will be useful if somebody wants to post a similar question: not only he'll know it's not constructive, too localized or whatsoever, but his question will be already answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What will hurt, is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If people would answer to the old low-quality questions, making them appear on the home page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If the sole purpose of answering a question which will be closed would be to gain reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first point may be a problem, but from what I've seen, the low-quality questions are closed quickly enough for that. The second point is a non-issue, IMO. Most users who post low quality questions rarely accept or upvote answers, and other people won't upvote your answer just because you made an effort answering a closed question: they upvote if your answer is good; if it's good, it's welcome on SE websites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/130355/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27977" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6799" RevisionGUID="4fa7301e-fdaf-49f2-b665-89ef989ca917" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:45.687" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I know StackExchange has a pretty strict policy about discussion based questions, as I [recently discovered][1]. It got me thinking, how does the StackExchange community define opinion-based or *bad* questions? Without a strict line between what is opinion-based and what isn't a lot of questions that have been answered on StackExchange can be considered opinion based. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are numerous questions about Best Practices for example. Some of these questions pose arguments for or against doing something and give sufficient background information to allow an answer to be a &quot;Best&quot; answer. Some of them however don't, and yet aren't considered opinion based questions. In fact, any Best Practice question has an infinite number of answers that are valid which can be infinitely disagreed upon by others and turned into a discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even the act of determining if a question is opinion-based can be boiled down to an opinion. One person may think a question is opinion-based while another doesn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, everything I've said here doesn't apply to every question, only a select few &quot;fuzzy&quot; questions. As with almost everything in life there are the extreme ends of the spectrum; the questions that have clearly well defined answer like &quot;What is 2 + 2&quot;, and the questions that are purely opinion based like &quot;What is your favourite colour&quot;, but in the middle things can get wonky.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how does StackExchange define opinion based and how does it handle questions that are in the fuzzy zone?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm probably just butthurt that my question got took down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/252250/where-to-find-introductions-to-seemingly-general-programming-knowledge&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/252224/when-is-it-appropriate-to-do-calculations-in-front-end" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27978" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5736" RevisionGUID="dc4c15ee-b0f9-4031-a28f-e5898bbffbcc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As an example, look at https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/190096/can-commented-out-code-be-valuable-documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why has it been locked, what does &quot;This post has been locked while disputes about its content are being resolved.&quot; mean, and what can we do about it? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The &quot;For more info visit meta&quot; link attached to the notice just points to the meta site itself and not a particular question or answer, the comments don't say anything, and a search on meta has not been fruitful." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27980" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1953" RevisionGUID="b96b1866-6076-4796-88ce-5876eccb189b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question][1] was made CW (I'm not sure why - the whole CW criteria is pretty difficult to understand now) yet I am still getting rep accumulated when up-voted. My understanding is that rep is not affected by CW questions/answers. Has this changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/92984/how-do-i-ease-into-programming-coming-from-a-designer-background" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27981" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2872" RevisionGUID="7ad71b03-4d52-4690-9c8c-1a67c76750ec" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Opinion can be divided on many things, and even when people agree on principal they may have valid reasons to disagree in other ways.  That's human nature, and differing experiences which result simply in differing points of view. It becomes hard though where the edge cases exist, and where we see the most polarized positions which make it harder in some ways for the moderators to do their thing. If however there is a  system in place to deal with such issues, then it all comes out in the wash so to speak.  My concern is that often the questions can be seen as subjectively generalized, and also subjectively specialized. It might not be very clear where you can ask such questions without getting voted out from every place your question goes to, even when there will be a large group of people who actually want to know the answer, or to participate in some way.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I weighed into this issue when I found that this [question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/130645/what-you-should-do-if-your-junior-did-not-adopt-your-suggestion) had been closed.  It seemed a little premature and on the surface, given my reputation points are quite low at this time, I am unable to see the stuff that goes on behind the scenes so my understanding of why a question I found to be pertinent and - in the view of some - barely on topic, why the question would be closed.  It even prompted me to create a [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/2242/allowable-topics-on-programmersse) about it, where I hope we can as a community come to a general consensus about what to do in these cases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is - as has been pointed out already - a system via this meta to deal with closures and making a case to reopen questions.  It just seems to me that this question v answers format doesn't really work so well when attempting to solicit opinion and engage in a healthy debate about an issue.  The chat seems better suited to a more conversational approach to dealing with problems, but really limits how much you can type in a single post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I am hoping to achieve if at all possible is a little more transparency.  Moderators work together it seems, so it isn't like a single individual arbitrarily shuts a question down, but from the view of the question, when your reputation points are quite low, you don't get to see all these goings on.  Perhaps that is for the better for the most part, however it does leave many feeling frustrated and perhaps a little disillusioned about the process.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps what is needed is a lower reputation to allow people to vote on closures (not necessarily with an actual right to close the issue mind you). Perhaps a short period of notification before the closure with a link to an issue chat or a question on the meta.  I don't have a ready answer, and the question is whether any of this would actually devalue the site as a whole.  Something we certainly wouldn't want to happen, although I feel that adding a little more transparency seems IMHO a small price to pay to ensure that the reputation of the site doesn't suffer unnecessarily. I wouldn't dream for a minute of abandoning this site for reddit, as I feel this format works much better and is much cleaner.  Such responses are I think more of a knee-jerk reaction born more of frustration than anything else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As all programmers probably know, small problems left unchecked become ticking time bombs later on.  In this case however, we are talking about a sociological issue which may be considered a minor problem yet I believe highlights an underlying concern that perhaps could be addressed for the betterment of this site. My understanding is that ProgrammersSE was split from StackOverflow due to similar dissatisfaction, and while creating a new stack exchange isn't necessarily a bad thing, it might be overkill for the edge cases that could possibly be dealt with in a more sensitive manner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Side Note:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Re: my last paragraph, I don't really believe the moderators are insensitive.  I think you guys do a terrific job on the whole. I'd just like to see less questions shifted when they arguably might be considered more of an edge case, and perhaps the better option is to err: on the side of caution and not close without searching for other options." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27982" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6814" RevisionGUID="0dd054e9-b978-4de0-b57f-dbb489d96651" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Generally speaking if the question has a definite answer and is not-implementation dependent, we'll take it. Example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/49550/which-hashing-algorithm-is-best-for-uniqueness-and-speed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question has a definite answer and is in no way implementation dependent. The top answer is a work of art as well as being good solid science. This is the standard that we strive for. Obviously, we don't expect this level of amazing from every question but this is the direction people should be heading in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question winds up being too implementation specific, we can always just migrate the thing. No hard feelings." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27983" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1805" RevisionGUID="f24d892d-0d90-4168-bb2c-78736cc2c8ba" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="One very important question that I think needs answering before we even *think* about having a blog is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Who is our target audience?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or even more generally, what would be the purpose of the blog?  To keep the existing community engaged, or to try to reach out to a larger audience and show how awesome we are?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not to put too fine a point on it, but currently there's still an inordinate focus in this community on *vapor* topics (careers, productivity, coding style, language A vs. language B, etc.) as opposed to just *soft* topics (design patterns, enterprise architectures, software project management, and so on).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the same tug-of-war that the community here has *always* been embroiled in, but a blog is going to be somewhat polarizing.  Is it going to have the tone of...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Paul Graham, Steve Yegge, Scoble, and their ilk - full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? There's already copious amounts of this on P.SE and the internet in general. I'm sure it would be popular, but would it mesh with SE's pitch of making the internet a better place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Eric Lippert, Raymond Chen, Jon Skeet, etc.?  The material from them almost seems too technical to put on a P.SE blog.  It really belongs on a Stack Overflow blog - of course, *that* blog already has a [different meaning][1], so maybe this is precisely where it should be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Maybe the kind of topics we see from Fowler, Ayende, Udi Dahan (minus the advertising), and so on?  There *are* bloggers out there who frequently or at least occasionally write serious posts about non-code aspects of the software development *process*, although they're kind of hard to find.  This would certainly be an interesting niche; the question is, would people read it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Or maybe we want to take advantage of the breadth of the community and aggregate all of the off-the-beaten-path stuff like [space][2], [high-frequency trading][3], [energy][4], [device drivers][5], and all of the other professions that collectively employ millions of developers worldwide but we almost never hear about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a critically-important question to me.  I'm not saying for sure that I'd personally be qualified or willing to write *anyway*, but I definitely *wouldn't* want to be associated with the usual [participatory narcissism][6], complete with fluff on software &quot;craftsmanship&quot; and what it &quot;means&quot; to be a developer and how every corporate programming job (which is [over 85% of all programming jobs][7]) is a nightmarish dead end and the only way to ever be truly *happy* as a programmer is to work for a caffeinated, VC-infused, pampering software publisher like Google, or maybe start your own business.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You get the idea, I hope.  Software is an *immense* field; it's almost depressing how 90% of the popular writing seems to come from this weird alien echo chamber comprising maybe 10% of the profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point is, if P.SE really wants to have a blog that *stands out*, it's going to have to do something different from the mountains of crap that are already out there.  Take advantage of the diversity in this community to produce articles that will make people *think*, and dispense with the usual narcissism found on the less-technical programming blogs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/82648/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/13547/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/78928/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/52729/3249&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151131.htm" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27984" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5761" RevisionGUID="e62b5afa-389b-4e39-9e9f-4afb160990af" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My [question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/190668/iphone-device-version-statistics/190673?noredirect=1#190673) was downvoted and closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Comments suggested it was downvoted because it was a question about data unrelated to programming. The question it was duped as is a very similar question, why is that one on-topic and mine off?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, the question it was closed as a dupe of does ask about device stats, but no answers mention them. It has an accepted answer too, so I'm unlikely to get much help there or have much success reviving it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where should I ask this question if not here, or how can I fix it up so that it's acceptable?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27985" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2885" RevisionGUID="beb6c396-0623-4c8a-a107-9b51afb014cb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="After 2.5 weeks of no objections or attempts to salvage the questions, I went ahead and did the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Merged&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What are some handy tools in Windows that makes programmers life easy?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/26076/what-are-some-handy-tools-in-windows-that-makes-programmers-life-easy) &amp;rarr; [What are the must have development tools for Windows](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1913/what-are-the-must-have-development-tools-for-windows)&#xD;&#xA;* [What are the symptoms, events or actions of a software death cycle?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/25181/what-are-the-symptoms-events-or-actions-of-a-software-death-cycle) &amp;rarr; [What are the warning signs of impending doom to watch out for on a project?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1371/what-are-the-warning-signs-of-impending-doom-to-watch-out-for-on-a-project)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What are .NET's #starlibs?][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [What are must have tools for web development?][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the worst software bug in history?][3]&#xD;&#xA;* [What are some handy tools in Windows that makes programmers life easy?][4]&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the biggest software security vulnerabilty you've personally discovered?][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next step is to work through [Yannis's list of close candidates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2813/8): we will be closing questions that are off-topic, not constructive, or too localized as written. After a month, they will be deleted. So now's the time to save any questions there with heroic edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/60303/what-are-nets-starlibs&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/19408/what-are-must-have-tools-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/40477/what-is-the-worst-software-bug-in-history&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/26076/what-are-some-handy-tools-in-windows-that-makes-programmers-life-easy&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5168/whats-the-biggest-software-security-vulnerabilty-youve-personally-discovered" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27986" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2011" RevisionGUID="b1f7a874-c846-4d74-9f73-1f69a913def2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked a [question about VB.NET and C#][1], but a moderator closed it within a few minutes of it being asked without allowing the community to decide whether it should be worthy of the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to know, how can I appeal this action? Why don't moderators wait until other members of the community weigh in before closing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/96845/why-are-vb-net-developers-are-migrating-to-c" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27987" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6836" RevisionGUID="73c2c853-bcf6-4eb6-81ec-af004fe8b5d1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My [account][1] has been blocked from asking new questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only 1 question asked (0 downvotes). Whats up? Why? Can I unblock this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/85118/geotarget" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27988" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2913" RevisionGUID="2c251813-093b-44da-bb9c-2881c7debce0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Last election, there was [a suggestion that nominees should have their reputations recalculated](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1071/8) to accurately reflect their current totals and take into account all activity taken on the site thus far.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back then, it wasn't done automatically, but several candidates took it upon themselves to do it anyway by going to the [Reputation page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/reputation) and clicking &quot;Trigger Reputation Recalc&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't remember if the feature existed back then, but moderators *can* recalculate anyone's reputation now: should it be done for nominees? If you're a nominee, would you mind recalculating your reputation yourself?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27989" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2013" RevisionGUID="64e290f4-a29e-46cd-81c1-c182be68d25d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was [told to come ask this here][1], so hopefully it doesn't get closed or down voted here too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've always been curious why people seem to move from VB to C# when VB.NET seems to have some technical advantages over C#, while both use the same framework and compile down to almost the same code. VB.NET is supported most everywhere C# is in the Microsoft stack.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a way to ask a question about this without it being closed as an ***EXACT DUPLICATE*** of [C# vs VB.NET Debate][2] or some other closed question. Is the [Programmers][3] site not the place to ask questions comparing and contrasting the technical merits of programming languages? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to compare things without it being assumed I am asking &quot;Which tech is better?&quot; Better is subjective but technical advantages or merits is objective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/96854/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1180/vb-net-vs-c-debate&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27990" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2933" RevisionGUID="61cd8897-b971-4871-a397-46c57a856ba1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Considering this question :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is the best ORM for .NET?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion it is off topic as it is a [shopping][2] [tool][3] question. On the other hand the [best answer][4] answers what should have been the question &quot;What are the criterias for choosing an ORM for.NET?&quot;, but that would be too much of a change ? Most answers wouldn't fit anymore with the question... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should it be edited ? closed ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related question (but old and in a somewhat different context of migration and different subject) : [Rewording other people's questions][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/9498/what-is-the-best-orm-for-net&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/9531/7454&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/987/rewording-other-peoples-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27991" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6865" RevisionGUID="4a0a847a-b4b2-450b-93d3-7d6364a69d7d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/132357/42132) has a [voluntary typo](http://chat.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/18670554#18670554) by the author, yet people keep correcting it. I've explained in the edit reason why it should be kept, and it's already been rolled back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure what I should do. On the one hand, the content is community-owned, especially if the edits keep coming (since it'll go in community wiki). On the other hand, I think the author's typo is fun, and the original author should still keep his answer in the tone he wants. (After all, it's *not* community wiki.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't want to get in an edit war, so I'll just ask here what should be done." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27992" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5886" RevisionGUID="d7b65052-e25d-461d-8df7-95c0099a9915" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/196777/documentation-examples-etc-of-implementing-googles-website-translator&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The one comment I got was a link that was so generic, it might as well have been to www.google.com. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27993" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2935" RevisionGUID="94da3270-b6e3-457d-b388-66e1bd845d7e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just added a post notice to [a question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/124109/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-design-patterns) and saw the font had dropped down a size:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![Post notice font problem][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't added a post notice in several days so I don't know when it started doing this, but could it be related to the [change in code block font size](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2130/could-we-get-the-new-coding-font-style)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Kaho2.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27994" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1806" RevisionGUID="6eb634df-9b4e-4037-aaed-8056a16bd790" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So it's summer-time, and while you may be thinking that means warm temperatures and blue skies (sorry, Southern Hemisphere!), the Stack Exchange network has caught the clean-up bug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our sister sites like [OnStartups](http://meta.answers.onstartups.com/questions/526/onstartups-clean-up-getting-started) and [Ask Ubuntu](https://meta.askubuntu.com/questions/1220/clean-up-week-event-planning) have proposed cleaning up old questions to spruce up the place, and we thought it'd be a good idea to explore here on Programmers.SE, as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange has an automatic deletion system in place (see [Jeff's answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1806/programmers-se-summer-cleaning/1807#1807) for the details), but we've still amassed 2,690 (and counting) closed questions so far. The idea would be to sweep up the hundreds of questions collecting dust because they weren't great fits for our site and were closed or abandoned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It'd also be a way to get everyone involved in moderating the site, and we moderators would rely heavily on you guys to go through and take a look at what needs to go or what needs to be reviewed. Plus, it's a chance for more flag weight increases than you can possibly imagine!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Criteria for deletion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our thinking right now is to follow the leads of our sister sites and delete questions that have one or more of the following criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Have a vote total of -2 or less *(Edit: mostly complete)*&#xD;&#xA;* Have a very low view count&#xD;&#xA;* Have no answers, or no upvoted answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With the additional criterion that the question must've been closed, ideally for a decent amount of time to allow the original poster to revise the question and try to get it reopened (let's say, a month).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, based on Joel Spolsky and Robert Cartaino's suggestions, any questions with have not been answered and haven't had any activity in several months (i.e. the &quot;forgotten&quot; questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Getting involved&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is where you guys come in. If you see a question that's worth saving but exhibits the qualities above, **fight for it.** If a question is sitting around that really doesn't belong here, **tell us.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does that mean? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Identifying questions that could be improved.** Some questions were closed because they were bad fits for the *as written*, but nevertheless had some really great answers. If you think you can get the question into a state that'd make it a fit for our site without invalidating the answers, edit the question or suggest an edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Voting on questions.** If you have the ability to vote for deletion or re-open, use your powers for good. If you see a question that's wrongfully closed, vote to re-open it. If you see a question that should be deleted, vote to delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **Flagging questions that need moderator's attention.** If you find a closed question that needs one of us to take a look at it, flag it and let us know what your concern is. If you don't have the ability to vote to re-open or delete but feel strongly about it, let us know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Finding candidate questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE search has a few operators to help locate candidate questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [All questions that are closed](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed%3A1)&#xD;&#xA;* [Closed questions with -2 score or less](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1530/closed-questions-with-2-score-or-less)&#xD;&#xA;* [Closed questions with less than 100 views and more than -2 score](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1531/closed-questions-with-less-than-100-views-and-greater-than-2-score)&#xD;&#xA;* [Questions with no activity and no answers for 6 months](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/s/1532/questions-with-no-answers-and-no-activity-for-6-months)&#xD;&#xA;* Others? Post 'em!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Questions and comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do you guys think? Are there any other parts of the site we should be looking at for some clean-up? Do you have any suggestions or ideas about how to handle this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27995" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2073" RevisionGUID="52ff3314-2439-47a6-a94f-5c5b787d10b7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/98899/haskell-code-accompanying-the-paul-hudak-1994-us-navy-experiment-paper&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The paper cited is a much-referenced (in the PL world) classic. I can imagine finding the accompanying code would be an occasional if not frequent need to anyone who found the paper useful or interesting or even controversial.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can think of no sane reason to close a useful question with a correct and useful answer. The only thing I can imagine is that since the mod didn't find the question interesting, they couldn't imagine that others might." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27996" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5963" RevisionGUID="50fc96d7-384c-4038-8b32-0208afce4bbf" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; What is the suitable platform for project discussion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that this is part of the problem with the question in that very discussion oriented questions increase noise on the site, and make it harder to build content.  Questions should be answerable, but a discussion is a series of questions, and then discovery leading to more questions.  It doesn't do well in the Q&amp;A format we have on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cite the [Help document](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/helpcenter/dont-ask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you need a discussion then I advise checking out our [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), it is intended for such things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How to initiate a project if I can't be the technical lead?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I actually think this is a great question by itself and you should ask it.  The problem is that I don't see where you are actually asking this or it just isn't clear you are asking this.  If this is something you really want to know then it is getting drowned out by unrelated problems you are bringing up in your Question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What should I learn / equip myself with in order to start the project?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is considered an Off Topic question on Programmers.  I cite the [Help document](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/helpcenter/on-topic) on Off Topic questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [you should not ask ...] what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that overall if you ask a new question focused around point number 2, then you can get some good answers, but your other problems should go to chat and see if anybody wants to discuss them with you first." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27997" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6870" RevisionGUID="6a1546bf-0a8b-46bd-aae2-69c421272e38" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/254978/whats-wrong-with-comments-that-explain-complex-code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; after writing a complex piece of code written in a partly human-readable programming language, why not add a descriptive and concise comment explaining the operation of the code in friendly and understandable English? ...What's wrong with explaining complicated code with a comment?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/201657/forcing-people-to-read-and-understand-code-instead-of-using-comments-function-s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is the approach of avoiding commenting code to make people actually read the code and understand what is going on make sense in a medium-sized coding environment (one that can be reasonably read in whole by every person working on it within a month or two), or is it a recipe for a long-term disaster? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the approach?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At a first glance, above questions look quite similar to me. First looks like asking something like &quot;what's wrong with following `&lt;particular approach&gt;`&quot;, while second asks &quot;is it okay to abstain of following `&lt;particular approach&gt;`&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But both questions are somewhat broad and verbose and I am not fully certain that I figured the similarity correctly. Would appreciate an explanation if I miss some substantial difference between these questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27998" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2940" RevisionGUID="33c74416-71c1-40ab-b44f-52bcb59bf57f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am referring to [this question:What you should do if your junior did not adopt your suggestion? ][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was asked to take this question to [Parenting SE][2] or [Professional Matters SE][3], because the question is a workplace issue. You can read the comments for a debate on whether this question should be closed or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, I can't take the issue to Parenting SE because I am not a parent to those juniors whom I am responsible for. Second, the Professional Matters does not exist yet, so I can't take the issue to a site that hasn't been created yet. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I was asked to refer to this [meta answer][4] for a reasoning as to the closure of the question. I agree with the answer's definition of the Programmer SE's characterization, and I believe that my question applies uniquely to programmers in particular and to creative workers in general. Closing a question as such because this question doesn't just apply to programmers but to other creative workers will only restrict unnecessarily the scope of Programmer SE and make it less useful for the programmers. Not to mention that closing a question because it belongs to a still-not-yet-exist site doesn't sound too good a practice. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**AND** if the career-related site didn't get created there would be no place for my question to go to, which makes the SE rather &quot;incomplete&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, the question should be reopened and must remain opened until at least the Professional Matters SE goes onlive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/130645/what-you-should-do-if-your-junior-did-not-adopt-your-suggestion&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://parenting.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/professional-matters?referrer=TXS6wD4QBeaJS6wd42Y-3w2&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2483/why-are-all-of-the-good-career-related-threads-closed/2484#2484" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27999" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2082" RevisionGUID="aa85b675-64f0-4e2a-a16e-b6497608003d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question][1] came up on my tag clean up, so I can't retag it. I can see it being closed for Not a Real Question, since it isn't good in it's present state. However, I did want to (like I said) retag it, improve the title, and improve the grammar and formatting of the question. I believe that even closed questions should be well-written and formatted - it just makes the site look better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/60568/acm-ieee-software-engineering-code-of-ethics-and-professional" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28001" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6872" RevisionGUID="e5587fea-c5c9-4319-a7e2-890b0928c82e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [first][2] is saying the OP has seen people suggestions that comments are bad and should not be used, and are asking if that really is true or not for specific scenarios, and why or why not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To highlight the important bit&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it really that bad to explain a complex algorithm with a few lines of comments about it's general operation? What's wrong with explaining complicated code with a comment?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [second link][1] is all about the standard that you should not write comments in code in order to enforce a specific kind of code quality. The user is specifically asking why or why wouldn't this standard be a good idea to implement in a specific environment size.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To highlight the main bit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Is the approach of avoiding commenting code [...] make sense in a medium-sized coding environment? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the approach?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions are very similar, however I would not count them the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am assuming you are asking because you want to close them as a duplicate. And since the second is already closed as a duplicate, I am assuming you want to close the first as a duplicate to the second.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would not personally.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only do I view them as separate questions, but also I find it extremely annoying when I come across cases where question A get closed as a duplicate to question B because they are similar (but not identical), then question B gets closed as a duplicate to question C because they are similar (but not identical), however question C does not answer question A. The end result is when I want an answer to question A, I get question C which does not answer my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add a link between them since someone seeking the answer from one would be likely interested in the answers of the other(s), but don't close as duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/201657/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/254978/whats-wrong-with-comments-that-explain-complex-code" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28002" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2009" RevisionGUID="39b75cae-96a2-4f34-8ffa-74fe3d6408d8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Another question migrated:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/96445/arent-permanantly-logged-in-accounts-inherently-insecure?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looks like the frequency is increasing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28003" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2964" RevisionGUID="c4ae0748-7c6a-4b49-9e67-6b5b8c23a2e2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="According to a Community Manager for the Stack Exchange Network, &quot;[**unless a question has some chance to be considered for reopening, it should be deleted**][1].&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on this query for [closed questions][2] (which returns 2,682 questions) and [16,210 questions count here][3], it appears possible that some closed questions are not being deleted, which based on my understanding goes against [SE practices][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Just to be clear, this is not a question about why questions are closed, or if too many are closed** -- but instead why there are so many closed questions that have not been deleted, given it appears to be SE policy to delete closed questions if it's clear they will not be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://security.meta.stackexchange.com/a/683/2742&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=closed:1&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://security.meta.stackexchange.com/a/683/2742" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28004" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6047" RevisionGUID="822caff1-1037-4392-aa12-c15ed4138d6c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/203686/revisions) has become a CW, presumably because it was edited several times. It cites Martin Fowler, but the quotation is paraphrased, so I edited it, posting the original quote and a link to the document from which came the quote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original answerer removed my change. If it were still &quot;his&quot; answer, I would be OK with it, but if it's really going to be CW, doesn't that mean it's owned *by the community*, or am I misunderstanding the semantics of CW?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28006" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6928" RevisionGUID="65df8d9e-a29f-4db0-8e3c-26acb7002687" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just notice in my account for programmers.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The following message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Some of your past questions have not been well-received, and you're in danger of being blocked from asking any more.[1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here my questions on https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/30714/gibbok?tab=questions, they have all from 2 to 10 up votes, some where bookmarked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reading more on this site I have found this explanation for that warning message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...heavily down-voted, zero-voted, or deleted posts. One or two bad posts will not cause you to be blocked from using the site...&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to ask more info on why this warning was sent and how could I improve my present questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ytAjh.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28007" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2020" RevisionGUID="41dfd415-ebff-4524-b470-0d92ee8c2519" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As I stated in a comment on [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/96845/why-vb-net-developers-are-migrating-to-c)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There will be an answer for every developer who switches and each answer will be equally valid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means it falls foul of this clause in the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) under the &quot;What kind of questions should I *not* ask here? section:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. [...] **avoid** asking subjective questions where ... every answer is equally valid [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28008" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6942" RevisionGUID="a9502e4d-57e1-4c7a-a755-8f4e26c74c45" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Was given a [post to review I made myself](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/80729) about 2 weeks ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Was &quot;only a test&quot; but I wonder if that's not something that should be filtered out...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6pcEs.png &quot;own post shown as review audit&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28009" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2037" RevisionGUID="0ab24be1-6303-4b34-bcbc-052cb99cb52c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="If this is the first time you hit the cap you'll get the [Mortarboard](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/25/mortarboard) badge. In fact if you look at that page now (30th July 2011) you'll see your name at the top of the list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep doing it and you'll eventually get the [Epic](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/26/epic) and [Legendary](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/27/legendary) badges." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28010" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3066" RevisionGUID="49dd64bf-a797-4acf-8202-f343af161622" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I agree that Math formatting could be a very nice feature, as it is available in numerous SE sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is helpful to formalize some problems, and I personnaly do not understand the workaround that is suggested.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example in this [question][1] I'd have preferred to explain my solution mathematically without actually giving the code. And I would have like to be able to provide the formula for computing the performances: $p_t = \frac{p_{t+1}}{p_t}$&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/133738/how-to-unit-test-computational-libraries-when-the-return-type-is-double" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28011" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2121" RevisionGUID="5826a6ed-69ec-43ba-b0ee-383f7a5698af" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I want to offer a bounty for my [question][1] and the **start a bounty** link is not there. Please help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/98651/what-are-the-advantages-of-the-intel-c-compiler" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28012" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6111" RevisionGUID="9108315b-bbe9-4a6f-91eb-dae9588e456f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Given the timing, you are likely referring to [What to do with a not well organized application? [duplicate]](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/101391/what-to-do-with-a-not-well-organized-application)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question being asked by the OP is summarized as &quot;I've just inherited a huge load of code that is of questionable quality and I don't know what to do with it.  Its fragile and 'like walking in a field with land mines!' What should I do?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question, is essentially the same as the question [I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code — what now?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now) which asks &quot;What would you include in your list of the most effective strategies to help straighten out the spaghetti (and prevent it in the future)?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These two questions ask the same thing.  Thus, &quot;This question has been asked before and already has an answer&quot; is correct - it has been asked before (in a slightly different form) and has already been answered." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28013" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6959" RevisionGUID="0d802dc9-9bf8-49e4-9439-07343bb738f8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A [question I asked][1] was put on hold. I have edited and instead am asking for guidance on how I can build a SAAS app. Does this question have scope to be taken off hold and attract some answers ? Or should I just re-ask the edited question ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]:https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/260693/guidelines-for-developing-saas-applications-in-java" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28014" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6135" RevisionGUID="25f583ea-d74e-4fad-bc81-dde0830479ba" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Yes.  With the fire of a thousand suns.](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/general)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28015" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2167" RevisionGUID="1d8aa690-cc21-47e9-b428-5873c95d3d28" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Are MS Server OSs a requirement for DVCS systems (Mercurial or Git) on the windows platform? ][1][closed]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/103199/are-ms-server-oss-a-requirement-for-dvcs-systems-mercurial-or-git-on-the-window&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet, another example of a question being closed as ‘not a real question’.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I grant the question actually requires reading to understand. Yet, people shouldn’t be closing questions if they do not understand the details. If one doesn’t use Kiln (for example) they should be additionally cautious for closing a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The very first line is:&#xD;&#xA;“Kiln (service for Mercurial) requires Windows server 2003/2008.”&#xD;&#xA;This establishes a found system requirement.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The two actual questions are not only reasonable and clear, but actually bulleted to stand out as questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;• Are MS Server OSs a requirement for DVCS systems (Mercurial or Git) on the windows platform? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;• Or to put it another way, Is it practical to run DVCS (Mercurial or Git) on Windows 7?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The next paragraph points out that open source software tends not to include this type of information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last bullet point is a bit vague, but taken in the context of the question is answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would at this point answer the question myself, but as it is closed cannot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer is along the lines of the following should be acceptable:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, while Kiln (service for Mercurial) requires Window Server 2003/2008 to operate, Mercurial itself does not require Windows Server 2003/2008. Many developers run Mercurial on Windows 7." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28016" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2084" RevisionGUID="977e4b16-ae0c-4200-bbca-5658712f6237" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Agree, most people use them synonymously anyway. And there seems slight confusion. In a context with internationalization the usage as natural language would make sense, like in [this](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/95202/if-someone-was-making-software-able-to-display-content-in-any-written-language) question. But they could (and most likely should) use [tag:internationalization]. In addition there is [tag:natural-language] and [tag:spoken-languages]. Maybe some text in the tag wiki would help users to make the distinction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;btw: We have both: [tag:language] and plural [tag:languages]. Could be merged as well I guess." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28017" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3109" RevisionGUID="b585603e-453a-4311-840c-67d30e5322b7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Asking &quot;what certification should I get?&quot; doesn't really fit with the Stack Exchange model of Q&amp;A: strangers telling people how they should plan their career is always a bad idea and usually too localized to the asker's specific circumstances.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way to make such questions not too localized, or at least more general, is to create a list of certifications, like you suggest, to let people decide on their own which ones seem interesting. Canonical lists do have their uses, but they're an exception to the rule, and generally reserved for [a last-ditch effort](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3096/8) to try and save a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a few problems with trying to use lists as the &quot;go-to&quot; method to solve a question quality problem like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's untenable for us to create a canonical list of every single certification a person can get, and more importantly, provide a reason why it's on the list (instead of just adding a link)&#xD;&#xA;* What criteria are used to generate the list is an open question, making the list dubious in quality or accuracy&#xD;&#xA;* While everybody likes the idea of lists, very few people take the non-trivial amount of effort to actively maintain the list&#xD;&#xA;* Lists are still [outside the Stack Exchange style of Q&amp;A](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of telling people what they should do, or providing a long list of stuff and telling them &quot;have fun!&quot;, it's almost always going to be better to ask questions that informs someone how to find and decide for themselves. Stuff like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* How do I go about identifying whether a certification is  useful in my line of work?&#xD;&#xA;* [Are certifications worth it?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/44/8)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28018" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6977" RevisionGUID="6b127d51-b351-48cb-b4fb-bd1afc326519" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Hitting the close vote reviews, I came across [this one](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/close/82286).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![screen shot of review][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm really not sure what the proper action on it is.  It's been deleted. I'm not sure if I should leave it open (it's deleted), close it (it's deleted), or attempt to edit it (it's deleted).  So... why was this one of the reviews that showed up?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hit skip.  And I suspect its not an audit.  So, is there something amiss with the 'our system has identified this post as possible spam' system?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/aBAhn.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28019" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2190" RevisionGUID="95adcf64-d651-4ba0-ac05-7a81b1d92098" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A question was recently posted on Programmers.SE about [Why IDEs don't support Unicode characters in code?][1]. The author wrongly asserts that &quot;no IDE supports&quot; unicode, and the question is written in a way that it has chances to be downvoted (and has already one downvote) and closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, the question can be reformulated into a form which will be actually useful to the community; something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are the things to check when my IDE fails to support unicode in code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I use [name of the IDE], but am unable to use unicode characters like `æ`, represented by U+00E6 in unicode table.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is this behavior the same in other IDEs? What can I do to make it work in [name of the IDE]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, we don't care about about the wrong assertions of the author, neither by the fact that the IDE she/he uses does not support it, but the situation where the text editor must support unicode, but doesn't can exist and affect other developers (see my answer about fonts or underlying file encoding).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So is it a good idea to just rewrite from scratch the question, or it's somehow abusive to change the question so heavily, and I must let it as is, awaiting for it to be closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/104885/why-ides-dont-support-unicode-characters-in-code/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28020" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3110" RevisionGUID="8f0c1c2a-634d-46d1-91ea-6464f7f82fb2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="To add to [what Mark said][1], consider writing a tag excerpt and starting a tag wiki for the [certification tag][2]. Both are currently empty. Perhaps organize a list by topic area, write a short description including the name of the certification, who sponsors/offers it, and provide a link to the official website to learn more. That seems like it would add plenty of value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3109/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/certification/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28021" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6982" RevisionGUID="1554a2bf-d220-400e-8bcc-267b495d20f1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The proposal to disambiguate the complexity tag is a good one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having discrete tags for &quot;big-o&quot; and &quot;cyclomatic complexity&quot; would I'm sure be useful for people who have questions about these specific topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for &quot;hand wavy complexity&quot; (an amusing term(!) for story point complexity estimation which you got from [here](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/238478/planning-poker-with-visually-impaired-colleague?noredirect=1#comment531359_238478)), I'd suggest using the tag &quot;story points&quot;, as story points are used to represent the complexity of a story in Agile estimation (see this article [here](http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/07/story-points-complexity-effort) for more information).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28022" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6164" RevisionGUID="62985785-895a-46a2-bbfc-3db8d99514ed" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/193415/best-practices-for-sharing-tiny-snippets-of-code-across-projects was closed 6 months after being posted. It was marked as a duplicate to https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/175066/how-to-promote-code-reuse-and-documentation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm a heavy user of many stack exchange sites and I feel that this question should not be closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - The questions are different, and require different answers. The only similarity is they ask about code reuse - a very broad topic. My question is quite specific.&#xD;&#xA; - The old question hasn't got the same quality of answers, upvotes, attention, discussion.&#xD;&#xA; - The old question hasn't got a single accepted or highly upvoted answer.&#xD;&#xA; - **More importantly:** There are still possible answers and suggestions that could be posted as answers to my question that still have not been posted. I won't write them here but since asking the question I've come across of a number of other answers/solutions that would be valuable to anyone reading the question.&#xD;&#xA; - Before being fully closed, I edited in and commented my case for not being closed. This was ignored.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wouldn't usually bother to write about this in meta but the question I asked is something I have and will always come back to as an important problem to look at. Closing the question without much thought throttles the discussion and prohibits further contributions by either myself or other users." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28023" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3123" RevisionGUID="5d4567d9-0809-4d5f-afda-85350d03dd88" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My understanding of the policy is that questions that are too subjective should be closed but not deleted, because they might still contain useful information for people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why was [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/14856/what-popular-best-practices-are-not-always-best-and-why) deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28025" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2159" RevisionGUID="22d9b764-4cba-455b-9f90-045041373891" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I see several types of closed questions on the Programmers' stack exchange that concern me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. ***Non-duplicate-duplicates***: [Questions closed as duplicates that are at least some degree different from the question that is cited as a duplicate](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/101988/should-developers-accept-overtime-weekend-work-denied-bonus-payments). (The concern here is that a good question, when asked in a different light, can elicit different, possibly better answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. ***Poor questions***: [Questions closed as not fulfilling enough of the 6 guidelines for a good question that are &quot;on the border&quot; of fulfilling enough of the guidelines](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/102528/what-is-more-standard-shortening-for-regular-expression-regex-or-regexp) that, to the casual observer, appear to be good questions. (The concern here is that closing good questions makes the exchange less valuable as a medium for exchanging information about, in this case, the programming profession).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. ***Mis-labeled closed questions***: Questions closed as not fulfilling guidelines that are actually good questions, but clearly off-topic, [such as this one on what is an iteration](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/95920/what-is-each-time-through-a-loop-called), or [this one from a 14-year old beginner](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/97785/my-dad-is-impatient-with-the-pace-of-my-learning-to-program-what-do-i-do). (The concern here is that newbies can become confused between what it means to stay on topic and how to ask good questions.  Another concern is that moderation can take the appearance of being incompetent when it lists the wrong reason for closing a question.) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. ***Marginally off-topic questions***: Questions that are closed as being off topic that, while not being exactly on topic, have the casual appearance of being on topic, such as [this one about interruptions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/33667/how-to-fend-off-external-interuptions). (The concern here is that closing good questions makes the exchange less valuable as a medium for exchanging information about, in this case, the programming profession. Another concern is that moderation can take the appearance of being in the control of mindless bureaucrats rather than reasoned, pragmatic elders.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One way to handle this is to ask the moderators to take some extra time to explain close decisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance, noting that Programmers' stack exchange is for ***expert*** programmers would be sufficient to close [this one](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/97785/my-dad-is-impatient-with-the-pace-of-my-learning-to-program-what-do-i-do) and [this one also](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/95920/what-is-each-time-through-a-loop-called).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For ***poor questions***such as [this one on GIT](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/96933/why-did-git-get-so-much-hype-while-others-dont) or this one on [regex/regexp](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/102528/what-is-more-standard-shortening-for-regular-expression-regex-or-regexp), ticking off the guidelines that are not present would really help casual users understand the elements of a good question better. For instance, the [regex/regexp](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/102528/what-is-more-standard-shortening-for-regular-expression-regex-or-regexp) question could be closed because it is merely mindless fun, it cannot be answered through facts or references, it does not invite sharing of experiences, it is not asked in an impartial tone, it only elicits short answers, and it will not inspire good answers. (Note -- I am curious about why [the regex/regexp question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/102528/what-is-more-standard-shortening-for-regular-expression-regex-or-regexp) is not a good question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The entire community can help out with ***mis-labeled closed*** questions by flagging then for re-labeling.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When closing, ***marginally off-topic*** questions -- either close them with the caveat that they be reworded to apply to expert programmers, or explain why the question is considered off-topic. For instance, the [question about interruptions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/33667/how-to-fend-off-external-interuptions) is a real problem for programmers as interruptions impact the productivity of programmers differently than they impact most other professions, so either it can be reworded to apply to programmers, or it should be explained that this is off-topic because other professions (such as mathematicians) also have the same problem with interruptions, so this question will always be considered off-topic in this stack exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not know the answer to the ***non-duplicate-duplicate*** issue, this one is heavily discussed in [meta.stackoverflow](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=non-duplicate+duplicate) as well. It is just one of the minor annoyances of using stack exchanges, I guess.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The moderators for this stack exchange have been very busy lately. I do not know if it is fair to ask them to shoulder the additional thought and care that the above recommendations would entail." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28026" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6988" RevisionGUID="816cdf2c-9c83-42ea-b0fd-3ab4dd8700b8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/262/will-java-still-be-relevant-in-5-years&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It had 40 upvotes and 4 years has passed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has 40 000 views. *Anyone* considering to start learning java will google &quot;future of java&quot; All they get is this outdated thread.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/FqR7n.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28027" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2200" RevisionGUID="41809488-7634-455d-af9c-c7ec08e03b0e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I posted the question: [Is it a bad idea for a company to take liberties with the truth in job specs for software developers?][1] A few people have interpreted this as either a rant or a question that is not constructive to any degree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This issue I raised was based on a past observation I found as a graduate and also based on my discussions with team mates. I thought it would be good to post the question to see if developers in other software houses have noticed this and if there was a reason why it was happening. In addition to this, I thought the answers would provide useful input for other graduates/junior developers who come here and may find this of some interest. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question can be salvaged, by rewording it, I'm happy to do so. If that's not possible, I'm happy for it to be closed. I'm not interested in evoking an argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/105326/is-it-a-bad-idea-for-a-company-to-take-liberties-with-the-truth-in-job-specs-for" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28028" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3192" RevisionGUID="6bb8d48e-f797-49bb-a1cb-19c800809507" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question [What is the most productive way to handle development-related failures?][1] is currently [flagged for deletion][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Dealing with project failures or your code being rejected seems like something that comes up a lot as a developer, and I like the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what can I do to the question to salvage it? Should I edit the content of the question and answers completely?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've edited the question to remove examples that are not related to software development, and flagged a lot of the low quality or duplicate answers for deletion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also made an edit to the accepted answer because I felt it was missing a key piece (learning from your failures), and edited a few other answers as well to bring them in line with the edited question. If I have time, I will attempt to go through the remaining answers and clean them up as well, although please feel free to step in and do it yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/23075/what-is-the-most-productive-way-to-handle-development-related-failures&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3172/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28029" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2172" RevisionGUID="1d88540e-bcd6-42f3-8544-811b4f457a52" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was the one who migrated it after a quick consultation with the other moderators. As an aside, you can click on the &quot;programmers.stackexchange.com&quot; link in the &quot;Migrated from&quot; banner on PM to get back to the [original question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/103930/should-a-group-of-three-students-working-on-a-big-programming-project-have-a-lead?noredirect=1) here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reasons for the migration were a combination of #1, #4, and #5 on your list. The question (while mentioning a software team) did not focus on software development aspects of the project and the answers did not provide any information that was uniquely related to software development either. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was a general question that could be summarized as &quot;should we have a project manager/leader?&quot;. The type of project appeared to be irrelevant, and I think that made the question a better fit for PM than for us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Far as editing the question to be more specific, I'm not sure how anyone except the OP could do it. We could've asked the OP to edit it, I suppose, but I'm not sure what that'd gain us when the question as it stands is pretty good as is, but simply better for another site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28030" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6263" RevisionGUID="5c030bc3-a44a-4595-b889-4f055463cf03" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="From our own (and I'm not digging too deeply):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/63504/would-a-cut-and-paste-coder-ever-get-past-a-job-interview&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/88745/does-over-reliance-on-tools-imply-that-you-are-lazy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Outside of that... we're a poor substitute for google.  And please remember, we're not a forum." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28031" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7037" RevisionGUID="4a8c0027-c075-4704-8c3d-550c84a56ada" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The character limit only applies to suggested edits. The reason the limit exists is that suggested edits need to be reviewed by at least two people, and it's quite rare that a minor edit will be worth two reviewers' time. Once you reach 2K rep points [your edits will go through without review][1], and the character limit won't apply anymore. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Until then, if you feel a minor edit would make a big difference in a post, you are welcome to drop it in [our chat room][2] and ask one of the regulars there to edit it for you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, you can always post a comment pointing out the mistakes. The original poster, or any high rep user who'll happen to read your comment can then fix the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/edit&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28032" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2251" RevisionGUID="2c5b05dc-67de-4397-91e4-5c2184fdfbd3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This][1] question has been closed as being not constructive. The main point is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does anyone still use flowcharts and if so, under what circumstances?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is answerable and relevant answers can include pointers to contemporary development methodologies that uses flowcharts. I fail to see how it is  non constructive. Can someone shed a light on this issue?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/107227/does-anyone-still-use-flowcharts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28033" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3174" RevisionGUID="a47dc95b-4230-4d0e-bcf5-33c705e2c90e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing [the \[stci-career\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. 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https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/47477/why-do-employers-care-so-much-about-gpa&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/50311/does-it-really-takes-5-10-years-or-more-to-be-really-good-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/50461/advice-for-how-to-handle-company-pride&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/51546/how-do-you-handle-developer-that-has-taken-an-early-retirement&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/53123/how-important-is-studying-algorithms-and-theory-is-to-becoming-a-great-programme&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently we hit the character limit, [closure candidates continue in another answer][1]. Please don't add anything to this answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3206/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28034" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7123" RevisionGUID="f1e48c47-d090-4819-8d58-0db6b274fb87" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It looks like it was deleted by a moderator because it did not meet the quality standards we have for answers on this site.  Short one sentence answers really fail to capture a full explanation needed, even if the OP is asking a painfully simple question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is a link with some helpful information on how to write better answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28035" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2266" RevisionGUID="c91884e8-81f0-4a79-8fe7-b17edc2e19cf" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I know that originally, questions about testing were on-topic here, but now that http://sqa.stackexchange.com exists are questions like [this][1] still considered on-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/108351/integration-tests-across-a-3-tier-net-solution" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28037" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2173" RevisionGUID="a6653090-9c2e-473d-9dfb-40140d214152" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Update - October 20th, 2011&#xD;&#xA;Current statistics:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Total Questions: 13,440&#xD;&#xA;* Total Closed but not deleted: 1,321&#xD;&#xA;* Closed Percentage: 9.38% (▼ 7.56% from September 20th, ▼ 10.81% since this post was written)&#xD;&#xA;* SE 2.0 Closed Percentage (no Trilogy): 5.36% (▼ 0.72%)&#xD;&#xA;* Network Closed Percentage (w/Trilogy): 2.56% (▼ 0.04%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point, we have a lower close percentage than Web Applications, Android, English, and Webmasters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There was some concern that we're bleeding users: not sure how long they've been tracking it, but [the Stack Exchange site tracks](http://stackexchange.com/sites?sort=newengagedusers&amp;expand=true) new 200+ users over a rolling two weeks period: Programmers has consistently had the second highest number of 200+ users (only Stack Overflow itself has beaten us), and the number has gone up since I've been tracking it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We've also updated [the FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) to be much more straightforward, which will hopefully alleviate some confusion about what is and isn't on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I don't think it's particularly constructive to approach a problem this way, I think it's important, if we do, to work with accurate numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of right now, there are 2,816 closed—but not deleted—questions on Programmers. There are 13,925 questions total on Programmers. This makes the closed, but not deleted ratio of questions 20.2%. In the 10 days since you measured this, it's gone down 3%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Focusing on the same metrics you did your post, here are number closed with at least 5 score and number closed with less than or equal to 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 774 (27.5%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 265 (9.4%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This puts the ratio of 5+ score questions closed higher than what you had and the ratio of &lt;= 0 score questions much lower than what you had.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To understand why, we need to include data you didn't have access to when you did this survey: the number of deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The number of deleted questions on Programmers.SE is 2,975: more than the number of closed questions you see. If we also include these numbers into the mix, we get a different story:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score: 891. % of closed or deleted: 15.3%&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score: 2,223. % of closed or deleted: 38.3%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This paints a bit of a different picture than measuring just the closed questions and the results presented in your survey. Why? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's because we routinely delete low-scoring questions as they are uncontroversially bad for the site, and the scores on those questions agree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason we don't delete nearly as many high-scoring answers is because [&quot;closed&quot; doesn't mean &quot;bad&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed). It means the question doesn't meet the site's guidelines in some way, but there's some value, and it could even be improved and reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, *deletion*—not closure—is where bad questions go to spend eternity in Hell. Closure, on the other hand, is the purgatory of questions. They're not on-topic, but they're providing *some* value: enough to stick around while we figure out what to do with them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### A Comparison&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now that we're working with accurate numbers, how do they compare to other sites, particularly Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From a purely quantitative standpoint, Stack Overflow's numbers are in a different league:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Publicly viewable questions: 1,997,856&#xD;&#xA;* Closed, but not deleted: ~39,048 (2%)&#xD;&#xA;* Deleted: 194,008 (8.9%)&#xD;&#xA;* &gt;= 5 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~1,964 (5%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~4,142 (1.8%)&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;= 0 score:&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed (not deleted): ~26,123 (67%)&#xD;&#xA;    * Closed + deleted: ~199,326 (85.5%)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like Programmers, Stack Overflow's ratios skew a lot higher when  deleted low-scoring questions are added, and lower when it deleted high-voted questions are added. This isn't coincidence: the same moderation style is used on both sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Some context&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it's important, from a qualitative standpoint, to put these numbers into context. Stack Overflow is not qualitatively similar to Programmers.SE, and comparing their closed/deleted percentage to ours is about as meaningless as comparing our percentages to [Quora](http://quora.com) or [Yahoo! Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com). We just simply don't have the same issues or types of questions they have. If we did, there wouldn't be a separate site: we'd just be part of Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also important to put Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE into historical context:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow was the first, and for a long period of time, the only Stack Exchange site. It did not, for much of its history, have the benefit of knowledge gleaned from the year of trial and error with the Stack Exchange 2.0 project. And notably, it did not have the benefit of 40+ other sites with 40+ other sets of problems to crystalize what makes and doesn't make a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This difference in background and two year head start is [a constant cause of problems](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1899/the-business-of-being-a-migration-path-for-stack-overflow): 27% of all questions migrated here from Stack Overflow are closed and/or deleted. Thousands upon thousands of questions that should be off-topic there and on-topic here never get closed or migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because of its history as the flagship Stack Exchange site, it also has enormous scaling issues. They have [~10 volunteer moderators for 2 million questions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/101431/should-stack-overflow-moderators-have-a-standard-of-duty): one for every 200,000 asked. We have 4 for 16,000: one for every 4,000. We are just better equipped to close bad questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The history of Programmers.SE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But going into [our history](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created/64046#64046) a little bit: Stack Overflow had a serious problem with popular questions that didn't really belong anywhere: &quot;What's your favorite programmer cartoon?&quot;, &quot;What do you like about programming?&quot;, etc. When Stack Exchange 2.0 and the Area 51 engine launched, one of the first proposals to gain traction was [*Not Programming Related*](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related), intended to house all of these types of questions. It launched on September 1st, 2010 and for a period of 3 weeks, surged in popularity as all the questions repressed on Stack Overflow were asked on this new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, the quality was all over the place: the site had some of the worst questions and some of the best questions. After a few weeks of this, [new guidelines were put into place](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) to try to raise the level of questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the rest of the beta period, these guidelines were enforced sporadically as the community tried to come to terms with its original charter and what it would take to make a useful site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On December 16, 2010, [Programmers.SE was launched](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/) under its new mission, having been the test-bed for a number of guidelines about questions that later generations of Stack Exchange sites benefitted from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This left 3.5 months of questions asked during a particularly formative point in the Stack Exchange network: more than a quarter of our site's lifespan. Compare this to Stack Overflow, which has had the benefit of 2.5 years of maturity and wasn't originally created to be [the toilet bowl of a different site](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73382/please-stop-using-programmers-se-as-your-toilet-bowl).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While we're slowly resolving those initial growing pains, it's going to take some more time. The ratios will normalize, but they aren't going to normalize in the next month: it going to take several months to a couple of years to stabilize into a site as mature as the currently-three-year-old Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The situation isn't as dire as it might seem from one reading of the numbers. It was dire at one time, but that was last year. Now, we're moving forward: our traffic is increasing and our closed ratio is decreasing. More and more, people are taking ownership of Programmers.SE as something to be proud of, and the quality of questions and answers is noticeably rising.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there's a lot we can improve, but it's going to be far more constructive and productive to isolate specific failings and correct those, not to make generalizations about the site as a whole. If we stick to generalizations, we might as well just shut this site down and start over." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28038" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7170" RevisionGUID="21778d69-abbb-431e-b078-9d7f32a32904" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I changed the title of [this question][1] of mine which have more than 8 answers and one accepted answer to match it with the question; but it was immediately put on hold. Should I change it back to its previous title? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;About the question itself, I referenced my answer to some scientific pages which correspond to my question. I edited it many times to clarify it and now don't see much unclear things in it, please note I can't change the question totally regarding the existing answers (then they might become irrelevant, could I do that?), I kept those things which was referenced on the answers intact, but yet my question is clear. If it is not, please tell me. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or maybe I should have asked it in another website? for example CS.stackexchange.com? I personally think my three or two recent questions fit more in the CS.stackexchange.com. and it's possible that users here don't expect more academical questions here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/272638/what-is-a-program-rather-than-implementation-of-an-algorithm&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_computation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28039" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6391" RevisionGUID="42798a6c-635a-46ed-bc33-9b24811b6157" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Since he treats everyone that way, and doesn't single out individuals, that somehow makes it no longer harassment, and makes it &quot;conscientiously improving the quality of the site.&quot;  Unfortunately, there is no real policy in place to deal with over-zealousness, despite its affect on the site's image with new users.  You are not the first person to describe the end effect of this particular user's voting and editing patterns as feeling &quot;harassed.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you *can* do is dispute individual edits or closings, either with a meta post, or by raising a flag.  For example, I think you have a pretty strong case that https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/221710/3965 is an example of a &quot;[good subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&quot; question, and I voted to reopen accordingly." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28041" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3248" RevisionGUID="bba8dbaa-474c-4094-8aa4-f2fc8c503afc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've just seen a question closed by a moderator because &quot;Career advice is explicitly off-topic, per the FAQ&quot; ([link][1]), which is simply incorrect: the FAQ makes clear that career advice specific to programmers is relevant, by linking to an answer, the first sentence of which is &quot;First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate directly to software development&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closing the question did nothing to make this a better site, and was taken on the basis of a clearly incorrect understanding of what is defined as on-topic. What mechanisms currently exist, or should exist, to prevent moderators from simply pursuing their own agenda?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/138152/choosing-between-an-msc-and-an-industry-job/138153#comment259728_138152" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28042" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2284" RevisionGUID="30577ca7-aaaa-4a12-89ac-f29872985a8f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="From the [FAQ][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 250 	Vote to close, reopen, or migrate **your** questions  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 300 	Create new tags  &#xD;&#xA;500 	Retag questions  &#xD;&#xA;1000 	Show total up and down vote counts  &#xD;&#xA;2000 	Edit other people’s posts, vote to approve or reject suggested edits  &#xD;&#xA;3000 	Vote to close, reopen, or migrate **any** questions &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hate to say it, but *seriously* - read the whole FAQ. :) Clicking on each header expands it so you see the whole section (and doing all of them, gets you a *badge*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yes, if you think a Question *should* be closed - flag it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28043" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6522" RevisionGUID="d516bcd1-f93d-4f07-8761-06aa8c2f1993" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question [Why is BigDecimal the best data type for currency?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/228584/why-is-bigdecimal-the-best-data-type-for-currency) has been marked as a duplicate of a [question about numerical approximation of floating point data](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/224859/when-do-rounding-problems-become-a-real-problem-is-the-least-significant-digit).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Persons who recognised this as a duplicate probably thought to accounting software or related questions.  There is however industry fields where software uses float to represent currencies, which happens to be a perfectly valid approach—of course, we do not talk of accounting software here!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the correct answer to this question is “BigDecimal is *not* the best data type for currency” and the question is not a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can we remove the “duplicate” annotation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28044" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2374" RevisionGUID="5ad52fcc-363a-4d43-8ad9-e11b042d2ee7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I see nothing wrong with [this user](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/24257/pacerier#qpage_3-qsort_votes) which was suspended for low-quality contributions. Most of his questions are upvoted and only one answer has five downvotes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does anybody care to explain reason for his suspension?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28045" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7206" RevisionGUID="ce65272c-17ae-418d-bd34-98ce3229b29f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Good questions need to be specific to avoid being &quot;too broad&quot; and have a small number of valid answers to avoid being too subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking for advice on something is fine - but not using the Stack Exchange Q&amp;A format. It is too open-ended. While a good answer can be long and contain many supporting details, an answer to &quot;I need advice&quot; could be an entire novel.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A better question would focus on one facet of the problem in a way that can be objectively answered _and_ applies to more people than just you: see the graphic in the [on-topic page][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please remember that helping _you_ (for any value of &quot;you&quot;) is not the goal of this site. The goal is to be a repository of knowledge to help _many_ people. This is why we may appear to be so picky about what questions stay open and which are closed. While a question and its answers may help you in your specific situation, it does not necessarily help _many_ programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28046" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3255" RevisionGUID="50a01162-4856-40df-8f06-f141b4054a0f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Unfortunately, [the site name does not match the site FAQ][1]. Questions on programmers.SE should be about software development, not about programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The essence of your question was if you should continue your education in Canada, or get a job in the US. While this might be a decent question if this were a Q&amp;A site about programmers, it doesn't fit in a site about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site was originally designed to be a site about programmers, hence the site name, however it was determined by the powers-that-be that this was not a good fit for the stack exchange system and they changed it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've been trying to get them to either change the site name or the site scope, however I feel until they do that, there will always be misunderstandings like this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some quotes from both the FAQ and the linked question that I hope will help clarify the issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[FAQ][2]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert **answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development**.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **career advice**, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[Question on Career advice questions][3]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; First and foremost, **any career advice questions need to relate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; directly to software development**: general career advice questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with no relation to software development or where software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is a minor facet of the question are off-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, a career-related question needs to be directly related to software development to be on-topic. Career-related questions that only relate to programmers are not on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28047" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2288" RevisionGUID="b60122f6-f9ee-44ff-9d82-41e97cf1d62c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Before I address your specific question, it's important to note that the level of activity a question gets has no bearing on community moderation: there is no &quot;safe&quot; zone for bad questions just because they're popular.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange only works insofar as it attracts experts: questions that don't demonstrate a base understanding or preparation for a question give experts—who we need to answer questions—the impression that the site isn't worth their time. So a really bad question like &quot;What's your favorite programming cartoon?&quot;, while wildly popular because it has a low barrier to entry, will be closed every single time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, look to [the FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) for guidance or like you've done here, ask a question on meta asking why a question was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To get to your specific question, I can see why 5 members of the community closed it: you provided a basic summary of your understanding of what a compiler is, and then asked people to confirm or deny it. That's not *really* what we're shooting for here. You can confirm whether your understanding of a compiler is correct by looking it up on Wikipedia.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There *is* a potentially interesting question there: &quot;can compilers be used by non-developers?&quot; with a subtextual question, &quot;when would compilers be used by non-developers?&quot; I've revised your question to highlight those questions and reopened it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The one thing that's preventing this question from being really great is *why* you're asking. Answers provided are survey-level stuff that could easily be answered by Wikipedia, but where Stack Exchange really shines is when we start solving your specific question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can revise your question to specify what problem you're solving by knowing if non-developers use compilers, it'd go from being a okay, but open-ended question to a great, concrete question that's really the best of what Programmers has to offer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28048" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7208" RevisionGUID="60368226-6f36-4c01-8b1d-9b61e5e77575" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The author of [this recent question][1], after receiving a valid answer, completely rewrote his question, invalidating the answer. The author also opened a bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should be done with such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should they be closed? If yes, why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or flagged?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or simply downvoted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or reverted to its original stage?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I imagine that the question should be reverted through the rollback to its initial form, without being closed, flagged or downvoted. But given the presence of a bounty, I'm not sure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/274609/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28049" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6540" RevisionGUID="f4ee4dca-4ecf-4233-b8af-c5df7906c7b6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Should aop and aspect-oriented tags be synonyms? Should they be merged? I think so. I would like to hear your opinion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am referring to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[aspect-oriented tag][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[aop tag][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/aspect-oriented&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/aop" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28050" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2385" RevisionGUID="db84576b-258c-4269-8b0f-b991b909fb28" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; [Being asked to do a job without being paid for it](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/112833/being-asked-to-do-a-job-without-being-paid-for-it)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked this question because I've seen several ethical questions proposed on this site with fairly good responses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question got closed because &quot;General workplace issues aren't on-topic here, but what you're describing is a pretty standard internship.&quot; My question has nothing to do with an internship as I'm not an intern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was about asking for advice on a beginning programmer if he should give up some of his intellectual property as a way of getting his foot in the door or if he should stand his ground and not participate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I checked the FAQ's and it says I can ask questions about freelancing jobs and business concerns. Which I consider this to be about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can I get some info about this and maybe why this isn't a good fit for this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28051" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2292" RevisionGUID="f3b4104b-0bd4-47e7-b099-7920d4976b96" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text=" * &quot;I need an idea for my [school][1]/[BSc][2]/[Masters][3]/[MS grad][4] [final year][5]/[college][6]/[final year][7]/[course][8]/[computer science][9] [thesis][10]/[project][11]`*`&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; `*` Delete as applicable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/108961/getting-ideas-for-project&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/109139/bsc-honours-in-computing-final-project-ideas&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/18337/cs-masters-degree-final-project-ideas&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/41003/ms-grad-student-project&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/102714/any-ideas-for-a-project-in-my-degree-year&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/16725/final-year-college-project&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/108118/android-application-ideas-for-final-year-student-in-a-final-year-project&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/18891/project-suggestion-for-computer-networks-using-c&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/85387/computer-science-project-idea-suggestions&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/51717/good-idea-in-xmpp-for-master-degree-thesis&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/37816/need-an-idea-for-a-non-rails-ruby-project" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28052" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3260" RevisionGUID="6bdec553-c26e-4a14-8847-baa979dbadef" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/138359/how-can-i-demonstrate-my-productivity-to-management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this on topic? There is no reference to programming. It can be extended to other fields as well, not just programming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask a question in the past&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/132878/how-to-present-your-development-work-to-your-it-manager-in-an-effective-way&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which was closed as off topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please do not think that I want to get this question closed. But I want is to have some rules and regulations as well as standards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As or right now, it was asked today and has 417 views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28053" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7228" RevisionGUID="68cfa701-b2f7-46fb-899e-4eb923ed0767" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are questions which are badly written and absolutely unclear. Those are downvoted and closed as unclear within minutes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are questions which are clear but I personally can't understand them because I lack some knowledge. For instance, I don't understand most questions about Haskell because I don't know Haskell yet. Obviously, even if *I* can't understand those questions, there is no reason to downvote/close them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, I remember a few cases where a question is well formatted and looks like being clear, but after reading it several times, I still can't figure out what is it talking about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A practical example is the recent question [Code structure with MongoDB in python][1]. I've read it four times. I know MongoDB and Python. The question *looks* right. Still, I have absolutely no idea what the person is talking about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should be the behavior in this case?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Be subjective and downvote the question and vote to close?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - In doubt, do nothing and let other people deal with it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Request clarification from the author? In which case, what should be the comment? I doubt that a comment which tells that the question is unclear is constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Close the question as unclear (given that four other persons should also vote for it to be closed), but avoid downvoting a question which may be perfectly valid?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/276350/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28054" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2349" RevisionGUID="5625e193-908e-4a7c-a2f8-09c230804eb9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Usually there's no punishment. However, it all depends on why and how often you roll back edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All posts to Stack Exchange are made under the [cc-by-sa 3.0 license](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) that means that [other people can edit &quot;your&quot; stuff&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#editing) so if someone spots something they consider wrong in your post, they are able and, indeed encouraged, to correct it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, people should exercise caution over edits - especially to questions - that might change the meaning of the post. If you think this has happened then roll back explaining why. You might also want to double check your post for spelling and grammatical errors and check the formatting. These could be why someone started editing your post in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's not welcome is where two (or more) users engage in edit wars, rolling back each others edits. You also shouldn't roll back the automatically inserted text that gets inserted when a post is closed as a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think someone has maliciously edited one of your posts either flag it or raise it here on meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28055" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6566" RevisionGUID="2d54f847-f6c1-4c4a-9e73-58f31387198f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question here: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/233461/strategies-to-troubleshoot-an-error-that-only-happens-on-a-specific-device was closed due to being too broad. I don't quite understand why it's too broad, but that's fine, if it's a bad question, then it's a bad question. However... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm reasonably sure it's the type of problem that many programmers in the mobile device area will encounter, and I'm equally sure that others will have workaround strategies that may be useful, for me and others who read the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What can I do to get the question re-opened?** Should I post it on a different SE site? Re-word it somehow? I'd be grateful for suggestions, this is currently a real-world problem for me and probably others too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28056" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2404" RevisionGUID="f4bed0c8-9c06-44a5-89d3-4cb3834069fe" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have tried to edit this question (closed by one **moderator** vote):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/108992/what-does-a-company-expects-from-a-perl-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;to be as clear as possible and most importantly to be objective AND to address specific concerns raised by the moderator in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the question remains unopened despite my flagging it for moderator re-review, with no moderator feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, my meta question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - What specifically is the deficiency in the **updated** wording of the question which makes it not satisfy &quot;six guidelines for constructive subjective questions&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or, alternately:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - What possible areas of fixing are suggested?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks in advance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please note that empirically, it's very hard to claim that the question as worded can not be answered not-too-poorly, since it DOES have an answer (disclaimer: mine) upvoted 4 times despite pretty narrow target audience (it's limited to Perl)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28057" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7271" RevisionGUID="58a92138-8db5-47dc-a0d8-7a98104084aa" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think there are two things that need to be addressed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Question&#xD;&#xA;------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I see a question that has a good idea but poor phrasing, I will edit it to be more objective and to ask for a more abstract, conceptual answer. In that question, _what is the algorithm_?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The difficult part is that specific question already asks for an algorithm, then goes on to request a solution in actual code. In other words, it is saying &quot;here is my problem, write my code for me.&quot; To the author's credit, he did a really good job describing the problem, explained his mental block, and gave objective success criteria. For those reasons, I would not vote to close the question, I would improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I did [edit that question][1] to remove the code request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Answers&#xD;&#xA;-----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one is easy. Answers of poor quality should be downvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question does not already have a quality answer worthy of being accepted, feel free to provide one even if it is an old question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/246616/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28059" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3309" RevisionGUID="49d572e6-f417-4227-b204-807a8651336b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="From our [FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions should I not ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is very open ended, doesn't present an actual problem, and the only motivation behind it appears to be a discussion as OP appears to have already made up their mind. There is nothing inherently wrong with the question or questions of similar characteristics, they just don't fit the Q&amp;A philosophy and format of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [Is Programmers.SE a discussion board or a Q&amp;A board?][3] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/433/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28060" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6647" RevisionGUID="c51b8a19-ed48-44ef-a917-4c7b87e4895b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [original question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/238139/1) reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can any one suggest a good (but simple) read on the design of ExtensionPoints for Asp.net?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That question is a polling for books to read and could be closed as either 'too broad' or 'recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.'&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is no problem presented in the question. It is a request for resources which lead to (poor) link only answers that rot over time." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28062" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7275" RevisionGUID="6718df65-8ed1-492b-9fed-421f595cddaf" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've come across some questions that say things like 'I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this...'&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While the apologies are.. appreciated, I guess, should they really be included in a question? If the question is not suitable for the site, it will presumably be closed or migrated to a different site, right?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is it okay to remove such apologies? Or should they only be removed if the question is, in fact, on-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One such question can be found [here](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/278618/sorting-sentences-by-new-words-in-each), where the author apologised three times throughout the question, including one parenthetical apology that asked if you were still reading." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28063" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2526" RevisionGUID="27b7f96c-a5f6-4ccc-8517-892966a40de1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Is curiosity allowed on the various stackexchange sites or does every single question need to be a question about a precise problem to solve?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, are the two following questions valid questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&quot;When did Huffman discover his minimum-redundancy-code?&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(not that the answer to that one is hard to find, but I'd like to know if that would make for a valid question on a SE site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or the following (asked by me):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/118575&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I mean, to me they're interesting question in themselves but a mod pointed to me that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&quot;(the question) may be interesting but it's not what this site is about&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think a case could be made that knowing the &quot;history&quot; of algorithm, data structure and techniques is interesting in any case: it helps understanding how things evolved and may give insight as to why some other things were made this or that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But even without taking that into account: are interesting question just made out of curiosity not allowed on SE?&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;*(just to be clear: I made the above question because I'm currently working on implementing said tokens and I wanted to read material on the subject and figured out starting from the oldest material available would provide good insight on the topic: that old Usenet post from 2003 I found was certainly a good read, for example)*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28064" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3189" RevisionGUID="92cad7f0-d86e-45c0-a790-8470bb3df6b0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Background on polling questions:** Stack Exchange by it's very nature to a voting Q&amp;A site, which is to say every question is a poll. The best explanation of the difference between a &quot;polling&quot; question and a SE question might be found in [Aarobot answer here][1]; which is referenced by [Jeff Atwood here][2] on the Stack Overflow blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Question this question is about:** [Google Code Search Replacement][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Here's why I do not believe it's a poll:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Question is looking for a replacement for a now discontinued programing  tool, [Google Code Search][4].&#xD;&#xA; - Google Code Search's is a well defined solution, and to search for a replacement is not subjective; meaning the best answer would be an exact clone of the tool.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I might be wrong, I believe [Yannis Rizos comment on an answer][5] points to my observations above: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; provide the link for reference. Especially since you are the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; co-founder, you should expand the answer a bit and tell us why your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; service is a good alternative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meaning for a good answer it must be in the context of being an alternative to Google Code Search, and every answer is not as good as another answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/75179/152184&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/114629/google-code-search-replacement&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.google.com/codesearch&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/130588/4942" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28066" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7343" RevisionGUID="101343ff-8eab-4617-ba06-082c788e7ce8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="To be clear - no Programmers moderator ever made a comment on that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were plenty of comments on that question. I'm not sure if it was flagged by a user or an automatic flag raised by the number of comments, but it looks like it was brought to the attention of a moderator who cleaned out the comments. I think cleaning out the comments was the appropriate action, given [what comments are for][1] - asking for clarification or pointing out issues with a post, not for carrying on an extended conversation. If you want to carry on an extended conversation, that's what chat is for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/comment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28068" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2460" RevisionGUID="4c6050b7-00b8-4291-ab0d-33b8d2910bbb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just noticed the warning box in the following question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/115654/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-functional-design-specifications&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it is very helpful. Is this new? Who can moderate questions like this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28070" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7347" RevisionGUID="f082dc4b-bdb0-46fa-b21f-88a1b37f1205" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I [asked a question here][1], because [I didn't get any suitable answer from this question][2]. It got 5200 + views with good answer, but mine was closed **without any** answer. Why did this happen? How could I have asked a similar question that would not be closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked the users who closed the question, but none of them gave an answer that I understood. What should I do now?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/281894/why-is-magento-that-much-difficult-and-what-tasks-will-i-be-working-on-as-a-ma&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3525118/is-magento-development-too-difficult-for-a-junior-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28071" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7042" RevisionGUID="96a9a3a1-1fa9-41c4-87e8-7e67de2b1b73" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm a bit mystified, a few hours ago, I posted a comment on [this answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/266370/157639).  It's somehow gone; I don't remember deleting it.  I'm guessing someone flagged it as obsolete, but the response to my comment is still there somehow.  It currently looks like @MainMa is talking to an imaginary friend...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Was my comment deleted because it was rendered obsolete due to an answer change?  If so, why wasn't the response to my comment also deleted?  Was it an error?  Was it me and I totally forgot about it? Or was it something else?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28072" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2491" RevisionGUID="69a5651b-a0ae-4068-b5f6-2b976f3e0268" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm referring to [this question][1]. It seems like a question with real answers to solve a problem that's only applicable to software developers. The only problems are the &quot;should we?&quot;, the &quot;thanks&quot;, and the poor tags applied, but if it's not going to get reopened, there's no point in fixing it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/66544/do-programmers-qualify-as-professionals-to-get-a-pro-domain-name" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28073" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2691" RevisionGUID="177a9eb1-fea3-4c87-8380-7b408934afc7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[One of the answers][1] gives some information about the product (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I can recommend KanbanTool. You can **organize your work with colored sticky notes** placed on a kanban board to **visualize, control and optimize your workflow**. It also **provides analytics with breakdown charts and cumulative flow diagram**. You can also **invite people to build project teams and share online documents**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's quite a lot more information than some of the other answers to the [question][2]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/112479/25936&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/123367/25936&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/123366/25936&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/112474/25936&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/112475/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are more spammy than cloue's answer. That's not to say that the answer is a good one, but I wouldn't go as far as calling it spam. It feels more like a fanboy / fangirl answer, the &quot;I'm using this great thing and the world must know&quot; type. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of the answers I linked to are from high reputation users, and some have quite a few upvotes, and that might have lead less experienced users to think it's ok to provide so poor answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/112472/what-kanban-specific-software-is-out-there/123362#123362&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/112472/what-kanban-specific-software-is-out-there" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28074" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7354" RevisionGUID="a2e0ea4a-79e8-4e91-9658-807f2e470ac8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a bit of history around on startups.com and Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers.onstartups.com was originally a Stack Exchange 1.0 community and was relaunched through area 51. After a rather long time, [the proposal was closed](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6243/startup-business) for [various reasons](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/12607/site-on-startups-is-closed-what-to-do-now).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a few posts that have answers.onstartups.com links (as of this writing, 23 found via [this search](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=url%3A*.onstartups.com)) that should be cleaned up... (I think I got most of them though there may be some residual cleanup to do... 90% of them were links to the same post by Joel again and again).  Admittedly, that might take a bit of work to sleuth through http://www.brightjourney.com/ to find the corresponding post (assuming they grab the data dump - their Q&amp;A clone doesn't use post IDs... they did grab the data dump, but not everything is there, they might have deleted some posts since then).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Onstartups.com still exists at http://onstartups.com and while they're pointing to a broken link for answers.onstartups.com themselves (SE doesn't own the onstartups.com domain).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a note, the relaunch was relaunched again as http://startups.stackexchange.com and is still there if one is looking for content." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28075" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3318" RevisionGUID="5e013d20-929b-4e0d-aac5-f2bdc6b69dbc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**There are two proposals here:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original proposal was to change the FAQ and site scope to more accurately reflect the site's name. It was created because of the votes and responses received on [this question][1], however since posting this I've learned of the [history behind the site scope change][2], and am not sure if this is something SE would allow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second alternative proposal is for adding a section to the FAQ to help clarify what makes a good question for Programmers.SE. It was added based on an [answer below][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you post an answer supporting either proposal, be sure to specify which one.&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;**First proposal: Change site scope and on-topic definition in the FAQ**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we change the way we define what is on/off topic of the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity, so questions on our site are best defined as on-topic by the type of answer they need, not by the subject of their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, many freelancing or business concerns are off-topic here even though they're listed as on-topic in the FAQ, and some career-development questions are actually on-topic despite being in the off-topic list. The deciding factor is the type of answer the question requires. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see this causing a lot of confusion about what is actually considered on/off topic for our site, so I think it would be better to define what is on topic by the type of answer needed, instead of the subject of the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what about changing the list of on/off topic items to something like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h2&gt;[What kind of questions can I ask here?][4]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.SE is a site for programmers to ask questions and get&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers from other programmers about non-code issues that are related&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to their career choice, or self-identity, as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We welcome questions about conceptual topics in software development,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; such as software architecture and design concepts, algorithms and data&#xD;&#xA;&gt; structure design, the software development lifecycle, testing and QA,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and freelancing &amp; business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; yourself][5]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR&#xD;&#xA;&gt; department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in one job too long][6].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][7]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][8]. Don't ask questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What  language/technology should I learn next?][9] or [Is A better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; than B?][10] because we do not want questions that lead to chatty,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; open-ended discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][11] for open-ended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][12]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does that make me a bad developer?][13]. We want a site that we can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][14]** &lt;br /&gt;    &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer?][15] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end&#xD;&#xA;&gt; result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a single answer][16] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Not be a coding problem][17]** &lt;br /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;[Programmers][18] was created to be a site about non-code issues programmers face, while its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; sister site, [Stack Overflow][19], is for coding questions. To put it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; another way, [Programmers][20] is for when you're in front of a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; whiteboard working through higher-level conceptual programming issues,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; while [Stack Overflow][21] is for when you're in front of a compiler&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or editor working through code issues. &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][22]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us&#xD;&#xA;&gt; maintain our site. &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Each of those bullet points should be a link that points to a [meta-faq][23] post containing more details on the subject. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop some of the confusion I see about our site scope, and reduce the number of upset users who asked a question which was in the &quot;on-topic&quot; list of the FAQ, but the question still got closed as off-topic. The scope of this site is really defined by the type of answers required, not the subject of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was a site created for programmers to get answers from other programmers about issues related to their career choice (or self identity) as a programmer. The scope was changed due to the deteriorating quality of questions being asked, however I think it has changed far beyond the original proposal, and the site has [gone downhill][24] since then. I believe we can still be the site this was meant to be, while maintaining SE quality guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;SE works best with communities, and I think a community called Programmers should be one about Programmers, not be only about one part of what Programmers do&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Second proposal: Add a new section to the FAQ to try and clarify what makes a good question**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[jcmeloni's answer below][25] made the suggestion to make this a new section in the [Programmers.SE FAQ][26] instead of replacing the existing section.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section would be like the [UX.SE's FAQ][27] section titled **What makes a good question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like this proposal as well, so instead of changing the existing bullet-point list defining what is an on-topic question, what about simply adding a new section titled &quot;What makes a good question&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **&lt;h2&gt;[What makes a good question?][28]&lt;/h2&gt;**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should elicit definitive answers or solutions rather than&#xD;&#xA;&gt; prolonged discussions. Remember, [this a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion&#xD;&#xA;&gt; board][29]. To participate in open-ended discussions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programming-related topics, please visit our [chat][30] instead.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; yourself][31]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;A good example would be career-related&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions. We are not career guidance counselors, nor are we an HR&#xD;&#xA;&gt; department, so most career and workplace questions will be closed as&#xD;&#xA;&gt; off-topic unless the question can be best answered by a programmer,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; such as asking [if it's detrimental to your programming career to stay&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in one job too long][32].&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be asking for a single answer, not a list of answers][33]** &lt;br /&gt;    &lt;sub&gt;Asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer?][34] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end&#xD;&#xA;&gt; result is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that list will get outdated as time and technology progresses.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a single answer][35] that can only be answered by a programmer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement][36]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;Questions should relate to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare time.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does that make me a bad developer?][37]. We want a site that we can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; continuously learn and grow from, not one that simply amuses us when&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we're bored at work.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be asking for an answer, not opinions][38]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;[We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][39]. Don't ask questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What  language/technology should I learn next?][40] or [Is A better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; than B?][41] because we do not want questions that lead to chatty,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; open-ended  discussions. Instead, visit our [chat][42] for open-ended&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussions with other programmers&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Not be a coding problem][43]** &lt;br /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;[Programmers][44] was created to be a site about non-code issues programmers face, while its&#xD;&#xA;&gt; sister site, [Stack Overflow][45], is for coding questions. To put it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; another way, [Programmers][46] is for when you're in front of a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; whiteboard working through higher-level conceptual programming issues,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; while [Stack Overflow][47] is for when you're in front of a compiler&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or editor working through code issues. &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **[Be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you][48]** &lt;br /&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;Please don't give us your life story with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your question. Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question. We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which can be referenced by any programmer, not just you, so help us&#xD;&#xA;&gt; maintain our site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2948/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3319/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/171/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1646/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [24]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3136/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [25]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3319/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [26]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [27]: http://ux.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [28]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [29]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [30]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [31]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [32]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [33]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [34]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [35]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [36]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [37]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [38]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [39]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [40]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [41]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [42]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [43]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/171/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [44]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [45]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [46]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [47]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [48]: http://a.b" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28076" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7068" RevisionGUID="f7e3a16a-4b37-4503-a598-101f7eb14d0b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Sorry if this is a duplicate or if this is the wrong place to ask for this but I cannot find any instructions on what I should do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is my problem:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Earlier today I asked [this question][1] about using `extern const` in an header file to make my global variables (that can be changed by the implementation) read only to the files that include my header in C and C++.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the time I started to write it I thought that it was valid because I had managed to compile a test program with GCC where I had `extern const int global_variable` in the header file but `int global_variable` in the implementation file.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I later started to doubt that it was valid because I had never seen or heard of it before so I asked [this question][2] on stackoverflow to make sure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It turned out that the only reason I got it to compile was because I did not include my header file in my implementation file.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should I do in this situation? I think my question on `programmers.stackexchange` should be deleted but I am not sure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/267761/c-c-using-extern-const-in-header-files-to-make-global-variables-read-only/267774#267774&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27724453/is-it-valid-to-declare-a-global-variable-extern-const-int-in-header-but-only/27725225#27725225" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28077" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2697" RevisionGUID="a51f1a4a-94f7-441c-8c92-1c03f510560a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Assuming that by &quot;Stack Overflow people&quot; you mean users who visit Programmers from Stack Overflow... I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that people will realize that a different site would have different scope and might behave differently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers Stack Exchange is still a part of the Stack Exchange network and so is Stack Overflow. Both sites work the same in the sense that there's an FAQ that describes what the site is about. Anyone interested in finding out what Programmers is about just needs to check the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even when looking at the [About](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/about) page, I think it's reasonable to expect visitors to read the first sentence without it being bolded. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Incidentally, it looks like the About link in the top bar on the site has been replaced with a link to this meta site, so the About page is even less emphasized than before. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;TL;DR: I don't think we should make the first line in the About page or the FAQ bold." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28078" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7374" RevisionGUID="69250eef-85cf-457b-8ba6-8fb65f01740c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Seeing vote counts is one of the perks of the [Established User privilege][1], that's awarded at 1000 rep. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once you earn the privilege, it'll work the same as on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/established-user" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28079" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2499" RevisionGUID="ba724f6b-e09c-42a3-9f4b-4bb76fd2b404" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think we should re-open [this question][1] on how to get a PHP stack on iPad as it seems it's [technically possible][2] to get a minimal but working lighttp / PHP stack after all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Granted, the iPad is not the best device to code on, but if it's technically possible the question is valid. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/97363/php-programming-in-ipad/97368#97368&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.ipadforums.net/ipad-hacking/24007-running-php-server-ipad.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28080" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7099" RevisionGUID="9e4d52fc-b1d4-493e-9cde-784a78596bde" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I selected &quot;Not pr0gromming related&quot; etc from Area 51 because I wanted to avoid asking a question that would be choked by aggrandizing badge polishing S.E. police and ended up here... &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/ask&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and webpage heading of just &quot;programmers&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you see anything about &quot;Not programming related&quot; in either the url or the webpage title?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This merely lays the contributor (UGC) open for more discussion closings.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;your very website design is typical geek..or greek whichever....." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28081" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2706" RevisionGUID="b45a5894-31b6-405a-aa89-11905cbc94ee" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[One of your answers][1], the one with the 2 upvotes, is on a question that was made [community wiki][2] before you answered (or before you got any upvotes). You don't earn or lose rep for those - but you can still earn badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further investigating, the question was made community wiki on [Nov 1 at 23:06][3], and you answered on Nov 2 at 10:21, so it was automatically turned to community wiki, as shown in the [revision history][4].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But it says &quot;21 answers&quot; and I think the limit is 30.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The limit [here is 15][5]. 30 is the limit at [StackOverflow][6], and can be different at different sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/117440/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/117243/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/117440/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1596/the-15-answer-cw-conversion-really-sucks&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28082" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3325" RevisionGUID="0bf33daa-7b0a-46ae-b02c-8bb81ffefbb1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At Rev 5, there was a major edit to question text, based on discussion in [comments made to this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3348/31260).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of Rev 6, question has been reopened. Reference: [question timeline](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/139482/timeline).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Below applies to question prior to revision 5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After consideration of both the questions and answers and taking into account the [mission statements][1] and [About page for Stack Exchange][2], the [Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions][3], voting and flagging, I have closed the question regarding [why statements are terminated by semicolons in most programming languages][4] pending a further discussion here on Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the mission statement of Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We build libraries of high-quality questions and answers, focused on the most important topics in each area of expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the About page of Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We welcome questions that are clear and specific, representing real problems that you face&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm having difficulty seeing how this qualifies as an important topic to professional software developers, nor how it relates to a real problem being faced by any software development professional. Perhaps if it focused more on the aspects of programming language design that led to the use of special characters and why a semicolon might be more appropriate than another character. However, this is not emphasized in the question nor in the majority of the answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reviewing the Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions, I scored it a 4 out of 6. I gave it credit for inspiring answers that explain why, generating lengthy and detailed answers, having a constructive tone, and can be (in theory anyway) backed up with facts and references. It is doing very poorly in the category of reliable references being generated. I was not able to find a way how it was inviting the sharing of experiences nor how it was contributing to a problem being solved (or how it was more than mindless fun). To me, a score of 4/6 is only about 67% - the equivalent of a C.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I looked at the answers, the top answer was a mostly discussion of the English language, with a small component discussing parsing and syntax of languages. Other top answers discussed the history of programming languages and other options for terminating statements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts and comments?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/139482/why-are-statements-in-most-programming-languages-terminated-by-semicolons#question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28083" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2552" RevisionGUID="1cab38a2-ce51-45e4-a3df-407c76e3f828" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I got a question migrated from Stackoverflow [Visual Programming paradigms](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/119463/visual-programming-paradigms), and it continues to be responding, so my reputation on Programmers should increase. However I did not get any increase from any actions since the 5 points from the question creation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this behavior right? I mean, we get no points from migrated questions here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS.: If this is not the right place for me to ask this kind of question, please inform me on how to proceed before closing this, ok? Thank you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28084" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2709" RevisionGUID="24e151db-ab9a-4851-a424-02cb780cf3e3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question was migrated to Stack Overflow: when a question is migrated, all of its answers on the source site will be deleted and reposted on the destination site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if you look at [the question right now on Programmers](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/126210/how-do-i-resolve-an-expected-expression-before-unsigned-error?noredirect=1), it really does have 0 answers, and both the active questions list and the newest questions list are accurately reporting that fact. You can find the answers (including yours) [on Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8583017/how-do-i-resolve-an-expected-expression-before-unsigned-error).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, why one shows you're the last poster and one doesn't:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* the active questions list is sorted by the last time the question was modified. Since you were the last person to modify the question (by posting an answer), you're listed.&#xD;&#xA;* the newest questions list is sorted by when the question was first posted. Since you're not the person who asked the question, you're not listed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28085" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7385" RevisionGUID="ca7af698-6516-4bb9-8998-87b6ab49ab52" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/284881/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My initial reaction to it is essentially the same as the first comment it got:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question pushes the boundaries of what is on-topic here in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; several ways (opinion-based, list format, perhaps even education&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice), but I find it so fantastic that for once, someone responsible&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for portraying us to the outside world doesn't simply make stuff up&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that I hope it will get a lot of love. –  Kilian Foth [6 hours ago](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/284881/amateur-question-about-corrupt-software/284901#comment586495_284881)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question currently has four close votes on it, a couple fairly good answers, and I've seen it in the hot network questions list at least once. I haven't cast any kind of vote on it (since it has enough upvotes already imo).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I believe this question is valuable and worth keeping open.** However, it's not like there's an obviously on-topic part and an obviously off-topic part; arguably every part of it is an opinion poll. So I don't know what needs changing to get those close votes retracted. Or maybe I'm just wrong and the question should've been closed ages ago.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So this is directed primarily at the close voters, but also at anyone who might be willing to cast a reopen vote should this question get closed. **What changes do you think are required to make that question acceptable, or do you think it's unsalvageable?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few ideas I do have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Simply remove bullet point #5, as it's by far the most opinion-based of the five, and the best answers have either punted on it or devoted very little time to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Change much of the wording to something like &quot;How would a professional programmer be expected to respond to this situation?&quot;, i.e. make it about industry best practices (like the good answers describe) rather than simply a poll for all of our l33t anti-hacker techniques.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If anyone thinks the *main* problem with this question is that it's too broad/asking too many questions, we could split the four &quot;good&quot;(?) bullet points into 2-4 separate questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm more than willing to do the actual editing, I just have no idea which aspect of the question needs editing to prevent closure without removing the spirit of the question (if that's even possible)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28086" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7141" RevisionGUID="8c33b58e-1b4e-4a94-a57b-d683a942edef" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked a question basically on packet sniffing (or whatever the term might be).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ** https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271342/how-to-identify-http-requests-made-with-a-java-app **&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead of asking on StackOverflow, I thought it might be appropriate for here.  Looking at your guidlines [What topics can I ask here?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) this could fall under a number of your software related themes.  And I don't think it falls under the [**What questions shoiuld I avoid asking?**](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) e.g. it is not a rant in disguise.  Certainly, I have separated out the legal issues involved in that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not interested in raising a polemic. Right now it has **-2 votes** but it has **1 favorite**, which expresses ambivalence on part of the community.  How can I improve this question so it relates more to this site, or should it be moved someplace else entirely?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28087" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2815" RevisionGUID="91bd6dfa-b294-46d3-982f-324d7831d1c6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Probably irrelevant to the question, but the latest answer to it [is clearly spam][1]. It's not obvious at first, but checkout the user's [other answer][2]&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; on a question that's actually about promoting Android apps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think we should consider the possibility that promotion questions have a very high potential of attracting spammers. I wouldn't mind declaring them off topic just for that, as I completely agree with Craige and Steven A. Lowe. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Now deleted, it was almost exactly the same as the first answer.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/129312/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/129313/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28088" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7392" RevisionGUID="b76b1509-16a3-4f12-ab43-580e257090a0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Why was my question closed as [primarily opinion based](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/284922/what-is-a-sa-mgr) ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; #What is a Sa Mgr.?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I read some (software engineers) linkedIn profiles where they have &quot;Sa&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Mgr.&quot; as current job role.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is a &quot;Sa Mgr.&quot; ? I suppose Mgr stands for &quot;manager&quot; but I have no&#xD;&#xA;&gt; idea on what &quot;Sa&quot; stands for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is definitely wrong" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28089" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2707" RevisionGUID="458fb3c3-1997-4ba2-b60a-c07ce4bf4b23" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question [How do I resolve an “expected expression before 'unsigned'” error? \[migrated\]][1] appears right now on the [active questions list][2] as having zero answers, and as having been posted by me, while in fact it has 6 answers and it was NOT posted by me. If you look at it at on the [newest questions list][3] it appears as posted by the correct poster, but still as having zero answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/126210/how-do-i-resolve-an-expected-expression-before-unsigned-error&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28090" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3354" RevisionGUID="3696f466-1e51-49eb-8fd3-7ef711d2225c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Related:**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  [Request for comment: structured tag cleanups](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2886/request-for-comment-structured-tag-cleanups)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Structured Tag Cleanup — Call for proposals #1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Welcome to the third structured tag cleanup! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the voting in the [call for proposals](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3087/structured-tag-cleanup-call-for-proposals-1), the second round goes to the [tag:software-development] tag, with 282 current questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tag has been renamed to [stci-software-development](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stci-software-development), which hopefully should prevent people from adding any more questions to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Ground rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of this cleanup is to systematically clean up the software development tag without causing disruption to the rest of the site. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [deletion candidates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3357/25936) below and see if there's a way to save any of the questions before they go gently into that good night through [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits). At the end of the clean up period, any questions not sufficiently improved will be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [merge candidates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3356/25936) to see if can be merged into one question. If they shouldn't be, revise the questions to demonstrate how it's not in any way like the question it's been duplicated to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [closure candidates](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3355/25936) list to see if you agree with what others have identified as being out of the site's scope. If you agree, vote to close. If you don't agree, use [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to address the problems the question has and bring it back into scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Review the [currently open questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bstci-software-development%5D+closed%3A0&amp;submit=search) and see which ones do not fit our site scope. Vote to close them and add them to the closure candidates list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Improve the leftover questions by copyediting, fixing spelling, flow, adding clearer titles, etc. while replacing the `stci-software-development` tag with something more meaningful&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:web-development] for questions relating to web development,&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:mobile] for questions relating to mobile development,&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:architecture] for questions relating to system level architecture, documenting architecture, view models, architectural quality, and product line development.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:design] for questions relating to software design.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:documentation] for questions about documentation. &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:requirements] for questions about requirements engineering and documenting requirements.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:testing] for questions about unit, integration, smoke, and system testing using white box or black box techniques.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:maintenance] for questions about maintaining legacy software systems.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:quality] for questions about process quality, product quality, code quality, or measuring the quality of any of these.  &#xD;&#xA; * [tag:education] for questions about formal education, self-teaching, and self-improvement as a software developer.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:metrics] for questions about software metrics.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:patterns] for questions on design patterns.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:agile] for questions on agile methodologies.&#xD;&#xA; * [tag:project-management] for questions on project management.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ...and other, more specific tags as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Finally, and this is perhaps the most important of all the rules: **do not just remove the stci-software-engineering tag without improving the question and its answers.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### End date&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This round of cleanups will end on **Sunday, April 8th at 04:00 UTC.** At that time, all the default actions will be done: deletions, merges, closures, and such. If [tag:stci-software-development] is not empty by then, it'll be renamed back to [tag:software-development] and be saved for later rounds of cleanups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is empty, we will move on to getting it blacklisted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; These are (mostly) the same suggestions as for the [software-engineering] cleanup - I felt they make sense for [software-development] and couldn't find any other tags that would be common candidates for [software-development] questions. If you have suggestions, please edit them in.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28091" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2819" RevisionGUID="9008781a-a223-4fbc-bae5-1af827fcb869" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="On a second look, it looks like [What's your best unnecessary code?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8384/whats-your-best-unnecessary-code), from October 2010, is it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    function GetCurrentSessionId: DWORD;&#xD;&#xA;    asm&#xD;&#xA;      mov     eax,fs:[$00000018];   // Get TEB&#xD;&#xA;      mov     eax,[eax+$30];        // PPEB&#xD;&#xA;      mov     eax,[eax+$1d4];       // PEB.SessionId&#xD;&#xA;    end;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Normally, however, you'd want to get [10k reputation to see deleted posts](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28093" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7156" RevisionGUID="a96d68fd-94b8-492d-9085-353a2caeca29" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="my question on blogging got put on hold for being unclear what help I need.  Fair enough...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/272102/blogging-usefully-about-learning-a-new-programming-language**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then I am trying to understand how this substantially more vague question got through with 41 votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/140423/how-do-you-remember-programming-related-stuff**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In any case, how can I make my question more clear?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28094" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7417" RevisionGUID="62c10605-98b6-421d-b165-27ffca124769" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I voted no, they are not duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are two separate questions, deserving two separate answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Q: Why there is an interface for Comparing object, but not one for Hashing or Equals?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; [Answer][1]: &#xD;&#xA; &gt; Equality is a property of two objects, but in OO, you always call a method on one single object, and that object gets to solely decide how to handle that method call.   &lt;br/&gt;&lt;Br/&gt;So, in a design like Java's, where equality is a property of one of the two objects being compared, it isn't even possible to guarantee some basic properties of equality such as symmetry (`a == b` &lt;=&gt; `b == a`), because in the first case, the method is being called on `a` and in the second case it is being called on `b` and due to the basic principles of OO, it is solely `a`'s decision (in the first case) or `b`'s decision (in the second case) whether or not it considers itself equal to the other one. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Question: What is the reason behind behind putting .compareTo() in the interface and .equals() in the class?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; [Answer][2] : &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Not all objects can be compared, but all objects can be checked for&#xD;&#xA; &gt; equality. &lt;br/&gt;...&lt;br/&gt;   The `Object` contract applies to all Java&#xD;&#xA; &gt; classes. If even one class cannot be compared to other instances of its own class, then `Object` cannot require it to be part of the interface.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd leave them linked with a comment, but I would not close either as a duplicate to the other. The accepted answers in both specifically address the question that was asked, and are different enough that I would prefer to see them as separate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/283207/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/283171/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28095" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2854" RevisionGUID="e4ecdaa0-d2b5-44a6-9e86-3c31256526c0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Well, if there is a trend, it might be [my fault][1]!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Insofar I've rejected only two edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. One that only [removed the automated duplicate notification][2],&#xD;&#xA; 2. A weird one that revised *only* two words, that where referenced in a comment to the question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those where too minor, but obviously also otherwise problematic. But I can't really say I happened upon really minor edits. For argument's sake, here's a few examples I'd consider too minor:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Links that don't add anything valuable, an example would be someone adding Amazon links to [this answer][3].&#xD;&#xA; - Spelling &amp; grammar corrections on a post that has a lot more of such errors&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question I would ask myself, if I happened upon those is if they where made in good faith. The Amazon links I would probably reject, but the minor spelling &amp; grammar corrections I would improve, or if lacking the time I would simply approve. To my mind, these edits would be from someone not very confident with his/her English but stll eager to contribute in any way (s)he could, and I don't mind that. But I wouldn't mind anyone rejecting them either, and if such a rejection ever made it to Meta, I would defend it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Special cases that I would reject outright, would be minor edits on old posts. If someone is on a badge run for [Strunk &amp; White](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/12/strunk-white) and / or [Archaeologist](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/92/archaeologist) and spamming the front page with minor edits, it wouldn't be very nice. Assuming I noticed repeated such edits from the same user, I would flag one of his posts for moderation attention, and continue my own run towards the elusive [Marshal][4] badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for tags: Retagging is possible at a lower rep threshold. If it's an edit that's mostly retagging I'd assume the user was going to do that originally, but just went ahead and capitalized those I's as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recently found out that suggested edits on StackOverflow [require approval from two users][5]. To be honest I would prefer that would be the case here as well, only if for the process to be peer reviewed, as is (almost) everything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2588/are-micro-edits-on-new-posts-insignificant&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2816/should-we-reject-edits-that-remove-the-automatic-duplicate-notification&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/124109/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-design-patterns/124114#124114&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/94/marshal&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119232/why-cant-i-edit-a-question-answer-after-i-voted-approve-in-review-suggested-edi" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28096" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7424" RevisionGUID="b8079507-8309-4d8b-91d6-a6cc72e27e57" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just based on your examples, I don't think that these types of questions would be a good fit here. Programmers, and Stack Exchange in general, work best when you're trying to solve a specific problem and don't know what to do. The Q&amp;A portions of the site don't really support teaching or broad questions well, and broad, discussion-based, and/or opinion-based questions tend to be discouraged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there is a chat mechanism that could be useful. The [Programmers chat room, The Whiteboard][1], tends to be active. The level of activity varies, but there are quite a few regulars. You can talk about these broader subjects there. Other sites may have active chat rooms as well, for various topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How does one develop an operating system and other system software?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would likely be closed as too broad. There are entire books and courses on these subjects. If you were reading a book and had a specific question that wasn't made clear in the book or after researching other sources first, that may be on-topic, assuming it was focused enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the make up of programs which run things like appliances, remote controls, and so on?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, this would likely be closed as too broad. There's just a wide variety of examples. We do have a history of [similar questions being acceptable][2], but I suspect it would have to be something specific and noteworthy. There's a difference between asking about the software that runs in a random make and model of a commercial product and things like the Curiosity rover or space shuttle. It also depends on if we can reasonable be expected to be familiar with the internals of the software or have access to publications that discuss it to quote and reference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How could I get my hands on this type of code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This would be closed as off-topic. This would be one of the &quot;resource request&quot; questions that we currently have a custom close reason for. Searching is the best solution. Since you're looking for open source code, searching something like GitHub would be more efficient than asking a whole bunch of people to effectively do the same thing. The answers that would be generated also wouldn't meet our quality guidelines - they would essentially be links to repositories and maybe brief descriptions of the project, and how hows and whys for solving your problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28097" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7178" RevisionGUID="7f928c4e-192c-4867-acb6-8df945f8fe77" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/48760/should-i-choose-doctrine-2-or-propel-1-5-1-6-and-why&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this the intended behavior?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was searching for the &quot;answer&quot; button because I read that I need at least 10 reputation because the question is protected. I have more than 10 reputation on that site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Turns out the question is actually closed, in my opinion at the bottom it should point that out." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28098" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2765" RevisionGUID="0c1bdff5-d5af-4301-bf11-cba4e8fe1f67" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here's my question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/128080/naming-an-operation-hibernate-archive-freeze&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have created a process within a system and wanted to establish if there was some precedent or existing nomenclature for it.  I haven't been able to come up with a good idea, and believing that it might not be a very uncommon process, figured I'd see if anyone else had come across it before or had a good idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I believe that naming classes and processes well is important in a medium-to-large scale system, and IS a part of programming, and valid for asking questions about.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, Mark Trapp decided it's not a valid question, saying that it doesn't matter, and that I should ask my team.  My problems with this judgement:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It matters to me&#xD;&#xA;* I am the team&#xD;&#xA;* I believe the question was closed simply because the mod could not think of a suitable answer&#xD;&#xA;* It was closed, then I was immediately directed to the meta site (personally making a decision, then hiding behind the meta site IMO)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it was crappy to close the question within an hour.. I think this is the perfect platform to ask such a question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28099" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7459" RevisionGUID="f81d74e6-620b-4abe-aef0-c675a7aa1181" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently asked [a question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/288398/when-to-use-single-line-if-statements) that was closed as a dupe of two other similar, but not related questions. I edited my question to clarify why it is not a dupe, however I was too late and the question was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please reopen the question as it is not a dupe, even if the other questions (which I obviously read before posting) address similar concerns." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28100" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2856" RevisionGUID="09c279cd-c264-4a09-ba2e-da443bec7063" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As an extension to this previous question - [Should our FAQ contain a list of what's off topic and if so what should that list contain?][1], can we add two categories of questions that are often asked by new users but not on topic :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **&quot;coding homework&quot; questions** - [recent question][2] / [Recent discussion about homework tag][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specific enough questions can be migrated to [StackOverfow][4]. They accept coding homework questions with this politic as the tag description explains :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Homework means the asker is requesting help with school homework. This&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lets potential answerers know that they should guide the student in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; solving the problem, rather than simply showing the complete answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This means people shouldn't answer directly a question that looks like homework before migration. But I don't know how to enforce that (in the FAQ ?). Any ideas are welcome on that subject, and may be part of another question if it proves extensive =) (There is an [extensive discussion about how to answer homework questions on Meta-SO][5])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **personalized lesson plan / school guidance** - `What courses should I follow/ What should I start with to learn X with my specific background` - [recent question][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same idea as career questions. If it generalized enough, why not. If it's too localized, it's off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also close to this point :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;[and is not about...] what language you should learn next, including&#xD;&#xA;&gt; which technology is better&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But people seems to miss the point that &quot;part of a language&quot; is about the same as a language itself, and will mostly end up with a generic answer that looks like &quot;You should learn everything about this language&quot;. For example those questions :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What do I need to learn of C# for ASP.NET?][7] &#xD;&#xA;- [What do you need to learn to become professional ASP.NET programmer?][8] &#xD;&#xA;- [Should I be a professional in C# programming in order to build good web applications using ASP.NET?][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ends up with the same generic answer : &quot;Be the best as you can in C#&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/817/should-our-faq-contain-a-list-of-whats-off-topic-and-if-so-what-should-that-lis&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/130468/lottery-program&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2850/removing-the-homework-tag&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/homework&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/130454/what-are-some-ways-to-get-started-learning-java-and-where-should-i-go-from-ther&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/130080/what-do-i-need-to-learn-of-c-for-asp-net&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/44701/what-do-you-need-to-learn-to-become-professional-asp-net-programmer&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/62170/should-i-be-a-professional-in-c-programming-in-order-to-build-good-web-applicat" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28101" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7475" RevisionGUID="d8beea8b-c4b9-49a8-b9b2-b71067cc50f3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The core question to the problem is one that needs work.  I see it has been reopened, but the issue of it being primarily opinion has not been addressed or resolved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Are there any other &quot;good&quot; uses for single-line if statements? How strictly should the practice be avoided? Note that I am explicitly asking about the lack of an indented line to indicate that a condition may or may not occur, I am not asking about the use of braces. Although I would appreciate all opinions in the comments, answers should address objective reasoning, such as maintainability or extensibility of code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This text needs to be changed to ***not*** be a poll for suggestions of enables of 'good examples' for single line if statements.  Furthermore, the second question is completely opinion. There is no problem to be solved. I will have different answers than others that differs only on my beliefs - not on objective architectural or design principles.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without resolving this, we get answers such as [this](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/288408/40980):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I always prefer the version with braces.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. If I don't always use the braces, then I may forget to put them when there is more than one statement in the block.&#xD;&#xA;2. IDEs used by other team members can reformat the code automatically to move the statement to the new line, thus making it much more error prone in the future.&#xD;&#xA;3. Merging the code across the branches is more error prone if the `if` statement is a conflicting spot. The probability for error is even higher if the person doing the merge is not completely familiar with the merged changes.&#xD;&#xA;4. A statement not-belonging to the block may be included in it later by mistake (I add new statements to the block, so I need to add braces, but because of indentation or similar visual effects I also include a statement that should be left out of the block).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where it implicitly encourages people to answer with &quot;I prefer...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it may be possible to resolve these issues, the question should ***not*** have been reopened prior to removing the polling nature." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28103" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2774" RevisionGUID="7818b652-ca46-4430-b7f1-889aabf2a1b1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's not explicit in the question but, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/128344/would-smalltalk-be-a-good-introduction-to-programming, to me is just another form of &quot;Which language should I learn next?&quot;  The OP has found an online resource and is, I think, really asking &quot;is this a good introduction to programming for me&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I flagged it as &quot;off topic&quot;, which was the closest match to what I was trying to express." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28104" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2866" RevisionGUID="3337c870-c351-4426-94f3-1a6d8036e606" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="If you delete the question and then perform a recalculation: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/reputation (click on the button at the bottom of the page) you'll get your reputation back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can only do this once in any 24 hour period.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can only delete a question 48 hours after it was closed. You should have got a message stating this. After 48 hours you'll be able to delete and do a reputation recalculation." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28105" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3356" RevisionGUID="1e24116b-6ec6-41da-be09-2f635cca649f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Merge candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please review these questions closed as duplicates to see if they can be merged. If they shouldn't be merged, please use [heroic edits](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits) to clarify why the questions aren't duplicates of each other and vote to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/83167/is-cowboy-programming-a-senior-approach → https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7217/frankly-do-you-prefer-cowboy-coding&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/102348/my-lead-does-not-co-operate-may-be-lack-of-knowledge-or-unwillingness → https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/78547/how-do-you-tell-if-advice-from-a-senior-developer-is-bad&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/64275/standalone-developers-whats-are-your-methods-of-development → https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/63048/design-and-development-methodologies-for-the-single-developer&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/103095/why-there-is-a-testing-team → https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/77146/why-to-let-not-let-developers-test-their-own-work&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/101602/can-i-be-too-old-to-be-just-a-programmer → https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/370/how-old-is-too-old&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/125435/what-is-a-good-way-to-refactor-a-large-terribly-written-code-base-by-myself → https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/66438/techniques-to-re-factor-garbage-and-maintain-sanity&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/105862/online-code-reviews → https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/104975/website-for-code-review&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/128044/how-to-protect-own-software-from-copying  → https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/10340/how-do-you-prevent-the-piracy-of-your-software" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28106" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7255" RevisionGUID="1dc66df0-ec79-4a81-b787-afc5493182d7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This just happened:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;INBOX&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Programmers SE item)&#xD;&#xA; answer migrated 2 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;Your answer to &quot;Testing a method that reads from standard input and outputs to standard output&quot; was migrated to Stack Overflow. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ACHIEVEMENTS&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Programmers SE item)&#xD;&#xA;You've earned the &quot;Disciplined&quot; badge (Deleted own post with score of 3 or higher) for &quot;Testing a method that reads from standard input and outputs to standard output&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Needless to say, I did not delete [my own post](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/277302/testing-a-method-that-reads-from-standard-input-and-outputs-to-standard-output/277303#277303?noredirect=1).  Apparently, the migration was counted as deletion, and for this reason the &quot;Disciplined&quot; badge was awarded.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On second thought, thisissuchanunimportantbug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;noneedtodoanythingaboutitreally.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28107" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2871" RevisionGUID="c6f298e5-0e53-4e8e-9c1a-d3202ffa9584" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="* note the answer update below&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As one of close-voters I can share what would definitely stop me from voting back then - or make me vote to reopen now that question is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given your comments in this question it feels quite doable:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **I did my research and I am still open on this question since years, and nobody wants to give me a decent example to know how this is done in an appropriate way. All the repos I found generally are either made by people who does not care about quality (it's just a bunch of really hacked up scripts) nor platform transferability, nor addressing the different phases (development, testing, deployment, installing). In alternative, they give you fully CI/IDE solutions that are unreachable by a single developer.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, let's see...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. _All the repos I found..._  &#xD;&#xA;   - List these repos in your question.  &#xD;&#xA;   - If list is very long, list a few that looked best to you.  &#xD;&#xA;   - If it's very long and you can't select a few, just list them all in a &quot;references&quot; section at the bottom ([it's not really hard to do](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/108298/31260))&#xD;&#xA;1. _...either 1) made by people who does not care about quality nor 2) platform transferability, nor 3) addressing the different phases 4) In alternative, they give you fully CI/IDE solutions that are unreachable by a single developer_  &#xD;&#xA;  - Above makes your requirements - just list these in the question.  &#xD;&#xA;  - If you not only list reqs but also clarify which particular requirements aren't met by particular repos in previous list I mentioned then I would **upvote** your question instead of closing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...well - that's it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;#update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above applies only to old version of the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Revision 1: Starting a new project in python and qt. Where can I find...](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/130676/1)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Since then it has been revised and I think improved sufficiently for reopening.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My downvote and vote to close are revoked at rev 2. At rev 3, I upvoted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28108" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7482" RevisionGUID="7fc32727-ef15-4711-9edd-5ff73eb097ed" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This post is a call to arms to higher rep users on Programmers that have the ability to view deleted answers.  I merged a couple questions together asking for Agile references on request and took the top voted answer and locked it as a Wiki.  I deleted the rest but there is a bunch of good content still.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7859/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-agile/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below are links to each of the deleted answers. If you intend on editing it in then edit this question or you feel it is crap then just edit it out of the question.  If you took the last answer then tag this question status completed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/213382/25476&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/73649/25476&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/113253/25476&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/87772/25476&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/83533/25476&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/83515/25476&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/83511/25476&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/83508/25476&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/73153/25476&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/64050/25476&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/27076/25476&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/14086/25476&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/13039/25476&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/7953/25476&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/7944/25476&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/7939/25476&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/7908/25476&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/7907/25476" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28109" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2785" RevisionGUID="44763ed7-890f-4213-84b5-c46594e8d901" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I appreciate that the community moderates itself, that is part of what makes stack exchange great.  Sometimes though, moderators can be careless and/or wrong and there really isn't a way to fix it. Certainly, this edge case could be handled better making stack exchange a more pleasant and useful place. I know it is technically possible for questions to be reopened, but no one ever looks at those closed questions again. If you made it easier for the user, maybe there would be more hope. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**An Example**&#xD;&#xA;-----------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Original Question:** https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/128634/what-do-you-need-to-know-when-you-begin-contracting&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm trying to ask a question that is clearly allowed according to the FAQ, but it has been closed twice.  Just today, I read a few similar questions that helped me a great deal. My question was upvoted 4 times before being closed. Clearly, not every one agrees with those who closed it.  It has now virtually vanished, with no hope of being reopened.  I think the majority would have chosen to do so if given a better opportunity. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**More Specific Version:** https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/128665/how-to-write-a-freelance-contract&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Still, I tried to take the constructive criticism and re-posted it as a more specific and broadly useful question. Unfortunately, it was closed again almost instantly.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**From The FAQ**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions can I ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **====&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;freelancing and business concerns&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;====**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28110" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3383" RevisionGUID="dc05c64f-5af8-42d6-bee9-7b5a67f76700" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've seen a few of these and often up-vote them because I've had the same questions and am interested in the answers, however these questions frequently get closed as not constructive, and one is currently [marked for deletion][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it off-topic to ask if something is normal for programmers, and if a programmer should be concerned about it? If not, what is the criteria used to determine if these sorts of questions are constructive or not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples are&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it normal to think about a design problem for days with no code written?][2] - Closed as Not Constructive and marked for deletion&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it normal for a company to have programmers on such a rigid schedule?][3] - Closed as NC&#xD;&#xA;* [Should I be concerned that I can't program very fast without Google?][4]  - Closed as duplicate, but when I pointed out it wasn't an exact duplicate [on meta][5], a moderator said he thought it should still be closed as off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it “normal” for people to not work?][6] - Was closed as NC, but now [locked][7]&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it normal for programmer to work on multiple projects simultaneously][8] - Open&#xD;&#xA;* [What's the “normal” range for typing speed for developers?][9] - Open&#xD;&#xA;* [Should I be concerned if I have nothing to do during an internship?][10] - Open&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3357/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/118962/is-it-normal-to-think-about-a-design-problem-for-days-with-no-code-written&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/88329/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/141860/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3379/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/81929/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3298/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/38647/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/26243/whats-the-normal-range-for-typing-speed-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/100725/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28111" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7358" RevisionGUID="aab682ae-7f60-4066-9df2-8609c1dcdeec" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked [this](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/245392/do-rails-join-models-get-controllers) and one of the comments has nothing to do with the question.  It's not &quot;wrong&quot; (in the sense of having incorrect information), it just is totally irrelevant to the question being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to flag for removal to clean up the site, but I'm not sure which flag is appropriate.  &quot;Not Constructive&quot; is, I thought, meant for comments that are joking around or being insulting.  &quot;Obsolete&quot; seems wrong because the comment wasn't _ever_ relevant, so it didn't stop at some point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which flag is appropriate in this situation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28112" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7491" RevisionGUID="5f978722-570c-4cf9-89e0-a8e02d2baa2e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was allowed to ask at meta because my question was [locked][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Probably I had to start with revising what programming mainstream tells about the topic. That is after all the core of my concern, inappropriate terminalogy, that I believe deep-rooted in the community. The [first stop learning about MI is Wikipedia][2]. The article is basically reduced to the Diamond problem and its mitigation. It is not surprising therefore that the most popular question at programmers, [why do you hate MI][3] also identifies MI problem with diamond problem. Google engeneers answer to that with a proposal to fix the language, [propose fixes to the language saying that `MI can be enabled through enabling the Diamond` and give us an example][4] with a simple join (3 points),&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    class OrderedSet extends Set, Sequence&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;with Set and Sequence providing collection-specific toString implementation. My question however stems from the fact that this class hierarchy corresponds to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which is not a diamond because diamond. The diamond has 4 points&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have nothing left with but to read about the Diamond problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The diamond problem says that we get (naming) conflicts because D obtains two copies of same properties of A. And we see that programmers blame the common ancestor for the conflicts. However, question what [if we inherit from `card_deck` and `graphic`, both of which have a `draw` method, what does it mean to draw the resulting object?][7] (I had less far-fetched example with digital circuits in my locked question if you ask `why do we need to merge deck with graphics`) clearly demonstrates how naming clash without the common ancestor, simply, likewise Guava language demo above. Guava demo does not have the diamond problem. These are examples of having the naming clash, due to simple Join, without the Diamond. You can have naming clash without the common ancestor. But, the programmers seem to identify MI-caused naming conflicts with Diamond problem. For me, it is a logical fallacy, like saying that &quot;all birds are ducks because we know that all ducks are birds&quot;. Indeed, all ducks are birds but I see that there are other birds, who are not ducks. Why do you keep telling me that pigeon is a duck, like Guava designers do? Why do you call something `Diamond` when `Join` is assumed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also suggested that Diamond may solve the problem, created by Join. In this light, reducing MI-caused naming conflicts to the Diamond problem is even more rediculous. Why do you do so? I ask only because I like order and feel really uncomfortable when everybody says `white` when black is demonstrated. How can you feel otherwise?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would also ask why do you hate that question? How should I appreciate comments like `this question cannot have the answer` (how did you know? by closing the question?) or `it was answered already` or `stop telling us the trivial things` or `it is not clear at all`. And all these controversial attacks can come from a single person. I welcome only analysis of my question. This question does not let me sleep. How can I make it sharp?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/289742/why-diamond-is-a-problem-rather-than-join?noredirect=1#comment599419_289742&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_inheritance&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/218458&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/289742/why-diamond-is-a-problem-rather-than-join?noredirect=1#comment599359_289742&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/KZvCk.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Snc8m.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/218477/165631" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28113" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7390" RevisionGUID="a81ddc92-5db2-42a9-8d11-d11c533ecd40" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Tag merge / synonym request: [tag:developer] -&gt; [tag:software-developer]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's possible they should both be added to STCI, but at the very least, I don't see much of a difference between these tags. Software developer has more questions and a wiki, so I suppose it should be the target.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[**Synonym link**](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/software-developer/synonyms) for manual voting" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28114" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2936" RevisionGUID="bcebfb30-ad80-42ec-9f5e-98117c95117a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="These questions have now been merged:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/89158/do-you-have-to-be-good-at-math-to-be-a-good-programmer#question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28115" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3385" RevisionGUID="1523edf3-6209-4214-9b46-c30d6ee957a8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [I answered my own question and accepted the answer. Why is it not at the top?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3376/i-answered-my-own-question-and-accepted-the-answer-why-is-it-not-at-the-top)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I have posted [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/140483/is-it-a-waste-of-time-to-free-resources-before-i-exit-a-process/141014) not long ago. And I got some really interesting answers. One got a lot of up votes, but after some investigation, I asked my instructor at the university, and got [this answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/140483/is-it-a-waste-of-time-to-free-resources-before-i-exit-a-process/141014#141014) which actually proves the most up-voted answer wrong. I don't want to down-vote that guy, because he showed an interesting aspect. But I think that my answer should at least appear a little higher, so people at least see it. Because if we're honest, who reads all the answers through and really thinks about them?!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not concerned about other answers because most of them answered about &quot;good software engineering&quot; and not my theoretical question. But they are worth reading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question is actually: why is the accepted answer so low in the thread?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28116" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3047" RevisionGUID="323a5b67-3f85-47aa-81ae-a6431bc7655a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="While not exactly what you're looking for, if you have 10k reputation, you have access to [a list of migrated questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=migrated). You also have [the active tab](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active) in the questions list, which sorts the questions by their last activity, including their migration date.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The default sort for the [questions list](http://programmers.stackexchnage.com/questions), however, is unlikely to change from its current definition of &quot;newest questions in absolute terms&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28117" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7497" RevisionGUID="133afbe2-e58e-4d1a-917b-451a11af0bd3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Asker's reputation is [over 250](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/view-close-votes), allowing them see close votes and messages on their question. Because of this, they could probably see close message suggesting possible modifications:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please add details to narrow the answer set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's about how it looked like to the asker when they deleted the question ([10K link](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/289985/unorthodox-use-of-standard-constructs)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;kbd&gt;![https://i.stack.imgur.com/XcDVF.png][1]&lt;/kbd&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/XcDVF.png &quot;close dialog screen shot&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28118" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3417" RevisionGUID="ba2a11d6-6ea6-42b5-8e94-dbe4cc544906" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [Computer Science][1] Stack Exchange site has launched and is now in public beta (note that this is a different site than [TCS][2]). I'm an active user there, and we were wondering about the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.SE currently allows questions about &quot;algorithm and data structure concepts&quot;; in fact, it's the first bullet point on the [FAQ][3]. It seems to me that most of these questions would be on-topic for the new Computer Science site. To illustrate this: the majority of the 17 answers I have posted on this site are answers to questions that would be on-topic for the new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should these questions still be on-topic for this site, considering that there is now a good home for them on Computer Science?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, this is quite a nontrivial thing, as this would change the scope of this site. As I don't consider myself an active part of Programmers.SE, I will defer to the opinions of this community: I just wanted to bring up the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28119" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3457" RevisionGUID="15aea850-8ed5-44f9-9016-74cb69102386" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/26782/goma&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two Questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. How did this user amass more than 2k worth of reputation?&#xD;&#xA;2. Does their history of asking non-constructive questions put them at risk of getting banned?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;UPDATE&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This user is suspended again for their activity." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28120" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7507" RevisionGUID="64445d68-e04d-4c19-8ec7-a19e6968fff3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was composing an answer to https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/289785/can-i-distribute-a-gpl-executable-not-a-library-in-a-closed-source-application# when I discovered it has been closed as a duplicate of https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/125606/can-i-use-gpl-lgpl-mpl-licensed-packages-with-my-application-and-make-it-close#comment599873_289924 .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since my answer 1)covers the original matter much more substantially than any answer in either question, and 2)couldn't be adapted for the overriding one, I posted it as https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/289924/108337 for the time being, mutual-linked it with the initial question with comments and tried to have that question reopened on these grounds. This didn't work (with no feedback to guess why).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I have two questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. What to do with the answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    * Adapt it for the for the much more general overriding question?&#xD;&#xA;        * This will make it a few (if not several) pages long: the general question asks for many licenses at once and implies all similar ones as well, it will take a lot of text to cover them all in the same level of detail&#xD;&#xA;        * Moreover, since more licenses are implied, the scope to cover is unclear and potentially unlimited&#xD;&#xA;    * Reopen the initial question and move it there?&#xD;&#xA;    * Something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Is the overriding question's scope appropriate?&#xD;&#xA;    * It can be (and is) answered in the &quot;more or less educated guess&quot; way, but&#xD;&#xA;    * Cannot be practically given an answer based on facts rather than opinions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28121" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3206" RevisionGUID="43946a9e-0b4d-4ad2-91ab-2976c38036f6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Closure candidates #2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/53692/i-need-some-career-guidance-please&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/52657/what-would-you-recommend-to-someone-looking-to-work-with-java&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/54612/how-to-capitalize-maximally-on-location-independence-my-personal-1-incentive&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/56557/advancing-my-embedded-knowledge-with-a-cs-degree&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57456/what-should-i-quote-for-a-project-i-hope-to-get-a-job-at-the-end-of&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/56941/are-highly-capable-programmers-paid-more-than-their-managers&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57651/open-source-consensus-based-development&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57715/do-you-slowdown-after-you-decide-to-quit&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/58956/will-a-programming-professional-certificate-from-a-university-enhance-my-resume&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/60157/will-design-patterns-help-me-in-this-case&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/60760/how-do-you-calculate-the-overhead-of-an-employee-in-a-software-consulting-firm&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/62176/how-to-resolve-a-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place-situation&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/63589/finding-this-kind-of-companies-to-apply-to&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/65607/volunteering-with-a-non-profit-to-expand-skills&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/64936/how-can-i-make-myself-better-at-programming-working-at-a-shi-job&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/65250/as-a-professional-net-developer-should-you-learn-to-work-with-msil-using-refle&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/66297/im-a-professional-software-engineer-how-can-i-take-it-to-the-next-level&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/66274/10-years-out-of-programming-wanting-to-return-how-to-best-approach-it&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/66465/experienced-programmer-taking-classes-at-community-college-useful-or-too-basi&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/67060/im-applying-for-a-position-at-a-startup-to-whom-should-i-address-my-cover-lett&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/69918/how-do-i-increase-my-chances-of-getting-a-job-after-being-out-of-work-for-a-long&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/69295/does-aiming-at-non-glamorous-positions-improve-chances-of-being-hired&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/71304/is-creating-automated-tests-a-good-way-to-begin-a-career-as-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/70471/where-am-i-as-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/71580/why-there-are-no-real-software-companies-in-europe&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/71096/msc-worth-going-back-for&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/72040/how-many-skills-should-i-list-on-my-resume-cv&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/74021/reacting-to-question-will-you-act-as-an-on-call-consultant-after-you-leave&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/74105/is-it-legal-for-me-to-contribute-to-open-source-software-while-employed&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/74970/how-do-i-use-programming-experience-at-a-non-programming-position-on-my-resume-f&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/75639/what-is-the-value-of-consulting-for-your-career&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/75647/which-is-a-better-degree-a-computer-science-degree-or-an-it-degree&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/76245/anyone-been-through-the-net-program-with-setfocus&#xD;&#xA;1. 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https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/80410/what-is-expected-out-of-an-intern-know-everything&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/80482/ways-for-self-taught-coder-to-build-a-portfolio-with-the-purpose-of-landing-an-e&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/84841/to-be-strict-or-pragmatic&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/83724/making-the-move-to-team-leading&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/84909/jobs-that-use-programming-which-arent-in-the-technology-sector&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/86042/switching-domains-in-ones-career&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/23691/why-are-more-programmers-not-freelance-these-days&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1189/what-should-i-do-to-be-language-agnostic&#xD;&#xA;1. 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https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/27173/does-graduating-a-term-later-as-a-cs-student-matter&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/28317/when-is-it-ok-to-flex-your-skill&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/28693/role-of-microsoft-certifications-ado-net-asp-net-wpf-wcf-and-career&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/42755/applying-to-a-company-while-personally-working-on-a-comparable-project&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/44692/have-you-tried-to-switch-to-different-kind-of-language-and-find-a-job-in-a-new&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/55555/how-can-i-transition-from-being-a-9-5er-to-being-self-employed&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/59597/anyone-been-successful-changing-their-career-without-having-to-start-over-from-s&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/66669/how-to-tackle-an-experienced-c-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/70147/career-change-after-years-as-a-programmer&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/72164/junior-programmer-working-with-a-poor-senior-programmer-and-poor-code&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/82920/looking-for-unpaid-interns-2-am-i-crazy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28122" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3559" RevisionGUID="698d92ba-cf2e-4722-b5d2-4efbe0fd74f4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="See the first bullet point in the [What kind of questions should I *not* ask here?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * every answer is equally valid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's no **one** &quot;correct&quot; answer to your question - you are asking for a list of equally valid answers, and as such your question is not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's a perfectly valid question to ask, but there are some kinds of questions that Stack Exchange is not suited to answer and this is one of them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28123" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7530" RevisionGUID="514042c5-27d8-491f-93ec-8f3fa3399ade" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Today we stumbled across an old question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[Should UTF-16 be considered harmful?][1]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm going to ask what is probably quite a controversial question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Should one of the most popular encodings, UTF-16, be considered&#xD;&#xA;&gt; harmful?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The long and short of the question is that UTF-8 is unambiguous and compact, while UTF-32 is unambiguous and fast. UTF-16 is ambiguous (at times) and wins neither on speed nor on size. Since it is non-optimal in every case and there are known defects in operating systems and popular language implementations, why use it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers and all eleventy bajillion comments are excessive, at times inaccurate or opinion-based, but nonetheless do contain a lot of useful information. They make compelling arguments for and against using UTF-16 in various situations. As someone who has been programming for many years and using Unicode for most of them, I learned a few things myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We [discussed it in chat for a bit][2], with the following options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Delete the whole question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Clean up the comments and answers, then lock it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Just lock it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, the question is locked. Should we do anything further with this question? Delete it? Unlock, clean it up, lock it again?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind this question does have over 70k views and four questions link to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/102205/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/23409290#23409290" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28124" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7518" RevisionGUID="96f127bc-93da-4bef-bb25-0346451b878d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My comments on this question were deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/291200/is-it-ok-to-avoid-testing-base-classes#comment603254_291200&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: Also deleted on this answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/291169/53014&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is going on? Why is there a need to censor and moderate these SE sites to such an extent? It's annoying.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm calling it a day. I've been a daily contributor to SO and have helped many people resolve their problems, but you've lost out on the small contribution I was going to continue to make.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I'll make sure my opinion is clear about these sites to anyone I suspect may have had a use for them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28126" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3444" RevisionGUID="fa765a51-1f43-4707-944a-9311560bd07e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed [Why do we need private variables?][1] got closed as a duplicate of [Do ALL your variables need to be declared private?][2], but I thought the first question and its answers were much better than the second one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't the first time I've noticed a question getting closed as a duplicate to what I view as a worse version of the question. This is probably because new questions get more attention, so are more likely to attract close-as-duplicate votes than older questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this something I should be concerned about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I'd rather have the best version of the question left open, and the worse versions closed as duplicates, but I'm not sure if that's something I should flag moderators over.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;Question has been [reopened][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/143736/why-do-we-need-private-variables&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57491/do-all-your-variables-need-to-be-declared-private&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3444/what-should-i-do-if-i-think-a-good-question-got-closed-as-a-duplicate-to-a-worse#comment9279_3449 &quot;related clarification in comments&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28127" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7565" RevisionGUID="2f4f54b1-678c-453c-9b96-149c42c87b5d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm talking about [this](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/294394/building-computer-programs-for-analyzing-abstract-strategy-games). The user is obviously a troll and should probably be question-locked and some serious action taken to limit their ability to comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I flagged it for moderator attention, no bones." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28128" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3213" RevisionGUID="ed9d48f1-f233-418d-a2d4-fb90e5ee92ae" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I only saw the &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective)&quot; warning next to book recommendation questions. Do they form an exception? For example [this](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil) question is a &quot;recommendation&quot;-kind, which is indeed not a good fit for Q&amp;A, but then again, so aren't book recommendation questions (you can't really select a single good answer)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28130" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7521" RevisionGUID="bfb148cb-070a-4d70-8680-b596aaa0a7b3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="When I go to the question https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/76804/explaining-floating-point-precision-to-customers and get a &quot;share&quot; link for Scott Whitlock's answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [link](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/768) sends my browser to a different answer on the question https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/750/what-should-you-test-with-unit-tests&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Bk96.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/9hBi6.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28131" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3466" RevisionGUID="0b3e249a-9bd1-46b7-b7a4-04188c1cf5b2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Polls aren't useful here. In fact the opposite is true. That is one of the reasons you got such a quick response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a read of https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq you will see the very first section is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development. If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software licensing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28132" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7578" RevisionGUID="dbdedea6-e246-4f0e-a4a1-ecefbbf4112e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Such a question might be too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you are unable to explain a solution fully, it means you are missing something required to complete the answer. Assuming it is not your own training or experience, the question may be missing a piece of information, or one aspect of it might be too vague. Providing an answer would be far too verbose, or could boil down to &quot;pick something.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let us consult the &quot;too broad&quot; [close reason][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; too long for this format. Please add details to narrow down the answer&#xD;&#xA;&gt; set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The proper thing to do in this case is to ask for clarification in a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I tried answering your question and came up with some good points, but&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this one aspect is giving me trouble: do you mind expanding on this a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; little bit to help nail down the scope or provide additional&#xD;&#xA;&gt; clarification?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It _may_ be acceptable to provide the answer anyway and edit it later: this depends on if your answer is complete _enough_ to be useful as-is. If you are missing something optional, or provide a big enough push in the right direction, then go ahead and answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The key to think of is to ask yourself _if I were someone else, would I upvote or downvote the answer as-is without the additional clarification?_ I hope I do not need to explain whether to post or to wait depending on the outcome of that self-question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please do keep in mind that Stack Exchange is about living content that is owned by the community: every day, users go back and edit years-old questions and answers as the underlying information evolves. Several times per week I edit old answers to update broken links, add notes about evolving technology (e.g. &quot;back in Java 5 this was how it was done, now we have some new-fangled Java 8 feature that makes it easier&quot;), and more. There is nothing wrong with leaving a valid answer then going back and improving it later. They key is _valid answer_: do not write a half-assed answer and expect to go back and edit it without a few downvotes and comments to take care of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28133" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3239" RevisionGUID="930ac99c-ec77-40b6-a646-9fc63c475f37" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yes, yes, yes. These questions should be deleted - they are [broken windows](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows) on the site. If they cannot be edited to meet the standards in the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq), they don't belong! As you say, they clutter up the site and hide the good information from everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for users that have a problem with closing questions: closing is a [fundamental operation](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/) on Stack Exchange. It allows a community to reject questions that are off topic or are bad quality. If you let them remain, the scope of the community gradually implicitly increases until you have Yahoo! Answers. The quality of both the questions and the answers also goes down, to the same hole. I'm not talking about basic vs. advanced questions here; the quality of communication (how well the OP describes his problem and whether the answers fix it in a way he can understand) is at stake.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, these questions should be removed so that the best questions can get more attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [SE post on deletion](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Why would you delete a question? Isn’t closing it enough?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; * Some questions are of such poor quality that they cannot be salvaged. They’re literally nonsense. Not every byte of data that is created in the world is infinite and sacred.&#xD;&#xA; &gt; * Some questions are so incredibly off topic that they add no value to a programming community.*&#xD;&#xA; &gt; * The mental cost of processing these closed questions is not zero, particularly for users who are actively engaged and scanning questions to find things they can help answer.&#xD;&#xA; &gt; *If users see a lot of closed questions, they’ll note that we don’t enforce the guidelines, so why should they? Without any final resolution, asking questions that get closed becomes something we are implicitly encouraging — a broken windows problem. If this goes on for long enough, we’re no longer a community of programmers who ask and answer programming questions, we’re a community of random people discussing.. whatever. That’s toxic.&#xD;&#xA; &gt; * If enough of these closed questions are allowed to hang around, they become clutter that reduces the overall signal to noise ratio — which further reduces confidence in the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;*I believe this can be generalized to &quot;that specific community&quot; throughout the post, now that SE has sites for more than just programming.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28134" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3735" RevisionGUID="68647a18-9c45-4150-8eff-1041e081d95c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't think the question is really answerable, you are essentially asking for &quot;war stories&quot;, that's more appropriate for a discussion forum, imho. What is the problem you are trying to solve and how are you going to pick a solution from all our experiences? Is there an answer to the question, or just an endless lists of what everyone's experience was?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a follow up to the *Good Subjective, Bad Subjective* blog post, [Real Questions Have Answers][1], that I think is a lot more clear than the *Good Subjective, Bad Subjective* and ends with: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I realize this is a lot of rules, a lot of guidelines, a lot of thinking. But it’s simpler than it looks. As Aarobot said in his post: **real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are asking for items, the answers your question would generate would be equal - how can you say one's experiences are better or worse than an other's? That is discouraged in the [FAQ][2]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions should I not ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28135" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3468" RevisionGUID="3acb1eb0-7a1e-4f41-abfe-7a2b7ff220f7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Would this be a valid question anywhere at SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What is the most recognisable graphical element spring 2012 that would make you realise that this page exists in XML format too (not rss)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, no version of your question would be suitable for Stack Exchange, the problem wasn't its wording. You are polling for people's opinions and that [doesn't really work with the Q&amp;A format][1]. The main problem with your question is that there is no sane way of validating the answers, as every possible answer is equally valid. For example let's say that I posted this as an answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then I ask 20 of my buddies who are active on various Stack Exchange sites to upvote it. How would you know that this +20 answer is what you are looking for? How would any one else know? There simply aren't any actual parameters in your question to test answers against, other than the extremely vague and unmeasurable &quot;most recognisable&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange sites work when the best answers float at the top, and they fail miserably on questions like yours, as there's simply no way to ensure that the highest voted answer is the best. [Real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, while we welcome _some_ subjective questions on Programmers, we expect all questions to require the unique expertise of software developers. And choosing an icon has nothing to do with our professional expertise, regardless of the fact that a part of your target audience (may be) programmers. It's a user experience question, but for all the  reasons I explained above and because icon questions tend to be too localized, your question [isn't suitable for User Experience Stack Exchange][4] as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kkO62.gif&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://ux.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/629/is-it-time-to-put-an-end-to-icon-for-x-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28136" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7581" RevisionGUID="1f879048-baee-4f96-9c9c-df6f22ffd7b9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="When a post is migrated to another site, the Community user locks the post to prevent attempts at reopening, votes, and comments (and really, the only way to get to the post is to [?noredirect=1](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/295169/can-an-abstract-class-be-instantiated?noredirect=1) in the url).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Eventually (30 days), the post will be deleted if the migration isn't rejected on the other site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The goal of the combination of the lock and the migration is to direct all future activity on the post on to the other site rather than having it fracture between two different sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28137" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2789" RevisionGUID="c02086a1-c2f6-470e-a9b9-bcf61998809f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Mark recently deleted one of my answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/128440/25885&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questioner was asking roughly: _by not finishing my degree, what is the long-term effect on my career?_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He also appended: &quot;_I apologies for the poor punctuation._&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For those without 10k privileges, my response was along the lines that clear writing skills are vital to business and come through practice; I ended with: &quot;_Nothing improves one's writing skills as much as practice and University is an excellent place to get practice writing, re-writing, and editing._&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought my answer was well-written, addressed this specific questioner's question, made specific suggestions how to improve the clarity of his writing, and it had an aggregate score of +4 (I can't yet view my actual scores here) so at least some others thought my answer had merit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In what way did I fail to address the questioner's question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28138" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7592" RevisionGUID="e599795e-3be7-416b-b95e-1795cb84f4d1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You have nearly 5000 votes cast ([stats](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/935/mason-wheeler?tab=topactivity)).  As of this writing, you have 992 question votes and 4000 answer votes. This is about 19% (992 / 4992 = 0.1987...).  To get to 25%, you will need to have a `question votes / (question votes + answer votes)` be 25%.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming you hold answer votes constant:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    X / (X + 4000) = 0.25&#xD;&#xA;                 X = (0.25) * (X + 4000)&#xD;&#xA;                 X = (0.25 * X) + 1000&#xD;&#xA;           .75 * X = 1000&#xD;&#xA;                 X = 1333&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, you will need about 340 more votes on questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28139" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3762" RevisionGUID="c961ac3f-69e7-48ef-91a8-c960c06d0d0a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So let's run through the [good question checklist](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Do your homework  &#xD;&#xA;I give you a grade of C on this one.  Yes, you pulled together the context, but you didn't cite any references. Your question didn't show any real level of research effort. &#xD;&#xA;- Be specific  &#xD;&#xA;Here you missed big time.  You asked two very big-answer questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of which is difficult to prove.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;Why did visual programming never take off&lt;/pre&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;The second of which is almost unanswerable.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;So, how advanced should be the &quot;new&quot; visual programming languages paradigms? &#xD;&#xA;Which characteristics these new paradigms would be required?&lt;/pre&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;Guessing at the future is fun, but it's not on-topic for P.SE.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Make it relevant to others  &#xD;&#xA;Definitely a programming related question, and kind of an interesting one too.  A+.  &#xD;&#xA;- Be on-topic  &#xD;&#xA;Another D or F here for the same reasons as in item 2 - Be Specific.&#xD;&#xA;- Keep an open mind  &#xD;&#xA;I'm giving you a D or a C here because I don't currently see any comments / replies from you in that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why did it get closed?  Take a deep look into #2 and #4.  You have asked interesting, but essentially unanswerable questions.  Unanswerable questions don't belong in a Q&amp;A format no matter how interesting." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28140" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3523" RevisionGUID="e599e385-683e-4d36-b94a-fd1543214689" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [How did this user amass more than 2k worth of reputation?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3457/how-did-this-user-amass-more-than-2k-worth-of-reputation)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I have seen [this user][1] posting _many_ low quality/off-topic questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of these are getting closed and subsequently deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Out of his 80 questions, about 40 are closed, though there are several that have been highly upvoted (over 5 upvoted). But from the amount of questions asked, it appears to me that it is more by chance that he post some good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have posted a comment on one of his (now closed) [questions][2] asking why he is posting such question, but got no reply.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What can we do about his activity? Should he be post banned? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/26782/goma&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/146296/abstract-comparison-between-three-server-side-languages" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28141" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7583" RevisionGUID="2eb885de-1e09-4967-bfbc-e6bfdcab9b39" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="One of the most elegant descriptions of the scope of Programmers.SE came from Thomas Owens [in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=23744163#23744163):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Picture Programmers like a small conference room with a whiteboard. No computer, no books, no papers. You write your question on the whiteboard and experts walk by. Someone sees one that they can answer, they stop in and help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Modify the top of the [help/on-topic](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) on the site to put this in the description.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently the text reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Modify the text to read (italics bit added to show difference - not intended to be in final):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. *Questions are ideally those which can be answered as if one was standing in front of a whiteboard with no access to a computer, reference books, or documentation.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The intended goal is to try to send a message (to those who read it) of &quot;asking questions about debugging and how to fix this error from a compiler completely goes against the spirit of the site.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure this type of message can be bit in the site tour." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28142" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3766" RevisionGUID="5993591f-faf6-4199-b521-f548fa6d4e83" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This isn't really an answer, but didn't fit in a comment. Lots of strange things happened to the question as it was originally migrated here from Stack Overflow and when it was closed, it was also locked. That's supposed to happen with rejected migrations, however rejected migrations aren't supposed to survive that long (asked Nov 13 '11), and while locked, the question couldn't be edited. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Overflow version of the question was deleted, so I cleared the migration history, to unlock the question and untie it from Stack Overflow, but that also re-opened the question automatically, and since this was originally a community closure, I closed it again. If re-opened, it should be re-opened by five votes, and not by a dumb side-effect of clearing its migration path.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On top of everything else, the question was automatically deleted, being an old closed question, apparently the fact that it was only closed fairly recently didn't really matter. I've un-deleted it, and now it's finally where it should be: closed and unlocked, ready to be improved, and possibly re-opened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Check the [question's revisions][1] to see its history. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/119463/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28143" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7598" RevisionGUID="f4a7fcb3-337f-4008-a6be-e66b8d49e82e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some of these questions could indeed be salvaged into ones that are within the scope of the site.  However, building this list was exhausting. It is probably also likewise exhausting trying to go through it and see which ones can be fixed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of the questions will have comments such as this exchange (from question #60)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's not clear what you're asking, and it's even less clear what problem you're trying to solve. –  GlenH7 Sep 9 at 20:46&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm asking if there is any sense in spliting spring-boot app into separate maven modules, one module for backend one for frontend –  whd Sep 9 at 20:57&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @whd that depends on what problem you are trying to solve. A suggestion is a solution to some problem. Without knowing what the problem is, suggestions are shots in the dark that may or may not be helpful to you or future readers. –  MichaelT Sep 9 at 22:11   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... and no response since then.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The people who *do* fix questions are getting overwhelmed and exhausted trying to do so.  Look at [the quarter's most recent editors](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Editors&amp;filter=quarter) and you will see that the people coming the questions are also the ones that have [historically been the ones *fixing* the questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/badges/156/refiner).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I'm exhausted trying to wade through the crap of 'fix this code for me' which is off topic here and has ***never*** been on topic here. Or the &quot;I'm a high schooler, how do I write a video game?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so I close and down vote the questions that other people shouldn't need to invest time in reading. In hopes that by not needing to look at them, they will find the other answers useful, enlighinging, and answerable." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28144" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3773" RevisionGUID="b2a680aa-3eab-4a79-a967-b2901edd8481" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Hopefully the first response to this post is a quick solution to getting 15 reputation points that I haven't seen&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All you need is 8 good edits! While under 2,000 reputation points, you gain 2 points for each edit you make, and with just 8 good edits you'll get the required reputation to up vote (plus 1 ;). There's a small catch, though, your edits must be approved by higher rep members, so don't just do minor edits in hopes of getting some cheap rep, or they'll be outright rejected. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you decide to start editing, scout for questions and answers with multiple problems, grammatical, syntactical or whatever else, and try your best to fix them, without changing the original intent of the post. Check out the [edit privilege page][1] for a summary of what a good edit makes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/edit" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28145" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2839" RevisionGUID="6c802595-23b0-437b-9f72-4f119d737aeb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have rewritten my question so as to remove any polling type questions. Can this question be reopened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/129152/are-there-open-source-alternatives-to-bitbucket-github-kiln-and-similar-dvcs" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28146" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7635" RevisionGUID="c0defa76-4df7-4876-856b-683170a36aa5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I posted the following question which was very quickly put on hold, likely because the way it was phrased invited low-quality, opinion-based answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What's the formal term for “usual way to solve a problem”?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/298229/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I once read a term that referred to the usual and expected way to solve a given problem. For example, writing `a = a + 1` in C-based languages would be considered inelegant by many programmers, who might say &quot;writing `a++` is more ****&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do you know the term for this that is used in programming literature? I think it was an adjective, and it was not &quot;canonical&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, the correct answer was given in a comment by CodesInChaos, and gnat posted a link to a meta question regarding which terminology questions may and may not be on topic. So I tried to edit the question to improve it, asked to reopen it, and flagged it for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, it was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I'm curious: what was wrong with the question? I genuinely feel that the question and the correct answer would prove useful. Can it be rephrased to have a chance of being undeleted? What are the criteria?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28147" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3547" RevisionGUID="11617e35-3ecf-4667-a86a-afd412d61a17" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have noticed that we are getting a lot more questions being posted that are interesting, engaging but ultimately amount to a glorified &quot;Shopping List&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/146908/in-memory-object-persistence-frameworks-pros-cons-implementations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Examples:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Can anyone recommend a good framework for X?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &gt; Can you provide a list of books that are good for a beginner?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find myself wanting to send them to the FAQ but I don't feel that it does a good job currently of really explaining that these types of questions are not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the communities opinion on adding this definition to the FAQ as an example of Questions that should not be asked here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28148" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7622" RevisionGUID="ae0d4e3c-2723-4f8e-951c-33c25de51d84" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Recently, @gnat proposed a duplicate where this is the source:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/135218/what-is-the-difference-between-writing-test-cases-for-bdd-and-tdd&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and this is the target:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/111837/relation-between-bdd-and-tdd&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that the answer to the lower voted question is much more thorough and complete than the answer to the higher voted question, and the target is slightly broader so it makes for a slightly better target, but it seems wrong to me to close such a highly voted question as the duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps the higher voted question with almost 100x the views should be made the target somehow, and then the answers merged from the other question into the higher voted one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are your thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28149" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4086" RevisionGUID="c2da9c38-e9ea-4c21-8b98-a398a8f7efaa" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="To be clear, the questions were on various answers to [this question][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I declined the flags because it was an inappropriate use of the flags.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers can not be &quot;bad subjective&quot; - that criteria only applies to questions. The definition of a low quality answer is something that doesn't provide a reason or explanation, only consists of a link, it's commenting on the question or another answer, and so on. The flagged answers were well written and explained themselves, and I disagreed that they didn't answer the question - they did provide real world examples of the use of dynamic typing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only other reason to delete an answer is if it's abusive in some way, such as advertising with no disclosure, unrelated spamming, or is offensive or abusive toward members of the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, the problem was not the answers, but the question. The question received 5 close votes for not constructive. It also received a large number of answers, which is something that could indicate a non-constructive question or a question that is too broad, since it could indicate that there's no right answer if people aren't norming on a few best ideas for the condition.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/167305/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28150" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3257" RevisionGUID="c4c11e37-53f6-481a-a786-6fd4d9da34bf" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yes it is a bit concerning, although 15% is not that much. I went through some of the questions and there is a minor pattern there, several of the closed questions that made it to Twitter were incorrectly migrated from Stack Overflow and they carried upvotes and upvoted answers from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is in the &quot;hot questions&quot; algorithm and as [ChrisF mentioned][1] it affects all sites, not just Programmers. Some things we could do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Close questions quicker&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   There seems to be a deep rooted perception that closing questions is a bad thing. It's not, and it should happen fast. Closing is just a peer review mechanism, a signal that a question is a bit problematic and in need of improvement. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Re-open questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Don't dismiss closed questions, they are not dead. If you feel a question can be re-opened, please try to get it re-opened. Bring it up on chat or Meta, find others that can help. Not every closed question will be re-opened, obviously, but some will.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote sensibly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Upvote questions that show research effort, are clear and useful. Don't upvote questions that you feel are interesting / fun but blatantly off topic. Similarly with downvotes, they are a comment to the question, not the person asking the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [A guide to moderating programmers.stackexchange yourself - close voting][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [What's all this about heroic edits?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, we prefer to be called [diamond moderators][4] ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the list of questions, there where flags on all questions, including the three questions that where closed by a single moderator vote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/136610/version-number-soup-in-ror-is-grails-better-django&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Typical &quot;which technology is better&quot; question, it could have been closed as off topic. Closed by a user and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/136736/online-code-editor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Blatantly off topic question, but borderline on Stack Overflow. Closed by a moderator, and I trust that it was never migrated to SO because the SO mods rejected it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/137252/is-it-a-good-idea-to-generate-code-with-the-help-of-your-ide&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closed as a duplicate by a moderator. This shouldn't really be an issue for someone coming to the site from Twitter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/137385/what-do-you-do-when-you-cant-seem-to-understand-a-certain-part-of-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Extremely vague and open ended question, gentle reminder to everyone: Programmers Stack Exchange is not a free for all discussion forum. Closed by a user and a moderator, and it makes me sad that it got as many upvotes as it did (question &amp; answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/137372/is-object-oriented-stuff-really-that-important&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Extremely open ended and argumentative question, comment wars on the question and almost every answer (and a particularly nasty &quot;discussion&quot;, that has since been removed). Closed by a user and a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/137520/why-do-some-job-posts-say-high-pressure-environment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Blatantly off topic, typical example of a populist question. Closed by five users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/137715/a-class-named-class&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I closed this one because it was getting a bit out of hand, and there wasn't any need for further answers. It had three re-open votes, and I've just re-opened it with a notice for longer answers. If it starts gathering poor answers again, I won't hesitate to close it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/137794/offshoring-a-software-project-conflict-resolution&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Very open ended. Closed by two users and a moderator. Potentially salvageable, but it requires a lot of work, and OP seems satisfied with the existing answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/137864/how-long-did-it-take-you-to-get-kernel-programming-down&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Open ended and quite difficult to understand what it's actually about. Closed by five users. I don't understand why this was tweeted, it's a zero scored question with no answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/137896/software-engineer-already-in-late-thirties-would-i-have-trouble-finding-a-new&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Duplicate, closed by four users and a moderator. Same as (3).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/137994/does-object-oriented-programming-really-model-the-real-world&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I closed this one because it started gathering answers that re-iterated earlier answers. It's not a question that will be deleted soon (if ever). It deserves the community's attention (wink).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/138132/list-of-the-really-big-and-really-small-discrepancies-with-js-in-the-big-5-brows&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Vague, overly broad, argumentative and mostly off topic. Closed by five users, I wonder if the fact that the single answer was negatively voted should have prevented tweeting it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/138229/python-is-slowly-replacing-c-in-universities-does-this-move-degrade-the-quality&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Vague, speculative, argumentative, wrong. Close by five users, I suspect it got twitted because of the highly upvoted answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is worth reiterating that there where flags on all questions, including ones closed by a single moderator. I will keep an eye on the one I re-opened, hopefully answerers will not fail to read the notice for yet another time...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3256/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3059/a-guide-to-moderating-programmers-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75189/who-are-the-diamond-moderators-and-what-is-their-role" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28151" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="84" RevisionGUID="24638799-5593-4b8b-bf2f-d1aa71cf207d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Is this a good place to ask questions about the [hidden features][1] of programming languages and tools?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our example: [hidden features][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/hidden-features&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8961/what-are-hidden-features-of-visual-studio" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28152" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2868" RevisionGUID="fc0b22f6-66e6-44e8-830a-6a8748c01b5e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/130676/starting-a-new-project-in-python-and-qt-where-can-i-find-a-good-code-layout-for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;ok, so one starts a new project, from scratch. Empty dir. This project must be laid out so that the programmers can work with it and test it, it must sport most likely something like the libraries the project is going to be dependent on and that will be added to the delivered package, it must have a set of scripts and techniques to make the program compile on the target platforms one ships to, and so on. This is such a common problem, but never in my career of programming I've met the &quot;proper way to do it&quot;. Plenty of books on proper code design and testing and code style, but never I found an example of actual industrial-level deployment from source to product. Everyone reimplements his own solution, oftenmost a huge hack which stays together with spit. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I simply don't believe this is a problem that is not documented or explained everywhere, and I also think that it's an important and well presented issue that any programmer that is involved in shipping an application, and not just coding it, must face potentially at a very complex level, since a single error may mean inability to compile on a new platform, to test, shipping the wrong files and so on. It is a programming question that most likely has a well definite answer, which can range from &quot;The best practices are defined in this book, or this website&quot; to &quot;this package which is publicly accessible uses a strategy which is the recommended best practice for such application&quot;. I can accept if nobody answers because nobody knows the answer, but I can't accept that the question is not fit for this site.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28153" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7699" RevisionGUID="9ba99695-77d9-4b47-be54-f52b072e5420" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="While stumbling across an update link project for Stroustrup's homepage (as I write this there are about two dozen posts that link to an old page that doesn't exist anymore), I found two book questions that have been historically locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first is: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/143553/what-are-good-books-for-learning-c11 with 17k views&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm just starting to get interested in C++11 (late I know). Does anyone have any recommendations for books available that cover the new features in depth? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has two link only answers. One of the links is dead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other is: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6974/whats-the-worst-programming-book-youve-ever-read with 9k views and 29 answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We do book reviews poorly. We do rant about a book review even worse.  Most of these books are so incredibly dated that at best, the only thing people would do is use one for a monitor stand. The question is about books that have no redeeming quality and five years later, the question itself has no redeeming qualities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please consider deleting both of these questions. Neither reflect well on Programmers.SE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28154" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4114" RevisionGUID="246f2344-5715-40cf-a0d3-ea6c973709c5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think since [tag:definition] does not have a **wiki summary** &lt;sup&gt;[\[here\]][1]&lt;/sup&gt; it is very easy to get confused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Better solution IMO would be to properly define the [tag:definition] tag itself first and then let users ask question on that basis. If the tag is explained as &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Define *xxxxxx*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then possibly [tag:terminology] and [tag:definition] could be merged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/definition/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28155" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="93" RevisionGUID="94f2160d-4f57-4891-a4e4-ca9ce086f27d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm speaking mainly of [this](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1020/would-you-be-willing-to-donate-your-software-or-computer-talent-to-charity).  What do you think?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28156" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3576" RevisionGUID="bfafefbc-7970-4327-8729-81e2872e762d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Where should the https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/29177/the-programmers-bill-of-responsibilities question be asked?**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To the internet in general? If that is the case a blog dealing with such questions would certainly be considered to be about Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reading the FAQ over again again for this post, I find myself compelled to ask:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A sight about algorithm and data structure concepts is the domain of [cs.se] or [cstheory.se], no? Design patterns, developer testing, development methodologies, quality assurance and software architecture should all be considered part of software engineering, right? Surely, software licensing is a freelancing and business concern?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site appears to have been simply a bucket into which we dumped things we didn't want on SO.  It is time to recognize that the title no longer fits the subject matter, and possibly that the subject matter no longer has any cohesion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this were an OO system implementation I would seriously weigh the costs of a complete rewrite before attempting to refactor... even believing [Joel](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28157" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="138" RevisionGUID="0a13ffb5-725e-4709-9b4d-e9e7b9b17876" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[How to deals with users that think their computer could think?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1814/how-to-deals-with-users-that-think-their-computer-could-think) does not answer to  &#xD;&#xA;&quot;expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet people are answering...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this question off-topic (it should probably then be asked on SU) or not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it is, but why are other people missing it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28158" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2921" RevisionGUID="4eb8fc6b-6c99-43c7-8897-2ec09a825cca" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Well, let me start by saying I voted to close this question as &quot;not constructive&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are implying that there is something wrong with how our current moderators and asking the candidates to confirm your opinions by saying what they would do differently, or alternatively paint a huge bullseye on their backs by saying they are satisfied with things as is. It's a rant in disguise, by definition. But I'll play along, since it wouldn't be a true election without those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have written a rather extensive [nomination stump][1], and I think it's evident that I'm largely satisfied with our current crop of moderators. There would be absolutely no way I could have done the work I've done in the non-rewarding aspects of the site if I was somehow dissatisfied or disgruntled. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, there's always room for improvement. Every one of us, if elected, will bring something new to the table, that's only natural. But the role of the moderator is to intervene only when absolutely necessary, and there isn't much room for differentiation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We will all be bound by the Stack Exchange vision and rules, the scope of the site and, of course by the community. As I wrote in my nomination stump, I realize that the role is clearly defined and largely restrictive, and that if elected I will need to take a step back and stop acting autonomously. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, I don't see any point in answering to the specifics of how I will handle closing questions. I have voted to close quite a few questions, participated in a number of clean up efforts, and I feel that the question is sufficiently answered by my participation. At the same time, I am the top editor amongst the candidates, while being relatively new to the site. Improve first, close only when necessary, is an approach I feel all the candidates and the moderators share. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm particularly proud to be part of the process, and amongst such fine company. All of us are extremely active and dedicated to the site and the community, and our participation speaks louder than anything else. Let's keep politics out of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/election/2#post-131517" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28159" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5124" RevisionGUID="0d64e571-a91e-4a73-b5c2-c85fe4bdd666" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Programmers, Stack Overflow and [Stack Exchange][1] in general are question and answer sites, mentoring is not really part of neither the philosophy nor the format of the sites. You mention that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am learning on my own and I come across questions I cannot find or do not have the exact answer I need to move on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, that's great! Go ahead and ask those questions, on Programmers if they are conceptual (design, architecture, etc) or on Stack Overflow if they are technical (implementation issues, programming tools). Your [single question][2] on Programmers received a fair amount of upvotes, some good answers and earned you enough reputation to use our chat (but unfortunately not the Stack Overflow chat).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know why you'd want to ask private questions but I should point out that even our chat rooms are public, the only form of private communication on Stack Exchange is between moderators, or between a moderator and a regular user, when issues of private nature arise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would insider that route. I do feel like my questions are so simple and I do not have answers for people unless we talk knitting. I will give that a try however. Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who cares if your questions are simple? If you present them clearly, and show us that you've at least tried a bit to solve your problem before asking, your questions are more than welcome. If you don't feel confident enough to ask questions, you should read and follow the advice given on:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Matt Gemmell's excellent article [What have you tried?][3], and&#xD;&#xA;- Jon Skeet's [Writing the perfect question][4] blog post, the canonical guide on asking questions on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/52123/where-is-the-best-place-to-teach-myself-a-language-and-which-one&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question.aspx&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#traffic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28160" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7642" RevisionGUID="eae68a18-9c1e-40cb-90be-b00ce6cbf801" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="For what it's worth, while it takes only 5 users to close a question, it also only takes 5 users to reopen it, or one moderator. These users may not vote to close your question again, once it's reopened, it would need a different five users to close the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the [Close Vote Review Task for your question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/close/119070), which was permanently ejected from the queue by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All that said, I suspect the reason you have received any close votes is two fold:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It is fairly similar to this question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/194975/readable-regular-expressions-without-losing-their-power and people have voted to close as duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;   - Personally, I think it's different enough, but that's why I voted to leave open. I don't think anyone can argue that it's not at least quite related.&#xD;&#xA;2. It's somewhat opinion based; it's hard to know the mindset of the original authors of the regular expression syntax used today.&#xD;&#xA;   - However, again you've phrased it in a way that has an answer &quot;Is there a specific reason...&quot; which is why I voted to Leave Open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, while I don't personally agree with the close votes on this question, I also think they're not *unreasonable*. I hope you continue to contribute to Programmers.SE." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28161" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3578" RevisionGUID="a5d5c7a3-95bf-461a-9d31-2175318769c1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The site is called **Programmers** because it was originally created to be a site for programmers to ask and answer non-programming questions that relate to their career choice or self-identity as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange later decided this wasn't a good use of their framework and changed the site scope to be about conceptual questions on software development, so the scope of the site changed however the name and design did not. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The site's [faq](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) contains a current list of what is on/off topic for this site, and you can view the full history behind the scope change [here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3412/1130)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That specific question was valid when it got asked, so got a lot of attention, however is deemed not suitable for the site now. I do not think there is anywhere on the SE network where a question like that would be welcome because it reads like a poll, asking for many answers each with one piece of the answer, and SE does not like polls.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You would probably have better luck on someplace like [Quora][1] &lt;strike&gt;or [Reddit][2]&lt;/strike&gt; or [Yahoo Answers][3], however I have not used any of those sites enough to tell you much about them. You could also try asking in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), where discussion is encouraged, although your question and its answers probably won't be easily found by others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.quora.com/home/getting_started/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.reddit.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://answers.yahoo.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28162" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7754" RevisionGUID="30ec0844-f07c-4ab3-8ae1-5656001ff798" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently posted a question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/303435/enterprise-architecture-where-to-put-persistence-dbcontext-management&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd come here from Stack Overflow specifically because I thought that this was the place for more &quot;broad&quot; questions, yet a comment indicates that this may be too broad still for programmers.stackexchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Any time we venture into &quot;enterprise&quot; decisions, things get too complicated very quickly. I voted to close as &quot;too broad&quot;. There are a million reason why any single answer would be incorrect for another project. Even if it feels correct to you, it's not correct in a general sense. Anytime there's no clear-cut correct answer, the question is not a good fit for Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a place within the SE network for these types of questions, or are they generally frowned upon across the board because they might not tend to have clear cut, correct answers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or perhaps some sort of network map to help newbies like myself land in the right areas and conform to the right expectations?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28163" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="303" RevisionGUID="5d248074-8231-4a9e-bdd9-ec026af5984e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="See: [Why don't people use white space inside parentheses][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, questions related to coding style / standards are clearly within the remit of Programmers.SE, however the tone of the question I linked is argumentative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: [What is better: Java or C#][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The content of the question itself seems ok, the title is very argumentative though.  An alternative that was suggested was: &quot;What are the relative merits of Java and C#&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that a lot of subjective questions are also argumentative, where does the line get drawn?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6512/why-dont-people-use-white-space-inside-parentheses &quot;Why don't people use white space inside parentheses&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6284/what-is-better-java-or-c" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28164" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5135" RevisionGUID="a8c5e80f-a29e-4516-af9c-d0b54e13183d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question was rightfully closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is composed of several different questions that are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Vague&#xD;&#xA; - Not answerable&#xD;&#xA; - Speculative&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are all not good attributes for a question on the Stack Exchange site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular they are of the `Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site` as the [FAQ][1] discusses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28165" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2923" RevisionGUID="5cd5f79e-61f5-4edf-8087-0861461e17f7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was reviewing answers and questions, and found a few questions related to game development. Some of them tagged with [tag:game-development], some not, but most of them would perhaps have better answers, and a better visibility on [GameDev.SE][1] .&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example those questions :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Good Game that has Scripting Support][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [Create a behavior/Component based system for games][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How would you handle those questions ? Are they worth flagging for migration to [GameDev.SE][4] ? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/80068/good-game-that-has-scripting-support&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/89423/create-a-behavior-component-based-system-for-games/126071&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28166" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3619" RevisionGUID="ad06c70e-8439-436f-add1-17982faffafc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently came across a question on [Programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com) asking what the first known pornographic video game/software/etc. was (wasn't able to find that particular question).  A comment on there asked if there were moderation for such NSFW topics. This question (and others I have found, like [this](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/49990/what-are-the-technical-contributions-of-the-pornography-industry), or [this](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/136711/would-working-for-an-adult-website-hurt-my-future-employability)) promoted legitimate answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't ever foreshadow that this forum will begin to include adult content, but I believe it would be a good idea to moderate for it. Imagine your boss walking by and sees **pornography** included in the title of the question you are reading." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28167" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7778" RevisionGUID="0bbece93-acfd-4279-a466-7191bff99089" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Tags have been merged, this is reflected at [synonyms page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/assembly/synonyms):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The following tags will be remapped to [tag:assembly]  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:assembler]" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28168" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="305" RevisionGUID="9926125a-7e31-4bc2-954f-9c9dda6ffbdb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Argumentative questions, in the sense that they are liable to piss a lot of people off, aren't appropriate; but neither of the questions you linked are particularly argumentative. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of inappropriate *argumentative* questions would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Do programmers have higher tendency to be atheists than non programmers? ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5555/do-programmers-have-higher-tendency-to-be-atheists-than-non-programmers) &#xD;&#xA;* [Is the computing community homophobic?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6295/is-computing-community-homophobic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also include the following as examples of questions that are ostensibly on-topic, but worded in such a way that make them unnecessarily argumentative:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [The lifecycle of &quot;cool&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311/the-lifecycle-of-cool)&#xD;&#xA;* [MVC just the SEO of PHP programming?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2806/is-mvc-just-the-seo-of-php-programming)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it'd be nice if people removed their answer to the question they are asking from the question itself, merely doing so isn't really grounds for a close. Down-voting questions with bad premises is more appropriate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28169" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5167" RevisionGUID="4f41dac8-0f60-4f15-8220-b39ee81a789c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="These are your questions: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The two in red are deleted, and are also taken into account in the question ban. As you can see _some_ of your questions were more than welcome, and some were heavily downvoted, closed and deleted (and lead to the ban). It's clear to me that you are more than capable of writing a good question, and I have no idea how someone who asked [this][2] then went and asked [this][3]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyway, what you need to do now is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Read our [FAQ][4] thoroughly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A couple of your questions simply don't belong on Programmers. If you want any clarifications on what topics we welcome, you can ask here on Meta or in [chat][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Stop trying to be cute&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  While all of us appreciate humour, it doesn't really have a place in your questions or your answers. Questions especially should be as clear and to the point as possible, you are asking the Programmers crowd for free help, answerers should be able to understand what your core question is without much effort. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A couple of resources that will help you ask better questions in the future (and perhaps improve your existing ones): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Matt Gemmell's excellent article [What have you tried?][6], and&#xD;&#xA;  - Jon Skeet's [Writing the perfect question][7] blog post, the canonical guide on asking questions on Stack Overflow (the principles apply on Programmers as well).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Contribute some great answers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Don't rush into answering just to reverse the ban. Find questions that you feel are not sufficiently answered, and give them your best shot. Don't repeat earlier answers, only answer if you have something new to add, back up your answers with solid references and make them as clear as possible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although the exact question ban algorithm is kept secret, from a very high level view you seem to be very near the ban threshold, it shouldn't take a lot of effort to reverse it. Our [chat room][8] may feel deserted at times, but if you have _anything_ to ask, just ask, someone will respond sooner or later.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EldJf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/167982/web-crawler-for-learning-topics-on-wikipedia&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/170928/1&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/170928/1&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28170" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7655" RevisionGUID="746b2837-4454-4850-99f8-2de2da0722ff" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/63342/what-are-some-easter-eggs-that-went-wrong&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are some easter eggs that went wrong and resulted in unintended consequences, e.g programmer(s) being fired, monetary losses, even human life loss, etc? Please share.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The question was locked two years ago and has in its four year lifespan only garnered 1764 views as of the time of this writing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It has no linked questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The answers are *meh* at the best.  Though most are not an easter egg by any definition and just personal annoyances and anecdotes or unintended consequences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; My Dad once changed the login screen for an in-house software, that he developed, to a simple and cheerful christmas greeting. Management was not amused.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There really isn't any redeeming qualities to it. I contend that with its low views and very poor answers it doesn't have any historical significance and should be deleted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28171" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3264" RevisionGUID="e34e678d-3ac5-4d55-bfd5-e2678c653abe" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Closure candidates&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Add any question you find while combing the [\[stci-software-engineering\] tag][1] that does not meet the site's scope and fell through the cracks. Review any existing question to see if it does need to be closed or can be saved by a [heroic edit](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/136425/architectural-patterns-for-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/135709/multi-threaded-applications&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/132314/methods-to-prevent-programmers-from-capturing-user-entered-data&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/130128/a-java-programmer-shifting-to-c&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/127075/what-percentage-of-code-and-runtime-do-you-typically-allow-for-testing&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/125903/applying-for-software-engineer-positions-without-being-a-qualified-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/68638/how-do-you-design-your-database&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/67298/what-do-you-do-when-there-is-a-last-minute-request-to-exclude-a-feature-from-a-r&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/67284/value-of-computer-science-degree-for-non-programmer-software-architect-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/65348/design-architecture-patterns-practices-for-web-development&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/64944/studies-on-breakdown-of-various-costs-associated-with-a-software-project&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/61195/in-a-software-engineering-view-what-are-all-the-steps-in-a-state-of-the-art-sdl&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/60648/is-software-better-designed-and-developed-by-people-who-will-use-it&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/58030/mom-vs-soa-is-soa-the-latest-mom&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/58006/im-doing-hobby-programming-what-programming-methodologies-e-g-xp-agile&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/55518/where-i-will-get-petshop-net-4-application&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/55408/filling-the-gaps-in-terms-of-software-planning-and-feeling-the-machine&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/54231/what-do-you-do-to-get-your-software-design-robust-flexible-and-clear&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/51839/how-do-you-keep-cool-when-production-system-goes-down&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/49763/how-to-recognize-my-performance-plateau&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/49226/green-engineering-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/47535/implementation-of-a-rules-engine-in-your-business-applications&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/47355/how-can-i-make-a-compiler&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46126/software-engineering-and-independence&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/44160/at-what-point-does-constructive-criticism-of-your-code-become-unhelpful&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/44066/why-is-implementing-copy-paste-in-a-touch-screen-based-smartphone-such-a-big-dea&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/43867/good-book-for-debugging-disassembling-proprietary-software&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/37451/telecommuting-with-a-foreign-employer-as-a-permanent-job&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/37008/will-people-respect-a-masters-of-science-in-it-w-software-engineering-concentrat&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/36491/what-can-programmers-learn-from-the-construction-industry&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/30853/relation-between-developers-and-clients&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/28978/is-anyone-actively-developing-software-to-be-used-with-the-emotiv-headset&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/25233/computer-science-vs-computer-engineering&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/28018/what-are-effective-strategies-for-setting-software-project-priorities&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Add questions here&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software-engineering" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28172" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7783" RevisionGUID="5d46f1c4-bce4-435f-aa9b-75f24b7320a3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some of our older questions are about hardware recommendations.  Well, Hardware Recommendations.SE is now live - lets clear up some confusion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, I'm not suggesting migrating these questions there, but properly and finally removing them from here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In particular, I am looking at [What are good keyboards for programming](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2254/what-are-good-keyboards-for-programming).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers tend to type a lot of code, bashing a lot of shortcuts and a lot of other things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What keyboards are good for programming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a broadly unfocused question with 33 answers.  Many not more than a picture, others just saying they wished they had a keyboard that cost several thousand dollars.  This post is no more valuable (and out of date, that wonderfully expensive keyboard hasn't been in production for years) than going to [amazon](http://www.amazon.com/s/?keywords=keyboards) and browsing the reviews there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it has merit, reask the question on HardwareRec.SE with the appropriate constraints to scope - but it is not now nor has ever been a good question on Programmers.SE and its historical significance is very much in doubt." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28173" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2925" RevisionGUID="169c92e7-ec70-450f-b130-3d6616f5f403" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't believe any of the candidates are looking to be too completely different, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Our moderators have been doing a great job. I'm sure there are things that some candidates, and even I, want to change, but there would be **nothing** wrong with not completely changing our ways. In fact, it might be a bad thing. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you look at any of the candidates, most of them have something(s) different they want to do. That's great! But specifically changing the ways we moderate would not drastically help, if it helps at all. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at ChrisF's answer to this question, I agree, and I plan to follow a similar approach. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have any questions, please [see my nomination][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/election/2#post-131555" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28174" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3628" RevisionGUID="11f8d312-0911-4f8b-8ca7-430e88ad8eda" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I use some variation of this one a lot when I see new users posting off-topic questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi Person, welcome to Programmers! Unfortunately, our site is a Q&amp;A&#xD;&#xA;&gt; site for conceptual software development questions, and not a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; place to simply get answers from programmers about any topic. I am&#xD;&#xA;&gt; going to vote to close your question for being off-topic, however feel&#xD;&#xA;&gt; free to check out our [faq](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or browse the site to learn more about us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It begins with a friendly welcome, followed by &quot;unfortunately&quot; to show you see the users point of view and sympathize with them, clarifies the site topic, explains the close vote, shows them where they should start to use the site, and invites them to stay on the site." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28175" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5199" RevisionGUID="d4e78a44-30d7-400d-b36b-9ef2b5fd2620" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You need [50 reputation to comment everywhere][1]. You can comment on your own questions or answers or on other people's answers to your questions regardless of your reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/comment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28176" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="431" RevisionGUID="135d4ffd-223f-4249-aef3-f2529edec328" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently posted [this question][1] on programmers.SE and it was suggested that I move part of the question to meta. I was asking if there was a good forum/discussion board I could find online to talk to other programmers about culture, opinions, stories, etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I love Programmers.SE but lately it seems that they are enforcing the &quot;good subjective question&quot; policy too harshly. If they want this to be a place for Answers and not discussion, that's fine, but then I would like to find a site where I can discuss things. If this is the site to discuss things, then please think before you vote to close something and don't just vote to close something because it doesn't meet some set of rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few examples are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **[What do you call this { character][2]**  I think this is a perfectly valid question. We're all new once and the best way to find out the answer to something like this is to ask the industry&#xD;&#xA; - **[What programming jargon words are your least favorite][3]** I enjoyed this one and learned some new terms&#xD;&#xA; - **[Do speakers get paid for their tech talks?][4]** Another one I was interested in but got closed&#xD;&#xA; - **[I've got &quot;benefits&quot;][5]** I actually found this one funny and would sympathize with him. Its the sort of thing you kind of have to be a geek to appreciate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were a few others I was looking at a short time ago that had some close votes, but hadn't closed yet. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/11397/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/11077/what-do-you-call-this-character&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/11033/which-programming-jargon-words-are-your-least-favorite&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/10916/do-speakers-get-paid-for-their-tech-talks-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/10970/ive-got-benefits-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28177" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7657" RevisionGUID="b3eacf13-1b98-4b5b-b506-66886679da4b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Today I answered this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Should I use strategy design pattern or something else?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After some back and forth with the asker in the comments, I thought it prudent to bring up the point that composition would be better than inheritance in his design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I searched the main site looking for a good question on the topic of &quot;composition over inheritance&quot; but could not find a _good_ one with lots of useful information, examples, etc. that demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses and makes a convincing argument in favor of composition. I ended up linking to a _good enough_ question but was not satisfied with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a question on the main site that would be a good candidate as the canonical &quot;composition over inheritance&quot; question that would be a good question to which to link when writing answers that advocate for composition instead of inheritance?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If not, I will consider writing up a self-answered CW Q/A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/299552/22815" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28178" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3277" RevisionGUID="e03e81b2-a099-41cb-82c9-8fbec1ad103a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I haven't looked through all of them yet, but the majority of closure candidates are not on the list because they are off-topic, but because they are not constructive. For example, this question on [architectural patterns][1] is on-topic, but it's also asking for a list of things. Using a question to generate a list is not constructive. Another example is this question about [what methodologies read up][2] on, which is far too broad and general for a good question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The purpose of a STCI action is to fully improve the tag - remove the bad tag, retag good questions with appropriate tags, and either fix or remove bad questions from the site so they don't remain as bad examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think that you can make a [heroic edit][3] to anything on the closure list, please do so. It will get reviewed before anything happens. However, keep in mind that many have answers and that it's often better to close/delete and re-ask questions that have answers that will be destroyed/rendered invalid by a heroic edit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/136425/architectural-patterns-for-software-development&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/58006/im-doing-hobby-programming-what-programming-methodologies-e-g-xp-agile&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3096/whats-all-this-about-heroic-edits" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28179" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3640" RevisionGUID="6163800b-8597-4d8e-a770-e03dd51b2b91" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've just found out about flair, here's mine:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/51770/roc-marti&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/flair/51770.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot; title=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/users/1399093&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/users/flair/1399093.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&amp;amp;A sites&quot; title=&quot;profile for Roc Mart&amp;#237; on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&amp;amp;A sites&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like it! But I would like it even more if my Meta badges were shown in there!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that [Meta reputation is derived from the main website][1], but I don't think it would be a problem to show badges in the flair, the site one or the combined one. Of course there is the option of Meta flair, but I don't think anyone would ever use that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28180" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5306" RevisionGUID="c86d9ea5-8749-436a-b9a7-1b86658cd9bb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm not sure why your [first question][1] was closed. Your answer is even an example of a good answer - it cites a language that is an example of one that has undergone usability testing and what they found by doing the studies. Other good answers might have identified other languages that had undergone usability testing, if any existed, and would point to what was learned (or what couldn't be learned) in that process, or resources about conducting usability testing on a new language.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point, you probably should have came to Meta to find out why your question was closed instead of posting a new question. Rather than taking shots in the dark at improving your question (and risking a second closure and down votes - two things that go into the triggering of the automatic question ban), finding out exactly what was wrong and trying to fix the question is preferred.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for your [second question][2], it has a few of its own problems. The question itself answers part of the questions asked. It's evident from the quotation in the body of the question that C# was indeed usability tested, which is the title question. The parts of the language that were tested and the results of those tests (or, at least some of them) were also identified in that quotation. It's not really clear what else you're looking for. Also, although self-answering is allowed, posting multiple answers to one question isn't recommended - answers should address the entire question and be relatively complete (for example, not listing one feature or test per answer, like it appeared you started to do).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you aren't sure if a question is good, you can also ask about how to best ask it here on Meta or [in our chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/178307/has-any-programming-language-been-usability-tested&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/178411/was-c-usability-tested-before-it-was-released" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28181" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7862" RevisionGUID="c2aff622-57c1-4dec-b35f-dc2ff67f44e6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="One of the things that we occasionally see on P.SE (and more often at the start of a new college semester) is new users posting their homework. With single posts, we are often able to comment and close before the user goes too far down the &quot;this isn't what the site is about.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it isn't rare (or at least as I perceive it) for these homework problems to be in rapid succession from the same user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, the stats I'm wondering about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For users with less than 125 reputation at the time of posting the questions (the rate limit threshold), who post their first two questions within 90 minutes of each other:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What is the eventual outcome of these posts?&#xD;&#xA;* What percentage of the users end up question banned? or severely rate limited?&#xD;&#xA;* Just curious: how many of them read the tour page (getting the [informed](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/badges/129/informed) badge) *before* posting a question?&#xD;&#xA;* How does this compare to users with less than 125 reputation who post their first two questions separated by a day or more?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The driving force on this is that these posts take up much more community moderation time (another set of close votes, additional comments explaining) and end up being a poor experience for the new user on the site.  Getting an idea of how often this happens would aide in letting us create better proposals for how to address this and maybe help raise the awareness of the new user experience on the site at various levels.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Queries should identify the following pairs of posts (all 10k links):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [4:27](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/254641/), [4:38](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/254642/)&#xD;&#xA;* [10:13](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/254567/), [10:22](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/254568/)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28182" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2930" RevisionGUID="f9689d49-68e9-40d2-af8b-f31989e43f88" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was referring to a question here: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/131746/how-to-correct-a-junior-but-encourage-him-to-think-for-himself/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was closed as off topic! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see it received 38 reps and there were great participation, about 10 answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can a &quot;good question&quot; be closed? I agree that one can say similar thing *can* happen on other industry; but that doesn't mean this is not what programmers face.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Isn't this being harsh just for the sake of being definition of off-topic? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28183" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3644" RevisionGUID="3a80ef68-30ae-4d8f-9d4a-45c41e99821b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Take for example [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/151157/what-is-the-equivalent-word-for-compile-in-an-interpreted-language).  This user knows they are cross posting and the question is word for word the same as the one on english.se.  I wanted to say something, but I figured someone else would have already since he admits to cross posting.  Is this allowed? The consensus seems to be the same on both sites." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28184" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2945" RevisionGUID="fdb95ad3-3f92-4a4a-8bdf-43349658011e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just saw a question on [how to have more fun at work][1], which I was about to vote to close, when I read the comments, and saw that it had been closed/re-opened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I think closing it was the right move (for reason in my comment to it). But, given that it *was* re-opened, should I *not* vote to re-close, at least for a period of time? Or just vote as I think it deserves, regardless?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/77486/3688" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28185" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7662" RevisionGUID="6fc6c005-c899-447b-9064-5ac34ad1f3ca" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/120560/what-are-the-things-java-got-right is a poll. It has 41 answers. Beyond the top answer (which is repeated countless times in blogs out there), the answers quickly devolve into poor ones that are debatable or repeating previous answers (garbage collection is mentioned in the question, and three of the top four answers by votes, similarly platform independence, library).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * A googlable name. Try googling for &quot;C&quot;...&#xD;&#xA;* A standard library that is somewhat consistent.&#xD;&#xA;* A fast and open standardization process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Checking bounds of all array accesses and validity of all casts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Nobody seems to have mentioned **Enumerations**. They've done quite a nice job on those.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Competition&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Either this should be a wiki lock (and I really don't like it - again, its in countless blog posts out there), or deleted.  The question only has ~1470 views. Its really not worth keeping around beyond as serving as an example of why we do big lists questions poorly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28186" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5308" RevisionGUID="a986ca03-e409-4ad8-9199-1d545f2bb197" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's a _very_ interesting question, but it lacks what essentially separates Programmers (and Stack Exchange in general) from traditional discussion forums: *An actual problem looking for a solution.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This, unfortunately, is not something we can overlook, it's a policy [engraved in all Stack Exchange FAQs](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) and (at least for the techonology / science sites of the network) is what keeps us all hooked, we are problem solvers by nature. You are asking us for a direct comparison of two services, without giving us any parameters that will help us decide what a good answer might be, and that's bad:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Voting, our way of measuring quality, fails.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Every feature that Github has and Bitbucket doesn't is a valid answer to your question, but you've given us no way to tell which feature (or limited set of features) would be the one you actually need, and the one that will make you switch to Github. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  People will end up upvoting their _favourite_ feature, and that _not_ always the more helpful feature. Questions like yours tend to turn to popularity questions more often than not, and [popularity isn't what the site's about](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **There's a huge potential that _most_ answers, even great ones, will be a waste of time.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  As a moderator, I've had my fair share of... not so pleasent experiences on Stack Exchange. However my _most_ unpleasent moments thus far is when I've spent about half an hour of my (limited free) time to write a thorough answer only to find out that the asker was looking for something else entirely. Don't get me wrong, the couple of times this happened, I got a ton of upvotes, but I couldn't care less about what essentially is an integer on a database somewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  In the case of your question this translates to an answerer writing an extensive answer about &quot;hidden but awesome feature foo&quot;, only for you to come back and say something along the lines of &quot;hm, nice, but bitbucket has equally awesome feature bar that better fits my workflow&quot; or &quot;hm, it's awesome, but it's not really something I'll ever use&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **It _must_ end somewhere**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Lacking well defined parameters means that your question also lack limits. And although we are not looking for the One True Answer To All The Things&amp;#0153; as Stack Overflow does, we do prefer questions with a finite and somewhat limited set of answers. There's nothing in your question, as currently phrased, to stop answers appearing ad nauseum. Every time Github releases a new feature, it's a valid answer to your question&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two blog posts that describe in some detail our general approach to subjective questions, [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) and its followup, [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/). The last sentence of the latter stands out:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; real questions have *answers*, not *items* or *ideas* or *opinions*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And for your question to become a real one, we need you to present us with a (somewhat) specific software development problem. It could be anything really, a workflow you are using but feels crude due to some Bitbucket limitation, a workflow you would like to use but can't because it's not supported, anything. But it has to be a problem, something we can feel a tiny bit proud about when (if?) we help solve. It can be trivial, or overly complex, it doesn't matter, just don't ask us to go to Github's documentation and just copy paste features from it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, I'm seeing there are material-if-not-overwhelming differences, e.g. Github's appealing and useful branches page versus Bitbucket's overly simple branch drop-down list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is on the right track, but not there yet, we just need a bit more of it. But this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This makes me wonder: what else am I missing out on? What are the lesser known Github features that folks like me using Bitbucket to save money are missing out on?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;should go away completely. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm afraid that's all I got at this point, hope it helps. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Hypothetical examples, of course.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Certainly Bitbucket may already have the feature, but chances are they've implemented it in a slightly different way, and that, unfortunately, is all a fanboy/girl needs to write an extensive thesis on Github's superiority.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28187" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3303" RevisionGUID="43e7b3f2-d5d4-471f-9bcd-1ecbd89790e0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Edit:** Proposal seems to have support, so I've made a [separate meta post][1] to propose this change. The actual proposal put forth has been adjusted a bit based on user feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2) Change the style of how we define site scope**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This section currently has a list of what is on-topic, and what is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * algorithm and data structure concepts &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * design patterns &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * developer testing &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * development methodologies &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * quality assurance &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software architecture &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software engineering &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what language you should learn next,including which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; …then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel this is a bad way of doing this because &quot;Programmers&quot; is an extremely broad topic that covers a type of person, not a specific item or activity. It seems unrealistic to have a comprehensive list of what types of questions are on-topic and what is not, especially since I think our site is best defined by the type of answer needed, not by the question topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So instead of trying to make a list of absolutely everything about programmers and if its on/off topic, I feel we should instead define what makes a question good for this site, which happens to be the type of answer they require.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions can I ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asked should:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Require an answer from a programmer specifically. They should not be ones that are better answered by another profession, or by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; yourself**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  A good example would be career-related questions. We are not career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; guidance counselors, nor are we an HR department, so most career and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; workplace questions will be closed as off-topic unless the question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can be best answered by a programmer, such as asking [if it's detrimental&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to your programming career to stay in one job too long][2].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **They should ask for a single answer, not a list of answers**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    For example, asking any form of [What kind of [X] is best for a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer?][3] is off-topic and will likely be closed. The end result&#xD;&#xA;&gt; is almost always a huge list of everyone's favorite [X], and that list&#xD;&#xA;&gt; will get outdated as time and technology progresses.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Instead, consider how you can [rephrase your question so it is seeking&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a single answer][4] that can only be answered by a programmer. For&#xD;&#xA;&gt; example, asking [What are some good books about development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies?][5] would be closed, however asking for a *specific*&#xD;&#xA;&gt; book with a limited scope, such as [Is there a canonical book on the Agile software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development methodology?][6] is OK.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Should be relevant to a programmer's to professional growth, not their personal amusement**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    The question should relate to a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer's professional life, not their personal life. Questions on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmer lifestyle are off-topic unless they relate to their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional life, such as asking [I don't program in my spare&#xD;&#xA;&gt; time. Does that make me a bad developer?][7].&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  We want a site that we can continuously learn and grow from, not one that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; simply amuses us when we're bored at work.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Has a clear answer can be agreed upon by the majority of programmers**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  [We are a Q&amp;A site, not a discussion board][8]. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Don't ask questions about [What &#xD;&#xA;&gt; language/technology should I learn next?][9] or [Is A better than B?][10]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; because we are not interested in questions that lead to chatty, open-ended &#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussions&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Instead, visit our [chat][11] for open-ended discussions with other programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **Should be written in such a way that the question is useful by more than just you**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  In other words, don't give us your life story with your question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Simply tell us the relevant facts, and state your question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  We work hard to build and maintain a library of questions which can&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be referenced by any programmer, not just you. Help us maintain our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hopefully this will stop the number of &quot;but so and so is on/off topic in the FAQ&quot; comments I see, because the scope of this site is really defined by the answers, not the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some concerns below about this becoming a big wall of text, and I agree. Perhaps we could use [more][12]/[less][13] links like we have in the current FAQ to hide examples unless the user is looking for examples. If we are unable to collapse the text or make this easy to read, we could also just display bullet points that link to meta questions on relevant topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3318/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/74626/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/12833/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/7859/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/48698/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/433/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/112504/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://a.b&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://a.b" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28188" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7866" RevisionGUID="9d011a0a-ab06-4066-a8dd-7607e13e0173" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.457" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/38299/do-computer-glasses-work?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does the above provide any reason why I should not delete it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28189" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2952" RevisionGUID="f0ce1a76-a967-4f2a-abc9-36dbd33b99d4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just [deleted my question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/132310/do-community-managed-product-backlogs-exist) after it received two close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Title of the Question was: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do community managed product backlogs exist?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The body of the question was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do community managed Scrum product backlogs exist? If so, what would&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be an example of a successful community managed product backlog, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what are key factors in it's success? If they don't exist, why, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; are there any reason that would make using a community managed Scrum&#xD;&#xA;&gt; product backlog problematic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What was wrong with it? Why was it on its way to closure?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28190" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3709" RevisionGUID="368c79d2-4cf4-47da-a367-13ce6305ea8b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/153532/how-to-deal-with-bad-developers-who-hold-back-the-project&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suppose that it could have gone on [Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/faq &quot;The Workplace - Stack Exchange is for members of the workforce navigating the professional setting...&quot;) (I didn't realize that site existed until it was commented on) but considering the list of questions in the related questions list, it seemed OK. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where did this question go wrong? It seems like once a down vote occurs, they flood in and you're toast!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to move it to workplace if it isn't appropriate for Programmers?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28191" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7666" RevisionGUID="a5b9f7d4-51cd-46d0-a1f9-f94ede8c1ef8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You are not crazy.  For me, I can see this on a few different pages.  Page [9, 15/view](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?page=9&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=15) ranges from scores of 4 to 1.  Page [10, 15/view](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?page=10&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=15) has 116 to 114, and then 1s and 0s. Page [11](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?page=11&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=15) has 116 to 111, and -4.  For what its worth, it starts getting wonky on page [7](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?page=7&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=15) where it goes from 109 to 58 and then goes downhill from there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar wonkiness can be seen on page [5](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?page=5&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=30) and [6](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?page=6&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=30) at 30/page. And page [3](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?page=3&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=50) and [4](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?page=4&amp;sort=votes&amp;pagesize=50) on 50/page." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28192" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5317" RevisionGUID="882b014b-8a8d-4e1c-830d-e64057b9dddb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Discussions should be closed as they fit the definition of not constructive. Not only is it mentioned [explicitly in the FAQ][1], but there's [an entire blog post on the Stack Exchange blog about it][2]. If you want to have a discussion with other users, we do have a [chat room][3] - all Stack Exchange sites tend to have at least one for the site. However, you need 20 reputation points to use an existing chat room and 100 reputation points to create your own chat rooms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider that closing questions, especially before they have answers, is a very good thing. It allows the author, and other users with the edit permissions, to make it a good, high quality question that meets all of the guidelines. If a question is too broad or too vague, closing it prevents bad or even incorrect answers and users can still comment, prompting for more information or guiding the user asking the question into providing everything that is needed in order to help solve the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you think that there's a question that was closed and shouldn't have been, ask about it on Meta. If you think you can fix the question, suggest edits. If you see a bad question, vote to close it or flag it so it can be handled before a bad question gets bad answers and work with the user to improve the question so it is helpful to everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also like to point out that [rudeness is not tolerated on Stack Exchange sites][4] and may lead to the suspension of your account. Calling the community elected moderators of a site &quot;Gestapo Moderators&quot; is good way to get off on the wrong foot.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#etiquette" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28193" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3305" RevisionGUID="6543eb3f-fa9c-4dec-869c-644606988ef3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**4) Remove the &quot;What about subjective questions?&quot; section**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are no longer as tolerant as we once were on subjective questions, and I think the guidelines listed lead to problem questions, particularly the bit telling users that questions should &quot;invite sharing experiences over opinions&quot; (I think every one of these I've seen has been closed as a poll). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel we can do better by merging key parts of this section in with the &quot;what kind of questions can I ask here&quot; section.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing I think we should keep from this section is the line that says&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please [look around][17] to see if your question has been asked before. It’s&#xD;&#xA;&gt; also OK to [ask and answer your own question][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I have no idea why this is in the &quot;subjective questions&quot; section anyways)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/its-ok-to-ask-and-answer-your-own-questions/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28194" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5318" RevisionGUID="acf01dcf-30c7-4f80-a06d-1f4fb6d13ea5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I really do not understand how a practical and very real question regarding use of one of the commonest text editors used by programmers be off topic on a programmers Q&amp;A forum?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Battling Emacs Pinky?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/178621/battling-emacs-pinky" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28195" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3710" RevisionGUID="5a61ce86-59dd-4f3b-8996-ef813f833b93" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="First of all, thank you for not cross posting on The Workplace. I've written [a rant][1] recently on how to get a question migrated there, the gist of it is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Flag for moderation attention, or&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. Drop the questions in the [Water Cooler][2], the Workplace's main chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the question in question I'd go with option 2, asking in the Water Cooler. It's a bit lonely in there, but _if_ there's a version of your question that fits The Workplace, the regulars will guide you to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for why it's not a good fit for Programmers, well as always, the [FAQ][3] puts it best:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in general:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question is about a _people_ problem, not a software development problem, and that the people involved happen to be programmers doesn't make it unique to our profession.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3701/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/8giiE.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28196" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7677" RevisionGUID="93f86501-57e5-4170-a53f-f0b57c224f05" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Programmers is all about answering _conceptual_ questions about software development. Questions about implementation are off-topic here: while implementation may play a role in a question or an answer, they cannot be _solely_ about implementation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking &quot;in what language was this product implemented&quot; falls squarely into the off-topic category of implementation. (Note: it may be about implementation, but it is also off-topic at Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, a question should elicit reasonably long answers that describe various aspects of a topic and go in-depth. Depending on the project, I might able to answer &quot;in what language is X implemented?&quot; with &quot;C++&quot; or &quot;Perl&quot; or some other one-word answer. That is fundamentally not a _good_ question or answer because there is nothing to describe.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, from [How do I ask a good question?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ## Make it relevant to others&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We like to help as many people at a time as we can. Make it clear how&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your question is relevant to more people than just you, and more of us&#xD;&#xA;&gt; will be interested in your question and willing to look into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good question will generalize a problem just enough so it is still useful to the asker, but other people can stumble on the question from Google or searching on-site and get value from it. This is one of the points of asking a question using a [Short, Self Contained, Correct (Compilable), Example][2] (or the conceptual/design equivalent to be on-topic here). Distill your question down to its core so it can be useful to others, among other benefits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Asking a question such as the one you posited is not really interesting to most people and it will not be relevant to others. Additionally, as you found out in the comments, you are more likely to get an answer from someone involved in the project anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;### Why are you asking this question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions like the one you brought up are normally a means to an end. You see some cool feature and are curious how to implement it yourself, or how to design your software to do something similar. While most popular programming languages are somewhat equivalent from a computer science theory perspective (i.e. Turing-complete), the reality is each has its own ecosystem of libraries and language features that might make certain software _easier_ to implement. Asking what language to use sounds like a decent first step.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You would be better off asking yourself _what is my end goal? Why do I care what language was used?_ That should lead you to another question which may be on-topic here. Now you start getting into design questions which are interesting, are relevant to other people, and do attract high-quality answers. Of course, one must ask a _good_ question that is not too broad (a very real risk with design questions), but now we are getting somewhere productive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://sscce.org/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28197" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3877" RevisionGUID="7660ded8-d07b-46cf-aace-895d7db75898" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There were two questions in the [question in question][1], a general one and a very specific and localized one. Unfortunately the emphasis was on the localized one, which lead to the question getting closed. I deleted it during a routine manual clean up, too localized questions are rarely salvaged, and this one didn't have a single edit, no effort to get it re-opened. Closed is a temporary state that leads to deletion, unless someone steps up and improves the question and gets it re-opened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your answer, or any of the other ones, had nothing to do with the question getting deleted, it's the question that is closed and subsequently deleted, answers rarely play a part in it. I've made a small edit to bring the focus of the question to the general one and undeleted it. Hopefully others will continue improving it and it will be re-opened, but if it stays closed it may get deleted again in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/157835/can-programmer-certifications-substitute-for-degree-requirements" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28198" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3329" RevisionGUID="52ded5f2-00d5-48cf-a6d8-81e5fd7a7e87" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Typically we evaluate questions on research effort and usefulness:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Research effort**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The question shows no research effort at all. It's a curiosity question, which I'm perfectly fine with in general, but that doesn't mean that OP still doesn't have to do at least some minor research prior to asking. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A simple web search for &quot;programming languages semicolon&quot; revealed the [Comparison of programming languages (syntax)][1] and [Syntactic sugar][2] Wikipedia articles that discuss semicolons as terminating characters, and the very interesting [The Semicolon Wars][3] article. The lack of proper terminology (statement terminators) and vagueness of the question tells me that there wasn't any research effort at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Usefulness** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It could be argued that the question would be useful to someone researching language design, but that would be a very weak argument since there's nothing in the question to even hint towards language design and every answer that approached the question from a language design perspective did so in extremely vague terms. Furthermore, even from a language design angle the question is a [typical bikeshed question][4], and amazingly it fits [Wadler's Law][5] perfectly, as it's a question on syntax rather than semantics: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; In any language design, the total time spent discussing a feature in this list is proportional to two raised to the power of its position.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; 0\. Semantics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; 1\. Syntax&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; 2\. Lexical syntax&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; 3\. Lexical syntax of comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, let's take a look at our [FAQ][6]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions should I not ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We _tend to forget_ that part once in a while, but for me it's the most important part of the FAQ, one that clearly indicates that we are not a discussion forum but a Q&amp;A site. The question in question is a great example of why that paragraph is important: It's a barely useful question, no research effort at all, but highly upvoted. However there is no actual problem to be solved, it's a typical discussion oriented question, and even if it wasn't otherwise troublesome it should have been closed as not constructive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which brings us to the notorious [6SG][7]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question itself fails all but the last one. It's simply too short to guide answers in a constructive manner, and although some of the answers are not bad, that has little (if anything) to do with the question. I won't evaluate the answers themselves, because I feel we kinda failed in protecting people from wasting their time in answering a question that clearly doesn't belong to the site, and that's not the answerers fault.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**In conclusion:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I fully support closing the question, and if I wasn't on the road when the question appeared I would have closed it sooner, it's not a type of question I would want to encourage on Programmers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It gathered quite a few upvotes and so did the three top answers, so it's not a question I would delete, but I don't think there's a point in trying to rewrite and re-open as I think it has run it's circle and there's little (if any) chance it will gather any more good answers. &#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Further reading:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [The Trouble With Popularity][8]&#xD;&#xA;- [Parkinson's Law of Triviality][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_languages_%28syntax%29&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_sugar&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/the-semicolon-wars&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/31253/the-bike-shed-problem-and-so&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Wadlers_Law&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28199" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2963" RevisionGUID="8fb2dfec-fcdf-40b0-b396-65f17d079ce9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Open [tag:web] questions that are not about [tag:web-development]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/91143/ms-certifications-for-non-it-students&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/105264/trying-to-evaluate-answers-provided-by-an-online-technology-school&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/80303/is-there-a-beta-testing-community&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/94397/online-advertising-and-marketing-your-services&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/45228/do-microsofts-desktop-platforms-have-as-much-potential-as-web-platforms&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/110675/overcoming-general-lack-of-ui-design-skill-in-developers&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/76822/i-need-a-true-random-number-generator-web-service&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/125545/evaluating-software-maintenance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a first step I retagged all [web]+[development], [web]+[applications], [web]+[app] questions. Eight of them in total, so I spammed the frontpage a bit. If the questions I've listed above are appropriately retagged or closed or are deemed [web-development] questions, I'd say it's safe to merge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[tag:web-development] and all related tags would be my first proposal for a structured cleanup anyway, so merging the tags would make my life a bit easier when the time comes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28200" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="442" RevisionGUID="c994babb-1540-4d6e-b0ae-eeac90b129ee" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Not until the site leaves beta, and then we'll have to provide evidence of open questions that should be migrated and closed questions that should have been migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end - if anyone comes across a question that fits the bill, edit it into this answer so we don't have to do it all at once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Pyton + GTK.Menu - show the menu at a certain position [closed]&#xD;&#xA;][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [jQuery $.Post quirk [closed]][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [mod_security + apache + geoip block != 404][3]&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12566/how-to-name-a-single-purpose-class-and-method-closed&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12426/what-methods-can-be-employed-for-using-composition-over-inheritance-closed&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12271/how-i-do-versioning-for-an-web-application-closed&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/225848/transform-class-text-to-my-domain-name-without-http-and-www&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Server Fault&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [In NameBench results, what is TO and other questions? [closed]&#xD;&#xA;][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Super User&#xD;&#xA;* [How is Linux not prone to viruses or that kind? [closed]&#xD;&#xA;][5]&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12839/what-monitors-have-larger-than-hd-resolution-size-is-less-important-closed&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12584/how-would-you-make-a-qwerty-keyboard-more-programming-friendly-closed&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12565/best-out-of-box-linux-distro-for-general-programming-closed&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12375/what-mouse-model-or-brand-do-you-like-closed&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/11895/recommendation-electronic-reader-closed&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/11577/running-javascript-on-the-command-line-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12010/pyton-gtk-menu-show-the-menu-at-a-certain-position-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/11451/jquery-post-quirk&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12942/mod-security-apache-geoip-block-404&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/11723/in-namebench-results-what-is-to-and-other-questions-closed&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/9141/how-is-linux-not-prone-to-viruses-or-that-kind" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28201" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3341" RevisionGUID="cef13ddb-dfd7-4316-a7d8-c12c455ea541" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="People Asking the community to do their homework are shut down fast.. Why wasn't this Question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Software solution from the 2000's, should I attempt to patch or remake the whole thing?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;His job was to :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discuss a system that a certain company is currently using and [determine] what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should be done with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;He basically had a meeting and threw the question here. Is that\should that be allowed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/140621/software-solution-from-the-2000s-should-i-attempt-to-patch-or-remake-the-whole" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28202" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5357" RevisionGUID="0f9f454f-548d-45b4-aa87-f18a3f36603d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Seems reasonable to me.  Of the 12 that are currently tagged, only one didn't have other tags that boxed the question better.  For the one that only has one tag, it's a pretty bad question that should be re-tagged to something else.  I would have re-tagged it, but I am afraid to edit and then bump the question to the front page without a moderator first closing it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For any moderators dropping in on this thread, here's the errant question.  I have also flagged the question for moderator review.&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/12343/53019&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28203" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7712" RevisionGUID="d1c0101b-f63b-486d-94e2-9bf5b86ffe75" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [tag:favorite] tag is all cleared out except for two questions, which are locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/940/what-are-your-favorite-version-control-systems&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is more a discussion question than an actual attempt to determine the &quot;best&quot;, since that clearly varies by the needs of the organization. I'm more curious about the arguments in favor of different systems across categories (centralized vs distributed, open vs proprietary, etc).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So, what do you think is the best version control system?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is an outright poll with 17k views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/39/40980&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What's your favourite quote about programming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; One quote per answer, and please check for duplicates before posting!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which has 180 answers and 36k views.  This really isn't much better than going through and reading Wikiquote's [Category:Computer scientists](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Category:Computer_scientists) or [Category:Computer science](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Category:Computer_science).  Sure, there are lots of quotes there, but it really isn't a good example of what we have nor material that isn't present in a much better form elsewhere.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please consider deleting these these two questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28205" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3910" RevisionGUID="33e6f03b-14d8-4786-ad97-a8f7904fb167" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question is: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/154794/31260&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...I am not sure if that is a correct way to deal with problem. I think in above mentioned case user is anyway going to change the text, so why not force him while constructing the action?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not quite comfortable with [this answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/161121/31260). It contains nothing but code and the code does not look self-explanatory to me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     public abstract class Action {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	protected String text = &quot;Default action text&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	protected String toolTip = &quot;Default action tool tip&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	protected String imageURl = &quot;http://myserver.com/images/default.png&quot;;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	.... rest of code, I guess setters and getters&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     public class MyAction extends Action {&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction() {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction(String actionText) {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;             setText(actionText);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction(String actionText, String toolTip_) {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;             setText(actionText);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	      setToolTip(toolTip_);	&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     &#xD;&#xA;&gt;         public MyAction(String actionText, String toolTip_; String imageURL_) {&#xD;&#xA;&gt;             setText(actionText);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	      setToolTip(toolTip_);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     	      setImageURL(imageURL_);&#xD;&#xA;&gt;         }&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Am I missing something here? Could above be really a valuable answer to the question asked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, answer is removed ([self deleted](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3910/is-this-code-only-answer-ok#comment10991_3910 &quot;according to clarification from moderator&quot;))." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28206" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5375" RevisionGUID="5da2eaf3-6628-43c6-8990-77bf92f2b4ab" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As of now, [tag:static] is empty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the (40+) questions that were there few days ago have been retagged to either of more specific tags such as [tag:static-analysis], [tag:static-methods], [tag:static-access], [tag:static-keyword], [tag:static-linking].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is expected that the [tag will disappear in 24 hours](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/18021 &quot;statement source&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28207" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3343" RevisionGUID="e16fcca0-c202-480f-8bf9-2cf29f5e3b80" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is a far cry different from the question about an existing system, its faults and the best way to design a better solution, vs. PLZZZ TEH CODEZ!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The question cited above clearly described the issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. The OP didn't get too localized&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. While potentially broad, the question narrowed the focus a bit by describing what he had already tried.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 4. The OP put in some effort yet still needed expert answers that could potentially benefit others in the future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets compare that to this Emmy Nominated question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/140500/how-to-check-string-for-space-in-ruby&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. No effort whatsoever put into figuring out the answer on his own&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. No effort at all into even proper command of the English language for that matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. Not even on on topic for Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 4. No way that the question can be answered without literally writing the code for the OP, thus doing his homework for him.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No comparison IMHO but like others have said, vote to close or flag if you feel that it is not a good question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28208" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7763" RevisionGUID="0027973c-8575-4d0a-8193-2b99246ac108" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The synonym suggestion has been placed in the system. It now needs a couple of (up) votes at https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/exceptions/synonyms to take effect." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28209" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2987" RevisionGUID="58b8164f-6e1a-4b85-a8b2-bb9114577b0f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question seems to suffer from all the same pitfalls as questions I see closed regularly:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/132852/dealing-with-management-that-does-not-see-value-in-improvements-that-are-not-imm&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though I think the question and answers are interesting, this doesn't need to be programming specific - same can be true of other fields. Also, just what an &quot;improvement&quot; consists of is unclear - too general?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have seen many questions on meta that refer to the validity of questions and this example is a good counterpoint to those who claim there is no problem on this SE. I really want to know how this can remain open based on other questions I have seen closed, as I am to the point where I am not really sure what can be asked on this site (and I have read the FAQ and followed meta). I think that I am not alone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:&#xD;&#xA;Here is an example of a very similar question that I just pulled off the newest questions page that was closed as not specific to software development:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/132878/how-to-sell-yourself-to-the-manager&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is perplexing to me. It seems the answer is that there is no rhyme or reason. You'll have a better shot of having your question accepted by the community if you include a reference to iOS." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28210" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5392" RevisionGUID="9eb4b644-edfd-4a17-9072-53b556ee07fe" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Why was https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/180796/video-courses-on-powershell closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28211" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3350" RevisionGUID="d4938992-df70-43a3-8c91-d57c4cd9ac17" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Studying similar ([faq-proposed](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/faq-proposed/info)) question at SO Meta and especially its accepted answer helped me to make my mind on that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Where can I ask a “how to get started” question on a Stack Exchange site with respect to technology?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/121705/where-can-i-ask-a-how-to-get-started-question-on-a-stack-exchange-site-with-re)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...tag wiki's is perhaps the best we can do.  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the wiki for a topic doesn't already contain this information - links to web sites, books, tutorials etc. then perhaps we should be making all efforts to ensure that it does...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Above brought peace and light into my life.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, if I can imagine an answer making good tag wiki, it means question is OK to me. &lt;sup&gt;assuming it is on-topic&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Otherwise, I take a deeper look into the question and try to find out if there's something wrong with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for [the question you referred to](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/84739/what-is-the-preferable-mobile-android-iphone-game-development-tool-for-a-c-ne), well, it doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While casting close vote I have been choosing between not constructive and too localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Per re-reading [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) I was rather inclined to vote for _too localized_ but the statement &quot;Which development tool is widely used now?&quot; made me feel that _not constructive_ would be a better match.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Understanding scope of the question helps to find out if it's appropriate or not. _&quot;I am a newbie, how do I get started writing new programming language?&quot;_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[FAQ discourages](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask &quot;`What kind of questions should I not ask here?'&quot;) questions that are too wide:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an _entire book_ that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that _not constructive_ close reasons description matches above with _&quot;this question will likely solicit... extended discussion&quot;_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![https://i.stack.imgur.com/BWAjl.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Not a real question_ can also match in blatant cases, with _&quot;overly broad&quot;_ close reason. _&quot;Need help getting started with programming.&quot;_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/BWAjl.jpg &quot;FAQ quidance about question scope&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28212" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7774" RevisionGUID="aae0cd06-4fbe-4622-9cc1-d5ddf1a8ffd7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Today, someone asked [Why do we need both Priority and Severity?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/303980/60357) (10k link) which is clearly on-topic being about software development concepts and all that, but was soon closed as primarily opinion based. That's correct, as it was not an exact duplicate of the much older [How do you classify bug severity?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/57047/60357) (10k link) which was also closed as opinion-based (again, correctly).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as I went back to these questions, I suddenly found them both &lt;s&gt;murdered&lt;/s&gt; deleted – by a mod, so I can't vote to undelete. Why were these questions deleted? Should we delete all questions as soon as they are closed? Or should we keep closed questions around if they solicited at least one valuable answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked [the all-knowing help center](https://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/deleted-questions), which told me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions that are extremely off topic, or of very low quality, may be removed at the discretion of the community and moderators. Over time, closed questions that are not useful as signpoints to other questions may also be removed, as well as questions which have no significant activity over a very long period after being asked. If you want to improve a question to keep it from being deleted, click the edit button beneath it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions were neither *extremely* off topic (only a bit opinion-based), and not of very low quality. As such, I'm not sure that these questions meet the criteria for deletion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I frequently vote to delete a question if:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - it is not reasonably possible to edit them into a comprehensible, on-topic question&#xD;&#xA; - and it is of low quality, e.g. as indicated by many downvotes&#xD;&#xA; - or if it is a remnant of the not-programming-related days which featured a significantly different site scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is my focus on topicality as the main criterion for the delete/no delete correct, or do we as a community decide to apply stricter standards?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28213" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3949" RevisionGUID="5f427435-352a-4810-8a73-1436fe01c23b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just came across this question that has already been closed: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/162696/reading-code-on-an-interview&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that the question as it was worded wasn't very constructive but I think that if it had of been cleaned up, it could have provided some useful answers for programmers, both interviewers and interviewees. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Robert Harvey was very quick to dismiss this question as off-topic and link to the FAQ. Fair enough, but our FAQ doesn't specifically say no interview questions that relate to programmers even though Robert Harvey states so in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think there are many things in technical interview that wouldn't be relevant to other disciplines. But, are the questions generated by technical interviews useful to all programmers, I not sure. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Either way, our FAQ as it is now, doesn't have a clear stance on interview questions. We have an interview tag that seems to be well used, but the majority of questions using this tag are closed. If these questions don't belong here, I feel we should be clear about that upfront. Remove the tag and update our FAQ. If there are cases where they fit this site, we should outline it in the FAQ. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28214" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5415" RevisionGUID="b347c882-0915-41e8-bea0-3a4a55016244" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question &quot;[How to effectively do manual debugging?][1]&quot; has been closed. Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close reasons stated are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;it's ambiguous&quot;, but it seems clear to me what's being asked (the answers seem to indicate the same)&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;it's vague, overly broad&quot;, but it's about a pretty concrete, real-world scenario&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;it's incomplete&quot;, if so: what's missing?&#xD;&#xA;- &quot;it's rhetorical&quot; that's probably not it (right?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition it seems to me that it fulfills most, if not all of the [requirements from the FAQ about &quot;good subjective&quot;][2]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;- tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;- have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;- invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;- insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;- are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's probably a good explanation that I'm missing. Then the final point of interest, the close reason includes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So let me know: what things can I do to clarify the question and get it reopened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:** After reading the answers and comment I figured I should('ve) add(ed) the reason *why* I like to see this question open, improved, and with great answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When trying to help others improve their SO question, new users often end up asking &quot;But what can I *do* to improve my question?&quot;. I was hoping that there could be an SE-network-place that has answers to that question, or at least the sub-question on manual debugging strategies, so I could link to it in comments. I thought this particular existing question could be the right place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. The &quot;not constructive&quot; a.k.a. no polling questions policy does make more sense to me than &quot;not a real question&quot;, and I wouldn't know if the question could be salvaged to become &quot;constructive&quot; again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/50552/how-to-effectively-do-manual-debugging&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#what-about-subjective-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28215" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3034" RevisionGUID="3221c332-852e-44d0-89f2-ba4fd3f31758" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've noticed that some people ([Matthieu][1]), even mods such ([Mark Trapp][2]) keep adding the text 'Is there a canonical book on..' on many book related questions. Sometimes fundamentally changing the question that was originally asked. Sometimes the person asking the question justs want a list of resources to follow in reading, not one particular volume that he *must* read and which is considered canonical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also this is highly subjective, one person's answer to what is canonical may differ wildly to another's.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any good reason for these edits?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we are searching for a canonical text on any given subject shouldn't there just be one community wiki question with all others closed as exact duplicates? I can't understand why these words keep being added to these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reference:  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/116328/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/103133/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/74308/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/69203/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/94071/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/37787/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/36356/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/99337/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/83787/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/27410/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/102916/revisions  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/12172/revisions    &#xD;&#xA;and on and on...    &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=canonical  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/7454/matthieu&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/8/mark-trapp&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/116328/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28217" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3358" RevisionGUID="23b43b27-6951-4c84-83f0-a8d1bed59b0b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/68370/10572 was recently closed as off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However I believe that the question is on topic. It relates to business issues as defined in the FAQ and it is specifically related to case studies for successful software development businesses. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is materially different than other general questions about forced overtime as  the steps, procedures, and policies that would apply to a successful software development  would not necessarily apply to other businesses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this question truly off topic? If not can it be reopened. If it is, how can it be improved to make it more on topic. While the accepted answer does not specifically list any case studies the accuracy of the predication was uncanny and I believe that it was helpful to me and I hope that it might be helpful to others that find themselves in a similar situation.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28218" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3950" RevisionGUID="e2c0e228-af22-4647-8d1e-7f8575e49095" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The only interview questions I can think of that are unique to our profession are actually technical / conceptual questions (thus on topic on SO / ProgSE) that just happened to be asked during an interview. The rest are either off topic by virtue of not being unique to software development, or very non constructive. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, I don't think we have a clear stance on interview questions, and the majority of them is open, we currently have [374 open ones][1] and [108 closed ones][2]. Almost 4 out of 5 are open, I think we really need to closely inspect the tag before completely denouncing an entire category of questions. A lot of them might just be mis-tagged [interview] when they are only tangentially related to the interview process, and obviously there might be others that slipped through the cracks and need to be closed. And there might be some that are truly about the process, and are absolutely on topic (although I doubt it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's clean up the tag first, and worry about the FAQ later. Worth noting that cleaning up [interview] was [first (?) mentioned more than a year ago][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Binterview%5D%20closed:0&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Binterview%5D%20closed:1&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/posse-request-jobs-career-etc-tag-cleanup" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28219" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3061" RevisionGUID="4cb2ab33-9221-4fec-9c3d-94b97cf67fa6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm an Independent Software Vender. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [&quot;FAQ&quot; page on Programmer's Meta][1] states that appropriate questions include &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Can I ask for advice on tax-related matters on Programmers? &#xD;&#xA;2. If not, is there a place on the SE network where I can?&#xD;&#xA;3. My question is specifically about Apple's App Store and some tax details there. Would that change the answer to either #1 or #2 above?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28220" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7817" RevisionGUID="b509147f-1639-4e18-9fae-fba95fade33d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Prompted by the recent-ish question [How to scramble a word, keeping first and last characters the same? (JS)](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/304833/how-to-scramble-a-word-keeping-first-and-last-characters-the-same-js), and today's MSE post about it: [Question closed as off-topic after following suggestion in Meta](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/271620/question-closed-as-off-topic-after-following-suggestion-in-meta).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I assume we closed this question because it was focused on why a specific piece of code did not run fast enough, which is normally a StackOverflow question. Based on this user's meta post, it is now retroactively obvious that the user was more interested in improving the algorithm than in JS-specific optimizations, and had reason to believe his question would be accepted here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it's probably too late to undo the damage ([judging by the user's displeasure with us](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/271620/question-closed-as-off-topic-after-following-suggestion-in-meta#comment881300_271621)), it does seem like it wouldn't have been terribly difficult to edit the question into one focusing on the algorithm rather than the code. I was honestly a bit surprised to see my name on the list of close voters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you can see, the question got good answers, and the answers were about the algorithm rather than the specific code. In other words, the apparent off-topicness of the question did not encourage any off-topic answers (as so often happens with unclear/broad/POB questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While the question as written is a better fit for StackOverflow, it's so easy to edit it into a good fit for Programmers that I think we messed up on this one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;tl;dr:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Whenever we see a question about fixing/improving code that can easily be interpreted as asking us to suggest a better algorithm, should we edit it to focus on the algorithm instead of closing it as off-topic?**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28221" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5418" RevisionGUID="861221b5-2162-48c9-9a9f-a1263aa7c871" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A little while ago I posed the following question - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/181296/potential-for-a-micro-document-indexer. Badly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was immediately leaped upon and labeled as soliciting &quot;market research&quot;. This was probably because I included the word &quot;potential&quot; in the title of the question (always a red flag) and because at the tail end of the question I mused on whether anybody thought it would be worth pursuing if it came out that no such technology existed. Combined with the title, I'm guessing that somebody assumed I meant &quot;as a commercial enterprise&quot; and not as an open source solution. When I saw the comment that was made I immediately edited the question to remove the offending remarks, trying to salvage the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No luck.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was closed within an hour and featured absolutely no discussion beyond the following comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Please don't do your market research here. The question is off-topic&#xD;&#xA;&gt; here. You may have better luck asking it at onstartups, though you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; should read their FAQ first.&quot; - [Oded][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;His closing vote was quickly followed by four additional close votes. Maybe I'm way off the mark here but this really seems to me like a close-vote dogpile.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was closed as off-topic but I fail to see how it didn't fall under *at least one* of these guidelines of the P.SE FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;- quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;- software architecture&#xD;&#xA;- software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on my understanding of the P.SE FAQ, it also qualifies as a constructive subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At worst, the question *might* belong on StackOverflow but even then SO is for strictly for objective questions that have verifiable, factual responses.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My conclusions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. I should have phrased the title differently. My bad. This is an easy edit, honestly.&#xD;&#xA;2. I should have realized that somebody might mistake my intentions when I asked if it might be a viable project if an existing solution wasn't available. Again, my bad, and was fixed immediately.&#xD;&#xA;3. The question was closed before anybody took the time to really read the post.&#xD;&#xA;4. The question should not have been closed but rather, could and should have been edited to make it more palatable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/4767/oded" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28222" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3956" RevisionGUID="b454a980-3a0b-4778-a73a-198eabfb1b53" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="No, we should not outlaw all interview questions in the FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Career questions are allowed providing they apply to programmers specifically.][1] This includes interview questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Mark Trapp phrased this well in [his answer][2] to another post about career questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; First and foremost, any career advice questions need to relate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; directly to software development; general career advice questions with&#xD;&#xA;&gt; no relation to software development or where software development is a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; minor facet of the question are off-topic. A good way to test this is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially&#xD;&#xA;&gt; different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot; If no, the question should&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, our [faq][3] even contains an image to explain this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this particular case, evaluating a candidates ability to read code is not something that applies to &quot;All Careers&quot; or &quot;Just You&quot;, so I don't see a problem with this question being on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1165/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/590/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xEI0s.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28223" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3370" RevisionGUID="d0d91a78-66e7-494f-990f-219806db39c9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Please close [this question][1] ASAP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure if I've ever seen a non-spam question that was more off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/28579/1996" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28224" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="444" RevisionGUID="07e96eb6-799b-40ae-8fdb-a3402271d096" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm hoping it becomes the one stop shop for &quot;What developers think about developing&quot; site.  A place to figure out what the collective wisdom of developers finds valuable, and (perhaps even more importantly) what appears valuable but turns out to be ineffective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A critical component is Q&amp;A about the Patterns and Anti-Patterns of performing software development.   Questions like &quot;Why do people do &lt; this &gt;?&quot; or &quot;Why should I avoid &lt; that &gt;?&quot; are great.  The subjective guidelines make sense here, they are designed to encourage answers backed up by experience and reasoning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   * A good recent example is [why-are-cyclic-imports-considered-so-evil][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But certain discussion forum type questions are valuable too.  Having a place where people vote on answers to Questions like &quot;what is your opinion on &lt; controversy &gt;?&quot; may actually help to clearly outline the pluses and minuses of either side, and help a visitor decide his/her own position.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  *  With some editing, [Is the agile approach too much of a convenient excuse for cowboys][2] could actually be a good discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another potentially valuable question type is &quot;What is the Best &lt; thing &gt; for &lt; situation &gt;&quot;, or &quot;What is your &lt; particular situation &gt;.  Good answers to the first one show where the community wisdom lies, answers to the second one paint a picture of the field. However, these are prone to multiple versions of the same short answers, making it hard to see if the community has a clear answer.  I'd really like to see the ability to tag a question as 'Survey', where the writer creates the initial set of answers, anyone could suggest more alternates, but only users with sufficient rep could add them.  People would vote for their best answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The question that made me think of this is [how-many-hours-do-you-work][3]?  I'd really like to see the answers to this question in the form of a survey.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my answer to this question is &quot;Both&quot;.  It should be a Q&amp;A board that encourages discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12005/why-are-cyclic-imports-considered-so-evil&#xD;&#xA;   [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/11188/145&#xD;&#xA;   [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/11589/how-many-hours-do-you-work-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28225" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="446" RevisionGUID="7f4c4e7e-91d4-4e23-8b5f-0af22c7fb719" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't support this, but in the interest of completeness, note that [the FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) says code golf does belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This __can include topics such as__:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * Software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * Developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * ... (snip for brevity) ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * Software law&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * __Code golf &amp; programming puzzles__&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * Freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(emphasis mine)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28226" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3961" RevisionGUID="b9d7f899-da33-4535-bc4e-c5a6c62eee44" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am the OP of that question.  First of all, I have developed a great deal of respect for everyone involved in the original question and the meta question so far, as well as for the SE technology itself.  How these edge cases are handled is exactly what separates good communities from bad.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###A Little Background...&#xD;&#xA;I happen to have borne witness to the first 70 episodes of the [Stack Overflow podcast](http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/series/stackoverflow.html?series=&amp;channel=&amp;offset=71) which chronicles Jeff and Joel's evolving philosophy of the goal of Stack Exchange.  I think the salient part of their philosophy for this particular matter can be summarized as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We want Stack Overflow to be the canonical source for the answers to long-tail questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm paraphrasing Joel there, but I don't think I'm putting words in his mouth (at least not as of the recording of the first 50 or so podcast episodes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Why programmers.stackexchange.com?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) which is linked to from the FAQ, he writes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&quot;But software and programming isn’t always a hard science, either. Once you get past the does this code compile or not questions, you’re dealing with issues of best practices, experiences, and behaviors. Perhaps because our communities have become so accustomed to getting quick, accurate, and timely answers, they feel that even a subjective Stack Overflow is better than the alternatives. So much so, that our fellow programmers [created a sister site specifically for their pent up subjective questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/).&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That sister site is indeed programmers.stackexchange.com.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###An Informed Decision&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The question I asked](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/162303/4767) came to be after about 40 hours of research on very closely related subject matter.  I was a tacit expert on exactly that question (and little else).  The following things were clear to me when I clicked submit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. even a half-decent answer to my question would fill a real void in documented knowledge (i.e. this is a long-tail topic)&#xD;&#xA;2. my question was carefully crafted such that answers would fill the void exactly&#xD;&#xA;2. the bounded nature of the subject matter itself meant that a canonical answer could be achieved in the SE format&#xD;&#xA;3. the question was outside the _letter_ of the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) and [&quot;good subjective guidelines&quot;](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/). &#xD;&#xA;4. the question was within the _spirit_ of Jeff and Joel's philosophy for stack overflow&#xD;&#xA;5. programmers.stackexchange.com was the most appropriate place to ask the question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the immediate comments cast doubt on that clarity but [chance avoided self-deletion of my question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/162303/does-c-give-you-less-rope-to-hang-yourself-than-c#comment311246_162303).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What I Think We Should Learn From This&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. There is a class of questions that appear prima facie to be too broadly scoped, but are in fact quite nicely bounded by the nature of the topic itself. &#xD;&#xA;2. It might take an expert on the subject matter to determine whether a question fits that class.&#xD;&#xA;2. If it is possible that a question is of that class, wait a few hours or days before going all meta on it.  This will allow the most expert readers on the topic to provide some feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This really doesn't have to be overthought&amp;mdash;just wait a few hours or days and then, if it's crickets and confusion in there, cite the FAQ.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28227" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7859" RevisionGUID="c300d927-68e0-4acc-be97-e735634f6fa6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This meta-question is about the following question on the main site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why should I use a factory class instead of direct object construction? \[closed\]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, it has a lone delete vote. The only reason I noticed is because another user pinged me in a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was closed as primarily opinion-based. However, I believe the question does have value. This is the type of question that new developers are prone to asking, and the accepted answer provides a very good explanation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I edited the question to clean up the wording a bit and to phrase it better. Given that at least one person believes it should be deleted, what else should be done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Does it need additional editing and reopened?&#xD;&#xA;* Should it stay closed, but not deleted?&#xD;&#xA;* Should it be deleted?&#xD;&#xA;* Should it be locked in some way? (I can never remember all the lock types we have now)&#xD;&#xA;* Something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/253254" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28228" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="534" RevisionGUID="6cd49ed1-1c1f-40ef-85cb-baaea3b32d20" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It seems that questions on Prog.SE are language-agnostic by default, and the tag is just unnecessary noise&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's [currently 29 questions with the tag](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/language-agnostic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone agree/disagree we should kill the tag?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28229" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5425" RevisionGUID="77a24248-2a5a-438a-8871-63db9bd8b0cf" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would like to ask why [How to force evaluation in Haskell?][1] was down-voted and closed. This came completely unexpected since it is a very specific and precise question regarding Haskell and how to force evaluation of an expression. There are tons of similar questions on programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 1**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I understand, a few question have been cleaned up (and possibly moved to stack overflow) in the last few days and this question was too old to be moved. I admit I was a bit confused about which questions belong on stack overflow and which belong on programmers because I have seen quite a number of more technical questions on programmers (e.g., if I am not mistaken, [this][2], and [this][3]) that IMO are a bit on the borderline.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I have seen that some of these questions have been moved to stack overflow so it is a bit clearer now. Still, I would find it better if it was possible to move also old questions: the question had already an accepted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have posted a [**copy**][4] of the question and answer on stack overflow, as discussed with the moderators.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT 3**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would now like to delete this question because (1) it is off-topic and (2) for some reason it got a downvote and I would not like it to get more. But it is not possible to delete the question because it has already an answer. What can I do? Thank you in advance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/160580/how-to-force-evaluation-in-haskell&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/181384/how-does-django-turn-field-name-strings-to-field-name-variables&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/181224/constants-in-c&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14163072/how-to-force-evaluation-in-haskell/14163112#14163112" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28230" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5427" RevisionGUID="0f9c276c-7700-41a3-8422-ac20386b64a9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A [question][1] was asked today that was a rant followed by a request for career advice on what the OP should do next. @Oded handled commenting to the OP that such questions were off-topic according to the [FAQ][2] and the OP justified the question &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; since I can use the tag [tag:career-development] and [tag:career-transition].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After a quick scan of both tags ([tag:career-development] and [tag:career-transition]) I found that the majority of both contain closed questions and another fair amount that can be retagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there value in having these two tags if the FAQ clearly states that the site is not about career advice, salary or compensation???&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/181706/101&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28231" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3078" RevisionGUID="251af1e7-8f83-46b7-9ac2-9bf0d8b1c656" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There were a couple possible choices to close with, duplicate seemed the easiest. There is also https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/114258/as-a-sole-developer-for-now-how-should-i-be-using-git which might help you best.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're asking a few different questions rolled into one. How to relate git to svn, what is a good branch / commit / merge workflow for a single developer, how “master” works or should work in a repo. You need to edit the question to make one of these the main point, and then check to see if it isn't answered by one of the many other git related questions. I've listed a few here I think can be helpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46039/git-in-non-distributed-independent-lone-programming-best-practices&#xD;&#xA;2. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/89025/what-should-be-the-workflow-with-a-git-repository&#xD;&#xA;3. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/37564/what-is-the-best-way-to-do-development-with-git&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28232" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3497" RevisionGUID="56d4753c-4dd9-41a5-9b0d-513095a40bfe" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've proposed the synonyms for mapping [vcs to version-control][1] and [vm to virtual-machine][2]. I figure we'll give it some time. If it gets voted on as approved by the community, great. If it's really close in a day or two and there aren't any objections, I (or another mod) can help it along by forcing the synonym.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, virtual-machine might need a clean-up at some point. It appears some questions are about virtual machines in a development environment while others are about the JVM or CLR virtual machines. It might be a good idea to consolidate into virtual-machine and then cleanup to consolidate into &quot;jvm&quot;, &quot;clr&quot;, other specific programming language VMs, and &quot;virtualization&quot;. But we'll cross that bridge later.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as FOSS and open-source, I would need to dig deeper into how the tags are used and if there are any others related to open source software that need to be considered. On the surface, it seems like a good idea. I agree with the top voted answer in the question you linked to, but I'd want to investigate a bit more before making a final answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/version-control/synonyms&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/virtual-machine/synonyms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28233" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5546" RevisionGUID="ad26304f-7009-49f4-97bd-2b2f0a7d7503" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/user-deletion) explains how to request an account deletion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28234" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="664" RevisionGUID="481d8740-7e46-4d7a-bcef-9e71be4e9924" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Why are some questions &quot;too localized&quot; while some aren't?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First question,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Programmer's salary in UK][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second question,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Computer jobs in Singapore?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One gets closed and the other doesn't. Both are country specific questions. Do people from different countries deserve different treatment?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/19/5940&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/22818/5940" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28235" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3090" RevisionGUID="353ad7fa-9c90-4407-a534-79725ce62521" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I read the question on [What is the best way to handle product versioning and branching of long term projects?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/129543/what-is-the-best-way-to-handle-product-versioning-and-branching-of-long-term-pro)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I saw all the answers but I wanted to make a value edition to it by [proving the a support answer relevant to the question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/133947/40327) but I was down voted for the same. When I deleted it it still remains there to be marked in red stating &quot;deleted by owner X hours ago&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;May I understand the logic behind why my answer not getting removed completely ?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28236" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="790" RevisionGUID="309a537a-da6b-4e05-ae32-080304bfd425" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="These fare poorly on the [subjective scale][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. If you read the question, it is literally asking &quot;what single quality you would want to see in a prospective employer?&quot; &#xD;&#xA;2. The OP should have revealed a bit more about who he was and what his goals were; I support leaving this one open.&#xD;&#xA;3. Might as well be &quot;what's your favorite word&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;4. Completely speculative and not in a good way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Read over these questions with the [6 guidelines in mind][2] ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tend to have long, not short, answers.&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;invite sharing experiences over opinions.&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are more than just mindless social fun.&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... and I think you'll agree *with the exception of #2*, they are all correctly closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&#xD;&#xA;[2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28237" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5552" RevisionGUID="cd17a766-7118-4731-bab9-b481aa390841" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Programmers is a site in the Stack Exchange format for asking questions that potentially have single, correct answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One example of a question (just looking through some recent ones) of this nature is [Why Was Python Written with the GIL?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/186889/why-was-python-written-with-the-gil)  There is an answer to this question - it has to do with optimizations on single threaded programs, and avoiding some other pitfalls of multithreaded natures.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hiring people with exact skill is difficult.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; So our strategy has been hiring people based on talent and make sure&#xD;&#xA;&gt; they are as young as possible. Then we train them.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We can't give them big project straight away. If we do that, we often&#xD;&#xA;&gt; end up reprogramming from scratch due to design issues.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think we should give them debugging jobs or small project jobs.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What other tasks usually such people do?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(emphasis mine)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is asking for a [range of answers](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/list-questions/info &quot;more details about 'list questions' at MSO tag wiki&quot;) - all of them potentially equally correct.  There is no single correct answer, or even the possibility of one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The Stack Exchange format is not set up for discussions or polling of ideas.  It just doesn't work well for those cases.  Trying to make it work for those compromises the thing it does work really well for - questions that have single correct answer.  People come to the Stack Exchange network to find answers - not to discuss problems or see what everyone else has to say on a given topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28238" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3963" RevisionGUID="a8dd5972-c5e2-48ab-ae01-52e52a300da0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**The Summer of Nonsense**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I consider the Summer of Love a mostly failed campaign, especially when it comes to the smaller sites of the network (I don't know if it benefited Stack Overflow, and I don't really care). Most people fixate on the whole &quot;niceness&quot; theme and forget that actively trying to help an asker, even just a tiny bit and even if only by pointing flaws in their question, is incredibly nice. No one is paying us to close questions, or comment on them or anything, if the comment is generally polite and points to the right direction, it's helpful (and nice, dammit!). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't be walking on eggshells, afraid we might offend someone, just because we politely expressed an opinion on the topicality of a question. We disqualify types &amp; categories of questions not because we are elitist --------&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, but because we've seen time and time again that these questions are more likely to turn to junk than anything useful. By closing these questions we help askers avoid having to read populist answers full of misinformation, something that could potentially hurt them a lot more than the slight sting of having their question closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A newer member of the community probably doesn't know all this. They haven't seen hundreds of `foo vs bar` questions turn to painfully moronic holy wars, they haven't seen populist but utterly useless answers getting tons of votes just because they were dropped in a similarly minded chat room, etc. Your comment, and I'm guessing your close vote, was a correct reaction to the question, and although the OP didn't immediately realize it at the time, I'm sure if they stay around they'll soon realize why we tend to disqualify overly broad / non constructive questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One small thing I would have done differently would be to remove the third question in the question in question right the moment I first read it. Since you immediately identified the question as overly broad, removing the lesser of the three questions would have been a good thing, and it would have helped make it a tiny bit more specific. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since all but one of the answers ignored that part, [I went ahead and removed it][1]. It would have been absolutely fine if you had removed it when you first saw the question, be bold and edit! The OP can just rollback if they wish...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Views, favourites and popularity in general**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ben already mentioned that there are [troubles with popularity][2] but I'd like to make a few points a bit more specific to Programmers. The subjective nature of the site unfortunately makes it a lot more attractive to [bikeshed questions][3] than Stack Overflow. We really need to always keep in mind that popularity alone says absolutely nothing at all about a question's usefulness and topicality, and ideally it shouldn't even be part of the discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having earned [17 gold Publicists badges][4] on Programmers (and a few on other sites), I think I'm more than qualified to discuss how amazingly worthless a metric popularity is. I've manipulated it more times than I can remember, and yes sometimes I've benefited from it with some sweet but mostly pointless rep. The gamification aspects of Stack Exchange is what keeps us all hooked, and all of us who've been around for a while understand that quality &gt; quantity, but it's also understandable that a newer user seeing their question getting tons of views, votes and being favourited will think that it's a good question&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;. Why wouldn't they?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well... Let's see some examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Is ORM an Anti-Pattern?][5] (+28, 13 favourites and 6,215 views)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Is it a good question? No, it isn't and I [said it][6] when I first read it: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; &quot;Your question is very broad and ambiguous&quot;, as noted in the SO question. ORM employs a variety of techniques, some may be considered to be antipatterns. Take a look at this related discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I remember hating that question with a passion the moment I first read it, good thing I was a regular user back then and my close vote didn't kill it. I still don't like it, but that didn't stop me from [posting an answer][7], one that is currently voted at +51. Why? It's very simple really, I was extremely bored at the time and had nothing better to do ;) Is it a _good_ answer? I don't know what the rest of you think, but I don't particularly like it, it's not the kind of answer for example that I'd choose to show to colleagues. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Even if you consider it a good answer, it's not worth +51 and although it got a decent amount of votes when I first posted it, it exploded when I shared it on Reddit, which also gave me my second gold Publicist. It's a pure populist answer, and the only reason the question is popular it's is noobesque quality and, well, Reddit. Today I'd just point to the Wikipedia article I reference, close the question and forget all about it (well technically if the same question was asked today I'd close it as a duplicate, but you get my point).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [What's up with the outburst of new programming languages and frameworks that's out/coming out lately?][8] (+10, 1 favourite, 1312 views, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A lesser example, that is now (rightfully) closed, but worth examining because it was [closed and re-opened, and then closed again][9]. I voted to close minutes, perhaps seconds, after I first saw it, but again being a regular user at the time my vote was not binding. And yet, there it is, [my +39 answer][10]! Yes, once again I was bored!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  But this time there's something more there, the answer is utter nonsense. And I even say so, publicly (but not so visibly) and a bit more privately: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - The third footnote, expanded reads as: *Could be wrong, though. Who knows? (is my actual answer)*.&#xD;&#xA;  - At the end of the answer there used to be an invisible html comment (since purged automagically by the system?) that in no uncertain terms declared: This is nonsense! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This was mostly a trolling answer, some people picked up on it's light hearted nature, but there wasn't ever any serious reaction to my absolutely unscientific analysis. I have no idea why the question was re-opened, and I can't say anyone benefited from the answers&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;. I deleted the question a little after I posted this, as it quickly got 2 delete votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll stop using my answers as examples, in fear of a rain of downvotes, but in the spirit of completeness and just in case anyone is still reading this, here's a couple more examples of the problem with popularity, from our [community blog][11]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [How we managed 24 software development trainees][12] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  An amazing post by a very skill full writer, providing unique insights of the training process, a must read for every software developer (imho). Currently it has been viewed 1,034 times and has 1 comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. [20 controversial programming opinions][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  A bit of a meh post re-iterating not so controversial opinions, that was rushed in as other more useful posts were being written, mostly to keep up with our schedule. Currently it has been viewed 91,845 times (and counting), has 77 comments, generated a couple of questions (on [Math][14] and [Code Golf][15]), at least [one retort][16], a [vibrant discussion][17] on Reddit and [a translation in Chinese][18]! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  *A meh post, I slapped together from a deleted question with the sole intention of keeping up with our schedule...*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The question in question (about time ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not a bad question. Certainly it's of the `foo vs bar` flavour, naturally attractive to opinionated and populist answers with little actual usefulness and perhaps even off topic under the &quot;which technology is better&quot; clause in our [FAQ][19]. But this category of questions is off topic by virtue of being almost always not constructive, so let's examine whether it fits the not constructive description: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question does solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion, and we don't like that around these parts of the Internet ;) It's a question build around an opinion, how can it not solicit even more opinion? Effective C++ was published 20 years ago (1992), still a wonderfully useful book, but is there any point any more&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; to discuss an obviously light hearted comment from it? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And is there any point in generally comparing languages and platforms at all? I think not, unless of course you have an actual specific problem to solve, which is something we very clearly point out in our [FAQ][20]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask **practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face**. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A rule we so often forget, but really applies for the question in question, that currently has 7 answers, and all but one have quite a few comments. Is that wrong? No, not necessarily, but it does strongly hint that this isn't a question we'll easily find an answer to. And we do care about finding answers to questions, this is what essentially separates this site from a typical programming forum. We don't disqualify certain types and categories because we don't like them, or because we can't answer them, but because we are trying to build something different than a discussion forum, a high quality Q&amp;A site where questions get sufficiently and sometimes even definitively answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that end we have build a certain set of tools and more importantly a community philosophy and culture that simply fails with overly broad and / or discussion oriented questions. Sometimes the reason is just plain trolling, sometimes it's opinionated answers that although not trolling are extremely hard to judge the quality of&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;, sometimes it just gets to a point where there are so many answers and comments that the whole thread is impossible to navigate. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again this isn't a bad question, and it's one I personally like, which is why I edited it and spend some time to write all this. It certainly did _not_ turn terrible, and some of the answers I think are useful. But I do agree that the question doesn't really fit the scope and philosophy of the site, and I voted to close it. I don't think it will benefit from further answers and it already had four close votes when I started writing this. One of them expired while I was writing the answer (!) but this is still a community closure, I _probably_ wouldn't have mod closed it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Finally a word to the OP (and I'll stop, I promise ;)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On Stack Exchange we have two peer review systems, one for quality and one for topicality, and both are based on voting. Closing a question is not necessarily a comment on the question's overall quality and it's reversible, even if a moderator is involved in the closure. Furthermore closure is a temporary state, a closed question might be re-opened if improved, or simply if five members who can [vote to re-open][21] think it shouldn't have been closed in the first place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, most closed questions do not get re-opened, and I can't promise yours will. However even if it doesn't the effort you put to it wasn't in waste:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - You got 7 answers, and although some I don't find particularly useful, they were all thoughtful and added something (even if a tiny bit) to the discussion. &#xD;&#xA; - It generated this Meta discussion&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; that will hopefully help the community better understand the nature of overly broad questions, why we close them and perhaps even help us find a way to better cope with them in the future and not have to close them at all.&#xD;&#xA; - It's not a question we'd typically delete, I can't promise that it won't get delete votes from the community but I don't see any reason why it would. &#xD;&#xA; - And you got some rep from it ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would have been a shame if you had self-deleted it, a fellow user pointing out some flaws in it wouldn't justify such an overreaction. At the end of the day what you suggested happened naturally, the question did sit for a couple of days before getting closed, Oded just expressed his opinion (both with his comment and his close vote), but you'll have to keep in mind that it (usually) takes five to tango ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I honestly hope you won't get disheartened by the closure and decide to stick around, you've already done your bit to help the community grow. And me closing the question doesn't really say much if the community doesn't agree with me. I have been wrong in the past (once or twice ;), and I may be wrong now. Who knows? ;P&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The end.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Not that there was any such accusation in this case, this is a more general rant. This whole Summer of Love thing ended up being mostly a big troll party... [sigh] &lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Not saying that the question in question isn't good, again a more general comment.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Although I must say that [Paul Nathan's answer][22] is highly amusing&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; And I'm not suggesting there was ever a point...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; How do you downvote someone's personal opinion?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; ...and gave me the opportunity to write yet another short novel!&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/162303/3&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges/56/publicist?userid=25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/120321/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/120321/is-orm-an-anti-pattern/120338#comment220944_120321&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/120338/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/126696/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/126696/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/126716/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/07/how-we-managed-24-software-development-trainees/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: http://math.stackexchange.com/q/188858/24474&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/7112&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: http://prog21.dadgum.com/149.html&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/z0nng/20_controversial_programming_opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: http://www.caozhishi.com/2012/08/31/those-controversial-opinions-on-program/&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/close-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/126792/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28239" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3227" RevisionGUID="9f9e3cc8-4000-418d-ae21-a4ceebc5a3a1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="When do you stop receiving reputation for editing posts?  I haven't come anywhere near the +1000 rep cap, but I appear to not get any reputation for edits (not that I do that many).  I read this in the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The other way to gain reputation is by suggesting edits to existing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; posts as a new registered user. Each edit will be peer reviewed, and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; if it is accepted, you will earn +2 reputation. You can only earn a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; maximum of +1000 total reputation through suggested edits, however.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm assuming &quot;new registered user&quot; has something to do with it, but that is not clear what it means; that phrase is vague.  I don't have that much rep here to qualify for much other than a newer user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For an edit example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I modified this [post](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/9853/free-alternative-to-bugzilla), received an excavator badge, but no rep for the edit.  Maybe I'm not supposed to get rep for that and I just don't know the rules." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28240" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3527" RevisionGUID="cdb6f322-b1db-43cd-9183-1fc3fd483730" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/49550/what-hashing-algorithm-is-good-for-uniqueness-and-speed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Particular answer to above question has been made CW per automatic rule ([quote source](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/11741/165773 &quot;MSO answer to 'What are “Community Wiki” posts?'&quot;)):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The post has been edited ten (10) times by the original owner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Automatically applying generic rule in this particular case looks unfair.  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;In case of doubt, check the answer to decide whether you agree with above.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* answer: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/145633/31260&#xD;&#xA;* timeline: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/49550/timeline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##This answer looks exceptionally good&#xD;&#xA; to me, and not only to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to clear CW status to recognize an extraordinary contribution of the author?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/CRw3X.jpg][1]](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/145633/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CRw3X.jpg &quot;screen shot - top part of the answer. And there's more, much much more...&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28241" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5557" RevisionGUID="ca40258b-f81d-456b-b607-50b5516d70ac" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The original phrasing was a bit not constructive. That said, I fully agree that the core question is about understanding the concepts involved, which is [what Programmers is all about][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting **expert answers on conceptual questions about software development**. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edited it a bit and re-opened. The article the question is quoting is misleading (and... stupid), but that's not the asker's fault. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28242" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="882" RevisionGUID="ed09d9f9-2109-46c7-9e54-dd6dadacf83e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="How can we define what is good or what is wrong about software law here? This issue came from [this question][1] closed as off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best way to explain the problem with that question would be: &quot;*What's that question could add to us, programmers on our job?*&quot;. We can ask questions about software law that affects our job. That question is just about an past issue of our industry. This issue probably didn't affect the programmers of IE 10 years ago. How it could affect us? How it could be more than a trivia like?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some good questions about software law:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Are there laws to protect us from hackers who disclose vulnerabilities prior to alerting the vendor?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is the “default” software license?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Should software patents be legal?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Ethics, Clients, and legal repercussions.][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What legal considerations do I need to have when programming?][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[How would you want to see software intellectual property protected?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of them have other problems, specially &quot;Should software patents be legal?&quot;, but they are on-topic to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is my personal opinion. What you think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/32460/why-was-microsoft-sued-for-for-a-product-ie-that-was-going-to-give-them-an-edg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/11546/are-there-laws-to-protect-us-from-hackers-who-disclose-vulnerabilities-prior-to&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/26548/what-is-the-default-software-license&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/790/should-software-patents-be-legal&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/10296/ethics-clients-and-legal-repercussions&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/13034/what-legal-considerations-do-i-need-to-have-when-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/32577/how-would-you-want-to-see-software-intellectual-property-protected" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28243" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3232" RevisionGUID="89f9fd7a-01a0-475d-81dc-bb6ecc562894" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [reputation tab](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/41542/karlson?tab=reputation) on your profile should tell you all you need to know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, you will have to check through the entire list to be sure. A quick look shows that Jan 20th might be one of the occasions where posts were deleted." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28244" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3978" RevisionGUID="8b0971e7-c9cc-44d6-9a18-1505a5c6730e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="From the [FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That part of the FAQ is common for all Stack Exchange sites, unfortunately your question is too open ended to fit the Q&amp;A philosophy and format. We can only guess when it comes to popularity alone, and that simply doesn't work for the site. It might be a great question to ask in [The Whiteboard][2], our chat room. I know most of the times it looks abandoned, but usually not constructive questions are excellent conversation starters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the C question, personally I'm on the fence, it does have somewhat of a technical core, and can be discussed on technical terms (and indeed it has, for the most part), but it's also very broad and has all the signs of a not constructive question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Language comparison elements (and that rarely ends well),&#xD;&#xA; 1. Couple of pointless answers,&#xD;&#xA; 1. Couple of extremely pointless answers (since deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it has survived without a single close vote or flag, and I see little point in mod closing it now that it's run its circle. If it starts attracting pointless answers and / or close votes it might be a whole different story, but for now I'm letting it sleep. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly I'd like to point out that it makes a lot more sense to concentrate on your own question's merits when contesting a closure than pointing us to other similar questions. It might just be the case that the similar questions escaped our attention, and the only thing you'll achieve is getting them closed as well. The community moderates itself vigorously, but some questions simply find their way in through the cracks. [Two wrong posts don't make a right][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3540/two-wrong-posts-dont-make-a-right" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28245" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5668" RevisionGUID="b5af6257-230d-4e8f-a65a-cfb842cc9cc4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="## *![PearsonArtPhoto](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/fdc52692a8ac266cd1c897f75a0f75f8?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [PearsonArtPhoto](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/3087/pearsonartphoto) [asked](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284777#8284777):* **Two of you have expressed an interest in seeing fewer questions closed. Can you point to an example of a question you believe should not have been closed, and provide an explanation for why you think it should be re-opened?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [answered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284856#8284856):** [Why do programming languages, especially C, use curly braces and not square ones?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/188455/why-do-programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-braces-and-not-square-ones)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**![World Engineer](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a294d4c9997c2a5cbc48388173689b14?s=16&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG) [World Engineer](http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/20683/world-engineer) [continued](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8284905#8284905):**  I think History questions that have answers that are more than just anecdotes or idle trivia are valuable. I think closing can serve as a useful flag that a question can be improved. Reopen votes exist for a reason." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28246" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3561" RevisionGUID="19ec46b7-a37c-4d45-b100-9a2833a569e8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Users not reading the FAQ, and not understanding what this site is for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am pretty new here, so I might be completely off, but I think that's the main problem. When I first found the site, I read the FAQ, it was pretty easy to find and quite informative (but very long!). I'm not an expert on what is on topic for Programmers, but I still haven't stumbled upon a closed question that would have been asked if the OP had read the FAQ in the first place. I don't know if this is possible but one statistic I would be very interested to see would be the exactly that, how many people actually visited the FAQ before they asked their questions, and how many of the questions asked by people not visiting the FAQ were closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My experience with the site is very limited, and so is my data set, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to familiarize themselves with the guidelines before asking. I haven't asked a question here yet, and do not know if I will soon (most of my questions are already asked and answered) but when I do I will give the FAQ another look to see if my question is ok. I think it's the sensible thing to do, it will only cost me a few seconds and it will help me get better answers, as from what I've seen so far the questions that are disallowed are those that don't generate useful answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site, Meta, is also very useful, there are several past discussions that are applicable to this one and I'm surprised no one mentioned them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Can the migration path from SO be reconsidered?][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [How can we help people who ask “What language should I learn next” ask a better question?][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [How to prevent “Why is my question being closed?” and User Frustration?][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [What can be done about bad questions on Programmers?][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [Questions barely or not related directly to programming. We need handling them.][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It also seems to me that people keep answering obviously off topic questions, although that has already been identified as something that we shouldn't do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Should we seek for alternatives to propose to OP when closing their off-topic question?][6] &#xD;&#xA;- [Please don't post answers on obviously off topic / bad questions!][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is not really helpful, although I understand that most people will think to answer first and clean up later, it's very misguiding to the person asking especially when answers are from senior members. It's like saying your question is off topic, but no problem, you got your answers. I've already lost 25 reputation points from answering a very bad question by [this guy][8], and I'm really glad the community and the moderators re-acted and other people didn't waste their time answering his questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm getting a bit off topic, so I will stop here, with [this amazing find][9]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not supposed to be a beginners site, and a lot of closed questions come from beginners. I don't think there is anything we can do here it is only natural that the site will have more closed questions than others. I like the advanced aspect of the site, and the work that is being done in the disciplined aspect of it, questions like [this one][11] should be the norm not the exception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2048/can-the-migration-path-from-so-be-reconsidered&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1580/how-can-we-help-people-who-ask-what-language-should-i-learn-next-ask-a-better&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/492/how-to-prevent-why-is-my-question-being-closed-and-user-frustration&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/642/questions-barely-or-not-related-directly-to-programming-we-need-handling-them&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1722/51770&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2823/please-dont-post-answers-on-obviously-off-topic-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3457/how-did-this-user-amass-more-than-2k-worth-of-reputation&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2000/51770&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Jd0eV.png&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/147205/what-were-the-core-api-packages-of-java-1-0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28247" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3989" RevisionGUID="e1a72c11-e845-4cb8-9bf0-dbd8aba78a82" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[maintainability tag wiki](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/maintainability/info) has been edited to help reader differentiate this tag from [tag:maintenance].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Excerpt was set as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; system quality aspect characterizing the ease of software maintenance&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag wiki were set as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Maintainability is a system quality aspect characterizing the ease of software maintenance.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Related Wikipedia references...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Related tags: [tag:maintenance]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28248" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3362" RevisionGUID="3909391e-912d-42e3-80e6-668ca74867ff" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I believe you are referring to [this question][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is not a forum for the discussion of new ideas. This is a question and answer site, designed for people who are facing a current problem or dilemma to get the answer to their problem from experts in the field of software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What you posted was not a question at all - there was nothing to answer. In addition, it received multiple flags, 6 downvotes, no upvotes, and the comment explaining why it was not appropriate for Programmers received 3 upvotes. It was extremely clear that the community did not want it on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/141388/which-is-better-for-an-open-standard-for-data-cleaning-r-or-sas-or-python" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28249" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="987" RevisionGUID="1e8a8ac7-7d9a-423a-8c80-30d39cc927a2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some questions seem destined for closure but have, at their core, something decent trying to get out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously it's fine to edit someone else's question to correct grammar, spelling or whatever, but how valid is it to rework a question because you think there's something worth saving and it's obvious it's not going to survive in it's current form?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance here: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/37532/best-industry-to-work-for-as-a-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Different industries do conform to type with regards to working practices, and do so in ways which are specific to developers.  For me there is a core of a good question here but the edit it needs goes beyond what I feel is polite to do to someone else's question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or am I just wrong and it's a bad question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT**: I have now edited this at Walter's prompting so you'll need to look at the edit history to see the original question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28250" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5679" RevisionGUID="7b765241-8011-4c3e-9f62-3b6b4e2783a0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As far as I can tell, good history question is one that evolves into a retrospective case study.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Practical purpose of case studies is explained eg in [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_method):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...an intensive analysis of an individual unit (e.g., a person, group, or event) stressing developmental factors in relation to context... Case studies may be descriptive or explanatory. The latter type is used to **explore causation in order to find underlying principles.** They may be prospective... or retrospective (in which **criteria are established for selecting cases from historical records for inclusion in the study**).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...&quot;Case studies are analyses of persons, events, decisions, periods, projects, policies, institutions, or other systems that are studied holistically by one or more methods. The case that is the subject of the inquiry will be **an instance of a class of phenomena that provides an analytical frame** — an object — within which the study is conducted and which the case illuminates and explicates.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Another suggestion is that case study should be defined as a research strategy, an **empirical inquiry that investigates a phenomenon within its real-life context**. Case study research can mean single and multiple case studies, can include quantitative evidence, relies on multiple sources of evidence, and benefits from the prior development of theoretical propositions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Case studies balance the need to understand something big (something that would be too broad / NARQ in Stack Exchange terms) with a limitation of being sufficiently specific to allow for reasonably scoped _productive learning_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Say, one shouldn't ask at Programmers _what do I need to know about mission critical projects_ - that would be too broad for our format. Instead, one asks [What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/159637/31260) - that's still tough but at least something we can handle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar to Stack Overflow, Programmers questions (including history ones) serve the purpose of picking and applying programming technologies. The difference is, due to _conceptual_ nature of Programmers questions, the purpose could be not as immediate / direct as at Stack Overflow...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* If you ask about mission critical software a week before interview, you're probably few months too late: few months ago, you should ask yourself whether you are interested, and what would you want to understand about doing software development in this context.&#xD;&#xA;* And you don't necessary need to understand the context of mission critical software development just because you are involved. In fact, it can be opposite:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hey you suggest us _Fagan inspections_, why? I mean I perfectly understand how these are justified in _mission critical_ projects, but how does this apply to our non-critical application, compared to lightweight reviews?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summing up, I believe that history questions can serve a practical purpose, sufficiently compliant with Programmers topics (if done right).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, above assumes these pass through community moderation, business as usual. Questions that do not fit get closed per standard [close reasons](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/close-reasons/info), answers that don't fit get downvoted / flagged / deleted per usual [community quality control](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/75717/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; [...] real questions have *answers*, __not *items* or *ideas* or *opinions*__.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...&quot;Real questions&quot; don't necessarily have *practical* answers, but they do have __*authoritative* ones__." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28251" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3364" RevisionGUID="dbc70745-c3a2-42fe-80bb-1f62f9f07ac3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed [my question][1] was automatically updated to Community Wiki after 15 answers, and that prevents me from  enjoying the upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to remove this status?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Note**: the question only had that many answers because I've set a bounty for it 3 times already. And as you know, bounties tend to get people's attention...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/54506/how-to-market-yourself-as-a-software-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28252" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3368" RevisionGUID="90022c85-d878-4c9b-8ac4-6d44b7226d63" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The moderators have closed following [question][1], which was, in Oct 2010 apparently a valid question.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;I would like to know the reasoning behind the closing as &quot;not a real question&quot;. I have made a defense in the actual question (which was afterwards deleted) but in my view the question is about improve your ability to write better code, which I thought this site was about. At the time quite a few answered my question and at that time no-one expressed any doubt about being a &quot;non-real question&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the same time I would like to ask the moderators closing my question for any pointers how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/9290/how-to-write-less-code" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28253" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1030" RevisionGUID="53cc2874-3bb4-407b-a353-a9e6c63d9a4b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It’s very important to pick the right moderators for the future of this community. Here is a first (grouped) question I would like to ask. I strongly encourage other members to do the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. In introductions I've seen many different way of describing moderation. I’ve seen words like serving, leading, navigating, guiding, facilitating, etc. Those are very different way of moderating. Could you explain in more details your way of moderation and why it will be efficient here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Regarding general criteria the owner specified in https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/election, could you please provide some concrete example on how you proven to be:&#xD;&#xA;- patient and fair&#xD;&#xA;- led by example&#xD;&#xA;- shown respect to fellow community members in their actions&#xD;&#xA;- *and* words and open to some light but firm moderation to keep the community on track and resolve (hopefully) uncommon disputes and exceptions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To summarize, please describe how your moderation style will help this community to prosper.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28254" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5680" RevisionGUID="e1b3bedf-58c0-4477-838f-92abee80d831" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yes, I am confused. If I have a conceptual question on software development, why wouldn't I ask it on Stack Overflow?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people who write code because they love it. We feel the best Stack Overflow questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question generally covers …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * a specific programming problem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * a software algorithm&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * software tools commonly used by programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * practical, answerable problems that are unique to the programming profession&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see a requirement for questions to be non-conceptual here. (What's a non-conceptual question anyway?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a professional programmer, I don't see Programmers.SE as a valuable resource for “conceptual questions on software development”. I mostly come here (not often) to answer questions that are really about computer science, where I notice that the “resident” community isn't providing good answers¹. I can't see a niche for Programmers.SE that's distinct from SO and CS.SE along these lines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where I do see a niche for Programmers.SE is for the social aspects of programming. Among the bullet points in the FAQ, this covers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * development methodologies&#xD;&#xA; * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA; * software engineering (to some extent)&#xD;&#xA; * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How this has anything to do with algorithms, design patterns, testing, QA and architecture puzzles me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why C uses curly braces? A social question about programming, valid but boring. Should be on-topic but scored close to 0. [Ah, well](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/188455/why-do-programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-braces-and-not-square-ones). 0 out of 2 *is* bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;¹ &lt;sub&gt; Which is why I not only don't frequent Prog.SE (comparatively with my general SE presence on topics that do interest me…), but I actively don't recommend trusting answers there, much less than most other SE sites. &lt;/sub&gt;  &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28255" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3570" RevisionGUID="38e75978-5ea5-4a7a-8f89-f73eeee354fd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Is [this question][1] off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/10166/introducing-20-time-at-a-workplace" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28256" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4009" RevisionGUID="059f5c0d-2417-45a2-bed7-900b3d59d6ef" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've taken a shine to the Programmers Stack Exchange lately, but one thing I've noticed is it seems to have what I think anybody looking at the questions list would classify as excessive down voting of questions (not answers, the answers seem to get fairly normative treatment from what I've seen)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My questions are I guess: Can anybody say why? Can anybody propose a solution?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel like there are a lot of questions which are programming related and have distinct answers which are voted down because they may not be very high level, or sometimes confusion among the poster leads people to downvote instead of commenting/editing to guide the question to make more sense. Again I ask, does anyone have ideas about what can be done to help solve this? Feel free to comment if your assessment of programmers is that the level of downvoting is completely applicable based on the questions being asked, perhaps I am giving the questioners too much credit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would very much like to hear from the moderators there on their opinions as well as any frequent participants.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:  &#xD;&#xA;Just a few quick ones to give examples of the things I'm seeing:&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164353/when-we-say-a-method-is-overloaded-overridden I grant the english seems broken, but it is a language agnostic question about a software concept. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164342/which-design-pattern-to-use-when-using-orm Again it has specifics but those are for the background, the question itself is about design patterns in relation to ORM tools which is a generalized design question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's just off hand right now, perhaps the downvotes are correct though. Again I am asking what we might do to get less downvoting, perhaps that means increasing question quality, to which I submit this request for ideas to that ends? Is there perhaps a way to put the FAQ more directly in front of people before they ask on there?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28258" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1047" RevisionGUID="933df6cf-e077-414d-a514-285f8824b659" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="If you can make it significantly programmer specific I don't see why not. I believe it would be a good question along the vein of they put a buzzword on paper but can't clearly define it or really understand what it is. [Similar to the agile buzzword question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/36925/weeding-out-real-agile-from-buzzword-agile-in-an-interview). " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28259" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3592" RevisionGUID="1c43d1b8-67c5-4f70-8255-01cf8951780a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Change the Programmers.SE tagline**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tagline is usually the first thing users see when they learn about our site. It currently is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is used in our site description on Google&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Tagline in Google][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;in the welcome message displayed to new users&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Tagline in Welcome message][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and in the Migration path for the site from SO ([according to Yannis][5], Stack Overflow is currently our largest referring site, excluding search engines)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Tagline in Migration path from SO][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This makes it sound like we are a SE site for Professional Programmers [interested in conceptual questions about software development], and not a Q&amp;A site for conceptual questions on software development only.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To further the confusion, the site is named and branded with Programmers in mind (whiteboard-look, triple-monitor logo, coffee mugs, comment marks around site name, etc), so by all first impressions, we are a site for programmers to ask questions and get answers from other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea that it is misleading can also be backed up just by looking at our [closed questions][1], where the majority of closed questions seem to come from new users that are looking for an answer from a programmer. I've started leaving comments on closed questions clarifying the site scope, and have received many replies from users not aware of the site scope, including [from some long-term users][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most people won't willingly post or migrate bad questions to a site, so I think changing the tag line to make it clear that this is a site for Q&amp;A on conceptual software development will go a long ways towards reducing the number of bad questions that get asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples I can think of would be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **This is a question and answer site for ...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... conceptual questions about professional software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... software professionals to get answers on conceptual software development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ... conceptual software development questions by professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(These are just examples. If enough people agree that the tag line is misleading and should be modified, we'll discuss what it should be then)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=closed:1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/4567828#4567828&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/K8n2k.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/j590S.png&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better#comment9662_3552&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/N9VxK.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28260" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5688" RevisionGUID="98c8ee7f-1223-4063-90f5-6a8b2dfec827" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Nobody knows what this site if for, what is on topic or what is off..**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the front page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are these on topic? (Based on what was listed above)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/188954/no-programmer-will-build-my-semi-adult-website-why&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/189073/how-to-deal-with-too-much-pragmatism-in-the-project&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/189025/where-can-i-find-an-example-of-a-relatively-accurate-eigenface-face-recognition&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/189096/knowledge-transfer-and-software-development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why are these Off?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;freelancing and business concerns Question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/189022/software-agreement-for-farming-out-development-work &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;developer testing : https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/188975/best-way-to-test-applications-on-different-machine-configurations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**The fact of the matter is the that on/off topics are not enforced as they are described in the FAQ** and it seems that the FAQ changes every time I look at it. Not to mention that classifying questions based on the FAQ is very subjective. This the cause of confusion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Why not add a rule that every question must be tagged as one of the topics listed in the FAQ?** I don't think it will solve anything but it will provide a tremendous amount of insight into why people are so confused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: Also an underwritten rule: topics that fit better elsewhere are off topic and migrated. SE continues to insist that there is no room for site overlap, which is complete Hogwash." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28261" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1119" RevisionGUID="59702606-bf12-4834-9bfe-c172c56791c3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Every once in a while there seems to be a question which starts bringing in tons of traffic from an external link.  For example, I've noticed that the question [Why do programmers write applications and then make them free?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3233/why-do-programmers-write-applications-and-then-make-them-free) has brought in around **33k views today alone**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've seen a lot of cool new tools added such as the (automatic?) link-posting to Twitter (that shows up in the history, which is really cool), as well as the Publicist badges and popups, and the Facebook/Twitter buttons (some of these may even be responsible for the traffic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it would be pretty cool to get the reverse of these new tools and show those of us who are regulars of the site where all the new traffic is coming from.  It could work by checking if the majority of the views are coming in from an external referrer.  If it was, it could post the top referrer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have no idea if this is possible or if SE would want to publicize this information.  Any thoughts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Edit] And apparently it was *&quot;reddited&quot;*: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/fg8gt/why_do_programmers_write_apps_and_then_make_them/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28262" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5690" RevisionGUID="1ece32a0-5dd6-415a-8309-94db2db03cb2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You ask three different questions in your post. Of these three questions, only one may be suitable for our Q&amp;A format, but it is significantly lacking in details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Does it worth to learn Fantom?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No one here can objectively answer this. As mentioned in [our FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq), questions about what languages to learn are off-topic. We can't tell you if learning something will be useful or valuable to you or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it mature to be used in real projects?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is potentially good, if you define &quot;mature&quot;. The definition of &quot;mature enough&quot; for use in a project depends on what you're looking for. Mature enough for a one-off personal application is different than mature enough for automotive applications is different than mature enough for high-volume financial trading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What Java developers think about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a poll. Polls are specifically mentioned as &quot;not constructive&quot; - all answers are correct and there's no way to judge correctness. This is explicitly mentioned in the FAQ and in the reason for closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind that closure early is a good thing. It allows for the question to be improved before low quality answers are given. This is not a permanent state for a question - if edits can be made to make the question suitable, it can be reopened (either by a moderator if flagged for review or by 5 members of the community). Once a question has answers (especially bad answers or answers that are invalidated by edits), it's harder to get the question reopened." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28263" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3382" RevisionGUID="579eaf02-5cfd-47c1-9717-59b7747e4e6e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Let's see if we can get something of a timeline here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. 15:40:40 - The [question is asked][1].&#xD;&#xA;1. 16:34:23 - Mark posts [his answer][2].&#xD;&#xA;1. 16:58:39 - You post [your answer][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From here on I'll split the timeline to the two answers, starting with Mark's:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:27:19 - [&quot;-1 for answer on non-asked by OP question. Do not consider yourself smarter than others&quot;][4] - Comment by you on Mark's answer.&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:38:42 - [&quot;When I said about non-answered, I had in mind Mercurial recommendation only. Because rest is just my stolen and expanded correct answer&quot;][5]&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:44:13 - Mark responds to your comment with [&quot;Unlike others here, I provided a solution with svn and then suggested an alternative.&quot;][6].&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:48:59 - Mark [expands his answer][7] a little bit. &#xD;&#xA;1. 18:50:33 - Mark informs you of his edit with this comment: [&quot;@LazyBadger - Happy now? I actually answer the specific question asked, along with the other suggestions for alternative solutions.&quot;][8]&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:53:30 - Another user steps in, [informing you that Mark's answer is actually earlier than yours][9].&#xD;&#xA;1. 19:00:29 - You post this meta question.&#xD;&#xA;1. 19:06:22 - I check to see what the heck is going on, and [inform you that you can see the actual timelines by hovering over &quot;x hours ago&quot;][10].&#xD;&#xA;1. 19:14:33 - You apologize to Mark for accusing him of stealing your answer with this comment: [&quot;@MarkBooth - I'm sorry, you did not steal my answer. It is incomprehensible for me confusion in the update-interface of the page&quot;][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And now let's see what has been happening on your answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:02:34 - Mark, oblivious of what would follow, [graciously fixes grammar mistakes in your answer][12].&#xD;&#xA;1. 18:29:35 - [&quot;-1 for answer on non-asked by OP question. Do not consider yourself smarter than others.&quot;][13] - Mark posts this comment, obviously referencing [your comment][14] in his answer, a couple of minutes earlier.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly, while all these where taking place someone flagged _every_ comment that was addressed to you as &quot;rude/offensive&quot;. Then you flagged two answers on the same question for moderation attention, which I declined as &quot;flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer&quot; - that's what down votes are for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that we reconstructed the timeline, I feel extremely confident that Mark did not do anything wrong here. He _improved_ your answer, even though it was a competing _later_ answer that re-iterated his own answer, and even expanded his own answer after you falsely accused him of stealing it from you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You, on the other hand, really need to **calm down**. You accused another user of stealing you answer, although you never adequately checked to see if your answer was actually earlier, posted some rather snarky comments, flagged _perfectly valid_ competing answers and I'm pretty sure that you were the one flagging almost every comment that was addressed to you, although people where generally being nice and _none_ of the flagged comments was either rude or offensive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The culmination of course is this Meta question, where you ask us to intervene for a single down vote. I'll recognize that you apologized to Mark after you found out you were in the wrong, however your overall behavior is unacceptable. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need [to be nice(r)][15]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Etiquette&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Civility is required at all times; rudeness will not be tolerated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Be nice.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Treat others with the same respect you’d want them to treat you. We’re all here to learn together. Be tolerant of others who may not know everything you know. Bring your sense of humor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Be honest.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Above all, be honest. If you see misinformation, vote it down. Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong. Provide better answers of your own. Best of all — edit and improve the existing questions and answers! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I appreciate your passion, however the hostility you displayed today was both unwarranted and nonsensical, and our community has a very low tolerance threshold for such behaviours. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Calm down and be nice**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/142123/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/142128/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/142131/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268263_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268271_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268275_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/142128/5&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268282_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268285_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268292_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268297_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/142131/2&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268265_142131&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142123/can-we-set-up-svn-server-on-a-local-computer-without-any-network-access#comment268263_142128&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#etiquette" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28264" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1124" RevisionGUID="ca20339b-3183-405b-9b3f-697166bfb021" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Being quite new to Stack Exchange, I don't know what the general opinion is about asking a question, based on a blog post of yourself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For Stack Overflow, where only non-subjective questions are allowed, the 'need' for this is low. On Programmers.SE however, it's tempting to attract a wider audience on a certain opinion you wrote about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course I feel that the [six guidelines for good subjective questions][1] should still apply, as the point would be to get more constructive feedback which is hard to get just by google traffic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't there be any formulated guidelines? Is it allowed to just pose the question with a brief summary of the blog post, and link to it for further detail?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally I have [a concrete example][2]. ;p The link to the blog post was removed by a moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/81714/15464" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28265" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4010" RevisionGUID="ca2b1fa1-397e-4d6a-9335-da3bfd0d3aec" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="# Part 1: statistics&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Skipping over the lies and damn lines)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Programmers has one of the highest all-time average score on questions of all sites.](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/78555/average-post-score-on-all-sites) Out of 34 launched sites (I'm excluding metas), only Skeptics, RPG, SF&amp;F and CSTheory have a higher average. If you count the [all-time average number of votes](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/78561/average-number-of-votes-on-all-sites) (this query conflates questions and answers), Programmers comes 4th after Skeptics, CSTheory and SF&amp;F. If you only count downvotes, Programmers comes 3rd after Skeptics and CSTheory. Programmers's all-time downvote/upvote ratio (again, conflating questions and answers) is 5.6%, rank 22 out of 34.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [recent trend](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/79468/average-number-of-recent-votes-on-all-sites) is different, however. If you only [count votes cast in 2012](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/79468/average-number-of-recent-votes-on-all-sites?OldestVoteDate=2012-01-01), then Programmers's voting amount is average, and it has the second-highest proportion of downvotes at 12.7%. Looking at [monthly trends](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/79471/vote-repartition-by-month), the proportion of downvotes has been steadily increasing during the lifetime of the site. (Note that entries before 2010-09-01 are solely made of votes on questions migrated from SO, cast on SO before the migration.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's normal to see more recent downvotes, because the total number of downvotes includes those on highly-downvoted posts that eventually get deleted. For example, [Wordpress](http://data.stackexchange.com/wordpress/query/79471/vote-repartition-by-month) (the site with the highest proportion of downvotes in 2012) has a recorded proportion of downvotes of over 30% in the last two months for which there are statistics, against 6% to 10% in previous months — I think deletion of old crap accounts for the disappearance of many downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I retract my initial analysis that Programmers isn't an outlier: while it is not an extreme case, there has been a rather large proportion of downvotes recently. The increase is more marked than on other sites with a large proportion of downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure how to interpret these statistics. SEDE data includes only the posts that weren't deleted as of 2012-06-27. Does this mean that, as of the last SEDE data dump, Programmers had been lax in deleting old crap (where crap is defined by having had downvotes)? Or have there really been more downvotes and fewer upvotes? It would be interesting to see similar statistics taking deleted posts into account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the large proportion of recent downvotes is not just an artifact of deletion dates, the next question is the interpretation. You force an interpretation in your question by speaking of “excessive downvoting”. Is there really excessive downvoting? Or is the downvoting a reflection on the quality of incoming questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first step of finding a solution is finding what the problem is. Too many downvotes? Not enough upvotes? Too many bad posts requiring downvoting? Not enough deletion (and perhaps not enough closure) of downvoted questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Part 2: anecdotes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You cite two questions. Let me have a look at them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164342/which-design-pattern-to-use-when-using-orm — score as I write: +1/-2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Web and database applications are far from my expertise, but I have a hard time believing that this question is interesting and useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    The scenario is: “I am writing a small ASP.NET Web Forms application. (…) I want to use PetaPoco micro-ORM.” Uh, ok, so what will this application be doing? Is this something that has to be rock-solid by the time it's deployed, or something that's going to be continually evolving?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    The question is: “Do I still need several class library projects to separate the concerns?” That's a very broad design question. With such an unclear scenario, it's hard to give a generic answer to such a broad question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Furthermore, the question does not have any redeeming value of being important. If the initial decision on the breakdown in wrong, for a “small” project, refactoring isn't going to cost much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164353/whats-the-difference-between-overloading-a-method-and-overriding-it — score as I write: +3/-0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    It would help your complaint against downvotes if all the examples were actually downvoted. Presumably there was a downvote on the initial question, which was written in barely-comprehensible English.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Downvoting a post where the poster has made no effort at making himself understood is perfectly legitimate (“is unclear” in the downvote tooltip). We aren't just talking about grammatical mistakes here, there's a marked lack of effort. There's one single sentence here, followed by a few related words. It's not clear what is asked; I'm not convinced that the edit respects the original meaning of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Setting aside the presentation, the other thing that makes this question a candidate for downvoting is that it “does not show an research effort”. Here's how a good question might look like: “I read about overloading and overriding in this book/this blog post/…. I understand that this example [code] demonstrates overloading and this example [code] demonstrates overriding. But I don't understand why this example [code] is overloading. The author claims without explanation, but I think it is overriding because [explanation]. Why is that last example overloading?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my provisional conclusion is that there is no problem with good questions being downvoted. There are mediocre questions that are downvoted, which is as it should be. If you think that's the case, give examples of *good* questions that have downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28266" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1126" RevisionGUID="277ec48d-60df-4ca8-b3e8-04e5ffd39b37" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think this is fine so long as&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. It actually answers the question (obviously.. right?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. You quote your blog and elaborate a tiny bit, don't make it one giant quote with a link, give us some additional explanation to go with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Your posts aren't *all* of this form, that is, if you are only here to post links to your blog.. that's weird. And would be discouraged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond that, go for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;edit: oops you meant for *questions*. Well that's even better actually, and les risky, since you're using the blog post as a platform to start with a well formulated question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just make **sure** you check https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask first to be sure you aren't running into the common pitfalls of discouraged subjectivity." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28267" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3604" RevisionGUID="00014131-4354-451c-b2a1-979f4c703829" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="## Results for Week 2 [documentation]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/148978/what-is-the-connection-between-literate-programming-and-the-semantic-web&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 303, Top voted answer: [Robert Harvey](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/148980/25936) (11)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/148900/should-i-follow-an-open-source-projects-documentation-patterns-even-if-they-are&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 175, Top voted answer: [MainMa](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/148905/25936) (8)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/148894/how-to-use-unit-tests-as-a-source-of-information&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 133, Top voted answer: [Mert](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/148899/25936) (7)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/148881/how-do-you-handle-what-do-you-charge-for-documentation-training-warranty-ch&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 80, Top voted answer: [Ryathal](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/148893/25936) (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/148799/what-exactly-comprises-documentation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 157, Top voted answer: [Graham Lee](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/148828/25936) (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/148607/alternative-to-perls-pod-documentation-in-other-languages&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 72, Top voted answer: [World Engineer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/148612/25936) (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/148534/does-msdn-follow-documentation-conventions-for-net-and-if-so-is-it-publicly-av&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 197, Top voted answer: [SnOrfus](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/148583/25936) (4)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/148488/documenting-a-programming-language-reference-manual&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 324, Top voted answer: [gnat](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/148513/25936) (7) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/148477/how-do-i-document-necessarily-complex-code-structures&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 126, Top voted answer: [Kirk Broadhurst](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/148491/25936) (4)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/148471/are-comments-considered-a-form-of-documentation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 562, Top voted answer: [Oleksi](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/148473/25936) (19)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Question with the most views &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/148471/are-comments-considered-a-form-of-documentation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/34364/dynamic&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/flair/34364.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Dynamic at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot; title=&quot;profile for Dynamic at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Top voted answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Are comments considered a form of documentation?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/148473/25936)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/47555/oleksi&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/flair/47555.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Oleksi at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot; title=&quot;profile for Oleksi at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28268" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5707" RevisionGUID="6983f733-f7c8-47c6-ac60-5ee5ef7f5239" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am still confused about what topics are allowed here. I read the questions here but would never ask a question. The number of closed questions, particularly ones with what seems to be an interesting answer, leads one to believe that you have to have some special &quot;sauce&quot; in order to know how to phrase your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some users do not read help manuals or FAQ so the context of the site title is what people base their decision on as to whether their question is in &quot;scope&quot;. If the site title says /* Programmers */ then most people will assume anything about coding is allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: An example of a closed question I found interesting is https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/189393/my-company-wants-to-get-into-mobile-development-and-use-multi-platform-framew .  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My interest is based on my work for an organization that will be forced into mobile development sooner or later but with limited resources.  I.nteresting to me, as a question I might ask in the future, but apparently not in Scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: @MichaelT Thanks for that refreshing link about group and social behaviour. Still, the question was asked by a programmer about software. if that question is not a good fit here then is it a good fit anywhere on Stack Exchange?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If what you can ask here is circumscribed by a set of rules that is not inherently obvious from the site title then, perhaps, using the Stack Exchange technology is not a good fit. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cue the eerie music, as Jeff steps in to suggest [a discourse][1]....&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/02/civilized-discourse-construction-kit.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28269" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3391" RevisionGUID="921cc238-c48a-4ed1-8057-a2326f00a72f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I find this title not very informative:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142475/item-2-scott-myers-effective-c-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I [suggested](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/4568) the following title: `storage of const objects`.&#xD;&#xA;The goal was to descibe the actual problem of the OP, and not some item in a book. The edit was rejected with the following comment: `The change do the title does not improve it - it removes some information that is useful when browsing.`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is the first title good enough? How can it be improved?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28270" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1131" RevisionGUID="9b591dc4-607c-4091-92d1-7e64cca98e58" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is definitely an  &quot;**it depends**.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For answers, Jeff's answer is great.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For questions, though, the danger is treading to close to [this guideline](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Avoid** asking subjective questions where …  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * **it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have posted a blog on the subject, there's a good chance the blog post already drew some conclusions.  And, there's also a good chance you feel passionately about it, since no one blogs about things they don't care about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you've already drawn conclusions, possibly passionately, it's **really** hard to turn that into a real question that isn't just a rant you want people to respond to.  But, if you can, then by all means, post it up and get opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My sense is that most posters and voters can tell the difference between someone who is really asking and those who are just looking for validation or a pat-on-the-back.  The value (and amount) of the responses you get will probably go down if users feel that you already know the answer.  (Unless it's a hot-button issue, in which case you may get a ton of votes and answers anyway.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. do you have a blog article for this question? :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28271" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4012" RevisionGUID="501e92ad-838b-4029-8818-0b0e317bf04b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The downvote arrow tooltip says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Latest questions with negative score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Where can I get practice questions?][1] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No research effort, tick! Unclear, tick! Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Apple Developer Enterprise Program?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't know what this one is about. Skip!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Relocation to USA or Germany][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone please delete this. Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Is “Application Programming Interface” a bad name?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At first I thought the OP was quoting a reputable source, then I realized he's quoting himself, so there's no actual research effort. There might be, but I'm not going to read his blog to find out. Would have downvoted if this one was at 0 or -1, skipping it now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Agile Unified Process][5] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No research effort, tick! Pointless question, tick! Downvote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Which design pattern to use when using ORM?][6] (one of your examples)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Extremely broad, unanswerable, uninteresting. Useful to anyone but the OP? No! Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Learn WinRT or Unity 3d?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What the hell is this I don't even... Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Good practices for large scale development/delivery of software][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meh. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Learning iPhone Development][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Which are the basic steps for learning Iphone development?` Ah, Google must be broken for this guy! Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [CSS/JS frameworks for Android Holo UI][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Android Holo UI _might_ be a specific enough parameters for this one to not be yet another &quot;pick for me, please&quot; question. Meh. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Applying for MS CS with an un-related Bachelor's Degree][11]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meh. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [How to select li range and move them inside div][12] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flagged for deletion. OP posted an off topic question here by mistake, a moderator explained why it's off topic and had to be closed, OP seems to have understood why his question is off topic. No point in keeping this around anymore. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Can jQuery be used server side?][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Profoundly confused question, OP doesn't seem to have even visited jQuery's website once. No research effort, tick! Unclear, tick! Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Video Lectures for the book “Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective”][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't even... Downvote!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Fitting it together, database, reporting, applications in C#][15]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too long to read. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Finding work as a college student][16]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Too long to read. Skipped.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't agree with you there's a problem. I'm very new around here, but I can tell you that one of the things that lured me in was [the &quot;promise&quot; that this site is about &quot;professional programmers&quot;][17]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for **professional programmers** who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've even written about this, [on a different but related Meta discussion][18]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers is not supposed to be a beginners site, and a lot of closed questions come from beginners. I don't think there is anything we can do here it is only natural that the site will have more closed questions than others. I like the advanced aspect of the site, and the work that is being done in the disciplined aspect of it, questions like this one should be the norm not the exception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a newer user, representing no one but myself, this is what I have to say:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I _rarely_ upvote a negatively scored question. Not because I go with the flow, but because usually I find the negative score justified.&#xD;&#xA; - I like it that Programmers is trying to be a bit more disciplined than other sites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am _not_ a professional programmer, bit young for that, but I have learned a lot since the first day I've joined the site. One of the more important lessons: A professional environment is tough, and it takes skills to survive in it. The scrutiny poorly researched questions face has made me a far better researcher, to the point that I now find 99% of the answers I'm looking for on Stack Overflow or Programmers just by searching.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps you want more of a &quot;let's all hold hands and pat ourselves in the back&quot; kind of site. I don't see anything wrong with that, but it wouldn't be *a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll close with [Gilles' conclusion][19], with which I agree 100%:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; So my provisional conclusion is that there is no problem with good questions being downvoted. There are mediocre questions that are downvoted, which is as it should be. If you think that's the case, give examples of good questions that have downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164376/where-can-i-get-practice-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164370/apple-developer-enterprise-program&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164368/relocation-to-usa-or-germany&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/164365/51770&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164355/agile-unified-process&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164342/which-design-pattern-to-use-when-using-orm&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164326/learn-winrt-or-unity-3d&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164324/good-practices-for-large-scale-development-delivery-of-software&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164315/learning-iphone-development&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164311/css-js-frameworks-for-android-holo-ui&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164310/applying-for-ms-cs-with-an-un-related-bachelors-degree&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164298/how-to-select-li-range-and-move-them-inside-div&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164292/can-jquery-be-used-server-side&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164288/video-lectures-for-the-book-computer-systems-a-programmers-perspective&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164285/fitting-it-together-database-reporting-applications-in-c&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164274/finding-work-as-a-college-student&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3561/51770&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4010/51770" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28272" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5750" RevisionGUID="eddc9a0a-2b0a-4f36-88cf-94819c656b13" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="All the changes are now live, you can find more details on [MSO][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first step was the brand new [about page][1] (see our [about page][2]), and the next one was the [changes in how duplicates work][3]. Right now Stack Exchange is looking for feedback on revamping the close reasons, on the main Meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will be updating this answer as more changes and requests for feedback are announced:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [We're rolling out a new “Quick Start” guide to help new users learn the basics][4] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Changes to “close as duplicate” (part deux)][5] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Help us make “Off-Topic” close reasons clearer to the OP][6] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Help us make “Not Constructive” and “Not a Real Question” closures more effective][7] &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;- [Every “close” has its thorn: help us improve closing verbiage](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/173497/every-close-has-its-thorn-help-us-improve-closing-verbiage) &amp;#x2713;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/about&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/169814/help-us-make-off-topic-close-reasons-clearer-to-the-op&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/163254/were-rolling-out-a-new-quick-start-guide-to-help-new-users-learn-the-basics&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166707/changes-to-close-as-duplicate-part-deux&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/169814/help-us-make-off-topic-close-reasons-clearer-to-the-op&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171732/help-us-make-not-constructive-and-not-a-real-question-closures-more-effectiv&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/184154/closing-the-loop-the-closing-overhaul-is-live" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28273" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1209" RevisionGUID="22ace7c9-767c-42b2-9e1b-e659cd4e2cc4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A lot of questions get migrated to Programmers by people who are not very well familiar with the site's [FAQ and guidelines][1]. Such questions often get closed because they would get closed if they were asked here directly instead of having been migrated in from another site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The specific question you used as an example is not a constructive subjective question. It's just asking for a list of sites. The answers are objective (either a site uses LINQ to SQL or not), short (what else is there to say besides leaving the URL?), and ultimately don't fit well within a Q&amp;A voting model on StackExchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28274" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4087" RevisionGUID="5b69b1a8-45f7-4995-a2f8-662412b5959d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="According to the [FAQ][faq], non-constructive questions are those that &quot;will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.&quot; What happens when a good question is asked which is useful to others, can be answered based on &quot;facts, references, or specific expertise,&quot; but still has lots of potential for debate, arguments, and extended discussion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A good example of this is [What can I do with dynamic typing that I can not do with static typing][question]. In the original question, the OP is confused about why dynamic typing is such a great thing and asks for &quot;a real world example where dynamic typing allows me to do something I can't do with static typing.&quot; I admit it is a sensitive question that will probably attract debate and long-winded discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, keep in mind that **static vs. dynamic typing is not what the question is about**, though some people will invariably get off-topic and start arguing about it. The question is about what extra practical functionality dynamic typing can offer. The question itself is legitimate, useful, and can be answered in a constructive, factual manner if we don't get off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or have I interpreted the FAQ incorrectly?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A great example is the currently highest-voted answer by Robery Harvey: long discussion in the comments, but off-topic. The next highest answer by ridiculous_fish (better answer in my opinion) has zero comments, is not off-topic, explains &quot;why,&quot; and is very constructive. I don't see why such a question should be closed if it produces nice constructive answers like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[question]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/167305/7935&#xD;&#xA;[faq]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#close" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28275" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3631" RevisionGUID="71cda4ef-1736-4087-8249-884e2c006fb8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="##Results for Week 3 [history]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/150254/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 678, Top voted answer: [Mason Wheeler][1] (17)&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/149998/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 305, Top voted answer: [Alan B][2] (1)&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/149895/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 259, Top voted answer: [Steve314][3] (9)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/149888/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 290, Top voted answer: [GordonM][4] (5)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/149880/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 392, Top voted answer: [Thomas Owens][5] (15)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/149827/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 774, Top voted answer: [Yannis Rizos][6] (43)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/149594/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 117, Top voted answer: [James Anderson][7] (8)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/149465/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 1958, Top voted answer: [Yannis Rizos][8] (60)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/149457/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 5487, Top voted answer: [maple_shaft][9] (40)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/149420/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Views: 549, Top voted answer: [rtperson][10] (3)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Question with the most views&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/149457/25936&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/users/25466&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/users/flair/25466.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for user281377 on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&amp;amp;A sites&quot; title=&quot;profile for user281377 on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&amp;amp;A sites&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Top voted answer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Who created the idea(s) of the first loop constructs?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/149484/25936)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/25936/yannis-rizos&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/flair/25936.png&quot; width=&quot;208&quot; height=&quot;58&quot; alt=&quot;profile for Yannis Rizos at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot; title=&quot;profile for Yannis Rizos at Programmers, Q&amp;amp;A for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development&quot;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/150264/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/150008/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/149904/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/149915/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/149899/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/149828/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/149601/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/149484/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/149475/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/149502/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28276" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5763" RevisionGUID="cfd0cd1d-38c9-410a-900c-d7a1da2b21ef" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The deleted question is actually closed as a duplicate to [this one](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/51591/sites-for-getting-freelancer-jobs), which contains a more complete list of freelance sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Best solution in this case would be to probably edit the existing answer to point to this non-deleted post instead of the deleted post, although in other cases where there isn't a good non-deleted duplicate, we'd probably want to edit the answer to remove the dead link (or remove the answer itself it the only content it contained was the dead link).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the rare event that the deleted post contains valuable information that is linked to from many places, it may qualify to be undeleted and a [historical lock][1] placed on it. That type of action usually depends on the content, how many views/votes the post has, and how many links go to it, and the deleted post you mention probably would not qualify because of it's low number of views (770).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also to answer your question about what you can do to see a deleted post when you don't have 10K+ reputation, you can try to find the post on [the Wayback Machine][2] or [StackPrinter][3], or you could try asking in [chat][4] or perhaps even here on [Meta][5] to see if a user with 10K+ rep or a moderator would be nice enough to get you a copy of the post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/126587/158605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://archive.org/web/web.php&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.stackprinter.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28277" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1229" RevisionGUID="b09810ba-6930-47e9-bf65-f81a6421acd7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You have the ability to cast close and reopen votes on *your own questions* at 250 rep per the faq&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, you will see `close (2)` if there are 2 pending close votes." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28278" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4100" RevisionGUID="c2fb9893-6a2e-4e9c-8202-81d4b2622dec" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Right now, we're operating on some community discussions from several years ago:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Are book recommendations on-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic) (July 2011)&#xD;&#xA;- [What's up with all the book recommendation flags?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2665/whats-up-with-all-the-book-recommendation-flags) (December 2011)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The idea was that there are some book or resource recommendations that are suitable for this site. If there are specialized requirements or a small number of right answers, then the book question can stay. A key idea was the &quot;canonical resource&quot; - the single, widely accepted, best resource on the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, just this morning, we had two book questions ([1](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/168144/books-for-exam-487-developing-windows-azure-and-web-services) and [2](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/168145/books-for-exam-486-asp-net-4-5-mvc)) that were closed with 4 community votes, followed by my vote. These questions also received down votes. At first glance, they seemed like they would fall under the criteria that we have been operating under - a very specialized requirement that I assumed would be covered by a small number of books or web resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I ask the community to consider the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- How are we doing right now in handling these types of questions? Are the current policies sufficient or are there more concrete policies that would be best implemented?&#xD;&#xA;- Without expertise in the subject matter, how do people (especially moderators who might have to act on a flag) know if there is a singular &quot;canonical&quot; book on the question?&#xD;&#xA;- What happens to topic areas covered by a small number of resources now (such as the latest language or library) down the road, when it is more popular and prevalent? Might resource requests, perhaps, be too localized since the available (and perhaps even what is considered canonical) change over the course of time?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28279" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3635" RevisionGUID="58591fa3-3b9e-4f99-849f-8a7393467e00" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Update**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After discussing with The Workplace moderators, and given the positive feedback both this and the [Meta Workplace discussion][1] received, I went ahead and updated our [off topic list][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is **not about**...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, office politics, résumé help (check out [The Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/) instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - implementation issues or programming tools (ask on [Stack Overflow](http://www.stackoverflow.com/) instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including [which technology is better](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - [career advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590), salary or compensation&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; *&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; For answers to common programming career advice questions, please see &quot;[Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/)&quot; by Patrick McKenzie.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt; If you are still seeing the old FAQ, it's caching. It's always caching...&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now our off topic list is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;personal lifestyle, including relationships, office politics, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - salary or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the topics from the list that the Workplace welcomes are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - career advice, including general workplace issues&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - office politics&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - résumé help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which I think should be combined in one item:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - general workplace issues, career advice, office politics, résumé help (check out The Workplace instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language you should learn next, including which technology is better,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what project you should do next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - personal lifestyle, including relationships, and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've re-ordered the items, putting the two we have alternative suggestions for at the top, and the rest in order of occurrence. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/274/would-we-want-to-be-mentioned-in-the-programmers-faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28280" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1230" RevisionGUID="d6b02f76-cca5-44b7-865a-584ca9481936" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="These two questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Question you really want to ask AS a potential EMPLOYER but cannot?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/53167/question-you-really-want-to-ask-as-a-potential-employer-but-cannot)&#xD;&#xA;- [Question you really want to ask AS a potential EMPLOYEE but cannot?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/53158/question-you-really-want-to-ask-as-a-potential-employee-but-cannot)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;are obviously related, but not duplicates. Rather, they are opposing pairs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;IMHO it was a mistake to merge them as duplicates and close the latter one. Now, most of the answers associated with the former one aren't actually valid answers to that question. (I even downvoted these mistakenly, before noticing that they have been merged from the other thread.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, it is another issue whether this pair of posts is suitable at PSE. To me it is borderline, I wouldn't object them getting closed as off topic. But merging them only created confusion.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28281" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5789" RevisionGUID="6ab7df04-3dff-4f48-b338-4a81d1052c7e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As pointed in the [comments](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5788/is-tagresource-questions-a-good-idea-for-the-main-site#comment14683_5788 &quot;here&quot;), this is not quite a good idea because having such a tag could have an opposite effect: users may think it's OK to use it, even if you write in its wiki and excerpt that it's forbidden - &quot;if there's a tag, why can't I ask about it?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you refer to my comment - for the sake of precision, this was only second time (I wish it would also be the last but unfortunately it wouldn't) when I referred asker to tag wiki.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior to that, my similar comments were pointing to particular meta discussion (the one that is currently set in the tag wiki as the guidance point). It was when my comment has been (quite legitimately imNSho) [challenged](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/190911/code-network-metrics-with-ui-events#comment370863_190911) by asker who pointed to another meta discussion to back up somewhat different approach.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After that, I suggested [tag wiki](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/186) and [excerpt](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/187) and switched to using these in comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On a more general note, I believe tag wiki like that are to be established any time when there is a confusion among meta readers caused by differing &quot;canonical&quot; / &quot;authoritative&quot; posts and comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* It's not a new idea, explained eg in [flagger's guide to link-only answers](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/154922/165773) at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;In some meta posts or comments you may see moderators suggesting / requiring particular kind flag to be used (or to avoid) for link-only answers. Convenient _[litmus test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litmus_test_%28politics%29)_ in cases like that is to ask author whether this is their personal opinion or a statement that can be quoted in [tag wiki](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/tag-wiki/info &quot;what's this&quot;) (wiki for respective flag or for [link-only  answers](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/link-only-answers/info)). **Tag wiki are quite authoritative reference; anything else, read: _use at your own risk_.**&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a more recent example you can refer to MSO [profanity tag wiki](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/172893/revisions &quot;tag wiki history&quot;) that have been established because of similar [confusion](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/172734/copying-profanities-and-obscene-words-on-meta/172747#comment513141_172747 &quot;discussed here&quot;) caused by having differing &quot;authoritative&quot; posts on the subject." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28282" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1319" RevisionGUID="b0b0d672-9fa9-4650-80b5-c36bf8d9e88b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Click the &quot;suggested&quot; link above the user name, and you'll find [*the rest of the story*](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/534): the edit was proposed by an anonymous user. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28283" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4115" RevisionGUID="4f100dd6-230f-4182-a864-e30ca5a1c057" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You appear to think that your question is about algorithms and/or development methodologies. Let's take care of the obvious first, a [development methodology][1] is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A software development methodology or system development methodology in software engineering is a framework that is used to structure, plan, and control the process of developing an information system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about development methodologies are expected to be about topics like, for example, prototyping, incremental development, agile methodologies, etc. Although as [Mark notes][2] there's a colloquial sense to development methodology, since Programmers is a site for professional developments, let's go with with the formal definition instead. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the algorithms part, although there isn't a formal and strict definition of what an algorithm is, [this one][3] is good enough:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm (originating from al-Khwārizmī, the famous Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī) is a step-by-step procedure for calculations. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that you say you'd love to see an answer as an algorithm, doesn't make it a question _about_ algorithms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original version of the question was also [not constructive][4]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: - “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking for &quot;the best&quot;, without clearly defining what that means for you leads to equally valid answers (and when that happens, the more popular answer wins, but popular doesn't necessarily mean useful - for example: Bieber). You were providing two valid answers in your question and expected more answers, without clearly telling us why the two methods you've already found didn't work. And, as you've mentioned in the comments, this was more of a curiosity question than a question about an actual &amp; practical problem. All of the above, made it extremely open ended. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in the current version of the question you are telling us why the two solutions don't work for you, and you've further defined the problem. You are not simply looking for the incredibly vague &quot;best&quot; and by giving us detailed explanations of why the two methods don't work for you, you've stopped people from proposing other methods that have the same problems, making the question quite less open ended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am still _not_ convinced that your question qualifies as a high level design problem, however since you fixed the more important problems, who cares what I think? Can't promise it won't get closed again, but even if not convinced I'm willing to err in the side of re-opening this one, just for the effort alone. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lastly please _don't_ try to argue for your question by pointing to other questions, the best that can come of it is that the other questions will be closed as well (if they are indeed similar to your own). Instead focus on arguing for your question **on its own merits**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_methodology&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4116/25936&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28284" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3393" RevisionGUID="780a2142-3cce-4376-8710-05551d7ea707" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Let's go through the questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142533/which-is-the-best-book-to-learn-ooad-including-design-patterns&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  Not constructive for Stack Exchange, and that won't change whatever action we take. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142524/horizontal-navigation-menu-with-sub-menus&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  We are not a replacement for Google, and that won't change whatever we may do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142522/how-to-count-the-number-of-affected-rows-in-mysql&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Off topic, clearly belongs on Stack Overflow, were OP has successfully asked 6 questions (!?). Extremely trivial question (we don't migrate crap) and OP posted an answer immediately after they posted the question (rep-whoring?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142516/grouping-a-comma-separated-value-on-common-data&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Exactly the same as (3), same OP (off topic, belongs on SO, self-answer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142513/video-codec-price&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Too localized for Stack Exchange, and that won't change whatever action we take.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142512/keyboard-shortcut-to-focus-on-side-bar-for-sublime-text-2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Off topic, a far better version of it could belong on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142510/what-is-the-lowest-icq-number-that-was-ever-used&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I don't even know where to start with this one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;8. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142498/how-to-learn-the-math-behind-the-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Not constructive and there's a ton of duplicates on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142493/should-i-go-back-to-college-and-graduate-with-a-poor-gpa-or-try-to-jump-into-an&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Good question (the first so far that shows at least some effort), but unfortunately off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142487/decimal-to-hex-with-same-value&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The full text of the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt;  How can I do the below in c, 12 in decimal to 0x12 or 20 in decimal to 0x20&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;11. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142483/is-it-worth-the-time-to-learn-to-program-ios-apps&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Not constructive for Stack Exchange, and that won't change whatever action we take. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;12. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142470/frustrated-where-i-am-but-not-sure-where-to-go-with-my-career&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Career advice, off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;13. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142461/how-to-effectively-design-a-piece-of-software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Vague, open ended, not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;14. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142451/error-mpicc-command-not-found&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Off topic, a far better version of it might belong on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;15. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142447/what-web-technology-to-use-for-web-app&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Vague, open ended, not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This list of closed questions has little to do with Programmers. Most off topic, belongs on Stack Overflow questions are from unregistered users. There is a trend of people posting their Stack Overflow questions here to sidestep question blocks on Stack Overflow, and if I had to guess I'd say they are getting smarter and posting from unregistered accounts (so we can't find duplicates, or even the fact they have an Stack Overflow account).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know if it's possible but if there's consensus we could require users to register before asking, that way we would at least be certain that OP is trying to sidestep a Stack Overflow ban and we could be deleting these questions ASAP, instead of waiting for them to be down voted to oblivion or attract delete votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyways, we have four of those, that far better versions of which could possibly fit on Stack Overflow. Then there are the herp derp questions (2), (7), (10), which brings us to 7 questions that are worth no one's time. That's almost half of the list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions (1), (5), (11), (13), and (15) are not a good fit for Stack Exchange in general, there's little (if anything) we can do there. That brings us to 12 questions that we can't really do much about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And questions (9) and (12) are career advice, the first item on our &quot;do not ask&quot; list and question (8) may be salvageable with a heroic edit, but I'm pretty sure any sane edit would make it a duplicate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see how any action we take will stop people from asking low quality questions, 7 out of 15 show no effort at all, other than typing the question itself. For the 5 questions that aren't a good fit for the Q&amp;A format of the site, there has been a ton of debates on Meta Stack Overflow, I don't see the format or philosophy of Stack Exchange changing any time soon to accommodate such questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which brings us to the two career advice questions. We can do a lot of things, but there are always going to be some topics that are off topic, regardless of what those are. If people fail to read the FAQ, why should we spent any time and effort on them? Why should the site change for the few that don't care enough to even skim through the FAQ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought the whole point of this was quality, not quantity. We don't need more people or more questions just for the numbers, we are a mature Stack Exchange site with a steady crowd and a steady flow of great questions and even greater answers. There is no point in trying to accommodate every user who doesn't care enough to spend 5 minutes reading the FAQ. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are not the only Stack Exchange site there is, there are 84 other sites currently, most of which have largely non technical crowds. _Somehow_ people find it quite easy to participate on English Language and Usage, Bicycles, Photography and Cooking, but when we ask them to [RTFM][1] on a site called Programmers, we ask too much?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28285" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3682" RevisionGUID="7132c394-6361-42cd-b3e2-0d8491646bff" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Sometimes we suspend after only two consecutive closed negative score questions depending on if they seemed to acknowledge our feedback.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hm, no we don't, unless I missed a memo or something. Mod messages may carry a suspension or be just warnings, and that's no immediately clear from, let's say, the [list of recent mod messages][1]. We typically go with a warning first, and suspend only if the behaviour is repeating. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The typical dance is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. A mod message warning for first offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 2. Suspension for a week for second time offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 3. Suspension for a month for third time offenders,&#xD;&#xA; 4. Suspension for a year or more for the absolutely nefarious ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course that may vary a bit per offence, and you're right, our &quot;policy&quot; is mostly a mixup of instinct, looking at past mod messages, TL chats. Generally I go for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Consistently low quality questions over time**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The most common abusive pattern, and the one where we've gone with the typical warning/suspension dance almost every time. I don't think there's need for a change in policy here, warn first, suspend if the behaviour persists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Question repetition**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is mostly a noob mistake, and I don't think it's worth a mod message, it's easily resolved with a comment (or two). I'd go for a suspension only if the user blatantly ignores the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Sockpuppet upvoting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Although I haven't had to deal with this one yet, I'd say it makes sense to skip the warning and suspend all participants. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Abusive to others**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Per case, and I'd prefer if there was some mod discussion before a warning or a suspension, this one almost always demands a second set of eyes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Revenge downvoting**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The last time I mod messaged someone for revenge downvoting, I went for just a warning, and regretted it a week later when he did something else, equally suspension worthy (this time, I pulled the trigger). I wouldn't mind if we skip the warning for revenge downvoting in general and suspend on first offence, but I also wouldn't object to warn first timers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Self-destruction of own content**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Also a common noob mistake, that's rarely repeated. Warn, and only suspend if (s)he does it again. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Using signatures or taglines**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I'm only mentioning this one because there's a template for it. The time to edit out the signature or tagline is less than mod messaging the user...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Excessive self-promotion**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - If the only contributions from the user is spam, destroy the account.&#xD;&#xA; - If there are non spam contributions, delete the spam ones and warn or suspend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Excessive discussion in comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  My favourite one. Warning the first time, and possibly the second time, not necessarily via a mod message, a comment on the post the discussion is going on _or_ a superping in chat would be enough (imho). For people who keep pestering others with borderline rude comments, a suspension should be considered even for first time offenders and especially if they've already ignored a comment by a mod asking them to calm down and be nice (which is what all of us go for at first).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Something else...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Strictly per case, obviously.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If an issue can be discussed publicly, a comment or a superping in chat is preferable and if not, there's always the option of a private chat, a completely tedious and cumbersome process that doesn't however leave a permanent black mark&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; on the user's record, the way mod messages do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Worth noting that SE takes the black mark thingy seriously, I got in trouble for suspending a fellow SE mod and a user who volunteered while testing a [rather obnoxious bug][2]. Apparently for science isn't a good reason for a suspension, even for a day.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To clarify for non mods: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a few of your questions get closed / down voted, an automatic mod only flag is raised. The first time that happens, you may get a mod warning (or not), but a suspension is unwarranted (imho), unless of course the questions are of the [&quot;how is babby formed&quot;][3] variety.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second time the flag is raised you will be suspended for a short time (week or less) _or_ you may get by with a warning, if we forget to send it the first time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/admin/users&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/133291/mod-message-header-notification-is-missing&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080329181633AAdYPKu" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28286" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1320" RevisionGUID="4e4447d0-619a-4bb7-817d-da9c2496fd53" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="While running some [Data Explorer](http://data.stackexchange.com) queries, I noticed a user who has no answers with less than 2 votes (more than 100 total).  As I don't yet have **[10k](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools)** I can't view the deleted posts, but I am assuming that there is no possible way this would occur over so many answers without having deleted low-scoring answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure I've ever deleted answers*.  I can understand the feeling of being sensitive to piling up low- or zero-voted posts &amp;mdash; I am too, but this is why I usually just don't post late answers to questions unless I feel I have a substantial improved answer to what's already there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Is this common, or did I happen upon an extremely rare case?&#xD;&#xA;2. Is it ok?  Should the community feel robbed of possibly good, but unnoticed (maybe late) answers?  Is it gaming of some kind?&#xD;&#xA;3. Why or why not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;* I may have that I can't remember, so if you have 10k, don't jump on me.  I even left a **-1** post because I reviewed the answer after downvotes and felt like I still believed in my answer.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28287" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3693" RevisionGUID="4d11a141-1990-49a8-b0d8-279806a412a7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Because it's a companion site to [StackOverflow][1], but with a different purpose, as evidenced by the [FAQ][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both are managed by [StackExchange][3], like many other sites, which are hosted under their own top-level domain (like [MathOverflow][4]) or a sub-domain of `stackexchange.com`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See [the list of all sites on the StackExchange network][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, new sites appear regularly spawned by the [StackExchange Area 51][6] based on community involvement, and may then undergo a &quot;beta&quot; period to be live-tested until they become a site of their own.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://www.stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.stackexchangecom/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://www.mathoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackexchange.com/sites&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28288" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3395" RevisionGUID="bcbb8a68-8880-4b7e-ae66-2278712ca813" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A [recent question][1] of mine has been closed as non-constructive. The question was IMO very clear: what are / would be the technical problems in dropping backward compatibility from C++. I got a quite satisfactorily and to-the-point answer from user AProgrammer, which I have accepted. Seeing that some users were starting to go out of topic, I have reformulated the question to bring the answers back to the point: technical reasons why dropping backward compatibility is not possible / difficult.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first version of the question contained a motivation that might have distracted from the main focus of the question, so I rephrased it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the question was specific enough to require a precise answer (&quot;Are there technical problems (e.g. ...) that make such a change too difficult or even impossible?&quot;). So, I was not suggesting a discussion whether backward compatibility should be dropped or not, I was asking specifically what kinds of technical / practical problems it would involve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would have found it more appropriate to invite the users that could not stick to the question to give a precise answer rather than close the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In any case, I would like to ask for suggestions how to formulate a question even better or about possible measures to take, in case a similar situation (answers not sticking to the point) should occur again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142698/why-is-c-backward-compatibility-important-necessary/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28289" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5806" RevisionGUID="2afde56d-02bb-4415-ad04-282298686f24" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Some old closed questions have many answers that probably were considered OK back then but are not quite up to current quality standards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are readers supposed to vote, edit, comment, flag answers in these questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it's better to leave these alone, then I would like to also understand how readers are supposed to know that they stumbled upon &quot;untouchable&quot; posts (questions I am asking about don't have [historical lock](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/historical-lock/info &quot;what's this&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some examples of the questions having many problematic answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Open-source wanted list](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/26425/open-source-wanted-list)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20120411074124/https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/26425/open-source-wanted-list)&#xD;&#xA;* [Language agnostic programming books](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/163/language-agnostic-programming-books)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [What haskell blogs do you follow?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/30058/what-haskell-blogs-do-you-follow)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20130331133445/https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/30058/what-haskell-blogs-do-you-follow)&#xD;&#xA;* [What traits do the best managers you've worked for have in common?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7966/what-traits-do-the-best-managers-youve-worked-for-have-in-common)&#xD;&#xA;* [What are some good programming cheat sheets?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3684/what-are-some-good-programming-cheat-sheets)&#xD;&#xA;* [What tools do you use to manage requests from users?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/13396/what-tools-do-you-use-to-manage-requests-from-users)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [How do you keep up to date with the C# programming language and community?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3023/how-do-you-keep-up-to-date-with-the-c-programming-language-and-community)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20101203140823/https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3023/how-do-you-keep-up-to-date-with-the-c-programming-language-and-community)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Programmer's experiences book](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/97303/programmers-experiences-book)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20110913190105/https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/97303/programmers-experiences-book)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Top research institutes in the world?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12416/top-research-institutes-in-the-world)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20110815235122/https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12416/top-research-institutes-in-the-world)&#xD;&#xA;* [As a software engineer, who should I be following on Twitter?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/135/as-a-software-engineer-who-should-i-be-following-on-twitter)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Recommended book about algorithms, data structures and complexity?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12833/recommended-book-about-algorithms-data-structures-and-complexity)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20101118060951/https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12833/recommended-book-about-algorithms-data-structures-and-complexity)&#xD;&#xA;* (deleted, 10K only link) [Are there any magazines still worth reading?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1108/are-there-any-magazines-still-worth-reading)  &#xD;&#xA;  backup copy: [at Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20110817004231/https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1108/are-there-any-magazines-still-worth-reading)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the general tech news website every programmer should read?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/21118/what-is-the-general-tech-news-website-every-programmer-should-read)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In all the examples listed above I found at least 3 (usually more) answers that look like severely lacking explanation and context, total about 90 such answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;PS. For the sake of completeness I'll explain in more details what kind posts are considered problematic here. In the context of my question, these are answers that fail an _&quot;imaginary opposite&quot; challenge_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's see how _challenge_ works, using some example answers from questions listed here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        1. &quot;Clean Code - Robert Martin&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        2. &quot;Ezyang is pretty good&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        3. &quot;Redmine&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        4. &quot;Ward Cunningham&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If someone posts an opposite claim** like&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        1'. &quot;Clean Code - Robert Martin is a book to avoid&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        2'. &quot;Ezyang is pretty bad&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        3'. &quot;Redmine is a bad tool&quot;&#xD;&#xA;        4'. &quot;Ward Cunningham tweets are useless&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;, how would this answer help reader to pick of these differing opinions? You see, without an explanation the answer becomes useless in case if someone else posts a differing / opposing opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28290" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5152" RevisionGUID="40da9d81-c13f-4949-a661-b05b974fa8cb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [first version][1] of the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was just wondering for the sake of wonderment, what kinds of things need to be added to Code Complete 3e, and for the sake of reductionism, what kinds of things would be removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [current version][2] of the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is it even possible to call Code Complete, Code Complete if it doesn't have language features that even Delphi has like anonymous methods and generics? What key sections are missing from the book and what should be deprecated?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Hm? Still the same question, and still you're polling for people's opinions. Programmers is not a discussion forum. The &quot;hard and fast&quot; rule is scribed in the [FAQ][3]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we define that? Constructive subjective questions …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What kind of questions should I not ask here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/12766/1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/12766/3&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28291" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3701" RevisionGUID="c5282b05-b75e-458d-9a41-de49befd57ca" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Migrating to beta sites and sites that are not in our migration target list**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Showing the full list of sites in the off topic dialog has been asked for a ton of times, and has been declined each time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; maybe one that is dependant on reputation, only people who have over 10000 rep can see beta sites or a comment block for where else it should go&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, no, unless you mean reputation on the target site. We've suffered enough from bad migrations from Stack Overflow to know that reputation on the source site says absolutely nothing about whether a question belongs on the target site or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Migration comments**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are an extremely bad habit, and I really (really) dislike them. The typical dance is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. A question that includes the word &quot;career&quot; is closed, or is gathering down / close votes fast.&#xD;&#xA; 1. An (un)helpful commenter posts something like &quot;this belongs on the Workplace&quot;.&#xD;&#xA; 1. OP, being new and having no idea we can migrate, posts on the Workplace. &#xD;&#xA; 1. The question is closed on the Workplace as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The same dance happens for OnStartups, for questions that include the word &quot;business&quot;. Cross posting is not something we like very much, but the important thing here is that the OP has been rejected by two sites. If getting your question closed in one site sucks, imagine how much it stinks when it happens twice in a day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main issue here is that people feel they are being nice by proposing an alternative, and they are, however migration is _not_ an alternative to closing poor questions that don't belong on Stack Exchange in general. What annoys me the most is that 99% of the times I see a migration comment from a high(ish) rep member, they haven't taken the time to bring the question to shape, even if just by fixing obvious spelling / grammar mistakes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously this doesn't apply to you, comments like [this one][1]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://workplace.stackexchange.com/ is a better fit for most work questions, but I'm not sure this is really a work question. I think it is a very poor idea to get a Masters immediately after you graduate. Get a few years of work experience first. I would not hire someone with a masters and no professional work experience over someone with a BA or BS for an entry level job because they expect more money and still only have entry level skills. And wanting what pays best and is easiest is a conflict, the hard stuff pays best. -  HLGEM 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;are exactly what a migration comment should be like. Thanks for taking the time to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Point to the workplace, but also pointing out that the question might not fit there.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Provide a mini answer to the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How do we migrate to the Workplace, then?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll answer the same way [I've answered for Programmers][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Flag for moderation attention, or&#xD;&#xA;1. Drop the questions in the [Water Cooler][3], the Workplace's main chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both options involve the Workplace community having a say in whether the question belongs on their site or not, and that's a good thing, and far better than a random migration comment, that more often than not is more obnoxious than useful. I realize you are part of the Workplace community, and currently the top user by reputation there, however you can't decide on your own if the question should or should be not migrated. Lacking an option for users to vote to migrate to the Workplace, flagging or visiting the Water Cooler are what's left, and are good enough solutions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`&lt;/rant&gt;`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/153085/master-degree-in-software-engineering-vs-game-development-vs-web-development#comment291063_153085&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/135239/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28292" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1326" RevisionGUID="a6b63b02-0078-45cf-937d-e58da59872e5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Hi Meta-forum,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wondered over to programmers.se today from SO for the first time, and posted a response to a users question.  I was a little surprised at being allowed to do this by just providing my name and email address, but once I saw my SE profile pic come up, I figured it must just be a common sign-on  (I'm using OpenID creds, via the verisign PIP site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was the question - and my response below &lt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/61936/do-software-engineers-really-need-to-know-low-level-stuff-anymore&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, tonight I'm logging in from my home system.  As before, I first log into SO with my OpenID, and then navigate to here via the StackExchange navigator, and I find I'm not logged in.  I hit &quot;Login&quot; entered my OpenID, and it found and linked my accounts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that my new account here doesn't have the question listed as posted by me - so it appears that is some other or &quot;anonymous&quot; account that just happens to have the same name and profile picture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So - I'm mentioning this as it was a bit odd of an on-boarding experience that might be useful to consider for new user workflows.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also be keen on getting that answer added to my real account, if there's an admin-type that I can appeal too!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks - I'm very impressed with stackexchange site functionality and am glad to see it branching out." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28293" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5158" RevisionGUID="2bda129f-5e1e-4713-b8ad-e2fe37a6ded3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Assuming that your question falls within the guidelines in [our FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) for what is considered on-topic and that your question makes it clear what you have already tried or already considered, I don't see why a question would not be allowed simply because it's a homework issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also relevant is [a discussion about homework questions on Programmers][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2894/how-can-programmers-se-be-used-to-assist-students-with-class-assignments" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28294" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3405" RevisionGUID="6110b013-7959-438f-bb1c-f38a15f756fc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are at least 6 Stack Exchange sites that address software development and programming topics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Stack Overflow][1] for programming questions, algorithm and data structure implementations, and software development tools.&#xD;&#xA;- [Programmers][2] for architecture, design, process and methodology, software project management, software licensing, and other &quot;whiteboard&quot; questions&#xD;&#xA;- [Code Review][3] for best practices, security reviews, performance, correctness&#xD;&#xA;- [Software Quality Assurance][4] for quality control, automation, and testing&#xD;&#xA;- [Programming Puzzles and Code Golf][5] for different puzzles&#xD;&#xA;- [Computer Science][6] for the mathematical and scientific foundations of computing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://cs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28295" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5840" RevisionGUID="e6c998a6-bdc4-40bb-ad54-e4898455c557" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My vote has been based on what is stated in the questions and in MSO guidance. Let's see,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Closed question ([revision that I voted on](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/194969/1)):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would like to know from the programmers what programming language is to be preferred?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [&quot;Target&quot; question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/41798/programming-an-expert-system):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the general process to define the behavior of an expert system, from the initial assessment of the conditions to the actual code?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given above, I voted in accordance with **[this guidance at MSO](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/166707/165773)**:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we want to tell the user ...something like, “*Somebody already asked this. If that other question doesn't solve your problem, please clarify your question to explain how it's different.*” Perfect: if the other question helps them, they're happy because they got an answer. If the other question doesn't help them, they know exactly what to do. No argument about how exact an &quot;exact duplicate&quot; needs to be..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28296" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3712" RevisionGUID="ab9ec956-d554-4998-9b1c-38508e05dd77" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This wouldn't really be possible because sites overlap to some degree so some question may fit many sites. Furthermore sites shouldn't have tags that cannot contain any on topic questions, programmers is a bit of a mess with tags because the SE definition of the site and the user definition of the site weren't always in sync, and there are also a lot of general topics that specific subsets are acceptable which is also a bit of an exception. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best way to determine if a question is on topic is to read the [FAQ][1]. If you do receive comments that another site may be better simply flag your post and ask it to be considered for migration. Don't feel to bad about posting an off topic question, thats why closing and deleting are separate, or not being aware of site X, just learn from it and the community will generally help you with that and also try to get questions to places where they will do the most good for everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28297" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1348" RevisionGUID="f57b8939-303e-4121-9267-c13d02102a98" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="After reading a post on meta.so, I noticed the https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/XXX page. I'm guessing that it's part of the so-called moderator tools a user receives as moderator or reaching 10k reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It didn't take long to find the [latest suggestion][1] and reject it. *Note: I didn't maliciously reject it - it was an irrelevant suggestion.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since this web page is publicly accessible, can **anyone** reject/approve edits? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/668" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28298" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5185" RevisionGUID="e7b57d78-f71f-40dc-ab44-f7b1372ae31b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is a number of questions on Programmers that relate to [Software Quality Assurance and Testing][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * [As per IEEE 12207, who has to perform SW integration testing?][2]&#xD;&#xA; * [How to apply verification and validation on the following example][3]&#xD;&#xA; * [Where should I draw the line between unit tests and integration tests? Should they be separate?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do I flag-off such topics to be migrated there?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note: This questions is similar to another [question][5] about migrations between stackexchange questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://sqa.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/173165/as-per-ieee-12207-who-has-to-perform-sw-integration-testing&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/172850/how-to-apply-verification-and-validation-on-the-following-example&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/171705/where-should-i-draw-the-line-between-unit-tests-and-integration-tests-should-th&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2826/flagging-off-topic-should-allow-you-to-migrate-to-codereview" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28299" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5904" RevisionGUID="795f320d-cc2c-4aeb-af0a-04b1599438d1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="maple_shaft [added a post notice][1] at the same time he deleted your answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer: please explain why you're recommending it as a solution. Answers that don't explain anything will be deleted. See Good Subjective, Bad Subjective for more information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My guess is that your answer was the reason for the post notice, as it reads more like a comment. What's missing for it to stand as an answer is a line or two explaining how using an issue tracker would solve the specific problem presented in the question. &quot;Use an issue tracker&quot; is good advice, but useless to someone who has no idea what an issue tracker is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you expand your answer, please flag it for moderation attention so we can undelete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/86850/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28300" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1494" RevisionGUID="39816826-60b1-455f-9341-d83e0e91c556" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Any update on this? (I'm not putting this as a comment as that simply will not bump this)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[My question seems still closed](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8961/what-are-hidden-features-of-visual-studio)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28301" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5194" RevisionGUID="79139e78-c66e-406d-8a0a-a86d9487908f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[The FAQ][1] States the Following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am proposing we drop the word &quot;professional&quot; from that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Professional is defined][2] as : &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participating for gain or livelihood in an activity or field of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; endeavor often engaged in by amateurs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We clearly are not enforcing this standard in any way, so i am proposing we drop the word. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/professional" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28302" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5990" RevisionGUID="0b8e3932-66d4-46b4-88e0-3ef095af7908" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There was a bug in [the scheduled job that cleans up migration stubs][1]: it also automatically deleted questions that had been migrated and then *rejected*. Obviously, that was not the intent and has been fixed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the other problem here is that a very popular question was rejected years after being migrated and after many edits and improvements had been made. The appropriate action here would've been to lock it. Unfortunately, a big part of the value that a question like this brings to the site comes from the ability of the community to edit it, updating and improving the answers as the years roll by. In other words, the question has value *as a wiki*. But there's no type of lock that reflects this need to foster editing while preventing pile-on answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...Well, *now* there is: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![wiki answer lock][2]](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This particular question was well-suited for testing this strategy: there were only a few answers, and the top answer had *massively* more activity (and popularity) than the rest. So I've cleaned up the migration rejection, restored the top answer, and locked it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We'll see how this works in practice, but at very least it should never be accidentally deleted again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78048/enable-automatic-deletion-of-old-unanswered-zero-score-questions-after-a-year&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/XT45O.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28303" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1681" RevisionGUID="506d036c-5f16-4920-89d6-46ff76356a1e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm sure this is answered somewhere on meta, but I couldn't find it (nor is it in the faq).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My [question][1] is better suited to pm.SE, as pointed out by another user.  How do I migrate my question?  Or how do I flag it so that a mod will perhaps do it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to simply delete and re-ask, but my question has answers now, so this is not allowed.  And I assume cross-posting is frowned upon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/81622/points-to-nail-down-when-agreeing-to-develop-software-on-spec" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28304" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3407" RevisionGUID="a03fbabb-8f19-4695-8aa9-cc63820f3055" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A question from yesterday about what to call different focuses in development was closed as off-topic - but I can't see where in the FAQ this would fall foul.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/142876/terms-for-different-types-of-development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To quote the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one of the closing users had deigned to comment on the question, maybe I'd better understand how this question is off-topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28305" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5231" RevisionGUID="99ee5c8b-1221-4ea5-9958-151656cd23d5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Footer line floats up too high in the main review page](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4095/footer-line-floats-up-too-high-in-the-main-review-page)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Looking the [review page][1], I notice the list of the review queue is covered by the image I normally see at the bottom of other pages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  ![screenshot][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to happen just on that page, while on the front page that image appears in the footer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  ![screenshot][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I inspected the page using Safari 6 Web Inspector, but I didn't see any reference to that image, if not in the .header `&lt;div&gt;`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/524Ne.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/wL2C0.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28306" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6415" RevisionGUID="a6ea5a72-b6c2-49e7-aff3-2dba7d50e333" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Asking about Algorithms is fine. Asking about how to use COM as it's a Windows API, should be directed to Stack Overflow. General architectural and software design questions should be fairly focused and conceptual in nature. They should also be equally applicable across most programming languages. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example: [Is the use of “utf8=✓” preferable to “utf8=true”?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is good because it's a tricky design problem: &quot;Why do I see this odd thing pop up in software designs repeatedly?&quot; It turns out to be an IE8 encoding hack.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good questions here may involve a fair amount of initial effort on your part, we expect you to have tried something before asking here. They also should converge to a small set of answers or a single answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lengthy discussion-based questions should be asked in the [Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28307" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3763" RevisionGUID="8fe823a2-2655-42c3-915e-566a05b15884" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I seem to have reached this limit while editing my answer to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a bit frustrating, as the editor didn't warn me, so I typed away and submitted... and it truncated the end of the text AND the links...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So now I'll gladly rewrite this quickly, and make sections more concise to fit everything in, but:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * What exactly is the limit?&#xD;&#xA; * Maybe the editor should warn and block submission, like the comment section does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Though I agree such long posts probably do not happen too often. Sorry. got interested in this question more and more :)_&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Update 2012/07/11:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * See [Shog9's answer][1] and comments below it for more details.&#xD;&#xA; * See this [answer from JeffAtwood][2] on another similar Meta.SO thread, where a fix is said to have been implemented, and the discussion we have in comments.&#xD;&#xA; * And finally see my [&quot;test-case answer&quot;][3] below and in particular its [revision log][4]. See steps below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Steps to reproduce:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   * The [&quot;test-case answer&quot;][5] was created by simply identifying where things went wrong in [my answer][6] to the [question linked above][7] and I narrowed it down to between revisions [12][8] and [13][9].&#xD;&#xA;   * So I created a question with content from revision 12 (+disclaimer a the top about testing),&#xD;&#xA;   * then edited it with content from revision 13 (but with the link table of revision 12, to get the untrucated ones in there as well, as the revision 13 was obviously damaged),&#xD;&#xA;   * the submission went through just fine and without warning, and the content was indeed truncated again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Update 2012/07/11 - continued:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Crap, it appears the revision log of my test-case doesn't show all the steps, and doesn't show the messages I had left in the &quot;change logs&quot;. Probably because I did them without a big interval between them, and when that's the case the SE systems seem to merge them in one changeset (probably so we don't hit the `10 edits =&gt; CW` rule when editing answers rapidly while they're new).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, that's annoying here for looking at the test-case (maybe SE gods have a way to see full logs), but the **steps I gave above should be enough to reproduce it** anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Update by Shog9&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reproduced, definitely a bug, [written up on MSO][10].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3767/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/26723/151515&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3770/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/3770/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3770/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/155505/3631&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/7b75c2e1-15ac-408d-807a-4cd83a2494bc/view-source&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/596bbe49-17a3-4c25-8175-d6242d796064/view-source&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/139320/post-maximum-length-check-ignores-markdown-results-in-long-formatted-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28308" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3410" RevisionGUID="e1a7c4ac-5074-4fa6-a367-2b5e646700ba" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would suggest asking in the programmers [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/programmers) about help identifying some good languages to look into giving your situation. You may not get a response right away, but there's a fairly good chance someone will help you out with your question when they get a minute.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you're still having trouble deciding after that, then sit down and figure out what you want to build, and narrow your language/technology choices down to 2 or so. Then create a question on Programmers telling us the specs of the project you want to build, and ask us if language A or B would be a better choice (and why) given the project and the situation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's important to include specific project specs, such as hardware requirements and estimated number of simultaneous users, and details about your situation, such as developer familiarity with the languages, how important deadlines are, etc. Keep in mind that the correct answer may be &quot;both are equally valid, so pick whichever one you prefer&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's an [example of a question][1] I asked a while back which was asking which language/technology was better for a specific project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/19893/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28309" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1685" RevisionGUID="be66b06b-77eb-4375-b3f1-b48547cc9de1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It is possible to post questions without creating an account. Simply log out, and when posting your question create a random display name and use an old email address.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that posting a question in this fashion has some restrictions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Post is quality checked by the system&#xD;&#xA; * No new tags can be created&#xD;&#xA; * You must supply both an email address and display name&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously you will also fail to gain any reputation or badges related to that question should it gain them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I took the liberty of creating an example question, see [Example Anon Question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/81913/example-anon-question). I'll delete this after you take a look. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28310" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3423" RevisionGUID="302b857e-a3ee-4da2-a0de-ab26deb819a8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Recently [this question][1] has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summary of the question: &quot;I want to use the actor model in C++ (more precisely, remote actors), can someone indicate a framework supporting this concept?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not understand in what sense this question does not &quot;involve facts, references, or specific expertise&quot; or why it &quot;will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whether such a framework exists or not is a **fact** which I would like to know&#xD;&#xA;before we start to implement some ad-hoc solution in our team.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks to the moderator for the discussion. The question has been edited.&#xD;&#xA;One of the main problems that have been identified in the original question is that the actor model, while quite well-understood, is not main stream, and&#xD;&#xA;some background information was needed to make the focus of the question&#xD;&#xA;clearer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/143170/actor-library-framework-for-c" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28312" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3772" RevisionGUID="3bc3d740-eeb8-4a7b-a4a2-5dfafb14f8ea" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="### Reworded slightly better but still not a good Q &amp; A format question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;@KonradRudolph this is reworded slightly better, and slightly more on topic on programmers, but still comes off as your ranty opinion on why *( in your opinion )* why others made *mistakes* in these implementations you asking for justifications for other peoples design choices and decisions that can't be answered definitively. If they could it would be very easily Googled, which you would of already found the answer quickly, therefore all this is going to generate, even on programmers is speculation and supposition ( this is what all the answers currently are ) and no true *answer*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Comments to the contrary of the claimed intent in the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a comment to this [answer][1]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&quot;As I said, I’m not convinced by that at all. Objects do get instantiated before, and code gets executed before. It’d need a quote from one of the original developers to convince me that this was the reason.&quot;* this comment from an answer below kind of proves you aren't going to get the answer you want unless you contact the original designers in question, anyone else is going to be speculating; this is still **not constructive** and **off topic** even with the attempt at re-wording it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And other comments are just more discussion arguments on why the OP doesn't **buy** the answer/argument. Matter of fact, all the comments are just arguments support or &quot;debunking&quot; complaints even on the deleted question. I would vote to close again if I could.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&quot;@Yannis True. I had somewhat hoped for an answer from one of the people originally involved (maybe from Eric? though his would probably be “because we copied Java”).&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then mail the people that did what they did, why do you think polling here will provide the answer you are looking for?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### The following quote from the re-worded answer are just unqualified opinion:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&quot;... the following answers don’t satisfy me, as I deem them incorrect: ...&quot;*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the only viable answer I could come up with, I avoided putting it the actual question so as not to contribute to the noise there, but meta is about noise right :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![The Dude](http://i.qkme.me/355dvh.jpg)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/156339/7519" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28313" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6448" RevisionGUID="76277f20-917f-4105-b987-aaefd90bd7e3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You have 9 deleted answers on Programmers. 7 of those were deleted when the question was deleted, one you deleted yourself and the more recent one was deleted by three community members. I'm guessing that's the one you are looking for, here's the link to the question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/212522/how-to-indicate-that-a-class-might-implement-an-interface.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As ChrisF already mentioned, you should be able to see your answer now that you have a link to the question. You can also edit and improve it - as is, it's more of a comment than an actual answer to the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28314" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1694" RevisionGUID="3048a3f5-684f-4380-81f8-32f11d07f6f5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is in regards to this question:&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/82519/why-command-line-is-faster-than-gui-closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please read the **previous version** of my question also, as the second revision will make more sense that way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A moderator mentioned the locking &quot;is because of [my] comments on answers.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###My question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Which** comments on **which** answers is the mod referring to?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everything has been vague so far (even the current answer below), and I still have no idea which user I was misbehaving toward, as was mentioned to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28315" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3792" RevisionGUID="8db7491d-97b9-4bc1-9dce-ff6faa6a038d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am unsure about the rules pertaining to questions related to education.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially I searched the site for questions related to MS and MSC degrees, and saw many questions from members seeking education advice. However, none of them dealt with the topic of school's ranking &amp; being online programs; therefore, I posted my question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/156895/online-msc-from-a-top-school-vs-in-person-from-unranked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was closed within a few minutes as offtopic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not quite sure why it was considered offtopic, and something like this isn't:&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/37482/having-msc-or-bsc-with-experience-whats-it-worth-in-industrial-environments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also read the FAQ, which brought me here:&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&#xD;&#xA;That post states: `A good way to test this is to ask the question, &quot;Would the answer to the question be materially different if a non-programmer answered it?&quot;`&#xD;&#xA;The answer to that question is a yes, as my question specifically asks about the level of challenge in these programs &amp; affects on the rest of the programming career. If I was to post the question in &quot;The Workplace,&quot; I would not get field specific answers there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the proper place to ask a question such as mine?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28317" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7895" RevisionGUID="9e2d5778-807d-4604-99b0-07f7d9546729" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="After five years, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/2815/ still has only 5.5k views. It has 57 &quot;answers&quot; which amount to a poll of feature requests and ideas for a rather old version of C#.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many of these are outdated and wrong now.  There are numerous other, better written (and updated) &quot;what don't I like about C#&quot; blog posts out there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The long term value of the post and its negligible at best on this site in this format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please delete it (or unlock it so that others can delete it)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28318" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6456" RevisionGUID="b9f6bc51-ba57-41a6-a1cb-b51ec3eb67fb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is a balancing act that is being walked between the &quot;[everything is downvoted and closed](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q)&quot; and the &quot;you delete things too soon&quot;.  The stress between these two philosophies has also gotten a touch more stressed with an interpretation of an answer [elsemeta](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/219922/what-is-the-goal-of-hot-network-questions/220099#220099).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is quite possible that we've been overeager with deleting things quickly.  That said, it may have eventually have gotten [deleted on its own](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/173513/turbocharging-the-roomba-solutions-for-premature-deletion/177675#177675) without intervention (arguably though the faster delete tries to reduce the perception of lost rep if something was upvoted... a bit of thought does go into what to delete or not).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deletion of the question was not about breaking rules (or not) but rather an attempt at hastening the ultimate janitorial actions.  And sometimes we delete fast because we don't want to forget to delete it later (there isn't a &quot;delete queue&quot; like there is for close votes and once it falls from view it becomes more difficult for people to delete what (ultimately) (debatably) should be deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would ultimately be deleted somehow.  If its done a few days after the question was asked or a week, or a month... its (arguably) just a matter of time.  In its current state, it is unlikely to have been reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question itself is really unanswerable by anyone not part of the Dart Team.  It requires one to go and ask them and any of us are equally capable of doing that compared to what you can do (this 'ask them' [has been done before](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/210399/why-is-there-a-new-in-go/216582#216582) and *can* be done as a good question - you may consider flagging the question for reopening if you find the answer to then do a self answer of the question).  Note that the reception of how well the question and interesting the question to the community as a whole is as fickle as the community itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with the question is that it is asking other people to do work for you that you are just as capable as doing yourself.  This applies to questions where people ask them to (basically) search google or quote wikipedia for them too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also with the edit, you've edited in an answer [from the Dart team](https://groups.google.com/a/dartlang.org/forum/#!msg/misc/8Uchi3bW1YQ/LTKIrC4L564J) - though clarifications for the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do I understand correctly that..&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* They shouldn't be using type annotations for locals but they use it.&#xD;&#xA;* This is not an indicator of quality, but just a bug. Becuase they written by a Dart team &#xD;&#xA;member but not by other person.&#xD;&#xA;* There is no &quot;why&quot; here because it is better to remain silent than to say unpleasant things.&#xD;&#xA;* Dart Team can forget to fix this if someone does not file a ticket.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;needs to be asked of the Dart team, not P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I will point out that this clarification didn't help the question.  In my reading of it, the third point combined with the main question reads like a rant about a style guide (or inconstant following of it).  To that, I've read a number of unpleasant comment threads in other questions that have a rant-like tone (again *my* reading of the question) that become wholesale delete the entire comments (and sometimes lock the question while the participants simmer down).  To this, quickly deleting the question quickly can help reduce the total amount of janitorial work that needs mod involvement (and thats where my vote came from)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28319" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1696" RevisionGUID="2a3c9d09-401c-4492-8b52-e60364cf22bb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question is yet another variation of &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why should I use vim for daily tasks, as opposed to emacs? Someone told me it's faster, but I don't understand why/when/how. Please provide examples of the daily tasks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or if you prefer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why should I use choose vanilla ice cream for my daily ice cream break, as opposed to chocolate? Someone told me it's more delicious, but I don't understand why/when/how. Please provide examples of your ice cream breaks!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question simply isn't appropriate for the site, per &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And specifically&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use \_\_\_\_\_\_ for \_\_\_\_\_\_, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if the question went off the rails, that's not surprising, since it wasn't a good fit from the beginning.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(I don't think we can interpret your question as &quot;I would like others to explain the benefits of the command line to me&quot;; even if we could, I wouldn't support such a question under the emerging too trivial / general reference close reason. That's like a truck driver asking about the benefits of steering wheels and gas pedals.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28320" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5299" RevisionGUID="707b4ab6-aba5-4898-a78c-f4ce862f2094" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[My question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/177579/empirical-evidence-regarding-testability) was closed. Robert Harvey says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Questions asking for links to external resources are more or less off-topic throughout the Stack Exchange network. That's what search engines are for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Reference request&quot; is the third most popular tag on cstheory.SE&#xD;&#xA;* It's is one of the 20 most popular tags on math.SE with over 2,000 questions&#xD;&#xA;* 114 questions for &quot;reference&quot; on stats.SE&#xD;&#xA;* Indeed, with the exception of SO itself all of the *.SE I regularly visit have a popular &quot;reference request&quot; tag&#xD;&#xA;* Even on this site itself, 23 questions have been asked with the &quot;reference&quot; tag, only two of which were closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are questions for which answers not backed by empirical data are fine. But if I want to see a peer-reviewed study instead of someone's personal experience, why is that off topic for this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note there are related questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5130/are-literature-requests-inherently-off-topic-or-not-constructive&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It strikes me that those deal with broad things like &quot;give me a book about C&quot; whereas I'm asking for support of a very specific hypothesis (the relationship between testability and stability)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28322" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3811" RevisionGUID="38c3cd98-8cb1-4d97-afdd-01070b36104a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**update** question has been edited and reopened and proposed &quot;draft&quot; has been posted as an answer there:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby!](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/157606/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior answer revision is removed since it no longer applies, it is available in answer history:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Revision 8](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/3811/8)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the question would be reopened, I'd probably write an answer like&#xD;&#xA;&gt; below.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; #TL;DR&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; In Java, the reason of `public static void main(String[] args)` is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [Gosling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling &quot;who's that?&quot;) wanted&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. the code written by someone experienced in C (not in Java)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. to be executed by someone used to running [PostScript](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript &quot;scripts&quot;) on [NeWS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS &quot;Networked Extensible Window System&quot;)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...**[How The JVM Spec Came To Be][2]**...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/gosling-jvm-lang-summit-keynote &quot;key note&quot;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28325" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6503" RevisionGUID="98372527-f048-4f39-867a-9afa61f44868" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Below 250 rep, the user doesn't see anything related to close votes unless a higher rep user tells them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: [view close votes privileges](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/view-close-votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This privilege allows you to view and cast close and reopen votes on your own questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And as gnat pointed out, they will see the comment of a suggested duplicate after the first duplicate vote is cast." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28326" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5301" RevisionGUID="3da4bb0e-0a12-4d0e-89c2-f9548f17ecc1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [Appeal to regain the privilege to ask questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5147/appeal-to-regain-the-privilege-to-ask-questions)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I asked the following questions in Programmers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1- [Determining an application's dependencies][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2- [Drag and drop feature for a website][2] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I did not get any down-votes, still I am banned from posting more questions in Programmers. Are these questions the enough reason for this ban?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/155960/determining-an-applications-dependencies&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/156115/drag-and-drop-fearture-for-a-website" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28327" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3430" RevisionGUID="8f70bea3-7048-4e91-919b-9f1164c36d59" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Using PHP version 5.2 or 5.3 for commercial products?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;seems to me to be the sort of thing that should be discouraged, because it will have no value in a year (when everyone will be using a version of PHP that's cutting edge right now).  However, I can't find a basis in the FAQ for this opinion; am I wrong? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/143327/using-php-version-5-2-or-5-3-for-commercial-products" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28328" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6559" RevisionGUID="dcc92186-b1f0-4e46-8bb7-2531090e220d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You've probably seen it [somewhere](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136609/repository-of-useful-pro-forma-comments)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sharing your research helps everyone. Tell us what you've tried and why &#xD;&#xA;it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time &#xD;&#xA;to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, &#xD;&#xA;and most of all it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer! &#xD;&#xA;Also see [how to ask](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What does this mean? Why do people keep asking for research? Knowing this, how can I ask a better question and avoid [downvotes](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6484/31260)?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28329" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2136" RevisionGUID="8b4f1f98-e2ea-4968-bab2-a5c4f801a644" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Before starting, take into account that my English is going to be awful XD.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think you are appliying a very restrictive policy when considering if a question is too subjective or not. You must also notice that some stackoverflow moderators redirect some users here when the question is not concrete enough there. So this is the place where questions that are subjective to a certain degree should go, otherwise we would have a clone of stackoverflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a lot of people scrambling to be the first to denounce a question as subjective, substracting points, and when that happens it influences other users to do the same. On the contrary, if the first votes are positive, the tendency is to add more positive points or let the score as it was.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've read a lot of questions here that are more subjective than the one I asked (and was closed), and these have, however, a high score since they are considered useful by many people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please, don't close a question so quickly if it has been aswered, wait a minimun time (2-3 hours) to see what happens. Because the first 3-5 answers may be really helpful and then you can close the thread if you want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone is interested, my question was this:&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/101451/best-programming-language-for-native-application-development&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe I shouldn't have used the word &quot;best&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28330" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3436" RevisionGUID="b55ead64-f189-4a32-837b-ad66c7a54d64" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As mentioned in the FAQ, your questions [should be about problems that you face that relate to software development][1]. Putting together a presentation or discussion is not an aspect of professional software development, which makes the current wording off-topic. Phrasing your question to only gather opinions or thoughts is also not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, the subject matter (in this example, design patterns) is on-topic. So if there's some aspect to the subject that you don't understand or need clarified, that would be acceptable to ask. In your example question, the problem is that you simply ask for suggestions - that's not a suitable question for a Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28331" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3835" RevisionGUID="0ce3bb52-26be-405d-b8b1-f4826476783b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; ...this question &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/158341/average-career-programmer-with-no-passion-try-harder-or-try-related-it-field&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;hellip; and I think such a canonical-form question should exist here on programmers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To reopen / rewrite above question and to have its answers converge into useful _canon_ instead of diverging into garbage bits of unrelated advice, consider passing it through an [Atwood's transform](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/124930/165773 &quot;what's this?&quot;)&lt;sup&gt; 1&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;_What traits to look for in &quot;outside&quot; career fields in order to leverage programming experience_ - stuff like that.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need something, some wording to effectively _repel_&lt;sup&gt; 2&lt;/sup&gt; answers like &quot;oh our company has a BA/QA/PM position opened, question is 10 years old, are you still interested in a new career?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need wording that would allow connecting different answers into some larger picture that makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Question wording would ideally allow reader to connect advice like &quot;go QA&quot;, &quot;go BA&quot;, &quot;assess your current skill set&quot;, &quot;decide between fields involving some minor coding, or dealing with programmers, or dealing with software product / process&quot; - to build something bigger on it, instead of leaving it lay as an unsorted heap of minor ideas.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; _Atwood's transform_ - here is a recent example for the reference: [a question at Workplace](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/posts/2799/revisions &quot;How can I tell if my shyness is an issue at a workplace?&quot;), revisions 3 through 5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; _repel_ garbage answers - one sure can not 100% protect a question from getting garbage answers. But at least try to phrase the question so that you can come to Meta, say _&quot;Here's the question, here's the answer, I don't feel like the answer is OK&quot;_ and have a good chance of garbage being downvoted by active community members who happen to read your post. Fair enough?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Incidentally, I've found an older question at _Workplace_ that sounds pretty close to what I would expect of &quot;canonical&quot; question of this kind:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **[Possible career transitions for a seasoned software developer?](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/199/168)**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have been a software developer for 11 years...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...I am thinking of making a career change - ideally moving somewhere my technical skills would still be beneficial in some shape or form...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are the steps I can take to figure out what I really like and what can make an interesting career going further?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28332" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5327" RevisionGUID="6b3f926c-095f-4cc1-b411-417194612d29" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is some controversy about [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/178787). There have been multiple questions about non-disclosure agreements. A quick look at [the tag](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/non-disclosure-agreement) shows that many of them are open, even though just as many of them are not specific to software development, a requirement [recently clarified and enforced](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3412).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there can be little doubt that non-disclosure agreements are extremely relevant to programmers, and there is currently no other place to ask such questions on StackExchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should P.SE allow, in general, questions about NDA that apply to programmers, even non-exclusively? If not, what should P.SE do to make it clear to people reading grandfathered-in questions about NDAs that the same question, asked today, would be considered off-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28334" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6591" RevisionGUID="d994aca5-9d02-4eed-8293-936434b6acba" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is [the original Help Center][1] page, with some minor changes.  It turns out that most of the Off-Topic subjects are already covered here, so I just added a couple of new ones to cover the missing cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA; - a product or service recommendation&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Additional updates:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Removed &quot;Freelancing and Business Concerns&quot; from the on-topic list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Removed &quot;software engineering&quot; in favor of more specific topics, many of which were already included.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Clarified &quot;Programming Tools.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4.  Added &quot;Legal Assistance&quot; to &quot;not about.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. Changed &quot;resume help&quot; to &quot;job hunting&quot; at the request of The Workplace mods to prevent people with resume critique questions from thinking they are on-topic there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. Shortened the subjective questions portion, since it's better addressed on the dont-ask page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What topics can I ask about here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ---------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Programmers Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;software requirements&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software architecture and design&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;algorithm and data structure concepts&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; methodologies and processes&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software engineering management&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;quality assurance and testing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;software licensing&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;h3&gt;and it is not about...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check&#xD;&#xA;&gt; out &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead)&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt; instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;coding tools, such as compilers, debuggers, and IDEs (ask on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stackoverflow.com/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; instead)&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what language/technology you should learn next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&quot;&gt;which&#xD;&#xA;&gt; technology is better&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what project you should do&#xD;&#xA;&gt; next&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;what book you should read next&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;where to find&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a software library, tool or other resource&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;a  product&#xD;&#xA;&gt; or service recommendation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590&quot;&gt;career&#xD;&#xA;&gt; advice&lt;/a&gt;, salary, or compensation&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;personal lifestyle,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; including relationships, and non-programming activities&lt;/li&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;li&gt;legal assistance&lt;/li&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please make sure your question uniquely applies to programmers in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png&quot; alt=&quot;proper scope for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &amp;ldquo;anything goes&amp;rdquo;. &lt;strong&gt;Please keep it professional&lt;/strong&gt;. If this is a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question you'd be uncomfortable&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see the Help Center page about &lt;a href=&quot;/help/dont-ask&quot;&gt;what not to ask&lt;/a&gt; as well as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective&quot;&gt;Good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subjective, Bad Subjective&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&quot;&gt;Real&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions Have Answers&lt;/a&gt; blog posts for details and examples&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;/search&quot;&gt;look around&lt;/a&gt; to see if your question&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been asked before. It’s also OK to &lt;a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; href=&quot;/helpcenter/self-answer&quot;&gt;ask and answer your own&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Exchange, it may be on topic for &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;another Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;commit to&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&quot;&gt;propose&lt;/a&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a new site at &lt;a href=&quot;http://area51.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Area51&lt;/a&gt;,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically&#xD;&#xA;&gt; created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28335" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3862" RevisionGUID="c38a3b95-22e5-4ea6-9a9b-386232511c05" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed the [tag:home-school] tag on a recent question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, there are [three questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/home-schooling) with that tag.  The first is OT for P.SE (belongs on codereview.SE) and the other two are already tagged with [tag:teaching].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suggest we get rid of the [tag:home-school] tag as it doesn't generate any meaningful distinction from the [tag:teaching] tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question is to generate a discussion about the future of that tag in line with [jmort253's recent answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3851/53019) about tag discussions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28336" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3483" RevisionGUID="3c705b33-5a21-4030-9525-019cc42639d3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/145359/which-revision-control-system-to-use-for-2-semester-capstone-course/145368#comment274842_145368) was closed as a duplicate, but I'm not seeing it.  One's asking us to consider issues for a college group project for people who have little to no experience with version control.  The [alleged duplicate][1] is an experienced version control user wondering whether to switch to something more powerful for one-man non-academic projects.  Even though both questions fall into the broad category of &quot;version control,&quot; the evaluation criteria are completely different, and therefore the &quot;why&quot; and &quot;how&quot; explanations are going to be different.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It wouldn't surprise me if the question has been asked before, but the [linked duplicate][2] isn't it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/69308/git-for-personal-one-man-projects-overkill&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/69308/git-for-personal-one-man-projects-overkill" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28337" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2152" RevisionGUID="4262f4d0-d054-413e-8134-47ac74ef8b5d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Every question is about advice: it'd be akin to tagging every question with [tag:help] or [tag:this-is-a-question-i-assure-you]. I would speculate the vast majority of questions tagged [tag:advice] are there because of misuse of the tag box (e.g. typing &quot;career advice&quot; instead of &quot;career-advice&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So can we kill [tag:advice] with fire?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A year later the [tag is still here][1] and is still a fan favourite (100+ questions). Can we please burninate and blacklist it asap?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/advice?page=1&amp;sort=newest&amp;pagesize=50" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28338" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="350" RevisionGUID="86c0b526-f00a-41f0-9b66-4071cec881d8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just a quick note here on meta to let everyone know we will be enforcing [these six subjective question guidelines][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Great subjective questions...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. tend to have long, not short, answers. &#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references. &#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is just the title of each guideline; there's [more detail about each guideline, with examples][1] on the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fair warning, any questions on programmers.se that do not meet a reasonable number of these guidelines (let's say roughly 4 out of 6) *will be closed... aggressively*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;edit: the subjective/argumentative close reason has been changed to&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Not constructive&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not meet enough of our &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;six guidelines for constructive subjective questions&lt;/a&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;edit: Description now enhanced to provide a TL;DR summary for the link:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Not constructive&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not meet enough of our &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&quot;&gt;six guidelines for constructive subjective questions&lt;/a&gt;. All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and [the official faq](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) has been updated to reflect the above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... now let the closings begin, *for great justice*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28339" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3901" RevisionGUID="cc3d2d5c-bf9c-4237-b1a5-ef6228eb9623" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This **is** a very good question that can be answered by programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, it solicits polling, extended discussion, and debate, so it's **not** a good question for Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I 100% agree with two points that @Yannis Rizos made in the comments section beneath the actual question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. [Just because it's closed doesn't make it an inherently bad question.][1] It's just that it's not a good question for this site.&#xD;&#xA; 2. [This might be a good fit for Workplace.SE.][2] The moderators over there have a much different understanding of what's constructive for that site. You might have better luck over there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/160392/determining-ethics-of-substance-use-to-enhance-programming#comment306471_160392&#xD;&#xA;[2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/160392/determining-ethics-of-substance-use-to-enhance-programming#comment306466_160392" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28340" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7907" RevisionGUID="5cc4d51f-0627-43d8-a983-4c951cb282f1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Ok, I've done this before... lets look at the most recent closed and down voted questions and look to examine if they are being closed because of overly strict rules, aggressive enforcement or if they just aren't properly answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311935/running-net-desktop-application-on-linux (-2, 1 close vote)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question is a software recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311931/need-help-to-make-advance-search-in-php-website-project (-2, 1 close vote)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A bit hard to determine (the close vote is for unclear). It looks like this might be too broad too. Its a student trying &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311930/pointers-and-hexadecimal (-5, 2 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is an implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311928/how-do-i-implement-material-style-account-switcher (-3, 2 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   This is a far too broad &quot;how do I do this&quot; type question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311925/structure-of-an-abstract-for-a-conference-talk-or-workshop (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question has nothing to do with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6.  https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311923/extraordinary-software-written-in-javascript (-8, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a too broad question asking for a list of all the ways that Javascript can be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311921/accepting-express-js-post-requests-in-a-chrome-app (-4, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for issues with writing something in Chrome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311918/how-to-display-a-non-interactive-message-on-a-jframe (-2, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for how to do something in Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311914/running-ruby-commands-does-nothing (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a problem running some third party ruby software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311913/how-to-break-infinite-loop-in-turtle-graphics-python (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for python.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311910/index-exceeds-matrix-dimension-matlab-hog-features (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for matlab (which was already posted on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311907/wdk-10-and-visual-studio-2015-acting-funny (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This (now deleted between then and now) was closed as unclear. It was an issue with some software installation for a C library.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311904/learning-linux-kernel-in-todays-world-would-i-be-better-off-hacking-with-android (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a &quot;what should I learn&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311902/why-do-i-get-an-error-in-the-cpp-file-if-i-make-a-class-template-before-the-cla (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311901/class-as-a-variable-of-another-class (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is another C++ implementation/debugging question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311899/find-availability-software-architecture (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a no effort homework dump.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311897/error-code-c4700-uninitialized-local-variable (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311896/android-file-retriever-application (-4, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted green field question that is asking how to use the IDE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311894/how-do-i-create-a-driver-for-extra-buttons (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rather vague &quot;how do I program buttons on a drawing tablet.&quot;  Aside from being off topic, no information about what drawing tablet it is is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311892/deleting-dynamically-allocated-memory (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311891/simplest-way-to-build-an-interactive-website-to-visualize-a-table (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a unclear / too broad &quot;how do I render a table&quot; (there are far too many possible ways to do it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311890/where-and-how-i-can-find-explanations-of-abstractions-and-fancy-stuff-used-in-bu (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rant about large software projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311888/adobe-illustrator-data-driven-graphics-via-php (-2, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a question about how to implement an AI that Photoshop has in php. I'm not kidding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311886/why-software-releases-must-be-self-regulated (-3, duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a poorly asked duplicate of a question that searching for &quot;Lehman&quot; would have found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311883/sending-computer-screen-video-through-lightning-connector-to-a-iphone (-3, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a &quot;is it possible&quot; feasibility study question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311874/importing-my-class-to-a-given-tester-class (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is an unclear question that might be &quot;how do I debug my code?&quot; but not enough information about it is given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311873/choose-an-application-development-environment-for-the-displaying-monitoring-da (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted too broad question (with a bit of unclear too).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311871/web-design-templates-for-backend-developing (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a tool recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311866/connected-city-problem (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a cross posted (CS) what appears to be homework dump.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311862/logic-of-ap-to-return-number-set-to-bit1-as-an-input-binary (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a block of code without any question asked (a comment of &quot;how does this work?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311860/can-you-please-explain-what-this-php-code-below-does (-7, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Someone asking what a given function in php does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311857/ways-to-send-a-message-to-a-users-phone (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A service request / too broad (how can you send a message to a device)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311856/periodicity-detection-for-gapped-data (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    An algorithm question that *might* be answerable if sufficient information is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311855/what-is-more-lower-level-click-or-urwid (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &quot;I make web apps using flask so I am tempted to start using click since it's made by the same person but I've seen more info around for urwid? Which one is more lower level?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;    I don't even know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311854/scripting-productivity-and-speed (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     How do you improve your productivity?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311853/automating-scripting-and-building (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A question about automating the IDE. It is a bit unclear and if it was made clear, would be off topic here (its a tooling problem)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311850/python-functions-and-parameters (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How to type the parameters for python calls (implementation question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, out of these 37 questions (which are all the ones with close votes on them in the 50 most recent), which ones are questions that we should examine and consider adjusting the rules for the site so that they are on topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also want to stress that many of these questions are poorly written and the topicality isn't at issue - but rather that I can't understand what is being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are we looking at 3% being improperly closed? 10%? 50%? Until we understand what the problem is - as a community, we can't fix it beyond closing and down voting the questions that don't meet the standards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There has been a suggestion in the comments that software recommendation questions should be on topic here. There is an entire site dedicated to that domain and they are off topic here just as they are off topic on Stack Overflow - because with the curation and community of this site, they rarely generate good answers and tend to be targets of spam and &quot;try my favorite library&quot; type answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28341" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3490" RevisionGUID="dca89ee2-7f67-43c2-84cd-c829c2f5a8a7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Really. We just cleaned up the [tag:career] tag, and now we have a [tag:carreer] tag? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's poke it with a stick. Or better yet, just kill the dang thing. It has [one question][1] and that question is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/145288/boring-vs-cool-ratio" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28342" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6597" RevisionGUID="68c4f807-bf3f-48d3-964f-51a2a2412fd5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per my understanding, for a while there was a sort of informal agreement to protect questions that are going to be featured at Ars Technica. Recently [this approach has been challenged](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/protecting-ars &quot;in Whiteboard chat&quot;), so I would like to have a dedicated meta discussion to sort this out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does it make sense to protect such questions as soon as we learn about coming exposure at Ars Technica or it is better to stick with approach designed in 2010 for Stack Overflow and Super User - that is, protect when there is &quot;a lot of drive-by noise answers&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (MSO - Feb '11) [For 15k+ users: Guidelines on Protecting Questions?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/78764/165773)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Jeff offered more information on [why post protection was implemented and what he expected it to be used for](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/new-protected-question-status/) in his blog.  This was when only moderators had this power, but the same reasoning applies to 15k users who can now protect posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (SE blog - Jun '10) [New Protected Question Status](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/new-protected-question-status/)  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **if you see a question that is attracting a lot of drive-by noise answers, please flag it for moderator attention. We’ll turn on protection.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those interested in more details about questions we discuss can find links to them in [this feed](http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/feed/) or in [edits history](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/39006/samthebrand?tab=activity) of [SE community evangelist](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6200/can-we-give-the-community-evangelist-something-more-notable-to-make-suggested-ed). Some details of 40 questions featured so far are provided [in the 1st revision of this question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/6597/1 &quot;find these under 'For your convenience...'&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28343" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2154" RevisionGUID="4d10c8c0-1b88-4ee8-b293-5ca65656202c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="If you look at my programmers profile [BlackJack][1], you can see:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`flag weight 518.3176`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to happen..&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/27757/blackjack" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28345" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3965" RevisionGUID="02f20398-7a99-42b3-b612-7bbb59835faf" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="##Askers yield&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a [prolific answerer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/4767/oded?tab=answers &quot;as clearly indicated by your profile&quot;), you better keep in mind that your satisfaction with questions quality is considered more important than that of the asker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the official statement on above, refer to Stack Exchange blog, **[Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/ &quot;reference article at Stack Exchange blog&quot;)**:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...we’re determined to keep question quality high, **even at the cost of refusing a little sand**. It’s true that you can’t have Q&amp;A without _questions_, but having the wrong sorts of questions is far more dangerous. The fastest way to kill any Q&amp;A site is to flood it with low-quality questions...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; We feel that the world is awash in questions, but not answers. Answers are the real unit of work in any Q&amp;A system. Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to **maximize the happiness and enjoyment of answerers**. If this means aggressively downvoting or closing unworthy and uninteresting questions, so be it. Without a community of people willing to _answer_ questions, it really doesn’t matter if there are questions at all, does it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My understanding of above is, when asker and answerer disagree about question quality, asker [yield](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/give_way &quot;'give precedence to other road users'&quot;)&lt;sup&gt; [1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3962/31260 &quot;term inspired by analogy used in another answer&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt; and answerer's opinion is given a precedence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Answerers drive by rules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just like it is with driving, having a precedence does not in any way mean entitlement to break the rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that other cars should yield won't help one driving the wrong side of the road. For cases like we discuss, this analogy means answerers should be civil when expressing their opinions about question quality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Authoritative references&lt;sup&gt; [1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/07/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-is-not-a-forum-the-role-of-niceness-on-a-qa-site/)&lt;/sup&gt; for Summer of Love I've seen so far definitely reiterate just two things:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* That rudeness will not be tolerated:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **See someone being rude? Flag it!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* That niceness yields to honesty, just like it has been before:  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Everyone loves to quote from [the FAQ’s etiquette section](http://stackoverflow.com/faq#etiquette), particularly the first “be nice” bit. But it’s the last section that has all the action items:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; ###Be honest.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Above all, be honest. If you see misinformation, vote it down. Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Applied to the case you describe I would say you did OK. Asker having different opinion is expected, and it was reasonable that you expressed yours. You were civil which means you did not break rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, you did exactly as suggested in the _FAQ action items_ and as reiterated in Summer Of Love quote above:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28346" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6601" RevisionGUID="ce27476f-271f-40b4-9c2d-ed783ffad651" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are two types of questions, the young ones and the old ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The young ones are still malleable.  We *can* edit them.  And before people say &quot;you can always edit something&quot; there is the thing that must be considered - it gets more and more difficult to edit a question to be a good one the more answers it gets.  When a question has half a dozen answers, its probably too late to edit it - the 20ks can only delete answers with a negative score and unless an answer is truly awful it rarely gets there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once a question gets half a dozen answers (especially if one is accepted) it becomes very difficult to edit it into a better question without causing some of the answers to become invalid.  The culture of the [frequent editors](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/badges/12/strunk-white) appears to be &quot;don't invalidate an answer with an edit&quot;, and given that we can't clean up meh but up voted answers on an question that leaves us with fewer tools.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that half a dozen answers can happen *that first day* when we can't protect the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The tool to address an older question is one of two: close and protection.  Closing is an option, though we (frequent closers) do get some grief for closing borderline 'primarily opinion' or 'too broad' questions that are popular.  The other tool is protection.  Consider also that sometimes, in the past there have already been attempts at closing a question.  Its not uncommon for me to hit a recently bumped historically hot question and see on there &quot;you voted to close on December 14th, 2013&quot;... and, well, I can't kick it into the review queue again.  Asking around chat sometimes finds the frequent close voters also may have expired votes on the question making it very difficult to use that tool to address the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Protection works poorly as a tool to quiet down a question as noted elsewhere.  That said, for experienced answers, protection may give them pause before writing a short, pithy answer.  If that is the case, the psychological aspect of protection still does serve a purpose to those experienced editors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond protection, the only remaining tool that we (non-mods) have at this point is the flag for a mod to close or lock it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you ask any of the mods, I'm fairly sure you'll find that I am a fairly frequent historical lock flagger.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A bit more on editing, specially with respect to Ars'ed questions.  Doing a significant transformation on the question would make it inconsistent with the Ars post.  For the appearance of Stack Exchange on Ars, I'd much rather have a protected question than a closed question and for that question (and answers) to match what is on Ars.  Bait and switch isn't a great thing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things to think about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Can we expire expired close votes after some period of time?  I mean sure, we can flag for a mod to close it, but I'd rather have the community close it than an evil mod (less flack for the mods).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What tools / process is appropriate for turning some of those questions into community lock questions.  I suspect it would be something like 'Do a community lockable answer, flag for a mod to community lock &amp; delete everything else, edit the resulting question into something good'? Though some of those steps might require some reordering.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Are there better tools that could be designed for 10k+ users to be able to better moderate questions and answers?  The big thing being after a little bit of time, the only tool that we have that makes any sense *is* protection.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Proactive protection isn't ideal.  Part of our considerations is that weekends we have light moderation (from moderators, 20ks with delete answer votes, and down voters to get an answer low enough to do a delete answer vote, and 10ks who will do a 'recommend delete' rather than 'edit' in the low quality review queue).  Would it be possible to get some community managers to help with some eyeballs on the Ars'ed questions who could help guide people to give better answers when there's something poor, or help with deleting in a timely manner to not have examples of other poor answers that encourage more?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28347" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3969" RevisionGUID="00add4a7-141b-4a0e-98e0-4541caa55440" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have been hitting quite a few 404's on P.SE lately. I was wondering how great the idea of perma deleting questions *that have been around a long time and indexed and linked to* (not spam or such) really is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, [the lastest blog post][1] by Yannis Rizos contains a link to a deleted question ([391 upvotes FCS!][2]) in the 2nd paragraph, resulting in a 404 error for basically all(?) the audience of the blog.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not saying that these questions are a good fit to the site, but removing them completely, leaving dangling links all over the internet (am I exaggerating? :-) certainly isn't my idea of Making The Internet a Better Place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that don't mind closing; I wouldn't even mind a `trash.stackexchange.com`; but in my very humble opinion, deleting valuable content from SE sites (not just P.SE) that has been lying there for weeks and months is just dead stupid.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Follow up question on Meta Stack Overflow: [Are you guys turning SE into a 404 black hole?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/148620/are-you-guys-turning-se-into-a-404-black-hole)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/2012/08/20-controversial-programming-opinions/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/31104/25936" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28348" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3513" RevisionGUID="d5cb877c-c6b0-4b14-be1b-a017a11235ee" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Is this question OK for Programmers? https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/145784/how-to-be-a-successful-programmer-without-a-cs-degree&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me [&quot;the essence of question&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/145784/6 &quot;revision of the question used in quote below&quot;) somehow does not feel quite right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###This in essence, is my question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - How do I objectively determine what areas of study, general knowledge, and other skills I would have gained through a CS degree that I may or may not be lacking in now? &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - How do I sort these skills in order of most importance?&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - What is the best way (over the next two years) to supplement my education to attain those attributes in such a way to match or even surpass the level of a CS undergrad from a top university?...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way they are spelled now, first and third bullets of above seem to have nothing to do with programming. Also, third bullet doesn't look constructive - &quot;what is the best way&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the second bullet - &quot;...order of most importance?&quot; - this doesn't look constructive nor even remotely specific. &quot;Most&quot; - not constructive. &quot;Importance&quot; - not specific.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28349" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="369" RevisionGUID="7b318817-7072-4d34-9c1e-ad5c754b94e9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So there are 2 ways to interpret this post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1.  All _Subjective_ questions must&#xD;&#xA;   adhere to these guidelines   &#xD;&#xA; 2.  _All_ questions must adhere to these guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reading the blog post, I understand the rationale behind enforcing #1.  Subjective opinions are valuable to the community if they are based on experience, well-thought out reasoning, etc.  Subjective rants or one-liners are not valuable.   So a policy to avoid bad subjective questions makes sense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But enforcing #2 implies that all questions must be subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that really the intent?  Are there really no objective questions about the practice of programming that would add value to the site?  I found these to be interesting questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8228/what-is-the-first-published-reference-to-test-first-programming/ &#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1151/where-does-the-word-programming-come-from?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first was closed as &quot;not subjective enough&quot;.  This makes no sense to me.  How is this type of question detracting from the value of the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28350" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5408" RevisionGUID="fd863780-78aa-43dc-a28e-b8697a90444e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think the current practice of closing questions is perceived as &quot;not constructive&quot; and leaves people confused, and probably makes them angry. As a result it drives away people instead of motivating them to rephrase their questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recent example: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/181071/how-to-increase-popularity-of-node-js-modules&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP was somewhat ranty, but I edited it to be a real question and it still got closed. See the second comment to the question - we have positively frustrated the user and drove him away. What a waste. I am sure there are similar cases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How could we improve the *tone* of closing questions to *motivate* users to improve their questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28351" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6616" RevisionGUID="aa5f1b1a-f0f9-4a83-a4dc-cf9836a15a95" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="With [Let's get rid of the 10K flag queue](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/226092/lets-get-rid-of-the-10k-flag-queue) (MSE), the ability for 10k users to see flags (particularly not an answer and very low quality) is gone.  This means that the little blue box for notifying a 10k user of a not an answer or low quality flag is gone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What this means is that the only way for 20k users to be notified of discovered bad answers is through the low quality review queue ( https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/stats ).  Note that a single 'looks good' or 'edit' can kick a question out of the low quality review queue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask that people not use trivial edits on bad answers to remove it from the queue.  If an answer is in there and you fix an 'i' to an 'I' it is removed from the queue and drastically reduced in visibility - but it still isn't a better answer.  Such changes mean it is *more* likely to get deleted by a moderator rather than a 20k user and this complicates the workflow for a user to edit and undelete the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a 10k user one has the [ability to see the history of *everyone's* activity in a queue](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/184309/165773 &quot;feature announcement at MSE&quot;) and the action took:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;[![https://i.stack.imgur.com/T6rhA.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;20k users, please use this ability to double check edit and looks good reviews that have been booted from the queue to see if a delete vote is necessary on them anyways.  Also, please look at the [10k tools deletes page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=Delete&amp;daterange=last7days) to see if there are delete votes on existing answers that need to be handled.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators (and I dislike telling moderators how to do their job - but I've done so in the past&lt;!-- and will likely do so in the future, until you tell me how to do your job --&gt;), if booting from a queue removes *your* visibility into these flags... well, you've got everything from have a chat with the user to review bans in your utility belt.  With the 10k flag handling gone we (20k users) have less visibility into to handling the answer deletes and its likely you'll need to do more if nothing else changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/T6rhA.png &quot;screen shot: LQ queue history as shown to 10k users&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/history" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28352" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2480" RevisionGUID="55804a1e-2b12-4750-9c27-e58203566393" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just out of curiosity, I clicked to order the questions by vote count, and was surprised that 7 out of the top 15 questions were closed as not-constructive, duplicate, etc. While I wouldn't argue that these questions shouldn't have been closed under the contemporary definition(s) of what is (was) on-topic here, I *would* argue that philosophically all questions are answerable, and the replies to even so-called &quot;unanswerable&quot; questions are often incredibly useful. There isn't one type of answerable question, nor do answers necessarily come in prescribable forms.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions at P.SE are inherently unlike questions on StackOverflow because there isn't necessarily a particular coding problem to solve which either works or doesn't. To me, P.SE is the BA version of SO (vs. the BS). One is more pragmatic (even dogmatic), the other philosophical, well-rounded and open-minded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would argue that consensus is the true &quot;right&quot; answer and 500+ votes for an answer among 300 other answers is more valuable to me than a 5 vote answer out of 7 that is arbitrarily chosen by a stranger who often isn't competent enough to know the difference before asking. To me, the very act of asking a question eliminates the potential for authority sufficient to recommend a proper answer. I care more about the community answer (i.e. the vote count), which from time to time veers obliquely from the chosen answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is answerable in the SO-style pragmatic sense, *that* system works wonderfully. However, I feel that for the 7 top-voted questions mentioned above that have been closed, the answer comes in a different, but no less useful, form.  Perhaps more useful. To my mind, so-called open-ended or chatty questions are **answerable, but not choosable**, and maybe that's a good thing, and should be allowed, especially since almost half of the top 15 questions more or less fit this description.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I'm not absolutely sure what a community wiki status is, how it comes about, etc. and I can't easily find any documentation on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##The magnificent seven&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Links to the 7 closed questions out of the current top 15* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t  &#xD;&#xA;    *closed as Not Constructive* &#xD;&#xA;2. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil  &#xD;&#xA;    *closed as Not Constructive* &#xD;&#xA;3. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/30449/is-4-5-years-the-midlife-crisis-for-a-programming-career  &#xD;&#xA;    *closed as Too Localized* &#xD;&#xA;4. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/perks-for-new-programmers  &#xD;&#xA;    *closed as Not Constructive* &#xD;&#xA;5. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/91350/what-should-every-programmer-know  &#xD;&#xA;    *closed as Exact Duplicate* &#xD;&#xA;6. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/20407/will-high-reputation-in-stack-overflow-help-to-get-a-good-job  &#xD;&#xA;    *closed as Not Constructive* &#xD;&#xA;7. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/91629/best-java-book-you-have-read-so-far  &#xD;&#xA;    *closed as Not Constructive* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28353" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7923" RevisionGUID="fb6a2bf9-1b7d-480b-81dc-d52a0b4ba08d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just noticed a recent change on this old question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/79041/how-to-apologize-when-you-have-broken-the-nightly-build&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some &quot;senior&quot; member of Programmers added [tag:xkcd-1305], while (to me) the question has nothing to do with http://www.xkcd.com/1305/.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, what to do? Can someone please explain the relation?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28354" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="565" RevisionGUID="09839a95-af1e-4e3b-8ac3-7fb8c2cff034" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Hi,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I found out that my eyes get tired when I spend more then 10 minutes on [the site][1] and this is because of the small difference between the colors used for visited/unvisited posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![unvisited][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![visited][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this going to be changed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks in advance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S. Sorry, if this is not the right place for this question, or if inappropriately tagged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/bIbSf.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LvQa7.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28355" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3976" RevisionGUID="0407d15e-85cc-4599-95d5-610c8773cf00" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I agree with you. 100%. [This link][1] should not go to a 404 error.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Replacing the link with a 404 is stupid. It is godawful stupid. It's, &quot;I'm going to fire the person who did this,&quot; stupid. Intuitive behavior would be to respond with **301 redirect**. *But it doesn't do that.* It responds with a 404.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All 400 level errors imply that the **user** made an error. But in this case, the user did **not** make an error. The user navigated to a URL that has been valid for years, and it is completely reasonable to expect that the link should continue to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Be careful to make the distinction: I said NOT say that the behavior of the link should remain unchanged. I said that the link should still WORK, and a 301 redirect to the blog will cause the desired effect while still allowing the link to work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stop telling users to go f*** themselves. Change it to a 301 redirect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Apparently what is obvious to *most people* (+18/-5 at the time of my writing this) is not good enough, so here it goes with the long winded explanation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Principle #1 - The User Comes First&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it amazing that I have to say this, but I guess if everyone knew this, the software world would be a different place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The attitude that I (and those I work with) have about programming revolves around the user. We're not writing code for ourselves. We're writing code for the user. The North Star of programming is that our code should be for the betterment of the world (or in this case, the internet).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is here that we agree--we're trying to make the internet a better place. The point that you have consistently ignored is for **who** are we trying to make the internet a better place for. We're not doing it for ourselves. We're doing it for those who use the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You spent a lot of time typing that response, but what is amazing is how little you mentioned the user and how often you mentioned yourself. In fact, it takes little effort to find regions where you talk almost exclusively about yourself, only taking a break to talk **negatively** about the user:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Although I do not have any expectations for appreciation for my&#xD;&#xA;&gt; efforts to give back to the community, I am not a moron and will not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; freely volunteer my time to promote the community through an activity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that has absolutely nothing to do with my diamond status when this is&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what I get for it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; At some point you got to say enough is enough. I've removed the url&#xD;&#xA;&gt; from the blog post, so users who would deliberatily click on a link&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that says &quot;hey, this is deleted&quot; won't have a bad experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, &quot;Me Me Me Me Me. If the user clicks on a dead link, its their fault.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That doesn't cut it. The user comes first. Always. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your actions were not made with the user in mind. Quite the opposite in fact. Your actions were (and are) irresponsible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Principle #2 - Error Messages Are Inherently Rude&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Software developers are terrible at this. We just throw up an error and expect the user to deal with it. The problem with error messages is that they rarely do enough to remedy the problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Imagine if I walked into your office and said, &quot;Your code has a bug in it.&quot; You'd likely ask, &quot;Where did you find the bug? What did it do? Can you recreate it on my machine?&quot; These are normal questions to ask. Now imagine that I simply repeated myself and said, &quot;Your code has a bug in it.&quot; Imagine that no matter what, I constantly repeated that. You'd become incredibly annoyed with me and would consider me to be arrogant, because I am not telling you all of the information I know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is the problem with error messages. They rarely (if ever) do anything to remedy the problem they report. It is very common that error code will know an extensive amount about the problem, and many times, will have the ability to fix it (or at least get around it). But programmers can be lazy, and that is the result. They take the easy way at the expense of the user.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its not always obvious what is meant when someone says, &quot;The code could have fixed (or gotten around) the problem,&quot; so here's an example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets say I'm writing Microsoft Word, I'm opening a word document, and I encounter an error. Here's an example of a error message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ERROR: Could not open document.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a terrible error message. It tells the user absolutely nothing (except, perhaps, that the programmer needs to be fired). Here's a slightly better example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ERROR: Could not open document. The file is locked for editing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is better, but is still terrible. Rather than saying, &quot;I'm a sucky piece of software,&quot; this error message says, &quot;I'm a sucky piece of software, and here's why.&quot; Continuing to improve:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ERROR: Could not open document. The file is locked for editing by user 'riwalk'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We're slowly getting better. Now the error says, &quot;I'm a sucky piece of software, but if you go bug the user 'riwalk', things might get better.&quot; Lets keep improving:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    ERROR: Could not open document. The file is locked for editing by user 'riwalk'. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;                 Would you like to open a readonly copy? (Y/N)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, for the first time, we've offered a solution. Someone else already has the file open, so obviously its a popular file. Maybe I just want to read it? Maybe opening a readonly solution and doing a &quot;Save As&quot; is an acceptable solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But now the question is, why should I even have to ask the user? Will the user ever say, &quot;No&quot;? Why don't I just open the file in readonly mode and tell the user what I did to fix things? Now, instead of an error message, we simply display an inline message between the document and the toolbar that says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    NOTICE: This document is currently locked for editing by user 'riwalk' and has been&#xD;&#xA;                               opened in readonly mode.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a user friendly message. It acknowledges that while there are technical limitations that stop the user from completing the request, we can still get around it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now what does this have to do with P.SE? You're actions caused an error message that lies somewhere between the first and second one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The 404 error page basically says, &quot;Well I know what you were *trying* to do, but I'm a sucky piece of software, so I'm just going to show you an error message instead.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Are you making the web a better place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Who knows? Everyone is trying. Not everyone succeeds. Let the masses judge our efforts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bigger question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Are you making the web a WORSE place?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one has an answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;***YES!!!***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the goal of software developers is to help the user with meaningful error messages, then I can confidently say that *you are making the web a worse place*. You're creating 404 messages despite the fact that the intent of the user was **obvious**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't say that no one notices. This thread exists because people noticed. You're making the web a worse place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## So, what should be done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nothing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, almost nothing. Change it back to what it was.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to stop worrying so much about the past. So there are old questions out there that we wouldn't consider appropriate today. Fine. Just put a message on them and stop worrying about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Paradoxically, you're spending so much time worrying about making the web a better place, that you are **confidently** making it a worse place. When you're in a hole, stop digging.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what *can* you do? Focus on what is being created now. Quickly recognize and close questions that don't meet our current standards. Rather than investing large amounts of time doing crap like this, why don't you invest your time in the [Stack Overflow competition][2] that is trying to prevent questions like the ones we're discussing now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to keep obsessing over these questions, fine. Do whatever the hell you want. Just do me a favor--stop making things worse.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/31104/whats-your-most-controversial-programming-opinion&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-machine-learning-contest/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28356" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="613" RevisionGUID="28836d7e-b203-4e40-99cc-2c4064edd2dd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Since you're going markup, the subtitle should be:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- programming issues beyond coding --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;...or the jQuery unicorns amongst us: (released under the [WTFPD][1] license)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    $(&quot;.issues&quot;).find(&quot;.programming&quot;).not(&quot;.coding&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/13072/alternatives-to-if-else-statement/13077#13077" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28357" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2545" RevisionGUID="bdfc7f69-bb49-478c-ac6b-9427723d9068" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently posted a [question regarding the syntax of Python][1]. It wasn't a _how_ question, it was a _why_ question, specifically wanting an explanation of the reason behind what I consider a quirk of Python. I posted it here on P.SE because I have seen similar questions here before. To make sure I wasn't telling myself a lie, I even did a quick search and found questions such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Why do iterators in Python raise an exception?][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why doesn't Python allow multi-line lambdas?][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why aren't there explicit access modifiers in Python:][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;None of those questions were considered off topic, but mine was. Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;I'm perfectly okay with the question being closed because there is a duplicate on SO; I'm not just trying to vent.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/119412/why-does-python-require-a-colon-at-the-end-of-control-flow-statements&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/112463/why-do-iterators-in-python-raise-an-exception&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/99243/why-doesnt-python-allow-multi-line-lambdas&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/91799/why-arent-there-explicit-access-modifiers-in-python" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28358" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3517" RevisionGUID="fe3ec376-4522-4860-b77c-0d640fe013ab" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I found this question today&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/145832/find-a-hole-in-a-list-of-numbers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For me, it's a very StackOverflow specific question. The op have a very specific task to solve and created a technique-specific-question (algorithm to find holes). The short question and hence the title. I will agree that the answers and reaction of the question is very interesting and contains a strong kind of &quot;Programmers&quot;-style, then it would(?) achieve in StackOverflow. Even I favorited the answer of bit comparision in between 256 integers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though, does it make the question more adequate to Programmers, then SO?&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;I would just like to bring some clearance for later judgement calls,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Edit]&#xD;&#xA;Ok I try to change the title.." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28359" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4047" RevisionGUID="d580c04e-43cd-4dcc-8cae-5b8b9665330b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I went looking for this after [you asked on Meta Stack Overflow][1], and from looking at the [Database schema documentation for the public data dump and Data Explorer][2] there doesn't seem to be an easy way to query for badges per class. The badges table schema is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Badges&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Id&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - UserId, e.g.: &quot;420&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Name, e.g.: &quot;Teacher&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Date, e.g.: &quot;2008-09-15T08:55:03.923&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you are only interested in gold badges, and [there aren't that many of them][3], the simple solution would be to hardcode their IDs in your query.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/148117/badge-that-is-achieved-by-most-number-of-people&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/2677/162704&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=general&amp;filter=gold" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28360" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="651" RevisionGUID="552bcc77-4bda-49cb-8a4c-4df05e5b639a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It really depends on the context of the question. I thought a few times about starting a very definitive proposal for office politics, but I lost enthusiasm once I realized that such a site would be quite depressing, perhaps toxic to the depressed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If a programmer finds his way to our site asking for help, I'd hope that the first question we ask is 'can I help' versus looking for reasons not to help. Granted, some questions that have been asked are just in outer space, but according to our community (if votes mean anything), most questions are on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone finds a new incarnation for a question, **I'm fine with that**, it just increases the chances of others finding the site. If someone attempts [a breaching experiment][1] that I feel is harmful to our community or goes against our purpose, I'll vote to close it. Example [here][2]. I've done such experiments myself, simply by [picking up litter in Singapore][3]. There are constructive ways to do most anything.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think you might be underestimating the power of those of us that the system has learned to trust. If the question _is_ off topic, it will be closed. It may take a few days, but it will be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps you were expecting faster results? If so, why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaching_experiment&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/24930/131&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://www.google.com/search?q=laws+against+littering+in+singapore" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28361" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7932" RevisionGUID="f7cb4134-a916-4dcf-ba38-a85e9417b8b9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/312197/52929&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I made a significant edit to make this question more appropriately scoped here and less &quot;tell me why my coworker is wrong.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reopen votes?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28362" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2547" RevisionGUID="16f3a617-315a-4336-8ec7-4d872907109c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Personally, I'm fine with &quot;why did X do it this way?&quot;-type questions as long as they meet two criteria:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. They're asking about historical language/compiler design decisions and *not* coding conventions. So, asking [why iterators raise an exception in Python](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/112463/why-do-iterators-in-python-raise-an-exception) is fine, asking why programmers write jokes in comments is not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. They're not rants. This is more of a &quot;it's not what you ask but how you ask it&quot; criterion, but from seeing the questions come in and how they play out over the past year, if a question starts with a rant, people address the rant instead of the content of the question. We don't want back-and-forth discussions about whether or not people are justified in thinking X decision is dumb or silly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So with those two personal criteria in mind, I'd say your question is okay, with the caveat that if the answers go south, it'd be closed again as *not constructive*. However, if consensus is that the question is on-topic, I think it's probably better we just get Stack Overflow to migrate the original one instead of reasking something that's already been answered." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28363" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6621" RevisionGUID="283fc224-092f-447d-af79-db3d8d0da2cf" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="###Please seat comfortable and take some time. I will not be synthetic, but it will be interesting, try to read it completely and see if you like. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to judge only after reading the whole document :-)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Have a look to this question: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251758/why-is-stack-overflow-so-negative-of-late&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It got 5 hundred upvotes in a really few time by both the people who thinks that SO is too much harsh and restrictive, and the people who would like to have a more strict rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason is that this discussion doesn't express an opinion. Doesn't make a suggestion on how to solve the problem or why there is a problem. But allows everyone to express his own idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Here][1] a famous write well explain how to speak to win and influence people. For curious men, the reason is bound to self-esteem. You can Google for: confirmation bias, [rationalization][2], psychological self-defense.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to scientific evidence human tries to find / see only the evidences which confirms their own opinions, this is a self-defense mechanism for protecting the self-esteem. This mechanism is made through [Rationalization][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - This means that human prefer to be asked their opinion instead of listening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Means that human prefer to confirm their idea instead of revising them&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - Means that they try to see only the evidence which confirms their own ideas&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; These are not theories. **All this stuff is completely supported by tons&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of search made by brain [fMRI][4] and so on**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What does all this stuff means? Why I'm saying that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because it's really important to understand that human being should not completely trust themselves. We have a strong bias towards confirming our own ideas. So we should always make a strong effort to deeply listen and understand if other people opinion is in someway right, and if ours is in someway bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another very important stuff which you should think of. Is that *when an individual is put inside a flow of ideas, like a community, he will tend to polarize in that direction and look for confirmation that all that ideas are completely correct, good and so on.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Most of individual will stop trying to see alternative possibility. It is called [Conformity][5].**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Now, according to what I said from Dale Carnegie it's not convenient for me to express an opinion which goes against the **beliefs** of other people. Because this would wound their self-esteem.* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I'm not good at this, and I hope you to be mature enough to deeply think on what I reported here. I'm pretty sure to get dozen of downvotes, and this is not a good signal, but hope is the last stuff to die.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*The **main** objective of SE is **to spread knowledge** or **to classify which question are of a good quality and allowed**?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Are we here **to learn** or **to instruct a neural network** how to recognize 'good' (better to say allowed) questions?*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both are objective, but which is the MAIN one?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is probably against many rules. At the same time it strongly spreading information (for the definition of information spreading look at [Information Gain][6]).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also this question was a bit against the rules but it was spreading some information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/236941/learning-r-and-related-concepts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Have you ever deeply thought on all this stuff?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_%28making_excuses%29&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_%28making_excuses%29&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_magnetic_resonance_imaging&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1859554/what-is-entropy-and-information-gain" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28364" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="686" RevisionGUID="5b17a2e3-0601-44ff-b98e-87d3a63415b4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've voted to close [this question][1], but it shows no close vote, but when I vote to close again it says I've already voted.  See pics.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![No close number][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Already closed][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/26793/which-nosql-databases-every-programmer-should-know-about&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/YZp6f.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PTYzj.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28365" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5529" RevisionGUID="1da7d34b-d45b-429d-be42-3ed0bb12d2de" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Karl](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5526/1130) and [Shog](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5527/1130) have both provided good answers about why questions like this can be worthwhile, but I'd also like to point out that [we've had this discussion][1] in the past about history questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was sparked by the question [Why are statements in many programming languages terminated by semicolons?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/139482/1130), and per the top-voted and accepted answer on [that meta discussion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3325/1130), &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question came up in chat yesterday, and a point was made that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programming History is often overlooked on P.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; To [quote Mark Trapp][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Save for the accepted answer, I thought the semicolons question was&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; pretty good. Programming history has always been an overlooked aspect&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &gt; of Programmers's scope.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; So although the question is probably not relevant to a programmer job&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in today's world, it does provide some insight into the history of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programming languages, which can possibly be used for future&#xD;&#xA;&gt; decisions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have not seen any other discussions on meta since then about changing our policy on history questions, so I would say yes, this question is on-topic and should be left open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3325/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/3908862#3908862" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28366" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3519" RevisionGUID="a6f8b2dc-c01f-4610-b3d4-24a4726a3238" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Answers to this question involved facts, and yet it was closed as 'Not Constructive'. Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/146009/a-single-language-to-learn-to-develop-desktop-and-mobile-phone-applications" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28367" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5589" RevisionGUID="0c490ef3-da7c-4d6e-998f-94fe6f58099d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a discussion in the comments on [this question about empirical support for commenting code](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/187722/are-there-any-empirical-studies-about-the-effects-of-commenting-source-code-on-s) to the effect that &quot;resource request&quot; questions are off-topic. It refers to [Why did a question about programming books get closed on Programmers.SE?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5454/why-did-a-question-about-programming-books-get-closed-on-programmers-se) here on meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've asked on programmers before for [empirical evidence in favour of paradigm selection](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/162789/empirical-evidence-for-choice-of-programming-paradigm-to-address-a-problem), a question which didn't attract the same response about requesting resources.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a difference between asking for a book/books and for research literature? Should some of these questions be considered on-topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28368" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2594" RevisionGUID="1b9c0117-7fd6-4a8c-bb22-dafa0378a710" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You're right that the https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46260/how-long-would-it-take-to-learn-objective-c question is not suitable for this site. It has now been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question, unfortunately, isn't suitable either. As Mark Trapp said in his comment on your question, Programmers is not a career advice site and we cannot predict whether or not employers will like your education or degree. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please check out our [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) to see what kind of conceptual questions about software development Programmers is about." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28369" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4108" RevisionGUID="04554121-1ca8-4798-bfae-a0604c2cf5d0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Believe me, I'd be the first in line to shut down recommendation questions if there was a real problem, or if there was a good reason to, but I'm not seeing either here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How are we doing right now in handling these types of questions? Are the current policies sufficient or are there more concrete policies that would be best implemented?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's hard to tell how we're handling these types of questions without a significant amount of data demonstrating a problem. You've cited two questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/168144/books-for-exam-487-developing-windows-azure-and-web-services&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/168145/books-for-exam-486-asp-net-4-5-mvc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They were both asked by the same person in rapid succession relatively about the same topic and both are absolutely terrible. If these two questions are demonstrative of an alleged problem with book recommendation questions, then I don't see it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The biggest issue with their closing is that they were closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; instead of what they are: not real questions. The &quot;not constructive&quot; close reason seems to be used more and more as the &quot;I don't care why it's closed, just close it&quot; reason, which dilutes its meaning and causes ambiguity about why questions don't belong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with these questions aren't that they are asking for a book, it's that they don't describe anything about the problem the user is having, or rather *why* the user is asking the question, to afford a useful response. They're like asking, &quot;tell me what book will teach me everything and anything about Java.&quot; Where to begin? Questions *must* narrow the scope down to a *specific* problem, otherwise, they don't belong here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because the two cited questions are incomplete in this respect, they're not real questions. They'd be &quot;not constructive&quot; if they had asked something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What's your favorite way to study for Exam 486?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;Exam 487 really sucks, how am I supposed to study for this stupid exam?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;How does Exam 486 make you feel (as a programmer)?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;What are some tips and tricks for overcoming my inability to take Exam 487 seriously?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;My co-worker/buddy/priest/cat says *X* book is the best for Exam 486. Help me prove him/her/it wrong.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Without expertise in the subject matter, how do people (especially moderators who might have to act on a flag) know if there is a singular &quot;canonical&quot; book on the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's not the guideline for books, and it's not up to anyone (much less moderators) to determine ahead of time (or during the act of moderation) whether there is a single canonical book for a subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Instead, mimicking the guidelines in &quot;[Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][1]&quot;, and as I described in &quot;[What's up with all the book recommendation flags?][2]&quot;, the important things are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **the topic asked about is *capable* of providing a canonical book on the subject.** The application of this criteria requires common sense. Java doesn't count. PHP doesn't count. NLP for Big Data probably does. F# or any other boutique language probably does. If someone's really in doubt whether something counts, do an [Amazon.com search][3] for the subject. If there's over 10,000 hits, it doesn't count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **the questions sufficiently describes a situation or problem space that invites converging on a small number of correct answers.** &quot;What are some good books on F#?&quot; sucks. &quot;Coming from a purely C# background, I'm trying to add F# to my repertoire. What is the definitive [read: canonical] book for getting up to speed with idiomatic F#?&quot; doesn't, or at least sucks a lot less. If in doubt, wait. If the question attracts dozens of answers, that's a problem. If it settles on 3–5, awesome. If there's a dozen but only a couple of really stand-out answers, cull the herd and protect the question if necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Neither of these guidelines require domain-specific knowledge of the question; just an understanding of how to ask a good question, which is something anyone moderating (diamond or otherwise) should have a good handle on.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What happens to topic areas covered by a small number of resources now (such as the latest language or library) down the road, when it is more popular and prevalent? Might resource requests, perhaps, be too localized since the available (and perhaps even what is considered canonical) change over the course of time?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Irrelevant: [Stack Exchange is designed to handle changing answers][4], even rapidly changing answers, through frictionless editing. Answers for pretty much any subject or problem change over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Problems arise trying to keep questions up to date when there are dozens of posts to maintain, which is why [there are guidelines and technical features][5] that kick in once a question starts getting over 15-30 answers. Per the guidelines for book recommendation questions, this is a non-issue for them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So unless there's some other reason, not mentioned, to shut them down now, I don't see anything that's cause for a policy change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2666/8&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://amazon.com&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/87415/149432&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2321/8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28370" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7952" RevisionGUID="d7765e6c-ae6f-4094-8558-12ea544ce16e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/312680/52929&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I made a fairly significant edit to remove the &quot;which language should I pick?&quot; part of this question and focus on the core question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Understanding how to decide when to move away from bash scripts is a question I think most programmers face and one where I believe there is a good, systematic approach towards understanding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This got mod-clobbered right around when I edited it, for good reason, but this did not reflect the substantial edit I made." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28371" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="901" RevisionGUID="cbbe9651-cb5a-4299-b9e5-e68727775bed" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This site is apparently 1/2 full of closed questions because we can't discuss anything that shouldn't already be on SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If many interesting, useful questions with dozens of posts and votes are getting closed non-stop, maybe there should be a place for those questions.  There is obviously a demand for questions such as this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/33058/most-innovative-or-helpful-tool-library-technology-practice-you-use-that-you-feel&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a different SE site I should be using or is are questions without one concrete answer beyond the scope of SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28372" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3580" RevisionGUID="1d656150-8622-42e2-9160-c2c01efcfe60" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So since we've been round about today on Constructive Questions, should https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/148108/why-is-global-state-so-evil be closed?  It is essentially a subjective matter, likely to result in a list, and seems to be geared toward a discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should I vote to close, merely laugh at the responses, or pile on?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28373" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2596" RevisionGUID="a5150320-4418-48f3-afd3-120538ecc248" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You should spent some time familiarizing yourself with the site, before forming an opinion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've asked a question that's clearly off topic, if you've taken the time to read the [faq][1] as @MarkTrapp and @AnnaLear suggested you would have seen that career advice and resume help are considered off topic. And then you asked this question on the main site instead of here at meta, no worries it got migrated, but still you could have avoided it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The guidelines of the site are simple, and if you disagree with them you can always start a meta discussion and change them, if your proposals gain enough support from the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**As for the specifics of your question:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is anyone supposed to know? The only way to get a helpful answer is from someone that were at some point in a very similar situation, but even then how could you tell if her experiences will match yours? The best that could come out of your question would be a subjective discussion, and these don't fit the QA format. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, I can tell you that the Open University is highly regarded in most FSTE companies, but how could I prove that I'm not just re-iterating their marketing department? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And how could anyone compare Open University to &quot;traditional bricks and mortar university&quot;, unless you tell us which one? Cambridge University or University of Luton? If the choice is between Luton and Open employers will greatly prefer Open&lt;sup&gt;\*&lt;/sup&gt;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question generates quite a few questions, and that's almost always a sign that [it's not a very good one][2]. But in the off chance you do get a great answer, how would that be helpful to anyone other than you? We like questions that can potentially be helpful to the community, and we don't like questions that can only be helpful to an individual. *We are not that shallow*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**As for that &quot;not a real question&quot; question you fished out:** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately there are quite a lot of those that are still open, some are just because no one else discovered them and some because in the early days of the site some subjective questions that fall under the &quot;[bad subjective][3]&quot; category were allowed and even encouraged. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*After* you familiarized yourself with the site's scope and mechanics you could greatly help the site grow and evolve by searching for them and [flagging them appropriately][4]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;\* Not to badmouth the University of Luton, but a thousand years ago when I was a student in the UK its reputation was, let's say, less than stellar.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/flag-posts" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28374" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5590" RevisionGUID="d94bd54a-b87e-43f6-9629-04c74cccbbce" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My answer, to be treated as a straw man if required:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There _is_ a difference between &quot;is there a canonical book on [x]?&quot;, the subject of the question closed in the linked meta discussion, and &quot;are there empirical studies on [x]?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers to questions of the first form are likely to be laundry lists, or single-entry &quot;I like [y]&quot; responses. These are unhelpful; &quot;I like [y]&quot; is not a valuable answer, and &quot;I like [y] because…&quot; solicits _polling and extended debate_ which is not valued here. Furthermore, these questions imply the existence of a _real question_ (&quot;how do I do this using [x]&quot; or similar) that is not being asked and answered here, reducing the value of this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answers to questions of the second form give readers information from which to form their own conclusions. If an answer discusses a study, for example &quot;there is [z] published in 1995, which I consider irrelevant because…&quot;, readers can choose to read [z] and decide for themselves; particularly, they can read [z] in context with the sources presented by other answers. The first-form request for &quot;a canonical book&quot; suggests that the intention is not to read _every_ book, but to be told the _one_ that needs reading.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are still problems with questions of the second form; the risk of extended debate is not mitigated. See the [comments on this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/187722/are-there-any-empirical-studies-about-the-effects-of-commenting-source-code-on-s) as a demonstration that even _whether empirical results have value at all_ is a contentious issue. There's also the difficulty of _choosing an accepted answer_; if multiple answers provide multiple, distinct sources then none of them is &quot;the&quot; answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28375" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="912" RevisionGUID="b611ca1a-3d4a-4653-88a0-f2e625769a13" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Today I saw my reputation go down and up with a strange behavior. Then I got the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![alt text][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I shouldn't have **217** but **215**. 200 for &quot;normal&quot; reputation (capped) + 15 for the accepted answer. Maybe this is something you wanted to be aware of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it has something to do with down votes I got after cap was reached, then got new reputation point, and now new cap is calculated incorrectly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**: I did something unusual. I deleted one of my [answer][2] (link) that got 4 upvotes and one downvote (the answer did not answer the question at all). Maybe this *case* is so specific (cap + deleted question with up/down votes + accepted answer) ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/jvbaD.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/33986/software-consultancy-or-in-house-developement/33990#33990" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28376" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5127" RevisionGUID="dfd2d6d7-01d1-4c36-b585-9f4517c64e47" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You have asked 8 questions in total, 4 of them deleted. Here's a breakdown:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [How to use a switch statement with enum efficiently?][1] (+5, open)&#xD;&#xA;- [How faster an IIf is as compared to if and in when to use it?][2] (+1, open)&#xD;&#xA;- [What are the pros and cons of multiple inheritance?][3] (+1, closed),&#xD;&#xA;- [How to climb up the hierarchy from a programmer (codesmith) to a full-fledged Software Engineer?][4] (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;- A good book on managing software projects in MS Project and Visio (-2, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- Why Java does not support mutidimentional arrays, unlike C or Fortran? (-7, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- How to teach computer programming to a 9 year old kid? (-3, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- Which programming language to go for in order to learn Object Oriented Programming? (-3, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Out of a total of 8 questions, only 2 are open. That's... not good. Please follow the instructions given in the [link on the question ban message][5] and keep in mind that the ban is automatic, there is nothing anyone can do to reverse it, it's completely up to you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/126886/how-to-use-a-switch-statement-with-enum-efficiently&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/122213/how-faster-an-iif-is-as-compared-to-if-and-in-when-to-use-it&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/122480/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-multiple-inheritance&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/127545/how-to-climb-up-the-hierarchy-from-a-programmer-codesmith-to-a-full-fledged-so&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28377" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7969" RevisionGUID="fe35029a-4ac0-4651-a176-8e1ac8ed9a49" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/313233/in-my-situation-how-could-i-learn-to-program-without-a-mentor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears to be off-topic here, I've made a mistake assuming this site is about all things programming. Is there a site in the roster that this quesiton fits?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28378" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3621" RevisionGUID="2e2d5adc-2a98-4b8a-8a0a-cafca00b0750" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/150266/is-c-too-hard&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You keep editing it to bring back the question, yet insisted it be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You won't let me delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ridiculous." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28379" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6645" RevisionGUID="c9e53217-35b5-4016-b5a5-cf184dec1d2c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The first thing to realize is all but one of these questions have five close votes. Not a single one is there a review by you with a close vote review of 'leave open' on it.  That is the best time to act on them if they are to remain open rather than closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In most cases, the reopen review was done by three *different* people than who did the close votes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/236533/what-are-the-benefits-of-exotic-languages-and-scripts (reopen review: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/60905 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This question is too broad with three nested questions in it.  It is asking for people's opinions on things &quot;Why would somebody explicitly want this?&quot; and asking for a poll of the reasons for the original request (on Software Recommendation) reasoning.  We can't know what the reason is, we are only guessing and giving our opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/235042/what-are-the-perks-and-drawbacks-of-using-html-templates-versus-building-the-htm (reopen review: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/58877 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This question is a poll.  Plain and simple.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; what are other advantages and disadvantages of both approaches?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It can get dozens more answers and *still* not have a right answer.  There is no problem posed in the question.  There can be no answers solving the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/234699/segregating-interfaces-concerns-to-a-tree&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Apparently this one has been reopened from being a dup.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/230784/is-a-degree-in-cs-and-a-degree-in-se-the-same-thing (Reopen review: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/56022 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This question is asking about career and education and is asking questions specific to the curriculum at various universities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/230486/giving-team-members-more-decision-making-power-led-to-very-long-arguments-block (I couldn't find a reopen review on this one)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I'd argue its a better fit for PM.SE.  The question is one more of project management than methodologies and working with the *people* more than the *patterns*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/230271/is-procedural-programming-the-root-of-all-object-oriented-evil (Reopen review https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/56018 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Seriously?&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Is procedural programming the root of all object oriented evil?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   You've got debate forming language right in the question title. If you think this can be a good question, *edit it* into one that isn't inflammatory and isn't trying to spark a debate or discussion. You have just as much ability to fix the issue as other people do and appear to have a better idea of what the proper question *should* be.  When answers start out with &quot;I think the problem is not so much...&quot; you've got answers that are going to try to discuss this and debate it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/224275/why-are-there-so-few-comments-in-c-c-code (Reopen review: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/49492 ) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question is speculation about a particular culture.  I've seen wonderfully documented C.  I've seen awfully documented C.  The comments fairly well sum it up with that it is who you are dealing with and the culture. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;8. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/227983/how-do-we-go-from-assembly-to-machine-codecode-generation (I couldn't find a reopen review for this)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- this is likely an Andy sock --&gt; This question is asking some questions but lacks the associated information about what is understood.  The question was risked with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/229346/how-does-assembly-relate-to-machine-binary-code that included additional information that remains open. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/227743/coming-from-high-level-to-c (Reopen review: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/52927 )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   This question is a combination of career advice and what language should I learn next. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Coming from high-level languages, should I go down the ladder (to Java, then C++, then C) or just skip to the bottom (C) and go up from there if I need?&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Is learning C with Internet tutorials easy, or even recommended?&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; Do I need C for common software? Does my knowing C help me with coding high level?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Those three questions are the epitome of the close reasons given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/224356/debugging-checklists-how-much-its-necessary-to-have (Reopen review https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/50374 (had one 'reopen' vote) )&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  On the surface, this question is too broad, polling for people's suggestions on debugging checklists.  I should also stress that the original question that at least some votes where on was against the question:&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Should making debug-checklists be an essential part of development process? How it can be integrated with unit-tests?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  which was the entirety of the question.  The question now has a long rambling update which presents a revised question of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; If the above example could save myself or another developer 10-15 minutes of looking around to find the problem, should we make it mandatory for every developer to write this kind of checklists when they spot something that's potential to be source of a problem on a specific part of application later?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  At that point, the question becomes one of opinion.  If focused down to what the question really is, and the problem rather than the poll, it might be something to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to point out that *every single* reopen review except one that I was able to find was a unanimous &quot;Leave Closed&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just tossing a reopen vote on a closed question will likely *not* get it reopened.  If the question is to be reopened it likely needs some work of some sort - an edit to fix the issues raised in the close vote reason (and possibly some that don't show up in the close vote majority reason).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fix the question, then vote to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * Provide a notification to anyone capable of casting reopen votes (3000+ rep) when a question they upvoted or answered has been closed, or&#xD;&#xA;* Allow some means of casting reopen votes before a question is closed, and&#xD;&#xA;* Time out the downvoting and close voting privileges of people who vote to close a question that is later reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first item is addressed on MSE: [Notify upvoters and answerers when a question is closed](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/133660/notify-upvoters-and-answerers-when-a-question-is-closed) and was status-declined.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second item is addressed on MSE: [You should be able to vote to reopen a question before it is actually closed](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/33259/you-should-be-able-to-vote-to-reopen-a-question-before-it-is-actually-closed), [How about a “Vote not to close” option to counter the “Vote to close”?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/125/how-about-a-vote-not-to-close-option-to-counter-the-vote-to-close).  The key here is to do reviews - thats where the 'remove from queue' functionality is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The third point, I'd suggest that you ask that on MSE instead. &lt;!-- I don't want to dignify it with a response --&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28380" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2604" RevisionGUID="da7cf11a-a950-4928-8e1e-7cc7f5a270b0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm torn. Some of the questions seem good, most others don't. But I can't exactly figure out where that line is. I think it has to do with localization (time and space), topicality, and specificality of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of the questions are vague or wide reaching. Like the ones about [cowboy coding][1], [chosing to study IT][2], and [happiness in the IT industry][3]. Either there's not a significant body of research, it's mostly polls/surveys, or they are so broad that there's a gratitutious amount of information out there. I don't see how these questions make the Internet a better place by being asked/answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Others are off-topic. The [programming linguistics question][4] is clearly asking about things from a linguist's perspective, not a programmer's perspective, for example.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few are too localized in time and space. Things like [geographic differences in work environments][5] and [market conditions][6] fall into this category, especially in today's world where communication and cultural exchange is so easy and the technological landscape changes rapidly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, there are good ones. [Deadlock resolution][9] came up in not one, but two software engineering courses that I took as an undergraduate (concurrent systems and real-time/embedded systems). [Coding productivity][10] might also fall into this category - maximizing productivity of an employee is a concern of managers, but I'm not sold on it as it's very individualized and specific to a given programmer and team. There are also good questions about people making cases - I frequently need to present improvement suggestions in terms of software quality, productivity, and the bottom line (among other things), so questions like the [debugging question][11] that help identify reputable sources that can be cited in such a document might be useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As long as the question is about something that's on-topic, it's targeted to/about software development professionals, and it's specific enough to provide pointed answers, I don't see why it shouldn't stay (unless, of course, it has a better home somewhere else).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Like I said, I typically need to provide reputable, citable data as to why X is better/worse than Y (if such data exists), and &quot;because Bob on Programmers told his success/failure story&quot; isn't good enough, although it does help to make the point. The collective Internet (ie: Programmers) has read more reputable, published material than any single individual, and would be able to point me toward citable resources (including things that indicate the opposite).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also wonder if there's a student angle here. I can't come up with a question that's not &quot;do my research for me&quot;, but there might be something I'm not thinking of. I don't think Programmers should be a place for someone to ask the Internet for every resource they need to write a paper, but there might be some take on how questions like this can add value to students, especially those writing Masters or Ph.D. level work if they hit a block (especially in applied topics and case studies, rather than just academic research). But perhaps not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I don't know about other people, but I love when I get my IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering or ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology in the mail. Although take what I say with a grain of salt - I'm an empirical software engineer that specializes in process and methodology. So, to me, these numbers and research results drive what I do. I might be a bit biased.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/121953/what-data-is-available-regarding-cowboy-coding&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/55062/what-motivates-students-to-choose-a-cs-it-track&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/14299/why-is-it-programming-the-profession-with-the-least-happy-people&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/60282/has-there-been-research-into-programming-linguistics&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/87851/is-there-any-research-out-there-on-geographic-differences-in-work-environments&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/60439/programming-languages-and-credible-data-on-market-conditions&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/108991/how-many-developers-should-a-software-company-have&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57420/which-specific-programming-activities-do-women-on-average-perform-better-than&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/108735/schemes-to-resolve-deadlocks&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/92580/are-there-any-studies-that-correlate-time-spent-coding-and-productivity&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/91758/debugging-facts-and-statistics" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28381" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="950" RevisionGUID="c7b5dd46-7609-42d0-aefb-18956d8bfa7b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So we can ask questions like https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/35887/why-programmers-when-stackoverflow-already-exists" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28382" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3683" RevisionGUID="4c99efa5-ba8f-4f3a-832c-3a5bf60c9e09" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question][1] got me nostalgic about the days of built-in BASIC interpreters in home computers, and typing in programs from books (glory days!), then I remembered a series of books from my youth aimed at teaching BASIC to young kids. While I have a clear recollection of the content, I no longer remember titles or publisher. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would asking about this on P.SE be on topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/23816/fiction-that-includes-basic-programs" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28383" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5628" RevisionGUID="62c9de24-e65f-4429-a8ae-bf8d67f7a8a2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/188455/why-do-programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-braces-and-not-square-ones&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This post has generated very rapid close/reopen votes along with an extended discussion in the comments. I have cleaned up the comments, but brought some relevant points here, attributing them to the author. Please use this Meta question to discuss the merits and appropriateness of this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have cleaned up the extended discussion as well as the low-quality answers to the post. Please resume discussion here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only person who can answer this is Dennis Ritchie and he's dead. A&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reasonable guess is that [] were already taken for arrays. – [Dirk&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Holsopple][1]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @SomeKittens: Sorry, but the fact that you are curious about it&#xD;&#xA;&gt; doesn't make the question on topic here. As you can see from the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answers nobody knows and it's just a discussion of options, what we&#xD;&#xA;&gt; mostly avoid on this site. – [thorsten müller][2]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @thorstenmüller MichaelT makes good observations though, and that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; looks almost like an answer. I'm not experienced enough on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.se to judge what is on topic but it looks like an&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interesting question to me. – [dystroy][3]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Voting to close. See [Are programming-related history/trivia questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; acceptable on P.SE?][4] That, along with the fact that this doesn't&#xD;&#xA;&gt; seem to be related to a real problem, makes this off topic and not&#xD;&#xA;&gt; constructive. – [Caleb][5]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @SomeKittens It's still difficult to see how this is an actual&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problem. If you find reaching for the shift key tiring, there's no&#xD;&#xA;&gt; shortage of software on any major platform to help you remap your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; keyboard. Indeed, one has to wonder why you're looking to change what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you type to suit your (archaic) keyboard rather than changing your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; keyboard to suit what you type. But I don't think that's a terribly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; constructive question either -- just do whatever suits you. –&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Caleb][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/60900/dirk-holsopple&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/13866/thorsten-muller&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/52680/dystroy&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2021/are-programming-related-history-trivia-questions-acceptable-on-p-se/2029#2029&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/20011/caleb&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/20011/caleb&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28384" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5130" RevisionGUID="f38431c9-770b-4062-9a6b-465675a87750" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am referring to this question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/170059/good-literature-for-object-oriented-programming-in-c &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I have seen question like https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/124109/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-design-patterns&#xD;&#xA;And &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/88743/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-parallel-programming-with-focus-on-c &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - are clearly ok. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question is, is literature/book requests by itself wrong? or is three something specifically wrong about my question? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the comment also mentioned that : &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking too much.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not really asking anyone to write a book right here -but I do want to find references which are credible which I can suggest to relatively new poeple. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be honest most book shelves really take you to C++ books which are not what i am asking. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any possibility to improve the question and get it open?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28385" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7976" RevisionGUID="f25fe243-718f-416f-a557-b67e702967d2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/313493/52929&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I made an edit to the original question which was basically, &quot;what programming languages exist to do X?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the site close reasons is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  Questions asking us to find or recommend tools, libraries, programming languages, resources (including books, blogs, tutorials, and examples), or projects to undertake are off-topic on Programmers as they attract opinionated answers that won't have lasting value to others. You may be able to get help in The Whiteboard, our chat room. 2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems this original question fits this criteria exactly as the question as worded was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a programming language that supports this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers are pretty much exactly the problem with such questions as it is a large number of &quot;this language does this!&quot; types of answers, as I write this post there are 15 different answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However it seems the community support is in favor of leaving the question as it originally was worded given several of followup comments and their respective upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should be done with this question? It seems like what might be best is to just rollback my edit and closing the question. The original is obviously off topic and has picked up a lot of answers already." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28386" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2615" RevisionGUID="fc2a84f2-88bf-40e0-a31b-ae33df2e33a9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently marked [a question][1] (subsequently closed as not constructive) as an exact duplicate of another, closed question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another user questioned this as being nonsensical. While the question wasn't an *exact* duplicate, the response to it would be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any reason why not to mark a question as duplicate of an already closed question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/122524/i-studied-electrical-engineering-can-i-work-as-a-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28387" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="996" RevisionGUID="114481d3-d164-497a-8a4b-f9cfed2c5603" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Hi All,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have come across quite a few questions now that have been closed a single Moderator (and a couple with 1 Moderator, and 1 Community Member).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't this not happen? Half the point of the &quot;SE-way&quot; is that the community decides (with vote-to-close), and the moderators are brought in only if required. I am all for having active moderation, but this is still a community website, driven by the community itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not have a ton of examples, but a good one is here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/14856/best-practices-that-you-disagree-with&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community has **obviously** shown that the question belongs, but the moderator closes it in any case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an update, that question has had a couple more queries on why it was closed (and another asking why it was closed as a singular decision)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28388" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3719" RevisionGUID="be922bda-7fe7-4c54-b730-bd136e7bf998" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I saw [this question][1] and thought it was going somewhere.  It was closed, and with good reason I believe, but I still think that there is a nugget of a usable question in there somewhere.  Would I be justified in editing the question even if it requires almost a complete rewrite in order to get it off of a career question?  I would just write my own question, but I don't want to ask a question that doesn't pertain to my situation since the FAQ says that we shouldn't ask &quot;random&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154132/job-change-problem" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28389" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6652" RevisionGUID="e5cbd22a-25aa-4c67-ae23-5e199a052bd1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; My first and only question on this site has been closed. I've a fair amount of rep on SO and I know how things work here. Before asking it I have read the FAQ and the What topics can I ask about here? section. I'm fairly sure my question fits the &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; or even &quot;software engineering management&quot; sections.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't agree that your question fits as the site is defined. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, I'm concerned about topicality. It is about a methodology and process, but if you continue reading the [&quot;what topics can I ask about&quot; page][1], there's a diagram that shows that questions asked here must be unique to software developers. Why does this question require the expertise of a professional software developer to answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it doesn't fit that, why not migrate it to The Workplace? The next problem that I have with it is that the question is too broad. You're polling for opinions. The [&quot;don't ask&quot; Help Center page][2] addresses this. Of the questions that you ask, there is no way to measure the rightness or wrongness of how other people use a tool. If you focused on your current process and quantified how you wanted to improve it, you may be able to get a good question out of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the current content is best suited to an extended discussion. Both Programmers and The Workplace have chat rooms - [The Whiteboard][3] for Programmers and [The Water Cooler][4] for The Workplace. The chat rooms are good for either discussing topics with other people or for getting help from site regulars on how to refine your question so that it fits on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So let's look at some of your other &quot;top questions&quot; that you have concerns with and address those, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [What technical details should a programmer of a web application consider before making the site public?][5] -- definitely too broad. There is no definite, finite list of things. The answer depends on the language, technology, libraries.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first thing to note is that this question was asked 5 years ago, on Stack Overflow, before Programmers existed. This site has had a long history, with some turmoil in the early days. You can read about it [in more detail here][6], but the short story is that the original definition of Programmers didn't work.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second thing to note is that this question is locked. Stack Exchange introduced a new [Collaborative Lock functionality][7] and this was [the first question that it was applied to on Programmers][8]. Before the Collaborative Lock was introduced, the [Historical Lock][9] was applied to the question, which prevented all changes to anything. The reason this was done was because the question wasn't a good fit, but it had a lot of useful information that should not be lost. The question was viewed many times, had many incoming links from outside sites, came up in Google searches frequently - deleting it would have been a disservice to the Internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report. How can I convince him that it's a bad idea?][10] -- offtopic. Should be in the workplace SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You could build an argument about migration to The Workplace, but The Workplace was still in beta. Admittedly, it was a public beta. The norm is to minimize migrations to beta sites so that they can develop their own culture as a community. Unless the question is very much off-topic on the site where it was posted and very much on-topic on the beta site, it shouldn't be migrated to a beta site. If this question was asked today, I highly suspect that it would be migrated since I could argue that it applies to more than just software developers, but anyone designing or building a product.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Where did the notion of “one return only” come from?][11] -- it's not a programming question. It could be asked on history, if anywhere. Don't know how this didn't get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions about the history of software development [are on-topic here][12]. I'm not sure how you can argue that it's not related to software development, since it's about a programming construct. Would people outside of the software development community care about this question? Probably not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code — what now?][13] -- could it be any more too broad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're right on this one. It's not a good question, but it does have historical significance. It has a large number of views, and many questions are closed as a duplicate of this one. I put a historical lock on the question so the content isn't lost, but to discourage people from using this as an example of the kind of question that can be asked here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?][14] -- opinion based as hell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You're right again on this one. This isn't a good question. However, it has a very large number of views. I treated this just as if someone had flagged it and put a Historical Content lock on the question. It's really not a good question and can't be used as an example of what to ask, but given the number of views and the content in the answers, it falls into the same category as the first question you pointed out. Closing and deleting it would be a disservice to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overall, I think you should read through some Meta posts. Maybe jump into The Whiteboard and chat with the regulars to get a better feel for this community. We have a certain culture here and a certain expectation for questions and answers. Coming from other sites, it can be a bit of a shock - many SE sites have their own expectations and standards and nuances as to how they work. One closed question isn't that big of a deal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3060/the-water-cooler&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/what-is-the-history-behind-the-site-scope-change-from-npr-to-conceptual-questio&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/182566/this-lock-notice-is-partly-misleading/182572#182572&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5991/new-lock-type-for-truly-collaborative-questions-and-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587/what-is-a-historical-lock-and-what-is-it-used-for&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154733/my-boss-decided-to-add-a-person-to-blame-field-to-every-bug-report-how-can-i&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/118703/where-did-the-notion-of-one-return-only-come-from&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5633/is-programming-history-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/48698/i-dont-program-in-my-spare-time-does-that-make-me-a-bad-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28390" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5150" RevisionGUID="7ef08cdc-7674-4060-bcb3-ec75223e3f3a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="To elaborate on what ChrisF said, the post block is an automatic activity based on your history. This feature exists on all sites in the Stack Exchange network and is [well-discussed on Meta Stack Overflow][1]. That post is a far better description than I can put into a post here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The system can't distinguish between an expert and a beginner. However, regardless of your skill and knowledge level, everyone is held to the same standard when it comes to the quality of their questions and answers. The relevant things to read are our [FAQ][2], [guide on how to ask good questions][3], and the blog posts on [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][4] and [Real Questions Have Answers][5].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would recommend first reading those resources. Then, go through your closed or down voted questions. Not every question is salvageable easily - questions with answers are harder to save than questions that aren't answered yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you need help, you can always ask very specific questions about what you can do to improve your questions. But keep in mind that not every question can be saved. Also look for any questions that you can answer - even good answers that provide new information to old questions are valuable and might help return your account to good standing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-sorry-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28391" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2653" RevisionGUID="2463873e-718a-4baa-bf5d-3ebb2e2bb0d5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This][1] Question Should be tagged as a SQL question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should there be an &quot;Edit question Tags Privilege&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Is there currently one?)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/123630/how-can-i-improve-this-set-of-queries-in-php" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28392" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5633" RevisionGUID="7671aa1c-31e3-4788-b416-c85aee9ccf0e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="History questions are on topic on Programmers, but have proven to be particularly troublesome:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- It's not uncommon for history questions to get closed (and re-opened, and closed, ...)&#xD;&#xA;- It's not uncommon for history questions to not show any (or very little) prior research.&#xD;&#xA;- It's not uncommon for history questions to generate highly speculative answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We had a [history week](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3546/programmers-se-contest-the-complete-outline/3631#3631) in last year's contest. As an example of how troublesome history questions are, even the [winning question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/149457/25936) didn't escape an early closure&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. Furthermore, almost every answerer in my [request for feedback](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3653/what-did-you-think-of-the-contest) for the contest identified the tag as particularly troublesome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the same time though, the history tag has given us some exceptional questions. A few random examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What software programming languages were used by the Soviet Union's space program?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/145669/what-software-programming-languages-were-used-by-the-soviet-unions-space-progra)&#xD;&#xA;- [What were the “core” API packages of Java 1.0?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/147205/what-were-the-core-api-packages-of-java-1-0)&#xD;&#xA;- [Where does the term “Red/Black Tree” come from?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/116614/where-does-the-term-red-black-tree-come-from)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that the majority of programming history questions are either exceptional or crap, with very few being somewhere in the middle of the quality spectrum. This makes the whole category a very interesting beast, and one that needs special treatment. My questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Do history questions offer value to the site?&#xD;&#xA;- How do history questions pass the &quot;practical problem&quot; test?&#xD;&#xA;- What should our general guidelines for them be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related past discussions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Are programming-related history/trivia questions acceptable on P.SE?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2021/are-programming-related-history-trivia-questions-acceptable-on-p-se)&#xD;&#xA;- [Is curiosity allowed on programmers.stackexchange.com?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2526/is-curiosity-allowed-on-programmers-stackexchange-com)&#xD;&#xA;- [How can historical questions be on topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/363/how-can-historical-questions-be-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;- [Are word origin questions on-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5524/are-word-origin-questions-on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;- [Content Dispute for “Why do programming languages, especially C, use curly braces and not square ones?”](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5628/25936)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Don't get me wrong, early closures are good, especially when they lead to the question getting improved and re-opened.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28393" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6656" RevisionGUID="7eb8db19-d9bf-425b-b737-af4761accea2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per my reading of the timeline, [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/216371/should-you-always-pass-the-bare-minimum-data-needed-into-a-function) has got 3 answers in 24 hours from new users (i.e. users who earned less than 10 reputation on the site, excluding any association bonuses): https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/216371/timeline&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - May 10 '14 **16:28**, **16:50** and May 11 '14 **08:16**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I understand, these answers [should have triggered auto-protection](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228805/165773).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How come that this did not happen?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28394" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2723" RevisionGUID="fa784222-1b7a-4bab-99af-927f31898ed2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="If the bounty expires, half of it is awarded automatically to the highest voted answer since the bounty was set. From the [blog][1]: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the bounty owner does not award the bounty within the 7 day bounty period, the same auto-award rules apply, as before: any answers to the question posted after the bounty started, with at least 2 upvotes, are eligible for auto-accept and earn half the bounty amount. If there aren’t any answers meeting that criteria, no bounty is awarded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question's [revision history][2] shows a 50 rep bounty set on Dec 13 at 1:53, and the answer's [revision history][3] shows the 25 rep awarded on Dec 21 at 3:51. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/improvements-to-bounty-system/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/124429/revisions&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/124770/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28395" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5178" RevisionGUID="8f518c7e-afc5-4035-8856-452c14deb2b7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Locating an article is _not_ a software development problem, regardless of what the article is about. Questions that are nothing more than a request to an external resource are off topic, not only on Programmers but on Stack Exchange in general, this isn't a link sharing service.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [FAQ][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finding an article or a blog post is _not_ a conceptual software development question. We make a small exception for [canonical books][2], but that's the only exception, not the rule. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Let’s Play The Guessing Game][4]&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4100/is-our-current-process-of-handling-resource-request-questions-sufficient&#xD;&#xA;- [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [Real Questions Have Answers][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why is asking for references/sources to study specific topics considered not constructive?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/are-book-recommendations-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/153220/why-is-asking-for-references-sources-to-study-specific-topics-considered-not-con" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28396" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1005" RevisionGUID="2e8c65e7-6986-4e54-acf8-edf7298645a4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I feel like I'm partly responsible for this, having brought special attention to the question and all, so I'd like to throw in my two cents.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The question itself][1] is a useful resource, but that's *only* because the answers are of a reasonably high quality.  Luck factored into this one; questions phrased the way this one [was originally phrased][3] have *so much* potential to end up like a reddit comment thread, and usually, they do.  What's wrong with it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * It explicitly asks for **opinions** (&quot;disagree with&quot;);&#xD;&#xA;  * It doesn't ask for **evidence**, or imply that answers should be backed up;&#xD;&#xA;  * It doesn't even ask for any **elaboration**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In short, it fails the poll test.  Fortunately, it happens to be a subject that many programmers are passionate about, and so many of them took the question seriously and answered it with the requisite amount of detail and care.  I still think that luck and timing played a major part as well; when I open a question with a title like that, I expect to see dozens of one-liners, and it's kind of miraculous that there weren't any here (or maybe there were, and they got edited/deleted).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The quality of answers clearly indicates that it **should not be deleted** - but that doesn't necessarily mean it should be *open*.  Closing a question *sometimes* means &quot;this question is going straight to /dev/null&quot;, but sometimes it also means &quot;this question needs an overhaul so it doesn't start attracting crappy answers&quot;.  In this case, I felt the latter would have been an appropriate rationale, albeit a sudden and unexpected one.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've put in a major edit to the question representing what I think *would* have been a more constructive version; I have a feeling it's going to get rolled back within minutes, but at least I tried, and anyone can view the edit history to see what I'm getting at here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, off the subject of the specific question and onto the larger moderation issue, there are a few points to note here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * The more open-ended a question is, the more people become compelled to upvote it because they *enjoyed* the question, and not necessarily because it was *useful and clear* as upvotes are intended to be used.  Popularity has to be taken with a grain of salt for certain types of questions, and moderators have to walk this tightrope frequently, sometimes overruling the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * There are *dozens* if not *hundreds* of questions on Programmers.SE that were asked during or shortly after its &quot;free for all&quot; phase (before the &quot;constructive&quot; criteria were introduced), and it's unreasonable and unfair to expect all of the high-ranking community members to slog through the entire history and use up their close vote quotas.  I actually spent one day here going through what I felt were the worst questions and flagging them; I got exhausted after about 10 of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * The [improved flagging system][2] allows lower-reputation users to flag for moderator attention based on a specific close reason.  This *strongly* indicates that, yes, it is OK and expected for moderators to occasionally intervene if the community is not pulling its weight.  If the community was perfect, if it always did the right thing, then *we wouldn't need moderators*, right?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * Although Programmers.SE probably has the highest number of 3k+ (close-rep) members of any of the Stack Exchange communities, there are still only about 70 of them.  That number is *good*, but it's not *huge*.  The trilogy sites have *hundreds* or even *thousands* of these privileged members, so it's natural to expect a high level of autonomy there; the same is not true of Stack Exchange sites where the number of these members is relatively low **and** many of them are still learning what Stack Exchange is all about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  * As Jeff says, Programmers.SE is a bit *experimental*, and has a lot of checkered history to cope with.  Since many of the rules are new and have not been followed or enforced consistently in the past, members here don't have a great example to follow, and they're left scratching their heads and saying *&quot;well, this question is pretty open-ended, but it's not as bad as **this** one over here...&quot;* and of course, there be dragons.  Moderators are **uniquely** qualified to do the cleanup work necessary in order to make the site more consistent and set a strong example for the community itself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Honestly, if I could sum all of this up in one sentence it would be that **Stack Exchange sites tend to need *leadership*, not just moderation**, and the diamond moderators are in the unenviable position of wearing many hats.  Once the sites *mature*, then the role of diamonds will become less and less important over time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know how many people will agree, but I hope I've done a good job of representing the position and responsibilities of P.SE moderators and really *all* SE moderators here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/14856/best-practices-that-you-disagree-with&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/improved-flagging/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/446b12a3-9761-41c5-9f91-c9d60f28c507/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28397" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3739" RevisionGUID="3fd3ab26-3b75-4736-ac1f-f9491efb2f55" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here is an example of a question that is strictly related to the workplace -- the topic is essentially meta-programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154565/where-does-a-technical-programmer-fit-in-and-what-does-the-title-mean&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And here is another one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154822/does-it-work-when-a-developer-is-the-project-managers-boss&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice both questions are extremely similar in topic, but the first question has been deemed off topic and closed while the second seems to be just fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm a little confused where the line (if any) is drawn.  Can someone explain the difference between the two questions to me?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28398" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8007" RevisionGUID="979036e0-883d-4180-8b21-9ce1c8cf3c21" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/315555/131624 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;has been placed on hold as primarily opinion based.  I'll have to admit the name you give something is opinion based.  However, this has a name that can be cited from authoritative sources and knowing the name actually would help someone find useful resources.  It has not been mentioned in the lone answer or the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to answer this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question and my proposed answer are on topic as explicitly allowed in the help as part of: [development methodologies and processes](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further, without knowing the right words it's not something easily found by doing a google search.  I know it because I read about it years ago.  So no, I'm not just googling for the OP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit to preview answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Picking just one term for this and writing only about it could easily be taken an opinion based.  What I would prefer to do is discuss the singular situation the OP describes.  You want change.  Change will break things.  This needs to be described positively and accurately to all stakeholders.  Not simply the users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Users don't care about refactoring&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Users don't care about transformations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Users care about working features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Your boss cares about working features&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Your boss cares about transformations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Your boss doesn't care about refactoring&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A refactoring is NOT a change in code behavior.  If you're adding a feature, you're not refactoring.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A refactoring is changing code without changing behavior.  Refactoring will not make failing tests pass.  It's what you do to clean up to get ready for change.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not everyone lives in the rigorous world of test driven development.  Indeed we are not all Uncle Bob (or Martin Fowler, or Kent Beck, or...) but if you throw around the word refactoring at least use the term correctly.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A change in behavior is called a [transformation](http://blog.8thlight.com/uncle-bob/2013/05/27/TheTransformationPriorityPremise.html) in the rigorous world of test driven development.  When you write a failing test the next step is to make it pass.  That is a change in code behavior.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Outside the world of TDD making a behavior change in an integrated system that will require changes in multiple locations is called a [breaking change](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/breaking_change).  It is a transformation whether you do it rigorously or not but that term is not well known outside of TDD.  At least it doesn't sound so negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But even if the word transformation gives you a warm fuzzy feeling this is still not something users care about.  Infact, by even asking the users to think about it you're pissing them off.  They don't care about your problems.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why when you ask for a term that fits here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;The webpage is _____ right now because I had to make it generic for all products&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd have to agree that '[under construction](http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/26669/62047)' fit's nicely.  What I disagree with is the very idea of users seeing the message.  Even if it wasn't that term users simply do not want to be told about what they can't have.  Rout them to what they can have.  Don't show them tumbleweeds that remind them of what could have been.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A website should always be under construction.  Heck this answer is under construction.  Would an animated gif make you feel better about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is why developing on the live system is a bad idea.  Develop on a development system.  Use a deployment plan so you can send the whole change, all at once, when it's ready.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's why the best user friendly term for this is: nothing at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28399" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2903" RevisionGUID="d5d59ce6-938e-4263-82bc-9daefa598325" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is a potential to have a separate version of every question or topic that focuses on: scientific evidence, research, or some other reference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Shouldn't this get handled in the OP's evaluation of the answers? Answers that include support should be encouraged.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a work-around to appear to avoid a flame war? &quot;What are some references to scientific evidence supporting that Java is the greatest language?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example: This [question wants Scientific Evidence about variable length.][1]. Another just asks [can variables be too long][2] and does give specific examples which I hope the focus is not on the particular variable names themselves. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/33349/scientific-evidence-that-supports-using-long-variable-names-instead-of-abbreviat&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/20206/are-my-method-or-variable-names-too-long" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28400" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6665" RevisionGUID="2cb48461-7e46-45fb-92e2-a62f397aa098" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I ask the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [following question here](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/240404/japanese-multiplication-simulation-is-a-program-actually-capable-of-improving?noredirect=1) led to the OP asking the [greater meta.stackexchange.com site here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/231885/should-strictly-on-topic-cross-posts-be-put-on-hold-as-off-topic/231888#231888) which seems to have a broader and more popular consensus that when a question is well received and on topic that it should not be closed as &quot;Off-Topic&quot; for purposes of preventing cross-posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently myself and I believe other moderators at Programmers when flagged about cross-posting will currently close the question on Programmers it if appears to circumvent a ban on the other site or if it historically appears after the original question on the other site.  The OP sometimes legitimately realizes that he needs a different perspective, or perhaps they weren't getting the attention they felt they needed so they wanted to try a different community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current tag info for cross posting on meta.stackexchange: [link here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) still seems to suggest that it is still frowned upon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Cross Posting refers to posting the same question over multiple Stack Exchange sites. Cross-posting is strictly frowned upon as it leads to fragmented answers splattered all over the network. If you spot a user cross-posting, please make use of Moderator Flags to inform the Moderators.  Refer to cross-posting faq for more details.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask the community, are we right to do this and should we change how high rep users and moderators are dealing with cross posting on this site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To sum up the great answers and suggestions I have seen thus far, and reviewing the greater discussion on Meta.StackExchange, I feel I can compile the popular and agreed upon points below so that we can use this question as a canonical guide on how to deal with cross-posting on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Poor quality, unclear questions and opinion/flame bait should be put on hold as expected regardless of cross-posting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Off-topic hold reasons should not be used against cross posted questions unless it is legitimately off topic (NOTE: There is overlap in Programmers between CS, Project Management, et al.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 3. If the question is not tailored for target audience, software developers, and is instead copied from the other site still targeted to computer scientists, project managers, or others then a user can flag for a moderator to investigate, and moderators can use their discretion if a temporary content dispute lock should be used while the moderator gives the OP the chance to state why they wanted to cross post on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 4. If the question is not tailored and the OP shows no desire to change the question or does not respond, then the moderator or other users can decide to edit the question to try and improve it and make it more appropriate for Programmers, otherwise it can be put on hold as off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 5. If the cross post is tailored for the target audience and the OP wishes to get a different perspective or perhaps felt the question didn't get enough attention at the original community, then he/she is well in his right to do so. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28401" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5219" RevisionGUID="76ab4029-05d1-4891-9ed5-93020506def0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[It was suggested to me][1] to copy-paste my answer to [another question][2] which I marked as duplicate, but which looks larger than the [original question][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was totally against this technique: duplicating an answer feels like a cheap way to gain more reputation with no effort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But after thinking about it, I'm not sure if I'm right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Should copy-paste technique be prohibited for answers, or is it a valid and ethical thing to do?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If I post the same answer to several questions, is it a good idea to cross-link them?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Any thoughts or suggestions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/175066/how-to-promote-code-reuse-and-documentation#comment334229_175066&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/175066/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/173312/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28402" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5637" RevisionGUID="f8226580-2f04-4656-b86a-3fca22d7763a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This answer is a bit of a straw-man in order to apply what's being proposed and evaluate that against past precedent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Our Example:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/188455/why-do-programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-braces-and-not-square-ones&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;was recently asked and is currently closed &amp; locked.  The lock, I presume, is pending the outcome of this Meta discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5628/content-dispute-for-why-do-programming-languages-especially-c-use-curly-brace&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Analysis against criteria:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Askers must do their homework&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Somewhat failed as I don't consider a single look-up within Wikipedia as research.  But I certainly reference Wikipedia as convenient, so I'll grant the consideration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Askers must share their research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Passed inasmuch as we're given the Wikipedia reference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions must be answerable&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is both a pass and fail.  The answers to that question provide some compelling evidence and / or conjecture.  On the other hand, my initial take on this question was &quot;how would anyone know that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programming history questions should be about programming history&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Definite pass.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No trivia&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Arguable pass.  If there had been a more clear-cut problem to be solved then this answer would be a cleaner pass.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Past Precedent:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/159593/why-was-the-percent-sign-chosen-as-the-format-specifier-for-the-printf-famil  &#xD;&#xA;This one has a bit more research to it, but doesn't necessarily have a problem to be solved.  Overall, I would consider this fairly similar to the braces question.  It fails the trivia test by not having a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/117943/why-is-in-identifier-names-for-so-many-languages  &#xD;&#xA;No research; no problem to be solved; pretty much a curiosity question only.  I'd argue this is a weaker question than the braces question.  This one is still open even though it qualifies as trivia without having a problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/124570/why-pointer-symbol-and-multiplication-sign-are-same-in-c-c  &#xD;&#xA;No research but does have a problem to be solved.  Interestingly, the answers are actually more valuable than the original question scope because they extend into the more general problem of parsing issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/118268/do-any-languages-use-for-the-inequality-operator  &#xD;&#xA;Equivalent research (Wikipedia) but no problem to be solved; mostly an intellectual curiosity question.  Without a problem to solve, this is likely trivia.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Some commonalities:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those four questions share minimal to no research as well as being equally difficult to assess on the `answerable` category.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Three of the four qualify as trivia, but are currently open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My thoughts / conclusions:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The assessment of the recent braces questions would indicate it should remain closed, but past question precedent contradicts the results of the assessment and that the braces question should be opened back up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The assessment also doesn't take into account the great answers that the braces question has attracted.  I acknowledge though that it's impossible to make an [a priori](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori_) determination like that though.  The answers, though, place the question within the ranks of the more interesting historical questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since this is in meta -  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote up if you agree with my application of the assessments from above and that we need to keep working out the details of the assessment questions to improve them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Vote down if you think I woefully missed something in the application. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28404" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3027" RevisionGUID="12730a45-ebb2-4a5e-85e6-dcba79bbce07" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Went ahead and:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Retagged the [lone unix process question][1] to [tag:system-processes] &#xD;&#xA;- Retagged the [tag:process] questions to [tag:development-process]&#xD;&#xA;- Retagged the [tag:processes] questions to [tag:development-process]&#xD;&#xA;- Retagged the [lone development-methodology question][2] to [tag:development-methodologies]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And removed some deprecated tags, like [tag:software-engineering] in the way. Now we can concentrate on the major tags:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:development-process]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:development-methodologies]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:methodology]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First things first, [tag:methodology] should be merged into [tag:development-methodologies], obviously. But all three tags are generic catch-all tags and I don't see any point in keeping them around. From our discussion in comments, I get that you want them merged so it will be easier to clean up later, and apply more relevant and specific tags. That's fine by me, and it will help the clean up process.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Still, I don't think everyone will agree with your definitions of process and methodology. When I see a question tagged as methodology (or variants of) I expect it to be about one of the common structured methodologies, not about implementation, which is part of the software development process. Having two tags instead of one, won't really hurt the clean up effort, will it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And we should probably blacklist [tag:process] &amp; [tag:processes]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/93801/are-concurrency-abstractions-emulating-unix-processes&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/109378/should-we-adopt-an-agile-methodology-when-rewriting-an-existing-application-from" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28405" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1063" RevisionGUID="8947b90b-ae75-453b-804e-c5874ae84f6d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="See this answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12216/which-features-from-other-ides-editors-you-wish-you-have-in-visual-studio/22729#22729&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has got a +25 bounty from the community, which looks like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![This answer has been awarded bounty worth 25 reputation by Community][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It says in the tooltip on the red box with +25:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;This answer has been awarded bounty worth 25 reputation by Community&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is this? How is it awarded?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/BGQSc.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28406" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3748" RevisionGUID="fee1c89d-9912-41a8-b619-739d7a019f84" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/155693/sending-mail-by-host-is-true&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll grant you that the grammar isn't perfect, but the question speaks to a real programming (or programmer's) problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/04/so-youd-like-to-send-some-email-through-code.html&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Often, businesses are reluctant to spend money to outsource their email operations; and so, they task one of their programmers to reduce their spam volume.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28407" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3108" RevisionGUID="9739fde0-d62a-41ac-a43b-bcb0d74d51c1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Your edit was more than appropriate, hopefully others will be inspired by this Meta question to do similar edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [FAQ][1] explicitly states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Etiquette**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Civility is required at all times; rudeness will not be tolerated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you feel that a reasonable person would find the language used in a post rude, even slightly, feel free to edit. There is absolutely no need to use expletives in a professional setting, hence no need on Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you notice a user *repeatedly* using harsh language, please flag one of his / her posts for moderation attention and let us know of the situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28408" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3751" RevisionGUID="a44e317d-b903-4b89-842a-a4d466ed9c2e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I had a question closed today, [Why did visual programming never take off and what future paradigms might change that?][1] which I do not understandy why. People keep responding the question, and for me the explanation for the closing makes no sense at all. Actually all the answers were very useful for me, and most of them were based on facts and based on each one knowledge. So I'd like to ask for reopen the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/119463/why-did-visual-programming-never-take-off-and-what-future-paradigms-might-change" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28409" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8036" RevisionGUID="3566c5dd-14a4-4c9b-af31-56d4d5abda02" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/317571/1204), the author wrote (in the [original revision](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/317571/1)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Please note:** This site specifically calls out questions about *software requirements* as being on-topic. **Escrow** is specifically listed as a [non-functional/qualitative&#xD;&#xA;&gt; requirement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-functional_requirement)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on Wikipedia, and I argue that makes it a valid requirements-based&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question for this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clever.  But is it true?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can the Wikipedia definition of &quot;Non-Functional Requirements&quot; be used as a guiding principle for asking on-topic questions on Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that Licensing, which is on-topic, is also listed in the Wikipedia article as a non-functional requirement.  But so is Network Topology, Privacy, Environmental Protection, Pricing, and even &quot;Emotional Factors.&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28410" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6681" RevisionGUID="aec9abb0-157c-4ec4-ac74-0ad59c8ba516" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Let's look at a block of &quot;No Action Needed&quot; reviews:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![No action needed][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What constitutes a 'reviewed' review?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Leaving a comment&#xD;&#xA; * Up voting a comment&#xD;&#xA; * Up voting the post&#xD;&#xA; * Down voting the post&#xD;&#xA; * Flagging (or close voting)&#xD;&#xA; * Editing the post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If something is likely to be closed, even if one doesn't agree with the closing philosophy leaving a comment suggesting for how to refocus the question in a way that isn't likely to get closed.  Alternatively, editing it to try to make it something that won't get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a no action needed it means that ***none*** of the above reasons are applicable or needed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Not bad enough to down vote&#xD;&#xA;* Not good enough to up vote&#xD;&#xA;* No existing comments to up vote to help suggest a better question or improve the existing answer&#xD;&#xA;* No additional guidance needed to help improve the post (note: likely in conflict with 'not good enough to up vote' - it is unlikely that *both* of these are true, but may be the case)&#xD;&#xA;* Grammar, spelling, and formatting of the post are acceptable and don't need any work (note: it's a good thing to click 'edit' to see the actual markdown and make sure there isn't formatting that has been lost that needs to be brought back out like a numbered list or line breaks)&#xD;&#xA;    * There is no unnecessary preamble or bit at the end that is appropriate to remove ('hello', 'thanks', 'hope this helps', etc... consider also linking to [Should 'Hi', 'thanks,' taglines, and salutations be removed from posts?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2950/should-hi-thanks-taglines-and-salutations-be-removed-from-posts))&#xD;&#xA;    * Double check the title.  Tags in the title are unnecessary ([MSE guidance](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19190/should-questions-include-tags-in-their-titles)).  Make sure the title of the question matches the question.&#xD;&#xA;* On topic without any need to migrate or suggest a way to make it narrower, less opinion, or need to refocus it from an existing off topic reason.&#xD;&#xA;* Not a duplicate of another post (do a search - especially the case with questions, many new users don't know of existing questions)&#xD;&#xA;* Not posted elsewhere on Stack Exchange (example: [&quot;This was posted on Stack Overflow as well, where it was closed and has now been deleted.&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/241598/cms-desktop-app-control#comment486410_241598) from https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/241598/cms-desktop-app-control could have either been up voted or researched and written themselves)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't want to check these things, either hit skip or don't do the First Posts review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Selecting 'no action needed' means that someone else *can't* do the review to check these things, completing it and giving guidance to the new P.SE user that may help them have a more positive experience on P.SE and Stack Exchange as a whole.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is in part an issue with the system.  The First Post review queue, by its nature, has binding votes for *every* review.  This isn't something that people are always aware of, but the First Post review (and late answer) are both review queues that one should approach with all the seriousness of a diamond mod because there's no redo or community safety net for these reviews.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/IxqNK.png &quot;No action needed?&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28412" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5226" RevisionGUID="08d98411-1e04-4123-9ab0-39ffa5d2f4b0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**[&quot;any suggestions for a good tool/service&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/175268/2 &quot;wording as of revision 2&quot;)** makes question a perfect match for type questions that are strongly discouraged per [Q&amp;A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, question looks salvageable using a healthy dose of [Atwood's transform](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/124930/165773 &quot;what's this?&quot;). I would consider editing it into something like _&quot;How do I tell if a product planning tool would suit my needs... etc_ then [flagging to reopen](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1753/31260 &quot;related discussion&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The fact that question has been closed while it had no answers greatly simplifies editing it. Otherwise one would have to take additional care to make sure that changes don't invalidate existing answers - which in some cases can [effectively lock the question from any substantial editing at all](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;an example discussed here: 'Change the question, and you invalidate all of the answers...'&quot;)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28413" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3133" RevisionGUID="09b4f549-fa6f-4a4b-9101-50dadd0adfe4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Since I have a lower reputation **all my edits are peer reviewed**. Some changes I make are accepted but **some others are rejected** but do not indicate **why they are rejected** which leaves the editor clueless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[I can illustrate this with the following example][1] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How to build a career path to be an Architect?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which I changed to,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How to build a career path to be a Software Architect?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The change Software Architect was clarified by the author in the comments specified in the question section and I applied the change to the question but yet my edit was rejected in the peer review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there a **feedback system of why are certain edits rejected to help editors improve their editing skills?** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/79916/how-to-build-a-career-path-to-be-an-architect" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28414" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1067" RevisionGUID="d8b1fb9a-8d76-4b2e-a552-6212eb7eaf18" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've noticed this morning that once I hit 190, I stopped receiving rep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was on 9 votes (+9/-0) in this question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/40315/whats-the-name-for-a-bug-that-suddenly-breaks-things-but-has-always-been-present/40323#40323&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since then the answer has went to (+12/-1) yet my rep has not changed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't care about the rep, just wanted to report the bug and see if it is already known.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screen shot][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today's section of the rep log:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     2     40103 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40103 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40109 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40103 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40103 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40109 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40109 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40103 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40103 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40103 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40103 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 (10)&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 [0]&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 [0]&#xD;&#xA;     3     40323 [-2]&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 [2]&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 [0]&#xD;&#xA;     2     40323 [0]&#xD;&#xA;    -- 2011-01-26 rep +200  = 3597  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ogALl.gif&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28416" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3788" RevisionGUID="adc288fa-eda0-42a4-ae6a-d39f5c72231b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/156740/reducing-power-consumption&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Indeed, as currently constituted, this question probably *should* be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet the OP seemed genuinely curious, and the answers and comments that were provided were exactly what the OP was looking for.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Couldn't a well-placed edit have saved this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28417" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5248" RevisionGUID="3b526ed9-5aba-4f7e-9643-7b9510121e9f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**No.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keeping things more central is actually antithetical to Stack Exchange's philosophy of creating laser sharp focused Q&amp;A sites. Additionally if &quot;discussion&quot; and &quot;open topic for general questions&quot; is your description of what Programmers is about, you should really read our [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) a bit more carefully. While we welcome _some_ subjective questions, Programmers is definitely _not_ a free for all discussion forum.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, more responsiveness is _not_ necessarily a good thing. We strive to be a canonical resource, answers should be as detailed and complete as possible, being quick is an added bonus but not a goal in itself. From the perspective of the asker, quick answers might be more useful, but Programmers and every other Stack Exchange site (including Stack Overflow) aren't only about the asker. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thirdly, folding Programmers into Stack Overflow right now would be a disaster for everyone involved. Stack Overflow, similarly to Programmers, has created and maintains a community culture that is different, and in many respects conflicting to ours. While the target audience of both sites might more or less be the same, the focus and scope is distinctly different, thus is community culture.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, Stack Overflow is gigantic, and that's one of the many reasons, perhaps the main one, I never really participated in the site. To put it very simply, if it takes me more than 5 minutes to find interesting content on a site, that site is not for me. Reducing the conceptual aspects of the [SDLC][1] to a set of Stack Overflow tags would be extremely counter-productive, it would take a certain level of masochism to put yourself in the position of searching for interesting methodology questions (for example) in the vast ocean of crap Stack Overflow is slowly becoming. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since you posted this as a feature request and there are tons of earlier discussions both on our Meta and Meta Stack Overflow that explain how the sites are different and what's the purpose of Programmers, I'm afraid I'll have to decline it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Introducing programmers.stackexchange.com][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?][3]&#xD;&#xA;- [Should Programmers.SE exist?][4]&#xD;&#xA;- [Choosing between Stack Overflow and Programmers Stack Exchange][5]&#xD;&#xA;- [Is Stack Exchange becoming too fragmented for programmers?][6]&#xD;&#xA;- [Why was the Programmers site on Stack Exchange created?][7]&#xD;&#xA;- [When do these questions belong on programmers instead of stackoverflow?][8]&#xD;&#xA;- [Once all the disciplining is done and P.SE is purely professional, will it be merged with stackoverflow?][9]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_development_life-cycle&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/153082/should-programmers-se-exist&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/82988/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/105428/is-stack-exchange-becoming-too-fragmented-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64042/why-was-the-programmers-site-on-stack-exchange-created&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1704/once-all-the-disciplining-is-done-and-p-se-is-purely-professional-will-it-be-me" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28418" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1069" RevisionGUID="1e15454c-9b4b-4515-8822-896b471e6060" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="ChrisF's answer is correct, but if you're interested in a blow-by-blow:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You wrote an answer to the question [What is the best way to count time spans?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/40290/what-is-the-best-way-to-count-time-spans). That answer got 1 upvote, which gave you **10** reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You also got **80** rep from [How many lines of code can a C# developer produce per month?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/40100/how-many-lines-of-code-can-a-c-developer-produce-per-month/40103#40103), **30** rep from [vim tutorial for beginners](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/40099/vim-tutorial-for-beginners/40109#40109), and **80** rep from [What's the name for a bug that suddenly breaks things but has always been present?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/40315/whats-the-name-for-a-bug-that-suddenly-breaks-things-but-has-always-been-present/40323#40323).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this point, you hit 200 reputation and the daily cap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then, [What is the best way to count time spans?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/40290/what-is-the-best-way-to-count-time-spans) was migrated to Stack Overflow, so your answer was deleted. The reputation report immediately recalculated your score, removing the **10** rep you got from the now migrated answer and giving you **90** rep for [What's the name for a bug that suddenly breaks things but has always been present?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/40315/whats-the-name-for-a-bug-that-suddenly-breaks-things-but-has-always-been-present/40323#40323), bringing you back to the daily cap again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The front end immediately gets rid of the deleted answer, but doesn't immediately show your recalculated reputation, making it seem like you only got 190 rep before hitting the cap, even though you didn't." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28419" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6838" RevisionGUID="d9b21583-baf5-40c0-9d33-0293063cec9c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You're in the wrong place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For coding issues you need to ask on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This site is for conceptual and design issues.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The simplest explanation is that if you're standing in front of a whiteboard and have a question ask here, if you're sitting in front of an IDE ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also if you have one question closed then don't just ask the same question again. Read the reason given in the text inserted just below your question for why it was closed. Follow the links and take the [tour](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tour)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28420" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8047" RevisionGUID="8d25e58e-20f8-49f4-9e6c-b7079b9103f6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question:&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/35898/how-and-where-do-you-store-your-private-work-sourcecode/&#xD;&#xA;is currently locked, but not deleted, as it is being kept for historical reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It does have a lot of views: 24,601, and 19 upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;It is off-topic as it is asking for everyone's personal opinions.&#xD;&#xA;Which is too discussy for our format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If asked today, it would probably be closed.&#xD;&#xA;Then downvoted to the point that it is deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now, having it locked,&#xD;&#xA;means that you can not down-vote, nor correct  what are now, terribly incorrect/nonoptimal answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the historical lock is damning us to be having blatently poor advise on the site, without the power to correct it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think this question has enough historical note, to keep it, and let it be wrong for ever.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28421" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5275" RevisionGUID="0fe42111-7de4-45d6-9726-ef1d23b4de0f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are countless design &quot;bugs&quot; that may or may not get fixed in any reasonable amount of time because *they don't actually matter very much*. Everyone has their pet peeves, but when and how those actually amount to problems worth fixing is subjective. Easy to fix when related changes are being made, but not a high priority otherwise. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may change *somewhat* as we continue to expand the dev and design teams.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't find a recent suggestion to change migration targets either, but [if you look at the stats](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats) there's no real point - [as ChrisF notes][1], we don't add beta sites to these lists, and with only 3 questions migrated in the last 90 days, SU isn't exactly *crying out* to be more easily migrated to. Choice for the heck of it just wastes time and increases the chance of mistakes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5272/why-many-features-and-bug-reports-are-pending-for-years-without-being-implemente/5273#5273" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28422" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3809" RevisionGUID="471bd781-307c-4fc2-8cf3-ce960cc4897e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As of now, the issue appears resolved:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. you were able to comment on the question: [Added details in the question...](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/157171/java-bufferedreader-vs-separate-producer-consumer-thread/157207#comment299775_157171 &quot;proof link&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;1. you were able to comment on the answer to your question: [As you say, It depends on the IO wait...](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/157171/java-bufferedreader-vs-separate-producer-consumer-thread/157207#comment299796_157207 &quot;proof link&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;For the sake of completeness, adding also a reference to question timeline:  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/157171/timeline  &#xD;&#xA;Sudden breakthrough in ability to comment could possibly be triggered by question upvote  &#xD;&#xA;but I wouldn't bet on that given that [privileges page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges) doesn't show any statement about this.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28423" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1115" RevisionGUID="40e1f371-ba26-4cfa-a72c-e85dbb70ee38" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It appears you have two different accounts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/15794/alex  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/10538/alex&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In your picture, it doesn't show the 'private' fields 'Real Name' or 'email'.  That indicates you are looking at a profile that is not the same as the one you are logged in as.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A friendly neighborhood moderator should be able to merge these for you." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28424" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6843" RevisionGUID="c063b585-6c50-4ed8-90d2-275f0c5d90b1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently updated my Stack Exchange profile to include a link to my newly created Area 51 proposal [Scientific Imagination][1]. I included a sample question from the proposal as a level 1 header. It looks good on my Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow profiles, but here it appears very cluttered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Stack Exchange profile][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Stack Exchange profile][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Stack Overflow profile][4]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Stack Overflow profile][5]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Programmers profile][6]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we do a little tweak to site's CSS to make it a bit more appealing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/75912/scientific-imagination?referrer=IPIEcsN2huMFuP7v0aO_3g2&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/262588/krumia&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xANt1.png&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/1461424/krumia&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/3s1Sb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/139479/krumia&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/P2lb1.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28425" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3153" RevisionGUID="3251b4b4-b78b-4b15-9385-9a519f9b07bc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="According to my profile I have 132 suggested edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to my progress towards Strunk &amp; White on the [review][1] page, I have edited 79 posts.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why don't these numbers match up. Is this my fault or the sites's?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28426" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5738" RevisionGUID="3ccaa030-122f-48f8-80bc-8aac30a662fd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per [Yannis' suggestion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5727/what-if-any-changes-to-this-sites-scope-would-you-like-to-see#comment14539_5727), I decided to go through the [list of closed questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=closed%3a1), pick out some specific examples, and make a detailed case for why those questions should be welcomed on the site.  The first thing I discovered is that I agree with most of the close decisions.  We close a lot of questions, yes, but most of those really do need closing.  The other thing I found when going through the list one by one is that most of the questions that stand out to me as being unnecessarily closed follow a &quot;getting started&quot; theme.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Example Questions ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To generate a list of questions for discussion, I searched for [closed:1 start](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=closed%3a1%20start) and clicked on the &quot;newest&quot; tab (although that generates some false positives).  I'd like to go through the first several questions as examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/190127/3965 This question is a little chatty, but the gist of the problem is he has heard that self-taught php programmers can pick up bad habits from some resources, and is seeking expert advice to avoid that happening.  Open for 1.5 hours, 1 upvoted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/190095/3965 This question was seeking a general approach to finding third-party libraries and frameworks, a skill that's very important to professional programmers.  This question was possibly too broad, but I think a skilled answerer could have pulled it off had it been left open longer.  It feels like a &quot;teach a man to fish&quot; type of question. Open 3.5 hours, 1 downvoted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/189927/3965 This one could use some editing for English issues, but a question about how much java background is needed to learn a language based on the jvm, does not seem to be an unreasonable question to pose to programming experts.  Open 3.5 hours, 1 answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/189824/3965 Web development has changed a lot since 1996.  It is not unreasonable to seek the advice of someone with more up to date skills.  Also this is a different question from someone who has never programmed before, so the duplicate doesn't really apply.  Open almost a day, 1 upvoted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/189650/3965 This question is a good illustration that even expert programmers are newbies in some domains.  Possibly could have been worded better, like &quot;what characteristics should I use to evaluate a GUI framework,&quot; but mostly a good question to pose to experts in a programming domain.  Open 3.5 hours, 3 answers, 2 upvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Common Opposing Arguments ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some common arguments in opposition to these sorts of questions.  Some from https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1749/3965 and some I've seen in various comments on closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The questions don't show enough research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a chicken and egg problem.  How are you supposed to research something if you don't know where to start with your research?  If you are a beginner to a topic, how are you supposed to evaluate which resources are the best?  Getting started is a natural topic to ask a group of experienced professionals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; They will produce inevitable duplicates.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So?  We have a process for closing duplicates that works quite well, and there's little to no evidence to show getting started resource questions are any more likely to generate duplicates than other sorts of questions.  And how is closing a question as a duplicate any more work than closing it as off topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; People will just list their favorites.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We have a process for closing bad answers, and besides that, the favorites of experts is precisely the information we're trying to get at here.  If people don't explain *why* it's their favorite, their answer will get deleted like for any other topic.  If I want a list of 6,000 php books, I can search Amazon.  Narrowing it down to the 5 or 10 favorites of experts is a lot of value to add, for which our site is well-suited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; These kinds of questions will garner too many answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not a unique problem to getting started/resource questions, which is why we have a process in place to prevent that.  If you actually look at the questions that have been closed, they are no more likely than other types of questions to garner a large number of answers, even ones that were open for several weeks.  Even if there are multiple answers, the best few will get voted to the top.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The answers will become outdated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, how is this different from any other type of question?  We work in a rapidly changing field.  When an outdated answer is found, people comment on it and it's either corrected or deleted at that time.  Also, getting started topics change much less rapidly than cutting edge topics.  The basics stay relevant for a long time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The only way to do it right is to create one heavily-moderated &quot;canonical&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While this approach might be most appropriate on StackOverflow, where questions are expected to be highly specific and objective, &quot;good subjective&quot; questions are our bread and butter here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's too broad if you can imagine an entire book answering your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's all well and good unless your problem is needing help to find the most appropriate book for a subject.  These people aren't asking to have a book copied and pasted into your answer, just to get pointed in the right direction.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm not interested in answering newbie questions.  This site is supposed to be for professionals.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even expert programmers are newbies in some domains.  If you personally don't want to see these types of questions, you can put them in your filtered tags list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Summary ###&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are by and large good questions garnering good answers.  They are the kind of questions you'd go down the hall to ask an experienced programmer, which are the kind of questions people naturally assume are on topic here.  Welcoming these questions would go a long way toward improving our image with new users, and making it a better reference for experienced programmers learning new domains." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28427" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5277" RevisionGUID="da3a3946-55b3-450a-828c-39e3f4c9fb8a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I went over all our open bugs and feature requests and retagged/closed a lot of them. The Meta front page looks like a battlefield because of this, but I figured it would be better to do it in one big sweep to get a better idea of what we are talking about. So, right now we have:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [8 open bugs][1], and&#xD;&#xA;- [25 open feature requests][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not _that_ bad. Yes, there are some Meta questions that needed feedback from Stack Exchange and appear to be long forgotten, but we can easily fix that, just ping one of us (mods) in chat and we'll ask a SE employee to have a look. With 90+ sites (and 90+ Metas), it's understandable that they can't keep track of _everything_. Furthermore we haven't really been doing a very good job keeping our Meta clean, there were (and still are) a lot of questions that are mistagged, or no longer relevant. We should clean up Meta at some point, that would make our feature requests and bug reports far more noticeable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back in June we created a mod+SE only chat room, the collection room, and gathered tons of feature requests and bug reports from all per site Metas, in an effort to get feedback from SE. The room was frozen in August, and we're still waiting for feedback on most, if not all, requests. I've nagged Grace Note a couple of times about this, privately and publicly, and although progress has been very slow, I'm confident SE isn't ignoring per site Metas. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for migrations, our [migration stats][3] don't really justify more migration targets:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][4]](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFFqv.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bbug%5D%20-%5Bstatus-declined%5D%20-%5Bstatus-completed%5D%20-%5Bstatus-bydesign%5D%20-%5Bstatus-deferred%5D%20-%5Bstatus-norepro%5D%20-%5Bstatus-planned%5D%20closed:0&amp;submit=search&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?tab=relevance&amp;q=%5Bfeature-request%5D%20-%5Bstatus-declined%5D%20-%5Bstatus-completed%5D%20-%5Bstatus-bydesign%5D%20-%5Bstatus-deferred%5D%20-%5Bstatus-norepro%5D%20closed:0&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFFqv.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28428" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3812" RevisionGUID="11ea5c14-7432-458c-8e5c-bd509a888e66" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just noticed that two questions I asked at the beginning of last year were then removed 6-7 months later.  Is there any chance I can get a heads-up as to why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[This one][1] may have been too subjective, but I certainly can't see why [this one][2] was nuked...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/56847/outsourcing-a-private-project-can-it-be-done&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/42685/sql-plan-guide-comparison-syncing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28429" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1188" RevisionGUID="d7ce6908-4755-4bb2-8e87-a07fbe4b3741" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Jin,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I managed to confuse myself today as I couldn't tell which tab was active on the &quot;tagged&quot; page:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming-languages&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can the current tab be shown in red or something?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/T0Zn7.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28430" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8072" RevisionGUID="3324217e-ef0d-4a0a-a25b-73dc0e1d8dae" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm looking for advice to improve this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/320247/has-anyone-challenged-uncle-bob-on-his-love-of-removing-useless-braces&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's been well received with up votes but seems to be in danger of being put on hold.  Rather than wait I thought I'd provide a little more room here for you to instruct me. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm attempting to gather answers that will make clear when this behavior should and should not be imitated backed up with cited arguments. Particularly if Uncle Bob's style creates an environment where making an exception to the rule is justifiable.  In my fear of it being closed as opinion based I seem to have bumped into other close reasons (unclear, asking for a book/resource recommendation, asking a yes no question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm here.  I'm willing to make adjustments.  Any guidance much appreciated.   &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28431" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3166" RevisionGUID="45b962b7-e095-437d-905a-4b70029ba896" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Quick question but can someone provide a bit of clarity in regards to how the flagging review works? I recently flagged a [question as off-topic][1], it was closed by community vote as off topic, but then the flag was declined as &quot;a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now I'm assuming that it was closed before it was reviewed, but still the phrasing rubs the wrong way a bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/136082/java-interview-fundamentals" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28432" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6861" RevisionGUID="d742f2bd-c222-451e-86c2-2cc4030e1895" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="What's up with the [Meaning of MIT license](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/255227/31260)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This five years old post was recently migrated from SO to Programmers. Not that I complain, but regular migrations like that are blocked by system (see [Disable migration for questions older than 60 days](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/151890/165773)). What makes this question special to overrule this limitation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I briefly checked recent posts at [MSO](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/) and [MSE](https://meta.stackexchange.com/) and found nothing about this migration.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Question revision history at SO](http://stackoverflow.com/posts/706799/revisions) shows couple funny changes made recently:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Deleted by Tim Post♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Locked by Community♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Migrated Away to programmers.stackexchange.com by Tim Post♦&#xD;&#xA;  	  	 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Closed as &quot;off-topic&quot; by Tim Post♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Undeleted by Tim Post♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Reopened by Tim Post♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Migration Rejected 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Unlocked by Community♦ 	occurred 5 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Deleted by Shog9♦ 	occurred 19 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Locked by Community♦ 	occurred 19 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Migrated Away to meta.programmers.stackexchange.com by Shog9♦&#xD;&#xA;  	  	 	occurred 19 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;  	  	Post Closed as &quot;off topic&quot; by Wouter J, egrunin, msmucker0527, Mario, Linger&#xD;&#xA;  	  	 	occurred Mar 6 '13 at 20:37&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;FWIW it looks like a duplicate of [MIT vs. BSD vs. Dual License](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/121998/31260) to me.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28433" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5309" RevisionGUID="f091f91b-0bee-42df-814a-7353ff721d09" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am having trouble getting to grips with Programmers despite having had good success on SO. My questions here keep getting closed. By my reading of the FAQ, my questions are good and on topic but I'm starting to realise that there are also some unwritten rules.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, from the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions can I ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers — Stack Exchange is a site for professional programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; about software development. If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ..&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why is this question, about software licensing, closed as off topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/178510/my-new-anti-patent-bsd-based-license-necessary-and-effective&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is a well scoped question that is answerable. OK, it might not be easy to answer but I've asked plenty on SO that just sit unanswered because no-one knows the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So my question to meta: does the FAQ represent the full reality of this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28434" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3821" RevisionGUID="5464187c-8224-40e5-b464-e188a1b2627d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I fail to see any value in [this answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/157660). Do I miss something?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I have to make database for data that are currently being kept in excel files, so I have to do some changes before writing into database. I'm going to read those files in java, and write them from java into db. Should I use hibernate for that job? Or how else to connect those read data in java, with database?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer (full text):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **LibreOffice and OpenOffice could scale you to the moon. Headless linux-Mac-win. You can get the contents of spreadsheet with licenses cost and about 200 lines of code.**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28435" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1225" RevisionGUID="3820a1c7-dd20-4393-a577-6efd137fb8f8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I earned 60 rep on PSE yesterday, as shown on [my rep page][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in the [weekly user league][3] only 30 points appear:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect this is a side effect of yesterday's rep recalc, where I lost exactly 30 points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/recent/14221?StartDate=2011-02-27&amp;EndDate=2011-02-27&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/3D5xx.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackexchange.com/leagues/52/week/programmers&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/1oIMK.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28436" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8076" RevisionGUID="7b2ff46c-268b-4959-9883-de625545ceaa" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have a question regarding productivity, and it goes like this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**Time difference between developing with unit tests vs no tests**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;I'm a solo developer with a pretty time-constrained work environment where development time ranges usually from 1-4 weeks per project, depending on either requirements, urgency, or both. At any given time I handle around 3-4 projects, some having timelines that overlap with each other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Expectedly, code quality suffers. A considerable amount of bugs escape to production, which I have to fix and in turn sets back my other projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;This is where unit testing comes in. When done right, it should keep bugs, let alone those that escape to production, to a minimum. On the other hand, writing tests can take a considerable amount of time, which doesn't sound good with time-constrained projects such as mine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;Question is, how much of a time difference would writing unit-tested code over untested code, and if possible, how does that time difference scale as project scope widens?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As it is now, I suspect that this would be put off as subjective because it differs from person to person - someone can write unit-tested code as quick as someone else can do the same code but without tests. How can I improve this question so that it doesn't read as such?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:** [Question is now posted at the main site.](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/322256/time-difference-between-developing-with-unit-tests-vs-no-tests)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28437" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1254" RevisionGUID="03686844-242b-414f-a583-a970b32b85fc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="No, I don't think so. Rants are explicitly discouraged in the [Don't ask](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) section of the FAQ. They can be interesting to read, but if they are appropriate anywhere it would be in answers, which don't have tags &amp;mdash; not questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28438" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3568" RevisionGUID="c7723929-c5b3-43e4-a986-d101a0039b01" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Software terminology is on-topic here, however my question [When programmers talk about &quot;data structures&quot;, what are they referring to?][1] got closed as &quot;not a real question&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was asked because when looking up the exact definition of a data structure, I noticed that wikipedia provides a list of data structures which includes [composite types][2] (class objects, structs, enums, etc) and [primitive types][3] (boolean, int, char, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think I've ever heard of programmers using the term &quot;data structures&quot; to refer to primitive types, and very rarely when referring to classes, so this got me wondering about the exact definition of a data structure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since [software terminology is on-topic here][4], I thought programmers would be a good place to ask, but it got closed as not-a-real-question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree with this assessment because the question is on-topic for Programmers, and the answer is actually not as clear as you would think, and not easily found by a Google search. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Data Structures&quot; is a broad term used to cover structures that hold data, however it is also used as a term to reference abstract data types like `Lists`, `Trees`, `Graphs`, etc. When programmers talk about &quot;data structures&quot;, they are usually referring to the more specific term for abstract data types, which is why I almost always hear it being used in reference to abstract data types.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I am incorrect and software terminology is off-topic here, than it's fine being closed, but if this is incorrect then can we get the question reopened?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/147886/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_structures#Composite_types&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_structures#Primitive_types&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/4534590#4534590" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28440" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5332" RevisionGUID="17784cd4-f3c5-4431-8c01-9b472d625e12" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just for giggles, here's a quick summary of the number of users with more than 3,000 reputation.  I used the [leagues](http://stackexchange.com/leagues/52/year/programmers) as my source for these numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Total Rep* 	Users  &#xD;&#xA;25,000+ 	13  &#xD;&#xA;10,000+ 	73  &#xD;&#xA;5,000+  	184  &#xD;&#xA;3,000+  	315  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know how to / don't have access to &quot;active&quot; user counts to refine those numbers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the [question's revision history](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/178787/revisions), a total of 10 users have voted to close and 5 have voted to reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So the &quot;battle&quot; could wage for quite a while." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28441" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8085" RevisionGUID="93b02612-b3cf-423b-b764-3cdc63dd6d7a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm not complaining, but I think the [Mortarboard][1] badge is broken. I hit the rep cap yesterday and the day before, but didn't get the badge either time. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is something busted or am I just being harebrained?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/badges/25/mortarboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28442" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6878" RevisionGUID="697dc9bb-63f8-4ca0-873d-ed35be77ecc2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So there was this question asked by a new user. And it's undeniably crap. It is a code-dump showing 0 research effort, not even a problem statement. This is **the** prime example of what a crap question is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/255703/how-to-get-the-average-of-an-array?noredirect=1 :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Screenshot of the crap question...][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that question is on SO and the situation isn't any better. The question still is crap.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know what you all are probably thinking right now: &quot;Another mindless rant by a new user&quot;. Well you may think that way, and I'm okay with that, but I want you to ask yourselves a simple question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Has SO become the trash dump of Programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From what happened to that question, this one definitely looks like a yes. And I think that is very sad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some users have even realized that this question should not be migrated. Please programmers-users, don't become mindless crap-migrating SO users and **think** before pressing the migrate button.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Some thinking...][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/QsZj5.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CVGyZ.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28443" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3845" RevisionGUID="521b304b-09f2-46f0-9693-81ad7f8f87bb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I want to ask a question regarding best practises for working with Mercurial within a small team.  This is more about strategy for managing repositories rather than commands for using Mercurial.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a question better suited to Programmers or SO?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For reference, this is the question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/158847/recommended-methodology-for-working-with-shared-libraries-and-mercurial#comment303129_158847" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28444" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3656" RevisionGUID="7fc4fd93-d78c-4f04-82ae-04ce579cb794" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would have liked to see each contest tag go a little bit longer, since I felt that you had to ask a question towards the beginning of the week to maximize your views. Perhaps Tuesday through next Saturday or something like that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the contest did a good job at attracting new users to the site, as seen by some of the contest questions [with][2] [high][3] [view][4] [counts][1], and it was nice to see a lot of on-topic questions being asked instead of the newest question list always being half full of closed questions. I also enjoyed the fact that mods were a little more relaxed with question closures, and let the community take care of the on-the-fence questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as what we could do better with in the future, I think we could do a better job at picking tags. The [tag:history] was probably a bad idea in hindsight since it did promote some off-topic questions, although overall it didn't go as badly as I thought it would and I learned a bit from the questions asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really enjoyed the [tag:data-structures] and [tag:algorithms] contests since they gave me some interesting puzzles to think on, but wasn't overly fond of [tag:documentation] since I hate documentation as it is, so spending time reading about documentation is not my idea of fun :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/149465/who-created-the-ideas-of-the-first-loop-constructs&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/150939/how-common-are-generic-case-exponential-time-algorithms-in-production-software&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/150615/why-is-quicksort-better-than-other-sorting-algorithms-in-practice&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/149457/was-classical-basic-ever-used-for-commercial-software-development-and-if-so-how" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28445" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1391" RevisionGUID="7fbf19db-a3c2-49be-ab00-ebe4cc4f81f5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Just for the record, I flagged your question with something like the following comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question clearly fails 2, 4 and 5 of the six guidelines and is gathering some really terrible answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;2. **tend to have long, not short, answers.**&#xD;&#xA;3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;4. **invite sharing experiences over opinions.**&#xD;&#xA;5. **insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.**&#xD;&#xA;6. are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you argue with any of those?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And so many of the answers ([1](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be/65082#65082), [2](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be/64475#64475), [3](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be/64531#64531),&#xD;&#xA;[4](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be/65107#65107),&#xD;&#xA;[5](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be/65030#65030),&#xD;&#xA;[6](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/64248/if-you-could-pose-a-question-to-a-turing-test-candidate-what-would-it-be/64265#64265) to name the clearest examples) really were not useful in any way.  They get votes because they are funny.  Humor has a place on this site, but mostly that's in comments.  Humor is also fine if it's *also* in a useful answer, or *maybe* as an answer to a question you know is doomed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was prepared to vote for this question, because I don't think the moderators are perfect, but your rant turned me off.  Yes, there are dozens of examples of questions that are on the fence enough that they could warrant a reconsideration.  [I've asked some, too](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/28172/what-does-a-productive-programmer-day-consist-of-closed).  But the moderators are doing a decent job and are generally fair and open when you flag it for reconsideration, address them in comments, or bring it here to Meta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Popularity != Appropriateness**.  A simple correlation between popular and *constructive* questions doesn't make it a rule." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28446" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8089" RevisionGUID="5484644a-933d-4171-910b-01c5bc54b3f0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Hmm, I'm showing that you [already have the badge][1], earned March 4, 2015.  Mortarboard, along with its successors, Epic and Legendary, are single-award badges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To see your progress towards Epic and Legendary, you can track them in your user profile!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/badges/25/mortarboard?userid=142319&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, nice answer about events :)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28447" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5334" RevisionGUID="a24fad72-a928-475a-9454-262ecc75d551" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm becoming frustrated at questions being closed due to being &quot;off-topic&quot; where they are clearly on topic. Two recent questions have been closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Please recommend a patterns book for iOS development][1]: I got two decent answers and wanted more on the topic. As stated in my question body there are many books that teach the language, and how to write interfaces, but very little on actual patterns and practices for solving common design scenarios. So why is this off topic? Some may say that one books is better than another, however I don't really care. I'm looking for professional advice so I can go out and apply patterns within the books that I find best to me.&#xD;&#xA;* [What is the convention for the star location in reference variables?][2]: Two decent answers with good reasons either way, if I didn't ask this question I would be less informed and still not know what is the best. Again, this I can choose to do what I like, as long as I stay consistent.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if these are subjective, where do we ask these types of questions? If we get valuable answers what's the harm? I don't ask these types of questions on [stackoverflow][3] and ask on [p.se][4] instead as the FAQ clearly states that subjective questions are allowed within reason. I believe that both of these questions meet the &quot;within reason&quot; criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/178989/please-recommend-a-patterns-book-for-ios-development&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/176260/what-is-the-convention-for-the-star-location-in-reference-variables&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28448" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3867" RevisionGUID="26b7cac0-c51e-4805-9d01-d408218573be" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I thought [tag:subjective] was blacklisted already, but it made its way onto [a recent question][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's one of the [unholy trinity of bad meta-tags][2]: can it be blacklisted here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/159183/1&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28449" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3896" RevisionGUID="72d6621a-2eff-4e13-8837-3e7a02ea1b89" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently asked a question and it was closed and I cannot go back to view the answers in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just curious as to why it was closed, it was on topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/160205/file-comparison-tool-that-will-allow-me-to-manually-remap-lines-between-two-file)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28450" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5828" RevisionGUID="cdb13bbc-2646-4c14-b126-04a126a9cfb7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/194414/what-psychological-factors-account-for-readability was asked after a [related question][1] was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;gnat posted a comment that detailed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**[resource requests are not quite welcome at Programmers][2]**. As far as I understand, one would rather present an **underlying problem** instead - a problem that was intended to be solved with particular resource requested&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've had a look at the faq for what's on-topic, but this doesn't seem to match any of the criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is receiving upvotes, so wondered whether it's been edited to a state where it's on-topic?  &#xD;&#xA;I've given it a few comments, but not answered it to avoid encouraging it if it is off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/194348/where-can-i-find-scientific-papers-about-code-readability&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/resource-questions/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28451" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6887" RevisionGUID="7965eaf1-7bef-416c-a5f1-7e31d875a88f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't feel this question is a good canonical target for &quot;License Shopping&quot; questions as it is overtly broad and would give users the wrong impression about what kinds of questions are okay to ask here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not sure that there can be a canonical answer for license shopping that isn't overtly broad.  I think the best solution is to try to improve the quality of existing and future license shopping questions to where they are specific and present a real problem that the OP faces.  If this question gets a great focused answer then we can use that specific question as a dupe target for future questions that are highly similar.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Eg. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/236370/query-regarding-mit-licence being a duplicate of the better question https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/117572/mit-and-copyright&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The latter question can be a canonical dupe for questions about copyright as it pertains to utilizing software components that have the MIT License." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28452" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1511" RevisionGUID="5b2009f6-f42f-4105-8a63-91c3b660ffb5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It seems that there is an issue with votes/reputation on Programmers.SE (don't know if there is the same issue on other SE websites).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've recently answered two questions and my answer had one up-vote each, but the up-vote is not reflected in my profile. The reputation remains the same as before, and &quot;votes&quot; display is weird.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's a screenshot:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can see that for non-wiki questions and my non-wiki answers, for both answers the reputation has +0 instead of +10.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The links to the answers are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Are Subject specific programing books a good idea][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [What best practices should be employed in a PHP login script?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What's happening?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:** it seems that the same problem affects [another answer][4]. With 34 upvotes, there are 215 reputation points (15 as accepted answer) instead of 355.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It makes me think about another point. At the beginning, I published this last answer as a community wiki (see edits history). But it didn't work, i.e. the answer was displayed as a non-wiki. Then, I edited the answer, without checking the wiki checkbox again. May it be that it affected every other answer, so now, every answer I write is treated as wiki, while being displayed as non-wiki?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Je00w.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/73009/are-subject-specific-programing-books-a-good-idea/73030#73030&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/73024/what-best-practices-should-be-employed-in-a-php-login-script/73042#73042&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/72967/i-want-to-create-a-software-company-what-are-the-basic-things-that-i-should-know/72969#72969" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28453" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3704" RevisionGUID="b50099e9-4300-4f78-9677-e9a3ebd493db" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is [meta-tag:status-bydesign], Meta Stack Overflow is the only Meta listed in the network profile, and that's because it's a bit special. Per site Metas are considered an extension of the main site, and your per site Meta accounts an extension of your site account.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know how useful it would be to list per site Metas in the network profile, your Meta participation is interesting only to the specific community, and your Meta account is linked to from your [main account][1]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/37315/austin-henley" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28454" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8104" RevisionGUID="dc1f1fac-d960-45ff-bc2e-53390091949a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked this question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/321462/8939&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do agree that my initial question (before edits) was outside of programmers.stackexchange, and after I received a comment from a moderator, I edited my question to make it more objective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason given for closing does not seem to line up with the question.  The reason claims that I asked for anecdotal experience, when really I'm asking for objective give and take between one methodology and another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to the FAQ, I can ask questions about development processes and methodologies (which is why I asked on Programmers, and not on SO)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suspect that what really happened here is that there was a vote to close before my initial edit, and then it was eventually closed by &quot;me too&quot; close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I'm wrong about that and my edits did not bring the question into alignment with the site, I would like to know what more I might have done to have made the question suitable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thank you" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28455" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3911" RevisionGUID="e9760223-1eba-4e27-984b-5925e21b3d28" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As of the time of this posting, [ElYusubov](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/57164/elyusubov) has been a Programmers.SE member for **59 days.** Yet he has accumulated over 7600 in reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a record pace?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28456" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3799" RevisionGUID="62f2d564-a43b-4288-80d1-606ee4d35a1a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A [recent question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/157022/53019) was posted about coding for charity and finding organizations that help coordinate those activities.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Currently, it's closed as off-topic.  An attempt has been made (by me) to make the question more on-topic and trigger a reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is to spark a discussion on whether or not the question can be salvaged and made on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_Edit:_  &#xD;&#xA;There is a fair degree of agreement that the question is a list style question.  To help focus additional answers and comments, I'm adding the following questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it possible to define a narrow set of circumstances where list style questions may be appropriate?  If so, what would those conditions need to be?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28457" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6915" RevisionGUID="0f395f01-c673-497e-8b4f-81e0ec97faa2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="When a question is edited it [shows back up](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/48578/165773 &quot;see 'What can cause my question to be bumped?'&quot;) on the recently active questions.  People read it again and it takes time from people.  Deleting a question removes it from view and allows the OP (if he or she should desire) to be able to edit it (you *can* edit deleted posts if you can see them - such as 10k users and the OP can) and flag it for undeletion.  In the meantime, deletion prevents further down votes of the question and can reduce the comment drama that can detract from the rest of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most recently, this happened with the question [Steps for App Development?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/257714/steps-for-app-development) (10k link):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original version:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##App Development minimal knowledge&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to create some mobile and web applications quickly. I am aware of the 'full stack' but I do not know any of its associated technologies. If I were to use 'back-end as a service' what is left for me to do in deploying an app besides simply coding it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The edited version:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Steps for App Development?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I want to create some mobile and web applications quickly. I am working in 'full stack' environment but I do not know any of its associated technologies. If I were to start there and use 'back-end as a service' what additional steps do I need to take in deploying an app besides simply coding it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the comments on it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/…](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490) –  gnat yesterday&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I made the question &quot;less broad&quot; by asking for &quot;additional steps,&quot; and wonder if it can be re-opened in its current form. –  Tom Au 22 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @TomAu that still doesn't make it not too broad. What technologies are known? What end result is desired? Mobile and web apps are very different. Is this android or iOS or that windows phone thing? Do you even have the right hardware? If we're talking about web apps is this to be on the intranet? or the cloud? There is ***much*** more information that the OP needs to provide to make this an answerable question. –  MichaelT 22 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With this question, I can think of dozens of ways to answer it for various combinations of technology.  For ruby, it would be one thing, for a php another, for python another, for the .NET suite another, for Java yet another. And then I'd answer it answer it differently if this was being deployed on the corporate intranet vs putting it out in the intranet... and then there's the mobile bit that is very different from web apps.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, the OP doesn't even know where to begin and no amount of tweaking of the question will change it from that unless the OP provides the additional information about the actual problem being encountered and the path they are trying to follow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comment that gnat provided to https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6490#6490 exactly details what is wrong with the question and that *all* of those things need to be fixed before it is reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Deleting the question prevents people from spending additional, undue time on the question. Questions that don't fix the close reason (and *really* fix it, not just a slight narrowing of scope) don't get reopened.  Transforming it from one close reason to another (for example, unclear to a poll) is also not a useful edit. Consider how the question would be answered and if those answers would be ones that meet the desired quality of Programmers.SE's answers.  If there are too many possible answers or the answers would require pages of tutorials then it is still too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Bumping a heavily down voted closed (or on hold) question will draw increased scrutiny of the question which, if it's not a good question, can lead to it getting deleted more rapidly than the [roomba](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/177675/165773 &quot;automatic deletion&quot;) would (and in some cases because the roomba won't).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is an edit to be made, fix *all* of the problems and make it into a good question not just a less bad one.  Alternatively, ask clarifying comments for the OP to respond to (and if the OP puts it in the comments, *then* edit those comments into the question)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28458" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1669" RevisionGUID="2f0b0196-871d-4601-a132-1db7c42fcac2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As a thank you for *being awesome*, if you are on page 1 or page 2 of &amp;hellip;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users?tab=reputation&amp;filter=all&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&amp;hellip; we'll be sending you a little care package shortly:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Programmers Stack Exchange t-shirt in your size&#xD;&#xA;- Programmers Stack Exchange die-cut, vinyl stickers&#xD;&#xA;- [Stack Exchange sharpie][1] &#xD;&#xA;- [Stack Exchange pen][2]&#xD;&#xA;- [Stack Exchange stickers][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can expect to get an email soon with details on how to confirm and provide your mailing address and size preferences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The t-shirt&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![programmers.stackexchange.com t-shirt][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## The sticker&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![programmers.stackexchange.com sticker][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The rest of the items you can view in the [Stack Exchange store][7] &amp;mdash; direct links to [sharpie][8], [pens][9], [stickers][10].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Congratulations! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(for anyone else who wants this swag, but isn't on page 1 or page 2 of the all time top users -- the limited edition t-shirts and stickers will be available for purchase from the store soon as well)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://shop.stackexchange.com/collections/frontpage/products/stack-exchange-sharpies&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://shop.stackexchange.com/products/stack-exchange-pens&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://shop.stackexchange.com/products/stack-exchange-network-stickers&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EXsDI.png&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/1rsFF.png&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: http://shop.stackexchange.com&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: http://shop.stackexchange.com/collections/frontpage/products/stack-exchange-sharpies&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: http://shop.stackexchange.com/products/stack-exchange-pens&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: http://shop.stackexchange.com/products/stack-exchange-network-stickers&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28459" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8122" RevisionGUID="848f43ed-c85f-455b-b386-06729fce5c20" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm following more or less all the current buzz about changing the site name. I entirely agree with the proposal.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I haven't seen mentioned (maybe it was, but, well, there are *a lot* of answers and comments) anything about one particular technical aspect involved in the change of the site name: hyperlinks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Imagine I have [a link][1] in my blog, pointing to a very popular, highly upvoted question with an excellent answer. What would happen after the site is renamed and—I imagine—moved to a different third-level domain name?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Would it be [automatically redirected][2] to the corresponding question on the new site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Would it show a page telling that the website moved, inviting the user to figure out by herself how to find the new question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Or would it simply result in [a generic HTTP 404][3]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, only the first solution is a valid approach. Anything else would be disastrous both for the overall internet community (there are enough dead links already on the internet), and specifically for the newly renamed website: an important number of new users come here from Google, and it would take some time for Google to reindex all the content on the new site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/46716/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_302&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://example.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28460" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6010" RevisionGUID="4a20020e-13b6-4c6e-b2d0-c879110ac676" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Related question - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5931/where-to-ask-for-advice-regarding-a-review-audit &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just ran into a review Audit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question for which the first post occured was: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/44/are-certifications-worth-it &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I checked the question, but could not find the answer on the page. In the review box, it wasn't possible to either down/up vote, nor flag or comment the post, since the quesiton is marked as wiki.  The only actions available were: share(on the answer), Nothing needs to be done(review), Skip(review). Since the answer wasn't visible on the question page and I couldn't find the user, I clicked &quot;Nothing needs to be done&quot;, assuming that it had already been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In retrospect, &quot;Skip&quot; probably would have been the better choice, but is this really a good review audit scenario? First-posts on wiki questions aren't even possible, are they?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/DMOuH.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28461" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3906" RevisionGUID="95d72daa-3a63-4a70-aa81-14b5857d16a2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Burninated and blacklisted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please [care for the orphans](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/untagged). " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28462" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5413" RevisionGUID="3ab165d6-625d-4893-8812-2a3b89ce0cc3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HlC8e.png &quot;downvote tooltip - 'This answer is not useful...'&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by compelling presentation of personal experience, posts that appear to ignore prior answers covering same grounds, stuff like that...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I can tell, many (probably most) of my downvotes go to answers in [&quot;hot questions&quot;](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/hot-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While I downvote maybe one of the answers to 5-10 &quot;regular&quot; questions, I noticed that almost every question with [views over 2K](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) brings answers that look bad to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**&quot;Hot garbage waves&quot;** in the answers appear to happen once or twice a week on average, frequent enough to feel the connection between these and respective questions making their way into [SE collider list](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that something to worry about?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My particular concern is the poisonous effect these mis-answers have on questions, making **interesting and well presented problems** look the same as non-constructive [popularity contests](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sub&gt;&quot;Oh look: ['my guess is fairly prosaic. Git is brilliant...'](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/177890/31260 &quot;example&quot;) - with upvoted answer like that it [can't be a real question](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/not-a-real-question/info &quot;not-a-real-question - what's this?&quot;)&quot;.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is especially depressing is that regular ways to deal with this kind of issues just don't work. It's typically not difficult to edit the question to [repel garbage answers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3835/31260 &quot;as discussed eg here&quot;), I can easily name a handful of active regulars who [can and do](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;filter=all &quot;our editors gang is pretty strong&quot;) just that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that [invalidates my edit](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;). And answer that exploits another minor ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;It feels like all one gets is just like 60 seconds to figure protective edit to cover every word and letter in the question that could possibly be misinterpreted by some random passer-by and exploited for their senseless cheap shots. That's just... impossible. And more, it feels quite unfair to over-police text of such questions: per my observations &quot;hotness algorithm&quot; have been smart enough to pick questions that have reasonably good wording as-is.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way how things work now helps to attract new contributors but I would appreciate if achieving this important goal &lt;sup&gt;**[1](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/when-is-an-account-abandoned/ &quot;'reduce the friction of... answering to little more than entering an anonymous comment on a blog'&quot;), [2](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/helping-the-experts-get-answers/ &quot;'attract notable experts to your site'&quot;), [3](http://stackexchange.com/about &quot;'free and open to everyone... answer questions without even bothering to register'&quot;)**&lt;/sup&gt; would somehow be less damaging for good, highly visible questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **protect your own users from scale ...human interaction, many to many interaction, doesn't blow up like a balloon...** ([A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy ](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html &quot;quote source&quot;))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are some additional observations based on discussions that followed posting this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Low quality answers in hot questions likely contribute to the fact that currently, it is [hard for users to understand site standards](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260 &quot;discussed here in more details&quot;), which results in posting many &quot;bad&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Taking into account that these are highly visible posts, with thousands of views, it is pretty possible for them to be a steady source of misguided contributors... There are... [broken windows](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/broken-windows/info)... **&quot;why can't I post X when Y exists&quot;**.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Until recently](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228940/165773 &quot;until this change announced 2014-04-09&quot;), low quality answers also threated to [penalize contributors](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13713_5448 &quot;see 'clear that 10k barrier...' and further discussion&quot;) who post good ones because when piled on in hot questions, garbage answers trigger [CW](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info &quot;automatic community wiki when there are more than 15 answers&quot;) which consequently turns all the upvotes given to good answers into zero reputation for their authors.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [more than 1700 answers scored 25+ turned community wiki](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;q=wiki%3ayes%20is%3aanswer%20score%3a25)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of precision, note that number `1700` above is only indicative since search does not exclude answers turned CW for other reasons. Also note some of the answers could be high-voted &quot;unfairly&quot;: per analysis 10+ voted answers in sampled questions (below), this could happen, although rather infrequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Background research&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For a little data to back up what was written above, I quickly went through few [sampled](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/181999/31260 &quot;random sampling, stuff like that&quot;) questions with more than 10K views asked for last half year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please bear in mind that below list only **partially** represents the issue: it would be hard to do similar walkthrough for questions with [over 2K views](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a2000%20closed%3a0) since these appear about **10x** more frequently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/156722/how-does-learning-assembly-aid-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  20 answers total, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/158640/why-cant-the-it-industry-deliver-large-faultless-projects-quickly-as-in-other  &#xD;&#xA;  [protected](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/protected-questions/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 27 answers, I'd downvote about 12-13  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 7 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 2 answers, all look OK  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Both answers are scored above 10 (way above:).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/159813/do-i-need-to-use-an-interface-when-only-one-class-will-ever-implement-it  &#xD;&#xA;  13 answers, I'd downvote about 6-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/161794/is-it-a-good-idea-to-design-an-architecture-thinking-that-the-user-interface-cla  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/162643/why-is-clean-code-suggesting-avoiding-protected-variables  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds-quote-about-good-programmer  &#xD;&#xA;  17 answers, I'd downvote about 7-8  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 3-4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/165380/how-can-i-really-master-a-programming-language  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 14 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 3 answers scored 10 or above, 2-3 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/167305/what-functionality-does-dynamic-typing-allow  &#xD;&#xA;  protected by [mod notice](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/168751/is-the-use-of-utf8-preferable-to-utf8-true  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 3 answers, I'd downvote 2 (especially the one where author didn't even bother to format their code, `&lt;meta charset=&quot;URF-8&quot;&gt;`)  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;The only answer scored above 10 is one that looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/173441/what-triggered-the-popularity-of-lambda-functions-in-modern-mainstream-programmi  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote 2-4  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/176113/does-having-a-higher-paid-technical-job-mean-you-do-not-get-to-code-any-more  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 4 answers, I'd downvote 1-2  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;There's only one answer scored 10 or above; it looks OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 16 answers, I'd downvote about 8-9  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, all look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/177875/why-is-the-sudden-increase-in-number-of-git-submitters-on-debian-popcon-graph-in  &#xD;&#xA;  protected, 11 answers, I'd downvote about 6-7  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 4 answers scored 10 or above, 2 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/180948/why-arent-user-defined-operators-more-common  &#xD;&#xA;  12 answers, I'd downvote about 4-6  &#xD;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Of 5 answers scored 10 or above, 4 look OK to me.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the sake of completeness, note that besides 199 answers reviewed above, there are also 19 answers deleted in 16 questions listed above. These answers are visible only to moderators and to users with [sufficient privileges](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools &quot;Access to Moderator tools -&gt; 'View deleted posts'&quot;). Of these 19, 9 are deleted by moderators, the rest has been deleted by owners. Of 10 answers deleted by owners, I would downvote 7-8.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;URL used to get above questions is:  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=views%3a10000%20closed%3a0&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I wrote &quot;I'd downvote&quot; above since I did not really do that to all the answers I checked because of [voting limits](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/voting-limits/info).&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Summing up, I would downvote about **101-118 of 218** answers I reviewed per above research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some data related to [recently added](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/5413/revisions &quot;see changes in rev 13&quot;) observations on community wiki status.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 2K+ views - about **25%** are CW, [307](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [1247](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A2000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions with 10K+ views - about **60%** are CW, [62](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0+wiki%3Ayes) of total [101](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A10000+closed%3A0)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoting [self](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better/5448#comment13717_5448 &quot;from here&quot;), wow. Just... wow." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28463" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6947" RevisionGUID="cf885f84-7097-4007-8597-2b771e99e9f7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have asked [this question][1] because I wanted to know how and why F. Brooks connected this quotation, from a restaurant: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Good cooking takes time. If you are made to wait, it is to serve you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; better, and to please you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;with software engineering. I understand that it has a subjective theme, so tried to reword to better fit programmers.se following the guidelines on [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective][2]. However it seems like it didn't work, so I would like to ask for some tips (its better if you could give some examples) about how to improve the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/260192/why-does-fred-brooks-uses-this-quote-in-the-mythical-man-month?noredirect=1#comment527053_260192&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28464" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3935" RevisionGUID="4cc1e9e8-220a-484e-93ef-be9b4c4c882a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/160473/what-is-the-best-way-to-use-inheritance-with-orms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my view, this is a perfectly appropriate question for Programmers.SE that can yield an objective, constructive answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do people think that it would be more appropriate for Stackoverflow? Were people expecting code samples?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28466" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3953" RevisionGUID="da077ecc-e685-454c-9300-b4c135bead8f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This [question][1] was closed as non constructive with no comments or feedback of why it is considered of low quality.  &#xD;&#xA;IMHO, I believe the question is reasonable and answerable from anyone with good experience.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similar question were posted on some time ago, but specific to certain languages:  &#xD;&#xA;[How can I test PHP skills in a interview?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/118886/how-can-i-test-php-skills-in-a-interview) with a great answer provided by **Yannis Rizos**  one of the moderators.  &#xD;&#xA;[.net Interviews](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/56797/net-interviews) a question about interviewing a senior .Net developer.  &#xD;&#xA;[How you prepared for your .NET interview?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/14047/how-you-prepared-for-your-net-interview)  &#xD;&#xA;[What are some tasks you might ask a potential ruby developer hire to complete?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/86294/what-are-some-tasks-you-might-ask-a-potential-ruby-developer-hire-to-complete)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why a question about a non-language specific interview was closed?&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/162767/non-language-specific-interview-questions-for-a-senior-web-developer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28467" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8128" RevisionGUID="f27087f4-5584-489f-b7c9-8afb22e1b98a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just received the moderation privilege and reviewed [this new answer][1] to an old thread as not adding anything to the accepted answer, hence, not worth the resurrection.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What stumbles me though is the comment I got from @jules, stating that it is worthwhile to keep such an answer, since it provides a summary of the lengthy and detailled original answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this view shared by the community? I always had the impression that thorough, backed and deeply insightful answers are what we are after - even (or especially) if that means you have to read a page of text. The accepted answer in particular is well structured and making use of section headers even. It certainly isn't on the too long list for me either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I do understand the value of a TL;DR in the accepted answer and I would welcome that. I am just not convinced, that having another answer, which is merely a summary of an existing answer, is worthwhile - or is it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/326285/16375" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28470" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6953" RevisionGUID="c62758a8-371e-4a53-ba42-f17a082663ef" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Update** - follow-up feature request to establish popup as discussed here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6983/improve-question-quality-by-informing-askers-of-expectations-in-some-career-rela&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As explained in [another answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6951/31260), tag specific [popup](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvXIT.png &quot;like this&quot;) can be used to guide askers and editors willing to use it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an [example](https://anime.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1083/improve-question-quality-by-informing-users-of-reverse-image-search-sites) of tag popup request. Process to create such a popup is described [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/242252/automatic-warnings-of-dangerous-tags/242355#comment792260_242355):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;Post a [feature-request] for each tag, with specific guidance (ideally linking to a meta post if non-trivial so I don't have to edit these all the time) and justification for needing something more than the tag excerpt. Let folks discuss it, then ping me ([Community Manager]) if there's support... This is really something that should be discussed within each community, as these might become annoying if over-used (ideally you don't want multiple tags on a single question to produce warnings) and the guidance should reflect the lessons learned from handling these questions.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Suggestion to create a popup for this tag ([tag:job-market]) and other particularly troublesome career related tags:  &#xD;&#xA;[tag:job-market], [tag:resume], [tag:career-transition], [tag:career-development]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Tag popup content is derived from [career-development tag wiki](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/career-development/info):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Wait!** Career advice is off-topic per the [Help Center](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  Please note that most career advice questions end up being closed for being too broad or impractical; try to make yours a [good subjective question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they require the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;* Please make sure your question has the proper scope.  It needs to apply to other programmers besides yourself.  &#xD;&#xA;* If your question can also be applied to other job fields, then it does not uniquely apply to software development and is not on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;* _Before_ asking, review this meta guidance: [Why was my question closed or down voted? -&gt; Career or education advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488).  Make sure your question avoids the problems listed in the guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;This post is made community wiki in order to simplify editing.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28471" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3937" RevisionGUID="4ea78b33-571b-419b-8092-47a3774b1d18" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/87107/what-are-the-differences-between-qa-engineers-and-software-engineers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just don't think that this is constructive; and I feel like there's a small rant embedded in the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28472" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6089" RevisionGUID="f3c4c811-40f8-4d31-b323-b88fc9f855be" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am writing a Python script for downloading a website for offline viewing and changing the links in the downloaded webpages for proper links between the downloaded webpages. I don't know the technical term for this so I asked [this question][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - There was some debate in the comments about whether it is on-topic or not before the comments were purged. &#xD;&#xA; - One moderator [wasn't sure whether to close the question][2] while another moderator closed the question. &#xD;&#xA; - There seems to be some consensus on [this meta question][3] that &quot;name that thing&quot; questions should be allowed. Mine isn't about naming a thing but for finding out the proper technical term for a process that I am trying to do. If &quot;name that thing&quot; is allowed then asking &quot;technical term for this thing&quot; should also be allowed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was also told that my question isn't programming related.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I want to know if the answers to my questions are correct i.e. the process that I am trying to do is `web-crawling` or `archiving` then how is it not programming related? As far as I know search engines do `web-crawling` for their work. Then if the argument is that what I am doing isn't programming related then are search engines not programming related?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does the community define `programming-related`? Are technical terms excluded?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is my question off-topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/206415/whats-the-technical-term-for-downloading-a-website-for-offline-viewing&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10545107#10545107&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2380/are-name-that-thing-questions-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28473" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1814" RevisionGUID="8e3315f3-a614-42b2-a097-46fc5df0b85f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question [&quot;Evolution of mainstream programming languages: simplicity versus complexity.&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/87155/evolution-of-mainstream-programming-languages-simplicity-versus-complexity) has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not sure I fully understand why. The explanation I got from the moderator(s) is that &quot;we're looking for practical, solvable problems people are actually facing and need to get help with&quot;. The problem that I was stating was quite clear to me: C++ and Java are becoming very complex and difficult to use (is this not a real problem?), shall I switch to another language? This is a very practical problem for me since I am a developer and C++ and Java are my main languages of expertise. I am considering whether I should invest time learning the new versions of these languages, or move to some other language like Scala.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was hoping to read answers like: stay with Java because my experience is ... or: move to Scala, because my experience is...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have seen questions that are much more vaguely formulated and still have not been closed, such as: &quot;Why do we study Java at university?&quot; Very interesting question and I do not have anything against it. But in what way does this very general and very open question meet the site requirements more than mine? This is not very clear to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also understand that a question on this site should not end up in a discussion. It should be rather one question with possibly a few answers.&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand I am afraid that a general question will generate some discussion (some back and forth). Should this be avoided altogether? Or is it allowed to a very limited extent?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am a bit unsure whether I try and submit further questions on this site apart from very concrete, technical ones. So I would be grateful if someone could explain to me better what exactly caused my question to be closed and whether I could have formulated it in a different way (consider also what I have explained above) so that it would have been valid." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28474" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8146" RevisionGUID="fc1e8626-a547-41c4-8bfb-7bf44d57e498" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="dunno who the moderators are but the deletion of my comments in [this thread](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/328001/is-power-of-two-bits-per-word-convenient-if-it-is-why-is-that) coupled with the retention of similarly disrespectful comments from *gnasher729* appears to show favoritism, or at least, insufficient reading/consideration or awareness of the comments as a whole in that thread.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;i'm not particularly put-out, but i think the admins or moderators of this forum should be aware of the disparate scrutiny applied to contentious comments in this particular case." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28475" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5205" RevisionGUID="83a9abcf-2d01-49ed-ab0f-033c089b17f2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I feel that the [tag:tutorial] and the [tag:tutorials] tags should be blacklisted.  They are for the most part called out in the FAQ as off topic, and even when they are non general knowledge and cannot be easily answered with a Google search then they have to be monitored very closely for poor answers that contribute nothing but a link to that persons favorite site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples of confusion that we are potentially giving users over the appropriateness of tutorial requests:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/173605/what-is-the-correct-ui-interface-to-learn-for-creating-windows-phone-8-apps#comment331805_173605&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/173532/excellent-c-tutorials&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/170525/where-can-i-learn-objective-c-well&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/165219/what-are-the-benefits-and-drawback-of-documentation-vs-tutorials-vs-video-tutori&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/159852/scala-courses-like-codeschool-or-codecademy&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/148902/ruby-on-rails-book-with-exercises&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/129444/interactive-tutorial-for-learning-python&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/126027/intro-to-windows-development-for-a-linux-programmer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/124617/best-tutorial-for-c-asp-net&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/119892/are-there-any-good-books-or-tutorials-on-learning-visual-studio&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could continue to post examples but I think my point is clear.  Nearly all of these questions posted with this tag have been closed, and the ones that aren't were probably just missed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**EDIT:** Currently no more Closed questions have the tag." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28476" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6957" RevisionGUID="c9ec410d-63f4-4128-8667-f2a03bc659ca" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Search shows](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=is%3Aanswer+hasnotice%3A1 &quot;is:answer hasnotice:1&quot;) several answers with old mod [notices](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/post-notice/info &quot;what's this&quot;), could these be [reconciled](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconciliation_%28accounting%29)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At first I thought to flag them but there seems to be too many and some are not quite clear cut so I decided to ask at meta instead.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Notice appears ignored:&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/194589&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/151524&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/171241&#xD;&#xA;  * (\*) https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/201190  &#xD;&#xA;  * (\*) https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/155059  &#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/177532&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/202497&#xD;&#xA;  * (\*) https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/172957  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. There was an edit but I can't tell if the issue is addressed indeed:&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/167776&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/185954&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/173248&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Notice appears to be obsoleted by answer edits:&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/175249&#xD;&#xA;  * (\*) https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/148870  &#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/167393&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/159829&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/228080&#xD;&#xA;  * https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/198499&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In list above, (\*) denotes cases where not only answer but also question itself looks troublesome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am particularly concerned about answers in first and last groups. First makes site visitors think that it's okay to ignore mod notice, last makes them think that moderators ignore attempts to improve." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28477" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1816" RevisionGUID="cd7267af-d17b-4e81-a21e-932913312ea0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't believe that [this answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/87366/are-there-any-valid-reasons-for-disallowing-characters-and-limiting-the-length-of/87367#87367) is of any use on the site:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; #No&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; There are no _good_ reasons,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's it. No further explanation or justification of this view. It doesn't add anything to the debate. Yet as of this writing it has a score of 17 consisting of 26 up-votes and 9 down-votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we as a community want this site to be taken seriously we all have to act responsibly and show that we (that's everyone who contributes to the site) know what we're talking about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;NOTE: I'm not singling out any particular user here, nor am I questioning the validity of the actual answer - just that there's no *evidence* to back up the bald assertion." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28478" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3939" RevisionGUID="46e01d35-557b-4a34-bb83-33e49910f4f1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/89266/comparing-ones-self-to-others-during-interviews&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Isn't this question a better fit for Workplace.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just don't see how this is specific to programmers or programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28479" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6148" RevisionGUID="3882f456-daec-4218-89c2-5b65bd31872d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question I cast the first close vote on was [revision 1](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/209867/1) which reads:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do programmers need quiet? If they do why do so many places not have quiet and still seem to get something done?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Do programmers get quiet? If no, WHY not.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; PLEASE, references and substantive answers based on notable sources please!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even with references, this can be the domain of opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider the following hypothetical answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer #1:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; No programmers do not need quiet.  We run an agile shop and have found that it is necessary that programmers are able to interact with each other at all times as described by many Agile consultants ([1](http://fugelsoitconsulting.com/2013/03/the-agile-workspace/) [2](http://blog.giffordconsulting.com/2006/10/agile-workspaces-microsofts-patterns.html) [3](http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-ideal-agile-workspace)) and can be seen in [this blog post](http://cmegroupideaexchange.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/building-an-agile-work-environment-part-deux/) demonstrating a typical agile work environment.  Pair programing does not work if the pair isn't talking, and the open plan requires that there is a constant level of communication and talk.  Some programmers even prefer to have music going on and we have a community driven local 'radio' station of streaming mp3s over the intercom system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Answer #2:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The environment of programmers needs to be that of a library.  We expect the workplace to be quiet.  The only way to get the noise level to 'ok' as suggested in peopleware is to have silence as different programmers expect different levels of noise (see Peopleware Chapter 8 - Effects of Workplace Table 8-1).  Those that want noise can use headphones.  Furthermore, we've abolished telephones in the work area so programmers aren't distracted by other phones ringing or people talking on them (see Peopleware Chapter 11 - The Telephone).  If you need to talk to someone on the phone, you go to a sound proof phone cube off in the corner.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are countless more possible answers - each right and each fits within the constraint of the first question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The second question is asking about the multitude of reasons that people don't get quiet.  Why not?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Programmers aren't valued where I work, we're on the second floor of a loading dock.&#xD;&#xA;* Programmers are mixed in with support people to encourage interaction, the phones are always going off&#xD;&#xA;* We have too many juniors for each senior and there are always 'tutoring' sessions going in in cubes.&#xD;&#xA;* When doing agile spikes I get distracted by other noises of people working&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, countless why answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers are opinions even if you ask them not to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few other factors to consider in this is that asking for refrences is not something that is on topic for P.SE.  I would suggest reading [Are requests for a specific reference material off-topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5176/are-requests-for-a-specific-reference-material-off-topic), [Why are “reference request” questions off topic?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5299/why-are-reference-request-questions-off-topic), and [“Scientific Evidence” versions of each question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you *really* want the studies aspect, it could get closed as a dup of [Studies on how noise affects productivity of programmers [closed]](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/132952/studies-on-how-noise-affects-productivity-of-programmers) and [Is there any scholarly research on the detrimental effects of a noisy workplace on productivity? [closed]](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/56220/is-there-any-scholarly-research-on-the-detrimental-effects-of-a-noisy-workplace).  If I need to point out again, the top answer in each of those two questions is essentially &quot;Read Peopleware&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also a question on skeptics.SE - [What study showed that using headphones to drown out office noise is detrimental?](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7517/what-study-showed-that-using-headphones-to-drown-out-office-noise-is-detrimental) which has one answer that starts out:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The study was described in Tom DeMarco's excellent book &quot;Peopleware.&quot; I think it was said to be done at Cornell University." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28480" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5426" RevisionGUID="f9e6672b-0912-4b86-80c6-3af56acb56a2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The down vote came from the close reason. Some close reasons, including off-topic, automatically apply a down vote to the question. The reason for closure is clearly stated in [the FAQ][1]: questions about &quot;implementation issues or programming tools&quot; belong on Stack Overflow. A good rule of thumb is that if you are sitting at your computer, in front of your development tools, the question probably belongs on Stack Overflow. If you're at a whiteboard or in a conference room, Programmers is probably a better bet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was not eligible for migration to Stack Overflow because of its age. In the past few months, a restriction was placed on migration. After 60 days (refer to [this feature request at MSO](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/151890/165773 &quot;'Disable migration for questions older than 60 days'&quot;) for details), questions can no longer be migrated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there are indeed &quot;tons of similar questions&quot; on Programmers, please point them out. Implementation details are, and always have been (as far as I can remember), off-topic here. If any exist, they should be closed or migrated to Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28481" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5221" RevisionGUID="83b2fb70-16d9-48d3-be98-a4b403f7c2e1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would like to know why my question has been closed nearly instantaneously?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What is a good product planning tool?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/175268/what-is-a-good-product-planning-tool)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I read the FAQ prior to asking, and it does not seem to contradict any of the following guidelines to me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; *   inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA; *   tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA; *   have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA; *   invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA; *   insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA; *   are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, those are the exact types of answers I want for my question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And it would seem to me to fall under the category of &quot;practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&quot;.  Is it not possible that someone else might need a product planning tool under similar circumstances?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that there is a desire to keep this site constructive, but if people can't ask real-world questions, then what is the point?  I use other StackExchange sites regularly without nearly the amount of trouble avoiding getting my questions closed.  I can't help but feel that the atmosphere of legalism on Programmers is hindering what could be an even more **useful** site.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nobody owes me anything, and I'm grateful for anyone who is willing to help me.  However, this is not a particularly welcoming environment, and I don't think I'm the only one who thinks so.  If this sort of question is not acceptable here, then perhaps someone is interested in pointing to me to a website where people will answer questions like mine." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28483" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5442" RevisionGUID="f383a271-10b6-4546-ad4a-b9327fe97b27" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My [profile summary page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=summary) currently says 3668 upvotes while votes-&gt;upvotes sub tab ([dev team only link](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/31260/gnat?tab=votes&amp;sort=upvote)) counts less than that - 3544.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`3668-3544=124` - as far as I understand this difference could be [due to deleted posts](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144757/165773 &quot;as explained here&quot;), does that mean more than 100 posts I **upvoted** during last one and half year are **all** deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my past observations deletion indeed decreases the count, I only don't know if there's anything else besides that could also cause the miss (eg like it was with expiration in [this bug report posted at MSO](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/162044/profile-page-shows-6-reopen-votes-total-while-i-have-at-least-25-successful-ones)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;For the record, I also tried to check if this could somehow relate to deleted users but it appears to be not the case. My favorite [&quot;good one-liner example&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3477/31260 &quot;advertised here:)&quot;) that was posted by now-deleted user shows my upvote just the way it was cast in April 2012.&lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28484" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6191" RevisionGUID="06bdf86e-5dec-4041-a28c-00218aac38dc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The recourse for having a post locked is to post on Meta. Now that it's here, all of the mods are notified. The lock is temporary (unfortunately, the options are rather limited, though) and can be lifted early once a resolution is achieved. Continually rolling back valid edits to your post is not constructive, and a lock is the only mechanism available to deal with it, so that an appropriate Meta discussion can happen to reach consensus.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll let other mods and community members weigh in with their thoughts as well, but here are my problems with your edits, even after being warned against them by a long-time and high reputation member of the community and myself, a community moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (the criterion set out in the &quot;Good Subjective vs. Bad Subjective&quot; discussion)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is meta, not relevant to your question. This applies to all questions asked and answers posted on the Stack Exchange network. In essence, it's noise in your question that detracts from what you are trying to ask. It should be edited out.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can you provide widely-cited sources to bolster any thoughts on (1) or (2) above, to foster a more thorough discussion of proposed ideas (please do not merely post answers that are purely references to outside sources).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange sites are not suitable for discussions. If you want a discussion, it's best to use a forum, or perhaps a chat room. On Stack Exchange, most sites have their own chat room - the [Programmers chat room is The Whiteboard][1]. You can also make your own once you have sufficient reputation on any site in the network (which you do). Mentioning having a discussion in a question (even if it's not your intent or supported by the rest of the body of the question) tends to attract unwarranted down and close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, answers that are purely links to, citations of, or references to outside resources are already forbidden under our [How to Answer guidelines](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer), so there's no need to include the additional &quot;noise&quot; in a post telling people not to do it - it's meta and should be edited out. If questions start attracting bad answers, it can be protected against low reputation users. Down votes and deletion votes can be used to remove any answers that do not meet our expectations and quality guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Are there any definitive or widely cited sources of best practices literature when it comes to these kinds of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Inherently, it is expected that answers leverage a combination of personal experiences and various external references. Asking for sources is not only meta, but makes your question read like a reference request (which are not allowed on Programmers, per [1](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5176) [2](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5299) [3](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5130) and the other Meta discussions and blog posts they link to. Asking explicitly for resources, even if it's not the full intent of your question, does tend to attract unwarranted down votes and close votes and is inherently part of any question asked on any Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28485" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4015" RevisionGUID="283368e3-eee1-43e6-980a-8749ad967800" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've not found this asked, so apologies if I've missed it...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is it appropriate to link to web copies of commercial documents, where the publishing of that document is breaching copyright or licensing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;By way of example, in [this thread][1] PeterK has linked to [a university copy of ISO12207][2] (the document includes the statement `Single user license only, copying and networking prohibited`)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I appreciate that the WWW is a bit wild-west at times, but surely we should be upholding copyright and/or license restrictions in our Q&amp;A?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Updated: naughty link in referenced post now deleted&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/164359/how-come-verification-does-not-include-actual-testing&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://www.math.unipd.it/~tullio/IS-1/2009/Approfondimenti/ISO_12207-2008.pdf" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28486" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5342" RevisionGUID="a91c4d8a-3e6d-4699-8932-73b586014a85" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here are the ones I reviewed.  &#xD;&#xA;Can we at least get the reputation points taken away?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Memory edits:**  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17525  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17526&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Direct lift from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_memory  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Assembly edits:**  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17523  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17524  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Problem Solving edits:**  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17521  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17522  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_solving#Computer_Science_and_Algorithmics  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Node.js edits:**  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17519  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17520  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Node.js  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**TFS edits:**  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17517  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/17518&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Foundation_Server" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28487" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6993" RevisionGUID="d83ac672-4eeb-431f-ad7f-709973b7011f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="### We are inline with similar sized sites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's an interesting chart there... but I draw issue at comparing P.SE to Stack Overflow.  In particular, the size of the voting user base compared to the daily influx of questions can make most of the stuff on Stack Overflow get no votes at all (there's also a significant 'whine about down votes' and 'give sympathy up votes' (examples [1][1], [2][2], [3][3] (entirety of question in mouseover in case they are deleted)) culture on SO).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to see what similar sites to P.SE looked like - similar in terms of questions/day and overall size.  This is what I came up with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Other sites][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You will see that we are by no means the most down voting of the 30k or so question sites that I sampled (Gaming, Programmers, Electrical Engineering, Android Enthusiasts).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question really is &quot;what is EE doing right?&quot; along with &quot;what groups Gaming and AE together?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer to this is likely the accessibility of the material to the 'common' person.  The harder/less accessible the material, the more focused the site can be and clearly communicate that focus to people asking questions.  Furthermore, the more difficult the material, the more natural it is for the person to have done the requite study of the problem before asking the question along with asking the question fully.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Judging from this, I would suggest that if we want to have fewer down voted questions, it is would be necessary to restrict our scope *drastically* such that we're closer to that of Theoretical CS or Server Fault in what is allowed or not and take fewer soft questions; requiring all the questions to be at the professional software architect level.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure that would be the right thing to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore, there's the conception on other sites (Stack Overflow, I'm looking at you) that Programmers.SE is for questions without code or for getting opinions.  One can reliably go and find [belongs on P.SE](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24972540/how-many-copies-of-instance-method-will-be-created-for-n-number-of-objects-in-c#comment38818793_24972540) type comments on Stack Overflow ([data.SE](http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/133379/recent-p-se-comments)) for questions that don't meet the desired quality.  The questions get asked here, and down voted, and, well, that's what you see.  I contend that it is *impossible* for P.SE to stop the problem as there are far too many with this misunderstanding of P.SE's scope on SO and the best we can do is close, down vote, and educate people who post here under those conceptions (and, again, that's a non-negligible portion of the ratio).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Changing the name won't help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One reoccurring theme that has popped up over the years is &quot;maybe if we change the site's name people will post on topic questions?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm pulling up the current newest questions page and listing all the questions with a negative score:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/263077/help-understanding-this (-4) - a block of code with &quot;what does this do?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/263075/c-project-design (-3 on hold) - too broad (not off topic) &quot;how do I understand C++?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/263048/do-i-need-an-msdn-subscription-now-that-visual-studio-is-open-source (-3 on hold) - primary opinion (not off topic): do I still need MSDN?&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/263043/when-should-i-use-arraylists-compared-to-hashmaps (-4 on old) - too broad (not off topic): &quot;When should I use ArrayLists compared to HashMaps? Which is more effective, and for what purposes?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/263023/how-to-make-triangle-in-nested-loop (-5 on hold) - off topic (failed to migrate to SO): I have a bug in this classic homework problem.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/263014/alphanumeric-addition (-3 on hold) (one vote for unclear): How do you solve [crypto math](http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/cody/problems/621-cryptomath-addition) problems?&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/263004/what-should-i-describe-myself-in-my-cv-a-business-intelligence-developer-or-wha (-4 on hold) off topic: resume help - can I call myself a Sr. developer without the experience?&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/263002/pseudo-code-of-3-digits-reversed (-4 on hold) Unclear: &quot;How can I write a pseudo code of an algorithm that displays a given 3 digit number reversed?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/262999/how-to-use-slime-indentation-with-editorconfig-in-emacs (-1 migrated) Emacs tool use&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/262992/how-can-i-start-writing-a-apps-to-be-build-before-code (-3 on hold) too broad: how do I write an app?&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/262991/code-snippets-website-app-with-integration-for-windows-mac-linux (-3 on hold) off topic (tool recommendation): &quot;Is there a website where I can save code snippets&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/262980/what-is-the-most-minimal-web-app-stack-for-a-server (-3) off topic (tool recommendation): what is a good web stack to use for a severely underpowered machine?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is my contention that absolutely *none* of these would have been not asked if the site's name was SoftwareDevelopment.SE or SoftwareEngineering.SE.  Every single question there would still have been asked.  Very few of them had off topic votes.  General topicality is not the problem with the questions (specific bits of 'tool recommendation' and 'career advice' still is).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We are long past the days of &quot;what is your favorite comic&quot; or &quot;what should I name my cat&quot; and the like.  Those questions don't show up. Programmers is understood to be a site about software development processes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The off topic questions that we get now are ones that very closely map to the topic of software engineering, but are issues that we are not qualified (as programmers) to answer.  Career advice and legal being the two biggest ones.  We also regularly get polling questions, but that isn't an issue with the site name, that is a misunderstanding of the Q&amp;A format itself (and a failure to read the tour which shows what is on and off topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; But there will always be people that suffer from the &quot;herp derp oh look a textbox&quot; syndrome, and no amount of renaming the site or amending the FAQ is going to fix that. -- [Anna Lear](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/renaming-the-site-to-match-its-faq-or-changing-the-faq-to-match-the-site-name/3225#comment7479_2950)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/26758518/289086 &quot;I need to make an error count that will shut down my vb.net programme when the user has made 5 errors&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/26746755/289086 &quot;What are the minimum required deliverables for a NOSql data model?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://stackoverflow.com/q/7648417/289086 &quot;How to create a media player for Android?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/N04qm.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28488" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4051" RevisionGUID="0e774d3b-689c-4e87-b0f2-822433de9bff" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I intended to edit my own answer to a question to append some extra info I forgot to mention but accidentally edited someone else's.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The warning that my edit would require a peer review should have been a good sign that I was doing something wrong but I didn't until it was too late.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I want to withdraw my edit (perhaps *fail* the peer review on purpose) since it doesn't even fit well with the rest of the answer. How can I do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is the answer I accidentally edited:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/165825/177&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, the &quot;peer review&quot; warning no longer appears and the answer doesn't even include my edit. Does this mean I successfully rolled back my unintended edit? Or is it simply invisible now?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28489" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5482" RevisionGUID="6dd4e9ca-1ba5-4ff1-b8aa-497adf22b189" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Could we please make a trial run of modified &quot;hotness formula&quot; for Programmers questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Modification details are described in [this MSO post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164712/165773) as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As far as I can tell, substantial part of `Qanswers` in current formula is fake.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;  `(log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascores)`&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;About 1/3 of the answers [studied here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773 &quot;questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever&quot;) (83 of total 254) have score less than 1/100 of top voted post in respective question.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Given that questions checked were ones with tens thousands views, **insultingly low score** indicates that assuming these answers to be popular wouldn't even be in the ballpark. Still, the formula pumps these into `Qanswers` value, as if it is something everyone would be happy to read (hint: it isn't).&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Consider tuning the formula to make it deviate less from voting results. **Ignore answers with non-positive score. Or [better yet](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment13857_5485 &quot;preference for cut off at (TopAnswerScore/10-1) explained in comments here&quot;), ignore answers scored less than some reasonable fraction (eg 1/10) of the top one.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that current formula appears to give an unjustified value to crappy answers in highly upvoted questions (`Qscore/5`, no matter how much is answer downvoted), I would like to perform test run to find out if suggested change would make an impact to issues outlined in Programmers meta posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What can we do to help users understand our site better?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5448/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5413/31260  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Note: results of the trial run to be analyzed using study analogous to one performed in _Answers quality in hot questions_. Current evaluation shows about **101-118 low quality of 218** answers sampled.  &#xD;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;  &#xD;&#xA;Upon completion of trial run, similar evaluation is to be done in order to estimate whether there was a substantial impact, positive or negative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Complementary information to this request is provided in [comments below](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5482/trial-run-of-modified-hotness-formula-for-programmers-questions#comment16044_5482 &quot;starting from here&quot;), marked with &quot;for the record...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note I expect modified formula to be competitive to current one at &quot;moderately hot&quot; questions, following the [reasoning outlined here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/164078/165773):&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;For questions that are not too hot (likely 2-3 clicks away from top of the list) it's natural to see things working exactly as intended. Answers and comments quality is mostly maintained by site / tag regulars (business as usual), [collider](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info &quot;what's this&quot;) brings moderate amount of interested newcomers from other sites with their views, votes and fresh perspective, everything is nice and cool...&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Recent hot question about [automated testing](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/185819/31620) gives an example of why I would want to try a modified formula. In 17 hours, question collected 17 answers, merely 5-7 of which provide useful original content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Overheat of fake hotness impacted question like a [Black Saturday fire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a01_17890753.jpg][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the fire settled, what is left for future visitors of the question looks like a wasteland of low quality garbage (note that due to high views, it will score high in web searches).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausfire_02_09/a04_17906927.jpg][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the light of above, [community wiki](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/community-wiki/info) status stamped on the question looks especially despicable. It kind of suggests that **after damage has done**, community members are invited to go over the crap brought in by braindead formula, carefully analyze it and try to tame the pain by downvotes. As if they don't have anything better to do!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Update&#xD;&#xA;Related feature request has been posted at MSO:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/192046/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please stop counting proven low score answers in hotness formula. Please roll the dice fairly, let user voting and time decay contribute to hotness score as intended. Please promote to collider audience less brain-damaging content to learn from.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vKQvI.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/B1hjy.jpg" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28490" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8166" RevisionGUID="83973f3a-2e2e-4f02-a6b7-5770b3f3e600" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here is the answer at hand: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/329219/243450" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28491" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5432" RevisionGUID="42c713ff-5098-490f-b997-0b7e7c958fdb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/181792/1204&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I recently created a site in SharePoint and I need to setup a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; maintenance/support agreement for the site. In addition to the site,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; there are some custom modules that were developed that we monitor.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What considerations should I be making when determining how much to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; charge for supporting the SharePoint site and any custom applications&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developed for the site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28492" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4057" RevisionGUID="d6f66be2-c184-4750-8e20-73d8673f830f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked [this](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/155639/which-algorithms-data-structures-should-i-recognize-and-know-by-name) question a while back. Today I was awarded the 1000 views badge. I looked at the question and noticed a delete vote. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that a question like this isn't really suited for stack exchange. However, since this seems to be a fairly popular question, should it be kept and not deleted. Or does popularity not really matter for closed questions(that aren't duplicates)? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28493" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5499" RevisionGUID="e0546705-e007-4a74-a07b-9c7bed50292f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'd be interested in writing a blog entry about what we skills we need to develop as professional programmers. The technical side is just 50%. The article would be based on this answer - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/185236/44081 that Yannis suggested could make a good article." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28494" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1896" RevisionGUID="5d409b3b-2a6d-4a10-b3c9-23c454863584" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The reason we have these rules is not because we are jerks who hate fun discussions. It's because these sorts of questions do poorly on our engine due to its philosophy and design.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But, for the sake of argument, let's consider the opposite of [the don't ask list][1] as a guideline for **what would be explicitly allowed and encouraged in [Bizarro][3]-Programmers.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![superman and bizarro][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like others to explain \_\_\_\_\_\_ to me”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like to participate in a discussion about \_\_\_\_\_\_”, then you are probably OK. &#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please **do** ask subjective questions where ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since we emphasize learning and problem solving, on Bizarro-programmers there would be no emphasis on learning at all, only its opposite: **entertainment by any and all means possible**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is simply *not what we do on Stack Exchange.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, to have a good home for these questions, almost _by definition_ you would have to create it **not on our engine**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MWZ32.jpg&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizarro" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28495" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7048" RevisionGUID="8205d741-3807-4fdc-9574-f3df5b4e8bdb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been asked many times before:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Compare the [Help Center On-Topic page for Programmers][1] to the [Help Center On-Topic page for Stack Overflow][2].&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171/whats-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/423/how-is-this-site-different-than-stack-overflow?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;  - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1747/what-is-the-difference-between-programmers-and-stack-overflow?rq=1&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2237/what-is-the-difference-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;- [Choosing between Stack Overflow and Programmers Stack Exchange](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/254570/choosing-between-stack-overflow-and-programmers-stack-exchange)&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5132/when-do-these-questions-belong-on-programmers-instead-of-stack-overflow?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28496" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1898" RevisionGUID="64cfece5-f944-4f45-9d11-ab76f05dff0e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="We now have a question that's really, really popular, [Why do programmers write applications and then make them free?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/3233/8), which is fine (better than fine, great!), but the color used for the &quot;on fire&quot; state overpowers the rest of the color palette, drawing attention to the question over everything else:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Holy crap that's popular][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could the red be subdued a little so it's not as striking?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*(This is also a problem on comments with a ton of up-votes, but not as big of an issue as comments don't appear on a page everyone visits. Presumably they share the same styling rules, though)*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/MHdiN.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28497" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6234" RevisionGUID="602cc58d-7923-4385-aa6e-5d069162d797" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It is often challenging to have people ask appropriate questions.  The front page sometimes shows this.  There are a fairly active group of people voting and P.SE doesn't have as much traffic as SO - thus there is more attention on each question and answer that gets posted - both up votes and down votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the important aspects of votes is that questions that have a negative score and 0 or negative score answers (and no accepted answer) gets automatically deleted by a process after a period of time.  Thus, to try to keep these questions out of the accumulating pool of questions (that are having an improving quality), down votes are necessary.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking at the current 15 newest questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/215576/creating-reproducible-builds-to-verify-free-software is asking for a tool&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/215572/how-to-think-like-a-computer-scientist-java-edition-exercise-7-2 is asking for someone to do their homework&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/215565/software-engineering-project-idea-feedback is asking for a general critique of a design&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/215563/program-put-on-computer is asking for something that we don't know what is being asked&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/215562/agile-books-for-sales-people is asking for a shopping list&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/215558/windows-azure-hpc-scheduler-architecture is at least 6 nested questions (too broad)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/215546/previous-and-next-buttons-within-javascript-function is something that should be on SO, but would get closed asked as it is.&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/215541/how-to-fix-fatal-error-jvmti-h-no-such-file-or-directory-compilation-terminated is another implementation question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Design questions are certainly welcome - look at the ones that are up voted to see many examples of such questions (one such recent question - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/215482/what-are-the-safety-benefits-of-a-type-system - incidentally migrated from SO) .  But, we're getting a fair number of questions from people who are asking questions that just aren't appropriate or were cross posted from StackOverflow, or trying to get around a Stack Overflow ban.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, it is a constant battle to try to maintain the direction and scope of the site (what is currently an upward trajectory for quality and activity). Closing and down voting the questions that don't fit is part of this ongoing maintenance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't know it will fit or how it will be received, try asking us in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28498" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5456" RevisionGUID="1f35bcb1-bc94-45cb-8010-94ceea70559a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It seems as if there is enough debate about this that I wanted to start a discussion about if EULA's are currently considered on topic, and if they are *should* they be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/183796/can-an-eula-restrict-what-you-can-use-an-application-for&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I made the following argument:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about software licenses are on topic and agreements on licenses fall in that category in my opinion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another user made the counter argument:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but software isn't the only area where EULAs are used, which puts the question into the FAQ's &quot;All People&quot; circle. – Blrfl&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is a strong argument.  Other comments like this one make me question if this can even be answered from a non legal perspective since a EULA is a legal contract.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; probably worth pointing out that there are often things EULAs can not restrict e.g. statutory rights – jk.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is, if software licensing is on topic, does that make agreements about software licensing on topic?  And if that is the case, is the EULA a widely enough used agreement outside of the realm of software development that it can be considered to apply to *Everyone*?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28499" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5576" RevisionGUID="5999133e-7f5e-486f-a9eb-357e87923077" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently asked a question about very development-specific market research: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/187476/how-to-do-market-research-for-plugins-to-proprietary-platforms. After several hours a few &lt;del&gt;moderators&lt;/del&gt; users glommed on and downvoted it with no comments and closed it as off topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How is this off topic? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is clearly about &quot;freelancing and business concerns&quot;. Answers to some highly-voted questions such as this one: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/83129/from-freelance-to-software-company basically say &quot;you should do market research&quot; as the accepted answer...but asking a how to do a clearly defined type of software market research is off topic?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28500" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1922" RevisionGUID="1cb366e7-1c89-4c4f-8205-e83fd228af67" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A week ago, I asked [this question][1] about code editor UX design. The first response to this was an extremely polite moderators comment (since deleted) asking if I wanted it to be migrated to UX.StackExchange - this moderators comment was upvoted about 8 times. In my reply to this comment (also deleted) I recognized the overlap but pleaded for it to remain on the grounds that I wanted the advice of programmers first, before going to the UX designers. Thankfully, it was allowed to remain and I got invaluable help from both answers and comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, in the normal course of events, a UX designer would probably be given the UX problem (addressed by the question) first. They would then come up with some options and then test these out with developers, who might contribute their own ideas which the designer would consider, the process would then repeat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that we can't really bounce questions and answers back and forth across forums, is it ok **in principle**, to submit UX-related questions to Programmers when they're related to the design of programmers tools?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My own view is that questions on programmers tools are high-risk on the subjectivity-scale. But, provided that they can be framed so as not to elicit too many &quot;my tool is better because it does this&quot; responses; they can produce informative, interesting, useful and even innovative answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a tools developer these questions are based on real issues, either for now or the near future. I've listed some extremely raw questions below, to provide just a flavor:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. Which code editor or IDE feature has had the greatest influence on programming language design?&#xD;&#xA;  2. Which parts of IDE functionality most readily lend themselves to touch/gesture based interfaces and why?&#xD;&#xA;  3. What is the best way to measure/assess whether indentation of code within editors is more space-efficient than the alternative methods for conveying code nesting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**[Edit - Following 1st Answer]**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't get too distracted by the above 'sketch' questions - the real question is in the title. The idea is to establish a general principle, discussing the merits of the sample questions was not the intention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having said the above, the sample questions have be re-drafted with totally fictional answers **for illustrative purposes only**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Q1.** Which IDE feature or Code Editor feature has had the greatest influence on programming language design?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**A1.** Auto-completion. e.g. LINQ and other modern function languages require the subject of an expression to comes first so that auto-completion can be provided within that expression (different from SQL).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Q2.** Which parts of IDE functionality most readily lend themselves to touch/gesture based interfaces and why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**A2**. Operations within the IDE related to project files. Because gestures are efficient when managing large sets of objects in groups and also there's useful overlap with other touch-based applications that handle files.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;**Q3**. What is the best way to measure/assess whether indentation of code within editors is more efficient in terms of screen real-estate usage than the alternative methods for conveying code nesting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**A3**. Use the sample code from this [made up] website that implements the same algorithm using 3 popular programming langauges with each one following 3 different established conventions for code structure and formatting. Plot a graph showing the cumulative character space usage for these for each line of code. Then overlay this data with the equivalent space usage taken by the methods put forward as an alternative to indentation:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/87077/27103&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/WDciM.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28502" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7051" RevisionGUID="547cb8cb-364f-415b-a950-cb5488ae667c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked [this][1] this question. It was put on hold by [Bart van Ingen Schenau][2], who kindly and patiently explained that he rejected the question because of a community consensus that programmers cannot authoritatively answer questions involving the legal topic at hand (copyright law).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have searched [Programmers Meta][3], and I find no evidence of such a consensus. To the contrary, I find a pronounced lack of consensus. Relevant posts seem to be [What types of legal questions are on-topic here?][4], [Are software law questions off-topic here?][5], and [“consult your lawyer” answers][6]. Among those discussions, there seems to be a contingent arguing that programmers are qualified to answer no legal questions; a contingent arguing that programmers can answer only those legal questions intimately related to programming; a contingent arguing that programmers can answer a wide range of legal topics as long as &quot;common sense&quot; is applied to the interpretation of the answers; and a contingent arguing that programmers may potentially be able to answer any legal question. No contingent clearly dominates the others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a newcomer browsing the documented record, my perception is that the community is very far from a consensus on this matter. Nevertheless, community consensus was cited in Mr. Schenau's explanation for the rejection of my question. The apparent implication is that a non-existent community standard is being used to justify the rejection of questions on Programmers Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I come to Meta (at Mr. Schenau's suggestion) in search of clarity. Does there exist a consensus on programmers' inability to answer questions on copyright law sufficient to justify the rejection of questions on that topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is attracting answers which are not quite on-point, so I think it would help if I elaborate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the help center guidelines are out-of-sync with community standards, especially when it comes to deciding whether or not legal questions are off-topic. I suspect what has happened is that the community has formed a shared opinion over time, but hasn't kept the guidelines up-to-date. That's okay -- We can fix it by establishing what the community standards are, then updating the guidelines to reflect them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start with the one question where I've been told there is a consensus: Does everyone agree that programmers cannot authoritatively answer questions of copyright law? If yes, then let's edit the guidelines to say that copyright questions are off-topic for that reason. If no, then let's tell people to stop citing that as a reason for closing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems likely that follow-up questions will be necessary. Doc Brown says we shouldn't encourage legal advice because it may be illegal to do so, or carry too much responsibility. Maybe we should look for a consensus on that point and, if we find one, write that into the guidelines. Telastyn suggests that copyright questions are too specific to be useful. Perhaps the community agrees with that, and it should be written into the guidelines. Snowman suggests that legal answers carry too big a risk of leading to bad decisions. Etc. Etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But let's take things one step at a time. The question on the table is whether or not we agree that programmers are incapable of giving authoritative answers to copyright questions. Yes or no?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Edit:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks to everyone who answered or commented on this question. Here is a summary of what I learned:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Some respondents suggest that my question is based on a misconception. I had believed that Programmers Stack Exchange first establishes a consensus on which topics should be allowed, then writes those criteria into the help center guidelines, then instructs its moderators to close only those questions which fail to meet the guidelines. (Let's call this System A.) However, Eric King, Walter Mitty, and Rob Y suggest that Programmers Stack Exchange doesn't work this way. Instead, moderators vote to close and reopen questions at their own discretion, and the balance of votes, not the help center guidelines, determines what is on-topic or off-topic. Consensus doesn't play a formal role in the process, but you can infer consensus by looking at which questions remain closed and which remain open. (Let's call this System B.) I felt this was too big a concept to address properly in the comments here, so I started a [new question][7] to discuss it. Thank you to Eric, Walter, and Rob for opening my eyes to System B. It explains a lot of what I see on PSE, and it helps me to understand the replies to my question. If Stack Exchange does, in fact, work along the lines of System B, then my original question and my earlier edit in which I suggest that we bring the help center guidelines up-to-date with community standards are misguided; the site simply doesn't work the way I expected.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Some respondents assert that the help center guidelines prohibit most legal questions through their prohibition on legal assistance. Snowman says that anything which crosses the line beyond &quot;how the license works&quot; is &quot;explicitly off-topic per the help center&quot;. MichaelT says &quot;The help center already has 'legal advice' in there as off topic&quot; and suggests that this implicitly extends to &quot;interpretations&quot;. Robert Harvey says &quot;Legal interpretation, advice, and assistance are all the same thing.&quot; My conclusion is that some moderators believe the help center contains a broad prohibition on legal questions, and may use it to justify the closure of any question with a legal aspect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3) Several respondents went beyond answering whether or not there is a consensus on whether programmers can authoritatively answer questions of copyright law, and tried to explain why programmers cannot or should not answer legal questions in general. The diversity of these replies convinces me that there is no doctrine on the subject, but rather a bunch of individual theories.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/266445/is-early-binding-legally-constrained-while-late-binding-is-not#&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/5099/bart-van-ingen-schenau&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=legal/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2099/are-software-law-questions-off-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/89961/consult-your-lawyer-answers&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7056/is-the-vote-to-close-process-how-pse-finds-consensus-on-appropriate-topics" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28503" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8191" RevisionGUID="c9acaad3-f879-4968-89de-13b0450da9b9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;!-- Do not remove or edit --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- Note: Questions not about your post will be deleted --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have a question about my Programmers Stack Exchange post: [If mutual exclusion is not implemented, how would we detect a race condition?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/222184/if-mutual-exclusion-is-not-implemented-how-would-we-detect-a-race-condition/330087#330087)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- Your question below: --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am looking for a reply (preferably by Gnat, who removed the answer) about the reason this answer was removed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/330087/204960&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is the background:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(1) Even though my answer speaks of a solution developed by our company, the Disclaimer was provided;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(2) The information in the answer provided is going to be very helpful to the audience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All one needed to do is to follow the links and to see for himself/herself that this work is solid and useful for the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please be so kind to answer why my answer was removed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below is my answer that was removed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question is about how to detect race conditions, perhaps the most state of the art solution today, which works with small overhead, and with no false positives, is Race Catcher from Thinking Software, Inc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Small overhead here implies most often being under 10%, however the overhead is target process algorithm dependent. Race Catcher can, therefore, be used not only at the stages of debug and test, bun also in most production cases - in the field, where the most costly races, that slip the test phase, are happening (see ARM-CM described below).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Race Catcher is a dynamic code analyzer that works directly on bytecode and can be seen as an addition to a JVM. That also means that is applicable not only to Java code, but to applications written in any of ~60 languages compiled to bytecode.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; An original service called ARM-CM, Application Reliability Monitoring via Collaborating Machines is based on an obvious fact that 100 agents are less expensive and more reliable than 100 human testers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; DISCLAIMER: I am involved with Thinking Software, Inc." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28504" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="1926" RevisionGUID="770fec97-d27f-43b7-b895-3f9e49da659b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You mean something like this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28505" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4091" RevisionGUID="17485042-cef8-4b59-aa37-0d08073d3f39" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed that there's 14 instances of a [stackoverflow][1] tag. This tag is easy to confuse the site with the actual issue. How do we rectify this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stackoverflow" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28506" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5578" RevisionGUID="65d70352-b0ab-4355-ad3a-7cfd028f0cc0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="First I will point out that the moderators of the site did not choose to close your question, it was closed by 5 fellow high reputation community members.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without speaking for them, my take on the reason for this closure is that the fundamental problem that you faced as a software developer here is that you don't have the transparency of data to decide which project you should do next.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) under the list of questions that are explicitly off topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about ... what project you should do next,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question to me reads that even if a case were to be made that it is not a general market research question and that it falls under legitimate business concerns facing software developers, that it is still offtopic because the core reason for question is that you want to figure out what project you should work on next.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as Market Research is considered, if it falls in the general domain then it is off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; How can I choose a good pair of noise cancelling earphones for programming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The above question pertains the software developers certainly, however it could pertain equally well to web designers, drafters, authors, etc...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question applies as much to entrepreneurs or software sales people as it does to software developers, probably more so in the case of sales and marketing people.  Market research questions would only be ontopic if the case can be proved that it is almost exclusively the domain of software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hope this makes sense and that I captured the communities thoughts on this." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28507" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5524" RevisionGUID="43a51aa2-8603-4e62-98d4-805d14c45cf3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The latest example is here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/186293/why-are-actual-parameters-called-arguments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that the OP is not asking for the difference between &quot;parameters&quot; and &quot;arguments,&quot; or even what the word means, but merely how the word came to be used in the software development context.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find these questions troubling for several reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  They don't focus on a specific problem area in programming, but merely satisfy a particular curiosity.&#xD;&#xA;2.  They are often trivially answerable with a little bit of Internet searching.&#xD;&#xA;3.  They tend to attract opinions and debate over semantic issues.&#xD;&#xA;4.  They are extremely localized.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is less clear with questions [like this one](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/19416/is-argument-or-parameter-considered-more-appropriate-for-a-function-method-argum?rq=1), which asks for the actual definition of the words.  Such a question might be useful in clarifying communication among programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or this one:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/184010/where-does-the-the-term-feature-creep-come-from&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which clearly serves no practical programming need, yet seems very popular with the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28509" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2022" RevisionGUID="479cc34d-a571-4e45-b7b9-8a4115323dd9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Any question that's trivia, by definition, would be any that ask about unimportant (i.e. *trivial*) facts and matters. Those [would be prohibited](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask) and should be closed as *not constructive*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.** Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, a question stops being trivia the moment an actual, solvable problem is defined: that is, if one tells us *why* you want to know X or how knowing X solves Y problem, the question is a whole lot more constructive." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28510" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4093" RevisionGUID="0086f4ca-844e-473c-aced-548fa3a2f38a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have a question &quot;[How long can a programmer concentrate in a day][1]&quot; that was being closed for being off-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In that question, I asked about the existence ( or lack of) of scientific study on then programmer's productivity. This is a clear, single-minded question with clear cut answers. But it is closed as not constructive. I think that the closure is not doing justice to the nature of the question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it should be reopened.  Moderators, please! Time to exercise your power and open the question to allow answers pouring in! I am sure a great many developers, Product Managers would be interested to learn these studies. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/167396/how-long-can-a-programmer-concentrate-in-a-day" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28511" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6256" RevisionGUID="31a9042c-ce4f-4f77-ae7f-6b1bcf006b95" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a post that was closed as off-topic, which it is. It's a rant, one that definitely doesn't fit within the scope of our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The author of the post mentions he's contemplating suicide. Is there anything that we should do in these situations? Amy makes a great point that it would be a shame if that did indeed happen, but we also shouldn't keep the post open just because someone is having a bad day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems odd though that a site about conceptual questions in the field of Software Engineering has to deal with such a question, but it's something that's worth discussion to get everyone on the same page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What should we do if someone is threatening suicide? Is it our responsibility to intervene? Should the post be locked so folks don't do more harm than good by posting inflammatory comments (not that that's happened)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/216389/i-am-not-satisfied-with-my-career-and-accomplished-nothing-in-my-life-what-shou" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28512" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5745" RevisionGUID="57cd4b02-1dbe-4e64-a13e-ee36c6f415c2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I find it curious when questions with 20+ upvotes and several highly voted answers ([such as this][1]) get closed. The community has deemed the question as being valid. It has attracted good answers (again as deemed by the community) so why is it closed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just think that the community is a bit more amorphous than what some are trying to force it to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For many of the questions that get asked, there isn't going to be a canonically correct answer for all time (which is the goal for StackOverflow), and I'm okay with that because we're still learning about our craft. Depending on when you consider the start of programming, it's a 50 year old profession. We still have people involved in the profession who were doing it from the start and we still have a long way to go before we can say that we truly know how to do this properly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't like the &quot;do my homework for me&quot; questions that basically are nothing more than a retype of the assignment. But if someone is legitimately trying to engage with the community and get advice from his peers, well we have too few people who call themselves programmers who won't even be bothered to go that far. So yeah I'm going to bend over backwards to invite them into the conversation. The more people we get clued in, the more we grow as a profession. I view programmers.se as a portal of stewardship primarily and a repository of knowledge secondarily. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/63890/well-designed-high-quality-open-source-software" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28513" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7112" RevisionGUID="424aa90c-c7bd-4f54-bb8c-683bd9f32cf3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Nice idea, but that guidance was *waaaay* too long to fit in a pop-up. I trimmed it down a bit:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Wait!&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&quot;&gt;Personal advice is off-topic here&lt;/a&gt;. Please ensure that your question…&lt;/p&gt;    &lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;…is &lt;b&gt;specific to &lt;i&gt;programming careers&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;/b&gt; Try &lt;a href=&quot;http://workplace.stackexchange.com/tour&quot;&gt;The Workplace&lt;/a&gt; for other career development questions.&lt;/li&gt;  &lt;li&gt;…can apply to &lt;b&gt;other programmers&lt;/b&gt; besides yourself. &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&quot;&gt;Avoid asking for open-ended advice&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;  &lt;br&gt;  &lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488&quot;&gt;Why was my career or education advice question closed or down voted?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Check it out:][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![][2]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;FWIW, I find that meta answer fairly unhelpful in this context, given most folks aren't likely to click through in the first place. So I tried hard to pack some specific advice into the pop-up itself, leaving the meta link as sort of a veiled threat at the end.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/ask?tags=career-development&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/80bXi.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28514" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5533" RevisionGUID="bf31e952-c663-4788-84cb-1bce3c5097f4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/186315&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once in a blue moon, a question comes along that, in spite of its Not Constructive nature, is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  Interesting and thought-provoking,&#xD;&#xA;2.  Well-written,&#xD;&#xA;3.  Meets the Six Constructive Guidelines,&#xD;&#xA;4.  Is on topic for the site, and&#xD;&#xA;5.  Can actually be answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is one of those questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Close reasons exist to give us an excuse to close all of those crappy, poorly-written, underspecified, lazy and, ultimately, uninteresting questions.  You know what those are, what they look like.  This is not one of them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please reopen." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28515" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5142" RevisionGUID="b843a9be-ffa1-4111-9d19-704210c26154" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I registered on this site because I want to learn from the experienced programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;So I look many interesting questions and answer. Then I ask [my first question][1], some days later this was closed as a duplicate. Also I make [an acceptable answer][2]. After that I didn't very much but look at some Q&amp;A.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Right now my account is banned. When I try to ask a question, I get this message:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account. See&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://goo.gl/C1Kwu to learn more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - It is fine?&#xD;&#xA; - How can I do to ask new questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;What I can tell in my favor is that my incorrect questions was written a long time ago and now I have learned from [my Ubuntu account][3]. I also make good things like create the pascal tag.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/155183/58225&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/155194/58225&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: http://askubuntu.com/users/62483/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28516" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8232" RevisionGUID="e437f3a8-744e-4811-b4e9-7d06d22dc862" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:46.340" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="That particular question isn't a good fit anywhere in the Q&amp;A portion of any Stack Exchange site, but there may be a good chat room to ask it in. Every site on the SE network has a Help Center page about [what not to ask][1] that (almost?) &quot;you should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&quot;. There are a few problems with questions about trade-offs: it's hard for an individual to write a comprehensive and complete answer, many answers could be valid (each presenting a different subset of trade-offs), and there's no problem to solve.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, your question is still salvageable (since it does not have any answers that would be invalidated by an edit), perhaps even in a way that doesn't need the question to be migrated. If you can focus your question on something that is on-topic here (such as [methods and processes][2], or [build management][3], or [deployment][4]), you can make the changes and then flag it for review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_build&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_deployment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28517" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5747" RevisionGUID="55d58c3d-c2d0-4e26-a7b2-12e84cbf7eb8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is where the diagram on the [Help Center](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help) comes into play.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally the accepted definition of what is acceptable here, whether it be career advice or not, is within the blue area of the diagram below.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am having trouble convincing senior members of the team to go into crunch mode, how can I deal with senior members that are not willing to work 60+ hour work weeks to get the software project done?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the surface you can clearly tell that this was written by a software developer or somebody that leads them.  Really though this could apply to any type of project work, therefore if falls in the All Careers circle.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is the best keyboard for programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one is even broader and applies to All People.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This one job is offerring me $50k per year but is in Indiana where the cost of living is cheaper and the job is more stable. Meanwhile I got another offer for $80k at a startup in Palo Alto but I will learn more cutting edge technologies.  Decide my life for me!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one is Too Localized and is unlikely to help future visitors in any way.  It applies to Just You.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regardless Career advice is unilaterally off topic as of this moment. It wasn't always so on this site so it is unrealistic to expect that every off topic question is going to be moderated.  We do miss a number of questions from time to time so don't let a lack of moderator action confuse you on this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as a decision close tree, the home page gets populated with questions that have recent activity.  Often when an older off topic question gets some activity then it gets bumped where either a moderator sees it and decides to deal with it, or a concerned community member flags it for moderator attention or just votes to close it.  There is also a Review feature that higher reputation community members can use to evaluate potentially problematic content and either take action or flag for moderator attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators tend to only deal with the flags that come up but we don't necessarily need a flag to take action right away.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/xrYwN.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28518" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2068" RevisionGUID="ac360ef6-43f4-4186-873b-2e9e2cdcca67" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Would a moderator on programmers.stackexchange (specifically, Anna Lear) kindly explain why this response was deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/98692/where-are-octals-useful/98697#98697&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I fail to see why it would be deleted after reviewing the FAQ, especially when there are other, almost identical responses that were not deleted, and my response also had three upvotes.  I admit that it doesn't directly answer the question asked (I was going back to add more info...), but the deletion seems arbitrary to me." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28519" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5564" RevisionGUID="78271e0f-ea7d-407a-bdc9-e0fdb2510ddf" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are a number of reasons why your question was closed.  I will use quote various resources from the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) to help elaborate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  I'd like to push code around and just have my way with connecting to services and using SOA when building web apps... but where do I start?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Where is an answerer supposed to start?  From the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you don't know where to begin, then three or four paragraphs from somebody on the web isn't going to explain everything you are asking to understand.  It takes years to master web technologies in just a single framework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The best you will get are answers giving emotional support telling you that they are going through the same thing and that they remember how hard it was.  That may make you feel good, but does it really help you?  Does it really help anybody else that finds this question on their feed?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can someone recommend the right book, or series of books.. the right tutorials, screencasts, or path of learning -- in particular, something that doesn't require a deep dive into theory, but has a practical hands-on aspect to it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So this is where it is not constructive.  You will get lists of peoples favorite books, then arguments will break about authors and then which technology is best.  It becomes noisome and is difficult for a reader to feel like they got a solid answer.  These kinds of questions don't have real answers.  They just involve recommendations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it is not about .... what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bottom line is that we are different than your typical discussion forum.  We are a Q&amp;A site with a high standard of quality content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can tell your frustrated by delving into a new world of established technologies and practices, but believe me it takes time.  If there is something you don't understand that you wish to know more about then find a book on it, read, and if certain concepts or design patterns don't make sense to you then post back with a more specific question that could have a solid answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28521" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5155" RevisionGUID="44cbfb96-30e7-43c3-a4e8-0befc75a4c14" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just forget his name -- but he is (used to be?) the LEADING reputation holder on Programmers.SE, and has asked such popular questions as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[I'm a Subversion geek, why should I consider or not consider Mercurial or Git or any other DVCS?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/35074/im-a-subversion-geek-why-should-i-consider-or-not-consider-mercurial-or-git-or)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why, then he is shown as &quot;user2567&quot;? And can someone help me recollect his name?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28522" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5580" RevisionGUID="36415218-ba1a-4fe3-b0cc-a0666e4d75c3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So I recently posted an answer to [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/34334/cheap-programmable-portable-device). At the time I posted it, it had a 50 rep bounty on it. I knew it was a &quot;shopping&quot; question, but decided to post anyway. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, it's been closed by a diamond mod. No sign of the bounty having been awarded or existing. What happened to the bounty? Is this the one and only case where the bounty rep goes back to the user who posted it? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28523" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6001" RevisionGUID="2080d213-6839-40e9-bc9e-6fb6047e8bad" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So let's start with the biggest hitter in [tag:freelancing]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/110487/my-customer-wants-me-to-record-a-video-of-how-i-develop-his-software-product&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would argue this is primarily about issues that come up within freelance programming that aren't likely to be seen in other programming models.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/96331/how-should-i-charge-for-programming-things-which-take-two-minutes-to-fix&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This one gets into the aspects of ethics, billing, and valuing experience.  Arguably on the edge due to the potential for picking up less-than-satisfactory answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/85479/how-to-improve-relationships-between-consultants-and-staff-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is another that could still work as a question without the freelancing tag, but the freelancing aspect adds a nuance to the relationships and their interplay.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/162904/what-should-i-ask-a-prospective-client-during-initial-meeting&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Arguably not constructive, but certainly informative from a freelancing point of view.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/33526/who-should-pay-for-fixes-bugs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quite solid for freelancing.  While it deals with contract managements, it's particular nuance relates to programming and that's why I'd argue it belongs here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are quite a few more in the ~25 vote category of [tag:freelancing] that I think are on-topic because of the freelancing tag and have specific programming nuances that ought to keep them on our site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**TL;DR**  &#xD;&#xA;Yes, it can be a problematic tag but there are some valuable questions that we get by having it as part of our scope." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28525" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6283" RevisionGUID="73bc47d7-1126-4556-8b0f-17f433a79764" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Related:&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3799/the-coding-for-charity-q-any-hope-of-ever-being-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/157022/coding-for-good-or-charity&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/47558/how-can-programming-ability-be-used-to-help-people-in-poverty&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How should we deal with questions that are attached to a specific time or event?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The one that is currently in the spotlight is https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/218178/are-there-any-practical-ways-people-with-computer-skills-can-contribute-help-to which was originally asked as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Are there any practical ways people with computer skills can contribute help to the relief effort of typhoon Haiyan. Really simple question, is there any answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm putting this on Meta in an attempt to head off the associated comments in the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28526" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7153" RevisionGUID="fd2b944b-3d69-4e35-8ea5-ca7887647f4f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="If you have a question (or can find an existing question) about the topic then you are more than welcome to add the tag. Tags cannot exist if there are no questions having that tag - this means we can't create any tags before questions are asked, but can only apply what we think are the relevant tags to existing questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You do need 300 rep to be able to create tags - see the [privileges page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges), so in the meantime if you do have a question in mind you can do the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Post a comment on the question suggesting the tag is added.&#xD;&#xA;2. Post a request in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard) for someone to add the tag.&#xD;&#xA;3. Post a question here - with a link to the question(s) - suggesting the at the tag is added." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28527" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5210" RevisionGUID="495eb1bb-bd9e-4c6c-b45a-16da9f9f4f7e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This [question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/174733/is-wrapping-a-third-party-code-the-only-solution-to-unit-test-its-consumers) was closed for being an exact duplicate, but I modified it extensively so that it now discusses  a particular condition to wrapping third party code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In its previous condition the question was too generic and may have been indeed a duplicate." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28528" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6014" RevisionGUID="ef43ec3c-16bb-4178-8298-fe0abe459987" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/202875/which-technologies-will-most-affect-financial-services-over-the-next-decade&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;just made me remember another good reason we constantly close stuff, folks asking for a technical crystal ball.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is asking for pure speculation, of which no one can be provably correct, incorrect, or informative in any way at the present moment. This site has a focus on gathering authoritative content, unfortunately for this question no such content is currently possible." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28530" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5597" RevisionGUID="444ede44-9d46-400a-bafd-769314b9201f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted an answer to [When would using a scripting language within a larger program be useful?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand down votes from programmers who feel insulted. But why on earth would you delete a questions that links to relevant papers, etc.?&#xD;&#xA;Is this question the common definition of 'Questions that are extremely off topic, or of very low quality'? If yes, I just won't post anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is my answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason for using a scripting language is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. **productivity:** For rapid prototyping, writing throwaway code, web programming you are much more productive in a scripting language. Many businesses programs are throwaway code. Think of twitter.com: at the beginning, they used ruby to get started quickly and later when, scalability and long term maintenance was needed, they switched to scala. Read this IEEE article: http://www.tcl.tk/doc/scripting.html&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. **easy to learn** Scripting languages are easier to learn than general purpose languages. So if you have amateur programmers (think that some graphic designs also do a bit of web programming, javascript was designed to also appeal to programmers who are not professional programmers. people who change config files, 3D artists) you want an easy to learn programming language. See the LUA wikipedia page: 'Because many potential users of the language were not professional programmers...'&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So if the above two points are important for a part of a program, you would use a scripting for that part within a whole program which is mainly programmed in C# or so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Basically, scripting languages are based on 'untyped lambda terms' (think LISP in 1958). Thats just the big picture, not an accurate statement. (Lua Wikipedia page 'We did not consider LISP or Scheme because of their unfriendly syntax.'). The upside is that untyped lambda terms are as powerfull as typed lambda terms, but you don't have to think or care about types. The downside is much more things can go wrong, which is a debugging, maintenance, security nightmare.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Possible contraindications:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - big projects with big teams&#xD;&#xA; - long maintenance needed&#xD;&#xA; - systems that need to be depended on (medical equipment)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The argument about 'doesn't need to be recompiled' isn't accurate. Think of haskell, which is not a scripting language. There is an interpreter available that is called 'ghci', which I can use to execute haskell programms without compiling any code. This is applied in the 'snap' web framework (link), where webpage code is interpreted and can be changed without recompiling. Any language that can be executed via an interpreter can be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/187963/when-would-using-a-scripting-language-within-a-larger-program-be-useful/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28531" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7253" RevisionGUID="9e7d81d3-eaf2-455b-8fea-94761e331998" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have a question about tools. According to the [on-topic page][1], tool questions are off-topic on Software Engineering Stack Exchange. Is there a site for me to go to ask specific tool questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28532" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6362" RevisionGUID="ac267faa-70f9-451d-a244-364d2376ddca" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I modified the original [Building a distributed system on Amazon Web Services][1] after the comments mentioned about [Why do interview questions make poor Programmers.SE questions?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question now is more focused about whether building an application on AWS makes it by default distributed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can you please re-open it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/222222/building-a-distributed-system-on-amazon-web-services&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28533" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5599" RevisionGUID="d7a3c007-c92b-4e5a-bf8f-00beb99c27eb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Use this as an example, a mistake I made in the early days of my joining the site: [How Does A Compiler Work?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is a very basic, broad question. Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - There are literally entire books written on the subject.&#xD;&#xA; - You usually have to go to college to get fairly good at making a compiler.&#xD;&#xA; - If you Googled that, you would actually get pretty decent results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A more specific, more constructive question would have been &quot;What is the difference between lexing and parsing?&quot; or &quot;What is a parsing tree?&quot;. At the same time, these questions are easily Google-able too, and probably would get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Fundamental programming questions should probably get closed, because it is probably either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Easily Google-able.&#xD;&#xA; 2. Requires an entire book to be explained.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can find a question that doesn't apply to either of those, it's probably pretty decent. Unless, of course, it's highly opinionated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/118586/how-does-a-compiler-work" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28534" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5218" RevisionGUID="0c25b13d-2982-43b3-bd39-53ef591f4a44" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There is a question, [How to promote code reuse and documentation?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/175066/38200), which I think is well worded, but new and only got a few average answers so far. It was also suggested that it's a duplicate of [How Visual Studio could help to avoid duplicating code?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/173312/38200), but the later is low voted and the wording is more specific and not really similar. But that question has a very good generic answer that would be perfectly applicable to the first question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should it be closed as duplicate? They don't look like ones. Or should they be merged? Or is there some other way to make the answer visible on this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28535" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6029" RevisionGUID="e06faa16-9ced-4d10-8977-e0174ff0da5d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am confused whether questions about IDEs can be asked on [programmers main website][1] or not? Questions such as which IDEs have this feature? An example would be [this question on Stackoverflow][2].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I asked such questions on stackoverflow before being told to ask on superuser or other websites. I [read this][3], [asked this question on its meta][4] but it seems the [questions about IDE][5] are still being put on hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So before posting questions on programmers I decided to ask it on its meta. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Should I ask questions about IDEs here or not? &#xD;&#xA; - If not then which websites do they belong to?&#xD;&#xA; - Is there a question about the where I can ask questions not fitting on this website. Like [the one on Stackoverflow][6].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have looked at the [about page][7]. It says to ask such questions on stackoverflow. But on stackoverflow I have been told otherwise. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17439620/an-ide-with-drag-and-drop-feature-for-python-2-7-tkinter&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/113087/software-tools-in-faq-is-too-hazy&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/181041/confusion-regarding-the-faq-and-a-question&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17439620/an-ide-with-drag-and-drop-feature-for-python-2-7-tkinter&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8401/where-can-i-ask-questions-that-dont-fit-or-are-off-topic-for-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28536" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2260" RevisionGUID="28234c0c-1d17-405f-acd4-17ac416d56ab" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I noticed that the [tag:pronunciation] tag is not doing well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is odd, because I migrated&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/107479/pronunciation-for-hexadecimals&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;here from SO yesterday and I thought it was a *great* fit -- totally programmer-centric and something that has confounded me from time to time in talking to my programming peers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, my first user group meeting as a very young teenager (this is the Apple // era) I was talking to another user and said&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What Ay Ess Cee Eye Eye character is that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I practically got laughed out of the room because **nobody pronounces ASCII that way!** But how was I to know? I had never *heard* anyone say it, I had only *seen* it in writing...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I agree that not every &quot;how do I pronounce X?&quot; should be allowed, but I'm convinced a bunch (but not all) of these [tag:pronunciation] questions are on-topic and worthy of staying open." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28537" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5607" RevisionGUID="f4b8d71c-0670-4ef4-a6c1-3abd146a88be" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've seen several questions that I dont think meet the standards met in the FAQ. [This question][1] seems particularly low quality to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question seems like the OP hasn't actually built anything, and is asking what he should do next and he hasn't got far enough to actually encounter a real problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question contains the presupposition that the only alternatives are raw sockets or HTTP. It is not &quot;conceptual&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The requirements describe the main concern of &quot;responsiveness&quot; yet offer no evidence as to why these two particular protocols should have this concern. What does responsiveness even mean? Latency? Throughput? Or an ability to start downloading things before they're uploaded.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP states that the files are under 3MB and wants to know if the VPS will have enough memory for N connections. How can anyone answer that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do others feel that this question is low quality?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could this be re-phrased to make it higher quality?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A question of this quality would have been closed on Stack Overflow&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/188217/writing-a-tcp-protocol-or-use-http-for-file-transfer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28538" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6386" RevisionGUID="5ad58d68-bafa-4366-9e7b-904d8996e4cd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **As a newbie I can suggest something. I have not read the FAQ before&#xD;&#xA;&gt; posting my first question. It is like reading all the terms and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; conditions before installing any software. I think 95% of the newbies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; coming here will not read the FAQ before posting their first question.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **When I asked my first question I got negative votes and my question was kept on hold just because I didn't know the rules.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **I have read the short note on the right side while posting new question. Most of the people will get their eye on it.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **The note on the right side while adding a new post is as follows:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is your question about software development? We prefer questions that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can be answered, not just discussed. Provide details. Share your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; research.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **I suggest adding some more details on the same page where user can see the basic rules. &#xD;&#xA;Or before a newbie is directed to the *'ask question page'* . Let them go through a pop-up like:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **What topics can I ask about here?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Your question will be deleted if it is related to:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     general workplace issues, &#xD;&#xA;&gt;     question helpfully for you alone.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     what project you should do next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     what book you should read next,&#xD;&#xA;&gt;     career advice, and non-programming activities &#xD;&#xA;and a link [Things you have to know before posting a question.][1]&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we can make them read this points before posting a question. We can limit the number of off-topic questions. A **pop-up** would be helpful. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28539" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6050" RevisionGUID="edc9b26b-2be9-4c5c-b8fe-71270b560229" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've just received the Announcer and Booster badges for a [question][1] (not mine! I haven't even answered it, and it's over a year old)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only thing is, I never share questions. I don't have a high traffic blog, twitter or anything like that which could deliver 25, never mind 300 unique IP address clicks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this a bug? Any way to find out?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/60545/how-to-tell-client-i-no-longer-want-to-work-on-his-project" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28541" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2271" RevisionGUID="dfb91c2b-b9e0-4402-bf55-e7d52a8f9708" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Are you looking at Pierre 303?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I look at one of Pierre's posts, I see the following which seems to match your partial image:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![badge counts overflow][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It looks like there's too much text on that line that it is getting pushed out of view.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;However, if I look at the [users page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users?tab=reputation&amp;filter=all) then the full count is visible, 212 not 21.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![oh hey 212 not 21][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/qICRl.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/kIUNQ.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28542" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5261" RevisionGUID="d08428f0-e3db-472e-8fa4-3ebd21afa542" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As suggested in the contact us page, I am posting this question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posed a question originally on Stack Overflow. I thought the question was appropriate for posting there, but it was ruled to be to be more appropriate for the Programmer area. So I posted the very same question in the Programmer area. Here is the direct [link][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question was closed with no helpful information on what was wrong with the question or how I can improve it so that it is appropriate. Please help me to understand how it is not appropriate, how I can improve it, or what other resources I might look at.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/176028/real-time-multi-user-gaming-platform" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28543" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6061" RevisionGUID="2abe5242-3b27-49a8-a4fc-967847598bd3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There doesn't seem to be any guidance for what would make a good or bad collaborative question. So far, I'm having an easier time defining what such a question is not:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Frequently changing. The answer should be fairly consistent over time. It may take time to get there, but if the type of question requires frequent additions/subtractions over the life of the question, it's likely not a good fit.&#xD;&#xA;- Off-topic. Currently, things that are off-topic include what to learn next (although proper phrasing, such as [the web development question][1], can push it to the good side of this line), recommendations for tools or libraries, recommendations for off-site resources, and education or career advice are all off-topic and probably wouldn't make good collaborative answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28544" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7293" RevisionGUID="7ac4767d-f818-4592-bc20-36c4a1239cee" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="#Postponed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:legal] [tag:law] [tag:copyright] [tag:software-patent] [tag:patents] [tag:proprietary] [tag:foss] [tag:trademark] [tag:intellectual-property]&#xD;&#xA;- [tag:eula] [tag:terms-of-service] &#xD;&#xA;- [tag:gpl] [tag:lgpl] [tag:agpl] [tag:mit-license] [tag:bsd-license] [tag:apache-license] [tag:mpl] [tag:ms-pl] [tag:creative-commons] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Legal / licensing questions are generally difficult to clean up because some questions are legitimately on-topic here. See:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1655/what-types-of-legal-questions-are-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7265/when-is-a-software-licensing-question-on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For this reason, we have decided to postpone these tags as being the active ones, though readers of this answer are welcome to make appropriate edits, tag removals and close votes as normal. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some questions [tagged both legal and licensing](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=[licensing]+[legal]+closed%3Ano) may have nothing to do with legal matters and therefore need just deletion of the inappropriate tag. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28545" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2431" RevisionGUID="7ac392e6-ed7a-4f99-8b6e-b915c81254b2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Reviewing an [old answer of mine][1], I noticed that one of my links to [another answer of mine][2] had gone stale, losing both the content and the context of that answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I seem to remember that the [second question][3] was considered a duplicate of another [closed question][4], and it was probably right to be closed, but did it really deserve to be deleted?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that a number of answers there were valuable. I certainly put some effort into making a balanced, impartial (as far as one can) response that tried to cover different ground to other questions/answers. In fact, my own answer aside, I remember that it contained more useful answers than the earlier question which *hasn't* been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Incidentally, is there any way for me to get back the content of my answer?&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/101649/a-modern-review-of-java/101737#101737&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/92157/what-features-are-there-in-c-and-not-in-java/92333#92333&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/92157/what-features-are-there-in-c-and-not-in-java/92333&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/6284/22493" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28546" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5652" RevisionGUID="ad91140e-e731-498c-bfa2-804bfb0f382f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here is the question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/61394/do-you-see-an-use-for-spreadsheet-programming/188854#188854&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Short summary: spreadsheets should be translated into standalone apps, is there any example, is it a good idea, what's your opinion, experience?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, it's not a question like &quot;what's the name of string replace function in PHP?&quot; (this is a daily question from Stack Overflow and *never* gets closed), instead, it's an excellent idea, which is &quot;not in the air&quot; like big data or whatsoever, but if we discuss this, the world should go further. I think.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand if it gets closed on Stack Overflow, but this is the *Programmers* site, where dudes can come out with new ideas, ask others wheter they tried or not or will it blend.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Point out please that I'm wrong, **but**, with the same movement, send me to the appropriate Stack Exchange site, where programmers can discuss about theoretical issues, plans, architectures. I'm looking for something just like code reviews, but only with ideas, concepts." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28548" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5283" RevisionGUID="b9d38744-e714-498a-a6bd-bb9a7f1ce057" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question about [maintaining poorly written code base][1] got closed as being duplicate of [another question][2]. Those two questions are definitely not a duplicate as I'm looking for an answer to very specific situation (it is even highlighted) and not asking in general &quot;what to do?&quot; as other question does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if it would be duplicate I personally don't see a problem as long as there are users who would like to discuss it, as there always may be some new approach or an new idea about the same problem. It shouldn't be so easy to close a question with many answers at least number of user votes required to close given question should be higher than number of users who in any way participated in given question (created, commented or answered)  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/177058/how-do-i-maintain-a-really-poorly-written-code-base&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/155488/ive-inherited-200k-lines-of-spaghetti-code-what-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28549" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7301" RevisionGUID="86ff419d-1b4d-4bf5-98e5-95c77f62f68a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The expected quality of an answer on P.SE is that it fully answers the question *here*. That one can read an answer posted to the question and come away enlightened.  That is the key criteria.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer *may* include links to other resources that can act as supplementary reading for someone who wants to go into greater depth on the subject for material that doesn't fit in the answer.  That doesn't mean the answer can be absolved of answering the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the [help center](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/deleted-answers) specific information is given to why some answers are deleted:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Answers that do not **fundamentally answer the question** may be removed. This includes answers that are:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * barely more than a link to an external site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * not even a partial answer to the actual question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer you provided fails on these three tests.  It doesn't fundamentally answer the question, it is barely more than links to external resources and it is not even a partial answer to the question - if one removes the links, there is nothing left." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28550" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2453" RevisionGUID="ff59b16a-2a21-4b2f-951e-d298cacf39c4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've just added a tag wiki for [myslq][1], essentially copying the text from SO's [mysql tag wiki][2], leaving out the popular questions section as they are SO questions as felt that we should do something similar with PSE questions, *but didn't bother to actually do it*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm wondering if it would be of any value to automate the process (*ask our overlords to do it for us*) and just link tag wikis across SE, or at least between SO and PSE, in which same tags will most probably refer to the same subject. We have a few empty tag wikis for popular (or somewhat popular) tags, i.e. [oracle][3], that have great and peer reviewed info on their SO wikis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And if we can't automate it, would it be generally acceptable to just copy paste the info from SO? That would give the copy paster 4 points (2 for excerpt and 2 for body) and that somehow feels wrong. (*although I'm expecting my 4 points for my hard work at the mysql tag wiki soon, people*)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**edit**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I got my 4 points (and a badge) for the mysql tag. And I'm now fighting the urge to copy paste info on all our empty tag wikis...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/mysql/info&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/tags/mysql/info&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/oracle/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28551" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5678" RevisionGUID="fcb78644-b858-4775-a464-f60ec7d4f669" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You can use a [closed:0 search](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=closed%3a0%20is%3aquestion) to filter them out.  Unfortunately, this doesn't look as nice since they added answers to search results." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28552" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6458" RevisionGUID="3cce3959-49c0-4d5a-9312-38f131b701a3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The Help Center says this:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; [career advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/590/1204), salary or compensation,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;... but it links to an answer that cites this question as being an acceptable [tag:career-development] question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8886/can-someone-find-a-job-as-a-programmer-without-an-education&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [Tag Wiki](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/career-development/info) says this in its body:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions about developing one's career can be asked as long as they&#xD;&#xA;&gt; invite the unique insights of a programmer and are specifically about&#xD;&#xA;&gt; developing one's career as a programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please note that most career advice questions run the risk of being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed for being too broad or impractical: try to make yours a [good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; subjective&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please also make sure your question has the proper scope. If your&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question can also be applied to other jobs then it's not really&#xD;&#xA;&gt; something that uniquely applies to software development and isn't&#xD;&#xA;&gt; on-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![proper scope for question](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; More information about career development questions:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it says this (not encouraging) in the Tag Wiki Excerpt:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 99% of questions with this tag are off-topic and will be closed. Study&#xD;&#xA;&gt; other questions under this tag closely that aren't closed before&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking your question, if you want any chance of it not being closed.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Closed questions add up to a possible question-ban disallowing you to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ask further questions. Questions about steps one can take to develop&#xD;&#xA;&gt; one's programming career that require the unique insights of other&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, we have a custom close reason that seems to provide no room for exceptions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers.** They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate&#xD;&#xA;&gt; lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may&#xD;&#xA;&gt; not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular&#xD;&#xA;&gt; circumstance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So how does one identify an on-topic question for this tag?  Do they even exist?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28554" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6124" RevisionGUID="0087279f-2bae-4928-9a66-b4389f21d71a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think there is a misunderstanding, from the community, between closing a question and deleting it. FAQ doesn't help neither.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Closing should be applied to any question which is wrong from FAQ's point of view.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Closing is an indication that the question has a problem: an indication for both the original author and the subsequent visitors, would they be willing to answer or comment, or simply ask a similar question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Deleting, on the other hand, should be an extreme measure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Deleting is not an indication; it's a way to make the question disappear for anybody except members with high reputation. It also throws away the votes, which is extremely impolite for the users who took time to answer the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There is nothing wrong in deleting a question which is &quot;totally wrong&quot;: this includes spam or offensive speech, questions written by illiterate people who make no effort whatsoever, questions obviously off-topic (for example a question about horse breeds on Programmers.SE) or obviously duplicate (for example a question which copy-pastes another one), etc. But that's all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  It's the degree of wrongness which should determine whether the question can be deleted or simply closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I follow the following guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Vote to delete if the question is totally wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Vote to delete if the question is wrong **and** has no interest whatsoever for **anybody** except the original poster.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Don't delete if the question may have an interest for someone except the original poster. Note that a question can serve as example of what is *not* welcome on Programmers.SE by its closed status. Delete the question, and the example will disappear, making it easier for future visitors to ask the same question again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Don't delete if the question has *many* votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Don't delete a question which sucks but has a great or highly upvoted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously, I'm completely against the delete vote of the https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/195989/is-it-ok-to-split-long-functions-and-methods-into-smaller-ones-even-though-they question. It has 97 votes (98 if I count mine). It has an answer which received 156 upvotes. Yes, it should be closed, because it's a duplicate. But deleting it will not make Programmers.SE a better place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a side note:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - There was a question on Programmers.SE which I had answered. The question was marked as a duplicate, but the answer was more detailed than answers of other questions. For months, I kept linking the answer in other answers on Stack Exchange and in different discussions outside SE, until one day when the question was deleted by a moderator. The harm of such deletion was important, while it had no benefit whatsoever.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - There are plenty of questions on Stack Overflow I can't access because I don't have enough reputation, while those answers have a large amount of links to them. It's baffling to not being able to read them and feels wrong: a feeling compared to when you open Experts Exchange." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28555" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5711" RevisionGUID="834bf0fd-9d61-4b1a-bf53-d5b6ee477a84" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just saw an answer from a new user (1 reputation point joined today) with [3 downvotes][1]&#xD;&#xA;I'd be surprised if that guy ever decided to return to the site because of the welcome he received. Only one person who downvoted decided to leave a reason for his vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it might make sense to give new users (by length on site or after a certain amount of questions asked/answered) a protected status. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that I'm thinking about it...what point does a negative vote have? If the idea of the system is to bubble quality answers and questions to the top, shouldn't an upvote be enough? A bad answer will remain at zero, good answers will get more points.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/189626/13181" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28556" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7327" RevisionGUID="7038f556-9743-41f3-9a6e-2e16cc9e7b47" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[tag:coding-style] (490 and growing)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Off-topic and categorically primarily opinion based. Coding style is the domain of religious debates and flame wars anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While it is difficult to advocate a one-size-fits-all approach for a tag with this many questions, I would argue that based on a sampling of questions they fall into two categories:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that are about coding style as defined in the tag wiki: how to structure code to affect readability and maintainability. Stuff like formatting.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [what are the most important coding standards in c# \[on hold\]][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [Why does C++11 developers prefer space before colon in range-based for loops? \[closed\]][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [Cleaner C# without unneeded indents \[closed\]][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that are about techniques, how to call a method, what to name a class, etc. which may have some value but might be better served with a different tag such as [tag:code-quality]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Using self.method vs the scope :method DSL][4]&#xD;&#xA;* [Is it ok to break the “is a” relationship if I just want part of a class' functionality?][5]&#xD;&#xA;* [How to handle type conversion of a constant?][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/280118/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/276875/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/264179/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/279368/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/276698/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/275751/22815" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28557" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2466" RevisionGUID="ecc11f50-7c79-4377-97f9-2e586562fbde" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the close reason there is a block of text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which has two links in it. I've reproduced the text here with the links:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not meet enough of our [six guidelines for constructive subjective questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/). All questions should be practical, answerable, and of some educational value to the greater community. Chatty, open-ended discussion questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. See the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#close).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This pretty much explains why this post was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What more information would you like to see?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Of2OA.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28558" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5742" RevisionGUID="a652db90-5780-41c3-810d-27748ed628b3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question that you are asking about is [this one](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/190299/is-scraping-images-from-tumblr-legal/190301), which is visible to users with enough reputation. You need 10k reputation (or be the asker) to see deleted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off, questions that require the expertise of a lawyer are off-topic here and will be closed and/or deleted. As a community of experts in software development, we can't answer most legal questions. Our FAQ makes an exception for software licenses since it's often expected that, as professionals, we'll be able to know if we can use a certain tool or library in our projects based on the license terms of the tool/library and our project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, your answer says, quoting:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think, and I'm not a lawyer...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Again, I'm not a lawyer, and this is not something I really understand at all, but that's my take on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it's not surprising to me that you were down voted for this answer. Stack Exchange sites are designed to provide people with expert answers to their questions, not opinions or facts. By starting your answer with &quot;I think&quot; and ending it with &quot;this is not something I really understand&quot;, your answer doesn't meet the criteria of an &quot;expert answer&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, you shouldn't blame moderators for being rude to you. Members of the community vote on questions and answers. Anyone with 15 reputation can vote up and anyone with 125 rep can vote down. Moderators are here to keep the site clean and handle exceptional cases quickly. This particular question was on the receiving end of community disapproval (through close votes and down votes) as well as flags for immediate moderator attention. Because there is no way to salvage the question for the community, deletion was best for everyone involved." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28559" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2486" RevisionGUID="7bc1c90f-2de9-414f-ae36-a863c90a8a43" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Scenario**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask a reasonably good question on StackOverflow but it does not get many views (maybe because there are so many questions asked on StackOverflow). I then ask a more generic question on Programmers that is closely related to the StackOverflow question and I link it there. There is a very good chance that if the question on Programmers is a good one, it will get a lot of views. When it does, the linked StackOverflow question will get many views as well. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does this looked down upon as abuse? Or is this just good marketing :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have just done this recently (and certainly not to abuse the sites). My StackOverflow question had only about 50 views and 5 upvotes before linking it (and it was tapering off at that point). Now the StackOverflow question has more than 250 views and 10 upvotes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are the questions in the example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7922019/openjdks-rehashing-mechanism&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/116678/how-good-does-a-well-rounded-programmer-need-to-be-with-bit-wise-operations&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(And yes I understand that I am doing it again :) obviously the intent is not malicious here)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28560" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5337" RevisionGUID="fcec847d-55cb-4ad0-955b-bb9fb9d44d59" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just noticed that an old answer of mine has had a LOT of recent upvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See for yourself: [What made object oriented programming successful?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/16196/4099)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, I happen to think it's a good answer - and I'm not objecting to the additional rep - but 26 upvotes in just one day **smells**. I'm just not active enough to hit the 200 rep limit on any given day.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, could someone with sufficient rep (a moderator?) have a look to see what's going on? Love it to be legit, but (currently) inclined to believe it is not." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28561" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5744" RevisionGUID="8aa97676-6ee8-4aa0-9c25-37dd15e9f49b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I will try to answer your questions to the best of my ability.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and the moderator was clearly being rude to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't see where any of the moderators responded to you in anyway. The community users appeared to have downvoted your answer and commented on this, but they are not the moderators in that sense of the word.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We take rudeness very seriously around here so if you suspect you are being treated unfairly then please Flag for moderator attention and we will look into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I know we want to keep things on topic, &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you read the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) you will see that while license questions from a software developers perspective are on topic, general legal questions are not. The question itself is off topic and was removed promptly.  This isn't your fault BTW.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Again, I'm not a lawyer, and this is not something I really understand at all, but that's my take on it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So again referring to the FAQ, the first few sentences state that we are a Q&amp;A site of *experts* for conceptual questions on software development.  The voting and deletion system on answers to questions is designed such to promote expert answers to the top of the page and demote lower quality answers below, giving the reader the experience that is commonly missing from your typical discussion forum where the quickest and loudest answers get read first.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above you clearly stated that you know very little of the legality, and while you have some valuable insight, your answer really can't and doesn't answer anything, despite the fact that the question was off topic to begin with.  This is probably why you were downvoted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your input would have been better received in the form of a comment on the question, where some dialogue and discussion can take place." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28563" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6140" RevisionGUID="808c20d7-a000-4c26-b7a9-3b0b6fa5a5c7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&quot;These articles are in opposition.&quot; + &quot;prove Jeff Atwood&quot; suggest that OP already knows the answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Atwood trashed Norvig. If you know the answer, why ask? That means, _unclear what you're asking_, which was my close vote (&quot;opinion-based&quot; [shown to readers](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/209295/revisions) is pure fake [indiscriminately attributed to me](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10922461#10922461) due to... shall we say, not too smart user interface - a bit more on that below...).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a &quot;clean room&quot; case, I would shrug, edit this unfortunate phrase into something like &quot;These articles appear at odds with each other, how can I find a way out?&quot; and walk away knowing that _unclear_ doesn't apply anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, at the moment question has been [&quot;locked&quot; from such an edit](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773 &quot;how's that?&quot;) by already submitted [FGITW](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/fastest-gun/info &quot;what's this&quot;) answer: &quot;You're missing the point...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Besides above, there are a few issues _induced_ by the phrase &quot;Is there a [friggin'](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2905/31260 &quot;Sprinkling &quot;Science&quot; on top of something does not automatically render it correct&quot;) scientific evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► Is-there part of the phrase shifts it into Yes/No territory with [all its known issues](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/183177/165773 &quot;discussed eg here&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Stack Overflow is not just a 'get an answer for me' place, it's &quot;Produce quality content that is useful for people who follow&quot;. In the case of your question, the second part is lacking...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;When asking a yes/no question there are one of two possibilities:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;1. You really want a yes/no answer. If this is the case, and you don't need anything else to answer your question then it means the answers will be inherently low quality. An answer that only says &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; (in addition to not meeting the minimum length) would be of very low quality. SO answers expect more.&#xD;&#xA;2. You don't actually want a yes/no answer, in which case your real question is not actually a yes/no question, and you're hoping that people will determine what your real question is. For example, someone might ask, &quot;Can I do [...]?&quot; when what they really meant to ask was, &quot;How can I do [...]?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;Almost all yes/no questions I've seen fall into case 2; they should be edited into a question that isn't really asking for just a yes/no, it should be asking to explain something. (Even if it has a yes/no in there somewhere.) Note that just adding &quot;Explain&quot; at the end isn't really a good way to go about this; you should refactor the question on a more fundamental level...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► The part &quot;evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach&quot; sucks, well, because it blatantly misses the opposite: &quot;evidence to prove the Peter Norvig approach&quot;. This is yet another indication of question quality issues (happily ignored by reopeners).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the very least, I would rephrase to symmetric wording &quot;evidence to prove one of these approaches above another&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;► Issues with &quot;scientific&quot; part are addressed in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I for one like the way these are presented in [this comment](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/scientific-evidence-versions-of-each-question#comment7317_2903 &quot;just discovered it's written by one of my favorite MSO authors&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Slapping a request for scientific literature onto the question... doesn't really make this question any better. It still is enormously vague and unanswerable, there is no objective scientific measure..., it remains a question that should be nuked on sight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above does not fully apply to this particular case because there is an answerable question obscured by scientificevidence garbage there, but it rather makes a point that it would be better to wipe out that scevidence crap outta there at all (if such an edit wouldn't invalidate existing answers).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The last but not the least, even with all imaginary editing cleanup, the question would still remain average.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Don't get me wrong, resolving false contradictions can be fun, I sometimes enjoy [doing this myself](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/193864/advice-on-rehabilitating-an-unpopular-meta-question-or-not#comment608984_193864 &quot;example&quot;) but it's often way too simple. And this case looks simple to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As Mysticial [would probably say](http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/1262201#1262201), it's not _really advanced question_. Meh.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Side note, regarding question closure notice, I would rather prefer it to be shown rephrased to something that doesn't put words in my mouth. There is a bunch of [feature requests](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/194593/165773 &quot;listed eg here&quot;) for something like that at MSO, but SE team doesn't give a shit.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28564" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2488" RevisionGUID="a8a5e0d1-f8a4-4cd0-b47a-f3825dce3b9f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question you asked here on Programmers is not on-topic here. From [the FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an *entire* book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first part of your question is a rant about how unreasonable it seems to be to know how to understand the code. Taking out that part, we're left with just the general question, &quot;how good does a programmer need to be with bitwise operations?&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is not reasonably scoped nor is it answerable: the only context we have is a question you had on Stack Overflow that you didn't know the answer to. Obviously, knowing bitwise operations would've been helpful to you on Stack Overflow, but not every programmer has the same issue or the same situation as you. The answer is going to be different for every programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, in this diagram: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![Scope diagram](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've made your question applicable to the &quot;Just You&quot; section, not &quot;All Programmers.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the problem was scoped differently and described a problem *generally applicable to programmers at large*, it'd be on-topic. And such a question wouldn't include a link to a question on Stack Overflow that you want people to answer, because it'd be irrelevant to such a general problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So in general, if you're asking questions framed around getting people to answer question on Stack Overflow, you're Doing It Wrong™. Intentionally and repeatedly doing this would be abuse of the system." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28565" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5759" RevisionGUID="1c590c60-7eb2-4fdf-becc-5e15f4b29349" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Earlier I've posted [this question (link)](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/190628/dissertation-of-a-case-where-using-mysql-resulted-in-a-serious-scalability-probl) on Programmers Stack. Why was it closed and what can I do for it to be reopenned? Note: I've already made some edits taking in account the argumentation provided by the closers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28567" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2495" RevisionGUID="c7b57771-6aaa-4d33-9361-9e27a5c0f79b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In general you should edit your question so that you are clear about the distinction between it and the possible duplicate. Once you've done that, flag the question for moderator attention and we'll review it. The fact that it's been closed will mean that you've a slightly higher bar to reach, but we try to be fair and often questions do get reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, be careful that you don't end up making the question too localised to your specific situation and this time. This would mean that the question isn't of wider use to the community and could end up staying closed. Take a look at the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) - particularly the diagram. You're aiming for the blue part.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can also post a link here where other members of the community will see it and can vote to reopen if they agree. Having other votes to reopen are a good thing." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28568" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6157" RevisionGUID="f889bfa9-82cf-4f07-9ad1-3998307f7dea" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So, the cleanup has been done.  There are no questions tagged as asp.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [Let's Ban the [ASP] Tag on StackOverflow!](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/112317/213963) the next step would appear to be making it a tag synonym.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From Stack Overflow a screen shot of http://stackoverflow.com/tags/synonyms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which is probably what we should have too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The way to do this would be to go to the [tag:asp-classic] tag and navigate to synonyms - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/asp-classic/synonyms&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The requirements for suggesting and voting on this are:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Users with more than 2500 reputation and a total answer score of 5 or more on the tag, can suggest tag synonyms. Users with a total answer score (total upvotes minus total downvotes) of 5 or more on the tag, can vote for tag synonyms. Suggestions will be automatically approved when they reach a score of 4, and automatically deleted when they reach a score of -2.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since I've got nothing in the asp tag for answers or questions, I can't vote on this one (or suggest it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And asp-classic its not that highly asked of a question area - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/asp-classic/topusers so there aren't many who do have the necessary rep to cast votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its probably up to a mod to do this, if it is modable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/eZuvN.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28569" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5760" RevisionGUID="f255f690-4413-4ad3-bfe0-398694ea3411" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The original version of your question was very broad, and read more like a thesis than an actual question. It seemed like you've already made your mind on almost everything you were asking about, and if that's the case, why ask? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To make matters worse, your question is of the &quot;foo vs bar&quot; variety, and strictly speaking those are [off topic][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and it is not about...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what language/technology you should learn next, **including which technology is better**,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Broad comparisons don't really work, we all have our favourites. If you don't give us enough parameters to make a sane comparison, the question is in danger of turning into yet another flame war. And yours almost did, the back and forth in the comments was getting out of hand. No one is to blame here, we all got caught up in the conversation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your edit was a step in the right direction, you removed your conclusions from the question, and it certainly reads more like a question now than a thesis. But you really need to do another update, and give us a few more details on the actual design. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With almost each one of your clarifying comments you revealed design idiosyncrasies, the project seems to have a very unique design. Every detail about it will help the community give you an actual answer, and not just opinions and speculation. You said in a comment that if you give us more details, the question would become &quot;too localized&quot;. That's certainly a risk, but &quot;too localized&quot; is far better than &quot;too broad/possibly flame-ish&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I'd like to see in your question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- A very brief and very high level overview of OTServs design. Why, for example, is a crash so devastating, why isn't there any redundancy? &#xD;&#xA;- A high level overview of the database schema, not just the table names. You mentioned in a comment that items don't have unique IDs, add that to the question. &#xD;&#xA;- A brief outline of usage and traffic. Solutions for 500 concurrent users will be quite different from solutions for 5*10^6 concurrent users. Be precise and avoid words like &quot;huge&quot;. A one million rows table is &quot;huge&quot; only if you haven't worked with billion rows tables.&#xD;&#xA;- A somewhat detailed outline of what you need to save and when.&#xD;&#xA;- Tell us what's beyond your control, what you can't possibly change. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All in all, it's a good question, but you've approached it from the wrong angle. Tell us what the problem is, and we'll do our best to help you solve it. But if you've already decided on a solution, then post it on your blog, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28570" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7426" RevisionGUID="b939d44e-f541-472e-9b7e-ad6e81c1a373" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would like to see some more close reasons added. Rather than blindly stabbing in the dark, I want to cite the [on-topic page in the help center][1] with a slight formatting change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out The Workplace instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. how to use specific tools&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. what language/technology you should learn next, including which technology is better&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. what project you should do next&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. where to find a software library, tool or other resource&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. product or service recommendations&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. career or education advice, salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. legal advice or aid&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Items 2 and 3 have a close reason for Stack Overflow migration (with the caveat that 3 needs to be more specific than the wording here implies).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Items 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 all fall under existing off-topic close reasons.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Item 9 does not have an existing reason but probably does not need one. This item really is the catch-all for &quot;none of the other off-topic reasons we get a lot of so they need their own reasons.&quot; It is served well with the custom close reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This leaves items 1 and 10. I propose two changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Add a migration path to The Workplace**. We do not get a _ton_ of questions that belong there, but we do get them. Nixing beta sites and the two existing migration paths, this would likely be near the top of paths for which there is a legitimate need. The only issue here is _some_ of the questions are on-topic here, but they really need to focus on the non-workplace aspects of the question _and_ require the [unique perspective of a programmer compared to other professionals][2]. They also cannot devolve into [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?][3] which covers the &quot;my boss says to do X, but I think we need to do Y. How do I persuade him?&quot; questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Add an off-topic close reason for legal advice**. We tend to add custom reasons such as &quot;...because it is about legal advice&quot; or &quot;...because we are not lawyers&quot; et al. I propose writing up a friendly, well-written close reason that enumerates [precisely where the line is][4] when it comes to licensing/copyright/legal questions. I think we need some consistency here, because there tends to be some confusion not only among question authors but also close voters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1697/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6629/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7265/22815" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28571" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2574" RevisionGUID="9a61b227-0567-49e2-afac-c7b085c4757a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question about iOS development](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/120375/ios-book-app-with-custom-book-repositories-will-apple-block-this) was closed as _off topic_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At its core, this question boiled down the types of applications allowed by a software publisher (in this case the Apple App Store) would accept for publication. The specific rules are most likely detailed in a _Developer Agreement_ that developers would need to agree to abide by.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that the types of questions that could be asked about developer agreements are similar in nature to those that have been asked about software licenses. Furthermore, software publishing via channels like the App Store are becoming more common, and developer agreements will be an important topic of interest to many programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think these types of questions should be permitted (and encouraged) rather than be closed as off topic." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28572" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5351" RevisionGUID="e7d469a0-e7c3-4800-9135-06890b367555" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="We have a [version][1] tag. Is this is a useful tag?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/version" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28573" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6498" RevisionGUID="60a7e8f9-10dd-4a57-8872-07daa0556d57" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="(I am not a lawyer.  Do not take any of the following as legal advice.  It is, however, my understanding as someone who is more than a little bit familiar with certain aspects of copyright law... but could still be completely wrong)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First thing to realize with the question https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/230592/would-copyright-drop-if-i-re-do-it-from-scratch-in-different-language (from my reading of it) is that it is ***neither* a licensing *nor* a copyright question** in many situations - it is a *contract* issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For all of the major companies that I worked at, there was a specific clause in the contract that if I wrote software that was directly applicable to my job, even in my off hours on my own equipment, that software would be owned by the company.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example, at my previous employer I worked on a point of sales system.  If I wrote something that was point of sales use (a custom dsl for doing receipts, or rules engine for determining the price of something based on discounts and coupons and sales, etc...) that creation would have been owned by my employer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I haven't seen similar provisions in my current employer's contract, so this isn't universal, but I'm more inclined to believe that my current employer is the exception rather than the rule.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To that extent:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If on my off hour, I write with a language C, from scratch a program which have a similar goal, but target user base B, and is open source, is it unethical or breaking trade secret/non compete/other?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is likely an answer that can only be determined by &quot;read your contract&quot; and &quot;talk to a lawyer&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lets assume that this isn't a contract issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As described, it could be a *copyright* issue instead.  In this case it is a question of is any of the works in the 'from scratch program' a derivative work of the program written while on the clock.  This can only be answered by a lawyer - its not a licensing issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question also asks about trade secret which is *completely* the domain of lawyers and I couldn't even *begin* to comment on that - what a company considers a trade secret or not.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is also the 'non-compete' question in the question.  This is likewise a question that is something that varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction (enforceable in some, not others, and funky rules in yet others).  This is also completely in the domain of lawyers to determine what competes and what doesn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In total, the question appears to be nearly all legal questions *other than* licensing.  I don't see any license question in there.  The copyright part isn't necessarily correct, but that it is a legal question that programmers don't have the expert knowledge of is absolutely correct.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Its a fine line between the two topics in some cases.  However, most of the closed questions that I've poked at that that have received closed votes are either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* questions about legality&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;Is it legal to remove the license information from a GPL compatible license when using it in GPL software?  &#xD;&#xA;* questions about non-license issues (contracts)&lt;br&gt;&#xD;&#xA;I am working for XYZ who is using in house modified GPL software. Can I submit those changes back to the main fork? &#xD;&#xA;* &quot;find a license for me&quot;&#xD;&#xA;I am looking for an open source license that prevents military or commercial use.  This one is a resource request, despite it being about licensing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This set of questions makes up the majority of the closed questions relating to licensing.  Nearly all of the copyright questions fall into that first group.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The thing that would help the most is to identify a licensing question that was closed with a reason pertaining to copyright that is actually a licensing question that should be open based on the guidelines." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28574" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5779" RevisionGUID="fe2679f7-66ff-48a6-81e5-5b64fb8172ac" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Consider [this question][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It would be a perfect candidate for the Software QA Stack Exchange site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So can we please add http://sqa.stackexchange.com as a migration target?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/139712/is-performance-testing-applicable-to-a-qa-or-business-user-testing" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28575" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6195" RevisionGUID="5ad3d8e9-63da-413f-8fae-c1253ad6181b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You seem to believe that question locked for content dispute at meta should remain at main site as originally posted (&quot;Lock question as-is&quot;). This approach doesn't make sense to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the purpose of meta discussion, it is insignificant what particular revision is hanging on the main site because [full revision history](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/212517/revisions &quot;example for your post&quot;) and [original version](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/212517/1 &quot;example for your post&quot;) are always available to study content and edits in as much details as needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With above in mind, I would expect moderator locking the post to take whatever edits deemed appropriate in order to make it look OK for regular, inexperienced readers of the site - for those who just read what is posted and don't pay attention to obscure, strictly internal notices about _meta_, _content dispute_ etc.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From this perspective, I would expect moderators to err on the safer side, performing pre-dispute cleanup of the content. Given that _final_ version of the content is to be determined by community discussion at meta anyway, I see no point to fixate about what is there on the main site during the dispute (it helps that locked post can not be voted, thus question score can't be influenced until it's unlocked back).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is worth noting that expecting mentioned cleanup to be performed by asker would be a really bad idea, as they are naturally biased.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In your particular case, part cleaned up at main site prior to dispute is: *&quot;Are there any definitive or widely cited sources of best practices literature&quot;*. To me, cleaning it up looks reasonable safety wise, as this part of the question makes a perfect match to one of the [close reasons](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6025/31260 &quot;quote source&quot;):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Oh and please don't tell me that it's safe to keep because this part is hidden deep inside your &quot;main&quot; question. It's there and readers will find it. I remember myself being new at Programmers, carefully studying questions, stumbling upon resource-request parts and posting [low quality answers](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nyfwh.png &quot;example&quot;) _&quot;look here's the resource you asked about: &amp;lt;link&amp;gt;&quot;_.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--- &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would like to also address one of the [comments](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments#comment419290_212517) you made, likely intending to support the question with an authoritative reference:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Note that my post specifically implements the tactics referred to in that post to achieve usefulness as a subjective post. It isn't shopping for a source if you insist that an experience or widely-known principle be backed up by references. This is why it says &quot;Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your interpretation of [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) article looks wrong to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My reading of the statement _&quot;questions insist that opinion be backed up&quot;_ is that it's a strong prohibition against filling questions with a [**poison** like &quot;what's your opinion?&quot;, &quot;what do you think?&quot;, &quot;what do you prefer?&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/184574/165773 &quot;more on that here&quot;)... and yeah, &quot;which resource do you recommend&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question should _never_ have words like &quot;what's your opinion&quot; simply because this makes a wide open door for crappy answers where authors just post their opinion without even attempting to back it up.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Good question, in addition, is worded in a way that actually _[repels](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5401/31260 &quot;more on that here&quot;)_ garbage answers - allowing readers, guys like you and me, to flag low quality posts for mod attention and request deletion on the ground that these don't answer the question asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Note that what's-your-opinion in the question immediately makes such flagging and demanding deletion impossible because, well, such answers _match the questions asked_. Same reasoning applies to resource requests - it is officially legal to post a [low quality](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/8259/165773 &quot;more on link-only answers here&quot;) &quot;I recommend this URL&quot; and pretend that this just answers to what have been asked.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now I would like to expand on what looks fundamentally wrong in your position.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You (and some [other askers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6147/31260)) re-post excerpts from the article, plainly translating these into requirements to answers and pretend that this makes your question compliant. **Don't do that.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above &quot;translation&quot; is purely yours, you have no grounds to state that this can be inferred from the article you refer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing to remember is, this article states requirements for _questions_, not for the _answers_. Re-read it again and pay attention to the sub-title (quoted below, keeping font close to original):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Article is about guidelines for _questions_, plain and simple as in the title quoted above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whatever requirements for _answers_ you stuff into your questions, you have no ground to link these to the article. These are all yours, and, frankly, from the perspective of those who read your question, these are pure noise, as these add nothing [substantial](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6171/31260 &quot;related discussion here&quot;) to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't pollute the question with requirements to answers - for readers, these are useless.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, _after reading_ particular answer, you feel like something is not OK there, check whether it fits [answering guidelines](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer &quot;here&quot;) and if you believe that it doesn't, feel free to raise your concerns." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28576" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5364" RevisionGUID="b7e24711-19df-4411-8319-92bf776324b6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Should [this question about how to learn enough programming to communicate with programmers without learning to program][1] have stayed on programmers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me this question is about programming, specifically.  Yes, the question could be asked about another field, but it would be another question, with totally different answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At this moment, the most recent question (with net positive votes) on Programmers is [this one, about the advantages of proper unit tests over functional tests misnamed as unit tests][2].  We could change it to &quot;What do I do about a colleague who does the wrong work and misnames it as the right work?&quot; and move it to Workplace, but it wouldn't get an answer to the question that was actually asked, because the question is about programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question isn't NC, because it's open on Workplace.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The argument to migrate would have to be on the grounds that it's off-topic, but it's a question about learning certain aspects of programming (or was, before it got radically edited to be on topic for Workplace).  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I first saw it on Workplace, and immediately thought &quot;I should flag this to move to Programmers&quot; before I noticed it was migrated from Programmers!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit - Yes, it was originally a request for books.  It should have been changed to a general request.  But otherwise my point still stands.  So far no one has given me any answer that I feel even begins to explain why the question isn't about programming.  Oh, wait- Rachel did, but she asserted that communicating with programmers is outside the scope of conceptual software development.  I have no idea why one would assert that, but she did address the issue.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/7155/how-can-i-learn-to-communicate-better-with-colleagues-from-another-profession&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/180026/what-are-tangible-advantages-to-proper-unit-tests-over-functional-test-called-un" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28577" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7545" RevisionGUID="c860260e-d1cd-4f16-b6ac-376d2dfc2e57" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Based upon a [recent answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7534/53019)&lt;sup&gt;1, 2&lt;/sup&gt; to a [previous question of mine](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6507/53019), I'd like to re-visit an older request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Please give all close voters&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; on Programmers 50 votes instead of the standard 24&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_Why?_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. All of the [original reasons](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6507/53019) that were laid out before still hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. New users to the site end up with a poor impression regarding what is on-topic for the site when off-topic questions are not cleared out quickly.  The more quickly we can patch up the broken windows, the more favorable Programmers and StackExchange appear to new visitors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. The [stats show](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7534/53019) that our active close voters regularly run out of votes and this is impacting their ability to help provide community moderation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. The influx of low quality questions from {bans at SO | ignorance of SO} continues to increase.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. Items like the [Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7285/53019) put a strain on the community when they are trying to balance closing off incoming low quality questions as well as cleaning up old NPR-style low quality questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. This version of the request is much easier to implement as it's already part of the per-site configuration setting and doesn't require a code change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. More close votes means being able to migrate questions more quickly.  That in turn cuts down on extra work created for mods when they have to merge cross-posted questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;`Finally, if we were going to increase the limit, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to just raise it for 10k users. From a very practical standpoint, changing it for everyone is a site setting, but changing it for users over 10k would require a code change. For another, the setting has already been raised to 50 for 3k+ users on SO, Math, Super User, Ubuntu, and Server Fault without any particular problems. I'd suggest removing that portion of the feature request that needlessly confuses matters`&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;[Gratuitous footnotes are because I heard someone likes them](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/166518/194162)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;By &quot;Close Voters&quot;, I mean anyone who has earned [at least 3k rep](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions) on the site.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;sub&gt;My assumption is that the number of allowed votes in the close review queue increases proportionately, but if not, I'll make a separate request.&lt;/sub&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28578" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2606" RevisionGUID="155c5812-4a2a-4785-b77e-31220caf98ab" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just answered the question https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/122378/whats-the-point-of-initializing-a-variable-with-the-same-value-twice here on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was going to answer it anyway, then saw that Morons suggested it be migrated to StackOverflow.  I agreed, so I added my migration vote.  Then I answered the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, it exists on StackOverflow as well, and my answer exists in two different places.  You can see from the [revision history](http://stackoverflow.com/posts/8316463/revisions) that it was migrated, but it doesn't say by whom.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And, it's still open on Programmers.  Thankfully, Mark Trapp has locked it in the mean time.  But, I don't really know what happened - even after the migration happened, I still saw &quot;close(2)&quot; in the question links.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28579" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5797" RevisionGUID="e72c6c6d-f2d7-4c6e-8779-06c14e5f0d4c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked a legitimate, specific, relevant, answerable question here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/193142/do-integrated-systems-increase-development-time-and-cause-inflexibility&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;. In the &quot;hot questions&quot; box I found a few questions on other Stack Exchange sites that I don't think are more suitable for the Q&amp;A format than mine was: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/10645/how-to-keep-up-a-busy-apperance-at-work&#xD;&#xA;- http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/58185/what-would-be-the-effects-if-jupiter-was-to-blown-up&#xD;&#xA;- http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/58208/how-long-can-you-survive-1-million-degrees&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Could you explain to me why it was closed and what I should do to get it re-opened?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28580" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6254" RevisionGUID="d1d123df-be3c-46e9-a7b0-86db7b5ed05f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As much as I poo-poo the quick closes around here, I think this question falls squarely in the &quot;likely to start a flame war&quot;/&quot;has no objective answer&quot; realm - and based on the guidelines of the site, in its current state it should not be a question we support. ...and I largely agree with those guidelines, for most of the reasons commonly given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All that said, this question could be &quot;fixed&quot; pretty easily by doing something like &quot;what are the commonly accepted/argued benefits of OOP?&quot;. I mean, it's one thing for you to say &quot;here is why OO is good&quot; and another to say &quot;X, Y, Z OO advocates say that...&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further, I think that &quot;big&quot; questions like this (and a lot of our highest voted questions like [What should every programmer know about web development?][1]) _should_ be kept around because they're important and useful to our consumers. Arguments about what programming language is best isn't important or useful to programmers. Knowing the difference between object oriented and procedural programming (and functional, and...) is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So personally, I would err towards the side that thinks content influences the quality of a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28581" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5487" RevisionGUID="da4cf1a3-8ec7-43b8-ab4e-2629c2d5c0b2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Disclaimer: I do have an answer in the example question and I am not looking for up votes. I am genuinely concerned as to whether this kind of answer is poor form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Occasionally I will run across a question on this site where I feel that the best answer to the question is to change the reasons it is being asked. An example of a question like this is [here][1]. My opinion of the correct answer to the question is to modify the design that caused the question in the first place. The FAQ clearly states that a provided answer should actually answer the question being asked; I am not sure if slightly modifying the question to fits this criteria. Can anyone provide me with some guidance on this? Should I keep my opinions to myself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/184862/how-to-name-a-variable-when-the-word-is-both-a-noun-and-a-verb/184946#184946" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28582" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6500" RevisionGUID="875d758f-f931-4fe4-91d7-edb24c94a063" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[![Bountied questions on Programmers.SE][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stack-exchange-dynamic-ads.herokuapp.com/programmers.stackexchange.com/bounty.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/?tab=featured" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28583" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5865" RevisionGUID="962f8e7b-1629-4f43-97df-0c0f5ef6a000" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I wonder why [this question about the possibility of zero bugs](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/195571/is-it-possible-to-reach-absolute-zero-bug-state-for-large-scale-software) was closed as &quot;not constructive&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since it's very much on topic for the field of software engineering, and it's not an opinionated/flamebait sort of question, I can only think of one close reason: that it will solicit debate and extended discussion. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But this question is the stuff software engineering is made of, right? An answer _is_ possible, and you can quote software engineering books and papers. Right? You can mention practical matters such as the cost of finding bugs, diminishing ROI, etc, or theoretical aspects such as the feasibility of formal proof in the general case, and all of that with proper references.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It doesn't seem so open-ended it must be closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**edit**: as Yannis points out, I misread the close reason, which is actually &quot;not a real question&quot;. I still think it is on-topic and can be salvaged into a more focused question.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28584" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2628" RevisionGUID="667a472f-8bff-47ab-858f-1f9e2ae0f15a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Is down-voting supposed to be completely arbitrary to the user down voting?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I ask because I received a down vote of my answer on this question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/122734/some-who-can-help-me-program-a-game-in-c/122736#122736&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The justification for the down-vote was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am downvoting this just because you basically enabled the OP to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; cheat on what was very clearly his homework assignment. All of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; code is right there for him to plagiarize.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this right or fair?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it is arbitrary, am I justified in going to the user's profile picking one of his answers at random and down voting for revenge?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28585" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7639" RevisionGUID="418e8abf-541c-45cc-a3cf-dddd2093e65e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question is on hold and I'm not going to change it. Should I delete it or just keep it there because the comments link to relevant discussions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/298594/recommended-way-to-store-a-distributed-project-in-git?noredirect=1#comment620378_298594" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28586" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5869" RevisionGUID="907f82fd-8044-4f4a-be0f-f8f38d14aa4d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So I would like to jump in the programmers.SE community, but for the life of me I can't actually figure out the community standards.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had this question closed: [What languages do Node.js developers primarily come from?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I literally do not see how it fits NARQ. It's a precise question with a literal factual answer. I do not know the literal factual answer or how to research it. That's why I posted the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only problem I see is that I gave the background on why I wanted to know the answer to this question, but the question is a legitimate question in its own right. One person answered the &quot;background&quot; question and was quite helpful to me. This is pretty typical practice on SO for instance - you try to research a question, ask a derived question, and someone is all the more helpful by giving you a different approach entirely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, I'm asking for 1) an explanation of why this was closed and 2) some information on how I can learn what belongs and does not belong on programmers.SE, that would help me avoid asking non-real questions like this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/195991/what-languages-do-node-js-developers-primarily-come-from" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28587" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6290" RevisionGUID="c1f5dbd6-b813-4314-972a-80a6b6aa03fb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="i understand in stackoverflow, questions are closed as &quot;off topic&quot; &quot;not constructive&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;that is why we come here!! /* programmers */ should be alot more liberal as to the type of questions allowed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;example: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/125796/comparison-of-ides-for-c-and-c-development-on-linux-kdevelop-eclipse-netbea?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;this is a perfect question for programmers. this place is to heavily moded. chill&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*******************&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2794/dangers-of-too-eager-moderation?rq=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;even my meta question gets down-voted... no wonder this place is not too popular. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28588" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2642" RevisionGUID="345cfb3e-4fb2-44ec-a1c1-2ddf9695091e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You should be able to read the entire comment by going directly to the [deleted post](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/123093/8). Your post was deleted prior to migration as it didn't directly answer the question but was a critique on the supplied code. Stack Exchange isn't a discussion board: if you don't have an direct answer, please don't use the answer section to add commentary. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have a direct answer to the question now, feel free to post it on [the migrated question on Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8368717/adding-components-to-jpanels-dynamically-during-runtime)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28589" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7679" RevisionGUID="36319912-6972-45b9-a689-5f96e8059066" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Software Recommendations is graduating][1] and will soon be a non-beta site!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[There is a question on their meta][2] about being a migration target: they are asking about other sites such as [Super User][3] having a migration path to [Software Recommendations][4]. [Programmers][5] did not come up there: while I would expect some other sites to have more recommendation questions, we do see some of these questions on Programmers and we have a few open slots for migration targets.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Once Software Recommendations is fully graduated to a regular site, should Programmers have a migration path to it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;### See Also&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Software recommendations stackexchange][6] - asked and answered before the graduation announcement.&#xD;&#xA;* [Revisiting what is on topic, with respect to new sites: Open Source, Law, and Software Recommendations][7] - software recommendations are _still_ off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2298&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwarerecs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2307&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://superuser.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6464&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7539" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28590" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5500" RevisionGUID="032303ee-1a3e-4d07-92fe-74a88dddf57e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Can someone help explain why my question was closed?&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/185130/what-is-the-best-example-of-a-large-legacy-codebases-that-has-been-significantly&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One of the comments said that my question was a list question, so I have rephrased it in a way to no longer be a list question.  I feel that the question is on-topic for the site and have read the FAQ, but I don't know how to proceed from here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can anyone help me rephrase it so that it would be acceptable?&#xD;&#xA;Also, can anyone tell me if i is ever likely to be accepted on this site?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28591" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2644" RevisionGUID="b9c24353-b5c9-40f5-b2f4-95538a1f0478" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It ought to have been a self-referential best-of sort of tag for those who know that what they're getting in to is the stuff that will raise the most possible eyebrows and generate the maximum amount of vitriol.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;AKA flamebait. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance, I asked [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/9521/what-constitutes-a-dead-programming-language) back when programmer.SE had a spark of tempered genius (that, by the way, was never in any way headed toward programmers Reddit or 4Chan or anything web-despicable no matter what they tell ya).  I asked it because I was waiting for someone to say something cruel about Delphi and then have an excuse to tell them why they're wrong.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some may say that's trolling, but as a [Catechist][1], I can tell you that sometimes all you can do is ask leading questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://christianity.stackexchange.com/users/4/peter-turner" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28592" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5874" RevisionGUID="397de1df-d429-4abc-9015-b2e05a75536a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I originally posted a question on Programmers because at the time it was quite general with no code.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/195959/java-blocking-on-multiple-queues&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After doing some work on the problem I have a fair amount of actual code which I added to the question.  Now it looks more like a question about a specific problem I'm having, ie it's now more suited to Stack Overflow than Programmers.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've voted to migrate the question to SO, but I can't migrate it until others vote to migrate it as well.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you agree and think it's better for Stack Overflow in its current form can you please vote to migrate it?  " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28593" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5573" RevisionGUID="1fd10a3a-56f5-40cb-bc00-e2cd7bb8fc1b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The 2013 Community Moderator Election is now &lt;s&gt;underway!&lt;/s&gt; completed!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Community moderator elections have three phases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Nomination phase&#xD;&#xA;2. Primary phase&#xD;&#xA;3. Election phase&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please visit the official election page at&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/election&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;for more detail, and to participate!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on Meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged [meta-tag:election].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We also have an [election chat room][1], for open discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/7568/programmers-2013-moderator-elections" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28594" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2655" RevisionGUID="1e778176-5c14-4183-b68a-7c9e9c534a0b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question [What hurts maintainability?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/123293/what-hurts-maintainability) recently got closed as being not constructive. In the comments two reasons were suggested:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The fact that it has 18 answers is an indication that it's not constructive.&#xD;&#xA; 2. wound up being a honey pot for creating a list of possible things that can hurt maintainability: lists aren't really what we do here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I'd like to know is why is it different from [this](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has even more answers, and pretty much invites the users to create lists, yet it also clearly gave people lots of value for their time, and the maintainability question seems to have done the same, judging by the votes. I personally don't see a good reason to close it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28595" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6296" RevisionGUID="7c7fc81e-35f3-4f5b-a7aa-72f93a3449ad" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was told to make a post here to understand why is my question wrong after it was placed on hold: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/218986/13833&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Context&#xD;&#xA;--&#xD;&#xA;The question asks, essentially, how is it called when you create constants that refer to large namespaces in an attempt to simplify the writing. Basically, something like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Sprite = Super::Large:Namespace::Graphics::Sprite&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;Closing reason&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;The reason, it seems, is that my question is a [guessing game][1] (at least that's the most upvoted reason).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;My reasoning&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to the [the linked blog post regarding guessing games][2], such questions involve vague, broad descriptions. However, I don't think that my question is vague at all. I am describing, very accurately, every step involved in the practice (which is to create constantes referring to large namespaces). I know perfectly well every aspect of the practice, but I don't know how is it called, which is what I'm asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Examples&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/207597/13833. The asker accurately describes an (anti)pattern, and wants to know how is it called:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't have a practical problem to solve here; it's just bugging me&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that there seems to be a common design element that I can't put a name&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/171430/vocabulary-should-i-call-this-apply-or-map. The asker has a construct design, but is not sure whether it is a map or an apply method.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Would you call this specific construct a [...] or would it better be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [...]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/109400/what-it-is-a-data-structure-of-a-certain-type-called. He's creating a data structure and doesn't know how is it called.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is this called?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/155330/how-do-you-call-the-process-of-taking-a-part-of-a-function-and-making-an-individ. The asker describes a process and wants to know its technical term.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I know there was a technical term for this. I'm just can't remember&#xD;&#xA;&gt; what it was.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/195426/13833. The asker is describing some sort of &quot;ability to find relevant code&quot;, but he doesn't know how it is called, so he made the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's obviously part of maintainability, but is there a name for this&#xD;&#xA;&gt; specific, desirable, property?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**How are all those open, upvoted questions different from mine? Why was mine closed exactly?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They all accurately describe something, and they all want to know how is it called. I'm fairly certain that I am doing the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, my question [happened to be answered][3]. The answer was **Type Aliasing**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/219004/13833" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28596" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5883" RevisionGUID="57835c12-5174-47ec-9672-f3f1390827a0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; Yeah it sounds like overreaction but there are always some genuine questions which may not have genuine answer but may have collection of answers to satisfy the questioner. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Your question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/196646/traits-of-good-php-web-developer &quot;Traits of good PHP web developer&quot;) is legitimate and appropriate for a discussion forum, Reddit or Slashdot but we actively discourage such open ended broad questions here.  We are looking to build a site around peer reviewed, specific questions, within the scope of the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) and have clear concise peer reviewed answers that actually address the problem with facts or experiences.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question is good, but it will invite a lot of really bad answers and a lot of conflicting answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think PHP Framework X is the BEST!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I think PHP Framework Y is the BEST!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then how does that help you?  You might think the one with the highest votes is the correct answer but in fact the one with the highest votes is the most popular framework.  That doesn't really help anybody make the best framework choice for their specific situation and that is what we mean when we say a question becomes a poll.  We are a Q&amp;A site, not SurveyMonkey.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I don't mean to call them bully, but some people cannot help themselves to surf around and hit the close button as fast as they could. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You can't speak for what is in other peoples hearts and minds.  You can't claim to know what they are thinking.  There are bullies on every site as in every aspect of life, and just for the sake of argument lets say that 1 out of 5 people on this site happens to be a bully (I am guessing on the high side).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It still takes 5 people to close the question so if one bully closed it for the lulz, then you can only assume the other 4 had a very good reason to.  Don't worry about the bully or the quick close vote, why did 4 other people decide to close and downvote?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am positive about SE and people here who are here to help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of us are here to help and we want to welcome new users. The challenge for us is explaining to new users like yourself **HOW** we are different and **WHY** we are different than any other site out there.  When new users get frustrated or angry then I feel like we have failed in explaining.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please don't take downvotes and close votes as a personal attack or insult.  It is the way that we rank content and nothing more.  It only becomes an issue if it is a repetitive habit.  Furthermore we do take bullying seriously.  There are algorithms in place to identify, reverse and punish those that target users with downvotes and close votes.  Downvotes and close votes should be directed at content and not people." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28597" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6551" RevisionGUID="6c1cbe01-ce91-46c8-b215-2bd020e8afc3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="What can be done about reversing the momentum of a questions shamed as &quot;opinion based&quot;? The moment a question had been shamed it seems that rewording it doesn't really bring attention back to it, it isn't worth it to expend effort on a question already marked *on hold* - trends are hard to revert, and I understand this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So it also seems that the community is quick to punish questions why are not being asked according to the rule (eg &quot;opinion based&quot; questions&quot;) however isn't necessarily as quick restoring questions which have been edited to remove the offending elements.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question I have in mind is this: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/232462/development-wagons - I did ask for an opinion initially, which was wrong of me, however I quickly reworded it to ask for a concrete definition. By that time the question was already on hold. What are my options sans asking a new question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Generally, it seems to me that it is better to give questions a new chance - it is well know that &quot;three strikes and you're out&quot; didn't prove to be a good idea after all, so maybe &quot;criminal&quot; questions could be given an opportunity to start a new life. So can we consider keeping the close vote count but removing the *on hold* status once a question has been edited by the author? An additional *close* vote could trigger a new re-evaluation, still taking the full close vote count into consideration. However if a question had been edited in an appropriate way, it is unlikely that such a vote will occur anew." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28598" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7723" RevisionGUID="d14520da-f045-4037-9535-37245c41598e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**This experiment is over.** I will be adding an answer to show the results and suggest a plan for going forward.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the next 30 days, closing a question will require just 3 votes. Also 3 votes will be sufficient to reopen a closed question. In essence, each close and reopen vote has 5/3&lt;sup&gt;rds&lt;/sup&gt; the normal value. After 30 days I will revert the site setting back to 5 and evaluate the results. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have tested this change on a development instance and questions that currently have 3 or 4 close votes will not be closed automatically. Rather they will be closed when the next close vote comes in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Background&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it's fair to say there's a lot of dissatisfaction with the question closing system on Programmers. [One proposed solution](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6507/provide-10k-users-more-close-votes) is to increase the number of close votes available to 10k users. Some of us on the community team have considered various schemes to scale close votes with reputation under the theory that people most invested in the site (as measured by reputation) will have the most incentive to curate questions. That might still happen, but we'd like to be pretty sure that it will solve the various problems with question closing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's pretty clear that organic closing (via the [close votes queue](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/close) or people voting to close questions they find naturally) isn't working very well. To demonstrate, here's how close votes on questions asked in the last 30 days are distributed on Super User:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Super User close vote distribution][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most questions have no close votes (not shown). 461 questions have just one (the yellow circle on the left) and the number slopes down to 142 with 4 close votes. 5 votes is a natural [attractor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor) because people will keep voting to close off-topic and otherwise closable questions until they reach that limit. There's a long tail beyond 5 close votes (also not shown) due to votes expiring, close wars and so on. In essence, questions with at least 1 close vote, but not 5, are in a grey area in terms of closablity. This general pattern turns out to be extremely common across a variety of sites. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In contrast, here's the same graph for Programmers&amp;mdash;Stack Exchange:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Programmers close vote distribution][2]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Remember this is only showing questions that have been asked in the last 30 days; we aren't talking about [Not Programming Related](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3273/not-programming-related) questions. Instead of a fairly smooth gradient between questions that should clearly be open to questions that clearly should be closed, this graph shows something closer to a binary state. My hypothesis is that since the people contributing the most close votes feel the need to conserve votes, they don't vote to close borderline questions. There's too great a risk those votes will expire impotently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've also included the counts of questions that have been edited or deleted in each close vote bin. Relative to other sites, questions on Programmers with close votes are more likely to be deleted and less likely to be edited. It's entirely possible that a greater proportion of questions are unsalvageable on this site. But I suspect the underlying problem is that the questions that could most benefit from an improvement are not getting close votes in the first place. _That might not be a problem_, but close votes can provide incentives for askers to fix problems even before their questions are closed. Close votes also put questions in front of reviewers who might be inspired to improve them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another problem that we discovered [very dramaticly](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/7649/1) is that [closed questions are rarely reopened](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7654/96050). Most closed questions can't (and shouldn't) be reopened, but statistically speaking, we expect more than 1-2% will be. My hypothesis is that it takes so much effort (and coordination) to close questions that people are not interested in undoing that work even if there's been an edit to fix a question's problems. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be clear, the breakdown in the close voting system is not limited to Programmers. It is, however, rare across the network for the division between open and closed questions to be so stark. We hope this test will help us understand how the close vote system breaks in order to (hopefully) fix it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Why 3 votes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Initially users with enough reputation could unilaterally close and reopen questions on Stack Overflow. In December 31, 2008, the close vote system [was created](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/i-move-to-close-this-question/) and required 3 votes. Between then and the [next April](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/), the limit was increased to 5. (Shog9 remembers 3 lasting a few weeks.) The documentation of the site setting reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; KEEP THIS AN ODD NUMBER&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So we need an odd number greater than 1 and less than 5.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# How will this change be evaluated?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a nontrivial chance something will break requiring me to revert the change. If we continue for the full 30 days, we will compare before and after the change:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Close rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Obviously, it's now easier to close questions. Insofar as bad questions are put on a path toward either corrective edits or deletion, that's a good thing. But this site closes well over 50% of new questions, which is the highest rate on the network. (Considering _total_ questions closed to questions asked in a time period, the rate is [more like 70%](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last30days).) Paradoxically, I'd like to see the close rate remain steady or decrease.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Reopen rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Reopening questions is one way to mitigate against a high close rate. Since the bar for reopening is now lower, we'd expect more questions will be reopened. Currently the reopen rate is about 2% of closed questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Edit rate on closed questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  In general, the only path to reopening a question is editing. It's also the most effective way to prevent questions from being closed in the first place. Since it's easier to reopen questions, there's even more reason for askers to fix their own closed questions. In the last 30 days 9% of closed questions were subsequently edited.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Deletion rate&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  About 65% of questions that get at least one close vote on Programmers are deleted. We aren't exactly looking at the cream of the crop here, but that's noticeably more than other sites. (Again, this only counts questions asked and deleted within the last 30 days.) We can't force people to ask questions that don't deserve deletion, but hopefully more questions can be salvaged with edits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, I'm curious if this change helps people enjoy the site more overall. At the end of the experiment, I'll post my results and ask for any followup thoughts you as a community have. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# How you can help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Relatively few people are active in closing, reopening and deleting questions. Even fewer are [active in editing](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Editors&amp;filter=month). In order for this experiment to improve the quality of content on this site, more people need to be involved in identifying questions with potential to be unlocked with a judicious edit. Fixing tags and removing signatures are good first steps. But title and (occasionally heroic) body edits might be needed to pull some questions out of mediocrity. Remember: once the question is posted, it belongs to the community as much as it does the original author.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In addition, please use the answers below to let me know how the experiment is going.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EHxvb.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/ESxAD.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28599" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2666" RevisionGUID="8ac24255-15ac-4645-9374-164dea0b2f86" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="According to the last discussion, most of these *don't* meet our quality guidelines (emphasis mine):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; However, like programming language questions, if you have **specialised requirements** (you want to go into LINQ, or networking, or.. in great depth) then perhaps those should be allowed. **They should inspire answers that explain why a book is good for this topic and shouldn't just produce a list of everyone's favourite.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the discussion on meta, we started to apply the litmus test to incoming questions, but we have a *huge* backlog of book recommendation questions that aren't specialized (&quot;What's a good book for C?&quot;, &quot;How can I learn Java?&quot;, &quot;Is there a book that'll make me a good programmer?&quot;, etc.) and a *lot* of book recommendation questions that didn't get any love and/or didn't produce explanatory answers:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Questions where all the answers are pictures of books, or links to books with no explanation&#xD;&#xA;* Questions that are worded poorly, never got love in the form of votes, views, or answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because there are other problems we wanted to focus on first, the backlog hasn't been brought up on meta, but someone is taking the initiative to go through and review those questions (for which we are grateful: if you see something, say something and all that). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having evaluated the flags that have come in, I'd say it's about 9/10 are just terrible book recommendation questions. There is a small number of flagged posts that meet the basic requirements set out in the meta discussion question you linked, and [have been revised to be clearer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=active&amp;q=%22is%20there%20a%20canonical%20book%22).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since we're on the subject *anyway*....&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you want to help review and get these questions up to shape, here's what I've been doing:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Determine if the question is about a specialized or niche topic in program&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the subject of the recommendation is covered in hundreds of online tutorials, thousands of books, or is likely a topic every programmer has been exposed to, it's too general. They're not going to produce a *canonical* book, they're going to create a small subset of the list of books about the subject.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That is, when a person asks &quot;What's a good book on Java?&quot; and it attracts 5 answers, we're not doing the internet a solid. There are way more than 5 books on Java that are passable, and I think we all know this. These aren't the type of questions we want here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if a person asks about a niche topic and it gets a few answers, that's valuable: if there have only been a dozen people writing about the subject, we have a high chance of capturing what is the canon for the subject. *That's* the type of recommendations we want here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Clean up the question to invite and demand the type of answers we want&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even if a recommendation question is about a niche topic, a badly worded question can doom it. What I've seen is a question that essentially asks for a book recommendation for a niche topic but clouds that question with things like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* rants and personal life stories&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;I want a book, but if you have any other advice you can give me&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* &quot;one book per answer please&quot; (aside: ugh)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not good. In [our FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq), there are several guidelines our questions need to meet:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.&#xD;&#xA;* tend to have long, not short, answers.&#xD;&#xA;* have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.&#xD;&#xA;* invite sharing experiences over opinions.&#xD;&#xA;* insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.&#xD;&#xA;* are more than just mindless social fun.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what I've done on the questions that are about niche and specialized topics is rewrite it to follow a set template:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### Is there a canonical book on [insert subject here]?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [Insert brief paragraph about what the user is trying to do and what they're trying to learn.]&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on [insert subject here]? What about that book makes it special?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And tagging it with [tag:books] and the subject of the recommendation. This way, we can transform the book tag from being a catch-all for recommendations that wildly vary in quality and scope to a really great library, where you can just search for the topic you want and find a list of books for that niche topic you need to know more about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28600" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6324" RevisionGUID="846e7e3a-8b3a-49e6-bbe8-cc3e1643882c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In [this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5910/32347), Thomas Owens says &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If 5 users vote, I believe it's majority vote gets the reason. However, if a moderator closes, it's always the moderator's reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I cast the last close vote on [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/220694/need-advice-about-a-specialized-ecommerce-system?noredirect=1) and did not observe that behavior - The vote was 2-2 between &quot;asking us to recommend&quot; and &quot;too narrow&quot;, and I voted for &quot;too narrow&quot;.  However, the &quot;asking us to recommend&quot; is the reason that showed up in the close box.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No moderators were involved in the vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, two part question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Why was the wrong reason displayed?&#xD;&#xA;2. Why not show both?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28601" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5896" RevisionGUID="c8718082-ba59-46dd-bcea-f5fa1d774589" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I find it hilarious that [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/195351/16247) was closed as a duplicate of a question [which is in turn a duplicate](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/4320/16247) of a question [closed as off-topic](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/9/16247)!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I realize questions may be closed at any time, not only when the first question in the chain was closed as duplicate, but _this is not the case in my example_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When finding dupes, shouldn't we make an effort to either&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Choose one that is not closed itself, or if not possible&#xD;&#xA;- Go to the root cause and use it as the close reason? (In this case: off-topicness).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also think, in this particular case, the question at the leaf -- vague question about productivity in the workplace and rightfully closed as off-topic -- is different to the original question, which was specifically about earmuffs. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Duplicate of&quot; should be a transitive property (if A is a dupe of B, and B is a dupe of C, then A must be a dupe of C), otherwise we are using it wrong!&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28602" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6650" RevisionGUID="5ede75b0-354d-4a51-aa69-9c20a5bcd34f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[My first and only question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/238487/how-to-efficiently-use-sticky-notes-as-a-development-progress-tracker-tool) on this site has been closed. I've a fair amount of rep on SO and I know how things work here. Before asking it I have read the FAQ and the *What topics can I ask about here?* section. I'm fairly sure my question fits the &quot;development methodologies and processes&quot; or even &quot;software engineering management&quot; sections.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I've gone to the top-rated questions list:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I daresay most top rated questions from that list could've been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*What technical details should a programmer of a web application consider before making the site public?* -- definitely too broad. There is no definite, finite list of things. The answer depends on the language, technology, libraries. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report. How can I convince him that it's a bad idea?* -- offtopic. Should be in the workplace SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Where did the notion of “one return only” come from?* -- it's not a programming question. It could be asked on history, if anywhere. Don't know how this didn't get closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code — what now?* -- could it be any more too broad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?* -- opinion based as hell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My point is that I've asked a perfectly understandable question which can be useful to many, many programmers who are unfamiliar with the concept or would like to improve their efficiency, to make things better, faster or more precisely than before. That's what we programmers strive to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If questions like mine, or [this one](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/238466/is-there-a-name-for-this-technique-in-testing) or [this one](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/16058/do-you-use-automatic-garbage-collection-with-standard-c) keep getting closed, I don't see a future for this SE page." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28603" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2675" RevisionGUID="0e15d250-b57b-4c18-805d-235b4f5f02ac" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question [Is there such a thing as a super programmer?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/14052/6184) is currently closed as not constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Why? The question invites explanation; has inspired reasonably long answers; is worded in a fair way; and invites sharing experiences. In fact, in my _subjective_ opinion it satisfies all guidelines.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. Was the edit containing referring to the answers the part which made the question seem not constructive? In other words, would you accept the original question as open but vote for closure of the edited version because it now seems too wordy, all over the place or inviting opinionating?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3. Can the same question be opened if worded differently? Is the topic itself not constructive or just the expression of it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28604" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5908" RevisionGUID="d03d0064-ca4c-4867-9d45-653b0607f047" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I can't recall the podcast edition where Joel Spolsky made a comment about question evaluation/voting. One point he made was to evaluate questions on how they are asked and not just whether you agree with the premise or whether or not it belongs on the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Having a good title.&#xD;&#xA; - providing enough information and using appropriate tags&#xD;&#xA; - Formating your code.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; Getting to the point instead of wasting people's time with 17 paragraphs ranting about your boss before asking a about a framework is the sign of a bad question. Constructive comments for downvotes is a good thing and I agree should be used more often.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just be thankful you didn't get treated like [this post][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/197568/i-dont-know-what-to-code" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28605" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5582" RevisionGUID="d4cbe2db-f962-4fab-a120-2738f3848b08" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm not asking as a result of bitterness, I'd just really like to know what I am doing wrong per the spec.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have only two questions on programmers SE, both of which got closed.  By contrast, I am an avid user of StackOverflow proper and have never had any issues with questions being closed as off topic.  I'm specifically referring to these two posts:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/171518/conventions-for-search-result-scoring&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically I have asked regarding scoring metrics for searching.  Admittedly the wording is somewhat vague, but the intention was to elicit responses from an algorithmic perspective.  This is specifically mentioned in the FAQ as being on topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[from the FAQ]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet again, my second question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/187590/is-it-tactful-to-get-in-touch-with-an-previous-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would consider at least to fit under the umbrella in the FAQ spec as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though I suppose I could see where subjectively it could be considered a question of relating back to the previous developer.  That said, I did try to keep the wording as objective as possible to understand what the general consensus was on what was proper.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I find it worthy to note that both these questions received a couple upvotes, which would indicate to me that at least some users were interested in potential responses and felt they were constructive.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I must admit I feel uncertain about what kind of things are appropriate for Programmers SE and how the format of these questions could be improved (if at all).  I admit that even while trying to be impartial I find this kind of moderation counter-productive if other people were interested in potential responses.  Have I misunderstood the model?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28606" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6429" RevisionGUID="ec751289-368a-4342-8ce1-28b9ce3d8b1a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The FAQs got turned into the [help center](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help) some time ago. The equivalent pages for the most part are [on topic](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) and [don't ask](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28607" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6661" RevisionGUID="aa154e96-d74c-465e-9759-f21bab9563a4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I see that the [[VBA] tag doesn't yet have a tag wiki on Programmers](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/vba/info), whereas [the one on StackOverflow](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/vba/info) is well established.  Since the tag is exactly the same, would it be acceptable to simply copy that tag wiki over (removing SO cross-references of course) or is this taboo? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[**Related**: this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2456/131580), though this doesn't appear to preclude the idea that *some* SO tag wikis might provide appropriate content for Programmers tag wikis.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would still be curious to know if it would be acceptable for me to port over the specific tag in my question, [VBA].  Comments?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28609" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2693" RevisionGUID="ea2324a9-6880-4106-ac72-e265ac5333d0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Are questions on simple class hierarchies, like this [recent one][1], on topic? I think they are perfectly on topic here, but also that they might find a much better home at [Code Review SE][2]. As @YamMarcovic notes in a comment to the question, a class diagram is essentially code. Initially I agreed, but now I'm a little bit undecided. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Code Review SE is still in it's early days, and unfortunately they still haven't decided if class hierarchies are on topic there, as the [relevant meta discussion][3] is still open. Their faq [specifically disqualifies questions][4] on &quot;Higher-level architecture and design of software systems&quot;, and a [meta question on those][5] points to Programmers as the appropriate site. But can we really classify a simple class hierarchy question as a &quot;Higher-level architecture and design of software systems&quot; question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we decide that they are off topic here, should we care that they might not find a better home at Code Review? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/125726/review-my-class-hierarchy&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/74/should-design-questions-be-on-topic-here&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/faq#questions&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/where-do-high-level-architecture-and-design-questions-go" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28610" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5584" RevisionGUID="00222fff-29b9-4290-9264-13f82407327c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Certain close votes are publicly available, such as in the &quot;closed by&quot; box on the question itself, and in the [history](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/close/history) tab of the new review tool.  However, I have been unable to find a way to view that information in aggregate for a specific person, like the votes tab people can see on their own profile.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there an easy way to view that information in aggregate, perhaps with a data query, even if it's only the votes that are already publicly viewable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The reason I ask is that I repeatedly see the same few names pop up making decisions to close that I disagree with.  While I respect the difference of opinion, and have successfully worked within the edit and reopen system when I feel strongly about a question, I would be uncomfortable giving those people the power to close questions with one vote, should they choose to run for moderator.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In summary, I intend to base my vote for moderator largely on his or her voting record.  I hope to encourage others to do the same, and would like an easier way to retrieve that information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there isn't an easy way to get it, maybe some candidates would like to voluntarily post a couple months' worth of their close votes here, perhaps with some commentary to put the votes in context?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28611" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5911" RevisionGUID="62980e3f-2737-4d2b-bf84-3b187af5837e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Should https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/197650/how-should-i-behave-as-a-developer-in-a-project-thats-headed-for-failure be open or closed?  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the one hand, project failure is more common in software development than most professions, and it's not unreasonable to think there might be answers to this question that are specific to software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, at the time of this writing there are 6 answers and IMHO none of them are particularly specific to software development.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My thought on reading the question was that it should stay open.  But I would say every answer belongs on Workplace.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is not uncommon on this site - the question *could* be answered in a way specific to programming, but it doesn't have to be.  Should questions be required to have some magic phrase like &quot;I am asking for factors unique to software development&quot;, and therefore this one should be closed for not having such a phrase?  If it did have such a phrase, it would make it reasonable to delete answers that aren't specific to programming.  But how would people know to include it?  Does that, in practice, force people to edit it in to all such questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, my real question, despite the title, is &quot;What should are criteria be for deciding whether to close questions that have answers that *could* be specific to programming, but strongly invite answers that are not?&quot;  Whether that specific question should be closed would be a corollary.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28612" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7734" RevisionGUID="0175c49d-ce5e-44c2-b2e0-fea3a3df0b9a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="After one week, the results are not encouraging:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Week posted Qs  Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion Rate&#xD;&#xA;    ----------- --- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- -------------&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-12  324    190      58.6%           8.9%     2.1%       5.9%         40.7%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-19  349    204      58.5%           8.8%     2.0%       5.6%         39.5%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-26  319    207      64.9%           8.7%     1.4%      11.1%         45.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-02  362    218      60.2%          12.8%     3.7%      10.7%         42.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09  286    205      71.7%          20.0%     3.4%       4.9%         36.0%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of this is in flux as weeks refer to when questions were asked. So questions asked in the week of Nov. 2 might still be closed or deleted while questions asked last week could still get edited and/or reopened. Also, a week is probably not enough time to spot trends since the numbers vary quite a bit from one week to the next. The one thing we can be confident about is that it's a lot easier to get questions closed now:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![Only 3 close votes needed.][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# _Pro forma_ closing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Watching the questions that have been closed in the past week reminds me of my (very short) stint [creating UML diagrams](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/124996/is-code-commonly-generated-from-uml): theoretically necessary, but of dubious practical value. It seems clear to me that a lot of closing on Programmers isn't because certain types of questions cause problems, but because they _might_. In effect, questions are closed because they have a particular form with little regard to the substance and purpose of the question. I encourage you to look at the list of [recently closed questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=Close&amp;daterange=last7days) and **consider what actual problems these questions cause today**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let me cherry-pick some recent examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/302688/how-narrow-or-broad-should-constant-names-be (Closed as &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot;.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Is this the _form_ of a question that could devolve into religious warfare? Sure. Has it? Well there are 3 plausible answers and one that's meh. It was open for 6 hours. Unfortunately, I can't add my answer based on page 186 of my edition of _Code Complete_ until the question is reopened. (Hint: there's been real science done on this question.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/302723/passing-fields-instance-variables-by-arguementsparameters-inside-an-object (Closed as &quot;primarily opinion-based&quot;.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This was immediately closed and only one answer slipped through. I'm not anything like an expert in OOP, so I can't judge the answer. Maybe it's heresy somewhere, but it sounds reasonably uncontroversial and grounded in objectivity to me. The close seems to be triggered by the final (unimportant) paragraph:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; What are the advantages and disadvantages of these solutions? Which is considered as better practise? Which one do you prefer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/302567/what-are-the-advantages-of-a-traditional-backend-architecture-for-a-standard (Closed as &quot;too broad&quot;.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  Two comments on the question are instructive:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; recommended reading: **[Why do 'some examples' and 'list of things' questions get closed?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7538/31260)**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &gt; Asking for &quot;the advantages&quot; of X is almost always a list question ([the earlier comment] probably should've linked the &quot;pros and cons&quot; post for this one). As the existing answers have already demonstrated, you end up with a list of example applications for which X is a good thing, and then everyone has to debate in the comments whether those examples are valid because the original question wasn't sufficiently well-defined to make it clear what would or wouldn't count.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  There are exactly as many comments arguing about whether the question should be closed as there are about whether the examples are valid. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I could go on, but I don't want to get bogged down into an argument because I picked a bad example. My point in bringing these up is not to get them reopened, but encourage you all to think a bit about **why questions need closing**. One advantage of lowering the bar for closing is that it gives this community freedom to field more potentially problematic questions. If things get out of hand, it's far easier to shut questions down than it used to be.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be completely clear, I have no intention of keeping this site setting if it accelerates the closing of questions.  It is my firm conviction that **a site which closes 70% of new questions is already failing**. That's one experiment I don't want to try.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have been encouraged by valiant and occasionally successful attempts I've seen this week to fix and reopen questions. Whatever else I might imply above, I truly do admire the care and thoughtfulness you all have exhibited over the years. It's not easy to manage a radical change in scope as the one this community has pulled off. Let me restate that: **Programmers has successfully corrected itself from a very rough beginning**. That was accomplished not by the Stack Exchange software, but by the efforts of users such as the readers of this post. This site is now useful to actual programmers whereas the initial scope was not. So build off of that success.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/DR0KU.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28613" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6593" RevisionGUID="bf23bcf5-5b98-48e1-a58e-4ddc3daef7a2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Is this question actually answerable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The specific site scope is conceptual questions in software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The general policy of Stack Overflow is to disallow any quesion that is primarily opinion-based. That commonly gets interpreted as disallowing [any question][1] that does not have a single, unambiguously correct answer. Sometimes that policy goes wrong and rejects the equivalent of '[what is 2 + 2][2]'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Looking on the front page, literally every question is either [subjective][3], [trivial][4] or a [matter of definition][5]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously, the set of conceptual question that have unambiguous, uncontroversial but nevertheless non-tautological answers is not going to be large. But is it actually empty, or merely very small?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I would be interested if anyone could find an example of a question that clearly both should and would not be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/235504/branch-per-feature-what-are-the-actual-benefits-and-risks/235557#235557&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/235590/which-automated-analysis-tools-can-find-the-heartbleed-bug/235594#235594&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/231867/which-classes-should-be-autowired-by-spring-when-to-use-dependency-injection&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/235659/is-there-a-difference-between-writing-passing-value-with-or-without-float-f-su&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/235643/whats-the-difference-between-model-for-test-and-model-for-development" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28614" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6672" RevisionGUID="16d26ff7-67a9-416f-b2f8-9b31c9888917" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are two questions on whether one should lower his coding practices to meet those of the surrounding team:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Simplicity-efficiency tradeoff][1]&#xD;&#xA;- [If my team has low skill, should I lower the skill of my code?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The accepted answer to the first, as it stands now, is &quot;yes, you should prefer communication within the team&quot;, and the answer to the second is &quot;no, you should try to educate them&quot;. (For the record: those are not my questions nor my answers, I do not ask here over a feeling of rejection or anything; I want clarification on the site's policy and purpose in this respect).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was told [in a comment to this other question][3] that &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; SE is built around identifying a &quot;single&quot; answer, and isn't structured to handle multiple equally good examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Searching around in this Meta site, I found that the &quot;[official guideline on duplicates][4]&quot; states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What we want is on the order of 4 or 5 similar-but-not-quite-the-same duplicates to cover all possible search terms and common permutations of the question. It is also OK for these duplicates to have their own answers so people who find them don’t have to click yet again to get to a good answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in this case, the answers to those duplicate questions are different.  Doesn't this imply that there are no objective answers &quot;[that are supportable by objective statements, and aren't purely a matter of taste][5]&quot;, and therefore are questions that are opinion-based? Or do you think it just shows that the answer's authors have not researched enough,  and therefore the community votes do not reflect an objective winner?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/241444/simplicity-efficiency-tradeoff&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/203469/if-my-team-has-low-skill-should-i-lower-the-skill-of-my-code&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/241116/scenario-to-illustrate-how-unit-testing-leads-to-better-design/241132#241132&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28615" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5632" RevisionGUID="b7a7ccae-62f5-4b0e-a745-176aa6589b63" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the [&quot;don't ask&quot; section][1] of our FAQ it says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your question would be of interest to …&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - **Professional and enthusiast programmers**, ask on Stack Overflow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well, that's not right, if your question would be of interest to professional programmers, you are most likely in the right place. That part of the FAQ is not editable by mods, so we'll need a Stack Exchange employee's help to change it. Also, I can't think of a better phrasing, just that the current one sucks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thoughts?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28616" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5951" RevisionGUID="5c825f25-85df-4949-bd2e-c99c9ab9b236" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Question asked](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/25963/31260) is stated as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is there any hard data (studies, comparisons, not-just-gut-feel analysis)** on `&lt;particular subject&gt;`?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of the answers given are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* I honestly feel there is no downside... ([link](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/199818/31260))&#xD;&#xA;* In summary, if you're going to pursue `&lt;particular subject&gt;` make sure you... ([link](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/151227/31260))&#xD;&#xA;* We successfully use telecommuting in our team... ([link](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/40144/31260))&#xD;&#xA;* we started getting a lot of inquires from our customers... ([link](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/26000/31260))&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my reading, listed answers totally ignore question part quoted above (&quot;hard data...&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is that OK?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28617" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2725" RevisionGUID="d18fe2d8-c674-471a-a558-8dc56bee9909" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As the OP, I'd like to put in my 2 cents: This question wasn't meant as seeking legal advice. It was meant to find out if this client's request was technically logical.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've gotten plenty of answers, and they all back up my gut feeling that the request doesn't [make][1] [sense][2], and also gave me [solid][3] [explanations][4] as to why screenshots aren't more reliable than saving in DB. In addition, some posters gave me [good][5] [alternatives][6], and some gave me a direction to look in, in case I *do* go with the client's request (in the comments to my question).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Having said that, if you do decide to close the question, I won't mind, since - as I said - I feel I got what I came for: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Solid evidence as to the illogicality of the client's request, &#xD;&#xA; 2. Good alternatives to that request&#xD;&#xA; 3. Ways to go about implementing the request.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/126518/2964&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/126522/2964&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/126515/2964&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/126573/2964&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/126527/2964&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/126534/2964" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28618" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6937" RevisionGUID="3f6c86fd-3797-4938-b340-03bb6a13abee" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked a question about [software design](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/258544/knowledge-of-multiple-languages-a-hindrance-or-an-asset-in-software-design). It is [on topic](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). I also read the [questions to avoid](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask), which was linked to in the Ask Question page. Now, the question was put on hold as primarily opinion based. I believe this question is helpful to many people. How should this be stated then? Does this question not fall under the exception [Constructive Subjective Questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) near the end? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28619" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7741" RevisionGUID="f30a5838-a7cb-4704-8f4e-3c021b50e384" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This experiment appears to be a dead end. The problem it revealed can't be fixed by quick closes... it can't be fixed by closes at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Per my observations, since the experiment started, we've got lively and interesting reopen queue. To me this indicates that solid amount of closed questions are worth improving and reopening.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thing is though, when I tried to find these questions myself, not through reopen queue, it turned out very difficult. Site is flooded with blatantly off-topic, unsalvageable crap that hides questions deserving a closer look.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;Guess we need to thank [SE Quality Project](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/se-quality-project/info) which (finally) made it really difficult for low quality questions to get answers at SO. As a result, askers are now trying their luck at other sites. (I wonder by the way why they put &quot;Stack Exchange&quot; in the name of that project. Only site that benefits of it is Stack Overflow; at Programmers it only brings pain and suffering.)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Salvageable questions being visible only through reopen queue is very bad thing. It means that only very small fraction of site users can participate - 3K users who frequent that queue plus few others who were lucky enough to catch a question before it was buried under heaps of unworthy garbage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This in turn means very low chance for questions to improve and reopen, and no matter how fast we close, we can't change that - the flood of hopeless stuff simply hides questions worth looking at.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Above makes me think that &quot;Server Fault experiment&quot; may be a better way to go for us. Folks over there [recently elected moderators](http://serverfault.com/election/5) who seem to be quickly closing and _most importantly_, deleting, questions that are clear cut off-topic. This way we can get more usable site front page where _every user_ can find gray area, incorrectly closed, salvageable questions and take care of these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(On a historical note, I couldn't even imagine proposing above option two years ago. Back then, site scope wasn't settled firmly enough to allow such measures.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Meanwhile, an advice to those who want to continue reopening efforts no matter what.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When [searching through closed questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=closed%3ayes%20migrated%3ano%20duplicate%3ano), skip most recent ones and proceed to those posted 3-4 days ago. At this age, some of the worst off-topics are cleaned up by delete votes of 20K / 10K users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may get even cleaner selection at 10 days old questions which are additionally cleaned by _roomba_, but since that script is automatic, it may also delete some salvageable questions." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28621" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6676" RevisionGUID="42c3b7be-4fe7-486b-b041-30771f9b32bf" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="At last year's [Summit][1] Joel Spolsky gave a talk entitled &quot;How to Have Nice Things&quot; in which he described why there must be rules on content based factual sites and why the rules that exist on SE are the way they are. Although it is a bit long it might be nice to link to it somewhere on programmers.SE as we seem to get a lot of questions that violate these rules. Do you agree this should be linked to somewhere here and where would be best for this? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this [closed questions page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions) covers everything quite nicely, it **lists** the reasons a question can be closed and explains why, although I think Joel's explanation is helpful because it is an explanation of his reasoning and so is nicer to new users. &#xD;&#xA;The [tour page][2] does list some examples of bad questions but does not give an nice list of banned question types, the [on topic page][3] is good at explaining what this community considers on topic in detail but doesn't address the other types of question sthat will get closed, and the [don't ask](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) page is good but again is mainly examples rather than a list of types of questions and an explanation for the reasons behind the rules and why the rules exist. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I tagged this question as a discussion, do people think that putting the content in the list in the [help/closed-questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions) post more prominently on the site might help with the number of questions that need to be closed? As a new user to the site I found it hard to understand the rules, there are indeed pages to help on the [help/asking page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/asking) but you can't get directly to that from the main page. Maybe nothing needs changing but I found it difficult so I thought others might too. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://new.livestream.com/websummit/DeveloperStage2013&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tour&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28622" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2794" RevisionGUID="2a9a6a6d-55de-4334-96c8-70e70297d8d9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My impression is that a lot of moderators on stackexchange sites overuse their powers. It seems they browse the site for fun in their free time, and close questions trying to find a reason. They rationalize that they are doing good community service but in my opinion they are effectively deterring new users and choking off the tiniest seeds of discussion when they do so. Thereby, they are preventing the creation of value on the site, which inhibits the growth of stack exchange. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Therefore, moderator powers should be used responsibly and sparingly. It is not something that is fun to play with when someone is bored. In most cases, other users who are more knowledgeable in the given topic have time to answer the question, before a moderator comes in and does harm by closing or deleting it, though I'm sure his intentions are good. This just results a lot of users leaving the site, and moving to other programming forums, (such as reddit), where moderators are more liberal. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand that moderation is a fine balance, because in too much noise the signal gets lost which results in ghosts towns. Therefore, moderation is necessary. But at the same time, too much moderation also suppresses the signal all together.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here is an example of what I mean. I asked this question a few hours ago. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/128935/why-are-machine-learning-quant-researchers-paid-so-much It got closed by a moderator, because it's too localized. At the same time, another question was also closed by the same moderator, stating that it's not a real question https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/128922/why-c-is-called-c-sharp&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cannot see why either questions are offtopic, other than that the moderator couldn't answer it, so he closed it. In the first case, I don't see why interviews are ontopic but salary is offtopic. This question concerns everyone with CS degree as they could apply for this job. That specifically includes programmers. In addition, machine learning quants are highly compensated all over the world, not just in specific regions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, I can't see why the second question is offtopic either. In my opinion, it's a perfectly good question. Just because there's an answer for it on wikipedia, it's doesn't make it not a real question.&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;Anyway, this is my opinion and you can take it or leave it. I just wanted to draw attention to the dangers of too eager moderation that I have noticed on stack exchange lately" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28623" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5966" RevisionGUID="fd3b72c6-5014-4177-b30d-bddde263eae4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It is an interesting discussion and I must admit I found the answers very enlightening, but in reading the question, their are only two possible answers...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1) Writing software is easier than understanding existing software because ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2) Learning software is easier than writing software because ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The ellipsis can really be any rationale but ultimately nothing more than the enlightened opinion or rational argument of a single person.  It would be a great discussion for Slashdot or Reddit but it is not a constructive question as specified in the [Help](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) section about what kinds of questions not to ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP provided the answer that he already accepts, that this is because writing something line by line conforms with the natural psychology of how humans build understanding on complex problems.  Providing your take or best guess in a question is a very good thing, but ultimately he/she is polling for more possible explanations or arguments, rather than looking for the right answer to a specific problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There really isn't a specific problem here, it is more of a philosophical dilemma and I don't believe there is a &quot;right&quot; or &quot;wrong&quot; answer either way.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In other words, I agree with the community closure of this and as a moderator I don't believe it should be reopened in its current state.  Users with privileges to cast a reopen vote can cast and disagree with my assessment and if so then I will respect that and not personally close it again." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28624" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7749" RevisionGUID="df4dac18-199a-47f2-9f6c-6a2c3ae6a9c7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a big fuzzy gray line between the software licensing questions that we find to be on topic, and the rest of the legal questions.  Many software licensing questions *are* legal questions, that are ones that a programmer is at least somewhat competent to answer as a programmer.  Most legal questions, however as the [more info](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/legal/info) in the [tag:legal] says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The law is a minefield and the best advice anyone can give when asked about legal matters is often:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&gt; ask a lawyer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Asking legal questions on Stack Exchange is not a substitute for taking proper local legal advice. What we can do is advise whether asking a lawyer is essential or just highly recommended.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can competently answer some questions. Most often, when the answer is &quot;you need to talk to a lawyer.&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With your question, this is something that you need to ask a lawyer. You've gone into the realm of encryption and munitions.  If you are in the US, this gets into [ITAR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations) and the like. It is not something that as programmers we are even able to properly give you any correct answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You need to talk to a lawyer. This goes ***far*** beyond the legal questions of &quot;can I remove the header from a BSD licensed file?&quot; that are (marginally) on topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7265/40980&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28625" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6940" RevisionGUID="5cc95c8c-71cb-4c4a-bdde-49a9ec707ac4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="WRT the topic &quot;[How common are jobs for open source R&amp;D?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/259859/how-common-are-jobs-for-open-source-rd)&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure about why I am asking for clarification." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28626" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6719" RevisionGUID="f1faa9b6-43fa-4053-8746-667b147adbc0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Can some of the moderators revive (undelete) [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/245703/57759) (my own) and it's answers? I was more than sure that it is completely useless and voted to close or delete it. But, other users suggests in comments, that even this kind of questions should bring some value to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately, I was too slow and read these comments after question was deleted by moderator. As per [this answer](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5938/57759), I can see that questions and answer deleted by moderators can be revived only by them." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28627" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5968" RevisionGUID="2c1bd171-a10c-4ac7-8a26-a9f02b443200" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Why is [this question][1] considered off topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I choose to be fair and show all reasons why I dislike the current options - would've it been ontopic if I simply lied and only told I was dissatisfied with googlecode? That's hiding from information and should actually be worse than someone who is fair and open in his mindset I think?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore: isn't it completely stupid that people up/downvote about how someone THINKS instead of up/downvote for the quality of the question? Considering the massive userbase of stackexchange I do not think downvoting should be done when someone hates something you love.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/200896/good-place-to-upload-files" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28628" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2808" RevisionGUID="61fb58cb-825b-422e-a012-d3da9ec84831" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="should we remove the [tag:canadian-law] tag that was created per request of [this][1] question? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think it just opens the door to create too many different [country-law] tags that aren't that useful. I think [law] is good enough for legal questions on Pogrammers.SE since every question about legal issues more or less comes with an ask a lawyer anyway disclaimer, and legal questions while allowed aren't a primary focus of this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/129215/41381" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28629" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5689" RevisionGUID="6096794e-74a6-4903-a090-0eaa9793b335" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is my question which is closed:&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/189078/fantom-programming-language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before telling me that the answers would be subjective have a look at your questions and answers and see how many of them are subjective.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't understand how a question about maturity and perception of a new programming language can not be constructive?!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is not obviously about technical detail, it's about the overall view about the language." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28630" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6973" RevisionGUID="e0ba9a7e-c248-401e-8813-0b7546e3b9fe" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[I asked the question:][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Is it fundamentally possible to validate that an unmodified version of your client connects to your server?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which to me, looks like a very specific question to which the answer is either &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No&quot; and then: &quot;Here's why.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Below the question, I added detail to explain my question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was just thinking about the idea of having my client-side app hash&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it's own source code and send that as a key to the server with any&#xD;&#xA;&gt; requests as proof that it's unmodified, but that's silly because&#xD;&#xA;&gt; anyone could just have the client send a hash of the unmodified&#xD;&#xA;&gt; version via a modified version.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I was wondering if there might be a secure way to do this though, via&#xD;&#xA;&gt; some sort of proof that the client was unmodified&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I thought my question remained very clear, and that this text would only serve explain my curiosity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The community here just seems to have reacted badly to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Information Security SE seems to be a place where people were intelligent enough to understand the question and answer it without nit-picking and moaning about some minor discrepancy. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No one said it was too broad.&#xD;&#xA;Everyone provided helpful insightful answers.&#xD;&#xA;The question was up-voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This community is clearly trending towards a less positive demeanor. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/261478/is-it-fundamentally-possible-to-validate-that-an-unmodified-version-of-your-clie/261481#261481&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/72091/is-it-fundamentally-possible-to-validate-that-an-unmodified-version-of-your-clie?noredirect=1#comment117929_72091" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28631" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7761" RevisionGUID="77e1a85d-015c-4666-8c6d-54aa6f91a15e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I wasn't going to update the experiment this week, but the results this week were so encouraging I can't help myself:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Week posted Qs  Closed Close Rate Closed-&gt;Edited Reopened Cl-&gt;Ed-&gt;Re Deletion Rate&#xD;&#xA;    ----------- --- ------ ---------- -------------- -------- ---------- -------------&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-12  325    190      58.5%           8.9%     2.6%      11.8%         40.9%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-19  349    205      58.7%           8.8%     2.4%       5.6%         39.8%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-10-26  319    207      64.9%           8.7%     1.4%      11.1%         46.1%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-02  362    218      60.2%          13.3%     3.7%      10.3%         44.2%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-09  286    206      72.0%          20.9%     3.9%       7.0%         41.3%&#xD;&#xA;    2015-11-16  340    205      60.3%          17.6%     9.3%      30.6%         35.6%&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not only has the close rate dropped to something like the pre-experiment rate, the reopen rate has rather dramatically increased. Much of this is due to more edited questions getting reopened than in previous weeks. (It might be too early to tell if it's statistically significant, but more closed questions are being edited since the test began.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also spent some time last week trying to learn what prompted people to close so many questions on Programmers. While there are many detailed reasons, two themes emerged in my mind:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Questions that remain open are signposts that prompt new questions of the same type.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. It's difficult to maintain the quality of answers on certain types of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first didn't surprise me. It's a variation of the broken window theory (which is [different than &quot;zero-tolerance policing&quot;](http://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in-policing/research-evidence-review/broken-windows-policing/) by the way.) Since it's often difficult to curate a large corpus of answers, it's a lot more convenient to curate the questions instead. Some sites, however, pull it off. Skeptics, for instance, has [strict rules](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/faq-welcome-to-new-users) about what sort of questions can be asked (notably, notable ones) and what is required of answers (particularly that they be referenced). As a result, Skeptics deletes a large percentage of answers that have a score &gt; 0:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;       7634     35.5     19.64     0.05     0          97.16 Area 51 Discussions&#xD;&#xA;       8288     13.61    55.68     0.1      6.03       28.63 Skeptics&#xD;&#xA;       5782     10.26    46.49     0.09     0.02       48.74 Islam     &#xD;&#xA;     141392      9.38    25.01     0.45     0.02       78.15 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       4810      6.63    52.45     0.12     0.46       27.9  Biblical Hermeneutics&#xD;&#xA;      15660      5.86    45.84     0.03     0.37       48.31 Christianity&#xD;&#xA;      22572      5.08    28.81     0.33     0.02       63    Web Apps&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cut the list off at sites that delete at least 5% of positively-scored answers. Area 51 is interesting because 97% of &quot;good answers&quot; get deleted when their question gets deleted as a result of their [failed proposal being deleted](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/9068/do-not-delete-discussions-about-deleted-proposals). But the next in line is a real site: Skeptics. Their policies encourage deletion not only of entire questions, but individual answers as well. (Skeptics is unique in its extensive use of post notices.) [Islam](https://islam.meta.stackexchange.com/a/610/138), [Christianity](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1446/914) and [Biblical Hermeneutics](https://hermeneutics.meta.stackexchange.com/a/533/68) have fairly strict requirements that answers be well-supported. Those sites also emphasize narrow questions that allow moderators to delete many answers as non-answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm less familiar with Web Apps, but I believe they [had a major change in scope](https://webapps.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/764/proposal-to-clean-up-the-scope-of-the-site-is-your-question-about-using-a-speci) not unlike what happened on Programmers. When you shift the topic of a site, that will leave many now-off-topic questions that need deleting along with all their answers. As a corollary, there's a real need to lock questions and their answers. But look what happens when we limit to answers posted in the last year:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    answers deleted % edited % locked % notice % Q deleted % Site Name &#xD;&#xA;    ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- ----------- --------- &#xD;&#xA;      10617      4.53    34.44     0.01     0.03       66.53 Programmers&#xD;&#xA;       2999      1.93    27.91     0.23     0          48.28 Web Apps  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Web Apps has settled into a fairly normal pattern of deleting relatively few upvoted answers. It's also split fairly evenly between deleting those answers individual and as a result of deleting the question. Programmers has become a little less extreme in terms of positively-scored-answer deletion, but it still ranks near the top of the list with Area 51 (31%), Skeptics (11%), Islam (4.5%) and Christianity (4%). More recent additions include Hinduism (4%) and Health (4%).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;# Ok. What does this all mean?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Truthfully, I'm not sure. My current guess is that people are concerned that forces outside of their control will flood the site with embarrassing or just-plain-wrong answers. (This relates to another theme I heard a lot of: the Hot Network Questions list.) [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) gets [cited a lot here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=url%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.stackoverflow.com%2F2010%2F09%2Fgood-subjective-bad-subjective%2F). However, I wonder if the post gives the false impression that burden falls _solely on the question_. Certainly the way a question is asked increases or decreases the odds it will receive [crowd-pleasing nonanswers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1109/how-to-discourage-crowd-pleasing-non-answers). But ultimately, we need to [hold answers to that standard too](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1110/96050).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The other thing that kinda gets lost when talking about Good Subjective is that it isn't that opinions aren't allowed. Rather **naked opinions are noise**. The post even suggests:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Use your specific experiences to back up your opinions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It seems to me that software engineering is one part science and one part craftsmanship, so it should be surprising to see some answers backed by experience rather than data. This is doubly true since the profession is incredibly young. Given quality of [users on this site](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&amp;filter=all), there's no reason opinions (backed by research and experience) shouldn't be useful to other programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, it's a lot easier to delete popular answers if they don't actually answer the question. One technique that [seems to work](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/690/what-makes-a-good-focused-question) is requiring questions focus down on a specific domain. For instance, instead of https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/125320/do-todo-comments-make-sense maybe it would be better to ask &quot;Should TODO comments be removed when a project is in maintainance mode?&quot; That way the focus of the question isn't a holy war between pro-TODO and anti-TODO, but about the specific utility of those comments. (Obviously the asker should specify the situation they are actually facing.)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28632" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5973" RevisionGUID="47b0f224-0cfa-4014-a304-61971505871c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Although interesting, this type of question is not a good fit for the Stack Exchange format. There are [quality guidelines for questions][1] that define what types of questions are good, and this doesn't fit those criteria. Specifically, questions like this, where every answer is equally correct and the question is open-ended, are not a good fit for this format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Consider starting a discussion in [our chat room, The Whiteboard][2] or creating a new chat room for this purpose if you want to have this discussion inside the Stack Exchange network. Otherwise, perhaps a more discussion-oriented service would be more appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28633" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6809" RevisionGUID="13da1277-786e-4149-9bb3-32cb7a47e962" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/252424/quantifying-the-advantages-of-a-modern-version-control-system&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question asked&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What I'm trying to find are ***concrete facts*** demonstrating developers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; work more effectively with Git, or ANY modern source control system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The notice said &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; put on hold as primarily opinion-based ... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since I was specifically asking for hard evidence, I don't see how this can be seen as an opinion oriented question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28634" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6017" RevisionGUID="b7ac6a56-060b-40ec-803e-981eaa20b9a3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The following edit has been rejected as too minor&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/32981&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you read the sentence it's obvious that the edit needs to be made, if you read the entire post it's obvious that only one edit needs to be made to it.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28635" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7022" RevisionGUID="677fef58-2c7c-4c0d-bea8-d2d4243a2956" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I posted [a question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/161966/term-for-24-bits) about the terminology for 3-byte integers (since we have terms for 4 bits, 1 byte, 2 bytes, and 4 bytes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was fine for a long time until it was finally closed as subjective. I flagged for a moderator's attention (since it was asking for a definitive answer and not *&quot;what should it be called?&quot;*).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The moderator changed the reason to simply *off-topic*, [stating](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/161966/term-for-24-bits?noredirect=1#comment537803_161966):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question appears to be off-topic because it is a &quot;Name That Thing&quot; request which is near universally off topic for StackExchange. For more information see Jeff Atwood's blog post: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/02/lets-play-the-guessing-game&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is most definitely not a *guessing game* post. As Jeff Atwood correctly states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; A half-remembered description of something you vaguely recall is not what I’d call a practical, answerable question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't *vaguely recall* anything; I simply didn't know. I didn't know if there had historically been a term. I didn't know if there was a term that isn't common but still used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The goal of Stack Exchange is not to construct un-findable single-serving questions that only help one person, but that’s exactly what guessing game questions tend to do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Is there a term for 24-bit integers* is not an un-findable or single-serving question. It is a very common integer width in audio/visual software, and as you can see in the answers **there are *many* occurrences of 24-bit terms**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also, an expert in the topic should be able to have at least some confidence that the answer he’s writing answers the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not sure how this could be misconstrued. None of the answers given were subjective or opinion based; a few even linked out to proof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; . . . these questions aren’t educational in any way, because there’s no way to learn about the process of discovery. A particular community member, by virtue of their experience in the field, just happens to be able to take the limited information you remembered and fill in enough of the blanks to guess the correct answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, this isn't a *&quot;hey, I remember reading this book about stego algorithms written in visual basic and it mentioned the use of elephants in their research. What book is it?&quot;* question. It's a **definitive, answerable** question. It's not a request for recommendation. It's not asking for an opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further, the close reason states it is *off topic* given the [help center guidelines](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question is about:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; software **architecture** and design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; algorithm and **data structure concepts**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As well, my question doesn't even come remotely close to anything on the off-topic list.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand my question is a simple one, but it is no less qualified on the site than any other perfectly well-formed question. Why, then, has a moderator deemed it as such?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28636" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2813" RevisionGUID="d3626121-480d-4940-a932-cf3279567a7a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[tag:software] questions that should probably be closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57653/registering-in-the-ios-developer-program-as-a-minor&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/54487/whats-the-best-way-of-marketing-to-programmers&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/48100/which-skills-would-you-expect-and-appreciate-in-a-junior-software-engineer&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/47963/recommendations-for-a-web-based-help-system&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46965/how-do-big-companies-of-software-developers-check-for-bugs-in-thier-programs&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46434/why-is-it-that-software-is-still-easily-pirated-today&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/81919/is-there-a-source-for-user-opinions-on-commercial-enterprise-software&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/72967/i-want-to-create-a-software-company-what-are-the-basic-things-that-i-should-kno&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/63602/entry-into-software-field-after-7-years-gap &#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/40134/information-on-small-business-software-development&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/67054/work-division-horizontal-vs-vertical&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/40593/do-you-use-mathematica-during-the-software-development-process&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/20476/why-is-it-so-hard-to-get-people-to-pay-for-software&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/43752/where-do-i-begin-when-dealing-with-my-first-corporate-client&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/17434/the-useful-tools-for-windows-device-driver-developers&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/39122/post-commit-code-review-tools&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/41678/how-to-implement-software-for-my-vehicle&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'll keep updating the list as I go through the tag, all of the above got my close vote for one reason or the other. Everyone please review and:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Try to salvage, or&#xD;&#xA; 2. Flag / Vote to close&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please do not vote to migrate, most of the questions are really old and there is no point in migrating them on StackOverflow, or anywhere else. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Done.** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've gone through each and every one of the questions. The only open ones still tagged [tag:software] are the ones in this list. They all got _my_ close vote, but of course I'm not assuming they will be closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderators (and everyone, really), please review the list." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28637" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7039" RevisionGUID="6100d6ae-4f92-456b-8d0f-d03b84bf7efc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="We've *almost* got the psychology tag gone.  There is one question remaining that happens to be locked (it doesn't show up in [tag:psychology] - you need to use [this query](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bpsychology%5D+locked%3Ayes) to find it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/78956/i-no-longer-want-to-be-a-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since this is a locked question I can't flag it for a mod to tweak it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I suggest:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* removing [tag:psychology]&#xD;&#xA;* possibly adding the [tag:motivation].  No, thats not a great tag either.  But it does help find the related questions on the side if someone should happen to visit it in the future." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28638" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6810" RevisionGUID="742ab92c-4290-460e-9649-8061bd66c353" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The final part of your question was:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What I really need is something powerful enough to break through the &quot;This process has worked for 20 years, why should we change it?&quot; argument.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You are trying to win an argument.  This is something that is particular to you and the person you are trying to persuade.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a comment on this question which is key to understanding why this was closed (realizing that &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; recommended reading: [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6629/how-do-i-explain-something-to-someone/6630#6630) –  gnat 15 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This particular suggestion is one that I am quite familiar with, though one of the things you are trying to do isn't covered in that answer (I'll have to see about updating it).  You are asking for a list of bullet points of ammunition (pun intended) for your argument.  I'll point to [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/) which tries to address polling type questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This type of question is a poll that can have dozens of answers, none of which are 'right'.  I'll draw your attention to a comment in the &quot;How do I explain...&quot; meta post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you look at this you'll see an example of &quot;how to win an argument&quot; - and there are numerous ones of these, and we tend to want to avoid this with its 20+ answers with no 'right' answer. &quot;I thought of another example&quot;, &quot;I haven't really thought it out&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The original links have been cleaned up by the roomba, so https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/107723/40980 (and thank you for having me find that question, there's a close vote on it now too).  And while this may be what you are looking for, it really works against the Q&amp;A style format that Stack Exchange is trying to promote.  I'll point out that several of the answers have comments that have devolved into discussions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, why its opinion rather than too broad?  That's just what people clicked on at least three times when closing the question." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28639" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2837" RevisionGUID="f1b23b1b-1451-45e1-a8ee-f478927fbf9a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="First off, let me say I love the community moderation system. I think it's tops.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I feel like too many questions that could elicit interesting answers (specifically, interesting as a **programmer**) are being closed prematurely.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I get that polling and extended discussion are Bad Things. I also get that argument is probably not going to be helpful because, hey, this is the internet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But it seems to me that a lot of the value of having a programmers SE site separate from SO is to get the opinion of one's peers on some topics. Ultimately, what are 'best practices' but 'opinions most of us kinda agree with strongly'?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of the questions I was disappointed to see closed (for instance, [this one](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/130018/book-on-network-cryptographic-protocols) or [this one](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/130061/how-can-i-branch-out-from-ui-into-other-areas-of-development)) seem like thay would be of general interest to many programmers; the first cited, because it deals with technologies of particular interest to programmers who code for network infrastructure; the second, because asking a career-development question to people *who don't know you* can only elicit generic responses that, while possibly (even probably) helpful to the questioning party, must by nature be rather abstract. So I feel like it fits the scope.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know. Programmers is my favorite SE site by far, but I feel like it either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. needs a name change (programming?) if questions directly related to programmers being programmers are going to get routinely closed&#xD;&#xA;2. Needs to revise its policies or, create a peer review policy for question closings so that if enough users disagree with closing an question, it can be re-opened, or&#xD;&#xA;3. Widen the scope of available SE sites to migrate questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe I'm alone here... but I feel like there are good questions being swept aside because of an over-zealous interpretation/application of the FAQ guidelines, and that's no service to anyone." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28640" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6024" RevisionGUID="9cd5cc40-99b0-4014-a8f2-c4618aac594c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So long as the issue is about design and not actual code, and it's presented as a solution with cons, you may ask the question &quot;How could I correct this design to resolve issue(s) X, Y, Z?&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These questions can be on the fence but structured properly we've had some high quality questions of the nature in the past. Have a look at these as similar but well-asked design questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/202559/how-to-refactor-to-cleaner-version-of-maintaing-states-of-the-widget&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/202725/recommened-design-pattern-to-handle-multiple-compression-algorithms-for-a-class&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/201152/oop-design-possible-wrong-approach-makes-it-impossible-to-implement-it-in-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice these all had to narrow their design questions down to a given issue (whether perceived or real doesn't matter) and asked how to make their design solve for that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So you can get feedback on your designs for sure, you just have to structure your question correctly to give people a problem constraint which they are to change your design to solve." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28641" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5762" RevisionGUID="2cb8dcb8-4fe9-45af-9725-40cd0fc50ee0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This answer :  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/13976/20065  &#xD;&#xA;points to this question :  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/13282/freelance-programming-sites/13565#13565&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since I can not see deleted question, what should happen to this answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, I do want to see the deleted question. Is there anything I can do?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28642" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6850" RevisionGUID="e101c0ca-36ba-468a-abe2-3eed326c84cd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question [DETERMINISTIC FINITE STATE MACHINE](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/254595/deterministic-finite-state-machine) (10k link) had the content of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; DESIGNING A SIMPLE DETERMINISTIC FINITE STATE MACHINE TO RECOGNISE A VALID DUT PASSWORD NUMBER. IT ,MUST FIRST INCLUDE LOWERCASE LETTER,NUMBER AND SUBSEQUENT SYMBOLS @!%$&amp;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What was the quality score for this? How did it get through the quality filter?  And does someone need to change the settings on the threshold for the quality filter for P.SE? or add more rules to the quality filter (e.g. '80% non symbol characters in the character set `[A-Z]` should get automatically rejected)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is tagged as both bug and feature request - its either bug that it got through or a feature request to improve it if this was working as designed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28643" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7073" RevisionGUID="a6b9757c-9ff7-4e13-b792-e92cab46b256" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[![Bountied questions on Programmers.SE][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://stack-exchange-dynamic-ads.herokuapp.com/programmers.stackexchange.com/bounty.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/?tab=featured" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28645" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7826" RevisionGUID="ed94303b-cd47-4907-a676-2961195ad98e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;(_special edition_ for folks coming from Math.SE, reposted from [Math meta](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/21680/hint-programmers-se-doesnt-do-coding-help-and-expect-research-before-asking &quot;10K link&quot;))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Hint: Software Engineering Stack Exchange doesn't do coding help and expect research before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes, we at Software Engineering get a stream of troublesome questions from folks with linked accounts at Math.SE. One of them was kind enough to [explain why they get there](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7610/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;my friends told me that &quot;stack exchange&quot; is undergraduate or master level, and &quot;stack overflow&quot; is PhD or research level. I think my question is very basic, so I asked here&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another user, familiar with many other sites, even figured what could lead to such a [misconception](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7610/using-programmers-as-learning-and-training-area-for-stack-overflow-kind-questi#comment22868_7610):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;This &quot;exchange&quot; is the undergraduate while &quot;overflow&quot; is the graduate level may because of the idea for Math vs MathOverflow and Physics vs PhysicsOverflow (not SE related) leaking into other domains. While I don't believe that that naming distinction needs to be fixed (nor can we do anything about it), being able to more promptly close (and delete) the debugging and blatantly off topic questions with a minimum of additional community moderation needed.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is sad to observe how many of them have fallen victims of this misunderstanding, getting their questions heavily voted down, closed and deleted. This includes even established users having over 1K rep at Math.SE ([1](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/299572/given-a-integer-n-compute-nth-non-repeating-number &quot;10K link - user with 1.4K rep at Math asks very low quality question at Software Engineering&quot;), [2](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/304765/31260 &quot;10K link - 1K Math rep user asks outright off-topic at Software Engineering&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Things many Math.SE folks seem to miss when they try their luck at Software Engineering are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* **coding and debugging help is off-topic** at Software Engineering.SE&#xD;&#xA;* it is generally expected of askers to **demonstrate research** they did before asking&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Further reading for those interested to learn more about Software Engineering.SE:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Software Engineering Help Center -&gt; What topics can I ask about here?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why is research important?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6559/31260)&#xD;&#xA;* [Why was my question closed or down voted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6483/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An overview of CS and programming related sites at SE network:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129632/165773)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8066/i-have-a-question-but-it-may-not-fit-best-on-software-engineering-where-else-c&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28646" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5861" RevisionGUID="d1608d4f-4f2b-4bf9-a732-402d25034a75" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A lot of times, development requires discussion. As programmers we know that there is not clear right or wrong answer, but a myriad of solutions, each with their own benefits and draw back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example:  &#xD;&#xA;Which is Better To Use and Why: Mysql, PostgreSQL or MS SQL?  &#xD;&#xA;What are the advantages of Redis over Memcache?  &#xD;&#xA;etc&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On top of that, their are interesting changes to be discussed such as this one here: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/101241/did-jquery-kill-the-javascript-discussions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of these times topics are shut down as being not constructive. So my question is if the question has merit and hasn't been asked before, can there be a place for these &quot;not constructive&quot; questions to live?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28647" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2875" RevisionGUID="dad92382-1291-4b59-b618-a1341a86b976" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Good news, everyone!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Everyone's favorite Programmers mod, [Anna Lear](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/226/anna-lear), has joined the [Stack Exchange Team](http://stackexchange.com/about/team) as a Community Manager, where she'll be working her magic across the network.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anna's been an active user here since the beginning, and a dedicated moderator since our first elections way back in January of 2011.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Unfortunately for us, this news means she'll be stepping down as a moderator here on Programmers (but hopefully she'll still be stopping by frequently anyway!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We all wish Anna the best of luck on her new role, and thank her for her service here!&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28648" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6026" RevisionGUID="a833bfbc-0420-4022-8904-56de742ab655" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="From [programming practices starting](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/203181/programming-practices-starting) (a stereotypical &quot;what do I start with&quot; college question):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Community**: Since this question keeps coming up in one form or another (&quot;what should I do next?&quot;), and it's technically off-topic for the site, I suggest we curate this one as a canonical question. – Robert Harvey&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I see it, there are a few possibilities here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. We make a canonical question, and instead of off topic duping them, we close them.&#xD;&#xA;2. We keep closing them as off topic with an appropriate message.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately, the questions will be closed either way.  The problem that I see with the canonical curated question is exactly as mentioned in one of the suggestions for off topic reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for advice about careers or education are difficult because the stakes can seem high and the decisions seem permanent. In most cases though, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a particular circumstance. These types of questions are off-topic because they don't generate meaningful and lasting value for the entire community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we make the question answers completely general enough to be a canonical answer, they become just something that is longer than that close message.  If we make the question answers not general, the (valid and an entirely 'nother set of meta questions) critique that &quot;yes, but my problem is different because I'm not looking into web design or mobil, but rather desktop apps vs embedded systems and that is completely different.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am holding off on casting a close vote on this question because its the weekend (less attention to that (and this) question) and I am curious if anyone can make a good, general answer to this question that might be one that is better than the custom close vote reason.  As of yet, I haven't seen any.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do remember that there are many forms of the &quot;what should I do next?&quot; - this one deals only with education.  There is what project, what language, what book, what job, etc... I personally don't relish having every major variation of &quot;what should I [do|learn|read] next (given the current situation of [in school|out of school|new programmer|unhappy with job|switching career paths from [testing|support|non-technical]])&quot;." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28649" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2880" RevisionGUID="f7be442d-80ad-4a02-a5b3-22d126fb3a99" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="----&#xD;&#xA;**Moderators Diary**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;--------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Questions they **Correct**, &#xD;&#xA;- Answers they **Inspect**,&#xD;&#xA;- Improvements they **Direct**, &#xD;&#xA;- Based on the **Subject**, &#xD;&#xA;- Ultimately making the website **Perfect**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;*I have been an active member for the past two months and I really like the quality of posts that is maintained [here][1] and thats' because of **good moderators.***&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From my experience in these two months, many questions have her touch of quality as **corrections or answers** and I really appreciate her for her _**dedication**_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Anna - Congratulations and Best of luck for your new role at Stack Exchange Team!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28650" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7226" RevisionGUID="ff1661db-7693-4e59-9610-f5c710e52316" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The following question has been closed:  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/146909/how-can-i-apply-six-sigma-in-a-software-development-environment][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel it is a very valid question and have some sub-questions for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't find where to navigate to re-open the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/146909/how-can-i-apply-six-sigma-in-a-software-development-environment" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28651" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7901" RevisionGUID="a0e075e9-0a20-497c-9b5b-2cd4e0781279" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="For reference, as of this writing migrations to CodeReview in the past 90 days shows 5 sent, of which 2 were rejected (40%).  Which also happens to be CodeReview's rate with us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Away (all 10k links - Roomba deletes successful migrations after 30 days):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [P.SE Function to return a string - Which is cleaner?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/307311/function-to-return-a-string-which-is-cleaner?noredirect=1) ([CR](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/116696/choosing-a-css-class-based-on-an-http-status-code))&#xD;&#xA;* [P.SE Better way to build SQL query from form input?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/307307/better-way-to-build-sql-query-from-form-input?noredirect=1) ([CR](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/116694/build-sql-query-criteria-from-form-input))&#xD;&#xA;* [P.SE I wrote a sleep() function! Is it harmless and cross-platform?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/305939/40980) ([rejected](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/115192/sleep-function)) (10ks deleted)&#xD;&#xA;* [P.SE How can I make the Sieve of Eratosthenes algorithm more efficient?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/305454/how-can-i-make-the-sieve-of-eratosthenes-algorithm-more-efficient?noredirect=1) ([CR](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/114485/extending-sieve-of-eratosthenes-beyond-a-billion))&#xD;&#xA;* [P.SE Jumping into C++, TIC TAC TOE. How is my code?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/304911/jumping-into-c-tic-tac-toe-how-is-my-code?noredirect=1) ([rejected](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/113723/jumping-into-c-tic-tac-toe-how-is-my-code)) (op deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And since I'm in the tools, the CR to P.SE migrations in the last 90 days:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/309160/does-my-code-still-break-encapsulation-and-uses-getters-setters-instead-of-the-t&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/306289/generating-dual-xlsx-files-and-htm-pages-of-the-same-data&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/306277/testing-using-mocking-must-i-mock-all-dependencies-too&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/304643/how-much-implementation-should-i-provide-in-an-abstract-class (rejected)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/304470/factoryclass-versus-factorymethod-in-pojo (rejected)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28652" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6033" RevisionGUID="a21874a5-4970-4ba7-9fc5-1970453ce87a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In SO, the usage (or what I though the usage is since the great cleanup campaign last year) concerning the linking of external resources is that it is a bad pratice, as linking to an external resource like a blog post or a pastebin as an answer may later lead to a 404 and makes the question/answer less readable (if not unreadable at all) in the first sight.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus it is better for answers to add a little extract of the external resource or to post the source code in extenso if it is not several pages longs, or a reduced Short, Self Contained, Correct (Compilable), Example.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the consensus concerning images? An edit suggestion I made to replace an imageshack external link by the same image inlined [was just rejected][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]:https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/33416" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28653" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5915" RevisionGUID="6e7bfb8f-fbf1-4f23-bb1d-ade7022e6208" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/198052/what-is-the-modern-alternative-to-newsgroups and 2 minutes after it was closed as &quot;not constructive&quot;. No comments, no answers, just closed. What is wrong with this site? I am a full time developer with more than 10+ experience, 3K+ reputation in SO... This question is REAL, it related to programming (but it is not a specific programming question), and after searching a lot in the 'net I have found no answer for it. So I guessed the intelligent group of programmers that is on this site could help me answer the question. So what the hell is going on here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28654" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="2893" RevisionGUID="d1c9e766-6b25-4d6e-a0fe-704029c9dd08" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I search Meta Stack Overflow for structured guidelines on tag wikis recently and didn't find any. The only thing that comes close is the sticky note when editing a tag wiki&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **What are Tag Wikis?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The tag wiki excerpt is a brief plain text introduction to the topic that the tag represents. It is shown at the top of tag question lists, and as a tooltip wherever the tag appears. Complete this first!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The full tag wiki is a detailed introduction to the topic, suitable as a destination for those curious about it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - what questions should have this tag?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - some basic definitions&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - brief introduction to the subject&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - important links for learning more&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - one reasonably sized page&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; See our advice on [writing great tag wikis][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The link is to the blog post that introduced tag wikis, and it offers _some_ vague advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I'm editing the occasional tag wiki, I look at similar tags for inspiration, here and on Stack Overflow. What I end up with is usually: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. An introduction to the concept, adapted from the relevant Wikipedia article,&#xD;&#xA; 2. A list of links to common resources,&#xD;&#xA; 3. A list of highly voted and representative questions,&#xD;&#xA; 4. A list of relevant sister sites.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;An example is my very recent edit on the [web-development wiki][2]. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are some tags that don't even have a wiki, and if something is a priority is those. Any tag wiki would be better than no tag wiki, especially for the more popular tags. An example is [tag:development-process] which has 222 questions currently and seeing how you are the [tag's top user][3], this one is up to you :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But seeing how new users continue to use [tag:career] and [tag:advice], when both their tag wikis say &quot;Don't use this tag&quot;, I'll say not many actually read them. Informative tag wikis would be nice to have, but other than offering some basic guidance they don't really solve any actual problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And seeing how cleaning up [tag:career] is only halfway through, I'd say we already have our hands full as it is. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Posted here for completion's sake&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/03/redesigned-tags-page/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/web-development/info&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/development-process/topusers" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28655" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8021" RevisionGUID="e1f9836c-d326-4d52-8705-461fc495d31c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The blocking system is automated, but it doesn't look odd to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From [the Help Center][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The exact formula for the bans is not disclosed, but users are only&#xD;&#xA;&gt; banned if they have a significant number of heavily down-voted,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; zero-voted, or deleted posts. One or two bad posts will not cause you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to be blocked from using the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[According to your profile][2], you have asked a total of 10 questions on Programmers. Of those 10 questions, 5 have a net negative score ([1][3], [2][4], [3][5], [4][6], [5][7]), 1 has a net 0 score ([1][8]), 4 are closed ([1][8], [2][5], [3][4], [4][3]), and 5 are deleted ([1][3], [2][4], [3][5], [4][6], [5][7]). It seems like that's enough to trigger the block.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/81367/konrad-viltersten&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/313651/is-it-wise-to-invest-in-angular-2&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/310681/how-common-is-it-to-get-unpaid-but-skilled-labor&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/309821/explaning-to-newbies-that-sometimes-it-works-isnt-it-works-well&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/306324/what-does-the-operator-mean-c-and-ef-context-for-strings&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/203020/using-vs12-to-create-and-manage-an-azure-sql-db-simple-tasks&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/204871/automatic-code-snippets-in-vs-12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28656" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6035" RevisionGUID="878ee9f4-7f92-43ec-b33b-68a67e57fe99" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You were unlucky, the author of the answer was editing the post at the same time, and your edits conflicted. When that happens, the suggested edit &quot;loses&quot; and appears as rejected by [Community ♦](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/-1/community).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, your edit, albeit helpful, was a bit minor. Suggested edits are generally expected to substantially improve a post, and adding the image inline wasn't really necessary in the specific answer. It wasn't a bad edit, and I would have probably accepted it if I had seen it, but I would like to encourage you to focus on editing posts that are in need of more substantial edits. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28657" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6984" RevisionGUID="a5d5f9c2-8785-4be3-9a00-50759ff47eb0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [guidance](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487) for off-topic questions has this to say about the use of statistics:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Asking for a link to something or statistics**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a subtler meaning of the 'favorite off-site resource' part of the wording of the close reason. Asking a question that doesn't draw upon the community's expert knowledge as programmers but rather asking it to be a crowdsourced search engine falls into this area.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Links to things suffer from link rot. Statistics become out of date over time. Neither of these contribute significantly to the collective knowledge of problem solving that the Q&amp;A format provides.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't understand what the issue is with questions that invite answers that involve statistics. To me that guidance is bad for the quality of answers on this site. Allow me to illustrate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Take for example this question about code reviews:&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/261801/how-to-deal-with-no-code-reviews-in-my-new-place-when-i-come-from-that-practice&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my view, having to argue in favor of the best practice of code reviews is something programmers are likely to face (hence on-topic) and the best possible answer to this question is to provide provable statistics that demonstrate the value of the practice of code reviews (and possibly statistics that compare the different ways of performing code reviews). This way the asker has better than anecdotal arguments in favor of code reviews as a best practice. In my opinion statistics are a higher quality answer when it comes to best practices answers, because they remove the bias inherent in an answer that is a sample of 1.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can understand forbidding link-based answers, and requiring that the statistics are repeated in the body of the answer (citing the off-site resource where they were obtained), but why is it a good thing for P.SE to automatically close questions about best practices which can best be answered through statistics?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28658" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5920" RevisionGUID="07f1904e-479b-4530-811e-f816a33cb2f2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I liked [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/198057/25936), asking how to make a benchmarking app or give information on already usable code to test map implementations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sure it needed a code reference but why close it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28659" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7237" RevisionGUID="117b47c6-c820-49ae-b013-354e78501498" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**If you have a question about...**&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA; - software requirements&#xD;&#xA; - software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA; - quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA; - development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA; - software configuration management&#xD;&#xA; - software engineering management&#xD;&#xA; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**and it is not about...**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - general workplace issues, office politics, and job hunting (check out [The Workplace][1] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - implementation issues, such as code fixes (ask on [Stack Overflow][2] instead)&#xD;&#xA; - [how to use specific tools][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [what language/technology you should learn next][4], including [which technology is better][5]&#xD;&#xA; - [what project you should do next][6]&#xD;&#xA; - [where to find a software library, tool or other resource][7]&#xD;&#xA; - [product or service recommendations][8]&#xD;&#xA; - [career or education advice][9], salary, or compensation&#xD;&#xA; - personal lifestyle, including relationships and non-programming activities&#xD;&#xA; - [legal advice or aid][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...then you're in the right place to ask your question!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subjective questions are allowed, but subjective does not mean &quot;anything goes&quot;. **Please keep it professional**. If this is a question you'd be uncomfortable discussing with your colleagues in a work environment, it's probably not appropriate here, either. For more information about subjective questions, please see [the Help Center page about what not to ask][11] as well as the [*Good Subjective, Bad Subjective*][12] and [*Real Questions Have Answers*][13] blog posts for details and examples.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please make sure that your question is not [too broad][14] or [strongly rooted in opinions][15]. We should be able to answer your questions in the equivalent of a few pages of text and graphics and provide references to support claims. If you have questions that warrant an extended discussion, feel free to [come to chat][16].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before asking, [look around][17] to see if your question has been asked. If you see similar questions, be sure to check out their answers and differentiate your question from other, related questions. It’s also OK to [ask and answer your own question][18].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your question is not specifically on-topic for Programmers Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for [another Stack Exchange site][19]. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may [commit to][20] or [propose][21] a new side at [Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are created][22].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more details, please see [our curated FAQ on Meta Programmers Stack Exchange][23].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7253/where-does-my-tool-question-go?cb=1&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6486#6486&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6488#6488&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1655&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/&#xD;&#xA;  [15]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491&#xD;&#xA;  [16]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7248/how-do-you-get-20-rep-to-get-into-chat&#xD;&#xA;  [17]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search&#xD;&#xA;  [18]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer&#xD;&#xA;  [19]: http://stackexchange.com/sites#name&#xD;&#xA;  [20]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq&#xD;&#xA;  [21]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site&#xD;&#xA;  [22]: http://area51.stackexchange.com/&#xD;&#xA;  [23]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/faq/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28660" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6046" RevisionGUID="16c6961c-e7c1-4ed8-891f-bf5b7c0c5804" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Questions like this [one][1] have me wondering if introducing kids to programming isn't a good candidate for doing a &quot;one post to rule them all&quot; that gathers all of the good ideas we've accumulated on the subject and curates them in one place rather than it coming up again and again and different recommendations being made?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/204504/how-to-interest-my-8-yo-child-about-programming#question" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28661" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3041" RevisionGUID="6e252fe0-3047-4c3c-a7f2-7bbae3fdda10" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Ok I wasn't asking a question but tried the link anyhow and it said&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account. See&#xD;&#xA;&gt; http://goo.gl/C1Kwu to learn more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are the questions that I have asked in the past.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/112336/creating-a-blog-for-software-changes&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/93788/should-i-update-this-code-or-continue-with-current-design&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/132878/how-to-sell-yourself-to-the-manager&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My last question got closed, should I be banned just because of that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28662" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8054" RevisionGUID="fb661b60-f971-4445-9719-e90b27eeec27" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="##Oct. 20th, 2016 - This is done! &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8266/its-official-this-site-is-now-software-engineering-stack-exchange&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It took us a good while, but the Community Team has circled up and here's where we stand on your request to change Programmers.SE's name.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###We agree that renaming this site is a good idea.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Programmers&quot; is an affinity group, whereas &quot;Software Architecture&quot; (for example) is an action and a discipline. It is entirely possible that changing the site's name will send clearer signals and prime new users to ask questions more consistently in line with what y'all would be proud to see and answer, particularly given where this site’s scope has solidified over the past few years.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_So yes, we're open to proceeding with a name change._ That said, we'll need to make sure the change makes the kind of difference you want it to, because we can't repeat this process again several years down the line. We gotta get it right _this_ time. Last time the site was renamed, the scope was very much still in flux; by now, hopefully you can identify much more precisely _what this site is about_ and commit to both a name _and_ description _and_ introductory materials that communicate this body of knowledge clearly and succinctly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Here's what the Community Team needs before we can move forward:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. **Tell us what you're proposing as the new site name.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &quot;Software Engineering&quot; and &quot;Software Architecture&quot; both look like good options from where I stand. Let’s not turn this into a bikeshed discussion; we need well-considered options here, not a popularity contest - Coffee McWhiskeyface is right out. The ideal name will suggest _at a glance_ what this site is about, without suggesting that it might be “fix my code” even a little bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. **Lay out what the [new site scope](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) will be.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   Above all else, **the scope needs to be simple**. Seriously. No more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no gerrymandering - **it needs to be easy for any new visitor who bothers to read** and even mildly pays attention to what they're reading to know what they can and cannot ask about here. Eliminate ambiguity for a first time poster once and for all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's talk again in a month." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28663" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6066" RevisionGUID="02946c43-06c7-4ef0-8a8f-7c9a57104b1c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="At 2500 rep, one can work to create tag synonymous (see https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/suggest-tag-synonyms ).  While I am not familiar with all the behind the scenes working, I believe it would merge the two tags so that nothing is lost.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That said, while similar, I'm not sure they are the same or should be synonymed (thats a new word I just made up).  A &lt;i&gt;pars&lt;b&gt;er&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; is a **thing** - a specific implementation.  While &lt;i&gt;pars&lt;b&gt;ing&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt; is a **concept** or a process that the parser does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One would use the parser tag, while talking about how to use yacc or biosn or antlr to build a parser for the construction of an app.  On the other hand, one would use parsing if trying to attack how to parse a csv file or other data formats.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do compare the questions that show up in [tag:parser] and [tag:parsing] to see if the separation of ideas exists.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thats just my take on it though. I could very well be wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To create a synomym for a tag, navigate to the tag ( [tag:parser] or [tag:parsing] ) and click on the appropriate [synonym](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/parser/synonyms) link (that one is for parser).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You may also find https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms to be of interest." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28664" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3201" RevisionGUID="6640ba41-2fe4-472f-bead-017c6acc0a34" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="If you [click back to Programmers](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/136760/complex-sql-query-need-help?noredirect=1) from [the migrated question on DBA](http://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/13876/complex-sql-query-need-help), you'll see your deleted answer and a comment explaining why it was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In this case, your answer was a commentary on the asker's choice of language and not a direct answer to the question, so it was deleted as part of the preparation of the question for migration to DBA.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The banner doesn't seem right, though. In a migration, deleted answers are not migrated with the question, so the banner is incorrect (and of course, a bad user experience)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28665" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6075" RevisionGUID="92dad096-bf2e-4160-833c-fd0d376689a6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I like the term and decided to create the dogfooding tag and add it to your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a user you earn the privilege of creating new tags when you ask a question after receiving 300 reputation.  I see you haven't quite reached that point yet but I am sure you will get there some day. :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/create-tags" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28666" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5940" RevisionGUID="ac3fc241-be69-4dcd-b12c-d15c86030653" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've just been reading this question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/141818/32008. And after refreshing, I saw it was closed for being a duplicate to https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/220/32008. I don't discuss the fact that those are duplicates, they clearly are.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I feel [this answer][1] from user @DXM to the closed question is way more insightful, well written and thoughtful than most other answers to the other question. I was thinking it's a shame this answer gets destroyed/hidden because the question is closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is moving answers something that can be done, or has it been already discussed maybe ? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/141821/32008" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28667" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3221" RevisionGUID="997afc42-9f9b-4e89-a791-15ef6c07f65e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A closed question won't immediately get deleted (unless it's otherwise offensive or rude). This provides the opportunity to try to save a question from deletion. However, once a question has answers, it becomes extremely hard to save the question. It's much easier to delete the question and wait for it to be reasked in an appropriate manner than it is to either edit the question in a way that preserves the answers or go through all of the answers and delete the ones that no longer fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there's a closed question, anyone (including the original poster) has the opportunity to try to fix it. There are many tools to find questions in need of saving, such as helping with the structured tag clean-ups or using the search to find popular, [highly voted closed questions][1]. If you manage to fix one, flag it for moderator review and briefly explain your edits and why it should be reopened. If you have successfully fixed the question without invalidating answers, it'll be reopened. If you haven't, it won't be reopened.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In terms of leaving a comment prior to closing - no. If someone flags it or it absolutely needs to be closed since it is by no means a good question for the SE format, I won't hesitate to close it. However, if it's not obvious as to why, I'll leave a comment explaining the close in more detail. The quick closing will prevent people from posting answers making it exponentially easier to save the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=closed:1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28668" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5946" RevisionGUID="29fc124a-b642-4b73-9ec3-94d301257aea" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Today I noticed [tag:sdlc] tag, which has no information written.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Anyone know what exactly is it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[List of questions with this tag][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/sdlc" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28669" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3261" RevisionGUID="919b9e7b-8677-4f53-b961-8cb22927fee0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In its current state, the question about [demonstrating productivity to management][1] should probably be closed for off-topic. However, I don't feel that it's appropriate for me to close that question because I participated in it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;if you start with [revision 1][2] or my edits at [revision 3][3] which improved the readability, the question was about demonstrating productivity and measuring one's work output. This problem is very specific to software development. Unlike most other fields, it's much more difficult to count the output of software developers. Look at manufacturing or electrical engineering - you can could widgets produced or components built and tested fairly easily. In addition, there's a distinct relationship between producing these physical things and being productive. This is something that does not exist in software engineering - creating more UML diagrams or writing more lines of code and unit tests does not make one more productive, at least with regards to adding business value.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in [revision 4][4] of the question, the topic was changed drastically with the addition of the last paragraph. It no longer became about demonstrating or quantifying productivity to management. Instead, it became a question about teamwork and team dynamics. These are not topics unique to software development, and are therefore off-topic here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, onto your question. I don't think it should have been closed as off-topic for the same reasons I discussed above - measuring and demonstrating the productivity of a software developer is inherently difficult and unique (although I do think this question has been asked before, so it's probably a duplicate). However, it's not a good question in its present form.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, most people assume IT manager is usually a technical person. Your question isn't explicit about the role of the person that you are interfacing with, along with what your role is. Then, you go on to provide solutions - it's best served if your question asks a question without presenting solutions (the exception being if you've come up with solutions that are unacceptable - present these and explain why they aren't acceptable). Finally, the final sentence opens the door for a survey of responses, instead of presenting people with an explicit situation and problem that must be overcome, and surveys/getting to know you type questions are not appropriate for Stack Exchanges.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would say that your question is far more salvagable than the original, especially since it has two answers and only one of which even has a vote. The impact of editing and reopening would be far less than the first question I discussed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/138359/how-can-i-demonstrate-my-productivity-to-management&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/138359/1&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/138359/3&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/138359/4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28670" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6121" RevisionGUID="b1601bb8-80d6-4d10-848c-5ffdfdf2fbc9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/208143/using-notepad-for-php-coding got closed as being off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that I'm not trying to ask for any tool recommendations or libraries - it is a specific question on how to configure a particular tool for use when programming a certain language.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm aware that maybe its off-topic due to a different reason and this one just happened to be the closest fit, would appreciate knowing the actual problem if so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are questions on tools that support particular features, is it that I can't ask about a specific tool like Npp but could ask for, say 'Are there good freeware editors support auto completion, syntax highlighting and other features for PHP dev?'" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28671" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8063" RevisionGUID="4adb10d1-d027-4c00-9355-c1e8d710bd0a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="###On behalf of emeritus member MichaelT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;There's nothing wrong with the scope. The essence of it could be condensed to fewer bullet points, but such is of relatively minor consequence. The bullet points are more of an issue for moderators of other sites that check the help/on-topic before migrating... and the rare individual who read it before posting a comment of &quot;belongs on Programmers.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The name, as demonstrated in the comments of https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/319375/ (10k link) is of some confusion to some people who post with the &quot;but I'm trying to ask programmers this question.&quot;  A name such as software-engineering or software-architecture may have give them second thought about where to post the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, it should also be pointed out with the above question that this demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the Q&amp;A model that SE uses - to the point that changing the name alone will not do it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As mentioned in https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/279661/ the thing that new users (and lets be honest - a significant chunk of the 70% closed questions are from new users) look at is other questions without regard for the &quot;on hold&quot; status of the question. There was a podcast awhile back by Joel and David about the intent of [Closed] - and part of that was as a head on a pike. I'm sure SE employees would more easily dig it out than I can. The mini-meta survey demonstrates that this is completely failing. One can refine the scope and change the name till the end of time - questions will be asked like the ones that show up when you go to the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This brings up an awkward realization - the way to make the questions go away from immediate view is to down vote them heavily. This leads to the &quot;why are you all so negative&quot; posts which are not at all fun to deal with, especially without moderator and community manager support.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one wants to cut down on the off topic questions - close and delete the unsalvageable posts quickly. Gnat likes to point out that triage on Stack Overflow helps with this. Failing the ability to prevent questions from showing up on the front page with triage, down votes, close votes, and 20k delete votes are the thing necessary to cut down on the off topic questions that reinforce the perception that this is where one is to ask such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This brings up another awkward realization - the active pool of close votes and 20k delete votes is on the decline. And to this, no amount of UI, name change, fiddling with the help/on-topic, or trying to make a one sentence thing to put in the tour will accomplish significant amounts. Moderators will likely need to step up and more than just close and ignore the off topic questions - close and delete them - preferably quickly. Instead of 70% of the front page showing questions that one shouldn't ask, 70% of the front page should be showing questions that one should ask.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One might want to consider adjusting the privilege levels for a few months after the redesign, giving 10k or 15k users the ability to cast delete votes on questions that are less than a few days old... and reviving the 3 vote experiment again. The front page needs to reflect the scope and the both the moderators and the community at large needs to step up and make the site match the vision of what they want to see.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there isn't any change to how (and who) people cast close votes; or the duration that an unsalvageable question remains visible on the front page, serving as a model for how to ask another question - the results from this exercise in scope, name, and design will not likely have the intended effect of consistently reducing the number of off topic questions asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is another problem with the 'scope' though. It isn't about the scope itself, but rather the question of where does one draw the line with primarily opinion and too broad questions. Even with a more concise scope of Software lifecycle, Software configuration management, Algorithm and data structures and Software engineering and team management as described by Snowman, there are still questions that are primarily opinion or too broad that fit within this area of topicality.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to be one of the more difficult and overlooked parts in this process of a name change - and these are the questions that have given the people who actively curate and moderate the site the most headaches. Without any guidance (and I'm not going to offer any here), questions along the lines of &quot;how should I lay out my Git repo&quot; or &quot;what patterns/algorithms should I use to solve some problem&quot; will still be asked and still consume too much community moderation and curation time and still be a point of contentious debate on meta." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28672" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3308" RevisionGUID="725fd9b3-2a2c-43f8-882b-4633f73e55f0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="About the question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [In hindsight, is XAML a mistake or a good approach?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/139382)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think this is a solicitation of constructive criticism and praise for an existing technology. We want to know what lessons we learnt, what good ideas to replicate and what mistakes to avoid in future.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why was this very constructive question closed as “not constructive”?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28673" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7035" RevisionGUID="33d5970a-341b-4880-a981-370186815d8c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Lets go through [meta-tag:faq-proposed].  Note that a few of these are ones that I wrote.  I'll avoid making recommendations on them.  Many of these were issues that were FAQ issues back in earlier times when things were in more flux (scope and the help center about scope).  Many of these questions are now of historical oddity and while can serve as a record of where we've been, they aren't as useful for providing guidance to people *today*.  All of this is my take on the topic meant to start some activity on clear cut ones and considerations of the non-clear cut ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions - Mine.&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6665/should-cross-posting-be-allowed-sometimes-on-programmers - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6625/i-just-failed-an-audit-but-i-was-right-and-it-was-wrong-what-now - **FAQ it**&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6559/why-is-research-important - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6458/there-seems-to-be-some-contradictory-guidance-with-respect-to-asking-career-deve - This is another career question and I'm of the opinion that we should have only one career question in the FAQ, and this isn't the one that fits the FAQ the best.&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6442/why-do-certification-questions-keep-getting-closed - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6366/where-to-start - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/why-do-interview-questions-make-poor-programmers-se-questions - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6327/how-to-ask-a-batch-of-related-questions - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6311/where-does-my-git-question-go - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6283/current-events-questions-and-answers - Mine&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5633/is-programming-history-on-topic - **FAQ it**&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3547/adding-the-definition-of-a-shopping-list-request-to-the-faq - **Obsolete** (detag it)&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3301/changing-the-faq-to-reflect-the-sites-name - **Obsolete** (detag it).  See above&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3096/40980 - **FAQ it**  Consider a name change.&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2959/40980 - **Obsolete** (detag it)&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2912/should-legal-advice-or-copyright-trademark-and-patent-law-be-added-to-the - **Obsolete** (detag it)&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2894/40980 - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2856/addendum-to-off-topic-themes-in-the-faq - **Obsolete** (detag it)&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2699/basic-guidelines-for-discussing-business-logic-and-programming - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2645/are-what-did-person-mean-questions-on-topic - I think that https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6417/40980 is a better analysis of the issue, but thats my post too.&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2608/are-why-is-x-code-snippet-done-this-way-questions-on-topic - **Obsolete**ish&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2599/are-i-need-data-on-x-phenomenon-questions-on-topic - **Obsolete** (part of a cleanup form '11)&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2590/legal-disclaimer-in-the-faq - **Obsolete**&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2502/are-marketing-questions-on-topic - **Obsolete**&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2228/when-should-comments-be-deleted - More thought needed&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2133/faq-should-include-examples-of-good-questions - **Obsolete** (see the tour again)&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2131/how-to-reconcile-guidelines-community-opinion-and-moderation - **Obsolete**&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2114/are-new-users-allowed-to-advise-without-mini-modding - Consider redoing as a new Q&amp;A to address community moderation&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/how-can-we-improve-our-guidance-about-the-purpose-of-comments - **Obsolete** as written it isn't that FAQy.&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/why-was-my-question-closed - I think https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted does a better job of answering this, but thats my post.&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1838/can-something-highlighting-the-difference-between-programmers-and-so-be-added-to - **Obsolete** as written it isn't that FAQy.&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1556/when-are-career-questions-too-localized-should-this-be-more-strict - Another career question question.&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/40/should-each-point-be-posted-in-a-separate-answer - This is already partly in the help center in [What does it mean if a question is &quot;closed&quot; or &quot;on hold&quot;?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28674" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7257" RevisionGUID="41b784d9-4fb7-4eaf-9893-3dd57004b837" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Propose to detect troublesome questions using Stack Overflow quality scoring data and put them to [Triage queue](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278380/help-us-test-question-triage) for an hour or two. If the timeout expires before decision is made, let questions go to homepage.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for the questions that fail the Triage, one option to handle these is to keep them invisible for a day or two (if not edited), then automatically [bump](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/bump/info) them for a broader community review. This way would keep them away from the top of [newest tab](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest). (Attentive readers may notice that bumps imply certain pollution of [active tab](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active) but this looks less of an issue to me, as this tab is rather heavily dominated by better questions being bumped by answers and edits. Not to mention that Triage would spare active page from questions deserving flagging for speedy deletion - spam, [homework dumps](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3837/31260), [&quot;cubicle fart&quot;](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6677/31260) kind stuff...)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reasons why I consider above approach feasible are [laid out here](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7251/31260):&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  goal, about [&quot;wall of crap&quot;](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258699/the-stack-overflow-homepage-is-over-emphasizing-bad-questions-and-a-proposed-so) at homepage, also looks relevant to us, as indicated by multiple recurring discussions about [too many bad questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/7130?lq=1).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...site topics substantially overlap and... many troublesome questions over here appear to be posted by users who are simply [trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7020/31260). Using same scoring data that is supposed to detect and block them at Stack Overflow would make sense, wouldn't it?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;...there is just no way to ensure that questions in Triage queue would be reviewed within reasonable timeframe... automatically kick questions off this queue and let them go to homepage after some timeout (say, 1-2 hours) if these haven't got sufficient attention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-there-something-wrong-with-this-sites-rules-for-posting-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7614/why-are-we-getting-so-many-off-topic-debug-this-for-me-questions-what-can-we&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7593/is-there-any-point-in-this-site-still-existing  &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note this one even suggests Stack Overflow (protected by Triage!) as an example of how a site should look like.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7130/so-many-bad-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7239/there-are-way-more-negative-votes-in-the-top-50-questions-than-positive-time-to&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7221/problem-titles-in-off-topic-questions-of-new-users-coming-from-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7020/lets-help-askers-who-are-trying-to-circumvent-question-block-at-stack-overflow&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6990/why-cant-we-raise-up-questions-quality&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6850/how-effective-is-the-quality-filter-against-this-question-with-all-caps-brief-ti&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6788/a-lot-of-front-page-down-votes&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6711/cutting-down-on-off-topic-posts&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6592/how-many-questions-do-we-get-from-users-recently-blocked-at-so-how-many-of-thes&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6376/why-so-many-negative-votes-here&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6371/how-can-we-encourage-people-to-read-the-faq-before-asking-their-first-question&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6241/how-can-we-avoid-turning-off-potential-participants-who-see-the-wall-of-closed-q&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6233/why-are-there-so-many-closed-on-hold-and-down-voted-questions-here&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5618/better-selection-title-for-top-questions-list&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5377/requiring-registration-to-ask-questions-did-it-made-a-difference&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4029/why-are-there-so-many-minus-points-on-questions-in-this-site&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4009/programmers-stack-exchange-question-downvoting-what-to-do&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3947/what-can-we-do-about-extremely-low-quality-questions-from-unregistered-users&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3778/can-we-have-some-way-to-not-show-closed-questions-on-the-front-page&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3551/what-can-we-do-to-help-users-understand-our-site-better&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2851/what-can-be-done-about-bad-questions-on-programmers&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2744/how-can-i-create-a-custom-filtered-view-of-questions&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2727/are-we-scaring-off-new-users&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2570/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Nov 17 '11)&#xD;&#xA; * https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4097/why-are-so-many-questions-closed (Oct 8 '12)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1589/what-to-do-about-the-proliferation-of-bad-questions-from-generic-accounts&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/841/why-are-almost-half-the-questions-on-the-front-page-marked-closed&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/784/are-we-closing-too-many-good-questions-now" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28675" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5948" RevisionGUID="309bee5b-4322-43da-95b8-d4b734ab5250" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="After seeing the update to https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/17442/is-clang-llvm-ready-for-prime-time, I'm wondering how to rate the other answers. A lot has happened between the moment when the question was posted, and the update.&#xD;&#xA;Most answers seem dated now.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was wondering how to deal with a situation like this. Should we update votes? (if any were cast)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, the question itself seems to be very 'temporally localized'.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think the update to the lead answer was a bad thing in itself, it's just such a stark contrast to a) the question and b) the other answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28676" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6152" RevisionGUID="dda8c970-a9a0-450a-906e-453b318ae564" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I tried to ask a question on Stackoverflow and I really pissed someone off there. So I re-asked here on programmers, but pissed off some another people because I tried to delete my duplicate question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Today when I login and find my question closed (again).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/210381/do-analytics-services-build-their-own-database-or-using-existing-ones&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So may I ask, is my question really opinion based? (Compared to other questions here on programmers.stackexchange.com)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or am I just pissed of someone so they are really want my question on hold so no one could answer it?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28677" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7109" RevisionGUID="11d3d264-3264-4bec-ac40-c47840d385f7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="After recieving good answers to [this question][0] I have realised that some of my questions here are too language-specific to recieve the attention I want on here on &quot;programmers&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I decided to copy them to Stackoverflow (with some rewriting to fit that site better).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now when I am starting to recieve the answers I wanted Stackoverflow I think that it is time to delete the questions that are here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions are:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [using macros to implement a generic vector][1]&#xD;&#xA; - [using macros to protect assignment to global variables][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [0]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7104/i-get-more-and-better-attention-on-stackoverflow&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/267657/using-macros-to-implement-a-generic-vector-dynamic-array-in-c-is-this-a-good&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/268194/using-macros-to-protect-assignment-to-global-variables&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just wanted to let you know before I do it. To me it seems like the right thing to do but I want to know what you think first." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28678" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8092" RevisionGUID="4e4b18ee-e20d-4ec8-ad16-450913002958" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Programmers could benefit from a few more regular visitors who close questions on the front page and the Unanswered page that are **clearly off-topic.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Clearly off-topic&quot; means:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;**We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We don't answer survey questions, make lists of things, or engage in extended discussion here.  We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here.  We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for.  We don't give legal advice.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the moment, many such questions get three or four close votes, and then [languish on the Unanswered page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/unanswered/tagged/?tab=newest), sometimes for several days.  Ideally, the goal would be to get questions like &quot;Best Library&quot; and &quot;Coding Help&quot; closed within the hour.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It just takes a few minutes a day.  Usually, all you have to do is scan the Unanswered page for downvoted questions, and add your close vote where you agree. Alternately, [review questions flagged as off-topic in the close queue](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/close?filter-closereason=offtopic) directly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As an added benefit, you would be inaugurated into the [White Board Curmudgeon Club](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), where we hang out, talk about tequila, wax philosophic about a diverse array of subjects, and watch in amusement while new users can't figure out what the site is all about.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any volunteers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28679" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3333" RevisionGUID="c7be805d-2d3c-41fe-b7d9-5edde1069df2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I saw that there were up votes in this question, does that means people agree this is a good question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just got one at https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/140237/most-useful-guides-to-learn-python-pdf-books-which-one but I'm starting to get confused currently whether I should answer this sort of question or not. Is there any new opinion about this?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28680" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6178" RevisionGUID="feabbbd1-ec34-48bc-a4ea-40a96fd4db52" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Specifcally to a recently closed question for yours, I voted to close it as unclear when the question was at [revision 1](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/210947/1).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; In Python, should subpackages have 'test' packages or 'test' packages have subpackages?&#xD;&#xA;Which is the preferred test package structure for packages containing subpackages:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Tests in Subpackages?&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (example)&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Subpackages in Tests?&lt;br/&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (example)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Something else?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To which you commented:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @MichaelT mattnz BЈовић: you all voted to close this question, but didn't provide a comment as to why. Please let me know what improvements I could make to help you answer the question. – Jace Browning yesterday&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close message to the question is the comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell exactly what you're asking.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally, I don't feel that an additional comment is needed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only answer to the question at this time starts out with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am probably misunderstanding the question. Nevertheless, here is a go. Please, guide me to the precise question of interest by the means of comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close reason still stands.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the problem that you are having that can be solved (potentially) with a single answer? If you are able to clarify it, please note that asking for a range of opinions from people as to which ones they prefer is a poor fit for the Q&amp;A format." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28681" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7264" RevisionGUID="ff5aafa5-4b5e-4a92-9aca-61884036e562" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="For fear of the ultimate answer being [&quot;I know it when I see it...&quot;][knowit], I'll try to add some of the criteria I use when deciding if a question is on-topic or not for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why me?  Well, I'm currently the [top answerer for the copyright tag][copytopusers] and  the [number four answerer for the licensing tag][lictopusers].  Six others and I hold the [bronze license badge][bronzelicense] and no one currently has a [bronze copyright badge][bronzebadges].  I'm also a [prolific close voter][closestats], so I think I have a decent perspective on this question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what do I look for in determining if the question is answerable or not?  Or more specifically, should I vote to close?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Is the question about `licensing` or `copyright`?  If it's about copyright, I generally vote to close.  Copyright laws vary by jurisdiction and can be subject to some seemingly obscure rules despite the efforts of the Berne convention.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Does the question pertain to an open or commonly known license, or is it about a proprietary or commercial license?  If it's a proprietary and / or commercial license, I vote to close because it's:&#xD;&#xA;  - Unlikely we can read the full license, so answers will be speculative&#xD;&#xA;  - Unlikely to be of value to future visitors&#xD;&#xA;  - Likely to need an attorney to interpret what the terms actually mean&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Does every answer start with &quot;IANAL&quot;, ie &quot;I am not a lawyer&quot;, or have it somewhere in the body of the answer?  If so, that's a sign to me that the answers are speculative and an attorney is required to interpret.  Vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;  - Aside: If you feel compelled to start an answer with IANAL, then you probably shouldn't write the answer.  It's a useless phrase that just adds noise to the mix.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Does the question really require an attorney to answer?  Some questions are so specific, narrowly focused, or the potential consequences are significant enough that consulting an attorney is really the only viable option to consider.  Great candidate for a VTC.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Is the question purely hypothetical and / or contrived?  If so, vote to close.  You could argue that this is a duplicate condition of the &quot;does this require an attorney to answer&quot; bullet point.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers aren't lawyers (generally), but programmers do encounter common situations involving points of law and licensing.  Lots of companies incorporate open source software into their products and have worked with their legal teams in order to make sure things were done correctly.  And while legal matters may appear to be a black art, there are some circumstances that are fairly commonplace and more or less universal in their application.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's some of the things I look for in order to leave a question open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Is the question about applying an open source license to their application?  Likely answerable as others have done this as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Is there a related question and answer in the [FSF GNU FAQ][gnufaq] or in the FSF's commentary about open source license compatibility with the GPL?  Again likely answerable, although in some rare edge cases you should vote to close and encourage the OP to contact Free Software Foundation directly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Is the question about an actual or likely issue and not just some hypothetical?  If so, the actual details should be present within the question (or provided by the OP) and the question should be answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* (My catch all bullet point) Do I feel that this question is answerable within a reasonable expectation of what the community's experience is regarding licensing topics?  If so, I leave the question open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's a special category of licensing questions that I remain on the fence about.  These are the &quot;pick a license for me!&quot; type questions.  Discerning whether they are answerable or not becomes more difficult.  In general, I look to see if they are a) looking for an open source (or related) license and b) if they provide enough details about _how_ they want to license their application.  Those questions are usually answerable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But we'll see some where the OP has some amazingly restrictive ideas about how their application is to be used.  It's safe to say that these fall outside of the community's experience and an attorney is required in order to answer the question.  So I vote to close.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[knowit]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it&#xD;&#xA;[bronzebadges]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/badges?tab=tags&amp;filter=bronze&#xD;&#xA;[bronzelicense]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/badges/97/licensing&#xD;&#xA;[copytopusers]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/copyright/topusers&#xD;&#xA;[lictopusers]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/licensing/topusers&#xD;&#xA;[closestats]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/close/stats&#xD;&#xA;[gnufaq]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28682" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5962" RevisionGUID="15dfbefa-5b89-4fbe-b35d-3c8f3bc5af82" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Can someone tell me what's wrong with this question? How can I improve it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm in the field of EEE but I'm not specializing in software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; engineering. Yesterday, i had an impromptu idea to develop a software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to integrate smartphone with a laptop. However, without any software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development background, I'm quite clueless on how to start or where&#xD;&#xA;&gt; can I learn it?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Can i discuss the idea freely and initiate an open source project?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (But how to initiate that if I can't be the technical lead of the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; project?)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Could someone please point me to some self-learning sources / platform&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for project discussion? :) Thank you!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It has been voted down and stated as &quot;possible duplicate&quot; of https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6625/how-to-recruit-programmers-for-an-open-source-project-and-kick-start-it&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But I can't find my answers there. What I want to know is &#xD;&#xA;1. How to initiate a project if I can't be the technical lead?&#xD;&#xA;2. What is the suitable platform for project discussion? (is it on Programmers.stackexchange?) &#xD;&#xA;3. What should I learn / equip myself with in order to start the project? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also, what is the reason for downvote? Often, many people downvote without a reason. (how can I improve without knowing what's wrong?) Perhaps, it should be made a rule to state the reason when they choose to downvote. :( it's really hurtful. &#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28683" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3384" RevisionGUID="5f3ff2f3-3cf5-4aa1-8167-b11b51c37879" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'd say that for the questions that have been closed the correct decision has been reached.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reviewing the questions that are still open I'd vote to close as Not Constructive on those as well. (I'll wait to see if anyone else votes to close or flags before acting though).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well - while each of these could well be an interesting question they don't fit in with the Stack Exchange model, as the Not Constructive close reason states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question is not a good fit to our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To take some of the questions as an example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/26243/whats-the-normal-range-for-typing-speed-for-developers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Does typing speed really matter when writing software? Most of your time is going to be spent thinking, designing algorithms, testing and debugging - none of which require fast typing.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/38647/1130&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This will depend on where you work, what industry you work in and all sorts of other things. In some places it's perfectly normal and in others it will be quite rare. Knowing this doesn't really help the OP.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28684" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7129" RevisionGUID="14c1ffd3-8689-449d-84e1-a2406a956440" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Referring to: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Specifically for duplicates it states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **When should I vote to close a question?**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions should be closed by&#xD;&#xA;&gt; casting close votes if:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * they are sufficiently similar to existing questions and *would be answered identically to them*. &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * they are unclear, too broad, or otherwise problematic to identifying the problem in a way that can be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * properly addressed by answerers they are sufficiently off-topic, as outlined in the help center.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(emphasis mine)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I was in a discussion this morning on this question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/255148/should-i-throw-guard-exceptions-that-will-be-thrown-by-internal-methods-anyway?noredirect=1#comment552707_255148&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whereby it was marked as a duplicate to a question that was several months newer, I expressed confusion and was directed to this meta post:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6160/closing-a-two-year-old-question-as-a-duplicate-of-a-one-year-old-question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Regardless of whether or not it was a correct move, I believe the information on the help page does not cover this policy and should be updated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The current use of *would be* in the help text implies that a question, as it currently stands, has not yet been answered, or is likely to receive newer answers and implies that perhaps this close reason is best suited to new questions. I don't believe that is the case in my situation, and so the help text should be updated to cover closing as duplicate older questions in line with the meta post I linked above to avoid confusion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do you agree?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28685" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5977" RevisionGUID="ffc5020f-ded7-40a1-bbbe-c8366bab49a7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I just rejected 2 suggested edit to the [tag:pythonic] tag. Not that the edits were that bad, but it just struck me that this tag seems useless. It's usually used on questions in conjunction with the &quot;python&quot; tag, so that seems highly redundant, and would encourage the spread of similar tags where any fancy terms describing the the virtue adheres to the principles of culture X.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd see mavenic pop-up for maven, or other abuses show up, when using the main tag relating to the technology would be sufficient.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Do you think we should get rid of the &quot;pythonic&quot; tag (and other similar tags)?** &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Another alternative suggested by YannisRizos:** We could make &quot;pythonic&quot; a synonym of &quot;python&quot;. I just suggested that synonym on the [&quot;python&quot; tag's synonyms page][1]. You can vote there directly for adoption or rejection of the synonym.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/python/synonyms" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28686" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7363" RevisionGUID="fa16cd57-1bf1-43c5-bc5a-55ccc535f88c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; you can kindly comment and tell them that this question is offtopic in a friendly way, but don't downvote innocent questions or close them&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have come into a fundamental misconception. It's a common one, but it's still a misconception.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Downvotes are not personal.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are not &quot;attacks&quot;, or &quot;hate&quot;, or &quot;rudeness&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They are not &quot;punishment&quot; (though they do lose you rep as we'll explore in a moment).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**They are a measure of post quality.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If your post is of poor quality (or is simply in the wrong place / on the wrong site), it *should* have a low score. That's how other visitors, and any automated processes on the site (e.g. rankings, search result filtering) can tell that the post has a poor quality without having to read it and find out for themselves (certainly tricky for those automated processes!).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Similarly, the fact that you lose a little bit of rep when you get downvoted is the reverse consequence of this: **you *gain* a little bit of rep when you get upvoted** ([in fact, _more_ than you lose from the same number of downvotes!][1]). There's your incentive to instead post good, useful questions that are \*gasp\* on-topic and \*gasp\* abide by the rules and values of this Stack Exchange network. It's pretty obvious why the system was designed to encourage you to do that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is important to realise that people do not answer questions to help _you_. This is not a site for _you_ to get help whenever you need it. It is a [repository of questions and answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/ &quot;The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions&quot;)! Your question, and its answers (if any), _must be able to help someone else some day_. It must be potentially of help for _everybody_. If it does not, it belongs in a chat room or on a forum. This is not &quot;rude&quot;: it is a fact. It is the basis on which the site stands. If that does not suit your needs, you are certainly more than welcome to post the question on a different site that does or, alternatively, hire someone to provide personal training/consultancy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It is not &quot;rude&quot; to keep the site clean and tidy by downvoting and closevoting when it is appropriate; conversely, it *is* rather &quot;rude&quot; to come onto the site stomping your feet and shouting at everybody for following all of the above, simply because you failed to research and/or comprehend the purpose of this website.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do I know you haven't performed that research? Well, it was a bit of a clue when you posted this rant on the main site instead of meta, making it off-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/7238/255171" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28687" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6190" RevisionGUID="be6648e8-5105-4cb0-8f90-c186f0f4feaf" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This post: &lt; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/212517/best-practices-for-refactoring-parameter-file-structure-in-multiple-environments &gt; was locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe I set out a very dispassionate and objective counter-argument to the points raised in the comments there. I appreciate the comments, but am puzzled by them. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As referenced there, this post on [&quot;Good Subjective v. Bad Subjective&quot;](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) seems to cite many properties that are to be used when assessing the usefulness of a subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The commenters appeared to use a straw-man argument about posts that are plainly just literature requests. I agree such posts are not constructive, but my question *is not at all just a literature request* for the reasons that I cited in the comments to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I even made attempts to carefully word my questions so as to remove any ambiguity about the reference request sub-portion of the question. These edits were repeatedly deleted and rollbacks were made to the commenters preferred editions of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any way that I may enforce my last set of edits, and to have *that version* be the &quot;locked version&quot;? This process seems unfair to me, given that I tried to provide *very concrete examples* of the ways in which I was adhering to the needed properties for a good subjective question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, the process *may not actually be unfair* and I'm willing to give the commenters the benefit of the doubt. If this is the case, may I please have a more clearly articulated defense of the commenters chosen edits, specifically *not relying on the following two mis-applied ideas:* &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  1. The straw-man argument about posts that are *purely* literature requests.&#xD;&#xA;  3. The notion that &quot;all questions implicitly contain reference requests&quot;. The Good v. Bad subjective post says that good subjective posts *insist* on references (that's the precise language used). This strongly insinuates an active position of the question's author to *insist* on reference requests.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Follow-up Question**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am also concerned that moderators are able to use the locking feature to privilege their preferred version of edits. For example, in this case, I made some edits and the moderator *first rolled them back* and *then* applied the lock. This seems like an unfair use of power. Why the presumption that the moderator's opinion about the edits is the one that deserves locked status, as opposed to whatever the most recent version is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To put it another way, if there is anything close to a 50/50 chance that my argument is sound and my edits are fine, it seems like an unfair asymmetry in the discussion to allow the moderator to make changes *then* lock, as opposed to *lock first.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Critically* this is not an argument that this action was *unfair to me*, but rather that it is *unfair to the community.* I totally love the idea that posts do not belong to me. I'm all for that. But in a case like this, the community is primed by the moderator's choices, rather than something less partial such as whatever edits happened to occur last. New viewers will form an initial opinion about the post as it is right now, and if they have prior beliefs that you need a lot of inertia to justify changes, this implicitly favors the moderator's choices, which runs counter to what the community wants via the locking mechanism in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There's some ambiguity between the proper order of operations here:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Lock question as-is&#xD;&#xA;2. discuss the issues that are causing trouble&#xD;&#xA;3. include additional community members and moderators to ensure nothing is done out of idiosyncratic opinions alone and &#xD;&#xA;4. make rollbacks if needed and unlock the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That's very different from:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Rollback to changes that I prefer&#xD;&#xA;2. discuss or not" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28688" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8102" RevisionGUID="8a3e867d-1714-4262-a352-15c46a0d4c57" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You've asked 10 questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Please give some references for examples of class hierarchies][1] (score of -5, closed and deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- [Demonstrate Polymorphism with Tic Tac Toe where students submit player code?][2] (score of 0, closed and deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- [Why is 12-based indexing not more common?][3] (score of -3, closed and deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to explain the mystery of programming][4] (score of -4, closed and deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to decide what instance variables to have in a class?][5] (score of 1)&#xD;&#xA;- [I think fan-in fan-out is backward, please explain][6] (score of -3, closed and deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- [Should “default constructor” mean the compiler-generated one and “no-argument constructor” mean one you create?][7] (score of 0)&#xD;&#xA;- [I need a real-world example of a class to demonstrate consistent state][8] (score of -6, closed and deleted)&#xD;&#xA;- [Should &lt;= and &gt;= be avoided when using integers, such as in a For loop?][9] (score of 16, closed)&#xD;&#xA;- [Why are Update statements in SQL called Queries?][10] (score of 0, closed and deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your net score on questions is negative and you have more closed and deleted questions than open questions. You've had a lot more than 3 strikes to learn about what is considered a good question for this community. It seems like a question block is in order, to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/292122/please-give-some-references-for-examples-of-class-hierarchies&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/292152/demonstrate-polymorphism-with-tic-tac-toe-where-students-submit-player-code&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/302527/why-is-12-based-indexing-not-more-common&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/307200/how-to-explain-the-mystery-of-programming&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/309181/how-to-decide-what-instance-variables-to-have-in-a-class&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/308079/i-think-fan-in-fan-out-is-backward-please-explain&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/310359/should-default-constructor-mean-the-compiler-generated-one-and-no-argument-co&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/310789/i-need-a-real-world-example-of-a-class-to-demonstrate-consistent-state&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/313143/should-and-be-avoided-when-using-integers-such-as-in-a-for-loop&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/314946/why-are-update-statements-in-sql-called-queries" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28689" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7394" RevisionGUID="3454c4a5-be86-4cd9-9186-c2a6f043f002" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Code troubleshooting and code implementation questions are not in Programmers' site scope.  Although there is an option to migrate such questions to Stack Overflow, the vast majority of them are not of sufficient quality to migrate there.  Thus ensues a long-winded explanation of how we don't accept troubleshooting or implementation questions, but your question is not of sufficient quality to be migrated to Stack Overflow, yada yada.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close reason ought to be simple enough:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Question about **writing specific code** (i.e. troubleshooting and implementation) are [off-topic on Programmers](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic).  You might be able to get help on [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/), but *read their [Help Center](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) first.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28690" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8182" RevisionGUID="2d1a3b4b-8fb9-4ef0-8fc2-02bc2613980a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/badges/10/scholar?userid=82480&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Scholar: Ask a question and accept an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I literally just asked my first question &lt;strike&gt;2&lt;/strike&gt; 40&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; minutes ago. There are no answers to accept at the time of this post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;You can only post once every 40 minutes.*" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28691" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6211" RevisionGUID="98a93f31-939d-4550-bec7-3d266179b7df" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The two most-upvoted answers on this question are identical: [Should curly braces appear on their own line?][1] It seems like a bug... surely the exact same answer would not have been upvoted so much *twice*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2715/should-curly-braces-appear-on-their-own-line" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28692" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5980" RevisionGUID="51e371a3-9540-4da2-9244-8ddd81fa3379" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/201814/can-i-perform-a-code-review-although-i-am-very-inexperienced&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I see people closing this as too localized. Can someone explain why? To me it looks on topic and ok." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28693" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3465" RevisionGUID="85c8dadd-d06b-4ffb-98f2-f9bd77cd480d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am referring to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/144649/what-icon-would-you-use-to-denote-an-xml-not-rss-feed-available&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;which was closed - and when I (not having seen the warning that asking about icons was off topic at UX too) re-asked it at UX it of course also got closed. It is really amazing how quickly that took place. As if I was being punished for having the gall to ask for an opinion.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All I want is to -poll- (ohh I cannot poll) ASK the programmer community for what they would pay attention to when I try to help them choose a service on my site over screen scraping. So I used the word ICON and get slapped. Very disappointing and unhelpful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would this be a valid question anywhere at SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**What is the most recognisable graphical element spring 2012 that would make you realise that this page exists in XML format too (not rss)**" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28695" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6015" RevisionGUID="bc387532-2818-4bf8-92ee-c734d830a1c0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Today, I noticed [a question that was placed \[on hold\]][1] (as the new pre-cursor to being closed), with as reason&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; put on hold as off-topic by Oded♦ 1 hour ago&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    &quot;Questions about specific programming problems encountered while writing code are off-topic, but can be asked on Stack Overflow.&quot; – Oded&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question or leave a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Previously, such questions would be migrated to their target site (SO in this case) immediately after sufficient votes were cast.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But with the new close system in place, it seems that migrations also go through some probation period. Is that intentional, and how long is that period?&#xD;&#xA; A five day probation period, like for closing a question, before a question gets migrated to another site seems like an awfully long period, during which it is likely that the OP will re-ask the question on the other site, leading to needless duplications.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/202907/can-somebody-tell-me-the-error-with-this-php-code" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28696" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3472" RevisionGUID="a7b156de-a48b-4fce-886b-56b54fd9fc11" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="IMHO a one line answer that is not backed up by references and doesn't show significant research efforts doesn't fit to P.SE. An example (no offense to Thorbjørn who is actually one of the best contributors): [How would you know if you've written readable and easily maintainable code?][1]. Peer code reviews is indeed one of the best ways but this answer doesn't explain why, doesn't give any references, etc. It seems like the contributor didn't have the time to work on the answer. In that case I think that a comment would be more appropriate. Am I right or I'm missing something here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/141010/21030" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28697" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7147" RevisionGUID="46bcc1d5-c071-44f5-a51d-2a763068d339" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here's my opinion on the same question list as [MichaelT][1] with a name that strongly emphasizes conceptual software design, such as **&quot;The Whiteboard&quot;**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am writing my answers from the point of view of a user whose only knowledge of this site is it is a StackExchange Q&amp;A site titled &quot;Programmers&quot; or &quot;The Whiteboard&quot;, and who doesn't have a strong grasp of what makes a good/bad question for SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271586/what-examples-are-there-for-mean-js&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271584/what-cms-to-use-for-mean-js&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I would ask both of a Q&amp;A site titled &quot;Programmers&quot;. I would only ask the second of a Q&amp;A site labeled &quot;The Whiteboard&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271573/how-to-speed-up-the-following-matlab-code&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271545/clarification-on-migrating-to-visual-studio-2010&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271544/is-there-any-harm-in-using-amazon-aws-as-a-development-environment&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271541/what-do-you-do-while-youre-waiting-for-your-tests-to-run&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271537/how-to-choose-a-framework&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271535/compare-values-from-two-spinner-and-display-the-result-accordingly-in-android-st&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271532/best-way-to-get-data-from-database-inside-thread-class-in-spring,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271515/can-i-use-qtcreator-with-pyqt5&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271531/c-malloc-error&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271530/univerisity-iphone-assignment-without-an-apple-mac&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271510/code-blocks-not-opening-new-console-why-is-this-happening&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271507/git-hangs-when-pushing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271497/difficulty-finding-a-recursive-starting-point-for-an-algorithm&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Maybe.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271491/i-want-to-build-a-software-with-c-book-list-is-needed&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271487/installment-of-python-2-7-9-and-3-4-2-recommended-learning-source&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes to the first, No to the second&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271490/how-to-learn-backend-development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Probably&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271473/best-way-to-implement-in-app-purchases&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [PHP Ajax error, get 404 when type first char][2] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; For 10ks there are also:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [Does php can solve this][3] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [For Windows developers who would like to get into the Mac OS X software development industry, what's a great way to get started?][4] &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [how to solve the problem of fault face detection in image processing][5] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Yes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [Generous budget: what's your ideal setup?][6] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: Maybe&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [recommend a British based programmer / small company that also does design, a language and requirements definition document][7]&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. [What books helped you to become a better programmer][8] Programmers: Yes; Whiteboard: No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Total: Programmers 26; Whiteboard: 7-8&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind, this is *my perspective*. Everyone's different. We can't say definitely &quot;yes this would be asked&quot; or &quot;no this wouldn't be asked&quot;. It depends on the question asker.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The point is, a user who only knows *&quot;this is a SE Q&amp;A site titled Programmers&quot;* will most likely have a very different assumption than a user who only knows *&quot;this is a SE Q&amp;A site titled The Whiteboard&quot;* (or Software Concepts, or Software Design Theory, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The term &quot;**Programmers**&quot; is an extremely broad term that could bring to mind a person writing code, a person designing software, a person gathering requirements, a person seeking a new job, etc. But in all cases, it brings to mind *a person*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However a term like &quot;**The Whiteboard**&quot; gives a first impression of &quot;conceptual software design&quot;, which is more likely to bring to mind designing software, considering architecture, evaluating approaches, etc. It's much more inline with what this site actually is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7146/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271472/php-ajax-error-get-404-when-type-first-char&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271529/does-php-can-solve-this&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/360/for-windows-developers-who-would-like-to-get-into-the-mac-os-x-software-developm&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271560/how-to-solve-the-problem-of-fault-face-detection-in-image-processing&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1763/generous-budget-whats-your-ideal-setup&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271517/recommend-a-british-based-programmer-small-company-that-also-does-design-a-la&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/271480/what-books-helped-you-to-become-a-better-programmer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28698" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8188" RevisionGUID="1b5af792-970d-4603-8409-8df634c06e3d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I posted the question https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/330802/what-are-the-best-vba-libraries-and-tools which, I learned violated the site rules:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking us to find or recommend tools, libraries,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programming languages, resources (including books, blogs, tutorials,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and examples), or projects to undertake are off-topic on Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; as they attract opinionated answers that won't have lasting value to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; others. You may be able to get help in The Whiteboard, our chat room.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I understand why questions that ask for recommended tools could lead to opinionated answers that won't have lasting value to others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But in 2016 most VBA resources online are from a different era and often point to broken links. Clearly this question could have lasting value to others: someone puts &quot;best VBA tools&quot; into their search engine, it pops up and just by clicking on my question they can already learn about a very useful tool called Rubber Duck, that they may not have found otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers might be opinionated/spam, but that can be addressed by the up/downvote buttons, or by flagging them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Again, I'm not saying that this is a bad rule in general, just asking why discretion can't be exercised for this particular question I asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28699" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6217" RevisionGUID="c05463ed-f3c0-444b-8bac-a6c117fc1808" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/167508/are-there-any-real-world-practical-problems-where-only-the-best-exact-solution is closed with reason &quot;it's unclear what you're asking&quot;. &#xD;&#xA;And the advice says to `add additional details to highlight exactly what you need`.  &#xD;&#xA;That's ridiculous. I've been adding as much details to the question as I could to present my point in the most clear way I could.  &#xD;&#xA;I am not realizing what additional details are asked for or how this question might not be clear (besides some people might feel tl;dr) and will appreciate if anybody helps me with that.  &#xD;&#xA;Even if it is worst question here on the stackexchange network please help to improve it because it's subject deserves to be existing and open for answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update** Practically, the help I need is following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Does the question explain the idea of a problem of a special kind?&#xD;&#xA; 2. What can be done to reduce the question so only the idea of a such problem is shining clear?&#xD;&#xA; 3. Does the question probably belong to http://cs.stackexchange.com/?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28700" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3506" RevisionGUID="e5f31054-0340-4071-992c-c2306c86138f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When you vote to close a comment is added with the link to the question you picked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When the question is closed this is converted into an edit on the question (for example):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; [In the absense of a CS degree, how can I &amp;ldquo;fill in the gaps&amp;rdquo; so to speak?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/81591/in-the-absense-of-a-cs-degree-how-can-i-fill-in-the-gaps-so-to-speak)  &#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;    &lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![enter image description here][1]](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/145784/how-to-be-a-successful-programmer-without-a-cs-degree)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This can be edited out (either maliciously or by accident). If you see a closed as a duplicate question without this text check the revision history and edit it back in.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/LocJX.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28701" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7172" RevisionGUID="01132370-34c9-47eb-88a3-969de02f6c34" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think something like &quot;Conceptual Software Development&quot; or something more concise with the same meaning would fit better.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I think of &quot;programmers&quot; in the context of Stack Exchange, I think &quot;I can ask about any topic specific to what programmers do compared to brick layers or other professions.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Changing the name to something that more accurately reflects the [on-topic list][1] would help. Notice that several things &quot;that programmers do/use&quot; are off-topic: questions about tools, code, etc. Looking at what actually is on-topic reads more like &quot;here is a bunch of computer science stuff framed in a real-world, practical context.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28703" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3586" RevisionGUID="27b8bbd5-2182-44b4-aac2-e9ad56b7c4d4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Profile in question.][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This guy's bio contains the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.SE, where 2/3 of all questions are summarily closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why am I here? I like to piss off twits. Does that make you mad?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do we do with that? That is trolling in my opinion... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gw57Q.jpg][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/9293/crazy-eddie&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gw57Q.jpg &quot;screen shot for user-card popup&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28704" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6156" RevisionGUID="c4199307-6a29-4b4f-b0b3-5ade3b600ccc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Is there a better way to ask this question, &quot;[Validating need for documentation][1]&quot; - since this seems like a question that has an answer, but then again, I might be wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've attempted to state the question clearly, give examples, provide context, and answer comments - but I get the feeling the question could be improved.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any suggestions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/210664/validating-need-for-documentation?noredirect=1#comment415051_210664" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28705" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8209" RevisionGUID="a83835d5-7adf-4ca2-b87f-e711286064f0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/331388/why-was-the-caret-used-for-xor-instead-of-exponentization?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Seriously though, this question asks for a specific reasoning - it doesn't encourage (nor would I accept) subjectivity or conjecture. It has 4 re-open votes, but I'm a little surprised it was closed to begin with.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There seems to be a bit of a pandemic for closing questions that aren't black and white on Programmers - which is strange since this is the place to ask them (versus SO) so long as they are on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Requirements, architecture, and design&quot; seems to apply well here. Further, the example off-topic reasons don't remotely apply to the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What gives?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28706" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7190" RevisionGUID="85388420-ae3d-4488-9770-d42f13e77fdc" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Coming up on this discussion - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/271585/53263&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because I'm trying to avoid this problem - https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1127/are-answers-being-posted-as-comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My answer is reproduced here, less the OP's original quote:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Wow! We do not work on the same code bases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Inversion of Control frameworks - like Guice or Spring - essentially strive to make this half of your problem, a pillar of design. Many arguments in constructors is totally fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Seriously, a typical constructor in my code base might have 20+ arguments. No apologies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have delete votes for this. I feel this is wrong because:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * people should be allowed to answer questions...&#xD;&#xA; * incompletely because they have something substantive to say but don't&#xD;&#xA;   have the desire for whatever reason to write something extensive...&#xD;&#xA; * letting others write better answers to flesh out the response if&#xD;&#xA;   possible...&#xD;&#xA; * because an incomplete answer such as mine may be&#xD;&#xA;   extremely helpful to the OP and future visitors...&#xD;&#xA; * and answer *as* an answer since the comment muck is not appropriate for what is, in fact, an answer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm disappointed I have delete votes and downvotes for what seems to be incompleteness alone, and want to see what meta thinks." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28707" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6246" RevisionGUID="8be0529b-68cd-4dbd-a688-1ee302102faa" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="From https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/215501/how-to-improve-design-ability/215507#215507&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When a question that is very broad is asked, it is an attempt to see how well you are able to work through the question. Asking &quot;How do you implement a game of Monopoly&quot; wants you to think through the problem. How do you represent the board, the cards, the placement of the tokens, the rules for the special squares, the houses and hotels and property values...&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The interviewer wants to see you work through the problem and talk about the data types being used and the like. When you hit an area where you are unfamiliar with, how you work through that part of the problem is another key point of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The thing here is that questions asked in interviews are often poor P.SE questions because they have different goals.  The interviewer isn't interested in the right answer as such, but rather how the interviewee thinks and works through the problem.  On the other hand, on a Q&amp;A site, we are interested in the solution rather than the process of coming to the answer (its sometimes useful, but not the focus of the site).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Interview questions *by their nature* are often too broad for the Q&amp;A site format." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28708" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7404" RevisionGUID="c16d1990-5b12-46f9-a7e8-574cfad16ef4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The locked questions that I am particularly (dis)interested in are the ones that were historically locked at some point in the back and *really* haven't aged well. They are relatively low view and vote.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[is:question closed:yes locked:yes duplicate:no migrated:no views:..3000 votes:..20](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=is%3Aquestion+closed%3Ayes+locked%3Ayes+duplicate%3Ano+migrated%3Ano+views%3A..3000+votes%3A..20)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note that this picks up a fair number of rejected migrations too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This query brings up things such as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/163/language-agnostic-programming-books : score of 20, 1242 views, 10 answers of which many of them are *really* poorly written links and one liners.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1674/suggestions-for-programs-to-develop-for-learning : score of 12, 894 views, very poorly written question, 9 answers of which most are a single sentence.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1701/career-guidance-books-for-programmers : score of 18, 1463 views, 10 answers and it shouldn't be a surprise that I include it here because most are single sentence answers (some not even a sentence)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2192/what-can-slow-a-developer-down : score of 12, 1606 views, 31 answers (2 deleted), and... yes, mostly single sentence answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2331/which-language-features-are-considered-harmful : score of 20, 2454 views, 32 answers. Mostly single sentence answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I hold that these questions (and others) should be closely reexamined with the [criteria from MSE](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/126631/213963).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not believe that any of these questions meet the criteria of &quot;The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature&quot; and likely also fail to come close to the criteria of &quot;There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post&quot;.  Despite these question being several years old they have not shown that they have the views or the score to warrant permanency.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe that these questions should be deleted. If you wish to unlock them first and then have the community delete them, that's certainly an option.  Note that only one of them in this list would require more than three delete votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After digging a bit on Data.SE [this isn't too big of a list to re-evaluate](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/321872?Views=3000&amp;Score=20) (once you get the migrations, unlocked, and merged questions out of there) it brings up a number of... well,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/21032/help-me-construct-a-list-of-best-approaches-for-new-c-and-c-developers (+1 score, 483 views, wiki lock, last accessed a year ago)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/65316/what-are-some-tips-for-avoiding-death-by-powerpoint-during-a-technical-present (+1 score, 956 views with some really not stellar answers)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/11757/what-are-good-social-coding-sites (+2 score, 1938 views with answers of &quot;github&quot;, &quot;bitbucket&quot; and &quot;bitbucket&quot; and &quot;I have a public svn server&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/141676/recommendable-reads-about-programming-history (+3 score, 539 views, 10 answers of which half don't even take up enough space to line wrap)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are questions that we are saying have historical significance and are stellar examples (all be it off topic) of what the site wishes to maintain.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28710" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8216" RevisionGUID="1ca62d16-8ae1-4e5e-bd4f-0fd5385fca2d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/331919/131624&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reminds me of&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/331878/deploying-multiple-wars-on-one-server-instance-vs-each-on-a-server&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/99553/deploying-multiple-wars-small-websites&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't see the deleted question but this seems awfully familiar.  How do I flag in a case like this?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28711" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3740" RevisionGUID="4859733b-e7fe-4c0b-8456-53faee998ad0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The line is vague and blurry and comes down to how you and other community members place the question on this diagram (which is prominently displayed in the [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![the off-centre target that is our goal](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ociNc.png)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A lot of questions *do* fall outside the blue area, but there are some general sounding questions that do fall inside it as they do require the expertise and experience that only another software developer can bring. It's difficult to describe what such a question would look like and I don't always see it even when others point it out, but they do exist.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't know why one question attracted close votes (and possibly flags) and the other didn't, but clearly at least two community members thought that the first question didn't fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There isn't a &quot;one size fits all&quot; solution to this problem. Each question must be taken on it's merits and treated individually. What you should consider doing (in no particular order):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Edit the question so that it does fit - but without losing the intent of the author.&#xD;&#xA;2. Vote to close where the question cannot be made to fit. Flag if you have less than 3,000 reputation.&#xD;&#xA;3. Vote to reopen where you think a question has been incorrectly closed. You may want to discuss in in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21) or here on meta to get other user's views. If absolutely necessary flag it for moderator attention. Please note however, that you are more likely to get a question reopened if you have edited it to correct the original defects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, if you think that https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154565/where-does-a-technical-programmer-fit-in-and-what-does-the-title-mean was unfairly closed, do items 1 and 3 above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Equally if you think that https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154822/does-it-work-when-a-developer-is-the-project-managers-boss should be closed, do item 2 above." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28712" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7406" RevisionGUID="b9e255ee-690e-48c5-ab93-ff68ea7facf4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The close vote reason provides a description of why the question was closed. It also brings you to the [help center page for what it means when a question is closed](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions). That help page, among other things, has a link to a page that [tells you what to do when a question is closed](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/reopen-questions).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When a question is closed, you should read the reason for closure attached to the question and the linked content in the Help Center. You should also see if anyone has left a comment explaining their vote. If you disagree with the closure or don't understand it, the help center says that you should ask on Meta. Here on Programmers, we have a regular chat that may also provide help as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although this focuses on down votes, it's relevant to close votes as well:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/154895/downvoting-without-comment-why-its-allowed&#xD;&#xA;* https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-downvotes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28713" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7202" RevisionGUID="b19feda7-2b9f-4f47-9a72-652c7f9771a3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question got closed as off-topic with the reason that it's &quot;asking for advice on what to do&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/274551/what-are-the-possible-repercussions-of-developing-an-application-for-a-customer?noredirect=1#comment562488_274551&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am trying to understand why, and if there is anything more I can do to salvage the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The link of the close comment links to this meta post on **The Workplace**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2693/custom-off-topic-close-reasons-change/2695#2695&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not even sure why a Workplace meta post counts as a reason to close on Programmers, but I followed the advice there anyway:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Another alternative is to edit your post to ask about why and how you should make the decision, rather than just what decision to make. For instance, instead of asking &quot;Should I take the job in the big multi-national company or the up-and-coming startup?&quot; you could ask a question that will help you make that decision, like &quot;How can I figure out the financial health of a startup I am applying to by asking questions in an interview?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I edited the question to not ask for what I should do, but for information that helps me make the decision myself. The question got closed anyway.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also I am not sure that the reason for closure in the meta post even applies to me:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Our goal here at The Workplace is to help out people in the future who are facing the same problem. When people ask us for personalized advice, a lot of the specific details will not apply to other people who come across the question since their details may be slightly different and they can't determine whether or not the answer is appropriate for their situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem in the question is pretty generic and I tried to keep it general enough so that it will be helpful to people with a similar problem (customers asking for something that violates someone else's TOS).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Someone mentioned that it is a matter of legal advice, but that's only a part of the problem really. Also, there are many other questions with a similar direction that weren't closed for that reason, for example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/86754/is-it-illegal-to-rewrite-every-line-of-an-open-source-project-in-a-slightly-diff&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/49067/what-to-do-if-you-find-a-vulnerability-in-a-competitors-site&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Both of those questions handle legal topics as well, but are deemed on-topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Can someone explain to me why my question is off-topic?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Is there a chance to edit it so it could be reopened? If yes, in what way should I change the question?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To make my point, this question is both about a legal topic and asking what to do (and in relation to a client asking for something risky as well on top!), and still is on-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/118136/should-i-accept-to-write-unsecure-code-if-my-employer-requests-me-to-do-so&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I really have a hard time to see where the line is between on- and off-topic questions here to be honest." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28714" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6327" RevisionGUID="836e75bf-134b-431c-b6eb-2a515ca0df5e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked a batch of related questions in https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/220890/when-did-current-source-control-management-emerge and I am wondering what is the best preactice to do so.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one asks several related questions in a single SE-question, it might be hard to choose appropriately a correct answer or to attribute a bounty.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If one asks a lot of small questions, sharing some common background, it looks like flooding or spamming and may irritate readers, because of the repeating shared background.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the best practice here?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28715" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8218" RevisionGUID="2648e0d9-1db0-41cc-adb0-b72886181e72" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Virtually every question from this site that I see on the 'hot questions' list strikes me as a pure exercise in eliciting conflicting opinions. They may be expert opinions, or they may not, but they do not come close to some sort of objective standard. The most recent example I've seen: [&quot;Is readability a reason not to use const parameters.&quot;][1]. If the standards of this site are going to continue to encourage this sort of thing, I'll continue to give it a miss. If you are aiming to squeeze this stuff out in favor of questions that are less opinionated, I might start showing up and answering some things.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another example of interest to me: [Let's Debate Two Buzzwords][2]. This one is currently protected, but open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/331678/is-readability-a-valid-reason-to-not-use-const-in-parameters&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/331864/does-tdd-make-defensive-programming-redundant" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28716" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6286" RevisionGUID="8635b5ec-9b85-4786-8803-56f29a0af8bd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question][1] is marked as a dupe of a deleted question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please unmark it as dupe, or resurrect the deleted question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/29531/what-are-some-good-programming-exercises-projects-to-help-me-learn-new-languages?rq=1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28717" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3757" RevisionGUID="05774e91-4cc6-4f89-ba8b-fff30366904b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You seriously have no idea why you were suspended?  This came as a complete surprise?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/85296/what-does-uitable-reloaddata-really-do-anyway&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/150873/model-view-controller-application-in-objective-c-sorting-which-one-is-which&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/151097/how-to-handle-key-in-php-array-if-the-key-contains-japanese-characters&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/151115/whats-typical-work-hour-for-programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/153860/what-questions-i-should-ask-apple-tech-support&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/153862/does-ios-has-api-to-access-contacts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/153863/do-we-have-api-to-close-all-background-software-in-ios&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In less than two months you were able to achieve the astounding feat of posting 7 questions which have resulted in deletion.  There are a few more which were closed.  More than half of your questions were closed or deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your questions have been either of low quality or completely offtopic as was laid out in the [Frequently Asked Questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq).  You were also contacted privately where we asked you to better familiarize yourself with the FAQ so that you can understand what kinds of questions we look for on Programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You were given ample warning and multiple people have tried to give you direction." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28718" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7413" RevisionGUID="0b212b8e-a0d7-4edd-b247-034f15c74449" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/285787/clean-code-comments-vs-class-documentation/285795 was closed as a duplicate of https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1/comments-are-a-code-smell&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are a couple of reasons I'm finding this difficult to understand.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**First,** they explicitly ask about different things. The first is about documentation comments, and says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is not a question about in-line comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the second says is about in-line comments and says:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (ie, not javadoc style method or class comments)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a result, both questions have answers- including the accepted answer for each question- which would not be a valid answer to the other. The accepted answer to the closed question, for example, is about expressing a method's intent through it's signature, which would not have made sense on the other question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Second,** the &quot;Comments are a code smell&quot; question has been closed as not constructive and locked as only existing because it has &quot;historical interest&quot;. My understanding was that the choice of which question to mark as duplicate isn't just about which is older, but which is the better question. For example, the [help center][1] describes one function of questions marked as duplicate:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but often they are left as a signpost pointing people towards the canonical answer to that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that, it seems bizarre to close a good question as a duplicate of one that would have been deleted if it weren't for &quot;historical interest&quot;. Does it make sense to have a signpost pointing to such a question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/duplicates" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28719" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6334" RevisionGUID="a3916ccd-a53c-4c8d-9803-d4ce9e16591b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've been continuously improving my answer on https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/221152/freelance-charging-based-on-tasks-completed&#xD;&#xA;Now after my 11th revision, without any other contributers adding to my answer, my answer has been converted to a community wiki answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why is this done if there's only 1 editor to the answer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think its unfair to not receive credit for the work I put into that answer. (if it get any votes in the first place)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28720" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3768" RevisionGUID="cf764bb5-2d0a-48f4-b2c7-f0cee6c0bec5" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**Jul 20 update:** [question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/156336/2366) has been unlocked [per discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/5436540#5436540) and reworded as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Looking for a definitive answer from a primary or secondary source for why did (notably) Java and C# decide to have a static method as their entry point – rather than representing an application instance by an instance of an `Application` class, with the entry point being an appropriate constructor?  &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Feedback on revised wording would be much appreciated.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;[I asked a question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/156336/2366) about the historical perspective of a feature in C# and Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was closed as “not constructive”. Needless to say, I disagree. But more importantly, I don’t understand the reasons. I fail to see what distinguishes this question from, say, [“Why does F# have an interactive mode but not C#?”](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/156303/2366)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In fact, I was hoping for the same kind of answer. The latter question had the enormous luck of having Eric Lippert answer it authoritatively – but the same *kind* of answer would fit my own question perfectly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what’s the criterion here? Was I just unlucky / the other question lucky? Or is there a distinction that I fail to see? Or could I improve the way the question is asked? I’d be more than happy to." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28721" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6288" RevisionGUID="ae38778f-0530-4c8a-ac9c-8b7f1791d9f3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="My question [Which concepts are pertinent to plan a “end-user documentation” strategy?][1] has been closed, and I do not completely understand why.The reason invoked is&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract&#xD;&#xA;&gt; opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has been done so far to solve it.&quot; – Eric King, GlenH7, World Engineer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not think that this apply to my question, and _argued_ my position in the comments of the question.  These arguments were not answered and the question has been closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can I get any chance to reword my question in an appropriate manner if moderators do not provide details about their decision when asked?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/213291/which-concepts-are-pertinent-to-plan-a-end-user-documentation-strategy&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28722" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8243" RevisionGUID="8e04e7f4-e36d-4e98-b0c2-19165babfe9e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:48.047" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Lately, I've seen a number of questions closed as duplicates with only gnat's vote, such as https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/332688/3965 &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[![marked as duplicate by gnat, Community][1]][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as I know, the only legitimate way to do this is by having a [gold badge](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/dupehammer/info &quot;'dupehammer' feature&quot;) in one of the associated tags.  As gnat's one and only tag badge is a bronze badge in [tag:java], I can only assume this is a bug.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/OxUw9.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28723" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6387" RevisionGUID="722e77a9-7307-41b0-b42e-3dea2b6d3eed" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="If I feel like a certain user is harassing me, editing my answers, downvoting my answers, closing my questions, making offensive and condescending comments, or anything like that; what can I do? I have read the relevant FAQs:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Who are the site moderators, and what is their role here?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Why and how are some questions deleted?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What if I disagree with the closure of a question? How can I reopen it?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/site-moderators &quot;Who are the site moderators, and what is their role here?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/deleted-questions &quot;Why and how are some questions deleted?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/reopen-questions &quot;What if I disagree with the closure of a question? How can I reopen it?&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But what I am asking about is a specific person who seems to be &quot;following me around&quot; the site. I only have one answer and one (closed) question on Programmers.SE, and both of them have positive reputation and upvotes, apart from this single user who is consistently harassing me. Is there something I can do to report that?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28724" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3856" RevisionGUID="e2165317-2d42-4ef2-84da-89dea40edb2c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm confused as to why my recent [question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/159053/file-naming-conventions-for-javascript-multi-word-names) on naming conventions in JavaScript was closed as &quot;not constructive.&quot; The best explanation I can find in the closed notice and FAQ is that &quot;this question will likely solicit debate [or] arguments,&quot; which I'm guessing has something to do with the fact that people might have many different opinions on the &quot;proper&quot; way to name JavaScript files. I understand that naming conventions can be a subjective topic, since a convention is by definition an opinion, but I only asked this question after searching around the site and finding that there are plenty of other questions on naming conventions that have been upvoted and answered. Can someone please explain why my question is not constructive but other questions about naming conventions are?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28725" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3863" RevisionGUID="dcaf1087-334b-45da-a028-6cdffd15a2a9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="To follow up on my comment. Now that the tag has been removed from all existing questions it will disappear from the suggestions after 24 hours and will require users with [more than 300 reputation](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/create-tags) to suggestion it again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it reappears we can request that it be blacklisted, but that's a last resort." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28726" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7279" RevisionGUID="8da0a711-972a-41d8-8844-db1b267668b7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I had a rather interesting response when offering [an answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/278726/31260) to this question: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/102593/tips-on-converting-a-c-program-to-pure-python&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question has since been &quot;protected&quot; because it has &quot;attracted **low-quality** answers.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I fail to see how my answer merits that." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28727" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7437" RevisionGUID="d0dd1937-fc49-405b-85a3-453b7197f724" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've [expounded on locked questions before](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7404/40980) and mentioned that these often age poorly. If something *is* to be locked, especially today, it should have some amount of moderation and curation done. These are things that we should be putting in museums as questions that can produce good quality and we should aspire to (&quot;see, look, we can have good material on very soft questions if people act to moderate and keep the quality up&quot;) rather than things we want to lock away and forget.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To this, I really have to ask about why https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8104/how-many-developers-actually-have-private-offices was locked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question had 4 delete votes on it (6 needed total for it based on votes and popularity).  It was locked.  And... well... if it is something that we should be keeping around (I don't believe so - that's why one of those delete votes is mine), before it is locked it should be evaluated for:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Poor quality and negatively scored posts should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;* Too chatty / not constructive comments should be deleted.&#xD;&#xA;* Tags that are part of a burnination process should be removed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What really gets me here is that this question really is just a poll with one answer that is reasonable (but doesn't answer the poll question) and 23 answers that are &quot;I've got an office&quot; or &quot;I have an open plan.&quot; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel that this type of question - old polls - really doesn't age well and isn't indicative of what good quality on the site should be.  It is exactly the watercooler conversation type thing and getting to know you that the six subjective guidelines were put in place to prevent. That it hasn't been seen much and there are no in bound links from other questions on Programmers.SE suggests that it really isn't that valuable of a post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This type of question is the type of thing that a [Slashdot poll](http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl) (for example [do you need to wear headphones while working](http://it.slashdot.org/poll/2669/do-you-need-headphones-while-working)) does better than a Q&amp;A format site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I cannot flag [the post](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/8104/how-many-developers-actually-have-private-offices) (its locked), and this question wouldn't fit into a flag text, please either:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Unlock the post so that it may continue with the normal lifecycle of a post&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;or&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Delete all poor quality material (I believe this would be 'all posts other than the accepted answer' - or first and third if you stretch it a bit), remove the burnination tags ([tag:jobs] and [tag:job-title] are both in [the current round](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7287/40980)), and rework the body of the question so that it isn't a poll and is answered exactly by the accepted answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28728" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3959" RevisionGUID="0b4640b2-be44-4605-a76d-5cc0e6a33952" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Recently [Does C# give you “less rope to hang yourself” than C++?][1] was asked - I thought the question was too wide in scope, voted to close and commented as such:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; From the FAQ: Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.. I believe this qualifies as such a question...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP, several days later responded with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @Oded Being a n00b I almost deleted my question because of your comments. It was only happenstance that I did not -- I was interrupted, then took Sunday off. By Monday there were over 500 views, 7 answers, lots of up votes and 2 favorites. I humbly submit that immediately commenting new questions with a hypertechnical meta reason that it shouldn't have been asked actually damages the community more than it helps. If the question had been sitting for days or even hours it might have been more appropriate, but the above comments happened within minutes of the original post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is currently open, has over 800 views, 7 answers and only two close votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Was I wrong to write what I did? Does it go against the Summer of Love? &#xD;&#xA;- Does the question belong on Programmers and if so, why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am not trying to close the question - I am looking for some enlightenment here. I see that both the OP and I have good points and that yes, the question appears to be a popular one and has some great answers. But I still feel it is overly broad in scope and not right for Programmers (or Stack Exchange in general).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/162303/4767" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28730" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6307" RevisionGUID="35256fd6-9da8-4cf5-af39-2a4905ceaec8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="_10k+ only link:_  [This is the question you're asking about](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/219691/is-the-mvc-software-architecture-used-only-in-web-development)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the time of deletion, it had a suggested duplicate question in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The owner of the question chose to delete it." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28732" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7440" RevisionGUID="9df3e546-d5cd-4ff6-8a3e-c356b07e1486" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="**TL;DR** Suggest to [undelete the question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7438/31260) since it was edited to a better shape and made match the top answer. After that, remove &quot;poll item&quot; answers invalidated by the question edit and reopen.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that in its current shape the question staying visible is not okay, even as historically locked. Low quality &quot;historical context&quot; seems to totally obscure worthy content in there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As of now, it looks like a blatant poll, followed by multiple useless poll item &quot;answers&quot; (including even a [different question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/11110 &quot;blatant not-an-answer: 'Is there any software company in the US besides Microsoft and FogCreek Software which provides private offices for software engineers?'&quot;) posted as an answer) so that most readers could only wonder what was the reason to keep it at all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Worth noting that it looks like an exceptional case for question to be so much overwhelmed with bad content. All other historical questions I recall _do_ have bad stuff (otherwise there'd be no lock), but good parts in these are prominent enough and readers don't have to guess why these were decided to keep.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With above in mind, our options seem to be as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**1\.** Delete. Easy way out, the one I wanted before I stumbled over this meta question, but now, upon closer studying of the [top answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/8203/31260) I am not quite comfortable about it anymore.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2\. Unlock the question, retag to [tag:productivity] (to clear all issues related to ongoing tag cleanups), then pick one of the following:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.1\.** Add a moderator comment referring to [this meta discussion](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7437/31260), so that readers interested in historical context could discover it without having to stare at all 20+ low quality answers over there. After that, remove all answers except the top one, then lock it back.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**2\.2\.** [Aggressively edit](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1820/168) the question to bring it to better shape, worrying only about keeping consistency with top answer, about like as follows:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;So I know everyone here is all about private offices, how many developers actually have them. I am sort of half skeptical. I can believe that lead developers have them, but that's normally just one person in your average office.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;That makes me wonder, how many developers have private offices. Which leads to the actual question: why should they have them?&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question [edit summary](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/edit-summary/info &quot;what's this&quot;) would better refer this meta discussion to help readers of edit history find out what led to the radical change.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After the edit, remove all answers that fail to match the revised question (as far as I can tell, these would be all except for the top answer), then reopen. Side note an edit drafted above would also &quot;trigger&quot; removal of the opening sentence from the top answer (&quot;I think the question should be...&quot;) but that's rather minor.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Advantage of #2.1 is that it guarantees that worthy content is preserved. In comparison, 2.2 carries a (rather minor) risk that edited question will be eventually closed again and deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Advantage of #2.2 is that it doesn't introduce deviation of our usual practice to avoid cleanup prior to locking - since it doesn't involve locking at all. (that practice is in turn based on common sense - if you do cleanup anyway, it's only reasonable to improve content up to the point when it doesn't need locking at all)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As for #1 (delete), it looks really inferior in comparison. It only doesn't deviate from our locking practices, but so does #2.2, which additionally offers a solid chance of preserving worthy content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming that risk involved in #2.2 is minor, it looks like most appealing option." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28733" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3968" RevisionGUID="a2f59235-dc66-4ef5-84ba-37ccb224f36e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="They work for me ;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are several links around that will return a 404 for you, but work for others. I'm sure you have noticed by now that we have a [reputation based privilege system][1], you get access to a variety of tools &amp; toys as you earn reputation. And when you reach 10,000 you will be able to [see deleted questions][2], if you have a direct link to them and the links in your profile you point to would work just fine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A 404 error does not necessarily mean that there's nothing there and there will never be, just that there's nothing there *right now*. Let's see how [rfc2616 describes it][3] (emphasis mine): &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ### 10.4.5 404 Not Found&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. **No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.** The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address. **This status code is commonly used when the server does not wish to reveal exactly why the request has been refused, or when no other response is applicable.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Simply put 404 is the preferred error code when something is not there but may be available in the future, and in our case that means when you get some more reputation points. But why have the links at all in your profile? Well, three reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. It would be an overly complicated solution to remove _all_ the links when you don't access them, and the benefit (if any) would be extremely small. Reputation is fluid, I was jumping over and under 10K for a couple of days&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; and it would be a mess to update every link every time I got or lost access to the 10K privileges. Especially the profile page is a very low priority aspect of the site, and is cached aggressively, showing the links only when you can follow them would require the cache to be refreshed every time you get the privilege or lose it. That'd be a lot of work for nothing... &#xD;&#xA; 1. Moderators and diamonded Stack Exchange employees can see your profile the same way you do (the only exception being the votes tab), so if the links updated as you gained or lost privileges, another snapshot of your profile would be required for all of us that can see it from a moderator's perspective. &#xD;&#xA; 1. Most of these links lead to deleted questions and answers, and in case you'd want to make a case against the deletion, having the link would be extremely helpful, even if you can't actually see the deleted posts. Others can follow it and get a better idea of why it was deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, _some_ of the links are indeed removed, and it's a lot easier to do that on just the delete event than to scan back all actions the question generated and update them all. A small inconsistency, but a harmless one (imho) and I think the easiest solution to it would be to just not remove the links (but let's not poke the bear on this one). Worth noting that this is a rare case where the question was deleted only a day after it was asked (yes, it was that bad), typically we wait at least a month before deleting closed questions, and if that had happened you probably wouldn't even notice (the events would be far apart in your profile).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm marking this as [status-bydesign] as you predicted ;) &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; That's a theoretical example, as a moderator I have access to all toys, regardless of reputation. That said I would like to take this opportunity to thank the serial voter who took me over (and under when the script run) 10K a couple of times, that was a blast :| Serial voting is a bad idea in general, but it's exceptionally moronic  when you are serially voting one of the very few who have access to tools that detect abusive voting patterns and can find out who you are.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-10.4.5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28734" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7309" RevisionGUID="6aeb6559-361e-4fa4-a7c3-5adb2d984e53" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/159369/67524 is marked as a duplicate, however the duplicate [link][1] returns 404.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is the appropriate action going forward here?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Should the question be closed?&#xD;&#xA; - Should the question be removed in its entirety?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel like this creates a bad impression of members and visitors looking for this information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I did see https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3969/67524 which seems to address a larger issue, but I would like to focus on this question in particular here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/159294/is-entity-framework-reliable-enough-to-use-in-a-corporate-project-should-i-use" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28736" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="3977" RevisionGUID="f9608f4c-83ce-44b3-b5f2-3a9e6bf87787" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I thought I was asking a straight question for a straight answer, but I guess I wasn't.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm just curious to why my question was closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/163566/what-makes-objective-c-such-a-popular-language&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;if this question is allowed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/141329/what-makes-c-so-popular-in-the-age-of-oop&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only difference I see between the two is the latter is entitled specifically to OOP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this isn't the suitable place to ask such question, where else can I post it within Stack Exchange?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Edit: I just saw Yannis's comment on my post to why it was closed. I do think the question itself have merits (to prospective objective-C developers, for example), but I guess it's not really worded well and does lack technical details." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28738" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6309" RevisionGUID="7e406969-ff94-4daf-a3db-b736f7b71256" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Question in review:  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/219700/53019&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Thunderforge][2] asked in [chat][1] &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I recently had my question put on hold and I'd like to know how I can improve it so that it can be reopened.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It seems to me that the comments have indeed been attracting opinions, but the answers themselves have been polished up to be decent, supported by studies or experience.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd like to know what more needs to be done in order to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As it's a holiday weekend in the United States, I have moved his question here to meta in order to help provide some answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So what can be done to improve the question and make it more constructive?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/12385464#12385464&#xD;&#xA;[2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/81973/thunderforge" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28740" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4002" RevisionGUID="2d991b6a-e454-42ab-8315-b1228456aaf8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Book (or resource) on Java bytecode][1] was recently asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I voted to close immediately, without really reading (or understanding) much of of the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should questions that request resources get automatic close votes from members such as myself?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/164204/4767" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28741" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6646" RevisionGUID="c51d8708-ce38-40a2-a18a-91371c109a21" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here the link to the question:&#xD;&#xA;[ExtensionPoints design and architecture with examples][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/238139/extensionpoints-design-and-architecture-with-examples" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28742" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7471" RevisionGUID="47ea521f-de5b-46fa-9a7b-112df91d2fb1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There's a question [what is the meaning of manage c++?][1] that is pretty clearly not a good fit for this site.  There's a duplicate on SO, and the question was more or less answered in the comments.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm OK with closing this one (and was about to vote to close), when I saw it had 4 &quot;your question is unclear&quot; votes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It appears to me that we're starting to use **&quot;unclear what you are asking&quot;** as a synonym for **&quot;we don't like your question&quot;** or **&quot;your question doesn't fit the site&quot;**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In a way, this is a duplicate of [Is it really unclear what is being asked?][2], except I'd like to focus on the reason for closing, not the merits of a single question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/288618/64132&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6217/64132" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28744" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7479" RevisionGUID="88806b7d-909b-4ff6-80d0-a50349888d39" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="We recently had a [very poor quality question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/288861/53019) seemingly bypass the [filter for all caps in a title](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6854/53019).  And about a month ago, there was [another poor quality question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/285515/53019) that made it through the quality filter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. _Bug report:_ Can we have someone please check and see if the quality filter is still enabled to prevent those all caps questions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. _Feature request:_ Can a regression test be generated so that the next time the filter breaks it's detected earlier in the development cycle?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28745" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6682" RevisionGUID="d420fb61-0c1e-4a00-bdb5-faed95b58248" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question ticked me off a bit:&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/243190/software-monetization-that-is-not-evil&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's basically a question about how to monetize software without using toolbars.&#xD;&#xA;And while I know a large population hates those toolbars and may even find them evil. I also think it's large irrelevant to the question of calling certain things evil.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, a question should be a question that's answerable, just that, not also a platform for personal beliefs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, should you edit out something like that in a question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28746" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4064" RevisionGUID="f7d36248-aa5a-48a5-876c-92fd09d31227" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is how the [stats for the low quality posts queue][1] looks like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Same thing happens in the history tab, for example check out the [first posts history][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Just in case this is browser specific, I'm on Chrome 22.0.1229.79 m (latest stable), on Win7.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review-beta/low-quality-posts/stats&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/J791P.png&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review-beta/first-posts/history" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28747" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6321" RevisionGUID="33cdae85-5103-4c13-b3ca-da515767172a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Your level of experience doesn't matter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What all Stack Exchange sites are about is getting **expert** answers to your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, you do have to find the right site for your question. Check the `\help\on-topic` page for each site to see if your question fits.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ours is [here](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflows is [here](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28748" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7493" RevisionGUID="7c3c34e8-61c9-4f46-a1bd-b17c9ae04b73" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="For the non-10k users, a screen capture of the entire post: [jpeg](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fo04d.jpg) (I had to switch from png to jpeg and reduce the image quality to get it to fit into the upload constraints - it started out as a 4.4 megabyte file)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that we've got that out of the way and we can look at it:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I have difficulty identifying the actual problem. The question gives a bit of history, and then starts going into &quot;I'm right&quot; and &quot;why does everyone (other than delphi programmers) not to notice this?&quot;  Beyond that point, it goes to some odd tangent of personal experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can't find the question that can be solved. It reads like a giant blog post. The [help center](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) specifically calls out the types of questions that don't work in the Stack Exchange format:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;2. your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;3. there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”&#xD;&#xA;4. you are asking an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;5. your question is just a rant in disguise: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This feels like a some degree of fit for #2, #3, and #5. The bit for #2 is that first part of &quot;your answer is provided along with the question&quot;:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why conflicts due to join are not a problem whereas Diamond, which I hopefully explanied very well is a solution, is a problem for you instead of Join? Why solution is considered a problem whereas the problem itself is totally ignored?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You've provided a solution to something, but I'm not exactly sure what that something is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If I had close votes, I would have cast them as [unclear](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6489#6489) too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, this question didn't end there. The comments immediately start out with:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As I expected, they will downvote and close the question. This is a taboo question. They silence the question to silence it. It would be stupid to let it come to the surface and discussed. –  Recognize Evil as Waste 6 hours ago &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and eventually gets to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; @RecognizeEvilasWaste good grief; give it a rest, would you? This isn't a place to rant (if you want to do that, open your own blog), it's to ask and answer (answerable, on-topic) questions. Also, bear in mind that the probability that you're a misunderstood genius is somewhat lower than the probability that you've misunderstood something. –  jonrsharpe 4 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; jonrsharpe expands unjustified smearing of my question (it is clearly a question, I wounder how you bend your brain to read it otherwise) with personal attacks. It seems that so far there was not enough dirt for me. –  Recognize Evil as Waste 4 hours ago&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The resulting post and comments are no longer suitable for a question and answer site and any hope of civil discourse (note that discussions shouldn't the focus of a question) are lost when Thomas Owens locks it down to try to cool things off and then decides that its really beyond repair.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Overflow has their [Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) which goes to trying to clearly identify the problem in a way that is understandable by all.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question fails at that minimal aspect with significant amounts of other material that I don't understand why its there. It gets into half adders and... well... there isn't an answerable problem there. As I read it, there is instead a manifesto of multiple inheritance and asking why the rest of the world is ignoring this solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This type of question really isn't a good fit for the Q&amp;A format. Maybe you want to instead post such on other sites. It might work there. However, I would encourage you to not come out swinging and looking for a fight about taboo subjects (there not, we're just bored of them) immediately.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For Stack Exchange, please try to concentrate on answerable questions that don't take more than a few paragraphs to answer. Questions like the one you ask would take significantly more to refute (possibly into the 'needs to be a white paper' size) and if you're going to attack anyone who answers or tries to gain a better understanding of what you are asking you may get a similar reception there." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28749" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6721" RevisionGUID="2dadf011-9511-4fc0-b50b-5afb4be46d88" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/246034/power-of-2-and-performance-in-sql-server - is this a &quot;good&quot; question by the standards of this site?  Sure, it's an advanced optimisation programming technique.  But my first response was &quot;so what&quot;?  Either my application needs to divide by 255 or it needs to divide by 256.  It's not like I'm *not* going to use SQL Server for that one query in my applicaiton and install a customised MariaDB instance to save a few nanoseconds.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I thought about flagging it.  &quot;It should be closed for another reason&quot; was the only option which made sense.  &quot;Too broad&quot; it diametrically opposite to what it is and nothing under &quot;off topic&quot; matched my concerns.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It *is* interesting, but its not &quot;practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face&quot; IMHO. Guidance, please?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28750" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6370" RevisionGUID="916fbcae-01c8-4daf-a475-473538e95ac7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't think that pure citational answers are a good idea, because of legal reasons (but IANAL):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All user contributions on Stack Exchange sites are licensed under CC-BY-SA (see the footer of this page). An user can only grant a license to content he created himself. I don't think that simply copying and pasting a few paragraphs of text and applying some formatting creates new content. This reasoning ins moot in two cases:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The cited content was licensed under a compatible license, or&#xD;&#xA; * The citation is small enough that it can be considered to be “fair use”. Note that “fair use” is an US legal term and does not necessarily exist at other locations.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, any user who was considering to post a pure citational answer can easily build his own answer from that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * Explain how the quote is relevant to the question and possibly give examples.&#xD;&#xA; * Only quote the essential point and refer to the whole content, e.g. via a link or book title. This has to be balanced so that the answer isn't reduced to an equally bad link-only answer: Links can break, so the answer should still be able to be useful on its own without the linked content.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Citations should generally be marked as such, e.g. with “quotes” or a blockquote environment (in Markdown: start each line with a `&gt;`). The source should always be mentioned to make the quote verifiable and to allow a reader to explore the context of the quote. It is also a matter of honesty to mark the work of others as such.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [answer which you linked to](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/222720/60357) as an example seems a bit borderline, but is actually OK. In case the answer gets edited, I am referring to the *first* revision (i.e. original answer).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; * The content in the citation plus the large image is copied verbatim from Wikipedia.&#xD;&#xA; * Wikipedia content is also licensed under CC-BY-SA, so the license is compatible with this site.&#xD;&#xA; * The cited text is attributed in the form of the link to the Wikipedia page where it was taken from. It would have been better to unambiguously show *which* link the content was taken from.&#xD;&#xA; * The citation is framed by a few sentences of explanation that show how it is relevant to the question. The answer would still “work” without the citation, so the answerer has created his own content here.&#xD;&#xA; * Only relevant parts of the source were quoted, and all images were mirrored. Therefore this answer will stay useful even when the links break.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If we want to be really exact we could criticize that it isn't immediately obvious that the large image is part of the quote, and lacks correct attribution. This attribution could have been given implicitly by including the image in the blockquote or by linking to the image's page on Wikipedia. It is also possible that future revisions of the Wikipedia page remove the cited content. Therefore it would have been more correct (in terms of attribution) to link to the specific revision of the Wikipedia page." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28751" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7532" RevisionGUID="248b2878-c349-4455-891b-6889fd1665c9" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This is a resource request and is [off-topic][1] on this site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For more information, please see [Why was my question closed or down voted?][2] The short version is any such recommendations are one-off to a specific time and person, while the site is trying to be a repository of knowledge useful to _many_ people and for the future as well. No question can truly be 100% future-proof. However, development environment tools and versions change constantly, making them an especially poor fit for the Q&amp;A format.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6487/&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28753" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4075" RevisionGUID="8fee89fe-abcf-46a2-a348-77130add7129" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="OK, so I added this question last year: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/112270/is-it-unusual-for-a-small-company-15-developers-not-to-use-managed-source-vers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question got a fair bit of interest and a number of people made it a favourite question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've just added an update to say that X has happened since the question was asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this acceptable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I just suddenly thought perhaps the Q&amp;A format of the site would prohibit this (I'd be happy to remove the update if so..).&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28754" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7453" RevisionGUID="773f1de4-91b1-42b5-91f3-60b3428e9570" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="# Burninate / replace the tag from closed, locked questions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/250840/tags-that-only-exist-on-locked-questions-should-we-treat-these-the-same-as-tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Pending questions with multiple tags&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/14706/overtime-is-part-of-the-job-true-but-a-bad-attitude?s=9|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Replace both [tag:jobs] and [tag:work-environment] with [tag:productivity]&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2757/how-many-monitors-do-you-use-why-how-they-are-used?s=11|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Pending questions with only one tag&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/59173/why-do-ads-for-s-w-engineers-always-say-they-offer-a-fast-paced-environment&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:development-environment] would be superior to [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/11312/stuff-every-programmer-needs-while-working?s=5|0.0000&#xD;&#xA; - [tag:development-environment] would be superior to [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA; - **Needs closure**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Edited questions&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/78547/how-do-you-tell-if-advice-from-a-senior-developer-is-bad&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/106980/perks-for-new-programmers&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - We should remove the tag, and [tag:hiring] too.&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/25432/how-can-a-new-programmer-impress-the-software-engineer-boss&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Both [tag:career-development] and [tag:work-environment] need to go. Replace with [tag:management]&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/604/is-the-80-character-limit-still-relevant-in-times-of-widescreen-monitors&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Remove [tag:work-environment]&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/81929/is-it-normal-for-people-to-not-work?s=4|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - Should be tagged [tag:productivity] instead&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2051/what-is-the-craziest-stupidest-silliest-thing-a-client-boss-asked-you-to-do&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA; - I've got nothing. [tag:team]? [tag:teamwork]? [tag:management]? All seem bad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;## Deleted questions&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5267/what-should-i-do-when-i-cant-reach-my-deadline?s=12|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/59740/change-managements-mind?s=13|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/45525/open-office-arrangement-with-non-programmers-sales-etc-talking-all-day?s=15|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/96871/my-manager-hates-documentation-in-our-large-project-what-should-i-do?s=16|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/102348/my-lead-does-not-co-operate-may-be-lack-of-knowledge-or-unwillingness?s=17|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/60091/programmers-and-database-professionals-in-performance-based-companies?s=18|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;&#xD;&#xA;- &lt;strike&gt;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/89606/working-at-home-for-a-junior-developer?s=14|0.0000&lt;/strike&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28755" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7572" RevisionGUID="4f7625c1-623e-4b89-8060-771e8d7ac191" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked [a question about whether an oft-quoted piece of programmer wisdom has empirical evidence to back it up](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/294820/is-there-any-evidence-based-examination-or-modification-of-brooks-law). &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question was closed within seconds using the close reason normally used for lazy questions asking for laundry lists of libraries and other resources. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the comments, it's not clear what the reasoning is - a comment says &quot;It looks like you're asking for a paper or book&quot;, but I'm not, I'm asking about the currently available evidence on a topic, the results of research testing a claim.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Are questions about empirical evidence off topic here? I see a lot of answers that are just one line, &quot;Someone said '[some witticism]'&quot; which get a surprising number of upvotes. Does this site favour anecdotes over evidence?&#xD;&#xA; - If not, how do I need to rephrase my question to allow someone to post an objective, factual answer like &quot;This has been investigated by researchers in [discipline], the evidence points towards [X] with [Y] caveat, the most recent peer-reviewed literature review / the largest study to date is [citation]&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This [meta thread][1] appears to suggest that questions about empirical evidence are on topic so long as they are about the state of the evidence, not &quot;What's the best book on X&quot;. That is absolutely 100% the intention of my question. Is this still the policy? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If so, how do I need to re-phrase my question to stop people misreading it as &quot;pleez can I has teh books&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Incidentally, this is the first time in 4+ years on stack exchange that I've run into problems for a question being *too* evidence based.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the discussion I've seen so far, I'm starting to get the impression that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - **What does real empirical research say regarding Brook's law?** would be of topic because when evidence is peer reviewed, it becomes an &quot;off site resource&quot; rather than a user's opinion&#xD;&#xA; - **Do you guys think Brook's law is true?** would somehow be more on topic because it relies on experience of users of the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Experienced programmers use research relevant to their field and are in a better position than anyone to see through methodological problems and see what is practical research and what is flawed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5589/is-a-question-about-research-material-on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28756" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4088" RevisionGUID="b7355b4c-3db8-484e-9716-93babeabbe4f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [FAQ says it all][1]. It's also discussed in [a blog post][2]. Constructive subjective questions meet most, if not all, of the criteria for good subjective questions. If there is extended discussion, then there are many equally valid answers or the question might be pushing other questions off the site where they won't get answered as quickly.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What kind of questions should I not ask here?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual&#xD;&#xA;&gt; problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. To&#xD;&#xA;&gt; prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; - every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.” we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question: “What if ______ happened?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; asking here. If your motivation is “I would like others to explain&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ______ to me”, then you are probably OK.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Extended discussions are more suitable for a forum or a chat room, not a question and answer site. You can make your own chat rooms on Stack Exchange sites for particular discussions, and most site (including Programmers) has a general catch-all chat room. These chat rooms are archived and can be linked to as references in answers to appropriate questions, from your blog, or on your choice of social network (which might also be an appropriate place for an extended discussion).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28757" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6381" RevisionGUID="86b3602b-c56a-4a92-aa2a-da3f316baaf6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/223192/will-i-get-acceptable-performance-for-learning-c-python-if-i-use-a-vm-as-my-lear&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've always considered &quot;opinion-based&quot; questions as those which would generate 17 answers with every guy sharing his own experience and wanting to add &quot;me too&quot; to the list but no one answer is better than the other.  Obviously such a question would not be a good format for Q&amp;A and good chance I'd be behind the closure.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At the same time I do not believe question above falls in that category. OP asked that question and got ZERO opinions in the first 6 hours. In more than 24 hours he got one answer from me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Do I believe it is a good question? I do not. Because any real programmer (and most newcomers) should know that it doesn't take a lot to run python compiler or even one for C when you are just learning. One could probably hook up a keyboard to a phone and learn C on 5&quot; screen. Information he is looking for is completely apparent to me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question was closed as &quot;opinion-based&quot; after I provided an answer which IMO wasn't based on opinion at all.  Or does the community require me to post the actual perf graphs? So not only is close reason doesn't match the question, it doesn't even match the flood of all those answers the OP got as a response.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And what was the reason for closure? This question looked like it was well onto its way to the archive. There was no flood and no &quot;me toos&quot;.  If it was left open, it would probably have same answer count it has today. So to a new guy, who comes across this site, it probably just feels like a kick in the behind on his way out. And then we ask, how to attract more people.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I voted to reopen it not because it is a good question (although if it was bad, you'd think it would be voted down not up), but because it annoys people, especially new ones when they get shut down like this. And what's worse than no reason given for closure, is bad reason given for closure. And if it was left open, I do not see what possible harm this specific question could have done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28758" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6945" RevisionGUID="6873ad39-0683-4a6e-a9be-38894ddaea9e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There exists an excellent question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/119415/how-to-deliberately-practice-software-engineering&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is marked a duplicate of the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/15742/continuous-professional-development-the-best-approach&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating-with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-t&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe the first question about **deliberate practice** differs from the duplicate questions in the following ways:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1) Deliberate practice is not limited to recent graduates, it applies to all programmers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2) Professional development is a broad term that can include: reading programming books, talking to programmers, coding at work. **In contrast deliberate practice is a highly structured activity engaged in with the specific goal of improving performance.** (more &lt;a href=&quot;http://expertenough.com/1423/deliberate-practice&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is best, a new question, unmarking the original question as duplicate?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Update:**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd also like to add that if you follow the duplicate questions, and try to find some question that is still open, every question is a dup of a dup, locked, or closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wanted to add some new answers to the original question about deliberate practice. Those answers would be to check out http://exercism.io and ( thanks to @gant ) http://codekata.com/&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the original question is narrow enough to be a valid question, and already has enough distinct answers, that separate it from the dups.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's not my original question, please advise on how to proceed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE #2**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After reading everybody's comments and suggestions I've decided to re-ask this question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/260289/how-to-deliberately-practice-computer-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Please advise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE #3**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The new question is now &quot;on hold&quot; for the following reasons:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe this question is of value to the broader community of programmers, a summary of the answers so far:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* write your own implementation of an algorithm&#xD;&#xA;* reading other peoples code&#xD;&#xA;* compete in a programming competition&#xD;&#xA;* solve a problem set&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of the answers so far have not recommended a tool. How can I change the wording of this question to meet the requirements?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**UPDATE #4**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've reworded the question to help with the `recommending a tool problem`:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before: What techniques or resources can a computer programmer use to deliberately practice programming?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After: What techniques can a computer programmer use to deliberately practice programming?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28759" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7574" RevisionGUID="f7c1d544-4813-4aa5-be62-7677732edb42" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I had an hour-long discussion with moderators and senior users. As an experienced SE user, the results were very surprising, but this isn't my site, so I'll accept your policies as they are. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**TLDR;** evidence-based questions and answers are not held in the same esteem here as on other sites. It's expected that questions are answered from individuals' experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After an hour, the moderators couldn't find any way to ask about the state of evidence on an on-topic topic that wouldn't be counted as a &quot;reference request&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was accepted that this type of question is routine on other sites on the network, but is apparently not allowed here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's a brief summary of a long, long chat.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers does have a very different policy on evidence to other sites. The preference is for personal ancedotal experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **GlenH7:** Asking for empirical evidence (aka research on a subject) will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; inherently consist of links off-site. That puts Programmers in the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; position of being research librarians, which isn't terribly&#xD;&#xA;&gt; interesting to the community.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After explaining that, on most sites on SE, answerers provide expert summaries of the most relevant research, sometimes with reference to personal experience, it was explained that Programmers is different&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Me:** Look at any good answer on Skeptics.SE. It's an expert-based summary of research, WITH references, not a list of references. Look&#xD;&#xA;&gt; at any good answer on biology, chemstry, physics, cogsci - even good&#xD;&#xA;&gt; quality answers on UX&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **enderland:** Skeptics is not Programmers&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After pointing out [an example of an excellent evidence-based answer that wasn't simply a reference dump]( https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/179616/a-good-programmer-can-be-as-10x-times-more-productive-than-a-mediocre-one), it was immediately decided to close that other question, and the evidence-based answer was described as being no better in content than other opinion-based answers, beyond being well written.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Me:** gnat has a great evidence-based answer here. You can see clearly how his (?) expertise helped inform the elements of the study&#xD;&#xA;&gt; he picks out. Doesn't look like anyone's in a rush to delete it.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; programmers.stackexchange.com/…&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **enderland:** I expect that will end up closed in.. a short while&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **MichaelT:** You are also missing seeing the deleted answer and that more answers would be equally right.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Essentially, emperical evidence appears to be something this community has chosen not to be interested in. That's fair enough, it's your community, it's just very unusual for SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **GlenH7:** I think Brooks' Law is better asked on Skeptics. The Progs community tends to be too pragmatic to worry too much about making sure there's backing research when firsthand experience backs the principle&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** ...I read books. I read IEEE Software and the ACM magazines. But I don't read the hardcore research and whitepapers, because it's not likely to help me do my job. Anecdotes are pretty powerful to me, though. I have enough experience to take someone writing about their situation, pick out the things that apply to me, and reason if they will help me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** we aren't a science site. We're a bunch of people in the trenches.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** sharing a personal experience is immediately sufficient for supporting evidence&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Thomas:** You need to ask us a question that you'd ask a coworker in a conference room or at a whiteboard.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Jimmy:** oh goodness we don't bother with that sort of thing. You want methodologies and google scholar? Hit up CS&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **MichaelT:** The trade magazines we read are certainly not peer reviewed." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28760" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7001" RevisionGUID="3bcc730e-a370-4eb3-9322-e5a6b0132e8c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.833" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have a question that was originally in *codereview* and now its migrated here where its on hold.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem is that in *programmers* its too opinionated and thus on hold. However I cannot edit it because it has to be edited in *codereview* where it does not exist anymore. The question is basically: &quot;here is how I did it, how should I have done it.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there something that I am missing or is the question permanently locked beyond repair.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question at hand is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[what-is-the-simplest-human-readable-configuration-file-format][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(situation on 12:51 EST)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/141556/what-is-the-simplest-human-readable-configuration-file-format" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28761" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6400" RevisionGUID="9283dbfe-9ecf-43bb-bba3-c49a91abfd6f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Do you think [tag:chess] tag is helpful?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I introduced it: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/chess&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[World Engineer][1] removed it from: &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/34952/which-paradigm-to-use-for-writing-chess-engine as extraneous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My position is that chess programming is a distinct and well researched field of its own, and since people seem to take interest in the theory behind it, the tag would play a helpful role. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's also worth noting that the quality of chess-related questions and answers is typically good (in compare to average).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm asking about your opinion on the matter, both in the narrow and broad aspect:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* was the tag redundant for this particular question - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/34952/which-paradigm-to-use-for-writing-chess-engine &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* is it unnecessary in general?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/28988/world-engineer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28762" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7752" RevisionGUID="a8ca755e-ee80-462f-ab88-0f90e29ca88a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Lord Loh.'s &quot;How is spinlock different from polling?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/301947) was one of those questions that made me think &quot;Huh, he's right, what *is* the difference?&quot; when I first saw it. But after reading [Jorg's answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/301953/161917), it makes perfect sense to me; I feel like I learned something.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[pduersteler's &quot;Git branching from a feature branch to work on a subfeature&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/300183) Most git branching questions strike me as people confusing themselves by overcomplicating things, and the answers often seem to only make things more complicated, but [MichaelT's answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/300185/161917) was surprisingly clear, to the point that it &quot;feels obvious&quot; in retrospect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[David Moles's &quot;Why does(/did) Bertrand Meyer think subclassing is the only way to extend a “closed” module?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/298867), [answered by gnat](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/298930/161917) is a rare example of a question about a very abstract, high-level design principle that manages to be interesting, answerable and show genuine research effort.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here are two questions where a (low-rep!) OP did everything right in asking their question, and as a direct result they got exactly the answer they needed. This is the kind of Q&amp;A that makes me think &quot;the system *does* work!&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [TBridges42's &quot;Is a large static initializer a code smell?&quot;, answered by amon](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/298402/is-a-large-static-initializer-a-code-smell)&#xD;&#xA;- [James Ko's &quot;Is it possible to avoid abstraction inversion in this scenario?&quot;, also answered by amon](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/287470/is-it-possible-to-avoid-abstraction-inversion-in-this-scenario)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Finally, some high-quality answers that convinced me not to close-vote questions which initially seemed too broad/opinion-based to get a good answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [Thomas Owens's answer on BЈовић's &quot;Where to describe architectural problems?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/303011/161917)&#xD;&#xA; - [MichaelT's answer on Kimble's &quot;Estimating in groups - How to extract useful statistics / estimates?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/298087/161917)&#xD;&#xA; - [MichaelT's answer on Carcigenicate's &quot;How does a skip list work?&quot;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/287263/161917)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28763" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4112" RevisionGUID="ccccb8ba-f458-4a2a-8a0e-a7e4f7b8def7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I am talking about a question I asked recently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/168450/what-is-best-way-to-create-a-cross-fade-effect&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moderator [Yannis][1] is repeatedly claiming it to off topic question. I want to know what exactly is off topic. Pointing out the entry in FAQ&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If you have a question about...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * **algorithm** and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * **development methodologies**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the question I asked is asking for a better development methodology on creating cross fade effects. Out of the options I mentioned I was hoping for answers other techniques that can create same effect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Also quoting another FAQ entry&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; avoid asking subjective questions where …&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”   &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”    &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”    * it is a rant disguised as a question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt;    * “______ sucks, am I right?”&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closest among those points is `there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”` where I think most of members will point out. But if question like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-web-development&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/48698/i-dont-program-in-my-spare-time-does-that-make-me-a-bad-developer&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154155/should-you-keep-a-copy-of-all-the-code-you-write&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;is on-topic so is mine.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was not about any problem I encountered while developing them. If a programmer has previously built such system themselves, it could be easily answered. Like in a [comment][2] throsten has mention using canvas element. That is probable alternative for creating that effect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/25936/yannis-rizos&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/168450/what-is-best-way-to-create-a-cross-fade-effect#comment-323829" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28764" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7765" RevisionGUID="66012711-3669-4011-9072-832275f17a02" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm going to blow my own trumpet here but as the question was good, I feel ok with it. (parrrrrp)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Should You Write Your Back End as an API][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;this is a question hat encouraged some discussion (in a good way, not the usual &quot;you suck&quot;, &quot;no you suck&quot; kind of discussion) to build up answers that took the questioner from a somewhat entrenched position to a better understanding where he accepted what we were telling him. I think this provided less of an answer and more of a guided education.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/287819/should-you-write-your-back-end-as-an-api" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28765" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6437" RevisionGUID="0407b7d7-9307-495a-9bc6-0f7f68e97753" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[I asked a question last night][1] which I believe was worthwhile and could have received some interesting responses, but sadly it was swiftly stamped on by the community. I'm doing my best to figure out how I can word it so that it gets the chance to capture any positive input from members of the community. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;From the comments and the reason for closure I am certain that the majority of the blame lies in the way I worded the question (I am doing all I can to remedy that)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - I originally used the term &quot;project&quot; which was slightly misleading&#xD;&#xA; - I included the option of answering with links &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can *basically* understand the reason for the question being closed but I could also really use some help and I don't believe I am the only person who would benefit from a quality answer. I'm doing all the training myself, the *how*, *why* and *where*, but I'm stuck on an the *what*. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If this site really is unsuitable for such technical questions then maybe someone could at least suggest where I can ask this question (I don't think chat has a wide enough audience).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Here's the question in it's current form:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Training material for a teenager**&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I've started teaching my son to write code. I've decided on the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; languages and do not need to start any discussions on that - the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; general route through the languages will be&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - node.js &amp; javascript&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - twitter bootstrap&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - Python&#xD;&#xA;&gt;  - C# (at this point all development will become test driven)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What I am looking for are ideas for training material from personal&#xD;&#xA;&gt; experience -  probably fictional solutions with clearly defined&#xD;&#xA;&gt; modules that eventually meld into a complete solution.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; You can't google an answer to this question and this site would seem&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to be the best place in the world to ask for help from people who may&#xD;&#xA;&gt; know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/226469/training-material-for-a-teenager" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28766" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="4116" RevisionGUID="e852b2e4-fc40-4d37-8f50-a54b35313d19" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I don't know why people are giving you grief over whether or not your question is about development methodologies, or whether a perfect solution exists, as if either are reasons alone to close your question. While it's true there is a technical definition to &quot;development methodology&quot;, using it in a colloquial sense to mean &quot;a high-level method to handle a programming problem&quot; is still on-topic and [exactly what Programmers is for][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To me, it's pretty clear that's what your question is looking for—high-level design advice—and it's definitely a practical problem someone would actually face. So in that sense, [What kind of questions should I *not* ask here?][2] section of the FAQ doesn't apply.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, your question is lacking one crucial thing, which [thorsten müller tried to draw out][3]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Why exactly do you want to disregard those solutions? They work reasonably well for most needs. Most other solutions would need to directly access the pixel data (after putting the image in a canvas element), which would be slow and a lot of work to implement. (That at least if it needs to be done within a web site)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Or, to put it another way, your question doesn't address [what you've tried][4]. If you expand your question to explain why the solutions you've found so far are not sufficient, and—even better—go into what you've tried yourself (and where you came up short), your question would be perfectly fine and I'd vote to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/168450/what-is-the-proper-way-to-create-a-cross-fade-effect#comment323829_168450&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28767" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7525" RevisionGUID="ff260f4b-ea6d-42d7-9141-fe37a63f6e4a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="A few recent questions seem to exhibit issues explained in [The Trouble With Popularity](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2012/01/the-trouble-with-popularity/) article:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; we discovered that these posts... truly start to drown out everything else on the site... it's too addictive and too easy, and in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While these questions were open, they were widely advertised on the Hot Network List and gained relatively high scores [despite piling on of close votes](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/237391/165773 &quot;feature request to account for these&quot;). All of them are now closed, but due to their high scores they present appealing examples for newer site visitors to try their luck asking similar questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;High scores send a fairly strong signal that those sorts of questions are welcome here. I think this _signal_ is much stronger than the subtle hint  of a close banner, especially for inexperienced users ([&quot;it's okay to ask about roses here...&quot;](http://communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/a/1247/516 &quot;if needed, refer here for more elaborate discussion of having off-topic questions in the hot list&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###The crux of my question is: what can we do to make these closed questions less like [broken windows](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/broken-windows/info)?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**_Recent examples for review:_**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the issues with this question are best covered in a custom close reason borrowed from the Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Topicality wise, it appears to be in overlap between our site and Workplace, probably closer to Programmers. Our close reason ([opinion based](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6491#6491)) looks like a fit.  As for better matching Workplace close reason, it is likely because they (Workplace) are getting more troublesome questions of that kind and have acquired more experience at efficiently handling these.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;...How would you explain a statement... to a beginner?&quot;_ - We have a dedicated meta post explaining exactly what the issues are with these kinds of questions: [How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6630/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Of course, hot list visitors who voted it up likely have no idea about our meta guidance.  And even if they knew, they likely don't care. (And even if they would care, [system simply wouldn't let them tell](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/238514/165773).)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;_&quot;I personally prefer 4 spaces for each indentation level, but there are colleagues that prefer 2 and even 5 spaces... I decided to post a question see if there are tools/method to settle the problem without calling a meeting.&quot;_ - If that doesn't make it a [shopping list question](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/) then I don't know what it makes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[The revision history](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/290941/revisions) suggests that even some moderators have tried to figure out a way to protect and salvage the question. But, honestly, I am not surprised to see that this failed. Asker clearly indicated that they were _just shopping_ and there's nothing else on their mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If someone tried to &quot;derive&quot; a better, more substantial question from this one, they would end up with their own, and _different_ question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet another case when Workplace folks seem to be better prepared to recognize and handle troublesome questions of that kind with their custom close reason:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Questions asking for **advice on what to do are not [practical answerable questions](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)** (e.g. *&quot;what job should I take?&quot;*, or *&quot;what skills should I learn?&quot;*). Questions should get answers explaining *why* and *how* to make a decision, not advice on what to do. For more information, click [here](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2695)...&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;Granted, I think that our own [education advice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/31260) close reason also makes a good fit, but the majority of close voters picked another reason ([too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260)) which suggests that the match with the education close reason is not as clear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And yet again, issues with this question seem to be best covered in already quoted custom close reason from the Workplace:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **[Real questions have answers.](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)** Rather than explaining why your situation is terrible, or why your boss/coworker makes you unhappy, explain what you want to do to make it better. For more information, click [here](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2696)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although still somewhat workplace-y, this question looks much closer to Programmers than previous example covered by the this close reason (&quot;mentor's concern&quot;). Still, their close reason looks like a really good fit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm often conflicted when creating a project that requires manipulation of data in files... &amp;lt;example how JSON looks like&amp;gt; &amp;lt;example how CSV looks like&amp;gt; ...is it better to use larger, more readable formats, like JSON, or smaller, harder to read formats, like CSV, for data storage?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[If memory serves](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234894/165773 &quot;no, system won't help me recall&quot;), the close reason I picked was [too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6490/31260). The majority of voters have chosen [opinion based](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6491/31260) which also looks like a reasonable match ([Gorilla vs. Shark](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2011/08/gorilla-vs-shark/)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these questions were old, or if their score and views were acquired _organically_ due to great content, I'd probably ask for a [historical lock](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/historical-lock/info). But that doesn't seem applicable due to the recency of the questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For what it's worth, I considered an option to edit them into better shape. Unfortunately, it looks like the answers that piled in prior to closing [&quot;lock the question&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/144787/165773) from any substantial changes I could think of.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One possible exception (which would involve removing most of the answers though) is the [question about indentation width](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width). It looks possible to convert it to a [collaborative effort question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-technical-details-should-a-programmer-of-a-web-application-consider-before &quot;example&quot;). If we pick this option though, we had better do some substantial edits to the question text, to make it look like less of a wide open broken window for inexperienced site visitors. _&quot;Hey, folks do shopping over here, lemme try my own.&quot;_" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28768" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7873" RevisionGUID="c4e6391f-4feb-4f41-bd4d-0d6da2c23157" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Looking at [this &quot;why is it? &quot;question][1] I see it has 1 close vote and a bounty. I think its too vague to be a good question so I thought I'd give it a close vote - but when I attempted to do so, it was refused with the response &quot;this question has an open bounty and cannot be closed&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Firstly, I'm sure questions could be closed even with bounty - [this][2] suggests that the bounty would be refunded. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Secondly, its already got a close vote - did this occur before the bounty was placed, in which case - bounties can be used as a way to keep rubbish questions open past the initial time that they usually get closing attention and thus end up staying open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, is this a new thing, or should bounties not prevent closure?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/309607/why-arent-there-more-multi-natural-language-programming-languages&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5580/what-happens-to-a-bounty-when-a-question-is-closed" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28769" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6453" RevisionGUID="b70ce5ec-91a2-4ab5-a5a9-a82fe44e3a3c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I cannot find my question on [programmers.stackexchange](http://programmers.stackexchange.com). It was today deleted. But I cannot find any notification about that. It lasted about a week and suddenly disappeared. Negative reputation was not (one upvote, one star). It was closed as &quot;on hold&quot; in first day. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But as I know the &quot;on hold&quot; not means deletion mark. &#xD;&#xA;How I can know who delete this my question forever?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;P.S.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I found this question. Here is link to it. [Why doesnt the Dart Team follow-their own style guide? Should I follow it?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/228388/why-doesnt-the-dart-team-follow-their-own-style-guide-should-i-follow-it)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I cannot undestand what was wrong with it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What rules have been violated? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why moderator removed completely innocuous question, which contained only the facts and nothing but the facts? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Naturally facts raise questions. Why questions about facts considered impaired? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Maybe the moderator has the right to delete any questions?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28770" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5151" RevisionGUID="82a45fc8-087a-467b-942b-0e2bbd50884d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm sorry, been trying to play by the rules as of late (or just avoid programmers.se) but I got notified that I had a [notable question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/12766/is-code-complete-still-code-complete) and when I went to look at it, I found that it was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, maybe it was an open ended poll, I recognized that it had pollish features so I removed them and it was reopened.  And subsequently reclosed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, why mod would unilaterally reclose something that was validly worked through the system with no funny business (to my knowledge) is beyond me.  I was informed in chat that this is still a poll, but fortunately, one mod is not the end all arbiter of reality. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, can we get a hard and fast community supported definition of poll when it comes to programmers.SE that I could be referred to, or refer others to, when a question is seemingly randomly closed?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28771" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5300" RevisionGUID="bc64d643-a32a-4d74-88eb-22c3f11b1460" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The first thing to consider is that within the (usually) broad guidelines, the communities of Stack Exchange sites have some ability to define what is acceptable for their community. On a couple of occasions, the community of Programmers has decided that simply asking for resources is not a suitable question for the site. Just because other sites allow for reference requests or resource requests does that mean every site has to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are two driving factors against allowing resource requests:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [FAQ][1] states that:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The close reason for Not Constructive states:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&amp;A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions that simply ask for resources are not about solving a problem nor do they allow for answers to be supported by facts or expertise that requires human thought to produce. Searching through libraries or databases for documents is something best done by a search engine, not for a question on a Stack Exchange site. Questions should require some kind of human thought, experiences, or expertise in addition to being able to be backed up by a specific situation or reputable resource.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For your specific question, it seems fairly self-evident that it's true. Especially considering that you say that it's an assertion made in several papers. If no citation is provided, that generally means it's considered to be [common knowledge][2]. Of course testable code is going to be more stable - testability is often related to the ability of developers to understand the code as well as be able to write tests. Even if no tests are written, code that is easy to understand can be read and problems seen and fixed quickly, making the system more stable. I highly doubt you'll find this studied because it is evident to anyone with any experience in software development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28772" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6547" RevisionGUID="6d6c3c01-fe42-4f75-887f-94e17cfbd369" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="What to do with a contest puzzle questions? Close, or leave them as they are?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Example : https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/230059/apple-eating-problem#" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28773" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7875" RevisionGUID="4c7b168e-9229-4cb4-9c94-f447ac5a5050" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;p&gt;We’d love to help you. To &lt;b&gt;improve your chances&lt;/b&gt; of getting an answer, here are some tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt;###STOP!&#xD;&#xA;Programmers is primarily about *software design.* We don't do code troubleshooting here, so if your question is about how to fix your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search&quot;&gt;Search&lt;/a&gt;, and research&lt;/h2&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...and keep track of what you find. Even if you don't find a useful answer elsewhere on the site, including links to related questions that *haven't* helped can help others in understanding how your question is different from the rest. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Keep in mind readers (other than you) _have_ to be able to understand your situation. They don't know what you've researched, tried, or the details driving your problem. No one here can read your mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Write a title that summarizes the specific problem &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The title is the first thing potential answerers will see, and if your title isn't interesting, they won't read the rest. So *make it count:*&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;- **Pretend you're talking to a busy colleague** and have to sum up your entire question in one sentence: what details can you include that will help someone identify and solve your problem? Include any error messages, key APIs, or unusual circumstances that make your question different from similar questions already on the site. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- **Spelling, grammar and punctuation are important!** Remember, this is the first part of your question others will see - you want to make a good impression. If you're not comfortable writing in English, ask a friend to proof-read it for you. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- If you're having trouble summarizing the problem, **write the title *last*** - sometimes writing the rest of the question first can make it easier to describe the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Make sure it is **relevant to the actual problem** you are having. Many times people will read the title and answer that question without reading the rest of the body of the question. If the title and body of the question don't match, it is likely that the answers that you get will be confused and go off on tangents that aren't ultimately helpful to solving the problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Examples:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- On floating point errors...&#xD;&#xA;  - **Bad:** C# Math Confusion&#xD;&#xA;  - **Good:** Why does using float instead of int give me different results when all of my inputs are integers?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- On redirecting in php&#xD;&#xA;  - **Bad:** [php] session doubt&#xD;&#xA;  - **Good:** How can I redirect users to different pages based on session data in PHP?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- On flow control and equality&#xD;&#xA;  - **Bad:** android if else problems&#xD;&#xA;  - **Good:** Why does str == &quot;value&quot; evaluate to false when str is set to &quot;value&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Introduce the problem before you post any code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the body of your question, start by expanding on the summary you put in the title. Explain how you encountered the problem you're trying to solve, and any difficulties that have prevented you from solving it yourself. The first paragraph in your question is the second thing most readers will see, so make it as engaging and informative as possible. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Help others reproduce the problem&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Many Programmers.SE questions don't significantly benefit from including code. But if your problem is *with* code you've written, you should include some. But **don't just copy in your entire program!** Not only is this likely to get you in trouble if you're posting your employer's code, it likely includes a lot of irrelevant details that readers will need to ignore when trying to reproduce the problem. Here are some guidelines:&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;- Include just enough code to allow others to describe the design. For help with this, read [How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;- If it is possible to create a live example of the problem that you can *link* to (for example, on http://sqlfiddle.com/ or http://jsbin.com/) then do so - but also include the code in your question itself. Not everyone can access external sites, and the links may break over time. &#xD;&#xA;- Remember, ***we don't fix broken code here.***  Questions should be focused on design, not implementation.  If your question is about your broken code, ask it on Stack Overflow, not here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;##Include all relevant tags&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Try to include a tag for the language, library, and specific API your question relates to. If you start typing in the tags field, the system will suggest tags that match what you've typed - be sure and read the descriptions given for them to make sure they're relevant to the question you're asking! See also: [What are tags, and how should I use them?](/help/tagging)&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;##Proof-read before posting!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now that you're ready to ask your question, take a deep breath and read through it from start to finish. Pretend you're seeing it for the first time: *does it make sense?* Try reproducing the problem yourself, in a fresh environment and make sure you can do so using only the information included in your question. Add any details you missed and read through it again. Now is a good time to make sure that your title still describes the problem!&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;##Post the question and respond to feedback&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;After you post, leave the question open in your browser for a bit, and see if anyone comments. If you missed an obvious piece of information, be ready to respond by editing your question to include it. If someone posts an answer, be ready to try it out and provide feedback!&#xD;&#xA;   &#xD;&#xA;##Look for help asking for help&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In spite of all your efforts, you may find your questions poorly-received. Don't despair! Learning to ask a good question is a worthy pursuit, and not one you'll master overnight. Here are some additional resources that you may find useful:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Writing the perfect question](http://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2010/08/29/writing-the-perfect-question/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Open letter to students with homework problems](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/open-letter-to-students-with-homework-problems)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to debug small programs](http://ericlippert.com/2014/03/05/how-to-debug-small-programs/)&#xD;&#xA;- [Meta discussions on asking questions](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/faq)&#xD;&#xA;- [How to ask questions the smart way](http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) &amp;mdash; long but good advice." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28774" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5386" RevisionGUID="17be58e0-bdcb-498f-923e-9aa9e16f5d06" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Tags were made synonyms:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [![https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Opi8.png][1]][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Opi8.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/operating-systems/synonyms &quot;The following tags will be remapped to operating-systems : os&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28775" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6572" RevisionGUID="063c6266-3a3d-42c4-8171-251697b0def0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question below was marked as a duplicate. However, it is very clear based on the comments associated with the question I posted that my question is not the same as to what it is marked as.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[What to do as a Dev when for years their team has lacked product innovation, not used project mgmt methodologies, and kept bad Software Dev practices?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*This question already has an answer here: How should I behave as a developer in a project that's headed for failure? 20 answers*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those answers in the other post do not address my question. Who is going to leave a company just because a project is failing? It does not make any sense, so whoever marked my question as duplicate is clearly not attention to detail.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**I already left a note in the question but it is still marked as duplicate**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*Note: I have read[ \[How should I behave as a developer in a project that's headed for failure? 20 answers\]][2], but the answers do not address the points on this question. If you look at the answers I've received, the answers are totally different to the ones posted on that other question. For example, who is going to leave a company just because 1 project is failing? It does not make any sense, so whoever marked my question as duplicate is clearly not attention to detail. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To those who have marked this question as duplicate: The answers on that post do not address my question, unlike the ones on this post that do address my question directly. Please don't mark something as a duplicate if it isn't, because then people stop looking at it. Also, that question is just about 1 project failing. My question is about all projects, the product and a team that has been doing the same for years and that continuing to do so will eventually lead to failure of whole team and product.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/198767/what-to-do-as-a-dev-when-for-years-their-team-has-lacked-product-innovation-not&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/197650/how-should-i-behave-as-a-developer-in-a-project-thats-headed-for-failure" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28776" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5397" RevisionGUID="783afd01-5a79-4d9a-a7de-cf87092ce959" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I asked a question on Programmers, and received 7 upvotes, but got the following comments, if you could spare a look:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![List of comments][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And then the question got closed for being `not a real question`. But then a user commented on my question, and said this after it being closed:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Yet another highly rated question with a thoughtful, highly-rated answer gets closed for &quot;not being a real question&quot;. Three cheers for Stack Exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I think there really may be a problem here. Could we somehow make the closing system more strict, or make the reopening system more lenient?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not doing this because this is my question, but more because I think this could benefit everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[Question Here][2], original (first) revision [here][3].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/dHk7K.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/180824/what-is-the-criteria-for-a-language-to-be-considered-a-programming-language#comment346638_180824&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/180824/1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28777" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6673" RevisionGUID="518660f1-1dad-4a57-b2d2-a4dab7ecbd91" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/241503/jira-full-blown-solution-for-the-single-developer&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;what is wrong with this question, in gods name, can someone tell me what the problem is and why it gets blocked right away?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28778" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5454" RevisionGUID="20a74182-f0b6-438b-a621-afd220e34cd8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So, today I wrote a question that follows the general pattern for book questions on Programmers (*Is there a canonical book on [x]?*) about a topic that's definitely related to programming (data integration).  [This is the question][1].  It was closed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to understand why, when there are many other questions that follow similar formats that are open and highly rated.  Any thoughts? Is it the topic?  If so, where should I have posted this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/183574/is-there-a-canonical-book-on-data-integration" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28779" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7536" RevisionGUID="b4966ba6-a17c-4cf7-8618-b55dd73eda89" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It was quite interesting to observe impact of this meta post on the listed questions ([&quot;meta effect&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/235225/165773)). Or, more precisely, lack thereof.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First thing I noticed is there were no attempts to improve / salvage these questions (except for an old one about indentation width, there was only one, more on that below). Attention brought to these by this meta post did not really help: &quot;active&quot; notices on listed questions (except for last one) say _2 months ago, 21, 17, 14, 16 days ago_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This may ring a bell to readers familiar with [famous post about Programmers / NPR history](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/200144/165773):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Turns out that while everyone _loves_ those questions, very few are _actually_ willing to spend any time to... maintain and moderate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only _recent_ edit was done to question about [JSON vs CSV](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/291618/revisions), which recently changed wording to &quot;what are some advantages/disadvantages...&quot; Not that it made it worse (as far as I can tell, edit didn't even invalidate existing answers) but it didn't really help. Edited question now prominently exposes issues described in another meta post, [What is the problem with “Pros and Cons”?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6758/31260)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another thing worth paying attention to is how little of negative feedback was given to these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It gets especially prominent if you account for attention given to this meta post, which is mostly about explaining what's wrong with them. It stuck in [hot meta posts](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/234453/165773) for about a week (quite the irony), has got almost 400 views and solid positive score. Now, let's take a look at the questions it lists:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/286508/is-my-mentors-concern-for-code-quality-excessive  &#xD;&#xA;  3 votes down, 4 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/290764/how-do-you-explain-a-statement-in-programming  &#xD;&#xA;  3 votes down, 3 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/290941/how-to-work-with-programmer-with-different-preference-of-indentation-width  &#xD;&#xA;  7 votes down, 2 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/291052/how-to-stop-thinking-in-terms-of-code  &#xD;&#xA;  4 votes down, 2 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/291270/todos-in-checked-in-code  &#xD;&#xA;  4 votes down, 4 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/291618/is-it-better-to-store-data-in-a-small-unreadable-format-or-a-large-readable-f  &#xD;&#xA;  5 votes down, 3 votes delete&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not much really, huh? Considering that some of these votes were cast long before the meta post, it becomes even weaker. Closer check of _The Trouble with Popularity_ suggests that this may actually be a common case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Note how the article says nothing about negative feedback to such questions. This makes a fairly strong indication that there is no such feedback, at least not at a scale worth mentioning. (Atwood would probably be happy to point that at least part of community actively opposes such questions but it looks like this just doesn't happen.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Reflecting on my own behavior in these questions makes me feel that there could be a good reason for this. I tend to feel _reluctant_ giving negative rating (down, close, delete) when post has high score. This may seem strange, given that I am well aware of upvotes to popular posts frequently degrading into useless &quot;likes&quot; of Facebook kind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But the thing is, I am much more used to looking on regular, on-topic, good quality questions. And in normal questions, high score fairly reliably indicates quality content worth voting up, not down.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If many users are like me, it should indeed be that high score posts rarely get negative feedback, no matter how bad these are. People simply build an opposite habit by reading on-topic, good quality questions, where high score means that post deserves upvotes. Not surprising that they would feel discomfort trying to do opposite to what they are used to - at least that's the way I feel myself.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This probably won't make me many friends over here but summing up above, it looks like the most realistic way to address the matters of broken windows would be a moderator deletion of these questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which, interestingly, brings us back to the quote that opened this question:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in the absence of any moderation, the community would do nothing but add and upvote the easy, fun stuff. This is why community moderators have real power; they _need_ that power to intervene, educate, and refocus the community's exuberance on more substantive content..." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28780" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5463" RevisionGUID="2a6c38d3-d737-40c5-bf93-cfc46620bcac" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question on networking at conferences][1] was not closed, but [this one I just posted][2] was closed. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First, what is a better forum for that [closed question][2]?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Second, I'm assuming that the first one should have been closed too, but it wasn't because it is a bit older and this site is more deletionist now than it was.  Do we really want to be this strict? There's a lot of good info in the answers to the first one--info I wouldn't have found anywhere else.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm assuming there's already been debates here on how strict we should be.  Can someone point out those discussions?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/77102/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9010/how-does-one-network-at-conferences-beyond-the-first-conversation" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28781" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6697" RevisionGUID="d2f864d4-75fc-452f-b881-a4d2b5794412" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You closed this question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/243309/how-to-find-original-source-code-of-javascript-implementation-code&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What is wrong with that question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Obviously one user's opinion does not matter so much. People only matter at the aggregate level, not singly. But by being this strict, you guys really just push people away from your website. Maybe you do not care. You seem to be making OK money from the site from those (excuse me) stupid ads on the right column. I was really into that question and at one point it had 6 upvotes (until you guys started down-voting it as a result of this question), Why does this website have to be so censored?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28782" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7556" RevisionGUID="7b4179c5-f7e5-47bb-ba7a-630f377a57d7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Culturally, caffeine and pizza are part of being a programmer.  While it doesn't make for [good main site questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/286216/40980) (10k link) coffee, tea and other caffeine delivery mechanisms are a [documented part](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/I/ISO-standard-cup-of-tea.html) of what it is to be a programmer for a significant period of time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted, this is such a culturally significant part of the desk of a programmer, that it is part of the site's design.  Think geek has [coffee mugs](http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/mugs-travel/) as a major section of the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As noted on the https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7070/ you will note the wording:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; * ...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * anything else your community would genuinely be interested in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the community is honestly interested in the culture of caffeine intake, then promoting that stack exchange site is well and good.  Its an advert on the side of the page - not a main site question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If, however, the powers that be suggest that this *shouldn't* be the case, I would urge them to get the requisite 125 reputation, participate on the main site and the community here, and vote on the answer. I would similarly encourage them to do the audit of *all* of the other graduated sites and ask themselves why Health.SE is advertised on Gaming and Cooking and Space.SE on Skeptics and then ask if its really worth the trouble of going against the community when it has reached a consensus of what other things they want to advertise given the guidelines we are provided with." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28783" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5465" RevisionGUID="7885aee2-4429-4f51-a2b9-65cce755a295" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I had to think a bit when I was reviewing your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the one hand, the question is specific to programmers and is somewhat related to development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, it's not a constructive question.  I can see a good answer being provided, but I'm not positive that answer would have the applicability or lasting value that we're seeking.  Discussions about networking are kind of in the realm of &quot;career advice&quot; which are explicitly off-topic per the [faq](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I didn't vote to close your question but I can see why others in the community did.  FWIW, I have voted to close the older question as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It's worth pointing out that voting to close is not the same as recommending the deletion of a question.  A closed question will remain, and others will be able to see it.  A deleted question can only be seen by moderators and those with 10k+ reputation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And you didn't get heavily down-voted on the question, so it's not like you asked a patently bad question.  You were sitting at a +5/-3 split when I wrote this answer." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28784" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7608" RevisionGUID="74737005-ceb6-4209-811d-01abbb5a712a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="terminology tag (as defined by you guys): &#xD;&#xA;&gt;   Questions about the objective meaning or &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    common understanding of words and &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    concepts that programmers encounter.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Well I need to develop something which reads audio data to be played, and [I asked what one calls the term for the &quot;rate&quot; at which audio is interpreted / played by software](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/297720/term-for-frame-rate-when-reading-audio-data/297723#297723). Similar to how one uses a video's frame-rate to know how fast to present the frames.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This seems to meet the criteria, but a user downvoted my question and linked to a meta discussion: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6582/on-the-troubles-of-naming-and-terminology&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I read that meta question and its accepted answer, and it clarifies that questions asking &quot;what should I name this&quot; are off topic, but &quot;what is the name of this well known concept?&quot; Is on-topic. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My question, being &quot;What is the term for the rate at which audio data should be read?&quot; isn't really a code problem, it's a matter of well known terminology, and seems to fit the criteria set by the community through the &quot;terminology&quot; tag and meta duscussions. So why has this user downvoted and linked to meta on my question? It also recieved close votes. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Subsequently, my question recieved a perfect answer quickly, it was &quot;Sampling Rate&quot;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28786" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5470" RevisionGUID="dd12f7bb-25e0-4e43-94fd-7fafe4eddd96" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I've just deleted your question - for technical reasons. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You cross posted the question on The Workplace, and the community there seemed to welcome it. When I noticed, I migrated the Programmers version to the Workplace, and promptly voted to close it as a duplicate of the version you posted yourself. The question was closed a couple of hours after the migration, and then merged with its duplicate. That was the plan, a single version of the question with all its answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But a few minutes ago I noticed that the Programmers version of the question - that was supposed to be just a migration stub pointing to the merged version on The Workplace - was actually appearing in full, with no mention of the migration and closed as off topic. What had happened was that a Workplace moderator deleted the merge stub on their site, which for some reason also rejected the migration and brought the question back to Programmers. That's... not normal, the deletion of the stub shouldn't had rejected the migration, and I've already contacted Stack Exchange about it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To avoid any further confusion, I've deleted the Programmers version of the question. For reference, the relevant links are: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- [Workplace version][1], the proper version of the question, with all the answers&#xD;&#xA;- [Workplace merge stub][2], deleted (2K+ link)&#xD;&#xA;- [Programmers version][3], deleted (10K+ link)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Although I fully realize the [irony of deleting the question][4], it was necessary to maintain some sanity, a single version of the question with all its answers. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Please _do not_ cross post**  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Flag the question for mod attention and ask for it to be migrated, cross posts are messy.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9010/how-does-one-network-at-conferences-beyond-the-first-conversation&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9016/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences-beyond-the-first-conversation&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/184017/how-does-one-network-at-software-conferences-beyond-the-first-conversation&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5463/are-we-too-strict-where-should-off-topic-questions-go#comment13743_5463" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28787" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6749" RevisionGUID="a1b463b6-db1f-462e-99a4-d94d064a005b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="If you go to the vanilla http://programmers.stackexchange.com URL, you get the standard tabs:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* active&#xD;&#xA;* featured&#xD;&#xA;* hot&#xD;&#xA;* week&#xD;&#xA;* month&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, if you go to https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions, you get the tabs:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* newest&#xD;&#xA;* featured&#xD;&#xA;* frequent&#xD;&#xA;* votes&#xD;&#xA;* active&#xD;&#xA;* unanswered&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There are no other interface cues to alert you that one is different than the other - only the missing sort tabs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why? And more importantly, should there be a difference?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28788" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7930" RevisionGUID="bb35d818-10e1-498e-bdfd-361657336d28" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Over in https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7906/is-this-site-failing-and-should-it-go-away/7907#7907 I posted this list and haven't gotten a satisfactory response yet.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the site's scope is at issue, then some percentage of these questions should instead be open.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If these are just poorly asked questions that need some moderate editing, then there is an army of people who say they should be open that can help cultivate them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without identifying which questions we need to consider how the scope is wrong rather than the question doesn't fit we are simply talking in circles around each other.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, here's the list.  Where the post has been deleted (at the moment of posting this question), the *entire* text of the question is here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311935/running-net-desktop-application-on-linux (-3, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question is a software recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; We need to develop a desktop application that would run on both Windows and Linux machines, preferably with the same code base or minimal code changes. I know Mono is an option, but I read that Mono Win Forms implementation is suitable only for very simple applications. I guess I cannot make the app using the newly announced cross-platform &quot;.NET Core&quot; either, as apparently it does not support client/desktop apps. So apart from Mono, is there any other option to create a cross-platform desktop application for Windows and Linux?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311931/need-help-to-make-advance-search-in-php-website-project (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A bit hard to determine (the close vote is for unclear). It looks like this might be too broad too. Its a student trying to do some project that isn't well articulated.  The answers to it are all over the place. The OP hasn't been back since the original post of the question to help clarify.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311930/pointers-and-hexadecimal (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is an implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; So I want to make a pointer of chars. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; char *ptr = 0x239038F2  &lt;---- this is my attempt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; where I can iterate through each char.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   &gt; So ptr would give me 0x23&#xD;&#xA;ptr++ would give me 0x90&#xD;&#xA;ptr++ would give me 0x38&#xD;&#xA;and finally ptr++ would give me 0xF2&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311928/how-do-i-implement-material-style-account-switcher (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   This is a far too broad &quot;how do I do this&quot; type question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311925/structure-of-an-abstract-for-a-conference-talk-or-workshop (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question has nothing to do with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6.  https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311923/extraordinary-software-written-in-javascript (-8, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a too broad question asking for a list of all the ways that Javascript can be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; JavaScript is usually used for either web frontends or backends (JavaScript). What other extraordinay things can be done with JavaScript?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311921/accepting-express-js-post-requests-in-a-chrome-app (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for issues with writing something in Chrome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311918/how-to-display-a-non-interactive-message-on-a-jframe (-2, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for how to do something in Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311914/running-ruby-commands-does-nothing (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a problem running some third party ruby software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311913/how-to-break-infinite-loop-in-turtle-graphics-python (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for python.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311910/index-exceeds-matrix-dimension-matlab-hog-features (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for matlab (which was already posted on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311907/wdk-10-and-visual-studio-2015-acting-funny (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This (now deleted between then and now) was closed as unclear. It was an issue with some software installation for a C library.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I installed WDK 10 on my computer, and I tried to build a si and I got the error: An SDK corresponding to WDK version '8.1' was not found. Please install the SDK before building.. I downloaded and installed the Windows 10 SDK, and then tried build again, this time I was getting multiple syntax errors, the following code:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Shows the following errors: fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'ntddk.h': No such file or directory, and multiple intellisense errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        extern &quot;C&quot; {&#xD;&#xA;        #include &lt;ntddk.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        #include &lt;ntdddisk.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        #include &lt;wdf.h&gt;&#xD;&#xA;        NTSTATUS DriverEntry(IN PDRIVER_OBJECT DriverObject, IN PUNICODE_STRING RegistryPath) {}&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Shows the following errors:&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; `fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'ntddk.h': No such file or directory`, and multiple intellisense errors.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; How do I fix this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311904/learning-linux-kernel-in-todays-world-would-i-be-better-off-hacking-with-android (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a &quot;what should I learn&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311902/why-do-i-get-an-error-in-the-cpp-file-if-i-make-a-class-template-before-the-cla (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311901/class-as-a-variable-of-another-class (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is another C++ implementation/debugging question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311899/find-availability-software-architecture (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a no effort homework dump.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311897/error-code-c4700-uninitialized-local-variable (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311896/android-file-retriever-application (-4, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted green field question that is asking how to use the IDE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311894/how-do-i-create-a-driver-for-extra-buttons (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rather vague &quot;how do I program buttons on a drawing tablet.&quot;  Aside from being off topic, no information about what drawing tablet it is is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311892/deleting-dynamically-allocated-memory (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        void RemoveDuplicates(Node *head, int size)&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;        Node *tmp = head;&#xD;&#xA;    &#xD;&#xA;        while(tmp-&gt;next != NULL)&#xD;&#xA;            {&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            for(int i=0; i&lt;size; i++)&#xD;&#xA;            {&#xD;&#xA;            if(tmp-&gt;data == tmp-&gt;next-&gt;data)&#xD;&#xA;                {&#xD;&#xA;                Node *remove = tmp-&gt;next;&#xD;&#xA;                tmp-&gt;next = remove-&gt;next;&#xD;&#xA;                ***//delete remove;***&#xD;&#xA;                }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            tmp = tmp-&gt;next;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        }&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; ok, i wrote this piece of code to remove duplicated nodes in my data structure course, the commented delete operator supposed to keep freeing the memory which the remove pointer is pointed to every loop cycle. it doesn't work, IDE keep segmentation faulting me&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; any help?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311891/simplest-way-to-build-an-interactive-website-to-visualize-a-table (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a unclear / too broad &quot;how do I render a table&quot; (there are far too many possible ways to do it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311890/where-and-how-i-can-find-explanations-of-abstractions-and-fancy-stuff-used-in-bu (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rant about large software projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; This question is broad, but I'll try to be concise and to restrict the wideness of it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I'm full of hate toward these business hipster programmers, so I won't be formal this time. Sorry.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Don't get me wrong, I really want to sort this out, I need to understand how it works.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Let's put this in .NET framework only. It's already a good cut down of the range.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    (another 3000 characters)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311888/adobe-illustrator-data-driven-graphics-via-php (-2, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a question about how to implement an AI that Photoshop has in php. I'm not kidding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311886/why-software-releases-must-be-self-regulated (-3, duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a poorly asked duplicate of a question that searching for &quot;Lehman&quot; would have found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311883/sending-computer-screen-video-through-lightning-connector-to-a-iphone (-3, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a &quot;is it possible&quot; feasibility study question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311874/importing-my-class-to-a-given-tester-class (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is an unclear question that might be &quot;how do I debug my code?&quot; but not enough information about it is given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     &gt; In Java I have created a class with a HashMap where I put 13 values. With it's own main it will display the RGB values of the Color Object. The problem is trying to import it to use with a given ColorTest class (which has the MAIN main and cannot be changed); which I can tell from the &quot;NullPointerException&quot; it gives me when trying to create a new instance from my class. I'm still very noob at coding so any help is appreciated!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I have all the code but don't know what/where/how to change it to be used by the tester, and I just don't want to dump all that text unless someone wants to see it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311873/choose-an-application-development-environment-for-the-displaying-monitoring-da (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted too broad question (with a bit of unclear too).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311871/web-design-templates-for-backend-developing (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a tool recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311866/connected-city-problem (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a cross posted (CS) what appears to be homework dump.  It has since been deleted here and a bit large to include - see the [CS.SE version](http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/54031/10159) for its text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311862/logic-of-ap-to-return-number-set-to-bit1-as-an-input-binary (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a block of code without any question asked (a comment of &quot;how does this work?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;        public class BitSet1&#xD;&#xA;        {&#xD;&#xA;        	public static void main(String[] args)&#xD;&#xA;        	{&#xD;&#xA;        		double num=(Math.pow(2.0,31.0))-1;&#xD;&#xA;    	    	int num1=(int)num;&#xD;&#xA;        		double outnum=num1;&#xD;&#xA;        		int count=0;&#xD;&#xA;        		while(num1&gt;0)&#xD;&#xA;        		{&#xD;&#xA;        			if((num1&amp;1)==1)&#xD;&#xA;    	    		count++;&#xD;&#xA;    	    		num1=num1&gt;&gt;1;&#xD;&#xA;        			}&#xD;&#xA;        		System.out.println(count+&quot; bits sets to 1 in number &quot;+ outnum);&#xD;&#xA;        		}&#xD;&#xA;        	}&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311860/can-you-please-explain-what-this-php-code-below-does (-7, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Someone asking what a given function in php does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I just need the logic behind the statement because the idea of escaping strings doesn't seem to make sense to me. What does this code do ? and why is it escaping strings ?What does this code do ? and why is it escaping strings ?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;            $BackupRegister=mysqli_real_escape_string($Count,monitorEntry($anticipatedDate,'created'));&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311857/ways-to-send-a-message-to-a-users-phone (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A service request / too broad (how can you send a message to a device)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; What are some ways to send a private message to a user's phone from a separate computer over the internet? Is there any preferred or standard way to do this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Some methods I could think of:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; - Email: May get buried under other emails. Requires the phone to have internet connectivity. Advantage is that its free and works regardless of device operating system.&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; - SMS: Either costs money (does it?) or you need an SMS gateway, which can not be figured out programmatically (can you?) Advantage is that it works without internet and works regardless of device operating system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311856/periodicity-detection-for-gapped-data (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    An algorithm question that *might* be answerable if sufficient information is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311855/what-is-more-lower-level-click-or-urwid (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &quot;I make web apps using flask so I am tempted to start using click since it's made by the same person but I've seen more info around for urwid? Which one is more lower level?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;    I don't even know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311854/scripting-productivity-and-speed (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     How do you improve your productivity?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I would like to ask what kind of scripts that a software engineer writes to increase his/her productivity. I know some of them could really save time so please share with me.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311853/automating-scripting-and-building (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A question about automating the IDE. It is a bit unclear and if it was made clear, would be off topic here (its a tooling problem)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I am working on a project on Visual Studio with C++. So I need to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1) build the solution  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2) click on debug/attach to process  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 3) click on 3 - 4 buttons in the programs to create and load stuff  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 4) type &quot;Run master&quot; in a textfield(in the my program)  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 5) press Enter button.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; After all this steps, then I can start testing my program. My program is desktop application on Windows 10. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I would like to automate the whole process of clicking build right up to before I start testing. &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; And also, I need this script to monitor the status of the build in cases of build failures to stop. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; I also need to this script to able to &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 1) monitor that I click on the correct buttons so that it does not mess up other running programs.  &#xD;&#xA;    &gt; 2) Is there someway of monitoring the changes in UI or the commands are executed or the maybe just the status/state of the program? This is to check that the script does the correct action at the right time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311850/python-functions-and-parameters (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How to type the parameters for python calls (implementation question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Can Python only accept parameters passed to a function that meet a certain criteria  for example,&#xD;&#xA;    &gt;  Accepts as the first parameter a string specifying the data structure to be used &quot;list&quot;, &quot;set&quot; or &quot;dictionary&quot;  only&#xD;&#xA; &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, that is the list from the other day. The questions that were being closed or were closed from the 50 most recent questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which questions would ideally be on topic for the site?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For those questions, what part of the help center is identifying that they are off topic, or is this part of a too zealous closing?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And I would ***really*** like community managers to chime in on this too." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28789" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6754" RevisionGUID="6f8d3e60-074a-427e-87cc-6f32d00fea07" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="When a question is migrated to another site, all answers to it are deleted (its a soft delete - 10k users and mods can still see it) and moved with the question to its target site.  The question is then locked by the Community user to prevent other state changing things (votes and edits).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the migration is not rejected (closed on the target site), in 30 days the question will be deleted on the origin site.  Until then, it acts as a redirect.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the migration is rejected by closing it as something other than a duplicate, the following things happen:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* The answers that came from the origin site are deleted from the question on the target site&#xD;&#xA;* The question on the target site is locked&#xD;&#xA;* The answers on the origin site are undeleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;All that said, it doesn't appear that you answered it *here*:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [no redirect link](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/246076/netbeans-changed-after-uml-installed?noredirect=1)&#xD;&#xA;* [timeline](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/246076/timeline)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thus, P.SE never had reason to say there was one answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Only in a *very* few cases does one SE site query another one (migrations to see if the question can be posted there (tags, question ban)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Putting a &quot;check how many answers are on the target site&quot; can cause some disproportionate amounts of activity on the database, especially when things could move from SU to SO and then having a significant uptick in the &quot;how many answers are on this question over there&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This could have very significant impacts depending on how Stack Exchange partitions the databases or machines." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28790" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7620" RevisionGUID="d3809665-e409-401f-b367-01788dc73b77" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; you can only see 2 question &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off, do you have any deleted questions? These don't show on the profile, and if the question was asked recently you should be able to go to https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/recently-deleted-questions/144875 to see this.  Otherwise, you would need to get a mod to pull out a link to any other deleted posts that you have.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; with so much down vote that nobody cares to explain to me why.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/298097/difference-between-admin-and-super-admin is a rather boring and uninteresting terminology question. No, there is no standard for 95% of any of the words we use in programming. Even 'bug' has no standard definition.  The name of a role has no standard definition either.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The mouseover for a down vote reads:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Your question does not show any research effort.  It is not useful.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Likewise, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/297056/is-commenting-of-code-part-of-system-documentation is a question of definitions again. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; When my boss says that I need to have a proper documentation of the project does it include proper commenting of codes in my project?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As I pointed out in the comments, &quot;Ask your manager.&quot;  The question is either to be closed as a duplicate (of something that many people are tired of having questions and attempts at debates on), or primary opinion. The question does not show any attempt at searching for our well known answers, and again attempts to stir up a useless debate. Thus, the question was down voted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would encourage you to read [Why was my question down voted?](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6488/)  The [help center](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is also a good read about the types of questions that are in scope. Make sure you completely read the text paragraphs at the end and not just the bullet points." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28791" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5472" RevisionGUID="b2b855c5-1b80-40da-bc63-12fcd8c70101" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As [Deco][1] [said][2], there is a similar question, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/37029/difference-between-defect-and-bugtesting/ where one of the answers gives the definitions of _error_, _faults_, and _failures_ given by the IEEE Standards. As the questions on Academia doesn't have any answer, migrating it on Programmers would have just the effect of closing it, without even the possibility of merging them.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/42031/deco&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5471/question-migrationerror-terminology#comment13773_5471" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28792" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6794" RevisionGUID="8cf2b94f-6597-42a1-8acd-a0eeb9c1c761" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So there's a couple of things to touch upon.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;First off, you said:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The people flagging the first question as duplicate apparently made an assumption, namely that &quot;maintenance programming&quot; equals &quot;dead end&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;No, the OP started with that assumption:  &quot;So half my current work experience would count for naught in the long run.&quot;  And there are other comments within the question that make it clear the OP does not consider maintenance work to be valuable.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Whether or not that attitude is correct is immaterial in this case - it's the OP's bias.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Next up:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd say that question #1 is a pretty interesting one, whereas questions #2 and #3 are fairly mundane, and even borderline inappropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And the answer here is &quot;Nope, all of them are off-topic.&quot;  Career and education advice are explicitly off-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So that brings us to whether or not the correct close reason was picked on that question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We (the community) could have gone &quot;Off Topic -&gt; Career advice&quot; and been done with it.  But in this case, we have a chain of related questions that mostly answer the essence of what was being asked.  [Jalayn's](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/108100/31260) and [Demian's](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/108095/31260) answer address what the OP was asking given the OP's biases.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So closing as duplicate is seen as a kinder response since we're linking the OP to an answer that ought to help their case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Understandably, you feel you have a different perspective and wish to provide that.  That kind of brings us back to the fact that the question is off-topic regardless of how well the duplicate matches the question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You have a few options:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. You can flag the question and make the argument as to why it should be re-opened.  If you've read this far, then you know the key points the mods will want to see addressed to explain why it's different and why it's on-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. You can edit your thoughts into one of the existing answers.  Both [PDR](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/200373/31260) and [Dan](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/200367/31260) have fairly &quot;pro-maintenance&quot; stances in their answers and I suspect your thoughts would blend in with that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ultimately though, you're arguing that the duplicate close vote is an &quot;abuse of the duplicate tag&quot; (per your question title).  And I disagree with that stance.  The question is off-topic for the site.  We have reasonably close questions with answers that address the OP's concern.  Closing as duplicate is well within normal duplicate usage.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28793" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7651" RevisionGUID="905218af-b80f-4e56-84fb-a5df9a9c2c71" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I cannot flag this question for deletion, nor vote to delete it. It has been apparently decided that it should be locked, so that it may fester in our backlog permanently.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I disagree.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I should like to see it deleted as it provides zero value outside of what you could get reading the latest opinions of old technology on any tech opinion site Article. So I leave it to the community to vote for this here as the right to vote for it's deletion on main has been removed from us.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/75486/why-arent-young-programmers-interested-in-mainframes" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28795" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6796" RevisionGUID="5870ecfb-a3cc-4e08-9aa5-99195d49edb6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/252095/who-gives-out-the-awards-to-award-winning-software&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is about the software development industry and is very relevant to programming.  Why was it put on hold? " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28796" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5506" RevisionGUID="c5457f1e-30f5-44bc-affd-9d44675718ed" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Heh... You got *lucky*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;See, [Sam *The Brand* Brand][1] has been doing this syndication deal with the respected tech-news site ArsTechnica. Today, they republished some of the top answers from [Is there an excuse for short variable names?](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names/)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[...Including yours...](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/176582/is-there-an-excuse-for-short-variable-names/176611#176611)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...Wherein you link to that &quot;problem domain&quot; question using the referral format:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The code simply assumes the [problem domain](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/125926/50950) familiarity.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Now, *normally* using the referral shortlink in an answer doesn't do much for you; we don't count links from *within* Stack Exchange when figuring up these badges. But of course, if someone copies the text of your answer (hopefully [in a CC-Wiki-compliant fashion][2]) to another domain and it generates a bunch of inbound links, well...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Free badge! Yay! – [Yannis Rizos](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5505/buggy-announcer-badge#comment13887_5505)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/39006/samthebrand&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/attribution-required/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28797" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7659" RevisionGUID="9f1db6ce-2bc4-41a8-b03c-ba3989cb4bb6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/17053/40980 was asked in 2010 (Java 6 was still in active development). The information in it is quite dated (J2EE isn't a thing anymore - incidentally, it was Java 6 that got rid of J2SE and J2EE). Android is refered to as 'new'.  Some of the answers are no more than one sentence anecdotes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It's still being used in the Academia quite a bit ... &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;!-- --&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; The company I work for uses J2EE and uses it for web development too. I know SAP has integrated a Java interface that can be used instead of ABAP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Without a significant amount of updating, the answers are becoming more and more dated and serve as worse and worse examples for others.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While there's a lot of views on it, it really isn't providing any up to date information.  Looking at the [anonymous feedback](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/220020/qa-anon-feedback?QuestionId=17053) votes on the question and its answers, downvotes are often outweighing the upvotes (the question received 1.2k anon upvotes, and 1.6k anon downvotes).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With its lack of current information, and vastly outdated information the question provides no utility to anyone who finds it via search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is there any reason to keep this question around?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28798" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6802" RevisionGUID="aacb33a1-a915-4638-8a82-b268415c4b5f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="As I understand the process:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A non-moderator can vote to reopen a question, which will appear in the question links as:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &gt; Share | Edit | Reopen (1) | Delete ...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A person can vote to reopen a given question only once,&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - A question may have been closed, reopened, then closed again, making it appear as having zero reopen votes, but preventing the same person to vote to reopen it again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;According to [the revisions][1] of a question, it has been closed only once; it has zero reopen votes. And still, when I try to reopen it, I see the following error:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; You have already voted to reopen this question&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How could it be?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is the revision history not showing all the close and reopen events?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If it was just closed once, then why does the counter say nobody voted to reopen the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/237861/revisions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28799" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7660" RevisionGUID="2f4af5ce-8837-4299-acd1-a71276cbb252" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The question is heavily (but not primarily) opinion-based and certainly too broad.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answers are rambling, outdated, and many are low-quality. Several provide examples of individual projects that use Java, which is a bit too specific to be of much use. Q: &quot;What are cars used for these days?&quot; A: &quot;Well my cousin is a cab driver.&quot; Sure, that technically answers the question, but is useless information.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The bigger issue is &quot;what value does this question and its answers provide?&quot; As far as I can tell it serves one of several purposes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Fuel for the language flame wars.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Answers the questions &quot;what language or technology should I take up next&quot; and &quot;recommend an off-site resource such as a language&quot; (Java, in this case).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [Pros and cons][1] of Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In no way does this question bring measurable benefit to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If there is any useful content in any of the answers, it belongs in the [Java tag wiki][2] which probably has enough useful information as-is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6758/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tags/java/info" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28800" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5508" RevisionGUID="0983d0c0-1f31-4bb7-aab9-7717ed73fec8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This question on main was recently opened &amp; closed.  &#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/185784/is-it-reasonable-to-expect-all-the-items-on-the-programmers-bill-of-rights&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This meta question is to allow a discussion on whether the question is  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* on-topic&#xD;&#xA;* off-topic&#xD;&#xA;* if off-topic, any hope of salvaging it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To be a little more clear, my intent was for the meta discussion to evolve around the latest version of the question, whatever that may end up morphing into. " ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28801" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6808" RevisionGUID="33f13592-f150-48b4-a694-a453c25c4356" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This would not be appropriate on Programmers.  Our Help Center states that questions asking for recommendations on software tools is off topic.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You might be interested in the following site, still in public beta.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28802" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7725" RevisionGUID="d52b53f6-66cf-4cf6-8ed4-16c0615ce896" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm mainly an Stack Overflow user. I'm used to moderate there voting and flagging and I believe that I know their rules quite well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, I'm new here and I'm still getting used. One thing that I've noted is, as this site has more subjective terms than SO, it keeps getting a huge amount of opinion-based and forum-like questions (that are properly closed). Before writing [my question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/302226/what-javascript-has-that-is-so-special-that-could-make-asynchronous-programming), I've tried my best to avoid this behaviour, but in the end it was closed with the same reason.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main question was: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are the specific characteristics of JavaScript that makes Node.js&#xD;&#xA;&gt; so special and why other languages can't build similar frameworks to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; rise in popularity in their own community?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My objective was to attract answers like: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - JavaScript has an unique way to handle threads that is X and no other language have it.&#xD;&#xA; - libuv was the key of Node's success. As it would be very hard to port it to Python for reason X or as it would be so slow in Ruby for reason Y, these two languages don't have successful event-driven frameworks.&#xD;&#xA; - Async is already becoming standard and successful for other languages. E.g: RxJava. The code just don't need to be fully async because those languages are more structured than JavaScript regarding X.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, in the end, it attracted some answers/comments like:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - JavaScript is a terrible language but is used because is the only language available for front-end.&#xD;&#xA; - JavaScript is so poorly designed and demands so many workarounds its gotcha minefield that stuff like Node.js seems glorious by comparison.&#xD;&#xA; - Your answer really is &quot;A language to rule them all&quot; because JavaScript is ubiquitous.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Its my fault** but where I did it wrong? I'll create another question soon and I hope to learn with this mistake to avoid another closed one. So, **how could my question be reworded to fit in this site?** If its not possible, why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt; I've [already](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6742/on-discussions-and-why-they-dont-make-good-questions) [read](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7182/what-goes-on-programmers-se-a-guide-for-stack-overflow) [some](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) [meta](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/the-real-borderline-for-opinion-based-in-programmers) [questions](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/) before posting this meta question. &lt;/sup&gt;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28803" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7941" RevisionGUID="7907fd46-2200-4508-a6c0-3f29be76aabd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="It's not the scope that is wrong, it's the name. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I took your exercise [again][1] to demonstrate, and came up with these results: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Programmers.SE : 37/37&#xD;&#xA;* SoftwareDesign.SE : 13/33, with 4 being a Maybe&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While doing this, I noticed there are a lot more implementation questions than there once was. Here are new programmers looking for answers online. They see two major programming Q&amp;A sites, one titled **&quot;StackOverflow&quot;** and another titled **&quot;Programmers&quot;**. Guess which one they are going to click on first every time?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But here's the details about my opinion on the same questions, and if I'd post each question to a site titled `Programmers` vs a site with a title that strongly emphasizes conceptual software design, like `SoftwareDesign`. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am doing this from the point of view of a user whose *only* knowledge of this site is it is a StackExchange Q&amp;A site titled &quot;Programmers&quot; or &quot;SoftwareDesign&quot;, and who doesn't have a strong grasp of what makes a good/bad question for SE or want to make any significant effort in learning the meta for the site since it is not worthwhile time investment to them at the time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311935/running-net-desktop-application-on-linux - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Maybe;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;2. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311931/need-help-to-make-advance-search-in-php-website-project (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A bit hard to determine (the close vote is for unclear). It looks like this might be too broad too. Its a student trying to do some project that isn't well articulated.  The answers to it are all over the place. The OP hasn't been back since the original post of the question to help clarify.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Maybe;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;3.  https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311930/pointers-and-hexadecimal (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  This is an implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;4. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311928/how-do-i-implement-material-style-account-switcher (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;   This is a far too broad &quot;how do I do this&quot; type question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311925/structure-of-an-abstract-for-a-conference-talk-or-workshop (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This question has nothing to do with programming.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6.  https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311923/extraordinary-software-written-in-javascript (-8, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a too broad question asking for a list of all the ways that Javascript can be used.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311921/accepting-express-js-post-requests-in-a-chrome-app (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for issues with writing something in Chrome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Maybe;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311918/how-to-display-a-non-interactive-message-on-a-jframe (-2, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for how to do something in Java.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Maybe;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311914/running-ruby-commands-does-nothing (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a problem running some third party ruby software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311913/how-to-break-infinite-loop-in-turtle-graphics-python (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for python.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311910/index-exceeds-matrix-dimension-matlab-hog-features (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is an implementation question for matlab (which was already posted on Stack Overflow)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311907/wdk-10-and-visual-studio-2015-acting-funny (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This (now deleted between then and now) was closed as unclear. It was an issue with some software installation for a C library.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311904/learning-linux-kernel-in-todays-world-would-i-be-better-off-hacking-with-android (-4, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a &quot;what should I learn&quot; question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311902/why-do-i-get-an-error-in-the-cpp-file-if-i-make-a-class-template-before-the-cla (-6, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311901/class-as-a-variable-of-another-class (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is another C++ implementation/debugging question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311899/find-availability-software-architecture (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a no effort homework dump.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Question cleaned up to ask about equation for finding availbity in software architecture and has been reopened. Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311897/error-code-c4700-uninitialized-local-variable (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311896/android-file-retriever-application (-4, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted green field question that is asking how to use the IDE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311894/how-do-i-create-a-driver-for-extra-buttons (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rather vague &quot;how do I program buttons on a drawing tablet.&quot;  Aside from being off topic, no information about what drawing tablet it is is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311892/deleting-dynamically-allocated-memory (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a C++ implementation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311891/simplest-way-to-build-an-interactive-website-to-visualize-a-table (-3, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a unclear / too broad &quot;how do I render a table&quot; (there are far too many possible ways to do it).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311890/where-and-how-i-can-find-explanations-of-abstractions-and-fancy-stuff-used-in-bu (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a rant about large software projects.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311888/adobe-illustrator-data-driven-graphics-via-php (-2, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a question about how to implement an AI that Photoshop has in php. I'm not kidding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311886/why-software-releases-must-be-self-regulated (-3, duplicate)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a poorly asked duplicate of a question that searching for &quot;Lehman&quot; would have found.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311883/sending-computer-screen-video-through-lightning-connector-to-a-iphone (-3, 3 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a &quot;is it possible&quot; feasibility study question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311874/importing-my-class-to-a-given-tester-class (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is an unclear question that might be &quot;how do I debug my code?&quot; but not enough information about it is given.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311873/choose-an-application-development-environment-for-the-displaying-monitoring-da (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a cross posted too broad question (with a bit of unclear too).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311871/web-design-templates-for-backend-developing (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a tool recommendation question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311866/connected-city-problem (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a cross posted (CS) what appears to be homework dump.  It has since been deleted here and a bit large to include - see the [CS.SE version](http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/54031/10159) for its text.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311862/logic-of-ap-to-return-number-set-to-bit1-as-an-input-binary (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     This is a block of code without any question asked (a comment of &quot;how does this work?&quot;)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311860/can-you-please-explain-what-this-php-code-below-does (-7, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Someone asking what a given function in php does.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311857/ways-to-send-a-message-to-a-users-phone (-4, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A service request / too broad (how can you send a message to a device)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311856/periodicity-detection-for-gapped-data (-3, 4 close votes)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    An algorithm question that *might* be answerable if sufficient information is provided.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: Yes;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311855/what-is-more-lower-level-click-or-urwid (-5, closed)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    &quot;I make web apps using flask so I am tempted to start using click since it's made by the same person but I've seen more info around for urwid? Which one is more lower level?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;    I don't even know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311854/scripting-productivity-and-speed (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;     How do you improve your productivity?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311853/automating-scripting-and-building (-6, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    A question about automating the IDE. It is a bit unclear and if it was made clear, would be off topic here (its a tooling problem)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1.  https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/311850/python-functions-and-parameters (-5, deleted)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    How to type the parameters for python calls (implementation question)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  - Programmers: Yes; SoftwareDesign: No;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And to copy/paste from before :&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Keep in mind, this is *my perspective*. Everyone's different. We can't say definitely &quot;yes this would be asked&quot; or &quot;no this wouldn't be asked&quot;. It depends on the question asker.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The point is, a user who only knows *&quot;this is a SE Q&amp;A site titled Programmers&quot;* will most likely have a very different assumption than a user who only knows *&quot;this is a SE Q&amp;A site titled The Whiteboard&quot;* (or Software Concepts, or Software Design Theory, etc)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; The term &quot;**Programmers**&quot; is an extremely broad term that could bring to mind a person writing code, a person designing software, a person gathering requirements, a person seeking a new job, etc. But in all cases, it brings to mind *a person*.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; However a term like &quot;**The Whiteboard**&quot; (or SoftwareDesign) gives a first impression of &quot;conceptual software design&quot;, which is more likely to bring to mind designing software, considering architecture, evaluating approaches, etc. It's much more inline with what this site actually is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And as a footnote, I've worked many years now in user-interface design and development. I speak to end-users on a regular basis, and translate their &quot;user-speak&quot; to application designs, taking special care that everything is clear and makes sense *from their point of view*. The discrepancy between the site name and scope and subsequential confusion it causes is extremely clear to me as a major cause of this site's problem. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know it won't fix everything, but it *will* significantly cut down on the number of off-topic questions that get asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7147/1130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28804" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5511" RevisionGUID="95df27d9-3b47-4195-92ee-348e3e69e421" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Per the [meta-faq post about career-questions][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; ##Can I ask career advice questions?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; No, **unless your question is specifically about software development&#xD;&#xA;&gt; and requires the unique insights of a programmer**. Most career advice&#xD;&#xA;&gt; questions [run the risk of being&#xD;&#xA;&gt; closed](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/588/are-career-advice-questions-useful-to-anyone-except-the-poster/590#590):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; try to make yours a [good subjective&#xD;&#xA;&gt; question](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Since the question is about a programmer-specific work environment, providing items from a Programmer-specific &quot;Bill of Rights&quot;, I think that it is on-topic for the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a side note, I know [another answer][2] suggested that the question get cleaned up and migrated to the Workplace, however the original question was [cross-posted](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/9381) on the Workplace. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;They've edited their version to fit their site scope, and I edited the one here to try and fit Programmer's scope. The end result is two very different but related questions. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Programmers.SE**: [Is it reasonable to expect all the items on the &quot;Programmers Bill of Rights&quot;?][3]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**Workplace.SE**: [How to encourage an employer to adopt the &quot;Programmer's Bill of Rights&quot;?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Personally I think the Programmers version is OK now, and have voted to reopen it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1165/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5509/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/185784/1130&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/9381" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28805" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6862" RevisionGUID="64c4c422-3470-4bbf-867c-10a3aaefb939" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I was reading [this question and answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/122191/what-benefits-are-there-to-native-javascript-development) this morning and I noticed it disappeared now and I get an error page with &quot;removed for reasons of moderation&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What happened to the question and why?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I recall it having 6K views and some activity today (A friend of mine wrote a popular answer there and he pinged me surprised that it got attention)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28806" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6877" RevisionGUID="2dba0cc0-e5bf-4588-88cd-fb3bbd0ec7ae" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/255703/revisions&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It should be obvious that this question will be downvoted and closed within moments. Please don't migrate crap to SO.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Perhaps this site should have a close reason like SO does for things that belong on SU but are too crappy to be migrated?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28807" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5513" RevisionGUID="419d9220-f1b3-49db-bb40-e27ca64cddd0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [current revision][1] of the question is definitely a lot better than the [original one][2], but I'm afraid the question is still not one that can be answered factually. The core question is:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm sure not all workplaces do (mine doesn't), but I would like to know if each of these items can reasonably be expected for most programming jobs.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The assumption that there's any kind of uniformity in programming jobs is horribly flawed, answers will differ wildly per industry and per country, and even per team. It's an interesting question, but as currently phrased, it's one that can only be discussed and not answered.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/185784/4&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/185784/1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28808" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8214" RevisionGUID="bf9cebeb-6be6-405f-9c83-b25be6c1931f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.240" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="On one hand, when you're asking for an algorithm, you're also asking for the information to implement it - either a library, a book or paper, an example. On the other hand, choosing an algorithm is clearly part of software design, which [is on-topic][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I closed the question as being too broad, since I think that fits the best. The primary reason why we don't allow resource requests is that finding documents is the job for a search engine and rarely requires human expertise. We're best at writing answers that not only draw on published material, but also personal knowledge and experience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the question scope was narrowed to describe the problem and intended outcome in more detail, I think the question would be OK. If you take the core of the question now (&quot;machine learning algorithm for Stock Market Prediction model using Deep Neural Networks&quot;), you end up with several posts on different sites with techniques. However, if the problem is described more, it becomes something that's not really searchable, but would require human expertise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the asker does what we ask in the [how to ask a good question article in the Help Center][2], then some burden also goes to the answerer to not just name algorithms and throw out links, but to [write a good answer][3] that stands on its own and gives future readers sufficient information to have a solution.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28809" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7756" RevisionGUID="1ff98c5a-e65c-47ac-a560-1d24302d081e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Cmon, now.](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-an-alien-language?noredirect=1#comment633790_303438) Apparently using a hyperbolic writing style is grounds for marking things as &quot;unclear&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question very clearly describes a scenario in which the UTF-8 standard would have to be greatly expanded, and the effects/feasibility of such an act. The question has garnered many direct and concrete answers ranging from historical considerations to [mathematical limitations](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-an-alien-language?noredirect=1#comment633785_303438).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One argument for the closing of the discussion was that it would be [hard to search for](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-an-alien-language?noredirect=1#comment633769_303438) (I'm assuming that's the reason for throwing a random link at me, anyway). However, aside from SEO considerations there are, at the time of this writing, [40 questions tagged &lt;kbd&gt;unicode&lt;/kbd&gt;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/unicode) and [15 tagged &lt;kbd&gt;utf-8&lt;/kbd&gt;](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/utf-8).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If the answer to whomever's question cannot be found among the [52 questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/utf-8+or+unicode) on this site because of the way the question was posed, then they're not going to find it on this site *at all*.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was garnering a good amount of information that I have yet to find aggregated into a single place other than the RFC for unicode (which doesn't address alien invasion hypotheticals, mind you), and the closure of the post yielded a [missed opportunity for a potentially revealing and informative answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/303438/would-utf-8-be-able-to-support-the-inclusion-of-a-vast-alien-language#comment633790_303438). Not to mention a diamond mod [closed it](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/303438/revisions) in a mere 30 seconds or so, which leads me to believe it [wasn't read in-full to begin with](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/185288/180420) (link is generously written by one of the opponents to the question at hand).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Is this what I should expect from Programmers.SE?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28810" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5515" RevisionGUID="3452ac61-e32b-45d0-8cfc-58f8a870d714" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I would like to point out that according to the faq this site deals with &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These are problems that tend to be reduced to some kind of math problem and many times are best expressed with the help of mathematical notation. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I looked at the solution proposed of using images linked from http://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;but for anything non-trivial this really would be a big PITA.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For instance, I wrote [this solution for a problem from Skiena's Algorithm Design Manual][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/186081/73652" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28811" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7828" RevisionGUID="4e8c2511-ce18-4fdf-bec9-bee922dc3ce7" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Related: [Tags that only exist on locked questions, should we treat these the same as tags that don't exist at all?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/259740/165773)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; philosophically Historical Lock questions are **deleted**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Visual difference between historically locked and legitimate questions looks quite subtle to me, even though I have few years experience on the site. It can be even harder for inexperienced readers to tell the difference.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that historical lock is applied mostly to (inappropriate) questions [having large amount of views](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+views%3A20000 &quot;currently, search shows 132 locked questions having 20K views or more&quot;) and ranked highly in web search engines, this creates wide open broken windows. Inexperienced site visitors coming from web searches at h/l questions think that these are legitimate and try to ask similar ones.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In order to help newcomers see the difference, suggest to use pink background when rendering historically locked posts - same that is currently used to render deleted posts displayed to 10K users.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Related feature request at MSE (hat tip to [durron597](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/300687/i-think-this-old-deleted-question-should-be-undeleted-and-historically-locked-i/300727?noredirect=1#comment315138_300727)):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [Automatic visual indication of old questions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/98589/165773)" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28812" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6903" RevisionGUID="d9e527c0-2a77-45a8-a7f4-4e83240bb4cb" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [tag:domain] tag currently provides very little value, because it's an ambiguous term that refers to several unrelated concepts in vastly different fields. Based on a very quick look, it appears that most of the questions fall into one of three categories:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* questions about Internet domain names&#xD;&#xA;* the software engineering concept of domains (a la [tag:domain-driven-design] [tag:domain-model])&#xD;&#xA;* the SQL notion of a domain, per `CREATE DOMAIN`, as in https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/110316/to-domain-or-not-to-domain&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Full disclose: I'm not well-antiquated with the latter two uses, so I don't know how related they are, if at all.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;These separate uses should probably get their own tags, and `[domain]` should possibly be blacklisted to prevent further vague misuse." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28813" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5519" RevisionGUID="210eb15c-00b1-41d9-ad45-b530505022c1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I'm mainly looking at [this question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/186243/cloc-not-counting-actionscript-files-correctly) and the list of things that are on-topic in our FAQ:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - design patterns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - developer testing&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - development methodologies&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - freelancing and business concerns&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - quality assurance&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software architecture&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software engineering&#xD;&#xA;&gt; - software licensing&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;However, our FAQ also states in the list of things that are off-topic:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; implementation issues or programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Some of the things that are on topic are supported by tools. There are tools to capture and manage requirements. There are tools for software design and architecture used to create or verify models. There are tools, such as the one in the linked to question, to support gathering measurements and metrics from software projects. There are tools to support developer testing and quality assurance in the form of CI servers. Part of software engineering is configuration management, often supported by version control systems.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that there are tools that support areas of professional software development that are on topic per our FAQ, does that mean that there are indeed some tool questions which belong here as opposed to Stack Overflow? If so, what can we do to make it more clear what type of tool questions belong here versus on Stack Overflow?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28814" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7848" RevisionGUID="df22b83f-99aa-435d-8720-d34137c97309" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Looking at the topmost answer of [this question][1], I wondered if the inclusion of that Dilbert comic might be a copyright violation, and what might be the proper way to handle it. More general: how should we act when we see a posting which includes material which might be copyrighted? Edit out the material ASAP and inform the author about the edit?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/307672/how-to-define-fixed-priced-software-projects-and-how-to-argue-what-is-inside-sco/307675#comment645893_307675" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28815" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6934" RevisionGUID="e847a11e-6562-4b94-9ab0-614544403aea" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You've asked more than 3 questions here. You have asked a total of [8 questions][1]. Of these 8 questions, a total of 4 have a negative score and 1 has a neutral score. Your overall net score on questions is -3. In addition, 4 questions were closed (including some of the deleted ones) and 2 were migrated. This does indeed warrant the automatic quality messages.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/29430/aitchnyu?tab=questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28816" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5614" RevisionGUID="e499716d-1d4c-4bae-ae0f-462095383a23" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text=" &gt; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/188292/should-i-try-to-persuade-my-manager-that-code-tidying-should-take-priority-over&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not agree that this question should have been closed. If it was truly a duplicate, than the answers would have been the same. As it is, the answers are not the same.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&quot;Should I&quot; is not the same as &quot;How can I&quot;.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were several good reasons to keep the question open in comments, however those comments were deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Sometimes I absolutely despair for this site when good content is mercilessly closed like this. Eric Lippert took the time to write an absolute gem of wisdom, it's such a huge shame that it'll go almost entirely unnoticed now due to over zealous moderation :(" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28817" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7880" RevisionGUID="6c45b922-f89b-4e92-b462-f3f3129ab2e6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;Sort of a later follow-up: question was further cleaned up and 14 answers that didn't attempt to address the question and/or were repeating prior ones were removed by moderator (one or two answers were deleted by their authors per discussion in comments).&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question looks generally good to me, it appears to be reasonably clear and focused and rather difficult to misinterpret.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Though some answerers managed to &quot;leak through&quot; minor slippery points in wording. Granted, some of them dumped their stuff in first several hours prior to [revision 4](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/118703/revisions &quot;'Nov 9 '11 at 23:19'&quot;), while text (and especially title) of the question were leaving bit more room for misinterpretation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Prior editors did pretty good job of cleaning it up but there still seem to be some corrections worth considering, especially now that question apparently gained [huge popularity](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/103053/165773 &quot;see 'How aggressively should we maintain and improve very popular questions?'&quot;) and has got to our [all time top 50 open questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=views%3A85000+closed%3Ano) with over 85K views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I would particularly recommend the following changes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Add [tag:history] tag. After revision 4 main focus of the question has been very prominently shifted to this and lack of the respective tag looks really confusing. Not to mention that this makes it harder to search.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Note about ternary operator that &quot;gets even less love among Java programmers etc&quot;. It probably fit well into trollish / ranty mood of the original text but in current form, it looks rather poor fit to the rest of the question. I would replace it with more neutral explanation, about like this:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;But that's only because code snippet was made as simple as possible to clearer show the idea, the question is about more realistic cases where ternary operator is not an option.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Closing words &quot;why do people adhere to it rigidly?&quot; are worth removing. These are just a leftover of original rant and really have no place in the question. Actually, words like this are usually enough for me to vote close as [opinion based / too broad](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6742/31260 &quot;see 'On discussions and why they don't make good questions'&quot;) but prior editors did a really good job of making it clear that it's tangential to the question (except for maybe the [most _rigidly_ careless answerers](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/118703/where-did-the-notion-of-one-return-only-come-from/119117#comment654398_212495 &quot;example: 'the question was twofold and I answered to the latter aspect of it... rigidly blah blah' OMFG&quot;)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Cleaning up the question may be good, but we would better take care of tangential answers as well.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Even now, visitors probably find these confusing and wonder how these are related to the question. But very attentive readers can at least re-check the question text and say, _&quot;ah, this answer exploits &amp;lt;such and such minor point of the question&amp;gt;, I understand&quot;_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But if the question is cleaned as suggested above, these answers will become really harmful, telling tens thousands visitors, _&quot;hey, it's okay to totally ignore what is asked about and just drop into answer box whatever comes to your mind&quot;_." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28818" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7049" RevisionGUID="286d4ecd-a99c-4958-be2d-9ff6bf6dac4e" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="After missing a pre-existing answer and providing a duplicate by accident, should one delete the duplicate?  This came up due to the following example:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I posted [this answer][1] to [this question][2], not realizing the fact that essentially the same answer had been provided [here][3].  This had to do with why `break` statements tend to be necessary in different languages' `switch` syntaxes, and though I saw where several people mentioned matching multiple cases and handling them the same way, I had missed the one answer that mentioned handling `case x` by using code that applies only to that case, followed by code in a fall-through that matches both `case x` and `case y`.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general I would think the most appropriate thing to do in cases like this, if no votes have been cast, is to just delete one's duplicate answer.  But if the answer has been upvoted at least once, which kind of response would be more appropriate on Stack Exchange sites:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Just leave it and keep the upvote.  It's not the end of the world.&#xD;&#xA;2. Delete it immediately.&#xD;&#xA;3. If one doesn't have the `disciplined` badge already, they should see if they get two more upvotes, then delete the answer and game the badge.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/266813/100669&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/162574/why-do-we-have-to-use-break-in-switch&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/162582/100669" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28819" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5616" RevisionGUID="d2f6778b-dc94-4541-8d5f-9c7d2e2c00ad" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="To answer your first question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I deleted the comments because they didn't add anything of value to the question itself.  They were mostly a meta discussion that belonged here anyway.  There is currently no feature that allows for moderators to migrate comments to a meta discussion or chat room.  I figured that the same arguments about Not a Real Question and Duplicate would reoccur here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;To answer your other question:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Should I keep trying to persuade him, and, if so, **how**?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The answer the *Should* is rather uninteresting and could be based on any number of opinions.  Popular opinion and demonstrated by the nine answers that all seem to say, **NO** it is not a good idea to push deadlines to take care of technical debt.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Furthermore not every answer is focused on Should... many answers like this one are specifically answering **How** which has been answered to death on the duplicate with 14 answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/188298/25476&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Beyond maybe a One Word answer, NO or YES, should wasn't that important in my opinion.  The real thing the OP wanted to know was how to frame the argument to his boss to address technical debt.  Should questions generally don't do well here because there is often wildly different opinions and perspectives for it be answerable in a clear way." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28820" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7085" RevisionGUID="2fc7e0e4-858a-447c-9e0c-0ec9b3d3cf64" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="People are obviously having trouble understanding this question: [Effect of denormalizing](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/267948/19237)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Why is it unclear / what unclear about it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- What ought I to do (or ought to have done) to make it clearer?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Is there a policy or prefered format for database-design-related questions (e.g. include the DDL or a schema diagram in the question)? Would that help in this case or is there something else that's unclear?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I feel like I've posted half a dozen clarifications in comments, to several different people, when I thought the question was clear (to me at least) already.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clearly my question is therefore inadequate; but I don't know in what way / how to improve it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand it's being up- and not down-voted, so I really don't know." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28821" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5625" RevisionGUID="bea13096-bd11-4636-a0e5-227d8e9a4473" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question][1] has two [accepted][2] [answers][3]. How is that possible?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/122955/34339&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/122962/34339&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/122963/34339&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/VLmTo.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28822" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7893" RevisionGUID="a4bc24ea-d58d-4611-91f3-b5f56ece0ee1" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I wonder about this question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/308245/should-we-avoid-language-features-that-c-has-but-java-doesnt-to-increase-main&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It stuck in hot list for 4-5 days, got about 14K views, 16 answers, over 100 upvotes (plus few hundreds more upvotes were cast on answers). That's quite expected in cases like this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Strange things happened after it dropped off the list, it was like immediately forgotten and ignored. In a month that passed since it has got only 4 votes and about 300 views.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(You can check votes in the [question timeline](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/posts/308245/timeline). As for views, I started checking these after I got curious about how fast it has lost popularity - Feb 7: 14,435 views, Feb 14: 14,569, Feb 21: 14,663, Feb 28: 14,736.)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I know that [usefulness isn't the goal](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/165773 &quot;as discussed here&quot;) of hot questions but it's hard to believe that 14K views and few hundreds upvotes went to content that isn't even _interesting_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I also used [this query](http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/95383/anonymous-feedback-for-a-certain-question-and-its-answers) (hat tip to Yannis) to learn about [anonymous feedback](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/post-feedback/info &quot;what's this&quot;) and it doesn't look impressive: votes on top answer were +29/-5, on question +12/-20, other answers got less than 10.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At 14K views this means only one of 400-500 visitors bothered to click the voting arrows. Granted, this seems to be typical, I used same query to compare against two other recent questions with similar score and views and numbers look pretty similar (post ids 307467 and 307292)." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28823" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7104" RevisionGUID="1cbdcbdc-675f-4180-a1aa-1113ab59c21a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I have been trying out &quot;programmers&quot; for quite a couple of weeks now and I feel disappointed.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The questions I have been asking are for the most part left completely unanswered or get a answered with an answer that I do not consider to be very good.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There the only exception to this is [this question][1] where I got very a few very constructive answers and well thought out answers (but that is just an exception).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Look at these questions. I have put alot of effort in them and I think that they are all very decent but all of them have yet to recive the answers that I want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - [int * vs int [N] vs int (*)[N] in function parameters][2]&#xD;&#xA; - [using macros to implement a generic vector][3]&#xD;&#xA; - [using macros to protect assignment to global variables][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only answer I got on [int * vs int [N] vs int (*)[N]][2] felt wrong (everybody makes mistakes) so I made [this question][5] on Stackoverflow to make sure. That question on Stackoverflow started reciving constructive comments and good answers immediately after I posted it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that this is a problem. My time spent here is not rewarding. I think that I would have gotten alot better and more constructive design and readability answers on all my questions if I had put them on Stackoverflow instead. I get so much more attention there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/269502/how-to-structure-a-loop-that-repeats-until-success-and-handles-failures&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/269648/int-vs-int-n-vs-int-n-in-functions-parameters-which-one-do-you-think-i&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/267657/using-macros-to-implement-a-generic-vector-dynamic-array-in-c-is-this-a-good&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/268194/using-macros-to-protect-assignment-to-global-variables&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27878583/does-int-decay-into-int-in-a-function-parameter" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28824" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7120" RevisionGUID="2b2935f4-766a-4903-a6c5-fb27b1f158e3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/270135/) was closed as unclear.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There were also attempts to delete the accepted answer as &quot;not providing an answer.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The question is a poor one; it doesn't show any research effort. It seems perfectly *clear*, though. The answer is very succinct, but it does answer the question, apparently to the asker's satisfaction. The close/delete reasons don't really fit in either case.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At least one user marked both the question as &quot;unclear&quot; and the answer as &quot;not an answer.&quot; These seem like incompatible views; if you're not clear about the question, how can you be sure about whether an answer to it is any good? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Are close/delete reasons meant to be taken literally? Is there a better way to handle closure of a question like this, or should this kind of thing just be downvoted and left open?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For the record, I have no problem with the question being closed. I'm just trying to understand how close/delete reasons are used on this site, and how much thought is given to the reason behind the closure." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28825" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5647" RevisionGUID="39b1106f-0bed-48a4-bd98-19ca1cab7b80" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="We've had a few questions like https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/188657/3965 lately where the question is ranty, but not anything some editing couldn't fix, but in the comments the *user* who asked the question is arguing and soliciting debate and discussion.  Pretty much the textbook definition of &quot;not constructive&quot; except it's the user that's the problem more than the question itself.  Sometimes the lengths they go to in defending a specious argument makes me wonder if the asker has some sort of mental illness.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think the worst of these cases end up getting purged from the system.  At least I couldn't find more examples when I looked just now.  In nearly all cases the question quickly gets closed.  I've even voted to close after answering some of them myself.  However, it sort of seems a shame we can't lock out the original asker but keep the question after some editing.  Is there some sort of standard way these situations are supposed to be handled?  Normally I'd encourage editing and reopening, but if it's the user being intentionally argumentative it seems a quick delete would be a better course of action." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28826" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7122" RevisionGUID="3b925452-69f3-444e-be19-12ab7e5fd6e2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Yesterday I provided a short answer to a question, and it has been deleted as if it was a comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/270394/40631&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I don't think it was a comment, somebody asked what the name of a pattern is and I told them what name I was taught to use for that pattern.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm not sure how to rewrite my answer so that it wouldn't be deleted?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28827" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5694" RevisionGUID="8d3113c6-2529-441b-9371-dea0c8fc4b25" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Couple of days ago I started noticing deleted questions appearing in search results. At first I thought it was mod vision (moderators can search for deleted posts) but today when I happened to search in &lt;strike&gt;porn&lt;/strike&gt; incognito mode:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The [circled question][2]&lt;sup&gt;10K+ link&lt;/sup&gt; was deleted on February 9 and it really shouldn't be in the search results.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/sSpTE.png&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/181462/how-to-connect-ios-application-to-a-telephone-system-through-gprs-and-getting-ph" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28828" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7943" RevisionGUID="2983691b-790a-469f-931f-191c2eddf7f3" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The last week we had seen (again) some discussions here what is &quot;wrong&quot; with this site, why are here so many closed and downvoted questions and why people are interpreting this as &quot;hostility&quot; and &quot;unhelpfulness&quot;. Peter Tòmas Scott [made some kind of survey][1], and his final suggestions were&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. Improve communication of the site's purpose.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 2. Change the self-moderating style&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The first topic was already adressed [here][2] by an attempt of Rachel to get permission for changing the site's name. My question is: how can we address the second point (which is IMHO the more important one)? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Will it improve the sites' perception if we try to improve our means of communication, being more polite, less terse, using the &quot;downvote&quot; button less often against newbies (even when we suggest to close a question), and so on? Let me show you some examples for questions which were closed and/or downvoted in the last 12 hours:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. [I add dynamically dropdown and input fields rows using Jquery][3]&#xD;&#xA;2. [reading line from text files in java (netbeans)][4]&#xD;&#xA;3. [What's wrong about thos code][5]&#xD;&#xA;4. [While loops in C# for Windows Forms. I'm trying to loop certain coefficients so that they can keep displaying on certain labels][6]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should we not have a more **polite** comment template for these kind of &quot;fix-my-code&quot; requests?  Like &quot;Hi OP, are you aware that these kind of questions are off-topic on Programmers? ...&quot;.   &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Moreover, these are a new users, can't we just close those questions instead of giving them a ton of additional downvotes?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;5. [Should filenames be relative to their directory name?][7]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Ok, this is primarily opinion-based. But a downvote, and those precanned links? What about enclosing the link into somethink like &quot;Hi XYZ, are you aware that your question is probably too oppionated to let someone give you a good answer, see &lt;link-to-meta&gt; for more information&quot;?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;6. [What should I know to create applications in Phoenix Webframework?][8]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is IMHO a much better example of how the closing should happen, a comment which was detailed enough to get a &quot;thanks&quot; respond from the OP.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;7. [Registration form with email verification][9]&#xD;&#xA;8. [Integrate between PHP and C program][10]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The comments below those question are fine, and the questions are not yet closed. But the downvotes? The questions are not badly written or expect the reader to have a glass-bowl. And what about a friendly comment like &quot;Hi OP, are you aware that questions of this type are often downvoted or closed on this site if they do not show that the asker did some research effort before&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;9. [Rejected by recruitment process on bad code review][11] &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as &quot;unclear&quot; **after** it got a long-winded answer with 4 upvotes? Sorry, just because for some of us the question seemed to be unanswerable, others seemed to have a different opinion - and that was obvious at the time of closing. There must be a better way to deal with such questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;10. [If condition vs variable assignment performance wise][12]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Closed as a dupe (that is debatable, my close vote would have been for a different reason), but 5 downvotes? The question was clearly written and from a newbie. There must be a better way to handle this.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;And finally, a more positive one: &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;11. [Is it ok if I can't solve a problem when sitting in front of a computer?][13]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Correctly closed, because this was not programming specific, and surely too opinionated. But it got lots of comments and upvotes before (still those 3 IMHO unneccessary downvotes). So that is IMHO a much more constructive way of closing a question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you think about this? &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;EDIT: Here is another one I would like to add for demonstration purposes:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  12. [Quartz .net does not work when I inject dependency][14]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Why not use a more friendly comment like &quot;Hi SlashMet, are you aware that we have a strict no-crosspost policy here in the stackexchange network? Please delete one of your doubles, or expect the community to downvote and close both of your questions.&quot; Of course, that question would be closed either because it is a &quot;fix-my-code&quot; request, and it would surely make sense to tell the OP that, too.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7911/great-expectations-or-at-least-user-expectations&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7935/four-years-later-can-we-change-our-site-name&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/312536/i-add-dynamically-dropdown-and-input-fields-rows-using-jquery-php-but-how-to-sub&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/312534/reading-line-from-text-files-in-java-netbeans&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/312531/whats-wrong-about-thos-code&#xD;&#xA;  [6]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/312525/while-loops-in-c-for-windows-forms-im-trying-to-loop-certain-coefficients-so&#xD;&#xA;  [7]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/312533/should-filenames-be-relative-to-their-directory-name&#xD;&#xA;  [8]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/312530/what-should-i-know-to-create-applications-in-phoenix-webframework&#xD;&#xA;  [9]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/312522/registration-form-with-email-verification&#xD;&#xA;  [10]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/312513/integrate-between-php-and-c-program&#xD;&#xA;  [11]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/312488/rejected-by-recruitment-process-on-bad-code-review&#xD;&#xA;  [12]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/312472/if-condition-vs-variable-assignment-performance-wise&#xD;&#xA;  [13]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/312511/is-it-ok-if-i-cant-solve-a-problem-when-sitting-in-front-of-a-computer&#xD;&#xA;  [14]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/312591/quartz-net-does-not-work-when-i-inject-dependency#comment660099_312591" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28829" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7179" RevisionGUID="433f61ae-5838-414d-a27a-30f3d92ff58f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Question 1: [What is an object pool?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Quoted because of impending edits:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What is an object pool?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; What are some examples of Object Pools?&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Could you consider stack memory to be an example of an Object Pool?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 2: [What is a thread pool?][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Question 1 attracted downvotes and close votes, but question 2 did not: in fact it is upvoted and has quality answers. Why is this?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/273532/22815&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/173575/22815" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28830" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7945" RevisionGUID="d81470b7-f806-41fe-81e6-5a6d99986d4c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Specifically regarding downvoting, one important observation is that when viewing the [homepage](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/) questions that are -4 or lower are not visible.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not know how many people view this link, but given how often bumped content of mine receives upvotes across the SE network, I suspect quite a few do.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Additionally, questions that are -3 or lower can be deleted immediately by [20,000 trusted users](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/trusted-user):&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Voting to delete questions with a score of -3 or lower immediately after they are closed&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28831" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7184" RevisionGUID="50f48159-8d6e-44d6-807f-496ed7d84099" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently had a [question][1], after I posted it, someone answered me. based on it's answer another question aroused.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Then I don't know whether it's better to ask it in the same question or make a new question for it?&#xD;&#xA;I thought if I continue it there, then I have a more complete question, however a user suggested me to make a new post.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In general which is recommended and when I should make another question and when update the same question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/273590/abstraction-in-algorithms?noredirect=1#comment559958_273590" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28832" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7949" RevisionGUID="0f7fa362-cea9-4fc5-871e-f87be97dc2df" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Having worked as a freelancer for years, I hope I can bring a useful comparison between working with customers and answering questions on Stack Exchange. This may eventually be redundant with other answers, but I'll try to make my view more illustrative.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any company, including freelancers, are faced with bad customers—the ones who will spend time jerking about the product you delivered, behaving unprofessionally and trying to screw you and get your work for free. With experience, it becomes easy to spot some of those customers from the beginning of the project, and so you start looking at ways to get rid of those people. Those ways vary from a simple “Sorry, you're a jerk and I won't work for you” to screwing the project to lawsuits to extremely diplomatic ways to explain them that *you* may not be the best freelancer/company for their project.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When things go bad and you know that it will go even worse, it's easy to throw the customer away by shouting at him by phone or by sending him an e-mail telling that you're fed up with his unprofessional crap. It's much more difficult to remain perfectly diplomatic and professional yourself and *lead the customer decide that he should develop the current/next project by somebody else*, not because *you* suck, but for any reason which preferably seem unrelated with your relations between the customer and you.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So why would it matter to be diplomatic? It's not for the customer. You *know* that this customer won't bring you any money. Actually, he costs you money and make you miserable, and it won't change. But you do it for the image of your company—a disgruntled customer can do a lot of harm, such as posting publicly the e-mail you sent him where you told him that his project sucks.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange is different: here, all we do, we do it publicly. Comments are public. This discussion is public. It's like if all e-mails and all phone conversations with customers were public, so any potential customer could read and listen those and make an opinion about the company.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The quality of questions like [I add dynamically dropdown and input fields rows using Jquery][1] or [What's wrong about thos code][2] is a good indicator that we don't want those people on Programmers.SE. If they leave angry at our community and never come back, it's not that had. Many of them won't learn how to ask questions correctly, because they simply don't care. They don't care either about the fact that they are also talking to real people, and *plz send teh codez* and do my homework for me style questions are not particularly polite in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem, instead, is that other potentially valuable users may come to our site, see those questions and the way they are treated here, and make a negative opinion about the community of Programmers.SE. This is where the actual problem lies.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I can suggest two solutions to that.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Be welcome and polite to everyone, including the authors of *plz send teh codez* questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  The issue I can see with this solution is that when this happens, it usually ends up with a discussion. You explain to the person that this is not a good place for such questions, and the OP answers something like: “I don't care about all this meta stuff. Just answer my question.” This could easily lead to not so kind comments and more downvotes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Make the question disappear from the home page. What if the rules which make the question appearing on the home page were different? Such as two close votes and one moderator flag from high rep users make the question immediately vanish for users with low reputation?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  I think it would not only solve the public image of unfriendliness problem, but also make the content more attractive to newcomers (and Google). Meanwhile, high rep users will still see those partially-closed questions and decide whether they are worth being edited/improved/commented, or downvoted/closed/flagged/deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/312536/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/312531/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28833" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5719" RevisionGUID="a16842eb-d169-43b0-887a-9c8ed063e076" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="With this recent spurt of activity on meta, a number of opinions have come out. A number of these describe some rather radical changes.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(please pardon me if I ascribe rather extreme positions)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On everything should be open&#xD;&#xA;----------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**There are instances where people seem to be opposed to closing any question for any reason.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Many of these people who are 3k and above have few if any close vote&#xD;&#xA;   reviews&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This suggests that either everything should be open or that they are comfortable with what is closed.  This is sometimes refuted by numerous &quot;reopen&quot; votes without any &quot;leave closed&quot; reviews.  From this, I can only conclude that there is the perception that everything should be open and there should be no moderation closing things - everything can be salvaged, somehow.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On down votes&#xD;&#xA;-------------&#xD;&#xA;**There are suggestions that there shouldn't be downvotes for users with less than a certain reputation.**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; - Somehow this suggestion has 10 positive votes at the time of this&#xD;&#xA;   writing (and 11 downvotes)&#xD;&#xA; - This is done in the name of &quot;welcoming users&quot;&#xD;&#xA; - People seem to take down votes personally&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Down votes are a necessary feedback to users and part of the design of the system.  There is a threshold where questions don't show up on the front page if they are below a certain level (people complain about seeing too many closed questions on the front page that they don't want to see?  Down vote them.)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As [mentioned](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for#comment14418_5706),&#xD;&#xA;&gt; We have a system for dealing with lousy answers This is where your argument fails. Yes, it's absolutely true that we have a system for dealing with lousy answers, but that's irrelevant if no one is actually using that system. Next time you see a closed question you think should be re-opened, moderate the answers first. Use your downvotes on crap answers that attempt to answer the question and your flags on answers that don't attempt to answer the question. Questions can easily get re-opened if people actually did something about it instead of just talking about it. &lt;/rant&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Downvotes are part of reopening good questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On closure reasons&#xD;&#xA;------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**There is a consistent misunderstanding about closure reasons**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- I understand this is something that Stack Exchange is going to address&#xD;&#xA;- Many people complain about something being closed as off topic when it was closed as non-constructive or not a real question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Not everything is closed for off topic.  Many of the questions of &quot;I don't understand why this was closed&quot; within [are you still confused...](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5654/are-you-still-confused-about-what-programmers-is-for) had to deal with not the scope, but rather with the structure of the system.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;One such examples was [How can I learn algorithms and data structures of any type?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/189143/how-can-i-learn-algorithms-and-data-structures-of-any-type)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I am a novice computer science and engineering student. I am learning Java but i want to learn from the basics so I want to learn algorithms.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Where to start that?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This was not closed for scope reasons but rather that it is not a real question.  It was overly broad.  Attempts were made in the comments to try to figure out what is actually being asked - if there is some way to narrow it down.  It took nearly an hour between being asked and closed and the original questioner was gone not to be seen again within 3 minutes of the question being asked.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Another question of confusion was [My Company Wants To Get Into Mobile Development — And Use Multi-Platform Frameworks](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/189393/my-company-wants-to-get-into-mobile-development-and-use-multi-platform-framew) that has with in:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; What do you guys think about this? No one at my company has any experience with any of the mobile development frameworks. We're starting basically from scratch. I know a bit about iOS, a few people know a bit about android but it amounts to little.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Would love some input from some experts :D&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This question is polling - asking for lots of ideas.  Not an answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is lots of history&#xD;&#xA;------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is lots of history to what Progammers.SE *was*.  Get over it.  The site has not been that way for a long time.  Go through the [top users in the past year](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users?tab=reputation&amp;filter=year) - The vast majority where not here in September of 2010.  These are the people that are here now.  Trying to tell us about how wonderful it was back then and how bad it is now - we don't think its that bad now, and what you try to tell us that we are missing, we don't think we really want.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;You want to tell me about how wonderful the site was back then?  Sure.  I have fond memories of BBS's and that his of a 1200 baud modem connecting.  Some of those old BBS's became telnet sites when slip and isdn became more common and web sites with forums and live chat later on.  Its not the same place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't the same place of July 2010.  It isn't likely to become so again.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Lots of ideas, not answers&#xD;&#xA;--------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my mind, what people come to Stack Exchange for is an answer.  They come to Programmers.StackExchange for a reason too - they want an answer.  They don't want to [reddit programming](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/) or [ask slashdot](http://ask.slashdot.org) when they have a question about programming.  We offer something special here that people come *here* to find.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack exchange doesn't have polls.  It doesn't have endless threads of comments.  It wasn't designed to.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;----------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Stack Exchange and Social Media&#xD;&#xA;-------------------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I've said this before, I'll say it again.  Read [A group is its own worst enemy](http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) by Clay Shirky.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This isn't just because I think its an essential thing to read when trying to understand a group of people... but because this was part of the considerations when creating Stack Exchange and how it is built - and thus, how we can work within it. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Back in [Podcast #23](https://stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/default.asp?W25450) &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Atwood**: Maybe. But the cool thing about this is this is not just me, because that would be boring. It is actually me and Clay Shirky. You know, Clay Shirky is one of my heroes.&#xD;&#xA;&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Spolsky**: Oh...&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Atwood**: Yeah I know, it's awesome. So we get to talk about like building communities online and I get to talk about StackOverflow, you know, and all the lessons we've learned and, get to present with Clay. Obviously he's an expert so. That's one of the people that I have emailed actually, because I thought that would be good, because he is from New-York city as well. So we could A) show him the site and B) talk about the thing we are going to do together in March, because he needs to see the site to have some context. I mean I did meet him and talk to him about this earlier a few months ago, I think I mentioned it on the podcasts. But that was before we had sort of even going to beta, so there's really not a lot to show him. But I would love to show him in person. So we'll see if I'll hear back from him, I do not know.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers.StackExchange.com runs in the Stack Exchange framework.  It was designed with Clay's writings in mind.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;*A Group...* goes into many points of online communities.  The one I've tried to bring to a forefront (there are far too many essential things in the article - for me to try to explain them all would have much more than the text I've already written, and I suspect by this time you are a bit weary.)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale. Scale alone kills conversations, because conversations require dense two-way conversations. In conversational contexts, Metcalfe's law is a drag. The fact that the amount of two-way connections you have to support goes up with the square of the users means that the density of conversation falls off very fast as the system scales even a little bit. You have to have some way to let users hang onto the less is more pattern, in order to keep associated with one another.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We can't have a question that can be answered by 100 different answers.  Jeff considered the issue of scale when he designed Stack Exchange to make it difficult to have conversations in comments (and has apparently been thinking of things in for [discourse](http://www.discourse.org) - which apparently had been nagging him for [a long time](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/11/discussions-flat-or-threaded.html)).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So, what do you want?&#xD;&#xA;---------------------&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Those of you discontent with Programmers.SE, when considering that this is the way that the software works and that great changes to the fundamental ideals of the sites won't happen - what is it that you actually see Programmers.SE being that it isn't today?  How does the site work?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How do we clean up broken windows and trash in the park?  What do you do about that guy who keeps asking how to interview for Google and Microsoft and Blizzard and Oracle again and again?  What does the FAQ say?  How does voting work?  Is voting there at all?  Do we try to make it so that every single person feels like this is a nice warm fuzzy place? Is there a place for [As a programmer, what are the most routine and what are the most creative development tasks?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/189574/what-are-the-most-routine-and-what-are-the-most-creative-development-tasks)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How does what you perceive as the ideal site differ from reddit? Ask Slashdot? Generic php forum?  Can this be implemented in Stack Exchange?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28834" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7195" RevisionGUID="2e623864-8395-4e72-b131-3e6b0484722d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I posted this comment&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    Here's my contribution: http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/restful-web-services-a-tutorial/240169069.  It seems to go into sufficient detail to provide a satisfactory answer to your question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Which apparently broke the URL.  Here is the link to the comment:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/274173/is-this-pattern-restful-or-something-else?noredirect=1#comment561385_274173&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Clue:  What's that semicolon doing there?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28835" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7197" RevisionGUID="54bd913e-363f-4026-a595-e9085aca9e07" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I recently [posted a question][1] on programmers with the view to getting advice on handling individual work contributions outside the realm of employment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Originally, I did mistaking theme this as looking for legal advice and the boundaries between what one can and cannot do when contributing to open source projects that happen to be used by my current employer. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Based on the feedback given, I did reword this just to get general advice from the development community. I seriously doubt I am the first person to have encountered this problem and I'm sure there are a number who can offer suggestions or advice to promote what I am trying to do. This is purely from the point of view of a developer trying to promote the idea of contributing back to open source projects, so I don't see it worthy or moving to another exchange.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I am very open minded to rework the question/content based on feedback if it can be salvaged somehow. I seems like good enough question that a developer may learn from the answers given. It's not unknown for developer to take a liking to an open source tool used in his job and decide to look at it outside work and contribute be it in code or documentation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Any suggestions would be welcome.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/274073/22815" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28836" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5777" RevisionGUID="1b188c02-feb5-4cef-8372-d530f90a854d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Recently I reviewed some posts using SEDE query called [&quot;Marginal short answers with links&quot;](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8599945#8599945 &quot;described here&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* &lt;sup&gt;For the record, I have been using query parameters [as suggested here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8600254#8600254 &quot;0,5,250&quot;), with the only difference that min value was set `-2` instead of `0`, for I wanted to additionally review posts indicating some sort of &quot;community disapproval&quot;.&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;While reviewing posts listed in query results I downvoted some of these ([&quot;pulled a Gnat&quot;](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8605062#8605062) as they say:). Soon after that, I noticed that many of the posts I DVed popped in Low Quality review queue: &#xD;&#xA;[1](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24599 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[2](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24600 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[3](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24601 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[4](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24602 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[5](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24603 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[6](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24604 &quot;example&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Given that mentioned posts were laying dormant for quite a long time (year or more), it looks like my votes triggered their inclusion into queue. Is that observation correct? If yes, I also would want to understand whether such a _dependency of downvotes_ is intended by queue design?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Update&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Two days later I repeated experiment like above and, voila, 8 more posts were added to the queue:&#xD;&#xA;[7](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24768 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[8](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24769 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[9](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24770 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[10](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24771 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[11](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24772 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[12](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24773 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[13](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24774 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[14](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24776 &quot;example&quot;). Next day experiment brought yet another 5 posts into the queue:&#xD;&#xA;[15](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24875 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[16](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24876 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[17](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24877 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[18](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24878 &quot;example&quot;), &#xD;&#xA;[19](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/24879 &quot;example&quot;).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What I noticed in repeated experiments is that queue was populated with posts that got zero score because of my downvote. It looks like quite a reliable pattern of _cause-effect_.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28837" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7950" RevisionGUID="17c7df20-f9cf-46ca-906d-b2397330678d" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I absolutely agree that we need to be more welcoming. This is something that all of us who actively curate and moderate the site need to be more cognizant about. I am going to quote from our own help center.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [Be nice][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. **Rudeness and belittling language are not okay.** Your tone should match the way you'd talk in person with someone you respect and whom&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you want to respect you. _If you don't have time to say something&#xD;&#xA;&gt; politely, just leave it for someone who does._&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I believe our weakness is we can be too terse when dealing with new users. Commenting with a canned link with no other explanation is one example. We may not use rude _language_ per se, but some users are clearly interpreting our terseness as being rude. Suck up your pride buttercup, **we** the [3k+ regular users][2] are the ones that need to change our attitude, not the &quot;omg lolz gimme teh codez&quot; newbie posters.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As a military NCO, as a civilian manager, as a person who has had to deal with angry customers, I have had _many_ people in my face and angry for a variety of reasons. Being rude, terse, or belittling is not a solution to the problem. We need to be calm, professional, and to move the situation to a positive result even when others are not interested in working with us toward that goal. If a new user is confused, upset at a comment, does not understand how to edit their question, _someone_ needs to make an effort to help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This dovetails nicely into the next point:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. **Be welcoming, be patient, and assume good intentions.** Don't expect new users to know all the rules — they don't. And be patient&#xD;&#xA;&gt; while they learn. If you're here for help, make it as easy as possible&#xD;&#xA;&gt; for others to help you. Everyone here is volunteering, and no one&#xD;&#xA;&gt; responds well to _demands_ for help.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;There is a key there: do not expect new users to know all the rules. While _we_ have seen a thousand off-topic, too broad, POB questions, _new users_ have not. We already know that while the help center and tour are good resources, expecting every new user to read and understand those resources is a pipe dream. We need to help guide them in the right direction, rather than assume the worst. The guidance above says to assume good intentions. Rather than assume anything, let the new user prove whether they are here to make positive contributions or to troll or spam. There is an old saying about giving someone rope to hang themselves: let the user choose what to do with the rope and let us assume the best until proven otherwise.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; 3. **Don't be a jerk.** These are just a few examples. If you see them, [flag][3] them:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I omitted the list of obvious stuff. I do not believe we have an issue with being jerks to new users, other than the terseness mentioned above.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### [What topics can I ask about here?][4]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **Programmers Stack Exchange** is a Q&amp;A site for professionals and students in software development and related fields who are interested&#xD;&#xA;&gt; in getting expert answers on conceptual questions about software&#xD;&#xA;&gt; development.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Before showing the list of what is on-topic, the first thing we encounter on that page is our intended audience.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Most of us regulars fall into the _professionals in software development_. We have graduated college, worked in our profession for several years to several decades, and know quite a bit. There is a reason we are the ones with high rep: we have the knowledge and experience to make many positive contributions to the site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the flip side, _students_ are also included. While our profession is unique in that we have many brilliant, self-taught individuals, not everyone is like that. We need to expect that there will be students who fall at both ends of two spectrums: skill level and educational coursework. We may receive questions from people who are in semester one of freshman year, or who are at the graduate level. We may receive question from people who are really good or really bad at software development. We need to welcome everyone and be patient with those who need a little extra handholding.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### On Canned Comments&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The canned comments and links have come up a few times. I wanted to focus on this specific aspect a little bit.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;We see a lot of the same problems over and over again. Rather than typing the same guidance over and over, it makes sense to collect it in a meta post and link to that meta post. We get consistency that way, and questions and answers can be much, much longer than a comment.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I do not advocate for stopping the canned comments and meta links. But I do agree with the point several people brought up that we need to personalize them more. [One of the examples Doc Brown brought up in this meta question was mine][5]: I linked to a meta post with all the details about why the question was off-topic, then I explained what the user needs to do. While answering questions in comments is not what Stack Exchange wants us to do, I felt that saying &quot;nope, sorry, can't ask that here&quot; was too jerkish. I will break down what I feel any comment explaining an off-topic or broad/POB/unclear question must do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Provide a link to a meta post that goes into more detail about why the question is not appropriate.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. Provide a brief explanation of the deficiency in _this specific question_. If I ask a question that is going to be closed, I want to know how I can improve it. While the meta link may wax poetic about various problems, I might not know how it applies to _my specific question_.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;1. For off-topic questions, end with a note saying &quot;while this question is off-topic, if you later encounter conceptual or design issues, those may be on-topic questions for this site.&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I strongly advocate against suggesting that a user may be trying to circumvent a question block on Stack Overflow, or stating that a user has recently asked multiple poor-quality questions, even if there is evidence for it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The only exception would be one from a few days ago. MichaelT told a user that he had asked several poor-quality questions and may receive a temporary question ban. He offered guidance about how to improve the questions and avoid a question ban. I cannot find the link to his comment right now but the point is he was being positive and constructive, trying to help the user avoid an unpleasant situation.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;### Conclusion&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The main takeaway from all of this is that we need to do a better job of guiding new users toward making positive contributions to this community. This will require stepping up our professionalism to the next level and investing more time curating questions beyond close/down votes and canned comments. If we show new users that we care, those new users are more likely to return the sentiment and be positive contributors to Programmers.SE.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/be-nice&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/flagging&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xD;&#xA;  [5]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/312530/what-should-i-know-to-create-applications-in-phoenix-webframework#comment659956_312530" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28838" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7210" RevisionGUID="ce2602cd-5d6f-4386-8df1-a108bbf10cd8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think the major issue with your question (both its original form and the edited one) is that **you have two questions mixed in one**:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. How to convince [someone] to contribute to back to the open source community?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a general question which applies to any company. The only (somehow) relevant context info is that a company uses open source software.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. WTF is the reaction I received from my manager, since I did nothing wrong?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;    This is a specific question which concerns your particular case. Here, the context matters: what you did exactly to contribute to open source community, and how your company was mentioned.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;[My answer][1], if you've read it, replies exactly to this second question, explaining the reaction of your manager, and why you may indeed be subjected to disciplinary action—because you do your personal stuff during your work hours. This is essentially the situation which led you to ask the question in the first place.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Notice that [Snowman's answer][2] is also bound to the context. His answer is, IMHO, plainly wrong (sorry; nothing personal), because **it misses the point that your tutorials made no reference to the company**, but still attempts to explain the reaction of your manager *in your specific case*. If your tutorial was published as being written by *an* employee of Example Corp. instead of a named person (for instance, on a public corporate blog or documentation website or simply containing the name of the company), Snowman's answer would be right, and mine—wrong.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the other hand, the way you formulated your question may also lead to **context-agnostic answers**, that is to explain how an abstract person working in an abstract company should convince an abstract manager to contribute to open source community—and the title of your question is exactly that. It's a perfectly valid question, except that **the context you provide in the question is then completely irrelevant and makes it impossible to answer this context-agnostic answer**.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In my opinion, you should split this question in two:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The first one will explain that you were contributing to open source community by writing a tutorial during your work hours, but your manager is angry and you don't understand why, since you believe that you did nothing wrong. By the way, you haven't mentioned the company anywhere in this tutorial, so it doesn't affect your company's PR. Why is your manager screaming at you? (My answer replies to that) Would it be better to mention the company in the tutorial? (Snowman's answer replies to that)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA; 1. The second one explains simply that your company uses a lot of open source content, and you consider it fair to contribute back to open source community. How should you convince your management to do it?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/274133/6605&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/274075/6605" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28839" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7967" RevisionGUID="7ea006a7-400b-487d-bb7d-10e962ce2f42" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This site used to be a good, safe place to get help on algorithms.  Indeed, I would consider it one of the primary purposes of the site.  It is prominently listed in our help center and tour.  It's probably our biggest differentiator from StackOverflow or Code Review.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yet, more and more, I see questions asking for help on algorithms being closed or migrated.  Like https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/131067/3965, which asked for help with an image classification algorithm, or https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/313167/pizza-hut-math-problem-1-in-haskell, which was asking for help finding a more efficient algorithm on a puzzle problem.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Did people just forget that algorithms is what this site is largely about?  Are people assuming if a question includes a bit of code, or mentions difficulty with a specific language, it can't possibly be asking about an algorithm?  What's going on here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28840" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7216" RevisionGUID="0456e492-99e0-4c84-bfcf-e3f1a93081bf" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This doesn't sound like something that would work on any Stack Exchange site. Various help pages - the [Tour page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tour), the [topics that are within scope](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), the [types of questions that should be avoided](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask), and [the tips for asking good questions](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask) are all relevant. In short, we expect questions to be questions about problems with answers that can be measured how how well they address the problem. If you want discussions, Stack Exchange does provide a [chat facility](http://chat.stackexchange.com), and the [Programmers chat room - The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), is relatively active, I'm not sure you'll find what you're looking for there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As far as the legal repercussions for what you post on any Stack Exchange site (or any other site on the Internet), you would need to consult a lawyer. We aren't experts on the law here on Programmers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28841" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5788" RevisionGUID="4785f53c-512c-4684-8fdc-9f2a8ce874e0" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I like the meta tag [tag:resource-questions] as the [wiki info](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/resource-questions/info) for it can be a useful educational resource for new users.  I notice that user gnat has been using this in his comments where people post their first question asking for a list of tutorials or books.  Eg:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/192102/i-want-to-learn-scheme-which-interpreter-compiler-and-books-can-be-recommended#comment371576_192102&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; [resource requests are not quite welcome at Programmers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/resource-questions/info). As far as I understand, one would rather present an **underlying problem** instead - a problem that was intended to be solved with particular resource requested &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This is great and I don't think anybody would disagree with this, but perhaps it is a good idea that we create this tag on the main site so that when we identify blatant resource requests we can tag the question.  I think it will help speed up the cumbersome and time consuming process of cleanups as we will have a big list of things we can speedibly delete all at once.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What are your thoughts?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28842" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8005" RevisionGUID="e6831208-e3ac-42c1-9788-586f90919680" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This post is a supplement to the [Help Center Article](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) of the same name.  That article, in a nutshell, describes questions that are either too broad, too opinionated, or too discussion-oriented to make good questions.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;This article describes the *specific categories of questions* that you should avoid asking.  Where can you ask them instead?  Try [The Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard), if you have 20 reputation or more.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Coding help&#xD;&#xA;If you need help writing or troubleshooting code (or using the tools), ask your question on Stack Overflow, not here.   Read [&quot;What topics can I ask about&quot;](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) before you ask your question there.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Review my design&#xD;&#xA;We don't review entire software designs; that's a *discussion,* not a question.  If you have a *specific question* about your software design, ask that. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What is the name of this thing?&#xD;&#xA;Questions that ask us to name things or provide word definitions are just requests for search engine help, which we don't provide here.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Which way is best?&#xD;&#xA;*The way that best satisfies your software's requirements.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Because *you* already understand the detailed specifications for your software project,  *you* are in the best position to answer the question &quot;Which way best meets my functional and non-functional software requirements?&quot;  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you can clearly define what &quot;best&quot; means to you specifically without simply restating &quot;best,&quot; then your question might be suitable for asking here.  Otherwise, you're just [trotting after a herd](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/142354/102937).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Convince my boss/coworker&#xD;&#xA;We're not here to help you win your argument.  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Customer service&#xD;&#xA;If you have a question about how a company or organization's product is licensed, priced, serviced, released, etc., *ask the company.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Legal Advice or Licensing&#xD;&#xA;Ask a lawyer, or one of our sister sites like Law or Open Source.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Where do I find...?&#xD;&#xA;We don't help people find things here.  We don't know where you can find that highly obscure paper/product/whatever. You have access to the same tool we do, which is Google.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What do you recommend?&#xD;&#xA;We don't make product, service or technology recommendations of any kind.  Try [here](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) or [here](http://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), but *read their Help Center first.*&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###What should I learn? &#xD;&#xA;We don't know that.  We can't predict the future, and your personal circumstances are too specific to make a good question that can benefit everyone.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;###Is [technology] popular/dead?&#xD;&#xA;We don't know that either.  Even if we did, any answer we provide would become useless a week from now." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28843" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7234" RevisionGUID="935efdb8-a932-4df7-a734-91fd3a942a8f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The [Help Center](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help) has all the information that you need. Specifically, check out these pages:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What topics can I ask about here?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)&#xD;&#xA;* [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask)&#xD;&#xA;* [How do I ask a good question?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you aren't sure if your question is on-topic or if you need help to narrow down the scope or make other improvements, you can always ask here on Meta or in [the chat room, The Whiteboard][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/the-whiteboard" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28845" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7261" RevisionGUID="aac16ad3-03ef-4760-84a9-a3add376985f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Today I saw a question https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/277778/why-are-people-making-tables-with-divs Which have no linked with any programming language (including client side javascript or others). It is pure HTML/CSS based question.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I wonder if it suited at UX site not Programmers? But it get lot of upvotes and answers so I assuming it allowed under some criteria. What could be the criteria of allowing this question?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28846" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5793" RevisionGUID="8ed931bc-e13f-41e1-9402-03192058b0b8" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="this is general question regarding guideline of where to post non-technical questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I had non-technical question at&#xD;&#xA;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15653199/free-compiler-ide-for-writing-windows-app-in-c-for-students and it was marked as off-topic and asked to move to programmers.stackexchange.com.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;So I did https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/193138/free-compiler-ide-for-writing-windows-app-in-c-for-students?noredirect=1&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;and then it got marked as off-topic and migrated back to stackoverflow.&#xD;&#xA;Knowing clear guideline will prevent me asking question in a wrong venue next time.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28847" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8056" RevisionGUID="95fdaef6-3586-4009-9277-00e1eb17f27a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="From [Ana, a Stack Exchange Community Manager][1] in [the previous question about changing the site name][2]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; It took us a good while, but the Community Team has circled up and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; here's where we stand on your request to change Programmers.SE's name.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###We agree that renaming this site is a good idea.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; &quot;Programmers&quot; is an affinity group, whereas &quot;Software Architecture&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (for example) is an action and a discipline. It is entirely possible&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that changing the site's name will send clearer signals and prime new&#xD;&#xA;&gt; users to ask questions more consistently in line with what y'all would&#xD;&#xA;&gt; be proud to see and answer, particularly given where this site’s scope&#xD;&#xA;&gt; has solidified over the past few years.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; _So yes, we're open to proceeding with a name change._ That said, we'll need to make sure the change makes the kind of difference you&#xD;&#xA;&gt; want it to, because we can't repeat this process again several years&#xD;&#xA;&gt; down the line. We gotta get it right _this_ time. Last time the site&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was renamed, the scope was very much still in flux; by now, hopefully&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you can identify much more precisely _what this site is about_ and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; commit to both a name _and_ description _and_ introductory materials&#xD;&#xA;&gt; that communicate this body of knowledge clearly and succinctly.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; ###Here's what the Community Team needs before we can move forward:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 1. **Tell us what you're proposing as the new site name.**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    &quot;Software Engineering&quot; and &quot;Software Architecture&quot; both look like&#xD;&#xA;&gt; good options from where I stand. Let’s not turn this into a bikeshed&#xD;&#xA;&gt; discussion; we need well-considered options here, not a popularity&#xD;&#xA;&gt; contest - Coffee McWhiskeyface is right out. The ideal name will&#xD;&#xA;&gt; suggest _at a glance_ what this site is about, without suggesting that&#xD;&#xA;&gt; it might be “fix my code” even a little bit.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; 2. **Lay out what the [new site scope](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) will be.**&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt;    Above all else, **the scope needs to be simple**. Seriously. No&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more than four bullets, no multi-line comma-separated lists, no&#xD;&#xA;&gt; gerrymandering - **it needs to be easy for any new visitor who bothers&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to read** and even mildly pays attention to what they're reading to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; know what they can and cannot ask about here. Eliminate ambiguity for&#xD;&#xA;&gt; a first time poster once and for all.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Let's talk again in a month.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Let's start answering the following questions:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* What should our site name be?&#xD;&#xA;* What should [our tour][3] say? Specifically, the first paragraph below the site title that begins with &quot;Programmers Stack Exchange is a question and answer site...&quot;&#xD;&#xA;* What should our [Help Center's on-topic page][4] say about what is on and off-topic? Note that what this site is about and not about also does appear on the tour.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/106878/ana?tab=profile&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7935/4&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/tour&#xD;&#xA;  [4]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28848" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7267" RevisionGUID="021933bc-fc3a-47f2-8989-5d05891faf06" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Here is the link to the question that was considered off-topic: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/277933/69485&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I read the answer to another question on here (meta.programmers.stackexchange.com) that as long as the question doesn't just apply to me and it applies to programmers in general, then the career question should be acceptable. Why was my question not considered on-topic specifically? What can I do (if anything) to change the question?&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28849" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5818" RevisionGUID="c5f5a984-2eb0-43f3-939a-bd776f2e192c" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="This has been [discussed before](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3556/are-app-store-questions-on-topic-on-programmers), but the [App Stores proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30702/app-stores) is inching closer to fulfilling the commitment requirements and I'd like to raise the topic again just to see if anything has changed in the past year.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I saw the App Stores proposal, my first instinct was to say that the topic should be pretty well served by Stack Overflow and Programmers for all of the questions that would be a good fit for Stack Exchange in the first place. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Programmers has a lightly used [tag:appstore] tag and the questions that do exist there seem like exactly the kind of questions that'd fit the newly proposed site. The [FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq) also explicitly includes &quot;freelance and business concerns&quot; as a topic, which to me sounds like it would cover the less technical or implementation-related aspects of working with any app store.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm also on board with [this post](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/a/3003/26022) on Area 51:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If [...] the proposal is &quot;about bridging the gap between the development and business aspects of the App development process that don't fit on other StackExchange websites.&quot;, I'd roll it into a larger proposal. &quot;The business of development&quot;. We have a site that's essentially &quot;The business of being a programmer&quot; (Programmers), and I think that would have both a broader reach and a larger base of questions.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;That was written a good year and a half ago and Programmers has evolved quite a bit since then. I think at this point it may well be, at least in part, a &quot;business of development&quot; type of site.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;What do you all think? Would you welcome questions about dealing with app stores here?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28850" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8090" RevisionGUID="1d26e8ca-f7d8-468b-a73c-037fcb4ae6ce" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think it's on-topic, since the [tag:negotiation] tag exists, and one of its question ([How do I negotiate with a company to develop software?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/89960/192731)) is similar to the question of mine. However, that question was asked in 2011, and looking up in the [What topics can I ask about here?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), I'm not sure if my question is on-topic or not. Further more, I'm aware of the proposal of changing the name of the site, and I don't feel like the proposed name best suit for me. After all, I just someone who code, not a qualified professional programmer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;**My draft question**: I'm a solo &quot;programmer&quot;, and I need to buy data for my program. All of the vendors both ask me what is my budget to buy it, and the prediction of the number of users will use my program. How should I negotiate with them?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28851" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5821" RevisionGUID="857a3fcf-f80a-4a3b-9479-bf5cdf3e8ec2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/193893/3965 was originally worded in a polling, discussion-inducing way (&quot;Have you ever&quot;, &quot;work of yours&quot;, &quot;Is it a world of selfishness&quot;), but is not fundamentally a polling, discussion-inducing question.  I edited to fix the language, and I hope people will join me in voting to reopen." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28852" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7270" RevisionGUID="43184982-b211-4c1e-be34-fcd824b59d03" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="So I was looking through the close review queue today and I saw this question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/246616/an-algorithm-for-finding-converse-duplicates-of-ordered-pairs&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The OP asked for an algorithm to find certain parts of related elements in a list. For some reason, all the answers are of the form &quot;Here's my solution in [language]: [big block of code]&quot; without any attempt at discussing algorithmic trade-offs like worst-case time complexity versus implementation complexity. I would assume the latter is what we want from an &quot;algorithm question&quot;; otherwise they should Google or ask on SO with a specific language tag (right?).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My first question is: **What should we do when this happens to a question?** Closing doesn't feel right to me, since it's still a well-written, on-topic, answerable question. It has been protected, which I completely agree with, but there's probably something else that should be done.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;-----&#xD;&#xA;For the record, I was prompted to ask this because of the somewhat odd custom close reason that was provided. See these comments:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because as written and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; answered, the question is answerable by unexplained code snippets in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; arbitrary languages. –  MichaelT 2 days ago&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @MichaelT: Full marks for originality: I've never seen that as a close&#xD;&#xA;&gt; reason before. It was a serious question about an actual problem and I&#xD;&#xA;&gt; was disappointed at the outcome. I thought it deserved better answers,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; but is that the fault of the question? –  david.pfx yesterday&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; @david.pfx I'm not sure. I remember looking at the question nearly a&#xD;&#xA;&gt; year ago and thinking it looked good and could get some good answers.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Unfortunately, what you are getting is &quot;here's an implementation in&#xD;&#xA;&gt; python, here's another one in ruby...&quot; and it appears to be taking on&#xD;&#xA;&gt; more of an algorithm golf problem nature (with some code) than what&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'd really like to see from the question. –  MichaelT yesterday&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;My second question is what the OP asked here: **Was this the fault of the question?** or better yet **Could the question be edited in a way that might discourage these &quot;code-only&quot; answers?**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'm also not sure if this is a trend or just one exceptionally unlucky question; I personally haven't seen it happen anywhere else, but I haven't searched for more examples." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28853" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8126" RevisionGUID="18c3450f-16b1-403f-882e-f3700974c049" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&lt;sup&gt;(summary of July 29th [discussion at Whiteboard](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/new-site-name-discussion-jul-29-2016 &quot;'New Site Name discussion Jul 29, 2016'&quot;))&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;At [help/on-topic page](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)...&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...bullets in about list look OK to keep as is:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* software requirements&#xD;&#xA;* software architecture and design&#xD;&#xA;* algorithm and data structure concepts&#xD;&#xA;* quality assurance and testing&#xD;&#xA;* development methodologies and processes&#xD;&#xA;* software configuration management&#xD;&#xA;* software engineering management&#xD;&#xA;* software licensing &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Note in past discussions there were some doubts whether licensing belongs. Current plan is to consider this a [minor issue](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/31224602#31224602 &quot;'it's a super inside-baseball kinda discussion; licensing and law just aren't a big part of this site on a day to day basis'&quot;) that can be clarified later per separate meta discussion. (since this part of Help Center is mod editable, adding and removing bullets is a lightweight change)&lt;/sub&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;...not-about list is to be made smaller, with bullets as proposed by Robert Harvey:&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;* **We don't do code troubleshooting here,** so if your question is about how to fix your broken code or how to use your programming tools, ask it on Stack Overflow, making sure that you provide a [minimal, complete, and verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve).&#xD;&#xA;* Please make sure that your question is **directly related to the [Systems Development Life Cycle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Systems_Development_Life_Cycle.jpg)**. Avoid peripheral issues such as product recommendations, career or education advice, product support or legal matters&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Note above phrasing is tailored for using at [help/dont-ask] page where [we would like it to move](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/31762989#31762989), and such a move would require CM to agree and do the page edit. In case if it is going to get to &quot;not about&quot; part at [help/on-topic] page we will tweak the phrasing to make it read smoother over there, that is when followed by words &quot;not about...&quot;&lt;/sup&gt;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;---&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;With regards to overlapping sites, [current stats](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8114/follow-up-2-new-site-name-and-scope-proposals/8121#comment25265_8121 &quot;In the last 90 days, we've migrated 89 questions away from Programmers. Of those, 70 to Stack Overflow, 4 to Workplace, 3 to Programmers Meta, 2 to Unix &amp; Linux, 2 to Open Source, and 1 each to Programming Puzzles &amp; Code Golf, Computer Science, Code Review, Law, Webmasters, Startups, Cross Validated, and Software Recommendations. In order for a migration to be available to users, there needs to be sufficient need and agreement by both communities.&quot;) suggest that we better keep migration options as is.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Later though [this may be reconsidered](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/21?m=31378331#31378331):&#xD;&#xA;&gt; If the name change is successful and the number of questions migrated to SO and/or the number of code debugging questions drops, I think it's something to revisit for sure.&#xD;&#xA;" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28854" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7342" RevisionGUID="5a56425e-2873-4946-a235-9b21fad26a36" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="In the comment section to [this question post][1], I was replying to a comment of a moderator with a question and also posting another comment for the asker. The moderator apparently didn't like my question to him and wrote something like &quot;how pedantic you are&quot; (to which I responded that I don't mind if he doesn't mean what he says).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A few hours later all comments, including some comments of the asker and my comment to the asker, which were not related to the little conversation between the moderator and me, have been deleted.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I think that if he was going to retract his comments, he shouldn't delete the entire comments section. That's destroying content. Isn't he exceeding his competencies with this action?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/274270/er-diagram-multiplicity-uml/280470#280470" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28855" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5847" RevisionGUID="c5abd29c-316f-48a8-b5dc-eca2a675124f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Okay, I'm very confused now. A [question of mine from 2 years ago][1] with multiple upvoted answers and upvoted to ten was just closed as not constructive. I'm assuming that someone stumbled across it and voted to close putting it in the review queue. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If anything maybe it should be locked, but there were good answers to the questions and it proposed something for people to think about. It relates directly to programming so I'm just curious, what's not constructive about the question?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/43838/do-you-own-your-tools" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28856" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="44" RevisionGUID="4dd9e2f3-ac8a-47e1-b1ea-077dc7e02c6a" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:51.070" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; ### Note (copied from Mark Trapp's answer)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; This question was posted before the Great Disciplining of Programmers.SE and is rendered obsolete by the following resources:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Programmers.SE FAQ](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Good Subjective, Bad Subjective](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [The Six Subjective Question Guidelines — Enforcement Notice](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/350/the-six-subjective-question-guidelines-enforcement-notice)&#xD;&#xA;&gt; * [Real Questions Have Answers](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When this site was proposed, there was an unspoken understanding &amp;#8212; heck, sometimes it wasn't even unspoken &amp;#8212; that it was the place for questions like &quot;[What's your favorite programmer cartoon?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/84556/whats-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon)&quot; and &quot;[What book should every programmer read?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read)&quot;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Assuming for a moment that the migration pathway opens up from SO after the beta &amp;#8212; that's being discussed at [a separate question](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/23/should-we-migrate-subjective-question-from-stackoverflow) &amp;#8212; do we still want to ask those questions during the beta?  It's already happening; [example 1](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon), [example 2](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-programming-quote).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;On the one hand, it seems redundant.  But on the other hand, there's always the merge function.  Back to the first hand, merging will probably create some dupe answers.  But on the second hand again, there are already dupe answers." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28858" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8201" RevisionGUID="ea6477ed-9e01-405b-a92b-5540e979b10f" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I think your message is fine, it is polite and and contains useful information, especially for new users. IMHO it is a much better reaction than just downvoting and closing without any comment, or these rude or terse comments we saw in the past and [discussed here][1].&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;When I just tried to use a similar comment, first thing I noted is: this fits only to a certain kind of low-quality questions. For example, if someone blatantly asks for a website or book or other 3rd party resource, it is pretty pointless to tell him he should try it on another SE site. For these kind of questions, I think a downvote, a close vote, and just no comment is probably appropriate. The automatically displayer text the asker will be shown after his question is closed is IMHO self-explanatory enough.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Nevertheless, I think the general idea is fine: having some precanned, polite text template or maybe templates for different issues, where we just need to fill out the name of the asker, can help to keep a better balance between removing the crap from the site as quickly as possible on one hand, but also staying professional and friendly to newcomers on the other hand. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I like yours, but I would try to improve the wording in some details slightly, and I think adding a personal &quot;Hi User&quot; gives a much better impression to the asker. So here is my attempt to improve your text:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; Hi XYZ, welcome to Programmers. We only support [good](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [This site list](http://stackexchange.com/sites) may help you to find out where [your topic fits best](http://goo.gl/YoQVd0). Please search existing answers first. If you do not find one which matches your issue, feel free to take it to an appropriate site. Please [don't cross post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;`Hi XYZ, welcome to Programmers. We only support [good](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask), [on-topic](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) questions. [This site list](http://stackexchange.com/sites) may help you to find out where [your topic fits best](http://goo.gl/YoQVd0). Please search existing answers first. If you do not find one which matches your issue, feel free to take it to an appropriate site. Please [don't cross post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/tags/cross-posting/info) by failing to delete your question here.`&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;(Unfortunately, I needed to use an URL shortener to come around the maximum text size limit of comments, I hope that does not break any site rules).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Yes, I am aware filling out the user name will slow down the process of making the comment a little bit, since you cannot just copy-paste the text blindly into the comment form. But it will (hopefully) give the reader a better impression that you treat him like a real person.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7943/how-to-improve-our-style-for-reacting-on-low-quality-questions" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28859" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5924" RevisionGUID="3b319d0b-4d4e-4b71-8c26-c13454ab21d2" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Saw this comment in user page of [Rachel][1],  &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; I'm done with this site unless something changes. I feel its changed&#xD;&#xA;&gt; too far from the original programming resource it once was, and the&#xD;&#xA;&gt; current moderation style is not for me.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; I dislike that so much valuable information gets deleted for the sake&#xD;&#xA;&gt; of &quot;maintaining a clean site&quot;, dislike the way many users are treated&#xD;&#xA;&gt; (particularly new ones), and dislike the way the overall culture of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; this site has been changing from a community of programmers out to&#xD;&#xA;&gt; teach and learn from each other, to an insular group of programming&#xD;&#xA;&gt; elitists (of course this isn't all of you, or probably even most of&#xD;&#xA;&gt; you. Its just a large percentage of the more active/vocal users who&#xD;&#xA;&gt; take part in running the site).&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Anyways, I'm not interested in helping to support this site anymore,&#xD;&#xA;&gt; although I will be happy to take part in any initiatives to changes&#xD;&#xA;&gt; things.&#xD;&#xA;&gt; &#xD;&#xA;&gt; Also, if someone makes a Q&amp;A site for Programmers to ask questions and&#xD;&#xA;&gt; get answers from other Programmers about any issue related to their&#xD;&#xA;&gt; career choice or self-identity as a programmer, let me know. I'd love&#xD;&#xA;&gt; to participate in such a site again, and will help you promote it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thought this needs some attention of active users of the site.  :)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/1130/rachel" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28860" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="48" RevisionGUID="d390fe94-6cec-4b9c-8cff-04b2838c0e7b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:51.070" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="There are now a lot of questions that are of the same caliber:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* [What's your favourite programming quote?][1]&#xD;&#xA;* [What is your favorite “programmer” cartoon?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154/what-is-your-favorite-programmer-cartoon)&#xD;&#xA;* [What is your favorite editor/IDE?][2]&#xD;&#xA;* [What's your favorite programming joke?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/35/whats-your-favorite-programming-joke)&#xD;&#xA;* [Can you recommend some good programming blogs?](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/67/can-you-recommend-some-good-programming-blogs)&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Should these types of questions be allowed on Programmers.SE, or should we be limiting the scope of the site to subjective questions that promote extended discussion?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;It was suggested on the [Community Wiki on Programmers](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8/community-wiki-on-programmers) question that we should use the *Community Wiki* flag to allow these types of questions, but prevent rep farming on them. But is that a good solution? What about closing these questions as off-topic even on Programmers.SE?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/39/whats-your-favourite-programming-quote&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/219/what-is-your-favorite-editor-ide" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28862" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7351" RevisionGUID="12e19ee7-1634-4e44-9f0e-2440b4e18a18" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="I searched for this topic and found this post here : https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57380/how-to-start-a-software-company&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;But several times people refer to a web site called answers.onstartups.com which doesn't exist. Can someone point to a new source of information about starting a software company or perhaps fix the broken links?" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28863" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="5979" RevisionGUID="1bb4ee52-7ab4-4499-858e-14b35a6bd171" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="From our [&quot;what's reputation&quot; help page][1]:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;![enter image description here][2]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Can we get a good old ampersand please? The ligature has been around for almost 2000 years (early instances can be seen in Pompeian graffiti), I'm kinda used to it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/whats-reputation&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/fj1QI.png" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28864" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="101" RevisionGUID="a1975282-c79b-4ce9-a2b6-e1a269b576b4" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:51.070" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="&gt; **Possible Duplicate:**  &#xA;&gt; [How to ask a question about software library resources](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1234/how-to-ask-a-question-about-software-library-resources)  &#xA;&#xA;&lt;!-- End of automatically inserted text --&gt;&#xA;&#xA;When asking a question that will result in a list (which is a big chunk of this site's content), people often provide an example answer in their question. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;For example:[What non programming books should a programmer read?][1]&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The problem with this is at least twofold. Firstly the question may get upvotes based on the example answer, rather than being a good question. Secondly, the answer provided in the question will not sit in the list in the correct place in the voting, as it's unlikely anyone else will add that answer.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I propose that we should encourage people when asking &quot;list&quot; type questions to provide their own answer separately so that the question and answer can be voted on independently, and the answer can be part of the list of answers.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/966/what-non-programming-books-should-a-programmer-read-that-helps-developing-progra" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28865" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8249" RevisionGUID="1d837b78-4804-41ba-b05b-020950bf01fe" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[This question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/23276/2618) was closed in favor of a question that was asked some three years later, and was itself closed as being not on topic?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;How can it be a duplicate if it is actually the original? Words either mean something or they don't." ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28866" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7382" RevisionGUID="ffc0526b-f41c-4948-a33e-0e4169dc99bd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="You may have noticed some updates to the design lately, they are part of a SE network-wide update to a new base css framework.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;The updates allow us to:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;- Have sharper / more beautiful design on retina displays&#xD;&#xA;- Fix layout bugs&#xD;&#xA;- More easily add new features to all of our sites in the future&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;As you can see, the layout of the header section was also updated for a better use of the space while using our new Q/A site design layout.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&gt; **But more importantly, it gives you access [to the new profile](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/current)!**&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;If you see any bugs please let us know in the form of answers (to this post) that illustrate one particular thing at a time.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Thanks!" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28867" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="107" RevisionGUID="f2f30915-1b40-4f5d-a8cb-7680f91cba06" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:51.070" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="###[FishToaster][1] ([meta][2])&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I'd like to throw my hat in, since the guidelines say self-nomination is encouraged.  No one's been here long enough to really establish their credentials, but we need people with mod tools, so here I am.  I've been reasonably active in both NPR and meta.NPR, and intend to be for a while (at the very least for the duration of the temporary modship).&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/6&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6/fishtoaster" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28868" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="7430" RevisionGUID="95cd85bf-ba97-4f4f-b771-d5cab21d91e6" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.087" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="The code posted [in this question][1] looks (to me, at least) very poorly formatted, with the opening and closing curly braces on different indentation levels.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Would it be appropriate to edit the code block to align the try-catch blocks to make the code more readable?&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/286422/why-would-we-need-to-rollback-twice-before-closing-in-a-finally-block" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28869" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="8252" RevisionGUID="73abc3bd-690e-4f5b-881c-9222c425700b" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:47.477" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="[Editing and collaboration][1] are fundamental parts of Stack Exchange. Except for rare cases of content disputes (a large number of edits and rollbacks or Meta discussion on a particular post's quality) or historical protection of posts that would otherwise be deleted, all posts can be edited. However, we do have guidance for editing - edits should fix grammar or spelling, clarifying the meaning, incorporate information from comments, add updates as the post ages, or add related links.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;I reviewed the edit and saw that it didn't meet the criteria. It changed the words without accomplishing any of the objectives for edits - it didn't become more clear or incorporate new information or add anything of value. Because of this, I [rolled the edit back][2]. Anyone with edit rights to a post can also use this rollback function.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;In the future, if you see anything wrong, here are things that you can do:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;* Fix it. At 2,000 reputation, you have the ability to edit questions and answers without review. Prior to this, you can make edits and put them into a review queue for people with sufficient reputation to review. By this point, you've also gained other editing capabilities - creating new tags (300), editing community wiki (100), and commenting (50).&#xD;&#xA;* [Flag it for moderator review][3]. If you suspect that something bad is happening, please flag it. We review our flags very regularly and handle things. We have lots of good tools to help us.&#xD;&#xA;* Bring it up on Meta, like you did here. If you don't need a moderator to handle it or something needs broader discussion by the community, open a discussion. Moderators are also notified of all new Meta posts, so if it requires our input or review, we'll see it and should be able to look into it.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;  [1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/editing&#xD;&#xA;  [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/17038/what-is-a-rollback&#xD;&#xA;  [3]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/flagging" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28871" PostHistoryTypeId="5" PostId="6002" RevisionGUID="bad33777-681c-4a7d-a032-4764df38aa97" CreationDate="2017-04-12T07:31:49.643" UserId="-1" Comment="replaced http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ with https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/" Text="Let me provide a low quality link only answer:&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/200935/freelancing-and-gpl&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q